Archive | April 2006

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 25th

Martin Waldseemuller, b. 1507. German mapmaker and geographer who gave America its name, named after Amerigo Vespucci, the man Waldseemuller thought had made the first voyage to the American continent.

Walter de la Mare, b. 1873.

Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Someone came knocking;
I’m sure-sure-sure;
I listened, I opened,
I looked to left and right,
But nought there was a stirring
In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
The screech-owl’s call,
Only the cricket whistling
While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
At all, at all, at all.

De la Mare also wrote this poem that we use to tease the very industrious Tim in our family:

POOR tired Tim! It’s sad for him.
He lags the long bright morning through,
Ever so tired of nothing to do;
He moons and mopes the livelong day,
Nothing to think about, nothing to say;
Up to bed with his candle to creep,
Too tired to yawn; too tired to sleep:
Poor tired Tim! It’s sad for him.

Guglielmo Marconi, b. 1874. Inventor of the wireless telegraph, without which we probably wouldn’t have the internet now. What kind of mother would name her child Guglielmo?

Maud Hart Lovelace, b. 1892. Author of the beloved Betsy-Tacy books. All my girls have been quite fond of these books about Betsy, her sister Julia, and her friends, Tacy and Tib. The series takes Betsy from age five through four years of high school, a trip to Europe, and then a wedding. I wonder if Eldest Daughter who is in France now is planning to emulate Betsy and make that sequence a pattern for her future. No Joe yet though.

Kingdom of Children by Mitchell Stevens

Apr24

“Thus, conservative Protestant theology posits a dualistic human nature: we are essentially sinful, in need of discipline; and we are essentially good, worthy of love.” p. 65, Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement by Mitchell Stevens

This book by sociologist Mitchell Stevens has a lot of good stuff in it, but I think he has a basic misunderstanding of the theology, and hence the motivations, of Christian homeschoolers. We do believe that humans are inherently sinful, but we and our children are not in need of discipline for our sinfulness. We are sinners in need of grace, in need of a Saviour. No amount of discipline or teaching in ethics or spanking or law-giving is sufficient to turn sinners into saints. Only the forgiveness and grace and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit can change evil into good.

Nor do evangelicals teach and believe that we have a “dualistic human nature” that is “essentially good” and “worthy of love.” I am worthy of nothing. The Bible teaches that my so-called righteousness, my pitiful attempts to do good and follow God’s law, are like filthy rags in the sight of a Truly Good God who made us to be so much more than we have chosen to be. God doesn’t make “junk”, but I have become junk in His sight. Again, I’m not worthy of God’s love, but I get it anyway because, the Bible teaches, that God Himself is Love, not because I am lovable.

So why do evangelical Christians discipline and teach their children at all? Except for the legalists among us, who can be legion, we don’t discipline in order to make the children good. The Bible says that the law of God is given for the purpose of showing us our own sinfulness. So, almost paradoxically, we teach children Biblical ethics so that they can see for themselves how far short of God’s ideal we all fall. And we teach other things — reading, writing, arithmetic, art –not to free the beautiful inner child waiting to blossom, but rather to prepare the child to be a servant to the One who made him. We pray that our children will see their need for a Saviour and will then choose to serve Him with the talents and gifts He has placed in their lives.

This misunderstanding of the evangelical view of human nature and the purpose of education has implications for the rest of Mr. Mitchell’s thesis in his, nonetheless, enlightening book, Kingdom of Children. His primary conclusion is that there is a divide in the homeschooling world between two groups that he calls believers (evangelical Protestant Christians) and inclusives (everyone else). He says that this gap is due, not so much to differences in ideology and belief, but rather differences about “who would be welcome in their associations, who would be in charge, or how decisions would be made.” Homeschoolers do divide over these issues; however, these differences in style and organization are only symptoms of a deeper difference in ideology. True “inclusives” believe, finally, that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you don’t believe your belief system to Truly True. True “believers”, although they are capable of working together with diverse groups in a common cause, in the final analysis, believe. Evangelical Christians believe that the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news indeed and is true for all people whether they believe it or not. Therefore, they’re not willing to have their children taught belief systems that are antithetical to what they believe is the only possible way of salvation. Also, Christians believe that sin is dangerous and tempting (bad company corrupts good morals), and that children are already undiscerning and tempted to sin and don’t need more temptation in their lives. All these underlying beliefs about who people are and how they work cause most of the splits that I see in the homeschooling world between “inclusives” and “believers”.

That said, I see much more overlap and cooperation between homeschoolers of different ideologies and beliefs than Mr. Mitchell indicates in his book. I am a member of a Christian homeschool co-op. We have a statement of faith that members are required to sign because we are engaged in teaching classes to the children, and we want those classes taught in accordance with our beliefs. However, we have Catholic homeschoolers in our co-op and members from many other Christian denominations. We have families that use a very rigid, school-like curriculum, and families that are much more free-spirited, unschooling types. And we advertise for other groups that plan activities that are more inclusive, and many of our co-op members also attend field trips and support group meetings and classes with homeschoolers of all different backgrounds. I see all kinds of homeschoolers cooperating all the time, and I also, unfortunately, see splits among Christian homeschoolers over issues such as dress codes or affiliations or other issues, large and small, as often as I see splits between evangelical Christians and other groups.

