Kids don't know anybody

This is quilt number 11 of 45 for the remaining days of 2014

Teaching high school is the best job ever.  I have so many days where I just laugh and laugh!  The quilt above reminds me of a story from my honors Biology class I have to share with you.  Not sure if you will find this as funny as I did, but man, I was laughing so hard, I was crying.  My kids think I'm crazy.  You see, this quilt was donated by a rather famous to us quilter from our area, Paula Baum.  She makes lots of fancy quilts and enters them in local shows.  I've seen her name around and when I saw that she had donated this little quilt, I got really excited.  Her name probably doesn't mean much to any of you, but to me, I thought, wow, I feel so lucky to quilt something of hers.

 Here's a face many of you might not recognize.  This is J. Craig Venter.  Do you know what he's famous for?  Well, in my Honors Biology class, we were watching a video about bacteria and he comes on talking about how they had mapped the DNA of bacteria and how important that was.  I pause the video to talk about how important this man is to biology and then compare him to Watson and Crick.  J .Craig Venter helped map the Human Genome.  Because of him and his team (and a competing team from the US Government) we now know where most of the genes are that are responsible for many genetic disorders.

 The kids look at me and ask, 'Who are Watson and Crick?"  I almost fell out of my chair!  I went on to explain how Watson and crick figured out how DNA had the spiral structure and the letters ATCG after stealing the idea from Rosalind Franklin who sat in on a lecture they were giving and when she saw the XRay images they showed, figured out the double helix design.  She doesn't always get credit for her efforts.  They ask, "who was Rosalind Franklin?"

 So, I had to resort to something they could understand.  I said, do you know who Beyonce is?

For those of you who don't know, she's a singer who has hair like me :)  I couldn't name a single song she sings, but I guess she's sold a bunch of them.  Do they even make CD's now?  I'm not sure.  Yeah, everyone knew who she was.  So, here I am comparing one of the great men of science to a singer with nice hair.  Sorry J. Craig Venter.  But the kids will always compare your work to Beyonce.  At least they will remember that you made a difference.  Or maybe that you sing well.  Or that I'm crazy.