Being Real

Over at Dominion Family, Cindy has been writing about the nature of online friendships. She linked to Alexandra Stoddard's interview here- it's quite good, and I cannot do it justice in a quote or two.

I spend a lot of time on the computer- admittedly too much of late. But here are some ways I reduce that time:

On Twitter I do not follow many people. I follow topics- and right now that topic is the CPSIA.

On Facebook, I am a bit of a snot. I don't go around reading all the updates or leaving lots of messages- I scan a quick few. I mainly use it to look at photographs friends have taken, and to leave messages for some of our daughters' young friends (-teens and twenty somethings- they are the facebook age, after all) who I think need a bit of encouragement, and as a bulletin board (messages to our church adoptees, for instance, asking if they want to come out for the weekend). I frankly resent it when friends my age (and I mean real life friends, not internet pals) think a public message on facebook is a substitute for meaningful discussion and interaction.

Email- I don't email much, although I usually do answer emails. Not always, unfortunately- and while I am getting better, it tends to be the more important ones I don't answer- I set them aside because they deserve time and attention, and then the sieve in my brain let them slip through. I do prefer writing emails to writing snail mail because hand writing hurts my hands.

I never telephone anybody. It's a phobia. My answering machine broke, and now I have to answer the phone, but I dislike it immensely and my children know that and will usually answer for me.

I just about NEVER 'chat' in real time- not with AIM, FB, Google, or any other feature. I strongly dislike those features and leave them turned off, unless I have a really good and specific reason to leave the feature open. I have left that feature open on facebook on perhaps three occasions in the last year, and each time it was because somebody specifically asked me to because they had specific questions, usually of a time sensitive nature. Each time, I was swamped with other people wanting to chat and I felt like a mother of three children under five again, all of them tugging at my skirts and asking questions at once and I found it hard to focus.

At Cindy's blog I said something in the comments about how I think people I meet in real life who first knew me on the internet are disappointed, and the meetings don't go well.
That was me being a cynic, and a forgetful cynic at that, because one of my dearest friends in the world reminds me, when I say stuff like that, that we first met through my writing- she read articles I had published in a church publication, called me, and we kept up a correspondence until we had a chance to meet in person, and since then have met several times- her daughter played the piano at the Equuschick's wedding. But... there have been some who met me who came to that meeting with expectations I could not meet, and they were not happy. One issue is that I do write better than I talk. I am wittier and think better with a keyboard in front of me.

While I know that I have I sat in disbelief while I read posts by people I know in real life, and I know what they are writing has absolutely no resemblance to the truth, I am going to be cantankerous and suggest that equally often, the fault of disappointed expectations is with the reader for expecting too much from a person they know only through the internet, and putting human beings up on a pedestal where they don't belong.

It's not that we live a problem free life- pain we have, and grief enough, and bitterness and crying (from the poem White Bird Flying). But we don't think the internet is the place to lay down and bawl over them. It's unproductive, depressing, boring, and in some cases, actually makes things worse.
As I told a friend recently, Some of us deal best with the monstrous elephants in the living room by ignoring them on the general principle that if we ignore the elephants they ignore us. If we look at them or talk about them, it starts a stampede.
I don't consider that pretending. It's a survival mechanism. But yes, there are elephants in my living room. Different elephants than yours, I think, but they are there, and they are not going to go away.

Yes, my friends, there are mean and vicious, nasty, spiteful, destructive elephants in my living room. We never speak of them, for it wakes them up and it takes a long time to clean up that mess.

We also have dirty laundry, arguments, disobedient children, and so forth. As I said here, a blog is no the place for airing of dirty laundry. It would not be reasonable to assume that we have no dirty laundry just because I don't air out dirty laundry here (and neither do my daughters).

I know, because people write to tell me so, that people can get a rose colored picture of our family based on what I communicate in public. While it is true that I think I have a wonderful family, we none of us are perfect, and some of us are further from that perfection than others (me, most of all). It may seem like nobody here ever disagrees, disobeys, misbehaves, argues, or indulges in other fractious behaviors calculated to make most of the rest of the family long to punch one family member or another in the nose. It may seem like our house is never a mess (this is laughable to the extreme). It may seem that I am organized or that all is always sweetness and light here. This is not the case.

If it seems this way, and yet is isn't, the disconnect is not because I intend to deceive. Indeed, I am puzzled that anybody reads a blog and expects that they are reading all the details there are to know.

I read other people's blogs assuming that they are not airing their dirty laundry (In fact, I don't like blogs that air dirty laundry, and I stop reading them almost immediately), and I fully expect others to read our family blog with the same understanding.

I do not air such things because I wish to be fair to my family.

I think we should think very carefully about how we speak about our families in public, and this internet medium is ever so much more public than public. It doesn't go away. You can delete a page or a post, but it can be retrieved again through google's cache or the internet archives, or somebody else will have saved a screenshot, or printed it out. Our children are going to grow up and see the things we said about them to hundreds or thousands of other total strangers, and they may resent it.

I see so many people publicizing things about their children or their spouses that make me cringe. I think about how I would feel if my children or my husband posted publicly about my most PMS of moments, telling the entire world and all our nearest and dearest strangers my most unlovely traits. That would be a painful betrayal, and the unkindest cut of all seems to me to be allegedly posting those negative things about our family members under the guise of 'being real' or 'needing prayer'.

We should be 'real' with our REAL life friends- the ones who can see more sides than the one we choose to present in print, because however fair and honest we may try to be, we still are human and cannot help but be slanted in how we present details. We should be real with those real life friends who we can trust to be real back, to be honest and tell us, "You are not being fair," or "Yes, that's true, but does it matter? Does it alter how you are supposed to be respond?"

What if the issue within the family is resolved, and the target of an unkind blog post changes his ways- and ten years from now somebody finds that post and gains a negative opinion of that person because of it?

When your family members come to read what you have written in public about them, there should be nothing there to sting and humiliate and leave a painful cut.

Are you writing the kinds of things about your children and husband that would upset you to see written about you? Are you publicizing events in their lives that they can also enjoy and appreciate, or will they be wounded, hurt, and humiliated two, ten, or twenty years from now to come across what you have publicized about them? Can people tell from your writing how much you love and appreciate your family members?

My husband and I love each other dearly, and we have a good marriage. We also have our moments, our disagreements, our irritations. If I were to blog about one of them in the heat of annoyance, I would look very good and he would not. This is not because I would be right and he would be wrong- far from it. Most of the time when we disagree, he is right and I am wrong. And if I were blogging about it in a moment of petulance or the spirit of complaining, I would be doubly wrong. But you would not know that because I happen to have the advantage of words- I write well enough, one of my few talents, that I could hide my guilt behind my words and make him look bad. I know this, so I do not do it. And because I know it, I am suspicious when I see others using the internet as a platform to complain about their family members.

Love covers a multitude of sins. It does not publicize your complaints about the wrong doings of your spouse and children. It does not humiliate, degrade, or repeat the sorts of stories that you would not want repeated about you. It does not sow the seeds of discontent by broadcasting them over the internet.

It is important to have a good friend to whom you can safely vent and share such frustrations, or perhaps a handful of such friends. It is also important not to share the specific faults of family members to the entire internet world.

Principles

Did you know that the word principles comes from the word princepes? The princepes were Roman soldiers but not just any Roman Soldiers. They were experienced soldiers who formed the counter-attack. Which made us think of principles as soldiers in the line of battle helping us to fight the good fight of right conduct and repudiate temptations toward bad.

Well, it would be intriguing if it were true, but I think really it comes from princeps, which is just a word used for the Emperor. On the other hand, this possible line of thinking is also food for thought because if you have good principles they can rule your conduct, (and, in fact, your real principles do rule your conduct even if they are bad principles), but I liked the warrior imagery better.
But then, I am no pacifist.

CPSIA updates for March 31

From AmendCPSIA on Twitter: #CPSIA Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) agreed to speak at Rally. We now have 6 Reps, 2 Senators and 1 Governor. No Dems yet!

Isn't it adorable?!

From How and Where We Live, an Open Door to Geography by Nellie B. Allen and published in 1924. There are several colored plates in the book by several different illustrators. They are so lovely. E.M. Wireman did this illustration.

