Sunday Hymn Post

We are traveling today, visiting a sister congregation, taking our dear friends back to the airport 90 miles away. Due to one thing and another my family will be in four places in three vehicles, and two of my girls will be driving some distance on unfamiliar roads, roads they must share with big and evil semi-trucks.

Frankly, I'm terrified and nearly sick with worry, and there's not a drop of hyperbole there. I have driven exactly two times since our own car accident, and I do NOT a good passenger make. I could use some prayers, and I crave many prayers for safe journeys on behalf of my family and friends.

There are many hymns I could use for this Sunday's hymn post- His Eye Is On The Sparrow, God Will Take Care Of You, God Moves in a Mysterious Way, Eternal Father, Strong to Save... but I choose this one to be my prayer and hope for all travellers today, my cowardly, nerve-wracked self as well.

The Lord bless you and keep you
The Lord lift His countenance upon you,
And give you peace, and give you peace;
The Lord make His face to shine upon you,
And be gracious, and be gracious;
The Lord be gracious, gracious unto you.

Update: We are all home safe now, except the HM who had the least distance to travel and is finishing up inventory at his store.=(
I remain a cowardly, nerve-wracked, very bad passenger, and I would not say the drives were without incident, but they were without accident.

Thank-you, God.

SEcond Update: We were a tad bit behind in our information. Turned out our young friends missed their connecting flight because their plane at our airport did not take off until two hours later than it was supposed to! They were stuck in Chicago's O'Hare airport for several hours waiting for another flight, and they didn't get home until sometime after midnight.=( Still, they are home safe now, and while we miss badly (some of us didn't stop crying until several hours after they left), we are glad they are safe at home and we know their family is relieved and thrilled to have them back.

Operation Soft and Clean- Mission Accomplished

These pictures are highly classified, of course, which is why they are pasted all over the internet...anyway...

This would be GrannyTea's house last night, after a band of Artistic Hooligans came out of the woods in the dark of the night and vandalized the house.

The members of Operation Soft and Clean would like to express their appreciation to one lovely woman in Texas, who financed the operation out of the kindness of her heart. It was a good deed, and we are sure it will earn her extra stars in her crown.

The Artistic Hooligans have standards of course, and came over this morning to take down their masterpiece. It required a ladder and a rake, and The Equuschick was conveniently scheduled to work, but the band forgave her.

The Numbers-
*18 Rolls of Soft and Clean
*11 Artistic Hooligans, all gathered from the geographical locations of the country to convene on this strategic location and create a masterpiece
*6 Clean-Up Members, two of them the FYG and the FYB

Aunt Sophronia Says...

This series begins here.

Aunt Sophronia has just discussed the necessity of hospitality and courtesy, and she explains that one reason they are necessities is because without them, there would be little extension of the grace of.....

"Friendship, and this brings us to the thought that in our homes we should cherish FRIENDSHIP. This grace expands the soul, it leads us out of selfishness, and a narrow round of thought, to sympathize with other hearts which have-their own circle of attachments and duties; and thus, one to another, we are linked in kindness throughout the world.

As, in the family, ages and temperaments vary, so the choice of friends will vary: the child has its inseparable playmate, the youth a chosen companion; the hearts which have experienced and suffered much find an affinity with souls of like experiences. Thus. by friendships, while each member of the Family brings into the household interest and sympathy the comrade of his especial preference, the circle of Home interest and outlook is widened; these friendships constantly re-vivify the life of Home by bringing into it new elements, and giving to it new points of observation and contact with the busy world.

Now'how shall these exterior claims be made to harmonize with the world within? How shall the duties of Courtesy, and of Friendship, and Hospitality, be performed without robbing any of the household of their rights? The demands of the Home alone are myriad, and what shall be done with this outer myriad of flocking cares? There is but one way in which we obtain time for all, doing these, and not leaving the other undone, and that way is...."

To be continued

Another Frugal Present

I couldn't post about this one before Christmas because Pip reads here. But it was one of my favorite presents to give.=)

The HG gets an allowance for printing pages at her university. The allowance does not roll over, so she emailed me the last week of her term telling me she had enough in her account for hundreds of pages, did I want anything copied?

We put together a folder of sheet music for Pipsqueak, including things like:
downloadable sheet music copies of Beethoven music here (Moonlight Sonata)

Molly Malone and London Derry Town from here

Irish Folk songs here

A Nessun dorma (from 'Turandot') arrangement, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, In the Hall of the Mountain King, a Boccherini Minuet, for piano from here.

There were several other pieces as well from various spots around the internet.

And I learned, while listening to her pick her way through the theme from Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, that this was where Dan Fogelberg got the opening melody for his 'That Old Lang Syne' ('met my old lover in the grocery store...').

Memories

Our children and our current houseguests have grown up together. Most of them have known each other ALL their lives, and the two oldest do not remember a time when they did not know the other family. We met back in the dark ages when their mother was a teenage wife and mother of a baby boy and this mother was an ancient crone of 23 or 24. We have managed to get ourselves stationed in the same area several times over the years, and close enough to visit at other times. The mothers have racked up an embarrassing amount of money in phone bills (when we were young and foolish). So we have a lot of shared history. In fact, there are many games we play, recipes we cook, books we read, and CDs we listen to that we say, "Ohhh, we did this first with the 'This Castle Rocks' family. Remember when.... "

So there's a lot of shared history. Last night after the parents went to sleep they sat up sharing some other history- things I'd not heard before (one of the Progeny came in this morning laughing over it and telling me some of the details. I'll find out more later).

They decided to each share something rotten they'd done as a child, a bad memory of our time together (usually when they got in trouble for something rotten they had done), and a good memory. An interesting thing about it is that in every case, the truly rotten thing they had done, the thing that they were embarrassed about- nobody else remembered it but the perpetrator.

I am told the statute of limitations has run out on all these things, so there will be no punishments.

Later on they will discover that there is no statute of limitations on blackmail fodder.

Aunt Sophronia Says... 9

This series began here.


I love this next virtue, partly because it's one of our favorites anyway, but also because it's so unexpected in this context. We'll actually include two of the virtues she recommends, because they are linked so closely. Aunt Sophronia has already explained to her young proteges the importance of thrift and economy, beauty, order, industry, and education. She says that just as beauty must be balanced by economy, industry should be 'honest and wisely directed,' and thus informed by education, and now she is going to tell us what the proper sort of education will lead to. Can you guess?
She's told us many interesting benefits of education. One of them is that the right sort of education will be humbling, not arrogant producing. She's told us that the right sort of education will give us a sense of our place in the world as one of many, and that one not independent of the rest of the human race, and this comes with a recognition of certain duties to our fellow man. Therefore, the proper sort of education will lead to the 'recognition of these duties, the realization of his wide relationships to his kind, reveal to him the duty of....'

"... extending HOSPITALITY. Here is a rare Home virtue, by which the happy Home becomes as a city set on a hill, which cannot be hid. By exercise of this virtue the Home makes broad its gates, enlarges its sphere, and increases its benefactions :
" Till, like a ray of light across the land,
The heart's large love goes, brightening more and more."

As, in speaking of Industry and Education in the Home, we might refer to the parable of the entrusted talents, and the inquiry made after their use, so in regard to the exercise of Hospitality we may refer to that panorama of the judgment when we see the Judge seated on his throne, and hear him say: " I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; in prison, and ye came to me." Here, in Hospitality, the one jewel home is fitly set with others of its kind, crown jewels of the King.

Loosely linked with the exercise of Hospitality is that grace of Courtesy, without which Hospitality would be but poorly exhibited. Let us in our Model Home exhibit COURTESY: this grace has well been called" the flower of flowers." This Courtesy fills the Home like a soft pervasive music; to its tender notes the joys and cares of domestic life move gently on, the one prevented from jarring the other, and concord is developed from the whole. This Courtesy is the very essence of the Fifth Commandment; it rises out of our brotherhood under one Father, God. It passes on from parents to children and servants, to the stranger within our gates, and gives to each his, due, as " superior, inferior, or equal."

Without this genial, chivalric virtue, there would be but little exercise of the grace of....

To be Continued...

When Knighthood Doesn't Pay

We have houseguests again (or still). Our current crop are a brother and sister we have known since the infancy of the older one and the gleam in her Mama's eye of the younger one. We are having a grand and sometimes giddy time, except we sadly miss the rest of the family. More than once I have retired from the dinner table with a tear in my eye because I so wish the entire family could be here. They are a wonderful family who have done a fine job of rearing their many children (such as are reared- some of them are still babes in arms). They have many sons, all of whom could be called very parfait, genteel knights.

Because the son visiting us is a son, and also because he is a grown up person with college work to do over his break, we have placed him in the downstairs guestroom, while all the girls stay upstairs in the bedrooms surrounding The Common Room (Our wee rooster is in his own room upstairs, if anybody is wondering, but for a wonder, he does not figure in this story as he was already soundly sleeping).

The young people had all supposedly retired to their sleeping quarters while one of the girls (who shall remain nameless) was finishing up her toiletries and pj changing in the upstairs bathroom. Long term readers will perhaps remember that our upstairs bathroom was designed with six females in mind, so there are two rooms- the private inner sanctum and the more public outer sanctum with two sinks and vanities.

The OTHER girls, who shall also remain nameless, filled up a cup of icey cold water from the outer sanctum sink and tossed it into the inner sanctum upon their victim, who shrieked, sputtered, and shrieked some more.

OUr very parfait, genteel knight, hearing the agonized screaming of a female, took the stairs at a rush (no doubt, four at a time) and raced upstairs asking, "Who's hurt? What can I do? What's wrong?"

Thereupon he was routed by the females who shooed him back downstairs, so he found himself in short order soundly defeated and ousted from their domain. He came downstairs a baffled but wiser knight and did the only thing a genteel and parfait knight could do under the circumstances.

He retired to bed, locking his door behind him.

Our friends have reared not only chivalrous sons, but wise sons as well.

First Anniversary of the Homeschooling Carnival

Coming up. Submit a post; see directions here.

Testing, Testing....

I see on Bloglines that something seems to be wrong with my feed, and a couple friends have told me recently that they couldn't see any of my recent posts until they thought of hitting refresh.

If you can see this post, would you mind commenting to it? It needn't be more than a word, just another test if you like. Thanks.

Aunt Sophronia Says... 8

This series begins here.

Having addressed the physical aspects of the home as well as the virtues of thrift and economy, beauty, order, and industry, she says that just as beauty must be balanced by economy, Industry should be 'honest and wisely directed,' and thus informed by:

EDUCATION.

Education in a home is like a fountain of living waters. Education is constantly bringing forth something new and attractive; its ordinary tendency is to prevent extravagance and crime. It makes a person happy in himself; preserves him from constantly being cast on others for advice or entertainment; it refines away the roughnesses of natural disposition, opens to us opportunities of accomplishing things useful and praiseworthy: it fills usefully leisure time, binds a family in common interests and pursuits, secures cheerful content even in the midst of poverty, disappointment, or ill health. The natural tendency of Education is to impress upon a man that he is one of many; that, not being in the state of savage nature, he cannot say that he is independent of his fellows, nor that they are independent of him.

Two points here- one is that by Education Aunt Sophronia is not limiting herself to a college education. Indeed, I think she would be shocked to learn that there are those today who thing that 'college' is the only synonym for education worth using. Charlotte Mason also spoke of this humbling benefit of the proper sort of education. I mentioned this in a previous post, where I said, "A knowledge of history teaches humility and is a welcome antidote to that intellectual pride which makes us think modernity is virtue on our part, and went on to quote Miss Mason:

".... Now, this pride of intellect also comes of the arrogance of man; not only in our age..., but in all time, it is our nature to lift up our heads and say, 'We are the people; before us there were none like unto us, neither shall there be any more after us.' But when we come to ourselves we realise that our Author and Father has not in this way made over any single vast realm of our lives into our own hands." School Education by Charlotte Mason

Aunt Sophronia goes on to explain what influence the proper sort of education will have on family life and the each member of the family:

He recognizes that he owes duties to his race. The recognition of these duties, the realization of his wide relationships to his kind, reveal to him the duty of....

To be continued.

Aunt Sophronia Says... 7

This series begins here. "Aunt Sophronia" is the narrative voice in a book on housekeeping published in 1970 1870 (thanks, dear friend, for emailing me that typo!). My copy belonged to my great or great-great Grandmother. This particular series of posts is taken from a chapter where Aunt Sophronia shares an essay about what is needed to build a proper home. Having addressed the physical structure of the house, its location, design, decoration, and certain aspects necessary for health, she has been discussing certain virtues she considers the 'true lares and pennates,' or household guardians, of the home. We have had order, beauty, and economy, and now Aunt Sophronia says:

Guarding against meanness, they must unite liberality with a wise Economy. Economy is the virtue which preserves. There must be yoked with it the virtue which creates.

Let us invite into our house holds, INDUSTRY. Accustomed to Industry, little time is left for contention, for vice, or for destructiveness. Let parents consider their, families: if they have a child who is always busy, that child is peaceable, contented, breaks out into no disorders, destroys no property. What is true of the individual will be true of the whole family; what is true of the family will be true of the community, and of the state. It is the Industry wedded to the Economy of France, which, in dire disasters as great as ever shook a nation, has maintained her credit, and has prevented her being bankrupted, and parcelled out among the nations. A habit of Industry secures the future of our children. Wealth may fly: indeed, it seems to grow wings with wonderful facility; but Industry is a perpetual inheritance.

Industry maintains the Home. This Industry should be honest and wisely directed: this can be secured only by development of the mind and the reasoning faculties; the hand must be guided by the brain; therefore, in our Home we must cultivate...

to be continued...

Honest toil, a habit of industry, thrift, order, and an eye to beauty- a virtue that preserves as well as one that creates- seems to me to be a very portable and durable inheritance.

Aunt Sophronia Says... this virtue counts the most

This series begins here. Aunt Sophronia continues with the keystone of the Model Home:

Inspire now this blessed Home with the breath of immortality. This beautiful clay, moulded by the hand of the Divine Sculptor into the image of things above, is too fair to perish with the products of earth; this perpetully renewing Adam lacks only the breath of Elohim.

Inspire, then, this home with a vital piety; turn all these faces God-ward; let them see towermg above the far horizon of their life one object toward which alike all their faces are steadfastly set. This vital piety only will be able to give courage in disappointment, vigor in defeat, strength against temptation, wisdom in success, perpetuity to love, and faith to conquer death.

I can't top that.

Aunt Sophronia Says, .... 6

This series begins here.

To balance beauty Aunt Sophronia says:

We must invoke ECONOMY to preside in our homes. Extravagance is one of the crying evils of the age: it provokes to envy, emulation, hatred, dishonesty; it has shaken the whole fabric of society, and the faith of nations. Where one man sins in penuriousness, ten sin in extravagance. It is a sin of selfishness and of deceit. The extravagance of the age has ruined homes already established, and hindered the establishment of others. People become too selfish, or too timid to marry. If people do not need to practise Economy for their own sakes, they must practise it for the sake of their children, of the community, and of their servants, and for the enlargement of their charities.

That view of economy and the financial responsiblities of each citizen is pretty remarkable. We must practice personal economy in order to benefit our children, our fellow citizens, those in our employ, and for the enlargement of our charities.

I agree with that. Where we get into trouble is when we demand- and enforce by law- that others make financial sacrifices for the enlargement of our own pet charities.

Continued Here

The Boy's present to DHM

The Boy made this all by himself with sticks and tape, and then Jenny helped him hot glue it together. He tells us it is "his own design."

Happy Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Common Room!

Sunday Hymn Post

1. Joyful, joyful, we adore thee,
God of glory, Lord of love;
hearts unfold like flowers before thee,
opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;
drive the dark of doubt away.
Giver of immortal gladness,
fill us with the light of day!

2. All thy works with joy surround thee,
earth and heaven reflect thy rays,
stars and angels sing around thee,
center of unbroken praise.
Field and forest, vale and mountain,
flowery meadow, flashing sea,
chanting bird and flowing fountain,
call us to rejoice in thee.

3. Thou art giving and forgiving,
ever blessing, ever blest,
well-spring of the joy of living,
ocean depth of happy rest!
Thou our Father, Christ our brother,
all who live in love are thine;
teach us how to love each other,
lift us to the joy divine.

4. Mortals, join the mighty chorus
which the morning stars began;
love divine is reigning o'er us,
binding all within its span.
Ever singing, march we onward,
victors in the midst of strife;
joyful music leads us sunward,
in the triumph song of life

Listen

Read

Read more

The Equuschick's Collected Quotes

These particular quotes are very special quotes, and they carry a great deal of sentimental value to The Equuschick. In fact, the HG purchased for The Equuschick's birthday, a poster of these collected quotes, and it now hangs with pride on her bedroom door. The author of these quotes is known as the Happy Bunny.


"I'm cute. Let's put me in charge!"
"I have a dream. And in it, something eats you."
"You go, girl! And don't come back."
"It's not your fault! But I'm blaming you anyway."
"Me pretending to listen should be enough for you."
"I'm cute. You're not. Seems so unfair."
"Does it hurt being so dumb?"

And etc.

BUAHAHAHA. *laughs hysterically clutching her sides*

The Equuschick loves her Happy Bunny poster. It makes her feel warm and fuzzy inside.

"I'm happy. Don't wreck it by talking."
"Let's not bore each other! You start."

Time flies...

... a year ago we were preparing to paint the upstairs Common Room. Now we are wondering where in this room the misplaced library book got put. The new house is slowly but surely turning into home.

Aunt Sophronia Says... 5

This series begins here. These short paragraphs on the virtues that every home must have are full of meaty, though-provoking stuff. I'll be separating these posts into one short paragraph for each day because I'd like some time to think about each of them individually. We're going to have lots of time to think about this one because I'm not posting again until sometime after Christmas. It might be the day after, but it might not. No promises.

Aunt Sophronia, asked to share her views on how to establish a proper home, has told us about some basic physical necessities (arsenic free wallpaper, good drains, fresh air, sunshine, and so forth), and she's talked about decorating. Now she gets into what she terms the 'true Lares and Penates' of a home.

According to answers.com, this phrase means the treasures of a home. According to this website, the term comes from Roman times and referred to household spirits of family and larder. We might think of them as guardians. They were represented by small figurines which when with the family wherever the family went for any longer amount of time, and thus today the phrase refers to portable household property. According to the 1911 encyclopedia, they were Roman gods of store-room and kitchen.

Aunt Sophronia is incorporating all these definitions into a metaphor for the sound basis of a home. It is portable treasure because the family with these virtues takes them along wherever they may live, blessing the home whether it be an apartment in New York, a farmhouse in the midwest, or a yurt in Mongolia. They are guardians because the family with those virtues has many protections and aids against poverty, disorder, dischord and chaos. I am charmed by Aunt Sophronia's Lares and Penates, and I hope to invite more of them into our home:

Now, into this beautiful and well-surrounded home we must invite those virtues which are the true Lares and Penates of a dwelling. First, we must call in ORDER, for where Order is lacking, comfort and beauty and their attendant train, and often love, will fly out of the window. Order will secure the saving of time, the saving of strength, prevent the rapid wasting or wearing out of house or furnishings, and preserve a healthful atmosphere, inspiriting to the family and inviting to guests.

But Order alone might be cold, and carried to the extreme of being forbidden. Let us secure the gracious presence ot BEAUTY. The love of Beauty is in the human soul a reflection of the mind of God. Truly, He is a right kingly lover of Beauty, who could not let even a beetle go from his creating hand without polishing and spotting its wings; who paints admirably, not only the flowers of the field, but the fishes of the sea, the crabs crawling on the shore, and the reptiles burrowing in wood and wall. If we deny our homes of beauty, we deny what would be inspiriting and refining to ourselves, and we bereave our children of their natural inheritance. Beauty makes homes dear to their occupants, it softens the asperities of life, and binds in mutual tastes and mutual pleasures the members of a family.

Yet the pursuit of Beauty must not lead us into extravagance....

William Morris was fond of saying that we should have nothing in our homes that we do not believe to be beautiful or know to be useful.

The Apostle Paul said that the sort of things we wanted to spend time thinking about should be things which are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, or praiseworthy.

