The best laid plans of mice, men, retirees and praying mantises!

It was carefully planned. A free Tuesday, no school visits, just a quick trip to have my car tyre pressure corrected, and then off to the library where I'd sit and think and write....

So, I packed my charged laptop in my shoulder bag, pushed a couple of sweets in my pocket, and set out.

Tyre pressure corrected kindly at a nearby tyre store, I parked at the library and went inside. My favorite table, the one that overlooks the base of a big tree, was empty....yeah! I unpacked my laptop, pushed the on button, and unwrapped the two sweets. As I began to chew and enjoy the taste of strawberry, I checked my email.

The first letter I read was from Jeannine..............

Hey---your citizen scientists are very excited this morning.  I love when their sentences begin with....."We are curious...."

So, read below what they discovered this morning.

Dear a scientist Mr.Paul, 

  

We all love your citizen science group.  We were so excited when we found that egg sack on the rock.  We did some research on it and found out is was a praying mantis egg sack.  We are going to try and hatch it.  Ms.West was telling us that you had a perfect habitat to hatch the eggs in.  We were wondering if you could bring in the gas tank?? 

Last week, when out with a small group of 5th grader Citizen Scientists, looking for spiders, we found a rock with this peculiar shape stuck to its underside:

This morning, the 5th grade Citizen Scientists had carried out some research and discovered it was a praying mantis egg sac! WOW! So much for my plans for a quiet couple of hours in the library......:)

I had to go and see it.

I packed my computer and, stopping first at the nearby Starbucks for a couple of coffees (one for me and a grande non-fat wet cappucino (sp?) for Jeannine), and made my way to her school.

The group of young Citizen Scientists were ecstatic!!
"Mr. Paull, Mr. Paull, that blob on the rock - it's an egg sac, egg sac of a praying mantis!"

I went home to fetch a big glass jar so that the kids could make a home for the praying mantis eggs. The egg sac, one Citizen Scientist said, could hold up to 200 eggs. 200 baby praying mantises!!!!

Can't wait to hear this evening from Jeannine what transpired during the rest of the day.

It was JUST one of THOSE days....

♬  It was just one of those days, just one of those craaaazy days…..    ♬

It started as JUST one of those JP retiree mornings. I was up early, made myself and my wife Jeannine a cup of steaming hot tea, fed our sibling cats, Bertie and Fiona, made some toast, had another cup of tea, waved Jeannine goodbye as she drove to her school, and then bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t flick through the editorial pages of the New York Times because, for some unknown reason, my paper hadn’t been delivered. 

I knew then that it was going to be one of THOSE days!

Feeling a tad irritated, I caught up with the morning chores – emptied the dishwasher, switched on my desktop, listened to Morning Edition on the radio, put my dressing gown on the bed for Bertie and Fiona and told them to behave themselves.

Around 9, I drove to the nearby Goodwill, unloaded a bag of unwanted clothing, and then drove on to the doctor’s for my 10:00 o’clock appointment.

Not too happy with what I learned from my doctor, I arrived back home around 11, put on the kettle, made some tea, dunked and ate three cream biscuits, and took Bertie and Fiona outside for a VERY closely supervised walk. At noon, I came back in and made myself a light lunch washed down with another cup of tea

Ho, hum…………Just one of those retiree mornings, ruined by the absence of my daily paper.

As it was such a beautiful day, a bright blue sky and the temperature touching 70, I resisted the temptation to have a nap, deciding instead to go for a walk. So, making sure I had my wishing rock in my pocket, I got in my car, drove a mile or so, and parked close to the Cherry Creek trail. As I got out of my car, I was struck by the quietness and the nearby cottonwood trees whose leaves were a flaming yellow

As I began my walk, my head was filled with the conversation I had with the doctor. The prairie dogs saw me before I saw them. One of them who was on guard duty stood on his back legs and, breaking the silence, screeched his warning call to every prairie dog around. All the others took note and disappeared down their holes. 

Prairie dogs, as you know, were mentioned in the 1804 journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They note that they "discovered a Village of an animal the French Call the Prairie Dog.”   Its genus, Cynomys, derives from the Greek for "dog mouse".

Curious, I walked over and looked down one of the prairie dog holes. Nearby, about a foot from the entrance, I saw a tiny skull resting on the earth. I picked it up and blew of the dust, put the skull in my shirt pocket, thinking, ‘Hey, it ain’t such a bad day after all.”

Then, I spotted some petrified wood. I picked it up, turned it over and, wow, it was such a beautiful piece.

And there was another piece! Like a geode, the top was covered with tiny quartz crystals. Looking at it, touching it, gave me such a rush. My eyes widened and my head began to glow. I felt great! Not a worry in the world! WOW!!

I knew then it was really going to be ONE of THOSE days!

Next I came to an ant-hill, the home for thousands of ants and one or more egg-laying queens. Swarms of ants will soon depart the nest in great nuptial flights. After mating, the males die, along with most of the females. A small percentage of the females survive to start the business of making new nests. Watching the ants move back and forth, pushing sand and tiny pebbles out their way, I was amazed at their industry.

Then, THEN, I spotted this beautiful conglomerate, a mix of rocks glued together, lying next to……………………THIS!!

