The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver: I did finish it, and barely in time for the church book club discussion. Really, really good. I was relatively isolated in liking it, though. It's definitely a dark read and much longer than I was expecting. I was most impressed from a literary perspective by the kaleidoscope of impressions as the same story is told from five different points of view--the mother and four daughters--all distinct, all with their own strengths and limitations. The story is of a cult-of-one renegade Baptist pastor who decides to take his woefully unprepared family to Belgian Congo--just as Belgium pulls out and the family is left to fend for themselves in a land that has been exploited for centuries by white people.
The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Steven Baxter. Somehow I had fallen behind on this series and came across the third book at the library, so of course I had to go back and read the second. What I love about this series is how it feels exactly like it could happen--like tomorrow I might open my Facebook to see a link to making a homemade "stepper" that would allow crossing into infinite alternative dimensions of non-human-inhabited Earth, ready to be explored. And then, of course, the difficulties and changes that would ensue. Highly enjoyable speculative fiction.
Paradise Lost by John Milton, Books I-III. This is for an online book club; I read it on my own a couple of years ago and it is definitely much more comprehensible the second time around, and with discussion. It's much easier this time around to follow Milton's convoluted sentences and appreciate the majestic roll of his phrases.
For family read alouds we have done By the Great Horn Spoon and now are in the middle of Five Children and It. Both have been big hits.
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Saturday, January 09, 2016
New Digs
One of the big projects of the past month has been moving our main business location from an overcrowded spot at the other end of the county to a roomy (currently cavernous) location a few miles from home.
This means for the second year in the row, the Christmas season has been dominated by remodeling. Fortunately a lot of it was able to be done by volunteer or in-kind labor, but DOB still put quite a bit of time in himself. He found that crawling along the floor and taping things up was actually a pretty good stretching routine. I only showed up for a day or so, but I did add an extra layer to my already stiff as a board painting jeans.
The new location looks quite amazing, though. Like *real* lawyer offices. We are hoping to sublet a number of the offices to other attorneys, and have a couple of them spoken for. DOB reserved the biggest office, and now we no longer have to climb over his various mobility devices and rearrange them for every client meeting.
My office is small, since I'm only in two mornings a week, but we're going to put custom shelves up so I can stand or sit as the spirit moves me. I am not very good at staying in one place for long, and I expect this to be much more comfortable for me than a standard desk setup. It's a cozy, not-too-office feeling space with antique chairs (from my great-aunt) and table lamps.
This means for the second year in the row, the Christmas season has been dominated by remodeling. Fortunately a lot of it was able to be done by volunteer or in-kind labor, but DOB still put quite a bit of time in himself. He found that crawling along the floor and taping things up was actually a pretty good stretching routine. I only showed up for a day or so, but I did add an extra layer to my already stiff as a board painting jeans.
The new location looks quite amazing, though. Like *real* lawyer offices. We are hoping to sublet a number of the offices to other attorneys, and have a couple of them spoken for. DOB reserved the biggest office, and now we no longer have to climb over his various mobility devices and rearrange them for every client meeting.
My office is small, since I'm only in two mornings a week, but we're going to put custom shelves up so I can stand or sit as the spirit moves me. I am not very good at staying in one place for long, and I expect this to be much more comfortable for me than a standard desk setup. It's a cozy, not-too-office feeling space with antique chairs (from my great-aunt) and table lamps.
Sunday, January 03, 2016
The Way of Things
Like most pithy statements, it has coalesced into a Facebook meme, but it certainly floated about the ether before that:
Our pace of technological innovation and information generation mandates it. We must be ever adapting and embracing change. Enough of life is in flux automatically that flux itself is considered a necessary or desirable state.
"Way" is a beautiful word, though, with far more meaning than we usually notice in it. It is a path, a road. Something that is both the sequence of steps between here and there and an entity in itself. "The way we have always done things" isn't just an arbitrary list of procedures; it is a path that has been tested and refined through the experience of much time and many people. To preserve it inviolate is not the nature of a way; a way adapts over time to changing circumstance. But to always be ignoring it and starting over is to waste a great deal of information that has had the opportunity to coalesce into wisdom.
What we have instead of ways is random data points. I saw an article recently, one of hundreds like it, about "9 Things Insanely Healthy People Do In the Morning." Individually, most of the things were reasonably likely to have been proven to be healthy in one regard or another--like drinking water, or exercising. Collectively, no mortal under the constraints of the space-time continuum could have accomplished them all, even if they lacked such common accessories as children and a job. It was most certainly not based on the actual practices of healthy people, but on this study over here and that study over there.
It is the nature of current scientific inquiry to be primarily concerned with isolating one factor and trying to find its causes and effects. Which is well enough as far as it goes. But at a human scale, factors do not live in isolation. This thing we are doing here influences four things in sixteen different ways which then influence each other in other ways. One small change that fixes one small problem may set off dozens of larger problems. A six-month study looking at three things has only the smallest of insight on how to actually live. Which is why in another six month another study will come out saying the exact opposite and there will just be more fodder for the wars of We Have Everything Figured Out This Time.
It takes the actual experience of many lives to find ways of living, and they will never be reducible to individual factors. They will be ways, the way we have always done things, and if you try to poke at the individual parts they will always be full of flaws or opportunities for theoretical improvement.
Speculative fiction tends to split on whether our technological innovations will usher in apocalypse or paradise, with apocalypse the more popular outcome. Odds are against extremes, but if we are to have progress and not just change, it will be because we have found ways of being through lifetimes of experience, because we are willing to pay attention to the whole picture not just the data points, because before we throw out the old ways as relics of an unenlightened past we are willing to pause and find out why they were where they were.
The most dangerous thing to say is, "That is the way we've always done it."It's the quintessentially modern approach (and by modern I mean the past 200 years or so, it's a short time in human history). Always we should be blazing trails, innovating, rejecting the old and outmoded ideas of five months ago.
Our pace of technological innovation and information generation mandates it. We must be ever adapting and embracing change. Enough of life is in flux automatically that flux itself is considered a necessary or desirable state.
"Way" is a beautiful word, though, with far more meaning than we usually notice in it. It is a path, a road. Something that is both the sequence of steps between here and there and an entity in itself. "The way we have always done things" isn't just an arbitrary list of procedures; it is a path that has been tested and refined through the experience of much time and many people. To preserve it inviolate is not the nature of a way; a way adapts over time to changing circumstance. But to always be ignoring it and starting over is to waste a great deal of information that has had the opportunity to coalesce into wisdom.
What we have instead of ways is random data points. I saw an article recently, one of hundreds like it, about "9 Things Insanely Healthy People Do In the Morning." Individually, most of the things were reasonably likely to have been proven to be healthy in one regard or another--like drinking water, or exercising. Collectively, no mortal under the constraints of the space-time continuum could have accomplished them all, even if they lacked such common accessories as children and a job. It was most certainly not based on the actual practices of healthy people, but on this study over here and that study over there.
It is the nature of current scientific inquiry to be primarily concerned with isolating one factor and trying to find its causes and effects. Which is well enough as far as it goes. But at a human scale, factors do not live in isolation. This thing we are doing here influences four things in sixteen different ways which then influence each other in other ways. One small change that fixes one small problem may set off dozens of larger problems. A six-month study looking at three things has only the smallest of insight on how to actually live. Which is why in another six month another study will come out saying the exact opposite and there will just be more fodder for the wars of We Have Everything Figured Out This Time.
It takes the actual experience of many lives to find ways of living, and they will never be reducible to individual factors. They will be ways, the way we have always done things, and if you try to poke at the individual parts they will always be full of flaws or opportunities for theoretical improvement.
Speculative fiction tends to split on whether our technological innovations will usher in apocalypse or paradise, with apocalypse the more popular outcome. Odds are against extremes, but if we are to have progress and not just change, it will be because we have found ways of being through lifetimes of experience, because we are willing to pay attention to the whole picture not just the data points, because before we throw out the old ways as relics of an unenlightened past we are willing to pause and find out why they were where they were.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
A Last-Day-To-Remember-This-Year's-Books Post
Hmmm, hmmmm. I kind of tapered off this fall. Doing more work-work and that tends to leave me with less mental and emotional energy for imaginary problems.
