Update, of Sorts

 I haven't blogged in quite a while -- I was keeping up with people on Facebook. But now I've de-activated my Facebook account to see if I can do without it, so maybe I'll start blogging again. We'll see.

Wedding Photos

For those who missed the Live Stream and aren't on Facebook...

The wedding was broadcast live over the internet via ustream.com. It was held at a small castle - what you see in the photo is all the castle there is. There's a hall, a small balcony above, and a downstairs. That's it. The atmosphere was perfect for a medieval/Renaissance style event, but not very big.

Lanterns hung from the balcony...

Groom and groomsmen before the wedding.

The wedding had a storybook/fairy tale feel, with banners, crowns, and fairies. The bride and groom even looked like a prince and princess. Much of the ceremony was taken from the books and movies they've both loved since childhood. They were prayed over and coronated as heads of their own new little family of two, and the males from both families joined and vowed loyalty to each other. Their wedding rings are green (his) and yellow (hers) so they can travel to and from Aslan's woods whenever they want. :-)

The bride and groom!

The flower girl, a groomsman, and a wedding guest.

To end the wedding, the bride and groom stood on the bridge over the castle moat and held a lit paper lantern while they sang a duet (At Last I See the Light from the Disney movie Tangled) and then let the lantern loose to float away up into the sky. it was quite dramatic.

(By the way, I was told that Disney's lantern scene was inspired by an actual event - the yearly Taiwan Lantern Festival.)


The bride and groom just got back from their honeymoon last night and are staying in Charlotte for the summer. Not sure where they'll be after that. The official photographer's pictures aren't ready yet, but she did post one as a teaser, which should be publicly viewable here.

Gifts Differing

I've been trying to wrap my mind around Myers-Briggs (MBTI) theory for a couple of years. I've read Understanding Yourself and Others by Linda V. Berens, Personality Type: An Owner's Manual by Lenore Thomson, 16 Ways to Love Your Lover:Understanding the 16 Personality Types by Otto Kroeger and Janet Thuesen, participated in a few online discussions about it (and a couple in real life), and watched DaveSuperPower's YouTube videos, which say that you can't rely on those online tests because it's all about cognitive functions, and the only way to understand MBTI is to study the cognitive functions. I am still stumped!

Gifts Differing by Isabel Briggs Myers and her son Peter Myers was recommended as a good book to help understanding the functions, so here I am, with the book, determined to figure this thing out.

First off, the four letters of everyone's MBTI are really describing two things:
How We Perceive (what we see in a situation depends on whether we prefer to notice things through our five senses or through our intuition; this tells whether we're S or N)
How We Judge (what we decide to do about the information we take in depends on whether we're driven more by impersonal logic or personal relationships; this tells whether we're T or F)

One difference between this book and others:

Linda Berens defines the four core types as:
SP (the Improvisor)
SJ (the Stabilizer)
NT (the Theorist)
NF (the Catalyst)

But Myers describes them using only the middle letters:
ST (practical, matter-of-fact)
SF (sociable and friendly)
NF (inspired, enthusiastic and insightful)
NT (logical and ingenious)

I did note that, where Myers takes a paragraph to briefly explain each of the core types, there are two paragraphs to explain NF's. It also did not escape my notice that Isabel Briggs Myers was INFP, her mother, who started the family's MBTI research, was INFJ, and her son is ENFP. In other words, a pack of NF's wrote this book, so it's no surprise that NF's get the most thorough description. :-)

Scaling Back

To make a long story really short - at our last local CM meeting, we discussed pressuring kids to read and keep up with math before they're really ready, and the later problems that can cause, and the fact that some people (including The Trivium/The Bluedorns) feel like math shouldn't be started until age 10. So I re-assessed what I'm doing with Miss M (just turned 8 years old, doing AO Year 1), and I decided to cut down on her math.

We're doing Math-U-See, and since we do a CM co-op Fridays, we have a four-day week of "lessons." I've been trying to squeeze a lesson per week into four days (and a week of a scheduled Bible reading). I decided to just stop doing that. It might take us closer to two years to finish the math-U-See book, but that's okay. In fact, I think Steven Demme says he planned for each book to take a couple of years. So now we can do the concept presentation one day (which, for us, means watching the video together), and then start on work sheets the next day, and go ahead and and take a day or two to do the word problems from the teacher's manual 9which I had been skipping!) Yesterday, I let her play with measuring cups to learn how many pints are in a quart. I feel more relaxed, and I think that's appropriate for her, where she is. She has in no way reached a developmental point where fighting over "getting school done" would be a good idea.

