June, 2008 Books

Granted, there are a few more hours left in this day, but I somehow think they'll be spent doing things not reading related.

It was a good month.

1) The Last Battleby C. S. Lewis - a re-read, although it had been years since the last time I read it. The first 2/3 of the book are so very dark and depressing, and then the final 1/3 is full of joy and gladness and light. It's a fascinating contrast.

2) American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis - When talking about Jefferson's character and life, Ellis is excellent. When talking about American conservatives in his conclusion, however, he reveals himself to be out of touch with modern conservative philosophy. Still, I now feel like I have a much better grasp of Jefferson's character - American visionary, often too idealistic to be troubled with the realities of life or his own inconsistencies.
(I'd like to do a short post about the way he misreads some of the conservative movement, but first I have to recall where I put the book, because I apparently didn't put it where it belonged. *sigh*)

3) The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - There's already a brief review of this book here. Beautifully written, it was a delicious summer read.

4) Understanding the Bible by John R. W. Stott - I'm a bit torn over this one. There were some fine passages and I highlighted many of them. This was one of my favorites:
"Popular Christian devotion has perhaps concentrated too much on the negative joys of heaven, that is, on the promises of the Revelation that there will be no more hunger or thirst, no more scorching heat or sunstroke, no more tears or pain, no more night, no more curse, no more death. Thank God for these absences. But thank God even more for their cause, namely the presence - the central, dominating presence - of the throne of God."
An important point to remember...
Still, this book was written in the 1970s, and there were definitely parts where relativism crept into Stott's thinking. This was particularly apparent in his discussions of Genesis and in analyzing the role of women in the church. While saying that we shouldn't take modern culture into account when studying the Bible, he did that very thing with these two areas. Not surprisingly, he ended up sounding a bit dated in those parts. A good moral lesson, even if disappointing to read.

5) His Chosen Bride: Applying Proverbs 31 as a Single Young Woman by Jennifer Lamp
- Speaking of disappointments, this was a large one. Although the premise is promising, the execution is dismal. I am far from being a great writer, but there are certain rules of writing that should be followed when writing a book and it bothers me to see them broken. Lamp talked a great deal about how important it is to dress nicely and look nice (and wear deoderant that worked) so that one's witness and testimony was not injured. By the same token, if we claim to a God of order and purpose in the universe, our published writing should not be sloppy. It should not be full of sentence fragments, paragraphs lacking any sort of connections with each other, ~ marks, misplaced apostrophes, and odd parenthetical statements. She said she wanted this book to read like a letter to a friend. There are two problems with this: (a) I am not her friend and have never met her before, so had no previous intimation into her character or writing style. This left me feeling like I'd been thrown into a sea of words without a life jacket. (b) All friends are not alike. I write to Friend A in one tone and Friend B in another. One dear friend dislikes exclamation marks, so I try to limit them when writing to her, whereas another friend doesn't care so much about them and so I'm not as careful. I don't want to be lumped into a Faceless Mass of Friends.
As for the message of this book, I came away seeing it as a sort of hodgepodge soup of ideas and anecdotes over a wide range of topics. One page would be spent talking about evolution with the next covering how important it was to re-assert the Christian heritage of America. This left the reader (or this one, anyway!) very confused. Part of this may be because she was addressing a category of girls I don't fit into. True, I am a single young woman, but I'm also a single young woman with a very full and busy life that often centers around formal academics. Although I don't think college is necessary in every case (and get very tired of hearing people talk as if people-who-haven't-gone-to-college-are-not-motivated-or-not-smart), I do happen to think it is a rich and rewarding choice for my life. Lamp seems mainly to be writing to young women who have decided not to do college and yet still don't know what to to do with themselves. I don't think that any of my sisters will fall into this lot (even if they also choose no college), and I think they could get more out of living a full life by reading books like Mere Christianity or Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.
whew. I didn't realize I had so many pent up thoughts on this book. ;-)

In Which the DHM Needs to Practice That Whereof She Preaches

I heard through a fairly short and reliable grapevine that a young friend of ours (we're 46- anybody less than 30 is a young friend) is losing sleep over an issue in his life. From where we sit, it's an issue that we are sure will work itself out acceptably and we're not worried about it- we have faith in our young friend and experience enough to know that with his other priorities in a row, this one will fall into place, but we also know that it's quite understandable the young friend would worry. Still, wishing to encourage the friend, I sent him a simple message:

In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

Philippians 4

We love you.

And I had to feel the double edged blade of those words just a few hours later....

The 4-H stuff is, as I said, due. Today. I am totally flipping out over it. I have made three phone calls to the 4-H office and to my 4-H friend who holds my hand and babysits me over this stuff, and she's called me about the same number of times. In about two hours. Neither of us are out of our pajamas yet. I very nearly answered the phone once by picking it up and saying, "I just told you, it's m-a-c-h-i-n-e-r-y- " because that is a question I had just answered for the Boy in filling out one of his project sheets. Instead, I picked it up and stopped, mouth open, saying nothing at all. Which, of course, is a great way to answer the telephone.

I spent this entire weekend in the company of crowds and strangers. Have I mentioned that I do not like crowds? I like lots of people on an individual basis but put them together in a large group and there is a point at which I wish to go curl up under my bed in a fetal position and cry a little to myself. It's very, very draining. Because you see, I don't really FIT under my bed.

Acquaintances of ours have this big volleyball tourney in their backyard every year. This year my husband signed up my youngest two children for volleyball (he says they're his, too, but he was conspicuous in his absence at volleyball time so I think we shall call them MINE for the purposes of this blogpost). He promised, promised, promised he would be there to drive us (have I mentioned I hate driving even worse than I dislike crowds? I loathe it and would immerse myself in prozac if I thought it would help), but naturally, he had to work.

He drove down in the evenings and stayed with us at a friend's house and went to church with us on Sunday, which was very nice, of course, but, not to quibble or harp or be a dripping whatever so he lives on the roof you know, but still, I am not the one who signed the youngest two up for volleyball because I simply would not have done that, but I was the one who took everybody but the two eldest (who aren't children anymore but I can't stop calling them that) to the volleyball games and stayed All Day, where there were bout 150 people of whom I think I knew ten, five of whom were my own children. I had to work really hard, too, doing stuff like moving my own and the Cherub's chairs out of the sun into the shade, and once or twice just to look useful we picked up a few thousand cups scattered around the lawn and I don't think the people we took them away from minded terribly much, and occasionally we looked at the volleyball players and cheered for them, and honestly, I did have as good a time an introvert like me could have in a group 150 people strong, but I was as tightly strung as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs by the end of the day.

So if we're adding up neuroses I've tripped over in the past 48 hours, we've got my:
fear of cars and driving
fear of crowds
dislike of using the telephone
strong, near agoraphobic dislike of being away from home
In fact- to keep this short, let's just see the most recent edition of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and I'm sure you'll find a more comprehensive list and maybe my picture.

But let's return to today:
My dad is out tootling about on the riding lawn mower, actually mowing the lawn when he's not driving up and down the road and feeling independent and powerful and all that. He called me a couple days ago to assure me that he wasn't going to be mowing at all, just 'testing' the mower. I am, in spite of my message, quite anxious about this. A friend tells me an 80 year old man was killed on the state road just a mile from our house a couple weeks ago. He was driving a golf cart.

One of the places dad went to on the riding mower is our house, where he explained that he's going to be driving his truck tomorrow so he'd like the keys back. If you are a new reader, you should know my dad has been diagnosed with vascular dementia and he's not supposed to be driving anymore, which is why we have his truck keys. We need to get the mower keys as well, just as soon as he gets tired and goes to take a nap.

I called my mother at work to tell her about this and ask if she wanted me go get Dad off the lawn mower or push him under it, only I realized halfway through dialing (fortunately, before it rang), that I wasn't calling my mother, I was calling Shasta (the future son-in-law and long-time courtesy son). At his work. I think this is because he and my mother have the same first initial, but there's really no telling how or why my mind works. Not only is it not remotely his problem, he's in Texas and couldn't do anything about it even if it was his responsibility.

So maybe I should put my head in a paperbag and say to myself, "Be anxious for nothing, be anxious for nothing, be anxious for nothing" a few thousand times.

4-H

Let m just start by saying that if you don't know what 4-H is, I can't explain it. YOu can read more about it here.

4-H project sheets are to be signed later today by our group leaders- doesn't that sound ominous? Well, it is. We are still filling them out, only I just discovered that we were never given one of the books and project sheets we needed for The Boy, and there's just no way to fix it now, so he'll take an incomplete. I thought he and his sister would just share a book and we'd copy the record sheet, only I just learned today that since he's almost two years younger, he was supposed to have an altogether different book and record sheet which it is too late to complete. It's very problematic that we don't actually do grade levels in our home school.

On the project sheet for weeds, the youngest two Progeny are answering the question, "Why did you take this project" with "My mother made me." On one of the project sheets we are filling in the date project began and date project ended with the same date. I was weeping over the phone with a friend, telling her how inadequate I was, and she says she does the same thing, only she doesn't bother with the date. She would just write Project Begun: 6/08, and Project Ended: 6/08, and let the judges fill in their assumptions about just how inadequate we really are.

Another question they had to answer was about how weeds spread. In addition to the material in the book we are reading from Weeds, by Dorothy Childs Hogner (also here)- a nice guide to weeds written at a childs' level without being insulting. One of the ways weed seeds travel, of course, is that animals or birds eat them, don't digest the seeds, and they spread them through the process of elimination. My youngest two Progeny were indignant at my suggestion that they merely write, "Animals eat them one place, poop them out somewhere else." They said they would only write that IF they could add, "Our mother told us to say that." No wonder I feel so guilty about it all.

We ran into some trouble with the difference between the two questions:
How may weeds be introduced?
How may weeds be scattered?

The main reason for this trouble is not that we can't tell the difference between the questions (although they do overlap quite a bit), but that the project manual writers apparently can't, as they mixed up the two in a single paragraph that wasn't the best example of clear writing I have ever seen in my life.

So I know what I would say, but I don't know what they would expect to hear.

In some places 4/H really isn't that big of a deal, but in this place, it's quite The Thing To Do. I would guess that there are more homeschooled kids in our county than there kids NOT doing 4-H- and yes, almost all the homeschooled kids do 4-H here, too.
So I thought we would try the cult out this year so we could try to fit in a little more, because we really don't. At. All.

This Not Fitting In-ness was really highlighted for me at the very first 4-H meeting we attended. There's a pledge. And a 4-H flag.

I pledge
My head to clearer thinking,
My heart to greater loyalty,
My hands to larger service, and
My health to better living,
For my club, my community, my country, and my world.

Here is where I confess that I am not really comfortable with the Pledge of Allegiance and, in fact, I only make it a point to teach it to my children as a bit of common cultural knowledge. We don't recite it at home. My husband does not feel the same way, so he and the children do recite it where called for in public. I mumble and look uncomfortable.

So if I don't even like to recite the Pledge of Allegiance AS a pledge, imagine how I feel about this one. The 4-H pledge gives me the willies, and no, I can't explain why. Just call me a curmudgeon.

Why are we doing this, again? I think the photography project is good for Pip. I think the electrical project was a great bonding experience for the youngest two and their daddy. And it does make people look at us more like members of the community and less like three headed creatures from the freak show. We're only two headed freaks now.

You know what really gives me the willies? We'll probably sign the two youngest children up again next year.

The Rattery

Update: For clarification- we do NOT live in this house. The Rattery was first my great-grandmother's home. She moved to a nursing home around 1960 and my uncle move right in. We were moving here to take care of him (and actually just six months from that move) when he grew impatient of waiting on us and died rather abruptly. I miss him. Most of the time. He left the Rattery to me, along with the farm property where we built our own house and now live. And I miss him more when we go to the Rattery, but I am also very upset with him when we are there for doing this to me. The Rattery stands empty of all human habitation at the moment (and possibly forever). We live elsewhere, and I while I do have trouble with organization, our own abode has never looked anything like this. These pictures show what it looked like five years ago when we inherited. It looks a little better now. But we have a long way to go yet. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you can see a picture from the house where we actually live.
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For those of you offering kind suggestions on what to do with our Rattery trash and treasures, perhaps a picture or three will help put this in some perspective. Please brace yourselves.




The dining room. That barrel contained clothing from the forties. We now have the table (I know, you can't see the table, but it's there) and the chairs in our dining room, and the big black cabinet in back is in our mud-room holding library books, socks, old linens, and various odds and ends.



The kitchen- I worked for weeks to bring that almost chest high pile of stuff at the end of the kitchen down- I got through it all. And then discovered that in the cupboard hiding behind that pile were large flour and sugar tins still holding flour and sugar. My uncle did not bake. My great-grandmother did. She went into a nursing home in the late 50s. The surfaces to the right are entirely cleared out. The rusted metal cabinet to the left was full of my great grandmother's spice tins, most of which we sold at an antique booth for 3-5 dollars each. I believe that made the return on our labor about .10 an hour.



The bedroom, which is now almost completely cleared out.- there are two large pieces of furniture and a few boxes and plant pots that we intend to keep, currently stored here. The wooden floors are beautiful, though in need of some care. We filled up a LARGE dump-truck at least twice. We filled up a pick-up truck of Goodwill items at least a dozen times. We had a yard sale. We filled up our garage. And I haven't even shown you the upstairs, the cellar, or the Rattery garage.

As for the local historical society? Ha. My mother and my eldest daughter are members and they are currently trying to catalog the Historical Society's own disorderly collections.
They flatly refuse to allow me to donate anything there.

In fact, Granny Tea, who never, ever raises her voice says:

NO! NO! NO! Do NOT in indiscriminately donate to the local historical society. I speak as an elderly lady sorting through boxes of stuff dropped off at the museum by families who don't want to go through inherited boxes nor just pitch them, apparently, who is not delighted with some of the stuff of the ages. I suspect my youthful granddaughter would not endorse the idea of "wholesale dumping" of ephemera, boxes, misc unfinished sewing projects, etc., etc., either.

And indeed, she does not.

I'm sure some of you more organized types, if you've not run away screaming, are only still here because you are in complete shock and disbelief.
Here's some compensation:

Most of these things are from the Rattery.


And so are most of these.

Boiling Beef

What is "boiling beef"?

What would you do with five pounds of it?

Sunday Hymn Post

lyrics by Eleanor Farjeon

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the word

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God's recreation of the new day

Iron Gate

Gate at the little house which the EC refuses to call the Dovecote, but which I shall continue to call the Dovecote until she chooses a better name.

Sadly, somebody stole the gate a couple months after this picture was taken.

Gone Fishin'

We're gone for the weekend. In fact, some of us have been gone since yesterday afternoon, but Blogger has a new feature whereby we can postdate posts and it'll publish them later. I am lovin' it.

We're at a singing, then a Bible study, then a volleyball game, then fun with the friends we're staying with, and then church with them, and then another singing, and then home.

Wednesday night Shasta comes in for a week, and we are twitterpated with excitement. Some of us more than others, of course, but we shan't name any names.

Wal-Mart Fabric Sale!!

The patterned ones were 2 dollars a yard (I got 2) and the plain ones were 1 a yard (I got 3).

The green one is for mother, but the rest I intend to make into shirts and skirts to sell on my website!

Mud Wars

You cannot see so well in this picture, because it is in black and white, but the three little boys in shorts were absolutely coated with mud from the knees down. They learned from the water buffaloes that the mosquitoes won't eat them alive that way. =D I was going to take a picture of the one holding a cat, but he said "Noooo! You can't take a picture of me! I'm dirty!" They got distracted by attacking the big boys, though, so I was able to get one of them.

A Justice System that Isn't

I am theoretically in favor of the death penalty. I am deeply disturbed by the practical applications of the death penalty in this country, and I know we have convicted many innocent people.

Scott Henson, at Grits for Breakfast, highlights a case that, while not about the death penalty, churns my stomach.

Patrick Waller served 16 years for a crime he did not commit. He was recently exonerated by DNA evidence, and to seal the deal on his innocence, the DNA evidence also enabled law enforcement to identify the real criminal, who in turn confessed, named his partner in the crime, and then the partner confessed.

Waller was identified by witnesses, victims of the crime pointed him out in a line-up and in photo I.D. As Scott says:

This one blows my mind: In this case four different witnesses wrongly identified the defendant as the perpetrator - three in photo arrays and one in a live lineup - but we now know they were all unquestionably wrong!

Those kind of seemingly unfathomable results make me think about research I've been reading recently on "The Role of Interviewer Behavior in Eyewitness Suggestibility" in prep for my new consulting gig with the Innocence Project of Texas. Unless Waller was simply a dead ringer for one of the actual perpetrators, which can certainly happen, it's hard not to think that biased interviewers somehow influenced these eyewitness IDs, and that the lack of double-blind identification procedures may have contributed to Waller's false conviction.

Faulty eyewitness identifications are the leading cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, but I've never before heard of a case where four different witnesses misidentified the same man in varying versions of police lineups!

Vikings & This Country of Ours

Notes on the background and context of Vikings from the first chapter to This Country of Ours, based off an e-mail to a friend (hi, friend! :) who plans on reading this book with her boys soon.

"Ok, I read this chapter at about 7 o'clock this morning so my brain is rather foggy.

The Smithsonian has a really cool website on the Vikings in the New World - Be sure and do the Viking voyage here. The boys will probably appreciate this too as you can drag the little Viking ship across the route the Vikings probably took to reach North America. Seeing things on a real map can be so very helpful.

History is not just about people; it's also about the places they inhabited. Geography shapes settlements and peoples, and is in turn shaped by these same peoples. When the Roman empire ended in disarray, there was a power vacuum of sorts in Europe. We like to think of Germany as always being Germany, France as always being France, Norway as Norway, etc. Actually these are very modern constructions. The Vikings were not one tightly associated group of people but rather a host of groups living in regions that were:
a) connected to the sea somehow
b) full of geographical boundaries (e.g. - this map of Norway's fjords - shows how very difficult it would have been for its inhabitants to unify into a single people).

Thus, in a Europe lacking a strong central power, the moment was ripe for the marauders to appear on the scene. This the Vikings did. We still don't understand all of their sailing technology but what we do know impresses us.

793 AD is the first time the Vikings clearly make their mark on the historical record, with their attack at Lindisfarne. Other Europeans reacted in horror at what these pagans had done. As modern historians like to point out, the Vikings were not only into attacking and looting. They were traders, farmers, and had their own villages and towns. This is true and should be kept in mind. If they were looters alone, they probably never would have made it to North America. Still, there is no doubt they attacked other areas or that parts of their religion involved human sacrifice. That's pretty savage.

Eventually, in Europe, the Viking threat was lessened as two things happened. Other European entities strengthened themselves, and the Vikings grew more sedentary. One of the most vivid icons in this transition to a calming period is that of the Viking, Rollo. He reached an agreement with a French king and stopped pillaging in return for some territory - this territory is now called Normandy, which comes directly from the term for "North Man's Country." Cool, eh? French geography today named after the Vikings! (There are further connections to be made with this history of Normandy but we can wait for that... I have a feeling my historian side is taking over a bit strongly right now...)

- another good general site on Viking history.

OK, so I've veered slightly off the topic of the Vikings in North America. Hopefully that's alright because now there's a bit of European context. The Vikings were a group of people intensely interested in new horizons. They possessed the skills and the sea-knowledge for it. They lived in a continent with shifting and competing settlement patterns. And it really is not such a big world after all...

And just for bare-bones reference, here's a timeline of Viking history."

Endangered Amendments?

Editorialists at the New York Sun are not sanguine about our Bill of Rights, given the narrow margin of the SCoTUS ruling on second amendment rights, and the track records of both Obama and McCain:

Meanwhile, Senator McCain greeted the decision with a statement that said, "today's ruling recognizes that gun ownership is an important right — sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly." If Mr. McCain really believes the right to free speech is "sacred," why has he devoted so much time and energy in his congressional career to imposing new restrictions on campaign speech under the rubric of campaign finance "reform"? Given all that Mr. McCain has done to shred the First Amendment with the McCain-Feingold law restricting the airing of television commercials mentioning candidates' names within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election, his claim that he finds gun rights as "sacred" as "free speech" is entirely unreassuring.

There are plenty of swing voters in swing states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio who own guns and would like to know that their Constitutional right to do so will be safe four years from now, regardless of who leaves the Supreme Court and who joins.

