Fashion Revolution Week 2020: Go and spread good germs

So, yes, back to the cook who quit because those above-stairs failed to consider that their actions had any impact outside their own circle. Which is not to say that not eating one's souffle is a criminal act, but only that there is cause, and it has effects. As Ray Bradbury put it, a tiny butterfly stuck to a shoe can change history. In this pandemic situation, we understand the dread of one tiny germ that can suddenly sicken or kill.

But turn it around, at least in the realm of how we use money. Reverse butterfly effect; random bursts of positive energy. Instead of worrying about small, bad mistakes, what if we counted on the ripple potential of small good "germs?" We get a small idea to show a kindness, to share with others. We spend our money or time supporting a ministry that has an impact on one person's life, and that affects a family or a village, maybe a country: who knows? I heard the story recently about a disappointing evangelistic event at which just one person accepted Christ: but he became the father of James Dobson.

Maybe the letter you write asking "who made my clothes?" will get into the hands of someone who needs just one more bit of encouragement to enact policy changes. Maybe the person who did make your clothes will take her wages and buy books that will help educate her to speak out against injustice elsewhere. Maybe an orphanage you help support through a fair-trade purchase is caring for future pastors or artists or farmers or doctors or other future bright lights and brave souls. Maybe a buying choice you make will help keep the water, the soil, or the air a little cleaner.

Where will we be by Fashion Revolution Week 2021? I don't know, but I hope it's in a place just that much better than where we find ourselves this year. Even better: let's start moving towards someday not ever having to have such a day at all.

Wendell Berry and Us (Fashion Revolution Week, Final Post)

"Care in small matters makes us trustworthy in greater. When we come to be trusted with the property of others, whether in money or material, we are on our guard against wastefulness, carelessness, extravagance, because integrity requires that we should take care of and make the most of whatever property is put into our hands..." Charlotte Mason, Ourselves, pp. 177-178

"At present, too ignorant to know how ignorant we are, we believe that we are free to impose our will upon the land with the utmost power and speed to gain the largest profit in the shortest time...The woods is left a shambles, for nobody thought of the forest rather than the trees." ~~ Wendell Berry, "A Forest Conversation," in Our Only World 

For Christians, the idea of being entrusted with another's property is integral to our understanding of stewardship. God made it all. He gives it to us...trusts us to care for it, not (as Mason says elsewhere) to throw battery acid into the watch workings.

There's also the proverb about borrowing the earth from our grandchildren. Caring for what belongs to others also means honouring the past and thinking of the future. What do we want to hand down, and I don't mean just ecology-wise?

"Any conversation at home between grandparents and grandchildren is potentially the beginning of a local culture, even of a sustaining local culture, however it might be cut short and wasted." ~~ Wendell Berry

Do we want to pass down the values of big ideas and small things, and not just growth for its own sake? Then we have to live like that ourselves. To repeat something from a previous year's Fashion Revolution post: it's never too late to plant some pizza seeds.

"To learn to meet our needs without continuous violence against one another and our only world would require an immense intellectual and practical effort, requiring the help of every human being perhaps to the end of human time.

"This would be work worthy of the name 'human.' It would be fascinating and lovely." ~~ Wendell Berry

So what does this mean when we buy socks?

"The logger who is free of financial anxiety can stop and think." 

"We...must think of reverence, humility, affection, familiarity, neighborliness, cooperation, thrift, appropriateness, local loyalty. These terms return us to the best of our heritage. They bring us home." ~~ Wendell Berry

Quote for the day: progress and the planet

"To organize society merely on the principle of private profit leads to a rejection of nature...utilitarian 'progress,' so closely connected with the ideology of liberalism, breaks the contract of eternal society, despoiling the soil itself. 'For a long enough time we have believed in nothing but the values arising in a mechanised, commercialised, urbanised way of life: it would be as well for us to face the permanent conditions upon which God allows us to live upon this planet.'"  ~~ Russell Kirk, Eliot and His Age; quote from Eliot's The Idea of a Christian Society (1939).

Yum: ambiguity in science writing.

Also called: the importance of commas. Especially when the original attempt at humour falls flat.

I read this to Lydia this morning, from Gary Parker's Exploring the World Around You:

"Consumers include plant eaters or herbivores....An organism that eats anything, such as a teenager, is an omnivore."

Lydia, understandably, looked at me in horror.

Even with the commas, that's a bit creepy, don't you think?

Lydia's Grade Eight: Plans for Term One, Week Eleven

First off, I have to point you to this quite marvellous post on Afterthoughts, Teaching Our Children the Way of the Reason. "Marvellous" for two reasons: first, that Brandy mentions a Lloyd Alexander book I've never heard of, The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen. (Now going on hold at the public library.)  Second, it's a perfect description of what some call the Grand Conversation. 

"After our reading of this chapter, the children and I discussed it. I asked them what Li Kwang's mind did when he was tempted. Together, they were eventually able to discern that his mind sought to justify the sin he wanted to commit. I read once again of Li Kwang's desire to be rid of tempting thoughts. We discussed how he was looking for an outside source to do that for him."

So where do I hope that we'll have some Grand Conversations this week of Remembrance Day?

Westward Ho!, Chapter 29. How the Virginia Fleet Was Stopped at the Queen's Command
From the AO study notes: Amyas seems to be unable to see matters clearly, in more than one area of his life. What advice does his mother give? What is his return argument?
How is Salvation Yeo becoming a less positive influence on Amyas? Has his disappointment over the "maiden" darkened his own view?

Can you have a grand conversation over the topic of temperature? (Apologia Physical Science, Module 3) Maybe. How about the hole in the ozone layer? Definitely.

Keeping a Nature Journal
This week's challenge is to take as much time as you need and draw a natural object in close detail. How does this close study change your perception of whatever you're looking at?

