Two weeks later...
We left back for Tennessee the next day. It's been all quiet on the home front, with no more break-ins. It's been pretty quiet on the Farm too. We moved back into a different cabin, one across the road from our midwife's house.
I guess I should explain about the Farm Midwifery Center. It's the US's oldest freestanding (not directly attached to a hospital) birthing center. The Farm was established in Tennessee in 1970 as a hippie commune by a group of alternative lifestyle advocates from San Francisco. 38 years later it's still going as sort of a combination gated rural community/alternative lifestyle tourist attraction. It's biggest draw is the Midwifery Center.
The Center both takes care of pregnant women and trains midwives. The provide home births for local women, including the local Amish community. But they also have cabins available for women who come in from outside the area. Currently my neighbors include pregnant women from California, New York, and Illinois. We're the only ones who didn't fly in.
So basically, right now we're in a cabin in 40 year-old woods in the foothills of the Appalachias. The deer come up to the back windows. The midwife lives across the road, with more midwives down the street. There's a clinic within walking distance, a spectacular earthen swimming pool with a rock face diving cliff that's like something out of one of the more expensive hotels at Disneyworld just out of walking distance, good restaurants with cheap lunchtime buffets in driving distance, and a tourist town with a friendly obstetrical department that works with the clinic just down the road. I've had nothing to do but eat, sleep, swim and play tourist for two weeks. It's been incredibly relaxing.
It's been so blasted relaxing the baby hasn't wanted to come.
I've had three premature labors in a row. Since they were all eight and nine pound preemies, nobody was sure what the cause was. Now it looks like the premature labors might have been stress-related. This is the first time I've had a labor go full term. That's good. I keep telling myself that's good. The problem is I don't know how to cope with a full term labor.
I'm not used to the baby dropping and staying dropped. I'm not used to contractions that come and go, letting you get back to sleep. It's all starting to get a teensy bit annoying.
Meanwhile, we're not running short of days. My husband has been saving his leave days for this moment for seven years. He's enjoying the delicious feel of it being August and him not being in the classroom teaching a new class, although he has been asked to guest lecture at the Farm's alternative school.
Sunshine is taking it incredibly well. Brighteyes has had some trouble with the break in her routine. Not a day has gone by without her throwing a temper tantrum over something that she felt was out of place in some way. It's probably aggravated by her loose tooth -- she's always fussy when she's got a tooth coming out. Still, in the last few days we've made it clear that her fusses aren't helping the baby. She was shocked to realize the baby could hear her even though it hasn't been born yet. She's trying harder to keep it together. Now that she isn't spending so much energy on fusses, she's become an extremely prolific artist, doing two or three sketches a day. Her father is working his way through the exercises in How to Draw What You See and experimenting with some pastels I found on sale at a local Hobby Lobby. It's occurred to Brighteyes that she can invent her own art exercises, and she has been making detailed notes on how to draw hands.
Sunshine is drawing more as well, and is getting better at drawing individual objects. She's also working her way through a dinosaur coloring book.
I brought their math and spelling workbooks along as well. These were very helpful in the first week. Whenever they started to feel anxious and get fussy over the lack of a familiar routine, I would pull them out and they would calm down. By the second week they preferred to spend their time drawing.
And that's basically it. We've hit all the local tourist attractions and eaten at almost all the recommended restaurants. I found a consignment shop that sells new name brand children's clothing overruns for $1.50 to $5.99 and got a start on the fall clothes buying. I've almost finished the Torchwood audiobooks I never had the time to listen to at home. Tomorrow is our 20th wedding anniversary, and the day after that is the adjusted official due date.
I'm really, really ready for the baby to be born now. Okay baby?
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Monday, August 04, 2008
A Really Awful Week
I left home to be closer to the midwives for the birth last week. I came home two days ago. No baby yet, but it's been one hell of a week.
Tuesday I ran around trying to finish the packing and get the house settled for our first vacation in 17 years. I was so busy I didn't conciously notice the heat index of 116F. Which isn't to say I didn't unsconciously notice it, as it sent me into precipitous labor around midnight.
All of my births have been precipitous. Once started, labor doesn't stop until late morning, when the baby is born. So, after a few frantic midnight calls to the midwives, we all agreed it would be best if I came on up.
Problem: the Sunshine and Brighteyes are sound asleep. This means an early-morning call to SIL to ask if she can come over and babysit. At 1 am. That she actually shows up is testament to her good character (a fact I sometimes have to remind myself of when -- but that's another story). So we get underway at a 2:45 am.
Did I mention the midwifery center is three and a half hours away? In the daylight? We get there at 6:45 am, find our cabin, and I get examined and immediately ordered to bed. My husband and I eat a cheese pizza we picked up on the way. I manage to convince myself it's really cheese toast with a fruit on the side in a slightly different format. Alas, my husband lacks my skill at self-delusion and had a harder time with it. We get a call from SIL to see if we made it, then crash for three hours.
SIL is supposed to call back at 11. No call. At 11:30 my husband leaves to pick up the girls. I try to talk him out of it, but he logically points out he has to pick up his paycheck today anyway, and he doesn't trust those jokers not to lose it on him. So he made the trip twice more while I got another checkup and slept the rest of the day.
With all the sleep I actually managed to stop the labor for the first time in four pregnancies. Maybe that wild yam extract the midwife insisted I take is actually doing some good. The family gets in around 10, and we finally get everyone fed, settled, and in bed around midnight.
We spent all day Thursday and Friday morning exploring, shopping for stuff that got behind left in the mad dash, and relaxing. We were feeling pretty good by lunchtime Friday when we got a call from SIL that our house now had busted-out windows.
My husband spent the afternoon and night on the phone getting damage reports while I packed everything back up. According to the searchers, the thief had broken through the window in the front door, found it unopenable, then broke a back window, made a mess, stole some change, and left without taking any large items. They couldn't tell what small items were missing and what were lost in the mess. I finally got my husband off the phone at 11pm so we could sleep.
Saturday morning I had an exam, was okayed with a stern warning to avoid stress, and we left. It was another over 100F day. The car, which had been doing fine, had it's air conditioner die once and it died twice on the way back.
The house was in a bigger mess than we'd been told about. On the other hand, it was in a mess when we left, so the searchers probably didn't realize what was us and what was the thief. On the third hand, the thief apparently found it hard to deal with. He checked a few stereotypical places, then stopped instead of doing the whole place.
Note to future thieves: even I'm not dumb enough to hide anything valuable in my panty drawer. We don't have a lot of pawnable swag. A fortune spent on books, DVDs, homeschool materials, and arts & crafts supplies isn't worth much at Leroy's Pawn Shop. It's called "investing in education". You may have heard of it?
Anyway, don't bother looking for the top pawn shop items here. I don't own any gold jewelry. I'm a silversmith, dude. That means everything I own is silver, and almost all of it is non-commercial and so distinctive tracing it would be a snap. Leroy wouldn't know what to do with it.
As for the electronics, the TV is 13 years old. The buttons have worn off the set and it has to be worked with a remote. The computer was assembled out of mostly second-hand parts put together from junked machines people brought my husband to work on. We're not worth breaking into.
Bah. It looks like the thief got a graphing calculator, around $100 worth of change inside two coin banks (one containing dd1's allowance for the past year!), a pearl necklace, some heavy commercial silver chains, a handmade silver and garnet chain, some carved wood and crystal boxes from my collection, a handful of Christmas candy(?), and some forty-watt light bulbs(?) he stuffed into a toy bucket and dropped in the backyard.
This paucity was not for lack of trying, mind you. He backed his car up to our front door with the intention of loading it up, but in the end he didn't find it worth the effort. We didn't design our house to be easy to steal from.
The next thief will have an even harder time. The broken panes have been replaced with a shatter-proof material, and the windows are being fitted with custom locks made by my husband. Never challenge a genius who has his own machine shop.
And the new front window is elegantly engraved with our family name, our business name, and a pair of dragons.
But the sherriff's department and our own searchers missed the Clues. The thief left his homemade club outside the window and left his bloodstains on the curtain and on the floor after cutting his hand opening the window. Pity we can't interest the sherriff's department enough to come collect them or even take our statement. We called and were told the officer in charge "had called this afternoon but no one picked up the phone". (Lie. Neither we nor the answering machine got any such call.) and wouldn't be available until Monday.
By Saturday night my (not) Good (definitely) Old PTSD was wearing off and I felt a bit -- frazzled. On top of all this I'm still almost 9 months pregnant and still under orders to avoid stress. And did I mention easily exhausted? It took me over 24 hours to type up this post, and I to stop once for contractions, which fortunately stopped with rest and plenty of water. I so don't need this right now.
And on top of everything else, it's probably guaranteed it'll be another 17 years before I get another vacation!
Tuesday I ran around trying to finish the packing and get the house settled for our first vacation in 17 years. I was so busy I didn't conciously notice the heat index of 116F. Which isn't to say I didn't unsconciously notice it, as it sent me into precipitous labor around midnight.
All of my births have been precipitous. Once started, labor doesn't stop until late morning, when the baby is born. So, after a few frantic midnight calls to the midwives, we all agreed it would be best if I came on up.
Problem: the Sunshine and Brighteyes are sound asleep. This means an early-morning call to SIL to ask if she can come over and babysit. At 1 am. That she actually shows up is testament to her good character (a fact I sometimes have to remind myself of when -- but that's another story). So we get underway at a 2:45 am.
Did I mention the midwifery center is three and a half hours away? In the daylight? We get there at 6:45 am, find our cabin, and I get examined and immediately ordered to bed. My husband and I eat a cheese pizza we picked up on the way. I manage to convince myself it's really cheese toast with a fruit on the side in a slightly different format. Alas, my husband lacks my skill at self-delusion and had a harder time with it. We get a call from SIL to see if we made it, then crash for three hours.
SIL is supposed to call back at 11. No call. At 11:30 my husband leaves to pick up the girls. I try to talk him out of it, but he logically points out he has to pick up his paycheck today anyway, and he doesn't trust those jokers not to lose it on him. So he made the trip twice more while I got another checkup and slept the rest of the day.
With all the sleep I actually managed to stop the labor for the first time in four pregnancies. Maybe that wild yam extract the midwife insisted I take is actually doing some good. The family gets in around 10, and we finally get everyone fed, settled, and in bed around midnight.
We spent all day Thursday and Friday morning exploring, shopping for stuff that got behind left in the mad dash, and relaxing. We were feeling pretty good by lunchtime Friday when we got a call from SIL that our house now had busted-out windows.
My husband spent the afternoon and night on the phone getting damage reports while I packed everything back up. According to the searchers, the thief had broken through the window in the front door, found it unopenable, then broke a back window, made a mess, stole some change, and left without taking any large items. They couldn't tell what small items were missing and what were lost in the mess. I finally got my husband off the phone at 11pm so we could sleep.
Saturday morning I had an exam, was okayed with a stern warning to avoid stress, and we left. It was another over 100F day. The car, which had been doing fine, had it's air conditioner die once and it died twice on the way back.