And they have reason to be worried. Their civil rights yesterday were upheld by only the narrowest of margins. A single vote. The liberal wing of the court — encompassing Justices Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer — looked hard at the Second Amendment, and found that the Amendment doesn't protect the rights of ordinary gun owners. It took the conservative wing of the court — Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito — joined by swing vote, Justice Kennedy, to see this as a civil rights issue and to rule accordingly.

Betsy is particularly concerned about Obama's admiration for Breyer and Ginsburg:
He wants a justice who will create out of whole cloth some sort of balancing test that will allow the justice to do whatever is in his heart rather than what is in the words of the Constitution. And once you start down that road, justice becomes whimsical according to whatever is in that justice's heart with some balancing test created out of whole cloth in order to have something official-sounding to justify doing what the justice wants to do anyway.

Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades says Justice Stevens needs to keep a closer eye on his clerks, as David Hardy notes some factual errors in his dissent.

Baby Fights for His Life

There's a six month old baby boy fighting for his life right now. He's been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder called HLH.

Bill Medvecky says,

"The child’s Doctor’s have stated that the boy is not a victim of child abuse, he has a medical condition that cannot be purposely inflicted. And yet, CPS is hounding this family while the Parents are not even allowed to hold the child or touch him because they might “Abuse” him some more!"

Currently they are paying fifty dollars a night for a hotel room, and they are not eligible for a stay at the Ronald McDonald house because they are under investigation by CPS.

Four Generations

My grandmother (with the elegant hat, standing in front)
Me: small blonde kid
Granny Tea: standing behind me.
My great-grandmother (she's the one who wrote the journal entries I've shared), in bed holding my little brother.

Happy Birthday Charlotte Zolotow

A belated birthday, as yesterday was the birthday of beloved children's book author Charlotte Zolotow. Semicolon is accepting links to any Zolotow related posts, and her daughter says she'll read them to Ms Zolotow (who is vision impaired. There's a post by Ms Zolotow's daughter linked at Semicolon, too. I recommend it.

She was born in 1915, and has written over 90 books. I wish I had remembered this special event earlier, because we do like Ms Zolotow's picture books very much, but we are supposed to leave for the weekend in just an hour or two, and I have yet to pack.

I will say I think my favorite is Big Sister, Little Sister. I've mentioned before that we never did the "I hate the new baby" books because we thought it encouraged a discontented spirit and gave children ideas about resentments they'd never even considered. I also don't like books with the sort of sibling rivalry that has an underlying sting in it- harsh name calling, fighting, that sort of thing. Yes, children rub each other the wrong way at times, but we don't permit that kind of hatefulness. Big Sister, Little Sister touches the common friction that comes up whenever two people live together, but instead of an underlying spirit of discontent, it's sweet, loving, and affectionate.

The Old Dog is a story about a boy whose old dog goes gentle into that good night while sleeping- it's a sweet, comforting story for young children who have lost a pet.

Here's a link of information on her life- (the account of her school years was painful to read). Pain can be one of the best crucibles for writing.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission and Mark Steyn

Canadian Human Wrongs commission, as Jeanie Cheney puts it:

Begun as a quasi-legal entity to root out discrimination in the workplace, the CHRC has more recently turned to punishing "offensive" speech. In taking on Mark Steyn, however, it may have invited more publicity than it wants.

Two years ago an excerpt from Steyn's book, America Alone, was published in Maclean's, one of Canada's leading news journals. The article, titled "The Future Belongs to Islam," expressed Steyn's view that at their current comparative birth rates, Islamic citizens of Europe will soon outnumber native Europeans—with, shall we say, troubling implications for Western tradition.

Actually, less than half of the article addressed Islamic ascendancy in Europe.

Three Muslim law students in Ontario were outraged and demanded equal time in Maclean's. The editors declined to have the content of their publication dictated to them by outsiders.

...the Canadian Islamic Congress filed a complaint with the CHRC—not only in Ontario but also a provincial tribunal in British Columbia, where commissioners were known to be especially sensitive to such grievances.

And so

A three-member panel convened in Vancouver early this month to hear the case. Maclean's editor Andrew Coyne, liveblogging the proceedings, reported that according to Section 7.1 of the Human Rights Code, "innocent intent is not a defense, nor is truth, nor is fair comment or the public interest, nor is good faith or responsible journalism. In other words, there is no defense." Also no standard for conviction except the complainant's feelings—no wonder the national CHRC has never declared a defendant innocent.

In final arguments on June 6, council for the complainants asserted that they had met a two-part test of hate speech, proving that Steyn had both encouraged hate in the readership, and expressed hate in his writing. Plus, he used sarcasm.

The defense introduced no evidence but appealed to Canada's tradition of freedom of the press—even though that tradition has lost its teeth. Only the week before, a CHRC panel in Alberta handed down a decision against Stephen Boissoin of the Concerned Christian Coalition, who published a letter critical of homosexuals in a local newspaper. For this offense, Boissoin and the coalition were directed to pay $5,000 to the complainant for "pain and suffering," to refrain in the future from publishing discriminatory letters, and to make no "disparaging remarks" about the case. These measures, according to the panel, are "remedial not punitive." Nice to know.

Canada's hate speech laws are pretty bizarre to these American Ears:

the lawyer for Maclean’s, Roger D. McConchie, criticized the hate speech law: “Innocent intent is not a defense. Nor is truth. Nor is fair comment on true facts. Publication in the public interest and for the public benefit is not a defense. Opinion expressed in good faith is not a defense. Responsible journalism is not a defense.”

AFter all,

"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." ~ Dean Steacy, principal investigator for the CHRC

Frugalities on a Friday

It's Frugal Fridays at Biblical Womanhood.

My weekly post is up at Frugal Hacks.

Wilted Lettuce?

I usually just put it in the compost pile- or, when we had chickens, I fed it to them.

But the Nourishing Gourmet has what looks like a very tasty recipe for a refreshing summer soup using wilted lettuce.

They Feel My Pain

As many of our readers know, about five years ago we inherited my uncle's house- a place known as The Rattery. It was my great-grandmother's house. When she went to a nursing home he moved right in and just added his stuff to hers. He was an inveterate collector of all kinds of things, including junk. He had a malicious sense of humour and sometimes bought things at estate auctions just because somebody he did not like was bidding on it. These things he simply brought home and set down in a corner somewhere, receipt still in the box so we can date our finds, fifty years later. He combined that malicious streak with a heart of gold, and he also bought things at auctions that belonged to people he had known in order to pass on some of their family things to their descendants. He kept everything related to family- everything.

He expected me to keep it, too, and I haven't been able to do that. For one thing, he died fairly unexpectedly so we don't even know what is and what isn't 'family.' For another, it would take at least three houses to hold everything he had stuffed into that one house. For another I find myself simply bowled over with grief when I try to go through his things. And for another, well, never mind. That's enough.

Some of it has come to be sorted 'later.' We do this when we're trying to finish up clearing out a room. So in my recent closet cleaning exercise, I have found half a dozen unfinished quilts, a very ugly finished quilt (polyester pieces from the fifites, it looks like), postcards from the 40s, my grandmother's commencement booklet from DePauw University in 1928, a photograph taken in 1898 (about fifty photographs, in fact, mostly of people I don't recognize), birthday cards my great-grandmother gave to my grandmother (she must have saved nearly all of them), a receipt for propane gas from 1953 (.13 a gallon), about seventy-'leven crocheted doilies, table runners, and some once white linen tablecloths, and a pair of longjohns that button up the front and back so that when you go out to the outhouse of a cold midwestern morning, you don't have to get any colder than you oughter.

I also found my Uncle's baby book. He was born in the thirties, and there's nothing really remarkable or interesting in that baby book, except it was my uncles, and he loved me and I loved him and I already feel guilty about throwing away his 7th grade art projects which had no artistic merit whatsoever (I didn't even throw them all away- I used the ashtray as a soapdish).

Granny Tea sent me this article, The Tyranny of the Heirloom, and they know of which they speak:

Here is the problem with family furnishings: they are never simply stuff. As hard as it may be to dispose of a piece of furniture you bought with the fellow who turned out to be your ex-husband, it is far more difficult to get rid of a piece bequeathed to you by a member of a previous generation, which carries with it not only your memories, but his or hers as well.

Even today, when so many people favor simple, modern décor, turning your back on a grandmother’s tea set or ornate settee can feel like betrayal. Admit to your family you’re thinking of getting rid of such a piece and you’re likely to kick off a family opera, with crescendoing wails of “How could you?” Quite likely, you’ll be torturing yourself with the same question.

Oh, yes. Oh , yes, indeed.

The HG and I came up with a solution to my Uncle's baby book (complete with swatch of his once golden baby fine hair)- we'll offer it to Granny Tea. But then she sent me the article, and it contains this paragraph:

Jane Hammerslough, the author of “Dematerializing: Taming the Power of Possessions” (Da Capo Press, 2001), feels it’s important to remember that family members who are forcefully urging their possessions on their relatives don’t want those items in their homes either.

--------
Updated to add: Y'all are sweet, but I think you might be out of your depth. Come back Monday when I'll be brave and share pictures of the Rattery.

Calico kitty.

A friend's calico cat. I think calico cats are my favorites because they are so beautiful.

Mob Action & Fundamental Values

""Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." - said by an investigator in Canada's Human Rights Commission.

Another Canadian, the brilliant Northrop Frye (author of Educated Imagination), wrote something about free speech that rather disagrees with this latter assessment:

"I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society. The area of ordinary speech, as I see it, is a battleground between two forms of social speech, the speech of a mob and the speech of a free society. One stands for cliche, ready made idea and automatic babble, and it leads us inevitably from illusion into hysteria. There can be no free speech in a mob: free speech is one thing a mob can't stand."

Interesting, no?

Language, Religion, and Politics

Neo-neocon has two thoughtful posts up on language and literary style.

One is on the various versions and translations of the Bible, and even if you disagree with her conclusions, I think you'll enjoy the read.

One is on Barack Obama and style vs substance:

In trying to understand what about Obama appeals so powerfully to his supporters, I’ve decided that some—perhaps even much—of it is style.

He gives a good speech. He has a deep voice. He’s tall. He’s slender. He knows what a dap is. And he can turn a literary phrase.

The latter is the reason some literary folk like him, anyway, by their own report—that’s according to at least two examples of the genre, fiction writer Michael Chabon, and Sam Anderson, who appears to be a book reviewer at New York Magazine, and is the author of the article from which the following excerpts are taken [quotes italicized, with my comments interspersed in regular print]:

Michael Chabon, arguably America’s best line-by-line literary stylist, says he became a proselytizing Obama supporter after reading a particularly impressive turn of phrase in the senator’s second book—a conversion experience that seems, on first glance, inexcusably silly, but on fifth glance might be slightly profound.

No, even on fifth glance, it’s not even slightly profound. It’s profoundly slight.

How much can you tell about a candidate’s fitness to lead a country based on a single clause?

Nothing.

Check it out.

Supreme Court Reads and Understands Second Ammendment

The right to keep and bear arms? It's is indeed the right to keep and bear arms. It's not that difficult.

“Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.”

”In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.”

The Court, splitting 5-4, struck down a District of Columbia ban on handgun possession.

Boxes in the closet

1962- a baby DHM and her parents.=)

Update:
Granny Tea emails to tell me the dress she is wearing is the same dress she was married in the year before this picture was taken.

Socialized Health Care

In link-rich post from the erudite Anchoress:

Socialized Medicine: it really doesn’t work, if you’re just out to live longer. I’m coming to believe that socialized medicine - particularly as we see it evolving in Europe, into a slow-but-steady “ah, you’ve lived long enough” mentality of utilitarianism - is a soul-killer. I think Thomas Sowell is right to wonder why some want to bring to America what is not really working in Europe. The good news, though, is that in Canada, they’re considering sending very ill children to the US, so they can get treated. Tell me again why we want to socialize healthcare, here?

But where are the links? Back at her original post- click through, click through.=)

FLDS June 25

From Free the FLDS Children:

As for the Grand Jury Session, the State was not prepared to move forward with their case and to make offers of immunity to the women to testify against their family members. They have to go back and do their homework first. They’ll come back when they know what they’re doing in late July. It won’t do any good, there’s nothing to testify about.

And Bill says that Natalie Malonis has asked him not to contact her anymore.

Trib Photographer Trent Nelson took this very fine picture of Teresa Jeffs showing some spirit.

This Trib story says:

Teresa Jeffs, the last of seven FLDS witnesses summoned to testify before a Texas grand jury today, left the courthouse this afternoon after spending about 40 minutes in the building.
Alan Futrell, a criminal attorney representing Jeffs, the 16-year-old daughter of polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs, said the jury would meet again July 22. It was unknown what other witnesses may have been called to testify today.

-------------
No indictments yet:

ELDORADO — A West Texas grand jury spent a full day Wednesday weighing evidence about alleged sexual abuse inside a polygamist sect but adjourned without filing criminal charges after hearing from only a few of the witnesses subpoenaed by the state.

The Schleicher County grand jury was ordered to reconvene on July 22 to continue hearing the state's case against members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said Rod Parker, an attorney for the breakaway Mormon sect.

FLDS attorney Rod Parker says:

state prosecutors failed to provide written assurances that witnesses engaged in polygamist unions would not be tried later on bigamy charges, either here or in places outside their jurisdiction, like Utah or Arizona, where the FLDS has its stronghold.

"I think the whole thing fell apart because (state prosecutors) failed to offer the necessary immunity," Parker said. "There are Fifth Amendment issues here."

Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran said it might take months for the state to lay out its case. Investigators were still in the process of sorting through the hundreds of boxes of evidence collected during its weeklong raid of the sect's ranch in April as well as results collected from DNA tests, he said.

"We expect this will be a long process," Doran said.

Each of the FLDS women appeared before the GJ for no more than 40 minutes, a figure the SLTrib arrived at by timing when they entered and left the building.

The women went one-by-one before the jury in the afternoon and spent about the same amount of time - roughly 40 minutes - inside the Schleicher County Courthouse, which was cordoned off by crime scene tape and heavily guarded by state troopers throughout the proceedings.
The last FLDS witness to testify was 16-year-old Teresa Jeffs, who broke up the monotony of the wait by climbing a towering live oak tree outside the building and perched on a branch about 30 feet off the ground.
Alan Futrell, a San Antonio criminal attorney representing Jeffs, afterward called the process a "slow grind" and "emotional" but said "everybody appears to be doing their job with a minimum of contentiousness."
Asked how his client fared, Futrell said, "If I was 16, whoosh, I'd like to go home and take a nap."
Also summoned to testify: attorney Natalie Malonis, who represents the teenager in the state's child custody action against the sect. The lawyer, who arrived at about 9 a.m., was the last witness of the day.
Jeffs wants Malonis disqualified as her attorney and on Wednesday the two kept their distance from one another.

What an easy gig for Malonis- she's getting paid by the state while she and her client keep their distance from one another.

The FLDS women arrived at the courthouse at 8 a.m., and spent most of the day clustered in a parking lot or on the grass lawn with their attorneys. Dozens of state troopers strolled the grounds, as did a sheriff's office photographer who relentlessly snapped shots of the witnesses, media and other onlookers.
Futrell said no one was held in contempt during the proceedings but said he did not know whether the Texas Attorney General's Office, which is handling the criminal investigation, had offered the women immunity for testifying. Such offers, which would be needed from both the state and federal government since both are pursuing investigations of the FLDS, are typically offered to encourage witnesses to testify without fear of prosecution.

----------

Here's an interesting bit of perspective on the Grand Jury in Texas issuing no indictments yesterday- a few weeks ago Walthers swore in another Grand Jury. She entered the Courthouse to swear in the GJ at about 12:30 in the afternoon and left in an hour:

By the end of the day, 18 indictments had been issued, although no details were immediately available. The number was more than the usual; typically, five to 15 indictments are returned, a court clerk said.

If you go to the link, that story indicates some of them 'may' have been related to the FLDS, but it turned out none of them were. So at the beginning of the month a GJ which didn't even convene until after lunch issued 18 indictments by the end of the day, and the GJ which met yesterday and heard testimony all day long hasn't been so hasty.

Kids

FLDS, June 25th, Take Two

Kathy sent me this link, and it's so good it deserves a post all it's own.

Kurt begins:

This morning I spoke by phone with an attorney ad litem (AAL) who represents several FLDS children in their ongoing dispute with Texas CPS. I’ll call her Millie — not because she’s unwilling to go on the record but because I think it’s good for the country to keep CPS guessing. Millie, an attorney with considerable experience in child protection cases, read my op-ed in last Thursday’s San Angelo Standard-Times and contacted me to say “thanks.” A lengthy conversation ensued.

Some tidbits:
Mothering:

Millie says she was awestruck by how much the mothers knew about their kids, their level of organization, and how well they addressed each child’s needs. They were so good that during one visit, the CASA next to Millie “bawled” through the entire visit at the injustice of putting such good parents and kids through such abuse. She could hardly bear to watch it.

Evidence (or lack thereof) and legal irregularities:

A significant number of the ad litems are seriously unhappy (”pissed off” might be a better term) with how this case has been handled. Federal civil rights actions based on outrageous and illegal conduct by various authorities will be filed at some point. Millie says she’s never seen anything like this. CPS is routinely high-handed and Millie admits to allowing them to get away with it in other cases where the evidence of abuse was clear and abundant.

This case is the opposite. Millie says she has seen literally NO evidence of abuse and remarked at how, during the now infamous 14-day hearing in San Angelo (download full transcipts of April 17 and April 18 here), Judge Walther allowed totally unauthenticated material into evidence, routinely over-ruling or simply ignoring solid objections to admission of hoakey material offered by CPS.

Many of us have said that one reason CPS seems to be acting so idiotically is because We the People have let them get away with it so long that they had no idea we did not know how they operated, and they've grown cocky and arrogant about their rights over other people's children- and Millie indicates something along those lines as well:

In retrospect, Millie wonders whether it was so smart, in her prior evidence-rich cases, to let CPS trample over the rules of evidence. For non-attorneys, the rules of evidence require that documentary evidence be “authenticated” by someone familiar with its creation. Only the bishop or the bishop’s clerk could “authenticate” a bishop’s list. But nuances like this are lost on Judge Walther.

Invasive medial exams, such as:

In one case involving one of the pregnant mothers, CPS tried to force an M.D. to approve a bone scan in an effort to establish that the mother was really a minor because CPS thought they could show that her pelvis was too narrow for an adult. After CPS lied to both M.D. and patient about what the other was saying, the M.D. ended up telling CPS to get lost unless the patient would agree to the test.

She's not impressed with Malonis' behaviour or that of the judge permitting it. She's spoken with teen boys who debunk the 'lost boys' stories, and

Millie says the idea that CPS couldn’t tell whose kids are whose is a falsehood. On the name-confusion thing, Millie thinks the allegations of “misleading” multiple names are the product of official ignorance about a completely benign aspect of FLDS temple culture. The FLDS meant to confuse no one with the multiple names and, most likely, if authorities hadn’t broken into that safe, there’d be no confusion at all.

Quote

Weeds come of themselves; flowers require cultivation. --Gleanings

Oh, tis true, tis true.

WW 2 Ephemera

Post card from my great-uncle to his sister, my grandmother, in April of 1942. He writes, "Am living in a house like this with another Lt. Don't know how long I'll be here."

The back of the post card says, "The Vieux Carre, or French Quarter, of New Orleans is replete with architectural oddities. At 600 Bock Royal Street with shops on the ground floor and living quarters above may be seen an example of the famous window balconies."

There is no postage stamp because it was mailed through the military.

FLDS June 25

Not much to add today. The Grand Jury hearings have begun.

The TRO against Willie Jessop is extended for 90 days. Attorney Malonis, she who won't fight with her client through the media gives her professional lawyerly opinion:

"They were pulling out all the stops. ... There was some real weird stuff going on."
[...]
"It was the weirdest (hearing) I've ever been involved in," Malonis said.

I think it's pretty weird that both Malonis and her client are subpoenaed to testify before the same GJ, and it's pretty strange that the attorney keeps contradicting her client before the Court.

Malonis alleges the girl was spiritually married at age 15 to an older man; the girl in letters, e-mails and interviews has denied being abused.

