More Nutrition Facts, circa 1929

'Food Materials' can be classified into the following categories:

1. Fuel Foods- [basically fats and starches]
2. Foods for growth and Repair [meats, eggs, cheese and grains]
3. Mineral Salts: Salts of iron, or lime, of sodium, and many others. They are found pretty well distributed thru all of our food, some foods being rich in one and some in another.
Iron salts, for instance, are espeically abundant in oatmeal, whole wheat flour, raisins, etc.....
4. Vitamines.- Food substances not completely understood but which are vitally necessary to the normal grown and health of every child.
(a) Those found in fresh fruits and leafy vegetables such as cabbage, spinach, lettuce. Tomatoes are also rich in this vitamine.
(b) Those found in milk and diary products.
(c) Those found in the cereals and grains.
We do not understand completely what the vitamines do for us but we do know that some of them have a very important influence on growth. It has been shown, for instance, that young rats fed an abundance of fat, sugar, protein and water but with vintamines of a certain type extracted from this food, will live but cease growing entirely until the special vitamine is restored.

The lack of certain other vtamines will produce very definite diseases- an example of this is scurvy- a disease from which sailors and explorers used to suffer frequently. It is now occasionally seen in badly fed young children. It is caused by the absense of the vitamine contained in fresh fruit and leafy vegetables. It can be cured by treating the sufferer with doses of fresh orange juice or tomato juice, either fresh or canned.

...Tradespeople and advertising specialists are beginning to make capital of the term vitamine. Yeast, for instance, is widely advertised and recommended as a vitamine food. It is perfectly true that yeast contains vitamines but there is no logical reason why anyone should resort to yeast for those substances when they are found in such abundance in attractive foods like oranges, lettuce, cabbage, milk, butter, cereals, etc. A good mixed diet contains all the vitamines any child needs, and in the best possible form.

Anybody else reminded of the tomato diet of the recuperating soldier in The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton Porter?

The cult of the expert grates on our modern nerves, although often we are just as inclined to worship at that alter. But there is something exciting here, hiding behind the, to our eyes, quaint phrasing, outdated ideas, and oracular pronouncements from on high.

Think of what this new discovery of 'vitamines' meant to the average mother. IN Home Education by Charlotte Mason, she writes, "Scientific truths, said Descartes, are battles won; describe to the young the principal and most heroic of these battles; you will thus interest them in the results of science..." This discovery that there were such things as 'vitamines' lurking in our foods, hitherto unknown, but always doing their work of building, repairing, and supporting things necessary to health must have been nearly as electrifying as van Leeuwenhoek's discovery of the wee beasties he called 'animalcules.'
Behind every vitamin pill lies a series of those battles won in a laboratory somewhere, sometime.

1929 Summer Lunch for the School Child

Yesterday we looked at the recommended summer breakfast for a school child 7 to 12 years old. Today we'll do lunch.=) Only in the table they call this dinner, and the evening meal is supper, which is still the way it is around my county. You can call the mid-day meal lunch, but calling the evening meal dinner marks you as a foreigner, somebody not from around here, and in some people's eyes anyway, as just a wee bit snooty.
This information comes from a book published in 1929, and the meal table specifically comes from "Diet for the School Child, No. 2. Federal Health Education."

Lamb stew, with vegetables, small portion
Squash or string beans, 2 to 3 tbsps
Bread and butter, 2 to 3 slices
Bread pudding, 2 tbsp
----------------------
Chicken with rice, small portion
Mashed potato, 2 to 3 tbsps
Dandelion greens, or boiled onions, 2 to 3 Tbsp
Stewed fruit, 2 to 3 Tbsp
Bread and butter, 2 to 3 slices.
---------------------------------
Bacon, 1 slice.
Poached egg and spinach
Spaghetti with tomatoes, 2 to 3 Tbsp
Green peas or string beans, 2 to 3 Tbsp
Bread and butter, 1 to 2 slices.
------------------------
Rice pudding, 1 to 2 Tbsp
Hamburg steak, 1 small ball
stewed potatoes, 2 to 3 tbsp
New beets and beet-top greens, 2 to 3 tbsp
Stewed fruit, 2 to 3 tbsp
Bread and butter, 2 to 3 slices
----------------------------
Fish or clam chowder, 3/4 cup, or egg.
New beets or spinach, 2 to 3 tbsp
Boiled potato.
Bread and butter, 2 to 3 slices
Custard or junket, 1/2 cup
---------------------------

(erratic capitalization of tbsp and Tbsp is my own)
One or two things strike me about these meals. One is that the amount of bread and butter seems huge to me, but the amount of pudding and vegetable servings rather small (2 or 3 tablespoons of pudding?). The other is that there is no suggestion a child might turn up its nose over beet or dandelion greens. I cannot see one of today's publications recommending new beets or spinach for a child between 7 and 12.

On another page in the book, it is recommended that parents make sure the children get the right number of calories for their age, but the writer assures parents that no tedious caclulations are necessary since they can just appeal to an 'excellent table..... appended here [and] worked out by Dr. Emmett Holt, the eminent specialist in child feeding." Milk is very important, and: "Every child 6-14 should drink at least a pint a day. Dr. Graham Lusk, the great nutrition specialist, says that no family of 5, father, mother and three children- should buy any meat at all until they are regularly using 3 quarts of milk each day. "No other food can take the place of milk," says the Federal Bureau of Health Education. "Milk should not be given too cold; warm milk is more easily digested. If children rebel against drinking milk alone it may be given in the form of cocoa, custards, milk soup, etc. Where it is impossible to get fresh milk, dried or evaporated milk may be used tho they are not so good.... After milk, eggs, simple cheese and cereals are also preferable to meat. A very small piece of meat or fish once each day is the most required by any child."
In fact, if there is enough milk and eggs in the child's diet, 'very little meat need be given before the 7th year" and after the 7th year two ounces of meat daily is adequate until 10, and about 3 ounces a day until 14 years of age.

Other interesting recommendations:

darker, coarser breads are always to be preferred
There is little danger of feeding a child too many vegetables.
Potatoes, baked, boiled or mashed, should be given every day.
Lettuce, spinach, beet greens, carrots, cooked onions and all the dried vegetables should be generously served. Cabbage is very wholesome, but most children need to have it cooked.
Many children find corn and cucumbers difficult to digest so these had best not be used till after the 12th year.
Fresh fruit should be very ripe; uncooked bananas should not be eaten before the 10th year. All the simple stewed fruits are good. Excessive amounts of sugar should be avoided. A small amount of simple candy, like milk chocolate, may be eaten directly after a meal.
Children 5-7 years should not have more than 1 tablespoon of sweets in addition to sugar in the diet.
Those 7-12 not more than 2 Tablespoons
Substitute butters are not injurious, but it is better not use to them with children [sic] as they contain little or no vitamins. Olive oil and small amounts of nuts are wholesome. Children should not be given cooked fat, except bacon, as they are harder to digest.
All fried foods and pastry should be avoided.

And what strikes me about all this is that it is a mix of what, from our perspective, looks like quite sensible, practical advice and utter nonsense, and the thing that strikes me about that is that very likely fifty years from now my grandchildren or great-grandchildren will be saying exactly the same thing about what we write.

On a positive note -

- that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich article was very interesting and actually contained more history than the two other essays we read for class today. She documented the household items of three colonial women and used this information to discuss how their daily and seasonal housekeeping routines would have been structured. Good stuff. It just didn't need the heavily condescending introductory comments.

Sadly, many people in my class thought it was a boring essay *because* of all the low-key archival documentation she did, with almost no flights of fancy. And c'mon, you've got to face it: the kitchen routines of a colonial women are nothing to the relationships between Indian women and English men, especially when these relationships are described in a lurid manner.

Whoops. My positive note has gone slightly sour.

What 's In My hand Fridge

A few days ago the HG made some dough for something like pirogies. The filling was delicious mixture of ricotta cheese and herbs. The wrapping, which had to be boiled, was tedious to work with for a family of nine, and not as tender as one might like. She got frustrated with the process, made something more like lasagna with it and put the rest of the dough in the fridge.

Tonight she got it out, rolled it out to about 1/8 of an inch in thickness and topped it with all kinds of herbal goodness, savory, flavory herb- she says it was just oregano, parmesan cheese, and garlic powder (she sprinkled it liberally on top and then rolled it down on the top of the crust. It was divine). She baked this flat bread and we had it for supper with cheese and sausage.

Yesterday I looked in the fridge and found a couple cups of browned ground beef, some carrots, celery and radishes that had been a relish tray on Sunday and were now getting, well, rather depressed, some cold cooked brown rice, half an onion, and Bragg's Amino Acids. We had a delicious stir fried rice dish that the Equuschick put together with a can of water chestnuts added. I have taken leftover fried rice and made spring rolls or egg rolls with it, but the Equuschick's fried rice is so delicious I do not think there are any leftovers.

Odds and ends of leftover bits and pieces of this and that can also be used in:
Pot pies
Soups
Pasta salads
Pocket sandwiches or pasties (make biscuit dough, roll it out and cut it in circles. Inside each circle you can put some filling made of any combination of cooked veggies, cheese, meat, and perhaps a spoonful of something like gravy, cream soup, or cottage cheese.
Crepe fillings ( and crepes freeze very well)
1/2 an apple can be diced, tossed with cinnamon and sugar and baked or microwaved. Top it with a crumb topping and call it cobbler.


What do you have in your fridge? Want help figuring out what to do with it? Leave a comment and we'll see what we can help you come up with.

Other frugal tips here, at Crystal's blog.

1929, Sample Summer Breakfasts for Children 7-12

From _The Volume Library_ by Abram Royer Brubacher (1929) (a concise, graded repository of practical and cultural knowledge designed for both instruction and reference)-
These are sample breakfasts for a school aged child, as 'recommended by Federal Health Education':

Oatmeal, 1/2 to 3/4 cup, with milk
Stewed fruit, 2-3 tablespoons
Bread and butter, 2- 3 slices
Milk to drink, 1 glass
-------
Force or cornflakes, 1 cup with milk
Egg
Brown bread adn butter, 2 to 3 slices
Milk to drink, 1 glass
------------
Hominy, 1/2 to 3/4 cup, with milk
Toast and butter, 2 to 3 slices
baked banana, 1
Milk to drink, 1 glass
-------------
Cornmeal, 1/2 to 3/4 cup with syrup
scrambled egg, 1
bread and butter, 2-3 slices
Milk to drink, 1 glass
----------------
Shredded wheat, 1 with milk
Corn bread and butter, 2 pieces
Apple sauce, or stewed pears, 2 to 3 tablespoons
Milk to drink, 1 glass

Hygeine is also very important. Every child of school age should have at least two warm body baths each week and should be taught to sponge quickly to the waist each morning in cool water- as cold as can be born....

Wash hands before each meal.

Brush teeth at least twice a day, using a 'simple paste powder' once each day.

"The hair should be washed with warm soap and water every two or three weeks. Dirty hair may readily carry germs of disease.

Every school child should have clean underclothing at least twice a week.

A child of ten requires at least ten hours of sound sleep every night...

And the "Rules of the Health Game," as helpfully provided by the Federal Bureau of Education,

should hang in every shool room and home where there are growing children:-
1. A full bath more than once a week.
2. Brushing the teeth at least once every day.
3. Sleeping long hours, with windows open.
4. Drinking as much milk as possible, but no tea or coffee.
5. Eating some vegetables or fruit every day.
6. Drinking at least four glasses of water a day.
7. Playing part of each day out of doors.
8. A bowel movement every morning.

The parent and the teacher must here work together to see that the child carries out to the very best of his ability every rule of the health game. Such health habits established in childhood will be automatic long before adult life is reached.

My newest sewing project

The FYB has a new shirt!
I'm so happy with how it turned out.
I'd never made a collar before this and I was so terribly vexed and confused while I did it.

Mother bought this fabric at a yard sale for 2 dollars; there were 18 yards of it!
I have made the Head Girl a 6 tier skirt, the Cherub a tiered jumper, and this shirt for the boy, all from it! And there's still a decent amount of the hideous stuff left.

Of Fears, Tears, and Roosters

The Kansas Milkmaid fell down:

“I have fallen down. It is so hard to even speak.”

These two sentences capture the breadth of emotions I experience. Yes, I have fallen down heaving tears unable to speak due to terror and fear of what is going on in my life. What does my future hold? Will I have the strength to carry on? Will my enemies feast on my life like vultures pecking at decaying road kill? How will I provide for my six children? Will we have a home? Does the farm have a future? What is going to happen to me?

Falling down is not a bad thing. It is a requirement for being broken and contrite. You see, I believe we all fall down. We fall down before something. Many days I fall down before the god of fear and despair. It is not a good place to be. Laying flat before this tyrant giant can eat away a person’s sanity and strip one of peace.

Why should I fall down before the enemy in fear when there is another option? As a Christian I have the opportunity in the midst of trials to fall down before a great and glorious God. Yes, God’s beauty still shines in harrowing darkness.

But she's getting back up by the grace of God, and holding on to her sense of humour (and that's not all):

All I can say is if you want to milk cows and run a dairy farm, you need the patience of Job and understanding of God. Oh, and say lots of prayers. Finally, don’t forget your shoulder length glove for good measure.

And she's finding parables in dead roosters, lessons we call all learn:

Walking through the yard here on Fuller Farms enriches my life. I wrote recently about seeing the sunrise and baby chicks following their mamma. I love to write about the beautiful, the serene. But you see, I am the kind of gal that believes in order to live an abundant full life, you have to look at harsh realities too. Why? Well, there is much to learn about the nature of God in the harrowing experiences of farming too.

Enrichment doesn’t always mean that a stroll through the barnyard is pleasant. Many people want just the good stuff in life. They don’t want to deal with reality. I suppose that is why they try so hard to hide their rather large blemishes.

Today I walked through the yard and noticed the smell of decay. It was an old rooster who didn’t survive repeated attacks from members of his very own flock. It is an unpleasant smell and brings sadness to my heart. I really rather liked that rooster.
Do you realize I am responsible for the rooster’s death? You see as an overseer of the flock it is my responsibility to make sure there are not too many roosters. Or, I have to ensure that the roosters are all getting along. It is easy to get preoccupied on this farm with milking the cows and forget my other responsibilities.

I so appreciate Christine's honesty about how tough farm life is. It's rewarding, yes, but it's not all green grass and flowers blooming in sunshine.

And I so appreciate her sharing her struggles and her reminders of how to face those struggles.

Will Loaf for Food

Employer: Sorry- we're not hiring right now. We don't have enough work to keep you busy.

Applicant: I don't mind that. It takes surprisingly little to keep me busy.

~Samuel Stannard in a 1976 Saturday Evening Post

Paper Casting

A couple people asked for directions for the papercasting we did here. Here's how we did it:

Make sure your mother has an older friend who is seriously into crafting and thinks you are doing her a favor if you let her drive thirty miles out to your house to teach you and your friends how to make paper casts. She's so excited to do this that she even supplies all the materials except the picnic table, a few of the molds, and the water.

Have a few cute clay cookie molds or plastic candy molds (such as Wilton makes) on hand.

Add children.

And that's it. Really quite easy, once you know how.

However, now that we do know how, I'll tell you how we hope to do it another time, when my mother's friend isn't paying for all the supplies and driving out to supervise.

You need a dish pan, bucket, washtub, or large bowl to hold the water and the paper pulp.

You need a sieve- we had, I think, about four sieves for ten people and this worked out fine. She went to the dollar store and bought a couple of large, cheap plastic ones, and these worked great.

You need the molds. We had clay cookie molds, some clay molds actually designed for paper casting (our local craft store discontinued the line, and I picked up the 20 dollar items for five), and some small baking pans. We used plastic candy molds and small shaped baking tins (they were a bit harder to use) We also had one of those tupperware jello molds where you can change out the shape (see picture). We just used the little discs with the shapes. These worked great for littler people and The Cherub (obviously, you use the back side of the discs for papercasting). Basically, anything you could use to stamp a design or mold a design in play dough you can use for paper molding.

You need your paper pulp. My mother's friend bought a large bucket of paper casting from a place in her area that makes crafting paper. You can make your own by just tearing up sheets of paper and putting them in the blender with water- you make a 'slurry,' which looks about as thick as watery potato soup. We're going to try that next time. You can also add a bit of drier lint for extra texture and strength.

I've looked up several 'how-to' sites online, and they all make the next step a little more complicated than what we did. No doubt there is something just bit more aesthetically pleasing in the end if you take all those extra steps and care, but we didn't and we're happy with the results.

We had the paper pulp and water in dishpans. We used a sieve to scoop out some water and pulp, and then we plopped it down over or into our molds- do this step over the dishpan of water, because some of the paper and water will slop off. Then play pat-a-cake with your mold- pat it, slap it, push at it with the palm of your hand, pushing the water out. You can do this step over the dish pan as well, but we just did it over the weeds in the yard (we have weeds instead of grass). Just keep doing this until no more water comes out. If you have any bare spots or thin places you can just add more slurry and pat again, much like patching up a pie crust. You can use a sponge to press out the water, but you have to remember to keep wringing out the sponge. I have a couple clay cookie stamps with handles, and I found that these worked best for me if I first held them upside down, stamp side up and pressed the slurry down over the stamp with my hand, and then, once it was fairly dry, I turned it stamp-side down and pressed the stamp covered in paper-casting into a sponge a few times. These required some care to peel them off, but they were my favorites when they turned out.

Most of the directions I found said to let the paper cast dry in the mold, and so you needed to spray the mold with oil or dust it with baby powder, but we carefully peeled the casts off or out of the molds while they were still wet and set them on a towel to dry. NO doubt the lines are sharper if you let it dry in the mold, but we could not have all used the favorite molds if we had done it that way.

After carefully lifting your cast off the mold, set it down to dry- on a screen is best so air can circulate all around. They take anywhere from one night to two or three days to dry, depending on how thick your casting and whether they are drying on a screen or a towel.

Once dry you can trim the edges and paint, color with chalks, or decorate in some other fashion as you think best. They can be used on cards, as gift tags, as ornaments, or attached to wooden plaques and hung on the wall.


Links:

This site tells how to make your own molds using charms or jewelry you like and polymer clay. It also has a recipe for a small batch of paper pulp using 15 sheets of 'Kleenex' type tissue paper. They suggest dusting the molds with baby powder in order to get the pulp out more easily and I might try that next time.

This site tells how to make your own paperpulp using junk mail and then how to make paper casts using rubber stamps and plain cheap toilet paper.

Ephemera or Scraps

I begin to suspect, darkly, that we have far more than 6 or 7 thousand books. We are not even 1/3 of the way through the history books, the six bookcases of classic literature have not even been touched, few of the picture books are added, none of us have started on the science shelves, the art, music, fairy tale, and poetry bookcases haven't even been dusted in forever, let alone catalogued, and while I have completed four full bookcases from the downstairs, I have more than that left to list, just in my bedroom alone. And we are at 3500 plus books.


Most of the 'vintage' books to add are my responsibility because most of them live downstairs. And many (though not all) of them come from my packratting family, and going through them is something like looking through a series of Chinese puzzles or Russian nesting dolls. There are notes inside that are fun to read. There are names of the grandparents, great-grandparents, and great uncles who owned the books. And there are sometimes scraps of interesting articles or handwritten notes that I have to stop and read, because I cannot just toss them aside.

Inside the book

General history of civilization in Europe

(this edition published in 1896, written by Guizot) I seem to have hit a storehouse of such ephemera. Or maybe just a dusty attic. I have a scrap of a page from an 1863 publication called 'The Child's Paper,' which seems to have been the sort of maudlin Victorian sort of Sunday School paper to which Mark Twain reacted so violently. There is a card with a picture of 'D.L. "Bob" White,' who was running for councilman at large, possibly in Chicago, , possibly in the 1890s, but I am not sure as it is undated. There are some handwritten notes for a history test, dated 1902, and an invitation to a lecture by Prof. Baillot on 'The French Language and Literature' (dated 1896), the November, 1896 program for something called the "Joint Institute' of ClearCreek Township, and a scrap from a newspaper. The newspaper's date is not on it, but there is a bit of an article about a stage-coach robbery, and some local politicking that I believe was roughly about the time of the Spanish-American war. On the back is an exam of the sort I think was popular with Chautauqua societies, and it includes a question about the 1860 election and the 'open door policy' in the Philippines (which Wikipedia places at around 1898).

According to Wikipedia,

"Ephemera is transitory written and printed matter, not intended to be retained or preserved. The word derives from the Greek, meaning things lasting no more than a day. Some collectible ephemera are advertising trade cards, airsickness bags, baseball cards, bookmarks, cigarette cards, greeting cards, letters, pamphlets, photographs, postcards, posters, stock certificates, tickets, and zines. Decks of personality identification playing cards from the war in Iraq are a recent example.

