Scribbles: Motor babbling

I love abstract art done by children like my granddaughter.

Fiona loves colourful markers. Pencils are out.

Come September my granddaughter Fiona will be all of two. And Ga-ga, that's what she calls me, has had the pleasure of watching her develop. It's been wonderful.

Naturally, I think she's quite the talented little girl. But, thanks to the Internet, I know the truth — she's just a normal child developing on schedule.

Right on cue, at 18 months, the kid discovered pencils, pens and paper. (I am so thankful she discovered paper. Lots of kids don't. They discover walls.)

Fiona would sit on the floor, a pen gripped tightly in her fist and get great joy from swirling the pen over the paper. This is typical of many toddlers as they do not have good finger, hand and wrist control.

Now, the little tyke has moved past grey pencil lines and boring blue ink — she is now deep into colour. She loves her package of colourful felt-tipped pens. She sometimes makes a simple work with only one colour and a few, concise lines but it is far more common for her to attack the paper with every colourful pen-weapon at her disposal.

She chooses her colours carefully.

Toddlers learn to speak by first learning to babble. But there are more ways to babble than just verbally. There is also motor babbling that teaches children muscle control and enhances coordination.

Baby talk has meaning. Mothers understand their child's babbling. Scribbles also carry meaning. Children as young as 18 months have been known to use dots, for example, to represent falling rain. (We know this, I assume, because the message has been babbled to mom.)

I don't understand Fiona's verbal babblings but I do have a feel for her art, her motor babbling. I'm sure she is concerned with colour, line and placement. She loves to experiment with the process, mixing a variety of dots and bold dashes with sweeping, full-page ovals.

As she gains more control, she will gravitate toward more and more realism in her art. She may oscillate between realism and scribbling but the move is always towards the real.

By the time she is six years old outlines will be replacing single lines to depict legs and arms. Stick figures will be out.  It can take another two or three years before body proportions become important to a young artist like Fiona.

Then, if she is a real artist, maybe she will rediscover the abstract. Her aunt did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has been more than a year since I wrote the above piece on motor babbling. Fiona's love of art has remained strong. She loves to get out her paints, her brushes and create five or six works of art before moving on to another activity.

Done shortly before she turned three, Fiona titled this work "Rainbow."

Fiona, 3, finds inspiration in the world surrounding her: "Red Flower"

Woonerf Court

Woonerf: It's the latest cool word in urban planning circles. North American suburbanites have been enjoying their own form of woonerfs for years: Courts, crescents, places and culs-de-sac.

This London cul-de-sac is a perfect living yard: Woonerf.

I first encountered the word woonerf in the Toronto Star more than a year ago. In my reading since then the word has cropped up now and again, most recently in an article by Kelly Pedro in The London Free Press.

According to the London paper, woonerf is Dutch for naked street. No, we are not talking nudism. A woonerf is a residential street stripped of the clear division between traffic and pedestrian rights of way.

Traffic and kids at play share this suburban court.

One idea being floated to improve the London downtown is to convert Dundas or another downtown street into a woonerf. Two little corrections should be made here: First, a woonerf is a residential animal. If you want to release a woonerf in a commercial area, you need a winkelerf. Second, a woonerf is more commonly translated as a living street and not a naked one.

The word may be Dutch but according to Colin Hand the concept originated in Britain with a British road engineer and architect, Colin Buchanan.

In this tale of how the woonerf came to be, a story also retold in the pages of Architecture Week, it was a Dutchman, Niek De Boer, who took the Englishman's idea and ran with it or should I say planned with it.

Woonerfs are streets designed, or redesigned, to force drivers to slow down as they shared the road space with cyclists, pedestrians and children. De Boer named these streets woonerfs, or living yards. His woonerfs were residential in character and the first one was built in the City of Delft in the '60s.

In Toronto, woonerfs (pedestrian oriented streets) are planned for the West Don Lands development.

If you search the web, you'll find examples of Dutch woonerfs with gardens and pedestrian seating nestled in among the shrubs and flowers. These remind me of  the court directly above mine and linked to my court by a well-used walkway.

When I first wrote this I was being a little facetious. Now, I'm not so sure. It's possible that some of the finest examples of woonerfs may be found in North American suburbs.

The Dutch government set design standards and passed traffic laws regulating woonerfs in 1976. Some suburban courts come quite close to following many of the Dutch government guidelines:

• Playing on the roadway is permitted
• Pedestrians may use the full width of the roadway
• Drivers must make allowance for the presence of pedestrians and children at play
• Speed bumps may be encountered
• The roadway may curve and shorten a driver's line of sight
• The roadway may be narrower than that of other area roads
• There may be flower filled islands and large pots
• Seating areas may encroach into the area of the street once designated only for vehicular traffic.

If the design principals of a woonerf are applied to a commercial area, the area becomes a winkelerf, which is not covered by the woonerf regulations.

Some suburban courts, crescents, places and culs-de-sac answer many design guidelines for woonerfs. See the following pictures taken near my Byron, Ontario home.

Narrow roadway is not car friendly.

Short line of sight plus park, complete with benches, all act to calm traffic.

A walkway links culs-de-sac making the distance shorter to walk than drive.

Finding lost graves at 'Uncle Tom's' family cemetery

UWO grad students Flannery Surette and Jim Keron surveying Henson cemetery.

Contrary to popular mythology, Uncle Tom may have been a bold fighter for freedom. Josiah Henson, possibly the man behind the Uncle Tom character, was an escaped American slave who fled the United States with his wife and children to enjoy freedom in Upper Canada, the future province of Ontario.

Josiah Henson's last home still stands in Dresden, Ontario

Henson was a renowned abolitionist, preacher and "conductor" on the Underground Railroad.  He personally "conducted" more than 115 runaway slaves to freedom, according to Devon Robinson of the Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site, In all, the secret network helped almost 30,000 make it safely to Canada.

Henson delivered on his promise: "I'll use my freedom well." His home in Dresden, Ontario, is now a historic site commemorating his work.

Today archaeologists from The University of Western Ontario are searching for unmarked graves hidden in the Henson Family Cemetery. A few years ago Henson's home was moved a few hundred metres (yards) to its present location beside the cemetery.

Archaeologists find lost graves with ground penetrating radar.

Originally, the search was to be completed before the 177th anniversary of Emancipation Day, which celebrates the abolition of slavery in the British colonies.

Unfortunately, rain prevented the UWO archaeologists from mapping the areas in question before the symbolic August 1st date. The team is using sophisticated Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) which beams radar waves into the ground. It cannot be used in the rain.

Hidden features and buried objects reflect the waves enabling archaeologists accurately to map anything they discover. This approach minimizes surface disturbance — very important when mapping an historic cemetery. GPR allows a thorough but respectful search by the archaeologists.

Dena Doroszenko, archaeologist for the Ontario Heritage Trust, which owns and operates the historic site, said, "This work will be extremely helpful. Because the Henson family cemetery is still in use today . . . "

A forgotten grave was unearthed at the Henson Family Cemetery during a burial —  an unnerving event. "We are trying to prevent this happening again," said Edward Eastaugh, a UWO archeology supervisor and leader of Western’s survey team.

It is possible some of the unmarked graves will later be identified with the help of family members who have a knowledge of Henson Family genealogy, Doroszenko said.

Josiah Henson shown with Harriet Beecher Stowe, top right.

Many have forgotten how influential the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was at the time of its publication. It was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, only bested by the Bible. It was a catalyst for positive, radical change when it came to society's rejection of slavery in the States and around the world.

Shortly after the release of her book, Stowe acknowledged that Josiah Henson's autobiography, published a few years earlier in 1849, had been an inspiration for her novel. Henson, himself, republished his work as The Memoirs of Uncle Tom.

Sadly, as The New York Times recently pointed out:

"Today, of course, the book has a decidedly different reputation, thanks to the popular image of its titular character, Uncle Tom — whose name has become a byword for a spineless sellout, a black man who betrays his race."

Clearly the original meaning of Uncle Tom has been lost or Henson would not have taken the name for the later release of his memoirs. The archaeologists from Western are finding long forgotten graves while showing great respect as they conduct their search.

Josiah Henson's grave is not forgotten. It is clearly marked. But the respect for "Uncle Tom" seems to have been lost. Finding the man behind the myth is easy, no GPR necessary, but finding Uncle Tom's noble character, now obscured by time, seems much harder.

Dormant or dead?

Dying? Dead? Or just dormant?

Recently I started thinking that Stephen Colbert was onto something with his newly minted word: "truthiness". Someone suggested to me that the widely reported story of lawn grasses going dormant during a drought may be more truthiness rather than truth. They were right.

When newspapers and other media outlets tell you "grass goes dormant during dry periods" and proceed to encourage you to refrain from watering, you see yourself as green, if not your lawn. Unfortunately, follow this advice too rigidly and you will not be green and your lawn will be dead — permanently dormant.

Surprisingly, the lack of truth in the advice is not in the claim of dormancy, grass does go dormant during a drought. It is the belief that dormant grass needs no water where the error creeps in. Dormant grass is living grass and so it should come as no surprise that it still requires a little water.

So, what is the greenest response to lawn care during a drought? Based on information gleaned from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and from Ohio State University:

• Water turf once every two weeks with about half an inch or 1.27 cm of water. This will supply enough moisture to keep crowns, rhizomes and roots of your lawn grass hydrated and alive. This amount of water will not regreen a dormant lawn, however, it will help to insure good recovery with the return of rainfall. (If your soil is very sandy and does not hold water well, your lawn may require watering more often —  say, once a week.)
• Use water gauges to measure the depth of water applied. A lawn water gauge can be as simple as several empty straight-sided cans, such as tuna and salmon containers, placed in the sprinkler's watering pattern.
• If possible, cycle irrigation to allow water penetration and avoid water runoff. Dry soils may not absorb even 1.27 cm of water in one application.
• Water turf in the early morning to reduce water loss from evaporation.
• Never allow sprinklers to water pavement, driveways or sidewalks. This wastes water.
• Never trim lawns shorter than two and a half inches or 6.35 cm. Taller grass develops a deeper, more extensive root system. Keep mower blades sharp to avoid tearing rather than cleanly cutting the grass. A healthy lawn is better positioned to survive a drought.

If the drought is serious and a total ban on lawn watering is in force, face reality; Your lawn may be toast.

What does it have to do with me?

Mel Goodale is director of the centre focused on the "three pounds of wet matter" between our ears.

When research centres hold press conferences to make important announcements there is a tendency for the average person to have the response, if they have a response at all, of: "So what? What does all this have to do with me?"

The Centre for Brain and Mind at The University of Western Ontario held such a press conference today. It was announced that The Centre will begin training post-doctoral fellows from University of Cambridge, King's College London and University College London (three of the top institutions in the United Kingdom). Similarly, Western will be sending three post-doctoral fellows to each of the three U.K. institutions for four-month training periods.

Stephen Williams, King's College, U.K.

This was big news — it had to be — as research scientists from the United Kingdom made the long flight across the pond to speak at the press conference.

Still, you can be forgiven for wondering, "What does any of this have to do with me?" Research like that done by The Centre can sound esoteric and its concerns remote, unless it involves you or a loved one.

Years ago, while still working for the local paper, I covered the installation of a special, 3 Tesla MRI unit at The Robarts Research Institute.

Kim Krueger, an MRI technologist, shows scans during tour.

I was told the huge scanner being carefully lowered by a giant crane slowly into the Robarts Centre was 10 to 15 times the strength of low field or open MRI scanners then in common use.

Interesting, impressive, but so what?

Then, a few months ago I found myself inside that high-field MRI as part of an ongoing research study.

The clarity of those images revealed what been hidden from specialists right across the continent, from London to Winnipeg to San Francisco; The 3T MRI showed that the right side of my heart is being converted from muscle to fat and scar tissue causing the right side to weaken and expand. A valve is leaking.

DNA testing confirmed that this was an ongoing problem with a genetic cause. I have ARVC.

Videographer Craig Glover films 7T MRI from a safe distance.

When I heard The Centre for Brain and Mind at the University of Western Ontario in the Natural Sciences building works closely with both University Hospital and the Robarts Research Institute, I knew this was a press conference I did not want to miss.

I learned the Robarts people have an even more powerful scanner than the one used to diagnose my heart problem; They have a 7 Tesla MRI — one of only three 7Ts in the world developed specifically for neurological use. According to Siemens, MRIs don't come any more powerful for human applications. Wow!

The research scientists with The Centre will be using this incredible and very rare machine. There are less than four dozen of these in use in the entire world. There are clear reasons why The Centre is widely recognized as a global leader in many branches of neuroscience research.

So what diseases may be forced to reveal their secrets by Western's pioneering scientists? Think Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, MS, schizophrenia, epilepsy, stroke, a myriad of psychiatric disorders . . . Sadly, I am sure something in that list hit all too close to home. What is being done here is not remote, ivory tower research but work advancing our knowledge about, and our ability to deal with, everyday medical tragedies.

And now you know the answer to the question: What does an announcement of the grand opening of The Centre for Brain and Mind have to do with me? In a word: "Lots!"
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To read more about The Centre's research which is being conducted by approximately 20 principal scientists and many others across many disciplines at both Western and the Robarts Research Institute, check out the following links:

• Click of his tongue unleashes sonar-like bat sense
• People blind and deaf from birth have remaining senses enhanced
• UWO team proves sound of yawning is contagious

The village paper

The London noise bylaw brought an end to the Bruce Cockburn outdoor performance.

According to The London Free Press, London "is a village masquerading as a big city." Why? Because a London noise bylaw prevents outdoor concerts from being "played too loud* after 11 p.m." In truth, if London were a village, it would be much easier to hold loud music festivals. The bigger the city, the more people who must be appeased.

Last year in Montreal, the second largest city in Canada, music festivals like the Osheaga music festival and a Pop Montreal showcase held at Parc des Ameriques were the focus of efforts by the City of Montreal to deal with noise pollution. The Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal initiated Project Noise and began handing out fines of up to $12,000.

When the Concordia student union planned on bringing international star K’naan onto campus for a performance, the city insisted the volume must be kept under under 80 decibels. The orientation headliner was moved to Loyola Campus when the city would not relent and the concert could not find another venue anywhere in downtown Montreal.

Loud music is a problem that all cities face but many do not realize the full extent of the problem. Loud music causes hearing loss and hearing loss is not a joke. In 2008, V-Fest in Toronto was promoted with catchphrase: "If it's too loud, you're too old." A more accurate statement might have been, "If it's too loud, you may be going deaf."

I suffer from tinnitus. The only sound I hear from my left ear is generated within the ear itself. Other than that constant background noise, I hear almost nothing with my left ear. Why? I trace the loss back to my youth and hours spent listening to outlandishly loud rock concerts. What finally did my ear in was an April Wine concert held at the old London Gardens. My left ear was pointed at a massive bank of speakers all night long. When that night was done the ringing in that ear never left.

When I was young, and immature, (rather than my present old and immature), I took in some fine, loud rock concerts. One of the most memorable was that of Detroit's Amboy Dukes at the former Terrace Bowling Lanes in Windsor, Ontario. The Dukes were fronted by guitarist Ted Nugent and Nugent knew a thing or two about loud.

Writing this I began to wonder how is Ted Nugent doing today? Is he as deaf as I am all from a silly drive for high decibels and truly ear-splitting volume? The answer in a word: Yes!

Musicians with tinnitus:
  

• Ted Nugent - "My left ear is pretty much whacked."
• Pete Townshend - "I have severe hearing damage. . . . It hurts, it's painful, and it's frustrating."
• John Entwhistle - According to Who scholar Andy Neill, Entwhistle was pretty deaf, and tended to rely on lip-reading.
• Jeff Beck - "It's in my left ear. It's excruciating . . . " You can ask, "Why is a guy scratching at a window with his nails such a horrible sound — I couldn't put up with that! This is worse!" 
• Phil Collins - The former Genesis drummer and vocalist announced he will perform live only occasionally to avoid further hearing loss on his "hearing damaged left ear."
• Danny Elfman - Oingo Boingo, film scores/composer. Touring took a major toll on his hearing. "My instincts were telling me I was doing myself a lot of harm — and I was right. I really should have gotten out sooner . . . I'm paying the price for it now."
• Steve Lukather - The guitarist/song writer for Toto says, "Yes, I have tinnitus, what a drag. . . . My hearing is damaged . . . I always have to say, "What?" Be careful guys, this could happen to you!"

Free Press editorial writers beware that attempting to diminish your hometown, the city and its people with childish remarks doesn't actually diminish London; It does diminish you.


* played too loud - Shouldn't this be the adverb loudly modifying the verb "played" instead of the adjective loud as used?

This is an honest question. I make a lot of grammatical errors. I am slowly correcting many thanks to the suggestions I receive from former editors. I'd really like to know: Is it loud or loudly?

Truthiness is hot in the media

Going jogging? Have a cup of coffee first.

Nothing brings out truthiness like extreme weather. As hot weather records in Ontario tumbled Thursday, at least three hot weather myths were repeated in the media ad nauseam.

The Weather Network online forecast it would feel like 49°C.

Linda Stobo, of the Middlesex London Health Unit, talking with The London Free Press, managed to repeat two of the most common myths in one interview.

She told the paper: One should drink plenty of water . . . even if one doesn't feel thirsty and one should avoid caffeinated drinks because they will make you more thirsty.

False and false. Both are myths that have been repeated so often they have entered the realm of truthiness.

Stephen Colbert, the host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, had this to say about truthiness.

I'm sure the word-police, the "wordanistas" at Websters, are gonna say: Hey, truthiness is not a word! Well, anybody who knows me knows that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, what did or didn't happen . . .

Cobert doesn't trust books. They're all fact, no heart, he says . . . we are divided into those who think with their heads, and those who know with their hearts . . .

According to some folk who think with their heads at the University of California, Berkeley, and publish the university's Wellness Letter: "You don’t end up with a net loss of water from drinking moderate amounts of caffeinated beverages. In other words, they don’t dehydrate you."

In a study from the University of Nebraska Medical Center a decade ago, healthy adults showed the same "hydration status" (as determined from urine analysis and other tests) when they drank caffeinated colas and/or coffee as when they drank only water and/or fruit drinks.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM), which advises the government about health issues, including dietary intakes, concluded "caffeinated beverages appear to contribute to the daily total water intake similar to that contributed by non-caffeinated beverages."

One report, by a scientist at the University of Connecticut who reviewed 10 previous studies, discovered fluid retention was essentially the same for both water or a caffeinated beverage.

So, feeling thirsty? Have a Tim's, if you like. Many authorities agree that the average person can enjoy from three to four cups of coffees over the course of a day — even a day that's a scorcher.

And have that Tim's when you're feeling thirsty, unless you're an old geezer like me, then drink early. Again, from the Wellness Letter: People normally get enough fluids by drinking when they’re thirsty — only older people should drink water before they get thirsty. Thirst is a less reliable indicator as we age.

This may seem like nitpicking and unimportant but if you're ever in Africa and in need of a drink, coffee made from boiled water is a healthier choice than cold water. Even bottled water can be suspect in some regions of the world.

I know a fellow who, while traveling in the Sahara Desert, drank so much bottled water at the encouragement of his guide that he made himself quite ill. That night he had a severe headache, suffered from fatigue, nausea, vomiting and had to urinate frequently. He was up all night. He munched on potato chips in an attempt to boost his low levels of sodium. Come morning he ate a couple of bananas for the potassium. The water, consumed despite not being thirsty, appeared to have seriously diluted his body's electrolyte.

Long distance runners have been known to force themselves to drink despite not feeling thirsty and a very small number have died as a result. It's rare but it happens.

Yes, it can get hot enough to fry an egg!

Oh, and about the phrase "hot-enough-to-fry-and-egg", it is often reported that this is a myth — an impossible feat. Can't be done, we're told.

Well, it can be done but it is a bit of a magic trick. You've got to know how to pull this one off. It is not as easy as simply breaking an egg on a hot surface. The hot surface will quickly cool and the egg itself will supply the insulation needed to keep the surface from regaining its original temperature.

The Alberta Egg Producers say that egg whites begins to ease into an opaque state at 62°C (144°F). Yolks needs a bit higher temperature: 65°C.

If you want to pull this off, have a chat with a high school physics teacher to get pointed in the right direction.

Once, I fried an egg in a frying pan placed on the hood of a black car. My neighbours were amazed. One hint: you've got to keep the performer's spiel going and keep attention diverted. It's only magic if no one can see the science behind the trick.

There is one group of folk who can't rehydrate with a Tim's. And these folk cannot tell you if they are feeling thirsty, either. I'm talking about babies.

Well-meaning caregivers may believe a baby needs plain water on a hot day; They don't. With such small bodies babies can quickly ingest too much water. Water poisoning is one of the leading causes of seizures in otherwise healthy babies, according to Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

Keep babies lightly dressed, keep them in air conditioned environments, if they are drinking formula, do not over dilute the mix. If they must go outside to play, encourage them to splash about in a small pool set up in the shade.

The advice — drink plenty of water . . . even if you don't feel thirsty — is poor advice in many cases. Who knows, maybe even Stephen Colbert would agree.