I’ve been decorating my new office (ACLU of Washington recently moved to a fancier building) and playing with making panoramic pictures by stitching smaller pictures together, so I thought I’d show them both off at once.

The mask is an Indonesian depiction of the Hindu Eagle god Garuda, who uses ethics to right injustices throughout the universe (appropriate for ACLU, no?). The plants on the wall are air plants that don’t need soil. They just need to be sprayed with water a couple times a week. The building with the neato tiling on the side is the 5th and Madison condo building.

The photos were taken with my iPhone and stitched together with an open source tool called Hugin.

So I’ve booked my flight to Washington. I’ve tried repeatedly to make appointments, but his secretary doesn’t realize who I am, so that hasn’t panned out. However, I hear he frequents modern dance performances, so I’ll have to attend those regularly. Posh restaurants might be a good idea too.

I’ll be telecommuting to my day-job, and never fear, I’ll be back to Seattle in the fall. My partner Brian got some dead-end fellowship to work for a scrappy little nonprofit called Public Knowledge, so he’ll be tagging along. And I figured I’d better bring the geekling for cover when I’m attending children’s events on the lookout for Malia and Sasha.

So ping me if you’re in or around DC. I won’t be spending the whole time harassing my backwards elected officials. I do like some of them – like that dreamy Jim McDermott and his fantastic single-payer health care plan. I should bake him some cookies. I will be hopping around the east coast some while I’m out there, and you should be able to find me at local tech or storytelling events (BarCamp, PechaKucha, Ignite, etc.)

Bon Voyage!

Twitscoop scans twitter in real time for words that are suddenly becoming popular. This screenshot was taken 90 minutes after the ruling. I think it tells its own story, but I would like to add my appreciation that the first three readable words in the cloud are “ban bigots bullshit”. A rallying cry if I’ve ever heard one!

My boy Brian Rowe.

That’s my friend Gregory Heller from CivicActions showing some Obamalove.

The full set is up on Flickr. If it looks like the room keeps changing, that’s because it was actually held in a new condo building in several adjacent identical condos.

I don’t think I’ll be back to Greendrinks. I appreciate what they are doing, but the smug-white-people quotient was a little too high for me. They really should have called this photoset Stuff White People Love. (If you haven’t checked out Stuff White People Like, you have hours of laughter ahead of you.)

Opening
My husband, Brian, and I have a child in Suzuki violin. We have a quirky way of practicing, and our violin teacher keeps telling us that we should tell other parents about it, because it really does work. So this blog post has nothing to do with technology (although it does have to do with lifehacking). It’s aimed at other Suzuki parents, so if you’re one of my normal blog readers and you have zero interest in music or motivating children, then move along. I’ll be back to my normally-scheduled tech blogging next week.

Suzuki is hard work
Learning an instrument is a life-long endeavor. It requires daily practice over a long period of time. If you’re like my husband and me, you’ve made the decision that it’s worth it. Our little one (I call her the geekling) is seven. She started Suzuki violin at the age of five, and she can’t remember a time when she didn’t practice every day. That’s hard work! However, our job as a parents isn’t to help her (or bribe or intimidate her to) struggle through the hard work. I’m going to tell you about the way we practice. It’s a lot of work for us. The difference is that we know we’re working hard. If all goes as planned, she thinks it’s playtime.

Trust your teacher
There’s a reason we hire teachers. Any violinist could tell a child the 1,001 things that they are doing wrong. Edmund Sprunger says in his great book, Helping Parents Practice, that his job as a violin teacher is to tell the child the one thing that will help them the most. A good violin teacher (ours is the fabulous Christine Dunaway) will tell you exactly what to practice at home. We, as parents, have a strong urge to correct our children. It’s hard to watch them practicing bad habits, but if the focus for the week is a good bow hand, let the other stuff slide. There are a lot of things to think about while playing an instrument, and trying to focus on them all at once will overwhelm you and your child. Your job as a parent is to practice what you’re told to practice. It’s a no-brainer.

Teach your child’s body
Suzuki is about repetition. It’s about muscles and neurons. Your child wants to be a great musician, and they want to perfectly execute everything you ask them to do. Telling your child “you’re just not trying, try harder” is incredibly demotivating. You and your child have the same goals, you just need to help her whip her body and her brain into shape. Try using body and brain terminology with your child. Saying “you’re having trouble with that fast spot in Allegro” is really different from saying “your fingers are having trouble with that fast spot in Allegro”. The latter is both more accurate and more productive. The problem isn’t that the geekling always forgets the c-sharp, the problem is that we need to work together on strengthening that neural pathway, because it sure is stubborn! Get it?

