List of Star Wars air, aquatic, and ground vehicles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Popcorn and Crowds
• Peas and Cheese Salad
• Do You Get Along with Your Grandchildren’s Other Grandparents?
• How Big Is Your State?
• Who Invented the Hula Hoop?

Last month, readers spent the most time on:

• Grandparents. Poems. Funny.
• How To Do Nothing with Nobody
• What Are 10 Top Tips for a Long Marriage?
• Popcorn and Crowds
• Moore’s Law

Coming up next week:

Do You Like Tapioca? Monday, May 20, 2013

Moms. Desserts. House rules.

Star Wars Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Lightsaber. Princess Leia. Han Solo.

We’re Going to the Moon. Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Sputnik. JFK. NASA.

When Being a Grandma Isn’t So Grand Book Thursday, May 23, 2013

Love. Respect. Attachment parenting.

How Long Is the Mississippi River? Fun with Grandkids, Friday, May 24, 2013

Scatter plot. Graph. Challenger.

A Reminiscence Poetry Corner, May 25, 2013

Algernon Charles Swinburne. A true poet from Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear.

Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
There is no help, for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear.
And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
She would not know.

Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
Saying ‘If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.’
All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
She would not weep.

Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
Nor see love’s ways, how sore they are and steep.
Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
She would not love.

Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
And the sea moving saw before it move
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
Though all those waves went over us, and drove
Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
She would not care.

Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
Sing all once more together; surely she,
She too, remembering days and words that were,
Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
She would not see.

Extra Info:
From “Poems and Ballads” – 1866

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 – 1909)

Copyright catalogs at the Library of Congress. Located in room LM-404 of the James Madison Memorial Building, Washington DC. :The publication data for each magazine issue was hand-entered on the 3 by 5 inch index card. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On a recent visit, my grandson asked me how big Virginia was.

I asked him if he wanted to know the size in land or people.

He said both.

I got out 50 index cards. We wrote the name of one state on each card.

We looked up the area, in square miles, for each state and wrote it on the index cards.

Then, I asked him to lay out the index cards in order, by size, stretching out across our living room, dining room and kitchen, so he could see where Virginia fits, relative to other states.

Then, we looked up population and wrote that on the back of the cards.

He then laid them down again, in order by size, smallest to largest.

He learned how to say six- and seven-digit numbers.

He learned to notice which number was most important, millions first, then hundreds of thousands.

And, he learned which states were the largest and smallest.

You and your grandchild can learn about ordering with a shorter, simpler version of this activity.

Materials:

• Index cards
• Pen or pencil
• Reference materials for looking up size and population of states. We used the Internet. You could as easily use an almanac.
• Optional: U.S. map

Instructions:

• Ask your grandchild which two states they think are the largest in size
• If you have a map, see if they can decide which are the largest from looking at the map
• Write the name of each large state on an index card
• Ask them which two they think are the smallest
• Write the name of each small state on an index card
• Ask them if they think the state they live in is larger or smaller
• Write the name of their state on an index card
• If different, ask them whether they think your state is larger or smaller
• Write the name of your state on an index card
• Look up the area in square miles of each state. Write it on one side of the appropriate index card for that state
• Look up the size in population for each state. Write it on the other side of that state’s card
• Ask your grandchild to lay the cards out in area size order.
• Then, ask them to flip them over and lay them out in population size order.
• Optional: older children may be interested to know that the number of Congressmen in the House of Representatives for a state is determined by population. This is recalculated after every Census, every ten years, and can change the number of Congressmen in that state.
• Click here to see the 2010 Congressional apportionment, which states gained or lost Congressmen and which stayed the same.

Why Is Ordering Important?

Putting something in order means you can compare things you can count.

You can compare area and population, for example.

But, not all things compare.

For instance, you couldn’t say blue was greater than red, unless you were talking about its position in a rainbow.

You couldn’t say water is greater than milk.

