July 22 2009
I had a great day at camp. The first thing I did was go on the internet on a computer. And then I went to the gym to play bowling. Then I went to Arts and Crafts to make chalk.
I had a barbeque at lunch. I had some potato chips and a burger. I had ketchup, mustard and relish on my burger. After lunch I went to the Adventure Centre to play T-ball. After that I went to room 112 to have some ice cream. Then I went back to the gym to listen to some music. Camp was a lot of fun.
Jon
I don’t usually enjoy wedding movies, but this one’s different. It was posted to YouTube only five days ago and it’s already become a web phenomenon. Does it qualify as a meme? At any rate, it’s guaranteed to make you happy.
Update: This is getting surreal: The newlyweds Jill and Kevin, and their attendants all appeared on the Today Show, recreating their dance in the middle of New York.
Anyone who’s taken psychology brain-and-behaviour courses has probably come across the gruesome case of Phineas Gage. In 1848, Gage, a 25-year-old Vermont railroad worker, was using a three-foot tamping iron to pack blasting powder in rock. The powder prematurely ignited, sending the 13-pound iron firing up into his cheek and through his brain, exiting from his frontal cortex. (See an animated illustration here.) Gage not only survived this horrifying accident, but was lucid and chatty on the way to the hospital, and his normalcy was later exhibited to amazed doctors. He died 11 years later.
The standard trope was then that Gage immediately started to show unpleasant personality changes due to his brain damage. The psych textbooks seemed to revel in Gage’s bad behaviour, pointing out how he became quarrelsome, alcoholic, neglectful of his appearance, choleric and unemployable. Interestingly, there is now controversy over whether these personality changes actually were as severe as has been quoted in textbooks. Certainly the fact that he managed to travel extensively and hold down jobs, one of them driving long-distance stagecoaches, suggests that if he did have personality changes they were not long-lasting or severe in nature.
Daguerreotype from the collection of Jack and Beverly Wilgus
In 2007 Jack and Beverly Wilgus, a couple from Maryland, posted on Flickr a favourite photo that they had owned for several decades. It was a daguerreotype from the mid-1800s showing a dapper gent missing an eye, and posing with an odd, pointed object. They posited that the gent was an injured whaler with his harpoon, but were quickly disabused of that notion by commenters. The name Phineas Gage kept coming up, and intrigued, the Wilguses compared the photo to pictures of a lifecast made of Gage:
Lifemask (often incorrectly referred to as a deathmask) and skull of Gage
The pictures matched up perfectly, and if that weren’t enough evidence, on the object in their photo you could read part of the inscription that was known to be written on Gage’s actual tamping iron, “This is the bar that was shot through the head of Mr. Phineas P. Gage.” (Wilgus’s Phineas Gage website)
Though it’s hard to tell personality from a vintage photo—where people had to hold their pose for many seconds—one would like to think that this hale, assured-looking young man was not the profane wastral that he has been painted as through history.
July 18/09
I had a great first 2 days at camp. On Thursday I watched the movie Bolt. On Friday at camp I had drama in the music room, computers and sports. After those things I had lunch. For lunch I had Indian food I brought from home. I also drank some pink lemonade. I enjoyed the teddy bear picnic on Friday. I like camp. I had lots of fun.
Jon
(On Thursday Jon started his first day camp of the summer, a two-week session held at his school. I have no idea why they started the first session right after Canada Day instead of the following Monday. The ways of the Toronto School Board are strange and mysterious… —L)
July 9/09
I went to the Danforth with Mommy. I made three stops. The three stops were the magazine store, the bank and the Big Carrot. We looked at magazines at the magazine store. Mommy deposited money at the bank and I bought a bag of pepper chips at the Big Carrot.
I’m going to eat the pepper chips this afternoon.
Jon
(For this post I had Jon work on editing and spelling. I had earlier said to him that I was depositing money—he actually remembered the word (though not its meaning). Guess we’d better watch the cuss words around him from now on…—L)
July 6/09
I had a great time at the cottage. I went kayaking with daddy. There were some big waves. A kayak is a boat. I had a snack at the cottage. Mommy downloaded two new games for the iPod touch. The two new games are Millionaire and Jeopardy. In Millionaire. mommy reads the question and I touched the answers. In Jeopardy mommy has to read the questions.
Jon
(We just came back from a grey, wet, but still fine week at the cottage. I am amused at Jon’s “a snack”—we actually had far too many snacks! Once home, unprompted, Jon insisted on writing this journal entry.—L)
Toronto’s Luminato festival closes this evening with a finale by Cirque du Soleil, but Cirque’s participation actually spanned the weekend, since Friday evening.
It was then that the Nas (characters from the natural world) found themselves in the shadows of the condos and Queen’s Quay Terminal, while the Bans (characters from the urban) found themselves in the (relatively) more natural Music Garden.
In between now and then, they were apparently doing some shows throughout the weekend afternoons, and some ad lib sidewalk performances, like the buskers they had been 25 years ago.
Given the sad lapse into minor disappointment the previous night had been, we decided to wander down*, and at least get a decent walk with Jon and Photon out of it.
Personally, I didn’t think we’d see much, especially Jon, but a walk’s a walk, and on a late spring day, it’s better than TV or computer. Another adventure!
Jon’s visual comprehension slowly improves, but it will never be strong. Cirque du Soleil is an amazing combination of strong visuals, complex designs and acrobatics that amaze those with strong sight and a firm grasp of theatre and the limits of the human body. Not quite Jon’s strong suit. This is why he stayed, by choice, with Grandma and Auntie Pam when we went to Cirque’s La Nouba.
So I was very delighted when we came upon this pair:
and Jon was able, with a descriptive word or two, to get an idea that he was with a lady riding an ostrich. Though only “street performers”, they were in incredibly conceived costumes and personae.
She was regal and composed whilst riding an inquisitive wandering ostrich that choked on imaginary things it found or was given—though she was actually walking on stilts while single-handedly puppeteering this “headstrong animal”.
He was a curious, well, courtier of sorts, clearing the way for the ostrich and assisting the regal character, but on occasion studying a tourist’s camera—intently and confusedly—or trying to figure out what Photon was or how she walked on all fours.
The ostrich chokes on something imaginary it took out of someone’s hand
The ostrich visited select people, and it did come to Jon, who touched it gently, with a big smile.
We were right at a show, but it was insanely crowded, and exactly the sort of thing that would have taken a lot out of Jon. We proceeded down the street to find a Na storyteller telling a tale of the Nas and the Bans in chalk.
Eventually joined by his female compatriot:
Farther east, we found a similar—but very differently costumed—pair of Bans doing the same thing, though the male of the pair was having a bit of trouble. Having requested the assistance of some children to draw his map with him, they instead endeavoured to trap his feet within chalk circles, which was broken by someone pulling him out. Wonderfully improv’ed with a handful of excited little ones. Jon had just worked up the gumption to help when the teen in front of him did it, and pulled the Ban out.
I’m sorry I missed the finale, it would have been wonderful I’m sure. Still, needs must, and all-in-all, a good two-hour family walk! And Jon (who’s now telling select folk that he met an ostrich) got his first taste of Cirque!
* Actually, “wander” is becoming a bit of a misnomer; it can no longer be so casual. As he grows, Jon is getting harder and harder to push, not to mention load in and load out of cars, etc. Our neck of Toronto hasn’t been particularly good at keeping its sidewalks smooth and curb cuts, well, existent. While Jon can wheel himself at school on level, well-kept floors, he’s not strong (or strong-willed enough) to do it outdoors yet (not to mention with the fun of visual disability added in). More on this another day…Back ↩