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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Tubing Down the Ichetucknee River

This past weekend, out family tubed down the Ichetucknee River along with other families and boys from Boy Scout Troop 77.  It was a fantastic weekend.

We camped at the Florida O'Leno State Park http://floridastateparks.org/oleno/default.cfm in a group camping area, about 6 hours drive from Atlanta.   The girls were particularly glad to go camping. 

Ichetucknee Springs State Park
http://floridastateparks.org/ichetuckneesprings/default.cfm
The crystalline Ichetucknee River flows six miles through shaded hammocks and wetlands before it joins the Santa Fe River. In 1972, the head spring of the river was declared a National Natural Landmark by the U. S. Department of the Interior. From the end of May until early September, tubing down the river is the premier activity in the area. In addition to tubing, visitors can enjoy picnicking, snorkeling, canoeing, swimming, hiking, and wildlife viewing. October through March scuba diving is available in the Blue Hole only (you must be cave certified). White-tailed deer, raccoons, wild turkeys, wood ducks and great blue herons can be seen from the river. Picnic areas, equipped with tables and grills, are available throughout the park. A full-service concession offers food, refreshments, and outdoor products from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Tubes plus snorkeling and diving equipment can be rented from private vendors outside the park located four miles northwest of Fort White, off State Roads 47 and 238.

Tom grew up in Jacksonville and has told me on many occasions about his trips tubing down the Ichetucknee.  The tubes they used were truck tire tubes, not these "fancy" tubes with handles made specially for "tubing."

Friday, May 27, 2011

Rain and Kindness

Just 2 miles from our house is the greatest little market/lunch spot/butcher called the Oak Grove Market. http://www.oakgrovemarket.com/   This is a favorite lunch spot, and it just doesn't take long at all to walk to from our house.

Well, yesterday I had Mary Elizabeth ride the bus to the "Meat Market" after school because I didn't think I'd be able to make it to Marta to pick her up in time.  I decided I'd walk up to meet her, and we'd walk back together.  I got to the Market and found her at a booth with her friend finishing an ICEE.

(When I was growing up, it was a BIG treat to go to the 7-11 after church and get and ICEE.  We'd wait in the car while dad when in.  He'd come out with 4 small ICEEs and pass them out to us kids in the back seat.  Good times.)  

ME said she was "starving", so she ordered a grilled cheese.  While we were waiting for that, Mary Elizabeth asked if it was supposed to rain.  I said that I didn't think so.  Of course, in a few minutes it started pouring!  I was sure that by the time the grilled cheese as eaten, the rain would be over.

The rain did not cease.  It continued to rain...and lightning...and thunder.  We decided to wait it out a bit at the outside tables. Still...it rained some more.  A mom and her two kids were leaving and getting in their mini-van.  The mom asked if she could give us a ride that she had seen me walking up just a bit ago.  We assured her that the rain would be letting up and that we were going to enjoy the walk home.  Still...it rained some more.  Finally, Mary Elizabeth decided that we should walk home in the rain!  We did not have umbrellas because  I didn't think it was supposed to rain.  We headed home.

Just at the light on the corner, a friend rolled down her window and offered us a ride.  Crazily, we declined, just knowing the rain was going to stop.  No...it rained some more, and harder.  We're laughing and walking and getting wetter and wetter.  It's also thundering and lightning a little.  I'm sure we just might die.  Mary Elizabeth thinks it's awesome.

About 3/4 mile into the walk, we're drenched.  I told ME that if anyone at this point offers us a ride, we're taking it!  In a few moments, a car turns into a driveway ahead of us.  A cute young girl hops out and brings us a HUGE golf umbrella and tells us to take it and to keep dry!  She gets back into her car and drives away.  Wow!  We didn't even have time to ask her her name.  She had on a Woodward jacket and an Alpha Delta Pi sticker on her back windshield.  I'm guessing she lives in the neighborhood and is home from college.  Thank you, who ever you are!!

After that, the walk wasn't so bad.  It continued to rain pretty good the next mile or so, letting up to a quiet drizzle.  ME had put on her flip flops before we left the Market.  My sneaker were completely soaked, making that squishing noise when I took a step.

As we walked we talked about the kindness that had just been displayed to us.  There are some really nice people out there.  Mary Elizabeth decided that we should keep the umbrella with us, and if we ever see someone in need of an umbrella, that we give this one to them.  What a great idea!

Thursday, May 26, 2011

May Mayhem

Remind me next May how busy and crazy it is!  Just about every day on the calendar is filled with events/activities...

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Book List

Reading is encouraged at our house.  This book list is for all ages.  Most good for older kids and up.  I'm just about finished with Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (#31).  It's very long.  It's okay.  I've italicized  the ones I remember reading.  I remember A Town Like Alice (#96)being very good.


1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien 
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible - 
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger 
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot  
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Marte 
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce 
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola 
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell 
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad  
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl  
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Dinner Tonight!

For dinner last night, we had "veggie plate."  I sauteed cabbage (yummy!), green beans (Steamfresh), rolls (Sister Shubert's) and our new favorite- Velveeta Down-Home Macaroni & Cheese.  Caroline said the mac is as good as Napoleon's.  (Napoleon's is a new restaurant right down the street from us.)  Thank you, Caroline!

