The Opinionated Homeschooler

2009-06-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

Re: Silence

From Joel in the comments box below:

Homie! It's been two months! Where are you?

Good question. Facing the facts, I suppose. The chief of which are these. We have an almost-two-year-old toddler with developmental delays, to which difficulties she has recently added the quite age-appropriate Super Tantrums, with the interesting twist of preferring to bang her face savagely into the floor as she screams, resulting in bruises, cuts, and bloodied nose and lip. On the other end, a child in the throes of adolescence, who needs a surprising amount of parenting time for someone who so often just wants to be left alone in her room to sulk. And then the middle child--who I am striving not to neglect utterly, both emotionally and educationally, as the continuing daily drama unfolds with her two sisters.

To be frank, I no longer have time to blog. And haven't for some time, even when I was blogging regardless. A conversation in the confessional a few months back went essentially like this:

Her Opinionated Self: ... also, I've neglected my regular prayers, especially in the evenings...
Father Direct: Why?
HOS: Oh, you know, there's so much housework, and caring for the children, and all....
Fr. D: Can't your husband give you a little time in the evening?
HOS: Well truthfully he does, really he makes sure to give me at least half an hour to myself.
Fr. D: And you do what in that time?
HOS: Um ... I blog, sometimes? And I read other people's blogs ... and such ... you know.
Fr. D: Oh yes, I know. Looks like we've found some prayer time for you then, have we?

So. Actual prayer--not the kind silently offered on the fly, but with a quiet heart and settled mind, has been more frequent as blogging and blog-reading have been less so; and I'm reading more actual books, too. And spending more evening time with Eudoxus, with no computer screen diverting my attention. It's been nice.

If I had a 'real' job, the kind where they're required by law to give you a lunch break and a chance to go to the bathroom without someone flinging themselves against the door shrieking while you pee, I might squeeze in some blogging. But I don't.

Is this goodbye? I think so. I'm toying, however, with trading in the bloggage for a website: less of the fleeting thoughts of the moment, daily flung into the cyberpit, and more of a permanent edifice, added onto on occasion. Still focused on homeschooling, and Catholica, and Catholic homeschooling, and other things of interest, modeled perhaps on the late Gerard Serafin's Praise of Glory site, which grew continuously and wonderfully, forestlike. If, when, such a thing has been successfully planted and seems likely to grow, I will provide a link to it from here.

Thank you and goodnight.

2009-04-24T12:45:00.001-07:00

Two Recent Quotes

... that sum up nicely the tenor and relative success of Offspring #1's homeschooling career:

1. "You know what's really amusing about Planck's Constant?"

2. "Punic, Peloponnesian, whatever."

I think she's not so much headed for the liberal arts.

2009-04-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Accurate Moments in Televised Religion (caution: spoilers)

A category that sprang to mind while re-watching Carnivale last night. These aren't the best moments necessarily, but after cringing nearly every time religious faith or practice, or just the ordinary lives of believers, is portrayed on television (or movies), it's wonderful when, every couple of years, you see a moment that makes you say "Aha--they got it."

1. Brother Justin Crowe, the Methodist minister in Carnivale. Not just that the writers had the creativity to make the demonic preacher neither fundamentalist/evangelical nor overwrought Catholic, but an ordinary Methodist revival preacher; but they got the historical details right, too. Methodism has changed over the last seventy-odd years, but the nitpicky details all seem to be correct. And they don't even mention the word "Methodist"; [I'm willing to be corrected on this point]; you have to figure out for yourself who in the 1930's would have a pulpit in the middle, wear a cassock, have a bishop, and do revival preaching. A wonderful job.

In fact, bonus points for the writers noticing that most churches do have an organizational structure, and if strange things start going on, the bishop (or whoever) is going to be paying a visit pretty promptly.

2. David Caruso's character, in the first season of NYPD Blue, confessing to his parish priest. This may be the first and last time I've ever seen Catholic confession on TV or film that wasn't in a little dark wooden box and behind a screen, with some startled and horrified priest, who clearly doesn't know the penitent from Adam, listening to it all. Caruso's Detective Kelly, despite not being portrayed as a religious zealot, actually knows his priest (shocker!), and confesses while the two are outdoors, in a way familiar to most American Catholics who went to confession in the '90's: somewhat casual but reverent, face-to-face, and actually sounding like a real confession rather than a cheap device for narrating the plot or making the priest or penitent seem weird or threatening.

(Unfortunately, fifteen years later, I've never seen another realistic confession on the screen. My favorite bad TV confession was Scully's hour-long stint in the box, as a framing device for that week's plot. A real priest would have said in the first two minutes, "So, do you have an actual sin to confess?" Or "If this is going be very long, would you please make an appointment? Mass starts in fifteen minutes and there are eight people in line after you.")

3. Andre Braugher's Detective Frank Pembleton in Homicide, upon discovering his clueless "spiritual but not religious" partner took Communion when he went to a wedding Mass:

Pembleton: You're not Catholic and you took communion?
Bayliss: Yeah. Is that wrong?
Pembleton (smiling): If my God wins, you're screwed.

Non-pious banter about religious practice among laypeople! Nary a devout nun nor earnest priest in sight!

4. X-Files snake-handlers vs. mainliners. "Signs and Wonders": Deep South snake-handling fire-and-brimstone preacher out of central casting, played against the tolerant, educated, mainline Protestant minister who is quietly despairing at the credulity and unsophistication of the local yokels. This doesn't really belong on a list of "most accurate" portrayals, except in the sense that the final twist shows that some writer actually paid attention to the idea that a certain kind of progressive Christian theology denies or finesses so much as to be anti-Christian, and that the fundie preacher's insistence that Christ "demands our very lives" is, in fact, the genuine Christian faith.

5. Carmela tells off Father Phil in The Sopranos. When everyone else whips up a "bad priest" character in seconds by making him some combination of (a) gay, (b) predatory, and (c) vow-breaking hypocrites, the Sopranos writers knock it out of the park with Carmela's epiphany of what's wrong with the (technically) chaste but spiritually immature Father Phil:

"I think that you like the whiff of sexuality that never goes anyplace.... I think you have this m.o. where you manipulate spiritually thirsty women. And I think a lot if it is tied up with food somehow as well as the sexual tension game."

Ouch. It hurts because we've all seen it, or some variant of it.

Any others?

2009-03-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

"Ain't Nothing To Comment On"

Lone Star proud! Did you think that, in giving us the 2004 scandal that was the "Texas miracle," Houston explored the limits of our state's educational policy malfeasance? Or was that challenging standard definitively met and exceeded the next year, when the Texas Supreme Court had to strike down the state's blatantly unconstitutional system of school funding for the fourth time?

