Fresh 52 and the Greeks

$2.41

That's how much it cost me in fuel according to Road Trip America to go to The Fresh52 Farmer's Market, which happens each weekend in extreme southeastern Las Vegas. I don't think I'll be going to Summerlin on Tuesday afternoons anymore if I don't have to.

Don't get me wrong. Fresh52 is just as scrawny, with a majority of the booths selling bread (which I can make at home instead of buy - shoot, after that recipe I got from Pinterest, I'm convinced I should be selling loaves, not buying them), popcorn, pizza and hot dogs.

My issue was that even after my roommate sold me a bottle of Clover Honey for $0.00 so that I would have an emergency supply, I was running out of honey and was about to have a conniption fit if there was not a beekeeper at the corner of Eastern and Silverado Ranch. Lucky for me, a youngish guy with a pickup truck advertising his dislike for some of my favorite presidents and his support of some candidates I think are kind of crazy was hawking one flavor and some little wooden honey dippers. He bent the ear of the person in front of me for nearly six full minutes. The person was clearly not going to buy anything, while in the meantime I was mentally (and maybe even out loud, it's hard to say) chanting honeyhoneyhoneyhoney.

I walked away to another booth where I saw honey bears. Although orange flavored honey probably would have been delicious with that Pinterest cake (ahem, I mean bread...), I decided to go with what I knew. I did what every person who ever went to a crowded bar in their 20s knows how to do: I pulled out my money and waggled it at the salesman to indicate that I actually wanted a product. He winked at me. *shudder* But I got what I went to the market for. I also came home with spinach, asian pears and four really large, beautiful lemons.

How do I feel about buying honey from a guy who wants to string me up and take away my rights? Um...I'll get back to you on that.

In the meantime, while you're waiting for my response to that somewhat accusatory question, check out this article in the Guardian if you haven't already seen it on Facebook. I was just telling my students two weeks ago that Greece was busy getting bailed out just like us. It seems they're cutting out the middle man in Thessaloniki.

Our Europe unit is over, however. We will have to wait until next year to talk about Greece again. In the meantime, we are studying the continent of Africa, and I am following Proverbs of Africa on Twitter.

I will leave you with one from the Congo:
"He who looks for honey must have the courage to face the bees."

Bon appetit.

Short and Sweet (More Food for Thought)

Tomorrow is a very special day! First, it is Jodi's 35th birthday. It is also, however, PI DAY! This is the annual occasion when I get to wear my shamrock pi shirt, shown here during a 2009 trip to the Rhyolite Ghost Town:

Woot! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!!! Since I still suffer guilt from having stolen an image from a Scholastic publication, I will go ahead and promote them by telling you to check this out! Then just google "pi day" and read all about it. When it became a school tradition, I don't know. The first time I heard of it was 2007. I think I got the shirt in '08.

What does this do to help us out in the apocalypse? Well, if you're me, it prompts me to type "zombie pie" into google, learn that iPad users have access to a free app called "Zombie Pie" which allows them to throw cartoon pies at some cartoon undead, and get insanely jealous because you (meaning I) have a humongous iPod CLASSIC and an Android. Oh, well. Undaunted! Onward and upward!

*giggle*
*giggle**giggle*

Warning! This link is not for those who do not curse. This link is not for those who are easily offended. This link is not for social conservatives or people who do not appreciate sarcasm.

You're not going to believe this. Really, you aren't. Are you ready? Here it is.

That's right. I own that. It's not really for the apocalypse, because all the recipes call for ovens and such.

One such recipe appears on the Good Food blog. Feel free to make it tomorrow for Pi Day, but it's not the pie I'm going to make, because I need my pie to be far less complicated. Like...no-bake, for example. But that's just me.

In the meantime, since I can't practice aim with Zombie Pie, I'm headed out to the patio to play with the Nerf Darts.

Confessions of a Screen Zombie

I have some information for you that you can't get unless, like me, someone you know subscribes to Scholastic Scope. That information is as follows:
"The average teenager spends more than 53 hours a week in front of a screen." The question we came up with (well, she did, and it blew my mind) is this: Does that count the PowerPoint presentations?

