Saturday Book Reviews

We just can't get enough good book reviews, can we? Fortunately, Semicolon is there to help us out. It's another weekly edition of the Saturday Review of Books.

Shrimp and Cauliflower Casserole

Combine:
12 oz frozen shrimp
1 large bag frozen cauliflower
1 can cream of mushroom soup (or your version of thick sauce)
1 cup shredded swiss or other cheese of choice
1 cup mushrooms, sliced (canned are an abomination, but they do work in a pinch)
6 green onions, chopped
1 teaspoon dill
3/4 teaspoon red pepper
Pepper and salt to taste (the amount of salt will depend upon what sauce you use)
3 cups cooked rice (we much prefer brown and I have never made this with white so cannot tell you if it would work or not)

Combine all this in a 9 X 13 pan. You can cover this and freeze it until ready to cook and serve, or you can cook it immediately. Top it with a smattering of cheese and bread crumbs if desired. Bake at 350 degrees until hot.

You can also freeze this in a freezer bag to save freezer space. If you freeze it, defrost it before baking.

Banbury Tarts

I haven't actually made these, but was charmed by the title and the cookbook they came from, The Royal Baker and Pastry Cook. What I have is the remains of what was once a very lovely old cookbook, a baking powder company advertisement published in 1911. Unfortunately, mine is tattered, torn, missing the entire cover and the first two pages as well as a few back pages (my copy ends at page 40, but 40 is separated from the rest and I have half an index with a recipe listed on a missing page 41).If you want to see the lovely cover that I am gnashing my teeth because I do not have it, it's online here.

Royal Baking powder published this little book during 'the baking powder wars,' which, according to the page linked above, were a fight for the market on the basis of being alum free. I don't know when the public stopped caring about aluminum in their baking powder, or when they started caring again. These 'wars' produced some very delightful little vintage cookbooks. This particular name-dropping baking powder boasts endorsements from many luminaries I don't recognize as well the Chef for Presidents Cleveland and Arthur. Well, I don't recognize the chef's name (A. Fortin), either, but I do recognize the Presidents' names.

Here is the recipe for Banbury Tarts as made by a 1911 cook:

Chop 1 cup seeded raisins, add 1/2 cup cleaned currants, 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons cracker dust, 1 beaten egg, juice and grated rind 1 lemon, Roll pie crust, 5 very thin, cut in circles. Lay on each a tablespoonful of filling; wet edges of paste; fold each side over the middle to form pointed ovals, dust with granulated sugar, and bake 20 minutes in a slow oven.

I believe the number 5 which seems so oddly placed is a reference to which crust recipe to use. Below is the #5 recipe from the front of this section of the cookbook (pies). I love the description. I doubt if half of high school graduates today could understand it:

Paste, 5 (Puff Paste)
3 cups sifted flour, 2 cups butter, 1 egg yolk, a little salt. This is difficult to make. The essentials are; a cool place to make it in, ice broken up in 2 shallow cake-pans, good flour, and butter, firm, with salt and buttermilk worked out. Sift flour on pastry slab, form it in a ring with back of your hand. Place in center the egg yolk and salt, add a little ice-water, and from inside the ring gradually take flour, adding a little at a time as you require it, more ice-water, about a cup altogether, until you have smooth, fine paste, very tenacious and lithe. Place in ice-box 15 minutes, then roll out to size of a dinner-plate; lay on it butter, and wrap over it edges of dough, carefully covering it; turn it upside down, roll out very thin; then turn face down- the face is side of paste next to rolling pin- folding it in three, squarely; repeat this three times more, placing it in thin tin on the broken ice, and other tin containing ice on it, after each turn or operation of folding and rolling. By this method this difficult puff paste may be made successfully in hottest weather.

I'm certainly reassured that by this method this paste may be made successfully, how about you?

Lessons Learned at a Horse Expo

*If you're over 40 years old and exhibiting a Friesian for a business, do not wear purple butterfly wings as part of your body-stockinged fairy costume. 'Tisn't nice.

*If you don't know how to ride, do not wear purple butterfly wings as you exhibit your Friesian, because when you catch an updraft you will fall off.

*If you're exhibiting a Friesian and would like to demonstrate that classic Medieval style, wear a different colour than an appalling orange. "Pardon me ma'ma, but can you get your Orange out of the way? I'm trying to see YOUR.HORSE."

*If you're riding a Classical horse, classically, well gee, The Equuschick would recommend classical music for your choreographed program.

How the elderly, family-man puts up a picture.

This is a long excerpt and I know few of us read blog posts of this length, but permit me to implore you to exert yourself as a special favor and read the whole thing. I hope it makes you laugh as much as it does me, particularly if you are in need of laughs as much as I am:

You never saw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame-maker's, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say:
"Oh, you leave that to me. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I'll do all that."

And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl out for sixpen'orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, and start the whole house.

"Now you go and get me my hammer, Will," he would shout; "and you bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! you run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell him, `Pa's kind regards, and hopes his leg's better; and will he lend him his spirit-level?' And don't you go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go out again for a bit of picture-cord; and Tom! - where's Tom? - Tom, you come here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture."

And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; and then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and all the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.

"Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came across such a set in all my life - upon my word I didn't. Six of you! - and you can't find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of all the - "

Then he'd get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out:
"Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now. Might just as well ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it."

And, when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the chair, and the candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family, including the girl and the charwoman, standing round in a semi-circle, ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third would help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold of the nail, and drop it.

"There!" he would say, in an injured tone, "now the nail's gone."

And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to be kept there all the evening.

The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost the hammer.

"Where's the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens! Seven of you, gaping round there, and you don't know what I did with the hammer!"

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could find it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would call us all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down. And he would take the rule, and re-measure, and find that he wanted half thirty-one and three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it in his head, and go mad.

And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at different results, and sneer at one another. And in the general row, the original number would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would have to measure it again.

He would use a bit of string this time, and at the critical moment, when the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of forty-five, and trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him to reach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on to the piano, a really fine musical effect being produced by the suddenness with which his head and body struck all the notes at the same time.

And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the children to stand round and hear such language.

At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, on somebody's toes.

Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done.

"Oh! you women, you make such a fuss over everything," Uncle Podger would reply, picking himself up. "Why, I like doing a little job of this sort."

And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it, and Uncle Podger be precipitated against the wall with force nearly sufficient to flatten his nose.

Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up - very crooked and insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched - except Uncle Podger.

"There you are," he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the charwoman's corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride. "Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like that!"

I should assure our gentle readers that the above in no way describes my husband. It is embarrassingly more like myself than it is my spouse, but if it catches some (one hopes, faint) glimpse of myself at such trying moments, it is almost a perfect replica of a certain other member of my extended family (except for the language part), and I am quite sure his other relations would appreciate this portrayal as much as I.

One More JKJ Excerpt

In the present instance, going back to the liver-pill circular, I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general disinclination to work of any kind."

What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.

"Why, you skulking little devil, you," they would say, "get up and do something for your living, can't you?" - not knowing, of course, that I was ill.

And they didn't give me pills; they gave me clumps on the side of the head. And, strange as it may appear, those clumps on the head often cured me - for the time being. I have known one clump on the head have more effect upon my liver, and make me feel more anxious to go straight away then and there, and do what was wanted to be done, without further loss of time, than a whole box of pills does now.

You know, it often is so - those simple, old-fashioned remedies are sometimes more efficacious than all the dispensary stuff.

More deliciousness here.

It only gets better, you know, and the next bit on sea-sickness had me laughing until I cried the first time I read it.

Planted, Transplanted, and Blooming

More daffodils are blooming, and the squill is out in full force. Grape hyacinths are up (Yoda like, I originally typed out that sentence as 'Grape hyacinths up are). Crocuses are also blooming, but you can tell they do not care for the warm spring days we've had recently.

Today the HM and JennyAnyDots transplanted:
Poppies (great frowsy red ones, or at least they will be)
squill
Lily of the Valley
Crocuses
A big clump of peonies
Iris
Daffodils
red tulips
more grape hyacinth

Poppies do not ordinarily transplant well, but IF you get them small enough, when the leaves are still hugging the ground, dig them deep enough and plant them in a hole just as deep, they hardly know they've been moved. We tried this last year with two or three just to see if it would work, and it worked so well we wished we had done more of it.

They also planted about a dozen packets of wildflower and forget-me-not seeds, and one packet of heavenly blue morning glories. I have never had any success at all with forget-me-not seeds, so I haven't much hope for these.

Everything but Housemaid's Knee

Jerome K. Jerome is ill. It is his liver that troubles him. He knows it is liver because he has:

just been reading a patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.

In fact, Jerome suffers all sorts of torments. He went to the British Museum once to study the remedies for hayfever, or something mild like that, and began to leaf through the volume, and I shall let him explain what he found:

I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.

Naturally he took himself to his doctor, an old friend. He explained his troubles to his friend, who thumped him up a bit and wrote out a perscription. Jerome says:

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's [pharmacy or drugstore in USAMerican], and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.

He said he didn't keep it.

I said:
"You are a chemist?"

He said:
"I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative store and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me."

I read the prescription. It ran:

"1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pt. bitter beer
every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand."

From the second edition (1909) of Three Men In a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), written by Jerome K. Jerome. This does make lovely family listening on car trips, although there is one sensitive chapter towards the end of the book where the three men in a boat discover a poor suicide in the river. It is not graphic but is a worthy chapter, reverent, full of charity and the milk of human kindness, but perhaps too much for sensitive younger children. You would have to decide that for your own family.

The Boy

Today a friend of ours, the mother of four boys from about 11 down to 3, needed some help. This family has been an incredible blessing in our lives so....

Jenny and I went to her house to help out with the household emergency ( a collapsing ceiling forced them to bring everything in the attic down to the living room and we helped her pack it up and box it for storage elsewhere).

The four boys came out here and played all day while Pipsqueak supervised the seven children (her four plus our FYB and FYG and The Cherub). It was the HM's day off, but he had errands to run. He checked in periodically and was home for good a few hours before supper.

We had them over for dinner, and the HM grilled burgers. It was a pretty late night.

The three year old cried when it was time to go home. He thought they should all spend the night here. Other than that, the HM remarked to me, the five boys played together for 13 1/2 hours and there wasn't a single argument, fuss, ruckus or a upset in all that time.

The girls, on the other hand.... are girls.=)

Books to Make You Laugh

Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) is one of the most laugh out loud funny books I ever read. You may read it online here.

It is Jerome's account of a boating trip he took with two friends (to say nothing of the dog) on the Thames, but that is what it is about in the same way that Will Rogers was merely a cowboy who told some jokes.

P.G. Wodehouse's stories, are of course incomparable and an absolute delight to those who want to laugh out loud while they read without being embarrassed to share what they are laughing about. If you don't like or get British humour, these two authors are not for you. On the other hand, if you try them perhaps they'll help you overcome that impairment.

Jeeves was first introduced as a side-character, hardly worth noticing it seemed, in a chapter in this book (that's a Gutenberg link to the e-text, so you can use your find feature and search for the first recorded mention of Jeeves). Wodehouse later realized what a jewel he had in Jeeves, and he played a larger role in many subsequent books. The first of these is "My Man Jeeves" [1919], which can be found at Gutenberg and Blackmask.

For those requiring more class, wit, and gentility in their reading, of course you must read evrything by Jane Austen, these are not laugh out loud funny (most of the time), but they will put a smile on your face, gain some insight into human nature, and refine the furniture in your mind.

These are also available online, but really, they do much better in your hands between the hardcovers of an excellent edition. I came to Jane Austen late, as I did not read her until I was in my thirties. You may be sure that my Progeny do not share this particular deficit in my education.

Comfort REads, Part II

Anne Morrow Lindbergh's diaries- I love these. She writes so
beautifully. I've written briefly about these (or quoted them) here and here.


Madeline L'Engle's nonfiction books- Summer of the Great Grandmother is one. They are part of a series of journals with a name like Crosswycke or Stonewick or something like that. I'm embarrassed to be so vague, but if you search for L'Engle at Amazon or your library and find books in the adult section, that should put you on the right track. She writes lovingly, well and realistically about real life, relationships, and families.

The STillmeadow books by Gladys Tabour- soft, gentle, journals of
life, lovely to read bits of in the evening. Not really stories per
se. I've mentioned these before.

Elizabeth and (or in) Her German Garden and another title by the same author, Enchanted April There is also a movie that is equally enchanting.

Books for Pleasant Escapes, Part One

If you don't like mysteries, my reading of choice for mental therapy, or Grace Livingston Hill, my other reading of choice for mental health therapy, you may like some of these titles:

Most of you have probably heard of the Miss Read books and Elizabeth Goudge (who should both be on your lists), and if you like these, then you will probably like books by D.E. Stevenson. They usually contain a romance, but without being, as my daughters say, 'smooey,' and without all the selfishness of being interested in one's happiness and feelings without ever thinking about whether or not you're the sort of person to give happiness to the object of your affections.


These are all British writers. If you want an American version, before there was the Miford series by Jan Karon, there was Janice Holt Giles.



I do not think these are clones or duplicates, or even interchangable. I should say rather that they are in the same family of good, uplifting, family and friend oriented comfort reads without being twaddly.

Part Two is here.

Authority

Most of our readers have heard this before, I think, but something I was reading brought the general themes to mind again.

Whether or not it's constitutionally justified, Public schools are public institutions funded by public funds ostensibly to educate other people's children, and thus Publice Schools are accountable to the taxpayers for their use of the funds and their education of the taxpayer's children.

Families are not creatures of the government. Homeschools do not operate using government funds to educate other people's children. You don't violate a family's constitutional rights by imposing regulations on home education because you think somewhere, somehow, somebody might be doing something wrong. You don't give every child an antibiotic because some children have ear infections. You need reasonable grounds, not cynical suspicions.

In Germany one homeschooled teen was placed in a pschiatric ward for 'school phobia.' Other children have be permitted to live at home, but they are removed from parental custody and placed under the custody of social workers even though the judge admits the children are well-educated:

The judge had concluded that the children were well-educated, but accused the parents of failing to provide their children with an education in a public school. The court noted that one of the daughters expressed the same opinions as her father, showing they have not had the chance to develop "independent" personalities.

Do you think he would be so bothered if he heard school children expressing the same opinions as their teachers?

More here.

Horse Lovers Carnival

Equuschick and other horse-mad folks should enjoy this one. REad all about it here.

A New Collection

I've just started one. I wish I'd one it sooner because I know there are a handful of things I've read about the blog that I wish I'd saved but didn't. Here are my first two for today:

I know you will tell me that the gold must be thrust into the fire, that believers must pass through much tribulation. I answer, Truly it must be so, but when the gold knows why and wherefore it is in the fire, when it understands who placed it there, who watches it while amid the coals, who is sworn to bring it out unhurt, and in what matchless purity it will soon appear, the gold, if it be gold indeed, will thank the Refiner for putting it into the crucible, and will find a sweet satisfaction even in the flames. “And not only so, but we glory in tribulation also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.”

Charles Spurgeon, bonnet-tip Carmon

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, Bonnet Tip, Cindy.

1 As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

3 My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?

4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.

5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.

7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

8 Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.

9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?

11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.

Psalm 42

Lists

What does it mean, I wonder, when I find an old birthday list, an old Christmas list, an old Mother's Day list, and notice that they all look suspiciously like a 'to-do list?'

Castle on the Hill by Elizabeth Goudge

This was one of my TBR books, and I'm afraid I lost the notes I jotted down while reading it.

I realized while reading it that I actually had read it before, I'd just forgotten. I remembered then that I thought it was sweet, but contrived, unrealistic, and still a fun read.

This time through I thought it had a lot to say about trauma, depression, pain, loss, and anguish.

I know that Clifton Fadiman said that you never read the same classic twice. What you understand from Hamlet as a teenager isn't going to be the same thing that strikes you as a twenty-five year old, or as a mother with many children or as a grandmother. But I thought I also read this is the So Many Books So Little Time book, only more personally. I thought I read somewhere in there a comment about how you bring whatever is going on in your life to what you read, thus individualizing and personalizing each reading-probably more so the more you are enduring at the moment.

And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

Social Experiments

SEICUS and the ACLU are working to get states to reject government funding for abstinence based education, which ought to be no surprise to anybody. If you want to read more about that, you can read the article here (not necessarily child friendly reading). But what really caught my eye is this paragraph:

The real problem is that the federal government is funding a social experiment with its emphasis on abstinence sex education programs, which teach that people should not have sex until they marry, Mr. Smith argued. “This is about a public-health agency that is running against the evidence of what works,” he said.

Emphasis is mine, because what were public schools in the first place but social experiments? What is all sex education but a giant social experiment? Head Start is a huge social experiment. I could go on indefinitely. I agree that government funding of social experiments is wrong, but I had no idea that the VP of SIECUS (for that is who our Mr. Smith is) felt the same way.=)

Update: Mr. Smith has done us the honor of responding in the comments and he solicits my support of SIECUS' lobbying efforts to have an Act called REAL passed by the Federal Government. I appreciate his civil response and the time such a busy man has given to reply here.

As most of our readers know, I barely have the emotional fortitude and wherewithal to leave my room these days. However, pro-life issues have long been near and dear to our hearts, and I think it's important that our readers know a bit more about this act.
For more accurate and comprehensive information on REAL, please see here and here.

Beauty: Balm for the Soul

Brighten up the furniture of your mind by feasting on things such as the picture above by Eugene Grasset. Find more beauties at the Victoria and Albert. That bright collection of images- called a Light Box- was put together by the Victoria and Albert. Register and make your own 'light-box,' a collection of images you choose from their incredible collection. They'll save it for you, and you can sign in and return to it as your soul requires.

Assign a light-box to a student for an art project. Look up William Morris or Burne-Jones and weep over the beauty you find. Search by century and marvel at the craftsmen of the 11th and 12th centuries could accomplish. Consider it mental health therapy.

School Lunches

This really isn't intended to pick on public schools as much as it is, once more, to point out that those people who want to burden homeschoolers with more regulations on the pretence that they really care about the children have more effective places to meddle than with homeschoolers. Homeschoolers account for approximately two percent of the population, that's all, and no measurement to date shows that they aren't doing well enough, as one study title said, to be left alone.

Congress requires Public school cafeterias to be inspected twice yearly to make sure they are clean, the food is stored properly, employees wash their hands, and so forth. About 10 percent of the nation's schools aren't getting any inspections at all. Nearly 1/3 get inspected once instead of twice. I sympathize entirely with claims that these congressional mandates aren't paid for, health departments are understaffed, distances are problematic (in Alaska in particular), and that there just isn't time.

Where we fine one bureacratic institutions we will usually find another, and there is at least one agency dedicated to studying this issue- the Center for Science in the Public Interest (they are about far more than school cafeteria food, however). This consumer group studied school cafetera safety and has found a few disturbing things:

Rhode Island schools were commonly cited for cross-contamination of
utensils, improper holding temperatures and the presence of vermin;
...Washington, D.C., schools had hot and cold holding equipment that needed
repair...

There are approximately 60 million school children according to the article I'm reading (link below). There are fewer than 2 million homeschooled children. About 30 million children are eating their lunches in school cafeterias.
It's also true that there are more reported outbreaks for food related illnesses from eating out at restaurants. But you see, we choose to eat out restaurants. Children eating in the school cafeteria don't generally have much choice about it.

It's also true that the failure here is primarily the health department (and, as ever, Congress) rather than the public schools. The schools can't make the health department come out and inspect.