No, turns out we hadn't reached bottom yet, y'all. The Dallas Morning News reports that South Oak Cliff High in Dallas has plumbed the depths of educational disgrace, reinvigorated southern stereotypes, and set a new standard of shame for Texas schools, by officially instituting student cage fights as a combination disciplinary method and faculty spectator sport:

The principal and other staff members at South Oak Cliff High School were supposed to be breaking up fights. Instead, they sent troubled students into a steel utility cage in an athletic locker room to battle it out with bare fists and no head protection, records show.
...
Investigators found that security monitors routinely used "the cage" – a section of the boys basketball locker room barricaded by wire mesh and metal lockers – to force problem students to fight out their disputes.

In one incident documented by investigators, a security monitor tried to fight a student in the cage, but [former principal] Moten intervened and broke it up. In another incident, the report said, Moten told security staff to put two fighting students "in the cage and let 'em duke it out." According to the report, students told their teachers that they were "gonna be in the cage" over arguments with their peers.

Eudoxus thinks this might be something that could be implemented profitably in the graduate program.

2009-03-12T17:44:00.000-07:00

We Know Where You Live

Dana has the full scoop on this report prepared by U. of Iowa students for state legislators on the subject of homeschooling, but I was struck by this anxious little paragraph at the end, on the difficulties of enforcing intrusive regulations within private citizens' homes:

Little data exists on how often homeschooling laws go unenforced.... Furthermore, many states have no way of knowing if the information given by homeschools is accurate. For example, in Iowa there is no way to know if the attendance records are being accurately kept.

My! Really? If only there were some way to figure out if those homeschooled kids were actually showing up. In their homes. Where they live.

I know in this economy state budgets are tight, but surely we can find a way to fund school investigators to go to every homeschooling family's residence and inspect the attendance records. After all, it's for the children.

2009-03-01T06:38:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: pre-1985 children's books

Yesterday was our public library's yearly sale, at which they let the public buy, at unbelievably cheap prices, library discards (most of them in great condition) and books donated by the public. Many donations are of high quality; but the fact is that the public libraries simply don't want and can't store most of their donated materials.

This was an opportunity to see if the ban on pre-1985 children's materials had already been implemented, and the answer is: sort of.

Among the library discards, a few were pre-1985, and they were available on the shelves. I picked up a lovely out-of-print Carolyn Haywood, among other nice finds. Given that there were literally thousands of children's discards, it's not surprising that nobody was able to pick through them for publication date.

There were no donated children's materials available for sale, however. In the past, about a quarter to a third of the children's books were donated items: I've gotten some of the Offspringen's best books this way. There were still plenty of donated items shelved in non-children's areas (you can tell the donated items because they have no library markings), and a well-stocked "vintage books" section: but no donated children's books. Since there were certainly hundreds of children's books donated to the public library over the course of the year--the legislation banning the sale/distribution of pre-1985 children's books is quite recent, and only went into effect in February--I can't help wondering what happened to them all. The landfill, sadly, is the most likely option; the library can't afford to store unwanted materials in the hope that Congress might reconsider this ghastly and ill-advised legislation.

2009-02-26T07:51:00.000-08:00

Firemen in Congress

The unabated progress of the overreaction-to-headlines CPSIA should sicken the heart of any lover of older children's books.

It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.

Surely you wouldn't endanger your children's minds, I mean bodies, by permitting a book published before 1985 to fall into their little hands. What was the year before that, when books suddenly qualified as hazardous to the young? It's almost as if Congress were aiming for symbolic significance.

Since the law became effective the very next day, there was no time to waste in putting this advice into practice. A commenter at Etsy, the large handicrafts and vintage-goods site, observed how things worked at one store:

I just came back from my local thrift store with tears in my eyes! I watched as boxes and boxes of children’s books were thrown into the garbage! Today was the deadline and I just can’t believe it! Every book they had on the shelves prior to 1985 was destroyed! I managed to grab a 1967 edition of “The Outsiders” from the top of the box, but so many!

I'm so glad we've already stocked our shelves with high-quality pre-1985 literature--much of it nearly certain never to be reprinted, as it will never again be popular enough in American culture to make reprinting cost-effective. The local public library is having a big sell-off this Saturday. We'll see if pre-1985 children's books are available, or if the book ban has already been implemented here.

2009-02-11T06:53:00.000-08:00

Lincoln's Birthday

Today is the birthday of our sixteenth president. Now you could wait another week for the lame congressionally invented excuse for a three-day weekend called "President's Day," or you can celebrated individual actual presidents and their individual actual achievements on their individual actual birthdays. We at the Opinionated Household opt for the latter, as you probably've guessed. (If I ever write a post on 10 Reasons We Go To The Latin Mass, this principle will be one of the reasons: Holidays, Feast Days, and Commemorations have meanings which are usually linked to their day of celebration. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to celebrate Ascension Thursday on Thursday--40 days after the Resurrection--and not on the following Sunday. Etc. But I digress.)

So if today is Lincoln's Birthday at your house too, here are a few resources we like. Please add your own, for any age up to and including adult. I need a good adult work on Lincoln to read.

Offspring #2 likes her old Step Up to Reading book, Meet Abraham Lincoln. It's still in print, but is now somewhat confusingly listed in the Landmark Books series, which great old series was originally intended for the middle school ages. In fact there are two Landmark books for older readers: Abe Lincoln: Log Cabin to White House, which is in reprint, and Lincoln and Douglas: The Years of Decision, which unfortunately is not.

O2 this year moved up to Ingri D'Aulaire's Abraham Lincoln, heavily illustrated in the D'Aulaires' distinctive style. And we sang a round of "Old Abe Lincoln" from her Wee Sing America CD, which song by the way is how I happened to know that he was the sixteenth president without having to look that up on Wikipedia.

And Offspring #1? She's still finishing up Ferdinand and Isabella, but I think next it would be good for her to read Carl Sandburg on Lincoln.

Offspring #3 will have to be content for now with sucking on pennies.

Other Abraham Lincoln resources which I don't have, but wish I did and have been assured are good:

Abraham Lincoln's World. Genevieve Foster. Gives the broader historical context of what was going on world-wide in the mid-nineteenth century.

Abraham Lincoln: The Great Emancipator. From the Chidhood of Famous Americans series.

Other suggestions?

2009-01-31T12:01:00.000-08:00

Uh, no.

From the chapter on the Eucharist I'll be teaching tomorrow:

Precepts of the Church. "The Church is our teacher and guide. One way the Church guides us is by giving us precepts, or rules, that state some of our responsibilities. One of the five precepts of the Church says that Catholics are to participate in the Eucharist on Sundays and on holy days of obligation.

For the non-Catholic readership, the "precepts of the Church" are ecclesial requirements that govern the relationship of the Catholic to the Church. One of them is that Catholics must receive the Eucharist at least once a year, during the Easter season; another is that Catholics attend Mass at least every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. These are minima for active ecclesial life: better of course is to attend Mass as often as possible (it's offered daily in nearly every parish in the world) and to receive as often as conscience permits.

