Welcome to Livlife. Where I am living my life out loud, for all to read.

So I am thinking that I haven't blogged much lately and how I wished there was something interesting to blog about. Not my life, but something interesting in the world around me, maybe something I could learn or teach to you.

Well, I had nothing. Couldn't think of a thing. BUT--luckily for me, I often send myself links to interesting things on the internet that I think I might like to blog about. I have a whole folder for it in my email. I figure I'll get to them eventually, but life intervenes and I end up not needing them because I blog about other things.

Imagine my joy when I remembered that folder today. I figure I could poke through it and find something awesome and create a new, fun, blog. To my surprise, the universe had other plans (not that this blog isn't new and fun, it is). I opened the most recent message in the file, first, and saw a link to something called the Exploratorium. I didn't remember what it was, so I opened the link.

Flashback to three days ago.

I am on my way to the grocery store on a Friday night (I know, big exciting plans) when I got a call from Kelly and she persuaded (okay it wasn't that hard) me to stop by for a beer. She and Mark and the kids just got back from a family vacation and they wanted to chat.

So we're hanging out at their house, drinking beer and chatting when Kelly asks if I've seen this cool book by Eric Carle. (Author of wonderful children's books like "The Very Hungry Catepillar"). She and the kids and Mark had stopped by my library a couple weeks earlier and checked out some books. One of them was "Hello, Red Fox" by Eric Carle. I hadn't seen it so she handed it over to me. On the inside front cover was this description of the "why" of the book. Neither Mark nor Kelly had read this, though they had both read the book, so we all took a moment to learn something. This is what it said:

     One evening about two hundred years ago, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stopped at a tavern to dine. As he sat at his table, he gazed at the waitress stood taking an order at a nearby table. Her red dress stood out in sharp contrast against the white wall behind her. When the waitress moved away, Goethe continued to stare in the same direction, at the wall.

     Then a strange thing happened: on the white wall he saw a faint glowing image of the waitress's dress - but it was green, not red! Why? This moment of wonder led Goethe into more than twenty years of scientific research on color.

     In 1810 he published Farbenlehre, his color theory. He determined that there were three primary colors - red, blue and yellow - from which all the other colors could be made, and that each color had an opposite, or complimentary, color.

     Goethe (1749 - 1832) is celebrated as a great German poet, novelist and philosopher. But, to him, his color theory was his most important achievement.

Why, oh why, am I telling you this? Well, this book was pretty cool, a way to explore color and opposites in an unusual manner. Probably not really geared toward a three-year-old, but for an older child, a great gift. I enjoyed reading it and learning something but then I kind of forgot all about it. Until today. (Behold, the power of inter-connected learning!)

When I opened the link to the Exploratorium, I saw a link to exhibits and suddenly remembered why I copied this link. The things on size and spatial recognition (Changing Illusions) are pretty cool. And there is one exhibit called Bird in a Cage that is exactly what Eric Carle is demonstrating in his book! How awesome is that?

And here I thought I had nothing to teach you.....turns out, in a weak moment, the universe thrust some synchronicity into my path, just to make me happy. It worked.

"For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation."
     -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe