wathe
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Posts posted by wathe
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Not a lot, but enough LOL. I've never measured. We mostly boil it down to sugar and do just a little syrup, and we eat it as we go. Sometimes the kids drink the sap straight ("spring tonic").
The internet says about a gallon of syrup for 2 trees, and that feels about right.
(This year I will measure!)
We use commercial spiles and covered buckets. Our buckets are the traditional metal kind, which they don't seem to sell anymore. The lids are important - you do not want rain, debris, and creatures in your sap! I've seen others use any kind of lidded bucket: ice cream pails, juice jugs etc. Backyard syrup is popular here; front lawn trees sprout all kinds of buckets every spring.
I cook it down in an old rice-cooker on the front porch. The automatic turn-off feature of the rice cooker means I don't have to pay too much attention to it. I just let it boil away and top it up from time to time.
Warning: if you boil the sap down indoors, you will have sticky walls. The boil is really best done outside.
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Maple syrup season! We make backyard maple syrup and sugar in a very small way - we tap just 2 trees. We set our taps last week, and the weather will be warm enough later this week for the sap to start running.
I love it. It's become a family tradition for us, a kind of ritual that means spring is really nearly here. And making sugar and candy from watery tree-juice just never gets old for me. It feels like a magic trick every time.
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I sew. Mostly practical things for my family that would be either otherwise hard to find, or nice to have customized: Pencil rolls, pencil cases, tote bags, dice bags for D&D, gym suits and swim suits for my boys (pink paisley boys' gym suits are a one-of-a-kind type of item, LOL), pj's, custom stuff sacs for camping items, rice bags, juggling bags, clothes for stuffies (Roman emperor toga and tunic for stuffie dog was a highlight), costumes/costume elements. My latest project has been pouches for a custom "utility belt" for my DS 13, who is Mr Prepared and takes his survival gear e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e.
Also, I've done a lot of masks (hundreds) and scrub caps for donation.
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6 hours ago, kbutton said:
These are probably my three best EPP items so far. I don’t have a finished project in mind just yet—still playing around.
I think PeterPan mentioned EPP as a hobby some people have, and I went down the rabbit hole. I don’t cut or machine stitch precisely enough for quilting on a machine. The EPP method perfectly remedies that problem.
I really like this! It reminds of my kids' pattern blocks. I might have a go. Maybe use pattern block colour scheme as a math homeschooling momento.... Make a quilted pencil case, maybe.
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1 hour ago, Murphy101 said:
eta: so I just got off the phone with my son and his friends who were telling me calling them “people with slanted eyes” is a racist term not because they do not have slanted eyes, but because it dates back to world war days when that characteristic is what determined who got put in camps. Just like the N word isn’t racist because it’s a color but bc of the attitude it references. Idk know that. I mean I knew asians were put in camps but not that that phrase was like white people saying the n word to POC. Now I do.
"slant eyes" and "slanted eyes" are slurs in my part of the world.
1) East Asian people objectively do not have "slanted" eyes - their eyes are not at an angle or crooked. They are as straight on their faces as anyone else's. Many East Asians have a distinctive fold of skin (epicanthic fold) that partially covers their upper eyelid. (Not all East Asians have this feature, and plenty of non-asians do have it).
2) Slant vs straight has moral implications with slant = crooked, corrupt, vs straight = morally straight and upstanding.
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4 hours ago, Murphy101 said:
Side topic. I own this book and it’s a family favorite. I pulled it out just now bc I’m not seeing racism in it. The whole book is cartoon, but I’m not seeing anything like Africans as monkeys in it. It looks.. culturally diverse to me? I’m not reading it and hearing subservient or derogatory. Some people ARE culturally different and do dress differently - is that racist to show that? I’m not being at all snarky. Genuinely trying to figure it out on this particular book.
I'll have a go:
Both the illustration and its place in the plot are racist because:
1) The illustration itself is both a caricature of racial features (yellow skin, slanted eyes), and stereotypes (clothing such as hat, robes, footwear, pigtail; and behaviours such as "eats with sticks"). In fact, I don't think there is a single component of this image that is not a caricature of racial features and stereotypes.
2) The plot itself: The narrator tells a fantastical story that becomes more outlandish and crazy with each page. East Asian person = outlandish and other. The image of the East Asian person serves as yet another outlandish and crazy object in the story. It has no other purpose in the narrative.
Edited: missed a bracket.
