Note to Room Twelve

I posted this on my classroom blog at the start of my second day out of my classroom, to attend NCCE 2008. The kids could not see the picture because Flickr is blocked in our district - and hence, could not see our FOURTH XO laptop. OMG, wait 'til Monday.... (thanks, Glenn and Tami!). This was the first time in several years I'd missed a day of school. My anxiety was obviously higher than my kids'.

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Hi Room Twelve, this is Mr. Ahlness. I talked with Mrs. Luke last night, and she said things went really well in class on Thursday, and that many of you were very helpful to her and each other. Wow! That sure made me feel good - nice job.

And your writing - oh my goodness! I checked my email at 1:30 in the middle of my presentation (to about 50 teachers), and there were 28 messages!! I approved a couple, some we looked at quickly and decided to wait on, but most we did not even get to - sorry! You wrote so much!! You should be proud of yourselves.

I'm about to hop on the bus to go back downtown, but I thought I'd leave a little picture for you. You won't be able to see it at school on Friday, but maybe you can check from home over the weekend. See you Monday! - Mr. A.

tags: ncce2008 roomtwelve olpc xo

Follow NCCE in Seattle

I just set up a Hitchhikr page for the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE), February 26-28, 2008 in Seattle. Head there for latest blog posts and flickr images tagged with ncce2008.

Grab the rss feed while you're there, so they'll all come to you.

So if you're going, or if you comment on any activities happening at NCCE, please use this Technorati Tag:

ncce2008

Twitter, finally

I've read lots of posts like this one. I bet many have. I'm not rolling my eyes anymore. Here goes.

I finally broke down yesterday and jumped in to Twitter. I had held off for a variety of reasons, most related to not having enough time to do everything as it was. There was also this fear of getting involved in one more really addictive computer activity. And I really could not see what the value might possibly be.

I had set up an account months ago, and followed one person, David Warlick. I figured he was safe :) There the account sat, until yesterday. It was Mid-winter break. My wife was off doing extra work stuff. I had no excuse.

It was amazing getting started. Choosing people to "Follow", getting emails saying so and so is "Following" you, etc. Finally figuring out something worthy to say. Figuring out how to indicate an individual when you're replying to somebody in the chaos of a free for all conversation with hundreds, thousands of speakers. I'm currently following around 100, and being followed by about 50. Sounds kind of creepy at first.

If there was "Twitter for Dummies" on hand, it probably would have been helpful. Too late, I'm figuring it out on my own, like everybody else.

There are the conference folks talking: Shareski, Richardson, Levine, etc. There is the earth rhythm, as eastern N. America folks turn out the lights (except for Vicki Davis), folk out west keep going, and those in Asia start to wake up... The exchanges are funny, informative, meaningless, helpful, questioning - what a wide range.

So is it any good? Well, yes. It is amazing in a way that is hard to describe. I've seen some incredible work I flat out would have missed. Stuff I will use. Great ideas have been flying in front of my eyes constantly. And I've just been on for one day.

So there you go, my "I'm on Twitter" post. I kinda feel like one of the last edtech people in the world to jump in, and I'm sorry I held off so long. But it's good to be in there.

twitter

An XO Tale

OK, so I finally took the plunge and put together a little VoiceThread preso. The tipping point in this was discovering that it is unblocked at school! Nothing fancy here, I just used the pictures the kids had taken and are stored on our local server. Did it using my laptop's mike, as I can't get voice recording to work on our cpu's.

XO Joy

I know it seems like I've gone off the deep end with all this talk here, and in other places, about the XO laptop. Well, sometimes things happen, and you have to decide if you're on the train or off. I'm on, and my classroom is a marvelous mix of exploration and chaos right now. It's exhausting sometimes. Mostly, it's just so much fun.

Last week my classroom received another donation of an XO. We had our first donation a couple of weeks earlier. I had brought in the one that I bought right after Christmas vacation. So my kids were pretty amazed. It was funny, in some ways. I told them, exasperated, that I had just figured out how they could share TWO XO's - and now we had THREE, for goodness sake. They thought this was pretty cool, and wondered if we'd be getting more...

It's not like we don't have any other computers - we're swimming in them at this point. The XO's have put us perilously close to 1:1. Just when I thought I had all computer management issues worked out, we have three more.

