American Revolution Revisitied

• The bloody massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt. Creator(s): Revere, Paul, 1735-1818, engraver

A DIFFERENT LENS: The kids are involved in a social studies club that meets weekly. It's a group of kids interested in history (as well as the present and future), and each week we have different broad topics to explore. Students prepare reports on topics of interest to themselves, and others. 

Case in point: This week, the topic was the Revolutionary War. I think way more often than not, this war's soldiers are probably envisioned as white men vs. other white men. However, that wasn't the extent of the event, for sure.  

There are so many aspects to choose from. Annabelle chose to look at the role of women in the Revolutionary War effort, while CJ wondered what Native Americans did during the war effort. 

Here's CJ telling you a bit more about his topic

The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which colonists in the Thirteen American Colonies maintained by force of arms their refusal to submit to the authority of the King and Parliament of Great Britain, and founded the independent United States. On 4 July 1776, the Declaration of Independence was ratified, forming the present-day United States.
While the vast majority of soldiers in the American Revolution, both British and American, were white, people rarely think about the involvement of Native Americans in the revolution.

For starters, the Declaration of Independence has a passage that reads as follows:“[King George III] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured [sic] to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

As seen in the quote above, the Declaration of Independence characterized Native Americans as being savages bent around the destruction of all other humans. According to the National Park Service, there were primarily 3 different groups of Native Americans, in terms of how they reacted to the conflict:

A.     Native Americans who chose to stay out of the American Revolution (for example: White Eyes, a leader of the Delaware nation, attempted to remain neutral in the conflict before his murder by the American government).B.     Native Americans who chose to fight on the side of the 13 Colonies.C.     Native Americans who chose to fight on the side of the British Government (primarily due to the British government’s attempts to stop the United States from advancing into Native American territory, such as the Royal Proclamation of 1763).

After the end of the Revolution, the British government stopped their attempts from preventing US invasions into Native American territory. The majority of the white inhabitants of the United States perceived Native Americans as being anti-liberty savages, which would partially serve as the basis for anti-Native American racism 

Sources:       "American Revolution." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Apr. 2017. Web. 7 Apr. 2017. .

·        Jefferson, Thomas. "The Declaration of Independence." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, 2 Nov. 2002. Web. 7 Apr. 2017. .

·        Calloway, Collin Gordon. "The American Revolution." National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, 4 Dec. 2008. Web. 7 Apr. 2017. .in the following centuries.

Yikes. A very not happy ending. And double yikes - the description of Native Americans in the Declaration of Independence. Horrible and deplorable.

Annabelle researched what roles women played in the American Revolution. Here's what she found out. ... 

The contributions of the men who drafted the documents of the Revolution, commanded the forces, fought in the war, and offered support have been well documented. The Revolution was not a one-gender war, however. Many women contributed to the effort, and it is time their stories are told.

Today, women who followed the army are known as “camp followers.” This term was not used in the 18^th century. The females who followed Washington’s army were usually poor and looking for safety, warmth, and food. They would usually do the laundry for the army as their “service”. Many people believed they shouldn’t tag along, being a “distraction” to the soldiers, but George Washington allowed them to as he believed if they left, their husbands would leave with them. A different example, Private Ralph Morgan sought a furlough in December 1775 because his wife and children had no roof over their heads. Morgan received a discharge. Since the Continental Army could not afford to discharge a soldier every time he needed to assist his family, Washington was obliged to permit some women to follow the camps. He wrote to Superintendent of Finance, Robert Morris, "I was obliged to give Provisions to the extra Women in these regiments, or lose by Desertion, perhaps to the enemy, some of the oldest and best Soldiers in the Service.”

Many women also masqueraded as men during the war. Deborah Sampson, who called herself “Robert Shirtliff”, got her own army suit in 1780 and decided to join the war.

 

She was eventually chosen for an elite unit, where her disguise would go unseen as no-one would look for a woman in a squad specifically chosen for their large size and strength. She was injured twice and was honorably discharged in 1783. In short, women played many parts in the revolutionary war, whether it be washing clothes or fighting on the front lines and I feel that they should be recognized and celebrated just as much as the men in the war.Sourceshttp://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume7/nov08/women_revarmy.cfmDeborah Sampson

Seattle Field Trip Advice

TINKERING: Tuesday evening, we continued our work as part of an ongoing session at Pacific Science Center called Tech Tales. It's a focus group/program funded by the National Science Foundation, the University of Washington, Seattle Public Libraries, and Pacific Science Center, to name a few. Per its Wordpress website, Tech Tales is is an opportunity for families "to learn about circuitry, robotics, e-textiles, and programming together—use old and new technology to bring your stories to life."

