Peeling back the veil: a thought on Charlotte Mason and history

In one of Ellis Peters' medieval mysteries, The Leper of St. Giles, the diseased beggars living near Shrewsbury wear cloaks and veils that allow only their eyes to show.  Sometimes this appears almost to encourage rough treatment by others passing by, as if it is easier to abuse someone you can't really see; the beggars are more like shadows or ghosts than real people, individuals, flesh and blood beings.  But Brother Cadfael, reflecting on the times he has treated some of their sores (through his work as the abbey's herbalist), says that he has found sharp minds, unique personalities behind the veils..."by a thousand infinitesimal foibles of character that pierced through the disguise, they emerged every one unique."  He has the gift of seeing what others miss.

In The Living Page, Laurie Bestvater says, "One of Mason's primary purposes for making history the 'pivot' of her curriculum is to allow the child to see the flow of history and to think of himself within it."  She points us to Philosophy of Education, page 273, where Charlotte Mason calls history "the proper corrective of intolerable individualism."  So history, as a way of seeing, cuts us down to size but also shows us where we belong; gives us a place and time but makes it clear that there are other places and times that matter just as much.

But we have to see it.  However we can make that happen, for ourselves and our children.

It's snowing. Make a cake.

We had a freeze.  We had a thaw and lots of rain.  Now it's been snowing all day, big thick flakes.  Gray, cold weather seems to require something to cheer things up.

For some reason I was thinking about the "Delicious Death" cake in Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced.  Next to Esther's Orange Marmalade cakes in the Mitford books, that's probably the literary cake I've always been most curious about.  It turns out that about three years ago there was a big AC birthday celebration, and to mark the occasion they created a real, actual recipe for "Delicious Death," a rich chocolatey flourless cake with fruit and rum in the middle and sugared fruits and gold flecks and who knows what else.  Actually I never envisioned it quite as posh as that, especially if the baker in the story (Mitzi the hard-done-by maid) had to struggle just to get the post-war butter and eggs and chocolate together.  The cake in the Joan Hickson BBC version of the story looks more like a white cake with a thick chocolate glaze over the top.  So I guess you can imagine Mitzi's cake any way you like.

Besides the Small Chocolate Cake, which we still make regularly for birthdays etc., we have another 8-inch cake that I make if I have some chocolate to use up (which I did, just a bit left from Christmas baking).  It calls for two squares (ounces) of unsweetened chocolate, and I was a bit short but made up the last bit with part of a (dark, barely sweet) Polish chocolate bar.  I grated up some more of the bar for the topping.  And that is close enough to "Delicious Death" for us.

Here's the recipe. It came from a Kraft What's Cooking magazine, Fall 2001.  (You can see the whole thing here on their site, under "Mix Easy Snack Cakes."  The recipe gives three other variations, but this is really the only one we liked.)

One-Pan Chocolate Cake, Not Mitzi's But Not Bad

This is my version of the directions.  If you want to see Kraft's, click on the link above.

Preheat the oven (a toaster oven is fine, if it keeps steady heat) to 350 degrees F.  Put 1/3 cup cooking oil and 2 ounces (squares) unsweetened chocolate in an 8-inch square pan.  Kraft recommends non-stick but I don't have one, I just use Pyrex.  Put the pan in the preheated oven for about two minutes or until the chocolate is soft.  Carefully remove the pan from the oven (use mitts!) and stir with a fork until oil and chocolate are blended smoothly.

While the chocolate is getting soft in the oven, you can be assembling the other ingredients:

3/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda.

When the pan comes out and you have blended in the chocolate, beat in the other ingredients with a fork. Keep beating it for about two minutes.

Before baking, top the cake with any combination you like of grated chocolate, chocolate chips, coconut, nuts, etc.

Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.  Cool before cutting.

Dollygirl's Grade Seven: Tuesday and Wednesday School

Tuesday

Opening time, section from Ourselves Book II
Study map of Denmark, answer map questions
Start next chapter in Heidi's Alp
Math: 10 Gauss questions
Natural History: Half a chapter from Lay of the Land
Grammar of Poetry: Hyperbole
Picture talk: Introduction to Oscar Kokoschka
Watership Down

Wednesday

Opening time, Book of Acts
Marshall's English Literature: Some Song Stories
You-tube Bonus: Ballad, Sir Patrick Spens
General Science: The Fourth Aspect of the Fossil Record
Poems
English History: continue the chapter on the Danish kings
Book of Centuries
Sewing and Handicrafts
Return of the King

Frugal Finds and Fixes: Sometimes it's there waiting for you.