But these three are so different. They connect to the internet (and thus the kids' blogs), but they can't print to our printers. They can chat and instantly share applications with each other, but they can't get to all the kids' work saved on our network. One of the biggest hurdles is it's difficult to show the kids how to use them, and find enough time for them to explore on them. It's not like a different OS, or platform - it's more like using a computer that uses a totally different language - that also does totally different things.

We are having a truly great time with them. This past week they started producing PowerPoint presentations about our XO's. They were taking pictures of them, working with a partner, still learning PowerPoint (only the second time they've used it) - but having a bast. They were almost done when we got another one - so we all rolled our eyeballs in joy as they took pictures of the three, and had to change slide content. Some of the presentations turned out pretty good, and I'll put 3 or 4 of the best online, soon. Naturally, we will be doing video later on....

Then there are the things you just never do. Like send kids to different parts of the school to see if they can still chat with each other. Good grief. We are still experimenting with the range of the mesh network - it is definitely bigger than from our WAP. But I knew I had really gone too far when I found myself pouring water on an XO keyboard so my kids could take a picture of the XO's waterproof qualities for their presentations. I really did this, I can't believe it. Of course the XO was fine.

This joy of exploration with children is one of the bonuses that comes with being a teacher. I don't get to do it every day, but I'm really thankful when it comes.



And yes, the kids are writing about our XO's. They have blogged their initial impressions (when we only had one), so there will definitely be more.

tags: xo olpc

Being a Part of the Process

Can't remember if I've ever posted about politics here before.... Here goes.

I attended my precinct's democratic caucus today at my local high school. I'd never been to a caucus before. I always thought a caucus was some sort of old fashioned throwback they used in places like Iowa. Probably served hotdishes at them....

Wrong in so many ways, and I am so glad I went. Turnout was huge. Excitement was everywhere. People scrambled to figure out what to do. When we divided up into our precinct groups, we got down to business.

(To get an idea of the look of it all, head to this post on the West Seattle Blog. The first two pictures are from the caucus at my own school. Also note the 32 comments in the 2 hours following the post, as caucus goers shared their results)

First, we had to elect a leader. We did. Somebody (actually a group) read through all the instructions in our packet. It was kind of like being on a jury. Except we had 45 adults crowded into a high school classroom. About 90% of our group had never been to a caucus before.

After a group counted everybody's initial declarations, it was announced Clinton 13, Obama 31.

Anybody had a chance to speak for up to 60 seconds. About a dozen did. I spoke briefly as a long time third grade teacher who thought the right candidate was the one who would change the lives the most for those kids as they grew up. (Had to be there to know who I thought that was - sorry).

Then everyone was asked if they wanted to change their candidate preference. Nobody did. One woman who had not decided was asked if she had a preference. She said Obama. Holy crud, I thought. How different this process was from stepping into a private voting booth.

We split up into two groups to select delegates. The Obama group got to choose 3, the Clinton group chose 1. Those delegates will go to a couple more gatherings - at the county and then the state levels - to represent us.

I personally knew or recognized about 1/4 of the people in the room. Pretty good, I thought, for city dwellers these days. All those summer block parties...

In the end it was a fantastic experience in participatory democracy. On the way out, I stopped with several others to watch a very spirited precinct in a lobby area of the school still going through the 60 seconds to speak about their candidates. So much passion. Everybody clapped for everybody (well, most of the time).

I walked home with a new acquaintance neighbor whose daughter is best friends with one of the kids in my classroom. A small world, brought even closer together by this chance to participate in a unique experience.

(I recommend In Praise of Chaotic Caucuses by Eli Sanders for a well written description of the caucus process)

A Tale of Two XO's

I haven't had so much fun just playing, since I got my Lincoln Logs set. And this time it was at school.

I had bought an XO laptop, and my kids had enjoyed exploring with it. They had blogged about their initial impressions. Some had even read from their blogs on it at a Barnes and Noble "Coffeehouse Night".

A week ago my classroom received a donation of a second XO laptop. Management of "fair" access to the first one in my third grade classroom had been a challenge, to say the least. Then all of a sudden we had TWO.

(Larry, if you are reading here, you have no idea - THANK YOU!)

Anyway, there we were with two of the coolest things you can imagine for an 8 or 9 year old. Sitting on my desk, next to my grown-up laptop.

Yesterday I somehow figured out how the two XO's could chat, via the built in mesh network. This I had heard about, but when I saw it in action, it was amazing. When my kids saw it, well they just about came unglued. The next time we tried it, it didn't work. So we worked on it, me and the kids.

