How Did this Happen?

My daughter has gone off to prom. How did this happen?

#Halloween 2016

Again, my children (who helped me stage this photo) are creepy.

Emma

I forced my daughter to be my volunteer victim, er.... test subject this evening for some photographs. But, so as to not embarrass her (not embarrass her any more than necessary, anyway...) I have edited the picture somewhat: the vest that I made her wear was a really ugly Christmas sweater-vest...

Words from My Son: What I'm Doing this Weekend

How Many Joints Would You Have To Smoke To Die of a Marijuana Overdose?

Words from My Son: Kaiju

Getting the Come On from the Whores on Seventh Avenue

Not long ago I caught my teenage son in something unexpected, something that startled me, shocked me, even, a little. “Oh dear!” you may already have gasped. “What could it be? Drugs? Was he smoking the marijuana?”

But no. It was nothing like that.

He was in the basement, as he often is after his homework is finished, playing Star Wars: Battlefront on the Playstation. Now, there’s nothing incredibly odd about that. He enjoys video games, and I enjoy them with him sometimes – though he usually wastes me. I’ve never been very good with video games.

But what was odd about this was that he’d turned off the game’s soundtrack and was running and gunning down rebel scum with laser blasters while listening to the music of Simon and Garfunkel. I smiled at this and stepped into my little at home office in the next room. I left the door open so I could listen to him – unobservedly – as he was singing along.

I smiled again – at the odd juxtaposition of futuristic, science fiction violence and introspective, folk music of the 1960s, and smiling with pride for my son.

I smiled until he came to the line about getting the “come on from the whores on seventh avenue…” My smile faltered a bit there.

He’s fifteen. And while I know that he’s a long way from the little boy who used to dress up as a pirate every afternoon – a pirate wearing cowboy boots and not one, but three vests – he can’t be old enough for that line, can he?

And then I remembered that I was about fifteen myself, when I found my father’s vinyl copy of Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits (that was the best of the records in my dad’s small collection. Second best might have been Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass  - yes – the one with that  cover…) I copied that Simon and Garfunkel album to a cassette tape and wore it out.

I thought about my boy, and about myself, and about my father and my smile came back. It never really left, I suppose.

Venus and Jupiter

My teenage son and I have been enjoying the new game No Man's Sky in which players are free to explore an open universe of over 18 quintillion planets (1.8 X 10¹⁹). It’s pretty amazing. But tonight we left the fictional planets of a digital universe to observe real planets in the physical universe which we inhabit. We went out to observe the conjunction of the planets Venus and Jupiter. 

This stellar event will not occur again until 2065.

There are some who believe that the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter may have been the “star” that the three wise men of Matthew’s gospel observed. 

Words from My Son - Feral Rat

Words from My Son - Carousels

Words from My Son - The Medieval Period

Emma Chipmunk

My daughter had her wisdom teeth extracted a few days ago. The swelling is mostly gone, but she's still a little puffy. I've been calling her "Chipmunk"  - but only because I thought calling her "Z'dar" would be cruel.

Words from My Son - Oranges

At Lake Michigan with the Family

Over the weekend (a long weekend: Thursday-Monday) our family took a family trip across the country. We drove from Iowa to Ohio to visit a couple of colleges that our daughter is interested in attending. On the way home we stopped, on Sunday, in Toledo, OH to visit my brother and sister in law and their daughter; we spent the day with them at the zoo. Then, earlier today, we stopped for about an hour at the dunes along Lake Michigan.

Outbreak

My son posed for this photo. He's a creepy kid.

Pics, Or It Didn't Happen

My son drew this during church this morning. It seems like a fair paraphrase of Luke 24: 11.

"Guys! Jesus is gone! He's alive."
"Pics, or it didn't happen."

A Day at School with Radiohead

My son, contrary to the rules of teenagers everywhere, likes to tell me about his day at school. He enjoys being able to discuss what he’s learned in his classes,in part to see what I know about those things, and also to see if he can tell me something I don’t know. It’s fun. But it can be difficult to stay ahead of him. The other day, the two of us were greatly amused to find numerous connections between his classwork and the music of Radiohead.

In his Geometry class they have been working on formulating proofs, and the steps to prove or disprove mathematical statements like: “2 + 2 = 5”

In his English class they are reading William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, which connects to Radiohead’s “Exit Music for a Film.”

In his Global Studies class they were discussing the Athenian democracy so you’ll need a bit of “Electioneering.”

And in his Science class they learned about the physics of car crashes and how an “Airbag” could save your life.

Dragonfly Daughter

O dragonfly daughter, I love you,
my blue glaze Egyptian wonder;
I cannot hold the flittering splendor
and you do not yet know
the sparkle of your flight.

My Little Dragonfly

My (not so) Little Munchkins

My kids, now in high school, enjoy participating in the theater. Tonight was opening night for their school production of The Wizard of Oz. Our daughter played a Dragonfly, a Winkie, and an Ozian. Our son played a Crow, a Snowman, a Winkie, and an Ozian.

And on the topic of the Wizard of Oz, here is my favorite version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by Blixa Bargeld:



And, as you might or might not know, the 1939 film staring Judy Garland was not the first film made of The Wizard of Oz. The first was a 13 minute silent film made in 1910:

Dune

That's my son. I like him.