Monday, July 24, 2006
Family newsletter - July 2006
Our "Mellor family newsletter" was due last week. Since Pauline & I took some time writing stuff for it, I thought I'd include it here.
___
Dear Family, July 2006
Greetings from the Wisconsin Coltons! Here’s an update on what’s been going on in our lives the past while.
Grandparents – This last quarter began with a visit from Phil and Bobby Colton. They were able to come between General Conference and Easter, which was also the girls’ spring break so we got to spend a lot of qtime. We went to Effigy Mounds National Park/Monument and somehow conned Phil (with the weak knee) and the kids (with the whi-nees) to climb up to the top and see some bumps in the ground. The bumps were ancient Indian burial mounds in the shape of animals, but they weren’t as exciting as the view of the Mississippi river and the vultures that were flying really really close to us. If that weren’t excitement enough, we got to go to the Bily Clock Museum/Dvorak Museum. The composer Dvorak spent sometime in Spillville, Iowa and they have a few rooms dedicated to his visit.
Other highlights of the Grandparent visit include: a Bargain Nook adventure, a scientific/nuclear energy lecture by Phil, egg dying and Knox-blocking for easter. We put Phil to work on the squeaky bathroom fan problem and He was VICTORIOUS!
Spring – Leslie joined her 4th-grade drama club this spring and spent two afternoons each week learning the craft of theater. She got to share the lead of the play! She memorized her lines really early on and enjoyed the experience. She also got to participate in a few multi-school academic competitions: Math-letics and Battle of the Books. Her Battle of the Books team won the bronze medal! Everyone at Math-letics were given awards for participation and Leslie and her team had a fun day.
May – Pauline painted a new “family history” painting in April – it was of Uncle Lehi’s house with Uncle Lehi and his Family in front. She did two paintings of the same subject and RaNae was given one for a birthday present. The other painting was hung at the Public library and displayed the entire month of May.
June – We completed 95% of our “year’s supply of basics,” we’ve been working on for a couple of years. Also we did a “food storage basics” display at a church preparedness day. This was just a warm-up for Pauline doing a presentation for the other ward’s enrichment night. On June 7th, Pauline turned 35 and celebrated by purchasing a new Dyson DC-15 vacuum-cleaner that we named HoosFoos.
Summer Schedule – The children were also let out of school. We decided our “summer schedule” would be to fill out a page each day of what we did. Each day we have to do something in the following categories: Work, Read/Write, Play, Practice/Exercise, Learn/Make, Serve. At the end of the day we report to John on what was accomplished. This way when the kids can’t think of what to do they can figure out which of their categories are blank for the day and DO something to fill it in.
Summer Events – One of the Learn/Make things we did was to help Leslie and Emily get a start on sewing. They each made a draw-string backpack to take with us to Circus World museum (see below for Circus World description). The backpacks have since been used for adventures to Riverfest, the library, and swimming leassons. Riverfest is a local community event which concludes with fireworks on the 4th of July. Swimming lessons are going well this time. Leslie is a lot stronger and braver than she was a year ago and therefore is doing excellently. Emily still loves to play in the water and will eventually learn to swim.
John’s cousin, Katie Snyder (new last name) recently moved to Milwaukee and had her second baby. Aunt Claudia Snyder came out to help and called us. We arranged to meet each other in New Glarus (about mid-way) and enjoyed spending the day walking around the shops and visiting.
John’s Work – I’m in the continuing process of writing up a paper based on experiments that I ran in January and June. The last couple of days have been spend reading a whole bunch of research papers written by other people on similar topics, to help figure some things out about my own paper. I’ve made some good progress and hope to be done with the paper in just a couple of days. I’m also in the process of waiting for new samples to study and waiting for new equipment to come in, to do some other experiments.
Another work project that I have going on is a teaching project. I was chosen to be the “Wisconsin Teaching Fellow” from our university for the coming year—each campus gets to choose one fairly new faculty person to be part of this program. The fellowship comes with some extra dollars, and the responsibility to carry out a “scholarship of teaching & learning” project. There are also several in-state conferences to attend during the summer and through next year. After thinking of 10 or so different projects, I’ve more-or-less decided to study how the type of exam (open notes vs. closed) affects students: their study habits, their motivation, retention, etc. I’ll assess the students through interviews and surveys. I think it should be an interesting project, and something that hasn’t really been done before in physics, as far as I can tell.