These are good lares and penates of a home, and are good principles by which to examine the clutter and habits of our lives. We want order and beauty, be not extravagance. I think it is also important to avoid extravagance in order as well as beauty. Aunt Sophronia is going to be talking about economy and frugality in pursuit of beauty, but I would like to take a moment to encourage one that extravagance in order and organization is not necessarily the same thing as excellence.

If you are so orderly and organized that your friends hestitate to interrupt your scheduled pursuit of excellence to ask you to sit with a child while they have a doctor appointment, it is not excellence you are pursuing.
If you cannot set a math lesson aside to hold a funeral for a dead bird, that is not excellence.
If people come to your orderly, organized home and leave feeling discouraged, inadquate, and inferior, it is not because you are engaged in the pursuit of excellence. Excellence does not put others down. Excellence joyfully spurs others on to love and good deeds.

Let us not turn virtues into household idols.

Have a joyful rest of the year!!

Aunt Sophronia series continued here...

Yet more easy Christmas crafts

We had a couple families over for dinner and a Bible study the other night, and some of the little girls brought us a basket of Christmas crafts they'd made, and this was one of them.

There are directions here.

Theirs looked a little different. Instead of red paint berries they had glued tiny little wooden Christmas woodies to it. This could be made into tiny circle shaped wreathes of hearts. The HG once made a heart one in red and white for me for Valentines'. The painted puzzle pieces could also be used to decorate a picture frame.

If you have no acrylic paint, you could give the puzzle pieces an interesting variety of muted tones using rubber stamp ink, or paint them with a mixture of elmer's glue and food coloring. The advantage of using the glue is that you could put them together while still damp. You can use anything for a basic shape to glue them down to- a bit of cardboard from a box or some pipecleaners.

Another one they did was so cute and so simple- they took a square scrap of cloth, put some small pea gravel in the center, then gathered it tied it tightly closed with a ribbon just below the ball of gravel- this made a head with a gown beneath. Then they cut a triangle of felt and sewed it to the back making little angel wings. What I liked about this one is that I could envision the little girls with their scissors and cloth sitting at the table in the kitchen while Mama makes cookies- or lunch. Or washes the dishes, to be more practical.=) The required minimal supervision and the sewing part would have kept them intently occupied for a good five or ten minutes or so.

IF you wanted to vary this you could have them sew buttons on for eyes, or use a mixture of rice, scented tea, and flower buds to make little sachets or air fresheners- but my goal for this little series of daily crafts is not to give you too much to do in an already too busy season. It's to give you some small things that might work for last minute gifts when you're out of money and realize you simply must give Aunt Mimi something, or when you're out of patience and realize you simply must give the children something to do.

Get out a jar and let them paint it with a mixture of glue and food coloring. Fill it half way with sea salt or sand and put a candle in the center.

Get out paper, fold it half and let them make cards.

Cut strips of felt or paper and let them make bookmarks- put a basket of things like cards, buttons, bows, scraps and magazine pages out to let them make a collage of their own.

Do these things IF you need something fun to keep little ones busy. Do these things IF you think it sounds fun and not stressful. Do these things IF you promise not to be stressed about them. You won't be a bad mommy if your children do not make a single craft or cookie this week. It won't matter if you don't remember to make Grandma's favorite cookie recipe. It won't be important ten years from now if you made Christmas bread this year. What is important is that you make time to read Carmon's post on abundant living.

We had company this week- out of town company, friends we haven't seen in two years. That was lovely. They left about an hour ago, and about five hours from now we are going to pick up our single mom friend and her two children. They'll be staying with us until the morning after Christmas. We 'need' to clean the house (we did more game playing, watching movies, visiting, and chatting than cleaning). We 'need' to wash and change the sheets on the guestbeds. We 'need' to get some extra cooking and baking done. We 'need' to wrap presents.

What we're doing is running over to Grandma's to watch Nutcracker on Ice.

Another Easy Christmas Gift

Put together the materials for a Charcoal crystal garden (see here) and give as a kit.

Aunt Sophronia Says... 4

Aunt Sophronia is taken from an old book on housekeeping which belonged to my great grandmother. This particular chapter begins here.

As to the colors in interior finishing of a house, be sure and avoid glaring white walls, as they are bad for the eyes. Where rooms are whitewashed, the walls must be relieved by pictures, branches of green leaves and soft-colored draperies. Kitchens should have dark paint or dark graining. For halls and lobbies nothing is better than dark walnut, either the wood or walnut coloring, relieved by gilt mouldings.

When pictures are to be hung on the walls the paper or wall-painting should be in subdued colors and without marked patterns. The ceilings are most favorable to the eye and harmonious which imitate Nature's hues for depth and distance, and appear in faint blues and grays. Where no pictures are to be used, the wall-papers can be largely figured, and walls of halls and large rooms can be beautifully papered in panels of landscapes or pictures of statuary. A narrow gilt moulding at the ceiling and one three feet from the floor favorably break the monotony of a wall.

A solid or chiefly green paper is to be avoided, as it is usually poisonous, but deep maroons are rich, durable and harmonize with various styles of furnishing. Grainings and dark paints or stainings save time in cleaning, needing only to be wiped with a sponge, moistened in weak ammonia water, and suit many rooms. For a parlor, cream or silver-gray papers, with delicate gold figures, are very pretty. Some rooms look well, papered in columns and cornices, with medallions in the spaces. Choose paint and paper to suit the size, lighting and use of the room. It adds to the beauty and variety of a house to have something distinctive in the color of different rooms, as one in red, one in blue, one in gray, or in green- but here you must be chary for fear of arsenical poisoning; rose-color and buff are also choice shades for bed-rooms.

Wall-papers can be cleaned by dusting thoroughly with a soft cloth, and then rubbing downwards in a long, straight, light rub with a piece of stale bread; do not rub hard nor crooked-wise. If you boil whitewash, adding to every two gallons while hot: one tablespoon ground alum, one-half pint flour paste, one-half pound glue, the wash will be nearly as firm and shining as paint, while it can be tinted with indigo, ochre, or lampblack, or red, to give you sky-blue, drab or buff walls. Concerning furniture I have so lately spoken, that it is needless to say more on a subject so largely to be governed by each householder's taste and means.

Let the furniture he suited to its use, solidly good in quality, subdued rather than loud in taste, and such as will give a home-like look to your apartments. Let there be careful avoidance of superfluity or sparseness. Do not have everything in the home bought: it savors too much of the shop and too little of human interest. It looks too much like a hotel. Have little ornamental and useful things made by your own hands: they will indicate that the dwelling has an animating and interested soul.

If you are unfortunately without an eye for colors, take counsel in furnishing of some friend who has taste in this direction, for a discord in color will strike some of your guests as harshly and painfully as a discord in music. Do not fear that you will betray bad taste by a decisive color. Some people fear to indulge in a line of red or orange or pure yellow, as if it were a sin: remember that these colors came to us from the Great Artist, that he has put peculiar honor upon them, inasmuch as the sunlight is golden and the morning and evening skies are freely painted in reds. Ruskin calls red pure color. Sometimes all that a doleful-looking room needs to correct it is a fragment of scarlet or clear yellow.

Now set this commodious, neat, convenient and tasteful house in its proper grounds; give attention to keeping these grounds neatly. Have flowers, and not too many of them to look like a florist's; have shrubs flowering and foliage shrubs, but do not crowd; have trees, but not too shady; have plenty of grass, smoothly shaven, closely sown and re-sown, until it grows like velvet. Do not forget to have patches of myrtle and of blue violets in nooks where they may "run out the grass," and be as lovely as they please; have vines, for nothing is more delicious than a fragrant honeysuckle or jasmine and nothing is more gorgeous in autumn than a woodbine, and nothing is more health giving than a plenty of grapes. If there is room, cultivate small fruits, for they add to the healthfulness of a family.

To be continued, when, having finished outlining the physical basics of a well appointed home, Aunt Sophronia will address what she calls the true Lares and Penates of a home.

Fabric Paper Dolls

Use a large gingerbread cookie cutter for a pattern. Trace and cut out a figure from felt or other scrap fabric, a solid color. Dip this in a mixture of boiled cornstarch and water (about 1 tablespoon of starch in two cups of water. Let dry on waxed paper.

Sew or attach velcro, snaps, or a button to the doll's front, about the, just below her neck in the center. Make her face with fabric scraps, needlepoint, markers, or fabric paint.

Cut other dress shapes (using the cookie cutter as a pattern) from other scraps of fabric and attach velcro, snaps, or put in button holes on the front, just below her neck in the middle, but on the back side of the dress. Dip these in starch and water and let them dry, too. These make nice paper dolls because they don't tear, the dresses can match your child's, and they store nicely. They are also quiet, especially if you use a button or snap instead of velcro for fastening the dresses to the doll.

More ideas here.

Simply Vintage Girl's Home Made Christmas links here.

A greater accomplishment

I just read an article from the December 2006 issue of Readers Digest -- Shameful.

Near Everest peak, the climbers faced a choice: head for the summit, like others had done, or stop to save the injured man.

Imagine your life dream is to make it to the top of a mountain, and you have spent approximately $20,000 dollars to accomplish it. You and a group are heading up the mountain and a member of your group gets sick with cerebral edema. Now, do you get to the summit or stop to save his life?

Some people just order him to be poked in the eye to check for life, take all his gear and live him for dead. Which is what group seven did to Hall when he fell on the way to the top.

"Just hours before, another climber, a German man named Thomas Weber, suffered similar symptoms, then collapsed and died, less than 20 yards from Hall. And ten days before, David Sharp, a climber from Great Britain, had become seriously ill from the high altitude and died beneath a rock overhang. Forty other climbers, intent on reaching the summit, had passed by, refusing to help"

What is a greater accomplishment, getting to the top of Mount Everest or saving a mans life? It is really a shame that to some people it is a tough decision.

Grades are up - and the HG is relieved. :-)

She made A's in her three history classes and a C in her math class. Making C's is not her favorite thing to do (she has done it once before... in another math class) but she has been trying to learn recently that grades are not the only things of utmost importance, especially when they're in classes not related to her major.

It is especially exciting to have finished her first semester at a large university in a decent manner.

Next semester the biggest worry will be Spanish III. Having made A's in her previous two Spanish classes is somehow not as reassuring when considering the fact there will have been a year gap between any Spanish language classes. The class she is most excited about is an honors senior level class on Mexican history, taught by her favorite prof from this semester and in a class much smaller than from this semester. Latin American history was a soph level class with about 100 people in it. History of Mexico has 13 people in it. *does happy dance* That is going to be so much fun! And so much work too.

Aunt Sophronia Says... 3

Aunt Sophronia has been asked to present a paper on the home and family for the benefit of several young couples in her community, including a pair of newlyweds. Being a good Victorian, when she moves from generalities into specifics she begins with a focus on such practicalities as drains and clean air (if you are ever curious about this Victorian focus try googling 'Victorian, drains, cholera'):

Now as the same general principles will hold good in building or remodelling a home, I will suggest some of the points which are to be observed, as far as practicable, in building a comfortable house. Let the house stand on an elevation: this secures drainage, and prevents to a great degree malaria. If the house stands on rising land the cellar will generally be dry; and there can be no health in a house with a damp cellar. I notice many farm houses set close down under a hill for shelter from cold and winds. They had much better be half-way or all the way up the hill: the breeze is healthful, but the mist hanging low in the hollow, in the morning, is deadly. If the soil around the house is gravelly, and declines gently on every hand, the position is enviable indeed. Not only will you have healthfulness; easy drainage and a sightly position, but your sloping ground offers a fine opportunity for terracing, and a sodded terrace with shrubbery, occasional small beds of flowers, and grape arbors placed over the main path on each terrace, making a succession of green arcades, leave little to be desired in the surroundings
of a comfortable middle-class home.

On this elevation set your house, facing the southeast, you will then have well sunned rooms, summer coolness, winter protection, and escape damp walls and leaking chimneys. Let the house be rather high between joints: very lofty ceilings might dwarf the apparent size of the rooms and make them difficult to heat, but avoid low ceilings. Have windows judiciously placed so that the rooms can be well aired; in bed-rooms, see to it that they are so set that the room can be thoroughly aired without a draught passing over the bed. Do not have too many doors in one room, and never have a room capable of only being entered through another.

Let the bed-rooms be comfortably large; have no nine-by-nine cubby-holes for sleeping apartments: crowd the parlor if you must, but let us, in bed-rooms, have space for breathing. Do not have bed-rooms on the ground-floor; it is always unhealthy to sleep on a first floor; many cases of seemingly chronic ill-health have been cured by sending the patient into the third story.

Be sure and do not put the kitchen in the basement or cellar: this makes too many steps for the housewife; too much heavy carrying for the maids; the fumes of the cooking rise through the house and are driven back toward the furnace-cellar, and rise also with the heat. If the kitchen is beside the dining--room, do not have a door opening between them, but through a lobby; if dining-room and kitchen communicate, the dining-room is apt to be filled with steam, smoke or flies as the door is constantly opened, and the people at table get a view of the kitchen whenever the waiter passes in or out.

Be careful about the building of the chimneys: let them be curved rather than straight, and see that the draught is good, for few things are so destructive of family good temper, or punctuality, and of furniture, as smoking chimneys or fires that will not burn [the HM says that today's equivilant would be functional hot water heaters, as few things are so destructive of family good temper as running out of hot water in the middle of a shower].

Have plenty of closets. Some one says that 'women especially appreciate the comfort and advantage of having plenty of these convenient receptacles for old clothes and dirt.' Here is a very low idea of good housekeeping. All the closets in a house should be well cleaned quarterly: not a particle of dirt should accumulate in them to infect the air of the house with dust and stale smells. Old clothes should be promptly disposed of: those useful to be given away are owed to the needy; those which are to make house and cleaning cloths should be ripped, washed, and folded in a box; those which are kept for rug or carpet making should be ripped and cut as soon as possible. Old clothes hanging about, or tucked into corners, fill a house with mouldy smells, moths and roaches, and encourage mice.

Let every precaution possible be used in arranging flues to prevent houses catching fire; let no stove-pipes pass through wooden floors unprotected by earthen thimbles, and iron or tin sheathing, and let no pipes or low chimneys be placed where their sparks will lodge under a higher roof. Let the cellar be dry, hard finished, with well-protected and lighted inside steps, outer steps, and windows fit for ventilating, and wire-screened to keep out animals.

Have a large cistern, with a filter. No water, unless of a very good spring, is so healthful for drinking as filtered cistern water. The best fashion is to divide the cemented cistern perpendicularly into two halves, the partition being the filter; let the water run in on one side, and the pump draw from the other. Both fuel and water should obtainable without going from under shelter; many a woman's life has been sacrificed by being forced to run, while heated into the mud or rain for water or fuel.

Every house should have provision for several open fires. In early spring or autumn these are both cheerful and healthful, and nothing, unless it be sunshine, is more beneficial in a sick-room. If the house is furnace-heated, these fires are still useful. Every furnace should get its air supply through tubes or boxes communicating with the outer air, not less than two or three feet above the surface of the ground: one does not wish to have the confined air of a cellar distributed over the house for breathing, nor to breathe air impregnated with the damp, vegetable, and insect decay of the earth's surface. Let the furnace also have a water-box which should not get dry so long as fires are kept up.

If water is introduced into the house through lead pipes, great pains should be taken not to use the water which has stood in these pipes, as it has become poisonous: pipes should be lined with rubber. Never have a zinc-lined cistern, and do not allow water which has stood in a copper boiler to be used for any cooking purposes. City-plumbed houses, where there are servants, demand a housewife's constant vigilance to prevent the slow poisoning of her family in such ways as these. Extreme care should be used in cleansing all sinks and waste pipes: concentrated lye water, sal-soda water and ammonia water are all good, while too much praise can hardly be bestowed on potash, a strong, hot solution of which will destroy all hair, animal matter, vegetable decay and grease, and so save us the visitations of fevers and plumbers.

Every house should have at least two main stair-ways.

To be continued...

(tomorrow Aunt Sophronia will address the decorating of the home)

Easy Christmas Gift, 3

I promise this is easy. It is only the second thing I have ever crocheted in my life, and the first was another bonnet like this, only it was about ten years ago because then I lost the pattern and I only found it two days ago. I really messed this one up and it is full of ugly flaws and patchy crochet, but the FYG loves it.
All you really need to know here is how to make a chain stitch and then single crochet in each chain, and you don't even have to do that very well. The shell stitch forming the ruffle is not as hard as it looks, and I did it by going to this website and slowly following the step by step directions (more below).

You need yarn and a crochet hook. Chain stitch a chain that is long enough for the doll you want to bonnet. I hold one end of the chain just under the doll's cheek, then bring it up over her head to just over the other cheek to see how long it needs to be.

Then begin row two and single crochet in each chain. Repeat this, going back and forth until you have crocheted a rectangle large enough for the doll bonnet. You are going to fold this in half and stitch closed the back as pictured to the right (but not yet). So hold the rectangle over the doll's head to make sure that when you close up the back, the hat will still fit the doll's head. You can really see my mistakes better here, and I closed up the seam by crocheting it when sewing it shut would have been better. I didn't do that because I was so close to finishing and I didn't have other thread or a needle downstairs with me and it was midnight and I just wanted to be done and I did have the crochet hook and yarn and the needle and thread were so far away and upstairs in the dark and all and the HM was snoring so peacefully next to me that I didn't want to disturb him by getting up to get other supplies so here it is, and the FYG loves it anyway. But again, do not sew the seam shut yet. Just make sure you have a large enough rectangle to do this.

When the rectangle is the right side, you're going to crochet one more row to make that ruffle. Begin that last row with three chainstitches. Then, in the same space work one double crochet- don't panic. Here's the handy guide I used last night.

Now, skip two stitches and then do FIVE of those double crochets in the third stitch. Skip two stitches and work ONE single crochet in the third stitch. Skip two stitches and work five more double crochets in that third stitch. The double crochets are the ruffle, the single crochet attaches the end of the ruffle to the bonnet. Repeat this pattern (skip two stitches, single crochet in the third. Skip two stitches, five double crochets in the third. Skip two stitches, single crochet in the third...) to the end of the row. Tie off.

Now fold in half and close down the back. To tie this closed you could just sew ribbon ends onto the bottom, or thread a ribbon all the way around the bottom, leaving enough at both sides to tie. I stitched a chain long enough to make the tie I wanted, then single crocheted three or four more rows, finishing up with one shell stitch (five double crochets in one stitch, then a single crochet). I used yarn to tied this onto the bonnet, then repeated for the second tie.

You can also crochet a scarf and attach it to the bottom of the bonnet, but I was in a hurry to be done.

I did the bulk of the crocheting in the car on the way to a doctor appointment of the FYG and back. I did a lot more while visiting with company last night, and I finished up after the company left. More talented people than I could make these for a baby or make a larger one for an adult. In general, hoods for adults would begin with a chain of 70, but I don't know how easy that would be to finish by Christmas. The doll sized bonnet could be finished fairly quickly.

These bonnets do have a pointy sort of elfin top, and you could finish that off with a pompom, bell, or bow if you like.

"Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?"

I was going to write a highly intelligent post (about what? je ne sais pas), but the fact is that I am 20 pages away from finishing Pride and Prejudice and a gal's gotta have some priorities in life.

Greetings From Long Ago and Far Away

Let's see, it would have been on the 11'th that the Common Room had company for three days, and for two days before that they were house-cleaning.
And then they left on the 13'th and The Equuschick said "Woohoo! Nothing planned again for a week!" and then herfriend with four dogs called in tears because her father passed away and she needed to leave for Missouri that day, could The Equuschick start watching her dogs tomorrow? So for all of last week she was living in some strange No Man's Land between work, the CommonRoom house, and friend's house, which is a good half an hour away.
On the plus side, or minus depending on your point of view, they loaned The Equuschick their car for the week. Beautiful car, and how she loved her smooth little Lexus.
And she had to give it back Sunday and she hates the rusty Buick. The Equuschick=Now Very Spoiled and Unable to Drive Old and Rusty Cars That Make Loud Noises and Have No CD Player But Unable to Afford Anything Else So Sort of Stuck and Must GET OVER SELF YOU MATERIALISTIC MORON.

