Character is How We Deal With the Things We Don't Get Over.

From this article about the widowed father of two young boys and how they coped. It touched me deeply.

Two employees from a department store who were spending a day with friends at the beach find themselves falsely accused of some minor, pettifogging violations of the law, and one of their smooth-talking pals talks them out of the police station with a rousing speech:



Starting about the 7:45 mark- "Let a man say you were spitting on the sidewalk when you weren't and the next thing you know he'll be tearing up the Constitution. I don't care how small the right is you're trying to take away from me, I'll fight for it..."

And then he starts reciting the Constitution. "That always means trouble," says the police chief, right before he lets him go.

It's a funny little movie- 1941, starring Jean Arthur, Charles Coburn, and others. It's a pro-union, anti big business man film with a somewhat predictable twist and some smiles and screwball silliness along the way.

Gives new meaning to Birthday Bash

The Boy has been planning, replanning, arranging and rearranging a series of events for his birthday. He has things planned for every hour all. day. long. He just told me that he realized he has a two hour gap in the itinerary.

"So I thought," he said with a grin, "We'd spend those two hours just casually blowing things up."

The Tea Chemist is looking up recipes for homemade fireworks.

To Mow or Not to Mow

(repost)

And the green grass grew all around....

So goes the old folk song, anyway. Except for Colorado and New Mexico we've had the green grass, too. And the green weeds flourishing like the bay tree of scripture. Wherever we live, the weeds grow, and I generally like it that way because I like wildflowers, and wild flowers do not do well where they get mowed down every couple of weeks. But wherever we've lived we've been the odd folks out for my preferences for the wile and unkempt (albeit floral).

I guess we were both behind and ahead of the times.

In 1841, Andrew Jackson Downing published the first landscape-gardening book aimed at an American audience. At the time, Downing was twenty-five years old and living in Newburgh, New York. He owned a nursery, which he had inherited from his father, and for several years had been publishing loftily titled articles, such as “Remarks on the Duration of the Improved Varieties of New York Fruit Trees,” in horticultural magazines. Downing was dismayed by what he saw as the general slovenliness of rural America, where pigs and poultry were allowed to roam free, “bare and bald” houses were thrown up, and trees were planted haphazardly, if at all. (The first practice, he complained, contributed to the generally “brutal aspect of the streets.”) His “Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening” urged readers to improve themselves by improving their front yards. “In the landscape garden we appeal to that sense of the Beautiful and the Perfect, which is one of the highest attributes of our nature,” it declared.

He promoted the green and velvety lawn, and the public promoted his book, and a new lawn-cutter was developed, and over the years we got where we are today- where you are a bad neighbor if your lawn is not a velvety expanse of weed free grass, neatly clipped and trimmed.

We spend some forty billion dollars a year on grass- the legal sort. That includes seed, equipment, and poisons- lots of poisons. While we think of the velvety expanse of grass as a pleasant place for children to play- and I admit cool green grass does feel nice beneath bare feet, most suburban lawns hide lurking dangers- chemicals that run off into our water.

Yet not to have such a lawn is viewed as un-neighborly, anti-social, slovenly, even.

The lawn has become so much a part of the suburban landscape that it is difficult to see it as something that had to be invented.

A lawn is a symbol, a way to communicate something in our culture.

A lawn may be pleasing to look at, or provide the children with a place to play, or offer the dog room to relieve himself, but it has no productive value. The only work it does is cultural. In Downing’s day, the servant-mowed lawn stood, eloquently, for the power structure that made it possible: who but the very rich could afford such a pointless luxury? As mechanical mowers enabled middle-class suburbanites to cut their own grass, this meaning was lost and a different one took hold. A lawn came to signal its owner’s commitment to a communitarian project: the upkeep of the greensward that linked one yard to the next.

“A fine carpet of green grass stamps the inhabitants as good neighbors, as desirable citizens,” Abraham Levitt wrote. (By covenant, the original Levittowners agreed to mow their lawns once a week between April 15th and November 15th.) “The appearance of a lawn bespeaks the personal values of the resident,” a group called the Lawn Institute declared. “Some feel that a person who keeps the lawn perfectly clipped is a person who can be trusted.”

Several different writers have addressed the lawn culture adn offered solutions. The real problem with the grassy lawn, besides the trouble it takes, is that it's another monoculture. And variety is the spice of life:

Over the years, many alternatives to the lawn have been proposed. Pollan, in his book “Second Nature” (1991), suggests replacing parts—or all—of the lawn with garden. In “Noah’s Garden” (1993), Sara Stein, by contrast, advocates “ungardening”—essentially allowing the grass to revert to thicket. Sally and Andy Wasowski, in their “Requiem for a Lawnmower” (2004), recommend filling the yard with native trees and wildflowers. For those who don’t want to give up the look or the playing space provided by a lawn, the Wasowskis suggest using Buffalo grass, one of the very few turf species native to North America. Smaller American Lawns Today, or SALT, is a concept developed by William Niering, who for many years was a professor of botany at Connecticut College. Niering planted trees around his property, then left most of the rest of his yard unmowed, to become a meadow. “The meadow can take as much of your remaining lawn as you want,” he observes in an essay posted on SALT’s Web site. “There are some people who prefer no lawn, which is ideal!” For the past few decades, David Benner, a horticulturist from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has been touting moss as an alternative to grass: he himself has a one-acre “moss garden.” Recently, there have been several calls to make the lawnspace productive. In “Food Not Lawns” (2006), Heather C. Flores argues that the average yard could yield several hundred pounds of fruits and vegetables per year. (If you live in an urban area and don’t have a lawn, she suggests digging up your driveway.) “Edible Estates” (2008) is the chronicle of a project by Fritz Haeg, an architect and artist, who rips up conventional front yards in order to replace them with visually striking “edible plantings.” Haeg calls his approach “full-frontal gardening.”

Not all places and spaces will yield the same results, of course. I don't think we could have grown any fruits and veggies in our Colorado yard- it was dry, brown, and sandy. We did get some pretty wildflowers, however.

The Northeast is one of the relatively few regions in the country that are actually well suited to lawns. There, the simplest alternative to the modern, industrialized lawn may be a lawn that functions more or less as it did in the eighteen-forties, before herbicides or even sprinklers had been invented. In “Redesigning the American Lawn” (1993), F. Herbert Bormann, Diana Balmori, and Gordon T. Geballe dub such a lawn the Freedom Lawn. The Freedom Lawn consists of grass mixed with whatever else happens to seed itself, which, the authors note, might include:


dandelion, violets, bluets, spurrey, chickweed, chrysanthemum, brown-eyed Susan, partridge berry, Canada mayflower, various clovers, plantains, evening primrose, rushes, and wood rush, as well as grasses not usually associated with the well-manicured lawn, such as broomsedge, sweet vernal grass, timothy, quack grass, oat grass, crabgrass, and foxtail grass.

The Freedom Lawn is still mowed—preferably with a push-mower—but it is watered infrequently, if at all, and receives no chemical “inputs.” If a brown spot develops, it is likely soon to be filled by what some might call weeds, but which Bormann, Balmori, and Geballe would rather refer to as “low growing broad-leaved plants.”

That list of plants sounds charming to me.

Here all this time I thought we were just, um, relaxed, and it turns out we were part of a bono-fide political, cultural, environmental movement- the anti-lawn movement, the freedom lawn brigade.

It has a much nicer ring to it than lazy.=)

The Things Kids Say

Flower-Flies and Nightening Bugs, that's what Blynken and Nod called lightening bugs on Friday night when they caught them and put them in a jar.

I love 'nightening bugs.'

Dementia's On First

An online friend of Granny Tea's tells this story (I've changed the names) about life at her house (her spouse has dementia). She'd told him a day or so ago about some things they might do. Then she repeated them yesterday because he doesn't usually remember what she's told him, but he said, "You already told me that." She responded, "I wasn't sure you'd remembered."

John – “How am I supposed to know what I will remember or not remember?”
Gail – “Well, how am I supposed to know what you will remember or not remember?
John – “I don’t know, because I don’t remember.”
Gail – “If you don’t know what you’ll remember, I certainly can’t know what you’ll remember.”
John – “It’s confusing.”
Gail- “I give up.”

Granny Tea and I were discussing Blynken's reluctance to go home and I pointed out that at our busy household, where 9 of us are currently living and Shasta and the Equuschick are likely to be here for some chunk of every day, he always has somebody to play with and do things with him and for him. At his second floor apartment, his mother is the only one to cook, clean, do laundry (which is downstairs), take care of his younger brother- and not even the most devoted, single mindedly doting of mothers could duplicate the sheer amount of attention he gets here.

"Yes," said Granny Tea. "I sympathize with single parents. It's a hard job. And I should know, I am one now. Only mine is over six feet tall, and somehow, I think it's much harder."

"Well, for one thing," I agreed, "He's not nearly as cute as Blynken and Nod."

Me, me, me, me

I thought about posting a sort of shallow, easy, but kind of fun questionnaire. You know the sort of thing:

1. What are you wearing?

Black cotton skirt, lime green shirt, black and lime green thong sandals, lacey black head-covering. Glasses. Band-aids. Excess weight....

2. Name five things you can see right now.

a. my purse, yet another one which is losing its strap because I fill purses too much
b. unfolded laundry. LOTS of unfolded laundry
c. The book Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
d. the sales fliers for the local grocery stores
e. The Zeus dog, which surprises me greatly, as I thought his person came in here an hour ago to tell me good-bye.

3. What's for dinner?

Ham roast, cheesey potatoes, hopefully a salad. Then we go next door for cake and ice-cream for my Dad's birthday. I was horribly neglectful and did not call him for father's day. He was in another state visiting one of my two brother's (the other doesn't speak to him), and I was in another state visiting friends, keeping Blynken and Nod, and first it was just too busy and then I couldn't think of anything to say, so I didn't.

Anyway, Pip's cooking, it's her night. We're having company, out of town guests from Arkansas are arriving today. (company has car trouble and are stranded six hours south of us waiting for a mechanic). I have no idea how long they are staying. Well, that's not entirely true. I know how long ONE of them is staying, approximately a week to ten days IIRC. There are three, and I don't know if the other two are staying the same amount of time or not.

Incidentally, one of these days I am actually going to keep track of how many people we feed in a week, and then I will quit feeling so guilty that I cannot keep my grocery budget down as low as other people with large families seem to be able to do.

4. Last book completed?
Cold Comfort Farm- I thought I had read this. I am sure that I have always checked off on any booklists where it appears that I have read this. But I have been thinking all this time of some other, completely different book. I don't know exactly what book, but the book I remembered as Cold Comfort Farm is a vaguely sappy, some social commentary, not very funny to me novel set in the American South, and that book is an imposter. I don't know what the real title is. Because it turns out I never had read Cold Comfort Farm until this week and it's set in what appears to be the 20's in England and it's hilarious. And I just learned there was a movie, too, starring Stephen Fry. (Updated to add: don't bother. I watched some on youtube and found it explicit where the book is tactfully discreet)

5. How do you feel about arts and crafts? I ask this because, while I am not a phony arts and crafts person, I did supply plenty of experience with paints, paper, clay, glue, play-dough and so forth to my kids when they were little (they can have them now, too, but they are grown up enough to buy their own and except for Jenny, they mostly don't want them). By 'phony' arts and crafts I mean things like, oh, ugly ash trays made of toothpicks and drinking straws- or anything made of drinking straws, really- and caterpillars made of egg cartons and that sort of thing. We did once make rolling turtles out of walnuts- you decorate a walnut half like a turtle (or something else if you like) and put a marble under it and let it roll around on a slanted surface. To me this wasn't a 'fake' craft because it was making a fun toy that could actually be played with for a long time.

So we did these kinds of things often when the kids were younger, and I didn't think it was any big deal. But I'm doing that home-school co-op thing (for my sins, and I am still not sure why), and we had parents interested fill out a survey asking them what they most wanted in a co-op, and the results were:
Algebra
high school lab sciences
PE
and Arts and crafts- these things were all billed as things parents often couldn't do by themselves or required a group. I get that about some P.E.- you can't play team sports if you have two kids. And it would be sad never to get to play a game of kickball or volleyball. But arts and crafts for the little kids? I don't understand. What is so hard about sitting the kids on a shower curtain and handing them the play-dough or water colors and paper? Or naked in the bathtub with shaving cream and food coloring and letting them fingerpaint? Or even handing them glue and glitter at Christmas? Why does that require a surrogate for it to happen at all? And I say this NOT in the spirit of criticism, honest. It's just that, when I expressed some befuddlement, or really, surprise, about why moms needed a co-op in order to do even the most basic arts and crafts stuff, the other moms all looked at me like I had three heads, and at least one had a wart on its nose and spinach in its teeth.
I know I don't fit in and I have no kindred spirits. But sometimes.... I just am taken aback at all the ways this is true.

6. Houseplants? Yes? No? If yes, how many and what kind? If no, why not?

Me: Yes. I have over 25 right now (there are somewhere between 3 and 6 spiderplants upstairs but I didn't go up to count). Sometimes more, sometimes less when they die of neglect. Mostly aloe vera, geraniums, and spider plants. Petunias in the sunroom, one scented geranium in the kitchen, and a couple philodendrons and a rubber plant. I am surprised it was 25. I really don't think it looks like that many, and I always want more. Oh, and I think an African violet is recovering from a shocking near death experience when I forgot all about it for nearly three months, and then set it outside where it was alternatively chilled and drowned by rains.

7. If you could ask me one question, what would it be? (email if you'd rather- heartkeepercommonroom. It's a gmail account.

Me: I ask myself this question almost every night: What's WRONG with you? Why do you stay up so late? You know you'll regret it the next day.

The Power of Narration

While there are several things we have done and do for language arts in our shrinking little homeschool (next fall I shall have only two students. The last time I had only two students was, my dears, 16 years ago. How strange it feels), the two constants have been good books and required narrations. I've blogged about narration before (a couple examples here and here), oh, and here as well, and now Tim's Mom at Bona Vita Rusticanda is sharing some great notes she took from a recent Charlotte Mason conference. Here's a sampling:

Narration is an all-purpose, extremely powerful activity. Transformation occurs that physically changes the brain. "The Power of Retelling: Developmental Steps for Building Comprehension," and "Read and Retell" by Hazel Brown and Brian Cambourne encapsulate all the principles of the wholistic/natural learning model.

Narration has linguistic spillovers: meaning, phraseology, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling. Children can retain phrases, styles, etc. that they pick up from narrating even after a year.

Narration enables learners to "own" their learning. "Learning that is not accompanied by transformation is shallow and transitory." (Cambourne) "Reader-Response" by Louise Rosenblatt. The learner "reproduces such Knowledge touched by his own personality; thus his reproduction becomes original." (CM vol 6)

Narration enables students to:
- write better sentences
- better solve math word problems
- increase vocabulary
- have a much higher level of comprehension

Narration improves concept of story, critical thinking, oral language development.

Critical thinking requires background knowledge and concepts to think critically about.

Narration reveals what a child remembers and what he thinks is important. It shows whether his organization matches the text - and more.

Narration in History: For generations and throughout centuries, history has been passed on through oral narration. People who are forced to increase their oral mind have better mental capacity than those who rely on printed text, note-taking, etc. Jewish Rabbis used oral tradition to relay God's truth to generations. See "The Singer of Tales" by Albert Lord for studies. Oral tradition is as literary as printed text. The art forms of literature/story-telling were already set and styled before any of the tales were ever written down. Songs, stories and poems can be kept in people's minds for centuries - intact - with no notes! The more you rely on notes, the less you use your mind.

Emotion drives learning because emotion is what transforms and engages. When the "amygdala" part of the brain is activated by fear or emotion, learning can enter long-term memory instead of short-term memory. Stories, not dry facts, engage our emotions.

It's good stuff. And for those to whom this seems entirely too easy- remember, a true education happens in the mind, not on workbook pages. You can do the workbook pages, and there are times they serve some purpose- but they serve no purpose at all if something isn't also going on in the mind. Narration begins in the mind of the learner.

Honduras VS Iran

From HotAir:

It’s difficult to make sense out of the foreign policy coming out of the White House under Barack Obama. On the one hand, Obama insisted that he could not interfere with the internal politics of the “sovereign government of Iran,” refusing for days to even condemn Iran for its flagrantly violent repression of dissent. When Honduras’ military staged a coup, though, Obama apparently had no such reticence in involving the US on behalf of deposed President Manuel Zelaya — a close ally of Hugo Chavez:

(much more at the link)

The thing is, the coup in Honduras was actually in response to President Manuel Zelaya's violation of the Constitution. He ordered the military to help him participate in this Constitutional violation, and the head of the military refused. So Zelaya fired him and continued his plans. At that point, he was removed from office. The military escorted him from office, with the full blessing of Honduras' Supreme Court- but President Obama didn't like that, and he has certainly been, to use his term, 'meddling:'

The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. “The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message,” said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed. Washington called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn’t recognize any other leader.

The U.S. stand was unpopular with Honduran deputies. One congressman, Toribio Aguilera, got prolonged applause from his colleagues when he urged the U.S. ambassador to reconsider. Mr. Aguilera said the U.S. didn’t understand the danger that Mr. Zelaya and his friendships with Mr. Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro posed.

While I believe the President should have spoken more forcefully and more quickly to condemn the election fraud and government sponsored massacres in Iran, I have agreed with him that he should not intervene militarily. I understand that level of 'not meddling.' Like many others, however, I do not understand why he thought it was acceptable to 'meddle' in Honduras on behalf of a leader attempting to violate his country's Constitution. Or perhaps I just hate to recognize the very obvious difference:

The first I heard about the coup in Honduras was in a story about how the US had helped avert it.

My first thought was Obama and meddling. Of course, subsequent events prove that either the above link* was Bagdad Bob in nature, or Obama's meddling was a signal failure.

