New Years the New Thanksgiving

Over the Thanksgiving holidays Jeremy and I were talking about Thanksgiving. I like the holiday, especially the history behind it but sometimes I think the way we celebrate it is a little silly.... But then again food isn't really my thing.Anyway I was just talking about how it seems to me from my uneducated point of view, that Thanksgiving was originally not just being grateful in general but being grateful for the outcomes that your own labor and the hand of providence brought about... In other words being grateful for the harvest because of the work that you put in and for what you were able to reap from it. I hope that made some sort of sense... anyway, I was trying to describe this and I was also mourning a little bit that this isn't really how we think of Thanksgiving anymore mostly because we no longer are farmers, when Jeremy said "isn't that what New Years is for?"
So, this New Years, I hope you are able not just to set some new goals but also be grateful for the things that you have accomplished in partnership with God.

This is what I accomplished.

Christmas: A time of Traditions

We set up a Christmas tree this week. It was really fun to see how it all came together.
I really wanted to have a live tree, which we got and smells awesome. It is set in my parents Christmas tree stand, with their star on the top. Jeremy claimed the right to wind the lights on. So he wound some colored lights that his parents had around it. We both prefer colored lights on Christmas trees. I also put my parents bubble lights on our tree, a tradition from my great grandma. Then we both hung our childhood ornaments as well as a few new ones on the tree. At the foot of our tree is a beautiful Christmas tree skirt that my sister made.

I go into all these details because I thought it was so fun how we were able to combine old traditions with a mix of some new ones, that might be our own someday.
That is one cool thing about Christmas, not only is it about connecting and reconnecting with friends and family around us but also with those that have gone before.

Facilitating Lifelong Learning

My dad always says that it doesn’t matter what you don’t know if you know how to learn. Knowing how to learn is a skill that is beneficial throughout life. Educators can increase students’ desire to be life-long learners by creating an environment of curiosity and facilitating involved learning.

The teaching environment is vital for student engagement. As a teacher’s assistant for various professors and classes, students approached me most frequently when there was ambiguity abut assignments. A clear syllabus or online portal with policies, assignments, dates, and rubrics decreases stress for students so that they can focus on learning and not on guessing what the instructor requires of them. In addition, instructor feedback on important papers and tests transforms grades into a learning experience rather than a decree of fate. Organization and feedback enhance the learning environment, but more can be done as well.

Growing up, my home was a learning environment. My mom would look up everything from William Henry Harrison to the Linnaean system in her encyclopedia set, while I begged her not to tell me what she discovered because I didn’t need to know for my homework. Now her spirit of curiosity has rubbed off on me and I recognize that questions from students and self can be the most impelling motivators. A classroom environment based on organization, feedback and curiosity sets the stage for long-term learning.

Life-long learning is encouraged through active teaching which requires students to understand reliable sources, make connections, and explore. As an undergraduate one of my professors assigned a text book that he had written. This made me realize that real researchers are not so distant as they may seem. When instructors assign readings and give lectures not only based on textbooks but also peer reviewed literature it builds students’ confidence in learning from the source, helps them understand what a reliable source is, and gives them an understand of how real research happens. When instructors encourage discussion and other projects that guides students to make connections it helps students remember and apply what they learn. Sometimes when giving tours of paleontology museums I compare extinct animals to Pokémon and suddenly the fossils come to life. Such connections, whether made by the instructor or by students, in groups or individually leads to increased engagement with the material and opportunities for exploration. In my high school physics class, we dropped pumpkins off the school roof to calculate that velocity equals distance over time. This personal experience with equations made the principles understandable. When students are able to explore for themselves, they are more likely to internalize the subject matter. When instructors provide original sources, and opportunities to make connections and explore it leads to active learning.

Learning is enhanced when instructors create an environment of stability and curiosity and then facilitate interactions with the material that is based on original sources, and students’ own application. This type of education can lead to life-long learning, so that when students confront the unknown, they have confidence in their own ability to learn.

Spirit of Curiousity

This is the mandible of Thomomys umbrinus aka a Southern pocket gopher. You can tell it is a 

gopher because of the small bump on the back of the jaw. The base of this bump starts at the "1" and it appears to be for the end of the incisor. Yes that tooth goes all the way back there. 