Our project is a combination of robotics, electronics, storytelling and visual arts. Each family had to choose a story they wanted to tell, and now the challenge is to make it come to life in a wired for sound, lights, and other special-effects diorama.

We have chosen to recreate a scene from our trip to see "The Wall" performed in Wembley stadium, but also make it an allegory about talk today of building a wall along a U.S. border and how we feel about that. It's going to be titled #TearDowntheWall.

IN THE FIELD: This morning, I helped host a session sharing information about field trips tips with some local home schooling parents. 

I started by showing a photo of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, I will never forget him addressing the crowd at the social media event for the Juno launch, and he was talking about education and how the things kids seem to remember most about their years of schooling are the field trips.

I really took his statement to heart, and when we decided to go down a super alternative education path, I was determined to try to make most every day a field trip of some sort. 

One thing I made sure to mention is that it doesn't have to be part of a huge Master Plan and this huge, orchestrated event. Sometimes, the best field trips are by happenstance.

 For instance, there was that day where we were pulling into the parking lot to go to a class in Shoreline and heard on the radio that there was a Super Big Special Event at the Space Needle regarding Angry Birds that morning. We put the car in reverse and headed back down to Seattle to go. 

Our reward for being spontaneous was Angry Birds shirts, stuffies, a signed book and meeting the game designers. That, and getting to see an enormous Angry Bird hanging from the Space Needle!

And sometimes you have a field trip planned and it turns into something else. For instance, not long ago, we were at The Museum of Flight for one reason, when we happened to see a sign about a talk a docent was giving. We spontaneously shifted course, went to that and heard The Most Amazing story told by a 90+ year old gentleman about the time he and his crewmates and their B-29 crash landed in the Pacific Ocean off Iwo Jima - and they all lived to tell about it! 

We felt so privileged to have heard that story, and it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been willing to reboot our plans on the spot. 

Another aspect I talked about was timing.  

I shared that we avoid field trips on weekends and during school hours if at all possible. 

Why?

Well, we kind of like the place to ourselves.

What's funny is I Googled for an image of "crowded museum and got the one upper left below.

And then I Googled "deserted museum" and got the lower right photo. 

I didn't realize until a bit later they are one and the same museum!

Yeah, I want to go to the lower right one! My point was that we schedule our field trips for first thing in the morning or after about 2:30, when the last school bus with dozens of kids leaves a venue. It's ever-so-much more pleasurable (at least from my perspective) to visit museums when there's not a crowd.

Another aspect I covered: Go outside your comfort zone and try something new!

Case in point: We're not golfers. We don't watch golf, the kids have never done anything above putt putt a couple of times, and Christian golfs about one a year. But, a couple of years ago the US Open (the 'Super Bowl' of US golf) came to a course just south of Seattle. So, we went.

We TOTALLY didn't know what to expect, and were fish out of water, but it was AWESOME! So much fun, and something we'll never forget!

We got to hoist the actual US Open trophy, and because there were so few kids there, CJ and Annabelle were media darlings. :) What an amazing day!

I made sure to point out that amazing adventures don't have to cost big bucks. Or any bucks.

We talked about free "First Thursdays" at museums, getting tickets to attractions through King County and Seattle Public Library (insider info:SPL's available tickets refresh at 9 p.m. every night).

I even talked a bit about my experiences as a mystery shopper, where by working a bit you get paid to play.

And I pointed out that social media is a powerful tool to ID-ing cool places to go. People are always asking me how I find out about all the cool events going on. Facebook is our best friend in that regard, as it tracks your every move. For instance, when an event pops up in my feed and if I'm even remotely interested in it, I record that 'like' or 'interested,' as I know that I will be rewarded as the software will record that feedback and then continue to flood my feed with other events in the same vein.

And perhaps the best advice I could give anyone is this:  

If you ever have the opportunity to meet an astronaut, DO IT!!!!!!!

Seriously. Each and every one of them is remarkable, with a stunning life story and experiences and knowledge to share. 

CJ and Annabelle have met the very first human (Alexey Leonov, lower left) to ever do a spacewalk. They've met moonwalker Buzz Aldrin. Twice. They have visited with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield (upper left) three times. He is such a remarkable human. They have chatted with South Korea's one and only astronaut, Yi So-yeon. They have had lunch with astronaut and physicist Jerome "Jay" Apt, and were two of only three people in attendance. How about that? They met astronaut Jeannette Epps (lower right) after her aquanaut experience (living in an undersea lab!), but before she was named as a flyer on a future Soyuz flight. They won the chance to have breakfast with geophysicist and astronaut Drew Fuestel (upper right) by solving a riddle and finding a treasure hidden at a Seattle landmark. They have been inspired by the first Native American spacewalker, John Herrington.