In library and information science, the term ephemera also describes the class of published single-sheet or single page documents which are meant to be thrown away after one use. This classification excludes simple letters and photographs with no printing on them, which are considered manuscripts or typescripts. Large academic and national libraries and museums may collect, organize, and preserve ephemera as history."

I think I come a long line of people mistakenly under the impression that they lived and moved and had their being in large academic libraries and museums.

In Which the Zeus Dog Is Learned in Human Comforts

The Equuschick's dog child, having as he does a head that averages about 10 lbs. and that's when he's on a diet, has always preferred to rest the massive home of his colossal brain on anything that will support the weight. He can often be found with his head on a stack of books, a box, a brick, etc. He is not particular.

Until it is time to go to bed with The Equuschick.

By his keen powers of observation he has discovered real pillows. He observes that his Alpha always uses one, and as he sees himself as superior to the Donovan dog, he has felt entitled to the use of a real pillow at bedtime since Donovan has joined the pack.

Generally, The Equuschick doesn't mind, because she has two pillows, and as long as she is moderately comfortable she has no objection to Zeus laying his massive head next to her own, because it is a warm head and a soft head and it smells of comfort and affection.

The Equuschick likes her pack, as a general rule, and the three of them, the girl, the big dog, and the little dog, sprawl all over the bed every which way, with arms and legs and paws and wet noses all in a pile, like the puppies do in baskets.

Generally, The Equuschick's greatest cause of discomfort when she shares the pillows with the Zeus Dog is that he breathes too loudly in her ear. But she feels that this is a common affliction in couples, and no relationship is perfect.

There are times, however, when The Equuschick, for whatever reason, decides to keep her pillows to herself. Her back is sore, or her neck, and the point is, she IS The Alpha, so she doesn't have to share the pillows if she doesn't want too.

The Zeus Dog, at times, finds this difficult. He has learned too well over the past three years that, however rarely his Alpha draws the line, when it is drawn, it is drawn, and there is no point in outright resistance.

But he is depressed and rather piqued that he doesn't get a pillow, so he makes a point of resting his massive head on The Equuschick's ribs instead.

The Equuschick, alas for him, is rather unconcerned, because The Equuschick's ribs aren't comfortable enough for a head to rest on long, so it is only a matter of time before the Zeus dog rolls over with a resigned sigh and in the meantime, well, he keeps her warm.

Last night he thought of a new tactic. He thought it was rather clever, but The Equuschick was irate.

He thought he would trying resting his head on The Equuschick's neck.

Discomfort is one thing, you know, but pain and constricted breathing are another.

There was a series of several small but polite, on the Zeus Dog's end, scuffles. He is rather stubborn when he wants to be, but as previously stated, he has learned to be cautious in his dealings with The Equuschick.

When she became quite sure that there was a bruise forming on her neck, she'd had ENOUGH and he was thrown off to the side in disgrace while The Equuschick explained to him in precise terms why it was she would prefer to be alive when she woke up in the morning.

He ended up on the floor again, with one of his disgruntled sighs.

Radish Sculptures

La Noche de Rábanos, a folk festival held in Oaxaca, Mexico on December 23, has to be one of the most unique folk art projects I have ever heard of. It's such an interesting example of using what you have on hand, as well.
It's been going on for over a hundred years, and probably much longer. The story is that in the 1500s a local monk suggested that vendors at a booth would attract more customers if they carved some of their vegetables into more eye-catching designs. You can view a slideshow of radish art from the festival here.

I would guess that in Oaxaca, mothers encourage children to play with their food. =)

In Which the HeadGirl Goes Off to University to Learn Many Things

Some of the reading for tomorrow's women's studies class:
"One of the greatest barriers to an accurate assessment of women's role in the community has been the habit of assuming that what women did was not very important. Housekeeping has long been women's work, and housework has long been regarded as trivial. Laural Thatcher Ulrich shows, however, that housekeeping can be a complex task and that real skill and intelligence might be exercised in performing it."
- from an introduction to an excerpt from one of her books in Kerber & De Hart's Women's America

There. Don't all you housewives wish you'd completed your Ph.Ds so you'd have the credentials to write a paper about this?

Paper molding

These are the paper molds we and another homeschooling family made today. It was quite fun, and as you can see, we made a lot of them. My favorite is the large angel mold.

Grit, PR Article, Conclusion

This is the fifth and final section of a very interesting article on Grit, or strength of character, and how to help our children develop it. The article was originally published in 1891, in the second year of the Parent's Review Magazine, edited by Charlotte Mason:

When a lesson is given, or any task whatever set, complete attention should be insisted upon; no listlessness or trifling should be tolerated; but of course, care must be taken that the strain does not last long, as children are neither physically nor mentally capable of prolonged concentration. The habit, however, of fixing the mind promptly and entirely upon one thing at a time outweighs almost all others in the worth of its moral and intellectual consequences. Weakness of character, vacillation, aimlessness, and inertness cannot go along with it.

The principle underlying these practical suggestions, which are, after all, but few and scattered, is plain and simple enough; it is this- that from the first a child's own efforts, physical, mental, and moral, should be as intimately as possible associated with all that he gains of good and avoids of evil; he is all respects to be treated as an active, independent, and more or less rational agent, so that he may early learn to feel his own controlled will a power in his small world. But perhaps the most important condition of all success in this educational aim remains to be mentioned, and I have kept it purposely to the last. No endeavour to strengthen a child's will and to create self-reliance, energy, and endurance, will succeed if his life be dull and dreary, if half his time he is, what we elders call in our own case, "being bored." He must have things which it is worth his while to gain if he is to make struggles; he must have interests if he is to b eager; he must have plenty of scope for his faculties and activities if he is to exert them; and this scope would be always a little ahead of them. If one half of children's naughtiness and ill-temper comes of dulness, narrowness, and monotony, so does a great part of their weakness and stolidity. Having few things presented to them worth caring for or struggling for, they grow up apathetic and indolent.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

The Paper Punch Lunch

Click on the picture to enlarge.

We had a potluck here Sunday, and that made my husband's lunch pretty easy to prepare, as it is mostly leftovers. Hubby had Monday off. This was Tuesday's lunch, which I have to tell you he forgot to take to work. Sometimes when he does that one of us can take it in to him, but Tuesday that just wasn't possible. Sometimes when he does that, one of the girls just goes ahead and eats it or takes it for her lunch. But that didn't happen this Tuesday. That means' it is now Wednesday's lunch.

What's in it:
Somebody else brought a relish tray to the potluck and then left the vegetables here for us to eat. They were all jumbled together in a container, and I could have dumped them into his lunch compartment in the same way, but it only took me about ten seconds longer to arrange them by vegetable, turning the radishes so their nice red edges show. The vegetable dip is in a small muffin paper, yellow also just for the added touch of color. Dessert is half a slice of éclair cake (a whole slice was too big to close the container, a couple mini snickers left by a guest, and two mandarin orange slices in a purple mini muffin paper.

At the right edge of the main dish compartment we have a few artichoke hearts and some basil pesto for color, and because a pickle is always a nice thing to have in your lunch. The main dish is brown rice topped with creamy poppy seed chicken. I used the craft punch you see in the picture to make several green leaf shapes out of a sheet of nori (seaweed paper) to scatter over the top because I thought the dish needed a dash more green in it. The artichokes are picked artichokes, and there was on small red pepper in the jar and I fished it out and put it on top of the main dish as a garnish.

Color balance is really what I struggle with the most with these lunches, and it's what takes me the most time, too. I am just not very good at it. I often get an entire lunch made in five minutes and then decide it needs more color and spend half an hour scrounging through the fridge and pantry looking for just the right dash of color to add. It would help if I would stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables, but I just haven't done that lately as we have been using up the freezer and pantry stuff, which are now waaaay out of balance and contain a preponderance of fish, beans, banana chips (don't ask) and little else of use.

This is not a genuine bento lunch- bento box lunches should not need to be reheated or kept cold, as poppyseed chicken clearly does. Since my husband works at a grocery store, he has easy access to large coolers, and there is a microwave in the break-room.

The Heloises of the Blogworld

Post their tips every Wednesday over at Rocks in my Dryer. I just realized that a good many of my readers are probably too young to remember Heloise. Oh, well. Head on over there and get some ideas that your fellow bloggers find make the gears of life mesh just a little more smoothly.javascript:void(0)
Publish Post

My Husband's Lunches

SCroll Down for a few Nitty Gritty How-To Tips


Emily said some very nice things I don't deserve (but that doesn't mean I didn't like them) about my husband's lunches, and she asked a couple questions. I love it when people ask questions, because that gives me an easy topic for a blog post! She asks "...do you prepare his lunches the evening before or in the morning, and about how long would you say it takes to fix a meal? "

This is the lunch that prompted that question. Yes, that one took longer than it should have, but I made it at about midnight and the youngest children were all in bed. I had fun with the carrots and cheese. I only meant to cut flower shapes out of some largish carrots. I peeled the carrots, sliced some carrot discs like you would for a salad, then used my tiny flower cookie cutter right in the center of each one. And it left such a perfect flower outline in the center of the uncut circle, that I just had to try using the cookie cutter to slice some flower shaped cheeses to fit inside the carrot scraps- and voila- my scraps became a work of art. It was fun. But you don't have to like the same things I do. I also had fun with the pine tree shaped cheeses against a background of sunset red tobasco sauce with green parsley grass, but the truth is my husband would probably have eaten it just the same if it weren't so pretty, and yours will, too.

On to the questions:

"...do you prepare his lunches the evening before or in the morning"

Yes. Or both. He works days sometimes and other times he doesn't start work until noon (for years he did not go to work until 4 in the afternoon). When he works mornings, I try to fix his lunches the night before. When he works in the afternoon, I usually fix it just before he leaves.

Another good time to fix lunches is while putting away a meal the day before. That's when you can get some good ideas on how to put things together. Sometimes I make his lunches a week in advance, while I am cleaning out the fridge. Little bits of odds and ends can make nice salads, omelette fillings, pot pies, or fried rice dishes. The last two baby carrots, single pickle, lonely piece of cheese, and half a cup of pasta can be put together for a great pasta salad, or maybe you want to make macaroni and cheese and have the carrots and pickle on the side.

Sometimes I do not get his lunch made at all, and posting what I do here is a way for me to keep up with making sure he does get a lunch. For a while I had the girls make his lunches. Other times he buys something at the grocery store where he works.

I don't really have a routine time. I fix it when I think about it, or when putting food away.

How long would I say it takes?

I can do this in fifteen minutes or less. I have done it in five. Of course, the cuteness factor goes down in proportion to the time, but, again, your husband will not really mind. It's like a cherry on his ice cream. Nice, but he's not going to shun the ice-cream just because it has no cherry.

For speed lunches you really want to look at Lunch in a Box. I am not very fast at doing anything. I am not even a slow and steady wins the race sort of gal. I am more like your slow and easily distractable and full of creative brain storms resulting in 29 unfinished projects and 52 messes in any given day sort of gal.

There are things you can do to increase the cute factor while reducing time- cut out several shaped cheeses at once and refrigerate. The heartshaped breads I baked a few days ago, sliced, and saved for several lunches. I keep a small jar of artichoke hearts in the fridge and add one or two to salads and side dishes- this lasts a while and adds a nicely elegant touch without taking more time than it takes to open the jar. I keep the tiny cookie cutters and garnish tools all in the same basket so I can get them out quickly. The right container helps a lot, and I look for these at thrift shops and yard sales. I keep his lunch containers in the same cupboard. Of course, the Progeny don't, so this isn't as successful as one might hope, but since one does not do the dishes or most of the other cooking, one shouldn't complain. One does, but one should not.

Ahem. And this brings us to another point. I do have seven Progeny in this house. But four of them are able bodied, intelligent, capable young women of 24, 22, 18, and almost 17. I do not cook unless I just feel like it. I do little cleaning. I don't even do all my own laundry. I do lesson plans, read alouds, decorating, furniture rearranging, and some light dusting and I complain about the dog hair. I am management. There are enough of them to spread the work around, so it's not like any one of them is imposed on too much- and the youngest two are 11 and 9. The 11 year old made dessert for company tonight. The youngest two do dishes, sweep floors, dust, scrub sinks, take out trash, brush dogs, make beds, pull weeds, water plants, and plenty more besides as well.

When I put dishes in the dishwasher or take them out, I am just being nice. If I do not do those things, somebody else certainly will before the day is over. The only thing that does not get done unless I do it or ask somebody else is my own laundry and cleaning my own bathroom (there are four bathrooms in this house. I am responsible for one). So I have time for this and I like it.

I did make the HM's lunches when we (and the Progeny) were younger and I had less time and fewer capable helpers. They were still quite nice lunches, but I took more shortcuts, made fewer cute shapes (I usually did at least one cheese or carrot shape, because I am like that), and I ALWAYS drew hugs and kisses on his napkins, while relying a lot more on plain leftovers or sandwiches. But you can still do something to make them just a little special.

PBJS? What's his favorite jelly? Keep it on hand. It does not take more time to use strawberry than it does grape. It does cost more money, but if you write "Daddy's Jam" on the jar and don't use it for anything but his sandwich, he'll feel pretty spoiled- at least, my guy would.

Ham and Cheese? Doe he like horseradish or some special mustard? Keep it on hand. It does not take more time to slap horseradish on a piece of bread than it does mayo.

A side salad with cherry tomatoes will look prettier with at least one cherry tomato visible, on top. It doesn't take time to put it on top instead of burying it beneath the lettuce.

Keep a pen in the kitchen near the napkins for writing those love notes on, keep tools near to hand, think about how to pretty up leftovers while you're doing something else (showering, washing dishes), get out his lunch container before you put away the food after lunch or dinner and put some of it directly into the lunch container, and keep one or two small items on hand just for his lunches.

Or do something else that you know he appreciates. Not all hubbies would feel the same about love notes on their napkins, flower shaped carrots, and heart shaped cheeses in their lunch trays. And that's okay.

These things work for me

Make It Yourself

Or, 'The Make it From Scratch' Carnival, yet again. This is always so much fun, so varied, and so interesting. Turn a Chenille bedspread into a very cute and trendy dress. Decorate an office Cubicle. Make some to-die-for waffles. Make a purse. Organize your recipes. Make cool toys for your kids. All this and more right here.

Homeschooling Blog Carnival Here

I had a couple of ideas in mind for a cute theme for this weeks' carnival of homeschooling, but various crises small and large, not to mention just random business, put them right of my mind- or at least out of my time span. I'll save them for another time. So what we have here is the boring edition, or the miscellaneous edition, or the "This is the Order They Came to My Inbox' Edition- so you can see who is early, right out of the box, and who came in five minutes after the bell rang=)

There are almost fifty entries this time, so let's not waste anymore time, but get right down reading what other homeschoolers are saying, and enjoy your online homeschool support group meeting!

Mucking in the Rain at Home Spun Juggling
- This post is about some of the things her daughter has been learning during her internship at the Bronx Zoo.

Scott presents 32 Weird Scholarships Almost Anyone Can Get posted at College and Finance.

Annette Berlin says Scholastic is a well known because of their books, but did you know they also have a website? The site is full of fun and colorful activities for a variety of age groups. Best of all is that the emphasis of the site is making learning fun. She presents Scholastic.com posted at Homeschooling Journey.

The National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) recently published its concerns regarding homeschooling. Alasandra replies and addresses the eight homeschooling concerns educators had and offers eight public school concerns she has. (As an aside, Alesandra, our warmest sympathies to your family on the loss of your cat Whiskers as a result of the contaminated pet food).

HappyCampers presents Sesame Street Got It Wrong posted at Reese's View Of The World.

Get more resources for introducing your child to a foreign language in Raising Bilingual Kids, Part Two at The SeaBird Chronicles


Renae at Life Nurturing Education tells us 'Why I Home School, Reason 2 of 4' and she asks who is responsible for education?

Millionaire Mommy Next Door presents How to Treat Affluenza: Spend Less, Save Our Earth and Live a Happier Life posted at Millionaire Mommy Next Door. Says MMND, "David Wann (co-author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic) encourages us to become historical superheros. We can change our world; save our world. Let's curb our consumption so that our grandkids can read about our generation in their history books with reverence."

HowToMe presents How to Make a Wooden Growth Chart posted at HowToMe because "My Grandparents had a special door frame between the kitchen and dining room. For at least fifty years, their grandchildren would mark their heights at Christmas time. The memory of touching those marks each year is so sweet. We wanted something similar for our home but are aware that moving is part of our lives. After online searches failed to yield a growth chart that could accommodate infants and adults, last for generations, and look pleasant hanging on our wall, we decided to make our own. This is how we made it."

Stephanie says that this article is not directly no homeschooling, but their blog encourages children to ask questions and spend quality time with their parents, which she believes is an important theme in homeschooling. This article is an example of what they can do, and she presents Strawberries: More Vitamin C than Oranges! posted at Moms Hotline.

ChristineMM blogs a friend's 'binder of reminders' to look at for reminders about why it is good to avoid the temptation to enroll her children in school on the days when homeschooling seems challenging and the idea of putting the kids on the schoolbus seems tempting.ChristineMM presents Keeping A Binder Of Reminders posted at The Thinking Mother.

Stephanie presents Running Errands with Kids posted at Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood.

Dawn presents An opportunity for homeschoolers to get involved in beta testing a new homeschool planning site! Homeschool Planit posted at Day by Day Homeschooling.

Maria Marien says, "I am an educator and I had a lot of teaching experiences in different school levels; yet as a mom, I prefer to homeschool my child. I'm aware how much work it's going to be, especially if I intend to create a curriculum from ground up. But I'm willing to invest all my time, my energy, my creativity and my expertise. It's worth it, because it's for my child." She presents A Passerby’s Trail » Blog Archive » Homeschooling: Rethinking our Schools and our Society posted at A Passerby's Trail.

Suni presents Race doesn’t matter posted at EternaLearning Academy.

Tiffany Holley presents Genius Kids … Naturally posted at Life on the Road: Home Business, Homeschool, and Cats!.

Alvaro Fernandez presents The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains posted at Brain Fitness Blog.

An experienced homeschooling mom with a large family shares what she has learned about balancing life and getting "it all" done.Jacci M presents Wise Words From Another Mama posted at The Educational Life.

Here's an entry on why homeschoolers should be concerned about home charter schools.Judy Aron presents Charter Schools And Homeschoolers posted at Consent Of The Governed.

Christian Bachman asks "Do you believe those who tell you that obesity is a big problem? Just recently this has been pushed once again by Scientific American. But this view is not supported by hard facts - only by a majority of experts. And a lot of money in the weight loss industry is at stake!" Christian Bachmann presents Can fat be fit? A review posted at Med Journal Watch

Patti writes about the affliction that seems to hit most kids at one time or another: the dread "I don't wanna do school!" Happily, it's pretty easily solved (most of the time!) with some communication and new skills.

A homeschooling father faces a trial by fire: he has to figure out just what it is his wife does all day, and comes away with greatly enhanced appreciation for his spouse. Tim Power presents A Couple of New Experiences posted at Sometimes I'm Actually Coherent. Awwwwww.

Barb presents The Heart of Harmony - Homeschooling without Feeling Overwhelmed Part One posted at The Heart of Harmony.

Mrs. Ghost reminds herself of why she homeschools. She says it's about 'Evaluating initial goals and reasons to homeschool in response to criticism from others on our decision- reinstilling homeschool achieves the goals we are working toward.'

Turn your child's portfolio into a keepsake for him or her. Learn how at Peewee's Portfolio.


Our Homeschooling Expedition


Mama Squirrel presents Teaching French in the Treehouse posted at Dewey's Treehouse.

Andrea presents Denying Our Gifted Children posted at Notes From A Homeschooling Mom.

Liz asks, "Do all parents have what it takes to be a successful homeschooler? Liz Smith presents To Homeschool or Not To Homeschool: That is the Question posted at Modern Sage Online: New Traditions for Living Well.

Lynn presents Artist Studies posted at Eclectic Education.

Marjorie finds herself unschooling and questioning herself and her lifestyle as the new "school year" begins, in Autumnal Anxiety

Percival Blakeney Academy presents Some thoughts on teaching our kids (and ourselves) about politics and elections in Election Education.

In Planning for the School Year, Tootle's Time
says, "sometimes you need to scale back to meet the educational needs of your
children."