The Equuschick's friend called her husband and asked him to take down the Christmas tree before she came back. Please pray for her, she is taking this very hard.

And The Equuschick does love the little Bichons and the dalmation. But she loves her dog more and missed him and is happy to be home.

Aunt Sophronia Says... 2

With much fear and anxiety I addressed myself to my diaries, depositories of the thoughts of years, endeavoring to collate certain views of the chief things which belong to a home. And as the beginning of the home is in marriage, and marriage is an institution now often both openly and insidiously attacked by the children of riot and unrighteousness, I was about to open my subject with some words of my own on that topic, when I found these remarks of the Bishop of Winchester, offered at a nuptial celebration, and them I transcribed: "The whole of human civilization has its rise, its origin, in marriage: that which most distinguishes civilization from barbarism is the sacredness of the marriage tie and its indissolubility. The more sacred marriage is held by any people, the more certainly that people rises to a high condition of civilization. The married home is the type and the source of civil society. The home, the family, is the unit of civilized life. The home is also the type and the unit of the Christian church: only from the basis of the Christian family can we understand that great truth of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of Christian man. No one can tell what the future may be passing into the generations of a Christian household. Think for a moment, what was the future of that home when Abraham married Sarah. He knew not then what it would be, that in him should all the families of the earth be blessed; yet all that sprang from that one holy marriage."

And now, my young friends, I trust that you hold these simple and sacred views of marriage, and I behold you newly wedded, standing on the threshold of your future life. I would have scarcely known of what next to speak to you, but looking in this spring day from my window, a pair of newly mated robins' and a pair of blue birds brought me counsel; they were nest building!

The robins were erecting a new home from the foundation. The blue birds had found a nest of some other year and were refitting it. I observed that they who built and they who repaired proceeded on the same general principles and that the homes when ready for occupancy were nearly alike. This is a copy of human affairs, for some young couples build houses for themselves and others do the best they can with houses already built, but for both there are certain general sanitary and aesthetic principles to be observed. Nor is it unfit to set this house-building closely beside the thought of the emotional and spiritual union of which we have just spoken, for the house in which the family lives has much to do with the health, happiness and perpetuity of the family; it is as the husk to the kernel, and the nest to the bird, needful to the existence, and indicative of the nature of the occupant.

Now as the same general principles will hold good in building or remodelling a home, I will suggest some of the points which are to be observed, as far as practicable, in building a comfortable house.

To be continued

Part one is here.

Easy Christmas Gift, 2

No picture this time. One of the things kids like most from us is our time. One way to give that time in a fun and memorable fashion is to put together a craft kit for your kids and then do it with them.

For a girl, go to your library or google and look up a book of dollhouse crafts made from things around the house. Pick a project and collect the household items needed to complete it, including such things glue, paint, brushes, and papers. Copy the directions and put this all together in a bag or box.
Here are a few websites that might help you get started.

Boys and girls both might enjoy one of the dioramas here.

This looks a little harder, but it also looks very, very kewl. Make stones from egg cartons and use them to make a 'stone' building- a castle, perhaps.

Several different Middle Ages toys and models to make here- some of them more complicated, most require the use of your printer, as do the houses, town buildings, and airport here.

Very basic, use a cardboard box to make a house, fort, or garage.


Egg Carton dump truck.


Kalaidescope with a film container.


See more ideas here.

Southwestern Chicken Pot Pie

This is easy, feeds a crowd, and freezes well:

Southwestern Chicken Pot Pie, 30 servings, or three *large* pans
(probably this is closer to 36 servings)

3 3/4 tablespoons vegetable oil
cooked meat from about 1 3/4 whole chickens (guesstimate- perhaps 8-
10 cups cooked chicken?)
8-12 cups cooked black beans
20 oz frozen corn
Salsa (The first time I made this I used a large jar of mango salsa, a small jar of cilantro salsa, and a tomato from the garden in the blender because that's what we had. If you don't have these, use 24 ounces of tomato sauce, add chile powder, garlic, and cumin)
1 or 2 cans diced green chiles, optional
7 1/2 cups shredded monterey jack and cheddar cheese blend,
divided
3 (8 ounce) packages corn muffin mix (we'll make our own cornbread batter)

Combine all the ingredients, except the cheese and cornbread batter, in a bowl. Add half the cheese and mix well.
Pour into three large, rectangular foil pans, and freeze.
Divide the cheese into three portions, bag and freeze one bag with each
casserole.
To prepare: Thaw casserole and top with remaining cheese.
Prepare corn muffin mix batter as directed on package, or make your own batter cornbread.
Spread the batter over chicken mixture.
Bake 25-30 minutes at 400 degrees or until corn bread is golden
brown.

The first time we made this it was a big hit with everybody. We used muffin mix for simplicity, but we think the mix is a lot sweeter than we are used to.

It's a very simple recipe, very forgiving, so you don't need to worry about getting the proportions just right.

The math.

By the time December ends we will have had five different sets of houseguests this month.

The semester ended a few days ago. Things have been a bit too hectic to feel really relaxed, but it is still a wonderful feeling to realize that it is perfectly fine to take a novel to the Doctor's office instead of homework, or to eat lunch over your lunch break at work rather than finishing up a school book.

I made a list of things to do over break apart from enjoying the company that is coming (and doing the cleaning for the company ;-).
I want to:
* finish re-reading Pride and Prejudice
* read Witness
* get the oil and brakes done on the car
* clean out and vaccuum the car
* clean a huge cabinet from the rattery
* if at all possible, put this huge cabinet in the antique mall
* sorting and organizing our CD collection

Other fun things not on the list: playing with my siblings, doing my laundry (yes, I am excited about this. Maybe now more of my socks will not come out as widows and widowers), playing games with friends, and not having nightmares about bad grades.

Aunt Sophronia Says...

THE MODEL HOME

Aunt Sophronia has paid a call on the youngest of her nieces, Hester, and has found her reading Plato's Republic, where Socrates speaks of the ideal, "In heaven there is laid up a pattern of such a city; and he who desires may behold this, and, beholding, govern himself accordingly; He will act according to the laws of that city, and of no other."

Aunt Sophronia comments that perhaps the old gray heathen has caught a glimpse of the Holy City in Heaven.

"Let us fancy," said Hester, looking across the lovely land scape which lay beyond her window, "that all that is really good here, inasmuch as it is good, partakes of the character of God, is in harmony with him; it is, therefore, a straight line, for he never deviates, deflects, nor has the shadow of a turning. It is also infinitely extended-eternized; therefore, being a straight and infinitely extended line, it is not bounded by our mortal limits, but is projected into the future world, indefinitely to develop itself in a growing likeness to the mind of its Maker.

Of these things may be the home, designed, established, continued and finished in him. What then might be the infinite possibilities of the Home, the nursing place of immortality, immortal in itself!"

"You lead me too far," I said, "as the poet cries, 'to fields beyond our ken.' Who is it that says: 'There are plenty who indicate to us the road to the skies, but this man taught us a way through this lower world' ? "

"That is Sauvestre speaking of Oncle Maurice, and Sauvestre has a very pretty paragraph on the Home. Let me read it to you."

She took a book from the table, and read: "Never before had I so comprehended the ineffable attraction of the family. What sweetness in these always shared joys, in this community of interests which confounds sensations, in this association of existences, which out of many beings forms one single being! What, indeed, is man without these affections of the hearthstone, which, as so many roots, fix him solidly in the earth and permit him to drink in all the juices of life? Strength, happiness-do not they all come from thence? Without the family. where shall man learn love, mutual aid and self-sacrifice. Society in miniature, is it not the Home which teaches us how to live in the world at large? Such is the sanctity of the hearth-stone, that, in order to express our relationships with God, we have borrowed words invented for the family. Men have called themselves the children of the Supreme Father."

" Yes," I said; "here is not only God's ideal of human life, but it is the foundation of society, of the state. This is our inviolate ark, and who would injure or destroy that would destroy human bonds and national strength. Let us exalt the atmosphere of Home."

"Since you will not devote your time," said Hester, "to fancies of what the Home might be in the land that lies very far off, will you give a little time to explicating your view of a Model Home in this world? In fact, I have a request to prefer to you, and I would have visited you for that purpose to-day, if you had not come here. Grace Winton is to be married to Dr. Nugent's brother. They mean to live here in our little town, and to build a house for themselves. You planned and super-intended your house building, and everyone likes it. Grace wants you to draw up for her your views of a Model Home. You can give your ideas of externals and internals. Depict it as it had better be when people are able to choose a site, and set up the home without being hampered by necessity of saving. and yet do not intend to live in a style of extravagance."

" But, Hester," I remonstrated," such a work would require folios! It would take a lifetime to depict a Model Home."

" Condense it, aunt: merely suggest the topics to be studied, and hint at what is needful. A word to the wise suffices."

"But in many conversations at various times, with all of you young people, I think I have fairly unfolded my views of home, and home-life."


".. Let this paper then be an epitome of what you have said to us. Indeed, aunt, we are bound among ourselves to give you no peace until you gratify us, and then we intend to take the paper, have it printed, and a hundred copies bound to suit our fancy, and distributed among ourselves, as a memento of our many pleasant conversations on home affairs. Therefore become an author a little in spite of yourself."

To be continued

Actually, I Think I'm 100 Percent Confused

'Cos you may recall that I was something like 75 percent Southern in another such test.

You are 51% Canuck!

Good for you! You make me sorta proud. Yeah, sorta proud, not really proud, but sorta proud. You show potential and that is something to be sorta proud of. If you actually did well, then I could be really proud, but you didn't so I'm sorta proud.

How Canadian Are You?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Thanks to the Blue Castle for the fun. Yes, these tests are kinda silly and sort of a waste of time (but I did it anyway, didn't I)- but what is not a waste of your time is taking a look at The Castle Kitchens- guaranteed to make you drool.

Quick and Easy Christmas Gift Crafts- 1

I have been posting a lot of crafts, because I like them and I like doing them with my small children. I don't have any really small children anymore, so this is the next best thing. My crafts are all pretty doable for the craft impaired. I don't sew and I am not very artistic. If you're gifted in the sewing/handicraft area, you probably won't find much here that you won't be able to do better.

I thought it would be fun to see how many of these I can remember and post about between now and December 24th. Many of them will require some fabric scraps, but don't let that scare you away. I don't sew- Jenny does. But even if nobody here sewed I could come up with some fabric scraps, and probably you could, too. Look through your sheets, pillowcases, and clothes and see if there are any you don't need to keep and then cut them up for crafts. The picture frame pictured here was made from (I think) and old bandana given us by my uncle who had seen the girls make bandana baby dolls and thought it was a hoot. My uncle and grandfather used bandanas and cloth hankies until they died, btw, no disposable tissue for them.
Pick a picture to frame. For the picture, use a photograph you already have, or cut out a magazine or catalog picture of something your recipient really likes. A friend once made the Equuschick a picture like this using the cropped picture of a herd of horses racing through the countryside. I think it was originally a cigarette ad. You need to choose your picture first so you'll know what size frame to make. You could also print out a small motto or scripture verse from your computer, or try a bit of calligraphy.

For the picture frame you'll also need at least one piece of cardboard, two is nicer. For cardboard you could use an old manila folder, shirtboard lining, or (what we usually do) look in your pantry for cereal boxes, oatmeal cartons (see the lids and bottoms), pasta boxes (especially if they have nice square cellophane windows), or any other cardboard packaging.

For the nicest version, cut two rectangles the same size, and then cut a window for your picture in one of them- that will be your top piece. It will look nicer if you can put some padding along the top of that top piece- cotton balls, cotton batting, scraps of felt or other cloth, whatever you have. If you don't have anything, don't pad it. It will be okay. Then lay the fabric over it and figure out where to cut the hole, leaving enough excess fabric so you can wrap it to the back side and glue it down. A stapler also works and you can finish sooner. If all you have is one piece of cardboard, go ahead and put your picture in the back now, pasting or taping it down around the edges so it can be seen through the window. You can embellish the basic project with ribbon, buttons, lace, or bows. You can also put a bit of fabric over the back so it will look more finished.

If you have another piece of cardboard, glue it to the back, but only glue it on three sides, close to the edges. This way you can just slide the picture in at the top.

Attach a hanger (a paperclip works, so does the tab from a soda can) to the back, or, as we did here (though you can't see it), paste a magnetic strip to the back so it can go on the fridge.

Sunday Hymn Post

To God Be The Glory

To God be the glory,
Great things He hath done;
So loved He the world
That He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life
An atonement for sin,
And opened the lifegate
That all may go in.

Chorus:
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the earth hear His Voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father
Thro' Jesus the Son,
And give Him the glory,
Great things He hath done.

2. O perfect redemption,
The purchase of blood,
To ev'ry believer
The promise of God;
The vilest offender
Who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus
A pardon receives.

Chorus

3. Great things He hath taught us,
Great things He hath done,
And great our rejoicing
Thro' Jesus the Son;
But purer, and higher,
And greater will be
Our wonder, our vict'ry
When Jesus we see.

Chorus

Carnival of the Recipes

Welcome to another Carnival of the Recipes, where you can find some good downhome cooking, fancy dishes for entertaining, and terrific recipes for celebrating, feasting, and eating anytime! I had a bit of a short circuit with the carnival, and I appreciate Shawn for helping me out! I think I managed to include all the entries, but please look it over and let me know if I missed any or botched the links.
To illustrate this week's carnival I used several images from some of our many vintage books. I hope they don't make it too slow for our dial up friends to load. I tried to control myself- you should see all the pictures I didn't use. Maybe another carnival...


Main Dishes
I love chicken, and might try Triticale's classic chicken dish, purportedly an Elvis favorite (A La The King).

Or maybe we'll have what they're fixing at ChickenRecipes- Roasted Chicken!

Cehwiedel presents Wheatless Honey Lemon Chicken - New Recipe Posted posted at Kneadle Work.

Kevin presents Braised Lamb Shanks posted at Seriously Good.

Rightwingprof presents More Food: The Saute posted at Right Wing Nation.

Christmas Baking!
To the right we have a picture from a vintage children's book about Wales. The children in that picture are stirring the Christmas plum pudding and will bake enough to share with all the neighbors. At our house we've been making my grandmother's apple-orange bread, snickerdoodles, cracker toffee, and all sorts of other yummy things. All around the bloggerhood good things are cooking. For instance:
Christmas Berry Jelly posted at Christmas Recipes.

Third World Country is thinking about Grandmother's Date Nut Bread, and it sounds lovely. There's a reason why Grandmothers' recipes get passed down, isn't there?

Mrs. Happy Housewife and her children are making easy gingerbread cottages- using cookies!

Gingerbread Cupcakes (oh, my, this makes my mouth water!)

Mama Squirrel presents Chocolate Hazelnut Crescents posted at Dewey's Treehouse.

Blest with Sons has some delicious looking (and kid friendly) truffles.

Maureen presents Trinity Prep School - Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies posted at Trinity Prep School.

All of these sweet treats would be good to share with a friend!

The recipe carnival goes international in our Holiday Traditions with:
montacado or montacao anise cookies from spain, Springerle anise cookies from Germany- my mother makes these every year using the original springerle pans my great, greats used (we're very traditional in some ways). Bothenook shares two separate recipes and entries with pictures. I think The Geezer really likes Christmas, because we have four recipes from that blog- but it's Christmas, so I'm going ahead and including them all. Plus, they look really good:
chocolate crinkles/snowflakes and thumbprint cookies
(with picture!) See, yummy looking!
Christine presents Candied Walnuts posted at Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea.
Joe Caterisano presents Amish Sugar Cookies posted at Mom's Favorites.

Soups and Sandwiches
Yes, folks around the blogosphere are certainly cooking up a storm! I bet ours isn't the only kitchen that looks like three winds of destruction came sweeping through!

Bernadette at Booklore shares some traditional Polish Christmas Eve soups, and it's good to have something so warm and nourishing to keep us from overloading on the sugar.

That geezer fellow is also sharing a very tasty looking lentil soup.

Beefy Beanie Soup posted at Diabetic Recipes.

Kathy Maister presents English Muffin Pizzas

Bill at World Famous Recipes presents Salmon Boats or Tuna Boats

Vegetables
Gary at Disease Proof offers some tasty looking veggie snacks.

In the Headlights has some very savory looking garlic mashed potatoes. I think this is the recipe my mother prepared for us recently, and there were no leftovers, no, not even enough to run your finger along the serving bowl.

larryb presents How to Cook Collard Greens by Sarah Sandori posted at Baking 101.

Adam presents Glazed Carrots posted at Men in Aprons.

Holiday Beverages

Bill at Famous Recipes presents Christmas Drink Recipes

We make our hot cocoa mix every year, but this year we used some flavored coffee creamers, making peppermint hot chocolate. It's quite tasty. For added creamy chocolate goodness try adding some powdered sugar and sifted unsweetened cocoa powder.

She didn't submit it, but I just came across this post over at Carmon's Buried Treasure Books, and it looks so good I have to share it- Peppermint Chocolate Mocha!

That's it for this week. Thank you all so much for your recipes!
The next carnival is December 24th, and is hosted by Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea. This submission form at TLB makes the carnival very easy for the hosts. You can also send recipes or links to recipe.carnival@gmail.com by noon CST on Saturday.

Despising the Shame

We were studying the Olympics, my children and I, reading and discussing books about Greece, the athletes, the events. We watched them on television at Grandma's house. It was merely academic. Spiritual growth was not on the morning schedule.

Snuggled up on our bed, a six year old on one side, an 8 year old on the other, I read aloud to them from a book about running races. When running a race, an elementary rule is that you never look back at your opponent. Instead, you keep your eyes on the goal ahead. Looking to the side or behind to see how you are doing slows you down. I thought suddenly of Jesus, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:2

I remembered that a few days earlier our minister asked the congregation, "have you ever wondered why it says 'despising the shame' rather than 'ignoring the pain?' We make much of the physical agony our Lord endured- but the gospel writers actually spend more time on a different sort of agony.

In Matt 27:26-31 we read the simple statement that Jesus was scourged, and then delivered to be crucified. Matthew does not spend any more time on the scourging. He does not go into gruesome details about the exact meaning of scourging, nor does he take time to describe every single agonizing thing the scourging does to the flesh. Unlike many of our modern preachers, he simply mentions the physical pain, the scourging, and then goes on to the real agony- the shame:
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head. And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
I thought of that lesson again in the middle of our Olympics lesson. I paused in my reading, took a drink of water to lubricate my dry throat, and thought of all the weak and silly ways I allow shame or embarrassment keep me from full, complete, abject, utter and total obedience to my Savior, my Lord, my Master. It is not comforting. I am relieved when my children drag my thoughts away from such unpleasant contemplations.

"Mom? Mom! Can you finish the book, please?"

I read my children stories of great champions, people who overcame handicaps of physical imperfections, illness, great poverty, disadvantages of skin color, and geography, relentlessly pursuing a goal. I wonder why they do it. HOW do they do it?
Then I came across this quote from Katarina Witt, who has twice been an Olympic ice-skating Champion:
"It doesn't matter where I am, if I feel eyes on me, I am better."

Do I do better in my pursuit of holiness if people are watching? Most of us do behave differently under the watching eyes of others. That's not necessarily being Pharisees- sometimes we just are able to give our best when clouds of witnesses are watching. But why should I ever act as though nobody sees me? We know that God sees us all the time. As a child, I had a much stronger sense of his constant presence, so much so that I used to ask His pardon if I burped, even if nobody else was in the room. Cute? Childish fancies? Yes, superficially. After all, does God really care if a child belches? But really, the child was wiser than many adults, including my sadly sinful self- God is here. He is real. He is immediate. He is more immediately present and aware of our actions than a companion in a small elevator.
Think of riding that small elevator with another person. The elevator is contained, private, a universe of its own. You suddenly burp. Oh, the writhing, blushing shame of it! How gauche.

Why would this be more humiliating to us than thinking a sinful thought in the presence of the Creator? I don't know, but it generally is, and we are always in the presence of the Creator.

