The long blog catch-up

So, yes, hello February. Like the groundhog, I'm coming out of our hole.

I think this is the longest blog hiatus I've ever taken in...fifteen years. (We started here in February 2005.) Although I don't have a 9 to 5 job, I do work at this and that, and the this and that seemed to wipe out blogging for the last while. 

I finished my Adult Ed courses early in December.

Then (aside from making cookies and stuff), I spent most of December working on a book project.

The current "other man" in my life is Pompey, as in Plutarch's Life Of. He's one of the few characters to earn a whole two terms of study in Charlotte Mason's schools (most just get one). Writing study notes for Pompey is like eating a foot-long sub instead of my usual six-inch. (We're Canadians. We still do not order subs in metric. Why's that?)

And then there has been thrift-store volunteering, books to read, places to go, and winter things. Not much snow shovelling here, though...at our former Treehouse, the driveway was a team effort and could take hours (depending on how much the city plow had added to nature's abundant gifts). Our townhouse has snow-clearing services, but occasionally you do want to clear off your space yourself.

Mr. Fixit and I have visited a few more antique markets and thrift stores around town than we usually do. This is partly so he can scout out electronics to fix, but also just for the fun of it, looking for household things, sometimes music or books. Or clothes. 

One day we went to an antiques place that had a vintage booth, and I left with a cowlneck sweater.

Purse from the Salvation Army store.

Artwork from Value Village.

Sweater and pants from the MCC store.

This white sweater is going to get a post of its own.

So what's new with you?

From the archives: Ponytails' really good narration about Theseus

First posted June 2006. Ponytails was almost nine.

(Note from Mama Squirrel: Ponytails dictated this to me recently. It's from the middle of the story of Theseus in Charles Kingsley's The Heroes. Some background: Theseus has been on a quest to find his father, King Aegeus (who doesn't know him), and on the way he has had to kill various monsters and so has gained a reputation for himself; one of these slayings turned out to be some kind of a kinsman, so he had to go and get purified for that (forgiven, as Ponytails says here). When he finally arrives at the palace, he finds it has been taken over by his partying cousins.)

Theseus went and got forgiven, and then he went on to the palace. He looked around for his father, but he wasn't there. He said, "Where is the master Aegeus?" "We are all masters here! You can ask one of us instead. Come and eat and drink with us (hic!)! Heh heh heh!" Theseus looked around, but he did not see Aegeus. Then he said, "Go and tell him Theseus is here!" "Yes, your majesty--Mr. Theseus--I will go and summon him!"

So he went, and next to him [Aegeus] was Medea, and she was a snake woman. So Aegeus turned pale, red and then white. He went out because he knew this was going to be important.

Theseus said in his mind, "I'm going to test him first before I say I am his son." So he said, "I have come for a reward." Aegeus said, "I cannot afford it." But Theseus said, "All I want is dinner." "Okay, I can give you that."

Medea was watching. She went back into her room, and she came back out. She said, "This is a troublemaker." She saw him [Aegeus] go red and white when he heard the word Troezene. So she was going to get rid of him, Ah ha ha ha! She dressed in jewels and got a golden bottle full of magic wine and a golden cup. And she came out to Theseus and said in a soft voice, "Theseus! Please drink from this cup! It will give you strength and heal your wounds, it will give you fresh blood in your veins, so please drink." But Theseus saw the look in her eyes, the black smoky evil look with a tint of red, it turned up at the corners to make her look evil. He said, "You drink first." But she said, "I can't, I'm ill, I'm very ill. So I cannot drink." (But it's supposed to HEAL wounds!) He said, "Drink from it or you die!", swinging his club. She dropped the cup and ran. She called for her dragon carriage and went off, far away from the kingdom.

The stones bubbled from the wine she had spilled, and they just kind of disappeared.

Aegeus said, "What did you do? That was sort of my wife!"

But then he pulled out the sword and the sandals, and he said the words his mother bade him to say. And they hugged and wept until they could weep no more. The end!

Five interesting things you should read today

1. If you're at all interested in the era of the Spanish Armada, or just like good book talk, and you happen to be registered at the AmblesideOnline forum, you should check out the recently-begun discussion on Charles Kingsley's novel Westward Ho! Before I ever knew what that book was about, or much about Charles Kingsley either, I assumed that anything called Westward Ho! must have something to do with covered wagons. Westward, for Kingsley, meant westward from Britain, across the Atlantic--and not necessarily to the location you'd think, either. Anyway, come join the first-time-through readers for some speculation about whether Rose will become a worthy heroine or not.