One reason so much water came in the garage last weekend was that the old weatherstripping on the garage doors was past its prime.  After thing started to dry up, outside as well as inside, Mr. Fixit pulled off the old stuff and went looking for replacement stripping.  He bought some at the Large Canadian Chain, but when he got it home and examined it more closely, it did not look like it would fit well on our 1959 doors.  The Big Box place also didn't have what he wanted.  So he tried another place, a smaller chain where he's had good luck before.  This store has two parts: the main store building, and another building at the back for contractors, where you have to be invited in.  When Mr. Fixit explained what he wanted, the hardware guy showed him the regular stuff on the store shelf, and then said, "We have some heavy-duty stripping in the back building--do you want to check that out?" He got the key and took Mr. Fixit into the hardware holy place, and Mr. Fixit kind of did a double take: they had exactly the kind of real rubber stripping he had just taken off the doors.  Old stock, no bar code.  "How long has this been sitting here?" Mr. Fixit asked.  "I guess since before we were bought out by the new owners, so at least fifteen years."

AND the price was at least fifty per cent less than the not-as-good stripping he'd seen elsewhere.

So tell me that's all just a coincidence.  No? I didn't think so.

What's for supper? Pasta night

Tonight's menu:

Butterfly (bowtie) pasta with meat and mushroom sauce
Spinach salad
Bread-machine garlic bread

Pineapple-banana freeze, combining leftovers.

What we did in school today (Dollygirl's Grade Seven)

We sang a hymn from the back section of The Accidental Voyage, and read the part about their yummy tofu-seaweed dinner (Abdul thinks cooking is unnatural).  Mr. Fixit sometimes joins us for opening time, but he was busy with the plumber who came bright and early to replace our bathroom taps and do something to the bathtub.

We read about the fossil record in General Science.  According to Dr. Wile, 95% of the fossils found are basically clams, and the next largest group is fish.  Doesn't leave much room for dinosaurs!

After a break (when Dollygirl finished a post for her own blog), she did ten questions from an old Gauss contest.  She got most of them right but it did show us a couple of places she needs to review.

We read from Sigurd the Volsung, how Sigurd killed the dragon/serpent/man Fafnir, and then Fafnir's brother Regin, and how Sigurd accidentally got a taste of the dragon's blood...which would not appear to be a really good thing.

The plumber left.  He said his boss told him that we are good people to do work for because our cheques don't bounce.  I suppose you could add that they like us because we give them so many things to fix...sigh.  This didn't have anything to do with the basement flood--the bathroom repairs were already set for today.

After lunch we read about King Canute, Earl Godwin, and Godwin's son Harold, who became the most powerful man in England although he was just the king's brother-in-law at the time. Seems like the king (Edward, not Canute) was a little too friendly with the Normans and that didn't win him points with his English subjects.

I tried to help Dollygirl demonstrate the story of King Canute and the Waves by letting her use her new beanbag chair as the royal seat; but when the waves came at her (me), she kind of capsized the beanbag and went over backwards.  Well, it was a diversion anyway.

Copywork.

Music history: how Bach's Prelude in C is a piece of music without a tune, but it's still well liked.  We listened to it once in its usual legato version, and then in Glenn Gould's staccato, more harpsichord-like interpretation.  I said that a piano teacher might smack your hand for playing it that way, and there are some negative comments on the You-tube version, but it's Glenn Gould, and he doesn't do things just like everyone else.  Maybe that's how Bach meant it to sound.

Last 20 minutes: a game of Hexxagon on a math website, which Dollygirl says is a lot like a game on Webkinz.  First Dollygirl beat the computer, then she beat me.

After supper will be swimming.

And that was our day.

