Reading the Labels

Organic apple-raspberry sauce was on sale through our co-op a few weeks ago, so I ordered some. This is something of an event at our house, as I do not remember the last time I bought apple-sauce. I've made it, but I do not buy it.

The HG made some delicious applesauce muffins. She said she'd learned the recipe while staying with friends a couple years ago, and that they had them weekly. She'd been meaning to make them for us, but since we never have applesauce on hand and she kept forgetting to buy it, she hadn't been able to. She wondered why I don't buy it.

I don't buy it because I am frugal, and frugal to me does not just mean cheap. I read the applesauce labels at the grocery store and they have less nutritional value than bag of peanut M&Ms or a glass of Kool-Ade (which is something else I don't buy. I don't care how inexpensive it seems to be, if I buy a food item that I expect to fill the place of a fruit on our menu, I want it to have the nutritional oomph of a fruit, not less than a glass of sugar water with artifical coloring a shot of vitamin C added.

The applesauce at the grocery store seems inexpensive. But the only thing it has that resembles any nutritional value is 2 grams of fiber per serving. Otherwise, I am paying for empty calories when I'd rather be spending my money on nutritious food.

The organic applesauce does cost more and I won't buy it again unless it's on sale, but the same serving size contains those 2 grams of fiber, plus measurable amounts of potassium, iron, and a nice percentage of vitamin C.

If all I want is a treat, a dessert, and I don't care about the nutritional value, this brand of storebought applesauce is the better buy, and I could buy it to fill the same place in the menu as any other confection. If I want something to take the place of fruit in our diet, I'll serve real fruit, fresh or frozen, or the organics when it's on sale.

Checking the labels and comparing ingredients and nutritional value is an important tool in your frugality arsenal. Reading applesauce labels is pretty easy. There are no mystery ingredients.

Reading the label to some things, however, requires some serious detection work. What do you eat that has an ingredient akin to food grade plaster of paris? There are 38 other ingredients in that food item.

So when you're looking at a food you think of as expensive, check the nutritional value and think again. It's not frugal to spend money on food with no nutritional value.

We do buy junk food, and we certainly eat it, too, but we know that's what we're getting when we get it. When we indulge in junk food (far too often), we are at least buying it on purpose. It's one thing to do it on purpose. It's another to think you've made a healthy choice for your family by serving applesauce only to learn that you might just as well have given them sugary gelatin.


Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats

Maris, by GLH review

Maris, by Grace Livingston Hill: You can always tell when I've been sick or stressed, because that's when I read a GLH. GLH books are formulaic but it's a sweet formula. Boy meets girl, falls in love, then they learn that one is a Christian and one isn't, and oh, no, what shall we do? Lots of reliquishment, angst, prayer, and trust. Often there's a rich boyfriend who serves as the villain. There are also plenty of sweet little homemaking touches, loving family relationships, thrilling hand touches and chaste kisses.
In this one Maris is the eldest daughter of the house, one of six or seven children. She is engaged to marry a rich young snob from the upper crust. GLH is at some pains to assure us that Maris' family pedigree is every bit as good as the rich young snob's, they just aren't wealthy. This is an subtle but very present theme in all her books, much like the Gene Stratton Porter books of the same era.

On the day before the invitations are to go out, Maris' mother collapses and lingers unconscious on death's door for most of the book. Maris' hoity toity young snob is irritated at the mother for putting such a crimp in his wedding plans. The boy next door returns home in time to help out- he takes on the youngest brothers so the invalid can have the quiet she needs, he helps out with the father's business, he muffles the doorbell, reminds Maris of the gospel she once believed, and in general makes himself indispensable.

The family is in shortened financial straits largely due to the upcoming wedding. In fact, Maris' mother is so sick because she's worked herself to death handsewing Maris' wedding dress, which the hoity toity fiance and his mother are offended by. Maris stays home to nurse her mother back to health, to care for a child who came down with the measles (or is it scarlet fever?), and to keep an eye on a young teen sister who is leaning in a wayward direction.

She finally sees the light and breaks things off with the fiance, who responds in the time honored fashion of villains everywhere by kidnapping her and holding her in durance vile in the shiproom on the ship they were to take their honeymoon trip on. Maris, of course, escapes, running into Our Hero the boy next door who is on his way to rescue her, and they both admit their love for one another and go on to get married, the mother fully recovered, the father's business put on sound footing, the wayward sister teary eyed and penitant, the little brothers worshipful and adoring of their new older brother, the big brother newly mature and helping out his father in business, the villainous boyfriend drinking himself to destruction in European cities.

I mock, just a little, but the family relationships of the main characters of the piece really are sweet and precious, the self sacrifice a bit sticky sweet but always admirable, and the cooking always delightfully old fashioned and frugal.

The Children of Men, Review

The Children of Men, by P.D. James ( I read this while hanging around doing a lot of nothing at an airport and in the plane): Most of my internet friends read this book years ago. I put it off because I must confess that James is not one of my favorite mystery writers. She's an excellent writer- a better writer than many of the mystery authors I enjoy more. But that's the thing. I am afraid I read my mysteries to escape, for amusement, for a cozy read. Her books make you think and they aren't as comfortably cozy as I like. So the fault is all on my side.
Others have talked about how surprisingly pro-life the book is, but what struck me more is how ominous the ending is. I don't know that I agree that it's so very pro-life so much as it is how corrupt are the hearts of men, and how easily corrupted we are by power. I would also say there is a theme here about the seduction of wielding power for good. I don't want to dismiss the pro-life theme altogether. It just wasn't as powerful as I'd expected based on some other reviews- but probably that was a case of my own expectations being unrealistic.

Spoilers now follow, so if you don't like them, you've been warned.

I haven't seen the movie, but now I am curious about it. I understand quite a few changes have been made- significant ones from what I read, and that usually disappoints me. I've read a few reviews of the movie, but I can't tell if the changes made strengthen or weaken the themes I saw about totalitarianism, the hopelessness of a life with no promised future, and the seduction of power.

I did get a good belly life out of one movie review written by a young feminist. Young is the operative word here. She thought there was something feminist and significant about the fact that the movie (and book) title is The Children of Men, but the miracle baby conceived after decades of world-wide infertility is born to a- hang on, you're just not going to believe how powerfully significant this is, and it's so surprising, too. Because this baby is born to- are you ready? You should probably be sitting down because it's such a twisty surprise ending given the title of the book and all. That baby is born to a woman. I know. Aren't you amazed?

I got the impression we were supposed to see something more significant than biological accuracy to that, although the child in both book and movie does in fact have two human parents. I could hardly read that sort of review with a straight face. The youngish members of those circles have indulged in a lot of foolish speculation about the title of the book/movie. The point may be missing from the movie (and it's a shame if it is), but it's quite clear in the book. A good man has been killed by a marauding gang (these gangs are composed of the last children to have been born on earth, now grown up and with no hope for a future they have no regard for life or love). The main character reads a funeral service over him and reads from the 90th chapter of Psalms:

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou [art] God.
Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
For a thousand years in thy sight [are but] as yesterday when it is past, and [as] a watch in the night.

I am reminded once more that we have an entire generation of people who plant their intellectual gardens with cut flowers. The Children of Men is about the infertility of the body- and how that affects our world and our future. We have an infertility of the mind, too, and this also brings a sense of hopelessness.

Blog Carnivals

The Festival of Frugality is up, so check it out to get some great ideas on how to save money (the great ideas are only as great as our implementation, however).

The Carnival of the Recipes is also up, and this one had a theme (I, um, must have been absent that day, but I'm sure I had a good excuse). The theme is great for large and/or busy families- it's crockpot and slow cooker recipes. Lots of great recipes there (and, of course, the great recipes are only as useful as our implementation).

Why this emphasis on implementation? That Dominion Family blogger Cindy has been stomping all over my toes.

Obnoxious

You know that you have been placed in a particularly obnoxious family when on your 11th birthday the family is playing the card-game of your choice and at the moment one obnoxious family member plays the card that means you lose that round the rest of your obnoxious family breaks into a spontaneous (and very bad) adaptation of "It's her party and she'll cry if she wants to, cry if she wants to... You would cry, too, if it happened to you!"

Actually, there was no crying, only mock indignation and the loud verbal brawling we consider something of a family speciality.

What The Boy Made

Muvver posted about the FYB making this here. I like the cute little pirate. :-)

Books Read in February

I know this will be annoying to those who read through RSS feeds, because everytime I update a post you get the whole thing again as a new post. But this is the way that works for me. That way (I know you're all wondering 'what way, what 'this' do you mean and what are you talking about?' I'm like this in real life, too, you know. I start explaining something backward and it confuses people in real life just as much as it does here) I can update with my reviews and Amazon links as I have time to make them, but I won't be posting my list of books read in February sometime in April. I've spent as much time on this this morning as I can, but I am being impatiently summoned to a rematch of last night's card game. I'd tell you what it is but there's another game with the same name and it's not the same at all and this is a cardgame from Germany and out of production in the US so it's very expensive. Shame, that. It's a great game.

The Children of Men, by P.D. James (while hanging around doing a lot of nothing at an airport): My review of this book is here.

Maris, by Grace Livingston Hill: My review is here.

Psalms- 3 times (3 in January, and my goal is at least three times each month). You don't really need me to review this for you. It's funny how 6.3 times through (with 14 left to go), I still keep hitting new stuff. Other things strike me the same way everytime. "Over Edom have I thrown my shoe" for some reason is one of them.

Ruth Stout's No-Work Garden Book (did you know her brother Rex was the author of the Nero Wolfe books? I knew Rex Stout authored them, but I didn't realize that these two Stouts were related. He didn't approve of her gardening methods, but then, he could afford to pay somebody else to turn his compost.) I already reviewed this one here.

Jasper Fforde's The Well of Lost Plots (I started this one in January and lost interest, finally picked it up and finished it while sick). These are mainly interesting to those who have read Dickens, the Bronte Sisters, and like classics, to literary amateurs, and people who like the satisfaction of recognizing literary allusions.

UPdates completed as of 2/28/07

Lord Mullion's Secret, by Michael Innes- Review here.

Lord of the Far Islands by Victoria Holt (I'm really embarrassed to admit to this one. It's one I put up for trade at PBS, and when I needed something to read me to sleep, it happened to be at hand). Her stuff is basically better written than a Harlequin, and much cleaner (from what I hear, of course), but it's still basically a gothic romance bit of fluff.

First Person Rural, by Noel PErrin, another of my TBR challenge books. You can read my thoughts on this one here (general information about Noel Perrin and the book), here (about his essay on maple syrup, modernization, and materialism).

The Silver Ladies, by Margaret Erskine- I like some of Erskine's mysteries (usually her earliest ones). This one jumped around and the narrative style was choppy, although that might have just been me. I read it at bedtime the day of the party where we had 65 people here. Her sleuth is Detective Inspector Finch.

Knight's Castle by Edward Eager; review here.

The Practice of the presence of God, by Brother Lawrence, a small paperback published by Whitaker House in 1982

Cat Among the Pigeons, by Agatha Christie- I finished it while snuggling with a sleeping 11 year old this morning (the 28th) who needed to sleep off the effects of too much cake and ice cream.

I'll share more about these tomorrow um, later. I may have one more book to add by the end of the day, but then again, I'm not sure I'll have enough reading time to finish it. The HM has plans for the day that include the littlest two and me.

The Cinderella Syndrome

We had a youngster who liked to feel sorry for herself. She would do thinks like choose to hold the baby for ages, refusing to allow anybody else a turn, and then later cry and complain that she had never gotten to do X because she had been forced to hold the baby all that time.

We started a blessing narration at least a few times a week. We did this sometimes at family prayers each evening, sometimes at a mealt. We eached name at least one or two things good that happened to us that day, or things that we're thankful for.

I assigned this poem for copywork

One ship drives east and another drives west,
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
That determines the way they go.
Like the winds of the sea are the winds of fate,
As we voyage along through life.
'Tis the set of the soul
That decides the goal
And not the calm or the strife."
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What I wanted to get across was both that she should count her blessings, recognize them when they come, develop a spirit of gratitude, *and* learn to be content in all things, just for starters. Not asking much, was I?



I learned to see the signs of the Cinderella syndrome coming on- she would sit alone building up a martyred expression, or perhaps it was an orphaned beggar child or the cruelly used servant girl this time, I was never sure, but I know she was imagining something gloriously abused.

I talked to her about this tendency in the midst of a more cheerful afternoon, and she agreed that she did this, and that she often created her sense of injustice out of nothing at all. I told her that from now on we were going to nip this in the bud and she was to redirect her thoughts the moment it began- and to help her, if I saw it happening I would remind her of our talk by humming "Count Your Blessings."

It wasn't always sweetness and sunshine and it did not work immediately, but it did work. She appreciated the novelty in having mother be a conspirator on her behalf, and the fact that only she and I knew why I was humming Count Your Blessings.

Incidentally, I don't want to leave the impression that all my children are perfect all the time and that I was the perfect Mother. We each have many unfixed flaws and failures under our belts. This was just one of the things that worked, and so I pass it on.=)

Unions

Thomas Sowell explains unions and economics:

Labor unions, like the government, can change prices — in this case, the price of labor — but without changing the underlying reality that prices convey.

Neither unions nor minimum-wage laws change the productivity of workers. All they can do is forbid the employer from paying less than what the government or the unions want the employer to pay.

When that is more than the labor in question produces, some workers who are perfectly capable become “unemployable” only because of wages set above the level of their productivity.

In the short run — which is what matters to politicians and to union leaders, who both get elected in the short run — workers who are already on the payroll may get a windfall gain before the market adjusts.

But, sooner or later, the chickens come home to roost. They have been coming home to roost big time in the automobile industry, where hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost over the years.

It is not that people don’t want automobiles. Toyota is selling plenty of cars made in its American factories with non-union labor.

More about Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace is an amazing movie and I think most people should be able to follow it without any background knowledge to speak of.

We could be wrong, though, because William Wilberforce has long been one of our personal heroes, and we read our first biography of him some ten years ago. He was an admirable man. So just in case you want to make your experience even richer, you might find out just a bit about these people before you view the movie:

William Pitt the Younger
Hannah More
Henry Thornton
Thomas Clarkson
John Newton
James Stephen
Olaudah Equiano

There is also an official 'Amazing Grace' Website with materials to download, links to more information, clips to view, and information on how to help abolish the modern day slave trade still in existance.

Quite often when we moderns discuss injustices of the past, somebody is always going to make excuses, saying something like, "Well, that's just what people thought then. We can't judge the past by today's standards. People just didn't know better."

At some level I'll grant that's kind of true. But men like William Wilberforce and John Adams show us that there have always been people who didn't accept the status quo, who did not just think like everybody else, and who lived by a better and different standard than 'everybody else thinks so.'

William Wilberforce was a powerful force for good in his day, and there weren't very many people in England (and I would guess American, either) who didn't know what he believed, what he was fighting against, and why. The British slave trade did not continue because people 'didn't know better.' Those who want to know better have always been able to find out what 'better' looks like.
The Slave Trade continued as long as it did because people didn't want to know, didn't want to be inconvenienced, or just plain did not care.

Amazing Grace is a powerful movie about several people, mainly William Wilberforce but others as well, who, motivated by their faith, wanted to know better and worked to make a better world. They serve as models and examples for all people who desire something more than the status quo, who are not satisfied with 'fitting in,' 'getting along,' and going with the flow.

If you want your Progeny to stand up for what is right when others are sitting down and looking the other way, they should get to know William Wilberforce and his friends. Amazing Grace is an absolutely wonderful introduction.

I will warn our most conservative friends that the neckline on the dress of one of the main characters is so low I sometimes didn't know where to look, and there are, I think, about three uses of a word that I'd rather not hear come out of my family members' mouths. Placed up against the overall power and message of this movie, for us these things barely tipped the scale at all.
There are some verbal references to the brutal treatment of slaves which may be disturbing to young people, but only a parent could decide whether this is too much for any given child.

Update: Carmon has a most instructive review of the movie. I think you'll find it informative. She also shares two good links for more information. My favorite is this one by John Piper.

Amazing Grace, the Movie

Magnificent.

Go see it.

I am not kidding.

Wow.

Assorted Trifles

HEre's a useful post on cleaning those vintage linens (I know I've posted something like this before, but we do have a lot of vintage linens around here!)

I loved this quote from Elizabeth Goudge on bookselling.

And these 13 ways to make fun messages for your blog looked interesting.
Felt china protecters- cut these out to put in between your nice dishes- or better yet, cut them out as a nice little gift for a new bride! And from the same blog (The Homespun Heart), I love this idea for a blue jean organizer! I think I probably bookmark more posts of stuff to try out at home from this blog than any other single source.

Scary things: Teflon, More Teflon, transfats, GMO potatoes, and our educational system.

Charlotte Mason believed it was important to give children time to process what they knew. Turns out, we do this in our sleep, too (most of us kind of knew this, but now there's some bona fide proof)


Homeschoolers should be interested in this essay contest.

Heh- I'm 44 years old and the only time in my life we ever had cable television is when I've stayed a hotel with it. My parents did get it after I left home, but we not only did not have it when I still lived under their roof, for several years we had no television at all, and then for a few more years we only had black and white. This not only did not harm us, but there was one occasion when my mother said she was thinking about getting a color television set, and we insisted we alread had color. I specifically told her that I knew we had color, because Woody Woodpecker's head was red (we did not, in fact, have color. I was imagining it).

And soda/pop/cokes? Those were a rare treat. We drank water, milk, or tea. The HG has, over the last couple years, spent a lot of time in other people's homes, and she was just telling me how amazed she is at the amount of carbonated beverages other people buy and let their kids drink. She says that just based on the cost of their beverages it's no wonder people don't understand how nine people could live on one working class salary.


There's no laundry genie? Now she tells me!


I've been trying to get on of our girls to post on the modesty survey, but I can't wait any longer. It's very interesting. They've been reading and discussing it with each other and their friends, but if I wait for them to discuss it here, I'll be a very old lady who won't remember what they're talking about. Personally, I think the most important place to start reading (after the explanation of the survey itself, so you don't get confused about which are the questions and which are the answers) is this question:

As a guy, what is your responsibility in this area? What is your role in guarding your eyes and mind (as opposed to the women's role of dressing modestly)?

It's a very useful tool. There were some things that were no surprise, a couple things that surprised me (both things that were considered modest and things that weren't), and one or two things that surprised me by the intensity of the comments.

Add Educational Researcher to the hats we parents wear.

And because you've all been so patient, here's a special treat to make you smile: Why Amanda's son would hate to be a tick.=)

And Baby Makes....

You probably already know that Amy has been doing a great series of posts with tips for life with three under three. HEre's the link to the fifth, which is a bit more philosophical in nature, and I think you can find the others from there. Fabulous need-to-know stuff.
Long term readers already know our slightly different story. We had three children, and literally overnight, we had five. We had one child in diapers and literally overnight, we had three in diapers. They weren't, technically, all under three, but the Cherub was one of them and she still functions at the level of a two year old, our youngest biological child was only two. She could just walk, was still in diapers all the time, couldn't talk, and knew three signs. She thought each of them meant, "You will now put something good to eat in my mouth and I do mean now." Our other 'new' child was then three, but she was developmentally delayed (an environmental issue rather organic). She was also still in diapers. She talked, but not as well as the two year old we already had, and she was utterly shocked to discover that she was not in charge. Life was fun. I'd tell you more about how I managed, except I don't remember.=)

I do remember the comments- in fact, we got so many of the 'better you than me' types of comments (in front of our children) that one of our 'new' children once indignantly responded to a cashier voicing just that sentiment by blurting out, "Well our Mommy loves us children, don't you, Mommy!!"
Ours are, of course, much older now, and long gone are the days when I herded five little darlings through the grocery store like ducks in a row, did all the laundry, cooking, and cleaning for seven people, or had three little ones to diaper every day. Now they do the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning, and the herding (and I get the compliments).