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving. This was for the church book club as part of the library's fall selection for the whole community. Chosen mostly on the basis of being a local author, I suspect. It was mostly just depressing. Inept people trying to cope with senseless tragedy and not a smidgen of hope anywhere. Not badly written, but pointless.
Sky Raiders, Rogue Knight, Crystal Keepers. Another Brandon Mull series the kids insisted I read. Lots of fun.
Castle Hangnail, Ursula Vernon. Totally hilarious tale of a castle that needs a new Evil Overlord and an aspiring young witch trying to fill some very big shoes. My birthday present from Bookworm. Duchess also loved it.
The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio. Apparently this was Lloyd Alexander's last book, a simple but satisfying fairy tale romance set along the Silk Road.
Seems like I must have read other books, but I'm drawing a blank.
In progress, hoping to finish soon:
The Secret Lives of Codebreakers. Ron and I came across a miniseries called Bletchley Park about some former code-breakers trying to catch a serial killer. It was so engrossing I couldn't resist the urge to find a book and read more about the real story.
The Poisonwood Bible. This is our church's book club selection for January. I'm not sure whether I'll love it or hate it or what but it's extremely well written and engrossing.
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving. This was for the church book club as part of the library's fall selection for the whole community. Chosen mostly on the basis of being a local author, I suspect. It was mostly just depressing. Inept people trying to cope with senseless tragedy and not a smidgen of hope anywhere. Not badly written, but pointless.
Sky Raiders, Rogue Knight, Crystal Keepers. Another Brandon Mull series the kids insisted I read. Lots of fun.
Castle Hangnail, Ursula Vernon. Totally hilarious tale of a castle that needs a new Evil Overlord and an aspiring young witch trying to fill some very big shoes. My birthday present from Bookworm. Duchess also loved it.
The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio. Apparently this was Lloyd Alexander's last book, a simple but satisfying fairy tale romance set along the Silk Road.
Seems like I must have read other books, but I'm drawing a blank.
In progress, hoping to finish soon:
The Secret Lives of Codebreakers. Ron and I came across a miniseries called Bletchley Park about some former code-breakers trying to catch a serial killer. It was so engrossing I couldn't resist the urge to find a book and read more about the real story.
The Poisonwood Bible. This is our church's book club selection for January. I'm not sure whether I'll love it or hate it or what but it's extremely well written and engrossing.
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
White Christmas
A rather obscure beloved book of my childhood, called Wu-Han of Korea if memory serves me right, depicted an idyllic pre-war but post-Catholicism Korea with its traditional customs and folkways.
One of the lines I remember vividly explained how in Korea, white was the color of mourning, and there was a rigid procedure for how many years it must be worn: so many years for the death of a parent, grandparent, sibling, spouse, child. The result of these customary long years of mourning, the book explained, was that adults pretty much only wore white. Only children and an occasional young adult would still be wearing bright colors.
As a child, I figured this must be because people died a lot more in the olden days.
Well, perhaps they did die a bit younger, but the death rate is, of course, the same. Because the grownups in my life didn't wear mourning, I could not see the loss that walked with them. A once-met uncle or great-aunt was just a name to me. I did not remember the hands who had written the recipes, the faces in the faded pictures.
Now I know that they did. Now I have my own loss that walks with me. And now I realize it is simply part of life, in the past, the present, and the future. The longer you live, the more dead people you know. The more Christmases you celebrate, the longer the Ghost of Christmas Past shines his light backwards to places and people forever gone.
One of the lines I remember vividly explained how in Korea, white was the color of mourning, and there was a rigid procedure for how many years it must be worn: so many years for the death of a parent, grandparent, sibling, spouse, child. The result of these customary long years of mourning, the book explained, was that adults pretty much only wore white. Only children and an occasional young adult would still be wearing bright colors.
As a child, I figured this must be because people died a lot more in the olden days.
Well, perhaps they did die a bit younger, but the death rate is, of course, the same. Because the grownups in my life didn't wear mourning, I could not see the loss that walked with them. A once-met uncle or great-aunt was just a name to me. I did not remember the hands who had written the recipes, the faces in the faded pictures.
Now I know that they did. Now I have my own loss that walks with me. And now I realize it is simply part of life, in the past, the present, and the future. The longer you live, the more dead people you know. The more Christmases you celebrate, the longer the Ghost of Christmas Past shines his light backwards to places and people forever gone.
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Winter Storms
This year is the clear winner for Least Posts Ever.
Starting a business is just about as exhausting as having two new babies, and it uses a lot more words.
Business has been going well enough, all things taken into account, but the star of Murphy has been in the ascendant and when things can go crazy, they have. El Niño has given us an endless succession of rain and wind and power outages. One case goes crazy, and then another does, and then they push something else out of the way which takes three times as long to fix as it would have to have done right in the first place, but mind and body do break down at some point.
Still, we've been in our own business for nearly a whole year and we haven't gone broke or had a malpractice claim yet.
Beginning the first of the year we are moving to a location only seven minutes from home. We are keeping a satellite office at our old location at the other end of the county, but we will all be relieved to avoid the daily bottleneck and hopefully spend more time working (or possibly even sleeping) and less time driving (and, in my case, carsick). Our new location is also much larger and we will be subletting to other attorneys.
I gave the kids and myself an extra week off school for Christmas. I haven't exactly used it to relax yet, but we did do a massive purge of the playroom and bedrooms. They decided they had outgrown most of their toys--trains, toy food, most dress-up--so we are down to Legos and a zoo's worth of stuffies. They may have made up for quite a bit of it when they went Christmas shopping for each other at the variety mall--they were flush with cash after we hired them to stamp numbers on the documents for a trial--but they mostly got more stuffed animals which, if somewhat space-hungry, at least don't hurt to step on.
This year, Christmas dinner is going to be gourmet frozen pizza. And cookies. Surely I can still manage a couple of batches of cookies.
Starting a business is just about as exhausting as having two new babies, and it uses a lot more words.
Business has been going well enough, all things taken into account, but the star of Murphy has been in the ascendant and when things can go crazy, they have. El Niño has given us an endless succession of rain and wind and power outages. One case goes crazy, and then another does, and then they push something else out of the way which takes three times as long to fix as it would have to have done right in the first place, but mind and body do break down at some point.
Still, we've been in our own business for nearly a whole year and we haven't gone broke or had a malpractice claim yet.
Beginning the first of the year we are moving to a location only seven minutes from home. We are keeping a satellite office at our old location at the other end of the county, but we will all be relieved to avoid the daily bottleneck and hopefully spend more time working (or possibly even sleeping) and less time driving (and, in my case, carsick). Our new location is also much larger and we will be subletting to other attorneys.
I gave the kids and myself an extra week off school for Christmas. I haven't exactly used it to relax yet, but we did do a massive purge of the playroom and bedrooms. They decided they had outgrown most of their toys--trains, toy food, most dress-up--so we are down to Legos and a zoo's worth of stuffies. They may have made up for quite a bit of it when they went Christmas shopping for each other at the variety mall--they were flush with cash after we hired them to stamp numbers on the documents for a trial--but they mostly got more stuffed animals which, if somewhat space-hungry, at least don't hurt to step on.
This year, Christmas dinner is going to be gourmet frozen pizza. And cookies. Surely I can still manage a couple of batches of cookies.
Friday, October 16, 2015
Things That Keep Happening
I went to the conference and it was not only highly informative and a chance to meet lots of people from the blogverse, there were cookies freely available at all hours of the day and night. It doesn't get more restful than that. And I met up with some new people who were interested in joining us for park day!
Also, light-saber dueling over Shakespeare adaptations:
Then, of course, Real Life returned. At work we have a trial coming up at the end of the month, which is a pretty big deal in our mostly transactional and negotiations practice, and we have to hunt up things like how do you impeach a witness, anyway? And what is with all these deadlines?