Today, we finally figured out the procedure for starting a chat, extending an invitation to chat to another XO, the acceptance of that invitation, and getting started.

Once the connection was made, all else was easy. Instant IM mode: capital letters disappeared, grammar/spelling entered a different dimension... The kids were entranced.

I had let our new XO sit on the desk of our "student of the week" for 2 days. She could use it whenever she had a free moment. That was bad enough, but imagine the chorus of "Not Fair" when a couple of kids got to actually "chat" with her from the other XO. We dealt with that, weathered that storm. They know their time will come. But waiting is hard.

Enjoying this success during my lunch, sitting at my desk, I wondered whether you could share other applications on the mesh network. Silly me. Besides chat, I found "write" could be shared. It was kind of like having two keyboards with input to the same document - but not side by side. They could be a long ways apart - like maybe even from one side of a village to the other... this will be amazing, I think.

But when I found I could share "Record", I knew I really had something. Take a picture on your XO, and the other XO sees it. Record a video on your XO, and the other XO sees it. And obviously vice-versa. You don't have to "send" anything to the other XO - it is just THERE, instantly. It was mind boggling.

As you might imagine, when I showed my kids, they went nuts. I joined them. Can't remember a time when I had so much fun in the classroom. The school day ended way too soon.

Somebody might ask, "yes, but were you teaching anything, and were your kids learning anything?" Duh.

During the day we talked about what it might be like in a village somewhere where there was no electricity - but many of the kids had XO laptops, powered by hand cranks or pull strings. We talked about what it might be like for a child sitting in a little cottage sending a message to one - or many other - kids in the village on an XO. We talked, and they thought, about what life might be like in that kind of world.

We are just beginning to understand the potential of this amazing machine, just beginning to understand the collaborative vision of its creators, and just beginning to understand that there is a big wide world out there, and that our life on it is blessed with good fortune.

tags: xo olpc

Our XO Laptop

Just posted to my classroom blog:

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We just added one more computer to our classroom. Now, we have lots of fast computers - 12 desktops and 5 laptops. So you might think the newest addition would be REALLY fast. It's not. It's the slowest one, and the smallest.

It is the XO Laptop, from OLPC (One Laptop Per Child). What it lacks in speed and size, it make up for in its very cool design and its ability to do many things.

For the past two weeks, the students in Room Twelve have been trying it out. Here are some of their initial impressions, after just half an hour apiece on our XO:

About Our XO

ps - to the kids in Room Twelve.... word has it that we will probably be getting another one!


tags: olpc xo

Tictech - a little history

The following is cross posted from a list I moderate. Or HAVE moderated.

I'm putting it here because it's important to document significant moves. This one is certainly significant. In many ways.

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I've been thinking quite a bit about the history of tictech as it comes to a close. I thought it might be useful, hopefully informative, and maybe a little nostalgic for some, to review its history. Here goes...

Tictech was founded by Currie Morrison, a teacher at Nathan Hale HS in Seattle, in the 1997-98 school year, (maybe in the 1996-07 year?). I have an archive of tictech emails going back to the summer of 1998, with a "welcome back" message Currie sent to the list.

Currie came up with the name tic-tech because of the "Technology Innovation Challenge Grant", which provided some funding for him or the list; I'm not sure which. The "tic" part of the name came from Technology Innovation Challenge... the tech part just was kind of natural to add on.

In November of 1999, Currie handed the list over to me. Just looking through the email exchanges I had with him then make this hard to write at the moment. He was so wise, and he was so good. He was such a good teacher.

Tictech was at that time run using Listserv software. All text based, of course. Not user friendly - and very labor intensive.

In January of 2002 I moved the entire list to a new server, provided by The Learning Space. The Challenge Grant server running tictech had been failing, and there was nobody to provide support for list issues. This move was a big one, not without issues. I remember on the day of the move, frantically calling Ann McGlone, who was in charge of the server for The Learning Space, telling her to turn it OFF, because everybody was getting every message, sent to everyone else. I think it got shut down after each member received my "Welcome" message about 150 times. Not a real great start. I wrote some specifics about "the move" here: http://tinyurl.com/3cw6qs

But it ended up being really a good move. The list was now running on Majordomo software, and the server was very stable. Still text only (ugh), but a little friendlier and more flexible - at least I thought so... Tictech ran on that platform and at that address for a year and a half.