The apparent split led attorneys for Annette Jeffs to file during Tuesday's hearing a motion to disqualify Malonis from the case, citing the girl's wishes expressed in a letter to Walther and e-mails to Malonis herself.

"Central to the issue is the relationship" between Malonis and the girl, attorney Tim Edwards said, noting that the attorney contradicted her own client in her motion Friday. "That goes to the very heart of the problem the court is facing today."

The GJ hearings may not begin until after noon today:

Six women and girls arrived at the Schleicher County Courthouse this morning, and three attorneys who represent mothers also arrived to be with their clients.

One girl known to be subpoenaed, the 16-year-old girl, has been subpoenaed to testify, appeared at the courthouse, as did her attorney, Flower Mound lawyer Natalie Malonis, who also has been subpoenaed. Those summonses were revealed during court filings Friday and a resulting hearing Tuesday.

The girl and her mother, Annette Jeffs, said today they still plan to seek Malonis' removal from the case after the attorney requested and received a restraining order keeping the girl from sect spokesman Willie Jessop.

----------------------------------
Ben Winslow of the Deseret News has more:

Four FLDS women have arrived at the courthouse, including Teresa Jeffs, 16, who is expected to give testimony before the grand jury this afternoon.

"I don't want to do it," Jeffs said as she walked into court. "It's weird."

And people are catching on:

Texas Child Protective Services alleged a pattern of abuse on the YFZ Ranch, with girls groomed to become child brides and boys growing up to become sexual perpetrators. Much of the state's claims have not proved to be true, including pregnant teenagers and abused children. The original call that sparked the raid is being investigated as a hoax.

emphasis mine

Black Pastors Disdain Planned Parenthood Funds

Shasta sent me this link:

A coalition of black pastors plans to call on the Republican and Democratic parties to reject campaign spending from Planned Parenthood, claiming the abortion provider promotes a racist agenda.

The pleas, to be made in a demonstration outside the Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, are the latest effort by the group to clamp down on Planned Parenthood, after an undercover inquiry by a college group revealed an alleged effort to target minority women for abortions.

The pastors are amplifying their argument that abortion, which its members call genocide, is a civil rights matter.

“We are very concerned that Planned Parenthood is targeting African American communities and African American babies,” said Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr.

Planned Parenthood:

told FOX News in April that its role in black communities is greater because the need is greater. The group issued a statement citing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control that showed black teenage girls are far more likely than other teenage girls to contract sexually transmitted diseases, and that the teen birthrate among black teenagers rose 5 percent in 2006.

So if their role is greater and more visible in black communities, as they admit, then it doesn't look like PP is doing them much good, then, does it?

An April report from Students for Life America found black women are 4.8 times more likely to have an abortion than white women.

Cleaning and Organizing

We have tons of stuff to do this month and next- deep clean the house, including all the closets and the garage; figure out sleeping arrangements for guests in November, organize my cookbooks, keep the flowers alive, do some work on the little house and the Rattery, complete 4-H cult stuff. And so forth.

I did finish my closet- which was no small task. It's not perfect, but I can get in and out of it again.

I transplanted all the flowers that needed it, now I just have to keep them alive.

I've weeded about a third of the tire retaining wall, and want to cover the rest with old straw so I don't have to weed so much again.

I finally finished cleaning out the closet under the stairs this morning.


NOw somebody else has to put everything back in it.=)

Surprise!

We awoke this morning to lovely rainshowers and thunderstorms. Okay, some of our friends refer to it as a monsoon, and it did rain VERY hard. But I love the rain.

So does the FYG. When it rains we get lovely deep puddles in our driveway. She got up this morning and dashed outside in her P.J.s to splash in the puddles. We have a hill in front of our house and the drive cannot be seen from the road, so she was quite private. She went dancing and skipping in joyful abandon down the driveway, splashing through the ankle deep puddles and turned the corner past the garage and met my husband's boss- he'd stopped by to pick up his trailer. Neither of them expected to see anybody, and I am not sure who was more startled.

Miracle Whip Cake

This recipe is from great-grandmama's stash- but it's in a box with letters and pictures and other ephemera ranging from 1898 (one picture) to the sixties. Most of it is from about 1938 to 1962, but I can't tell what date to put on this index card-

Mix together:
2 cups flour
4 heaping Tablespoons cocoa
1 Cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda

Add:
1 cup miracle whip
1 cup warm water

I presume you stir this, though it doesn't say.

Bake in 325 degree oven for 30 minutes.

I'm guessing this is a 8 or 9 inch square pan, too. We don't ever buy Miracle Whip, so I won't be trying it anytime soon.

This headline cracked me up...

Astronomers May Be On Verge of Finding Earth's Twin

Really?! With that terminology I have a few things I'd like to announce to the world:

* The HG may be on the verge of finding her missing library book (she would like to know that she's on the verge of it, of course)

* The Common Room family may be on verge of finding a million dollars(then again, they may be on the verge of *not* finding a million dollars)

*Jenny may be on the verge of dropping her violin on her toe (she is practicing it right now, and the science of gravity has proven that if she lets go of it, it will fall and may very well hit her toe)

Curtains

These are decorative rather than effective for blocking the sun or covering your windows at night to prevent others from seeing in. But they do look pretty.

Take a tablecloth that is about 1 1/2 times the length of your window, and looks just as pretty on the 'wrong' side as it does on the right side. Cut it in half lengthwise. Hem the raw edge- you can sew it, use iron on hemming tape or glue (they make fabric glue now). Hang them up by folding them over your curtain rods- so that the shorter end comes down in front, only about 1/3- 12/ of the way down, making a curtain in the back with a shorter panel in the front. Take that shorter end and tie a ribbon or cord around it- I think this looks nicest just a few inches from the bottom of the short panel.

A Quote:

"The imaginative stories of C.S. Lewis are important because he sees the reality of the supernatural and the supernatural battle. I am thinking of his series of allegories for children, commencing with The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
Of course, these are imaginative and not 'real' but C.S. Lewis's idea of what the heavenly country may be like.
Young people who are really well grounded in the teaching of the Bible will not get confused, and Lewis's approach really does something to make the supernatural seem not so far away and impossible.
When C.S. Lewis wrote his Science Trilogy (three books) he similarly achieved that same breaking of the wall of impossibility for some adult people's thinking; the supernatural is right beside us. The ignoring or denying of the reality of the existence of God, and of angels; the attempt to live as if the universe were only a machine-like collection of atoms-
this is destructive for any one human being and to human beings as a whole."

The Hidden Art of Homemaking, by Edith Schaeffer

Shasta Says....

Shasta has gotten into trouble with his female friends from church before for saying that girls expect guys to read our minds and it's not fair. One of the reasons he loves his intended so much is that the Equuschick doesn't expect mind reading at all. She is quite direct in her communications and he adores that about her (I am not sure what he doesn't adore about her, and I feel sorry for every mama-in-law to be who cannot feel as confidant as I that the man her daughter loves will love her as much as she deserves). And he has said he appreciates that I do acknowledge the truth of what he says- girls aren't fair. They do expect a skill that amounts to mind-reading from guys.

In a recent e-mail I exchange I tried to explain to him that most females honestly don't realize that's what they're asking. The truth is that girls are just better than guys at reading tiny facial cues and body language. And we find it pretty simple. We don't want our guys to read our minds. We simply want them to cherish us so much that they also can read these tiny cues. After all, I explained to Shasta, WE could, so we don't see why you can't.
It requires maturity and the ability to see things from another point of view and really grasp the differences between girls and boys in order to understand why what looks like normal discernment to us looks like requiring mind-reading from the guys.
We could, I told Shasta, have another long conversation about the things guys do that girls just don't get, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun.=)
His response is below- and he asked me if I thought it was something that could go on the blog. I did.

*If I understand your statement correctly that girls are more keyed into reading guys TINY facial cues and body language, then why would you be upset when we have a hard time reading those signs, something you have admitted women are much better at doing than men?
*If I understand the statement that women want men to CHERISH THEM SO MUCH that they also can read these TINY clues, then what it would seem is that if we don't see these tiny clues then we don't cherish women so much. . . disappointment will ensue.

To illustrate my point, (Transitional Phrase) I will tell you my theory on why men are not as good at Cherishing women as much as women cherish men.

*Back in the garden of Eden, I think we can both agree that Adam and Eve had a wonderfully easy life. They walked around the garden with God and had a wonderfully intimate relationship. However, (Transitional Phrase) when they were thrown out Man had to work hard for his food. This meant that we did not have time to think sensitive and long, convoluted thoughts. Girly man thoughts, there wasn't time. When we saw a deer, we had to make a decision on how badly we wanted our family to eat. If our family needed food we killed the deer. We didn't think about the deer's family, if the deer had just had babies and now those babies are going to stave to death or be eaten by another animal. We only knew that we were hungry and our family was also hungry. Women, on the other hand, (Transitional Phrase) were to take care of the family and love, and nurture the children and are designed as more sensitive creatures. In conclusion, (Transitional Phrase) I don't think we can fight the tides as much as women would like men to understand them and CHERISH THEM, (Reading those tiny clues), and men want women to understand them more and nurture and respect them more. It's a constant struggle but the thing that I have to remember is that it is a DESIGNED STRUGGLE! God wanted it this way. Well. . . he didn't want it this way, he wanted to be like Adam and Eve had it but then they messed it up and He had to design a different way. Which He did.

I love your daughter so much! She is such an amazing person! I am so excited to walk through life with her and lead her and our family. And I have the utmost confidence that she will follow me and love me IN SPITE of me. She is so patient, kind, she doesn't keep a record of wrongs, (at least past 7 days because that is against the rules), she doesn't get jealous very easily, she isn't proud, she isn't rude, (Well. . .not all the time), she doesn't get mad easily, she is a wonderful woman. Thank you so much for raising such an incredible woman! Sorry, I really didn't mean to take up all that work time to write this nor did I mean to make this so long but I got on a roll. I love you! ~Shasta

Song of Solomon 4:10
How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume than any spice!

We will miss the Equuschick immensely, of course, even if the happy couple are just up the road, but there is not a single drop of salt tear in our cup of joy, because I cannot imagine another human being in the world more perfectly suited to her than Shasta, and what mother could shed a tear over her daughter wedding a fine young man who values his bride as highly as he ought?

Which is not to say I won't cry heartily at the wedding, but tears of joy are sweet.

FLDS June 24

The FLDS have put together a clothing business to help support the families trying to recover from CPS' disruption of their lives and families. I particularly like the nightgowns.

Today is the hearing on whether or not the Temporary Restraining Order against Willie Jessop should become a permanent one. The judge isn't expected to address the 16 year old girl's request for a new attorney.

...Rod Parker, a Salt Lake attorney acting as a spokesman for the FLDS, believes Malonis is not following her court-appointed duties. Because Malonis is Teresa Jeffs' attorney ad litem and not her guardian ad litem, her job is to be an advocate for the child, he said.

"Her duties under the statute are to represent the child's expressed objectives. And if the child expresses certain objectives the child wants pursued, that's what the attorney is supposed to do," Parker said.

He points out that since the girl's request for a new attorney is what motivated Malonis to seek a restraining order in the first place, that request really should come up in the hearing.

The state has a dossier on 13 FLDS members that was used to gain the TRO against Willie Jessop. Here's one of the statements about him:

William R. Jessop, also known as "Willie the Thug" or "King Willie," is the most serious threat affiliated with the FLDS religion.

Um, known by whom, exactly? Law enforcement makes up a scary name about somebody and that's evidence that he's dangerous?

-------------------------
Still no word on the hearing involving Natalie Malonis and her 16 year old client, but Brooke Adams is there watching, and she says:

Imagine being her [the 16 year old]. Now replay the past three years, and imagine being her: The FBI's Most Wanted List, the news shows, YouTube parodies, the T-shirts, the Big Love, the Lost Boys, the Escape and Stolen Innocence, the Oprah shows -- all of it centered on your father.

It is easy to focus on the man, forget about the sons and daughters.

And now, Teresa finds herself, or at least her life, in the kleig lights.

Already, Natalie has revealed all kinds of things about Teresa in courtroom statements or filings, from suspicions the teenager had a child (wrong) to an alleged spiritual marriage (unclear) to having had sexual relations (denied) and the girl's scheduled appearance before the grand jury meeting in Schleicher County this week.

So much for grand jury secrecy.

There's more. I suggest reading it all. It's short, but meaty, as Brooke's posts generally are.
-----------------------
It turns out Nancy Malonis has appeared three times on the Nancy Grace show.
Malonis' client had also written to her complaining of her behaviour before Willie Jessop had the meeting with them. And when her client sent a letter to the Judge, Malonis responded to her client this way:
On June 20, after Teresa had written her letter to Judge Walther requesting a new attorney, Malonis sent to Teresa the following in an e-mail message:

Writing that letter to the Judge was about the most foolish thing you could have done. The Judge is now convinced that you are not able to make good decisions for yourself, and she is convinced also that your mother is not able to make proper decisions for you either Teresa, the Judge wants to take you back in custody and what's worse is that these poor choices may end up with your siblings back in custody if the Judge and CPS think your mother is not able to reign you in. The judge would probably not allow me to withdraw right now even if I requested it because the Judge sees me as the only person who is looking out for what is in your legal interests.

So does this mean that the Judge doesn't trust a single other attorney at her disposal? Does this mean Malonis and the Judge have been having private conversations about Malonis' client?

There's more at the link. It's a good read.

------------------------
Update 5:01-
Well, Natalie I-won't-fight-with-my-16-year-old-client-in-the-media Malonis continues to speak to the press:

The e-mails and a similarly worded letter written to Walther seeking Malonis' removal do not represent her client's true wishes, Malonis said, and appear to be written by someone else.

"The judge considered it, and rather than remove me, issued a restraining order," Malonis said Monday, referring to Walther's temporarily granting the order, pending today's hearing.

"If (the girl) wants to have me removed or disqualify me, that's not a freely chosen preference."

Malonis' filings describe the girl as cooperative and friendly until shortly after her release, after which Jessop told Malonis he had spoken with the girl "several times," according to an affidavit Malonis filed on her own behalf.

That particular article opens with a breathtakingly idiotic statement:

In the sprawling FLDS child-custody case, a new, if unwilling, star has been born.

Do 'unwilling' stars appear on the Nancy Grace show three times in a couple months? Do they give interviews to blogs? Do they get themselves quoted repeatedly in the press, while other lawyers in the case are circumspectly saying, "No comment?"

Here's a unusually fair report:

A 16-year-old girl is a key witness in the state's effort to pursue criminal charges against members of her polygamist sect, even though she denies investigators' claims that she was abused.

The girl, a daughter of the sect's jailed prophet, says she's never been married and doesn't have a baby. She denies church elders are influencing her and wants to fire her lawyer. The state can't even prove her alleged abuse happened in Texas.

This, incidentally, is going to be a problem for every one of the under-aged marriage cases the state may bring. Oh, yes, I do expect there will be some, perhaps 20- the number CPS initially brought to court. But I'm afraid there won't be many convictions because of the hamfisted way CPS handled this.

The mother's lawyers seek to have Walthers recused from this case:

Lawyers for the mother of a 16-year-old FLDS girl caught up in a legal battle are seeking to have the judge involved in the polygamous sect's custody case ousted.

The attorneys filed a motion this afternoon, seeking to have Judge Barbara Walther recuse herself from the case. They cited news articles based on a Deseret News report about law enforcement dossiers being compiled on Fundamentalist LDS Church members deemed a "potential threat," which led to increased security surrounding the judge.

"A reasonable person could not be impartial under such circumstances," the attorneys wrote.

The request was denied, not on its merits but because

it was not filed in a timely manner.

Random Transitionless Thoughts

It's been about ten days and no flowers have died yet, although a couple are looking peaked, and the dahlia will probably not recover.

My alarm clock this month has been a woodpecker on the tree outside my bedroom window. I love it, even if my woodpecker is up at 5:30 sometimes.

The other day the HG asked her dad if the youngest two children could help fold and put away laundry. Daddy assigned them full responsibility for that task. A few hours later, she thanked them doing the folding and putting away. The Boy stopped, looked at her and exclaimed, "OH! So it was your Evil Plan!"

My son-in-law to be is curious and wishes to know why, if we can renew our books online, we often have overdue fines. His mama-in-law to be wishes to suggest this is an injudicious time for such embarrassing questions.

Hen and Chicks, Mother of Thyme, Creeping Thyme, yarrow, and day lilies are thriving in the sandy soil inside our tire retaining wall.

Speaking of tires and plants- these tire planters are really, really cool.

I virtuously got up very early yesterday morning (for me). I had to go into town with Jenny becasue she wanted to go by her bank and I needed to pick up my co-op order. We also needed to go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for Pip.
We got our co-op order and that transaction went smoothly.
When we got to the pharmacy, it wasn't open yet, but we only had to wait ten minutes. When we got into the pharmacy, the shopping side was open, but the pharmacist wasn't on duty yet. But we only had to wait fifteen minutes.
Then we went to the bank. It wasn't open yet. But we only had to wait ten minutes.

I didn't want to wait for anymore things to open, so we went by the plant nursery, which was open, where I spent approximately a dollar a minute during the 40 minutes we were there. OUCH. MOral: Don't get up too early.

It is a very, very fine feeling when your nine year old son begs to be permitted to watch a movie and that movie is 12th Night.

The sugar free things continues, and I'd like to say I'm not seeing any results, but I was able to weed flower beds for 2 hours yesterday. Of course, I feel like I've been beaten with sticks tonight. I even bought all the Progeny a .33 cent chocolate bar at the store yesterday and did not get one for me.

Joining the 4-H cult was a huge mistake for which my children may never forgive me. We are not prepared, and it's all my fault, and we can't get prepared in the time we have left, and I am just not cut out for this. What was I thinking? I don't know. My Progeny would really like to know.

I think an ideal bathroom trash can is a plastic cleaning bucket with a handle. Easy to pick it up and empty it, light-weight, and cheap. And besides, I want the big ceramic green pot we're currently using in one bathroom for a planter for my purple and white pansies.

Actually, these thoughts only seem transitionless and unrelated. Each item flowed naturally from one to the other in my mind. It's a scary thing, my mind.

Better Living Through Chemicals

Our dear friend George Bosworth wrote the following. He cracks me up, but he's perfectly serious at the same time.
He's a homeschooled lad somewhere around Pip's age, and is amazingly quick, as you will see when I shut up and let you read what he wrote.

He's been watching pharmaceutical commercials on television, and he doesn't like them:

...Pay attention to those commercials sometime. "Have-been" actors have been pitching for the drug companies lately. Want to see something really boring? Catch a "Boniva" commercial, and you can watch in eager anticipation as Sally Field, in a glowing backyard, and surrounded by her "grandchildren", demonstrates how easy swallowing the advertised pill is. ("That it! I just took my once-a-month 'Boniva'!") In the Caduet commercials, cloned actors hold a one-sided conversation discussing the benefits of taking a pill that combines two medications. The backdrops of these commercials are usually forests, fancy hotels, seaside cliffs, evening parties, family reunions, picnics, and -get this- an amusement park, complete with rides, animals, and customers, made entirely out of copper pipes. Sound pretty ideal? These aren't the images that come to my mind when I watch my 80+ year old Aunt and Uncle sit on a stool in their crowded Tennessee kitchen, trying to figure out what medications they have to choke down today. The products we see advertised claim to treat everything under the sun, and if it doesn't fall under the heading of something they can treat, it's usually a side effect.

I know the formula that makes a typical drug commercial. The ingredients include a perfectly healthy, middle-aged but attractive person with perfect diction, a background consisting of a place so exotic that the average viewer is distracted by its novelty, and the obligatory, fast-paced caution of side effects, usually read while that middle aged person wakes up in a perfect house, walks a perfect dog, plays with perfect children, drives a perfect car, or shops in perfect stores. Here, I'll show you:


"Are you suffering from... something? Do you find that you are too similarly different from everyone else? Do what I did, and talk to your Doctor about 'Mandaligamonitosical TQ'. For years, I was sure that something about me wasn't quite right. I just didn't feel perfectly healthy all over, and spent my nights worrying that something may not be wrong with me, after all. Then my Doctor told me about 'Mandaligamonitosical TQ'. He told me that I wasn't alone. Millions of Americans suffer each day from the same mysterious condition. He told me 'Mandaligamonitosical TQ' would not only stop the damage, but also start healing the damage that had already occurred."