The Bible thing is taking some getting used to. The Bible we're using has the readings all laid out and labeled "Monday" "Tuesday," etc., and it's unsettling to see the "Wednesday" label on Monday's reading. (But I suppose I can learn to be flexible!)

Jo's Boys

I just finished reading Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys, and I was struck with how much Louisa May Alcott echoed Charlotte Mason's ideas. I think that Charlotte Mason probably didn't manufacture her ideas out of her own head, but these were ideas that were out and about in the minds of many thinkers at the time, and Charlotte Mason organized them into her own school/curriculum in the same way that Jo March Bhaer used them in her Plumfield school for boys.

Jo's Boys has a chapter that deviates from the boys at the school to focus on the girls who were there, and there's no missing the similarity with Charlotte Mason's own section just for girls. So, with no commentary, I'm going to present, side by side, sections of both books so you can compare for yourself.

The books:

Jo's Boys, by Louisa May Alcott, Chapter 17. Among the Maids

Volume 5: Formation Of Character by Charlotte Mason, 2. Concerning The Young Maidens At Home (I used my own paraphrased version for the comparison.)

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
Although this story is about Jo's boys, her girls cannot be neglected, because they held a high place in this little republic, and especial care was taken to fit them to play their parts worthily in the great republic which offered them wider opportunities and more serious duties.

CM:
It's not enough for them to learn to cook a little, sew a little, and do laundry. Every one of the girls should receive some definite, thorough training in some art or profession that will enable her to earn her own living doing something useful for the world, and something interesting and enjoyable to herself, as all skilled work of the mind or hands is. I think that parents owe this to their daughters as much as they do to their sons. There is valuable training available in many fields of work suitable for women, and at about the same cost as it takes to support a girl at home.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
To many the social influence was the better part of the training they received; for education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but make experience their master, and life their book. Others cared only for the mental culture, and were in danger of over-studying, under the delusion which pervades New England that learning must be had at all costs, forgetting that health and real wisdom are better. A third class of ambitious girls hardly knew what they wanted, but were hungry for whatever could fit them to face the world and earn a living...

CM: [One kind of girl] imagines the great things she could do for some idealistic cause, but she's careless about details of kindness, things she says, and routine chores... a little friendly help and advice might save her from a lot of blundering and regret.
There's another kind of girl who has no interests beyond cute clothes. These girls ... view the world as a place for them to have and get, but never, unless forced, as a place to do, to endure, or to share. ... what can be done for the average graduate whose education is supposedly 'finished,' yet who's still rough and uninformed?

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
At Plumfield all found something to help them; for the growing institution had not yet made its rules as fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and believed so heartily in the right of all sexes, colours, creeds, and ranks to education, that there was room for everyone who knocked... the Faculty was composed of cheerful, hopeful men and women who had seen greater reforms spring from smaller roots, and after stormy seasons blossom beautifully, to add prosperity and honour to the nation. So they worked on steadily and bided their time, full of increasing faith in their attempt as year after year their numbers grew, their plans succeeded, and the sense of usefulness in this most vital of all professions blessed them with its sweet rewards.

CM:
School hasn't completed the girl's education, it's only provided a beginning. Now the girl is home to learn how to make the most of herself, and how to succeed in life. How to make the best life is the issue she faces.... A woman who has herself under control, thinks for herself, reserves her judgments, thinks before she speaks or acts, is a woman who will succeed in life. Her success is measured in how generous her heart is, how broad her mind is, and how large her soul is.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
They were busy women, yet on Saturdays they tried to meet in one of the three sewing-rooms; for even classic Parnassus had its nook where Mrs Amy often sat among her servants, teaching them to make and mend, thereby giving them a respect for economy, since the rich lady did not scorn to darn her hose, and sew on buttons. In these household retreats, with books and work, and their daughters by them, they read and sewed and talked in the sweet privacy that domestic women love, and can make so helpful by a wise mixture of cooks and chemistry, table linen and theology, prosaic duties and good poetry.