Circus World – My last Teaching Fellow conference was in Madison a few weeks ago. To have some family fun, Pauline and the girls decided to meet me half way home, in Baraboo Wisconsin, where there is a circus museum. It was the winter home for the Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey Circus, back in the day. Why Wisconsin in the winter, you ask? Apparently B&B were from Wisconsin, so it was near their home. It’s now run by the Wisconsin State Historical Society, and they have a bunch of old circus stuff (decorated train cars, etc.). They also have some live “exhibits”—we saw a clown show, a magic show, an acrobatic show, rode on a carousel (which we were informed was more properly called a merry-go-round, since the horses went up & down), and saw an elephant demonstration. Leslie, Emily, and John decided to complete the experience by riding on the elephant! It was fun.
The piano saga – A circuit on our electric piano blew last October. This was the piano that we bought way back in Provo, Utah, 1994. We hadn’t had any problems with it since, but discovered that Panasonic repair technicians are hard to come by in this part of the world. We determined that the closest person was in a small town most of the way towards Madison (about an hour and 45 minutes away). It’s a long, but scenic drive there. And coincidentally the repair shop is run by a guy whose last name was Snyder, and his ancestors were from Athens, Ohio—so we’re likely relatives (that’s where John’s grandpa Snyder grew up).
So dropping off the piano was a good experience. Unfortunately, we had to wait and wait and WAIT to get it fixed. As things turned out, the particular piano wasn’t made anymore, and replacement parts were no longer being made. They ended up having to send the circuit board to Japan, where it was traded in for a used, repaired, circuit board. So that basically took FOREVER. Or at least six months, which felt like forever. The most frustrating thing about it, is that the repair guy (Snyder’s assistant) would NEVER call us to let us know what the status was. We’d literally go months without hearing from the guy—until I called *him*, and then the answer would invariably be that he was still waiting from Panasonic to call him. Apparently “initiative” wasn’t in his vocabulary. If I hadn’t followed up, and “encouraged” him every 6 weeks or so to keep calling Panasonic to see where in the world our circuit board even was, I am certain that it would have taken twice as long for us to get it back, if at all!
Then, when we finally got it back, we took it home… and the speakers promptly blew. I imagine something wasn’t screwed down on the inside, and made a bad contact when we tilted the thing over to fit in our minivan. So, we had to take it back to the repair place, and they had to order new speakers for us (at least they didn’t charge us for them, that was nice). So our hope was dashed to the ground again, just when we thought the saga was over.
Happy ending: we finally got in back in mid-April. Yay! Playing the piano is fun. And it *is* a nice piano, so it was worth getting it fixed. I started having piano lessons with the kids again. Leslie and Emily are both doing really well. Leslie decided she’d prefer to just continue with the piano instead of doing both the piano and the violin. Last year in school she did violin for both semesters, which ended up being very nice while the piano was gone.
Choir – Most if not all of you should know that I sing in the La Crosse Chamber Chorale. We sing mostly classical-style choral music, both ancient and modern. Let me know if you’d really like to hear the choir; since our choir performances are taped for later radio broadcasting, I’ve got recordings of just about all of our performances. I’ve even compiled a couple of “greatest hits” CDs. Every year we have a fund-raising dinner/performance that can let us break out of the classical stereotype, called the “May Feaste”. This year’s Feaste theme was “1950’s and 60’s”. We sang a West Side Story medley, a Beatles medley, “At the Hop”, etc.
Also part of the May Feaste are some “small group numbers”, which individual choir members organize. I joined several of these, and ended up singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, “My Girl”, and “Heart” (from Damn Yankees) in three different male quartets. Fun! The Lion Sleeps Tonight was a great hit, and a ladies group from a town an hour away is willing to pay [money going to the choir, I assume] for our quartet to perform at some meeting they have in September.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention—we got to dress appropriate for the era. So I wore a tie-dye shirt, a long hair wig, beads, and sandals. :-)
Church – Church is still pretty much the same for me. I’m still the second counselor and the organist. And I’ll probably direct the choir again this Christmas. Pauline, on the other hand, about a month or two ago, was asked to teach the Gospel Doctrine class. She has done an excellent job, and I’m not just saying that! She’s probably as good as any other Gospel Doctrine teacher that I’ve ever had, and much better than most! And I think she even likes it a little—the “preparing for lessons” part, not the “standing up in front of people” part.