The Parents' Review on Geometry and Synthesis (and the argument over taking flowers apart)

"Before the child has to work at geometry, see that he realizes:-- That there are in nature no lines, except the edges of solids, nor surfaces, except the sides of solids. That natural movements and growths take place usually in curves, not straight lines. That axes, diameters and co-ordinates are not part of any natural figure, but measuring rods introduced for man's convenience. Connect in the pupil's mind these devices with that earlier invention, mentioned in the former paper, of breaking big numbers into tens and hundreds; explain that man extracts no more real instruction out of such devices than a monkey gets by breaking things in bits, unless he completes the cycle of study by the transcendental (or supra-simian) act of synthesis. The parent will translate these words into such as she finds suit the child; the essential thing is for the parent herself to grasp the idea clearly. If she does not, she should get herself taught to do so by some competent person.

 "In connection with this idea of synthesis, a child should be taught that if he wants to learn anything about an object by breaking it open, he should not break it till he has taken a good look at it in its original state, so as to be able to reconstruct it in his mind as a whole.'  ~~ "Home Algebra and Geometry," by Mary Everest Boole, in The Parents' Review, Volume 3, 1892/93, pgs. 854-857

And check this one out (emphases mine):

 "May I make an example of flowers to illustrate the application of the science of appearances? Amongst other sciences applicable to them is horticulture, which treats of their civilization, the robustness of their constitution, their span of life, their propagation, their cultivation, the improvement of their characteristics of form and colour, the soil suitable to them, its texture, and its chemical constituents. There is also botany, a science which deals with their habits, their structure, their organs, their classification and variety. These are all concrete facts, to acquire which we examine the flowers from every point of view. We uproot them, we dissect them, we remove them from their surroundings, and consider them almost without reference to them. The facts of their appearance are different. They depend, not only upon the aspect and condition of the flowers themselves, the relation of the parts to the whole, and of the parts to each other, in different qualities and characteristics, but their aspect also depends upon their relation to surroundings, and to the aspect and condition of surroundings, and to relations, conditions, influences outside themselves and their immediate surroundings.

 "We may be able to change their surroundings and the outside influences, but we cannot disassociate them, We may take flowers from the field, or hedgerow, or garden, and bring them indoors, place them in a vase or upon a table or in a box, we may change their conditions in a countless number of different ways, but do what we may, we cannot see them without some surroundings. Any change of surroundings or change of relation of outside influences will cause change of appearance. Their appearance amongst the green grasses in the field will be different from their appearance as they grow in the garden soil against the red-brick wall, or as they lie indoors upon a polished mahogany table. They will appear different under the influence of sunshine, or gray weather or rain, at a distance from us or near at our feet. The appearance of the flowers will in every possible case have certain fixed relations to surroundings and outside conditions and influences. We cannot see or conceive flowers or any other object except under aspects influenced by outside conditions, for that is the way nature conveys to us the impression of them."  ~~ "The Fine Arts and Education, Part 1," by Francis Bate, in The Parents' Review, Volume 7, 1896, pgs. 561-571.

Do you get the feeling we're talking about a lot more than botany here?

Winds, weather and water--lots of water

The temperature has gone up, and the thawing and the rain have brought all kinds of water in places where it's not welcome.  Including our basement, which is on the same level as the garage.  In the forty-some years that Mr. Fixit has known this house (it was his grandparents' before we bought it), the drains in the basement have never failed, even in wet weather.  Until last night.  Mr. Fixit is slightly insomniac anyway, and something around 2:30 in the morning told him to go and check on the status of things.

The status was several inches of water in our laundry area and basement entrance, some trying to get into the storage room, and more coming into the garage under the doors.  Mr. Fixit and Mama Squirrel spent about two hours, in boots and pajamas, bailing, sopping, wringing, pouring, and mopping.

The damage so far is not too significant.  All the floor mats in that area will have to be replaced, but some of them were old anyway.  The water that got into the storage room stayed in the middle, so it missed the shelves. The laundry appliances and vacuum cleaner (stored on the floor there) seem all right.  We had to toss part of a box of stuff being packed for the thrift store, and re-wash a few towels and things that got damp (besides all the old towels that we used to mop things up).  There is some concern about the places we couldn't reach to get clean or dry, but we are running heaters and trying to get everything dried out quickly.  It could have been a lot worse.

But we went out this morning and bought a new Shop-Vac.  Just because.

