Declutter with Barbie

Even Barbie needs to clean out her closet sometimes. After all, she's been shopping for years.

List of "33 Things To Eliminate From Your Closet" from BeMoreWithLess/Project 333.

Anything with shoulder pads, even if they are making a comeback. 

Your high school jeans that haven’t buttoned since high school. 

That formal outfit you bought for one occasion. 

Your ex-anyone’s anything. 

Christmas sweaters

Things that are ripped or have holes that aren’t supposed to be there. 

Pieces you can see through unintentionally. (see above)

Those super cute shoes that you can’t walk in. 

Sentimental items that make you sad. 

The warm coat you don't wear. Someone needs it more than you.

Sentimental items that don’t fit. Take a picture. 

Clothes you are saving for your children. 

Pieces that need to go to the tailor that never get to the tailor. 

A bridesmaid’s dress they said you could wear again, and you know you won’t. 

Hats you don’t wear even though everyone says you look good in hats. 

Ill-fitting bras. Feature your features. 

Purses. You only need one. 

Clothes that don’t belong to you. Give them back.

Anything with a weird smell that won’t wash out. 

Clothing or shoes that leave a mark or blister. 

Scarves that don’t go with anything you currently own. 

Clothes that don’t allow your underwear to be under. 

Anything you have to squeeze into. 

Clothes you bought on vacation that you won’t wear where you live. 

Pants that are shorter than they are supposed to be. 

Shirts that are longer than they are supposed to be. 

Sequins and sparkles if you prefer simple and subtle. 

Anything with a stain that won’t come out. 

Guilt items. If you spent too much for it, dump the guilt. You’ll keep paying for it in time and attention if you don’t let it go now. 

Multiples. Just because the blazer looked good in cream doesn’t mean you need it in every color. One is enough.  (unless it's shoes?)

The top or bottom of a suit. They aren’t sold separately for a reason. 

Clothes you can pet. 

Yoga pants that don’t go to yoga.

Bye-bye.

Thank you to Courtney Carver at BeMoreWithLess.com for this list.

From the archives: Happiness is, happiness isn't (book review)

Edited from a post of February, 2008

Someone at church handed me a book to read called Happiness™ by Will Ferguson (Penguin Books, 2002) . I knew it was meant to be satirical; I didn't know just how much off-colour stuff I was going to have to muck through to get to the heart of it. Hip-waders would be advised.

However, I do like the premise of the book, and it did try to make some good points. It’s a novel about an (imaginary) self-help book called What I Learned On the Mountain that--astonishingly--works. And its impact (mostly negative) on the editor who discovered it and society in general. Some of the initial effects:

“People no longer felt estranged from their bodies. They felt connected. For the first time, possibly ever, Americans began to feel comfortable with who they were. Cosmetics went unsold; department stores stood half-deserted. Expensive perfumes were marked down and sat gathering dust. GQ magazine switched its emphasis from men’s fashion to articles on ‘fostering happiness.’ Dour Calvin Klein models stood on street corners holding up signs: ‘Will pout for food.’” (Happiness™)

Unfortunately, the spread of “happiness” not only begins to destroy the economy (the alcohol and tobacco market dries up alongside the cosmetics industry), but it (whatever it is) destroys people's minds and emotions as well. The editor, Edwin, comes to this conclusion:

“[It’s] a world without a soul. A world without laughter. Without real laughter. The kind that makes your heart ache and your eyes go blurry….we need our vices….because life is sad and short and over far too soon.”

One could argue that this version of happiness isn’t happiness at all, but some kind of selfish, mindless seeking after bliss. (bliss n : a state of extreme happiness [syn: blissfulness, cloud nine, seventh heaven, walking on air]) Edwin pleads for what he calls “joy” instead of “happiness.” However, you could also argue with Edwin’s definition of “joy” since it seems to be based only on celebrating the ugliness, pettiness and vices of humanity (accepting and enjoying what makes us human) rather than looking outwards from ourselves (e.g. to a supreme Being).

I hear echoes of Brave New World in this--the Noble Savage "claiming the right to be unhappy." However, Edwin isn't the Noble Savage by any means, or even Brave New World's questioning Bernard; he's a frustrated Gen-Xer who can't stand his wife, or his cat, or his boss, or his job, or the city he lives in. His only redeeming quality is that--somehow--he's one of the few people who read What I Learned On the Mountain and aren't taken in by it. This implies that he's worthy of telling the rest of us what supposedly makes life meaningful.

