Olympics

We spent another week at Portuguese Family camp, Mar e Floresta, in Bemidji, MN. It was lovely. A bit cold, but lovely. I met Sophia who is a professor of portuguese language and Sivana who is a brasilian teaching portuguese. I learned about brasilian folclore. I had read some brasilian folkstories but they did not make sense to me. Bulgarian, Russian folclore is straight forward because I am familiar with these cultures. Brasilian folclore also makes sense once some historic background is provided. I was very happy to learn what I did. My kids had a blast. On the way to camp we went to the Mall of America, we visited Todd and Tory. On the way back we went to lake Itasca, met with Minneapolis friends and went to a water park. At camp the kids learned a good deal, even the little guy spoke. The food was fantastic too. The counselors were very helpful, friendly and nice. All the activities were entertaining and engaging. I recommend this camp. I wish more families would participate because it is more enjoyable with more people. I envy my girl now because in her camp there are many kids. She is having a blast. I wish day camp were offered so that the little man would have taken advantage as well. Next year!

Our trip to Minnesota led us to a synegogue which was hosting an exhibit. The theme of the exhibit is what spiked my curiosity. The exhibit had as objective to highlight the strength of civil disobedience demonstrated by the bulgarians during the last days of WWII; actions which, as the exhibit was attempting to protray, were responsible for the saved lives of at least 40,000 jewish bulgarians.

I was disappointed because I have never been present at an exhibit which proves the anti-thesis of its claim. The summary is that under pressure from the third reich, the bulgarian authorities implemented laws which stripped all jewish bulgarians of their civil, political and social rights. Many were sent to labour camps, others were expelled from the larger cities into villages where they had to live in schools, friends' or stranger's homes, and had to rely on hand-downs because they were denied the right to work. Upon further pressure from the reich, towards the end of the war, even after germany began its demise, the bulgarian authorities carried out laws that put all jewish residents from the annexed territories (Macedonia and Thracia) on to trains to the death camps.Towards the very, very end, when the intelligentia most likely did not expect serious repruccusions did it assmble ralleys and demonstrations. A bit too late to be hailed as heros of freedom. Nothing on the scale of rescue effort carried in Northern Europe.

Since the topic came to us, I slowly eased my children into it. We read The Harmonica, The Greatest Ice Skating Race, Baseball Saved Us, and as a counterpoint to the generalization that all japanese were bad, we also read Passage to Freedom which illustrates the true events which took place in the Japanese embassy in Lithuania right at the beginning of the war, and the efforts of the japanese embassador, despite the disapproval of Japan, to rescue hundreds of refugees by issuing them papers which permitted them to travel west, away from the war.

The olympics in Brasil are right around the corner and this is extra motivation to revisit the origin of the games, their revival, talk about some great athletes, and some memorable olympic games. We already read Living in Brasil, which I found quite nice-a beautiful overview of information my kids already knew.

We are going to read about some exceptional athletes that inspire us to reach out, rise from obscurity, dream big and work hard to achieve. We are going to read about Wilma Rudolph, and Jesse Owens. While not related directly to the olympic games which are televised, Emanuel's dream is related to the paraolympic games, which are inspiration in their own right. This year we have been reading very inspirational stories: Ada's violin and the Boy who harnessed the wind, among them. I am inspired to continue finding books that lift the human spirit and human ambition. The book on Jesse Owen is a bit more detailed than what I would prefer, so we will read some and skip some, but we will tie it to Hitler Germany. In addition, I will tell the kids the story of the Boys in the Boat because it is remarkable. I will tell them about WWI, The Great Depression, and the fall out of Germany due to reparation payments to tie it to the rise of Hitler's extreme nationalism in the 30s.






Voices in the park is an interesting book that I found. I was reading Wonder which reminded me of Faulkner's Sound and the Fury. I wondered if there is a picture book which illustrates the literary structure of retelling a story from many different view points. I think this is a very interesting technique. It helps capture what is interesting to each character, and gives deep insight into the character's being. I am very pleased with how the concept is developed and revealed in this tiny picture book. I recommend it.

In portuguese we are currently reading Juca Brasileiro e a Mata Atlantica. I think we will finish and talk about reciclagem before moving on to a story book. There are a few Ruthe Rocha books that I would like to read to the kids before the end of the month. Portuguese is going well. Ballet girl is in camp, is having a great time and is making friends. Sunlight boy is right across the camp with his grandparents. He is in Bulgarian camp in which only two other people speak bulgaria-the grandparents!




The following are my readings for this month. I am very passionate about the election. I think that the country is in a pivotal spot in its evolution and can tip over. Unfortunately the options are not good. Saving Capitalism is an interesting reading, detailing some of the misconceptions of how the economy works and how it is controlled and by whom, The free market, the hallmark of capitalism, is a game whose rules are designed and enforced by the government. When rich people with powerful interests invest in the government to stir into  desired direction, we have corruption. The modern word is rigged, but it is corruption.