When inspections don’t happen in cafeterias, it’s not the school’s fault. Cafeteria workers don’t inspect themselves

That's according to the sympathetic author of the article I'm reading. And most of them probably do a good job. But if more of them did 'inspect themselves,' maybe that watchdog group wouldn't be finding things like cross contamination of utensils and vermin in the cafeteria of some Rhode Island schools.

You can read the entire article quoted here.

More about how we are satisfied with the mediocre.

A couple days ago a Prof mentioned something about "official" histories of nations; some nations have a government endorsed history, and he wanted to know if the class thought we had one. Yes and no was the answer: no, because there's not one government sanctioned text; yes, because the government does issue standards for what it expects students to know in history, and other subjects.

This led to the discussion of who set these standards, and a student mentioned how high school teachers given input for what should be on the curriculum. This, in turn, elicited the following exchange (paraphrased):
Professor - Not to disparage high school teachers, but they are often behind the times when it comes to new historical research or pertinent data in the field.

Student - That may be true, but it doesn't seem fair to hold up high school teachers to college professor standards.

Interesting, no? We have a couple of interesting admissions here... that high school teachers are not giving students the best information and that some people are OK with that.

Why Isn't This Reassuring?

Members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police. An FBI spokesman said "parents and children have nothing to fear."

Asked about the alert notice, the FBI's Rich Kolko said "there are no threats, no plots and no history leading us to believe there is any reason for concern," although law enforcement agencies around the country were asked to watch out for kids' safety.

Read the entire article here.

So many questions arise. Is it just me, or does the FBI sometimes sound like Keystone Cops? Is it just me, or does it sound like the FBI thinks the public exceedingly stupid? Is it just me, or do the statements 'members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers' and 'parents and children have nothing to fear' demand further explanation?

What 'extremist groups?' Homeschoolers or Al Queda? I might not agree with the FBI's definition. If they are truly an 'extremist' group by reasonable definitions, then why shouldn't reasonable parents and children be concerned?

And... oh, never mind.

Hanging On

Be assured that God is always near to the broken-hearted. Cling to the promise of Psalm 34:18 that “the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

This doesn’t mean the counsel is not sound, but the only spoonful of sugar that helps this medicine go down is this: it’s true.

It is a fact that God is in control. God is in control. God is in control. God is in control.

May each of us find strength and hope in the truth of 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, where Paul writes from the midst of affliction “…this slight and momentary affliction is (even now) preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient (passing away), but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

From this devotional posted by the Bluedorns, linked by Cindy.

Carnivals

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up, and Allesandra uses the opportunity to share some information on Charles Darwin. The 65th Carnival is huge, it's full of rich, diverse posts on equally diverse topics, and as always there is something for everybody.

The Make it From Scratch Carnival just had its sixth edition. This isn't just baking- there are crafts as well. There's a very cool crocheted denim rag bag, a window box, some knitting, as well as some yummy stuff from the kitchen.

Not quite a carnival, but remember that Sprittibee is accepting nominations for homeschool blogs for 2006. See here for information on how to enter your nominations.

Mom is Teaching is having a different sort of contest. Here's what she's looking for:

I want you to write a post on your craziest, wackiest, weirdest day homeschooling. Did a bug in the house turn into a lesson on insects? Was a simple trip to the store changed into a lesson you never expected? Did a simple science experiment turn into an explosion in the kitchen? Whatever happened I want to know about it! Don’t be embarrassed, share your story!

Here's where to go to find out more. I thought about it, and it seems to me our Bear Scat post or the post about our fancy tea party might do- what do you think?

Another sign of Spring

My husband has his first case of poison ivy for the year. Poor man. He's so allergic, and all he did was walk through the woods. The poison ivy isn't even obviously green yet.

The FYG also has the first case of her life. She rather hoitily decided she wasn't allergic to it because she's never gotten it, so she uprooted a poison ivy vine from the site she's chosen for her 'secret garden.' She indignantly insists it was just a stick, no leaves on it at all, not even buds, but it's clearly poison ivy on her arm.

The HM is so allergic to the stuff he gets it just standing in the vicinity. It needn't touch him at all. Usually he has to go to the Doctor for steroids a couple times in the season.

The FYG worries me because she has hypertrophic scarring, a tendency to get raised, bumpy scars and thicker scar tissue than normal. This is most problematic for issues like surgery or cuts to the face (plastic surgery only makes it worse, according to the diagnosing doctor). Getting a third grader not to scratch her bug bintes and poison ivy is something of a challenge.

Children aren't Clones

I know you know that, but somehow sometimes we still don't quite know that. People expect me to be some sort of parenting expert (at least some do) because we have seven children. But there's the rub. We have seven individual Progeny, no two alike, not seven clones.

They have things in common because of their shared upbringing, shared family values, shared experiences. They also have almost as many differences, and they keep developing more.

Heather, in response to these two posts by our eldest two Progeny, commented,

You two have such varying interests and are pursuing them with passion. I know this is a result of being homeschooled by parents so committed to encouraging you to be self-learners. It gives me hope for my fledgling beginnings this year!

I agree that parental influence is really important and necessary if we want to encourage our children to continue to be the self-learners they were all born to be.

It is also true that we have tried to encourage our Progeny in their individual interests, to share in them to some degree, to support them and foster them when possible and in the budget.* But Heather's comment reminded me of something I've been thinking of recently. Of late I have had a sneaking suspicion that this sort of encouragement and parental involvement doesn't account as much for their different personalities and interests as I used to think. Children are going to do this with or without us.

I've been wondering lately if the reason it's important to respect these individual passions and personality differences, to foster them and show yourself in sympathy with them is not so much to 'develop' individuals, but to develop and cement the bond of affection with the individuals God's already given us.


*I know horses look like a rather expensive interest, and they are. But it's not been our expense for the most part. Two of the horses in the pasture were gifts from others, and one she saved her own money for over several years. She also paid for the fencing and stable herself, paid to seed the pasture herself, and buys her own feed and other supplies and has for some time).

Why early morning commutes aren't all bad.

I was so pleased to have the camera with me this morning. Isn't it beautiful?

The semester ends in just a few weeks. I am ready. I know I will miss my history of Mexico class, but even knowing that makes me rather happy. It is wonderful to have a class that you hate to see end. The reading and research required for it may be making me a sleep deprived maniac right now, but I am learning and thinking in it, so I'm a happy sleep deprived maniac.

I've signed up for fall classes:
* Spanish 4
* Europe 1618-1789
* History of Women in America to 1870 (maybe I'll write a post about this one soon)
* Great Figures in Latin American History

The Equuschick Speaks

(Note on post title- The Equuschick actually titled the post "Life Lessons" in her other journal and when she copied and pasted the post here she seemed to be under the ridiculous impression that the title would magically paste itself into the right spot, too. She thinks the title goes with the post by its own accord.)

*One should never be too busy to buy a five cent snow cone from your 8 year old brother and 10 year old sister.

*One's schedule should never be so full that you cannot take a break and go down to the neighbor's place to bottle-feed a baby lamb, when the chance is offered.

For once, and unfortunately for only the second time in The Equuschick's remembrance, she was asked to step outside her comfort zone, and when she impulsively said "No" and knew instantly that she'd regret it, she changed her mind and ran, because she had all ready wasted too much time.

And she was glad she did it, of course.

And it isn't that The Equuschick's comfort zone is particularly tiny.

When it comes to outdoor adventures, many animals, new and unusual thoughts, and taking physical risks, her comfort zone is actually considerably expansive.

It doesn't matter where she's ever been in ability or experience, or whether she's doing well or struggling, The Equuschick always been essentially comfortable on the back of a 2,000 lb. animal. She likes living there. She's changed her shoes up there. She sits there, lies on her stomach, and talks to Sky's ears without the slightest twinge of uneasienss. That's where she belongs. It has always felt like home up there.

She's eaten her lunch in the kennel of a massive Husky who was known for making death threats to numerous people. She knew he loved her and she loved him and they were friends, it felt like home to sit there next to his massive, intelligent being and talk about life. The Equuschick belonged with him.

If The Equuschick were given a chance to see a Komodo Dragon in Indonesia affordably, she would go. At the drop of a hat. She hates airplanes, she hates leaving her pets, but there's a person in there who needs to see a Komodo Dragon in its natural habitat one day. To sit there and watch a living, breathing, remnant of the ancient reptilian world would feel like home. Komodo Dragons are familiar. The Equuschick has studied them intensely since the age of 14 and they are a part of who she is and what her confused psyche calls home.

But that's the rub. The many strange and unusual places that The Equuschick calls home don't count, it doesn't mean anything that she can do those things, because it has never been uncomfortable. She was born belonging and never had to try.

When she has to try to feel like she belongs somewhere, when she has to go somewhere that doesn't feel like home, she's a coward. She always has been.

But things will get better. Because she's stubborn like that.

I'm Shocked, Shocked

You paid attention during 97% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Create a Quiz

But then, I always was good at guessing.

Bonnet Tip to Blest with Sons, and the sheepish admission that if I hadn't scored within ten percentage points as she did, I had no intention of sharing my results.

Flowers in March

Orange Crocus

Mysteries

Cindy's working her way through the list of books from this post, so naturally, I had to update it and add a few more. You might want to take a peek (if you are a mystery reader).

No, really what happened is that Pipsqueak and I finally had the courage to face the cupboard of mysteries in my bedroom and sort them and arrange them in an accessible fashion. The cupboard is deep, so the books were stacked on two 3 foot long shelves at least 25 books high and three stacks deep. We could store a lot of books this way, but we couldn't really retrieve anything we wanted. We culled duplicates, added another bookcase, a small wicker shelf intended for bathroom use, and cleared off a shelf on another bookcase by getting rid of some political books that no longer interest me, moving some other books to more pertinent shelves, and some careful squeezing.


We also cleared off the bookself behind my bed and moved all of the schoolbooks for the youngest two down to my room where we'll be doing schoolwork curled up on my bed for a while. It seemed easiest to work within our limitations rather than fight them, and the borders beyond my room are so very, very far away of late.

Cleaning out the mystery shelves has added considerably to my 'to be read' list. And it's nice to have the shelves fixed so that we know where to look for any particular author. Now everything fits, but we positively cannot fit in one more mystery here. Which means, naturally, that I just ordered another one from PaperbackSwap.

Connections

The boy, reading a story with the word 'glad' in it: "Hey! So g-l-a-d would also be the first four letters in the word gladiators, right?"

Clifton Fadiman on Reading

Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan is a delight, and it's a good companion to Invitation to the Classics, (reviewed here)
It isn't infallible, and he makes no claims that it is. His choices are not always compatible with my own values and moral code, so it's not a good substitute for your own judgement- it's a help, a reference tool, and a delight to read in its own right.

The books he suggests are:

...intended to occupy an important part of a whole life, no matter what your present age may be. Many of them happen to be more entertaining than the latest best-seller. Still, it is not on the entertainment level that they are most profitably read. What they offer is of larger dimensions....
...Once part of you, they work in and on and with you until you die. They should not be read in a hurry... This is list is not something to be 'got through.'
...
The Plan is designed to help us avoid mental bankruptcy. It is designed to fill our minds, slowly , gradually, under no compulsion, with what some of the greatest writers of our Wester tradition have thought, felt, and imagined. Even after wwe have shared these thoughts, feelings, and images, we will still have much to learn; all of us die uneducated.
....
Just as important, living in an age which to its cost has abandoned the concept of the hero, we will have acquired models of high thought and feeling....

I wish I could quote all of this section, his 'preliminary talk with the reader.' What he says about reading these books is that they will not make you happier or educated or solve your problems- they will simply improve your interior life, change it into something more interesting.

He makes no claims for a comprehensive list. He does not include the Bible, and I will include his explanation here:

The Bible of course is more important than any book on the list, influencing constantly and deeply the lives of all Westerners, including those, such as the Communisists, who claim to be atheists. But I have assumed that anyone who would read this book is already familiar with the Bible. In any case I assume you own one- and the practical purpose of the Plan is to induce you to add to your library.

I think few statements have contained in them that vast gulf that lies between the American culture in which Fadiman lived and had his being and our own, or shown so well how rapidly American culture changed in a few short years.

He makes no claim for scholarly choices or writing. He isn't writing as a scholar or for scholars. He's writing for the common man, and he unabashedly desires to persuade the common man to read the books. The comments that follow each book are 'cards of invitation' which he hopes are inviting and interesting enough to make you want to read the books. The books he recommends, he says, can 'alter your mind profoundly' but his book can only direct your steps at the bookstore or library.

If you find a book too hard, he encourages you to set it aside and come back to it after a year reading other books on the list. This works because of the sorts of books you'll be reading. "Each original communication helps us to extract a bit more from all the others." Reading a mystery and a Grace Livingston Hill every week is comforting reading, and comfortable, but if all we ever read is books of that sort, well then, that's all we ever can read.

He also points out that these excellent books nearly all bear up under reading and rereading. They won't be the same to you. What stands out to you when you are twenty-five and read Plato, he says, will be different when you read it at forty-five. Charlotte Mason, incidentally, says the same thing. She says there is no such thing as having 'read' the great authors, as though one reading was all it takes to learn what they can teach. As Mr. Fadiman says:

The works of Shakespeare do not consist of thirty-seven plays, but more nearly of three hundred seventy plays, for Hamlet changes into something else as you change into someone else with the passing of the years and the deepening of your sense of life.

Mr. Fadiman believes that all of us can read these books, but he admits that we will have to work at it. Like exercise, the effort brings its own reward. If reading is a passive experience, he suggests you're reading trash or the news. I would say there's a place for the comfort of passive reading, but if that's all we ever read, then it might be time to stretch some flabby brain muscle.

Reading

Clifton Fadiman set out many years ago to write a Lifetime Reading Plan. And then he updated it, and then it was updated again, and recently it's been 'improved' by a co-author. I haven't seen the co-authored version, but based on what it includes that wasn't included in the earlier editions, I don't think I'm missing anything.

Based on some of the reviews at Amazon, some of those writing the reviews have missed entirely the introduction Fadimen wrote to his book. For instance, when an author admittedly seeks to introduce readers to 'some of the greatest writers of our Western tradition,' it's rather idiotic to complain that he focuses entirely on Western books. It makes no sense at all to 'update' such a book by including the Koran and other Eastern books, particuarly when he specifically explains why he left them out. So don't get the co-authored revisionist version. Get one of the older versions by the good reader himself.

It's not changes I object to. I have the third edition, and Mr. Fadiman says he's added Woolf and Chekhov among other changes because 'one of the advantages of a long life is that you are given a chance to change your mind.' It's changes that contradict the very nature and original goal of the book itself.

I'll share more from this delightful book in a later entry.

Stories Like These Make Me Wish Spunky Were STill Blogging

Faltering Schools Want to Keep the Kids Longer
3/26/2007
"States and school districts nationwide are moving to lengthen the day at struggling schools, spurred by grim test results suggesting that more than 10,000 schools are likely to be declared failing under federal law next year." (New York Times, Tuesday)

If a little poison isn't working, try a lot.

FEE Timely Classic
";Backing the Wrong Horse: How Private: Schools Are Good for the Poor" by James Tooley

Copied en toto from one of the regular emails I get from FEE, the Foundation for Economic Education, and if you aren't on their mailing list, you might consider it.

Books Fall Open...

I have a Mary Englebreit card from a friend with the saying on the front of it (Books fall open, you fall in). I framed it and hung it on a bookcase, naturally.

If it's a good book, when you fall into the book, parts of it fall into you, and you're not quite the same person when you leave it. Much of the time your 'to be read' list won't look the same after reading it, either. You'll find new treasures to add.

And so it was when a few years ago the HG stumbled across a prettly little book titled Ex Libris, Reflections of a Common Reader. There's a review of it here, but I'm not sure it quite does it justice. If you like books about books by people who love them, you'll love this one. If you like sweet stories of affectionate families, you'll love it. I liked it so much that I had to find a copy of my own, since the HG quite selfishly wrote her own name inside the cover the book she bought (she wishes she had done this from the beginning of her book ownership, as I never do remember with certainty who bought which book, and am always suspicious of claims that it wasn't me).

Anne added several links to my chain of people, things, and books I wanted to know more about, and one of them was her remarkable parents. According the review linked above:

Her father is Clifton Fadiman, the legendary critic, anthologist and former Book of the Month Club judge. Her mother, Time magazine correspondent Annalee Jacoby Fadiman, co-authored "Thunder Out of China" with Theodore White. Their apartment had room for 7,000 books and not much else.

And I was embarrassed that I had never heard of either of them until I read their daughter's book. I was even more annoyed by this obvious gap in my common knowledge when I learned that my mother knew all of the above (at least about Mr. Fadiman) and could fill in my gaps with more. I wasn't annoyed that she could fill in the gaps, just frustrated that it hadn't been done before.

What books are you falling into lately?

7 Weird Things About Me

I forget all the different places I've seen this meme, so I can't give credit. Perhaps you'd like to share, too.

1. I like to mix peanuts into my potato salad.


2. No matter how hard or how long I cry, my eyes never get red and puffy. This used to bother me as a child- I wanted that public badge so that everybody would know of my suffering. As an adult, I'm much happier keeping it to myself, and I really hate opening up to others about how I really feel, especially if I'm upset.

3. When I was about 6 or so I loved Bears of Blue River so very much that I insisted that my parents call me Balser, the name of the main character (a boy).

4. I think the longest I have ever lived in any one house is five years, and I think that was the house we left when I was eight. I know the longest I have ever lived in any house since I was 17 is four years. And I like to move. My children don't. They have been looking forward to roots for a very long time. It's been 25 years since I've stayed somewhere longer than four years. I think it's their turn.

5. Whenever I hear somebody singing a song I can hear another voice singing the alto part in my head- even if I've never heard the song before. That voice in my head is my mother's voice.

6. When I was around sixish, my dream was to be a hockey player when I grew up.

7. I get very sick when I am pregnant. REally, really sick. When I was pregnant with the FYG, my husband took me to see a Jim Carrey movie, one of the Pet Detective ones. It was for our anniversary. It was at least two years before I could even hear the name of the actor or the movie mentioned without gagging and getting the dry heaves.
I'm not kidding.

Sunday Hymn Post

My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly lean on Jesus' name.

Refrain:
On Christ the solid rock I stand,
all other ground is sinking sand;
all other ground is sinking sand.

2. When Darkness veils his lovely face,
I rest on his unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
my anchor holds within the veil.
(Refrain)

3. His oath, his covenant, his blood
supports me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
he then is all my hope and stay.
(Refrain)

4. When he shall come with trumpet sound,
O may I then in him be found!
Dressed in his righteousness alone,
faultless to stand before the throne!
(Refrain)



Lyrics to verses and midi files with tune here.

Dinner and a Movie?

That's the theme of the Carnival of Recipes for this week, and it looks good enough to eat!

What poetry form am I?

A cywydd llosgyrnog; I'm one. "A what?" Well, quite. There'd be no fun In being understood; I Thrive upon obliquity. Don't comprehend or follow me, For mystery's my ally. What Poetry Form Are You?

Second place was a tanka:

I am the tanka. The attention of others Is unnerving, and Since I try not to draw it, I'm left alone. Which is good. What Poetry Form Are You?

(Thanks to Dewey's Treehouse.)

Can You Tell What He's Been Reading?

Or rather, has been having read to him? Recently the two youngest children, after a romp in the woods, hide and seek, and a visit to the various secret club houses they have arranged all over the woods between here and the creek, went to play 'Sorry' at their Grandparents' house. It was quite a grand evening for them, complete with secret passwords, call signs, and some solid work clearing paths and undergrowth for a secret garden or two, as well as a tramp through the mud as the creek has overflowed its banks well into the woods and corn fields. The Sorry game was the crowning end of the evening, since I, knowing their Granny Tea must be in bed no later than 10, and usually sooner, did not give them a curfew.

