waldorf class presentation

 we were a little late getting out of the apartment for chanda's world geography presentation with her homeschool class. however, a few others were late too, so it worked out.

 silvie went first and presented her report on earth.

 then chanda presented water, which she shared with another classmate. she spoke about the major wind belts which go all the way around the globe: the trade winds, the westerlies and the polar easterlies.  the only ocean current that goes completely around the world is the antarctic circumpolar current, also known as the west wind drift. 

singing a native american song they had learned:
the river is flowing
flowing and growing
the river is flowing
back to the sea
mother carry me
a child i'll always be
mother carry me
back to the sea.

 thea continued the presentation on water with information about the mariana trench.

 chanda draw a diagram of the main ocean currents which are the gyres (top right paper). there are five main gyres: the north and south pacific, the north and south atlantic, and the indian. these currents travel along with the winds until they hit a continent when they are forced to turn. due to the coriolis effect they turn clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern hemiosphere. after running along the shore of the continent, they hook back up with a current that is flowing back the way it had come, forming a circle.

the coriolis effect is a phenomenon that causes fluids, like water and air, to curve as they travel across or above earth's surface. because the earth is spinning around its axis from west to east and because it  is a sphere and wider at its middle, points on the equator are spinning faster than points on the poles.  winds that are moving from equator to pole are deflected to the right in the northern hemisphere and deflected to the left in the southern hemisphere.

their rendition of the geographical fugue, which i thought was very good!

next, austin presented his report on fire. 

 he went into a detailed account of how fire has kept us warm through the ages from the paleolithic people to our present day use of coal, geothermal, nuclear, wind and solar power.

the main forms of energy on earth are movement, light and heat.

 svetlana's presentation of air included a picture of one of her favorite paintings by arkhip kundji, a russian landscape painter of greek descent. he lived from 1842 to 1910. i find this painting incredibly beautiful and present day feeling, not from the turn of the 20th century.  

a diagram of the wind belts.

everyone's world map lesson pages.

sunday apartment work and schoolwork

today greg and i finally decided to work on the oven.

 since the bottom baking coil (also called the "element") wasn't heating we needed to check it to see if it was broken or burned. since it looked fine we next needed to unscrew it from the back of the oven to check it with a multimeter. when we pulled it out we saw that one of the wires had completely broken off and been lost in the back. of course now we had to pull the whole thing out (and clean all around it too, which i suppose was a good thing, though not fun!). 

 the multimeter showed that the coil was in good working order, all it needed was a new tip to the wire. luckily, the last time greg worked on the oven (when the whole clock attachment needed to be replaced) the guy at the parts place he went to in brooklyn had given him a bag of small tips. 

re-attaching the tip . . 

viola, all fixed!

(i think she was looking for tidbits on the table when i startled her.)

 in celebration, when greg and i returned from the birthday party, i made a roast chicken with sweet potatoes and surprised m and c when they came home (chanda from the birthday party dessert expedition and morgana from a play meeting with her friends).

 this evening and these past few days, chanda has been madly working on her presentation . . 

in the morning i need to pack ingredients to make a soup for lunch. we will all be bringing something different to contribute.

poem for a sunday morning

it's an incredibly beautiful and sunny morning. when i opened the window i could smell the earth and so i know spring is finally here.

spring

sound the flute!

now it's mute.

birds delight

day and night.

nightingale

in the dale,

lark in the sky,

merrily,

merrily, merrily to welcome in the year.

little boy

full of joy,

little girl

sweet and small.

cock does crow,

so do you.

merry voice,

infant noise,

merrily, merrily to welcome in the year.

little lamb

here i am

come and lick

my white neck.

let me pull

your soft wool.

let me kiss

your soft face,

merrily, merrily we welcome in the year.

by william blake

saturday sewing and a dinner at doma

 chanda went to ballet in the morning and morgana worked on a few "chicken" skirts for her modern dance/choreography teacher's carnival of the animals piece. ellen's mom made these skirts years ago. 

 a few of them are new (like the one morgana is sewing) but this one directly above is an original. her mom did beautiful work and made all the costumes for her dances.

 i never have an easy time sewing through velcro . . 

 chanda's friend has a birthday party tomorrow to which we'll all be going for lunch. 

 the girls were out at a friend's house this evening so greg and i decided to eat out.