After a few days, though, Real Life got even more fun when Duchess came down with a stomach flu. She got over it in a day, but I was just waiting for round 2. I sent everybody to bed with towels beside their beds and metal bowls. Nothing happened.
Another day, nothing happened.
I was afraid we would miss our newly-revived park day, but everybody was still quite well, so we went ahead.
Then His Majesty went into the hospital with what initially looked like some loathsome disease but turned out to be an allergic reaction to his blood pressure medication. But he was pretty sick for a few days.
And in the middle of that, Deux finally came down with the stomach bug.
Then he got better. And I waited for the twins. And waited.
Finally, on the next Park Day, Dot started in. But she started early in the morning and I didn't want to cancel and she seemed to be perking up so I committed the unpardonable sin and we went to the park anyway.
She threw up as soon as we got there.
And no one else showed up anyway, probably because it was Columbus Day and some, not-self-employed people have this strange concept called Days Off.
And I kept her on a towel in the middle of a field of grass while the other kids played, so I don't think she really spread any germs. And the sunshine was nice.
Then she got better. And then, finally, finally, Dash got sick. And DOB got sick (maybe. Grownups seemed to have different symptoms.)
And then . . . I got it. I think. Again, different grownup symptoms.
Anyway, today I am recuperating while trying to face reality and it's not a pretty combination. I'm really only writing this blog post because it gives me an excuse not to get up and face lunch.
My apologies to anyone we unwittingly exposed over the last two weeks. I really tried to do better. But what kind of 24 hour bug doesn't infect everyone at once? That's just not playing fair.
Also, light-saber dueling over Shakespeare adaptations:
Then, of course, Real Life returned. At work we have a trial coming up at the end of the month, which is a pretty big deal in our mostly transactional and negotiations practice, and we have to hunt up things like how do you impeach a witness, anyway? And what is with all these deadlines?
After a few days, though, Real Life got even more fun when Duchess came down with a stomach flu. She got over it in a day, but I was just waiting for round 2. I sent everybody to bed with towels beside their beds and metal bowls. Nothing happened.
Another day, nothing happened.
I was afraid we would miss our newly-revived park day, but everybody was still quite well, so we went ahead.
Then His Majesty went into the hospital with what initially looked like some loathsome disease but turned out to be an allergic reaction to his blood pressure medication. But he was pretty sick for a few days.
And in the middle of that, Deux finally came down with the stomach bug.
Then he got better. And I waited for the twins. And waited.
Finally, on the next Park Day, Dot started in. But she started early in the morning and I didn't want to cancel and she seemed to be perking up so I committed the unpardonable sin and we went to the park anyway.
She threw up as soon as we got there.
And no one else showed up anyway, probably because it was Columbus Day and some, not-self-employed people have this strange concept called Days Off.
And I kept her on a towel in the middle of a field of grass while the other kids played, so I don't think she really spread any germs. And the sunshine was nice.
Then she got better. And then, finally, finally, Dash got sick. And DOB got sick (maybe. Grownups seemed to have different symptoms.)
And then . . . I got it. I think. Again, different grownup symptoms.
Anyway, today I am recuperating while trying to face reality and it's not a pretty combination. I'm really only writing this blog post because it gives me an excuse not to get up and face lunch.
My apologies to anyone we unwittingly exposed over the last two weeks. I really tried to do better. But what kind of 24 hour bug doesn't infect everyone at once? That's just not playing fair.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Only Two More Days!
And I get to go here: Charlotte Mason Northwest Educator's Conference. I'm totally excited. I will bring my ugly knitting. But I haven't figured out what I did with my copy of The Living Page.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Wheat Thickens
I don't have as many stories of household disasters as I did in my younger years. Those of you who have only known me in the past ten years or so may think I am a sane, well-rounded manager. Those of you whose memory stretches back to my teens and early twenties know at what cost this knowledge was gained.
Among my siblings, any time I manage to put baking *powder* in the biscuits is still an occasion for celebration.
Still, some challenges never entirely go away. Last week I was doing the grocery shopping and was trying to obtain wheat kernels. They were in bulk bins, the upper bins where you lower the lever and your desired substance goes shooting out, hopefully into a plastic bag you are holding underneath it.
The trouble is, wheat kernels are quite heavy and plastic bags are not strong and the lower level of bins has a lot of poky bits. The inevitable result of this was a small hole in the bottom of the bag. However, by the time that happened, the top of the bag was very, very full. If I tipped the bag so kernels wouldn't fall out of the bottom hole, they all just came spilling out the top. I realized this was not a problem I could address on my own, so I asked fellow shoppers to hand me a second bag.
Someone was kind enough to do so, but this didn't really address the problem because I still couldn't get what was in Bag A into Bag B without letting things fall out of one end or the other. I finally just kind of dumped the whole thing into Bag B, which had developed a hole of its own by this time, so then I needed to summon Bag C, which finally proved enough to keep what was left of my kernels contained.
I think some people were hovering around wanting to offer more constructive help, only they couldn't quite figure out how to step into this mass of flailing arms and bags and cascading kernels without making things worse. Or maybe they were just standing around laughing. I was a little too busy to tell.
When the bag was finally fastened with no kernels emerging from other holes, I beat a hasty retreat from the bulk section, leaving the floor covered with kernels in my wake. I hope nobody fell on them. Those things are slippery.
Among my siblings, any time I manage to put baking *powder* in the biscuits is still an occasion for celebration.
Still, some challenges never entirely go away. Last week I was doing the grocery shopping and was trying to obtain wheat kernels. They were in bulk bins, the upper bins where you lower the lever and your desired substance goes shooting out, hopefully into a plastic bag you are holding underneath it.
The trouble is, wheat kernels are quite heavy and plastic bags are not strong and the lower level of bins has a lot of poky bits. The inevitable result of this was a small hole in the bottom of the bag. However, by the time that happened, the top of the bag was very, very full. If I tipped the bag so kernels wouldn't fall out of the bottom hole, they all just came spilling out the top. I realized this was not a problem I could address on my own, so I asked fellow shoppers to hand me a second bag.
Someone was kind enough to do so, but this didn't really address the problem because I still couldn't get what was in Bag A into Bag B without letting things fall out of one end or the other. I finally just kind of dumped the whole thing into Bag B, which had developed a hole of its own by this time, so then I needed to summon Bag C, which finally proved enough to keep what was left of my kernels contained.
I think some people were hovering around wanting to offer more constructive help, only they couldn't quite figure out how to step into this mass of flailing arms and bags and cascading kernels without making things worse. Or maybe they were just standing around laughing. I was a little too busy to tell.
When the bag was finally fastened with no kernels emerging from other holes, I beat a hasty retreat from the bulk section, leaving the floor covered with kernels in my wake. I hope nobody fell on them. Those things are slippery.
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Summer Reading List
One advantage of being rather tired and down this summer is that I read quite a lot. I've probably forgotten many of them. But here are some I remember.
The Wave-Watcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney. Quite a fun read about the aspects and nature of waves. Science for people who like to read novels.
Beyonders series by Brandon Mull. The ducklings are all avid Brandon Mull fans. I had only read the Fablehaven series previously, but having tried one series they wanted more. And then they insisted I should read it, and since I'm making them read Little Women and Treasure Island it seemed only fair. As middle-grade series fantasy goes I'm pretty happy with them. There's plenty of action, a good bit of trying to do the right thing in the face of extreme difficulty, and the grownups aren't all stupid or evil. A little gruesome for the more sensitive, but apparently none of the ducklings fall into that category. (BTW, after several years of nudging on my part, they have finally gotten hooked on Redwall.) Romance tends to stall at the butterflies in the stomach stage until the epilogue, when everyone is safely grown up.
I tried to read an Agatha Christie that wasn't a murder mystery, and that just didn't work at all. I can't even remember the name.
What Language Is by John McWhorter. I like to read McWhorter and pretend I am a linguist, without the bother of having to actually master another language.
