Taste the Rainbow

CANDY CHASERS: Our plan today was to marathon watch lectures online for our Magna Carta and classical music classes. That is, until I spied this on Facebook at about 9:45 a.m. ...  

Well, that's a game changer. Who wouldn't drop everything for a pack of Seahawks' Skittles?! ;)

We all hurriedly showered and hopped into the car. We were parking out front of Safeco Field, just south of CenturyLink stadium, where the Seahawks Pro Shop is, by 10:25. I thought it would be better to park a bit further away and hot foot it in, rather than circle CenturyLink, looking for parking. Glad we did that, as on our way out, we saw dozens of people getting ticketed for panickedly parking illegally. For Skittles. . 

We could see there was a line of a couple hundred people already, but I told the kids I liked our odds, based on how many security people there were and where they were standing, and where the 'cattle' fences were. 

This shot shows where we were and where we had to get. The blue arrow is pointing to the Pro Shop, where the Skittles station was.

Everyone in line was friendly and chatty and a few minutes before 11, when distribution was supposed to start, the line started moving at decent pace, and we were seeing folks walking away, Seattle Mix Skittles in hand!

My compliments to the Skittles team. They were friendly and efficient and made lots of people happy today.

CJ and Annabelle were pretty pleased when they got the golden ticket, so to speak.

In addition to the Extra Special Magical Skittles, we each got a pack of regular (red wrapper) Skittles, a groovy Skittles headband, and some eye 'black' (er, rainbow) patches. Sweet!

I'm so glad we shifted gears at the last second and decided to go down to the stadium on super short notice. Another fun Super Bowl XLIX memory made!

And if we were so inclined, we could have turned a tidy profit from our field trip. When I checked this afternoon, the Super Bowl XLIX Skittles were going on eBay for over $100 a pack. But we're not in it for profit. It's for love of the game. We gave Rick and Ken each a pack, a headband and some under eye patches, and we can't wait to eat our pack of Skittles come Sunday. :)

OH MY: We did managed to do more than gather collector candy today. We listened to several lectures for our classical music class covering music written in Monasteries and Convents in the Middle Ages, including the chants written by Hildegard of Bingen.

We learned about Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame, dance music of the courts back in the day, humanism in music, the musical instruments and dances of Middle Ages and Renaissance, the advent of the a cappella motet, and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation movement.

The eye-popper of the day, however, was learning that women weren't allowed to sing in the Catholic church back then, and so what to do about high parts in chorales? There were three options, said our professor: Male falsettos, young choir boys, and castratos. 

Professor Church talked a little bit about castratos, and noted that Alessandro Moreschi (1858 – 1922) was Sistine castratos. Below, is a photo of his from 1904.

We listened to a vintage recording of a 40-something Moreschi singing "Ave Maria."

It was haunting, to say the least. After the lecture was over, I asked the kids if they knew why the singers were called castratos.  

Let's just say they were NOT aware, and after I explained it to them, CJ blurted, "Pass me the mind bleach."

Indeed.

SOIL SCIENCE: Early morning West Coast launch tomorrow, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in  California. Up, up and away will be SMAP, or the Soil Moisture Active Passive mission for NASA. Once it's deployed, SMAP will produce global maps of soil moisture, which will help improve understanding of Earth's water and carbon cycles and our ability to manage water resources.

The kids and I have watched a couple of press conferences about the project. Interesting and valuable information will come from SMAP. The orbiting observatory will measure the amount of water in the top 2 inches of soil on the entire Earth surface. This data is vital as, the topsoil layer is the one in which the food we eat grows and where other vegetation lives.
This video has lots more info.