Your update an Obama's commenting on this story is remarkable to me -- for the speed with which he commented. When the abortionist was murdered, he spoke within the hour. When the soldier was murdered by an islamofascist in the US, he took days. People getting slaughtered in Iran? Even more days.

A Chavez ally ousted from power? Mere hours for him to speak.

Is there a trend here?

Of course, it could just be more amateur, learn on the job stuff. I don't know. I just don't think it's very impressive.

What kind of Representative Democracy is this?

Can somebody defend this to me? Explain to me why this is a reasonable way to pass a law.

Texas Republican Reps. Joe Barton and Louie Gohmert have just asked the chair whether there exists a complete, updated copy of the Waxman-Markey carbon-cap bill.

"If a bill for which there is no copy were to actually pass this body," Barton asked, "could the bill without a copy be sent to the Senate for its consideration?"

Through a series of parliamentary inquiries, the Republicans learned that the 300-plus page managers' amendment, added to the bill last night in the House Rules Committee, has not even been been integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk's desk, let alone in any other location. The two documents are side-by-side at the desk as the clerk reads through the instructions in the 300 page document for altering the 1,090 page document.

But they cannot be simply combined, because the amendment contains 300 pages of items like this: "Page 15, beginning line 8, strike paragraph (11)..." How many members of Congress do you suppose have gone through it all to see how it changes the bill?

Global Warming is apparently so urgent that we can't even wait until members of Congress know what they're voting on.

And yet... it passed. What has happened to our government, and what has happened to our citizens that we mostly find this sort of post boring or teeth gritting and cannot be bothered to tell the politicians, both Republican and Democrat, that this must stop. They MUST read the bills before they vote.

Signing a Blank Contract- your government at work

Via Ace, this large chunk of important information I simply lifted directly from his blog, because this stuff is too important to miss. There's actually more there, and you should read it. Ace's comments are italicized, the post he's quoting from is in green. Consider the tactics used here, and if they're just peachy keen with you, please respond to three questions- two here, and one at the end of this post.:
1. Would they be just peachy keen if used by a party you didn't like to pass a bill you didn't approve of?
2. What is the point of a representative democracy? What is acceptable to you about voting on a bill without being informed about what is in it?

How bad is it? This bad.

To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers.

The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy.

In other words, the "costs" examined are merely the costs of salaries and phones and computers and Post-Its for the people administering this program -- the actual costs just to hire bureaucrats to sabotage the American economy.

Not the costs those bureaucrats in turn inflict on us all.

The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: "The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap."

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill's restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

...

Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.

Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are destroying the country with a Shock and Awe bombardment. They rush enormous bills which change the basic foundations of the American economy through the Congress, with only a day (or less!) to read 1500 page abominations. No one has read any of these bills. No one.

The American public is not only not permitted to debate and consider, but they're blocked from even knowing a debate is going on at all. The rush of one huge bill after another is working the way it's intended to work: Massive, economy-destroying bills are being rammed through Congress without being read or debated because Obama and Pelosi and Reid don't want the bills to be read or debated. They just want these bills passed.

Whatever these bills might actually contain -- something we'll all be discovering later.

They don't want to give the opposition time to read these bills, because then they might actually be able to warn the American people about what's in them.

You think Ace sounds a little over the top? You have no idea just how bad it really is. Consider what this means:

Similarly, the bill contains a "placeholder" -- an empty area to be modified/determined later, after the vote.

That means there is no bill. You cannot add or modify a "bill" after its passed, except by... voting on a bill. You can't just edit it later.

A PLACEHOLDER? Tell me how this is NOT like being given a blank piece of paper and told it's a contract, you need to sign on the dotted line, and they'll fill in the details of the contract later.

At approx. 2:35pm Eastern, GOP Rep. Joe Barton announced that there is now a placeholder in the bill to be determined later.

Barton notes that this is unprecedented. He can’t recall any final passage of a bill that has a placeholder in it.

Third question- Would every one of you who thinks this was just fine and wishes I would shut-up and cease complaining about this kind of governing do me a favor? Would you please send me a check? Keep it blank, all except the signature line. I promise it will go to a good cause, and I'll fill in the details later.

That's what the government is doing.

Play-pretties

I wish the blogger at Stone House would come decorate my house.

And design my garden.

Training My Daughters...

People often ask how it is that my daughters have turned out to be so capable about the house, such lovely household managers, so able to run the household without me, even when they are quite young. I try to explain, but am seldom believed. Let me illustrate with an example taken from real life.

This Sunday Pip was sick, and then the Cherub contracted it- 'it' being a sore throat, wheezing, coughing, stuffy, misery. I stayed home from church with both of them, not because Pip isn't perfectly capable of taking care of herself (she is), but because it is no fun to have to take care of a sick Cherub when you are also sick.

Everybody was still asleep when I got up, so I went into the kitchen to make myself an omelette. I chopped a bit of red onion to saute first, and found when I opened the jar of coconut oil that the kitchen was so warm the oil was liquid. I learned this by spilling half a cup of the valuable stuff on the floor because, expecting a solid, I had the jar tipped at just the right angle to pour it on the floor as I unscrewed the lid.

I put the onions on low and cleaned the floor where I had spilled the oil. Meanwhile, I whisked the eggs and mayo for the omelette, reheated my coffee in the microwave, and cut up the swiss cheese for my eggs. This is important.

I opened the fridge to put the mayo away, and knocked out a container of sandwich spread of some sort. I cleaned the floor. Meanwhile, my red onions turned black.

I put my eggs on to gently set into a perfect omelette and started to clear off the windowsill while I waited. I knocked over a vase of slimey water which had formerly held a rosebud. I cleaned the floor.

I cleared off a stool my loved ones perpetually use as a useful spot for setting things on. I dropped an unfinished cup of tea. I cleaned the floor.

My eggs now being nicely done, I put my cheese on the top and folded my omelette over. Then I remembered I needed a plate and got it out and slid my perfect omelette onto the plate. I now I had a large glass of mint water, a cup of overly hot coffee, and a plate of steaming omelette to carry back to my room. I didn't want to bother to get out a tray, too much trouble. I thought I could set my plate on my cup and carry water and plate in one hand and steaming coffee in the other.

Um, do set down your drink, there's a dear. You don't want to snort things out of your nose and smear the computer screen, do you?

So. I picked my large and steaming cup of coffee in one hand and picked up my larger (a mason jar with a handle) jug of water topped with a plate laden with omelettey goodness up in the other hand (I realize this sounds stupid, but I have done it before and it worked then). I suppose my omelette was heavier at one end than the other, or, and this just occurred to me, I neglected to compensate for the fact that I am limping (a new flare-up of raw dishydrotic eczema on one foot, still broken toe on the other). Because I took one half step and the plate fell. UPside down, naturally. At first this wasn't too bad- it fell on the counter of the island. However, the OMELETTE fell in such a way that it was dangling over the side of the island, drooping like the clocks in Salvadore Dali's The Persistence of Memory, and it was slowly responding to the caress of gravity. Quicker than thought (Moral: do not DO things quicker than thought. THINK first.) I flipped my plate rightside up with one hand, set my steaming hot cup of coffee down on the island with my other hand, and using that left hand, grabbed my omelette to scoop it on my plate.

And even more quickly dropped it again, letting it fall to the floor. Because my omelette was hot. Hotter still was all the gooey, steaming, melted cheese which was now covering my fingers and cooking them. I told you the swiss cheese would be important. You thought it was going to be the coffee, didn't you? But no, it was the cheese which so hot it was quickly becoming grafted to my skin.

The next few seconds are a blur of agonizing white hot pain as I bit my lips so as not to disturb my sleeping sickos (which included our houseguest), hobbled rapidly and unevenly over to the kitchen sink, turned on the cold water to get that sticky, hot, melted cheese OFF MY COOKING FINGERS and, of course, the cold water promptly turned the melting cheese to an impermeable shield encasing my still burning fingers. I had to take a washcloth and rub that cheese off my tender, still steaming fingers, but it finally came off and I held my cooking fingers under the soothing balm of cold water. As the pain subsided somewhat, a sensation I had been ignoring finally managed to rudely intrude itself upon my conscience and I became rather harshly aware that somewhere between picking up a steaming hot cheese omelette by the melted cheese and hardening that cheese under a stream of cold water at the kitchen sink, I had stubbed my broken toe.

I took my fingers out of the cold water and realized they actually weren't done cooking yet. This did distract me from the pain in my foot, however. I hobbled back to the pantry and grabbed a bottle of vinegar and poured it on my fingers. It did help, but the fingers were still feeling painfully steamed, so back in the cold water they went. When the pain subsided I limped over to the aloe vera plant and cut a stem off, sliced it open and slathered it on my cheese broiled fingers. This made my toe hurt more, which I figured was a good sign. So I turned my attention to my lovely omelette, still all over the floor.

I am afraid I will disgust you all, but the truth is I was terribly hungry and I don't do well when I delay proteins in the morning, and I was in no shape to cook anything else, so I scooped it off the floor onto my plate, and, once more, wiped up the floor, (which is now 3/4 of the way clean). I got out a tray, put my breakfast on it and hobbled back to my room (which, adjoining the bathroom we share with the Cherub, is the best place to ensure I would hear her when she woke up). I set the tray down next to my bed and started to climb in when I looked down and realized that somewhere, somehow, I had spilled part of my omelette on me- and it was pretty nasty, and, I realized to my surprise, still warm, giving some indication of how hot that omelette had been. So I tossed that outfit into the dirty clothes, put on something fresh, and again settled in to have my breakfast in bed- now shaking a bit from low blood sugars.

I brushed my hand against the sheet and quickly got up again to run my fingers under cold water and slather on more aloe vera.

Finally, I settled down to eat my breakfast. It was cold, of course, but there were only two dog hairs on my plate and none I could find in my omelette.

I have only a tiny red mark inside my ring finger to show for my trauma, and the broken toe is still broken but doesn't seem any worse than it was.

And that is how and why my daughters are so very capable, you see. Unable to be a good example, I serve as a horrible warning, and it has frightened them into competency.

Sunday Hymn Post

GO TO DARK GETHSEMANE



Go to dark Gethsemane,

Ye that feel the tempter's power;

Your Redeemer's conflict see;

Watch with Him one bitter hour;

Turn not from His griefs away;

Learn of Jesus Christ to pray.



See Him at the judgment hall,

Beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;

See Him meekly bearing all!

Love to man His soul sustained.

Shun not suffering, shame, or loss;

Learn of Christ to bear the cross.



Calvary's mournful mountain climb;

There adoring at His feet,

Mark that miracle of time,

God's own sacrifice complete;

"it is finished!" hear Him cry;

Learn of Jesus Christ to die.



Early hasten to the tomb

Where they laid His breathless clay:

All is solitude and gloom;

Who hath taken Him away?

Christ is risen! He meets our eyes.

Savior, teach us so to rise.



This is also the tune used to sing the lovely Gracious Spirit Dwell in Me:

Gracious Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would gracious be;
And with words that help and heal
Would Thy life in mine reveal;
And with actions bold and meek
Would for Christ my Savior speak.

Truthful Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would truthful be;
And with wisdom kind and clear
Let Thy life in mine appear;
And with actions brotherly
Speak my Lord’s sincerity.

Tender Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would tender be;
Shut my heart up like a flower
In temptation’s darksome hour,
Open it when shines the sun,
And his love by fragrance own.

Mighty Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would mighty be;
Mighty so as to prevail,
Where unaided man must fail;
Ever, by a mighty hope,
Pressing on and bearing up.

Holy Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would holy be;
Separate from sin, I would
Choose and cherish all things good,
And whatever I can be
Give to Him Who gave me Thee!

Lila Rose has further video footage of PP lying

This time a client they believe to be a minor says she saw images of aborted fetuses online and asks if they're real. Without ascertaining what images she saw, what website, or any specifics of what the girl saw (her only description is it was gross and bloody), the clinic worker lies to her and tells her "No, it's not real." She also suggests that there's no reason to even look at those pictures because they will just upset her.

NO reason to seek information? To have consent to a surgical procedure be informed, fully educated consent? Why are these images so disturbing if this is nothing more than tissue or faked images? Why are they so disturbing to this clinic worker that she must deceive her client instead of being honest with her?

You can see her lie for yourself here, and then they follow with some images of aborted children- there is a warning and enough time given to close the footage if you don't want to see it. Youtube, however, pulled the video. Like the PP worker, they view images of the results of our prochoice society too shocking to see. They allow videos of autopsies and open heart surgery, but simple photographs of the 'Product of Conception' once the abortionist has finished with it, these are too horrific to permit the public to see.

Why are they so afraid?

Scrap-paper Wall Covering

This is really, really cute. Bright, cheerful, and frugal as all get out.

Our thrift shop has a craft section where all their craft stuff is 2.50 a bag, except on half price day when it is 1.25 a bag, natch. Last half price day I scored a stack of scrap-booking supplies, books, papers, embellishments, and all kinds of goodies, including enough paper to do a wall of my own if I could think of a wall in this house I wanted to do.=)

Americans, grow up already.

Let us speak plainly. Events in Iran were largely blown off the front pages, blown out of our tiny, teflon brains and outside the kin of our itsy bitsy attention spans:

Until now, the opposition may have been buoyed by the robust support across the globe for their drive to bring real democratic change to Iran. The protesters certainly haven’t been getting any support from the censored and browbeaten (or just plain beaten) media in their own country (Reporters Without Borders calls Iran the world’s biggest prison for journalists). How disappointed and demoralized they’ll feel when the world’s attention shifts to eulogizing a famously talented man who couldn’t stop grabbing his crotch.

The mullahs in Iran must be loving it. Our evening broadcasts were clear proof that the decadent Westerners have the attention span of children. We decry political tyrants, but we knowingly accept and immerse ourselves in silly cults of personality so long as the icons are celebrities.

The attention span of children? More like lobotomized fleas, fleas which have been sucking the blood of crack addicts.

And I would so very much like to blame the media, I really would. But I can't. The media is not responsible for choosing what we Americans collectively google, and here are the top 100 google trends as of three minutes ago:


1. road to perdition
2. michael jackson death photos
3. powerblock tv
4. melanie oudin
5. western states 100
6. michael jackson autopsy results
7. virgin mobile free fest tickets
8. sycophants
9. cap and trade vote results
10. because of winn dixie
11. lisle
12. michael motte
13. rhythm and booms
14. lincoln financial field
15. philip samuelsson
16. seattle rock and roll marathon
17. serpico star
18. dc carnival
19. rv movie
20. climate bill 2009
21. evan chandler
22. cheyenne woods wikipedia
23. maryss courchinoux
24. lisicki
25. eric knodel

26. mikko koskinen
27. ryan bourque
28. conrad murray
29. ben hanowski
30. michael jackson children pictures
31. ob street fair 2009
32. michael jackson funeral arrangements
33. sabine lisicki
34. skin grafting
35. armando montelongo
36. caribbean festival dc
37. sycophants definition
38. chris mccandless
39. manayunk arts festival
40. jerry d amigo
41. soulja boy inmates
42. taste of philadelphia
43. virgin festival 2009 tickets
44. spellbound movie
45. cole younger
46. veronica montelongo
47. straight talk
48. watch transformers 2 free online
49. kutztown folk festival
50. taste of chicago

51. ruth madoff
52. celebrate freedom
53. evan chandler michael jackson
54. landon ferraro
55. tssi ts 20w7
56. lisicki tennis
57. funkmaster flex car show
58. virgin freefest
59. marcus foligno
60. maria elisa chapur
61. penn s landing
62. one step ahead
63. magellan gps
64. kim kardashian ex husband
65. troy davis
66. antivirusbest
67. dc caribbean carnival 2009
68. tomas tatar
69. slime mold
70. cow belles
71. western states 100 mile endurance run
72. farrah fawcett funeral
73. casey cizikas
74. kidz bop 16
75. westfarms mall

76. quarter round molding
77. brett ponich
78. ultimate chaos
79. mac bennett
80. free downloadable games
81. wimbledon schedule
82. brian dumoulin
83. hobie pro angler
84. cherry blossom festival denver
85. hyde park blast
86. brayden mcnabb
87. cedarburg strawberry festival
88. jo koy
89. ryan button
90. ri air show 2009
91. nhl draft tracker
92. dr. tohme tohme
93. jay bouwmeester
94. jordan chandler lied
95. oudin tennis
96. word to the badd
97. flip this house
98. john mulaney
99. taste of tacoma
100. deltanet

Tehran, Iran, Mousavi- nowhere to be found. And who knew so many Americans didn't know the definition of sycophant?

Cap and Trade Passed the House

Tell these 8 treacherous Republicans just how despicable you think they are. Make a donation to their opposition for their next election run.

Tell these noble fifty Democrats how much you admire and appreciate them for their strong stance for the little guy. Cap and Trade would be a devastating tax on the poor.

Word is it will fail in the Senate. One prays so. Also via HotAir comes this link:

An epitaph from Vodkapundit: “Never have so few stolen so much from so many to achieve so little.”

This is irresponsible government. Remember, Waxman insists he doesn't even know what's in his own bill and he shouldn't be expected to- and he added a 300 page amendment in committee that most (if not all) politicians had not even had a chance to read yet when it came to a vote.

And we desperately need the Read the Bills act. This should be a no-brainer. Not a single person with a shred of intellectual honesty or integrity can deny that it's irresponsible and simply wrong for legislators to pass bills they don't bother to read. IT's absolutely disgusting that we have come to a place where we have to make a law in order to get our alleged representatives to perform this bare minimum of due diligence.

Pew Warmers and Cultural Christians

Last weekend we watched a movie called Time Changer. I didn't expect to like it at all. I expected to find it poorly acted. I figured the story line would be hokey, production values embarrassing, the dialogue contrived, and it would all be completely implausible.

It was badly acted for the most part, the dialogue was stilted, it was implausible, and it also had some shoddy theology in it, and the production values were in places absolutely cringe worthy. But I liked it. Not well enough to recommend that everybody buy it, but if you are at somebody's house and they ask if you'd like to see it, you might well enjoy it. You won't be blown away by the script or the acting, but you might find it a pleasant and thoughtful way to spend a couple hours.