At work I often spend a lot of time inventorying and cataloging random bones. This can get really boring! but when I am able to keep up an attitude of curiosity it can be really fun. Before inventorying various rodent mandibles I could only recognize them as rodent, now I can tell gopher mandibles from marmots, pack rats, rabbits, and porcupines (granted those are bigger). The process of discovery was really fun and it made me excited to perform the inventory.

My problem is keeping that spirit of curiosity, because it is sometimes difficult to do, and then the monotony press in...

Questions and Observations

Nearly every work day I walk past a replica cast of a giant sloth skeleton. It's pretty impressive, and it is one of the more popular exhibits at the museum.
The other day I came across a large mammal scapula in the museum collections. The animal it was from wasn't identified so I thought I would give it a shot. I googled some mammoth and mastodon scapulas and then realized I had no idea what a giant sloth scapula looks like, despite walking past a beautiful example almost every day! So the next time I walked by, I actually took a closer look.
This experience made me realize two things about questions. First, one reason why questions are so important is because it causes us to actually slow down and make important observations. Second, it is easy to see things (skeletons/objects/problems/infrastructure) as single entities and only when a question comes along do the individual parts become visible.

Perfect for What?

A couple of weeks ago I went with Jeremy to his ecology class. It was fascinating. They talked about various types of photosynthesis (who knew there were multiple types?) and how they were each good for different situations. They also talked about other evolutionary trade offs. I was struck how different animals and plants were perfectly adapted... for their environment. They were all different and all perfect for their situations even though they still have pros and cons. The desert version of photosynthesis keeps plants from loosing water but it makes it so the plants have to grow really slowly, while other types of photosynthesis make it so the plants can grow fast but if they also loose more water.
Sometimes I think it is easy to get caught up in trying to be perfect or wanting the perfect.... something. But the thing is there is no one situation and therefore there is no one perfect solution. Therein lies the beauty. You can be perfect! for your situation.

Mesa Verde Two

​So like I said we went to mesa Verde and it was amazing but.....

It was frustrating too. A lot of what I learned about mesa Verde in school was about you're there was a lot of violence in the region at the time, but every ranger we talked to denied this, telling us that that was old information and that there is no evidence for violence.

So when we came home I did several google scholar searches and even contacted my college professors, (professional archaeologists) who have studied the archaeology of the area. Everything I looked at said or alluded to the violence of the area. My professors said the same thing, even suggesting that the very presence of the cave dwellings was a proof of violence. They they ended their emails with tactful sentences about political correctness and politics causing the Park service to blatantly lie about the state of things.

I know revisionist histories are a thing but it is still disturbing to find it for yourself. and why? Why is extensive scientific evidence so feared? Who cares if someone's possible ancestors were fighting? Every one has ancestors who fought, who were violent. I like to tell people about how one of my ancestors was the first white man hung in the America's for murder. And when people claim offense for truth being spoken (or at least the most likely scientific evidence) I think the warning bell has gone off. Instead of teaching falsehoods to the unsuspecting to assuage their feelings we should be helping people be resilient enough not to take offense at all.

Mesa Verde

​About a week ago we went to mesa Verde. I had never been there but I had learned about it in my anthropology classes.
It is a national park that has multiple archaeological sites. Some are houses and other buildings on the mesa tops where they farmed. But the impressive sites, the ones people really go to see are the cliff dwellings. Giant multi level pueblos nestled in natural caves and alcoves high above the canyon floor and nearly inaccessible from the mesa tops.
I don't think I have ever gone to a place that has sparked my imagination like this place. It was awe inspiring and just filled me with curiosity. How would life be like to live on the side of a cliff but be part of an otherwise normal agricultural society. What was the violence like that would force you into living like that. If the best source of water was 9 miles away at a bottom of a canyon what was water gathering like?
I already wrote a book about a hunter gatherer society, in large part because I was fascinated by what life would be like as a hunter gatherer. I kind of want to write one about a complex cave palace dwelling society to explore the possibilities....

Satisfaction

​I've never really budgeted before. I've kept track of where my money goes and I've avoided spending money but that isn't really the same as planning on spending a certain amount and then doing things to make that happen.

