Parenting Advice

Pray often, and remind yourself that God loves your children more than you do. Ask Him to show you how to show His love to your children.

Give up on things like, oh, seeking the one perfect schedule that will never, ever have to be altered if only you can find it.

Don't give up on things that would work if only you were more persistent and consistent (good manners, drawing lessons, regular math lessons, music lessons, habit training).

Don't neglect discipline, but don't neglect singing, laughing, and playing together either. Reproof and correction are withdrawals from the bank. They need doing sometimes (often times), but you are making a withdrawal. You need to be sure there's a healthy balance and a regular habit of deposits, too. You make deposits in your children's banks by respecting their privacy, their dignity, by laughing with them, playing with them, loving them, singing with them, doing fun things together as a family, sharing joyful times together.

Have high expectations. Children do live up to them.

I wish I'd met my friend at the Blue Castle sooner, because she taught me that you can't expect what you don't inspect- and it would have saved us all years of frustration if I'd realized that sooner.

I wish I had written more things down, cute, sweet, funny things, and also ideas I had about parenting and about homeschooling, things we tried that worked, things we tried that failed. For instance:
~ I once had this great idea for a game to teach my children all about borrowing and paying interest and how burdensome it was to get into debt. We played it, and my oldest two children vividly remember the lesson the learned from it. It really made an impression- unfortunately, none of us remember exactly what I did.
~ We've just been excessively busy of late. The kids seem to be involved in so many activities and it's been very frustrating trying to keep up with everything. Today my eldest daughter reminded me that when she was still in high school and the same thing started to happen, I made a rule that there could be no outside activities during school hours. I had forgotten that. I just sat there stunned, thinking, "Who was that smart woman, and what has she done with my brain?"

Whenever a family member finishes reading one of our books (or has it read to them), we write down the name and date inside the front cover. I wish we'd done this from the beginning.

There are things I wish I never did- but they are the sort of things every mother does and wishes she didn't do.

Things I'm pretty happy about:
We've always included Bible.
We've always read good books.
We've always included hymns, folk songs, and classical music in our days.
We've always included poetry.
We've always included art.
We've always read together.
We've always played games together.
I chose a wonderful man to be their daddy (well, this was a case of fools rushing in where angels fear, and 'there, but for the grace of God..... But he is a wonderful daddy).

All things that worked for me....

Lunches

Meredith has a terrific post on making bento box lunches. We lived in Japan for five years. I loved the bento boxes- both the containers and the packaged lunches we could buy at the grocery store.
Kind of reminds me of the lunches I sometimes fix for my husband (except I started doing this for my foster sister in high school, long before I ever heard of bento boxes. And real bento boxes are ever so much more elegant than my feeble efforts). I'll have to post pictures one of these days.

Once upon a time I had a couple tiny little glass tobasco sauce bottles- so cute! They'd been either part of an MRE or an airplane lunch, I forget which. I saved them and reused them for ages, cleaning them out in between uses with vinegar and dish soap. I used them in the HM's lunches- adding extra soy sauce or vinegar and oil dressings to foods that I didn't want to get soggy before he could eat them.

IN some of the links at the bottom of Meredith's post there are directions for making sushi. I haven't found an asian grocery store near me, but I did just order six boxes of nori from Amazon groceries. If I can keep The Boy from snacking on this stuff plain (one of his favorite snacks), maybe I can make a few sushi rolls for the HM's lunches.

Books read in July, 2007

I read a great deal of fluff this month, but as it's the last month I really get to do that for a long time, I'm not feeling overly guilty about it. I enjoyed it. :) And it wasn't all fluff, just predominantly fluff.

1) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fireby J.K. Rowling - As you can tell, I tarted to re-read some of the books before the last one came out. Not beautifully or deeply written, but still a story that keeps the reader engrossed in its plot twists and strong narrative style. This is where the books begin to get darker but - as JKR asked in an interview - you couldn't exactly call the first one warm and fuzzy, either.

2) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling - I liked this one better a second time around, when I wasn't reading it in vast gulps while packing for an out-of-state move. It's a fun summer book.

3) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling -- Completely threw into doubt many of my post-book-5 theories, although reading my book journal, I still was fairly close to the mark. This one was better written (or edited) than the earlier books.

4) Upstairs at the White House: My life with the First Ladies by J.B. West (chief usher at the White House, 1941-1969)
- A nice inside look at the White House through various administrations. West makes it quite clear that for the the Hite House to be preserved as an American institution, staff loyalties must be to the Presidential office, not to individual personalities. Still, it's a life of service and of helping a family find privacy in the most public of roles.
This book could have done with a better editing job to aid in paragraph transitions, but that was really the only quibble I had with it. It's an easy read, and a politically-neutral way to get a glimpse of the domicile of a person with anything but a politically-neutral life.

5) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallowsby J. K. Rowling - This was a beautiful and surprising book. Everything tied together - everything fit.
As a friend of mine said: Brava, Rowling, thank you for ending it the right way!

6) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - Fresh and beautiful, as always. It had been several years since I'd read this one, and I somehow had it in my head that this was only a book poking fun at gothic novels. It is that, but she has more serious and pertinent points to make as well. Catherine was raised in a home that valued honesty of character and simplicity of speech. While this is a good thing, her parents did her a disservice by not taking the trouble to make sure she understood that not everyone operated with the same sense and kindness. Thus, while Catherine charmed people she met, she also fell prey to several embarrassing situations because of her inability to distinguish what was real and what was fake in other people.
Wonderful book. Wonderful author.

7) A Going Concernby Catherine Aird - It's been a long time since I've read a murder mystery, and longer still since I've read an Aird. Her mysteries are good fun: witty without being over the top, moral without being philosophically heavy.
This one was slightly dated in a couple regards, but still was an enjoyable way to pass an evening after a hectic day.

8) Radical Restoration: A Call for Pure and Simple Christianityby F. LaGard Smith - Primarily of interest to those with a background in the churches of Christ. Smith challenges many cherished notions while begging for an adherence to scriptures alone. Thought-provoking book.

9) Parting Breathby Catherine Aird - Another mystery, this one is set in a university during the Cold War. It's good, but sad. The victims were not cranky or malicious: on the contrary, they were people who cared, and it was this caring that spelled their end.
-
On another note, I have fallen out of the habit of proper mystery reading. I need to get back into the routine of keeping track of characters, motives, clues, and alibis!
-
On *another* note: it was interesting to see how university was viewed in this (1960's/70's) book. We are apt to forget that the notion that everyone should go to college is a relatively recent phenomenon. Even in this relatively modern book, the mindset that all young people should attend college was noticeably lacking. It was catching up, because one character thinks about how he wants "the best of everything" for his son and that will include college.
I think that's where we tripped up: assuming that a person who didn't go to college was somehow deprived. We need to get back to realizing that college ought to be optional, that a person who doesn't choose to go is not deprived or under-educated, that they instead are choosing a different path in life. College should not be the post-highschool default. In a country where individuality supposedly matters more than almost anything, we've got an awfully rigid standard for our 18-22 year olds.

83rd Homeschooling Carnival

Mom is Teaching does a lovely job of hosting, and it's another great read. We've got using junk mail as a teaching tool, teaching moral courage, a gorgeous art gallery thanks to Kim's linkage, a really neat looking program from France, College Scholarship tips, and ever so much more.

Hahaha.

The Equuschick is always inordinately amused when things that are supposed to be extinct turn out not be extinct after all.

It isn't their fault, nobody told them that Modern Science had decided they didn't exist anymore.

Rabbit Trails- from Architecture to Dogs

In the comments to our post with architecture pictures for our timeline, Love2LearnMom suggested this website as one that may be of interest to us, which I had seen once before and meant to pass on, but sievelike as my brain is these days, forgot. I am so glad she refreshed my memory, because it's a great resource (I really love this timeline of architecture I found there).
Well, one good thing often does lead to another and so I was browsing around on that Architecture for Kids website and found some interesting links in the sidebar...

Which led me to this very nice collection of archived articles from Heart and Mind, a magazine for Catholic homeschoolers that still has, if this page is any evidence, a lot of very nice reading for noncatholics like myself (see the C.S. Lewis inspired reading list, for one of many such examples). There are also unit studies and just a dandy list of useful and interesting reading.

Which led me to this article in PDF form which is laugh out loud funny. Equuschick and Pip will want to read this hilarious tale of a very smart dog.

Time is a Gift

When I am reading older books I enjoy coming across inadvertent evidences of some of the many changes between then and now. I'm not talking about idealistic portrayals of times past, I'm talking about books written in the time period. And the things that most often surprise me are not usually things directly related by the author, but rather are small details, things taken for granted, dropped in the story almost by accident.

In one of Jane Austen's novels (I forget which), there is a small detail you can easily miss- they are planning a party, and it must be planned around a full moon. When there were no street lights, traveling by horse and carriage during the week of the new moon was not something one did for pleasure. Parties were events for full moons and pleasant weather. Thus, the weather and the seasons and lunar cycles themselves provided for a down time that we moderns tend to ignore.

Another thing I notice is how much leisure time a certain class of business man had. Again, this is rarely part of the story, it's an underlying assumption of the author's. I see it when I come across some mention of what hour the business man arose, or his lunch hour, or the time between appointments. You have to read between the lines to see it. But when people walked or went by carriage (and occasionally train) everywhere, there was, by force, more time to think between appointments. When living by gas and candlelight, most white collar workers did not get to work before dark and leave after dark. If your store had to be lit by gaslight, you tended to shut up shop before the sun went down.

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

Life was harder in other ways, especially for the underprivileged, and the 'simple life' was often a matter of poverty reducing all ones options down a minimalist's dream of one. I remember reading a Ngaio Marsh mystery (not so very old), and noticed another such detail. A gardener is well known in the neighborhood for his pants- the only pair he seems to own. He wears them every day, year in and year out, a shapeless, shabby pair of tweeds. They were given to him by the Vicar in years past. This isn't a major part of the story, just a small paragraph, a detail shared for the human interest rather than for any significance. But I don't know anybody in America who is limited to one pair of pants, given him by the charity of a local preacher. People barely living above the poverty line can give away garbage bags full of clothes each year.

In the Five Little Peppers there are two small details that really are quite insignificant to the story, but offer an interesting vignette into how times have changed. One is when Polly and her siblings want to write a letter, and there is a huge hunt through the house for paper and an envelope. Finding a single envelope and a single sheet of paper to write a letter on is such a momentous event. I know FLP is a fairy tale about being poor, but somehow I don't think this is a fairy tale bit. Today we buy pads of paper cheaply enough to use them for scratch paper, and envelopes come in the junk mail every day (just paste a label over them, or turn them inside out and retape). It didn't used to be so easy.

Another such episode is when they make a cake and have to take the stones out of the raisins. What a tedious task! I have some older recipes that also call for 'stoning raisins.' I am so glad I live in a time when paper is so readily available (and so much cheaper than in Polly's time), when pen and ink are easily come by, and I will never have to stone a raisin. I do hope Polly's raisins were at least larger than ours, else there would hardly be any point to the exercise.

Servants and other 'lower classes' did lead lives harder, longer, colder, and starker than the pleasant enough lives of the poverty stricken Bennet sisters who are reduced to only two servants. But the work of those servants has largely been replaced by central heating, electric stoves, microwaves, dishwashers, washing machines, power mixers, power steering, gas powered lawn mowers, vaccum cleaners, hot water heaters, flush toilets, weed-eaters, electric drills, vacuum cleaners, crockpots, running water, synthetic fabrics, convenience foods and other advances we take for granted. The servant class of yesterday has almost disappeared in this country, and the 'underprivielged' of today live a standard of life the middle class of yesteryear couldn't even imagine.

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

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

Well, do we?

From New York Magazine, an article on burnout.

Adapted and reposted
Other posts referencing the burnout article here and here.

Chief Justice Roberts and Seizures

The Chief Justice has had a seizure or two, and the press is making much of this, Americans with Disabilities Act notwithstanding. Danny Carlton also has seizures, and he shares his perspective here.

The Call to Service

John Erskine, author of The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent- WHICH IS ONLINE HERE!!!! YES, I am SHOUTING because this is THRILLING!

Anyway, included in the book with the same title (which we blogged about here) are four other essays, including a commencement address with this title. He says here:

"...that every graduating class expects, to be told what to do with education, now you have it; your school or college owes it to itself, you think, to confess in public the purpose for which it has trained you."

And that most commencement speakers will oblige by deliverint a speech about service,

"educated men should be unselfish; that learning is a vain and dangerous luxury if it is only for ourselves; that the following of truth, the reverent touching of the hem of her garment, is not, as we may have thought, a privilege, nor is even the love of truth a virtue, until it is converted into a responsibility toward others. "

This is what everybody says. Ths is what everybody knows. This is what everybody expects. But John Erskine says he hestitates to deliver this message.

"What confounds us is the plain fact that only those who hope to render the service have the slightest enthusiasm for it. We might well expect also some due and ardent recognition, some rising to the moment, from those about to be served. Their need, to be sure, has no such focus, no such rallying-point, as the impulse to their rescue; no commencement address puts them in mind to receive, as you graduates are stimulated to give. But their need itself, we might think, should at first prepare in them, and experience year by year confirm, a receptive and a thankful heart. Yet those about to be served are silent. If there are distinctions in silence, theirs leans less toward humility than toward defence. Those who have already been served and who now hear again the summons to their benefit, break silence by gradations of reproach. They deprecate the ministrations of the educated. They invite the physician to heal himself. They intimate hypocrisy in their would-be rescuers, who, they say, instead of equalizing men's misfortunes once for all, so that no further rescue might be needed, actually prefer to patch up life's injustices from year to year, finding a moral satisfaction in being charitable, and craving, therefore, a sup-
ply of the unfortunate to exercise that virtue on."

Ouch. There is something sweetly seductive, isn't there, about seeing oneself in the capacity of a saviour, a rescuer, a Lady Bountiful (or Sir Bountiful) who is always willing to consider the needs of the great unwashed and serve them well? It's insidious, like the fumes of the Green Witch in Lewis' The Silver Chair. What happens when we see ourselves as the noble saviour, out to rescue the great washed, the poor and ignorant, the underprivileged from themselves, their circumstances, and everybody around us, is that we create an unhealthy relationship where our good opinion of ourselves is dependent on the continued existence of those great unwashed, and if they don't appreciate us as they should, well, then, they are clearly ungrateful wretches, selfish, deeply flawed, and- this may explain why some of those who have the lowest opinions of the people they are supposed to help are in the helping professions. They get tired and burned out, often because their goals are not supported by reality or shared by those they supposedly want to help it, and this burnout can carry with it some level of resentment, even disdain, towards the job. Social workers and teachers suffering burnout report being disgusted and fed up with the people they were supposed to be helping, furious at being called upon to help yet again.

I've also seen some adoption and foster care situations blow up in people's faces, and generally, in those I've seen, one of the factors was that the parents went into it with this savior mentality- they were going to be noble and rescue somebody. Nobody likes being somebody else's project, and seeing other human beings as your project dehumanizes them in your eyes.

We need to watch that. Erskine some helpful questions to ask ourselves before we go off on our errands of mercy. I'lls hare those tomorrow.

The Timeline

JennyAnyDots and I helped the Boy and Girl put up the pictures for the agricultural Architectural time line DHM posted about here.
Since the Boy and Girl have been learning about them, they were supposed to tell us a little bit about what they remembered of each one as it got put up. The Boy, of course, did most of the talking.
This is the Ziggerat at Ur, on which the Boy talked profusely. Near the end, he pointed to some point in the picture and said "And this where a guy would go up and do this:" and then he mimed some sort of singing prayer. "Ummm, buddy..." said the Girl, "I think you're making that up, cuz the book did NOT say that."
"Yeah," said the Boy lightly, "I figured that part out on my own."

Another Library Booksale

The nearby town which delivers our mail has a population of about 2,000. It has a teeny, tiny library. They recently had a library book-sale and accepted donations for it. We got rid of several boxes of books. They asked us to stay and help sort our hundreds of books, and while we did that we noticed half a dozen things we really, really wanted. We paid our 'Friends of the Library' fee to go to the early preview.

It was Thursday evening at 5:00. We showed up fifteen minutes early because the HG was driving and she's a bit of a stickler for getting places early. We were the only ones there. We walked up to the door and just as I was saying to my son (who had run ahead to get the door for us), "It's probably still locked," he pulled it open. I looked inside and asked the two librarians if they were open yet. One of them told me, "Not for fifteen more minutes, but if you want to come on in and start looking you can." So we did. We made a beeline to the books we'd spotted earlier (there were new ones out, too, and we picked up several of those along the way). For fifteen minutes we had the place to ourselves.

I brought home two boxes of goodies, the Progeny each picked out a few of their own that they may have to tell you about later. I understand they've smuggled the books they bought (with what they alleg to be their own money) into their respective bedrooms where they are defacing them by putting their names in prominent places inside the covers. We did not bring home any of the books we donated. I know you thought we would, but we didn't.

Pip helped me catalog and sort one box tonight. These are the titles:

15-Minute Low Carb Recipes: Instant Recipes for Dinners, Desserts, and More! by Dana Carpender

The Land Remembers by Ben Logan (an agrarian, homesteading thing)

Annotated Alice in Wonderland

China Cry: The True Story of Nora Lam, video

Civil Disobedience: The Liberator (Audio Classics) by Henry David Thoreau
Cassette tapes


The American Revolution, Part I (The United States at War) by George H. Smith
Cassette tapes


American Revolution Part II (The United States at War Audio Classic Series) (Aud ...
Cassette tapes


Two Treatises on Government by John Locke
Cassette tapes

Medical Science by Edwin Newman
Cassette tapes

Galileo's Daughter: A Historic Memoir of Science, Faith and Love by Dava Sobel (Random House Audio, 1999), audio cassette

THE LANDS AND PEOPLES SERIES SCOTLAND (Hardcover)
by GEORGE BRODLIE (Author)

Thomas Jefferson: American Visionary Audio Cassettes (The Great Courses) by Professor Darren Staloff

The History of Ancient Rome (The Great Courses) on Cassette tape, Professor Fagan

Rome, Power and Glory, Questar video set, six volumes.

SELECTED ESSAYS of Montaigne. The William Hazlitt translation, Revised and edited, with an Introduction, by Blanchard Bates. by (The Modern Library,, 1949), hardcover

Golden Dictionary, The ( 1030 words & more than 1500 color pictures ) (Hardcover)
by pictures Miss Gertrude Elliott, prepared under supervision Mary Reed Text Ellen Wales Walpole- a nostalgia purchase to replace the one my grandparents and uncle gave me when I was small and which the HM stored, along with other childhood treasures, in a mud-puddle at the base of our cellar steps one winter but I am not bitter. Actually, I am not, because he did this cruel deed some 22 years ago, and when I brought home this book in a triumphant victory march through the garage and flourished it in his face, he recognized it! As I told him, just recognizing the book is worth a bucketload of brownie points.

Bach's Fight for Freedom- a video the HG wanted.

To Sell:
The Detox Diet: A How-To & When-To Guide for Cleansing the Body (Paperback)
by Elson M. Haas (Author) (5.00, postage paid)


Bugs - Mosquito (Bugs) by Heather L. Miller (Author), 32 pages, 10.00

Praying Mantises (True Books) (Library Binding)
by Larry Dane Brimner (Author)- Very cool pictures, good condition- 8.00


Speak to the Earth pages from a farmwife's journal. by Rachel Peden and Sidonie Coryn hardback, dj (I've quoted from this one before) 5.00 postage paid.

The Great Courses ~ the History of Ancient Rome {Part I, II, III, IV} Course #341, 342, 343, 344 - Set of 24 Audio Cassette's with 4 Guidebooks (Audio Cassette)
by THE TEACHING COMPANY by Professor Garrett G. Fagan, $170.00 It's killing me to list this, but there it is.

Brave Men, by Ernie Pyle, published June 1945 by Grosset and Dunlap- hardback, ex libra, 3.00

Benjamin Franklin by Enid La Monte Meadowcroft- paperback, 1.00


For gifts:
Reflections From A Mother's Heart (Hardcover)
by J. Countryman (Author) (a guided journal, blank, new, very nice)

Oh, the unconscious humor.

