Laborious Weekend

Photo from City of Seattle; Hammering Man was designed by American artist Jonathan Borofsk

WORK, WORK, WORK: Right after breakfast I informed the kids it was Labor Day. I asked them if they'd heard of it before. They both answered in the affirmative, so I asked them what "Labor Day" means.

"You have to work hard?" CJ ventured a guess.

"That's why you're working on the yard. It's LABOR day. Get it? Get it? It's a joke!" Annabelle declared, cracking herself up. (ed. note - more on that yard work later)

Here in Seattle, you can't think about Labor Day without thinking about Hammering Man. Since 1992, he has "lived" on First Avenue at University Street, at the entrance to the Seattle Art Museum, and we pass him every so often. The 48-foot, hollow-fabricated steel man hammers from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, with one exception. That's right, he gets Labor Day off. A holiday well earned, I'd say.

Learning about Labor Day's history seemed an obvious choice. We turned to the History Channel's Web site. There we found a video about the History of Labor Day.

We talked a bit about what a union is and why they can be effective (strength in numbers). We also talked a bit about strikes and Annabelle summed it what they are up by saying, "A strike is a huge group of people marching, declaring, 'We want better rules' and they give their reasons why.' " Not a bad definition of a strike for a 5 year old, I figure.

I thought showing the kids a History Channel video about child labor laws would be an eye opener, and it was. We learned that not too terribly long ago in this country, children were "hired" (forced into work, really) because there were no laws protecting them and they could be paid less than adults. The kids were aghast at that. "I would NOT want to work in a factory," CJ said wide eyed. Unions were instrumental in getting legislation passed to end child labor in our country. I told the kids children in some other countries are not as fortunate.

Next, we hopped over to BrainPop, which featured a video about Mexican American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez. The kids watched that and took a quiz afterward. We also read a library book "Cesar E. Chavez," part of an "Equal Rights Leaders" series.

In order to get some writing in, I asked the kids to write (and finish) "I might like to work as ... because ..."

Annabelle wrote, "I might like to work as a ballet teacher because I am good at ballet." CJ wrote, "I might like to work as a game maker because I like programming."

WATER WOES: While Labor Day means a long, lazy weekend for some, on the MPA campus it meant a terrible, awful no good time digging over 100 feet of 2-foot deep trench in order to install a new main water line. It sprung a leak last winter and while that patch has held, we knew we were on borrowed time. Another winter's a comin' and we wanted to get the new line in before the rains came.

When CJ came up and saw the trench on Sunday morning, he said, "Oh my God! It looks like an earthquake!" (I'm guessing he was thinking it looked like a fault line.) This line-in-trench photo shows just a portion of it. The line stretched another 60 plus feet beyond, down the hill (you can see it in the photo of Annabelle, over her shoulder).

So the kids spent a large part of their Saturday, Sunday and Monday outside playing alongside their parents,who were in the throes of plumbing woes. Hopefully they're learning something about home improvement by osmosis. ... The good news is, as of 8:22 p.m. tonight, the line is in, and it appears to be watertight. Tomorrow, we cover trenches.

EYES ON THE SKIES: Late this afternoon I had to pick Rick up at the airport. He left Chicago at 3:29 p.m. and winged his way toward Seattle.

Using the Alaska Air Web site, we were able to track his travels across the northern U.S.

We saw that he crossed Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Idaho before arriving over the Evergreen State. It was a good mini geography lesson for the kids.

When Rick was over central Montana, just a little after 4 p.m., he was at 37,000 feet- wow! I asked the kids if they thought Rick could see us if we waved at him. They both said, "No way!"

We continued to watch his flight westward. Soon enough he was in Idaho. And then at the Washington-Idaho border, and then in Eastern Washington and then over the Cascade Mountains and before you know it, we watched his flight's altitude go lower, which let us know the plane was descending.When we saw his plane's nose heading down toward Seattle, we knew it was time for me to leave for the airport. Once there, I waited in the cell lot and exchanged text messages with Rick regarding his exact whereabouts outside the terminal for pickup.

Honestly, all this led me to wonder, how did people ever retrieve someone from the airport before there was the Internet (to monitor the flight status), "everyone" had cell phones, and text messaging?! ;)

SHE LOVES TO 'SHOP: This morning Annabelle asked if she could do some more Photoshopping. The answer was, of course, "Of course!"

She said she wanted to alter a scene from a game called Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga. Interesting choice. ... So we found an image online, and then Annabelle got to work.

She recalled full well how to do color sampling, use the paintbrush, use liquify, the magnetic lasso and clone stamp, how to save her work and how to go backward a few steps.

Today, I taught her how to zoom in and out of a picture (so she could be more fine with her work), how to change the size of a brush and a stamp, how to make a custom color, how to change the opacity of a color or stamp, and how to use the history function to go back to various states of the creation. Together we discovered how to use the pattern maker tool. Neat-o!

In the end, she came up with this ...

I'm sure you will agree it is a fine piece of art. :)

Annabelle would like to draw your attention to the fact that she used three different shades of green on Luigi's hat, and the five different elements that went in to each of the orbs the monster is throwing at the Mario Bros.

CLASSIC LITERATURE: A story briefly on the front page of Yahoo! today caught my eye. "Motion Controllers (for video games) that Didn't Work." I knew CJ would be interested. When I read the headline, he came running. :)

We read the article together and discussed the pros and cons of each of the examples given. I asked the kids what they took away from the story.

Annabelle said, "Sometimes you can make things that suck and don't work."

Well said.

CJ's take away was, "There were controllers that didn't work, there were two gloves one for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the other was for Playstation." Despite the fact that both got such horrible reviews, "I'm going to have both of those gloves," declared CJ, the classic game aficionado.