An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. And then I like to read Sacks and pretend I am a neurologist, without the bother of having to actually go to medical school. The way he brings out the soul of individuals even with damaged brains and minds is unmatched. Sad to hear of his death right as I finished this.
Stork Raving Mad by Donna Andrews. This is definitely my guilty pleasure author. However, drafting a murder mystery solved by a woman eight and a half months pregnant with twins and have it come off as believable is a feat worthy of some note. (It helped that the murder happened in her home office so she doesn't have to go far and she overhears much of the important evidence because she is napping or eating in odd locations.)
The City of Ember and sequels by Jeanne Duprau. And this would be middle-grade post-apocalyptic fiction, but I enjoyed it very much and so has Duchess. (Neither of us could get into the one prequel in the series, The Prophet of Yonwood. We prefer apocalypses in the distant past.) We also watched the movie version of the first book over the summer, which was notable for being a movie that Deux had never seen before but still liked.
Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett. The next-to-last of the Discworld books. Some sad and narrow-minded newspaper writer recently blasted people for celebrating Terry Pratchett, as he was clearly nothing more than a hack churning out pot-boilers. He admitted he hadn't actually read any of the books, though, but he tried to snobbishly compare it to Mansfield Park, which he had only recently read for the first time. Well, I've read Mansfield Park several times, and it is a lovely work of its kind, and Pratchett's works are excellent works of their own kind; not the finessed style of an Austen, but generous work of a writer who gets better and better through long and copious practice. It will take a hundred years to be sure, but I think he easily stands with writers like Wodehouse and Dickens. Just because a book is funny doesn't mean it isn't profound. As Moist von Lipwig would point out, if you can get people laughing, they'll buy your goods. (One sign of his genius: he has so many books and so many different characters and they are all profoundly different and yet still human. Moist von Lipwig is most certainly not Sam Vimes who is not Archchancellor Ridcully who is not Susan who is not Granny Weatherwax. Even the minor characters sparkle with aliveness. And he can do something that in my reading is very rare among even celebrated male writers--he can write believable and interesting women, of every degree of age and desirability.)
I'm trying to get into Don Quixote, but apparently the version I started on was so abridged as to have left out most of the fun; I have borrowed from the library the translation Silvia recommends. It does read well, but it's frightfully thick and I may not get far before the library runs out of patience.
Also working on The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, by Edward Dolnick. So far quite absorbing.
And to the kids I am reading one of my all-time favorites, Carry on, Mr. Bowditch, which has everything: ships and storms and love and loss and lots of math.
The Wave-Watcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney. Quite a fun read about the aspects and nature of waves. Science for people who like to read novels.
Beyonders series by Brandon Mull. The ducklings are all avid Brandon Mull fans. I had only read the Fablehaven series previously, but having tried one series they wanted more. And then they insisted I should read it, and since I'm making them read Little Women and Treasure Island it seemed only fair. As middle-grade series fantasy goes I'm pretty happy with them. There's plenty of action, a good bit of trying to do the right thing in the face of extreme difficulty, and the grownups aren't all stupid or evil. A little gruesome for the more sensitive, but apparently none of the ducklings fall into that category. (BTW, after several years of nudging on my part, they have finally gotten hooked on Redwall.) Romance tends to stall at the butterflies in the stomach stage until the epilogue, when everyone is safely grown up.
I tried to read an Agatha Christie that wasn't a murder mystery, and that just didn't work at all. I can't even remember the name.
What Language Is by John McWhorter. I like to read McWhorter and pretend I am a linguist, without the bother of having to actually master another language.
An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. And then I like to read Sacks and pretend I am a neurologist, without the bother of having to actually go to medical school. The way he brings out the soul of individuals even with damaged brains and minds is unmatched. Sad to hear of his death right as I finished this.
Stork Raving Mad by Donna Andrews. This is definitely my guilty pleasure author. However, drafting a murder mystery solved by a woman eight and a half months pregnant with twins and have it come off as believable is a feat worthy of some note. (It helped that the murder happened in her home office so she doesn't have to go far and she overhears much of the important evidence because she is napping or eating in odd locations.)
The City of Ember and sequels by Jeanne Duprau. And this would be middle-grade post-apocalyptic fiction, but I enjoyed it very much and so has Duchess. (Neither of us could get into the one prequel in the series, The Prophet of Yonwood. We prefer apocalypses in the distant past.) We also watched the movie version of the first book over the summer, which was notable for being a movie that Deux had never seen before but still liked.
Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett. The next-to-last of the Discworld books. Some sad and narrow-minded newspaper writer recently blasted people for celebrating Terry Pratchett, as he was clearly nothing more than a hack churning out pot-boilers. He admitted he hadn't actually read any of the books, though, but he tried to snobbishly compare it to Mansfield Park, which he had only recently read for the first time. Well, I've read Mansfield Park several times, and it is a lovely work of its kind, and Pratchett's works are excellent works of their own kind; not the finessed style of an Austen, but generous work of a writer who gets better and better through long and copious practice. It will take a hundred years to be sure, but I think he easily stands with writers like Wodehouse and Dickens. Just because a book is funny doesn't mean it isn't profound. As Moist von Lipwig would point out, if you can get people laughing, they'll buy your goods. (One sign of his genius: he has so many books and so many different characters and they are all profoundly different and yet still human. Moist von Lipwig is most certainly not Sam Vimes who is not Archchancellor Ridcully who is not Susan who is not Granny Weatherwax. Even the minor characters sparkle with aliveness. And he can do something that in my reading is very rare among even celebrated male writers--he can write believable and interesting women, of every degree of age and desirability.)
I'm trying to get into Don Quixote, but apparently the version I started on was so abridged as to have left out most of the fun; I have borrowed from the library the translation Silvia recommends. It does read well, but it's frightfully thick and I may not get far before the library runs out of patience.
Also working on The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, by Edward Dolnick. So far quite absorbing.
And to the kids I am reading one of my all-time favorites, Carry on, Mr. Bowditch, which has everything: ships and storms and love and loss and lots of math.
Thursday, September 03, 2015
Here With You
We have started school again, with all the attendant fun and drama. Sometimes we have those frameable moments when everyone is eagerly sketching leaves in their nature notebooks to the music of Brahms, and sometimes it's just plain hard work and you can do one more line, and sometimes the majority of the participants are wailing in despair (usually because everybody else is making so much noise).
One thing I have learned in five years of this is that it is all the good stuff. Ambleside Schools International has an inspiring series of videos, one phrase from which echoes in my mind through every day: "It is good to be me here with you."
It may be that our lesson today is not so much about odd versus even numbers and more about putting your mind back to your work despite the fact that your brother has the audacity to breathe audibly, but I am here to help you learn both.
It may be that you only get three words on the page after fifteen minutes of tears, but those three words represent a battle bravely fought and won against fear, perfectionism, and a brain that takes things in much faster than it can get them out.
It may be that we are still practicing three-letter words when I thought we would be reading novels, but we are weaving day by day the links between sight and sound and movement and one day that weaving will be strong enough to hold the torrent of ideas you will need it for.
The written lesson plan matters, but the unwritten lesson plan matters more. And that is the plan that says: Here, today, we will do the best we can with what we have; we will give it everything we have in us; we will grow in what we need today.
It is good.
ETA: Why yes, it is the fifth day of school and I am winding up eating brownies straight from the pan. They're good, too.
One thing I have learned in five years of this is that it is all the good stuff. Ambleside Schools International has an inspiring series of videos, one phrase from which echoes in my mind through every day: "It is good to be me here with you."
It may be that our lesson today is not so much about odd versus even numbers and more about putting your mind back to your work despite the fact that your brother has the audacity to breathe audibly, but I am here to help you learn both.
It may be that you only get three words on the page after fifteen minutes of tears, but those three words represent a battle bravely fought and won against fear, perfectionism, and a brain that takes things in much faster than it can get them out.
It may be that we are still practicing three-letter words when I thought we would be reading novels, but we are weaving day by day the links between sight and sound and movement and one day that weaving will be strong enough to hold the torrent of ideas you will need it for.