Walter Olson's blog yesterday had some excellent links and information (and kind words for yours truly)

This story of a real CPSIA hero, Rick Woldenberg, and how he got involved and what he found when he did is a must read. Seriously:

Rick quickly realized how expensive it would be for companies to comply with the new testing regulations. And, he saw that the legislation would make for more complications and headaches for a wide range of businesses, including his own. “I believe that these new incentives will cause several terrible things to happen. It will cause a lot of responsible products to be dropped. Right now, we sell about 2,000 products. At 2,000 items, we might have 100,000 tasks annually to complete to comply with the law. That’s very impractical but the consequences of failure are severe. So, the law doesn’t want you to sell 2,000 items - it now wants you to sell 50 to make compliance doable. The law also wants me to abandon small customers and go after high volume customers, like Wal-Mart. Only in the mass market do your new costs blend into your old costs. I HATE the idea that there is a law that says I cannot be in the specialty business, because it renders the specialty business un-economic. If you have a dyslexic child and you want to buy products to help with dyslexia, you need a specialized market. Nobody will be able to cater to those markets anymore!”

Large legislation favors big businesses, that's just the way it is. Bureaucracies perpetuate more bureaucracies. The broader the legislation, the more small, individual, unique, items are swept away in the tsunami of law. Only the homogenized, humongous companies (that donate to politicians) are left standing.

It was clear to Rick that the legislative process had taken place behind closed doors. Deciding that this would not happen again, Rick thought “I’ll create a public record so this issue will be open.” He put up a special website and later started blogging. Soon, others joined him. More websites were created and people began paying attention to the need to amend the CPSIA. The effort grew exponentially. “We have a number of people from the education business, crafters, homeschoolers, people from the bicycle, ATV and motorcycle businesses, toys, people who make pens, clothing and footwear companies, members of the consumer specialty industry, sporting goods people—it has become a very big coalition.“

Frustrated because you wrote your rep, and got only a boilerplate formletter, cribbed from the self serving press releases of PIRG or Public Citizen? RIck hasn't gotten one reply to any of his letters.

Here's how you can participate in the rally on April 1st, even if you cannot go to Washington.

Aquarium

CPSIA, Is it time to panic?

From the comments here, at pghpicturebook (book illustrators of Western Pennsylvania), one Karen Jo said, reasonably, that:

I’m not becoming an alarmist about this yet, because...

and then she stated her reasons. You will find her italicized reasons and my responses below. Unfortunately, you see, the law is not reasonable, and where the law is unreasonable, citizens would do well to stand up and fight.

1. the Consumer Products Safety Commission hasn’t officially decided on the issue

Me: Actually, they have said this:

The [publishing] industry has made assertions and done very limited testing, but the Act requires more, as it should, before we can exempt a children’s product from the lead content requirements of the law. We cannot act on the “everyone knows children’s books don’t contain lead” and “historically there has never been a problem with lead in children’s books” assertions, particularly when we now know that children’s books have indeed contained lead in the past. ... They need to provide all of the information that our staff believes is necessary in order for the Commission to act based on sound science and comprehensive market coverage.

That is taken directly from a letter Commissioner Thomas Moore (who also called for the sequestering of some library books) wrote to Congressman Waxman.
Please note the great gulf between 'never been a problem with lead in children's books' and 'children's books have contained lead.' That chasm is where Common Sense apparently plummeted to death.
Ed Kang is a spokesman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, and here he is quoted:

"Kang said local libraries will not have to close their doors or be required to test books to ensure books are safe. On Friday, the Safety Commission issued a ruling stating children’s books printed after 1985 are safe.

In some older books, Kang said, lead was used in inks."

(http://tinyurl.com/cadn3y)

They [the CPSC] also specifically excluded pre-1985 books from the Stay in their official guidelines (http://tinyurl.com/dguc8f):

"the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is announcing its enforcement policy on the lead limits established by the CPSIA.

Manufacturers, importers, distributors, and retailers should also be aware that CPSC will:

*Not impose penalties against anyone for making, importing, distributing, or selling

....

**an ordinary children's book printed after 1985..."

That's pretty official.

2. the federal government hasn’t proven lead could actually be in old books

Me: It doesn't have to prove lead is in anything, the law applies to ALL products, and the burden of proof is not on the government.

The way the law is written, all products are considered guilty until proven innocent- it's up to the sellers and manufacturers to prove there is no lead in their products, and the only legal standard acceptable for such proof is:

"the best-available, peer-reviewed, scientific evidence that lead in such product or material will neither result in the absorption of any lead into the human body, taking into account normal and reasonably foreseeable use and abuse of such product by a child, nor have any other adverse impact on public health or safety.
Congress obviously established a very demanding standard for such exclusions. Indeed, the Commission staff is not yet away of any substance as to which the required showing can be made."

3. the federal government hasn’t handed down reccommendations regarding children’s books

Me: The Federal Government, in the form of Congress, passed a law forbidding the sale or distribution of ALL products intended for the use of children 12 and under without first testing them for lead, and all toys for phthalates, and all childcare products for kids under three for phthalates.

It is disconcerting that lawmakers wrote a law specifically covering ALL products and is now surprised to learn that 'all' would include books, but that is what they did.


4. publishing and printing industries set up a Web site for book publishers last December to post the results of studies measuring the lead in books and their components, such as ink and paper. Those results show lead levels that were often undetectable and consistently below not only the new federal threshold, but the more stringent limit that goes into effect in August 2011.

Me: Carol has answered this (You can read her reply at the original post- that's Carol Baicker-McKee of the Doodles and Noodles blog)- ordinary paper books published since 1985 are probably fine. Ordinary children's books published before 1985 are, right now, illegal to sell, according to the law and the CPSC.

5. The American Library Association said it has no estimate of how many children’s books printed before 1986 are in circulation. But typically, libraries don’t have many, because youngsters are hard on books, librarians said.

Me: I really wish I knew what libraries they are checking. The libraries around me do have many, many such books. And this does effect thrift shops, used book stores, and charities that distribute books as part of literacy efforts (staples and ring binding are not allowed without testing, even for newer books).

6. the lead is contained only in the type, not in the illustrations, according to Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs for the Association of American Publishers

Me: I have no idea why he said that, and it's so erroneous I wonder if he has been misquoted. It is the illustrations that tend to be the problem. Jennifer Taggart (The Smart Mama) has XRF tested a number of older books. MOST of them have no lead, but in a few that did, it was in the illustrations. One copy of Little Women, for instance, had 2700 ppm in the red dress of the cover illustration.

Panicking is inappropriate. But the law is not going to go away if people are complacent about it. Congress needs to amend this law or what's going to go away is our older children's books, thrift store clothing, and a number of unique, hand-crafted products.
Congress won't fix it if people do not hold their feet to the fire.

See also:
These are a Few of My Favorite Things
Good-bye Library BookSales

quirky side-note- I keep humming this to a snatch of tune from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody-

Mama, they've just killed the books,
XRF guns say some have lead,
the law's the trigger, now they're dead.
Mama, Old books are so much fun,
But now they're going to throw them all away.
Mama, ooh, Didn't mean to make you cry,
CPSIA brings so much sorrow,
Congress carries on, carries on
as if nothing really matters.

Too late, the law has come,
Sends shivers down my spine, they're trashing books all the time.
Goodbye, Library booksales, they've got to go,
This law bans sales of old books and that's the truth.
Mama, ooh, I hate to see them go,
I sometimes wish Waxman had never been born at all...

Gladsome, Jocund, Cunning Words

repost, which I know I've been doing a lot this last week, but I have a lot on my mind and have had trouble settling down to write on anything, because I can't write about what's on my mind.

I first came across the word sesquipedlian in a delicious little book about books, Ex Libris, by Anne Fadiman- It makes perfect reading for Doctor's waiting rooms. Each chapter is a stand alone essay, so you can pick it up and set it down as you need to. It's a little gem of a book, absolutely must reading for anybody who loves reading- with some caveats.

I don't relate to or approve of every single thing she says or believes, and neither will you. A handful of moments may bring a blush to the cheek of a young maiden, and, truth to tell, an old matron like me. Nevertheless, I consider it a happy find.

I first read this book a few years back when the HG found a copy at a library book-sale. She began reading the first paragraph to me and I knew I needed to own this book. Anne writes about merging her library with her husband's (they waited until they were married a few years to do this), and how they organized them, and whose copies they kept. Even though I couldn't personally relate to this on a specifically personal level (my husband brought two books into our marriage- his Bible, and Helter Skelter. Merging our books meant I threw away Helter Skelter and he kept his Bible), I could connect on a deeper level with how Anne and her husband felt about their books, related to them, connected with them, and bonded with specific editions.