But this odd mish-mash of the two precepts ends up with a command to receive the Eucharist as a matter of obligation, regardless of state of grace; a command not only nonsensical but (in Catholic eyes) quite dangerous, as receiving when not in a fit state is a serious matter. It's like an owner's manual that should say "oil machine blades at least once per month" and "cover blades when in use" but instead says "oil machine blades when in use."

And this is actually by far the best of the textbook series our parish's textbook committee (which I got to be on, I presume as the token homeschooler) was allowed to consider. At its worst, this series--RCL's "Faith First"--has some errors (as above) and fairly dumbed-down language, especially for Scripture readings. Others were much, much worse; despite the USCCB's thumbs-up, some had clear agendas at odds with orthodoxy, and many were so riddled with errors you could pick a page at random as a sort of game to see what bizarre mistake would show up.

"Faith First," though, at least takes Scripture seriously, providing large dollops of it throughout, starting each chapter prayer with something that used to be a Bible verse, and generally presenting Scripture as an integral part of Christianity. Imagine! Of course I can't help comparing sometimes Offspring #2's Little Visits With God, which expects tiny tykes to memorize verses like "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof," and "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord," and to look up the verses for themselves when a little older. Still, our CCD textbooks do a much better job than the average, even affirming in the 8th grade book that Catholics ought to read the Bible every day. I just about keeled over when I saw that. Nine years ago, when I put Offspring #1 in her CCD class and started sitting in, I was blown away by the diligence with which CCD seemed determined to bear out the caricature of Catholics as folks who wouldn't know the Bible if it fell on them on their way out of Mass. For all the "post-Vatican 2 Church" fluffiness of the Catholicism-lite textbooks (Eudoxus memorably remarked, upon perusing the CCD book, "It's hard to believe you guys produced Thomas Aquinas."), the openness to Scripture that was supposed to be a great fruit of the Second Vatican Council was nowhere evident.

There's still some unfortunate substance to the caricature. My CCD kids universally come to third grade never having opened a Bible, not knowing the difference between the Old and New Testaments, and utterly unfamiliar with all things Scriptural. I still have to debrief the Offspringen after CCD classes (my favorite Things They Learned in CCD is: Christ used unleavened bread at the Last Supper because yeast hadn't been invented yet), and I take for granted that they will learn Absolutely Nothing about the Bible that I don't teach them myself. And even though our textbook committee looked at the 7th and 8th grade level books for each series we considered (as those are the years preparing for Confirmation in our diocese), I was surprised (silly me) to find that even at that late date, verses and passages from Scripture are adapted--pretty heavily--to make them, I suppose readable by the young and stupid. Expectations are pitched low, way low. And the children, who being children will live up or down to the expectations placed on them, are robbed--of the beauty and truth of Scripture, of the inheritance of the Church, and of the right to be challenged in their understanding.

I leave you with the verse that begins Chapter 2 of my third-graders' textbook, Psalm 104:24:

O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

No, I beg your pardon. The putative verse cited as "Psalm 104:24" in our textbook is rather this:

Lord! the earth is full of your creatures.

And to prove the claim, now that it has been rendered fit for children, a picture of a dolphin graces the page. Alas. To think that we once produced St. Thomas Aquinas.

UPDATE: Mrs. Darwin Catholic shares her daughter's CCD text's rendering of the 23rd Psalm's "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake":

You guide me along the right path.

Isn't it interesting how the children's versions so often consist of telling the Almighty things He might not know?

2009-01-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

Paging Homer Simpson

I'm not making any judgments about the particulars of this story that showed up on one of my homeschool discussion groups. I'm just passing along some great quotes.

Krispy Kreme rep: "By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies."

American Life League rep: "We challenge Krispy Kreme ... to separate themselves and their doughnuts from our great American shame."

2009-01-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

" 'Fire!' " he shouted.

This is what comes of being married to a person who thinks about this sort of thing for a living, but I've become addicted to the Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks. Not just orthography pedants, like the people who cluck over the misuse of it's/its on shop signs, these are rather obsessors over the various meanings and implications of quotation marks: do they mean the text has been quoted? or is irony implied? or is the real meaning the reverse?

The amusement factor comes from the common misuse of quotation marks to convey, rather than any of the above conventional meanings, mere emphasis. As a commonplace example, not long ago I spotted a workingman's pickup with this hand-lettered on the side: We "Fix" Appliances. Which, of course, makes you wonder what they in fact do to your dishwasher.

The all-time best (or "best") example:

As commenters note, it surely means either "This starts fires" or "Let there be a fire alarm." Or, perhaps, a Magrittesque "Ceci n'est pas une sirène d'alerte du feu."

2009-01-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

Yuletide Juvenile Reading

DarwinCatholic has been reading A Christmas Carol to the younguns, and overthinking the Muppet version of the Dickens classic. Personally I like to introduce Boz through the weird but child-pleasing story "The Magic Fishbone." (Or, if the Darwins prefer to launch the children right in to full Dickens mode, I think that if they consult volumes III and IV of their lovely old set of Miller's My Book House, they will find representative chapters from The Old Curiosity Shop and David Copperfield, beautifully illustrated.)

We in the Opinionated Household have been doing Christmastide read-alouds as well. Offspring #2 enjoyed E. T. A. Hoffman's Nutcracker, and highly recommends the edition illustrated by Maurice Sendak. If you haven't read the original, it's much, much weirder than the ballet version.

Offspring #1 loved James Joyce's "The Dead" for her holiday read-aloud, and if you haven't read it yourself since college, go read it again as an older and presumably wiser person. This would also be a good time to read at least the first story of Dubliners--Joyce wrote the stories in a definite order, developing certain themes, and "The Sisters" at the collection's beginning is a companion piece to "The Dead" at the end. This would be a good time to rent the wonderful John Huston movie version, but then any time is a good time for that.

2008-12-24T18:37:00.000-08:00

For while all things were in quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course, Thine Almighty word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of a land of destruction.

-Book of Wisdom, 18:14-15

2008-12-21T19:38:00.001-08:00

220 of 238 people found the following review ... energetic

In the post below, I link to the text Offspring #1 will apparently be using in her Real Analysis class. Just to see if it would help me grasp what on earth "real analysis" might mean, I read the Amazon reviews, and found this one. Amusing reading, even if it does leave me no closer to understanding the topic than before, and pitifully glad to have been a liberal arts major.

OK... Deep breaths everybody...

It is not possible to overstate how good this book is. I tried to give it uncountably many stars but they only have five. Five is an insult. I'm sorry Dr. Rudin...

This book is a good reference but let me tell you what it's really good for. You have taken all the lower division courses. You have taken that "transition to proof writing" class in number theory, or linear algebra, or logic, or discrete math, or whatever they do at your institution of higher learning. You can tell a contrapositive from a proof by contradiction. You can explain to your grandma why there are more real numbers than rationals. Now it's time to get serious.

Get this book. Start at page one. Read until you come to the word Theorem. Do not read the proof. Prove it yourself. Or at least try. If you get stuck read a line or two until you see what to do.

Thrust, repeat.