"'Mandaligamonitosical TQ' is not for everyone. Side effects are generally mild and may include nausea, dry mouth, bleeding, stomach ulcers, cancer of the liver, drowsiness, dizziness, snoring, hand shaking, craft making, cookie baking, out-on-the-lake-ing, day-off-from-work taking, illness faking, leaf raking, gambling, increased urges to eat carrot sticks with a spoon, eyeball rolling, toe stubbing, inability to breath, difficulty eating, difficulty seeing, difficulty thinking, non-stop belching, loss of appetite, loss of hearing, loss of friends, inability to sleep, increased urges to watch reruns of "Craftmatic" infomercials, and an overwhelming desire cook a steak with your hairdryer. You should not drive or operate heavy machinery, including vacuum cleaners and battery-powered toothbrushes, or harbor a fear of volcanoes or Wombats, until you know how 'Mandaligamonitosical TQ' will affect you."

"So talk to your Doctor today, and find out if 'Mandaligamonitosical TQ' is right for you. 'Mandaligamonitosical TQ'- because we want your money, and convincing you that you are about to die of something is the only way for us to get it."

A Transitional Phrase

A Transitional Phrase, Shasta patiently explained to The Equuschick the other day, is a phrase typically used to connect two topics of conversation that do not actually have anything to do with each-other.

You use it sort of like a turn signal, so that the person you are talking to knows you are going to Turn Here. (So he said.)

When The Equuschick does not use a Transitional Phrase, he explained (less patiently, but still using an analogy The Equuschick would be sure to understand), he is left with both his knees on the asphalt while she chases the bunny rabbits.

Ohhhhhhhhhh. How Enlightening!

Kitty

We went to a friends house last night for some food and games. They have barn cats, and we all (minus DHM and the HG, because of allergies) had a good time holding the kittens. This is Jenny Any Dots. I needed some good black and white pictures for my 4H project, so most of the pictures I took last night were in b&w.

Hot Weather, Large Group

We're having a group of friends over for a house-cleaning party in a couple weeks.
I'm looking for recipes I can make in advance to make things easier, recipes that won't be overly pricey, and recipes that will be tasty.

These Cheese sandwiches look good.

Pizza Sandwiches are delicious:
Mama's Stuffed Pizza Sandwich

1 Pound ground meat
1 Can [10.5 oz.] Condensed Chicken Gumbo Soup*
1 Tablespoon Mustard
2 Tablespoons Ketchup
1 loaf french bread (from the day old bread store)
cheese

Brown the meat, frying with optional onion and peppers if desired. Drain. Mix
with remaining ingredients except the bread. Simmer over low heat while you do the next step.
Slice off the top of a loaf of French bread- you're slicing horizontally, a long thin slice scalping off the top of the loaf. I hope this feeble sketch helps rather than objuscates. You should cut on the dotted line. The bread, not the picture on your screen.
HOllow out the loaf. I use a knife to cut gently all around the loaf about 1/2 an inche from the edge (don't cut all the way to through the bottom) and my fingers to then dig out most of the inside of the French bread. Set these pieces of bread aside, you'll use this tomorrow for another recipe. Set this hollowed loaf on a large sheet of tin foil (large enough to later wrap the entire loaf in), and put this on a cookie sheet.

Pour the meat filling inside the hollowed out loaf of french bread.
Sprinkle the top with cheese (cheddar or mozzarella work well). Top this all with the piece you scalped off the top.
Wrap with foil. Bake at about 400 for 20 minutes or so- just long
enough to warm it all the way and melt the cheese nicely.

Remove, slice, and serve with salad or veggie sticks. If you were to freeze this I would butter the inside of the French bread first to keep it from getting soggy. I would keep the cheese in a separate bag and add it just before cooking. Or you could just freeze the filling and defrost it when you have a loaf of french bread needing to be used up. You could also just cook the meat and add the ketchup and mustard and freeze that, adding the soup on the day you intend to eat it.

*The chicken Gumbo soup… You can make your own version of this stuff by boiling about 3 cups alphabet noodles or orzo in 2 cups water with some chicken bouillion, Worcester sauce, and a bit of soy sauce. Grate into the boiling water some carrots, onions, and other veggies if you like. It's not exactly the same, but close enough, and probably a little cheaper.

A nice, big, three beans salad and some watermelon should round out the menu. Unless some of you have some suggestions for feeding a hard working crowd on a hot day?

Wedding Dress

I guess it's not just for bridal shower contests anymore.

What the well-dressed canine is wearing

Of course, the Zeus dog already comes with a tux:

I wonder...

What it would be like to be someone Jesus marveled at!

Luke 7

1 Now when he had ended all his sayings in the audience of the people, he entered into Capernaum.
2 And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and ready to die.
3 And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant.
4 And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly, saying, That he was worthy for whom he should do this:
5 For he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue.
6 Then Jesus went with them. And when he was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto him, Lord, trouble not thyself: for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof:
7 Wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee: but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed.
8 For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.
9 When Jesus heard these things, he marvelled at him, and turned him about, and said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.
10 And they that were sent, returning to the house, found the servant whole that had been sick.

(Mathew also gives an account of this-Mt 8:5-13)

A Large Room

What is education? What sort of results do we expect from that thing we call education?

If you've ever read anything by John Taylor Gatto, or Mr. Llewellyn Davis' book Why are So Many Christians Going Home To School?" you'll note that they focus on certain underlying assumptions that we generally pick up in public school, assumptions that don't always have much to do with actual academic topics. These assumptions come through in how school functions rather than in particular teaching, and we see their implications in our own lives in the kind of people we are, in what interests us, in what bores us.

I'm talking about things like how to study, how to learn, what we come out of school believing about ourselves, about who our friends are, about how the world works, about our expectations for what is normal, about peer relations, about the use of free time, about the purpose of education, about knowledge, values, ideas, family, state, kirk, and home, about utilitarianism, politics, and more. In every culture there are assumptions imbibed in the very air, things more caught than taught, things we don't even realize we believe because the assumptions are so deeply ingrained in us.

It takes a long time to unearth those assumptions we assumed, and it takes longer to actually think about them and replace the assumptions with carefully thought out reasoning. Ask yourself, sometime, what do you think about X, and why do you think so? Where did you learn this? How do you know? For X, insert almost anything.

What do you think about socialization? What is it, what does it look like, how does it happen? Why do you think so?

What do you think about the pyramids? What were they, how were they built, who built them, why did they build them? Why do you think so?

What do you think about learning? What is it? What does it look like? How do we learn something new? Why do we learn? Where do we go to learn? How do you tell when something has been learned? And why do you think so?

What do you think about government? What should it do, what should it not do? How should it do those things? Why? Where does it belong, where does it not belong? Who decides? How? Why? Why do you think so? Where did you learn this? How do you know?

What is education? Here's what I wish for in our home education efforts:

-- We wish to place before the child open doors to many avenues of instruction and delight, in each one of which he should find quickening thoughts. ... Our aim in Education is to give a Full Life. -- We begin to see what we want. Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking -- the strain would be too great -- but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests....
The question is not, -- how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education -- but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?

School Education, by Charlotte Mason, page 170-1

FLDS June 22

You may be reading stories with headlines about how one of the FLDS teens is seeking a restraining order against Willie Jessop. Not quite. Natalie Malonis, court appointed attorney, sought that restraining order, apparently against her client's wishes. Natalie Malonis' client, a 16 year old girl Natalie has formerly stated has a child being claimed by another mother, is fighting back. There is an account of Malonis's dealings with CPS and her client here, including two letters from the girl to Malonis.

The application for a restraining order against Willie Jessop is here. One thing I find odd is that Malonis met with Willie at the ranch on the tenth. IT took her ten days after that meeting to decide her life was 'in danger' without the restraining order.

Trib story here- and the Trib reporter spoke to the girl on the phone.

Bill at Free the Flds has several posts in this situation, including the information that the girl went to a doctor to prove her innocence. Maybe it was after that when Malonis admitted that the girl had never been pregnant, and the information that she was had NOT come from the girl at all, but from law enforcement. Here's one of the letters the girl wrote to her court appointed attorney.

She also sent copies of emails sent to Malonis to the Salt Lake Tribune:

An FLDS teenager is taking a dispute with her attorney public, claiming the attorney is making her life "harder" and asking the lawyer to "please leave me alone."
Teresa Jeffs, 16, a daughter of polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs, gave The Salt Lake Tribune on Sunday a copy of an e-mail she sent Natalie Malonis of Flower Mound, Texas, after seeing news reports about her case. On Friday, Malonis won a court order banning contact between an FLDS spokesman and the girl.
"The most help you will be to me now is for you to step aside and let me get a different lawyer that I feel like can help me," Jeffs wrote in the e-mail.

This seems just a wee bit self-blinded:

Malonis said she just wants Jeffs to be free of any outside influence and make her own decisions. "Right now, that's not happening," the attorney said.

Doesn't it seem to you Malonis wants her free of any outside influence Malonis doesn't like, and she wants her to make decisions Malonis agrees with?

Let's forget all the FLDS stuff, and just think about how any 16 year old girl would feel about a woman who stood up and told the world she had a secret baby she was hiding with another mother in her community and lying about. How on earth will this 16 year old trust her attorney under these circumstances? She can't. So why can't Malonis see that if her client is really to be free of outside influences and free to make her own decisions, Malonis needs to step aside and permit the girl to have another lawyer?

And here's another look at their relationship- which Malonis characterized as 'great:':

Under Texas Family Code, an attorney ad litem represents a client's position in court, unless a child is not acting in her own best interest. A guardian ad litem represents what is in a child's best interest - which may be contrary to what a minor wants.
Jeffs said she has met her guardian ad litem just once but has had three meetings and numerous email and telephone conversations with Malonis. Jeffs said the conflict with Malonis began before Walther released some 440 FLDS children from custody earlier this month.

The raid took place in April. This is the middle of June. She's only met her GAL once and her attorney three times? One of those three meetings was the one with Jessop at the Ranch, where Malonis says her client wouldn't even speak to her. So two meetings makes a great attorney-client relationship? Her 16 year old client says that it was only good at the very beginning, but it began to deterioriate when Malonis visited her at night in her group home and harangued her for hours. She says she's told Malonis and the judge this. So now....


She's talking to any reporter who will listen, it seems:

"I have asked her many times to please step aside," Teresa Jeffs told The Associated Press by telephone on Sunday from Texas. "I need more help. I want my attorney to listen to me."

Not so Malonis:

Malonis declined Sunday to respond to her client's complaints.

"I'm trying to help her," Malonis said. "It's really not in any child's interest to waive their attorney-client privilege. I'm not going to fight with her in the media."

Look again. Isn't that what she just did? She just said what Teresa is doing is not in her best interests, and where did she say it? In the media. Where did we hear that Teresa had a baby that she was hiding with another mother? Through the media, who heard it from Malonis. How many reporters did Malonis contact in order to correct the false information she disseminated and tell them Teresa was not pregnant and never had been? The only one even reporting that information is Brooke Adams:

Texas attorney Natalie Malonis created quite a stir a couple weeks ago when she stood in an open courtroom in San Angelo and said she was worried that Judge Barbara Walther might send her client home.

Natalie said she had reason to believe the 16-year-old girl, a daughter of Annette and Warren Jeffs, might have had a child who was being claimed by another mother.

Now the rest of the story: Not true. I spoke to Natalie today and she said it is now clear the girl has never been pregnant, never had a child. She said the initial suspicion had come from law enforcement, but was erroneous.

And look again:

"What's been the response? More intimidation and more pressure," Malonis said Sunday, confirming that she had received similar e-mails to the ones published online.

Here she is, again not arguing with her client through the media.

Malonis said she still believes she can still maintain a working relationship with her client, and worried that the publication of the e-mails may have created a new problem by having the girl waive her attorney-client privilege. The girl admits in the e-mail that she has been avoiding service, but says Jessop had nothing to do with it.

"It is my own dear feelings and doings. Right now I am just at home, sitting on my bed. Does it sound like I have dissappeared (sic)? To tell you the truth, I havn't (sic) tried very hard at all to dodge this subpoena. Of course I am not just going to go running for it! I know how to think for myself, if you can believe it!" she wrote. "This is how I feel and I just thought I would let you know."

And while a few reporters are couching this in terms of a teenager fighting her own best interests ('fighting her attorney's attempts to shield her'), note the timeline here:

On Friday, Malonis successfully sought a restraining order against church spokesman Willie Jessop, who she said was intimidating and improperly influencing the girl.

"I believe that (the girl) was avoiding service because of coercion and improper influence from Willie Jessop," Malonis wrote the judge.

Malonis sought the protection order after the girl asked State District Judge Barbara Walther to release her from the case and appoint another attorney.

This happened, again, ten days after the meeting with Jessop which Malonis characterized as threatening, and only after the girl sought to have Malonis replaced.

Keep in mind as well that Malonis is the only attorney so far to give a full interview on the case to anybody- and what a doozy it was. She stepped carefully around the '31 minors with children' allegation, saying 'if true....' and then indicated that she knew abuse was rampant. Right there she blew her credibility as a nonbiased attorney- what the press keeps leaving out is that one of Malonis' other clients was Pamela Jeffs, the first disputed minor to give birth. An adult. Malonis must have known this at the time she gave her interview.

Incidentally, the fuss over the subpoena was resolved in short order:

A 16-year-old girl at the center of a legal fight has finally been subpoenaed to testify before a Texas grand jury investigating members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church.

The girl's mother was given a subpoena on Saturday, the girl's court-appointed attorney told the Deseret News. It orders the girl to show up this week to testify in Eldorado before a grand jury considering criminal charges stemming from the raid on the FLDS Church's YFZ Ranch.

I don't know what the 'finally' bit is about. It only took a day or two, and Malonis knew her client wasn't 'missing' or she would have filed a missing person's report.

Again, regardless of what one thinks of the FLDS, oughtn't a 16 year old girl have an attorney she feels she can trust? And are most 16 year olds likely to trust somebody who has publicly stated they have had a baby when they haven't? Even if you believe she's been abused, why not give the girl a new court appointed lawyer without the baggage, and they can start from a clean slate?
----------------------
I forgot to mention that the publicity shy attorney Natalie Malonis has also appeared on CNN- on the Nancy Grace program. I've never seen it, but I have heard Grace is shrill, unreliable, and sensationalist. Here's what Malonis said there on May 28th:

GRACE: Back to Natalie Malonis, if you had to choose right now, what do you do with the children that you are representing? What are you asking the judge to do with them?

NATALIE MALONIS: Well, if I had to make a decision right now today on the children I represent, I would have a great deal of trouble sending them back to their parents. I don`t think I could make that recommendation.

GRACE: You know, Natalie, I`m a new mother. I don`t want to see children that are loved by their parents ripped away from their parents.

MALONIS: Right.

GRACE: But the state of Texas is not being given an alternative because they`ll be going back into homes where these systematic child bride marriages, abuse of little boys, broken bones, is ordinary.

MALONIS: Right. That`s correct. And one of the big problems in this case is that the victims really don`t consider themselves victims so they`re not -- it`s difficult to help them.

Updated note: Malonis also appeared (briefly) on Nancy Grace's show in connection with the FLDS case a couple weeks before the above program.

Looking for Quotes

We're looking for quotes related to love and marriage to use in part of the reception decorations, and I'm taking submissions. We'd like Bible verses, poetry, excerpts from literature- bring it all on.
Here's a few I have already (I actually have something like two pages of them, but why settle for moderation when you can lose your mind with excess?):

If ever two were one, then surely we.
....
Then while we live, in love lets so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Anne Bradstreet (1612-72)

from "The Velveteen Rabbit
BY Margery Williams

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but Really loves you, then you become Real."

The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.

~ Martin Luther

Also, of course, The Shakespeare Sonnet which begins, "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove..." 1 Corinthians 13, and 'How do I love thee, let me count the ways..."

Oh, and the Aravis and Shasta quote, naturally.

Sunday Hymn Post

Jesus, Thou soul of all our joys,
For Whom we now lift up our voice,
And all our strength exert;
Vouchsafe the grace we humbly claim,
Compose into a thankful frame,
And tune Thy people’s heart.

While in the heavenly work we join,
Thy glory be our whole design,
Thy glory, not our own:
Still let us keep our end in view,
And still the pleasing task pursue,
To please our God alone.

The secret pride, the subtle sin,
O let it never more steal in,
To offend Thy glorious eyes,
To desecrate our hallowed strain,
And make our solemn service vain,
And mar our sacrifice!

To magnify Thy awful Name,
To spread the honors of the Lamb,
Let us our voices raise;
Our souls’ and bodies’ powers unite,
Regardless of our own delight,
And dead to human praise.

Still let us on our guard be found,
And watch against the power of sound
With sacred jealousy;
Lest haply sense should damp our zeal,
And music’s charms bewitch and steal
Our hearts away from Thee.

That hurrying strife far oft remove,
That noisy burst of selfish love,
Which swells the formal song;
The joy from out our hearts arise,
And speak and sparkle in our eyes,
And vibrate on our tongue.

Thee let us praise, our common Lord,
And sweetly join with one accord
Thy goodness to proclaim:
Jesus, Thyself in us reveal,
And all our faculties shall feel
Thy harmonizing Name.

With calmly reverential joy,
O let us all our lives employ
In setting forth Thy love;
And raise in death our triumph higher,
And sing with all the heavenly choir,
That endless song above!

cyberhymnal

Clean Your Plate

Food waste is a more serious problem in view of rising food prices:

As it turns out, Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.
[...]
n England, a recent study revealed that Britons toss away a third of the food they purchase, including more than four million whole apples, 1.2 million sausages and 2.8 million tomatoes. In Sweden, families with small children threw out about a quarter of the food they bought, a recent study there found.

And most distressing, perhaps, is that in some parts of Africa a quarter or more of the crops go bad before they can be eaten. A study presented last week to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development found that the high losses in developing nations “are mainly due to a lack of technology and infrastructure” as well as insect infestations, microbial growth, damage and high temperatures and humidity.

Having been so poor we couldn't afford food, I am very, very unhappy when we throw away food at our house because we let it go bad before we used it. To me, I can clearly see the dollar bills we are throwing in the garbage can. We do compost, and that helps. A bit. IT was nice when we had chickens and pigs, because they could eat just about everything we didn't compost.

Next, I have to figure out a way to make good use of the horse manure from the pasture.

Personal Experience with The Look-See Test

This is to some degree beating a dead horse, but two things happened this week that made me laugh, and made me glad we don't live in Texas.

As most of our readers know, when FLDS went to court at the 14 day hearings, they said they had five under-aged girls who were currently pregnant or already had children. Once they left the courtroom and were no longer under oath, they told the public they had 31 minor girls who had children or were pregnant. And, of course, every one of the new 'minor mothers' turned out to be adult women. CPS acknowledges they declared these women to be adults by looking at them, and they looked like minors to CPS. One wonders why people who demonstrated so clearly such incompetence on the job are still performing that same job with the same people they previously slandered.

But enough of that, let's talk about us.

Shasta is 26 and the Equuschick is 23. Shasta took pictures of his new bride-to-be to work to show his co-workers. I understand that when they looked at the pictures there was some reservation, and then they said something like, "Shasta? What are you doing? Is she even 18 yet?" I suppose when the happy couple visit Shasta's home state of Texas they should be very careful never to appear in public together as a happy couple unless the EC has multiple forms of identification on her person and a copy of their marriage license.

Pipsqueak is 17, and she'll be 18 in just 3 or 4 months. She is the youngest of our five oldest Progeny, but people usually peg her as the oldest. She had a doctor appointment on Friday, and the radiologist looked at her records and then looked at her in surprise and said, "Wow. I never would have pegged you as 17 years old. You look maybe 15, tops."

Yes, the Progeny know this is a blessing they will appreciate when they are older. They've heard it before. It's not that they don't believe it. It's just that they aren't older yet, and there is a limit to how many times you can hear the same piece of information before it becomes rather tedious.

Quote

"We're supposed to encourage, we're supposed to uplift, admonish here and there. We're not supposed to make each other feel stupid... we do that enough on our own." ~Anonymous

Narnia Movie News

The FYG would like readers to know that the actor for Eustace Scrubb has been chosen- .

