Time for a rant!
I'm annoyed. I have to take three school days from doing something much more productive and beneficial, to administer the ITBS to my two older boys, just so I can jump through hoops the state has set. Why? Who knows. We have to jump, and jump so high, so the state will "let" us continue to homeschool. The public school kids are tested, but if THEY score below 30%, shall we not "let" them go to public school anymore? No, if they score below, nothing much happens; the federal government shakes a finger at them and says "Bad school" and that's about it. Grrr. Anyway, I'd rather spend my week truly assessing what my children have absorbed from our term's readings in Charlotte Mason style. I like to think I'm bright enough to be able to notice if they've learned or not. :-) But apparently I'm not, since I'm not "certified." So we will spend several hours this week filling in little ovals instead of narrating their books to me.
And all to fulfill what the state THINKS is their "responsibility." Oh, please. Ten minutes with my kids and one could determine that they are bright and learning; a half an hour and one could see they were light-years ahead. Last night my 9yo (and his 12yo brother) were discussing with their father the difference between ionic and covalent bonds and which was more prevalent in nature and why. (eyes rolling) It's MY responsibility to see that my kids learn, and I have a whole lot more interest in the outcome than the state does. These kids will be raising my grandchildren!!! LOL All the evidence shows that homeschooled kids in tightly regulated, mandatory-testing states like mine do NO BETTER than homeschooled kids in more lenient states. So all this aggravation and hassle is not benefitting the homeschooled kids of Iowa one iota. Although it certainly is providing employment for bureaucrats who push all the papers around and make regulations. So I suppose I'm performing a public service that way. I guess I feel better now.
One silver lining--I get to sit at the table and read while they are testing. I have Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time open at the moment and it is fascinating! I should be able to finish it today, LOL.
Well, off to sharpen pencils and blunt minds. :-)
Monday, February 27, 2006
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Finding time to read
Well, that is an interesting topic. And I need to note that there are times that I don't read much--the two weeks I was occupied with visiting my grandmother and attending her funeral, for instance, or when my babies were small or my toddlers roving destruction machines . . . For whatever reason, Heavenly Father does not have any babies or toddlers in my home right now. There are whole days I think "Hmm, I'm still on page 34 of that book, wonder if I'll ever finish."
But there are things I have done to carve out time. The first--deliberately infect my family. :-) My dh loves to read, too, so that was easy already. And a main goal of my parenting has been to get my children to love to read. So far I'm 3 for 3, and consider myself blessed. So the whole family happily reads--together, separately, separately in the same room. On a recent evening, we did have the Olympics on, but we all had something out to read, and even the 5yo was at the dining room table "writing" a book. (very cute--I'll have some adorable things to share later about his first authorial attempts, lol)
Another thing I did was to institute a mandatory quiet time in the afternoons. This took place during nap time as soon as I could get a little one on a nap schedule. Even after naps are given up and before the child can actually sit and read for long, I keep a quiet time--they can go to their rooms and play with puzzles or legos or whatever. I will be transitioning my 5yo over the next year or so to reading during part of his quiet time. It takes some determination and training, but this has been a non-negotiable in my home since the first days.
We often read in the evenings, out loud and separately. I can often find some time for my own reading right before bedtime.
Another thing I've needed to do is adapt my own reading style. I used to be a totally engrossed reader who could read right through a meal and never miss it. This would cause some consternation among the hungry hordes here. :-) Every great once in a while I do get pretty lost and have a hard time pulling myself back to the real world--but by and large, I don't do that anymore. I can now read while partially paying attention to the rest of the family, carrying on a low-intensity conversation with them while they watch TV, for example. I can read in 5-minute bits while waiting in a doctor's office. I can even read while making dinner. :-) I reward myself with 5 or 10 minutes with a book when I get something done around the house that I've been dreading. I would definitely rather read in this imperfect way than not read at all, so it works out pretty well.
These are things that work for me. Naturally, I'd like to read even more. :-) But I do treasure the time with my family while they are all still here. I have trouble with the balance at times, like any mom. But I do know that reading is like breathing for me, and I wouldn't last long without at least some. It's been too big a part of how I make sense of and interact with the world around me, for too long. There are days I probably should have paid more attention to something else rather than read, and there are days where I end my day feeling slightly desperate because I did not get time to reorder my mind by reading.
Well, that is an interesting topic. And I need to note that there are times that I don't read much--the two weeks I was occupied with visiting my grandmother and attending her funeral, for instance, or when my babies were small or my toddlers roving destruction machines . . . For whatever reason, Heavenly Father does not have any babies or toddlers in my home right now. There are whole days I think "Hmm, I'm still on page 34 of that book, wonder if I'll ever finish."
