Wednesday Hodgepodge: A recipe for contentment

1. When you think about your future what do you fear most? Hope for the most?

"He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.

I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much;
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such.

Fulness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage:
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age."

~~ John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (Part II)

2. September is National Chicken Month. How often is chicken on the menu at your house? What's a favorite dish made with chicken? What's something you're a 'chicken' about doing or trying?

We used to have chicken quite often, but lately it's been expensive. Sometimes Mr. Fixit buys a whole small chicken and we do it in the slow cooker, with a little seasoning or maybe barbecue sauce. Lydia had a friend here for dinner on the weekend and I made Ten Napkins Sticky Chicken, something we hadn't had for a long time but that everybody likes.

You could say I am a chicken when it comes to climbing high things or going too close to the edge. Like on apartment balconies, ahem. I prefer to admire the view from inside.

3. What are three things you don't own but wish you did?

That's an interesting question. Here's Mr. Fixit's list:

"A garage with a hoist, and a 1969 Nikko amplifier."

Here's my list:

My Samsung tablet is going to need replacing soon, so that's on my wish list.

If I ever take another more-than-overnight trip, I would like to have one of the newer-style bags with a handle and wheels.

But honestly...there isn't much else. When I went to Toronto last week, I had half an hour to stroll through the big-name stores we don't have here, before heading to the subway station under the mall. When I was younger, going to that mall with my parents was a rare and special treat. Even when I lived in the city as a student, I enjoyed browsing through the shops full of things I couldn't afford.  This time, I left there thinking, "I'm glad I already like my own things." (And that wasn't just because I was heading to the Tiny Wardrobe Tour.)

4. Would you rather be a jack of all trades or a master of one? Elaborate.  If you answered one, which one?

Mr. Fixit says "Master of electronics." Which I think he is already, but he's also handy at other things.

Me...I'm not sure how to answer that. Definitely not all trades, maybe good at a couple.

5. Ketchup or mustard? On what?

Ketchup: mixed with brown sugar, baked under Leanne Ely's Upside-Down Meatloaf.

Mustard: on Oktoberfest sausage on a bun.

6.  Insert your own random thought here.

I just finished re-reading Little Women, the first part. (Like The Pilgrim's Progress, there's a lot of argument over whether you include the second part in the general title.) It wasn't a book I loved when I was growing up, although I think I did plow dutifully through it once, along with Eight Cousins and Jack and Jill. I was more of an Anne fan. This time through, I was looking for different things; and I was surprised at a few details that don't usually make it into filmed versions. The long serious conversations, mostly. The mailbox in their back yard--Alcott seemed to love that kind of detail, and there was a similar setup in Jack and Jill, where they sent "things" (we are not given all the details) in a basket across a clothesline. I also liked the picnic with their British counterparts, where every character contributes the next part of an ad-libbed story. It was a clever way for her to reinforce each one's traits and point of view.  Again, it's the sort of scene that comes up in Jack and Jill (a lengthy play-by-play of their debating society meeting and then a dramatic performance), and in An Old-Fashioned Girl (a detailed description of the conversations at a young working women's lunch). Conversations and long descriptions of what games they played or who did what on stage are the sort of thing abridgers like to axe...too long, don't move the plot...but I think they sometimes show the author at her most relaxed, and they give us some unintended but genuine "peeps" into what people of the time did and thought--when they weren't trying to be too high-minded.

Linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

Cleaning Closets with Polly and Fanny

Image found on Wikipedia

“Actually I have nothing to wear,” began Fan impressively; “I’ve been too busy to think or care till now, but here it is nearly May and I have hardly a decent rag to my back. Usually, you know, I just go to Mrs. O’Grady and tell her what I want; she makes my spring wardrobe, Papa pays the bill, and there I am. Now I’ve looked into the matter, and I declare to you, Polly, I’m frightened to see how much it costs to dress me.” ~~ An Old-Fashioned Girl, 1869

In Louisa May Alcott's novel An Old-Fashioned Girl, Polly's friend Fanny Shaw runs into serious family financial trouble, and so she asks her frugal friend for some clothes-on-a-zero-budget help.  (Longtime Treehouse readers might remember a similar chapter from Mary at the Farm.) Here is Polly's 1860's advice on using what you have.

1. Upcycling and combining, decades before Pinterest

“Now, to me your’rubbish’ looks very encouraging, because there is good material there, and not much worn-out finery, that’s my detestation, for you can’t do anything with it. Let me see, five bonnets. Put the winter ones away till autumn, rip up the summer ones, and out of three old ones we’ll get a pretty new one, if my eyes don’t deceive me.”