Motivation
Just like adults, children need a good reason to follow directions. I think we all know that “because I said so” isn’t a good reason. We quickly learn that our children think “because it will make you a great musician someday” isn’t a good reason. There is a very important difference between adults and children here. Adults want the real reason. Children want a reason. This is the really important really hard work you need to do: making stuff up. Here’s an excerpt from a recent practice I did with the geekling:

“oh no!”
“what’s wrong?”
“gremlins have just kidnapped the willow princess, and somebody has to go save her!”
“I’ll save her!”
“okay, they took her into a dark cave. you’re not afraid of the dark, right?”
“no way! what do I have to do?”
“there’s water in the cave, but fortunately there’s a rowboat. To row the boat, you need to play the first four measures of Perpetual Motion three times with a perfect bow hand, then we’ll get to see what’s at the end of the cave.”
“okay”
“get into a good play position, here we go!”

You get the idea. If she forgets about her bow hand, then we’ve lost an oar and we need to go back to the mouth of the cave and start over. We’ve done dinosaur hunts and rock concerts and even saved the world from global warming. Take whatever excites your child this week, and roll with it. If I’m having a lousy day, and not feeling particularly creative, we’ll use a book or a myth (The Ramayana works great) so I don’t have to make up the structure. The teacher tells us what to practice, the story provides the motivation, and all I have to do is put the two together.

It’s a totally flexible method too. If she’s doing great, or it’s taking longer than I expected, then a gryphon swoops in and flies us to the end of the cave. If I feel like a little more practice is necessary, then there’s a gnome at the end of the cave who needs us to row him to his brother’s place so we can all get scuba suits because the kidnappers went underwater. We also throw in a liberal dash of Choose Your Own Adventure, giving her two (or more) productive choices to turn the story in a certain direction. We always end the lesson on an incredible victory, and she’s happy to practice the next day.

Our child is particularly kinesthetic, so we also include activities like “you’ve been sprinkled with fairy dust. put down your violin and touch every doorknob in the house so the fairies can come in.” We’ll toss a coin to decide what to do, or have her collect 8 pencils by playing something eight times, but then actually let her get a pencil out of the drawer each time she plays it. If she’s extremely wiggly, we’ve even been known to have her run around the block in the middle of a lesson then come back and play.

Some people (like my husband) can do this sort of storytelling on the fly. I usually need some prep time to look over my lesson notes and form a story outline beforehand. Do what works for you.

In closing
I hope that helps. All my work is public domain, so feel free to share this with friends, copy it, publish it, whatever. I won’t sue you. I would appreciate if you keep my name attached and let me know if you liked it and where you’re passing it on. Good luck with practice!

A print-friendly version of this post is available at http://sarahdavies.cc/suzuki.html

So I’ve dropped about two pounds. I’m a little surprised! Before this, I generally ate a ton of pasta and rice, drank my fair share of wine, and my only exercise was swimming for half an hour about twice a week. So I thought my weight loss would be more dramatic.

However, my energy level has been good, and I’ve been doing an increasing amount of Wii Fit everyday as I unlock more new games and more reps on my existing games. I started at 18 Wii Fit Credits per day (each Wii Fit Credit is one minute of exercise), and I”m now up to 40. I like doing Wii Fit, and it’s something I’ll continue after the detox. It’s an intense workout, and I’ve definitely had sore muscles, so I suspect that one of the reasons my weight has been stable is that while I am losing fat, I’m gaining muscle. And that’s great if that’s what’s happening, but I’m not sure how to tell. Maybe I should start measuring my waistline?

I did have issues with hunger the first few days, but those have subsided entirely. I now feel a good mild hunger before each meal, but nothing uncomfortable. I also felt lightheaded the first few days, but that has dissipated as well. I am eating a larger mass of food than I ever thought I could. This experiment is actually getting a little more expensive than I realized. Without the carbs and oils in my diet to fill me up, I’m going through about seven pieces of fruit, two bags of salad, and a can of beans every day, not to mention cooked veggies and soups, which is exactly what the book says I should be eating. I’m going to switch to non-organic from now on, though, because it’s about half the price in my neighborhood.

My motivation is suffering a little. We’re having a big problem trying to get any flavor into the foods. Curry powder, basil, and salsa seem to be helping the most, but they can get a little old, even after only one week. I suspect that my pallet is still used to salt and oil and cream. I’ve heard rumor that the subtle flavors of veggies become more prominent as you eat less salt, sort of like getting used to a dark restaurant from a bright street, but I haven’t experienced that yet.

I thought I would have substantial weight loss to motivate me, but I don’t. If two pounds is the difference between eating whatever I want and eating a very restrictive diet, I’ll take the two pounds. But the book says give it six weeks, so I’ll give it six weeks.

Without weight loss as a motivator, I’m thinking about adding in a glass of red wine every night. The book says it’s not great, but it is okay. What do you guys think? Is one indulgence okay when motivation is flagging?

The diet is called Eat to Live by Dr. Fuhrman, and it’s intended for folks who are morbidly obese and agree to follow a ridiculously strict diet because if they don’t, they will die. We aren’t dying, but we are serious about lifehacking – proactively intentionally making changes to our lifestyle to make it faster! better! stronger! and food isn’t an area we’ve tackled before. We also don’t need death as a motivator when we have you, dear blog readers, to hold us accountable for cheating or quitting. We are allowed to plan two cheat days where we can eat and drink whatever we want after lunchtime, recklessly retoxifying ourselves in the name of sanity. Those will be January 24th (a good friend’s wedding – can’t pass up the champagne!), and January 17th.