But I gotta tell you, we still get the comments. True story- a few weeks ago the HM and I were visiting with a receptionist in a lawyer's office- fancy, upscale kinda place. She was gushing about her grandchildren. She has several and she has them over every weekend for lunch and eats at the children's table with them because they are just so much fun, such a delight, she just adores children, they are so wonderful, such a precious gift.
She went on in this vein at some length and concluded by smiling sweetly and saying, "I just don't see how anybody could be mean to children. I just don't."
The HM and I agreed with her, and then one of us started to say:
"We know what you mean. We have seven and-"
The woman didn't blink or draw breath- she just burst into a heated interruption:
Seven!!!??? Good Lord. I couldn't stand that. I could barely manage my own three. I couldn't take seven of them. How do you manage that? And, my goodness, who's watching them while you're here?"
You couldn't have counted to twenty in between her 'I just love children' and her 'Good Lord I couldn't stand that' statements. She never even blinked or seemed to hear what she'd said.

We explained that they mostly watched themselves since two of them are grown up young ladies in their early twenties who help out, two of them were nearly grown up young ladies in their mid teens who help out, and so there are only three who really need watching. She shook her head slowly. She clearly didn't believe it and couldn't possibly comprehend it.

The HM and I were only away for two days on that trip, and that woman wasn't the only who freaked out when she learned we had seven. I guess it's been a while since we met so many people who hadn't already heard about our family size before we met them. She also wasn't the only one who expressed shock and some dismay over it. It's not any wonder Amy's gotten such a positive response to her series. As she says,

Our 21st-century homes do not have front porches. Quilting circles are only found in books. And the hospital nurse at your last delivery? She was 20. Her coaching consisted of asking every few minutes if you were ready for an epidural.

Has it really come to this? And if so, is it OK?

I don’t think it’s OK. I also think many women agree with me. We weren’t meant to do it alone. We weren’t meant to take our cues from the broader culture. We want to know that it’s OK to cross-the-line and have Baby #3 (on purpose).

If you're asking me, it's more than o.k.
It's hard work when they're little. But often those who sow in tears come again rejoicing, and if you do that hard work when they are little, you stand a mighty good chance of reaping a mighty fine harvest.

Of Bread, Boys, and Toys

Saturday just about everybody was gone all day except the three youngest (Cherub is a youngest even though she's chronologically older). We played games, read, sang songs, practiced math, did some chores- and then, they were bored. I refused to let them watch a movie, although it sounded most alluring to have them go off and be quiet and trouble-free for a couple of hours. I also refused to make any more suggestions for things to do, and they wandered about for a few minutes in perplexity, and then one of them remembered the bread dough in the refrigerator. Lightbulbs went off. They must have played with their bread dough for a good hour, shaping and reshaping turtles, rabbits, lilypads, frogs, teddy bears, and snakes. Faced with boredom, they created their own creative outlet and they had a wonderfully productive time.

Sunday afternoon was pretty quiet around here. Dogs and cats need to be fed and watered just the same as if it were any other day, so after church the Equuschick has to go to work to care for the shelter animals. The HM was working yesterday. The HG and Pipsqueak took a long nap. Jenny was working on some other project behind closed doors (our birthday season will soon be upon us). The FYG curled up with a new coloring book. The Cherub doesn't like to play. The FYB was at loose ends. He wanted something to do. I read to him a little, played a short game, sang a silly song, but the truth is I wasn't feeling very entertaining, either. I wanted to lie down and see if I could a head start on next month's reading. He asked if he could watch a movie, and I hesitated. I really don't believe time in front of the screen is valuable time. In fact, I think it's detrimental to growing minds, and yet we keep sitting down in front of the screen, and worse, letting the youngest of us sit there, too. He pleaded and looked cute. I wavered. He looked cuter still, and wrapped a confiding (and manipulative) arm around my neck. Somehow the most touching appeal to manipulate my emotions usually backfire. I strengthened my resolve and refused. I suggested he just go find something to do for the afternoon.

It wasn't really very much later that he came downstairs to show me what he'd been creating. He'd taken a picture of it on the digital camera. He'd found some old twigs and things and was working on setting up a sort of diorama. He had a little hut, a fire pit, a toy pirate, some toy animals, and he wanted some ideas for how to make more people for it. He was not interested in his sisters' dollhouse dolls. He brought down pipecleaners and we made some pipecleaner people (I made three to show him how, and then he made three and got fancier). He went back upstairs and played creatively for several hours longer. Later in the evening I pointed out that he'd created all this marvelous play and made his own toys and now had a cool scene gracing his shelves in his room- and if he'd been sitting in front of a screen, none of this would have happened. Somehow he reacts to my moralizing much as I react to his emotional manipulations, so I should do it less, but I do think he got the point. You probably do, too. But I am grateful for Tammy at Tammy's Recipes for passing on the link to this article as well: Something worse than white bread! It's the bread of idleness.

I think it will encourage me to stand firm next time I am asked for the screen.

Of Sheep and Goats

TNFarm Girl says:

I believe one of the most amazing things that happens when you live the agrarian life is that the Scriptures take on a new life….so many of the Lord’s parables and stories related to agrarian things. Reaping and sowing become a part of your seasonal work when you live the agaraian life. Many of the stories involving animals become crystal clear once you have worked with those animals. The scriptures seem to have a deeper meaning or perhaps we have a deeper understanding because we have become a part of these things.

And I've experienced that too. She specifically goes on to talk about what you learn about sheep and goats when you get one or the other, and it's an informative, thought provoking read. What I'm going to say is more by way of a rant. We don't have any critters but the Equuschick's horses right now (and the dogs, cats, turtle, and fish), but we used to have 9 goats, including two milk goats.

Let me tell you, before we got those goats I secretly rebelled against the biblical stories of sheep and goats. I thought sheep sounded stupid, ignorant, and utterly unadmirable, while goats sounded like delightful creatures with interesting personalities and a charming sense of curiosity. That's all true enough from the comfortable seat of the armchair agrarian. The genuine agrarian who is actually responsible for the goats recognizes that they can be all of those things and also be a real burden and a danger to themselves. They can find more ways to get into trouble and injure themselves than just about any other critter I've known. The HM has set broken legs. I've untangled stubborn fool goats from rolls of fencing- stubborn fool goats so tightly wrapped up in that fence roll that it seems they must have woven themselves into it. We had a mama goat strangle herself while exercising her charming sense of curiosity and trying to get through a fence not meant to be gotten through. I have chased stubborn fool goats with the most interesting personalities you have ever seen at milking time. They may be smarter than sheep, but they aren't any wiser to speak of. Those silly things wanted to be milked. They'd be in pain if they weren't milked. The could even get sick if they weren't milked. They just didn't want the experience to be boring. The way they would look at me out of the corner of their wicked little eyes, gleaming with mischief and let me get just close enough to feel the tickle of their hair as it lifted with the breeze of their fleeing kicks was certainly interesting, intelligent, and displayed loads of personality. That delightful personality sometimes made it the hardest thing in the world to do anything good for the blame fool critters.

If I'd had a gun I would have shot them on the spot.

It's not any compliment to be called a goat by the Lord. Smart money is on the sheep.

Sunday Hymn Post

I usually pick my hymns for Sunday several days in advance, save as a draft, and then publish them in the morning when I arise. Chances are quite good, however, that in the morning when I arise the power will be out, so I'm publishing early tonight, using the magic of the internet to change the time stamp.=)


O Christ, the Lord of Heaven, to Thee
Clothed with all majesty divine,
Eternal power and glory be:
Eternal praise and right is Thine.

Reign, Prince of Life, Who once Thy brow
Didst yield to wear the wounding thorn;
Reign throned beside the Father now,
Adored the Son of God firstborn.

From angel hosts, that round Thee stand,
With forms more pure than spotless snow,
From the bright burning seraph band,
Let praise in loftiest numbers flow.

To Thee, the Lamb, our mortal songs,
Born of deep fervent love, shall rise;
All honor to Thy Name belongs:
Our lips would sound it to the skies.

Jesus! all earth shall speak the word;
Jesus! all Heaven resound it still:
Immanuel, Savior, Conqueror, Lord,
Thy praise the universe shall fill.

More information and midi file at Cyberhymnal

An Embarassingly Girly Day

The Equuschick had an absolutely miserable morning that resulted in a weepy temper tantrum in the car on the way back into town after she'd been home for one hour and had accomplished absolutely nothing.

After half an hour in town it became clear that the day she had planned for herself was lost forever. So, like a girl, while running errands, she bought close-out Valentine's candies and a new pair of shoes for herself. How totally irrational.

She comforts herself that the shoes are for a friend's wedding and she will actually need them eventually?

At the library she checked out what, for The Equuschick, constitutes a comfort read. "How the Tiger Lost Its Stripes: An Exploration Into the Endangerment of a Species", by Cory J. Meacham.
It is all about tigers in the wild vs. tigers in captivity and conservation efforts vs. nature and DNA testing and stuff, and happens to be surprisingly well-written and so far, relatively unbiased. The Equuschick is pleased.

(Laugh, go ahead. Since did when your comfort read become a standard for The Equuschick's anyway? SHE'S not weird. You're weird. Yep, yep.)

*munches valentine candy contentedly*

The Bread

Some of the more creative children made their own thing instead of a Teddy Bear, and this was my favorite of all the loaves (although Dora the Explorer was pretty good). Isn't it just adorable? (Oh, and this is before it was cooked. We don't have a picture of how it looked out of the oven.)

Home-Town Cookin'

Some time back I blogged about the little coffee shop in town. It closed shortly after that post, partly because of some pretty silly business practices (she bought salad and sandwhich fixings at retail price from the priciest grocery store in town), but largely because where we live people just think it's nuts to spend more than about a dollar for a cup of coffee.

A new restaurant went in, and it seems to be a raging success. They are open- unbelievably, until 10 p.m. on weekends. They sell a variety of hotdogs and hamburgers, and the locally popular brat sausage sandwiches- except during Lenten season when they offer an additional menu of egg and fish sandwiches. They are locally owned and operated.

Today I heard their ad on the radio:

"Hey, if you want good food, never follow a skinny person."

Saturday Review of Books

Every week you can read other bloggers' book reviews as linked at Semi-Colons cool widget/linki thing (I wish I knew how to do that!)

Check it out!

Bread Recipe, Redux

I know we linked to this bread recipe in this post, but I just want to repeat that it's a fantastic recipe- and perfect for making bread with a huge group of kids.


We used our Bosch, and I'll be sharing directions for that. I think a Kitchen Aide is about the same. The directions on the above website are perfect for mixing the dough by hand or with a smaller mixer, so I won't be repeating them here. That blogpost also has a lot more general information on refrigerator dough and other things you can do with it, but that's also stuff I'm not duplicating here.

Here's what we did with this terrific recipe:

Potato Refrigerator Dough (3 loaves or 12 small bread loaves)

Ingredients:
2 scant Tablespoons of yeast (we buy ours is a large bag from a co-op. If you are buying individual packages, I think you're spending a shocking amount of money per batch of bread. I did a price comparison last December and learned that if I bought it by the envelope I was paying something outrageous, like 60 dollars a pound, when I can get it from my co-op for about 7 dollars a pound).
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 cup mashed potatoes (the recipe calls for lukewarm, we made the mashed potatoes the night before so they were room temperature, and our 'room temperature' is about 68 degrees. Ideally, you would make this with some leftover mashed potatoes)
2/3 cup sucanat (a 'natural' sugar from the co-op. Regular sugar, I am sure, would work just as well or better, we just didn't have any).
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 medium eggs (recipe calls for large. This is what we had)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
7 to 7 1/2 cups freshly ground whole wheat flour (the recipe calls for white or a mixture. I suspect it would be too heavy if you used all wheat flour from the grocery store, but I don't know).

"Sponge" the yeast by mixing the yeast in about 1/2 cup of water and perhaps a couple spoonfuls of flour. When it foams:

1. Combine the 'sponge' and remaining 1 cup water with the rest of the ingredients except the flour in the Bosch, using the dough hook attachment. Run it for a few seconds- just long enough to blend everything in.
2. Mix in about 1/2 of the flour and run the mixer until it's all mixed in
3. Mix in additional flour with dough hooks and run the Bosch just until it cleans the sides of the bowl. It should be light and spongy, but not sticky to the touch.
4. Place in a greased or sprayed bowl, turning dough so greased side is up. Cover bowl with sealing lid or plastic wrap. If there is any unmixed flour mix it in by hand now. It should only take a turn or two. Original recipe suggests spraying so it doesn't stick. We didn't because it wasn't going to be in the bowl long enough to stick.
4a. Because we needed enough bread for a group of fifty kids, Pip repeated this step four times, making four batches of dough. She *might* have been able to double it in the Bosch, but it probably would have flowed over the top. There's no way she could have quadrupled it in the Bosch. She filled up two of our largest Tupperware bowls ('Thatsa Bowls') with her four batches of dough.

4b. Then, to facilitate working with a large group of children, I divided the dough for her. I worked with one bowl at a time. Basically, I just turned out the contents of one bowl onto my marble slab, then I divided the dough in half, and then divided it again, and again, and again until I had roughly 32 equal sized pieces from each bowl. Each piece was enough to make a decent sized individual bread loaf or Teddy Bear, or perhaps four nice rolls. That's a lot of bread. As I worked, our youngest two put each individual roll of dough into a plastic bag and put the plastic bags back in the bowl. We did not grease the bags and it didn't stick, but the dough was only in the bags for the morning, not for several days.

5. Place in the refrigerator (or an unheated room in winter=)). Punch down when doubled (we did this by default when we divided the dough up and put it in the bags)
6. According to the recipe you can keep this dough refrigerated for up to 4 days. You just need to check it once or twice a day and push it down if it starts expanding.
7. The recipe calls for removing the dough from the fridge about two hours before baking, but we didn't do this, and I think it worked because we were baking the same day we'd made the dough. It was basically only slightly cool when we shaped the dough into shapes (teddy bears, a Dora the Explorer, a heart, a rabbit, a sea serpent, a few basic bread shapes, and I don't remember what all else).
8. We put ours on foil lined cookie sheets. We did not oil the foil because we needed to write each child's name on the foil beneath the loaf. Pip let them rise only about fifteen minutes- and again, I think this worked well for us because our dough had not been refrigerated overnight yet.
9. Bake at 375° F. for about fifteen minutes (for the smaller individual loaves)

The kids shared bites of their loaves with the mothers and they all loved the bread. Some of them said it was so rich and tasty it didn't even need butter. Some of them forgot their craft or their coloring papers, some left their paper airplanes behind.
Not a single loaf of bread was forgotten, and about half were eaten before the kids left. There were no leftovers. Even my slighly overdone 'test' teddy bear made before the kids got here (to make sure it wouldn't hurt them if they didn't get an hour to rise) was gobbled up.

We have enough dough in the fridge to make about 9 smaller loaves or individual teddy bears and hedgehogs, or perhaps two good sized loaves.

This is a great way to make a huge batch of bread once and still eat hot bread all week long- even for a larger family.

"Easy to do justice. Very hard to do right."

"Easy to do justice. Very hard to do right." Is a quote from "The Winslow Boy". It is the movie that I watched with FYB & FYG, prior to watching Sophie Scholl - The Final Days with the older prodigy. It was my choosing, they hadn't seen it for quite some time and me for even longer. It is a wonderful story about the importance of telling the truth and doing what is right at all costs. The father tells his son that he must tell him the truth. If is lies it will be found out and he must tell his father the truth.

However the most profound dialogue was at the end of the movie:
Sir Robert Morton: I wept today because right had been done.
Catherine Winslow: Not justice?
Sir Robert Morton: No, not justice. Right. Easy to do justice. Very hard to do right.

Moving on the the movie the HG listed below (Sophie Scholl - The Final Days).
Doing right at all costs. Standing firm. We must never, never, take for granted the first amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

A properly trained conscience keeps us trained to do what is right. We must keep the thrust of our thoughts on "what is the right thing to do". This depends on what we accept as right versus wrong. Which can only be defined by a constant and that constant is truth.

Jesus said that he was the truth (Jn 14:6) He told Pilate that he came to testify of the truth in which Pilate response was "what is truth", as he went out to tell the crowd that Jesus was innocent. (John 18).

James 2:12-13
"Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!"

A movie to watch.

The Equuschick and the DHM do not watch sad movies, so if you are like them, you may now skip this post and go on to read something more cheerful.

----

The HM, Pip, Jenny, and I have just finished watching Sophie Scholl - The Final Days. Sophie Scholl, her brother, and friends, formed a resistance movement against the Nazis during World War II. They were apprehended and condemned to death. This film is an amazing and sensitive portrayal of the last several days.

They get caught as they are distributing anti-Nazi leaflets at their university. Watching them rush surreptitiously around university corridors was eerie for someone who sees opposing ideas bandied about campus like tennis balls. There are fliers against Bush. There are fliers against liberals. Students will drag a chair out on the main lawn and give speeches a la Hyde Park. These are norms in my university existence. And yet the norm for the Scholl siblings, and any university students of the time, was a one-faceted view of the world that refused to accept any contradictions. Conscience had no place. It was, as Sophie said (in the movie, at least), the wrong world view.
I don't think college students today appreciate the freedoms they have. They don't vote, because they don't want to take responsibility for the results. They wail loudly and at great length about their lot, and rarely consider the blessing of being able TO complain about their lot, and that their "lot" is to be able to study at some of the best colleges in the most affluent and free nations on earth. Members of the White Rose died for doing what college students today barely think about. They died for ideas that many don't even take the trouble to consider.

I am not doing this film justice. See if your library has it. Rent it. Buy it. Just make sure you see it. I have seen many movies about this period, and this is one of the best.

----
The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer (someone who also died for convictions)

The Equuschick's Obituary

Dead, on Feb. 23'rd 2007, The Equuschick, aged 22. Cause of Death is believed to be overexposure to small children. She was accompanied to the last by her faithful dog Zeus, who valiantly displayed his tricks four times in a row to roughly 50 children and permitted himself to be fondled by all.

The Equuschick's last words were "Bury me in chocolate."

It really wasn't THAT bad. The children were mostly well-behaved, it was just that there were so many of them, you know. The Equuschick prefers her children taken small doses at a time. Like medicine.

Funniest Event of the Day

My devotional topic was on not comparing ourselves to others and keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source of our joy (if you read the comments, you already know this). I specifically mentioned this very common problem- that when we compare ourselves to others we are only looking at what others let us see, and we are comparing our worst to their best.

One of the moms there is one of the people who comes to our weekly Tuesday night Bible study. After the meeting when the kids were running around and adults were visiting with one another, she commented to the HG that one of her little ones asked her how we were able to keep our house so clean. The young mother told her daughter that we kept our house so clean because we were neat and tidy people who put things away as soon as we were done with them.

When the HG finished laughing and could catch her breath, she fetched me. "Mom, you have got hear what H. said. Just listen. You're not gonna believe it."

So I came over and H. repeated this for me and I had to sit down I was laughing so hard. I told I was very glad to have given somebody else such a false impression, but really I just couldn't keep a straight face over it. And besides, I was worried that God would flatten her with a lightening bolt if she told such a boldfaced lie to her children again.

I told Pip, who said, "HA! They just don't see the hours of power cleaning that goes on every single Tuesday night!"

Our young friend H. looked relieved. I think I made somebody else feel better when I admitted that when we cleaned up the laundry room/mudroom we filled up two totes, one closet and had to hide three boxes of boots, mittens, scarves and gloves. I keep meaning to clean that stuff out....

