Feast Day!

Last year on Oct 31 my sons and their friend did a Narnia Feast using recipes from The Narnia Cookbook and in Narnian costume (we blogged about it here.) This year they're doing a Medieval Feast. And they're doing it all themselves - I have a busy week with a birthday and company coming in a few days, so they're doing it all--collecting recipes, cooking, decorating the house and preparing their own Medieval attire themselves. They were hoping for some exotic meat like venison or mutton, but the closest we could find in our area was lamb chops. Turkish Delight will still be on the menu, although I'm not sure how authentically Medieval that is! I, on my raw diet, will only get to enjoy the smells of all the dishes they have planned. I did taste a turnip they boiled. They wanted to see if turnips would be palatable enough to use in a couple of the dishes. I've read about turnips all my life and I couldn't pass up an opportunity to see what one actually tastes like. When it's raw it tastes like a radish, but when cooked, it's milder, more potato-ey, although it doesn't get as soft as a potato. Medieval people didn't have potatoes, so they ate turnips.

I tried on Miss M's outfit (the same one she wore last year) to make sure it still fit, and, as soon as it was on, she noticed that she was wearing a skirt and insisted on doing the hula in it.

Busted!

"For several months over this past summer and fall, Michigan authorities tracked Richard Hebron, 41, and his weekly truck hauls the 140 miles or so from Vandalia to Ann Arbor. To gather evidence, an undercover agent infiltrated an organization that was making private purchases from Hebron.

On the morning of Oct. 13, the authorities closed the loop on their complex sting operation. Just outside of Ann Arbor, a state police officer pulled over Hebron's truck during its weekly run, served Hebron with a search warrant, and with several other agents began removing goods from the truck.

Back home in Vandalia, a state trooper accompanied by four plain-clothes agents knocked on the door of Hebron's home, presented Hebron's wife, Annette, with a search warrant, and fanned through their small three-room house, removing their computer, business records, and product samples. Later that afternoon, in Ann Arbor, four additional agents, also armed with a search warrant, rummaged through a warehouse that was Hebron's destination when he was pulled over, seizing more business records.

The trigger in this huge investigation? No, it wasn't drugs, stolen goods, or terrorism. It was, of all things, raw milk . . "


I'm not a milk drinker, but this seems a bit over the top. Undercover agents on a sting operation to catch milk sellers?? Apparently organic and raw milk prodicers are cutting into the profits of the conventional dairy industry, and they're not taking it lightly. As a result of this successful catch, they may have accomplished the closing down of three independent businesses and bankrupted the families who own them.

Read the full article here.

Year 7 Medieval Poetry: Of a Rose

The original is here. This was an easy poem. I was able to get it just from the first reading. Tim suggested that maybe I'm just getting better at it, but I think this particular poem is just easier.

Of a rose, a lovely rose,
Of a rose is all my song.

Listen, lords, both old and young,
How this rose began to spring;
A rose as much to my liking
In all this world I know not one.

The Angel came from heaven's tower,
To greet Mary with great honor,
And said she would bear the flower
That would break the fiend's bond.

The flower sprang in high Bethlehem,
That is both bright and beautiful:
The rose is Mary, heaven's queen,
Out of her bosom the blossom sprang.

The first branch is full of might,
That sprang on Christmas night,
The star shone over Bethlehem bright
That is both broad and long.

The second branch sprang to hell,
To fell the fiend's power:
So that no soul might dwell there;
Blessed be the time the rose sprang!

The third branch is good and sweet,
It sprang to heaven plant and root
To dwell there be our salvation;
Every day it shows in priest's hand.

We pray to her with great honor,
She that bore the blessed flower,
She is our help and our aid
And shields us from the fiend's bond.

Dr. Phil and The Great Homeschool Debate

Dr. Phil has taped a show about homeschooling in response to recent school shootings. Just like in Wife Swap, homeschoolers were sought out and lured to participate on the show and in the audience - only to find that they had been deliberately misled, set up and misrepresented. One homeschool mom who was hand-selected to be part of the audience shares a behind-the-scenes look at the show.

The show is scheduled to air Oct. 27. Don't expect any information or reasons or results to show how homeschooling might be a viable option for a well-informed parent. The audienced was 85 percent local high school students who were bussed in to provide an audience hostile to homeschoolers, and the clips shown were badly edited footage from the group of homeschoolers least understood by the mainstream public - radical unschoolers. The clips were well-calculated to make homeschoolers look bad.

