Mae's Real Stories

HawaiiIn Hawaii, the volcano is still erupting near the parking lot where we were able to park last summer. But now, no one is allowed to go there. You can only stand on the other side, near the lodge or near the observatory. This picture is one of the many they post each week -- it shows you how amazing the volcanic eruption looks. By the light of the stars just before moon rise and by the glow of the lava, you can see the landscape and the plume of hot ash erupting from the volcano.

AntarcticaWe have never been to Antarctica, but some of the researchers there have a wonderful blog that I wanted to let you know about. The researchers took some photos of snow, mountains, and penguins from a plane a few days ago: this is one example. Check it out!

The Antarctic blog shows several new pictures today of the sun setting. What's important is that it is late spring here, so in Antarctica the winter is starting. After a few more sunsets, one day there will be no sun at all. It will be dark or almost dark for a couple of months!

I hope everyone will have a good time. Last year I wrote about it a lot. Here is a repeat in case you would like to see it:
In the spring we celebrate the Jewish holiday called Passover. We have a special ceremony called a Seder, and we tell a story about Jewish history a long, long time ago. To tell this story, we have special food on the table. The picture shows the table from last year.

At the Seder, we tell the story of how the Jews were slaves in the land of Egypt in this long-ago time, and how Moses, their leader, helped them to escape. We celebrate freedom and the coming of spring.

Moses and all the people ran away from Egypt so fast that they didn't have time to bake bread, but ate a flat bread called matzoh. For the holiday of Passover, many Jewish people do not eat any other type of bread or crackers for 8 days, because they want to remember the story.

When the Jewish people were slaves, they had to work very hard making big buildings for the Egyptians. On the Seder plate is a special fruit jam called charoses that tastes very good.

Charoses looks like the mortar that holds a brick or stone building together, and we eat it to remind us of the lives of the Jewish slaves who worked on the buildings in Egypt.

The next special food is called "bitter herbs," or horseradish. This is a very bitter, sharp-tasting root. This taste makes all the people at the Seder remember the hard and "bitter" lives that the Jewish people had when they were slaves around 3000 years ago. They make us remember that freedom is a good thing.

One part of the Seder is to eat matzoh with some charoses and ground-up horseradish on it, and remember the bitter and the sweet parts of the story.



Salt water on the Passover plate makes us remember the tears that people wept when they were not free men and women.


The egg on the Passover plate reminds us that spring is here.
Parsley or other mild-tasting green herbs is also on the Seder table to remind us of spring. Another part of the Passover celebration is to eat egg with salt water and matzoh, and to dip the parsley in salt water.


Also on the Passover plate is a bone from a lamb. We also drink wine as we tell the story.

When Moses helped the Jews to escape, the first thing they did was to cross a big sea named the Red Sea. Here is the magical part of the story: the water of the sea opened up, and everyone could walk between the walls of water.

While they walked, Moses's sister sang and danced to help them on their way. Her name was Miriam, and she has an important part in the story. After all the Jews crossed the Red Sea and escaped from slavery, they lived in the desert for a long time. Miriam had a magic well so that wherever they went, they found water to drink. Even though the desert is a very dry place, Miriam's magic well was always with them.

Click on the photos to see enlargement with detail:

Labels: Mona Lisa

See this April Fool video from the BBC. (It's about penguins!)