So- no more comparisons, okay? They are insidious.

Stats

Jenny, reading aloud from a magazine: 93% of all Americans eat pizza once a month.

We all look at each other and wonder if we're unAmerican.

HG: Okay, but wait a minute. What percentage of Americans are college students? That's got to skew the stats.

Drum Roll, Please

Counting the eight of us (since the HM was at work), there were 65 people inside our house. They started arriving at 1:15 and they started leaving at about 3:30. The last folks left at about 5:00.

The devotional went well, and the moms had a nice talk afterward with some nittygritty how-to questions asked and answered. The children were pretty well behaved. We had only three incidents of literally swinging on the rafters (in the unfinished Sunroom), no bloodshed, no breakage, no fights, no tears or injuries except one small tot who got her fingers stepped on.

Everybody seemed to have a good time. The bread baking was hugely popular with almost everybody, and that bread recipe is a keeper- we used 100 percent whole wheat flour and sucanat for sweetener. One of the older boys who thought that was too girly found his way into the kitchen after all the loaves were done. Other children were snacking on their personal loaves. He asked if he could have some. I asked him if he'd ever heard the story of the Little Red Hen, and he said not, so I told it to him and then gave him some of the bread from my own experimental teddy bear anyway (I also made two hedgehogs that turned out very sweetly, but I sent them home with Granny Tea).

The paper airplanes and building modeling were not interesting to the boys they were planned for, but other boys enjoyed them. The biggest boys spent most of their time in the sunroom playing chess, which is just fine.

REally, everything went very, very well and we are exhausted and in serious need of some down time and quiet, but we are well satisfied with how things went.


These are the things we can think of that we will do differently (and all the Progeny, surprisingly, think this would be a good thing to do annually):

Have an RSVP date and be firm about it.

Have people go through the line by family unit supervised by the related adult rather letting the children race through unsupervised and finish off all the deviled eggs before the DHM other people had a chance.

Separate a couple of the giggliest girliest girly girls.

Hide the great big bouncy balls.

Hide the rebounder.

Handle the transition from room a little bit differently. It actually went very well and the Progeny say it took less than two minutes to have each group completely transferred to the next activity. But all the children who knew their way around the house ended up in the same two groups, and because most of the other children had never been before they got confused about which way to go. It really wasn't a big problem, it just would have made things go a little more smoothly for them if we had handled that part differently.

Think about our own lunch sooner than we did- none of us thought of it until almost noon and we didn't really have anything easy and mess free to prepare. The HG was on her way home from school so we called and asked her to pick up storebought bread and tuna fish. I had to laugh at the irony of having her pick up bread from the store when we had enough bread dough in the fridge to make 14 loaves of the stuff, but there it is.

We do have crayons, scratch paper, and toothpicks literally everywhere, but we can live with that.

All in all I believe a good time was had by all.

Games and Activities for a Crowd

I woke up earlier than planned this morning, and the house is really surprisingly clean. I have a few finishing touches on my devotional (which borrows shamelessly from the comments in an earlier post here). I thought I'd share our plans in greater detail along with websites that were fun or helpful for planning a party for a large group. We're supplying the art supplies, printed out pages, bread dough, paper products for snacks, and tea or water for drinking. Others are bringing snacks, play dough, toothpicks, foil, waxed paper and a couple other minor items. We're entertaining over sixty people for basically ten dollars worth of paper plates and cups.=)

What we've done is basically divided up our downstairs into zones or centers. As the families arrive we'll funnel them into the different centers. My preference has always been to divide groups by family rather than by age segregated groups, and that's what we're doing here for the most part. If other families want their children separated we can accommodate that, but we're not having groups of two year olds, groups of teens, groups of 1-3 graders.

Pippin, as mentioned, is hosting her group in the kitchen where they are making bread shapes. She is making this recipe for refrigerator dough this morning. This way she doesn't have to worry about the bread dough getting too yeasty and rising overmuch before all the kids have had their turn. Other parents are bringing raisins for decorating bread dough teddy bears, and teddy bear bread is a very easy shape to make (just a series of circles). The children are also welcome to make their own shapes, Pip just won't be explaining how to do anything but the bears. We've suggested (just to prime the pump) cats, snakes, dinosaurs, or race cars. Pip will spread out tin foil on baking sheets and trays and write each child's name in permanent marker on the foil beneath their shapes. When they have finished their shapes and are ready to move to the next activity, she will set them aside to rise while the next group makes their shapes. The foil can be moved from trays to baking sheets as necessary. We expect the toddlers to want to participate in this activity, but just in case they get bored, we have a small basket of toddler toys to entertain the toddlers in her groups. She is also to choose one easy group game to have on hand just in case they finish early.

Jenny's group is in the dining room. She is doing a cute craft of making George Washington refrigerator magnets. We'll share pictures later. She and a couple friends and siblings finished cutting out all her supplies yesterday. She has some coloring pages and crayons ready for smaller children who get bored and want to quit.

From the dining room she can see into the sunroom, where we have one of our 'unsupervised' centers. We have a card table with Uno cards and a low, wide coffee table with a box of wooden trains. The sunroom is unfinished (inside walls undone, no insulation, concrete floor), but the windows make it warm on a sunny afternoon, which is what we'll have today. Four to six children will go here during one of our project times so that we can keep the Progeny's groups down to a manageable number.

In the living room the HG is our acting Games Mistress. We found some absolutely wonderful group games at this website. Bookmark it. I loved their 'custom games' list, because you can search for games for two people or a large group. You can search by age. You can search for games that require a lot of movement or games that don't require any. Altogether there are 8 useful categories, and you can choose parameters in each one of them to find the game that is just right for you. So the HG has three or four printed out to choose from. They'll also be playing Popcorn, and the Name Game from this site. These are 'ice-breaker' games, and a lot of these kids don't know each other. The HG also has a box of picture books for any toddlers who need to withdraw from the excitement. The HG also is thinking of teaching her groups a folk song as they cycle through.

We are also setting up a card table in a corner of the living room (blocking off the front door). Two or three of the bigger kids can sit here and work on paperfolding stuff- they are where the HG can see them all the time, but they are out of the loop in their own little center as well. We've taped up some instructions for making paper airplanes and origami boats. I believe I specifically chose (for simplicity) this 'deltry,' (I really think that should have been delta, but oh, well), the 'rapier,' this paper helicoptor just because it will be so cool dropped over the top of our stairs, the 'fish', and Nick's Paper Airplane. Of course, kids are welcome to try their own designs as well, I just wanted to give them some ideas if they needed them. We have stacks of scratch paper for the airplanes, and some old magazines for the paper boats (glossy magazine paper makes better boats). The kids will write their names down on their airplanes and later we'll have a flying contest. We are considering making one of the teenage boys 'Flightmaster' and having him supervise airplane flying in the garage, but we're not sure how cooperative they'll feel.

In the laundry room/Mud room we have an old two person school desk. We'll have two people at a time here, and we expect this also to be mostly for bigger kids. We are setting out straws, toothpicks, and playdough. I printed out coloring pages of a handful of famous buildings (The Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Sears Tower, and Empire State Building Oooh, I like the Roman Aqueduct here). WE taped this pictures on the wall in front of the desk and the kids are to work on building a model of one of these buildings.

The Equuschick will be with her group in the master bedroom. She has some coloring pages, some booklets from work, and some pictures of various dog postures to go over with the children so they can recognize when a dog is feeling stressed or frightened. She'll talk to them about the right way to approach a dog, and if time permits and Zeus is feeling cooperative she will walk him through some of his tricks and explain how she taught him those tricks. One of the tricks I never ask him to do is 'give me kisses.' When you tell him 'kisses' he puts his nose up on your nose. The Equuschick taught him this trick after visiting a dolphin show where they explained how they taught the dolphins this very trick. I'll have to get some of the links from websites she's using from her later.
We expect Zeus to frighten small children into submission just because of his massive size (he's nearly 100 pounds of muscle and bone).=) However, the Equuschick also has some books and toys ready for the tinier tots.

The mothers will be upstairs seated in a circle in a sunny spot in The Common Room. I'm thinking I'll have a small table set up with teacups and tea things. I'll have a pleasant CD in the player (either Carrie Crompton and the Baroque Folk or some harp music). We'll light a few candles, even though it is in the middle of the afternoon.

We have dusted, straightened, and tidied. We'll sweep the floors one last time after lunch. I am not mopping the floors because there's not any point to mopping just before a dozen adults and fifty children stop by for the afternoon, is there?

I did ask some online friends for advice and suggestions and there were several I liked and will keep in mind for a much smaller group another time. But there isn't going to be any adult supervision possible except my four Progeny (16, 17, 22, 23), and I'm not having fifty kids set up forts in my living room. Here are some of the ideas I thought sounded like fun for ten or fewer- incidentally, I thought most of them sounded like fun ideas for a birthday party, too, and none of them would cost any money to speak of:

There were some terrific science activities at this site. I especially liked the section of science activities to do at a restaurant or in the dining room at home while waiting for your food. It's a keeper.

A 'treasure hunt.' Prepare 2 identical maps, split the older kids into 2 teams, and have them running about the place trying to solve clues. i.e., the map leads to clue #1, which leads to clue #2, etc. Or, you could have 2 completely different treasure maps, and 2 different 'treasures' at the end. (Cupcakes? snack bars? teenage boys love food.)

Do a couple of science lessons on magnetics. Little children will enjoy just playing with magnets and magnetic toys.


Read a story and have the kids build something related to the story from Leggoes.


Put everything needed for constructing a simple circuit in a paper bag and saying 'have at it'. Using low voltage batteries should ensure no one gets
hurt, at least, not much. Heh. Or you could put the supplies for other science projects and explorations in different lunch bags. Or you could put a collection of oddities in a bag- pipe cleaners, nuts, bolts, bottle caps, glue sticks, whatever, and ask each child to create a 'sculpture' or other art project of some kind.


Build structures out of packing peanuts. When wetted slightly, the peanuts stick together. Add small animals and stickers to complete the projects. Use a sponge or paper towel for wetting.

-Collect any kind of machine, old copier, lawn mower that doesn't work, that sort of thing (nothing with a tv type screen that might be broken and be dangerous), clocks, etc. A group of boys could bring screwdrivers and wrenches, maybe some vise-grips and take the item apart.

-Ask others to bring any scrap lumber they have along with nails/fasteners, fastening tools -hammer and screw drivers, and let the boys build something.

-Have each family bring a roll of aluminum foil for each boy. Let them make a "boat" that floats. Use a kid wading pool and see which one floats/sails the best (wind is by blowing, storms happen when the water is stirred).

Ask other parents to help supervise a winter "field day" and have them do exercise competitions, consider having them do it by teams. Sit ups, push ups, jumps, running races, obstacle courses carrying an egg on a spoon or bike riding or one person leading a blindfolded partner, balancing on a 2x4 laying on the ground, stilts or pogo stick contests.

Set up toy army men all over a particular room (on bookshelves, on top of furniture, etc) and then taking turns shooting each others with rubber bands. If you have Lincoln logs or Legos, the boys can create walls and obstacles to set up so others can't hit *their* army men.

Play 4-square. You can make a board anywhere, inside or out using masking tape or chalk. Adjust the size of the board to the size of the ball you are using.

Play paper football, with a triangle shaped football folded out of paper.

Outside foot races- only the boys and older children have to carry the younger
children...like *horse* racing.

The Story of a Crazy Lady

Some of you will remember when, a couple weeks back, I posted a hypothetical question about what you would say if you had just been reminded that months ago you had promised to present the devotional to your monthly support group for homeschooling moms.

There were some great suggestions and they blended together very good topic, I thought, so I was prepared, and with no great trouble. And then the meeting was canceled because of the weather.

Our Moms group is pretty small, we might get five or six moms at any given month. And this month has been pretty snowy adn blowy so I know people haven't been able to get out much. So I had this bright idea. I would invite the moms here for a meeting, only in the afternoon and they could bring their own Progeny. And our Progeny would help entertain them. We'd divide the other P. into four groups and rotate them out through the four activies our oldest four P. would provide- a craft with Jenny, some bread baking with Pip, a story and skit with the HG, and a class on dog safety with the Equuschick (with concluding tricks by Zeus).

Doesn't that sound lovely? I sent the introductions. The meeting is for tomorrow. I forgot to set a deadline for responding, but since I had explained that we'd provide the snacks and that what we would be doing included baking and crafts I did think that people would realize without being told we needed a few days in advance to prepare the right number of craft supplies. By the end of the first week I had heard back from three moms, 10 children. Sounded nice and cozy. A couple more trickled in a few days ago. The group was larger, but still comfortable.

Yesterday we got notification that four more adults and 22 more children wanted to come. That is a total of over 40 children (not counting mine) and 11 mothers (not counting me). I have heard from mothers I haven't seen all year long. Today most of the Progeny are going to be out and I am babysitting a three year old, an arrangement made weeks and weeks ago. Can you say insane?

Yes. But what really threw me off was this conversation:

Mom: Is it too late for us to come?

Me: Well, no, I guess not. The groups are getting pretty big, but we'll just make a fifth group by setting up a card table and some Uno cards. Uno is a game that can be picked up and set down without too much trouble, and nobody needs to supervise it. That should keep the groups the girls are working with down to a reasonable size.

Mom: Well, I had a question about that. The activities you have planned sound kind of girly. Are my boys going to be interested?

Me: ?

Mom: I mean, do you have anything planned my boys will want to do?

Me: Um. I have no idea. If they do not want to do what we have planned, I guess they can just play Uno the whole time.

Mom: Well, would you rather do this over two different days so you can have one day of girly activities and on another day do stuff more interesting to the boys?

Me (firmly): Uh, No. This is it.

I hung up the phone in bewilderment. I sent out a plea for ideas to a small email list of friends and homeschoolers. Then I went out and rearranged my living room. The Progeny are only more certain than ever that I am nuts, but it works for me.

Two changes have been made to the program. I emailed the group and asked them to bring snacks after all. Upon the advice of a friend I am setting up another table with some toothpicks (supplied by our visitors) and a batch of home made dough. There will be pictures on the wall of two or three famous buildings and the kids at that table will use the dough and toothpicks (and possibly cut up drinking straws) to reconstruct one of those buildings.

We might have a paper airplane folding table, but maybe not. It will be too cold to play outside, unfortunately, and the garage is a mess so I can't send them out there (it's not the mess that worries me, it's the piles of furniture and boxes of breakables).

So I don't think I'll be posting much between now and Saturday, except perhaps to tell how it all went. And if you'd like to leave your comments with other brilliant, quiet, and not messy ideas, that would be lovely. If you would like to pray for my Progeny, that would be lovelier still.

One more change we're making is that I am setting up a donation can in the room with the Moms requesting donations for the babysitting. The Progeny suggested that they could place a persuasive note on it saying something like, "Donate or we'll teach your children rude phrases." I think they are a tad stressed.

Winter

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
-Isaiah 55:10-12

Still Working

So the FYB is still getting used to his new chore chart- and to having a chore chart he has to refer to instead of just me reminding him of what he needs to do each day.

One of the chores he and the FYG share is to make their parents' bed. There is a good reason for this- for many years I couldn't make it when I got up because one or both of them had climbed in it during the dark hours of the morning. So we asked them to make it when they got up. For a few years the FYB also slept on a top bunk and he couldn't make his own bed, so I did his and he did mine. Thus, one or both of them making our bed in the morning is a habit of long standing, but the actual chart is a new thing in the land for this young lad.

There is a computer and desk right next to my bed and the last several mornings as soon as I get up I pull out a stack of books to list for sale or trade. I find it easiest to spread them out over my bed, since the computer desk itself is already covered with books on every square inch except the part that's covered by a wooden crate. Which is full of books. There's also a pretty green basket for decoration. Of course, it's full of- but never mind.

So the FYB came in this morning and waved a peremptory hand at my books, saying urgently, "It's time to make the bed. These must go. You can put them back after I make the bed, but I have to make it now."

In the middle of typing a description, I looked at my carefully sorted stacks and groaned. "Honey, come back and do it later, or I'll do it later. I have these sorted and I don't have any room to put them and keep them sorted."

"But Mom," he said seriously, "It's on my list, and I have to do it now!"

I pointed out that I made that list so I know what it says and it did not say he had to make that bed by 8 a.m. There were other things he could do before the bed- like finish swallowing the breakfast he was still chewing and then brushing his teeth. He could take out the trash, make sure the bathrooms all were stocked with toilet paper. He could water the upstairs plants or sweep under the loveseat. He could do everything else on his list before he made the bed. Then he could just come back and do this later or leave it for me to do when I finished my book listings.

He left the room, but he came right back, this time carrying a wooden t.v. tray and stand. He set it up for me and said, "We can put the books here and keep them sorted. But I really need to make the bed now. I already crossed it off my list before I came in here."

I moved the books.

Of Straw Men and Taking the Harder Road

A friend of mine pointed out a global warming blogpost she thought I might be interested in reading, and asked if I felt up to the debate with the blog-owner. I didn't. There were a number of reasons for that, but one of them was it was quite obvious that blog-owner wasn't interested in genunine discussion of any the issues. The reason I could tell that was because of the basis for her post.

There are a lot of reasons why people have concerns about what passes for common wisdom on global warming these days- they range from doubts over the science itself to doubts about whether the proposed solutions are remotely effective or even desirable. Those who challenge current Global Warming scaremongers as seen in your local news include, but are not limited to, people who think we just don't have enough data yet, people who think that sure, it's probably real, but it's not a bad thing, people who think that sure, it might be real but it isn't caused by humans, it's a natural cycle that happens with or without men, people who point out that we can't even accurately predict the weather next month, so it's a little much to believe we can accurately predict it over the next decade or century, and people who point out that the Kyoto Treaty never even addressed some more probably contributors to Global Warming (if it exists), but singled out America while giving the polluters of choice in Europe a free pass. That's a lot of reasons, and here's a link to a post offering a fuller explanation of those and some others.

But our blogger addressed none of them. Instead, she singled out perhaps the least common argument ever used against global warming- and in fact, an argument I have never heard offered as anybody's sole reason for questioning it. It was just some flippant remark by some guy she knew- and that's an intellectually dishonest tactic known as a 'straw man.' It's always easier to debate straw man then it is real people with real arguments, though. That's why people do it. It makes them look so smart, too, because they have all the answers- since they carefully selected the argument, of course. It's easy to refute the arguments you handpick and dress up a bit. It's much comfortable for that blogger and her friends to complacently mock the 'anti-global warming crowd' when they have tidied them away with a convenient label, regardless of whether or not most of them have even heard of that label, let alone subscribed to it.

I've made it sound deliberate, but I doubt that it is. And if I sound harsh and crticical, it's partly because I know I've done this, too. It's human nature to choose the easy way. I once had an atheist professor who bragged about stealing fossils from one of his co-workers- because he decided the guy had too many and was selfish. I once knew an atheist who mocked his wife for her religious beliefs, and one day she asked him how he could make fun of something he'd never read, so he read the Bible and became a Christian. And it's pretty easy to pick those two guys and use them as reprentative of the category 'Atheist,' but it's also a kind of jerky, stupid thing to do- and yet, I've done it. Not on purpose, but still, I did it without thinking, and that might even be worse. And then what do you do with the good many honest and kind hearted atheists who actually have read a Bible all the way through and rejected it, something all too many Christians have never even tried?

It is really, really difficult to accurately and fairly represent positions with which you disagree. The more strongly you disagree, the more your disagreement is based on some moral base, the hard it is. The hardest things are often the most worthwhile.


No, I'm not posting the link here, because I'm not interested in the blog-fight that would ensue.