If you make it through the first six or seven chapters like this then there shall be no power in the verse that can stop you. Enjoy graduate school. You're half way there.

Now some people complain about this book being too hard. Don't listen to them. They are just trying to pull you down and keep you from your true destiny. They are the same people who try to sell you TVs and lobotomies.

"The material is not motivated." Not motivated? Judas just stick a dagger in my heart. This material needs no motivation. Just do it. Faith will come. He's teaching you analysis. Not selling you a used car. By the time you are ready to read this book you should not need motivation from the author as to why you need to know analysis. You should just feel a burning in your chest that can only be quenched by arguments involving an arbitrary sequence {x_n} that converges to x in X.

Finally, some people complain about the level of abstraction, which let me just say is not that high. If you want to see abstraction grab a copy of Spanier's 'Algebraic Topology' and stare at it for about an hour. Then open 'Baby Rudin' up again. I promise you the feeling you get when you sit in a hottub for like twenty minutes and then jump back in the pool. Invigorating.

No but really. Anyone who passes you an analysis book that does not say the words metric space, and have the chaptor on topology before the chaptor on limits is doing you no favors. You need to know what compactness is when you get out of an analysis course. And it's lunacy to start talking about differentiation without it. It's possible, sure, but it's a waste of time and energy. To say a continuous function is one where the inverse image of open sets is open is way cooler than that epsilon delta stuff. Then you prove the epsilon delta thing as a theorem. Hows that for motivation?

Anyway, if this review comes off as combative that's because it is. It's unethical to use another text for an undergraduate real analysis class. It insults and short changes the students. Sure it was OK before Rudin wrote the thing, but now? Why spit on your luck? And if you're a student and find the book too hard? Try harder. That's the point. If you did not crave intellectual work why are you sitting in an analysis course? Dig in. It will make you a better person. Trust me.

Or you could just change your major back to engineering. It's more money and the books always have lots of nice pictures.

In conclusion: Thank you Dr. Rudin for your wonderfull book on analysis. You made a man of me.

(Spelling fixed. Hey, he's not an English major, is he?)

2008-12-21T18:47:00.000-08:00

What We're Using: Teenage Edition

Hard to believe Offspring #1 will be a teenager when our new academic year starts in January. Her list of curriculum and resources is much shorter, since she has 45-60 minute study periods, while O. #2 has 15 minute lessons and lots and lots of being read to out loud.

Math
Real Analysis. Whatever that may be.

English
Perrine's Structure, Sound, and Sense

American History
America: A Narrative History (vol. 1)

German
Rosetta Stone
Mastering German: Level 1

Chemistry
Apologia Exploring Creation with Chemistry. No, I'm not a Creationist.* Yes, I have to go through the Apologia texts in advance and redact out the "evidence suggests that man lived with the dinosaurs" parts. So go find me a good, systematic secular junior high level science curriculum that intelligently incorporates experiments doable at home. Nope, I couldn't either.

Latin
Artes Latinae: Level 2. Finishing up at last this semester, I hope.

Faith
Our Quest for Happiness: Through Christ Our Lord.

Now if you clicked on any of those links and blanched at the prices, keep in mind that a $100 text always has a last year's edition that is now $5. Used older editions are the way to go.

*I find it annoying that the word "creation" has been co-opted to mean a particular view of the origins of life and the planet to the point that some of us are left explaining that we believe in creation, but aren't Creationist.

2008-12-20T23:24:00.000-08:00

What We're Using [FINAL UPDATE!]

Enough about First Communion gear. December is here, and that means the end of the Opinionated Household's academic year, and of course preparation for the next.

Offspring #2 just turned six, which means she's starting first grade (by our rules), and gets a formal curriculum.* For those who are thinking about their own elementary level curriculum, or anticipate doing so in the more normal summer months, I list below what I've got planned, with links and a few comments.
*All you unschoolers can just be quiet now.

Scope & Sequence: Core Knowledge Sequence: Content Guidelines for Grades K-8
This is the condensed form of those What Your Nth-Grader Needs to Know books. Where those books contain the academic material itself, Core Knowledge Sequence just lists it, and you find it using your own resources.

I'm not wedded to CKS, but it's quite useful for subjects I don't know much about (i.e. art and music), and breaks down general science and history/geography into manageable chunks for you, so you have an idea of a reasonable amount for a child of that age to cover for the year. Most importantly, it helps you spot gaps, so your child doesn't get to high school knowing nothing about the Seneca Falls Convention, or the Alhambra, or geometry.

Math
Curriculum
Key to Decimals - Key to Geometry - Key to Algebra. Yeah, she's good at math.

Practice Problems
A Beka Arithmetic 4. I don't care for the A Beka math curriculum, but I like the workbooks for review and drill, as they're reasonably enjoyable, visually interesting, and less spirit-crushing than your usual stark page of practice problems.
Math Drillsters. Timed drill can, in fact, be fun.

English
Curriculum
Learning Language Arts Through Literature: The Red Book. LLATL, the best homeschool English curriculum (excepting their disastrously bad high school level books) with the worst name, continues to be our main English curriculum. Unfortunately, Common Sense Press years ago completely transformed the series, splitting one book into several, adding unnecessary readers, and hiking the price to eyebrow-raising levels. I use the older series, last published (I think) in 1994. It's getting a little hard to find: probably because the horrible spiral binding would fall apart fairly quickly. As usual, Bookfinder is your friend.

Vocabulary
Wordly Wise. A new item for us this year, as Offspring #1 never needed any vocabulary practice.
The Golden Book Illustrated Dictionary. A dictionary you start reading and can't put down; from the Golden Age of Golden Press.

Grammar & Orthography
God's Gift of Language A (A Beka).

Literature: Poetry
Oxford Book of Poetry for Children (ed. Blishen). Wonderful collection; mostly poems not written for children.
The Golden Treasury of Poetry.
Kingfisher Treasury of Shakespeare's Verse.

Literature: Prose
The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends, Adapted from the World's Classics. We focus on the Great Stories of western literature throughout the elementary years, and I love this compendium. Anne Terry White collects adaptations of several Greek myths, Beowulf, The Chanson of Roland, Tristram and Iseult, the Persian Epic of Kings, and the Volsunga Saga. The Greek section isn't as thorough as (say) the D'Aulaires, but it includes extensive and faithfully rendered passages from (for instance) Euripides and Sophocles.
The Iliad and the Odyssey. Illustrated by the Provensens, as was the book of myths above. Beautiful art, and an adapation that carefully preserves important passages, such as the campfires of the Trojans compared to the night stars.
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books. Skipping around among the books, reading for now just the stories that have become cultural touchstones.
Aesop's Fables for Children.
The Golden Children's Bible. I put this in the literature, not faith, section because it does the best job of any children's Bible out there of both (a) including as much Biblical material as possible, including some fairly obscure stories, and (b) preserving the sonorous language of the Authorized (King James) Version that has become integral to English literature. The editor's goal is not doctrinal but literary.
The Canterbury Tales. Again, from Golden Press.
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. And again ... Notable in these early '60's Golden Press books, besides the confidence that children should be read the classics of western literature, in suitable editions, with outstanding illustrations, is the confidence that difficult language can be used without confusing or putting off the young readers or listeners. There are words in these books I didn't know. And given the controversies over the vocabulary capabilities of modern Americans (Google "USCCB" and "ineffable" for some inside baseball here), it's interesting to see what levels children were, not so long ago, thought capable of rising to.
D'Aulaire's Book of Greek (Norse) Myths. Classics, and rightfully so, with abundant detail, though with less faithfulness to the literary sources than the Golden Book versions.
Gilgamesh.