But there are things I have done to carve out time. The first--deliberately infect my family. :-) My dh loves to read, too, so that was easy already. And a main goal of my parenting has been to get my children to love to read. So far I'm 3 for 3, and consider myself blessed. So the whole family happily reads--together, separately, separately in the same room. On a recent evening, we did have the Olympics on, but we all had something out to read, and even the 5yo was at the dining room table "writing" a book. (very cute--I'll have some adorable things to share later about his first authorial attempts, lol)
Another thing I did was to institute a mandatory quiet time in the afternoons. This took place during nap time as soon as I could get a little one on a nap schedule. Even after naps are given up and before the child can actually sit and read for long, I keep a quiet time--they can go to their rooms and play with puzzles or legos or whatever. I will be transitioning my 5yo over the next year or so to reading during part of his quiet time. It takes some determination and training, but this has been a non-negotiable in my home since the first days.
We often read in the evenings, out loud and separately. I can often find some time for my own reading right before bedtime.
Another thing I've needed to do is adapt my own reading style. I used to be a totally engrossed reader who could read right through a meal and never miss it. This would cause some consternation among the hungry hordes here. :-) Every great once in a while I do get pretty lost and have a hard time pulling myself back to the real world--but by and large, I don't do that anymore. I can now read while partially paying attention to the rest of the family, carrying on a low-intensity conversation with them while they watch TV, for example. I can read in 5-minute bits while waiting in a doctor's office. I can even read while making dinner. :-) I reward myself with 5 or 10 minutes with a book when I get something done around the house that I've been dreading. I would definitely rather read in this imperfect way than not read at all, so it works out pretty well.
These are things that work for me. Naturally, I'd like to read even more. :-) But I do treasure the time with my family while they are all still here. I have trouble with the balance at times, like any mom. But I do know that reading is like breathing for me, and I wouldn't last long without at least some. It's been too big a part of how I make sense of and interact with the world around me, for too long. There are days I probably should have paid more attention to something else rather than read, and there are days where I end my day feeling slightly desperate because I did not get time to reorder my mind by reading.
Friday, February 24, 2006
OK, I'm onto a new book. Sensitive readers might not be so fascinated with the last chapter of The Child That Books Built; there were parts of that I skipped. :-) Didn't really need to read his thoughts on science fiction and especially not his thoughts on, um, erotic literature. I always read a fiction alternating with a nonfiction, so I had to squeeze in a quick fiction read before getting to the new book my son found for me at the library yesterday (wasn't hard, I had Goodbye, Mr. Chips in my stack, I finished it this morning.) So now I am onto More Book Lust by Nancy Pearl; I've read the original Book Lust and got LOTS of new ideas for my ever-expansing Want to Read lists. I'm looking forward to the same with this one, and she even mentions The Child That Books Built in her intro. Also this quote, which I love!
"I have always been reconciled to the fact that I was born a bibliomaniac, never have I sought a cure, and my dearest friends have been drawn from those likewise suffering from book madness." Lawrence Clark Powell
Ditto. :-)
"I have always been reconciled to the fact that I was born a bibliomaniac, never have I sought a cure, and my dearest friends have been drawn from those likewise suffering from book madness." Lawrence Clark Powell
Ditto. :-)
Thursday, February 23, 2006
More musings on The Child That Books Built:
Spufford mentions a phenomenom that I have experienced myself--the child reader who reads words far too complex for him, really, and imagines unusual meanings and pronunciations and then finds them difficult to let go even after gaining enough sophistication to have more understanding. He says a classic example is "misled" which some children read as myzled--the past tense of the verb "to misle" LOL His own favorite example is "grimace" which he still prefers in his imagination to give his own childlike "grimACE rhymes with face" LOL Having once, when I was five, convulsed my parents by announcing during a country drive that there was a great big pile of man-yerr behind that barn, I know what he means. How was I to know that "manure" was not pronounced according to the same reasonable rule as "picture"? I mean, really. :-)
He also writes of the library:
I approached them (the fiction stacks) slowly, not with reverence exactly, but with the feeling that the riches in the room needed to be handled with some kind of grateful attention to their ordered abundance. Also, I knew that once I'd chosen my four books, the multiple possibilities of the library would shrink down to that finite handful. I hated to be hurried out of the great, free bazaar.
I remember feeling that way, too. And in my tiny small-town library, even the "ordered abundance" there seemed insufficient to meet my needs. Like children of the Depression who still hoard string and rubber bands, wasting nothing, out of memory of the times when there WAS nothing, I may never recover from the feeling that one day, I would run out of things to read. Since I owned only a handful of books myself, I methodically began reading my way around the children's section. I finished when I was nine, not taking into accoun, naturally, the small subset of books worthy to be reread again, and for which I periodically descended the stairs even into adulthood. The adult rooms upstairs looked so large to begin with, but by my mid-teens, the appropriate and interesting had started to diminish and I was on letter T, with not very much left afterwards. It was a near-panicked sensation, contemplating what I would do when I finished Z. I would RUN OUT! What on earth would I do with myself?