Affinities

Veteran Homeschoolers know that homeschooling can take us anywhere, and we never can be quite sure where the next interest will lead us.

One of the things My favorite Homeschool Mentor, Miss Charlotte Mason, talks about is the importance of putting children in touch with what she calls their 'affinities.' Affinity can mean 'A natural attraction, liking, or feeling of kinship' and it can also mean a 'Relationship by marriage.' This starts to make sense you remember that Miss Mason also says that 'education is the science of relations.'

You see, the more things we know and find interesting, the more connections we discover between those old things and new things we learn- the more we know, the more we can know, and the more we care about things, the more interested we will be in knowing more. Incidentally, that's one of the many reasons it is important not to dismiss topics that just don't interest you based on the question, "When will we ever need to know that!?" You don't know, and decisions based on ignorance are seldom best.

From time to time the Headmaster and I pick a book to read together. Because our clocks are on alternate rhythms we end up taking turns with it- I read him to sleep at night, and he reads me back to sleep in the mornings.=0 One way or another we get through about a book together about every five years this way. Several years ago we were reading Penny Gardener's Charlotte Mason Study Guide together. During the time that this book was our husband/wife read aloud, we took a little jaunt ovr the mountains to visit relatives. We stopped at a National Park along the way to enjoy our picnic lunch and squeeze in a little nature study.

It was truly lovely, one of those delicious homeschooling moments where all the work and reading seems to just coalesce in a sparkling, effortless and jewel-like moment. The Progeny were besides themselves with joy, finding all sorts of "treasures" and exclaiming over each of them. The Headmaster and I were looking at each new find, and smiling conspirationally at each other and quoting little bits from Gardner's book all about what was going on- "introducing them to their first-born affinities..." "intelligence limited by their interests," '...nature study,' yadda, yadda, when all the children except The Cherub and the Boy, who was then an infant, let out war whoops of excitement over the greatest find of all, ever, anywhere, at any time, they'd never seen anything this wonderful on a nature trek before, they couldn't believe it, we would be so impressed. They were giddy, and practically incoherent. As we understood is that this was incredibly and they were gleeful about it.

Chattering with delight and using sticks and a plastic bag they proudly brought their newfound treasure to us to examine, and admire, with them. It was a great pile of what we believe to be.... bear scat (that's poop, to the uninitiated).

We actually have a children's book on animal tracking that includes the different types of scat produced by different animals, but it didn't include bear for some reason, so we could only be reasonably sure. Our certainty was largely by process of elimination (what a terrible pun). It didn't look like anything human. It didn't resemble anything in the book. It was large. We had some clues about the critter's diet and they were compatible with what we knew of bear diets. For those interested in these details, later did find a better illustration, and yes, it was bear scat.

Meanwhile, the poor Headmaster sat upon the picnic table with his head in his hands, melodramatically moaning:

"Poop. My daughters are interested in POOP. This is what homeschooling has led us to? Poop? They have an affinity for manure!???! We're surrounding by all the wonders of nature and my little ladies go for the droppings?!!"

Which was a pretty fair assessment. We consider it a success story. And for those wondering, yes, our Progeny have occasionally included sketches of scat in their Nature Notebooks.



*The book we were using that had no bear illlustrations is still quite nice for beginners. It's called _Tracks, Scats and Signs_ by Leslie Dendy, published
by Northwood Press in Wisconsin.

** Yes, if you've been with us for a while you have read this story before.

Lying

Lying is so destructive to a family, and if a child starts lying it really needs to be nipped in the bud before too late. I once had a friend who told me it was just a stage children go through, and she was correct, to a point. It is a stage. But it's a stage you have to take care of or it becomes a habit.

Charlotte Mason thought it was important to discover why a child was lying, because there are different causes and solutions. I agree with this, to a point, but I disagree with her about what she thinks are the typical causes. I think she missed what I believe is the most common cause. This is just my experience and observation, however. Yours may vary. We have had two who lied habitually and overcame that habit, and both did so for very different reasons.

I say we had two who lied habitually- but all of mine first started telling lies at around 4 years old. It did not become a habit with the others because I learned to quickly stop this before it became a habit. I've talked about this with my friends, and their experiences are the same, some start around 3, some at closer to 5, but the developmental stage is about the same. If you don't get anything else from this post, I hope you do take away the understanding that it does not mean you're a failure as a parent if your children begins lying to you somewhere around four years of age. I have a theory about this.

There is a time when young children do _not_ realize that you don't know everything that they know. They think if they see it or experience it, everybody else does, too. You know this stage- when a child holds up a book so only he can see the picture and says, "See this fireman?" And you say, "No, I can't." And he says insistently, "Yes, you can, see, it's right here!" and points to the fireman only he can see because only the back of the book is being shown to others. Or, as happened a few years ago at our house our 3 y.o. was quite certain we all were hurt because he'd skinned his knee. Another of our children was certain we all experienced her dreams with her. If she saw it in a dream, she just knew we'd been there, too, and she would get very frustrated when we didn't know what she was talking about.

Anyway, there comes a point when a child almost suddenly discovers that his parents do not see and know everything that he sees and knows. This is amazing to him, and he pokes and a picks away at this knowledge. I liken it to the way a child will take a small hole in his sweater and poke his finger through it, exploring the hole and in the process making the hole bigger and bigger. Or we could just say the child is experimenting with this new knowledge and what it means. I really do think that quite often their first little lies are not told with intent to deceive, but rather, with an intent to find out just what it is that his parents do and do not know after all. This is an important step towards being able to see things from somebody else's point of view- because before they didn't even realize there was a different point of view than their own. This is a good sign, developmentally, but you still need to get involved.

At around 4 most children find this 'hole' in their universes and start picking at it, and they start by telling a lie and getting away with it, and then they keep on lying for no better reason than because they can and they never knew this before. It needs to be stopped, of course, but I really believe most children do start lying for this reason. Most parents spend a lot of time hand-wringing and wondering where they went wrong and what have they done, and how terrible this all is, and it's all so shattering and the child will probably grow up and perjure himself in court and what are we going to do. Based on my theory and observations, most parents simply don't need to stress out too much further about what they've done wrong if a child starts to lie around fourish. It's just that stage. You didn't do anything. However, I think parents still need to take it seriously, and
they need to accept the shocking fact that their little darlings _can_ lie- much damage is done when parents refuse to believe it is possible, and meanwhile, the child continues to lie with impunity, and by the time the parent accepts the sad reality, it has become a habit for the child to prevaricate.

My first child started this way. She learned, at about four, that she could tell Mommy something that wasn't true, and Mommy didn't know it! This was normal. But she kept it up because I didn't and could not believe that my child would lie. After all, she never had before! This is like refusing to believe a child can walk or speak because she never has before! I realized this about two years after the fact. I also couldn't believe it because there was no reason for it. Well, children do not always reason like adults, and at any rate, all of us do things without good reasons behind them from time to time.

Thus I allowed it to develop into a habit. There was no other reason behind her lying- she'd simply discovered that she _could_, and, fascinated with this knowledge, kept on doing it because her mother didn't nip it in the bud before it became a full blown habit. It took much prayer, discipline, consistency and time in the Word to overcome this bad habit. And I learned, to my sorrow, the truth of CM's insistence on consistency- somewhere she mentions the mother's tendency to overlook it 'just this once' because the child is so sorry, and then you are right back where you started from, only worse. Oh, 'tis true, 'tis true!

She says: "Never permit the child to regress to the bad habit for even a moment. (page 123 of volume one) You must _not_ relax your efforts or permit the slightest backsliding _Never_ overlook the slightest regression in a habit you are working
on 'because she's been trying so hard, after all.' This is not doing your child any favor at all, it is making her life far harder and it is reinforcing the very bad habit you are _supposed_ to be helping her to overcome. (See pages 121-2) Mistimed easiness will lose every foot of the ground gained. (page 124)

Do not relax, do not mistakenly overlook a bad habit just this once, or you will find yourself beginning again, only this time it will be much harder for both you and the child. I am delighted to share with you that we did learn to be consistent here, and she did stop telling lies and by the time she was six years old, she was completely trustworthy.

The second child who had a problem with habitual lying was a child who lied habitually from fear. She joined her forever family through adoption when she was almost 4, and she simply was afraid. She was afraid of the new rules, afraid of the unknown (and everything was unknown to her), afraid, bewildered, confused- and lying was one of her coping mechanisms. She sometimes confessed to doing wrong when she hadn't because she thought that's what we wanted to hear. We made many mistakes here, and it took several years of work.

Other children may also lie out of fear, but their fear stems from different causes. I have known children to lie and deceive because their parents made the cost of telling the truth too high. I understand the desire not to let children think they can get away with any sort of naughty behavior if only they make it back to tell their parents about it before somebody else does, but you must not err on the other side by making it just as risky to tell the truth as it is to lie. I think different circumstances and causes will warrant different treatment, but I would only be guessing about what works in other cases. I'll stick here to the two cases I have the most connections with. Charlotte Mason, if I recall correctly, thought that children who lied from fear might need to be taught courage, and probably this is true for some naturally timid children.

But I think what worked the best in our particular circumstance was not to teach our child courage, but to teach her that her fears were unfounded. We had to convince her she was loved unconditionally. We had to build a relationship with her. Since she
was older when she came to us, she didn't know we loved her no matter what she did- she didn't know we loved her at all. We could tell her so, but she had no background or relationship with us upon which to base any trust with us, and the last person who told that she loved her had 'given her away.' This is hard for a 4 y.o. to understand.

This was a unique situation, but sometimes our birth children don't know how much we love them, either. Sometimes they see high expectations as _conditions_, and we need to be sure they know better (we do this not by telling them so, but by showing them this through our actions, and sometimes by recognizing our expectations are too high or our way of communicating them too harsh).

We also had to convince her that what we wanted was always the truth, not false confessions of wrong- doing. We even had to teach her what a lie was- we explained over and over that it was any attempt to make somebody believe something other than the truth.

It took years for two reasons. One is because of our own mistakes- I think we expected too much too soon, and didn't realize how much we were asking of her. Another reason is that _generally_ it takes about as long as the child is old at the time of adoption for bonding to complete. We expected it to take a few months. In reality, since our daughter was almost 4, it should have taken about four years.I think that bonding needed to be complete before she could trust us enough to always tell the truth.

One thing I wish we had done differently is to give her fewer opportunities to lie- both by keeping her close by more often, and also by not putting her in the position where she felt safer by lying- in other words, not asking her questions about who did what. We already knew that we couldn't be certain of her answers, so I don't think it was fair to ask her questions when we could only half believe the answers anyway.

However, children are people too, and people are more resilient than we realize, more forgiving, more flexible than we think possible. Parents aren't perfect, and we all muddle through in one shape or fashion after all. So we we did the best we could by our lights at the time to explain what lying was, why it was a problem, and to make it safe for her to tell the truth. For many years now she has been reliable, and utterly trustworthy- and, of course, she knows how dear she is to us.

Which is not to claim that any of us are perfect. That should go without saying, but some of us need reminders.=)

That Was Then

Written in 1998 (some slight changes made for the purposes of this post, but no substantive alterations):

We taught ________ her letters by using magnetic letters and a Laurie crepe rubber puzzle. We put the letters in a bag, and she would reach inside and grab one, identifying it by the feel before she looked at it. Of course, this gave her trouble later with p, b, q, and d, so if I were doing it over again I'd keep those letters out and teach them some other way. I also had her practice her spelling words later on using magnetic letters (she had trouble with handwriting too).

I don't know how much that helped, she's still a pretty poor speller, but she has an amazing vocabulary. My dh is an AF recruiter and he gave her a pre-ASVAB test just for fun. In the vocabulary section she scored higher than any student he's had, and he's had several honour roll students take it. She was also only 12 at the time, and in the eighth grade.

I mention that not to brag (well, that's not my main purpose, anyway;-)), but to point out that some really bright people are simply dismal spellers, and I'm not too sure anything will really change that, other than one of those little electronic pocket spellcheckers=/.

This is now.

In 2007: That child is the now Grown-up Equuschick. I think she might still be under the impression that she doesn't spell well, but, in fact, I ask her for spelling advice because she spells very well. She spells and writes so well that her writing is the most often complimented on this blog. She writes a regular column for our local paper (about the animal shelter and adopting animals) and they never have to make changes for her grammar or spelling. She spells so well that one of the reasons the county hired my little homeschool graduate is so she could correct the spelling and grammar errors her high school graduate co-workers make in their reports and other written documents. She just was a late bloomer in the spelling department- or maybe I was the impatient sort of gardener who keeps pulling up the carrots to see how they are growing.

I let her use (indeed, I implored her to use) the spell-check function of MSWord so that she would at least notice when a word might be questionable. I do think it helped. I also think she simply needed time. She took longer to learn the alphabet than most of her siblings did. In fact, for some time I thought she never would. She would learn three letters and then we'd move on and she would forget the first three and learn a new trio. It was though her memory had a capacity for only three letters. We hit on the magnetic and crepe rubber puzzle letters in a bag method entirely by accident. Purely on a whim one weary morning, I had her reach in the bag where the letters were stored and see if she could find the 'C,' (or whatever)- and she did. As I recall, she learned her letters in about a week once I stumbled on the method that worked for her.

Even if she never had learned to spell well, it would not have been the end of the world. When my two oldest girls were young teens I remember the stifling sense of panic I felt. They were almost grown. My work with them would soon be done and there was so much we hadn't accomplished, so much I hadn't done, so much that needed to be done, and soon they would be 18 and it would all be too late, too late. I was sick with worry.

Well, they have both passed 18 some time ago, and to my astonishment, while much of my work may well have been done more or less around there, they just keep right on growing and changing and learning with or without me. In retrospect, I see that I acted like I believed they were something like polymer (Fimo) clay, and their 18th birthdays would act on them like the oven acts on polymer clay- hardening it into its set and final shape. I thought their character, their habits, their attitudes, their everything would be fixed, for good or ill, pretty much by what we did and didn't do in high school, and I was't meeting my expectations for myself. It is true that much of what we do can make some things easier or harder for our children when they are grown. If parents could have no influence on how our children turn out then I don't think they would need parents. But I don't think I fully understood what Charlotte Mason meant when she said 'Children are born persons' until two of my persons grew up and continued to be persons who learned, who grew, who put off bad habits and put on good ones, who made dumb mistakes and smart choices, who loosened up in some areas and tightened up in others, and, in short, acted like living, breathing, changing people instead of scripted characters in a book.

I know this probably sounds perfectly obvious to you, and if I had read it before my first two kids were teens, I think it would have sounded obvious to me, too. But something about seeing that big 18th birthday looming up on the horizon all of a sudden just fogged my vision for a bit. It's good to take parenting seriously . It's good to want to do the best you can. It's even good not to be too complacent about what you're doing. But if you're one of those parents who, like me, sees the teen years as the end of the road so you'd better hurry up and cram 18 years of things you forgot to pass on into four years- relax. It's not the end of the road.In fact, the road here does not end until life ends.


There's nothing magic about 18 anyway, that's just a cultural artefact. The bridge is not out at 18, and not even at 21. Your child hasn't 'arrived' at 18. Somewhere around there (give or take a couple years, depending on you and the young person) he takes over the controls and destination of the car completely. But he keeps on going. He doesn't stop, stuck at whatever destination you created for him and unable to go anywhere else after 18. You've taught him how to drive, given him some roadmaps and shown him the sorts of things he might run into on his journey. You've probably taught him some things about how to take care of his car. Probably you've not taught him everything he needs to know. It's okay. He won't stop learning and growing just because he passed the year 18 marker. Your child is not 'stuck' forever at the same level he reached when he was 18. I promise.

Note to the DHM

One spoonful of coconut oil is enough to keep the Equuschick's throat in gag reflex for a week.


(But she did open a can of black olives. That was an improvement.)

Work, Work, Work

After almost a year in the new house I finally feel enough at home, feel some sense of where things are and what needs to be done, that I finally wrote out new detailed chore charts for this house (kind of like this old one). Because I always overschedule, that means yesterday and today were very busy days. This is also a big jump in responsibility for the FYB in particular, and so he's been just a little over conscious lately of his work contributions to the family. And today was busier still because we had our weekly neighborhood Bible study here at the house, and our single mom friend and her two children came over this afternoon and stayed until after the Bible study.

So, tonight we during our weekly Bible study the HM read aloud from Ephesians chapter four, verses 11-13:

And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

And the HM expounded for a moment on the fact that each of us has a purpose in life, that no matter how small and insignificant we think we are, God has work for us to do, and we need to be doing the Lord's work, all of us. "I have work to do," said the HM. Then he pointed at Mrs. Neighbor, "God has work for you to do, too," and he pointed to Mr. Neighbor and said, "You have work, too, each of us has a job..."

And the FYB sighed heavily and nodded in agreement as he said (with great expression and a world-weary air), "I know that, and I sure do have some work to do, too!"

Comparisons.

This is our old house sometime in the spring. Note the very flat yard around the fence.

And this would be the same yard and fence a couple days ago.

Carnival of Children's Literature

MotherReader hosts, and it's a treat.

Popcorn and Other Conveniences

I mentioned here how shocking I think it is that people spend crazy amounts of amount (and that is what it comes out to when you do the math) to buy microwave popcorn in a bag. Yuck. But I've done the math on most convenience foods. I forget that I've been doing this a long time, and some of you maybe haven't. If you've grown up with convenience foods, you may not even realize that's what they are (I can't tell you how many times people I thought would have known better were surprised it was possible to make cake/frosting/biscuits/bread/pancakes/etc from scratch instead of a mix).

Here's an article where somebody does the math for you. You'll want to be sitting down, probably carefully holding your head in your hands for support if you buy some of this stuff:

A friend of mine, for example, bought pre-marinated, individually
vacuum-packed chicken breasts for $1.67 per four-ounce portion. It never
occurred to her this is $6.68 a pound! Boneless chicken breasts were selling for
$3.29 a pound. If it takes 5-cents worth of seasoning and one minute to season a
pound's worth (do it in the morning and leave it in the fridge to marinate), you
pay $3.34 per minute for this "convenience" or $200 per hour!
...Another example? Microwave popcorn. The cheapest nine-ounce bag at the
store was $1.19. It takes three minutes to prepare in the microwave. A 32-ounce
bag of popcorn kernels costs the same $1.19. I brought that bag home, clicked
off my trusty stopwatch, slapped a pot on a burner, poured a tablespoon or so of
oil in it, threw in three spoonfuls of kernels, popped them and checked the
time. Two minutes, fifty seconds. Allowing twenty seconds to wash the pot and
put it away, I saved only ten seconds. Yet the oh-so-convenient, time-saving
microwave popcorn costs 3.5 times as much.

Working parents are some of the biggest losers when it comes to buying convenience products to save time:

Think about it. Say you're paid $12 per hour. Buy $60 worth of "time saving" products that save you a single hour of time, and you've just worked five hours to save one hour! (Actually, it costs more, when you factor the bite taxes out of your paycheck.) Insane.

So ignore the commercials and marketing claims. Estimate the cost-to-time-saved ratio before you buy. Chances are, you'll save money, quite possibly a lot of money. Then maybe you can afford to work less, and that's the best way to save time.

Bonnet Tip to those adorable newlyweds at Thou and Thou Only for doing their homework. Harmony points out that not only are the adults in those households that buy into these convenience foods losing when they work five hours to pay for an hour's worth of convenience, their kids end up taking some very faulty assumptions and practices for granted:

And there's the real reason why we are a nation of convenience food addicts. How many kids my age grew up with moms who didn't cook very much, or when they did used a lot of convenience foods? For most of America, cooking without convenience foods is like cooking food from a foreign culture. They've never or rarely tasted it, and they've certainly never seen anyone *prepare* it. For most Americans, the idea of making bread from scratch is about as intimidating as the thought of making the spicy and sweet dried squid dish that I've seen at Korean markets, or making kimchi, would be for me.

