Vicarious Thoughts

Let’s see:

I was with some members of the Marton Plunket Committee earlier this week selling Raffle Tickets at Marton New World. I had my camera out ready to take some photos of our stall and prizes and someone pointed out to me the giant lampshade in the entrance way and I without thought lifted my camera and snapped it.
Makes me wonder how many other great images (well I think this one is great!) I miss out on by not having my camera at the ready!

I heard about this book by Professor Jim Flynn while catching up on the latest episode of 60 Minutes where an individual claimed he was the smartest person in New Zealand based on the fact he could get a perfect score on a standardised IQ test. (I’ll leave that particular topic well alone!)

So bearing in mind that I haven’t read the book, here’s what I’ve found out about it since I found the idea intriguing.

The full title is The Torchlight List: Around the World in 200 Books and to put it simply, the premise is that everyone can improve their education and knowledge by reading good books.

The book is only 120 pages long but appears to be a succinct, yet engaging journey through history. It isn’t clear from articles and the like that I found online whether the list stays strictly in the history genre of wanders into other areas of study, though admittedly history can be such a far-reaching topic in itself.
The Otago Daily Times have a 3 page article about the book and author which is a really good read and a far better overview of the author’s aim and opinions and they also have a 4 page edited extract from the book, which lists the books numbered 93 to 114. Each book name is inserted into the text amongst information on why the author considers it a useful read, tidbits of information and witticisms.
Despite how dry this idea for a book may sound, the edited excerpt drew me in and had my fingers itching to search out each book and get started.

It’s fairly easy to see at a glance that this booklist on RadioNZ’s website isn’t the complete list of books but it appears to match up with the books mentioned in the description for the RadioNZ segments that you can listen to/download here. There are 12 episodes listed averaging about 10 1/2 minutes long.

My own forays into the world of Charlotte Mason’s education theories and those of the Classical Education bring to mind the term “Living Books”. These are books which immerse you in the subject you’re studying, and let you breathe in the facts rather than have them pummelled at you. Certainly from my own childhood and latter years I garner and more importantly retain the most information when reading a book which tells a fact-based story rather than a dry tome that simply lays out the information.

Though having not succeeded at the Higher Education route myself, I certainly understand the value of a University Degree and those who achieve them (and vastly admire those who go on and continue their studies in academia).
However I do agree with Professor Flynn that a great education can be had through Self-Education. I’d add that it’s important to remember that education is a life-long process and no one should consider themselves past learning.

The book is $33 RRP in NZ Dollars and I can tell you it’s been bumped up to the top of my wishlist!

If you’re at all interested in how you can do electronics with your young children, do I have the TED talk for you! ;)

For more information you can visit her website, Squishy Circuits.

I’m really looking forward to giving this a go later in the year!

Edit to add: Just found this in my drafts – It should have published on the 6th April – and I’m not calling it a NaBloPoMo fail because I could have sworn I published it!

A random title for a rather random day.

Tonight I went to my first Marton Community Meeting and became a member. I may have made an impression by the end of the meeting but I’m not convinced that it was an entirely positive one. :D
My intention was to be quiet, observe and learn – but my mouth engaged more than I expected, though hopefully the brain along with it! I am excited to be participating in the community more though, and I am interested in finding out how local government works (or doesn’t) for the members of the community. More importantly though, I was overjoyed at the news the next meeting’s venue will be somewhere warm! I can’t recall the last time I shivered my way through a meeting (though it at least covered up any nervous shaking I might have had!)
When I got home I realised I was dreading having to give a potted bio of who I am before they co-opted me onto the committee. Luckily that wasn’t requested though I’m left wondering what they think they know about me. :D
But enough self-obsessing!

Sam and I went, on our first proper organised educational fieldtrip, to the Canaan Honey Farm. The owners were lovely people and Sam conducted herself well. It occurred to me that in a school setting with the wrong teacher she might actually be able to coast her way through a day without the teacher picking up on her specific needs. She happily sat on the mat with the other children and chorused the answers to questions with them. Until you listened closely, and realised that she was just mimicing their vocal sounds and not saying any particular word – in the same way you can mumble your way through a song. She really enjoyed herself though and I know she did pick up some of the information, which I’m certain will come out in the next few days. And if it does take her a few days before she mentions some of the facts we were presented with, that may be another aspect of her Autism as it took her a few days to process (without any discussion) that she was once a baby and was born and not purchased!
I was really impressed too that she took herself off to a quiet spot in the room when she got overwhelmed with the noise/people/constant movement, with zero fuss and then returned to the situation when she was ready. I wanted to squeeze her I was so proud!

Third and final topic before I jump back into the raffle-ticket fray (I’m up to the cutting stage; the perforating stage went really well – except for one mishap) and that is I made an attempt at the latest Weekly Photography Challenge. With a twist though as I was too much of a wuss (it being rainy and cold) to leave the protection of our vehicle, and so I took some shots sitting in the truck whilst parked on the main street of Wanganui. I wasn’t particularly happy with the results unsurprisingly. Sitting still is definitely a handicap I didn’t need. Nevertheless, I did make an attempt and I will probably have another go before submitting a photo to the challenge.
Ooh, actually, I’ve just looked at them onscreen and they look so much better than they did on the LCD screen. Still not brilliant though. The images I was trying to capture needed more zoom than I had for tighter photos and I’m not convinced they really fit the criteria of a street scene, though I guess I could say I looked above the street level – above the parapets so to speak for my inspiration. Here’s the best two out of the bunch:
I like the incongruity of a building built in 1875 sandwiched between a building reminiscent of the Art Deco period and the building on the left which frankly defies description on a main street. (Click on the image for a closer look – the cladding has to be seen to be believed!)

This photo isn’t the best I’ve ever taken and yes, that is a bit of my car at the top. It was taken with my Kodak camera which has a better zoom as a comparison shot to the one I took with the Canon. However, I liked the mock-ancient look to the building with the (and let’s see if I remember my architectural terms correctly) pilasters and pediment, and that it’s got a touch of the modern with the bright splashes of colour taking it from what would otherwise be ho-hum.

It certainly wasn’t my intention on writing this post at the end of the night. Unfortunately, I’ve been busy making raffle tickets for Marton Plunket and I am ashamed to admit that it took me the majority of 4 hours to simply add the serial numbers to the tickets and get them printed off. On the upside, I now know what is and isn’t possible and how to get it done – and also that it’s fiddly and a pain in the neck to do. So the 1000 tickets are printed and ready for cutting, perforating and collating tomorrow. Definitely will be doing them in batches so if I don’t get them all done tomorrow we’ll at least have some ready for the first day of selling on Wednesday whilst I feverishly get the rest ready to roll. This is more than likely to happen because we’re headed off to Wanganui tomorrow for a fieldtrip to a Honey Farm.

If you’d visited the site this past week, you may have noticed that there’s an updated NaBloPoMo image/link showing on the lefthand sidebar. Yup, I’ve suckered myself into thinking I can go from 3 blogposts a week (for one week) to 30 blogposts in a month. If nothing else, it’s certainly going to help getting my weekly blogpost goal happening. I feel guilty though, for doing these last minute blogposts when I’m trying to squeeze this extra thing into my day. Not that I don’t slack off.

So this Sunday was not only my usual day for doing Weekly Review, but also for doing a Monthly Review, and a Quarterly Review. And funnily enough, I haven’t got there yet. I’ve finished reviewing the three past reviews (if that makes sense) and now I need to organise the goals for the next Quarter, and from that the next Monthly goals, and from that the usual Weekly Goals.
Since I know I’ll have some downtime while we’re out and about to work on these I’m going to procrastinate this group of tasks tonight and do them tomorrow.

But before I go, let’s compare my goals I set for this past week with my accomplishments.

Let’s see:

So I was out/occupied for most of Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday but I’m not really sure how so little got done on those other days. I suspect a certain small computer game that needs to be eradicated from my computer again!
Just realised I’m going out tomorrow night so I definitely think there’ll be raffle ticket production still happening on Wednesday!

Alright, time for bed for me now :)

Oh dear! Daylight savings ended early this morning and it being a Sunday I was hoping to catch up on some missed sleep today. That hasn’t happened so I am incredibly tired and it’s a whole hour before I generally go to bed (two hours if you remember I haven’t adapted yet), yet I can barely keep my eyes awake.
I’m feeling guilty and a cheat for posting just this but Tomorrow is another day and I can redeem myself then hopefully.

I saw this easter themed embroidery on Craftzine today, and since Sam is currently a little obsessed with the movie Springtime with Roo (to the point, she’s initiated bouts of Spring Cleaning – not that I’m complaining) and she has enjoyed the small amounts of handsewing we’ve done together, I thought she might be interesting in having a go at stitching the decorations on a outline of an egg on cloth.
So I had a quick google images search and came up with this picture from Family Stitchery on Artfire as an example of the idea I had. I’m certain our results would be rather more err “freestyle” looking. :)

Sneaking in a blogpost before the end of day.
Us Southern Hemisphereians are seriously underrepresented online. Everything seems to be about Spring Cleaning, New Growth and don’t even get me started about the whole Easter fiasco.
My newsfeed always seems to be 6 months out of whack; I’ve got my heater out and looking regretfully at the summery dresses I didn’t wear nearly enough this season. The garden is winding down for the growing season and soon the only thing growing will be our backyard lawn (since the incoming wet months mean mowing is a sure-fire recipe for mud-mud-mud)

So here is me, Grinching off for now – but don’t you worry, I’ll be shaking my fists at the internet again in six months when you’ll be complaining about the shortening days, impending snow and generally chilliness and I’ll be down here looking at new growth and looking forward to sunshine and warm days.

(This blogette-post brought to you by tongue-in-cheek)

Click on the image for a closer look.

This is my first time doing one of these challenges from the Digital Photography School. This week’s challenge was to capture contrasting colours and so I’ve taken a photo of the flowers of our Jerusalem Artichoke plants with the clear blue sky as a backdrop.
I really like how crisp and clear the spiky parts are and that you can see the detail of the internal parts of the flowers without petals. Colour me weird (and forgetful when it comes to the names of parts of a flower). :)