Rip Van Winkle’s Return.
Tompkins H. Matteson (1813 - 1884).
Oil on canvas, 1860.

 

Regarding Dame Van Winkle's attitude "as years of matrimony rolled on":

... a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.

from Proverbs 25:

       23 The north wind brings forth rain,
      And a backbiting tongue an angry countenance.
       24 It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop,
      Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.

Save the video until you've read the blog.  It just makes more sense that way. :)

 

 

A Video Tribute to the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Music and lyrics by Gordon Lightfoot.  Directed by Joseph Fulton.

As a child I learned the power that Lake Superior has to awe.  Each year's camping trip and hiking excursions and picnic stops brought the lesson close to home.

Scanning the landless horizon beyond the ever-rolling surf would impress upon me its vastness.  Wading along the rocky shore as I desperately searched for my very own agate would impress upon me its frigid temperatures.  Swimming out several feet from the shore despite the cold, and vainly attempting to touch the rocks I could see so plainly impressed upon me its clarity.  Paddling with my dad in a canoe, rising and falling in rhythm with the waves, even as close to shore as we were, and on a fairly calm day, impressed upon me its power and my vulnerability.

Now that I live in Chicago, those memories double the pleasure I find in walking along Lake Michigan.  Little did I realize as a child how deeply rooted the land of the Great Lakes would plant itself in my mind and spirit.

Paul and I are about to take the kids on a roadtrip to the other three Great Lakes, and as I was researching the region's geology and history, I was reminded of the ferocious power of storms on these inland seas when I came across the video embedded above. 

Some time ago I read a book about the stories and folklore of the Great Lakes entitled Sweetwater, Storms, and Spirits, edited by Victoria Brehm.  In the introduction she writes of the difficulty not only of encountering a storm on the Lakes, but of reconciling the danger with the false sense of security from being on fresh water in the middle of a continent.

She cites a letter that Rudyard Kipling to his family of his experience:

There is a quiet horror about the Great Lakes which grows as one visits them.  Fresh water has no right or call to dip over the horizon, pulling down and pushing up hulls of big steamers, no right to tread the slow, deep sea dance-step between wrinkled cliffs; nor to roar in on weed and sand beaches between vast headlands that run out for leagues into bays and sea fog.  Lake Superior is all the same stuff towns pay taxes for (fresh water), but it engulfs and wrecks and drives ashore like a fully accredited ocean--a hideous thing to find in the heart of a continent.
(The Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling, AMS Press, 1970.)

Well, when you put it like that, it sounds like the very stuff of Jules Verne, practically subterranean in its alien nature.  However, because I myself have very little experience with saltwater seas, I can't say that I share his prejudice against the credibility of a freshwater sea.

He was right that the strength of storms on the Lakes are equal to any squall on the ocean.  They may even exceed the danger of those on the open salt sea, given how quickly they arise and how unpredictable the landscape may be, even far from the shore.  The hostility of such storms, particularly in the cold autumn weather, is personified in Great Lakes literature as wild animals or devils bent on evil or revenge, and those who survive are humbled and broken, far from victorious.

A fine example of a modern folk song was written after 29 men died in the 1975 when a freighter loaded with iron ore was wrecked on its way from Superior, Wisconsin to Detroit, Michigan.  In the tradition of Great Lakes literature, Gordon Lightfoot writes: "that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed when the 'Gales of November' came early".  



The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Gordon Lightfoot, 1976.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called "Gitche Gumee."
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the "Gales of November" came early.

The ship was the pride of the American side
coming back from some mill in Wisconsin.
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
with a crew and good captain well seasoned,
concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
when they left fully loaded for Cleveland.
And later that night when the ship's bell rang,
could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
and a wave broke over the railing.
And ev'ry man knew, as the captain did too
'twas the witch of November come stealin'.
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
when the Gales of November came slashin'.
When afternoon came it was freezin' rain
in the face of a hurricane west wind.

When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin'.
"Fellas, it's too rough t'feed ya."
At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said,
"Fellas, it's bin good t'know ya!"
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
and the good ship and crew was in peril.
And later that night when 'is lights went outta sight
came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
if they'd put fifteen more miles behind 'er.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
in the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams;
the islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
with the Gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
in the "Maritime Sailors' Cathedral."
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call "Gitche Gumee."
"Superior," they said, "never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early!"


More about the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck and its investigation can be read here.

Interestingly, the legend that Lake Superior never gives up her dead is based in the reality that her waters are too cold to harbor the bacteria that would otherwise cause a body to bloat and rise to the surface.

