Outing
Today Jim and his wife, Portia, took some of us apprentices on an outing. It was good fun. Our first stop was the Empty Set Project Space in Pittsfield.
Notice that the sign contains an error: that's actually not the empty set- it's the set containing the empty set.
Next we went to the Hancock Shaker Village, where we saw how the Shakers used water power and heard their Shaker song "Simple Gifts" roughly twenty times. Kep tried her hand at spinning wool, Juan learned how to use a loom, I milked a life size fiberglass replica of a cow, and Penka and I (at her suggestion) dressed up in Shaker clothes and had Jim take our picture.
Because you just haven't lived until your math teacher has seen you play dress-up.
At the Shaker village I also accosted Juan with questions about Chinese animal sounds. Chickens apparently go "ji ji," which I thought was funny since the word for chicken is "ji."
"So it's like they go around saying 'chicken chicken'!" I said.
"No," said Juan, looking a little confused. "Because it's a different character."
I asked Penka about Bulgarian animal sounds, but they were not too different from ours.
Our last stop was The Mount, Edith Warton's house. We took a tour, strolled the gardens, and had some tea.
Over tea, I asked whether everyone would rather be Shaker or Edith Warton-style wealthy. Juan and Kep chose Shaker. Jim and Portia chose Edith Warton. I can't decide. If I were Shaker, I wouldn't get to do any of the things I enjoy - reading, drawing, learning things - but I would have the certainty I was going to Heaven. I think that would be agreeable. Jim said that really neither option was ideal; that, in fact, the ideal would be more or less the life he had now. I found this quite cheering and actually I think it's true for me as well. In any case, any changes I might make would not be in the way of opulent wealth or religious fanaticism.
5 Comments:
While I note with interest that you appear to have the family trait of appearing different from one photo to the next (not much of a superpower, but perhaps useful for international spying), I am more interested in the animal noises discussion. Do dogs in China say "dog, dog"? Do cat's simliarly proclaim their identity? What about seagulls? In English, if I can trust Nemo, they say "mine, mine" - is it the same for Chinese seagulls?
Dogs (gou) say "wang wang," cats (mao) say "miao miao," ducks (kaoya) say "gua gua." Mice- which I think are "laozi," or maybe that's rat ... or tiger ... one of those - say "zi zi." I don't know about seagulls.
Portia? What a pretty name!
Two questions:
1)Is that an Olmsted School t-shirt?!
2) 20 times or not, isn't Simple Gifts a truly great song? Maybe Laura Cantrell will cover it!
Aha, clearly cats speak the language of Adam, since they say the same thing all over the world, whereas dogs, probably due to their close relationship with humans, were afflicted by the curse of Babel. The mice and rats, too, who also often maintain a high concentration in proximity to humans, especially urban humans, whether or not they're building ziggurats. Ducks, however, I cannot explain, or tigers, if they're really rats.
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