The premise of the diet is basically that you can eat unlimited amounts of fruits, vegetables, and beans, and about one cup of whole grains each day. He includes several recipes in his book, so we should have a decent amount of variety.

I’ll be blogging weekly on my energy level, hunger level, weight, and any other odds and ends that seem relevant or interesting.

Come Valentines Day, if we’ve stuck to our plan the whole way through, we’re going to eat and booze our way through Seattle in as many courses as we can muster.

Have you done any food/nutrition hacking? Leave your experiences in the comments!

It was also the only private school we visited that included children with learning disabilities. These children are held to the same standards as the others, but they each have a personal teacher to help them with classroom tasks. Awesome!

They incorporate a lot of science into the curriculum, with iMacs in every classroom, gardening, checking the weather, and taking care of animals.

Overall, we were impressed with the school. We will apply and see what happens.

The next school we graced with our under-caffeinated presence was the Spruce Street School.

The trump card for the Spruce Street School is that, as far as mass transit in Seattle is concerned, all roads lead to downtown, so the school is very easily accessible, and when you’re working 40 hours a week, that’s a huge factor. Also, it will be two blocks from a light rail station starting in 2009.

The music program is really impressive. All the kids learn marimba, and since there is no way to play a marimba out of key, they sound really fantastic after a few months. I wonder about the adults there though. I think listening to marimba music at work all day every day would drive me up the wall.

They have a theater program with a heavy emphasis on Shakespeare. That’s awesome. Their playground (including climbing wall) is on the roof. Also awesome.

They also have three-week “elective” periods, where teachers sign up to teach random stuff like cooking or contra dancing or juggling, and kids from any grade can sign up for the class.

They don’t have the mission or vision that we saw so strongly at Giddens.

The curriculum was extremely American-centric. They learn all about democracy and American media, and elections and presidents, but they don’t seem to learn anything about the rest of the world. Seems to me like becoming a global-citizen is an absolute requirement for being a functioning adult today, let alone ten years from now.

The weirdest part of the whole tour was that the entire school is carpeted. I’ve never seen a school with carpeting before. It seems terribly inefficient. Not sure why it bothers me so much. I just feel like schools shouldn’t be carpeted.

Overall, our opinion was mixed. The location is amazing, but the school itself seems pretty average.

This week we toured a small independent school on first hill in Seattle called Giddens School.

Giddens School was recommended to me by my colleague Leah Lee, who used to work there. She had endless praise for all the faculty and staff there, so I went in with extremely high expectations.

We first met in the library, which is a cozy little room on the top floor. It’s like a maze with creaky floors and book lined alcoves ideal for children looking to lose themselves in the wonders of reading. Our guide asked us what other tours we had been on. We told a more diplomatic version of our Waldorf experience. She seemed casual and sincere, which was a pretty big departure from the nervous and approval-seeking guides at other schools.

The guide explained that everything at Giddens revolves around their mission of social justice. This immediately impressed me. I do technology work for nonprofits because I believe that I can change the world for the better, and it’s very important for me to be able to instill that feeling in the geekling.

We went on a classroom tour, and they actually encouraged us to talk to the kids (who were all very excited to show us their work, and passionate in their love for school). Traditional academics appear to be strong there, though not spectacular. The kids get Spanish for half an hour twice a week. It’s not an immersion program, so I would guess that they come out of 5th grade exposed heavily to Spanish, but far from fluent. The music program is run by a local musician who writes social-justice oriented songs for the kids and runs an after-school choir. Each classroom has three desktop computers set aside for the kids to work on spelling, word processing, and educational games.

The kids at Giddens have a “secret garden” where they grow food. They then put the food into little red wagons and haul it over to the food bank across the street. They also plan meals for hundreds of people at the senior center down the block as one of their math projects. One of the teachers told us about how the fourth grade class implemented a postal system for the school where they sell stamps and deliver letters and packages for people. They then employed a democratic process to decide what to do with the money earned by the postal system, and ended up donating it to a local park to help them make their play structures more diverse so that kids of all ages and sizes could play there. The school has a student council which influences the decisions of the administration. Each class has representatives elected to the council.

I was very impressed by the amount of exposure that kids get to public service, democracy, and activism. After the tour, we spoke with the principal. He was very passionate about child development, and we were able to have a great conversation with him over when it’s developmentally appropriate to expose kids to things like hunger and poverty, and how to expose them in a way that inspires optimism and activism rather than cynicism and inaction.

The level of conversation that I was able to engage in with the students, teachers, and administration was orders of magnitude above the other schools we have talked to. They were open, honest, sincere, and genuinely dedicated to inspiring children to be active adult citizens.

We will definitely be applying to Giddens, and I suspect that we will become active and passionate members of the Giddens community come next year (if we can afford to!).