Mental multivitamin

2009-11-19T18:37:00.003-06:00

Apparently, the Misses and I are the only ones looking forward to this evening's finale. If, in fact, the show was better in the past, we can't wait to see if the library has earlier seasons on DVD. Until then, we're going to "Make it work!"

Postscript: For the record, we're rooting for Carol Hannah. Irina's designs are also quite good, but... "Irina-ish" has become a non-too-flattering adjective around here. Heh, heh, heh.

Added later: Oh, the library does have the first five seasons of the series! The women of Family M-mv are doing a happy dance.

From the archives:Uncharacteristic entry

2009-11-19T12:32:00.000-06:00

Several years ago, I espied photo calendars in the dollar aisle of Michaels. Proud owner and occasional user of a quality color printer, I knew this would be a simple, nearly painless project that would yield gifts a couple of relatives might enjoy.

I was right.

Eventually, my color printer died a painful death at the hands of an errant plastic lizard wedged in the cartridge, so for a couple of years, I printed the photos on my laser jet printer. This probably sounds cheaper and tackier than it actually turned out. I'm not certain why it took me years to realize that I could simply download the photos to, say, Walgreens or Target, for photofinishing, but it did.

What can I say? I'm not crafty like that.

This year, however, I did download the photos -- thirteen color photos, one for each month and one to personalize the front (or back) -- and over the holiday, I assembled five calendars. Four are gifts.

Photofinishing at Walgreens: $12.35 *
Calendars from Michaels: $5 plus tax
Glue stick: $0.50
Envelopes to ship the gifts: approximately $3
Postage: unknown, but usually under $2 per padded envelope

So for less than $30, I've guaranteed four smiles this holiday season. Are you looking for simple, inexpensive gifts that either you or the kids can make? Check out the dollar baskets at Michaels, folks. Inexplicably, the calendars usually begin appearing sometime over the summer, but there may be some left. If not, make a note on your planning calendar: Check dollar bins at Michaels. Then you'll have 'em for next year.

Related and equally uncharacteristic entry here.
__________________

* Just before I sent the photos to Walgreens for this year's calendar, I googled "Walgreens coupon code photo" -- and ended up saving twenty percent on processing. Frugality is never a bad idea. Look for promotional codes, coupons, and other deals when shopping online.

Oh, I cried, all right. I did. All of us did.

2009-11-17T15:20:00.000-06:00

Spoiler alert.

But have our expectations sunk so abysmally low that a movie's greatness is now measured by the number of times it brings an audience to tears?

Yeah, like nearly everyone else in this rural-suburb hyphenated hybrid of a town we live in, we rented Up this weekend. While everyone else raves about it, though, plans to wrap it up for Christmas, I'm feeling a little a bit like a citizen looking at the emperor's new cloak -- that is, worried about having my head handed to me for speaking my mind.

The opening fifteen or so minutes represent a beautifully poignant, and, yes, emotionally mature animated sequence. Memorable. Truthful. Poetic. In fact, if this movie opened with that sequence, included the scenes in the construction area, concluded with the house ripping away from its foundation and borne away by balloons, and ran credits over an image of the house happily nestled atop the falls, I'd thoroughly understand all of the early Oscar buzz. It would be a sure bet for best animated short.

But it doesn't.

Up continues. Over a city, through a storm, and into South America. And there, while a dog you know was drawn with an eye to what an adorable stuffed toy it would make distracts you from the melancholy theme of dreams dashed and/or deferred, you wonder if you're the only one who can see that the emperor is only wearing a pair of stretched out Hanes underpants.

"So get off your ath; let's do some math!" *

2009-11-15T15:19:00.003-06:00

From "Who Needs Mathematicians for Math, Anyway?" (City Journal, November 13):

Those trying to overthrow the traditional curriculum found mathematics a hard nut to crack, however, because of the sequential nature of its content through the grades and its relationship to high school chemistry and physics. Nevertheless, education faculty eventually figured out how to reimagine the mathematics curriculum, too, so that it could march under the banner of social justice. As Alan Schoenfeld, the lead author of the high school standards in the 1989 NCTM report, put it, “the traditional curriculum was a vehicle for . . . the perpetuation of privilege.” The new approach would change all that.