The written lesson plan matters, but the unwritten lesson plan matters more. And that is the plan that says: Here, today, we will do the best we can with what we have; we will give it everything we have in us; we will grow in what we need today.
It is good.
ETA: Why yes, it is the fifth day of school and I am winding up eating brownies straight from the pan. They're good, too.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Breathing
I haven't done as much work as I hoped to do this summer.
Nor blogging, obviously.
Really, I haven't done much of anything.
I've been tired. Some of it physical, some of it mental, some of it emotional.
Despite our trepidation, DOB's health has been quite good this summer; better than it has been in years. His scooter finally came and he can get around solo. He's found a good set of water exercises that help him keep his whole body fit in a way that's hard to do when you're forced to sit all day. He's had hardly any of the episodes that were so debilitating the last few years and that we feared would mean I would have to take over the business this summer. Instead, he's been working lots and loving it.
So perhaps it's just that I need to rest now that I finally can. I kind of hope it ends at some point, though, because honestly it's a bit boring and I'm sure the business would do all the more better if we were both working hard at it. But I still can't work up much interest in doing stuff. Doing nothing sounds like more fun.
I also finally went to a TMJ specialist after twenty years of pain and got the rather surprising diagnosis that my jaw pain actually stems from narrow airways, essentially a form of sleep apnea: to keep my airways open, I've learned from childhood to press my tongue forward against my teeth, creating pressure on the jaw. Supposedly with a properly fitted appliance to keep everything in position while I sleep it should take care of the pain and probably get better rest as well. It might even explain my bouts with chronic fatigue when I don't have the other systemic problems that tend to accompany chronic illness. Well, we shall see once insurance comes through.
Nor blogging, obviously.
Really, I haven't done much of anything.
I've been tired. Some of it physical, some of it mental, some of it emotional.
Despite our trepidation, DOB's health has been quite good this summer; better than it has been in years. His scooter finally came and he can get around solo. He's found a good set of water exercises that help him keep his whole body fit in a way that's hard to do when you're forced to sit all day. He's had hardly any of the episodes that were so debilitating the last few years and that we feared would mean I would have to take over the business this summer. Instead, he's been working lots and loving it.
So perhaps it's just that I need to rest now that I finally can. I kind of hope it ends at some point, though, because honestly it's a bit boring and I'm sure the business would do all the more better if we were both working hard at it. But I still can't work up much interest in doing stuff. Doing nothing sounds like more fun.
I also finally went to a TMJ specialist after twenty years of pain and got the rather surprising diagnosis that my jaw pain actually stems from narrow airways, essentially a form of sleep apnea: to keep my airways open, I've learned from childhood to press my tongue forward against my teeth, creating pressure on the jaw. Supposedly with a properly fitted appliance to keep everything in position while I sleep it should take care of the pain and probably get better rest as well. It might even explain my bouts with chronic fatigue when I don't have the other systemic problems that tend to accompany chronic illness. Well, we shall see once insurance comes through.
Friday, July 31, 2015
A Message to the Past
Sometimes I like to go back and reread old years of blog posts and remember what things were like back then. Then again, some things don't bear remembering. Sometimes I wish I could send messages back through to my past self. Sometimes I almost feel as if I can. So, this is for me then.
************
When the twins were on the way and our church was very kindly helping out with meals and sometimes people would stay and help catch up on dishes or something while I lay on the couch and didn't speak or move because if I did I would throw up. One lady, a tall and imposing and efficient woman without much experience with small children, took advantage of the opportunity to look around at our house knee-deep in toys and point out that I was neglecting the necessary task of teaching my children to pick up after themselves, and they would certainly need this for life, and it really was quite horrible that I was failing them in this regard.
I didn't say anything at the time, mostly because I would have thrown up if I had, such as pointing out that it is very hard to direct small children in picking up when you can neither move nor speak. I just tried to be grateful that she had washed the dishes and brought supper and not to worry too much about it.
And, though I tried not to let it worry me, sometimes it did, because even when I could move and speak, I never was one of those people who could make sure there was A Place For Everything and Everything In Its Place. Sometimes we got things cleaned up (usually in time to show the house and move) but more often we didn't. When we did get things cleaned up, it was often by dumping everything higgledy-piggledy in a box and shoving it out of sight somewhere.
But I figured if I couldn't keep on top of things enough to teach them good habits of cleanliness, I could at least not make them hate cleaning, so on the days when we did clean, I tried to make it fun as long as I could, and then I let them go, even though I feared this was a terrible mistake. (And I didn't always manage that. Sometimes I freaked out about the mess, too. Sometimes, everybody cried.)
I read once that children who had plenty of time for free play were actually better at picking up and taking care of things, owing to their more highly-developed executive function. It seemed too much to hope for, and I certainly didn't see any evidence of it yet, but it did give a glimmer of hope.
And then, slowly, I started to notice that things were changing. The children's cleaning-up capacity started to outstrip their mess-making capacity. The older two, especially, could actually participate in cleaning for quite a long time and even enjoy it. Sometimes, if they wanted to beg me for a special favor, they would even clean an area up on their own initiative.
Two days ago, they decided they wanted to move some furniture and beds around between the bedrooms and play room. (Essentially the whole upstairs of the house belongs to them, and it runs pretty wild most of the time.) I didn't want to deal with it. We hadn't done much housework in two weeks and everything was a mess. But DOB agreed to their pleadings that if they really got the whole area--all three rooms--cleaned and organized, they could do it.
They started right into that evening. They worked a lot of the next day (but they still did their weekly chores of laundry, mopping, scrubbing chairs and cleaning the bathroom and they also went swimming with his Majesty). And they did it. No grownup help, supervision, or even ideas. They cleaned out areas I had been afraid to touch. If I had tackled it, I would have scheduled at least three days, meals and laundry would have been late, and I would have been horribly crabby the whole time.
Now, I haven't been up yet but things are probably going to be messy again. But they *can* clean. More than that, they can tackle a big project on their own.
So, dear past me, lying on the couch: You're doing fine. They'll get it. Give them time, and let them play.
************
When the twins were on the way and our church was very kindly helping out with meals and sometimes people would stay and help catch up on dishes or something while I lay on the couch and didn't speak or move because if I did I would throw up. One lady, a tall and imposing and efficient woman without much experience with small children, took advantage of the opportunity to look around at our house knee-deep in toys and point out that I was neglecting the necessary task of teaching my children to pick up after themselves, and they would certainly need this for life, and it really was quite horrible that I was failing them in this regard.
I didn't say anything at the time, mostly because I would have thrown up if I had, such as pointing out that it is very hard to direct small children in picking up when you can neither move nor speak. I just tried to be grateful that she had washed the dishes and brought supper and not to worry too much about it.
And, though I tried not to let it worry me, sometimes it did, because even when I could move and speak, I never was one of those people who could make sure there was A Place For Everything and Everything In Its Place. Sometimes we got things cleaned up (usually in time to show the house and move) but more often we didn't. When we did get things cleaned up, it was often by dumping everything higgledy-piggledy in a box and shoving it out of sight somewhere.
But I figured if I couldn't keep on top of things enough to teach them good habits of cleanliness, I could at least not make them hate cleaning, so on the days when we did clean, I tried to make it fun as long as I could, and then I let them go, even though I feared this was a terrible mistake. (And I didn't always manage that. Sometimes I freaked out about the mess, too. Sometimes, everybody cried.)
I read once that children who had plenty of time for free play were actually better at picking up and taking care of things, owing to their more highly-developed executive function. It seemed too much to hope for, and I certainly didn't see any evidence of it yet, but it did give a glimmer of hope.
And then, slowly, I started to notice that things were changing. The children's cleaning-up capacity started to outstrip their mess-making capacity. The older two, especially, could actually participate in cleaning for quite a long time and even enjoy it. Sometimes, if they wanted to beg me for a special favor, they would even clean an area up on their own initiative.
Two days ago, they decided they wanted to move some furniture and beds around between the bedrooms and play room. (Essentially the whole upstairs of the house belongs to them, and it runs pretty wild most of the time.) I didn't want to deal with it. We hadn't done much housework in two weeks and everything was a mess. But DOB agreed to their pleadings that if they really got the whole area--all three rooms--cleaned and organized, they could do it.
