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HOME SAFE!
Updates below:
Driving home from music lessons and a trip to the big W early this evening, Pip comments that the roads are terrible. The roads are not so bad, I point out. I just can't see them. We go 20 miles an hour down the last few miles towards home because the snow is so thick. It's thick on the road, too, two or three inches already and it's only been snowing an hour.
But that's not what is SO reassuring, no.
The Equuschick and the HG are 90 miles down south picking up a friend at the airport. Let's call her Susan, after Death's niece in Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time. I like this friend, even though I have never met her, because she introduced us to Terry Pratchett. I called them to tell them not to drive home, get a motel or stay with a friend, but don't chance the drive home. I wasn't taking notes at the time, but this is roughly how the conversation went:
Me: Warning, warning, danger Will Robinson, Death and gloom, Despair, dark predictions, and please stay at a hotel tonight or with our friends down there.
The redoubtable and fearless (some say fool-hardy) Equuschick: Right. We were already talking about that, but it will be a while yet. Well, I don't know if you heard or not, but an, um, needy person attached herself to Susan on the plane. It is NOT Susan's fault, it's just one of those things. And, um, we took her to the grayhound bus station so she could continue making her way to Ohio, where she says she needs to go. And, well, the buses are not running.
So now we are trying to figure out what to do with her. We might take her to a motel and we'll pay for her stay, but then we are going to another hotel, because we are all, um , getting kind of stressed.
Me: You girls are at the bus station RIGHT NOW??
Equuschick: Yes, but it's okay, Mom. It's not.... Well, I mean.... we are staying in a pack, a tight pack, and I am wearing my scary black goth looking boots and stuff, and I'm trying to look mean [which she actually does surprisingly well. After all, it's not HER trim little black phone the Person is using and wearing out the battry on, but the HG's sweet little pink number].
Me: Are you sure you're okay?
Equuschick: Yes. We're fine. We just need to find a place for her to stay. She's talking to her mom on the HG's phone, and then we're calling [a friend who lives not far away] to see if she can give us directions to a motel or somebody from church who can put this girl up- but, um, it needs to be somebody without children.
Me: It doesn't have to be somebody from our church, you know, maybe there are other churches in the area who can help her out- does she go to church anywhere?
Equuschick: (with emphasis) I should think NOT! (more quietly)- Oh, and Susan says to tell you hello and thank you for having her and she hopes to be able to meet you soon.
Me: Tell Susan hello back and I am very much looking forward to seeing her soon. Safely. Are you sure you're all okay? Shouldn't you just get out of the bus station and go somewhere else to make arrangements about where people are staying?
Equuschick: We're fine, Mom, really.
Me: You always say that. About Everything [I am thinking of a billion and one examples, not least of which is the Pancreas Incident, when only I, of my family members at the hostpial, seemed to be aware that the Pancreas actually Does Something of Vital Interest to your personal survival, and the Equuschick, told her pancreatic duct was disrupted, crushed, gone, but nicely loaded with pain killers, breezily inquired as to when she was being discharged and why couldn't she just Go Home]
Equuschick: I am not just saying that. Really, we're fine. We're going to find a way to help her out for tonight, and if that means putting her up in a hotel we will do that and then we are going to a Different Hotel, because, well, I'll explain later. And so we're fine. We're in packs. We have three cell phones (except the HG's is highjacked and losing power) and I am wearing my scary black goth boots. We are fine. Although I will admit that I am really, really missing Zeus right now. He would be quite a comfort to me.
(*Yes, yes, I know God is charge, and so does the Equuschick. the people at the bus station can't see God. They could see Zeus, and his nice shiny teeth.)
Updates (as of 7:41)- Breathing heavy sigh of relief. Information comes from a cell phone call from Equuschick, whose blood sugar is very, very low and so she is on her way (with friend Susan and sister HG) to a fast food place in order to spike it and get lots of nice nourishing trans-fats and cholesterol.=)
The girl is at a hotel in down-town wherever they were, not far from the bus station, nicely settled in. Equuschick says the girls is 23 years old, and they do not know if she Has Issues because she actually has congenital problems (and so we are sympathetic, but she should have been accompanied by a family member), or she has lots of problems due to the acknowledged and obvious(and possibly current and ongoing?) substance abuse (and so we are still sorry, but more wary).
The weather is not too bad down there, so they are diving back up this way at least until they get somewhere that Equuschick can mainline some protein and fats. Once their blood sugars are up and all systems go, they'll decide whether to brave an attempt to come all the way home or stay at a hotel. The snow has stopped here, but it is expected to start again. It's just a question of who gets here first, Jack Frost and all his minions, or the eldest Progeny and their friend.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Well. THIS is Reassuring
Politics
Dana at Principled Discovery, as always, has a thoughtful informative post on the curent crop of candidates and the political process itself.
Corn and Oil has a great post (well, distrubing, but immensely useful) about how the political process is being used in an attempt to police homeschoolers in several states.
She also linked to Judy Aron's thoughtful post on the Real ID act.
Judy Aron also has an interesting post on CNN and whether their hosting of the recent debate between Republican candidates was fair. I can't really see myself voting for Ron Paul, but even me, a nonsupporter, can see that the media is certainly trying to sway the election, presenting us only with candidates they approve of, and shutting out those they don't. This disturbs me greatly. It seems grossly unethical.
Over here you can find a weird and kind of creepy (to me) tool called 'The Godometer,' which rates candidates on their 'God talk.'
And since politics cannot be separated from economics, I am including a link to this post by Carmon here. It's absolutely spot on.
Writing
I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine 0'clock every morning.
Peter De Vries
I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing, the top thing in the world.
John Keats
A Useful Word
The History of the Underground Map
The fairly easy to read schematic of the commuter train systems you see for large cities (the London Underground, the Metro in D.C.) are easy to read because they aren't accurate.
In 1933 London Underground employee Harry Beck, "realised that, because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get to one station from another — only the topology of the railway mattered." So he sketched out the stylized version with simplified lines and smoothed out corners that most of us are familiar with today. (quote from Wikipedia)
More here, for the map fiends among us. Fascinating stuff.
And for an easy visual reference, this page offers a small side by side view of a section of the Tube map, one geographically accurate, one using the simplified map schematic we're used to.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
For Mama Squirrel (and you)
Mama Squirrel will love this for obvious reasons. And the 'you,' You know who you are, collector of picture books with pictures that make you smile even though there are no more little people around to share them with you. Feast your eyes:
Just a few sample pages. Sorry for the occasionally lopsided scanning!
click on a scan to enlarge.
January, 2008 Books
My goal for 2008 is to read four books a month. I read five in January, so that bodes well. That way I might be able to get away with reading three in February if the need arises. ;-)
1) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
2) Markings
Weep
If you can,
Weep,
But do not complain.
The way chose you-
And you must be thankful." - from this book
3) Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up: A New Look at Today's Evangelical Church in the Light of Early Christianity
4) Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
5) An Ordinary Man : An Autobiography
Written simply and with power, this book tells the background of the Rwandan genocides and what living through part of them was like. Not for overly-sensitive readers.
One sad note: Rusesabagina no longer has the faith in God that he had previously. He explains this (as many in situations like his have done, and somewhat understandably) by saying that God would not have allowed such terrible things to happen, and that he doesn't see how God helped him through his hard time, that it was only luck that got him through.
And yet... after watching brutality like this, it seems like we should realize that it is mankind that can't be trusted. If humans can't be trusted, and we've ruled out the possibility of God (without thinking about freewill), then what *is* there to trust in life?
Supper.
Tonight was my night to cook supper for the family, and after rummaging around in several cookbooks, I decided on a recipe from the back of a Thai Green Curry mix. It had coconut milk, the green curry, and for the meat and veggies I put in cauliflower and corn. Unfortunately, the green curry was a LOT spicier than I expected, and the recipe made a whole lot more than it said it did. Everybody had to try some, though, and when FYB tried it he said (eyes watering and gasping for breath):
"Pip, it tastes like you put a piece of the SUN in there!"
The price of a man's toy
When the FYG gets an elephant &
the Equuschick
gets a hippopotamus I want one of these from
Thunderbolt Areosystems.
Starting only at $98,000.
"Down by the Sally Gardens"
I'm learning this song on the Violin! Although I don't understand what it is about I do love the music!
It was down by the Sally Gardens, my love and I did meet.
She crossed the Sally Gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree,
But I was young and foolish, and with her did not agree.
In a field down by the river, my love and I did stand
And on my leaning shoulder, she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy , as the grass grows on the weirs
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
Down by the Sally Gardens, my love and I did meet.
She crossed the Sally Gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree,
But I was young and foolish, and with her did not agree.Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Branches.
I took this picture on New Year's day, when we got tremendous amounts of snow. I hadn't seen *snow* coating the branches like this very often, although I had seen ice, so I found it very striking. I took this picture lying down on the ground looking up through the branches.Taking a class with a bunch of lawyers-in-training
We had the first quiz of the semester in today's Constitutional History class. We reviewed the answers after it had been completed and turned in. I was amused by the difference between typical history classes and one filled with pre-law students. Vociferous debates broke out about the the meanings of certain words, and what emphasis should be placed on particular phrases.
No wonder we sometimes have trouble advancing in our class lectures...
Search Engines Fixed!!
I know they've not been working right, but I think I've fixed it now- although their size is not quite what I want. Check it out!
For directions, very, very easy ones, see here! THANKS, LESLIE!!!
How Shall We, Then, Read?
How shall we read? One answer is that we should read
with as much of ourselves as a book warrants, with the part of
ourselves that a book demands. Mrs. Browning says:
We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits--so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth--
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.
We sometimes know exactly what we wish to get from a book, especially
if it is a volume of information on a definite subject. But the great
book is full of treasures that one does not deliberately seek, and
which indeed one may miss altogether on the first journey through. It
is almost nonsensical to say: Read Macaulay for clearness, Carlyle for
power, Thackeray for ease. Literary excellence is not separated and
bottled up in any such drug-shop array. If Macaulay is a master of
clearness it is because he is much else besides. Unless we read a man
for all there is in him, we get very little; we meet, not a living
human being, not a vital book, but something dead, dismembered,
disorganized. We do not read Thackeray for ease; we read him for
Thackeray and enjoy his ease by the way.
We must read a book for all there is in it or we shall get little or
nothing. To be masters of books we must have learned to let books
master us. This is true of books that we are required to read, such as
text-books, and of those we read voluntarily and at leisure. The law of
reading is to give a book its due and a little more. The art of reading
is to know how to apply this law. For there is an art of reading, for
each of us to learn for himself, a private way of making the
acquaintance of books.
Lyman Abbott's Guide to Reading
More Candidate Calculators
Here's another one. I thought the results were pretty bad for me- it said McCain was the closest match, but I absolutely will not vote for him under any circumstances, not even if I have to choose between him and Hilary. His squelching of free speech was simply not acceptable, and I will never vote for him for anything other than 'Worst Republican Candidate. Ever.'
I still like this 'which candidate for you' tool best.
Oy!! Pip!!!
You've got to look at this! Cool photo mosaics made for you while you browse the internet. Might make a fun wedding gift for our friends in Colorado!
Bonnet tip to Mrs. Mordecai, who shows some samples here.
News and Views
A same-sex couple asked Elaine Huguenin, co-owner with her husband of Elane Photography, to photograph a “commitment ceremony” that the two women wanted to hold. Huguenin declined because her Christian beliefs are in conflict with the message communicated by the ceremony.
The same-sex couple filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Division, which is now trying Elane Photography under state antidiscrimination laws for sexual orientation discrimination.
More here.
Which do you prefer:
This?:
Wassily Kandinsky: Composition VII (1913)
Or this?:
Claude Monet: Red Poppies at Argenteuil (1873)
Want to guess which one I prefer? :)
Monday, January 28, 2008
A fence.
The very loverly old gate that guards the way between GrannyTea's house and our own. It looks so charming with snow on it, I think.I want.....
Do you have ever feel like you just yearn for, crave, must have, need, ache for.....
Something.....
But.....
You don't really know
what it is?
Quote from "The Educated Imagination," by Northrop Frye
"We're often taught that prose is the language of ordinary speech, which is usually true in literature. But in ordinary life prose is no more the language of ordinary speech that one's Sunday suit is a bathing suit.
The people who actually speak prose are highly cultivated and articulate people, who've read a good many books, and even they can speak prose only to ea other.
If you read the beautiful sentences of Elizabeth Bennett's conversation in Pride and Prejudice, you can see how in that book they give a powerfully convincing impression of sensible and intelligent girl.
But any girl who talked as coherently as that on a street car would be stared at as though she had green hair. It isn't only the difference between 1813 and 1962 that's involved either, as you'll see if you compare her speech with her mother's.
The poet Emily Dickinson complained that everybody said "What?"to her, until finally she practically gave up trying to talk altogether, and confined herself to writing notes."
Interesting January facts
The first legal divorce was granted in the Republic of Ireland in January, 1997.
Sir Francis Drake died of the Plague.
The siege of Leningrad ended in 1944 (after 872 days)
Beer was first sold in cans in the USA in 1935.
Australia Day is in January.
On Mansfield Park - again
Thinking about it more last night, I realized that this version was like a Cliff's Notes version of MP: Sticking in the absolutely pertinent points of the plot and barely touching the richer parts of grace, wit, and deep character development.
And still I didn't absolutely hate it. I would like to watch it again, being fully aware beforehand of its break-neck plot speed. I was so terrified beforehand that they'd make Edmund a pompous bore (I love the guy but am not naive enough to think that modern movie makers will agree with me), Mary a sympathetic character (admittedly, they tried to do that in the introduction -- weird people, because her first appearance in the movie casts her in an unflattering light), and Fanny a proto-feminist type. It was a complete relief to see Edmund cast as a clergyman with conviction and Mary as a greedy, superficial woman.
Hope springs eternal and maybe some day while I'm yet living they'll decide to make a long, decent version of this novel. For now I'll just be content to read the book and watch this production when I'm craving Regency costumes, British manor houses, and the British accents Americans are so inexplicably fond of. ;-)
Oh. Yes. Two more notes:
1) Anyone else notice that Fanny's dress in the scene where Henry proposes to her is identical to one Emma Thompson wears in Sense & Sensibility?
2) The WALTZ??? Someone must've been on some funny medications to think that was a good idea.
Good Morning, America!
6:30 am: Alarm goes off.
6:31 am: The Equuschick gives a friend a requested wake-up call.
6:45 am: A friend of The Equuschick's gives her a requested wake-up call.
6:50 am: The Equuschick hears Donovan making suspicious noises and discovers he has made some artistic alterations to her purse strap. The purse is picked up and thrown on the bed for safe-keeping.
7 am: Zeus jumps on the bed and gives The Equuschick his nose kisses, which get more fun the later on in the day he gives them.
7:05 am: Donovan is heard to be at work again, and The Equuschick sits up to see him carrying around a decorative pillow. "BAD CHEW!" The pillow is placed on the bed for safe-keeping.
7:06 am: Donovan picks up The Equuschick's coat, which has been knocked off the hook, and looks at her inquiringly. "Is this a good chew?" "NO. IT IS A BAD CHEW. DROP IT." The coat is picked up and put on the bed for safe-keeping.
7:10 am: The Equuschick is in her (small) bed with a 110 lb. dog, her purse, five decorative pillows, and her coat. She decides to get up.
So here she is now.
You may wonder why The Equuschick even bothers with all the precautions to make sure she starts getting up at 6:30 am when clearly she's not out of bed until after 7 am. But it doesn't actually matter what time the alarm goes off or she gets a wake-up call, The Equuschick will always take between twenty and forty minutes to become Cognitively and Completely Awake.
When she wakes up at 8 am, the day starts at 9 am. This way, the process begins at 6:30 am, and The Equuschick's day actually starts at 7:30 am- An hour and a half ahead of schedule.
Mansfield Park
The verdict on last night's movie is mixed. The HG liked it. I didn't. Most of the girls thought most of the actors were good choices. I didn't really think any of them were a good match except Tom, the Crawfords, and the Pug. The father could have been a good choice, but they didn't really bring out his sympathetic side well, he seems to be more of a split personality than a busy man who truly means well but doesn't know how to show the warmth he feels.
I loved the line where he says he wanted his daughters to be good and didn't realize that all they had were good manners.
We are all agreed that the depiction of Mrs. Norris resembled no character in the book at all, and certainly not the character of that name.
The FYG sadly misses Susan and says she is going to sue because she's been cheated.
We were all grateful there was none of the smutty nonsense of Northanger Abbey, but we do wish there were a better way to tell Mansfield Park in two hours than this one. We just do not know what it might be . We are all agreed that Gillian's introduction, where she compares Jane Austen to Mary Crawford, was written by somebody with no sense.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Christian Rights and Responsibilities
To ensure that the Christian understands both his-her Rights (Privileges) & Responsibility (Obligation)
Sct Txt: Galatians Chapter 5
1. Rights (Privileges)
a. Freedom: (1 Cor 10:23ff)
b. Not worried about Laws: (Gal. 5:6)
1. What do we do with our Freedom? (1 Cor 9:19-23)
c. Being Children of God, Heirs, Brothers of Christ. (Gal. 4:4-7)
2. Responsibilities (Obligations)
a. To be a slave to all (1 Cor 9:19-23)
b. We are “obliged” to the Spirit (Obliged or Debtors) (Rom. 8:12-17)
1. Therefore we are obliged, or in debt, to Produce Fruit of the Spirit! (Galatians Chap 5)
Rights:
Freedom from worrying about the law:
1 Cor 10:23-33
"Everything is permissible"-- but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible"-- but not everything is constructive. 24 Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. 25 Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, 26 for, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it." 27 If some unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. 28 But if anyone says to you, "This has been offered in sacrifice," then do not eat it, both for the sake of the man who told you and for conscience' sake-- 29 the other man's conscience, I mean, not yours. For why should my freedom be judged by another's conscience? 30 If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for? 31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 32 Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God-- 33 even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.
Galatians 5:6
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
What am I to do with my Freedom?