Do I despise the shame, as Jesus did? Or do I avoid a wholehearted pursuit of holiness because it would be conspicuous, make me different, embarrass me? We begin to feel the nudge of conviction on some issue, and we argue. "Oh, no, Lord," I think. "Surely there's nothing wrong with that! If I change in that area, I won't fit in at church, I'll be even more different than I already am, and I can take the cold shoulder from nonChristians, but it hurts so much more from fellow believers. I'll be thought weird. Socially maladjusted. Silly. Stupid. Legalistic. Don't ask me to endure that!"

Those accusations- weird, strange, 'different,' legalism- in our twisted, mixed up, pathetically confused culture, are somehow the kiss of death to any meaningful fellowship. To be accused of those things is somehow much worse than to be accused of something common and mediocre. Something like sinning.

After all, we know that you can be so heavenly minded you're no earthly good, right? Right? Hmmm. Could anybody be more heavenly minded than Jesus? Was he no earthly good? How can one possibly be too much in mind of heaven and its principles? What have we come to that this a criticism offered by Christians of other Christians?
We contribute to this when we allow these attitudes to come between us and a wholehearted, completely sold out, passionate, persistant pursuit of the holiness God commands us to seek.
But it's too hard. We're tired.
Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
We don't like not fitting in amongst fellow Christians, our own people.
Luke 23:13-21
13 And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people,
14 Said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him:
15 No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him.
16 I will therefore chastise him, and release him.
17 (For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.)
18 And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas:
19 (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.)
20 Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them.
21 But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him.
These were Jesus' own people.
Total submission, total faithfulness- this is what we must seek. Instead, we make excuses for ourselves. We're only human, we say. Everybody makes mistakes. We're going to fall.
True enough, and yet!

Suppose your husband comes to you and tells you that he loves you with all his heart. He loves nobody but you. He will strive his best to be faithful to you. But after all, he's only human, so he will perhaps manage to be faithful to you 95 percent of the time, and you will have to take it easy on him the other five percent of the time.
Is that faithful?
According to Jerry Bridges, in the book _The Pursuit of Holiness, "If we sin, it is because we choose to sin- not because we lack the ability to say no to temptation. We are not defeated; we are simply disobedient."
Let us begin calling sin what it is. All sin. Disobedience is sin.
Let us turn completely and wholeheartedly to God, and earnestly seek His face. Let us covenant to "Make every effort to¦ to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord."
Hebrews 12:14
The focus is not on us. It's not about what we avoid. It's not our success over sin, our victory- our defeat of sin that matters. What matters is that we see God. To see God, we pursue the positive of holiness. Sin grieves God. This ought to grieve us. If sin makes us shrug, because, after all, we are all human, than we are not thinking of it as God does. This should grieve us.
A nineteenth century commentator explained, "it is not the importance of the thing, but the majesty of the Lawgiver, that is to be the standard of obedience. But the principle involved in obedience or disobedience was none other than the same principle which was tried in Eden at the foot of the forbidden tree. It is really this: Is the Lord to be obeyed in all things? Whatsoever He commands? Is He a holy Lawgiver? Are His creatures bound to give implicit assent to His will?"
1 Pet 1:15-16
But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.
1Thes 4:7
For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.
Titus 2:11-13
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.

This time of year many people are thinking about the infant Jesus, and that baby Jesus is an important part of the Great Story- but he's only a part. The real story is the Saviour, Redeemer, Lord and Master.

Where do we start in a pursuit of Holiness? With God, first, last and only. Seek God. Know Him. Love Him. Adore Him. The Bible contains the mind of God sent to mankind. Study it. Learn it. Implement it.
What is holiness? Here is a good place to start:
Ps 15:1-5
LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?
He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.
He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.
In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the LORD. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.
He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

The more time we spend with the Lord, the less room we have in our lives for these other things.

It is our responsibility to pursue holiness with all due diligence. God said so. He says without holiness, we cannot fellowship with Him, and we want that fellowship. Without it, we are so incomplete. With it- there is joy overflowing.

Ps 16:11
Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

And please understand, I write not about those things which I have accomplished, but those things I long to see in my own life. I write about my goals and hopes, not my finished checklist. Like you, I am still running the race, sometimes slowly, halt, and stumbling, but this is better than giving up and sitting on the sidelines because it's embarrassing to get out there and limp alongside the more accomplished runners.

The more time I spend in His presence, the less room there is for shame- joy overflowing leaves no room for embarrassment.

Note to Nursing Moms

If you're nursing and your baby is using a sippy cup, he may alter his latch to work with the sippy cup, and this means, to put it mildly, discomfort for mom. Not all babies will do this, but mine did. You could see where their teeth scraped the sides of the sippy cup spout, and this explained why I could feel their teeth... Sippy cups with hard plastic spouts and valves that require the kids to suck hard to get the beverage out, are, in my opinion, and it is just my opinion (and experience) best saved until *after* baby is weaned.

Frugal Fridays

Crystal has a Frugal Friday post up with some questions:

1. What is the best resource for frugality you've found (book, magazine, website, etc.)?

The Tightwad Gazettes, hands down. I've looked at all the other books I have seen mentioned so far, and the Tightwad Gazette was much more useful to me. Some of the books the other ladies are mentioning did not have a single tip I didn't already know, which was disappointing in the cases where I actually paid more than fifty cents for them. Websites, I would say Meredith and Kim, because they are experienced mothers with a lot of frugal living under their belts.

2. What is the best deal you've gotten recently?

Hmmmm- an unopened puzzle for fifty cents, a great bean bag chair for 3.00, and another great beanbag (yellow smiley face) for the kids to curl up in for.... 2.00 at our local thrift ship on their half off day! The yellow one looks unused. The bean bag chair is a huge hit with all the Progeny.
Oh, and I also got this terrific chair for just 2.50. I do not know why they had it marked at only 5.00, but they did, and, being the skinflint I can be, I waited for their monthly half price day to see if it would still be there- and it was! It is such a comfortable chair, too. The pillow in it matches the chair perfectly, and I picked it up at the thrift shop about six months ago. I thought it sort of William Morris-ish, so I had to have it, even though I didn't really have anything to match with it- yet.=)

Oh, yes- we also picked up a love seat for 15.00 and Jenny covered it for me with some upholstery fabric I'd picked up for 75% off, using corkscrew style upholstery pins that were in a bag of notions I picked up at the thrift shop- since I bought that bag for the zippers and lace inside, I consider them free! I'd share a picture of the loveseat, but our digital camera died in the car accident, and the HG's camera batteries died the moment this picture was taken. =(

3. What is your best idea for a creative and inexpensive gift (I was specifically thinking this might be helpful for those who still are looking for some last-minute Christmas ideas!)?

This one, of course!

Christmas Ornaments

Aren't they darling?
I got the idea from a link in one of yesterday's posts. Just cut a Christmas card into strips (coloring the back first if you like). Use a paper punch to punch a hole in the top and bottom of the strips. Put a brad through the holes in the top and one through the holes in the bottom. Then slowly fan the strips out. If you hold the top and bottom ends down a bit, curving out the strips, it will be easier.

The FYB did two of these alone. It took perhaps ten minutes altogether. They can be hung on a tree, put over Christmas lights, used to fill up a holiday basket, fill out a gift basket, or you could write a person's name on each strip and use for a gift tag.

At the original site (follow the links above), there are instructions for shipping this flat in an envelope, so you could brighten up somebody else's Christmas (college student? Newly married couple? Soldier, Sailer, Marine, AIRMAN?)

Have fun! Enjoy! Put a lotta homemade in your family traditions, whether those tradtitions include Christmas or not. Do things together, easy things that allow you to talk and visit while you craft, bake, clean, and create.

P.S. Do not forget that we have a post with a roundup of all our posts we could find that could be used for easy decorating, simple and classy gifts, and easy recipes. If you have a link to a great Christmas idea that doesn't take too much skill or money, let us know!

More Easy Christmas Decorations

I thought I had already posted about these, and maybe I did, but I can't find those posts now. The concept for these two ornaments is the same, but one is very easy for small people, and one requires a bit more coordination.

For small people I used to make a pattern of dots on a piece of paper, then tape the paper to a cardboard box or a piece of cardboard on the table. Then I gave the small fry a thumbtack and they would polk holes in the dots. When finished, frame it as seems good to you (the soldier here is framed in another piece of construction paper) and hang as desired.
Now, I cannot draw anything more complicated than triangle trees and square houses, and they don't make interesting shapes for Christmas. I traced cookie cutters or I got out old coloring books and a bit of carbon paper. I put the carbon paper under the coloring book page and drew the dots around the edge of the picture.

Piercing the dots with the thumbtack is good for small muscle skill development, if you want to make a note of that. Once they've mastered the paper and thumb-tack they can move up to a hammer, nail, and a juice can lid. I didn't make the one here, and neither did any of the Progeny. It's a present from a friend of one of the Progeny, and it's adorable and so is their friend.

I think it's pretty self explanatory. Just make sure the juice can is on something that won't hurt when the nail goes through.

Another easy and attractive craft is here- they make it using photographs. I think it might work with Christmas cards, too.

Updated: you can adapt the pierced pattern idea to make envelope sachets for gifts, as seen here.

You could even make your own mini envelope using the template here.

Festival of Frugality Link

Every week there is a Festival of Frugality, where bloggers of all stripes from all points of the blogosphere share frugal tips. It's been going strong for at a year, and you can always find practical, useful, moneysaving tips there. It's a must read. Make it a regular.

Cheaper by the Dozen Moment

I once asked our FYG and FYB, then 7 and 5, if they liked being part of a large
family. They said yes. I asked what they liked about it, and their responses were so very typical of their personalities. They talked over each other and sort of complete each others sentences.
The 7 y.o. said, "I like having lots of people to talk to-"
The 5 y.o. said, "-and cuddle me."
They both said, "And lots of people to kiss us."

Whereupon an older sister swooped down and kissed them, and the 7 y.o. smirked at me, "See what I mean?"

Finished!

Last night I finished reading all 1443 pages of "War and Peace," by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Rosemary Edmonds). I had a difficult time getting past all the battle strategy, but other than that it was very interesting. Did you know that when it was written it wasn't considered a real novel, because of all the essay-like sections? Even he considered "Anna Karanina" to be his first novel. Oh, and another interesting fact: War and Peace has 580 characters. No wonder I couldn't remember all the names!

Guard Your Heart

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those that torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C.S. Lewis.

Doing good for others can be a very seductive desire. It's very easy to cross over from desiring to help people to desiring to exercise some sort of tryanny over them for their own good.

Several years ago we had just joined a local congregation and the ladies were discussing a family they wanted to help- the family was on hard financial straits and it was Christmas time. One of them women shared, in somewhat strident and emotional tones, "I went over there and they don't even have anything up for Christmas- no tree, no lights, and no presents out! Those poor children!" And everybody agreed and they began making plans to 'make' their Christmas by bringing over all the trappings of a traditional Christmas.

A quiet lady in the corner finally made herself heard over the excitement, "I don't think they celebrate Christmas."

People looked at her in some perplexity. She tried to explain, "I know they're having a rough time just now, but the lack of Christmas stuff- that's not because they don't have enough money. They never put up a tree. They don't believe in it. They never put up lights or other things either. They always just give a few very small and practical things to their children in Christmas morning, and that's it. I don't think they want a tree or any of these other things. They would probably appreciate it very much more if we could pay the electric bill for them this month."

It was a very near miss for that family and their convictions, as the loudest and most 'charitable' ladies there continued insisting that the children deserved a Christmas, because it was all about children after all, and they continued to plan the elaborate Christmas they were going to impose on a family that didn't want one.

Because, you know, providing a full-blown Christmas to the children would be so much more fun than paying the utility bills. The children would be so pleased and grateful, and would look upon us with thankful (and perhaps dangerously worshipful) eyes.

Thankfully, more thoughtful heads prevailed and the ladies did not collectively present the anti-Christmas family with a full-blown Christmas against all their own convictions and drive a wedge between parents and children.
And while they could certainly have gone ahead and done it on their own (the most vocal pro-Christmas ladies were also the most wealthy), I do not think they did.

There's a moral in there.

Everybody else is talking shoes...

Yes, Everybody is talking about shoes. Everybody. Everybody who is anybody, surely. So I will, too.
About that last link I will say that I have a secret affection for cheesy songs because they are so fun to mock, but if they are cheesy songs that also make me cry even while I am realizing they are the ultimate, the utter end, and the very utmost of bad cheese, then I look upon them with a disgust that amounts to absolute detestation.
And furthermore, I am casting a dark and baneful eye in the general direction of the MMV and Cindy because I had never heard this song before, and they have committed an act of cranial terrorism whereby my mind is now filled with maudlin images of dying barefoot mothers gasping out their collective last breaths, holding on to that thin and tenuous thread of life with slippery fingers (and barefoot toes) so that they can just die with their shoes on, if only their tearstained and emotionally manipulative little boys would hurry up and get home from the local HyphenMart with those shoes.
And I resent their encroachment upon my mind's eye so very much that I am compelled to share it with you. Babies, don't let your mamas die in their barefeet.

About the first posts I will say that theirs are shoes of class, grace, elegance, and the Manolo, he would be the proud. Yes, he would. And I, the DHM, I admire them and their lovely feetwear of the beautifulness.
The DHM, she loves to look at the Myrna Loy and Ginger Rogers shoes of her so elegant and classy friends of the stylish feet-wear.
The other ladies, they have the shoes of the tasteful and lovely ladies of style.



The DHM, she is the comfortable.

A Note to 'Nesting' Moms

When I was pregnant with our sixth child, we had major bathroom problems- upstairs bathroom pipes burst, flooded, the ceiling downstairs had to be torn out, and it was messy and ugly, VERY ugly. The Headmaster said it would be fixed before the baby came, but my due date came and went and the ugly remained.

I do not remember this any more, but I was browsing through old emails and two years ago I tried to encourage another mother in that 'nesting' stage of pregnancy by sharing that I could vaguely remember some strange whiny woman, great with child, sitting on the steps staring at that ugly ceiling and sobbing and wailing "You just don't understand. If you understood, you would fix it. I just Can't have
it like that. Ooooh, you just don't understand. If you really understood it would already be fixed, but it's not because you don't understand at all that I just cannot have my baby with the ceiling like that..."

Who was that crazed woman?

Now, that particular baby was ten days overdue, so it may be that the Headmaster had time to fix the ceiling before she came, but the sad and humbling truth is that when the 'baby' of that pregnancy was 8 years old, I could no longer remember whether it got fixed or not. It just didn't matter so much later as it seemed to
matter at the time. And now that she is ten, I don't even remember sobbing like a spoiled child over it. I do, just barely, remember the hole in the ceiling, but I just can't imagine getting so worked up over it. Without the email evidence of my own report, I would hotly deny that I had ever behaved so foolishly over a hole in my downstairs hall ceiling. It didn't matter as much as I thought it did then.

Of course, I am pretty certain that I would not have been open to hearing this when I was in the midst of nesting that gaping hole was filling my nest with maws of ugliness.

So maybe this isn't a note to nesting moms, it's a note to formerly nested moms so we can laugh at our previous selves together.

If you are the husband of a nesting mom, may I gently suggest that if it is at all possible you go ahead and fix the holes anyway? And if you are the nesting mama, maybe you should just avert your eyes.

Favorite Read This Morning

Cindy's Stream of Consciousness post is cracking me up. It could be a Carnival of Homeschooling all by itself.

There's a lot of wisdom there, all wrapped up in bright bows of good humour. This is some of the wisdom extracted from the fun stuff:

How many times have I read articles about some *new* thing a homeschool mom is trying? Don’t ever tell me what you are doing until you have succeeded for at least 2 months.

AMEN, and can I hear another AMEN?

Can I confess to you where I learned this humbling truth? I learned it a couple years ago when browsing through a homeschooling list's archives. There was this one woman who just was full of exciting ideas and plans she had to share with everybody else. It sounded so inspiring, all those terrific and grand new ideas- over and over, her enthusiasism just shone through and I could see that she had truly found homeschooling nirvana and from here on out she would have nothing but easy paths and straight ways and smooth sailing and other clichés of ease and simplicity.

I would think, "Wow, what a fantastic idea, we should try that!" and I would look to see who wrote that very clever and admirable idea down for the benefit of the homeschooling world at large.

It was me.

And it had worked so well and wonderfully that I didn't even remember trying it.

At least two months, girls, at least. The next time somebody tells you this terrific idea they have and you think it's for you- write it down on your calendar and come back and ask her how it's going two months later. Especially if the new idea is mine.

Vintage Picture Resource

This website contains a lovely (and growing) archive of public domain illustrations from old Bible story books. The illustrations include pictures of Bible stories (see right), illustrations of Bible verses (see left, where Proverbs 31 is depicted), and illustrations of 'modern' (at time of publication) families and children illustration religious themes. They are in both black & white
and color,

and I am completely charmed.

Prayer Request

Let us all bow our heads in a moment of silence, and those so inclined, in a moment of sincere supplication, on behalf of the HG and the math exam she is about to endure.

3 Minute Microwave Fudge

3 minute microwave fudge-

Put these ingredients in a glass bowl in the order mentioned. Do not stir, melt, or mess about with it in any way. Just put the stuff straight into the bowl!

1 pound powdered sugar- you can sift it to remove all lumps, but that's the most messing about with the ingredients you're allowed to do.
1/2 cup powdered cocoa (or more if you want a richer flavor)
dash of salt
stick of butter (just set it right on top of the mound of sugar and cocoa powder. Don't stir, chop, or mash it up- just put the stick of butter down and continue the recipe).
teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup milk- Do NOT stir this in, just pour it over the top.

Cook in microwave on high for three minutes.

NOW you can stir. Stir quickly,
pour into a pie pan, either greased or lined with waxed paper.
Cool in the fridge. Score and eat.

To make the most decadent hot fudge ice cream topping you have ever had in your life, melt the butter first, use 1/2 a cup of milk instead of 1/4 cup, and stir it all well before microwaving and then again after microwaving. Spoon over ice-cream while the fudge sauce is still piping hot.

Sciatic Nerve Pain

A simple exercise a physical therapist gave me to help with sciatic nerve pain- while standing, any time and as often as possible, tighten the buttocks while sucking in the stomach at the same time. I generally find this helps within a very short time (as in, the same day).

Crockpot Breakfast

Longterm readers may remember our crockpot cereal recipe, which I posted about here, and then shared some variations here.

Last night I made it for the first time this winter (even though it's only in the forties and low fifties this week). I added coconut oil, chopped walnuts, and diced apples along with a generous splash of our homemade vanilla, cinnamon, freshly ground cloves, ginger and a touch of molasses. For grains we used about half oat groats and half buckwheat.

Pipsqueak made granola this week, too. Since we have houseguests I set the granola on the counter near the crockpot, along with the canister of brown sugar and the butter for those who like their hot cereal with butter. Then I put out a stack of bowls and spoons and told our guests that there was vanilla yogurt and whole milk in the fridge.

This way, breakfast was available to any early birds while allowing those of us kept up by snoring spouses with stuffy noses some of us to sleep in without guilt.

-------
Updated note: Gem asks about sources for groats and millet and for the granola recipe. There you go.=)

They might not remember, but it doesn't matter.

Recently Pip had a piano recital, and the HM noted that some of the students brought their music up with them, and others didn't. He wondered why. The girls explained that the piano teacher preferred that the students do it from memory, but if some students felt strongly they hadn't had enough time with the piece, she would let them choose to use their sheet music. But it was better, our musically inclined Progeny told us, if you memorized your music. "It's wonderful for your muscle memory," said one of them.

We take our babies to the zoo and to parks, even though, as older people were fond of telling us when we were new parents in our twenties, they won't remember it anyway. "Might as well wait until they're older and will appreciate it, so you get your money's worth," I've heard from more than one person old enough to be my mother or grandmother.
I've heard other mothers lament that they did something special on a regular basis with their kids and their kids, when grown, insist that such treats never, ever occurred. They don't remember a single one.

I've always insisted that it didn't matter whether or not they remembered it. I believe these enriching activities benefit our childrens' development in ways we may never see directly, but the benefits are there. Maybe it's like muscle memory when playing a musical instrument- the mind and body are building connections and patterns without the child necessarily being consciously aware, or without necessarily remembering, later, just why she is so fond of Peppermint tea, monkeys at the zoo, or oak trees.