I looked it up ahead of time and found all the above criticisms, which were fair, plus one that it was preaching to the choir and doing it so badly that nobody 'outside' the faith would be converted. That wasn't a fair criticism. This movie wasn't made to persuade 'outsiders' of anything. My husband and I both felt this movie was ALL about 'preaching to the choir' and telling them to get off their comfortable pews and start living real, authentic lives.

It's kind of the message found here:

"One of the reasons that Southern Baptists now need to ask the hard questions about a regenerate church membership--a historic and foundational Baptist tenet--is that people have confused the Christian faith for substitutes. The Christian faith is not mere moralism; it is not faith in faith, some subjective amorphous feeling, nor is it some kind of a self-help theory. The Christian faith is the manifestation of God's truth revealed in His Son and made known to us today in His Word."

It is the same sort of warning as this:

When the first few episodes revealed the earning potential of this "everyday family," Jon & Kate Plus Eight became a brand name that was packaged and sold. And many Christians were happy to comply by opening up their wallets and their fellowship halls. When the network and the couple were not satisfied with the money generated through high ratings and book sales, the Gosselin home was filled with product placements and the children were filmed for long hours each week. All the while many (though not all) evangelicals watched with undiscerning eyes. Somewhere along the line we, like Jon and Kate, seemed to forget the warnings of 1 Timothy 6:9-10:

But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. (NRSV)

It was not until the recent allegations of sexual impropriety arose that a significant number of Christians began to question whether Jon and Kate were indeed the examples of faithful living that we had imagined. Somehow most of us missed the long trajectory that was, day by day, moving them farther from a life of Christian virtue. Sexual immorality—whether actual or merely suspected—caught our attention, but the materialism, narcissism, and exploitation of children that preceded it was largely overlooked.

As such, the breakdown of Jon and Kate's marriage is but a symptom of the larger weaknesses of ethics in the evangelical community. We are easily seduced by wealth and fame. We are easily contented by the shallow rhetoric of hot-button issues. In short, we are easily deceived by cultural values painted in Christian veneers (or clothed in Isaiah 40:31 T-shirts).

It never interested me at all, John and Kate Plus Eight. The HG caught one episode while she was in Texas helping to care for another multiples family and she was not impressed with the exploitation of the children. But I digress.

God is still not our vending machine.

A Case for Life

From Touchstone, an excerpt from a review of a new book:

The scientific belief that ties into the normative premise is the simple medical fact that embryos and fetuses are human beings. There is no longer, strictly speaking, any debate about “when life begins.” That question has been answered not by religious authority but by the disciplines of human biology and embryology. A human life begins at the moment of conception when a distinct and complete, though immature, human being forms from the joining of her parents’ gametes.

What follows from the conjoining of the scientific and normative beliefs is disarmingly simple: all human beings have a right to life; unborn human beings are human beings; thus unborn human beings have a right to life. When you add the basic political belief that the purpose of governments and laws is to protect fundamental human rights, you arrive at the basic pro-life position.

Hedges

Many years ago when my brother was still a fairly young newlywed, he worked as a janitor/groundskeeper on Pepperdine's campus. One of his married co-workers frequently went on day long hiking trips with his best friend because his wife didn't really enjoy that kind of thing. Thing was, his 'best friend' was another woman.

My brother was shocked when he learned that, and his co-worker was shocked that my bro was shocked. I guess it was quite an electrical moment for both of them. Har.

His co-worker mocked him for thinking there was something dangerous about it, and basically told him "Man, your wife must keep you on a short leash. You can't have girls for friends? That's wacked."

My brother tried to explain that yes, he had friends who were also female, but now he was married no woman would ever be his 'best friend' except his wife. The co-worker insisted he was just over-reacting and making an issue out of something perfectly healthy and normal.

And about six months later the co-worker's marriage shipwrecked on the rocks of adultery when the 'best friend' relationship became more physical than the wife could overlook.

When I was in high school, my best friend was a boy. I thought it was strictly platonic myself until the day he proposed to me. I couldn't figure out why he was willing to end such a perfectly happy friendship by changing it into something romantic. I just wanted us to go on being best friends forever. I convinced him we should just be friends, but then I married my husband and he had other ideas. I could not convince him that it was really okay for my best friend to be this guy I'd known since I was 13. By then my friend had married, too, and his wife was okay with us being best pals, I would point out, so why wasn't my husband?

Well, my pal's wife left him for another man, and my husband pointed out she was okay with our friendship because she wasn't that invested in the marriage to begin with. I really didn't see my husband's point of view, and I never, ever felt even the slightest smidgen of temptation- but I loved my husband and the friendship bothered him so I let the friendship drift apart. Over the years I have seen his wisdom again and again as we have watched other marriages fail when one or both partners failed to respect the hedges, the boundary lines, that a marriage should place between each partner and all other members of the opposite sex. You see:

Few people wake up one day and say, “Hey, I think I’ll destroy my marriage, trash my integrity, and break my spouse’s heart today.” They drift into it. What baffles me is how otherwise intelligent people fail to take steps to protect themselves from it. With regard to “casual emails,” for example, my husband and I normally cc: each other when emailing a personal note to an acquaintance of the opposite sex. We maintain good boundaries with other people and we don’t invest our emotions in friends of the opposite sex.

Can men and women be friends? Certainly. My husband is my best friend – the ultimate “friend with benefits.” But it is unwise in the extreme to invest your emotions and build an intimacy with someone with whom you can’t complete that intimacy. Even if you are never physically unfaithful, is there any way to have an intimate friend of the opposite sex without depriving your spouse of the emotional investment to which they’re entitled?

Global Warming FAcing Robust Skepticism

In Australia. Excerpt:
Australian Senator Steve Fielding of the Family First Party, decided to investigate the whole thing first hand. .

His story is particularly interesting. Andrew Bolt, who has been leading the charge against the global warming hysteria for years, notes that Fielding's investigation "could blow apart the great global warming scare."

Fielding went to the US to assess the American evidence for global warming at close quarters. As Melbourne's Age reported on June 4:

Senator Fielding said he was impressed by some of the data presented at the [US Heartland Institute's] climate change skeptics' conference: namely that, although carbon emissions had increased in the last 10 years, global temperature had not.

He said scientists at the conference had advanced other explanations, such as the relationship between solar activity and solar energy hitting the Earth to explain climate change.

Fielding has issued a challenge to the Obama White House to rebut the data. It will be a novel experience for them, as Fielding is an engineer and has an Australian's disregard for self-important government officials. Here is how The Age described his challenge:

Senator Fielding emailed graphs that claim the globe had not warmed for a decade to Joseph Aldy, US President Barack Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, after a meeting on Thursday…. Senator Fielding said he found that Dr. Aldy and other Obama administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science.

Telling an Australian you're not interested in the legitimacy of your position is a red rag to a bull. So here is what Fielding concluded:

Until recently I, like most Australians, simply accepted without question the notion that global warming was a result of increased carbon emissions. However, after speaking to a cross-section of noted scientists, including Ian Plimer, a professor at the University of Adelaide and author of Heaven and Earth, I quickly began to understand that the science on this issue was by no means conclusive….

As a federal senator, I would be derelict in my duty to the Australian people if I did not even consider whether or not the scientific assumptions underpinning this debate were in fact correct.

What Fielding's questioning represents is just the tip of the kangaroo's tail. He speaks for a growing number of Australians who will no longer take green propaganda on trust.

The global warming pushers have brainwashed our school children and subjected us to draconian and invasive laws and regulations all calculated to save the planet from something we cannot change and which may not even be a threat. They have all the poisonous moral self-righteous priggishness of the puritans of myth (who were mostly a far more jolly people than we have given them credit for), and to question them in any way is to render oneself a social outcast in their eyes, fit for only the public stocks and a scarlet letter- and all this on the basis of no scientific due diligence, says Plimer, author of a book titled Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science . Only dogma.

Let me tell you how insidious this brain-washing is. Blynken, the five year old child we keep many weekend (he has decided to anoint me his 'godmother') has been going to HeadStart for two years. He doesn't know what lightening bugs or ladybugs are. He knows one or two folk tales but the versions he has learned are horribly mangled (the Wolf and the three pigs merely misunderstood one another and the wolf simply wanted somebody to play with). He can sing the ABCs but hasn't the least idea what sound they make. He has almost no experience with water, mud, or plants in their natural state. He recognizes pictures of exotic creatures that he has never seen outside of books, but not common domestic creatures like chickens, ducks, donkeys and cows (he does live in farm country). And on a recent car trip where we brought along a large jug of water and several cups for everybody, he carefully and urgently explained to all of us that we should not throw away our cups but should use them to make something because that was recycling and that was important to save the planet. He was so concerned that we had to wait until he fell asleep to throw away the cup.

His school has taught the children a falsehood. Turning a cup into an art project that will still be thrown away will not reduce the landfills one iota nor will it save a planet- not even if everybody does it. It doesn't reduce trash a bit. In fact, the majority of 'recycling' art projects add to trash as they require additional products that must be purchased new (crayons, paints, plastic googly eyes, pipe cleaners, construction paper, tape, glue...).

Had he learned to reuse it for something practical, like a pot for a plant, or cutting it up to use for packing when shipping something breakable, that would impress me. But hearing a poor five year old child share his successful indoctrination, when it wasn't even accurate or useful and it clearly worried him, was simply depressing.

Churches get a bad wrap with many on the left for 'instilling fear', for teaching children to be afraid. I'd like to know what they think they're accomplishing telling five year olds they are destroying their planet if they throw away a paper cup.

The Secret of Dementia?

If you knew that everyday for the rest of your life, you'd be dressed in diapers and confined to a wheelchair with blurred eyesight in a small brick walled room what would you do? If you knew that at every meal for the rest of your life a woman who talked to you as if you were a baby would spoon three flavors of baby food into your mouth, what would you do? If, opening your eyes, you knew that all you would see would be a bright fluorescent glare and the blurred shapes of dozens of others, mostly women, lolling about in wheelchairs, what would you do? If you knew to a dead, solid certainty that you were never going to be released from your room until you were released, at long last, from your body, what would you do? If you were a sane man, just what would you, at long last, do?

I don't know about you, but I would figure a way out and if that way out was only deeper in, that's where I'd go. I'd go deep into my palace of memories and I'd use all my energy to construct a world inside that was made of the most vivid moments of all the years I'd lived.

WEll, I don't quite think so- it certainly doesn't describe my father's situation, for instance- but it's a compelling read.

On the other hand, when my late and very dear uncle was in the hospital the last week of his life, drifting in and out of coherency, he had one moment his last day on earth where he kept asking my mother to open the cupboard at the foot of the bed and get him out another feather pillow. There was no cupboard at the foot of the bed, or even in the room. There was no feather pillow. He was gesturing at the air. My mother, an even-keeled, deeply practical, no nonsense, factual human being who never did play 'let's pretend,' was sure he must be trying to say something else, and kept trying to understand what he was getting at. He repeated himself to her three or four times, and then turned a clear-eyed, perfectly sentient gaze on me and dead panned, "She has no imagination. She never did."

And We All Sing With the Same Voice...

Pretty cool stuff:

Population geneticists expected to find dramatic differences as they got a look at the full genomes -- about 25,000 genes -- of people of widely varying ethnic and geographic backgrounds. Specifically, they expected to find that many ethnic groups would have derived alleles that their members shared but that were uncommon or nonexistent in other groups. Each regional, ethnic group or latitude was thought to have a genomic "signature" -- the record of its recent evolution through natural selection.

But as analyses of genomes from dozens of distinct populations have rolled in -- French, Bantu, Palestinian, Yakut, Japanese -- that's not what scientists have found. Dramatic genome variation among populations turns out to be extremely rare.

Instead, it is "random genetic drift" that appears to be more important in sculpting our genes. Drift describes the chance loss of genetic variation that occurred not only in the out-of-Africa migration, but through all of human history as famine, climate change or war caused populations to crash and then recover.

Beating the Heat at Frugal Hacks

And other 'what's in my hand' strategies. Check it out.=)

Blynken and Nod Hang Out

So this latest visit of Blynken and Nod, the one that was to last a week? They are still here. Blynken asked to stay 100 days. Nod told his mother over the phone not to cry, but he wanted to stay a little longer.

There's a singing and bonfire tonight, so of course, they couldn't possibly go home before then. Blynken suggests Monday if he's not going to be allowed to stay for 100 days.

It's interesting- because they live in a upper level apartment and because their mother's background and parenting philosophy is different from my own, they don't play outside much at home, and their toys are nearly all electronic (when the five year old was two, the first thing he asked when given a toy was always 'where are the batteries?'), and these small children have their own television set and DVD player in their room. Yet they haven't asked for a movie here yet. They play outside, they build with blocks, they play with the toy cars and horses, they listen to story books galore, they play with the people available to them (and in this, we have it infinitely better than their poor single mother, who has only herself to distract them all day). They request specific picture books and specific stories all the time- and songs- lots of songs.

One night while trying to get the little boys to go to sleep during a thunder storm, after several stories and nursery rhymes, five year old Blynken told me, "Could you sing to us? That would comfort us and help us calm down and then we would go to sleep." And they did.

I know that to some reading this, their mother sounds a bit flighty or irresponsible, and it is true she has made and continues to make some life choices I would never have made, and live a life I would not live, and I certainly would never have left my children anywhere for two weeks, either, nor is her parenting style mine. But she loves her boys and is happy they are able to play outside and spend time with us. She wouldn't leave them just anywhere- she chose us, and I maybe shouldn't say it, but we are not a bad choice for a surrogate family. And the boys are good children. We have never had an issue with them swearing or engaging in more than ordinary childhood naughtiness ("No, I won't pick up my mess!" but then they do), and not too much even of that. They are talkative and friendly, extremely social and very, very nice at apologizing (a skill I was never able to develop in my small children). They didn't get that way through dreadful parenting.

Also, while I wouldn't have done it, in her culture it's fairly common for children to spend large chunks of time- weeks, or even a summer, with extended relatives and without the parents. The boys call us their Godparents, and they call me Ti-Ti, which is short for Auntie. I think from her point of view, this is not at all out of the ordinary.

We are all a bit tired, especially the FYG, who has done yeoman's duty in the diaper department. She refuses to share the adorable, personality packed 2 year old with anybody at any time, so I have explained she must take the bad with the good and if she won't share the fun stuff, she can't parcel out the unpleasantness at the diaper club, either, but must be the Little Red Hen.

It's been fun, but I'd be lying if I said we weren't all looking forward to Monday, when the boys will be going home. And we'll all be looking forward to the next time by the next day.

Um, yeah.

So. Michael Jackson is dead.


And that's all I have to say about that. Except that I wish that was all anybody else had to say about that.

Sincerely,

The DHM

A Nation of Adolescents

From the Palm Tree Pundit: From Mark Steyn in April's issue of Imprimis:

The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government "security," large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time—the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff. It's ridiculous for grown men and women to say: I want to be able to choose from hundreds of cereals at the supermarket, thousands of movies from Netflix, millions of songs to play on my iPod—but I want the government to choose for me when it comes to my health care. A nation that demands the government take care of all the grown-up stuff is a nation turning into the world's wrinkliest adolescent, free only to choose its record collection.

Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College, is always a good read, and it's free! Click here to subscribe.

The School Officials Who Stripped a 13 y.o. Looking for Ibuprofin...

That case reached the Supreme Court and Popehat has the ruling- it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment:

... but because Redding’s assailants, Kerry Wilson, Helen Romero, and Peggy Schwallier, didn’t know under clearly established law at the time that their conduct was illegal, they have qualified immunity and will not face damages.

I maintain that regardless of what Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier knew of the law, common decency should have guided them to the right action, but that’s between them and their consciences now, rather than a matter for a court.

Ms. Redding gets nothing but vindication, which she richly deserves. The brighter side is that in the future, school officials who decide to strip search children looking for trivial contraband such as ibuprofen cannot say that they didn’t know their conduct was illegal. From now on, such child abusers will have to explain themselves, before a jury of parents and fellow citizens.

Of course, for everyone else the maxim that ignorance of the law is no excuse stands, but in this case Redding’s assailants get a pass.

I think Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier belong somewhere they will never, ever, EVER again have the opportunity to humiliate and abuse children through the exercise of their deplorable judgment.

ObamaCare Not Good Enough for Obama Family

So says..... President Obama:

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.["]

It's only a matter of time, of course, before Devinsky private life will be placed under a media microscope and we will all learn whether or not his first name is really Orrin or if that is only his middle name, and what his grades were in school and his taxes will be audited and made public and we will learn if he brushes his teeth as he should or not.

Here's video footage and a transcript:

"...you're absolutely right that if it's my family member, my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care. but here's the problem that we have in our current health care system. Is that there is a whole bunch of care that's being provided that every study, every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier."

Why is it that the political elite always want to demonstrate their 'compassion' by foisting off on the lower classes programs they themselves wouldn't take as a gift? That isn't an example of compassion, it's political pandering and an insidious form of paternalism.

It is my staunch personal opinion that if we are going to have a health care plan imposed upon us by those who consider themselves our political betters, those political betters and their families must be required to use the exact same plan as the rest of us- no other options for them permitted. Neither should Congress be permitted to make union members exempt, as they are hoping to do, from any requirements imposed on the rest of us.

More must reads on the Health Care plan and info-mercial last night:
Cato

Patterico

What is going on in New York?

The state legislature has basically had a split, sort of like when the Catholic church ran with two Popes for a while? The gov wants state troopers to force the two sides to get together and actually act like grown ups. And the Dems turn out the lights on Republicans and lock them out so the Repubs take their marbles and go elsewhere. This is bizzaro-world.

