February First

Image credit: NASA
The crew of STS-107, Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Michael P. Anderson and Ilan Ramon

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DISASTER: Today marked the eighth anniversary of the loss of space shuttle Columbia. I remember that day well. I was very pregnant with CJ (he was born about 10 weeks later) and in the Burlingame Fred Meyer in Portland with Christian. It was a Saturday morning, and we were standing in the home electronics section and saw news of the disaster on the bank of TVs there. Awful.

We spent some time on NASA's Web site today, looking around the special pages devoted to the Columbia. After a successful 17-day mission, the crew was just 16 minutes from home when
the Columbia orbiter suffered a catastrophic failure due to a breach that occurred during launch when foam falling from the External Tank struck the Reinforced Carbon panels on the underside of the left wing.

CUCKOO FOR KOKOPELLI: This morning's Musikgarten homework was drawing a picture from the Kokopelli story that teacher Nancy read the kids last week.

There was just one problem. Neither one of the remembered the story or what Kokopelli was.

Naturally, we hopped on line. There, it took us all of two seconds to be reminded that Kokopelli was a prankster, healer, story teller and fertility god in Native American tradition.

Kokopelli was especially widely known in the Southwest region of what's now the U.S., where petroglyphs of him date back over 3,000 years. Kokopelli often played his flute, which prompted Annabelle to go retrieve a flute like instrument and start parading around.
We found a couple of Kokopelli takes on YouTube. The first one we watched was a bit odd. The music was blaring Rhythm & Blues and seemed to have little, if anything, to do with the story being told.

Fortunately, we found a more traditional Kokopelli tale, and the music and narrator both sounded Native American.

It was the last day of the Native American unit at Musikgarten. To celebrate, teacher Nancy served corn and some buffalo meatballs. Annabelle ate three. CJ, not so much. This blurry photo is him recoiling in horror at the smell and taste of the buffalo ball on the toothpick in front of him. STORYTELLERS: Our writing today was just for fun. I gave the kids a story title - The Day Mario Met Mega Man - and told them they needed to produce at least four sentences.

Annabelle wrote: "Once apon a time ..... Mario went out of the castle to go stop Bowser (again). Then he saw a person standing on top of a building. He said Hello up there! But he could not hear it. But then he noticed it was just Mega Man so they went out to go get Bowser together. The end.

CJ wrote: "Mario he 1 day saw Mega Man runing. Mega Man looked at Mario. Mario looked at Mega Man. And the bolh of them went on a journey."

OVERHEARD: At one point this afternoon Annabelle was drawing some kind of creature for CJ and I heard her say to him, "I need you to make enormous decisions." I asked her what the "enormous decisions" were about and she replied, "I'm making CJ's creature," she explained, and needed guidance regarding its various body parts.

AGE OLD BATTLE: Today CJ started talking about Spy vs. Spy. I asked where he'd heard of them before and he said on a TV show called "Mad." Turns out the Cartoon Network has a MAD magazine TV show on regularly.

I told CJ Mad magazine was my favorite when I was his age, and that I still had some old issues upstairs. That excited him greatly. He hunted through them looking for Spy vs. Spy cartoons, and, happily, found some.

Wait until I tell him I found a "What, me worry?" game online!

OH SO AWFUL: On our way to yoga we listened to the CD for the next unit in Musikgarten: It was supposed to be full of African American music. And, I suppose technically it was, but OMG, honestly, it was just awful. The arrangements and vocals made the songs sound as if they were produced for some flippin' "Barney" the purple dinosaur show. "When the Saints Come Marching In" sounded like elevator music. The songs were completely devoid of soul, rhythm, blues - everything that would have made them sound they represent the roots of Aftrican American music. What a disappointment. So, I'm going to have to right that wrong and find some good versions of those songs for the kids to listen to.

GROUNDHOG EVE: We spent tonight watching "Groundhog Day." It's still funny after all these years.