But, you could compare the volume of a glass of water to the volume of a bucket of milk.

Back to the Congressmen example.

The number of Congressmen is determined by population, not by area.

But, all states get two Senators. So, no state has a greater number of Senators than any other state.

How big is your state?

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru

Author, “Who Gets to Name Grandma? The Wisdom of Mothers and Grandmothers”

http://newgrandmas.com

Portrait of Jane Austen, from the memoir by J. E. Austen-Leigh. All other portraits of Austen are generally based on this, which is itself based on a sketch by Cassandra Austen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What is the story arc?

What are the facts about your life?

What stories do you remember from writing prompts?

Judith Barrington, author of Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, says you start with your passion and add your perspective about your life’s events.

Poet, memoirist and memoir-writing instructor, Barrington says if you are writing a memoir, there is something you want to say, something you want your readers to know about life – start there.

“Memoir…is a story from a life. It makes no pretense of replicating a whole life.”

“One of the important skills in memoir-writing is the selection of the theme, or themes, that will bind the work together.”

Barrington also advises memoir writers to be honest about their quest to understand the events in their lives.

Rather than using writing to heal old wounds, she suggests that writers do the hard work of understanding their lives in the context of their times and families and write what they now understand with the perspective of distance.

“The memoirist need not necessarily know what she thinks about her subject but she must be trying to find out. “

“She may never arrive at a definitive verdict, but she must be willing to share her intellectual and emotional quest for answers.”

“Rather than simply telling a story from her life, the memoirist both tells the story and muses upon it, trying to unravel what it means in the light of her current knowledge.”

Finally, Barrington gives memoir writers permission to tell their stories.

The question is not, why would readers care about any of the writer’s stories, but why does the writer care?

“Some books on writing life stories offer long lists of subjects to jump-start you.”

“It is not the obvious landmarks of a life that hold the passionate moments, the transmormations, and the painful growth: those lie within incidents and relationships that are unique to each of us.

“…create your own list. Find that haunting story that has nothing to do with what looks like one of life’s ‘big moments.’”

Finally, Barrington recommends reading other memoirs, to get ideas about how to present your own stories.

“You will learn, in the most enjoyable way, more about style and language from reading good literature than you will ever acquire from workshops and how-to books.

“Reading other people’s memoirs will give you concrete ideas about how to organize your own stories and demonstrate just how many different approaches you can take.”

“Other peoples’ memoirs, too, will remind you of how much you can care about someone else’s experience when it is written well.”

Some of Barrington’s recommended memoirs:

• Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America, by Carolyn See
• Road Song, by Natalie Kusz
• Blue Windows, by Barbara Wilson.

Order Barrington’s book from amazon to read a poet’s view on how to write your life’s story, by clicking on the title, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art.

For more samples of memoirs, as well as audio interviews with several of the authors, highlighting various techniques they used, check out the books in Related posts, below.

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru

Author, “Who Gets to Name Grandma? The Wisdom of Mothers and Grandmothers”

http://newgrandmas.com

Related posts

• The First Century (includes audio interview)
• Why Would You Put Butter in the Well? (includes audio interview)
• Pennies from a Heav’n (includes audio interview)
• A Cruel Calm (includes audio interview)
• Memory Lake  (includes audio interview)
• All Over But the Shoutin’
• Don’t Forget to Call Your Mama…I Wish I Could Call Mine

Related articles

• Where Are the Lines Between Fiction, Nonfiction, Creative Nonfiction and Memoir?
• Memoir Writing Insights From Kathleen Pooler and Pat Mckinzie
• The List You Need to Write a Memoir

Plessy v Ferguson, that 1896 ruling, held that as long as facilities were equal, in that case, railroad cars, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection under the law, was not being violated.

Article in the Daily Picayune, New Orleans, announcing the arrest of (Homer) Adolphe Plessy for violation of railway racial segregation law. The case would go to the US Supreme Court as Plessy v. Ferguson. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Brown v Board of Education, a decision under Chief Justice Earl Warren, held that the segregation of students in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because separate facilities are inherently unequal.