The interest of the few is observed at the cost of the well-being of the many. I also enrolled, late, in the local library's reading program for the summer. The topic is sprots related. I am reading Goldfish towards that goal. So far I find the book funny.  I am also reading Night Divided, which was given to me by a friend. This is a book about the Berlin wall. It is quite interesting because it speaks a lot of things I know for certain occurred behind the iron curtain. I do not like the voice, the "I can defeat them", "I can go against the regime" voice. It did not exist. Even one's thoughts were not harbor such bravery because the thoughts were read and interpreted as well. I am not buying the authenticity in the voice of the book. I will finish and wrap up my criticism.


While the kids are away in portuguese camp, I have been busy with picking up the violin and moving forward with piano. I am also reading more portuguese books that we have at home. I am also preparing for some of the science units that I would like to cover this year: Hydrolics, Microscopes, Simple Machines and Solar Energy. I am hoping that we can use any of these as the basis for science fair project. I feel like I am making progress and this is good.

Update: July 25, 2016

 Ali is a nice biography. It offers plenty of historical and personal references to bring the story into context. I do not like boxing, I find this discipline inappropriate as an olympic sport in the current understanding of the term Olympics, which envokes the notion of respect and comraderie. Boxing is violent. I, as a result of these preconceptions, read the biography out of curiosity, mainly driven by the fact the Ali passed away this year, the both the traditional medua channels and social media went overboard in recognizing him and his convictions. After reading the biography. I have a better understanding of some aspects of US history that I never knew-the Nation of Islaam, MalcomX, the Vietnam war and the resistence to it. I also did not know that the guy who talks about Idea, the ad, is the same formidable George Forman that Ali faced. I never knew, but always wondered, what sort of TV personality was this George ad man. Now, I know. I also respect Ali a little bit more, although I believe his behavior was narcisisstic, arrogant and disrespectful. Reading, I recalled back in the late 80s when Lady Tatcher, the prime minister in UK resigned, I heard someone say: "this is a smark woman. she knows when to step down-at the pinnacle of her performance". The precise opposite happened to Ali. I enjoyed the reading, but I will not cover it in our read-akoud sessions because it touches on too many, too complex issues which at this moment are inaccessible to either child.

This is a beautifully written story about Nadia Kumaneci from Romanian, the first gymnist to score perfect 10 in international competition. The story is well narrated, the illustrations are captivating. Few important historical moments and behaviors are outlined, making this book a great conversation starter for the meaning and the attitude towards the olympics in the last century. We will be reading this book very soon.

This was my Sunday, by the pool reading choice. Clearly, I picked the wrong spot. I find this book rather depressing. It depicts times in history which are feorcious and dirty, hummiliating and revolting. More than that, the story touches on some fundamental elements which make such atrocities possible. In particular, people tend to be naive, and with respect to the likelihood of bad events believe that it will not happen to them. In addition people still, after thousands of years of evolution, and especially a 300 rapid period of knowledge gathering, believe in fictional make-believes, tales dictated by men for some men's goals; tales that should long be irrelevant and yet are, by our collective mentality to believe in something simple, something superior, something perfect. I see it as nothing more than a convenient excuse. Oh, this happened. Well, clearly this was the wish of my god, what can I do. In this regard I have to say that I believe that we bulgarians have the best folklore. Nevolyo!

Simple Hydraulics machines has been our focus during the last two days. From the projects that are displayed we built two-the box and the bridge. Our bridge is two-sided.Before the kids returned from camp I built a hydraulic crane. We will talk about pressure and force in describing the machines. I will use these two projects to intorduce them to some scientific vocabulary. I will also encourage the kids to look around for situations or real machines where hydraulic implementations are possible.
From Hydraulics we will jump into solar energy and electricity. The associated activities are for next month. This month activities thus far have been a success!

1984

"I re-read it every few years and every time I focus on one unique element that I did not sense before"

This is a close approximation to what a colleqgue of mine mentioned to me in passing related to the book 1984. I have never read this book and until I hear the comment above, I believed that I knew the book. People have been referring to it in context for me to actually build up this confidence. I buried my head in the sand and decided that I will read this book. This month. In June.

This little snippet brings me to a belief that I have held for a long time. I have believed that my schooling was a waste of time. Over time I have come to accept that in many aspects of my life my formal education was just the introduction to a life time of never ending learning. The problem I was struggling with is, I believe now, not the covered material and the provided interpretations, but the fine print and final label "knowledge" which a student either knows or does not know. The label is misleading if in fact learning and understanding is a long-term, never ending journey.

So, I have felt rushed to learn and learn and learn the things I had not learned before. And there are trillions of things. Some were never covered in my schooling-some did not exist, some were deemed unimportant, others were politically unacceptable. Initially this was very stressful for me, until one day when I started enjoying the learning. Learning something simple, asking more questions, finding more in the next text and so on and so forth.

With this in mind, I delve into the olympic games for our read alouds. That was my intention until I realized that we can learn more about how our ideals can be hijacked and becomes nasty and cause suffering. Things we have to always be aware of and fight against. I have never seen children's books being so powerful.

Beautiful book which talks about so many topics all with the underlying theme of the olympics. First, there is the reporter who tells the big over and over "you are loser, you lost again, why don't you give up? don't you feel like a failure? give up". Sound familiar. In life there are too many such voices and we need to learn to deal with them, accept that they exist, and surround ourselves with the support to carry us through, and build the mental capacity to shut these voices down. The reporter is representing all media, all channels, all propaganda whose sole goal is to step and destroy your individuality and to mold you into something they desire, something that is not you. Second, there is the beautiful family, who supports the fighter, wherever, whenever. The mom whose pride transcends all controversies. There is nothing like a strong family. The worst mistake a society can make is destroy its families. Third, there is the community. In child is raised by a village, a child is the face of a community. Fourth, there is the dream, the ideal, the never-give-up-never-surrender. The never ending optimism which says "I don't know how something will be useful to me, but I know it already is because I spent time learning about it and enjoying it". My daughter often asks "Why is piano good for me?". It just is. Everything you know, everything you can is a step closer to freedom.  Fifth, ambition. There is nothing wrong to be cocky and ambitious. Only people who live with the vision of victory win. It is part of the psychology. Skills and knowledge are neceessary but insufficient. Ambition, strong belief, and visualization of the end goal is possibly the hardest to achieve. The difficulty comes from the reporter, the broken family, the lack of a community that are sadly so prelevant today. This is a fantastic little book. This is a book that is relevant to kids, young kids, middle schoolers and high schoolers and adults like me. A book that will be making its come back in our hands regularly and each time we will be discovering something new.This is the kid version of my friend's 1984.

 Besides being great opportunities to learn about the location of two countries you don't hear much about-Paraguay and Malawi-these books talk about CAN when you CANNOT, use when others refuse to use, by believing when nobody believes. People in developed countries have more than they need and throw away a lot. Much of what they throw away recklessly can be used and used purposefully. The music teachers make instruments for an entire orchestra. The boy makes a wind mill which powers the lights at his home, which can also power the water pump. People believe when they see, people marvel when they experience, but they are skeptics when they do not have a vision. Music was the escape from boredom,idleness, waste and violence. Music gave a purpose to the kids. The books in the library was the escape from idleness, waste and hunger for the boy. The books and the knowledge gave him purpose. He did not need a teacher, he needed time, purpose and resources of knowledge and vision. If these can happen on a small scale with the amount of trash the world can be a richer place. People can have access to free water and cheap medicine and good food. The fact that this is possible, but it is not happening, begs the question why? What is the stopping force? The answer is many, human beings like us, who live very localized in time and space lives, who fear and do not live free. America is not nearly as creative as could be and precisely because creativity is not prioritized, it is in fact damaged and murdered at a young age. Creativity is not given a chance. If we give our poorest kids violins made of tresh. If we teach them how to make energy and build their own computers, we will occupy their minds away from violence, away from the inevitability of gangs and death. These books are marvelous. They will be visiting us often as the years pass as well.

 It is good to know that America is not a great coutry. It may be the best the world has seen but it is far from ideal and equal for all.  16 years in 16 seconds touches on a lot of topics-descrimination, dedication, love, ambition, immigration, persistence, visualization. Asian americans are not currently looked down on, but they were in the past. They were a different race-not the beautiful white one I have. Public facilities were not equally available to them. There were restriction about their use. There were restrictions about the use of restaurants, participation in school events, etc. Ability was first conditioned on skin tone and ethnic background. There is no scientific basis for this type of descrimination but voila. This kind of descrimination is man-made convenience from the slavery days. The owners invented this concept to make the poor whites living on their plantations feel superior to the black animals from Africa who slave the grounds along with the poor white serfs. The convenience made the term race prelevant and destroyed lives for hundreds of years. The shame of the modern world. Moving on the book talks about the ambition and the dream of the immigrant. Immigrating is often a tough choice because living where you were living is dangerous and unwise. Greeks immigrated from their islands onto the shores of Egypt because of scarcity of food. Irish did the same. The Vikings travelled far and wide motivated by the same. The Huns learned to war in order to always have access to food. Immigration is in the fabric of human civilization. Humans immigrated from Africa into all parts of the Earth. Hardly something to put people down over but it does happen. What good is diving? What good is a gold medal? Is the gold medal the end of it? Very similar to the questions my daughter asks about piano. Diving made this man free and happy. The gold medal was his ambition but it was only one stop in a long journey. The gold medal was not a goal in itself. It was a celebration and a continuation. I love the moment in which he faces the 3-meter board and is aware of all the audience, and shuts it all done and focuses. The energy from the outside world is so important. I have experienced it a few times. When someone just cries out-go, you can do it-and you do! This is a powerful little book with powerful messages that will also return frequently to our hands and our minds. "Baseball saved us" talks about how sports can help us through difficult times. Just like music in "Ada's violin" and the books in "The Boy who harnessed the wind" help avoid violence, hunger, boredom, this book shows us how sports helped the Japanese in the NM desert survive the unfair treatment of the camps during WWII. This is very similar to the way Trump talks about Muslims today and people believe it. By believing this dangerous rhetoric people are acknowledging that the Japanese camps in the middle of the desert was a good idea, and nothing to be bothered by. Maybe we should have Trump supporters camps and see how these folks will survive. Maybe they will gun each other our. This book will lead us into the discussion of WWII-why were such needed at all, what is WWII all about. I don't know if I loved this book; there are tons others about these shameful days of America's history, but we will read it now.