Two theories lie behind the educators’ new approach to math teaching: “cultural-historical activity theory” and “constructivism.”

* From School of Rock

2009-11-14T08:02:00.000-06:00

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

(The continuing pursuit of) Fine Art (on) Friday

2009-11-13T13:55:00.006-06:00

As I wrote last Friday, the Misses and I are studying the art of portraiture at the local college. We must be doing all right: Many of you were able to pick Tim Gunn, Theodore Roosevelt, and the First Lady out of our early efforts. So, the goggle-eyed fellow behind the thick glasses? Burgess Meredith in the "The Twilight Zone" episode "Time Enough at Last." And the clear-eyed man at the bottom of the mosaic? Richard Farnsworth.

This week, the class focused strictly on charcoal techniques. Here is my "inspiration image." What do you think?

I have found it to be true that the older I've become the better my life has become.
~ Doris Lessing

"[T]he privilege of drinking a soupçon of pee is hardly a recommendation. "

2009-11-12T07:14:00.006-06:00

Excerpts from Edward Champion's review of 2012:

■ There comes a point in any Roland Emmerich film in which anyone with a brain must give up and ponder why such superficialities remain a draw.

■ Here is a filmmaker so happy to whore himself out to product placement that the most important government representatives all use Vaio laptops.

■ And instead of Emmerich using his exploitative skills to make his audience think, he has produced the cinematic equivalent of an audience member running out of toilet paper when she most desperately needs it. His audience is doomed to run around the house with pants around legs, hoping to seek out a Kleenex or paper towel substitute and praying to the deities that nobody else is home.

Bookmark his site or add it to your reader, folks, because, unlike Emmerich, Ed does make his audience think.

"Who should and shouldn't go to college?"

2009-11-10T12:30:00.004-06:00

From "Are Too Many Students Going to College?":

With student debt rising and more of those enrolled failing to graduate in four years, there is a growing sentiment that college may not be the best option for all students.

Gee. No kidding.

Related entries
■ About college (first posted 11.16.2003)

■ Paying for college: A rant of modest proportions (first posted 5.20.2005)

Quote of the day

2009-11-08T12:17:00.000-06:00

All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.

~ Benjamin Franklin

From our sketchbooks

2009-11-08T12:16:00.005-06:00

As I mentioned on Friday, the Misses and I are enrolled in another art class at the local college. This semester we're learning about portraits, and I'm sure many of you will agree: Faces are hard. But we're learning. We're learning.

Added later: If you can identify the celebrities whose photos we used for inspiration, we'll know we're doing all right. (Hint: Three of them are deceased.)

2009-11-07T07:56:00.001-06:00

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

On the nightstand

2009-11-06T19:33:00.001-06:00

He is home again, so this is a hasty entry.

Recently completed
■ Hamlet (John Marsden)
SFP at Pages Turned recommended this excellent retelling.

■ Await Your Reply (Don Chaon)
Recommended to those M-mv readers who appreciated Seven Types of Ambiguity (Elliot Perlman) as much as I did.

■ The Writing Class (Jincy Willett)
Perfectly entertaining. Equal parts well-paced mystery and cunningly written commentary. Willett wittily skewers the stereotypical cast of wannabes (including instructors) found in writing seminars -- found, in fact, in most continuing ed courses.

Currently reading
■ Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar (James Marcus Bach)
Subtitled "How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success," this slim volume was penned by the son of Richard (Jonathan Livingston Seagull) Bach.

■ Stitches: A Memoir (David Small)
Related article here.

You'll find the complete "On the nightstand" archive here.

This post contains affiliate links. A purchase made through one of these links will earn this site a small referral fee. If applicable, advance reading copies (ARCs), review copies, and/or promotional copies are duly noted. For more information, see this site's disclosure statement.