Plutarch's Life of Crassus, Lesson 10.
From the AO study notes: Why did Crassus send Publius to charge the Parthians? Do you think he might have hesitated to send his son into that battle, or would he more likely have been proud to do it? Why? Comparison to a Bible narrative: read 2 Samuel 18:24-33 (David's reaction to the death of his son). Note any similarities to the story of Crassus and Publius, though David's relationship to Absalom was somewhat different. Why does Plutarch say that Crassus "shewed greater courage in this misfortune, than he before had done in all the war beside," or in Dryden's words, "outdid himself in this calamity?"

Picture Talk: Titian, Three Ages of Man (caution: semi-nudity)

"In life, we are in death, the philosopher tells us. In an age when people died so young, perhaps Titian is reflecting the same attitude by placing all of these figures in the same landscape. Perhaps the angel is not only protecting the infants, but also reminding us that in Titian’s day, children died at a frightening rate, inconceivable in this modern age, and his/her home in heaven is the destination to which they will soon be transported." "Shakespeare’s sonnets, That time of year thou mayest in me behold [we read this a couple of weeks ago], Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, and When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd; Coulehan’s poem, “Sunsets”; and Roethke’s poem, “The Waking” (all annotated in this database) are equally applicable literary companion pieces." (Literature, Arts and Medicine Database)

And a couple of related additions: the History of English Literature chapter on Sir Walter Raleigh mentions Millais's painting The Boyhood of Raleigh, and The Roar on the Other Side includes the poem Ozymandias.

Drawn from the P.U.S.: how Charlotte Mason might have introduced aquatic ecosystems

Subject: Aquatic Ecosystems

Group: Science. Class III. Time: depends, can be split over two or three sessions.
Books used: The World Around You, by Gary Parker. The Usborne Living World Encyclopedia. Philip's Atlas of the Oceans. Optional: The Silent World, by J.Y. Cousteau and Frederic Dumas.

Objects.
I. To introduce the concept of aquatic (vs. terrestrial) ecosystems
II. To describe inland and marine ecosystems.
III. To notice the common thread of this chapter: how each system is designed to support life

Introduction: review terms such as ecosystem, biotic and abiotic factors.  Name and describe some terrestrial ecosystems (rainforest, grassland, etc.).
  
Section One:  Lakes and Ponds, particularly about seasonal turnover. This section in The World Around You is written rather briefly; I prefer "Lake Turnover, How it Works" by R. Karl.

Hands-on demonstration of water density, with hot and cold water plus food colouring:  Lake Turnover, from Science North.  Draw a page for your science notebook, noting how seasonal turnover helps to sustain life in lakes.

Final notes on this section: rivers as a mixture of ecosystems (life in a river depends on factors such as what's on the bottom).

Section Two:  Marine Ecosystems, i.e. Oceans.  Look at the Vertical Distribution illustration on page 86 of the Atlas of the Oceans, showing the different depth zones. Read pages 25-27 in Parker, on the same topic.  Look at pages 22-23 in the Living World Encyclopedia, "The ocean surface," and pages 26-27, "The depths of the ocean."  Narrate, creatively, graphically, or otherwise.

Section Three:  Read pages 27-28 in Parker. Use the illustrated pages in The Living World Encyclopedia to look at Coral Reefs, Shorelines, and Estuaries.  Narrate, noting especially how life is sustained in different parts of the ocean and in special systems such as estuaries.

Bonus reading:  Chapter 13, "Beyond the Barrier," in The Silent World.(about coral reefs)

Bonus field trip:  Take a fall trip to the pond.
  
Adapted from Class Notes, as printed in various Parents' Reviews.

Drawn from the P.U.S.: how Charlotte Mason might have taught a chapter on Ecosystems and Biogeography

Subject: Ecosystems and Biogeography.

Group: Science. Class III. Time: 30 minutes. By Mama Squirrel.
Book used: The World Around You, by Gary Parker.

Objects.
I. To increase the student's knowledge of biotic and abiotic factors.
II. To show how all living things are connected to each other.
III. To give some account of the different biogeographic realms, using Australian marsupials as an example.

By way of introduction, I would ask the student to tell me the meaning of an ecosystem, and, for any ecosystem, name some of the things included; for instance, in an aquarium, we would have particular plants, animals, but also factors such as light and temperature. (Don't forget the tiny organisms that we can't see unaided.)  We can label any of these factors as either biotic or abiotic.  How do the different "factors" interact with each other? (Example: plants releasing oxygen for the animals to use.)
 
I would have her read orally from The World Around You, page 11, the paragraph about the interaction in an aquarium ecosystem.
 
Then, after narration, I would show a map of the six (original) major biogeographic realms: Palearctic, Nearctic, Neotropical, Ethiopian, Oriental, Australian.  Recently this map has been updated.  I would give the student a printout of the updated map, and read from the accompanying article.  "Our study is a long overdue update of one of the most fundamental maps in natural sciences," lead author of the new research in Science, Ben Holt, said in a press release. "For the first time since Wallace's attempt we are finally able to provide a broad description of the natural world based on incredibly detailed information for thousands of vertebrate species."  
 
After narration, we could talk about why scientists believe it to be important to divide the biogeographic realms more accurately, and what has allowed them to do that. Something hard to think about: would creationists and evolutionists think about biogeography somewhat differently?  As an example of a creationist approach, we would read the rest of the chapter, about Australian marsupials.

Adapted from Class Notes, as printed in various Parents' Reviews.

Only in homeschool...

Why is teaching Dollygirl such a unique experience?

Because only Dollygirl could take a science lesson on the food chain and spend most of it discussing the fact that cows eat producers

and lions eat consumers.