A Hard Grain's A-Gonna Fall...

Long ago in China, there lived an emperor who had a daughter that he loved above all else. When his daughter fell sick and seemed unlikely to recover, the emperor was inconsolable. He called upon all the healers and shamans in the land, but none of their tinctures or arcane rituals improved her condition.

As a last resort, the emperor had the wise old woman who lived in the hills brought in. The wise woman brought an herb from the mountains that was unfamiliar to the valley dwellers, and ground it into the sick girl's gruel every morning for a week. At the end of this time, it was clear that the girl's condition was improving and the wise woman packed her bags for the long trip back to her mountain home.

The emperor was beside himself with joy at his daughter's return to health and presented the wise woman with a large basket and invited her into the royal treasury to fill it with any precious metals or stones she wished.

The wise woman returned the basket, insisting that she had no use for such worldly riches. The emperor was unwilling to allow her to leave empty-handed and asked her what she thought would be a suitable reward.

The wise woman told him that what she could use more than anything else was a month of grain. He was to deliver a single grain of rice on the first day of the month, and each day thereafter would double the amount of grain delivered until the end of the month.

Now, the emperor was feeling very magnanimous after winning back both the life of his daughter and a small fortune in precious gems. He thought a few handfuls of rice was small thanks for all the wise woman had done, and declared that he would deliver grain through the end of the year, about four months away.

The wise woman smiled and nodded her silent assent before leaving the emperor's palace for her humble home in the hills.

The emperor kept his promise and on the sixth day delivered a scant quarter teaspoon full of rice to the wise old woman.

On the twelfth day, he delivered a scant cup of rice-- still not enough grain to feed the old woman for a single day.

On the eighteenth day, he delivered less than a gallon of rice, and was still feeling slightly guilty about his agreement with the old wise woman.

The next week, as he began loading horse-drawn carts with rice to deliver, he began to understand that he had underestimated the wise old woman. At the end of the month, the wise old woman's grain storage shed was over-flowing. She told the emperor on the last day of the month that she would not expect him to keep his word and continue payments until the end of the year if he agreed to fill her shed once a year for the remainder of her life.

The emperor readily agreed, and that is for the best since this is what would have happened had he continued:

[Many thanks to Jim for his project inspiration. We worked with long grain brown rice... I'd imagine variety could skew results significantly.]

On Splatter Art, Sneetches and Suicide

Before Christmas, we decided to make some wrapping paper. I spread out some butcher paper on the deck, got small jars of paints and old toothbrushes, and we engaged in some splendiferous splatter art. Here's our small test-canvas, used to see if we wanted to embark on a larger project:

Well, of course we did! Here is Finn demonstrating his Mad Ninja Paint Flinging Skillz:

This was the most excited Finn has been about an art project in a long time-- he spent at least an hour happily flinging paint. Larkin flung for quite a while, but then started drawing more distinct images, the numbers from 1 to 14, and made a splatter pattern around a leaf. Consensus is that the results were quite striking. I'm on a mission to find more physical art projects to work on with Finn.

Larkin's recent fascination with Zinn's U.S. history book (geared toward young teenagers) has led me to wonder a bit about how much the kids are actually absorbing from the various things we do with them. I know a lot of the language and concepts in the book are going over Larkin's head and doubtless she will get a lot more out of it if she chooses to read it again in a few years, but I'm often amazed at how much information is making a lasting impression.

A few days after reading Zinn's chapter on civil rights, Larkin and Finn and I were cuddled up on the couch with the good Dr. Seuss (whose political biases, I realize, are no more subtle than Zinn's... Really! We're not trying to brainwash our children!). We were reading a long-time favorite, The Sneetches (in which, in case it's been awhile for some of you, the star-bellied Sneetches are under the impression that they are superior to the Sneetches with no stars upon thars). A light bulb clearly went off for Larkin a few pages in: "Hey! This is just like when there was [insert word that should be segregation but had a few extra syllables] in our society!"

Another recent, very popular, topic of conversation has been suicide. I believe this started after reading about what happened to the native Americans when Columbus and his cronies showed up. There were some pretty gruesome stories about natives having their hands severed if they failed to show up with an acceptable amount of gold, and mothers killing themselves and their children rather than face persecution.

