May 1st........my dad's 104th birthday!!

It's a grey and snowy day...............I wish the sun was shining to celebrate Arthur Charles' birthday!

A walk with Bertie

It's a regular morning routine now, a longish walk in the wide open countryside at the back of my home with Bertie and Fiona. 

This morning, though, only Bertie appeared when I whistled........so off he and I went....

When we approached the Skunk Hotel, Bertie HAD to take a look, of course.........

and then, as no one was home, Bertie stretched out for a two minute rest.....

Then we made our way home.....
Fifi will be disappointed that she missed out on today's hike......

From the NYT Thursday April 14th, 2016 - Science Fair at The Whitehouse

I loved this article in the NYT:

President Obama vowed early in his tenure to make science “cool” and decorated the Oval Office with patent models of groundbreaking American inventions.

But to truly understand Mr. Obama’s zeal for all things scientific and technological, one must take a spin with him around the White House Science Fair, a tradition he began in 2010 and hosted for the final time on Wednesday.

“There are a lot of good things about being president,” Mr. Obama said in the White House’s ornate East Room, surrounded by youngsters who brought their creations — robots, spacecraft, toys made from 3-D printers. “But some of the best moments that I have had as president have involved science and our annual science fair.”

Across the hall in the State Dining Room, the president awarded congratulatory fist-bumps, the closest this particular fair gets to a blue ribbon, to a pair of sisters from Seattle who launched a spacecraft adorned with tracking devices, cameras and a picture of their late cat Loki 78,000 feet into the air.

“That’s crazy,” Mr. Obama told Kimberly Yeung, 9, and her sister Rebecca, 11. “Your gizmo was that high?”

The president pulled the lever of an ocean energy generator built by a ninth-grader from Florida to help a pen-pal in an Ethiopian village get access to electricity.

Mr. Obama marveled at the ingenuity of another ninth-grader who developed a less expensive, faster test for Ebola. “What were you doing in high school?” he said during his remarks to reporters, adding that his only problem with the science fair was “it makes me feel a little inadequate.”

This year’s event was bittersweet for Mr. Obama, who announced programs that will carry his administration’s emphasis on science education into the future, beyond his presidency, and welcomed alumni of science fairs past. “How’s Harvard?” he asked one, Elana Simon, who studied her own cancer to try to develop a cure.

The White House announced Wednesday that Oracle, the computer technology company, would invest $200 million for computer science education for young Americans over the next 18 months, as part of Mr. Obama’s “C.S. for All” initiative. And the Department of Education will issue new guidelines to states and school districts on how they can use federal money to enhance science, technology, engineering and math — or STEM — education.

“I’m a big science guy,” Mr. Obama told the Science Channel in a brief videothat aired on Monday, part of a week of roughly minute-long appearances he taped for the network.

For a day each year since Mr. Obama began the tradition, the state floor of the White House is transformed into a veritable geek paradise of projects that resembles countless school and regional science fairs in far less glamorous locales, complete with poster-board displays of findings with graphics and diagrams, colorful models and young people eager to show off their creations.

Mr. Obama has fired a giant marshmallow cannon invented by a 14-year-old and been charmed by 6-year-old Oklahoma Girl Scouts dressed in Superman capes who showed off their prototype for a mechanical page-turner constructed with Legos. (They were all back at the White House on Wednesday.)

Last year, he invited Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim high schooler from Texas who had been arrested after teachers mistook a clock he invented for a bomb. “Cool clock, Ahmed,” Mr. Obama said at the time from his newly minted Twitter account, @POTUS. “Want to bring it to the White House?”

White House officials say the fairs have drawn some 450 students in kindergarten through 12th grade; this year’s was the largest, with 130 attendees.

The event gives Mr. Obama a chance to showcase his commitment to STEM education, a push his advisers say has paid off during his term. There are 25,000 more students graduating in those fields than there were in 2009, when Mr. Obama took office, the White House said.

Through Mr. Obama’s Educate to Innovate program, he has spurred more than $1 billion in private investment for improving STEM education, officials said. The administration is more than halfway to the goal he set of training 100,000 STEM educators by 2020.