French
Rosetta Stone. Only the 'B' exercises, so she never sees how the words are written. Oral only. Fortunately we got Rosetta Stone back when you could get used copies on e-bay.

Science
The Core Knowledge curriculum says we're supposed to start with animals and their habitats, which seems as good a subject as any. We'll be using different resources for different science subjects as the year progresses, of course, but I can't be bothered planning that far in advance.

Who Lives Here? Animals of the Pond, Forest, [etc.]. Gentle little introduction to critters and the swamps they live in.
The New Golden Treasury of Natural History.
About Animals. This is where I put in a plug for the 1975 edition of the Childcraft children's encyclopedia. It's a huge educational bargain; it's interesting, full of good information, recent enough to not have been made irrelevant by later events and discoveries, and book sellers can't get anyone to buy them. A nice set languished on the shelf of our local used bookstore for weeks recently, and was finally broken up and sold as individual volumes for 50 cents per.

History & Geography
A Child's History of the World.
The Golden Geography: A Child's Introduction to the World.
Through Golden Windows: Stories of Early America. As with the Childcraft volumes above, an example of an excellent, engaging, and educational book that, as part of a children's series, is dirt cheap as a separate volume.

Music
Piano lessons. From someone who is not me.
Wee Sing (various) and the Adoremus hymnal.

Art
Art Adventures at Home 1.
Look Again. Another reason to find the 1975 Childcraft. As far as I can tell, it's the only edition that includes this marvellous introduction to art and sculpture, both classic and modern.

Faith
Maria Montessori, The Mass Explained to Children.
Baltimore Catechism #1.
Little Visits With God.

2008-12-18T15:11:00.001-08:00

And About Time, Too

People are noticing that the Newbery Award is your guide to depressing, issue-laden bibliotherapeutic yawn-inducers. Started with this post on the School Library Journal blog:

Right before the announcement of this year’s Newbery winner, I had two surprising encounters. First, a librarian at my local public library confessed that she had no interest in learning “what unreadable Newbery the committee was going to foist on us this year.” Then, a few weeks later at an education conference, I was startled to hear several teachers and media specialists admit they hadn’t bought a copy of the Newbery winner for the last few years. Why? “They don’t appeal to our children,” they explained patiently. (more)

Got linked by people falling over themselves to point out that they'd noticed the Emperor's sartorial deficiencies a long time ago, and finally the blogstorm got picked up on the Washington Post's radar. My favorite quote, from an ALA flack:

"The criterion has never been popularity," said Pat Scales, president of the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association. "It is about literary quality. We don't expect every child to like every book. How many adults have read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning books and the National Book Award winners and liked every one?"

You see, if the kids aren't devouring these books, it's because they're just too lowbrow, like their parents who probably wouldn't know a Pulitzer if it fell on their morning newspaper. It's the children's fault.

By the way, I hadn't realized that Hendrik van Loon's Story of Mankind was one of the early Newbery winners, back when ordinary librarians got to vote, and they just counted the ballots. Van Loon's book, though a bit dated now, is one of the lesser-known homeschooling standards, used by parents who would prefer an engaging world history written by a fairminded and respectful atheist to a dull, unreliable one by a religious partisan (yes, I mean A Beka and Anne Carroll, for a start).

(HT Joanne Jacobs)

2008-12-11T16:43:00.000-08:00

The Dresses

Less to say about First Communion Dresses, except that they're far less varied and interesting than they used to be. Few mothers sew anymore, and a dress bought off the rack at Burlington Coat Factory is going to look very much like most other dresses. An unfortunate corollary is that the quality of a girl's First Communion dress is now simply a function of how much money her family has to spend on it. When they were all handmade and no two dresses looked alike, how attractive, stylish, fancy, or ornamented your dress was, was simply a function of your mom's sewing skill and available time.

We were very fortunate in having Offspring #1's dress made by an extremely talented friend of the family (you can see it in the photo below). Consequently I haven't spent much time looking at dresses, but have dug up a few interesting tidbits. First, definitely click here for proof that life was better, or at least more interesting, in the days when your mother made your dress. Now whatever you think of the suitability of that particular piece of sartorial audacity for the solemn occasion, it takes a pretty cool mom to sew you a groovy minidress with the (briefly) trendy shoulder cape for your First Communion. All it lacks is white go-go boots.

Finally, it seems that in Switzerland and nearby areas, the custom at First Communion was (is? I'd like to know) to wear a simple alb and wooden cross--both boys and girls--and a white wimple for the girls instead of a veil. Given the huge amounts sometimes spent on First Communion gear and parties in some quarters, the disappearance of sewing as a cultural norm, and some scarily materialistic attitudes toward First Communion in some parts of the Catholic world, I wonder sometimes if this isn't the wisest course.

2008-12-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

Seasonal Linguistics Humorvia Language Log

2008-11-28T19:00:00.000-08:00

The Gear: The Prayer Book

There are three standard gifts for a child receiving his First Communion: a rosary, a prayer book, and a scapular (or scapular medal). And just in time for this post, you have only 13 more hours (at time of posting) to put in your bid for FRANK SINATRA'S PRAYER FIRST COMMUNION PRAYER BOOK!!! Yes, my friends, for only $100,000 (free shipping!), Frankie's little prayer book can be yours. Ring-a-ding-ding!

Just in case the auction ends before you read this--and you will surely bemoan your fate at missing such a significant piece of Italian-American heritage--a picture of it is provided at the top of this post.

I can tell you what it looks like on the inside, too. The cover is somewhat thick and padded--in the first half of the century it was common for the cover to be celluloid, that stuff they used before plastic was invented--and while the cover may just have a plain cross, often there is a scene, usually featuring Jesus and/or Mary, appropriate to the sacramental occasion. The covers are often fastened together with a tiny metal clasp. Inside the front cover is probably set a crucifix. The prayer on the opposite page will be the "Prayer Before a Crucifix," a standard and well-loved, if somewhat saccharine, post-communion prayer that would have given little Frankie something to do after having received other than fidgeting in his uncomfortable suit.

The rest of the book will mostly have the Order of the Mass, with ink drawings so you can tell what part of the Mass from what the priest and server are doing, with a description and some appropriate prayers to be praying at the time, other frequently used Catholic prayers, and an examination of conscience to help with confessing those seven-year-old sins (Did I disobey my parents? other lawful authority? Did I look at bad pictures on purpose? etc.).