CM:
Every woman should understand and know how to do every task related to cooking, cleaning, mending or making in the home. A regular instruction time learning to do these things under her mother's guiding eye would be a good way to spend an hour or two every morning. One valuable and extremely useful project is a household book where the young girl writes down exactly how to do specific things, like how to strip a floor, or how to make an omelet. She should write down the exact steps she took herself to do it, or as she observed while watching someone else do it, noting any special circumstances specific to her own house. This kind of reference will be invaluable later because it contains personal experiences, and it will help her to speak authoritatively to her cook or servant who might say, 'I never heard of anyone doing it like that before, ma'am.' Planning meals, setting a proper table, every detail about managing a household for a week or a month, should all be taught and noted in her book.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
...Mrs Amy contributed taste, and decided the great question of colours and complexions; for few women, even the most learned, are without that desire to look well which makes many a plain face comely, as well as many a pretty one ugly for want of skill and knowledge of the fitness of things. She also took her turn to provide books for the readings, and as art was her forte she gave them selections from Ruskin, Hamerton, and Mrs Jameson, who is never old. Bess read these aloud as her contribution, and Josie took her turn at the romances, poetry, and plays her uncles recommended. Mrs Jo gave little lectures on health, religion, politics, and the various questions in which all should be interested, with copious extracts from Miss Cobbe's Duties of Women, Miss Brackett's Education of American Girls, Mrs Duffy's No obtund in Education, Mrs Woolson's Dress Reform, and many of the other excellent books wise women write for their sisters, now that they are waking up and asking: 'What shall we do?'

CM:
Her academic education has hardly gotten started in school, and it needs to progress. She needs to develop her own independent habits of intellectual effort. She should have one or two hours every morning for nothing but solid reading. English literature is still mostly unknown her, so she'll need some of that. She has a lot of history to read--ancient, medieval and modern--and that will relate better when she compares it to her own current history. She probably learned to read some French and German in school, and now is a good time to introduce her to some French and German literature. She'll probably only find time for the best of the novels, the ones that have become classics, except for those occasions when she has a cold or earache or has a spare half hour after dinner. It's very helpful to have a 'commonplace book' or reading journal at hand while reading so that she can jot down any notable thoughts about the author, or her own impression of the book, or a portion of it.
...Give them sincere intellectual work to think about. Let them feel how necessary it is to brace up every faculty of their minds to understand the width and depth of the truths they're called to believe in.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
It was curious to see the prejudices melt away as ignorance was enlightened, indifference change to interest, and intelligent minds set thinking, while quick wits and lively tongues added spice to the discussions which inevitably followed. So the feet that wore the neatly mended hose carried wiser heads than before, the pretty gowns covered hearts warmed with higher purposes, and the hands that dropped the thimbles for pens, lexicons, and celestial globes, were better fitted for life's work, whether to rock cradles, tend the sick, or help on the great work of the world...

CM:
Young ladies should receive some general training and special preparation to help them form fair, just opinions. For starters, a girl should be encouraged to use her common sense to weigh issues that come up...
Young women should also know something about the principles of political economy. ... Any girl who studies it with some thought and effort will be able to form sensible opinions about some of the current issues that are used these days, not just as matters of opinion, but as reasons to justify one social class's superiority over another. It would be good for England if educated women had fair and just ideas about these kinds of issues, not just so they can have something interesting and valuable to say to their husbands and brothers, but so that they can present a different perspective to the men in their lives, and influence them to see a different side of the issue.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
It was good for these girls to hear of the evening-schools supported and taught by women whom they knew and honoured; of Miss Cobbe's eloquent protest winning the protection of the law for abused wives; Mrs Butler saving the lost; Mrs Taylor, who devoted one room in her historic house to a library for the servants; Lord Shaftesbury, busy with his new tenement-houses in the slums of London; of prison reforms; and all the brave work being done in God's name by the rich and great for the humble and the poor. It impressed them more than many quiet home lectures would have done, and roused an ambition to help when their time should come, well knowing that even in glorious America there is still plenty to be done before she is what she should be--truly just, and free, and great.