Matthew McConaughy (actor -- I've only seen him in the funny adventure movie Sahara, but he's apparently a Very Cool Dude right now) said this in an interview:
"My best quality is that I'm a big hearted person. I'm resilient, too. My worst quality is selfishness, although everyone is guilty of that to an extent. Everyone should be, I think -- you need to respect yourself."

Somehow, I think he's right about what his worst quality is, although I don't think he realizes quite how deep it goes...

For Our Timeline

This is for our timeline, but I thought maybe somebody else might use them as well. I'll be printing this out and then we'll cut them up and put them up on the proper place on the timeline.


Cheops Pyramid, 2600 BC

Stonehenge, 2000 BC (about)

Gobekli Tepe, in Turkey
10,000 B.C.
More here
and it's all very cool stuff.




Egyptian Temple at Karnak 1300-1200 B.C.
(below left)

Ziggerat at Ur 2100 B.C.E
(above, right)

Parthenon 447-432 B.C.(above, right)

Caryatid column from the Porch of the Maidens
on the acropolis (below right)

Acropolis, Around 410 B.C.
.

Temple to Diana (Artemis) at Ephesus, 600 B.C.(center, above).

Roman Pantheon, 120 A.D (left)

Colosseum or Flavian Amphitheatre, 80 A.D. (right)

.Arch of Titus (80AD) Roman Aquaduct, 14 A.D.



There was some evidence that I had been at this entirely too long when Pip came in to bring me a second cup of coffee and I said, something like, "I'm making an agricultural timel- I mean, an aggravating, I mean-'" and I waved my hand towards the book Young People's Story of Architecture.
"You mean architecture," she said helpfully.
"Yes. And You can tell I've been doing this too long because it's starting to make my brain fuddled, but I just have a couple more pictures after the apocryphal- I mean, the, um, the er-' and again I waved my hand vagely toward the book as I snatched the coffee from her hands.
"You mean acropolis," she said.

"Yes!" I agreed. "And after I finish this how would you like to help me work through the two boxes of books from the last library sale?"

She didn't look regal. I mean easter. I mean eager. I wonder why?

I'm not done, but I think I'll have to quite and come back and do more in a second post.

So That She Will Not Be Idle....

On Sundays, let all occupy themselves in reading,
except those who have been appointed to various duties.
But if anyone should be so negligent and shiftless
that she will not or cannot study or read,
let her be given some work to do
so that she will not be idle.

Weak or sickly sisters should be assigned a task or craft
of such a nature as to keep them from idleness
and at the same time not to overburden them or drive them away
with excessive toil.
Their weakness must be taken into consideration by the Abbess.

Ha! Take that, all those nay-sayers who shake their heads at me and say, "I just don't have time to read. I have too much to do...."

An Interesting Little Rabbit Trail

Browsing through my great-grandmother's 1960 journal today, I was interested in these late July entries:

Monday, July 25- Mrs. Guy came up to watch television. Rep. Judd from Minn great- heard him at conference a short time after he had to leave China.

Tuesday, July 26
Handwashing
Watched the convention.
Mrs. Guy here.
It's a wonderful privilege to watch Pres. Eisenhower's speech. Wonderful.
Dr. Schantz (SP?) came to see me- gave me a new prescription. hope it helps.

Well, I didn't know who Judd was, so I did what we do in the year of our Lord 2007. I googled. Here's the rabbit trail:

From the Minnesota Historical Society's inventory of his papers:

Walter Henry Judd was born in Rising City, Nebraska on September 25, 1898, the son of Horace Hunter and Mary Elizabeth (Greenslit) Judd. He was educated at the University of Nebraska, receiving both his B.A. and M.D. degrees there, the latter in 1923. From 1920 to 1924 he also taught zoology at the University of Omaha.

In 1925 he began his career as a medical missionary in China. He worked under the auspices of the Congregational Foreign Mission Board in Nanking from 1925 to 1926, and in the Shaowu and Fukien hospitals from 1926 to 1931. In 1931 he returned to the United States and studied surgery under a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. He returned to China in 1934 where he supervised a 125-bed hospital in Fenchow, Shansi Province. Following the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, Judd remained at the Fenchow hospital although his family returned to the United States. For five months he remained under Japanese rule before returning to the United States in 1938. After his return to the United States, he resigned from the mission field. He spent two years lecturing throughout the country on the crisis in the Far East, particularly voicing disapproval of American shipments of raw materials to Japan that could be made into war materials. In 1941 he opened a private medical practice in Minneapolis.

Backed by liberal Republicans and independents, he entered Minnesota's fifth congressional district race in 1942. In the Republican primary he defeated the isolationist incumbent, Oscar Youngdahl. He went on to win the general election, defeating the Farmer-Labor candidate, Joseph Gilbert, and the Democratic candidate, Thomas P. Ryan. In the nine succeeding congressional elections, he defeated his Democratic-Farmer-Labor opponents. In 1962, following redistricting, he lost to DFL candidate Donald Fraser.
[...]

The first portion of the collection (1.5 cu. ft.) documents Judd's experiences in China and his continued support for a Free China, as well as his interest in the Far East. It includes correspondence and printed material relating to the hospitals and missions in Shaowu and Fenchow, Shansi Province; financial statements and reports of the Fenchow hospital; and correspondence with Chinese friends which continued until 1991. His interest in China and the Far East is reflected throughout his papers.

From a transcript of recordings from President Kennedy's time in office:

President Kennedy: That poll shows Judd to be ahead.37
Sorensen: [unclear] the firsthand meeting [unclear]
Unidentified: [unclear]
President Kennedy: If Judd gets to 43 percent...
Sorensen: Yeah. [unclear] And Anderson's pulled up an old [unclear]. 38
Unidentified: [unclear]
Unidentified: That just seems ridiculous.
Heller: Did Hubert say that he was doubtful about that poll?39
Kennedy: Which one?
Heller: This... you haven't [unclear] last poll, this one?
President Kennedy: Yeah, well no. I think we'd better, I don't think they've got much of a poll. I just think the problem is that... oop, turn that up, will you? Just turn them up.
The president turned off the recorder.

The Secretary of the Treasury stayed behind to continue the discussion with the President and Walter Heller. The President had time for more telephone calls, then he went to the pool at 7:03.

Footnotes:
Walter H. Judd was a Republican U.S. representative from Minnesota and keynote speaker. at the 1960 Republican National Convention. Judd, in what was considered a mild upset at the time, lost the 1962 election to Democratic state senator Donald M. Fraser.
38- This is most likely a reference to Elmer Lee Anderson, governor of Minnesota, then running for reelection in 1962. His reelection bid resulted in the closest election in Minnesota history with a loss to his opponent by 91 votes.
39. Hubert H. Humphrey was a U.S. senator from Minnesota.
40. A University Professor of Economics before joining the Kennedy Administration, Walter Heller was particularly interested in this Minnesota congressional race.

From a Wikipedia article on Louisiana Democrat Otto Passman(segregationist, implicated in Korea-Gate):

Passman chaired a pivotal House subcommittee that ruled on foreign aid appropriations. He took the view of Doug Bandow, a former scholar with the Cato Institute, that foreign aid involves "taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries." In other words, he did not believe that the aid was used as intended by Congress and that such aid was often harmful because it propped up despotic regimes that might otherwise have collapsed from corruption, failure, or unpopularity. Passman could not remove foreign aid from the budget, but he frequently was able to cut the program wherever he could.

For several years on the subcommittee, Passman clashed with Congressman Walter Judd, a Minnesota Republican and a former medical missionary to China, who was frequently the point-man to argue for expanded foreign aid to needy countries. Judd had even been considered for the vice presidency by Richard Nixon in 1960. Ironically, the Democrats in Minnesota gerrymandered Judd out of his House seat in the 1962 elections. Liberal Democrat Donald M. Fraser succeeded Judd, but there was no forceful defender of foreign aid on the House subcommittee from either party willing to step forward to fill Judd's shoes.

What I Was Saying About Our Books Eight Years Ago

Found in the dusty archives of some of you know where, this was written in response to somebody expressing envy and asking me how on earth I had room for all those books ('all' those books back then was about 2000*). This was eight years, four houses, and three states ago:

Room for books? If I live there, there is no such thing as a house with no room for books. We have four children in one room, two in another, and the baby still sleeping with us. We're crowded but well-read ;-)

Please don't be envious, but consider that you're dealing with a very sick woman. Sick, sick, sick. It’s an addiction more consuming than any other. I must have books. I need them. I'd rather buy a book than get myself new clothes, go out to dinner, or pay the electric bill. I'd sooner go to library sale or a yard sale or thrift shop than I would go to High Tea at the fanciest place in the world. I'd rather read than watch a movie, dust, go for a walk, visit Disneyland, and sometimes I even prefer reading to talking to the real humans in my life=(

WE have nine people in a three bedroom house, which fortunately has an extra room the owners built out of the garage. That's our guestroom/library/computer room/office/pantry (I have a dinky kitchen). We arranged some of the shelves as you find in a library, too, back to back, extending out from the wall, rather than against the wall. I prowl thrift shops and yard sales seeking bookcases (as well as more books, natch). We have shelves attached to the wall. I put any box or crate I come across into service as a bookshelf. There are nine bookcases in the library alone, and that doesn't count the three very long shelves attached to the wall, the two crates and one long box (picture a window box turned on its side and you'll get the rough idea) on the back of my desk, another window box shaped thing turned on its side on the top of one bookcase to extend its capacity and the boxes and boxes of books which I didn't have room for, so I put them under the bed in this room.

In the dining room, which is small enough we have to go sideways around the table, I have two bookcases. In the living room I have put my mantle into service as a bookshelf, have a hutch-top we picked up for free from somebody's trash sitting on top of the stereo cabinet, have another hutch top I just got at a thrift shop on top of a small table, and have a china cabinet full of books top and bottom. I have two old wooden ammunition boxes doing service as bookshelves on top of another cabinet. There is a wood burning stove in this house, and it sits on a raised brick hearth that runs the width of the living room. I even put a bookcase up there, under the mantle, and we use the rest of the hearth to store our library books.

I have three bookcases in the hall, and two of those are so full that we have to keep the books in them stacked horizontally rather than vertically (you can fit lots more in the same shelf space this way, although it's sort of harder on the books than I like). To extend the capacity of those shelves I have another wooden ammunition box on top, with books in it and on it. I even have pressed a sturdy cardboard box into service, with books both in and on top. It's lasted surprisingly well.

I have three full sized bookshelves in my room and one small one sitting on top of a chest of drawers. I have three more of the ubiquitous ammunition boxes doing bookcase service on top of one of those shelves. We've had books in closets, books on top of every flat surface in the house, and I've even got a few books in plastic storage tubs. I've been looking for some time for a used headboard with a built in bookshelf so I can get more space for books without actually taking up anymore space in the house. I'm obsessed.

This is even more insane when you consider that we are military and move every few years. We will not be here more than two more years, and may only have one. Does that stop me? No, it doesn't even give me pause.

I read of one woman who emptied out her kitchen cupboards to make space for books, and I've given that serious consideration. She let her children play with the cans for blocks, and would go rummaging through their toy box at dinner time, I suppose;-)

My daughter has her own business selling books (via e-bay and through an online catalog she updates weekly). To help her out, I took her to library sales about four weeks in a row. I told myself every single time that I was not going to buy any books at all, just browse while she shopped. Oh, the heart is deceitful above all things. In short, I lied. I have 159 books that I bought at those library sales. I still have one laundry basket and one small box to go. But I'd go to another sale in a minute, greedily rubbing my hands together and gleefully cackling, "Books, books, BOOKS!"

Obsessively yours,

DHM
who has three copies of Faust by three different translators, and is trying to read them all at once. Don't envy me. Pity me. I won't mind. I'll probably be too wrapped up in my books to notice=)

* I said it was about 2000, because I had been making lists of my books and authors on grubby notebook pages, and when I counted those titles it came to 2000. When I described where all the bookcases were and how many of those we had and so forth- somebody said I had to have more than that.

Later I was cleaning out a box under my desk, and I found some _other_ notebook pages of books that had somehow gotten separated from the main body of the list. And there were just as many titles listed on those pages as on the ones I already had. So I
actually had around 4,000 books! But like I said, that was some, er, thirty or so library booksales ago....

Collected Tidbits from Parents Review Back Issues

The PNEU, Parent's National Education Union, was basically a national club with local chapters. Local chapters had regular meetings, much like a support group. The Parents' Review Magazine, edited by Charlotte Mason included articles of interest to the members of the PNEU as well as information about the national organization's work. In every PR magazine there was a also brief section with information about local chapter meetings which might also include transcripts of some of the talks. Here are a few random samples taken down from notes from local chapter meeting sections of several PR magazines. The only connecting thread is that they were in the early PR magazines and they interested me. I don't think there's anything earth shattering or of special use to CM homeschoolers. This is more for those of us who just find the historical trivia fun:

Many of the local chapter meetings include 'lime light' shows- a form of slide show (One also featured everybody getting x-rayed and looking at their bones- sounds like a jolly meeting).

More on discipline and how things have changed...

Vol.. VIII, no.3:
At the Derby branch of the PNEU:
"... The results of scientific observation and experience in the matter of education should be widely known, because people could not now, as too often had been the habit, throw all the blame on parents, and say that the fault rested entirely with them....

On Mrs. Curwen and shaped notes:

Volume VIII, No. 4, notes on the local PNEU groups:

Richmond and Kew branch:..."Mrs. Spencer Curwen, who had kindly consented to fill a blank at the last moment, delivered an interesting address on "Children's Music."...the first introduction to musical notation should be through the singing class, the tonic sol-fa notation and method being the best for this purpose. There
was not advantage in beginning instrumental work at five or six years of age. Bad habits of technique might be formed by beginning too early. The first pianoforte lessons were often spoken of as drudgery...something wrong in the teaching."

This note on foreign language was interesting:
Vol. VIII, no. 4;

Wimbledon branch had a lecture on teaching foreign language. Mdlle. Duriaux addressed previous defects in the teaching of foreign language based on long, tedious grammar rules and translations.
Instead, she had prepared ' a course of quite short lessons, each consisting of a short series of actions that a child could easily follow and remember. One of these short series she then proceeded to give to a class of four little boys, and thereby unmistakeably [sic] proved the truth of what she had been saying. It was evident at once how interesting and intelligible such lessons must be to children, and how quickly they could learn to repeat and understand the few short sentences without word having been "translated" to them."

And this more general bit of info on the PNEU and the first conference has many little tidbits of information one could glean:

Vol VIII, No. 7; on the first PNEU Conference:

..."in framing the programme, the object kept in view was to tell members 'what the P.N.E.U. Is,' and how branches can bring its teaching before their members. The groundwork of the arrangements was the leaflet which is published each month in the Parents' Review...

...To carry out this idea, Miss Helen Webb, M. B. and Miss Mason were asked to read papers, which should help parents in working out the underlying principle of the Union, "That character is everything." Miss Mason also gave definite help to branch
secretaries as to the best subjects to put before their members when arranging for monthly lectures on the physical, mental, moral and spiritual development of children.

Mrs. Steinthal [note: Aunt Mai, who did the 'Budget', the children's section of the PR] emphasized the value of art and manual training in education, and the best method for securing it."

From Sir Vincent Kennett Barrington's remarks: "Miss Mason has told us that the Union lays no claim to any exclusive methods; she reminds us that we are a progressive body, and that we are going on by the help of modern thinkers..."

Vol. VIII

The P.N.E.U. Had only 2,000 members at that time.

Miss Blogg, the secretary who later married G. K. Chesterton, gave a talk on the work of the main office. At the close of her speech Mrs. Steinthal thanked Miss Blogg and remarked "...We are constantly getting letters from mothers and others saying that she has quite won them over to our side by her nice letters."

(sidenote:She also had a letter expressing her regret at leaving the work, not exactly regret, since she was marrying, but you know what I mean- and saying that just because she was leaving the secretarial position that did not mean she would not still be furthering the work of the Union and its ideals in any way she could.)

At the same meeting Miss Mason added that Mrs. Steinthal's work was also very important. "The portfolio and the various sewing, cooking and gardening clubs are the great delights of children in many homes. I have known children who seize on the Parents' Review before the parents get a chance, so keen are they to see what "Aunt Mai" has to say..."

Miss Mason also said that a House of Education student had told her that a student's improvement should be credited to The influence of the Union generally, and above all to 'Aunt Mai....'

Miss Mason further added that "Aunt Mai's" work is at the very heart of the Union.

Here's a sample of one of Aunt Mai's letters:

"My Dear Children, -- I must first of all wish you a very Happy New Year. The happiness depends on yourselves, does it not? If you make good resolutions that you will be very obedient, very orderly, and that you will help everybody younger and weaker than yourselves, then the year 1897 will be a very happy one, and mother and father will before pleased with their boys and girls.

We now begin all our new work, and I hope that many new nieces will join our extensive family. Many children have learned to love sewing while making the clothes for the wax and the live dolls.

I should like suggestions to be sent to me this month of new competitions you would like to work for. Aunts have so much thinking to do, that sometimes they feel that they can invent nothing more, and then they are delighted if young brains set to work and help them, and the old ladies begin to feel quite young and fresh again.

Your loving

Auntie Mai."

From:

Vol. VIII, No. 11

Miss Mason writes in the letter bag that "It has long been our custom here to have a Sunday afternoon reading which we find very helpful, as giving us subjects in common for thought, prayer, and endeavour, increasing our interest in the Bible, enabling us to deal better with the doubts and difficulties which are in the air, and , above all, deepening our spiritual life. It is our habit to read through, from Sunday to Sunday, on e of the four Gospels, with comments which are more in the nature of a practical meditation than of a lecture or of a lesson." She further calls this a 'weekly stimulus to a higher life...." And is offering to mail out their weekly readings to mothers and House of Education graduates in the field who may be
interested in sharing.


In Leeds a "Mrs. Mirrlees gave an address to mothers only on 'Heart Culture.'"

Expect somebody to trademark the term any day now.

And this article, the opening paragraph of which warms my heart:

"When I lived in what is sometimes called a "state of single bliss," I used to find it easier to exhort parents-- and especially mothers-- about their parental duties, than I find it now. How many a time, as an inexperienced bachelor, did I almost wax eloquent in the enunciation of ideal principles which should guide parents in the
important matter of training up a child in the way it should go!
Since I became a parent myself and have got a look from the inside at the difficulties and responsibilities of a parent, and especially of a mother, I find I am not quite so ready of tongue to lecture parents, though my hear beats with fuller sympathy for them now than it ever did in bachelor days....It is easy to be a doctrinaire on the subject of parental duties, but to be a prophet one must graduate in the university of the nursery, where the professors are one's own
babies...."

Miss Mason spoke at several branch meetings in the fall on Letting Alone. According to the report of the Harrow secretary, she said 'that she thought that children are just a little too much to the front nowadays, and that we sacrifice the children's virtues for the sake of developing our own-- a suggestion behind which lies the
deep waters of a seldom-thought-upon truth. She went on to remark that the "wistful mothers" of the present day are a little apt to wear on the children's nerves. The lecture throughout was listened to with quiet, thoughtful attention..."

A Mr. Tufnail lectured two different branches on toadstools, and the secretaries of both branches referred to his lecture as suggestive and stimulating. I know this seems silly, but a suggestive and stimulating lecture on toadstools by a Mr. Tufnail struck my funny bone. I was equally amused by another report which was held with a
Rev. Somebody Bird in the chair (chairing the meeting). I think somebody else noticed this, too, because the _next_ report from the branch was reworded- 'in the chair was Rev. Somebody Bird.'


The PR had many clubs, one of which intrigued me was a foreign language translation group. They were set a passage in German to translate each month, mailed their translations in to be graded in some fashion and announcements were made in the PR as to who had done exceptionally well.

A new edition of Maria Edgeworth's Helps for Parents comes in for some mild, but friendly praise in the book reviews. These are online.

Often in articles on the education of girls, the author will point out that only 40 percent of women in England at that time were going to marry. There seems to have been a dire shortage of likely men for the middle and upper classes. Furthermore, it was considered *incredibly* irresponsible in that day to marry if one had any sort of health condition (even evil, in some cases).

