Immortal Trees Bookshop weekly newsletter: Issue 15

Thursday, August 9

Hello, readers!

How did week 1 of Intellectual August go for you? Did you get any badges? I'm gonna leave the information on how to play down below just in case you missed it last week.

I admit that I haven't worked on any more badges, but I am very curious about how to get the Pet Portrait badge. I think it might take enlisting Jack and Toothless to help me. :) Let me know if you figure it out.

SALE EXTENDED!!!!

Intellectual August Week 2:

Just a hop across the pond

Today we adventure to the Natural History Museum in London! If you have not been before, you need to put it on your travel bucket list. Definitely one not to miss. In the meantime, let's go explore their website and get a sneak peek to how amazing this museum is. Here is the link, and then I will explain some key experiences I have found.

At this link, you can walk around the former Fantastic Beasts (Harry Potter world) exhibit, take a virtual tour of the main lobby area and connecting hallways (CRAZY BEAUTIFUL BUILDING!), and listen along to Sir David Attenborough as he gives you a personal tour around the hall. All of the experiences at this link have been richly developed, and I promise you will lose track of time (and maybe earn a few of those Google badges!)

After you wander around the museum, you can pop some popcorn and flip through the picture slideshow of the Wildlife Photographer of The Year photos. Here's the link:

If you select the first photo (the bear one), it will open to just that photo with details and background information about the photo, photographer, and photo location. You can advance to the next photo with the arrow at the top right of the page. Amy and I took a break today to flip through a few pics while we ate our lunch. So far, Amy's favorite is the wolf spider/plover chick, and mine is the sea lion/sea dragon. You'll have to go see our picks and then pick your own! (We have only got as far as the mouse and moth.) Let us know your vote!

Intellectual August Week 1:

Smarticles Unite!  

(reposted from last week just in case you need it)

Say goodbye to the cobwebs in your brain; we are going on a virtual museum tour! There are so many museums that have created 360 degree turn-arounds and walk-throughs. We have picked just a few for this month, but there are so many that you could keep going for the rest of the year!

However, before we "step" into any museums, I found a super activity to share with you that will work with your virtual museum adventures. Introducing Google Arts and Culture:

Did you know about this site? So much to do! This website isn't a specific virtual museum, but it does have a lot of information collected from other museum collections, and they are organized by date, style, time, location, peoples, etc. You can see there are already several directions I could go explore just on this page, and then there are tabs - Explore, Play, Nearby - that have even more fun things to look at. But I am suggesting you go to the three-line drop down over on the top left. Go ahead; I'll wait.

Open the "Achievements" tab. Does your page look like the one above? Scroll down and look at all the digital badges you can earn by doing things within Google. I currently have Art Inspector (the only colored one in the pic above), Adventurer, Museum Explorer, Bookworm (of course), Color Explorer, and Time Explorer.

I have to be honest with you; I'm still working out how you actually get these badges. I was searching on my phone for museums and they just started popping up as I earned them and did certain activities. I'm guessing you need to use the Google search engine to earn the digital badges, but you don't have to be just in the Google Art and Culture section. Some of my badges came from being on a museum website.

I'm going to keep exploring and trying to earn all of these cute and free awards; I'm hooked now! If you discover how to earn any of them, drop me a line so I can start a how-to list to share with each of you.

Also, let me know if you fall down a rabbit hole and discover something worth sharing. I'm always looking for fun ways to acquire new information. Good luck, Smarticles! Go earn those badges!

Reaching out to our community

We are looking to reach out to more people through newspaper and magazine paid advertising and then hopefully hire a few employees so we can plan more events and programming for our shop. We are asking our community to help us out by spreading the word about our Go Fund Me account. You can read all about our shop and our plan to use the funds at the link below. (I took the previous really long-winded descriptions from previous newsletters out so I could add new stuff to this newsletter.)

Thank you, as always, for supporting us!

Update: Many, many thank yous to everyone who has donated! :) These generous financial gifts are being put in a pot to apply toward paid advertising, hopefully soon when we get enough for contract requirements. Yay!

Editor's last words: Mean what you say, and say what you mean

Both my mom and Mr. Bookshop are left-handed, so it was not a surprise when Aurora was also born left-handed. When she was bitty, I did little tests to see which was her dominate hand such as putting her fork on the right of her plate to see if she would use it as-is or move it to her left hand. She moved it every time, and I was tickled that she had a little characteristic I have always thought was pretty cool.

As you have probably discovered by now, I am a word person, so when it came to talking about being right-handed and being left-handed, I started considering the double meaning about the word "right". Right/Left and Right/Wrong. My mom had told me stories about how she was treated poorly by her teachers when she was in school because she wasn't writing with her right hand. Writing with her left hand was considered wrong, and it took my grandfather stepping in and correcting the teacher to make it okay for my mom to write with the hand that was natural.

Remembering that story, I never wanted Aurora to feel like she was "wrong" because most people were "right" handed, as if they were "correct" handed and she was somehow broken or odd. Think of it this way: sometimes when someone says something that is a confirmation question - "You wanted that with fries, right?" - we answer with a quick response: "right." Using the word this way is a confirmation. I was concerned that "left", by default, would mean "wrong", so I starting replying to questions with "correct". Was this silly? Perhaps. But it was important to me that as Aurora was first learning our language, I not only demonstrated using the most accurate words when I talked, I didn't equate the word left and wrong. Side note: I have since used the word "correct" when confirming physical directions and "right" when I'm telling them to literally turn right.

Do you have any words that you use specifically to give instructions so that the receiver knows exactly what you are trying to say? Sometimes it is the receiver not translating the message correctly, but sometimes it's us not thinking through how the message might be translated.

And now you know a little bit more about how much I think about words. <grin>

Have a great weekend!

P.S. Left-Handers Day is Wednesday, August 16. Yep, patient readers, there's the connection.

~ Charity and Amy (and Jack and Toothless)