George Ohr

Thousands and Thousands

Our Wonders of the World Unit: last night – giant sequoias!  The largest trees, the oldest trees (my son learned about counting rings in a slice of tree trunk to determine the age).  We love that the hugest of the huge trees have names (like “The President” and “General Sherman”).  We love that there is only one way to get an accurate measurement of the trees: a forest ecologist has to climb up to the top (some 300+ feet up, count me out).  But here is what got us thinking: a typical giant sequoia can produce up to 11,000 cones a year.  11,000!  What if they all drop at once?  Is there some sort of cone maintenance protocol?  What’s the deal here?

sequoia cones

Our George E. Ohr Unit: with great regret, we finished the A+ book on wacky, outrageous self-promoter, potter George Ohr. If you don’t know about George Ohr, here is the heartbreaker:  although he was able to support his family with the sale of his utilitarian ceramic pieces, and although his art pieces won awards at the national level, he was unable to sell ANY of his thousands of art pieces!  No one wanted them.  Fifty years after he passed on, the public “discovered” Ohr’s work and went into a buying frenzy.  There is now a fabulous George Ohr museum in his hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi, designed by an architect worthy of the project: Frank Geary.

ohr 2 ruffled ohr okeefe museum ohr book

Our Back Yard:  mistletoe has made a home in one of our oak trees, so last night we learned all about this parasite and its legends.  Then we took on a related Farmer Brown story problem.

 mistletoe clump

Our Farmer Brown Story Problem:  Farmer Brown has donated clusters of mistletoe to a local ecology club for a holiday fund raising project.  Club members are going to sell sprigs of mistletoe (packaged in cellophane bags and tied with a festive red ribbon) at the Holiday Romance Dance.  If 150 bags of mistletoe are sold at $5 each, how much profit will the club realize (remembering that although the mistletoe was free, the bolt of ribbon cost $60 and the cellophane bags cost $60)?

Our Music Theme: last night was VIRTUOUSO NIGHT starring Sir James Galway, flute player (flutist/flautist/flute player…we learned that all terms are correct, so ONE LESS WORRY).  Of note for anyone wanting to improve their flute playing skills: there are several FREE really fun master classes taught by James Galway on youtube!

We love listening to Sir James Galway:

  • Mozart’s “Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra”, movement II –  as a non-pharmaceutical means of lowering blood pressure, this piece is probably the music equivalent of an aquarium in a physician’s office.  Unhurried and soothing.  Ahhhhhh.
  • “I Saw Three Ships” – the traditional Christmas carol, so brightly played, from Galway’s Christmas CD of 1992.  The CD is still available and really, if you celebrate Christmas, you should own it.
  • Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” – composed in 1899 for the opera, “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”.  How can he play this fast?  Is this played with one breath?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDMp5xJh0s4

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

Mounting Interest

Mount Everest

Our Wonders of the World unit: last night, Mount Everest.  Mount Everest is 29,029 feet above sea level at the summit (the summit being about as big as my son’s bed – we spent a few minutes thinking about whether we could be up so high, standing on something so small without freaking out and throwing up).  But back to the height:  when we fly to LA, our cruising altitude is not that much higher than the top of Mount Everest.  Wouldn’t it be weird to be in a plane, just about cruising altitude and look eye to eye with a person outside the airplane?  This puts the size of the Everest into a perspective that forces us to understand that THIS IS ONE GIANT MOUNTAIN.

New unit: George Ohr, potter. We started a most interesting book, “The Mad Potter, George E. Ohr, Eccentric Genius”. George Ohr (1857 – 1918) tried/failed about 14 different career paths before he was trained in ceramics.  In his own words, he “took to the potter’s wheel like a duck to water”. My son needed to know what a potter’s wheel looked like, so we viewed a neat video of a skilled potter throwing a pot.  He was spellbound as the solid lump of clay was transformed into a rather large bowl. Here is the video we watched:

Last night’s music theme celebrated Mount Vesuvius!

funicular illustration

Here is the story:  in 1880, a local journalist (Peppino Turco) teamed with composer Luigi Denza to create the immensely popular “advertising” jingle, “Funiculi Funicula”, commemorating the grand opening of a funicular cable car up the side of Mount Vesuvius. The original words are essentially “ride the totally cool cable car to the top of the mountain, see what you can see, bring a love interest”. The song went as viral as viral could be in 1880.

THEN!  Only 6 years later, composer Richard Strauss was touring Italy, heard the song – thought it was an old traditional Neapolitan theme – and wove it into movement 4 of his “Aus Italien” tone poem. Bad surprise: Denza sued Richard Strauss, won the lawsuit, and Strauss paid royalties every time “Aus Italien” was performed.

THEN!  (here we go again) 21 years after the Denza vs. Strauss dust-up, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov was touring Italy, heard the song – thought it was an old traditional Neapolitan theme – so he polished it up for full orchestra and it became “Neapolitan Song”.  He apparently was not sued. This is a sparkling orchestration, but my son and I think the original, unrefined rendition is THE BEST. (spoiler alert:  this is a flawed video visually – you will see what I mean immediately, but Pope Benedict is in the audience, so that is pretty awesome)

Final note:  Vesuvius is a dormant volcano, but in 1944 it erupted and the cable car was a casualty.  Rats.

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH