If you’ve ever navigated
On the Erie Canal.
Low Bridge, ev’rybody down,
For it’s Low Bridge,
We’re coming to a town!
You can always tell your neighbor,
You can always tell your pal,
If you’ve ever navigated
On the Erie Canal.
Coolest Paper Airplane Ever
ORDINARY PAPER AIRPLANES that look like jumbo jets and fighters are one thing. This airplane is something else altogether. We don’t have an official name for it (why not make one up yourself?), but this folded wonder is something special.
HOW TO MAKE IT
Take a piece of ordinary 8½″ × 11″ paper. Hold the paper so it’s tall rather than wide, and fold the page in half lengthwise. Crease the center, using your fingernail. Unfold. That’s fold #1.
Fold the left side in to touch the center crease. You’ve just made a new left edge. That’s fold #2.
Fold the new left edge to touch the center crease, creating again a new left edge (fold #3).
Then fold the edge over the center line, and crease the top with your fingernail (fold #4).
So you can make your airplane into a circle, soften the paper. Wrap it around your hand, or pull it against the edge of a desk or table, as when you curl ribbon . This breaks down the fibers in the paper. Soon the paper will be very pliable, and you can bend it into a cylinder shape, with the folded edge on the inside. Slip one end of the fold under the other, about an inch or so, to hold everything in place . Add tape to secure. It looks like a squat tube, and the folded edge is the front of the plane .
HOW TO FLY IT
To fly, the plane needs power and spin. Hold it fully in your palm, facing forward. As you pull your arm back, ready to throw, flick your wrist and fingers. But, here’s the trick: do not let your wrist or hand bend downward. Keep them straight up. This gives the plane spiral spin.
Be ready to use your determination and patience, as it may take some practice to perfect this technique. Once you have it down, though, your unique airplane will fly beautifully. And you’ll use this same technique for tossing a football, so here you’ve learned two skills in one.
WHY IT WORKS
Airplanes—real and paper—stay in the air for two reasons. Understand these reasons, including a few technical terms, and you will possess the mental tools to design many a flying object.
Reason 1: The lift force is greater than the airplane’s weight.
Lift is what keeps the plane up in the air. It happens when the air pressure pushing the plane up is more powerful than the pressure of air pushing the plane down. Lift counters the force of gravity, which always pulls objects back down to Earth.
Reason 2: The thrust force is stronger than drag.
Thrust gets the plane moving forward. In paper airplanes, thrust is the power of your toss. In real airplanes, designers keep materials as light as possible and use powerful engines. The heavier a plane is, the more thrust it needs.
Thrust counteracts drag, which is any quality that makes it harder to cut through the air (like sideways gravity). Here’s a great way to explain drag: Turn your hand flat, palm down, and wave it back and forth, slicing the air horizontally. Then turn your hand sideways, thumbup, pinkie-down, and wave it through the air, as if you are clapping or fanning yourself. Feel how much more air is in your way when your hand is sideways? That’s drag. For airplanes, drag is the force of the air the plane must push through to get where it wants to go.
Airplanes fly when engines and wing design counter gravity and drag. Paper airplanes fly when you thrust them with gusto that overcomes gravity, and when they have a shape that is low-drag and can gracefully slice through the air. This creative design accomplishes everything you need to soar your new air flyer.
Albigail Adams’ Letters with John Adams
LETTER WRITING, real letter writing, is a storied part of American life. Friends and spouses built relationships, and political thinkers changed the world, by expressing their thoughts and sending them through the mail.
The correspondence between Abigail Adams and John Adams during the American Revolution tops the list of our country’s famous letter writing, both for the couple’s modern relationship and the important political events they discussed. The relationship was modern because John so valued the opinions of Abigail, who was well educated and believed learned women had much to contribute to society. The events they discussed were so important because they shaped the birth of our nation, and John would later become the second President of the United States.
Abigail Adams, born Abigail Smith, came of age as a member of the wealthy Smiths of Massachusetts Bay Colony, related to the Quincys on her mother’s side. Many generations of men in her family had studied at Harvard, but, as the college didn’t accept girls, Abigail’s mother and grandmother tutored her at home in math, literature, and writing.
John Adams was the son of a shoemaker from Braintree, Massachusetts, and his mother helped run their family’s farm. He earned a law degree from Harvard. They met because Abigail’s sister Mary courted and then married John’s close friend Richard Cranch. Several years later, in 1764, John and Abigail married; Abigail was a few days shy of twenty, and John, several years older, had just turned twenty-nine.
John’s passion for reading, like Abigail’s, drew them together, and they formed an extraordinary bond. They pored over important books of the time, by such authors as Adam Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, discussing them at length and, at least on John’s part, making voluminous comments in the margins. As John grew more involved in public life, the couple developed relationships with important thinkers, including Abigail’s famous friendship with Mercy Otis Warren, who lived in nearby Plymouth and documented the American Revolution.
Between the years 1774 and 1783, John spent long stretches away from Abigail. He worked with the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to draft the Declaration of Independence. He went to France to join Benjamin Franklin in crafting the Treaty of Paris, which ended the War for Independence (also known as the American Revolution). Abigail stayed in Massachusetts to tend their four children and their home.
During this period, Franklin was the Postmaster General, multiplying post offices and introducing the stagecoach as a means of delivering mail reliably between the emerging States. John and Abigail made good use of this new postal system. We know of 284 letters between them from this time, thanks to their grandson, Charles Francis Adams, who kept and edited the letters, releasing them for the nation’s centennial in 1876. Throughout their lives, they wrote more than 1,100 letters to each other.
John to Abigail, Philadelphia, 29 March 1776
I give you joy of Boston and Charlestown, once more the Habitations of Americans. Am waiting with great Impatience for Letters from you, which I know will contain many Particulars. We are taking Precautions to defend every Place that is in [Danger]—The Carolinas, Virginia, N. York, Canada. I can think of nothing but fortifying Boston Harbour.
Abigail to John, Braintree, 31 March 1776
I long to hear that you have declared an independency—and, by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of the Husbands…That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend.
John to Abigail, Philadelphia, 3 July 1776
Your Favour of June 17 dated at Plymouth, was handed me, by yesterday’s Post. I was much pleased to find that you had taken a journey to Plymouth, to see your Friends in the long Absence of one whom you may wish to see. The Excursion will be an Amusement, and will serve your Health. How happy would it have made me to have taken this journey with
you?
Yesterday the greatest Question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men. A Resolution was passed without one dissenting Colony “that these united Colonies, are, and of right ought to be free and independent States, and as such, they have, and of Right ought to have full Power to make War, conclude Peace, establish Commerce, and to do all the other Acts and Things, which other States may rightfully do.” You will see in a few days a Declaration setting forth the Causes, which have impell’d Us to this mighty Revolution, and the Reasons which will justify it, in the Sight of God and Man. A Plan of Confederation will be taken up in a few days.
Abigail to John, Boston, Sunday, 14 July 1776
By yesterday’s post I received two Letters dated 3 and 4 of July and tho your Letters never fail to give me pleasure, be the subject what it will, yet it was greatly heightened by the prospect of the future happiness and glory of our Country; nor am I a little Gratified when I reflect that a person so nearly connected with me has had the Honour of being a principal actor, in laying a foundation for its future Greatness. May the foundation of our new constitution, be justice, Truth and Righteousness. Like the wise Mans house may it be founded upon those Rocks and then neither storms or tempests will overthrow it.
…all our Friends desire to be rememberd to you and foremost in that Number stands your Portia.*
* * *
* The wife of the Roman Republican Senator, Brutus. Abigail often signed her letters with that name.
Clubhouses and Forts
EVERY GIRL SHOULD have a clubhouse or fort of her own, and here are some ideas for making one. Several weekends may be spent sweating over the plans for a long-lasting clubhouse of wood beams and nails and real roofing tile. But there are ways to make quicker work of this endeavor.
QUICK FORT
With 6-foot metal garden stakes, you can construct an outdoor clubhouse or fort almost immediately. Garden stakes haven’t the stability of wood beams, but the swiftness with which the walls go up easily makes up for that. Five stakes will do the trick.
The stakes come with footholds. Stand on them and they should push into the ground rather effortlessly. If there’s a problem, a rubber mallet or a taller person can help; if it proves intractable, that may mean that there’s a rock in the ground and you need to move the stake. Use one stake for each of the four corners. Set the fifth stake along one of the sides to create a space for the door.
Wrap the whole structure, except the doorway, with chicken wire or deer netting, or lighter-weight bird netting. Garden stakes have notches in them and you can attach the materials to the notches to form the basic wall. (Trim the bottom of the netting neatly at ground level, lest chipmunks and other small animals inadvertently get tangled inside; this happened to us.)
To add privacy, use burlap or a white painter’s dropcloth as a second layer, or cardboard (you’ll figure a way to attach these to the stakes). If you want a ceiling, the burlap or dropcloth will help, although they won’t be waterproof, and rainwater will collect on top. You can use a tarp, but the plastic can make the inside very hot. You’ll figure it out. A sixth stake, taller than the rest, can be added to the center to create a sloped ceiling. From here, use twine, rope, duct tape, wire, scissors, sticks, cardboard, plywood, and any other wood scraps you can scare up to build walls, create windows, ceilings and floors, and otherwise make it your own. There are no rules; it’s your fort.
LEAN-TO
A lean-to is a very primitive form of shelter that’s little more than a wall or two and a roof. It’s meant to keep you safe from the worst of the rain and wind, and often leans into existing walls or fences, hence the name. Find any tucked-in spot or corner, rig a tarp roof with some ropes knotted to trees, and lean a side of plywood against the house. Build up the front with branches, odd pieces of old fence your neighbors left out on trash day, or even a picnic table turned on its side.
INDOOR FORT
The classic formula of couch cushions, blankets, and the backs of sofas and chairs is a good start for an indoor fort, as is throwing blankets over the top of the dining room table (stacks of books on top help keep them in position).
You can improve upon these traditional forts. To make a hanging wall, screw a line of hooks or eyebolts into the ceiling. Run picture-hanging wire or clothesline rope through them. Attach clips or clothespins, and from these, dangle all sorts of sheets, light blankets, large swaths of cloth, holiday lights, or your mother’s oversized scarves to create a different kind of fort.
Daisy Chains and Ivy Crowns
TO MAKE A DAISY CHAIN, pick twenty or so daisies. Near the bottom of the stem, but not too close, slit a slender lengthwise hole with your fingernail. Thread the next daisy through this hole until the flower head rests on the first stem. Take care not to pull too hard; daisy chains are lovely, but fragile. If you want to see lots of stem between the daisies, make the slit farther from the blossom. If you prefer a tightly packed garland, slit closer to the flower itself, and pinch off the rest of the stem. Continue until the daisy chain seems long enough fit around the top of your head. To finish, tangle the last stem around the first daisy, and tie it off with a longish piece of grass. Put the chain of daisies on your head, close your eyes, and make a wish. You can also make them into a necklace, or preserve them by leaving them to dry in the back of a dark closet shelf.
In ancient Greece and Rome, circles of ivy, laurel, and olive branches crowned the victories of athletes and marked as excellent the pursuits of scholars, artists, and soldiers. As the ancient Greek playwright Euripedes wrote in The Bacchantes: “Come, let us crown your head with ivy.”
Ivy crowns are incredibly simple to make, too. Ivy has large leaves and long, thick stems. Start with a piece of ivy many times the circumference of your head. Mark off the size you want and then start twining the ivy around itself, until the crown is full. Tuck the end under and don your new headpiece.
God’s Eyes / Ojos de Dios
OJOS DE DIOS (oh-hoes day DEE-oes), or “God’s Eyes,” are yarn and stick creations traditionally made by the Huichol Indians. The Huichol, who live in the southern mountains of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental Range, call their God’s eyes sikuli, which means “the power to see and understand things unknown.” The design, created by yarn wrapped around the intersection of two sticks at right angles, forms the shape of a cross that is meant to symbolize the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. When a child is born, a sikuli or ojo de dios is made by the father; every year on the child’s birthday, another one is woven, until the child reaches the age of five. The ojos de dios are bound together and are kept throughout the person’s life as a means of guaranteeing health and well being.
An ojo de dios can be as simple or complex as you like. Create one using different colored yarns; attach feathers or other decorations on the ends; or make two and combine them to form an eight-sided god’s eye.
To make a basic four-sided ojo de dios, you’ll need:
Multi-colored yarn, or different colors of yarn
2 Popsicle sticks, or other sticks (chopsticks, wooden skewers that aren’t sharp—you can even use toothpicks to make tiny ones)
Glue
Take your base sticks and cross them over each other. If glue is handy, a small dab on the sticks helps to secure their intersection.
With your yarn, make a knot and tighten it where the sticks intersect, to hold the cross shape. (Don’t cut the yarn from the skein—you can cut it later, when you determine whether or not you’ll be switching yarns or weaving until you reach the end of the sticks.) The knot should face the back side of your ojo de dios.
Wind the yarn in a figure eight around the intersection, up and down, then from left to right, to stabilize the sticks and cover the middle.
Once you have the intersection of the sticks covered and they are secure, weave the yarn by bringing it over a stick, then looping it around, and continuing the same over-around patter
n on the other sticks.
You can continue in this pattern until you reach the end of the sticks. However, you may also mix things up by reversing the direction—if you’re weaving in a clockwise pattern, switch to counterclockwise after a few rows, and vice versa. This provides a varied texture of recessed and raised rows.
If you wish to change yarn colors, make sure to tie the new yarn to the previous yarn so that the knot is on the back side of the god’s eye. Clip off any excess yarn only at the end, when you’re done.
When you are about a half-inch from the ends of the sticks, cut your yarn, leaving about 8 inches of yarn at the end. Tie a knot in the yarn close to the stick to end the weaving. You can use the “tail” of yarn to hang up the god’s eye when you are done.
If you have feathers, bells, charms, or other decorations, you can glue or tie them to the four ends of the sticks.
Writing Letters
WRITING GOOD OLD-FASHIONED letters has somewhat fallen out of style, with the advent of technology and the tempting immediacy of email, instant messaging, and texting. But there are still circumstances where a typed or handwritten formal letter is required that calls for something more personal and professional than CU L8R, KTHXBYE!
The Thank-You Letter
When you receive a gift or other form of hospitality, it is polite to send a thank-you note or letter in response—and it is most polite to have the letter be handwritten. Begin by greeting the person and then start the letter right away by saying “Thank you.” You don’t have to get fancy with an introduction; the whole point of the letter is to say thanks. So start with that: A simple “thank you for your gift” will do. Then, mention how the gift will come in handy for you (or, if writing in response to a favor or gesture of hospitality, how useful their actions were to you: “I really appreciated
The Daring Book for Girls Page 17