Mr. Obama has also incorporated innovation into his policy-making process and the way the White House communicates his message, building an Office of Digital Strategy to manage a suite of social media platforms and naming the first chief technology officer.

He started an initiative in precision medicine to find ways of using Big Data and genomics to cure diseases and he has had money poured into clean energy research to combat climate change.

“I have just been able to see the unbelievable ingenuity and passion and curiosity and brainpower of America’s next generation, and all the cool things that they do,” Mr. Obama told this year’s fair exhibitors, joking that he would one day take credit for future cancer cures or clean energy innovations they pioneered.

“I’ll say, ‘If it hadn’t been for the White House Science Fair, who knows what might have happened?’ ” Mr. Obama said.

Follow The New York Times’s politics and Washington coverage o

And then there was Teddy.......

Thinking of Shawn (my previous blog) reminds me of Teddy. Quiet, withdrawn, most days sullen, Teddy, like Shawn, would not participate in class either. It took something special to turn him around.

The day came, though, when Teddy’s teacher told me THAT special thing had happened to Teddy in class. 

Teddy, apparently,  was thrilled with the hands-on lesson on electricity. He was beside himself when he and three other boys connected the wires to the small battery, made a circuit,  and lit up the small bulb. 

“Look, Miss, look!" Teddy shouted. "We did it! We DID it! I’m going to do it at home. Hey! It’s dead good!”

The following day, before morning assembly,  Teddy’s mum came to see me. She looked very upset, angry, even,  as I asked her to take a seat in my office.

Refusing to sit, she looked sharply at me. “Our Teddy’s in hospital. Got ‘lectrocuted. Last night. Ambulance came. Took him. He’s there now. Tried to copy what he did in class. Didn’t have no batteries, so he stuck his wire in the ‘lectric plug ‘ole. ’lectricity went through his fumb and finger. Sparks everywhere. Big flippin’ sparks!  Burned them and stuck them, finger and fumb,  together. ‘E’s in intensive care………Ashby hospital. Goin’ there now.”

Oh, my God poor Teddy, I thought. That sounds awful. I looked at Teddy’s mother and said,  “Hang on, I’ll get Mr. Moore to cover assembly. Won’t be a minute. I’ll take you to the hospital. That ok? Then you can tell me more in the car.” 

I told my secretary, Sylvia, what had happened and asked her to go and tell Teddy’s teacher. Mike, my deputy, quickly agreed to take assembly, and wished me the best of luck.

As we drove towards Ashby Hospital, Teddy’s mum talked, talked and talked about what happened. “Didn’t see what he was doing, ‘Eadmaster, just heard our Teddy scream. Ran upstair as quick as I could, saw him. He was rolling on the floor, holding ‘is ‘ands. Amblance came, took him to ‘ospital. Been there all night. Intensive care, you know, the burns thingy room.”

When we arrived at the hospital, we were quickly escorted by a nurse to the Burns Section, and, as we entered the door,  told to put on some head and footgear. Teddy was sitting up in his bed. He looked down at the bed cover when he saw me. “My in trouble?” he asked. “Only doin’ the speriment. Stuck a wire in the plug ‘ole to get some 'lectricity for the big bulb. Got burned and it ‘urts. Sorry, Mr. Paull, sorry.”

I assured Teddy he wasn’t in any trouble. 

Because his flesh was so burned, the doctors decided to take some skin from Teddy’s thigh – and, much to my surprise,  to prevent the blood from clotting, attach a live leech to the wound. 

I stayed talking for about half an hour and then left. Teddy’s mother said she’d catch the bus back to Ibstock when she was ready. Teddy’s dad, she said, was probably coming around lunchtime, as soon as he left work.

That evening, I read as much as I could from my Encyclopedia Britannica about the use of leeches in medicine. 

Medicinal leeches (Hirudo medicinalis), I learned, are blood sucking aquatic animals that live, like common leeches, in fresh water.

The small, slimy creatures were widely used in the 19th century to cure a variety of ailments. Today, they are used in many parts of the world to help heal wounds and restore circulation in blocked blood veins. 