Elena shares her lesson plans for grades 3, 4, 6, and 9 in Elena LaVictoire presents Lives of Loveliness, the loveliness of Lesson Planning posted at My Domestic Church.

Planning, planning, planning! Rebecca, at Today in Faerie School, "describe[s] the "think-think", my newest planning invention, and how I'm going to try to do lessons with a first grader and a fifth grader this year.


Denise asks, "would you like to study "the knowledge of all existing things and all obscure secrets?" That is how Scribe Ahmose described his mathematical papyrus (c. 1650 BC). Try your hand at working a few of Scribe Ahmoseâ's puzzles: Egyptian geometry and other challenges posted at Let's play math!.

Dana presents Homeschool standards posted at Principled Discovery.

Lynn presents Homeschool Government Course in The Wall Street Journal | Homeschool2.0 Blog posted at Homeschool2.0 Blog.

Jocelyn Dixon of Lothlorien has been designing and putting together her own hope chest, and she's decided to write an ebook about it. She'd like some input from her fellow bloggers and homeschoolers. Click here to go see what that's about. Looks fun!
Post URL:

What is the definition of unschooling and does it have room for formal instances of learning? Elisheva Levin presents Not Back-to-School Today! Unschooling, Formal and Informal Learning posted at Ragamuffin Studies.

LostCheerio did not submit a post to the carnival, but I am sharing this one with y'all anyway, because it is just too funny to keep to myself. Do you know the difference between homeschooling a girly girl and homeschooling an ungirly boy? It involves sparkles, among other things. Of course.

NerdMom presents Nerd Family: Free History! posted at The Nerd Family Blog.

At Why Homeschool Henry notes that
many homeschoolers make heavy use of libraries. He writes about the development of libraries in America.

Amanda Dixon at The Daily Planet shares a list of All The Books I Have Read- or at least those she remembers. Keeping a lifetime list of books read is a great idea, and it's never too soon to start.

Jacque Dixon at Seeking Rest in the Ancient Paths wonders How Did The Pioneer Women Do All of This?! She says necessity is the mother of invention.... so she guesses she needs to invent a Unit study on how pioneer women got all of their work done!

Beverly Hernandez says, "After learning about the “New” Seven Wonders of the World , I thought it would be fun to establish a list of the Seven Wonders of the Homeschooling World. I need your help to make the nominations and then vote after the nominations have been gathered. What or who has made an impact on homeschooling?" Go tell her.=)

It's not just America they don't know about....

Many of you have probably seen this highly embarrassing YouTube video about Miss Teen South Carolina. I feel rather sorry for her because it's always hard to be put on the spot like that; on the other hand, she's supposed to be prepared for that type of thing and no matter how flustered you are, it's hard to see how Iraq and South Africa connect with the fact that Americans can't find their country on the map. And speaking of maps, I work at the local library and even if some Americans don't have maps, the library does. All of the staff would be delighted and thrilled to show you where North America is on an atlas. It would be much more satisfying work than looking up the newest horror flick or the latest in a series of badly-written and schmaltzy thrillers.

As to my subject line: I'm not a person gifted in the art of small talk. I'm not very good at it and prefer to sit and listen to people do it rather than participate myself. The early days of the semester are the best times to listen to people chit-chat, just for general reference.

In my Europe 1618-1789 class (a senior-level honors class, so we are supposedly not talking about the deadbeat students who just need a random history credit), it was fascinating to hear students talking about their pre-college history exposure.
So this is what I heard last week:
* "I never really learned anything about Europe."
* "We just covered the same parts of American history over and over again. They were repeated year after year."

Ugh.

Some day I think I'll host a burning all the American history textbooks and all the "world civilization" textbooks. Y'all are welcome to join me.

It just really, really makes me angry: We have thousands of years of rich history behind us -- people who exhibited all kinds of traits: selfishness, selflessness, brilliance, ingenuity, cleverness, bravery, cowardice... all the traits that we admire or despise today. These were not automatons doing only what their times required from them. Their choices were not inevitable. They went through the anguish of decision, the joy of making right choices, the frustration of wrong turns.

All this -- and people can only stutter things about maps and get bored of having American history leftovers warmed up, rehashed, and served to them all over again. It's despicable.

Birth Announcement

Our good friends, David and Sarah Blackstone ( David comments here frequently) would like to announce the birth of their twins, Jeremiah and Eva. They were born Sunday, the 26th, at 2:11 and 2:19!

These are their third and fourth blessings. With their second baby, Sarah was in labor for thirty house. The twins took about 3.5 hours, and weighed in at a very whopping :

 8 pounds, 6 ounces- Jeremiah
8 pounds even, Eva.

Sarah is doing wonderful and is euphoric. David is a very proud papa, and I am sure the twins have two bemused but delighted big brothers.

Hubby's Lunch....

This one was really not quite so orange as it appears- some of the oranges were actually reds, but I am not very good at getting the colors right in photographs. Okay- clockwise starting in the top compartment- to the left we have a carrot slice added for filler, to keep things from sliding. In the small box with the maroon lid there is salsa (red). Green celery in the back and on the side for filler. Burritos with red hot sauce, white cheese trees, and green parsely. A red paper cup full of green spicy edamame nuts. Two heart shaped slices of jalapeno cheese bread with more (green, not black) peppers and cloud shaped slices of cheese on top, and carrots and cheese (made with cute cut-outs) in the back. Salad with carrot flowers and a tiny jar of dressing. The cup on the right fit perfectly on top of the bread, and it contains cottage cheese and mandarin orange slices.

Mandarin oranges are available for .39 a can several times a year at Walgreens, using a coupon. That is the only time we buy them.

Update: Ooops. Yes, you smart cookies all noticed that this is posted by Pip, but it has to be the DHM's post. And I, the DHM, did indeed write the post and take the picture. Pip is my technical assistant. Sometimes she takes the pictures, sometimes I do (in this case, I did), but she is always the one who loads them into blogger for me. Usually, I copy and paste them into a new post of my own- but this time I was in too much of a hurry and had other things on my mind, so I forgot to do that.

Grit, IV, a PR article

Patti linked to this series with some pertinent remarks well worth reading (Patti is a really smart lady). I have not much time this morning and there is a world of good and excellent advice in this next bit, so we'll just look over these two paragraphs:

As regards the mischief and damage which any lively child is sure to do, instead of entirely disregarding it, which would make him selfishly careless, or scolding and punishing, which would make him resentful- seeing that his offense was not intentional- the better plan would be to oblige him always to make what amends he can; let him fetch the cloth to wipe up the water he has spilled, and stop his play to assist in the mending of a broken toy. In little things and in great a child should always be expected to do his utmost to repair injuries done, either to grown people or to companions; this should be made a point of honour with him.

Another important matter is that children should be required to do what little they do, well, or at least as well as they can; they should not be commended for things which cost them no effort, and even in their play they should be expected to take pains. Do not praise a careless scribble or smudge of paint, or some senseless erection of blocks, whenever they are offered to your notice. The child will soon feel that your praise is of little value, that you give it because you take no interest in what he does and have no standard in regard to it. This will diminish his own interest and destroy his belief in himself much more than tardy recognition of merit would do.

We've posted something along the lines of that second paragraph before, and we often get an interesting reaction to that. There are those who read this advice and then get concerned that this is a way of teaching children that love is conditional, that they must work for approval.
Praise is not the same as love. I love my children no matter what they do. I express gratitude for kind intentions. But praise for work well done is conditional.


Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

I have NO Idea where this one comes from....

Books : Peck's bad boy and his pa: Containing a faithful account of the tricks, games and escapades of the very worst boy ever born in America, published in 1883 by C.B. Beach & Co

The illustrations are ugly and slightly vulgar in style. One of them features 'pa' doing some sort of dance while being attacked by bees, and calling on 'Helen Damnation.'

And there it is, sitting on my shelf. I am guessing it must have come home from the Rattery.

Cataloguing the Books

Is a project that goes on, tediously. I'm finding a lot of books published by Grosset and Dunlop or Dunlap, and this is the kiss of death to a book, I think. I did some research (a fancy way of saying I googled) and found that they were book pirates, often reprinting even the title page of a previous publisher without alteration as though it was their own. They used cheap paper, cheap paste, and cheap binding and their books are always browning. But they also were inexpensive at the time, so a lot of the poor and lower middle classes (and, no doubt, struggling young professionals) bought them to fill out their shelves, and one hopes, minds.

Another publisher that reminds me much of Grosset is M. A. Donohue and Company out of Chicago. Another name is Donohue and Henneberry (I love that name). They are the same company. They usually have lovely covers, very pretty designs or artwork, and inside the pages are browning, often brittle, and unpleasant to the touch.

According to this website (where you can see a handful of cover designs):

Donohue bought out Henneberry in 1903 and began using M.A. Donohue & Company imprint. Died 1915. Company continued (to 1960s) at 711 South Dearborn. (DLB 49). This appears not to be entirely correct: in the 1899 Chicago Lakeside directory, Michael A. Donohue is listed as a principal in Donohue, Henneberry & Co. In 1900 and after, there is no entry for Donohue, Henneberry & Co., but in the classified portion of the 1901 directory, the M.A. Donohue & Company is listed under bookbinders at 407-429 Dearborn and described as "successors to Donohue Brothers" while in the alphabetical listing its entry reads "successors to Donohue and Henneberry, publishers, printers and binders."

And according to this Henneberry family website (which apparently gets pestered by lots of people who want to know more about the publisher):

Founded by two bookbinders, Michael A. Donohue (of Cox & Donohue) and William P. Henneberry. At 407-425 Dearborn 1871; first publishing 1879; in 1890 launched series of inexpensive editions of popular novelists, concentrated on libraries (i.e., sets and series). Some plates sold to Lovell in 1890. Did much job printing for competitors in cheap book trade. Donohue bought out Henneberry in 1903. (DLB 49).

And this fascinating page explained for me why so many of my vintage books were published by companies in Chicago. It made me think of Wendell Berry, transportation, railroads, and the march of time.

Charles Scribner and Sons sued them (and I believe won) for copyright infringement over a cookbook which M. Virginia Terhune, the wife of Edard P. Terhune, wrote and published with Scribner's under the name of 'Marion Harland titled 'Common Sense in the Household; A Manual of Practical Housewifery.' Scribners sued :

...Belford, Clarke & Co., printers, publishers, and booksellers doing business at Chicago, Ill., and the defendants Donohue & Henneberry, printers and bookbinders doing business at said Chicago under the firm name of Donohue & Henneberry, well knowing the plaintiff's rights, and intending to infringe said copyrights, at Chicago and else where, without the allowance and consent of the plaintiff, published and sold a work in one volume, issued by them under various titles and with different title pages, and purporting to be edited by different persons, and to be written and compiled by different authors, ( the body of said work, and all the matter contained therein, excepting the title-pages and matters relating thereto, being the same,) said work, consisting of 351 pages, being a compilation of receipts for cooking, treating of the same subjects, and covering the same topics, and adapted and intended for the same portion of the public, as the plaintiff's said book, and being a copy from, and an infringement and piracy of, the plaintiff's said work; that more than 170 receipts contained in said piratical work were copied verbatim et literatim from the said copyrighted work of the plaintiff...

This was all in the 1880s, and to seems that part of Donohue's, et all, defense was that Scribner's couldn't hold the copyright since Mrs. Terhune's husband had not signed her contract, and as a wife she had no right to do business apart from her husband. The judge said he could find no evidence that this was the legal status of a wife in either the state where Mrs. Terhune resided or the one where her publishers lived.

I am not sure this sort of rambling is what the poet meant when she said, "There is no frigate like a book...."

Sunday Hymn Post

Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,
[or Guide me, O Thou great Redeemer…]

Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land.
I am weak, but Thou art mighty;
Hold me with Thy powerful hand.
Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven,
Feed me till I want no more;
Feed me till I want no more.

Open now the crystal fountain,
Whence the healing stream doth flow;
Let the fire and cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through.
Strong Deliverer, strong Deliverer,
Be Thou still my Strength and Shield;
Be Thou still my Strength and Shield.

Lord, I trust Thy mighty power,
Wondrous are Thy works of old;
Thou deliver’st Thine from thralldom,
Who for naught themselves had sold:
Thou didst conquer, Thou didst conquer,
Sin, and Satan and the grave,
Sin, and Satan and the grave.

When I tread the verge of Jordan,
Bid my anxious fears subside;
Death of deaths, and hell’s destruction,
Land me safe on Canaan’s side.
Songs of praises, songs of praises,
I will ever give to Thee;
I will ever give to Thee.

Musing on my habitation,
Musing on my heav’nly home,
Fills my soul with holy longings:
Come, my Jesus, quickly come;
Vanity is all I see;
Lord, I long to be with Thee!
Lord, I long to be with Thee!

Cyberhymnal

That's Weird

For months now Blogger has been telling me I have a comment that needs moderating, but when I go to 'moderate comments,' it isn't there. Or it will tell me I have five comments that need moderating, but I can only see four of them. And tonight, suddenly, there it was- a comment that has been invisible to me, but not to blogger, since February. So I approved it, and it's showing up at this post as the second comment- months after I saw and approved the others that now come after it.

Cue twilight zone music now....

Recipe Carnival- LUNCH!

I chose the Let's Do Lunch theme for purely self-serving reasons. The school year is kicking back up, six of the nine of us are here all day long every day (except for the two days a week we're off doing music lessons, art lessons, nature study, and Shakespeare with another family), three of the nine of us are packing lunches (as are the rest of us one day a week), and lunch is just..... stale. So I wanted some other ideas to perk up the afternoons around here.

I asked on a homeschooling list, too, and I'll be sharing some of those ideas here and there in this carnival. So grab a comfortable seat, pick up your coffee, tea, or water, and start your shopping and menu lists, because we're off to Do LUNCH!

Kathee presents Old Fashioned Deviled Eggs posted at World Famous Recipes. She uses brown mustard, too, which is always a tasty treat.

Homeschooling Mom Jodi was looking around online for ideas and came across the Laptop Lunches website. Even stay at home moms might have fun doing lunchboxes sometimes- one advantage of these is you could put them together in the morning or the night before, when you're doing the lunches for the family members who eat lunch away from home (if, in fact, you do that). Their photo gallery has lots of great
ideas for lunches- run your mouse over the pictures and a little box
comes up with the names of the foods that are in the pictures. If nothing else it will prime the pump for more ideas of what you can do at home.


Bill presents Sausage Pancake Puff posted at Pancake Recipes. These can also be baked in muffin tins, and they look delicious and filling! A keeper for sure.

Homeschooling Mom Kelli suggests lunch shish-ka-bobs, something I've done before as well. Set out plates of cut up fruit, veggies, cubes of cheese and sometimes, meat. With it, put wooden skewers or bamboo shish-kebob sticks (my family does this with pretzels sometimes, and we use pickles and olives too). The children put the goodies on the sticks. The only 'rule' is that they can't load the skewer with one or two favourite items - they must take an assortment.

Thelly presents Toasted Almond Chicken Salad Sandwich posted at Chicken Recipes. Delicious!

Homeschool mom Kelli is very creative. She also suggests having a child use a rolling pin to flatten pieces of bread (kids love it when they get to help). Then spread the flattened bread with peanut butter/raspberry jelly or cream cheese/strawberry jam. Then roll each piece of bread from it's shortest side to make a long roll, and cut into thin slices. These make very pretty and tasty
'pinwheels'.


Diabetic Recipes presents Roasted Vegetable & Feta Sandwiches posted at Diabetic Recipes. We're always looking for a way to get more veggies.

Slow Cooker Recipes presents Slow Cooker Barbecue Beef Sandwiches posted at Slow Cooker Recipes. These look delicious, piquant, tasty, and tangy. Yum.

Kelli also says,

"I save a lot of money by making my own "fast food." I get Bridgeford bread dough from the freezer section of the store and make homemade calzones, "hot pocket" type sandwiches, etc. I especially like the Bridgeford rolls for calzones when I can find it, just take a roll, roll it into a circle, put some grated mozzerella and spaghetti sauce and a few pepperoni slices in the center, fold it, use a fork to make indentations and let rise for a bit and bake. When cool, throw them in gallon size Ziplock bags and freeze til you need them... I do the same thing basically for hot pockets, only I use grated cheddar and bits of chopped ham. I also make homemade burritos out of leftovers and refried beans. Everything goes in labeled bags in the freezer, then all I have to do is get out the requested item, throw it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and lunch is ready. Another thing I do a lot that is very fast and easy is scampi. My kids love shrimp, so I buy the big freezer bags from Costco, throw it in a skillet with a bit of butter, garlic and white wine. It cooks in like three to five minutes and I serve it with instant pudding, carrot and celery sticks and fruit"

Expat Chef presents a funny story that starts with a lunch date and ends with a marriage — to someone else ... and a recipe, of course! Tuscan-style White Bean and Tuna Salad.The Expatriate's Kitchen: A Tale of Two Hearts posted at The Expatriate's Kitchen.

Shawn Lea shares links to the best Road Food- sandwiches from this cookbook available online

Homeschooling Mom Merilee suggests putting together a rotation of ideas for lunches, and serve each of them with plenty of fruit on the side. With this rotating cycle of lunch ideas, you pretty much have your shopping list ready made. Here are some of her great ideas:

pb&j on wheat or turkey and cheese on wheat with carrots, celery, pea pods and hummus on side

refried beans and cheese tortillas with salsa and chips and carrots, etc.

mac and cheese and peas

Tuna salad in wheat pita pocket with veggies on side


Dani presents Picnic-Perfect Pasta Salad posted at Catch the Spoon.

Mama Squirrel presents Small potatoes. And Wieners without Beaners. posted at Dewey's Treehouse.- It sounds delicious and is another great example of improvisational cooking.

Merilee also uses pasta salad and regular salad with tuna and/or kidney beans added in her lunch line up, as well as:

bagel or english muffin pizzas with veggies/salad

tomato soup, veggies, cheese and crackers

any other soup

and leftovers from dinners...

Back in the blogworld,
Stephanie presents Canning Tomato Soup posted at Stop the Ride!. She says she may never be able to eat another bowl of storebought soup again, and I believe it. This sounds fantastic.

Anne-Marie presents Oceans Seasons and an alternative to tuna salad sandwiches posted at A Readable Feast.

Marsha Hudnall presents Healthy Recipe: Peach Stuffed Chicken posted at A Weight Lifted.

Meredith Mathews presents It's Lemonade Day! posted at Lemonade Stand.

Annette Berlin says using real garlic is a lot more trouble than just opening a bottle and pouring out powder, but for some dishes the extra work is well worth it. This is one of those dishes, and she presents Spaghetti with Garlic posted at Frugal Journey.

Chief Family Officer presents Crockpot Portugese Bean Soup posted at Chief Family Officer

Eleisia Whitney presents Roast Beef Salad, Chicken Chili Burgers, and Taco Salad posted at Two Moms in a Blog/In the Kitchen.

Frugal Panda presents How to: Eat Healthy for Cheap posted at Frugal Panda

Arvind Devalia shares his idea for a nutritious ingredient for a quick lunch.

pickel presents Salicylate Free Homemade Apple Sauce posted at My Two Boys.

I was making something like bento boxes for lunches years before I even knew there was such a thing (I made some for my foster sister once in a while when we were in high school in the late '70s, and I made them for my husband when we were dating in the very early 80's. I was very excited when we moved to Japan and I saw just how fun these could really be). Here's one effort, and here's where I tried my hand at making onigiri.


from wee wifey at 2 Fat Leaders we have this fluffy Italian Fritatta which looks quite tasty and good enough to eat.=)

Lunch in a Box is another favorite bento lunch oriented site where I get interesting ideas for lunches.

Lucynda Riley presents Chocolate Syrup from scratch posted at Quietly into the Night.

Homeschooling mom Lani found a website with a list of meals already planned out for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. She uses it to plan her shopping list.

Mansi Desai says "This is an asian recipe with my own Indianized modifications" and presents Cabbage Rolls and Salsa posted at Fun and Food.

Lionel at Lookin' At Cookin shares Ham and Swiss Stuffed Burgers, which he says are a different kind of burger with some of the add ons on the inside.

cehwiedel shares an easy grilled pork chop recipe with Oriental pizzaz: Pork Chops with Plum Glaze - New Recipe Posted posted at Kneadle Work.

That's it for this week- enjoy your lunch! Thank you all so much for submitting your recipes! Thanks to everybody for reading as well, and please be sure to pass on the link to this carnival to all your friends and readers. Let me know if you submitted a recipe and don't see it here, or if there is a problem with any of the links. Happy cooking and eating!

Next week we'll be perusing recipes at the Expatriate's Kitchen. Submit your recipes through the very convenient blog carnival doohickey or to recipe.carnival@gmail.com.