Lately Jeremy and I have been budgeting, especially in terms of groceries and I have never found grocery shopping so satisfying. Usually when I have completed my grocery shopping it is like, "great, I'm done with that necessary item." But since we've been budgeting successfully it has not only been a chore to check off, but it has also been an accomplishment. Is it any wonder addictive computer games tend to have lists of simple requirements that you can accomplish each day and gain a bit of that sense of satisfaction.

Necessary Art

I had a conversation with a friend this week that surprised me. She basically said art wasn't necessary and for the most part shouldn't even be a major is schools.
I don't know why she feels so strongly this way, although I know it is not because she hates art, in fact she is a gifted amateur artist, but I disagree.
Me the person who only does art if I can find some sort of practical reason for it.
I think that art is all around us, whether it is architecture, or stickers, or gourmet food. We all appreciate different forms more then others but if it wasn't necessary would we, as a race, be driven to create so frequently.
Art makes me happy. It provides peace. I think nice art can contribute to the emotion and the feel of a location. It provides emotional connections. It is evocative and freeing. I think the act of creating brings us closer to God, after all who is more creative?
Art may not be entirely necessary for the human body but surely it is necessary for the spirit.

Search Parameters: Part 2

Quite a while ago I posted about search parameters, but I was thinking about it again recently.
Growing up, I went on hikes and walks with my mom. She notices birds and flowers and names them so I started noting them too. Then, I studied archaeology and I started noticing chert fragments used for projectile points and broken glass. Then, I became curious about firehydrants. Then, I started learning about bones and became fascinated by them. As my nephew once said after I found a bone on a hike, "of course you'd be the one to find a bone." Then, I studied geology,
and rocks and geologic features started popping out at me. And now, I've been going on hikes with Jeremy more and I keep noticing bugs. I kind of love how my search parameters keep getting added to, because really it is just more things to appreciate and learn about.
One thing I try to do in my writing, an character building is to make different characters have different search parameters. I think it is a simple way to add a bit of a different feel to the point of views of various characters. For instance one of my characters likes birds, while another likes horses. When I write from the point of view of the one that likes birds I try to mention more birdsong and seeing specific birds while ignoring horses except to notice their presence.
As I concluded in my last post about search parameters though, what makes even more of a difference over specific likes and dislikes or educational biases is attitude. Am I looking for the positive or the negative or perhaps how to be a hero or a victim. Things like that are bit more tricky to add to a written character and probably even trickier to notice in your life but perhaps all the more important because of that.

Masks

I like a series of books by Sarah M Eden. Each book is about a different brother. In one of the books the mother of all these boys says to one of them "You all keep yourselves tucked safely behind various masks and walls, whether it be isolation or playing the fool or clinging to the appearance of impeccable respectability."
One of the reasons I like the series is because each book is about one of the brothers being brave enough to reveal themselves, to come out from behind the mask or wall they hide behind. And they each do it in a slightly different way because their mask was different to begin with.
This week I submitted my book Legend Speaker for possible publication (again). I wrote a cover letter for it that Jeremy kindly told me was boring... he was right and it forced me to confront my own mask.
When introducing myself I immediately want to say something to portray myself as boring as possible. Like telling people an interesting fact about me is that I have brown hair or I like to dig holes. When writing emails or cover letters or resumes I hide behind stiff formality. At first I told Jeremy it was because I hate talking myself up, which is true, to an extent.... but why do I hate talking myself up? Is it really because I hate bragging... or is it more about revealing myself, being vulnerable, showing excitement...
I was able to rewrite it in a way that wasn't boastful but it did show my excitement about what I've done, and yes it was a lot less formal.
I have been surprised at how much marriage reveals masks.... its been good but a bit uncomfortable.

Using Words with Power

Jeremy says I over analyze words....
The other week at church people were asked to describe attributes of God and some of the words that came up were Omnipresent, and Omniscient etc. Which are true and everything but it doesn’t really mean anything to me personally.
I think language is a super powerful tool, but we often don’t use it to its full advantage. I think one of the most annoying ways we don’t use it properly is when we say things that don’t even mean anything to us. We have all these big words that we throw around but sometimes they don’t represent any better what we meant then a simple word. That isn't always the case of course. People make fun of scientific papers for being overly dense, and they probably are but sometimes a really complicated word is so specific that using it can be far more succinct and clear then a lot of more ordinary words.