1 Cor 9:19-23
Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
(Do you enjoy being Obligated (as a slave) to everyone)
Gary Smalleys comments on how to find happiness. Plugging our self into people or thing will not make us happy. Serving them will! We get our energy, happiness, and vigor from plugging into others and serving them. Not by the latest toy, planned vacation, new spouse, child, hobby or job.
After all, that is what our God and older brother did—
Gal 4:4-7
4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. 6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.
VS 5(NKJ)
to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
We are Children of God, adoptive brother of Jesus, who “willingly” became a servant of all.
Responsibilities:
(Obligations)
Again, what responsibilities do we have?
1 Cor 9:19-23
Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
(Are we content being everyone’s slave?)
We are Obliged to the Spirit— To produce fruit
Rom 8:12-17
12 Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation-- but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14 because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs-- heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.’
Gal 5:1-26
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. 2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. 7 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? 8 That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 "A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough." 10 I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be. 11 Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. 12 As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves! 13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. 14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. 16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. 19 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit IS LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, 23 GENTLENESS AND SELF-CONTROL. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
Close:
Rev 2:7
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
Rev 22:14
"Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
"The Book of Hours"
a friend during a chat with farmers in town,
especially when the prince is great--and far gone.
They call "mine" their walls of stone,
but do not know the Lord of their home.
They say "mine" and call it theirs although
everything withdraws when they approach,
like a boisterous charlatan
might call his the lightning and the sun.
That's why they say: my life, my wife
my dog, my child, and know quite well
that everything--life, wife, dog, and child--
is someone else's work on which
they scrape their groping hands.
Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Book of Hours: the Book of the Pilgrimage."
Friday, January 25, 2008
Books, Books, Books
The Girl is listening to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park for the first time. "I can't decide if I like Edmund or not," she said earlier today. Dear child, generations of Janeites have quibbled over that for decades. (I like him).
She listened to all of Northanger Abbey last week, determining early into the reading that Isabella was rather silly.
If this were not enough to make enough her big sister inordinately proud of her, she's also slightly obsessed with India right now and has taken to lugging about the gigantic Oxford Encyclopedia of India, reading excerpts from it here and there.
Books give so much pleasure in and of themselves, but watching someone else immerse themselves in a story new to them but old and familiar to you is almost as good. :-)
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Why We Read
The human race for thousands of years has been writing its
experiences, telling how it has met our everlasting problems, how it
has struggled with darkness and rejoiced in light. What fools we should
be to try to live our lives without the guidance and inspiration of the
generations that have gone before, without the joy, encouragement, and
sympathy that the best imaginations of our generation are distilling
into words. For literature is simply life selected and condensed into
books. In a few hours we can follow all that is recorded of the life of
Jesus--the best that He did in years of teaching and suffering all ours
for a day of reading, and the more deeply ours for a lifetime of
reading and meditation!
If the expression of life in words is strong and beautiful and true it
outlives empires, like the oldest books of the Old Testament. If it is
weak or trivial or untrue, it is forgotten like most of the "stories"
in yesterday's newspaper, like most of the novels of last year. The
expression of truth, the transmission of knowledge and emotions between
man and man from generation to generation, these are the purposes of
literature. Not to read books is like being shut up in a dungeon while
life rushes by outside.
Plus, of course, it's just plain fun.
(Lyman Abbott's Guide to Reading)
Shudder
A millionaire who
had one house in the city, one in the mountains, and one in the South,
wished to build a fourth house on the seashore. A house ought to have a
library. Therefore this new house was to have a library. When the house
was finished he found the library shelves had been made so shallow that
they would not take books of an ordinary size. His architect proposed
to change the bookshelves. The millionaire did not wish the change
made, but told his architect to buy fine bindings of classical books
and glue them into the shelves. The architect on making inquiries
discovered that the bindings would cost more than slightly shop-worn
editions of the books themselves. So the books were bought, cut in two
from top to bottom about in the middle, one half thrown away, and the
other half replaced upon the shelves that the handsome backs presented
the same appearance they would have presented if the entire book had
been there. Then the glass doors were locked, the key to the glass
doors lost, and sofas and chairs and tables put against them. Thus the
millionaire has his library furnished with handsome bindings and these
I may add are quite adequate for all the use which he wishes to make of
them.
From The Guide to Reading, by Lyman Abbott, online here.
Quote for the Common Place Bok
Give us a house furnished with books rather than with furniture.
Both if you can, but books at any rate!
--HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Koko, Language, & The Mentally Disabled
Koko being, as no doubt you all know, the gorilla famous for learning sign language in the 1970's, and The Equuschick has been reading the chronicle of her education published in 1981, The Education of Koko.
First and foremost, let The Equuschick say that she is not of the opinion she is descended from an ape, nor does she believe that apes, or any other animal for that matter, should ever take precedence over a human. Mankind was made in the image of God, the ape was not, and as far as The Equuschick is concerned, there is the essential difference.
But actually it is that first assertion, that basic underlying assumption, that colours all the rest of The Equuschick's conclusions on the subject, and they differ from critics on either side.
Project Koko was based upon the underlying assumption that the fundamental difference between man and beast is the use of language. It is therefore assumed by its proponents that if it is proved that an ape developed language, all fundamental differences are dissolved.
It seems to The Equuschick that there are those on the other side of the fence who would also agree that the line between man and beast is drawn at language use alone. And what troubles The Equuschick is that it is only the evolutionists who seem to realize that if you draw that line, it goes both ways.
The Equuschick's sister The Cherub knows less sign words than the gorilla Koko.
One can protest that Koko only imitates, that it was a Pavlov's Dog scenario, because as John Limber put it, "Getting someone to bring you a drink is surely not the same thing as telling someone you want a drink." For the moment then assume that is all that Koko does, she has learned that when she produces a certain sign a certain result occurs. But the trouble with that reasoning is that, again, it is a line that goes both ways. (Lines usually do, you know.)
It could be argued that is all that The Cherub does as well- She produces signs, and often asks for specific things, but rarely when she is not asking for something will she produce a sign that makes sense in a conversational context. She has mastered some sign words, but not the art of language itself.
She (and Koko too, for that matter) certainly has some things to say and a point of view that she is capable of expressing, but she is unable to express it in language. Partially because she is unable to form both the spoken and the signed form of many words, but also because she has a very imperfect grasp of the purpose and function of language. Thus far then, she and Koko are equal.
Are Christians of all people content to let the matter rest at that conclusion? By default, that is where they let the matter rest when they agree that language is the defining difference between man and beast.
The consequences of this sloppy logic are devastating. Hence institutions, abortions, mercy-killings, and the social out-casting of all those who have failed to live up to our standards for humanity.
Some of the critics of Project Koko protested that it proved nothing, because Sign Language was not a language anyway. Wherever else The Equuschick may or may not have been in agreement with Dr. Patterson, she was in full agreement when Dr. Patterson pointed out in the book that you could not argue from that point of view without dehumanizing the entire deaf population.
She also made this statement, the implications of which were so frustrating to The Equuschick she wanted to cry.
"It is somewhat ironic and sad that a good deal of the current interest in the nature of sign language stems not from interest in the deaf, but from curiosity about a language that might be acquired by an animal."
Indeed, before Project Koko, in the sixties and fifties, what provisions then did most of society try to make for the deaf and the disabled? It was only in the seventies, when Project Koko and other such exeperiments made head-lines, that sign language become a topic of interest.
One wants to ask why Christians, of all people, stood by and watched while improvements in the lives of the disabled were spear-headed by evolutionists researching animal behavior.
But perhaps that is not as ironic as it seems, though it is certainly tragic. The very nature of an interest in animal behavior is one that stems from an innate sense of curiosity about the meaning of life, and a compassionate willingness to step outside of yourself and consider what the world looks like from another point of view. Why should we be surprised when these questions, asked about animals, lead to questions about the silenced members of our own kind?
We should only be ashamed that we didn't ask them first.
What then is the defining difference? Where do we draw the line? The Equuschick is not sure how to best articulate this, but she often gets the impression that Christians have fallen more prey than they realize to the evolutionary underlying assumptions of the day.
We have the uncomfortable feeling that we must pin-point some clear-cut differences and nail something concrete down because otherwise chaos will ensue.
We are human, and the beasts are not. That is not something that can be argued. We look different, we smell different. Everyone, looking at a monkey and a human, would know the difference, and it is only when an evolutionary worldview is accepted that any similarities or differences become relevant to the rest of our religious philosophy.
We're a separate species, and a Christian operates under the knowledge that one species in particular was singled out by God as made in His image, and placed in Dominion over all the others. He breathed life into the first man, and not the first ape, and that ought to be enough for us.
We may never be able, philosophically or scientifically, to nail down that "Divine Spark" which would decide The Equuschick in favor of a disabled human over a healthy animal in a case of life and death.
We're not asked to draw a finer distinction other than Made in the Image of God and not made in the Image of God, and whatever that means when it comes to questions of language, beauty, and emotion,is not actually as relevant as we think it is. And again, to draw that line too quickly threatens the weaker parties of our own kind.
God has told us Who We Are, and How We are to treat the Animals. Why things are the way we are and What are those differences, matter only so far as they help us do our job as stewards of the animal kingdom, and of course, they make for fascinating study.
The Equuschick said earlier that lines tend to go both ways, and never is that more important than in this very discussion. The stakes are higher than in any other controversy, because we're gambling Life Itself.
May we never draw the line too quickly, and may the Christian always be the first to err on the side of caution and compassion.
"Am I not a man . . .whose soul is drawn to heaven like water from the dark well of Africa?"
Olaudah Equiano
Words to Live By
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Herm Albright
The Home-maker and Science
I really agree with what Mrs. Betts has to say here:
Practical knowledge of the various departments of home making is the third and most important practical factor in the increase of the family income. If the home-maker has little or no knowledge of the problems that housekeeping involves, she necessarily increases the expenses of the family, lessening the purchasing power of the income she commands or administers. She may be ignorant when she is first placed in her position, but if she remains ignorant, the fault is her own. Art, literature, science, invention, mechanics, are the servants of every intelligent housekeeper.
But she kind of loses me here. In fact, I am quite sure that some of these things are exactly where we went wrong:
If she buys an ugly tea cup, it is because she chooses to be ignorant of the laws of beauty; she does not seek to know the elements of beauty. The paper maker, the textile manufacturer, the thread manufacturer, the potter, help to maintain schools of art that our homes may be beautiful. The art schools, by lectures and exhibitions, as well as training, seek to enlighten the seeker after the knowledge of how to discern the beautiful. Artists and architects and decorators create free schools for the education of the tastes of the people by their exhibitions, while magazines and newspapers seek to educate the critical faculty. The home devoid of beauty to day is the home of ignorance.I would agree that certain tastes in art and decor lack a certain, um, refinement (Elvis paintings on black velvet, for instance), but I find it hard to fault a woman as ignorant because she buys an 'ugly teacup.' Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that there's too much of the cult of the expert wafting about in that paragraph. I am not sure that those attempts at 'education of the tastes of the people' were more than an education into conformity, and I know I don't want want my 'critical faculties' educated by an elite group of editors and publishers of magazines and newspapers.
The laboratories of the world are at the service of the home-maker who chooses to profit by the results of scientific discovery and investigation. Not only are these investigations carried on to discover food values, but the principles of cooking are considered worthy of the attention of the scientist, who frequently gives his knowledge to the world in the most elementary form possible, for the education of the housekeeper, that she may purchase and cook her food, securing the best results with the least expenditure of time and money.
Science can certainly be a handmaiden of use to the family chef. But it's not infallible, because the people behind it are not infallible, and our knowledge is always incomplete. We read the best scientific advice of a former age (like the excerpt I posted a while back extolling the virtues of asbestos hot pads) and laugh in comfortable self-complacency over our wiser age, but instead, we ought to wonder what it is that we consider perfectly rational scientific advice that our grandchildren will be shaking their heads over.
You can get some ideas about just high a regard turn of the century America had for science (at least that portion of America publishing, and presumably reading, books) by browing through the vintage cookbooks available online here.
Each cookbook at that site is introduced with a paragraph or two setting it into its historical context. Here's some of what they have to say about 'Foods for the Foreign-Born:'
As the waves of immigrants from Europe and elsewhere poured into the great cities of America at the end of the 19th century, earnest American social workers, medical personal, home economists, educators and others became increasingly concerned with the newcomers' diets and health. Numerous studies were undertaken to learn about the immigrant's foodways, mostly in an attempt to change them.
Today we might cringe as we read about some of the condescending comments and methods to be found in books such as this one. However, the authors truly felt they were attempting to help the immigrant adopt what was then considered a "healthier" diet and to adapt to the American way of life. Often, the authors were trying to introduce the newest methods of eating, complete with all the new scientific advances then being propagandized.
Consider this excerpt from Foods for the Foreign Born, by Bertha Wood, published in 1922:
Mexican dishes are very tasty. During the winter, when vegetables are scarce, their food is limited almost entirely to beans, rice, and potatoes, using a little meat when they can afford it. Such a diet abounds in starch and has too little protein and mineral matters, thereby causing stomach troubles of all kinds. In some ways, however, their foods are superior to ours, and by making adjustments, if they do not acquire some of our bad habits, there ought to come from their dietary a sensible, economical, and nourishing group of foods. Only lack of variety and the use of hot flavors keep their food from being superior to that of most Americans.
Undernourished and malnourished children are frequently found in Mexican families. They are served with the same foods as the adults, foods highly spiced, with a large amount of fat added, or corn meal fried in fat. Bland foods are quite unknown in their dietary.
[ ]
As the Mexicans come north or intermarry, it would be better for the children and adults to learn to eat the simpler foods of the American people, boiled or baked, with less spice and fat.
Any nurse or dietitian can persuade them to use cereals or baked or boiled fish and meats and vegetables, if they gradually reduce the amount of tomato or pepper for flavor until it becomes a bland dish, easier to digest and not harmful to the kidneys.
In the first few decades of the twentieth century, business co-opted science, as the numerous cookbooks recommending the healthful properties of corn syrup will attest.
So do make science your hand-maiden, rather than a demi-god.
Leisure Time
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
Will Rogers
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
One of those fun book surveys
... because I enjoy reading other people's answers, and because I'm still feeling slightly depressed about a professor's comment that a paper of mine was "reasonably well-written." He was right, which is even more depressing.
1. Which book(s) are you currently reading?
* two books on Spanish settlements in North America for my classes.
* And because my new car (to be posted about sometime in the future, I'm sure!) has a CD player, I'm now listening to The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis
2. What book did you read last?
An Ordinary Man : An Autobiography
An amazing book.
3. What book are you planning on reading next?
It's always rather hard to pinpoint what I'm reading "next" in a semester, because so much time is spent reading excerpts from various books... but the just-for-me book I intend to read next is Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America
4. Do you own most of the books you read, or do you borrow them from a library?
Well, my family owns about 6000 books so I read many from our home collection. The library still accounts for probably 25% of my reading material.
5. Who was your favorite author when you were a child?
L. M. Montgomery, Robert Louis Stevenson and, E. Nesbit, and... Carolyn Keene, honestly enough.
6. What were some of your favorite books when you were a child?
Child's Garden of Verses, Millions of Cats, Alexander's No Good Very Bad Day, the Chronicles of Narnia
7. Which male literary character would you like to take out on a date and why?
Ah. Mr. Darcy. Gilbert Blythe. Mr. Knightley. Henry Tilney. My standards aren't high at all. ;-)
8. Which author would you most like to have a 'one-to-one' with?
Ooh so hard. Jane Austen, except then I'm sure she'd write sarcastic notes to Cassandra about me. Dorothy Sayers or C. S. Lewis might be good ones. All of them would intimidate me, I'm sure.
9. Which fictional character would you most like to have a 'one-to-one' with?
Elinor Dashwood.
10. Which literary character would you least like to be stranded on a desert island with and why?
Uriah Heep.... because he'd ever so politely do everything in his power to kill me off so as to better ensure his survival.
11. Which character would you most like to be stranded with?
Robinson Crusoe? How unoriginal is that?
12. In which literary/fictional location would you most like to live?
Narnia! By the Sea! Maybe on one of the islands they come across while sailing the Dawn Treader.
13. Which is the best TV/film adaptation of a book you have seen? Why?
Oh goodness. There are so many good options here.
Wives and Daughters
Sense & Sensibility
14. Which is the worst TV/film adaption of a book you have seen? Why?
Again, so many options... and I try very hard to avoid watching adaptations I know will be rotten (the 1990s Mansfield Park and the third Anne movie being key examples). The 1980s Austen adaptations were pretty awful.
15. What film adaption do you actually like more than the book?
Mary Poppins? After all, you can't hear Julie Andrews singing when reading the book...
16. What book do you like better than the film adaption?
How about 99% of them?
17. What are your top 5 favorite fiction books?
1. anything by Austen
2. Narnia books
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
4. The LotR books by Tolkien
5. mysteries by Dorothy Sayers and by Josephine Tey
(so I cheated)
18. Who is your favorite author?
Probably Jane Austen. I love so many others, but she holds a very special spot in my affections.
19. What is the most memorable line delivered in a film?
Gandalf's whole "speech" delivered to Frodo in the mines of Moria in FotR
20. What is your least favorite book and why?
Elsie Dinsmore. She typifies "wet noodles" in my mind.
The one Zane Grey book I read. Atrocious writing.
Artemis Foul Fowl, dreadful writing, dumb plot. <-- I know there are probably many people who read here that do like these books. I just alternated between being bored or disgusted during my reading of the first book in this series.
21. If your life was a book, which author would you choose to write it?
Probably Bess Streeter Aldrich. Or Gene Stratton Porter.
Blogging from the Maelstrom
Or Malestrom, which would be just as accurate:
| 1. | a large, powerful, or violent whirlpool. |
| 2. | a restless, disordered, or tumultuous state of affairs: the maelstrom of early morning traffic. |
Or, six small boys, one female betwixt and between block battles and tea parties, a box of cardboard bricks, assorted furniture, pillows, beanbags, and cardboard boxes and a battle.
Casualties- one poked eye, one bruised lip, one sore head, assorted hurt feelings and indignant remarks about spies and thieves, and a rousing good time.
Or at least a loud one.
