News from Hawkhill Acres

Ant Rant

2008-06-30T18:58:00.003-04:00

Lynn over at Bore Me to Tears (the blog that asks if you're an Ant trying to understand the Internet) posted about whether or not kids should be tested for knowledge and I wrote a comment that threatened to turn into a short novel, so I figured I'd better post here instead. First of all, I don't think the post at Homeschooling Research Notes that Lynn referred to in her post was talking about standardized testing, but just in case, here's a link that pretty much sums up what I think of that. I'm ag'in it, in case you don't want to click on the link.

I've read some of Rob Reich's writings and I'm ag'in what he has to say also, although I agree that he's a thoughtful, even-minded critic of homeschooling and an advocate for children and their right to autonomy. However, how he squares this with his belief that government testing would be a good idea is beyond me. How can kids learn what they want to learn if the government is testing them for what the government thinks they should know?

What happens when kids fail the tests? Knowing the government the way I do (hey, I sleep with a government worker, don't forget), I can't believe failure or low marks won't lead to more government intervention and possibly a recommendation for remedial learning in public school.

As far as Lynn's "gray area" of worrying about kids who are allowed to learn only as much math as they need to balance a checkbook, while I understand her concern and sometimes share it, I have this to say. I'd rather see that than government intervention and I don't agree that it can't be remedied if a kid decides that she wants to be a doctor or scientist. For one thing, by the time the kid is old enough for the kind of math needed for any math-intensive profession, surely said kid would have a clue that they'll need more than multiplication to be a rocket scientist. If they don't, then I question the desire for that kind of profession.

If I remember correctly, Algebra 1 doesn't really start until 4th or 5th grade and can be learned in a matter of weeks. I know this because when I was in Algebra 1, which started in 8th grade back in the 60's, I got a C-, because my teacher was a kind man who didn't want to flunk me even though I failed every test and never really got the basics so I floundered through both semesters. In 9th grade, we had Geometry which made a lot more sense to me, because I could actually see the lines and angles, unlike those mysterious X's and Y's in the Algebra formulas. (Hey, I'm an Earth sign. What can I say?)

Several years later, I realized that failing to learn Algebra still rankled, so I got an Algebra 1 course that consisted of a textbook and workbook and I slogged through it all by myself until I grasped the concepts and could pass the quizzes and tests. I've never used or thought about Algebra since I closed the workbook, but I learned it. If I did it, anyone can. There are adult classes in high schools and community colleges and online lessons for free in almost anything that a person could need to catch up on.

Daughter is another reason I don't think testing is necessary. She chokes on tests. They give her hives. If something is timed, her IQ slips twenty points and she assumes the emotional attributes of a toddler who hasn't napped, but has ingested a 5 lb bag of sugar. She's wicked smart, but we didn't find that out by testing her. I've figured it out from living with her for almost 11 years.

Those of us who have children who learn at home, whether we "teach" them or "help" them with their unschooling or just let them learn whatever they want with no guidance from anyone, know much more about our kids' intelligence, interests, capabilities, drawbacks and weak areas than any test can show. We also probably know from the time the kid is a pre-teen whether or not they'll need math for science or extra emphasis on language arts to express their love for words or art lessons instead of sports.

Testing does what public school does: It separates learning from life. It breaks down learning into neat little categories like math, reading and writing. As if you can. Life is too big for that. It's "everything" as my late son once said when asked what he was learning at home. I think the only way to "test" our children is by observing whether they're happy and engaged and interested in life. If they are, how can they help but learn what they need to know to succeed?

Welcome To The Hotel Paranoia

2008-06-25T11:13:00.002-04:00

Daughter and I recently managed to combine business, pleasure and terror in a trip to our old stamping grounds in Vermont and New Hampshire. I made some money and she added yet another stuffed animal to her collection, which now rivals the nearest Hallmark store. We also took in the sights, ate a few good meals at the beaneries of Brattleboro and stayed at a motel that wasn't too bad, once I'd cleaned the filter on the window air conditioner/heater unit and used hand sanitizer on the mold on the microfridge's freezer door. Did I mention that this was a frugal expedition?

Well, it was. The idea was to make money, not spend it, so we resisted the urge to flee to better (and more expensive) surroundings and toughed it out for a week. However, as usual, we brought our own bedding and pillows and threw the motel bedding on the floor beside the bed. Other than those few little drawbacks, the room wasn't bad and we enjoyed our stay.

Except for the bikers, who had evidently pooled their social security checks to rent most of the other rooms, the motel was kind of quiet. Evidently, the high price of gas is keeping people home. Who knows? Maybe in a few months, only bikers will be able to afford to go anywhere, so motels will be full of them. That would certainly change the look of the upscale places, especially if, like one biker we know, some of them insist on parking their bikes beside their beds.

But I digress. We were talking about mold, but I don't know why. Let's segue into the next scene where we leave Vermont and travel across New Hampshire on our way back to Maine. Let's turn on the radio and listen to the gentle strains of classical music on NPR. Then let's almost go off the road when that damned weather warning buzzer starts blatting and a hollow, cybernetic voice comes on and says that the National Weather Service in Nashua, New Hampshire has reported a tornado headed toward Northwoods at a speed of 35 mph.

Coincidentally, that's the speed I would have liked to be going at least as fast as, if I hadn't been stuck behind a pulp truck that was crawling up a hill at 20 mph and slowing down by the inch. And, even more coincidence here, folks, Northwoods was the next town on the map. Daughter is terrified of garden-variety thunderstorms, so she went into complete panic mode when she heard the warning. And I wasn't exactly as cool as some cucumbers, let me tell you.

It got worse when we looked to our left and saw two distinct funnel-shaped inky black clouds, swirling toward us. That's when we reached the top of the hill and the pulp truck began to pick up speed. It's a good thing or I would have passed it in the oncoming lane to get ahead of those clouds. As we raced down the hill, Daughter reported on the clouds, which I could see in my rearview mirror. They were still to our left and falling behind us. After another five miles, they were gone, but the sky had taken on that eerie green Wicked Witch of the West glow that so often results in houses pitching, twitching and landing on ladies wearing red stripey stockings and ruby slippers. (Talk about a fashion faux pas, no?)

Well, we made it safely to Sanford, Maine and staggered out of the car and into the first motel that we saw. At that point, the Bates Motel would have been fine with us, as long as it had four walls and a roof. So we checked in and raced into our room without even grabbing our suitcases or anything else. The sky was still very dark and there had been severe storm warnings for that area also. (I was thinking maybe it was us, bringing it with us.)

