Come Unthrifting With Me, Last One

Wearing one of the un-thrifted necklaces with a green t-shirt and khaki pants (and my white cardigan, it's still chilly here). If I were actually going anywhere, I might add the bag shown in the graphic, which came (like the t-shirt and the necklace) from the MCC thrift store. 

I finished Breath for the Bones; according to my Goodreads log, it only took me three years.

Here's a quote to end with. It's from a Fraggle Rock song called "Stuff Samba." Marjory the Trash Heap sings it to some Fraggles who have a big problem and no ideas for solving it. Her advice:

Don't be shy don't be lonely

Don't go falling on the floor

What you need now is only

Do the stuff you've always done

And do it do it do it do it do it like before.

Here On My Island (Wednesday Hodgepodge)

Notes from our Hodgepodge hostess: "Here are the questions to this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here tomorrow to share answers with the universe. Here we go-"

1. "The cure for anything is salt water-tears, sweat, or the sea." (Isak Dinesan) Would you agree? Of the three, which has 'cured' you most recently? 

None of those that I can think of! Didn't Isak like chocolate?

2. What's something you can't eat without salt? Do you normally salt your food a lot, a little, or not at all? 

A few years ago, we were very very low salt around here (a medical need), and I had a low-sodium food blog as well. Since then we have eased back into our normal amount of sauerkraut. But I was eating awhile back with some friends from the U.S., and they said that Canadian food generally seemed undersalted. So maybe there's a cross-border difference between "a little" and "a lot."

3. Sands of time, bury your head in the sand, built on sand, or draw a line in the sand...which sandy phrase could best be applied to something in your life right now? 

Sands through the hourglass?

4. A favorite book, movie, or song with an island setting or theme?

This is just for any of the Squirrelings who stop by here:


5. Yesterday-did you run your day or did it run you? How so?

I am at the tail end of a writing project, so I'm trying to pretend like I'm on a desert island without too many distractions.

6. You're on an island holiday. Will I most likely find you parked in a beach chair, shopping in town, on the back of a jet ski, or snorkeling off the back of a catamaran?

No idea, I haven't been on an island holiday since I was three. No, wait, I guess Prince Edward Island counts too, right? Not exactly tropical, but it is an island. But that was a long time ago too.

The beach chair sounds nice.

7. What do you think we humans most take for granted?

Opposable thumbs.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Mr. Fixit told me yesterday that he is getting pumped to do some more cleaning out (this time mostly mancave stuff). I've already been through a lot of the typical online lists of things to trim down (like the Scavenger Hunt we did last year), but here's another one I found with some fun ideas.

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

Everybody needs one

You can find the pattern here. I added rice for some ballast.

Merry Little Wednesday Hodgepodge

 

1. What's your biggest 'first world' problem?

Too much construction where we live--they're building an LRT line through the city, and a lot of places have become difficult to get to, or the parking's half gone, or there's too much traffic because some other route is closed. We live a short drive from one library branch, but it's now too hard to get there unless we walk (and there never has been a bus in that direction from our house), so we end up driving to another branch further away. This is supposed to "help the environment," how?

Oh, and we've suddenly lost our house-to-house mail delivery, just on our own block, because we don't have a sidewalk on our side. When I asked the Canada Post person how we should break our way through the snowbanks* to get around the corner to the new community mailbox, she said, "I guess they assume you'll drive there."

I throw up my hands.

*We don't have any snow right now, but during a normal winter, climbing across and through the built-up snow on the lawns (including what's been plowed out of the driveways) is something you might want to try only with a small toboggan or a mountain-climber's pick. And wearing hipwaders.

2.  Each year Time Magazine names a 'Person of the Year', someone who has 'for better or worse...done the most to influence the events of the year.' It was recently announced they've named Angela Merkel Person of the Year for 2015. You can read more about this year's selection here. Your thoughts? If you were in charge, who would you declare Person of the Year? 

I have no particular opinion about Angela Merkel or Time Magazine. In Canada, the Person of the Year would probably be Justin Trudeau. Worldwide? My husband would probably vote for the Pope. 