Fine Art Friday

2009-11-06T09:16:00.005-06:00

Alma Mahler (1913)
Charcoal, with stumping, laid down on cream wove paper
Oskar Kokoschka, English, born Austria (1886-1980)

Portrait of a Peasant Woman (1898-1899)
Charcoal on cream wove paper
Paula Modersohn-Becker, German (1876-1907)

We hadn't thought we would be able to find a spot in our schedule for an art class this fall, but we did, and this semester we're studying the art of portraiture at the local college. After spending the summer with watercolors (related entries here and here), we're working primarily in pencil and charcoal again (related entries here and here).

I'll share some of our work soon, but right now? I am distracted. A small female deer has crept under the autumn umbrella of low-hanging pine branches and sleeping brush that bounds the back yard. The Misses are captivated, and so, frankly, am I.

Course texts
■ Heads, Features and Faces (George B. Bridgman)
■ The Human Figure (John H. Vanderpoel)
■ Drawing: A Contemporary Approach (Teel Sale and Claudia Betti)

The "Fine Art Friday" archive can be found here.

From the archives:Just borrowing?

2009-11-02T08:37:00.003-06:00

The following entry was posted six years ago today. I've updated some of the links.

Here's a compelling sliver of news — an article that, toward the end, manages to make (potential) plagiarists seem somewhat sympathetic. You see, once submitted to the site, the students' papers remain stored on the web as a further deterent against plagiarism, which, as one source in the article notes, "[A]nd that's a big worry I think."

Really? A worry? Which part? The part about our centers for higher learning being so rife with academic misconduct and dishonesty that professors are compelled to check every student's work for theft? Or the part where student-writers must essentially surrender their property to the Web?

Talk about your double-edged sword, huh? Academic integrity has disintegrated to the point where professors (who are not, it seems, above a little "sloppy scholarship" themselves; consider the recent case of Naval Academy history professor Brian VanDeMark) [new link] patronize a business that has reduced published work to "code," against which student papers can be compared to identify what amounts to theft of another writer's work.

And the other edge? Well, whether you're a student who thinks a little borrowing from here and there (especially if "here" is an obscure academic journal and "there" is a frat brother's cousin's sister's paper on the same topic) is A-okay or a student who triple-checks sources and attributions, once your papers are submitted to the California website, Turnitin.com, they (the papers) become a permanent part of the Web's landscape.

A conundrum, no?

I can see the headline now: "Potential plagiarists seek refuge in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

These are unwieldy issues to deal with in a short blog entry, I know, but I'll address this much: It's funny (and I don't mean, "funny, ha-ha funny") to me that most thinkers and readers can readily identify plagiarism when the words or ideas of one traditionally published writer are appropriated by another.

But when it comes to the Web, many of the same readers and thinkers have adopted an "oh-it's-just-borrowing" mentality that makes e-writers, website developers, photographers, artists, graphic designers, and others who make all or part of their living along the information superhighway shudder. An entire article is reprinted without permission there. Images are copied from here and used over there. Unique design elements of a new business' corporate identity program are diminished when cribbed by another business. Photographs for sale in an Web image gallery are copied and pasted into personal websites.

And so it goes.

Just borrowing? Um, can you say, "RIAA Strikes Back At Music Pirates in 2003"?

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States [new link] seeks, among other things, "[t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

Click here to learn how to avoid plagiarism of any kind.

"Narrative these days competes against incrementalized information -- data, chatter, noise."

2009-11-02T08:21:00.003-06:00

From "The vestigial tale" (Washington Post, October 29):

Story-loving isn't just culture; it's biology. The human brain has evolved in such a way as to enable the construction and comprehension of narratives.

"We experience our lives in narrative form," says novelist Jonathan Franzen. "If you can't order things in a narrative fashion, your life is a chaotic bowl of mush."

[...]

