We had a very good visit this Mothers Day to my mom at Symphony Manor, the nursing home and memory care facility in Roland Park where she lives. They had a singer performing "Frank Sinatra style" music and a big reception, including finger sandwiches and raisin biscuits, in their lobby. Our son, Matt, kindly joined Barb and me and I can't thank both of them enough for conversing with my Mom and patiently going through the usual set of pictures that I brought along to show her what is happening in the rest of the world including pictures of our wonderful chickens on the farm. Afterwards, Matt made sure that Barb was taken to her favorite restaurant, Johnnie's in Roland Park. We had a fine meal.
The month of May has been an astonishingly busy month for my videotaping business through Barb's
TV news recordings. I've been working for the University System of Maryland, State Sen. Jim Rosapepe, Mosaic Community Services, and I'm especially grateful for the opportunity to videotape another wedding. This time, it was a gift from my sister Pegg to Phoebe Marie Brown and Adam Joseph Minacapelli who were married at Trinity Episcopal Church in Towson, same as Pegg and Larry. Phoebe and Adam are a beautiful young couple and the church is very impressive.
The videotaping job for State Sen. Rosapepe has a particularly sweet place in my heart. It introduced me to the College Park Academy, an experiment in learnng with the University of Maryland College Park. The concept is called a "hybrid" in online learning and it boils down to every student getting a laptop when they arrive at the school and not having to carry any school books. All of their lessons and textbooks are online. The school has teachers who mentor the students, but the students can proceed at their own pace. They interact together, a point made clear by Chancellor William Kirwan who was interviewed for the project. The students, he said, pick up so many skills that they will need in the work place including working together on group projects and using work stations (see photo above). The computers track everything including the students' progress in learning and the data accumulated by the work stations give scientists an insight into what lessons are working and which are not. Quite impressive.
Of course, all of this busyness means something had to suffer and this year it was work on the garden. We get the potatoes planted and the asparagus is doing great in only its second year, but the other cold weather plants such as onions and radishes didn't get planted this year. What did get done is a doubling of the size of our chicken run! Our four hens are much happier now that they have more space to run around. Our neighbor, Art Wannlund, reports that they have a new favorite food: grass. He scooped up a lot of it after the first cutting of the lawn and the "girls" couldn't be happier.
It is hard to believe that we are just one month away from our first trip to the Grand Canyon!