Until just three to five years ago (I forget exactly when we stopped, but I am pretty sure it was connected with that shattering move three years ago), every year at Christmas we participated in something like Toys for Tots, The Angel Tree project, Magi Boxes, or some local version. We took the children with us to the department store and had them help pick out spanking new toys and clothes for children we didn't know. Ironic, since we were giving our own children used toys and clothes from thrift shops and yard sales, but we never pointed out the irony. We thought it was good for them and we knew it was good for us, and we hope and pray it was good for those who received our presents.

The Magi Boxes require some advance preparation and planning, and that nasty move prevented most advanced planning and prep. There's not a military base around here, so I didn't see any Toys for Tots program, nor did I see any Angel Trees up and around, and without making a deliberate decision to stop, we just got out of the habit and directed our charitable giving in other directions. (Excuses, excuses, we hear them every day....)

Recently I learned that one of our older children has picked up the habit on her own this year- no fanfare, no great publicity about it. She banks at a different bank than the rest of us, and her bank had a version of an Angel Tree. She just picked a name off the Christmas tree at her bank and is stockpiling some presents for this very personal project of hers.

I was glad to see one of our Progeny was keeping up the tradition we had let slide. But when I said something about it, I got blank stares. They apparently do not remember doing this every year from infancy until well into their teens, yea and verily even LATE into their teens. I wish they remembered it better, but it's not that important. I like to think that what we did has some influence on our children are and why, when she saw the Angel Tree, this daughter picked a child and decided to make a better Christmas for somebody she didn't know.

I do think they got some benefit from it whether they remember it or not, but, more importantly, it's not about us, anyway, is it?

A Cure for the Gimmes

Perhaps not a cure, but a dose of perspective.

Read more about it here.

He'll either make his wife very happy, or very crazy

The Equuschick has a small collection of Christmas fairies/angels (I call them fairies, because biblical angels were never female), which she's been adding to since she was a tiny child (insert obligatory short joke). The Boy decided to help her straighten her room the other day and he rearranged them from shortest to tallest, telling her she should always keep them that way.

Each year the HM gives me one silk rose on our anniversary. I keep them in a large vase (you can see them here) in my room. It is a small affected conceit of mine to keep some dried rose petals scattered at the base of that vase, looking like they dropped randomly from my (silk) roses.

The FYB was helping me tidy up my room today, and he decided to fix up that cabinet top. Since most of the things on it were his own picture books that he brought down to my room and left, I thought that was a good idea.

My rose petals now, instead of a random, as though just fallen from the rose pattern, are neatly arranged in perfectly even pattern of squares with squares.

Christmas Word Game

I love word games! Sally, at A Gracious Home, has a delightful one based on Christmas Carols. I think this would be fun to print out and use at a Christmas party, or, even better, hand it around at dinner time and enjoy it with your family

Here are two, just to whet your appetite:

1. Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their
belief
2. Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious songs

I love stuff like this. How fun- a math post and a word game post back to back!

Is there a difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars?

Verizon customer service reps don't think so.

The entire blog was created to demonstrate their math impairment. The first link above is a rough transcript of the entire conversation. It's pretty funny, in a banging your head in despair sort of way. Some of the comments contain vulgar language.

Synapsis: George pays for unlimited Verizon use, so he doesn't know their regular rates. He was going to be in Canada, so he called to ask what their rates would be while he was there. He was quoted .002 CENTS per unit. He was so surprised he asked the representative to verify that. She repeated it, and at his request so noted it in his information on Verizon's system.

His bill was for .002 DOLLARS per unit, which, understandably, upset him, as it changed his expected fees from 71 cents to 71 dollars. So he called to point out the difference to Verizon. Shifted from caller rep to caller rep, every one of whom demonstrated absolutely no understanding that there was any difference between the two numbers at all, he finally turned out his tape recorder and recorded his conversation with the floor manager and published it to his new blog. Even while quoting the rate of .002 CENTS to him, they kept insisting this was the same as .002 DOLLARS, and he was the one with the problem.
At one point, the floor manager tried to tell him it was simply a difference of opinion, as though two plus two was four if you happen to like four, but if you're feeling more favorable towards twenty-two, that works just as well.

Sample:

G: [big sigh] Okay, I think I have to do this again. Do you recognize that there's a difference between one dollar and one cent?

A: Definitely.

G: Do you recognize there's a difference between half a dollar and half a cent?

A: Definitely

G: Then, do you therefore recognize there's a difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents

A: No.

G: No?

A: I mean there's... there's no .002 dollars.

Since publishing his experience, George has learned that his is not an isolated case, and he points out that while Verizon did adjust his accounts, they still refuse to acknowledge their error, and between two totally different customers:

there have been 10 customer service reps that either quoted rates in cents or didn't recognize the difference, 6 in mine (5 on the phone, and 1 by implication - Nikki), and 4 in this second case.

Make that blog your math lesson for today, homeschooling pals. I spent entirely too much time there this morning and would like to know it wasn't wasted.=)

Sunday Hymn Post

On Zion's Glorious Summit

On Zion's glorious summit stood
A numerous host redeemed by blood
They hymned their King in strains divine
I heard the song and strove to join
(I heard the song and strove to join)

Here all who suffered sword or flame
For truth, or Jesus' lovely name
Shout victory now and hail the Lamb
And bow before the great I Am
(And bow before the great I Am)

While everlasting ages roll
Eternal love shall feast their soul
And scenes of bliss, forever new
Rise in succession to their view
(Rise in succession to their view)

Holy, holy, holy, Lord
God of Hosts on high, adored!
Who like me thy praise should sing?
Oh, Almighty King!
Holy, holy, Holy Lord!
God of Hosts on high, adored.

Holy
Holy
Holy

Listen to it sung here. Wonderful stuff!

Words by John Kent

Family Communication.

Company is coming in just a few days and all of us have been working to get the house ready to one extent or another. Jennyanydots cleaned the guest bathroom, and now a little sticky note is affixed to the door reading:
There are three other bathrooms in this house.
(Hint, Hint!)

For Jenny, that's quite blunt. :)

Why Bother...

Writing intelligent posts if one can amass seven comments with an obsessive rant, and have more fun at the same time?

However, just to prove she can do it-

*The flaw in the logic that says "Democracy for Iraq will do the trick, if we just spread this country's Democracy to the world then the world will be a better place" is that we forget our country was founded on Christianity first, and Democracy second. Democracy is a good thing, but it has to stand for something and on something. So maybe Democracy, sad and pessimistic as it sounds, just won't work in Iraq right now.

Geology Buffs?

These were found in the rattery, all together in a small handcrafted wooden bowl from Berea College in Kentucky, which fact may have nothing to do with what they are or where they were found.
Anybody venture a guess as to what they are?

Craft Stick 'Gingerbread' House

Like a magpie or a packrat I pick up crafting odds and ends at our local thrift shop on 50% off day, like the craft sticks, woodsies, and foam cut outs above.
This project isn't finished yet, in fact, it's barely started. But when it is done it will look like a green and red candystriped version of this project. But different.

We don't have circles or candycanes, but we do have hearts, stars, and rick-rack.

We'll make our own 'textured snow' with laundry soap flakes and water (recipe here, along with some winter poems) .

You can also make little mounds of snow and snowmen from a mixture of toilet paper and glue- just wet the toilet paper with some glue and start kneading and molding it. It's messy, but dries hard and white and makes very satisfactory model snowballs in your tabletop winter village.

There are other recipes for paints, clays, and modeling compounds here, and you can also use these recipes to make some fun frugal Christmas presents for your small fry.

Frugal Gift- Also Classy and EASY!

This is a plain, garden variety black and white composition notebook (click on the picture to enlarge). As I recall I picked up several at the local drugstore when they were ending their 'back to school' sale and giving them away at 3 for a dollar or something.

It's been gussied up with pictures cut out of some junk mail we got from, I think, The Folio Society. Jenny cut them out and arranged them, gluing them down with regular glue, and then she put contact paper over the cover. She only did the front cover, but it does look nicer if you do both front and back.

You can also drill a hole in the center of the right edges of both covers and loop ribbon through so it can be tied shut. If you're a scrapbooker you could use brads and attach elastic through the top and bottom so it can be closed that way.

We tried different arrangements, and found that pictures from the same advertisements give it a more finished look, whether you're using fruits and vegetables from the weekly grocery salespapers, or movies from one of the movie clubs. Victorian Trading Co. has lovely pictures in their catalog, or you could use art prints from old calendars, snippets from Smithsonian, The New Yorker, or other pretty magazines.

We did this two years ago at the last minute for Equuschick, and her sisters liked it so much they all asked for one. This is the HG's, and she uses it for notes from her English class.

Remember we're collecting links to our other posts with frugal Christmas ideas, gifts, decorating, sweets and treats!

A Special Day...

Today is James Thurber's birthday. He wrote much adult fiction, but also a delightful little story called Wonderful O. His adult fiction is funny, too, but this book was my first introduction to him. :)

Home-Birthin'

Our last two babies were born at home, by choice, with midwife assistants. The homebirth experience after several hospital births was sublime, and I would never willingly go back to a hospital birth short of an emergency situation. So, naturally, I love this post and Sora's subtext.

Frugality from Living Books- Suggestions?

In the comments to this post our dear Mama Squirrel suggested we include a certain type of book in our family read alouds when one of our frequent houseguests is present:

There are people in literature who have always been my thrifty/contentment role models. I can name a few right off--Ma Ingalls (remember when she made the button lamp in The Long Winter?--even Pa didn't know how to do that); the post-war Germans like Margret's mother in Margot Benary-Isbert's book The Ark (she holds her family together and scrounges what they need); George Washington Carver (he was really resourceful); a character named Old Washburn in a picture book I read with the kids once (Old Washburn loses everything but always finds something positive about the situation)...I'd have to make a longer list. Whether the characters are/were real or not, I've learned things by spending time with them.

I like that idea. I'd like to have a list of any living books demonstrating thrift, a 'can-do' attitude, self-sufficiency, frugality, etc- picture books, too. Do our readers have any suggestions?

UPdated to add: These Christmas stories are charming and sweet.

It says the "new version of blogger is ready for you!"

*freaks out* NO PLEASE NO IT IS NOT NECESSARY FOR YET ANOTHER OF THE SITES THE EQUUSCHICK FREQUENTS TO CHANGE THEIR FORMAT SHE CAN'T FUNCTION IF YOU CHANGE THE FORMAT.

Stop it.

It will take The Equuschick weeks to find her way around the world again. Switching from yahoo! to gmail was an adjustment that took hours of preparation and coaching from a good friend. She hates the new format on her other bloggish site. She just can't take any more of this new fangled updated formatting nonsense.

She had something intelligent to say, actually. She got on blogger for the specific purpose of sharing it. She can no longer do so. She's assimilating and processing the possibility of getting a new version, and when she is done with recognizing the mere possibility she will decide against it.

Real Life Conversation about Erskine's Book

It's a dorky title, okay? I know that. But it's descriptive, or at least as descriptive as I can be in a few short words.

I was at the physical therapist's tonight, where I go twice week to be poked, prodded, and pinched by a very interesting and incredibly capable P.T. She is just amazing. She runs her hands along my neck, shoulders, and back, pokes gently two or three places and then says, "I think you're having a lot of pain right here, correct?" and she is always right, (and no, you wags, not just because she happens to be prodding me right there when she asks).

At some point in the therapy I spend about ten minutes under ice packs or heat, and so I bring a book to read just in case. Tonight it was The Moral Obligation to BE Intelligent. She noticed it and said that was quite a challenging title. Then she looked again and asked just how old that book was, anyway. The copy I'm reading was published in the 1920's, and it does look its age.

She wanted to know what it was about, and I tried to explain it in the remaining five to ten minutes of my therapy, without distracting her too much from the places she was poking. I said something about Erskine believing that culturally we placed too much emphasis on character to the detriment of intelligence, that we valued the use and application of the mind so little that we thought it didn't matter at all so long as a person was virtuous, and his idea was that if we value the work of the mind so little that we deliberately set out to ignore it and refuse to use it, then we lose something in the virtues of character as well.

For a moment she stopped kneading what she calls my hotspots, and I acknowledged her unspoken objection, "Well, yeah. He wrote that in the 1920s, like I said. We might have placed a high value on character and virtue over intelligence then, but today..."

And she finished my sentence with me, as though we'd practiced beforehand,
"Today, we just don't value good character or intelligence."

And it occurs to me that this may account for some portions of the essay that trouble some of our readers. Erskine is writing to an audience who took it for granted that virtue, character development, and the old fashioned standard of being good were widely understand and practiced.

I don't think we do. Nobility of character is admired and held up as a standard in isolated cultural pockets, and the culture at large looks askance at such high ideals and calls them 'legalism' if its vocabulary runs that direction, or something worse if it doesn't.

We need a melding of the morés, so that we can say, "be good, sweet youth, and as much as you may, be clever."

Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, Part Eight

This is the last of this particularly essay. Later I hope to share other essays from the same book, which was published before 1924. I have enjoyed reading it, and I have enjoyed your comments about it. Before continuing with the final installment, I thought you would be interested to know what Erskine himself said about the response he was receiving from his essay:

When the essay appeared in this country it was criticized again by certain well meaning people as a menace to religious faith and a peril to the young. By some ingenuity which I have never been able to follow, such critics found in my praise of intelligence an attack on conventional morals. I still feel that the essay says clearly what I meant – that to be as intelligent as we can is a moral obligation – that intelligence is one of the talents for the use of which we shall be called to account – that if we haven’t exhausted every opportunity to know whether what we are doing is right, it will be no excuse for us to say that we meant well.

I am reminded of those computer users who blindly forward every single forward they ever get without checking its veracity. I understand that when we are new to the computer we all make a mistake or two. But those who understand the moral obligation to be intelligent humbly and even gratefully accept instruction. Try pointing out that a certain email about a missing child has been circulating so long that child is now a college graduate and mother of teens herself, and, in fact, according to Snopes.com, she never really was 'missing,' just temporarily mislaid and found sleeping peacefully in her own closet five minutes after the 'alert' went out and you will soon discover whether your correspondent is humbly intelligent- or somewhat otherwise.

Perniciously foolish women who value feelings most of all and intelligence not at all will lash out in response, always concluding their resentful response with some sort of smug declaration about how much they care. Claiming in an email that you demonstrated your moral superiority simply by wiggling your pinky finger and thereby sending another hoax email to fifty thousand dearest friends and strangers who will now know to discard any email forwarded from your account somehow does not strike me as the moral high ground, nor is it particularly intelligent. Erskine says we must exhaust every opportunity to know what we are doing is right, and I am weaker than that, but I feel sure it is not okay to refuse to exhaust any opportunity to know what we are doing is right, and meaning well really isn't really much of an excuse for thinking well. We all know what sort of paving stones are made of best intentions.

I do not always agree with Erskine in particulars, but in general applications I think he has more to teach us than our culture has proven willing to learn.

Erskine concludes by saying:

Perhaps my question as to what you think of intelligence has been pushed far enough. But I cannot leave the subject without a confession of faith.
None of the reasons here suggested will quite explain the true worship of intelligence, whether we worship it as the scientific spirit, or as scholarship, or as any other reliance upon the mind. We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to the problems of life, but because we believe it is life,not for aid in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the will of God. We love it, as we love virtue, for its own sake, and we believe it is only virtue's other and more precise name. We believe that the virtues wait upon intelligence-literally wait, in the history of the race. Whatever is elemental in man-love, hunger, fear-has obeyed from the beginning the discipline of intelligence. We are told that to kill one's aging parents was once a demonstration of solicitude; about the same time, men hungered for raw meat and feared the sun's eclipse. Filial love, hunger, and fear are still motives to conduct, but intelligence has directed them to other ends. If we no longer hang the thief or flog the school-boy, it is not that we think less harshly of theft or laziness, but that intelligence has found a better persuasion to honesty and enterprise.

We believe that even in religion, in the most intimate room of the spirit, intelligence long ago proved itself the mastervirtue. Its inward office from the beginning was to decrease fear and increase opportunity; its outward effect was to rob the altar of its sacrifice and the priest of his mysteries. Little wonder that from the beginning the disinterestedness of the accredited custodians of all temples has been tested by the kind of welcome they gave to intelligence. How many hecatombs were offered on more shores than that of Aulis, by seamen waiting for a favorable wind, before intelligence found out a boat that could tack! The altar was deserted, the religion revised fear of the uncontrollable changing into delight in the knowledge that is power. We contemplate with satisfaction the law by which in our long history one religion has driven out another, as one hypothesis supplants another in astronomy or mathematics. The faith that needs the fewest altars, the hypothesis that leaves least unexplained, survives; and the intelligence that changes most fears into opportunity is most divine.

We believe this beneficent operation of intelligence was swerving not one degree from its ancient course when under the name of the scientific spirit it once more laid its influence upon religion. If the shock here seemed too violent, if the purpose of intelligence here seemed to be not revision but contradiction, it was only because religion was invited to digest an unusually large amount of intelligence all at once. Moreover, it is not certain that devout people were more shocked by Darwinism than the pious mariners were by the first boat that could tack. Perhaps the sacrifices were not abandoned all at once.

But the lover of intelligence must be patient with those who cannot readily share his passion. Some pangs the mind will inflict upon the heart. It is a mistake to think that men are united by elemental affections. Our affections divide us. We strike roots in immediate time and space, and fall in love with our locality, the customs and the language in which we were brought up. Intelligence unites us with mankind, by leading us in sympathy to other times, other places, other customs; but first the prejudiced roots of affection must be pulled up. These are the old pangs of intelligence, which still comes to set a man at variance against his father, saying, "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me."


Yet, if intelligence begins in a pang, it proceeds to a vision. Through measureless time its office has been to make of life an opportunity, to make goodness articulate, to make virtue a fact. In history at least, if not yet in the individual, Plato's faith has come true, that sin is but ignorance, and knowledge and virtue are one. But all that intelligence has accomplished dwindle in comparison with the vision it suggests and warrants. Beholding this long liberation of the human spirit, we foresee, in every new light of the mind, one unifying mind, wherein the human race shall know its destiny and proceed to it with satisfaction, as an idea moves to its proper conclusion; we conceive of intelligence at last as the infinite order, wherein man, when he enters it, shall find himself.
Meanwhile he continues to find his virtues by successive insights into his needs. Let us cultivate insight.

"0 Wisdom of the Most High,
That reachest from the beginning to the end, And dost order all things in strength and grace, Teach us now the way of understanding."

I know that's a long, meaty chunk and most of us find our eyes glazing over when confronted with long, meaty quotes in blogs (at least I do). But I can't help it. I can either finish this essay this way at this time, or I can possibly finish it a different way a few days or weeks from now (or next year=) ). I chose a more immediate conclusion.

Part one is here
Part Two is here
Part Three is here.
Part Four is here.
Part Five is here.
Part Six is here.
Part Seven is here.

Spunky- You'll Be Missed

Spunky at SpunkyHomeschool says she's not going to be blogging. She'll leave the archives up for us, though.

It's kind of like finding out one of your favorite neighbors is moving. Yesterday.

I met her once and found her a perfect joy to chat with. If I ever have the chance to meet her again, I will leap at the opportunity.

Just for Fun

Library of Congress Data:
Title: "Good morning" : music, calls, and directions for old-time dancing / as revived by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford ; compiled and descriptions written by Benjamin B. Lovett.
Edition: 4th ed.
Published: Dearborn, Mich. : [Dearborn Pub. Co.], 1926.
Description: 124 p. : ill., music ; 27 cm.
Subjects: Ballroom dancing -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Square dancing -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Other authors: Ford, Henry, 1863-1947.
Lovett, Benjamin B.

Becoming a shrewish librarian, according to the DHM.

We have a small marquee in the library for advertising our special programs. It's rather a hassle to change out the letters for it, and so I was quite distraught tonight to find an adolescent boy muddling up a couple of the letters.

I cleared my throat.
"Why don't you put those back where they belong?" I said. Then, because he was having trouble putting them back (I thought he would be) I also could not resist adding on, "Because, obviously, it took a little bit of work to put that together in the first place."
Bwahaha.
My supervisor has said that she didn't dislike teenagers until she started working at the library. I can see where she's coming from. Thankfully I know that all teenagers in the world aren't like this... the ones who aren't, though, are generally quite happy to be doing something else than annoying librarians on week-day nights.