Is America a better place? I think so. My daughter's best friends are two black twins-a boy and a girl. My son's best friends are two other black twins-a boy and a girl, who were adopted by white parents. Imagine if they lived in the 30s and the 40s. These kids would never have played with my kids, they never would have been adopted by white people, they would not have been able to swim in the same pool at the same time as my kids. My kids love playing with their friends. They are all really good at tag.
We have read "The Other Side" already, but we will read it again, to again talk about how senseless from a human perspective descrimination is, and yet how important from a business and financial perspective it is. I am not certain my kids will understand that, but I hope that over time they will. We will be coming back to this book again and again. It is wonderful.

Why piano? Why harmonica? I played piano as a child for four years and I mostly sucked. In college I was very sick one year and access to pianos and being able to shut myself and just play alone, saved me from the pain, from the embarrassement, from the isolation. This books bridges the messages and weaves them into the cruelty of WWII. It is a very sad story but is accessible to children. You just never know when something you know or can can come in handy and can help even save your life. Learning is a bliss. Far beyond the material mandated in schools. Far beyond that.
This will be a book that we will come back to again.

 These two are just to wrap up the WWII discussion. "A picture book of Anne Frank" is the real wrapper. "The greatest skating race" is weaving the element of race, sport, endurance, bravery. The book is beautifully written and beautifully illustrated. I am pretty certain that we will be returning to this picture book in the future.


Summer has begun. School is out. The first week there are no activities-all is free time. Starting next week there will be summer camp. We will go for a week to portuguese family camp in Minnessota. The goals for this summer are:

Ballet Girl:

• Reading - I would like her to read at least one hour each day. She is starting with "The Mouse on the Motorcycle".
• Math - finish all the material for grade 3
• Science - learn about simple machines, hydrolic machines, solar energy and learn to work with our microscope
• Piano - keep on learning songs and move on with reading
• Violin - keep on learning songs and improving bow use

Sunlight Boy:

• Reading - finish All About Reading Level 1 and move through the Piggie Books
• Math - finish all the material for grade 1 and grade 2 (including the word problems and the problems in the textbooks)
• Science - learn about simple machines, hydrolic machines, solar energy and learn to work with our microscope
• Piano - keep on learning songs and move on with reading

In conclusion these are my reads until now this month. I have enjoyed each and every one of these books. The last two I read in portuguese.

Matilda is beautiful. I saw the movie a long time ago but didn't remember it. I am going to now show the movie to the kids and later in the summer we will read the book together in portuguese. The Watsons was a bit cumbersome to get through but I liked it at the end. It is a read-aloud for older kids. It was easier to read than "Bud, not Buddy"

This is a beautiful story about a boy who was born with a facial deformity. I remember when we went to Philly for my girl's cleft lip operation and we met a girl whose face at birth was missing. She was borne in a rural community and send immediately to Philly for care. Here they have been caring for her since birth. She looked beautiful. When she spoke it was evident that the muscles were not all working normally but it was impossible to tell the severity of her condition at birth from her state then. She would require ongoing operations as she grows. I don't know what happened to her, but I related to the family immediately and I related strongly to this story because of my own personal encounter with a child with facial deformity. It is easy to stare and be afraid, it is harder to be compassionate and loving. We are conditioned this way. I don't think it is inherent. So, I try to tell my kids be kind, be compassionate. If someone is not as good as you at something, I am sure there is something else that they are way better than you are. The world needs friends not enemies. Beautiful book. It will be a read aloud in a year or two. I will wait for the young man to enter second grade.