And that's the short list. 

All in all, it was a good session with lots of information shared and absorbed.

Big Breakthrough

BERTHA HITS THE FINISH LINE:  Back in July of 2013, we took a field trip down to an information center (Milepost 31, which highlights the people and projects that shaped Pioneer Square, and provides an inside look at the SR 99 Tunnel Project.  We checked out displays all about one of the biggest tunneling projects the world has ever seen, and it was about to happen right here in Seattle where Bertha, a 7,000 ton boring behemoth would work its way underneath Seattle streets and buildings, creating a tunnel which would eventually carry two tiers of traffic through a portion of the city. The photo above shows a shiny, new Bertha ready to get to work.

Measuring 326-feet long and standing 57.5 feet high, the boring machine was supposed to complete its 1.7 mile run in about two years. 

Well, Bertha just reached the finish line yesterday, nearly two years late and millions and millions and millions over budget. There were sinkholes, starts and long, long stops. At one point, her cutting head was pulled off and repaired.  But in the end, Bertha did finally get there!

Here is video from the Washington State Department of Transportation of the moment Bertha broke through.

#BerthaBreakthrough pic.twitter.com/lFwxCVMbl9

— Washington State DOT (@wsdot) April 4, 2017

Now, I don't expect you to spend an hour watching this (especially the beginning, when it's noise and dust), but skip through the video like we did in about three minutes. It's really pretty neat-o. Annabelle noticed a drone in the pit at about the 26 minute mark.

#berthabreakthrough https://t.co/KCL3xxPcmc

— Washington State DOT (@wsdot) April 4, 2017

And here's the coolest video of the bunch, in our opinion.
It's footage from the drone! (No sound, but the sight is neat-o)


The tunnel is still months/years away from being complete, but the rest is 'just' heavy construction now, so it should be pretty straightforward. We look forward to taking a trip through the tube when it opens.

Tickled Pink

HELLO BARBIE WORLD:   We had a busy weekend. Part of our activities included sewing costumes and building sets for a play that Annabelle is in at the end of May. We took time out Saturday afternoon to head to one of our favorite haunts, Living Computers: Museum + Labs (LCM).

This weekend they debuted their new Barbie display. Yes, Barbie. LCM has rolled out the pink carpet for Barbie.

As the song points out, it's "a Barbie World," and as LCM demonstrates, that world includes math, coding and big business. 

An interesting, surprising case of 'when worlds collide,' but LCM makes it work in a fun, engaging way.

Our main draw for the visit was so the kids could attend a programming workshop.

I'll let them tell you a bit more about it. Annabelle is up first ... 

I went to a workshop at Living Computers: Museum + Labs celebrating Ms. Pac-Man’s 36^th anniversary. The workshop showed us how to use Scratch to code our own simple versions of the Ms. Pac-Man game. The nice lady running our workshop taught us some of the basics of Scratch, like how to import sprites, how to make the sprites move, and how to use variables to keep track of things like score. She spoke very clearly and went at a nice, stable pace so everyone could catch up if need be. She offered plenty of help to those who needed it, which made the workshop easy and fun. I liked learning about how to use the basics of scratch to make your own game! I also shared the project I created at https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/153670452/ . If you want to play it, feel free! I had a lot of fun at LCM and I really love their workshops!

And here is CJ's take ...

As described over and over again in my previous posts, my family enjoys going to the Living Computer Museum. Most recently, we went for a programming event using Scratch (a popular free coding language made by MIT), with the intent to code a simple version of Pac-Man, Namco's classic 1980 arcade game.

While the event isn't fresh in my mind, here's what I remember:
The event started at 2 P.M, in one of LCM's class/theater rooms. The instructor was standing at a podium, in front of a large screen (showing the contents of her own screen). I sat down at a laptop in the center of the room, and started receiving instructions.

In the program, there were some preset things (like the background featuring the classic Pac-Man maze, and the basic sprites). However, I had to do most of the coding myself, with guidance from the instructor. One of the most important parts of the experience was coding Ms. Pac Man's movement, which ended up getting programmed into spaghetti code. I also had to make a pretzel fly around the board, and make it disappear upon being eaten. 

I really enjoyed my experience at the Living Computer Museum event. Yum, spaghetti code.

You *might* be able to see CJ's game here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/embed/153670549/?autostart  The link was a little sketchy when I tried it earlier.