I went to a conference at the Fields Institute and gave a five minute “lightning talk” on my work around active learning and applications. It was very fast. The thing that I enjoyed most was seeing friends from the mathematics education community that I hadn’t seen in a long time. For a number of them, it had been “two kids and a Pandemic” since we last spoke.
We made a trip out to East Toronto for the Lakeshore African Violet Society Spring Sale. I came home with eight new plants.
When I got home from the sale, I found an e-mail in my inbox from the attender who told me the story about growing violets as a child. Apparantly, someone Googled the sale, found my blog post, forwarded it to the relevant person, and she contacted me. Things happen fast on the internet!
I am so glad that she reached out. Also, she plans on sending me some mother of thousands plantlets. This interaction led to me getting the contact information of the quilt maker and sending her a picture of Mira snuggling her new quilt. She responded saying that she really appreciates the photo and will share it with her quilting friends. I feel connected to the Lakeshore AVS in a personal way now.
The early part of the week was spent at One Dish One Spooon Retreat. It was a really lovely time. My notes from the experience are a complete hodge-podge which I haven’t touched up at all. I think that this says something both about: taking notes in public, and the sort of thing that one learns at such a retreat. Did I learn some deep and profound things? Yes! Can I summarize them in a paragraph? Nope.
This week my blogging friend Brandon closed down his blog due to idiots berating him on social media. This bums me out. We sent a bunch of e-mails back and forth. I often got inspired by his writing. When I saw his farewell post, I sent him a shocked e-mail expressing my condolences about closing down the blog. I would put a link to Brandon’s Journal here, but the domain is dead.
Don’t be mean on the internet!
Taylor recommended The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka. I took it and Research is Ceremony along with me to the retreat. Both of them made for excellent reading; I hope to write up little notes about them.
Sitting and reading on the couch in the lodge was luxurious. I don’t have a great spot to read at home and often read laying in bed late at night.
The pitch that I sent FYMSiC last week about the fundamental theorem of calculus was well received. They’re asking that I don’t use many formulae because the technology that they use for sending the newsletter doesn’t play well with $\LaTeX{}$. So, this will be mostly an education piece rather than a math piece.
During the retreat, I went for an excellent hike.
In general, I didn’t move much this week.
I’m noticing that I don’t usually have much to say for the “Moving” category of these posts. Perhaps it is time to ditch them? Or, flipping that around, perhaps this is a reminder to lean in to movement?
As for play, I did a fair bit of loop braiding at the retreat. Making five-loop friendship bracelets for my neighbours kept my hands busy during the talks. I think that I am going to move on to learning 7 loop braids. It looks like designs really open up after seven or eight loops.
I’ve been writing this post using my phone and ProtoArc keyboard.
It makes for a fairly minimal setup — physically light and easy to carry.
I just ssh into my desktop machine at work and edit things there.
Connect Bot, an Android SSH client, isn’t playing nicely with screen.
I would like to find an alternative because other than that hiccup,
the setup is pretty sweet.
Published: May 1, 2025 @ 16:15.
Last Modified: May 2, 2025 @ 17:25.
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