Had a very nice day today, but I will talk more about that when I get some pics emailed to me. I was too lazy and disorganized today to bring a camera along on our adventures.
In the meantime, I wanted to share a frustration of mine. My youngest daughter has become interested in Balto, the lead sled dog on the last leg of an urgent trip to get diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska. She recently watched the movie loosely based on his adventures. As I feared, the scene where men are crafting coffins for children who might die due to the disease was a little unsettling, but not overwhelming.
Anyway, we took a trip to the bookstore to fill in a few holes left in the homeschool curriculum, and I bought my daughter an "early reader" type book about Balto. Now why do so many books and web articles talk about a statue of Balto put up in New York City, but do not talk about how the city of Cleveland put together $2,000 (in the 1920's) in the space of two weeks to rescue Balto and his teammates from a vaudeville owner who was mistreating them? The dogs then happily lived out the rest of their lives at the Cleveland Zoo, and the Cleveland Musuem of Natural History now has Balto's body, which has been stuffed, periodically on display. I suppose they don't think little kids should read about Balto being mistreated, but why not give Cleveland some credit here? We need all of it we can get!
As a matter of fact, I discovered that the Cleveland Museum of Natural History will be having a presentation early next year about Balto's trip. Ironically, it is on Wildchild's birthday, which is also the day the sled dog team finally pulled into Nome with the serum. At least my daughter will have something to associate with her birthday beside Groundhog's Day! I'm thinking a homeschool trip to the presentation might be fun. Anyone else think so?
2 comments:
Seems like NY gets all the credit for lots of stuff! Sounds like that would be a very interesting trip for you to take! Thanks for stopping by my blog last week, as far as blog names go, I'd like to hear the story behind yours!
It has been a while since my kids have been there! We might be able to go along, but I will not be able to say for sure until around Christmas time.
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