And I suppose he's right, in a general way. Too much seeking after "happiness" is just self-seeking and self-defeating; yes, there's something deeper out there. But I felt reluctant to accept much of his pontificating...I think you can get a just as good a read on happiness-as-human-experience in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, and without the profanity.

Things you don't want to watch in the dentist's chair

Televisions over dentists' chairs seem to be just a given thing these days (can you imagine, says one who thought dentists offering headphones and CD's a few years ago were innovative). Ours, for some reason, never seems to bother turning on the captioning, but you can usually catch enough of what's going on if the cleaning machines aren't making too much noise.

On various occasions I've watched people voting on wedding dresses, trying to decide whether to renovate or move (maybe if we just moved the doorway?), and blathering about celebrity life. I thought the most appropriate episode was a home-improvement show that demonstrated drilling into a concrete patio...while I was getting a tooth drilled.

That was until today. Today, again getting drilled and filled, I was treated to an episode of "How It's Made," featuring Statue Restoration, Tripods, Polish Sausages, and Welding Guns. I especially enjoyed the art restorer who mixed plaster with glue, and dabbled it into all the broken places on a statue of the Madonna, at approximately the same time as the dentist was mixing up whatever dentists mix up and dabbling it into my broken places. And cooking it with what didn't seem that different from a Welding Gun.

As for the Polish Sausages, we won't even go there.

Quote for the day: T.S. Eliot on getting older

There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.

 ...Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

T.S. Eliot, from "East Coker" in Four Quartets

To read today: The Common Room on the vocabulary of good books

The Deputy Headmistress has a few well-chosen words about allowing children to climb the library shelves, so to speak.

Fashion Revolution Week: Finding a Balance

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 1911

The Fashion Revolution began because of a recent tragedy.  It wasn't the first one, and it won't be the last.

Who do you blame? Big businesses? Factory owners? Small consumers? Rich countries? Poor countries? People who just want to buy a pair of sweatpants?

How do you change a big, complicated mess?

Proverbs 31:8-10 (N.I.V.)

8 Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,

    for the rights of all who are destitute.

9 Speak up and judge fairly;

    defend the rights of the poor and needy.

But how can we speak if we don't listen first?

And how will we know if we don't ask?

"Beauty is about balance, and what is sustainability if not finding a balance between the desires of our generation and the needs of the next?" ~~ "A Moral Sense of Beauty," by Carry Somers

From the archives: Children Shouldn't Read Dead Things (LIving Books)

First posted April, 2011. Note from the original post: "The focus of this week's Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival, hosted at Fisher Academy, is Living Books, and it is based on this paper that she wrote, that was later incorporated into School Education, part of her six-volume series on education."

What is to be said about living books that hasn't already been said, said often, and said well?

And yet our public libraries seem to sell off more good books than they buy; the mall bookstores, as always, have mostly glitz-for-girls and scary-for-boys; and the sold-to-schools book flier that we brought home from last weekend's homeschool meeting--well, we won't even discuss what abominations were in that one.  Homeschoolers, in a way, are lucky...the rest of the world knows about the big online booksellers, but we also know about smaller vendors who aren't embarrassed to combine Alfie and Plutarch in the same catalogue.

"Now do but send to any publisher for his catalogue of school books and you will find that it is accepted as the nature of a school book that it be drained dry of living thought. It may bear the name of a thinker, but then it is the abridgment of an abridgment, and all that is left for the unhappy scholar is the dry bones of his subject denuded of soft flesh and living colour, of the stir of life and power of moving. Nothing is left but what Oliver Wendell Holmes calls the "mere brute fact."" ~~ Charlotte Mason

Dry bones, no flesh, no colour...books fresh from the morgue?  Whatever these textbooks were, as Miss Mason says in her paper, they obviously weren't the books that got Swedish schoolgirls fighting a duel about their favourite kings.  Or the books that got Marva Collins' students working literary quotes into their everyday talk:

"Once when a student told a lie in class, someone said, 'Speak the speech trippingly on thy tongue,' and another chimed in, 'The false face does hide what the false heart does know.'  If a girl was acting too flirty, the other girls would accuse her of acting like the Wife of Bath....Another time when a rubberband shot across the room, I asked Michael whether he had done it.  He said no and blamed it on Phillip, who said, 'Et tu, Michael? This was the most unkindest cut of all.'" ~~ Marva Collins' Way, by Marva Collins and Civia Tamarkin

The books are still there for the finding.  I expect that when I go to the Big Used Booksale at the end of this month, I'd be able to find multiple copies of Shakespeare plays, anthologies of poems, hundreds of paperback classics used for one class or another and then discarded.  They're getting a bit harder to find, but they're still out there....and they're "in here" too (online as e-texts).  If we're brave enough to trust our children's minds to the great thinkers, the great humorists, the great observers, then Pascal and Plutarch, Voltaire and Vermeer are easy enough to pull up, download, reserve through even a small library, or find on a used-classics shelf.