On the Daily Manual Labour

I enjoyed this section of St. Benedict's Rule:

On the days of Lent,
from morning until the end of the third hour
let them apply themselves to their reading,
and from then until the end of the tenth hour
let them do the work assigned them.
And in these days of Lent
they shall each receive a book from the library,
which they shall read straight through from the beginning.
These books are to be given out at the beginning of Lent.

But certainly one or two of the seniors should be deputed
to go about the monastery
at the hours when the sisters are occupied in reading
and see that there be no lazy sister
who spends her time in idleness or gossip
and does not apply herself to the reading,
so that she is not only unprofitable to herself
but also distracts others.
If such a one be found (which God forbid),
let her be corrected once and a second time;
if she does not amend,
let her undergo the punishment of the Rule
in such a way that the rest may take warning.

Moreover, one sister shall not associate with another
at inappropriate times.

One or two should be deputed to go about the monastary making sure everybody is reading instead of being lazy.=)

I like that.

More practically, this is another example of that wisdom I first heard from the CoffeeMama at Our Blue Castle- don't expect what you don't inspect.

Sunday Hymn Post

O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing

O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace!

My gracious Master and my God,
Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad
The honors of Thy name.

Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
That bids our sorrows cease;
’Tis music in the sinner’s ears,
’Tis life, and health, and peace.

He breaks the power of canceled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean,
His blood availed for me.

He speaks, and, listening to His voice,
New life the dead receive,
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice,
The humble poor believe.

Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Savior come,
And leap, ye lame, for joy.

In Christ your Head, you then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate your heaven below,
And own that love is heaven.

Glory to God, and praise and love
Be ever, ever given,
By saints below and saints above,
The church in earth and heaven.

On this glad day the glorious Sun
Of Righteousness arose;
On my benighted soul He shone
And filled it with repose.

Sudden expired the legal strife,
’Twas then I ceased to grieve;
My second, real, living life
I then began to live.

Then with my heart I first believed,
Believed with faith divine,
Power with the Holy Ghost received
To call the Savior mine.

I felt my Lord’s atoning blood
Close to my soul applied;
Me, me He loved, the Son of God,
For me, for me He died!

I found and owned His promise true,
Ascertained of my part,
My pardon passed in heaven I knew
When written on my heart.

Look unto Him, ye nations, own
Your God, ye fallen race;
Look, and be saved through faith alone,
Be justified by grace.

See all your sins on Jesus laid:
The Lamb of God was slain,
His soul was once an offering made
For every soul of man.

Awake from guilty nature’s sleep,
And Christ shall give you light,
Cast all your sins into the deep,
And wash the Æthiop white.

Harlots and publicans and thieves
In holy triumph join!
Saved is the sinner that believes
From crimes as great as mine.

Murderers and all ye hellish crew
In holy triumph join!
Believe the Savior died for you;
For me the Savior died.

With me, your chief, ye then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate your heaven below,
And own that love is heaven.

background information and midi file at cyberhymnal .

Lyrics and mp3 file of acapella singing here

You may recognize the tune as one to another hymn. I am more accustomed to singing it with these lyrics:
I'm not ashamed to own my Lord,
Or to defend his cause;
Maintain the honour of his Word
The glory of his cross.

More On Disagreements

A friend of mine said something recently about how siblings who pretend to always get along are hiding something. She hit the nail on the head, I think. My siblings are awesome and I would not know what to do with myself if I didn't have them, but part of our closeness comes from the fact that we *don't* always get along. We can get into fairly hot disagreements over a variety of topics. We can drive each other crazy very easily; the Equuschick and I have nearly opposite personalities, and working these personality conflicts is not always pleasant.
I think there are two areas where people really fail to see the dividing line, though, between what is normal and what is harmful:
* Even when we disagree, we recognize the hard and fast rule that nothing changes the fact God gave us to each other for a reason, that we love each other, and that we owe each other a lot of respect. I may tell a sibling, "That's a ridiculous reason for thinking _____." But I can never tell her, "You're an idiot." That's a lie, for one, and then we've moved our argument to a personal level. Moving things to a personal level like that is injurious and wrong.

* And, when we disagree, we recognize that it is something between *us* and that we have no business broadcasting it to the world. We are a very close family and part of that closeness stems from the fact that we keep our issues within the family, where they belong. I don't have a problem telling you that it isn't always fair weather here at the Common Room. It would, however, be counterproductive and malicious of me to tell you all about how the Equuschick always leaves the worst bit for me when we do the kitchen together (she doesn't ;-).
I love her; that is what the world needs to know. We don't always get along. That's how it is with people who care about each other; the world should know that. The world does not need to know the blow-by-blow accounts of our disagreements. That's demoralizing.

-----
On a separate note, but one still dealing with siblings: I'm getting rather tired of the attitude that siblings must always annoy each other, or that siblings can't be friends with each other. It's seeped into Christian and homeschooling movements, and it's wrong. Siblings are the first friends God gives you, and if you fail to recognize that, you're going to miss out on a lot in life.

School reading

"A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury."
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Family Bickerings, Part the Ninth

As explained in the previous posts, the excerpt below is taken from Volume II of the Parents' Review, a magazine edited by Charlotte Mason. Volume II was published in 1891/2, and very few of the articles from it are online. You, Gentle Readers, may be among the first people to read this article in several decades. This article is by Leader Scott. Scroll down for links to the posts to the rest of the article.

This is the final section:

I will conclude with a code of laws, which are in tacit form in this household, though no parliament has been held to pass them:--

1. Brothers and sisters, being only comrades, shall not be permitted to judge or coerce each other.

2. Parents and tutors, being rulers, shall be judges of conduct, under a law of reason and Christian kindness.

3. When one deems another person in the wrong, try and find out how he feels himself in the right, before you show anger towards him.

4. If you find the subject has two sides to it, then you shall agree to differ, but not attempt to make differences agree.

5. To steal another person's credit or praise shall be held to be as culpable as stealing his money.

6. Never let an opportunity pass of doing a kind action, or saying a kind word.

7. Charity or love begins at home, and is the key to household peace.

But neither rules nor aphorisms are of much use without example. After all, the real makers of the household atmosphere are the parents themselves. If they are not at one the household peace falls apart. Mother's champion and Father's followers will be at strife among themselves. Where parents work together in sympathy the family will be knit in the same bonds; but if the husband finds fault with his wife, or shows disrespect to her before the children, the brothers will certainly treat their sisters in the same manner; and where the wife complains of "papa's unfortunate temper," or lets the children hide their actions and thoughts from him in fear of a scolding, she divides them with her own hand, and sows the distrust and defiance that make quarrels not only possible, but probable.

The hardest part is summed up in that passage marked in bold font. The parental example sets the tone.

I hate that.


Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
Part the Fourth
the Fifth
Part the Sixth
Part the Seventh
Part the Eighth
Conclusion (Part the Ninth)

Curried Chicken Salad

Low-Carb Cold Curried Chicken (perhaps for lunch)
8 Servings

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Mayonnaise
1/2 cup Sour cream
2 tbl Lemon juice
2 tbl Dijon mustard
1 tbl Curry powder
1/2 tsp Garlic salt
3 cup Cooked chicken, cubed
1 cup Diagonally sliced celery
1/2 cup Sliced green onions
Crisp lettuce leaves
Toasted almonds for garnish

Method:
In bowl, combine mayonnaise & sour cream. Blend in lemon juice, mustard, curry powder and garlic salt. Add chicken, celery, green onions. Chill for several hours. Serve on crisp lettuce leaves and garnish with slivered almonds if desired.

For extra flavor, add a bit of lemon zest (grated lemon peel) to the salad.

Family Bickerings, Part the Eighth

As explained in the previous posts, the excerpt below is taken from Volume II of the Parents' Review, a magazine edited by Charlotte Mason. Volume II was published in 1891/2, and very few of the articles from it are online. You, Gentle Readers, may be among the first people to read this article in several decades. This article is by Leader Scott. Scroll down for links to the posts to the rest of the article.

The little girl who "did not want to feel cross with Dollie" had the attributes of charity spread, verse by verse, through the week.
The child who wanted to fight her vanity had such texts as: "Charity envieth not, vaunteth not herself, is not puffed up," "Be kindly affectioned on to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another," "Be not wise in your own conceits," &c.
The children kept their own part of the bargain as seriously as they kept their secrets, and the result, if not quite perfect after the first Lenten fight, was a complete victory after the second. In overcoming greediness Miss Dollie lost all that self-seeking manner which jarred upon her sister, so that they ceased to rub each other up the wrong way; and in fighting down her pride, Maude began to find out all kinds of talents and good points in the others, and learned to take as much pleasure in their successes as in her own. She no longer pushed to the front, and consequently aroused no feeling of jealousy nor made quarrels.

In this sunny atmosphere the young people developed any amount of talents which that deadening family criticism had kept down, and have now so many real occupations that they never find time to waste on bickering.

Notice here that this family worked on fighting these specific traits for a year- they didn't give up after a week or two. Notice how involved Mother had to be to hand out these texts (did she do it every week, or only through the two Lenten seasons?). Notice how the children themselves had to be brought to cooperate, to be willing to change, and how they had to believe God's word had something for them. So much is involved in such a seemingly simple process.

The family was, in all probability, church of England, so they had some understanding of the medieval ideas about virtues and grace, ideas that may be foreign to our 'easy believing' 'works don't matter' 'it's all about how you feel' modern culture. But maybe we need to return to some of those medieval virtues- because they are older than the middle ages.
You can learn more about those here, here, and here.

One section of the article left to go- the best, and hardest part yet.


Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
Part the Fourth
the Fifth
Part the Sixth
Part the Seventh
Part the Eighth
Conclusion (Part the Ninth)

Great Hoax from Little Acorns Grow

Our friends in King County will want to read this. Although they probably already know about it.
Take your blood pressure meds first. Sit down. Drink some soothing tea.

Washington's voter fraud problems have been a problem before. Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics kept a bloggy eye on things then, and he's got something to say about this as well.

Bowling in Egypt

Archaeologists have uncovered an Egyptian game that looks like a mix between bowling, billiard, and bowls.

Tracks of our Tears

In Seasons of a Family's Life by Wendy M. Wright, she writes of her mother-in-law,

Only twice did I see a tear on her cheek, and both times were during the last year of her life. My husband had never seen her cry. Not that she was an unfeeling woman. Far from it. But she had been groomed in an era when genteel lives were characterized by the privatization of emotion. My mother-in-law did indeed always present herself with great dignity and graciousness. It was a presentation that was consistent, for her demeanor never changed, even when she was by herself. When admiring friends remarked that her tearless countenance at her husband's funeral revealed her great faith, she shook her head ever so slightly and spoke to her son in a muted aside, "It's not faith. It's courage."
[ ]
The effusive act of weeping would have seemed oddly out of place for my mother-in-law.

Wendy Wright clearly disagrees with her husband's mother on this one. She follows this remark with several paragraphs about how tears are a spiritual gift. She quotes Symeon the New Theologian, "Without tears our dried heart could never be softened," and other church writers who 'saw tears as the outward manifestation of the spiritual experience of penthos, a term we might translate as 'compunction,' which means, quite literally, 'to puncture with.' Without tears, Wright seems to be saying, there is no humility, no recognition of human weakness.
Perhaps, but I suspect very few women are truly without tears. Some of us are merely unwilling to impose our tears on other people. Very few people know what to do with raw grief- it makes them nervous, uncomfortable, it makes them feel helpless and weak. Some people believe it is discourteous to burden others with their griefs in this way. After all, she really does not have any way of knowing how much or how little her mother-in-law's demeanor changed even when she was by herself, because the thing about being by yourself is that nobody is with you to witness.
Frankly, I am with the mother-in-law on this one, and I expect she exhibited multiple signs of grief, compunction, and agony over human weakness when she was decently alone and in private. Those who cry easily and with abandon tend to be all too quick to harshly judge those who believe courage is also a virtue, and that it is not only humility that prompts emotional outbursts.

I am reminded of a scene in one of my Grace Livingston Hill books, Job's Niece. I know they are poorly written formula fiction, but they are my comfort reading, and they do offer insights into what the manners and mores of another time- a time perhaps like the one in which Wendy Wright's mother-in-law lived and moved and had her being.
Doris Dunbar's father has died, leaving his family in financial straits. He has previously imposed a foolish and vain woman on his five children as their stepmother. A day or two after the father's death, Doris (who is, I think, 19 or 20) is awakened by the 'effusive weeping' and wailing of Florence, her

"step-mother sobbing aloud and calling out hysterical plaints of self-pity; a self-centred woman giving way utterly to her nerves, unable or perhaps unwilling, to take command of herself and behave in a womanly way.'
There was something terrifying, almost repulsive, in the sound of that grown woman giving way to her feelings without thought or care of those who suffered with her. She who should have been their stay and comfort now in the loss of their beloved father had turned baby and forsaken them.

Doris tries to reason with 'this wild weak child of a woman,' but is not successful. Isn't it interesting that behaving in a 'womanly way' meant self-control?

When Wright's mother-in-law is moved to a nursing home in another state (so as to be nearer her son and his family), a Jesuit priest friend volunteers to visit her in the new nursing home

"...and perform a blessing.
Despite the fact that my mother-in-law's Reformed religious milieu did not include the priestly blessings or traditional devotional rituals or the more modern faith-sharing experiences, she seemed open to the Jesuit's visitation."

Or perhaps she was merely courteous, sensible of her vulnerability, unwilling to offend.

He had planned a brief prayer and scripture reading that would allow her the opportunity to reflect aloud on the experience of being displaced and give voice to her feelings of loss. The little blessing service assumed a familiarity with ritual practices like confession in which a person's deepest emotions may be readily expressed. Perhaps it was her unfamiliarity with such rituals, perhaps it was her habitual reserve, perhaps it was her failing hearing and sight, but my Jesuit friend found himself having to extemporaneously fill in the silent pauses left empty for her responses. Politely, she listened as he spoke of Ruth and Naomi's itinerancy and of the pilgrimage of all our lives.
When it escaped, he didn't even notice it, nor did he recognize what had occurred when she fumbled for the folded tissue tucked away in her sleeve. One tear inched its way over the deep creases enfolding her right eye.

I am not convinced that Wendy Wright recognized what occurred, either. I have some idea what it would mean if I saw one tear inching its way down my mother's face. It would not be "a gracious God-given gift, a wonderful physical sign that the inner world of a person was being transformed.... [an] ongoing cleansing taking place as a person draws nearer to God...." Nor would it be a sign 'of the continuing power of the baptismal waters to redeem the created world.'

The Poor We Will Always Have With Us

Our readers know that we do know what it is to be poor, to be economically disadvantaged. At our worst moment, we did not have electricity, but we did have running water and shelter (start reading 'being poor' part one if you want to know more) There are people worse off than we were, even in this country. It remains a fact, however, that the poor in other countries suffer much more greatly than the poor in this country. Unlike most places even the very poorest people in this country typically have food, better shelter, better clothing, and amenities like hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing, and television sets. In fact, poor in this country is something more like middle class in other places.

We believe we do have a responsibility to do what we can to help the poor, but that doesn't mean we lose sight of reality- in fact, we aren't helping but enabling if we do ignore some basic realities. I've heard a lot of nonsense about this, and probably you have, too. I wrote before about a young woman who told me:

"When all the people in the Middle East have food on the table, a decent home, a good job, and democratic control over their own lives, who among them is going to be convinced to sacrifice his life by crashing himself into a tall office building?"

Two years ago I read about an English teacher who assigned his student's to read Howard Zinn (a reactionary, left wing extremist whose book is a 'history' book) and when a student objected, he insisted that the only reason he could possibly object would be if he believed the poor were inherently evil- he required his student to sign a paper to this effect. The teacher, not to mince words, was a bully and an intellectual light-weight. You can read more about it here and here, but do remember it's two years old).

A truly egalitarian lifestyle simply cannot ever exist, not because the poor are evil but because mankind is far from perfect, and we are not cattle. Some human beings are not going to be satisfied with having 'just enough,' they want more. Some people crave power more than food, and some people are just like the grasshoppers of Aesop's tale. Even if economical equality were achieved, all societal violence would simply not cease- and although that is a popular fallacy, it is a very naive and foolish thing to think. It's actually dangerously stupid. Even people who profess to believe it really don't believe their emotional rhetoric themselves, not deep down. Do they believe rich people never steal, never commit acts of violence, never commit injustice, never act out of rage or envy or selfishness? Of course they don't.

If the economic playing ground were leveled today and every single person in the world given exactly the same amount of money, the same square footage of living space per person, enough groceries for a year, a guaranteed income sufficient to support each person at a minimum standard of living, and a bicycle does anybody really imagine that in a year that situation would be the status quo? Would nobody make poor decisions, gamble away his income, trade his bicycle or home for a mess of pottage in a weak moment? Have you always been completely wise in your spending choices? A good many people living in what we call poverty because they make irresponsible choices.

If the economic playing ground were leveled today, as outlined above, would nobody be struck by some disaster outside their control, a sick child, a death in the family, car accident, a business going under, a housefire, a tornado or flood, or some investment gone bad, burglary, theft, attack from a psychotic ex? Accidents happen. They can happen to you. There are people living in poverty through no fault of their own- most of them don't live in this country, but some do. The difference is that in this country, we do have the economic freedom and the safety nets that, while allowing a lot of irresponsible people to be cushioned from the reality of their bad choices, also allow responsible people who have been through agonizing situations to claw their way back out.

The poor are not always to blame for their economic status, and even when their situation is of their own making, remember that you have probably made similar mistakes, only you had a greater cushion between you and disaster. It is wise to let compassion season your judgment- but we needn't let wishful thinking substitute for that judgment.

And it is merely wishful thinking of a most dangerous sort to argue that a guarantee of equality (or egalitarianism, really) of circumstances will result in the end of violence and the end of poverty. We keep 'learning' this again and again when more acts of violence are committed by, oh, people like doctors, and the MSM and naive people everywhere express shock and dismay- as though Joseph Mendele is somebody they never heard of, and for all I know, maybe he is.

The poor we will always have with us- and likewise, the greedy, the selfish, the violent, the power-mad. We do what we can about it, but we do not imagine we can create a utopia on earth.

Frugal Fridays

It's Frugal Friday again over at Biblical Womanhood. I am impressed at how little time Crystal says it takes her to plan menus. It's takes me a couple hours. A few hundred cookbooks and never wanting the same thing twice will do that to you.

There's a nice variety (using what you have, eggs for pennies, picture matting, home-made pads, and much, much, more) and sure to be more added through-out the day.

Correcting Faults

As I said here, there are some good ideas for family life found in St. Benedict's Rule of Order, which makes sense since it was designed to help a group of people living like a family get along. It's strangely current, that medieval document. And sometimes, not so applicable. While I do think it is good to teach (and practice) that it is better to show humility and admit fault quickly, even when the fault is merely carelessness, I wouldn't apply the rest of this discipline for such a fault:

When anyone has made a mistake
while reciting a Psalm, a responsory,
an antiphon or a lesson,
if he does not humble himself there before all
by making a satisfaction,

let him undergo a greater punishment
because he would not correct by humility
what he did wrong through carelessness.
But boys for such faults shall be whipped.

On those card catalogues...

...Krakovianka talked about how she didn't miss them because
"long ago when I worked in a library, as low-man-on-the-totem-pole, it was my task to file new cards into those wretched little boxes with cards threaded onto looooooong poles, AND remove all the cards connected with books that were being discarded."

We don't have a card catalogue, but we do have an On Order Box that is a pesky part of the clerks' existence. All the books the library currently has on order are listed on 3x5 slips of paper and filed alphabetically by author in this box. At least once a week, we have to go through order forms, checking them against the order box. It is work that gets raw-ther tedious raw-ther quickly. What's even more fun is when you accidentally dump the contents of the box onto the floor and then have to meticulously make sure they've been put back in the proper order. Horrible

College students these days...

-- a bunch of university faculty discussing their students at the beginning of the new term.
"'And John Smith?'
'Back.'
'Ah.'
John Smith was an undergraduate so daunted by his undistinguished name and so determined to make his mark that he had sought individuality the previous academic year by affecting to live by the Julian Calendar.
'Thirteen days too soon...'
There was a general shaking of heads. Eccentric students, they agreed, weren't what they used to be: Smith ought to have had the courage of his convictions and come up late."

