teaching the doctors

I would like to be writing posts about what we did last week with my sister and niece here, not to mention the spring celebrations of the weekend, but the computer that has my photos on it is beyond my reach this week as Dan prepares for another conference. So! Thank goodness for my sister and her i-phone and the photos she emailed me that I have to share of an experience we had while they were here!  We'll see how my old computer does with crafting this post.  

(But Debbie, couldn't you just...I don't know...write a post? You know, with words? Hmmmm. It's a thought.  But I'm a little addicted to the visual aids and will claim an April-ish mush brain and, well, leave it at that.)

The College of Osteopathic Medicine at the University here has pediatric clinical labs for their medical students - which of course means they need children to "practice" on.  We have a couple of friends who are standardized patients (they used to be called "simulated" patients, but as the head nurse in charge of our participation pointed out, they are actually real, not simulated), which means they have a job as pretend patients who come into their weekly lab presenting with symptoms, which the medical students then proceed to try and diagnose correctly.  I think they even get to wear make-up and spit up fake blood, but I could be making that up.  Anyway, through them we received an invitation to come and participate in the pediatric labs, giving the students an opportunity to brush up on their kid charms and practice checking reflexes, listening to heartbeats, examining eyes, ears, throat, and basically doing a thorough well-child exam.

Eliza is saving up her money for a summer camp, so when she heard that she would be paid to participate, she was all for it. (I even heard her negotiating with her first team of doctors; she jokingly asked if they'd be giving any shots, and one of them offered her money if she'd let him  and she said, yeah, give me an extra 60 bucks!) (There were no shots given.) Ani wasn't quite as sure, but as you can see from these pictures, she warmed up quickly to the idea, and their cousin was excited to make some money, so this is how she spent two mornings on her spring break from school in Wisconsin!

My kids don't go to the doctor very often, and to be honest, our current family physician could take a lesson or two from these very personable young med students, so the girls really enjoyed their mornings holding court with 2 students at a time in attendance, through 4 hour-long rotations.  It was very entertaining to eavesdrop on their interactions...the first set asked Ani to count backwards from 10 and she exclaimed, "Oh man, this is gonna be EASY!"  I heard Eliza tell her jovial first pair of students about getting a splinter out using a banana peel as a bandage ("It's the biggest herb in the world! And it WORKS!").

 

The more comfortable they got, the funnier they were. My kids are chatty to begin with, and they went all out.  Eliza lay back on the table while they listened to her "stomach" and she told them, "Um, I think my stomach is up here - you're really listening to my intestines. Can you tell what I had for breakfast?"  There was also a lot of cheese ("ok, I'm going to look at your boogers now") and you could tell which students have kids in their lives and which don't know where to begin with getting a kid to talk to them.  

 

It was on the whole pretty morale-boosting for them both.  They got to shine for a while as the bright, friendly kids that they are, and while they know it, I think they got a kick out of the people in the white coats finding them so as well.  They earned their money - by the end of the week (2 4-hour sessions) they could have run the exam themselves, and politely hung in there when they were asked "Have you every listened to your own heart?" for the eighth time, or reminded someone again that they don't go to school...My feedback for the students was to get creative about how they asked their questions, if they find their patient is a homeschooler.  My kids will not give you the answer you are looking for if you ask them what their favorite subject in school is, how their grades are, or what sports they enjoy at school.  However, ask them what they like to do, how they spend their time outside, ask them to talk about something they're good at, and how they like to move their bodies, and they have a lot to say!

 (thanks, sister, for taking these photos!!)

Banding Birds

Female Hairy Woodpecker

 This weekend we were invited to visit a bird-bander who is the professor of ornithology at the local college.  We weren't sure at all what to expect, but as we arrived at his home in the woods we could just make out some fine, loose netting billowing in the wind. Apparently this is not ideal - when there is no wind, they lie still and are very difficult to see.

 He showed us around his yard; he has netting strung up on three sides, and a ground trap for the ground feeders.  He had smeared a mixture of suet and peanut butter to the sides of two of his trees, which was doing a wonderful job of attracting woodpeckers.  He's had the opportunity to band 4 pileated woodpeckers, and there was one flirting around the woods just on the other side of the netting (swoon!!), but they never got any closer.  There were several red-headed, hairy and downy woodpeckers taking advantage of the feast, but the one who got caught in the netting was too big and had an easy time of shaking it off.

