It's Almost Research Project Season!

With Spring Break just a month away for most of you, I thought it was about time to get some helpful research paper information up here. Or do you not expect to be doing research papers and projects over the vacation? Maybe that's just my kids' schools who always assign things during vacation. Anyway, I've made a short slide show with narration so you can start getting an idea about why you have to keep track of your research materials--because you're going to have to refer to them in the final product you submit to your teacher. Teachers, if any are reading this, feel free to show this in class. Here is a link to Part I of MLA Documentation. Part II will follow as soon as I have time, and it will include suggestions for incorporating or introducing the information you found in your research into your paper (or the text of a poster).

Border Schmorder

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Originally uploaded by MargaretKeys185

These two flags, flying side by side, remind me that we feel more connected to Canada than separated. We love you, Canada--you and your clean bathrooms!

Winter Olympics in Summer

Olympic flags at the outdoor Whistler Awards Plaza, August 2009.

Here I am in front of the then-unfinished Awards Plaza. The flag poles were already in place, as you can see. This is where the athletes who win in Whistler will stand on the podiums to receive their medals. Look for it on TV--I know I will.


This play structure, in Whistler Village, is made of beautiful logs.

Sledding track, near the bottom, where the athletes finish their runs. The cover to the right is, I think, where they actually exit--at least, that's what it seemed from the description provided by the Australian construction worker pictured below.

This is the lower part of the sledding track in Whistler.


This is an Australian guy who was putting finishing touches on the sliding center at Whistler.

During our summer vacation to Canada with my sister and brother-in-law, I took lots of photos of the sliding center, as that was under construction just on the edge of Whistler Village, where we stayed. The photo of the construction worker, above, was taken in the area where the sledders end their run, where all the media are gathered. They actually start their runs way up the hill, out of sight from where we were allowed to stand.

My love for the Olympics started in grade school, possibly because my brother was an avid watcher. He especially liked the bobsledding events when we were kids. I hope he enjoys these photos! My love of the Olympics was also fueled by shaking hands with Innsbruck Olympics gold medalist Dorothy Hamill at the end of an Ice Capades performance in Seattle just a year after her glorious win. A few years later, I visited the ski jump in Innsbruck (during the summer) where there were commemorative plaques of all the medalists from the 1976 Olympics. As a young adult, my new boyfriend and I went to watch the Olympic torch being run through Los Angeles just before the start of the summer games there. A couple of years later, still together, we went to Vancouver to the World Exposition. And this past summer, as we neared our 20th wedding anniversary, we went up to the Vancouver area again for another Olympics-centered event. Our kids seem to enjoy the Olympics as much as we do.

Olympic Tragedy--Already

Having looked forward to the Olympics for months, I was just about to post an Olympics Trivia quiz to this blog today, when I heard the news of the tragic death of luge sledder Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia (a country near Russia). He was killed today during a practice run on the track in Whistler, a track I have photos of that I was also going to post. It all seems so sad now, that I feel posting a trivia quiz is, in fact, inappropriately trivial, and posting photos of the track under construction just kind of creepy.

There is also a grim shadow on the Canadians, as they restricted access to the sledding center. Only their own team members had access until recently. Is the track safe? Is it fair to restrict access to other countries, who might have raised safety concerns earlier? Now it will probably be too late to adjust the track for safety. Perhaps once the snow fell, it would have been too difficult anyway.

We will see if the sledding competitions will take place at all, now. Of course, the souvenir magnet that I bought in Canada this summer was of a skeleton sledder--at least not a luge. Anyway, I vote for the Georgians leading the parade of nations tonight--entering without music, pausing for a long moment of silence, in honor of Nodar Kumaritashvili.

Silk Road

Check out the American Museum of Natural History Web site. This museum, in New York City, is currently featuring an exhibit called Traveling the Silk Road. The site has ancient music to listen to and ancient fables to read, all related to the cultures that surrounded and frequented the Silk Road trade route. Additionally, the site has instructions for making your own paper, a quiz on mythic creatures from around the world, and a photo tour of the sandstone cliff dwellings of ancient Petra.

Black History Month

February is Black History Month, so dust off your library card and check out these titles-- for free--at your local library. These titles are recommended by American Library Association’s Booklist. Reviews I’ve borrowed from Booklist are in quotation marks. The titles are links that will take you to longer Booklist reviews. Enjoy!

Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justice. By Phillip Hoose. 2009.
Memoir about a teen who was arrested for her activities in the civil rights movement.

The Rock and the River. By Kekla Magoon. 2009. Gr. 6–10.
Historical fiction set in 1968 Chicago. According to Booklist, this novel “…follows a young teen who is torn between his militant older brother, a Black Panther, and his father, a civil rights leader passionately committed to nonviolence.”

Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary. By Elizabeth Partridge. 2009.
This photo essay, accompanied by quotes, illustrates the role children played in the Civil Rights Movement. An excellent companion to a wordier text!

Riot. By Walter Dean Myers. 2009.
“In this dramatic novel told in screenplay format, Myers describes the New York draft riots of 1863 from the viewpoint of 15-year-old Claire, the biracial daughter of a black man and a white Irishwoman.” --Booklist

Traveling the Freedom Road: From Slavery and the Civil War through Reconstruction. By Linda Barrett Osborne. 2009
Focuses on lives of African Americans from 1800 to 1877.

Liberty or Death: The Surprising Story of Runaway Slaves Who Sided with the British during the American Revolution. By Margaret Whitman Blair. 2010.
“Illustrated with crisp reproductions, this exemplary historical survey of African Americans in the Revolutionary War provides a well-researched account of slaves in Virginia who fled to the British.” --Booklist