At the time, there were 17 states that required racial segregation and 16 states that prohibited it. The rest of the, then 48, states either called segregation optional or had no laws either way.

Kansas had passed a law in 1879 allowing school districts to be segregated.

African American parents challenged this law in a 1951 class-action lawsuit.

The Topeka, Kansas Board of Education, in its defense, used the 1896 Plessy v Ferguson decision as precedent to support their position.

The Kansas District Court agreed, claiming the facilities were essentially equal in buildings, teachers and curriculum, even though they admitted separation was not good for the African American students.

Their decision gave the Topeka School Board permission not to change the racial segregation policy.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the case to the Supreme Court, combining the Kansas case with four others, from Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

In the Delaware case, the District Court had ordered that African American students be admitted to the white school because facilities were not equal.

The Supreme Court decision overturning racial segregation in public schools was unanimous, holding that even if the facilities were equal, segregation was harmful, and therefore, unconstitutional.

They based their decision partly on research from an African American professor and psychologist, Kenneth Clark,  and Civil Rights activist and first-generation Russian immigrant, June Alexander,  that pointed to social and psychological disadvantages borne by African American students who are segregated, even in equal facilities.

Clark and Alexander’s research also indicated that gradual desegregation had no advantages over moving quickly.

Topeka’s high schools had been integrated since 1949 and its middle schools since 1941.

After the Supreme Court decision, they peacefully integrated their elementary schools between 1953 and 1956.

Virginia, however, did not accept the decision.

They started a campaign called Massive Resistance, led by Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. and closed schools so they would not have to desegregate, skirting the law by granting tuition for private academies to white students.

In 1958, the state closed nine schools in four counties rather than integrate them.

One county’s public schools were closed for six years.

Arlington, Virginia’s local school board allowed desegregation of a junior high school in 1959, after a court ruled in favor of several African American parents who had sued to force them to obey the Supreme Court’s order.

They were the first school in the state to be integrated.

The state immediately disbanded the school board, not returning local control until 1992.

Click here to order a copy of The First Century: And Not Ready for the Rocking Chair Yet, in which retired school teacher Martha Ann Miller describes her front-row seat at the integration of that Arlington junior high school.

The Supreme Court ordered Virginia to desegregate all its public schools in 1964.

In 1959, I moved from a state where segregation was forbidden, Iowa, to one where it was required, Texas.

As a practical matter, there were few African Americans in Iowa, so I never knew any in elementary school or in my neighborhood.

But, in Texas, a few years before we moved, I had spotted segregated public restrooms.

They were labeled with the degrading signs on three bathrooms: Men, Women, and Colored.

In 1963, Texas decided to start integrating its schools by starting with first grade.

They planned to add one year each year until, 12 years later, all grade levels would be integrated, hoping to avoid the violence school districts in Tennessee, Mississippi and Massachusetts had experienced.

They completed the process in 1969, spurred by an effort to integrate high school sports.

When did your schools integrate?

What was the process?

How did it affect you?

To you and the diversity of the world at your grandchildren’s doorstep.

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru

Author, “Who Gets to Name Grandma? The Wisdom of Mothers and Grandmothers”

http://newgrandmas.com

Related posts

• The First Century
• Autobiography of Gandhi

Family heirloom silver napkin rings (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was a newlywed.

My husband of 5 months had been drafted, reporting two days after we eloped.

He and a new buddy had arranged for me and the other wife to be roommates while our husbands lived in the barracks for the Army’s Officer Candidate School that summer of 1968.

The war in Vietnam seemed to be ramping up and new officers were needed.

Our husbands would graduate as 2nd Lieutenants in November, bound for Vietnam a year later.

I was pregnant.

My new roommate had been married two years.