2. Karen Glass recently posted about a startling painting she saw in London's National Gallery.

3. To Sow a Seed posted on the fulfilling aspects of work.

4. Donna-Jean posted about the importance of "morning by morning."

5. A Holy Experience posted about what it means to be brave.

All worthy of your time and attention.

Quote for the day: Two sorts of men

"I have tried to hint to you two opposite sorts of men. The one trying to be good with all his might and main, according to certain approved methods and rules, which he has got by heart; and like a weak oarsman, feeling and fingering his spiritual muscles over all day, to see if they are growing. The other, not even knowing whether he is good or not, but just doing the right thing without thinking about it, as simply as a little child, because the Spirit of God is with him." ~~ Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!

Quote for the day: So close you could almost touch the seashells

"Near Arundel," by Copley Fielding (not the painting described, but nice anyway)

"As it happened, my attention was caught by hearing two gentlemen close to me discuss a beautiful sketch by Copley Fielding, if I recollect rightly, which hung on the wall--a wild waste of tidal sands, with here and there a line of stake-nets fluttering in the wind--a grey shroud of rain sweeping up from the westward, through which low red cliffs glowed dimly in the rays of the setting sun--a train of horses and cattle splashing slowly through shallow desolate pools and creeks, their wet, red, and black hides glittering in one long line of level light.

"They seemed thoroughly conversant with art: and as I listened to their criticisms, I learnt more in five minutes about the characteristics of  really true and good pictures, and about the perfection to which our unrivalled English landscape-painters have attained, than I ever did from all the books and criticisms which I had read....The tragedy, the art of the picture, the simple, dreary grandeur of the scenery, took possession of me; and I stood gazing a long time, and fancying myself pacing the sands, and wondering whether there were shells upon it--I had often longed for once only in my life to pick up shells..."  ~~ Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke

Mama Squirrel's Reading List, and a decor game

Currently in the middle of:

Alton Locke, by Charles Kingsley

10 Philosophical Mistakes, by Mortimer J. Adler (I'm only up to the third mistake so far)

Plutarch's Coriolanus

Shakespeare's Coriolanus

The July/August issue of House Beautiful, which Ponytails and I amused ourselves with one evening by comparing it with a flyer from a local bed-and-bath store.  (House Beautiful itself isn't all that expensive, which surprises me.  Some of the vintagey decorating magazines cost twice as much, which is why I hardly ever buy them new.)  It's surprising how many of the same colours and patterns trickle down from the Billy-Baldwin-quoting decorators to...er...the rest of us.

One example: this rug.  It's between $50 and $400, depending on size, which isn't yard-sale price but isn't exactly designer either, right?  About average for new stuff.  Anyway, take a good look at the colours, the pattern, the size of the pattern.  Then flip through a current decorating magazine or fashion magazine, or a sale catalogue, and see where the same colours and patterns pop up again.  Might be a dress, a shower curtain, wallpaper.  I'm wondering what that does to our minds, having certain images (that most of us don't even notice) thrust at us from so many directions.  Do we eventually start dreaming in "splashes of red against a deep black and rich browns?"

Quote for the Day: Charles Kingsley on self-education

That day fortnight came,--and the old Scotchman's words came true. Four books of his I had already, and I came in to borrow a fifth; whereon he began with a solemn chuckle: "Eh, laddie, laddie, I've been treating ye as the grocers do their new prentices. They first gie the boys three days' free warren among the figs and the sugar-candy, and they get scunnered wi' sweets after that.....If ye canna traduce to me a page o' Virgil by this day three months, ye read no more o' my books. Desultory reading is the bane o' lads. Ye maun begin with self-restraint and method, my man, gin ye intend to gie yoursel' a liberal education. So I'll just mak' you a present of an auld Latin grammar, and ye maun begin where your betters ha' begun before you."

 "But who will teach me Latin?"

 "Hoot, man! who'll teach a man anything except himsel'? It's only gentlefolks and puir aristocrat bodies that go to be spoilt wi' tutors and pedagogues, cramming and loading them wi' knowledge, as ye'd load a gun, to shoot it all out again, just as it went down, in a college examination, and forget all aboot it after."