12 Year Old Sues Dad to Go On School Trip: Wins

Yesterday we passed on the story about the 12 year old in Canada who pitched a hissy fit about being denied permission to go on a school trip after violating house rules multiple times (including posting inappropriate pictures of her 12 year old self online). Her hissy fit involved finding a lawyer and taking her dad to court. She won.

Here's more:

Lorne Gunter of Canada's National Post described the ruling as "sputteringly enraging." The Canadian blogosphere has taken notice, as have parents.

Gunter drew particular attention to the fact that the girl's attorney explained that she took the case to court because it involved the school trip: "For me that was really important."

Gunter responded:

"For me that was really important." So what? Just who are you? Are you the kid's parent? Are you a relative of any sort? No? So why, then, does your opinion matter? And if it does matter, how is court action appropriate? At most, even if you are a close relative, you are limited to calling up the dad and expressing your view that his punishment is over-the-top.

Ms. Fortin insists that while court was a last resort, the situation called for it: "This was not a question of going to the movies or not, or going online or not -- because obviously, I wouldn't have intervened in that."

Just how is that obvious? It should have been obvious that you don't go to court over missing the camping trip, either, but that doesn't seem to have dawned on Ms. Fortin. She called the trip a rite of passage. What will be the rite next time, a missed sleepover, her first out-of-town volleyball tournament with the school team?

The logic of this ruling is not limited to Canada. In 1970, Hillary Rodham, then a young lawyer (and later Sen. Hillary Clinton), wrote a law review article, "Children Under the Law," in which she argued that minors should be treated as "child citizens" who should, under at least some conditions, be able to challenge their parents in court over parental decisions.

This father may win his appeal -- we must hope that he does -- but the damage is already done. This 12-year-old girl has defied her father and been rewarded by a secular court. The judge and the court have now become complicit in the girl's disobedience. This father has had his rights as father denied and his authority undermined. We can only imagine the costs of this judicial malpractice in the life of this girl and her family. Beyond this, the precedent is now set for further judicial mischief.

Do What You Are Doing

Reposted in honor of this morning's post on multi-tasking:

“There is something about interruption that makes people especially unproductive,” says Suzanne Bianchi, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland and co-author of the new book Changing Rhythms of American Family Life. “And technology interrupts us all the time—e-mails, cell phones. It feeds into our sense of control”—another key factor in burning out, feeling a lack of control—“and highly educated workers all will talk as if they’re terribly overworked, how they feel as if there’s never enough time. Partly, we’re supposed to say it, but I think people also genuinely feel that way, even though they have the time. That’s what’s intrigued us. The subjective and the objective don’t line up.”

From an article in New York Magazine.

Somewhere, sometime I read about a sage, philosopher, or monk who offered this wise advice, "Do what you are doing." If it is time set the table, then set the table, attentively, consciously, and thoughtfully. If it is time to pare potatoes, then pare them with attention, living fully in that moment. If it is time to write a letter, sit down and do that task, fully, completely, with all one's attention.

Somewhere, sometime when I first heard that, I scoffed. I was a young mother, and if I gave paring potatoes all my attention, the young children would be getting into mischief. And to be sure, the sage, philosopher or monk could not have been a young mother of young children. It is not always possible or desirable to do what you are doing instead of rightly dividing the mind of Mom in a dozen different and necessary directions. On the other hand, too much multi-tasking does not make for a centered, grounded, and thoughtful life. It becomes a habit, and then one lives a splintered and divided thought life.

Just for today, I am going to try to do what I am doing. I will try to bring all of myself and my attention fully to what I am doing while I am doing it. I will not listen to my friend with half my mind on my plans for dinner. I will not read a book to my child while thinking about what we are going to do next. I will not allow thoughts about wedding plans and arrangements to intrude upon my devotions and prayers. I will not listen to narrations while thinking about what poems we'll memorize next, how to decorate that strange corner in the living room, what to do about the plumbing, why the lady at the grocery store looks at me funny, where the money for repairs is going to come from, when my dad is going to burn the house down, what to do about that character flaw in that child, how to use the fennel in the fridge before it goes bad, when to weed the garden....

I will try to do what I am doing.

Gleanings

Rick Saenz has a nifty tool in his sidebar where he links to articles he finds interesting but doesn't have time for or see a need to comment on. Here's one of them that interested me:
The Myth of Multi-Tasking- this interested me because I used to rather pride myself on my abilities in this arena (which abilities probably weren't any greater than any other woman's). But of late, I find my mind feeling fractured, discombobulated, unfocused, and I want to do this less, not more. There is a place for it- particularly with young children when you might be listening to an older child recite a poem while changing the baby's diaper, or going over a lesson with the children while you brush and put up the girls' hair, or making two or three things in the kitchen at once.

But...

In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence

and....

In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”

because...

Russell Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.” His research demonstrates that people use different areas of the brain for learning and storing new information when they are distracted: brain scans of people who are distracted or multitasking show activity in the striatum, a region of the brain involved in learning new skills; brain scans of people who are not distracted show activity in the hippocampus, a region involved in storing and recalling information. Discussing his research on National Public Radio recently, Poldrack warned, “We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus...

so we should ask...

what might this mean for today’s children and teens, raised with an excess of new entertainment and educational technology, and avidly multitasking at a young age?

Answer: We don't know. But it might look like this:

The picture that emerges of these pubescent multitasking mavens is of a generation of great technical facility and intelligence but of extreme impatience, unsatisfied with slowness and uncomfortable with silence: “I get bored if it’s not all going at once, because everything has gaps—waiting for a website to come up, commercials on TV, etc.” one participant said."

On the other hand...

The report concludes on a very peculiar note, perhaps intended to be optimistic: “In this media-heavy world, it is likely that brains that are more adept at media multitasking will be passed along and these changes will be naturally selected,” the report states. “After all, information is power, and if one can process more information all at once, perhaps one can be more powerful.” This is techno-social Darwinism, nature red in pixel and claw.

But then again...

“I think this generation of kids is guinea pigs,” educational psychologist Jane Healy told the San Francisco Chronicle; she worries that they might become adults who engage in “very quick but very shallow thinking.

A hundred years ago my favorite educator, Charlotte Mason, noted the same thing:

...we turn out young people sharp as needles but with no power of reflection, no intelligent interests, nothing but the aptness of the city gamin. (volume 6, page 55)

Charlotte Mason also stressed the value of teaching children to gain control of and direct their attention, to focus, and that's the next point in this article as well:

When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention. People who have achieved great things often credit for their success a finely honed skill for paying attention.

Once upon a time, the scattered mind, the brain that flitted from thought to thought without any ability to rein itself in and focus was the mark of a juvenile, immature mind. FOcused, steady attention was the mark of maturity.

Times have changed.

And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

Full disclosure: while writing this post I had two conversations with two daughters, read two articles, an email, and googled Langston Hughes.

Texas CPS At Work

Here's a video. Watch at your own risk. I don't even have sound and I found it agonizing, stomach wrenching, and had to quit watching at one point. IT's not that it's graphic. It's that watching the stark, raw pain of a mother who is having her infant taken away from her by the state is just more agony than I can handle.

A good political maxim

Give all the power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all the power to the few, they will oppress the many..." - Alexander Hamilton

That first clause is, I think, forgotten too easily today. There are many who hold to the fantasy that a pure democracy is the only way for liberty to be preserved. In this situation, though, the only way to guarantee one's liberty is to concur with the majority and hope for their tolerance if that's not possible.  Democracy often spirals down to mob rule... and mob rule is never egalitarian.

Chernow expands on another facet of this when he says that, "the American Revolution was to succeed because it was undertaken by skeptical men who knew that the same passions that toppled tyrannies could be applied to destructive ends." (p. 65,  "Alexander Hamilton")

FLDS June 20th

Ken and Kbp both left me links to this story in the comments- The earliest search warrant Kbp can find for the Ranch is dated April 6th. But the Ranch was raided on the 3rd and both children and documents taken. We can find the affidavit, the application, so-to-speak, but not any actual search warrant dated the 3rd. And this may be why:

"But a local judge had initially refused to allow Texas Rangers to search the compound, according to a statement from Texas Ranger Leslie Brooks Long. Long then took the same information to a different judge, who approved the search warrant, his statement says."

Ken says he'd like to see that statement. So would I. Kbp believes they used this order rather than a search warrant from the 3rd until the 6th.

More on Nancy Malonis' 16 year old client- recall that the restrictions Malonis had placed on her client whose interests she is supposed to protect basically amounted to house arrest. Now I think we can guess why- officials are trying to serve her a subpoena to get her to testify before a Grand Jury. She doesn't want to and officials can't find her. So she's seeking a restraining order against Willie Jessop, saying that he's been intimidating her client. Jessop points out that he's been in Utah all week long, so he can't be the reason the girl doesn't want to testify. He says it's not his fault her client doesn't like her, and she doesn't seem to:

When the teenager could not be located by investigators or her attorney, court officials contacted Malonis to tell her a letter had been filed with them, purportedly written by the girl and claiming that her attorney had said ''untrue'' things about the FLDS.

Previously Jessop said Malonis' client had called him asking how she could get another attorney because this one didn't listen to her. Malonis was then telling the world that her client had a child claimed by another mother, and this turned out to be false.

If they're subpoenaing this girl, then likely other subpoenas have gone out as well, probably to other alleged under-aged mothers or child-brides. When CPS went to court for the 14 day hearing/Kangaroo Court, they said they had 20 women who had conceived before the were of age. They didn't explain that they had to go back ten years to find that many, nor did they point out that ten years ago, 15 was of age, nor did they mention that the FLDS weren't even in TExas until about four years ago, so any such instances would have been in other states under those state laws. So this could be very interesting.
-----------
Here's more on Malonis and her client. Malonis says that

During a meeting at the YFZ Ranch, Malonis said that Jessop told her that the girl needed an ad litem who would advocate for the FLDS lifestyle.

"Mr. Jessop informed me that if I was not willing to take such a stance in (the girl's) case, then I was 'against the FLDS' and he would get another lawyer for (the girl)," Malonis wrote. "(The girl) said nothing during the entire conversation, even when I directed my comments and questions to her."

However, her client just might not have been speaking to her because she doesn't like Malonis:
In a letter to Judge Barbara Walther, the girl denied being a sex abuse victim, said she was not pregnant and accused her attorney of acting against her wishes.

"I have tried to work with her since, and have tried to cooperate with her," the girl wrote. "I have told her the truth, but she continues to make derogatory statements about my religion and my family."
[...]
Earlier this week, Malonis was told that the girl would be subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. A couple of days later, she said the girl sent her several hostile e-mails about being subpoenaed and refused to answer the phone. On Thursday, the Texas Attorney General's Office told her that the girl could not be found.

Hades: Handbasket

Shasta sent me the following two links to two stories about which I simply cannot think of anything to say. My jaw has been agape for fully five minutes:

17 Teen-age girls make a pact to get pregnant:

Principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine in a story published Wednesday that the girls confessed to making the pact after the school began investigating a rise in pregnancies that has left 17 girls at the school carrying a child. Normally, there are about four pregnancies a year at the school.

Sullivan told Time that nearly half of the expecting students, none over 16, were involved. Sullivan said students were coming to the school clinic multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and "seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were."

One father is a 24 year old homeless man, but the article doesn't say anything about the rest.

And then there's this story of court interference in a family matter that doesn't involve any abuse at all- unless it's the abusive way this 12 year old child is treating her father and the court system:

A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl's grounding, overturning her father's punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online using a friend's computer.

The father's lawyer Kim Beaudoin said the disciplinary measures were for the girl's "own protection" and is appealing the ruling.

"She's a child," Beaudoin told AFP. "At her age, children test their limits and it's up to their parents to set boundaries."

"I started an appeal of the decision today to reestablish parental authority, and to ensure that this case doesn't set a precedent," she said. Otherwise, said Beaudoin, "parents are going to be walking on egg shells from now on."

The internet usage is just the most recent in a long history of violating house rules, and she used the court appointed attorney from her parents' long and contentious custody battle to sue her father.

There is no real authority without responsibility, and vice versa. I say that since the court removed this father's authority, it removed his responsibility as well, and he should no longer be responsible for paying her bills, providing shelter and clothing, or anything else.

(Link added- thanks Harmony!)

Frugal Links and Thinks

My weekly post is up at Frugal Hacks- this week's 'what do you have in your hand' post is about....
reusing envelopes.=)

And, of course, it's Frugal Fridays at Crystal's Blog.

A few weeks ago I blogged at Frugal Hacks on gardening with old-fashioned plants that propagate themselves, and Meredith at Merchant Ships recommend a book that sounds wonderful= Passalong Plants. She says

"It’s a quirky and humorous guide to plants which thrive on old homesteads and are often passed from one gardener to another.

Not being a great gardener myself, these hardy plants that spread quickly are exactly what I look for!"

Likewise- I didn't own that book; it is not on my Amazon wish list and my wish list at paperback swap.
I also thought I'd share that in March, my husband and Jenny dug up around fifty day lily plants from the old homestead farm and transplanted them into individual tires in our fancy hillbilly tire retaining wall. A handful have started blooming, and several others have good, strong buds. By next year, I expect there to be a riot of orange all over the retaining wall in the summer months. I think I will plant white morning glories as well and then we'll have that creamsicle affect, which will make us feel cooler on the inside even when we're covered with a glistening sheen of sweat on the outside.

Why Not Improve Public Schools Instead of Choosing Home-Education?

But the question remains, does home education really cost less than public school? Would it be more beneficial to improve the existing schools and get more 'bang for the buck' there (and improve everyone's education)?


That's assuming what many homeschoolers do not concede at all- that it is ever possible for an institution, no matter how well-run, to provide the same quality of education that committed parents can provide within a family. I do not believe that even the best public school in the world is a better place for my children. I can't speak for anybody else's children, but I believe mine are better off at home than they are in government institutions 180 days a year.

I believe parents are directly responsible for their children's education. Whether they handle that responsibility by educating their children at home or by paying a tutor, or by banding together with other parents and running a school, or handing
that over altogether to a third party is their business. But I do not believe others have a responsibility to provide me with financial support in my endeavors to educate my children, so I am not sure why others feel a sense of entitlement to my family's funds in their endeavors to educate their children.

I believe that charity is a personal responsibility, but the focus in each person's life should be in 'what should I be doing,' not 'what should they be giving.' I believe that it is good for each of us to do what we can to support others in charitable endeavors, and that should include helping the poor in many ways, including to educate their children. But my bent is for personal rather than institutional actions.

I don't believe in government interference in education, nor do I believe in
federally regulated and mandated charity.
I think that the path we have chosen, government schools and government
charity, has led to poorer standards of education, poorer people- impoverished in spirit, in understanding, in freedom. I believe good teachers are increasingly shackled by testing requirements, paperwork, and mandates for social engineering and that should have no place in public schools. I believe there is a choke-hold on those public schools, making it increasingly difficult for good teachers to do their work. I also think this is the nature of institutions.

On Presidents, Alexander Hamilton, and Pragmatism

A few years ago I read David McCullough's brilliant John Adams (which, has anyone seen the HBO production based off of it? Was it good?). I decided I needed to read a biography of Thomas Jefferson for balance. It only took me three years, but I finally got around to it this month. After *that* I decided two things:
1) I needed to read a biography of Alexander Hamilton
2) I should start a project I've been wanting to do for a while: read biographies of the American presidents in sequential order. Since I'd already started with Adams, I decided to press forward right now and skip Washington 'til later. I'm getting quite a bit of him in the Hamilton biography and from other places, enough to give me a good sense of the man.

Thus, as soon as I finish my biography of Hamilton I'll start in on one of Madison. This should be fun. :) For Hamilton, I just went with whatever was on the library shelves. This means I'm pushing my way through Ron Chernow's 700+ page book, Alexander Hamilton, an appropriate - if also unimaginative - title.

So far it's excellent and it's been really good to read this biography immediately after one on Jefferson. The two men had such opposing ideas on what it meant to be a free country and I find myself grappling with which vision I think works better.
Really, I think Hamilton had a better understanding of human nature. In one of the Federalist Papers he wrote:
"Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom & perfect virtue?"


And while Jefferson rhapsodized about the French Revolution, Hamilton worried about its unrealistic fervor and the potential consequences of that mindset. As he wrote to Lafayette, "I dread the reveries of your philosophic politicians who appear in the moment to have great influence and who being mere speculatists may aim at more refinement than suits either with human nature or the composition of your nation."

Does it follow that someone with a better understanding of human nature will conceive a better plan of governance? I'm still trying to decide that one. Jefferson's ideas are quite beguiling, especially in light of the way the federal government has become so monstrous in our time. And yet, can that truly be blamed on Hamilton? I don't think that what we've got today fit into his vision either.

And in a world lacking perfect wisdom and perfect virtue, I suppose we'll always be striving for balance...

The Envelope Felt 'Round the World

More from Living More with Less:

The book is arranged in sections- the first section is on the general principles of Living More with Less, the second part has chapters on specific areas of living more with less with ideas collected from members of the Mennonite community around the world, homes, homekeeping, celebrations, recreation, eating together.

Within each section ideas are arranged or designated under the following topics:
Do Justice
Learn from the World Community
Nurture People
Cherish the Natural Order
Nonconform Freely

There is plenty of food for thought here, and a good number of useful, practical ideas. I get the most from the sections on nurturing people and nonforming.

I am in favor of 'justice,' (who isn't?). But I get the least out of that particular section. First of all, we don't quite agree on our terms- she defines justice in a way that seems most unjust to me and more about forced egalitarianism. And she makes connections that I simply cannot follow.

On page 23 she shares a story she heard from a missionary to India in the fifties. This woman was opening her Christmas cards and throwing away the envelopes. Her language teacher came in and told her "The reverberation of this wasteful act will be felt around the world." He was unhappy because the envelopes could still be used for writing by cutting them open and writing inside them.

I've done this- for several years all my shopping lists and notes from Bible class were written on the inside of envelopes. When the children wanted paper to color on, I slit open old envelopes and they used the insides. I think it's a great idea. What I don't think is that this is going to affect people on the other side of the globe whether I do this or not.

Mrs. Longacre says that this is a 'tycpical North American reaction to that story,' so I guess I'm guilty (she says that feeling guilty and objecting to it is the other typical North American reaction), but I don't really feel guilty, I feel annoyed.

She says typically we (Norte Americanos) will say, "Okay, how? How does throwing out blank-on-one-side paper affect people on the other side of the globe? I don't see the connection."

She responds by saying she could present 'pages of facts, statistics, and graphs to make a case for that link.' But she doesn't do that, so we are not to know if we agree with the methodology, numbers, or conclusions of those pages of data.

Then she says we import 'a great many of the resources which underpin our way of life.' Well, yes. I'm not sure how true that is for paper and envelopes, but let's grant that vague point as confirmed. Then it seems to me, if it is true that third world countries make our envelopes or the paper that goes into them, we'd be helping them by buying more, not less.

But, she objects, we export higher-priced manufactured goods. The math here isn't working for me.

Then she talks about the arms industry, and I completely have lost the connection to reusing paper envelopes here.

Then she talks about the Evil Corporations which actually control the world, quoting 'Economist John Kenneth Gilbraith to bolster her point, as well as Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and Frances Moore Lappe's Food First. In Sumatra, she says, they can sell lumber, but not plywood because of tariffs in Japan.

Sider's book was answered by David Chilton's Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators, thought probably the best approach is to take the best of both books and make your own outline for living.

And none of this seems to me to have anything to do with whether or not my family recycles envelopes.

Haditha

Most of the Haditha Marines have been exonerated, though the government is appealing.

In an interview with nationally syndicated radio talk host Michael Savage, the lead attorney for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani said he and his client will look into suing Murtha and the Time magazine reporter, Tim McGuirk, who first published the accusations by Iraqi insurgents.

But the attorney, Brian Rooney, said nothing will happen immediately because he wants Chessani, described as a devout Christian and the father of six homeschooled children, completely "out of the woods" legally before any action is taken. The government, through Lt. Col. S.M. Sullivan, today filed a notice that it would appeal the case to the next judicial level.

Rooney suggests citizens complain about it- he sounds like a lawyer with a lot of passion for his case, and close connections to his client:

Rooney, an attorney for the Thomas More Law Center who served a tour of duty in Iraq himself, is urging citizens to tell their representatives in Congress and military officials that they want the case to come to an end.