The first time our husbands came home for a weekend pass, 10 weeks into training, she put candles out for dinner.

This is a guest post for Around the Table, a blog designed to inspire families to connect at mealtimes.

Its author, Sharon Fleming and I share a belief that families are stronger when they sit down and enjoy meals together.

Click here to read the rest of the story. 

Related posts

• What Do You Do That Is A Family Tradition?

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru

Author, “Who Gets to Name Grandma?”

http://newgrandmas.com

Match: May 11, 1997.

The match-up between chess champions and computers goes back to Carnegie-Mellon, with a computer called ChipTest, later renamed Deep Thought, which first met Gary Kasparov in 1989.

Garry Kasparov upon winning the World Chess Championship in 1985. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Kasporov had become the youngest-ever undisputed World Chess Champion in 1985, at the age of 22, a title which he held until 1993, when he set up a rival chess champion organization, retaining the title of classical World Chess Champion until 2000.

By 1996, IBM had hired the Carnegie-Mellon programmers, renamed the computer Deep Blue and played it against the youngest U.S. Master since Bobbie Fischer and 1987 U.S. Chess Champion, Joel Benjamin.

Then, they hired Benjamin to help them get ready for more matches with Kasparov.

Between February 10-17, 1996, Gary Kasparov beat IBM’s Deep Blue chess-playing computer in a match in which Deep Blue won one game against Kasparov, then lost three and played two games to a draw.

Watch the winning plays in the Deep Blue game here.

It was the first time a computer had won a game against a reigning world chess champion.

On May 11, 1997, they played another match with 2 wins for Deep Blue, 1 for Kasparov and three draws.

It was the first time a computer had won a match against a reigning world champion.

Read the two 6-game matches, play-by-play here. 

IBM refused the rematch Kasparov demanded and retired Deep Blue.

What’s Happened Since?

In 2006, the undisputed World Champion, Vladimi Kramnik, played Big Blue’s PC successor, Deep Fritz, and lost the 6-game match, with two wins by the computer and four draws.

Computers are no longer re-programmed between games, as they were with supercomputer Big Blue.

A few months ago, my grandson and I learned algebraic chess notation so we could read chess books.

As it happened, the chess book of traps and pitfalls he had tried to read uses a different chess notation we have not mastered yet.

Against the day when we might want to start studying our games, we’ve written down the moves in the 11 games we’ve played since we started recording.

His best game? He mated me in 7 moves.

This post was first published on grandmotherdiaries.com

Do you play chess?

Who taught you?

Do you play with your grandchildren?

To you and sharing the games you love with the grandchildren you love.

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru

Author, “Who Gets to Name Grandma? The Wisdom of Mothers and Grandmothers”

http://newgrandmas.com

Related articles

• Chess grandmasters Kasparov and Karpov play match in Spain
• Video: All That Mattered: IBM computer defeats chess champ
• World Chess Championship 2013

A hula hoop contingent in the 2007 Summer Solstice Parade, Fremont Fair, Seattle, Washington marched the route while “hula hooping”; they deliberately had an oversupply of hula hoops, and continually urged people in the viewing crowd to join them. Many did, at least briefly, including this child. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Melin gave some hoops to children to see what they’d do with them.

Their play reminded him of the Hawaiian hula .

He and his Wham-O Company partner, Richard Knerr, started manufacturing plastic hula hoops for children in July, 1958.

They sold 25 million in less than four months, 100 million in the first two years.

On May 13, 1959, Melin applied for a patent on his version of a hoop toy.

A patent was awarded on March 5, 1963.

I ran into hula hoops again, or hooping, as it is now called, in Boston a few years ago when I saw a young woman using hula hoops for a beautiful dance at a sidewalk festival.

Since then, it has gotten popular as an exercise device.

There are different sizes for adults and children.

Adult hoops may be weighted, so they’ll spin slower, and have sticky grips on the ring.