It was during a lull between bouts of thunder and lightning, that I decided to go out to the car to get a few things. That's when I met our neighbors. She was talking loudly into a cell phone and drinking from a bottle of gin. (I've never known anyone who actually drank gin. We always used it for linament and I didn't know anyone could get past the smell long enough to drink it. Live and learn, I always say.) He was wearing a shirt which said, "Where the F*** is my medication" only with no asterisks. I smiled at them and he bared his teeth and growled.

It was a long night. They made several trips to their car, totally ignoring the vivid lightning, thunder and hail that kept us awake. They also watched TV until 2 and then argued loudly for a few hours. Probably still looking for his medication and I would have gladly given him some of mine if I'd brought it with me. (Linament, that is.) Finally, around 4 a.m., they both began to snore so loudly that I thought the bikers had followed us and checked in next door.

Very early in the morning, I decided to try to shower without waking Daughter, who was exhausted, poor thing. The danged bathroom light was combined with a fan, so I just opened the curtain on the small, high window which barely gave me enough light to see my way to the shower. I opened the glass shower door, grabbed some soap and a packet of "Hotello" shampoo (all vegetarian ingredients and imported from India, no less) and prepared to figure out how to operate the shower.

This is always a challenge for me and this one was even more cryptic than most. There was a lever underneath the water temperature control that said "flow control". I had no idea what that meant, but the water was coming out in a very fine mist, almost a vapor, so I figured I'd turn the flow control up and see if I could get a little more enthusiasm out of the unit. It did seem to perk it up, but not much. It was still more mist than spray, but I stepped under it, prepared to make the best of things.

Then I immediately leapt out of the thing, almost smashing the glass door, because somehow, in spite of the fact that the spray was so mist-like, it managed to feel like tiny little needles penetrating my skin. When I turned the spray down with the flow control, it was so anemic that I couldn't get the soap off my face. I had to stand there for what seemed like hours, just to get most of the suds off and I'm sure there were still soap bubbles in places. Then I tried opening the shampoo, but my hands were slippery and I couldn't get enough traction with my fingers to rip the thing.

So, I did what any reasonable person would do to open a packet of shampoo in the Shower of a Thousand (Paper) Cuts, I grabbed it with my teeth and yanked. It not only opened, but opened with a rush of shampoo that went right into my mouth. All I could think of as I spit flowery-smelling stuff all over the shower was that I was so glad that it was all-vegetable.

There was barely enough shampoo left to wash my hair, but it still was impossible to rinse the stuff out due to the low flow situation. I either had to live with soap coating my hair or risk death from water pressure and I chose to live. When I went out into the room, Daughter was awake and very anxious to leave the No-Tel Motel behind us, so we lost no time in leaving.

Unfortunately, in our haste, Daughter left Henry the white stuffed elephant on the floor beside the bed and we got all the way home before we realized it. (As you may remember, Henry is married to Rose, the handkerchief doll and father to Valentine, another handkerchief doll, and they were, understandably, upset, according to Daughter who does voices for all of them, so she'd know.)

I called the motel manager, who said he'd found Henry but would have to have a money order before he could send him to us. We sent one off immediately and Daughter is anxiously watching the mailbox and hoping that Henry will be back with his family before many more nights. If he's not, we'll go back and get him, but it'll be a one-day round trip, let me tell you. And it won't be in tornado season, although who knew that Northern New England even HAD a tornado season? Except for Al Gore and that NASA scientist, of course.

Mercury Isn't Retrograde; It's On the Floor Next To the Bed

2008-06-09T15:21:00.001-04:00

Geekdaddy is an early adopter. If it's technical and it's available, even in Beta - especially in Beta - he's gotta have it. So when compact fluorescent bulbs came out, the geek was first in line at the power company giveaway where you could get four bulbs free. He got 'em and loved 'em. I hated 'em.

They buzzed. They flickered. I complained. "That's a problem for you?" the geek said, not understanding why anyone would object to a buzz that he can't hear anyway with his hearing or a flicker mighty like the one of his beloved computer monitor. After all, this is the man who willingly closes the door on a room that houses "The Smilodon", a computer case that smells like Love Canal used to smell on a hot August day. It gives the rest of us a headache and we're on a campaign to make him get rid of it, but in the meantime, we insist that he close the door.

He's fine with that. Just like he was fine with the buzzing, flickering CFLs that he purchased in quantity and stuck into every light in the house. I thought it was ironic that I, the green maven chez Hawkins, was asking him to stop using something that everyone from Al Gore to the EPA endorsed.

So, we compromised. We put them into some of the lights, but not the lamp next to my chair, the kitchen light or the bathroom. For them, we use long-lasting bulbs while we wait for LED technology to be ready for prime time. Apparently, that'll be a very good thing, because those environmentally-friendly CFLs contain mercury, a heavy metal group that I'm not a fan of.

Unfortunately, I DID get involved a few nights ago when the geek knocked over his bedside lamp, thereby breaking the compact fluorescent bulb which strewed mercury impregnated shards of glass all over our bedroom floor. I have to admit that Geekdaddy cleaned it up immediately and did a very thorough job of disposing of it in the approved manner, but I was still not sanguine with having mercury-bearing bulbs in my vicinity.

Then, yesterday, as I went to open a window so that I could lean out and shake my fist at the heat wave that is inflicting itself upon our usually-cool corner of Maine, I stepped on something very sharp. It was a u-shaped shard of CFL and it was wedged into my foot so tightly that I had trouble removing it and bled profusely even after it was out.

I washed my foot, applied antiseptic and then googled mercury to see if I should be worried. I found this link to a fact sheet on Mercury and CFLs, but it didn't say a mumbling word about what to do if you step on a piece of the glass. Deuced remiss of them, I think. Don't they know any geeks?

So, I emailed a friend who's up on scientific things and I also found a place where I can get a cheap test to find out how much mercury I have circulating in my blood and brain. Considering all the fish I've eaten over the years and the fact that my brother and I used to play with mercury "snakes" from broken thermometers when we were young, I'm afraid the results might be high.

You know, it's interesting that when the planet Mercury is retrograde, as it is now, astrologers say that there will be communication difficulties, because Mercury is the planet of communication, writing and speaking. While, if you get too much mercury, you may have trouble communicating because of cognitive problems and mental confusion. I can understand that mercury, also known as quicksilver, was named for the swift messenger god, Mercury. But how is it that the effects of the planet appearing to stand still in the heavens has the same effect as ingesting or absorbing the metal that's named after it?

I'm not dissing the geek's attempts to be Green. At least he's not trying to be frugal like he was when he used old motorcycle batteries for a battery-backup for his computer. That time, they started to smoke and sizzle and spark after about a week and we were treated to the spectacle of the geek dashing madly back and forth from the four batteries to the back door until he'd thrown all of them out into the snow. This time, at least, there were no flames or smoke, only toxic chemicals, so I guess I should count my blessings.