 "Ah!" I sighed, "if I could have gone to college!"

 "What for, then? My father was a Hieland farmer, and yet he was a weel learned man: and 'Sandy, my lad,' he used to say, 'a man kens just as much as he's taught himsel', and na mair. So get wisdom; and wi' all your getting, get understanding.' And so I did. And mony's the Greek exercise I've written in the cowbyres. And mony's the page o' Virgil, too, I've turned into good Dawric Scotch to ane that's dead and gane, poor hizzie, sitting under the same plaid, with the sheep feeding round us, up among the hills, looking out ower the broad blue sea, and the wee haven wi' the fishing cobles--"

There was a long solemn pause. I cannot tell why, but I loved the man from that moment... ~~ Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke

Edith Schaeffer's Subversive Family Reading (Hidden Art of Homemaking)

And first he went through Waste-paper-land, where all the stupid books lie in heaps, up hill and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood; and there he saw people digging and grubbing among them, to make worse books out of bad ones, and thrashing chaff to save the dust of it; and a very good trade they drove thereby, especially among children.  ~~ Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

In Chapter 10 of Hidden Art of Homemaking, Edith Schaeffer writes that there are "four kinds of books."  Fantasy, realistic fiction, biographies, and the Bible.

Well, I should think there are a few more kinds of books than that in the world!  I'm not even sure where, in that list, she'd put some of the books she names elsewhere, such as books of poetry and Pilgrim's Progress.

But as a start for read-aloud books, it's not bad.

The read-aloud staples for Edith's own children included "Winnie-the-Pooh...Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows and The Water Babies...the 'Anne' books..." and "The Pilgrim's Progress on Sundays."

Interesting, interesting, interesting.  These are NOT, strictly speaking, yer usual evangelical Reformed-type favourites.  Lucy Maud Montgomery had a few religious quirks that show up throughout the Anne books.  The Wind in the Willows has a couple of chapters (like the one about Pan) that get skipped in some families..besides, it's full of talking animals. Even Charles Kingsley, dull and moralistic as his reputatation has become, was not exactly smack in the center of theological acceptability (somewhat like George MacDonald).  (According to Wikipedia, he was one of the first to publish praise of Charles Darwin's work.)  The books of Charles Kingsley and "Lewis Carroll" are fun (often), educational (sometimes), satirical, thoughtful, and definitely somewhat subversive.  Not what Kingsley called "stupid books," but not what you might find in a Christian bookstore, either, unless it's an unusually open-minded one.

Perhaps it's a good thing the Schaeffers ended their weeks with Pilgrim's Progress.

She says they also liked the Little House books, Gene Stratton Porter's books, Louisa May Alcott.  All books full of sweetness and light?  No, not exactly...how about illness and death, blatant racism, psycho landladies with knives, and a kind of Emersonian-naturish take on Christianity?  "And there is no better starting point for the father and mother to discuss Biblical answers," says Edith.  "Many of Fran's deep discussions with our own children had this very natural starting place."

Her paragraph on C.S. Lewis (the Narnia books and, later, the Space Trilogy) is illuminating too.  "Of course these are imaginative and not 'real' but C.S. Lewis's idea of what the heavenly country may be like.  Young people who are really well grounded in the teaching of the Bible will not get confused, and Lewis's approach really does something to make the supernatural seem not so far away and impossible."

Being on the Charlotte Mason end of the homeschooling spectrum, our family has explored a number of books that make some people nervous, and simultaneously avoided a few that everybody seemed to be reading.  It's only recently that Dollygirl (finishing sixth grade) has been allowed to read the Harry Potter series; we have been cautious with Madeleine L'Engle's books, and although Mama Squirrel loved The Dark is Rising years ago, it's not a series we've encouraged the girls to read.  "But you're reading me The Lord of the Rings, and the story of The Aeneid," pointed out Dollygirl.  "Look at all those wizards and goddesses and everything.  So why didn't you want us to read Harry Potter?"  Marketing, I told her.