This ability to see what she is feeling and connect with it is an indication of a good writer, but Anne isn't just good. She's witty. She writes that though they had been a couple for many years, their books remained separate, hers at the north end of their loft apartment, his at the south. They had talked about combining them, so that, for instance, all the Melville titles would be together, but just hadn't done it. They finally decided to take the plunge, and immediately ran into a snag:

Our reluctance to conjugate our Melvilles was also fueled by some essential differences in our characters. George is a lumper. I am a splitter. His books commingled democratically, united under the all-inclusive flag of Literature. Some were vertical, some horizontal, and some actually placed behind others. Mine were balkanized by nationality and subject matter. Like most people with a high tolerance for clutter, George maintains a basic trust in three-dimensional objects. If he wants something, he believes it will present itself, and therefore it usually does."

Anne believes that books and other small items are 'unreliable vagrants,' and must be kept 'strictly confined to quarters,' so they must work out a way to organize their books together. Again, please be forewarned that there are occasional comments, even in that chapter, that may embarrass some readers. For such a gladsome gift of phrasing, I am willing to overlook strong provocation, which, thankfully, she does not offer.


If I was hooked with chapter one, I was practically a raving addict with chapter two. Who could resist a book with an entire chapter about sesquipedalians? (If you could, don't tell me. I'd rather not know). Sesquipedalians are very long words, and as children Anne and her brother used to compete to see who could find the longest. He won with paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde, which she says they sang to the tune of The Irish Washer Woman (Isaac Asimov did, too, and I'm not sure who did it first).

She writes of her delight in finding, as an adult, a book with twenty words in it she didn't know, and I got to feel the smug pleasure of delight in knowing three she didn't (sapoy, grimoire, and camorra), even though I feel sure she'd merely forgotten her Rudyard Kipling for at least one of them.

That book was published first in 1920, and she suggests that in 1920, readers were more educated than they are today, and certainly had richer vocabularies. She quizzed several of her friends and relations and found her 90 year old father knew 12. A friend who knew seven of them reads primarily from works published before 1918. Her brother knew nine, which she credits to his 'unparalleled advantage of owning no television set,' as well as his science education (he teaches natural history).

This chapter demonstrated a lovely example of the wonder of connections, whereby the more you know, the more you CAN know because you find that there are connections between things that you never knew about- and indeed, could not discover unless you were open to learning things whether or not you can see a utilitarian value to them- an English professor guessed that Mephitic must mean foul-smelling because he'd seen it used in Milton's Paradise Lost to describe the smell of hell. Her brother guessed it was a bad smell because he knew the " scientific name for the striped skunk is Mephitis mephitis, which means stinky stinky." And so we strike another blow against the 'why do we need to know this' crowd.=)

Knowledge cross-pollinates. The more you know, the more you can know, which is another good reason to read those old books (if we needed a reason. We are book addicts, so we don't need a reason. You may call it an excuse or a rationalization if you prefer).

Anne asked her friends and family if they thought we knew more or fewer words now than a few decades ago. A comic (who I can't imagine I'd find very funny), knew none of the 20 on her list yet insisted we know more words today. He said, "I bet we know at least as many, the new vocabulary of the Internet alone has easily made up for everything we've lost from nineteenth century literature."

Anne found that idea mephitic and so do I.

A playwright who knew only one suggested, "We know fewer words, and the ones we know are less beautiful. ...the words we've lost tend to be connotative, and the ones we've gained tend to be denotative. I've never seen modem used in a poem."

Charlotte Mason was lamenting this impoverished vocabulary a hundred years ago:

We are in a bad way for epithets: there are hardly more than a dozen
current amongst us; and of these one person has seldom more than one or two in
everyday use. A cup of tea, a dress, a picture, a book, a person, -- is "nice,"
"perfect," "delicious," "delightful," "jolly," according to the speaker; not at
all according to the thing spoken of. Adverbs help a little; a thing may
be "nice," "how nice!" or "too awfully nice!" but the help is rather in the way
of force than of variety. J. finds all agreeable things "too awfully nice!"
while B. finds the same things only "nice" As a rule, things and persons have
each one distinctive quality; to see what that is in a flash, and to express it
in the fittest word, is a proof of genius, or of the highest culture.

… Little children often surprise and amuse their elders by the fitness
and elegance of their phraseology. We have only to foster this power of theirs,
to put good words in their way, to treat the perpetual use of "jolly" or
"delicious" as rather idiotic, and we are not only fitting our children to shine
in society, but doing some thing to conserve the treasures of the beautiful
mother- tongue of our inheritance. It might be worthwhile to hunt up good strong
Saxon epithets for everyday use from the writers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Milton alone affords a treasure-trove. In the hymn
beginning, "Let us with a gladsome mind," there are half-a-dozen adjectives used
with original force; perhaps half-a-dozen peculiar to that hymn, in their use if
not in their form. We cannot go about talking of the "golden-tressed sun"; that
is too good for us; but to get "gladsome" into our common speech is worth an
effort. "Happy-making" again, in the wonderful _Ode to Time,_ -- could we have a fitter word for our best occasions?

Formation of Character, by Charlotte Mason, pages 217, 218

Random thoughts: I think of this passage every time I or somebody I know uses the word 'cool.'
Miss Mason misquoted the title of Milton's poem, it is 'On Time,' something I shall never be.
I cannot count half a dozen adjectives of the sort she suggests in Gladsome Mind.
I find more here in L'Allegro, one of my favorite of Milton's poems.
Where Miss Mason lists five adjectives all too drearily common in every day use, I can only think of one word in several variations- cool, super-cool, way cool, so cool, and uber-cool. Such an impoverished language must denote a poverty of mind, methinks, including mine own.

For those interested, here are a few of the other lovely new words Anne Fadimen used to add to your treasure trove:
Calineries
cajoleries
diapason
adapertile
perllan
paludal
apozemical
alcalde
agathodemon
kakodemon
goetic
sapoy
subadar
aspergill
opopanax
monophysite
cupellation
adytum

Don't you just want to smack your lips over them?

No? Sigh. I know, I know. I am a word geek.

H U G Enormous -- Snake!

Muppet Pelts- the New Fur

We make no pretense of being a fashion blog, and it would be the ridiculous if we did. I think Frump is a Fab Fashion Statement, but I know how out of step that makes me. There's no place in the fashionista world for my standards, which are modestly comfortable, wearable, and did I mention, comfortable?

That said, I don't care how much of a Fashion Philistine this makes me, Madonna appears to have slain and skinned a couple of a Muppets for this outfit:


Or perhaps she's auditioning for the part of Papagena in The Magic Flute, with costumes by Dr. Seuss.

Equuschick likes the color but thinks it looks like somebody rolled her in an Easter Basket.

Pregnancy Tickers

We're looking for one of those pregnancy due date widgets you can post to the blog or get in your email box- and we specifically want one that shows what the baby is doing and how he is growing each week, NOT just 'how many more days.' But we're tired of looking.
I know I've seen these at other people's blogs, but I didn't pay attention- if you know of one, please share the link?

Eels

These things creep me out in a totally cool way. :)

A few books from Sunday's Library Book Sale

Paperback of St. George and the Dragon, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman- Yes, we already have at least one copy of this, if not too. Can you say grandbabies? The Equuschick and Shasta baby has given a new impetus to my picture book buying.
Conscience: Like it needed one.
Me: Shut. Up.

Besides- this was published in 1984, so I consider it a book rescue, as well.

A perfectly beautiful, unmarked, excellent 1950 hardback of Dick Wittington and His Cat, by Marcia Brown

A lovely ex libra hardback of Quips and Quirks by the Watson sisters, Clyde and Wendy- published in 1975. A collection of words that have been used over time to insult or tease someone. Epithets such as quidnunc, mollygrub, whopstraw, and slubberdegullion.

A rather disturbing picture book rendition of Jim, Who Ran AWay From His Nurse, and Was Eaten by a Lion, Hilaire Belloc

A sweet little hardback of The Tale of Johnny Town Mouse, by Beatrix Potter.

I picked up several "The How and Why Wonder book of" in very nice condition. These include The How and Why Wonder Book of:
Explorations and Discoveries
Mathematics
Machines

A Pedlar's Pack, by Elizabeth Goudge

A very interesting copy of When We Were Very Young, by A. A. Milne. The binding is different from what I usually see, in fact, the cover illustrations look like a Kate Greenaway knockoff, but inside it's the usual Ernest Shepard illustrations. The title page says this edition was printed in 1944. The binding is a library binding, and there is a sticker inside the back saying that the special library binding was made in 1972. That looks to me like the 1944 edition was falling apart, and the library paid for the book to be rebound, with new covers and end papers. It's a discard from a local elementary school library.