Sneaky Stinky Sticks, Mysterious Marsh Mammals, Light Nights and Dadblamed Disillusioned Daughter

2008-05-28T10:57:00.001-04:00

Throwing caution (and concern about gas prices) to the wind, Daughter and I decided to take a roadtrip yesterday to the bustling metropolis of Bangor. Home to Stephen King, a huge statue of Paul Bunyan and a pretty nice Annual Folk Festival, Bangor is also home to over 31,000 people. They're sprawled out all over Bangor's 34 square miles and - as far as I can tell - every one of them keeps their yard light on all night. What is this with the yard lights? I'm lucky in that I live in a very isolated spot with no neighbors nearer than a half mile through heavy woods, so it's nothing to me if my neighbors want to mount klieg lights on their sheds.

But for those who pile into neighborhoods together, it's getting so that night time is bright time, instead of when our eyes and bodies get a much-needed respite from bright lights. Research has shown that breast cancer rates are lower for women who sleep in darkened rooms and it just makes sense that, as mammals, we're programmed to thrive with sunny days and dark nights. Else, why would the human race have survived this far? How much longer we'll survive is anyone's guess if we keep behaving like those early humans who huddled around the fire, or kids who are afraid of the dark. Turn the lights off and go to bed, I say, and let everyone else have some restorative darkness.

But I digress. I was talking about stick insects. Well, okay, I was GOING to talk about stick insects. They're sneaky, folks, make no mistake. Did you know that they drop their eggs onto the ground where ants mistake them for seeds, carry them to their nests and eat the outsides, so that the little stick insect can get out and start a family in a new place? Yup. This may be why there are stick insects on every continent except Antartica. (And I think they just haven't looked in the right place there. They're probably lurking in one of those old boats the early explorers left behind. Take another look, scientists, and get back to us.)

Many stick insects are also stinky if you disturb them when they're dropping eggs or give them the hairy eyeball or something. The common Walking Stick, for instance, can release a toxic spray that will temporarily blind an adult. Who knew? Do you know how many of the little critters I've let walk over my arm over the years? Too many, now that I know what I know about their sneaky ways. I should have realized that anything that cons you into thinking it's part of a branch is capable of anything.

I call the marsh mammal mysterious, because it showed up outside the window of the Bangor Borders Bookstore, in a little pool. Daughter and I looked out the window to check the sky, because it looked thundery, and there was this little brown head poking out of the water. We watched, trying to figure out if it was a muskrat or a beaver, as the animal swam around, . Why a beaver should be in an area where the nearest trees are saplings is beyond me, but it looked like a beaver. The pool had an outlet that led under the road, and from there to another little drainage area that eventually hooks up with the Penjajawoc Marsh, which runs into the City Forest. (I think every city should have a forest, but, surprisingly, many don't.)

Daughter and I theorized that this might be a young, callow male beaver who was kicked out of the family home in the marsh and was trying to establish a home territory as best he could. (We're good at coming up with possible scenarios, no matter how farfetched. It's a knack we have.) Then, we saw another beaver, if beavers they were, swimming near the first one, so it looks like beavers are thriving in Bangor. That's good, because they're often chivvied from pillar to post (or aspen to apple tree, I guess would be a better analogy) when they flood roads or cut down trees people don't want cut down. Apparently, they're also prone to falling down wells (who knew?) and fall prey to birds of prey (apt, that, though unfortunate) and get run over crossing roads.

If you're ever confronted with beavers in your backyard, cutting down your Japanese Maples and flooding the veggie garden, don't panic. And, whatever you do, don't buy one of the popular but ineffective "Beaver Bafflers" or "Beaver Deceivers" that you've heard so much about. (I believe I saw William Shatner touting them on an infomercial, but it could have been something else.) No, walk right back into the house and call your local Wildlife Service or whatever you have where you live and tell them that you have a Problem Beaver. They can help you install a flow device to unflood the garden while leaving enough water around their lodge to keep the beavers happy. Relocating isn't a good idea, because other beavers will just move in or the local beaver population will explode (beavers self-regulate their numbers depending on food and nearby beaver populations), so they'll move in as fast as you move them out. Sort of the beaver version of the old game, Space Invaders. (I bet you didn't know that one Native American name for the beaver also means affable. Neither did I, but it does, which shows you what Native Americans thought of them.)

When watching marsh mammals palled, Daughter perused the books and chose one by Daisy Meadows, who is reputed to be the hottest of hot stuff with girls 8-12, who are heavily into fairy stories. I read one and it didn't do much for me. I found the writing very simple and the plot thin, not to mention that I'm not big on fairies. (If daughter knew what I know about REAL fairies like you find in Terry Pratchett books and old Celtic tales, she'd drop Daisy like a dead duck, but I figure she doesn't need to know that stuff right now.) However, I don't censor what Daughter reads and we always discuss the books, so we talked about Daisy Meadows' ouvre on the way home.

This morning, Daughter googled Daisy Meadows to find her web site and was not amused by what she found. The yowls brought me up from my basement study. (Let's not forget that Daughter is the child who suffers from Dramatic Fever from time to time.) She was yowling because she found out that "Daisy Meadows" doesn't exist. Four authors, including the woman who wrote "Bend It Like Beckham" of all people, write the books. That doesn't surprise me. I figure they saw a chance to grab a piece of the pre-teen fairy lovers market, probably when they were having coffee in their publisher's cafeteria, and ran with it. However, now Daughter isn't sure that she wants to read any more Daisy Meadows books, so they may have lost a reader who buys a lot of their books. Or not. The pull of fairies is strong. Oddly enough, it's the same in Pratchett novels, only he writes much better than Daisy Meadows, even with the beginnings of Early-Onset Alzheimer's. But that's another, and much sadder, story.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Life With a Feller-Buncher or Why I'm Not So Chipper

2008-05-20T11:06:00.000-04:00

I’ve had a headache for three days now. It’s one of those pounding at the temples, vise grip around the forehead, hot pokers in the eyes kind of deals, but at least it’s a Green Headache. Yes, folks, I’ve gone completely eco-freak and now have an environmentally-correct headache. And it’s certainly sustainable, because it’ll probably be here for at least three weeks.

With the guidance of a forester, we finally decided to selectively cut and improve the mix of hardwoods and softwoods on our sixty acres, before any more succumb to wind, weather and other trees falling on them. We have some nice old trees, but we also have - as they say in Maine - a mess of popple (poplar) and they’re taking over and so are the wild cherries that are so attractive to tent caterpillars.

We’ve had woodcutters look at it before, but they wanted all of the trees or nothing and we weren’t about to clearcut the place. We have too many animals and birds depending on our woods for food and shelter and we have no wish to look out at a bare back forty that’s eroding away toward the swamp.

