jumpingfish

The strings of gravity are attenuated out there. Out at ultima Thule. Yet celestial music plays even in those farthest reaches.

On New Year’s Eve 2018, the spacecraft that visited Pluto approached, encountered and promptly left behind a second celestial body orbiting our sun in the distant, primordial quiet. A body beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt. They call it MU69. They call it Ultima Thule. On that New Year’s Eve, New Horizons was there.

At the appointed hour on New Year’s Day, a DSN dish in Spain, scheduled with care, locked onto a stream of downlinking data. The mission operations team confirmed that the spacecraft was healthy. C&DH reported that the SSR pointer was as expected. The data recorder was full.

With luck, there will be pictures to follow. Happy 2019!

I went to Ottawa during Thanksgiving to visit my dad. Mainly just to visit. To spend time.

I wasn’t much help doing anything other than putting dishes in the dishwasher and carrying stuff out to the car from where they had been staying. But there was one day when my dad and I went to have coffee.

My original plan was to walk around the corner to the Tim Horton’s. It’s very close to where they live. And I was chomping at the bit to get outside in the Canadian snow and cold. 

Ok, that picture comes from a walk I took later. I provide it here as evidence that, “Yes it was cold and there was snow.” That walk involved bus tickets and walking downtown. But on this occasion, I was merely contemplating a walk around the corner.

“I can drive you,” Dad said. 

“No thanks,” I said. “It’s close. I can walk.” 

During the course of the morning, he offered again. I repeated my plan to walk.

“Perhaps you should go with your dad,” Khadija said.

Well, ok. She didn’t actually say that. She is more gentle and discrete than to phrase something quite like that. (Message to self: It’s not too late; emulate this!) But I finally figured out that perhaps I should accept my father’s proposal. So we drove.

Dad paid. We drank hot coffee. He had a donut. I managed to resist.

We sat. We talked. For a good long time.

I visited my dad and Khadija last week. The school district had the entire week off, and it’s not often I have the luxury to travel to the Great White North.

And it was indeed white there, and cold. But I was prepared, with boots and mittens and a warm hat and a scarf and warm shirts and a pair of long johns that The Fair And Industrious Trudy reminded me were in the (very) bottom of my chest of drawers. Few of those things get worn here. But they did there.

Or rather they were put to use on one day in particular. On that day (and only on that day), I ventured out into the elements, taking the bus downtown and walking to the National Gallery of Canada (Klee, Anthropocene, Halifax Harbor). Past the Chateau Laurier. Beneath the Peace Tower as the Carillon bells played. Past the locks. Down a windy street or two. My rarely worn winter clothes served me well. As did a couple stops at Tim Horton’s for coffee (and yes, I confess it now — a donut).

Yet despite the fact that I had come prepared for the weather, it was only on that one day that I went out. Other than a few other outings for food and groceries and … Tim Horton’s with dad for coffee, I did little else than hang out with the two of them.

And I confess it here, a fair amount of said hanging out was in fact spent napping. Because last week until this very day, I was a sleep sponge. And now it is time to go soak up some more, because it’ll soon be time to make the donuts.

In the mornings in his room, you’ll find boxes of donuts. They are available free for the taking, although you have to buy a napkin.

One morning last week, I walked into his room to fill out a form. Some kids were sitting at a lab table, huddled around a 3D printer. They were eating donuts, although to be honest, I didn’t watch them long, as my eyes were drawn to the boxes of donuts on the other end of the room and the prospect of a donut and a cup of hot coffee.

But here’s the thing of it…

My taste buds don’t taste sweet, anymore. It’s been a few years, but my brain won’t adjust. It keeps thinking that sweet things will taste sweet, but they don’t. And the donuts didn’t on that morning. It’s not that they tasted bad. But they just didn’t taste like my brain thinks they should. 

Old, bad habits die hard.

We did nothing but work quadratic formula problems on Friday. I let the students self-organize. Some chose to work alone. Others worked in groups. I gave each group a different problem.

It was a smashing success. The students were mostly engaged and focused non-stop for fifty minutes. The room was noisy. But the talk was (mostly) of math — music to a teacher’s ears. When they had problems, they’d call me over. (“Mister, should we get decimals?” “Yes, on this problem you’ll get fractions.”) I’d show them my answers and let them compare their work to mine, asking them to see if they could find their mistakes.

“Ohhhh, that’s what I did wrong!” I would hear behind me as I walked over to help another group.

When they finished one problem, they’d move on to another. (There were plenty to choose from.)

After class, a student came up to me.

“That was easier than I expected!” the student said.

Group work is magic.