CM:
..Women have so many rights these days that they can no longer justifiably claim the kind of immunities that secluded harem wives can. We aren't free to say, 'Oh, these things are beyond me; I let the men worry about those kinds of issues.' It's possible that God's Providence has brought women to the forefront in this age so that they'll be ready to act as mediators in these days when there's a dangerous risk of alienation and enmity between social classes. Some thinking people are convinced that we're in the early stages of a revolution. Whether this revolution can happen peacefully without the bloodshed and horrors of other recent revolutions may depend, more than they realize, on the women of England.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Uncanny, isn't it? One would almost wonder if they were the same person! Jo's Boys was published in 1886, which is about the same year Charlotte Mason was delivering her "Lectures to Ladies" that ended up as her first book.

Children are Born Persons, Revisited

As my kids are getting older, and my friends' kids are getting older, Charlotte Mason's "Children are born persons" is meaning something more to me. Or maybe it's just hitting home more.

For years, I've heard that if you "train up your child in the way he should go, when he's old he will not depart from it," and various interpretations of that -- if you train them to be good, they'll always be good, if you teach them right, they might stray, but they'll always come back.

At a recent gathering of moms, one of the moms said that "raise up your children in the way they should go" means that we guide them in the unique direction/career God has planned for them -- as if we could be presumptuous enough to know what God has planned for them. I'm not sure I'd even want to arrange a marriage for my child, much less their entire life.

I think of all the things I've attempted to do with/for my kids, like instilling values, presenting opinions, and nurturing tastes for reading and music -- when they grow up, they choose for themselves, and it might be very different than what I wanted, or even from what I thought from observation was "the way they should go." One of my little boys used to build things. Friends would even comment that he was very good at building things and would someday be an engineer. But, nope, as he's gotten older, I see his interests going somewhere else, and his brother being the one to show an interest in building things as a possible career, and I'm glad I didn't lock the wrong child into that path.

The first time "Children are born persons" really hit home for me was when my oldest son was in maybe fifth grade and showing some talent in his school lessons. I remembered reading about a child back in history who was extremely gifted, and spoke multiple languages. No doubt his parents threw everything they had into his gift and harbored hopes of what was in store for this child. And then he died at age nine of some childhood disease. I don't know what kind of childhood he had -- whether he had been allowed to play, daydream, enjoy nature, and seek out his own interests, or whether he had been pressured to make the most of his time by studying for hours on end because of what he would be someday. But his "someday" never came. In the end, what mattered for him wasn't the hopes for his future, but his childhood. It was all he had. It occurred to me at the time that each child is a born person and may only have a few years to live their life, and withholding any life from them in the hopes of their useful, prosperous future may rob them of what life they have. That was the first time I thought I understood what CM meant.

Now, watching the kids around me -- my own as well as my friends' children -- becoming adults, it's hitting me again. These children we thought we were raising are complete people, very different from us, very much their own people, and they always were. I look around at my adult friends and their opinions and ways of life, and wonder if they're even an inkling like what their parents thought they were raising them to be. The children we've collectively raised represent our contribution of a few full-grown adults thrown into the general population with their own opinions and ways of life, and, in many cases, they are very different as adults than what we saw in them as children. They have gifts we totally missed, or interests it never occurred to us to introduce them to in their childhood, or information gleaned from sources we never heard of.

Sometimes I think that the best we can do as parents is to watch them grow up into adult people, and hope we don't do anything to damage them along the way. I don't say that to sound helpless or despairing, but raising a child is more awe-inspiring and bigger than I thought, and I as a parent have less influence and control than I imagined. We attempt to set their feet in a large, broad room, without really considering the large, broad room we're in ourselves as their parents.

Cassatt's Woman Reading

Fragonard's picture of Girl Reading Etexts on Her PalmTX got outdated since I (and the rest of the world, it seems) have traded my PDA in for an iPod Touch as an ereading device. This is Mary Cassatt, with a bit of modernized touching-up by moi.




(That's The Brothers Karamazov that she's reading. She can't figure out why Dmitri is acting so odd as he's being questioned about his father's murder.)

Tea with Two Toy Kitties

This is something I meant to post awhile ago...



Miss M set up a little tea party with her two "friends." This particular tea party was right when she had turned six. Typically, she'll carry on conversations as she plays, doing all the speaking parts herself, like two grown-up ladies discussing what real grown-up ladies discuss -- concerns about fashion, their children, little life crises, etc.:

"Is everybody done with their cookies? Okay, good - now we can have a discussion."

"How did you like the opera last night?"

"It was HORRIBLE! My friend Lisa was in it, and she didn't have enough practice." (She doesn't really a friend named Lisa, nor has she ever been to a real opera.)