I tried to get better pictures of the cardboard bricks hurtling through the air, but the life of a photo journalist on the front lines is too risky for me.
Substitutions and Making Do
We have company; the HM is out of town; Tuesday is our 'busiest' day (as opposed to other merely 'busy' days). Some of the children have art lessons at the library. WE get together with a family with four boys, who also take art lessons at the library. In between ferrying children back and forth from the library we do 'educational' stuff with the other children.
It's cold and icy out and five of the children under 12 are boys. So we like to find things for them to do to get the sillies out. Today I had some games for them to play with bean bags- nothing fancy- just hop, skip, crawl, crab walk, walk forward, walk backwards, all while balancing beanbags on heads or stomachs.
Except I forgot the bean bags.
I rummaged through my purse and pulled out the various small bags I use to organize my purse- I store pens in one paisley cigarette case, sunglasses in a black leather cigaretted case, mints and gum in another, chapstick and lotion in another- all soft, all with snap shut openings, all worked just fine for balancing.
We played catch with a pair of knit gloves rolled up inside one another like a ball.
A game the oldest set usually play was missing its tokens- they foraged for dimes and pennies from their wallets.
We played Mad Libs, and I didn't like the particular page in the Mad Lib book I had, so we made up our own using Nursery Rhymes (Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of pop, Mary had a little city that followed her everywhere, Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary grows trucks in her garden).
We played a math game with dice, younger children added the rolls, older children multiplied.
We did picture study a la Charlotte Mason style using a post-card print.
In short, we did nothing but accept substitutes, and a good time was had by all.
We
Labor Saving Dievices
Here's my own simple-minded, housewiferly look at tools and technology:
Here's the 1912 Mary Frances cookbook list of essential cooking tools for a young cook:
That looks awfully simple, doesn't it, especially compared to the plethora of gadgets and doohickeys we have for everything under the sun? And while some people do still cook on this:
and I have tried it, I really prefer my self-cleaning built in the wall double ovens and my countertop stove top.
Here's the 1912 Mary Frances cookbook directions for making toast:
NO. 1.--PLAIN TOAST.
1. Cut stale bread into slices, about 1/2 inch thick.
2. Remove crusts.
3. Put into wire toaster.
4. Hold over a fire, moving to and fro until a golden brown color.
5. Turn, and brown the other side.
A toasting tool is simpler than a toaster. But then, how do you get a fire in your kitchen? Well, you need the right kind of stove, and that means it has to vent out through the roof or wall, and that means stove-pipe and coal or firewood. That means something to store the firewood or coal in, somebody to tote them into the house, or, if you have a coal cellar, somebody to bring them up and down the stairs in the coal scuttle. And you have to clean the stove by blacking it (a messy job which I have tried), and carrying out the ashes on a regular basis (all of which are hard on asthmatics, I've tried that, too).
The wire toaster is a small and simple enough tool, less complicated than a toaster- but the oven isn't. You can only make one piece of toast at a time with the wire toaster- maybe two if you're skilled and you have two toasters. You can't do anything but toast the bread while you're making toast- no popping in the toast and letting it toast while you get out the butter, fry sausage, or make some gravy.
Of course gas and electric stoves require a whole different sort of infra-structure, and buildings, equipment, and man-power. But coal stoves require coal mining and factories and a delivery service and coal cellars (and they are just plain messy).
If you want more than once slice of toast, according to Mary Frances's mother, then you:
1. Spread toasted bread evenly with butter.
2. Pile one slice on top of the other, and cover with a bowl.
3. Place in oven.
So when electric ranges and toasters came along, wire toasting tool manufacturers had a lot of useless equipment on their hands, and the folks who made stove blacking, black iron stoves, coal scuttles, and all the accessories suffered. The coal delivery guys lost business, too, just like the ice delivery man lost business when refrigerators with freezers came in.
But hauling coal and firewood is hard on the back, something I appreciate more now than I did when I was twenty. Cooking over one of those big black stoves is hot, sweat shop work. Making toast by standing over the hot iron stove and turning the wire toaster is not, and I know this is my opinion, a beautiful way to live, especially when you are cooking for nine. It's a hot, tiresome, tedious way to make toast.
Some people lost work. Other people gained it. And I can see neither justice nor beauty in stopping electric stove manufacturing from firing up because it's going to throw out of work a lot of people who work in the coal stove industry or one of its associated businesses.
Now somehow we have allowed our labor saving devices to result in materialism rather than increased beauty and craftsmanship and all those crunchy con things, and that is also not a beautiful way to live. But I propose to work on that in my own life while keeping my toaster.=)
House and Home, 1896, Cont.
It's hard to believe certain portions of this chapter was written in 1896. Keep in mind, too, that the author, Lillian Betts, actually lived in the tenements of New York for at least a year, trying to help the immigrant families living in those slums. She was not writing from an ivory tower. Of course, she's not writing from a modern perspective, either, and sometimes her perspective seems a wee bit harsh:
There is another influence potent in family life in America to-day; the tendency of the American woman, though married and a mother, to become a wage earner. Among the so-called poor people this is made necessary often because the wife is so ignorant that she cannot make her time count as a money factor in the domestic economy. She does not know how to cook or sew. She even does not know how to keep her house clean, and so she uses the time, for which she has no use, and she earns money, not because her husband's earnings could not be made to support the family, but because she does not know how to make her time count for dollars and cents by using it. There are thousands of intelligent married women to day in America who are wage earners because they cannot endure the monotony of home-making, because they are ambitious, because they, no more than the ignorant woman whose husband earns a dollar a day, can make their time count in dollars and cents by the application of knowledge and skill in the home.
There comes to mind now a school teacher in a village school, the mother of nine children and the wife of a trained mechanic, who in reply to the query of why and how it was possible for her to leave her family to fill her position, replied that her husband's wages would not supply the needs of the family. Further conversation revealed that she paid a relative two hundred dollars a year to do the housework; that she paid a char-woman about one hundred dollars a year, and she paid about one hundred and fifty dollars for sewing done by another relative. She earned four hundred dollars a year. What was the actual gain to this family for the loss of a mother's time and brooding?
Brooding is really what it says here. I don't know if that's a typo for something else, or if that's what she really meant to say.
The secret of the matter, which she did not appreciate herself, was that she disliked housework and the detailed care of young children. She exchanged labor; but to herself, her husband, her neighbors, she was to be pitied because she had to earn money to support her family. All were deceived. There is too much of this deception for the real growth of American character. If a woman chooses to earn money that she may buy that labor which she cannot for lack of strength or knowledge perform, let her be careful to be candid to herself, her husband, and her friends, and not set herself on a pedestal and belittle her husband in his own eyes, or those of the world, by putting necessity in the foreground as the reason for her activity, and not choice, which is the true reason. Let her examine carefully that, in choosing her position, she may not interfere with the rights of others, or the duties of her own position as a wife or mother. For a wife and mother to become a wage earner to gratify pride or social desires is contemptible, and the world soon gives to that woman her true position. The use of time is a positive factor in the increasing of the family income.
Some things have certainly changed, and some things certainly haven't. I know when my husband was active duty military (enlisted), and so everybody knew to the penny exactly how much everybody else made, it was sometimes a source of frustration to me when somebody with fewer children and greater income than we had would lament that it was just impossible to get by on one income, nobody could survive on one income, and so would I please provide cut-rate daycare so she could go to work to support her family.
Or I would be told that shopping at thrift shops just took entirely too much time, time they did not have (the implication being that I was frivolous and wasteful, and not entirely too bright for choosing to use my time that way). It is true that it does take a bit of time, but more than time, it takes a bit of planning. You don't suddenly realize you need a black dress and go to the thrift shop to find one, not if you are depending on instant success in your hunt. You plan ahead and think about your needs in advance, and when you are at the thrift shop and see a great pair of winter boots for two dollars, you don't leave them on the shelf just because it happens to be early summer. You look over your wardrobe and think about what sorts of activities your family participates in, and if you know there's an annual dinner you must attend, you look for a dress for it months in advance. In short, you shop like the ant and not like the grasshopper in Aesop's fable.
Circumstances vary, of course. I mentioned before that a friend of mine who is taller than the average woman by a good 12 inches really cannot find what she needs in the most thrift shops, and it is a waste of her time to look for clothes for herself. Little boy clothes, starting in about size 6 and up, are terribly difficult to find in good condition, so when I am at a retail clothing store I always check the racks for marked down pants for our son. Some areas simply don't have good thrift shops or consignment stores. Choices and values vary, too, but that's a different topic. What we're talking about here is people who claim one factor is at work, when really it is something else altogether.
Usually the same people who insisted that my thrift shop habit was a waste of time were people I knew who lived in my area, so I knew what sort of thrift stores we had available and what sorts of things they had available. I also knew that my critics themselves spent their time in ways that I thought could better be spent elsewhere, if they were asking me (which, of course, they weren't), and, to be honest, I never personally knew anybody who told me thrift shopping took 'too much time' who didn't spend at least the same amount of time and considerably more money in recreational shopping at 'new' stores- I am not saying they do not exist. I am merely speaking of a small subset of (outspoken) people in my own social circles during the years my husband was active duty. I felt sometimes as though the fact that we did make it one income was itself a personal affront.
It's also true that working brings with it hidden costs, and those costs include the things you don't have time for anymore. More than one friend told me with some surprise that once she quit her job, she found the family income actually stretched, not just because of the savings in child-care, but also because she was cooking from scratch, not stopping by a restaurant on the way home from an exhausting day at work, no longer investing in nylon stockings and the expense of the work wardrobe, sometimes a second car could be eliminated, and there just weren't as many outside pulls and tugs on her second income. Obviously, I am not saying this is going to be true in every situation.
The use of time is a positive factor in increasing the family income, and spending a few hours a month at a thrift shop can result in a savings of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars- as does homeschooling, by the by. I know I was often amazed when mothers with children in public school would swap their 'back to school clothes' war stories- often they spent as much on one child's back to school wardrobe as I did on my entire family's annual clothing budget. Saves on shoe leather, too.
But now I am really rambling.
More Snow Poems
The Snowstorm
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every wayward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of snow.
Monday, January 21, 2008
This about sums up my work evening
Adult patron: You all sure have a bunch of juvenile delinquents in here, don't you?
Uhm. Yup.
I really like these verses!
Psalms 19:7-11
The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul:
the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart:
the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever:
the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.
The Verdict on the BBC Northanger Abbey
There hasn't been a good movie of Northanger Abbey that we have seen, and the parts that were straight from Jane Austen we liked very much.
Overall, last night's movie seemed to be a sweet and amusing rendition of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey inexplicably interspersed with some unpleasantly juicy selections from the dark side of a much more modern, steamy, squalid, bodice-ripping genre.
President Bush in Ramallah
Today,our president visited the Palestinian occupied territories of Judea and Samaria(the West Bank), heading for a meeting with Palestinian President Arafat II Mahmoud Abbas....
... Palestinian security was almost entirely cut out of the event. The president was accompanied by a virtual army of 1500 Secret Service personnel, plus a security net of the Shin Bet and IDF teams on the ground who created a totally sterile zone a mile deep, virtually shutting down the roads and keeping whole sections of Ramallah in lock down, while the Palestinians were banished to the perimeter of the security zone which was closed even to Abbas' Force 17 presidential guard except for a small personal contingent on a preapproved list. The media was excluded except for a carefully vetted contingent and the Secret Service even replaced Abbas’ office furniture temporarily with American furniture they brought with them.
Now I wonder...it's obvious President Bush doesn't trust his `peace partners' very much, even after the millions of US dollars given to the Palestinians for `security'.
So why is he demanding that the Israelis do so?
Good question. In fact, there are plenty of other good questions where that one came from.
Ron Paul, TNR, and Libertarianism
The New Republic has published a disturbing 'hit piece' on Ron Paul, written by James Kirchick. You can read it here.
Dafyyd at Big Lizards objects, not because he's a supporter of Ron Paul, but because he's a supporter of better logic and less 'guilt by association' techniques. I don't see myself able to vote for Ron Paul, either, but Dafydd makes some excellent points about Kirchick's TNR article:
At a guess, I would say Kirchick is a big fan of the Claremont Institute. It's a great bunch of folks; but it also happens to be more or less at war with libertarianism in general -- and with the Ludwig von Mises Institute in particular.
That is the first damning charge out of the blocks: Ron Paul is associated with the von Mises Institute. But to use the Institute as a bludgeon against libertarians displays the same bigotry as using the Federalist Society to beat down conservatives. One would think that conservatives would show some caution about an argument of "guilt by association with the innocent." One would think.
However, like the English Puritans -- who escaped persecution in England only to resurrect it in the American colonies -- what conservatives actually learned from being pummeled over their association with the Federalist Society is how effective such an attack can be. Thus, they applaud the same kind of attack on libertarians!
The Institute's faculty includes Bruce Bartlett, Wendy McElroy, and Paul Craig Roberts, and it is largely based around the writings (besides Mises) of the late Murray Rothbard. To see how "racist" and "radical" the Institute is, you can read the Rothbard article "Myth and Truth About Libertarianism" and decide for yourself whether you agree with Kirchick -- and with boatloads of "me too" conservatives -- that libertarians want to restore black slavery, put women back in the kitchens with leg irons, and institutionalize atheism.
Which brings us to what is certainly the most controversial belief of many libertarians -- one that Kirchick and the New Republic twist into a Gordian pretzel of inuendo and conclusion-jumping: Many (perhaps most) libertarians believe it was not a good day but a bad day when the North won the Civil War... but not for the reason that Kirchick maliciously implies. He wants to push the meme that libertarians lament the victory because they're all racists... which is utterly preposterous to any educated person who knows anything at all about the libertarian philosophy, to which slavery and racism are anathema.
Rather, libertarians lament the ending of that war because of the extraordinary expansion of authoritarian federal government that followed.
The three or four libertarians in America who are wise realize that it wasn't just the victory; it was the victory plus Abraham Lincoln's assassination, which led to the horrors of Reconstruction. Many of us believe Lincoln himself would have ensured that the South was not utterly subjugated. Slavery would have been abolished, good for liberty; but the secessionist states would not have been made permanent "wards of the court," which was bad for liberty. Alas, John Wilkes Booth shot and killed the Great Emancipator, leaving the Weak Equivocator in nominal control; and Andrew Johnson was unable to rein in the vengeful Republican Congress.
Much more at the link above. Check it out.
Updated to add, check this one out, too. There are some flawed arguments in Kerchick's article, which Dafyyd brings out. But there are some serious reasons to be concerned about him, too.
New Technology, New Job Description
n : a person whose job it is to find, collect, and manage information that is available on the World Wide Web
Time and the Family Income
This it is that marks the woman of character. The centre of her life is her home. All that she does tends to its happiness, to the growth, morally and spiritually, of the family circle.
Time is the second factor that increases the family income. The way in which time is used by the home-maker increases or diminishes the family income. We live in what might be termed "ready-made-days." We no longer make our own clothing because we can buy it so cheaply ready-made. No one disputes that the materials made up at home without expense produce a better and a cheaper garment.
This might have been true in 1896, I don't know. But I do not think it's cheaper to make your own anymore, especially with the wide availability of second hand clothing. You just can't beat a 2.00 denim skirt, a pair of shoes for fifty cents and a pair of dockers for four bucks or less. If you need something special- a regency dress, for instance, or you have an unusual size- a friend of mine is 6 feet tall, and she can't find skirts in her size that don't become mini-skirts on her in length), then you are probably better off sewing them yourself of finding somebody who can.
The truth of the matter is that sewing is a lost art with the majority of American women. Decorative art has now stepped in with its dainty suggestions, and supplies even the quiet, stay-a-home woman with occupation and entertainment for her leisure. To make a garment, when the making saves so little money, seems foolish to many women who acknowledge that it is the penny saved that counts in the close of the yearly account. There are married women to-day who are intelligent and thoughtful, living on limited incomes, with no possibility of an increase except by the investment of capital secured by the saving of the family income, who have never made a garment worn by themselves or their families. They have grown up with the idea that it is a waste of time- that is, that time and knowledge can be better used. There are men and women who have come from homes where the burden of life was a limited income who have never worn a garment fashioned by a mother's brain and hand.
The picture of the young mother fashioning, in love and fear, the garments for the baby whose coming is the promise of her womanhood, the bond and pledge of her love, is fast becoming only a picture, to give sentiment to a story of days departing, if not already gone.
It is not considered a mark of wisdom to save small amounts in the use of time, there are so many things to do. Are they worth the doing? Will they count in making and preserving the family life, the financial freedom of the family? These are the important questions.
While sewing may be a moot skill for most people, these questions are still pertinent- what are the places you expend your time? Are those things worth doing? Do they count in making and preserving the family life you want? If you think one activity takes too much time to be worth it, are you using that time towards financial freedom elsewhere?
From the 1896 book Hearth and Home, edited by Lyman Abbott, this section by Lillian W. Betts.
Ed School Follies
George Leef skewers Ed Schools in "Teaching Teachers How Not to Teach:"
Criticism of education schools doesn't just come from outsiders. Some highly knowledgeable and vocal critics are to be found among the ranks of current and former education school professors. One of those critics is George Cunningham, who taught for many years at the University of Louisville. In a new paper for the Pope Center, Professor Cunningham explains why he does not believe that schools of education in North Carolina are doing an adequate job of training future teachers.
As he sees it, the great problem is that most of the American public holds to one view of the role of schools, while most of the education school elite – the deans and the professors – hold a very different view. The public overwhelmingly believes that the function of schools should be mainly academic – that is, to make sure that children learn very well the skills and knowledge that it takes to succeed in life. If you accept that view, then schools succeed only if their students graduate with a high degree of literacy, with proficiency in mathematics, with a good working knowledge of science, history, our social institutions, and so forth.
It follows that teacher training programs should ensure that their students are expert in teaching those things to young people. Someone who intends to teach math, for example, should be both well-versed in the field and well-trained in the techniques of explaining math to their students.