Fortunately I was able to occupy myself until leaving for college in the "big city". But I still suffer from a fear that I will "run out"; partly because my standards are higher now, and while I can mentally summon a list of books that will take me decades yet to finish, they are not all available in my town/library/home yet. This is why I have a love/hate relationship with my endless stacks of unread books; sometimes they seem to be jeering at me, reproaching me for not having read them yet, and I threaten them with dumping in the fires of File 13. They know, though, that I will never do that; I would sooner burn my food storage. Those tottering stacks represent insurance to me--the reassurance that THIS MONTH at least, I will NOT "run out": there will be something fit to read.
Spufford mentions a phenomenom that I have experienced myself--the child reader who reads words far too complex for him, really, and imagines unusual meanings and pronunciations and then finds them difficult to let go even after gaining enough sophistication to have more understanding. He says a classic example is "misled" which some children read as myzled--the past tense of the verb "to misle" LOL His own favorite example is "grimace" which he still prefers in his imagination to give his own childlike "grimACE rhymes with face" LOL Having once, when I was five, convulsed my parents by announcing during a country drive that there was a great big pile of man-yerr behind that barn, I know what he means. How was I to know that "manure" was not pronounced according to the same reasonable rule as "picture"? I mean, really. :-)
He also writes of the library:
I approached them (the fiction stacks) slowly, not with reverence exactly, but with the feeling that the riches in the room needed to be handled with some kind of grateful attention to their ordered abundance. Also, I knew that once I'd chosen my four books, the multiple possibilities of the library would shrink down to that finite handful. I hated to be hurried out of the great, free bazaar.
I remember feeling that way, too. And in my tiny small-town library, even the "ordered abundance" there seemed insufficient to meet my needs. Like children of the Depression who still hoard string and rubber bands, wasting nothing, out of memory of the times when there WAS nothing, I may never recover from the feeling that one day, I would run out of things to read. Since I owned only a handful of books myself, I methodically began reading my way around the children's section. I finished when I was nine, not taking into accoun, naturally, the small subset of books worthy to be reread again, and for which I periodically descended the stairs even into adulthood. The adult rooms upstairs looked so large to begin with, but by my mid-teens, the appropriate and interesting had started to diminish and I was on letter T, with not very much left afterwards. It was a near-panicked sensation, contemplating what I would do when I finished Z. I would RUN OUT! What on earth would I do with myself?
Fortunately I was able to occupy myself until leaving for college in the "big city". But I still suffer from a fear that I will "run out"; partly because my standards are higher now, and while I can mentally summon a list of books that will take me decades yet to finish, they are not all available in my town/library/home yet. This is why I have a love/hate relationship with my endless stacks of unread books; sometimes they seem to be jeering at me, reproaching me for not having read them yet, and I threaten them with dumping in the fires of File 13. They know, though, that I will never do that; I would sooner burn my food storage. Those tottering stacks represent insurance to me--the reassurance that THIS MONTH at least, I will NOT "run out": there will be something fit to read.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
I love having tactful friends. Yes, I'm "just a titch" over 34. :-) The author, Francis Spufford, is counting from the time he first read a real book--at age 6, when he was home in bed for a month with the mumps, and made his way through The Hobbit--haltingly at first, fluently by the end, although he admits that there were many words he did not understand then. Still, he got the gist of the story.
I was counting from the same event--my first real "book", not a picture book. I began reading so young that I cannot remember before I could read . . . but for some time I read captions, cereal boxes, picture books--I have a vague memory of some book of poetry with a poem in it about tying shoes and the last line was "because my thumbs get in the way." But my first "real" book was the fall I turned five, and it was The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My mother knew I could read, had been encouraging me to read picture books, and somehow acquired The Long Winter--the lovely yellow-covered version with the Garth Williams cover (any other kind ought to be illegal!) She told me how much she had loved these books, and set it on a shelf for "when I was older" I stared at that book, crept up and caressed it, looked longingly at the cover . . . but it was awfully thick, with so many small-printed words in it! Finally one day I worked up the courage to crack open the cover and see just how hard it was to read words when there were sooo many on each page . . . and found it not really that hard at all. I'm sure, in retrospect, it took me a very long time to finish that book--weeks or months, probably. But in my memory it seems like a single day--one day I knew only Dr. Seuss, nonsense and picture books, and the next, suddenly, a book had opened for me, like Pandora's box, and let out mysteries I had never imagined---whole real people, with problems and thoughts and clothes and hair. Who knew all that had been in that book? How did it all get in, and why was I suddenly privy to the magic to let them out? My world was never again the same. It seems to me as though my world, like Dorothy's, was instantly colorized, changed from rather drab Kansas to brilliant and vivid Oz with a mere swoop of print. Astonishing!