There's more power to the Great Lakes than just Lake Superior, however.  Sometime soon I'll focus on the power of Niagara Falls as water from Lake Erie rushes into Lake Ontario.  No wonder these lakes are called great.  No less of an adjective would suffice.


from Job 26:

 5 “The dead tremble,
      Those under the waters and those inhabiting them.

 6 Sheol is naked before Him,
      And Destruction has no covering.

 7 He stretches out the north over empty space;
      He hangs the earth on nothing.

 8 He binds up the water in His thick clouds,
      Yet the clouds are not broken under it.

 9 He covers the face of His throne,
      And spreads His cloud over it.

 10 He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters,
      At the boundary of light and darkness.

 11 The pillars of heaven tremble,
      And are astonished at His rebuke.

 12 He stirs up the sea with His power,
      And by His understanding He breaks up the storm.

 13 By His Spirit He adorned the heavens;
      His hand pierced the fleeing serpent.

 14 Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways,
      And how small a whisper we hear of Him!
      But the thunder of His power who can understand?”

Whassat?  May 5, 2008.

Hi, Cheryl!



from 1 John 2:

24 Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that He has promised us—eternal life.

© 2006 Jupiterimages Corporation

The tens' place.  The hundreds' place.  The thousands' place.  They each have their place, and when it comes to guiding my kids in their math work, I'm a real stickler about it.

I don't simply mean that my kids have to know which is which, and that they need to line them up when adding.  I mean that they have to understand how the digits filling those places interact with each other.

When adding, for instance, they aren't just adding different columns of digits; they are adding groups of a hundred, groups of ten, and groups of single units.  The worth of each digit should always be in mind as they compute the answer so that the process becomes one in which mathematical truth can be communicated, not merely manipulated.

Keeping a mind on the value of digits during addition or subtraction isn't as tricky as it is during multiplication.  Many of the conventional algorithms simply do not apply, as there is no room in this emphasis for suggestions such as: "Count the total number of zeros that would follow the two digits you're multiplying, and then write the same number of zeros after your answer."  That trick may make the process easier, but it doesn't help a person connect the abstraction of the numbers to the facts in reality.

What is the reality then?  To begin with, when a person multiplies a group of ten by another group of ten, he doesn't end up with a number with two zeros behind it; he has a group of a hundred.  Likewise, a group of ten multiplied hundreds of times will not yield some number with three zeros tacked on the back, but rather some number of thousands.

When language is re-introduced to the process of mathematical calculation, the numbers have a relationship that can be understood and communicated.  When these relationships are kept in mind, errors are more easily avoided and easier to correct.

Just today I asked Aelsa, who is multiplying place values on the other side of the decimal, "Are you trying to tell me that this tenth of a tenth is that number of hundredths, but this tenth of a hundredth is larger than that tenth of a tenth?"

It's helpful to have these relationships memorized, so I created a couple of charts to help to remind us.  The first one covers the multiplication of tens with tens to the multiplication of thousands with thousands.  The second one covers the multiplication of tenths with tenths to the multiplication of hundredths with thousandths, using both decimals and fractions.  You can download a copy for yourself here.


from Genesis 26:

4 And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed;

A new series wherein I may quote the quoters and requote the quoted for my own entertainment.

from the Discovery Channel's online news article by Jennifer Viegas
entitled Sharks Ruled Alabama's Dino-Era Waters

A bunch of shark teeth have been found exposed in the Cretaceous layer of a cliff in Alabama, and the strontium radioisotope dating done on the enamel of the teeth has encouraged researchers by the relatively consistent data it provides.

Kenshu Shimada, an associate professor in the Environmental Science Program and the Department of Biological Sciences at DePaul University explains:

... the age of a specimen can deviate "by as much as 52 million years" depending on what part of a fossil is studied.  He added that tooth enamel "gives more consistent and reliable" data than other tissues that have been previously studied.

It would seem that Lyell's and Darwin's inflation of the earth's ages has served to dull the inquiring mind to the immense quantity of even one million years.  Otherwise, would it not be disgracefully shocking for any scientist to have ever overlooked the mindblowing inaccuracy of a dating method that yields such absurd discrepancies as 52 million years within the same specimen?

Clearly, the assumptions governing either the computing or the interpretation of radioisotopic dating data are unsound.  But instead of being content to bolster a weak theory with shifting data, the scientific mind would face the discordant data head on and try to gain a correct understanding of what processes have actually been at work.

And in 1997, a team of eight research scientists known as the RATE group set out to do exactly that.  Read a little about their work here.


from Matthew 7:

24 “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: 25 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

26 “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: 27 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

28 And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, 29 for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.