The Cherub

As we've mentioned, one of our six daughters is profoundly retarded. There are people who get uptight about that label, but it's useful. It gives you some idea of what to expect, what not to expect. It offers an initial, introductory orientation into her world.

'Retarded' didn't used to be an ugly insult. It used to be a perfectly good word that just meant slow. The new term 'delayed' is going to be a negative term in another ten years or so. Kids will start using it as an insult, not ever realizing what they are really doing and saying. Every term ever used to describe our daughter's condition has become an insult, a word laden with baggage. This is not because there was ever something inherently insulting or rude about those words, but because people are inherently uncomfortable with, or even offended by, what they represent.

She doesn't speak and can only sign approximately 20 words right now. She did have more, but she regressed when we moved the last few times. Shifting environments, changing routines, these things have a deleterious affect upon the mentally retarded, and it will take us some time to bring her back up to her previous accomplishments. We've lived in five different houses over the last 11 years- unless I did the math wrong, which is terribly probable.

Our speechless, nonverbal child does laugh, giggle, cry, pout, vocalize with an "I want that" noise and a distinctly different "I don't want that and don't you dare try to give it to me because I am sure it will poison me and is utterly evil besides" noise. She makes up her own signs. Some of them make sense (the sign she made for 'tea' looks like somebody shaking out a teabag), and some of them we have never figured out.

Some of her made up signs I think she made up just to make me look bad. She makes these gestures at strangers, and the strangers look at me and say, "What is she saying?" I have to shrug my shoulders and say I don't know. And then they look at me in disbelief, because obviously, only an unfit mother would not be able to figure out the signs a retarded child makes up, right? Well, she's retarded. That doesn't mean she's stupid. Her development age is roughly close to that of a two year old, and just like any other two year old, not everything she figures out makes perfect sense to those of us on the outside looking in. I think she does it on purpose because she enjoys playing tricks on me. Why not? She plays tricks on the rest of us, too.

She hides things. Of course, we always catch her, because she's so pleased with her tricks that she starts giggling while she slowly makes her way to the hiding place she has in mind for somebody else's precious belonging. We hear that particular giggle and know we should investigate. She hides our pillows, our books, our favorite things.

She pinpoints what it is that will be particularly bothersome to a person, and that's how she teases that person. For my eldest and me, she finds our books and removes the bookmarks, losing our places. For a sartorially splendiferous friend, she would find his sartorially splendid leather coat, wave it at him in the manner of a bull fighter flourishing a red cape- and drop it on the floor the moment she got his attention. For a pregnant and easily nauseated friend, she would stand firmly in front of her and put her finger up her nose, holding it there and smirking. For an extremely gregarious, attention loving friend, she simply studious ignores him- either blankly looking right through him, or casually turning her back on him.

When she decides guests have outstayed their welcome, she brings them their car keys and points to the door.

The last time a qualified professional tested her I.Q. we were told that the results of the test indicated that our daughter could not do anything we had taught her how to do, because she was profoundly retarded. They asked there was anything specific I'd been trying to teach her that I needed help with (we homeschool, the testing was through the public school). I said, yes, that I wanted her to learn to undo her seatbelt and wasn't getting very far. They told me kindly that I probably shouldn't bother. It was a waste of my time and hers, and was not something she would ever be able to do. We left the appointment and drove home. When we pulled up into the driveway, she undid her seatbelt. Of course, she hasn't done it since then, and a couple years later she learned to open her car door while we were driving on the highway, so we haven't worked on this one any further.

She has Cerebral Palsy, too. In her case it's very mild. It means she walks very slowly and never runs. It means that some of her difficulty with sign and speech might be the C.P. rather than the retardation, but nobody knows for certain. It means she needs a leg brace. If it were worse, it would mean she could barely communicate at all, since nearly all of her communication is so physical. She needs her hands, her arms, her body language, the ability to turn her head this way and that, the facial muscle control necessary to make her smirks, her grins, her excited faces and squeals, her self-satisfied little gloating smiles, and her sad faces, her pouty faces, her "gloom and despair! They won't give me a cookie faces."

I wonder about people like her who don't have the physical range of motion and physical ability to control facial expressions that she does. What do they wish they could say but can't?

She used to have a t-shirt with a slogan I loved- it said, "Not being able to speak does not mean I have nothing to say." She outgrew it, and I recently got her another one at cafepress.

Too many people do not believe that one can have something to say even if one cannot speak. Too many people think life is all about the mind and think very little of the heart and soul. These things, the Cherub has in abundance.

P.S. The picture is the wallpaper and paint we chose for her bedroom. Her two favorite things are eating and the color yellow (at least, that's the color she recognises best), so we picked this. And no matter how old she gets, she will never outgrow it.

(sorry about the yellow font- it's fixed now).

Sunday Hymn Post

There is a happy land, far, far away,
Where saints in glory stand, bright, bright as day.
Oh, how they sweetly sing, worthy is our Savior King,
Loud let His praises ring, praise, praise for aye.

Come to that happy land, come, come away;
Why will ye doubting stand, why still delay?
Oh, we shall happy be, when from sin and sorrow free,
Lord, we shall live with Thee, blest, blest for aye.

Bright, in that happy land, beams every eye;
Kept by a Father’s hand, love cannot die.
Oh, then to glory run; be a crown and kingdom won;
And, bright, above the sun, we reign for aye.



I am particularly pleased with this shaped note singing find.

Here's a shaped note singing version in English- Note that they begin by singing through with just the notes (so,so, la, so, doh), and then go into the lyrics. For the sheet music see here.

For a Choctaw shaped note choir singing in their language, choir listen here. For the Choctaw lyrics they are singing, see here.

cyberhymnal (this is closer to the tempo I am accustomed to hearing for this song)

Here's a Mennonite Choir singing the first verse (slight variation in lyrics on the last line)

Quotes on Habit

'Heroic spiritual lives are built by stacking days of obedience one on top of the other. Like a brick each obedient act is small in itself, but in time the acts will pile up, and a huge wall of strong character will be built - a great defense against temptation. we should strive for consistent obedience each day.'
From the Life Application Bible's intro to Samuel.

We sow our thoughts, and we reap our actions; we sow our actions, and we reap our habits; we sow our habits, and we reap our characters; we sow our characters, and we reap our destiny.
Desiderius Gerhard Erasmus

Sow an action, reap a habit.
Hannah More

Pursuits become habits.

Ill habits gather by unseen degrees, As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
Ovid

Bad habits are best rooted out by replacing them with good habits.

Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton:
"Will power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself to posess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing of daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them or shifting their burden on others. The making of the substance called Character was a process about as slow and arduous as the building of the pyramids..."

Hospitality and the Vintage Cookbook

Repost


In a 1947 cookbook, in the section on how the 'servantless' household can manage regular hospitality, one suggestion is to have a small repertoire of repeating company menus. Don't go for variety, something different everytime somebody comes to dinner, but develop a reputation for always having that delicious... whatever it is.

My mom did this. We had company every Sunday after church, and Sunday dinner was always potroast with potatoes and carrots, salad, homemade rolls, and usually Texas sheet cake for dessert. Nobody complained, and it was delicious.


The authors of my vintage cookery book say it doesn't matter what delicious whatever it is you're famous for:

"If the same combinations are served more than once to the same guests providing that the food is sufficiently well cooked to justify its repetition. That is the way that reputations for good cooking are built up. We look forward to prune whip in certain homes just as we count upon onion soup at certain restaurants."

They had me right up to the phrase 'we look forward to prune whip.'

Home Decorating

Dresser in my bedroom- the dresser and most of the old stuff on it came from The Rattery.

The fabric is dollar a yard Walmart fabric- that's all it is, a length of fabric, unhemmed, just draped around the dresser.

The dresser is actually my husband's- he lets me decorate because it's out in plain sight.
My dresser is in my closet where nobody sees it, and it's not so pretty- but my dresser won't fit in this space- it's wider. And his dresser is too pretty and too tall to go in my closet.

But we're thinking of moving this dresser to the guestroom and bringing another dresser home from the Rattery.




The chair and pillow came from the local thrift shop. Book-case came from the rattery. Of course, I have rearranged the living umpteen times since this picture was taken.

I really like this chair- and it's also very comfortable. I bought it for two dollars at the local thrift shop.






View from my pillow:

For the first 23 years of our marriage, it was my philosophy and practice that a wife who likes this sort of thing (not all women do) should be careful not to make her home too feminine because her husband just might not enjoy the same decor she does.