The house was in a bigger mess than we'd been told about. On the other hand, it was in a mess when we left, so the searchers probably didn't realize what was us and what was the thief. On the third hand, the thief apparently found it hard to deal with. He checked a few stereotypical places, then stopped instead of doing the whole place.
Note to future thieves: even I'm not dumb enough to hide anything valuable in my panty drawer. We don't have a lot of pawnable swag. A fortune spent on books, DVDs, homeschool materials, and arts & crafts supplies isn't worth much at Leroy's Pawn Shop. It's called "investing in education". You may have heard of it?
Anyway, don't bother looking for the top pawn shop items here. I don't own any gold jewelry. I'm a silversmith, dude. That means everything I own is silver, and almost all of it is non-commercial and so distinctive tracing it would be a snap. Leroy wouldn't know what to do with it.
As for the electronics, the TV is 13 years old. The buttons have worn off the set and it has to be worked with a remote. The computer was assembled out of mostly second-hand parts put together from junked machines people brought my husband to work on. We're not worth breaking into.
Bah. It looks like the thief got a graphing calculator, around $100 worth of change inside two coin banks (one containing dd1's allowance for the past year!), a pearl necklace, some heavy commercial silver chains, a handmade silver and garnet chain, some carved wood and crystal boxes from my collection, a handful of Christmas candy(?), and some forty-watt light bulbs(?) he stuffed into a toy bucket and dropped in the backyard.
This paucity was not for lack of trying, mind you. He backed his car up to our front door with the intention of loading it up, but in the end he didn't find it worth the effort. We didn't design our house to be easy to steal from.
The next thief will have an even harder time. The broken panes have been replaced with a shatter-proof material, and the windows are being fitted with custom locks made by my husband. Never challenge a genius who has his own machine shop.
And the new front window is elegantly engraved with our family name, our business name, and a pair of dragons.
But the sherriff's department and our own searchers missed the Clues. The thief left his homemade club outside the window and left his bloodstains on the curtain and on the floor after cutting his hand opening the window. Pity we can't interest the sherriff's department enough to come collect them or even take our statement. We called and were told the officer in charge "had called this afternoon but no one picked up the phone". (Lie. Neither we nor the answering machine got any such call.) and wouldn't be available until Monday.
By Saturday night my (not) Good (definitely) Old PTSD was wearing off and I felt a bit -- frazzled. On top of all this I'm still almost 9 months pregnant and still under orders to avoid stress. And did I mention easily exhausted? It took me over 24 hours to type up this post, and I to stop once for contractions, which fortunately stopped with rest and plenty of water. I so don't need this right now.
And on top of everything else, it's probably guaranteed it'll be another 17 years before I get another vacation!
Friday, June 20, 2008
"I Got Sunshine on a Cloudy Daaayyyy"
Sunshine has hit a cognitive bump in her learning. Basically her short-term memory is shot to hell. You tell a story, she'll ask you to repeat it. She works a math problem, and two minutes later can't remember the answer and has to work it again. She looks at a word to copy it down and can't spell it correctly. She loses her pencil and her eraser half a dozen times each during every lesson. She turns over a card in Concentration (card game) and can't remember what it was.
Otherwise, she's smart as a whip. She knows how to spell most words, and her math reasoning skills, handwriting, and drawing are improving in leaps and bounds. She can often out-think her big sister when it comes to making connections and engaging her long-term memory.
That said, I'm about to tear my hair out in frustration. My husband reminds me that Bright Eyes hit a similar cognitive bump as well at 5 years old. True, but Sunshine is 7 years old, and it's harder to keep my patience sometimes. Still, it should clear up in time, when enough brain cells grow enough synapses for her memory to fully work. Not everyone's brain matures in the same manner or at the same rate. Until then it's just a waiting game.
At least she isn't in the school system. One of my husband's former students showed up the other day looking for help for his son. The boy had had a similar problem in his early grades and been labeled "special ed". The problem cleared up over time, but the label stuck. Now 10, he hasn't been challenged to learn anything and his father is starting to panic. At least with Sunshine I can repeat the material as long as it takes for her to master it.
Otherwise, she's smart as a whip. She knows how to spell most words, and her math reasoning skills, handwriting, and drawing are improving in leaps and bounds. She can often out-think her big sister when it comes to making connections and engaging her long-term memory.
That said, I'm about to tear my hair out in frustration. My husband reminds me that Bright Eyes hit a similar cognitive bump as well at 5 years old. True, but Sunshine is 7 years old, and it's harder to keep my patience sometimes. Still, it should clear up in time, when enough brain cells grow enough synapses for her memory to fully work. Not everyone's brain matures in the same manner or at the same rate. Until then it's just a waiting game.
At least she isn't in the school system. One of my husband's former students showed up the other day looking for help for his son. The boy had had a similar problem in his early grades and been labeled "special ed". The problem cleared up over time, but the label stuck. Now 10, he hasn't been challenged to learn anything and his father is starting to panic. At least with Sunshine I can repeat the material as long as it takes for her to master it.
Aaaand back again!
Our recurring problem with the telephone and internet connections being down during working hours tends to clear up within hours after complaining to the state utilities regulatory board. Three cheers for regulation!
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Same Song, Second Verse.....
Once again, our phone and internet lines are completely down except for a few hours at night. Once again, I'm not a happy camper. I've been working on new posts. This development really throws a spanner in those works..
Thursday, May 22, 2008
With the political campaign heating up, attention is beginning to fall on Bush's No Child Left Behind program for public schools. The program has drawn loads of scathing criticism for its top-down approach to solving problems and the inept way that it has been implemented in many schools, including the snarky No Child Left Behind -- Football Version
It would be a great analogy if it kept things in proportion. NCLB is not, as the blog claims, supposed to prepare children to win the championship. It's supposed to prepare children to qualify for the team. Way-big difference. Currently too many schools are not bothering to prepare children to qualify for the team.
The other day a young woman came over to our house for some math tutoring. She had graduated with good grades from the local "good" high school and is probably gifted, but she had never been taught the fundamental concepts she was supposed to learn. She couldn't subtract 0.5 from 6. While this distressed the adults in the room, it totally amazed my home-schooled eight year-old, who could do all the problems on the woman's college homework assignment in her head. I finally had to distract the child with cartoons before the poor woman died of embarrassment.
While NCLB is a step in the wrong direction, it only got passed because public schools weren't doing their job in the first place. To quote from today's AP article
All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship, their footballs and equipment will be taken away until they do win the championship.
It would be a great analogy if it kept things in proportion. NCLB is not, as the blog claims, supposed to prepare children to win the championship. It's supposed to prepare children to qualify for the team. Way-big difference. Currently too many schools are not bothering to prepare children to qualify for the team.
The other day a young woman came over to our house for some math tutoring. She had graduated with good grades from the local "good" high school and is probably gifted, but she had never been taught the fundamental concepts she was supposed to learn. She couldn't subtract 0.5 from 6. While this distressed the adults in the room, it totally amazed my home-schooled eight year-old, who could do all the problems on the woman's college homework assignment in her head. I finally had to distract the child with cartoons before the poor woman died of embarrassment.
While NCLB is a step in the wrong direction, it only got passed because public schools weren't doing their job in the first place. To quote from today's AP article
Educators look at that goal and say, 'These people must be kidding,'" Petrilli said.
Even if educators have that view, parents don't, says Kerri Briggs, the Education Department's assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education.
"They would like their kids to be on grade level now and not 50 years from now, not 20 years from now, but this year," Briggs said.
Let's not even try to kid anybody. The only reason NCLB passed in the first place was because the public schools were broke and had refused to do anything substantive to fix their problems for decades. Desperation was the cause for NCLB, not malevolence. Yes, there are a few loonies around who want to end public education, because a working public education system (as opposed to the mess we got now) is essential to a working democracy. But NCLB was not passed because of a few loonies. It was passed because a substantial number of parents in this country are fed up with their schools not working.
Want to end government interference in the school system? Fix the blooming schools without government interference. If the schools are not willing to fix their problems on their own, they can't blame their customers, the parents, for trying to fix the problems for them.
Monday, May 19, 2008
I Ought to Frame This
"Dear Taxpayer,
"You are entitled to an economic stimulus payment of $xxx as provided by the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. You can expect your payment by 5/23/08."
Honestly, how often do you get a note from the Federal Government saying, "Your check is in the mail"?
"You are entitled to an economic stimulus payment of $xxx as provided by the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. You can expect your payment by 5/23/08."
Honestly, how often do you get a note from the Federal Government saying, "Your check is in the mail"?
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Mississippi's First Big Budget Election
My family just survived our first big-budget political election. In previous years Mississippi has been too inconsequential for the Big Guys to bombard us with a propaganda saturation campaign. Not so this year unfortunately, as the race for the House of Representatives seat MS-01 seemed suddenly worthy of big-money mass callings, media, and mailings praising the virtues of the Conservative Republican candidate while accusing Democratic candidate Travis Childers of closing churches, not paying his own taxes, increasing taxes on others, and everything else short of eating babies for breakfast. Most of the attack ads turned out to be lies and all of them carefully avoided talking about the real issues, like the war and the economy.
I'm pleased as punch to report that the big-money ad campaign failed completely. Glenn McCullough, the Fundamentalist Christian Conservative Republican candidate who snowed in our mailboxes and whose flunkies called our phone 6-12 times a day with pre-recorded messages was about the first person knocked out of the race. Then we were blitzed with a fistful of anti-Childers mailings every day. My husband especially loved the one that linked Childers to Obama; he thought it was the best endorsement anyone could possibly offer Childers. The net result of all that garbage was that Democrat Travis Childers carried our county easily and won the race.
Hopefully the big-money people will have learned their lesson and we won't get a similar blanket of glossy over-sized postcards and annoying phone calls next election. Hopefully.
As for us, we voted for Green Party candidate John Wages until he was knocked out of the race. Wages was the only candidate running in favor of pulling out of the war. Then we switched to Childers for the runoff. Childers seems tolerable, but I could not in good conscious vote for someone who would, among other things, deny the sanctity of marriage to all single adults who seek it's blessings while a better candidate was on the ballot.
While looking for tonight's election reports I found a nice-looking blog for Mississipi Democrats called CottonMouth. It's good to see another Mississippi blogger who isn't a staunch Conservative; sometimes I feel a bit lonely.
I'm pleased as punch to report that the big-money ad campaign failed completely. Glenn McCullough, the Fundamentalist Christian Conservative Republican candidate who snowed in our mailboxes and whose flunkies called our phone 6-12 times a day with pre-recorded messages was about the first person knocked out of the race. Then we were blitzed with a fistful of anti-Childers mailings every day. My husband especially loved the one that linked Childers to Obama; he thought it was the best endorsement anyone could possibly offer Childers. The net result of all that garbage was that Democrat Travis Childers carried our county easily and won the race.
Hopefully the big-money people will have learned their lesson and we won't get a similar blanket of glossy over-sized postcards and annoying phone calls next election. Hopefully.