In the summer of 2003 I moved tictech to YahooGroups. Basically, I was real tired of the copy/paste text editing to approve list messages. But here's the email describing more specific reasons for the move: http://tinyurl.com/2surqq In the course of its stay on YahooGroups, I have made the message archive available to the public. We've been there for four and a half years. All messages posted to the list since that move are archived and searchable: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tictech

Earlier messages, posted to tictech from October, 2000 to June, 2003, are archived at http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/tictech/ I do have a personal archive of earlier tictech messages, saved from a Netscape "tictech" email folder, somehow culled from my "Pine" folders, I have no idea how - but I am happy they remain in a place where I can reminisce at times like this....

If anyone has corrections to make or details to add, please feel free... Thanks - Mark

Clarence, for the teacher

On the off chance you have come here and have not yet read Clarence Fisher's An Open Letter To Gary Stager (and comments) - go there, now.

Thanks Clarence!

Seattle XO Users

It has been a while since I've been to a meeting like this. People drawn together by a cause, by their knowledge, and by a need for assistance.

I had asked earlier if there were other educators in Seattle using XO laptops in their classrooms. I was the only teacher at this meeting, for sure. I was very intimidated by the level of expertise surrounding me. People were talking about re-imaging, builds, jabber, and sugar - to name only a few of the words whizzing around that I only knew a little about.

But everyone was so helpful and friendly. Next to me was a dad with his son, trying to get a game downloaded and installed on their XO. A really nice and smart guy named Karl (from the UW, I think) was on my other side, providing tech support for even the silliest question I could offer. He told me how you "save", "open", and "explore" on the little guy.

I took a picture here (with my XO) of folks across the table and put it on a flash drive. If you asked a question, it was as likely somebody across the room would respond as the person next to you. And there were three rooms full of us. I learned that Control-Q will force closed an application. I learned the SD slot (which I had just discovered earlier in the day) supports an unlimited amount of GB. I learned there is another Jabber server set up in Seattle, and I wrote down the location. And so much more.

There was a guy who actually works for OLPC as a kind of regional rep. who spoke with the whole group for a while. That was real cool. People volunteered to start up hardware support regionally. I even spoke with a couple of folks after the official business was over about setting up a Ning for OLPC users.

Tags: olpc xo

Public vs Private

It has to be public. Transparency wins. I should have known better.

In my rush to start up a social network on Ning for my educator colleagues, I made a decision to go with a private network. Part of this was to get rid of the ads. For an educational network that might include 13-18 year olds (secondary kids in a tech support role), Ning was willing to get rid of the ads. But I had to make the network private.

Only members could see it. Members had to be approved by me. These were for sure backward steps from where I had hoped to go, but I wanted the ads gone and the biggie was I thought I'd have a chance of getting the Ning through our school district filter.

I should have read the Ning FAQ on Public vs. Private.

Private networks do not have rss feeds.

End of discussion.

tictech.ning.com is public.

OLPC in the classroom

Yesterday I upgraded to a newer build (653) on the OLPC so I can get Internet access on it from the classtoom. WPA encription was not on the original version. It works great from home- I'm actually posting this on it via Opera at home. I'm crossing my fingers, hoping my kids will be blogging from it as well.

I've had the laptop in class this past week, and I've found very little time to let the kids really spend enough time exploring its potential. I've had to show them how to do things I know they could figure out on their own if they had enough time - and how fun is that?

Making videos is of course way fun, and gets everybody too goofy to allow it to go on for very long... and there's so much more to explore. The kids need time.

How to share equitably, ands still give every child meaningful time. It reminds me of not so many years ago when I had one computer in my classroom, and was going through the same thing.

I think I'll come up with a schedule, like 30 minutes per week per child.... If anybody has ideas or experiences to share on getting this little marvel into the hands of as many kids as possible, please leave a note here - thanks.

Letting go and pushing on

The 17 days since I last wrote here have been intense, to say the least. Rather than tell several tedious stories, I'll recount some major events - no, actions I took, and that is important - in the last 4 of those days.

• I resigned two stipend positions I've had at my school - one in building leadership, and one in technology leadership/responsibility.
• I announced the closure of an email list I've owned/moderated for tech folks in my district for a decade.
• I started a social network to replace that email list.

It was all about exercising control over things that I still have some say in. I am not walking away from doing things. I'm walking away from positions where I was looked to for action because I was in a position, and it was my "job".