- From Catherine Aird's "Parting Breath"

---
And you all are brilliant and dedicated readers. In no time at all several of you had identified that excerpt as being from "Northanger Abbey"

Non-Conformity

The Equuschick emailed me the link to this page, where there are more 'motivational' posters like this one. They are hilarious. I like several of them- like the one where the woman is hitting her head on the diving board as she dives into a pool- Caption is "CONVERSATION: Because the pooling of ignorance just feels better than hard truth."
Or the one with the scary pierced, tattooed, and scarred guy titled 'Incarnational Living." Caption: "What would Jesus do? I'm pretty sure he'd do the kind of stuff I think is cool." Cultural Awareness, Truth, Humility (), all these were particularly hilarious to me, but I don't think there was a dud there.('I'm not so arrogant as to think I've arrived at the truth about anything, but I'm pretty sure everything you say is not only dead wrong, but really, really stupid, too."
Funny stuff. And I need some funny stuff...

Protecting Confidences

While not every monastic rule is useful for family life, you can glean quite a few excellent ideas for family life and discipline from reading the rules of order for monastaries. Here's another example from St. Benedict's Rule of Order:

On Those Who Fail in Any Other Matters

When anyone is engaged in any sort of work,
whether in the kitchen, in the cellar, in a shop,
in the bakery, in the garden, while working at some craft,
or in any other place,
and she commits some fault,
or breaks something, or loses something,
or transgresses in any other way whatsoever,
if she does not come immediately
before the Abbess and the community
of her own accord
to make satisfaction and confess her fault,
then when it becomes known through another,
let her be subjected to a more severe correction.

But if the sin-sickness of the soul is a hidden one,
let her reveal it only to the Abbess or to a spiritual mother,
who knows how to cure her own and others' wounds
without exposing them and making them public.

Adapting this for family life might look like this:

When you make a mistake, or break something, or lose something, or damage something, or you're said something you shouldn't or done something you shouldn't, or just think you've messed up in any way at all-
Make sure you go to your parents and/or the person you've wronged to admit what you've done, to offer to do what you can to make it right, and to apologize.
If you, instead, try to hide the evidence and do not admit to your errors and it is found out some other way, the punishment will be much more severe than if you had openly admitted the fault.
But if you are heart sick over some private and secret wrong doing that nobody else will know about, take it to God, or reveal it only to your parents. And let parents be sure to recognize when it is appropriate to offer spiritual balm for your own and others' wounds without exposing them and making them public.

This 'not exposing them in public' is so important. I have stressed this here before and I will, no doubt, revisit the topic again. I stress this not because I'm perfect and my kids are perfect and because I have never done this and none of us ever gives any other member of the family any reason to feel annoyed. I share this advice because I HAVE failed my children in this area, and it wounds them to hear their little vices and weaknesses exposed to others. It is a breach of trust, and you will lose a little bit of their hearts and their willingness to confide in you every time it happens. It would wound you, too, to overhear your spouse complaining about you to other men.

I know it's hard. We mothers like to swap our war stories, and we often need to vent. What is and isn't appropriate to share may vary depending on the child concerned, the person you are speaking with, and the reasons you have for exposing a given matter. But think first. You can always give more information later. It is impossible to completely recall the information you have already released.

True Confessions

I care not at all for the dreepy Elsie Dinsmore, albeit for different reasons than I have for disliking other books. If I had a child that sat and dripped all the time like that I'd call in the plumber.

She is _such_ an annoying little anemic white mouse of a child. I want to give her a good shake and put her on a serious regimen of protein, iron drops and cod liver oil. Except this white mouse persona is deceptive, because she's also manipulative and passive-aggressive. She reminds me of all the women I know who believe that being willing to cry in public means they get to trump the feelings of those with a strong aversion to weeping in front of an audience.

At our house one of the direst punishments I can suggest is to threaten a recalcitrant child that she'll be forced to read Elsie Dinsmore (bwaahahahahahaha!). Better (or worse) than bread and water for a week;-)

And once before many moons ago, I shared with some other ladies on an email list that I didn't like Elsie (in much milder tones than this post, I assure you) and that our family had a name for Elsie, and I rashly told the whole e-mail list what it was. Ooooh, was I in trouble. I was soundly and roundly rebuked, but you'll never guess for why.

There was no call, I was told, for mean and ugly name-calling.

I had no idea that it was a sin to call fictional characters such dreadful names as 'milquetoast.'

Have I hurt your feelings? I didn't mean to. I hope that just because I don't like Elsie this does not mean we can't be friends. What books do you dislike that other people seem to love?

Name-Calling

I shared this story once before but it's been a couple years and a few hundred readers ago. It also seemed most appropriate in this season where we have been reading through that Parents' Review article on family bickerings.

Once upon a time my youngest daughter came to me in tears because while she and her little brother were doing their morning chores, one of which is making beds, she called the favored side of the bed first and her brother was calling her names. I know you're going to want to know why one side of the bed is better than other, and I bet you think it's because one side is closer to the wall. That would make sense, but these are my youngest two children we're talking about and so it would be folly to assume there's a reasonable explanation.

So, they were supposed to be working and instead they are fighting, and they were so funny that I wrote most of this down immediately afterward so now I can share it with posterity and humiliate them forever (it is such a joy being a mother).

What, I ask, did he call you?

She sniffles, "He called me a liar..."

This is very bad. He shall be reprimanded.

She continues in tears, "and a joker..."

This is, um, interesting, but I maintain a straight face. Parenting is not for the faint of heart.

She sobs out the last and most vile insult, and I can tell this was the one that cut her most of all, "And he called me a peanut butter sandwich!"

Oh.
Wash the child's mouth out with soap, I guess. A peanut butter sandwich, indeed! Let the beatings commence, because, how dare he. What a terrible horrible awful no good very bad thing to say. I mean, I never.
Actually, no, I never did hear such a ridiculous thing in my life.

Let there be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth begins- that would be me, trying unsuccessfully not to laugh. The harder I try, the more I laugh.

I am not taking this seriously enough for the peanut butter victim. I do make her brother apologize for his intentions, which were to hurt his sister's feelings, and the liar accusation gets the attention it deserves (as does the child who used it). They are both in trouble for fighting when they should be working, and eventually everything does get sorted out and they go on with their chores.

But just before they go off to do their other work, I rashly tell my sixth child (I mention that she is the sixth because one would presume I would know better by now, but clearly I didn't) that there are much worse things to be called than a peanut butter sandwich.

She stops crying and looks interested. She wonders if I will tell her what those things are.

Parenting is not for the stupid and shortsighted, either. My poor children.

*The bed they were making was in the middle of the room, not against the wall. There was a reason why they thought one side was better than the other and it was a very silly, very funny reason that made no sense at all. But I did not write that part down and I've forgotten everything except that I was even more amused when I found out what it was.

Turn Taking Tip

IN taking turns for the front seat, friends of ours who had five children told us that they cycled through from oldest to youngest in taking turns- but that it was the children's job to remember whose turn it was.

Furthermore, if if there was any forgetting and arguing about it, then their cycle automatically started again, and the oldest got to have a turn all over again. This provided four of the children with a keen incentive to remember correctly. If the arguing was four to one, and the one hold-out was the oldest, then the parents had a pretty good idea that four of the children were remembering.

Just one more possibility to store in your bag of parenting tricks.

Family Bickerings, Part the Seventh

As explained in the previous posts, the excerpt below is taken from Volume II of the Parents' Review, a magazine edited by Charlotte Mason. Volume II was published in 1891/2, and very few of the articles from it are online. You, Gentle Readers, may be among the first people to read this article in several decades. This article is by Leader Scott. Scroll down for links to the posts to the rest of the article.

The writer is acquainted with a large family in which bickering is unknown, though at one time there were signs of great character-friction among the members. The means the mother took to uproot family jars was by working on that vein of imagination which every child has, and setting them to fight giants. Of course the lessons began with a parable, for there is no moral teacher better than the parable, or else our Saviour would not have chosen that form of spiritual teaching. This mother, apropos of Jack the Giant-killer, gave a sketch of the giants which beset young folks, and morally devour them, such as Self-love, Vanity, Obstinacy, Falsehood, &c., and excited their interest by telling them that these giants were so curiously leagued together that if one were conquered the others would probably flee.

Emphasis mine. It seems to me that children acquainted with Pilgrim's Progress, The Blue Fairy Book, and The Phantom Toll-booth as well as their Bibles (here's a list of parables and their references) will be a step ahead in grasping this lesson. (of those links, two are to free online etexts, one to Amazon because it's not in the public domain yet- but you can read excerpts of the Phantom Tollbooth here as well as part of the first chapter here)
It being near Lenten time the mother proposed that the Lenten fast this year should be the abstiaining from pet faults and that Lent should be devoted to these spiritual enemies and the fighting of them. Each child was to keep his own secret and whisper into mother's ear the especial giant he wanted to fight, and she would give him the right weapons for it.

One by one the whispers came to her. Fat little Dollie said she "thought she was dreadfully greedy, and she would fight that ogre." A more nervous member whispered that "she did not want to feel so often cross with Dollie, whose ways jarred upon her." A third confessed that "her enemy was Vanity; she did not want anybody to do things as well as herself," and a fourth sighed that "it was very hard to keep one's temper when everybody seemed so aggravating."

Sigh. I can relate to that fourth child. I would be ever so much more pleasant, reasonable, and sweet tempered if only everybody around me would just be, well, perfect.
And if every thing around me, including my own body, would just not conspire against me to bring out that harpy that could not possibly be me, then life would be much easier and more pleasant for all of us. You see, surely Harpy Mama is not my fault.
Right?

On the Tuesday evening mother had private audiences of her warriors, and armed them with their weapons of war. Seven texts, one for each day of the week, to be learned and acted upon, as often as occasion served throughout the day. "If at the end of forty days the giant is not dead, he will certainly be wounded and have less power," promised the mother.

As a sample I will give one or two of the selections. This was for the child who could not keep her temper:- [I am altering the formatting of the verse references slightly as it is easiest for me to cut and paste them than to type out the referencing system used in the PR, which is a combination of roman numerals and arabic numbers]

Sunday. Pro 16:24 Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul.

Monday. Proverbs 26:32 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

Tuesday. 1 Peter 3:8 Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing. [This reference is incomplete and combines portions of 1 Peter 3:8 and 9. Many of the texts are treated this way, so if you want the full reference, double check it against your Bible]

Wednesday. 1 John 4:12 If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Thursday. Proverbs 3:27 Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.

Friday. 2 Timothy 2:24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient.

Saturday. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.[no reference given, but this is Romans 12:18)

A PROMISE.

"Him that overcometh, will I grant to sit with me in my throne."

No reference is given for this, either, but it is quote from Revelation 3:21.

Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
Part the Fourth
the Fifth
Part the Sixth
Part the Seventh
Part the Eighth
Conclusion (Part the Ninth)

Which book?

...I leave it to be setled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

-- the concluding lines of a fabulous book I just finished re-reading. Identification, anyone?

Insect website

Kelly :-) <>< [a homeschooling mom in Western Canada] collected and shared these websites on insect identification and gave me permission to share them here:

in North America:

Insect Identification...


What's that Bug?... (link updated)


What's this North American caterpillar...


Butterflies & Moths of North America...


Butterfly And Moth Caterpillars: ID Guide...


Caterpillars of the Pacific NW...


University of Wisconsin - Dept of Entomology...


Spider Identification and Management...


The Spider Myths Site...



For those in Europe:

What's this caterpillar - Britain & Europe...



For those in Oceania:

NZ & OZ - What's that bug...


OZ - The Spider's Parlour...


OZ - Spider ID Chart...



Finally, here is a fun website for children:

Insect Lore...

Raw Grief and Radical Hope

In Seasons of a Family's Life by Wendy M. Wright, she writes of the horrible pain and grief that came to her neighbors, and thus her neighborhood, when they learned of the gruesome murder of their adult daughter and one of her friends. Wendy says they didn't want to know, 'did not want the terrible truth to belong' to their neighbor, 'did not want to weigh this tragedy against the hopes' they all held for themselves, their children, and each other. She writes:

A radical hope is born at times like these- a hope closer perhaps to the hope of the ancient martyrs than to the hopefulness of spring's warming arrival. This is a fierce and hard-won hope- that death will not sever the bonds of love, that loss of one another here does not mean loss forever. It is a hope that does not dwell in the shadow of death but seeks forgiveness and healing. It is a hope that has been cauterized in the flames of grief and doubt and learns to trust in a generous love that operates beyond appearances. This is a hope that rises out of the ashes to move forward with courage into new life.

She thought of a paper written by a student of hers. This student wrote that winter brings birth. In the midst of winter,

"that cold, dreary season, plants send forth their deepest roots. Invisible to all appearances, true and lasting growth takes place deep under the frozen, lifeless topsoil."

And one day there will be no death, no pain, no sorrow. Wendy Wright explains this hope of all Christians in the resurrection more beautifully than I can retell with justice. I am just glad she did.

I am even gladder that the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

I've shared some of the other good stuff from this book in these two previous posts.

When you want to learn something....

Don't ask an expert. Ask somebody a little ahead of the learning curve from you. The real experts are often not the best people to answer questions raw novices because it's been too long since they were beginners themselves for them to really know what is and isn't obvious to the beginner- or to know what's really easy and what isn't. The expert is liable to take too much for granted.

I have found this to be especially true in connection with anything to do with computers and certain handicrafts. A few experts are able to bridge that gap between what they know and what I don't know. These special people are usually able to do this not because of their expertise in their given field, but because of other gifts, most notably a gift for teaching.

Outsourcing picket lines?!

Union workers don't want to be bothered with the inconvenience of standing around in picket lines, so they've hired homeless folks to stand around for them instead.

They pay less than Walmart and offer no benefits. See Captain Ed for more.

Family Bickerings, Part the SIxth

The brief excerpt below is taken from Volume II of the Parents' Review, a magazine edited by Charlotte Mason. Volume II was published in 1891/2, and very few of the articles from it are online. You, Gentle Readers, may be among the first people to read this article in several decades. This article is by Leader Scott. Scroll down for links to the posts to the rest of the article.

If the family have outgrown the nursery, and the causes of bickering are of longer growth, then one must fight it off with religion and reason.

I should in this case lead the talks with the young people to our power to render others either good and happy, or wicked and miserable, and the great responsibility this power brings us. I should by a Socratic method of argument make the children themselves prove how far their right to be happy is limited by the same right in others; that as they claim to be left free in action, so they must leave others equal freedom; as they resent having their actions criticised, and false feelings imparted to them, so they must refrain from criticising the behaviour of others. Indeed, all family criticism should be strongly discouraged. Let it be an axiom in the family that anybody may look for virtues, but nobody is to seek a fault except parents and instructors. If you thus cut off the family buds of criticism, you stop more than half the bickerings. It is when brothers jeer at girls' stupidity and cowardice; when children make fun of each other's little personal failings that anger and resentment are aroused. When one girl sneers at her less talented sister's efforts to play or sing, or ridicules her striving to be good, then are the seeds of non-sympathy shown.

I have again emphasized the portions which I especially want to emphasize. I kept this excerpt short because the next section changes gears just a wee bit, and it's so interesting I thought it deserved a stand alone post all it's own. I thought this was interesting enough to discuss, too. I think this Socratic method (asking leading questions) of leading the children to see for themselves that their rights and claims for happiness are no greater than those of the rest of mankind will work best with children who have had previous experiences conducive to developing the moral imagination. Essentially what you are asking them to do is to see something from somebody else's point of view, to put themselves in another person's shoes, to envision abstract virtues such as justice. In order to do this, children need to have some prior experience with exercising their imaginations, and in order for the rest of Leader Scott's suggestions to work well, I think it would do well to backtrack a bit and make sure certain conditions are in place.

Vigen Gurorian writes about this process in a most excellent book and essay:

In this past year, I published with Oxford University Press a book entitled Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination. Long ago I was convinced by Russell Kirk in such books as Enemies of the Permanent Things and Decadence and Renewal in the Higher Learning that at the root of the social crisis is a lack of attention to the nurture of the moral imagination. My own reading to my son, Rafi, and daughter, Victoria, proved to me the importance of a parental role in this moral pedagogy. I witnessed firsthand how morally beneficial good stories are for young children--and that is when we must begin their moral education, when they are quite young.

Thus, in Tending the Heart of Virtue, I try to show how the best stories, whether the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm and Hans Andersen or the fantasies of George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, and Madeleine L'Engle, communicate faith, morality, and civic virtue. Yet vast numbers of America's children never experience their felicitous influence at home or in school.

I think he did a fine job in Tending the Heart of Virtue. You can also see what he has to say about fairy tales and the moral imagination in this online essay:

The great fairy tales and fantasy stories capture the meaning of morality through vivid depictions of struggles between good and evil where characters must make difficult choices between right and wrong, or heroes and villains contest the very fate of imaginary worlds. The great stories avoid didacticism [in other words, they do not much look like Elsie Dinsmore] and supply the imagination with important symbolic information about the shape of our world and appropriate responses to its inhabitants. The contemporary moral philosopher Alasdair Maclntyre sums this up eloquently:

It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world and eldest sons who waste their inheritance..., that children learn or mislearn what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words (4)

Musing on the wisdom and ethics of the fairy tale, G. K. Chesterton observes that the genre sparks a special way of seeing that is indispensable to morality.
[... ]
Moral living is about being responsive and responsible toward other people. And virtues are those traits of character that enable persons to use their freedom in morally responsible ways. The mere ability, however, to use moral principles to justify one's actions does not make a virtuous person.
[...]

Mere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture the virtues. It might even backfire, especially when the presentation is heavily exhortative and the pupil's will is coerced. Instead, a compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in a way that is attractive and stirs the imagination. A good moral education addresses both the cognitive and affective dimensions of human nature. Stories are an irreplaceable medium of this kind of moral education. This is the education of character.

The Greek word for character literally means an impression. Moral character is an impression stamped upon the self. Character is defined by its orientation, consistency, and constancy. Today we often equate freedom with morality and goodness. But this is naive because freedom is transcendent and the precondition of choice itself. Depending upon his character, an individual will be drawn toward either goodness or wickedness. Moral and immoral behavior is freedom enacted either for good or for ill.

The great fairy tales and children's fantasy stories attractively depict character and virtue. In these stories the virtues glimmer as if in a looking glass, and wickedness and deception are unmasked of their pretensions to goodness and truth. These stories make us face the unvarnished truth about ourselves while compelling us to consider what kind of people we want to be.

The great fairy tales, myths, legends, and stories told to children for centuries of Western Civilization leave an impression on our children. Children reared on these tales will be better able to grasp the goal of that Socratic questioning mentioned earlier in this post. They will be able to imagine ideals and virtues better for the beautiful imaginative tales they have been nurtured with from childhood.

Most of, unfortunately, have grown up in that arid climate where virtues were replaced by 'values.' Values do not spark the imagination, glimmer in the mind, take fire in the child's heart and give her something to reach for. Values are dry, dusty things, like first and second trust deeds, foreclosures! Bonds! Chattels! Dividends! Shares! Bankruptcies! Debtor sales! Shipyards! The mercantile! Collieries! Tanneries!
Incorporations! Amalgamations! Banks!
And, of course, majestic, self-amortizing canals.

Virtues require us to look past the ends of our noses and sometimes to do seemingly foolish things such as feeding the birds:

The moral imagination is not a thing, not so much a faculty even, as the very process by which the self makes metaphors out of images given by experience and then employs these metaphors to find and suppose moral correspondences in experience. The moral imagination is active, for well or ill, strongly or weakly, every moment of our lives, in our sleep as well as when we are awake. But it needs nurture and proper exercise. Otherwise it will atrophy like a muscle that is not used. The richness or the poverty of the moral imagination depends upon the richness or the poverty of experience.

The values training I received in school stressed the importance of 'choosing' my own values. Teaching virtue is something altogether different. You do not choose your virtues- they are. You choose right or wrong, good or evil.