Charlotte Mason explains that yes, mathematics may help you develop your mind in a certain way; that learning Latin is certainly good for developing certain strengths, "intellectual muscle" and so on; but none of these alone are going to give you "fact clothed in living flesh, breathed into by quickening ideas."  This argument is not quite clear in the Parents' Review paper, as there appear to be a few words missing; it is clearer when you compare it with the same page from School Education:

"Mathematics, grammar, logic, etc., are not purely disciplinary, they do develop (if a bull may be allowed) intellectual muscle. We by no means reject the familiar staples of education in the school sense, but we prize them even more for the record of intellectual habits they leave in the brain tissue, than for their distinct value in developing certain 'faculties.'" ~~School Education, Chapter 16

But she also has a warning for those who would take even good books and grind, pre-digest, or otherwise manipulate either books or school subjects to make them work the way we think they should:

"The fault does not lie in any one of these or in any other of the disciplinary subjects, but in our indolent habit of using each of them as a sort of mechanical contrivance for turning up the soil and sowing the seed.  There is no reprieve for parents."

There's no getting out of it or around it; there are no short cuts, magic machines, or snake oil potions that can take the place of good books, well served at the right time.  And there is no magic clicker to tell you exactly what those are and when--even Charlotte Mason was chary about giving a list of the "hundred best books for the schoolroom."  She didn't want people just taking such a list and trying to plug it in, "make it work."  Now that is not the same as saying that any books are fine, including nose-picker histories and vampire romances; Miss Mason had definite opinions about good and bad books, and personally chose the best books she could find for her schools.  But it's not about the booklist, in the end; it's about awakening to the possibilities of books.

"Once she [Erika, a six-year-old student] began reading and saw what fun it was, there was no stopping her.  She became addicted to books.  If she wasn't reading one of the Judy Blume books or one from the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, then she was trying out the Fables of La Fontaine or the Song of Roland.  One day, as I went around the class asking each child what new bit of knowledge he or she had learned that day, [she] said, 'I'm like Socrates*.  The only thing I know is how much I don't know.  I'm learning something new every day.'" ~~ Marva Collins' Way

*In this term's Plutarch study of Solon, we learned that Solon said the same thing. I don't know Socrates very well: did he also say he was learning something every day, or was Erika misquoted? It doesn't matter much, but I'm curious.

Backyard Nature in April (photos)

 Violets

Periwinkle

Tulips-to-be

Rhubarb

Dandelions, just a few so far

More violets.

Something to listen to: Nancy Kelly on Plutarch

If you like listening to podcasts: Liz Cottrill recently interviewed Nancy Kelly on how to teach Plutarch's Lives.

Fashion Revolution Week: Tinying Up

So far this week I've tried to include posts on both where clothes come from and where they go afterwards. But I'm the last person who should be giving any advice on the in between: what to wear and how to wear it.

Instead,  I'll pass on a piece of classic dressing wisdom from a well-put-together lady: "boring clothes" are totally fine; she likes her "boring clothes", but she gives them more character (and more usefulness) with accessories. Which sounds at first, I don't know, a bit old, like you have to have five sets of matching shoes and belts and earrings and purses to dress up your Little Whatever Dress. Like a teen doll that comes with "accessories."

But that isn't the case.

I bought a plain navy t-shirt at the thrift store, and wore it yesterday with a special silk scarf that also came from the thrift store. I dug through my jewelry and found a pair of blue bead earrings that Lydia made for me during her earring-making blitz a couple of years ago.

Here's another scarf-plus-dark-t-shirt. I was experimenting with the same scarf knot, so the only thing that's different is the scarf itself.

What does this have to do with "tiny?"

For the travel expert above, using accessories means that she can pack fewer clothes but still look good. Even if you and your clothes stay at home, a few extra extras might mean that you need one sweater instead of three, or that you can wear the same dress on more than one fancy occasion. You can wear a forgettable-colour top with a more interesting scarf or necklace. Which translates to less money spent, less clothing produced and wasted, maybe less closet space needed. Or, for some people, it means the option to buy the sweater or dress from a socially-or-ecologically-responsible company that they like but wouldn't otherwise have been able to afford. Or to buy very good yarn and knit the sweater themselves. As it says on the Project 333 home page, thinking smaller isn't meant to be a project in suffering; it's more like an opportunity for choice.