Mummy Surprise

CAT Skin reveals a museum exhibit billed as 'Lady Hor' for the last few decades needs to be revised. The mummy turns out to be a man. Archeologists assumed he was a she because the coffin image sported no beard.

Governor Sanford's Remarkable Wife

I don't usually like to blog about this stuff, but I am making an exception here because I am so impressed by Jenny Sanford's strength, dignity, and self-respect:

The wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said Wednesday in a statement that she continues to love her husband, but that she asked him to leave their home two weeks ago because "I felt it was important to look my sons in the eyes and maintain my dignity, self-respect and my basic sense of right and wrong."

Please read it all and say a prayer for this woman and her children.

I am glad, glad, glad that she did NOT attend his press conference where he confessed his unmanly (and by unmanly I mean immature, undignified, purely carnal, utterly lacking in self-control) and disgraceful disregard for the covenant of marriage which he entered over twenty years ago.

Like Mark Hemingway (who first wrote this during the Spitzer shenanigans):

Why do we expect to see women “standing by their man,” even in circumstances when the husband doesn’t deserve his wife’s support? I doubt I’m alone in thinking that the next scorned woman would do herself and everyone else a favor by staying home when her husband holds a press conference to confess his depravity to the world.

Brava, Mrs. Stanford. Brava.

Know Your Roots

And Obama's:

The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society. In this he is no different from his allies like the Congressional Black Caucus and Bill Ayers, who have shown themselves perfectly comfortable with Castro and Chàvez. Indeed, he is the product of a hard-Left tradition that apologized for Stalin and was more comfortable with the Soviets than the anti-Communists (and that, in Soros parlance, saw George Bush as a bigger terrorist than bin Laden).

Because of obvious divergences (inequality for women and non-Muslims, hatred of homosexuals) radical Islam and radical Leftism are commonly mistaken to be incompatible. In fact, they have much more in common than not, especially when it comes to suppression of freedom, intrusiveness in all aspects of life, notions of "social justice," and their economic programs. (On this, as in so many other things, Anthony Daniels should be required reading — see his incisive New English Review essay, "There Is No God but Politics", comparing Marx and Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb.) The divergences between radical Islam and radical Leftism are much overrated — "equal rights" and "social justice" are always more rally-cry propaganda than real goals for totalitarians, and hatred of certain groups is always a feature of their societies.

Which might be why he does stuff like this:

Even as the mullahs are terrorizing the Iranian people, the Obama administration is negotiating with an Iranian-backed terrorist organization and abandoning the American proscription against exchanging terrorist prisoners for hostages kidnapped by terrorists. Worse still, Obama has already released a terrorist responsible for the brutal murders of five American soldiers in exchange for the remains of two deceased British hostages.

Prepare to be infuriated.

(do read the rest)

Or acts surprised at things like this:

...Obama called out the Iranian regime for mistranslating his comments, trying to make it appear that he was encouraging anti-regime protests and violence. But there was something odd about how Obama seemed surprised, incredulous, and almost offended by it.

Mr. President, a regime that will shoot its own people to stop a protest isn't above putting words in your mouth.

How Stupid Are We?

I am afraid to answer that question, I really am.

The Democrats must believe that Americans are incredibly stupid, and if we allow the cap-and-trade bill to be passed, then they're right.

On the other hand, if the public had a clue of what is in this bill, and just how much it is likely to cost them, they would know that it is a "disaster.", and rise up against it. But the Democrats plan to ram it through without hearings or even public availability of the relevant text. The same legislative process that brought us trillion-dollar stimulus spending and trillion-dollar deficit budgets is about to replicate itself yet again.

This is the bill that Waxman admits he doesn't even know what's in it- he just leaves that up to the scientists. Whom we did not elect.

And furthermore, there is a smoking gun here that the government is trying to hide:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has obtained internal EPA e-mails that show the agency willfully and recklessly disregarded scientific data that undermined the bureaucracy’s global warming zealotry.
This information is especially relevant as Congress rushes to pass the cap-and-trade nightmare on Friday.

This is serious stuff. Please read it. Because Pelosi wants this monstrosity to come up for a vote today. Never mind that NOBODY has had time or opportunity to read it, because while it's been in committee it picked up a whopping additional 300 pages.

Save on Glasses

When I was a child we learned I needed glasses when I was in the third grade and after getting in trouble for 'not paying attention' at least a dozen times, somebody finally believed me when I said I was paying attention as hard as I could, and realized I simply could not see the board to read it. I will always remember how amazing it was to me that everybody but me had known one could see separate blades of grass while walking along, and how beautiful those blades of grass appeared to me when I finally got glasses and was able to see the world around me.

I wanted pink frames. Or blue. Or purple, or really, anything in the world but brown plastic. I was not allowed to choose, however, or at least, not allowed to choose anything outside the range of brown, brown, or brown.

When I grew up and got to be the Mom and the Equuschick needed glasses we went to the optical department together and I let her choose whatever color she wanted (I think she chose blue, but I am not sure), and I finally bought myself a pair of glasses with pink frames. Parenting is all about undoing the horrible things your parents did to you (while doing all sorts of horrible things to your offspring that your parents never even considered). Or something like that.

We came home with our new glasses and Shasta, whom I was then babysitting, looked at me and said, "Those kind of make you look old." He's always been one to say whatever comes to mind, our Shasta, and I'm sure he would have said it just the same if he had realized then that I would be his mama-in-law when he grew up.

I have needed to buy a new pair of prescription eye glasses for a while, now- my not very old pair broke and the place where I bought them claims they cannot be repaired. Fortunately, Crystal Paine just posted a couple of great deals on buying glasses online.

Before choosing glasses online, you might want to look at this page to choose the right shaped frames for your face (I am fortunate enough to have an oval shape, so it doesn't much matter what I choose. It's probably my one good feature). There's also advice there on choosing which color frames match your coloring. Plum looked good to me, and pink is also supposed to be good for my skin tones. Ha.

If your prescription isn't stronger than -2.00, you can get a pair from Coastal Contacts through Cashbaq for only $6.26- and maybe even less. That's because...

When you order these glasses through Cashbaq, you get 10% of your order credited back to you. AND if you haven't already signed up at Cashbaq (and I hadn't), there's a five dollar sign-up bonus! Crystal says that this means these glasses cost you around sixty-three pennies. If your prescription is between -2.00 and -4.00 they recommend a different lens, and that total comes to 35.72, minus the five dollar rebate and the ten percent cashback, which isn't quite the outstanding deal that those who see better get, but it's still way cheaper than you'll find in a brick and mortar store.

Click through to sign up (or sign in to your own account if you already have one), and you want the offer posted right at the top of the page as the "Deal of the Day".

If you sign up through my link, I get a few cashbag credits, too, and you can pass your referral link on to friends for the same thing.

You can buy other things through Cashbaq.com as well, and you get various cash-baq percentages on different things, or free shipping- it depends on what the companies are offering.

If you want more options available to you for glasses or you have a stronger perscription, check out Crystal's review of Zenni Optical, which is where I ended up going since my prescription is so much stronger. I haven't gotten them in the mail yet, but I'll be sure to let the bloggy world know how they work out when they arrive.

But in case you're wondering what color I chose- I chose these:



I did consider getting the lenses tinted pink, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I didn't want Shasta telling me I looked old. But I think when my hair turns all white and I get it dyed lavendar at the beauty parlour in town, I'll go for pink glasses then. That seems like a good fit for me.

Prayer Request

One of the nicest bloggers around, Patrick at the Paragraph Farmer, is asking for prayers for his daughter, who was in a serious car accident with him on Tuesday and suffered head trauma. I wish I could tell his family all I am feeling for them right now, but I simply haven't the skill. Praying.

Oops- I should have looked at updates- she is home and still recovering, and things look pretty good.=)

ABC's Infomercial On Obama's Health Care Plan

Cindy at Dominion Family:

My friend, Lynne, has prodded me to open up a live blog on Wednesday night while listening/watching ABC’s informercial for Obama’s health care plan. So if you want to growl and hiss and throw tomatoes stop by Wednesday night a few minutes before 10:00 pm EDT where hopefully someone smart, like Lynn, or involved in health care, like Dana, will be here to say intelligent things. These live blog events have been a lot of fun and I hope this one will be also. It should be a very negative time for all and that always makes good blog fodder.

She has some questions to get the discussion started now.

We have Tricare because of my husband's military service. The Cherub has Tricare and Medicare because of her disabilities. And let me tell you that we had NO option but to enroll her in Medicare if we wanted to keep Tricare. Because she was 'eligible' for it, if we did not enroll, then Tricare simply refused to pay for anything at all. So that costs us an extra hundred dollars a month that it shouldn't have. The military was billed as free health care for life, and that's simply not true. We already had a family premium each year to keep our health care. It's not high (around five hundred a year). I know others pay far more. But it sticks in my craw that we have to accept Medicare for the Cherub or Tricare can simply cease to provide us any insurance whatsoever.

I find our government provided health care inefficient, bumptious, time consuming, and not cost effective. And I watch what government health care and other government programs do 'for' Blynken's and Nod's mother and I am even less impressed. If they are this inefficient and bumbling now, I shudder to think how monolithically botched a single payer system would be.

Wandering Minds and AHA!! Moments

"An 'aha' moment is any sudden comprehension that allows you to see something in a different light," says psychologist John Kounios at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "It could be the solution to a problem; it could be getting a joke; or suddenly recognizing a face. It could be realizing that a friend of yours is not really a friend."

These sudden insights, they found, are the culmination of an intense and complex series of brain states that require more neural resources than methodical reasoning. People who solve problems through insight generate different patterns of brain waves than those who solve problems analytically. "Your brain is really working quite hard before this moment of insight," says psychologist Mark Wheeler at the University of Pittsburgh. "There is a lot going on behind the scenes."

In fact, our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wandering and we've actually lost track of our thoughts, a new brain-scanning study suggests. "Solving a problem with insight is fundamentally different from solving a problem analytically," Dr. Kounios says. "There really are different brain mechanisms involved."

By most measures, we spend about a third of our time daydreaming, yet our brain is unusually active during these seemingly idle moments. Left to its own devices, our brain activates several areas associated with complex problem solving, which researchers had previously assumed were dormant during daydreams. Moreover, it appears to be the only time these areas work in unison.

"People assumed that when your mind wandered it was empty," says cognitive neuroscientist Kalina Christoff at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who reported the findings last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As measured by brain activity, however, "mind wandering is a much more active state than we ever imagined, much more active than during reasoning with a complex problem."

More at the link.

My first thought was something like, "well, sure, whenever you're doing something inefficiently it takes more energy," but upon reading the entire article (which is very interesting stuff), I think it's much more than that.

Kids need a good balance between input and large chunks of free time to process that input- and so do adults.

Crabby Old Ladies

Years ago we (we being my brothers and I) referring to particularly crabby old people and dogs as Mother Dexter. This past weekend my parents drove up to see my brother and his family, and they brought along their very annoying little dog, who terrorized my brother's new dogs, a beagle and and Irish wolfhound.

Last night Granny Tea came over and said my brother was calling their little dog a Mother Dexter, and while we both knew what that meant, we couldn't remember how that got started. After she left, I googled and found it came from the old Phyllis television show. Here's the original Mother Dexter (one slightly off colour joke) on her way to get married:


Frankly, I don't think Granny Tea's dog is as sweet as Mother Dexter.

Map of the Cap and Trade Cost to Consumers

Powerful visual.

Perhaps no White House chief of staff in modern history has worked the media as aggressively and relentlessly as Emanuel. Drawing on his long-standing relationships with journalists, Emanuel serves up on-the-record quotes, background spin and the sort of capital gossip that lubricates relationships. The former Chicago congressman also seeks their take on events and floats possible administration tactics.

And Emanuel is brusquely efficient. "It's a no-nonsense relationship," Todd says. "He's always trying to extract as much information as he's trying to give."

"He thinks like a journalist," says Obama senior adviser David Axelrod, who marvels at his colleague making multiple calls and wolfing down lunch at the same time.

As chief of staff to the elder President Bush, James Baker was also masterful at working his media contacts, but usually from behind a curtain of anonymity. Many other predecessors, such as Andy Card, Mack McLarty and John Sununu, were less accessible to journalists.

Emanuel is regularly quoted in major newspapers, even in routine stories in which he is simply another administration voice.

Rahm's comment to the paper?

He called Washington reporters "professionals who take very seriously their responsibility to act as a go-between for the American people and their government."

Is that really the press' job? To act as a 'go-between,' something like a mediator, an interpreter? I don't think so.
Emanuel is doing his job and doing it well, and I don't fault him for that. But the press should be doing their job rather than his.

More on the disgraceful sycophancy of the American Press here.

Obama Considering: No Hot Dogs For You

Two Years Ago Columbia U. Students were Cheering Ahmadinejad. That story. I wonder where those students are now? What are they thinking? Have they the maturity and wisdom to be deeply, horribly, guiltily ashamed of themselves?

Before the election he was writing a conciliatory letter to the 'Supreme Leader' of Iran:

Barack Obama sent a letter to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, before this month's disputed election calling for an improvement in relations, it was reported today.

There have been plenty of indications that our learn on the job President does not know the difference between deference and diplomacy.

Today Iran's government is massacring people in the streets. Neda's family have been forced out of their home and Neda's body was buried by the government without notifying her family. Horrible photographs and commentary from the bloody scenes around the country here.

So our government is taking a firm, steely stance against such abusive thuggery.

The Obama administration is seriously considering not extending invitations to Iranian diplomats for July 4 celebrations overseas, senior administration officials tell CNN.

What on earth has taken him so long? Why is he only 'seriously considering' it? Isn't this a no-brainer? Murder innocent people in the streets? No hot-dogs for you.

(before his own election, Obama said:

Obama has consistently said he is willing to meet, without preconditions but with preparation, the leaders of Iran. This could include, but is not limited to, Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad is not the most powerful person in Iran, and his status is uncertain as there will be Presidential elections in Iran in 2009.

OBAMA HAS SAID HE WOULD BE WILLING TO MEET WITH THE LEADERS OF IRAN

Obama Said He Would Be Willing To Meet Without Precondition With The Leaders Of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, And North Korea. Obama was asked "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?" Obama responded, "I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous." [CNN, Youtube Debate, 7/24/07]

Prayer

Recently my sisters and I went to a girl’s bible study on prayer. This post in comprised mainly of my notes from that lesson so it is going to be rather choppy, but I hope you are able to glean something useful from it.

Why do we find it so hard to pray?
• Maybe we are too busy.
• Maybe we feel guilty because when we do pray it is only to ask for something.
• Maybe we are just forgetful.

Prayer is one of the most important things in our lives, and yet there are so many excuses we can come up with to keep us away from it.

Praying will help us to know and understand God better, it will help us understand ourselves better, and it will help us to think of others instead of ourselves.
I know that when I do actually pray regularly I feel so much more peaceful and content than when I do not.

Having a specific time set aside for praying is good, but we should also be comfortable praying at any time. In fact 1 Thess. 5:17 says we are to “pray with out ceasing.”!

The lady who led this study showed us a handy memory tool for praying:
A- Adoration
C- Confession
T- Thankfulness
S- Supplication

(She pointed out that this is just a guideline to help us get started; we need to be careful and make sure that we don’t turn prayer in to a checklist.)

A- When we start our prayers with praise and adoration for God and His creations we immediately take the focus off of ourselves.

C- Our confessions should be specific, forcing us to be humble and look at our sins.

T- I am thankful for His blessings, but have I told Him so?
There is a difference between feeling thankful and expressing thankfulness.

S- When we say “If it’s Your will” we need to mean it!
We need to make sure that if God doesn’t answer our prayer the way we want it we
will still praise Him.