I seem to have strayed far afield from bickering siblings, but I think maybe not so far as it seems. All the other tools Mr. Leader Scott is going to share with us rely on the children involved already having some idea of virtue, of good and evil, already have some spark of that imagination that enables them to put themselves in another's place. This begins with the tales of traditional childhood.

I highly recommend Guroian's essays, and suggest you print them out and ponder them for a day or two, and make sure your children have a strong background of those ancient tales before trying out the rest of Leader Scott's suggestions in the article on Family Bickerings. And virtual brownies for anybody who recognizes the allusions in my comments.


Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
Part the Fourth
the Fifth
Part the Sixth
Part the Seventh
Part the Eighth
Conclusion (Part the Ninth)

Hanging Pictures and Other Stuff

I have quite a few smaller, lightweight things hanging on my walls. I like to frame cute cards, so there's at least a dozen 5X7 inch frames around the house. I have a few things framed in embroidery hoops, and some of them are even embroidery. I have at least a dozen older, vintage plates hanging in my bedroom- all covered in roses. This is kind of funny because not so very long ago I hated plates as decor and roses were just nice as flowers, not as a theme for my bedroom. I don't know who I am or what I have done with the real me.

But anyway, I like to have all these things hanging all over my walls, but I hate to have large nail holes in my walls- probably a legacy of having never lived in any single house for longer than five years in my entire life, and I was eight years old when I moved out of that house. To give that some perspective, the last time I lived in a house for longer than four years, Apollo 13 hadn't happened yet and 18 year olds couldn't vote.

So I like stuff hanging all over, but I don't want the walls to look like swiss cheese when I have to take those pictures down less than four years later. I hang these smaller items up using ordinary quilting pins from the notions department of any fabric or department store. I hammer each pin in very gently, tap, tap, tapping until the pin is in the wall, leaving enough of it sticking out to hang my pictures, plates, and embroidery hoops. This works for me very well, probably because so much of the pin is in the wall.

Indeed!

Sarah left this in part of her comment on the DHM's earlier card catalogue post:

And I can say after this summer of library visits, I miss the quiet of libraries as well.

That made me chuckle in an ironic and slightly bitter way. Libraries in the summer are - I have discovered - also daycare centers and teen hangouts (which pretty much comes to be the same thing). Our library patrons are either elderly or children -- we see very few mothers or fathers in with their children. It's sad and, on a practical level, it's much harder to keep noise levels down.

In a Certain Mythical Universe....

...If it were not clear from the previous books, it is made palpable here — utilitarianism, which is subject to the self-interest and self-delusions of those who wield power and who thus determine what is the “greater good,” is a source of great evil.

There is more here (slight, very slight, spoiler alert)

Ohhhh, Progeny! You'll want to read it.=)

Quick Cookin'

Just a reminder:

There are links to about a dozen freezer meals for a family of nine here- they are all crockpot meals and all can be used for a crowd. Most of them are combined and frozen first, cooking done later, so they are quick to get in the freezer as well.

And if you google 'dump chicken recipes' you'll come up with dozens more wonderful and easy recipes. A dump recipe is a combination of diced or sliced or whole chicken meat with a sauce. You put it all in a bag and freeze it, putting it in the crockpot or baking it in the oven on the day you want to have it. These take just a few minutes from grocery sack to freezer.

Bickering Children, Part the Fifth

The excerpt below is taken from Volume II of the Parents' Review, a magazine edited by Charlotte Mason. Volume II was published in 1891/2. This article is by Leader Scott. Scroll down for links to the posts to the rest of the article.

The children's hour is a fine time for cultivating the nursery virtues and setting down bickering. When the boys and girls sit round the fire with mother, a series of stories might be told bearing, evening after evening, on instances of love and self-denial - "would not you like a chance to do such beautiful things for each other?"

Oh, dear. I am reminded of a certain young person at my house who was quite taken with her personal appearance and often reminded everybody of how gorgeous she was. She literally could not pass her reflection without stopping to admire herself. I told many little stories about sweet, kind little girls who were not very pretty and rude, hateful little girls who were physically lovely . These stories often ended with, "Which would you rather be? The beautiful girl who hurt everybody else's feelings, or the plain girl who was so kind to everybody?"
She never answered the way I wished, and one painful afternoon said to me quite plainly, "Look. I know you want me to say I would rather be the plain but kind little girl. But I would much rather be pretty." She was about four or five. She did outgrow it, and few years later it was her heart's desire to be kind, so maybe the stories helped. Something did, but I really do not know if it was those little moral tales or something else.

I also note the reference to 'the children's hour,' and see again that this advice is for parents who see but little of their children, and that at scheduled hours of the day. And again, it is the mother's responsibility to be with the children in the evening before bed and tell them these little moral tales.

As rarely as possible make wrong actions the theme of a story, unless they are actions the children have already committed, and you want to show the natural consequence of them. It is a certain fact that the suggestion of good things is much more likely to lead young minds upwards than the suggestion of evil, even in the form of a warning, is likely to keep them from sinking to it.

In other words, don't give them any ideas they might not have already thought of for themselves (this is why I did not let mine read the Ramona books or the "I am going to hate the new baby" books).

Then one might proceed to put these newly awakened ideas into action. One day, for instance, say to Dora, "I am going for a drive and have room for only one of you. As you are the eldest it is your right, but Effie is not well; would you not like to give her the pleasure? It would be such a chance for your to be kind to her." No doubt Dora will give up, and will stand at the door watching Effie's happy face with great satisfaction; only make sure that Effie shall thank Dora for it on her return, for children are exacting in the way of justice, and recognise gratitude when they see it. Never compel a sacrifice as a right, but merely suggest to the child that here is a way to give up self, and do a kind and lovely action. Very often it will be refused, for virtues are difficult flowers to train; then all one can do is draw the child's attention to any suffering or discomforts which may be occasioned by its selfishness, and make a mental picture of the pleasure he has missed giving. When an unselfish action has been performed, give the child the full benefit of the happiness it brings remark on the other's enjoyment, and show the light of mother's smile and approval.

In general, I agree with this, only I think it is also good to also try to suggest shared sacrifices. If you are always suggesting that the children make these little sacrifices while you give up nothing that they can see, it sends the wrong message. You might try asking a child to help you make a sibling's bed, or help you fix a sibling some cinnamon toast or other special treat, or suggest giving up some pocket money to go in with you on some small treat for a sibling who is feeling sad.

I personally get a little fed up with people in power (and parents are people in power) who keep suggesting that others make the sacrifices.

The next section looks very interesting, and is for those children who have 'outgrown the nursery' and have 'causes of bickering of longer growth.' I would guess children have outgrown the nursery by nine, perhaps younger, but I do not know for certain.



Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
Part the Fourth
the Fifth
Part the Sixth
Part the Seventh
Part the Eighth
Conclusion (Part the Ninth)

Anybody Else Miss Card Catalogs?

Don't get me wrong; I totally enjoy the decadent luxury of being able to log on to my computer's catalog and reserve 79 books while sipping latte and lounging in my nightie, but no card catalog is a major "downer" when the computer system is down! This happened once while I was actually making a couple last minute peeks through the card system- you know how you suddenly remember you wanted to find a book on ___? Well, I couldn't, because the computers were down (and were down for a couple days) and there was no longer an card system=(
And just a day or two ago the HG tells me the library computers were down again. Besides the asthetic appeal of the old card files, the beautiful wooden cabinets where they lived, and the typewritten notes on them, the card catalogs never were 'down.'

Homeschooling Carnival

Tami, at the eponymously named Tami's Blog, is hosting the 82nd hsing carnival this week. She had 44 entries, and she did an outstanding job.

I clicked through several and haven't found a dud yet. A few highlights:

Mama Squirrel, as always, sound, practical, useful, frugal ideas for using Highlights Magazine for homeschooling.

Mary Jo Tate explains to a public school superintendent why children are not commodities.

The Thinking Mother has a terrific post about reading the classics. She includes quotes from and a link to an interview with the great Harold Bloom. If you've been reading very long at all you'll know how emphatically I agree with what he says about reading, which is:

not only one of the most intense of all pleasures,
but I think it is the most healing of all pleasures. I think it is
more profoundly therapeutic than most of what is urged upon us as
therapy. I mean, one does not quarrel, of course, with antidepressant
drugs or anti-schizophrenic drugs. They are essential. But when it
comes to the various modes of talking therapy or even of spiritual
therapy, I would urge a deep course of solitary reading of the books
that most matter instead."

This blog following the life and times of a homeschooled teen in China is great reading.

There's some great stuff at this post on modesty- the fashion show pics are cute, too.

Pamela had a thought provoking post on homeschooling and social equality.

Here's a nice resource for poetry memorization.

This is a beautiful blog done by the 16 year old homeschooled Jocelyn, second of 8 children. The Progeny simply must check it out- there's something there every one of you will LOVE, but it's different for each of you. See if you can guess what I'm talking about.=)


Also for the Progeny- there's a ten dollar gift certificate prize available for those who write a blogpost telling why your dad is great. Since you do have the best Daddy in the world.....

There were several other goodies, but I don't want to duplicate the carnival right here- so go peek!

For Posterity

Seven years ago we watched the Jeeves and Wooster DVDs for the first time when friends recommended them (we love these). At that time the HG was reading to her younger sisters at bedtime (four of them shared a room). I found this note from 9 year old Pip to her older sister (typos are her childish scrawls):

SisTer,
You NeeD
to ReAD
P.G WatShis NAMe
BOOKS AFtR
you ReaD
the Black Arrow"

What is Your Family's Narrative?

Seasons of a Family's Life by Wendy M. Wright is a book with which I have a love/disgust relationship. The following section from page 43 illustrates that in a small way. I agree with so much that she says here, and then I disagree with almost as much and think she's being downright flaky at times.

One of the most cheapening aspects of contemporary American culture, and one that I believe acts to the detriment of families, in the commercial narrative that dominates our public life. It is evident in a thousand forms; in the ads that convince us that we may buy beauty and power; in the reduction of higher education to a purchased ticket to a lucrative job; in the insidious subtext of our upward social mobility (more and bigger is better); in the transformation of the public city Green or square into the privately owned shopping mall, in our fascination with furtive information acquisition to the detriment of our spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual formation; in our zeal to overload and over schedule our children so they will succeed in the competitive marketplace of life; in the extent to which we marginalize and underserve our unproductive citizens- the elderly, the young, the disabled, the poor; in the prevalent view that children and adequate health care properly belong only to those who have earned enough to have them; in our expensive purchase of new and better nipped, tucked, augmented, and reduced bodies; in our collective frenzy to cash in on a bullish market. WE live with a powerful cultural narrative that defines us first and foremost as consumers and that locates ultimate meaning in the material things we are able to accumulate and display. The fact that Americans receive stock market report on the daily news but not a report on indicators of child well-being is a striking witness to this fact."

That last sentence? Pure flake-ville. It is not a striking witness to anything except her silliness and the fact that these two things change at very different rates! The stock market changes hourly, is easily measured, and it immediately and directly affects the readers of the newspaper. The indicators of child well-being are debatable, for one thing, cannot even be measured daily, let alone hourly, and the accuracy of those measurements is highly debatable. She might just as well castigate us all because the newspapers report the weather daily instead of 'indicators of child well-being.' For all I know, maybe she does. It would be just about as sensible.

Mixed in with the nonsense, she offers poetry and sense. The antidote to the consumer driving, materialistic narrative, she says, is family and faith. 'We are not what we buy, what we own....; we are an integral and interconnected part of a mysterious and graced reality. A deep and active faith, a family life rich with loving traditions and grace- these things provide a richer narrative and an alternative to the life script dictated by a well run advertising compaign.

I am finding much in this book that resonates with me, and some that seriously makes me recoil in horror. I've shared some of the good stuff in these two previous posts and also in the following posts:
Tracks of our Tears
Raw Grief and Radical Hope
The Season of Letting Go

The Season of Letting Go

In Seasons of a Family's Life by Wendy M. Wright, she writes of the new season she is entering where her children are growing up and leaving home for college, one of them graduating from college,

"Children have occupied center vision for so many years now that it is odd to find them moving to peripheral vision in the course of day-to-day life. That is not to suggest that their positions have shifted in our hearts- far from it. There they remain at bull's eye center. But for so many years their every waking moment was at focal attention: breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtimes, and naptimes, diapers for bottoms and wool caps to cover cars, Valentine cards for the kindergarten class, evening gowns for the prom, carpools to soccer, basketball, volleyball, softball, and dance classes.....
There were firsts; first tooth, first step...first driver's license... and I spent much time monitoring piano practice, insisting on swimming lessons, signing report cards..., distributing play dough... drying tears and shedding them.... curfews and consequences...."

There has been a quarter of a century of the season of 'welcoming,' she says, and now it is the season of letting go as her children grow up and she becomes the older generation.

"It was daunting to be the court of last resort, the one to whom the inconsolable bundle was handed when all else had failed, but it drew out all my gifts of comfort and nurture. It formed me. It drew from me those latent and hard-won capacities that transformed me from a woman into a mother. It taught me a way of being in the world that I have practiced for twenty-five years. And now something new is asked."

I've shared some of the other good stuff in these two previous posts.

Leonardo Da Vinci

When we go to art museums we end our visit with a trip to the museum shop where we each pick at least one postcard of a painting that we especially connected with. Several years ago when I visited a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit in a museum in Canada- the last one in North America, this was the one I picked. One of the girls picked the Lady with the Ermine, and another picked a study of lilies, and yet another picked the sketch of a girl's head that you see in the movie Ever After.

I do not know why this one meant so much to me, but it did. This postcard doesn't even begin to do it justice. The detail, colors, size, impact, details, everything of the original just- well, I'm speechless. I wanted to touch that stone wall. I was sure it would feel rough and solid, like ancient stone, to my touch. I wanted to hold my breath so as not to frighten away the bird and bug on the sill. I wanted to brush my fingers over the tips of the plant leaves. I wanted to stand there forever.

The back of my postcard says 'Leonardo Da Vinci (school), The Kissing Infants, ca 1510-1515 Oil on oak, 97.2 X 59.2 cm, Private collection, Switzerland.

It's in another private collection as well. The one in my heart and mind's eye.

Family BIckerings, Part the Fourth

The excerpt below is taken from Volume II of the Parents' Review, a magazine edited by Charlotte Mason. Volume II was published in 1891/2. This article is by Leader Scott. Scroll down for links to the posts to the rest of the article.

Virtues, like flowers, grow in the sunshine; you can cultivate them or draw them out with love and reason, but you can neither force nor whip them into existence. Try to do so, and the virtue you wan will come forth in the guise of its corresponding vice. Instead of truthspeaking courage, a lying cowardice; instead of obedience, obstinacy.

Of course the best way to prevent bickering is never to admit it from infancy; to train the child to find its happiness in giving others pleasure; to show him always how good and kind others are to him; in fact, to let the names of mother, father, sister, and brother stand for love and loving-kindness to him.

If unhappily this has not been begun from the cradle, then an entire change of treatment will be required. Never be angry when the children are cross, and never add harsh words of reproof when a child is sore under what it feels to be an injustice. Gently draw the belligerents' minds to the fact that they are feeling very unhappy; that this is merely the natural result of saying unkind things; and that, as it would not be fair to make everyone else unhappy too, they must for other people's sakes go away from the room, or leave the game till they can make it pleasant.

If you have seen the beginning of the quarrel, try and get the children to talk it over with you when they are cooler, and suggest to Bessie that if she had answered softly when Tom was first angry , all the tears and misery would have been avoided; and put it to Tom that if he would only remember in time that it is the man's privilege to protect the women, and be generous and gentle to Bessie, she would always look up to him and try to please him.

In general terms, I agree with this and have emphasized the points where I especially agree. The last paragraph will seem outdated to some readers, spot on to others, but not of much help if both offenders are of the same sex. Looking beyond the specifics, the real message is really only to try to get each child to consider the other rather than himself, to see things from somebody else's point of view rather to reinforce the child's resentment by conspiring to gossip with the child about somebody else's perceived wrongs. Your child needs no help from you to hold grudges and bear ill-will towards somebody he or she has already quarreled with.

I think it is important that the cooling off phase be brief, or else it becomes a sulking and dwelling on the wrongs others have done to us phase. I think there are ways and means of getting to the bottom of what happened in many cases whether you saw it or not, and I think it's important to try. Otherwise, you leave an ill-tempered or deceptive child with an unfair advantage.

I forget now who we learned this from, but when we are trying to sort out a quarrel, we try to get our two belligerents to tell us the problem from the other child's perspective. Naturally, they do not do this willingly or well, but I find it helps to sort out what happened by asking a couple of careful questions after they have gotten their version off their chests.

Separate them and, if necessary, give them a brief cooling off period. Then ask one child in to come and tell what happened, and when he or she is finished, ask, "And is there something else that happened just before your story starts?" You see, quite possibly it is true that child B grabbed the fly-swatter from Child A and started hitting her with it, just as Child A has reported. Possibly, and even more likely, Child A has neglected to tell you that the story actually began when Child A called Child B a rude name or started the hitting herself. Do not assume your child has told you the whole story from beginning to end until you've heard from all the witnesses and participants.
It is also helpful to ask, "Is your sibling going to tell me the same story when s/he comes in? Is that what s/he will say happened?"

The tendency, of course, is always to minimize and rush past one's own wrong doing. A discerning parent can usually tell. The child will say something like, "Well, I was just playing with the truck and teasing (and then,taking a deep breath and speaking very fast, or else talking much more quietly here as though this will keep you from noticing) and-then-I-ran-it-into-her-leg-but-not-very-hard-at-all and then FOR NO REASON SHE JUST HIT ME and-I-hit-back-but-just-barely-and-not-very-hard And THEN SHE GRABBED MY TRUCK AND THREW IT!

Another sort of child will open its eyes quite wide and look openly and utterly disingenuously into her parents' eyes while uttering the most shocking untruths. Sometimes this is done when the parents believe that they have managed to whip out vice and this suffices for planting and nurturing virtue. Other times, it is simply a case of a clever child with a strong sense of her own cuteness.

A discerning parent is one who recognizes that her children are not perfect and no matter how carefully she has taught them that lying is wrong, she must be open to the possibility that even quite nice children get carried away with the emotions of the moment, still do wrong, still lose their tempers, and still do not quite admit fault with complete ease and accuracy. Sort of like grown-ups.



Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
Part the Fourth
the Fifth
Part the Sixth
Part the Seventh
Part the Eighth
Conclusion (Part the Ninth)

The Jabberstamp

The Jabberstamp is a new story telling toy that adds sound to normal pictures, although I don't think that that was a very clear description of it. It sounds rather like the Jabberwocky, but it looks interesting.

Polarized Politics

Picking his way carefully through the minefield of tinfoil hats, jingo-istic nutcases, and reasonable dissent from both sides of the 'war on terror' question, Rick Moran puts together some thoughtful commentary.

The Worst Job in Hubby's AF Career

Was recruiting. We never saw him and when we did he was stressed. It was rough, but I've been gradually forgetting about it. Until now, when I came across this old note to friends about just how busy the HM was and just how often he was gone:

Everytime the HM kisses one of us, the baby (then just two) hands him his hat and says "Bye!"

Speaking Movie

One of my family's favorite movies is The Winslow Boy, and when we have a favorite movie, it is usually because it is so quotable. We love to find apt quotes and incorporate them into the family lingo. At one point in this movie the father is reading the letters to the editor section of the paper to his daughter, and the editor has closed a line of discussion with the line "This correspondence now must cease." A few minutes later the father is gently teasing his daughter about her engagement and she smiles up at her dad and says, "This correspondence now must cease."

In our family that has become part of our family shorthand- when somebody is asking too many questions about a surprise, when somebody is continuing an argument beyond its use, when somebody is getting too silly, when we are too embarrassed to respond to a question or comment, when we are too busy to continue, when teasing is going too far, when we simply have nothing to add- in short, for any reason that we must
ask for a discussion to end, we smilingly say, "This correspondence now
must cease."


Do you speak movie? What are some of your family favorites?

MomTricks

I used to keep a basket stocked with reading material in the main bathroom- magazines, interesting catalogs, amusing reference books.

Once upon a time when the girls were spending too much time at once reading in here, I took out all the magazines and left a biology textbook in the basket.