But back to the point mentioned in the title of the post. The FYG was getting huffy about losing, so the FYB (who usually is the huffy one about losing) chided her, "Now, now, don't get into a Blood-Wrath over it."

Guess the book?

Saturday Review of Books

The Saturday Review of Books is up at Semi-Colon. I like the quote she has opening this week's post (it ends with 'literature is a drug,' and it is certainly the best drug I know just now). I think there's truly something for everybody here- picture books, young adult, children's fiction, classic novels, mysteries, and more.

Pay her a visit and perhaps add a book review of your own from this week.

Primary Pasta Salad

For a main dish recipe of this for our family of nine, we cook:

One pound of pasta shells (al Dente)

Then we had 3 ripe tomatoes, diced (or about a pint of grape tomatoes, halved)

1/2 pound of fresh green beans that have been halved, cleaned, and then blanched. or you could just steam 1/2 a pound of frozen green beans. Steam them just until they are a brilliant green, not until they are mushy.

1 large bell pepper, cored seeded, and diced. Yellow is better, because that's what makes this a 'primary' salad- the green beans being the 'blue' vegetable. Two peppers is better, but yellow peppers are not always reasonably priced.

Toss all this lightly in a large bowl.

The Dressing

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup mayo
1/4 cup red wine vinegar dressing
3 tablespoons of chopped cilantro (you can substitute or combine basil and parsely)
1 minced clove garlic

Whisk these dressing ingredients together, then combine with salad.

You need to eat this the same day- between the cheese and the diced tomatoes it can go a bit mushy on you if you keep it overnight.

If you want more protein in it you could dice ham, add bacon, or boil a few eggs and slice them over the top of the salad.

I do love that boy.

Last night the Boy was looking through a book of British monarchs and first wanted to know "if I'd studied" Henry VII. So I told him a bit about being the dad of Henry VIII who had so many wives; he responded by telling me about some Egyptian king who had 16 wives, thus we paused the account to explain that Henry's wives were in a sequence rather than concurrent.

Later on he asked about Edward VI. I told him how he became king at a very young age, and how the people who were supposed to reign spent most of their time fighting with each other, and how he died before he was really grown-up. "I don't blame him," said the Boy.

Well, that's one way to look at it. Are your ministers fighting amongst themselves over how to best handle the power you have? Disoblige them all by just getting really ill and dying.

Blue Mystery

Blue Mystery by Margot Benary-Isbert is a very charming children's book I wish I had known as a child. I wish my older children had known it when they were small. It's perfect for about 8-11 year olds. It's also a wonderful book to include during a year when you have studied plant propagation, George Washington Carver, Salamanders, the Himalayas, or Germany.

The main character, Annegret, is an only child who amuses herself with the plants her plant growing father raises in his seed nursery, the snails she is breeding herself, and a cousin (Hans) who has now grown too old for her and is interested in his studies more than pretending to be a Viking on their 'secret' island. She gets a dog (Cara), makes a friend (Uschi), befriends a friendless apprentice (Fridolin) who is all prickles and shell and very hard to befriend, and helps prove his innocence when a priceless new variety of gloxinia is stolen from the nursery.

But there's more in this sweet little tail tale (aaarrrghhh, I hate it when I do that) than those details. There are themes of love, honor, justice, mutual respect and affection in the family unit (her parents are loving, wise, and make sure she knows that they don't know everything). The children have a thirst for learning, and their interests are widespread (the Himalyas, where Annegret's Uncle disappeared while on a plant hunting trip,). The relationship between the Great Dane Cara and her young mistress reads true to this mother of a Progeny with a Dog of Unusual Size. Young Annegret decides to make the tiny island her own nature preserve, and then must grapple with the question of whether or not humans are part of nature and to be protected as well. She was cast into doubt by a young school friend, but she asks the adults in her life for help settling the question, and the reassuring answer from each of them is yes.

The setting is in Germany (the author was a naturalized U.S. Citizen, but she was from Germany and the book was written in German originally). The nursery and its grounds are on the outskirts of an old 'German town that harked back to the time of Martin Luther,' and Martin and St. Martin get special mention more than once. Towards the end of the book there is a town-wide celebration of St. Martin's day that concludes with the celebrants singing "A Mighty Fortress is our God."

That quote about the old German town is from the blurb on the dustjacket where it also says,

"Throughout the book there is a keen sense of nature, of the wonders of growth and the changing seasons. And in her perceptive characterization, Mrs. Benary shows the mixture of love and awe that is felt by those who work closely with the earth and growing things."

It's a keeper, a sadly undiscovered sweet story that should be better known than it seems to be, though I will admit this one is probably of more interest to girls than boys.

Bethlehem Books republished another of her books, so that tells me this is an author I'll want to looking for.

Music Quiz and Biography

The answers to the bonus questions are Sibelius and Mendelssohn. The HG brought home the book from the university library for me. Here's a quote from the chapter on William Byrd:

IN the days of good Queen Elizabeth, there were no concerts. Music was a social pastime for the home. The resourceful hostess passed out parts of songs after dinner as casually as she deals a hand of bridge to-day. Byrd wrote, "Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing." And all the educated ones did read and sing at sight so that a new song was hailed more eagerly than a new jazz piece to-day."

He was granted a monopoly on printing and selling music and music paper in 1575 (according to this book), but Answers.com gives a slightly later date and tells us:

These were years of close professional association with Tallis, his former mentor and senior by some 40 years. Together they received in 1578 a license "to imprint any and so many as they will of set songe or songes in partes, either in English, Latine, Frenche, Italian or other tongues that may serve for musicke either in Church or chamber, or otherwise to be plaid or soong…. " This license, a virtual monopoly for music printing, passed to Byrd's sole ownership upon the death of Tallis in 1585. The proprietary fervor it inspired no doubt was a factor in the extraordinarily productive period which followed. During the next few years Byrd published no less than four major collections, all devoted entirely to his own works: Psalmes, Sonets & Songs (1588), Songs of Sundrie Natures (1589), Cantiones sacrae I (1589), and Cantiones sacrae II (1591).

Answers.com also says:

"Byrd did provide for a glimpse of contemporary procedures in the circulation of music with his expressed resolve to expose untrue copies of his works then abroad."

The Answers editor says his Madrigals were stiff, and prefers his other work, particularly, I think, his masses. The authors of Minute Sketches say that "his madrigals made England a 'nest of singing birds.'"
If you scroll down to the bottom of the Answers.com page you will find links to scores, midi files, and free recordings.

Spring Flowers

A couple days ago I thought I was going to be posting a picture of our first flowers to bloom this spring, or rather, Jenny's first flowers.

Last summer and into September she worked tirelessly and persistantly on one patch in particular, digging, raking, hauling stones and logs to border it, decorating with such treasures as she could find, an old garden plaque somebody gave me once, an old wooden wheel from who know where, placing her stones just so, mulching just so. She planted bulbs other places, too, bulbs she dug up from country places. She put her stamp in various nooks and crannies around the yard.

She has found that she loves gardening, and this particular spot is almost entirely her making, though the FYB did manful labour as well. It's in direct view from the back window of the masterbedroom and I love to look on it not just because she made it a pretty spot last summer, but because she made it, and it's hers.

And, as I said, a couple days ago I looked out and spotted a tiny patch of blue, low to the ground. The glasses I am wearing are five years old (at least), and I've needed a new perscription for some time now, so I couldn't distinguish much more than that patch of blue. I hoped it would be Jenny's hard work blooming, but it might just be an old sock of the Boy's, dragged out by a dog, or a bit of trash blown into a little nook.

I asked the HG to come see what she thought. She squinted and said it looked very much like flowers to her, but there was something odd about them, too, and she would go out to look and see for sure.

She came back in laughing. "Yes," she said. "It is a flower- but it's a picture of a flower. Jenny planted something there and she staked the package with the picture on it there as well, and that packet is what we see." We just forgot about it because it's been buried under the snow and dead leaves so long.

The weight of the snow flattened the leaves and mulch beneath it, and now the snow has melted, and now we see the promise of what is to come.

Pain in the Pews

Everybody has a story. Not everybody wants to tell that story. Not everybody can. Some may seem more horrible than others, although that doesn't really change whatever agony and pain any given person is in the midst of. It isn't a contest.

Here's the blog of somebody trying to tell that story, and she's thoughtful enough in the midst of genuine agonies to reach out through her blog and help others learn how to minister to that sort of pain. Start with this post

You may also find encouragement from this quote:

“It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God’s. He begs you to leave the future to Him, and mind the present.”

–George MacDonald (1824-1905)

It has been both a curse and a blessing to me that I actually almost never do think about tomorrow. I can't. It's never been a real place to me. I don't worry about it, but I'm unable to plan for it, either. I'm a day to day thinker, liver. But lately I live in a perpetual state of Groundhog Day (that's a movie reference for those who didn't know), and my Groundhog Day is a searingly painful and immobilizing burden I keep telling God is entirely too much to bear. He doesn't seem to agree with me, and an awful lot of other people are enduring things they also think are too hard to bear, and arguing with God, as I have told a few friends, never seems to have gotten Job anywhere. What's the answer?

I don't really know, except grim survival one minute at a time, prayer, Bible reading, and in my case, any kind of reading. Hold on.

(and thank-you, Mama Squirrel, for sharing the link).

Marriage Advice

Not that I'm in a position to be any sort of counselor, but this is advice somebody else passed on to me many years ago. In the not altogether connected fashion in which my mind works, the last post reminded me of what a young friend told me many years ago. She was a young bride and I was not much older. She said when she'd gotten married and her husband joined the military her mother (who had also been a military bride) shared some interesting wisdom on friendships. I can't quote her here, so I'll just paraphrase, although I think I might have shared it here before.

Young married couples enjoy getting together with other young marrieds, and especially in the military where all your family ties may be on another continent, this happens frequently and you bond quickly. This is a good thing. However, sometimes, for no reason you can discern, you will find that every time your evening with a particular couple comes to an end, you and your spouse are out of sorts with each other, perhaps even arguing and fighting. There need not be anything in particular you can put your finger on, and certainly this does not mean it is the other couple's fault. It doesn't much matter why- if you find that your arguments and disagreements happen regularly after hanging around a particular couple, you need to cool that friendship and spend less time with them.

That seems quite obvious, but sometimes you don't even realize the connection, especially when the fights have little or nothing to do with the couple themselves.

It may be that one spouse is sitting in the seat of the scornful about the other one, and this is rubbing off on you without you being aware of it. It may be something else altogether, something you never will discover. But you need to pay attention to what is happening during the hours before you find yourselves arguing and being disagreeable to one another, and if you see a pattern, whether you see a connection or not, break up that pattern and change it.

Let Me Not Sit in the Seat of the Scornful

Lewis, in his Reflections on the Psalms, suggests that the main reason the Psalmist must avoid the seat of the scornful is not because he is too good and is altogether above them, but because he isn't. His concern is that he will be all too prone to 'laugh at, admire, approve, and justify' what is displeasing to God.
"Lead us not into temptation" says Lewis, "often means, among other things, 'Deny me those gratifying invitations, those highly interesting contacts, that participation in the brilliant movements of our age, which I so often, at such risk, desire.'"

I don't know about you, but that does make me wince.

Lewis says that "closely connected with these warnings against what I have called connivance are the protests of the Psalter against other sins of the tongue."

This surprised him, he says, because he thought of the Psalmists as living in a more violent and primitive age (and he still does, from what I can tell), and expected more discussion of physical violence and sin. Yet this sort of wickedness, the sins of the tongue, are mentioned more often than almost any other, a sing that 'most civilised societies share,' says Lewis in some surprise.

Flattery, deceit, whispering, cruel lies, slander, gossip, betraying of confidences, bitter, hateful words, 'cruel lies that 'cut like a razor,' and so forth are sprinkled liberally through out the Psalms. Says Lewis:

"One almost hears the incessant whisperings, tattling, lying, scolding, flattery, and circulation of rumours. ...we are in the world we know. We even detect in that muttering and wheedling chorus voices which are familiar. One of them may be too familiar for recognition."

Grousing.

So Tuesday my professor chided us for not taking enough notes in class, and said that he always made the most of every minute in his class times.

And then today he told us about the stretching exercises he does on airplanes and about the problems of global warming. How we're supposed to connect those issues to notes on British history, I'm not really sure.

Music Quiz Answers

The Original quiz is here. I only knew seven of these, or rather, guessed accurately about seven of them.

1. "Princeps Musicae" - Palestrina (an important early composer, according to the HG, wrote church music in the 16th century. I thought this was Mendelsohn, who had this on his tombstone, but I was wrong)
2. "Master of the Madrigal" - William Byrd
3. "The Father of English Song" - Purcell (shoudl be Caedmon, IMO)
4. "Musical Dictator of 17th Century France" - Lully
5. "Court Musician to Louis XIV"- Couperin
6. "Compositeur de la Musique de la Chambre"- Rameau
7. "The First Great Fiddler"- Corelli
8. "Serious Father, Frivolous Son" - The Scarlattis
9. "Master of the Oratorio"- Handel
10. "He Made Symphonies out of Folk Songs"- Dvorak
11. "The Complete Frenchman" - Saint-Saens
12. "The Supreme Poet of the Piano" - Chopin
13. "The Brownings of Music" - Robert and Klara Schumann
14. "Father & Son - Strauss
15. "The First Musical Impressionist"- Debussy

Bonus questions:

Solitary Finnish Genius?
Darling of the gods?

Connivance

That's the title of a chapter in C.S. Lewis' book Reflection on the Psalms which I delude myself into thinking I have been reading for a year or more. It's only 12 chapters. I borrowed it from the childrens' music teacher at least that long ago. Then I found a copy of my own at a thrift shop.. Then we moved and I lost both. Then I found it again and hope I returned hers. Then I lost it again. The story repeats itself.

I picked it up again in February absolutely determined to finish it that month for no more noble reason than that my reading list for February might not look as trivial as it is. Instead I read Practicing the Presence of God because it was half the length. Pathetic, isn't it?

But I'm trying again. I have to try because aspects of Lewis' theology are not mine and I'm not in sympathy with many of his views about the Psalms or the faint antisemitism he directs towards the Psalmists. But when Lewis raises questions about how to live out our faith in the every day world of here and now he has my full attention, and that is what he does in the chapter on connivance (which is only chapter 7, for those interested in the extent of my humiliation).

He speaks of the many portions of the Psalms where the writers talk about hating what God hates- and WHO God hates. They talk, even boast, about avoiding the wicked, and hating those who are not walking in God's ways (or whom we have decided are not walking in God's ways). This troubles him, as it has others before and after him. It smacks of Pharisaism, but, as Lewis warns, we must not be Pharisaical even to Pharisees. There is a question here we still struggle with, as he points out.

Lewis' times are not after all very far removed from our own, and in his day, as in ours, celebrities led 'vile and mischievious' lives, newspaper editors lied, politicians were dishonest, and officials sometimes abused their office. In his time as well as ours, this didn't matter. People still clamor after them for autographs, attention, and favors. People still pay money for their publications, magazines with stories about them, and to hear or see them perform.

If the harshly judgemental society of yesteryear (which we imagine more than was actually the case) was a bad thing, is 'that state of society in which rascality undergoes no social penalty' really better? Is it desirable to allow tyrants and reprobates both the pleasures of their vices and a sense of entitlement and superiority to plain, honest, hardworking people?

The question those imprecatory Psalms ought to raise in our minds, says Lewis, is 'how ought we to behave in the presence of very bad people who are powerful, prosperous, and impenitent." The 'outcasts, poor, and miserable whose wickedness has not 'paid' are to be treated as Christ treated the Samaritan woman at the well, although here, too are dangers to ourselves. We must not be so insolent, Lewis says, as to assume 'His authority to rebuke and pardon,' and often those who are quickest to forgive other people for sins not committed against themselves are actually indulging themselves in the 'desire to patronise' and even masking the sin of meddling under the cloak of 'a vocation to help the fallen.'

At the other extreme, many of us would be titilated by the opportunity to meet some celebrity, even one we disapprove of, for ignoble reasons. We might positively wriggle with pleasure if some 'great, though odious, man recognizes' us in public. Lewis warns that the Christian would 'be wise to avoid, where he decently can, any meeting with people who are bullies, lascivious, cruel, dishonest, spiteful.... not because we are 'too good' for them," but "because we are not good enough." We are neither good enough nor clever enough to handle all the temptations and problems "an evening in such society produces." We seem to often, by word, smile, glance, or posture to condone- to connive.

IN a society which most disdains self-righteousness or 'priggishness,' this is even more likely a problem, because quite often what our society condemns as self-righteous and judgemental, 'holier than thou' is nothing more than a desire to be 'good,' to please God. We live when "the very presuppositions of any possible good life- all disinterested motives, all heroism, all genuine forgiveness..." purity, integrity, modesty are not denied, but worse: "assumed to be phantasmal, idiotic, believed in only by children."

And we really cannot avoid such company, much as we may try, as Lewis points out. We should not seek it out, still, we need to know 'what is one to do?' If we are too unprotesting, people assume our standards are no different than theirs and we behave as though "we knew not the man" or He has not had much influence with us. But contentious argument is just as problematic.

Silence, Lewis suggests, is a 'good refuge,' partially because 'few of us enjoy it as we might be in danger of enjoying more forcible methods.' At other times you may present a counterpoint or an objection without seeming a tyrant- you may still lose the friendly debate that may follow, but Lewis says this matters much less than he used to think. "The very man who has argued you down will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said." Sometimes things will be said with which you must voice your disagreement or disapproval, and, Lewis says, 'if it can't be done without seeming priggish, then priggish we must seem.'

And, after all, says Lewis, it's more important not to BE self-righteous than it is not to SEEM self-righteous.

The Hall in the Grove, by Isabella Alden

The Hall in the Grove is written by Grace Livingston Hill's aunt, also known as Pansy. She was an enthusiastic supporter of Chautauqua, and this fat paperback is primarily a paen to Chautauqua and its influence for good in people's lives. It is sometimes less a novel than a 400 page advertisement: "everybody should subscribe to the Chautauquan, a library for a dollar a year!"

The story follows some of the inhabitants of the little town of Centerville who seek to establish a chapter of the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle." We follow various members of the Circle as we see how it influences their lives, saves three wild boys, elevates a kitchen maid, and brings nearly everybody to Christ. They pursue their studies and readings (devoting 40 minutes a day to these topics), cause a few snobs to have some second thoughts, maintain a humble demeanor, gain some friends, open their minds to new ideas, and all of them manage to find a way to go the original Chautauqua on the lake in New York. Some of them, of course, fall in love, but it isn't really a love story, although that's how most 'Pansy' reprints are currently marketed. I picked it up sometime ago anyway, because I knew Mrs. Alden did not really do love stories as we think of them. Nobody who considers 'falling in love' a coarse and meaningless expression could possibly write the sort of books that fall in the category of 'love stories.'

And Mrs. Alden does say just that in one of the early chapters of her book. A flighty, thoughtless little scrap of a fashionable girl happens to say something to one of our young loafers in need of saving that just happens (but let us be reasonable, says Mrs. Alden, and say it was destined by Providence) to start him on a train of thought that will work on him for good, although neither of them at the time realize it. Our young loafer, at least, doesn't understand it fully, but he has an inkling that she's opened up a window he never considered before. Mrs. Alden explains,

"It was not that James Ward "Fell in love" with this small bit of flesh and blood beside him, whatever that coarse expression may mean to those initiated; it was not that he realized any special personality in the matter..."