A Hole in the Universe

Scientists have discovered what they think to be a very large hole in the universe. It is not a black hole, it is just a large space full of- nothing. This reminds me of the Neverending Story, although probably the Nothing in Neverending Story was more like a real black hole than this empty place.

Poetry Scrap

Pain has been, and grief enough, and bitterness and crying,
Sharp ways and stony ways I think it was she trod;
But all there is to see now is a white bird flying,
Whose bloodstained wings go circling high- circling up to God!

~Margaret Widdemer, as quoted in Bess Streeter Aldrich's A White Bird Flying

Cultural Illiteracy Indeed

Granny Tea substitute teaches from time to time, and recently she taught the local kindergarten class. She thought they needed a bit of downtime during the day, so she read them a story (she always reads a story to the classes where she substitutes).

In her story the wind blows through the yard, making the apron on a clothesline move in the breeze. And Granny Tea stopped and thought that maybe these young children of post-modern parents might not know what a clothesline was, so she started to explain it. The children did know what a clothesline was. A couple of the children actually have on in their yards and their mothers dry their clothes on it.

What they did not recognize was an apron. Not one of them knew what one was.

Grit, III, a Parents' Review Article

Part II is here.

Mrs. James Ward has been discussing how a previous generation once instilled a certain resolution of character that she believes her own generation is failing to pass on to its children. She now moves forward to some practical instances of just what grit is and how we can see to it our children get it:

To make clear what is meant it will be worth while to instance a few practical applications. Le us start with a baby of a year old or under; it may learn something both of self-control and self-reliance by being allowed to do all that it it can for itself, instead of having all its wishes anticipated and passively gratified. As it grunts and grows red in the face with its efforts to reach a distant object, to pick itself up when it has rolled over, to open a box or turn a handle, and in order to succeed checks instinctively little cries of impatience, it is laying the groundwork of energy and resolution. Over-careful and anxious mothers and nurses, in preventing a child from running the slightest risk or incurring the least hurt, prevent it also from acquiring any caution, patience, or endurance; and in the end the children so carefully guarded are often those who get the worst injuries; they cannot always be watched, and they have become helpless and heedless.

Again, even a baby may be checked in excessive screaming for slight causes; and in the case of older children I agree with Locke in thinking that it is absolutely not to be tolerated; nothing in early life more evinces that lack, or prevents the acquirement, of self-control than this. And it is a matter of breeding as well as morals. There is much less loud bawling to be heard among the children of cultivated parents than among those of the less educated, even apart, I believe, from special training; there is often an instinctive reserve and dignity in the one which is rare in the other.

Later on when a child has some command of language and can reason there are a few necessary everyday disagreeables which he should be expected manfully to face, such as going to bed, or picking up toys, or taking a coldish bath. A little assistance or encouragement in doing such things might be given, but wheedling and cajoling should be avoided. I have seen people make a habit of chasing a child upstairs and frolicking with him every night, so that he was deluded as to the real end in view, and the consequence was that when reached the top and the chill reality burst suddenly upon him, he always howled fearfully.

As imagination strengthens and the future comes into play he should be taught to labour for ends more or less remote; to-day's effort should earn to-morrow's gratification, and whenever possible, he should be allowed to share in providing for his own needs and pleasures. Let him act as much as he can on his little stage of life, take a lively part in all that seriously goes on in it, instead of standing like a dummy [dhm's note: remember, she means something more like a mannequin or doll here. The word had not yet evolved into quite the insult it is today] and being handed about like a chattel. In this way his sympathy with grown people will develop; he will feel no great gulf between their world and his own, and he will have a delightful sense of useful activity. The toys children help to manufacture are twice as much valued by them, the games for which they must make some preparation twice as much appreciated. Vastly too much, even for enjoyment, is usually passively conferred upon them, and their lives are thus robbed of half their natural zest. Let a child earn a garden by thoroughly digging and weeding a plot, a pet by keeping it clean and well fed, a doll by sewing or washing its clothes, a tea-party by helping in the arrangements, a holiday by extra good work. In this way life will mean much more to him; he will have a sense of power and acquire self-respect.

While I don't make my children take cold baths (though I can see why the Victorians needed to do this sometimes), I do agree that there are disagreeable elements of life every child must just learn manfully to face- getting its teeth brushed, face washed, hair brushed, picking up toys, making beds, eating a tiny taste of a food it professes to despise, and working, along with the rest of the family at chores and duties for deferred pleasures.

We've written before about chores for young children here.

And here we wrote about grumpy attitudes towards those chores.

As for the importance of labouring for remote ends rather than instant gratification, this is a marvelous instance of the careful, diligent thought of most adults in nearly all of western civilization preceding the science of our day. Remember the marshmallow study? We blogged about it here. Here's an excerpt:

This was a fascinatingly simple little study conducted at one of the larger universities. Researchers gave individual 4 year old children each a marshmallow and told them they could eat one now, or wait until the researcher returned and get two. Then the researcher left the room for fifteen to twenty minutes. The children were left alone in a room with hidden cameras and windows monitoring them. Some children ate the marshmallow immediately, some waited a few minutes before giving in to their desires, and others worked at distracting themselves by singing songs, reciting the alphabet, or even taking a nap until the return of the adult and the promised two marshmallows.

The very interesting thing was that they tracked these kids for years and found that those who had the ability to deny themselves and delay gratification, to control their impulses, were more successful later in school and in their careers.

Those 'passionate' children who could tell the researchers 'no' because they could not tell themselves 'no' struggled and were not as successful.

Fortunately the researchers also concluded that it was possible for these kids to learn self-discipline and self-denial from the adults in their lives, but it did *have* to be addressed.

We'll be doing our children a favor if we teach them to tell *themselves* 'no.' Those small children who successfully overcame their will while waiting for extra marshmallows give us a clue about how to develop and strengthen the will (which I wish to repeat, is the ability to tell oneself no, not the ability to defy your parents). They distracted themselves. Interestingly enough, Miss Mason talks about this, too. She says the way to develop your will is not to concentrate on what it is you wish to do but want not to do (I would use the example of wanting to eat a doughnut or the last piece of cake), but to distract yourself and think hard about something else. So instead of thinking about that piece of cake and telling yourself no, no, no, no- you should try to set your mind on something else altogether- a difficult math problem, a letter you want to write to a friend, read a book to your child, shovel snow out of the yard or weed a garden- anything to give yourself something else to think about.

And some of this would be good practice for many of us parents as well, since some of us never learned it in childhood.


Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

Smart Zeus

Zeus has finally perfected his master plan of getting rid of Donovan whenever he gets tired of him.

1. He stands at the glass doors to the deck staring wistfully down into the backyard.

2. He comes to me and whines softly with an oh-s0-pitiful look on his face. After that, I am supposed to say something to the effect of "EC, your dog is whining," while rubbing him gently on the ears.

3. When EC says "Do you want to go outside?" he looks excited and bounces around, thereby attracting the attention of Donovan.

4. On the way down to the door, he makes sure that Donovan is the first to get there, and so is the first to leave the house.

5. Once Donovan is safely out of the house, he lays down on the living room floor and refuses to go any further.

And then he can finally enjoy some peace and quiet away from the Donovan-dog.

Another Cool Discovery

Cool Sea Critters- nifty pictures, formerly unknown to man. Looky, looky.

Booksellers

Magpie-like, I picked up this quote from somebody else who picked it up from somebody else who got it from a book by Elizabeth Goudge:

'It is the most friendly vocation in the world," he announced…"A bookseller is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of the hungry, very often the binder up of wounds. There he sits, your bookseller, surrounded by a thousand minds all done up neatly in cardboard cases; beautiful minds, courageous minds, strong minds, wise minds, all sorts of conditions. And there come into him other minds, hungry for beauty, for knowledge, for truth, for love, and to the best of his ability he satisfies them all…Yes…it's a great
vocation."

"Great than a writer's?" asked Felicity.

"Immeasurably," said Grandfather. "A writer has to spin his work out of himself and the effect upon the character is often disastrous. It inflates the ego. Now, your bookseller sinks his ego in the thousand different egos that he introduces one to the other…Yes…Moreover, his life is one of wide horizons. He deals in the stuff of eternity and there's no death in a bookseller's shop. Plato and Jane Austen and Keats sit side by side behind his back, Shakespeare is on his right hand and Shelley on his left." He paused for a moment while Felicity took Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights gently away from him. "Yes. Writers, from what I've seen of them, are a very queer lot, but booksellers are the salt of the earth."

Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells

Convicting.

"Your portion is to love, to be silent, to suffer, to sacrifice your inclinations, in order to fulfil the will of God, by moulding yourself to that of others. Happy indeed you are thus to bear a cross laid on you by God's own hands, in the order of His Providence. The discipline which we choose for ourselves does not destroy our self-love like that which God assigns us Himself each day. All we have to do is to give ourselves up to God day by day, without looking further. He carries us in His arms as a loving mother carries her child. In every need let us look with love and trust to our Heavenly Father."
~ Francois de la Mothe Fenelon

The Psychology of the Human Dilemma

I cannot remember why I put this book on hold at the library. It's not a title I would ordinarily find of any interest whatsoever. Somebody must have recommended it, or some other book I read quoted it, or it was a mistake. I don't know.

It is a collection of essays centered around 'the great variety, richness, and span of human experience- a vast spectrum shown, for example, by man's capacity for admirable reason on one hand and the far reach of his irrational behavior on the other, the joy and productivity of which he is capable and his ever-present proclivity for despair and self-defeat.'

So says the author in the foreword. He also explains that he does not mean 'an insoluble problem' but rather the 'polarity or paradox' which is the human condition- these extremes of reason and irrationality, joy and despair are not oddities, or pathological conditions- they are part of the human condition for all of us, for every man, and they are, he claims, the source of 'dynamic and human creativity.'

Psychology, Rollo May says, makes molehills out of mountains. In the first chapter he pictures the psychologist standing before St. Peter at the pearly gates and Peter telling him, "When man was tragic, you made him trivial. When he was picaresque, you called him picayune. When he suffered passively, you described him as simpering; and when he drummed up enough courage to act you called it stimulus and response. Man had passion; and when you were pompous and lecturing to your class you called it 'the satisfaction of basic needs,' and when you were relaxed and looking at your secretary you called it 'release of tension.' You made man over into the image of your childhood Erector Set or Sunday School maxims.- both equally horrendous."

St. Peter points out that while can certainly be a worm, some men built the Parthenon, and some of them 'looked up at the stars and wondered. And when the stars were setting he went back to his cave hut in the hillside and studied the ibis legs painted on his potter. And he seized a charred stick from his fire and drew a triangle on the wall, and he made mathematics...."

The psychologist's defense is that he simply let man speak for himself, but Peter objects that experiments in which the punch line is the psychologist lying to the human subject hardly can be objective- "Once you get your Ph.D's.," says Peter, "you assume you can fool other human beings all the time. .... You thought everybody could be fooled. Everybody but you. You always assumed that you, the fooler, were never fooled! Not a very consistent theory, is it?"

We are each of us sometimes the object to be acted upon, responding in predictable enough fashion to outside influences, and sometimes the subject who does the acting, resisting outside influences for reasons of our own. Sometimes, May says, psychologists lose sight of this fact.

May says he once asked the physicist Werner Heisenberg to explain the principle of indeterminacy. Heisenberg "emphasized his belief that our classical, inherited view of nature as an object "out there" is an illusion, that the subject is always part of the formula, that the man viewing nature must be figured in, the experimenter into his experiments or the artist into the scene he paints. This subject-object polarity...was what he and Niels Bohr call the "principle of complementarity." At this point he dropped an aside, "Of course, you psychologists in your discipline have always known this."
Mays says he had 'the uneasy feeling that the inseparable relation between subject and object he was describing was exactly what much contemporary psychology had been trying strenuously to avoid.'

"The more strenuously he tries to be purely objective about his data and his work, the more he is caught in subjectivity, deny it though he may. One formulation of the dilemma is given by Morris R. Cohen: "unlike the physicist, the psychologist... investigates processes that belong to the same order- perception, learning, thinking, as those by which he conducts his investigation."

It seems to me this is true of reporters, as well, I think I am finally getting the point of Schrödinger's cat. Maybe.

Frugal Fridays

For some reason I cannot get to Biblical Womanhood through my usual links today, but I searched at Technorati for other blogs mentioning it, found a link to today's Frugal Friday there, and this takes me to today's Frugal Friday.

Egg Substitutes

You're in the middle of baking and realize you don't have the eggs you need. You could run to the store, but that takes time and gas, plus, if you're like me everytime you run to the store you pick up more things than you meant to buy, and even if they are on sale that's money you would not have spent otherwise.

For pancakes you can substitute cottage cheese, which is only more frugal if it saves you that trip to the store and you needed to use up the cottage cheese. But it actually tastes pretty good.

Here are some substitutions:
1 tsp cornstarch plus 1/4 cup water, combine first (this is for one egg)
or just use 2 Tablespoons cornstarch right into the dry ingredients of the recipe for each egg.
2 tablespoons arrowroot flour, same as above
in cake recipes you can mash up one banana for each egg, but this will change the flavor.

Now I can't use most of those if the Cherub is going to eat it, because she can't eat eggs.

WE use this flax seed substitute for the eggs:

Grind about 2 Tablespoons of flax seed (your coffee mill will work, and you can try your blender. You should have about 1/4 cup of ground flaxseed. Whisk this into 3/4 cups of cold water and continue whisking while you bring the mixture to a boil and boil it for three minutes longer.

The texture will resemble egg white with flecks of seed in it.

You want about 1/8 of a cup for each egg in a recipe, but precise measurements are not important. I just add this entire batch to the wet ingredients (the creamed butter and sugar) of the pound cake recipe instead of eggs.

It keeps in the fridge for about two weeks if you want to make it up for a different recipe. Flaxseed egg substitute binds like eggs, but it won't, of course, add the lightness that real eggs would. That doesn't matter for a poundcake- a poundcake is supposed to be dense, heavy, rich, and sweet. But I wouldn't try to make a light white cake with this.

That recipe came from More Than Breakfasts, by Sue Gregg. Sue Gregg's cookbooks are very popular among many homeschoolers and women who are trying to improve the nutrition level of their cooking. In some cases I think they are overpriced and the information in most of them was not new to me. They would be helpful for beginners, and I've still got my eye on the Main Dishes cookbook and the Master Index the curriculum materials look nice, too)- however, for the time being we're doing without them. But, and I say this emphatically, but the Breakfast cookbook is more than worth its price. It is unique, comprehensive, and it is one of the ten or so cookbooks I simply could not manage without. (Amazon does not have it right now, but you can order directly from Sue Gregg at her website).
We have a grainmill and we grind our own wheatberries to make the rye flour for this poundcake, but Sue Gregg's breakfast cookbook includes recipes and information for safely using your blender to grind some whole grains- that will save you the cost of a grain mill and get fresh grains into your diets much more quickly than waiting for the grain mill. Buying our own fresh grains is also cheaper than buying the flours, so I ma able to make up for my tepid response to the other Sue Gregg cookbooks with unstinted, heartfelt, full-blown praise for this one. If you make breakfast instead of pouring it out of a box, this is a most excellent cookbook to own. If you pour your breakfast out of a box then this is a great cookbook to help you escape that money trap. I really like this cookbook (and nobody's paying me to say so and I have no stock in the company, unfortunately).

If you're out of milk, frankly, just about any liquid will do in most recipes (especially baked goods). Seriously. The flavor will vary accordingly, milk will be richer than water, but you can fiddle with other ingredients to make up for that.

And if you're out of sour cream- well, then, try this.

Books, Books, Books

Patti asked if I'd share the reading lists for the classes I'm taking this semester. I love doing this because sometimes I can get really good feedback from people wh oh ave read these books before.

Europe 1618-1789:
* Spain, 1469-1714 by Henry Kamen -- This precedes the time period the class is supposed to cover but Kamen discusses, at great length, Ferdinand & Isabella. Changes made during their reign impacted all of Europe and looking at them now gives a good background and structure for the rest of the class.
* The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618-1815 by Charles Ingrao
* Old Regime France, 1648-1788 ed. William Doyle
* Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment by Daren Staloff (the Prof freely admitted that this one is an odd choice since it's American history and not European. He chose it, though, because he thought it had an excellent introduction to enlightenment ideals)
* Candide by Voltaire (*sigh* read this one in English last year... suppose it will be interesting to see it from a historian's perspective)

Great Figures in Latin American History
* Francisco de Miranda by Karen Racine (I'm looking forward to this one; I've started the introduction and it looks like a well-written biography of a fascinating guy)
* Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism by Domingo Sarmiento
* Emiliano Zapata! by Samuel Brunk (read during last semester's history of Mexico class)
* The Peron Novel by Thomas Martinez (look! more fiction!)
* Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara by Jorge Castaneda

Women in America to 1870
* Anne Orthwood's [Illegitimate Child]: Sex and Law in Early Virginia by John Ruston Pagan*
* Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 by Theda Perdue
* Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
* The Murder of Helen Jewett by Patricia Cohen
* Mothers of Invention by Drew Gilpin Faust

* --> The title of the Pagan book has been modified, mainly because I don't want people who use the correct word for nasty purposes to find our blog by using that word in their searches.

Thus, not a lot of paper writing this semester, but quite a bit of reading.

A really yummy cookie recipe (and a great way to use up some bananas!)

Banana Drop Cookies

Cake like cookies that are coated with cinnamon- sugar and bran

1 cup whole bran cereal (I left this out)
2 eggs (I used 2 TBS ground flax seeds)
6 TBS sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 cup mashed bananas (3 medium)
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups sifted flour (I used freshly ground whole wheat flour)
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup shortening
1/4 cup butter (I used 3/4 cup of this and no shortening)
1 tsp. salt

Place bran cereal on sheet of waxed paper; roll fine with rolling pin. Add 6 TBS. sugar and cinnamon; mix well. Set aside.
(I just left out the bran and mixed the cinnamon and sugar together in a bowl.)
Beat 1 cup sugar, shortening and butter until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs (flax) and vanilla to mix thoroughly. Stir in bananas.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Stir into banana mixture. Drop by teaspoonfuls (I think I made them more tablespoon size :) ) into bran mixture and tumble until they are well coated. Place 2" apart on greased baking sheet.
Bake in hot oven (4oo) about 10 minutes (more like 8 minutes). Remove cookies (from the sheet immediately, otherwise the sugar from the coating glues them to the sheet and it is very hard to get them off) and cool on racks.
Makes 4 1/2 dozen.

(Recipe from "Homemade Cookies," by the Farm Journal)

DHM's note: these were tasty- sort of like banana snickerdoodles!

One of The Boy's lego creations

This is called something like a "Gardening Truck" (originally a Gardening Limousine, but that was just to see if I remembered how to spell limousine). The Boy explained it in very detailed fashion to me. The green legos are grass, and I think the blue legos were the water for watering the lego grass, and then they also had a supply of trees.

Vintage bit of Ephemera

Women's Athletic Association of Depauw University, 1927-1928

"The game's the thing,
never mind who wins."

W.A.A. Code for a Good Sportsman

1. Be gracious in victory or defeat.

2. Seek pleasure in the game for its own sake.

3. Practice truthfulness and honesty with oneself and opponents.

4. employ self-control and self-discipline at all times.

5. Co-operation is the key to ultimate success.

The calendar includes:
W.A.A. Walkout, tennis, soccer, and archery for the Fall Season (September-November)

Rifle, bowling, basketball, and swimming from Decempter thru March

Swimming, archery, tennis, and a May Day Lantern Parade, Track Meet, and Pagaent for April thru June.

Year round sports were hiking, bicycling, and horseback riding.

To be in the Athletic Association, you had to pay your dues of seventy-five cents and earn at least points. You earned points by participating in team sports (Tennis was only 50 points, others were 100). If you weren't on the team but showed up for practices 75 percent of the time you earned 25 points.

You also earned points for passing the REd Cross Life Saving course, hiking (any combination of five or ten mile hikes totally forty miles, fifty points), ten mile cross country hike, 50 points; horsebike riding, five hours taken in one and two hour rides, 25 points; hiking cross country on two ten mile hikes- fifty points. And so forth.

You were awarded different honours- pens and letters to put on your sweater, for 500; 1,000; 1,500; and 2,000 points.

There are various other rules and bylaws (Captain must inspire her team and encourage clean playing and good sportsmanship. She is also responsible for providing a uniform costume for her team, as well as securing a picture of her term for the informal report of the head of her sport...).