The point of Are You a Screen Zombie is that scientists are studying the effects of social networks, texting and TV on reflexes, grades, mood and weight. Scholastic Scope is a magazine for middle-level learners. Therefore, of course, the conclusion is that teens should reap the positive benefits of their tech toys, but turn them off before they get addicted. The website linked above has some other interesting stories on it. Here's an image of the cover; hopefully, it's not tooooo copyrighted. There's very little you can get from Scholastic without paying.

For the grownups among us, in its "10 Ideas that Change Your Life" story, Time (yes, I fell for it again) has a similar two-page spread called, "Your Head is in the Cloud." The story agrees that we don't remember as much as we used to due to our increasing reliance on search engines. The memories we form, the story contends, are not of the information we find, but of where we can find the information again later on. This revelation goes a long way toward explaining some of the baffling situations we teachers face in our classrooms. This short piece ends with a warning for adults that is similar to Scholastic's warning for our teenage progeny.

I am obviously not immune to the addictive qualities of electronic gadgets. I also clearly have a magazine problem. That's a different issue, though. Currently my roommate and I are both victims of the one-yard stare, with our phones nearby and Dual Survival (my idea, and a questionable one) just ended on TV. We're now moving on to Deadliest Warrior. This week, I accepted a pinterest invite, as if I have gobs of spare time. But I have an excuse! A great excuse! I'm a licensed practitioner of public education, so I must constantly do RESEARCH. There's my excuse. That's it, that's all I've got. And I didn't remember it...I looked it up online. Therefore, I don't have to wait for the apocalypse because at times I'm already a zombie.

Notice how with this blog, I slyly turn you into one too, the long-distance equivalent of munching on your brains. :) Sorry about that. (I'll apologize, but I don't plan to stop my behavior.)

I would challenge us all to spend one hour a day away from screens, but the fact is that I love my life. Despite (oops I forgot to mention the New Super Mario Bros.) video games, the internet, the PowerPoints, TV, the iPod and the phone, I and pretty much everyone I know still take walks, read books made of paper, have meals with friends and go out on the town. Personally, I plan to keep filling my brain with more information in a year than my great-grandparents consumed in their lifetimes. 

The Monsoon Apocalypse!

It's all fun and games until two towns in your home state get wiped off the map! RIP, Henryville. I can't find the name of the other town in the news sites. 


I read a USA Today story about one couple's canceled checks. The couple from Chelsea, IN died, and their canceled checks were blowing into yards in Cincinnati. Ugh. 


Here's a line that I stole from RTV6, "The Indy Channel:"


"The Federal Emergency Management Agency will get a firsthand look at the devastation left behind in Clark County, assessing tornado damage to determine whether the area will be eligible for federal aid.'


Stay classy, FEMA! Here's a story about the local volunteers helping the victims. What's the point of this post? I suppose it's to remind myself and my five loyal readers that the apocalypse comes for each of us when we are least expecting it, and sometimes in the weirdest possible way. 


I was busy "teaching" 6th grade girls' PE (don't ask) on Friday when I received a text message from Jodi in Indianapolis: "Well all of the kids are hunkered down because we have a tornado warning." Later, she elaborated: "We dismissed 20 minutes late to let the storm pass. I feel bad for the kids because they were 'in the position' for 30 minutes." I can't imagine being in duck-and-cover that long.


I do, however, think I got a taste of what Indianapolis saw on Friday as I was wrestling my car to keep it on the road during my 20-mile commute today. My first sign that something was a little off came as I exited the school building to get two eyefulls, two nostrilsfull and one mouthful of desert sand. As I turned out of the school parking lot, visibility was about 1/4 mile and the road was obscured by the same sand blowing across. Palm trees were bent in half. As I turned onto Nellis, cardboard boxes were blowing across the road and dogs were running for their lives. Two of my preset radio stations blinked out, and I can only assume that their towers blew down. Finally, during the last five miles, I was dodging large sheets of aluminum siding blowing over the wall from the neighborhood next to Vegas Valley. 


I'm not trying to say I have any idea what it's like to be a resident of Henryville right now. I'm just saying I was wondering about my disaster preparedness kit and whether it would get me through the next few days on the off chance that my school blew away. Have I practiced the preaching I ripped off from Anderson Cooper? Only I can be the judge of that, but after reading the stories, it seems like I still have a long way to go. 