The more time I spend with God the easier I will find it to open myself up and really pray.
If I make time pray than instead of feeling like prayer is eating up all of my time, I find instead see that it is actually giving me more time to do important and meaningful things.
~~~

“Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.” Ps. 55:17

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Rom. 8:26

“Confess [your] faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” James 5:16

“And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four [and] twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.” Rev. 5:8

“Then hear thou from the heavens, [even] from thy dwelling place, their prayer and their supplications, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people which have sinned against thee.” Chron. 6:39

“My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct [my prayer] unto thee, and will look up.” Ps. 5:3

“Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints…” Eph 6:18

“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” Phil 4:6

Various Versions of Events in Tehran

There are many versions of the events in Tehran. Some see in the protests the culmination of the pro-Western “reform movement” along the lines of the “orange” revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, etc. – a secular reaction to the Khomeini revolution. They support the protests as the first step towards a new liberal-democratic secular Iran freed of Muslim fundamentalism. They are counteracted by skeptics who think that Ahmadinejad really won: he is the voice of the majority, while the support of Mousavi comes from the middle classes and their gilded youth. In short: let’s drop the illusions and face the fact that, in Ahmadinejad, Iran has a president it deserves. Then there are those who dismiss Mousavi as a member of the cleric establishment with merely cosmetic differences from Ahmadinejad: Mousavi also wants to continue the atomic energy program, he is against recognizing Israel, plus he enjoyed the full support of Khomeini as a prime minister in the years of the war with Iraq.

Finally, the saddest of them all are the Leftist supporters of Ahmadinejad: what is really at stake for them is Iranian independence. Ahmadinejad won because he stood up for the country’s independence, exposed elite corruption and used oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority – this is, so we are told, the true Ahmadinejad beneath the Western-media image of a holocaust-denying fanatic. According to this view, what is effectively going on now in Iran is a repetition of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh – a West-financed coup against the legitimate president. This view not only ignores facts: the high electoral participation – up from the usual 55% to 85% – can only be explained as a protest vote. It also displays its blindness for a genuine demonstration of popular will, patronizingly assuming that, for the backward Iranians, Ahmadinejad is good enough – they are not yet sufficiently mature to be ruled by a secular Left.

Opposed as they are, all these versions read the Iranian protests along the axis of Islamic hardliners versus pro-Western liberal reformists, which is why they find it so difficult to locate Mousavi: is he a Western-backed reformer who wants more personal freedom and market economy, or a member of the cleric establishment whose eventual victory would not affect in any serious way the nature of the regime? Such extreme oscillations demonstrate that they all miss the true nature of the protests.

And what is the true nature of those protests? For me, I can't become an expert on Iran overnight and I am not going to pretend that I understand the politics and religion of the respective parties. But then, to me, those things are really irrelevant. There was a fraudulent election, the people object, and their government is shooting peaceful protesters down as though they were rabid dogs, letting them bleed to death in the street, sending police to hospitals to collect the wounded, and charging the families of the slain thousands of dollars for the bullets used to murder their loved ones. Freedom loving people every where need to speak up.

But in an effort to continue to educate myself (and yourself) about the situation in Iran, you might want to read the rest of Anthony Paul Smith's essay to see what he says is the true nature of the protests.

Johnny Depp to Play the Mad Hatter...

And, as you see, he looks deliciously, perfectly, wonderfully, eye-poppingly strange.

We're looking forward to watching him in a March 2010 release of Through the Looking Glass done by Tim Burton. Alan Rickman (Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility) will play the caterpillar, Helena Bonham Carter (Olivia in Twelfth Night and Jane in a movie about Lady Jane Gray).

Iran

He has a testy press conference.

Exit question via Jim Treacher: How is it that Obama was a genius yesterday for not condemning Iranian brutality and tomorrow he’ll be heralded as a genius for condemning it today? I guess he’s just super-keen on timing, huh?

Did you hear that the WH spin on his is that Obama's Cairo speech is a significant factor behind the Iranian protests? No kidding, that's what they're saying. Here's a fairly good summary of Obama's dance steps:

So just to get this straight, Obama refrained from condemning the murderous violence brought to bear against the protesters in Iran over fears that he might be seen as meddling. He’s downplayed the impact speaking out can have world events like this. And he’s said that he still respects Iran’s current regime. And the Iranians’ invitation for the 4th of July BBQ is still totally on.

But the protests? Well he’s responsible.

That's right- he's responsible for the protests, but it would be wrong to say anything supportive of them because that would be meddling, but the government shooting civilians in the street is totally invited over for hot dogs (which, um, they don't eat).

Amusing tweets:

Obama says speech & assembly in Iran are “rights.” In U.S. his DoD calls them “low-level terrorism.” (RT so many times I can't find original source)

giardinello1: Can we ask Obama's teleprompter to arrange a speech addressing the situation in Iran?

petenicely: How Dare Republicans Criticize Obama on Iran? Obama's Speech to the Muslim World Helped Make This Revolution Possible


WhatWldCheneyDo: Chuck Todd today on MTP said White House frustrated they are not getting credit for Iran uprising given Obama's Cairo speech.

IanKC: Why on earth do people here think Obama doesn't care about Iran? Did they not listen to his hour-long speech in Egypt?

brunac1: Is it just me or the Obama Cairo speech changed Iran?

rjacobray: Bush starts war to force democracy on Iraq. Million + died as result. Obama gives 1 speech & Iran revolution begins w/ 0 US casualties

charlesnicas: Past 6 days: +1M protest Iran's sham election. 11 days ago: 3/14 increased its majority. Two weeks ago: Obama gave a speech. Coincidence?

mycropht: I think Democracy in Iran would be cool but after Obama's speech in Cairo I think we'd look a little bit ***** [expletive deleted] for backing it.


Brasilmagic: Not only the Internet (Twitter specially) helped the uprising in Iran, Obama's Cairo speech did too. Obama is inspiring change.

LadyBeryl: @joshlevscnn Pres Obama has always done it right. His message should change as events change in Iran. He is NOT reacting to GOP.

Sobering Tweets:
just in from Baharestan Sq - situation today is terrible - they beat ppls like animals

Urgent: memorial ceremonies for the martyrs, who was to be held tomorrow has been canceled

saw 7/8 militia beating one woman with baton on ground - she had no defense nothing - #Iranelection sure that she is dead

RT Iran so many ppl arrested - young & old - they take ppl away -

I see many ppl with broken arms/legs/heads - blood everywhere - pepper gas like war

all hospitals is surrounded by militia to check why ppl going in - if gun or baton injury - they arrest and beat u

It Would Seem That Basij Are Ordered To Make Tonight The Bloodiest Hell Yet. I'm Hearing of Public Executions

URGENT- Woman tells CNN Iranian security forces have opened fire at protesters outside parliament in Tehran

they pull away the dead into trucks - like factory - no human can do this

Nobody can stop this massacre

RT we must go-dont know when we can get internet-they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names - now we must move fast

A better summary of tweets available here.

And there are 'tweets' being used as sources in this CNN report- everything there attributed to 'one source,' 'another source,' 'a source,' etc- those are cut and pastes of tweets I've seen on Twitter. I wonder why they are not properly identified?

More here, well worth reading.

And are you boycotting Siemans and Nokia, who have facilitated the Iranian's government ability to spy on its people?

Good Question

mpaf: What will a government that does this to its own people, do when it possesses nuclear weapons?

(via Twitter)

Talk to your Tomatoes

to make them grow- if you're a woman, that is. Women's voices make tomatoes grow up to two inches more than men's voices.

The Dismal News About Cap and Trade

Read Gates of Vienna for the bleak news.

His climate guru suggests we can do quantifiably more and immediately so by painting our roofs white (rooves?),* so I think we should all do that first and wait five years before implementing cap and trade. By then maybe the idea will have fallen out of political favor and we will have dodged a bullet.

*According to his data, roofs constitute 20 to 25 percent of urban surfaces, while pavement is about 40 percent. Therefore, if all of those surfaces were switched to a reflective material (or color) in the 100 largest urban areas in America, his calculations show, this would offset 44 metric gigatons of carbon dioxide. That’s more than all countries emit in a single year. Further, that’s worth about $1.1 trillion at current carbon trading rates.

Mulberries

This summer I think I want to try dehydrating mulberries and then adding the dried berries to granola or trail mix.

Nutritional information:
* Low in Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium
* High in Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Iron, Dietary Fiber, Riboflavin, Magnesium and Potassium (webpage source)
And:

Mulberry contains fiber, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, carbohydrates, iron and proteins essential to one's good health....
One benefit of Mulberry is that it contains anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are believed to contribute to the antioxidant properties of berries,

Once picked:

These are highly perishable fruits. Once ripe and when picked, it is best to eat them as soon as you can.

Whether prepping for a recipe or preparing for serving, gently rinse, drain and pat the berries day, if necessary.

Mulberries dehydrate and freeze well too. Clean the berries, then:

To dehydrate – place the whole berries on a dehydrator tray and dehydrate until the berries are completely dry through and through.

To freeze - place the berries on a flat surface, like a cutting board of a baking sheet, in a single layer, and place in the freeze until they are frozen. Transfer to an airtight freezer storage container, label and date. They should keep well up to 6 months.

I haven't tried dehydrating them, but according to one site, they taste like mulberry raisins. I've also read that the dried berries can be crushed to a powder which can be used to sweeten and flavor teas, pies, and other things.

Mulberry cookies:

If fresh mulberries are available you could use dried mulberries, just soak them in to rehydrate. You might like to try other berries [raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, blackberry] as filling possibilities, or one of these fruit fillings [peach, apricot, apple, or banana].

1 cup raw buckwheat groats, ground to flour
1 cup raw almonds, ground to flour
½ teaspoon sea salt [I used course grey sea salt]
1/3 cup agave
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
½ teaspoon organic vanilla extract
20 fresh mulberries

Combine the ingredients
Grind raw buckwheat groats and raw almonds to a flour in a coffee grinder. Add the ground buckwheat groats and raw almonds to a food processor. If using coarse sea salt, grind it in a coffee grinder and add to the food processor. Pulse a few times to mix the flour and salt. Add the remaining ingredients – agave, fresh lime juice and organic vanilla extract. Process until the mixture forms into a ball.

Make the filling
Place fresh mulberries in a food processor and process until well mixed.

Shape the cookies
Remove the dough from the food processor bowl and place on a clean cutting board or flat surface. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin to about ½ inch thick. Using a cookie cutter or the mouth of a round jar, press into dough to form cookies. Peel away excess dough. Press down on the center of each cookie to form an indentation then fill with the mulberries jam. Use a spatula to lift the cookies from the surface and place on a dehydrator tray.

Dehydrate 4 hours or to desired texture.

Yields 20 2-inch round cookies

reposted recipes:
Mulberry Rhubarb Shortcake

2 1/2 cups mulberries
1 1/2 cups rhubarb, diced
1 1/4 cups white sugar
1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract

8 Shortcakes (basically slightly sweet biscuits, split in half)


DIRECTIONS:
Combine ingredients. Microwave until rhubarb is soft.
Chill, pour over shortcakes. Top with whipped cream if desired.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mulberry Syrup

Mulberry Jelly

Mulberry Jam

Mulberry Almond Coffee Cake

Mulberry Fool

Mulberry MeadThis website has more information about the mulberry tree and several recipes.

Mulberry Muffins
2-1/4 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup brown or raw sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt
3/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons cream or whole milk
3 tablespoons melted butter or coconut oil
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon almond extract or vanilla
3/4 cup mulberries

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease a muffin pan.
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, soda and salt. In a medium bowl, mix together sour cream, milk, butter, egg and almond extract. Stir in flour mixture until batter is smooth. Fold in mulberries. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

Makes about a dozen muffins

Use one of these shortcake recipes with sweetened mulberries

Use Mulberries with some other berries to stretch the more expensive fruit (mulberries are free).

Mulberry season is summer season. Need help keeping cool this summer? Here are some ideas.

For help identifying a mulberry tree, see here.

If we're going to get the same kind of health care Congress gives themselves...

As Obama promised, why are members of Congress and all Federal Employees exempt from the health care program the rest of us will be forced to accept?

Opaque Transparency

What he said in January:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use.

“As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding ’secret energy meetings’ with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama’s ‘clean coal’ policies.” (Newsweek, Sunday)

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. –P.J. O’Rourke

From FEE In Brief

more here

There were some other transparency promises as well:

The bulk of Obama's transparency proposals are in the Ethics and Technology sections of the site, though other areas address the issues as well.

The bulk of Obama's transparency proposals are in the Ethics and Technology sections of the site, though other areas address the issues as well.

The majority of the transparency proposals appear on the Ethics page, which outlines Obama administration plans to:

Create a searchable, online database of lobbying reports, ethics records and campaign finance filings, as well as one for federal contractors' lobby activities

Push to open all legislative activities — including mark ups and conference committees — to the public

Make information about corporate tax breaks publicly available online
Give the public five days to review and comment online on any non-emergency bill before it's signed

Disclose the names of lawmakers requesting earmarks and request written justification for the request before approval by the Senate

Require Cabinet secretaries to hold broadband town hall meetings

Conduct significant federal agency business in public and

Ensure the timely release of presidential records

He's broken his promise of allowing five days of public comments before signing a bill so many times (and has given no indication of keeping it, ever) that the Politifact people aren't even bothering to keep track of every time he breaks it- and they lean very favorably toward Obama. That's probably why they aren't going to keep track of every time he breaks this promise.

From Newsweek:

Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."

The hard line appears to be no accident. After Obama's much-publicized Jan. 21 "transparency" memo, administration lawyers crafted a key directive implementing the new policy that contained a major loophole, according to FOIA experts. The directive, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder, instructed federal agencies to adopt a "presumption" of disclosure for FOIA requests. This reversal of Bush policy was intended to restore a standard set by President Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno. But in a little-noticed passage, the Holder memo also said the new standard applies "if practicable" for cases involving "pending litigation." Dan Metcalfe, the former longtime chief of FOIA policy at Justice, says the passage and other "lawyerly hedges" means the Holder memo is now "astonishingly weaker" than the Reno policy.

Only two things really bemuse me about this- the first is why anybody expected otherwise, when nothing in his record should have given any sensible person any reason to believe that he would practice what he preached about transparency. The other is why so many of his followers, when confronted with example after example of the disconnect between what he says and what he does just squeeze their eyes shut and believe in him even harder.

Testing, Testing

In this post I asked: "I would like to know who watches the test-makers, too, and what the connections are between textbook publishers and test creators."

And Malcolm Kirkpatrick offered this eye-brow raiser:

The State of Hawaii DOE claims that our single, State-wide school district promotes educational equality. I called to ask how the variance of the Hawaii's Stanford Achievement Test scores compares to the variance of SAT scores in other States. The person to whom I addressed this question said I should call The Psychological Corporation, the makers of the SAT. The Psychological Corporation, it developed, is a subsidiary of textbook publisher Harcourt Brace.

Standardized tests of Reading vocabulary and Math provide useful information about school systems and about the efficacy of instructional methods. They are a tool, a thermometer or a weight scale.

The punchline to my inquiry? I called the Psychological Corporation and someone there said that they had an agreement with the Hawaii DOE not to release the information on variance in test scores.

That thermometer is of no use if you are not allowed to read it.

And also seeing a world in a grain of sand

"To write meant then and still does, catching sparks of thought in a hard-backed notebook balanced on my knees.--"

Doug Robinson in A Night on the Ground A Day in the Open

Caught in the headlights, the deer temporized. With steely skill.

I don't know how they face themselves in the mirror, the American press. I really don't.

...because women are not allowed to sing...

More on Neda (via HotAir):

Only scraps of information are known about Ms. Agha-Soltan. Her friends and relatives were mostly afraid to speak, and the government broke up public attempts to mourn her. She studied philosophy and took underground singing lessons — women are barred from singing publicly in Iran. Her name means voice in Persian, and many are now calling her the voice of Iran.

Some Dogs Do Not Go to Heaven

Whew

Road trip over. We are exhausted. There's no air conditioning in our van, so we arrived home sticky, wilted, and probably a bit smelly. We took many scenic detours both planned and unplanned on the way home. We ate too much junk. We enjoyed the museum, although Blynken told me he was just too tired of walking after it was all over and he had a major meltdown with Pip outside in a garden walk/petting zoo area.

I spent too much money in the gift shop at the museum. We must have sung 'The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock' at least fifty times coming home. The boys' mom called and said she was on bed rest for a possible slipped disc or pinched nerve so could we keep them another three or four days- making this a ten day stay. This depressed Blynken's spirits greatly when he learned of it, partly because we had put off telling him, awaiting an opportune moment, and then Shasta blurted it out Monday night at bedtime.

We went to a large (162 people) singing on Friday night, and in the midst of it 2 year old Nod turned to Pip, grinned really big and said, "I YIKE singing. It's COOL!"

Saturday they played with all new toys at a friend's house and then watched volleyball and played on the swingsets. Sunday was church at a new place and then the father of one of the HG's university friends took our very large family out for dinner.

We gave the HM his Father's Day presents Sunday night; Now it may be told:
Swedish fire steel, flint for lighting bonfires without chemicals.

America's White Table, a picture book about the Missing Man Table, a military ceremony I have seen enacted once, and not a book (or ceremony) to get through dry-eyed.

A shirt and tie

a 'Dad' coffee cup

And then... Monday. The HM had driven back home to go to work. We were still at a friend's house and left at 7:30 to get to the museum (which Blynken called a Zoomeum) by 10:00, and also to miss the worst of the heat since the van is without AC. It was a cool and pleasant drive, but we got all the heat on the way home.

The boys hardly fussed during the drive at all. They are amazingly good tempered most of the time (Nod is always good tempered, Blynken only less so because he knows enough to feel insecure at times).

Blynken now informs people who ask why we have these extra two children that we are his Godparents, and Nod informed the Boy last night that he was Nod's sister. Yes, sister. Nod that was a specimen of delightful hilarity and he could hardly talk he was so amused with himself.

Sunday we crossed a milestone in our relationship when Blynken decided that it was acceptable after all for me to see him in nothing but his skin. He's insisted that I keep my eyes closed whenever he needs help, and he doesn't want anybody involved in bathing him, which is problematic, given his propensity for falling in the frog pond. It wasn't, however, an issue I wished to force with him. But when I carelessly pointed out I had seen other little boys in their baths before he decided it would be okay after all.

Last night the van was unloaded, but most of the contents merely vomited up into the living room. The agenda for today includes showers, laundry, and putting away all that stuff.

Plus resting up and propping up my poor heat swollen ankles in the hopes that they will no longer look like mutant watermelons.

Two Good Stories...

Said Linda, at Linda's Thoughts. And she wasn't lying. Al Capone, WW2, O'Hare airport- Well worth reading, and it won't take long. Do look.