---
On a chipper note: A group from a local church brought in hot cocoa and thank you notes for the library staff tonight. That was nice.

A Missed Opportunity for Frugality

Background: Almost four years ago the HM retired from the AF and we moved to where we are now, more or less. We had a small 1200 square foot house with major quirks and only one bathroom here. Our original plan was to live their for about six months while we built a new house, so I packed for 'temporary' living, meaning I only left out our schoolbooks for that year, a few games and kitchen supplies, and about 1/3 of our toys and craft supplies. But probate on this property dragged out, and it became obvious we weren't going to be moving anywhere in six months, so I had The Progeny pull in almost all the boxes and I repacked them, pulling out schoolbooks for next year and a few more toys and kitchen tools. I pulled out much more than we needed, in part because our storage was less than optimal, and I wanted as much as possibly inside the semi-heated house where mice, hail, snow, and water couldn't get to it.
Then it turned out that the next year our builder was busy building a house for my parents, so we had to wait another year.

We are still unpacking a few boxes from that first move over three years ago, boxes that haven't seen the light of day since then for one reason or another. Of course, if I had known that we weren't going to unpack them for three years, a good many more things could have been left behind in Colorado. But some of the new discoveries are pretty cool.

I am thrilled to finally have my entire cookie cutter collection together in one place (that place is a bushel basket such as apples sometimes come in).

It was wonderful to know that my vintage galvanized tin watering can had not disappeared in the move.

Some missing tablecloths turned out (although two of them turned out to be nibbled by mice).

We FINALLY found our Apples to Apples game, a big family favorite that we have missed. And since we wrote many of our own cards with some dear family friends, it's almost like having them nearby to read them again.

And the Boy has been playing with a bucket of Legoes he wasn't interested in three years ago and had forgotten all about.

I should have put the Apples to Apples game and the Legoes away for a couple more weeks and given them as Christmas gifts.

Quick Chop Suey

Saute together:
1/2 lb. ground beef
1 onion, sliced
3/4 c. celery, sliced
Add:
2 c. canned or 3 c. fresh bean sprouts
1 c. beef or chicken broth
1/2 c. sliced mushrooms (optional)
Cover skillet. Simmer 5 minutes.
Combine:
1 T. cornstarch
2 T. soy sauce.
Add to beef mixture, stirring constantly. Cook until thickened and smooth. Serve over hot rice.

When I made this yesterday, we didn't have mushrooms, and I added a can of bamboo shoots.

We should add that Pip's lunch served seven of us, with only enough leftover to make a small snack of a lunch for an eighth. To stretch it, we could have added another onion, more rice, or perhaps a few more stalks of celery or bok choy.

Frugalities : Ignorance is Costly

A friend of mine is fond of saying, "When you don't know, you don't know that you don't know." For example (sorry, Granny Tea), I was born placenta previa. For those who don't know, this is a dangerous condition where the placenta is partially or totally over the cervix, with baby above. Babies often die or are born retarded. It is usually (always, really) treated by careful monitoring and C-section deliveries. Except my mother's doctor did not do a C-Section. He confined her to bedrest and allowed me to come the usual way (a practice which shocked the midwives who delivered my last two babies). He spent the night in my mother's hospital room the day before I was born. Two years later my mother lived in a new area and had a new doctor for her second pregnancy. When the doctor asked what if she'd any complications with her previous pregnancy, she said, more or less, "No, everything was fine. Well, except for placenta previa. But no, no real complications." The doctor goggled a bit and informed her that placenta previa was a major and serious complication. That was the first my mother realized. Later a friend asked her, "But didn't it make you wonder when the doctor spent the night in your room at your bedside?" My mother pointed out that never having had a baby before and not knowing much about it, she just assumed that was normal. She didn't know enough to know what she didn't know enough about to ask the questions she needed to ask in order to know more about what she needed to know. (And no, I can't say that again.)

That's an extreme example, but there are probably a dozen more mundane cases we've all seen where we just don't know enough to even know what questions to ask, what things to think about differently to help us think about how to go about thinking about things differently.

My friend and I have also talked about the fact that when you do know and have nearly always known, it's hard to see what others don't know. This creates a great gulf between those who know and those who do not, and it's hard to cross it.

I asked a person in need to share with me a list of things we could do or give her that would be the most help. She said she didn't know. She hadn't really thought about it. I encouraged her to think about it. I encouraged her to think about it many times over a period of weeks, and she kept saying she didn't know. I thought at first I was embarrassing her, but I realized later this wasn't the case.

So I tried to help by making suggestions. Wanting to be sensitive to her and not embarrass her, I let her know that we were once on foodstamps ourselves (I am not proud of that) and followed up with some gentle suggestions. I said, "I don't know what it's like now, but when we were on foodstamps twenty years ago, you could not buy things like toilet paper, shampoo, and cleaning supplies with them. If that's still the case, do you need things like that? Is there some shampoo brand you wish you could have, or some cleaning supplies you want on hand? Could we help with that?"

Her response shocked me to my very toes. She looked surprised and said, "You're not on foodstamps? Why not?"

I stuttered something incoherent, and she said, "But why not apply? You could get them. You should apply for them."

I gaped like a codfish for a bit. Then I managed to say, "Well, I don't think we're eligible, and anyway, we don't need them. We manage fine without them, so I think we should leave those resources there for others who need them more." I wish I had thought to say, "because if all of us are ON foodstamps, then who will pay for them?"

I finally did get her to share some things she said she needed and couldn't get yet herself, useful things like cleaning tools, a toaster, toilet paper. She did not need shampoo, she said, because she already had a bottle. It seemed not to occur to her that an extra bottle might be useful when the first ran out. And then later that same day she went to the store and bought a gadget with no other use but entertainment, new toys for the children (we'd given them several that week), and a movie.

When the opportunity presented itself, I mentioned that we never bought household things on credit, but paid cash or did without. I explained that this meant we went without things we liked sometimes, and that we usually just made do. "For instance," I so tactfully said, "A toaster is very convenient and I think it's a good thing to own in the long run, but if you have to get along without one, you can always toast your bread under the broiler of the oven until you save the money for a toaster."

In the spirit of sharing helpful tips, she thought of one to bestow on me, "And here's something else I learned when I was in the homeless shelter," she said, "If you don't have regular bread for a sandwhich, but you do have hot dog buns, you can use those for your bread! I never thought of that, and when I saw them do that at the homeless shelter I thought it was weird. I never did it that way before. But it works!"

It would never occur to me to tell somebody that if they didn't have any bread in the house they could just use tortillas, or hot dog buns, or hamburger buns, or cornbread or biscuits or any other bread like substance, because it doesn't occur to me that anybody needs to be told that. I take it for granted.

Being genuinely helpful, I think, must include an understanding that other people don't know the things you take for granted. Common knowledge just isn't, nor is common sense.

If you don't realize that, telling somebody that you never bought baby powder but only used corn starch will only lead to them spending two dollars a bottle on "100 percent cornstarch Baby Powder" instead of .50 for a box with three times the amount of cornstarch in it.

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, Part Seven

This is an essay by John Erskine, with a few of my comments thrown in just because I think breaking it up into pieces makes it easier to read. Erskine now explains how 'we' (Anglo-Saxon culture) have compensated for this embarrassment over intelligence:

But we discovered long ago how to evade the sudden embarrassments of intelligence. "Toll for the brave," sings the poet for those who went down in the Royal George. They were brave. But he might have sung, "Toll for the stupid." In order to clean the hull, brave Kempenfelt and his eight hundred heroes took the serious risk of laying the vessel well over on its side, while most of the crew were below. Having made the error, they all died bravely; and our memory passes easily over the lack of a virtue we never did think much of, and dwells on the English virtues of courage and discipline. So we forget the shocking blunder of the charge of the Light Brigade, and proudly sing the heroism of the victims.

The poem "Toll for the Brave" is by Cowper, and Erskine may be treating Kempenfelt unfairly. According to Wikipedia, the ship was shifted to one side to repair a leak, not to clean her, and the Admiralty's court martial revealed that the ship's structure was so flawed, that the bottom basically fell off her. Or perhaps Erskine is correct, as some other causes are mentioned here. According to this website, the Admiralty suppressed their court martial findings until well into the next century.

Whether the loss of the Royal George illustrates Erskine's point or not, The Charge of the Light Brigade certainly does, and another poem that has always troubled me might serve as well. The actual events may not bear out the portion of the poem that bothers me so- there is no indication that the boy stayed on the fiery ship because he could hear no answer from his dead father giving him permission to leave.
But I have never considered that poem a testimony to faithful obedience as much as it is a stark witness of an autocratic and very short sighted father.

Should I leave my children at home some afternoon while I am running errands and direct them not to leave the house, I fully expect they will 'disobey' me should the house catch on fire. I would not be proud of their obedience if they died in a housefire because they thought they were obeying me. I should be wracked with grief and immeasurable and endless pain and shame that I had failed to teach them that I am only human and cannot foresee all contingencies, and that of course I love them enough that I would prefer they save their lives than mindlessly obey a command obviously not intended for that situation.

But these events all happened long ago, and surely reflect a different age and time. Perhaps, but in his own time, Erskine points out:

Lest we flatter ourselves that this trick of defense has departed with our fathers – this reading of stupidity in terms of the tragic courage that endures its results – let us reflect that recently, after full warning, we drove a ship at top speed through a field of icebergs. When we were thrilled to read how superbly those hundreds died, in the great English way, a man pointed out that they did indeed die in the English way, and that our pride was therefore ill-timed; that all that bravery was wasted; that the tragedy was in the shipwreck of intelligence. That discouraging person was an Irishman.

I scanned in this text from a book the HG checked out for me at her university library, and after scanning it in I discovered that at least two other copies have been posted on line since I last googled for this famous essay. According to this one, this essay

was composed as a Phi Beta Kappa oration, and delivered at Amherst College just before the war [World War I] began. It was first printed in the Hibbert Journal, and on its appearance it was attacked by some British readers who saw in it a bumptious criticism of the Old World from an up-start American. These pages, however, were written with only the American audience in mind.

Keeping that in mind provides useful context as you continue reading:

I have spoken of our social inheritance as though it were entirely English. Once more let me qualify my terms. Even those ancestors of ours who never left Great Britain were heirs of many civilization – Roman, French, Italian, Greek. With each world-tide some love of pure intelligence was washed up on English shores, and enriched the soil and here and there the old stock marvelled at its own progeny. But to America, much as we may sentimentally deplore it, England seems destined to be less and less the source of culture, of religion and learning. Our land assimilates all races; with every ship in the harbor our old English ways of thought must crowd a little closer to make room for a new tradition. If some of us do not greatly err, these newcomers are chiefly driving to the wall our inherited criticism of the intellect. As surely as the severe northern climate taught our forefathers the value of the will, the social conditions from which these new citizens have escaped have taught them the power of the mind. They differ from each other, but against the Anglo-Saxon they are confederated in a Greek love of knowledge, in a Greek assurance that sin and misery are the fruit of ignorance, and that to know is to achieve virtue. They join forces at once with that earlier arrival from Greece, the scientific spirit, which like all the immigrants has done our hard work and put up with our contempt. Between this rising host that follow intelligence, and the old camp that put their trust in a stout heart, a firm will, and a strong hand, the fight is on. Our college men will be in the thick of it. If they do not take sides, they will at least be battered in the scuffle. At this moment they are readily divided into those who wish to be men- whatever that means- and those who wish to be intelligent men, and those who, unconscious of blasphemy or humor, prefer not to be intelligent, but to do the will of God.

Writing my thoughts nearly a hundred years later, I am struck by similarities between Charlotte Mason's earlier ideas about educating the common man out of sin and into virtue. She, like most of her class and time, had such high hopes and faith in the idea that knowledge would bring virtue and the messianic possibilities in education. This is more noticeable in her pre-Great War writings. She was much more subdued in her post-Great War writings. It's rather sad, really, to read the difference.

When we consider the nature of the problems to be solved in our day, it seems-to many of us, at least-that these un-English arrivals are correct, that intelligence is the virtue we particularly need. Courage and steadfastness we cannot do without, so long as two men dwell on the earth; but it is time to discriminate in our praise of these virtues. If you want to get out of prison, what you need is the key to the lock. If you cannot get that, have courage and steadfastness. Perhaps the modern world has got into a kind of prison, and what is needed is the key to the lock. If none of the old virtues exactly fits, why should it seem ignoble to admit it?

I am not sure I agree that intelligence is the key Erskine thinks it is. But I do agree it is an obligation to be as intelligent as we can be- to think about what we are about and why. WE ought not to worship it or elevate it above all other virtues, but neither should we altogether dismiss exercising the mind from the list of virtues.

England for centuries has got on better by sheer character than some other nations by sheer intelligence, but there is after all a relation between the kind of problem and the means we should select to solve it. Not all problems are solved by willpower. When England overthrew Bonaparte, it was not his intelligence she overthrew; the contest involved other things besides intelligence, and she wore him out in the matter of physical endurance. The enemy that comes to her as a visible host or armada she can still close with and throttle; but when the foe arrives as an arrow that flieth by night, what avail the old sinews, the old stoutness of heart! We Americans face the same problems, and are too much inclined to oppose to them similar obsolete armor. We make a moral issue of an economic or social question, because it seems ignoble to admit it is simply a question for intelligence. Like the medicine-man, we use oratory and invoke our hereditary divinities, when the patient needs only a little quiet, or permission to get out of bed. We applaud those leaders who warm to their work-who, when they cannot open a door, threaten to kick it in. In the philosopher's words, we curse the obstacles of life as though they were devils. But they are not devils. They are obstacles.

Discernment, then, is called for, as it is discernment, wisdom, that enables us to know the difference.

It is probably a very silly and shallow example, but I have suddenly remembered a small and insignificant event that may be an example of what I mean, if not what Erskine meant.
A couple decades ago we lived in Okinawa, a small island which gets its fresh water from rainfall. We were in the midst of a drought, and water rationing was in effect. I went to a meeting with a group of women who were setting up a program to work with unwed mothers. In the morning it had looked like it might rain, and some of the women brought umbrellas and raincoats just in case. By the time the meeting ended the clouds had drifted apart and it was sunny and warm, as usual. One of the women, the wife of the pastor at the local charismatic church, and one of the older women there (which meant, in that place and time she was probably in her thirties) picked up her now useless raincoat and said with a smile, "How foolish of me. I should have just trusted God for good weather."
Bringing the raincoat was not foolish, nor did it indicate a lack of faith or a dependence on 'man's wisdom' rather than God's. 'Trusting God' for dry weather in the midst of a drought was foolish (and blindly selfish), and I don't mean the foolishness of man vs the wisdom of God. I mean plain, garden variety silliness.

And while that is a trivial example, I think we see such confusion in larger and more important areas. It's not just an example of somebody valuing 'character' and 'faith' over the use of the mind, of course. There are other larger issues here (like thinking of the Master of the Universe and Creator of all as your personal lucky rabbit's foot). You can probably think of better ones. I do think it is an example of a situation where a small application of intelligence and thought would have prevented her from sticking in my mind for two decades as an example of a particular sort of foolishness that is foolish both to man and God.

To be continued...

Part one is here
Part Two is here
Part Three is here.
Part Four is here.
Part Five is here.
Part Six is here.

A Poem About the Season

Bleeding fingers

Freezing Toes

What's the Point

Of a World that Snows?

For You

Even if you saw it last year, this is Way Cool, so go watch it. Merry Christmas!

On the Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, part six

Edited 12/06 to add link to part five and correct a typo or two.
Part one is here
Part Two is here
Part Three is here.
Part Four is here.
Part Five is here.

This is an essay by John Erskine, with a few of my comments thrown in just because I think breaking it up into pieces makes it easier to read. Erskine continues with some solace to those who may have been depressed by his treatment of English literature until now:

This will be sufficient qualification of any disparagement of English literature; no people and no literature can be great that are not intelligent, and England has produced not only statesmen and scientists of the first order, but also poets in whom the soul was fitly mated with a lofty intellect. But I am asking you to reconsider your reading in history and fiction, to reflect whether our race has usually thought highly of the intelligence by which it has been great; I suggest these non-intellectual aspects of our literature as commentary upon my question-and all this with the hope of pressing upon you the question as to what you think of intelligence.

I think most of us do prefer good character to a fine mind, and surely, if we were so limited to only those two choices, an either/or proposition, nobility of character would be best. But is it really true that we can only work to improve only one or the other? And does it really display good character to disdain good intelligence?

This next section is where Erskine really gets into the meat of some hard ideas:

Those of us who frankly prefer character to intelligence are therefore not without precedent. If we look beneath the history of the English people, beneath the ideas expressed in our literature, we find in the temper of our remotest ancestors a certain bias which still prescribes our ethics and still prejudices us against the mind. The beginnings of our conscience can be geographically located. It began in the German forests, and it gave its allegiance not to the intellect but to the will. Whether or not the severity of life in a hard climate raised the value of that persistence by which alone life could be preserved, the Germans as Tacitus knew them, and the Saxons as they landed in England, held as their chief virtue that will-power which makes character. For craft or strategy they had no use; they were already a bulldog race; they liked fighting, and they liked best to settle the matter hand to hand. The admiration for brute force which naturally accompanied this ideal of self-reliance, drew with it as naturally a certain moral sanction. A man was as good as his word, and he was ready to back up his word with a blow. No German, Tacitus says, would enter into a treaty of public or private business without his sword in his hand.

I am stirred to admiration by such words. Of course the will matters- and it matters not how intelligent a man is if we cannot take him at his word, although it's hard to imagine we, as a nation, really believe that when you look at the politicians we've been electing for many years.
But there is a danger here (emphasis below is added):

When this emphasis upon the will became a social emphasis, it gave the direction to ethical feeling. Honor lay in a man's integrity, in his willingness and ability to keep his word; therefore the man became more important than his word or deed. Words and deeds were then easily interpreted, not in terms of absolute good and evil, but in terms of the man behind them. The deeds of a bad man were bad; the deeds of a good man were good. Fielding wrote Tom Jones to show that a good man sometimes does a bad action, consciously or unconsciously, and a bad man sometimes does good, intentionally' or unintentionally. From the fact that Tom Jones is still popularly supposed to be as wicked as it is coarse, we may judge that Fielding did not convert all his readers.

We make heroes of men we believe, and then we refuse to believe they can act like men.

Some progress certainly has been made; we do not insist that the more saintly of two surgeons shall operate on us for appendicitis. But as a race we seem as far as possible from realising that an action can intelligently be called good only if it contributes to a good end; that it is the moral obligation of an intelligent creature to find out as far as possible whether a given action leads to a good or a bad end; and that any system of ethics that excuses him from that obligation is vicious. If I give you poison, meaning to give you wholesome food, I have-to say the least-not done a good act; and unless I intend to throw overboard all pretence to intelligence, I must feel some responsibility for that trifling neglect to find out whether what I gave you was food or poison.

I have always been somewhat impatient of half-hearted apologies that conclude, "I didn't mean to," even though I sometimes subscribe to them myself. Looked at in quite a cold-blooded fashion, it ought to be unnecessary, for example, to explain that one broke a family heirloom accidentally rather than on purpose. Surely the apologizer does not really believe that the owner of the plate believes his plate was broken deliberately and with malice aforethought.
But sometimes, don't you think we use "I didn't mean to" as some sort of magical incantation that not only divorces us from our actions and their results, but also serves as unspoken criticism of the wounded party? Sometimes, at least, there is a subtext something like, "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to stomp on your foot (therefore, your time for whimpering about it has now expired)."
I say this even though I can easily think of several accidental actions of my own with quite dreadful results for which my reflex action is to flinch, throw up my hands as thought shielding myself from a blow, and blurt, "I didn't meant to!" So maybe the subtext isn't always there, but I do think it is often implied. But that is perhaps a triviality and Erskine makes for much better reading:
Obvious as the matter is in this academic illustration, it ought to have been still

more obvious in Matthew Arnold's famous plea for culture. The purpose of culture, he said, is "to make reason and the will of God prevail."
This formula he quoted from an English man. Differently stated, the purpose of culture, he said, is "to make an intelligent being yet more intelligent." This formula he borrowed from a Frenchman. The basis culture must have in character, the English resolution to make reason and the will of God prevail, Arnold took for granted; no man ever set a higher price on character-so far as character by itself will go. But he spent his life trying to sow a little suspicion that before we can make the will of God prevail we must find out what is the will of God.

