Introducing the idea: I’m having too many “if I were teaching (insert subject), I would use (insert example) to explain (insert principle)” moments. But my teaching days are on the left hand side of the timeline. It’s a bit deflating to find something so usable and yet have no way to use it. So I blog.

Background: Today (6/28) is Tau Day. What?  Tau (τ) is the circumference of a circle divided by the radius, approximately 6.28.  [Pi Day was 3/14, celebrating π, the circumference of a circle divided by the diameter.]  Michael John Blake has put Tau, the infinite number, to music on this video. The tune is the wistfully mysterious; for me it also captures the order and structure and design in something as elementary as a circle.

Getting closer to the point: I am a sucker for the sidebar.  After I watched the Tau video I noticed a video posted by the same musician/guy: Carol of the Bells (major key).

Bring it home: The familiar Carol of the Bells is, of course, written in a minor key.  [If you were sitting next to me, we'd hum it together.]  The carol has such a different mood played in a major key.  Raising or lowering the third, the middle note in a chord, greatly alters a tune.  This video would be a perfect way to teach major/minor keys to piano students. I have this urge to round up the street urchins and explain it to them. 

Winding down: When I play the piano, I often take a familiar song written in a major key, say Great is Thy Faithfulness or even The Star Spangled Banner, and play a middle verse in the minor key. Because life is sometimes that way. In a minor key. And the music captures that sense of struggle and strain and difficulty.  The video above, however, goes in a different direction: the minor to the major.

Concluding question: Minor keys make a lot of people gag. They complain, “What is with the dirge?”  I’m quite fond of minor key tunes.  But that is a topic for another time. Which version of Carol of the Bells do you prefer: major or minor?

Like a hot air balloon, book lists inflate and ignite me.  I just stumbled across this May 2004 list. They are all thrilling, true stories. The website has a short recap of each book. Here is an abridged list of the titles (and links to Amazon) and Kindle availability. 

1.   The Worst Journey in the World (Apsley Cherry-Garrard) Free Kindle
2.   The Journals of Lewis and Clark (Lewis & Clark Expedition) Free Kindle
3.   Wind, Sand and Stars (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
4.   The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (John Wesley Powell) Kindle
5.   Arabian Sands (Wildfred Thesiger) Kindle
6.   Annapurna (Maurice Herzog)
7.   Desert Solitaire (Edward Abbey) Kindle
8.   West with the Night (Beryl Markham) [Used paperback $.01] Kindle
9.   Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer) Kindle
10. Travels (Marco Polo) Free Kindle
11. Farthest North (Fridtiof Nansen) Free Kindle
12. The Snow Leopard (Peter Matthiessen) Kindle
13. Roughing It (Mark Twain) Free Kindle
14. Two Years Before the Mast (Richard Henry Dana) Free Kindle
15. South (Ernest Shackleton) Free Kindle
16. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (Eric Newby)
17. Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft (Thor Heyerdahl) Kindle
18. Travels in West Africa (Mary H. Kingsley) Free Kindle
19. The Spirit of St. Louis (Charles A. Lindberg)
20. Seven Years in Tibet (Heinrich Harrer) Kindle
21. The Journals (James R. Cook) Free Kindle
22. The Home of the Blizzard (Sir Douglas Mawson) Free Kindle
23. The Voyage of the Beagle (Charles Darwin) Free Kindle
24. Seven Pillars of Wisdom (T.E. Lawrence) Kindle
25. Travels in the Interior of Africa (Mungo Park) Free Kindle
26. The Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe) Kindle
27. Sailing Alone Around the World (Joshua Slocum) Free Kindle
28. The Mountain of My Fear/Deborah:A Wilderness Narrative (David Roberts)
29. First footsteps in East Africa (Richard Francis Burton) Free Kindle
30. The Perfect Storm (Sebastian Junger) Kindle
31. The Oregon Trail (Francis Parkman Jr.) Free Kindle
32. Through the Dark Continent (Henry M. Stanley)
33. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (Isabella Lucy Bird) Free Kindle
34. In the Land of White Death (Valerian Albanov) Kindle
35. Endurance (Frank Arthur Worsley)
36. Scrambles Amongst The Alps (Edward Whymper) Kindle
37. Out of Africa (Isak Dinesen) Kindle
38. Journals: Scott’s Last Expedition (Robert Falcon Scott) Free Kindle
39. Everest: The West Ridge (Thomas F. Hornbein) Kindle
40. Journey Without Maps (Graham Greene)
41. Starlight and Storm (Gaston Rebuffat)
42. My First Summer in the Sierra (John Muir) Kindle
43. My Life as an Explorer (Sven Hedin)
44. In Trouble Again (Redmond O’Hanlon)
45. The Man Who Walked Through Time (Colin Fletcher)
46. K2, The Savage Mountain (Charles Houston and Robert Bates)
47. Gipsy Moth Circles the World (Sir Francis Chichester)
48. Man-Eaters of Kumaon (Jim Corbett)
49. Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure (Richard E. Byrd) Kindle
50. Stranger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo (Eric Hansen)

I’m interested in your feedback.  Which books have you enjoyed? What areas would you like to vicariously explore? Which titles look intriguing? Are the books you would add to this list?

I found this list because of my interest in Beryl Markham’s West of the Night, which I’m listening to while I garden. (I love it.) Books on my shelf: 16, 17, 27, 33, 37, 53. Books on my Kindle: every Free title. It’s a knee-slapper that someone who rarely takes mild risks loves adventure books.