On the other hand, the dominant view among those who run and teach in our education schools is that the key role of schooling is to achieve various social objectives. In their opinion, it's more important for teachers to properly adjust students' outlook on life and society than to instruct them in "mere" knowledge and facts. Under that view, teachers who devote too much time to "rote learning" (for example, learning multiplication tables) are not doing a good job and a school could be performing poorly even though all its students have mastered the "3 Rs." Cunningham writes that according to this theory, "a child's education is successful if he is exposed to the right attitudes by teachers, even if he does poorly in measures of learning on reading, math, history, science, and so on."
Hube, at The Collussus of Rhodey, agrees, and backs it up with his own experience as a teacher in Grad School:
We played games -- yes, games -- that elementary school kids would play. This -- in a graduate level university course. We'd "brainstorm" main ideas from the previous night's reading. Some of my fellow students' answers were either just plain silly or purposely contrived to "match" the faux enthusiasm of the instructor. Questions like "What are some of the definitions that come to mind when you read that passage?" would elicit replies of "depressing," "ignorant," "distressing," etc. and this would go for about five minutes. The instructor would excitingly exclaim "Yes! What ELSE?!" One time I whispered to a teaching colleague of mine, "This is ridiculous -- watch this," and then I raised my hand and offered this [sarcastic] high quality adjective: "Bad." As predicted, the instructor said "GOOD!" Unbelievable.
The "multiculturalism/diversity in the classroom" (not the actual title) course, predictably, had the most loathsome content. There was no textbook, but every one of the readings was by a leftist. And by "leftist," I'm talking FAR-leftist. Howard Zinn was the author of an article that trashed Christopher Columbus and his subsequent Western legacy. In one of my papers on this reading, I pointed out that Bartólome de las Casas, whom Zinn quoted favorably in his article as standing up for Indian rights, was the main proponent of making use of Africans as slave labor to replace the Native Americans!
There's more at Hube's site, including the very disturbing position of most assigned authors in one grade school course- it was inappropriate to teach minority students advanced academics because it would give them 'false hope.'
Silly me. I always thought giving kids diplomas when they can't actually do high school level work was 'false.'
Previous related posts- notes from the book 'Ed-School Follies, where we learn the acting Dean of the University of Texas at Austin says that you can't NOT use schools as agencies of 'social change,' because it's just too convenient, and anyway, teachers are social workers.
How being critics of education schools helps Educationists (as opposed to teachers) keep control.
Education Schools as the 'Smoking Gun' of what's wrong with education.
Textbook selection isn't such a hot process, either.
How a professor in the then cutting edge multi media education department at Amherst learned that Education Schools are that Smoking Gun. "Visual Literacy," a popular catchphrase at the time, turned out to be the creation of a wildly successful marketing campaign by Kodak.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Sunday Hymn Post
From the 1809 "COLLECTION OF HYMNS FOR THE USE OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF THE UNITED BRETHREN, NEW AND REVISED EDITION" A Collection of Hymns: For the Use of the Protestant Church...
Also in:
published in 1859
Also in a 1848 hymnal titled 'Psalms and Hymns with the Catechism' published by the Reformed Church of America
At least one verse written by Isaac Watts
"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
~ 1st Timothy 3:16
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The joys of a Graham Cracker spread with frosting.
Yesterday I spent all day in a far off town with Dad while he helped manage the store up there. At about 4:15 I wandered into the break room and found an open container of frosting with graham crackers and crumbs scattered about. Not exactly sure why an adult grocery store employee would think it was OK to leave a mess like that, I nevertheless shrugged it off and went back to my book.
A few minutes later a little boy carrying a book satchel came into the room. I chatted with him and discovered that he was the assistant manager's son. That was his snack, and he was waiting for his mother to get off her shift so they could go home together. I introduced myself as "Joe's" daughter.
Him: Ooooh. He's cool.
Me: I think so!
Him: Of course you do. He's your dad.
Now how special is that? Complete confidence in the fact that a daughter would think her dad was fairly cool stuff. His parents must be doing something right.
As we talked, he was very carefully spreading a graham cracker with the frosting. When he finished, he calmly handed it to me and began making one for himself. Then we munched and made small talk for another few minutes before he had to leave.
He's a smart kid... knowing how to blend food and conversation like that when meeting new people. If he keeps up like that, he should make many friends.
booklust
Still listing books like mad. I've spent so much time at it that my left eye is twitching constantly, my hands itch from the dust, and I keep remembering other nooks and crannies where books are stored, just when I think, "aha, only xx more shelves.'
"We have 44 Christmas books," I announced to the Progeny. "And now they are finally cataloged and we can pack them away until next year."
And so naturally, "We have 47 picture books" I had to tell them a few seconds after they finished packaging the box and closing it up. "I found three more in the bathroom that I forgot were there."
"There's a surprise," they said in dry, unsurprised tones. Nor were they surprised when, a few days later, I said, "We have 54 Christmas books. There were several stashed on the picture book shelves where they do not belong."
Then there are the poetry books. I am not always sure where to put them. The above volume of Whittier's poetry, for instance, looks like it would fit in more in the living room with the other vintage/antique/just-plain-OLD-books. But I decided to keep it with poetry. So, the poetry books are done- excepting those stray volumes that have wandered off their shelves to mingle with other books. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has been done up into something that looks like a picture book but isn't. IN fact, I can think of few poems less suitable for the picture book shelves. Bug eyed corpses on a ghost ship, dead birds tied and hung around the mariner's neck, a crew of dead men that comes to life at night to sail the ship... Scary stuff, that is.
We have a couple hundred poetry books. I would have guessed 300 myself, and I am feeling virtuous about not having quite that many after all.
Of course, I have 53 Mother Goose and other Nursery Rhyme books, and they are poetry, too. But let's pretend not to know that.
"Why," I ask myself sadly, as I pick up another stack of books and move them from one place to another, and back again, "Why do you have so many books? You're not reading them. You could start now and never do anything but read them for the rest of your life and you probably wouldn't finish them before you died. So why, Self? Why? What's the matter with you?"
"The children," I told myself defensively, "The Progeny can read them, and there are more of them than there of us, so they might get through them all one day."
"Rot!" my Self replied rudely, as I stroked the raised pattern on one of the older books. "You simply have a grasping, avaricious, acquisitive nature with a rapacious appetite for books."
"So what do you suggest? Shall we get rid of some of them?" I asked.
"Don't be hasty," my Self objected hastily. "You shouldn't make such drastic decisions at a time like this."
"LIke what?" I asked.
"Well, you're obviously unstable, in the midst of some mental crisis. You're talking to yourself AND answering. You need help. But you should leave the books alone in the meantime. Except for cataloging them. Get back to work."
Tale Bearers
We read Proverbs 18 together yesterday, and discussed the meaning of 'tale-bearer.'
Providentially, the FYG listened to this episode of Paws and Tales today; The Tribe, about a young cub who goes about trying to make friends with two warring groups of kids, and though his aims are noble, his methods are questionable, resulting in sharing each other's secrets and offending everybody.
We don't have any malicious gossipers in the house, but we do have a very social chatterbox (think little sister Margaret in Emma Thompson's movie version of Sense and Sensibility)
Words are mighty, words are living;
Serpents with their venomous stings,
Or bright angels crowding round us,
With heaven's light upon their wings;
Every word has its own spirit,
True or false, that never dies;
Every word man's lips have uttered
Echoes in God's skies.
A. A. PROCTER.
There But for the Grace of God...
On the way to work The Equuschick & Co. saw smoke in the distance, and saw fire trucks heading out at top speed.
They only watched then, curiously and with sympathy, wishing it wasn't at all serious, but life goes on, you know, and it was very unlikely that what was going on over there would ever affect them.
An hour after The Equuschick arrived at work, the Animal Control officer was called out to pick up a dog from the property of a house fire. The family was safe, but the house was a total loss and the fumes were heading towards the dog's outdoor kennel.
So the dog arrived, in the shape of a nervous and utterly disoriented Border Collie.
Two hours later the owner arrived, reeking of smoke and tottering slightly in his confusion as if he were drunk, but he wasn't. Only still stunned, and still blinking back tears as he tried to laugh and thank the shelter for taking care of his dog.
All fees were waived but the reclaim form must still be filled out, and The Equuschick, as a creature of habit, circled the top of the form that is always the only required section in emergency situations, handed it to him and stepped back, only to realize too late that the circled section asked for a home address and a phone number.
What does a home address mean to a man who just lost his home, anyway? He looked at it and tried to laugh, but failed. He gave his father's phone number, insisted on giving a donation, and walked out the door before The Equuschick could learn anything else of his situation besides that he and the dog were staying with his sister.
When you go to bed at night you have a house, when you wake up the next morning, you watch it turn to ash before your eyes. Poor man.
Weed, Revisited
In November of 2005, I posted this post where I bored everybody with a list of the stuff on my desk. The real reason I wrote that post (besides not having anything more interesting at the time, and if ever there was vanity publishing, blogging has to be it) was because I wanted help identifying the seed pod and the manufacturer of the package of flax seed pictured.
Cindee properly identified the flax seed brand for me (puretest). I did get a couple suggestions for the plant via email, but they weren't quite right.
I did not see the pods again- they came from the site where we built this house, and I assume building disrupted their happy home and they abandoned it. I never really knew what they'd looked like before they had pods- the pods are the first thing I noticed.
Tonight while cataloging the books, I listed a picture book we've owned for, oh, 20 years. I opened it up to admire the end paper designs:
This book is larger than my scanner bed, so you can't get the full scope of the thing. It's very, very pretty, and what I had never noticed before is that it's a seasonal romp through the botanical year. Over to the left, (not pictured) at the top we begin with violets, moving clockwise we have dead nettle, daffodils, buttercups, bluebells, crab apple blossoms, forget me nots, lilacs, foxgloves, big red poppies, delphiniium, wild roses (we're into the flowers of summer now, and heading down the right edge of the book), cow peas (vetch) corn flower (chickweed here), and fumitory. Then we move down the page and across the bottom (right to left) from fall into winter- English oak just changing colors, crab apples in fruit, rose hips, black berries...
And there's we are. Thorn apples, there at the bottom center of the two page spread of end papers, my mystery plant:
Thorn Apples. And I actually had seen their blossoms all over the house site the previous summer, only I knew them as Jimson Weeed, a noxious weed in several states, and not something I really wanted to keep around (although the blossoms are striking and quite pretty).
What I find interesting is that I looked and looked through my field guides, I looked online, I asked my readership (which back then numbered maybe fifty)- and all along the answers I wanted were on the picture bookshelf and had been for twenty years.
Isn't that just like life?
The book, incidentally, is My Way Sally, purportedly feminist book which actually is an excellent story of leadership, creative thinking, and solving problems instead of perpetuating them.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Picture Book REview
The BAsket That Flew Over the Mountain, by Mabel Watts:
Abner goes down to the river and cuts some willow branches to make his mother a basket. She uses it to keep her sewing notions in. Then one day she buys a sewing machine an since she is no longer sewing by hand, and the sewing machine has drawers she puts all her notions into the machine. drawers.
The basket is empty. Abner and his mother want the beautiful basket to be used, and Abner thinks of the grocer, who lines it with ferns and fills it with strawberries. He puts it in his window where people admire it, and he sells all his strawberries. Then He fills it with with cherries, and later gooseberries- He gives the basket back to Abner and says he can find some other good use for it. He gives it to his friend Caroline who puts her kitten in it as a bed.The kitten outgrows the basket and Caroline gives it back to Abner, who fills it with flowers and puts it on his front door. When the flowers are gone, the basket blows away. It lands in the mud of a riverbank on the other side of the mountain, where after a season it sprouts, and new willows grow and the children on the other side of the mountain are able to make baskets of their own, because before Abner's basket took root and grew there, they had no willows for baskets.
Today
Phone rang at 8:00 a.m. Ignored caller, letting him leave a message. Groaned and turned over in bed.
FYG popped in and reminded me that we had to leave to go somewhere in an hour. Groaned louder. Told FYG to call Daddy on his cell phone to deliver the message previous called had left on machine.
She dialed. Simultaneously dogs started barking- all three of them. FYG left message on Daddy's cell phone, then ran back in my room shouting over the dogs, "They're barking because there's a truck outside honking its horn.
I told FYG to put on her boots and step outside to see if it was UPS (we're still waiting for some of our prizes from the HBA). Pulled self blearily out of bed, frightened myself when I caught a glimpse of my hair in the mirror (I went to bed last night with wet, uncombed hair. I was tired, okay?). Stumbled towards living room window to watch FYG. Couldn't see her.
Phone rang again, different caller. Dogs are still barking. Pip dashes downstairs, and I send her out to look for the FYG and pick up the phone. It's HSLDA calling my husband back so he can give them some information, but I don't have the info he wanted to give them, they need him. I don't like HSLDA. Yesterday, I was neutral, take them or leave them. At 7:55, had I been asked, I would have said I was neutral on the subject of HSLDA, but now, the dogs are barking, the lady is trying to give me information I can't hear, I don't where my 11 year old is, and ... "Did you realize it's barely 8:00 a.m. here?" I ask, as I look for my husband's cell phone number and find his cell phone instead. "Yes, I did," the obnoxiously cheerful woman chirps. Nope, today I loathe HSLDA, no neutrality at all.
Pip runs back in- 'there's no truck out there at all, and the FYG is barefoot, standing at the end of the drive looking for it.' It's zero degrees (Fahrenheit) outside. ZERO (Fahrenheit). I tell her to haul the FYG back by her belt-loops if she has to. "What?" asks the startled HSLDA lady.
"Not you, just a minute," I sputter, dogs STILL barking and I have been awake for TEN entire minutes and NOBODY has put a cup of coffee in my hands. I put the phone down and move to throttle the nearest dog. Pip and the FYG come in and I innocently put my hands behind my back: "Whichever one of you knows the phone number to the HG's new cell phone go over there and tell that woman on the phone what it is. The HG is with daddy, so this woman can call that number and get the information she wants. The other one of you can go make coffee. And somebody get me JennyAnyDots, this is an emergency bad hair day and I need her help."
The FYG delivers the message. Pip makes coffee. Jenny un-snarls my Medusa head. The dogs shut up. I explain that the 'honking' noise the FYG thought she was hearing in the distance was Daddy's cell-phone set to vibrate, and the noise sounded like a horn in the distance. I explain also that we do not go outside barefoot when it is zero degrees (fahrenheit) outside. I have explained this before, many times. The FYG complains of hot feet and she prefers to wear sandals through the entire winter.
This is an issue where the principle is not one of high moral value- it is one of safety. Mine. As I have explained, when she is old enough that strangers will not call Child Protective Services on me for neglect because my young child is out in the snow and ice with bare feet, then she can do what she likes about her foot-wear or lack there-of. It is also one of personal embarrassment- so long as people think I am still responsible for her, it is embarrassing to me that she be seen barefoot outside when the thermometer reads zero (fahrenheit).
But enough about bare feet and zero degrees (fahrenheit). We had to be going somewhere. The Progeny got dressed and got the Cherub dressed. I took care of myself, hit publish on a few blog posts, and we rushed out the door to get in the van and drive.
Where did we go? Well, we have succumbed to the local cult. We have Turned in our paper work, signed on for far too many obligations, and dropped out of my mind and my formerly staunch opposition to participation in said local cult. So our first 4-H meeting was today.
We had brunch with the group, and I was standing awkwardly in a corner holding my plate and trying to pretend I didn't mind being in a room full of strangers when I noticed the FYG was running around the basement barefoot. I turned to Jenny. "Why is she barefoot? What shoes did she wear?" I demanded. Jenny shared my dismay. "She's wearing her white sandals. I didn't notice until we got here."
Her white 'sandals' are a pair of 'shoes' consisting of a white canvas covering over cork, with a strip of lace over the front part of the foot to hold them on. That's it. Fortunately, it was no longer zero degrees (Fahrenheit). It had warmed up to a balmy 21 degrees (Fahrenheit). I made up a new rule on the spot. If the temperature is under 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) and the FYG does not have socks and real shoes on, then she's going to give me money and clean me a toilet or two.
But on to our 4-H meeting. I was told this was a small club. This means we have nearly twenty kids in the club ('large' clubs around here have fifty or more). They had to elect officers. The mom in charge suggested that they should make sure to try to include kids who hadn't been officers before, and nominate them. So it went like this:
Cute 4-H cult member: "I nominate Pip"
Cute and very bashful Pip, whispering: "No, thank-you."
Cute 4-H cult member: "I nominate the FYG"
Cute FYG: "I respectfully decline."
Cute 4-H cult member: "I nominate the FYB."
Cute and not at all bashful FYB: "Huh? Oh. Nope. Mom, why are you looking at me like that? What? I don't know what that look means. Why are you making that face at me? Why are you moving your lips like that? I can't hear you.
Oh, Okay. I mean, uh, I inspectfully decline."
That's how it went for President. That's how it went for Vice-President. And then came secretary.
Cute 4-H cult member: "I nominate Pip"
Cute and very bashful Pip, looks uncertain for a minute and then whispers: "Okay, I guess."
I was shocked. I was even more astonished when, even though two others were nominated and accepted as well, Pip was elected secretary. She doesn't like doing things like that, and I could hardly believe my ears when she whispered that she would accept the nomination. I asked her after the meeting what prompted her unusual participatory spirit. She looked accusingly at me. "YOU did. I was going to say no, but you LOOKED at me."
"Oh, no! Honey, that wasn't a 'you'd better sign up for this' look. That was a curious, 'what is she going to do?' looking purely for informational purposes look, and I was shocked when you said you'd do it."
She is not excited about this, and I am very sorry she confused an inquisitory look for an imperative look, very sorry indeed, because now we have to attend every single monthly meeting of our new cult.
The FYG is presenting the 'health tip' at the next meeting.
That's okay. Some other mother's little boy 'respectfully reclined.'
Materialism and The Renaiisance Man
Cindy and others are reading through Hazlitt's book Economics in One Lesson, as I've mentioned. YOu can learn a lot reading along and checking out the other blogs that are participating. We are not a monolithic hegemony, we homeschooling bloggers. There's some disagreement about the book, and in particular this chapter. Afterthoughts ( a very pretty blog template there) disagrees with some of the ideas in this chapter of Hazlitt's book, and I agree with her for the most part, and disagree at some points (Rick Saenz and I disagree on about the same points, as well). I started to comment there, but I got so longwinded (my bane) that I decided to make a blog post instead.
