One great context clue: Greek/Latin prefixes, suffixes, and roots.
Take for example, my student and artist, who shall remain anonymous, but we can call her “K.”
This artist was challenged to draw a centipede — and when challenged, this student steps up! Must be right! You are WRONG, sir, good day!
Challenged to draw a 1,000 leg critter – the artist is inspired:
And draws the multi-sectioned beast with 1,000 legs. Count ’em. They’re all there.
However, if the artist had remembered the CENTipede has the prefix, CENT, the artist would have remembered that this critter would only require 100 legs.
One
hundred
legs
“Milli” is the prefix for 1,000. “Pede” is part of the derivations for “foot.”
Something I learned though, and would have lost the bet, too:
Millipedes don’t have 1,000 legs, but usually around 100-400. But more than centipedes. Which is probably why they don’t call millipedes: “afewmorelegsthancentipedesbutwearetoolazytocountthem.”
Here is a picture of a millipede from the National Geographic website:
I have a hemispheric bias. I understand my northern hemisphere, its traditions, and its quirks. We northerners personify the dark days.When I see an image of Chronos/Saturn using one of his children as a midnight snack, it’s a metaphoric munchie , and innately I understand its cultural roots and the darkness of December–it’s time eating our lives.
It is near logical to me that people, in their complete and “advanced darkness” (thanks, Spongebob) would make finding out when the darkest day of the year would be a really…big…deal. Time to cut down some evergreen branches and put another log on the fire. Heck, sacrifice a young maiden if you need to, it’s dark! We want light! Sun, come back! Come back, sun!! I can set my Stonehenge to it.
And how do I connect Saturn to Snow White? When the Queen, with one tenuous hold on her youth and beauty, all due to the subjective whims of a rhyming mirror, decides that the ebony-haired beauty, with nary a grey hair or wrinkle, is encroaching on her territory, well, then, Snow’s heart is the price she must pay! What is it with older folks symbolically ‘eating’ the young? Hey, dude, I can buy an i-Pod too – so what if I break a hip trying to dance to it?
Enter Baby New Year. Crackling. Colicky. Cranky. Abandoned by old man Saturn, this kid grows up all over again on his own, to learn the same lessons, to touch the burning stove again, and stick the proverbial fork in the proverbial light socket repeatedly. No wonder why we never learn anything, really.
Both Chronos/Saturn and the Queen should have a chat, compare notes. Getting older isn’t all that bad, is it? Reminiscing on past triumphs and errors–it’s as someone said: “It all works out okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” I can’t think of a more paradoxically optimistic/pessimistic quote as that one.
In the northern hemisphere, today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night. It’s officially the first day of winter. It’s officially the first day of winter and one of the oldest known holidays in human history. Anthropologists believe that solstice celebrations go back at least 30,000 years, before humans even began farming on a large scale. Many of the most ancient stone structures made by human beings were designed to pinpoint the precise date of the solstice. The stone circles of Stonehenge were arranged to receive the first rays of midwinter sun.
It’s true. I have a little secret science crush on Bill Nye the Science Guy. (Yes, my husband knows. He has a small crush on Sandra Bullock, and we’re okay with that, too. His chances of actually meeting Sandra Bullock are an astronomical, exponential number.)
If one of his professors was Carl Sagan, well, maybe that explains some things, because I also think Carl Sagan, a physicist, said some incredible things, too:
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
So, as I ask some big questions, like my place in the universe, why am I here, am I only limited to my tiny mortal coil, restrictive and finite, I will also know I am in good company with others more intelligent than I–Professor Sagan, Bill Nye, and of course, my husband, whom I *heart* the most.
And draws the multi-sectioned beast with 1,000 legs. Count ’em. They’re all there.