The short answer: a bunch.

When I consulted with my 19-year-old self, I decided that one vital point I would look for in a potential husband was a guy who had a robust relationship with his dad. I craved children; even more, I wanted a man who would be a good father to those future children. Specifically, I wanted a man who had lived with an example of strong leadership, who knew firsthand what a good dad looked like; a man who wanted to be like his father.

[Disclaimer: I know that men who have had passive, indifferent, distant, or abusive fathers are capable of being good dads.]

Thus, when I talked to a guy who dissed his dad, I drew a mental X next to his name: Disqualified.

When Curt and I started going out, he was working summers with his dad. He came to take me to dinner in his dad’s brand new Triumph Spitfire. There was a confidence and respect that flowed between those two men. Curt introduced me to his parents very early in our relationship. When it came time to marry, Curt did not hesitate in choosing his Best Man: “my Dad“. After we had children, we moved nine hours to our current location (where Curt’s folks lived) in order for our kids to live close to their grandparents. Curt and his dad formed a partnership and worked together 12 years. Ever since Curt was old enough to hold a gun, they have hunted together.

“Dad” poured himself into Curt, and through the man his son became, my sons and I have reaped a boatload of benefits. What did Curt learn from his dad? Motivation to work; equilibrium expressed in the family motto: Let’s get the work done and then have fun!; a willingness to confront tough issues and pursue resolution; the courage to be unpopular; stubbornness; unflinching sacrifice; bluntness; the beauty of order; affection; fidelity; compassion; service; laughter.

He made an investment. He renewed that investment. He continues to invest. And I am the rich beneficiary.

Some as they approach middle age, some only when they are old, wake up to understand that they have parents.

To some the perception comes with their children;
to others with the pang of seeing them walk away light-hearted out into the world,
as they themselves turned their backs on their parents;
they had been all their own, and now they have done with them!

Less or more have we not all thus taken our journey into a far country?

But many a man of sixty is more of a son to the father gone from the earth, than he was while under his roof.

What a disintegrated mass were the world,
what a lump of half-baked brick,
if death were indeed the end of affection!

   ~ George MacDonald in Home Again

This is what a child (back then) needed to know about measurements. I don’t want to ponder on the method used to measure a mouthful. Eww!

Two mouthfuls are a jigger;
two jiggers are a jack;
two jacks are a jill;
two jills are a cup;
two cups are a pint;
two pints are a quart;
two quarts are a pottle;
two pottles are a gallon;
two gallons are a pail;
two pails are a peck;
two pecks are a bushel;
two bushels are a strike;
two strikes are a coomb;
two coombs are a cask;
two casks are a barrel;
two barrels are a hogshead;
two hogsheads are a pipe;
two pipes are a tun–
  and there my story is done!

The curious thing about reading S. Carl Hirsch’s 1973 Meter Means Measure is his assurance that the metric system would be ensconced by now into our society. His opening sentence:

I found this history of measurement fascinating.  In the same way that working with different base numbers in mathematics takes you outside your comfort zone, thinking through different methods of measuring length, weight, time, and temperature boggles the mind.  Thomas Jefferson suggested this master plan for linear measurements:

Four questions illustrate the difficulty the English system of measurement.

Hirsch waxes eloquent on the superiority of the metric system. Yet there is great resistance to switching over. “Change,” Hirsch assets, “is strange.” It took Japan forty years to change over.  Great Britain did it in ten years. 

The United States, Myanmar, and Liberia are the only countries in the world not using the metric system. I admit that I was ambivalent about metrication before reading this book. We cling to what we know, how we were taught. Yet, I see the benefits of going metric. More on Metrication in the United States. And, just for comparison, Metrication in Canada.

What do you think?

When I travel, I inevitably get the request. 

“I need your cell number.”

Yeah.  I mean, no.  See, I don’t own a cell phone. 

I’m not morally, philosophically, environmentally, esoterically, aesthetically or fundamentally opposed to cell phones.

It started as a financial decision.  We really didn’t need a cell phone and not incurring that monthly charge was like having Weight Watcher bonus points in our financial diet.

It’s evolved into a game of How Long Can We Last? with a bonus round of Think of What We Can Do With That Money. The average monthly cell phone bill is $60/month.  Hmm.  That’s about 20 books (I buy them used); a good pair of sandals; an elegant dinner out. Or, if I bundle a year of not paying for a cell phone, it is two plane tickets to visit a sibling.

Not only does it save money, not having a cell phone saves time answering those “Wassup?” calls.  

I believe that cell phones make us (the collective us) less independent, less confident, less decisive.  And, while they are certainly more convenient, I believe they make us, dare I say it, less connected. 

I don’t want to be presumptuous. If travel were a constant in our lives, it would make sense   be wise to have the means to communicate.

I have a resident curmudgeon inside me: if I’m honest I’d admit it’s fun to be eccentric. I take joy pointing out that what seems impossible today was simply normal thirty years ago.  

One of the ironies of not packing a cell phone is that I lug around our laptop, allowing me to send and receive emails (and update my Facebook status) when I’m traveling.

We will pole vault over the digital divide when the cost and benefits of cell phones outweigh a land line.  I’m content without one for now.

After I wrote this, I read the quote below, which was just too rich to omit from this post.  It is from Matthew Algeo’s delightful book, Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure.