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Monochrome

We Didn't Know We Were Doing This, But This is What We're Doing

This is the social activist's (and, more recently, Christian's) response to hyper-consumerism and, more specifically, Black Friday. We've always called it "staying home and avoiding the crowds," but it actually has an official name and purpose.

Wikipedia even has a webpage about it.

Homeschooling Headed for Criminalization?

I saw this at Homeschoolbuzz.com.

So why should we in the U.S. be concerned with the plight of German homeschoolers?

I was quite surprised (yet obviously pleased) that homeschooling developed in the United States with minimal resistance from government agencies. I am even more pleased with the statistics that have emerged on the subject of home-schooled children excelling in extraordinary measure compared to their public school-attending counterparts. In truth, I rather expected a few average American families to have to endure Waco-style sieges, imprisonment and decades-long legal battles over the issue.
So, why all the hubbub over the plight of some German home schoolers?
Well, here’s why. The socialistic European model of government is where the Left in America has us gravitating toward. Read more...

The Strange Things You Think About While Driving

I was driving one son to basketball practice, and we passed a field of cows. They all had tags in their ears, even the little ones. I wondered if they were the same tiny calves I'd seen over the summer.

And then I wondered if, as tiny calves, they'd had any inkling that they'd have to go through the ordeal of tagging. And, even now, wandering in the field with their mothers and the other cows, nibbling a bit of grass when they get hungry, do they have any awareness of what lies ahead for them? I think these are beef cows who enjoy about a three year lifespan. All the older cows in the field will meet their fate soon, but probably have no clue about what's coming. As did last year's cows, and the cows before them, and the cows before them -- history repeats itself again and again, with the same fate for each cow, and has for probably twenty years -- more, if this is a family farm that's been going on for generations -- yet the cows are blissfully unaware of what's in store, and what happened to the generations of cows before them. Existence for a cow consists solely of the three years of its life. There's nothing before and nothing after.

But what if a cow wrote down his experiences to enlighten those who would come after? Would he warn future generations to not go into the truck, no matter much he was prodded, so as not to be led to slaughter? Would he be followed by another cow who would write, and another, so that all the generations of cows became linked with an awareness of shared experience? Would any cows read it? Would they even care? Or would they go on their merry way as long as there was green grass, blue sky, and shade to rest in?

And then I thought of a recent Common Room post, and how much our situation as humans is like the cows'. Yes, there have been some people who have expressed the deepest, most profound essence of their souls and lives, forming a link uniting generations and generations of mankind telling us that we're not alone; people have been here before us, had the same experiences, asked the same questions, attempted to find nswers, laid the foundation of knowledge in art, music, all kinds of things. But in spite of their efforts, generally, like the cows, we prefer to live in blissful unaware ignorance, as if the years of our life were the whole of existence. Nothing of importance happened before, and it's not that important what comes after. The only reality is the time we're here, like a little bubble of time that exists in isolation.

I know we don't really believe that -- sure, we "know" that famous people lived and wrote and discovered and painted. But for the most part, we don't care. It's irrelevent to our lives, and probably inferior to what we're doing today.I mean, people know the names of Blake, Rousseau, Milton, Tennyson. But how many people have actually read what they wrote? Most of us are too busy reading the latest best-seller to care about old, dusty books written by 'dead white guys.' It's the same with music. We know what's current, what's hot, and hits from twenty or thirty years ago are quaint 'oldies.' Never mind that music has been slowly evolving and saying something for hundreds of years. We feel like real music started with the birth of rock and roll.

It's amazing how your thoughts can ramble while you're driving. I wonder if cows listen to music?

It's Not a Yam

I've just done some research, and discovered that I've never had a yam. And I'll bet you haven't, either. In the US, they're all sweet potatoes. The softer ones are called yams, but they're still sweet potatoes. Actually, yams are African. When slaves came to the US, they thought that our sweet potatoes tasted close to what they knew as yams - and that's where the confusion began, because they started calling them yams.