So one momentous day, my fifth birthday, my mother took me to the library and got me my own card. The token of the secret membership which would let me go anywhere, anytime! I proudly carried home two other Little House books, and Indian Captive by Lois Lenski. I remember them still, it's another crystal moment. I became insatiable; why was it that with all those marvelous books, anyone ever wanted to do anything else? I still find that puzzling. :-) I became greedy--I wanted them for myself. This was largely unrealized in my childhood; most of my books came from the library, and I had a precious few of my own. But no princess ever treasured her jewels and silks and satins more! I eventually ended up with the WHOLE beautiful yellow-covered set of Little House books (sixth birthday present, wish I still had them!) and an odd assortment of other things, with an honorable mention to my lavender-covered bookclub Nancy Drews, two stories to a volume. :-) I hoarded them with miserly drive.
This is surely why The Child That Books Built is resonating with me; the author has different memories, but still of the same order. His description of how The Hobbit released its dragon is the counterpart of Laura suddenly appearing in my little mobile home. Tomorrow I will try to include some interesting tidbits from the book I also identify with--like all those words we learn first in books, when we know neither their exact meaning nor their accepted pronunciation, but they nevertheless are as real as the other words. Lovely!
I was counting from the same event--my first real "book", not a picture book. I began reading so young that I cannot remember before I could read . . . but for some time I read captions, cereal boxes, picture books--I have a vague memory of some book of poetry with a poem in it about tying shoes and the last line was "because my thumbs get in the way." But my first "real" book was the fall I turned five, and it was The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My mother knew I could read, had been encouraging me to read picture books, and somehow acquired The Long Winter--the lovely yellow-covered version with the Garth Williams cover (any other kind ought to be illegal!) She told me how much she had loved these books, and set it on a shelf for "when I was older" I stared at that book, crept up and caressed it, looked longingly at the cover . . . but it was awfully thick, with so many small-printed words in it! Finally one day I worked up the courage to crack open the cover and see just how hard it was to read words when there were sooo many on each page . . . and found it not really that hard at all. I'm sure, in retrospect, it took me a very long time to finish that book--weeks or months, probably. But in my memory it seems like a single day--one day I knew only Dr. Seuss, nonsense and picture books, and the next, suddenly, a book had opened for me, like Pandora's box, and let out mysteries I had never imagined---whole real people, with problems and thoughts and clothes and hair. Who knew all that had been in that book? How did it all get in, and why was I suddenly privy to the magic to let them out? My world was never again the same. It seems to me as though my world, like Dorothy's, was instantly colorized, changed from rather drab Kansas to brilliant and vivid Oz with a mere swoop of print. Astonishing!
So one momentous day, my fifth birthday, my mother took me to the library and got me my own card. The token of the secret membership which would let me go anywhere, anytime! I proudly carried home two other Little House books, and Indian Captive by Lois Lenski. I remember them still, it's another crystal moment. I became insatiable; why was it that with all those marvelous books, anyone ever wanted to do anything else? I still find that puzzling. :-) I became greedy--I wanted them for myself. This was largely unrealized in my childhood; most of my books came from the library, and I had a precious few of my own. But no princess ever treasured her jewels and silks and satins more! I eventually ended up with the WHOLE beautiful yellow-covered set of Little House books (sixth birthday present, wish I still had them!) and an odd assortment of other things, with an honorable mention to my lavender-covered bookclub Nancy Drews, two stories to a volume. :-) I hoarded them with miserly drive.
This is surely why The Child That Books Built is resonating with me; the author has different memories, but still of the same order. His description of how The Hobbit released its dragon is the counterpart of Laura suddenly appearing in my little mobile home. Tomorrow I will try to include some interesting tidbits from the book I also identify with--like all those words we learn first in books, when we know neither their exact meaning nor their accepted pronunciation, but they nevertheless are as real as the other words. Lovely!
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
What I'm reading today: The Child that Books Built, by Francis Spufford
Interesting, although it's on sudden death due to two profanities I've encountered; I've decided to give Spufford three strikes. :-)
Anyway, it's a rather odd psychological explanation of why the author reads books obsessively. Ought to be interesting since I read books obsessively. At the moment I'm wandering through a rather tedious chapter full of "forests as myth" and Piaget. Hmm. However, a few interesting things caught my eye in the first chapter, called "Confessions of an English Fiction Eater." LOL
"Reading catatonically wasn't something I chose to do, it just happened, and if it could be my funny characteristic in the family . . . that was great. Though I never framed the thought on the surface of my mind, stopping my ears with fiction was non-negotiable. There were things to block out."
He says he's been reading for 26 years. (Ha, I have him beat--34 and counting here!)
"Twenty-six years since the furze of black marks between the covers of The Hobbit grew lucid, and released a dragon." I love that! For me, 34 years since those black marks coalesced and aligned themselves and released . . . Laura, a friend and playmate, and her sisters.