"At some point you have to have somebody in the chain of command, whether it's civilian or military, saying enough is enough," said Rooney, who served with Chessani in the second battle of Fallujah.

Rooney told Savage the Haditha case is the largest investigation in the history of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, with 65 agents assigned by the government.

The old 'bleeds, leads' standard at work again:

He noted the New York Times featured the case on the front page when it was being compared by war critics to the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam. But now, with evidence the Haditha accusations were a smear, the story has been relegated to the back pages.

Newsbusters has more

There's a roll call of those who formerly rushed to judgment here.

And more here:

Of the eight marines accused, six had all charges against them dropped, and a seventh - Lt Andrew Grayson - was acquitted after facing a court martial.

Only one marine - Sgt Frank Wuterich - still faces charges in relation to the incident.

Sgt Wuterich will be tried on nine counts of voluntary manslaughter later this year.

The Thomas More Law Center has more on the government's appeal. The Law Center calls it persecution.

The Historian: the novel and a minor note on real history

Krakovianka asked me how I'd liked the novel The Historian. It is, after all, a Dracula novel and I don't much care for vampire stories. The DHM was rather quizzical when I brought it home - "A vampire novel?" Because of various things (namely, my reading too many books at once and not having time for another), she ended up reading it before I did. She said she thought I'd love it... and she was right. With the exception of two lurid and totally unnecessary chapters and some language, this book was an outstanding summer read. Kostova's novel is filled with the pleasure of travel, the pangs and pleasures of history, suspense (required in a Dracula novel, I suppose), and the delightful intensity of historical research. In reading her descriptions of Constantinople, I was reminded of the gentleman on the plane to Europe who told me he thought it was one of the most beautiful places he'd ever seen. I suppose I must now add it to my "places to see" list, although I don't feel as comfortable going there alone as I do several other places.
Constantinople wasn't the only location in this novel, though... there were glimpses of Oxford, of Amsterdam, of Orthodox monasteries in Eastern Europe and Roman Catholic ones in Western, of Bulgaria and Romania, and a little bit of Hungary. Much of this novel is also set during the Iron Curtain years and there are some interesting allusions to events happening then.

~~
Slightly related, I should like to register my complaint with the way Transylvania tends to always be associated only with Dracula. It's a fascinating region in its own right. Maybe that's part of the reason I liked the novel so much - Kostova took the time to explore this area for its own beauty and to explain the tensions of empire that made Transylvania such a contested region.

Since this is a post from The Equuschick--

No doubt you are all ready for something completely different, but she can't help it, she simply must tell you all about her last lesson with her Western Pleasure instructor so if you were looking for a romantic post you'll have to make one up yourself.


The Equuschick roped her instructor with a lariat. And then she thought she was going to fall out of the saddle she was laughing so hard, because she had no business to be doing something so coordinated with a rope and she isn't quite sure how it happened. Only he dared her and claimed she couldn't do it at all, since she had never held a lariat in her life and her ignorance was crystal clear.

But somehow in her perverse desire to prove him wrong (poor Shasta, take note) she threw it and it landed over his head and shoulders and he stood there climbing out of the rope with a dumb-founded but amused expression.

The Equuschick is rather dumb-founded herself, truth be told. And since the camera had all ready been put away there is no proof that she did it, but she assures the Common Readers that it is true.

It will remain a Golden Moment of Glory in her memory forever. (It had better, anyway. Because she'll never to be able to repeat it.)

A box of fluffies?

A friend of mine recently moved from the state of Washington to New Zealand (yes, I'm squelching envious feelings here), and she has been writing various tidbits about her life there and what is different from where she lived before. One phrase she mentioned was "a box of fluffies," which she told me meant "I'm fine" or "doing good." I tried to look it up to see where on earth that phrase had come from, since I had never heard it before and was fascinated, but alas I had no luck. Do (or did) any of our readers live in NZ, and can they possibly give me any insight on the origin of that phrase?

Random Nothings

The wedding stuff is a joy, a delight, and the wedding planning, it's consuming our lives and we are become boring people. So we have decided to set aside one day a week as a sort of Sabbath rest from all things wedding related. This way we will remember that there are other things going on in the world, and we will come back to it the next day refreshed and renewed. You want to know how well our new SIL 2b fits in with our family? The oldest two girls and I discussed this yesterday afternoon. Last night Shasta called to talk to us (his Equuschick was spending the night with a friend and unavailable for phone chats until a bit later). While we were talking another friend of his called and wanted to discuss wedding stuff. Shasta told him he couldn't talk, and then got back on the line with me. He said he was just too tired of details to discuss wedding plans anymore that day, and then he started falling over himself apologizing, explaining that wasn't what he meant exactly, and backtracking in horrified confusion that he might have put his foot in it with the mama-in-law and I couldn't reassure him soon enough because I was laughing too hard. When I quite laughing, I told him we'd already decided to have one day a week where any discussion of wedding planning stuff was absolutely verboten- just that day. He was both relieved and enthusiastic.

All four of the oldest Common Room Progeny are away today- three of them had overnight stays, and the fourth went to go pick them up and take the grandparents to a doctor appointment, so it's very quiet around here.

While EC has been away, the Zeus dog has been my constant companion. I am thinking he'll have to come over for doggy play dates once he leaves home. I took him for a walk about 11:00 this morning. I was wearing my big floppy hat with the large green and blue flowers on the brim, my lime green baggy t-shirt, tan stretch pants, only mine are baggy, and polka dotted canvas shoes. The only part that really embarrassed me is that I realized, about fifteen minutes down the road, that I'd dribbled coffee down my green shirt as we walked. I took my coffee with me, you see, and set the cup down when I was done to pick up on the return journey home. Apparently, I can't walk and drink coffee at the same time. I met nobody but the mail-lady, and she was more interested in keeping an eye on Zeus than on my coffee stained self.

Mosquitoes are out in full force, which I would not have noticed if Zeus hadn't been with me. They never, ever bother me. We will be out some damp evening and the rest of my family will come in swollen, red, and itchy, and I have a hard time not believing it's psychosomatic since they don't even come near me. Zeus, however, was followed by a swarm everywhere we went.

Mulberries are also out- I don't much care for them myself- tasteless, insipid things, I find them. But the youngest two Progeny love to pick them and eat them straight from the tree. In these days of rising grocery and gas prices, I should probably make a more diligent effort to use what's in our hands and try some of the Mulberry Receipts.

Many years ago, the day we were going to court to finalize two adoptions, we all got dressed up real purty and drove to the courthouse, some 45 minutes away. When we got there, we discovered that Pip and Jenny, then 2 and 3, had left a couple of mulberries on the seat of the car where the HG was sitting. So she had a large and very purple stain on the seat of her favorite go-to-meetin' dress. I don't remember how we helped her hide it during the adoption proceedings- probably just stood around her and behind her- large families are so useful. At home later I used this recipe and the entire stain came out.

Blest told me I need to walk fast enough that I can still talk, but not sing. Does it count if I am singing in my head? I haven't been able to get Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence out of my head all morning.

So I mentioned I've been doing this sugar-free, low carb thing, we're at about two weeks now. I did avoid the bag of chocolate I found in my closet. I gave away the last three chocolate raspberry kisses left from Mother's Day. I skipped brownies, I passed on doughnuts, and I'm eating my tuna salad without bread. But this weekend my brother and his family were down for a visit and we had tuna salad on croissants and summer veggie pizza (crescent roll crust topped with cream cheese/mayo/dill mixture and sprinkled with fresh cut veggies and cheese, and I did not resist. It was delicious. After dinner I even cut myself a piece of the delicious looking chocolate cake- a piece almost as large as a tootsie roll. Oddly enough, it tasted awful to me, artificial and plasticky. I spat it out in the trash can. Later I asked the HG how she liked it, and she said it was delicious.

The HG says you change your tastebuds over time- they replace themselves or something. I didn't think it took two weeks, though. According to this article, it's about every ten days. Vindication for our practice of always requiring the Progeny (and ourselves) to take a tiny taste of everything at every meal, even if they don't think they like it. Further vindication- just this week, Jenny, who has always loathed squash, took her mandatory tiny bite of some stir-fried squash, and took seconds- she suddenly discovered she likes it (if cooked just until crunchy, not mushy).

I have been enjoying this rich and real tasting desert- it sounds awful, but I love it:
3 tablespoons sour cream (organic, full fat preferred)
2 tablespoons dutch processed cocoa powder (I think it must be dutch processed)- this is 2-3 carbs
1-2 tablespoons sugar free chocolate syrup (the kind you buy for coffee)
1/4 to 1 teaspoon of orange extract (to taste, and read the label, some extracts have extra sweetener, some don't)

Stir until smooth. Eat with a spoon. It's like a mousse, smooth, creamy, chocolate, and satisfying.

Yesterday the HG took my dad to the dentist- I had to be north of here with three of the PRogeny, and Grandpa's dentist trip is south. He was anxious about payment, because he doesn't have a debit card, check-book, or credit card anymore. He wanted to be taken to the bank and had to be redirected. He had to have a tooth pulled, and then had to go to the pharmacy in another town to get pain killers and antibiotics for two more teeth due to come out. So she was driving him around hither and yon for several hours. At one point, he thanked her profusely, saying, "If you'd not been here, I wouldn't, I wouldn't....' he struggled to figure out how he meant to complete that sentence. Then he said, "I wouldn't have anything today."
She said, "Sure you would, Grandpa. You'd still have that tooth!"

FLDS June 19

Slim pickings.....

Excellent, excellent op-ed at the GoSanangelo website- just a taste:

Let the government violate the law today to "protect children" and you empower it, tomorrow, to violate your rights in pursuit of other objectives. How will you redraw the line once you have crossed it "just this once"?

This isn't just a case about child endangerment; It's about the rule of law and the American system of government. Those who commit such crimes against the rule of law - whatever their office - should pay a price in court or at the ballot box. If they don't, the rest of us someday will.

For those who think that Texas was working to confirm identities of the parents and children, or to validate birth certificates, read this link and note two things:
1. The recent request for birth certificates for YfZ couples comes from ARIZONA, not TExas. and
2. Jeff Duncan, director of the Utah Office of Vital Records and Statistics says,
"I never heard anything directly from the state of Texas."

Further:

"During custody hearings in April, a Texas judge refused to accept birth certificates offered by FLDS women as proof of their age or their status as a parent. Duncan said Texas officials never contacted his office about the authenticity of the documents."

As somebody else on another comment board pointed out: 'So if the Texas authorities never bothered to check with Duncan's office to see if the documents were legitimate, how could they claim the documents were fake? Texas authorities - (Walther,and CPS) failed to do even this most obvious and basic research.'

"However, FLDS members contacted Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. for help, including verifying information on the documents. Huntsman's office, in turn, asked Duncan's office whether it was possible to authenticate birth certificates.
"I told them I could verify facts and the paper it is on, but I never heard back from them," Duncan said"

None of the authorities who publicly called the FLDS liars, who said that they had faked birth certificates, who said that adult women were minor children, took any steps to verify their birth certificates.

Public Policies to Support Homeschooling?

If we want to make homeschooling a viable option to everybody, what would we need to do to support it?

I am totally in favor of homeschooling, but it already is a viable option for those who want it badly enough, and I am not sure I see why it's anybody else's responsibility to 'support' it. I do think it's important not to hinder it. That means not imposing expensive costs (testing) and legal restrictions (teaching certificates) and other restrictions that are designed for public institutions are private, home-based, cottage industry.

Lower taxes would be nice, for everybody, not just us.

What really enabled us to homeschool seven children on one enlisted man's salary is not something that can be measured in dollars and cents. It's a lifestyle, an attitude. Things like the fact that we don't watch television, don't have cable, won't go to the movies, don't care for status symbols, buy our clothes in thrift shops, and don't feel cheated if we can't eat out more than once or twice a year, and
think arcades and amusement parks are not nearly as fascinating as a pond or a
city park, the fact that we genuinely like our children as people and enjoy
their company and don't feel compelled to make snide jokes about what a burden
they are and how we can't stand to be around them more than a small number of
hours each week without going crazy- this type of thinking goes further toward
making homeschooling possible than anything else, and there's no public policy that can or should address those issues.


How much voucher/tax credit you should receive?

There is disagreement amongst homeschoolers about this issue, but speaking for my family- we don't want a voucher or a tax credit. We want the government to stop taking money it has no right to take for involvement in areas it has no constitutional rights to be involved. And we want this for everybody, not just homeschoolers.

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

I mentioned that at the library recently to overcome some noisy boys, I would start humming every time they started talking loudly. My favorite song to hum was 'Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.' They didn't know why, but I did.

A friend says he's never heard that one, so here are two very different versions:


A more down-home sound from Rick Saenz at Cumberland Books.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly minded,
for with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human vesture,
in the Body and the Blood
he will give to all the faithful
his own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
spreads its vanguard on the way,
as the Light of Light descendeth
from the realms of endless day,
that the powers of hell may vanish
as the darkness clears away.

At his feet the six-winged seraph;
cherubim with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the Presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry,
"Alleluia, alleluia!
Alleluia, Lord Most High!"

When Time is Not Money

Brandy, who blogs at Afterthoughts, left such a perspicacious comment on our post "Homeschooling labor costs" that I wanted to share it here to make sure everybody sees it:

I agree with you, DHM, that most of us don't fragment our time by saying that this is learning time and this is not. Though we might reserve special times for, say, reading aloud together or doing our math worksheet, most homeschooling families I've met seem to approach all of life as a learning experience.

These questions are intersecting with some of my recent reading in interesting ways. For instance, they seem to represent what James Taylor (who wrote Poetic Knowledge) would call a postCartesian view of education. Before DeCartes, there was the reigning view that all of life was educational, even though we might spend certain hours devoted to study.

And then there is the idea of attempting to quantify the intangible (something Postman discusses in Technopoly). I am not one to believe that time really can equal money. For instance, there might be money saved when we do something ourselves, but then there is the intangible benefit of character and skill developed by becoming more competent rather than more helpless and dependent, and I'm not sure anyone can even begin to put a number to what that is worth.

I think, in this modern culture, we feel more comfortable if we can weigh and measure something. But this is an overextension of science. Education, since it is by nature both a physical and spiritual activity, cannot be quantified, nor have a monetary value placed on it. It is truly an area for wisdom.

There are two books to add to my wishlist. And this intersects with some of my reading as well. In Living More with Less Mrs. Longacre writes:
"...most of the maxims by which North Americans handle money aren't found in the Bible, not even in Proverbs....
One of our most pervasive notions is that time is money. ...as far as I have been able to determine, the idea is found in no language except English nor in any culture outside of North America."

She wrote this book in the seventies, so that may well have changed. She also notes that many returning Mennonite missionaries have observed that in many other places people are "rich in time. Time is not equated with material gain. Time is a free gift. Time comes from God, the source of life."
I know some would point out that this may be why many other places are third world countries, and there is probably some truth to that, but surely there is a balance, a middle ground.

There are times when I think time is money- a salesman on commission who already knows how to change the oil and filters on his car might do better to pay somebody else to do that tedious job (especially now with oil disposal fees and restrictions). My husband doesn't work on commission, but he does prefer to pay somebody else to do that job because he needs his time elsewhere. However, he is planning on doing it himself a few more times in order to teach the girls how to do that job. Once they know how, he will encourage them to pay to get it done instead, but as Brandy said, knowing how to do it yourself if you need to is an advantage that isn't calculated in dollars and cents.

Time is also required for relationships. When he shows the girls how to change the oil and filters, that will be time spent on those relationships. Right now it is actually cheaper for us to buy our bread at a bread store 45 miles away than it is to make it- if we combine that bread store trip with other trips we already needed to make. We can buy organic whole wheat bread for .89 a loaf and avoid heating up the kitchen altogether, also saving us a couple hours of bread baking time.

During the summer, that's what we're doing- when we don't have a trip to the bread store and we're out of the bread in the freezer, we just do without bread. But teaching my daughters to bake bread has an intangible value, as Brandy pointed out. Not only do they learn a skill that enables them to be a little more independent than otherwise if they need it, this time spent on bread baking is also time spent on our relationships. Children open up and talk more with you when you are doing something worthwhile together. So come fall, when I won't mind heating the kitchen, the FYG will be learning how to bake bread with me, because that time is too valuable to exchange for mere money.

FLDS June 18

More on Nancy Malonis, who first demanded that her client, a 16 year old girl, not be sent home without a court order requiring further protection because she believed the girl had a baby being claimed by another mother:

You'll remember that Nancy Malonis, the court appointed lawyer for the 16 y.o. daughter of Warren Jeffs, first told the world that her client had a baby being claimed by another mother. This was false. Then she said that it wasn't her idea, she got it from law enforcement- which suggests that nothing the girl herself told her attorney supported the attorney's actions against her client. Then she got a court order that amounts to placing this 16 y.o. on house arrest, as it:

"restricts travel by the girl beyond her and her mother's home in the San Antonio area."

She is quoted in this article as making vague, unsubstantiated accusations not only against other FLDS members, but their attorneys, saying other girls

'could be at risk.

' We've seen before that when state agents begin using weasel words like 'could be' their statements generally mean the opposite- if girls only 'could' be at risk, then they just as likely could NOT be at risk.

"My client is not by any means the only one in that situation," Ms. Malonis said. "And coming up, I think you will see more restrictions and more action – either by [court-appointed lawyers and special advocates for FLDS children] or CPS."

It might well be so. We've seen the pictures of Jeffs kissing a 12 year old, and I assume CPS will want to do something about that. We've heard there are five minors (four of whom will be 18 this year) who have babies or are pregnant- the state might want to do something about that (the fact that they didn't already indicates there are problems with their evidence). But I want to know how she knows this confidential information about other minors who are not her clients.

Susay Hays complains about her colleagues:

any court-appointed lawyer "who has reason to believe her client is being sexually abused, which includes underage marriages, should be taking steps to protect her client – investigating it further, discussing it with their clients."

I ABSOLUTELY agree- and the fact that others do not seem to be doing that indicates that Malonis and Hays are reaching- that no other court appointed attorneys are seeing what they are seeing, that they do NOT believe their clients are at risk.

"I'm not going to get into specifics, but there is evidence that the order is warranted and necessary," Ms. Malonis said. "Her mother signed the order. This was not a snap decision. A lot went into it."

Still, lawyer Andrea Sloan of Austin, who represents several FLDS teen girls, said a May 29 ruling against CPS by the Texas Supreme Court returned to sect parents the right to decide where they and their children will live and with whom they'll associate.

"It starts getting into a real ethical gray area when you start getting court orders that are against your client when they're 15, 16, 17 years old," Ms. Sloan said.

Given that Judge Walthers did set down very restrictive conditions for the Jeffs' girl, this statement makes no sense to me:

Former Dallas County family court judge Jeff Coen said that state District Court Judge Barbara Walther of San Angelo had little choice but to issue her one-size-fits-all release order on June 2.

If this were true, how did Malonis get her client placed an order so restrictive it amounts to her being under house arrest?

And this is simply outrageous in terms of utterly blind disregard for the trauma the children experienced when CPS removed them:

"We are proceeding with the investigation as quickly as possible, always with the safety and security of the children as our first priority," Mr. Crimmins said.

Bill Medvecky has another idea for helping families recover from CPs' tender mercies- next time you go to Home Depot, buy a gift card for them and put it in the mail- ten dollars buys a lot of seeds and a few hand tools. Next time you're in a fabric store, pick up a gift card and mail it to them- ten dollars can help buy sewing notions, or a couple yards of fabric.

The FLDS and their attorney point out that the dossiers the state of UTah compiled on 16 members and sent to Texas amounted to slander and libel and should be corrected. I found it very disturbing as well- none of these people were ever convicted of a crime or accused of anything specific more serious than looking funny at people and being suspected of thinking unpleasant thoughts.

Gregory A. Hessian of The New American writes:

The issue of taking children from any family — regardless of its ideology — must be governed by law and due process, not hysteria over religious or political beliefs fanned by a statist press corps.

And he goes on to give a timeline of events, beginning with the hoax phone call from Rozita of Colorado:

This fraud points to the widespread potential for manipulation in the child-abuse-hotline reporting system. Any disgruntled neighbor, angry ex-spouse or boyfriend, roommate, or enemy can make an anonymous false report and be believed. A mere allegation from such a person will prompt the agency to literally knock down the door to get into a home to check on the children. If and when the agency figures out it has been played for a chump and has improperly brought down the entire weight of the law on an innocent family, a great deal of harm has already been done, as is the case with the children at the YFZ Ranch.