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2 hours ago, Ordinary Shoes said:
I know this blog post was shared on this forum last summer. It made the rounds in the homeschooling world and I think it opened some eyes.
I hadn't seen this blog post before, but it rings true for me.
I'm a white mother of kids of colour. Children's literature, especially older classic titles often recommended by classical home ed curricula, including TWTM, felt like such a minefield. The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, the Little House books, Peter Pan, Swallow and Amazons, Pippi Longstocking, The Cricket in Times Square, The Great Horn Spoon, Twenty-One Balloons, Caddy Woodlawn, The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, the list goes on and on. You'd be happily reading along, and them Bam! get slapped in the face with a baldly racist phrase or allusion or image, or a dismissive remark about "savages" or "cannibals" or "Indians". It's really not OK.
Now that my kids are older, it has almost become a bit of a macabre running household joke - books of a certain age will necessarily have at least one problematic racist element.
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3 hours ago, Spy Car said:
Right. But the analysis seems to point to caricature as a theme for determining if an illustration is racially insensitive that is distinct from stereotyping (not to say they don't recognize an image can be both stereotypical and a caricature, as they surely do).
I know it seems like hair-splitting, but we adopt a standard that all caricatures are inherently racist then we'd wipe out a vast genre of cartoon work.
Bill
I see your point, and I don't disagree.
I do think that caricaturing racial features is racist though, and I think that's were the blog author was going with her argument.
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3 minutes ago, Spy Car said:
I looked around for examples of offending images by my beloved Dr Seuss, and unfortunately many are rather regrettable--and especially the "African" images.
I do think that one of the above standards for deeming an image racially offensive, namely Caricature: “exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics,” is a pretty high bar to clear given all Dr Seuss's art involves caricature.
So not only would all the 45 characters of color (100%) be deemed caricatures, but the same would apply to all the beings, trees, houses, and environs in Dr Seuss books.
That quibble aside, some of these Dr Seuss books do rely on negative stereotypes. No denying that.
Bill
Indeed. It's the caricaturing of stereotypes that causes the trouble, I think.
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3 minutes ago, City Mouse said:
I like most Dr. Seuss books, but I was uncomfortable the last time I read Mulberry Street to a class and realized that it did have I appropriate illustrations. At that point, I stopped reading that one in a school setting. I don’t think that is the same as banning or burning a book. Copies are still out there for adults to choose to read. I do not think those kinds of books should be read in a classroom situation where someone could infer that those representations are acceptable.
I do think those books could be used when teaching a lesson about racism.
Disney stopped producing the movie Song of the South many years ago due to the rasist representations. I don’t see any problem with that.
By the way, I do own a copy of Mulberry Street if anyone is looking to buy one. (Just joking)
I also own Mulberry Street (in the Six by Seuss hardcover compilation). I haven't read it in at least ten years, and I knew exactly which illustration they were talking about from memory - it bothered my then, and has stuck in my mind. I didn't read it to my Asian kids.
Yertle the Turtle, on the other hand, we practically wore out.
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23 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:
Let's take these headlines with a grain of salt. These aren't Seuss' best work, and other than Mulberry Street they aren't very well known, and I doubt any of them have been big sellers in the past 20+ years.
The Seuss estate decided to stop printing six poor sellers, and to get a little PR out of it by saying that it's due to the offensive imagery. It's not like the imagery isn't there, but if they thought that there was more money in it, they would've simply had the books edited slightly and then issued that press release instead.
I think this is right on the money. It's an easy win for the Seuss estate.
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14 minutes ago, Plum said:
Is there a problem with the writing or just the pictures? Seems like an easy fix either way. It’s not like Seuss is that complex.
Couldn’t they insert a lesson with context at the end of the book?Why stop publishing them completely? What does that accomplish?
I think it's both.
Some of the books might be fixable. Others, racism or exoticism is woven into the story line.
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Quoted from the same blog post I linked to above:
Critical Analysis of Race in 50 Children’s Books by Dr. Seuss
- Of the 2240 human characters, there are 45 characters of color, representing 2% of the total number of human characters.
- Of the 45 characters of color, all 45 (100%) are depicted in a racist manner.
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Every single character of color is portrayed through at least 3, and sometimes all 5, of the following themes:
- Subservience: “Useful in an inferior capacity: subordinate: submissive”
- Dehumanization: “To deprive of human qualities, personality, spirit / to treat someone as though he or she is not human”
- Exotification: “portrayed as originating in or characteristic of a distant foreign country / very different / “other””
- Stereotypes: “a standardized mental picture that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment / to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same”
- Caricature: “exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics”
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Of the 2 “African” characters:
- Both are depicted as monkeys (in the same likeness that Seuss depicted Africans and African Americans in his racist political cartoons).