As for us, we voted for Green Party candidate John Wages until he was knocked out of the race. Wages was the only candidate running in favor of pulling out of the war. Then we switched to Childers for the runoff. Childers seems tolerable, but I could not in good conscious vote for someone who would, among other things, deny the sanctity of marriage to all single adults who seek it's blessings while a better candidate was on the ballot.
While looking for tonight's election reports I found a nice-looking blog for Mississipi Democrats called CottonMouth. It's good to see another Mississippi blogger who isn't a staunch Conservative; sometimes I feel a bit lonely.
Monday, May 12, 2008
The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class
Harvard Law Scholar Elizabeth Warren gave a lecture on what has gone wrong with the American Economic Dream. It's up on youtube here. Watch it. The sad but entirely predictable thing is that I heard all these statements 20 years ago in publications on the "radical liberal fringe". I did what I could to protect my family then, staying away from credit cards and debt. I figured, rightly it turned out, by the time the mainstream media picked up on the story it would be too late. Still, it's nice to see the government's figures backing everything up.
Keep in mind that what Elizabeth Warren talks about isn't news. It's history. She isn't talking about what is happening right now, but what has already happened while America has slept.
Keep in mind that what Elizabeth Warren talks about isn't news. It's history. She isn't talking about what is happening right now, but what has already happened while America has slept.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Blasted At&T
Thanks to our wonderful phone company and internet provider, we now have no phone or DSL during business hours and only intermittent service at night. AND they give me the run-around when I try to get it serviced. I am so not a happy camper.
Monday, March 03, 2008
March 2008 Update On the Girls.
Latin
We're starting over again on Minimus. It's a refresher for Brighteyes, but Sunshine needs it more. I had hoped both girls would precede at the same pace, but that's not to be.
Math
Brighteyes is working through Singapore 3 without any real problems. Sunshine is having trouble adding and subtracting above 10. She doesn't want to give up her fingers yet, even though she knows how to use the abacus. I'm printing her out worksheets from http://www.kidzone.ws/ for extra practice.
Spelling, Handwriting, Grammar
All going fine. Sunshine is through with her handwriting book and currently practices with Draw, Write, Now at the end of lessons. While Brighteyes inherited her father's command of the pencil, Sunshine has inherited my lack of command of the pencil. She's coming along with her handwriting with practice. I hope we'll show the same improvement with art eventually.
Brighteyes is working in First Language Lessons Volume 3. I really like the way these lessons integrate sentence diagramming into the lessons, teaching the parts of a sentence by teaching their place on the diagram. That makes so much more sense than the way my husband and I were taught grammar in grade school.
The importance of these skills really sank in to us this year. My husband is teaching a remedial test prep class at the high school. He began by spending two weeks teaching the parts of speach and sentance diagramming. The students had never been taught either skill before. They hated every minute of it! Why wasn't he teaching them math, which was on the test, instead of this garbage which wasn't on the test? They tried to sneak out at every opportunity, and he constantly had to round them up. But when they were tested after the first two weeks, every one of them had jumped a letter grade higher. It turned out grammar was on the test after all in every problem. Those poor kids had literally not been taught enough grammar to properly understand the questions they were supposed to answer.
History
Back at it.
Literature, Science, Art
Not back at it. I have hopes for it as soon as Sunshine stops throwing a tantrum at the start of every lesson. Brighteyes went through the same stage at that age. I hope Sunshine will also leave it behind when she turns 7.
Reading
Sunshine is working through her beloved Doggie Sticker Book and happily reads aloud the description of each dog.
Logic
Brighteyes has started on Mind Benders. At 8 1/2 she seems a bit young to me, but she is eating them up, completing 3 or 4 3-square logic problems a day. So, I'm ordering her the beginning set and the first Cranium Crackers book. That ought to keep her busy for a while. Sunshine is chomping at the bit to begin the Mind Benders Warmup, but I told her she had to finish first grade math before that.
Format
Right now we're splitting lessons. We work in the mornings until lunch, then resume after a 4pm snack. It's working for now.
We're starting over again on Minimus. It's a refresher for Brighteyes, but Sunshine needs it more. I had hoped both girls would precede at the same pace, but that's not to be.
Math
Brighteyes is working through Singapore 3 without any real problems. Sunshine is having trouble adding and subtracting above 10. She doesn't want to give up her fingers yet, even though she knows how to use the abacus. I'm printing her out worksheets from http://www.kidzone.ws/ for extra practice.
Spelling, Handwriting, Grammar
All going fine. Sunshine is through with her handwriting book and currently practices with Draw, Write, Now at the end of lessons. While Brighteyes inherited her father's command of the pencil, Sunshine has inherited my lack of command of the pencil. She's coming along with her handwriting with practice. I hope we'll show the same improvement with art eventually.
Brighteyes is working in First Language Lessons Volume 3. I really like the way these lessons integrate sentence diagramming into the lessons, teaching the parts of a sentence by teaching their place on the diagram. That makes so much more sense than the way my husband and I were taught grammar in grade school.
The importance of these skills really sank in to us this year. My husband is teaching a remedial test prep class at the high school. He began by spending two weeks teaching the parts of speach and sentance diagramming. The students had never been taught either skill before. They hated every minute of it! Why wasn't he teaching them math, which was on the test, instead of this garbage which wasn't on the test? They tried to sneak out at every opportunity, and he constantly had to round them up. But when they were tested after the first two weeks, every one of them had jumped a letter grade higher. It turned out grammar was on the test after all in every problem. Those poor kids had literally not been taught enough grammar to properly understand the questions they were supposed to answer.
History
Back at it.
Literature, Science, Art
Not back at it. I have hopes for it as soon as Sunshine stops throwing a tantrum at the start of every lesson. Brighteyes went through the same stage at that age. I hope Sunshine will also leave it behind when she turns 7.
Reading
Sunshine is working through her beloved Doggie Sticker Book and happily reads aloud the description of each dog.
Logic
Brighteyes has started on Mind Benders. At 8 1/2 she seems a bit young to me, but she is eating them up, completing 3 or 4 3-square logic problems a day. So, I'm ordering her the beginning set and the first Cranium Crackers book. That ought to keep her busy for a while. Sunshine is chomping at the bit to begin the Mind Benders Warmup, but I told her she had to finish first grade math before that.
Format
Right now we're splitting lessons. We work in the mornings until lunch, then resume after a 4pm snack. It's working for now.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
One More Round!
I'm pregnant again, for the fourth time. It lacks the thrill of my first time, but it also lacks the stark terror of #2 and #3 after the death of my first child. I can live with that. More details to follow.
Monday, January 07, 2008
First Computer
We fixed up an old computer for the girls. It's on Windows 98, with no printer or internet access. It will play the older games and educational software though.
Brighteyes liked playing Jumpstart 3rd Grade on it, but other games haven't interested either girl that much. It's not as much fun as playing outside. That's a pretty good start in my book.
Brighteyes liked playing Jumpstart 3rd Grade on it, but other games haven't interested either girl that much. It's not as much fun as playing outside. That's a pretty good start in my book.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
December Update
Must update blog.
We're still alive in spite of everything. Yay! But it's been an exhausting year and a half. I can't remember the last time I felt rested.
Part of my updating problem has been that Blogspot's new owners were constantly losing my password, making it too much of a hassle. That appears to have been fixed. Cross your fingers.
Brighteyes is eight now, and surprisingly responsible. She's doing a few chores and gets a $1/week allowance. Her handwriting has improved remarkably, and her ability to correlate things has grown in leaps and bounds. She's also finally started to figure out how to crochet, which she has tried to do without success for years. She no longer throws screaming fits over loose teath, although they still make her fussy.
Sunshine is six. She's incredibly bright, but she has the attention span of a kitten. Her handwriting has been very bad, but it's started to improve after I started making her try to read what she herself had written and she couldn't do it. Must remember that trick. She has also lost her first tooth.
We've been writing a jewelry-making book and trying to teach classes in Jackson, three hours away. We could now write a separate book titled Logistical Nightmares Associated With Distance Teaching.
We had a wonderful babysitter for many months whom the girls loved. Unfortunately transportation problems have recently prevented her from being with us anymore. We're going to see if we can fix this.
I haven't been doing much of anything else. The house is a complete disaster area and the tree isn't up yet. I sewed the girls up some pants for the fall, but that's all I've been able to sew. I've started crocheting while I sit with the girls for lessons to get something creative done so I don't go insane. I crocheted six hats for the winter. The girls got striped hats and got to pick out the colors. Then I took all the untangled a ball of cut yarn and crocheted the individual strings into flowers. I gave them to the girls to sew onto their sweaters. They've had fun arranging the flowers and sewing them on with a big yarn needle and yarn.
Now I'm feeling a bit more ambitious. Tonight I found a pound of a lovely varigated bulky wool yarn originally sold for $70 on sale for $15. After a quick look around I found a beautiful pattern that calls for just that. The problem is, it's got Martha Stewart's name attached to it. I don't care for Martha Stewart. In over 25 years, I have never heard anything that woman has said or done that wasn't stupid, venal, petty, ridiculous, and/or a health hazard. I don't want to look like I'm the sort of person who idolizes her. But that said, it's a real nice pattern. I really want to make it up. So I think I'll chalk it up to my philosophy that no human being is a complete waste of space, even Martha Stewart.
I'll try to post again before 2008.
We're still alive in spite of everything. Yay! But it's been an exhausting year and a half. I can't remember the last time I felt rested.
Part of my updating problem has been that Blogspot's new owners were constantly losing my password, making it too much of a hassle. That appears to have been fixed. Cross your fingers.
Brighteyes is eight now, and surprisingly responsible. She's doing a few chores and gets a $1/week allowance. Her handwriting has improved remarkably, and her ability to correlate things has grown in leaps and bounds. She's also finally started to figure out how to crochet, which she has tried to do without success for years. She no longer throws screaming fits over loose teath, although they still make her fussy.
Sunshine is six. She's incredibly bright, but she has the attention span of a kitten. Her handwriting has been very bad, but it's started to improve after I started making her try to read what she herself had written and she couldn't do it. Must remember that trick. She has also lost her first tooth.
We've been writing a jewelry-making book and trying to teach classes in Jackson, three hours away. We could now write a separate book titled Logistical Nightmares Associated With Distance Teaching.
We had a wonderful babysitter for many months whom the girls loved. Unfortunately transportation problems have recently prevented her from being with us anymore. We're going to see if we can fix this.
I haven't been doing much of anything else. The house is a complete disaster area and the tree isn't up yet. I sewed the girls up some pants for the fall, but that's all I've been able to sew. I've started crocheting while I sit with the girls for lessons to get something creative done so I don't go insane. I crocheted six hats for the winter. The girls got striped hats and got to pick out the colors. Then I took all the untangled a ball of cut yarn and crocheted the individual strings into flowers. I gave them to the girls to sew onto their sweaters. They've had fun arranging the flowers and sewing them on with a big yarn needle and yarn.