Spufford writes, "I have a cultural sanction for my addiction. Books get cited over and over as the virtuous term of a contrast whose wicked other half is Nintendo, or MTV, or the Web. The villian varies but it's always some cathode-ray entertainment that jitters on the retina, where printed words are supposed to rest calmly. It doesn't matter that my eyes track across the breakfast table for the wafer of text on the cornflake box just as avidly as any channel hopper squeezing the remote, both of us eager for the mere brush of our chosen medium going by. The difference of the forms is enough."
I love this quote as well:
"Story's lucidating way with experience rushes into the primary fashioning of a self, the very first construction of a person out of the materials of environment, and family, and reading silence."
"We can remember readings that acted like transformations. There were times when a particular book, like a seed crystal, dropped into our minds when they were exactly ready for it, like a supersaturated solution, and suddenly we changed. Suddenly a thousand crystals of perception of our own formed, the original insight of the story ordering whole arrays of discoveries inside us, into winking accuracy." What a description of Charlotte Mason's "animating idea"
He included a William Hazlitt quote that I did not have in my "book files":
"Books alone teach us to judge of truth and good in the abstract: without a knowledge of things at a distance from us, we judge like savages or animals from our senses and appetites alone; but by the aid of books and of an intercourse with the world of ideas, we are purified, raised, ennobled from savages into intellectual and rational beings." Ignoring the spiritual here, as well, but I think the force of Hazlitt's thought holds still.
So, that was the serious thought for the day. The Funny Thought for the Day:
My 5yo, PMM, has begun a very low-key state-by-state unit study sort of thing. Picture books from each state, stickers for the state bird, a recipe. Yesterday we read about Missouri, and learned the state nickname. I asked him to tell Daddy what Missouri's state nickname was when he got home last night. PMM proudly announced "The CALL ME STATE"
Interesting, although it's on sudden death due to two profanities I've encountered; I've decided to give Spufford three strikes. :-)
Anyway, it's a rather odd psychological explanation of why the author reads books obsessively. Ought to be interesting since I read books obsessively. At the moment I'm wandering through a rather tedious chapter full of "forests as myth" and Piaget. Hmm. However, a few interesting things caught my eye in the first chapter, called "Confessions of an English Fiction Eater." LOL
"Reading catatonically wasn't something I chose to do, it just happened, and if it could be my funny characteristic in the family . . . that was great. Though I never framed the thought on the surface of my mind, stopping my ears with fiction was non-negotiable. There were things to block out."
He says he's been reading for 26 years. (Ha, I have him beat--34 and counting here!)
"Twenty-six years since the furze of black marks between the covers of The Hobbit grew lucid, and released a dragon." I love that! For me, 34 years since those black marks coalesced and aligned themselves and released . . . Laura, a friend and playmate, and her sisters.
Spufford writes, "I have a cultural sanction for my addiction. Books get cited over and over as the virtuous term of a contrast whose wicked other half is Nintendo, or MTV, or the Web. The villian varies but it's always some cathode-ray entertainment that jitters on the retina, where printed words are supposed to rest calmly. It doesn't matter that my eyes track across the breakfast table for the wafer of text on the cornflake box just as avidly as any channel hopper squeezing the remote, both of us eager for the mere brush of our chosen medium going by. The difference of the forms is enough."
I love this quote as well:
"Story's lucidating way with experience rushes into the primary fashioning of a self, the very first construction of a person out of the materials of environment, and family, and reading silence."
"We can remember readings that acted like transformations. There were times when a particular book, like a seed crystal, dropped into our minds when they were exactly ready for it, like a supersaturated solution, and suddenly we changed. Suddenly a thousand crystals of perception of our own formed, the original insight of the story ordering whole arrays of discoveries inside us, into winking accuracy." What a description of Charlotte Mason's "animating idea"
He included a William Hazlitt quote that I did not have in my "book files":
"Books alone teach us to judge of truth and good in the abstract: without a knowledge of things at a distance from us, we judge like savages or animals from our senses and appetites alone; but by the aid of books and of an intercourse with the world of ideas, we are purified, raised, ennobled from savages into intellectual and rational beings." Ignoring the spiritual here, as well, but I think the force of Hazlitt's thought holds still.
So, that was the serious thought for the day. The Funny Thought for the Day:
My 5yo, PMM, has begun a very low-key state-by-state unit study sort of thing. Picture books from each state, stickers for the state bird, a recipe. Yesterday we read about Missouri, and learned the state nickname. I asked him to tell Daddy what Missouri's state nickname was when he got home last night. PMM proudly announced "The CALL ME STATE"
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Calandria, the earlier picture was taken, of all places, in a field in Dust Bowl Kansas. :-) This one was taken right before Grandpa was sent overseas in WWII. They already had 3 little boys by then, and my mom was born while he was away in Italy. 