Wikipedia has a whole webpage about it.
And here's a group that's dedicated to Sweet Potato Awareness, and even has a downloadable flyer to print and pass out.

I don't care what they're called, I love them. Baked, cubed and boiled, sliced and microwaved. They also taste great right out of the can.

YAFP

(Yet Another Feet Picture)

Because it goes so well with Donna-Jean's.

Stuffing Bread

This is a Thanksgiving recipe that you make in your bread machine. I wish I could credit the source, but I've tried and tried since last Thanksgiving to find the lady's website I found this on, and I haven't been able to find it. I'm wondering if the site itself disappeared.
This might be it; at least, this the recipe I changed. This might have been the site I first found it, but I'm just not positive.

Stuffing Bread

1 cup warm water
1 egg
1 Tablespoon softened margarine
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup cornbread mix
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups unbleached flour
2 teaspoons dried onion powder
1 1/2 teaspoons celery seed
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast

Place everything in the bread machine in the order listed. Use basic white bread setting, 1 1/2 pound loaf size.

This Morning's Leaves

Otherwise entitled Cold Feet.

Today's Name Is . . .

Miss M insisted on being called Harry for a week or so, then it was Electricity.

We went on vacation last week and she decided her name was Beautiful, and insisted on being introduced as such, and would only answer to that name.

That Explains It

So that's why we don't have very many readers . . .

I found this at Dewey's Treehouse, and I'm also linking this post from there to read later.

Feast Day

We had our third annual All Hallows' Eve feast last week. This year it was a Renaissance Feast, and we welcomed the Locksley children back to our home. (You may recognize them from our trip to the Renaissance Faire earlier this year.)

Grace at the main table

The toddlers' table

Despite the Renaissance theme our menu ranged far and wide, and we didn't worry much about authenticity. After last year's feast we knew we wanted to scale down, so we limited ourselves to two main dishes that we knew we could cook.

Cooks in the kitchen

Good, stiff mashed potatoes

The menu looked like this:

First Course (Appetizer): Homemade bread and gourmet cream of mushroom soup, right out of the Cambell's can (yeah, we kind of cheated on that one). Lemon squash from the Narnian Cookbook to drink--it's a lot like lemonade, but more bitter because it's made of a puree that includes the peel.

Second Course (Main Course): Baked ham and cottage pie, which is just like shepherd's pie--meat, vegetables, mashed potatoes, and cheese--except that it uses beef instead of mutton. To drink, ginger beer from Ingles.

Third Course (Dessert): Turkish Delight and champagne. Okay, so it was sparkling juice really, but it makes a good substitute.

As the night wore on we also had oatcakes and Halloween candy with hot cider.

We decorated the dining room with wall-hangings and curtains to cover the bookshelves and other unsightly objects (computers, CD's, you know the sort). The tableware was goblets and wooden bowls (which contributed their own flavor to the soup). We did use forks; the Locksleys had to learn how to use them, but they caught on quickly. The food was good, the feast went well, and I may say with certainty that the Locksley children had a lovely holiday.



Previous feasts: last year and the year before that.

There are more things in heaven and earth...

"A Christian...living as he does in the huge universe all ringing with the footfalls of hurrying seraphim, cherubim, archangels, angels, men, and devils, will never be too peremptory concerning what creatures aren't in on the traffic. He can only demur and say, 'Elves? I don't know much about them. I've never come across one (worse luck).'"

- Thomas Howard, Myth: Flight to Reality

(I've been reading The Christian Imagination this term--one of those happy occasions when the interests of school and inclination converge on one book. It's an excellent, inspiring anthology of Christian perspectives on art and literature; this quote is from one of the essays printed in it.)

Keeping your kids from being dumb as rocks

I saw this article posted at HomeschoolBuzz.com.

Read a provocative column recently from the SF Gate titled "American kids, dumber than dirt: Warning -- the next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history." Ouch. The writer, Mark Morford, maintains -- as if none of us knew it already -- that the problem "is not bad at all. It's absolutely horrifying."

Read ten things parents can do to help here.