Now I'm feeling a bit more ambitious. Tonight I found a pound of a lovely varigated bulky wool yarn originally sold for $70 on sale for $15. After a quick look around I found a beautiful pattern that calls for just that. The problem is, it's got Martha Stewart's name attached to it. I don't care for Martha Stewart. In over 25 years, I have never heard anything that woman has said or done that wasn't stupid, venal, petty, ridiculous, and/or a health hazard. I don't want to look like I'm the sort of person who idolizes her. But that said, it's a real nice pattern. I really want to make it up. So I think I'll chalk it up to my philosophy that no human being is a complete waste of space, even Martha Stewart.
I'll try to post again before 2008.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
School's Back
After limping through our first 100F summer in 10 years, cooler weather has finally arrived. We did lessons once or twice a week during the summer, now we're trying to get back to a daily schedule. The fact that it's cool enough to tempt the girls to go out more is helping keep them focused on getting through.
We're just doing math, handwriting, spelling, grammar, and a little Latin at the moment. We're all out of practice, so I'm holding off history and science until the girls get more used to the schedule.
Brighteyes is 8 now. She has lost four baby teeth and has 3 1/5 adult teeth. Unfortunately she fusses and screams up a storm when a tooth is getting loose. I've had to pull her last three teeth just to help her with the pain. Immediately after the tooth comes out she calms down, even though she insists has cranky mood has nothing to do with her bad mood and that the real reason is that the world hates her. I'm hearing a lot these days about how much I her daddy, and the world at large hater her. I'm told that some sensitive children are like this. Her father is of the opinion that it's better if she gets it out of her system now than when she's a teenager. There's some truth to that.
Sunshine is 6. She is smart as a whip and surprises us with the things she says. Unfortunately she rarely speaks clearly, usually rushing or mumbling her words, usually both. It drives me to distraction. I know she hates getting asked to repeat herself, but often even I can't make out what she's saying.
As for me, I'm getting over my depression. Previously I self-censored myself on this blog. I tried not to write about anything I couldn't put a positive spin on. Then came things like the Iraq War and mad cow disease, and how do you put a positive spin on those? The effort just made me frustrated and depressed. So you may see me ranting a bit more in these posts. Consider yourself warned.
We're just doing math, handwriting, spelling, grammar, and a little Latin at the moment. We're all out of practice, so I'm holding off history and science until the girls get more used to the schedule.
Brighteyes is 8 now. She has lost four baby teeth and has 3 1/5 adult teeth. Unfortunately she fusses and screams up a storm when a tooth is getting loose. I've had to pull her last three teeth just to help her with the pain. Immediately after the tooth comes out she calms down, even though she insists has cranky mood has nothing to do with her bad mood and that the real reason is that the world hates her. I'm hearing a lot these days about how much I her daddy, and the world at large hater her. I'm told that some sensitive children are like this. Her father is of the opinion that it's better if she gets it out of her system now than when she's a teenager. There's some truth to that.
Sunshine is 6. She is smart as a whip and surprises us with the things she says. Unfortunately she rarely speaks clearly, usually rushing or mumbling her words, usually both. It drives me to distraction. I know she hates getting asked to repeat herself, but often even I can't make out what she's saying.
As for me, I'm getting over my depression. Previously I self-censored myself on this blog. I tried not to write about anything I couldn't put a positive spin on. Then came things like the Iraq War and mad cow disease, and how do you put a positive spin on those? The effort just made me frustrated and depressed. So you may see me ranting a bit more in these posts. Consider yourself warned.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
First Lost Tooth
Brighteyes didn't cut her first tooth until she was 14 months old, so I wasn't too surprised that she didn't lose her first tooth until she was almost eight. We've been telling her to expect it for two years now. Still, she sobbed when she came ran up to me, crying, "Momma, Momma! My toothy fell out when I bit Sister! It hurts!"
For some reason she didn't understand why Momma fell out laughing, and chuckled all day long.
For some reason she didn't understand why Momma fell out laughing, and chuckled all day long.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Long Time, No See
Hello, again. It's been a busy fall and winter, and I'm trying to get back to something resembling a schedule. But first let's catch up on old times.
Chimneyville
When you last saw us, we were heading toward Chimneyville for our first major show. It weeks to get everything ready. Finally, after a last-minute babysitter cancellation and replacement we were on our way. We were ready. We got there and found the other vendors were ready.
Unfortunately the management wasn't ready. There were new people running the show who didn't know what they were doing, and who had driven off the best customers with their pre-show scheduling blunders. Sales were terrible. We had entire days where we didn't sell a thing. So did the more experienced vendors around us. All in all we spent over $600 to get there and made $37.
But hey. It's just the first show. If we really get a move on, we can improve the look of our setup and quadruple our sales. We can slash expenses to the bone (after upgrading our setup, of course) and cut our costs in half. Then next year maybe we can spend $300 to go there and make $150.
It was even worse than I've said so far, but I don't want to go into the gory details yet. Just thinking about writing them down has kept me away from this blog for months. Maybe later.
New Project
My husband and I are working on a new project which is eating up large chunks of our time. Details to follow.
Homeschooling
We've had trouble with homeschooling for the past year. Last summer we let the girls take a couple of classes at the local summer workshop program. The year before they had been very well run, but last year they were run badly. All the girls came home with was a bunch of excuses in their repetoire, such as:
"It's too hard!"
"You can't make me!"
"I won't do X unless you do Y!"
*random screaming fits to disrupt lessons and everything else*
Those wear Mom out fast.
Then came Rightstart Mathematics. It's a lovely math program which I've heard nothing but good things about. It seems perfect for closing up some holes in my daughters' math education. But it takes 4 - 5 times the work out of the parent as any other math program.
Between the girls' fit-throwing, the work for the show and the new project, and the extra work for Rightstart -- I crashed. I crashed long and hard. We got down to doing lessons a few times a week, then not at all over the winter.
Spring came, and we're back to doing lessons now. Enough time has passed that Brighteyes actually wants them instead of fights them. We were far enough ahead that we're not behind on too much with her. I'm concentrating on math and English, catching up on the rest when I have the energy for it. Sunshine is still way ahead.
I haven't tried the Rigthstart program again, although I do pull out the manipulatives when Sunshine gets bogged down by mathematical concepts. I just don't have the energy to do more with it at the moment.
Chimneyville
When you last saw us, we were heading toward Chimneyville for our first major show. It weeks to get everything ready. Finally, after a last-minute babysitter cancellation and replacement we were on our way. We were ready. We got there and found the other vendors were ready.
Unfortunately the management wasn't ready. There were new people running the show who didn't know what they were doing, and who had driven off the best customers with their pre-show scheduling blunders. Sales were terrible. We had entire days where we didn't sell a thing. So did the more experienced vendors around us. All in all we spent over $600 to get there and made $37.
But hey. It's just the first show. If we really get a move on, we can improve the look of our setup and quadruple our sales. We can slash expenses to the bone (after upgrading our setup, of course) and cut our costs in half. Then next year maybe we can spend $300 to go there and make $150.
It was even worse than I've said so far, but I don't want to go into the gory details yet. Just thinking about writing them down has kept me away from this blog for months. Maybe later.
New Project
My husband and I are working on a new project which is eating up large chunks of our time. Details to follow.
Homeschooling
We've had trouble with homeschooling for the past year. Last summer we let the girls take a couple of classes at the local summer workshop program. The year before they had been very well run, but last year they were run badly. All the girls came home with was a bunch of excuses in their repetoire, such as:
"It's too hard!"
"You can't make me!"
"I won't do X unless you do Y!"
*random screaming fits to disrupt lessons and everything else*
Those wear Mom out fast.
Then came Rightstart Mathematics. It's a lovely math program which I've heard nothing but good things about. It seems perfect for closing up some holes in my daughters' math education. But it takes 4 - 5 times the work out of the parent as any other math program.
Between the girls' fit-throwing, the work for the show and the new project, and the extra work for Rightstart -- I crashed. I crashed long and hard. We got down to doing lessons a few times a week, then not at all over the winter.
Spring came, and we're back to doing lessons now. Enough time has passed that Brighteyes actually wants them instead of fights them. We were far enough ahead that we're not behind on too much with her. I'm concentrating on math and English, catching up on the rest when I have the energy for it. Sunshine is still way ahead.
I haven't tried the Rigthstart program again, although I do pull out the manipulatives when Sunshine gets bogged down by mathematical concepts. I just don't have the energy to do more with it at the moment.
Doctor Who and Torchwood
While all this was going down, I found someplace to escape to from the madness for a while: Doctor Who. I loved the show as a teenager, but I was dubious of it's revival. Have you ever seen a show where the revival was as good as the original? It's theoretically possible but it never happens. It didn't happen with Doctor Who either. The revival is better than the original, which is way beyond all but my wildest dreams.
I've reviewed the first season here already. The second season was not as good as the first, due to it being rushed and revised several times (long story, but it wasn't the production crew's fault), but had some stellar individual episodes.
Then came Torchwood, the adults-only spin off of Doctor Who. Words cannot express how much I love this show. And yes, before we go any further, the first season was badly flawed. The series didn't have enough production time, and what little they did have was cut in half by technical problems with their cameras. The writing was experimental, and not all the experiments worked. But what they did right hit all my buttons.
Torchwood is about a group of ordinary people whose job it is to save the world from alien invasions without letting the world know that aliens exist. They don't know very much about aliens, they are hideously underpowered and understaffed, the job has an incredible stress load, a tremendous death toll, and nobody who works there longer than six months is sane anymore -- they know all this and they still show up for work every morning because somebody has to do the job, and for lack of anybody better qualified it looks like its going to be them. That whacks the biggest button I've got square on the nose.
In the first episode you find out that a fairly likeable Torchwood employee has been driven crazy by the job and become a serial killer. The policewoman who uncovers that is offered the job of replacing her. In spite of what she just uncovered she thinks she can turn the organization around and make them all happier, saner people.
You just know she's going to end up the craziest one of the lot. Well, I did at any rate. And by the end of the sixth episode she's jumped off the deep end with the rest of them. But she's just one member of an ensemble cast, and some of her coworkers are far more interesting and/or admirable than she is.
But Torchwood is an adults-only show, and I don't feel comfortable talking in detail about it on a homeschooling blog that children can read. It's rated for ages 15 and up, with good reason. I don't let my own 6yo and 7yo watch it. So I have a separate lj account for my analysis, speculations and fan fiction about Torchwood. If you're old enough and interested enough in the show, click on it.
Writing
You read me right. I've been writing fiction. Well, it's "missing scene" sorts of things, with someone else's characters and setup, but it's a start on something that has absolutely terrified me in the past. I'm told I'm pretty good with voices and pacing, which is good to know. It was very hard the first time, but the basics have become easier. I'm still setting new challenges for myself though, and each one is scarier than the last. Hopefully I'll eventually work my way up to original setups, and then on to original characters.
In the meantime it looks like I may be doing some nonfiction for publication. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
A poem from my husband.
There is grass under the swings.