"Yesterday the kids were all in the backyard murdering each other. Leopard tried to stop them, but he got his brains knocked out, and now he can't think. And all those kids are living with us now because their house burned down, and we have all their money. And that's good, because we have more than we need. We won't give any of it away. And Leopard still can't think, he might have an operation - oh, there's the telephone, that's the news I've been waiting for . . . Hello? Is the brain functioning? We'll make the appointment for Wednesday? The doctor can't get to his brain unless he does surgery on it..."

Back

I took a little break from blogging - I guess it's been 8 months since I last posted. I've been busy on Facebook, which has been fun, but it's not really the same thing. It's also a different thing to be part of a group blog, with someone else providing substance and just doing whatever strikes me in between for light relief, and being pretty much a sole blogger. But my blog partner is moving on in life, and has limited time with his college and other stuff. And, for a long time, I haven't felt like I had anything to say. So Facebook has been good enough.

Still, Facebook has its limitations. For one thing, you can only post short quips and links. For another, once something moves down to the bottom of your "wall," it's pretty much gone for good. It's a hassle to back up to older things that were posted, and I'm not sure how far back you're even allowed to go.

So, I'm dusting off this old blog and I'm going to try and bring it back to life.

Last Child in the Woods Summary

I finished Last Child in the Woods, and, to keep notes, started a summary -- one or two sentences to sum up each chapter. And these are the sentences.

1 Most adults have fond memories of being outside climbing trees but today, kids don't go outside much anymore. Why?

2 Kids used to build forts and tree houses but today's kids don't even have grandparents who live in rural farms where they can play and see where food comes from.

3 Parks and open places are no longer places for kids to free-play--too much liability if kids fall out of a tree, and too many flowers they might trample.

4 Vacant lots left untouched can be wild natural areas. Nature relaxes us and can help with mental health.

5 Spending two weeks in the desert helped at-risk inner city teens. Most people today only experience nature as store theme-displays or in sensationalized nature documentaries.

6 Howard Gardner added a 'nature smarts' category to his theory of multiple intelligences. But it can only be developed by being in nature. Building forts teaches lots of other skills, including use of all the senses.

7 Lots of creative people--writers, musicians, etc.--list nature as an early inspiring influence in their creative life.

8 Being outside in greenery seems to calm and ground kids with ADD. Perhaps nature is as necessary for kids' growth as food and air.

9 Organized sports and busy lives can squeeze out time for free play outside. We think of free play as a luxury, but it's necessary for physical and mental health.

10 Emphasis in the news of crime makes parents afraid to let their kids play outside, but the risk is exaggerated, especially considering how much we sacrifice by letting fear confine our kids indoors.

11 Even families who do get out miss the beauty as they tear up the landscape in their ATV's. College science majors no longer know basic life forms in nature because they didn't learn that as children.

12 If kids view nature as far removed and all about abstract global warming and rainforests, how will they ever be passionate about protecting the environment? They need to love the nature near their homes first by playing in it.

13 Adults need to take kids out and share their own awe at nature. As an antidote to too much falsely stimulating entertainment, take them hiking or camping or even just for a walk. Watch bugs, grow vegetables.

14 Teach kids to be alert under your watchful eye to keep them safer in general; nature is great for teaching alertness.

15 Saving stranded turtles, keeping nature notebooks, gathering plants for food or medicine, even hunting and fishing can create a connection with nature.

16 Finland: 'The core of learning is not in the information . . . being predigested from the outside, but in the interaction between a child and the environment.'

Ho hum; I got bored with the book and started speed-skimming. So, I have nothing to say about chapters 17 and 18. I cracked down on myself the day before the book was due back at the library to make myself finish.

19 Nature and animals can coexist with people through innovative plans in urban areas: cities can plan wild, overgrown patches of land or rough, green 'pocket parks' and encourage wildlife to live there by planting native plants they like. ('Pocket parks.' I love the term. I like how it sounds when I say it out loud: 'pocket parks.' And the concept sounds good, too!)

20 Imagine an idyllic world where kids grow up in a natural green environment and a world where buffalo roam once more on the prairie. Can we do it? Yes we can! (MBTI: I sense some INFP here...)

21 For Christians, caring for the environment isn't earth-worship; it's good stewardship.

The End