How?

Apr22

I got this story from Joe McKeever’s blog, and he copied it from a 1975 book on preaching by Dr. Clyde Fant. It made me laugh.

To inspire patriotism in the common man, Napoleon had a story he loved to tell. “Once he came upon a soldier who had one arm and still wore his uniform, on which was displayed the Legion of Honor. `Where did you lose your arm?’ the emperor asked. `At Austerlitz, sire,’ the soldier replied. `And for that you were decorated?’ `Yes, sire. It is a small token to pay for the Legion of Honor.’
“‘It seems to me,’ Napoleon said, `that you are the kind of man who regrets that he didn’t lose both arms for his country.’ `What then might be my reward?’ asked the old soldier.
“‘Oh, in that case I would have awarded you a double Legion of Honor.’ And with that, the old soldier drew his sword and immediately cut off his other arm.
“For years the story circulated and was accepted without question until one day someone asked, `How?'” (Pp. 76-77)
Think about it.

Tender Grace by Jackina Stark

Apr22

Audrey Eaton is stuck. She’s quit reading, quit listening to music, lost interest in almost everything that once brought her joy. It’s been a year and three months since her husband, Tom, died peacefully in his recliner at the age of 58. Audrey can’t find a way to get over his death or a reason to resume living.

Tender Grace is Christian fiction. Unbelievers will find it unbelievably “religious,” not preachy or offensive or even poorly written, but bathed in Christianity and Biblical thought and prayer and possibly annoying. I, on the other hand enjoyed the book, maybe because the death of a loved one (not my husband, thank the Lord) has recently been a part of my own journey. And although I’ve not been stuck in grief and joylessness, I can identify with Audrey in some ways. I can imagine how difficult it would be if I did lose Engineer Husband and how without losing my faith, I might very well still be tempted to or led into acedia and depression.

As the book proceeds, Audrey Eaton goes on a journey, both metaphorical and actual. She summons up the courage and determination to take a road trip, and as she travels, she finds the grace of God in unexpected places and unusual ways.

Again, I think Christians, especially those dealing with grief and loss, will find this book to be encouraging and real at the same time. Others enter at your own risk. I do find it odd, and at the same time serendipitous, that the last two books I’ve read have both been about death and about what may or may not come after death, both for the deceased and for the survivors. I didn’t choose these books because I knew what they were about. Tender Grace was a review copy that someone at Bethany House very kindly shared with me. The other death book, Passage by Connie WIllis, I read because I’ve become a fan of Ms. WIllis’s writing. However, I had no idea what the book was about until I actually started reading. More about Ms. Willis and my delight in discovering her books tomorrow.

One could almost believe that there was some sort of plan to the universe . . . or something.

On the Character of John Adams

Apr21

During my Lenten blog break and during the month of February for my Semicolon Book Club, I read the biography of John Adams written by David McCullough. I also watched the mini-series based on McCullough’s book. Both book and video series were excellent. I learned a lot about our second president and came to admire him sometimes in spite of his faults, which he would be the first to admit were many.

Here’s what a few other people said about Mr. Adams:

Benjamin Franklin: “He means well for his country, is always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.”

Thomas Jefferson: “His vanity is a lineament in his character which had entirely escaped me. His want of taste I had observed. Notwithstanding all this he has a sound head on substantial points, and I think he has integrity.”

Jonathan Sewall: “Adams has a heart formed for friendship and susceptible to its finest feelings. He is humane, generous, and open, warm in his friendly attachments, though perhaps rather implacable to those he thinks his enemies.”

Thomas Jefferson, again: “Mr. Adams is vain, irritable, stubborn, endowed with excessive self-love and still suffering pique at the preference accorded Franklin over him in Paris.”

John Adams himself to James Warren:
“Popularity was never my mistress, nor was I ever, or shall I ever be, a popular man. But one thing I know, a man must be sensible of the errors of the people, and upon his guard against them, and must run the risk of their displeasure sometimes, or he will never do them any good in the long run.”

The real John Adams? Perhaps all of the above. We are all mixtures of vanity and generosity and common sense and sometimes absolutely out of our senses.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

Apr20

“For Lillian’s mother, every part of a book was magic, but what she delighted in most were the words themselves. Lillian’s mother collected exquisite phrases and complicated rhythms, descriptions that undulated across a page like cake batter pouring into a pan, read aloud to put the words into the air, where she could hear as well as see them.”
~from chapter 1 of The School of Essential Ingredients

Lillian, in reaction to her mother’s pet obsession, develops an aversion to books, even cookbooks, but she loves to cook. She reaches out to her avoidant mother, and later to others, through cooking for them. Lillian owns a restaurant where she creates a community and gives herself to people through the food she cooks for them.

Once a month on Monday evenings, the restaurant is closed to customers and open only for Lillian’s cooking class. The School of Essential Ingredients weaves together the stories of a particular set of students in the cooking class, the aromas and tastes of the foods they cook, and the developing relationships of the characters and ingredients in the book.