3. Do you have a nativity set in your home? If so share it's history and how you display the pieces.

This was the Nativity scene my grandparents displayed on top of their television set. (There wasn't really any other good place for it.) It's a "dime store set," probably bought during the 1940's. I think a couple of the pieces were switched or added to over the years, probably when an over-enthusiastic grandchild broke an angel or a sheep. This is the way it was set up a couple of years ago, but this year I am trying something different.

I linked to a photo post about Nativity scenes earlier in the week, but here it is again if you missed it.

4.  Do you make an extra effort to give back in some way during the holiday season? How do you encourage those who need encouragement this time of year?

Maybe blogging?

And I still send cards through the mail. Fewer than I used to, though.

5. Who is your favorite person to shop for? Why?

I can't think of any one person--my family, collectively. Or maybe it would be my three nieces/nephews in another province, since they're the only little ones on my gift list and therefore an excuse to buy picture books. Even if we do get gouged for postage on packages. (Canada Post, again.)

6. What's the last delicious thing you ate?

Last night's "Doritos Taco Bake" was pretty good. 

7. The best way to spread Christmas cheer is________________.

Music comes to mind, but I think there's too much of it and most of it either isn't very good or it's overplayed...or people are listening to it only through earbuds, which doesn't exactly spread anything. So to be more specific: music that people play together, sing together, or at least really listen to together.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Mr. Fixit and I had a conversation the other day about how a certain kind of "cultural" Christmas celebration seems to be on the wane--thinking back to the days when the schools, the public buildings, the media were all about Christmas during December. That's changed, for many reasons, and some of them are good reasons, but we miss some of the external markers we used to have. As Kermit the Frog once said, "Life would just pass in a blur if it weren't for times like this." But in a way it's good, because it forces Christians to depend less on the externals (we can live without watching twenty Christmas specials on T.V. and making twenty kinds of cookies); it makes us have to think harder about reclaiming Advent and Nativity, how we can do that in a way that goes beyond nostalgia and warm family fuzzies. Maybe we should be grateful for the gradual de-emphasis on a Christian holiday, the lessening of expectations that everybody celebrates in the same way. Ugly and overplayed as its remnants (office parties and other obligations) may be; it's not as much out there now, so we have more freedom to make whatever-it-is happen for ourselves.

Linked from Have Yourself a Merry Little Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

Charlotte Mason and the Not-Just-Reading Challenge, Part Two

(Part One is here.)

Even when looking at the few samples we have of actual Parents' Union School timetables, the "what you do when and how" question looms....

People talking about Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education sometimes use the word organic.

Yes, organic does mean natural, real, of living things, not artificial.

But another definition is "consisting of different parts that all fit together well." Different organs, working together to make a functioning whole. Yet another is "happening or developing in a natural and continuous process."  

And the word that seems to fit in right after that is "holistic."   The idea that the total effectiveness of a group of things each interacting with one another is different or greater than their effectiveness when acting in isolation from one another.  The whole philosophical and educational package, made up of many small lessons over many days, multiple terms, a number of years, turns out to have a greater meaning and value than we could have forseen.

'Open, Sesame.'––I think we should have a great educational revolution once we ceased to regard ourselves as assortments of so-called faculties, and realised ourselves as persons whose great business it is to get in touch with other persons of all sorts and condition; of all countries and climes, of all times, past and present. History would become entrancing, literature a magic mirror for the discovery of other minds, the study of sociology a duty and a delight. We should tend to become responsive and wise, humble and reverent, recognising the duties and the joys of the full human life. We cannot of course overtake such a programme of work, but we can keep it in view; and I suppose every life is moulded upon its ideal. ~~ Charlotte Mason, School Education

Many living books.  Many ideas.  Many glimpses of the divine, of Eternity, of something beyond ourselves. ("God Sightings.")

And, unfortunately or fortunately (I think fortunately), it's impossible to program all that ahead of time, because we're not programmable beings.

We can plan books, do a little research ahead of time, think of good "narration prompts."  But we can't always predict where it's going to take us.