- Both are depicted in a subservient role, carrying an animal to a white male child’s zoo.
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Of the 14 “Asian” characters:
- Eleven of the 14 “Asian” characters are wearing stereotypical, conical “rice paddy hats”.
- The three (and only) “Asian” characters who are not seen wearing “rice paddy hats”, are carrying an animal in a large cage on top of their heads. There is a white male child holding a gun, standing on top of the animal cage that is being balanced on top of their heads.
- Twelve of the 14 “Asian” characters are featured in subservient roles, hunting down or carrying exotic animals for a white male child. They are described by Dr. Seuss in the text as “helpers that all wear their eyes at a slant” from “countries no one can spell”.
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Of the 29 characters wearing turbans:
- Fifteen are riding exotic animals, including camels, elephants and zebras, and four are playing exotic instruments.
- Seventeen of the “turban-wearing” characters are in a subservient role, “fetching” something for the white male child; driving a cart full of white males; or, carrying something for a white male child.
- One of the “turban-wearing” characters is referenced as being suitable to bring back, along with the exotic animals, to be on display in the white male child’s zoo. In the book, If I Ran the Zoo, Seuss’s text reads “A Mulligatawny is fine for my zoo And so is a chieftain (referring to the turban-wearing man), I’ll bring one back too”. There is a notable history of white people putting people of color on display in zoos (see David, 2013).
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We were discussing this news as a family last night. Of the six books that will no longer be published, I've only ever seen one IRL (Mulberry Street.) None of them are amongst his most popular works.
The news prompted us to do a bit of a google to see what the issues are. Which led to this interesting blog post that posits that some of Seuss's most popular works (Cat in the Hat, Horton, and The Sneetches) are also racist. WRT Horton and the Sneetches, I saw the blogger's point immediately. But her Cat in the Hat argument contains information that was new to me - that the TCITH contains racist tropes I wasn't aware of (I am not American, and I am white. I'm learning every day). Anyway, this blog has provoked much thought and discussion at
yourour house https://www.pragmaticmom.com/2017/05/examining-dr-seuss-racism/Edited to correct: Our house. No idea about anyone else's house!
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Brains On! is another great kids' science podcast
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4 hours ago, kand said:
This was ringing a bell for me of having read about this in the past and them having discovered it wasn’t a matter of the immune response in obese people, it’s that the standard needle length isn’t going deep enough to go into muscle instead of fat. I did a quick search and found this study verifying that: https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/3/e508
I am thinking it’s likely the same needle size is used for everyone at these vaccine clinics? Though I don’t know.
That’s so sad! I’m sorry. I hope you can get another soon and it goes much better.
Same needle for everyone at the clinics I've worked.
ETA: weight/BMI are not documented either.
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I feel your pain.
DH is SAHD, and has historically been the grocery shopper and meal planner.
I have taken on the role of grocery shopper for the last year, because I work outside the home and I have fewer risk factors, so it make sense both in terms of limiting exposure and risk. And now I am the only one in the home who's immunized, so it's a no brainer that I am the shopper.
But I hate it. Of course, I buy the wrong thing. Or can't find the right thing. Or the right thing isn't available, so I sub something else and it's the wrong thing. Shopping in person during a pandemic is unpleasant. And I'm doing this in addition to a more than full time job. I do not want to hear complaints!!!!
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34 minutes ago, Mrs Tiggywinkle said:
No, the doctors try to be specific whenever possible on the death certificate. They just usually tell the families “natural causes” don’t trigger autopsies. Since Covid there have been plenty of families asking if we are autopsying everyone to see if they have Covid. Obviously no because that would be incredibly expensive(the county pays for the autopsy, which is done at a hospital an hour away so they also pay for the body transport). And since all decedents are getting Covid swabbed, an autopsy for that is unnecessary.
so families are often being told the catch phrase of “it was a natural death,” but the actual death certificate, when completed, almost always has a specific cause. I have seen a few “unknown” over the years, but those are always autopsy cases that just really didn’t show anything.
There is one doctor that likes to write “cardiac arrest,” which always seems pretty redundant to me.Thanks. That makes sense to me and matches practice here (and most places, since most countries base death certificates and certification process on WHO guidelines). "Cardiac arrest" won't fly here either as a cause of death, and would prompt a coroner to make the certifying MD revise the certificate. Need a disease process ie -> Cardiac Arrest, due to Myocardial Infarction, due to Coronary Artery Disease.
