MONDAY

Re: MONDAY

I'd cover it in fabric and catch the wind.

Maybe

Re: MONDAY more

Here is another example.

Re: MONDAY more

I had the same impression that John had but thinking more that they were for catching nocturnal "thoughts"?

Tom

Re: MONDAY

Didn't Rodgers and Hammerstein produce a musical about the region this comes from?

Fred

Clear and really cold in Eastern Missouri

Yes. Two last examples for the rest 

#2 example 

Re: MONDAY ANSWER

Welcome to twenty ten.

Frederick gets the gold star for his answer about the musical South Pacific. James Michener�s Book �Tales of the South Pacific� was the original story line.

The pictures are replicas of stick charts.

Stick charts are used to visually demonstrate the wave patterns and swells bouncing off the islands in the oceans in and around Micronesia. In area, the South Pacific is larger than Russia and China combined. The examples shown symbolize something that is perhaps 2000 years old. Early explorers from the west destroyed these as unworthy toys but with more respect for the navigators gained by additional science the charts were checked out in 1862, by a German named Winkler. Actual examples exist in navigation sections of museums but each stick chart is individually tailored to the recollections and mnemonics of the maker of the chart. For others who do not have identical recollections they are useless. Stick chart examples made today are mostly made as tourist items. But for a very few, the traditional charts can still be made by elders who have through years of history and study kept the knowledge. For any of us to be trained in the recognition of this type of navigation is almost impossible unless you are family as it is a closely guarded oral style of learning held tightly in island clans.

Historians generally agree that there were either three or four types of these. If you check stick charts on any browser or use the web addresses below, you can find the names, definitions, and examples. Elsewhere on the web there are writings detailing Captain Cook�s voyages in the 1700�s indicating there was a chance to bring the information dealing with these stick charts to the �civilized� world but the native teacher (apparently on board ship) died before what he knew could be taught, and soon thereafter Cook himself was killed. With that the technology and understanding of stick charts for early marine navigation in Europe was forgotten until Winkler.

The skills of the Polynesian navigators that built and used these has never been surpassed. They had no instruments of any kind yet by reading waves and swells, clouds, and celestial references they could navigate in open ocean to a small island a thousand miles away. Today other navigational devices like the compass, satellite imagery, GPS, accurate timing, longitude and latitude and star tables, radar, paper charts, etc. have, eliminated the need. Check out these locations.

http://www.ethnomath.org/resources/turnbull1991.pdf

http://www.ethnomath.org/resources/bryan1938.pdf

One interesting story related with the stick charts is that the ancient navigators could have taken a frigate bird with them. These birds refuse to land on the water as their feathers will become waterlogged making it impossible to fly. When the voyagers thought they were close to land they may have released the bird, which would gain altitude and either fly towards land or else return to the canoe.

From the web. �Stick charts were constructed by palm ribs bound by coconut fiber with shells used to represent the islands. These stick charts are not charts in the western sense but are instructional and mnemonic devices concerned with swell patterns requirements. Indeed, an entirely competent navigator cannot, under any circumstances, interpret a chart which he himself has not made,