The most surprising thing about these old First Communion prayer books--and you'll note that the eBay seller has carefully avoided mentioning this, or showing any objects next to the book--is that they are extremely small, about four by three inches, or even smaller. If you glance down at the previous post, you'll find that several of the little girls are clutching a tiny rectangular object: that's their prayer book.

Despite their tiny cuteness, the often good condition these are found in (one might even suspect some of the children didn't use them much), and the reasonable price at which they can be had, these old books aren't rescued for First Communions today, since the Mass that they're meant to guide children through is so different from the modern post-1064 Mass as to make the books irrelevant. Prayer books and missals in general, while still around, are far less central to the Catholic prayer life since the Mass began to be said in the vernacular, memorization of standard prayers was deemphasized, and confession fell into the desuetude from which it's only beginning to recover.

But since the Opinionated Household likes to go to the old Latin Mass anyway, I snagged one of the less battered prayer books from the 1920's for Offspring #2. No, not Sinatra's.

2008-11-27T05:35:00.000-08:00

First Communion Madness

The day is approaching when even the most sensible, balanced Catholic mother (I'd like to think that's me) starts to get a little fevered: the day of her little girl's First Communion.

For the non-Catholics among the Opinionated Readership, take a quick consult on Wikipedia's pretty much on-target article on First Communion. Then check out the merchandising. There, that should give you an idea. Did you think the Catholic Eucharist was about transubstantiation, going to confession, experiencing mystical union with Christ? Silly you. The Eucharist, perhaps; but First Communion is about the dress, the veil and gloves and shoes, the party, the gear (rosary, check; prayer book, check; scapular medal--do we do that in this parish?), and the photographs.

Why does Father start to hyperventilate when you ask if your Uncle Fred can bring his video camera up into the choir loft? Why did mothers of the parish nearly riot the year they learned that the parochial school kids would be receiving at a (photogenic) prie-dieu*, but the CCD kids would have to stand to receive? Why do the boys' parents just hear "suit and tie," but the girls' mothers are given a sternly-worded handout about requirements for dresses? Because it's almost spring, and it's time for First Communion, and the Mothers are preparing their little girls for the event of their childhoods.

*A prie-dieu is this:
First Communion Madness is why the Opinionated Homeschooler is already obsessing on the details of an event that will not take place until spring. Come, obsess with me.

The Veil

Offspring #1 had a beautiful dress, hand-made by a family friend, that happens to fit #2 very well (she's taller, but thinner for her height, so instead of ankle-length it goes partway up the shin). Violating my usual rule about not posting pictures of the Offspringen, here's a pic of #1 in all her adorableness. Doesn't she look pious? Hard to believe it's the same child who slouches around the house now in the throes of adolescence.

As you can see, instead of a veil she has a beaded fabric coronet, of the same brocaded material as the dress. But Offspring #2 wants a proper veil, so off I went in search.

The first thing I discovered is that all First Communion veils today look alike. There are basically three kinds: plastic comb with plain netting; plastic headband with plain netting; and plastic tiara with plain netting. Bows, flowers, rhinestones, and/or plastic pearls are glued onto the plastic headpiece.

Not that they aren't cute, but the cheap ones ($15-20) look ... cheap ... and even the pricey ones ($50-$90, I kid you not, for a piece of plastic--did I mention it was plastic?--with a short polyester net hanging down) still often look like dress-up clothes for some little girl who wanted to be a princess bride for Halloween. And there just isn't anything beyond those three basic styles.

The next thing I discovered, as noted above, was the insane cost. Even the low end is high for what you get, and only in a society in which almost no one sews (sure wish I did), and in which children actually get a say in purchasing pricey items with their parents' money (that's the only way I can conceive that the rhinestone tiaras got so popular), could the plastic glittery fairy Disney Princess look appear with such a high price tag.

Depressed, I searched around for other options, and discovered a treasure trove of old photos of girls at their First Communions. There are hundreds, thousands of them out there. Which makes sense; it's been a photo-heavy event since cameras were invented. If a Catholic girl in the last hundred years had no other photo ever taken of her, she had a First Communion picture taken. There's an amazing variation in dress and veil styles, partly because of variations in time, place, and custom (especially the move away from Catholic girls covering their heads at Mass), but also because until about twenty years ago, First Communion dresses and veils were sewn by mothers and passed down to younger girls in the family.

Today, dresses and veils for First Communion are factory manufactured, bought off the rack, and so limited to the most popular styles. The materials tend to be cheaper, and since labor costs are the big markup for clothing, there's much less in the way of decorative stitching, embroidery, lining, or other extras. Not being any hand with a sewing machine myself, at last I was convinced that I would have to search eBay for "vintage first communion veil" until I found a non-plastic, non-princess, hand-made veil. But there are so many decades, with so many changing fashions. Which style to search for?

The Photos

Let's start out about 100 years ago, before Pope Pius V issued Quam Primum (1910), which, in an effort to combat Jansenism (short take: a rigorist quasi-heretical tendency that, among other things, emphasized the need to have a detailed intellectual comprehension of the doctrines of the Faith before one could be a full Communicant in the Church), lowered the age of First Communion from 12-14 to the "Age of Reason," about seven years old.

The photo to the left shows a German-American girl from just after the turn of the century, who would have been twelve or a little older. Check out the elaborate headpiece for the veil. The darker material isn't a hairdo--girls at that time wouldn't have been exposing more than the hair just above the forehead at Mass--and I think must be colored fabric flowers.

Note some other things. The veil is doubled--this seems to have been standard until very recently--and reaches almost to the hem of her dress. Other photos from this era have veils down below the hem, even to the heels, in a bridal style. She is wearing dark leather ankle boots and dark stockings rather than the now-universal white shoes and tights; this is common, though not universal, in photos from around the turn of the century.

Finally, notice that this is a professionally done photo taken in a studio. All early First Communion photos were taken outside the church building, for the straightforward reason that, until the mid-20th century, Catholic churches were very dark by modern standards, or even by the standard of Protestant churches at the time (which tended to have more windows of clear glass). You just can't take a good photo by candlelight. Sure looks like the concept of spending lots of money on your daughter's First Communion had an early start.

Here are a couple more great old photos from early in the century, a French girl to the right, and a Czech girl to the lower left. Note again the long veils and elaborate, hand-made headpieces, in differing styles according to the local custom. Both girls look like they are 12 or so, an estimate borne out by the pre-1910 styles of their dresses and veils. The Czech girl, who bears a startling resemblance to Ozma of Oz, has quite the veil, and a dress and pose that suggest the Czechs were somewhat less rigorist in their Catholicism than the notoriously Jansenist French.

While I think all three of these veils are far more interesting than the modern commercial veils, still, they're just a little much for a hundred years later. The day of really big headgear as a standard form of couture for women has gone.

But if I had to draw from the distant past, I'd take the Czech look. Maybe it's just the way she carries it off.

