Wednesday Hodgepodge: Seasons of Change

1. Thursday (September 22) is the first official day of autumn in this part of the world...how will you welcome the season? I know some of you have been celebrating way too early, but it's official now so permission granted. House Beautiful recently listed ten ways to make your home smell like fall (you can read the list here) What's a scent you love this time of year and how will you add it to your home?

I think of the scent of baking with spices: apple cake, gingerbread, cinnamon rolls. But one of the Squirrels has developed a sensitivity to cinnamon (and, to a lesser extent, ginger), so I am trying to accommodate that. Actually, after such a long hot summer when I couldn't do much baking at all, the smell of any kind of baking makes it feel like fall. Banana muffins would do it.

Slow Cooker Applesauce Cake, linked here

2. Apple pie or pumpkin pie? Apple cake or pumpkin bread? Warm apple cider or a pumpkin spice latte?

See #1; I'd take just about any of those things except maybe for the latte. I've posted recipes for almost all of them on the blog over the years.

3. Do you suffer from what is sometimes referred to as an afternoon slump? What helps ward it off before it hits and/or tell us what helps you shake it off once it's here?

I work best in the morning, so I wouldn't exactly call it an afternoon slump, more just being done for the day.

4. Ladies-how have your friendships with women inspired you or made you a better person? For the men here today- how have your friendships with men inspired you or made you a better person?

I'm not sure how to answer that without either getting too personal (about friends who stayed loyal or those who didn't), or...well, yes, getting too personal. 

Let's just say that if you have a mutually encouraging, deep, lasting friendship with someone, or more than one someone, hang on to it.

5. Are you a people pleaser? If you said yes, do you think that's a good or bad thing? If you said no, do you wish you were more of a people pleaser? 

Somewhere in between. I aim to please the people I care about, the rest not so much.

6. The seasons are a-changin'...share a favorite song relating in some way to change (not necessarily seasonal change, it could be change of any kind).

Well, I already used "Mother Earth and Father Time" in a previous Hodgepodge ("He turns the seasons around, and so she changes her gown.."). So I'll have to think of something else. Oh, I've got one! Sesame Street nostalgia is always fun.

7. What do you wish would never change? 

Our city is going through construction turmoil these days, and certain things that just were are never going to be the same. I think families go through the same process: some change that is inevitable, and some that makes you think "why couldn't that have stayed the way it was?" In this post at To Sow a Seed, there's a quote from John Piper: “Occasionally weep deeply over the life you hoped would be. Grieve the losses. Then wash your face. Trust God. And embrace the life you have.” 

8.  Insert your own random thought here. 

If I get too random, I'll never get this posted, so I'll stick to this: if you're in Canada, Ten Thousand Villages has all its fair trade coffee on sale right now (in time for International Coffee Day?). But I can't seem to find any beverages on the U.S. site, so maybe the American stores handle coffee separately. I did find this really fun post (with photos) about an Apple Cider All Nighter.

"I just think it was a great time for friends and family to get together in the fall. We were always a mixed group from little kids to teenagers, twenty-somethings, our parents and grandparents. Sometimes we would go out into the field across the road and stargaze. One year there was a special alignment of three planets in a triangular shape. Then we went out to see it and as we were waiting for it to get dark a meteor flashed above the field and everyone saw it together."

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

The Mason Circle (L'Harmas posts)

Mr. Fixit and I, having watched all the Foyle's War episodes, have turned to the somewhat-related miniseries The Bletchley Circle.  It's about a group of women, formerly wartime codebreakers at Bletchley Park, who reunite several years later and solve crimes.  During the war, they felt like they were doing something real and important; since then things have been too quiet.

Behind a front of knitting and discussing Charles Dickens, the women of the Bletchley Circle come together to use their brains.  At first it's hard to persuade them to take risks, to act. At one point even the boldest of them says that they shouldn't be pursuing a murderer; that's a job for the authorities. 

What does that have to do with Charlotte Mason email lists and Facebook groups?  With little meetups to share nature notebooks and talk about Shakespeare? And with L'Harmas, a bunch of apparently nice, middleclass moms (and a couple of dads; men aren't excluded) spending a Friday night and a Saturday at a small-town Canadian church?  Or with other similar goings-on in the United States? And maybe someday in Australia?

Francis Schaeffer said that in God's kingdom, there are no little people, just people God uses. 

We're of different ages, from different countries. Some of us are still in the trenches, actively homeschooling.  Others are older, have found post-homeschool life a bit dull and are finding ways to branch out. We want to be challenged and we also feel a need to serve, help, brighten our corners. We think learning is something to celebrate. But like the Bletchley group, more things happen when we connect and work together...and sometimes play together.  We learn from each other. We learn to take care of each other.

And sometimes we shake things up, bypass the experts. Because, as in The Bletchley Circle, if they're not going to do it...it's up to us. We begin by taking the risk of homeschooling, then by connecting with each other, by putting thoughts on paper, speaking to groups. Some of us find ourselves taking bigger risks, doing things we hadn't planned on: homeschooling through high school. Organizing communities, opening schools. Reaching out to more parents and children, looking beyond our families.

Maybe you could call it The Mason Circle. Because we don't want life to be "ordinary" either.