Plus, I kept thinking of that article, some of you know the one by Nancy Wilson, that talked about women decorating their houses all frou-frou with ribbons and bows and pink stuff when they should keep in mind that a man lives there, too. So they should cut back on the frou and add some stuff like, I dunno, dead fish on plaques and critter skulls and so forth. Manly-man things.

I also knew that some of the ladies I know have also read that article and if I decorated too much like a girl then they would come to my house and frown upon my roses and lace and think that I decorate in a proto-feminist, Elsie Dinsmore, emasculating or even hoity-toity fashion and they would frown and feel sorry for my husband and think I am too la-ti-dah.

How anybody could look at the dog hair that piles up around here, the dust all over the place, and the mulberry and muds stains on my children and think that I am too la-ti-dah is not a question I asked myself.

But anyway, I spent 23 years toning down my decorating ideas so as not to make them, oh, as pink and fluffy as the picture of the dresser at the top of this post, or the picture of the window at the top of this section, and then in the 24th year, just threes ago before moving into this house, my carefully thought out ideas received a shock.

Before moving into this house the girls and I were looking at magazines and catalogs to get ideas for the new house. Now my husband and I had had the same quilt on our bed for some 20 years. He bought it for us in Korea. It's a cream background with bold red applique. Okay, so the appliqued pieces are hearts, but my husband is a romantic soul (more romantic than his wife, if truth be told) and it really wasn't very frou-frou- it was a bold sort of country look, not at all too feminine.

But after 20 years, I felt like a change. One of the bedroom designs we found was exceedingly frou-frou- lace, ribbons, bows, pink flowers, dainty furniture, curly-que accents everywhere, fol-de-rol, and fancy fluff in abundance. I teased the girls and told them I thought that's how I would decorate the new master bedroom. They thought that was pretty funny, and when their daddy got home that day, they slyly brought him the catalog and pointed out the picture of what they said would be his new bedroom.

The joke fell flat, however, because he just looked at it and said it looked alright to him, whatever I wanted to do was fine by him. The girls thought he was just trying to go along with the joke. They kept trying to rib him, and he kept not seeing the joke, because there wasn't one. He really didn't care.

Still not catching on, I said, "Seriously, Honey. You do know I wouldn't really decorate our room that way, right?"

Puzzled, he asked, "Why not? If you like it, why wouldn't you?"

"Well, because it's feminine, and you live here, too. I've always been careful not to go too floral and female, because I assumed you wouldn't feel comfortable in it. And besides," (this said a bit defensively because he was giving me that 'I think you're a little loopy on this' look), "Douglas Wilson's wife says the same thing, you know."

He just laughed. "Douglas Wilson's wife is married to Douglas Wilson, whoever he is. If he cares that much what color their bedroom is, then sure, she should think about that when decorating. But I'm your husband, and I don't care. You know I probably won't even notice. If you want pink roses and all that stuff, go for it."

"But, but..." I stuttered. "I'm supposed to make sure to include manly man touches, like dead fish on plaques and hunting themes."
But my husband said, quite reasonably, that he doesn't care if I want pink and roses to decorate our room, but he doesn't like dead fish on plaques and he likes to eat his meat, not decorate with it, and if I like paisley, pinks, and roses scattered about the room, then he likes it, too.

The bottom line here is really not a gender issue. It's a communication issue first, a consideration issue next. It is very important to be thoughtful and considerate and respect the tastes of your spouse, not somebody else's, and certainly not some other woman's ideas about what YOUR spouse SHOULD like. You can't really respect your spouse's tastes without asking him personally. I know that should be obvious, but since I went nearly a quarter of a century without thinking that through, maybe I'm not the only one.

And, as it turns out, he did decide after all to turn a corner of the wall space in our room into something clearly his'n. It's full of pictures of the children, the grandmother who raised him, and airplanes.

In one sense, I suppose it clashes madly with the Redoute rose prints, vintage sun bonnet, and wild rose prints on sheet music decorating the walls on my side of the bed. In another sense, I think it works out exactly right.

The First Step Towards a Cure Is Recognizing You Have a Problem...

REPOST:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obsessively yours,

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

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

Later I was cleaning out a box under my desk, and I found some _other_ notebook pages of books that had somehow gotten separated from the main body of the list. And there were just as many titles listed on those pages as on the ones I already had. So I
actually had around 4,000 books! But like I said, that was some, er, thirty or so library booksales ago....
---------
So naturally, of course, I went to a library book sale just a week or two before I reposted the above article two years ago, and brought home two more Boxes of lonely books. I couldn't help it. They just looked so pitiful sitting there, staring at me, pleading silently to come home with me. I couldn't just leave them there....

And this would also be the justification for the library booksale we're going to Sunday afternoon after church.

The CPSIA Shoves the Poor Off a Cliff

In 1992 we had three little girls, ages 2, 8, and 9. My husband was serving out his enlistment in the Air Force, and I was a sahm. You may have heard rumours about how little enlisted men get paid. Those rumours? They are mostly true.

We weren't seeking adoption at all, but we heard of two little girls who needed a home together, and we just couldn't come up with a good reason to say no. One of the children was severely handicapped, and it was unlikely anybody would take on both of them (nearly 4 and 6 at the time) because of the severity of those disabilities. The birth-mother did not want them separated. And so, over the objections of everybody sensible that we knew, we opened our home to this unplanned blessing.

Unplanned? Surely, of all the ways to add to a family, 'unplanned adoption' doesn't make much sense- how is that even possible? It's funny to call an adoption unplanned, but it really was. What little planning we were able to do came to naught. We were supposed to take the children for weekends over a period of a few months so they could get used to us. On the Wednesday before the first weekend visit, the birth mother telephoned and called off the adoption. We notified our friends and relations. The following day she called and asked the caseworker what time we were picking the girls up. The case worker asked her what had changed. She had her reasons, and I won't go into them here, but she did have their very best interests at heart, so the caseworker gave her a time. And then she dropped a bombshell.
"I want you to come and pick them up tomorrow," the birth-mother said, "but not for a visit. They need to go to their new parents now, and not come back."

So... we went to bed with three children and the next morning suddenly gained two more children who came to us with nothing but the clothes on their backs and some immediate and distressing but treatable medical problems, and some longterm and severe medical problems- again, just two weeks before Christmas. We had no clothes for them, no beds, no presents; nothing was in readiness for them, except our hearts (and even those needed some sprucing up).
(if you are interested in the longer version of our adoption story, see here)

They came on a Friday. We went shopping on a Saturday. Where did we go shopping? Thrift shops, of course. We had an immediate and urgent need for clothing, toys, and bedding for two new children, and we lived on an enlisted man's salary. It was only two weeks before Christmas. The thrift shop enabled us to fill the gap between our income and our needs.

We dressed our five girls from thrift shops, consignment stores, and yard sales over the next several years. Now they dress themselves largely from the same sources- 'new' clothes are supplementary. Not only does this help their budgets, but it also is a culturally and environmentally beneficial practice.

Clothing, books, and toys purchased from thrift shops do not come with all the extra external packaging that new items do. They are bagged in used bags donated by the public. They arrive at the thrift shop instead of at a landfill by means of donations. Many times stores will donate unsold inventory to thrift shops. These are items that do not contribute toward further burdening of landfills.

Thrift store shopping is culturally beneficial as it teaches children thrift, and is a direct reproach to the consumer oriented materialism of our culture.

Thrift store shopping benefits charities- most thrift shops are run by and for charities and provide job training and other support to those in need.

And thrift store shopping directly benefits the poor- thousands of others, as we did, fill the gap between what they make and what they need by shopping for necessities such as warm coats, hats, boots, snowpants, hats and scarves at thrift shops. Boots, bikes, and balls can be purchased used anywhere from 1/2 to about a tenth of their price new. The impact of the CPSIA on the poor is devastating.
One reason for this legislative blind spot, I believe, is that politicians and special interest groups like PIRG and Public Citizen have little understanding of what it means to have no margin of error.

And this is important to remember- when you are poor the margin for error is so very, very thin that the consequence of what seems to some to be a very small error in judgment or very small increased cost due to poorly thought out legislation such as the CPSIA is disproportionately large. Even people who are just barely financially comfortable sometimes just can't understand how thin that margin of error is. The poor are skating slowly and shakily on razor thin ice. The smallest mistake, theirs or somebody else's, can send them plunging into life threatening icy waters. You very likely make exactly the same sort of foolish decisions in your financial decisions on a regular basis- but you have a larger cushion to protect you from irresponsibility, whether it's your irresponsibility or that of legislators who pass unread bills or pass bills without hearing from ALL the stakeholders.