The rules for Hiking are:

No men are allowed on hikes.
A five mile hike in one hour must be conducted by a member of the Board and a ten-mile hike by a girl having walking credit.
Leaders of hikes must be apporved by the walking chariman and must report the date, length of hike, and names of girls taking the ike.
At least two girls must be present on every hike taken.

General Health Suggestions
Eight hours sleep with open windows.
Three regular meals a day.
Only one cup of tea of cofee a day.
Eat nothing between meals except fruit and milk.
Bath or shower every day.
Regular exercise very day.
Avoid excess of pastry.
Drink water freely.

Where Are We?

Well, Miss Jenny is in the kitchen trying to figure out how to quickly use up about forty pounds of bananas the HM brought home two days ago. We don't want them in the freezer, and we are about banana smoothied out. She made banana cookies yesterday- these super simple banana cookies that taste quite good and are suitable for our Cherub who cannot eat wheat, eggs, or corn products. Baking is slightly complicated by the fact that our soft wheat berries did not come in with our co-op order recently, and Bear and I more recently used a lot of hard wheat-berries baking a couple of huge batches of bread of many flavors. We gave eight small loaves, each a different variety, to Granny Tea. We traded two large loaves and several small loaves for donations of about twenty dollars elsewhere, and we've eaten some, and are freezing more for gifts and later eating.

The Cherub is standing at the kitchen door, staring longingly within to the treasurehouse of forbidden foods, and I'm happy with that because standing is something she does not do enough of, and the baby gate keeps her from actually eating any of the forbidden foods, and as long as she's there we know exactly where she is.

The HG, of course, is at school. This year Tuesdays and Thursdays are her long, long days away.

The Equuschick sold Strawberry the miniature horse and gave a riding lesson today, and then she drove the 12 passenger van into the next town over to pick up horse feed or something horse related. She'll be shoveling stalls and fixing meals, no doubt, for the rest of the day.

The Boy is spending too much time hanging out here, and while in between whiles he actually does build big projects with his real legos, we'll put a stop to the excess computer time soon, maybe when we finish hanging around....

Here, because I have discovered that with four computers online at once, Pip, the FYG, and I can be logged into the same librarything account and adding books to the catalog while the Boy is occupied doing his thing. We've each taken on a bookcase that we are responsible for adding. Pip is doing a history shelf, the FYG is doing some juvenile classics, and I am doing a bookcase full of vintage books. I have thrown away one tatty, ancient, ragged copy o Ray's Arithmetic that was once used by an ancestor of mine, and I don't want any guff about it because it was in terrible shape, and I don't want any cheers either because it is only a supreme act of will that keeps me from snatching it back out of the rubbish bin. I've kept the other one that at least had all its pages, even if the back cover was gone.

From time to time the curious minded may click on our LibraryThing link in the sidebar to see what we've added now, and if I come across any goodies I just have to share I may post about them here (as a matter of fact, I've got one now). The vintage books are the most tedious to add, since they have no ISBN numbers.

And at some point I'll be organizing our school books for the coming year. That will take a week or more and there will be a point where it will look like somebody picked up our house and shook it upside down like a snow globe, only ijavascript:void(0)
Publish Postnstead of little white styrofoam bits of snow, we have books.

Beauty and Health

Breast cancers come in more than one variety.

Some of them are 'estrogen receptive,' which I gather means they are fueled by estrogen. Does this mean I should stop eating tofu?. I don't know. (Does this give me yet one more reason to feel guilty about the quality of care the Equuschick received when she was a baby and got so sick for so long because I didn't get pushy with the doctors soon enough, and she quite breastfeeding and I had to bottle feed and I chose soy formula? That's an easy question to answer. Why, yes. Yes it does. Do not try to talk me down from that cliff. I am a mother, feeling guilty, and mothers who feel guilty will not be rationalized out of it.)

So a great big fat YES on the mother-guilt, but a maybe, maybe not on the tofu (I know the Japanese have been eating tofu for centuries and have low rates of breast cancer, but I'm not sure that means that those of us with northern European genetics can do the same- northern Europeans can tolerate more milk products than Asians or African Americans). It's something to consider, particularly, I think, if you're northern European in genetic background and have any breastcancer in your family history. Parabens may also be suspect:

Parabens are known to disrupt endocrine (hormone) function. More than 12 research studies (1) show parabens to have estrogenic activity in animals and in tissue culture. Recent research detected five types of intact parabens in human breast tumors (2). Although not a conclusive link between exposure to parabens and breast cancer, this new research signals the need for a precautionary approach to the manufacture and use of these compounds.

There's more at the linked page. Some 13,000 cosmetic products have parabens.

There is also more information here, although the tone is a bit shrill. There is a useful page of information on alternative names for paraben for those of you who would rather eliminate them from your ointments and unguents (and topical application is apparently more likely to result in parabens showing up in your breast tissue than ingestion). Given the illustration on that page, you probably don't want a child or husband looking over your shoulder when you go there. You decide- I just don't to astonish anybody without warning. Now you've been warned. Be astonished or not, as it suits you.


And if I'm scaring you to death, here's a much more cautious minded explanation of what parabens do and a, possibly calming, explanation of the study which found parabens in 19 of 20 tumours. It wasn't very big, and it needs to be repeated before more can be said with certainty. This is science, after all, not witchcraft. Or so they say.

Nonetheless, I'm thinking that I really do not regret not wearing make-up for the last twenty years. I am also thinking we're just going to pick a handful of products with as few ingredients as possible, aluminum and paraben free, and we're going to watch for them to go on sale and buy enough to last for the next sale. Of course, we'll have to store them in the refrigerator or freezer since parabens are preservatives and anti-bacterial agents. So we'll have to get a second freezer. Or I can just go back to my old stand-byes of olive oil for skin softening and vinegar for hair rinse.

And can somebody tell me why, while we're at least in some approximatation of the topic, my brand-new, clearly labeled UNSCENTED deodorant includes fragrance in the ingredients?


This is, so far as I know, still somewhat in the speculative stages, and I'm not trying to terrify anybody or make any specific claims, nor am I offering any medical advice whatsoever. It's just information I'm considering that I thought some of our readers might find interesting.

Four Things

come not back;
The spoken word;
The sped arrow;
Time past;
The neglected opportunity.

In a state of complete shock

... well, I'm not completely shocked, just mostly. Maybe you all are over the fact that I'm actually finally posting.

What do I find so surprising? This is the semester of three history classes, all 300-level or above. Guess how many papers I'm writing over the semester?

Two.

One is a 5-7 page paper on an American woman's journal or set of letters, so that almost doesn't even meet the paper requirement. I'm sure the other one will be quite a bit more serious: it's in the honors Europe 1618-1789 class and will constitute 25% of my grade. Still, the rest of my grades in all my history classes come from exams, the ever-present-and-occasionally-vapid-participation scores, and quizzes.

I will be doing a great deal of reading, which is encouraging. Even more so is the fact that the readings are from real books and not hastily slapped together textbooks.

There's an odd, conflicted feeling about this state of affairs. On the one hand, like all bona-fide American college students, I'm slightly relieved at the thought of having a bit more free time this semester. Unlike all bona-fide American college students, though, I'm mainly relieved because I know this will give me time to actually finish reading The Black Arrow to my younger siblings and to complete what will be an atrocious amount of Spanish homework.
The other hand is still grappling with the notion of an academic study of history sans serious paper-writing with its theses and analyses.

Shudder

The Wasp

The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamity.
He throws open his nest with prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality.

-Ogden Nash

All the News We Deem Suitable to Share With the Peasantry

For several years now those who involved with security issues have known that the ferry systems in this country are vulnerable to attack. Recently, the FBI received several reports from several different passengers and ferry employees on at least six different ferries. The reports were that two 'Middle Eastern looking' men were riding the ferries, so the FBI published the photograph a suspicious ferry employee had taken and asked newspapers in the Seattle area to do the same.

Well, not quite, although to read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's account (and the complaints of Muslim groups), that's what you would think it was all about. No, the suspicious activity was not merely looking Middle Eastern, but included (and were not limited to) such activities as going to areas of the ferry not typically of interest to passengers, taking pictures of doors and doorways, and were asking questions about the operation of the boats. On, again, at least six different ferries. This denotes more than a casual interest, ne? More troubling, the FBI could not find the men to ask them questions about their keen interest in the workings of the Ferry system- perhaps it is merely an idle hobby, but it would be negligent not to ask. (more about exactly what prompted the FBI's interest here)

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (and post intelligent may well be the right word for it) declined to publish the photographs, choosing instead to attempt to act as gate-keepers deliberately with-holding information from the ignorant rabble and yahoos they apparently believe constitute their readership. They refused to publish the pictures, but did suggest their readers could voice their opinion on the matter- in a Haiku contest. Today they've apologized for the poor taste of offering a Haiku contest in response to the very real possibility that this is a genuine terrorist reconnoitering- but they still won't show the photographs, making sure their readers understand that if its news they want, they will have to go elsewhere. I hope their readers take them up on that.

Newbusters has more as does Michelle Malkin, who was the subject of one of my favorite Haiku submissions.

Not Like the Other One

You know you when you were a kid Highlights Magazine (and sometimes the Sunday papers) had that feature where you compared two seemingly identical pictures to see what was different between them?

Y'all have probably seen this before, but go ahead and try that with this one and see what you think.

And if you've ever wondered why so many young girls have problems with body image (and so many young lads have such totally unrealistic expectations), well, don't.

Bonnet-tip LaWanda at I Should Not Say This

UPdated to add Redbook's justification:

Redbook's editor in chief Stacy Morrison said, "The retouching we did on Faith Hill's photo for the July cover of Redbook is completely in line with industry standards."

I am sure it is. That would be a HUGE part of the problem.

And, as Laura reminded us in the comments, we've seen another example of thise before- that Dove commercial. I mentioned it and shared the link in this post.

And Laura also shared this link to that gutsy lady Jamie Lee Curtis baring her true thighs in a 2002 issue of Ladies' Home Journal (if that link does not take you right to the article, just type in Jamie's name in the search bar for the website).

Why do we buy into this? Ladies, it could be killing us in more ways than one. More on that later.

Think About It

When I had five children 9 or 10 and under (for a time, three in diapers), I got a lot of comments in public, not all of them positive. IN fact, many of htem sounded downright grumpy they way they would shoot out, "Are they ALL yours!???" And sometimes I would get fed up with it, particularly after a long day of errand running and I would be grumpy right back and say something like, "Yes, and we LOVE having a large family."

There are nice ways of asking 'are they all yours?' and there are nice ways of saying 'yes, and we love it.' But there are snippy ways, too, and I am talking about being snippy.

Invariably, when I got snippy, the person who had just been sounding disapproving and hostile would soften up, or even get teary eyed and say something tragic and heartbreaking, like, "I always wanted a large family, but when I had my first child at 20 I nearly bled to death and they did a full hysterectomy on the delivery table. I found out when I came to in recovery." Or, "I always wanted a large family, but my husband refused."

Both of these are true stories, and they are fairly typical. Everybody I know well enough to know has some tragedy, some battle, some heartache that would make the rest of us gasp in pain. Some of them handle it with such grace and aplomb that they would be surprised I think that they've had deep grief in their lives. But since everybody I know well enough to know has something painful in their lives that most people do not know about, I think it's safe to assume that just because I've never heard the details, it doesn't mean that the crabby clerk at the store or the snooty receptionist at the doctor's office, or the obnoxious client at the animal shelter, or the hubristic teacher at the college, or the neighbor from hades or the sweet lady at the bank or the chirpy cheerleader type in the next pew over can't say the same.


"Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."

Attitude

I stole borrowed this from a friend who got it in an email from another friend, who got it who knows where:

ATTITUDE

There once was a woman who woke up one morning, looked in the
mirror, and noticed she had only three hairs on her head.

"Well," she said, "I think I'll braid my hair today." So she did
and she had a wonderful day.

The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and saw that she had
only two hairs on her head.

"H-M-M, " she said, "I think I'll part my hair down the middle
today." So she did and she had a grand day.

The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that she
had only one hair on her head.

"Well," she said, "Today I'm going to wear my hair in a pony tail."
So she did and she had a fun, fun day

The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that
there wasn't a single hair on her head.

"YEAH!" she exclaimed, "I don't have to fix my hair today!"

Okay, yes, it's sometimes just not that simple and there are much bigger problems in life than balding. But it's funny.=)

GRit, II

This is the second part of an article about instilling a certain strength of character in children, taken from the 1891/2 issue of the Parents' Review. In readin tthe following, I'm reminded a little of Eustace Scrubb, during the stage of his life when he almost deserved it, and perhaps also of David Copperfield's friend Steerforth and his unspeakable mother, but then again, the children she describes do seem more pleasant.

The doctrine that lessons are to be made interesting, and that school-life should be other than "durance vile," is nowadays often construed to mean that a child is never to struggle with a difficult task, or to force his attention; all the real work is to be done by the teacher, whose business it is to prepare the intellectual food in such a way as to be always tempting and easily swallowed. I know of more than one school in which the application of this theory has resulted in the general limpness of the pupils, the parents no doubt aiding and abetting.

An intelligent lady who has had considerable experience of the matter writes that "parents nowadays seem to have an almost insane dread of their children having to endure anything approaching to hardship or even disagreeableness," and, as a consequence, whenever they come into competition with the sterner-nurtured children of the artisan, they go to the wall." This weakness or effeminacy in home training is said to be especially observable in manufacturing towns, where many of the parents have risen by their own efforts from poverty to wealth; having known the bad side of hardship and struggle themselves, they seek to avoid them in any form for their children, and have no higher ideal for them than the preservation and increase of that physical well-being which has been their own goal in life.

The difficulty of inciting children so brought up to any effort, or of creating in them any eagerness or enthusiasm, is enormous; their attention is mainly engrossed with their comfort, and to this they expect everything to be subordinated; there is room for no hero-worship, no devotion to a cause, in their stolid souls. But they often evince, however, an easy good-nature, a mild temper, and a certain sluggish affectionateness.

But, supposing that we are agreed in disapproving of all this, how are we practically to oppose it, without sacrificing much modern education that we rightly prize- a love and sympathy towards parents, brightness and naturalness, attachment to home life, ease of manner and confidence? If we had to choose between these and strength of character, we should be in a sad fix; but fortunately we need do nothing of the kind. Even as regards personal charm, which the easy-going indulgent treatment might be supposed specially to foster, is there anything more attractive than the dignity and peacefulness of a steady will and a mind at one with itself? It has often a classic beauty beside which the seductiveness of mere light-heartedness and easy good-nature look poor.

To secure the good and avoid the evil in this connection we must begin early- very early; and we must shun extremes, for there is nothing more fatal in education that to mount a hobby and ride it to death.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

One in Four Americans Read No Books Last Year

Readers, a dying breed?

Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.
[...]
In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled "Reading at Risk" found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet.
[...]

On the other hand, I'm not sure we can be satisfied about the folks who did read:

At the same time, book enthusiasts abound. Many in the survey reported reading dozens of books and said they couldn't do without them.

"I go into another world when I read," said Charlotte Fuller, 64, a retired nurse from Seminole, Fla., who said she read 70 books in the last year. "I read so many sometimes I get the stories mixed up."

People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently.

There was even some political variety evident, with Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.

Very slightly. Elsewhere I read that it's a difference of.... one. And the study has a 3% plus or minus margin of error.

And while people who never go to church read more than those who don't (according to this survey of 1000 people):

The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories. Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five read romance novels. Every other genre — including politics, poetry and classical literature — were named by fewer than five percent of readers.

There you have it. Everybody reading this blog is above average. But we knew that. I wonder how different the results would be if they'd polled via email instead of telephone?

Watermelon Fiend

Mom to Boy: That is enough watermelon. Don't get any more today.

Equuschick to Boy: Especially since that's your FOURTH piece.

Boy to World at Large(indignantly): Nuh-uh!!!! It is NOT my fourth piece.

Equuschick to Boy: It's not? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was.

Boy (self-righteously): Well, it's not.
...
...
...
It's my seventh.

And then he took a bite like this settled everything.

This Year's Crop of College Students

It's time once again for Beloit College's annual list of what this year's entering Freshman do and don't remember, do and don't take for granted, or 'Things that make you feel ancient:'

Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.

1. What Berlin wall?

Other goodies that stood out for me:

# They never “rolled down” a car window.

# They have grown up with bottled water.

# Russia has always had a multi-party political system.

# Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.
”
# Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.

# Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.

# Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.

# Commercial product placements have been the norm in films and on TV.

# Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.

# Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.

# Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil.

# The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

# Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture.

# Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

For a few items the political bias showed (Michael Moore has always been funny and angry? I do not think so.). And some of them are culturally biased: 'Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.' Unless they mean airports and libraries, smoking is still allowed in most places in my town.

I have a child born in 1990, and quite a number of the items on the list were not true for her, but then, our children are culturally, um, other.

The Magical Homeschooling Carnival

This is a fun edition with some some vintage illustrations from a catalog of magic tricks. You can look it over at Homeschool Buzz.

I would particularly recommend getting up to speed on the National Association of Elementary Principals, who have their nether garments in a state of disreputable wrinkledness over homeschoolers, again. Or still.

The Crimson Wife posts a worthy read about it as well.

At the Dow blog we have some very thought provoking commentary on vouchers- and I would add that this applies to those programs where you 'homeschool' by signing up for a state program which provides you with funds and free materials. Think carefully then, how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise...

While generally the articles that catch my eye most at the hsing blog carnivals are the political ones, this post about making tiny dollhouse treats out of bread dough was great fun, and I am looking forward to trying it with the FYG.

And Mama Squirrel's organizing system looks cool. Parts of it are very similar to what we already do around here, but I am really loving that flip-photo album idea.

Seeking Rest in the Ancient Paths has a post listing favorite books for boys, one of our favorite topics, and you can add a list of your own using Mr. Linky.

There are plenty more posts worth your reading time, these are just the handful that jumped out at me on first skimming.

What the Mother Should Bear in Mind

As I have mentioned before in sharing these ideas from Benedict's Rule of Order, we are not Catholic. I don't mention it so often so as to beat a dead horse or to be offensive, but to avoid any confusion and to point out that one need not be sympathetic to significant points of Catholic doctrine to actually learn from Catholic writers. Benedict was an early sixth century monk who had to put together a rule, a code of bylaws, if you will, simple enough to be followed by men of different cultures and circumstances, by many different people, all of whom were trying to live together in a community that functioned quite similarly to a family.

While the culture of the sixth century may have been quite different from our own, human beings really are pretty much the same everywhere and every when we go. In reading through this sixth century document, I continue to find a good many gems and precepts that with only a little tweaking apply quite well to family life. In this case, the only tweaking is to substitute 'mother' for Abbess and children for sisters, and you can do that for yourselves:

let the Abbess always bear in mind
what a burden she has undertaken
and to whom she will have to give an account of her stewardship,
and let her know that her duty is rather to profit her sisters
than to preside over them.
She must therefore be learned in the divine law,
that she may have a treasure of knowledge
from which to bring forth new things and old.
She must be chaste, sober and merciful.
Let her exalt mercy above judgment,
that she herself may obtain mercy.
She should hate vices;
she should love the sisterhood.

In administering correction
she should act prudently and not go to excess,
lest in seeking too eagerly to scrape off the rust
she break the vessel.
Let her keep her own frailty ever before her eyes
and remember that the bruised reed must not be broken.
By this we do not mean that she should allow vices to grow;
on the contrary, as we have already said,
she should eradicate them prudently and with charity,
in the way which may seem best in each case.
Let her study rather to be loved than to be feared.

Let her not be excitable and worried,
nor exacting and headstrong,
nor jealous and over-suspicious;
for then she is never at rest.

In her commands let her be prudent and considerate;
and whether the work which she enjoins
concerns God or the world,
let her be discreet and moderate,
bearing in mind the discretion of holy Jacob, who said,
"If I cause my flocks to be overdriven
they will all die in one day."
Taking this, then, and other examples of discretion,
the mother of virtues,
let her so temper all things
that the strong may have something to strive after,
and the weak may not fall back in dismay.

Now we can be discouraged by how far we fall short here, or we can be encouraged by the reminder that God is merciful and the thought that maybe this can be a tool to help us think about our duties differently and approach them with renewed care and devotion.

Will we mess up? Oh, probably many of us will interrupt our very reading to snap at children who have just poured out a bucket of cereal on the floor and are in the process of adding the milk, or to be frustrated by a toilet overflowing because of the matchbox cars the toddler flushed down it when you thought he was napping. Or you will be humiliated later in the day, when your six year old is supposed to be in the bath, but is instead sitting, naked, on the windowsill in front of the frosted glass window over the tub, which frosted glass your mailman kindly stops to let you know isn't quite frosted enough to screen the fact that a naked child is sitting there, mooning the street. Or perhaps your child will be doing something nefarious with dolls and glue. Our children may well be fellow heirs with us and we should love them like brothers and sisters, but they are all, after all, still children, and children are not only delightfully childlike but maddeningly childish at times.