Fashion Revolution Week: How Shopping Changed, and a CM Thought

Shop window on "Mr. Selfridge"

At the beginning of the first episode of "Mr. Selfridge," Harry Gordon Selfridge, in the midst of opening his own London department store, went to buy a pair of gloves at another store. He asked to see a lot of gloves all at once, which was not the way things used to be done in stores. You were supposed to know what you wanted, and have one thing handed to you at a time.The gloves clerk attempted to co-ooperate with him, but ended up losing her job over the incident. (When Selfridge found out, he hired the clerk at his own store.)

Selfridge's in the early twentieth century, as shown in the series, was something new. It was a community place, a happy place, a place where people could come to see exhibits and celebrity appearances (and buy celebrity souvenirs). When Selfridge's friend Woolworth (yes, that Woolworth) planned to open a discount store in London, Selfridge responded by offering lower-priced items in every department, so that everyone could feel part of the Selfridge's world. When the war began and Selfridge (an American) wondered what he could do to help the war effort, someone told him that he did a great deal for morale by having such a wonderful place. People cheered up just by walking in the Selfridge's door, he was assured. 

The Selfridge's experience probably isn't the one that most of us grew up with. Even in my younger days, the elegant super-stores were being replaced by malls and discount stores. I am old enough, though, to remember being "waited on" by shoe salespeople, who would measure your feet, bring shoes out from the back, even put them on you, and then try again until they and your mother were satisfied.

But the then-new concept of making shopping fun, and the mall  or store a friendly, welcoming, even seductive place: that's what has trickled down. 

I keep going back to assorted bits of wisdom that Charlotte Mason put forth on shopping, making choices, getting bargains, and patronizing local businesses. She actually said a surprising amount about those issues. Her one thought that seems to stand out here is that you shouldn't go into a store, like "Mr. Selfridge's" character Lady Loxley, and say, "I need a new wardrobe. Dazzle me."  If you know you need shoes (to paraphrase C.M.), figure out what you're looking for and what you want to pay, then go buy some. End of story. Don't obsess over the search, or over getting the best deal. Look for quality (still C.M.). Think about buying local products or at least from your own country rather than imported (still C.M.). I don't think Charlotte Mason would have supported sweatshops (and there were miserable factories all over England in her day, so it was definitely an issue then too); or, at the very least, she would have looked for ways to improve the education and health of the workers.

It's not about guilt and over-asceticism, though those can creep in. It's simply realizing that every life, every choice we make, touches so many other lives. We each have the potential to make a positive difference in our small places, even in the bigger world. We can spend our lives shopping and dressing ourselves. Or we can get on with it.

Quote for the day: Frodo couldn't have said it better

'You're crazy/restless/brave.'

Only when I have to be. 

"All Roads Lead Home," at From This Side of the Pond.

Fashion Revolution Week: Haulternatives on coats and jackets

The Fashion Revolution people, aiming at a crowd apparently much younger than I am, suggest that those wanting to share creative Haulternatives this week should post a You-tube video. Since I don't make videos, my contribution is here on the blog, and probably two people will see it. But that's okay.

We are actually no strangers here to posting about "haulternatives," since a lot of our frugal homeschooling posts and craft posts over the past decade have been "look what we found, look what we're doing with it." But here's one for clothing. If you want to get involved in this, you can focus on vintage, fixer-uppers, used stuff, or just some favourite piece of clothing that you've worn forever. The point is to get away from "look what I bought new today."

 (Some of this you've heard about before, if you climb up here occasionally.) 

Awhile ago I read something online about sewing a coat from a thrift-shopped blazer plus its matching skirt. That sounded a little complicated for me, but I did remember passing over several skirt suits at the thrift store, mainly because I don't wear skirt suits, so I decided to have a look the next time I was there. They did have a purple, hand-made, faux-suede suit with an extra-long jacket, so long that you could just wear it as a coat without doing any fixing. But the suit was priced at an incredible $15, so I moved on. It didn't sell (big surprise?), and the next time I was in the store, it turned up on the dollar rack. For a dollar, I was happy to take it home and wear the jacket as a spring coat.

The skirt, I wasn't so sure about. I could have just sent it back to the thrift store, but I decided to turn it into a tote bag instead. Obviously I can't wear the coat and carry the bag at the same time, but otherwise it was a good idea, and I've used the bag a lot this spring.