I loved what she said about efficiency and making one dress in three hours instead of four dresses in twelve, which is materialism:
Whenever we begin to do things "more efficiently," an interesting thing seems to happen. We buy more of it. Whereas children used to have one to two sets of playclothes, one pair of pajamas, and one nice outfit for church, and one pair of shoes, they now have closets packed full of clothes for every occasion, very often double what they truly need, and a minimum of two or three pairs of shoes.
Something here tells me that we are not truly efficient. I have written about this before in regards to meal preparation, but I am determined to think this thought again. True efficiency would be doing more in less time and then moving on to do something else. When I think of it this way, it necessitates contentment. If it used to take me twelve hours to make my one church dress and a machine is invented that allows me to make it in three, efficiency is making one dress in three hours. It is not making four dresses. That is materialism or perhaps greed.
I know that this is true. And actually, for most Americans, there weren't two or three sets of playclothes and pajamas- there was one every day dress, one work dress, a large apron, and a Sunday-go-to-meeting dress. You might have a nightie, or you might sleep in your undies. When you read those old Victorian books where the children are naughty and muddy their their clothes and they have to go to bed until the next morning, that's because they muddied the only clothes they had and they have to wait until they are washed and line dried. I know we responded to better washing methods and off the rack clothing with more clothes. We responded to electronic dishwashers with more dishes.
And yet....
In the example above, what if you're selling the other three for money for your father who used to be a weaver and is now out of work? What if he's the one doing the sewing because he used to be a weaver but lost his job, but now he's learned to sew?=) The sewing machine makes that possible, too. Most middle-class families used to handle clothing by hiring a seamstress to come in and stay for a week or so, and sew everything by hand from dawn til dark. Now the seamstress could stay home and take in more work- and some families, hard pressed to hire a seamstress, could cover their backs by sewing their own. In the 1900's many of America's immigrants in New York supported their families by sewing from home, using that efficient sewing machine. It wasn't ideal by a long shot, but that extra efficiency was the difference between eating and not eating.
if you were raised to be a weaver and weaving is all you know, being replaced by a weaving machine might do irreparable damage to you, especially if you are older. Machinery often encourages businesses to become big. Although this is not immoral in and of itself, an institution, and organization does not have a soul. By definition it cannot exercise true compassion.
I do feel sorry for those left behind. I am a one pony show myself and I understand that.
But if you were brought up to weave and that's all you know, is it really somebody else's responsibility to make sure you always have a trade by keeping the machines out? What about people who don't take to weaving, but do take to machinery? Don't they matter, too? Isn't it your responsibility NOT to only know one thing- at least a little?
I think of the character of Burt in the Disney Mary Poppins- when it was cold, he sold hot roasted chestnuts. When it was windy, he sold kites. When it was nice and sunny out he made sidewalk art or performed extemporaneous musical numbers. He was a chimney sweep. He had a diversified stream of income.
I don't know what the answer is, if there is one, at the government level. But at the local level, the most local level there is, your family, teach your kids to diversify, to have more than one way to earn their income. Develop your skills, so that like Heinlein's ideal man, you "should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." Stay abreast of trends and technology so that you aren't taken by surprise, when you're making a living knitting stockings, by machines that do the work for you (think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Charlie's father, put out of work by a machine, learned to repair the machine and got a new job).
Full disclosure, I can't do most of those things, but I can write the poetry and cook the tasty meals while my husband does the butchering and setting broken goat legs.=) The Renaissance man is, as Brandy says, the way to go. The Renaissance man is not somebody who is thrown out of work and stays out of work because all he knows is weaving the old fashioned way.
Online Texts
'Forces in Education'
From the user's guide of the multi-volume 1909 Journey's Through Bookland by Charles Sylvester.
This is reported to be a diagram of 'forces in education.' This is the 'sum total of all those influences which tend to make the mind and character of the growing child.' Misc. includes 'morals, manners, and hygiene.' The point of the diagram is to show how important reading is in the life of a child. The point of the series is to help parents give children good books to influence their minds. But what struck me, of course, is how much less influence parents were reputed to have than the schools, even in 1909.
Frugal Gift
For more about the making of this gift, see this week's post at Frugal Hacks!
I've posted this picture of my ribbon bulletin board before- ribbons, buttons from Grandma's button jar at the intersection of ribbons- but I can't find that I explained how my husband hung this ribbon bulletin board on my closet door (click on the picture to enlarge):
He took a wire coat-hanger and some wire cutters, then he cut the coat hanger into two pieces, bent them the way he wanted them to go, and hung them over my closet door with the bulletin board attached. The white plastic pieces you see here are over the closet door hooks I picked up at a thrift shop. The hooks are inside the closet, where I hang things like purses, totebags of scarves, sweaters, and my winter cape- a nice warm red plaid victorian thing that is decades out of style, but 100 percent wool and 100 percent warm. Plus, I look very good in red.=)
The pink roses in the picture to the right should also get a mention- that is a large piece of vintage sheet music with a pretty picture of a roses on the front.
Get some other frugal ideas from Crystal's Frugal Fridays.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
C.S. Lewis quote
The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the cross-section of humanity whom one has to meet every day. In my experience, it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who "happen to be there." Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.
C.S. Lewis, "The Four Loves"
Thoughts Inspired by the Passage of a Soap Bubble
It was a tiny one, a clear and perfect sphere, that danced and sailed about the room in perfect time to the music in the background, glistening in the reflection of the lights above. The Equuschick could only watch in childish delight and be sad that such a pretty thing was not alive.
It could be argued that there is nothing particularly emotional about a soap bubble, it is a material phenomenon brought about by entirely material causes, all of which when scientifically discussed would seem to render the dancing crystal sphere dull and utterly lacking in magic.
But would it really? Because bubbles are beautiful, any child can tell you that. That's why they play with them. The beauty in a bubble is as undeniable as the material cause.
Were bubbles made to be beautiful? Possibly not. But beauty itself is inherent within the universe as a part of the creative process. It is highly unlikely, in this universe in which we live, for something to serve its function well and not have a pleasing form.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Candidates and Economics
Spunky has continued her look at Mike Huckabee and why he's not the Homeschooling Dream Candidate HSLDA's PAC says he is. She's also blogged about the Michigan Primaries, and I suggest just checking out her blog regularly through the election cycle. Skim the comments, too, as there are counterpoints, disagreements, and arguments offered that are useful as well.
And do check out Dana's post and the comment section at Principled Discovery- she offers "a little hope for conservative voters," but I think even non-conservatives will find something of interest there.
Porkbusters is a useful link to those of us who are sick and tired of the money games. Politics and economics are closely tied, and you can get an excellent education in economics reading Henry Hazlitt's book Ecnomics in One Lesson and then reading the posts about it linked through Cindy's Mr. Linky doomaflawtchy.
(There's word I do not think I have ever seen in print, but I use often. I just asked the Equuschick, "How do you spell 'doomaflawtchy?" She replied, "I wouldn't. I would think of another word that I could spell."
And so you get the phonetic spelling.
Privacy, Tenement Houses, and Other ADD Thoughts
Kelly, the BadgerMum, asks an interesting question in response to this post:
[A]re they saying privacy from one another (a bigger house), or privacy from neighbors (a bigger yard)? Or something else entirely?
I thought I knew, but then when I thought about it, I couldn't think of any good supporting evidence I had for what I thought, so I googled.=) I found this interesting book published in 1906 and titled 'Aliens or Americans?' with this information about Mrs. Betts:
Mrs. Lillian W. Betts, author of two enlightening books,[_The Leaven of a Great City_, and _The Story of an East Side Family_], has lived for a year in one of the
most crowded tenements in one of the most densely populated sections of the Italian quarter. We condense some of her statements, which reveal the foreign life of to-day in New York's Little Italy, with its 400,000 souls.
[Sidenote: Immigrant Isolation]
"A year's residence in an Italian tenement taught me first of all the
isolation of a foreign quarter; how completely cut off one may be from
everything that makes New York New York. The necessities of life can be
bought without leaving the square that is your home. After a little it
occasioned no surprise to meet grandparents whose own children were born
in New York, who had never crossed to the east side of the Bowery, never
seen Broadway, nor ever been south of Houston Street. There was no
reason why they should go. Every interest in their life centered within
four blocks. I went with a neighbor to Saint Vincent's Hospital, where
her husband had been taken. I had to hold her hand in the cars, she was
so terrified. She had lived sixteen years in this ward and never been on
a street-car before. Of a family of five sons and two daughters, besides
the parents, in this country fifteen years, none spoke English but the
youngest, born here, and she indifferently. Little Italy was all of
America they knew, and of curiosity they had none.
[Sidenote: Children American in Spirit]
"The house in which we lived was built for twenty-eight families and
occupied by fifty-six. One man who had been in the country twenty-eight
years could not speak or understand a word of English. Nothing but
compulsion made his children use Italian, and the result was pathetic.
The eldest child was an enthusiastic American, and the two civilizations
were always at war. This boy knew more of American history, its heroes
and poetry, than anyone of his age I ever met. This boy had never been
five blocks from the house in which we lived. He removed his hat and
shoes when he went to bed in winter; in summer he took off his coat. A
brother and two sisters shared the folding bed with him. His father
hired the three rooms and sublet to a man with a wife and three
children. The women quarreled all the time, but worked in the same room,
finishing trousers and earning about forty-five cents a day each.
[Sidenote: Evils of Overcrowding]
"How do they live? One widow, with three in her own family, took nine
men boarders in her three rooms. A nephew and his wife also kept house
there, the rent being $18 a month. Another neighbor, whose family
consisted of four adults and two children, had seven lodgers or boarders
at one time. These men owned mattresses, rolled up by day, spread on the
floor at night. One of them had a bride coming from Italy. Two men with
their mattresses were ejected and space made for the ornate brass and
green bedstead. The wedding was the occasion of great rejoicing. Next
day the bride was put to work sewing 'pants.' At the end of a month I
found she had not left those rooms from the moment she entered them, and
that she worked, Sundays included, fourteen hours a day. She was a mere
child, at that. The Italian woman is not a good housekeeper, but she is
a homemaker; she does not fret; dirt, disorder, noise, company, never
disturb her. She must share everything with those about her. She cooks
one meal a day and that at night. Pot or pan may be placed in the
middle of the table and each may help himself from it, but the food is
what her husband wants.
[Sidenote: Family Cooeperation]
"Together they will wash the dishes or he will take the baby out. The
mother, who has sewed all day, will wash till midnight, while the
husband sits dozing, smoking, talking. But he hangs out the clothes.
They work together, these Italian husbands and wives. Their wants are
the barren necessaries of life; shelter, food, clothing to cover
nakedness. The children's clothes are washed when they go to bed. Life
is reduced to its lowest terms. They can move as silently as do the
Arabs and do so in the night watches. But they are rarely penniless;
they have a little fund always in the bank. They put their young
children in institutions from weaning-time until they are old enough to
work, then bring them home to swell the family income. Recently a
father, whose children had thus been cared for by the state, bought a
three-story tenement. This is typical thrift. There was never a day when
all the children of school age were in school. School was a prison house
to most of them. There was not room for them, even if they wanted to go.
[_University Settlement Studies_, January, 1906]
I would also suggest Jacob Riis' 1890 work of photojournalism documenting the squalid conditions of New York's tenements, How The Other Half Lives.
In reading some reviews of this work, I find it both amusing and tragically sad that today his work is considered flawed because he stopped short of calling for government intervention and because he separated the poor into the deserving and undeserving categories. Women and children were the deserving poor. The unemployed and the criminal were undeserving. I understand that it's not fair to classify all unemployed men with criminals, but it's also not fair to ignore the fact that some men were unemployed by choice, and I cannot see that being a criminal makes you a member of the deserving poor.
It's also considered flawed because of his plainly stated bigotries and prejudices, and there I would agree, but such flaws are easy to see now, with the advantage of a hundred years or so on Riis.
Because we do have that advantage that hind sight gives us, so that the most glaring problems in the two works cited above (Aliens or Americans and How The Other Half Lives), I think both of these books might be interesting for those of interesting in immigration issues to read today. What issues are the same, which are different? how have they changed? Which proposed solutions seem like they might be revised and adapted for today? Which seem utterly wrong headed to the point that you can't imagine what those people were thinking? And which of our proposed solutions today will strike our descendants in the same way?
There is a sequel to How The Other Half Lives, which I have not read. It is called Battle for the Slums.
What I cooked for lunch:
Mustard Baked Chicken
Prep: 10 min. Bake: 35 min. Oven 425F Makes: 6 servings
2/12 to 3 pounds meaty chicken pieces (breast halves, thighs, and drumstick)
1/3 cup brown mustard
1 TBS cooking oil
1 TBS soy sauce
2 tsp non-calorie heat stable granular sugar substitute (Splenda)
1: Skin chicken, if desired. Place chicken in a lightly greased shallow baking pan. Bake in a 425 oven for 15 minutes.
2: Meanwhile, in a small bowl stir together mustard, oil, soy sauce, and sugar substitute. Brush mustard mixture generously over chicken pieces.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes more of until chicken is no longer pink (170 F for breasts; 180 F for thighs and drumsticks), brushing frequently with mustard mixture.
In step 2 when it says to bake if for 20 to 25 min. at 170 F I did but found that it was going to take a bit longer than I wanted it to so I baked it for about 15 min at 170 F and then for 350 F for about 10 min.
I served it with brown rice and a green salad.
( When I started making this recipe I thought I wouldn't like it because I don't really like brown mustard, but I did! It wasn't too bad! )
The Miracle of Labor-Saving Machines in 1896
Strength, time, and practical knowledge are the servants that increase the family income threefold. The first should be administered as one administers the income of the family. If it is abused- used recklessly- it brings physical bankruptcy as surely as the reckless use of money brings financial failure. Many women are old at middle life and become burdens carried with loving patience, or even endurance, by their families, when they could have gone down to old age helping to carry the burdens and pleasures of life with ease and grace, had they used intelligence in expending their strength.
It is this danger that threatens the women of to-day. They dissipate their physical powers, not in the home, but in meeting outside demands. If tombstones recorded truth always, in many a graveyard in this country would appear this legend" "She died of Committee." It has become within the past year the proper thing to justify this outside work of women on the ground that women are the leisure class. It would appear that this must be sarcasm. were it not for the deeply earnest quarter from which this justification comes A woman of leisure to-day would either be a curiosity or an object of veneration or envy, according to the standpoint from which we view her.
Women of the past did abuse their strength in the labor they performed in their homes and for their families. This is not possible to-day where woman has the intelligence to use the labor-saving machines that science and invention have placed at her disposal. To-day her physical bankruptcy is due to concessions made to the world outside her home, to her own ignorance, or false economy. Hundreds of husbands in our day stand patient, willing, loving, attendants on wives who are invalids because of the service they rendered outside their homes- and this often without the assurance that the victim of her own temperament or mistaken zeal has rendered true service., Wise is the woman who knows the measure of her strength and uses it to enrich the home life making it increase the family income by saving the money; economizing the strength when the expending of money means greater happiness for the family, giving of her abundance where it tells for the world's good, making that service to the world a part of the intellectual life of her own home.
From the 1896 House and Home by Lyman Abbott- this chapter written by Lillian Betts.
Quote for the Common Place Book
Alas! such is our weakness, that we often more readily believe and speak of another that which is evil than that which is good. But perfect men do not easily give credit to every report; because they know man's weakness, which is very prone to evil, and very subject to fail in words.
THOMAS A KEMPIS.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Wisdom, indeed.
"...never assume that the way we understand the past today is the way people in the past understood their own present."
~ William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indian, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (just finished today in prep for class tomorrow. 2 pp paper written and submitted to prof. Now I've really got to find out what caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and then Get.In.Bed. The alarm clock goes off too soon for comfort)
"At Home in Mitford" by Jan Karon
It was a sweet book but it did have parts that I didn't like, didn't agree with, and were bored with.
However there were some nice little passages that I would like to share with you. :)
"Don't be anxious? Most mortals considered anxiety, and plenty of it, an absolute requirement for getting the job done. Yet, over and over again, the believer was cautioned to abandon anxiety, and look only to God."
"Perhaps, he thought, we should all live as if we're dying."
(This idea seems so interesting to me... What would I do differently if I knew that I would be gone from this world by this time tomorrow. Hopefully it wouldn't be much different. I already know that I don't know when I may be taken from this world -could be in the next day, week, month, year, etc- so, I should already be living my life in a way so that if I knew I were to die tomorrow, I would go to bed knowing that I've done what God wanted me to do that day.
I hope that made sense, I do have such a hard time putting what I think into words on "paper." :( )
" 'I've never been one for for physical exercise, " she said, "but what God does with our faith must be something like workouts. He sees to it that our faith gets pushed and pulled , stretched and pounded, taken to its limits so that its limits can expand[...]If it doesn't get exercised,"she said thoughtfully, "it becomes like a weak muscle that fails us when we need it."
"Starting tomorrow, we're going back to something I hardly ever hear these days. We're going back to 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir,' not to mention 'thank you' and 'please.' "
And she quoted this man:
Oswald Chambers
"Let me say I believe God will supply all my need and then let me run dry, with no outlook, and see whether I will go through the trial of faith, or... sink back to something ever lower."
Awww!
See some adorable pictures of a four week old polar bear that was taken away from his mother. As the Equuschick says:
"Daddy, I want a polar bear!" :)
Who You Are
The first paragraph of this portion from Lyman Abbott's 1896 House and Home seems more quaint than applicable, but the last paragraph is spot on in application:
The income of the average American family is estimated at about five hundred dollars a year. The incomes above and below this average represent the upward and downward scale of social opportunities. The problem of living is hardest to solve in the United States for families of refinement, who have the natural ambitions of intelligence, how to live that they may secure at the same time the greatest freedom and the greatest privacy. Rent is the first item. What proportion of the income can be expended for rent? We are told that no man should spend more than one fourth of his income for rent. But we cannot accept this as an unchangeable law, for one fourth of the income of some families will not secure space enough for privacy, and a greater proportion than one fourth must be for rent. This extra allowance then must be secured by economy in other expenditures. The social life, the wardrobe, or the food supply, must pay their tribute to this absolute expense that cannot be brought below a certain point without affecting, not only the comfort, but the health and morals of the family.
