Get National Velvet!

A couple of weeks ago we finally watched the National Velvet CD I got at the thrift store for a Christmas present for the kids.

They saw the cover and actually refused to watch it for over a month, but then they became obsessed with it and wanted to watch it over and over.

Besides being a great story and having famous actors (Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, and Angela Lansbury), it also has an excellent parental role model in it - the mother, actress Anne Revere, who actually won an Oscar for her performance.

So rarely do I watch anything at all, but when I do, I even more rarely see people modeling the kind of parent I'd love to be. So I highly recommend getting National Velvet and then going around like I do, saying to myself, "What would Velvet's mother say in this situation?"

An Awesome Video - Art or Physics or Chemistry?

This video is amazing. Only about a half an hour. You can get it from First Run Films. It's actually an art film, but the entire film is watching physics/chemistry as an installation. Here is a more clear definition of it from Wikipedia:

The Way Things Go (German: Der Lauf der Dinge) is a 1987 art film by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. It documents a long causal chain assembled of everyday objects, resembling a Rube Goldberg machine.

The machine is in a warehouse, about 100 feet long, and incorporates materials such as tires, trash bags, ladders, soap, oil drums, and gasoline. Fire and pyrotechnics are used as chemical triggers. The film is nearly 29 minutes, 45 seconds long, but some of that is waiting for something to burn, or slowly slide down a ramp.

The film evolved out of work the artists did on their earlier photography series, "Quiet afternoon," (German: Stiller Nachmittag) of 1984-1985. As the delicately unstable assemblages they constructed for the photos were apt to almost immediately collapse, they decided that they wanted to make use of this energy.^[1] The film may also have been inspired by the video work of fellow Swiss artist, Roman Signer. The artists undoubtably saw his video work which was exhibited at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1981.^[2] Signer's videos often document objects performing simple actions that are the result of physical phenomena.

And here's a little video "teaser".

Anyway, this video is great entertainment for adults. However, it is rated G, and so I let my kids watch it. My 2-yo especially loves it - they get to watch one video every Wednesday and he always begs for it to be The Way Things Go.

Of course, it just so happens to be educational - but it's accidental, so it brings up questions about what the materials are, etc. without answering them (thank God). But it is quite an inspiration, IMO. Makes me want to go build my own weird obstacle-course/installation-type thing.

Jane Goodall Talking with Animals Video

We watched a really cool video last night that I couldn't resist when I saw it at the library. I am such a huge Jane Goodall fan, and this video is featuring her, but mostly talking about the capabilities of animals/pets and the importance of human relationships with them.

There was some really cool stuff in there! One thing was an Amazon Gray parrot, who has a vocabulary of over 1,000 words and just chatters away about his thoughts and desires to his owner. Also this owner can communicate telepathically with the parrot (or the parrot with her - whichever).

There is also a section about whale communcation which was fascinating - apparently whale songs evolve "just like pop music"!

And I loved a long section on search and rescue dogs and a juvenile jail program called POOCH which pairs up "troubled teens with troubled dogs" - saves dogs from euthanasia and gives the boys the responsibility of rehabbing and training the dogs so they can be adopted out. They said there is a 0% re-offending rate of the teens that have come out of the program so far!!

They have tons of other interesting stories, too, like about training rats to (safely) detect land mines in Africa and about animals' abilities to detect earthquakes and tsunamis.

I could go on and on!

As soon as the movie was over, I told my husband maybe he might want to get a search and rescue dog to use for Tornado damage. He always says he feels guilty going to areas that are hit by tornadoes, because it might seem like he's just gawking (even though severe weather is his field!) Anyway, I suggested if he had a search and rescue dog, he could survey the damage and be helping look for victims in the process. He is not a dog person, though, so this idea did not strike him. I'll keep working on it, especially because I have a keen sense that my two boys are going to need a canine companion soon (once we get those 80 acres!)

One thing that was sad to me about the movie was that it was just brushed over that "maybe humans could have these abilities" and the truth is that they DO. They just aren't used by civilized society, so the only people who have developed them are considered freaks. However, there are entire tribal societies who can do a lot of these things - anyone interested in this might like to read Original Wisdom by Tom Wolff or watch Rabbit-Proof Fence, an excellent (but tragic) movie about the aborigenese of Australia. There is also quite a bit of information about human potential in the book Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce, and a little more about latent abilities in The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff.

Exciting New Developments

Today Ezra made a new friend named Shelly. She is the librarian at the St. Paul Central Library, and she was so excited about him. She asked all about him and his family and wants him to come back and visit her whenever he can. She was so glad he was so fascinated with rockets and space shuttles, and she said her son, who is an undergraduate, is working on something having to do with space shuttle sealants. She helped Ezra get a pile of books all about things he already knows, I think!

To balance this madness, I got him a couple of books on CD - right now he is listening to a long chapter book about a pig. I also got 2 new DVDs for movie night. We've watched Pippi every week, and now we'll move on to a funny short movie about Johnny Appleseed and another one about Clementine.

I also got some Jewish holiday books because I have been feeling terrible that for the fifth year in a row I have ignored the Jewish harvest holiday of Sukkot. Next year I'll be prepared!

We had a nice urban walk to the library. Ezra especially loves the Don't Walk signs that have a countdown on them.

Ottar got an Elmo board book about manners, that he picked out all by himself. He was also VERY excited.

Yesterday we went to our second apple orchard this season, but this time we didn't pick apples. We had a hay ride and played in the sun, and the kids got to jump off a haystack. They drank real apple cider, too. There were monsters and ghosts and spiders in the woods for a Halloween theme, and when we got home Ottar said "Monsters under a bed." !!! I have no idea where he came up with that concept, because it has never occurred to Ezra all these years. Kenny assured him monsters only live in apple orchards (except Elmo) and then Ottar said "Angels coming." What?

In less than an hour we're off to Ezra's NASA Future Space Explorers class! While he's there, Ottar and I can play with balls in the gym (Ottar loves balls and we hardly ever think to play it with him).

The End.