Indications We Have Too Much Technology

Twenty years ago: I still remember reading a book to the HG, who suddenly jumped up and said, "You could put it on pause for a minute? I have to go potty."

Today: The FYB could be heard calling, "Can somebody come show me where to push 'play' on the Washing Machine?"

Homeschooling Carnival, Presidential Version

Homeschool Hacks hosts this week. It's a good one, as usual, this time sprinkled with lots of Presidential Trivia. It's a homeschool support group, magazine, catalog, field trip, and website all in one handy to use blogpost, so don't miss it! Want some free stuff? It's there. Need some encouragement? It's there. It's there. Philosophy? Math? Thoughts about the future? All this, and more- so go visit!

Free, Intereactive Online Flash Cards

APlus Flashcards, Java and nonJava, timed or not, compete with others around the world, or not, or try the game room (we haven't looked there yet).
Apples 4 the Teacher flashcards, Several subjects, I've only looked briefly at math. There are online tangram games, online games to practice money skills, skip counting, and more. The games look interesting. The flash cards offered multiple choice answers in the version I looked at.
Spanish flash cards Basic, but fun.
Math Facts flash cards Cute. We just tried the simplest addition version. Instead of typing in the numbers you click on the right numbers from the numberline below the problem. Some kid will find this easier, some harder. When you're finished you get a couple cute graphics and sound effects (I got them all right, so I got applause and clapping hands. When I tried getting them all wrong, I just got a simple sentence stating my score).
Online Music Flash Cards I liked this. It shows you the flash cards, and you answer in your head, then check your answer by scrolling the mouse over the card. Practice:
Note Names
Key Signatures
Intervals
Triads
Piano Note Names
Reading Piano Notes
Guitar Note Names
Reading Guitar Notes

Education 4 Kids More math facts, a bit more prep involved in setting up the perimeters, but not much.

Garbanzo Bean Salad

2 cups cooked garbanzo beans
2 stalks celery
1 green pepper
1 dill pickle
radishes
tomatoes
1 carrot
green onion
parsley
1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 cup wine vinegar or lemon juice

Mix up the dressing and combine with the warm beans. This helps the dressing really flavor the beans. Cool. Combine with your choice of other vegetables, which you choose based on what you have on hand and what appeals to you. You can slice, chop, grate, dice, or mince the veggies. You can use olives, mushrooms, nuts, cooked green beans, peas, and your choice of seasoning ans spices as well.

Artificial People

My copy of Beacon Lights of History by John Lord belonged to my great-grandfather (or great, great) was published in 1883, 1886, and 1888. Volume 3, which I am reading for March (and I got a head start on it when I finished my February book for the TBR challenge) is about 'Ancient Achievements.' Section one is on Greek and Roman accomplishments in law and politics, or Jurisprudence. I think Dr. Lord does a good job of explaining, from his perspective, both the strengths and weaknesses of Roman law in particular (which he admires more than Greek). He concludes this section with this warning:

The great practical evil connected with Roman jurisprudence was the intricacy and perplexity and uncertainty of the laws, together with the expense involved in litigation. The class of lawyers was large, and their gains were extortionate. Justice was not always to be found on the side of right. The law was uncertain as well as costly. The most learned counsel could be employed only by the rich, and even judges were venal, so that the poor did not easily find adequate redress. But all this is the necessary attendant on a factitious state of society, and by many is regarded as being quite as characteristic of modern, civilized Christian England and America as it was of Pagan Rome. Material civilization leads to an undue estimate of money; and when money purchases all that artificial people desire, then all classes will prostitute themselves for its possession, and justice, dignity, and elevation of sentiment will be forced to retreat,--as hermits sought a solitude when society had reached its lowest degradation, out of pure despair of its renovation.

I'm sure you can guess which sentence stood out for me: Material civilization leads to an undue estimate of money; and when money purchases all that artificial people desire, then all classes will prostitute themselves for its possession, and justice, dignity, and elevation of sentiment will be forced to retreat.

Are we an artificial people?

The Rabbi and the Prof

In Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red Harry Kemelman places David Small, his rabbi detective, in a local Christian college for a term. The book was published in 1973 and the student body and attitudes of the professors reflect that time period. The student body includes hippies, 'women's libbers,' war protesters, and the usual suspects, so it makes for an interesting read as 'historical fiction,' especially since it was written contemporaneously. What I find especially interesting in this mystery is the revealing information about the state of higher education at the time. The dumbing down of education has been going on for a very long time.

The Rabbi is perplexed because he's teaching a Monday, Wednesday, Friday course, and in Friday's class most of his students are absent [If you read the comments to this post, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, okay? :-D]. They generally leave campus for the weekend, getting a head start on Fridays. He learns that because of this there are very few Friday afternoon classes, and those teachers that have to teach a Friday afternoon course usually just don't have classes on Fridays. They never give quizzes on Fridays, which is exactly what Rabbi Small has been doing in an attempt to force his students to remain in class. One of his fellow teachers is trying to encourage him to go along with things as they are and give the students the 'snap course' with no Friday classes that they assumed they signed up for. The problem is, nobody told David this is what he signed up for, and he wouldn't have agreed if they had. So when his fellow teacher asks,

"Why get yourself in a sweat, Rabbi, trying to change it? What not do as the rest of us do and go along with things as they are?"

Rabbi Small replies,

"Because I'm a rabbi..." and then added with some obvious disparagement, "not a teacher."

His co-worker says that he thought the word rabbi just meant teacher. Rabbi Small explains, "Not that kind...The kind of teacher you have in mind, the kind that coaxes the young and immature to learn, a teacher of children-- that's something else. Him, we call a melemed, and the term has a derogatory connotation."
He goes on to explain why it has a derogatory connotation,

"...since Jews have had practically one hundred percent literacy for centuries, anyone can teach. Naturally, the social prestige or the financial reward for doing what everyone else can do is not great. So the melamed was usually someone who had failed at everything else and finally had to fall back on teaching children to make a living."

It would seem that 'Those who can't, teach' has a long Jewish tradition. I am not sure it's completely fair to compare the 100 percent literacy rate in the Jewish community with the dismal rates we have today. The Jewish community Rabbi Small is talking about is culturally more homogeneous than the typical American school classroom, and the parents, I am sure, are generally more supportive and cooperative. I also know nothing about the Jewish alphabet and how it compares to the English alphabet for phonetic difficulty. But our current attitudes toward education have been a problem for a long time.
Rabbi Small goes on to explain that it's reasonable to have to coax children to learn, but he's signed up to teach college, and his students should have an adult attitude toward instruction, so he won't coax and tease them to learn. His colleague says he doesn't have to, just give his lectures and let those who come, come, and those who don't can stay away. It's not his problem. But Rabbi Small has a problem- because those who stay away still pass the course, and in fact, this is so commonplace that his co-worker is surprised he's even asked a question about this.

Rabbi Small says,

"...the degree granted here also has value and meaning throughout the world and the authority to grant it was conferred by the state, as I understand it. The college system calls for the candidate to accumulate credits toward the degree by sitting under a number of instructors and then satisfying them that he has properly completed their courses of instruction. I am being paid to pass on some small part of the total. So if I don't do my work thoroughly, I'm acting dishonestly. I'm cheating.... everyone who assumes the degree indicates a body of knowledge has been successfully assimilated."

His friend is shocked, and asks if the Rabbi intends to flunk all of his students who don't attend Friday courses. The Rabbi assures him he will flunk all of his students who do not take and pass the exams, and since several exams will be on Friday, it naturally follows that he will have several students who flunk.

His friend explains that he hasn't flunked any students for several years, and the conversation concludes when he tells the Rabbi, "You're going to have an interesting year." And so he does. And so he does. But more on that in a later post.

Note: I do enjoy the Rabbi Small books because they are not just well written mysteries, but they are very informative, too, as Kemelman's tales of 'mystery and Talmudic logic' contain education expositions on many things Jewish as well. They are a bit gritty, and there is language that makes me flinch from time to time.

(I blame spell checker and my too hasty fingers for altering melamed to melamel. I hope melamel doesn't mean something dreadful)

Rainbow Salad Reincarnated

Today for lunch the Equuschick made some of her delicious home-made mayonaise. Then she combined that, some diced turkey breast, and some leftover Rainbow Salad for an incredibly tasty luncheon salad.

I am sure it would be almost as good with store-bought mayo.=)

Updated: She also added a 6 ounce carton of Brown Cow's cream-top Apricot Mango yogurt. When she told me this later, I thought she meant she added it to hers, and I very maturely said, "Ohhhh, yuck!" She said, "You already ate it that way, and you raved about it."

Oh. And very good it was, too.

George Washington

Betsy's Page has a must-read post. So read it.=)

Lent

We don't celebrate Lent here because we don't celebrate religious days we can't find in the Bible (this is just an FYI bit of information, not an invitation to argue about it), but I really like Cindy's plan for adding something on instead of giving something up for Lent.

That's a Good Question

"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?"

What kind of business would you have if employees knew that you couldn't fire them?

Tom Elia at The New Editor has the source- that's STeve Jobs talking about the negative effect of teacher's unions. His competitor disagrees, but I think Jobs has a point.

When more than 90% of the private-sector labor force isn't unionized, why do 97% of us earn above the minimum wage? If our bargaining power is so pitiful, why don't greedy employers exploit us and drive wages down to the legal minimum?
The simple answer is that bargaining power comes from having alternatives. Even in the absence of unions, employers have to treat workers well to attract and keep them. In a workplace as dynamic as that of the United States, where millions of jobs are destroyed and created every quarter, a company's ability to exploit workers is greatly limited by how easy it is to find another job.

(Brothers Judd)

Carnival of Family Life

Visit here.

Catholics and Episcopals

Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year, The Times has learnt.

The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches.

In a 42-page statement prepared by an international commission of both churches, Anglicans and Roman Catholics are urged to explore how they might reunite under the Pope.

The statement, leaked to The Times, is being considered by the Vatican, where Catholic bishops are preparing a formal response.

More here.

A few years back several Episcopaleans joined the Catholic church in reaction to the ordination of women. Included in their number were several priests, and the Catholic church received those married men into the Catholic priesthood, marriages intact. So this should prove rather interesting.

Scandal in the Classical Music World

Remember the Milli Vanilli scandal, where it turned out they lip synced their music?

Here's a potentially bigger scandal around the works of the late Joyce Hatto, a recently deceased English pianist:

It was around a year ago that Gramophone’s critics began to champion this little-known lady, whose discs – miraculous performances, released by her husband William Barrington-Coupe on the tiny label Concert Artist – were notoriously difficult to get hold of. Such was the brilliance of this pianist across Liszt, Schubert, Rachmaninov, Dukas and more in a dizzying range – that it was worth making the effort to seek out Concert Artist to get these discs, and they became much sought-after. By the time she died in June 2006, Joyce Hatto was not only a sudden widespread success, she was a cause célèbre. To love Hatto recordings was to be in the know, a true piano aficionado who didn’t need the hype of a major label’s marketing spend to recognise a good, a great, thing when they heard it.

A few people questioned whether one unknown player could really play so well across such a grand cataloge of composers. But nobody had any evidence that she didn't. Until:

Several days ago, another Gramophone critic decided to listen to a Hatto Liszt CD, of the 12 Transcendental Studies. He put the disc into his computer to listen, and something awfully strange happened. His computer's player identified the disc as, yes, the Liszts, but not a Hatto recording. Instead, his display suggested that the disc was one on BIS Records, by the pianist Lászlo Simon. Mystified, our critic checked his Hatto disc against the actual Simon recording, and to his amazement they sounded exactly the same.

In then went a recording of Hatto playing two Rachmaninov Piano Concertos and, sure enough, his computer's CD player listed it as another – by Yefim Bronfman, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, on Sony. Again, the critic compared, and again he could hear no difference.

The rest of the article is here. Investigators are finding more of Hatto's works that are exact duplicates of other recordings made by other artists, or sometimes merely slowed slightly so as to alter the timing.

More at today's ARts and Letters Daily.

Vintage Bible Story Illustrations, Take Two

I blogged about this source for some lovely vintage illustrations from Bible books (and they aren't all Bible stories, either) before. Click on the link and you can see a couple of my favorite illustrations.

Mommy Life just found them, too. So did Meredith at Merchant Ships.

Since so many new people are looking at them, I wanted to pass on a suggestion. I know Jeff personally- he's a great guy. He's also a busy guy, and a homeschooling dad. I know he buys at least some of the books he puts up on the website. I haven't asked him, but I'm sure if you come across an old public domain book with suitable illustrations, he would not be offended if you donated it to him so he could make more of these illustrations available for the rest of us.

The pictures really are delightful- please make note of Meredith's suggestions for proper use of them so that we don't abuse Jeff's generosity by overloading his server.

First Person Rural

IN an essay describing the stresses between modernity and tradition in Vermont, Perrin shares an example from the Maple Syrup business. He says the syrup you buy will come in a can with a pretty picture showing men lugging around their pales on yokes hoisted across their shoulders, sugaring houses with their great stacks of logs for burning, and the teams of horses ready for carting more wood, tanks of syrup or barrels of sugar.

But if you write to the extension office asking for advice on getting started in the sugaring business yourself, you'll be told to install pipes instead of hanging pails or doing anything more strenuous with a yolk than eating the one in the middle of an egg. Even if you have a steady supply of firewood, thanks to the trees dotting your hills, you'll be told to use oil imported from Texas. In fact, the only thing horses, yolks, pails, and sugar houses have to do with the sugaring business done the modern way, is that these are the sorts of things you should put on your cans of completed syrup in order to market it.

Holding out against modernization, says Mr. Perrin, are the 'hill farmers, country storekeepers, ox breeders, and so forth.' Most of those, he says, already had to take day jobs to support the farm work which they tried to keep up with on weekends and in the evenings. They get some support from some of the summer visitors- the sort who don't want to farm, aren't interested in building walls, milking cows, or putting in the work to collect maple sap each year, but they do like to watch other people do those things. For the most part I fear I fall more in the second group, although we part ways when those in the second group start to get critical if anybody in the first group goes to the other side.

That other side, the side pushing toward bigger and more modern, that's largely made up of.... more farmers, younger farmers, often, says Perrin, farmers who want their sons to be able to go into farming as a full time job, rather than another job they have to do when their paying work is done. But also in this group are those who work for the state, either in government or education. Perrin doesn't really get into the reasons why, but I wish he had.

When Perrin wrote this, back in the seventies, he thought the forced for modernization were winning, and I assume he's right. I don't know. What he thought really tips the balance here isn't the farmers or the politicians. It the consumers, the tourists, the people who say they like to know there are still some old fashioned farms and people doing old fashioned things in an old fashioned way, but still buy most of their produce from the large grocery store instead of the roadside stand, their milk and eggs from the same grocery store, their lumber from the box home improvement store, and eat out at restaurants who ship their supplies in from a battery farm, an automated dairy, a feedlot six states further south and west, and their maple syrup from Aunt Jemima or Golden Griddle, though they'll pay a higher price if it that bottle of corn syrup, chemicals and maple flavoring features a nice old-fashioned picture a sugar house, horse team, and tapped maple trees on the label.

He says when this process is complete, and he expected it would be within another generation, the only maple tree producers tourists could expect to see would be plastic and the there'd be taps and buckets there, drawing up real maple syrup from refrigerated tanks hidden underground. I don't know if his predictions turned out to be accurate or not. I do know it reminds me of visiting a giant dairy that also operates as a tourist attraction. You can see real cows getting milked- but you watch it through thick glass windows from within air conditioned, purified, stainless steel rooms, and the kids can have a try at attaching milk machine pumps to the udders of giant plastic and metal cows. They make cheese on the premises- you can watch part of the process through some more thick glass windows in stainless steel walls. The place uses 17,000 acres (that's three zeroes) and has 27,000 (also three zeroes) cows.

And I can say I have agrarian sympathies and lament the passing of the old fashioned and oh so picturesque ways, but the foods in my refrigerator and the nice electric gadgets in my kitchen might tell you a different story. It might be that they say something about how sincerely and passionately I believe what I think I do. They might tell you that my budget takes priority. A kitchen full of electronic gadgets and canned and boxed mixes might communicate that somebody cares more about their own convenience than they realized.

What do you value? What do you believe about these mundane things of life (I'm not asking big questions about life, the Universe, and everything, about salvation and faith and eternity. What you believe about those things may influence what you believe about the rest- at least, it should- but that's not what I'm asking about). Do you deplore the modernization of the farm, the disappearance of the family market on the corner, the mechanization of the food industry, the 'corporate face' of America, mass production, consumerism?

What's in your pantry and your refrigerator? What's hanging your closets and stored your garage? What's on your shelves? What are your hobbies? What does your family do for fun? How often do you eat out? Where do you go when you do? What do those choices communicate about what you really value and believe about those things?

Asian Broccoli Noodles

This recipe is also from The VEgetarian Express Lane Cookbook, and it's a keeper (which is why I still haveit, even though I don't have the cookbook).

1 medium head broccoli
2 bunches green onions
2 large minced cloves garlic
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger (you can use dried, but fresh is better)
2 tablespoons peanut butter
1 tablespoon sugar (omit if you are using peanut butter with sugar added)
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 Tablespoons water or vegetable broth
2 tablespoons lemon
salt to taste
8 ounces of pasta
oil

Cut up the broccoli into florets and 1 inch pieces. Do no discard the stalk- break it off and then peel the tough outer skin and dice the juicy, tender inner stalk. Actually, I like to eat the peeled broccoli stalks fresh and raw- they are sweet, tasty, and I like them better than the florets.

Cut off the roots and any wilted greens from the green oinions. Snip them up with your kitchen shears (shhh, don't tell, but for years I just used regular paper scissors for snipping my green onions). Snip them right into a small bowl and add the garlic, ginger, peanut butter, soy sauce, and sugar. Stir well, blending the peanut butter. Add the remaining ingredients (liquid, lemon juice adn slat).

Cook your noodles (we would use something like soba, spaghetti, or vermicelli) until al dente. Drain, rinse with cold water, drain again and set to one side.

Heat oil in a large, deep skillet (a wok would work) Stir fry the broccolie for three or four minutes. Add the noodles, stirring continously so they won't stick (you may need more oil. I almost always do). Give the peanut butter stuff one more good stir to mix in the spices well, and add it to the broccoli and noodles in teh pan, stirring well so it all gets coated with the peanute butter/spice mixture. Serve immediately.

This makes enough for about 4 people, less if they are very hungry people who like this sort of asian flavor (which several of us do).

Sunday Hymn Post

Sunday Morning Prayer
from Psalm 119

Incline my heart unto thy testimonies
That my way be stablished in Thy Word.
Incline my heart unto thy testimonies
That my way be stablished in Thy Word.

Turn away mine eyes
From beholding vanity;
And quicken thou me in Thy way.
That my way be stablished in Thy Word

Glory be to the Father and to the Son
And to the Holy Ghost.
Incline my heart unto thy testimonies
That my way be stablished in Thy Word.

Midi File here

The Historian & The Scientist Debate Komodo Dragons

The Equuschick, quite by accident, came across this story last week and, having made long ago something of a hobby of the Komodo Dragon, was quite fascinated.

She brought the paper home to show the family, and all but the HG were impressed and shared The Equuschick's interest.

The HG protested that they were drawing conclusions too quickly, that fifty years from now they were going to have to retract their statements, and that maybe Flora had so been around a male sometime in the past, and that besides, the evolutionary assertions were ridiculous.