My other spring coat also cost a dollar. It was a too-long trench coat that I cut down to jacket length. Getting the front corners sewn down completely was the trickiest part, and I didn't get them 100% perfect (not bad, though); but I don't mind.

I looked through jean jackets at the thrift store a few times, but what they had was mostly heavier and either younger or more "boy" than I was looking for. Last week we were at a different used-clothing store and I found a denim shirt that can also work as a lightweight jacket. Plus it has some embroidery and other prettiness on it.

At the same store, I found a short-sleeved cardigan. It's labelled several sizes too big for me, but I guess that depends what you want it for. I wanted it longer (on me, that's easy, I'm short), and looser; but still, it seems closer to my own size than to something XXXL. 

So the classic piece of thrifting advice is to be flexible and look beyond size labels and rack markers. And categories (suit? coat? skirt? bag?). You can find what you need. Sometimes it just takes time.

Decluttering Scavenger Hunt (want to play?)

The list of items for this decluttering scavenger hunt came from the BeMoreWithLess website. It's supposed to be a family or a group challenge, but I'm playing by myself (occasionally passing something by Mr. Fixit).

1 small kitchen appliance (toaster, food processor, juicer, blender – if you don’t use it, lose it):

coffee percolator (an extra) and food processor (we have a newer, smaller one)

3 items from your closet that do not fit you: none, unless you count the Peanuts t-shirt I wore as a toddler

1 item from your closet that still has tags: I couldn't find anything.

20 hidden items (stuffed in your garage, shed, or another hidden storage area):  

bunch of kids' mittens and hats; I'm sure those add up to twenty

2 coffee mugs: we already did those

any candle holder that hasn’t held a candle in more than 6 months

2 winter coats: we already cleaned those out

5 trinkets: I do have a box with some ornaments that could find a new home

10 products in your bathroom that you haven’t used in more than 2 months: n/a

2 pieces of art that you don’t like to look at or haven’t looked at in months because they aren’t on the wall: n/a

any expired food in your fridge or freezer (toss this please): n/a

any unopened, unexpired food in your pantry that you aren’t going to eat (donate this please): n/a

2 tools you haven’t used in more than a year: the tools are Mr. Fixit's domain.

1 collection of goods to support a hobby you gave up (if you stopped camping, sewing, fishing, or coin collecting … it goes): n/a

5 pieces from a junk drawer that you’ve been saving just in case (even though you don’t know how to use them): n/a

2 throw pillows that should have been thrown months ago:  already did that

10 books: I've gotten rid of a lot already.

2 cookbooks: already did that

kids' toys in storage: Lydia cleaned out a few things, plus we sent a bagful of crayons and markers to the thrift store earlier this week.

10 mystery items (anything goes):

Loaf pan cozy

Valentine's Day stash

DVD sets

Pencil case

Unidentifiable objects

Stationery. I decided to rescue the binder, though.

Well, that was fun, wasn't it?

Fashion Revolution Week (something to watch)

Fashion Revolution home page

We never used to ask. Clothes were clothes, stores were stores, fabric was fabric. You bought what you needed, full price or on sale. Usually the stuff held up for awhile. Occasionally you were disappointed.

Things changed. We became more aware. Some of us, for other reasons such as economy, have been doing the now-trendy used clothing thing all along.

But what really surprised me was not more information about working conditions or who makes the clothes. We've heard the same stories about bananas, chocolate, coffee beans, sugar: the big companies, the workers, the question of giving people employment even if it's not great employment. Even as we stir sugar into our coffee or peel a banana, we know all that. We may not know quite what to do with it, but we do know.

The surprise, for me, was the reported amount of clothing dumped in landfills. Clothes in the garbage? Um, well, I do toss spent socks and underthings (most of what gets tossed wouldn't even make cute little toys). But almost anything else that we can't use in some way ourselves gets donated, because I know that even ratty t-shirts can be made into rags and other recycled stuff, if they're given to a place (like our MCC store) that has the volunteer base to sort them out. That, like buying things used, has never been so much a commitment as just a habit, what we do. Who puts that many clothes in the garbage?

Well, according to the video The Life of Used Clothing, an awful lot of people. Which makes me think that the clothes dumpers must be buying an awful lot more clothing, new or used, than I do, or people I know do; if the scenario of buy it, wear it briefly, trash it is so widespread.