There is grass under the seesaw.
There is a bird's nest on the slide.
Testing is more important than childhood.
There is grass under the seesaw.
There is a bird's nest on the slide.
Testing is more important than childhood.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Happy New Year
After a long and frustrating December, I'm back. We're in the middle of a computer upgrade that should be finished in a day or so (knock on wood). After that blogging should recommence with commentary, war stories, reviews and maybe even a bit of comedy. Maybe. Looking forward to seeing you then.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Chimneyville
My husband and I will be selling our jewelry at the Chimneyville Crafts Festival in Jackson this weekend. Hopefully after that I'll be able to come up for air.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Pumpkin Patch
We went to the Pumpkin Patch at the Tupelo Buffalo Park with a group of families from PEAK. They had a haybale maze which everyone enjoyed, even the lady who lost a pair of glasses in it and walked over it three times with helpers before she found them. The children played themselves out.
Autumn has been hard for us. My husband has had commitments almost every evening for over a month. I'm left alone at home with the girls all day and a good part of the night. We can't find a babysitter and we've only got one working car, so the girls and I are pretty sick of each other right now. Brighteyes has been so fussy we got down to doing lessons only one or two days a week, then stopped completely. I don't have the energy to deal with all her screaming.
I've also felt the urge to write fiction again. Fiction is a lot more uncomfortable for me to write, what with getting inside another person's head instead of just blathering my own thoughts. It feel much more intimate. I can't do it with anyone making noise near me, let alone standing over my shoulder. But I'm never alone. I can already feel the urge dying inside me from not having a chance to get out, and all I've written are snippets. The girls don't understand why I need to be alone, and it makes them cling to me even tighter. I don't know what to do.
Autumn has been hard for us. My husband has had commitments almost every evening for over a month. I'm left alone at home with the girls all day and a good part of the night. We can't find a babysitter and we've only got one working car, so the girls and I are pretty sick of each other right now. Brighteyes has been so fussy we got down to doing lessons only one or two days a week, then stopped completely. I don't have the energy to deal with all her screaming.
I've also felt the urge to write fiction again. Fiction is a lot more uncomfortable for me to write, what with getting inside another person's head instead of just blathering my own thoughts. It feel much more intimate. I can't do it with anyone making noise near me, let alone standing over my shoulder. But I'm never alone. I can already feel the urge dying inside me from not having a chance to get out, and all I've written are snippets. The girls don't understand why I need to be alone, and it makes them cling to me even tighter. I don't know what to do.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
We set up at the Rock & Gem Show on the Old Miss campus yesterday. Our babysitter cancelled at the last minute, which threw everything up in the air. We took the girls along, and I must say they were very well behaved. It still put a spanner in the works.
Note to self: always put out your own press release. Don't rely on the show to do it for you. That's the only way to control the quality.
It's the first time I've been on a college campus that had a football team since "tailgate parties" became big business. How on Earth do the students stand it? There were thousands of strangers everywhere, spending huge sums of money to rent dinky tents, grills, beer kegs, and satelight dishes that littered every inch of grass on the campus and made driving impossible. And this goes on for every home game? Unbelievable. The Administration's response to that lunacy had been to move the game time back to 8:00 to encourage it. I went to the football-free Mississippi University for Women and later attended the University of Southern Mississippi before tailgate parties were hot. Weekends were down time. They were time to chill out and catch up on your friends, your sleep, and your homework. I couldn't have stood that insanity twice a year, let alone every other weekend. I was shocked at the Ole Miss Administration, as it looked like they were placing money-making opportunities way ahead of the needs of their students.
We were set up at the Oxford Train Depot. It's a 135 year old brick building with hardwood floors. It's lovely, and the brickwork is in fabulous shape. My husband walked with the girls up to the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. It's a 10 year old building that looks really impressive from a distance. Get up close to it and you'll see that the "brickwork" is actually concrete slabs with caulk holding them together instead of brick and mortar. Find a place where the caulk is peeling off and you'll see cardboard shims under the caulk. One of these buildings will still be here in another 100 years. The other won't.
Note to self: always put out your own press release. Don't rely on the show to do it for you. That's the only way to control the quality.
It's the first time I've been on a college campus that had a football team since "tailgate parties" became big business. How on Earth do the students stand it? There were thousands of strangers everywhere, spending huge sums of money to rent dinky tents, grills, beer kegs, and satelight dishes that littered every inch of grass on the campus and made driving impossible. And this goes on for every home game? Unbelievable. The Administration's response to that lunacy had been to move the game time back to 8:00 to encourage it. I went to the football-free Mississippi University for Women and later attended the University of Southern Mississippi before tailgate parties were hot. Weekends were down time. They were time to chill out and catch up on your friends, your sleep, and your homework. I couldn't have stood that insanity twice a year, let alone every other weekend. I was shocked at the Ole Miss Administration, as it looked like they were placing money-making opportunities way ahead of the needs of their students.
We were set up at the Oxford Train Depot. It's a 135 year old brick building with hardwood floors. It's lovely, and the brickwork is in fabulous shape. My husband walked with the girls up to the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. It's a 10 year old building that looks really impressive from a distance. Get up close to it and you'll see that the "brickwork" is actually concrete slabs with caulk holding them together instead of brick and mortar. Find a place where the caulk is peeling off and you'll see cardboard shims under the caulk. One of these buildings will still be here in another 100 years. The other won't.
Friday, September 29, 2006
We're still getting back in the rhythm of lessons. We managed to have them three days this week. Yay for us! And Brighteyes is now taking lessons with Sunshine. Double yay! She's learning cursive, and finds it difficult but exciting.
My husband had to go to the high school homecoming game tonight. He said the entire homecoming court was escorted by either their fathers or their first cousins. None of them have boyfriends to escort them. The high price of gas is putting a severe crimp on the high school dating scene.
We'll be at Ole Miss tomorrow setting up at a Rock & Gem Show. It's our first show of the fall.
My husband had to go to the high school homecoming game tonight. He said the entire homecoming court was escorted by either their fathers or their first cousins. None of them have boyfriends to escort them. The high price of gas is putting a severe crimp on the high school dating scene.
We'll be at Ole Miss tomorrow setting up at a Rock & Gem Show. It's our first show of the fall.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Yesterday morning we all got up late. I was the last person to stumble into the bathroom. As I wandered around it in my birthday suit trying to wake up my brain, I noticed a yellow towel folded on the counter beside the sink. I had placed it there the night before so some toys I washed could air-dry. I had put away the toys before going to bed, but one of the girls' toys was laying on it. Good, they must have washed one of their toys themselves for a change. Which one? Ah, the toy snake their grandfather gave them. Haven't seen them playing with that for a while.
I sat down. I looked around. I looked at the toy. I admired the workmanship. It was well made.
The girls' toy snake was green.
This one was black.
And yellow.
And had a diamond pattern on the back.
BADSNAKE!
I got to my feet and backed out of the room.
Rattler or cottonmouth?
They're first cousins, whatthehell does it matter when one of them is on your freakin' bathroom counter! "Only aggressive when cornered" or "always aggressive" is immaterial when it's effectively already in a corner.
I called to my husband, "Come here now."
"Whuh?"
"Come here now!"
He walked in, also in his birthday suit, looked, and said, "Cottonmouth." That's cleared up. It's the "always aggressive" one. "Where are the girls?"
"Outside in the playhouse."
"Keep them out, keep the dogs out, watch that."
Clothed and shod, he stepped out to the workshop and came back with leather gloves, a one-inch wood dowel, and the long-handled tin snips. Sunshine came up and tried to walk into the house. I told her to go back to the playhouse until Mommy and Daddy said she could come in, don't fuss, it's important. She protests, I repeat myself. She turns around and screams only once, which is incredible self-control for our five year-old Scream Queen.
Unfortunately the snake heard her and -- disappeared.
We search the floor. No sign of the snake.
We start carefully pulling stuff off the counter. It was coiled up under some ointment bottles, ready to attack the first thing that moved.
It got the end of the dowel on its back behind the head. As it tried to strike at the dowel, the long-handled tin snips took off its head.
My husband carried it out the front door by the tin snips. He crushed and buried the head, then asked me to call in the girls.
"Come in and see this."
Brighteyes asked, "Why?"
"It's a lesson."
"Lessons on Saturday? Before breakfast? That's not fair!"
We showed the girls the snake. Even headless, it still looked more impressive than the ones at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science had looked two weeks ago, probably because it was on their front steps.
My husband had been in the bathroom shaving only minutes before me and hadn't see it, so it must have just come in. At a little over a foot long, it was a juvenile looking to mark out its own territory. No other snakes around then. We search the house anyway. We found the entrance point, a tree branch touching the bathroom window where there was a gap in the frame. We lop off the branch and seal the gap.
We tried to recover enough to get the rest of the day's work done. Somehow that wasn't as easy as it sounds.
I sat down. I looked around. I looked at the toy. I admired the workmanship. It was well made.
The girls' toy snake was green.
This one was black.
And yellow.
And had a diamond pattern on the back.
BADSNAKE!
I got to my feet and backed out of the room.
Rattler or cottonmouth?
They're first cousins, whatthehell does it matter when one of them is on your freakin' bathroom counter! "Only aggressive when cornered" or "always aggressive" is immaterial when it's effectively already in a corner.
I called to my husband, "Come here now."
"Whuh?"
"Come here now!"
He walked in, also in his birthday suit, looked, and said, "Cottonmouth." That's cleared up. It's the "always aggressive" one. "Where are the girls?"
"Outside in the playhouse."
"Keep them out, keep the dogs out, watch that."
Clothed and shod, he stepped out to the workshop and came back with leather gloves, a one-inch wood dowel, and the long-handled tin snips. Sunshine came up and tried to walk into the house. I told her to go back to the playhouse until Mommy and Daddy said she could come in, don't fuss, it's important. She protests, I repeat myself. She turns around and screams only once, which is incredible self-control for our five year-old Scream Queen.
Unfortunately the snake heard her and -- disappeared.
We search the floor. No sign of the snake.
We start carefully pulling stuff off the counter. It was coiled up under some ointment bottles, ready to attack the first thing that moved.
It got the end of the dowel on its back behind the head. As it tried to strike at the dowel, the long-handled tin snips took off its head.
My husband carried it out the front door by the tin snips. He crushed and buried the head, then asked me to call in the girls.
"Come in and see this."
Brighteyes asked, "Why?"
"It's a lesson."
"Lessons on Saturday? Before breakfast? That's not fair!"
We showed the girls the snake. Even headless, it still looked more impressive than the ones at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science had looked two weeks ago, probably because it was on their front steps.
My husband had been in the bathroom shaving only minutes before me and hadn't see it, so it must have just come in. At a little over a foot long, it was a juvenile looking to mark out its own territory. No other snakes around then. We search the house anyway. We found the entrance point, a tree branch touching the bathroom window where there was a gap in the frame. We lop off the branch and seal the gap.