The Equuschick countered that well, maybe they would make discoveries in the future that would provide new and possibly contradictory evidence, but that is what Science IS, so it is no use expecting otherwise of a discipline that exists for the very purpose of making new discoveries every day.

True, there are a few arrogant idiots in the world of science who insist that no theories held as fact today will ever be proved as fiction tomorrow, but a true man of science recognizes that Science is a Never-Ending Search for Truth and accepts the possibility that they might tomorrow learn they were wrong, but that is no reason to throw cold water on the exciting possibilities of today. It is the search itself that fascinates and inspires.


The HG protested that the articles all sounded too confident and they oughtn't to sound so confident if they knew they might find new data in the future, and The Equuschick protested that all that wasn't science, that was journalism, and that is what journalism DOES.


It is sad, of course, that so much of this is hailed as fodder for the Darwinian evolutionists, when actually all it may be is an interesting example of natural selection, where one species who may (or may not) have an advantage over another species becomes, by virtue of this advantage, the dominant species.

The essential distinction between Darwinian evolution and the very real process of natural selction, is, course, that according to natural selection, both species retain their own specific genetic code.

Flora's cool kids remained varanus komodoensis. They weren't, well, a very superior species of bunny rabbit or something.


/One of The Equuschick's More Vicious Moments. *adjusts halo* =)

(link fixed now)

Wow.

This is so cool.

Time for More Book Reviews

I was just about to link to Semi-Colon's Saturday Review of Books and spend some time there reading some book reviews myself when our power went off. So instead I spend some time playing Boggle with two of the Progeny, arguing about french fries and math, and reading some of Noel Perrin's essays on rural living. Oh, and the Equuschick made me a delicious cherry-chocolate milk shake. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Except for the part where I almost lost in Boggle to a ten year old who doesn't even spell well. To make the game more competitive when I play the younger children I promise not to use three letter words. I have to find words of four letters or more while they can use all the three letter words they can find. The Equuschick played with the FYG and me following the same handicap. Mostly the Equuschick and I canceled each other out while the FYG pulled ahead with her list of three letter words. She even found some four letter words we missed. I narrowly defeated her by finding the six letter word taxies near the end of the game.

Anyway, the book review looks fantastic. You'll want to read Cindy's post about books you didn't like for sure, and probably several others, but that's the only one I had time for so far (that's not true- I'd just already read that one).

Assorted Trifles

It's snowing again here, and has been since sometimes in the dark hours of the morning. The wind isn't blowing so hard today, so I don't think we'll drifts like we did earlier in the week. Granny Tea and G-Pa are home from Florida, and are all astonishment over the size of the drifts and snow banks in their yard and driveway. The snow plows had to put the snow in the middle of the road somewhere, and so now the banks of snow on the side of the road reach beyond the top of our fenceline. It was wet snow, too, so it's densely packed and the FYG tells me fun to walk on top of those banks.


The illustration above is another one from the Eldbridge Sabin book I blogged about here. If you enjoy vintage book illustrations, you could lose yourself for a while in this flicker site. You can share your own vintage book pictures there as well. The one on the right is from the cover of an old (circa 1940s) something or other- I scanned in the cover (which was torn and stained), picked the pictures that were the least damaged to enlarge, and then I threw the rest away. I think it was just a booklet of blank handwriting paper, or an old exercise or coloring book. Humpty Dumpty has always been one of my favorite nursery rhymes for some reason. Such a jolly little fellow.

Some people like to use these old scanned images in crafts and scrapbooking. So far, I just like to look at them. I mainly bookmarked this page to look at, too, but some of you crafter types will actually go ahead and look at the tutorial and make your own fabric flowers. Friends of ours recently sent us a fabulous bouquet of silk flowers attached to pens with green floral tape. You keep your bouquet of flowers in a vase next to the phone and you never lack for pens. These pens are not going to walk away and end up in the HG's purse at school, either, because you can't miss the flowers at the top. I wonder if you could do something similar with this craft?




You'll want to set your beverage down before clicking on this link. And don't blame me. I found it at the Beehive.

Vintage Cookery, cakes

Click to enlarge.
This is just one side of a small brochure. It's the right size to have been folded up and included in the package of flour itself. I like the simple lines of the bolw and spoon.
On the very back there's a blank order form to send in for "Latest Cake Secrets," a 'beautifully illustrated' book full of ''valuable baking secrets' and 'grand new recipes' for all kinds of cakes, cookies, quick breads, pastries and frostings. In 1936 you could order that book for ten cents in stamps or coin.

An Ice Sculpture

Simply gorgeous.

The Sort of Books the FYG Likes

"Books like 'Indian Captive' where you want to know what happened and when you do you wish you didn't."

Non Frugalities

I'm enjoying a cold, creamy cup of the best yogurt in the world, so I thought I'd share a few other nonfrugal things we do (currently because we can afford them). Just in case anybody had the idea that I was all frugality all the time.=)

All natural brown cow cream top yogurt. There just isn't any yogurt that tastes better, IMO. I buy cases of this stuff from the co-op whenever it's on sale. No non-fat or low-fat yogurt for us. I believe children need their fats, and besides, Brown Cow just tastes fantabulous.

Organic coffee beans- I drink one cup of coffee a day, two on rare occasions. My husband has two or three. We grind our beans seconds before making the coffee, and we make it in a coffee press (two cups at a time). It's not 'efficient' but the flavor is rich, robust, full, strong, and it's a total coffee experience. My husband calls it a 'cup of WHOA!!'

Chemical use in this country is (somewhat) regulated, and farmers are educated and they know that farmers have some of the highest rates of cancer in any business. Most of the farmers I know are careful about their exposure to chemicals, and they are always looking to ways to use less, even if they don't give a lick about 'organic.' I don't think this is true in other countries, especially where coffee beans grow, and I like to think that by buying organic coffee beans I'm helping a farmer far and away from here support his family and stay just a little bit healthier. Plus, it tastes so good.
It's outrageously expensive, however, and when times are tight I generally just quit drinking coffee altogether.

Flavored coffee creamer because I am a wimp, and yes, I realize that with my flavored coffee creamer I just about undo all the benefits to me of organic coffee.

Cheese- I don't think cheese is at all frugal, but I can't convince my family to eat less. I have convinced my husband that it should not be eaten by biting chunks out of a brick of cheese.

Frozen Ravioli- this is one convenience food that goes a long way at our house. Everybody loves it, none of us know how to make it, and I'm not sure it would be cheap if we could. WE get it at the discount grocer's and so it's not too bad.

Raw organic honey- I buy a five pound jar and it's about 3.00 a pound. I think it tastes much better.

Natural (no sugar added) peanut butter, because the other stuff has so much sugar added it might as well be candy. In fact, I think it is a candy. No, my kids don't like it nearly as much, but it lasts longer, and I am sure when they eat it that they are hungry and not just having a sweet tooth.

I am sure there are other things, but this is just off the top of my head. Here are two of our non-food luxury items:

Good Nights- disposable overnight 'pullups.' Cloth diapering is certainly cheaper, and I have done cloth before. However, I have a 19 year old child who still needs diapering at night and who is accident prone in the day and I really, really, do not want to do cloth diapers on an adult. I love the Good Nights company and have written them fan mail because they make a product that fits children up to, I think, 100 pounds. I've tried adult diapers, and they were much more troublesome to use, so much more that I can't even begin to tell you how troublesome. The Cherub is small for her age, so Good Nights work for her, and I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this. I have probably mentioned this before although it's not the sort of thing I would ordinarily talk about on a family blog, but let me just say that the Cherub has the mental development of a slow two year old, but she has the physical development of any other woman, and once a month I say a special prayer asking the Lord to bless, bless, bless the good people at the Good Nights company who made a product that fits her. It makes what could be a horrendously messy and demoralizing task simple and doable. Lately we've found a generic product in the same size at Walgreens and CVS, and they work just as well, but if not for the Good Nights company, the generic brands would never have realized there was a market for this size. Have I told you how much I love the Good Nights people?

Shampoo- All the females in our house (except the Cherub) have long hair- well past our shoulders, one of us down to her hips. When we lived in Colorado I bought a gallon of 'natural' awapuhi shampoo from our co-op every other month or so. One of the girls had sensitive skin, her scalp was getting small sores sometimes, and I thought it might be the shampoo. I don't think it was, but we really enjoyed that shampoo. When we moved here we had to cut corners, and I couldn't find the same sized shampoo from our new buying club. We switched to Suave. Over the three years that we used it, we all got more split ends, stiffer hair, and Pip's hair, which is the lightest (a lovely cornsilk color) got brittle, orangey yellow, and stiff instead of soft. I do not think it was just the shampoo- we had unfiltered water in an area high in sulphers and irons. But when we moved into the new house, though our hair improved with the filtered water, it still wasn't what it had been in Colorado. So the girls got together and bought their own Aussie shampoo. They all said they noticed a difference right away. Walmart raised its prices, so they quit buying it and went back to Suave, and complained again. I looked again at our buying club catalog and found a gallon of better shampoo for about 22.00 (Nature's Gate Herbal, which I just learned Amazon carries, and if you buy 100 dollars worth and use shipping code SHIP99HW you get free shipping, meaning we'd save about ten dollars in the long run). The girls agreed to go in together to buy thei rown shampoo from the buying club, so that's what they use. They all like it much better, and Pip's hair no longer has rusty streaks.

What really convinced me, though, was a small experiment I did on my own hair. I really like Jason's Shampoo, but it's expensive. Recently, however, it was on sale in our buying club, so I picked up two bottles of shampoo and one of conditioner and put it in my basket of bath supplies in the master bathroom. JennyAnyDots helps me with my hair because of the arthritis in my shoulder, and she came to help me brush it out as usual and exclaimed, "Wow- what did you do? It feels so much softer!" It was my Jason's shampoo instead of the usual generic whatever is on sale at the grocery store brand.

The HM and the Boy still use whatever is on sale. They say they don't care and they can't tell a difference anyway, at least not on their own hair. But there's a definite difference for the rest of us.

Again, if we had to, we'd go back to something cheaper. But we can afford it, and we think it does make a difference, at least on the long, flowing hair of the female members of our family.

Creamy Squash Soup

I wrote down these directions for one of the Progeny a couple years ago and just stumbled across them again while sorting through an old folder of recipes that needed to be thrown away or refiled in their proper folder. Yes, it's been that long.

We started with some baked butternut squash, but I think any hard winter squash would do, even pumpkin. I cut them, scooped out the seeds, and put the halves in a pan in the oven (yes, we do usually save the seeds and toast and butter them for eating). By the time lunch time rolled around I was deep in some other project and had one of the Progeny finish. I am guessing it must have been Pipsqueak, as she's the youngest of the first five and would have needed the most directions, and she's the one most prone to cutting her fingers.

Chop four onions (NO FINGERS!)
Metl 8 T. butter in the popcorn pan* and add the onions
Stir in 8 T. arrowroot
Stir in 1 t. nutmeg
Slowly stir in 8 cups of water, 6 bouillion cubes, and some powdered milk
Stir 'til thickened and smooth.
Turn off the heat.

Scoop out the squash, whisk it into the soup, reheating if necessary.
Stir in salt and pepper to taste.

Eat.
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I should explain here that I make popcorn the old fashioned way- I have popkern kernels (sometimes grown on our own land here, as the farmers who lease our land sometimes have grown corn for Orville Reddenbacher) and I have a heavy duty 2 quart saucepan that pops up terrific corn. So when I tell one of the Progeny to get out the 'popcorn pan,' that's the pan I mean, not some newfangled popcorn popper. My 'popcorn pan' is 20 years old and was part of a gift of cookware from two of the young men we had over for dinner and games every weekend when we lived in Okinawa. One of them still sometimes reads this blog, or at least he used to. If you're still reading, S, Thanks! I LOVE that pan.=)
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And microwave popcorn? Yuck. We have it sometimes because the HM does work at a grocery store and he does find an opened box he can't sell from time to time. But it's just a bag of chemicals, IMNSHO. And I think it's disgraceful that regular popcorn, which is inexpensive and just as quick and easy to make as microwaved chem-corn, has been edged out by pricey packages of convenient chemicals. You might just as well buy Lunchables instead of crackers and cheese, or those nasty sealed packages of precooked bacon, or a ready boiled egg. Actually, you would be better off with all those things, because then at least you would be eating something similar to real food.

Using the Right Tools and Methods

Cindy and Sora have been talking about homeschooling and why they think it's best, and they've also offered some responses to an older article by Steve Schlissel, a classical education proponent of private schools who laments the 'inefficiencies' of homeschooling (I think all of us agree that Schlissel does say some other things about homeschooling that we would all do well to consider). Cindy opines that these are actually advantages rather than disadvantages (and I agree), and Sora points out that for the most part, these 'efficiencies' are efficient for the adults involved, less so for the students. I don't really want to talk about Schlissel's article at all- this is just a sort of spring board.

There's a new homeschooler up the road from me, and she called me recently to ask my opinion on about 700 dollars worth of curriculum she already bought. My heart sunk. Her oldest child is only a first grader. What she had purchased had all the disadvantages of public school in a box, with none of the advantages. It was third rate imitation of public school. I talked to her a little about my philosophy of homeschooling as having its own unique strengths and advantages that we completely lose when we try to imitate an institutionalized setting. We'll never be anything but a third-rate imitation of an institutional school, but we can be a superior educational model if what we seek to create is our own uniquely educational home. She made all the usual social noises of agreement, told me she was going to take her curriculum back for refund, but what she really wanted to see was ______, and here she named a popular workbook based curriculum often sold to private schools and homeschools, complete with little cubicles in which the kiddies are to sit isolated with their pencils and workbooks. She said this had been recommended to her by about 8 other homeschoolers in our area. I know them, and I don't know why they are recommending a version of homeschooling that has brought them no joy at home, instilled no fire for learning in their children, and has chained them to an institutional model designed for a very different setting than a home. The best that can be said of it is that it has freed them from reading, thinking, and learning with their children, and I do not consider that an advantage.

Electric knives are very useful tools, efficient little things. I use them to slice my home-made bread because they make quick, neat work of it. I do not use them butter my bread. A chainsaw is also a very handy tool. It makes the process of cutting down deadwood and cutting firewood far more efficient than cutting wood with an axe. On the other hand, if you are cutting wood because you want the exercise, you need to work off some steam, and/or you enjoy the meditative you get while out with the woodpile and your axe, a chainsaw is not only inefficient, it's counterproductive. And none of us would butter our bread with a chainsaw.

All of which came to mind recently while reading a chapter in the No-Work Garden Book. This chapter was written by Richard Clemence. He is suggesting Stout's surface planting method (which I blogged about here as well as here), of just scattering seeds along the surface, following the path of a staked line, then covering them with damp peat moss, tamping it down, and watering well. He suggests scattering the seeds in a path about a foot wide, using the staked line merely as a guideline for one edge of your row. Later you will thin them as necessary, but you aren't worried about getting a single straight row (this has some similarities to the Square Foot Gardening approach).
He says most "gardeners shrink from the thought of rows more than one plant wide." They don't know why, he says, they just know it's wrong. Clemens points out there's no good reason why a plant needs more space in one direction than any other. And then he says:

"Narrow rows with wide aisles between them merely waste space in the home
garden, without fulfilling any useful purpose. They have been copied from
commercial practice which requires space for the operation of machinery.
Broad alleyways in the kitchen garden are about as logical as six lanes of
cement in the driveway. Such arrangements were designed for other
situations."

I would agree that homeschooling is sometimes dreadfully inefficient in a distinctly negative fashion, but where I think this is most true is when we homeschoolers are using 'arrangements designed for other situations,' using chainsaws to butter our bread, fire hoses to water our gardens, and workbooks designed to assess the learning of 25 strangers in an institutionalized setting to teach a single second grader who could communicate what he knows just as well over a dinner conversation with his family.

What are the goals of an institutionalized school, and how do they compare with your goals? I homeschool for a number of reasons (you probably do, too). Some of them are academic, some are religious, some have to do with consistency, others are connected with the benefits of family closeness, sibling relationships, and personal responsibility. There is no institutionalized school that shares every one of our goals for our homeschool (and there is no reason there should be). Their methods and arrangements are designed to meet their goals and the individual circumstances and situations of their own schools. Why would I compare my home to that institution and consider it an inefficient failure that my home is more like a home than an institution?

Free Drawing Lesson

The FYG has been visiting Jan Brett's webpage every day for drawing lessons. Jan Brett has hundreds (thousands?) of fun pages, projects, and activities on her website. One of the newest is the free drawing lessons on video. The FYG says the chick is the easiest one to start with, and the FYG is certainly drawing some adorable little chicks these days. These are excellent, and you could pay good money for a drawing program almost as useful as these- but why? Here you have some free lessons from a top notch childrens' illustrator, and since they are on video on the internet it's easy to pause the lesson whenever you need more time to work on it, or rewind it if you don't understand something the first time. I also like that she varies the lessons- some of them are drawing imaginary things, like gingerbread babies, and some of them are drawing real animals.

Highly recommended!

Driveway Wall

Group effort here. The team members responsible for getting this photo from our driveway to your living room are as follows:

Snow blocks courtesy of the snow plows that finally got here around 4 p.m. (a local farmer in his John Deer, and then later the county plows). As soon as the driveway and road west was cleared, the HM headed out to work in G-pa's truck. And as soon as the plows left, the FYG and B began a work of their own. They gathered the snow bricks created when the plows and bulldozers broke up the drifts, and they built this wall blocking the driveway so the HM could not get back in when he returned home from work. And since he was not expected to return home until after their bedtime, the DHM never goes outside if she can help it, Jenny and Equuschick hate the cold, and Pip had already been outside, they thought they could get away with this without anyone being the wiser until they were safely in bed.

JennyAnyDots, however, had gone out for a walk in the snow in the back forty, but she returned home by way of the front and took the pictorial evidence you see before you. Her young siblings begged her not to tell Mother, but of course, she had to report back to headquarters.

Pipsqueak who alone understands the technology necessary to get pictures from the digital camera onto the computer with the camera port (but currently no internet access) and then onto the computers with internet access.

Mother (or DHM), who wrote the text for this entry, and who naturally hated to tell them to take down the wall. While her sympathies were entirely with the youngsters, she knew her duty to her husband, and she also knew that the HM would not be as admiring of this wall from the outside as she was from the inside. They were quite dismayed at having to take it down,, and she was equally dismayed to make them. However, The Mother's sympathy evaporated entirely when she suggested they build their wall someplace where it would not block access to the driveway from the street and they grinned wickedly and said that was the entire point of the exercise and they weren't at all interested in building a wall somewhere convenient to the rest of the world. We hope the Rest of the World has some idea what it's in for when these two grow up.

Childrens' Book:Dollie's Big Dream, or The Man of Mirth

I mentioned this book a little while ago when I was feverishly typing out the titles of the boxes of books we picked up at that incredible library book sale (the only library sale they had had in over a hundred years).

I picked it up again recently while tidying a bookshelf in my bedroom, and I realized I had never posted any of the lovely illustrations. I opened it up to look them over again, and noticed something odd. I said the author was Eldridge H. Sabin, and that is the name on the cover. But inside the book it says his name is Elbridge Sabin, so this is an 'errata' edition.

I think the H may stand for Hoskins, and he had a brother named Edward. Dollie's Big Dream is the name of the book given on the cover, but there is a subtitle- "The Magical Man of Mirth," and it seems to have been the more commonly used title.

Here's my favorite of the color plates (click to enlarge):

I like the symmetry of the design, and the almost celtic look of the swirling waves and seaweed. The colors on the page are much deeper and brighter than you see here (at least on this monitor). These illustrators did better with wildlife and plants than people, I believe. Dollie is supposed to be a real human child, not a doll, but she hasn't nearly the living look of the fish and seashells.