Velveeta Down-Home Macaroni & Cheese

What You Need

1/4 cup butter or margarine, divided
1/4 cup  flour
1 cup milk
1/2 lb.  (8 oz.) VELVEETA Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 cups elbow macaroni, cooked
1/2 cup  KRAFT Shredded Cheddar Cheese
6 RITZ Crackers, crushed (about 1/4 cup)

Make It

HEAT oven to 350°F. MELT 3 Tbsp. butter in medium saucepan on medium heat. Whisk in flour; cook 2 min., stirring constantly. Gradually stir in milk. Bring to boil; cook and stir 3 to 5 min. or until thickened. Add VELVEETA; cook 3 min. or until melted, stirring frequently. Stir in macaroni. SPOON into 2-qt. casserole sprayed with cooking spray; sprinkle with Cheddar. Melt remaining butter; toss with cracker crumbs. Sprinkle over casserole. BAKE 20 min. or until heated through.   

Monday, May 23, 2011

Summer Schedule Final

After a super busy weekend of soccer tournaments and strings performance, I've finalized the summer schedule.

Summer Daily 2011
  • make bed
  • clean room
  • eat breakfast
  • brush teeth
  • cursive practice (one page from book and name)
  • math pages
  • read-30 minutes
  • extra chore (I decide--pull weeds, water plants (indoor/outdoor), recycling, vacuum, dust, put yard clippings at curb, put recycling at curb, put trash at curb, shred papers, sharpen pencils...)
Summer Weekly 2011
  • Monday- Library 
  • Tuesday- "big" clean day (art closet, book shelves, ping pong porch, backpacks, soccer bags)
  • Wednesday- Cook day (eat by candlelight)  Kids cook dinner
  • Thursday- Write a letter
  • Friday- Lunch with dad
Field Trips 2011
  • Fox Theater Tour (see a movie)
  • Historic Downtown tour
  • Oakland Cemetary
  • Archibald Smith Plantation Home
  • DeKalb History Center
  • White Water
  • Aviation Museum
  • IKEA (We always go to IKEA the first week out of school...eat and play, although the kids are too big for the playroom now.)

Thursday, May 19, 2011

High Flight-Poem by John G. Magee, Jr.

Today was the 6th grade Chorus performance down at Woodward.  One of the songs sung was this poem, High Flight.  After reading the back story, I had to hold back the tears.  The children's grandfather flew planes for the Navy.

 

 

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .


Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
— John Gillespie Magee, Jr
During the desperate days of the Battle of Britain, hundreds of Americans crossed the border into Canada to enlist with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Knowingly breaking the law, but with the tacit approval of the then still officially neutral United States Government, they volunteered to fight the Nazis.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was one such American. Born in Shanghai, China, in 1922 to an English mother and a Scotch-Irish-American father, Magee was 18 years old when he entered flight training. Within the year, he was sent to England and posted to the newly formed No 412 Fighter Squadron, RCAF, which was activated at Digby, England, on 30 June 1941. He was qualified on and flew the Supermarine Spitfire.

Flying fighter sweeps over France and air defense over England against the German Luftwaffe, he rose to the rank of Pilot Officer.

On 3 September 1941, Magee flew a high altitude (30,000 feet) test flight in a newer model of the Spitfire V. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck with the inspiration of a poem — "To touch the face of God."

Once back on the ground, he wrote a letter to his parents. In it he commented, "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed." On the back of the letter, he jotted down his poem, 'High Flight.'

Just three months later, on 11 December 1941 (and only three days after the US entered the war), Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was killed. The Spitfire V he was flying, VZ-H, collided with an Oxford Trainer from Cranwell Airfield flown by one Ernest Aubrey. The mid-air happened over the village of Roxholm which lies between RAF Cranwell and RAF Digby, in the county of Lincolnshire at about 400 feet AGL at 11:30. John was descending in the clouds. At the enquiry a farmer testified that he saw the Spitfire pilot struggle to push back the canopy. The pilot, he said, finally stood up to jump from the plane. John, however, was too close to the ground for his parachute to open. He died instantly. He was 19 years old.

Part of the official letter to his parents read, "Your son's funeral took place at Scopwick Cemetery, near Digby Aerodrome, at 2:30 P.M. on Saturday, 13th December, 1941, the service being conducted by Flight Lieutenant S. K. Belton, the Canadian padre of this Station. He was accorded full Service Honors, the coffin being carried by pilots of his own Squadron."

Photo courtesy: Captain Keith Moody

John's parents were living in Washington D.C. at the time, and the sonnet was seen by Archibald MacLeish, who was Librarian of Congress. He included it in an exhibition of poems called 'Faith and Freedom' in February 1942. And after that it was widely copied and distributed. These copies vary widely in punctuation, layout, and capitalization, as I've found out from readers! The original is in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, and I think I've transcribed it correctly. Note that most printed versions use "... even eagle" but the original seems to be "... ever eagle," with similar penmanship to the preceding "never."



Many thanks to http://www.skygod.com/quotes/highflight.html for this information.