ETA: Modes of death (cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, heart failure, any other organ failure/arrest) are different from cause of death (disease process). Death certificates here have to state a cause of death; substituting a mode of death is not acceptable. The coroner would make the certifier fix it.
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4 hours ago, Mrs Tiggywinkle said:
I work super part time for the county medical examiner’s office.
“Natural death” is anything from medical reasons. Homicide, suicide, and accidental deaths are all automatically autopsied. If the ER doc, hospitalist or patient’s primary doctor will sign the death certificate and it doesn’t trigger an ME investigation, then nothing further ever happens.
aside from unnatural deaths, my state requires the ME for any at home unexpected deaths without hospice, deaths of a patient who has been in the hospital less than 24 hours, and the death of a patient who has recently fallen(such as someone who fell at the nursing home, broke her hip, and passed away in the hospital a week later). Those categories are rarely autopsied as there is usually a known or highly suspected reason for the death.
Right now the county is doing a Covid swab and flu swab on every decedent with unknown Covid status. It hasn’t really given us any useful information though.
Ok, I'm perseverating now, forgive me. If you are comfortable answering, I would genuinely like to know:
Are you seeing "natural causes" written as the cause of death (box 32 on the US Standard Certificate of Death) in lieu of a disease process (like pneumonia, or coronary artery disease, or, metastatic lung cancer, etc)? Or are you referring to manner of death (box 37)? "Natural Causes" just isn't an acceptable cause of death on a death certificate here.
Our death certificates are much more streamlined.
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1 hour ago, Halftime Hope said:
You two can postulate and say what should or shouldn't happen, but what is reality is often different from the procedure manuals.
For sure, real life is messy and imperfect.
But the anecdotes you describe do not match the reality of how deaths are certified in my jurisdiction. They were surprising enough to me to prompt me to have a look at how deaths are certified in the US. It would seem that the process is much the same. Which lead me to wonder if your individual experiences (which of course are real) might not represent the greater reality of how deaths are certified in the US.
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@maize Another though: It takes a number of weeks before nursing home outbreaks are declared over - there will be a significant amount of lag in outbreak data. Our local nursing home with a big outbreak that was declared Jan 8 didn't have it's outbreak status lifted until Feb 18, for example.
I also think that nursing home outbreaks, when they do happen, will be smaller. No more massive outbreaks. The Roberta Place outbreak was horrific: 100% of the 129 residents infected and >50% (70) died. This occurred just as vaccinations for nursing homes were getting started. I don't think we will see numbers like that again. I really hope we don't.
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4 minutes ago, maize said:
I just saw in a local news source that my state currently has 17 outbreaks in residential care facilities.
These people should have all had access to vaccination by about the end of January. I don't know if the outbreaks are because of low vaccine uptake percentages? I know uptake has been lower than anticipated overall.
I'd like to see more specifics. What percentage of people in care facilities are refusing the vaccine?
It's a good question that I haven't seen data for.
I do know that our nursing homes started vaccinating residents mid-late Jan, and that they are now getting (or have recently gotten) their second doses. Outbreak numbers, cases, and deaths have been falling steadily.
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@Pam in CTYes. And one might argue that nursing homes have already achieved herd immunity for their sequestered sub-herds. Which is wonderful.
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On 2/26/2021 at 12:40 PM, Pam in CT said:
There's no knowing for sure, but I personally don't think the cohort who's already had it will do to get us too much closer to "herd," particularly the walking-around-economically-active herd. The confirmed case cohort is 28.4M, or 8.6% of the US population. Of that, half a million are dead and 2+M more were, recovered, and remain in LTC facilities. So even if contracting the disease *does* leave lasting immunity -- and the evidence is very wobbly on the question -- it still doesn't get us materially very far towards the 70-85% mark.
Right. For herd immunity to work, it's my understanding that the immunized have to be somewhat evenly distributed in the population. If most of those who have been immunized are sequestered, then they don't really count toward herd immunity, because they aren't circulating in the population - they make their own separate herd. Similarly, pockets of unimmunized individuals in the community will also work against herd immunity - I'm thinking of children and schools.
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What little thing are you looking forward to or happy about?
in The Chat Board
Posted · Edited by wathe
Yep. Our local hardware store carries buckets and spiles.