I will provide that action and that help as an individual. Because I care, and because I can. Because I always have.

With the stipend positions, the obligations that came from being part of the institutions of school and district are now shed. It will cost us a sizeable chunk of change every month. The relief is fantastic. My wife and I will make do. She's with me every step of the way here.

These were not easy moves, but the termination of the list (that frequently got me in trouble with my organization) was awfully hard. I'd have done away with that 1.0 list long ago, but I could not figure out where to put that energy, that enthusiasm, and that fire - on a local level. I inherited the list from a local edtech visionary, and I most definitely felt an obligation to continue on with his pushing of the system - for the kids.

So I started a social network for edtech people in my school district. After just a few days, I'm already in the middle of a big decision over private vs. public - which could be huge, if I want the district to allow access to it through our filter. The private network is really pretty clean, with lots of external links to dubious stuff removed, etc. But in this age of transparency, it rankles me to have go this way. It is a Faustian 2.0 tech tale... stay tuned.

I have no idea where Tictech 2.0 will go, but I'm excited to test the waters. I'm a member of several small social networks, as well as Faceboook and MySpace, but I'm not very active on any of them right now. I've never started one up before on this level. We shall see...

A break to start the year

Off to the WA coast for a few days to really get away from it all. No phone, TV, or Internet. Even the cell phone doesn't work. Just the fire, the ocean, and silence. Hoping to focus my passions for the New Year. Have a good one, everybody!

Mid Year's Day thoughts

It's New Year's Eve, and I've been barraged by print, TV, and now blogs with end of the year reflections. You know - best of, worst of...

But I'm smack dab in the middle of a school year. If I start thinking back to February or March of 2007, it's sooo long ago. Those kids in that class are no longer a close part of my life. How can I think about the year of 2007 as a separate entity? It has two distinct and incomplete parts: the class of 2006-07, and the class of 2007-08.

It is this annual cycle of the classroom teacher. It starts in August and ends in June. There is a definite rhythm and pacing to a year - starting up, getting to know you, building skills, building relationships, more, more, more, and then letting go. I doubt there are many professions with such a cycle, especially where you start all over every year.

It's like a living, breathing organism. You get to "be" a part of that special organism for ten months, then shed its skin (which takes a part of you with it every time), and then take a deep breath and do it all over again.

But I love it. I love the age I teach (8/9 year olds, third grade), and I love the process.

There is much handwringing going on in some edtech blogs as the year "ends". Much ado about the state of schools, the educational system, what's wrong with teachers, why teach anymore, etc. Here are three noteworthy ones, especially because of the comments:

• Parable 2.0 from Graham Wegner
• Some New Years’ Dreaming from Will Richardson
• On Leaving Teaching to Become a Teacher from Clay Burell

I thought about adding my 2 cents on all of them, but I ran out of gas. I am outraged at many of the same things these guys talk about. But this is what keeps me going:

The 9:00 bell. That's when the kids come in the door. Thank goodness for the kids. There, I've said it again.

Yes, it kills me when I see dysfunction in my educational system. Yes, it breaks my heart when I see 4th and 5th graders not using, and losing, the incredible tech skills they had in my classroom. Yes, it is incredibly frustrating when absolutely nothing I have tried in over a decade of encouraging technology use with my colleagues has made a bit of difference.

But that 9:00 bell keeps ringing. For one year my kids and I will have an incredible experience. Nobody can take that away from us, and my kids will remember.

So, Happy Mid Year to all you classroom teachers out there, especially Clarence, Doug, Brian, and Sarah. Enjoy the rest of it!

Leaving town to find the neighborhood

It's Christmas, and I'm having a great time playing. Today I had a couple of hours, during which I left my little house and connected to people in my town - because I first connected with a worldwide network.

My vehicle for this trip was my XO laptop, named Lincoln.

I had been following Tom Hoffman's posts about the OLPC, and found one of particular interest: xochat.org Up Seemed cool to try out, so I managed to get connected today - and was amazed as little XO user icons began to populate my "Neighborhood". Great fun, and a little intimidating, as I wasn't sure exactly what to do... I asked a couple of folks to chat (I think), joined a couple of chats, and looked in on a couple of shared activities: drawing and photo/video (this made me nervous, so I didn't stay long)...