We tried to recover enough to get the rest of the day's work done. Somehow that wasn't as easy as it sounds.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Celtic Fest 2006
We went to Celtic Fest this weekend. It was a bit disappointing. There was Irish singing and dancing for hours, but there wasn't anything else. The Highland games and other events that the festival used to boast about were gone. There was hardly even any vendors, to the disappointment of many people. They'd be better off changing their name to Celtic Music Fest and not getting people's hopes up.
While we were there we took in the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science and the Small Town exhibit at the Mississippi Agriculture & Forestry Museum. There wasn't anything else to do except sunburn.
While we were there we took in the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science and the Small Town exhibit at the Mississippi Agriculture & Forestry Museum. There wasn't anything else to do except sunburn.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
We're going to Celtic Fest this weekend. It will be our first time there. Two years ago I actually got my husband in Jackson the weekend of Celtic Fest, but he balked at the sight of the crowds. This time we're going in.
Still getting over some stupid sickness.
Still getting over some stupid sickness.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
This week lessons went easier, but they were still very tiring. I only managed to give lessons three days a week. That's an improvement though.
Brighteyes and Sunshine are still moaning about starting back up, but they're getting more in the rhythm. I still can't give them lessons at the same time. I have to give Sunshine her lessons in the morning and Brighteyes her lessons in the afternoon. Brighteyes is too fussy in the morning. Sometimes she'll try to throw a screaming fit in the morning during her sister's lessons. I'm trying to encourage her to go play outside at that time. By the afternoon she's calmed down enough to do her work with a lot less fuss, but mornings just aren't working for her.
This means I have to spend twice as long giving lessons, and I'm not getting anything else done. Period. I'm so worn out all I can do is collapse when we get through. I haven't been this exhausted since I was tandem nursing.
Hopefully it will get better soon.
Brighteyes and Sunshine are still moaning about starting back up, but they're getting more in the rhythm. I still can't give them lessons at the same time. I have to give Sunshine her lessons in the morning and Brighteyes her lessons in the afternoon. Brighteyes is too fussy in the morning. Sometimes she'll try to throw a screaming fit in the morning during her sister's lessons. I'm trying to encourage her to go play outside at that time. By the afternoon she's calmed down enough to do her work with a lot less fuss, but mornings just aren't working for her.
This means I have to spend twice as long giving lessons, and I'm not getting anything else done. Period. I'm so worn out all I can do is collapse when we get through. I haven't been this exhausted since I was tandem nursing.
Hopefully it will get better soon.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
I got sick two weeks ago, but I'm starting to feel better.
We picked up a real problem this summer. The girls went to a summer learning program and picked up some bad habits, like throwing tantrums and refusing to do what was asked of them. I thought it might just be a development phase and backed off for a few months, but the behavior has gotten worse and extended to everything they're asked to do. So now I'm having to homeschool them separately while making it clear that such behavior is not an acceptable way to communicate. It's very exhausting, which is why I haven't been posting as much.
We picked up a real problem this summer. The girls went to a summer learning program and picked up some bad habits, like throwing tantrums and refusing to do what was asked of them. I thought it might just be a development phase and backed off for a few months, but the behavior has gotten worse and extended to everything they're asked to do. So now I'm having to homeschool them separately while making it clear that such behavior is not an acceptable way to communicate. It's very exhausting, which is why I haven't been posting as much.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Stone Age Board Game
A nine-man's morris board found in Nottinghamshire appears to go back to the Ice Age. People had to have something to do on those cold winter nights.
More Ignoramuses
Evolution Major Vanishes From Approved Federal List
By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: August 24, 2006
Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.
The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. ?There is no explanation for it being left off the list,? Ms. McLane said. ?It has always been an eligible major.?
Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing.
If a major is not on the list, students in that major cannot get grants unless they declare another major, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Mr. Nassirian said students seeking the grants went first to their college registrar, who determined whether they were full-time students majoring in an eligible field.
If a field is missing, that student would not even get into the process,? he said.
That the omission occurred at all is worrying scientists concerned about threats to the teaching of evolution.
One of them, Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University, said he learned about it from someone at the Department of Education, who got in touch with him after his essay on the necessity of teaching evolution appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 15. Dr. Krauss would not name his source, who he said was concerned about being publicly identified as having drawn attention to the matter.
An article about the issue was posted Tuesday on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Dr. Krauss said the omission would be ?of great concern? if evolutionary biology had been singled out for removal, or if the change had been made without consulting with experts on biology. The grants are awarded under the National Smart Grant program, established this year by Congress. (Smart stands for Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent.)
The program provides $4,000 grants to third- or fourth-year, low-income students majoring in physical, life or computer sciences; mathematics; technology; engineering; or foreign languages deemed ?critical? to national security.
The list of eligible majors (which is online at ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/GEN0606A.pdf) is drawn from the Education Department?s ?Classification of Instructional Programs,? or CIP (pronounced ?sip?), a voluminous and detailed classification of courses of study, arranged in a numbered system of sections and subsections.
Part 26, biological and biomedical sciences, has a number of sections, each of which has one or more subsections. Subsection 13 is ecology, evolution, systematics and population biology. This subsection itself has 10 sub-subsections. One of them is 26.1303 ? evolutionary biology, ?the scientific study of the genetic, developmental, functional, and morphological patterns and processes, and theoretical principles; and the emergence and mutation of organisms over time.?
Though references to evolution appear in listings of other fields of biological study, the evolutionary biology sub-subsection is missing from a list of ?fields of study? on the National Smart Grant list ? there is an empty space between line 26.1302 (marine biology and biological oceanography) and line 26.1304 (aquatic biology/limnology).
Students cannot simply list something else on an application form, said Mr. Nassirian of the registrars? association. ?Your declared major maps to a CIP code,? he said.
Mr. Nassirian said people at the Education Department had described the omission as ?a clerical mistake.? But it is ?odd,? he said, because applying the subject codes ?is a fairly mechanical task. It is not supposed to be the subject of any kind of deliberation.?
?I am not at all certain that the omission of this particular major is unintentional,? he added. ?But I have to take them at their word.?
Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. ?It?s just awfully coincidental,? said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University.
Jeremy Gunn, who directs the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that if the change was not immediately reversed ?we will certainly pursue this.?
Dr. Rissing said removing evolutionary biology from the list of acceptable majors would discourage students who needed the grants from pursuing the field, at a time when studies of how genes act and evolve are producing valuable insights into human health.
?This is not just some kind of nicety,? he said. ?We are doing a terrible disservice to our students if this is yet another example of making sure science doesn?t offend anyone.?
Dr. Krauss of Case Western said he did not know what practical issues would arise from the omission of evolutionary biology from the list, given that students would still be eligible for grants if they declared a major in something else ? biology, say.
?I am sure an enterprising student or program director could find a way to put themselves in another slot,? he said. ?But why should they have to do that??
Mr. Nassirian said he was not so sure. ?Candidly, I don?t think most administrators know enough about this program? to help students overcome the apparent objection to evolutionary biology, he said. Undergraduates would be even less knowledgeable about the issue, he added.
Dr. Krauss said: ?Removing that one major is not going to make the nation stupid, but if this really was removed, specifically removed, then I see it as part of a pattern to put ideology over knowledge. And, especially in the Department of Education, that should be abhorred.?
By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: August 24, 2006
Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.
The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. ?There is no explanation for it being left off the list,? Ms. McLane said. ?It has always been an eligible major.?
Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing.
If a major is not on the list, students in that major cannot get grants unless they declare another major, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Mr. Nassirian said students seeking the grants went first to their college registrar, who determined whether they were full-time students majoring in an eligible field.
If a field is missing, that student would not even get into the process,? he said.
That the omission occurred at all is worrying scientists concerned about threats to the teaching of evolution.
One of them, Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University, said he learned about it from someone at the Department of Education, who got in touch with him after his essay on the necessity of teaching evolution appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 15. Dr. Krauss would not name his source, who he said was concerned about being publicly identified as having drawn attention to the matter.
An article about the issue was posted Tuesday on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Dr. Krauss said the omission would be ?of great concern? if evolutionary biology had been singled out for removal, or if the change had been made without consulting with experts on biology. The grants are awarded under the National Smart Grant program, established this year by Congress. (Smart stands for Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent.)
The program provides $4,000 grants to third- or fourth-year, low-income students majoring in physical, life or computer sciences; mathematics; technology; engineering; or foreign languages deemed ?critical? to national security.
The list of eligible majors (which is online at ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/GEN0606A.pdf) is drawn from the Education Department?s ?Classification of Instructional Programs,? or CIP (pronounced ?sip?), a voluminous and detailed classification of courses of study, arranged in a numbered system of sections and subsections.
Part 26, biological and biomedical sciences, has a number of sections, each of which has one or more subsections. Subsection 13 is ecology, evolution, systematics and population biology. This subsection itself has 10 sub-subsections. One of them is 26.1303 ? evolutionary biology, ?the scientific study of the genetic, developmental, functional, and morphological patterns and processes, and theoretical principles; and the emergence and mutation of organisms over time.?
Though references to evolution appear in listings of other fields of biological study, the evolutionary biology sub-subsection is missing from a list of ?fields of study? on the National Smart Grant list ? there is an empty space between line 26.1302 (marine biology and biological oceanography) and line 26.1304 (aquatic biology/limnology).
Students cannot simply list something else on an application form, said Mr. Nassirian of the registrars? association. ?Your declared major maps to a CIP code,? he said.
Mr. Nassirian said people at the Education Department had described the omission as ?a clerical mistake.? But it is ?odd,? he said, because applying the subject codes ?is a fairly mechanical task. It is not supposed to be the subject of any kind of deliberation.?
?I am not at all certain that the omission of this particular major is unintentional,? he added. ?But I have to take them at their word.?
Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. ?It?s just awfully coincidental,? said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University.
Jeremy Gunn, who directs the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that if the change was not immediately reversed ?we will certainly pursue this.?
Dr. Rissing said removing evolutionary biology from the list of acceptable majors would discourage students who needed the grants from pursuing the field, at a time when studies of how genes act and evolve are producing valuable insights into human health.
?This is not just some kind of nicety,? he said. ?We are doing a terrible disservice to our students if this is yet another example of making sure science doesn?t offend anyone.?
Dr. Krauss of Case Western said he did not know what practical issues would arise from the omission of evolutionary biology from the list, given that students would still be eligible for grants if they declared a major in something else ? biology, say.
?I am sure an enterprising student or program director could find a way to put themselves in another slot,? he said. ?But why should they have to do that??
Mr. Nassirian said he was not so sure. ?Candidly, I don?t think most administrators know enough about this program? to help students overcome the apparent objection to evolutionary biology, he said. Undergraduates would be even less knowledgeable about the issue, he added.
Dr. Krauss said: ?Removing that one major is not going to make the nation stupid, but if this really was removed, specifically removed, then I see it as part of a pattern to put ideology over knowledge. And, especially in the Department of Education, that should be abhorred.?