But now, with biomass boilers and wood pellet stoves popping up all over the place, things have changed. We had no problem finding someone to selectively cut the place, with a contract and oversight from the state. So we signed on the dotted line, sent the paperwork into the state and it was a done deal. We’re even going to make some money out of it. Not a fortune, but maybe enough to pay part of next year’s fuel bill. Or fill up the gas tank in the plow truck.

It was pretty exciting when they drove their feller-buncher into the yard, followed by a skidder (ours is a high-end grapple skidder) and something that I assume is a de-limber, because that’s what it does to full-sized trees, which it picks up in its claw. There’s another piece of equipment which may be a Rottine Forwarder, but don’t quote me on that. I’m not Paulette Bunyan. (By the way, in England, they call de-limbing “snedding” which sounds kind of x-rated, doesn’t it? I can just see the old man on the park bench on Laugh-In asking Gladys Ormsby if she wants to sned.)

However, after a few hours of machinery whining and growling, and trees crashing to the ground, the novelty wore off and the headache started. It got a lot worse the next day when the chipper showed up. If you follow the link and scroll down the page to “other” you’ll find that there are very large chippers that handle whole trees and have knives that shred the trees against an anvil. They don’t call it an anvil in the wiki, but that’s what our woodcutter calls it and he’d know.

I think that’s ironic (no pun intended) for anyone who was alive during the heyday of the Excedrin commercial that used a little animated graphic of a hammer pounding an anvil to illustrate the kind of headache pain it could cure. I don’t use Excedrin. I hardly ever use any painkillers, except when I overdo the gardening and have a sore back for a couple of days, and then I take a couple of valerian before I go to bed.

Valerian didn’t touch this headache, so I tried Ibuprofen. I won’t say the headache laughed at it, but it snickered up its sleeve and it still hurt. I’m not going to take anything stronger, so I guess my options are pretty narrow. I can stay here and listen to it or go to the library and use my laptop there. However, with the price of gas, that kind of deflates our profit. And did I mention that they show up at 5 and work until almost 7? Yup. They’re behind because of the weather and have to finish this up so they can keep other commitments, or leave it half-finished and come back when they can.

After twenty years in Maine, I know better than to tell someone to stop a project and get back to us later, so there’ll be a feller-buncher in the back-forty for almost a month. If my posts stop, check the local psychiatric facility bar Day’s Inn. After this, I think I’ll be so traumatized that I’ll shy away from bonsai plants at the local nursery and give up pruning my roses. Who knew that being green could be such a headache?

A Clique of Clicks

2008-05-16T11:00:00.000-04:00

If, like me, you were dying to know the difference between a marsh, a swamp and a bog, here’s a link that will sort it all out for you before your next nature walk. If, on the other hand, you’re sound on wetlands, but somewhat confused about our winged insect buddies’ private lives, this site will explain why that old Don Ameche movie was called “Cocoon” rather than “Chrysalis”.

If you’re sick of the same-old, same-old browser and would like something much snazzier, which makes blogging so easy-peasy that you may be inspired to start several more blogs, I urge you to consider my new blog of choice, Flock.

I have the Eco version, but the orginal version is great for anyone who likes the idea of posting to their blog(s) within their browser, being able to share photos, feeds, media streams or anything else seamlessly and effortlessly and so much more that I haven’t even explored it all yet. I’m a big Firefox fan. I’ve been using it since the Mozilla dragon was an egg, which may be why I like Flock so much. It’s built on the Firefox framework and seems to like all the Firefox extensions and add-ons I’ve stuck onto it so far. I especially like the keypad scrambler that encrypts my keystrokes at the kernel level and the “no-flash” option which turns flash into little icons that I can turn on or not, as I wish.

When you tire of playing with Flock, may I suggest you learn a new language or brush up on the ones you slept through in high school at Mango Languages. Like the web site says, “Don’t mangle a language, mango it.”

With a foreign language under your belt, perhaps you’d like to try your hand at some art. For the art-impaired like me or someone young, Carmine’s Landscape Adventure is just the ticket. I opted for the sleepy landscape, but you could go for adventure or a landscape that shows the weather.

Art is nice, but knowledge is power. If, to your chagrin, you find one day that your almost-adult son doesn’t know the fifty states and their capitals, or, worse yet, that you don’t, take heart. Most Americans don’t know how many states there are, never mind their names and major cities. You can learn everything you need to know about the 50 states at any of the web sites on this page. And with that I’ll leave you and return to satisfying my curiosity via the Net. Happy surfing.

The Good Vibrations Tour

2008-05-08T13:45:00.001-04:00

(From the WP version of News From Hawkhill Acres)

We’re back from wallowing in the (somewhat limited because it’s not tourist season) fleshpots of coastal Maine. It was a really nice break from dealing with what winter has done to our house, driveway and psyches. And speaking of Crystal Energy Healing Power (just seeing if you’re paying attention), did you know that amethyst is supposed to help with anxiety, sleeplessness and symptoms of ADD/ADHD? Well, according to the proprietor of a little shop we visited where shelves of precious and semi-precious stones and crystals attracted my crow-like children’s eyes, it is.

It’s no secret that both of my kids and my dh have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. However, after living with the effects of ADD for lo these thirty years (in June), I can’t help but wonder why it’s called Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD instead of Attention Surfeit Syndrome or … Ah, maybe that’s why. After all, everyone I know who has the diagnosis has no problem paying attention. Give them something they’re interested in and you can’t tear their attention away. Put them in a room where there’s a lot going on and they’ll pay attention - to everything at once - which effectively means that they don’t pay attention to anything.

I have the opposite of ADD, whatever that is. I can focus on anything unless there’s a full-blown melee going on or someone is throwing food at me, so, I don’t need an amethyst crystal to help me keep my mind on what I’m doing. Daughter, on the other hand, who has trouble sleeping to the point where she’s been known to waken and run to the window several times a night in the autumn when the leaves are falling, because one fell outside her window, does need an amethyst or anything else that will help her relax and get those zzz’s that are so necessary to her well-being. (Not to mention that when she doesn’t sleep, I don’t sleep.)

So we got an amethyst and she put it under her pillow in the motel room and it worked. She slept like a top. That, of course, led to a discussion of whether there really is anything to the whole “crystal energy healing” that the shopkeeper talked about while we were there. My theory, and I always have one, is that there might be something to it, because of vibrations.

Physics teaches us that everything in the known universe vibrates constantly. Every piece of matter and anti-matter, including the matter that makes up the human body, is moving at a frequency of its own. (Of course, with humans, you tend to notice it more when they’ve had a lot of coffee.) So why shouldn’t crystal vibrations have an effect on humans?