With mouse over the XO users, I saw a couple of names I recognized. Then I found one who ID'd himself from Seattle. A short Google search brought me to an XO user group - in Seattle! They even have a blog - and a F2F meeting tomorrow. I don't think I can make the meeting, but I'm definitely following the blog. I know a few of the people involved. Such a small world, but sometimes you have to travel far to find what's in your back yard.

Bouyed with confidence, I decided to try installing Opera on my XO, since the the default browser is definitely wimpy. Now, that was a challenge. I felt like I was back in the early nineties, groping around in DOS... Point and click, what's that? Only a couple of typos interrupted my progress, until I eventually had Opera running - and added as an "Activity" to my interface. Many thanks to those maintaining the OLPC wiki on the Opera install for making the procedure pretty clear and relatively painless. Web browsing is already ten times better - and once I get the hang of Opera, it'll be great. The machine really is pretty quick on the web.

Funny that it took flying so far to find something right around the corner. Such is the world in which we live.

I can't wait to get this little laptop running in my classroom. There are classroom networks and neighborhoods forming around the XO right now. I want to be ready for this. Maybe we'll find another class in Seattle :)

The Three Amigos

The Three Amigos
Originally uploaded by mahlness

Overwhelmed with an embarrassment of laptops, here they all are, with the TV in the background. Left to right:

• a Dell Latitude 610, property of Seattle Public Schools (via the grant I wrote). This doubles as my "teacher workstation".
• the XO, owned by us (via my wife's parents' generosity)
• an IBM Thinkpad R51e - owned by The Earth Day Groceries Project.
  

FW: New Feature: "Teacher Assignments"

I mentioned this before here as a part of a larger bunch of thoughts. It is such a wonderful development that I think it needs its own space and mention. I just posted this to my classroom blog on Classblogmeister:

To the readers of this blog, there is a new feature here which you might find interesting: "Teacher Assignments". In the left column of this page are assignments given by me (the teacher, Mr. Ahlness) to the third graders at roomtwelve.com.

So if you are interested in reading different points of view on and different interpretations of those assignments, please check out this feature by clicking on an assignment. All student writing on that topic will be listed in the center column (where you are reading now), underneath my description and expectations of the writers.

Many thanks to David Warlick for adding this to our blog. Happy Holidays! - Mr. A.

A Merry Christmas Story - and Poem

Doug Noon just posted a wonderful holiday greeting from E. B. White. Thank you, Doug. In that spirit of sharing on a special day, here's a poem, and a story that came our way today, on Christmas.

My wife and I were midway through our walk through our neighborhood park, and I thought the home-brewed stout I had in my pocket would have to wait for another day. But out of the corner of my eye I saw Chris. We called out, waved, and I ran over to him. I delivered the stout a little sheepishly (you would too, if you were delivering one you made to an Irishman who knows a good stout) . It has become a bit of a tradition.

Handshakes, laughs, and many thank you's later, we parted, but I heard a faint, "Mark...!" We stopped. Chris ran up to us and hurriedly put in my hand a poem he said his sister had sent him - with his reply below. We did not read it until we got home. It had started to snow...

A SOUL'S DESTROYER.

WHAT IS THIS LIFE, FULL OF CARE
WE HAVE NO TIME TO STAND AND STARE :

NO TIME TO STAND BENEATH THE BOUGHS
AND STAND AS LONG AS SHEEP AND COWS

NO TIME TO SEE, WHEN WOODS WE PASS,
WHERE SQUIRREL'S, THEIR NUTS AND GRASS.

NO TIME TO SEE IN BROAD DAYLIGHT,
STREAMS FULL OF STARS, LIKE SKIES AT NIGHT.

NO TIME TO TURN AT BEAUTY'S GLANCE
AND WATCH HER FEET, HOW THEY DANCE.

NO TIME TO WAIT TILL HER MOUTH CAN,
ENRICH THAT SMILE HER EYES BEGAN.

A POOR LIFE THIS, IF, FULL OF CARE
WE HAVE NO TIME TO STAND AND STARE.

WM. DAVIES 1871-1940.

We do indeed have time,
to stand and stare and thank
our god for all we see.
It is the same in any
age, if we but realize
that all we see is passing
and has no permanence.

The comment is so Chris, the ultimate Irish philosopher and nature lover. Added by hand with a manual typewriter, I'm pretty sure. If there were ever a time to think about this, it would be now.

It's snowing at the moment in Seattle - hard - on Christmas. Unbelievable.

Merry Christmas!