Happy Anniversary to Me

I've blogged for a whole year now.

Town Rejects Supermarket, Business Booms

The Guardian UK has an interesting series on how chain stores destroy entire economies. This article is their latest.

Business Begs State for More Regulation

Is there any surer sign that we're living in a Republican Administration? The Mississippi Health Department is getting terribly lax with restaurant inspections, and people are getting terribly sick. And the Governor is gunning for the Presidency, so you can look forward to his "special dinners" Coming Soon to a Restaurant Near You.

Americans' circle of close friends shrinking

So say the scientists. It certainly explains the widespread depression we've seen and the enormous trouble we've had getting up any form of children's club. I wonder how many people who try to pry into other people's lifestyles are really leading "lives of quiet desperation." What do you think?

Busy, busy, busy

I've been taking care of a new puppy, re-plumbing the bathroom and doing other major maintenance, and fighting depression. I'll give you the gory details when I have time and energy to post.

2006 Show Schedule

September 16 -- Indian Summer Festival Fine Arts Show, Hancock House, Okolona, Mississippi.

September 30 -- Ole Miss Homecoming Rock & Gem Show, Oxford Train Depot, Oxford, Mississippi.

November -- Trunk Show, Reed's Department Store, Downtown Tupelo, Mississippi.

December 1 - 3 -- Chimneyville Crafts Festival, Mississippi Trade Mart, Jackson, Mississippi.

This year is the first time we've set up at shows since we started building our workshop (and having babies!) We're scoping out additional shows this year, and we'll add some of them to the list next year.

Summer Goodies At Our Website

Our new pieces for this summer are up at Brigid's Forge. They include some carved castings with carnelians and the first of the belts. The belts didn't photograph as well as we hoped; we're more used to photographing silver. We had fun making our own leather stamps and playing with them. Leather stamps are over ten times easier to make than silver stamps.

Sneaky Sale at Dover

Dover Publications, publisher and reprinter of many interesting volumes, is having a stealth sale on their books. If you get the children's book catalog this summer, it'll tell you about a sale on Dover Books that lasts until July 31, 2006. The sale is on all their books, but it's not mentioned on their website or in their other catalogs. It's only mentioned in the children's catalog. That's not fair. Here's the code that you enter on the last line of any Dover order form to activate the sale. CCA6 gets you $10 off a $30 order. CCB6 gets you $20 off a $50 order, which also qualifies for free shipping.

Sunshine's new puppy has decided he needs company in the middle of the night. Guess who he insists provide it? He's too little to put out and too loud to put elsewhere.

Am I ever going to have a baby in this house who sleeps through the night?

Blogspot problems

It's my turn for Blogspot to intermittently mess up my account. I hear they get everyone from time to time, but this week is the first time it's happened to me. That's why I haven't posted anything this week. :(

15 Garments

4 pairs of shorts, 3 shirts, 2 nightgowns, and 6 dresses. That's how much I've sewn for the girls for their summer wardrobe. Not by any means the whole of it, but the way they keep growing up and not out I keep having to sew more for them every year. Looks like it will be even more in the fall.

I can see why families that sew a lot have restricted color choices too. I was tempted to restrict mine, but I'm trying to teach them to own their choices by picking out their own fabrics. Brighteyes informed me that her favorite color is no longer light pink. Light pink is for babies. Now it's hot pink. Sunshine experimented with yellow for a favorite color. It looks terrible on her, but I'd rather her find that out now with half a yard of $4.00/yd fabric that with a more expensive option later on.

I did restrict the patterns though. I used three of them. One shorts pattern for both girls, Sunshine just had less elastic. One shirt pattern for each girl. Shortened, the shirt became the bodice of a dress with a gathered skirt. Lengthened, it became a nightgown. I've got tons of patterns I could have used, but cutting it down to just three saved loads of time.

Now, I''ve got to sew a kimono for my husband. I found a grey-and-black Asian dragon print on sale, and I'll probably never find a more perfect fabric to make one out of. Then I get to sew for ME!

New Addition

We have a new addition to our family. Sunshine has a Lhasa Apso puppie named Brownie. Details to follow, I'm exhausted.

Minimus Worksheet Templates, Chapter 3 Part 2

These are for use with Minimus Latin.

New Verbs: you read, you cook

New Conjunction: because

New Adgective: strong

New Adverb: always

New Exclamation: No!