They started right into that evening. They worked a lot of the next day (but they still did their weekly chores of laundry, mopping, scrubbing chairs and cleaning the bathroom and they also went swimming with his Majesty). And they did it. No grownup help, supervision, or even ideas. They cleaned out areas I had been afraid to touch. If I had tackled it, I would have scheduled at least three days, meals and laundry would have been late, and I would have been horribly crabby the whole time.
Now, I haven't been up yet but things are probably going to be messy again. But they *can* clean. More than that, they can tackle a big project on their own.
So, dear past me, lying on the couch: You're doing fine. They'll get it. Give them time, and let them play.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Why I Hate Pretty Much Everybody In *The Hunchback of Notre Dame* (Especially the person who owned it first)
I don't remember when I got this book, but it must have been a bargain grabbed at a book sale or something.
I finally read it. And wondered how Disney managed to make a movie out of it, the plot consisting entirely of seduction, attempted rape, torture, mass slaughter, and hanging witches. (Answer, ascertained by a visit to IMDB: Disney took the title and list of character names and created an entirely different plot. I hate Disney.)
Pretty much everybody in this book is loathsome.
Claude Frollo is of course the villain and so perhaps I am supposed to hate him, but he's evidently been quite a kind man up until this point, taking in the deformed Quasimodo when everyone else wants him burned as a demon. Now, smitten by Esmerelda's dancing, he can apparently only think of two options: raping her or murdering her. I'm not saying it's impossible for these two characteristics to exist in the same person, I'm saying Hugo never explores why or how.
I rather liked Gringoire for quite a long while--he had all the best lines. "And then I have the good fortune to spend all my days from morning to night in the company of a man of genius--myself--and it's very pleasant." Weak, yes, but amusing and not bad-hearted. But walking off with the goat and leaving Esmeralda in the clutches of Frollo, that was just too weak.
Phoebus of course is despicable, and meant to be.
One feels like one ought to cheer for Esmeralda and of course I don't approve of her fate, but honestly, the girl is as dumb as a gargoyle. She has lived her life on the streets; she has all the worst of Paris as her closest friends and associates; and yet she still believes after months of no contact that the lecherous Phoebus must be truly in love with her and will gallantly come to her aid. Even for sixteen, that's pretty dense. (Difference between Phoebus and Frollo: Phoebus is handsomer and has more practice.)
That pretty much just leaves Quasimodo, who is of course a noble soul. Not that it does any good. In this book all love is unrequited, except perhaps Gringoire's fondness for the goat. Let's not inquire.
According to Wikipedia, Hugo wrote the book to draw attention to Gothic architecture. Well, the architecture was fine.
The truly maddening thing about this book that I did not realize until I started it, was that it was formerly owned by a high school student, who made notes for class in a large round hand in the margin. Notes like, "This is an example of irony," and "not brave" and "metaphorical." Yes, thank you, I have a *much* better grasp of irony and metaphor now.
I never get those second-hand books where someone wise and profound has written in the margins and it changes my life.
(Note: this post may possibly be the result entirely of the incoming storm system. However, Victor Hugo has been dead a long time and can't be hurt by this. I quite liked *Les Miserables*.)
(Second Note: Apparently the Disney version was partly based on Hugo's own rewrite of the novel as an opera. Guess he wound up hating everybody in it, too.)
I finally read it. And wondered how Disney managed to make a movie out of it, the plot consisting entirely of seduction, attempted rape, torture, mass slaughter, and hanging witches. (Answer, ascertained by a visit to IMDB: Disney took the title and list of character names and created an entirely different plot. I hate Disney.)
Pretty much everybody in this book is loathsome.
Claude Frollo is of course the villain and so perhaps I am supposed to hate him, but he's evidently been quite a kind man up until this point, taking in the deformed Quasimodo when everyone else wants him burned as a demon. Now, smitten by Esmerelda's dancing, he can apparently only think of two options: raping her or murdering her. I'm not saying it's impossible for these two characteristics to exist in the same person, I'm saying Hugo never explores why or how.
I rather liked Gringoire for quite a long while--he had all the best lines. "And then I have the good fortune to spend all my days from morning to night in the company of a man of genius--myself--and it's very pleasant." Weak, yes, but amusing and not bad-hearted. But walking off with the goat and leaving Esmeralda in the clutches of Frollo, that was just too weak.
Phoebus of course is despicable, and meant to be.
One feels like one ought to cheer for Esmeralda and of course I don't approve of her fate, but honestly, the girl is as dumb as a gargoyle. She has lived her life on the streets; she has all the worst of Paris as her closest friends and associates; and yet she still believes after months of no contact that the lecherous Phoebus must be truly in love with her and will gallantly come to her aid. Even for sixteen, that's pretty dense. (Difference between Phoebus and Frollo: Phoebus is handsomer and has more practice.)
That pretty much just leaves Quasimodo, who is of course a noble soul. Not that it does any good. In this book all love is unrequited, except perhaps Gringoire's fondness for the goat. Let's not inquire.
According to Wikipedia, Hugo wrote the book to draw attention to Gothic architecture. Well, the architecture was fine.
The truly maddening thing about this book that I did not realize until I started it, was that it was formerly owned by a high school student, who made notes for class in a large round hand in the margin. Notes like, "This is an example of irony," and "not brave" and "metaphorical." Yes, thank you, I have a *much* better grasp of irony and metaphor now.
I never get those second-hand books where someone wise and profound has written in the margins and it changes my life.
(Note: this post may possibly be the result entirely of the incoming storm system. However, Victor Hugo has been dead a long time and can't be hurt by this. I quite liked *Les Miserables*.)
(Second Note: Apparently the Disney version was partly based on Hugo's own rewrite of the novel as an opera. Guess he wound up hating everybody in it, too.)
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Finis
We finished school.
I'm proud of us. Last year we crashed and burned at the end of June with a month left. We had lost too much time moving, and when DOB's mysterious malady (let's be alliterative if we can't get a diagnosis) struck again in May without warning, it all just got to be too much.
So to finish this year, to *finish* the work we set out to do, on top of starting a business and all the rest of life ongoing, well, that's really something. And considering that this year saw the twins doing formal lessons for the first time, thus doubling the student body, that's really, really something. In a dramatic denouement, my red planning binder collapsed under the strain on the next to last day.
I am neither in the all-life-is-learning camp, nor in the just-school-all-year-round camp. I like to have a goal, and then I like to take a break. (Sure, all of life is learning, but there are days in life when one binge-reads fantasy novels or lies on the grass by the lake, and I don't intend to try to quantify what exactly is being learned.) I might take breaks through the year if I lived in a different climate, but the Pacific Northwest was crafted for the specific purpose of having summer break.
Some days I've probably pushed too hard at getting done for getting done's sake, but I think most of the time we've managed to stay in the moment and learning. Some days we cut our losses. The twins didn't get a lot of math this year, but I'm rather ambivalent about formal math that young. Some days we didn't do a lot of writing, but we always did some. We read some great books together.
One principle I am coming to believe in is that, if you don't have a lot of time and energy, focus what you do have on something challenging. It's better to do two tough books than five easy books. I hope to keep that in mind planning for next year.
I'm especially proud of the way Duchess and Deux have stepped up to doing their own work on their own steam. And I'm enjoying the way Dot and Dash revel in the stories we've read together.
DOB is doing a little better this summer--the whatever-it-is is still lurking in the shadows, but a careful balance of rest, exercise, air conditioning and protein seems to be keeping it at bay. He hasn't had to give up driving yet, at least. I'm hoping to pick up the pace at work a bit--I haven't quite been making the 15 hours I hope to work yet, although I'm finally increasing my billable hours as we get things better organized and more handed off to our assistants. As usual, there is way too much to cram into summer vacation.
And, of course, it's time to start planning for next year . . .