Big Picture Little Picture

One of our first stops at the petrified forest we saw little wood chips and chunks of logs. We were amazed at how wood-like they looked (see my last post) and also how common they were.

One of the next places we stopped was a lookout on a low plain where huge chunks of petrified logs scattered the landscape. It was pretty impressive, and once we went down in amongst them it was even more impressive because the ground was just covered with tiny pieces of petrified wood, absolutely covered!

Later in the week we went to another area where the complete logs were being eroded out in place and we could see just how long a single log could be.

It was really neat to see how the little picture (just how many wood chips there were) really made the big picture (the long logs) that much more impressive, because we knew that for each huge log there were that many tiny pieces. The reverse was cool too because understanding the larger picture of pretty much an entire forest of giant trees made us appreciate the beauty of each little fragment.

I feel like often people tel you to either smell the roses or look at the big picture... conflicting advice? but really it is both of those perspectives that make the other all the more meaningful and amazing.

Not Believing Our Eyes

For our honeymoon we went to Arizona for a week and spent much of the time in the Petrified National Forest. It was beautiful and deserty and warm and covered in petrified wood chips. Some of the petrified wood was beautiful bits of colored stone. What I usually think of when I think of petrified wood but what was far more impressive to Jeremy and I were the pieces of shattered stone that looked like modern wood chips, so much so that we felt compelled to pick them up over and over and over again just to drop them on the ground so they could hit their companions and "chink" against them in a very non wood-like sort of way.

Sometimes it looked like we had come across a freshly chopped log with wood chips all around.

Sometimes chunks of charcoal were scattered around.
But everytime my eyes were fooled and it was not wood.... at least it hadn't been wood in a very long time! And despite knowing the liklihood of these woodchips that I continually picked up would probably not be wood I still had to check and prove my eyes wrong.
How grateful I am for multiple senses to test things with and how grateful to know that sometimes my senses are fooled...

Fossils For Kids

This week I went to an elementary school to show off my fossils to a couple of groups of kids. I used fossils from my own collections and some of my friends. It made me realize that sometimes the fossils you collect for coolness are not necessarily the best for educational resources. In other words if I was to collect fossils for educational reasons I would definitely want some plant fossils, amber, tracks or coprolites and a modern longbone.
I'm sadly lacking in plant material, not counting my petrified wood. Amber is an important way things fossilize. My most obvious modern bone, other then skulls, is a moose vertebra which quite a few of the kids asked if it was a tree (which I don't really understand but there you go). Tracks or coprolites are really good trace fossils (the type of fossil no one ever thinks about). They show evidence of the animal but is not part of the animal itself.
I also realized that some of the fossils I do have that don't actually look that cool are really good learning tools. For example the petrified wood is just a big chunk but it is a good example of how the wood becomes a stone. And I have a little piece of sandstone that has imprints of tiny shells and it was the best trace fossil I had.
It was a fun activity though and maybe some of the kids will remember that not all fossils are dinosaur bones!

Learning from Journals

I recently re-read my journal from about a year and a half ago to up to 6 months ago. It was really interesting. First, I think journals are weird because time seems to go by so fast. Each entry, each day is so short that I can get through months in a single sitting. Also even though it was not very long ago I had already forgotten so much, particularly the hard and sad times in my life had been glossed over in my head. My journal seemed like the whole time was a lot more difficult then I remember, but to be fair I think sometimes journals have a tendency to emphasize the bad because it is a safe place to vent. Another thing that was fun is remembering the things I didn't include about certain events. For instance I wrote about going to an event and I went away annoyed but didn't explain why... or at least fully why I was annoyed... But I remembered. However, the thing I enjoyed most reading back through was seeing God's hand in my life. Having the perspective of even a few extra months I was able to better understand the feelings and experiences I was going through in the moment. God answers prayers and the longings of our hearts.