Although I feel that Mr. Stevens didn’t dig deeply enough in his investigation of “culture and controversy in the homeschooling movement,” there are many good insights in his book. I recommend it as a starting point for those who are interested in understanding the history and interactions of the homeschool movement from a sociological perspective. However, if you’re outside that movement, don’t allow Mr. Mitchell’s book to be the last word on the subject; come see for yourself what homeschooling is all about. You might find a lot of interaction and cooperation between many diverse individuals and groups who share one common bond: a desire to rear and educate chlldren in the best possible way.

Who Wants to Go to the Beach?

Apr24

Homeschoolers and teachers: The Homeschool eStore offers one free product each week, and the product for this week is a set of decorated pages for making an Ocean Journal. I think I’ll print out a set of these for each child when we go down to Galveston beach this summer. They can use the pages for coloring, drawing, letter-writing, copywork, or whatever. All the books at The Homeschool eStore are ebooks; just download the pdf file using Acrobat, and you’re in business.

Yes, I get a small kickback if you purchase something from the Homeschool eStore, but the Ocean Notebook Page Packet by Amanda Bennett, is FREE this week (April 24-30, 2006), no purchase required. You can’t beat that price!

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 24th

Apr24

Anthony Trollope, b. 1815. Has anyone else read any of Trollope’s novels? I read Barchester Towers a long time ago, and I remember enjoying it. However, I also think it moved very slowly, and I’ve read that all his books are about the same setting and similar characters— British country and small city, Anglican bishops and priests and church wardens and such. It all sounds perfect for a certain sort of mood–slow, gossipy, lazy, character-driven.

Elizabeth Goudge, b. 1900, wrote adult novels and children’s books. I’m pretty sure I’ve read one or more of her books, too, maybe Linnets and Valerians, but I don’t remember anything about it. Looking around on the internet, she seems to share some characteristics in common with Trollope. Three of her adult books are collectively titled The Cathedral Trilogy, about characters in a Anglican cathedral city in England.

Evaline Ness, b. 1911. Author and illustrator who received the Caldecott Award for Sam, Bangs, and Moonshine, a book about distinguishing between fact and fiction, when to fantasize and when to be strictly factual.

Book-Spotting, Special Edition: Shakespeare’s Birthday

Apr23

Cinnamon re-introduces herself and her girls to Mr. Shakespeare, via E. Nesbit’s Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.

Also on Mr. Shakespeare, a librarian blurbs a middle school mystery called Shakespeare’s Secret by Elise Broach.

Celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday with my dear cyber-friend MFS of Mental-Vitamin (who was once reprimanded for “dipping into a gilt-edged set of Shakespeare’s complete works. ‘You’ll ruin the pages!’ cried my mother as she swooped in to ‘save’ the books and promptly return them to their purely decorative function as knickknacks on her colonial-style drum table.” Ouch!). MFS has a much more enlightened attitude about books in her post, In the company of books.

A few other Shakespeare book suggestions:
Stage Fright on a Summer’s Night by Mary Pope Osborne. Jack and Annie, via the magic Treehouse, travel back in time to Shakespeare’s England and participate in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Shakespeare Stealer, Shakespeare’s Scribe, and Shakespeare’s Spy by Gary Blackwood. Widge, a boy of unknown parentage, becomes an apprentice at William Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Or maybe he’s a spy out to steal Mr. Shakespeare’s plays. Partially reviewed here.

Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare by Diane Stanley. A 48-page biography of Shakespeare with beautiful illustrations.

Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb.

Blood and Judgement by Lars Walker is a take-off on Hamlet (for adults). Reviewed here.

And these two I want to read, so I’m adding them to The List:
The Two Loves of Will Shakespeare by Laurie Lawlor.

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt.

Fianlly, this week I’m taking a poll:
What is your favorite Shakespeare comedy?
Tragedy?
Movie based on a Shakespearean play?
Quotation from Shakespeare?

I’ll share mine when the voting is over on Saturday. Leave your choices in the comments.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 22nd

Apr21

Dawn just started her blog in March at By Sun and Candlelight, but she already has a plethora of posts, mostly about poetry. I thought this one, All Things Bright and Beautiful was a particularly good reminder for Earth Day. We can celebrate not just the Earth, but the Lord God who made it all. In fact, I bought this book as an Easter present for the urchins. Isn’t it beautiful?