And the reason I'm sharing that video link is that, unlike some of the shame documentaries, it offers a positive message. Strangely enough, we can make a good thing out of North American nutty buying habits: donated clothing can be sent overseas and used to start used-clothing microbusinesses in other countries. Somebody buys a bale of clothing, sets up shop in a marketplace or even a mall, and makes some money out of it. There are also businesses that buy up unsalable clothing and turn it into stuffing material and that sort of thing, again providing employment.

That doesn't change the issues of over-advertising, overbuying, or substandard factory production. But it does shed a new light on the power of donating instead of dumping.

That's a bit oversimplified

Do you remember, it was a few years ago now, I groused here at Christmas time about helpful "decorating tips" from the media, that sounded like they applied only to a small percentage of people with already-overstuffed lives?

Their idea of helpful advice hasn't changed much since then, at least in this revolutionary new report about decluttering and simplifying.

"Our research shows that happiness spikes when people take deliberate steps to make life more manageable and embrace a philosophy of voluntary simplicity.”

Seriously? I don't know exactly what the study studied, but those results seem to be kind of a no-brainer; isn't that what the whole first chapter of The Wind in the Willows is about?

But then we get to the practical advice.

“The most popular step is decluttering the house and getting rid of extra stuff...Other easy steps include managing emails, using a calendar system and even just ordering-in dinners occasionally.” 

I hope that was helpful.

Quote for the day: we are among supernatural things always

From John Inglesant, by John Henry Shorthouse

A young man in the 17th century is caught between religious teachings; everyone tells him something different, everyone has an agenda. Finally he seeks out his first teacher, an old man he hasn't seen in years, and asks his opinion on what is true.

 "[You should] not think this life a low and poor place in which to seek the Divine Master walking to and fro. These high matters of which you speak, and this heavenly life, is not to be disbelieved, only it seems to me—more and more—that the soul or spirit of every man in passing through life among familiar things is among supernatural things always, and many things seem to me miraculous, which men think nothing of, such as memory, by which we live again in place and time—and of which, if I remember rightly, for I am a very poor scholar, you doubtless know, St. Augustine says many pertinent things—and the love of one another, by which we are led out of ourselves, and made to act against our own nature by that of another, or, rather, by a higher nature than that of any of us; and a thousand fancies and feelings which have no adequate cause among outward things. Here, in this book which I was reading when you so kindly came to see me, are withered flowers, which I have gathered in my rambles, and keep as friends and companions of pleasant places, streams and meadows, and of some who have been with me, and now are not. There is one, this single yellow flower—it is a tormentilla, which is good against the plague—what is it, that, as I hold it, makes me think of it as I do? Faded flowers have something, to me, miraculous and supernatural about them; though, in fact, it is nothing wonderful that the texture of a flower being dried survives. It is not in the flower, but in our immortal spirit that the miracle is. All these delightful thoughts that come into my mind when I look at this flower—thoughts, and fancies, and memories—what are they but the result of the alchemy of the immortal spirit, which takes all the pleasant, fragile things of life, and transmutes them into immortality in our own nature! And if the poor spirit and intellect of man can do this, how much more may the supreme creative intellect mould and form all things, and bring the presence of the supernatural face to face with us in our daily walk! Earth becomes to us, if we thus think, nothing but the garden of the Lord..."

There's still some roooom (AO Conference in Texas)

Join us at the AmblesideOnline Deep in the Heart of AO Conference, May 19-21 2016.

(Cow graphic courtesy of Brandy Vencel)

Wednesday Hodgepodge: Spaghetti Dreams Edition

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." 

1. What's the last thing you did that could be described as 'taxing'? 

Shovelling slushy snow when we should have been seeing dry pavement.

 2. If you could plant a garden of anything, what would be in it? 



Oh, that's fun...real or imaginary? Something to eat? How about...muffin bushes?

Or if you were serious: I would plant some tomatoes, zucchini and peppers, and hope that the bugs and critters didn't get to them before I did. We must be the only people on the planet who don't have much luck with zucchini.

 3. April 10-16 is National Library Week...will you celebrate with a visit to your nearest library? When did you last make a trip to the library? What are you reading right now? What's one title on your want-to-read list? 

I am having trouble even getting to our regular library because of road construction; and the one further away has to be a special trip. So I've been splitting my reading between what's already on the shelf, and the library books I can download for free through Overdrive. But the sun is shining and I might try walking over there today.

On the list of books I don't own, and that I don't think are at our library, is The Singing Bowl, poems by Malcolm Guite. And along with that, I want to actually read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The Apprentice (our oldest) read it for homeschool, but she read it to herself and I never got through the whole thing.