 we were going to try a new place called taverna, a greek restaurant on bedford street. however, they were all booked with reservations so we went to doma, right next door. i've been here often with the girls but greg hasn't. he used to visit their cafe when it was on perry street a few years ago. they have delicious food. in the pic above this one it shows the chicken liver mousse i had and the gouda cheese greg chose to have for an appetizer. then i had half a roast duck (which i brought home to share with morgana later this week, she's the only one who likes duck besides me) and greg had beef brisket.

 he had the amazing apple strudel for dessert. i managed to decline which wasn't easy! (still trying to stay off sugar and wheat.) 

around 8:00 a jazz band set up to play. it was a nice surprise to listen to some live music. they were very good.

sunny friday

 chanda finally moved on with her world geography map. she's now writing up her report which will be presented on monday. she has three lesson pages to create, an oral presentation, and a written report to complete. this should be interesting. 

it was so nice to have korrina and brian visit this afternoon. we had coffee together and some of greg's swedish ginger cookies. they're both doing very well and were happy to have an impromptu day off together, which they say hasn't happened in a month! korrina will train on a new station next week and then and in turn will train a new employee for that same station. she's still having a problem with her wrist, so needs to see our family doctor about it. brian has been working at a restaurant in soho, while also putting together a menu with a friend of his for a new place in mid-town. afterwards, they went to have dinner together at one of korrina's favorite places, rockmeisha izakaya.

off-broadway

my friend and i walked through the pouring rain to see an off-broadway matinee show this afternoon. i was so excited when she called me to say that she had an extra ticket from a friend. the play was sam shepard's buried child, (with ed harris and amy madigan) which i've never seen (it's the one piece from his later plays written in the late '70's to early '80's that i hadn't seen). i wrote my master's thesis on his early plays when at college, so it was a real treat. in 2014 he had a new play produced at the same theatre we were at today. click here for an article with him on the present production.

audiiton pics, asparagus soup and schoolwork

 it was so rainy today . . but i had to walk over to the ballet school to get more audition pics of chanda. every ballet school/program wants different positions. the current school that she's submitting to requested first arabesque and tendu a la seconde.

 i couldn't resist taking some pictures through the window glass . . 

 first arabesque . . 

tendu a la seconde . . 

 world map work again . . all i can say is that this is going to be the most amazing world map ever drawn.

so tonight's dinner was cream of asparagus soup and chicken sausages. i used about three pounds of asparagus, one large leek, a small shallot, few garlic cloves and homemade beef bone marrow broth. i then pureed it and added some sour cream (which is allowed on the gaps diet, whereas heavy cream isn't).

breakfast, lunch, ukranian biscuits and monday's lesson work

 i made steel cut oats for breakfast this morning. i read an article praising steel cut oats over rolled oats because they have a lower glycemic index; in other words digestive enzymes break the thicker oats down into sugar more slowly. oats aren't allowed at all on the gaps diet, so i'm going off here . . i still had my bone broth, but i should follow it with an egg and vegetables . . it's just that others do not find that appetizing at 8 am in the morning and since i don't feel like making two breakfasts we go with the oatmeal. 

 i do really enjoy having oatmeal and apples in the morning with a little bit of melted butter or heavy cream if we have it.

 this is lunch! waldorf coop was today so chanda and i headed uptown to our friend's apartment. she has such pretty plates, doesn't she?

 my friend always makes the most delicious salads. today we combined nappa cabbage with scallions, cilantro, toasted pepitas, lime juice and a little sea salt. for the soup we sautéed onion, garlic, cauliflower and carrots, simmered it in water for about twenty minutes, and then pureed it.

 svetlana had a treat for everyone: ukranian honey biscuits.

 hmm . . i can't remember what this says . . 

  the packaging is always so beautiful . . 

the biscuit was filled with a light fig jam and wasn't too sweet, which is why i think i really liked it.

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in class today they discussed the formation of wind, the atmospheric layers of the earth, the jet stream (cold air coming from the poles and meeting the warm air from the equator), the different cloud formations and the coriolis effect:

they've also been working on the geographical fugue at the beginning of each class. here's an example by students at California Baptist University:

next monday is the final day of the world geography lesson block and each student will present  his or her work.

lastly, here are two samples of the sheet music for the geographical fugue, written by ernst toch, who was  a composer in the 1920s in Berlin, and who invented the idiom of the "spoken chorus:"