Moving forward, here's a girl from a 1918 photo (right). Her veil has no ornate headpiece, apart from the bow tied under her chin, and more resembles a mantilla than a bridal veil. The bow seems to have been a favorite decoration for little girls of that era: I've got photos of my dear departed grandmother, topped by a bow that looks like it would carry her off if there were a brisk wind.

Still, minus the bow, this would be a possible style today, due to its simplicity. And so I've kept "mantilla" included as a search term, especially since the style has been in continuous favor in Latin America and the American southwest throughout the century, really until the 1970's and the advent of the non-head-covering veil (but more on that later), and so it should be possible to find examples that aren't too antique to be usable.

From the following year, 1919 (left), a veil with a headpiece from the other end of the fussiness spectrum. It's hard to tell from the darkness of the background, but there seems to be some sort of foliage crown, with net (tulle?) blossoms on top. The whole thing looks quite big for such a little girl, and one almost wonders if this started life as a mother's or aunt's bridal veil. Though the photo was taken on the cusp of the 1920's, it seem to belong to a period almost 20 years previous.

Moving into the Roaring '20's, there is a sudden uniformity of headpiece styles. I couldn't find any of the wild variety of style of the previous decades, all of them instead copying the '20's-style rounded "flapper" hat, covering most of the head except the face. See the little girl in the prie-dieu, above, who seems to have the flapper "bob" as well as the hat.

Here's another from the mid-'20's, with dress to match the decade. (More on dresses later, too.)

I don't think the flapper look is a historical style that can be easily resurrected, and I don't plan to try, though I did see a couple of these available. Besides being strongly dated to one particular era, though, they generally haven't aged well, and I doubt any kind of cleaning could bring back their original white.

Forward, to the 1940's and '50's, when the dominant style was a more subdued floral coronet, with doubled veil (still long, but shorter than in the past). Dresses were shorter also, and stockings were often replaced by socks. In the photo to the left, from 1947, you can again see the influence of ladies' hat styles, and almost see the pillbox hat on its way.

Some time in the 1950's there became popular an odd sort of stiff tulle crown arrangement, making a kind of vertical halo across the head from ear to ear. Where this came from is a mystery: the headpieces of the previous decades seemed to take their cue from the ladies' hats in fashion, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything in the '50's and '60's that could be responsible for this look.

The attached veils were quite short, often single instead of the traditional double veil (almost certainly a holdover from the bridal symbolism of a veil in front of the face that has been lifted back over the head), and lacking any ornamentation on the veil itself other than a thin pencil edge, or even no finish at all. These begin to dominate in mid-century, and by the 1960's there doesn't seem to be anything else (except for Hispanic girls, who were still wearing the mantilla style).

I can't help finding this style unattractive, and unfortunately it was replaced not by a nicer kind of headgear, but by almost no headgear at all: the wearing of hats, mantillas, and chapel veils vanished almost overnight from mainstream Catholic culture. Only the symbolism of the veil remained, and the meaning of it--covering the head at church, as was the custom among Christian women and girls for almost two thousand years--had gone. A short piece of netting, usually unadorned, was held in place almost invisibly by a comb, or by a tiara or coronet (with the veil attached to the back or absent completely, leaving the head uncovered (as with Offspring #1 in the photo above), instead of to the front, as with the coronet style of the 1940's and '50's). The hairstyle became of increased importance accordingly.

So it seemed that I was going to have to find a veil at least fifty years old, if I wanted something pretty for Offspring #2. And that's why eBay exists. So that every American can exercise her inalienable right to find, and bid feverishly on, a 1950's Vintage Veil Headpiece First Communion Catholic (to use the odd titling method of eBay sellers). And behold:

From 1959 (according to the woman whose it originally was), the last gasp of the floral coronet style, with doubled long veil, embroidered edging, and an embroidered cross with silver threadwork. Less than twenty bucks. I'm going to have to have it dry-cleaned, and the thin elastic that goes under the chin is certainly dead and will need to be replaced, but it will still be a bargain. My work as a First Communion mother is underway.

A historical footnote

There is a stratum of First Communion photographs from the Second World War, in which the girls are not Catholic, and are not making their First Communion. Catholic families taking in Jewish girls to hide would have First Communion photos made as evidence that the girls were really Catholic, and many of these photos have been preserved as part of the archives of the Holocaust.

How well the ruse worked is questionable--in most of the photographs, the girls look considerably older than the usual seven years old--but maybe there was enough variation in the age of First Communion to make it plausible. To the right is one such photo, of a girl who is visibly the least happy of any of the photo subjects I've posted here. The story with the photo says that she survived the war, stayed with the family who took her in, and now lives in Israel.

Next: The Dresses and The Other Necessary Gear

2008-11-25T13:19:00.000-08:00

Disgusting Rebus of the Day

Homeschooling connection: Learning about parasites (science); tips on personal hygiene (health); stroller jaunt over to the pharmacy (P.E.).

Ick.

2008-11-15T18:29:00.000-08:00

Saving Money: Homeschool Edition

First, go read Yahmdallah's post on Depression-style thrift. I second all of his suggestions, and here add the money savers that have worked for the Opinionated Household. Please add or link your own, and remember: everybody starts at a certain level, so some tips will be unnecessary (already doing them), and some will be overkill (you don't need to save that much).

1. Don't bathe/shower at all. This is just to one-up Yahm, who suggests bathing every other day to save water costs. This, my friends, is because he lives in Colorado, where you never go to bed naked and lying on top of sheets, with the fan blowing directly over you and your beloved, and still wake up drenched in sweat.

But in the summer, we go for weeks without bathing the children just by letting them go swim every day in the neighborhood pool. A few hours of chlorine soaking, followed by a hair rinse in the cold-water shower, and they're cleaner than the bathtub could make them. If the grownups can get up at a decent hour, morning lap swimming can replace showering at least once in a while.

2. Radicalize. You're already hopelessly eccentric just by virtue of homeschooling, so why not take one more step off the grid? Don't reduce your cable: stop watching TV. Don't order off the dollar menu: stop going out to eat. Stop using credit cards, or use them only for convenience, paying them off every month.

And did Yahm say that was like saying "Stop driving"? Well, stop driving. Walk, bike, use the bus. We haven't given up the car completely, but we use it much less; and a side benefit is that Offspring #1 has discovered the liberation of being able to get around without relying on parents for a lift.

3. Stop selling your unused books and curriculum. This may seem counter-intuitive, but think about it. If homeschoolers stopped selling to each other, and just gave away what they weren't using to other homeschoolers who needed it, we'd all be getting free curriculum. You say you can't afford to buy Curriculum Item X if you can't re-sell it later? Then you can't afford to buy it at all--there's no guarantee it will be in sellable condition later, or that it won't have become undesirable for some other reason. eBay won't let us buy and sell curriculum anyway, and the used book stores only give us pennies on the dollar, so why squeeze money out of other homeschoolers who are also trying to make it on one income? Bless someone else with it, and trust that what goes around, comes around.