                               A Native American ARROWHEAD!!

I picked it up and stroked its jagged edge. Hey, someone, long ago, made this beautiful shape........and left it for me to find........MAGIC!!

‘Flippin’ ‘eck,’ I shouted………..’What a DAY!’ 

But, it wasn’t finished……...just down the hill I came across a beautiful fox skull, complete with jawbone!

I knew then it was time to go home and clean my wonderful discoveries. As I walked up the path towards my car, a couple of teenagers came rushing past me, laughing and having the best of times on their skateboards. Hey, I thought, I had the best of times, too. It had been JUST one of those great days.

                      

Just wait, I thought to myself, just wait ‘til I show Jeannine, Bertie and Fiona what I found.

The next day, sitting in Laurie’s classroom at Mountain View School, I described my walk and showed my treasures to the wide-eyed audience of second graders……….

The next time I go to the classroom, I'll give the kids this list of things to look for when they next go for a walk.......it should help them focus non what's around them.

‘I’m a Collector’

 When you go for a walk, don’t disturb the small creatures that live outside. It’s their home.

See if you can find………….

Something green Something red Something yellow Something brown Something black Something pointy A blade of grass longer than your index finger A piece of petrified wood An animal track A piece of bark A spider web A feather A pine cone eaten by a squirrel A heart-shaped rock

A pebble smaller than a dime A pebble the same size as a quarter A wishing rock A white pebble A black pebble A leaf skeleton Something a bird would eat A dead branch as long as your thumb A flower A flower seed A tree seed A twig with pine bark beetle galleries Some moondust!! Something really, REALLY cool!

Response to my post on Frank Oppenheimer

From The Exploratorium!!

Dear John,

Wow, thank you so much for sharing your words and experiences!  They were very touching.  

I grew up in the Bay Area and was familiar with the Exploratorium as a young student, but I only just started working here this summer.  What I've learned of Frank and the history of the museum has deeply affected me.  There are still people around who worked with him, and it's an honor to serve alongside them in this special place.  I've never been part of an organization quite like the Exploratorium; Frank certainly left a unique legacy, to say the very least.

Would you mind if I shared your message with our staff?

Thanks for reaching out.

Best,

Kristal

----

Kristal Ip

Project Coordinator

Teacher Institute

415-528-4647

e x p l O r a t o r i u m

Piers 15/17

San Francisco, CA 94111

And another, from my friend, Dick,

Hi John,

Your blog entry on Frank Oppenheimer reads really well and I'm not just saying that!

It conveys your excitement and enthusiasm and makes me want to meet Frank, that not being possible, read his book. I've met 'really' bright people in my career in fact the guy who taught me to sail was Professor of Naval Architecture at one of the Glasgow Universities, a friend and neighbour and one of the brightest people I have ever met. It astonished me how he seemed to instinctively know how to strip down and repair a diesel engine, navigate a boat from Nice to Greece explain what a Higgs boson was years before it was flavour of the month and many etcs.

You have been super privileged to have met and discussed with such an astonishing group of guys, wish I had been there. I love the multi hanging ball pendulum videos myself and was just showing Mae one from You Tube last week.

I look forward to reading the book when it comes.

Best wishes

Oh, yes............yes, yes

LOVE THIS PIECE IN MY LATEST READING ABOUT THE OPPENHEIMERS..........this is taken from the book about Frank who, after many struggles, opened the EXPLORATORIUM MUSEUM in San Francisco:

'Frank Oppenheimer’s teaching experience at the University of Colorado convinced him that young people had become dangerously removed from the real stuff of their own surroundings and desperately needed to reconnect. His students were strangely incurious. Most of them had little experience with the natural world and few opportunities to build intuition  about it. They hadn’t climbed trees and collected rocks and fiddled with motors. The result was that they showed up at their courses not knowing why they were. He thought this was a scandal. “Their experience was so meager, their whole contact withy the natural world so restricted, that I thought a place was needed where they could walk through a kind of woods of natural phenomena.”

Like a lot of us of certain age, I can remember as a child being sent outside to play. We explored neighborhoods and built forts or dollhouses out of mud and sticks, climbed trees and watched clouds, played hide and seek and threw stones. We made model cars or planes, flew kites, dressed dolls, played house or tag. We chased dogs and cats, drew on sidewalks, played cricket and soccer in the streets. No one told us what to notice.

Our eyes, needless to say, were a lot more open before we became shackled to our schedules.

Whether kids were happier or more productive in those days, I can’t say. But, unmistakably, both children and adults were engaged in one-on-one contact with the world in a way that is almost impossible to achieve today, even for those who spend substantial time and money to try to make it happen.

In many senses, the tangible reality that used to be our playground no longer exists: that university of experience has been lost to television and computers and lessons and packaged entertainment and education, and also to the increased fears (often real) associated with wandering freely, poking your nose into things just for the heck of it.

And that has enormous consequences for science – as well as for the development of intuition and critical thinking skills in general. There was something about dealing with the real physical world that left you not only better informed but more grounded, more centered – less likely to be swayed by insubstantial claims or fluffy nonsense.'

Something incredibly wonderful happens – Frank Oppenheimer and the World he made up.

K.C Cole

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