I distinctly remember being a smug 12-year-old, when I could have kept a hula-hoop going, seemingly forever.

Most adults who tried rarely made it past the first or second spin and felt foolish for trying.

When grandchildren started getting old enough, I got out my old hula hoop.

Yes, I could still do it, but I had to concentrate.

My granddaughter now has her own, kid-sized hula hoop that hangs by her front door.

Records set with hula hoops:

• Longest time hooping: 74 hours, 15 minutes
• Most hoops at once: 132
• Hooping while running: 10 kilometers
• Most hoop dancers: 4,483
• Largest hoop: 45.55 feet
• Hooping with a 53-pound tire: 71 seconds

If you want to see some videos of hula hooping today, check these out:

• How to hula hoop for beginners, first steps

• How to use hooping in a beginner’s workout

• Full workout routine

• How to get started with hoop tricks

• Hoop dancing pulls it all together

When was the last time you played with a hula hoop?

Do you have one now?

Have you ever hooped with your grandchildren?

To you and keeping your inner child alive with your grandchildren.

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru

Author, “Who Gets to Name Grandma? The Wisdom of Mothers and Grandmothers”

http://newgrandmas.com

Related articles

• Hula Hoop Your Hips Away
• Orinda kids hula-hoop into history
• Kelly Osbourne, Adam Lambert Have Hula Hoop Parties To Stay In Shape

• Grandparents. Poems. Funny.
• How To Do Nothing with Nobody
• What Are the Top 10 Tips For a Long Marriage?
• Moore’s Law
• Have You Ever Made Your Own Slingshot?

Last month, the most popular posts were:

• Who Taught You You Were Pretty?
• Mom’s Pies
• Who Discovered DNA?
• Do You Get Along with Your Grandchildren’s Other Grandparents?
• My Grandmother’s Love Letters

Coming up next week:

Who Invented the Hula Hoop? Monday, May 13, 2013 

Hooping. Dance. Exercise.

When Did a Computer Finally Win a Chess Game Against a Champion? Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Deep Blue. Grandmaster. Draws.

When Did Your School Integrate? Wednesday, May 15, 2013 

Railroad cars. Kansas. Required/prohibited.

Writing the Memoir Book Thursday, May 16, 2013

Musing. Summary. Time.

How Big Is Your State? Fun with Grandchildren, May 17, 2013

Index cards. Order. Map.

A Leave-Taking Poetry Corner, May 18, 2013 

A woodblock from a photograph of Algernon Swinburne, aged 52. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

‘La maison sans enfants!’ – VICTOR HUGO.

I.

A month without sight of the sun
Rising or reigning or setting
Through days without use of the day,
Who calls it the month of May?
The sense of the name is undone
And the sound of it fit for forgetting.

We shall not feel if the sun rise,
We shall not care when it sets:
If a nightingale make night’s air
As noontide, why should we care?
Till a light of delight that is done rise,
Extinguishing grey regrets;

Till a child’s face lighten again
On the twilight of older faces;
Till a child’s voice fall as the dew
On furrows with heat parched through
And all but hopeless of grain,
Refreshing the desolate places

Fall clear on the ears of us hearkening
And hungering for food of the sound
And thirsting for joy of his voice:
Till the hearts in us hear and rejoice,
And the thoughts of them doubting and darkening
Rejoice with a glad thing found.

When the heart of our gladness is gone,
What comfort is left with us after?
When the light of our eyes is away,
What glory remains upon May,
What blessing of song is thereon
If we drink not the light of his laughter?

No small sweet face with the daytime
To welcome, warmer than noon!
No sweet small voice as a bird’s
To bring us the day’s first words!
Mid May for us here is not Maytime!
No summer begins with June.

A whole dead month in the dark,
A dawn in the mists that o’ercome her
Stifled and smothered and sad
Swift speed to it, barren and bad!
And return to us, voice of the lark,
And remain with us, sunlight of summer.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 – 1909)