Having settled the proportion of the family income that must be expended in rent, the balance of the income then must be divided to meet all the other demands of the family life. Now the problem becomes intricate and tests the wisdom and intelligence of the determining power. Each family differs in the standards of the necessities imperative for the maintenance of family life. Opportunity for education is the uppermost need of one family. Establishing the semblance of social prominence is the one universal want of another family. Clothes that attract the eye of the passer-by is the one desire of another family. What we term a good table satisfies the wants of another family. It is the gratification of the special taste of each family that secures for that family the greatest happiness. We may admire or condemn, but if we are discerning, we shall know that we, in turn, are being criticized for the arrangement of our own lives- that in the judgment of many, we are sacrificing the best things of life, we are not securing the best results for the amount of money at our disposal. Accepting this fact, then, it behooves us to concentrate our attention on our own affairs, being careful to secure the results in our own family life that minister best to the life of that family without regard to outside standards.
In addition to personal taste, I would say that each family also has its own unique purpose. We have guests in our home every single week (and usually more than once a week), but we don't do sports. One family doesn't bake bread but does play baseball (Hi, Cindy!); another family has a flair for music and life lived large (Hi, Queen S.!). One family has a knack for putting together bits and pieces and using them creatively and frugally (Hi, Mama Squirrel!), and others have a gift with art.
Some folks have money and the desire for five thousand dollar weddings with a dozen bridesmaids, and some people think 100 dollars and a potluck should just about cover everything. Your family may be dressed in blue jeans 365 days of the year, or perhaps Austen style gowns, or Edwardian dresses, or skirts and blouses. Your special niche may be writing and homeschooling and children with special needs. Your special talent might be elegant food or plain down home fare.
Your family might best use its talents in some political area (writing, canvassing, volunteering for a candidate) or in telling jokes and making people laugh. You can live in the city and never see a goat. You can be an agrarian. You can be something in between (our goats are at the meat locker. Our son is at the home of another homeschooling family, watching them butcher their goats the old-fashioned way. We women folk are at home pretending we were just too busy to go).
Even when we're doing the same thing, it doesn't necessarily have to look the same way. Lora Keeth's family has a heart for evangelism, and they pursue that aim largely through passing out tracts. Our own family pursues the same aims through in-home Bible studies and Bible studies my husband has had with co-workers every where he's lived, while my mother grades papers and answers questions through an international Bible Study correspondence program.
I have seven children, and I can tell that each of them are going to have homes that look very different when they are in their own homes. One will be extremely academic and will feature exotic cooking, international flavored decorating, and intellectual discussions over the tea table. Frugality will be practiced most in the kitchen and in self-control. Another will be less academic and the cooking will be plainer, but there will be more skill and interest in patterns, colors, design, decorating, and
frugality will be practiced most in creative, make-it-yourself ways. There will probably be no dogs inside either home. Another will feature large dogs, a life touched in every part by some connection with our four footed friends, relentless logic, snappy dialog, and creative cooking that sometimes soars into the heights and sometimes goes directly into the garbage can. And yet another will have the same focus on animals, with tender-hearted compassion, loving acceptance, the snappy dialog will largely be internal so as not hurt somebody's feelings, and the bedrooms will probably all be messy, but decorated with stunning photography on the walls and filled with beautiful music.
And each of them will be doing what they need to do. The HG needn't dote on dogs to be the woman God wants her to be, and the Equuschick needn't give them up (though we all feel like we're going to be giving something up every time we hear the words 'Zeusy-woosey'). Pip does not have to sew to be a godly woman, and JennyAnyDots doesn't have to master and duplicate Pip's ability with books (Pip has read faster than I do since she was about 8 years old).
Work at shoring up the weak places when they matter (the ability to sew is not one of them. My utter lack of any organizational skills at all is. Self-control matters, whether you bake bread or not does not), just enjoy the differences where they don't.
We don't all need to look exactly the same, even those of us who are stay at homeschooling moms.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
News and Views
Just for the record, it’s not the rightwing or the Libertarians that are trying to suppress the freedom of the press, neither in Canada nor in America. Don’t forget it, when you hear the right being called fascists and worse.From the Anchoress, and there's more. Check it out.
Ezra Levant has posted a series of video recordings of his defense. Here's his closing arguments. You can find more links at his blog.
Another shot fired in the race wars between Hilary's campaign and Obama's. The Captain comes down on the side of reason.
It's no secret that I'm no fan of Hilary's, but even I didn't know she could be this silly. "No woman is illegal?" What on earth does that mean?
Two interesting posts at the Belmont Club- one on Pakistan's problems with Al Queda, and one on Al Queda making use of Face Book.
Bomb hits U.S. Embassy car in Beirut. Three dead.
And Here's An Interesting Online Text
Pip and Jenny had to read this for school this year, for which they did not thank me. I warned them that it does not have a happy ending, but still, they seemed to think it was all my fault anyway. And so it was, for I assigned the book, and I'll be assigning it again to the FYG and Boy when they are old enough. It is the Autobiography of a Slander. Here's an excerpt: of the story as told by the slander itself:
I was introduced into the world by an old lady named Mrs. O'Reilly. She was a very pleasant old lady, the wife of a General, and one of those sociable, friendly, talkative people who do much to cheer their neighbours, ...Mrs. O'Reilly had been in her day a celebrated beauty; she was now grey-haired and stout, but still there was something impressive about her, and few could resist the charm of her manner and the pleasant easy flow of her small talk. Her love of gossip amounted almost to a passion, and nothing came amiss to her; she liked to know everything about everybody, and in the main I think her interest was a kindly one, though she found that a little bit of scandal, every now and then, added a piquant flavour to the homely fare provided by the commonplace life of the Muddletonians.
I will now, without further preamble, begin the history of my life.
"I assure you, my dear Lena, Mr. Zaluski is nothing less than a Nihilist!"
The sound waves set in motion by Mrs. O'Reilly's words were tumultuously heaving in the atmosphere when I sprang into being, a young but perfectly formed and most promising slander. A delicious odour of tea pervaded the drawing-room, it was orange-flower pekoe, and Mrs. O'Reilly was just handing one of the delicate Crown Derby cups to her visitor, Miss Lena Houghton.
"What a shocking thing! Do you really mean it?" exclaimed Miss Houghton. ... How did you find it out?"
"My dear, I am an old woman, and I have learnt in the course of a wandering life to put two and two together," said Mrs. O'Reilly. She had somehow managed to ignore middle age, and had passed from her position of renowned beauty to the position which she now firmly and constantly claimed of many years and much experience. ...
"Well now, I am delighted to hear you say that," said Lena Houghton, with some excitement in her manner, "for it exactly fits in with what I always felt about him. From the first I disliked that man, and the way he goes on with Gertrude Morley is simply dreadful. If they are not engaged they ought to be--that's all I can say."
"Engaged, my dear! I trust not," said Mrs. O'Reilly. "I had always hoped for something very different for dear Gertrude. ...
"Well, you see, I like Gertrude to a certain extent," replied Lena Houghton. "But I never raved about her as so many people do. Still, I hope she will not be entrapped into marrying Mr. Zaluski; she deserves a better fate than that."
"I quite agree with you," said Mrs. O'Reilly, with a troubled look. "And the worst of it is, poor Gertrude is a girl who might very likely take up foolish revolutionary notions; she needs a strong wise husband to keep her in order and form her opinions. But is it really true that he flirts with her? This is the first I have heard of it. I can't think how it has escaped my notice."
"Nor I, for indeed he is up at the Morleys' pretty nearly every day. What with tennis, and music, and riding, there is always some excuse for it. I can't think what Gertrude sees in him, he is not even good-looking."
"There is a certain surface good-nature about him," said Mrs. O'Reilly. "It deceived even me at first. But, my dear Lena, mark my words: that man has a fearful temper; and I pray Heaven that poor Gertrude may have her eyes opened in time. Besides, to think of that little gentle, delicate thing marrying a Nihilist! It is too dreadful; really, quite too dreadful! John would never get over it!"
"The thing I can't understand is why all the world has taken him up so," said Lena Houghton. "One meets him everywhere, yet nobody seems to know anything about him. Just because he has taken Ivy Cottage for four months, and because he seems to be rich and good- natured, every one is ready to run after him."
"Well, well," said Mrs. O'Reilly, "we all like to be neighbourly, my dear, and a week ago I should have been ready to say nothing but good of him. But now my eyes have been opened. I'll tell you just how it was. We were sitting here, just as you and I are now, at afternoon tea; the talk had flagged a little, and for the sake of something to say I made some remark about Bulgaria--not that I really knew anything about it, you know, for I'm no politician; still, I knew it was a subject that would make talk just now. My dear, I assure you I was positively frightened. All in a minute his face changed, his eyes flashed, he broke into such a torrent of abuse as I never heard in my life before."
"Do you mean that he abused you?"
"Dear me, no! but Russia and the Czar, and tyranny and despotism, and many other things I had never heard of. I tried to calm him down and reason with him, but I might as well have reasoned with the cockatoo in the window. At last he caught himself up quickly in the middle of a sentence, strode over to the piano, and began to play as he generally does, you know, when he comes here. Well, would you believe it, my dear! instead of improvising or playing operatic airs as usual, he began to play a stupid little tune which every child was taught years ago, of course with variations of his own. Then he turned round on the music-stool with the oddest smile I ever saw, and said, "Do you know that air, Mrs. O'Reilly?"
"'Yes," I said; "but I forget now what it is.'"
"'It was composed by Pestal, one of the victims of Russian tyranny," said he. "The executioner did his work badly, and Pestal had to be strung up twice. In the interval he was heard to mutter, 'Stupid country, where they don't even know how to hang!'"
"Then he gave a little forced laugh, got up quickly, wished me good- bye, and was gone before I could put in a word."
"What a horrible story to tell in a drawing-room!" said Lena Houghton. "I envy Gertrude less than ever."...
The conversation was here abruptly ended, for the page threw open the drawing-room door and announced 'Mr. Zaluski.'
"Talk of the angel," murmured Mrs. O'Reilly with a significant smile at her companion. Then skilfully altering the expression of her face, she beamed graciously on the guest who was ushered into the room, and Lena Houghton also prepared to greet him most pleasantly.
I looked with much interest at Sigismund Zaluski, and as I looked I partly understood why Miss Houghton had been prejudiced against him at first sight. He had lived five years in England, and nothing pleased him more than to be taken for an Englishman. He had had his silky black hair closely cropped in the very hideous fashion of the present day; he wore the ostentatiously high collar now in vogue; and he tried to be sedulously English in every respect. But in spite of his wonderfully fluent speech and almost perfect accent, there lingered about him something which would not harmonise with that ideal of an English gentleman which is latent in most minds. Something he lacked, something he possessed, which interfered with the part he desired to play....
..I felt the least little bit of regret as I looked at him, because I knew that I should persistently haunt and harass him, and should do all that could be done to spoil his life.
...And sitting down to the piano, he played the bridal march from 'Lohengrin,' then wandered off into an improvised air, and finally treated them to some recollections of the 'Mikado.'
Lena-Houghton watched him thoughtfully as she put on her gloves; he was playing with great spirit, and the words of the opera rang in her ears:-
For he's going to marry Yum-yum, Yum-yum,
And so you had better be dumb, dumb, dumb!I knew well enough that she would not follow this moral advice, and I laughed to myself because the whole scene was such a hollow mockery. The placid benevolent-looking old lady leaning back in her arm-chair; the girl in her blue gingham and straw hat preparing to go to the afternoon service; the happy lover entering heart and soul into Sullivan's charming music; the pretty room with its Chippendale furniture, its aesthetic hangings, its bowls of roses; and the sound of church bells wafted through the open window on the soft summer breeze.
Yet all the time I lingered there unseen, carrying with me all sorts of dread possibilities. I had been introduced into the world, and even if Mrs. O'Reilly had been willing to admit to herself that she had broken the ninth commandment, and had earnestly desired to recall me, all her sighs and tears and regrets would have availed nothing; so true is the saying, "Of thy word unspoken thou art master; thy spoken word is master of thee."
Lena, of course, does not keep the slander to herself. She passes it on to a handsome young curate, in the guise of 'concern' and seeking advice. He likes having the women of the parish come to him for advice, as they do so often, but he doesn't always enjoy the difficulty he has in answering the harder theological questions, and he doesn't like Mr. Zaluski. The slander is quite satisfied with his success with Lena. It was a struggle at first, but the moment the minister grew a bit dull, the slander was able to find a chink in her armour and from there it was easy enough to get her to imagine herself rightously indignant, best friends with Gertrude, and fearful for her friend's possible alignment with a nihilist of vicious temper: :
And yet Lena Houghton was a good sort of girl, and had from her childhood repeated the catechism words which proclaim that, "My duty to my neighbour is to love him as myself . . . To keep my tongue from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering." What is more, she took great pains to teach these words to a big class of Sunday School children, and went, rain or shine, to spend two hours each Sunday in a stuffy school-room for that purpose. It was strange that she should be so ready to believe evil of her neighbour, and so eager to spread the story. But my progenitor is clever, and doubtless knows very well, whom to select as his tools.And so our slander grows in strength and virility, if not in truth, and the foolish young curate passes it on again with a dollop of embellishment as he explains to the next person just exactly what everybody knows all nihilists believe (even though it has not been established that the poor man is a nihilist, let alone if he believes everything that 'all' nihilists allegedly believe). There is a breif moment when the woman whose mind he is poisoning thinks to ask the curate how on earth he knows this. The Curate says he has it on The Best Authority, which pleases our growing Slander very much:
And here I cannot help remarking that it has always seemed to me strange that even experienced women of the world, like Mrs. Milton- Cleave, can be so easily hoodwinked by that vague nonentity, 'The Best Authority.' I am inclined to think that were I a human being I should retort with an expressive motion of the finger and thumb, "Oh, you know it on the best authority, do you? Then THAT for your story!"
However, I thrived wonderfully on the best authority, and it would be ungrateful of me to speak evil of that powerful though imaginary being.
The slander continues its way, as the next recipient of the juicy bit of gossip writes a letter and needs something to fill up the second page. She can think of nothing else more interesting to say, so she passes this on:
...Mr. Zaluski is really a Nihilist, a free-lover, an atheist, and altogether a most unprincipled man. He is very clever, and speaks English most fluently, indeed he has lived in London since the spring of 1881--he told me so himself. I cannot help fancying that he must have been concerned in the assassination of the late Czar, which you will remember took place in that year early in March. It is terrible to think of the poor Morleys entering blindfold on such an undesirable connection; but, at the same time, I really do not feel that I can say anything about it. Excuse this hurried note, dear Charlotte, and with love to yourself and kindest remembrances to the Archdeacon...
One thing leads to another, and the slander makes its way to Gertrude's uncle, who:
"being a prompt, business-like man... sat down and wrote the following letter to a Russian friend of his who lived at St. Petersburg, and who might very likely be able to give some account of Zaluski:-
Dear Leonoff,--Some very queer stories are afloat about a young Polish merchant, by name Sigismund Zaluski, the head of the London branch of the firm of Zaluski and Zernoff, at St. Petersburg. Will you kindly make inquiries for me as to his true character and history? I would not trouble you with this affair, but the fact is Zaluski has made an offer of marriage to one of my wards, and before consenting to any betrothal I must know what sort of man he really is. I take it for granted that "there is no smoke without fire," and that there must be something in the very strange tale which I have just heard on the best authority. It is said that this Sigismund Zaluski left St. Petersburg in March 1881, after the assassination of the late Czar, in which he was seriously compromised. He is said to be an out-and-out Nihilist, an atheist, and, in short, a dangerous, disreputable fellow. Will you sift the matter for me? I don't wish to dismiss the fellow without good reason, but of course I could not think of permitting him to be engaged to my niece until these charges are entirely disproved.
Unfortunately, Leonhoff, living in Russia under police state rules, happens to run afoul of somebody, his house is searched, his letter confiscated, and poor Zaluski, temporarily visiting his uncle on business is arrested and confined to prison.
He wastes away there, proclaiming his innocence, demanding to know who has charged him and on what basis, and he lays himself down to die, comforted only by a fellow prisoner, one Valerian. The Slander wings its way across the seas to observe those who birthed it, nurtured it, and sent it out to do its nasty work, and the Slander reports:
It was New Year's Eve, and I saw Mrs. O'Reilly preparing presents for her grandchildren, and talking, as she tied them up, of that dreadful Nihilist who had deceived them in the summer. I saw Lena Houghton, and Mr. Blackthorne, and Mrs. Milton-Cleave, kneeling in church on that Friday morning, praying that pity might be shown "upon all prisoners and captives, and all that are desolate or oppressed."
It never occurred to them that they were responsible for the sufferings of one weary prisoner, or that his death would be laid at their door.
I flew to Dulminster, and saw Mrs. Selldon kneeling in the cathedral at the late evening service and rigorously examining herself as to the shortcomings of the dying year. She confessed many things in a vague, untroubled way; but had any one told her that she had cruelly wronged her neighbour, and helped to bring an innocent man to shame, and prison, and death, she would not have believed the accusation.
And so young Zaluski dies, and Gertrude lives on alone. The Slander notes:
And so my work ended; my part in this world was played out. Nevertheless I still live; and there will come a day when Sigismund and Gertrude shall be comforted and the slanderers punished.
For poor Valerian was right, and there is an Avenger, in whom even my progenitor believes, and before whom he trembles.
There will come a time when those self-satisfied ones, whose hands are all the time steeped in blood, shall be confronted with me, and shall realise to the full all that their idle words have brought about.
For that day I wait; and though afterwards I shall be finally destroyed in the general destruction of all that is unmitigatedly evil, I promise myself a certain satisfaction and pleasure (a feeling I doubtless inherit from my progenitor), when I watch the shame, and horror, and remorse of Mrs. O'Reilly and the rest of the people to whom I owe my existence and rapid growth.