While I don’t want to teach my kids that every cockamamie theory that New Age devotees come up with makes sense, I don’t want them to have closed minds either. And, of course, there’s the ol’ placebo effect. My feeling is that why it works makes very little difference as long as it does work. If Daughter sleeps better because she thinks the amethyst helps her sleep, then it’s helping her sleep.

Coincidentally, my brother sent me some large chunks of salt crystals for my birthday. They’re supposed to help clear positive ions from the vicinity of computers and electronics OR you can take a bath with them in the water and it relaxes you. I opted for the clearing the air wheeze and have two of them next to my PC. I can’t tell if they’re generating any negative ions, but they sure are pretty and soothing to look at. (And in a pinch, I could break a little piece off and sprinkle it onto my sandwich if I forget to salt it before I bring it downstairs from the kitchen.)

Besides absorbing crystal lore, we spent some time beach combing and also visited The Farnsworth Art Museum, home of the Wyeth collection. Both of my young artists were inspired, so after the museum we went to a really well-stocked art supply store in Camden and bought enough oil pastels, oil paints, paper and brushes to equip all three of the Wyeths. We walked around Camden until we felt like we lived there. We had several really good meals and the kids loaded up on cable TV, because we don’t have much TV at all at home.

The only downside to our trip was that my usual bad hotel karma was working. We had booked our hotel from Wednesday night to Wednesday morning, so I was flummoxed when the bill slid under our door on Saturday afternoon. When I talked to the manager about it, he said he’d understood that we wanted the room for four nights and had already reserved that particular room for someone else, so we’d have to take a smaller room with double beds rather than queen-sized beds if we stayed.

We decided to spend our last two nights in Bangor, so I made a reservation at a motel there, telling them that we wanted a “quiet room with two queen beds on the first floor.” The woman I talked to said there’d be no problem with that. However, when we arrived and went to the desk, another woman told us that we had a room with two double beds.

“But, I specifically asked for queen-sized beds,” I told her.

“Well,” she said, sounding as if I should know this, “There ARE no rooms with queen beds on the first floor. They’re all doubles.”

“Okay,” I said, “Then how about something on the second floor.”

She said that was doable, so we got our keys and headed up to our room. It was spacious, clean and quiet, so we brought our bags up and were unpacking when a horrendous whining noise broke out in the room next to us. It sounded like about a hundred dentists drilling at once. We all looked at each other in shock. I phoned down to the front desk and asked the desk clerk what the heck was going on and she told me that some repairmen were fixing a light, but they’d be done soon.

Two hours later, they were done and we settled down to some peace and quiet. We sent out for pizza, watched a little TV and went to bed, only to be awakened at 11:30 by the new occupants of the room next door (we were calling it Hell Room by this time). They seemed to consist of about twelve toddlers and seven yappy little dogs, but at breakfast the next morning, we met them and it was two toddlers, an infant and one yappy little dog with ADHD. Boy, could that crew have used some amethysts.

Yea, Nay, What the Hey

2008-05-08T13:43:00.001-04:00

(From the WP version of News From Hawkhill Acres)

Somewhere in the bible there’s a recommendation that you “let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.” I believe this was an admonition against swearing as in “I swear to high heaven I did NOT take the last cookie. It must have been the aliens that swooped down and sucked it up with their ray gun.” For some reason, god had a thing about people using oaths or embellishing their yeses and noes.

Well, I can relate to that. I decided a couple years ago that I was going to do everything within my power to say “yes” instead of “no” to my kids, even though my genetic makeup leans toward the other model of parenting. That would be the parenting style where you automatically say “no”, no matter what your progeny asks you, on the basis that whatever they ask you is a bad idea and will lead to tears, bruises, a mess or time behind bars.

When my youngest son died suddenly, I realized that the parenting style that I had been raised with wasn’t the way I wanted to raise my two remaining kids. If I had realized what a lousy parenting style it was, I would have dispensed with it when we acquired our first kid, but we can’t go back and do this parenting wheeze over, unfortunately.

So, from 2006 on, I’ve done a pretty good job of saying “yes” to almost everything my kids have asked of me. Luckily, I have pretty sensible kids. They seldom ask me if they can do things that are dangerous or expensive or extremely time-consuming. But yesterday, my son asked me something that I couldn’t say “yes” to and it’s bothered me ever since.

He’s 18 and his two best friends are 17. They have their licenses. He has his permit. They were all going to a movie and he asked me if he could ride with his friends. I didn’t even have to think. I said, “No, I’m sorry but you can’t.” He said he understood and gave me a hug and a kiss and went upstairs to bed, but I could tell that he was disappointed. Why wouldn’t he be?

Today, his friends pulled up to the movie theater in Josh’s little red car with the bumper sticker that reads, “Don’t piss me off. I’m running out of room to bury the bodies.” Never mind that Josh is a nice kid who gets straight A’s, babysits his little sister and has never given his parents a moment of worry. The bumper sticker says it all. “I have a license, a car and a healthy level of testosterone.” Showing up in the passenger seat of your Mom’s SUV with your little sister in the backseat just doesn’t cut it.

I’m really sorry. I wish I could see my way clear to letting Son ride with his friends. If they had been driving for a year longer, I’d give it my blessing. If Son had enough hours in to get his license and had passed his road test, I’d loan him my car and he could show up driving a vehicle and be on a par with his friends.

But, for now, he’s just going to have to put up with being driven around by his mom. It makes for some awkward moments and adds several trips a week to my schedule, but it beats lying awake nights wondering if I’ll be getting a call from the State Police. There’ll be plenty of time for him to give me gray hair when he gets his license in a couple of months. Of course, what with the price of gas, he’ll be lucky if he can afford to drive past the mailbox.

And speaking of driving, we’re driving to the coast of Maine for a two week vacation. This blog will be on hiatus until we get back. I’ll probably have a lot to blog about, seeing as how Son and Daughter and I will be sharing a motel room and Daughter and I will actually be sharing a queen-sized bed. Don’t miss the next exciting installment of “As the Clamworm Turns, A Maine Idyll” or something like it.

Shifting From Park To a Low Idle

2008-05-08T13:39:00.001-04:00

(From the WP version of News From Hawkhill Acres)

One spring ritual around here is the April visit to the Dodge dealer to get the ol’ Durango sorted out after a season of driving up and down the rutted washboard formerly known as our private road. It was great when the warranty was still in effect, but the odometer hit 100K in March, so this time we’d have to pay. I was going to skip the whole thing, but then we got a safety recall notice on it, so the geek, who works nearby, dropped it off one morning.

I had his weak excuse for a vehicle, which is even more decrepit now that I backed into it last weekend. In my defense, he’d parked it within two feet of my rear bumper, almost blocking me in between it and the garage. But in his defense, it was one of those deals where I came out, looked at his car behind mine, got into my car, started it, looked in back of me and crashed right into the sucker.