Sunday Hymn Post

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul.

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb, I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb Who is the great “I Am”;
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing;
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on.

Cyberhymnal midi file here.

But we prefer the faster tempo of Anonymous Four's rendition on their American Angels album. Listen to the sample of track three and feel your soul soar.

Family Bickerings, Part the Third

The excerpt below is taken from Volume II of the Parents' Review, a magazine edited by Charlotte Mason. Volume II was published in 1891/2. This article is by Leader Scott. Scroll down for links to the posts to the rest of the article.

A child's character is very complex. It has in it germs of all the qualities which will influence the man. In a child's heart are emulation, generosity, pride, ambition, love, and enmity, all in embryo; and so dual is child-nature that according to training, these qualities are either improved into virtues or demoralised into vices. Thus a child of strong will may be rendered either obstinate in the wrong or firm in the right, according to the way in which his will is directed; his generosity may become either a Christian liberality, or a selfish wastefulness; his pride either true pride in good and right, or false pride in empty show and display.

The only way to make the virtues grow is to train the child's conscience and the love of others. To breed vices, the most powerful agent is love of self, and this begins almost in the cradle. When a nurse says playfully, "Naughty sissie to want baby's cake. Go away, greedy sissie," she lays the very foundation-stone of selfishness and future family bickerings. When she says, "Sister loves baby, let sister taste the nice cake too," she inaugurates the culture of love and self-sacrifice that leads to peace. So early does the soul's education begin and so necessary is it that a nurse should have not only knowledge and judgment, but conscience and tact.

But about family bickerings. The two chief causes of these are selfishness and harsh judgment of others. No punishment is of the smallest use to combat these; punishment may awake resentment and arouse greater spite against the person on whose account it is incurred, but it will never lessen the selfishness by a jot.

I have a couple of thoughts about this. One is just a small tip- anytime you are reading a Victorian or Edwardian era article on children, consider the advice as to the conduct of the nurse to be conduct for Mom. You don't necessarily need to follow it, but if you're looking for ideas for what you, as a parent, might try, you can find a lot of sound practical ideas directed to the childrens' nurses. You'll find some nonsense, too, but we always must pick through the melon and spit out the seeds.

I agree that many bickerings begin with selfishness and harsh judgment, but I also think sometimes they are just habits of bad temper and poor self control. Some children just have choleric, to use a word fashionable in some circles, dispositions. They are crabs. They are self-willed enough to not inflict the worst of their crabbiness on their parents, but their siblings are not so fortunate. And so I most emphatically do not agree that punishment is of no use here. The thing is that you must use knowledge and judgment, as well as conscience and tact, like the nurse above. YOu know your children and you will know better than I what does work and is of use to you than I, who have never even seen your children, could possibly know them, so you must work out the approaches you believe will be most effective and compatible with your own values. I am merely going to offer some suggestions that have worked in our home with the children God has given to us.

I agree that punishment will not lessen the selfishness, nor will it do much towards reducing harsh judgment, but it WILL help many child learn some self-control, to stop and think before they lash out in word or deed. You simply do not rely on punishment alone. You help the child put off vice with punishment, but you help them put on virtue as well, through other techniques.

There will be more about the putting on virtue in the rest of the article. But I want to clarify what I mean by punishment, because people hear that word and get all sorts of strange ideas in their heads. Although I am not averse to a brisk dusting off of the seat of the pants, feeling there is some truth to the wise and humerous words in the poem Character Building by Edward Anthony:

Spanking is something that must go
Say some psychologists, although
Character building is a feat
Sometimes accomplished through the seat.

This is hardly the only tool, and it is not the best tool in every situation. I'll share a couple other tools we used. I'd like to hear from other mothers who have successfully managed to stop bickering between their kidlets as well (note: we've been, as I have said before, far more 'relaxed' with your youngest two, and sadly, this shows).

When our first two were quite young whenever they fussed at each other in that manner that makes most parents despair that their children will ever get along and love each other and makes me, at least, want to stand by the wall and beat my head against it, my husband instituted the following punishment. I confess that the first time he did it I wanted to beat my head even more. I thought he was nuts, and this would never work.

What he did is tell the girls, "God gave you to each other as sisters. He put you in the same family for a reason. Your mother and I love you both with all your hearts, and it grieves us all to listen to you being so ugly to each other. Obviously, you don't appreciate the blessing you have. So you must act as though the other did not exist. You may not play together, speak to each other, look at each other, or any way acknowledge the other one. You don't appreciate your sister, so you will spend some time as though you have no sister." I don't remember how long this punishment lasted, sometimes as long as the rest of the whole day, sometimes only a few hours. I do know that it was never very long before they were literally pleading to be allowed to have their sister back again. They both still remember this as perhaps the most wretched- and effective- discipline of their lives and I have heard them recommend it to others.

I do think it worked as well as it did because they did actually adore each other- they just hadn't learned self-discipline. They were also the only children we had at the time, so they had no other playmates in the home to play with. I think, but am not sure, that another part of this discipline was along the lines of a restriction- 'if you can't appreciate and love your sister, you certainly don't need to be off playing with the neighbors up the road.' They are also only 20 months apart.

Another disciplinary tactic that we have seen work to make children stop and think before they speak is to use vinegar or lemon juice in response to hateful words. When they speak to each other with 'that tone' or use words that are intended to hurt, I have given a small spoonful of vinegar or lemon juice, or sometimes touched their tongues with a bar of soap just enough to leave a bad taste (I had a child who liked straight lemon juice and didn't really mind straight vinegar). There is a little speech that accompanies this. It goes something like this:
The Bible says pleasant words are like a honeycomb, but your words just now were nothing like sweet. When you talk to each like this it leaves a horrible sting and a nasty, sour feeling behind, much worse than this vinegar tastes.\

We are supposed to use our words to build one another up, not to tear each other down. I want you to remember this taste. Talking to each other like you just did leaves behind a much worse taste than this, and you cannot easily wash out the bitter, hateful flavor of the words you have just said.

After their little lecture, they are permitted to go get a drink or brush their teeth. Very occasionally, I followed up with a bit of honey and told them that their speech should be sweet, like honey. Other times I just waited until we had something with honey in it and would remind them that this was how their words should make others feel. A little of this sort of talk goes a long way, and it is easy to numb the impact by overusing it.

These are two disciplinary tactics that worked for us with the older five girls. I also think they worked as well as they did because they worked in conjunction with the fact that the girls spent more time with each other than with anybody else, we do fun things together as a family, and my husband and I have a low tolerance for sibling rivalry. They also worked well in conjunction with 'putting on' the virtues. I don't think there's any single tool in the parenting bag that works across the board in isolation. We did not just focus on putting off. And they worked because of the personalities of those five older girls.

The personality of your children is a significant factor here. I am fairly certain that if Equuschick and Pip had been the first two children, the separation idea wouldn't have worked at all. They are both too exactly like each other, and neither would have been willing to concede anything to anybody. What works for you may well be different, and perhaps nothing much will work at all. This is not intended to come across as me, the perfect Mother with the perfect children issuing pronouncements from on high.

More on Monday-=)

Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
Part the Fourth
the Fifth
Part the Sixth
Part the Seventh
Part the Eighth
Conclusion (Part the Ninth)

Restroom reading

A few months ago I found The Little Brown, Book of Anecdotes edited by Clifton Fadiman at a used bookstore. Despite how my deary loved mother may feel about it, I made sure to write my name inside the cover because it will be coming with me should I ever move out.

Right now I'm being quite generous with it, though. It reposes in our upstairs bathroom for educational (and entertaining) browsing.

So far one of our favorite entries has been about Richard Gordon, author of the "doctor" books in the 1950's. He actually trained as a doctor first, and here's what the book has to say:

(Gordon relates an embarrassing experience at the viva voce examination at his gynecology finals. He describes his examiner as "a red faced fellow in tweeds and a striped tie.")
"'Well, my boy,' started the jovial professor amiably, pushing a bottle towards me. 'What do you think of that?'
"'Fibroids, sir,' I replied proudly.
"He frowned. I was puzzled. My answer, impregnably correct, had not gone over too well....
"'How would you treat a case of endometriosis?'
"'Progestogens, sir. But if I may say, sir, the results are often disappointing.'
"My examiner glared....
"'Have I said something wrong, sir?' I asked.
"'Not professionally,' my tweedy examiner snapped. 'But I don't think yo have much future as a gynaecologist.'
"My shamed eyes looked down in confusion. They encountered a pair of brogues, stout stockings, the hem of a tweed skirt. It frightened me off gynaecology for the res of my career, and off medical women for life."

Checkers

Did you know that the game Checkers has 500-billion-billion playing positions?

And that Chess probably has a billion-trillion-trillion-trillion positions?

It has been figured out that the perfect game of checkers, where neither opponent makes any mistakes, will always end in a draw. Fascinating stuff, that.

A Boy's Lunch

Several children are picking blackberries for their pioneer parents, filling gourds and deerskins with the thick fruit. They take a break for dinner.

"They had taken with them for lunch a loaf of bread and a piece of cold venison, but Balser suggested that he should go into the woods and find a squirrel or two to help out their meal. In the meantime, Tom Fox had started out upon a voyage of discovery, hoping that he, too might contribute to the larder."

Balser is the only one with a gun, having been given it as a present for offering assistance to an eloping couple escaping from her murderous family a few chapters previously. He brings back three fat squirrels. Tom brings back a coonskin cap full of turkey eggs. The other children want to know how they are to prepare the eggs. Tom only grins and tells them to guess.

"The boys then lighted a fire from the flint-lock on the gun, and Balser, having dressed the squirrel, cut twigs as he had done when he and his father dined on Conn's Creek, and soon pieces of tender squirrel were roasting near the flame, giving forth a most tempting odour."

Tom Fox disappears again and returns

"bearing a large flat rock eight or ten inches in diameter, and two or three inches thick. This rock he carefully washed and scrubbed in a spring until it was perfectly clean. He then took coals from the fire which Balser had kindled, and soon had a great fire of his own, in the midst of which was the stone. After the blaze had died down, he made a bed of hot coals on which, by means of a couple of sticks, he placed the rock, and then dusted away the ashes."

At this point in our reading this afternoon, my boy's attention was standing sharply alert, soaking in every detail. I could him processing this in his mind, picturing everything described and wondering where to get his own rock 8 or 10 inches in diameter.

Tom Fox asks the other children if they can figure out how to cook his eggs now.

"...the girls greased the rock with the fat of the squirrel, broke the eggs, and allowed them to fall upon the hot stone, where they were soon thoroughly roasted, and the children had a delicious meal. After dinner they sat in the cool shade of the tree under which they dined, and told stories and asked riddles for an hour or two before they again began berry-picking. Then they worked until about six o'clock, and stopped to have another play before returning home.

They played 'Ring aroudn a rosey,' 'Squat where ye be,' 'Wolf,' 'Dirty Dog...'

They thought they'd wind up with Hide-and-seek, but end up having wild and terrible adventures with a bear instead. Naturally, the boy wants to know when he will be old enough to hunt with a gun and when we can have squirrel roasted over an open fire, and when am I going to finish reading this chapter.

Although this was one of my favorites as a child, my youngest daughter only wants to know, in a dreary tone, 'are we done, yet?' On the other hand, she wishes me to hurry up and finish so she can return to Tin-Tin, another book supposed to be a 'boy' book.

Have I mentioned that the copy from which we are reading The Bears of Blue River is inscribed to me and my brothers as being a gift from our grandparents the Christmas of 1967? Obviously, as I was the only one of us able to read it at that time, obviously, it should be my copy, and therefore, it is.=)

Here are some places to find some other good books for boys:
A previous blogpost of ours.
Cindy at Dominion Family, natch.
Barbara Curtis at Mommy Life has a list her husband put together a while back.

Protein for Little People

I don't really do a low-carb diet with any consistency, but I did notice that extra protein and more complex carbs helped my younger children not to be quite so frantic and rather shrill with their energy levels. I have noticed that my younger children always got hungrier sooner when we did high carb meals and can last longer on low-carb meals. Here's a few ideas for things to add to their meals or snacks to help tide them over:

Peanut butter and celery or celery and cream cheese
boiled eggs
chunks of turkey ham and cheese
meatballs
nuts
tuna fish
tofu
peanut or almond butter spoons.
Add some meat to refried beans and top with a bit of cheese.
Brown rice instead of white, or quinoa instead of either.


Let them eat fruits and vegetables liberally, but try to use more things like berries, cauliflower, celery, bok choy, spinach leaves, cabbage, green beans, olives, peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, mushrooms, and zuchini and fewer things like carrots, beets, corn, and other high carb items

Or balance a high carb snack can add protein to other stuff to tide them over a little longer- we like apples and peanut butter; sausage with our potatoes; cheese with beans, sour cream, and other fats with their carbs. Children NEED good fats, and it's not a good for them for parents to start worrying about fat intake when they are still growing. This has nothing to do with weight- good fats help brain development and all sorts of other good things.

Family Bickerings, Part The Second

This is only one of many similar scenes which take place not only in this sunny nursery, but in many others. And every childish quarrel loosens a little bit of esteem or love from the family bond, till it grows at length too slack to hold the members together. The brother who tyrannises over this sisters in the nursery will not prove a trustworthy guardian of their rights in after years, and this is the cause of the frequent lawsuits when questions of pecuniary interests arise between brothers and sisters. The sisters who never give up to each other in the question of nursery toys and sweets will most likely become jealous rivals of each other in society. When grown up they will find no sympathy in their own home circle, and one soured woman may be found living alone in a foreign land, while another suffers sickkness and solitude, uncared for, at home.

Can you not keep the children from quarrelling so? said a perplexed father one day. And the wife retorted,
"What can I do? They are all born with tempers."
"I fancy there must be something wrong in the training," sighed the father, more perplexed than before.

He was right; but few are the parents who recognise this or know what is wrong. They accept their parental duties, some willingly and some unwillingly; they fulfil them more or less well according to their own good sense and conscience. They feed and clothe the child, nurse it tenderly when it is ill, and sometimes punish it when naughty, but they let the nurse begin its moral training, and governesses continue it; that is to say, they take care of body and mind; but it is only a mother here and there who really thinks, or even knows how her own child's soul grows.

Tune in tomorrow for more.=)



Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
Part the Fourth
the Fifth
Part the Sixth
Part the Seventh
Part the Eighth
Conclusion (Part the Ninth)

Wash-Day

From A Book of Nursery Rhymes by Charles Welsh illustrated by Clara E. Atwood published in 1901

Storm clouds

Another picture from my trip a couple weeks ago. We witnessed a huge storm rolling in, hid out under the eaves of store fronts, and then came out afterwards to the beauty of a double rainbow.

The Progeny Must Read This

Especially those of you who mistakenly think that just because Mother carefully inscribed sentimental messages to you inside the front covers of books you allegedly got in the same month as your alleged birthdays and other holidays this means the book can leave the house when you do. That is not what that means. As for those other books, I do not believe you bought them yourselves, and if you did it must have been with money from me anyway which all comes to the same time and even if you bought them with money from your babysitting or other jobs for other people or birthday money from Grandmama, I bore you all in my heart or under it and that's got to count for something. (No. We will NOT discuss the fact that all the books my Uncle gave to my two brothers and I at Christmas and carefully inscribed to each of us are sitting on MY bookcases because I had the good sense and chronological advantage that permitted me to leave home before my younger brothers and take the books with me. THOSE books are mine).

I like to think the fact that all the books have been given houseroom in my house on my bookshelves means they are mine (there's a theme here and if you pay close attention and think very hard you may be able to detect it).

And if you will notice when you read that post, at least Timothy has waited until he was decently wed and in his own home before he started raiding his poor mother's books. YOU PEOPLE are hiding my own books from me in your bedrooms and subversively writing your own names inside the front covers for such piddling and trifling reasons as having allegedly purchased them with your own shillings and pence.

You know how much I love you all. I would die for you. I live for you. I will not give up my books to you (nor yours, either). There are limits. The.Books.Are.Mine.

:P

Oh, what's that? The link you say? See? It just goes to you show you! I NEED my books more than Cindy does. My memory isn't as good as hers.

Younger mothers, be forewarned. Teach your children to view books from you as books from a lending library, books that must be returned and never, ever kept. And stop writing sentimental messages inside those books. It only makes the Progeny uppity.

Magpies.

Jane Austen Fans Should Sit Down

An unpublished author, frustrated with the process of getting his novel looked at, submitted the opening chapter to three of Jane Austen's novels to 18 different publishers and literary agents. He changed the titles of the books and the names of the characters, but left the rest of the material as is, including that famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice.

He received several rejections (including one from the house that publishes J.K. Rowling's books) and one very funny acknowledgment of his plagiarism. I will give a pass to those who didn't bother responding at all. They may or may not have recognized the works of Jane Austen. A nonresponse doesn't tell us anything at all. Those who rejected it are dolts.

Read the whole story here.

Bonnet-tip and thanks to JDavidB, who sent me this link about it.

Family Bickerings, Part the First

The following is taken from Volume II of the Parents' Review, a magazine edited by Charlotte Mason. Volume II was published in 1891/2. This article is by Leader Scott, who wrote several other books about Renaissance art. One of them is online here.

So far as I know, this article has never been reprinted outside the pages of The Parents' Review, and volume II is purportedly quite hard to come by. Since I have, unfortunately and quite stupidly, been unable to remember how to scan in my book as text on the HP scanner, I am transcribing it by hand. For this reason I am spreading it out over several days. So, without further digression, here is the first page of the article (I do think you'll find it interesting):

"You did, I tell you."
"I say I didn't"
"What! You didn't say I should have the book next after you?"
"No. I said I wanted it first."
"Well, then, I wanted it second, and you have given it to Effie."
"No, I have not; she took it."
"She shan't have it, then. It is my book; give it up directly, Effie."

With this the speaker, an angry little girl whose hair is fluffy, cheeks flushing, and eyes flashing, rushes at a younger child and snatches the book from her hand. On which Effie, small, pale, and peevish, sets up a dismal howl, and after trying in vain to recover the book from Dora's sturdy clutch, whimpers,
"You are a selfish thing, and I shall go and tell mother."
As the door slams, Dora turns fiercely to her brother.
"There now, see what you unfairness has done! Mother will give me all the blame, and it was your fault."

Recrimination takes place, and then a new struggle, which ends when "mother" enters the room to see the book in one pair of hands and its covers in another. She is greeted by a chorus of angry voices asserting the culpability of everybody except the respective speakers. Having taken away the ruined volume, and threatened that if the children quarrel any more they shall have no cake for tea, she goes off to ruminate sadly on the quarrelsome nature of children, while the culprits are left glaring sulkily at each other.

Does it not seem to you these little Victorian children are fast past the point of being quelled with a grieved look from Mother?

Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third
Part the Fourth
the Fifth
Part the Sixth
Part the Seventh
Part the Eighth
Conclusion (Part the Ninth)

Fungus.

This is a very fascinating fungus thing that FYG, the Boy, and I saw while on walk. The Boy would like everyone to know that He Found It First.

1891 Advise from a Mother on Teaching Phonics

I have taught many children to read, and in almost every case with nothing but pleasure on both sides. I find it best in teaching letters to teach them in pairs, capital and small ones together, as it may dishearten a child, and puzzle it, to find there is another alphabet to be learnt after one has been acquired. It is well to have several sets of letters of different sizes, and to pick out those known from advertisements, &c. The words of two letters are best learned by sticking them on separate bits of card, and having them picked out. The next step is to make plays with a spelling game- turn a cat into a hat, a rat, &c, ham into jam, and so on-- one set each day; then find these words in the lists beginning reading lessons, and only begin reading the lesson when all the words in it are already known. I have found nothing so goo as Nelson's Step by Step Series for teaching reading, but for the sake of variety it is as well to use other little asy books at the same time. Jennet Humphrey's Laugh and Learn" is very good (Blackie & Son); it contains pretty games, writing and drawing lessons, and other amusements, as well as reading. Every lesson should wind up with a song or game by way of a treat, which will forfeited by carelessness or inattention.
~ A Mother in Inda

From Volume II of The Parents' Review, 1891/92

A Rare Appearance of The Equuschick

The Equuschick's morning was not a good morning. A thunderstorm started at some unrighteous hour of the dark and early dawn, and it is bad enough that they wake her up, but the 100+ lb. dog, who does sometime sleep on the floor believe it or not, NEVER sleeps on the floor during a thunderstorm. He leaps into bed with a grunt and expects certain assurances.