And so are we.

We will all fall short of St. Benedict's Abbess, and shorter still of the Proverbs 31 woman, and shorter still of imitating Christ in all we do. But we will fall much shorter still if we never try at all.

PR Article: 'Grit,' Or Raising and Educating our Children

Here we have yet another article from the 1891/2 volume of the Parents' Review. This one is titled Grit and is written by Mrs. James Ward, and she writes to convince her audience that parents must not neglect to inculcate a certain strength of character in children, some 'grit.' By 'Grit' Mrs. Ward says she means that combination of 'energy, self-reliance, self-control, endurance, and dignity- of everything, in fact, that is commonly summed up under the phrase "strength of character," or in the Scotch term "grit." She begins by giving us a little history of how this was quality was once fostered in the stern parental climate before the late Victorian age, and if you apt to think of the Victorians as stern and rather grim, I think you may be surprised by what she says:
Beginning on Page 24 of Volume II of the PR

One generation is apt to be contemptuous or intolerant of the educational theories of its predecessors; what was faulty in them is made off-hand accountable for all that is defective in the present result, while what was good has become such a matter-of-course as to be scarcely acknowledged. But while we all think that our parents and guardians made gross mistakes with us, and that our turning out so well is entirely due to our superiour natural dispositions, we fancy that *our children at least* will have no cause to complain of their training, and no pretext for making their forbears accountable for their failings and follies. Let us wait a bit, however, and we shall find the next generation taking its turn to pick holes. Probably they will find more fault than we did in like case; for children are now taken into confidence about themselves, and their own great importance is no longer scrupulously concealed from them. Only the other day I heard of some children of twelve or thirteen being present at a parents' meeting! The old-fashioned humble deference to the opinion of one's elders is not in this way generated, neither is it nowadays much approved. Many are of opinion that obedience should never be exacted from children without reason given; and this doctrine carried to its logical conclusion would also constitute them judges of the sufficiency of the reasons, and of the reasons of the reasons! Children are learning very early to judge their parents both intellectually and morality and to criticise their own training. Are we quite sure that our modern methods of education are going to stand their criticism?

The theory of education in vogue with the best parents and teachers is very plausible; it seems, whether consciously or not, to spring from Froebel's principle of securing to children the freest and most natural development possible, by surrounding them from the first with sympathy and kindly aid, and be warding off from them rude jars and contradictions until they have grown so into harmony with the world that these no longer exist. There is a great attraction about such a scheme as this; it is idyllic; it charms like a dream of Paradise; while the old plan of repressing and thwarting the child, and forcing him into some sort of unwilling conformity to a stern environment, stands out in hideous contrast. Even the wise and gentle Locke, opposed as he was to much of the harsh and unsympathetic education of his day, says things which startle us. We come upon such statements as these: "Children should be used to submit their desires and go without their longings from their very cradles"..."Whatever they were importunate for they should be sure, for that very reason, to be denied."...."Children must leave it to the choice and ordering of their parents what they think properest for them, and how much;' and must not be permitted to choose for themselves, and say, 'I would have wine, or white bread': the very naming of it should make them lose it." Again he says, "Children love dominion; and this is the first original of most vicious habits"...."They show their love of dominion in their desire to have things to be theirs. They would have propriety and possession, pleasing themselves with the power which that seems to give, and the right they thereby have to dispose of them as they please." This seems to us natural and harmless enough, but Lock continues; "He who thinks that these two roots of almost all the injustice and contention that so disturb human life are not early to be weeded out....neglects the proper season to lay the foundations of a good and worthy man." In another connection he declares that "crying is a fault that should not be tolerated in children" from whatever cause it proceeds. "For," he sagely remarks, "the many inconveniences this life is exposed to, require we should not be too sensible of every little hurt.... "That effeminacy of spirit, which is to be prevented or cured, nothing that I know so much increases in children as crying." He even goes so far when discussing courage and hardiness, as to advise that children should occasionally be put to some pain to accustom them to bear it; although he adds, I am not so foolish to propose the Lacedaemonian discipline in our age and constitution." But "Satisfy a child by a constant course of your care and kindness that you perfectly love him, and he may by degrees be accustomed to bear very painful and rough usage from you without flinching or complaining."

In all this there is a distinct educational drift to which there is little akin in modern theory, and perhaps still less in modern practice. A certain amount of hardness and sternness is inculcated as necessary to the production of energy, self-reliance, self-control, endurance, and dignity- of everything, in fact, that is commonly summed up under the phrase "strength of character," or in the Scotch term "grit." And however much we may disapprove old-fashioned methods of promoting strength of character, we must still allow that any education which neglects it fails. We shall need it as long as struggle is a condition of life, and moral and physical pain quite unavoidable. Time was when firmness and fortitude were regarded as the chief, and almost sole, ends of moral training; and as we are rightly enough revolted at the petty tyranny to which children were consequently subjected, at the lack of sympathy with them, and meagre understanding of them, at the incessant contradiction and repression of them; and we see that the logic of outcome of such treatment is a character hard, morose, constrained, and dull. In the vaunted reverence for, and submission to parents and teachers, we see either meanness of spirit or merely conventional behaviour, which breaks down when the time of independence comes and discovers no reality behind. And we find that the absence of pleasure and freedom, of kindness and tenderness, beget lifelessness and sourness of temper.

But the reaction against extremes of this kind may lead to opposite evils; and we not infrequently hear that children now tend to grow up nerveless and unenergetic and self-indulgent; that they face no difficulties, endure nothing quietly, exert no original force. They have no idea of "striving to attain," and become disgusted and miserable when the good things of life are not found all ready to their hand; they have ideals or strong interests of any kind, and lack the power as well as the will to help themselves. While expecting to be provided with many means of happiness, they are unable to make good use of them, because they lack the energy and the eagerness which alone make continued enjoyment possible.

She goes on to talk about the trouble this causes them (and their teachers) in school. I think she makes some excellent points, and we do our children no good when we try to hard to make their world a soft and gentle one full of cotton wool and padded corners, where they never bump their heads, skin their knees, hear a cross word or have to work, and where crying about something is seen as a great tragedy that must be avoided at all costs.

There's another sentence that stands out for me as well- But the reaction against extremes of this kind may lead to opposite evils and this is true of almost anything- reactions may lead to opposite evils. A commenter at Mere Comments likes to say that most problems started as solutions. And somewhere else I read once that when we go into parenting with a solid idea of all the things we will NEVER do and all the ways we will NEVER make the mistakes our parents did, no matter how sound those ideas are, we end up making just as many errors, as our parents did. These mistakes are often equal to whatever grievances we bear against our own upbringing. It's just that they are different. HOmeschooling is also like this- those who homeschool reactively tend to burn out and give up quickly. The only time this doesn't happen is when somewhere along the way they have developed active, positive reasons to homeschool and continue homeschooling because they have positive goals and ideas in mind for what they are doing. They no longer homeschool merely because they don't want their children in the local public school.

Basing your parenting style almost entirely on the fact that you don't want to do to your kids what your parents did to you is not a long-term strategy for success, either.

And none of this is really what Mrs. Ward is talking about, but it's what passed through my mind on this lovely rainy morning as I proofread this section one more time before posting it. Mrs. Ward is going to talk more about grit, what it is, why we need it, and how to help our children develop it, and I think it's an article that will much more interesting to the majority of our readers than was Greek in Modern Education.=)

Incidentally, I am not sure who she was- there is a James Ward who was a painter but as he died in 1859, if this was her husband she was widowed for quite some time before publishing this article. There was another who was a philosopher and psychologist in England, and the time period is about right. But James Ward cannot be a very uncommon name and I am reluctant to even guess that this particular James Ward was married to this particular Mrs. James Ward, particularly as I cannot even find whether or not he was married.


Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

Homeschool Organizers

For basic math drill, print out a math worksheet from the internet (there's a great site linked in our side bar). Slip it into a plastic page protector and have you child write the answers down using grease pencil or china marker (they're the same thing, just different names).

Give them a time limit for a goal- one or two minutes, and have them do the same math sheet every day until they can get it done within the time frame you assigned.

I put my history books in the shelves in chronological order- with labels on them denoting their time period. Okay, the labels fell off and some of the books have been misfiled since then, but since we did start out this way, it will be a little easier to put things back the way they belong and this way, sorting the history books becomes a history lesson as well as an organizational task.


Keep your schoolbooks in an easy to reach place, close to where you are actually doing school. I have kept mine on a bookcase behind the couch, so we can sit on the couch and get out our books. This way we don't have to waste valuable school time hunting for books. Currently, the youngest two children keep their books in a wooden box on the extra wide window sill above my bed, and we do school in my room snuggled up on my bed.


If my bathroom is the right size and layout, I keep a bulletin board on the wall right in front of the toilet. This doesn't actually help with organization, but if the jokes, articles, and cartoons you put on it are interesting enough, it might keep your company from noticing how disorganized you really are. AFter all, the bathroom is the place company spends the most time alone. But it's also nice to post poems and verses you are memorizing in the bathroom- near the mirror, on the wall near the stool, and write short verses in dry-erase marker on your mirror.

Get a notebook, the right size for you. My right size is about 5X7, yours may be larger or smaller. Write in it. Write down everything in it. Chelle uses a purple notebook. I like the striped 'latte' versions.

I also write in our books, or sometimes on stick it pads. As I preview a book for my young scholars, I jot down comments in the margins, or add a question, or make a note at the end of the chapter suggesting a narration topic or something they may want to read about before going on to the next chapter.

Schedule in time for cleaning- in between topics have the kids switch laundry or unload the dishwasher- and write this down so they can't forget. We also have period clutter patrols during the day- I shout it at the top of my lungs and everybody pitches in and helps declutter and put things back where they go. We spend maybe ten minutes on this. Nobody gets to say, "I did not get that out," or "He touched it last." We ALL pitch in and help declutter everywhere and everything. This keeps the second law of thermodynamics at bay.

Do not try to emulate the cover of House Beautiful Magazine or the home of the woman in your homeschool group who is never available for spontaneous activities but who is always available to tell everybody that the only one true and right way to homeschool is to be up at dawn, panty hose, shoes, and make-up all applied with care, and devotionals accomplished, right down to the six month old baby who listens to the Bible (in Hebrew) on tape while he tidies his crib, all before breakfast which is removed, piping hot from the oven, at five minutes past dawn. We do not like her, why would we try to be her? She needs prescription medication and she is a discourager not an encourager.

Puddles!

It has been raining a lot where we are, so today I took FYB and FYG out and we played in all the puddles on our road. It was a lot of fun and we all got totally drenched.

I am a Fraud and a Failure

The FYG just read the dreepy Elsie Dinsmore- she finished it last night. And she loved it. And she finished it while I was next door at my mother's house watching Andre Rieu and then an old Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode on television- see how bad television is for you????? It's dangerous, and the insidious influence reaches across boundary lines, through doors and walls and into the minds of children who are not even watching it! Had I not been watching television, my young daughter would, no doubt, have been listening to a story of a salutary nature, or snuggling with me on the couch or doing something productive with her time. Instead, she read Elsie Dinsmore.

And what was an Elsie book doing in our house? The folks who were staying with us had checked it out at the library. They decided not to read it, based on my recommendation, but accidentally left it here this week when they left to go house-sit for friends. The FYG asked if she could read it. I said that, oh, I thought she might read the first chapter if she wanted, but she probably wouldn't like it (that was my big mistake, I think, suggesting that she would not like it. I know her well enough that I should have known better than to poison her mind in favor of the book that way).

She read it, and she read it, and she read some more. She did, at one point, wander in to the kitchen to tell me, "Elsie cries too much," but I made a second tactical error in agreeing with her too quickly and too emphatically. She grew defensive and insisted, "But she has good reasons!"

"You wouldn't cry that much even if you had all those reasons," I pointed out. She agreed with me, but thought Elsie was just different. "Yes," I said. "Elsie is soppy and you are not." She wrinkled her nose at me and insisted again, "But she has good reasons. Her life has been hard. Her mother died and she hardly knows her father. That would make anybody cry a lot."

So I've decided to jump off the Elsie cliff.

Not really, but later in the day the FYG was told she could not get on the computer when she really, really wanted to and she reacted by giving me that stink-eye that is her besetting fault. I hate that look, but I know exactly where she got it from and it is not her father's side of the family. I know it will be useful to her when she is a mother and understands better when and where to use the double-whammy (it's a stink-eye when you're a child, it becomes the double-whammy when you grow up). I've tried various approaches to losing that nasty old stink-eye glare, not one of them effective. But today I had a thought, a mean, underhanded, and even slightly hypocritical thought. It was great.

"Would Elsie," I asked in tones dripping with honey, "have looked at a grown up that way just because she couldn't have what she wanted?"

She changed the subject, but she also sweetened up the old Stink Eye look. Considerably.

This approach has possibilities. I figure it can go two ways.

I can use this repeatedly and she will actually learn to control that expression when she does not get her way, which will make life more pleasant for everybody including herself.

Or she will grow to loathe the Elsie Dinsmore character and wish never to hear her mentioned again.

I can live with either of these.

Fun Quotes on Books

A friend sent me these and I just have to share:

_Speaking of Books_ Ed. Rob Kaplan and Harold Rabinowitz

"When people ask me, 'Do you collect book?' I always say, 'No, books collect me.'"

Nicholas Barker, in At Home with Books by Estelle Ellis, Caroline Seebohm, and Christopher Simon Sykes (1995)

To be proud of having two thousand books would be absurd. You might as well be proud of having two topcoats. After your first two thousand difficulty begins, but until you have ten thousand volumes the less you say about your library the better. *Then* you may begin to speak.

Augustine Birrell

It is because the passion for books is a sentimental passion that people who have not felt it always fail to understand it.

Andrew Lang "Bibliomania in France, _Books and Bookmen_ 1886

Cultural Illiteracy Strikes Again

Recently we had a post about how DVDs for babies turn out not to be such a bright idea after all. Somebody we linked to basically said, "Well, yeah, but you can't stay away from television altogether, or the kids will be culturally illiterate."

My basic reply was that okay, they probably won't win any Trivial Pursuit games, but it turns out the problem is bigger than I realized. Much bigger, and I should not have been so dismissive. Mea Culpa. Now I know that not only will kids who are not as exposed to television as their peers lose at Trivial Pursuit, they won't win Catch-Phrase either. Clearly, I was wrong.

It also turns out not to be merely a matter of being under-exposed to television that causes this problem. We have learned that if one spouse spent some formative years in a different country than the other, this also results in a cultural divide that prevents the spouses from scoring points when on the same team. Obviously, people who didn't grow up totally in American should not play on the same team with people who did.

Case in point: I had the term "UNICEF" come up. Naturally, I said, "That organization we used to collect money for when we went trick or treating as children." My husband looked at me blankly. "I only collected candy," he said. "For myself."
"No, no," I argued. "We were given little collection cans or boxes at school, and as we went door to door we asked for donations for-" but by then, the buzzer sounded and it was time for the game post-mortem and recriminations to begin.

"You never collected donations for UNICEF?" I asked. "Never," he said. "I don't even think I knew who they were." The HG pointed out that going to school in different North American countries gave us different cultural references. Not for nothing is she our history major.

Getting the kids to do the shilling for the UN may have gone over in Toronto, but apparently it did not fly in Southern California in the sixties.

I missed a cultural reference of my own- the HM alluded to the lyrics of a song I only barely recognized, I don't know that I'd ever heard the lyrics. And since he was the baby of a large group of girl cousins and sisters growing up in California he knew more Southern California pop culture references than I did, being the oldest and living in Canada at the time. Who knew you could have a generation gap between two people born three months apart? The HG thinks there's another generation gap at play, too. The HM said "Goodyear;" I naturally said 'blimp,' and JennyAnyDots said, "Huh?" The HG said, 'I think that only works so quickly if you're a certain age.' Personally, I hope that was just her own cultural illiteracy showing up. The Equuschick's siblings are apparently less cultured than she- they didn't know what a shrimp fork was.

This collective cultural illiteracy made for a fun exchange in between rounds. We had an opportunity to share what we knew and how in that between-round period of post-mortem and recrimination. I'm in favor of more of it.

PR Article on Greek in Modern Education- Conclusion

I am posting articles from Volume II of the Parents' Review, and since they are long and I cannot scan them in as text I am doing it in small, bite-sized chunks comfortable enough for me to type in a short sitting. Therefore, I ended the last section somewhat arbitrarily. Oscar Browning has been talking about the benefits of a study for both character development and scholarly learning, and he says "I know of no study which produces such results as history, if only the history be properly taught,' and that is where I quite typing. He continues,

"Even in the lower classes the frivolous boy is turned by it into a thoughtful man. The reason for this is not far to seek. It is essentially a manly study. The schoolboy coming to the University if he takes to classics has merely to repeat the exercises of this childhood; if he takes to history he is plunged at once into those studies and those considerations on which the most mature men are accustomed to exercise their minds. History may, of course, by bad teaching be turned into a mere exercise of the memory. But if the political side is kept clearly in view and the student is made to trace events to their cause, to explain the present by the past, to distinguish in the records of ancient times what is permanent from what is temporary, what is essential from what is accidental, he must acquire a robustness of intellect which few other studies can give. It also calls out what I before described as the highest organon of thought- the power of balancing probabilities. In history there is no certainty either or prediction or of judgment, or even of the relation of facts. "Do not read history to me," said Bolingbroke; "I know that must be false." False it is , tried by the test of science; true in the highest sense if measured by that standard of probability which is the only criterion within the grasp of weak and fallible man.

This modern literary training, based on the highest use of language, culminating sometimes in history and sometimes in philosophy, will , I believe, be the training of the future, if in the future the highest intellectual training is to exist at all. Let us therefore begin it it as well as we can. Science is claiming every day a larger scope; she is spreading her influence far and wide over the land, extinguishing fancy, imagination, and belief, hardening the mind against those eternal voices which can only be heard in whispers. If we would protect mankind from a mental leprosy whose influence may last for centuries, we must call to our aid all the assistance which literature in its widest sense can give us. It will be obvious from what I have said that while I believe most strongly that Greek should continue to be an essential part of classical education wherever that is pursued, yet I think that literary education, of which classical education is a branch, cannot hold its own against the advancing tide of science unless it call to its aid the literature and the literary thought of the modern world, and this can be done by establishing a new kind of literary education in which not only Greek, but perhaps also Latin, has no place. I should therefore, wish to see some substitute for Greek admitted at our Universities, but such a substitute as would ensure that it was given up not out of mere indolence or indifference to culture, but from the desire to pursue some other worthy object of study with effective industry. The substitute for it should be either a competent knowledge of French and German taken together, or of mathematics and sciences. I trust that what I have said, if it does not command assent, will at least suggest ample topics for discussion.*"

And the editor, Charlotte Mason, attaches this comment to the conclusion of the article, "Discussion is invited.- Ed.

I'll be adding the links to all the sections of this article later, so those who want to peruse it as a single document can do that, and also to make it easier to put it together and get it up online at AO's repository of PR articles.

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

Part six

More Family Lessons from Benedict's Rule of Order

Chapter 63 of Benedict's Rule is about order, as in rank and hierarchy and who takes precedence over whom, and who must defer to whom and who has seniority and who doesn't in the community and that portion of it does not much apply to families. But this does:

Yet the Abbot must not disturb the flock committed to him,
nor by an arbitrary use of his power ordain anything unjustly;
but let him always think
of the account he will have to render to God
for all his decisions and his deeds.

Likewise, the mother and father must not use their authority arbitrarily and make unjust rules. Remember always that you are stewards, accountable to God for all your rules, decisions, and deeds within your family (and outside as well). Tall order, and do not beat yourselves about the head and shoulders for failing sometime, just keep it in mind.

Benedict goes on to explain more details, such as that a monk who enters the monastery at ten in the morning on Tuesday will be senior over a monk who enters at noon on the Thursday, even if the earlier monk is much younger than the older. Age, he stresses, does not trump length of service or experience on its own, although the Abbot may see fit to advance one monk over another for other reasons. But regardless of age, the Abbot stresses, monks must humbly take their order from time of entrance, not chronological age. With this exception:

Boys, however, are to be kept under discipline
in all matters and by everyone.