 He showed us his set-up - the tiny numbered bands that are fixed around the leg of the tiny songbirds he catches; the scale he has rigged up to carefully and safely weigh the birds; a magnifying glass on a stand to help him read the numbers when the birds he catches have already been banded, by him or by someone else.  He is studying the migration patterns of songbirds - who returns to the same spot year after year? How far do they go? While he is not licensed to capture and band hummingbirds (they are so fragile, they demand a specialized training), he told us about a rufous hummingbird, common on the west coast, and never seen here, who somehow, year after year, made it out to this area, and then back across the Rockies.  A hummingbird bander from Michigan came down to check it out. Crazy bird...

tiny metal bands

After hanging around for an hour, talking about birds, the girls were getting a little restless and we decided we'd give it 10 more minutes and then head home. (Last Sunday, at the tail end of the ice storm, he captured and banded or recorded 85 birds!) Finally Dan spotted something caught in one of the nets and we ran out to see what it was. A white-breasted nuthatch!

The back claw is backwards, allowing the bird to travel down a tree trunk

 Back inside, the bird's wings were measured, it was weighed, and the number on its band was recorded.

 He also blew gently to part its feathers, looking for yellow fat reserves.  He said that this winter none of the birds seem to have them (see?? not really winter!!!).

 Eliza learned how to hold a small bird for release...

 Ready...

 ...gone!

We rounded up our things and then looked for Ani who had gone to visit the dog in his little pen in back (dogs and netting are not a great combination!!), and was making her way back, slowly, along one of the netted walls of the yard. Suddenly she came running and calling - another bird caught in the net! This one so low to the ground it looked like a leaf that was caught - it would have been very easy to miss for a long while (though he regularly walks the nets to make sure he isn't missing anyone).

 This little one is a Carolina Wren. So tiny...also previously banded.

 He pointed out the rounded edges of the wings, which means it is a "bush bird", not a swooper and soarer.

 Then it was Ani's turn to hold and release "her" bird. Look how serious she is...

 Last looks...(it also kept trying to nip her fingers! Very fiesty)

 And gone...

 Eliza thinks she might like to apprentice to a bander when she's older - you have to be sixteen around here.  I felt so privileged to be so near these little creatures...

Gallery

I mentioned back in July that Eliza had caught on fire with her painting.  Well, she got off the bus on Saturday, got home and declared, "I have to paint!!" Off she went. Many of the paintings grew into collages.

While Eliza was still gone, Ani was working on a couple pieces of her own...

By Anika

By Anika

by Eliza

At some point I mentioned that we were quickly running out of precious watercolor paper, and while I didn't want to dampen the spirit with stinginess, maybe we could look at some other materials for holding paint?  I have a large tote bag filled with magazines and clippings for collage work, and there was an old trail guide from Virginia's park system that appealed. Eliza liked the way the words sometimes shows through (so do I).  Once in a while it even adds a bit of poetry to the image...

Lonesome Pine - Site Directions

Fairystone - Site Description

I came into the room at some point late on Monday (that's two full days of painting frenzy) to find the paintings taped up all over the downstairs.  With a little coaxing, I consolidated them into one Wall of WOW...

garden + paint = glorious

away on our roadtrip, but visiting moments of the past few weeks of summer...

Unexpected treasures

 We walk a lot in our family. There is not a walk that we take that does not yield some treasure: a bird call, a toad, a new flower, a stunning sky, good mud. On a walk last Sunday, the girls and I thought we'd found our treasure - a cicada, hollowed out but in good shape, ready to be closely inspected and handled and drawn.

 Such beauty in its transparent wings! So amazing to hold it and really see its eyes, the green of its legs.  We carried it with us to the "peak" where we were planning on sitting for a bit and drawing what we saw.

 Imagine our surprise when what we saw - in our spot,  our destination - was a burnt piano.

 I'll say it again - a burnt piano. Someone - and a bunch of their friends, I'm guessing - somehow lugged an upright piano up the hill in order to make a bonfire in its belly.  We were stunned.

 We circled it, noticing that it was still warm, and peering in at all its insides. We were half-horrified (an instrument!! GASP! it's like a living body!), and half-awed by the sad beauty.

 Our nature drawings took a different turn, as you can imagine, and Eliza came back from another prowl around its body to write "warm", "black" and "destroyed" on her drawing.

 I suggested that maybe she could think of what the piano would say, or what it might be thinking?

 I am hot.  Very lonely.  No one wants to be near me.

Maybe it was the heat or the humidity, but we left feeling melancholy.  Interestingly, at the potluck we hosted that night, a colleague of Dan's whose husband is in the business of repairing and tuning pianos reminded us that on occasion their family will host a party centered around the burning of an old piano, whose wires will sometimes sing and twang as they're released...we've been invited to the next one.