Steven Pinker, Harvard's guru of evolutionary psychology, says our interest in stories comes in part from a "thirst for gossip" -- we need insider information about our social world. Narratives give gossip shape and meaning. And stories let us experiment, safely, with novel social arrangements that might otherwise blow up in our face.

Fall behind

2009-10-31T15:10:00.002-05:00

Did you know daylight saving time ends this Sunday at 2 a.m.? More information here: "Fall back -- time change is this weekend."

Related book
Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time (Michael Downing)

2009-10-31T15:08:00.001-05:00

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-30T06:31:00.001-05:00

“She wept, throughout her life, at the world’s refusal to conform to her ideal vision of it.”

2009-10-29T18:47:00.004-05:00

From "Mrs. Logic" (New York Magazine, October 18):

It’s easy to chuckle at Rand, smugly, from the safe distance of intervening decades or an opposed ideology, but in person—her big black eyes flashing deep into the night, fueled by nicotine, caffeine, and amphetamines—she was apparently an irresistible force, a machine of pure reason, a free-market Spock who converted doubters left, right, and center. Eyewitnesses say that she never lost an argument. One of her young students (soon to be her young lover) staggered out of his first all-night talk session referring to her, admiringly, as “Mrs. Logic.” And logic, in Rand’s hands, seemed to enjoy superpowers it didn’t possess with anyone else.

Culled from the archives:Homeschooled students in fiction

2009-10-28T10:57:00.006-05:00

In two (one, two) August 2008 entries, I recommended four excellent novels featuring homeschooled students. Some M-mv readers might find one or another of these titles a neat seasonal tie-in for their students, so here they are again:

■ Wendy Orr's Nim's Island
Read-aloud, five and up; read-alone, seven and up

■ Gordon Korman's Schooled
Read-aloud, eight and up; read-alone, nine and up
Related M-mv entry here.

■ Katherine Hannigan's Ida B.
Read-aloud, eight and up; read-alone, nine and up

■ Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl
Read-aloud/read-alone, twelve and up

Homeschooling expert? Nah.

2009-10-27T16:35:00.005-05:00

I am always startled by e-mail messages from homeschooling parents seeking my counsel, advice, and, as one correspondent put it, "expertise."

Folks, I am no expert. True, I've been doing this for a while -- twelve years, three months, to be exact. And, yes, I have already graduated one student.

But, "homeschooling expert"? Nah.

Do I have a few tips? Sure. And I provide them, here and here... and there... and there. Well, okay, here's a whole passel of tips, if you really want 'em. I've even tried to provide accounts -- real-time (here and here) and stream-of-consciousness -- of our reading, thinking, learning, living days.

It's not enough, some correspondents protest. More. Tell more. What program? What schedule? How? When? Where?
________________________

Once upon a time ago, a colleague and I were working on yet another Very Important Project (Rush! Rush! Hurry! Hurry!) using a program called Ventura. Other publishing professionals may remember this package. It was a behemoth, but, oh, if you could harness even a bit of its power... the places you could go! Anyway, as always, one or another junior attorney in the firm was strutting and fretting in the hall beyond our suite. "What are you doing? When will it be done? Can't you hurry? How do you do that?"

In his carefully cultivated "affable mid-Westerner" style, my colleague replied, "You know what, man? It's like sausage. You really don't want to know how it's made. In fact, if you saw how it was made, you would never eat sausage again."

If you saw how it was made, you would never eat sausage again.

Yeah, I think that about describes how I feel when I field yet another request for a homeschooling how-to tutorial. Heh, heh, heh.

Look. I'm not willfully withholding information. I've been blunt, direct, and transparent.

We read.

We think.

We learn.

We go out into the world and work, play, and live.

What more can I say?
________________________

Perhaps I'm not prepared to provide a conventional how-to tutorial because so much of what I did and what I do is intuitive and specific to me, to my students, and to my family. Besides, describing what we do any more than I already have would be a hellava a whole lot like trying to teach that junior attorney some Ventura "basics."