What the little bit of flesh and blood did by accident was simply open up the possibility to young James that he had slipped out of polite society by his own actions and choices, and it was possible that he might do something towards climbing back by changing his actions and choices. That's what Mrs. Alden wants us to note, but I got far more pleasure from the window she inadvertently opened on a time and culture not so very distant from ours chronologically, where 'falling in love' was a coarse expression devoid of serious and respectable meaning.

Which brings me to one of the things I especially like about these sorts of books (Grace Livingston Hill's included). That is the glimpses into another time period, world, and set of standards they provide. Sometimes this is incidental (as above)- they didn't set out to write 'historical fiction,' they simply wrote with the assumptions and standards of their class and time, and those are the best historical discoveries of all. For example, a gentle little widow in reduced circumstances has been hired to clean the house of a member of the Literary Circle in preparation for a meeting there. There is no mother in the house and the 'housekeeper' is one in name only. The little widow looks over the kitchen and says, "Good land! How anybody can be so nasty beats me!" Mrs. Alden must apologize for her widow, and she explaims that 'she did not know that the adjective she used was an inelegant word.'

In another section I learn that 'fool' was plain language not used in polite society, a word the well-bred agnostic character in our story didn't even use to himself. Whatever that internal struggle was all about I don't precisely remember, but I came away marveling at the change in manners between then and now, when much more vulgar and coarse words are used as terms of endearment.

The 400 pages were sometimes tedious reading (tedious isn't necessarily a bad thing right now), but this one was particularly interesting historically as Mrs. Alden includes some quotes from Chautauqua lectures by real people. Her Centerville citizens hear lectures by Dr. Vincent, one of the two founders of Chautauqua and a Methodist minister. They learn the tonic sol-fa method of music reading and singing from Dr. Seward himself (he was instrumental in promoting this method in America during the 1800s). They hear messages from Frank Beard, enthusiastic American illustrator of the Ram's Horn magazine, and one member is brought back from the brink of agnositicism by the sermons of a Dr. Meredith, Boston pastor and Bible class teacher who had over 2,000 students attending his weekday Bible classes in Boston.

Another interesting sidelight is to compare the original goals and focus of the Chautauqua founders with what it has become today. Chautauqua was originally basically a parachurch ministry. Yes, they delivered lectures on a wide 'secular' topics such as astronomy, kindergarten, ancient history, music, art, poetry, and elocution- but they believed all these things could be used to lead people to Christ or to strengthen the walk and influence of those who were already believers so that they could lead others to Christ. Here's the focus of Chautauqua's religious program today. As one researcher points out:

However, the very nature of its growth caused it to be organized in a way that made it look more and more like the new corporate structures it was initially set up in opposition to.

This seems to be the history of far too many human organizations.

Homeschool Blog Awards

Homeschool Blog Awards are coming up. Sprittibee has listed categories and is interested in feedback before the nominations open up in a week.

This morning at the bus-stop

The weather was balmy, with a breeze finally from the right direction. The air smelled of warmness and moist soil. The birds were singing in the pine trees. And then a guy walked into the shelter with his iPod turned up so loud I could almost discern the lyrics of his rock music. Another guy walked by talking a mile a minute on his cell phone. They both missed the birds singing in the trees. How sad.

The Zeus dog, being over 100 lbs. and being an independent sort who was not given much training before the day he came home with The Equuschick, has never had much respect for the leash and The Equuschick has been working on it since day one. Some days he remembers that there's a person on the other end, some days he doesn't.

This afternoon he was taken for a loooooong walk and he was good boy until the very end.
They were right in front of the driveway when our oddest neighbors drove by and pulled over to chat.

Zeus didn't even run. He just moved. The Equuschick's weight meant nothing to him in comparison with the new people and the new car, and she was knocked to the ground, flipped over, and dragged in the gravel until he was right in front of the van.

He was, er, brought back to heel. Quickly.

And then The Equuschick stood there, blood dripping off her hands and elbows, with bruises beginning to bloom in unmentionable areas, and the neighbors stayed in their van and smiled benignly, and talked about the weather.

She did try to conceal her impatience, but couldn't hide the fact that she kept having to wipe blood off a finger because it was dripping onto her clothes.

They left, eventually, but Zeus was sulking and it took longer to get inside because he'd decided that he would make known his displeasure by refusing to sit for the door. He just stood there and looked at the clouds. Aren't they pretty? I can't hear a word you're saying, miniscule human. He just had that "look" that The Equuschick calls his "I Can't Hear You" Look.

But The Equuschick, is WAY stubborner than her dog has ever been, plus she was BLEEDING and not feeling particuarly benevolent. So eventually he had to sit. Poor kid.

(The HG says Zeus and The Equuschick are good for each-other, both being their noncompliant selves.)

The Equuschick feels rather disgusted, having to take Tylenol because she just took her dog for a walk.

But still, she loves him. Yep, yep. He'll still get to sleep in bed with her tonight because he's soooooooooo cuuuuuuuuute. =D

Invitation to the Classics

I wrote this review in 1999 and I still love this book, and fortunately, it's still available at Amazon.

Invitation to the Classics, a guide to the books you've always wanted to
read, is by Louise Cowan and Os Guinness.

I think it's a great resource for Moms like me, who are not as wellread as we could be. It is written/edited by people with a passion for their subject.

Each book has around two pages devoted to it.The entry will begin with a little bit of background information on the author's time and geophraphic area, some biographical information (all of which I find that CM's teachers also did when the started a new book), and then some inromation on the book itself. They don't try to cover every book by the authors they've chosen. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the book they've chosen to represent Austen. Goethe's Faust gets most of the attention in his story.

There is usually an illustration of the author, or sometimes if part of the story has been illustrated by a recognized artist, tht will be in the book. Then there is a short discussion of the story itself and its themes. My favorite section is 'Issues to Explore," in every entry.

For Faust 'Issues to Explore' reads:

"From a Chrstian point of view, the recurring theme of Faust in world literature and music remains a fascinating challenge. (Apart from Goethe's Faust, consider Marlowe's tragedy of 1594, Alexander Pushkin's Russian treatment of 1826, and Thomas Mann's novel Dr Faustus of 1946) The quest for absolute power over living beings ad nature accompanied by a desperatrely guilt-ridden conscience retains a disturbingly modern appeal.
(1) Why have Goethe's dramas appealed to readers and theatergoers fro more than two centureies as the most thought-provoking apporach to the subject?
(2) How integral is a Christian perspective to understanding the play?
(3) How is our own era's attitude to knowledge and power infected with a sense of Faustian bargaining?"

The other novels mentioned above are introduced earlier in the discussion of Faust and its background, so they aren't totally intimidating when you come across them in the issues to explore section. There is also a small box called 'For Further STudy' in each entry. It includes books about the bplay, which translation, if it was not originally in English, is preferred, and information on other resources (biographies, for example).

We bought our copy from Conservative Books about a year ago (9 years ago now). I use it for myself often. When the older girls are reading or have just finished one of the books in the volume, I have them read the entry in the book. If they are interested, they get online and check our library system for any books for further study mentioned. Sometimes, I ask them to focus their narration on one of the themes mentioned in the book. Sometimes that's it, I ask them to pick any one of the issues brought out in Invitation to the Classics, sometime I pick out the issue.

It is not our only book for studying literature, but it's an important one. I don't rely entirely on it- my ideas about what is appropriate for young maidens to read is not always the authors' (Chaucer's Wife of Bath, for instance).

It contains themes and entries you won't find in other resources. For example, it has a section on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor imprisoned and then murdered by the Nazis for speaking out against them. I have found it an excellent resource.

Making Connections

One good way to tell when your child has really connected with his studies is when the young students makes connections between what he has learned in one subject with something going on in real life. But this can take strange turns.

Several years ago our then 9 and 10 y.o. colored and labled simple line drawing maps of the Red Sea.

A few months later whilst I cooked lunch, our then 19 month old took a nasty tumble off the dining room chair and split his lip. I nursed him to sleep and put him down to finish his nap. His 10 y.o. sister picked him when he whimpered, and looked closer at his poor, swollen little lip.

"Mommy," she observed, "the cut on his lip is shaped just like the Red Sea."

Comparing Ourselves to....?

This is taken from a post some seven years old, and it's taken out of its original context and set down here all alone and undressed, so to speak, but I've snipped a few things here and added a few things there in an attempt to make it more coherent (I hope), and I hope it will be encouraging.
There are some among us who find Charlotte Mason or some other ideas presented here intimidating.


Unfortunately, most of us did not start studying philosophy, education, character training, and great literature until after we were already elbow deep in little characters needing training. We're playing catch-up, but the children are not giving us a 'time-out' or 'teacher inservice days' and they are certainly not holding off on their growing while we do this catching up. Other areas in our lives that aren't waiting for us might be the housework, the budget, the garden, the kitchen, or anything else to which we're committed (and for some of us the word 'committed' may apply in more ways than one, if you get my tiny joke).

So we're behind, we're out of breath, and we're desperate because we care deeply and passionately about our children, about doing right by them, and we know how vital some of these things are.

Then there are some people we meet who have a head-start- for whatever the reason may be- it might be they're just plain smarter, or only better educated, or maybe better prepared because of your superior parents (or perhaps superior in certain areas only- perhaps outstanding with poetry and literature, but training in good habits and making the children feel loved is an area where they failed utterly, or the reverse, or something else). Some of them are ahead because they were older before they had children (sometimes not by choice) and so had more time to prepare, read ahead and think about what they were going to do and how.

So here the rest of us are, treading water, forced by our circumstances or lack of foresight to rely on others to distill the
heady knowledge for us, whether that be the treasure in Charlotte Mason's six hefty Victorian volumes or something else, and we think we finally get a grasp on something, and boom- somebody with a little more knowledge or experience or just an extra piece of information we didn't have comes and offers it, and it turns out that the building we were building is using faulty material, or is on a soggy foundation, or is missing a key element, and we have to redo, rethink, or retreat.

This happens a few times, and some of us can get depressed, start to feel bad, begin to let a little envy or spirit of discontent begin to nibble us around the edges a bit. This can slant our view and cause us to see those who merely offer information as 'know-it-alls.' It can make us miserable. It can cause us to despair, or it can just make us feel sorry for ourselves because we're so dumb.

Sisters, this should not be. We do not need to be so insecure that a differing view needs to be shot down- we can always ignore it if we need to. We should not be so insecure that finding out one person uses myths or that another person doesn't makes us fret about if we're right about what we're doing, or worse, makes us decide that their Christianity is not as solid as our own.

It's always good to be shaken up, as somebody else has said so wisely- but we should welcome the shaking, hang on for the ride, and grow from it. We should not allow ourselves to stew, wring our
hands, respond with antagonism, and get defensive. We certainly should not feel defensive, envious, or jealous because somebody has read more or seems to know more than we do, or than our cherished sources do. We should be tickled pink when somebody is willing to share their own gold mine of information. -and if we don't like that information, we don't have to act on it. We should be confidant enough to do what we want to do, whatever anybody else is doing.

I know how hard this can be, and this little pep talk was originally written as much for me as for anybody else. The first time I saw one of Donna-Jean's daughter's narrations (it was a sonnet) I felt like a positive CM fraud. I began to fret that I'd never 'measure' up, that I'd failed my daughters, that I needed to hang up my 'CM card' and go directly to jail for impersonating a CM homeschooler- after about ten minutes of that I gave myself a hearty shake- but it was hard- and I've had to do it again and again. That spirit of comparing ourselves to others is just all to common- but we don't have to give in to it anymore than we give in to the common housefly and give it free reign of the house.

We can always feel inferior to somebody- we just need not to let it
bother us. I couldn't count the number of other bloggers and CM homeschoolers who are so much smarter than I am, and they know so much more about CM than I do- I'm not rowing in their wake- I'm dog-paddling!

I could react to that by being a little disgruntled or by feeling
sorry for myself- but I'd be a much better steward of the gifts God
has given me (which includes access to those other creative, thoughtful, or discerning) thinkers if I either jump at the opportunity to gain more knowledge without nearly as much hard work as they expended to get it=)- or simply nod and go on with the direction I feel my family needs to go.

Music Quiz

These are taken from the Minute Sketches of Great Composers, published in 1932. I don't own it, I've copied this list from an old email on a reader's list. Which composers are these Minute Biographies about?


1. "Princeps Musicae"
2. "Master of the Madrigal"
3. "The Father of English Song"
4. "Musical Dictator of 17th Century France"
5. "Court Musician to Louis XIV"
6. "Compositeur de la Musique de la Chambre"
7. "The First Great Fiddler"
8. "Serious Father, Frivolous Son"
9. "Master of the Oratorio"
10. "He Made Symphonies out of Folk Songs"
11. "The Complete Frenchman"
12. "The Supreme Poet of the Piano"
13. "The Brownings of Music"
14. "Father & Son -
15. "The First Musical Impressionist"

Answers here.

Of music and spring.

Non-school reading comes in snatches these days, and I fervently look forward to the end of the semester when I can commence my ever growing to-read-while-on-vacation list. Fool that I am, I keep sticking fat titles onto the list ("The Three Musketeers" for one). We'll see...

Part of my snatched reading the last few nights has been from Ian Bradley's The Book of Hymns. Bradley provides the background and full lyrics for 150 hymns. Reading a hymn is a good way to pause and take stock of the words, and a good way to remember to sing one later in the day. One complaint at Amazon is that there is no music in this book. True, that... although I can't imagine how fat the book would be if it included music. For hymns I know, this is not a problem at all. For hymns I don't know, I can ransack any one of our large number of hymnals or utilize the Cyber Hymnal to learn the melody.

It's still dark and cold in the mornings here (it was below freezing when I left the house this morning) but things are beginning to warm up. I tried a bit of psychological manipulation with myself this morning by using a track from the The Secret Garden soundtrack in my alarm clock. That CD always makes me think of Spring and growing things, and hearing it this morning reminded me that Spring really must be on its way soon.

The Equuschick was going to write a Specific Post.

But she forgot what it was.


There are actually three other topics under consideration, but all of them require investments of time and energy currently outside The Equuschick's limited resources, so she shall file them away somewhere in her ratroom of a brain under "To Write Later When You Feel Like Asking Your Muse to Dinner."

The Equuschick makes it a point to ask her Muse to dinner only when she is feeling chipper and energetic, and she's feeling remarkably lethargic.

A week ago she met, after a period of several years, with her very first riding instructor who was very pleased with most of her progress but encouraged to practice her two-point, which in theory is very exciting because it is the first step towards learning to jump and it improves balance immensely and is used frequently by endurance riding.
In point of actual fact, it involves standing in your stirrups (hence the term "two-point", it removes your third point of communciation with your horse, namely your seat) with your upper half balanced over your horse, while your thighs do all the work with your knees, calves, etc. all relaxed against the side of your horse and your thighs don't like it very much at all when you first ask them to do it. Then you get down and you clean stalls, and then you walk dogs. And then you come inside and ask your legs to go up the stairs and they say "I think NOT, thank-you very much."


Fun stuff though, really.

Deerskin by Robin McKinley

Another book I read recently is Deerskin by Robin McKinley. I picked it up at a thrift shop because I'd loved Spindle's End and thoroughly enjoyed her retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and because I thought she'd written the other retelling of Sleeping Beauty I love but it turns out that was Enchantment by Mormon author Orson Scott Card instead.

You can read excerpts from all of Mckinley's books here, and you should especially take a look at Spindle's End and see what a sparkling good collection of prose it is.

Deerskin was different- more adult, more painful, and centered around a theme I never choose to read about in fiction or nonfiction. There was a lot I liked about Deerskin, but there was also a good deal I didn't care for altogether and I don't think I could recommend it to anybody, but neither can I forget it. McKinley's writing does keep you turning the pages, although this book reminded me more of an Andre Norton than her own previous work. But since I've only read Spindle and Beauty maybe I am judging her by the best of her work and this is actually more typical. Some of the plot elements were tiresome, trite, and threadbare- The Moon Woman just wasn't believable, even when I tried my hardest to suspend my disbelief and I'm usually quite a capable disbelief suspender.

But other elements were all too believable for comfort. The reaction of her main character to the horrifying trauma she endures, the affect it has on her memory, her self-protective flinching from examining that memory is exquisistely and agonizingly well written and it read true and universal, if by universal I mean I recognized it and found it familiar and true. So true that it was very painful to read, but it may have been therapeutic pain.

The horrifying trauma she endures is utterly unsuitable for discussion on a family blog, and I felt betrayed by the blurb on the back cover. It said something about how the main character's resemblance to her beautiful dead mother made her father want to kill her, and so she had to flee for her life. She had to flee, but the rest of this was a lie and she didn't flee soon enough.

Ordinarily I would have put the book down when I realized that the blurb was a lie and just what sort of lie it was, but by the time I realized she was not going to flee in time, I was already gasping in pain and tears alongside the main character- and I dealt with my pain over different circumstances by following along as she was dealing with her own. Her way and mine were very different when examined externally, yet perhaps more similar than it seems from within.

Hers was largely one foot in front of another, one step at a time on a physical journey taking her as far from her home as possible, and physically fighting for her survival in hand to hand combat with beasts, starvation, and blizzards, all the while steadily and resolutely looking the other way from what hurt too much to be faced. Mine is staying in my home as much as possible, leaving only under compulsion and I prefer to put one foot in front of another through reading, one page at a time, blogging one post at a time, reading one Psalm at a time, playing one game at a time with my children even when I had rather hibernate away the rest of my life.

It is a giant step forward when I leave my room and sit on the back porch in the sun for a minute, or I presume it will be when I actually do that. Meanwhile, I am steadily and resolutely hanging on by reading and blogging about anything and everything but that thing- and I had to finish the book not only because that's the way I am at any time, but also because I needed to see her successfully gather the shattered pieces of herself together and make herself as whole as she could be again.

Who Sets the Standards?

"How well is the U.S. Department of Education fulfilling its responsibility to ensure quality education in U.S. schools, kindergarten through college?"

SAT scores have been on a continual decline for most of the last 40 years. The 1992 reading test rate of 77 percent for today's Americans over age 16 is 20 points lower than the 97 percent literacy rate for the World War II generation -- the last highly literate citizens produced by American public schools in this century. Half of America's government accredited high-school graduates can't read sixth-grade lessons, two-thirds can't read ninth-grade lessons.

According to the World Data section of the 1996 Britannica Yearbook:

...the seventh nation with an adult literacy percentage below 80 percent has the most expensive public schools in the world -- costing $280 billion in 1995. The 1992 NALS test scores show that only 77 percent of Americans over 16 can read.

Only about 2 percent of all American children are homeschooled. So far as I know, they have a 100 percent literacy rate. And yet the National Education Association insists that those who have the best interests of the children at heart should worry about regulating that miniscule homeschooled 2 percent of all American children.

Looks like a distraction tactic to me.

See here and here for similar saddening and sobering stats.

So Many Books....

I finished So Many Books, So Little Time (A Year of Passionate Reading) by Sara Nelson late last night. There's a pretty decent review of it here, though I don't agree with the reviewer that a book a week is unrealistic and probably not true. There's a very snarky and uncharitable review here. I disagree with much of it (I like parenthesis), and think it's weird to critize what is essentially a personal memoir for using the "I" word too often. On the other hand, it's kind of funny and I do agree with some things. The 'meet-cute way' drew me up short and still makes no sense, Sara has trashier taste in books than I do, and it's certainly true that you or I could probably do the same thing better but will never get a chance to because we don't live and work in the publishing industry in New York City. But since I don't want to, why be churlish about it? I'll never get to publish and be paid for my own reading diary, and she'll never be a stay at home mom to seven children. I know I think I have the better life, and I assume she thinks she does, and that's a good thing, IMO. At any rate, she recognizes this herself, pointing out in her October 24 entry that there are a huge number of books about writing and publishing and almost no books about, say, trucking, probably because people in the publishing industry are frustrated writers who think everybody is as interested in books and writing as they are.