Every day, I show my Explorations students CNN Student News, in a move I ripped off from John Faulds and Kathryn James jointly. Yesterday's transcript reflects an interview with Ohio governor John Kasich, who had this to say: "The fact of the matter is, people that live here are resilient, God fearing. They`re tough and we`re knocked down but not we`re knocked out."


A woman the transcript identifies only as, "unidentified female" had this to say; 
"Got a lot of good friends. We still got our family. What more can we ask for?"


Best of luck to the people in the flattened parts of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky as they rebuild their lives after their own real-life apocalypse. 

The Hysterics of the Past 88 Years

How often does Mammaw's 88th birthday fall on a blog-posting day in the year of a supposed apocalypse? We don't have to be math geniuses to know that clearly, this will happen only once. I thought that since today is a special occasion (also the anniversary of the Salem Witch Trials), I would examine the impending apocalypses of the past 88 years.

Mammaw was born on March 1, 1924, the year that Vladimir Lenin died. Following are my top eight picks for the Impending Apocalypses of her lifetime, in chronological order:

1. The Sacco and Vanzetti execution. Their deaths are a symbol of the Red Scare for secondary history teachers everywhere. Paranoia was rampant during the Red Scare, and anti-immigrant feelings for people coming into the U.S. from southern and eastern Europe may have contributed to their convictions.

(On a positive note, in between items #1 and #2 fits the invention of sliced bread. So, whenever you hear anyone talking about "the best thing since sliced bread," what they really mean is "the best thing since 1928.")

2. The Stock Market crash of 1929 and the subsequent decade of Great Depression, including the Dust Bowl. If you think the unprecedented number of natural disasters and the scarcity of jobs are bad now, you should read The Grapes of Wrath. Yeesh!

3. World War II. Included in WWII are whatever sinister forces allowed Hitler to come to power, the Holocaust, Japanese-American internment, and the invention and subsequent use of the atomic bomb, which has now advanced to even gnarlier bombs. I'm pretty sure 1939-1945 were probably the scariest years humanity had ever known up to that point.

4. The creation of the state of Israel. Someone's been threatening to bomb someone else over it ever since.

5. McCarthyism, a.k.a. "Red Scare Part Deux," or, "We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Red Scare." ARE YOU OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY!?!?! (To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For this reason I recommend pausing your blog-reading here and immediately watching the film Good Night and Good Luck.)

So tempting, but...nah. We're not going to talk about disco.

6. Jim Jones and the whole Kool-Aid incident.

7. Y2K. Remember that? That was actually pretty funny.

8. The Global War on Terror. Which reminds me, Global Thermonuclear Warfare is still trending #1 on the doomsday dashboard at 24%.

These eight are only the examples that I know the best from what have probably been hundreds of world-ending freakouts that Mammaw has lived through. It may be a childish thing to say, but I have always been of the opinion that if you have seen that much in your lifetime, you pretty much have the right to say and do whatever you want. But that's just me. For all of us, let her life so far be a lesson in the fact that no matter when and no matter where, the world is always about to end. Our task is to start where we are and prepare ourselves the best way we know how. The best way *I* know how is sideways. And very carefully.

Tying the Knot

First of all, it's good to see Pastor Dana of Kaleidoscope Faith back in business! She's been gone so long I almost forgot how to spell "kaleidoscope."

In other news, I started thinking about tying knots when I put a knot-tying toy on my amazon.com wishlist sometime last summer. I received this for Christmas from my parents:

First of all, let me just say that in the current political climate, when women are not being allowed to testify on the House floor about women's health issues, and Rick Santorum calls unwanted pregnancies, "a gift from God," far be it from me to advocate a sexist toy.

Therefore, please forgive me for a moment while I let my sarcastic show: BECAUSE GIRLS DON'T NEED TO KNOW HOW TO TIE KNOTS!!! *huff*

As my foray into knitting proves, apparently in order to learn a skill, my particular style requires that I:
1) read about it      2) see someone else do it in real life and      3) watch a ton of youtube videos about it.