Blog – Inspired by a priesthood lesson about 6 weeks ago, I decided to do a better job of keeping a personal journal. One of the new guys (Todd Ebbert, a resident at the local hospital) said that his family had had success doing a blog as a journal. I had thought about doing that very thing just a couple of days before, so I decided events were conspiring to tell me something. Long story short: I now have my own blog, which I’m using basically as a journal. This family newsletter will probably get posted there, for example.
So, to find out the latest in what’s going on with John, feel free to visit: http://johncolton.blogspot.com
___
Yes I love technology
But not as much as you, you see
But I still love technology
Always and forever
Our love is like a flock of doves
Flying up to heav'n above
Always and forever
Always and forever
Special Topic: Why the John S. Colton Family Loves Technology Always and Forever
Leslie: It helps you learn stuff. You can play fun games and things.
Emily: Technology means typing on the computer. I like technology because you can e-mail people and write a letter to someone.
Pauline: I like to use technology/internet to help me with Sunday School Lessons, answering kids “weird” questions, ordering books/music/movies/misc. on the internet, using google to find genealogy answers, comparing products I’m thinking of purchasing. I love technology because I can get a pattern from my mom the same day I ask for it. I can send pictures to people I like. I can “nuke” food so things don’t take very long.
John: I like being able to listen to store my entire CD collection on my computer and listen to music all day at work. I like wikipedia. I like anti-lock breaks. I love taking hundreds of photographs and being able to delete the ones that don’t turn out instead of having to pay for their processing. I like email. I like being able to follow the Utah Jazz even though we live far away. I like being able to have people’s addresses/phone numbers along with my schedule and a chunk of my music collection all on my Palm Pilot. I like optical mice. I like electric pianos that have headphones the kids can wear while practicing. I like amazon.com. I like googling things. I liked mechanical pencils. I like central heat & air-conditioning. I like indoor plumbing. I like writing newsletters with MS Word instead of a typewriter.
___
Dear Family, July 2006
Greetings from the Wisconsin Coltons! Here’s an update on what’s been going on in our lives the past while.
Grandparents – This last quarter began with a visit from Phil and Bobby Colton. They were able to come between General Conference and Easter, which was also the girls’ spring break so we got to spend a lot of qtime. We went to Effigy Mounds National Park/Monument and somehow conned Phil (with the weak knee) and the kids (with the whi-nees) to climb up to the top and see some bumps in the ground. The bumps were ancient Indian burial mounds in the shape of animals, but they weren’t as exciting as the view of the Mississippi river and the vultures that were flying really really close to us. If that weren’t excitement enough, we got to go to the Bily Clock Museum/Dvorak Museum. The composer Dvorak spent sometime in Spillville, Iowa and they have a few rooms dedicated to his visit.
Other highlights of the Grandparent visit include: a Bargain Nook adventure, a scientific/nuclear energy lecture by Phil, egg dying and Knox-blocking for easter. We put Phil to work on the squeaky bathroom fan problem and He was VICTORIOUS!
Spring – Leslie joined her 4th-grade drama club this spring and spent two afternoons each week learning the craft of theater. She got to share the lead of the play! She memorized her lines really early on and enjoyed the experience. She also got to participate in a few multi-school academic competitions: Math-letics and Battle of the Books. Her Battle of the Books team won the bronze medal! Everyone at Math-letics were given awards for participation and Leslie and her team had a fun day.
May – Pauline painted a new “family history” painting in April – it was of Uncle Lehi’s house with Uncle Lehi and his Family in front. She did two paintings of the same subject and RaNae was given one for a birthday present. The other painting was hung at the Public library and displayed the entire month of May.
June – We completed 95% of our “year’s supply of basics,” we’ve been working on for a couple of years. Also we did a “food storage basics” display at a church preparedness day. This was just a warm-up for Pauline doing a presentation for the other ward’s enrichment night. On June 7th, Pauline turned 35 and celebrated by purchasing a new Dyson DC-15 vacuum-cleaner that we named HoosFoos.