4. Take groceries seriously. Eudoxus and I have been doing competitive shopping, and at this point we're feeding a family of five for $100 a week. I took a notebook with me for weeks, writing down the unit prices of the food I bought for our week's menus, and doing a lot of comparing, between brands and between stores. That's how I found out that CostCo actually saved me nothing: if an item's on sale at CostCo, it's on sale at H.E.B. (I strongly suspect the wholesalers are doing the discounting). The only difference is CostCo makes you buy a huge amount of whatever it is. Wal-Mart for medications and personal items (sunblock, toothpaste, etc.)--only buy food at the grocery store.

Like Yahm says, store brands are usually just as good; and in this part of the country, you can often get Mexican brands that are just as good and usually cheaper than even the store brands.

The big grocery savings, though, come from replacing processed foods. Nearly any processed food we were buying, we discovered we could make at home from scratch for less money: applesauce, pesto, muffins, boxed mac and cheese.... Now I just need to get baking my own bread and bisciuts.

5. Hanging out the laundry is working well. My main concern was the time it involves; but I need to hang out laundry about every other day, and it turns out that I'm outside with the little ones at least that much anyway, so I just combine toddler supervision with mild clothesline aerobics; no time lost. I only use the dryer now if it's raining or so soggy with humidity that nothing is going to dry, and we're saving quite a lot of energy.

6. Did I mention no going out? That includes fast food. Even little people can fix their own sandwiches, throw them in the soft-sided cooler with a piece of fruit and some crackers, and there's the day's lunch-on-the-run with no effort to Mommy at all.

7. The big energy expenditure around here is, of course, air conditioning. In the real dog days, I'm not above taking the kids to the bookstore and letting them read in comfy chairs, taking advantage of the free AC. Swimming in the evening takes off the edge so everyone can sleep. Fans, lots of fans. People did once live here without air conditioning, you know. This year, the AC is our big challenge for saving money, so other tips in this regard are welcome.

2008-10-31T18:22:00.000-07:00

It's a Soft World After All

While I'm tossing out the occasional post on my favorite homeschooling resources, let's put in a word for the Hugg a Planet pillow globe. Despite an awful name, a disconcertingly amateurish website, and a product photo that looks like the west coast is giving birth, this is a great globe. Not a novelty toy, the borders are accurate, the labels are abundant, the colors and markings are clear and bright: this is a real, working globe. But it's a real pillow, too: the cloth is tough and well-sewn, and the stuffing is soft and resilient. It's a cushion that's been built for abuse by energetic children.

Like all homeschoolers, a good globe was one of our first investments. But when you're cuddled up for reading time, and the book mentions Greenland or Fiji, the last thing anyone wants to do is hop down, fetch the globe, and hunt for the place. But the Hugg a Planet, I promise you, will already be in someone's lap (though sometimes we have to shove the cat off of it), making the location of foreign lands quick and fun.

For an extra ten bucks, the Hugg a Planet will include (literally; it's tucked inside a velcroed pocket just west of California) a Hugg a Moon, with seas and mountains labeled, as well as the locations and dates of American and Russian landings.

And then it won't be long before you're contemplating your genuine, if previously unrecognized, need for a Hugg a Mars.

UPDATE: Insanely, Amazon is asking $48 for the basic, no moon included, Hugg a Planet. Go straight to their website instead, or here for a $3 discount.

2008-10-31T08:42:00.000-07:00

Annual Halloween Rant: 2 Principles & 12 Questions

John Aielli, the dj for our local university radio station, just finished explaining the old chestnut of how the Church created All Saints' and All Souls' Days to preempt the pagan festivity of Samhain, now to be called Halloween. You see, the Church just renamed the pagans' favorite holidays, laid over a thin veneer of Christianity, and voila. So, you know, if you celebrate so-called "Christian" holidays, you're really celebrating pagan festivals.

This year, I will skip the argumentation and simply lay out some principles, followed by some questions for consideration.

Principles:

1. Anyone who reads the accounts of early Christian missionaries (e.g. the Confession of St. Patrick) or the accounts of early Christian historians (e.g. Bede) will quickly discover the intense distaste the early missionaries had for anything and all things pagan. These guys were hardly poster boys for inter-cultural tolerance.

Go read some of these materials, and then come back and tell me how the monks "baptized" pagan holidays, customs, or other things so that the people could carry on with no changes in their lives--just new names for the old familiar paganism.

2. Despite the firm presuppositions of Victorian folklorists that most folk customs and holidays have ancient roots, scholars since have thoroughly debunked that notion. Customs and holidays die out quickly without reinforcement from the surrounding culture and real belief in the things represented by the customs.

Questions:

1. If All Saints and/or All Souls were meant to "baptize" Samhain, why do they occur in the two days following Samhain, with the more appropriate day (All Souls, aka Day of the Dead) a whole two days off?

2. Why would significant feast days of the universal Church be established to supplant pagan festivals in small, outlying areas of Christendom?

3. If the Church cared so deeply about the Celtic areas, so as to establish major feast days simply to co-opt Celtic feasts (Christmas for Yule, Easter for Ostara-worship, All Saints/All Souls for Halloween), which major Christian holidays were established to co-opt pagan feast days in other parts of the Christian world: northern Africa, central Europe, Scandinavia, Iberia, etc.? If there aren't any, why not?

4. Why would feast days be established for the entire western Church to coincide with Celtic holidays, when it was typical for a feast day to be celebrated at different times in different places? Why wouldn't the day have been established/moved only for the Celtic areas?

5. Why did All Saints' Day first appear in the third century, when missionaries hadn't even reached Celtic areas?

6. Why are All Saints' and All Souls' celebrated in the Eastern Church, far from Celtic areas?

7. If the feast day was moved to coincide with Samhain, then besides Questions #1 and #2, what is the evidence that either (a) the feast day in the West was moved for that reason (remember, it was moved by Pope Gregory, who was off in Rome), or (2) the two festivals were even celebrated at the same time in Celtic areas?

8. Why, when most of the former Empire was Christianized anyway, would popes be establishing holidays (or moving them around) to accommodate pagan festivals?

9. How many festivals did the ancient Celts, and ancient Romans for that matter, have? How hard was it to establish a feast day that didn't fall on or near a pagan feast day?

10. Why do the feast days that supposedly used to be pagan festivals (Christmas, Easter, Halloween) happen to be the holidays that are the biggest deals in 20th century North American culture, when a little research will show that they were not, in fact, very important feast days until well after the Middle Ages? What are the "pagan" roots of Epiphany and Pentecost, which were the two most significant holidays in the Eastern and Western Churches for more than a thousand and a half years?

The big Question: Other than the coincidence (or near-coincidence) of dates, what actual evidence is there for the "took over Samhain/Yule/Ostara" theories?

The little Question: Whose interests are served by the conventional wisdom that Christian feasts and customs have their origins in paganism?

Discuss.