Therefore, I followed the instructions in the All-American Sexist Knot-Tying Toy and then went to a knot-tying class at REI, where I experienced loads of social anxiety due to the absence of Miss Gokey. Soon, however, I was enjoying practicing the knots the instructor showed us, and then forgetting how to tie them IMMEDIATELY after we finished and moved on.

I supposedly "learned" a square knot (which I think I can do like a champ, but Amanda says this guy is doing it the right way, and this way is nothing like the way the REI instructor did it), a fisherman's knot (I can do this, but only with the help of the youtube video), a bowline knot (whaaaaat?), a clove hitch (this will require more practice), a taut line knot (I did this successfully in class, but I can't seem to make heads or tails out of the video), a figure 8 knot (huzzah! and [in the case of the video] British!) and finally a water knot which I'm not even going to hyperlink because it seemed so confusing and useless to me.

So...that's how you can get for free what I also got for free. Thanks to the sexist knot toy, for a little bit of someone else's money I also have a practice set of ropes and a tiny hitch.

Since I know that by this point you're saying, "surely these knots aren't the only reason I'm reading this post," when really they are, I'll go ahead and tell you what disasters are trending today on the Doomsday Dashboard. It seems nuclear war has overtaken pandemic as most popular, ringing in at 27%.

A Little Help From My Friends

A few weeks back, Ms. Tye sent Miss Gokey a text message informing me about a series called Doomsday Preppers that she thought I would be interested in watching. Here's something you either know, because you live with and/or in close proximity (within 30 miles) of me, or you never would have guessed because my posts are of the couch-potato variety:

***I don't have TV.***

I have Netflix and the internet, and that is all that I will ever need for the remainder of my life. Gosh, I hope both of these things survive the destruction of the Grid. (Hahaha.) The Doomsday Preppers website is a goldmine of fascinating stories about people who are succeeding far more handily than I am at preparing for  various disaster scenarios. You can find out which disasters are trending on the website, as well.  At the time of writing, pandemic is the favorite, although personally I hold with the 15%. You can watch video clips from various episodes, etc. What a wonderful feast for our eyeballs! Many thanks to Tye and Gokey.

In other (but similar) news, I was happy yesterday when Jodi announced that Anderson Cooper was doing a show on how to survive the end of the world.

Seeing as ***I don't have TV,*** I had to do some digging in the webospheres to find any information about the show, but my mad googling skills eventually landed me here. Oddly enough, he interviews cast members for...Doomsday Preppers! It's a small world after all.

As you can see, Anderson starts out in a mobile earthquake shack. Sadly, you can only buy a mobile earthquake shack if you are a government agency or part of some other special organization. However, it seems to me like you can hire people to fasten all your stuff down so that it can survive intact in an 8.0.

To sum up the remainder of what I was able to gather from the website, you should just go here, to the American Red Cross website, which will give you information that you already know from your real (if you're Miss Gokey) or vicarious REI classes: Prepare an emergency kit. Have food and medications on hand so that you can get by for a while (Red Cross suggests two weeks, others including James Wesley Rawles prefer much longer) without outside help. Know what disasters are likely to occur where you live.
Make and practice a disaster plan, and my personal favorite: take a class!

I resolve to count my blessings. I thought, "How splendid would it be to get my 8th grade Explorations class trained at CPR?" My own CPR certification was *FREE* from the School of Which We Shall Not Speak. The school nurse just threw a dummy down onto the floor and the next thing you know, I had a little card. (I want to challenge my current school nurse to do the same.) Once a quarter, I was able to leave my co-taught class to practice my CPR skills on a dummy in a drill! Yeah, the class costs $90 IRL. Boo!
But there are plenty of PDFs to laminate and other free resources through the Red Cross website.

As I leave you to enjoy the best night of the week as I watch Ken Burns and knit, I recommend that you take a minute to watch Anderson don his chemical and biological weapon suit, a less potato-chip-baggy version of which was featured in Phase 7, which I mentioned earlier this week.

Here's the link: http://backstage.andersoncooper.com/post/18094282206/chemical-biological-warfare-training-suit

Oooh! I almost forgot! There's also a GIVEAWAY! Good luck!

And many thanks to my friends (including Na'he for the flintknapping...coming soooon!) for the tips and recommendations! Keep 'em coming. >:+D