Noun Bank: mother, father, daughter, son, small child, cat, mouse, sister, soul, birthday, gift, house, garden, dress, soldier, cloak, wasp, whale, dolphin, horse, rabbit, pig, dinner, fish sauce, elephant, swan, peacock, parrot, fish, bull, dog, cow, hen, fox, cat, frog, badger, bird, cheese, bedroom, sir, slave girl

Adjective Bank: famous, beautiful, dirty, messy, tired, excellent, fat, big, small, very big, very small, friendly, naughty, good, very good, clever, very clever, beautiful, lazy, energetic, new, strong

Verb Bank: I am, we are, you are (singular), you are (plural), is, are, will be, I have, sit (plural), come (singular), sit down (singular), get up, silent (plural), smiles (singular) you are doing, I am writing, you are writing, he/she is writing, they are writing, I am watching, he/she is watching, they are watching, I am cleaning, he/she is cleaning, I am reading, he/she is reading, I am sweeping, he/she is entering, they are working, they are smiling, you read, you cook

Verb Endings: I - o, you - s, he/she - t, they - nt

Adverb Bank: now, once upon a time, of course, especially, suddenly, always

Pronoun Bank: I, we, everyone, my

Conjunction Bank: and, but, because

Greetings Bank: Hello, Hello (plural), Goodbye, Dear (female), Dear (male), Dearest (female)

Exclamation Bank: yeah!, oh dear, No!

Negative Bank: not, don't, No!

New sentance structures:

(Noun) (Verb) because (Noun) (Nerb).
(Noun) is (Noun/Adjective) becasue (Noun) is (Noun/Adjective).

Check-in time. My husband is finally through with school for the year. He and I were dragging badly by the end or the term, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Now he's home for summer and concentrating on our home business.

We've also had a long-running virus that left us tired and thirsty, but otherwise fine. Luckily the girls don't seem to have caught it. I've had trouble finding time to write coherent posts though.

My husband made his first two stamped leather belts. The first belt was a black practice piece that came out streaky. It turns out that if you want to dye something a flat black you first have to dye it hot pink, then overdye it. So next time you see someone looking tough in black leather, just picture all that hide in the hot pink color it used to be. Hee!

The second belt was my Mother's Day gift. It's dark blue with a stars, moons, suns, dragons and pegusi stamped on it with silver accents. I like it a lot. I haven't had a belt I liked in years. Of course I've also got out of the habit of wearing belts, so I don't have anything to wear it with. Now I've got to sew up some pants or something with actual belt loops.

He's really getting into the leather and fur. The other day I mentioned making a new bedspread, and he wanted to buy a full-size buffalo hide to use instead. He thought it would be fun to watch the dogs bark at it. My brain shorted out. I'm just not ready for that yet.

Eventually I want to hit him up for a Sheridan-style tooled leather corset. Wouldn't that be something to see? But I'd have to sew it myself, and I don't know if my sewing skills are up to corsets yet.

I'm almost through with the girls' summer wear. There's just two dresses to finish, then a third dress and two bottle carriers to sew. Then my husband is getting a kimono in a grey print with black dragons on it and black-and-grey Japanese trim. Then I finally get to sew for me. Yay!

The girls went on their first joint sleepover Friday night, and did very well. It was the first time we had an evening to ourselves in six years. Unfortunately we were so tired and so sick about all we could do was watch a couple of episodes of Firefly. We tried to eat lunch out at a restaurant Saturday, but we were so sleepy and ran so late all we had time for was a Cola and some deli chicken at the grocery.

Eh, I've moaned and groaned enough. Time to do something about my problems, like go to bed.

The Da Vinci Code

Last week I saw this headline on a supermarket tabloid, "The Da Vinci Code Diet!" Talk about the ultimate transformation of the sacred into the profane, at least in terms of contemporary American materialism.

I haven't read The Da Vinci Code. I haven't read Holy Blood, Holy Grail either, but many of my friends read it years ago, and then asked my husband and I to verify what we could of it's claims. This means that while everyone else is running around talking about "new" revelations, I'm scratching my head and going, "But we did this ten years ago."

So, here's what I remember from those sessions:

Yes, the Opus Dei is the new(er) name of the Inquisition. No, they've never had monks. It's a branch of the Vatican government, not an order.

Yes, early Christianity was 100 times more diverse than Catholic tradition records. Women played a large role as missionaries and church leaders. Many early churches were originally the property of Roman women, who by law could not will their land to their choice of heir but who could leave it to a religious organization.

Yes, the Gnostics had very different ideas about life and Christianity than the proto-Catholics did, however they appear to have been even more hung up over sex for the most part. Some poor soul even tried to start a branch of Christianity that included an Eluesian-style mystery rite, but this failed. According to the witnesses, the initiates were laughing so hard when they emerged they could hardly stand up.

