IF MOI WAS THE VARIABLE "X", HOW MIGHT YOU DEFINE MY APPROPRIATE EXPONENT?

School starts tomorrow for Michael and I am so proud....of moiself! In three months, I have crammed four years of math into a 13-year-old boy! He barely knew subtraction five months ago; today, he is at par with his peers, doing geometry and algebra! Last night, we had to do a refresher course in Scientific Notation -- do please feel how thrilled I am at writing that phrase -- refresher course in Scientific Notation...!

Okay, let Moi stop patting moiself on the back: but of course I'm mostly proud of Michael. How many 13-year-olds would have allowed someone to inflict this kind of math torture for nearly every day for three months? He has a HUGE work ethic! Nonetheless, I am so pleased to send him off to school tomorrow as I was really REALLY reaching my limit of doing teaching by being a half-chapter ahead...

And he's still a terrific artist, of course! Here is his drawing of where he immediately hung up a poster of Jasper Johns' "Flag" in his bedroom -- the poster is another gift from his Aunt Eve and Uncle John. That's his Lion bedside lamp and edge of his bed along the left-side...:



What a lovely way to commemorate his first view of Jasper John's Flag. It's interesting he made less stripes than on the actual flag and I'm also intrigued by how he uses color to focus.

I think there's a lot to learn in using color to focus -- speaking as one who's often relied on ekphrasis, it can be considered part of ars poetica!