When you are poor, there are no margins. You can't take money out of the budget in one area and apply to another because there are no surpluses in any area. There may not be even be a budget.

Being forced to buy a brand new winter coat for your child because thrift shops have had to send all their used coats to the landfill in response to the CPSIA can cause far more devastation for lower income families than the complacently comfortable can imagine. For those who live precariously from one small paycheck to the next, that legislative error might result in having to choose between warm clothes for winter and having the power turned off or not being able to buy gas for the car that week. It might mean an overdraft at the bank, which will then cost more money as the bank adds an overdraft charge, which then means other checks bounce, which means more overdraft charges.

To the complacently comfortable, this sort of scenario seems overly dramatic, but that's because they haven't lived there, and they don't know what it's like. We do. We've lived out of an ice chest for three months because we couldn't afford the deposit to turn on our electricity. I've been reduced to tears when the only food in the house was two eggs, and I dropped one and broke it.

Our thrift shop charges five dollars for winter coats, good winter coats. If they have to send those coats to the landfill and poor families have to buy brand new coats, we're looking at a coast increase of at least 75 percent imposed on the families least able to bear it, and their children will be no safer.

The CDC says that on a scale of 1 to 10, the risk to children of lead poisoning from books is maybe .05- that is a rhetorical way of saying nil. No children I have ever heard of have had an increase of lead blood levels from the zippers on their jackets.

Because I have lived it, the poor to me are very real, living, breathing people, with real flesh and blood children who will be immediately harmed by the impact of the CPSIA as it is written.

To legislators and the special interest groups who pushed this bill through, the poor appear to be an abstract concept, useful for exploitative purposes, as poster children for pet causes, as tools for emotional manipulation and rhetorical propaganda. And that is why they shrug over the reality that they have chosen to impose a very real and immediate harm to poor families by quadrupling clothing expenses for their children in order to avoid the negligible at best and utterly unproven risk of increased blood lead levels in the zipper pull or snaps on a ten year old's coat.




Old Woman in a Shoe from a Mother Goose Book illustrated by Ella Dolbear Lee

I found an old picture of The Boy's Earthworks

This is over two years old, and it is an illustration of how I am ALMOST the coolest mother in the world:

My coolest Mom street cred comes from letting my kids do stuff like this to the front yard (click on the picture to enlarge it so you can get the full impact of what sort of nightmare it would be to have me in your neighborhood):



My son says: Okay. About Thirty two people can fit in it. We have a pantry, and a kitchen, and we were going to have a toilet in there, but it's now been turned into a stockroom.

And herein is the detail that prevents me from being the coolest Mom in the world. My son actually dug a deep hole inside that bigger hole, and he dug it out in a sort of niche big enough for a person to sit in, and he fully expected me to let him curtain it off and actually use it for, er, an, um, 'necessary' room.
And when I got done screaming, stomping, spitting, and making 'oh, eww, ew, ew, ew, ew, yuck' faces and saying things about cholera, plague, stench, filth, and black death, he understood me to mean, "Not in my lifetime or yours, Buster."
And so the fort has a stockroom, but if the tenants of the fort have to answer a call of nature they have to quit being soldiers or knights and ladies or whatever they are playing at (badgers and mice, sometimes, because he loves Redwall) and come inside and use the indoor plumbing just as though they haven't been raised by wolves.

I think it's totallyworth not being the coolest mother in the world.

P.S. full disclosure: while this is the front yard, it actually cannot be seen from the road. You have to be in our driveway to see it.

How CPSIA Hurts the Neediest Children

As some of our long term readers know, there is a specific single parent family we work with from time to time (some previous posts here, here, and here)

The five year old little boy spent the night with us on his birthday this week, just for fun. We were discussing how bedtime routine would go with him, and with a casual remark, he shattered my heart.
It went something like this:
My husband: After you brush your teeth and get into your pajamas, I will read you a bedtime story. You like books, right?
Adorable Little Boy: Yeah. But my mommy doesn't read to me. When I go to my daddy's, he doesn't read to me, either. And nobody reads me bedtime story books

My husband read him three bedtime stories, including:

The Man Who Didn't Wash His Dishes, published in 1950, written by Phyllis Krasilovsky, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. I believe this book is out of print, certainly our copy is a 1950 edition, and we've read it to all of our children and now this charming little boy. I do not think it has been reprinted in a very long time.

The Adorable Little Boy (ALB) laughed, chortled, and gasped in delighted disgust, "Oh, no! That's gross! Ohhh, yuck."

He wondered why that man didn't just do his dishes. He got the giggles when the man ran out of dishes and had to use his soap dish, and then an ash tray.

He was simply delighted- and delightful.



Then my husband read him that deliciously nonsensical, but still informative book on manners, What Do You Say, Dear?

Again the little lad chortled and expressed concern by turns- "Look out!" he said at one point, "that little girl is gong to fall!"

And finally they read the classic Blueberries for Sal, Our copy is a pre 1985 hardback. By then he was tired, it was well past his bedtime. He relaxed in the HM's lap and just let the words wash over him.
If you already own a copy of this book, hang on tight. This is not the time to get rid of your old, tattered copy and replace it with a reprint. The CPSIA's ban on selling pre-1985 children's books is fraught with unsuspected pitfalls and snares for innocent children's books.

In fifteen minutes the little guy got more read aloud time than he normally gets in a week. Or a month. He's a little sweetie from a single parent family, his mother's main source of income is home daycare and what she gets from the state for the two children who live with her. He certainly counts as 'under-privileged.' If he is ever going to have access to books, it's going to be through books found at school, libraries, thrift shops and yard sales- and my house.

Which brings us to the point of this post- the CPSIA harms the poorest children directly for the sake of pretending to preventing dangers that are more imaginary than real. Yes, children are harmed by lead in their blood levels. But the greatest and most direct KNOWN harm is lead from paint- adult paint, paint for houses in older homes and paint on cars- even new cars. The second greatest dangerous source of lead is their drinking water- from lead in the pipes. And the third would be other adult products that are found more often in immigrant populations, like old samovars with lead soldering, lead folk remedies, lead candies from Mexico.

There are NO known cases of children harmed by lead in a book. There are thousands and thousands of case of children harmed by lack of access to books.

As Carol Baicker-McKee, who blogs at Doodles and Noodles, wrote in her excellent comment to this post:

...The other variable to mention is that exposure to a stimulating environment (like one filled with books, perhaps) can prevent or offset the harm of lead exposure. See this link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17290364. There's also more at my blog post on CPSIA and literacy programs: http://doodlesandnoodles.blogspot.com/2009/03/cpsia-and-books-5-threat-to-staple.html. (The lead vs. enriched environment stuff is near the end of the post.)



It is good to remind people that everyone involved here cares about kids and wants to do what is right for them. You don't go into a business involving kids' products unless you like kids - for the most part it's not a mega-bucks business environment, and it has always had tighter regulation and more headaches. The old Saturday Night Live character played by Dan Ackroyd (who was promoting great holiday gifts for kids like the "Bag o' Glass) is a complete fantasy. The recalls the last few years have all been for imported products, all cheap metal jewelry or lead-in-paint issues. (By the way, lead is still legal in certain paints, including auto paint - don't let your kid suck on the bumper - some industrial coatings, and a handful of artists' pigments like lead white which is used sometimes as a ground for canvas). The vast majority of children's products made in the U.S. are safe, with or without this law. Furthermore, even this law won't guarantee that the plastic action figure you pick up at Walmart is harmless - all it does is maybe make it easier and tougher to go after a wrongdoer. But we already had laws that were working well to do that - the leaded toys that were a problem were recalled, the manufacturers were fined, and kids stopped being harmed. The bigger problem has been monitoring, and that is likely only going to get harder, given all the enforcement of new paperwork requirements.



Lead is risky, but we still recognize that sometimes the small risk associated with its use outweighs the small danger it poses. Do you ever take your kid to church? Guess what holds those beautiful windows together - lead. And yes, if the lead is touched (say for cleaning) small amounts can flake off and mingle with the other dust in the church and get into a child who puts his hands in his mouth. But most church-going people will opt to take the chance. And that's the point - in our country, we let parents make their own choices. Want to smoke around your kids? Cigarette smoke is loaded with toxins, including lead. I think it's a terrible idea and wouldn't do it, but other parents choose differently and we let them. This law goes overboard in removing choice from parents, inhibiting the creation and distribution of safe, useful products, and punishing people who have done nothing wrong - and that's why I oppose it and always will.