 4. Share a saying or an old wives tale you heard while growing up, you believed to be true or that you paid attention to 'just in case'? 

That eating anything strange before bed would give you bad dreams. It always seemed to come true in stories.

Peter and the Story Girl, so it appeared, had wooed wild dreams to their pillows by the simple device of eating rich, indigestible things before they went to bed. Aunt Olivia knew nothing about it, of course. She permitted them only a plain, wholesome lunch at bed-time. But during the day the Story Girl would smuggle upstairs various tidbits from the pantry, putting half in Peter's room and half in her own; and the result was these visions which had been our despair. 

"Last night I ate a piece of mince pie," she said, "and a lot of pickles, and two grape jelly tarts. But I guess I overdid it, because I got real sick and couldn't sleep at all, so of course I didn't have any dreams. I should have stopped with the pie and pickles and left the tarts alone. Peter did, and he had an elegant dream that Peg Bowen caught him and put him on to boil alive in that big black pot that hangs outside her door. He woke up before the water got hot, though." L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

 5. Are you a fan of onions? Garlic? Ginger? What's a dish you love that contains one, two or all three items listed? 

Of the three, ginger. But honey-garlic chicken is good too.

 6. Where does nurturing end and indulging begin? What are some skills or qualities you think a person needs to posess in order to be viewed as mature? 

Some friends and I had a discussion about this awhile ago. Indulging is a parent having to phone their adult offspring's boss to say that said offspring is too sick to come in to work, since if offspring was not living at home, they'd have to do the phoning themselves anyway. Most of us agreed with that, although I was willing to plump for "well, there might be circumstances..."

 7. What leading figure in any field would you like to hear speak, and why? 

Oh, I can think of several writers and thinkers and teachers I'd wish would make a stop by here.

How about Frederick Buechner?



 8. Insert your own random thought here.

We get a NYT section in the weekend paper, and there was a column this week that mentioned the idea of "erasing" people, or groups of people, that we don't like. Not physically killing them, but, perhaps, moving them out of our awareness. We were watching the Mr. Selfridge television series (which I have mixed feelings about, but we're still watching it), and one storyline in the first season concerned a store employee who was let go for petty theft, who then could not get another job and was so desperate that she threw herself in front of an underground train. This caused her co-workers to wonder if they were wrong to try to "erase" this woman from their lives, because of her mistake. One of the best articles I've read this week is Compassion Needs Imagination at the Circe Institute blog. The last church sermon I heard spoke about the definition of grace (shouldn't every sermon be about grace? The Lutherans at least would say yes), and grace definitely includes compassion. The article quotes Atticus Finch and his attempt to define compassion to his daughter:

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—”

“—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Which, we hope, is one of the things that reading does for us.

Illustration from Many Moons.

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

Planet June, smart crocheting lady (a new technique)

For crocheters, epecially those who do amigurumi toys, doll hats, or other projects where you use back-loop-only stitches to switch between, maybe, crocheting a flat-across part and then working straight up: Planet June has come up with a nicer-looking way to do that.

We never stop learning.

Re-posted quote for the day: Broken plates and broken plans

"There is completely no secret: just plunging in, allowing time, making space, giving energy, tending each situation with warm-hearted effort.  The spoon, the knife, the food, the hunger; broken plates and broken plans.  Play, don't work.  Work it out." ~~ Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara Cooking (1973)

Greener, greener, greener

Also sunnier.

Who's counting? The problem of minimalism

From a 2013 post: Many of our houses contain several-times-over-enough stuff already to be beautiful, functional, and express our dreams, values, and individuality.  At church we are watching a DVD series with Dallas Willard, and in yesterday's session he stated that humans are "treasuring creatures."  Our "things" are important to us; they give us identity; they give us comfort.  As Edith Schaeffer says, they also give us continuity when housing has to change or life gets difficult.  It's not unnatural to want to have treasured possessions, cherished things...The issue of creative homemaking for us now is often cutting down, cleaning out, detaching ourselves from enough of the "stuff" so that we can cherish the most meaningful, most memorable, most beautiful.  Charlotte Mason talks about using our will to make choices, rather than just accepting whatever default options present themselves; in making our homes more homelike, that would include making conscious choices about the things you want in a room, and what you don't want.