Puzzles and Dinosaur Puzzles

So I've been working at a new project at work lately. In the collections they have what they think is 4 individuals, of an iquanodontid species from the same quarry. My job is to try to see if I can figure out which bones go together because they were not articulated (or in place) when they were found. I have worked on and off on it for about two weeks. One thing I noticed was that especially in the first couple of days I wasn't accomplishing much because I was organizing all the data in several different ways, sometimes unnecessarily. When my professor asked me about it I told him off the cuff that it was like doing a puzzle that doesn't actually fit together. He laughed and agreed.
Then I started thinking more about it and realized that when I do puzzles with my family (3D of course) I do the same thing I organize the pieces until they are so subdivided that there is pretty much only one choice.... it makes the puzzle really easy, it just takes a long time to actually get to the point where I'm actually putting pieces together.
Anyway, it's been an interesting process, and I'm a little sad I can't tell more about which pieces go where but I think I made some good process. And it was also interesting to realize how much my problem solving strategies were the same for both puzzles and separating out individual dinosaurs.

This is a picture I took of the organized foot elements. The left feet on the left and the right feet on the right (surprisingly) with the largest individual on the bottom and the smallest at the top.

Changing Importance

The other day I was looking for some messages on facebook and came across one someone sent to me 4 years ago and I had never seen it. (I have used facebook in the last 4 years but they weren't a friend so it never notified me... I feel like facebook could handle that better but that's another subject).
It was a woman who lives in my grandmother's house and she asked if I was the same Rebecca Esplin who hid messages in my grandmother's yard. Despite the message being 4 years old I responded with an excited yes, and we have chatted a bit about how her kids have had such fun finding a few of the messages. What is funny is that I don't think I have thought about those secret notes/treasure hunts we did as a family for a long time. As a kid I remember writing about them for school assignments and telling people about it when talking about our vacations. Hiding and finding those notes was one of the highlights of my childhood and yet now it isn't something that I even think about very often.
I guess it's just interesting how something so important at one point in your life just becomes a fond memory at other points in your life. The same is true for people. There are people from my childhood that were really important for awhile and now i have no interaction with them at all except for fond memories.

Age Assumptions

This weekend I met quite a few new people and it got me thinking about how often I make assumptions about age, mostly just relative to me. However some of my assumptions tend to be based on inaccurate things. If someone is married I almost always assume they are older than me even though I know that is ridiculous. A woman who looks really dressed up with makeup also makes me assume they are older.
Maybe it is not so much that I assume other people are older than me is that I seem to downplay how old I am.... I think my brain is convinced I'm still 18..... That is until I spend time with a bunch of 20 year olds....

Big Events, Small Moments

Big life changes often take a long time to sink in. I'm engaged to get married which is a pretty big change and it would make sense if the times when it felt the most real would be significant events like the proposal, or telling parents or things like that but it hasn't really been that way. The times when this change has been the most real has been small moments like when we are introduced as a couple, or when we refer to something as “ours.”
Every large event is made up of innumerable small moments maybe that is why they are the things that are significant.

Humor and Hurt

When I was about 8 or 9 (but maybe a little older) I had a friend over for the weekend. We had sleep overs every couple of months and had been friends since we were 3 or 4. We were really good friends (and still are) and were really comfortable with each other.
For whatever reason that weekend we took to calling each other names. For the most part, I think I had been calling her weird and she had been calling me freak. They weren't really meant as insults but we kept saying them. That night she was on the top bunk of my bunk-bed and after I brushed my teeth I walked into my room super frustrated with her (I don't remember why). I stood on the edge of the bottom bunk and looked at her and with gritted teeth called her weird, and freak, and some other things that we had said that day. And I meant everyone as a bitter insult. I've never been one to call people names in seriousness but I felt like I could because it was just the same words I had been using...
I think after that we went to bed in silence (which was an unusual experience), but since then I have been more cautious in how I speak, even in jest (maybe especially in jest) and I have always remembered that experience. It scared me how words used in a silly context could so easily become permissible to use in anger and I never wanted that to happen again.
I know I think about words and phrasing more than most people but I don't think it is just words/names. I think humor in general can be a dangerous line because humor is fun and delightful but walks the line of hurt and misunderstanding... and I don't know how to always stay on the correct side of the line.