“I’ll rip, and then do let me see you make a bonnet, it must be so interesting,” said Maud, whipping out her scissors and eagerly beginning to reduce a shabby little bonnet to its original elements. 

2. Looking at things upside down and inside out

“Will you have the goodness to look at this?” said Fan, holding up a gray street suit faded past cure.

Polly whisked it wrong side out, and showing the clean, bright fabric, said, with a triumphant wave, “Behold your new suit; fresh trimming and less of it will finish you off as smart as ever.”

3. Taking care of what you have

“There are two; then that piqué  is all right, if you cut the tail off the jacket and change the trimming a bit. The muslins only need mending and doing up to look as well as ever; you ought not to put them away torn and soiled, my child.”

4. Saying goodbye to what can't possibly be fixed

“Can’t I do anything with this barege? It’s one of my favorite dresses, and I hate to give it up.”
“You wore that thoroughly out, and it’s only fit for the rag-bag. Yes, it was very pretty and becoming, I remember, but its day is over.” 

5. Selling what you can on consignment, or swapping with friends

“If I had lots of things like Fan, I’d have an auction and get all I could for them. Why don’t you?” asked Maud, beginning on her third bonnet.

“We will,” said Polly, and mounting a chair, she put up, bid in, and knocked down Fan’s entire wardrobe to an imaginary group of friends, with such droll imitations of each one that the room rang with laughter.

6. Stockpiling a few useful things made of good fabric (or that have good parts)

“These white muslins and pretty silks will keep for years, so I should lay them by till they are needed. It will save buying, and you can go to your stock any time and make over what you want. That’s the way Mother does; we’ve always had things sent us from richer friends, and whatever wasn’t proper for us to wear at the time, Mother put away to be used when we needed it.”

The final word:

 “Such things are great fun when you get used to them; besides, contriving sharpens your wits, and makes you feel as if you had more hands than most people.”

Are you a disciplinarian? Do you want to be one?

"By Education is a discipline, is meant the discipline of habits formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body." ~~ Charlotte Mason

Are you a disciplinarian?

Do you want to be one?

Charlotte Mason says that if she were, hypothetically, asked about discipline-that-really-means-punishment, she would say that punishment has a necessary time and place. Like medicine. A necessary evil.  She says, "But punishment, like physic, is a casualty only of occasional occurrence at the worst, and punishment and physic alike are reduced to a minimum in proportion as we secure healthy conditions of body and mind."

Oh my, the connections that pop up here.

I'll start with our middle-school standby, Uncle Eric (Richard J. Maybury).  Uncle Eric preaches against big prisons full of lots of people being punished for lots of things. For one thing, they're expensive; they eat up taxpayers' money. In his view, prevention of crime would be much more advantageous than an overdeveloped penal system. Sick societies are expensive to run. So in a healthy society, yes, we would probably have jails, but they wouldn't have a lot of inmates.

Then there's Louisa May Alcott's novel Eight Cousins. It's a good story, but it's also a mouthpiece for Alcott's views on healthy lifestyle.  Rose is being cared for by a clutch of aunts, and most of them have particular agendas for her. One in particular, gloomy Aunt Myra, insists on seeing Rose as sickly, and would use any excuse to dose her with favourite medicines. In a rather troubling aside, it's hinted that Aunt Myra may have "dosed" her own daughter to death. Clearly this is a well-meaning woman who should be given a wide berth.

But into the story comes Uncle Alec, a doctor, who takes away Rose's morning coffee, as well as her corset and her silly dresses, and makes her go out and play and build up her constitution. "Healthy conditions of body and mind."  Aunt Myra's medicines are to be avoided at all costs; but even Uncle Alec's would be reserved for actual sickness. Later in the book, Rose does catch pleurisy, ironically, when Uncle Alec pushes his "healthfulness" envelope a little too far, and Aunt Myra gets her chance to gloat...but not to medicate.

What part does Discipline play in Uncle Alec's approach to health? What part does it play in Uncle Eric's just society? We think that Uncle Alec (or Alcott) and Uncle Eric (or Maybury) would, like Charlotte Mason, say something about method vs. system.

"We have a method of education, it is true [not a system], but method is no more than a way to an end, and is free, yielding, adaptive as Nature herself. Method has a few comprehensive laws according to which details shape themselves, as one naturally shapes one's behaviour to the acknowledged law that fire burns. (Ooh, Natural Law!) System, on the contrary, has an infinity of rules and instructions as to what you are to do and how you are to do it. (Political Law?) Method in education follows Nature humbly; stands aside and gives her fair play." ~~ Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, chapter 16

"Not mere spurts of occasional punishment, but the incessant watchfulness and endeavour which go to the forming and preserving of the habits of the good life, is what we mean by discipline; and, from this point of view, never were there such disciplinarians as the parents who labour on the lines we would indicate. Every habit of courtesy, consideration, order, neatness, punctuality, truthfulness, is itself a schoolmaster, and orders life with the most unfailing diligence." ~~ C.M., same.