Now there's some food to chew on. The following reflection is very lowering:

I doubt if Arnold taught us much. He merely embarrassed us temporarily. Our race has often been so embarrassed when it has turned a sudden corner and come upon intelligence.

Wittily put, but quite lowering.
I once observed a young bride to be acting somewhat peevishly towards her mother at her bridal shower, when she thought she was not observed. I was at first slightly shocked, and then I realized she was very shy and was reacting to a socially challenging situation and a small social faux pas which left her feeling embarrassed. Perhaps our sometimes churlish attitude towards intelligence (and those who admit to trying to be intelligent) is a similarly based in our own embarrassment and humiliation.

Charles Kingsley himself, who would rather be good than clever,-and had his wish,-was temporarily embarrassed when in the consciousness of his own upright character he publicly called Newman a liar. Newman happened to be intelligent as well as good, and Kingsley's discomfiture is well known.

Either I am quite ignorant, or this is not so well known as it once was (of course, both may be true, and certainly I am quite ignorant of this controversy). Perhaps you are as aclue-istic as I am. I learned more about it here and here.
And what does it say about me that I feel rather sorrier for Kingsley than for Newman?
To Be Continued

Part Seven is here

Fresh Water

Ghana West Africa Missions is a tremendous mission. Just to have fresh water in our house should never be taken for granted. Josiah Tilton also has a blog discussing his work with GWAM.

I highly encourage any and all to check them both out and support if you can!

All in a Day's Work

Library Patron (adolescent girl): I'd like a book on Africa, please.
After showing her the proper section...: It needs to be on Zimbabwe.
She needed it tonight. Not surprisingly, our books on Zimbabwe were checked out. Sweetie, that'd be because other students aren't procrastinators like you are.

Another patron: I want this book... I don't know who wrote it. I don't know the title. It's about 350 pages long. It's about a coach in his seventies who coached everything and was never caught. Some friend of mine was telling me about it. He didn't remember the title either, but it was about 350 pages. *hopeful look*

In Which We Lose More Subscribers

When I posted this, according to Bloglines we lost half a dozen subscribers within a few hours. Coincidence? Possibly, but we have never lost that many subscribers in that short a time before.

Nonetheless, I think it's important to know that Ligonier Ministries has fired Don Kistler and retains ownership of SDG, which kind of makes the original allegations look less unlikely- especially since Kistler expresses concern that the leadership at Ligonier blamed Kistler for being the 'source' of those allegations. Now, why would they believe Kistler was the source unless the initial allegations were things the administration believed only they and Kistler knew? If the allegations were false, why doesn't Kistler have control over SDG anymore?

I've not seen any of those bloggers who defended Ligonier so strongly share with their readership that Kistler has been fired, either. Do they know? Are they concerned about Don Kistler being terminated shortly before Christmas (and with no insurance)?

Christians are to be generous, to give, as Spunky has said, hilariously. But since our funds are limited, we are also to be good stewards. I like to give my money where most of it goes to ministry and benevelolence, not so much towards quarter of a million dollar salaries, mansions, and legal fees. Whether you are angry with me for publicizing Ligonier's firing of Don Kistler or you have never heard of Ligonier and Kistler, if you donate money to any charitable institution, you may wish to use these resources to help insure that you're giving to the causes you want to help rather than donating funds to buy million dollar manses:

Charity Navigator
ERI
Guidestar
Ministry Watch

But if you like donating money for million dollar manses, that's between you and God. I just think that sort of money would be better spent, like for instance, on some new toys or a few mortgage payments for us.=)

Or, perhaps, new homes for them.

Updated to post further information on the broader subject of donor responsibilities and stewardship:
I strongly suggest reading the comments here, particularly useful for their generic application, as:

I just think we as supporters must take extra care in doing the research and not relying solely on reputation. We are accountable for what we do with our money and to just give it to a ministry because they say things we like is, in my opinion, not the way to go about it.

I would add that this is true even if we don't think we support them for saying things we like, but are sure we contribute to them for supporting things that are true. Even in Paul's time, there were those who preached a true gospel for false reasons (Philippians 1:12-18)- so teaching what is true is not evidence that somebody is living what is true. Be not deceived otherwise.

I also think this is a useful comment:

Charity Navigator can be a very useful tool. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. One of the limitations with Charity Navigator is that they include the form 990 column E “Expense Acct. and Other Allowances” as part of “Compensation,” when in fact “Compensation” is only form 990 column C. Since from our perspective what often gets placed under column E is just another form of compensation (e.g. ministerial housing allowance) Charity Navigator’s approach of combining columns C and E is often an accurate reflection of a minister’s overall compensation. However, there are exceptions. It still is necessary in some cases to review an organization’s 990, rather than just rely on Charity Navigator’s compensation figures.

Keep in mind, too, that these organizations do not take into account the preaching salaries, book revenues, and sometimes the speaking fees for those who are asking you to donate more of your 40,000 a year income to support their 'ministry' which pays them a quarter of a million dollars or more.

Randy Alcorn also has written an excellent list of questions to ask before donating to any organization.

If you wish to exercise the moral obligation to be intelligent, I suggest doing a bit of digging on any organizations asking for your donor dollars- are they going to spend that money on inflated salaries for family members and themselves, salaries six or more times greater than yours, or are they using it wisely and well for reasonable salaries and the projects you hope to be supporting?

Donovan is NOT Any Part of an Irish Wolfhound

We have reached a final conclusion on Donovan's parentage. We have decided he is a labradoodle, part black lab and part standard poodle. The standard poodle part has its compensations. One of them is that being part standard poodle, he will still be satisfactorily large. The other is that being part standard poodle, he will shed much less than the other two dogs, especially the Sadie lady, who produces enough fur on my floor each day to stuff a throw pillow.

I should have said the PRogeny believe he is a labradoodle. I think poobrador is more descriptive.

The two year old who has been a regular visitor of late was calling the dog "Donno-MAN." He placed a special and disgusted emphasis on the 'man' because Donovan's face is just slightly above the toddler's, making it easy for him to give the toddler sloppy kisses, which the toddler despises.

However, our toddler friend has a new name for Donovan which is even more descriptive than 'Poo-brador.' He now believes the puppy's name is 'Bad Chew.'

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, Part Five

Part one is here
Part Two is here
Part Three is here.
Part Four is here.

This is an essay by John Erskine, with a few of my comments thrown in just because I think breaking it up into pieces makes it easier to read. Erskine continues:

Certainly it would be but a silly account of English literature to say only that it sets little store by the things of the mind. I am aware that for the sake of my argument I have exaggerated, by insisting upon only one aspect of English literature.

As the brilliant Queen of Carrots said in reply to the last post on this topic:

Well, then, let us celebrate Jane Austen. Although certainly not all her good characters are intelligent, yet she does portray intelligence as an admirable quality, and seems to hint that those gifted with less of it should find themselves a very good advisor who has more.

As Mr. Knightly says in Emma, "~Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives."

But our history betrays a peculiar warfare between character and intellect, such as to the Greek, for example, would have been incomprehensible. The great Englishman, like the most famous Greeks, had intelligence as well as character, and was at ease with them both. But whereas the notable Greek seems typical of his race, the notable Englishman usually seems an exception to his own people, and is often best appreciated in other lands. What is more singular-in spite of the happy combination in himself of character and intelligence, he often fails to recognize the value of that combination in his neighbors. When Shakspere portrayed such amateurish statesmen as the Duke in Measure for Measure, Burleigh was guiding Elizabeth's empire, and Francis Bacon was soon to be King James's counsellor. It was the young Milton who pictured the life of reason in L' Allegro and Il Penseroso, the most spiritual fruit of philosophy in Comus; and when he wrote his epic he was probably England's most notable example of that intellectual inquiry and independence which in his great poem he discouraged.

There remain several well-known figures in our literary history who have both possessed and believed in intelligence ; Byron and Shelley in what seems our own day, Edmund Spenser before Shakspere's time. England has more or less neglected all three, but they must in fairness be counted to her credit. Some excuse might be offered for the neglect of Byron and Shelley by a nation that likes the proprieties; but the gentle Spenser, the noblest philosopher and most chivalrous gentleman in our literature, seems to be unread only because he demands a mind as well as a heart used to high things.

Emphasis added, because isn't that the truth? I would blush if I could remember how many times in my life I have dismissed a book or an idea because it was 'too hard.' I want to have a mind and heart 'used to high things.' It would be a small but necessary beginning to learn not to scorn those high things. Another step would be to discern rightly what is actually a 'high thing.' Quite often when we hear somebody saying, "God meant for you to use your mind," what the speaker really means is, "And if you had, you would think exactly like me."
to be continued
Part Six is here.

Burn-out

Updated to link to the two previous posts with excerpts and comments on this article)
The New Yorker New York Magazine, which I don't often read, has an interesting article on burn-out. It's six pages long, so you might get burnt out on reading it before you're through (wasn't that a clever play on words?).

There are profanities, so be forewarned. I've just skimmed through it, picking out points here and there in a very disjointed fashion. I already published two other posts with excerpts from the article (here and here). Below are some other things I thought interesting, and sometimes even some commentary about why I thought they were interesting. I've written better stuff, more coherent, flowing, and meaningful (albeit full of typos). Still, maybe you'll be interested in the same things I'm interested in. Makes sense, eh, if you're reading my blog?

People who are suffering from burnout tend to describe the sensation in metaphors of emptiness—they’re a dry teapot over a high flame, a drained battery that can no longer hold its charge.

I liked that dry teapot imagery. One of my favorite such descriptions is from Tolkien, when Bilbo says he feels like too little butter spread over too much bread.

I always like knowing about the origins of terms and phrases. Maybe you do, too:

The term was first coined by a psychotherapist named Herbert Freudenberger, who himself probably took it from Graham Greene’s novel A Burnt-Out Case. (“I haven’t enough feeling left for human beings,” the book’s numb protagonist, Querry, wrote in his journal, “to do anything for them out of pity.”) While working at a free clinic for drug addicts in Haight-Ashbury, Freudenberger noticed that the volunteers, when discouraged, would often push harder and harder at their jobs, only to feel as if they were achieving less and less. The result, in 1974, was the book Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement. Others soon followed. A subspecialty of psychology was born.

According to the article, burn out often happens when reality doesn't match our expectations. This is usually, according to the article, because our expectations are too high. But I think sometimes it's just because reality just sucker-punched us. Other times it's because our expectations are pointed in the wrong direction.

Alden Cass, a 'therapist to both corporate attorneys and men on Wall Street' and a specialist in burn out says "I can’t tell you how many people come into my office and ask, ‘How come I have this money and I can’t find happiness?'
He tells his clients that 'That happiness equals reality divided by expectations.' That seems kind of sad to me, also a bit off kilter. That sort of question comes from people whose expectations and goals were misdirected. It may be a trite cliche that money doesn't buy happiness, but it's also true. Money can alleviate some stresses (and sometimes cause others), but it can't buy happiness and it wouldn't matter if it could. You still wouldn't be happy for long with your purchased happiness, because happiness is not the goal. It's a by-product.

And if this is true:

Work, after all, is a form of religion in a secular world. Burning out in it amounts to a crisis of faith.

It's no wonder we're in trouble. We need to put our faith in something a little more solid than that.

Ayala Pines, a researcher in Israel who’s looked at burnout in all sorts of inspired contexts (including marriage), rather heartbreakingly sums up the problem as “the failure of the existential quest”—that moment when we wake up one morning and realize that what we’re doing has appallingly little value.

She studied the insurance business and found that those insurance agents who could wor the longest without burnout were those who had been really helped by insurance in some crisis- something like a housefire when they were children, for instance. She thought the difference was "Because they came to the profession with a calling. They feel their work is significant.”"

People who burn out the most? Social workers, teachers (five years or less), and nurses in childrens' burn units. The least? Serial entreprenuers. Something to think about for those who think a college education is for everybody.

Young people burn out more often than older people, presumably because older people have more realistic expectations. This was pretty fascinating:

Maslach also found that married people burn out less often than single people, as long as their marriages are good, because they don’t depend as much on their jobs for fulfillment. And childless people, though unburdened by the daily strains of parenting, tend to burn out far more than people with kids. (This, too, has been found across cultures; in the Netherlands, a recent survey by the Bureau of Statistics showed that twice as many working women without children showed symptoms of burnout as did working women with underage children.) It’s much easier to disproportionately invest emotional and physical capital in the office if you have nowhere else to put it. And the office seldom loves you back.

Not only that, but studies of Israel's sandwich generation, people caring for young children and aging parents also had less burnout than expected, ostensibly because caring for family is itself intrinsically rewarding. Hard, certainly, but that connection with people you love, and who love you back is an innoculation against burn out- not, however, an innoculation against exhaustion, feeling drained and bone weary tired some days. Burn-out seems to carry with it some level of resentment, even disdain, towards the job. Social workers and teachers suffering burnout report being disgusted and fed up with the people they were supposed to be helping, furious at being called upon to help yet again.

I know this will be offensive to the social workers and psy- professions among us (do we have any among us?), but I know I am not the only one to observe that quite often the folks who go into those professions are coming out of a childhood that cried out for intervention from one of those same professions. Not a good idea. They burn out really fast.

"I think one of the reasons people burn out is because they take jobs that they hope, consciously or unconsciously, will help them overcome unresolved childhood issues," she [Ayala Pines] says. “But instead of healing the childhood wound, work reopens it."

For one thing, that's the wrong place to go for healing. I would also guess they pour themselves into their work, determined to change the world, but they feel more and more damaged, and the more they try to fix other people, the more wounded they feel (and often, other people don't need fixing in the areas these damaged people think they do). It's a nasty cycle, and then they end up with that dry teapot on a high flame feeling, like parched, cracked, and dusty earth.

There's a treatment for that not mentioned in the New York magazine article:

God says, "I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground"
– Isaiah 44:3

Acts 3:19
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;


John 7:37-38
In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.


Rev 21:6, in John's vision, he reports what he witnessed of Jesus:
And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.


Rev 22:17
1... And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

Average academics in Public Education

What makes an "A" an "A" in high school? What differentiate a "B" from a "C"?

What is average in academics?

Here are two sites regarding Grade Inflation.

This article is from the Associated Press.

Too bad that everyone is above average.

Sunday Hymn Post

In a better world, every single one of us would blush to think of ourselves this way, but be eager to apply the words of this song to everybody else.

O Lord, life is sacred, a gift from above;
Each person is worthy of honor and love.
Your works are so marvelous, we’re wonderfully made;
We each bear Your image, conception to grave.

Your hands shaped and formed us before we took breath;
You knit us together and clothed us with flesh.
You give us our life and ordain all our days;
Your works, Lord, are wonderful; we lift our hearts in praise.

Upheld since conception and carried since birth,
To old age and hair of gray, we’re still of great worth.
We still bear Your likeness, the stamp of Your hand;
You made us in Jesus for all the works you planned.

And so, may we honor each person we meet;
The kindness You’ve shown us, we wish to repeat
From children to agèd—we’ll serve them in Your Name;
As You honor us, O Lord, we pledge to do the same.

From Cyberhymnal

Just Another Day.

The self-cleaning kitchen stove is smoking and the kitchen needs to be shut off and fanned, the DHM is rearranging a table and four bookshelves upstairs and the room is in upheaval, a two year old is crying, Christmas decorations are scattered hither and thither across the downstairs.

But life could be worse, you know.

B.durbin is awarded many gold stars for her brilliant quotation of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather. All Terry Pratchett fans unite! And then, of course, do give the obligatory "Sorry, the man's hilarious but not for young ages, so do not read without parental permission" warning, which is always so aggravating to someone of a young age. But The Equuschick really doesn't want to get into trouble. So:
Terry Pratchett Is Not For Young Ages or the Faint of Heart or the Very Sensitive or Those Whose Consciences Are Not So Easily Silenced as The Equuschick's.

You can't sue her, she tried to warn you.

"If you follow your dreams..."
"Yes?"
"And reach for the stars..."
Yes?"
"You will still get beaten by people who spent their time learning things and working hard, and weren't so lazy."

Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

Christmas Crafts

We've updated this round up of our posts with Christmas craft and baking ideas (also frugal cards and wrapping paper), so if you haven't looked at lately, you might take a look again.

I'm also interested in adding links to other blogposts with home-made gift and craft ideas, so go ahead and share!

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, part four

Part one is here
Part Two is here
Part Three is here.

I did mention in part one that this is an essay by John Erskine, with a few of my comments thrown in just because. But I think I forgot to include that in parts two and three.

Erskine continues:

If there were time, we might trace this valuation of intelligence through the English novel. We should see how often the writers have distinguished between intelligence and goodness, and have enlisted our affections for a kind of inexpert virtue. In Fielding or Scott, Thackeray or Dickens, the hero of the English novel is a well-meaning blunderer who in the last chapter is temporarily rescued by the grace of God from the mess he has made of his life. Unless he also dies in the last chapter, he will probably need rescue again.

Here is another pause so you can again chuckle of Erskine's dry wit. I had to read the above paragraph aloud to my Progeny, such as were nearby.

The dear woman whom the hero marries is, with a few notable exceptions, rather less intelligent than himself. When David Copperfield marries Agnes, his prospects of happiness, to the eyes of intelligence, look not very exhilarating. Agnes has more sense than Dora, but it is not even for that slight distinction that we must admire her; her great qualities are of the heart-patience, humility, faithfulness. These are the qualities also of Thackeray's good heroines, like Laura or Lady Castlewood. Beatrice Esmond and Becky Sharp, both highly intelligent, are of course a bad lot.

No less significant is the kind of emotion the English novelist invites towards his secondary or lower-class heroes-toward Mr. Boffin in Our Mutual Friend, for example, or Harry Foker in Pendennis. These characters amuse us, and we feel pleasantly superior to them, but we agree with the novelist that they are wholly admirable in their station. Yet if a Frenchman-let us say Balzac-were presenting such types, he would make us feel, as in Pere Goriot or Eugenie Grandet, not only admiration for the stable, loyal nature, but also deep pity that such goodness should be so tragically bound in unintelligence or vulgarity. This comparison of racial temperaments helps us to understand ourselves.

I should have said cultural rather than racial, but that's probably cultural, too, a culture of time.

We may continue the method at our leisure. What would Socrates have thought of Mr. Pickwick, or the Vicar of Wakefield, or David Copperfield, or Arthur Pendennis? For that matter, would he have felt admiration or pity for Colonel Newcome?

I hardly need confess that this is not an adequate account of English literature. Let me hasten to say that I know the reader is resenting this somewhat cavalier handling of the noble writers he loves. He probably is wondering how I can expect to increase his love of literature by such unsympathetic remarks. But just now I am not concerned about our love of literature; I take it for granted, and use it as an instrument to prod us with. If we love Shakspere and Milton and Scott and Dickens and Thackeray, and yet do not know what qualities their books hold out for our admiration, then-let me say it as delicately as possible-our admiration is not discriminating; and if we neither have discrimination nor are disturbed by our lack of it, then perhaps that wise man could not list intelligence among our virtues.

How many times have we been irritated (or irritated others) by seeking a deeper, more discriminating, understanding of the books we love. Is that not also an indication that we do not consider intelligence, or at least the exercise of the mind, a virtue?

To be continued
Part Five is here.

Saving Time

When I am reading older books I am struck by many differences between then and now. I'm not talking about idealistic portryals of times past, I'm talking about books written in the time period. And the things that most often surprise me are not usually things directly related by the author, but rather are small details, things taken for granted, dropped in the story almost by accident.
In the Five Little Peppers, for instance, there are two small details that really are quite insigificant, but that tell us a lot about how things have changed. One is when Polly and her siblings want to write a letter, and there is a huge search for paper and an envelope. Finding a single envelope and a single sheet of paper to write a letter on is such a momentous event. I know FLP is a fairy tale about being poor, but somehow I don't think this is a fairy tale bit. We buy pads of paper cheaply enough to use them for scratch paper, and envelopes come in the junk mail every day (just paste a label over them, or turn them inside out and retape).
Another was when the made a cake and had to take the stones out of the raisins. What a tedious task, yet, again, this isn't a major part of the story, just a small bit of what was then every day life, added for versimilitude. I am so glad I live in a time when paper is so readily available (and so much cheaper than in Polly's time), when pen and ink are easily come by, and I will never have to stone a raisin. I assume Polly's raisins were larger than ours, else there would hardly be any point to the exercise.