According to the title page the book is illustrated by "Helen Alden Knipe" and Elenore Plaisted Abbott (who was a student of Howard Pyle's). This duo paired up to do illustrate an edition of Hawthorne's Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales as well, and I imagine it's a lovely book as well. But there are also many charming silhouettes, woodcuts, and other black and white illustrations through-out the book, and they are illustrated by several different artists. A few of them are Mary Clemmitt, Eleanor Campbell, Harvey Fuller, Nelson White, and others.

There is an Eleanor Campbell who was the first Dick and Jane illustrator, and it may be the same person.

Some of these smaller illustrations sprinkled about at the chapter headings and closes seem to have little to do with the book, and I suspect the publishers (Whitman) simply used illustrations they already owned from other books. Chapter One, for instance, is titled 'All Aboard' and is illustrated with a lovely black and white sketch of a biplane, but there is no plane in the story. The child and her magic slate are riding a great owl. In the beginning of the same chapter there is a sweet black and white sketch of a group of children playing in the snow, but the chapter has our heroine, young Dollie, sitting her her back garden amongst the daisies and hollyhocks of summer, wearing a short little white dress. There's no snow in the chapter at all.

I'm still not entirely clear on the story line- I am enjoying the illustrations too much to read the book just yet. But it seems still to be a fantasy something along the lines of the Water Babies and the Wizard of Oz, perhaps with a bit of Peter Pan thrown in- not that I think it's as well written as any of these, but that these are the sorts of books the author may have been reading.

The illustrations are a mix of sweet, old-fashioned, Edwardian sort of images and frankly fantastical with a nice sprinkling of the clean sharp lines of the stylized art deco work popular in the 20s.

I would share a couple more of the more art deco type illustrations, but I fear this post is already too image rich. And besides, Blogger just won't let me. I wish I could find more about several of these artists. I would like to know where else I could find some of their illustrations.

Copper Pennies Variation

I have never (at least not that I recall) posted a recipe here we haven't made at least once, so this is a first. I cut this out of a newpaper article seven years ago and it's traveled with me in three states and through four moves.

Oh, my. I never thought of it quite like that. Four houses in seven years? With nine people? Am I insane, or what? Pardon me, I have to go lie down for a minute.

Whew. Sorry. That just sneaked up on me when I was unprepared.

Okay, so the recipe is not one I would usually cut out, since it involves cooked carrots and I do not like cooked carrots. I know I am not the only mother who doesn't cook foods she doesn't like. It's not deliberate, they just aren't even on my radar.

But this recipe was published in a local paper by popular request, and the editor of the column said that when they'd first published it (over five decades ago), it was 'an instant, colossal hit.' So I had to have it. I just can't bring myself to cook it.

Yet. Maybe if you tell me you hate cooked carrots and it's still delicious, I'll try. It's supposed to be a variation on something called 'Copper Pennies Salad,' which, since it has cooked carrots in it, I have never eaten nor prepared it, either.

1 can tomato soup (unreconstituted),
3/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/2 cup oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon worchestershire sauce

IN saucepan combine above ingredients, bring to a boil while stirring, and turn off heat the second it boils.
Meanwhile, steam just until done:

About 10 carrots, cut into rounds (also peeled, although we'd probably scrub and scrape lightly, since ours are organic this month)

Saute until limp:
1 sweet bell pepper, sliced in thin strips
1 red onion, same.

Combine all ingredients and chill overnight before serving.

Doesn't that seem like a lot of sugar to you?

Upon saner, more judicious reflection, I think I'm throwing this one away, which is what I probably should have done four moves back.

Someone needs to create an anthology of the Quotable Hobbit.

"Never listen to your head, Sam Gamgee, it isn't the best part of you."

*Samwise Gamgee, otherwise known as Samwise the Stouthearted.

"I am a hobbit and no more valiant than I am a man, save perhaps now and again by necessity."
*Peregrin Took

Our Street, take two

This would be FYB and the Donovan-dog playing in the middle of the road.

Valentine

This old card came from The Rattery. I think it's from around the late 1940s. That puppy is a cute little dickens, isn't he?

Granny Tea's Driveway

Click to enlarge. Yes, that's the top of a garage door you see there. Granny Tea's basement/garage is in the side of a hill, and that hollow where the garage is just served as a great big snowcatching bowl. She asked me to have the kids shovel it out, but I don't think she quite understood just how deep it was. The Progeny would be shoveling until June. We might as well wait for a thaw.

Or for the farmer with the plow to come give us a hand.

OUR Driveway

Click to enlarge. Yes, that's a garage door you can just see at the top of the snowdrift.=)

Oops, wrong picture. That's G-pa's truck in our driveway. Remember that the HM shoveled it out yesterday. This is just the snowfall from about 1:00 yesterday afternooon until this morning. The HM has shoveled it out again, and is waiting anxiously for the slowplows to come so he can go to work.

Our Street

Click on the picture to enlarge. My husband took this picture standing in our yard at the end of our driveway. He is looking down our street. Yes, under that 8 foot deep, twenty yard long (or more) snowdrift, we have a paved road. That house you see is the neighbors who live across the street from Granny Tea and G-pa.

It's just as bad on the other side of our road, looking east. This is why the HM is staying home from work again today (and prowling around like a caged tiger because he's a workaholic with no work in sight) and this is why the HG is still not home. She could make it all the way home except the last mile. Then she'd have to park the car and hike and we'd probably find her in the next thaw.

Just keep staking up those tomatoes, y'all. And if you have tulips, Bradford pears, and such, we don't want to hear about. We're baking warm and sweet things, sledding, making snow angels, digging tunnels in the snow, and hunting around trying to figure out where the FYB was last seen before he floundered (just kidding on that last one).

An "Urban Myth" That Isn't

A few years back I met the father of a friend of mine. He's good ol' boy from Texas, though he's lived pretty much everywhere. He's a jovial, jolly sort of man, adored by his grandchildren and his daughters. He's fascinating to talk to, with a story to tell about just about everything. He thinks his grandchildren hung the moon, and I've heard tell that if his littlest grandchildren get into mischief, he'll often snatch them up and say, "Uh-oh. You and me had better git before Grandma sees," and he dashes them out of the room and redirects their attention toward safer pursuits.

He's a preacher, farmer, former Marine, and during the hours that we visited with him he always had a twinkle in his eye and a warm and friendly demeanor. That is, until we asked him about his experience in Viet Nam. It wasn't the fighting that wiped that smile off his face and replaced it with grim expression. It wasn't talking about Viet Nam that gave his voice that hard edge and replaced the twinkle with steel.

No. His demeanor and expression changed when he talked about coming home to see his bride for the first time since their honeymoon, wearing his only good suit of clothes- his crisply clean and starched uniform. He was thinking of his young bride when he was spat upon by some 20 something snot who thought this made a statement about the war instead of a statement about his own manners and maturity.

My friend's father had to wash his shirt off in a public restroom, and he met his bride in a damp and wrinkled shirt. His state of mind was no less disturbed by this disgusting act.

There are those today who are trying to rewrite history- uncomfortable with their acts in the 60s and 70s they are trying now to say that soldiers were never spat on by civilians when the soldiers returned to the states. They would have done better to have waited until those soldiers were all dead, every one of them, because they are living witnesses, and these deniers are liars.

Don't Tell Your Kids They Are Smart

Let them figure it out for themselves. As a kid I was shuttled into the 'honors' English classes, the TAG or MGM label (Talented and Gifted; Mentally Gifted Minors) slapped on me when it came to the Language Arts side of the curriculum. Math, not so much. I had decided a long time ago that this wasn't really doing me any favors. What I learned in those classes was that if it didn't come easy, then it was too hard to try. I also learned that I was smarter than quite a few of my peers and even smarter than most adults.

I had to unlearn that once I got out of school and discovered that life is not a multiple choice test. It was quite a humbling experience to learn that a surprising number of people who do not know the difference between its and it's or Hawthorne and Melville are singularly more capable than I am in a good many areas that matter a lot more for day to day living. It really only took a year or two of being out of school to learn to know my fellow human beings better than that, and perhaps another two or three years after that to quit being surprised when somebody with bad grammar turned out to be much more competent than I am at just about everything but writing well.

At 44 I am still struggling to unlearn a lifetime of bad intellectual habits. I still suffer from an intellectual inertia that at times has been crippling. I really struggle with getting past what I think I know about what I can and cannot do. If I have to work, even a little bit, at understanding something, I am just sure it's too hard for me to understand.

We homeschoolers may think we're immune to this sort of thing because we don't have 'TAG' and 'MGM' programs. But we need to read this article to be sure. It's incredibly interesting (emphasis below is mine):

Giving kids the label of 'smart' does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.

For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team at Columbia (she's now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise on students in a dozen New York schools. Her seminal work—a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders—paints the picture most clearly.

Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, 'You must be smart at this.' Other students were praised for their effort: 'You must have worked really hard.'


Why just a single line of praise? 'We wanted to see how sensitive children were,' Dweck explained. 'We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect.'


Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they'd learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck's team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.

If merely being given that single line one time had so much effect, imagine the consequences of a lifetime of being told, "you're so smart." Instead, what we need to be telling our kids is that the brain is a muscle and it needs to be exercised. But read the linked article. I know it's kind of long, but I think it will reward your efforts.

More on Ruth Stout's No-Work Garden Book

I've noticed that a goodly portion of gardening advice applies to homeschooling as well:

"An authority on almost any subject apparently finds it difficult to say,
"I don't know." When I talk to a garden club, I sometimes warn the
audience: Read one garden book, if you must, but better not make it two, for
they are almost sure to contradict each other, then you're sunk. I am so
conscious of all the unreliable advice and 'information' that's bandied about,
that when I write or talk to a group about gardening, I try never to advise, but
simply to report that I did this or that, then state the outcome."

This isn't a report on what I did. It's some notes on what I want to try this spring. By writing it down here I'll remember where I left these notes and what it was I wanted to do. We just moved into our new house in March, and I didn't plant a garden, other than a few flowers here and there. So all our ground is unprepared, and most of it is pretty sandy as well. According to another chapter in Mrs. Stout's books, you can expect it to take three years before Mrs. Stout's method shows the best results, because what makes it really work is the way the rotting mulch improves the soil each season. But there is a way to get some results right way- not the best, but good enough for a beginning. It's also sounds like a great idea for the indolent, the new mother, the mother of young children, the older mother with an aching back, the kids with short attention spans, and all the rest of us who like the theory of gardening, but are intimidated by, or just haven't time for, the work.
Mrs. Stout says she grows potatoes by laying the seed potatoes on top of the ground and covering them up with hay. I've read of this method before in older Organic Gardening magazines (it may be in new issues as well, but my subscription lapsed when they let Mike McGrath go as editor and it quit being so much fun to read). Mrs. Stout 'plants' onion sets the same way.

To defeat the cabbage worm, she goes out after a rain and lightly salts her cabbage and other brassica plants. To defeat the squash borers she pulls the mulch from under the squash vine at one spot when the vine is only a few inches long. She makes sure the vine touches the dirt and then covers it with mulch again right there. It takes root. As her vines grow, she repeats the process all along the vine, and while the borers will still get into the vines where they first grow out of the ground, the rest of her vine lives, being rooted in several places.

She also says that in a quarter of a century of gardening she had never seen a corn borer and very few ear worms, and the year her first book came out bragging about it there was a worm in every single ear of corn. She says the moral to this story is that you should not write a book.

She says she has less experience with growing flowers, but the flowers that she does have she mulches in the same way, only with a token nod to appearance she scatters some dirt lightly over the surface of her mulch. One flower bed she describes I might have Jenny try here. She has a petunia bed (because they are so easy to grow), and a frog pond on the other side. The frog pond is bordered by blue iris, lilies of the valley, and sedum- all of which come back without any work on the part of the gardener, and all of which I like in spite of their encroaching ways. To be truthful, I like sedum mainly because of one of its other names- 'life everlasting.' And to be even more honest, I like lily-of-the-valley because of its pretty smell and its encroaching ways- this makes it a plant you never have to bother with again. Just let it roam. I think it looks lovely in the middle of a green lawn and spreading far beyond its borders, so there!
We have a small volunteer pond right out in our backyard, so I think this will be pretty. One thing that spoils its prettiness is the proximity of the propane tank. Mrs. Stout's frog pond has a white fence around part of it, just high enough for the peonies on the other side to lean over it. She plants sweet peas, cosmos, bachelor's buttons and some heavenly blue morning glories just outside the fence as well. I think this sounds lovely, and with the possible exception of the bachelor's buttons, very doable for us. In fact, the only plants here I might have to buy are the blue iris, petunias, and bachelor's buttons, and I'd only need to buy a handful of blue iris corms once.

But my favorite idea is the one she shared for starting your vegetable garden from scratch. She tried this out at home just to see how it worked. She left a 12 by 20 foot plot of grass, weeds, and scrub alone until early summer, when some of it was waist high. She put some seed potatoes on the ground (like hiding Easter eggs) in rows about 14 inches apart.. Then she just flattened the weed growth and put down about 1/2 a foot of hay over it. She chose potatoes because they need less nitrogen than other crops, and she says she got a very nice crop of potatoes from it. Potatoes, of course, are one of the cheapest vegetables to buy, but still, this method (I think) would get a plot of ground ready for other crops by the next season with comparatively little work or time this season, while still producing something. But potatoes are not the only crop she grew this way.

In a similar section, she flattened the weeds and brush, covered them with rotting hay mulch, and then dug about 1/2 a dozen holes at varying intervals. She planted squash, cucumbers, pumpkins and melons in those holes, pulling the mulch back over when the plants were high enough. I am not sure whether she planted seeds or started plants. She says they grew very well as well. Squash and pumpkins, of course, are also fairly inexpensive vegetables, but organic cucumbers are not, and they have the advantage too of being one of the vegetables every one of the Progeny loves with a great love.

With only a little more work she grew tomatoes this way, too. What she did with the tomatoes was to plant started tomato plants in holes she dug though the mulch (and cut through the weeds beneath), and then then put some fertilizer (dried cow manure and bone meal) in the holes with the plants. She also ran the sprinkler for several hours after planting the tomatoes. She got a healthy crop of tomatoes without turning over more than the spadeful or so of earth necessary for each hole.

She also tried this with some traditional seed vegetables, lettuce, peas, and beans. She used slightly less mulch for this- about 3 or 4 inches, and she planted the seeds right on top of this. Because seeds would get lost in the hay, she flattened the weeds as before, covered with a few inches of mulch, and then marked rows (using stakes and string in the approved fashion). She then spread a very thin light layer of peat moss, just along the rows. She dropped the seeds right on the moss. Then she walked back along the row (which was a wide row), tamping down the seeds with her foot (you could also use a board for this). She ran a gentle sprinkle along the peat moss as well to keep it damp so the seeds could germinate.

For peas and beans, she added some aged manure with the peat moss, and they did very well. She tried some without the manure, and they did poorly. Beets and radishes also did very poorly. Lettuce did very well for her, with and without manure. Carrots, surprisingly, did very well for her, although she says she only tried this method once with them, so results should not be seen to be conclusive.

For best results, she suggests making sure the hay mulch is damp by watering it well when first laid down. If rain is not forthcoming, water it a few more times. Seedlings do better with a generous amount of fertilizer (organic, of course) to feed upon until their roots reach the soil. Using this method won't look pretty and your garden won't be featured on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. It doesn't look like a good way to try any of the more complicated vegetables, but it does look like a way to get a garden started from scratch in a place that wasn't prepared for it last fall, when it should have been.

Rainbow Salad for Winter

Set out a cup of frozen peas to thaw.

Then mix this dressing:
1/3 cup of oil
2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon brown mustard
dill weed to taste (a teaspoon or so)
sprinkling of sugar (like just a pinch)
same of salt, paprika, and even less pepper

Toss these ingredients into a bowl and then gently mix in the dressing:
3 leeks, cut into thin ribbons (use your scissors)
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup thawed peas
2 peeled oranges, sliced thin. You could also just drain a couple cans of mandarin oranges, which are inexpensive at the discount grocer's and the dollar store.
1 red onion- the recipe calls for sliced into rings, but we don't like that much raw onion in one bite, even though it is prettier. So we dice the red onion, or dice a sweet yellow onion if they are in season.
Mint leaves (we think it's better without mint)

You can serve this immediately, or you can let the flavors blend for a few hours before serving. Make it in a clear glass or crystal salad bowl, because it is so colorful and pretty you'll want to be able to see it. Makes a very cheery splash of color which is most welcome in the middle of winter (I am not talking to you people who are staking up your tomato plants).

Updated to note: We had this for a side salad a couple days ago, and we had some leftover, plus we had some leftover roast turkey. The Equuschick whipped up a batch of her home-made mayonaisse, and then she combined some mayo, diced turkey, and the rest of this salad and it was outstandingly delicious.

Happy Valentines' Day

Make your own

The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book, February's TBR Challenge

Today I finished reading Psalms for the fifth time since January. I have 15 more readings to go, and I hope to finish those by summer.

I also have completed the first two of my TBR challenges- January: Thalassa Cruso's Making Vegetables Grow Completed January 30th
X-February: Ruth Stout's No Work Garden Completed February 13.

I'm glad I read both of these books. They have quite a bit in common. Both of them are written by some feisty, opinionated, delightful ladies with a few decades of gardening under their belts. Both ladies are down to earth and full of common sense and practical wisdom. Both of them make gardening sound possible, and both of them are matter of fact about the failures. These books make nice companion reads for the beginning gardener as well as for the sort of gardener who makes extravagent plans on paper and then is easily dissuaded from even trying when those elaborate plans don't work out perfectly, but we don't know anybody like that, do we?*

In Ruth Stout's case, her book is also a good read for the experienced traditional organic gardener who is getting older and can't handle the physical work of digging, weeding, rotating crops, digging some more, turning over compost piles, digging some more, weeding again, and so forth. I'm not that experienced, but I think I can say without fear of contradiction that I do fit another category of gardener Mrs. Stout says she has in mind- the indolent gardener.

I'm not sure how well her method would work in the northwest, where snails and slugs are an enormous problem (three to five inch slugs are commonplace). But it worked well for her in the northeast over many decades. She was in her seventies or eighties when this book was published.

Basically, every fall Mrs. Stout would lay down at least eight inches of rotting hay over her entire garden. Instead of composting, she just puts her food waste right on the garden surface as well. She says turning a compost pile is too much work for an elderly woman. I thought this would pull nitrogen from the soil, but she asked a garden specialist and he told her that since the food waste (no meat, grease, or dairy, of course) was on the surface, this wouldn't happen. It was only if it were buried in the soil that it would pull nitrogen out of the soil for the decomposing process.

She just rakes back the mulch in the spring (if necessary) to plant her seeds, and then pulls the mulch back over the plants and adds more if needed when they get bigger. Or she leaves the mulch, digs a hole through it and sets in started plants.

I have more to say about this, and one idea in particular I find very intriguing for gardening in a new spot, but I am typing this post in the minutes in between dinner and a highly competitive post-prandial game of Mexican Dominoes (the HM won), and a family movie, which they have just started without me.=)

Toodles.=)

*Somewhere around here I have a post about that, but I can't find it.

One must speak to a dog at his level, you understand.

The Equuschick's blog tells her she can learn to make her own blogger widgets. What is a widget? She has absolutely no idea.

The dogs are rather more pleased with the blizzard than the people are, though Donovan had a trying time this morning when he was flipped and rolled, courtesy of The Zeus, into a snow drift twice his size. This trial was likely rendered all the more difficult by the inability of The Equuschick to lend assistance to the invisible small mound floundering beneath the snow, as she was doubled over laughing hysterically.

