A Dozen Years through a Haze

November 23, 2016.Reading time 6 minutes.

A forest fire rages fifty miles north of where I sit typing. I know they are common out west, but I don’t recall one of such significance since I have lived here. The biggest problem for firefighters is the lack of rain. North Georgia hasn’t had significant rainfall since September and forecasters don’t see any in sight. The dry and brittle autumn leaves have turned into a tinder box and the fires rage on. Remarkably, although I am far away, when I go outside I can smell the smoke from the blaze and metro Atlanta is grayed by its smoky haze.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, our second since losing Kylie. Last year I wrote that being thankful was difficult because the enormity of her loss made it hard to reconcile my blessings. I am a pragmatic person and of course I know that I have been blessed beyond measure. But feelings can be tricky things that blot out reason and logic. Read More

Multiplication by Subtraction

August 24, 2016.Reading time 7 minutes.

No one in our family is a math whiz – we’re all literature folk with one black-sheep biologist mixed in. Quite frankly, I think the average student is taught way too much mathematics in school. If you don’t plan on becoming an engineer, physicist, or statistician, do you really need to have advanced calculus or trigonometry? I’m sure most would disagree, but I wonder if we aren’t taught too much high level math and not enough basic life skills. How did my girls graduate high school with honors yet have never been taught how to balance a checkbook, write a resume, or fill out basic government paperwork?

I’m not saying I can’t do math. I can function on a very basic level and I helped the kids with homework until they got to about the eighth grade. That’s where I went rusty and chewed pencils down to nubs before blaming teachers for their new math and its crazy calculation methods. Give me Markmatics, which is a math theorem based on very rudimentary understanding, a calculator, and Google.