Monday, August 21, 2006
A study in contrasts
My 7-year old daughter asks out of the blue, "What's 149 +137?" I pull up a sheet of paper and start to show her how to figure it out, but she waves me away, thinks a bit, and says, "It's 286, isn't it?"
"That's right! Yay!"
That afternoon my husband comes home talking about his chemistry students, "When I mentioned the Chinese working on a space elevator for a lunar colony, a 17-year old senior in the class started laughing so hard he couldn't sit up straight. 'It'll never work! What will they do when the moon isn't in the sky? It goes down in the daytime!' Seventeen years old, a high school senior, and no one had ever taught him that the moon orbits around the earth."
"That's right! Yay!"
That afternoon my husband comes home talking about his chemistry students, "When I mentioned the Chinese working on a space elevator for a lunar colony, a 17-year old senior in the class started laughing so hard he couldn't sit up straight. 'It'll never work! What will they do when the moon isn't in the sky? It goes down in the daytime!' Seventeen years old, a high school senior, and no one had ever taught him that the moon orbits around the earth."
Thursday, August 17, 2006
My Favorite Geek Quote of the Week
An exasperated Paul Cornell, one of the writers on the revitalized Doctor Who, responding to complaints from some older fans about the romantic elements that have been added to the show, "People! Armies of teenage girls raving about Doctor Who used to be a distant dream. Let's not blow it now!"
No, make that my Favorite Geek Quote of All Time. It just says so much about where geek culture came from and how it's matured (or sometimes not).
No, make that my Favorite Geek Quote of All Time. It just says so much about where geek culture came from and how it's matured (or sometimes not).
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Still here
The heat is beginning to break, and we're starting lessons back up.
I'm working on a review of reports about Patrick Henry College. It's turned into the most depressing thing I've written in ages. An hour of work on it is enough to send me into a tailspin for the next 10 days. I need to get angry about it. I need to build up a good head of steam and pound my way though it in a total fury until I beat it into a postable form, but it just saps away all my energy. It's a humongous leach on my chi. So I'm spending all my time on the recently discovered youtube watching sappy romance fan videos set to 80s pop songs. YT is cheaper than therapy and healthier than bourbon.
Do me a favor, guys. Nag me to spend more time outdoors, and to put on some music and dance.
I'm working on a review of reports about Patrick Henry College. It's turned into the most depressing thing I've written in ages. An hour of work on it is enough to send me into a tailspin for the next 10 days. I need to get angry about it. I need to build up a good head of steam and pound my way though it in a total fury until I beat it into a postable form, but it just saps away all my energy. It's a humongous leach on my chi. So I'm spending all my time on the recently discovered youtube watching sappy romance fan videos set to 80s pop songs. YT is cheaper than therapy and healthier than bourbon.
Do me a favor, guys. Nag me to spend more time outdoors, and to put on some music and dance.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Ignoramuses
U.S. Lags World In Grasp Of Genetics And Acceptance of Evolution
A comparison of peoples' views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower.
Among the factors contributing to America's low score are poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians, the researchers say.
"American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close," said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University.
Evangelicals urge museum to hide man's ancestors
Powerful evangelical churches are pressing Kenya's national museum to sideline its world-famous collection of hominid bones pointing to man's evolution from ape to human.
Leaders of the country's six-million-strong Pentecostal congregation want Dr Richard Leakey's ground-breaking finds relegated to a back room instead of being given their usual prime billing.
Mathematician who doesn't understand history says human civilization only 1000 years old. He also doesn't understand either art or psychology.
I would write a post tying all these together, but it's just too depressing.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Sweet Apples, Sour Apples
These are posts on my husband's experiences teaching high school. It will be linked in the left hand corner of the page, and I'll add to it over time.
"Battleship"
What They Teach You in School
Expiration dates
Public School Reality Check
Teacher Training Lesson
I Couldn't Make This Up If I Tried
Ripples
Is the public school system harming teachers?
Summer Teacher Training Seminar
2006 Teacher Prep
"Battleship"
What They Teach You in School
Expiration dates
Public School Reality Check
Teacher Training Lesson
I Couldn't Make This Up If I Tried
Ripples
Is the public school system harming teachers?
Summer Teacher Training Seminar
2006 Teacher Prep
Monday, August 07, 2006
My Reviews, 2nd Edition
My earlier review link post has disappeared. If you find any other broken links on my blog, let me know. I've lost at least two posts. Is this a problem with Blogspot?
This is the post linked on the upper left side of this blog. It will be updated as I post new reviews.
Children's books:
1634 the Ram Rebellion by Eric Flint
The Da Vinci Code
Events:
The Miracle of Life
Firefly:"Shindig"
Doctor Who:
"Rose"
"The End of the World"
"The Unquiet Dead"
"Aliens of London" & "World War 3"
"Dalek"
"The Long Game"
"Father's Day"
"The Empty Child" & "The Doctor Dances"
"Boom Town"
"Bad Wolf" & "Parting of the Ways"
2005 Dr. Who Summary: Heroes
This is the post linked on the upper left side of this blog. It will be updated as I post new reviews.
Children's books:
Delilah by John Bemelmans Marciano
Homeschool and Education books:
Curriculum:
WTM first-Grade Zoology Review
Poetry:
Websites:
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
Fiction:
Night Watch: a Discworld Novel by Terry Pratchett
The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold1634 the Ram Rebellion by Eric Flint
The Da Vinci Code
Events:
2006 Crosstie Arts & Jazz Festival
DVDs:The Miracle of Life
Firefly:"Shindig"
Doctor Who:
"Rose"
"The End of the World"
"The Unquiet Dead"
"Aliens of London" & "World War 3"
"Dalek"
"The Long Game"
"Father's Day"
"The Empty Child" & "The Doctor Dances"
"Boom Town"
"Bad Wolf" & "Parting of the Ways"
2005 Dr. Who Summary: Heroes
Webpage Scam Alert
Beware Freestats. They offer a free web counter, but they won't let you access it and they won't respond to your complaints.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
2006 Teacher Prep
It's time to prep Mississippi public school teachers for the 2006-2007 school year. It's a mixed bag, with some good news, some bad news, and some weird news.
Good news from the DOE: The MSDOE now requires that all schools enter all their classroom assignments on the state computer by August 1. This wasn't done because the state wants to be a busybody, but to end some of the more egregious practices local school districts have fallen into.
All classes must now by assigned by August 1. Our local school system has been assigning classes anywhere from one week to one month AFTER school starts, with the children just sitting there twiddling their thumbs for days on end. Then the schedules they were assigned would be changed daily for the next several weeks. The first nine weeks of teaching was always thoroughly disrupted. Hopefully we won't see any more of that nonsense.
The bad news is that school districts that have gotten used to not working up their classroom assignments until the children are actually sitting there in front of them think they have to start back on August 1 or earlier. The new rules don't say that, but that is how some districts are interpreting them. This puts children starting school during the hottest month in Mississippi and there's a heat wave going on. It's too hot for grown-ups to think, let alone kids!
The state's computer program won't accept more than 25 students in a class. This "flaw" means that classroom size is now capped at 25 students. School districts can't cram 30-50 students in a classroom anymore.
The state's computers also won't allow school districts to give teachers more than 3 different subjects or "preps" to teach. That is the legal limit, but school districts have been routinely ignoring it. Now they can't. This is wonderful news for my husband, who has been given 4 or 5 preps ever year for the past 10 years.
The state is giving the school districts $4,193/student this year. While it looks like a lot of money, it's well under the actual cost of providing good teachers and resources. This is especially true since many school districts have to hire extra teachers because they can no longer get away with cramming classrooms to the gills and giving teachers too many preps.
Bad news from all over the place:
The Curriculum Board: The history teacher was apoplectic with rage. "Look at this mess! 35 years of teaching and I've never seen anything so stupid. It's insane!" She thrust out the Curriculum Board's junior high and high school "Social Studies Framework" like it was a poisonous snake.
History isn't taught until junior high. In 7th grade history begins to be taught in a "compare and contrast" model. It's never taught sequentially. You can't compare and contrast something without a context, and the context isn't taught. "Compare and contrast" is the way history should be taught the second or third time the student is exposed to it, not the first.
Oh yes, and American History begins in 1877. Nothing of consequence happened in American before then.
Lunches: Students are to be strenuously discouraged from bringing their lunches. Students are no longer allowed to eat anywhere other than the cafeteria. Gone are the days when you could chill out for twenty minutes picnicking on the grass. Chilling out is forbidden.
Gifted classes: There will no longer be any gifted high school classes in Mississippi. There will no longer be any accelerated classes either. Accelerated classes are "tracking", and "tracking" is now completely out of favor. If the class if too boring for a student, tough.
Since "tracking" is out of vogue, the highly respected CAT test is no longer needed or given. But since there is still a "need" to test, the much less respected Mississippi state tests will be used in their place. Mississippi students will no longer be ranked alongside national students and neither will their schools.
"Class looping": A while back experimental private elementary schools had a wonderful idea called teacher looping: the same teacher stayed with the same class for 4 years. This meant the students had time to really build up a trust and rapport with that teacher, and cut discipline problems in half. The public schools have picked up the idea and turned it completely backwards.
In Mississippi public schools, the students are supposed to stay with the same class every year BUT have different teachers. Forget about developing a rapport with your teacher. This means if you don't share any abilities or interests with the class you happened to have been shoved in when you first arrived, tough. You'll be stuck with them until you graduate. Isn't that against the Geneva Convention?
Worse, it means that the students within that class feel a rapport with each other that they don't share with the new teacher. After all, teachers come and teachers go but you have to put up with the classroom bully forever. It also means the students get extraordinarily good at cheating. They literally spend years perfecting how to send each other notes and signals, and the new teacher doesn't have a clue what the signs are.
Worst of all, because they bond with each other but not with their authority figures, they make exceptionally bad employees. Local grads have gotten into huge amounts of trouble with their employers because they'll do what their coworkers tell them and not what their bosses tell them. Why shouldn't they? That's the way the school trained them to behave.
Weird news: "They told us today that 71% of African-American second-graders would be dead or in jail by the time they were supposed to graduate."
"What? You've been teaching African-American students for 10 years now. How many of those kids have you seen end up in jail?"
"One."
"And how many died?"
"One boy got killed by a drunk driver."
"So for the average to be 71%, there would have to be communities where every African-American child was ending up dead or in jail. Wouldn't we have heard about that?"
"I know. It sounds crazy."
To sum it all up: it looks like my husband is going to need lots of Doctor Who this year.
Good news from the DOE: The MSDOE now requires that all schools enter all their classroom assignments on the state computer by August 1. This wasn't done because the state wants to be a busybody, but to end some of the more egregious practices local school districts have fallen into.
All classes must now by assigned by August 1. Our local school system has been assigning classes anywhere from one week to one month AFTER school starts, with the children just sitting there twiddling their thumbs for days on end. Then the schedules they were assigned would be changed daily for the next several weeks. The first nine weeks of teaching was always thoroughly disrupted. Hopefully we won't see any more of that nonsense.