During the 1980's, I learned, the government had approved the commercial marketing of leeches for medical purposes when reports were published that described the successful application of medicinal leeches to rescue surgery cases with complications. During the reattachment of severed fingers and ears, the blood flow needs to be reestablished. This is where the medicinal leech comes to the rescue. The animals are applied to the tissue and they remove blood and secrete numerous compounds that have anticoagulant, and clot-dissolving properties. This prevents the tissue from dying off and allows the body to reestablish good blood flow to the reattached part.

I visited Teddy every day until he left the hospital and returned home. When he eventually returned to school, he sat with me in assembly, holding a jar full of leeches, all bloated with his blood. 

Teddy was quite the talkative star, telling his audience what he knew about leeches, followed by me talking about safety issues, emphasizing that you DON'T stick wires in the electrical outlets at home!

At the end of the week, I checked in with his teacher.

"How's he doing?"

“Teddy’s great,” she said, “writing and drawing leeches. Telling other kids what he had learned about the blood suckers. Seems like a different kid. Really enjoys science............”

And the moral of this story? 

Don’t know quite…….what do you think?

Shawn - a teacher's story

Sipping my Starbucks and reading the NYT early this morning about a desperate refugee family made me think of one of my pupils when I was Head of Ibstock Junior School.....

Here's what I wrote about him in my yet-to-be-finished second memoir:

'In October, when the weather turned wet and cold, Shawn, a quiet, withdrawn, skinny nine-year -old,  was absent every Wednesday morning, getting to school just in time for his school dinner. 

One Wednesday afternoon, right after the dinner break, I saw Shawn in the hall eating his meat, potatoes and gravy, and went over, sat down next to him, and asked him what he did every Wednesday morning when he wasn't at school. 

Wide eyed, he looked up at me. “I gotta tell ‘e, Mr. Paull?”

“Course, Shawn, you’re supposed to be at school every day. " I replied, "You never bring a note from your mum, do you? Why’s that? why aren't you at school?”

“No, Mr. Paull.” he said. “Don't.” 

He then said he was helping his widowed mum. “Help her every week, Mr. Paull. Got to, ‘cos the house is cold, freezin'. She ain’t got much money, you know. She’s trying but she can’t get a job. Don’t do nuffink wrong when I ain't 'ere. 'Onest I don't.”

Intrigued, I asked, “What do you do for your Mum, then? You light the fire or something? Help her with the washing? Tell me – what do you do that prevents you coming to school?”

Shawn looked at me, scratched his head, looked at the floor and mumbled, “Can’t tell you……….Mum says I can’t tell nobody.”

I knew it was time for me to back off. “Ok, ok, won’t ask,” I said with a smile. 

But, a growing concern for Shawn – and I must admit, my curiosity - got the better of me. I asked, “But you ok if I go home with you and see your mum? Is she there when you get home?”

“Sometimes she is,“ he said. “Think she is this arternoon. You can come wiv me if you want."

So, after school, we waited for the the school to empty and then we walked Shawn to his home which was just off Ibstock’s High Street. He took me down the side of the house to the back door. Hanging just above the old, weathered  door was a large tin bath, typical of many of the old miners’ houses in Ibstock, all without a bathroom.

When I walked into the small kitchen with Shawn, his mum, her hair in curlers, was standing by the kitchen sink, running her hands under the tap, She stared, surprised to see me. “’Ello, ‘Eadmaster. Whatt you doin’ here? What's happened? Shawn in trouble? He’s a good lad, you know. Never does nowt wrong.” She looked at Shawn standing next to me, wide-eyed and nervous.

“Shawn, go on outside and play and lemme talk to Mr. Paull. There’s a good lad. Don’t do nowt wrong, don’t get in no trouble, you hear me? Leave next door's cat alone.” Shawn, relieved, ran out the kitchen door. “No, Mum. Promise. Won’t. Won’t chase that moggie, 'onest.. Promise. See you, Mr. Paull.”

“See you, Shawn. Be safe, ok?” I replied. “And, hey, DON’T chase the cat, please!”

“Yes, Sir, Mr. Paull, I won’t,” he answered, and and off he went.

