Getting By

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES: Yesterday we went on a nearly 4-mile hike and spent half the day outdoors. Today, not so much. The kids have been battling a cold since last Thursday or Friday, and for whatever reason, their colds both took a turn for the worse today. CJ, especially, was a faucet, shall we say.

So today was low key. We managed to get a few things done. We checked on our carrot 'garden' in the Root-Vue grower. We think the carrots are growing gangbusters. What's funny is we can't see the roots in our "root view" grower. So far it's just the carrot tops. When we remove the white shield from in front of the dirt all we see so far is, well, dirt. Maybe when the carrots get bigger we'll have something more exciting to report.

FOLKSY: Yesterday, we read a folk tale titled "Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky" by Elphinstone Dayrell. It had to do with Sun wanting to be a good host and inviting Water and his friends into his home, without realizing just how much volume Water and Co. would take up. Eventually the Water People pushed Sun and his wife Moon all the way up to the sky.

After reading the book, we talked about folk tales and what their genesis might be. I pointed out that often, they were attempts at explaining something that people didn't understand. "Oh, so they're like religion!" CJ analogized.

I asked the kids to each write an 'explanation-type' folk tale that related to something in our solar system. They got right to work and this is what they came up with. ...

Annabelle: "Why Mars is Red"

Once upon a time... Mars was hanging out with his friends Phobos, Deimos, and Earth, then Mars decided to tell Earth a joke. "Hey Earth! What do you get when you cross a planet with water?" Mars asked.

Mars waited a long time for an answer because Earth was talking to its moon!

By the time Earth turned around, Mars was red because he was angry. And he stayed like that forever.

CJ: "How the Moon Got Its Craters"

It was a regular day in the sky, The Moon said to the Sun, "Hi! How's your day, Sun?" The Sun didn't hear the Moon. The Moon looked at the Sun for a while, waiting for an answer.

The Moon stared for so long, He was blinded. The Moon, in confusion, walked around and smacked into sooo many other planets. After a while, the Wrong Way Planet said, "STOP!!!!!!".

The Wrong Way Planet also said "Moon, as banishment, you will be stuck in Earth's gravity and at dark!!!" So, the Moon is banished. And sometimes, it would come up in the day, hoping not to get caught. This is especially hard, because the Moon is blind.

TWEET SENSATION: A few days ago, CJ registered for a Twitter account. His motivation was that he wanted to start following the Tweets of some of the principals behind the game Minecraft. He was certain that would be an avenue to insider type info.

This afternoon he asked if could send a Tweet to one of the game's creators asking about access to the latest version of the game. I gave him the go ahead, but told him I had to proof read it first. And so, he wrote to @Jeb_ "Um.,. can you give me the link to the latest minecraft snapshot please?"

Brilliant, don't you think?

I cautioned CJ that @Jeb_ no doubt gets dozens/hundreds of similar questions a day from game fans and not to expect a reply from @Jeb_.  An hour or so later, when we checked CJ's account and his @Connect, lo and behold was the info CJ was seeking! It wasn't from @Jeb_, but someone named @DreamyNotch had replied with links to two of the latest Minecraft updates. Needless to say, CJ was pleased and he checked them both out. Behold, the power of an 8-year-old with a Twitter account!