Another thing I notice is how much leisure time a certain class of business man had. Again, this is rarely part of the story, it's part of the taken for granted elements of the story. You have to read between the lines to see it. But when people walked or went by carriage (and occasionally train) everywhere, there was, by force, more time to think between times. Living by gas and candlelight, most white collar workers did not get to work before dark and leave after dark.

Servants and other classes were, of course, a different matter, and their lives were indeed harder, longer, colder, and starker. But the work of those servants has been by and large replaced by central heating, electric stoves, microwaves, dishwashers, washing machines, power mixers, power steering, gas powered lawn mowers, vaccum cleaners, hot water heaters, flush toilets, and other advances we take for granted. The servant class of yesterday has almost disappeared as the 'servants' of today live a standard of life those of yesteryear couldn't even imagine.

Indeed, the hardness of life for certain classes is something else you can read between the lines in older books. Just this week I was reading a Ngaio Marsh mystery (not so very old), and noticed another such detail. A gardener is well known in the neighborhood for his pants- the only pair he seems to own. He wears them every day, year in and year out, a shapeless, shabby pair of tweeds. They were given to him by the Vicar in years past. This isn't a major part of the story, just a small paragraph, a detail shared for the human interest rather than for any significance. But I don't know anybody in America who is limited to one pair of pants, given him by the charity of a local preacher. People barely living above the poverty line can give away garbage bags full of clothes each year.

But getting back to the white collar classes- in one of Jane Austen's novels (I forget which), there is a small detail you can easily miss- they are planning a party, and it must be planned around a full moon. When there were no street lights, traveling by horse and carriage during the week of the new moon was not something one did for pleasure.

When communication took longer than in our day of instant email and telephone conversations, then white collar business men and society folks had, perforce, more leisure time. The wives of white collar business men never cooked their own food- the middle class had somebody else do the cooking and usually the laundry, too. Imagine how much free time you would have if somebody else did all your cooking and laundry. What would you do with it?

Yet when I consider how much machines have simplified the work load of the modern man and woman, we ought to have more free time than we think we do.

Most Americans believe they work more today than they did 35 years ago. Yet according to the American Time Use Survey, an ambitious project that for 41 years has been asking thousands of participants to keep detailed time diaries, Americans now have five more hours of leisure per week (38) than they did in 1965. Certainly, there are academics who reject these numbers—in The Overworked American, published in 1992, the economist Juliet Schor calculated we were working nearly an extra month per year, setting off a rather sharp debate about her methodology—but even those who agree our leisure time is increasing will readily concede that Americans experience their leisure quite differently and therefore may feel as if they’re working more. For one thing, it’s non-contiguous leisure time, time meted out in discrete increments. Human beings have always resisted the fracturing of time. Gleick points out that Plautus cursed the sundial. Now, he says, we gain 90- second reprieves with our microwave ovens. But do we do anything meaningful in those 90 seconds?

Well, do we?

From New York Magazine, an article on burnout.

Books finished in November.

I finished a depressingly small amount in November, but I know December will be better (if only by virtue of the fact that I have to finish two books for school in the first three days of it ;-)

1) Authentic Beauty: The Shaping of a Set-Apart Young Woman by Leslie Ludy - A challenge for young women to lead a set apart life. Written primarly with public school grads in mind, so many of her ideas were not new to this Already Weird Homeschool Grad, but still contains good reminders for purity and devotion to Christ above all things.

2) An Assembly Such as This: A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman by Pamela Aidan -
The first book of a tripartite retelling of Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view. While Aidan clearly loves Austen and thus is not grossly unfair to her characters, I still found this book tedious to read. Darcy is ridiculously romantic, awkward instead of proud, and almost gets involved with Large Politics - not at all Austen's two inches of ivory.
A disappointement, but not an overwhelming one... I'm now motivated to go back and re-read Austen's novel in order to forget this tripe. Honestly, I do not care what color Bingley's napkins were, and I certainly don't see Darcy tripping about the countryside treasuring to his bosom a scrap from Lizzy's bookmark.

3) Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen - Hedda Gabler is one of fiction's most selfish characters. A selfish and manipulative and arrogant woman who wrecks the lives of other people just for the fun of it. Read for English class. The Prof says it's a play about failed expectations; I can see that -- also how people deal with these failed expectations. Hedda refuses to deal with them and ends her life in a way fitting with her character, selfishly concerned for herself alone.
As some blog readers may recall, when I finished this play I complained mightily about it. Now I'm rather liking it. Ibsen certainly turns the tables: having his audience watch the primary character self-destruct in the way she does. Normally we would watch someone self-destruct from another person's pov.
And another interesting thing: the play is not completely depressing. Once Hedda takes herself out of the picture, there's actually hope for the other characters in the play.

Santa, to be or not to be.

This is not a post that ought to make anybody feel guilty. This is not a post to persuade anybody else to do Christmas as we do. It's just a post with a funny story about why The Equuschick is responsible for the fact that we don't do Santa. Just read it and laugh (please laugh). Don't read it and feel guilty. WE don't care if Santa is a fixed presence in your homes in the month of December. We don't believe you are lying to your children or setting them up to disbelieve in God, or otherwise sinning against the child. We know that most kids believe in Santa and then learn better without any 'issues.' We don't have deepseated religious convictions about it (we don't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday at all, so it wouldn't bother us that Santa has become a secularized figure), but we're not going to get all het up over it if you do. Your family, your call. This is just a 'what happened to us' post, 'kay?

I believed in Santa as a child, and I don't think it harmed me a bit. My parents made it their practice to tell us 'the truth' when we were six years old (because Dad believed until he was twelve and this embarrassed him deeply), and I do not recall feeling any stress or dismay over it. I love Christmas with all the trimmings and trappings, and Santa was part of that for me.

So we started out to do the same thing with our children. All went well with our first daughter. When she discovered the 'truth' about Santa, she thought it was fun to learn the secret. Didn't harm her a bit.

Along came our second daughter, the redoubtable Equuschick. She was indignant. She was very upset to hear that there was no Santa, and she actually refused to believe me. She argued for at least a week, maybe two. It was horribly traumatic for me.

The thing you have to understand is, I *really* like Christmas. I've been collecting ornaments since I was in high school and our Christmas decorations fill many, many large rubbermaid totes.

So we were going all out- dh was going outside at night to ring bells that were Santa's sleigh bells, we had different wrapping paper for presents from Santa, we put out cookies and milk, with carrots for the reindeer, got pictures taken with Santa, had a guy in a Santa suit come to the house one time to give them a couple presents (this was a fluke rather than a plan, this guy just called and asked if he could do that, and we said sure). I don't even remember everything we did, just know that it was elaborate.

One thing I did not do was come right out and say that he was real. If asked, I never said yes. I always responded by asking, "well, what do you think?" I never came right and overtly lied about it. I just built up all these corraborating details by my actions without ever in word saying that Santa Claus was real.

Keep in mind that these were *all* things my parents did, too, and yet I wasn't bothered when I learned it was one great big giant pretend, and I never heard that my brothers were, either. Our eldest never was bothered by it, either. I am stressing that because I need to keep reminding myself that the exact same process happened with four other children I know of and they all were JUST FINE with learning about the make believe part.

But then the Equuschick was six, and it was time to let her in on this delightful, hilarious, very coolly grown up secret- that there was no Santa.

She was not delighted, hilarified, or even mildly amused. She was angry, indignant, and, in fact, she scoffed at such a notion. She refused to believe me.

She thought about it all day every day, and it seems like weeks later she was still coming up to me to argue about it.
"But if Santa isn't real, how come his wrapping paper is different from all the other presents, huh? How about that? He IS real, isn't he?" And I would have to hang my head and mutter that, well, daddy and I bought that wrapping paper too, and just hid it in the back of the closet and only used it for Santa's presents. She'd look shocked, and, I thought, dismayed at her parent' perfidy. She'd walk off shaking her head.

Then a day or two later she'd back with, "If Santa isn't real, how come we set out cookies and milk and carrots for the reindeer and then they are gone in the morning? That proves it." And I'd have to confess that, well, Daddy and I ate the cookies, the carrots, and drank the milk. Then she'd be shocked. I still shudder over having to admit the truth to her when she demanded indignantly, "You ATE Rudolph's CARROT? YOU?" The best I could say in my defense was, "Well, Daddy helped!"

I felt wretched. And, of course, she never asked her father any of these accusational questions even though he was just as involved in the conspiracy as I. No, she only grilled and humiliated me. Not even when she said, "But we HEARD SAnta! There were footsteps on the roof and bells from the sleigh outside! Of COURSE he's real!" And I would have to sheepishly admit that Daddy sneaked out while they thought he was in the bathroom and did this whole bell ringing gig just to make this great pretend more fun. Oh, yes. Lots of fun. "Wasn't it lots of fun?" I pleaded.

It is a chilling thing to face the Equuschick's sardonic and accusatory eye, even when she was only six years old (and wearing about size 4T clothes). From an infant nobody has been able to snub with a look better than the Equuschick.

We never did Santa with the rest of the children. Probably they'd all have the personalities to be able to take it in the humourous and fun spirit which we intended, but we're not interested in taking a chance. I personally don't ever want to repeat the experience of having a child indignantly exclaim "You Ate Rudolph's carrot? How could you?." It was humiliating and made me feel ashamed.

I think it's interesting that she never once questioned the existance of God through all this. She didn't doubt that _He_ was real. She just doubted that her parents were sane and reliable people.

It's also interesting that she is now 21 and she does not remember any of this. She thinks it's all very funny now. Me, I'm scarred for life.
So that is why we don't do Santa. Nothing deep, nothing philosophical or theological, just the traumatizing experience of falling in the teeth of the six year old Equuschick's razor sharp logic skills.

We do tell the youngest lot that there was a man name Saint Nicholas who gave money to poor people, and that this is who Santa is based on. It's touchy, because then we get in situations such as the one where one of my children flatly announced to another child, "Well, Santa was a real man, but he's dead now."

We're really popular at our friends' houses this time of year. A real joy to be around, the Common Room Crowd. Come visit us and let us tear down your children's cherished dreams and pretends. How can you resist an invitation like that?
(I have *told* them not to tell other people that Santa's dead, but it's hard for children to remember these things).

This trip down memory lane prompted by Blest's post, which caused me to wonder:

What is it with this season that makes it okay for strange men to say to our kids, “IF I give you a candy cane will you come sit on my lap?”

Oh, happy, happy, joy, joy!
I still love Christmas with almost all the trappings.

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, Part three

Part one is here
Part Two is here

It is one thing, you see, to genuinely be of average of even less than average intelligence. It's another to deliberately decide that to use one's mind intelligently, to learn, and to know is to be less virtuous than otherwise.

Kingsley's line [be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever] is a convenient text, but to establish the point that English literature voices a traditional distrust of the mind we must go to the master. In Shakspere's plays there are some highly intelligent men, but they are either villains or tragic victims. To be as intelligent as Richard or Iago or Edmund seems to involve some break with goodness; to be as wise as Prospero seems to imply some Faust-like traffic with the forbidden world; to be as thoughtful as Hamlet seems to be too thoughtful to live. In Shakspere the prizes of life go to such men as Bassanio, or Duke Orsino, or Florizel-men of good conduct and sound character, but of no particular intelligence.

Intelligence is no substitute for virtue, but neither is an oxlike, plodding intellect. They just are what they are, and mean of good conduct and sound character but no particular intelligence can certainly be all that is good and kind. But more wit would not have made Bassanio less good.
And what of the women in Shakespeare?

There might, indeed, appear to be one general exception to this sweeping statement: Shakspere does concede intelligence as a fortunate possession to some of his heroines. But upon even a slight examination those ladies, like Portia, turn out to have been among Shakspere's Italian importations -their wit was part and parcel of the story he borrowed; or, like Viola, they are English types of humility, patience, and loyalty, such as we find in the old ballads, with a bit of Euphuism added, a foreign cleverness of speech. After all, these are only a few of Shakspere's heroines; over against them are Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, Hero, Cordelia, Miranda, Perdita-lovable for other qualities than intellect,-and in a sinister group, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, Goneril, intelligent and wicked.

I like Ophelia, and I am not sure I would say she was unintelligent, just unstable and emotionally fragile. Juliet was not unintelligent, only young and in love. Few people can be said to demonstrate great intelligence in such circumstances. Desdemona is in one of my least favorite plays, so I cannot comment. Cordelia may be lovable for qualities other than her intellect, but then, intelligence is not all by itself a lovable quality. Admirable, perhaps, but there are other virtues more admired than loved. Which is, I suppose, what Erskine is saying.
Hero, I blushingly confess, makes me tired.

In Paradise Lost Milton attributes intelligence of the highest order to the devil. That this is an Anglo-Saxon reading of the infernal character may be shown by a reference to the book of Job, where Satan is simply a troublesome body, and the great wisdom of the story is from the voice of God in the whirlwind. But Milton makes his Satan so thoughtful, so persistent and liberty-loving, so magnanimous, and God so illogical, so heartless and repressive, that many perfectly moral readers fear lest Milton, like the modern novelists, may have known good and evil, but could not tell them apart.

I interrupt this quote to give you a moment to chuckle at the dry wit of that last sentence, keeping in mind that Erskine delivered this lecture in the very early 1900s and published it around 1915.

It is disconcerting to intelligence that it should be God's angel who cautions Adam not to wander in the earth, nor inquire concerning heaven's causes and ends, and that it should be Satan meanwhile who questions and explores. By Milton's reckoning of intelligence the theologian and the scientist to-day alike take after Satan.

And it would seem that this is also true by our culture's reckoning. People interested in more meaningful pursuits than shopping, fashion, and the latest shenanigans of pop stars are 'weird,' and viewed with critical suspicion. People who ask questions, who don't accept things they way they are just because are troublemakers. People who cast a logical eye on life and politics are heartless. Our culture elevates the opinions of 19 y.o. pop stars and dismiss the views of elderly thoughtful, well read, but not very attractive authors.

I know a man who is extremely brilliant. He's so brilliant, he doesn't realize how brilliant he is. He often takes for granted that other people know what he knows, and talks as if they have the same understanding of math and science as he does. People think that's arrogant. So did I, for a while, because I never could understand him and I found it frustrating. Then I realized that I was looking at it all wrong- he wasn't being arrogant, I was. He was humble. He did not think of himself as exceptionally brilliant. He didn't think people were stupid if they couldn't follow him, he just didn't know they couldn't unless we told him.

People often mock intelligence rather than try to understand it. That is itself a shameful arrogance.

To be continued.
Part Four is here.

Want to Write?

Choosing Home has been going through some huge changes lately while I wasn't looking. Jenna is inviting others to write guest posts. She has a list of themes and dates up in the sidebar. Give it a look.

School Reform HEads Steadily in the Wrong Direction

Spunky again (that chick really lives up to her nickname, and the rest of us should be grateful for her tenacity in researching this stuff). Tony Blair:

believes the government should teach "life skills, " how to cook, enjoy the theater, and surf the internet."

I've said it before, why don' t they just keep kids in school full-time and parents can check them out like library books when they want to play with them.

However, even more grievious than just the blatant outsourcing of parenthood, Tony Blair wants some students to be allowed to take an International Exam rather than the British national exam. (Please stick with me and let me explain what that means.)

The International Baccalaureate is administered by an organization in Geneva. (How convenient the UN Education Bureau is right there!) The goal of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) is to create IB World Schools.

Is your school an IBO school? Go to Spunky's and read the rest of her post and check out the links.

This could be where American education is heading (could be? Who are we kidding? This is where we've been heading for decades. Most 'reform' has just been a parlour trick to redirect attention while the same old programs get new names and a paint job).

Older homeschoolers and those interested in religious freedom and family rights may remember this:

"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a
supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well by creating the international child of the future." (Harvard psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, speaking as an expert in public education at the 1973 International Education Seminar)

from a Military Homeschooling website

We should also remember the case in Nebraska where a private church school, not a home school, was shut down and fathers arrested and jailed because they did not want state teachers indoctrinating their children. The state locked the church building, opening it only for designated hours of worship, jailed seven fathers, and would have removed children from the homes except the mothers fled the state with their children. Somehow that whole separation of church and state thing that they like to claim didn't stop them from controlling what hours members could visit their house of worship and hold prayer meetings.

The only quarrel the state had was that the teachers were not certified. At the hearing for the fathers, then Governor Bob Kerrey (later a U.S. Senator for Nebraska) said, ""If we allow these people to raise their children any way they want to, they will not fit into the society we are building."
see here for quote.

If we 'allow' parents to raise their children the way they want? IF that doesn't send shivers up your spine you are no friend of freedom.

In the same time period and about that same case(April, 1982), Nebraska Senator Pete Hoagland said on television:

"What we are most interested in, of course, are the children themselves. I don't think any of us in the Legislature have any quarrel with the right of the Reverend or members of his flock to practice their religion. But we don't think they should be entitled to impose decisions or religious philosophies on their children which could seriously undermine those children's ability to deal in this complicated world when they grow up."

Keep in mind these children went to school, albeit a private school. There was no evidence that they weren't learning, nor was there any evidence that they were in any way abused or neglected. HOagland and the rest of them had no basis to suggest that these children would be unable to deal with 'this complicated world' when they grew up.


Source: the HM's notes (thanks, honey!! and this website as well as this one)

And if that's not enough, here's a blog I just found that's sure to get your blood boiling- whether in outrage or shocked recognition. I like this gal. She's radical and fiercely outspoken, and I enjoy that in a blogger.;0)

Multi-Tasking, Not

In 2005, a psychiatrist at King’s College London did a study in which one group was asked to take an IQ test while doing nothing, and a second group to take an IQ test while distracted by e-mails and ringing telephones. The uninterrupted group did better by an average of ten points, which wasn’t much of a surprise. What was a surprise is that the e-mailers also did worse, by an average of six points, than a group in a similar study that had been tested while stoned.

That’s right. Stoned. Those people were literally burned out, and they did better.

“There is something about interruption that makes people especially unproductive,” says Suzanne Bianchi, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland and co-author of the new book Changing Rhythms of American Family Life. “And technology interrupts us all the time—e-mails, cell phones. It feeds into our sense of control”—another key factor in burning out, feeling a lack of control—“and highly educated workers all will talk as if they’re terribly overworked, how they feel as if there’s never enough time. Partly, we’re supposed to say it, but I think people also genuinely feel that way, even though they have the time. That’s what’s intrigued us. The subjective and the objective don’t line up.”

From an article in New York Magazine.

Somewhere, sometime I read about a sage, philosopher, or monk who offered this wise advice, "Do what you are doing." If it is time set the table, then set the table, attentively, consciously, and thoughtfully. If it is time to pare potatoes, then pare them with attention, living fully in that moment. If it is time to write a letter, sit down and do that task, fully, completely, with all one's attention.

Somewhere, sometime when I first heard that, I scoffed. I was a young mother, and if I gave paring potatoes all my attention, the young children would be getting into mischief. And to be sure, the sage, philosopher or monk could not have been a young mother of young children. It is not always possible or desirable to do what you are doing instead of rightly dividing the mind of Mom in a dozen different and necessary directions. On the other hand, too much multi-tasking does not make for a centered, grounded, and thoughtful life. It becomes a habit, and then one lives a splintered and divided thought life.

Just for today, I am going to try to do what I am doing. I will try to bring all of myself and my attention fully to what I am doing while I am doing it. I will not listen to my friend with half my mind on my plans for dinner. I will not read a book to my child while thinking about what we are going to do next. I will not allow thoughts about Christmas gifts and baking to intrude upon my devotions and prayers. I will not listen to narrations while thinking about what poems we'll memorize next or how to decorate that strange corner in the living room.

I will try to do what I am doing.