Parents who smoke run the very high risk of low birthweight for their children, respiratory diseases, middle ear infections, and recurring infections. Parents who expose their children to pre-1985 books risk only making their kids smarter. Yet one of these two things is banned- and it's not the one that carries no known risks for children.

The Equuschick's Further Categorizations & Standards for Books

The Equuschick would like to thank all those who commented on her earlier post, they were fascinating to read.

The question was asked of where she would put Terry Pratchett, and he actually belongs in another category altogether known as the Humour Category. That is his virtue, and a lovely one it is too. Also in the Humour Category is Georgette Heyer who, depending on which book you're considering, properly ought to belong in either Romance or Mystery.

But for one thing The Equuschick likes to pretend she doesn't actually read Romance, she only reads Humour (Georgette Heyer) or Humour's clever older brother, Satire. (Jane Austen.)

She does read Mystery, and the favorite authors in that category include Ngaio Marsh, Ellis Peters, A.A Milne (and a tragedy it is he only wrote one) and Dorothy Sayers.

But Dorothy Sayers is versatile, her Unnatural Death The Equuschick tends to class with Mystery and a teensy bit of Philosophy.

She reads science and other non-fiction often for pleasure, provided only that the writing is up to the same standards she holds for all other reading. It is important for a child to have the opportunity, as The Equuschick did thanks to the DHM, to experience reading non-fiction purely for pleasure.

She also reads a great deal of what could be called Christian apologetics or Christian living, but here unfortunately she is often inclined to lament the fact that Christians seem to have accepted substandard literature on the rather poor excuse that "the message is good." Well, when your message becomes lost forever in the bog of your bad writing and your predictable formula may it be of some comfort to you that "your message was good."

Since when did moral standards become incompatible with intellectual standards? The Equuschick, she wants to know. It is possible, nay indeed it is best, to hold out for both.

And she was rather a difficult child for the DHM, alas. Other children of the DHM seemed to be capable of accepting the fact that no, this wasn't the standard for literature but something could be still gleaned if one was willing.

Oh dear, not The Equuschick. The King's Daughter? She hated it. (The DHM never actually had her read all of it.)


We seem to have accepted the idea that what makes a book a "good" book for a Christian child is simply the absence of the usual sins. If it has no "language" (a rather vague standard), no illicit relationships, no child rebellion, and if everyone is good and kind and sweet and behaves themselves well, than we rejoice for having found a decent book for our little kiddies.

What about the concept of sin and repentance? No one learns repentance who has never first seen sin. What about setting an example of creativity, of a quality of work that will withstand the tests of time?

What The Equuschick first learned of Christian living from any book besides the Scriptures, she learned from C.S Lewis's Mere Christianity when she was 14.

What she learned of life and imagination, and how to appreciate it and interact with it and revel in it, she learned as a child from books like E. Nesbit's, Madeline L'Engles' (and she was so versatile she shows up everywhere) Sterling North's, and L.M Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. (There is a book that was both morally challenging and well-written, which just goes to show it can be done.)

These are the books on which her memories are built. These are the books The Equuschick simply calls Children's Storybooks, and there actually does a traditional genre apply to The Equuschick's tastes.


The Children's Storybooks need not have any supernatural element whatsoever. They must be well-written. They must be about real personalities, true three-dimensional folks who live life having the adventures that most children never will, but why should that stop them dreaming? Ambition can be built on the pages of a Storybook. A child can learn yet again (and yes this is a tremendous priority for The Equuschick) to grasp the possibility that the world can be different than they see it. They must step into the very day-day-existence of someone who lives a completely different life. This is a blessing that will enrich their life throughout every single experience they face.


How can a child change the world if they never knew it could be done? If they never learn to look at the world through another set of eyes, how can they ever see another's point of view? How can they relate to lives different from their own if they never know such lives exist? How can a child have the wings to dream that life could be different than it is if they are never taught to question, never shown the many different shapes that life can take?

Ambition and Imagination are beautiful things. Nourish them. Cherish them. There are many different ways of passing these gifts on to the next generation, but a Storybook always helps.

Reminiscing about The Common Room

(edited repost)

As longterm readers (and those who read the masthead) know, the nine of us (and two large dogs) lived in a 1200 square foot house with one bathroom for three years before this house was built and we moved in.. You may not know that before that we lived in a 2000 sq foot house with two bathrooms for two or three years, and before that we lived in a house of about 1400 sq feet with 2.5 bathrooms and no counter-space in my kitchen whatsoever.

We won't go into the other baker's dozen plus places where we lived during the Headmaster's 20 years in the military. The point is, we collected quite a number of ideas about what we did and did not want in a house. We drew the floor plans for this house ourselves. Now that it's all in concrete, I can see a number of silly mistakes I made, but over all, it's very much what I wanted.

One of the things I actually loved about the little house was the closeness. The living room was central to everything (and the warmest room in the house). Here's what I wrote about it when we lived in it:

"Whenever two or three are gathered together laughing, the other six or seven will surely hear it and come to see what all the fun is about. Whenever two or three are gathered together enjoying a heated discussion about whether the new Narnia movie will be worth seeing in the theater or whether the new Pride and Prejudice took too many liberties, or whether or not Whiter Shade of Pale incorporates Bach strains, the other six or seven are sure to show up to contribute their two cents. When I get a sad phone call and automatically respond to hard news with "No, Oh, no!" I will shortly be joined by children wanting to offer comfort and to be comforted.

I've enjoyed having such a warm center to our home. We found that this central, and only, gathering place also was the heart of our home, and we wanted to keep that heart. I was rather sad at the thought of losing that when we move into the new house.

I kept that in mind while poring over hundreds and hundreds of house plans looking for design ideas I liked. Then I found the perfect solution in a reproduction of Gustave Stickley's craftsman home floor plans. It was for the second story of a woman's club house. Well, five of our six girls would be sleeping in the second story, along with their brother, so that seemed perfect- and it had.... a Common Room!

The design we finally drew and used with our builder looks different than the one in the book, but a couple concepts remained the same- there are bedrooms and a bathroom at the ends of the house, with a huge central gathering space in the middle. This is where we'll spend most of our time, I think, and this is where we'll have games, singings, and general romps. The Craftsman model had a maid's room and some built in writing desks and an extra broom closet. We elminated the maid's room, made a small linen closet instead of the large broom closet, and we won't have built in desks. We will have the central meeting place I wanted, a heart keeping space.

A Common Room isn't really anything fancy. Boarding schools, colleges, and club houses often have them. A Common Room is simply a space held in common for the use of the members of a particular community. It's a place to relax, to feel at home, to discuss cabbages, sealing wax and kings with other people who join you in the Common Room. And that's what this blog is, too, among other things. It's our Common Room, where we invite others to come and partake of good life and good literature, to discuss the things that interest us, and to join us in some small measure while we learn, grown, and enjoy life.

To those of you who have been reading our Common Room discussions, those of you who are new, and those of you have both read and participated through emails and comments, we say "Well come, well come indeed, and we hope you return again and again."

This month marks the third year anniversary in the Big House. Not everything is quite as I wanted- but we are so richly blessed.

There are no longer 9 of us here, as the Equuschick married and moved into the little house last November. The HG graduates in May, and who knows what the future will bring to her? The Common Room has been the location for many singings, slumber parties, movie nights, games, quiet reading, school work, and Bible studies. It's where the computers are.=)

We end up doing more school, the youngest two and I, downstairs in the summer months, because it's cooler.
The kitchen often ends up the gathering place as well- I am glad it is large enough to accomodate a dozen friends.

Some posts from moving month three years ago:
What not to do
When things go wrong (It's funny, but there is also a twinge of sadness here, there is evidence in this post of the dementia my father was diagnosed with just this past year. We didn't realize it then).
Counting our blessings

Frugal Supper

My weekly Frugal Hacks post is up.

The store bought, ready made, convenience tin of curry sauce is embarrassingly expensive, and it's not something we usually have on hand. But we like it so much that we may just keep some stocked up in the pantry anyway.

Aquarium

It's a bit blurry because the glass was fogged (steamy jungle, donchaknow), but I loved these frogs. There were five or six of them all lined up in a row on the same branch.

More on books and the CPSIA

Letter one from one PJFry on Boing Boing:

These books certainly have artistic and historical value, and I don't think that they should be destroyed, but it is important to keep them out of little hands. The ink in most books printed prior to 1985 contain lead. Just touching the books, not to mention gnawing on them which many kids do, can result in unsafe levels of exposure.

