Rough One

SHE SAID, HE SAID:  Today, we got our algebra in, and learned about subordinate clauses. Good stuff. 

But most of our day was spent on social studies - watching the coverage of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing about Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
I wanted CJ and Annabelle to see and hear this, because I believe it is an event that will be talked about for decades.

This morning, Dr. Christine Ford painstakingly recounted her memories from a traumatic  event when she was a teenager, and alleges she was attacked by Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh. 

This afternoon, an angry, and at times belligerent, Judge Kavanaugh came out yelling and (figuratively) swinging.  He was anything but impartial when it came to party lines (contrary to his former testimony).

Granted, he's fighting for his career, but, for instance, when he refuses to answer a question about his conduct and instead asks a United States senator if she's ever been blackout drunk, well, to me, that's crossing a line, big time. Talk about deflecting.

I was hoping today's hearing would be a lesson in civics, but IMHO, there was little civil about it. Rather, It was a circus sideshow. 

I remember the Anita Hill testimony during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. It was 1991. I was horrified then. I am horrified now. 

I'd like to think we can do better than this as a nation. 

That said, I will be shocked if Kavanaugh is not confirmed. 

Long Ball

EXTRA INNINGS: Kind of on a whim, we decided to go to the Mariners' game last night. It's the last week of their season and, of course, there won't be a post season, because, well, Mariners. Sigh.

Anyway, we got great seats right behind home plate for super cheap. It even included a parking pass in the Safeco Field garage, right across the street from the stadium. (About the only good thing regarding having your team not in the thick of things is that tickets are cheap.)

It was a beautiful night at the ballpark. And a looooooooooong night at the ballpark.

The first two innings seemed to take two hours. So many hits. So many runs. 

In the improbable end, the Mariners won it 8 - 10, via a walk off home run by a back up back up catcher in the bottom of the 11th. In all there were THIRTY hits in the game. That might be the most in any Major League Baseball game I've been ever seen.

GREAT PUMPKINS: It will be October before we know it, and so we're already going on a few craft projects for the tenth month of the year. Naturally, they involve pumpkins.

We're making a Great Pumpkin-themed birthday board for a local learning center. CJ and Annabelle helped trace Linus and Sally, as well as a shadow-y Snoopy. We made pumpkins, which will have the birthday kids' names on them in a Peanuts-like font, and cut out dozens of leaves for the pumpkin patch.

In the midst of all of this, I used one orange IKEA napkin, a roll of toilet paper, a cinnamon stick and one of our construction paper leaves to assemble this.

It took all of ten seconds - so easy!

MAD DASH: This morning we plugged away on algebra for nearly an hour. This afternoon, we dabbled in some language arts, using a video on BrainPOP all about hyphens and dashes. It was really interesting - I learned things I've never known my entire life (like the dash in this sentence should have been longer).

I'll have CJ tell you a bit more about dashes and hyphens and what we learned.

Today, I learned about the different kinds of hyphens and dashes. They are, in order from narrowest to most narrow:

1. Hyphens (‐), primary use is to form compound words (example: fifty-year-old), also used to separate syllables in a dictionary (example: syl-la-ble.)

1. Figure dashes(‒), primarily used in phone numbers (example: 123‒456‒7891.)

1. En dashes (–), primary use is to bridge times together (example: 9 A.M – 5 P.M.)

1. Em dashes (—), primary use is to separate parts of a sentence (example: John repeatedly stained my shirt — the same one I had bought the day prior.)

So interesting, don't you think?!

For our science schooling, we watched a video about conditioning - as in Pavlov's dog, not what you do after shampooing. ;)

Annabelle can tell you a bit more about that. 

Conditioning, made famous by Ivan Pavlov, describes how one can teach animals or humans to respond to certain stimuli in a new way. The experiment most are familiar with, known as “Pavlov’s Dog”, is an example of classic conditioning. It involves ringing a bell right before giving the dog food, which if repeated enough, will eventually cause the dog to associate the bell with food, and salivate at the sound of it.

On the other hand, there is another type of conditioning referred to as “Operative Conditioning”. This is when instead of prompting the subject with something, the subject learns that a certain action equals a certain response. An example would be a small child learning not to draw on walls, because when they do that they are scolded. This can go both ways, both positive and negative.

Grand Times

SIGHT SEEING: We're still playing catch up on our grand adventure last week.

Our travels to the American Southwest included a couple of visits to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

The amazing attraction lived up to its billing. 

My camera couldn't possibly do the destination justice.

The layers of the canyon walls and the stories they tell were so compelling. 

Below, CJ used one of the spotters along the trail to zero in on a point of interest.

I believe this photo, below, is from the Verkamp's Visitor Center. More on that place later. ...

Here are some of Annabelle's recollections regarding our Grand Canyon visit.

During our 2-day visit to Grand Canyon National Park, we visited the South edge of the canyon, from “Hermit’s Rest” to the visitor’s center. This spans approximately 9.1 miles of the canyon’s edge, possibly more due to winding trails and viewpoints. On our first visit, we took around 4½ hours, from 2 p.m. to sunset at 6:30. The trail was surprisingly packed with plants and vegetation; much more than promotional materials may lead you to believe. One of the most notable types of plant is the Blooming Agave plant, which can reach over 6 feet high. There’s also quite a bit of wildlife, including everything from lizards to ravens and the endangered condor.

The canyon itself is so much larger than I had expected. It’s extremely wide, reaching the horizon from most anywhere you stand. Rock formations jut out into the middle, with small steppes closer to the bottom. Rocks in the canyon are commonly layers of limestone and sandstone, with a few more clay-dense areas tinted a stunning red. The light rock, combined with most trails being in direct sunlight, makes the canyon especially hot during the warmer months. Thankfully, there are stations scattered on the trails where you can fill water bottles using purified water from the canyon spring itself. The heat is nothing compared to the view of all the crazy rocks and shapes you can find, including holes, cliffs, and an odd rock shaped like a duck.

On our second day, we visited the much more remote West end of the South rim, where there are multiple “points” with amazing views. These points are purposefully remote, allowing you to admire the canyon in absolute silence (except for the wind and other people, which is admittedly predictable). Among the most scenic is Hopi Point, right in the middle of the “Hermit Road” trail. This point was recommended by our tram driver, who repeatedly mentioned to more stubborn passengers that this was not a spot on the return trip. We stopped by nearly every point on this trail, before heading back to the village and saying goodbye to the canyon. In conclusion, while the sunset we saw was mediocre, everything else about the canyon was just as breathtaking as I had hoped.