rocket to nowhere

I recently found this fawn’s skull while walking through the ravines by my parent’s house.

When I picked it up, I was immediately drawn to the cranial sutures:

because they reminded me of this fossil, which might be ammonite (?), and which has been in a box in my parents house forever, and which I admired as a child:

So I put them together on the entryway table, and my mother hasn’t yet said anything about greeting guests with a memento mori.

J and I visited Nebraska’s lovely state capital, Lincoln, this past weekend. (If you live in Lincoln, please don’t be offended that we didn’t call. We wanted to, but there just wasn’t time.) While there, we also visited Nebraska’s lovely state capitol. You can look at all the pictures I/we took (I got a little crazy about the animals on the rotunda’s floor) by going here. You can get some good information about Nebraska’s lovely capitol building by going here. If you’re ever in Lincoln, I highly recommend taking a tour. It’s free and the building is gorgeous (and if I remember correctly, it was once and may still be listed as one of the seven architectural wonders of the modern world).

[03/21/07: See the comments section for answers from Jim Finn!]

[Today (03/20/07), I found the sheaf of worksheets I misplaced last week, and so had to refigure the math. The papers were from my "good" class, and so the numbers got skewed toward the "thoughtful" section.]

Recently, I showed my students the independent film Interkosmos by Jim Finn. The film is a pseudo-documentary/musical about a joint-East German/Soviet, secret plan in the 1970s to colonize a moon each of Jupiter and Saturn. It is also a love story. I provided the voice for Falcon, but that isn’t why I showed my students the film.

As they watched it, they had to fill out this worksheet (many thanks to Richard W. for the True/False questions!). The last question on the worksheet was “If you could ask the director of the film one (thoughtful) question, what would it be?”

Needless to say, the 14-18-year-old crowd isn’t as thoughtful as you might think. 47% of the responses were some variation of “Why did you make this movie?” Notable bits of phraseology in this section came from

Phoebe B.: “What the heck were you thinking when you made this movie?!?!”
Katie N.: “What was your modivation [sic] to make this movie?”
Staysha A.: “What promoted [sic] you to make this film?”
Dylan S.: “Why did you make this lame movie (waste of money imo)?”

The next largest group (22%) asked about the purpose and/or meaning of the film, with notable questions from

Tayler Y.: “What’s going on? What are we supposed to take from this movie?”
Andrew B.: “What is this movie really about?”

The third-largest, coherent group (a whopping 6%) was the group that left the question blank. 3% wanted to know why their teacher (me!) was in the film.

21% was comprised of those responses that were unlike the others, and which may have been “thoughtful.” For instance

Carolyn C.: “Why did you put random things that had nothing to do with the movie in it?”
Heidi B.: “What was up with the girls with sticks and torches? Why was that girl in the tub with the Phithon [sic]?”
Calin S.: “What was up with the Field Hockey scenes?”
Colter B.: “one dumb question: Why have I not heard of this movie? one smart, thoughtful question: Do you think that someday we will be just like the Cosmonauts, trying to live on Saturn’s moons?”
Sam C.: “Was this an honest attempt at a serious space movie or was it just satiracal [sic] to make me laugh? What exactly was the move about? I’m confused. . . .”
Dustin S.: “Well I would like to ask him what he was smokin, or why he hates childeren [sic], and were [sic] he found those people and how he became a director while I’m at it.”
Brett K.: “Did you have fun makeing [sic] this film?”
Curtis S.: “Is there a book version of this film? I think it would be much easier to follow and understand because you can go back and read things again easier than rewinding the film. Also books seem to have more information in them than a movie. I think if you could read this in a book you may be able to find a purpose or goal in this film.”

Armondo C. created a 1% all to himself when he wrote this:

“What inspired you to make this film? It’s interesting in a [sic] old fashion [sic] way, how did you think the film was ganna [sic] grab our attention. Why did you have all the music. Why did heir [sic] hulle [sic] in the movie?”

Regardless of their inability to spell or form “thoughtful” questions (for the most part), they were awfully good sports for entertaining both Jim’s film and my bullshit worksheet. And I thank them (even though they’ll probably never read this).

By the way, if you’d like to read all of answers to question #10 on the worksheet, you can get the PDF file here.

I saw this sign while taking a walk with J and her parents at Lake Katherine in Palos Heights, IL this weekend:

I had never heard of Northern Water snakes before, and my first thought was “is this real or just a ruse to keep people off the island?” I did some quick research, and found this on Wikipedia (which means it could be a complete and total lie, right?):

Northern Water Snakes. . . . defend themselves vigorously when they are threatened. If they are picked up by an animal, or person, they will bite, as well as release excrement and musk (bad smelling liquid). Their saliva contains an anticoagulant which can cause its wounds caused by biting to bleed profusely.

Anyway, I think that’s a great defense, and I may adopt it myself–seeing as I have so many predators.

I designed the ring with some help from the jeweler. The very green opal came from a ring that once belonged to my mother. Opal is also J’s birthstone.

She tells me she likes it. She also tells me (about a day and a half later) that she’s used to wearing it and now feels naked without it.

I’m happy.

Students of mine (German 1–freshmen) created this video:

On how many levels is this video awesome? I count at least four:

1. Despite some obvious errors, the level of language they use is above average.
2. The video tells a story both linguistically and visually.
3. It’s a metaphor for German class!!!
4. The whole thing was edited inside the camera, and was NOT storyboarded.