Sara writes about the aftermath of her book here. I wondered as I read it what her husband and friends would think of some of the things she said. Her husband, she says, was great about it. Some of her friends, not so much. This surprised her. I am only surprised that she was surprised.

I don't think I like most of the same books that Ms. Nelson likes, but I think we feel the same about our books:

"...there's something comforting to me about knowing that whatever is going on in my outer world, bad or good, exciting or boring, I know I will find comfort and joy and excitement the minute I get home to my book du jour or semain, or very rarely, mois.

I'm a great believer in reading for therapy, for escape, for comfort, as a substitute for drugs, and also in what Ms. Nelson calls 'socially protective reading.' "A book is a way to shut out the noise of the world. It's a way to be alone without being totally alone."

I've never read most of the books she mentions, and I still don't want to, but I had to laugh about the character in Heartburn who turns everything into a story, because if she tells the story she can make people laugh and she would rather have people laugh than feel sorry for her. I can't imagine reading a book about sports on purpose, but I loved her chapters on baseball, the book The Way Home (by Dunow, not Pride), and her anxieties over her little boy at his little league practices:

"Is there an adult alive who had a good experience in organized sports as a kid? Are there parents whose hearts don't clench... remembering in explicit detail the humiliations of their own youth?"

Sara decides if there are, their children will probably grow up to be serial killers or WorldCom executives.

I loved that so true to life heartwarming moment when she's finished reading Charlotte's Web with her son and he delights her soul by telling her that Charlotte reminds him of her. Like all of us who aspire to or are driven to write, she's long cherished E.B. White's epitaph for Charlotte:

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."

What mother wouldn't thrill to hear that her child think's she's like Charlotte? And what mother would be able to resist the attempt to draw out more sweetness from the beloved progeny, as Sara does, by asking her son how she reminds him of Charlotte? His reason? Charlotte is a girl, but she's nice anyway, and 'she's really, really bossy.'

I don't know if it's reassuring or disconcerting how much children everywhere have in common.

Gift-Giving

A preacher and his family once mentioned that they were looking for a freezer. A few weeks later a member of his church called, very excited, because they had found a used freezer for them and had gone ahead and picked it up for them at $X.XX because it was such a good deal, and the preacher and family could pay them back and pick it up at their convenience.
Only the price wasn't what the preacher and family had intended to pay- it overshot their budget by a good deal. Neither was the timing convenient for them.
They went ahead and bought the freezer, as painful to their budget as that was, because they did not want to hurt the other family's feelings (this was especially ticklish since he was the preacher), but they never again felt free to share with others the things they hoped to find at yard sales.

Right now we have a pig waiting for us at a meat locker. It's been there about a month because the people who generously gave it to us then surprised us by telling us that it was there whenever we wanted to pay the processing fees and pick it up didn't let me know about their generosity until it was time to pick it up. We have the freezer in our refrigerator and the tiniest chest freezer I have ever seen. I have owned ice-chests with as much storage capacity as this freezer. We're going to have to divide it up and store parts of it in freezers belonging to friends and relations. I am thrilled to have the meat, and I don't mind paying the processing fee (though it would have been better had we known of it in advance), but I wish we had time to find a good deal on a used freezer with more storage capacity.

We know of somebody else who did a large family a 'favor' by calling and ordering landscaping materials delivered to their house- but they had not chosen those materials from that location, nor had they budgeted those materials into the monthly expenses and they didn't have the money for them. The (single) friend contributed hours of labour on the large family's property and generously donated many things to them, but not being the father of a large family on a small salary, the friend did not understand how much an unplanned expenditure of a few hundred dollars could put a tiny budget out of wack.

Friends of ours were moving once and another friend came over to help them pack. When it came time to load the truck, all their things would not fit, so they had to make some last minute decisions about things to leave behind, and that meant her childrens' bicycles and their very nice picnic table and chairs. When they arrived at their new location and unpacked they learned that their friend had been able to pack so much so quickly because he often put only one thing in a box of newspaper. His assistance was generous and they did not wish to be churlish or ungrateful (and he never knew), but by default his decision to pack one item to a box forced them to leave behind things they would have chosen to take while taking things they would have chosen to leave behind.

I don't know what the receivers should do in each of these instances- probably just bite their tongues and say thank-you. I think sometimes we've handled similar situations well sometimes and not at all well other times.

I have looked this over two or three times and thought about deleting it for fear of being misunderstood or sounding surly myself. What I want to focus on here is not really criticism of these gift-givers or sympathy for the receivers in these scenarios. They all meant well and what is done is done, so let's keep in mind their kind intentions.
Let us also use them as a learning tool for our own growth. When you were a child it was cute to give your mother a cross-stitch kit she had to finish (and possibly buy new thread for because you used the thread supplied for some project of your own). But now that we're adults let us remember that when we are doing something for somebody else our generosity should not costing them something, or force them into choices they would not have otherwise made. I know it seems obvious, but sometimes when we don't think about it the obvious isn't quite so obvious.

Carnival of Homeschooling

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling invites you to Celebrate the Journey at Principled Discovery. Looks like a great read with plenty of topics to choose from.

Chores and Children

We believe in children doing chores. In fact, we believe in children working hard and contributing to the family's wellbeing. I grew up doing chores. My husband did not. Not one single chore was assigned to him at any stage in his life that he recalls, except during the reign of his favorite step-mother, and oddly enough, the rest of his kin-folk disliked his favorite step-mother and thought she was mean to him. I think during her very short sentence of marriage to his dad the HM had to do real slavish tasks like making his own bed and taking out the trash. I also think he was about 13.

You may have some idea how my husband feels about that when I tell you that he has assigned more chores to the 8 year old boy than to the 10 year old girl (I made up the slack there), and probably the proudest I've ever seen him is when we admire his little boy's work ethic (which is strong and tenacious).

Chores are for boys and girls: We also are an old-fashioned family with old-fashioned values and we pretty much stick to old-fashioned gender roles in our family- and our boy does what other people call 'girl chores' and the girls do what other people consider boy-chores. He helps dust, clean the dishes, clear and wipe tables, vacuum, fold laundry, and even cook. He also is all boy. The girls mow yards, muck stalls, carry out trashcans, and help with our tire retaining wall in progress in the front driveway. I do not want my son to be helpless without a woman in his life. If his wife gets sick I want him to be able to be supportive and not an added burden and hindrance. I want him to know how to get some basic meals together for his family so that if meals are left to him at any time for any reason he can rise to the occasion without breaking the family budget.

First Chores: Probably about the time our children are two they are already helping to do a few easy chores with Mama (or Daddy). They fold washclothes, pillowcases, and dishtowels. They put away silverware and plastic cups. They help sort laundry (color matching!). They get a cloth and get to 'help' wipe the table. They can carry things like napkins, cups, and dishes to and from the table. They can even water plants. I do this by getting a small cream pitcher, just the right size to hold enough water for one plant, and teach them to fill it up one time and pour it into one plant. If you have plants in several rooms you can teach them that the living room plants are watered on Mondays, the bedroom plants on Tuesday, etc. They can dry dishes (cups work especially well).

They can help you do just about anything at this age. Yes, everything will take a little longer, but it will be worth it later.

First Independent Chores: Once you've trained them to do the small things well and independently, you can let them do these things regularly- watering plants, folding all the towels and washclothes, setting the table and clearing it, wiping the table. It's helpful to make sure your cleaning supplies are safe for children and things are set up so that they make sense.

They can feed pets, especially if you give them a specific container and tell them exactly how full it should be.

They can wipe out sinks (I think I was about five or six when scouring the sink first became my job and I loved it).

They can dust- not a whole room yet, but certainly you can assign a specific piece of two of furniture, an end table or rocking chair, and teach them to do the job thoroughly.

They can make beds and switch out laundry when it's done- carrying a basket of clean clothes into the living room to be folded, carrying baskets of folded clothes to the rooms where they belong. They can hang clothes on hangers and fold quite a few things.

The main thing is supervision and apprenticeship. First they do the chore with you and you explain what you are doing and why. Then you watch over them the first few times they try a chore alone, checking to make sure they follow the steps you expect to be followed. Then check on their work periodically. If you are watching you can see when you've assigned a task too hard or too easy for some reason. A shorter child will take longer to be able to manage the vacuum cleaner than a tall child, or you may realize your child is color blind when you ask him to sort laundry, or you may find that your child with ADD tendencies needs a short, specific list of things to do rather than a general 'clean the kitchen.'

These are generalities, not the final word in chores for the children in your family. In general, our oldest two were able to do just about everything by the time they were 12- including meals. The middle two were a bit older when they learned meal preparation, and the youngest two are not where any of their older siblings were at the same age because I slacked off. But if you include your children in your chores and explain what you are doing, by the time they are 10 or 11 they should be capable of doing just about any regular household chore except some of the kitchen tasks.

Creative Writing Assignments

We don't assign creative writing in our homeschool. All the children have tried their hand at their own creative writing projects, and I do make sure they have time to do this if that's what they want to do. I just don't require it for school. What made me think about this and then go hunt up the following older note about it was reading this post at Dominion Family. You really ought to read the comments, too.


Charlotte Mason didn't think too highly of giving children creative writing assignments either. I think it's because good creative writing requires a wide body of experience and knowledge, which children don't have yet. She wanted to give them the knowledge and experience they lacked first. I think sometimes we give children what we call creative writing too early, and it actually spoils them in some ways. If they haven't had enough exposure to excellent poetry and literature, they tend to think their efforts are better than they are, and then they don't work as hard at improving as they might. Couple this tendency with the destructive self-esteem movement and its empty praise and goal that every child think more highly of himself than he ought, and the result is not good writing.

If they have had just a little more exposure to good literature than their peers, then their writing looks very much better than that of their peers, and this is even worse. They come in for a great deal of praise and admiration and encouragement to continue writing just as they are. This actually causes their own writing to suffer in the long run, because they don't realize how much drek they really are producing, and how much better it could be with more maturity, more rough drafts, more sweating over their craft, and much wider reading. I can't tell you how often I have been stunned by young people (and not so young) who say they want to be writers, who talk about their poetry as though it were polished, good stuff, and who also say they never read. If you're not reading your standard for good writing is your own stuff, and we all know the folly of comparing ourselves to ourselves.

Creative writing, making up the plot, characters, setting, dialogue, and so on, is also one of the hardest forms of writing there is. You are doing two things, working on writing itself and supplying the material for that writing.Writing narrations, letters to the editor, reviews, essays about what you have read or seen and similar types of writing allows you to focus on the task of writing, since the general information is supplied you by your subject or your reading.

It is interesting to note, too, that not even Shakespeare, the most creative genius who ever lived, to my mind, was creative in the way we have come to mean today. Most, if not all, of his plays were based on stories or plays already done by somebody else or part of the common culture. He recrafted and retold them in his own inimitable way, sometimes completely, but he usually started with a background of ideas, plot, characters and information already in place.

The wide reading of CM's program does that for our children.In later years, there is some creative writing, although the creative writing is still using cloth woven by other, more mature minds. In either volume 3 or 6, she gives some examples of writing assignments for exams that have the child write things like a scene between Mr. Wodehouse (from Jane Austen's Emma) and a modern young lady, or to write a diary as of some famous person, or to write in the style of a particular author (which is the way Ben Franklin and Jack London learned to write), or write a letter as though it were from some other historical figure.

When we give our children creative writing assignments for school and then shower them with praise (because they do write amusing things), we run the risk of spoiling them for later work. An example in the physical realm is a man I know who was a natural athlete as a young child, and his parents put him in a football league for grade school children. He did a fantastic job,and had all sorts of praise and admiration- but he was doing too much too young, and he injured his knee to the point that he could not play football when he got to high school. Had he waited until his body had grown and developed a little more, things might have been different.I think creative writing is the same way. Doing lots of good reading and writing about that reading builds the bone and tendon and muscle that will be used later in creative writing. Studying and comparing different styles of writing (beginning just by reading the treasure trove of good books available to us) for years before a creative writing project is assigned will make the writing end of things almost unconscious and leave the mind free to focus on the harder task of creating later.

But actually, building creative thinkers begins earlier than reading. In CM's day kids from homes with no books and low vocabularies still had more experience using their minds actively than kids in our book deprived, television glutted, computer game oriented generation. Oral stories were fairly common, even amongst the 'lower' classes, and the children had to get up their own amusements. Fancy play things would not have been widely available to the poor. Poor children had practice with outdoor games (in the streets, as likely as not), and with using the mind's eyes that CM says is so important- thinking about what they heard and picturing things in their mind's eye.

If you want your children to be able to write creatively, they need to think creatively long before they set a pen to paper or finder to keyboard. If you want to develop creative thinkers, you give them time to think.

Quote

Books get to me personally. When things go right, I read. When things go wrong, I read more.

Sara Nelson, So Many Books, So Little Time

Keeping Little Ones Busy

I may have posted this before, I can't remember. I know I've written it before, because what I'll be sharing here over the next few days is taken from posts and letters of mine that are several years old (at least eight years old).

On warm days we used to sit the one y.o. in his high chair in the kitchen, spread towels on the floor beneath the high chair and put some water in his high chair tray. He would splash happily while we managed to get some schoolwork done in the same room.

If your little ones are old enough not to put their fingers in their mouths, you can spray some shaving cream on a kitchen counter (or a cookie sheet), add a drop or two of food coloring and let them fingerpaint in it. Shaving cream makes great fingerpaint. In a house we lived in when I was small, we had a 'peninsula' countertop (like an island, only one norrow end was anchored to the wall, and we children could take two sides and an end unto ourselves). My mother used to wipe that down and spray shaving cream all over it and let us finger paint in it. Shaving cream cleans up well, too.

I've also put small tots in their swimming suits inside an empty bathtub and let them spray shaving cream all over the walls of the shower and tub.

I sometimes as a special treat let them rummage in my jewelry box. I actually don't wear jewelry, though I used to. So now I occasionally buy some sparkly piece at a yard sale just for this `treasure box' they love to look through.

Make a tent with a sheet over a table, or stand two chairs back to back, but about three feet apart- spread a sheet or bedspread over them. You may need to anchor the ends of the sheet on the chair seats using a stack of books. This is GREAT fun! In fact, the children can usually spend more enjoyable hours planning this sort of play out, gathering the props they need for whatever adventure they will be having, and making up their backstory than they will actually spend in the tent playing out whatever game they've invented for themselves.

Fill a sink half full of water and maybe a little soap. Put in plastic dishes, an egg beater or whisk, a few measuring cups and spoons and let them splash and play. Or get out the baby dolls and let your little girls give them a bath.

One rule of thumb I have found is that the less 'toyish' the material, the less 'babyish' the activity, the better satisfied my children are were.

Roses in December, Part II

My friend the Unblogger posted here about how we met. Part of that story was the first piece of my writing the Unblogger ever read, and I thought you might enjoy some 'rest of the story' information. If you haven't read that post yet, you need to go read it again or the rest of this post won't make sense.

There was something terribly wrong with that mud and muck from the old stable, and nothing but horsenettles ever grew in the beds we built and then filled with such backbreaking labor.

It took us three years to get ride of the thistles, and the year we finally got that small pasture cleared and it was looking better than ever is the year we sold everything and moved to a busy city in another state because of the HM's transfer.

I did get a garden going in another spot, where I found some previous owner had gardened as well- there was asparagas growing there in the weeds. We grew tomatoes, spinach, turnips, and a few peppers with the most success.

Jenny still likes to garden, but none of the rest of the Progeny enjoy it much- although the FYG may turn out to be a gardener. The FYG was born in that house- upstairs in a bedroom papered with blue flowers on a white background.

That first phone call from the Unblogger was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. We did indeed talk for hours and we did not begin to plumb the depths of the things we had in common. Her daughter and the HG also became fast friends, and when you are the child of a member of the active duty military and have never lived anywhere longer than four years, the blessings of such a permanent, long term friendship is at least quadrupled.

The Unblogger has been a wonderful friend, supportive, encouraging, compassionate, and generous beyond belief. My daughters tell me she spoils me, and I just smile and agree. She sends me all sorts of little token of her generosity and thoughtfulness. We both cruise the library booksales and thrift shops for books to send each other (though I am not as regular as she), and we laugh that one day we will send each other the books we've already been given as gifts because our tastes are so similar. She has been a great comfort and support through trials and sorrows, a wonderful friend through times of rejoicing (she made me maternity clothes when the FYG surprised us by joining our family after five years of infertility and miscarriages).

We have never lived in the same state (at least, not while we knew it- I did live in her state for a few years when I was a small tot), except for the State of Grace, which is, after all, what matters most.

Sunday Hymn Post

When overwhelmed with doubts and fears
Great God, do Thou my spirit cheer;
Let not my eyes with tears be fed,
But to the Rock of Ages led.

When storms of sin and sorrow beat
Lead me to this divine retreat --
Thy perfect righteousness and blood,
My Rock, my Fortress, and my God.

When guilt lies heavy on my soul
And waves of fierce temptation roll,
I'll to the Rock for shelter flee,
And take my refuge, Lord, in Thee.

When called the vale of death to tread,
Then to this Rock my I be led;
Nor fear to cross the gloomy sea
Since Thou hast tasted death for me.


Thomas Ken, 1637- 1713

MOre here

Thank-you to the dear friend who sent this to me. It is lovely. She says it's to a tune called Devotion, which is the tune to another hymn called "Show Pity, Lord."

Roses in December

Long ago (before internet use by commoners) many people communicated via mail, i.e. pen and/or typewriter and paper. We used curious stickers known as stamps which a company issued (still does) and that company would then carry via truck or plane your piece of paper to the person you wanted to receive your scribblings. Very useful, albeit slow.
The DHM and I met, of course, through her writing. She had written an article for a now defunct newsletter (which used paper and stamps) for homeschooling Christians. Her article covered a controversial topic that our family was also discussing. And so, as I had access to her location I called information (on the phone, with a person! who could give me a phone number if I gave her an address, or even a city and state!). And then I called her. Long distance. Before these lovely flat-fee programs. We talked for hours. And we did that regularly for a long time. We discovered we had much in common--not the least of which was our love of books, family, homeschooling, and, overarching all, God.
A few months later, we met in person at a gathering of homeschooling Christians. Our families had each traveled several hundred miles.
Almost 2 years later, our family traveled several hundred miles in another direction to visit the Common Room Family before they moved even farther away.
We have visited them in each of their homes as the HM has been posted by the military. The Common Room family has also visited us. We will finally be visiting them in their present home this spring.
We have been, like so many of you, so blessed by knowing this Family. The DHM has a wonderful talent for writing and she and the HM have a gift for hospitality. I have learned an awful lot about hospitality (and many other things) from the DHM.
I thought you might like the story of how we met. And I thought I might share with you the first thing I ever read by the DHM. It was published in the aforesaid newsletter a few months before the article which prompted my phone call. I have been enjoying a little trip down memory lane this week and figure you might has well join me on my trip!
Names have been changed to the ones you are familiar with!