If you saw how it was made, you would never eat sausage again.
________________________

Last month, I read a thought-provoking article on the subject of experts. Two passages struck me. This one:

We are advised to seek and heed to advice of a bewildering chorus of personal experts -- parenting specialists, life coaches, relationship gurus, super-nannies and sex therapists, to name a few -- who apparently possess the authority to tell us how to live our lives.

And this:

While this professionalisation of everyday life has been a distinct trend from the outset of modernity, it has grown at a breathtaking pace since the 1960s, with professionals systematically expanding the range of personal issues that demand expert knowledge. Today, every aspect of life from birth through to school and career to marriage and mourning is subject professional counselling.

While I do think the homeschooling endeavor could benefit from a little more -- for lack of a better word -- professionalism (i.e., the adoption of some of the traits that make us successful in our more conventional work) -- I never bought into the idea of professional motherhood that columnist Anne Quindlen once excoriated. (M-mv entry here; column here.) Critics of homeschooling often accuse us of professionalizing everyday life, though; of, in fact, professionalizing motherhood. And frankly? I understand that accusation. While it is not what prompted my decision, I certainly realize that homeschooling seems to have conferred some -- again, for lack of better word -- status on my choices. Many people maintain that stay-at-home parenting alone does not draw on the education and work experience one has acquired, but they concede that home education may. A little, anyway. (Either that, or they simply dis and dismiss homeschooling parents and their students, which is a topic quite apart from the ideas I'm exploring here, isn't it?)

I'm hoping we can, for now, sidestep the philosophical exploration the previous paragraph begs (i.e., "What do I care what other people think?"). It will add nothing to this entry. Moving on, then.

The family-centered learning project does, indeed, benefit from and draw on the knowledge gained from my studies and work. While a degree may not be necessary to be a good teacher, I cannot, will not understate the role my own education -- which includes a graduate degree and postgraduate studies -- has played in my teaching. More, I firmly believe that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and that the quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else. Folks bristle at such assertions, but they keep writing to me: More. Tell more. Don't become angry, then, when I tell you. My education -- and, yes, my work -- shaped me, shaped the way I receive and convey information, shaped my idea of what an agile mind comprises, so when I found myself in the most important teaching gig I'll ever have, I knew I was shaping my students, shaping the way they received and conveyed information, shaping their idea of what an agile mind comprises. I did so responsibly, not with the objective of providing a good elementary, intermediate, or secondary education but with the goal of growing lifelong learners.

Simply put, then, I have ensured that my students can read widely and deeply, write clearly, and think well.

Critics have also accused homeschooling parents of selfishness and self-centeredness, saying that we do what we do to serve needs of our own, not those of our children. I am guilty of one count of this charge, and this is it: I have selfishly spent the last twelve-plus years molding the sort of readers, thinkers, writers, and students that I sought in my classrooms and workshops once upon a time ago: Inquisitive. Well read. Versed in culture, both of the capital-C and the popular variety. At once thoughtful and challenging. Clear spoken. Confident. Mature. And so on.

While I appreciate the child-like, the childish leaves me cold, so I discarded conventional ideas about grades and age-level appropriateness and what every child needs to know, ignored most of the educational and homeschooling "experts," and simply gave my students the books, conversations, challenges, opportunities, time, resources, and all required to meet my ideal as quickly and effectively as possible.

The average child is capable of so much more than is typically asked of him or her! He need not be "scary smart" to understand Shakespeare in elementary school. She need not be "gifted" to move quickly through three levels of math. In an environment in which the tools of study are readily available, in a classroom in which the students have been led to understand that this -- all of this reading, thinking, learning, discussing, studying, creating, working, and, yes, playing -- is their job, in a school in which the teacher can, in fact, teach, damn it, there will be much profitable learning.

It's just hard to describe what's happening in such a classroom because it will be unique to that environment, those students, that teacher.

