The Path Math Hath

 

The Path Math Hath 

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Back when the earth was still cooling, back when I was a student at Harlem High, algebra was a high school subject. Now they start the kids learning simple equations in pre-school. Or near enough.

Up until Algebra, I’d made A’s in math. Our algebra teacher was an aerospace engineer the year the field was overbooked, clogged, with aerospace engineers and those who could not follow that path, taught math.

Class consisted of Mr. X, or was it Y, ordering us to memorize the equations and work the problems. Then he gathered the boys in a circle at the front of the room and talked sports until the bell rang.

I’m the type of learner that wants to know why, to follow a to b to c to x. This man said, “That is not important. Just memorize the equations and work the problems.”

I’d sit at the dining table at home, brown paper grocery bags for scratch paper, penciled with numbers run amok, until I’d get the right answer. And I could show how I figured it out. But it wasn’t the way Mr. X+Y wanted. So I’d get my papers red-marked, even with right answers.

When I’d figure the answers to the problems my way, convert them to his way, all was well, on daily assignments. Then came the dreaded tests. I didn’t have time to figure, then convert. So I’d fail the tests. Didn’t matter that I had the right answer and there was my figuring on the page to support the answer.

From then on I was soured on math and avoided it when I could. I’m not saying the teacher was wrong. Maybe further on in higher algebra there was a reason to do it his way instead of the way I’d figured out how to do it on my own.

I am the first to admit I had a certain amount of stubborn resistance going on. That same stubborn resistance has landed me in quicksand, metaphorically speaking, but has also come to my rescue in equal part. Using it as a tool, I’ve learned how to do a lot of things.

Take sewing, for instance. A similar situation happened back before I’d moved to Montana. I was nine or ten, joined 4-H, a great organization, my only year.

We had to make a fringed scarf and one other item I don’t recall. Grandma looked at the directions, frowned, said, “Why do it that way when it is easier and just as nice this way.” She showed me how. Made sense to me. Needless to say, I won no blue ribbon.

Maybe it’s all Grandma’s fault, my life, and all, even algebra.

Okay. Nice try, but I know to own my own actions and reactions, dang.

Still on the subject of sewing, when the pandemic hit, my wardrobe was showing signs of wear, tear and shabbiness. I began to revise, revamp, rebuild and repurpose my entire wardrobe.

I’m living a pared down life. I have a simple portable home sewing machine and a dozen spools of thread, scissors, the bare basics. I have no supply of fabrics, no patterns. I am creative. Once I have an idea, can see it in my imagination, I can usually figure out how to make it happen. You know, ab over c minus y equals x. I’ve made clothing from sheets and shower curtains. You’d never guess.

People know I love to sew. Several neighbors bring me mending. They also bring me, well, let Julie tell you. “Nancie gave me this piece of cotton. I’ll not use it. Maybe you can do something with it.” Just when I wanted a new tablecloth, Julie brought me that lovely curtain which made the tablecloth plus napkins.

Kathy brought me a traditional Indian (India) outfit that a patient had given Dr. Richard, her husband. I ripped the whole thing apart and created a lovely shirt plus a set of handkerchiefs.

So the other night lying in bed, I thought about a pair of jeans I’d bought online. I hate shopping. I know better than to buy clothing online. I have to touch, to see, to hold, to try on for fit. I dislike those pants.

That night I could see those jeans reduced to strips of denim married to another piece of fabric given me by Crinny a couple years ago, to have and to hold, I mean, to create a lovely blouse. I can see it. I can do it. I’ll let you know if I get a pass or fail. It’s all about math. Measure twice, cut once, I was taught. 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

How can it be March?

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Happy Plastic Halloween

The Grinch of Halloween Rides Again
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Happy Plastic Halloween




What a curmudgeon I have become! Halloween used to be so much fun—back when I was a kid. The holiday was all about us scaring ourselves. Ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night. I remember crouching out behind the wash house with my Bierly cousins, under a table covered with a sheet, the moon throwing shadows from the trees. We told ghost stories, each one more terrifying than the last. Over at my other cousins, the Bells, we huddled around a piano in the dark, the base notes drumming up the drama as we took turns topping the last tale of terror. We sure knew how to have fun. I wonder what it was in our makeup as children that we enjoyed deliberately setting out to feel scared.



I lived in the country, so going door-to-door trick-or-treating was not an option. My favorite Halloween memory was the year when my Grandmother took us to the Rehobeth Club, a kind of community center out in the country, for a party. All our neighbors were there. The clubhouse was decorated with corn shucks, straw bales, orange and black crepe paper streamers. Scarecrows were propped in the corners with jack-a-lanterns leering at their feet, candles throwing fluttering light from within—now that really should have been scary! Think of the liability!



We created our own Halloween costumes, of course. My cousin Shirley and I pawed through the attic, dragged possibilities into the hallway, and cobbled our costumes together. I went as a hobo. We stitched patches onto some of my fathers discarded work clothes, already ragged. My mask from the dime store was made of rubber. Shirley dressed as a great lady, draped in lace curtains hung together with plenty of safety pins. Her mask was a molded form that fit over her eyes. She sneaked make-up from her older sister and troweled it on heavily. We worked all afternoon making huge papier-mache ghost heads that we attached to broom handles. At the party we gobbled donuts, drank punch, dunked for apples, played games, danced and, to our astonishment, won a prize for our costumes. When the party was over, all the children were given small brown bags of hard candies and a popcorn ball. That Halloween was wonderful!



When my children were little I never had money for store-bought costumes, cheap and shiny though they were. They begged and pleaded. I said no. So I taught them to be creative, to search out materials to build new personas. One particularly lean year we all became ghosts, wearing thrift-store sheets with holes cut out for the eyes. We made a walking tour through the neighborhood, bags in hand, gathering loot. I waited in the dark at the end of each driveway for their return. Now and then I talked them into giving me a treat. We always returned home tired and happy, faces smeared with chocolate.



Times, they are a-changing. Several weeks ago, while visiting at my daughter’s house, I watched her cruise through an on-line costume shop, dithering over a choice from costumes with sixty dollar price tags. I, of course, was appalled. If I lived anywhere nearby, I would take my granddaughter in hand and we would make a costume with found objects. Of course, she’d probably balk. She likes and wants the plastic “princess” look, just like every other modern four-year-old girl. They will drive to the brightly lit mall, go store to store, holding out a shopping bag for the clerks to dump in handfuls of candy. With not even a walk through the dark and spooky night, ghosts and goblins lurking behind every bush, won’t they be bored out of their little minds? Poor kids.



I’ll buy candy for the children who might come to my door Halloween night. But I’ll choose the candy that I like best because I might be stuck with most of it. There are several more kids in my neighborhood this year than last year though. So maybe, if I am lucky, some ghoulies and goblins and long-legged beasties will knock at my door to scare me silly.



Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 28, 2010
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