. . . we bought a house--2 stories, 4 bedroom, and 3 acres of thistles, ragweed, and a few unknowns (to us anyway). There's a stable which we are told has a concrete floor--underneath 2 feet of mud and muck!
We've planted our fall garden and the two oldest girls each have their own small vegetable bed. The Head Master built a wooden frame for the Head Girl's vegetable bed using scrap wood we found in our shed. Because of the sizes of the boards her flower bed actually looks like a bed (a people bed)! He was at work when we built Equuschick's flower bed so hers is simply outlined with piles of boards, bricks, and rocks we found in the pasture. I shoveled dirt from the stable into buckets which Equuschick, the Cherub, and Pip carried to the garden and dumped out. . . .

Jenny likes to walk around ouside with me and learn the names of all the plants. She picks them up awfully quickly. Of course, my own knowledge is not as extensive as I'd like.
...
We've taken a break from our normally year-round school to unpack, clean, shovel, hoe, rake, weed, etc. At least the children think we have! Actually, we consider their gardens to be home education. The Head Girl caught a toad and we observed it and read about toads and frogs etc. in some of our books. We've learned that some of our wild plants and which ones aren't. They unpacked our books and sorted them by topic; they made a bird feeder and have watched for cardinals, bluejays and woodpeckers, etc. We have barnswallows nesting in the stable (wasps, too--ew). And they've observed and discussed them all. Then, they have chores! They may be glad to start school!

"God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December." author unknown

Yum!!

From another friend of the DHM. You can read her family's blog here.
These sound delicious and I love the manicotti tip--gonna have to try both!

Oatmeal Butterscotch Bars
From Cooks Country magazine

1 1/4 cups flour
2 cups oats (preferably quick cook)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
16 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 sticks)
3/4 cup butterscotch chips
1 cup brown sugar (preferably dark)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 large egg

Glaze:2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon water
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butterscotch chips
Preheat to 350 degrees. Line a 13X9 pan with foil, leaving overhang on all sides.
Mix flour, oats, soda, and salt in medium bowl until combined.
Heat butter in saucepan over medium-low heat until nutty brown in color, about 12minutes. Pour hot butter over butterscotch chips in a large bowl and whisk until smooth.
Whisk in brown sugar until dissolved, then whisk in vanilla and egg until combined.
Stir in flour mixture in two additions until combined.
Spread mixture in prepared pan and bake until edges are golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few crumbs attached,about 17-19 minutes.
Transfer pan to rack to cool.

For the glaze: Bring brown sugar, water and salt to simmer in small saucepan.
Pour hot mixture over butterscotch chips in a bowl and whisk until smooth.
Drizzle glaze over warm bars and cool on rack until warm to touch, about 1 1/2 hours.
Using foil overhang, lift bars from pan and cool completely on rack, about30 minutes.
Cut bars and serve.
The bars keep in airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
When we made these I didn't get the butter to brown and then when I added the sugar it didn't dissolve but was a big clumpy mess! I decided to go ahead with the recipe and it all worked out fine in the end and tasted fantastic. I had some of the chips in the back of my pantry and so this was a great way to use them up.
________________________

Baked Manicotti trick
Cooks Illustrated magazine had a great new trick for making manicotti that moved lasagna from being a once in a blue moon to one that we will make a regular part of our menus.
Buy the no-boil lasagna noodles, soften them in boiling water for 5 minutes then lay them on kitchen towels to dry. Spread any traditional lasagna filling over about 3/4 of the noodle and roll it up, sealing it where there was no filling.
This worked so well and my children had a great time making them.

Who is the unblogger?

An anonymous commentor suggested I introduce myself. I am really not good at that sort of thing. And my stint is almost over here. But here goes: I am a Christian, a wife of 30 years, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend. I homeschooled my children, starting back in the olden days of the 1980s. I love to read. I love books--the sight, smell, feel of them. I sometimes teach our ladies class at church. I am a good listener. And a good secret-keeper. I've lived through a lot and learned a lot and yet feel there is so much more to learn. I enjoy sewing and recently took up counted-cross stitch again (bifocals are wonderful!). I hesitate to admit it here but I enjoy tv--we have what we call "the DVD" channel that we thoroughly enjoy--the shows come on when we're ready and have no commercials! I enjoy gardening. I enjoy the results more than the process.
I'm always bemused by the "what you do all day" type question. Everyday is different. My Mondays and Tuesdays are usually filled with people. And later in the week is filled with laundry and errands. We gather to worship with our church family twice on Sundays and then we have Bible classes on Wednesday evenings. There are phone calls to answer. And a family who still need me as their friend, sounding board, and encourager.
If I could do anything I wanted for 6 months it would be to pack up my family and travel around the U.S. visiting all our beloved friends--from Kentucky to Washington and Alabama to Canada.

Journaling/Blogging

I am fascinated by journals. I will buy a book just because it is a memoir or journal. I don’t have to know anything about the author. But I want to read what that person said. I generally stick to female authors but occasionally am drawn in by a man–especially if his topic is about nature.
I think blogs are similar to journals. A blog is someone’s thoughts. Perhaps not about their lives, but what they are thinking about.
Blog and traditional journal keeping have a lot in common. And I have tried to analyze why I can do neither. And I think the major reason is one that many share–we are so busy. It takes discipline to slow down and write (or type). It takes discipline to look at our lives and try to make some sense of it. Some, however, like the DHM, are driven to write. I can only watch, and read, in awe.
I read books about journaling. I read blogs to see what people write about and how they write about it. But I don’t journal. I don’t blog. I really no longer write. Even e-mails are rare from me these days.
I admire those who blog. And those who journal. I am grateful to all those who have journaled down through the ages. I believe my life would have been different if I had not read The Diary of Anne Frank. Or in later years, the journals of May Sarton. And so many others. I am inspired by their lives; enlightened by their views; educated by their experiences.
I enjoy the DHM’s blogging tremendously. I feel privileged to read her insights, her views. I occasionally think that all her readers (other than myself) are bloggers too. But then I realize that while most of the commentors are bloggers, most of her readers do not comment. I have felt honored to be here (although if I told you her oh-so-flattering reason for asking me, you’d laugh with me and realize it is not because of my talent! Ha!) and yet, while honored, you will no doubt understand how intimidating it is to be read by those who read and love the DHM!
I loved Elena’s advice in one of the comments–to write as if no one is going to read. And of course, I can’t believe that my own writing would be worth reading–and so what a cheat to have a captive audience left by the DHM for a week!
I believe that many people want to journal or blog and don’t. We don’t know where to start, or why to start. Then what to write. So many reasons not to start. And yet, we want to.
As I said, I read books which are published journals and I read books about how to journal. One of my favorites is Leaving a Trace by Alexandra Johnson. She not only journals, she gives seminars on how to and why to.
A paragraph from the introduction tells us:
Ten million blank journals are sold annually in stationery stores alone. Two million in specialty stores. Thanks to secret passwords and specialized software, an estimated four million scribblers keep some form of journal on a computer. If the information age has spawned a hunger for connection (and privacy), so, too, a need for the quickest way to access interior life. Web sites pop up daily. Our accelerated global age has left little time to slow down and reflect. In Japan, for example, those too busy to keep journals phone in their entries. At the end of the month, a company sends a bound transcript.
That’s a whole lot of journals annually! How many are written in once and abandoned? How many are never written in? I have quite a collection of blank journals.
I wish I could say that by writing about this I have inspired myself to journal. I don’t think so. I do feel that yearning but as I’ve done so many times, (and to borrow from Mark Twain) I’ll lie down till the urge passes.

And yet, hope springs eternal.

Illiteracy

A few years ago I did a search on facts on illiteracy in American and turned up 2,000 webpages. The lowest illiteracy rate cited then was in the 20 millions, and it always seemed to come from some out of date numbers by the American Council on Illiteracy (if I recall the name correctly).

Actual numbers of illiterates appear to be twice that. Of course, many are immigrants and may not be illiterate in their own language, and many are high school drop-outs. But too many are not- and I'm kind of funny in that I think "high school graduate" and "illiterate" ought not ever to be labels we can apply simultaneously. And doesn't it seem to you that by blaming 'illiteracy' on high school drop-outs we are tacitly admitting that a whole lot of kids are getting through grades K-9 without being taught to read? This admission needn't be tacit, either. A few years back:

The National Education Goals Report states that three out of four fourth graders cannot read at Goal’s standards. All of the problems associated with reading deficiencies are far more extreme within some minorities. The ration of Good readers to bad is as follows: Asians 1 out of 3; Hispanics 1 out of 8; African Americans 1 out of 14.

That's from ppi books, and they're selling something. I don't agree with their 'fix,' but I do agree that what we have now isn't working and it's not acceptable.



From a website on the role of Libraries in literacy education:

According to 1983 statistics from the U.S. Department of Education, there were 27 million functionally illiterate adults in the country, and 47 million more were having difficulty in some of the domains tested (Davidson, 1988). The current extent of the problem is thought to be much greater than these figures indicate.

The information on this website is a little old:

According to a U.S. Department of Education study done in 1985, more than 27 million Americans 17 years of age or older cannot read or write well enough to perform basic requirements of everyday life. Another 45 million are considered barely competent in basic academic skills. In summary, more than 72 million--one out of three adults--may lack the reading and writing skills needed to function effectively. The U.S. Department of Education also estimates that illiteracy is growing at the rate of 2 million each year (Duffy, 1986).

Here's some more recent information:

Only 41 percent of graduate students tested in 2003 could be classified as "proficient" in prose -- reading and understanding information in short texts -- down 10 percentage points since 1992. Of college graduates, only 31 percent were classified as proficient -- compared with 40 percent in 1992.

On average, adult literacy is virtually unchanged since 1992, with 30 million people struggling with basic reading tasks. While adults made some progress in quantitative literacy, such as the ability to calculate taxes, the study showed that from 1992 to 2003 adults made no improvement in their ability to read newspapers or books, or comprehend basic forms.

If we can't blame drop-out rates, then maybe we can blame poverty. Not according to William Moloney:

Actually, poor children do quite well regarding literacy — as long as they don't live in the USA. As former U.S. Education secretary Rod Paige frequently pointed out, all of the generally impoverished English-speaking nations of the Caribbean have higher literacy rates than the USA's. Similarly, studies among poor children in Africa show levels of English literacy that would be the envy of any U.S. city.

There's a different sort of poverty, however, that contributes toward illiteracy. That is a poverty of the mind:

Jim Trelease is concerned that teachers do not read. The aliteracy rate among teachers, he says, is about the same, 50 percent, as among the general public.

According to numbers coming from the National Center for Education Statistics in 2005, less than half of parents read to their children. It's not clear to me whether this is the same survey, but according to this website:

A national survey found that less than half (48 percent) of parents said they read or shared a picture book daily with their children ages 1 to 3. Even fewer, 39 percent of parents, read or looked at a picture book with their infants at least once a day. Most alarmingly, one in six parents of an infant (16 percent) said they do not read to their child at all (Young et al., 1996).

And in California:

Fewer than half of parents (43%) read to their child daily. About 9% of children age 0-5 years are not read to in a given week by anyone in the household.

There are a number of programs, both governmental and commercial, to try to remedy this, but you don't need a program. Just pick up your child and a book and be subversive. Read it aloud.

A Precious Gift

Mothering is an occupation that in today’s society garners little respect. Having children is seen usually as an inconvenience or worse. Even among Christians it is not seen as really important. But it is one of the most important things a woman can do.

God gives us children–wonderful blessings. If God came in person to you and gave you a gift and said, "This is very precious to me, please take care of it until I come back for it", would you? When God returned for it, what would I have for Him? Would He be pleased? Would He be angry? What would I say? I was too busy? I was doing something more important?

He HAS given us a precious gift! A child. What could be more precious than a person with an eternal soul? What could be more important than caring for that person so that he will return to God?

I wrote that, with alterations, about 9 years ago. I still believe it and am passionate about being a mother and about mothering. To all you moms out there, take courage, be of good cheer, the battle is long and wearying but the reward is worth it all.

New (to me) Mystery Author

A Shark Out of Water, by Emma Lathen: I picked this up at a thrift shop for two reasons. One was because the author sounded familiar. I thought I'd read one of hers before and liked it, but I don't think I remembered right. The second reason was this blurb inside the front cover: ""[Lathen] has the same gift of intricate plotting, great readability, and lack of graphic sex and violence [as Agatha Christie]. Her characters..... are perceptively and fairly drawn- and readers just may learn something." It is true that there was no graphic sex or violence, but there was language, and I don't mean English. The plot was certainly intricate. So intricate I followed it not at all and so learned nothing. There was a lot about high finance, smuggling, insurance fraud, and international relations, but exactly what I could not tell you. Like my problems with Beacon Lights of history, this may be my fault and not the authors' I believe Lathen is a composite name and is written by two authors.

New Book Find

A few weeks ago I bookmarked this blogpost about this book because it looked like something I'd like to keep an eye open for. The illustrations looked lovely, and I had little hope I could find it at a used bookstore or library sale, but still, I could wish.

But serendipity! A few weeks ago I was browsing a bookshelf and found exactly the same book! It was lovely, just as lovely as One Woman's Cottage Life says.

It's just a little embarrassing that the bookshelf I was browsing was in my house.

Missing the DHM

I know all those who read this blog feel the same way--we miss the DHM!! I know she is having a well-deserved break and enjoying the company of the dearest friends of the Common Room family. There is simply no substitute.
Just wanted to say so.

John Lord on Gibbon

Lord admires Gibbon and recommends him a primary source in almost every chapter. He also says the "magnificent chapters of Gibbon" ought not "to be disregarded by the student of Roman history, notwithstanding his elaborate and inflated style."

And yet, about Gibbon's attitutude toward Imperial Rome he says:

I cannot understand the enthusiasm of Gibbon for such a people, or for such an empire,--a grinding and resistless imperial despotism, a sensual and proud aristocracy, a debased and ignorant populace, enormously disproportionate conditions of fortune, slavery flourishing to a state unprecedented in the world's history, women the victims and the toys of men, lax sentiments of public and private morality, a whole people given over to demoralizing sports and spectacles, pleasure the master passion of the people, money the mainspring of society, a universal indulgence in all the vices which lead to violence and prepare the way for the total eclipse of the glory of man. Of what value was the cultivation of Nature, or a splendid material civilization, or great armies, or an unrivalled jurisprudence, or the triumph of energy and skill, when the moral health was completely undermined? A world therefore as fair and glorious as our own must needs crumble away. There were no powerful conservative forces; the poison had descended to the extremities of the social system. A corrupt body must die when vitality has fled. The soul was gone; principle, patriotism, virtue, had all passed away. The barbarians were advancing to conquer and desolate; there was no power to resist them but enervated and timid legions, with the accumulated vices of all the nations of the earth, which they had been learning for four hundred years. Society must needs resolve itself into its original elements when men would not make sacrifices, and so few belonged to their country. The machine was sure to break up at the first great shock. No State could stand with such an accumulation of wrongs, with such complicated and fatal diseases eating out the vitals of the empire. No form of civilization, however brilliant and lauded, could arrest decay and ruin when public and private virtue had fled. The house was built upon the sand.

And I read that description and think how familiar it sounds to much of our culture today, but I cannot tell if that is because like Rome, we are in our Last Days, or because people are just people and not so terribly different however divided by centuries and oceans.

Writing Through Sorrow

In his accumulated sorrows Cicero now plunged for relief into literary labors. It was thus that his private sorrows were the means which Providence employed to transmit his precious thoughts and experiences to future ages, as the most valued inheritance he could bestow on posterity. What a precious legacy to the mind of the world was the book of "Ecclesiastes," yet by what bitter experiences was its wisdom earned!

John Lord, Beacon Lights of History

A Book Meme

Me and books. A big part of who I am is wrapped up in books. I got this meme from here.
Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback? any and all are welcome!
Amazon or brick and mortar? Brick and mortar. I prefer to see and touch books.
Barnes & Noble or Borders? Barnes and Noble is closer. But really, I rarely shop for unused books.
Bookmark or dogear? Bookmark. Bookmark. I can't bear to deface my book!
Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random? I would love to have different subjects alphabetized by author BUT random is actually how mine are arranged.
Keep, throw away, or sell? Keep. Occasionally donate. I will sell duplicates (those happen way too often as the same book looks good and I don't remember that I already own it). In my lifetime, I have thrown maybe 3 books away. They deserved it.
Keep dustjacket or toss it? Keep it. I carefully remove it while I read the book. Then, afterwards, if I can find it, I replace it.
Read with dustjacket or remove it? See above.
Short story or novel? Yes, thank you. I love both.
Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)? Both.
Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? I haven't read either.
Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? When I *have* to.
“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”? Both.
Buy or Borrow? Buy, or borrow from the library. I rarely borrow from friends. And then I am anxious till I return the book. Far more comfortable to buy.
New or used? Used. Definitely used.
Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse? I use all three. The strongest is a recommendation from someone I respect. Browsing is next. Some books just *feel* right.
Tidy ending or cliffhanger? Happy endings. Completely necessary. Hmm, so I suppose that would be tidy?
Morning reading, afternoon reading or nighttime reading? Yes. Whenever I can. Not picky. And reading rarely puts me to sleep--instead it keeps me awake.
Stand-alone or series? I love both. But series are delightful because I get to stay with the character longer.
Favorite series? Anne of Green Gables
Favorite children's book? The Old Man and the Afternoon Cat. Or does The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew count?
Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? If it is a book, then *somebody* else has heard of it. Maybe not everyone. Maybe no one *I* know. But *somebody*. ;-) But this one might qualify (or would had not the DHM mentioned it at some point): Laurel Lee's Journal by Laurel Lee
Favorite books read last year? Laurel Lee's Journal, Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katherine S. White, How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger, So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson, Among the Gently Mad by Nicholas A. Basbanes
Favorite books of all time? Little Women by L. M. Alcott, Eight Cousins by L. M. Alcott, A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher, Karen by Marie Killilea (oh, dear, I have too many favorites, you'd get tired.)
Least favorite book you finished last year? That would be Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt.
What are you reading right now? Sixpence House by Paul Collins (All you bibliophiles, have you heard of Hay-on-Wye, Wales??)
What are you reading next? Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy (just out and had requested it through the library.)

Sacharine Victorianism and Interior Design

As seen in Because of Stephen- by Grace Livingston Hill, Stephen is our Heroine's alcoholic brother who lives out in the wild and untamed west, and of course, she saves him from himself, gaining a deathbed 'conversion' popular in evangelical literature.
It is written in the proto-feminist style of the sort skewered with a serrated edge in Credenda Agenda as "saccharine Victorian feminism," "sentimental and domestic feminism," "an iron regime of domesticity-feminine tastes and values are set up as the standard of godliness and as a genuine regenerative influence," and "the divine influence" as "mediated through a woman. Men can be converted by listening to a pretty voice..." I don't always agree with Credenda Agenda, nor am I always comfortable with the extremes to which that serrated edge can go, but I can't argue that there is something saccharine, sentimental and a little squirm-worthy about the way our Heroine tames and subdues the wild west cowboys merely by her gentle purity, noble presence, and lovely singing voice- not to mention the fine china she serves them with. Still, I read it, didn't I? And finished it, too, and even went back to read a second time the sections on how our Heroine redecorated the shanty where her brother and his cowboy friend are living.

She plans to cover one rough wood wall with leaf green burlap, attached with shiny brass brads or tacks. She'll have her brother and his friend, willing slaves to her feminine purity, nail smooth cornstalks to the top of the wall near the ceiling for moulding, and paint the ceiling white. She papers the other three walls with a creamy ivory paper 'out of which seem to be growing great palms.' She cuts a few of these palms out and applies them 'in a dainty design' in 'the centre and corners' of the ceiling.' There is a large stone fireplace which her willing helpers have built for her (in a week), and they hang their guns on one side and buffalo horns on the other. The 'rough, cheap doors' out of the great living room are covered by soft green draperies, and there are bookcases as well.