How I could miss a whole car is troubling, unless you take into account that I was being yakked at by a ten yr old who just got “Disney Friends” for the Nintendo DS and has to tell me all about Stitch, Pooh, Dory and Simba’s doings whenever we get into the car. Why she saves it up until then is a mystery to me, as is so much of my interactions with other people, including Geekdaddy’s surprisingly gracious reaction when I went in to tell him that the Durango’s trailer hitch had gouged several huge holes in the Taurus’s front bumper.

His only concern was that the airbags hadn’t gone off and once I assured him that they hadn’t, he gave it a brief, unconcerned look and went back to blogging about union matters and Daughter and I went on our way to town.On our way, we picked up the mail and there was the recall notice for the Dodge. And that’s how Geekdaddy ended up calling me the next Monday afternoon to tell me that there was a little problem with my car.

“Well, it’s not unsafe anymore,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it couldn’t get any safer. It’s so safe that you can’t possibly get into an accident, because you can’t drive the thing. They can’t get it out of Park.”

He went on to tell me that the head mechanic was working on it, but if he couldn’t get the shift to move, the dealership would rent a car and deliver it to the geek at the computer mine where he works. However, about an hour later, he drove into the driveway in the Durango. Obviously, there’d been a paradigm shift. Or a shift of some kind.

He said the dealership had called another dealership or something and had figured out how to get the shift to move out of Park without stripping any gears or shredding any metal, which is a good thing when you’re dealing with transmissions. No harm was done. There was no charge and the Dodge was once more fit for duty.

The thing I found the most ironic about the whole thing has to do with the reason we brought it in. The safety recall was to fix a problem that Durangos have with jumping out of Park. Odd that the repair seemed to create the opposite problem of not being able to get it out of Park at all.

There’s probably some kind of deep message there, I’m sure, about balance or yin and yang or something philosophical like that. However, I don’t have time to go into it right now, because I have to call the Dodge dealer and ask them to come tow my car in so they can get it out of Park, where the shift is stuck apparently permanently, albeit it safely, in the driveway.

Yikes! It's the End Times! Again.

2008-05-08T13:35:00.001-04:00

(From the the WP version of News From Hawkhill Acres)

Somehow, without me even noticing, it’s time for our end-of-year review once again. This is where I tell our reviewer, a fellow homes schooler who holds a teaching certificate, what the kids have learned this year and how they’ve made progress, which is all that’s necessary in the state of Maine, thank goodness. This is also where I suddenly realize that they haven’t learned anything or made any progress since the last review, because all they’ve done for a solid year is play computer and video games, argue and goof off.

Of course, I could always say that they’ve become skilled at applied technology, rhetoric and creative time-management. It’s true, but I’d like to think that I don’t have to fudge to satisfy the “making progress” requirement and I’d also like to reassure myself that this unschooling wheeze is working. So, I cast my mind back over the year and look for instances of learning experiences, but it’s really hard to pin them down and isolate them.

The trouble with trying to assess unschooling is that it’s such an organic process. Because we’ve gone to the extremely relaxed (practically boneless) end of the unschooling spectrum, I don’t assess the kids’ progress, except in the holistic way of being aware that they’re maturing and changing and gaining knowledge. Where some of my more “schooly” friends can tell you what reading or math level their kids are at, I have no idea if mine are ahead, behind or level with other same-age kids. All I know is that they read a heck of a lot.

I can, however, tell you that they can figure out what they need and want to figure out when it comes to math. Sit my daughter down in front of a Webkinz page and she can instantly tell you how much the one she wants costs, complete with shipping and how long it will take for her to save up for it at $2/wk, how much quicker she could get it if we increased that by fifty cents and how many months, weeks, days and minutes it is until her birthday if she has to wait until then because we won’t loan her what she needs to get it now.

Son uses math of all sorts in his drawing and has been responsible for several of my after-lunch naps, when he’s explained the Golden Mean of Art or some such and exactly which ratio he’s used for each of the ten drawings of heads and shoulders he’s working on at the moment. As my chin hits my sprouted rye with ham and Swiss sandwich, I see that there’s absolutely no reason to worry about his grasp of fractions and I also realize that after-lunch math is still putting me to sleep, just as it did back in 8th grade algebra.

Unfortunately, or probably fortunately in some cases where sanity is something the people value, none of the folks who evince concern about my kids’ academic prowess live with us, so they don’t experience the day-to-day evidence that unschooling is working on all levels for Daughter and Son. For some reason, almost every time we run into any of these doubters, my kids seem to come all over witless.

We’ll be at the park, having a good old time, when Daughter gets a piece of grass in her eye. As another mother, who’s a former science teacher, holds her, I try to get the grass out, whereupon Daughter shrieks that it’s going inside her head and will get into her brain, thereby showing a complete lack of knowledge vis a vis the structure of the eye, which all the other kids there learned when they were toddlers, and which Daughter knows, but forgets in times of trauma.

Or Son, who is trying to be more independent, with my blessing, tells the woman at the pharmacy that his birthdate is March 29th and she asks him, “what year is it?” and he looks at me in terrified appeal. It’s only after we leave the poor woman, who is valiantly trying not to laugh, that Son explains that he didn’t know whether she meant “what year is your birthday” or “what year is this” or something completely different involving prescriptions and pharmacies that he didn’t understand. It doesn’t help that we’ve chatted to that particular clerk about how wonderful unschooling is, nor would it help to explain that it was a lack of confidence in successfully completing a new interaction, rather than a lack of IQ that was in play there.

Just to make myself feel better, I sat down the other night and made a stream-of-consciousness list of what I’m aware of that the kids learned this year. I know I didn’t catch everything, because half the time I don’t know that they’ve learned something until they surprise me with it by telling me something I don’t know. Like the time Daughter told me that Killer Whales aren’t whales; they’re Dolphins. Good thing I didn’t put money on it, because she’s right. (I still maintain that they should rename them Killer Dolphins. Just to make things clearer.)

Anyhow, my list ran to several pages for each of them by the time I was done and included books they’ve read, videos and tv shows we’ve watched, radio shows and podcasts we’ve listened to, museum trips, field trips (although every time we leave the house it’s a field trip, I guess), conversations with all kinds of people and the Democratic Caucus for Son, newscasts we watch together and then discuss and probably about a million or so questions that sent one or all of us off to the library, the computer or a friend who might know the answer.