Summer Schedule – The children were also let out of school. We decided our “summer schedule” would be to fill out a page each day of what we did. Each day we have to do something in the following categories: Work, Read/Write, Play, Practice/Exercise, Learn/Make, Serve. At the end of the day we report to John on what was accomplished. This way when the kids can’t think of what to do they can figure out which of their categories are blank for the day and DO something to fill it in.
Summer Events – One of the Learn/Make things we did was to help Leslie and Emily get a start on sewing. They each made a draw-string backpack to take with us to Circus World museum (see below for Circus World description). The backpacks have since been used for adventures to Riverfest, the library, and swimming leassons. Riverfest is a local community event which concludes with fireworks on the 4th of July. Swimming lessons are going well this time. Leslie is a lot stronger and braver than she was a year ago and therefore is doing excellently. Emily still loves to play in the water and will eventually learn to swim.
John’s cousin, Katie Snyder (new last name) recently moved to Milwaukee and had her second baby. Aunt Claudia Snyder came out to help and called us. We arranged to meet each other in New Glarus (about mid-way) and enjoyed spending the day walking around the shops and visiting.
John’s Work – I’m in the continuing process of writing up a paper based on experiments that I ran in January and June. The last couple of days have been spend reading a whole bunch of research papers written by other people on similar topics, to help figure some things out about my own paper. I’ve made some good progress and hope to be done with the paper in just a couple of days. I’m also in the process of waiting for new samples to study and waiting for new equipment to come in, to do some other experiments.
Another work project that I have going on is a teaching project. I was chosen to be the “Wisconsin Teaching Fellow” from our university for the coming year—each campus gets to choose one fairly new faculty person to be part of this program. The fellowship comes with some extra dollars, and the responsibility to carry out a “scholarship of teaching & learning” project. There are also several in-state conferences to attend during the summer and through next year. After thinking of 10 or so different projects, I’ve more-or-less decided to study how the type of exam (open notes vs. closed) affects students: their study habits, their motivation, retention, etc. I’ll assess the students through interviews and surveys. I think it should be an interesting project, and something that hasn’t really been done before in physics, as far as I can tell.
Circus World – My last Teaching Fellow conference was in Madison a few weeks ago. To have some family fun, Pauline and the girls decided to meet me half way home, in Baraboo Wisconsin, where there is a circus museum. It was the winter home for the Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey Circus, back in the day. Why Wisconsin in the winter, you ask? Apparently B&B were from Wisconsin, so it was near their home. It’s now run by the Wisconsin State Historical Society, and they have a bunch of old circus stuff (decorated train cars, etc.). They also have some live “exhibits”—we saw a clown show, a magic show, an acrobatic show, rode on a carousel (which we were informed was more properly called a merry-go-round, since the horses went up & down), and saw an elephant demonstration. Leslie, Emily, and John decided to complete the experience by riding on the elephant! It was fun.
The piano saga – A circuit on our electric piano blew last October. This was the piano that we bought way back in Provo, Utah, 1994. We hadn’t had any problems with it since, but discovered that Panasonic repair technicians are hard to come by in this part of the world. We determined that the closest person was in a small town most of the way towards Madison (about an hour and 45 minutes away). It’s a long, but scenic drive there. And coincidentally the repair shop is run by a guy whose last name was Snyder, and his ancestors were from Athens, Ohio—so we’re likely relatives (that’s where John’s grandpa Snyder grew up).
So dropping off the piano was a good experience. Unfortunately, we had to wait and wait and WAIT to get it fixed. As things turned out, the particular piano wasn’t made anymore, and replacement parts were no longer being made. They ended up having to send the circuit board to Japan, where it was traded in for a used, repaired, circuit board. So that basically took FOREVER. Or at least six months, which felt like forever. The most frustrating thing about it, is that the repair guy (Snyder’s assistant) would NEVER call us to let us know what the status was. We’d literally go months without hearing from the guy—until I called *him*, and then the answer would invariably be that he was still waiting from Panasonic to call him. Apparently “initiative” wasn’t in his vocabulary. If I hadn’t followed up, and “encouraged” him every 6 weeks or so to keep calling Panasonic to see where in the world our circuit board even was, I am certain that it would have taken twice as long for us to get it back, if at all!