I'm proud of us. Last year we crashed and burned at the end of June with a month left. We had lost too much time moving, and when DOB's mysterious malady (let's be alliterative if we can't get a diagnosis) struck again in May without warning, it all just got to be too much.
So to finish this year, to *finish* the work we set out to do, on top of starting a business and all the rest of life ongoing, well, that's really something. And considering that this year saw the twins doing formal lessons for the first time, thus doubling the student body, that's really, really something. In a dramatic denouement, my red planning binder collapsed under the strain on the next to last day.
I am neither in the all-life-is-learning camp, nor in the just-school-all-year-round camp. I like to have a goal, and then I like to take a break. (Sure, all of life is learning, but there are days in life when one binge-reads fantasy novels or lies on the grass by the lake, and I don't intend to try to quantify what exactly is being learned.) I might take breaks through the year if I lived in a different climate, but the Pacific Northwest was crafted for the specific purpose of having summer break.
Some days I've probably pushed too hard at getting done for getting done's sake, but I think most of the time we've managed to stay in the moment and learning. Some days we cut our losses. The twins didn't get a lot of math this year, but I'm rather ambivalent about formal math that young. Some days we didn't do a lot of writing, but we always did some. We read some great books together.
One principle I am coming to believe in is that, if you don't have a lot of time and energy, focus what you do have on something challenging. It's better to do two tough books than five easy books. I hope to keep that in mind planning for next year.
I'm especially proud of the way Duchess and Deux have stepped up to doing their own work on their own steam. And I'm enjoying the way Dot and Dash revel in the stories we've read together.
DOB is doing a little better this summer--the whatever-it-is is still lurking in the shadows, but a careful balance of rest, exercise, air conditioning and protein seems to be keeping it at bay. He hasn't had to give up driving yet, at least. I'm hoping to pick up the pace at work a bit--I haven't quite been making the 15 hours I hope to work yet, although I'm finally increasing my billable hours as we get things better organized and more handed off to our assistants. As usual, there is way too much to cram into summer vacation.
And, of course, it's time to start planning for next year . . .
Tuesday, June 09, 2015
Proper Nouns
There are many ways in which I fail at being a good modern parent, ranging from seldom insisting on baths to never once having done a craft off of Pinterest.
However, probably the most important is in teaching children proper names for body parts from earliest ages. You know, *those* body parts.
This is really important for their proper development and safety and what-not, or so countless articles and other, more successfully modern, mothers tell me. Nonetheless, I continue to fall behind on this count.
There are reasons for this.
One is that I tried once, and I got so tired of hearing about *that* body part that I never wanted to proceed to others. "Hey, that comes up as high as my (body part)!" "Watch out, you bumped my (body part)!"
Another is that I am still pretty dicey on anatomical details myself. I mean, I know a lot of names and I know the general area, but it's kind of like trying to remember the difference between Estonia and Latvia. This shocking ignorance has not prevented me from reproducing four times and having a lot of fun in the bargain. So it can't be completely necessary for a good life.
I'm a lawyer, not a doctor. My kids may not know where their spleen or other, more interesting, body parts are, but they can dissect a verbal ambiguity in ten seconds flat, much to the bewilderment of their peers.
So, kids, if you want to know the names for body parts, consult the anatomy diagrams in the science dictionary. If you want to know about your rights and duties with regard to your insurance, I'm happy to help.
However, probably the most important is in teaching children proper names for body parts from earliest ages. You know, *those* body parts.
This is really important for their proper development and safety and what-not, or so countless articles and other, more successfully modern, mothers tell me. Nonetheless, I continue to fall behind on this count.
There are reasons for this.
One is that I tried once, and I got so tired of hearing about *that* body part that I never wanted to proceed to others. "Hey, that comes up as high as my (body part)!" "Watch out, you bumped my (body part)!"
Another is that I am still pretty dicey on anatomical details myself. I mean, I know a lot of names and I know the general area, but it's kind of like trying to remember the difference between Estonia and Latvia. This shocking ignorance has not prevented me from reproducing four times and having a lot of fun in the bargain. So it can't be completely necessary for a good life.
I'm a lawyer, not a doctor. My kids may not know where their spleen or other, more interesting, body parts are, but they can dissect a verbal ambiguity in ten seconds flat, much to the bewilderment of their peers.
So, kids, if you want to know the names for body parts, consult the anatomy diagrams in the science dictionary. If you want to know about your rights and duties with regard to your insurance, I'm happy to help.
Sunday, June 07, 2015
Quoth the Raven
After many years of wondering how I would know a raven if I saw one, as opposed to a crow, I have finally learned. And discovered that our yard is ruled by a raven.
The difference is simple to spot: crows always flap; ravens glide. Now that I know the difference, it seems obvious and I feel as if I should go apologize to the majestic bird for muddling him with his lesser cousins.
He likes to sit on one of the stubby branches of the fir tree at the bottom of the yard, the few that are left after a predecessor in title from some other part of the company valued sunlight over trees.
We still have plenty of crows, too. They like the compost pile and tend to spread it. Actually the raven may help them. I'll have to watch more and learn his habits.
The difference is simple to spot: crows always flap; ravens glide. Now that I know the difference, it seems obvious and I feel as if I should go apologize to the majestic bird for muddling him with his lesser cousins.
He likes to sit on one of the stubby branches of the fir tree at the bottom of the yard, the few that are left after a predecessor in title from some other part of the company valued sunlight over trees.
We still have plenty of crows, too. They like the compost pile and tend to spread it. Actually the raven may help them. I'll have to watch more and learn his habits.
Sunday, May 24, 2015
A Random Number of Updates of Moderate Length
Doing fun things on the weekend has never been something we are very good at. I grew up on a farm, where weekends were for doing farm things, so I never got used to it. Anyway, doing fun stuff generally requires a surplus supply of a couple of basic things like time, money, and energy. So our weekends consist of DOB sleeping on Saturday while I do work and keep the kids quiet, and then me resting on Sunday afternoon while he (and sometimes a designated pusher) goes to the Y to get in a lot of workout and therapy.
BUT we managed one fun weekend this month. Bookworm and Rocketboy took me and the kids to the Science Center to see the Pompeii exhibit before it leaves the US. We also naturally used the opportunity to aim lasers, fly to the moon, visit butterflies, and all the other stuff science museums were for. Though by far the most memorable item was the presentation with liquid nitrogen which led to lots of further discussions on the point at which various materials melt or condense.
Then on Sunday DOB took all the kids to the Y and paid for them to go in so they could swim, too, not just wait on the sidelines. And they got ice cream. They were beyond thrilled.
That was a brutal Monday. I don't think we'll have fun again for awhile.
************************
After avoiding medicine for the better part of a decade, I finally decided to go in for a checkup. The nurse noted that my sinuses looked bad. Well, I suppose they feel bad, too, I just try not to think about it. This is my standard approach to illness. It is not without reason, as my experience is that no proposed remedy (standard or natural) makes me feel any different. Or any substance at all, really. My body just lumbers along, doing its thing, without much regard to what is thrown at it, though it tends to put up a protest at lack of food.
So far the sinus remedies are living up to expectation. Except now that I've noticed my sinuses hurt, it bothers me more. Ignoring them was also a lot cheaper.
***********************
We have four more weeks of school. Four. more. weeks. It should be five, but we're going to squish it into four, because we have to finish before Duchess's birthday. At least we should be able to come respectably close to finishing this year, unlike last year when nearly everything got tossed to the wind.
***********************
Although we are not a lot of fun, we have reinstituted our summer tradition of Tuesday Movie Nights and so far have seen National Velvet, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, and a somewhat debatable Kidnapped. I'm happy to report that we have produced four children who cannot help but point out all the ways the movie deviates from the book. (Though they were pretty happy with Harry Potter.) Part of this tradition is popsicles. I'm thinking I might want to branch out a little bit from my standard mushy-banana-and-peaches combo, so maybe I'll try some of these.
