Thursday, January 21, 2010

Two Interesting Conversations

As we drove home from Burlington a couple of evenings back, we were listening to Rabbit Ears Radio folk tales. Included are stories of Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett,  Rip Van Winkle, and Johnny Appleseed. I was tired from the long day; we had done school, library group, and an afternoon in Burlington (1.5 hours from home) to attend a birthday party. The stories lulled everyone into a peaceful place, and the car was strangely quiet.

Garrison Keillor's somnolent voice was narrating the story of Johnny Appleseed when Phaedra suddenly piped up. She said, "Mama, Johnny Appleseed was a bit like St. Francis and a bit like Siddhartha; he was even nice to rattlesnakes." I agreed with her, but I giggled to myself wondering whether too many people had made this observation before. I also did a bit of halo polishing, because she knows something about all three of these admirable people. Hopefully, their examples are sinking in.

The other interesting conversation also occurred in the car. On the way to Earthwalk this morning, Ezra explained, "If numbers are thoughts, then addition can always have a new idea, but multiplication is limited to only certain ones." He then expounded on how each of the basic operations is better than multiplication, because they each have the ability to see more of the terrain of the thoughts of numbers. There was something about how some operations are less likely to cause strife.  I'll admit that I got lost in his line of reasoning, but it also blew my mind.

There's no halo polishing for the number conversation, because I have no idea where he comes up with these ideas, but I always enjoy hearing them.

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