So yes, yes, yes, in those terms, we need to be the biggest disciplinarians that ever were!  But not in the style of Miss Norrie (Martha's old governess), but of Miss Crow instead. Like Miss Dunbar (in the tree there), in Belle Dorman Rugh's Crystal Mountain. (But not Mary Poppins, she's too tricky.) We are teaching "the good life." We are diligent to teach that spirit of the law, rather than satisfied only with the letter.

If you want to read a whole chapter of Charlotte Mason's thinking on discipline, the place to go is her Volume 2, Chapter 16.

Talents and trust, and the music chapter (Hidden Art of Homemaking, Chapter 3)

"If what we have
we believe we have gotten,
and if what we have
we believe we must hold onto,
and if what we have
is not available to others,
then we will live in anxiety.

"If what we have
we receive as a gift,
and if what we have
is to be cared for by God,
and if what we have
is available to others,
then we will possess freedom from anxiety.

"This is the inward reality of simplicity."  ~~ Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline

I get anxious about the challenges of The Hidden Art of Homemaking, from Chapter 3 on.

Because Chapter 3 is music, Chapter 4 is art, and so on.  Something definite is going to be demanded of me.

I get anxious because I don't think I have "gotten" enough talent in any of those areas to make it worth worrying about.  I get anxious because I would rather hold on to the little I have (hold on to it in private, thank you), than risk being compared with those who have serious talent.  I feel guilty because, out of the small talents I do have, I probably haven't worked hard enough on improving them.  I get anxious because I would not think of nailing leather over a barrel to make a chair.  Joyce Radway,  I am not.

But look, this is what Richard Foster is saying: 

Our creativity did not come from us.  We have not "gotten" it ourselves. It is not ours to hide under the bed with.  It is not ours to obssess over, whether we think we have enough or not enough, whether we have read enough interior design magazines or listened to enough Beethoven CDs.  It has been given to us by God, is cared for by God, and needs to be used, made available to others, in a spirit of thankfulness.

And yes, if there is no real awareness of what is dull or ugly or un-creative, or just too random in our lives; no deliberate attempt to try to improve those things, a bit at a time; then we do need to be dissatisfied, even to repent.  We don't need to set the curtains on fire in an attempt to beautify, as one of Louisa May Alcott's characters did; but we need to be open to trying. (Hmm, that didn't come out quite right--trying to celebrate creativity, not trying to start fires!)

This is one thing I have done lately about music:  bought a couple of new-to-me CDs at the thrift store.  We often have the radio on ("the radio" is a misnomer in this house--say one of many), particularly tuned to a favourite FM jazz station; but again, that is somewhat random.  What I want are a few music choices that I can put on, when I want them, and listen repeatedly.  I don't have any of those gadgets that shuffle tunes and so on--tapes and CDs will do fine, but I want to listen a bit more deliberately.  Right now I'm rotating between a Handel CD (NOT the Water Music, I've heard that way too often), a CD of lute music, and a CD of the original Quartetto Gelato members.  Here's something by QG's more recent incarnation:



Linked from The Hidden Art of Homemaking: Linky for Chapter 3, at Ordo Amoris.

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How homeschoolers do things: period.

I was pleased with Crayons' written narration of Dryope, but I did notice that her sentences and punctuation need some work.

Well, as Ruth Beechick said, find out what they don't know and teach that.

Today's English lesson:  three separate paragraphs copied from an online edition of The Secret Garden.  I copied each paragraph into a Word file twice, and then mucked up one copy of each, leaving out periods, erasing capitals and quotation marks.  I printed them out and gave them to Crayons for "editing."  After she had a go at the first one, we compared it with the original.  Oops--missed a few sentence breaks, but not too bad.  She did the same with the other two paragraphs.  I pointed out that there was one place where I might have broken a sentence in two but where the author kept it as one long sentence; that there's often room for individual choice.

I'm planning on having Crayons continue to work on this for awhile.  However, I did notice that a written narration she did later on showed much more attention to periods! (maybe too much, but we'll work on that)

JACK AND JILL, by Crayons
(from Jack and Jill, by Louisa May Alcott, chapter 7)

One day Jack and Jill were working in Jack's stamp book.  Then Frank came in.  "Jack when are you going to do your latin." he said.  "I dunno" Jack said.  Frank became angry he grabbed Jack's stamps.  "I'm not giving them back till you do your latin."  He said.  "ERRRRR" shouted Jack.