Snopes does one of their strange 'debunkings' which really leaves the majority of the story completely intact, and there's more here.

Hospitality, House, & Home

One Sunday morning in class there a discussion on hospitality. Actually it began with with a discussion from parenting class that was something like "How Can We Keep our Kids from Resenting God and His word" and from there somehow hospitality arose.

The Equuschick thought the apparent bunny trail was rather appropriate, because one poor woman began a good and lengthy discussion by confessing that a couple of weeks ago she'd asked her children why they never invited friends over anymore and their response was the tragically age-old "Mom, the house is just never clean enough for you when we have company."

The Equuschick thought it brought the whole discussion full circle, as a classic case of a child learning to resent a biblical commandment as a burden instead of learning its value as a blessing.


Hospitality is a biblical commandment, commanded several times in several places, and it distresses The Equuschick sorely to see it so blatantly disregarded or resented in so many churches today.

How did we get here?

The Equuschick sees one possible explanation in the all-too-common scenario described above, where the house was never "clean enough." We have misunderstood hospitality. In its purest and best form, hospitality has absolutely nothing to do with the state of the house and everything to do with the state of the heart.

Dictionary Definitions of Hospitality:

1. Cordial and generous reception of or disposition toward guests.
2. An instance of cordial and generous treatment of guests.
3. The friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers.
4. The quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way.
5. The act or practice of one who is hospitable; reception and entertainment of strangers or guests without reward, or with kind and generous liberality.

Synonyms-warmth, cordiality, geniality, friendliness.


The Equuschick's favourite synonym is "cordiality." Let's contrast cordiality with civility, a term that often confuses the idea of hospitality still further.

The Equuschick isn't against civility, it is a good place to start. Good manners are good, but they're only manners or methods of doing things and if the heart isn't right all the good manners in the world won't save your guests from an awkward reception. If your heart, however, is open and friendly than an uncertain grasp of "ettiquiette" won't matter. Your guest will still cherish your welcome.

Civility is placing your guest on the couch and offering to bring them a glass of water. Cordiality is when you take your guest into your kitchen and show them where the glasses are kept, where you get the water, and also where the milk, the juice, the soda, and all of the food is kept and when you do it cheerfully, because you are so happy to have a friend to share with.



And you do it whether your kitchen is particularly clean or not, because you are not sharing your house. You are sharing your home. The center of your little universe, the station from whence all the activity and life in your family flows, and you are sharing yourself.

The distinction between house and home is one often inclined to be troublesome when the lines are blurred and we begin to mistake one for another, and the trouble with hospitality may have begun, or at least been influenced by, the confusion women fall into about the crucial differences between keeping a house and making a home.


The Equuschick is a stay-at-home wife who does not believe it is wrong for women to work outside the home and Shasta and The Equuschick chose this route for many reasons, each of them their own.

But the point is, she has never even considered it as her job to "keep house." She is not a house-keeper. If her only job was to keep the house clean, she could be replaced by a maid who might not even speak her family's language. (But could probably do a better job.)

The older women in Titus were not commanded to teach the younger women how to get stains out of the carpet and the best way to dust wood furniture. The commandment was to teach young women to "love their husbands and keep the home."

First and foremost, to love their husbands. If The Equuschick is unwilling to set aside a household task she'd wanted to do to spend with her husband, she is not loving him. If she threatens a relationship for the sake of the furniture, she threatens the stability of the home.

The Equuschick's favourite piece of furniture in her whole house is the coffee table. Do you know why? Because the couches didn't come with foot stools, and she absolutely loves it when she can eagerly shove her wooden coffee table over to a guest and say "Here, put your feet up! That's what it is for!"

No, you don't understand. She really loves it when I get to do that! It means she has a true friend in her house. She'd rather have a true friend than a spotless coffee table any day.

Will the needs of the people often demand some care of the house? Of course. Food must be eaten. Healthy living conditions must be allowed to prevail. There's not much peace to be found in a house where no one can ever find anything, and the individual preferences and needs of each family member must be taken into consideration and met in whatever way necessary.

Alas for The Equuschick(never one to worry unduly about the state of the house) when Shasta's allergies began to bother him severely this spring and summer and they realized one day that the Zeus Dog was no doubt bringing in all sorts of pollens from the outdoors and leaving them all over the couch where yes, he is allowed to sprawl himself. So now The Equuschick washes couch cushions much more often than she'd ever dreamed she'd have to and she has a sheet that she spread over the loveseat that Zeus likes best and she washes the sheet regularly too.

But she doesn't do it because the couch cushions are a valuable part of the home and family. She does it for Shasta, who is.

While she doesn't believe it is wrong for women to work outside the home, she does get awfully tired of the poor fools who say "I just couldn't stay home, I'd be bored all day." But she also suspects that the confusion between home-making and house-keeping is a great deal to blame.

If "all" (The Equuschick does suggest that those who think of housework as unchallenging have never had to do much of it) she did was keep the house clean, The Equuschick would have gone suicidally insane by now.


But the house is not her job. Sometimes she has to clean it. Sometimes Shasta does too, because it is in the best interests of the family they are building together. The Equuschick's job is to help him build our family, to create a home environment that is peaceful, imaginative, challenging, nurturing, educational, interesting, and secure. A home environment that encourages and does not discourage opportunities like hospitality.

The Equuschick never realized how much she took the very free and open hospitality of her family for granted until Daddy got out of the Military and the Common Room folk suddenly found themselves in a land where hospitality as it is often only known to those who have been way-faring strangers themselves was very seldom practiced.

Only then did she begin to realize that when she watched her parents open up their hearts and home to friends and strangers in such a free and open way, she was watching an endangered art in action.

That endangered art of open cordiality in the home, extended to all and sundry, is one that The Equuschick very much wishes to pass on to her children.

The Books in my Van

Repost from 2005:

We're building a house this summer, or rather, paying through the nose to have it built by somebody with more physical ability than we have. So today the Headmaster, the First Year Boy, and I went to the Big City to look at floors, doorbells, and porchlights. We stopped for gas along the way, so I pulled out my tattered Charlotte Mason, volume 6 (part of research for an upcoming project) and read. At the home improvement store, my feet and back gave out before the salesclerk had quite finished not really answering the Headmaster's questions, so I went out to to the car where I sat and read more in CMv6. I also read a picture book to the FYB. On the way home the HM wanted to check his gas milage, so we stopped at the same gas station and filled up the tank again (45mpg). While he pumped, I pulled out my book and read some more.
The Headmaster got back in and asked me what I was reading.

I summarized the last sentence (page 86) I'd read, "the boy who did not learn to delight in knowledge in his schooldays grows up to be the man who is shallow in mind and whimsical in judgment."

The Headmaster cleared his throat nervously and told me that in his youth on one of his many trips to the principal's office, he had to cool his heels until the principal (or viceprincipal, it doesn't really matter, and I forget) came to take care of him. While waiting, he noticed a volume of Shakespeare sitting there and so he picked it up and started reading it. He assured me that he delighted in the knowledge he'd picked up in that moment.

It took me a second to understand why he wanted me to know this so urgently, and then understanding dawned and I reassured him, "It wasn't personal. That really was what I was reading about."

"You know," he said, "People call me a work-a-holic, but you are a research-a-holic. You never go anywhere without a book."

I agree that I am a book-a-holic, but I don't think I'm good enough yet to be a research-a-holic.

Nature Writing and Connections

Nature writing is relational. It is about the interconnections, the interrelationships, that form our world. Nature writing binds people to the natural world with words of understanding, respect, admiration, and love. These words may be formed in any literary type or style. The languages and forms of nature writing are many and varied, but each seeks to share what the writer has felt and known in times of living with nature.

From What is Nature Writing

Holding infinity in the palm of your hand...

"Looking closely at the commonplace things of nature that are found on almost any small family farm, one becomes aware of a quality of miracle
and infinity about them.
The more one researches these small things, such as the purple-blue
violet I picked in the yard this morning and brought in to examine
under a microscope, the more clear it becomes that nothing on earth
exists totally separate and unrelated, and that every living thing is
composed of ever smaller parts.
From the purple-striped deep tube of the violet's petal a naturalist
could go on to an examination of the larger, related plant world, or a
scientist could as easily discover the infinitely smaller parts of which
the violet cells are composed. Either way, a thing as commonplace as an
ordinary spring violet contains the essence of infinity."

Rachel Peden

Lies We Believe

Repost:

Many years back our first and second born children took a standardized test required by our state. They both did incredibly well on every portion except math. In the other subjects they generally scored years ahead of their grade level. In math the oldest scored one or two years ahead, and the second child scored exactly average for her grade level. So then, of course, I thought I was a failure as a homeschooling mom. This is not just a homeschooling mom thing- when we were in school my father always insisted that 'average' was the same as failing, and it was not acceptable. I never did figure out if he really couldn't understand that a C was passing or if he was just messing with our minds.

Funny thing was that the next year when filling out the forms for the same test I realized I'd made a mistake the previous year. Instead of properly placing each child in the grade she had just completed, I'd accidentally assigned the young Equuschick to the grade she was about to enter. So she'd received an average score for a student in the third grade when in fact she was only a second grader- and I thought I was a failure as a homeschooling mom.

What lies do you believe?

Sunday Hymn Post

God Will Take Care of You, a softer, gentler, sort of new agey version suitable for a lullabye:



The Oak Ridge Boys (they don't start the singing until the 1:36 mark):



Lyrics:

Be not dismayed whate'er betide,
God will take care of you;
beneath his wings of love abide,
God will take care of you.

Refrain
God will take care of you,
through every day, o'er all the way;
he will take care of you,
God will take care of you.

2
Through days of toil when heart doth fail,
God will take care of you;
when dangers fierce your path assail,
God will take care of you.

3
All you may need he will provide,
God will take care of you;
nothing you ask will be denied,
God will take care of you.

4
No matter what may be the test,
God will take care of you;
lean, weary one, upon his breast,
God will take care of you.

Her Name was Neda

She died in Iran, shot for watching a demonstration for freedom.

Tehran

From a friend:

If anyone is on Twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Cut & paste & pass it on.

Most of you have probably heard of Senator Boxers petulant, but minor, snittishness over a general calling her 'Ma'am' (which is proper protocol) instead of Senator (which is also proper protocol).

My take- she was ridiculous and petty, and demonstrated once again that the state of affairs Thomas Paine warned about low these many centuries ago has once more come to pass. That is, we now live once again in times when our 'representative government ceased to be representative because the ELECTED did indeed

"form to themselves an interest separate from the ELECTORS

On the other hand, as silly as she was/is, it's just about as silly to 'demand' an apology, and I think the General has shown himself to be the better man and it's not really worth blogging about.

This, however, raises it from petty politicking to hilariously funny and well worth blogging about:



Snigger.

Test Scores

I think it remains to be seen whether or not these tests actually measure education in a meaningful way, or whether we still have the same issues of a hundred years ago-

"Of the means we employ to hinder the growth of mind perhaps none is more subtle than the questionnaire. [tests] It is as though one required a child to produce for inspection at its various stages of assimilation the food he consumed for his dinner; we see at once how the digestive processes would be hindered, how, in a word, the child would cease to be fed. But the mind also requires its food and leave to carry on those quiet processes of digestion and assimilation which it must accomplish for itself. The child with capacity, which implies depth, is stupified by a long rigmarole on the lines of,––"If John's father is Tom's son, what relation is Tom to John?" The shallow child guesses the riddle and scores; and it is by the use of tests of this kind that 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." Towards a Philosophy of Education, page 86 (Charlotte Mason)

The textbook selection process needs some improvement, as well (see here- and it's worth keeping in mind that 75 percent of all school textbooks are published by the same three publishers- which does produce a uniformity of the mind.

I would like to know who watches the test-makers, too, and what the connections are between textbook publishers and test creators.

Books Along the Journey

As I type this, I am considering what books to take along with me for a weekend journey. I am trying really, really hard to be reasonable. I always overpack when it comes to books. So far I have only my Bible, Fire Star by D'Lacey (I don't enjoy it that much, but I am a compulsive finisher of books), Children of a Greater God by Terry Glaspey, Lord I want to Know You, by Kay Arthur, The Cricket in Times Square and Swiss Family Robinson on CD to listen to in the van, and I'm deciding whether to continue reading Virgil or Cicero (I am SO behind on my worthwhile reading challenge). And a magnifying glass, because my eyes are not what they once were. I keep slapping my hands when they roam over another bookshelf.

Plus, of course, The Three Little Kittens, by Paul Galdone and The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, as they are Blynken's favorite picture books just now. And, um, another bag of picture books the FYG put together.

Which makes this seem like a good time for a repost from 2005:

We were packing for our trip to D.C. when a friend called. I was glad for her call as it temporarily distracted the Progeny from making fun of me for packing too much. As I spoke to my friend on the phone I directed some of the Offspring to continue packing. They renewed their mocking. At one point the Head Girl thought I was telling her to put a stack away when I wanted her to put the stack in the tote with the other stacks.
"More?!" she squealed in disbelief, "You want to put more of this stuff in the tote? Mother, we do not need it all. This is too much."

My friend overhead her, and asked me how long we were to be gone. "Eight days," I said.

She was on my side- "Well, then, of course you need a lot of clothes. There are nine of you after all. Tell her that naturally you need plenty of changes of clothes."

"Well, no," I explained sheepishly. "We're only packing three changes of clothes each, and those are already finished and in the van. It's the books. I've got a huge plastic tote to fit between the two front seats, and I've filled it with books, some tapes to listen to, and a few things to do. But mostly books."

Silence. Then my friend asked me carefully, "But... don't the friends you are staying with own any books? Aren't they homeschoolers?"

As a matter of fact, they are homeschoolers, and they do have plenty of books. We read some of them while we were there. But I wanted our books, too. Some of them are about D.C. or things we'd see there. Some of them are reference materials for a large project I'm working on. Some of them are like family members (Equuschick mentions having read Anne of Green Gables nine times. I believe this is more times than she has spoken to one of her uncles).

I'm not sure my friend here really quite saw the force of my argument.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Governor Perry Vetoes SB 1440

Link Fixed

That's the bill that would have made CPS immune from following the Bill of Rights and basically declared open season on families everywhere and placed all of our children at risk of the extreme (and they are extreme) dangers of the Texas foster care system.

More here.

See also Grits for Breakfast

Effort vs Talent

In August of '06, Scientific American published this article on how we think and how experts are made:

"Teachers in sports, music, and other fields tend to believe that talent matters and that they know it when they see it. In fact, they appear to be confusing ability with precocity. There is usually no way to tell, from a recital alone, whether a young violinist's extraordinary performance stems from innate ability or from years of Suzuki-style training. The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. In fact, it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field."

Which all reminds me of this quote from Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men:

"...if you trust in yourself..."
"Yes?"
"...and believe in your dreams..."
"Yes?"
"...and follow your star..."
"Yes?"
"...you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working
hard and learning things and weren't so lazy."

There is more there. How do experts think? How do they store, process, and pull up what they know? What goes into the making of an expert? And how do we measure expertise?

Without a demonstrably immense superiority in skill over the novice, there can be no true experts, only laypeople with imposing credentials. Such, alas, are all too common. Rigorous studies in the past two decades have shown that professional stock pickers invest no more successfully than amateurs, that noted connoisseurs distinguish wines hardly better than yokels, and that highly credentialed psychiatric therapists help patients no more than colleagues with less advanced degrees. And even when expertise undoubtedly exists--as in, say, teaching or business management--it is often hard to measure, let alone explain.

Chess, however, provides a measurable standard, so that's what researchers looked at- chess champions. How did they get to be chess champions?

In one series of studies the players were blindfolded. The researcher posited that the players must have a near photographic image of the board and pieces, but he learned that this wasn't true. What they had was a general idea of the pieces in relation to each other, and this idea was more abstract than concrete. The chess-master doesn't have to remember details "because he can reconstruct any particular detail whenever he wishes by tapping a well-organized system of connections."

Which of course reminded me of Charlotte Mason's principle that "Education is the Science of Relations." What researchers learned is that "the expert relies not so much on an intrinsically stronger power of analysis as on a store of structured knowledge."

In order to have a store of structured knowledge, of course, we have to fill the store-room. Charlotte Mason also addressed this when she said that children ought to have a wide and generous curriculum.. She complained that many educators of her day believed that it is "more important that a child should think than that he should know. My contention is rather that he cannot know without having thought; and also that he cannot think without an abundant, varied, and regular supply of the material of knowledge."

Experts, it seems, don't really know more than the rest of us- they organize their information in connecting parts and are better able to pull up those chunks of information. But it takes time and work to build up that knowledge base:

The one thing that all expertise theorists agree on is that it takes enormous effort to build these structures in the mind. Simon coined a psychological law of his own, the 10-year rule, which states that it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field. Even child prodigies, such as Gauss in mathematics, Mozart in music and Bobby Fischer in chess, must have made an equivalent effort, perhaps by starting earlier and working harder than others.

What it takes is somewhat informed effort,
Or, as one scientist explained in the S.A. article:

...what matters is not experience per se but "effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time.

Emphasis mine again. Whatever you or your children are reading or doing, kicking it up a notch so it's just a little harder. And then kick it up again. And then again. We (by which I mean me) tend to reject that. We not only want to do things the easy, lazy way, we want to find some way to reinvent that as the more virtuous way. This shows that we are 'relaxed,' not driven, rigid, or 'A-type.

'Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance--for instance, keeping up with one's golf buddies or passing a driver's exam--most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind's box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields.

Are we (meaning me) allowing ourselves (meaning myself) to be 'impervious to further improvement?' When we put it that way it sounds a little less noble, doesn't it? I should so much prefer to believe that I just have no talent for playing an instrument, for housecleaning or for math than to believe, as the researchers suggest, that:

motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise.

I'm not sure I completely agree with that, but I suspect there's more truth to it than I find comfortable.
It's also true that the better we are at something initially, the more we like it and try it again:

success builds on success, because each accomplishment can strengthen a child's motivation. A 1999 study of professional soccer players from several countries showed that they were much more likely than the general population to have been born at a time of year that would have dictated their enrollment in youth soccer leagues at ages older than the average.

For parents, this indicates that one of the best ways to help children love learning is to give them small successes in the beginning of their study, whether that is in cooking, reading, math, music, sports, or spelling. Charlotte Mason addressed this, too, saying that lessons should be short, and that they should be ended on a successful note- with a math problem the child will be sure to get right, for instance.

Road Trip!!

We are going out of town for the weekend, yes, with Blynken and Nod in tow, poor lads, although they are currently pretending to be excited about it.
We leave later today, which means we're packing now, because we couldn't pack yesterday because we had three families over for a meeting and Strider came too. This means we cleaned house all day, and for a brief period we had 31 people in the house, but then the Equuschick and the Tea Chemist (who wished to bake a birthday cake for a friend) retreated to the quiet and solitude of the Equuschick's house so we only had 29.=)
The meeting broke up around 10:30, the last guests left closer to midnight (well, except for Strider and the little boys), and the dishwasher repair man is here this morning. Life is good.

Where are we going? We are going down south to a BIG singing/Bible study- usually there are about a hundred or more people there in one family's basement, which makes our 31 look trifling. We're meeting a blog friend there, too, which we are excited about.

We'll stay with friends and then go back in the morning for an all day volleyball tournament. They have three professional volleyball courts and throw a big bash with grilled hotdogs and burgers (others bring side-dishes), and people from all over put together their own teams. You can be cutthroat or just play for fun, it's up to the individual team captains. "Our" team, on which only Strider, the HM, the BOY, Shasta, and the FYG are playing from our family, are The Killer Bunnies. Strider drew our own killer bunnies (this won't be funny unless you know the game), and gentle Jenny used iron on transfer program Strider bought and ironed them the team t-shirts. The Tea-Chemist cannot play because of an injured shoulder. The HM is bringing home butcher's coats for the HG, Pip, and Jenny and they are going to be the Mad Scientist Cheerleaders who created the Killer Bunnies in the lab.=)

THEN, after a long, fun, but exhausting day, we are spending the night again, going to church with our friends the next day, seeing other old friends (one of the recent college grads is from there), and generally hanging out and being bums, although I will need to look for something special for Blynken to do for Sunday.

On Monday we are going with all those friends to a museum, and Blynken tells me he has ALWAYS wanted to go to a zooomeum. I wondered if he understood the difference between a zoo and a museum, and he said yes, he knows all about zoomeums because he saw them on television and they have bones.

So... as you read this... we are probably in the midst of singing already. As I write this, the easy part of my packing is done- one skirt, three shirts, and what was once nicely known as 'changes of linen,' and we don't mean sheets.

The complicated part- which books to choose, which books to leave, that is yet to come. Because I can't travel to the grocery store without a book or two, just in case. And I can't go away for the weekend with fewer than ten books, or at least, I have never given any indication that this possible.

California and Prop 13

(Update below)

Last week I was told by a public school supporter from California that California Public schools are terrible and have gone downhill badly over the years. I asked why that was, and was told it was because Prop 13 meant there was was no funding for anything in the CA public schools.

I doubted it, but I just shrugged, and the conversation went on to something else. I wasn't looking to refute it- I had actually already forgotten the comment, but Wednesday is my day to read Polipundit, and this caught my eye:

The claim that Proposition 13 crippled California’s revenue stream also doesn’t hold up. Because assessments can be raised to current values when property changes hands, property-tax revenue went from $6.4 billion in 1980–81 to $43 billion in 2006–07. That’s a nearly 600 percent increase, which is far higher than the combined rate of population growth and inflation over the same period. In fact, property-tax revenue went up at a slightly higher rate than overall state revenue. Krugman’s assertion that Proposition 13 amounts to a budgetary “straitjacket” is further undercut by the latest Tax Foundation data, which rank California 19th (out of all 50 states) in property taxes as a percentage of total state taxes.

In case you're wondering, no, I won't be passing that on to the person who told me that failed California schools were the result of the deficit in funding created by Prop 13. That, I am sure, would be pointless. If I'd know this at the time it might have been useful, but then again, probably not.
Even though there wasn't an argument (because I usually don't argue with this person), this is running through my head:

Backward, o backward
turn time in thy flight
I have now have found of my argument last night!

From the comments a few more facts about how much California really spends on education:

I don't know that California spends so little on education. Per Proposition 98 (http://www.lao.ca.gov/2005/prop_98_primer/prop_98_primer_020805.htm) California schools are mandated to get at least 40% of the state's overall budget. This shows up in the governor's budget (see http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/BSS/BSS.html and look for Proposition 98 spending in the budget). Around 75% of the total in 2008 was spent on K-12 education, meaning that about 30% of the entire state budget was spent on K-12 education. This equated to about $35 billion. Furthermore, California continues to pass almost every education-related bond measure that is put on the ballot. One wonders, if almost half the state's entire budget isn't enough, then what would be?

Rambleations

If you look carefully at the pregnancy ticker on the sidebar, you will note that it proudly proclaims that The Equuschick's baby has now reached the two pound mark.

She finds this amusing, because according to the ultrasound little Pinocchio was at the two pound mark almost two weeks ago.

These guessestimates provide so much food for thought and entertainment. (Mostly entertainment, in they cynical Equuschick's opinion.)

Speaking of food, sourdough bread is all well and good but one wonders why The Equuschick made it in a kitchen without air conditioning when the humidity was 97 degrees.

Juneteenth

June 19, 1865- Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas and informed the slaves that the Civil War was over and they were free. General Lee had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House two months earlier on April 9, 1865. And thus began Juneteenth, an annual celebration of freedom at long last by the Texan freedmen. According to Transgriot:

Juneteenth was celebrated every year by Black Texans from 1866 until the mid 20th century. Increased focus on expanded civil rights protections and World War II occupied Black Texans thoughts and interest in Juneteenth waned until it was revived at the 1950 State Fair in Dallas.

As we rediscovered pride in our heritage in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, the dormant Juneteenth celebrations and traditions were revived across the state in the 1970's.

It's a good time to celebrate the freedom that literacy brings, as well, since one way Texas slave-owners found to keep people enslaved was to bar them from the blessings of literacy.

While it is often read at Juneteenth celebrations, The Emancipation Proclamation, contrary to popular belief, did not free a single slave. It claimed to free the slaves in secessionist states, but of course, those were the very states that denied that the Union had any moral or legal force over them, so it was largely words with no deed to accompany it. It specifically did NOT free the slaves in any of the states that had not seceded, and it promised the secessionist states that they could keep their slaves if only they would return to the fold. I believe this is because Lincoln did not begin the war as a way to end slavery. He wanted merely to preserve the Union. I also believe that as the war progressed, he finally came to understand the moral imperative of ending the travesty of race-based slavery in this nation once and for all.

While the people enslaved in Texas certainly heard the good news of their freedom a bit late, it came later yet for slaves in the 'free' North- accordting to Wiki:

Slaves in the border states and Union-controlled parts of the South were freed by state action or (on December 6, 1865) by the Thirteenth Amendment.

See Rightwing Sparkle for more:

On the occasion of "Juneteenth," the oldest and most recognized annual commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, members of the Project 21 black leadership network suggest the civil rights-themed holiday be used to celebrate freedoms that have been won and as a warning of how easily freedom can be threatened by an overbearing government.

Project 21 members have called attention to the Juneteenth since 1999, urging black Americans to use Juneteenth to embrace their inherent talents and strengthen their ties with family and community.

Now, when the Obama Administration and Congress are increasing government intervention into the lives of all Americans, Project 21 members suggest that people reflect upon how this expansion of power can reduce the threaten individual freedom.

Some Forms of Race-based Discrimination are Acceptible, it Seems...

About five years ago, shortly before my term ended as a Regent of the University of California (UC), I was having a casual conversation with a very high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that he was developing to increase "diversity" at UC in a manner that would comply with the dictates of California's Constitution and the prohibition against race, gender and ethnic preferences.

As I listened to his proposal, I asked him why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. In an unguarded moment, he told me that unless the university took steps to "guide" admissions decisions, UC would be dominated by Asians. When I asked, "What would be wrong with that?" I got an answer that speaks volumes about the underlying philosophy at many universities with regard to Asian enrollment.

The UC administrator told me that Asians are "too dull - they study, study, study." He then said, "If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it." I won't betray the individual's anonymity because to do so would put him in a world of trouble - and he would, indeed, deny having said it. Yet, it is time to confront the not-so-subtle hand of discrimination against Asians that masquerades as "building diversity" at many elite college campuses.

Read on.

I don't know what's wrong with having a large number of 'dull' students who 'study, study, study,' either, but I guess I'm not thinking like a college administrator.

Legacy

I quoted recently from _Circle of the Seasons_ (The Journal of a Naturalist's Year), by Edwin Way Teale

There is an entry for each day of the year, sometimes describing something he
saw that day, or something he did (once he brought home a swallow's nest and
took it apart and counted all the things in it, there over a thousand items,
including 718 grass stems, 34 chicken feathers, 34 coal fragments, and 18
pieces of brick), or just things he's thought about that day.

From the back of the dustjacket: Edwin Way Teale is a literary naturalist
who has been awarded the John Burroughts Medal for distinguished nature
writing..."

Sometimes we've used it for copywork. We'd do part or all of each day's
section on that day. Then we'd compare anything he said about the date to
what's going on in our area that day. Or I'd read it aloud day by day at
lunch time, or over an afternoon snack out in the backyard. Or we'd utilize
the index to look up some nature journal entry and copy a quote or two into
our journals.

I have another book by Teale, North With the Spring. I have had it for years, part of my ongoing legacy of family 'stuff.' I come from a long line of people who never have thrown anything away, and my bachelor uncle periodically managed to loosen his death grip on a few of these family possessions and send some to me, his favourite niece.

Sometimes they were just junk. Sometimes they were useful (he sent me my grandparent's pasteurizer when we had dairy goats, and he sent me my grandmother's
cast iron dutch oven still in the box when I mentioned I liked cooking with cast iron). Sometimes they are treasures, although it might be some time before I realize they are gems.

_North with the Spring_ is one example. I didn't even know who Edwin Way Teale was when my uncle gave me a copy, so I gave the book an affectionate pat (a nod toward the giver), packed it away in a box under the bed and forgot about it.

A few years ago I noticed that when reading book recommendations from Charlotte Mason homeschoolers whose judgment I respected, I kept seeing his name pop up. I looked him up at the library and saw that he wrote one of those books gathering dust
under my bed. I pulled it out, dusted it off, and wrote down my thoughts about it. I said something like:

"So I have yet another precious little legacy from my grandmother, who died around my 13th birthday. My mother is ten years older now than my grandmother ever got to be. Grandma died young because her doctor told her the lump on her breast was nothing to worry about. He was wrong.

I miss my grandmother. She was a remarkable woman. She had studied botany and she taught school before she had children. She loved nature, and she was on a first-name basis with most of the plants and animals in her area. She was a kind and gentle woman, who read widely and thought deeply.

The older I grow, the more I value her, and the greater my sorrow that my children never knew her, nor she them. I am often bitterly grieved that a doctor's carelessness deprived us all of her participation in our lives. But it occurred to me today that through her books, she still participates in my life, and contributes generously to our homeschool, even though she died over three decades ago.
By passing on those books to my children, I am doing what I can to put them in touch with the woman who was their great-grandmother. I am helping to pass on her passion for God's creation, her interest in a wide variety of subjects, and her love of well-crafted writing. Through using the very books she held in her hands, savoured, and read, I am able to communicate something about her to her great grandchildren. They may never know the warm comfort of her hugs, but they will know something of the grace and elegance of her mind.
Thank-you, Grandma.

The Plot Thickens. Or Not

The FYB is participating in a library program where the prizes are books to select from a table full of books, and the person who selects the books on the table does not quite have our taste in books.

He picked up Fire Star, by Chris D'Lacey (unbeknownst to me), and now I have to preview it for him because I've never heard of it. I am finding it slow, tedious, slogging. I realized part way through that this is partially because this book is the third book in a series, and it doesn't really quite work as a stand alone title, but that wasn't enough to explain just how disjointed this work feels to me. Then I found an interview with the author and all was explained:

Q. Which aspects of the work that you put into the book did you find most difficult?

A. Only one: trying to work out the plot. Actually, I’m not sure the book has a real plot because it’s so multi-layered and complex.

Apparently the books are quite popular in many places, and for all I know my Boy would like them as well, but I am quaintly fond of books with plots.

President Obama Says He REALLY Prefers a "Light Touch" in Governing

He does. Apparently with a straight face.

More at Reason Magazine.

What Do You Do For Poetry?

We read it. We pick an era and a poet from that era, then we read poetry by that poet every day for several weeks. We talk about the poem a bit- I might read it to my youngest two and ask them "What was that about?" And then I might ask, "What do you think it means when Emily says 'how public, like a frog to tell your name the live long day to an admiring bog?' "What does she mean when she says 'zero at the bone?' That's about it. Years of reading, and then more reading.

I think it's more important that our young students first build up a background where they spend years simply reading and learning poetry than that they too early spend their time making uninformed judgments about which poet has the 'keener eye' for nature than others, and why they should spend more time reading and writing about what they are reading than in creative writing exercises where they 'express themselves.' Children (like the rest of us) express themselves as a matter of course. What they don't usually do without help is inform themselves without a little practice and guidance as to what to read and how to direct their attention.

Boys and Their Toys

Via Reason Mag:

The program was streamlined in 1997 when Congress created an agency called the Law Enforcement Support Program to facilitate the giveaways. National Journal reported in 2000 that between 1997 and 1999 alone, the office handled 3.4 million orders for military equipment from 11,000 domestic police agencies, and gave away $727 million worth of stuff designed for use in war to be used in American streets and neighborhoods, against American citizens. That included...

"...253 aircraft (including six- and seven-passenger airplanes, and UH-60 Blackhawk and UH-1 Huey helicopters), 7,856 M-16 rifles, 181 grenade launchers, 8,131 bulletproof helmets, and 1,161 pairs of night-vision goggles."

The transfers have only picked up since then. The program is also how Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff Leon Lott acquired his M113A1 armored personnel carrier, which moves on tank-like tracks, and features a belt-fed, turreted machine gun that fires .50-caliber rounds.

I realize the appeal of this stuff, just as I realize the fascination my son has with things that go sploidy. But that doesn't mean it's a fascination that should be rewarded.

Iran

Neo-neocon says Iran's accusing us of meddling anyway, and she offers some comparisons with 1979.

More on Walpin Firing

This ought to be making a much bigger splash than it is in the mainstream press. Thus far, these actions are not those of a PResident with respect for the law (in particular a law he co-sponsored when he was Senator), but rather, the political bullying of an unethical Chicago politician. See Neo-Neocon for more:

The Walpin firing should be a big big story: heavy-handed executive overreach by the President in order to protect a political supporter from charges against him.

Right now it’s not. The NY Times? So far it’s offering the sound of crickets chirping. Don’t trust me; try doing a search yourself on the Times’s website for “Gerald Walpin.” All you’ll find is this from early April, on Walpin’s investigation of Kevin Johnson. But now that Walpin has been fired, and has alleged that the White House did so to protect supporter Johnson—employing some of the niceties Obama’s learned along the way in Chicago—nary a word is heard from the Times (remember, in contrast, how very eager the paper was to air this all-important piece of flim-flam?).

Do the same for Newsweek. Nada. And here’s a piece on how slow the WaPo has been on the uptake, with the usual empty excuses by editors.

In contrast, the Wall Street Journal has an excellent story on the Johnson case and the related Walpin firing (please read the whole thing). I especially like the Orwellian irony of the fact that the hatchet guy for the termination, Norman Eisen, is the “Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform.”

This White House isn’t just lying here, it’s lying badly and stupidly. Perhaps Obama has never been under such scrutiny before and therefore is sloppy, or perhaps he knows that even now he is effectively immunized from scandal by the protection the mainstream press will give him.

And more, including video footage of Walpin.

Remembering Private Long....

Because his Commander-in-Chief apparently hasn't:

Some may recall that the President caught a bit of rightful flak earlier this month when he failed to make a public statement on the murder of U.S. Army Private William Long by a militant American convert to Islam. That event occurred within hours of the shooting of abortion doctor George Tiller (official statement here) - news coverage of which certainly eclipsed that of the similarly motivated shooting of one of the many members of the Army the President commands. (There are a lot of Soldiers, after all, and getting shot is what they do - so perhaps another one wasn't seen as news by those who determine what is - that's their call.)

But a few days later the AP announced that "President Barack Obama has issued a statement saying he's "deeply saddened" by a shooting that left one Army private dead and another wounded at a Little Rock recruiting center." As with many stories the "no response" news was developing in the blogosphere and was probably on the verge of breaking into the mainstream. In fact it's possible that an AP reporter researching it made a phone call to the White House for a statement and got that as a reply - end of story.

Except that if so, the White House forgot to follow through and actually release a statement.

Snort. One Good Potty Story Deserves Another

Kim made me laugh with her story, so I'm sharing mine:

For the first couple years of his life, our Boy was really fairly sedate and even timid- although this may merely have been a delusion created by the firecracker nature of the sister closest to him in age. In fact, when I was preggers with The Boy (we then had six daughters), people who didn't know us well would cackle and say they hoped it was a boy, and people who did know us well would say, "Oh, no- you haven't gotten to know her FYG. THAT one is four boys rolled into one and a barrel of monkeys just for good measure."
Which may explain my naivete when my eldest went to TX to nanny for a nice doctor's family we knew who had a large family consisting of one girl and several little boys and the Mom was on bedrest expecting multiples.

"Boys aren't really all THAT different, are they" I suggested to my eldest daughter, after her first month.

"Oh, Yes," she said emphatically, "they are VERY different. I know the FYG was active and rambunctious and climbing up on the roof at two and our Boy won't even climb on a counter. But Mama," she continued, "You never, EVER would have had to tell even the FYG not to pee from the second story deck onto the lawn below. And Mom? Their deck is in the front of the house."

Fortunately, OUR second story deck is in the back of our house.

And that's all I have to say about that.=)

Blynken and Nod have a Big Day