At that time it was fashionable for all royal families to claim divine descent from their patron God/dess, even though these claims were not taken literally in cosmopolitan areas. When the Romans wrote up their own attempts to make the emperor semi-Divine, you could tell they were having trouble keeping a straight face. The Frankish Mero Vinca family originally billed itself as "the children of the sea Goddess Mer." Later, when the patron God/dess of the region switched, the family switched its lineage as well. No one ever said they weren't pragmatic.

They did say the Merovingians were stupid and cruel. They became kings by killing off their own relatives -- think Dynasty meets the Godfather and ramp it a hundredfold. In the end, most of the work was done by their major-domo, Pippin the Younger aka Pepin the Short. Pippin wrote the Pope asking what to do. The Pope wrote back that "the one who does the work should wear the crown", thus sanctioning Pepin to take out the Merovingians. Pippin saw to it that all the Merovingians were either put to death or died without issue. If the Merovingians were supposed to be the "bloodline of Christ" it's highly unlikely the Pope would have sanctioned their extermination. And don't doubt that in those days "removing" a family from office amounted to exterminating the bloodline. Even the in-laws of distant cousins were in danger of being killed. These people believed in "long-lost heirs to the throne", and they were deadly serious about preventing any.

Mary Magdalene. In the Bible it says that Jesus "cast seven devils" out of her. It says that she didn't go in the kitchen with the other women to help clean up after meals, but stayed to talk with the men. When the women rebuked her, Jesus rebuked them. It says that she stayed by the tomb and was the first to speak to Jesus after the Resurrection, calling him "Teacher."

That's little to base a portrait on, but to me it seems simplest to think of Mary M. as a sharp-tongued, opinionated woman who loved learning and chafed from not having anyone to converse with. When she finally found someone worth talking to she stopped taking out her frustration on her neighbors, and began spending all her time with him and his friends.

Did she love him? Under those circumstances it's not unlikely.

Was she married to him? Insufficient data.

Was Jesus married to anybody? The Bible doesn't say, but the Bible was edited by men who had a bone to pick with women. It's possible Jesus' marital status was edited out.

It's true that Jesus' mother was obsessing about the food and wine at the wedding as if she were the hostess and mother of the groom, but we don't have sufficient information to say if she was the mother of the groom, if she was assisting the mother of the groom, and/or if she was just an obsessive busybody. The Bible does say that Jesus had brothers and sisters, and many of the extra-Biblical sources from his lifetime that mention Jesus spend more time talking about his brother James. It seems more likely to me that she was nagging the brother(s) and/or cousin(s) of the groom to make a wine run.

Tradition says that after witnessing the Resurrection Mary M. moved to Europe with a group of other Christian women. While there she worked as a high-level missionary and church leader, even witnessing to the Roman emperor before moving to what is now southern France.

Among her party was a little girl named Sara. Various accounts call Sara the daughter of Mary M., the daughter of another of the women, or a foundling, or slave child owned by the women. Sara inherited the women's property and job, becoming an early Christian saint, but it appears that she never married and died without issue. Another tradition names Sara as a Pagan princess unrelated to any of the women. The Catholic church eventually un-Sainted her as a myth, but there is insufficient data available to the public to say.

Did Jesus have a child? More bluntly, did he have sex? Even when I was a Christian, I never understood the people to whom this mattered. Surely what Jesus did the 16 hours each day he was out of bed were more important than what he did the 8 hours he was in bed, provided whatever it was was consensual.

Was Jesus the Son of God? Of course he was. So are we all the sons and daughters of God and Goddess.

But if everybody is the Child of God then he isn't special! I have trouble imagining how anyone could be "not special", especially someone as extraordinary as Jesus.

But what about Sin and Redemption? Most of the sin-and-redemption schtick was added to the Christian interpretation of the Bible 300 years after Christ died, by Augustine of Hippo. He also introduced many other not-so-lovely innovations to Christianity, like burning people at the stake who disagreed with him. His sinful interpretation of the Bible was so far from the contemporary interpretations that his early treatise was greeted with outright laughter by other Christian leaders. His followers spent 100 years lobbying, defaming the supporters of the traditional view of Jesus and burning their writings, and in one case outright bribing the emperor with war horses, before they finally got it accepted at the Council of Nicea. The Nicene Creed would not have won the vote without nearly century of dirty politics behind it. And that story would make a far more interesting movie than The Da Vinci Code.