He does get the order of events a bit wrong- placing the wrenching and brutal separation of babies and toddlers from their mothers before the 14 day trial rather than after.
He notes that the hearing was about beliefs, not practices, as Angie Voss and company played Thought Police:

The DFPS argued, as a reason to take the children, that “there is a mindset that even the young girls report that they will marry at whatever age, and that it’s the highest blessing they can have to have children.” Thus, in the agency’s view, inculcating respect for motherhood is “abuse.”

A review of the trial transcript shows that the judge made no pretense of providing due process, or of trying to decide the cases on an individual basis.

Hessian has some experience with these matters, and he points out the real purpose of CPS 'service plans:'

In reality, these plans contain boilerplate provisions that are primarily designed to provide information to the agency to use at the final trial against the parents — a tactic I’ve seen repeatedly in my legal representation of families torn apart by the so-called child-protection services.

A cover letter of the “plan” contained the following statement: “CPS’s [Child Protective Service’s] investigation of the Yearning for Zion Ranch found evidence under Texas law of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Because of what CPS found, CPS removed your child from the ranch. After a hearing, the judge agreed with CPS’s belief that your child was not safe from abuse. The judge gave CPS temporary custody of you [sic] child.”

The Judge couldn't have 'agreed' that every child was not safe from abuse, because neither CPS nor the Judge even knew how many children they had. At the hearing they claimed to have 413 children in custody. Afterwards the numbers went up, and up (and not even accounting for the 'disputed minors,' i.e.adult women CPS falsely accused to inflate their numbers makes the numbers come out right).

The points Hessian makes about how this case exposed typical CPS actions to the light of day are particularly well worth reading. And his conclusion is a chilling but accurate statement of where we stand today:

If the state can take children without due process from this religious group, then it can take them from anyone whose religious or personal beliefs are disfavored by the state.

This episode should be a warning to all families that an arbitrary attack by the state against a family can happen to any of us and that a court will likely not protect the family from overreaching state social workers or false reports of child abuse.

Birthin' Babies

Just curious, if this is not too personal--did you birth any of your babies at home?

Our first three children were birthed in hospitals- one a civilian hospital, one an Air Force hospital, and one at a Navy hospital. Our civilian hospital was still requiring practices that had been discarded by other, more enlightened hospitals for decades. The military hospitals were better, but still not what I wanted. Then we adopted two children (they were older than the baby, but younger than the others).

Then my husband finally agreed to let me have a home-birth, and our last two were birthed at home. With our seventh I completely went over to the crunchy side and did something I never, ever thought I would do- I let all my children who wanted to come into the room and watch. They all wanted to.

The Equuschick cut her brother's cord.

I loved my home birth experiences- superior in every way to our hospital births.

Who Could Ask for Anything More?

Questions from a friend in another state who has a fun sense of humour, and almost all material is grist for my blog mill:

Got your to-do lists written out?

This has been amazing for me to watch. When she was a child I used to call her my white queen (from Alice Through the Looking Glass) because she was so scatty. The first day or two after they set the date we joked that the Equuschick was the 'bride who doesn't do anything.' I think she was just stunned. The third day she went to the store and bought office supplies.has a huge fat binder of wedding planning stuff for her. She then bought smaller binders for each member of her family and member of the bride's side of the wedding party. These are full of lists and arrangements and ideas and phone numbers. Her notebook is about as big as she is, and she totes it everywhere, keeping all important information in it. She really has grown into a disciplined, organization fiend, and I wish I could say I had something to do with it, but I think the only influence I can claim for this transformation is by way of being a horrible warning.

Are you going crazy yet?

How can you go somewhere you haven't ever left?

~Are we having fun yet!!??
We have not stopped having fun. Just tonight the HG had a brilliant idea for a wedding venue- it's a place we've noticed is always beautiful, spacious, includes a piano, and good parking.
The Equuschick only glared at us and forbade us to mention the local funeral home to Shasta. The HG and I made ourselves sick with laughing over her expression. So here I am, carefully not mentioning it to him. (Hi, Shasta! Avert your eyes, I wasn't talking to you because I am not allowed to talk to you about that thing I wasn't talking to you about)


~Oh...You haven't really mentioned much about your sil 2b in the past few posts...
I have been remiss. How could I have neglected to mention what a fine Christian young man he is? What a terrific, totally delightful, darling sil to be he is? They are so perfect for each other. He tells me at least a couple times a week that he loves my girl, and he still talks to my husband or me several times a week to tell us that he loves us, too. He's asked my husband for advice, and he's given me some good advice this week, and he tells us all hilarious stories that keep us in stitches. He's been so helpful with wedding plans, and he remembers to talk to the littlest siblings as well, making them very happy. What a treasure.

~Do you all pretty much like him?

Nah, not much.


~Is he going to fit in okay?

As you can see, it's quote to be quite a difficult adjustment. After all, he's just about six feet tall, and only one of us is as tall as 5'6".


~Do ya think he knows what he is getting himself into?

Well, he thinks he does, but we know better, don't we? Muahahahaha.

~Does he like to read?

Well, not like the rest of us. Neither does my husband. He likes to listen to books on tape, though.

He does have one talent my husband does not share- he sings. I can't tell you how much we'll enjoy adding a male voice (an on key male voice) to the family sing alongs. He also plays the guitar.

Homeschooling labor costs

That is one of the things that I would like to try and quantify. What value do we put on the cost of labor?


Some things are priceless. What financial value do you put on the cost of nurturing my children, and why would we want to do that? What price shall we put on my efforts to teach them to be honest, hardworking, knowledge seeking, loving, kind, thoughtful, reasoning, human beings? Is there a price-tag on sharing my faith with them?

What is the cost of labor for sitting up with a sick child all night? Can you estimate the cost of teaching a child to tie her shoes or to offer her seat to an elderly person or to clean up her messes or to bake cookies or to volunteer her time at a nursing home or to share her allowance with a homeless person?

These are just as much a part of our living, parenting and homeschooling as math and
reading and writing. There are not rigid boundaries. The edges blend into each other and cannot be separated.

Maybe other homeschools are different, but our own, and those of the other hsers whom I know, do not compartmentalize life in such a way that one can say, "Aha, that is a homeschooling hour, that is not."

Kitchen Tool Hack

We broke our spatula, the flat one you use to turn pancakes or burgers on the grill. We forgot to replace it and the HM was grilling burgers and wanted one. We live too far from town to justify a trip like that for a hamburger turner.

He took one of my large metal spoons- single piece construction, and hammered the spoon end flat, like a spatula. Beautiful.

Worked for him.=)

more at works for me Wednesday

The Perogatives of Maturity, or Something

I am at the library computer while Pip and the FYG are volunteering and the Boy is watching a special visitor do a demonstration with his small exotic animals. The two adolescent boys on computers next to me are playing computer games and being very LOUD and RUDE and ANNOYING. I asked them once to be quiet, but they are not.
So every time they get noisy, I start humming. Loudly. I am going to be a very embarrassing Old Lady.

CPS Induced PSTD

An online friend emailed me to share this, but wished to remain anonymous:

"You answered 11 questions out of 22 Yes.

"Your score is 50%. You have experienced a trauma and now you are showing symptoms that are similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is important to talk to your doctor, a therapist, or other healthcare provider. You may also learn more about PTSD below."

I thought I was dealing with it better than this, but I'm sitting here sick at my stomach... and I feel guilty calling it trauma, since it seems like it was such a little thing -- certainly it was little compared to what many other people have experienced.

Ten years ago while we were living in military housing, a neighbor reported us to Family Advocacy for child neglect, with a list of thirty-something items we were doing that she thought were just awful. Most of them were purely imaginary, some of the rest were distortions or exagerations of things we actually do. But hubby and I both had to undergo psychological exams and I (because the charges were all directed against me) had to be interviewed and answer each item on the list.

The social worker was very hostile. She didn't approve of homeschooling, or of us not having a television, or of the way I fed my children... and lots of things of that sort.

ONE claim against us was substantiated -- that I left my children unsupervised. That makes it sound like I went to the mall while they were home alone, but actually, I went inside to use the bathroom while they were playing in the back yard.

We had to take parenting classes under this woman and she eventually figured out that we were really pretty decent people, but in the meantime, on account of this, we were denied permission to let my ailing daddy come live with us so I could look after him, and he died alone.

I'm still angry over that whole thing, and I find it very very hard to trust people -- and I'll never ever trust the people who have the power to take my children away.

We had an incident with s similar beginning, but a better ending. The Equuschick was an escape artist, and she often got up in the early morning hours and went outside to play, or to wander the neighborhood. We lived in base housing and could not add extra locks to the doors, and she could unlock all the locks already on the doors. She also was very small for her age- at 4, she looked about 2. At 5, she looked about 2 1/2. She was quick, and even when I was with her, she could disappear in the blink of an eye. I would invariably look in the wrong direction for her and she'd be gone. She would also simply refuse to speak to people she did not like, and so they often thought she could not talk at all.

One day a neighbor called the police, and I think this is why it turned out well for us. If she'd called family services, I am not sure how things would have gone. She gave the police an earful, and fortunately for me, most of it centered on my letting a 2 year old out to play. He came to my house, I acknowledged that yes, she did often hide and then go to that neighbor's house to play with her awesome outside toys, and that I was very frustrated with this and doing everything I could think of, but I couldn't add locks to the doors, and no, she was not 2, she was almost 5 years old, and kids her age walked to kindergarten alone on our base every day. He told me to try harder (in a nice, just doing my job way), and he left.

I have often thought over the years of the daughter of friends of ours who became a social worker in the state of California. She came to visit her parents the first year of her job, and her attitude was simply zero at the bone chilling. She boasted about her authority, and how those parents she dealt with had better to do exactly what she said, and no nonsense or she'd just put their kids in foster care- she displayed an appallingly self centered, self complacent sense of power, and absolute no awareness of what her petty little demi-god stance could do to the children. They were simply tools to use in her control of other people's lives.

I'm not saying there are no good foster parents- there ARE. I am not saying there are no good social workers. There certainly ARE. I am saying that there is an institutional mindset of circling the wagons rather than addressing the problems within the institution, and that there is no real remedy or recourse for parents who get stuck with the bad ones, whether they are bad because they are mediocre or outright rogue agents.

Vignettes from Historical Home

Badly out of tune piano

Gardens and courtyard viewed from second story.

Stairs

Original stained glass window, used in family chapel area.

Advantages: beautiful and convenient location
Beautiful price (50.00 for the entire day)
Wonderfully quirky lady with big hair and bigger heart who seems willing to do just about anything.
We love it.
The Equuschick loves it.

Disadvantages:
The guest list would have to be trimmed, again, this time to perhaps impossible levels. Many of our dearest friends have large families- Four of our families make up about half the guest list, and that does not even include the EC's co-workers or the HM's sisters.

Solution: have wedding at free community center fifteen minutes away.
Have reception at more expensive community center near this house (they share a lawn and parking lot)- pay to have the house opened and guests can tour the house, and the wedding party could get pictures taken here before the wedding.

I don't think the EC likes my idea of having them do two weddings for two different batches of guests.

Strawberry Season

Isn't this a fun strawberry? It tasted good, too. :) Some of us think it looks like a little person, and some of us think it looks like flower petals. Oh, and The Boy thinks it looks like just a strawberry. What do you think?

Back to Biographies

For those who asked which biography of Jefferson I read, I chose American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis. I read his excellent Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation a couple years ago during one of the most academically vapid semesters I ever had at the community college (that's saying a lot!) and I relished the stimulation this book provided. So when I found his biography of Jefferson at a used bookstore, I snatched it up.
After reading it, still in the habit of note taking from last semester's classes, I jotted down some thoughts:
"In this book, Jefferson appears as a brilliant visionary and one America as a nation is ever indebted to, but also as someone who needed pragmatic and compromising companions for anything at all to be effected.
His view of government seemed to be that - once the restraining holds of government were loosened - man would govern himself sensibly and well. He seemed to feel that a free man could always be trusted to do the right thing. Of course, this is not so - government by the people alone can be just as despotic and evil as that of a supreme dictator, to paraphrase Jefferson's Great Counterbalancer, John Adams.
Today we like to think of America's 'founding fathers' as being unified in a single vision and spirit. Although they were all self-proclaimed lovers of liberty, they often had violently opposed ideas on how it ought to be achieved. Jefferson hated the impositions, perceived and otherwise, of the federal government - most notably that of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall. He preferred the idea of states that were much stronger than the federal gov't, even lending credence to the notion that states could refuse to accept a federal law. This, in an unpublished manuscript, was prudently advised against by James Madison. Since Jefferson conceded, it can be seen that he he may not really have gone to such drastic lengths and was only carried away by a hyperactive political imagination, something he definitely possessed.
This imagination often allowed him to ignore inconsistent realities: He thought himself one of the few champions of real liberty and yet possessed slaves (perhaps even fathering children with one of them); he argued against a large gov't but used such a government for the Louisiana Purchase.
His life, while inconsistent, was still one of great profit to the nation. The ideals he vocalized still permeate our perceptions of justice and liberty today."

That's all I have from the Jefferson bio (although I underlined heavily in my reading); I read it perhaps too quickly, happy to be reading a history book without *needing* to worry about a paper on it.
For my biography of Hamilton, I'm taking things a bit more slowly. This is partly by choice and partly because wedding planning, general family summer stuff, and delicious novels like The Historian keep distracting me. ;-)

More biography stuff in the future...

The Wedding Plans Continue

We thought we had a venue settled, and then we had second thoughts. Here's our options thus far:

1. Community center in small town fifteen minutes from here- it's attached to the library and has heat and air, carpeting, nice bathrooms, nice corner area with comfortable couches and chairs, small stage, folding tables and chairs to be arranged as we like so long as we put them back, a gorgeous baby grand piano that is in tune and sounds lovely, tiny kitchen- we couldn't cook there (no room), but we could keep food there, replenish trays out in the main room, serve coffee and tea, and so forth.
It's free.
Disadvantages: It would need decorating- this is negligible, but it's something to consider.
There's no 'ready room,' no place for the wedding party to wait privately, they will have to dress at our house and then go to the building and walk up a long walk from parking lot to entrance. We hope it does not rain.
We'd have the wedding and reception in the same room, which is awkward. We could eliminate tables, and afterwards have the ushers and groomsmen move chairs back from rows into circles- or have guests help move their own chairs. Granny Tea says plainly, "It's better to have no reception at all than to have the guests help with anything." We disagree and we know our friends disagree, but the Equuschick is worried about Shasta's family.
Parking is a bit cramped.

2. GORGEOUS historical house we just visited today, about 20 minutes away. Very fun venue. Would not need decoration, or not much more than a pot or two of flowers - many of the decorations already there are green and purple. Only costs 50.00 for the whole day, and the very funny, big-haired, quirky, sweet, down-home woman who runs the show says we can have it free for the rehearsal unless somebody else asks to rent it that night, in which case, she'd ask for the usual 35.00 fee. The brides could get ready and wait upstairs in a very spacious and loverly antique bedroom. The groomsmen could wait upstairs across the hall in an equally cool room decorated with vintage military uniforms, flags, and other antique military accouterments, an old copy of the Constitution, and that sort of thing. Our Shasta is a veteran of the Iraq War.
Plenty of parking.

Disadvantages:
It does cost more, but this cost is negligible.
The guest list has to be halved; capacity is only 70.
There is a piano, not in the room where the wedding would be, and it sounds atrocious. This is really the most serious concern the EC has. We'd have to figure this out. The piano is high on her list of non-negotiables. If we could the baby grand from the first place to the second, we'd be set.

The reception COULD be at another community center just across the lawn from the historical home. There are basketball courts and playground equipment outside for young guests if they need to expend some energy. The community center seats 200. Disadvantages- it costs 100 dollars for just five hours. The lady in charge (a different lady from the one above) says that usually they just let people have it for the day. Decorating and getting the cake there in advance would be hard unless she agreed to let us in MUCH sooner, and she might agree now, but I've seen other such arrangements backfire when they aren't written down. Parking would be a breeze- people could walk from the house to the community center.

OR we could drive ten minutes away to the first community center with the baby grand piano and have the reception there for free. It is a slightly prettier building and we could decorate the night before. Parking is not THAT hard, but it is more confusing to those who don't know the area.

Right now we're planning on cake, nuts, and mints for the reception. If we use the historical house, then we may have a larger reception guest list than wedding guestlist. I thought of a finger-food potluck (a tradition in the church family of my youth). We won't have dancing or alcohol at the reception (I don't want to explain or argue about why), and I'm trying to think of some alternatives that reflect the eclectic tastes of our favorite young couple.

Who We Are

A new reader asks how to keep us straight, who we each are- basically for a more formal introduction:
We are a Christian family, and we homeschool. Want more?
HEre's who we were when we began this blog:
Who we are:

A family of nine, homeschoolers, ravenous readers, computer junkies, news addicts and more.

Where we live: in a 1200 square foot house with one bathroom in the country- cornfields as far as the eye can see in front of us, creek and woods behind us. We own thousands of books.

Further information, compiled by the members of the Common Room:

We are a boisterous family
::editress: No, we are not::

They love to hold heated and loud conversations.
::editress:No, we do not!!!!!!!!!!.::

This should not be taken as poor familial relations but rather as the Irish side 'coming out.'

We don't live in the little house anymore. We built a great big house with almost enough room for the children and our books. After three years in that little house with one bathroom I got a little carried away and the new house has four. There are still times I wish I had a fifth, just what they call a 1/4 bath, I think.

Our Firstborn Progeny is the HG, for Head-girl or History Girl, as you please. She was born in 1983. The HG is a history major at a university 45 minutes away, and she is a student who, tongue in cheek, claims to be Practically Perfect in Every Way and miles behind in her homework. We don't understand how she can be both perfect and keep her homework miles away. Now that we think of it, we don't understand why she makes her homework remain at a distance of miles behind her. She should allow it to walk beside her and be her friend.
Furthermore, it is our understanding that propinquity of student and homework is necessary if student expects to complete said homework. But who are we to question the HG?

The Head Girl also likes to be known as She Who Must Be Obeyed, which causes the EquusChick to snort in a distinctly horselike fashion.

The newly engaged Equuschick and her Shasta will be moving into the little house mentioned above, henceforth to be known as the lovenest, or Turtledove Hall, or something equally smarmy and embarrassing to the Equuschick who says I embarrass her. We are taking suggestions on deliciously smarmy names, btw, an Idea I just now thought of.

As to my embarrassing her, I had thought to reduce my tendencies in that department. But my new Son-in-Law to be says he likes it, and I should write what I like, and that being embarrassed by our excitement is good for her character, or something like that anyway. I probably did not hear anything else he he said after he said I should write what I like. Have I mentioned lately how much we love this man, how blest we all are, how delighted that these two who are so dear to us have plighted their troth (or should it be will plight their troth?)? I'll probably mention it again very soon.

When we started the blog we wrote that

the EquusChick dispenses horse-sense and nonsense. Your job will be to discern betwixt the two.

There are many misconceptions about EquusChick (born in late, late 1984 for those who wonder), one of them being that she is always in another world. On the contrary, she has been known to have as many as three Sentient Moments per week. During these moments, she has been known to display something that looks surprisingly like Cognitive Intelligence. When she is another world, however, we feel compelled to tell you, for your own safety, that it is sometimes Best to Leave Her There.

I doubt that she will blog with us anymore when she leaves our home to make her own home with Shasta, which makes me sad. Of course, she might continue if Shasta wishes her to- she listens to him better than to me, which is about as it should be, and fortunately he is somebody worth listening to- have I mentioned how much we love him? Yes? Oh. Maybe he'll join us, and wouldn't that be fun!

Chronologically The Cherub is next. Developmentally she is the youngest, functioning at about the level of a two year old. She was born in 1987, and we adopted her in 1992- December of 1992. Two weeks before Christmas. She does not speak, is still in pull-ups, and she she has only a few signs. The last few moves and a couple major family crises have not been good for her, and we desperately need to regain our footing and find a good schedule for her so she can regain lost ground.