I recently read a book, Scaling Down, which had good suggestions for those who need or want to fit themselves into smaller spaces. It also deals with the issue of moving (a.k.a. uprooting) someone else, such as a senior family member. How do we manage that with empathy, when our ideas of necessary, important, cherished, may not line up with theirs? In fact, almost any attempt to tell someone else what's superfluous can be rightly seen as disrespectful and interfering. Don't love what doesn't love you back, says a popular letting-go cliche, but loving back isn't usually the real issue. Don't base your identity on possessions, says one thoughtful person; it's true that things come and go, moths and dust corrupt, paper crumbles, colours fade, and knives lose their edge. All quite right.  But at the same time, the old, the saved, sometimes the hidden and then rediscovered, gives us a sense of our own history, our story; and we can't get away from that. Near where I live, modern construction was recently halted when a pioneer-era log road was uncovered several feet down. What does it matter, why didn't they just continue the work? Because people still cared about their community's past.

We have thought many times about moving from the Treehouse, probably to a smaller space. When that time comes, we may not take all the vintage Christmas balls with us; but we'll take some of them. We can't take all the books, but we'll take enough; scanned-in and downloaded ones aren't the same.  We have cleared out many of the things that were easy come, easy go, and left what we really use: 80/20, as some put it.

But the old debate continues: what is necessary, and who decides? In some times and places, a pretty ribbon was vanity, a novel was a time waster, a rug in the parlour was excess. Is stuff bad in itself? If some is good or okay, how much is too much? Is it a spiritual question, or an economic one? Is it more liberating to live with almost nothing, or to have more and yet hold onto it lightly?

"...I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Philippians 4:12-13, ESV

Green, green, green

From the archives: Knowledge and nonsense

First posted April 2006

My friend the DHM at The Common Room quoted Charlotte Mason today:

"There is absolutely no avenue to knowledge but knowledge itself, and the schools must begin, not by qualifying the mind to deal with knowledge, but by affording all the best books."--Towards a Philosophy of Education (Vol. 6), pg. 347

Did she mean the most serious books? The hardest books? The longest books?

Just before Miss Mason gets to that point in the chapter, she has been describing the sad case of two young men who had a half-baked education (in her view), who "laboured indefatigably" at making sense of the books they picked up as young adults, but who admitted themselves that "You and I go at a subject all wrong!" 

What was one of the books they couldn't make sense of? Alice in Wonderland.

Deeply impressed he bought the book as soon as he returned to London and read it earnestly. To his horror he saw no sense in it. Then it struck him that it might be meant as nonsense and he had another try, then he concluded that it was rather funny but he remained disappointed.

Here, again, is another evidence of the limitations attending an utter absence of education. A cultivated sense of humour is a great factor in a joyous life, but these young men are without it. Perhaps the youth addicted to sports usually fails to appreciate delicate nonsense; sports are too strenuous to admit of a subtler, more airy kind of play....

So we have to give our children more than facts, more than vocabulary drills. Knowledge, yes...the DHM's post points that out well, along with the sad fact of our culture's anti-knowledge bent. But also another kind of knowing...an understanding of laughter and nonsense that goes beyond the usual nose-picking humor found in childrens' books. They need to meet characters like my aged Uncle Arly, sitting on a heap of barley...and the Humbug...and the White Knight, one of my favourite characters in any book. They need some silliness, some furry squirrel puppets (I promise we'll do a post about Dewey soon), some knock-knock jokes, some James Thurber, and eventually some Wodehouse and Chesterton. They need to let their brains learn to play and dance and jump around with all the wonderful connections that a sense of nonsense allows. They need some nonsense so they can understand inventiveness...and a mandatory credit in inventiveness and creativity will not substitute.

I found this posted on the Catholic Culture blog:

A friend said all this reminded him of the scene in The Chronicles of Narnia where Aslan (God) creates Narnia, including an odd little bird which, like all the animals, can talk. The bird says something ridiculous and all the other creatures laugh. Turning to Aslan, the bird says, “Oh, Aslan, have I made the first joke?” “No,” Aslan replies, “you are the first joke.” My friend says there is a moral here.

I think he's right.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road

Join us at the AmblesideOnline Deep in the Heart of AO Conference, May 19-21 2016.

(Cow graphic courtesy of Brandy Vencel)

Drip drip drip

(Finally.)

Oh yes, please do read this today

More than once, I've gone back to Wendell Berry's novel Hannah Coulter; even posted about it here in relation to the way the children in the Branch family grew up, learning what they needed to learn and doing what they needed to do. One of the latest Circe Institute blog posts looks at the theme of education throughout the book, discussing what happened to Hannah's own children (who became successful in the modern sense, but lost too much personally). As the article asks, does schooling (and then work outside the home) have to mean the loss of one's roots?

What a whole day of snow in April looks like