A new year

“There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.” O.S. Marden (1850-1924)
Our farewell to the old year and welcome to the new one includes lots of skating (the end of the month has brought some cooler temperatures, much beautiful hoar frost, but still [...]

"Viewpoint Discrimination"

Interesting article in the most recent issue of The Economist (December 17th) received here yesterday about an even more interesting California case with more than a couple of highly interesting ramifications for home educating families, secular and otherwise. Because the article is considered “premium content” and you have to be an Economist subscriber to get [...]

Received and sent

Received in today’s e-mail inbox:
RE: Make Money Off Your Blog
Hello Bloggers!
I am contacting you on behalf of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and HomeschoolBlogger to see if you would be interested in signing up as an affiliate for our new e-books affiliate program. By signing up for our affiliate program and promoting your affiliate [...]

Narnia: Better than the book…

and I don’t say that often. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever said that before. Ever. Then again, the book wasn’t one of my favorites (rare for a children’s book). And the movie was thin in parts — the scene with Aslan at the Stone Table reminded me of the Star Wars [...]

Waiting for the Magic

Today, the kids and I are going to finish up with our reading of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and catch Narnia, possibly with Tom, at the local theater before it departs tomorrow.
I’m still waiting to get captivated by the book, and can’t shake the impression that Lewis must have said to himself, [...]

Christmas in the Country, Part 2

Here, as promised, is the rest of Justin Isherwood’s magical holiday essay:
Christmas is a time that makes us believers in magic. We as a people are so touched by the season that the selfish find themselves generous and the quiet find themselves singing.
It is a time when people become a little crazy, a time when [...]

Christmas in the Country, Part 1

Our main holiday celebration is Christmas Eve, so, before I go off to bake lemon shortbread squares for tonight’s dessert, here’s my Christmas Eve present to all of my invisible friends, by way of Wisconsin farmer and writer Justin Isherwood, from A Farm Country Christmas:
Winter brings an armistice to the countryside. The fields lie frozen, [...]

Hip and trendy, or, Brother, can you pare a dime?

Sorry, couldn’t resist.
I’ve never been trendy, not in clothing, books, or philosophy — in fact, I tend to be more of the throwback/stick in the mud type, going for the tried and true classics (a black turtleneck, the Beatles, John Steinbeck), and my parenting and home schooling decisions haven’t deviated from this path either.
Which is [...]

The shortest day

Before moving to the farm, the length of each day didn’t have much of an effect on my life, lived as it was for the most part under the streets and in the concrete canyons of Manhattan. Now I’m aware of even ten minutes of missing daylight, and the arrival of the winter solstice — [...]

The Posse is no doubt very pleased

with Judge Jones’s decision: “the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.”
Many thanks to President Bush for appointing such a credit to the [...]

Back to back to basics in the UK

“Schools to adopt ‘phonics’ style of teaching reading“. But not entirely back to basics, since the phonics the children will be taught is now known as “synthetic phonics.” Apparently The Guardian has the same reservations about this newfangled lingo — or perhaps the collective memory of its younger readers — because it offers [...]

Grammar Geek

The recent issue of the Core Knowledge Foundation’s e-newsletter, Common Knowledge, arrived in my inbox this morning. Found a very interesting article about the sad history of grammar instruction in America, The Naturalist Fallacy and the Demise of Grammar Instruction (with Practical Advice on Teaching Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics) by Robert D. Shepherd, the CK [...]

Over the river and through the woods

“Quick, get your snow pants. Dad says it’s time!”
The kids leapt into all of their layers and then into the truck, and Tom grabbed the old hand saw and a handful of Kleenex. We left the house around 3:30 yesterday afternoon and drove north for about an hour. On the way we spotted half [...]

Charles Darwin Has a Posse

Many thanks to the Stingy Scholar for the link to the Charles Darwin Has a Posse sticker page, the creation of the very public-spirited Colin Purrington at Swarthmore (one of my college choices many, many, many years ago, though in the end I chose Vermont). Make sure you check out all the links, and [...]

Beer and skittles

As I sit here, eating bonbons and painting my toenails, I continue to contemplate the weekend’s comments of the Liberal Party’s communication aide, Scott Reid, adding his two cents to the election campaign (we lucky Canadians don’t have to worry about the Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays fuss since we get think about which prime ministerial candidate [...]

A stake of holly through the heart

The fuss over the kerfuffle down south about putting things in and taking things out of Christmas and saying Merry Christmas vs. the more generic or neutral “Happy Holidays” (completely forgetting, of course, that “holidays” comes from — gasp — holy days) is starting to seep into my north of the 49th consciousness, especially as [...]

My current weekend agenda, er, plan

Hmm. Have just realized that next week includes my rural ladies’ club annual family Christmas party and dinner (Tuesday); Laura’s Brownies Christmas party, with caroling at the nursing home (Wednesday); the kids’ craft evening at the library (Thursday), meant as a “drop and shop” event to encourage economic excess in parents but craftily (ha!) [...]

John Lennon: Across the Universe

Twenty-five years ago, my sister and I awoke to our alarm clock/radio set to WPLJ, which for some reason early that morning was playing nothing but John Lennon songs; she and I had been playing the new Double Fantasy album for almost a month, so we thought it was just publicity for the record. Some [...]

Mas!

For Concierge, because a) she’s back, b) she was kind enough to give me Colin Firth the other day (though for some reason my thoughts have been straying to George Clooney, perhaps because he’s back in the news, and no, the beard and 30 extra pounds don’t bother me overly) and c) she loves Christmas [...]

Word of the day

From A.Word.A.Day, from the folks at Wordsmith:
schmendrik (SHMEN-drik) noun, also shmendrik, schmendrick, shmendrick
A foolish, clueless, and naive person.
[After the name of the title character in an operetta by Abraham Goldfaden(1840-1908).]