In the evenings the little family spend their time reading and singing together, and whatever its flaws, it makes very nice escapist reading when you can't concentrate very hard.

John Lord on Cicero's Last Days

In the midst of these public misfortunes which saddened his soul, his private miseries began. He was now prematurely an old man, under sixty years of age, almost broken down with grief. His beloved daughter Tullia, with whom his life was bound up, died; and he was divorced from his wife Terentia,--a proceeding the cause of which remains a mystery.

Neither in his most confidential letters, nor in his conversations with most intimate friends, does it appear that he ever unbosomed himself, although he was the frankest and most social of men. In his impressive silence he has set one of the noblest examples of a man afflicted with domestic infelicities. He buries his conjugal troubles in eternal silence; although he is forced to give vent to sorrows, so plaintive and bitter that both friend and foe were constrained to pity. He expects no sympathy, even at Rome, for the sundering of conjugal relations, and he communicates no secrets.

In his grief and sadness he does, however, a most foolish thing: he marries a young lady one-third his age. She accepted him for his name and rank; he sought her for her beauty, her youth, and her fortune. This union of May with December was of course a failure. Both parties were soon disenchanted and disappointed.

Neither party found happiness, only discontent and chagrin. The everlasting incongruities of such a relation--he sixty and she nineteen--soon led to another divorce. _He_ expected his young wife to mourn with him the loss of his daughter Tullia. _She_ expected that her society and charms would be a compensation for all that he had lost; yea, more, enough to make him the most fortunate and happy of mortals. In truth, he was too old a man to have married a young woman whatever were the inducements.

It was the great folly of his life; an illustration of the fact that, as a general thing, the older a man grows the greater fool he becomes, so far as women are concerned; a folly that disgraced and humiliated the two wisest and greatest men who ever sat on the Jewish throne.

Personally, I think Dr. Lord lets Cicero off a little too easily in that first paragraph, but the last one cracks me up.

I'm easily amused I guess.

God cares

What Can It Mean?

What can it mean? is it aught to Him
That the nights are long and the days are dim?
Can He be touched by the griefs I bear--
Which sadden the heart and whiten the hair?
Around His throne are eternal calms,
And strong glad music of happy psalms,
And bliss unruffled by any strife;
How can He care for my poor life?

And yet I want Him to care for me,
While I live in this world where the sorrows be,
When the light dies down on the path I take,
When strength is feeble and friends forsake;
When love and music that once did bless
Have left me to silence and loneliness;
And life's song changes to sobbing prayers--
Then my heart cries out for a God who cares.

When shadows hang o'er me the whole day long;
And my spirit is bowed with shame and wrong;
When I am not good, and the deeper shade
Of conscious sin makes my heart afraid;
And the busy world has too much to do
to stay its course to help me through,
And I long for a Saviour, can it be
That the God of the universe cares for me?

Let all who are sad take heart again;
We are not alone in our hours of pain,
Our Father stoops from His throne above
To soothe and quiet us with His love.
He leaves us not when the storm is high,
And we have safety for He is nigh;
Can it be trouble which He doth share?
Oh, rest in peace for the Lord does care.
(anonymous)

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time; casting all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7 ASV)

God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1 ASV)

The Rabbi and Charlotte Mason

In Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red, by Harry Kemelman- this is part of a mystery series featuring Rabbi David Small. The language is often crude ('realistic,' I imagine some would say) and unedifying, and I am irritated everytime Kemelman tries to explain Christianity, a religion he clearly doesn't understand. Quite often he will outline a belief very specific to Catholicism and say this is what all Christians believe. Other times he will dismiss as 'Christian' some belief or worldview I don't think accurately reflects any denomination, and certainly it's not one I've ever held myself. In fact, I chose this mystery when I was looking for a mystery precisely because when the HG started telling me about her Jewish Studies Professor I was reminded so much of what had annoyed me about Kemelman. But he writes about Judaism from the inside, and that is always interesting, as is his philosophizing about what were then current trends in society when he wrote these books (mostly the seventies). I also like it when he writes about learning and education.

I've already posted quotes from the good stuff here, here, and here.


The Rabbi doesn't actually meet Charlotte Mason in the book- but his philosophy and hers mesh together in my opinion:

"The rabbis held that learning should not be used as a spade to dig with, by which they meant that it should not be put to practical or material use. Learning and study are with us a religious duty, and hence not competitive. A's, honors, Phi Beta Kappa- these are the rewards of competition."

Naturally, one of the Rabbi's students wonders what's the point if there are no practical benefits. Rabbi Small explains:

"Because the desire for knowledge, knowledge for its own sake, is what distinguishes man from the lower animals. All animals have an interest in practical knowledge- where the best food supplies may be found, the best places to hide or bed down- but only man goes to the trouble of trying to learn something merely because he does not as yet know it. The mind of man yearns for knowledge as the body yearns for food. And that learning is for himself alone, just as is the food he eats."

So then his students want to know if there's something wrong with being a Doctor or Lawyer, or is it okay to be these things if you do them for free. Rabbi Small expounds:

"The learning one acquires to become a doctor or a lawyer, or a carpenter or a plumber for that matter, is of a different kind. It is practical learning for the purpose of society. And we favor that kind of learning, too. There is also a rabbinical saying that a father who does not teach his son a trade is making a thief of him. So you see, there are two kinds of learning: one for yourself and one for society."

Rabbi Small and his class determine there are two kinds of learning and teaching. Professional studies, and these should be 'relevant' or utilitarian, and liberal arts studies, and these should be broad and can include almost anything of interest. Rabbi Small uses the example of teaching medieval church law to students studying for the bar- this is not relevant and so there's not much point to it for professional studies. However, he stresses that 'liberal arts study, everything is relevant.' Medieval church law is an appropriate field of study in liberal arts.

The students ask him how he would handle exams if it were up to him. He said:

"Since you receive credit toward an earned degree, I'd have to distinguish between those who made a proper effort and those who didn't. So I'd just have two marks- pass and fail. And I'd try to devise an examination that would indicate interest rather than just information."

He suggests an exam where students can choose which questions to answer and at what length- whether that means they briefly answer them all or only choose one, but answer it at great length.

And to cap the Charlotte Mason parallels, the Rabbi has been pondering whether to continue teaching and go into it full time or to remain a rabbi. He realizes that the rabbinate is much harder than teaching at the college, but that is what he chooses because, "...the harder the task, the more satisfaction there is in doing it..."

Common Things

I have been building a rope of tenuous, spiderweb thin lifelines. They are spiderweb thin not because of their weakness, but because of mine, the magnitude of the task for which I need them.

Reading blogs that encourage, uplift, and distract me- I hesitate to give those bloggers the credit they are due because I fear that I will leave somebody important out. Writing here is another. Reading is another, and there's more than one reason I chose Psalms for this challenge. So are things like music, time spent with my family, reaching out to others when I would prefer, oh, so agonizingly prefer, to writhe hastily into my shell like a snail feeling the disintegrating sting of salt, celebrating "those common times of the drudgery of life" in the Common Room, sharing them with you and reading your comments. Friends, online and off (you know who you are I hope), prayer and fasting, singing...

They are candles in the dark, strands on my lifeline.

Thank-you.

Sunday Hymn Post

The Psalms
38

The Prayer of a Suffering Penitent
A Psalm of David, to bring to remembrance.


1 O LORD, rebuke me not in thy wrath:
neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.


2 For thine arrows stick fast in me,
and thy hand presseth me sore.


3 There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger;
neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.


4 For mine iniquities are gone over mine head:
as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me.


5 My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.

6 I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly;
I go mourning all the day long.


7 For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease:
and there is no soundness in my flesh.


8 I am feeble and sore broken:
I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.


9 Lord, all my desire is before thee;
and my groaning is not hid from thee.


10 My heart panteth, my strength faileth me:
as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.


11 My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore;
and my kinsmen stand afar off.


12 They also that seek after my life lay snares for me;
and they that seek my hurt speak mischievous things,
and imagine deceits all the day long.


13 But I, as a deaf man, heard not;
and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth.


14 Thus I was as a man that heareth not,
and in whose mouth are no reproofs.


15 For in thee, O LORD, do I hope:
thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.


16 For I said, Hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice over me:
when my foot slippeth,
they magnify themselves against me.


17 For I am ready to halt,
and my sorrow is continually before me.


18 For I will declare mine iniquity;
I will be sorry for my sin.


19 But mine enemies are lively, and they are strong:
and they that hate me wrongfully are multiplied.


20 They also that render evil for good are mine adversaries;
because I follow the thing that good is.


21 Forsake me not, O LORD:
O my God, be not far from me.


22 Make haste to help me,
O Lord my salvation.

Listen to acapella chants of Psalms as linked from this page.

Welcome to Our Guest Blogger

We're going to try something a little different here (different for us, but others have done it before). Most of us are taking a blogging break, but this time we have a guest blogger, a very, very dear friend I've known a long time in real life. She has never blogged before and is a bit uncertain about it all, but she agreed to take a chance because she loves me and that's the kind of friend she is.

She's blogging as "The Unblogger."=)

Please give her a warm welcome, encourage her, let her know she's doing a great job, and help her out with some of those great comments.

I'll be peeking in from time to time, because, you know, I can't stay away.

Writing Against the Darkness

Like a lot of people who enjoy writing, I use it to face my demons. If I have had an especially bad experience--or a happy one for that matter--or if I face a difficult problem in my life, I like to write it down.

That writing is not for publication. Oh no!

That writing is for me. It is cathartic. It helps me exorcise my demons. It helps me think about how to solve the problem, or get over the experience.

From here.

I've done this. I write for a hundred and one different reasons, sometimes all at the same time, sometime only one.
Somewhere here, once upon a time, I wrote about my bewilderment when people ask 'how do you find time to blog?' I want to ask them how they find time to eat, to breathe, to follow whatever passion they have in their lives that I do not have, a talent I do not share. I have tried for a time not to write, not to read, and it's like cutting off my hand or breaking an arm. I am crippled, incomplete, dysfunctional, without these outlets.

More than usually, I mean.

Some people with the ink in their blood write for themselves and that is enough. They are satisfied to spill out their blood on screen or page and hide it away, the outlet is all they need. I'm not one of those people, which is probably regrettable, but there it is. I need people reading on the other side. I may write what I write for myself, but I need an audience for completion. Otherwise it's like doing the laundry and not folding the clothes, or baking bread without letting anybody eat it.

Somerset Maughm said that habitual reading was to "construct for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miseries of life," and I have found this is true for writing as well. And so a reason I write that I have not talked about here before (because most of you are strangers) is not facing the demons, but to keep them at bay, to hold my bloody, battered fists against the doors of my mind when they are under siege by those demons screaming and fighting to thrust their way deeper into my head.

Victoria Gaines has blogged about writing through difficulties as a way of resilience, as a way of processing feelings, about fears that keep us from writing or influence our writing, and about persevering through... whatever.

I write sometimes to avoid thinking about the things I cannot bear to think about, the things that make my soul shrivel and curl around its scorched and splintering edges. Writing about anything at all, but especially about things totally irrelevant to the blows that are causing those fractured edges is the glue that I frantically apply to hold the broken pieces together, to keep the cracks from spreading and shattering the rest of me.

Basically, I write a lot of Spackle lately.

Attempting to tie tenuous threads of thought together.

Driving for a long time certainly gives one a long time to think. Whether these thoughts make any sense is not so certain. Here's an example of where my thoughts have been meandering the last couple of weeks, starting their train of thought from the DHM's post on self-esteem.

"A Communist knows that a given situation, in a given period of history, will produce certain periods of history, will produce certain human materials, and that those, and only those, are what history gives him to work with. The point is to work with them right. Then the situation and history will change, and, with it, the human material."
-- from Witnessby Whittaker Chambers

This isn't just something a Communist should know, though. We all should know it; know that we can only work with what we are given, and that by doing so we can change what we give to the next generation.

"'I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?'
'Such questions cannot be answered,' said Gandalf. 'You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.'"
- from The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien.
What we face in a given period of history is not a unique thing. It is not our special merit that grants us the privilege and/or burden of our times. It is simply by virtue of our being in in the right place at the right time and choosing to do the right in that time.

"'Are you smart?'" This the question of one little girl to another as they ride their bikes. She explains herself further by saying, "My teacher says I'm really smart." The second girl can only think of how her mother responded when the girl asked about her own smartness: "Of course you're smart, but so is everyone in one way or another."
- a childhood memory. I was the second girl in this conversation, and am eternally grateful to my mother for bluntly pointing out that I didn't have a monopoly on intelligence.

"...genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us."
- from Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto

We all have gifts. We all have a job to do. We may not like how others have developed their gifts. We may not like how we've developed our gifts, but we've got to use them anyway. We may think our gifts would be suited to a different situation than the one handed to us, but nothing can change that. And if we really want to change things, we must work with them in the right way. This is how to encourage future human genius and how to change history.

Hm.

So, yesterday it was in the 40s, and today it was in the 60s... and GrannyTea still has this snow drift in her yard. It's a little bit over five feet tall, and this was taken at the END of a 60 degree day, mind you.

Flex the Brain

- That's the title of this excellent article by Gene Edward Veith.

Oatmeal Cookies

This recipe is taken from The Creative Homemaker, by Mary LaGrand Bouma, a book my mother gave me when I got married. The dough is a tad dry as written, and I usually add just a bit more liquid than called for. They have a spicy sweetness that makes them especially good, as I remember. I haven't made them in years for no reason I can think of, but I was flipping through this book recently and wondered when I stopped making them and why:

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup lard or other shortening
1 egg
2 tablespoons cream (milk will do)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 heaping teaspoon soda
2 cups of oats (recipe calls for quick oats, I use old fashioned rolled oats)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon each allspice and cloves (I like more)

Cream sugar and shortening. Mix in egg and cream. Add dry ingredients and mix well. Drop by spoonfuls onto lightly greased cooky sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 7-9 minutes.

You can (and I do) add chocolate chips or nuts to these. Walnuts are good. So are pecans.

Beacon Lights of History, Volume III

This was my TBR challenge for April (yes, I'm ahead). I finished John Lord's Beacon Lights of History Volume three: last night, and a fat lot of good it did me or anybody else, and it is, in fact, for somebody else that I put all those books about ancient Greek and Rome on my list. I have been for some time in no frame of mind to concentrate at length on anything more substantive than mysteries or GLH, and so I am still not sure I can say I have read this book. I ran my eyes over each page in an exercise of sheer discipline, but for the most part very little of it permeated the shellacked outer surface of my brain. I began to take notes just so that I could try better to concentrate.

I would like to blame the book, but I could be wrong. You can check the book out for yourself- it's free at Gutenburg. I'll post the table of contents at the end of the post. I'm afraid if I post it here you will all quit reading immediately. I know it makes me want to soak my head in a bucket of cold water.

One issue that I think is simply a disconnect between Lord's time and my own is that he seems to assume a great deal of background knowledge on the part of his readers. He romped through a thousand years or so of painters, sculptors and architects as though his readers were on a first name basis with them all. I finally resorted to writing down the names as I came across them, thinking I'd look them up later, but I probably won't. For one thing, I've lost the paper where I wrote them down.

There is another factor that makes him dated reading, but also is the reason some homeschoolers like him- that's his moralizing. I liked it, too. Consider the following:

About the artist Parrhasius:

While many of his pieces were of a lofty character, some were demoralizing.

About the Colosseum:

What glory and shame are associated with that single edifice! That alone, if nothing else remained of Pagan antiquity, would indicate a grandeur and a folly such as cannot now be seen on earth. It reveals a wonderful skill in masonry and great architectural strength; it shows the wealth and resources of rulers who must have had the treasures of the world at their command; it shows the restless passions of the people for excitement, and the necessity on the part of government of yielding to this taste. What leisure and indolence marked a city which could afford to give up so much time to the demoralizing sports!

About the period when Cicero was born:

With these triumphs of art and science and literature, we are compelled to notice likewise a decline in morals. Money had become the god which everybody worshipped. Religious life faded away; there was a general eclipse of faith. An Epicurean life produced an Epicurean philosophy. Pleasure-seeking was universal, and even revolting in the sports of the Amphitheatre. Sensualism became the convertible word for utilities. The Romans were thus rapidly "advancing" to a materialistic millennium,--an outward progress of wealth and industries, but an inward decline in "those virtues on which the strength of man is based," accompanied with seditions among the people, luxury and pride among the nobles, and usurpations on the part of successful generals...

I don't know about you, but parts of that sounded rather familiar to me, as did what he had to say about the Roman Empire after Cicero:

Nor did the Emperors attempt to check the gigantic social evils of the empire. They did not seek to prevent irreligion, luxury, slavery, and usury, the encroachments of the rich upon the poor, the tyranny of foolish fashions, demoralizing sports and pleasures, money-making, and all the follies which lax principles of morality allowed; they fed the rabble with corn, oil, and wine, and thus encouraged idleness and dissipation. The world never saw a more rapid retrogression in human rights, or a greater prostration of liberties.
Taxes were imposed according to the pleasure or necessities of the
government. Provincial governors became still more rapacious and cruel; judges hesitated to decide against the government. Patriotism, in its most enlarged sense, became an impossibility; all lofty spirits were crushed. Corruption in all forms of administration fearfully increased, for there was no safeguard against it.

Theoretically, absolutism may be the best government, if rulers are
wise and just; but practically, as men are, despotisms are generally cruel and revengeful.

About his biographical sketch of Cicero:

In presenting this immortal benefactor, I have no novelties to show.
Novelties are for those who seek to upturn the verdicts of past ages by offering something new, rather than what is true.

About Cicero:

He committed no extortions, and returned home, when his term of office expired, as poor as when he went. One of the highest praises which can be given to a public man who has chances of enriching himself is, that he remains poor. When a member of Congress, known not to be worth ten thousand dollars, returns to his home worth one hundred thousand dollars, the public have an instinct that he has, somehow or other, been untrue to himself and his country. When a great man returns home from Washington poorer than when he went, his influence is apt to survive his power; and this perpetuated influence is the highest glory of a public man,--the glory of Jefferson, of Hamilton, of Washington, like the voice of Gladstone during his retirement. Now Cicero had pre-eminently this influence as long as he lived; and it was ever exerted for the good of his country. Had his country been free, he would have died in honor. But his country was enslaved, and his voice was drowned, and he had to pay the penalty of speaking the truth about those unscrupulous men who usurped authority.

Of the entire book, I found that chapter on Cicero the most engaging and illuminating, and can recommend it as worth your time. The chapter on jurisprudence was actually more interesting than it sounds. The section on the arts would be useful to somebody planning a course of study on the Ancients and their art, but you'd need to take pen and paper along with your reading journey and make a list of people to look up to flesh the study out. The section on domestic arts was interesting to me primarily for the insight it afforded into Lord's own time and how rapid have been the changes of the last 150 years. Again and again he will describe some practice or process (making cloth, transportation...) and say something about how the process is essentially unchanged from how it is done today. I cannot remember a thing he said about ancient knowledge of science, but, again, that may be my fault and not the author's. I found the chapter on Cleopatra tedious, and the Glory and Shame concluding section was also a struggle for me to get through- and again, this may be me and not the author.

