Halloween 2021

Our neighborhood is a magnet at Halloween, and the residents go all in to make it fun. It was great to be back to doing it this year--I really loved seeing all the kids, parents, and teens, and some of the costumes were just fabulous. My favorite was a chicken: a homemade comb-and-wattle of red felt, attached to a white felt cap, and the kid was wearing a white hoodie. I didn't get a picture, but one of the neighbors caught it in a slideshow they posted on FB--apologies for the graininess:



I carved a blowfish jack o'lantern:

In the early afternoon


After dark


And I used the monster mouth that I made a couple of years ago. "Do you dare to reach inside the monster's mouth to get a treat?"



Almost all kids dared ;-) (In some cases, a parent ventured in their stead.)



You can see the rain on the table in that last shot. It meant that we had to move the treasure chest (made by my sister for my kids years ago, and vulnerable to water) back inside. (The treasure chest had backup bags of candy--we used it all.)



Under the cut are some more fun costumes and shots of the growing dark

( Halloween 2021 )

Perhaps you recognized the Little Heroine with her mom? Her brother dressed as Pikachu. The girls on the other side dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and as a Beanie Baby cat. Very fun afternoon and evening!

The iceberg model of culture, or: taking a metaphor to extremes

No posts for nigh on two weeks and then two of them come in one day. NOT GOOD BLOG MANAGEMENT.

I'm training to do tutoring with an organization that helps immigrants and refugees, and part of the training was watching this one-minute video on the iceberg model of culture. Spoiler: Culture is like an iceberg, with only a small portion visible.

I was telling the ninja girl about this, and the conversation unfolded like this:

Me: Culture is like an iceberg: only a small portion is visible.

Her (sagely): Yes, as with an iceberg, most culture is underwater.

Me (giggling): With climate change, we can expect more and more culture to be underwater. Hey: what if we expanded on this analogy?

Her: Yeah--introduce the Titanic of our assumptions. We think they're unsinkable...

Me (excited): But if they strike the iceberg of culture horizontally across five compartments, each one will fill and send water into the next, and our assumptions will be doomed to sink! IN TWO HOURS! "I wish I'd built you some sounder assumptions, Young Rose."

Her: I wonder which of our ideas will make it onto lifeboats?

Me: Primarily the women-and-children ideas. And primarily ones in first class. Our assumption-ship was so classist.

Her: Think of all the ideas that just fling themselves into the freezing waters of... what do the freezing waters represent in this analogy?

Me: Not sure. But least *some* ideas will make it onto lifeboats. Later, England and the United States can pass laws later to ensure there are enough lifeboats for ALL ideas.

Her: Yes, definitely.