The Way Things Look from Here

(taken from just across the street)

A Month of Grace

This is an idea from Camille, a friend from the Gentle Christian Mothers message board:

"God is whacking me between my eyes SO MUCH about how really terrific His Grace is. I know that's OBVIOUS on some level, but I'm pokey. So for the next month on my blog -- between now and thanksgiving -- I'm going to only talk about Grace. From writers, poets, novels, and, of course, Scripture. Would you like to join me?"

So, for the next few weeks, I'll be looking for thoughts about grace to post - probably not every day, and not exclusively, but as I find things. I expect to find some things in Charlotte Mason's favorite devotional, The Cloud of Witness.

Minor Health Matters

About a month ago I posted about some severe fatigue and lung discomfort. It turned out, I think, to be a long-lived virus - I think it affected me for six weeks! I went to the doctor's at one point with it, and in that visit, there was nothing determined about the lung discomfort, but I learned that I have mitral valve prolapse and osteoporosis (most likely from four pregnancies and four periods of extended nursing). I was prescribed Fosamax for the osteoporosis. I suspect I had the bone loss with my first two babies. I wasn't eating as well then, and I was drinking a lot of coffee, which leeches calcium. I did some research and discovered that Fosamax has some problems associated with it that sound related to bone growing in places where it shouldn't grow, and dead bone growing instead of living tissue. One common side effect is TMJ. People with MVP have a tendency to have TMJ. I don't have TMJ, but it seems foolhardy to me to take something that has TMJ as a side effect when I'm already at risk for it. Conclusion - I'm not taking the medication. I'll take calcium until Miss M weans, and look into strength training, which I think is the same as weight lifting. Strength training builds bone.

When I had the virus weeks ago, I started adding things to my raw diet - soy chikin nuggets, salsa, garbanzo beans, peanut butter. Then it deteriorated to soy ice cream and Ruffles. I was still tired. So, I decided to try a low fat raw diet (as written about by Doug Graham and Nora Lenz). I've been working my way into it for four days, and I actually feel better than I have in weeks. I'm eating only fruit until dinner - mostly bananas, which are cheap, and whatever else I can afford. Then I have a huge salad for dinner with exactly half an avocado (my daily fat ration), some raisins, and the juice of an orange squeezed over it as dressing. It's pretty spartan, but if it helps, it will be worth it.

What We're Reading

Miss M's Honkey Donkey ballet video finally got all of us curious to find out what Don quixote is all about. But I've heard that it's not for children without some editting. So - look what I found! It's Stories from Don Quixote retold by a children's author I really like, James Baldwin. And it's online for free! We're all really enjoying it.


And I read this to Miss M for the first time yesterday - now it's her favorite book.

A Page from an Old Book

This is a frontspiece from an old (pre-1911) copy of Dryden's Plutarch.

Cutting the Apron Strings

I went to a local CM meeting this evening and left Miss M at home with Daddy and her brothers. It's just about the first time I've driven off and left her at home - until now, I haven't wanted to be away from her. The few times I was away for even a half hour, I missed her and couldn't enjoy the activity that took me away from her. But this evening was no problem, I enjoyed the time away and didn't spend all evening wondering how she was doing. She did fine, of course, as I knew she would. I guess now that she's almost three, I'm growing up! LOL!

Yes, I was just like this with all the others, too. It was about the three year mark that I felt okay leaving them, too. Kahoa would always be sad when I left, and he'd run downstairs to the basement to greet me as soon as I arrived home. Miss M was busy playing when I got home and didn't even immediately notice that I was back . . .

Related to my recent post about Miss M being upset by a Lassie episode, she watched Snoopy Come Home tonight and left the room in tears during the goodbye scene where Charlie Brown is missing Snoopy. That's another first for her.

Spring-tide

Anonymous. c. 1300
The original poem and a translation is here

3. Spring-tide

Early spring is come with love in its turn,
With blossom and with birds' song,
That all this bliss brings;
Daisies in the valleys,
Sweet notes of nightingales,
Each fowl sings its song;

The thrush chides them all,
Gone is their winter woe,
When woodruff blooms;
Marvellously many fowls sing,
And whistle so in their happiness,
That all the wood rings.