Then later on the dogs came upon a Dead Thing, of what species The Equuschick could not tell as she was without her glasses and visibility was rather low anyway, but it was Dead, and flopped, and the dogs were extremely pleased with their find.
Zeus asserted his rank and drove Donovan far from his great person, and seemed to have every intention of keeping the Dead Thing for himself as a token of his...Zeusness, or something. However, The Equuschick puts up with a great deal from the animal children, but she draws the line at Dead Things.
It does no good to tell a dog that a Dead Thing is nasty, because it isn't anything of the sort to a dog and you will never convince one otherwise, so The Equuschick felt it necessary to assume her identity as the Alpha Wolf and simply tell Zeus that it was HER Dead Thing, and he was to LEAVE IT. This much, at least, the Zeus child understood. After assuring himself that his Alpha did indeed mean business, he abandoned the Dead Thing and wandered off in search of safer entertainment in his cheerfully resigned way.

(The moral of this story is, if you're ever in the woods 'round the Common Room house and you hear a female voice saying "THAT IS MY DEAD THING, YOU LEAVE IT ALONE" you are not to be too disturbed.)

Carnival of Homeschooling

Please visit the Nerd Family to see the wonderful job they've done on this week's homeschooling carnival.

Enlarge Your Charities

I went to college for a couple years right after high school. My parents paid for most of that. I had some grants and scholarships, and I worked, too, but I had a massive safety net. I knew I could always go back home, that if I lost my job my parents would pick up the slack, and that I always had another chance. My grades reflected both that knowledge and my character (or lack thereof). I did do very well my freshman year, especially the first term. Mainly this was because everybody said that we couldn't do well as freshmen, that every student would do worse the first semester than we had in high school because of the adjustment to being responsible for our own deadlines and class appearances. So of course, haven't been told I couldn't, I did. Once I'd proved to myself I could do well, I didn't care about proving it again and again.

I dropped out to marry the HM (which I do not regret in the least, neither the marriage nor the dropping out). Then a few years after we were married, but just before we started homeschooling and having more babies, I thought I should go back to school so I could get a job when the children started school. I went for a couple semesters. This time we paid for it out of pocket. We had some grants, but they didn't cover it all, and every penny mattered personally to me. I worked for those grades. I studied, I thought, I read, I cared. I knew that every penny I spent on my studies was a penny we could have spent on something else. My whole family made sacrifices for those classes, and as the budget keeper in those days, I had intimate knowledge of just where those sacrifices were made. I did much better in my courses. I am sure you can guess which courses I got more out of between the ones I paid for and the ones somebody else paid for.

I dropped out to homeschool the Progeny (and produce or adopt more Progeny, choices I have never, ever regretted).

IN the last few months I have heard some complaints that surprised me, here in the real world of real life and real people. I have heard a person on assistance complaining because she had to pay three dollars for her prescriptions and she didn't think that was fair. "I guess that will just come out of my kid's pampers" she said. She has cable television and long distance phone service, with large monthly phone bills, larger than we have for a year.

I have heard one tenant in a subsidized apartment complaining because another tenant was going to have to start paying her own rent and utilities (both of which are provided by you and me to most of the people in the apartment). She had broken the rules and let her boyfriend move in with her, and since he didn't qualify for assistance, they no longer received coverage. Her friend complained to me that this wasn't fair, they barely had enough money for food now. I asked what the boyfriend did for a living and why he couldn't pay his own way. She told me he worked, but didn't make enough money for all their expenses. The mother of one of them, I was told, tried to help when she could. She lived in town, too, just somewhere else. Well why, I wondered, don't they all just move in with the mother? Because then they lose some of the state benefits they get by not living in her home.

Why, I also wonder, is it the state's (and therefore your and my) responsibility to pay for this couple's living expenses and not their own? I have been privileged to see first hand the destruction that results from government dependency. It's not pretty, and I don't understand the sort of compassion that thinks it's a kindness to foster more of the same.

Remember the first time you learned of that rare condition where a person does not feel pain? If you were a kid when you first heard of it, it sounded pretty cool. If you were like me, you thought of all the stubbed toes you'd never feel, the bumps and bruises that would never give you pause, the spankings that wouldn't ever bother you again. But we were children and immature and didn't understand the value pain has in teaching cause and effect, in actually protecting us. People with this disorder find out they've burned themselves when they smell scorched flesh. They find out they've cut themselves when they see the blood. They find out they're overheated when they pass out from sunstroke. Today they have only a 50 percent chance of reaching the age of 40. What sort of monsters would wish this kind of pain-free life on their kids? The answer is, nobody would, of course.

But we wish this on other people in the name of compassion. Many of those who claim to be compassionate want safety nets so large and so comprehensive that nobody need ever suffer more than mild regrets from bad decisions and irresponsible behavior. The natural results of cause and effect, the connection between actions and consequences, with our welfare system, this is nullified, with harmful results.

When I help somebody personally by bringing them into my home, sharing our food, our clothing, our living space, they see what it costs. That compassion has a face, a heart, a set of hands and feet to it. When I take a neighbor on food stamps to the grocery store and she watches me buy dry legumes, the cheap produce, eggs, milk, and old fashioned popcorn, it accomplishes two things. One is that she sees another way to cook and eat. The second is that she's just a little embarrassed to use her foodstamps for cokes, chocolate, chips, and frozen pizza (I am not making this up- this is first hand experience). When she offers me some of her WIC milk and I refuse because I don't want to accept food from the government, that's a perspective that she may not have heard before (and in at least one case I know this is true). When she looks in my fridge and sees a spot of mold on my cheese and then watches me cut it off and use the rest, this is useful information. When we go to the store together and she buys her child flimsy toys and I tell mine, "You know we don't buy a toy every time we go to the store. If you want this, save your money and buy it later," there is a lesson in delayed gratification. It's embarrassing for most people to have to ask somebody they know for help, so they'll do almost anything to avoid it. That's not a bad thing.

Charity is a duty, and all of us owe something to our fellow man. We ought also (as Aunt Sophronia said) to see it as our duty to make sacrifices, personal sacrifices, to 'enlarge our charities.' It was a Victorian virtue that 'the enlargement' of our charities is a desirable (and assumed) goal. That is a noble idea when applied to personal charity and responsibility. Just as economy balances and tempers the virtue of beauty, the virtue of charity must also be balanced, tempered, and guarded by other noble ideas, such as respect for other people's personal property and boundaries, humility, and a proper respect for personal responsibility.

In the 1900s certain influential society do-gooders decided that the best way to enlarge their charities was to impose them on other people- and they were influential enough to accomplish this imposition through taxation. We did not get a Welfare State because personal charity wasn't enough. We got the Welfare State because a number of do-gooders in and out of government decided that government imposed systems were the best way to enlarge their own charities- they wanted to force their own pet projects on the rest of us. The Government can be very profligate with other people's money. Bureaucracy is seldom wise, virtuous, or frugal.

Those of you who disagree with me about this like to say this is simply a different view of government, as though it mattered about as much as a different view about shoe styles or tastes in food. But you miss an important distinction. I like my comfortable shoes. Other people prefer a more elegant style. When we discuss different views, these differences are fairly neutral when we do not impose our standards and preferences on others or force others to support our choices and fund them.

Those who enlarge their charities by picking other people's pockets cannot claim the same. They not only impose their standards and preferences in charity on the rest of us, but in the name of compassion they cripple an entire underclass by separating them from the virtues and salubrious effects of seeing some consequences of choosing cable television over groceries.

In Second Kings Elisha helps out a poor widow. She needs money to pay off debts. That is where we have the story of the miracle of the nearly bottomless jar of oil. That was all the widow had, so Elisha had her borrow jars from all her neighbors and keep pouring the oil from her jar into theirs. When she ran out of jars, the oil stopped flowing, and then she was to sell the oil in order to pay her debts and feed her family. He could have simply produced the money. God could have given her a pouch of gold that never emptied. Instead, he gave her the means to work to support her family. But we are more compassionate than God himself. This is no compassion at all.

Where We Live

The wind is galing. I think it is also snowing, but I can't tell for certain because the snow is powdery stuff and it's blowing all over the place. That white plastic lawn chair the HM set up outside our bedroom window as an impromptu bird feeder? There's a snow drift right behind it about as tall as the back of the chair and still growing. All county offices are closed. Schools are closed. Libraries are closed. All community services are closed. The HG is stranded at a friend's house 40 miles south of here and unsure what to do. Some of her university's offices are closed, but classes have only been canceled twice in a century, and she's scheduled to take an exam in a couple hours. She is trying to find contact information to reschedule.

The HM took the FYB in to work with him this morning, an outing that the FYB had been promised for the last couple months. The FYB was so excited about it that yesterday morning he laid out his clothes with precision on his bed, and he slept on the couch so as not to disturb his clothes. He made a list of things to bring, and told he me he was worried that people might think he actually works there and ask him questions he won't be able to answer because he doesn't know where everything is. He showed us all his backpack of 'work' gear and things to do while Daddy is busy at least ten times. He was totally keyed up for this and I had to bite my tongue to keep from being the bad guy and insisting he stay home today. I'm still not sure I shouldn't have. The phone started ringing at 6:15 with people calling the HM about work issues.

I hear tell there's talk about closing down a main highway through the state, which was last done about 40 years ago. The HM says that they may have to close the grocery store since the snow plows may not be able to keep up with the snow. I just watched the Equuschick go out to the barn to take care of the horses, and she was stumbling along in snow up to her knees, trying to shield her face from the blowing snow.

I walked over to the window to look out at the snow, and the little juncoes, which formerly would fly away when anybody came near the window, hopped up as close as they could, looking expectantly for more seed.

And yesterday in the mail we got a catalog with pages and pages of summer clothes and bathing suits. So I can really relate to this.

Last week I read this other post, a really smart one with good insight and quite thought provoking. But you know what? What really made an impact on me is the part where she said she was staking up her tomato plants. I've been thinking about that all week long. I can't even see the ground, and she's staking up her tomato plants. And in the time it's taken me to type this post, that snowdrift has grown over the top of the lawn chair.

I'm crawling back under the covers for a good snuggle with the FYG. While I'm there I'll be finishing Psalms for the fifth time this year, listening to the wind gale, and watching the flicker on the suet feeder just outside my window.

And praying for safe journeys for all those out in this blizzard- and especially, of course, my own dear ones.

Update: The HG's university has canceled classes for the third time in the last hundred years, declaring a snow recess until sometime tomroow. The HG will stay safe and warm with the Christian family who have put her up before when she needed to stay overnight.

Updated again: The HM and FYB are home safe and sound. They drove the ten or fifteen miles through our country roads, along the state road, through part of town without incident- and got stuck in a drift in our own driveway. The HM is out shoveling now. Our neighbors (the tenant who rent the little house where we used to live, just around the corner) say their truck is also stuck, just about a hundred yards from the house. Another neighbor with four wheel drive tried to help him out. That neighbor was toodling around the country side driving over the frozen and barren corn fields looking for folks to help. Country life is funny.

Sewing and Crafting

I don't sew. I like the idea of sewing. I find it very appealing, in theory, anyway. In practice it just didn't work out. The sewing machine was a one woman machine, and I was not that woman. The thread took such a disliking to me that it just found itself all in knots everytime I touched it. Needles spontaneously snapped when I walked in the room, and what bobbins did probably cannot be discussed on a family blog.

But those brave souls who want to learn how to sew and have not been rejected by their sewing machines and various notions, this tutorial on how to sew a zipper looks good.

This rag rug tutorial looks really helpful.

I also appreciated this post linking to an embroidery tutorial.

If you're looking for some inspiration for some Valentine crafting, look no further. Barbara at Stray Thoughts has been collecting blog posts featuring heart themed crafts, and they are lovely to look at.

HIdden Treasure Finalists Are UP

Every Day Mommy has worked hard tallying the votes to discovere the finalists. You can go see and find some buried treasure of your own on her blog. REad the blogs and vote for your favorites in each category.

Uncooked Winter Relish

This comes from a December, 1944 clipping from my great grandmother's files.

1 onion
2 dill pickles,
3 unpeeled apples
1/4 cup vinegar
1/2 cup sugar

pinch salt

Grind above together coarsely, and stir well (I would use my food processor's mixing/cutting blade. I'm not sure what Grandmother would have used. A meat grinder?

More Swanliness

(Pardon the pen, The Equuschick never could figure out how creatures as beautiful as birds could be so messy. Peacocks are not any cleaner.)

Our lovely swan was taken by a local wildlife rehabilitation center, the person who claimed to have owned him originally later declined any interest in the bird whatsoever.

The Equuschick,in her enthusiasm, spent an hour browsing the website of the center, a mere 45 minutes away. Half of her wants to volunteer and play with the beavers and the woodchucks and the more reasonable half of her is patiently reminding The Equuschick that she needs another project like she needs a hole in the head.

Honey Hearts

Yummmmy.

The FYG made these for some friends from church. I dipped them, but she mixed, rolled, cut, and baked them. Nobody reminded her when to get them out of the oven, either. She took a little longer than I would have, being unable to concentrate on starting the next batch until the previous batch was safely out of the oven. The Equuschick complains that she made a fairly large mess in the kitchen, but if she did, she also helped clean it up, at least a little.=)

The basic recipe makes a very tiny batch. We quadrupled it, and then found the dough needed extra flour. Very likely this would be because I made a math error, since right in the middle of our calculations our single mom friend called for some needed some adult conversation, and I tried multi-tasking by talking and doing math at the same time.

MIx 1/3 cup of butter with 1/4 cup of honey. Blend well.
Add 2/3 cups of oats
1/3 cup dry milk (oops- we were out, and now I see why we needed more flour)
4 teaspoons of water (what we did instead was half water and half cream- this was because we had no milk and no powdered milk).

Add 3/4 cup of flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix all well.

Roll dough 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick

Cut with cookie cutter (heart shaped, of course)

Bake at 325 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes.

To decorate ours, I melted a few vanilla chips and some Andes peppermint white chocolate bits- these were both leftover from Christmas baking. I melted them in the top of my double boiler and then stirred it all well so it was a smooth, cat-in-the-hat pink. Then I dipped each cookie in, coating just half. There wasn't very much, so some of them are coated only on the front.

We set them all on waxed paper to cool, and showed them to all the siblings so they could drool.

Original recipe (which did not call for dipping) from the old Kinder Crunchies kids cookbook from Discovery Toys. I first bought mine twenty years ago. The recipe portions are generally just the right size for two or three siblings to have a tea party together when the older siblings are away doing older sibling things.

Below is a picture of our young cook with a pan of her masterpieces:


Isn't she cute? I know you can't see her face, but can't you just tell she's adorable? Don't you love her stylish baker's outfit? That apron is from the Rattery. This means it probably belonged to a maiden aunt (it's too small to have belonged to my great-grandmother) and probably dates from the forties or so. The skirt is one that JennyAnyDots made her. The style is her own.
You have noticed the socks, right?

By the way, that floor? That's my green cork kitchen floor, and I am crazy about it. I love the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it sounds when glass falls on it and goes 'thud.'

Carnival of the Recipes, Valentine's Edition

Hurry on over and look at all the delicious goodness at this week's recipe carnival. There are some lovely ideas for some homemade treats for your Valentines small and large (or should I say young and old?), as well as some just plain good cookin'.

Hypothetical Question

So, if you were just reminded that six months ago you signed up to present the devotion at your monthly homeschooling moms' devotional/support group meeting tomorrow night, what would you put together and present?

Purely hypothectically, of course.

Um, sorta.

(is that my nose growing?)

Nature Study

I swept out a forgotten nook last December and found this little critter, long dead, dusty, and brilliantly blue. I scanned an image of it to get a better look (I think my scanner makes a lovely microscope). I don't know what it is, and I don't think I should have liked to have met it while it was alive. But I do like the color.

Pick one part of the wee beastie or the whole thing and see what you can come up with in answer to these questions (As few as one or as many as all of them, and yes, some of the questions are really just another way of asking the same thing. They are open-ended thought starters to help you):

Does it remind you of anything else? Or perhaps a part of it reminds you of something else? What does it look like? Why do you suppose it looks that way? If you were as small as it, or it was as large as you, what would it look like to you? Make a list of ten things this reminds you of, anything at all, for any reason. Now write a sentence or two about why. It might remind you of a fighter plane because of its shape and the needled on the end. It might remind you of your favorite vase because of the color. It might remind you of the space under your bed because of the dust all over it. It might remind you of an armadillo because....?

Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one- Ezra Pound

Scientific and artistic discoveries 'are explorations of a hidden likeness.' Jacob Bronowski

February

The old English name for this month was Sprote Kale, because this was the time when kale and cabbages sprouted.

The trees stand wistful in the square,
Wearing a half-expectant air;
the sky is a slender silver bell
That waits to sound the knell
of winter.

Anne Mary Lawlor

From An American Book of Days, by G.W. Douglas, published in 1934, revised again in '45 and '48

I don't own it, but I picked it up at a V.A. hospital library to while away many hours while waiting for the HM one day last year or the year before. It's been revised every few years and I believe is still in print, or at least not long out of print. Every few years out of date tidbits and dropped and modern information added, which makes me suspect I'd prefer the one I found at the VA hospital over any of more recent vintage.

Modern Times

Actually, this picture isn't so accurate any longer. When we lived in Nebraska once upon a time and my husband was out of town, our plumbing sprung a leak. We didn't live altogether in the country. We lived in a little town with a population of 299 (saaa-lute).
There were no 'experts' hurrying to keep my modern home hitting on all cylinders.

I could not get a plumber to come out for love nor money for well over a week. I had running water. I just couldn't let it drain. For over a week we could not flush toilets, let the bathwater run down the drain, let the dish washing water run down the drain, wash clothes at all. I had six children from about 14 down to 1. Kind friends loaned us a camping potty, but we did not have the proper chemicals or dumping facilities for it. I just emptied it out at the site of the former outhouse (we lived in an old farmhouse at the edge of town, an easy walk to the post office).

That same week, as I recall, the truck broke down, a child got sick enough to be taken to the emergency room, the oven quit working, and our prize goat turned out to be a hermaphrodyte.

Or maybe that was a different week.

I once read an article by an Amish farmer about how much easier and less expensive his method of farming was than the machine version, and I am sure it was. But the article left a bitter taste in my mouth when he talked about how farming with horses was virtually cost-free. The week I read that article we'd had to spend several hundred dollars for a horse-doctor to come out and save the love of Equuschick's life, the venerable Paca.

In spite of all this and other trials too numerous to mention, I remain an agrarian wanna-be. I liked our chickens, I loved our eggs, and I loved the way our goats looked on our pasture. I liked the taste of our tomatoes, spinach, and turnips (once I got the spinach and turnip greens sorted out). The weeds undid me, but I would like to imagine that serious mulching would fix that.

If this post has a point, and I am not sure it does, I'm just sort of trying to gird up my loins for another attempt at fencing our poison ivy in, getting chickens and planting a garden in the spring. But it's hard to convince myself these things are all worth doing just now for one reason and another.

And I am frankly, decadently, deliciously glad we aren't heating with wood this winter.

The Cardinals

All (or lots of them, anyway) the loverly cardinals over at GrannyTea's house. Picture taken by the HeadGirl.

Vintage Cookery- Beans, 1947

Click to enlarge. I like the explanation of the meaning of the word simmer. Lima Bean Chowder sounds nourishing and warming for a cold winter's lunch. Something else I appreciate about these recipes is their size- there are several four serving recipes, but also recipes that make six and even eight servings, hearty meals for hearty families.