What's for supper? (Fridge clean out night)

Polish sausage baked with celery, brown rice, and the end of a bag of barley
(The grains stayed slightly underdone, so I put them in the fridge to use in a casserole or soup later, and we opened a can of baked beans instead.)
Leftover Mexican Potatoes from last night
Carrot sticks
Bread, leftover biscuits, other leftover bits and pieces

Pineapple Freeze
Cookies

Frugal Finds and Fixes: featuring Mr. Fixit

The past week has meant ultra-cold temperatures all over the place (unless maybe you're in Australia), which is not good for people, heating bills, water mains, and vehicles.  Our van had a leak in one of its tires, with the weather at least partly to blame.

We discovered this early Saturday morning, but the only tire-fixer at the nearby shop had called in sick, and they asked us to wait until Monday.  After keeping it pumped up long enough to handle Saturday groceries and Sunday church, Mr. Fixit was worried enough to take it into the Big Tire Chain on Sunday afternoon, but it turns out they're not a warranty dealer for our brand of tires, and the tire was still fairly new.  So on Monday Mr. Fixit went to the other shop and got a new tire for the van, free under the warranty but paying the service charge to put it on.  He drove away to run another errand, but when he came out to the van he noticed there was no little cap on the tire, where you pump it up.  He went back to the shop and inquired about the missing cap, and was told that Caps Are Now Extra.  No way.  He further inquired where the cap to the old tire might be.  The tire-fixer had to fish through the trash can to find it, but we got it back. So there's our automotive frugal tip for the week, which also applies, unfortunately, to other businesses these days:  don't expect even small things to come gratis.  Ask to make sure.

Mr. Fixit has a 1958 Simpson 260 analog multimeter (their photo) that he got free over thirty years ago when his high school shop class went digital.  (He says most of the digital meters got blown within a year, and the school had to re-replace them.)  He used to use it a lot with older cars, but it had been pretty much set aside for the past decade.  Recently his newer, digital meter (the second in the past few years) quit on him, and he decided to resurrect the Simpson.  After cleaning it and replacing its batteries, he used it to test the voltages in a radio he was repairing, and he says it still works well.

Mr. Fixit also negotiated a slightly better deal this week with our Internet provider.  We were considering switching, so the company offered us a please-stay incentive.  That was supposed to kick in today, so there's not much so far to say about whether what we're getting is really faster or better.

From this Treehouse it seems like food prices are going up again.  We are trying hard to make the most of what we have, use leftovers, cook up bits and pieces.  This week we had a lot of ground beef in the freezer, so we've had both lasagna and Mexican Potato Casserole, which we found in Company's Coming Kids: Lunches, but which is almost identical to the one on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook website, and they say they got it from a church cookbook.  So it seems like one of those recipes that's made the rounds.  You coat cut-up potatoes in melted margarine and taco seasoning and bake them in a casserole; then, about ten minutes before serving, you add browned ground beef mixed with salsa and chopped peppers, and cheese on top. I just used the amounts of everything that we had on hand, including homemade taco seasoning and mild Cheddar instead of Jack cheese, but we thought it was pretty good.  (The recipe says not to peel the potatoes, but we prefer them peeled.)

We also made pizza on the weekend, using bread-machine pizza dough; a batch of granola; and I turned a cupful of mashed sweet potato into two dozen half-size muffins.

Finally:  Mama Squirrel was browsing through a particular money website and blog, and came across a post about holiday spending.  The author described what their family had spent on gifts and so on, and then other people commented and shared some of their "holiday totals."  The most common comment was something like, "Yes, we have a set budget for our Christmas gifts, entertainment etc., and it can't total more than X." And that would have been fine, except that X, for our family, would be an astronomical amount. And though in general that would not surprise me at all, these are people who read and comment on a financial, money-saving blog.  

Which makes me worry a lot about the people who don't read money blogs.

What do you think?

This gift means the lights stay on.

On Christmas Eve I posted a link about a pressing need at an orphanage in Nigeria.

Thanks to those who helped, they have been able to buy a generator.

If you read about it here and prayed or helped financially, thank you too!

Back to school, but it's still cold (Dollygirl's Grade Seven)

School plans for Wednesday:

Opening time
Book of Acts

Discussing a point about integers, negative signs, and fractions
Short lesson, starting Reciprocals, on TheMathPage.com

Charlotte Mason had students read from various subjects and then write about them later in the week.  So Dollygirl will have the chapter on "Havelok the Dane" to read in Marshall's literature, and then do a written narration tomorrow or Friday.