An extended exercise in using food and cooking as a metaphor and catalyst for life, The School is a beautifully written book. It reminds me of Alexander McCall Smith with his vignette snapshots of people and situations, with less emphasis on plot and more on language and description. It also reminds me of a couple of movies, Mostly Martha and Babette’s Feast in which food and feasting are a gift and a sacrament communicating love and grace. (Oddly enogh, both of those movies are European, non-English films. Are there any English language movies that celebrate in gift of food particularly?)

I enjoyed The School of Essential Ingredients so much that I sent my copy, purchased serendipitously at Half-Price Books, to Eldest Daughter in Tennessee. I’m hoping that she will enjoy it, too, since she’s a lover of good food and cooking and of sharing her gift of cooking with others.

Education Week: April 11-17, 2009

Apr19

I thought it would be fun, perhaps enlightening, to keep a record of what we learned, or at least explored, each week in our homeschool, especially since I sometimes get discouraged and wonder whether or not we’re making any educational progress at all. As I waffle back and forth from strict and rigorous requirements in a classical education mode to a more laissez-faire unschooling approach, I’m thinking that it would be helpful to write down at least some of what we do around here, educationally speaking, helpful to me and maybe to you all, too. We are learning, just not always in a traditional way and not always exactly what I want the urchins to be learning.

Monday:
Z-baby (7) did her regular schoolwork with her older sister. Her math, reading, language lesson and writing practice take about an hour when she does them with Dancer Daughter. It was taking all day when I was trying to do it with her between distractions (for me) and stalling (on her part). She also watched the Kit Kitteredge (American Girl) movie again; I suppose she’s getting some feel for the period of history that we keep hearing is returning: the Great Depression.
Betsy-Bee (10) did little or no schoolwork today. She listened to Narnia stories in her bedroom and re-arranged her room. She likes to clean and re-arrange almost weekly. She’s reading Garfield cartoon books right now.
Karate Kid (12) did a Saxon math lesson and watched a math video about pi with his dad. He practiced drawing, too.
Both Bee and Brown Bear Daughter (14) went to dance this afternoon.

Tuesday:
We read a Psalm from the Bible, prayed together, and then I read them Young Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott.
Z-baby again did her regular work with Dancer Daughter. I heard them reading from Story of the World about the Rus. I asked Z-baby to tell me later what they read about in their history book, and she said, “We read about the Rocks or the Rus and how they tried to conquer Constantinople.”
“Did they?”
“No, because the Constantinoples had something like sea fire, and it would burn on the water. It burned their ships and they had to go home.”
(She can remember and pronounce Constantinople, but not Rus?)
Z-baby and I also read a few poems from Jon Scieszka’s Science Verse. The evolution poem was rather stupid, even for true believers, (Grandpa was an ape?), but I liked the Gobblegooky poem, a take off on Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.

‘Twas fructose and the vitamins
Did zinc and dye (red #8)
All poly were the thiamins
And the carbohydrate.

After science poems, Z-baby listened to Prince Caspian on CD. She also asked me to read The Buck Stops Here by Alice Provenson in an effort to stall before going to bed. We talked about some of the presidents as we went along, particularly which ones were assassinated.

Betsy-Bee did her DailyGram and read a chapter of Caddie Woodlawn. She can’t find her math book (Saxon 5/4). I can’t find it either. She also started Book 3 in Mindy Withrow’s history series, Courage and Conviction: Stories of the Reformation. She’s visiting Narnia again in her bedroom after the schoolwork is finished. We finally found the math book, too late to do math today.

Karate Kid did half a math lesson before he went to his canoeing class. I must say that the canoeing class has been good for my now 12 year old Boy Explorer. One week they walked through the sewers with flashlights and found? Better them than me. He finished the math lesson and did a simple worksheet/map exercise for history.

Brown Bear Daughter is reading Mere Christianity for her English/worldview class. She’s also trying to cram Algebra 1 into about three months so that she can test out of it and biology, the science class she’s been in all year. The public school she wants to attend next year won’t take her word, or mine, that she’s completed either course, so she has to take a test. She’s adamantly opposed to taking biology again next year which she would have to do if she doesn’t pass the tests. The next course in their sequence is physics, and they won’t let her take that class unless she’s finished Algebra 1 and taking geometry. Ah, what a tangled web we weave when first we decide to enter the public school system.
Under protest (hers), BB Daughter and I listened to Exploring Music on NPR on the way home from dance. The program was about Beethoven and tempo. She said it only reinforced her distaste for classical music.

Wednesday:
Karate Kid has a test in his math class today. He thinks he’s ready to ace it.
Z-baby did her regular schoolwork, and then listened to still more Chronicles of Narnia.
Betsy-Bee did her math lesson and her daily-gram, but not much else as far as assigned school work. She’s been re-reading Utterly Me, Clarice Bean by Lauren Childs. She spent a couple of hours working on a story called She’s Gone, but she won’t show it to anyone until it’s done.
Brown Bear Daughter is working on her solo for dance, and she has biology homework to complete. She only has two more co-op classes of biology lab, so she’s working hard to complete her Apologia Biology textbook.