This morning we annoyed Blynken by awakening him before he woke up on his own (this seldom happens, but he was tired last night). Then we took the boys to the summer library program, featuring a ventriloquist. The ventriloquist included a lot of group singing in her program (including the rather strange choice of Delta Dawn), and at one point in the middle of laughing, Blynken leaned over and whispered to me, "Are we going home today?" I whispered back, "No. Did you want to?" which I realized immediately was a stupid thing to ask, as if his answer was yes, it didn't matter, they couldn't go back today. Fortunately, his answer was an emphatic "NO!"

This was pleasing on two counts- one, of course, is that it was very gratifying that he wanted to stay. The other is that portions of the ventriloquist's program were all about fathers and how wonderful they are and how we should all do special things for our fathers for Father's Day, and aren't we glad we have Daddies, and aren't Daddies the neatest thing ever... Yes, yes we are and yes, a good Daddy is a wonderful blessing. But Blynken and Nod are utterly bereft of that blessing. Nod doesn't know the difference just yet, but Blynken does, and for that portion of the program he was very clingy, very sober, and seemed quite forlorn to me. When it was suggested that the children go home and give their daddies a great big hug, I suggested that he could do that to Mr. Tio instead (a close enough approximation of his nickname for my husband, and yes, I know that's like Mister Uncle), and he shrugged sadly and nodded.

After the library, we went to the grocery store and bought snacks. We took these to a nearby grotto with many shady park benches, rocks to climb, and cascading streams down the rocks into small pools below (all very small, really). We ate crackers, lunchmeat, yogurt, granola bars, and drank sparkling green tea. We spotted several chipmunks, which was hugely exciting for me- I'd not seen any chipmunks in our area before. "Just like Alvin and the chipmunks," said Blynken.

They climbed up and down the rocks, which is something they had no done before and probably won't do without us. They tossed rocks in the pools, and then we came home for naps. There was tickling most of the way home. We had a song or two and then we had Hurlbut's Story of the Bible, the chapter on the Garden of Eden, and some Mother Goose (the boys were out by the fifth Mother Goose).

After naps we had a nutmeg muffin and romps with the Boy upstairs. Then some of us had burritoes and some of us refused them rather sulkily and demanded yogurt (which was all gone) instead. Those who demanded yogurt went without. Then we had midweek Bible study, and as we loaded ourselves back into the van again Blynken remarked, "There sure is a lot of God talkin' 'round here. Why do you guys do that so much?"

If only he knew. The FYG and Boy missed their regular Bible lessons and hymn singing the two days the boys have been here because our days have been so fractured.

At Bible study Blynken snuggled up in my lap and told me the right way to rub his back and flirted with little girls his age. Nod flirts shamelessly with everybody, regardless of their age. Afterwards, we shipped off all the girls to a slumber party/girl's Bible study (except our Cherub), and then we went and used a coupon for some Starbuck's ice-cream. Suddenly, the burritoes we'd packed in the van for more supper after church looked much better to those who previously had expressed a preference for death over burritos, and they scarfed them right down.

We came home, had our ice-cream, found our tooth-brushes, put on pajamas, listened to Each Peach Pear Plum and a song or too (God Will Take Care Of You). I told 2 year old Nod I liked him very much. He hugged my neck tightly, pressed his nose up against mine, and whispered back, "I yike the FYG." Then he fell asleep and was put to bed.

Then Blynken went to bed at 10:00, which is late for him. And got back up again, and went back to bed and got back up again and went back to bed, and complained the light was too bright and too dark and asked to be taken to Shasta and Equuschick's house so Blynken could hug them goodnight, and asked not to sleep in the boy's room (where he had previously insisted he needed to sleep), but in some other room, and then MY boy started with the journeys up and down the stairs with some new excuse or complaint and I finally resorted to that traditional, tender, deeply maternal blessing: "I don't want to see either of you down here again unless somebody is bleeding or the sun is up and it's time for breakfast, do you understand me? It. Is. BEDTIME!"

And off they went, to sleep, I suppose, perchance to dream. At any rate, it's midnight now and there has been sweet silence for the last hour.

ABC to Run Obama Info-Mercial

That's what the Republicans, who are completely excluded from ABC's two hour or so program promoting Obama's health care option, are calling it. Wouldn't it be nice to have an independent media?

Learning History and Geography

The following is from Charlotte Mason, volume V, page 282/3, part of a larger section where Miss Mason compares and contrasts two books- Jörn Uhl (Jörn Uhl, by Gustav Frenssen) and Wilhelm Meister. Says Miss Charlotte:

"We get in these two the hint of a line of demarcation which divides the world into the people who, for one cause or another, are at the mercy of circumstances, and those others able to order their lives... In both cases, we have a boy set down with the problem of life before him. Will he cry I 'check' to circumstances, or will they checkmate him? This is the anxious question that presents itself now and then to every mother when she goes up for the last good-night; to every father when the curious children gather round to see what he would show...."

I have read neither, so I don't know, but I have bolded and highlighted those sections that I think offer much food for thought in the rearing and teaching of children today:

As for his education, he listened to the talk of the old men under the shadow of the linden in the middle of the village. He played, and his plays were his lessons; for, says our author, "in all the sports of Children, were it only in their wanton breakages or defacements, you shall discern a creative instinct: the Mankin feels that he is born Man, that his vocation is to work. The choicest present you can make him is a Tool; be it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for destruction; either way it is for work, for change. In gregarious sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to co-operation, for war or peace, as governor or governed: the little Maid again, provident of her domestic destiny, takes with preference to dolls."

Here is a thing to ponder, a word of wisdom, which should clear our nurseries of mechanical toys, and of all toys which have no use but that of being looked at. In this regard the two little boys, Jörn and Gneschen, had fairly equal opportunities. Both grew up in open places where they had the good of heaven and earth. We read how little Gneschen took out his porringer of bread and milk and ate it on the coping of the wall, from which he could see the sunset behind the western mountains. He made friends with cattle and poultry and much besides. While his sports made the boy active and sharpened his wits, "his imagination was stirred up and an historical tendency given him" by the reminiscences of his father Andreas, who had tales of battle and adventure to tell, wonderful to the child. "Eagerly I hung upon his tales, when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth; from these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades itself, a dim world of adventure expanded itself within me. Incalculable also was the knowledge I acquired in standing by the old men under the linden tree: the whole of Immensity was yet new to me; and had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years? With amazement I began to discover that Entepfühl stood in the middle of a country, of a world; that there was such a thing as History, as Biography; to which I also, one day, by hand and tongue might contribute."

It would appear [Miss Mason speaking now] that nature opens to all children, one way or other, a perception of time past, History, and of space remote, Geography, as if these ideas were quite necessary nutriment for the mind of a child; and what is to be said for a school education that either eliminates this necessary food altogether, or serves it up in dry-as-dust morsels upon which the imagination cannot work?

Necessary to the young: exposure to the very old, listening to their tales, listening to stories their parents tell of the things they have done and the places they have been, nature itself, tools with which to change the world around them, games, stories, and time to think about those stories.

'Children,' my great-grandmother saidly and wisely told my mother when she moved away from her home-state, 'need their grandparents.' My young mother only laughed then, but later she learned 'tis true, 'tis true.

If your children haven't any older folks in their lives, invited an older person home for tea, or take your children to visit a nursing home. Tell them stories, and give them things to work on- or as Miss Mason puts it in volume 3, page 80:

Power over Material––Another elemental relationship, which every child should be taught and encouraged to set up, is that of power over material. Every child makes sand castles, mud-pies, paper boats, and he or she should go on to work in clay, wood, brass, iron, leather, dress-stuffs, food-stuffs, furnishing-stuffs. He should be able to make with his hands and should take delight in making.

Young People in LooOOOooove....

Cell phone minutes for a certain person:

203 anytime, bonus anytime 150, mobile-2-mobile, 110, night & weekend, 765

Public Plan Deception

Nature Writing Requires...

"At best, the genre we call nature writing requires a rare mixture of scientist, philosopher, and poet."

Edwin Way Teale in Green Treasury

More on the Smearing of AG Walpin

Walpin pressed hard to prosecute Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson for defrauding the government over more than $400,000 in community service grants. Johnson, an Obama supporter, got a deal from the White House that allowed him to manage federal funds again and avoid paying back at least half of the grant money he used illegally. The White House cut Walpin out of those negotiations, and Walpin went to Congress about it.

At that point, the White House called Walpin and told him he had an hour to resign or be fired. Now, if the White House thought that Walpin was somehow incapacitated or disoriented, why bother to make that call at all? In fact, wouldn’t an employer with an ounce of empathy send the employee to a physician for diagnosis first? Even without the empathy, the proper course would have been to address the issue with Congress first instead of making an intimidation attempt to someone the White House now paints as all but senile.

This is nothing more than a bare-knuckled smear job, a despicable attempt to use allegations of mental illness to discredit someone who ran afoul of Barack Obama for taking the independence of his job seriously. That may play in Chicago, and it used to play in Moscow, but it shouldn’t play in Washington DC and America.

Democrat Senator McCaskill is the first Democrat to leave the Rez and ask for a better explanation than the White House has presented so far in their attempt to break the law and strong arm an AG. Let's hope there are more.

The Importance of Attention

There are bird-witted people, who have no power of thinking connectedly for five minutes under any pressure, from within or from without. If they have never been trained to apply the whole of their mental faculties to a given subject, why, no energy of will, supposing they had it, which is impossible, could make them think steadily thoughts of their own choosing or of anyone else's. Here is how the parts of the intellectual fabric dovetail: power of will implies power of attention; and before the parent can begin to train the will of the child, he must have begun to form in him the habit of attention.

Thinking connectedly- that is a lofty goal.

The other day we were driving along and discussing something, I can't even remember what, and in mid sentence almost I interrupted myself to point out how beautiful were the trees along the roadway.

Quick as thought the FYG interjected her own single word commentary on my dithery discourse, "Squirrel!" she shouted. That won't make much sense if you haven't seen UP, by the way. It was perfectly apropos.

It is very lowering to realize Charlote Mason would have thought me bird-witted.

Help Us With a KidLit Reference

In what children's book is the grandmother or the courtesy grandmother, we can't remember, called GranDear, 'Gran Dear,' or something like that?

12 Year old Legislative Aid

That's the only excuse I would accept for this sort of nonsense- that the aid is 12 and hasn't been out.

On the agenda for today...

We're taking the boys to the library where the children's program includes a ventriloquist.

I think they'll help make muffins.

We'll pick more mulberries- something two year old Nod enjoyed last night, but Blynken did not. He is more cautious than his younger brother, always worried that something will prove messy or dangerous.

Midweek Bible study and their classes tonight, which Blynken does enjoy, Nod less so.

More books, of course, and plenty of singing- last night at bedtime Shasta read them The Little Engine that Could, and the boys requested that I sing to them and tell the stories. They specifically requested the story of the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs. Blynken informed me that in his preschool they told him that the wolf just wanted somebody to play with, so after he blew all the houses down he and the pigs became friends. It was all just a misunderstanding. What a shocking thing to do to a perfectly good folk tale. I told him the less sanitized version, although I compromised my principles a bit and allowed all three of the pigs to escape, rather than have the wolf eat the first two up, a fitting end for the folly of ignoring their wise mother's instructions to build strong houses of lasting materials.

Every day they are here I want to give them something new to do, and fortunately, this is easy. Dancing in the rain, picking mulberries, jumping over mud puddles, stomping in them - these were all new experiences yesterday.

Every day I want to give them something to think about, something to love, and something worthwhile to do.

Children, said Kate Douglas Wiggin (author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm)

"should be... loved, not coddled; led, not driven, respected as
an individual... guided to walk freely on directed paths; to slay
caprice and to liberate will; to kill selfishness and to conquer self;
helped by the shining of your steady light to a vision of the
relationship between the world of nature and the world of the spirit..."

Mental Pictures

"The Perfect Mental Image
I have been remembering a little incident that occurred one summer day, years ago. I was on the Massachusetts coast, watching shorebirds with Ludlow Griscom, whose skill at rapid field identification is legendary. He called off greater and lesser yellowlegs without an instant's delay. "How," I wanted to know, "do you tell them apart at a glance?" His reply was: "it is largely a matter of having a perfect mental image of each bird." To tell the truth, at the moment, that sounded like the kind of answer given to a child to keep him quiet. But upon reflection, it seems profoundly true. Most of our mental pictures are blurred and fuzzy. We see approximations instead of clear images. We fail to appreciate differences because we fail, with mind and eye, to see what we are looking at clearly in the first place."

Entry for Sept 19, from _Circle of the Seasons_ ( The Journal of a
Naturalist's Year), by Edwin Way Teale

We allow our judgment, our standards, and our behavior to grow lax because we haven't been holding a clear image of the goal in our minds. We also fail to distinguish clearly between matters of principle and character and matters of preference.

The Further Adventures of Blynken and Nod!!!

Blynken and Nod are back for a visit- this time for a whole, entire week!

They were supposed to arrive last night, but their mama had car trouble, and we were expected next door where my aunt and uncle are visiting for a few days, so we couldn't go get them.

Today it rained all day, but there was no thunder and it was a steady, gentle downpour of rain, so, in keeping with my goal of giving them new experiences, we shocked the little boys by putting on some thrift shop clothes we bought for them and taking them out to splash in puddles and dance in the rain. I gardened some while others splashed and danced, still being a limpy gimpy and all.

Then we rinsed the mud off of them and put them in dry clothesfed them crackers, yogurt, and pickles for tea and tucked them up into my bed for naps.

We pulled out books for naptime reading, and bless my soul and be still my heart if five year old Blynken didn't remember The Tale of Peter Rabbit from his last visit two weeks ago. He insisted that he had to have that story and no other would do- the one about the one naughty little bunny and the three good little rabbits, he said, was the one he wanted most of all.

He's also been quite delighted with the Three Little Kittens, What Do You Say, Dear, the Millions of Cats.

This weekend we are going on a short road trip to a volleyball tournament and a museum, and I overhead his mother ask him on the phone if he wanted to go on a road trip with Tea-Tea (their nickname for me), and I could hear the glee and excitment in his voice as he asked her breathlessly, "For real?! I can for REAL?!"

It's so gratifying to the ego to be so important to small people.

Wedding Invitations

As for the Equuschick's wedding, we ordered invitations locally- part of our effort to support a local business. This was not an economy, except insofar as it is an economy to help keep local businesses in town.

As with the Equuschick, the couple has a blog where those interested can find maps and directions to the wedding venue, updated information, and a link to their registery at the alternative gift registry.

We used iprint for labels for both weddings. We put these labels on the invitations.

For the labels for the Equuschick and Shasta, I used a picture Pip took (she took their engagement pictures. Our camera is still in the shop and no engagement pics have been taken yet, so I used a photograph of the couple that our summer houseguest's sister took when visiting (Facebook is a wonderful resource) for graduation.
The picture is from the bowling alley, so I went to Resizr, a free online image page, and cropped the photograph down to just their shoulders and up, cropped out the bowling alley around them, and added it to the label at iPrint.

We chose a template for the address label, one with the option of using our own photograph. Instead of addresses in the label, we used the textboxes for things like:
For maps and updates, see our blog!
Blog URL
Bible verse
Bible verse cont.
Reference for Bible verse

TO make the blog address fit, we used tinyurl.com, utilizing the custom alias feature, and the custom alias is the groom's last name with the number 2- tinyurl.com/jones2, for instance.

The Equuschick chose a pale green background with deep purple lettering. The HG chose a white background with midnight blue lettering. I played around with fonts to make them legible as possible- the URL, for instance, is tektron font, to make it stand out. The bible verses were in Parisian for one couple and Park Avenue for the other.

The labels and invites will be here in another week or so, and we'll go over the address list again, because it's bulging at the seams. =)

Bynken and Nod are back

This time for a week. More of our adventures later. Now I am off to read to a book-starved little boy who will reward me with many hugs around the neck. I don't know about you, but I always find one of the best cures for a head-ache is a small child's arms around your neck.

Seriously.

From the land of fruits and nuts

Central California produces significant amounts of our fruits and vegetables. They've been able to do this because of the series of canals and irrigation ditches from Sacramento to Tehachipi. The Federal Government has pulled the plug on their water supply in order to save a minnow that looks pretty much like other minnows. This means that it would be a good thing if you have an alternative source for fruits and veggies next spring. They're going to get expensive. This also means unemployment rates are mind-boggling high in this part of California.

See Raggamuffin Studies for more:

I have had a very difficult time understanding the real agenda behind political environmentalism, just as I have had a hard time understanding that there are people within our government who do not value human existence. But now I understand that both of them have the same agenda. Neither value their own lives so much as they value temporary power, unearned adulation, and total control over others. It is becoming clear to me that they'd rather die than give that up. And they'll die happy if they take the rest of us with them.

In the meantime, brace yourselves. California is about to be hit with the perfect storm. A man-made agricultural disaster and financial default. If the adage is true that as goes California, so goes the nation, then there are rough waters ahead.

How Anti-Semitic Are They, Chuck?

Democrats, Republicans, and Jews (Bill Kristol, 6/13/09, Weekly Standard)

There’s an article in the May/June Boston Review on an interesting study that seems (I wonder why?) to have gotten little attention. Neil Malhotra, of Stanford Business School, and Yotam Margalit, who teaches political science at Columbia, report on a survey of 2,768 American adults in which they “explored people’s responses to the economic collapse and tried to determine how anti-Semitic sentiments might relate to the ongoing financial crisis.”

They asked, “How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?”, with respondents given five categories: a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, not at all. Among non-Jewish respondents, 24.6 percent of Americans blamed the Jews a moderate amount or more, and 38.4 percent attributed at least a little level of blame to the group. This alarms Malhotra and Margalit. Or perhaps 75 percent of Americans saying a little or no blame (with 60 percent saying no blame at all) isn’t really too bad.

But what the Stanford and Columbia academics find “somewhat surprising” is the partisan breakdown among the American public: “Democrats were especially prone to blaming Jews: while 32 percent of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, only 18.4 percent of Republicans did so (a statistically significant difference).” Why is this surprising? Because of “the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition.”

Thanks to Brothers Judd

10,000 Hours

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Tipping Point, Blink, and a new book called Outliers, was interviewed about Outliers:

His latest opus – or the first half of it – examines people such as Bill Gates, who are more successful than any human should reasonably expect to be. They are, indeed, his 'outliers'. This may come as less as a surprise to British readers, but the writer suggests that, while grit and intelligence do matter, other factors are critical in determining who makes it into this super-league of achievers. Such as personal circumstance, culture and sheer luck. (Did I hear you mention class, privilege and rich parents ,too?)

Once the book's main premise has been laid out, Gladwell backs it up with a series of real-life narratives about these very people. Among the intriguing titbits: that really successful people only become surpassingly good at what they do after 10,000 hours of practice. The Beatles were lucky, because the