Sunday Hymn Post

God Moves in a Mysterious Way

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

Words: Will­iam Cow­per, in Twen­ty-six Let­ters on Re­li­gious Sub­jects, by John New­ton, 1774

Definition

"Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed."
Elbert Hubbard (US author (1856 - 1915)

Embarrassing Confession

My little meltdown yesterday wasn't really over anything new or unexpected, I just periodically have these days where the thick black rope I am hanging onto with grim determination, the one that keeps me from freefalling into that slough of despair, suddenly dissolves into smoke in my hands. Those moments can be prompted by anything and everything and nothing and if I told you what some of the triggers were, well, some of them would make sense to you and make you depressed, too, and we can't have that, and some of them make sense to nobody but me and I am not even sure about me.

And to be quite painfully honest, as I just told a dear friend who asked, I just feel really stupid right now, because I did not mean to publish that comment about feeling knocked down and discouraged. I wrote it, oh, around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and I changed the timestamp on it for hours later. I then sternly threatened myself that I had until then to shake out of it or I would hit publish, and in spite of appearances to the contrary, I actually do dislike public displays of emotional messiness from myself. And then I meant to hit the save button and walk away, leaving it unpublished, sort of as an ultimatum to myself. And it was too late, too many kind people had already commented, before I realized I had hit publish instead. And then I did not know what to do. Until just now when I realized, in responding to my friend who asked, that I could either pretend it never happened or explain how silly I'd been, and it really wasn't all that complicated after all.

So I am sorry. But thank-you.

Should We Have a Child Professionally Evaluated?

A reader asks a very good question:

I was wondering if you would recommend having a child who seems to have mild AS professionally evaluated. My son seems "normal" during most short encounters with people, but it's obvious to me and those who spend the most time with him that he's going to need instruction in matters that most children will pick up naturally. I'm hesitant to actually get a professional diagnosis, though. We're a homeschooling, family-oriented family, and I really don't care how he'd perform in a group of children who were all his same age, since that's not a situation we plan to encounter anyway. We want him to eventually be a man capable of providing for his family and loving his wife and children as he serves God, and I'm pretty sure that we don't need professional help for that. (In fact, I think that many people would sabotage. our efforts.) Since you're like-minded and have raised the Cherub, I'd really appreciate your opinion. At what point would you get professional help?

That's a great question, which means, as we all know, that I have no great answer to match. However, that won't stop me from rambling away with some thoughts and suggestions.

It is true that it is a risk that many professionals will sabotage your efforts and give poorly thought out advice. Most professionals will insist that autistic kids should not be homeschooled because they need the 'socialization.' But they have no empirical evidence to back up their assumption that the socialization in public schools is better than than in homeschools. I do not have any empirical evidence for my position, either, and I do not have any experience with any autism spectrum issues other than having several friends who either have AA or have children or siblings with some form of Autism. I just know that autistic kids, like retarded kids (which is The Cherub's diagnosis) have trouble adapting what they learn from one area to another, so it makes more sense to me to have the place where they learn look as much like real life as, well, real life. As opposed to an institution, which is what a public school is.

On the other hand, some professionals are supportive, informed about homeschooling, and helpful. It's useful to find these- because the good ones are very, very good. They spend their lives with kids like your kid, and seeing such a wide range and number of families they are often a storehouse of great ideas on how to cope, how to compensate, how to do end-runs around whatever particular problem you're having. In order to find these people, you need to know other parents who are dealing with similar issues, and ask them questions. One of my favorite resources is Nathhan. I suggest that everybody dealing with a different kind of child get in touch with them. They will put you in touch with other parents, maybe even in your area, who are dealing with what you are, and this is a great back up to have.

I also cannot recommend Dianne Craft's work highly enough. I love this woman and what she does. If I lived near here, I would gladly take a child in to see her. I own one of her books, bought a multiplication program from her (and it is the reason one of my children learned the times tables), and follow her advice on supplements. She's just excellent.

There is another reason for getting a diagnosis, and it's one I thought much less of years ago. I thought it was just a label, and who needs labels. And that is a danger, as is the risk that a kid will use it as a crutch. So maybe it's better that you wait and get the diagnosis in the teen years, when the child hasn't grown up with it as a crutch.

I don't want to go into too much detail, because it's not my story, but one of our other children probably has some significant learning disabilities in certain areas. This Progeny is also exceptionally bright- in other areas. Brilliant, in fact. And she recently told me that she had only just decided that maybe she wasn't as stupid as she had been thinking- that there was something actually wrong, like a limp or bad vision, and knowing this meant there was something she could do about it besides tell herself she was not smart. I had no idea she thought it was her fault.

It helped her to read Jane Healy's book Your Child's Growing Mind. I think just growing up a bit helped, too. But this is a good reason to seek a diagnosis- just as we seek a diagnosis for bad vision. Kids are 'self-centered' because they have nothing else for reference. When I was in the second or third grade and needed glasses, I didn't know it. I just knew that I was getting in trouble all the time for not following along when the teacher was working from the blackboard. I knew I couldn't see the words, but I didn't know this was because there was something wrong with my vision. I didn't know why everybody else seemed to be able to see that board effortlessly and I couldn't. It was just my fault. I didn't even know enough to ask to sit closer to the board.

A kid who doesn't know he has asthma might start to think he's just weak, flabby, and out of shape because he's inferior, that he's not exercising right, or not doing enough, or is just too lazy- when all along it's his lungs that are the problem. A kid who does not know he's got Asperger's Autism might think that his issues are character flaws, a result of his own inferiorities. While we do not, I repeat, want these things to be excuses for lazy or bad behavior, knowing that there is something inherently, oh, cross wired in your system can help you know where and how to work on it, and when and how to do work-arounds.

If your child doesn't seem bothered by his issues, then maybe a diagnosis is not that important. But then, I didn't know until this week that one of my most intellectually gifted children thought she was stupid.

So that's what I think. How about you, readers? What is your experience with labels and disabilities and how they help or hinder? Can you suggest helpful resources, websites, books, organizations?

Giggle

Heh.

Hah!

Stop it, you're killing me. Bless her heart. If she had any idea just how much she was really revealing about her preconceptions and biases to the rest of the world she'd take up lobbying instead of journalism. Oh. Wait.

Want a good solid round-up of all the reasons why media credibility could do the limbo beneath a shiny snail trail? Nicole, up above, should read this and think about it real hard. Hint- it's not the bloggers, dearie.

A Fun Science Book

Famous Experiments and How to Repeat Them is one of my favorite library finds for grade school aged children. The author is Brent Filson, who has gone on to work mostly in the field of motivational speaking and this little gem of a book has lapsed into the darkness of the oop world.

There are several chapters, each about a different Great Discovery in science history. Each chapter follows roughly the same format. Filson tells the story of
a great scientist and his discovery, and the circumstances leading up to that discovery. and then give a short and easy way to demonstrate that science principle using materials most of us have around the house or can easily obtain (one experiment used two toilet plungers).

I liked his book so well I actually wrote him once, and he was very interested in keeping his copyright and getting that book reprinted, but I didn't have the resources or the know-how to make that happen.

Charlotte Mason believed that science, like most other topics, is best presented not through facts, figures, and demonstrations but through stories

Children forget data and unconnected strings of facts, but tell them a story, and they remember much more. Stories are vitally important for human understanding. Dr. Renee Fuller, a current pioneer in cognitive research, writes "Bits of information cannot function as thinking units, that is unless we make story-engrams with them. Fundamental to human thinking is that we are story bound. Organizing the stimuli that surround us in story form is how we structure our world; how we make sense out of our environment; how we describe cause and effect relationships, and every other relationship."

Stories! We can reach across the dry data, facts, and diagrams and light our children's imaginations with well-told stories. Even not so well told stories will have a better chance of transmitting scientific principles and knowledge than bare facts, devoid of all human interest or story-telling. Miss Mason liked to quote a Frenchman who said that scientific truths are the stories of battles won. Most scientific discoveries are stories of glorious deeds, grand detective stories, accidental and exciting adventures in the lab- if only we could find the right person to tell the story. Brent Filson did a terrific job of communicating this sense of adventure and discovery through story.

Indonesian Sate

Indonesian Sate (serves eight)

This recipe works best with frozen then thawed tofu, because freezing tofu gives it a much different texture.
Defrost 2 pounds tofu early in the day or the night before. Frozen and then defrosted tofu will be more full of liquid than a soaked sponge. Press this water out. You can put it in a colander over the sink and press it gently and steadily with your hands. You can put it in a colander and set a heavy pan or bowl of water on top of it and let it drain while you do something else. You can just wrap it in a clean dish towel and squeeze gently. You can just press it gently but firmly between your hands over the sink. All these methods work.

Oil the bottom of a 9X13 pan (sesame oil will add a nice flavor). Slice your tofu into 1/2 thick slices, or thinner. Thicker will be less flavorful because tofu absorbs the flavors of whatever you cook it with.

Make this sauce by mixing well:
4 minced garlic cloves
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/2 cup peanut butter
4 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons grated ginger root (or dried ginger, about 1 teaspoon)
1/2 teaspoon ground bay leaf (we usually forget this)
4 teaspoons honey
1/2 cup braggs amino acids (or soy sauce)
1/2 cup very hot water ( boiling is fine and will blend the flavors better, but it just needs to be hot enough to help the peanut butter melt and blend well)
salt to taste
cayenne pepper to taste

Put a very thin layer of this sauce in the bottom of your greased pan. Put the slices of tofu in the dish (only one layer thick- if you need to get out a second pan, but do not layer the tofu and sauce). Cover with the rest of the sauce. Let this marinate for 2-3 hours or more (sometimes we don't start it in time to do this. It's much better if it marinates, but it's okay if doesn't).

Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or so. We have this over brown rice with a side of vegetables or fruit and often a salad. Sometimes we top it with nuts or chow mein noodles.

Senses Challenge

This is a fun test from the BBC Science page. The Senses Challenge test doesn't take very long and has some really cool bits to it.

I wasn't able to get much from the Sniffing the Decades thing, being too young for their analysis, but I'd love to hear from some older people (not old, mind you, just older than me) how accurate you all found it.

Pity Party Hosted Here

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed...

Except for when we are.

Say something to make me snap out of it.

Cacti have leaves?

Scientists have recently discovered that all cacti plants actually do have leaves. They are at the base of the signs, so when looking for them, make sure you don't get poked in the eyes. Although... I'm not sure you can see them, considering how very tiny they are.

The Call To Service- a Rousing Conclusion

I am enjoying the concluding remarks Erskine makes in his commencement address "A Call to Service," and not just because they ARE concluding remarks. No doubt many of your eyes are glazing over with all these old article reprints in dribs and drabbles of late (you know they are)- but this conclusion is a very sound read:

It would be wrong to let you think that by entering any great profession even my own, you will automatically enter the life of genuine service. With teaching, with science, with religion, I have no quarrel; I long ago gave my allegiance to all three, and it is from noble priests and scholars and teachers that I have drawn the ideals here set forth.

\
'Giving one's allegiance' is such an old fashioned concept, isn't it? Do Americans do that anymore? Do we admire it?

But while human nature remains what it is, there is a great temptation to mistake immediate results for the true ends, to impart the by-products rather than the vital principle, to think of ourselves as conserving the torch, instead of handing it on. The mass of mankind are good-natured enough to let us treat them for a certain length of time as objects of charity, as destined to be served, but there is an end to their good nature. In religion this conclusion has already shown itself; in science and in education the writing is on the wall.

Unfortunately, I think he was mistaken there, and the mass of mankind is pretty much resigned to being a permanent fixure in the 'destined to be served' class.

For that reason I hesitated to call you to service, lest you should understand the summons only in the familiar way, and by your enthusiasm should make the gulf wider between your ideals and your fellow-men. But to be truly serviceable is our loftiest ambition. The service we dream of is such education, such religion, such science, as will increase in all men the abundance of life. The method we dream of is such an illustration of religion or science or scholarship in our own lives as will increase in others a hunger for the same spiritual sustenance.

Sometimes you've probably been at an unfamiliar restaurant trying to figure out what to order from the menu when the waiter walks past carrying somebody else's order, and it looks so delicious and the smell is so enticing that you close your menu and say, "I want that." Are our lives that enticing? Is the way we live such a representation, such a picture of true religion, noble science, and lofty scholarship that others hunger for the same things just because they have seen such beauty and joy in our lives?
No? Well, maybe, just for today, we can work on that a little. Devote some time to that "deliberate consideration of your reason, principles, and conduct..." that leads to an examined life, remembering that:

...a life in which conduct does not fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; and that conduct can only be made to accord with principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution. What leads to the permanent sorrowfulness of burglars is that their principles are contrary to burglary. If they genuinely believed in the moral excellence of burglary, penal servitude would simply mean so many happy years for them; all martyrs are happy, because their conduct and their principles agree.

I had to read the next section two or three times- the first time I was sure I completely disagreed. The second time I realized I misunderstood Erskine's meaning and I agreed with him after all. The third time I realized I'd misunderstood his meaning, but maybe I didn't agree. My conclusion is to ask what readers we have still following this article to tell me what you think he means:

If you rise to your own stature, you will thereby perform all the service you could desire you will help others to rise.
Doubtless some of your neighbors will think you selfish. Doubtless the man who buried his talent in a napkin was answering the call to service elsewhere.
The sacrifice was his own concern, but the service so rendered must have been for the served also a lessening of spiritual wealth. True service lessens nothing. Not that the teacher should waste himself in the enterprises of boyhood, but that even boys should fall in love with the enterprise of truth; not that the scientist should become a commodity- monger, but that all men should enjoy the high commodity of the scientific spirit; not that the priest should be secularized, but that by a race-wide consecration man should become a nation of priests- this is the end of true service.

Somewhere in here I wonder if a sentence or connecting phrase is missing, but I cannot currently find the hard-copy I've been using. All the Progeny but the youngest are out for the morning. I have enlisted the aid of the two readers here, but we're not getting far. They keep looking for "The Obligation to Be Clever" instead of "The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent."

For this we must be patient and with becoming care make ourselves ready; it is required of us only that we be productive of good at last. For a thousand years of inspiration to unnumbered men, how brief an investment are the forty years, or fifty, of the scholar's seclusion, the saint's discipline! Meanwhile the humble apprentice, so he be faithful, is even at the moment serviceable; for none of us can withdraw himself so far, but he will be still a ganglion of inspiration for all whose fate, by accident or kinship, is bound with his. We cannot too greatly desire to bring our fellows to the truth, but we may underestimate their own desire for it. When we ourselves seek it, every man who feels our contact will go with us.

This is the true call to service not, "The world is waiting for you to come and help it"; but, "Are you fit to serve? Do you know how to live your own life? Either religion or science may be for you the City of God. If the ramparts need rebuilding, take counsel of those ancient men who after long captivity raised again the walls of Jerusalem. Every man built in front of his own house."

We must set our own houses in order, true. I do not think that's all we must do, nor do I think we should wait to help others until our own houses are in perfect order- but true humility includes an understanding of our own shortcomings as at least equal to those we are trying to help.

Updated to add this link to the story of a man who prefers a permanent underclass of those whose role in life is to be served by the likes of him. Language warning.

Greek in Modern Education, PR Article cont.

This is the second to the last installment of an article by Oscar Browning, published in the 1891/2 volume of The Parents' Review magazine, which was published and edited by Charlotte Mason.

He has been discussing the place of Greek and Latin in a classical education and whether classical education as such should continue to hold the place it did in British public schools, but now he wishes to address another topic:

I must now pass to another subject. I mentioned above that there appeared to me to be four possible curricula in these modern days- the classical, the mathematical, the scientific, and the modern literary. The last of these has yet to be created; but I believe that if it were properly developed it would be found to be in educative effect and instructive value in no way inferior to the other three. A serious attempt was once made to introduce it during the Second French Empire by Napoleon III. and his minister of education, M. Duruy. It went by the name of Enseignement Secondaire Special. But there were great difficulties in the way. First, books had to be written for it. It was then discovered that there were no competent teachers, and a normal school had to be founded to provide the necessary instructors. The scheme had got no further when the Second Empire broke up, although I believe that something has been done to carry it by the present Republican Government.

The central idea of such an education is that it should fit a man for the problems and the work of modern life; that it should not be scientific nor mathematical, nor should it be professional. It should deal as classical education deals with that higher preparatory education which ought in every case to precede the professional or breadwinning training. A man disciplined in it would understand the best thought, the best literature, the best art of the day; he would be acquainted with the problems with which the wold has to deal- political, social, and moral; he would be cosmopolitan in taste and culture; he would be at home in any civilised country, and his interest in the life which he had to lead and the environment in which he would move would not be depressed and overweighted with the burden of an exhausted erudition.

There is nothing more remarkable than the general ignorance of classical scholars. It is difficult for them to put themselves in touch with the modern world. If you speak to them of politics they are apt to think that it is an animal in the Zoological Gardens. Grote was a politician before he was an historian, Gibbon acknowledges his obligations to his experience as a member of parliament, but Curtius, the German historian of Greece, is a mere scholar. He describes events by putting texts together, but he has no skill in animating events with the life of action. Heine visited Poland at the age of twenty-one, and wrote an account of that country which is said never to have been surpassed in truth and insight.

This is what I should like any scholar trained on modern lines to be able to do. He should have the linguistic facility of a Russian, the political understanding of an American, the erudition of a German, and the common-sense and sound judgment of an Englishman. Nothing should be thrown away in his education. Nothing should be regretted or thought better of when forgotten. He should not begin with a laborious scaffolding of a dead past. He should proceed from the known to the unknown. He should study the past only to understand the present better. I would of course begin with languages. He should learn French, German, and Italian, as many English children learn them from their nurses or their governesses. But as soon as I could I would make him aim at a scholar's perfection. He should grind at grammar, and labour at translation and composition enough to satisfy the severest pedant. He should also be made to feel that the principal use of language is as a key to literature, that the power of mere speaking was a mere courier's gift, and that the worth of language lies in its giving approach to the thoughts of men. He should know his Dante as well as a University scholar knows his Poetae Scenici. He should have studied with diligence and enthusiasm Goethe and Schiller, Racine and Pascal. But the main training of his mind I would draw from history, and especially political history.

I have now taught history at the University for about the same length of time as I had previously taught classics at school, and every year I have a stronger belief in it as a means of the higher education. Setting aside those students who have a marked aptitude for moral or natural science, or who are born classical scholars- and these classes form a small proportion of the whole- I know of no study which produces such results as history, if only the history be properly taught.

Sounds good to me.

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

Part six

Of Little Triumphs in The Equuschick's Life

The Equuschick spent half an hour loping her instructor's horse without stirrups this evening.

Her thighs, her back, and other body parts the general public does not to be overly concerned with, are killing her.

He didn't even ask her to do it, it just happened. The first half hour of the lesson the instructor's only two comments were "square your shoulders" and "sit up straight", and then he sat in his chair with a satisfied smile and asked what else The Equuschick thought she needed to know, thus indicating his approval of her performance.

The Equuschick laughed, but she was not satisfied, because she is never satisfied with herself, not ever, and something was bothering her. So she considered the question seriously, and came to the realization that what needed improvement were her FEET.

What was wrong with them?! Why did they keep interfering, why did they keep slipping out of the stirrups during the lope, why weren't they staying in position instead of fidgeting all over the place, why weren't they LISTENING to their mistress, why didn't they understand how totally unnecessary they are to the overall task of riding a horse well?!

The Instructor watched The Equuschick and her feet and knew all, but said not a word, because he doesn't.

Well fine then, if he wouldn't tell her, she would do it herself, so she ditched the stirrups in a huff and began to work, while The Instructor crossed one leg over the other and gave The Equuschick his grin that says "Well, this is sure going to be interesting."

But she did well, she knows she did, she balanced on her thighs and seat and forced herself through gritted teeth to make her aching back stay straight and her shoulders square and she made her feet understand that they weren't needed half as much as they thought they were, so there, and the stirrups weren't necessary at all so quit leaning into them, feet, thank-you very much.

And The Instructor watched, and when she dismounted he said "Excellent, excellent."

You may wonder why The Equuschick pays this close-mouthed guy, but she tells you a true saying when she says he is the best instructor she has ever had.

No one, indeed, NO ONE has ever had a teaching style that matched The Equuschick's learning style so well.

He tells her what he wants her to do, how to do it, and then he sits on his chair and shuts his mouth and lets her learn how to do it.

If she does well, he says "Excellent." Rarely more than that one word, but she loves it. She sweats and breaks her back just to hear that one word from him, and in the past year she learned his expressions and what they mean, and she would bleed herself dry for one of his satisfied grins because she knows it means she is doing things right. She knows the expression that means he is unhappy, and she watches for it and if she sees it she fixes what she can and waits for him to tell her the rest when he feels the time is right, knowing he will never stop giving The Equuschick the chance to figure things out for herself.

