Sprite's Site

The alarm clock was jangling and Sprite was pulling my nose and shouting in my ear.
“Wake up, wake up! You’ll really regret it if you miss the #gtchat session”
I squinted at the alarm clock. “But it’s only three twenty-five am!”
“I know. That gives you half an hour to get up and have a cup of coffee and get the computer fired up before it starts.”
“But it’s not even on today” I said “It will be on Saturday for us in Australia”
“I know that!” said Sprite “I looked it up on The World Clock Meeting Planner http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
Twelve noon Friday for them is 4.00am Saturday for us and 7.00pm Friday for them is 11.00am Saturday for us.”
“So why did you wake me up now?”
“I wanted you to have a practice run!”

I said “I plan to attend the 11.00am session and then I can read the transcript of the earlier session from links on Deborah Mersino’s Ingeniosus Blog” http://giftedperspective.typepad.com/ingeniosus/

“Well since you are awake now can you take me to visit Cybraryman’s website at http://www.cybraryman.com/ and can you help me write a letter to Annie Fox?” http://anniefox.com/

Dear Miss Sprite,
I see that you are enjoying the company of a Palaeontologist who gave
you a Pterodactyl poster. My son would love to see the Poster, he’s
right into dinosaurs! I am happy to see that the Memory Elephant has
made a collage of the P Party memories for you. I came across a Photo I
thought I had lost when we were Packing to move house. The Photo is 14
years old, a Pic of me cross-country skiing at Baw Baw in blizzard
conditions, Pregnant with my first child. The things we do when we are
young and Phoolish!
Today, we saw Parachutists land at Lilydale airfield as we were driving
Past. The Physics of Phlying is interesting, Particularly the ways in
which designers try to emulate the movement of a bird’s Pheathers when
the bird is controlling its Phlight Path. Being a Wren, I know something
about ailerons and wing Phlaps.Phlying is aways Phun.
‘Til next time,
Love
Jen-E-Wren

“You’ve been stealing stuff!” accused Sprite.
“I certainly have not!” I replied “What do you think I have stolen?”
“Well, Giovanni Arnolfini’s mirror, for a starter. I’ll bet that wasn’t clip art “
“I copied it” I said
“Yeah, copy/pasted it – you’re not allowed to do that, you know!”
I followed the link on Twitter that Sprite showed me
‘Are you stealing stuff?’ — http://bit.ly/aa0rL8
It went to the e-Learning Stuff blog at

http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/are-you-stealing-stuff/#comment-16817

“OK, OK, I’ll take down Giovanni Arnolfini’s mirror and see if I can get a mirror from Clip Art” I said.
“Where did my Memory Elephant come from?” asked Sprite.
“From your thoughts and memories and emotions” I said.
“NO!” said Sprite “Where did you get the image of the Memory Elephant? I bet I will have to give him back! He wasn’t always that great anyway, but I would miss him if he went! I was just beginning to learn how to work with him.”
“Don’t worry!” I said ‘The Memory Elephant can stay. He is a Clip Art image”

But I was beginning to feel very uneasy and to question the source of all Sprite’s friends and toys. Most came from clip art or from public domain photos and for some I had been given permission to use the image.

Then a murky disembodied voice spoke “I’ll just be going then. You won’t even know that I was here. I knew it was too good to be true to go to the P Party and it was fun while it lasted visiting the blog. But I expected it would have to end.
I’m a respectable Marsh Wiggle, I am and it would not be proper for me to stay if my image is not in the Public Domain. Sprite will probably be better off without me anyway!

“Oh NO!” cried Sprite “Puddleglum has to go! I know I said he annoyed me and he was a real wet blanket sometimes but I DID like him!”

It was almost a month after the P Party
The Playground had been dismantled, the string of Party lights taken down, the Pogo stick brought inside and the REAL Pony hired for Pony rides had been returned despite wails of protest from Sprite.

One evening I found two elderly gentlemen and a young lady wandering in the garden.
“We were just enjoying Peripatetic Perambulations around your Pleasant Property with Pauses for Pondering Philosophical Problems. We are here in response to your kind invitation to the P Party”

One of the elderly gentlemen pulled a pile of papers from his pocket and began to unfold them and tried to smooth out the creases.
“There’s yours, Patrick!” he said and handed over an invitation addressed to
‘Palaeontologist’.

The rest of his papers fluttered to the ground and the young lady and I bent to pick them up for him. I picked up an invitation addressed to ‘Physicist’.
“I guess this is your invitation,” I said.

“No, that’s my invitation” said the young lady. “I’m Paula the Physicist. This is Pa Peter, my Paternal grandfather, he is a Professor and a Poet of Prominence”

“I do have an invitation to ‘Professor’ and I will be Presenting a Paper and hosting a Poets’ Corner at this Prestigious P Party. It must be in with those papers somewhere” he said. I could see he was becoming rather agitated.

“Here’s your invitation Pa” said Paula
She read the invitation as she handed it over. Obviously it was the first time she had seen it. “Oh dear, we seem to have come on the wrong day! I’m sorry about that!”
“Pa is a bit vague at times – a bit Push on the Pull door of the Gifted Institute if you know what I mean” she said

“Don’t worry”, I said “Come in and meet Sprite”
“I have a Pterodactyl poster for her” said the Palaeontologist.

Here is the photo collage ball that the Memory Elephant had compiled from the pictorial memories of Sprite’s P Party
It was made with Shape College a free automatic photo collage maker http://www.shapecollage.com/

The Twitter Birds compiled a basket of fruits from around the world for Sprite.
Can you identify all the fruits?

Here we see the Playground, Pool, Pogo stick and the REAL Pony for Pony rides. The Policemen are Patrolling the Perimeters on Push bikes and Pennyfarthings and the Parachutist, Petra Polona the Polish Pole Vaulter and Aviatrix Amelia Earhart are arriving.
PC PC PC was not going to let Amelia Earthart enter until Sprite said she wanted her to be Present and introduced her as Pamela Pearhart Plane Pilot.

I was looking at some of my photos and Sprite’s Memory Elephant produced some of the pictorial memories recorded in the role of Photographer Pachyderm at Sprite’s P Party. The giraffe (a friend of Starjump Starfish) helped to unravel the pictures from the PhotoCollage ball and passed them up to the Twitter Birds who attached them to a display banner.