The rose clothes herself in red,
The leaves on the light-colored wood
All grow all with a will;
The moon sends forth her light,
The lily is lovely to see,
The fennel and the thyme;
The wild drakes woo,
Males make their mates merry;
Like a stream that still flows,
The moody man moans; many of them do
It seems that I am one of them
Because of love that went wrong.

The moon sends forth her light,
So does the bright, lovely sun.
When birds sing lustily;
Dew makes the slopes soggy,
Lovers with their secret tales
Give their decisions;
Worms woo under the dirt,
Women grow so proud,
So it would seem,
If I can't have the will of one,
I'll forego this wealth of joy
And be banished to the woods.

A Job Well Done . . .

I'm sometimes struck with how much great minds think alike. Often I find parallels between C.S. Lewis and Charlotte Mason. And today I heard Mister Rogers say something that I've read before in Charlotte Mason's writings.

Before I share the quote, let me set the scene. Cornflake S. Pecially in the Land of Make-Believe is over-worked and is starting to make errors in his production. After getting back to Mister Roger's Place, Mister Rogers talked a little about that. Here's the quote:

"No matter what you do, you can feel so much better about it if you do it well.
~ Mister Rogers

And this is from pg 168 of Ourselves:

"We're all paid workers in some sense, and none of us are excused from the obligation of integrity in the work we do. School children and young college students are paid in two ways: the cost of their schooling, and the trust of their parents and teachers. There's another 'employer' they're working for, too. This employer might seem lenient at the time, but he'll harass the poor worker with a heavy penalty of guilt later. That employer is--yourself. Every person owes integrity to himself as much as to others. When we don't produce thorough, timely work done well, it's we ourselves who suffer the most in the end."
~ Charlotte Mason (modern paraphrase version)

Poem Paraphrase: This World's Joy

I'm a little behind; I still need to do Spring-Tide and Blow, Northern Wind. But today's looked fairly straightforward, so I went ahead and did it.

5. This World's Joy
Anonymous. c. 1300
(read the original here)

Winter wakens all my care,
Now these leaves wax bare;
Often I sigh and mourn sorely
When it comes to my mind
Of this world's joy, how it amounts to nothing.

Now it's here, and now it's not,
as though it had never been, I wist;
Many man say it, and so it is:
Everything ends except God's will:
We shall all die, though none of us us like it.

All that was around me grew green,
But now it all fades
Jesus, help us remember that fact
And shield us from hell!
ForI know not where I shall end up, nor how long I shall dwell here.

Alison

I'm paraphrasing Ambleside Online's Year 7 Medieval Poems because it's the only way I can grasp them. Here's the second one. The poem in its original Ye Olde English is here. This is very different from the Elvis Costello version of Alison that I'm familiar with.

2 Alison

Between March and April
When new growth begins to spring
The little bird has her way
And sings in her own language
I live with yearning in love
For the most beautiful of all things
She may bring me bliss
I am her devoted servant
And I've taken advantage of a lucky break
I'll wager that it's sent from heaven
My love has left all other women
And alighted on Alison

The color of her hair is fair
Her brow is brown, her eyes black
With a loving look she laughs at me
She's well-made, with a small waist
If she doesn't decide to take me
As her own mate
I'll lose my desire to live
And wish I were dead
And I've taken advantage of a lucky break
I'll wager that it's sent from heaven
My love has left all other women
And alighted on Alison

At night I toss and turn
That's why I grow so pale
Lady, because of you
I've developed this yearning
In all the world there's no man wise enough
To tell all of her bounty
Her neck is whiter than the swan
She's the prettiest maiden in town
And I've taken advantage of a lucky break
I'll wager that it's sent from heaven
My love has left all other women
And alighted on Alison

I'm worn out with vigils from wooing
Like water in a stagnant pool
Someone else might steal my mate
I've been distressed for a long time
Yet it's better to endure distress for a while
Than to mourn forevermore
Prettiest thing under any dress
Listen to my song
And I've taken advantage of a lucky break
I'll wager that it's sent from heaven
My love has left all other women
And alighted on Alison

Toddlers, TV, Books, Composition Notebooks

I've always thought it was interesting to note when my kids first were upset by something they saw on TV, and what it was. Miss M has recently started watching the old Lassie VHS tapes I taped long ago when Tim was her age. And today she's watching it (she missed her nap and I'd rather keep her up until bedtime than have her take a late nap and be up til 2am!) She came up to me and said, 'I don't like this, I want to watch Honkey Donkey.' It turns out she was disturbed by the episode where the mother is trapped in her truck after a minor accident. Lassie comes to the rescue, of course, but I guess she didn't like seeing her unable to get out, or something.