As Shawn closed the back door, I looked at his mum and said, “He’s not in trouble,” trying to sound and look unconcerned so I could, I thought, help Shawn’s mum relax. “He’s a good lad at school. I just need to know why Shawn misses school every Wednesday morning. Does he help you with some of the housework? He says he keeps the house warm. What does that mean? Does he clean the fireplace or something?” 
Shawn’s mum looked down at the white tiled floor. “No,” she said. Then she looked up at me with half a smile. “Do ‘e want a cuppa?” I smiled, touched by her generosity. 

I replied, “No, thank you. But that was kind of you to ask. You want a fag?”

“Oh, yes, please,” she said. I lit up two cigarettes and sat on the kitchen chair. “Ta. Wednesday’s coal day……………” she said, “can't afford a bag full. Gotta put out a bag........You know, Coop delivers around the village…..comes down the main street around 9, straight from Coop yard. Lorry’s full of coal. Well..............Shawn found some coal on the road coming home from school one Wednesday. He stuffed it in his pockets, so we had a bit of a fire. He asked if he could follow the lorry the next Wednesday 'fore he went to school. . So, since, I give Shawn a few brown bags and he follows the lorry. Road’s bad. Got cracks and stuff. When the lorry hits the potholes, coal drops off back of lorry. Shawn picks it up. When it gets heavy, he brings it home. If we’re quick, I can empty the bag and he can catch up the lorry and get more coal. Keeps us warm for a couple of hours. Get scrap wood from the woodyard. T’ain’t pinching, you know, sir. Coal drops off lorry. Coal’s expensive. Saves me a couple of bob.”  

She looked quizzically at me, checking that I was hearing what she was saying. “Isn’t stealing………..is it? Never moans, you know. Our Shawn. He’s a good lad.”

Taken aback and feeling a bit embarrassed and overwhelmed, I bit my tongue and then heard myself say, “OK, thanks for telling me. Now I know. Good for Shawn. He’s a good lad at school, too. Tell you what. He can have every Wednesday morning off. You tell him, ok? I’ll make sure his teacher knows he will be absent.”

I paused. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything?”

“No, Headmaster” Shawn’s mum said. “But don’t tell nobody, ok? Please?” Without hesitating, I nodded, smiled and looked her straight in the eyes, assuring her I wouldn’t say a word.

As I hurried back to school, I couldn’t get the implications of the conversation out of my head. 
And, Shawn. What a perfect lad. Shawn was so concerned for his mother's well being and the need for a fire and had come up with a solution, the perfect solution. 

No wonder he never did well at school. He had too much to think about.

This experience reminded me of my childhood, when I knew some of my classmates missed days when they were helping their dads unload fish from the fishing boats. 

All children are greatly impacted by their home life, for better, for worse. I wondered how many boys and girls in my school were like Shawn, facing the consequences of poverty each and every day.

Throughout the winter and early spring months, Shawn was absent every Wednesday morning. Just before dinnertime each Wednesday, he’d return to school, come into my office and say,”I’m here, Mr. Paull, I’m here.
Me ma says thank you..........”

“Good, Shawn,” I’d reply. “Go and wash your hands and go and have your dinner, ok?”

Shawn would look at me and smile.“OK, Mr. Paull, see you.”

Spring has sprung!

Well, what a start this morning to a beautiful morning!

As I early-morning watered some baby trees I'd planted last week, Bertie, our young fella cat, brought my attention to a dead snake................thinking that I'd keep it and show some kids, I put it into a plastic see-through container, and left it lying on the grass.

That done, I took a short drive and went for a walk  across the Cherry Creek Trail, eyes, as always, glued to the ground.

I knew it was going to be a dead good day when I picked up a prairie dog skull and jawbones lying close to the first prairie dog home I passed.

Close by there was a collection of small rocks, including some petrified wood........and.......
a wishing rock!!

Crikey, I KNEW then it was, indeed, going to be a dead good day!








When I got home, I emptied my pockets of the bones and rocks and washed them, put them in a jam jar, ready to use at my next science workshop.

As I was drying my hands, my phone binged and I checked my text - it was from Carol, my neighbor. 'Hey, look out the back!' it read.

I went to the deck, looked out, and saw..................25 wild turkeys!!!!!

WHAT a day!!
Yep, spring has sprung!!