Thanks everyone for sharing in my reminiscing, it makes me feel better to think of good days and happy smiles. 
Thanks everyone for sharing in my reminiscing, it makes me feel better to think of good days and happy smiles.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
I just returned home from a trip to see my extended family, who is in need of a little support right now. My brother is in the middle of a messy divorce and is having a terrible time; he's living at my mom and dad's house right now. And both my grandmothers have been very ill. I went down to see everyone, and happily one of my grandmothers is rallying and improving a lot. The other one, however--I was shocked to see how quickly she has worsened. This is a picture of this special lady, my grandmother, in better days. I will try and collect my thoughts and see if I can express them. I think at one point yesterday she recognized me, but she simply was not well enough to track a conversation, and there are many things I wish she knew I felt that I could not say, for she would not have heard them. 
Grandma M,
There are so many things I wish I could have told you yesterday. It was so hard to see you so ill--you, who have always been a model of busy efficiency and vigor. I always thought you were too feisty to ever really fall ill.
I told you I loved you, and that you meant a lot to me, and I hope you heard me. But there were many things I could not tell you. Grandma, thank you for believing in me. When everyone else thought I was just odd or perhaps a changeling, it was YOU who kept handing me challenging books and telling me to be ME. I know that my love of books and thinking and my lack of fear of what others think, are largely legacies from you. How can I ever thank you enough? I often thought you were one of the smartest people I knew; even though you had few chances for higher education, that never stopped you from learning and trying new things. You seemed fearless to me.
I probably owe my rather strong will to you as well, and we had a few titanic clashes in the days you took care of us when Mom worked, didn't we? :-) I know you and Mom had a sometimes difficult relationship, too, but I hope you can feel her love as she tenderly takes care of you, for it is plain to see.
Do you realize that nearly all the places away from "home" I've ever been, you took me to? I've never known anyone to love travel so. I remember how disappointed you were not to make it to all 50 states with Grandpa. But I also remember how proud I was of you when you nonchalantly flew off to Hong Kong at an age when some other women just give up and stay home. I wish I'd inherited a little of your wanderlust, but alas, I'm a homebody. :-)
I'll never forget the day I solved a Wheel of Fortune puzzle BEFORE you had it figured out! I was so excited, and rightfully so. I always thought you would clean up if you could get on the show!
Grandma, I don't know how long you will be here with us, but you will be sorely missed. I love you for your courage, your determination, your willingness to be yourself, and for nurturing and encouraging a hopeless bookworm whom everyone else seemed to want to remake in some other image. Thank you for your love, and for the legacies you have passed on. I wish I could make this easier for you, but I cannot. I wish I could stay near and help take care of you, but I cannot do that either.
Go with God, Grandma.
There are so many things I wish I could have told you yesterday. It was so hard to see you so ill--you, who have always been a model of busy efficiency and vigor. I always thought you were too feisty to ever really fall ill.
I told you I loved you, and that you meant a lot to me, and I hope you heard me. But there were many things I could not tell you. Grandma, thank you for believing in me. When everyone else thought I was just odd or perhaps a changeling, it was YOU who kept handing me challenging books and telling me to be ME. I know that my love of books and thinking and my lack of fear of what others think, are largely legacies from you. How can I ever thank you enough? I often thought you were one of the smartest people I knew; even though you had few chances for higher education, that never stopped you from learning and trying new things. You seemed fearless to me.
I probably owe my rather strong will to you as well, and we had a few titanic clashes in the days you took care of us when Mom worked, didn't we? :-) I know you and Mom had a sometimes difficult relationship, too, but I hope you can feel her love as she tenderly takes care of you, for it is plain to see.
Do you realize that nearly all the places away from "home" I've ever been, you took me to? I've never known anyone to love travel so. I remember how disappointed you were not to make it to all 50 states with Grandpa. But I also remember how proud I was of you when you nonchalantly flew off to Hong Kong at an age when some other women just give up and stay home. I wish I'd inherited a little of your wanderlust, but alas, I'm a homebody. :-)
I'll never forget the day I solved a Wheel of Fortune puzzle BEFORE you had it figured out! I was so excited, and rightfully so. I always thought you would clean up if you could get on the show!
Grandma, I don't know how long you will be here with us, but you will be sorely missed. I love you for your courage, your determination, your willingness to be yourself, and for nurturing and encouraging a hopeless bookworm whom everyone else seemed to want to remake in some other image. Thank you for your love, and for the legacies you have passed on. I wish I could make this easier for you, but I cannot. I wish I could stay near and help take care of you, but I cannot do that either.
Go with God, Grandma.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
New today: my library entered the twenty-first century a few years late, and finally got its catalog online! I spent my free time yesterday investigating the new online services. So we're a little late, lol, when I moved here they were still using card catalogs in the lobby. :-)
I am so glad, because it's going to save me hours of in-library time, and part of me wishes they'd done it sooner!
