Tuesday, June 7

            I have been reading up more about Aspergers which is part of the autism spectrum and is characterized by causing individuals to struggle in social situations because of an inability or difficulty in reading social cues such as facial expressions.  So it can be hard for these individuals to understand or appreciate other people’s feelings.  Some research suggests it is helpful to teach and use vocabulary words that relate to feelings, words like “empathy” to help individuals with Aspergers.  Language it is believed has a positive effect on the brain’s ability to understand feelings therefore helping the individual understand feelings, theirs and others.

Monday, June 6

            Yesterday I facilitated a small group discussion in my daughter’s youth Sunday School class, the topic was Harry Potter, Magic and the Bible - then I taught about the book of Revelations in an adult Sunday School class.  The Methodist church has a long tradition of Sunday School classes.  The Sunday School format and use of lay teachers became even more popular in America as Methodist ministers helped found the Chautauqua Institute in 1874 which was a place for summer fun and learning along a lake in upper state New York and helped popularize the outdoor lecture style of learning.  It was originally called the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly.  Today visitors enjoy a variety of performing arts programs and classes and lectures by world famous authors/scholars in a variety of disciplines.  I would like to take the family there one summer for a one week visit.

Sunday, June 5

Rafael Nadal’s win this weekend over Roger Federer for his sixth French Open tied my childhood favorite player, Bjorn Borg’s record six French Opens.  A couple years ago Roger Federer  surpassed with six Borg’s previous record five Wimbledon titles. So it all made me consider who is the best tennis player of all time?  Today, tennis players are measured by how many of the major titles they have won.  The major titles are the Australian Open (January, hard surface), French Open (May, clay), Wimbledon (July, grass) and U.S. Open (September, hard surface).  Roger Federer currently has the most at 15 and has won at least one of each, completing a “career grand slam”.  So I would have to go with Roger since he has the most and can say he has won each of them.  Some say Rod Laver was the greatest because he won two “in the same year grand slams.”  The only other males to win each major were Fred Perry, Don Budge, Roy Emerson and Andre Agassi.  So Roger’s total and his ability to master each surface makes me give him the nod.

Saturday, June 4

            A campaign has begun to build a presidential library at Mount Vernon for George Washington’s papers and presidential memorabilia.  Presidential libraries as we know them today did not really start until President Hoover’s in his home state of Iowa.  President Reagan’s may have kicked off the wave of state-of-the-art facilities designed to attract visitors.  President George W. Bush’s is being built on the campus of Southern Methodist University.

            We went to see our first such libraries a couple summers ago going first to Austin for Lyndon Johnson’s on the University of Texas campus and then George H. Bush’s on the Texas A. & M. campus, stopping for a tour of the Blue Bell ice cream complex along the way.  (That’s the part the kids really liked.)  We hope to eventually see all of them.  Gerald Ford has one on the University of Michigan campus.

            The three presidents with the greatest personal libraries were probably John and John Quincy Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  One can see the Adams family library which is in the original building of its own at their family home in Quincy, Massachusetts and then some of Jefferson’s books are still at Monticello with the rest in the Library of Congress.

Pie is very important to me.  From the first slices of apple pie Mom would buy me as a treat after a check-up at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit to the Strawberry Rhubarb we ate with our hands in the car as college students returning from a trip to a cider mill near Ann Arbor to the banana cream made by the Mennonites who catered the Tulsa Maintenance Base cafeteria for American Airlines to the coconut cream at the Cotton Gin restaurant outside Dallas to the peach or apricot pies my family will buy me whenever we stop at a roadside gas station or convenience store in West Texas to the exotic such as buttermilk, chess and egg nog pies.  The best pie ala mode combinations in my opinion are peach pie with Blue Bell peach ice cream, pumpkin pie with Blue Bell pumpkin ice cream and of course apple with Blue Bell vanilla bean ice cream.  Two new bakeries have opened near us that specialize in pies!

Thursday, June 2

            Writing is the extension of human language and literature across time and space.

Wednesday, June 1

            Etchings found on 8,600-year-old tortoise shells in China may become the world’s oldest evidence of writing if researchers confirm they are linked to the Dawenkou culture of 2800-2500 BCE.      

The oldest language is thought to be Sanskrit of the Indo-Iranian family.  

The oldest literature may be mythological stories from the Babylonians and written in Sumerian on clay tablets.  One of the most famous was the Epic of Gilgamesh.  

Of course way before all of this we know humans were trying to communicate with pictures and symbols as many cave drawings have been found and dated.  

And before this we don’t know when sounds were used such as grunts and groans or when verbal language first developed.  The earliest and greatest writing was thought to have been written recordings of oral traditions such as Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad and the many books of the Bible.

It is the same with gestures or sign language, we just don’t know when.  

We don’t know when man’s brain developed to the point where it prompted humans to want to share information.  

And the ultimate question, when did information itself first arise?