Old friends

I’ve learned from Susan’s Chicken Spaghetti weekend reading list that Beverly Cleary, the eternal Ramona, is alive and well and will be celebrating her 90th birthday on April 12th; just as remarkable an achievement, all 39 books she has written since 1950 have remained in print. But her last, Ramona’s World from 1999, [...]

Poetry as broccoli, and a wrap-up for National Poetry Month

With apologies to Joyce Kilmer (poems are made by fools like me):
I think that I shall never see,
A poem lovely as a tree,
Unless it is my broccoli.
A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
Nearby a child with mouth, too, pressed,
‘Gainst vegetable with ranch sauce dressed…
In her Young Readers column last [...]

Our newest addition to the farm

The first calf of the year was born this afternoon, on a beautiful warm spring day. Okay, so we got nine inches of snow yesterday, but Tom was able to clear away a lot of the snow around the corrals with the tractor, and after some telltale grunting earlier today, we knew to move the [...]

Homeschool heresy

I’ve decided something akin to heresy in my local home school support group circle — we won’t be attending the provincial homeschool conference and trade show (i.e. shopping binge) next month.
For the first two years of our homeschooling, the big provincial conference and trade show definitely provided something I couldn’t find elsewhere, particularly when it [...]

Poetry Is Life, and some Great Books too

Sunday mornings after breakfast are my favorite time with the radio, because that’s when CBC’s “The Sunday Edition” with Michael Enright is on, followed by lunchtime with Stuart McLean and the Vinyl Cafe. I’d listen to Michael Enright read the phone book, though I’d rather listen to him talk about it, because I know [...]

Paging Charlotte Mason. Miss Mason to the front desk, please…

Yesterday’s New York Times reports that
Thousands of schools across the nation are responding to the reading and math testing requirements laid out in No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s signature education law, by reducing class time spent on other subjects and, for some low-proficiency students, eliminating it.
Which means that the educrats have twisted already twisted [...]

Paperwork season

Last night brought another four inches or so of snow, and it’s still falling; I feel sorry for the early geese and bluebirds.
So while the kids are out playing with the new unexpected gift, Tom and I are settled down, he in the living room with the TV set to curling, and I at the [...]

Night of the long pitchforks

Sadly, my entire 12 years in Alberta have been lived under the regime of Tory Premier Ralph Klein, whose enormous political missteps (from turning up drunk at a homeless shelter and lambasting the residents to gutting the health care system to eliminate the debt, and now that we’re rolling in money planning not to fix [...]

What the cat dragged in

A repulsive piece of grammar is like a mangled frog left by the cat in the middle of the kitchen lino. It is not necessarily ill-intentioned, but the repellent effect increases according to the frequency of the offence.
So writes the ever-delightful and pseudonymous language maven Dot Wordsworth in her lively and not particularly complimentary review [...]

Something told the wild geese…

that it’s spring. They’re back. We saw two yesterday overhead, flapping determinedly over the snow, not too far from the house. Can the gophers be far behind?
In other spring fever news, I bought a new set of sheets for the master bedroom, floral cotton with a heavy thread count, while we were at Sears [...]

You don’t say

“Book ban hasty: Clifford OK, so is Disney” read the headline at the LA Daily News earlier this week, on the subject of the Antelope Valley school board’s decision earlier this month to remove 23 books from a list of books to consider purchasing for the school library. Among the books caught in the dragnet [...]

More from the correspondence file

In this evening’s in-box:
Becky, I am not going to argue about all of this further because you obviously have your mind made up and that’s fine with me. The only thing that I can say is Gena absolutely thinks the death of that child is horrific. We just talked about it last week and she [...]

Boycott business

I realized last night that one of my Yahoo groups is sprinkled with mentions of The Old Schoolhouse (TOS) magazine, its free offers for new subscribers, and that the list owner has a blog through homeschoolblogger which is advertised at the bottom of the Yahoo posts. So I unsubscribed but also sent a private email [...]

Success

Today was poetry day at the Arts Festival, and we moved in from just before 9 a.m. until around noon. A long morning, between the recitations and adjudications, but it went very well. First, once he was done with both of his poems, Davy sat on my lap fairly well. Toward the end he did [...]

Getting ready

Yesterday was spent readying the corrals for the new calves who should be arriving shortly. Tom moved portable steel panels through the deep snow to make a chute/alley way from the big permanent pen, where the 10 hugely pregnant heifers are currently confined (to make sure they don’t have their babies out in the snow-covered [...]

April in Paris with chocolate

ench“…Chloé Doutre-Roussel, who is the esteemed chocolate-buyer for London’s Fortnum & Mason, finally came out with the book she’s spent a lifetime of tasting and working towards. The compact size of her book, The Chocolate Connoisseur, belies the depth of information within.
“The Chocolate Connoisseur is a must have for any chocolate lover, and it’s my [...]

Poetry festival selections III

Laura has two choices as well, though instead of fitting into the lyrical or narrative category, her first choice, part of the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V has been slotted into the solos section under Shakespeare, for 8 and under; she was inspired last summer during our very long Shakespearean rabbit trail at [...]

Poetry festival selections II

Here are Daniel’s poems. Again, the A.A. Milne poem, also from When We Were Very Young, is one of the official festival selections for Narrative/Dramatic Poetry Solos for ages six and under; the other is his own choice for Canadian Poetry Solo.
Before Teaby A.A. Milne (from When We Were Very Young)
EmmelineHas not been seenFor [...]

Count me in

I don’t have the heart or stomach after reading this article (and it’s well worth clicking the links on the sidebar for “related content” for the rest of the story), to dig around for any more pertinent links on the death by his adoptive mother of four-year-old Sean Ford Paddock; the official cause of death [...]

Erin go bragh

To Read:
How the Irish Saved Civilization, part of Thomas Cahill’s wonderful “Hinges of History” series
Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs
Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend & Folklore by William Butler Yeats
Brendan the Navigator: A History Mystery About the Discovery of America by Jean Fritz; about the legendary Irish monk’s voyage in his little leather coracle
Patrick: [...]