However, I am feeling a little nostalgic too. Does anyone miss the old-fashioned card catalogs, and pulling out the whole drawer to search for what you want, and standing with several drawers open at once? Or the satisfying little "clunck" sound when the old-fashioned stamping machine stamped the cards? Did anyone else have the cardstock cards with a little metal piece on it, and if you left it in the pocket of your jeans and washed it, and just returned the metal strip, they would only charge you half the cost of replacing your card? What about trying to find articles for school papers using the big fat green periodical index books? OK, sure, it took a lot longer, but somehow it seemed more "hands-on". Maybe I just view all that old-fashioned stuff through the eyes of the little girl who escaped to the library as often as possible, thinking it was a wonderland, a place of miracles, where anything could happen and I could go anywhere. Security to me as a child was being back in the stacks where no one could see me, surrounded by books. There was a lady librarian there, in the magical library of my childhood, who even entered into my fantasies by tiptoeing back to me, whispering that I might like to take a trip somewhere, and pointing out a book she thought I'd like. I read everything in the children's section by the time I was nine, sometimes several times over (yes, it was a small library) and moved "upstairs" where this librarian would simply frown at me if I chose a book she considered inappropriate, and I'd obediently go put it back (although sometimes I'd peek to see if I could figure out why it was forbidden, LOL)
I read some of my favorite books over and over and over again, never tiring of them. How many times did I read the Lambs' Shakespeare stories? The Betsy-Tacy books? The Story of the von Trapp Family Singers? I have no idea. I wish I could find the titles of some other favorites for which I simply do not remember enough identifying details to locate now, for I'd hunt them down and buy them if I did. There was a large volume of stories of all the English queens, illustrated--it was beautiful! I'd read of the "Chere reine crosses" and Henry the 8th's wives, Boadicea and Victoria, over and over. I also loved a compilation of stories of ballerinas--Anna Pavlova, Maria Tallchief--for an ungainly girl in the middle of a wheat field, it made anything seem possible. Oh, and a volume of stories of ice skaters---older ones, like Carol Heiss, and I'd dream of someday finding the thing that I was good at, was meant to do.
The library was my refuge from a sometimes disturbing reality, a "safe place", a second home. At one point, when I was attending the junior high across the street from the library, I'd beg my father to please let me go to the library after school, missing the bus, and have him pick me up on his way home from work at 5. He always suspected I was really trying to see a boy---but I wasn't. Who needed boys? I needed books.
Now I have both. A pretty good life. :-)
I am so glad, because it's going to save me hours of in-library time, and part of me wishes they'd done it sooner!
However, I am feeling a little nostalgic too. Does anyone miss the old-fashioned card catalogs, and pulling out the whole drawer to search for what you want, and standing with several drawers open at once? Or the satisfying little "clunck" sound when the old-fashioned stamping machine stamped the cards? Did anyone else have the cardstock cards with a little metal piece on it, and if you left it in the pocket of your jeans and washed it, and just returned the metal strip, they would only charge you half the cost of replacing your card? What about trying to find articles for school papers using the big fat green periodical index books? OK, sure, it took a lot longer, but somehow it seemed more "hands-on". Maybe I just view all that old-fashioned stuff through the eyes of the little girl who escaped to the library as often as possible, thinking it was a wonderland, a place of miracles, where anything could happen and I could go anywhere. Security to me as a child was being back in the stacks where no one could see me, surrounded by books. There was a lady librarian there, in the magical library of my childhood, who even entered into my fantasies by tiptoeing back to me, whispering that I might like to take a trip somewhere, and pointing out a book she thought I'd like. I read everything in the children's section by the time I was nine, sometimes several times over (yes, it was a small library) and moved "upstairs" where this librarian would simply frown at me if I chose a book she considered inappropriate, and I'd obediently go put it back (although sometimes I'd peek to see if I could figure out why it was forbidden, LOL)
I read some of my favorite books over and over and over again, never tiring of them. How many times did I read the Lambs' Shakespeare stories? The Betsy-Tacy books? The Story of the von Trapp Family Singers? I have no idea. I wish I could find the titles of some other favorites for which I simply do not remember enough identifying details to locate now, for I'd hunt them down and buy them if I did. There was a large volume of stories of all the English queens, illustrated--it was beautiful! I'd read of the "Chere reine crosses" and Henry the 8th's wives, Boadicea and Victoria, over and over. I also loved a compilation of stories of ballerinas--Anna Pavlova, Maria Tallchief--for an ungainly girl in the middle of a wheat field, it made anything seem possible. Oh, and a volume of stories of ice skaters---older ones, like Carol Heiss, and I'd dream of someday finding the thing that I was good at, was meant to do.