BUT we managed one fun weekend this month. Bookworm and Rocketboy took me and the kids to the Science Center to see the Pompeii exhibit before it leaves the US. We also naturally used the opportunity to aim lasers, fly to the moon, visit butterflies, and all the other stuff science museums were for. Though by far the most memorable item was the presentation with liquid nitrogen which led to lots of further discussions on the point at which various materials melt or condense.
Then on Sunday DOB took all the kids to the Y and paid for them to go in so they could swim, too, not just wait on the sidelines. And they got ice cream. They were beyond thrilled.
That was a brutal Monday. I don't think we'll have fun again for awhile.
************************
After avoiding medicine for the better part of a decade, I finally decided to go in for a checkup. The nurse noted that my sinuses looked bad. Well, I suppose they feel bad, too, I just try not to think about it. This is my standard approach to illness. It is not without reason, as my experience is that no proposed remedy (standard or natural) makes me feel any different. Or any substance at all, really. My body just lumbers along, doing its thing, without much regard to what is thrown at it, though it tends to put up a protest at lack of food.
So far the sinus remedies are living up to expectation. Except now that I've noticed my sinuses hurt, it bothers me more. Ignoring them was also a lot cheaper.
***********************
We have four more weeks of school. Four. more. weeks. It should be five, but we're going to squish it into four, because we have to finish before Duchess's birthday. At least we should be able to come respectably close to finishing this year, unlike last year when nearly everything got tossed to the wind.
***********************
Although we are not a lot of fun, we have reinstituted our summer tradition of Tuesday Movie Nights and so far have seen National Velvet, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, and a somewhat debatable Kidnapped. I'm happy to report that we have produced four children who cannot help but point out all the ways the movie deviates from the book. (Though they were pretty happy with Harry Potter.) Part of this tradition is popsicles. I'm thinking I might want to branch out a little bit from my standard mushy-banana-and-peaches combo, so maybe I'll try some of these.
Sunday, May 03, 2015
Books Read . . . Whenever
So, I'm already far behind on keeping track of books for this year. And it certainly hasn't been a good time for especially deep or challenging books. But let me see what I can still remember.
Idylls of the King, Tennyson
OK, not deep except for this one. But this was with an online book club, or I probably wouldn't have kept plowing. Tennyson's take on Arthur is unique. In his portrayal, Arthur is not Mordred's father--which means that the undoing of the Round Table doesn't come from Arthur--or at least not so directly. Rather Tennyson focuses on the roles of ideals and idealism and our own failure to live up to them. Arthur may be an innocent figure, but he is a cold one, lacking the ability to sustain love even though he inspires from a distance. He cannot sustain what he has created and it falls under its own weight.
Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett
This is one of those books I just need to read every once in a while. Despite being about witches and vampires and written by an agnostic, I find it very encouraging to my faith. I identify a lot with the Reverend Mightily Oats. Except for the acne.
The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
This is a brilliant title. The writing is good. I found the youthful hero a bit tedious, too much fabulousness at absolutely everything, but it was tempered with enough self-inflicted disasters through overconfidence that I thought he might grow up into an interesting character. And his nemesis, the mysterious Chandrian, definitely drew my curiosity. Which was all rather a pity, because then I read the second book in the series.
The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
And this was still going along OK, but it was getting more and more tedious as our hero goes to ever more places and masters ever more implausibly difficult things with absurd ease, and still gets no closer to finding out anything at all about the evil horrible things he has vowed to combat, when it took a detour that left me completely uninterested in the rest of the book. I am quite willing to accept that different cultures have different morals and customs. I cannot, however, swallow a low-tech, no magic society run by female martial artists who also practice free . . . well, they don't dignify it by the name of love so neither shall I. People can have many different customs, but they can't escape basic biology (or if you intend them to, then you better *explain* their novel biology). Either they would be pregnant most of the time--which would *really* put a cramp in the daily practice of hand-to-hand combat--or their society's in real trouble because all its strongest and healthiest young women are infertile. Sorry, that's not competent worldbuilding anymore, it's just sophomoric fanfic. So I lost interest and it had to go back to the library and I probably won't bother again. I don't find philandering to add to the appeal of a hero who was already starting to bore me. But dang, I wanted to find out about those nasty Chandrian. It just never seemed like we were getting any closer to finding out.
The Dead in their Vaulted Arches, Alan Bradley
Fortunately Flavia de Luce never disappoints.
Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
This was for the church book club, or I never would have read a book so currently popular. It was, nonetheless, pretty good.
Maskerade, Terry Pratchett
Not only did I need some more Granny Weatherwax, but I had to do this one again because I am leading an online discussion of Macbeth. Not that it's at all relevant. I just needed to.
Macbeth, William Shakespeare
Always my favorite tragedy. I just love bloodthirsty female villains. Lady Macbeth, Medea, even the White Witch. Let's not analyze it too closely, shall we? Or if we do, let's take a Gilbert and Sullivan approach and hope no one will hold it against me for being just a liiiitle bit bloodthirsty:
The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers. This was another reread, and I don't know what to say about it. If the idea of a literary dinosaur struggling for his life in a grizzly catacomb of books and monsters doesn't appeal to you, then there's no sense trying to explain. If it does, then you should just read it and the other Zamonian stories by the same author.
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. This was a highly entertaining take on the end of the world. When the devil becomes incarnate he finds himself siding with the carnate. I'm still pondering what I think of the theology of it all, though. Perhaps too much for a work of humor, but I think it well deserved. Hey, maybe we should read *it* for the church book club. (Insert maniacal laughter)
ETA: Of course when I wait this long I forget about two of the best ones:
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. Like pretty much everything by Potok, brilliant and sad and beautiful. A young Orthodox Jew tries to reconcile his gift and passion for painting with his faith and community.
Snuff by Terry Pratchett. Honestly, I don't know how anyone could keep writing so many great books and keep them all just as good while dying of Alzheimer's. I was sad to think this was the last one, but Bookworm assures me there is one more in the publication pipeline. RIP.
Still in process but probably going to finish someday soon:
The Royal Road to Romance, by Richard Halliburton. An old travel memoir from the days when travel was easy but McDonald's and Coca-cola had not yet invaded everywhere. A geography possibility for a few years down the road, but I found it at a second-hand store during Duchess's birthday trip (no, her birthday isn't for a couple of months yet but we found it kept getting lost in the morass) and couldn't resist the chance to get it now.
Home, by Bill Bryson. This is lots of fun, a meandering look at how the rooms and things in our houses got to be the way they were. Though the basic message seems to be that homes in the Stone Age were a lot more comfy than you might think, and homes right up through Victorian times much less.
Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens. We watched an outstanding BBC miniseries on this last month, so naturally at the end I had to pull it out and figure out what they got wrong. Not the casting, that's for sure.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
The Ghost of Print Jobs Past
When we moved into our proper quarters, the wireless connection on our printer stopped working. After some time of frustration, the paralegal physically connected the printer to her computer and then we sent all documents to her to print out. Clunky, but it worked for a week or two until I finally got annoyed enough to spend an hour or so in chat with tech support to get it functioning.
So the tech support took over the computer and did this, that, and the other thing. And then, suddenly, the printer came alive. And started churning out all the unsuccessful print jobs that had been tried and never properly canceled. Given the nature of our business, this turned out to be five copies of a fifty-page probate opening document.
I didn't want to turn the printer off, because the tech support people were still working their mysterious ways. So instead we dashed around trying to find which unworking copy of the printer on which computer had sent the job. I don't think we ever actually found it, but we managed to delete a few other things that would have come through next.
And now the printer is working. Which, I suppose, is worth half a ream of paper.
So the tech support took over the computer and did this, that, and the other thing. And then, suddenly, the printer came alive. And started churning out all the unsuccessful print jobs that had been tried and never properly canceled. Given the nature of our business, this turned out to be five copies of a fifty-page probate opening document.
I didn't want to turn the printer off, because the tech support people were still working their mysterious ways. So instead we dashed around trying to find which unworking copy of the printer on which computer had sent the job. I don't think we ever actually found it, but we managed to delete a few other things that would have come through next.
And now the printer is working. Which, I suppose, is worth half a ream of paper.
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