The long and short of it being, when it was officially time to roll out of bed and get ready for work, the fog out of doors was nothing to the fog in The Equuschick's brain. The fog in her brain was compounded by a bitter and depressed outlook on life that had begun to creep its way into her soul sometime yesterday afternoon, and she was not as quick as she should have been in banishing it when first she sensed it coming.

She arrived at work with absolutely no desire to be there, it seemed to haunt her in the horrific sense of a recurring nightmare. She was just here yesterday, what possibly possessed her to come back?! Was she STARK RAVING MAD?


She left two hours early, because she had honestly done everything that needed doing and she could do by that time, and it was slow anyway and she had absolutely no desire to spend two more hours getting to paid to sit on a desk and look at catalogs.

So she came home and checked her e-mail, which contained she must confess, a devastatingly convicting message on contentment. She felt justly ashamed of herself, but also in a strange way, rather touched, that God cares enough to drop hints like that just when The Equuschick needs them most. If He didn't care, you see, He would not have bothered.

So she attempted to snap out of it and she went into town to pick up stuff for supper and returned and made lunch, and after that it seemed the safest thing for herself and for those for around her was to retire into a book.

Ergo, she spent the afternoon happily engrossed in A Severe Mercy, because she has found that when she needs true comfort reading, she despises herself less if she's actually reading something of intellectual or aesthetic value. A Severe Mercy is both, as it is beautiful and thought-provoking and convicting and encouraging and heart-breaking all at the same time.

Plus, you see much of C.S Lewis, who is to The Equuschick like an old and dear friend that she misses very much, never mind that she actually never met him. She still misses him.

(Do not, she begs of you, attempt to use logic at this time. The Equuschick will fry you with the searing flame of her green eyes and you will wish you'd kept your mouth shut.)


Perhaps sometime in the future The Equuschick shall sit down and share all her favourite passages with you all. You are commanded to appreciate them as much as she has, or you will still, unfortunately, end up facing a very annoyed Equuschick. You don't want to face an annoyed Equuschick. It isn't pretty.

Bureaucratic Hubris

In my last post of pet peeves I kept things lighthearted and silly, as befits something as trivial as peeves. However, something that really does yank my chain, make me gnash my teeth, and literally shake like a leaf with impotent frustration is bureaucratic types who make things up, create petty little hoops, and otherwise just make life an obstacle course of annoying inconveniences for no better reason than because they can, being small minded souls whose power over appointment books and records has gone to their heads.

I have just gone through such nonsense for the last half hour over the Cherub- the medical clinic tells me that Tri-care refuses to pay her medical bill because she has other insurance, but Tri-care says they don't know what the clinic is talking about, they have no other insurance listed for her and anyway they can't talk to me about it because The Cherub is of age. What? No, they have NO RECORD of her being extremely developmentally delayed and unable to speak, so they cannot speak to me about it anymore because she is of age and must speak to them herself and give them permission to talk to me. If I were either more frustrated or more dishonest I could, and might on a more frustrating day, take the phone and claim to be the Cherub, since they have no idea she cannot talk, and give them permission to speak to me. But I don't want to talk about that because my fingers are still shaking and I feel like firecrackers are going off in my blood veins and head and I might melt the keyboard. Instead I am drudging up another juicy old story of mindless bureaucratic hoity-toityness that will, I hope, amuse you. Plus, this is 8 years ago, so it no longer makes my eyeballs peel back, my hair stand on end, and firecrackers snap, crackle and pop through my veins.

First of all, know that we never answer the phone. Our answering machine message specifically says that we are probably screening the phone call, but if the caller identifies him/herself we will probably pick it up, otherwise, we'll get back with the caller when we can.

So, I had this appointment with a surgeon's office and I realized the morning of the appt that I didn't know exactly where their office was. I called hours before my appointment to ask for directions and had to leave a message explaining my predicament on their machine (irony, that).

They called once, I found out later, hanging up without leaving a message. I assumed it was a telemarketer, naturally. As the day wore on, it was getting close to time for me to leave if I didn't want to be late. I called again asking for directions. They told me then that the receptionist had called, but nobody was home. I said I'd been home all day, waiting for the phone call. They said that all she got was an answering machine. I said that I assumed she'd leave a message, but she hadn't, and that our message recording says that we screen our calls, so if she'd done that, I'd have answered. They were totally unreceptive to that. The chilly reception seeped through the phone lines and gave me frostbite.

So I went to my appointment, and the doctor decided I needed surgery in a few weeks. During the consultation with the surgeon, I said I was breastfeeding and wanted to know what drugs I'd get so I could see how they would affect nursing. First he said
that I'd just have to pump and dump for a day because I'd be given x,
specifically. I said, politely, that I understood pump and dump to be the routine,
better safe than sorry answer, but that I knew for a fact x was compatible with breastfeeding and was actually the drug of choice for women who needed to be put under during labour, so I'd like to look up the rest for myself. He then said he didn't know that drug was used on women in labour, and he really didn't know what I would be given, so I'd have to ask the anesthesiologist for sure, and I could get that number from the 'girls at the desk' when they called to schedule my surgery. When I left the office, the surgeon also told me his office would be calling me again to schedule the next appointment.

So when I left, I stopped at the desk and explained again that we screen calls, so please make a note of that so that the caller would be sure to leave message. The lady at the desk looked at me in annoyance, and said, "We always do that. We don't need to be told." I explained that just that morning they hadn't done that, and we'd appreciate it if they would leave a message next time. At that point the woman who refused to leave a message the first time spoke up, got very snippy and told me in icy tones, and I quote, "That was me. Most people answer their phones, especially when they know the Dr's office will be calling."
I said that our message made it clear that we don't. She said coldly, "I realize
that."

I, not unnaturally, said, 'then I don't understand why you can't leave a message. Once we know who you are, we'll pick it up.' She said she was too busy, and hadn't left a message because she had another client on another line. I don't know what she
would have done if I'd answered the phone- hung up on one of us?

I smiled at the first receptionist (she did not smile back) and asked again for a note to be made that we didn't answer the phone and the office needed to leave a message. I watched as it was written down.

They didn't follow it.
Through the course of my treatment with that doctor, there was a pattern of our phone ringing and somebody hanging up on the machine for days, and then I would get a call from the Dr.'s office and they would tell me in aggravation that they haven't been able to reach me. I ask them again to leave a message. I remind them that it should be written down next to my phone number. It was. My husband called them again and told them again that they need to leave a message. They didn't- except the one time, naturally, that I could not get to the phone before they hung up.

I was in the middle of nursing, and we couldn't grab the phone before the office hung up. I called back immediately- as in, within five seconds of their phone call. I was told I could not speak to the caller (the same receptionist who hung up the first time because 'most people answer their phones.') because, and I quote again, giving emphasis where it was given to me, "She's busy right now because *she* has work to do. She cannot drop what she's doing, so I will have to do, because she can't talk to you right now."

It became clear as the conversation continued that she was not too busy to listen in on that phone call and add her two cents. I still wanted that anesthesiologist's number the surgeon had told me the 'girls at the desk' could give me. They clearly had no desire to give me that number. I was given the run around, again, as they carried on a conversation between the two of them, sotto voice, about the arrogance of people who do not take their surgeon's word for things and finally telling me (remember, these are receptionists. Not nurses. Not doctors. Secretaries), "We do not permit breastfeeding for 24 hours after surgery..." One of that duet was the one who had so much work to do that she couldn't speak to me two minutes after she'd called, but obviously not too much work to do after all, since two of them doubled up on one phone call, making it last fifteen minutes longer than it needed to arguing with me about what was and wasn't safe and why I didn't need to know anything except that 'they' didn't permit me to breastfeed after surgery, when all I needed was the number to the anesthesiology dept. Doesn't take two to do that.

I tell them, again, and patiently as I can, that I'd like to talk to the anesthesiologist about what drugs I'll be given. They get quite snippy and can't imagine why I need to know that, "Let us worry about that." I explain again that I am nursing, I want to know what drugs I'll be given so I can check their compatibility with nursing, and that the surgeon told me to ask them how to get in touch with the anesthesiologist. The two of them continued talking back and forth where I could hear them, (and they were obviously disgusted with me), said that I didn't need to talk to the anesthesiologist. I just needed to pump and dump for 24 hours after the surgery, one of them said slowly, as though she was speaking to an idiot.

This is same day surgery (or was supposed to be, as it turned out, I was sick enough to stay in the hospital for a week, but nobody knew that would happen then). They don't even know what I'll be given, and they are secretaries, but they know I have to pump and dump?!?!?!
I said, as sweetly as I could manage, "Yes, I understand that is routine advice, but I also know that it is not correct advice in every case. It is not necessary to pump and dump after every surgery because it does depend on the medication, which is why I want the names of the meds so I can look it up myself."

I cannot duplicate the sound that woman made over the phone, but it was something between a sneer and a very snide, superior laugh. It was an incredibly snotty, rude, condescending sort of noise, and I badly wanted to reach through the phone lines and shake her, but she finally gave me the number for the anesthesia dept, with the air of one washing her hands of a nasty piece of slime.

This continued, throughout the two months I was under the care of that office. They refused to leave messages until they'd wasted a lot of their own time calling and hanging up on the machine several times, and then they would get huffy about the fact that they couldn't reach me. They were rude every time I spoke to them, and the HG took to bringing me chocolate when she knew I would be talking with these two.

Oddly enough, when the time came for my surgery, the surgeon turned out to be a woman doctor from the same office. She agreed that pumping and dumping was unnecessary and who actually stood and waited to wheel me off for an extra ten minutes while the baby 'topped off' with one last nursing session. She was strongly in favor of breastfeeding and thought our large family was wonderful. Her sister had adopted an older sibling group and we swapped stories about that. She was clearly a doting Auntie and just a sweetheart. She smiled and chatted with us the entire time the baby nursed and was a completely delightful woman. (Later we did complain about the receptionists. I do not know or care what happened about that).

What's interesting to me, besides these rude women, is how many people want to make excuses for them when they hear this story. Here are some of the excuses I've heard.

1. They were probably just trying to adhere to confidentiality laws.

If the office is concerned about confidentiality (which is not the issue, as they themselves stated that their 'issue' was that leaving a message for me was a waste of their time), it would be a simple matter to simply say, "I'm calling for Mrs. DHM, if you're there would you pick up the phone, or to just say "this is the Dr's office..." They left *no* messages. They hung up. That is childish.

We specifically asked them to utilize our answering machine, more than once, so if this was all about confidentiality, they could have said so.

2. It's not their job to know about medications and breastfeeding. It's unfair to expect them to.

I am not upset that they didn't know. I am upset that they wouldn't
share the anesthesiologist's number until I asked repeatedly. I don't expect
them to know. But I also don't appreciate them giving specific advice on
whether or not I should nurse when they admittedly do not know what medications
will be used. I think *that's* inexcusable, not the fact that they don't know
what the anesthesiologist will use.

3. The anesthesiologist probably wouldn't even know, because it depends on all kinds of things including which hospital the surgery is at.

Not quite seeing how this explains the rudeness of the receptionists, but okay. And 'which hospital?' There was only one.

4. The receptionists couldn't answer that questions because which drugs to use are a matter of the preferences of the different doctors involved.

Then they needed to say, "I do not know" and give up the phone number.

I would have been perfectly okay with it if they had said something like, "Well, we don't know exactly what will be used. We can tell you that in the past, these medications have been used. There might be others used for any variety of reasons, so we can't guarantee that your meds will be limited to this list, but these medications are possibilities" I don't think that's at all unreasonable. What I did not
appreciate, and what was unreasonable, was this office giving me the runaround
and then having the receptionist tell me "We do not permit breastfeeding
because the drugs *are* bad for the baby," when she's already admitted she
doesn't have the slightest idea what drugs are going to be used. If she
doesn't know what the drugs are, then she can't tell me with as much certainty
as she used that they will be bad for the baby, right? This was medical advice she was in no way qualified to give.
It was also inappropriate for them to tell me that what drugs I would be given were not my concern and I should let them worry about that.

The very clear message was that these two busy receptionists have a career, and how dare I, a mere housewife with seven kids, insist that they leave me a message. I'm home, what on earth could I have to do that would interfere with hopping to it to answer the phone the second she, or anybody else, calls. Keep in mind, too, that this refusal to leave a message began before I had ever met or spoken to either of them. My doctor made the appointment with the surgeon's office, not me. I had no prior history with them or the office. They just started out in a snit for reasons that probably had nothing to do with me at all.

The other very clear message was that they were in the wrong career.

Grandmother's Sunflowers

Ah, sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!

William Blake

Child's Play

Referencing the studies we blogged about here and here, David Willetts, the shadow education secretary in the UK says children 'have little concept of space, volume and how the world actually works.' And that's not all:

Mr Willetts was addressing the Daycare Trust conference into child care and the way children are raised.

He said he was convinced that children develop their conceptual framework through experiencing the world in three dimensions.

"It is very hard to make sense of geometry if you haven't thrown a ball around or make sense of volume if you haven't messed about with water and sand or do arithmetic if you haven't collected things and arranged them."

He said the Conservatives were examining what was putting off schools and clubs from running trips.

Earlier this week, Britain's safety charity suggested it would be better for the occasional child to fall out of a tree and break their wrist than develop repetitive strain injury from playing computer games.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said parents were too risk-averse and youngsters should be allowed to bruise and cut themselves.

I think I've mentioned before two different approaches to babies of about the same age. One mother permitted hers tumble off the couch and stand up under the table and bonk her head. When the other mother saw her child heading off the couch, she rushed over and held onto her so that she slid down lightly and easily, never hurting herself even a little bit. When she saw her child standing up under the table she rushed over and held her hand between the table and the child's head, carefully shielding her from a bumped noggin. Six months later, one child was scrambling over ladders, up and down slides, running freely, and quite comfortable in her own body, making use of the world around her. She had established what Charlotte Mason calls 'dynamic relations,' with the earth, which she explained meant:

He must stand and walk and run and jump with ease and grace. He must skate and swim and ride and drive, dance and row and sail a boat. He should be able to make free with his mother earth and to do whatever the principle of gravitation will allow. This is an elemental relationship for the lack of which nothing compensates.

How odd that Charlotte knew this a hundred years before the research confirmed it.=)

Six months later the other little girl was still standing up under tables, unaware that she might bump her head because she was protected from doing so. She was still taking sudden dives off the couch, unaware that this could result in thumped arms, skinned knees, or bumped noses, because she'd never been permitted to skin her knees or bump her nose. She did not move through space and over toys and up and down trees with ease and grace. Her mother thought that maybe she was just naturally uncoordinated. Possibly. But I think it's more likely that this was a reaction to the fact thatwhat she had been taught about the physical world was false.

Festival of Frugality

There is an excellent Festival of Frugality this week- too many good ideas to list. Go see them ALL!

My Quibbles with Charlotte Mason

One of the great themes of Charlotte Mason, and one of the most frustrating for some of us, is her insistence that habit training and teaching obedience is something the clever and alert parent can achieve with merely a well timed look and a little distraction.

I suspect that by Miss Mason's standards I am neither clever nor alert. I also know I simply do not have the leverage or the distractions available to me that her mothers had available to them. I have two full sets of the original Parents' Reviews, as well as copies of hundreds of articles from other volumes. You can find out more about these here. In these magazines, edited by Miss Mason, mothers would write in with questions or tips (much like our modern email lists) and there were plenty of articles on parenting, educating, and applying Miss Mason's methods.

Here are some excerpts:

From an article on obedience in Vol. VIII, no. 4:

"I find no difficulty in securing obedience from my children," says one. ...."Suppose my little boy is playing in the drawing room, I tell him, 'you may play as long as you're good.' He begins to be naughty. I ring the bell; the nurse comes down and the boy goes up. He forfeits the pleasure of my company. The plan is simplicity itself."

I can think of several other adjectives for this 'plan' which is dependent upon the child's sense of the mother's love and attention being entirely conditional and upon a reliance on an underclass of servants. If my child were only permitted to see me for an hour or two each day, and then only as long as he did not annoy me, I imagine he'd be good for me, too. And if he wasn't, I shouldn't be bothered about it, since he wouldn't be allowed to hang around me while being annoying anyway. It's a win-win for the mother who doesn't her child to distraction and want to be with him. It's a lose-lose for the child whose birthright ought to have been unconditional love and the knowledge that his interests are one of his mother's top priorities.

From the P.N.E.U. Notes of no. 7 we do get a slightly different perspective:

Richmond and Kew branch: "....Mrs. Edward Sieveking lectured on the "Practical Relation of Parents in the Educated Classes towards the Nursery." ...dwelt on the importance of mothers in the upper classes being more with their children and not relegating all their own duties to paid substitutes. Mothers lost a great deal by not
doing more themselves for their children, as in many cases the children the children were more attached to the nurse than to the mother, which was only natural, the former being constantly with them. French and German mothers set a much better example. A German lady told Mrs. Sieveking that in her house there was no such thing as a nursery, the children lived entirely with their parents, and she expressed surprise that English children were left so much to servants....Mothers gave many excuses for not occupying themselves in their nurseries-- health, claims of society, etc., A book which could be recommended to all mothers as the greatest help in the nursery was Miss Mason's "Home Education."....

Still, Mrs. Sieveking also stresses the need to choose your nurse wisely, talks much about what the nurses can and should do and hoped that at some time 'a large percentage of the educated classes would take up the nursery as a profession....'

Vol.. VIII, no.3:

Miss Barnette...delivered a... Lecture on "Training and Inheritance." '...and said that sometimes what was mistaken for heredity was merely imitation, and therefore it was beneficial to a child to be sent away from home for a time before its character was formed."
I presume this is at least part of the theory behind the English boarding school system. At any rate, she delivered this same lecture later in the month, at the Wallasey branch, so it must have been generally accepted by _somebody_ as PNEU compatible.


I also once had the treat of visiting the Library of Congress and looking over a few of the older PR volumes. I had very little time and chose to focus on the letters sections with questions and answers from other parents. There were several questions about schedules, also many answers. The answers *all* talked about getting up really early, like 7:30, and spending a couple hours in the kitchen arranging meals with the
cook and the tasks for the day with the other help.

I suppose this is the time when the modern mother shall speak to her crock pot, bread machine, or rice cooker.

Children also were sometimes put to bed as early as 6:00, and yes, if I put my children to be at 6 p.m. when they were small, I could have accomplished quite a bit around the house that otherwise got only a lick and a promise.

The mothers of the class most involved in the PNEU simply did not raise their own children. They spent lots of time thinking about it, writing papers about it, attending meetings about it, and they really _cared_ about it, but over and over in these volumes I am seeing this faint thread about how in 'today's culture' women have so many social obligations they need well-trained, intelligent nurses to
support them in their work.

The nurses had the bulk of the child-rearing work for children from babyhood to about five. Mom was involved- but she came and went. Nurse was _always_ there. Nurse also had almost _no_ other job to do except care for the children. So of course Nurse could devote the constant time to habit training that was expected.

I don't mean that none of CM's ideas are applicable. They are. They just have to taken as goals to aspire to, not bludgeons to beat ourselves over the head with.

But I also think this is why Cm takes discipline so lightly, as something easy for the alert and clever mother to address with nothing more than a look and a shake of the head. It's always a simpler matter to get a child to mind somebody not its parent, or not as familiar to it than it is to get a child to be consistently obedient with Mom when Mom is the only one around. It's not the same as having Nurse, Cook, Gardener, under nursemaid, parlourmaid, second housemaid and the tweeny _all_
there, and _all_ bowing to Mom's authority.

I also note that a lot of the distractions offered to redirect the attention involve sending the child to other adults (take a message to cook, take this package to the gardener...) Somehow I just don't see that working for me (The crock pot wants to see you...).

