1/15/2015.  No, I didn't actually make them use a typewriter.  This is just a pic from a furniture store we ducked into yesterday to cool off in the air-conditioning.

I took the kids to the Singapore Science Museum this afternoon.  There was an exhibit on Alfred Wallace, the contemporary of Darwin.  He was doing fieldwork on the tendency of beetle species to form varieties.  It was right here in the Malay peninsula, the year before Darwin published The Origin of Species.  There were facsimiles of letters he wrote to Darwin, with Darwin's replies.  Four weeks to England, four weeks to get the reply.  Darwin was all enthusiasm.  Neither side of the correspondence suggests rivalry--just a shared "Oh my god, me TOO!" exuberance.  Wallace lived in what is now the luxury hotel district of Singapore.  He kept a pet orangutan and at night drew the caterpillars, beetles, and butterflies he'd collected during the day.

Before the museum outing, I did my little homeschool lesson with the kids.  Today I let them choose the activity.  They said they wanted to write letters to people they missed.  Here was Keka's letter to her kindergarten teacher.  It was many many minutes of effort.  But the impulse and the hope was the same as Wallace's, I think.

 

writing home2

 

 

 

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