There is no safe level of lead in anyone's body, but it is especially dangerous to babies and young children. Blood lead levels of just 5 to 10 mcg/dl in young children, below CDC limits, can result in 7 lost IQ points. There might still be a lot of bugs to work out with the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, like the prohibitive cost of testing for one, but the goal is a very important one.

My reply:

The CPSIA does not keep pre-1985 books out of 'little hands;' it keeps them out the hands of every single American youngster from age TWELVE on down.

And they are ending up in landfills thanks to this bill- many thrift shops have pulled theirs and are refusing to accept them in their donations. My library is pulling ours right now, and if they cannot sell them they will dispose of them.

Books printed before 1985 *sometimes* contained *some* lead in the inks. The Smart Mama (Jennifer Taggart) XRF tested several older books and she found most of them were lead free, only a few had lead in some of the illustrations.

"Just touching the books, not to mention gnawing on them which many kids do, can result in unsafe levels of exposure. "

There is no evidence I am aware of that this is true. What is your basis for making it? What studies do you know of that suggests lead in the ink (which becomes part of the substrate) somehow just comes off on a child's fingers?

And while your next statement may be true (there are no save levels of lead in the blood), you took a flying leap of logic there, as there is not a case on record where lead from a child's book entered the blood stream.

What evidence that does exist suggests that touching, holding, reading, even licking the book will not result in a chlid absorbing the lead, because saliva turns out not to be a very effective way of separating lead out of a printed page.

Actually EATING the entire book *might*- if a child chanced to eat a book that had more lead in it than most other pre-1985 books, but I suspect most children would be complaining of a belly ache for other reasons before they finished chomping down an entire book.

And I don't know any children over 2 who lick, suck, or chew on their books, yet this draconian law forbids the sale of all pre-1985 books for the use of children as old as 12- with zero evidence it's even possible for that book to harm a ten year old.
risk assessment is completely forbidden by the CPSIA as it stands.

Letter two from one PJFry on Boing Boing

I agree with you that there are major major problems with the CPSIA, and I think it would be a terrible tragedy if any books ended up in a landfill as a result of this bill, as I am sure that many probably already have. However, I do believe that it is important to protect children from lead, and other toxins, wherever they may be found.

The problem with lead is that it is a cumulative poison, each exposure results in more lead being built up in the body, and even small amounts of lead can lead to lifelong health and behavioral problems. Lead is in soil, paint chips and dust from older homes, vinyl blinds, pvc coating on power cords, antique furniture, keys, brass objects, and yes, some books. It all adds up.

Babies and toddlers routinely mouth their books, it is the first way that they learn to interact with them. I am sure that I am not the only parent to read their kid a book so many times that they have personally witnessed the ink being worn away. Or to watch the corners of books disintegrate from being sucked on.

Children absorb lead much more readily into their body than adults do. A child will absorb approximately 40-50% of all lead that they place in their mouths, as opposed to adults who will absorb about 10%. And young children, especially those younger than two, place their hands in their mouths much more frequently than adults. Certain health factors, such as a high fat diet, and low calcium and iron intake, can cause even higher rates of lead absorption. Children from poor backgrounds, the kind of children who are more likely to own items purchased from thrift stores, are most likely to suffer from the effects of lead exposure.

Right now, the CPSIA seems poised to do very little to punish the companies that are actually posing a significant health risk to children, and a lot of damage to the people that actually care about nurturing and protecting kids. It would be awful if libraries and thrift stores were harmed or forced out of business by the CPSIA. Likewise, WAHMs making cloth diapers or baby clothes, or the companies that make the wood toys that I buy my children. I feel very strongly that the INTENT of the CPSIA is a good one. However, I do agree with you that it is poorly written and needs to be thoroughly overhauled before being implemented.

My Reply:
I do not know if you are doing this sort of fear mongering bait and switch on purpose or if you really have been deceived by the Press Releases from PIRG, Public Citizen, NRDC, the Consumer's Union and other Naderite groups.

Nobody is arguing that lead isn't nasty stuff in the blood stream or that it isn't a cumulative poison. But you seem to think it somehow just magically enters a child through the air, and this is not so. You jump from 'lead in the blood is dangerous' to 'books poison children,' and there is NO evidence to support this.

Lead is in soil, paint chips and dust from older homes, vinyl blinds, pvc coating on power cords, antique furniture, keys, brass objects, and yes, some books. It all adds up.

Here's where you are wrong- NO, it only adds up if the child actually INGESTS it- there has to be some mechanism to GET the lead from point A to point B, and you seem to imagine this transferrence as something almost magical.

the paint chips have to be ingested, the dust gets on their hands and they put their hands in their mouths, or the inhale it, and the lead in keys, brass objects, etc ONLY 'adds up' in a child if they suck on or chew those things- and sucking doesn't extract the lead from every item- lead crystals, for instance, and books for another. The only scientific data I know of on this topic indicates licking a book does not, repeat NOT leach lead from the printed page. Chewing an entire book MIGHT, IF that book actually had lead in it (doubtful, as lead was NOT used in all pre-1985 books, only in a few) and IF the child at enough pages with lead in them (again, doubtful), and if the child had poor nutrition (vitamin C and calcium deficiencies have a lot to do with the higher lead absorption rates in children from impoverished families)- except, and this absolutely astounds me- there is NO RESEARCH supporting this theory about what MIGHT happen.

You include books with ZERO science to back that up. You are not using any scientific data or risk assessment to back up your claims.

Once more- SOME books have SOME lead in SOME of the colored inks. T

Babies and toddlers routinely mouth their books,

Cute. Not only is there no scientific data indicating any child ever has ever had the slightest bit of lead introduced to their blood stream from a book- not ONE, but we also aren't talking about regulations on only books for babies and toddlers. We are talking about books for 12 year olds, 11 year olds, 10 year olds, 9 year olds. 8 year olds, 7 year olds, 6 year old, etc.

I am sure that I am not the only parent to read their kid a book so many times that they have personally witnessed the ink being worn away.

And your evidence that this somehow magically translated into lead separating out of the substrate, separating out of the ink, and entering the child's bloodstream is based on.... what?

Or to watch the corners of books disintegrate from being sucked on.

When Jennifer Taggart lead tested her pre-1985 books, the majority of them had no lead. A few had lead well within the new limits set by the CPSIA, and a small handful had *some* lead in *some* of the illustrations. Do you understand it's not saturated throughout the book? This is where risk assessment is extremely useful, because, as you say, when babies do chew books, they chew the corners. They do not eat through the center like the Very Hungry Caterpillar. And low and behold, IF there is any lead (and remember there generally is NOT), it will be where there are brightly colored illustrations (and only a few of those) NOT in the corners of the book.

Children absorb lead much more readily into their body than adults do. A child will absorb approximately 40-50% of all lead that they place in their mouths, as opposed to adults who will absorb about 10%. And young children, especially those younger than two, place their hands in their mouths much more frequently than adults.

None of which in any way supports your contention that pre-1985 books need to be kept out of children's hands. In fact, the fact that they would only absorb half or less indicates the law is even more unnecessarily draconian than we knew, since older books do not routinely have lead, and it wasn't used in all the inks, either. .

Children from poor backgrounds, the kind of children who are more likely to own items purchased from thrift stores, are most likely to suffer from the effects of lead exposure.

Children from poor backgrounds are the kind of children most unlikely to own BOOKS, and now they will be even more unlikely to own them, with no benefit to their health, and much harm to their education.

Take a look at this


Letter Three, for another party: I'm certain that there are fewer than a dozen cases that could ever conclusively link lead poisoning to ink in books.

My reply: I am not aware of a single one, and I've been looking as have others. So there are actually zero cases that could ever conclusively link lead poisoning to ink in books.

The law doesn't outright ban their existence (like say Lawn Darts were) but it does put into place regulations that make their existence financially crippling to the point that they might as well ban them.

It is true that private citizens, at the moment, may continue to own those books. They simply cannot donate them to thrift shops or sell them and libraries are not supposed to check them out to children or in cases where children might use them. Libraries are, some of them, ignoring this law. Mine, sadly, is not ignoring it. They are pulling all kids pre1985 books, and because some books have no printed dates other than copyright date, they are pulling some books purchased in the last year or two that were undoubtedly printed post-1985 'just to be safe.'

And recently the CPSC ruled that it doesn't matter, because books have no useful value after 20 years anyway.
here.