Frankly, in the days of outhouses, chamber pots, an army of servants, nurseries on the top floor of the house, and children constantly being supervised by a well-trained nurse, I doubt very much that Parents' Union mothers often found themselves dealing with such issues as a preschooler wiping a clumsy hand on the bathroom wall instead of washing it with soap and water, a child stuffing the toilet with matchbox cars, pulling dresser drawers out and dumping out all the clothes, gluing baby dolls to the living room rug, finger painting in Mommy's make-up or lotions, and dumping out bottles of cooking oil on the kitchen floor while Mommy is cooking dinner. Mommy wasn't cooking dinner. Cook was.

I am enjoying the reading and finding it discouraging at the same time. I think I need to get _much_ better organized. I think I need to get up at 5 a.m. and put the kitchen in order, get a crock pot meal going, have a breakfast casserole made, or maybe start once a month cooking again. I need to plan and prepare various tasks in advance for the purpose of distracting the children. You know, when I see that look in the FYB's eye (you know the look, that little gleam of mischief that bodes no good to anyone), I _could_ send him to the crock pot- I could have a dish of spices or cut up veggies ready and waiting for him to add. I could have salad stuff ready for them to mix, I could have a letter ready for somebody to go put in the mail box, a plant to be watered, a pickle to put in daddy's lunch box for the next day- except that the Cherub would have quietly sneaked into the kitchen and dumped the spices out and dropped the pickle into the garbage (she dislikes them).

Sigh. This all requires so much _forethought_ and I am so much more a loosey-goosey type who has wonderful ideas two hours after the time to implement them....
I think I need a nurse. And an under-nurse. And a cook. And a gardener. And definitely a parlourmaid. If only I had a parlour.

Updated to clarify, because there seems to be some confusion- I LOVE Charlotte Mason's principles, and I have read and reread her books and highly recommend her approach to other homeschoolers. Amblesideonline.org is my favorite curriculum.;-)
I think CM is spot-on, the best thing out there in the homeschooling world when it comes to education, and I think her ideals are excellent. I quibble with her in the details of day to day family life and parental discipline, and I think we moms in the trenches can get discouraged here, especially if we forget are are unaware of the differences between the average middle class mom's life in her day and country and in our own.

For some mothers and some children the gently grieved look works wonders. My own grandmother was one of those. For me it doesn't even show up on the radar. I apparently have no gently grieved look and when I try it my children merely assume I have indigestion. What am I going to do about that? Feel miserable, unfit, and depressed, or shrug my shoulders and work out what does work for me? Ninety percent of Charlotte Mason's writings and ideas I have no quarrels with whatsoever. It's great stuff.

Education is for the Mind

Vol. VIII, No. 11 of the old Parents' Review magazines, a publication edited and produced by Charlotte Mason, includes a little gem of a review from one Pater Junior (nom de plumes seem to have been de rigueur). Pater Junior writes regularly to the letter-bag section of the magazine. His contributions seem to be in the nature of a clipping service on education related articles in other publications, and so he shares this:

"Mr. Quiller-Couch discourses pleasantly of education, classical, technical, maternal, not forgetting that branch of physical training which is concerned with the birch-rod....The following will appeal to teachers:--

A distinguished pedagogue once observed that boys are usually amenable to reason, masters sometimes, parents never. I take it, he had his eye on the modern parent, who imagines technical instruction to be an excellent substitute for education, and that the study of the humanities can be profitably replaced by Sir. Isaac Pitman's Shorthand. Education, which converts 'the small apple-eating urchin, whom we know' into an orderly citizen, respecting himself and his neighbour, is a gradual process not easily tested by examination papers. Technical instruction is far brisker, is quite easily tested, and produces the pleasantest immediate results in the shape of hard cash. The parent fascinated by these cheap advantages, is generally ill to deal with; and while the parent asks for shorthand, and the head-master for a free hand, there is bound to be some friction of temper."

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, I presume, is the same Quiller- Couch (he was knighted in the late 1800's/early 1900's I think, for his work in the literary and educational fields) who edited the Oxford Anthology of English verse, used by CM in her
schools. He is also the "Q" referred to in '84 Charing Cross Road' and/or its sequel. I have my grandmother's copy of Quiller-Couch's Oxford English verse, as well as a collection of his lectures, and I can't tell what a frisson of delight I get whenever I discover a reference to him or a quote by him.

I know the parent of whom he speaks, the one who prefers shorthand or other utilitarian skills instead of any of the humanities. Recently a homeschooling father said in my presence that there was no point to teaching history, after all, he'd never needed it for his job. There is more to live than a job, and education is for life, I said. "Whatever that means," he said.

And yet another groups of children will grow up in a wasteland where instead of a growing, living garden the children are given this sort of blighted landscape instead:

...Daniel Boorstin, who was a very good historian and Librarian of Congress, said that trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers.

JennyAnyDots copied this related excerpt from Rasselais into her commonplace book:

"The present state of thing is the consequence of the former, and it is natural to inquire what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or of the evil that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the study of history is not prudent: if we are entrusted with the care of others, it is not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it."

As you plan your upcoming school year, read again David McCullough's wonderful speech about how we are raising a nation of historical illiterates (and why not? They're illiterate in nearly every field), and what the consequences to that will be, since character is destiny and history is a grand place to learn some grand lessons about character.

Today's Non-Funny Moment

Okay, it was yesterday's nonfunny moment, not today's, and okay, it is kind of funny in that I'm laughing but it's nervous laughter because I don't know what else to do and this is all very strange and I'm not prepared kind of way.

Some of us went to the fair yesterday. I took some of our old kitchen utensils and cookbooks and hung out with Granny Tea at a genuine log cabin circa 1870 where such things were on display for the edification of any visitors. There's also an old schoolhouse, equally genuine, and a tiny and old post-office, equally genuine, and a blacksmith's shop. But that's neither here nor there.

While we were there, Pip took her two youngest siblings strolling through the fair to look at the horses and pigs and chickens and things. At one point she noticed that they seemed to be passing the same two little boys, about 11 or 12 years old, with strange regularity. The two boys were on bikes, but each time Pip and company passed them, they were standing by their bikes and had their heads together in an intense conference of two. Everytime they passed those two boys, they would stop talking and stare at the FYG as our three Progeny walked past. She noted it but didn't think a lot about it until the moment when she and her young charges walked toward the horse barn, passed these little boys again as they were leaving the horse barn, and when Pip and company suddenly decided not to go to the horse barn after all, they turned around to find the boys immediately behind them, obviously having turned around to follow. My three just walked off, and a few minutes later found themselves passing these youngsters yet again.

At this point, one of them plucked up his courage and yelled at my 11 year old daughter, "HEY! You in the green! Would you go with my friend?" My 11 year old daughter had no idea what he was talking about and just looked confused, and said, "Huh?" He pointed at his friend and said, "Would you go with him?" Pip completed the deflation of the poor fellow's ego by laughing (this was also largely nervousness and surprise, nobody meant to hurt anybody's feelings)," and then she ushered her charges away, deciding this would be a good time to find Mother.

The FYG and Boy kept pestering her with questions about what those boys were talking about, what did they mean, and why won't you tell us?" Suddenly, the FYG said, "Ooooh." and Pip reports that her face filled with pink from the neck up, and she turned to her younger brother and said, "Never mind, you don't need to know." Being used to the strange and incomprehensible changeability of girls, he said merely shrugged, sighed, and said "Whatever."

Pip says that they did not see the two young lads again. I told the FYG that the proper response to that question, should she be asked again, is "My father is a crack shot and I am not allowed to 'go with' a boy until I am forty."

Today's funny moment: The Boy begging his sister not to use lip gloss on days when they share a bottle of soda.

Make it From Scratch

The latest edition of the Make it From Scratch Carnival is here, Motherload is hosting! Where else can you find so much variety? We have giant soap bubbles, home-made purses, quick breads, wedding decorations, a headband, rain collecting, and loads more besides.

A Polish Boy doll

This is a Polish boy that I think came from the Rattery. We were wondering whether Krakovianka could tell us what it says on the bottom?

The Echidna; Tastes Great!

Rare Papua Guinea critter may not be quite so rare as previously believed. Tribesman says he didn't know they were rare, and it tasted delicious.

There's other evidence as well in this interesting article.

Reading Aloud

One way we used to fit in extra family read alouds was by Mother reading aloud at lunch.

So I enjoyed this excerpt from St. Benedict's Rule:

The meals of the sisters should not be without reading.
Nor should the reader be
anyone who happens to take up the book;
but there should be a reader for the whole week,
entering that office on Sunday.

Obviously, at the Benedictine Monastary they are not reading the sorts of books we read aloud (A Wrinkle in Time stands out for some reason). At the monastery before reading the group would pray and recite a blessing together, asking a special blessing on the reader, that her reading would bless the listeners.

And let absolute silence be kept at table,
so that no whispering may be heard
nor any voice except the reader's.
As to the things they need while they eat and drink,
let the sisters pass them to one another
so that no one need ask for anything.
If anything is needed, however,
let it be asked for by means of some audible sign
rather than by speech.

IT seems to me this is a fine way to teach courtesy, the gentle act of looking to see what the needs of others may be before filling your own.

In the Benedictine Rule nobody was allowed to 'presume' to ask questions, but in our family Rule this would be quite otherwise. Discussing the book together is the best part of reading it together.

The Benedictine sister performing the reading would 'take her meal afterwards with the kitchen and table servers of the week.' I would fix and eat my own lunch alone as I prepared the childrens' lunch, or I would eat afterward while they cleaned the kitchen. There was no fixed rule for when I did this- except how hungry I was.=)

We didn't use the lunch time reading to take turns practicing our reading. We read during lunchtime to squeeze in one more very good book into our days. To benefit from this, we had to enjoy the reading aloud, so we didn't try everybody's patience with the newest and youngest readers. I remember getting very frustrated listening to the stumbling monologue tones of some of my peers at school as they read aloud our school books. It seemed like such a waste of time when I could read for myself in a split second what took them five minutes to slog through. It seemed humiliating for them, as well. The Benedictine Rule, written some 1500 years ago, provided for that as well:

The sisters are not to read or chant in order,
but only those who edify their hearers.

We can learn a lot from the Dark Ages.

Homemaking books

Here are most of the books I have on homemaking and home living- though by no means all. They are in no particular order. I had most (but by no means all) of my books filed in the home inventory program of MS Works. A couple years ago I just typed in find: home-- and copied and pasted most of what came up. A few didn't belong (The Family Cow) and I think I weeded most of those out (but probably not all).


Living Simply on Less
The Art of Homemaking
The Creative Homemaker
The Hidden Art of Homemaking
The Mother's Book
The Pace of a Hen
Training Our Daughters to Be Keepers at Home
401 Ways to get your kids to work at Home
Emilie's Household Hints
Get More Done in Less Time
Get Your Act Together
Godly Daughter Checklist, by Renee Ellison
Heart and Home
HomeMaking; A Bible STudy for Women at Home
Living More with Less
Living Simply on Less
Meditations for Messies
Organizing Your Home
Polished Cornerstones
Polly's Homemaking Pointers
Sixpence in Her Shoe
Speed Cleaning
The Art of Homemaking
The Hidden Art of Homemaking
Dare To Be A Housewife
Get More Done in Less Time
Heart and Home
Hearth and Home
The Art of Homemaking
The Pace of a Hen
The Stay at Home Mom

The Messies Manual
The Way Home
Training Children Further
Who Says Its a Woman's Job to Clean by Don Aslett (This one helped ME get better organized and I had my children read it)
Books by Mary Carney- about half a dozen short, self published, comb-bound books that I got for a tiny class I was teaching.

A Full Quiver
All the Way Home
Child Training Tips
Dare To Be A Housewife
FaithTraining RAising Kids Who Love the Lord
Family Conspiracy, The
Family Focus on Christ
Her Hand in Marriage
Home Sweet Home
Homemade Business

Letting God Plan Your Family

Natural Healthcare for Your Child
Our Journey Home

Raising a Large Family
Raising a Modern-Day Knight

Reclaiming the Culture

Taming the Money Monster


The Home Invaders
The House and Home, A Practical Book, volume I

The Sound of Music- the real story of the real family. Very Catholic, but a good read for mothers

The Way Home
THE WAY THEY LEARN

What is a Family?

Who Gets the Drumstick- humorous book with good insights- story of a
widow with lots of children marrying a widower with just as many-

On Family Worship
For the Family's Sake
Confessions of a Happily Organized Family
A Woman's Priorities

Between Women of God: The Gentle Art of Mentoring
Country Women, a handbook for the new farmer- homesteading book with
feminist slant, but useful information
Family Focus on Christ
God's Priceless Woman Leader's Guide
Graces and Responsibilities of Christian Women

HomeMaking; A Bible Study for Women at Home
Men of Strength for Women of God ; by F. LaGard Smith
Precious are God's Plans
She Hath Done what she Could
Stepping Heavenward
The House and Home, A Practical Book, volume I
The Wise Woman Knows
What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause
What your Doctor May Not Tell you about Premenopause
Naturally Healthy Woman
Choices - for Women who Long to Discover Life's Best
Spiritual Mothering - the Titus 2 Model for Women Mentoring Women
A Way of Seeing
A Mother's Legacy

Yes, I have read all but a couple of these.

Books and Character Revisited

I posted about this back in 2005, and it was very popular. You can read the series beginning here. You can read the shorter summary below.

I think the bad examples in literature are so important, particularly to my children, at least as important as the good examples. My younger children live somewhat sheltered lives, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm not ashamed of it. Sometimes that's been deliberate, and then at other times it's not been something we could change (we once lived in a town of 299 people, and currently don't live in a town at all). That's okay, but I do want to look ahead to a time where my children will have more responsibilities, a time my sons in law will be able to trust their wives' wisdom, and my daughters will be aware enough of the world so that they can wisely do him good and not evil, at a time when our daughters may not have parents or husbands at all. Innocence is good in small children. Ignorance, on the other hand, is not the same as innocence nor is it the same thing as 'purity of heart.'

An old preacher used to tell us that a smart person learns from his mistakes, but a wise person learns from other people's mistakes. It's even better, I believe, if my children can first learn from mistakes of characters in books rather than from people who could really harm them, whether physically or emotionally.

Thus, I was actually grateful for the sneaky, sly character of Lucy Steele in Sense and Sensiblity, as it gave me the chance to warn my children gently of a type of woman who does exist in real life without actually gossiping about anybody we know or having to wait until somebody like her had threatened my girls' happiness.

Of course, I am not recommending gratuitously evil examples or literature with no good examples at all. But I do suggest that many Christians are too quick to dismiss valuable books because they expect their books, unlike real life or the Bible, to have only well behaved, admirable human beings in them.

It surprises me that this sort of thing needs to be said, but sadly, my experience indicates it does. Using the real people your children see around them, your neighbors, friends, co-workers, and the people you go to church with, as 'bad examples' does not encourage virtuous character development in your children. It encourages young children to gossip. It produces pharisaic attitudes, self-righteous, priggish and smug attitudes of superiority to others. It results in a marked lack of charity and a critical old womanish spirit most unsuitable in anybody, but particularly in children.

Sometimes the children themselves bring something up, at which point the appropriate response is not, "Well, she's always dressed like a tramp so it's no surprise she attracted a boy like that and ended up the way she did." It's something more like, "Yes, she needs a lot of prayers. I wonder if they might need a package of diapers?" You might perhaps add a more charitable explanation, if you think your children are able to process it, "Girls without a daddy in the home really miss that attention, and it's important when you are a man that you be the sort of Daddy who loves his children and stays with them, and its important for you to look for the sort of man who sticks to his commitments. A daddy who leaves his family causes his children all sorts of problems."

Better still to read a good book and hash out the biblical response there- before you meet the real life examples of the fallen world in which we live.

Handwriting Analysis

I did that online handwriting analysis a while back, and mainly all it did was convince me that handwriting analysis is kind of like astrology. Don't some of these things seem contradictory to you? Some of them are perfectly true (I'm not telling you which ones, you'll have to guess). But that, again, is like astrology. It's vague enough or general enough it could be true of anybody. So what does this really tell you about me?

DeputyHeadmistress has a healthy imagination and displays a fair amount of trust. She lets new people into her circle of friends. She uses her imagination to understand new ideas, things, and people.


DeputyHeadmistress is constantly disappointed when trying to reach success. She works very hard, perhaps harder than most, then just before succeeding, something happens that keeps her from success. Often, DeputyHeadmistress changes to a second project just before the first one is finished, thus failing to complete the first project. Sometimes she changes because she feels she needs a different challenge. DeputyHeadmistress feels dejected. This feeling relates to her failures. This trait is very important in a working situation and in a relationship. She must be handled in a very special way to get the most work from her or to make a relationship last. Concerning this trait, personality modification is available to change her life.




DeputyHeadmistress is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect her ego when she feels hurt. She pokes people harder than she gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny. They can also be harsh, bitter, and caustic at the same time.


DeputyHeadmistress's true self-image is unreasonably low. Someone once told DeputyHeadmistress that she wasn't a great and beautiful person, and she believed them. DeputyHeadmistress also has a fear that she might fail if she takes large risks. Therefore she resists setting her goals too high, risking failure. She doesn't have the internal confidence that frees her to take risks and chance failure. DeputyHeadmistress is capable of accomplishing much more than she is presently achieving. All this relates to her self-esteem. DeputyHeadmistress's self-concept is artificially low. DeputyHeadmistress will stay in a bad situation much too long... why? Because she is afraid that if she makes a change, it might get worse. It is hard for DeputyHeadmistress to plan too far into the future. She kind of takes things on a day to day basis. She may tell you her dreams but she is living in today, with a fear of making a change. No matter how loud she speaks, look at her actions. This is perhaps the biggest single barrier to happiness people not believing in and loving themselves. DeputyHeadmistress is an example of someone living with a low self-image, because their innate self-confidence was broken.


In reference to DeputyHeadmistress's mental abilities, she has a very investigating and creating mind. She investigates projects rapidly because she is curious about many things. She gets involved in many projects that seem good at the beginning, but she soon must slow down and look at all the angles. She probably gets too many things going at once. When DeputyHeadmistress slows down, then she becomes more creative than before. Since it takes time to be creative, she must slow down to do it. She then decides what projects she has time to finish. Thus she finishes at a slower pace than when she started the project. She has the best of two kinds of minds. One is the quick investigating mind. The other is the creative mind. Her mind thinks quick and rapidly in the investigative mode. She can learn quicker, investigate more, and think faster. DeputyHeadmistress can then switch into her low gear. When she is in the slower mode, she can be creative, remember longer and stack facts in a logical manner. She is more logical this way and can climb mental mountains with a much better grip.



DeputyHeadmistress will be candid and direct when expressing her opinion. She will tell them what she thinks if they ask for it, whether they like it or not. So, if they don't really want her opinion, don't ask for it!


DeputyHeadmistress will demand respect and will expect others to treat her with honor and dignity. DeputyHeadmistress believes in her ideas and will expect other people to also respect them. She has a lot of pride.


DeputyHeadmistress is moderately outgoing. Her emotions are stirred by sympathy and heart rendering stories. In fact, she can be kind, friendly, affectionate and considerate of others. She has the ability to put herself into the other person's shoes. DeputyHeadmistress will be somewhat moody, with highs and lows. Sometimes she will be happy, the next day she might be sad. She has the unique ability to get along equally well with what psychology calls introverts and extroverts. This is because she is in between. Psychology calls DeputyHeadmistress an ambivert. She understands the needs of both types. Although they get along, she will not tolerate anyone that is too "far out." She doesn't sway too far one way or the other. When convincing her to buy a product or an idea, a heart rendering story could mean a great deal to her. She puts herself in the same situation as the person in the story, yet she will not buy anything that seems overly impractical or illogical. DeputyHeadmistress is an expressive person. She outwardly shows her emotions. She may even show traces of tears when hearing a sad story. DeputyHeadmistress is a "middle-of-the-roader," politically as well as logically. She weighs both sides of an issue, sits on the fence, and then will decide when she finally has to. She basically doesn't relate to any far out ideas and usually won't go to the extreme on any issue.


People that write their letters in an average height and average size are moderate in their ability to interact socially. According to the data input, DeputyHeadmistress doesn't write too large or too small, indicating a balanced ability to be social and interact with others.

Here's something it tells you about me. It's a slow blogging day because my brain is befuddled and I found this in my archives of saved drafts. =)