Thursday
Ummmm . . . I forgot to keep a record, and I don’t really remember what we we did other than regular school stuff: math and grammar.

Friday
We have co-op on Friday mornings.
Z-baby is taking three classes at co-op: Seven Continents, Feather Files (a class about birds), and P.E.
Betsy-Bee is taking a writing class, an assorted topics in science class, and cooking.
Karate Kid takes Apologia General Science lab, a class on the stock market and how it works, robotics, and geography.
Brown Bear Daughter is studying Apologia Biology, Spanish 1, Study Skills, and Starting Points Literary Analysis and Worldview.

Have I made us sound as if we’re getting more done than we really are? I actually worry that my younger set of four urchins are learning to slack off and get by with the least possible amount of effort. But then again maybe I expect too much.

The continuing trials and second-guessings of a homeschool mom. To be continued . . . .

Favorite Poets: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Apr18

Today is the anniversary of Paul Revere’s famous ride through the Massachusetts countryside warning “every MIddlesex village and farm” that the British regulars were marching out of Boston to look for and capture the arms that the colonials had stashed in Lexington and Concord.

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

I rather enjoy that old chestnut of a poem, and here’s a cartoon version in which The Flame recites Longfellow’s famous poem:

There’s an Adventures in Odyssey episode that points out the historical flaws in Longfellow’s version of the story, but it’s still a good poem.

More Longfellow:
As I’ve said before, Longfellow isn’t always as well-respected as I believe he ought to be. However, I think he’s a fine poet, especially for those of us who enjoy poems that tell stories.

Longfellow, Hurricanes and The Wreck of the Hesperus.

A Celebration of Longfellow

Longfellow’s Birthday

This is the forest primeval . . .

7 Links to Waste Your Time or Educate

Apr17

These may be timewasters or educators; you decide.

The Eyeballing Game. I did spend some time trying to get these right, but my accuracy remained abysmal. How did you do?

Lunch Bag Art I want to show this blog to Engineer Husband. He’s really a talented artist, and I wish he’d make some of these. Or do a mural on my wall. Or something artistic. Don’t you think that art, for those who are somewhat talented, is both therapeutic and a way of praising God? Why couldn’t one praise the Lord on a lunch bag? Or a wall?

The Cheerios New Author Contest encourages aspiring authors to write and submit an original story for a book for children ages 3 to 8. You have to be over 18 to enter, and the deadline is July 15, 2009. I tell my children Maria stories, and I may send one in.

From The Common Room: Could you pass this test? This exam is one that a late nineteenth century teacher had to pass in order to keep his teaching certification. Even in the literature section, what I would think was my forte, I couldn’t answer half the questions. The rest was hopeless.

Most Interesting Bookstores of the World. Eldest Daughter used to hang out at Shakespeare and Company when she was in Paris. She found it fascinating in a 60’s, hippie sort of way.

Pun for the Ages: “Dryden called it the ‘lowest and most groveling kind of wit.’ To Ambrose Bierce it was a ‘form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.'” If you like puns, you might enjoy this NY TImes article on the uses and abuses of the lowly pun.

Children’s reading skill correlates with orderliness in the home? Whoaaaa, this is NOT good. However, I’ve managed to produce four adult readers so far with a minimal amount of order in the home, so maybe the study cited is flawed. Or else we’re the exception.

Favorite Poets: Walter de la Mare

Apr16

“A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape bottom on anything solid. A poet’s pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify it by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.”
~E.B. White


The Listeners (1912)

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest’s ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
“Is there anybody there?” he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
“Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,” he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

So, tell me, who is The Traveller? And who are the listeners? And whom are they to tell that the traveller kept his word? Why won’t the listeners answer? A very mysterious poem indeed.

The Poetry Friday round-up for today is at Becky’s Book Reviews.

Favorite Poets: Robert Burns

Apr16

On this date in 1746, the English armies defeated the forces still loyal to Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden near Iverness. The prince escaped, but many, many Highlanders did not. As the English swept across Scotland, they burned, pillaged and banned Scots culture, including a ban on the Gaelic tongue, bagpipes, kilts, tartans, and other Scots heritage and cultural artifacts. Prince Charles Stuart spent the rest of his life in exile. The Georges and eventually their descendant VIctoria ruled England and Scotland for the next century and a half.

Lament for Culloden
By Robert Burns
1759-1796

THE lovely lass o’ Inverness,
Nae joy nor pleasure can she see;
For e’en and morn she cries, ‘Alas!’
And aye the saut tear blin’s her e’e:
‘Drumossie moor, Drumossie day,
A waefu’ day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
My father dear and brethren three.

‘Their winding-sheet the bluidy clay,
Their graves are growing green to see;
And by them lies the dearest lad
That ever blest a woman’s e’e!
Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord,
A bluidy man I trow thou be;
For monie a heart thou hast made sair,
That ne’er did wrang to thine or thee.’

With Scott and Burns and Celtic Thunder links, this blog seems to have taken on a rather Scots air this week. I and my family are a basic Heinz 57 varieties mix of cultural heritage, so I’m sure I have some Scots blood in me. I just don’t know exactly how much or where.