The library was my refuge from a sometimes disturbing reality, a "safe place", a second home. At one point, when I was attending the junior high across the street from the library, I'd beg my father to please let me go to the library after school, missing the bus, and have him pick me up on his way home from work at 5. He always suspected I was really trying to see a boy---but I wasn't. Who needed boys? I needed books.
Now I have both. A pretty good life. :-)
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
And in with the new!
Announcing Satin, the new kingsnake. We believe she is a SHE. She is delicate and slender and is popular with the whole house already. She really likes to burrow in her bedding, with only her nose sticking out, so when she comes out, the entire house stops everything and goes to look at her. We hope Silky the Californian kingsnake likes her when she's a little older.
Announcing Satin, the new kingsnake. We believe she is a SHE. She is delicate and slender and is popular with the whole house already. She really likes to burrow in her bedding, with only her nose sticking out, so when she comes out, the entire house stops everything and goes to look at her. We hope Silky the Californian kingsnake likes her when she's a little older.
Out with the old . . .
This is Copper, Tallman's corn snake. The picture is dark, but he was by far our biggest snake. Tallman decided he wanted a new snake, and I told him he could only keep 3 at once, so one had to go. This is the one that went--a friend was found who had always wanted a snake, and his wife even let him. :-) So Copper has a new home, and Tallman has visitation rights. This particular snake was cranky and didn't like to be handled, so we rarely got him out. He was also very strong! Once he bit Tallman and wouldn't let go. I tried all the "tricks" like blowing in his face, and finally I headed to the sink, where I intended to put him under water . . . and not be in a hurry to let him up. He sensed his approaching doom and let go. LOL
Monday, February 06, 2006
We just finished reading this book as a read-aloud. I don't know a lot about Farley Mowat, but he was a Canadian naturalist and writer, and this is a book of reminiscences about his childhood companion, Mutt, who was rather . . . exceptional. This book is HILARIOUS! Ten combined thumbs-up from our family. Mowat's writing is exquisite--perhaps some of the most lyrical and powerful nature descriptions I've ever read, especially his haunting depictions of the western Canadian plains. Beautiful! It's worth reading just for that. Caution--for some inexplicable reason Mowat sprinkles his writing with "d***" words. It works best as a read-aloud, for then a judicious mama can black out or omit as necessary. :-) Terrific book!
Saturday, February 04, 2006
OK, if everyone is going to put up pictures of herself and her sister, then I suppose I will too. I actually just found this picture today while I was cleaning the office, so apparently it wants to be seen. I'm maybe 6-7 here, and my sister is 4 years younger. It was tough being the sister of a cute blonde. :-) But I love her anyway. 
I remember being very impressed with my "mod" miniskirt and matching tights. Don't try and figure out how old this makes me. :-)
I remember being very impressed with my "mod" miniskirt and matching tights. Don't try and figure out how old this makes me. :-)
Thursday, February 02, 2006
PMM and Cheery made homemade crowns from our Hands and Hearts Middle Ages activity kit. They papier-mached the crowns, then painted them and added jewels. They look very royal, I think. :-)
It's quite an interesting story, how we suddenly ended up finshing our Egypt-Biblical history course, and ended up jumping right into the Middle Ages. It's a long story. The short version is that we are using part Ambleside Online, and part Truthquest history and some other assorted things, but I had noticed how much extra work it was for my son, reading Kidnapped, for example, to follow along when we weren't doing the history. We, or I guess more properly I, had been agonizing over how to get us more fully integrated into using mostly Ambleside, but couldn't wrap my head around a way to make it work in chronological order. I fussed and stewed for weeks, then the Lord dropped the bombshell that He thought we ought to go straight into Ambleside years 5 and 3 next year, and just have a party studying whatever the kids wanted to study this spring. They picked the Middle Ages, so here we are. Not chronological, not perfect, quite a revelation, causing me some angst because it doesn't seem to fit neatly into how I ought to do things, but we are at peace and having fun. So. I need occasionally to remind myself that His plan is the perfect one!
It's quite an interesting story, how we suddenly ended up finshing our Egypt-Biblical history course, and ended up jumping right into the Middle Ages. It's a long story. The short version is that we are using part Ambleside Online, and part Truthquest history and some other assorted things, but I had noticed how much extra work it was for my son, reading Kidnapped, for example, to follow along when we weren't doing the history. We, or I guess more properly I, had been agonizing over how to get us more fully integrated into using mostly Ambleside, but couldn't wrap my head around a way to make it work in chronological order. I fussed and stewed for weeks, then the Lord dropped the bombshell that He thought we ought to go straight into Ambleside years 5 and 3 next year, and just have a party studying whatever the kids wanted to study this spring. They picked the Middle Ages, so here we are. Not chronological, not perfect, quite a revelation, causing me some angst because it doesn't seem to fit neatly into how I ought to do things, but we are at peace and having fun. So. I need occasionally to remind myself that His plan is the perfect one!
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