Related posts:
Notes from a Book Talk (2007)

Linked from the Hidden Art of Homemaking linky for Chapter 10 at Ordo Amoris

Analyze that

"In our eagerness to solve the material deficiencies of the old civilization, we imported into our schools a method as humble as the English sparrow--simple analysis--but now, the immensity of our success threatens with Toynbeean predictability to overwhelm us.  Like the thinker whose brilliance we universally acclaim, Alfred North Whitehead, we have cultivated a perverse form of modesty and self-deception that, in the absence of dogma (the working yet scientifically undemonstrable hypotheses of the old civilization), has allowed us to forget who we are and what our purposes are, as well as to neglect to teach these lessons to our children."--David V. Hicks, Norms and Nobility (1981)

"Now you must remember, whenever you have to do with him, that Analysis, like fire, is a very good servant, but a very bad master. For, having got his freedom only of late years or so, he is, like young men when they come suddenly to be their own masters, apt to be conceited, and to fancy that he knows everything, when really he knows nothing, and can never know anything, but only knows about things, which is a very different matter. Indeed, nowadays he pretends that he can teach his old grandmother, Madam How, not only how to suck eggs, but to make eggs into the bargain; while the good old lady just laughs at him kindly, and lets him run on, because she knows he will grow wiser in time, and learn humility by his mistakes and failures, as I hope you will from yours."--Charles Kingsley, Madam How and Lady Why (1869)

A Month with Charlotte Mason, #14

"For people who want to do the "living books" thing that Susan Macaulay has popularized, here is the kindergarten program all worked out for them.""--Dr. Ruth Beechick, review of a preschool-K curriculum

I use some of Ruth Beechick's books in our homeschool, and she has many good, practical ideas, especially (perhaps ironically) in using real books to teach language skills. However, I also think this comment is typical of the general misunderstanding around Charlotte Mason and "living books" in particular. In both fiction and non-fiction, the term “living books” has been overused, abused and confused, to the point that almost any chapter book set in some other era is now considered quality historical fiction...and, in the review above, "classic" picture books also suddenly join the list. Some people may take offense at that, and please understand that I am not discouraging the reading of picture books in general--only saying that these were not "living books" in the way that Charlotte Mason used the word.

If we’re going to be faithful to Charlotte Mason’s literary standards, we need to understand that she wasn’t exaggerating when she talked about little children playing Robinson Crusoe, or a schoolboy spending his whole Easter break reading Southey’s poems. It wasn’t so strange that Anne of Green Gables and her friends chose to act out "The Lily Maid" in 1908. Authors like Scott, Pyle, Kipling, Bunyan, Defoe, Kingsley, even George Eliot, were just considered The Books That There Were. They were the standards of the time, and children in "literate" households grew up familiar with Those Books, along with the Bible. If you look at the books Charlotte Mason refers to in the second half of Ourselves, which is meant to be read by older high school students, there are casual references to George Eliot's novels and other books that most of us are lucky even to get around to reading in college. For her students, they were common currency.

Now there must have been hundreds or thousands of books published over the last century, and most of us have gotten much worse at reading and at making time for reading. We’re hesitant, like Joyce McGechan, to put this kind of meal in front of our children because we’re not even sure we’d want to eat it ourselves. We’re in an era where, in a lesson plan for fourth graders, it’s expected that you should define words like “average” and “develop” before reading a book to them—and the lesson plan I found that in is for a picture book.

So I’m very aware in saying this, that the verbal and cultural gap between CM’s students and ours can seem insurmountable. But the fact is that there’s very little being published now, especially for children, that has both the literary power and the idea power of the books from the earlier eras, so we will often find ourselves turning back to them, not exclusively, but as a solid foundation.

Remember this from the third post? "Despising children is not doing the good that we should do in loving them or teaching them, because we undervalue their intelligence, their value as persons, their capacity for good, or even their capacity for bad."

And why are we using these hard books again? Is it because children develop character by chewing on gristle?

"Let us imagine an author at his craft, say, Herman Melville while writing Moby Dick, or Jane Austen working on Pride and Prejudice. Now assuredly what these literary artists hoped above all else was that a century or two from their own time students in high schools would be using their great works not better to understand love or honor or revenge or nobility or happiness, but to “analyze how multiple themes or central ideas in a text interact, build on, and, in some cases, conflict with one another”; as well as to “analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).""--Terrence Moore, "Dressing up Standards, Dumbing Down Schools," quoted by the Deputy Headmistress

Children, if they’re exposed to rich language from an early age, even if we find ourselves stumbling through some of the books, will get it, and will want more. Remember the little girl at Bending the Twigs who threw a sentence about Cerberus into her grammar lesson?

A leisurely education means having the freedom (time, space, opportunity) to discover what makes us fully human.