My copy belonged to my great-grandfather, which means that the rough-cut edges of the pages are soiled and gritty. They lived near steel mills and coke factories and almost everything that came from that house is covered in grime. The cover is disintegrating and the affect on your hands is like touching pitch, so I covered them with home-made book covers years ago- folded from brown paper grocery sacks I cut up for the purpose. Still, as I read them, tiny bits of brittle something from the book covers (leather? Cardboard? I can't tell) flake off in my lap. Do you care? Probably not, but it might correct any romantic images of my great-grandfather's leather bound library in hardwood cases- what books I have from him are mostly not leatherbound, and they spent a good many years stored in slightly damp cardboard boxes, coated in grime. But I still love them.

Here is the TOC to this one:

GREEK AND ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE.

Governments and laws
Oriental laws
Priestly jurisprudence
The laws of Lycurgus
The laws of Solon
Cleisthenes
The Ecclesia at Athens
Struggle between patricians and plebeians at Rome
Tribunes of the people
Roman citizens
The Roman senate
The Roman constitution
Imperial power
The Twelve Tables
Roman lawyers
Jurisprudence under emperors
Labeo
Capito
Gaius
Paulus
Ulpian
Justinian
Tribonian
Code, Pandects, and Institutes
Roman citizenship
Laws pertaining to marriage
Extent of paternal power
Transfer of property
Contracts
The courts
Crimes
Fines
Penal statutes
Personal rights
Slavery
Security of property
Authorities


THE FINE ARTS.

ARCHITECTURE, SCULPTURE, PAINTING.

Early architecture
Egyptian monuments
The Temple of Karnak
The pyramids
Babylonian architecture
Indian architecture
Greek architecture
The Doric order
The Parthenon
The Ionic order
The Corinthian order
Roman architecture
The arch
Vitruvius
Greek sculpture
Phidias
Statue of Zeus
Praxiteles
Scopas
Lysippus
Roman sculpture
Greek painters
Polygnotus
Apollodorus
Zeuxis
Parrhasius
Apelles
The decline of art
Authorities


ANCIENT SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE.

ASTRONOMY, GEOGRAPHY, ETC.

Ancient astronomy
Chaldaean astronomers
Egyptian astronomy
The Greek astronomers
Thales
Anaximenes
Aristarchus
Archimedes
Hipparchus
Ptolemy
The Roman astronomers
Geometry
Euclid
Empirical science
Hippocrates
Galen
Physical science
Geography
Pliny
Eratosthenes
Authorities


MATERIAL LIFE OF THE ANCIENTS.

MECHANICAL AND USEFUL ARTS.

Mechanical arts
Material life in Egypt
Domestic utensils
Houses and furniture
Entertainments
Glass manufacture
Linen fabrics
Paper manufacture
Leather and tanners
Carpenters and boat-builders
Agriculture
Field sports
Ornaments of dress
Greek arts
Roman luxuries
Material wonders
Great cities
Commerce
Roman roads
Ancient Rome
Architectural wonders
Roman monuments
Roman spectacles
Gladiatorial shows
Roman triumphs
Authorities


THE MILITARY ART.

WEAPONS, ENGINES, DISCIPLINE.

The tendency to violence and war
Early wars
Progress in the art of war
Sesostris
Egyptian armies
Military weapons
Chariots of war
Persian armies, Cyrus
Greek warfare
Spartan phalanx
Alexander the Great
Roman armies
Hardships of Roman soldiers
Military discipline
The Roman legion
Importance of the infantry
The cavalry
Military engines
Ancient fortifications
Military officers
The praetorian cohort
Roman camps
Consolidation of Roman power
Authorities


CICERO.

ROMAN LITERATURE.

Condition of Roman society when Cicero was born
His education and precocity
He adopts the profession of the law
His popularity as an orator
Elected Quaestor; his Aedileship
Prosecution of Verres
His letters to Atticus; his vanity
His Praetorship; declines a province
His Consulship; conspiracy of Catiline
Banishment of Cicero: his weakness; his recall
His law practice; his eloquence
His provincial government
His return to Rome
His fears in view of the rivalry between Caesar and Pompey
Sides with Pompey
Death of Tullia and divorce of Terentia
Second marriage of Cicero
Literary labors: his philosophical writings
His detestation of Imperialism
His philippics against Antony
His proscription, flight, and death
His great services
Character of his eloquence
His artistic excellence of style
His learning and attainments; his character
His immortal legacy
Authorities


CLEOPATRA.

THE WOMAN OF PAGANISM.

Why Cleopatra represents the woman of Paganism
Glory of Ancient Rome
Paganism recognizes the body rather than the soul
Ancestors of Cleopatra
The wonders of Alexandria
Cleopatra of Greek origin
The mysteries of Ancient Egypt
Early beauty and accomplishments of Cleopatra
Her attractions to Caesar
Her residence in Rome
Her first acquaintance with Antony
The style of her beauty
Her character
Character of Antony
Antony and Cleopatra in Cilicia
Magnificence of Cleopatra
Infatuation of Antony
Motives of Cleopatra
Antony's gifts to Cleopatra
Indignation of the Romans
Antony gives up his Parthian expedition
Returns to Alexandria
Contest with Octavius
Battle of Actium
Wisdom of Octavius
Death of Antony
Subsequent conduct of Cleopatra
Nature of her love for Antony
Immense sacrifices of Antony
Tragic fate of Cleopatra
Frequency of suicide at Rome
Immorality no bar to social position in Greece and Rome
Dulness of home in Pagan antiquity
Drudgeries of women
Influence of women on men
Paganism never recognized the equality of women with men
It denied to them education
Consequent degradation of women
Paganism without religious consolation
Did not recognize the value of the soul
And thus took no cognizance of the higher aspirations of man
The revenge of woman under degradation
Women, under Paganism, took no interest in what elevates society
Men, therefore, fled to public amusements
No true society under Paganism
Society only created by Christianity


PAGAN SOCIETY.

GLORY AND SHAME.

Glories of the ancient civilization
A splendid external deception
Moral evils
Imperial despotism
Prostration of liberties
Some good emperors
Disproportionate fortunes
Luxurious living
General extravagance
Pride and insolence of the aristocracy
Gibbon's description of the nobles
The plebeian class
Hopelessness and disgrace of poverty
Popular superstitions
The slaves
The curse of slavery
Degradation of the female sex
Bitter satires of Juvenal
Games and festivals
Gladiatorial shows
General abandonment to pleasure
The baths
General craze for money-making
Universal corruption
Saint Paul's estimate of Roman vices
Decline and ruin a logical necessity
The Sibylline prophecy
Authorities

Now, aren't you glad I shared that?

The Equuschick's Natural Habitat

That is to say, her bedroom.

The Equuschick was browsing through pictures for something else entirely when she across this picture. By a happy circumstance, it contrives in one little image to contain most of what defines The Equuschick herself.

You will note on the door, a shocking poster of a Happy Bunny collage, each little box bearing a one-liner. Among The Equuschick's favourites- "I have a Dream! And in it, something eats you." This poster was a gift to the EC from the HG, who later regretted it. To the Equuschick however, the poster remains a cherished possession, a masterpiece in the art of sarcasm.

On the closet door you see a Beautiful Dress. In and of itself The Dress says nothing much, because by nature The Equuschick is not a dressy person. But The Dress is a dress to be worn by The Equuschick, in the capacity of a Maid of Honour, in a dear friend's wedding this spring. For that reason alone The Dress would be treasured by The Equuschick, who is as staunchly devoted to the few close friends she makes as she is slow to make them.
(And besides, The Equuschick is only a girl after all, and every girl wants a dress like this once in a lifetime. With a stylish shawl and a pair of heels, The Dress makes the silly girl very happy.)

Moving on.

Slightly behind the dress you see, of course, a dog crate. There's probably dog hair behind it and a chew toy or two around it. Though The Equuschick is slowly making progress towards her goal of more organization or less, she has never had any intention of becoming one of those people who judge their own living spaces by someone else's organizational standards. The Equuschick will always be more of an animal person than she is a clean person. She was born that way, is happy that way, and though the dog crate, the dog blankets, and the dog toys may be on the floor, yet still to her the room is clean provided that that the dog hair doesn't make a virtual carpet and everything is relatively tidy and sanitary.
The Equuschick does not keep houses. She manages ecosystems. Yes, the dogs sleep on her bed.

And last but never least, you see a picture on her wall of the creature from whom The Equuschick takes her very identity, as you know her.
"Le Belle Dame Sans Merci" may indeed be a beautiful poem, and The Equuschick could quote most of it in high-school, but still it is the proud crest of the horse's neck and the torrent of his flowing mane that makes this particular painting as much a part of The Equuschick's habitat as her bunny poster.

Books read in February.

Three. And all related directly to school. I was hoping to at least start The Three Musketeers over spring break, or finish reading Whittaker Chambers' Witness, but I realized that the more prudent course would be to actually devote any free reading time to furthering research for a paper. Ho-hum.

1) Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797 by Stafford Poole, CM.
- Less like a book and more like a legal document, this work meticulously sifts through all the sources relating to the Guadalupe tradition.

2) The Story of the Maori People by G. L. Pearce - Read for History of the British Empire class. This is a good source for general information, but also rather dated. Even I, someone who can be defined as an anglophile, found some of Pearce's attitudes condescending towards the Maoris and too pro-European.
This view, however, is one apparently not shared by my Professor so maybe I'm missing something.

3) Santa Anna: A Curse Upon Mexico by Scheina - This is a very, very short little biography of one of Mexico's most interesting figures. It was also a slightly disappointing biography. It's rather telling when a Professor apologizes to his class for assigning a certain book.
Scheina makes the untenable claim that colonial Mexico had changed little in 300 years. He dwells on rather sensational issues at the expense of developing further the politics of the time.
Those are objective complaints. Subjectively, he focused too much on battle details for this reader's taste. Reading this book made it abundantly clear to me, if I had any doubts, that I was not built to be a military historian.

DOUBTING CASTLE

Now, there was, not far from the place where they lay, a castle, called Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was Giant Despair, and it was in his grounds they now were sleeping.

Next morning, while walking very early about his grounds, the Giant caught Christian and Hopeful still asleep. Then, with a grim and surly voice, he bade them awake, and asked then whence they were, and what they did in his grounds. They told him they were pilgrims and had lost their way.

Then said the Giant, “You have this night trespassed in my grounds, and therefore you must go along with me.” So they were forced to go, because he was stronger than they. They had also but little to say, for they knew they were in fault.

The giant drove them before him and put them into his castle, into a dark dungeon, nasty and evil smelling to the spirits of these two men. Here they lay from Wednesday morning till Saturday night, without on bit of bread or drop of drink, or light, or any to ask how they did; they were, therefore, here in a bad fix. Christian had double sorrow, because it was through his thoughtless haste that they were brought into this distress.

Now, Giant Despair had a wife, whose name was Diffidence. So, when he was gone to bed, he told his wife what he had done; to wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her what to do further with them. She advised him that next morning, he should beat them without any mercy. So, when he arose, he took a great crab-tree cudgel, and went to their dungeon.

First, he began to abuse them as if they were dogs, although they had never spoken harshly to him. Then he beat them fearfully, so that they were not able to help themselves, or even turn on the floor. After this, he left them there to sorrow over their misery and to mourn under their distress. So all that day they spent their time in nothing but sighs and bitter grief. The next night she, talking with her husband about them, advised him to tell them to take their own lives.

On the next morning, he went to them with surly manner, and told them that, since they were likely never to come out of that place, their only way would be to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison. “For why,” said he, “should you choose life, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness?” But they desired him to let them go.

Then, he rushed to them and had doubtless made an end of them himself, but he fell into one of his fits (for he sometimes, in sunshiny weather, fell into fits), and lost for a time the use of his hands. So he left them as before to consider what to do. Then did the prisoners consult between themselves, whether it was best to take his advice or no; and thus they spoke:

CHRISTIAN. Brother, what shall we do? The life we now live is miserable. For my part, I know not whether is best, to live thus, or to die out of hand. “My soul chooseth strangling rather than life, and the grave is more easy for me than this dungeon.” Shall we be ruled by the giant?

HOPEFUL. Indeed, our present condition is dreadful; and death would be far more welcome to me than to live on here. But yet, let us think: the Lord of the country to which we are going hath said, “Thou shalt do no murder,” no, not to another man’s person; much more, then, are we forbidden to take his advice to kill ourselves. And, as for ease in the grave, hast thou forgotten the hell, whither, for certain, the murderers go? for, no murderer hath eternal life.”

Who knows but that God, who made the world, may cause Giant Despair to die? or that, at some time or other, he may forget to lock us in? or that he may, in short time, have another of his fits before us, and he may lose the use of his limbs? I am resolved to pluck up the heart of a man, and try my utmost to get from under his bond. Let us be patient and endure awhile; the time may come that may give us a happy release; but let us not be our own murderers.

With these words, Hopeful at present did calm the mind of his brother; so they continued together in the dark that day, in their sad and doleful condition.

Well, towards evening, the giant went down into the dungeon again, to see if his prisoners had taken his counsel. But, when he came there, he found them alive; and truly, alive was all; for now, what for want of bread and water, and by reason of the wounds they received when he beat them, they could do little but breathe. Yet, he fell into a terrible rage, and told them that, seeing they had disobeyed his counsel, it should be worse with them than if they had never been born.

At this they trembled greatly, and I think Christian fell into a swoon; but, coming a little to himself again, they renewed their discourse about the giant’s advice and whether yet they had best to take it or no. Now, Christian again seemed for doing it; but Hopeful made his second reply as followeth:

HOPEFUL. My brother, remember how brave you have been. Apollyon could not crush you, nor could all the terrors of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Remember how you played the man at Vanity Fair, and were neither afraid of the chain, nor cage, nor yet of bloody death. Let us, to avoid the same that is unbecoming to a Christian, bear up with patience as well as we can.

That night, the old giant and his wife renewed their talking of their prisoners; and the old giant wondered that he could neither by his blows nor counsel bring them to death. And, with that, his wife replied, “I fear that they live in hope that some will come to relieve them; or that they have pick-locks about them, by the means of which they hope to escape.” “And sayest thou so, my dear?” said the giant: “I will therefore search them in the morning.”

That night, about midnight, they began to pray, and continued in prayer till almost break of day.

From John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, as seen on this website, where it is slightly abridged.
Unabridged version here.

PIcture here

The Rabbi and the Prof, III

The Professor who has been instructing the Rabbi on matters relating to colleges in the seventies is actually the victim in Kemelman's mystery, so Kemelman must bring in other characters if he wishes to further his commentary on the state of academia (which does not occupy as much space in his book as it does in this blog).

Rabbi Small meets some of the other teachers at the college, and one of them tells him that "A professor... is just an instructor who can strike a better bargain." She has been teaching for sixteen years and is paid as an instructor rather than a professor because she has no doctorate. I thought 'Professor' was always the title for a college teacher with a doctorate, but if I read Kemelman correctly, perhaps not.

Another teacher suggests the real reason is because she is a woman, and another demurs. "You know the reason as well as I do. Mary chose to invest her energies in teaching rather than research and publication, and these days it just doesn't pay off. You see, Mary, you made the natural mistake of assuming that college was a place where students come to learn and the faculty teaches. It's been years since that was true. AS soon as the administration discovered there was more endowment money even more student applications, when someone on the faculty made a discovery that hit the headlines, the old order was dead."

In the comments on our previous Rabbi and Prof post, Rick Saenz suggested that Kemelman was right, and that we might "put other non-profit institutions to the same cynical test. Parachurch ministries come to mind."

I think it is very sobering to replace the word teaching with the word 'preaching' in the above excerpts. Hmmmm.

The good Rabbi is concerned about this, and he asks, "[Before] the students came to study and the faculty taught. Now the faculty does research instead of teaching. What about the students who came here to learn. Did they also change?"

The answer is, of course. "They now come to get credits, to get degrees for better jobs. It's like green stamps. You save up a bookful and get a degree. And nowadays you don't even have to earn the credits."

The Rabbi suggests that surely there are students who do actually study and want to learn, and he is assured that there are. The problem is that their credits are tainted, and eventually the school's standards must be lowered to accomodate the large number of students who do not study. You can't flunk half your student body and attract more students, it seems. So the bad credits drive out the good credits.

If this was the case in 1973, what do you think the crop of graduating teachers looked like that year? The next year? The year after that? And after that? And might that have something to do with where we are now?

44 million adults in the U.S. can't read well enough to read a simple story to a child. 1

More than 20 percent of adults read at or below a fifth-grade level - far below the level needed to earn a living wage. 2

Questions.

An online friend, for one of those fun memes, asked me a set of five questions recently. There were whimsical ones - what sort of unusual animal would you like to have as a pet one day, for example, a ferret being the answer to that one.

One question, however, particularly arrested my attention. She asked:
Tell me some of the most important things (values, ideals, ideas, character traits) that your parents have given you.

Getting that question was interesting, because I'd already been thinking of huge posts that I could write about how much my parents have blessed me. I always knew they were good parents. Then I started college and discovered they were amazing parents.
My parents value a life that is dedicated to recognizing God's omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. They live a life that offers hospitality to all no matter what their circumstances. For them, one of the primary ways to show love is to share your home with others. Growing up memories, then, are associated with building rich friendships in a comfortable environment. I am thankful for that.
My parents value learning: Learning with passion, and learning with practicality. They expect the same from their children.
They have insisted that we live with integrity. If you can't trust your family, then it's not worth having one. I know I can trust my siblings and my parents to care for what is best for me, to communicate with me, and to be honest with me. Having this knowledge is wonderful.
They love to be with their children. They love to talk with their children. They love to share with their children. They love their children. They don't treat us like accessories to be taken out and shown to the world on Sundays and Holidays. They show their love with the time they spend with us.
Theirs is an attitude that refuses to give up even when the going gets tough. "Give up" is not even in their vocabulary. Stubbornness is, and I'm so very thankful for that.
They question things. If I posit an idea, they want to know why.
They love. They love me. They love my siblings. They love each other. They love God. Where they have convictions, they are strong. Where freedom in Christ is to be applied, they apply it.
---
That's, slightly modified, what I wrote for this friend. Since writing it I've had more things to come to mind. Some of it is more mundane, but still important.
Their example of frugality has been a good and strong one. I remember once mentioning to the DHM that we maybe should consider replacing a cooking pot because it was getting rather old and beat-up. Her response: "It's still doing the job, isn't it?" And it was. A great deal of money can be saved when we take the trouble to ask if we want something new because the old one isn't functioning efficiently, or it's simply because we're tired of looking at it. Sometimes it's OK to replace something because we're tired of looking at it, but I think more often than not we try to rationalize our desires and never think about how un-necessary an expense certain things are. We still have that cooking pot. It's still doing the job. We drive a car that looks anything but brand-spankin' new and that has almost 200,000 miles on it. It's still doing its job.

They created a home atmosphere that felt deliciously normal even while being rather unusual. Most Americans do not own 6000 books. Most Americans can't envision a life without television. Many Americans do not understand the thrill of finding a nice outfit on sale at a thrift store for $2. Being friends with your siblings is considered odd. Having a blast with your parents is considered odd. Most Americans find the idea of long car-trips with the family as anything but fun.
And yet these are all parts of my "normal" growing-up. My parents never made a big deal over the fact that the way we did things could be seen as bizarre and counter-cultural. It was our life, it was our normal life, and we loved it.

Still do love it, too.

Tomorrow-

The Equuschick goes to see Amazing Grace with the HG and they'll withdraw from the world into their own cozy corner of sisterhood and wear cute clothes and walk the campus together in the morning and play Sophisticated Intellectuals, and in the afternoon they'll go to the theatre and blow well-earned money on the silver screen and toxic food and drink.
They'll sit next to each-other and annoy each-other as much as possible, when not spell-bound by the movie, because that's what sisters do.