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The Maestro of Glass

29/2/2020

 
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Glass is an amazing material!  It is transparent, can be delicate and easy to shatter or it can be strong, it can be colored and be manipulated to become any shape an artist or craftsperson desires. It is mostly sand with some other chemicals mixed in, depending on what it will be used for.  In order to change its shape, it must become a liquid  and that requires extremely high, red-hot temperatures--2800°F (1500°C). Working with glass requires skills and respect.  Expect failure from shattering (never mind, it can be remelted) and always the danger of serious burns.   

Dale Chihuly is a visionary who has mastered the manipulation of glass to create art.  His life and work are captured in World of Glass: The Art of Dale Chihuly by the award-winning team of iNK author Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. In this biography, a first for young people, Chihuly  comes alive as an extraordinarily bold person who was hooked on glass the first time he blew a bubble in a glob of molten glass at the end of a steel pipe.  If he twirled the molten bubble of glass it widened into a disk.  And he could add color to the molten glass by rolling it in shattered glass color sticks.  Chihuly has created distinctive glass sculptures that are sometimes massive, brilliantly colored and as eye-catching as they are light catching.  

His works begin with an imaginative sketch on paper.  He has a team of artisans to help him create his vision, which took a hit when he lost one eye by going through a windshield in an automobile accident:

" 'There was no despair because I just felt so lucky that I didn't lose both my eyes.' Instead of an artificial eye, he put on a swashbuckling black eye patch.  It became one of his trademarks." 


​The authors describe how this loss, which cost him depth perception, and the physicality of working quickly to shape molten glass led him to forming a team of glassblowers who could create his vision:

​"After dislocating his shoulder in an accident while body surfing, Dale finally gave up blowing glass.  He assumed the role of director making drawings in the hotshop to pass along ideas to his team.  His ability to lead as well as to spot talent revitalized him."

World of Glass is a beautifully produced book, lavishly illustrated with full colored photographs and including a  double-wide page to be unfolded, emphasizing the scope and power of Chihuly's work.  Greenberg and Jordan had personal access to the Maestro himself, as well as his team.  The back matter includes a list of places where you can see Chihuly's masterpieces for yourself. Only then can you truly marvel at the scale of his work.  

Publication date: May 12, 2020







An Outstanding Webinar Experience

26/2/2020

 
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 From time to time, over the years, I sign up to attend a webinar.  One was called "The Non-Lecture Lecture."  There was a speaker (lecturing) and a chat going on simultaneously.  It involved multi-tasking reading the chat, answering the chat, listening to the speaker as he chuckled reading the comments.  I lasted five minutes as a participant.  But it was such a phenomenon that I watched to the end as the many participants finally clicked on an icon that gave the speaker a virtual round of applause. 

As a person conditioned to watching talking heads on TV, I always found these webinars lacking personalities and production value.  But today was different.  I think Education Week has hit on a format that allows for REAL audience participation in REAL Time.  The topic for the discussion is above. The conversation was divided up into six areas with a virtual "booth" in the virtual "lobby." There was a different question to chat about in each booth.  That meant I could enter a chat room, click on the green "chat" button,  read what others were saying and add my two cents where I felt I could make a contribution or add support.  This allowed me to find people who were saying things that interested me. 

At the end, there was a live-streamed video discussion from each editor who headed up a virtual booth.  One of them actually quoted something I had written!  How 'bout that!  It also allows the conversations to hang around in their archives, which you can refer to later.

Of course the skills you need to do this well are reading and writing. I do that every day so participating was easy for me.  I think that this format is a real innovation.  It allows individuals to fully have their say in real time but also in their own time and according to their own interests.  

If these coming webinar summits interest you, check out the new Education Week.  It is really exciting to see a novel use of technology coming from an educational source where individual voices can be captured and heard.  

An Honorable President

19/2/2020

 
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Painting by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860)
I am not a historian. But one of my greatest joys has come from reading history as written by iNK history writers. Yet my knowledge has gaps, which I try to fill.  For the past few days, the History Channel has run a miniseries on George Washington.  Suddenly, he is no longer a clichéd
"father of our country" or the somewhat sour face on a dollar bill.  Despite his flaws which included his strong temper and depending on enslaved people to run his farm, this series illuminated how his most important trait, his character, was built.  

In the eighteenth century honor was an important concept.  First,  it meant that you were your word.  You met declared obligations. (Period!)  You had an internalized sense of right and wrong.
You owned your mistakes and you fought for your beliefs, especially when they pertained to the greater good.  For Washington, there was no higher calling than being a soldier.  In his youth he fought many battles for the British Army, hoping to earn his way to becoming a commissioned officer.  Most of them he lost; but he learned.  When he finally realized that the British generals looked down on him as less-than-officer material at a time when the colonies were becoming restive under the rule of King George, III, he was ready to do his duty and take command of the rag-tag militia of the colonies to fight for freedom from English rule and for self-government of the United States.  It was a formidable task.  There was no greater fighting force at that time than the British army and navy.  

Second, he didn't quit when things got tough.  There were several last-ditch, do-or-die feats that he commanded with audacity and grit.  One event was crossing the Delaware on a bitter Christmas eve to ultimately win the battle of Trenton-- the crucial first-needed triumph to keep the colonists engaged in the war. 
​
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Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, MMA-NYC, 1851
He died in 1799 and his life and work have been scrutinized by many.  He did not want power for its own sake.  He did not want to be president.  He served two terms and passed the baton on to John Adams.  King George could not understand how he could take a pass on being, well, a king.

The series was produced by presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who said that "Resilience and humility and empathy” were Washington's chief character traits. He was worried about the emergence of a rancorous partisan divide in our fledgling country.  In his farewell address, which was published in newspapers as a letter to the American people, he warned us [about] 
 “the baneful effects of party spirit, of the spirit of revenge, of sectionalism, and the worry that if we endure such things it could lead to foreign influence and corruption.” 

Our current electorate who bought the slogan "Make America Great Again," still needs a history lesson from our first most honorable president.


     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

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iNK Think Tank, Inc. is a nonprofit with the mission of using nonfiction children's literature in classrooms

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