Sunday, May 03, 2009

"Happy Birthday Mr. Brian!"

6C became a fan of "Mr. Brian" when he guessed on all of their "People from Seattle" appearances. I put his (and all of your) guesses on a PowerPoint and they laughed their heads off at all of them. Now they often ask about him, so here they are wishing him a HB, and welcoming "Little Hatshepsut" into the world. Brian and Kristi's baby is due in about a week, and they won't even tell their sister across the world what her name will be, only that it will be "Hatshepsut" after the Queen who was "King" of Ancient Egypt. 6C knows all about her, of course...

Anyway, happy birthday, Brian.

21 comments:

Brian Bowker said...

Wow! I've never been wished a happy birthday by so many mythical deities at once! Wonderful! Please give my greetings and thanks to 6C!

As for Baby X's name - we're still deciding what her name will be. We keep going back and fourth between Hatshepsut and Little Bean.

Anonymous said...

Happy B-day Brian! I love how you Bowkers keep your B-days so exciting and engage so many people and use so many different mediums! Little Hatshepsut Little Bean Bowker is destined for greatness! Look who she has for relatives! The Gene POOL is way turbo-charged with multiple intelligences! God Bless you for reproducing! :) Jaci

Amy T. said...

Happy birthday!

and

gulp

NO one has suggested Marjorie?

Mungo said...

All you Bowkers are so cool.

Marjie said...

I showed 6C the video today and was corrected on Hatshepsut's spelling by five of them. My kids may have fun in my class, but they may not always get the facts. Is that REALLY so important in history? Amy, what do you think? If you get the gist of it, is that OK?

Megan said...

Happy (late ;) Birthday Brian! Hope that you had a good time with Grandpa when Kristi was at her shower! =)

inedist said...

Aw, Marj, there are 200 Hungarians who will misspell "pronunciation" for the rest of their English speaking lives. But those 200 Hungarians can say "pronunciation" and can converse with any American they come across. With the massive amounts you are teaching and the eye droppers of knowledge that is seeping in, I say the gist is what we go for!

It's the big picture, the lasting impression, the confidence building... but you knew I'd back you up!

Amy T. said...

and... I had never heard of Hatshepsut befor this blog entry...

(formerly know as inedist)

Brian Bowker said...

This is all very interesting, but isn't this post supposed to be about ME?

Marjie said...

Brian, what do you know about Hapshetsut, other than how to spell her name correctly?

Marjie said...

I mean Hatshepsut.

Brian Bowker said...

I know that you taught a segment on her recently, and that she was the cover story of April's National Geographic, and that Mom once played her in a play... All of which seem to me like cosmic signs that it's a great name for our daughter!

Marjie said...

Mom played Queen Hatshepsut in a play? Mom, you never told me about this.

Unknown said...

I didn't know that was her name. All I know is that I was a princess who was to pick up baby Moses from the basket in the rushes. (I was probably about 5 at the time.) When I did so everyone laughed, which hurt my feelings. I asked my mom why everyone laughed and she said it was because I picked the baby (doll) up by his head.

Marjie said...

I'm pretty sure that wasn't her name. In any case, Brian, Angie, aren't you glad that Mom learned her lesson regarding how to lift a baby while starring in this historically inaccurate play?

Brian - back to you - do you know how to lift a baby?

Brian Bowker said...

It's not for sure that Hatshepsut was the princess that pulled Moses out of the reed basket, but historians feel that she very possibly could have been since she would have been a royal princess at that same time.

As for my baby-picking-up ability... I guess we'll soon see.

Marjie said...

K, so my history book (from which I have been teaching my kids) says that Moses and Hatshepsut were from different centuries. That the Pharoah at that time was Ramses II and that his daughter's name was Thermithis (although it could have been one of 100 children who found Moses).

So whose source is right? And if it was Thermithis, then perhaps that is THE NAME for the baby. But Hatshepsut does roll off the tongue better.

But we are totally getting off the topic of your birthday.

Brian Bowker said...

Ramses II has been traditionally thought of as the Pharaoh that ordered the death of the Hebrew boys during that time, and I've no doubt he's the guy that most history books would list.

But more recent studies have found that the traditional synchronization of the Hebrew and Egyptian timelines were probably off, and that it was actually Thutmose I that did that deed. This would make Hatshepsut the fully royal princess during that time period, and there are also some other clues that point to her being the princess in question, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

I was pretty deep into this when I was working on my giant timeline project. There is no concrete consensus among historians at this point, but at the time when I was studying it I remember coming to the conclusion that most of the recent data pointed to Hatshepsut as making the most sense for that event.

But synchronizing the Hebrew and Egyptian timelines is a tricky business by any measure, and I'm just as likely to be wrong as anyone.

Brian Bowker said...

...And besides, Thermithis wasn't on the cover of National Geographic last month.

Marjie said...

Brian, I need to see this timeline. I think I want to have my kids do one. (Only it will be historically inaccurate.)

Brian Bowker said...

I guess I didn't realize that you hadn't seen it. It's gone now (taken down when we converted the TV room into the nursery). This would be a GREAT project for school kids to do.

I've been building a spreadsheet with significant dates for almost 10 years. I originally planned to build it into a website, but the scope was too big. So when I finally built it I used card stock and removable poster tape and put it around the perimeter of my TV room. It spanned from 4000 BC to 2000 AD and used all four walls.

My original intent was to gain a sense of how history all fits together, how biblical history fits in with secular history, and what was happening in parallel in different cultures. But it ended up giving me a much better sense of history from a spacial perspective; I now equate the time of King David as being in the corner behind the TV, and the great pyramids were in another corner behind the surround speakers. This has really helped me gain historical perspective. (I think better in a spacial sense).

And then we got pregnant.

But you can see pictures of what parts of it looked like here. You can see my actual spreadsheet of dates here.

For a classroom setting, I think it would be cool to split the class(es) into groups and give them each a date range and have them research significant dates inside that range. Figure out the scale for your room, and then have the kids make the placards and stick them up. When you're teaching on a given subject you can reference where it fits on the wall (and add it if it's missing).

What a cool way to give them perspective of history!

But it would be a giant project to undertake, for sure. And you'd have to be allowed to stick stuff all over the walls (removable tape is key!).