Read some of the Fossils chapter in General Science.
Work at our "rock table" for awhile.  Examine the "ghost crystals" we started on Monday.

Geography: Heidi's Alp, continue the chapter on Holland and Hans Brinker.

Grammar, one page.

Return of the King.

Snow Day Books Quiz (Reposted from 2007)

If you're looking for something to do, I've re-posted a snowed-in books quiz that we posted several years ago as part of a Carnival of Homeschooling.   (The photos are also from that post.)  Here are eleven cold and snowy excerpts from children's books--without authors or titles. Can you name the books? Answers are posted here.

Here we go:

"O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever," sang Will, reflecting that Mr Beaumont had shown a certain wry humour in choosing the canticle. "O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever." (1)

“Hush now, lad,” said Aunt Nan.
“You will have to wait until spring.
Nothing can get over
the mountains now, not even the mail.”
“No mail all winter?”
John asked.
“That’s right,”
Old Joe said. (2)

It was growing darker every minute and what with that and the snowflakes swirling all round him he could hardly see three feet ahead. And then too there was no road. He kept slipping into deep drifts of snow, and skidding on frozen puddles, and tripping over fallen tree-trunks, and sliding down steep banks, and barking his shins against rocks, till he was wet and cold and bruised all over. The silence and the loneliness were dreadful…..[He said] to himself, “When I’m the King of XX the first thing I shall do will be to make some decent roads.” (3)

By the middle of the pasture, the flakes were falling thicker. Now the wind drove Irene along so rudely she had to hop, skip, and go helter-skeltering over the knobby ground. Cold snow sifted into her boots and chilled her feet. She pushed out her lip and hurried on. This was an important errand….[The wind] swept up and scattered the fallen snow, got in front of Irene to keep her from moving ahead. Irene turned around and pressed on backwards. (4)

“On the little that could be seen of his face behind some unusually white-looking whiskers there was a mixture of surprise and excitement as he took in the sight which met his eyes. Overnight a great change had come over the weather. Whereas the day before had been mild, almost spring-like for early January, now everything was covered by a thick white blanket of snow which reached almost to the top of his Wellington boots.” (5)

[She] stood at the little window looking out in wonderment, for the snow was beginning again, and the thick flakes kept falling till the snow was up to the window; and still they continued to fall, and the snow grew higher, so that at last the window could not be opened, and [they] were shut up fast within the hut. (6)

In most places the snow was still hardly lying at all, for the wind kept catching it up off the ground in sheets and clouds, and hurling it in their faces. And round their feet little eddies of snow ran about as you sometimes see them doing over ice. And, indeed, in many places, the surface was almost as smooth as ice….Fighting her way forward with hood up and head down and numb hands inside her cloak....the only things she thought about were her cold hands (and nose and chin and ears) and hot baths and beds at Harfang. (7)

The ladder was his only hope, and yet there was so much more work to do….It was not much later when the wind began howling through the dark woods and fine flakes of snow whipped through the branches of the oak. Indoors it was warm and cozy, and to take his mind off his misery Warton decided to play a game of solitaire. (8)

The rest of the fieldmice, perched in a row on the settle, their small legs swinging, gave themselves up to enjoyment of the fire, and toasted their chilblains till they tingled; while [their host], failing to draw them into easy conversation, plunged into family history and made each of them recite the names of his numerous brothers, who were too young, it appeared, to be allowed to go out a-carolling this year, but looked forward very shortly to winning the parental consent. (9)

"We'll be lucky if we each get one present," said Susan. "Maybe we won't get any present at all," said Neddie. "Maybe Santa Claus won't be able to come, because it's snowing so hard...." "That doesn't make any difference to Santa Claus," said Betsy. "He always comes. Come on, let's help Santa Claus. Let's make presents." (10)

“You can fly in storms,” said Aunt Lily. “You’ve flown in storms before.” “That’s different—I was alone.” “I don’t see the difference,” said Aunt Lily. “If you can fly in a storm, we can fly in this storm if we have to. And that is that.” (11)