Then, when we finally got it back, we took it home… and the speakers promptly blew. I imagine something wasn’t screwed down on the inside, and made a bad contact when we tilted the thing over to fit in our minivan. So, we had to take it back to the repair place, and they had to order new speakers for us (at least they didn’t charge us for them, that was nice). So our hope was dashed to the ground again, just when we thought the saga was over.
Happy ending: we finally got in back in mid-April. Yay! Playing the piano is fun. And it *is* a nice piano, so it was worth getting it fixed. I started having piano lessons with the kids again. Leslie and Emily are both doing really well. Leslie decided she’d prefer to just continue with the piano instead of doing both the piano and the violin. Last year in school she did violin for both semesters, which ended up being very nice while the piano was gone.
Choir – Most if not all of you should know that I sing in the La Crosse Chamber Chorale. We sing mostly classical-style choral music, both ancient and modern. Let me know if you’d really like to hear the choir; since our choir performances are taped for later radio broadcasting, I’ve got recordings of just about all of our performances. I’ve even compiled a couple of “greatest hits” CDs. Every year we have a fund-raising dinner/performance that can let us break out of the classical stereotype, called the “May Feaste”. This year’s Feaste theme was “1950’s and 60’s”. We sang a West Side Story medley, a Beatles medley, “At the Hop”, etc.
Also part of the May Feaste are some “small group numbers”, which individual choir members organize. I joined several of these, and ended up singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, “My Girl”, and “Heart” (from Damn Yankees) in three different male quartets. Fun! The Lion Sleeps Tonight was a great hit, and a ladies group from a town an hour away is willing to pay [money going to the choir, I assume] for our quartet to perform at some meeting they have in September.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention—we got to dress appropriate for the era. So I wore a tie-dye shirt, a long hair wig, beads, and sandals. :-)
Church – Church is still pretty much the same for me. I’m still the second counselor and the organist. And I’ll probably direct the choir again this Christmas. Pauline, on the other hand, about a month or two ago, was asked to teach the Gospel Doctrine class. She has done an excellent job, and I’m not just saying that! She’s probably as good as any other Gospel Doctrine teacher that I’ve ever had, and much better than most! And I think she even likes it a little—the “preparing for lessons” part, not the “standing up in front of people” part.
Blog – Inspired by a priesthood lesson about 6 weeks ago, I decided to do a better job of keeping a personal journal. One of the new guys (Todd Ebbert, a resident at the local hospital) said that his family had had success doing a blog as a journal. I had thought about doing that very thing just a couple of days before, so I decided events were conspiring to tell me something. Long story short: I now have my own blog, which I’m using basically as a journal. This family newsletter will probably get posted there, for example.
So, to find out the latest in what’s going on with John, feel free to visit: http://johncolton.blogspot.com
___
Yes I love technology
But not as much as you, you see
But I still love technology
Always and forever
Our love is like a flock of doves
Flying up to heav'n above
Always and forever
Always and forever
Special Topic: Why the John S. Colton Family Loves Technology Always and Forever
Leslie: It helps you learn stuff. You can play fun games and things.
Emily: Technology means typing on the computer. I like technology because you can e-mail people and write a letter to someone.
Pauline: I like to use technology/internet to help me with Sunday School Lessons, answering kids “weird” questions, ordering books/music/movies/misc. on the internet, using google to find genealogy answers, comparing products I’m thinking of purchasing. I love technology because I can get a pattern from my mom the same day I ask for it. I can send pictures to people I like. I can “nuke” food so things don’t take very long.
John: I like being able to listen to store my entire CD collection on my computer and listen to music all day at work. I like wikipedia. I like anti-lock breaks. I love taking hundreds of photographs and being able to delete the ones that don’t turn out instead of having to pay for their processing. I like email. I like being able to follow the Utah Jazz even though we live far away. I like being able to have people’s addresses/phone numbers along with my schedule and a chunk of my music collection all on my Palm Pilot. I like optical mice. I like electric pianos that have headphones the kids can wear while practicing. I like amazon.com. I like googling things. I liked mechanical pencils. I like central heat & air-conditioning. I like indoor plumbing. I like writing newsletters with MS Word instead of a typewriter.
# posted by John Colton @ 8:59 AM 
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I agree with Todd and regret not being able to heckle her in class enough, as I'm too busy playing hooky during Sunday School.
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