Heavy stuff, and it obviously made a big impression on Larkin. For some reason, these conversations always seem to come up in the car. She wants Emile and I to name all the famous suicides we can think of and tell her how they killed themselves and why. It's pretty disturbing, but we comply. If this fascination lasts, we'll probably have to find some relevant books or web sites. I can only imagine where that search might lead.

When we were on our way to a Christmas Eve/Birthday dinner, I did let Larkin know that Grandpa Don and Grandma Vicki probably wouldn't think that suicide was a suitable conversation over a festive meal. She was happy to postpone the discussion.

Roxy Ann

We've been having a spate of unseasonably warm, sunny weather. Yesterday, Larkin, Finn and I decided to hike Roxy Ann loop. They were pretty excited, partly because Roxy Ann is visible from our living room and they thought it was pretty cool to be able to just get up and go there.

It's a bit hard to figure out, but using Crazy Google Technology, I think we walked about 3.5 miles. I think that's about as far as the kids want to go at the moment, but I only piggybacked Finn a few times so I think it's a pretty reasonable limit to put on my future hike searches.

A big bonus of this particular hike is that there are LOTS of geocaches in the area. We managed to locate six during our outing-- which is some kind of record for us. This awesome old madrone had one hidden among its roots:

Naturally, we had to spend at least 20 minutes playing here before moving on.

Closer to the peak, we spotted a spectacular oak. The way it was positioned, the bank was falling away from its roots, leaving some exposed. Finn decided he needed to visit them.

It was quite a climb. Here's a shot of the tree and roots so you can better appreciate Finn's admiration:

Larkin and Finn were pretty exhausted by the time we got back to the car-- but, of course, a couple of hours later you certainly couldn't tell by their energy levels that they'd done anything strenuous that day. I'm thrilled that the kids can manage longer walks these days... there are definitely more in our near future.

Let There Be Light!

One of our recent impulse purchases was a science kit on light. Larkin and Finn have loved doing the various experiments, including things like using a prism to separate sunlight into rainbows.

I always wonder how much they're absorbing (ha! light humor!) from these sorts of things, but I know something is getting through. An unsuspecting clerk at the grocery store asked Larkin what her favorite color was and Larkin replied, "Well, I don't really have a favorite color because I like so many, but if you're talking about light then I'd have to say white because it has all the colors of the rainbow in it."

Another big hit was coloring circles of paper with different colored crayons and attaching the disks to a small motor to see how they combined. So you take a disk like this:

And it becomes:

And one like this:

Becomes this:

They made lots of disks:

In other optical news, the recent lunar eclipse was visible out of the window at the top of our stairs. Emile managed to roust both kids from their sound early morning sleep and they sat and watched for about half an hour as the moon went from three quarters occluded to entirely gone and then waited long enough to make sure it would return.

The visuals are a little less spectacular on this one:

Larkin and Finn very excitedly made the eclipse connection to the "day of the black sun" in Avatar: The Last Airbender when the Fire Nation lost their power during a solar eclipse.

Culinary Adventures

Larkin has been very excited about cooking lately. She makes Emile and Finn sandwiches and loves baking. Finn fell in love with a stainless steel lunchbox set at the co-op and Larkin bought it for him for Christmas. She has since packed him several lunches for hikes. It's very sweet.

Larkin has recently helped with everything from peanut butter cookies:

To lasagna:

As a side note, I made a red sauce for the lasagna that was so yummy both Larkin and Finn ate a full bowl straight.

And, of course, she helped with the holiday chocolates:

Yeah, I have no delusions regarding why my family likes to visit at Christmas.

Meanwhile, Finn has been occasionally surprising me with his gastronomical requests. Up until recently, he has mostly chosen from options I present to him, but lately he has been coming up with his own, sometimes rather bizarre, food combinations. I wish I remembered more of his requests, but one was a cheese and hot dog sandwich. I mean, *just* cheese and hot dog-- no bread.

So far, he has eaten all of his odd requests.