It does get a bit melodramatic in the end, but the principles hold good, and it is interesting to note the procession of the slander- motivated by such trivialities as disdain for Zaluski's style of dress, a desire for notice or respect, a reliance on that mythical 'good authority,' an embarrassed woman at a dinner party snatching at something to revive a flagging conversation, a fondness for appearing knowledgable and well-informed, boredom, and that sloppy connection of random bits of information (dates, origins, and a refusal to talk politics) all are still the stuff that slander is born from and thrives on today.
Designing the Library
The walls and ceiling of the library, according to The Woman's Book: Dealing Practically with the Modern Conditions of Home ...:
"The frieze, if there be one, is usually made to indicate, directly or by implication, the dignity and scholarship that is supposed to inhere in the library. Etruscan, Greek, and Egyptian processions in flat primitive tints make suitable frieze decorations. One library, distinguished for its Americana, had a frieze of American Indians hunting, fishing, dancing, at play, battle-equipped. Another of historical importance had reproduced in paint the triumphs of William the Conqueror, depicted by the needle of Matilda of Flanders. The trade-marks of the famous old book men, the Elzevirs, Groliers, and their brothers have an appropriate place in a library frieze. Latin legends, apothegms from great men, verses from the poets, are frequently introduced with appropriate ornaments. The ceiling is panelled in wood or with cross beams enclosing recessed squares filled with leather, parchment paper, or composition with ornament or in relief. It is tinted and stencilled with the ornament belonging to the style to which the room conforms. One ceiling, recalled, disclosed the signs of the Zodiac, a curious fancy.
In reading that, I thought to myself that it sounded rather like the Library of Congress. When I looked up the Elzevirs at Wikipedia, I found this:
Captioned: "Elsevir printer mark depicted in the Library of Congress"
We don't really have such a grand scheme in our library. The wall at the end of the history section is graced by a large print of Gilbert Stuart's portrait of President Washington. The end of the literature section is decorated with a print of a bookshop and some movie posters of Lord of the Rings. The ends of the bookcases host prints of various art reproductions, most of them tapes up, a handful in frames, and wherever we can fit them are art prints depicting people reading.
You can visit the Library of Congress' website and find plenty of interesting things to read and listen to (a broadcast of some of their interesting recordings in their collection, for instance). You can put this book on interlibrary loan and hope it comes in so you can drool over it. This book is a collection of the quotes on the walls of the LoC. Or you can read it online for free! This book is an architectural alphabet using photographs of architectural details from the LoC.
You can take a virtual tour of the Thomas Jefferson Building.
The Human Spirt
Here's an amazing story of a Prisoner of War in Viet Nam and what he did to survive.
Fire Engines and Logic
Why are fire engines red?
They have 8 wheels and 4 people on them
8 + 4 = 12
12 inches makes one foot.
One foot is a ruler
There was a ruler named Queen Elizabeth
A ship called the Queen Elizabeth sails the seas
In the seas we find man fish.
The fish have fins.
The Fins fought the Russians
And Russians are red.
And that's why fire engines are red. Because they're always rushin'.
That, my friends, is one of my husband's oldest jokes. It's also bears an uncanny resemblance to the way some people reason, don't you think?
Monday, January 14, 2008
Dice
The Joys of a Tuesday/Thursday schedule.
It's the second week of classes and I already have two books to finish reading this week, a short paper to write on one of them, two court cases to read, and a case brief to prepare on one of them (for Constitutional History).
So this morning I read for approximately an hour and a half curled up on the couch with the Boy. He had a lego magazine he was reading. He wanted dearly to read it to me, but I managed to quell that notion by threatening to read aloud my book on the ecological history of New England. ;-)
It's still rather a long way off, but I realized with a shock today that I'll soon be filling out my last FAFSA as an undergrad. Yes, I'm rather obsessive-compulsive about milestones like that.
The Real Green Revolution
In 1970, Norman Borlaug won the Nobel peace prize for his ground-breaking- and life-saving- work developing a higher yield, sturdier breed of wheat that had revolutionized food production in Asia and saved millions of lives. In 1968:
Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, intoning, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. ... Hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs." The madding crowd of "stinking hot" Delhi was odious to Ehrlich: "My wife and daughter and I ... entered a crowded slum area. ... People, people, people, people. ... [We] were, frankly, frightened." It was a "fantasy," he said, that India would ever feed itself. Yet Borlaug's program delivered such stunning results that India issued a 1968 stamp commemorating the "wheat revolution," and by 1974 it was self-sufficient in all cereals.It does blow the mind how somebody so wrong could have become the voice of today's group think in environmental circles, but almost everybody has heard of Ehrlich, and few people have heard of Borlaug. Many 'greenies' who have are harsh critics :
Raised on a farm, Borlaug thinks many of his detractors would benefit from a week or two in the fields. He cites Ghanaian farmers who use no-till agriculture (that is, plant waste is left to improve the humus and reduce erosion) and control weeds with herbicides. Their lives are improved by the reduction in weeding. "Less backache, you see," he once said. "You know, it's amazing how often campaigners in rich countries think poor people don't get backache."
Borlaug's wheat saved Asia, but it had a smaller affect on conditions in Africa, and a new variety of stem-rust in wheat is spreading there, where it can do great damage to an already crippled continent. There are several reasons why Borlaug's research did not result in the same huge jump in food production in Africa as it did in Asia. The article I am quoting from (links below) cites irrigation differences, soil variations, lack of good roads, and politics. About politics:
Politics, both regional and global, were and are another hindrance. "If the Green Revolution in India was proposed to the World Bank today, it would be turned down," says Rob Paarlberg, an agricultural-policy expert at Wellesley College. By the 1980s, he says, "public investment in roads, research, irrigation, fertilizers, and seeds was politically unacceptable to the Washington consensus on the right--and on the left, among environmentalists opposed to chemical fertilizers, road building, and irrigation projects." Thus, real per capita levels of official development assistance for the agricultural sector in the poorest countries fell by nearly 50 percent between 1982 and 1995.I would add corruption under political causes- as real aid dollars were misused and stolen by Nigeria's ruling class to the tune of 220 billion. Until corruption is halted, increasing aid only feeds the problem, and the evidence is good that it actually causes more corruption. More here, here, and here.
Borlaug's research resulted in the real 'green revolution,' but without some real changes resulting in elimination of corruption at the top in Africa's leadership, it might not be enough for Africa.
Much more thought provoking stuff here.
The Family Library
"The library is a convenient term, and has a varied significance. It may be a family room, a working room, as well as a depository for books, as formal and dignified in this office as the drawing room, the antithesis of which it is, is light and graceful.
Which of these purposes the library is to fulfil should be first specifically determined, instead of equipping it according to some general principle pertaining to libraries.
There are relatively few homes in which the library is one of the rooms of state. In those, however, the sumptuousness of the bookcases of ebony, panels of lacquer and bronze, rich inlays of wood and pearl, fit almost to be enshrined in museums, make the depositories of costly bindings, first editions, precious antiques, rare etchings, collections of mezzotints, and line engravings, a distinctive feature of the palaces which have been recently reared as American homes.
Tempting as it is to describe some of these as illustrating luxury and resources of decoration rarely before reached, these are not the libraries that concern most people and are adapted to our needs. The requirements of a library in a formal sense may be considered almost canonical. It is reposeful and dignified in color. The bookcases make the wainscoting. The wood is dark mahogany, cherry, old oak, redwood, ebony, or ebonized. The shelves are adapted to their contents. They are arranged for books of different sizes. These are broken by receptacles for some special object.
Here is a glass enclosed cabinet for some curiosities of art or antiques. The shelves give place to drawers for engravings, etchings, manuscripts. Papers and pamphlets are screened by curtains. The dimensions of the shelves are all made with a certain balance and proportion. Their outline is irregular. In some appropriate place, as in the centre of the wall, it rises into the dignity of a panel. The top is utilized for vases, busts, statuettes, and objects of art.
The field above is covered with reference to the wood used. Ebony suggests gold, or gold mingled with red; oak intimates green or blue; walnut red or brown. When stuffs are used, velours is suitable, and, equally so, a new cotton canvas in tints of tan and olive, brocaded with color, and of appropriately heavy texture. In using stuffs, however, and this applies to any other room, avoid wool fabrics which offer a temptation that moths being, frivolous creatures, cannot resist.
The Woman's Book: Dealing Practically with the Modern Conditions of Home ...
Alack and a day, my library shelves are largely pine, light and airy, they are uniform in shelf spacing (which is an inconvenience), the do not 'make the wainscotting' but rather the entire wall, and I have given up putting any decorative objects on them because I always want that space for books.
A Funny Poem :)
Lines To Be Embroidered On A Bib
OR
The Child Is Father Of The Man, But Not For Quite A While
So Thomas Edison
Never drank his medicine;
So Blackstone and Hoyle
Refused cod-liver oil;
So Sir Thomas Malory
Never heard of a calory;
So the Earl of Lennox
Murdered Rizzio without the aid of vitamins or calisthenox;
So Socrates and Plato
Ate dessert without finishing their potato;
So spinach was too spinachy
For Leonardo da Vinaci;
Well, it's all immaterial,
So eat your nice cereal,
And if you want to name your ration,
First go get a reputation.
Ogden Nash
Books and Their Covers
Some of our books look like this on the outside:
And they look like this on the inside:
And some of them look like this on the outside:
And like this on the inside:
Their condition varies from torn paperbacks to lovely and tastefully made hardbacks, which could grace the decorous bookshelves of a cover home from House Beautiful. And all of them, as Cindy reminds me, are merely dust-catchers until they are read.
On the other hand, some of them are awfully fun to look at and hold.
Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis, nicknamed "Lefty," wrote an autobiography where he analyzes the madness that is bibliomania:
"Collectors like to think that nobler motives are involved in their own cases, such as love of learning and salvaging civilization, but when the instinct to collect is as strong as it was in Lefty it is nourished by surges from the unconscious. He loved books for what was in them and for what they could do for him, but he also loved books as books, as objects, and he wanted to own them: a library of his own would lead him, somehow, into a fuller life and even, who knew?"
I like to think I am a reader rather than a matron with a magpie's grasping instincts , but given how little I've been reading lately, I think I might be fooling myself.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
176th Carnival of the Recipes
Updated: Somehow this accidentally got top-posted, I must have inadvertently changed the date from yesterday evening (when I posted it) to Monday evening. I am not fixing it because I have no idea how much havoc that will play with any links. For more recent posts, scroll down below this one.
Welcome to the 176th Carnival of the Recipes, the Literary Edition. Y'all supplied the recipes, I supplied the literary quotes based on whatever tickled my fancy adn seemed to match the recipes.
I have an odd sense of humour.
We have a lot of entries, so let's get started:
Breakfast
“Before Dr Johnson came to breakfast, Lady Lochbuy said he was a dungeon of wit, a very common phrase in Scotland to express a profoundness of intellect, though he afterwards told me that he had never heard it. She proposed that he should have some cold sheep's head for breakfast…” Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with A Journal of a Tour to the ... By James Boswell, Samuel Johnson
Pancake Recipes presents Yummy French Toast posted at Pancake Recipes.
Here are some ideas to get out of the cereal rut: Veteran Military Wife presents No More Cereal for Breakfast posted at Life Lessons of a Military Wife.
This decadant smoked sausage roll with cheese and more sausage recipe would work as a main dish too, in all its artery clogging goodness: Greg Seher presents The Fatty - Fattystyle posted at Bossystyle BBQ.
Here are some tips on starting the new year ‘green’ along with a hearty and tasty looking whole grain pancake recipe: GP presents Start your New Year Right .. and Green posted at Innside Montana-Your Home at the Range.
Soup
So the cook went away, and the Many furred Creature cooked the soup for the King. She made a bread soup as well as she possibly could, and when it was done, she fetched her gold ring from her little room and laid it in the tureen in which the soup was to be served. The Green Fairy Book, By Andrew Lang
I think a nice butternut soup is perfect for a wintry evening, and this one looks great, not too heavy: Famous Recipes presents Butternut Squash Soup posted at Famous Recipes.
If squash is not your favorite, how about a nice bowl of cabbage soup? Bill presents Cabbage Soup posted at World Famous Recipes.
Melissa presents Toscana Soup posted at A Penny Closer.
Mel Rimmer presents Bean Sprouts: Duck Soup posted at Bean-Sprouts.
Deb Bixler presents Tomato Soup with Quinoa » Increase Metabolism & Live Healthy posted at Increase Metabolism & Live Healthy.
Main course
To his thinking, the hour was so long a-coming, that he fancied time stood still; but yet at last, the wished for moment came and they served him up some minced beef, with onions, and some calves feet, somewhat stale. The hungry governor presently fell too with more eagerness and appetite than if they had given him Milan godwits, Roman pheasants, Sorrentum veal, Moron partridges, or Lavajos green geese.
And after he had pretty well taken off the sharp edge of his stomach, turning to the physician, "Look you," quoth he, "Mr. Doctor, hereafter, never trouble yourself to get me dainties or titbits to humour my stomach; that would but take it quite off the hinges by reason it has been used to nothing but good beef, bacon, pork, goat's flesh, turnips, and onions; and if you ply me with your kick-shaws, your nice courtiers' fare, it will but make my stomach squeamish and untoward, and I should perfectly loath them one time or another.The History of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, By Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
This beef and bean dish is easy on the pocketbook, but hearty and tasty- popular even with most of the kids: Laura Williams presents Laura Williams' Musings: 4 Bean Casserole posted at Laura Williams' Musings.
Amanda presents Recipes: Best Meatballs posted at Pajama Mommy.
Shawn Lea is baking up some baby-back ribs.
We have a family of six over for dinner every other Tuesday night, and we’ve been doing sloppy joes in the crockpot. This version sounds like a nice change of pace:
Diabetic Recipes presents Tex-Mex Sloppy Joes posted at Diabetic Recipes.
"Now, we have killed a porker, and Emma thinks of sending them a loin or a leg; it is very small and delicate- Hartfield pork is not like any other pork- but still it is pork- and, my dear Emma, unless one could be sure of their making it into steaks, nicely fried as ours are fried, without the smallest grease, and not roast it- for no stomach can bear roast pork- I think we had better send the leg- do not you think so, my dear?"Emma, By Jane Austen
"My dear papa I sent the whole hind quarter. I knew you would wish it. There will he the leg to be salted, you know, which is so very nice, and the loin to be dressed directly, in any manner they like."
Rebecca presents Pork Carnitas with Green Tomatillo Salsa posted at The Experimental Kitchen.
"My dear sir if there is one thing my mother loves better that another it is pork a roast loin of pork. " Emma, By Jane Austen
Pork loin tenderloin is a favorite around here, too, and this recipe looks like a keeper.
What is that opposite Mr. Hartright? Boiled chicken, is it not? I thought you liked boiled chicken better than cutlet, Mrs Vesey?"The woman in white, By Wilkie Collins
Mrs. Vesey took her dimpled hands off the edge of the table and crossed them on her lap instead, nodded contemplatively at the boiled chicken, and said, "Yes, dear."
"Well, but which will you have to-day? Shall Mr. Hartright give you some chicken, or shall I give you some cutlet?"
Mrs. Vesey put one of her dimpled hands back again on the edge of the table, hesitated drowsily, and said, "Which you please, dear."
"Mercy on me! It's a question for your taste, my good lady, not for mine. Suppose you have a little of both, and suppose you begin with the chicken, because Mr. Hartright looks devoured by anxiety to carve for you.
A family of nine has to stretch the meat, so we’re always interested in more ways to serve chicken, and these chicken casseroles look delicious: Thelly presents Chicken Casserole posted at Chicken Recipes.
Chicken Recipes presents Chicken Recipes - Chicken and Green Chili Casserole posted at Chicken Recipes.
Walpoliana By Horace Walpole
Cabbage rolls stuffed with ground turkey breast, tart apple, rice, and more? Mmmmm: Slow Cooker Recipes presents Stuffed Cabbage posted at Slow Cooker Recipes.
Fortunately, we have two versions of this Serbian recipe- the authentic, slow food method (involving trans-Atlantic travel and a couple of months) and the quick and easy version: Coturnix presents How to Fix an Authentic Serbian* Sarma (Stuffed Cabbage) posted at A Blog Around The Clock.
Salads, vegetables, and side dishes
Poets' Wit and Humour
Sweet potatoes with a secret ingredient sure to tantalize your tastebuds:
GWN Lifestyle presents The Easiest Side Dish Ever posted at GWN Lifestyle.
Here’s a beautifully tasty array of salads: Joel Fuhrman, MD presents Disease Proof: Behold...the Salads! posted at Disease Proof.
Everything you always wanted to know about fennel, along with a recipe for a tasty looking fennel soup and one for a fennel salad: Expat Chef presents Weekend Herb Blogging/Fennel: Vegetable, Herb or Spice? posted at The Expatriate's Kitchen.
Jennie W presents Corn, Sage and Bacon Stuffing posted at Jennie's Rambles.
This side dish sounds elegant and piquant: Adam presents Wild Rice Pilaf with Goat Cheese and Cranberries posted at Men in Aprons.
Dessert
History of the Conquest of Mexico: With a Preliminary View of the Ancient ... By William Hickling Prescott
We still don’t have all our Christmas decorations packed up and put away (yes, we’re behind), and this recipe makes me feel like doing a little more Christmas baking:
pickel presents Chocolate Babka Recipe, Russian Christmas posted at A Child Chosen.
This sound melt-in-you-mouth-and-sinfully-delicious: Dani presents Holiday Baking Recap: Ginger-Cinnamon Caramels posted at Catch the Spoon.
This sounds delicious topped with a nice heaping dollop of whipped cream, especially if the whipped cream is made from scratch: WFR presents Apple Gingerbread Cobbler Recipe posted at Recipes.
One of the most mouth-wateringly memorable desserts I have ever had was in the Phillippines- just a bowl of home-made ice-cream from a neighborhood street vendor, topped with incredibly fresh and juicy mango. This brings me right back:
If mango ice-cream does not appeal, perhaps you’d like to try something a little more exotic: Katy presents Cardamom Ice Cream posted at sugarlaws.