The next Common-room member is our dear Jennyanydots (1989). She keeps us all in order, finds things lost, comforts those who need comforting, and handles all the artsy-craftsy departments. She does not enjoy our rather sarcastic bent, and therefore we are less sarcastic with her than with our more hardened Common Room denizens. After all, we not only do not like to hurt our gentle Jenny, we need to be on her good side.

We tear things. She sews them. We lose things. She finds them. We break things. She fixes them. We buy things that need to be put together and she puts them together. For Jennyanydots we "now give three cheers- On whom well-ordered households depend, it appears."

Pipsqueak, we wrote, 'shall be dispensing something, but she's not telling what just yet. We do know it won't be Spelling.' She chose photography as her speciality, and she's bashful, but brilliant, of course. Born in 1990, she likes computers, cameras, music, animals, and reading. She is very quiet, and has an extremely refined sense of silliness and satirical drollery on the inside where it really counts. And her spelling has improved dramatically.

Our two youngest children are a girl (1996) and a boy (1998, and no, we were not trying for a boy, God just has a sense of humor and after me saying all my life that a boy would be all right, but I certainly did not want my last child to be a boy because then everybody would assume that's what we were doing, trying for a boy, and I find that assumption insulting to my dignity and my valuation of our first six children, and so, God gave us a son and then we birthed no more babies).

First Years, we called these two when we started. That hardly fits now. I should have thought ahead further, and my inability to do that is not only the bane of my life but it is quite inconvenient for my loved ones as well.

At the time we began our blog, I wrote that these youngest children

'are two sprites known sometimes as Whose-its and Whats-its, and other times as the First Year Boy and First Year Girl (FYB and FYG). They shall not be posting if we can keep them from the computer, and we do intend to do that a few years longer.
A blog is a somewhat public activity, but there are Limits, and were we to permit these two to post, there is no telling what family secrets would be revealed. Visitors to the household are regularly regaled with all the news that has ever occurred within the family in their entire combined life-times. This includes such head-lines as the Lost Tooth, My Friend Abigail, My Tinker-Toys, My Poor Foot, That Boy Who Came to Our House, What Mom Said When the Toilet Wouldn't Flush, What the Head Girl Did When We Hid Her Math Book and What EquusChick's Room Looks Like and other such unedifying topics. We are doing our best to be Censors and Squelchers of the Running Historical Commentary.

This won't stop us from sharing Running Historical Commentary of all their doings, calculated to be of such a nature as to embarrass them for the rest of their natural lives. We see it as our duty, and we are slaves to duty.'

HOwever, the FYG now reads the blog from time to time and so we must be more careful about what we say about her.

About the parents:
My husband (the HM, or Headmaster) joined the Air Force one year after we got married (we married in 1982). We have traveled all over the world together, and I have been a stay at home mom since our first was born. He retired after 20 years in, and now manages a small chain of grocery stores.
I like being a sahm, a homeschooling mom, and my husband's wife. I read, I have a passion for writing (hence, the blog), and I collect books. I think we probably have 8,000. We're still cataloging.
And we are both very delighted in our son-in-law to be. He's definitely a keeper.

Thoughts from reading Living More with Less (some of them are very near quotes):
There is beauty in the exercise of discipline and self-control.

There is not a pre-packaged instant way to simplify our lives.

We can read books, blogs, magazines, and attend seminars on the topic, but we have to close the books, turn off the computers, and DO.

"The trouble with simple living is that, though it can be joyful, rich, and creative, it isn't simple."

Simple living begins with tiny steps, changing the way you think about things, accepting alternatives. Mrs. Longacre gives the example of a woman who has decided to make bread for the new neighbors, but then realizes she doesn't have enough flour. Instead of running to the store for flour, she makes muffins instead, saving time and money, and leaving the flour buying for the weekly scheduled trip to the grocery store.

"He who oppresses a poor man insults his Maker,
but he who is kind to the needy honors him. Proverbs 14:31

Today

The Cherub had an appointment for Physical Therapy at 7:30 a.m. Really, I could just end this post right there, because, I mean, 7:30 AM?!

My husband brought me coffee, got her up, washed her hair, put the tea tree oil ointment we use on her feet, got her dressed, and then reminded me that my coffee might actually still be hot, and if I got moving, we might not be late. I drank half my coffee, and fortunately had laid out my clothes the night before, I don't do make-up, and my hair style involves a comb, a barrette, and a scarf or bandanna, so I was ready in ten minutes. We both skipped breakfast, as our stomachs were not yet awake.

The appointment was nothing major- she needs to be measured for compression stockings because they not only do not make them in her small size, they do not even make the tape measure they use to measure her legs in her small size.

We left the therapist's office and went to go get a snack and then some gas- the van was perilously low. I also looked for anything in the sale aisle that might be suitable as a wedding or reception decoration. When it came time to check out, my credit card (we mostly buy on credit all month and pay it off at the end of the month) was not in my purse where it belongs. I tried to use my debit card, and it didn't work either. It only works about 20 percent of the time. I looked for some cash that one of the Progeny had previously told me she'd put in my wallet, but the wallet was as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard. So I asked her to hold my stuff while I ran to get cash, and the cashier agreed.

I got out to the van and while waiting for the five minutes it takes for the Cherub to climb in, I called home to see what was going on. Progeny on the line said she knew where my credit card was- she saw it yesterday on the computer upstairs. Progeny elsewhere had used it a couple days previously to order new music lesson books online and had not returned it. I asked Progeny on the line where the cash was that she said she'd put in my wallet. There was a brief silence and then she said, "WEll, I must have put it in your other wallet." The other wallet would be one I have not used for the last four or five months- I just haven't thrown it out because it still has all my pictures. There was not a brief silence as I spoke at some length about things that would not be edifying to share. I said I was going to go to a store where my debit card did sometimes work, and then I still needed gas because I didn't think there was enough to get home.

The debit card never has worked very well, and we understand this is a problem this bank has, but we use them for other reasons. However, today I decided that this just was not good enough. So instead of going where I told Progeny on the line that I was going to go, I went to the bank instead. I spoke to them at length (they were very kind and civil) about pieces of plastic that seemed to serve no purpose other than to take up space in my wallet and make me look like an idiot when I tried to actually use them.

As they tried to figure out the problem, my husband walked in- they recognize him as he does business there often, and he gave me cash and a hug- he is a prince among men. He said the Progeny on the line had called him to see if he was in the area because she thought I might need him. It is true that my blood pressure goes down when he walks in the room (except on those occasions he is the reason it went up in the first place;-)), and it was nice to have him there. Then he had to run to go on to work. The bank people figured out that the only thing they could do with my card is shred it and send in for a new one- a wait of two weeks. And I needed my husband's social security number and signature in order to do that.

Fortunately, I am a retired military wife, a Delta Whiskey in military lingo, and I know his social security number better than my own. Fortunately, too, I live in that small town I do, because she just handed me the application and told me to fill in his signature as best I could in order to save time. So I filled it out, signed his name for him and mine for me, and we were done.

In spite of my rather lyrical 'where I'm from' there have been a lot of hard adjustments about living here, and there are many things that we do not like. Three of my children say they will not live here forever.

But there are things I do like- like letting me sign my husband's name for the application, and like the fact that when I returned to the other store, even though it had been about an hour longer than I the cashier it would be, she had saved my bags and met me with a smile and sympathy, and wish that the rest of my day would be better than this beginning.

Homeschooling and Price-tags

Do you consult with other adults? What is the cost of their time? I am curious as to just how much homeschooling actually costs.


I talk with other adults, friends, about homeschooling, sharing ideas, trading information and ideas. Sometimes teachers who are also friends have made suggestions or offered ideas and tips, just as I have offered to watch their children for an appointment, or shared a recipe or a budgeting idea, or told them of a great place to find some item they say they are looking for. We do these things because we have relationships, we are part of a community. We are friends. Why would I put a price-tag on those discussions any more than I would on discussions about the garden or politics?

Not For Younger Readers

In the 80s it was satanists and child-sex rings:

IN Bakersfield parents spent 14 years in jail, only released when their little boys, after spending their lives in foster care, grew up and hired their own lawyers to get their parents released- and to tell the court how their testimony against their parents had first been gruelingly implanted in them by 'investigators' and then coaxed out of them by false promises and misleading claims.

Those people who say of the YfZ raid and holding of 450+/- children that 'if it saves just one girl, it was worth it,' are fools, frankly, willfully blind to the real harm and trauma that results from 'saving' children in far too many cases. The Kniffen family were torn apart by over-zealous law enforcement and social workers when their sons were 6 and 8 years old. They didn't see them again until the boys were adults:

Brian Kniffen, now 20 years of age, testified on JUL-25 how he was coerced and badgered at the age of six by social workers and district attorneys. Interviewed after the closed hearing, he said "I believed my mother's words when she said to do what these people said. And I believed them...when they promised I could go home if I just said it all had happened. So I did. ...And I never did go home.". Commenting on district attorney Andrew Gindes, he said "He would slam books down, yell when we wouldn't cooperated. He was demanding and scared us and wouldn't take no for an answer...I wish I could talk to him now and ask him... why, why did he do that to me?" Brian lived in a total of 16 foster homes, some of which were abusive. When he was 13, his grandparents, Dick and Marilyn Kniffen, were finally able to obtain custody. His brother Brandon, age 23, testified that he had never been molested by his parents and that he only agreed to say so after many grueling interviews. He related "For a long time I felt deserted by my family...I didn't know that all along they were trying to see me, get custody. I just thought they had forgotten about me."

On 1996-AUG-12, Judge Jon Steubbe of the Kern County Superior Court overturned the convictions of both the Kniffens and McCuans, and ordered their immediate release. His main reason was that the "the interviewing techniques used to obtain information from the minors were fraught with undesirable consequences." 5 They had been in prison for 14 years and isolated from each other for crimes that they did not commit -- in fact for crimes that never happened

--------
You find higher numbers of molesters and abusers in the clergy for the same reasons you find them in any other field where predators have access to prey- social work, education, foster care provider, scout leader, child psychologist- And in all of these groups, the predators have a further advantage because institutions tend to protect themselves.

Since they ought to know that predators will attempt to infiltrate their numbers, all of those in a position of authority in these institutions need to work on humility, willingness to admit it when the institution or its members have failed, and the willingness to protect those who are vulnerable and in their care.
World Magazine (worldmag.com) also filed a report on this in their March 30, 2,002 soc.religion.christian

In 2002 background checks uncovered criminal histories among DSHS employees (CPS) in Washington State:

Reported by Chris Ingalls, KING 5 News

SEATTLE - More than 150 state Department of Social and Health Services
employees have serious criminal convictions, according to the latest batch
of criminal background checks ordered by the state legislature.

There are still more employees to be checked out. [...]

The state patrol has now completed background checks on two thirds of the
state's DSHS employees and they've found scores with convictions.

Of the 9,000 screened, 166 have serious criminal convictions. The most
recent batch includes one manslaughter, 32 workers with one or more assault
convictions, and two employees convicted of indecent liberties.

Washington State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, sponsored the law
that requires DSHS to conduct the checks.

"There definitely are more individuals turning up under these background
checks than I envisioned," said Kohl-Welles. "It's very disturbing to me."

The background checks are to screen out employees like James Gregory,
profiled in a story by KING 5 last year.

Despite a lengthy criminal record of drugs and weapons convictions, he was
hired by a state licensed group home. On the job for 7 months, he allegedly
raped a 13-year-old resident of the home.

"It's kind of ruined my life," said "Samantha," a group home resident. "It's
ruined a lot because it's hard not to think about it. I'm thinking about it
all the time."

DSHS says employee criminal records are being analyzed by a review team.
They're not automatically being fired, but some are being reassigned as soon
as their criminal histories come to light.

"At that point we make sure that that person no longer has contact with a
vulnerable adult," said Ken Harden, DSHS. "We either give them another job
or we put them on what's called 'home assignment.'"...

Notice that the background checks could only uncover those who had been caught, tried, and convicted. It doesn't find anybody who hasn't been caught yet. Who knows how many children suffered at the hands of this state sanctioned protector before he was caught:

According to police in Austin, Texas, Billy Dan Carroll spent the better part of the past three decades assaulting and raping dozens of victims -- from girls as young as two years of age to adult women whom he lured to his home and then drugged into unconsciousness.
His alleged acts ("alleged" because Mr. Carroll has yet to be convicted of a crime) are reportedly documented on videotapes kept in his possession.

Austin police Sgt. Brian Lloyd, a 22-year veteran child abuse investigator, has rarely seen the like of Mr. Carroll, who he describes as “the worst of the worst…. Several of these children were abused multiple times.”
[...I snipped the next bit because it made me gag to read it]

In 2004, he became a court-appointed special advocate (CASA) for abused children. This means that he worked -- albeit as a volunteer -- for the same Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that recently abducted 460 children at gunpoint from their parents at the FLDS Church's YFZ Ranch.


It also means that Carroll was given access to many children -- some of them, perhaps, from abusive homes, others from homes and parents that were not abusive by any reasonable standard, but nonetheless were deemed unsatisfactory by the omniscient custodians of the State's children at the Texas DFPS.
[...]

Predators go where there is prey. Any institution with a higher than average proportion of children will have a higher than average proportion of creeps who prey on them. The more vulnerable those children are, the more attractive they are to creeps who prey on them.

Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn made a statement in 2006 about the Texas foster care system.[29] In Fiscal 2003, 2004 and 2005, respectively 30, 38 and 48 foster children died in the state's care. The number of foster children in the state's care increased 24 percent to 32,474 in Fiscal 2005, while the number of deaths increased 60 percent. Compared to the general population, a child is four times more likely to die in the Texas foster care system. In 2004, about 100 children were treated for poisoning from medications; 63 were treated for rape that occurred while under state care including four-year old twin boys, and 142 children gave birth.

As our regular readers know, the phrase 'err on the side of the child' drives me so wild it almost makes me stamp my feet and bite the air in fury. When we are talking about foster care, there is no such thing. If it is an error, it is NOT on the side of the child. And many times even when the home is not what it should be, the children do not benefit from this 'erring on the side of the child':

Children whose families are investigated for abuse or neglect are likely to do better in life if they stay with their families than if they go into foster care, according to a pioneering study.

The findings intensify a vigorous debate in child welfare: whether children are better served with their families or away from them.


Kids who stayed with their families were less likely to become juvenile delinquents or teen mothers and more likely to hold jobs as young adults, says the study by Joseph Doyle, an economics professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who studies social policy.

"The size of the effects surprised me, because all the children come from tough families," Doyle says. The National Science Foundation funded the study.

Doyle says his research, which tracked at least 15,000 kids from 1990 to 2002, is the largest study to look at the effects of foster care.

So it turns out that not only is it not 'erring on the side of the child' when you remove a child from a healthy home because you only suspected abuse, but even marginal families which do have issues are, it's not 'erring on the side of the child' to remove him and place him with strangers.

Quiz on PTSD

See here. Care to share your results? I'm trying to get some perspective on this one.

Loving Your Neighbor

I didn't write this- the husband of an online friend did. I liked it so well I asked if I could swipe it, and he said I could:

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, trying him: "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"
And he said unto him, "'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.' This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets'" (Matthew 22:35-40).

What is the "big picture"? That is a question that many ask-- details may be well and good, but what is the greater idea involved? Many may ask this question in regards to spiritual matters-- what is the "big picture" when it comes to how we should be serving God? What are the great commands that we should follow?

We recognize that the lawyer in Matthew 22:35 does not ask his question in sincerity-- he is seeking a way to trap Jesus. Jesus provides the answer without being trapped; one must fully love God (Deuteronomy 6:5), and one must love one's neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19:18). Everything else depends on these two commands.

Jesus' selection is compelling; He does not quote from the Ten Commandments, as perhaps people would expect Him to do. Instead, Jesus selects two statements made in various parts of the Law that truly summarize the rest of the commands.

Much could be said regarding the command to love God with one's whole being, and perhaps we will find an opportunity to do so at another time. The command to love your neighbor as yourself proves to be quite a challenge. On the surface, the statement is quite simple and easily understood; nevertheless, to truly love one's neighbor as oneself is no easy thing at all.

We first must recognize that the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself encompasses many specific exhortations and prohibitions. As it is written:

Owe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law. For this, "Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet", and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, namely, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: love therefore is the fulfilment of the law (Romans 13:8-10).

We can see why Jesus would use this verse in Leviticus and not something from the Ten Commandments or some such thing: many of the commandments are summed up in the idea of loving one's neighbor as oneself. As Paul establishes, loving your neighbor means to seek the best interest of your neighbor (Romans 13:10, 1 Corinthians 13). If you love your neighbor as you love yourself, you will not injure him or his interests, and you will avoid all kinds of sin.

Yet loving one's neighbor involves far more than just not sinning against him. Just as we would appreciate assistance, mercy, compassion, kindness, and the like in times of need, so we ought to provide assistance and show mercy, compassion, and kindness to our neighbors in their need (Luke 6:36)! Love requires us to assist the one loved just as much as not sinning against them!

The force of the charge to "love one's neighbor as oneself" was acutely understood by those in Israel. We read how a lawyer tested Jesus in Luke 10:25-37 by asking the same question. In this encounter, Jesus asks the lawyer how he understands the Law, and he comes to the same conclusion that Jesus does in Matthew 22: love God and one's neighbor. Nevertheless, the lawyer sought to justify himself-- "who is my neighbor?", he asks. Jesus' response-- the story of the Good Samaritan-- clearly exposes the obvious yet challenging reality: everyone is our neighbor. It was not sufficient for the Jews to just love their fellow Jews; it is not enough for us just to love the ones closest to us. We must love all of our neighbors as ourselves.

We can see that there is great value in understanding the commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" in terms of a summation of the Law, but we should not forget that this statement does not exist in isolation. We can learn much by considering the context in which God first uttered this command in Leviticus 19:18:

"Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people; but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD" (Leviticus 19:18).

God does not make this statement in an attempt to summarize the Law-- He makes this statement so that Israel can see that they ought not seek vengeance or hold grudges against their fellow people! The only way to cure such feelings is to love your neighbor as yourself. Paul indicates that no one ever hated themselves (Ephesians 5:29)-- therefore, we should not hate any of our fellow man.

A desire to retaliate against wrongs suffered, whether real or perceived, is a natural inclination. Under the old covenant, God made provision for retaliation to occur: the lex talionis, "eye for an eye" legislation (Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:17-22). This legislation was given to limit retaliation so that the vengeance taken would not exceed the original wrong suffered.

Nevertheless, Jesus expected those who would follow Him to take a higher path. In Matthew 5:38-48, He challenges people to suffer wrongs without retaliation, and to love one's enemies, not hate them. A similar expectation is provided in Luke 6:27-36. Paul exhorts the Roman brethren to the same type of conduct in Romans 12:19-21, concluding by saying:

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).

Love your neighbor as yourself: a command that seems so simple and yet is often quite difficult to practice fully. It means that we must not sin against but rather do good to everyone with whom we come into contact. They may like us, be indifferent to us, or even hate us; the charge is the same. They may have helped us, done nothing for us, or even hurt us; the charge is the same. We must respond to all people with love, mercy, and kindness-- there is no room for vengeance there! After all, would we not We would appreciate to have the same courtesy shown to us? Let us, therefore, show it to others, and love our neighbors as ourselves!

Ethan R. Longhenry

Cordless Crockpots

I have owned this book for a very long time (a gift from a dear, precious friend), and I can't believe I didn't read it before. It's really a gem.

The book is Living More with Less, and it's by the same author as my favorite More with Less Cookbook.

Here's an idea I'd like to try- has anybody else done this?

Stuff a deep basket (or icechest? Or box?) with newspaper. Make a hole in the center that will fit your bean pot. In the morning boil soaked dry beans for 15 minutes, then put the pot inside the nest of newspaper in the basket, covering with a heavy blanket or pillow. The beans will soft and still hot at supper time.

Another lady says she just brings her rice to a boil, turns it off, and then wraps it with a thick towel and the rice is done in an hour (I am not sure if she uses white or brown rice).

This would be a great way to save money on gas or electricity and keep the house cooler while cooking.

Crafty Question

According to this website:

I would suggest using a 2 part castable acrylic [Sourcing Environmental Tech Castin' Craft Clear Casting Resin 32 oz. can ].

Dip the flowers in this and allow to dry. Should give you a crystal clear finish and will be workable. If you need to thin it down add paint thinner (I think that's what I used last time make a small batch first to be sure).

Somebody else suggests:

To