Then there’s the stuff that they’ve learned from their friends, the medieval dances and (in Son’s case) the fighting in armor from the Society for Creative Anachronism we belong to, not to mention the feasts in costume and the other SCA events which include Medieval Arts and Sciences such as fiber arts, painting and crafts. There’s the music they listen to and Son makes with his saxophone, the drawing and (in Daughter’s case) the photography and writing. Their blogs. The housework, cooking, personal care and chores they’ve learned to be responsible for, unlike most of their friends who are told that “school is your job” and who can’t cook a meal or do their own laundry without help.

I guess for people who are used to testing kids against other kids based on what a group of adults thinks they should know at a certain age, assessing my kids’ progress in life would be very difficult. It’s like the different results you get from painting freehand or painting by the numbers. You can get a nice picture either way, but my kids do much better when they create their own picture . They need more control over their lives and education than public school allows.

So, that’s why I’m temporarily flummoxed every spring, trying to put down on paper what I know in my heart. My kids are making progress, although maybe not the progress that they’d make in school where they were miserable. They’re learning all the time and as a friend of mine says, they’re more like human becomings than human beings, just like all of us. That’s progress.

Eat Your Letters

2008-05-08T13:26:00.001-04:00

(Okay, I give up, no one is going to the wordpress blog, so I'll keep posting to this one in addition to that one. Sheesh!)

We stopped getting the daily paper sometime last year shortly after we figured out that, if we didn’t cut expenses, we’d be using newspapers for fuel thanks to the rising cost of oil. Now, I buy one when the mood strikes me as it did yesterday. I’ve always read most of the paper, but now that I only get one once in awhile, I find myself reading all of the paper, right down to the legal notices and police blotter. (But not, of course, The Phantom cartoon strip. Why is the racist thing still in the paper? But, I digress.)

Yesterday, there were two things that struck me. In the police blotter, there was a paragraph about a young man who had held up a grocery store with a bloody syringe. Horrifying enough, but what the paragraph seemed to dwell on the most was the fact that he was also charged with “committing robbery while concealing his face from the victims.”

I don’t know what they tack on to your prison sentence for that charge, but to me it smacks of penalizing someone for being intelligent. What, is there a rule book somewhere that you can look up the rules of robbery and see if it’s “cheating” to hide your face? To me, it’s right up there with “the rules of war” and “giving deer a sporting chance” by not using bait to toll them in.

I guess I’m just a simple soul, because it seems obvious to me that it’s part and parcel of being a miscreant to hide your face, just like it’s inherent to cats to sneak up on their prey, which we call sneaky, rather than rushing up with a lot of noise, which cats call starving. And when humans feel that they have to resort to war, the rules of human interaction have already broken down and the two sides should just get it over as soon as possible and have it over.

Making rules for killing people is ridiculous, except for the one that they used to have back in the good old days before guns, when armies met away from civilians and fought it out with each other. A better rule for war would be that the people who want the wars (and Homeland Security will no doubt be calling me on this one), such as the Neo-con chickenhawks in Washington, should fight the wars. They could bring their friends and the talk-show hosts who urged people to vote for them.

The other interesting item I saw in the paper - you remember the paper? - was a Notice of A Request For Permission To Enlarge a Suit. I mean this anti-obesity campaign is all very well and good, but really! Turns out it wasn’t what I thought at all but rather a bank trying to get more time to notify someone about a foreclosure. (I wonder if they’ve checked the homeless shelters?)

However, it did tie in with something I saw in a magazine. I believe it was Woman’s World, this week’s issue. It’s the “S” diet and it’s taking the weight-loss world by storm. Apparently, it’s so simple that a tubby child could do it. You simply eat 3 meals a day with no seconds, snacks or sweets - except on days that start with s. That would be Saturday and Sunday, so you can pig out on weekends.

I was on a similar diet this winter, only it was the “Y” diet. I could eat what I wanted, but only on days that end in y. For some reason, I didn’t lose an ounce, but rather gained about 15 pounds. I figured it was water weight, so I went on that diet where you drink a gallon of water everyday. You know, the “P” diet, but that didn’t work either, although I drank water with every meal and snack. Must have been six or eight times a day and even with my midnight snack.

So then I figured I’d try another letter. I googled letter diets and came up with the “W” diet which I followed faithfully for almost two weeks, until I went back to the web site and read the thing more thoroughly (I’d only skimmed it the first time) and realized that the diet was for skinny folks and guaranteed to “double you” in a year. Geez, that would explain why I needed a whole new wardrobe - including socks!

I’m no quitter though (especially when it comes to finishing dessert) so I continued to look for ways to cut down on the calories. I was overjoyed when I found “The Knitting Diet”, because I’m an avid knitter. The theory was that no one could knit and eat at the same time, so keeping your hands busy with knitting projects would just automatically cut out 250 calories a day. It’s a nice theory, but it doesn’t explain how I ended up with 12 pairs of socks, all with large chocolate stains on them.

Nope, I’m afraid I’m going to have to go on the only weight-loss plan that’s ever worked for me. I’m going to have to eat sensibly and move around more. I don’t know what the letter is for that - maybe the S and M diet? Anyhow, I’ve started using my gazelle exercise machine in the morning, planning what I’m going to eat for the day instead of just randomly grabbing whatever looks good and doesn’t take long to prepare, and I’m back on the ol’ cranberry juice spritzers instead of wine, except for two glasses on Friday night with two slices of pizza.

I figure by the time the snow is gone, I’ll be down ten pounds and maybe we can just let the last five pounds slide. Hey, we’re down to two feet and we even have bare patches that are big enough for a robin to stand and look disgusted in, so I guess I’d better get going with the ol’ diet. I don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to get me Permission to Enlarge.

What Is The Sound Of One Voice Arguing?

2008-04-02T09:07:00.002-04:00

Read the post AND for goodness' sake, update your bookmark to the wordpress site, okay? I'm going to stop leaving reminders here as of 4/25/2008. That's when I'll turn 57 and be too old to keep up with two versions of anything.

Seeing Things, Hearing Things and Doing the Groucho Crouch

2008-03-28T11:42:00.002-04:00

READ THE POST

I'm Worried About This Manifold Destiny Thing

2008-03-19T16:40:00.001-04:00

Have you ever noticed how the more there is to worry about, the more people tell you not to worry? For instance, if you tell a good friend that you have a funny pain in your head and your arm keeps going numb, do they ever tell you to worry about a brain tumor, even though those are two of the symptoms of one? Nope. The first thing they say is, “Don’t worry. READ THE REST OF THIS SCINTILLATING POST.

When Your Biological Clock Goes Off, Sometimes You Should Hit the Snooze Button

2008-03-17T07:20:00.002-04:00

It must be a trend. Three people have told me recently that they're trying to figure out if they're ready to have kids. One of them is barely more than a kid, herself, so I hope she decides to wait awhile. The other two are both in their thirties, so I suppose they're thinking that time is running out, but I hope they take a while to think about it in spite of the time crunch. READ THE REST OF THIS SCINTILLATING POST.