*waves wanly*

Good grief. It's been a busy week. Some of it has been absolutely splendiferous fun (nothing beats out of town friends). Some of it has been self-inflicted misery (I like how my bedroom looks now, but I think the re-arranging of it added gray hairs...or something). Some of it has been droning boredom (being stuck in traffic).

School starts on Monday. That doesn't feel real. Another semester - new classes, new professors, new books to buy and read, new papers to write. Maybe after I've had more sleep my excitement levels will increase a teensy bit. Isn't that dreadful?

Donoman!

Aww, look, he's showing signs of intelligence... unless you know that he was actually listening to EC typing on the computer. :-)

Home Improvement Projects

Here's my latest home improvement project.
I had a great huge teacher's desk sitting in this spot, and on the desk there was a hutch, and in that hutch there were some books, and more books, and some china, and more books (and on those books there was some dust....) I spent hours clearing off the desk and hutch and finding other places for the stuff on them (not entirely done with that finding a place part) in between sneezing from the dust.
Then I had to clear off my white computer desk next to the bed (if you look in the picture, the computer desk was just beneath the pictures you see in the mirror). Pip helped me slide my old white computer desk out from its former place next to my bed and into the living room, from whence Jenny took it to put it in her room (and she gave me a small bookcase in exchange). I put the huge desk where the computer desk had been and it's my new computer desk- a massive, oak, heavy old fashioned teacher's desk you may remember from the days when school bells were not electronic but were brass bells with wooden handles that the teachers rang by waving them back and forth The hutch is temporarily in the garage while we think about where else to put it inside. And we did all this to make room for my newest home improvement project pictured to the left.

By 'my' project I mean that somebody else carried it downstairs from the Rattery, loaded it in the truck and drove it home and unloaded it, and then somebody else cleaned it up and repaired the drawers, somebody else cleaned the mirror, moved it into the bedroom, put it all back together and did a few more repairs, and then while he wasn't looking I put all this pink and girlie stuff on it and called it mine.

Click on the picture to enlarge.

Kindly ignore the dog hair on the floor beneath it. I thought I had swept that all up, but I guess not.

I really hate dog hair.

But I like my dresser.

Books to the Ceiling

That's how I've been feeling lately- closed in, smotherd, and in danger of burial from the many towering piles of books all around my bedroom. I spent some time shifting things from here to there, added a tiny bookcase in a spot I had not thought it would fit (I am not at all sure my husband likes it there, but the idea is that this is permanent), took two boxes of books to half price books for a grand total of five dollars, pulled out another thirty or so books from the gardening/home improvement bookshelves and stacked one of my piles of books in a tea-cart that I can cover with a tablecloth if I get twitchy again. I feel better.

I thought I'd posted this before, but I can't find it:

Isn't that hilarious? Or scary, I guess, depending on your perspective.

Books to the ceiling, books to the sky.
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them!
How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
Arnold Lobel

I have that in a picture book somewhere. IT is to be hoped NOT in one of the hundred or more I recently got rid of.

You can find more fun things like this at Owl Square Press.

You can get this (and other fun book related pictures) on posters and book marks, and no, I am not even an affiliate. I get no shekels. I just like this poster.

It looks like home.

The Call To Service: Education

We've been reading through John Erskine's A Call To Service, a commencement address he delivered somewhere in the 1920's. The previous posts are here, here, and here- if you'll remember his general concern is the self-conceit inherent in the idea that some of us (mostly the 'us' in life) are called to serve while others are called to be served (the 'them' in life), without seeing, even rejoicing over, the idea that genuine service lifts somebody out of the ranks of the served to a point where they no longer need us- I would add that we must also see ourselves as people who at times need the help of our fellow man. He has addressed the failings of both science and religion in this area, and now he's about to step on some other toes:

I can imagine that some of you will be as little troubled by the insufficiency of science as by the shortcomings of religion; you have heard the call to service, but you understand it as a call to teach. Observing that I am by profession a teacher, you probably think that I have saved up education for the end of my discourse as a happy contrast to those other ways of serving. The call to service does indeed seem to be a summons to inquiry, whether of religion or science or any other region of faith or experience, and the life of inquiry might seem to be the life of a college professor.

The college is supposed to be a place of precious leisure, in which truth may be sought without distraction. It is not directly practical nor serviceable; it is the gymnasium rather than the arena of the spirit. As its name implies, it is a
collection of diverse minds and natures, strengthening their noblest impulses and
their finest knowledge by a communal sharing. Into this charged atmosphere
of the spirit a student enters, to learn his capacities and to develop them, as his
teachers develop theirs,, by this high traffic of soul and soul. The service
which the college can render is to keep the atmosphere properly charged to see that
there are enough teachers and enough students, so that this interchange of
character may be complete. The ideal is a byword "Mark Hopkins on one end
of a log and a boy on the other."

The log, of course, is not necessary. It is only a convenience. But unfortunately the college is seized with that spirit of service which looks for quick results. Neither Mark Hopkins nor the boy can be organized and administered to serve any very immediate popular demand; it is the log, therefore, that the colleges have organized and elaborated.

With the sincerest desire to be of service to the greatest number if possible, to all
who present themselves they have extended the log till some of the boys are almost out of earshot of Mark Hopkins, and for weak backs they have inserted a few bolsters. How narrow and unsympathetic sounds an extract from the report to the trustees of Columbia College in 1810 on the state of instruction in that institution "Your committee cannot for a moment suppose that it is the intention of the Board to try that most fruitless and mischievous experiment the experiment of educating either the naturally stupid or the incurably idle."

In justice to the modern educator who does not admit the existence of any such
class as the naturally stupid or the incurably idle, be it said that he lives up
to his ideal of service, even to the forfeiture of that leisurely investigation and
contemplation of truth which is the prime delight of the scholar. The log has not
been easy to organize. The college professor has had to manipulate embarrassing entrance requirements, and make the curriculum pliable, and serve as preceptor
to the near-idle and as adviser to the near-stupid; nay, having evolved this system of dependence in intellectual things, he has carried it, in the spirit of
service, into the amusements of the students, until he acts as director of
their sports and treasurer of their gate receipts and sponsor of their business
contracts. All this takes time.

Wow- I think that paragraph is one of the best of the bunch. Imagine! He wrote that in the 1920s, and about the only thing that is different today is that I believe many educationists are coming around to the notion that that not all students can be educated- they still want more money to continue not doing the same thing, and it's not their fault if the children are not learning, it's the childrens' or the parents (which may very well be true, I do not deny that some children are intolerably unwilling to learn and some parents are worse). However, while on the one hand insisting that they cannot be held responsible for the failures, they want more money to continue doing the same thing. I think the fix is not more money, but more responsibility back in the hands of parents and their children. I could say more, but I think Erskine said it better.

In more leisurely days the scholar would come from his meditations upon great truths like the prophet from Sinai, with the skin of his face shining. Now from a conference with student managers or from investigating the eligibility of the football captain he returns with that nervous step, that fretful eye, that palpable collapse of spirit, which announce to his sympathetic colleagues, "I have served."

Yet he would still have his reward, did his labors ennoble the served, or con-
fer upon them a more abundant life. That the effect is otherwise might be prophesied from a certain complacency in his sacrifice. If he looks down to those he serves, if the angle of his condescension is to himself the warrant of his welldoing, if football or the college dramatics be not really his career, but only an excuse for demonstrating to the youngsters that he can still revisit their point of view then he has robbed them of what it is his profession to give; robbed them not simply in their greater dependence, in their lessening enthusiasm and ability to conduct their own affairs, but far more tragically in the defeat of their right to live in the presence, and profit by the inspiration, of a scholar who follows with his whole heart the great quest of truth. Whether or not it is the students' duty to study, it is their right to behold the scholar at his work, and to imitate him; for it is by
comradeship and imitation that they share the teacher's life. But if the teacher keeps his scholarship out of the comradeship and the life which they
share; if he manages his days as though scholarship were a solace of the leisure
to be earned by service, or a hoarded treasure not to be rashly displayed he
will no more make others scholarly than a priest who conceals his holiness will
make others holy, or a scientist who does not live his science will make others
scientific.

85th Edition of the Homeschooling Carnival

Over at Dewey's Treehouse- looksee, looksee.

I love this peek at Anne's study.

I loved this dandy collection of pages to print out and put up on the walls- maps and more.

Those were just my first two click-throughs- there were others.

Highly amusing song by Superchick

You hate men is what you say and I understand how you feel that way
All girls dream of a fairy tale
But what you've got's like a used car salesman
Trying to conceal what's wrong behind a smile and a song
And I'm not saying that boys are not like that
But I think you should know
That some of us will grow
Because...
All princes start as frogs and all gentlemen as dogs
Just wait till it's plain to see
What we're growing up to be
Some frogs will still be frogs
Some dogs will still be dogs
Some boys will become men
Just don't kiss us til then.


I like this song a lot. It was especially funny at about 3 in the morning. :-)

Asperger's Autism

Here's an article by a man who lives with it and what he thinks about it. I think it's a really good read.

Ignorance Makes you Look Kind of Silly

The Media in the form of the AFP has, yet again, published some fauxtography of, um very questionable veracity. We have two photographs of very pristine, shiny, unscratched, very pretty bullets, still in their casings that allegedly struck a house and a bed, respectively. Both photos are taken by the same photographer. You can read more (and look at the nice, shiny bullets) at The Confederate Yankee, Hot Air, and Blackfive. The autonomist has a very handy field guide to bullets that have been fired and those that ain't. You may wish to share it with a journalist near you.

Follow the links for some hilarious reading. And tell me again why anybody trusts the media?

Haven't made these yet, but they look good!

Orange Marmalade Muffins

1 3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup orange marmalade (I used Polaner's Sugar Free)
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup milk
4 tablepoons butter, melted


Icing:
1/3 cup Orange marmalade
1 tablespoon soft butter
2 cups powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 400. In medium bowl, combine flour, salt, sugar and baking powder. In seperate bowl beat eggs; add butter, marmalade and milk. Add all at once to the dry ingredients. Stir quickly and lightly until just mixed. Mixture will be lumpy. Fill greased muffin tins 2/3 full. Bake 20-25 minutes. For icing, blend all ingredients in a small bowl until smooth. Frost muffins when cool.

Makes 24 muffins.

Be Like This

Make a rule, and pray God to help you to keep it. Never, if possible, lie down at night without being able to say, "I have made one human being, at least, a little wiser, a little happier, or a little better this day." --Charles Kingsley

Greek in Modern Education, PR Article cont.

Background- this article was published in the 1891/2 edition of the Parents' Review edited by Charlotte Mason. The author is Oscar Browning. When I finish this article, I'll start on another- very few of the PR articles from volume II, this volume, are available to the general public, and I'd like to get them all online. If you're interested, a list of the table of contents is up at Ambleside's website. If you want to look it over and put in a request for a particular article to be next, I'd be interested in hearing from you.

But the question is not whether Greek shall be reduced in our schools to the position of Hebrew, but whether it is to remain compulsory on all who proceed to a University of education. To decide this we must take a survey of the present condition of knowledge. All education which is worth the name conduces to a definite end. But nowadays it would be difficult for a master to say at any given moment which particular end he is aiming at in the education of a particular boy. Our public-school education which gives the tone to all the rest has never been subjected to a thorough revision. We retain the old classical basis which was once an end in itself, and we add to it mathematics, modern languages, history, and science. We attempt to embrace everything and to surrender nothing. We do not even allow specialisation, because in our schools questions of discipline, and even of society, are quite as pressing as questions of education. There arises, therefore an internecine strife between these conflicting claims; each study gets what it can in the struggle; and as when thieves fall out good men come by their own, so, while masters are squabbling as to what they shall teach, athletics and amusements, which have a clear and simple end in view, and which always know their own minds, step in and occupy the field. Therefore, as Mr. Gladstone wrote thirty years ago, the most crying want in the education of the present day is to distinguish between what is principal and what is subordinate.

Now, as has often been remarked, there are four main lines on which education may be based- the classical, the mathematical, the scientific, and the modern literary. This last has never been developed to the fulness of its power, but I believe that it is capable of very large extension. Leaving this latter alone, let us say a few words about the educational value of the three first. What effect do they severally produce upon the mind regarding them as organs of thought?

I am disappointed that he left aside the modern literary track, because I suspect this is the one that interested Charlotte Mason (and interests me) the most.

Science makes great pretensions for itself in the present day. Mr. Herbert Spencer has said that it is the only thing worth learning. It bases its claims partly on its intrinsic importance, partly on the stimulus it gives to the faculty of observation, but principally on the certainty of its conclusions. It claims to teach what is, to believe in nothing, to ask its learners to believe in nothing which cannot be seen, weighed, and handled. Now in this very certainty its weakness lies. In all the domains of human speculation, just as we become certain we become false. The mind of man is incapable of ascertaining absolute truth; all it can reach is a very high degree of probability. There is no reason to suppose that if the Creator could give an account of His own work it would correspond in any particular to what we have imagined that we knew about it. Time and space have no real existence, but are merely limitations o our own minds; the law of gravity, the discovery of which is reckoned as a triumph of inductive reasoning, might be found to have quite another explanation. In the complicated affairs of life, in law and politics, in love and war, we have to proceed by probabilities; certainties are impossible to us. The same is, of course, true of religion. A mode of reasoning, therefore which is based on certainty has not only a narrow scope, but it unfits us for the solution of these most important questions which can be decided by probability alone.

Hmph.

A similar charge may with good reason be brought against mathematics. They teach accurate reason, but they do not, except in their highest branches, stimulate the imagination, or accustom the mind to that familiarity with probabilities which is after all the highest degree of certainty which the human mind is capable of acquiring.

The great merit of classics is that their study does develop this habit of mind to a very great degree. Let me take two examples. A number of persons translate a passage of Shakespeare into Greek iambics. A competent scholar will have no hesitation in saying that one version is better than the other, and a consensus amongst competent scholars on the point would be found which would astonish anyone who was not familiar with these matters; yet these judges would not be able to assign reasons for their opinions which would satisfy the average mind, for instance a British jury. No reason could be given which would not break down under the cross-examination of an experienced counsel. Yet the opinion would be no less valid for that. It would be derived from an absolutely certain instinct, derived from a habit of weighing probabilities which had become a second nature. So also in asuggested emendation of a corrupt passage a practised scholar would be able to say that a particular reading must be the right one, or perhaps more often that it could not possibly be the right one. Yet it would be difficult to explain in words precisely the reasons which determined this decision. Iy is this training of a careful and well-balanced judgment that gives to classical studies their special and peculiar value.

I'm curious (and I really do not know)- would the informed consensus of these competent scholars be duplicated by another set of competent scholars 150 years later?
I know we have at least two sometimes readers and the spouse of another reader who have studied Greek and Latin- if you're reading, would you concur with what Browning is saying? Can you figure out what's saying and explain it to the rest of us?

I should therefore be inclined to conclude that of the three curricula which I have mentioned, the scientific, the mathematical, and the classical, the last is by far the best if it is applied to a mind suited to it. It is not difficult to ascertain at an early age whether a boy is likely to turn out a scholar or not. The class of mind which attaches a value to language, and is capable of appreciating minute differences of style and idiom, is one which reveals itself by unmistakable signs. It is true that there is a school of educationists who think that all natural tendencies should be repressed, and that the presence of a special faculty is a reason rather for repressing, or, as it is called, correcting it, than for developing it. This I do not believe. Observation of growing minds has taught me long since that more time is gained, and the best results are produced by training the mind in that direction to which nature points, and that the cultivation of one faculty is the best means of strengthening all the rest. But of this classical curriculum Greek is the most important part.

Greek is not only more educative than Latin, but is far more suited to be learned by tender minds; Greek not only appeals to the mature intellect by its subtlety and refinement, but by a certain childishness and simplicity, to the intelligence of a boy or girl. It is difficult in Latin to find any classical author which is really suited for beginners. On the other hand a child will take quite naturally to the Odyssey. The way of telling the story suits it, and there is a charm in the narrative which sounds like a fairy tale. Therefore I say fearlessly that if classical education is to be maintained, and if one of the two classical languages has to be sacrificed, I would rather it were Latin than Greek.

Also there is great danger of the standard of classical education being seriously lowered by the sacrifice of Greek. When I had an opportunity, some five-and-twenty years ago, of examining the education given by the French Government schools, I was horrified at the slow standard then attained in the Greek language- and I may say in the Latin also. Scholarship as we understand it was almost unknown in France and Italy, although it then held its own in Germany, which was indeed a model to other nations in this respect. In France, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, an agitation began against the study of Greek, similar to that which is now going on in England. The University of Paris was not strong enough to withstand the tide of popular opinion and surrendered Greek as a compulsory subject. The Jesuits- a very powerful and independent teaching body- were able to keep to it, and the consequence was that the education of the Jesuits took a very high position in France, and left the University far behind. Indeed this had much to do with the influence which the Jesuit teaching had over the whole of Europe. You will have gathered from what I have said that I am strongly of opinion* that Greek should continue to be an essential part of classical education as long at that education is preserved, and that to give it up would probably prove the deathblow of what is called scholarship in England and would seriously tend to lower the whole standard of the higher culture.

* that is how it is worded- not 'of the opinion.' I don't know if this is just a typo in the volume, or how a scholar such as Dr. Browning would have phrased it.

Maybe I am just tired, but it seems to me that Browning thinks Greek is the better choice because he did better at Greek in school himself. And this statement, "the classical, the last is by far the best if it is applied to a mind suited to it" carries with it a qualifier that seems to me to make it true of just about anything. I would agree that education worth the name has a definite end in view. And certainly, as Mr. Gladstone said, now over 130 years ago, we want to distinguish between what is principal and what is subordinate.

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

Part six

Slicing Cheese for Garnishes

Take your small cookie cutter. For this method, the simpler the shape the better. In this case I chose a crescent moon.

Push the cookie cutter down into the cheese. It doesn't have to go all the way down to the surface below.
I didn't take a picture of the next step because I am not coordinated enough to hold the camera in one hand, while holding the knife in my other hand and take a picture at the same time. You take a small paring knife and trim the cheese- run the knife along the outside edge of the cookie cutter, all around the edges, trimming away the cookie cutter and the cheese within it from the rest of the block of cheese.

Let the Equuschick eat the trimmings, or save them for another meal (Havarti with dill is good mixed in with your mashed potatoes or spread on a toasted bagel).
Turn the cookie cutter over and gently slide out just enough of the cheese to slice it off the end.
Repeat this until you've gotten all the slices you want (or could get). Havarti is soft. I was able to get three slices from this cookie cutter. I probably could have made it four or more thinner slices using a harder, firmer cheese.

I prefer them thin, delicately flavored, and melt in your mouth consistency. The HM prefers his thick and chewy.

Incidentally, we don't often have this delicious cheese. It was on sale recently, and the half moon package at the top of the page cost 1.60, which is still more expensive than cheddar, but it was an awfully tasty treat.


I have maybe two dozen tiny cookie cutters, and my large cookie cutters fit into a bushel basket (I'm not kidding). But you have to be carried away with this just because I am.

You can make different things with just a few shapes. If I was making this lunch for a toddler instead of my husband I would use that moon for a clown's smile or a rowboat. Turn it upside and it could be a rainbow. Maybe you could fix up what you cut with it to look like a banana. Look at things from different angles and see what they look like to you. It's like playing the Rorschach test with lunch.

But I did make it for my husband and you can see his finished lunch here.

Works for me.

Monochrome Lunch

To tell the truth, I am not very pleased with how this one turned out, but it will taste fine, and I guess that's most important.
We had just enough leftovers from lunch today to fill one sidedish compartment with macaroni, ground beef, and cheese. I topped that with two moon shaped slices of havarti dill cheese.

For dessert I filled up the top left compartment with a white custard the FYG made for a friend who had a wisdom tooth pulled, but she also made him lots of jello and his tooth didn't hurt as much as he expected and so the custard never got eaten. I put some grapes in it, and that's where I should have left well enough alone, because the white custard with the purple grapes made a pleasing color contrast. Instead I remembered the last few vanilla wafters in a bos and put them all around the edges and topped the pudding off with the crumbs and some cinnamon. This will taste great but it's exactly the same color as the macaroni and cheese, which wasn't pretty.
Sooooo, I squeezed the macaroni over to one side, cut out the egg cups from a cardboard carton and put that in the center, filling it with steamed green beans and topping them butter I sliced off a frozen stick using a vegetable peeler.

In the larger bottom container where I would usually put a main dish I put some tempura vegetable