Week 15: Backup and Review

May 5: Cinco de Mayo. In Mexico, the Cinco de Mayo holiday is not a national holiday (it is celebrated mainly in the state of Puebla, in east-central Mexico), but in other countries, especially the United States, Cinco de Mayo has become an important holiday to celebrate Hispanic cultural heritage and traditions. You can read more about the holiday in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this great image of a children's Cinco de Mayo parade in Minnesota:

Week 14: Back up and review

This week's review comes from the Saturday, April 30th blog post. As a future crazy cat lady who has loved many a calico, I couldn't resist diving into the Indian Word in English. :)

Indian Words in English: Today's word from India in English is CALICO, via Arabic Qaliqut (Malayalam Kolikodu), a city on the Malabar coast of India. It originally described a type of colorful fabric from that city but now it most often refers to tricolor cats. For details, see this blog post.

Weel 13: Back Up and Review

I really like this image from Friday's blog post. I think the value of creative writing is so poorly understood and misrepresented by so many people, and this image perfectly captures why I still love to write creatively, even if it has nothing to do with my career or life goals.


Why We Need Creative Writing. Here's why:

Week 8 Review

March 11: Douglas Adams. Today marks the birthday of Douglas Adams,one of my most beloved writers, who sadly left this world in 2001. Adams is most famous as the creator of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and his two books about the detective Dirk Gently are also priceless. Happy birthday to you, Douglas Adams, wherever in the galaxy you may be! Here is a YouTube video interview where Douglas Adams talks about his career, life, the universe, and everything:

Douglas Adams is one of my favorite writers EVER, so seeing this interview made my whole week! So long and thanks for all the fish, Mr. Adams. :)

Week 7: Review

I chose this video from Friday, March 4's post because I was so impressed by the musical talent it shows! The two singers have incredible voices, the clarinetist is great, and whoever arranged this mash-up has some seriously impressive theoretical skills -- it is NOT easy to get to very different musical systems (like, different versions of scales, right notes vs. wrong notes, etc) to sound so consonant together. Very cool!

Today's Video: Chaiyya Chaiyya Mash-Up. It's Bollywood-meets-Michael Jackson, featuring the amazing Shankar Tucker on clarinet.

And of course the shout-out to the opera below this segment made me happy. I hope some of you were able to come out and see it!

Week 1 Review: 1/20/15 Video

January 20, 2015

Today's Video: Be Brave for Education . This video is produced by BeBrave4Education, which is an allied group of Montessori schools and teachers. If any of you attended a Montessori school, you will have figured out by now I am trying to use the Montessori approach in this class. :-)