The Bobbsey Twins Meet Brighteyes and Sunshine

Saturday the girls got a box from my Mom with the first three Bobbsey Twins books in it. The original version, not the 60s rehash I read. Brighteyes started on the first one at 9 in the morning. She finished it at 3 that afternoon while her Daddy was giving a soldering demonstration at the Rock and Gem club, which was very impressed at how quiet and well-behaved the girls acted. She had read the third book by bedtime Sunday night. I think we have a hit on our hands.

Sunday night I started reading the first book at bedtime for Sunshine's benefit. The first chapter included the assertion by a child that girls could only grow up to do certain jobs. Brighteyes frowned.

"Mommy, why did they say girls can't be soldiers? You showed us those pictures of girls soldiers in the Civil War."

"Well honey, they probably didn't know about those girl soldiers in the Civil War. Not a lot of people talked about them at the time.

People have never been completely effective at keeping all girls and women from doing any job they wanted to do; but they sometimes made it very hard for girls to do any job they wanted. They would do all sorts of things to keep girls from working certain jobs, like being a soldier. A girl could always be a soldier, but sometimes she had to pretend she was a man to get the job.

This book was written a hundred years ago. At that time there was a lot of effort put into keeping women out of a lot of jobs. But between then and now an awful lot of women -- and some men! -- worked very, very hard to make sure that girls could do any job they wanted without having to pretend to be a man."

Monday at lunch the conversation continued:

"Mommy, why did they try to keep girls from certain jobs?"

"Do you remember the Ages of History you learned?"

"Yes."

"What were they?"

"Um, Old Stone Age, New Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age, Computer Age."

"Very good. Remember I said each new age came about because people invented some new way of making tools? I said that whenever that happened, a lot of people who had made their living with the old tools ended up out of work."

"That's bad."

"Yes. While in general most people were better off, a lot of people were left without jobs.

A hundred years ago was in the middle of the Industrial Age. A lot of people were thrown out of work. Somebody decided that the way to handle all those people who didn't have jobs was to take jobs away from women and not let them work. That way men could work those jobs."

"That's silly!"

"I didn't say it was a good idea. It wasn't."

"It's stupid!"

It'll be interesting to see where the Bobbsey Twins leads us next.

Oh Where, Oh Where Has Your Editor Gone?

Oh where, oh where can she be?
Your clauses are dangling,
Your research is flawed,
A total rewrite you need!

But if you want to show a child what poorly researched, badly written drek disguised as historical research looks like, click on this link.

Vintage Palm Pilot + Project Gutenberg = Happy Kid?

I know next to nothing about portable computers devices. I don't even own a cordless phone. But it seems to me that I could buy one of the older PDAs that doesn't do anything except hold about a book's worth of text, download a classic children's chapter book from Project Gutenberg, and keep a young book-lover happy for a day or so. I've been told one of the early Palm Pilots would be perfect for this job (and is fairly cheap off ebay), but I don't know what sort make/model/qualities to look for. Could you folks give me some advice?

Brighteyes and Sunshine Explain It All

This is a section of links to stories about my children. I'll put a link to it in the right column next time I poke at the template.

Hard Day

Mississippi Mud

"I"m too old for coloring pages."

The Grey Kitten

First Classroom

My Children -- an introduction.

The Explorers

Scorcher

Shellfish

The Paleontology of Oz

Cave Painting

Lady Ghosts

The Fossil Hunt

The Forsaken Merman

Time Flies

Review: The Miracle of Life

Another Reminder Why We Don't Unschool

A "Scheduled" Day

Breakfast Q&A

Happy Birthday Son

Caught With My Mouth Open.

BEM

Baking Day

Bruised

My daughter is an Unitarian

Brighteyes and the Golden Rule

How Not to Cast a Magic Spell where Sunshine learns that all words are magic words.

My Poor Little Sheltered Darlings encounter competition and bullying. Poor bully!

My Poor Little Sheltered Darlings

One of the complaints about homeschooling is that we "shelter" our children from the real world by not giving them a chance to learn about competition or about schoolyard bullies. Week before last we were at the playground with a lot of public-schooled children. There was a game of "Pirates" going on. Six year-old Brighteyes and a much bigger girl both wanted to be the Pirate Captain. The bigger girl looked at Brighteyes in her pink flowered sundress and flip-flops, and proposed a race to the top of the ship's "prow" for the title. By the time she got both feet off the ground Brighteyes was sitting on the prow.

Then a boy half a head taller than Brighteyes tried to steal her flip-flop. She told him no, go away. He tried again. She kicked him in the chest. He swung at her. She kicked him in the jaw. He ran away crying. I told Brighteyes that head shots were out of bounds and made her apologize for the last blow. His parents told him he asked for it.

Yep, it really looks as if our homeschooled kids don't know anything about competition or playground bullies all right.