Get All the News From Hawkhill Acres at Alltop.com

2008-03-11T11:50:00.002-04:00

I was going to post later this week about Guy Kawasaki's new site www.alltop.com, because it's fast becoming the place I go to whenever I have to research anything. (Okay, that includes when I have to research READ THE REST OF THIS SCINTILLATING POST

I Am NOT Cranky!

2008-03-08T11:29:00.001-05:00

Just because I’ve been a little irritable lately, what with having the flu for over a week, a couple of family members have accused me of being cranky. Me? Cranky? No way. I defy anyone to show one instance of crankiness that wasn’t justified by what I’ve gone through lately.

First of all, it’s not easy to be Susy Sunshine when you’ve been coughing almost constantly for two weeks. Add in a fever, sore throat, body aches so bad that my earlobes hurt and my eyelashes are numb, and it’s obvious that any slight hint of irritation that I exhibited was absolutely understandable. READ THE REST OF THIS SCINTILLATING POST.

Weaving Peace as Opposed to Waging War

2008-03-03T10:27:00.002-05:00

Who doesn't remember Sparta and Athens, those city states which were so easy to study because they were direct opposites. Well, at least they were the way history was taught in the early sixties when we labored over dioramas of burly athletes trouncing skinny guys in togas. I remember that we touched lightly on Aristophanes and his plays, including Lysistrata. If I recall correctly, we had an unmarried, rather prim and proper teacher that year and she was so vague about the whole thing, that I came away with the feeling that Lysistrata and the women of Athens had quit cooking supper for their husbands, thus bringing about an almost-immediate end to the Peloponnesian War. I remember thinking, "Wow, those Greek guys really liked their chow!" READ THE REST OF THIS SCINTILLATING POST

Unschooling Through the Instamatic Flu

2008-02-26T09:34:00.002-05:00

Well, I don't know if it's really Instamatic Flu that I have, but I'm Sick. When I mentioned it in an email to a fellow homeschooler, she sympathized and said she understands how hard it is to be sick when your kids are at home, rather than at school. I started to agree and then I thought a minute and realized READ THE REST OF THIS SCINTILLATING POST AT THE NEW WORDPRESS VERSION OF NEWS FROM HAWKHILL ACRES

Why Is The Shortest Month of the Year So Long?

2008-02-20T10:46:00.003-05:00

Around this time of year, I think we all get a little cranky. In Maine, we call it cabin fever and it leads to headlines like Woman Grabs Salad Tongs, Slathers Six. (In more urban areas, it’d be Woman Grabs Ax, Slays Six.) What with the snow, the short days, the frost heaves, potholes, high heating costs and the pounds we’ve packed on since November, clinical depression is about one whoopie pie away for some of us.
READ THE REST OF THIS SCINTILLATING POST AT THE WORDPRESS VERSION OF NEWS FROM HAWKHILL ACRES

Does The Marriage Bed of Satan Have A Memory Foam Mattress?

2008-02-14T08:19:00.001-05:00

As usual, Daughter and Son and I went to the library last Monday. While there, I perused the new books and had a hard time finding anything at all to read, so I browsed the stacks and found a couple of ancient books that looked intriguing but turned out to be more like bible tracts than books when I read them later. Daughter, on the other hand, found a stack of books and was already putting them into her cloth bag when I joined her in the children's room.

Now, some of my relatives and a couple of friends, have criticized me for not monitoring my kids' reading material. When I was a kid, one of my late mother's church lady friends told me that reading the wrong kind of books when you're a kid leads just one step closer to the Marriage Bed of Satan, a phrase that pops into my mind when Son takes out books with covers that show warrior women wearing the latest in leather bikinis. But I still let them read what they want to read.

Daughter's reading tastes are, like mine, varied and eclectic, and tend to run in spurts. Lately, she's been reading a lot of American Girls, Ranger Rick and Discover for Kids magazines, joke books and her constant favorite: animal encyclopedias. Son, on the other hand, enjoys a range of non-fiction, but only sci-fi and fantasy fiction. Lucky for him, fantasy seems to be the genre du jour lately and he also found bushels of books. So we were all booked up and went home to read our heads off.

A few days later, while I was working at the PC and Daughter was reading on the couch behind me, I heard mutters and mumbles and exasperated sighs. When Daughter sighs, work is impossible. If Tolstoy had been blessed with a daughter like Daughter, War and Peace would have been a shopping list. However, I'm not writing War and Peace, although it feels like it sometimes when ideas won't come, so I turned to her and asked what was wrong.

"Her father's a jerk," she said.

"Whose father?" I asked her.

"Elizabeth, the girl in this book I'm reading. He's really mean. First he's nice and then he's not nice. And her stepmother is a wimp. She says she'll help and then she says she's too busy to even see Elizabeth. And I think he killed Elizabeth's mother. Elizabeth thinks so too."

This did NOT sound like an American Girl. Well, unless the latest AG takes place in Prohibition Era Chicago and Elizabeth's daddy is a gangster. I didn't think that was likely, so what the heck was my ten year old reading that had this level of domestic violence in it?

"Are you sure about her father killing her mother?" I asked. "Maybe you read it wrong?"

Sometimes, Daughter's attention wanders and she misses facts and the odd sentence or two in books, although she's a very good reader otherwise. This is one of the reasons she learns at home - so that someone else can fill in those little gaps. Like when she read the book about American government, but couldn't answer the question about why we have an electoral college. Oh wait, that was me! Well, anyhow, she misses things sometimes.

"I'm going to go back to the beginning and read the part where she talks about her mother dying," she said, "Maybe that'll help."

So she did and it helped.

"Yup, he killed her. Killed a bunch of his other wives too. What a jerk."

Light dawned.

"What's Elizabeth's father's name?" I asked.

"Henry Vee or Vie. It's V-I-I-I but I don't know how to pronounce it. What a jerk."

So there you have it, folks. Daughter's pithy but accurate review of Henry VIII. And they say unschooling kids can't do book reports. Hah! Later Daughter finished the book and treated me to a scathing, but realistic report on most of the Tudors and a couple of the Stuarts with a short but compelling airing of her views on Phillip of Spain, who was, according to Daughter, also a jerk.

If your daughter or son would like some painless - and actually enjoyable - history lessons, sashay to the shelf in your local library that has The Royal Diaries, published by Scholastic. And if, like me, your library books of the week turn out to be clinkers, the Royal Diaries aren't bad for a quick read after the kids go to bed. I've just finished Kazunomiya, Prisoner of Heaven, Japan 1858 so Daughter will be reading it today. I wonder what public place we'll be in when she asks me what concubines are.