Moreover, folks become intensely uncomfortable when you tell them that, yes, seventh- and eighth-graders can understand college rhetoric, psychology, history, and logic texts. Sure, eleven- and thirteen-year-olds can enroll in college courses. Of course, ten-year-olds can attend museum lecture series. Hell, yeah, a student can do work he loves and earn good grades and graduate from high school with many college credits on his transcript. Certainly, 1.5 hours of music practice daily is possible. And why wouldn't they be able to join a sports team?

They become even more uncomfortable when you assert that your students are quite normal, really. Each has strengths, weaknesses, talents, flaws. But they have been asked to do what they are capable of doing -- regardless of their age -- every. single. day. by a teacher who embraces the idea of a lifetime of excellence. No matter what else life may demand.

It's really that simple.

And, yes, that difficult.

Like working with the 1995 edition of Ventura.

Or making sausage.
________________________

Since most homeschooling parents were products of conventional schooling, many remain caught between two false ideas: (1) that simply because they homeschool, their kids are somehow better positioned for success and (2) that learning must be keyed to certain grades, levels, ages.

Elsewhere, I've already explored how far off the mark the first idea is, but the second... well, that brings us back to the tyranny of experts, I think -- back to all of the e-mail messages asking me, What program? What schedule? How? When? Where? As if I possess the authority to tell someone else what to teach her own child. As if, even if I possessed the authority, the expertise, that what I've done here is replicable, that it would work elsewhere.

But I am no expert on the subject of homeschooling, so I won't add my voice to the "bewildering chorus" telling you which grammar book, reading list, math schedule, foreign language, lab science, etc.

More, I'm not even an advocate of homeschooling. I'm not. Really.

All I can and will say is this: Make your own sausage. My recipe is a family secret. It begins with parenting them well. After that, well, you're on your own.

From the archives (6.14.2005):The little things

2009-10-26T10:06:00.002-05:00

The little things -- the four-leaf clovers and the crooked hearts in the summer sand.

They accrue like the interest on your someday-maybe savings account in the neighborhood bank. Slowly, steadily.

The little things -- the early-morning exclamations over new visitors to the feeder and the later-evening chorus of "I love you!"

They grow in your heart, swell like those funny, flat sponges you won at the Fourth of July fair once-upon-a-time ago.

Oh, the little things.

They crowd out worry and doubt. And fear. And they leave only the full feeling of loving and being loved.

The little things.

2009-10-24T00:01:00.000-05:00

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

"I wear it for a memorable honour...."

2009-10-23T00:01:00.001-05:00

As I wrote in this entry, Act 4, Scene III of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V wins my vote as "Most Moving."

Will you be joining Family M-mv on Sunday?

"This story shall the good man teach his son...."

2009-10-22T22:34:00.001-05:00

From Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare:

According to a legend which can be traced back no further than the eighth century, Crispin and Crispian were two brothers, Christian, living in Rome. They fled the persecution of Christians begun under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. They traveled to Soissons in what was then Gaul (later France), and there they remained in hiding, supporting themselves as shoemakers. In 286 they were found and beheaded, presumably on October 25, which became their day of commemoration. They were the patron saints of shoemakers and their day was particularly celebrated in France. And it was on October 25, 1415, that the Battle of Agincourt was to be fought.

Yes, this coming Sunday, October 25, is "call'd the feast of Crispian." Why not plan to join Family M-mv in the celebration? (Virtually, of course!) Rent, borrow, or buy Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. Air-pop some popcorn. Watch, think, learn, discuss... enjoy.

If Sunday will be your younger set's first brush with Harry -- or even Shakespeare -- you might appreciate the following M-mv entries:

■ "I was not angry since I came to France / Until this instant...." (11.04.2007)

■ Shakespeare. Yes, again. And again. (9.30.2006)

(Other bardolatry entries are collected here.)
_________________________________

From Act IV, Scene III of Shakespeare's Henry V:

King Henry:
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

And here is a clip from the film, a harbinger of the great treat in store for you this Sunday.