Or if you’re not in the mood for Earth Day, warm and fuzzy, bright and beautiful, you could re-read Animal Farm by George Orwell. I just read it again for the British Literature class I’m teaching (the first time was oh-so-very-many years ago in high school), and I found it fascinating. “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. I mention this book because I just read it and also because today is the birthday of Vladimir I. Lenin, b. 1870.

Also, Kurt Wiese, b. 1887. He was the illustrator of The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Bishop and also the Freddy the Pig books by Walter Brooks.

Jan de Hartog, b. 1914. Author of The Peaceable Kingdom and The Lamb’s War (We’re back to the animal/creatures great and small theme, sort of.) I think I read The Peaceable Kingdom back when I was in high school and had decided to become a Quaker and a pacifist. I didn’t find many (any) Quakers in West Texas to associate with, and I’m no longer a pacifist. Mothers with a brood of eight chicks tend to believe in defending the brood.

Immanuel Kant, b. 1754. As far as I know, Kant has nothing whatsoever to do with anything bright and beautiful. Nor does he write about animals. Nor was he a Quaker or a pacifist, as far as I know. I haven’t read Kant, but dense and cloudy would be more appropriate words for him, from what I’ve heard.

The REALLY Dead Women Writers Meme

Apr21

OK, you saw the Women Writers meme, and some of us had read a few of the books on the list. I found the Really Dead Women Writers Meme at Bardiac, the blog of a literature professor, and I’m not going to list all the Really Dead writers here. I will tell you which ones I’ve read:

Jane Austen (but not the works on the list)
Anne Bradstreet (not all, but some of her poetry)
Hildegard von Bingen (I’ve listened to Eldest Daughter sing some of her writings put to music. Does that count?)

Ummm. that’s it.

The oft-quoted C.S. Lewis: “Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. . . . It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.”

Maybe I should check out some DEAD women writers.

Magic Tricks

Apr20

. . . . the latest fad at the Semicolon family homeschool. Karate Kid (9) borrowed about ten magic books at the library this morning, and now everyone is walking around with a deck of cards in one hand and a wand made of black consruction paper in the other.

Even Bethy Bee (7) is instructing me to “pick a card.”

It’s what Gregg Harris called “delight-directed studies.” Maybe Houdini started out this way. Or Henry Gondorff.

Karate Kid says that this book, The Magic Book by Jane Bull, published by Dorling Kindersley, was the best one of the lot. Keep in mind that he’s nine years old. I think the large photographic illustrations were helpful in showing him exactly how the tricks worked.

Blog Host Recommendation

Apr19

Some of you may have noticed the rude and almost blank screen that greeted you when you tried to visit Semicolon yesterday and part of today. It took about 30 hours for my web hosting company to track down and tell me what the problem was. They first said that my account had been suspended “due to spam.” Since I don’t do spam and I don’t like spam, except for the kind in the can, I didn’t know what to do about this seeming accusation. So I inquired further.

The web hosting company in question didn’t return my emails.

My emails became more and more frustrated and strident in tone.

They still didn’t return my emails.

Yes, I was going through blog withdrawal, but my main concern was the class schedule for our homeschool co-op that was supposed to be available on the web on Tuesday morning. It wasn’t. I had parents emailing and calling both me and the directors of our co-op.

Finally, thirty hours after they suspended my account without notice and after many, many emails from me, alternately irate and pleading, the web hosting company emailed to say that I could have my website back. One of the co-op class pages on this site had been the source of “a whole lot of spam” yesterday. Something was said about hackers, bcc injection, and pretty patches. Don’t ask me; I’m clueless.

Short version, I’m looking for a new website hosting company. Any suggestions?

Books by Women Meme

Apr19

Just BOLD those you’ve read, ITALICIZE the ones you’ve been meaning to read and ??? the ones you have never heard of (or wish you had never heard of? Or the ones about which I wonder, “Why is this book on this list?”)

HT: A Work in Progress

Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women Hasn’t every girl read Little Women?
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Atwood, Margaret–Cat’s Eye
Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters ??
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood ??
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street??
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History?????????
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South??
Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory??
Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics???????????
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day??
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, Geroge–Middlemarch
Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen??
Erdrich, Louise–Tracks??
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper??
Gordimer, Nadine–July’s People??
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
Hooks, Bell–Bone Black??
Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road??
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl??
Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy??
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing??
L’Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness (I’ve read the Earthsea books, but not this one.)
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals??
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series Blah!
McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts??
Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones??
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost??
Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji??
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women??
Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day??
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller’s Wife Blah, also.
Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
O’Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time??
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister’s Keeper
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats??
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping I read Gilead.
Rocha, Sharon–For Laci??
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth??
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle??
Steel, Danielle–The House
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You’re Wearing That??
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife’s Tale
Urquhart, Jane–Away??
Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer’s Beginnings
Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One’s Own

THere are an awful lot of books and authors on this list that I’ve never read or never even heard of. Can you recommend any of the ones I’ve not read? Are any of them “can’t miss” books as far as you’re concerned?