Here’s an idea whose time has come- a pecan pie made without corn syrup:
Becca Ribbing presents Becca’s Bourbon Maple Pecan Pie « Diary of a New Old-Fashioned Gal posted at Diary of a New Old-Fashioned Gal.
Not really a recipe:
Batya explains her experiments with a crockpot Is The Crockpot All That It's Crocked Up To Be? posted at me-ander.
Wenchypoo has some unconventional ideas on economy: I think you have to take this advice on a case by case basis. When I can pick up a whole chicken for .98, the carcass is a frugal buy. When I can get boneless, skinless chicken breasts for under 2.00 a pound, they are the better buy.
Thanks for visiting!
A New Rule My Mama Never Told Me I'd Need to Make
Do- Not.-Go-Down- The- Stairs- Backwards- On- Your- Skates!!!!!
(If you read this in rising cadence ending in a crescendo, you might have it pretty close to theway I issued this rule on the spur of the moment last night. If you shatter a crystal glass with your shriek, it is only slightly too loud.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Prayer Request
Top-posted for today. New posts will be added below this one, and we'll update this one as we hear them ourselves.
Update 10 a.m.: She's going to be fine- her surgery took 8 hours instead of the expected three. They pinned bones in both Merry's arm and leg; the breaks were substantial. She's not to put any weight on either limb for six weeks. It's her right arm and her left leg, and Merry is right-handed. Merry does have a couple cuts on her head and a pretty painful case of road rash. She is in a lot of pain, which her mother finds distressing, but her spirits are good. She's even suggested that now that she's been through this, she will be better able to minister to others who are in the hospital. They don't know how long she will have to stay in the hospital.
Please pray for our young friend Merry K, who blogs with her family (Mom Purring Piggy and Papa Clan Keeper) at Beth Spera in Domino. She is in surgery right now. She was struck by a car while walking to catch a bus. Her parents were told the surgery would last about 3 hours. Her lower leg has 3 fractures, including at least one compound fracture. Her upper left leg has one fracture, but they will probably just cast that one. Her upper right arm has three fractures in within an inch of each other. She will need surgery on her arm as well as her leg, but it was unclear as to whether they would tackle both at the same time. That's really all we know at this time, except that it does appear, amazingly, that she has no head injuries.
Her daddy went to the scene of the accident to recover her belongings, and he was rather shocked and shaken by the condition of the car which hit her, and I know her parents and siblings could use some prayers right now, too.
*spluttering sounds*
The heart is deceitful above all things.
This The Equuschick understands. But she finds that it makes life very confusing, and she doesn't know if she doubts her life out of wisdom or skepticism.
So suppose she want something very badly, and she sees signs pointing in that direction.
Were these truly signs, or simply circumstances The Equuschick exaggerated out of her own desire to see the signs that pointed her way?
Have there been signs that pointed the other way, that she's convinced myself she never saw?
What if these positive signs are signs, after all? What then? What if what The Equuschick want to happen actually happens?
Did it happen because it was the right thing, because God willed it that way, or did He look down at The Equuschick's stubborn ambition and her pride and simply wash His hands of her, saying "What that girl wants she'll grab, anyway. I'll let her dig her own grave."
Oh, dear.
And then, what happens when The Equuschick doesn't even know what she wants? What if somewhere in her head she has created an alternate universe, one where certain things play out in a certain way because in the story that she's telling herself, it sounds good? What happens when The Equuschick suddenly steps out of her own silly head and looks at what is actually happening in the reality of her own life, and realize that she wants something totally different?
What if they were all signs, great big neon signs, with blaring speaker phones that said "Equuschick, Come This Way," and The Equuschick didn't, because The Equuschick was born a cynic and a skeptic and resolved at age 6 to Never Fall for Anything?
*panic and hysteria*
End note. This has actually been a post long in the making, and is not a post related to specifics of any sort. It is simply the way The Equuschick goes through life every day and she's beginning to be annoyed with herself.
Economics and Small Boys
Eeek! Somehow I published an infinished draft and deleted the finished post! Here's an updated version with an actual ending!
So I am cataloging our books, with much assistance from the three youngest Progeny- Pip, FYG, and FYB. Pip pretty much conquered the history shelves, all nine or so bookcases. The FYG is 2/3 of the way through the juvenile fiction.
And the Boy? He's my muscles, my gopher, my climber up upon the couch to reach the books in high places where I can't reach. He has been a cheerful, willing, and diligent worker, doing everything I asked without more than one or two complaints (and those on a day when he was crabby from overmuch sugar and undermuch sleep).
However, I have noticed signs that they are growing weary- after all, we have a lot of bookcases, and the bookshelves are generally twice as tall as they are. The FYB has been trying to earn extra money to support his new found lego habit. So tonight, as he sturdily helped me pull books off the shelf, piled them up on his 9 year old arms and carried them over the computer desk for me to catalog ('More, Mom, I can carry more! They aren't that heavy!'), I said, "You know what? I have been thinking. You are working so hard and so cheerfully that I am going to start paying you .25 for each shelf of books we get catalogued as soon as you get them back on the shelves properly.
Well. I thought he was cheerful and diligent before. Now he's positively on fire. He put on his thrift shop Street Jets (shoes with rollers in the soles) so he could move faster twixt shelf and computer. He put three small chairs (nursery school size, from the days when the children were all much smaller) next to my desk for an assembly line. The blue chair is for books I am currently loading- as I finish a book, I move it to the brown chair. When that stack has gotten large enough, he carries the books over to the bookcases and puts them away, grabs another stack of books to be loaded and puts them on the third chair, the yellow one, so that he's not making a trip empty handed. By then, I have enough books listed that he can carry another stack away and put them where they live.
In fact, he's so motivated that I pretty much blew my entire week's budget for paying him off in a single hour (2.50). Now he's turning into a slave driver. Tonight he nudged me and nagged me and pleaded and bugged me, dragging me upstairs to the computer, where he pointed to my chair and said, "Behold! There is your destiny!!"
I worked on the books a little, but I did have other things to do. I finished the last book I could do for the night, and he put them away, scowling a bit, as he said, "Only 50 cents. I had hoped to do at least a dollar's worth tonight. We'll just have to work harder tomorrow."
Slave driver.
Yuck.
I am shocked, dismayed, and APPALLED.
The FYG has been looking at the site NarniaWeb in anticipation of the newest Narnia movie, Prince Caspian. I've been looking over her shoulder every once in a while, because I also am rather impatiently waiting for the movie, although I have less hope for it being an accurate and well done adaptation. The first one had some serious problems with it, and from what I've seen of the trailer, the second one seems to have the same sort. I mean: Epic masterpiece? Um, no. I LOVE Prince Caspian and I LOVE the Chronicles of Narnia, but I wouldn't have classified Prince Caspian as an "Epic masterpiece."
Anyway. To return to my story: FYG was looking at various things on that website, and I happened to glance over in time to see a photograph of...
NARNIA EASY-READ-BOOKS?!?!?!?!?!?! NO WAY!! See one of them here. It's DISGUSTING. Turning those BEAUTIFUL, charming books into insipid watery cheesy I CAN READ BOOKS???? Please nobody tell me that any THOUGHT of EVER buying them would cross your mind if you saw them! Read the real thing! Not some imposter's watered down sap. (Honestly, the real stuff is incredibly easy to read, anyway.)
Basing a book off of a movies based off of a book is, I think, just about as bad as it gets, especially if the movie has got it's own problems to begin with.
I think I'm suing them for emotional trauma.
On Being Understood
Curdie is not yet able to believe some things. Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing. You remember I told you that if Lootie were to see me, she would rub her eyes, forget the half she saw, and call the other half nonsense.'
'Yes; but I should have thought Curdie -'
'You are right. Curdie is much farther on than Lootie, and you will see what will come of it. But in the meantime you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while. We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.'
'What is that, grandmother?'
'To understand other people.'
'Yes, grandmother. I must be fair - for if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see. So as Curdie can't help it, I will not be vexed with him, but just wait.'
From the Princess and the Goblin
Time for the Common-Place Book
The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. C. S. Lewis
Time is a great teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its pupils. Berlioz
"Killing Time? Killing Time? It's bad enough wasting Time without killing it!" ~ Tock the Watchdog in Milo and the Phantom Tollbooth, a movie based on the book by Norton Juster. You can watch an excerpt of the time song from the movie here.
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. Paul, in Ephesians 5
Classes - Part 1
Last semester I was blessed with small classes and I was slightly spoiled by it. Although my history of women class had 60 students, my other three classes had twenty or under. Latin American Biographies had 11 on a good day. It's so much easier to have intelligent class discussion with a small group, and to feel more like part of a cohesive group than just one person in a wave of co-students.
This semester is different. I knew that my first class, History of World War II, would be a large one. It's a popular topic and one that many of the non-history people take to fill some of their humanities credits. I still underestimated, though. There are 400 people in that class. Yikes. There are 5 TAs, one of which I've had in another class. He's a really nice guy and we've run into each other a couple times on campus and stopped to talk about history stuff. (Note: I love my iPod, but I am so glad I don't use it while walking across campus... there are awesome connections to be made with faculty, co-students, and staff if a person will just inhabit *this* world instead of their own, musical ones.)
The lecture was excellent. We haven't actually touched World War II yet -- we went back to 19th century Europe and worked our way through the first world war. Not surprising, but I love it when professors take the time to explain that historical events don't happen in a vacuum. Everything builds and connects... even the 19th century was almost too late, he said, but he didn't really have the time to go all the way back to when Cain slew Abel, so we'd just have to start in the 1800s.
The books we will be reading:
The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality
Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, and the End of World War II 
In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
The grade in the class consists entirely of two exams. Everything rests a lot on those, but I'm happy to have one class that's paper-free. The other three will give me carpal tunnel by the end of the semester, I think.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Interesting (and amusing) school read
(These are from "The 20th Century Day by Day")
March 6, 1921
"The chief of police in Sunbury, Pa., has issued an edict requiring women to war skirts at least four inches below the knee. The chief was driven to this decision following a dozen complaints form town residents. They expressed dismay over the sight of two women traversing the streets who had the lave on their skirts too distant from their ankles..."
May 15, 1921
As I read this to the Head Girl we both looked at our skirts and she said "Well, we are fine today but just think about that skirt I got yesterday!" (Note: It is still a modest skirt just not that long)
"In Utah , a statute is pending providing for the imprisonment of women wearing skirts higher than three inches above the ankle."This one is really funny!
"The New Mexico Collage of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts newspaper writes that gliding smoothly over a dance floor while keeping in rhythm with music is pleasing to witness, 'but to jig and hop around like a chicken on a red-hot stove, at the some time shaking the body until it quivers like a disturbed glass of jello, is not only tremendously suggestive, but it is an offense against common decency that would not be permitted in a semi-respectable road-house."(Picture is from here.)
Our LibraryThing
We have now hit the five thousand mark with our efforts to catalog all the Common Room books at Library Thing. I think we have another thousand to go. Pip thinks it's at least two thousand more.
Above are some recent gems.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Just Another of The Equuschick's Obsessions
Mind you, The Equuschick did not want this flood to happen. She would rather it had not, she prays it all leaves soon, so people can begin to rebuild their homes. She would be more than glad for it all to disappear tomorrow.
But there is a part of The Equuschick that has always preferred watching a waterscape to a landscape.
Driving home yesterday, she passed large, glistening lakes that rippled with the wind and reflected the sunset, and she saw dark, eddying currents rush along with a swishing and a splashing sound, and it thrilled her to look at it. She hasn't seen that much water in one place since last spring, and how she misses it.
No, The Equuschick had not forgotten how much she missed it. She's never forgotten the ocean.
Some things about her childhood The Equuschick forgets, or over romanticizes. She is sure that there are things she misses now, that were not appreciated when she had them.
But the ocean isn't one of them. She knew what it was when she had it.
She was always looking for it, always looking at it, she couldn't drive past it without craning her neck to get that one last, breath-taking look at the expanse of water, sometimes glittering with the sun, sometimes sulking with the clouds. But it was always there, you could smell it and hear it and you knew what it was and where it could take you, but you could only guess at what it concealed beneath the waves.
What is water, anyway? The Equuschick has no idea why she's always been so obsessed by it.
She remembers as a child sitting in the bathtub, and being utterly fascinated by the image of her hand beneath the surface of the water. She wanted to know then what that mysterious stuff was. She took her hand out, and put it back. The water would break, then close over her hand again, a transparent shield. It was like covering up with a sheet that you could slide off at will, a sheet that rippled when you moved, with a a tinkling smoothness completely foreign to any other element. She wanted to know what the stuff was, and why it did what it did.
Three fourths of the world is covered in the element that we call water. Water gives life, it is the very breath of life, there is a reason Christ is called the Living Water. But water can also kill you, water can consume your very body and suffocate you from the inside out.
We can't live without it, we can't live in it. It is a closed universe. But a living, vibrant, culture of a universe, we know that much, a universe that supports more life than we could ever imagine.
And The Equuschick doesn't know what it would be like to live with that life, and she would like to know. Mankind has lived by side by side with the dog for centuries, but never with the whale. That universe is closed to us. It is a beautiful kingdom, but one locked to all but those ordained to live within it.
Water in great enough quantities is Power. Sheer, massive, speedy, unstoppable and violent, the very element that supports life can destroy so much of it in little moments.
Water is a transportation system all by itself, it carries people and places all over the world, with or without their will. Water moves, and we move with it.
Looking at an ocean comes as close to defining eternity for The Equuschick as anything can, because even though she knows it must end somewhere, she can't see one end from another. She can't comprehend that other shore, that she knows it must meet somewhere.
Three fourths of it all over the world, and here in The Equuschick's neck of the woods they are suffering from an excess of it, and in the deserts of Africa they die for the lack of it.
What a thing indeed, this element we have unimaginatively decided to call H2O. As if that does it any justice at all.
So much it all over the world in so many forms, so much power and beauty.
Racism and Gossip
The following is taken from a couple of posts I wrote on an email list in 2002- that's five year ago for those with math issues.=) Since what I wrote was in response to other comments in a discussion that y'all didn't see it would be kind of hard to follow if I just posted my responses without context. I've taken the liberty of adding context. I paraphrase the other person's argument in italics, or at least what I understood her to be saying, and then have my response below each of those:
I want to keep my family white. I think people ought to be free to make their own choices about who they marry, and I want to keep my family white. I don't see why I'm wrong for wanting my children to marry our own kind.
When you make 'white' the standard for being your own kind, it goes beyond a simple, neutral choice. "My own kind" are Christians. I have more affinity to, more in common with, a closer relationship to all Christians than to any nonbelievers, regardless of race, color, or even culture.
"My own kind" is not based on the external appearance, but on the fellowship of Christ's blood. My 'own kind' are those sanctified by the blood of Jesus.
In the beginning God created male and female. He commanded all of creation to reproduce after its own kind- for lions this was lions, for elephants, elephants. For humans, this is humans. Not black, not white, not asian- just human.
This is really just a cultural argument. I want to keep my culture. You don't think I should. Things are different here, and you're just imposing your northern sensibilities on my southern culture. I am proud of my Southern culture, and don't see what's wrong with that.
I know that in the south things are 'different.' I was born in Arkansas; my father is a native as well. I am proud of some aspects of my Southern heritage, but not others. I am proud of some aspects of my dh's Indian heritage, too, but not others. I enjoy some aspects of our German and Irish heritage, too, but I know others are quite out of line with biblical teaching.
That 'things are different' in one area really doesn't mean much. In California things are 'different', too. They were different in Rome, in Corinth, in Thessalonica, etc, too- but every place and every time has its own basic seldom questioned practices or beliefs that are the cultural atmosphere, part of the common, basic assumptions of the day. Some of those differences are neutral. Some are not. The real question is not what is the norm for this place and time- but what is God's standard? If the status quo is not in line with scripture, than I hope I have the courage not to perpetuate it.
I do not believe that it can be argued biblically that "My kind" = my skin color. Based on scripture, that is a theologically unsound position.
this is really just about being too PC. You're politically correct, and we're not. There is too much of this in the world and in the church, and our family has chosen to take a stand against this extreme political correctness by keeping our white culture and teaching our children not to marry outside their own kind. You are free to let your children marry who they wish, why am I criticized for my choice?
Reactionary policies based on perceptions of current conditions versus an eternal perspective are problematic for the Christian. The idea that somehow making a new rule about inter-racial marriage (even though only for your family) is a legitimate, or reasonable, or even practical response to the foolishness of "one-world" thinking prevalent in modern society for the Christian is to counter one unbiblical idea by forging another. WE should have a more eternal
perspective.
The world accepts inter-racial marriage because the world would love to see a one-world person [all ethnics mixed into one], a one-world government, a one-world family [everyone loves everyone]. But they are going about it all wrong.
I have heard this response in discussions of race and inter-racial marriage before- but I do not understand how the implication that those who do not have a problem with interracial
marriage are somehow dupes of the evil and sinister forces behind 'One-World Government' really addresses the issue- it changes the subject. It is illogical. One world government has little to do with inter-racial marriage. It’s like saying "I’m opposed to x, therefore my family will not participate in Z." Likewise, the charge that this is just "PC" thinking is illogical and doesn’t really deal with the issue itself. Labels are no substitute for thoughtful discussion.
Just as I will not think or act in a certain way just because it is "PC," neither will I not act or think a certain way just because it is not PC.
Political correctness will not be permitted to be a factor in my decisions- even a negative factor. BC is what I care about, and what I want to form my thoughts.
BC= biblical correctness.
We should have a more eternal perspective.
Here are a few Bible verses I have found helpful in forming my thoughts on this issue:
"...Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married..." (Numbers 12:1). And as punishment, God made Miriam’s skin- white- whiter than snow. It was leprous.
In Zephaniah 1:1 we learn that this prophet of God is the son of Cushi. Cushi means ‘man of Ethiopia.’
Genesis 1:27 says that "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." All human beings are made in God’s image. To decide that this i