When Tim was little, he didn't like an episode where some robbers trap Lassie in a shed and threaten Timmy. He used to run out of the room when that part came on. And Kahoa used to be scared of a Donut Man video because the puppets freaked him out. I don't think Keola was ever bothered by anything.

I always think that when they see something that bothers them, it shows that they've reached a certain level of understanding--the ability to imagine what they see on the screen, and the attention span and comprehension to follow a storyline and make some kind of sense of it.

Yes, we do read books, too! LOL! Miss M has been into Beatrix Potter's Tale of Two Bad Mice lately, she reads it to me now. And today I bought her a miniature composition notebook because she wanted a school book like her brothers' copywork books. She's been having me write things down for her, most of them don't make sense, they're just words assembled in a Jabberwocky kind of order that she thinks makes a sentence. One page says, 'It's about my Dad has ruined a bake someday.' She made me write a few pages and then she read it to me very dramatically as if it was a story: 'God has ruined the end of the day. God and Mary and they said, Go away! And that's the end of that.'

And then she turned to me and said, 'Now, you narrate.'

Fall Room and Shelf

The shelf above the doorway is finished and loaded up!

We put fall colors on the couch and chair, too. We decorate with sheet sets - the bottom fitted sheets covers the cushion of the futon, the top flat sheet makes a cover for the rocking chair, and a pillowcase covers the footstool. This sheet set is a Tshirt knit the color of pumpkin pie. I buy print fabrics to make pillow covers for the futon. For Christmas, we have a red sheet set - you can see the rocking chair in its red cover here.

Here's the futon with a napping toddler on it.

Armor from PVC Pipes

Pam asked about the chainmail that the kitten slept on... (this post, if you're wondering)

The rings were cut from 3/4" PVC pipe using a pair of ratcheting PVC cutters. We tried using a high-psi 1/2" pipe, too--it works well for small pieces (like mail vambraces) but it takes a lot longer because you need so many more rings.

There are instructions for how to weave the rings together on the net. We used the ones at ArtofChainmail.com. About half the rings are split so they can snap on; the rest are left closed. You can glue the split rings together again after they've been woven, to make it stronger, but we didn't glue them and it still stays together fairly well (just drops a ring now and then).

A mail-shirt (or hauberk) can be constructed several ways. The method we used isn't the most historical, but it's the easiest, especially when you're working with thick PVC rings.


It's woven in eight separate pieces: trunk, shoulders, two sleeves, and four skirt pieces. The trunk is a large cylinder (a flat piece of mail with two edges connected); the shoulders are a flat piece with a squareish hole in the middle for the neck; the sleeves are smaller flat pieces; and the skirt pieces are long flat pieces. Two edges of the shoulder-piece connect to the front and back of the trunk, and the other two edges connect to an edge of a sleeve. The skirt pieces (which are optional, and just add length) connect to the bottom edge of the trunk.

You'll end up with sleeves that hang over the arms but aren't connected underneath (as in the picture). They can be connected, but it limits mobility more; we've tried it both ways. (There will also be gaps at the armpits; I don't know of any way to close those. It would be almost impossible to move if you did.)

After the pieces of the suit are connected, you'll want to make a split in the front of the neck (as in the picture) so it can be pulled on something like a T-shirt. "Something like" because it's stiff and weighs 10-20 pounds--we usually need a helper to get it on. Taking it off is easier, if you make the neck-hole big enough--you just slip out of the shoulders, let it drop to the floor, and step out of it.

We painted the suit after it was all put together using a metallic spraypaint. This seems to work well, although you have to use more than one coat: paint all the visible surfaces, shake the suit to turn the rings, paint again, and repeat as necessary. The site whence we got the idea suggests that you paint the rings first and then assemble them. We've not tried this, but I expect this method scratches the paint a lot. If I were to do it again I might weave the separate pieces of the hauberk, paint them while they're flat, and then put them together.

Right now I'm working on adding a gold dagged edge to my suit. I'll try to get some pictures up when it's finished.


Some more links:
The site that got us started
More mail weaves (some of these are too tight to do with PVC)
My page on our chainmail

More Dancing

She picked out the outfit herself. :)