Sylvia's Journal

Two things entirely associated with winter entered our lives yesterday, just when the trees have started to blossom in Boston (not in Manchester yet, we are after all a full commute north of Boston).

The first warm thing, which entered gradually, is the 100% lamb’s wool sweater that I knitted from 4 skeins of the 16 that Alison gave me – a treasure she found while cleaning up her parental home. The sweater is much too warm now for the day time temperatures we have; but at the extreme ends of the day it is a welcome extra layer. The pattern comes from a Dutch woman’s magazine (‘Margriet’) that I have kept since November 1981. It is full of handicraft ideas and patterns for women of leisure or those whose babies are napping. Belonging to neither category, I managed to complete the sweater in a fairly short time by simply carrying my knitting along into the various waiting rooms I have been frequenting lately.

The second warm thing is the stove which finally arrived; a late delivery of an August 2008 order (we ordered it during the tax holiday). If the living room had not been partially demolished to accommodate it we might even have forgotten about it.

It is our new green stove that will allow us to burn the enormous amount of wood from the dismantled Norwegian maple and do it even when the wind is blowing – something we were never able to do with the old stove and badly constructed chimney. We will also be able to leave it on when we go to bed because it has doors. With the old stove we had to lug glowing embers through the house and throw them out in the snow and then kill the fire by spraying water over it. This was so messy, annoying and risky that it would sometimes keep us from having a fire at all.

Last night we had a family outing that was the direct result of Sita’s continuously scanning of what’s interesting out there. She discovered that Howard Gardner, The Harvard professor who came up with the idea of multiple intelligences, was speaking at a Montessori school in Boston on the Five Minds of the Future. We all jumped on the opportunity to see a great mind from close up. We converged from our respective workplaces East and South Boston and from North and West of Boston at a restaurant on Boylston Street and from there made our way to the school.

Sita scribed and recorded the presentation, Axel mindmapped, Steve and Tessa were sitting in the back to dash out just before their parking meter would run out and I just sat back and enjoyed the lecture that was like a rich meal put out in front of us, richer than the overpriced pizzas we had eaten around the corner.

Utterly at ease with his topic and deeply knowledgeable about his field (of cognitive psychology) he spoke, very low key, to an audience of mostly women. He laid out the new mental landscape of the global and digital age that our kids and theirs will have to navigate and what the implications are for education. We learned that the mind of the future is not one but five: a disciplined mind, a synthesizing mind, a creative mind, a respectful mind and an ethical mind. It’s a good thing our minds can grow more of themselves.

Afterwards there was a book singing and Sita lined up for a signature before heading out all the way back to western Massachusetts. I verified that I can get the book on my Kindle and I don’t need the signature so Axel and I left her in the line and drove home.