The bad news is that school districts that have gotten used to not working up their classroom assignments until the children are actually sitting there in front of them think they have to start back on August 1 or earlier. The new rules don't say that, but that is how some districts are interpreting them. This puts children starting school during the hottest month in Mississippi and there's a heat wave going on. It's too hot for grown-ups to think, let alone kids!
The state's computer program won't accept more than 25 students in a class. This "flaw" means that classroom size is now capped at 25 students. School districts can't cram 30-50 students in a classroom anymore.
The state's computers also won't allow school districts to give teachers more than 3 different subjects or "preps" to teach. That is the legal limit, but school districts have been routinely ignoring it. Now they can't. This is wonderful news for my husband, who has been given 4 or 5 preps ever year for the past 10 years.
The state is giving the school districts $4,193/student this year. While it looks like a lot of money, it's well under the actual cost of providing good teachers and resources. This is especially true since many school districts have to hire extra teachers because they can no longer get away with cramming classrooms to the gills and giving teachers too many preps.
Bad news from all over the place:
The Curriculum Board: The history teacher was apoplectic with rage. "Look at this mess! 35 years of teaching and I've never seen anything so stupid. It's insane!" She thrust out the Curriculum Board's junior high and high school "Social Studies Framework" like it was a poisonous snake.
History isn't taught until junior high. In 7th grade history begins to be taught in a "compare and contrast" model. It's never taught sequentially. You can't compare and contrast something without a context, and the context isn't taught. "Compare and contrast" is the way history should be taught the second or third time the student is exposed to it, not the first.
Oh yes, and American History begins in 1877. Nothing of consequence happened in American before then.
Lunches: Students are to be strenuously discouraged from bringing their lunches. Students are no longer allowed to eat anywhere other than the cafeteria. Gone are the days when you could chill out for twenty minutes picnicking on the grass. Chilling out is forbidden.
Gifted classes: There will no longer be any gifted high school classes in Mississippi. There will no longer be any accelerated classes either. Accelerated classes are "tracking", and "tracking" is now completely out of favor. If the class if too boring for a student, tough.
Since "tracking" is out of vogue, the highly respected CAT test is no longer needed or given. But since there is still a "need" to test, the much less respected Mississippi state tests will be used in their place. Mississippi students will no longer be ranked alongside national students and neither will their schools.
"Class looping": A while back experimental private elementary schools had a wonderful idea called teacher looping: the same teacher stayed with the same class for 4 years. This meant the students had time to really build up a trust and rapport with that teacher, and cut discipline problems in half. The public schools have picked up the idea and turned it completely backwards.
In Mississippi public schools, the students are supposed to stay with the same class every year BUT have different teachers. Forget about developing a rapport with your teacher. This means if you don't share any abilities or interests with the class you happened to have been shoved in when you first arrived, tough. You'll be stuck with them until you graduate. Isn't that against the Geneva Convention?
Worse, it means that the students within that class feel a rapport with each other that they don't share with the new teacher. After all, teachers come and teachers go but you have to put up with the classroom bully forever. It also means the students get extraordinarily good at cheating. They literally spend years perfecting how to send each other notes and signals, and the new teacher doesn't have a clue what the signs are.
Worst of all, because they bond with each other but not with their authority figures, they make exceptionally bad employees. Local grads have gotten into huge amounts of trouble with their employers because they'll do what their coworkers tell them and not what their bosses tell them. Why shouldn't they? That's the way the school trained them to behave.
Weird news: "They told us today that 71% of African-American second-graders would be dead or in jail by the time they were supposed to graduate."
"What? You've been teaching African-American students for 10 years now. How many of those kids have you seen end up in jail?"
"One."
"And how many died?"
"One boy got killed by a drunk driver."
"So for the average to be 71%, there would have to be communities where every African-American child was ending up dead or in jail. Wouldn't we have heard about that?"
"I know. It sounds crazy."
To sum it all up: it looks like my husband is going to need lots of Doctor Who this year.
Heat Wave Days
We're not having lessons right now because it's over 100 degrees. Even with air conditioning, expecting young children to concentrate in this heat is asking for trouble. So why are Mississippi schools starting back this week, at the start of the hottest month on the Mississippi calendar? It's crazy.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Summer Teacher Training Seminar
Every summer my husband has at least one teacher training seminar to attend. One of them was great. Most of them are boring. This year he got the Teacher Training Seminar From Hell.
There were three levels of informants at the seminar. The book that he was given, the presenter, and the MSDOE representative. Each of the three informants said completely different things. To be fair, I don't think the DOE rep. got the seminar he thought he was providing.
What the book said: "We are the Borg. You will assimilate. Resistance is futile."
Unfortunately the writer wasn't that succinct. Instead he wrote: "You work in a crappy place. There is nothing you can do to make substantive improvements. You can't do anything to make your workplace more safe, more fair, or even more legal. But hey, you can make it more productive! You can do that by being happy all the time, in spite of working in a crappy environment. If you micro-manage your emotions and spend an enormous amount of energy staying in complete control of your feelings every second of the workday you can make your workplace a more fun experience for the people around you. It won't be solve a single one of the structural problems which are bringing this workplace down upon your ears, but you and your coworkers will be more productive, and that's all that counts!"
While I don't completely agree with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, he got it mostly right. It's awful hard to "don't worry, be happy" when, for example, the funds entrusted to a teacher to provide for their classroom mysteriously disappears after the first two weeks, there's a hole in the ceiling that lets in rainwater which has rotted out 1/4 of a second-story early elementary classroom's floor, raw sewage seeps out of the restroom and perfumes the air, and the principal refuses to discipline students sent to the office for fighting and sexual harassment. Some things are worth bursting a blood vessel over.
When we were growing up in the 80s, the message we heard from the adults around us was, "Do what you love and the money will follow." This came from such New-Agey, fluff-bunny impractical types as the Dean of the College of Engineering at MSU and several millionaires next door. As the Dean of Engineering put it, "If you do what you love, you'll get really good at it. Somebody out there will notice and compensate you for it. It may not be the employer you have right now, but there's somebody out there who is willing to compensate you what you deserve for passion, skill, and experience." In spite of the "recessions" that's been going on for most of my life, I have to say that this advise is generally true. It might be awfully hard to find that somebody, and the compensation might not always take the form you expect, but it works out over the long run.
But the message from this book was 100% passion-free. "You're doing cruddy work for cruddy pay at a cruddy workplace. There's no chance of any of that ever improving. You will always be working for terrible bosses for miserable wages at dangerous worksites. Accept your fate. Be happy!" Not only is it a complete downer, that mantra comes perilously close to being a state endorsement of a religious message.
What the presenter said: "Micro-management is fun!"
State tests: "You are supposed to spend 100% of your time preparing your students for your state's test. Anything else is treason. Your students can't be allowed to think about anything else while they are at school. Even 6yos should not be allowed to ask questions or bring up any issue that is not on the state test."
Identifying troublesome students: "The child who has made trouble and been disciplined is no longer a problem in the classroom. They have been disciplined already, so they will not make trouble again. The REAL troublemaker is the quiet child reading a book in the back of the classroom while everyone else is finishing their assignment. There is the viper in your midst! That child incites trouble because he is not doing what you told him to do. It doesn't matter if he's already finished, he still shouldn't be reading. He should be going over his work again and again!"
Obedience: "Your students must obey you instantly. When you tell a child to stop reading a book, he should not take the time to read another word. Letting him finish the page is a sign of weakness. When you tell a child to stop writing, do not let him complete his sentence. That is a sign of rebellion on his part."
Discipline: "Keep your problem students in your classroom. Handle them by yourself. Don't send them to the office. The principal doesn't want to know about your problems."
Closure: "Always plan more for the day than you can possibly complete in the time you have available. The student must never, ever experience the satisfaction of successfully completing anything. Above all else, never, ever give them as much as a second to rest, think and regain their balance."
What my husband said: After a few days of this nonsense, he raised his hand and asked, "Excuse me, but there have been times when following that model would have cost me students. Once I had a teenager who came in on a test day in a state of total shock. Her mother had kicked her out of her house the night before. She had no car, no phone, hadn't been able to find anyone to stay the night with, and wound up sleeping on the sidewalk. The only reason she was at school at all was because it was the only part of her routine that she could cling to right then. I told her to not worry about the test, go put her head down on a back desk and rest, she could make it up in a few days when things had settled down. If I had put the slightest pressure on her that day, she would have quit school altogether. She was that close."
Presenter: "Uh that's good, but she should have taken the test".
Other teacher: "I can't afford to find out that much about my students' personal business."
DOE representative, glaring: "He did the right thing. That's exactly the kind of response we want to see from our teachers."
Presenter: "Uh, yeah. Let's move on to the next subject so we can get through early for lunch."
What the DOE rep said: The DOE representative talked the presenter into leaving early, then turned to the teachers and said, "Ignore all that. We're just trying to make the schools healthier. We want to get the soda and candy machines out of the hallways. We want to make sure the kids eat good food and get plenty of exercise. We would like to encourage them to eat supper with their parents so they don't get into social trouble, but who eats with their children anymore? I don't even eat with my second-grader more than twice a year! We eat takeout and they get theirs when they show up at the table. What good can we do?"
(Gee, our kids don't eat meals with us only when they're away on sleepovers.)
It was a very surreal and stressful week. I think you can understand why my husband was decompressing with massive doses of Doctor Who every night. "Even the Daleks are sensible compared to those people. All Daleks want to do is kill you. They usually don't bother messing up children's heads!"
Update - Presenter: "Reading non-assigned books is forbidden! Students should only read books they are assigned and will be tested on!"
There were three levels of informants at the seminar. The book that he was given, the presenter, and the MSDOE representative. Each of the three informants said completely different things. To be fair, I don't think the DOE rep. got the seminar he thought he was providing.
What the book said: "We are the Borg. You will assimilate. Resistance is futile."
Unfortunately the writer wasn't that succinct. Instead he wrote: "You work in a crappy place. There is nothing you can do to make substantive improvements. You can't do anything to make your workplace more safe, more fair, or even more legal. But hey, you can make it more productive! You can do that by being happy all the time, in spite of working in a crappy environment. If you micro-manage your emotions and spend an enormous amount of energy staying in complete control of your feelings every second of the workday you can make your workplace a more fun experience for the people around you. It won't be solve a single one of the structural problems which are bringing this workplace down upon your ears, but you and your coworkers will be more productive, and that's all that counts!"
While I don't completely agree with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, he got it mostly right. It's awful hard to "don't worry, be happy" when, for example, the funds entrusted to a teacher to provide for their classroom mysteriously disappears after the first two weeks, there's a hole in the ceiling that lets in rainwater which has rotted out 1/4 of a second-story early elementary classroom's floor, raw sewage seeps out of the restroom and perfumes the air, and the principal refuses to discipline students sent to the office for fighting and sexual harassment. Some things are worth bursting a blood vessel over.
When we were growing up in the 80s, the message we heard from the adults around us was, "Do what you love and the money will follow." This came from such New-Agey, fluff-bunny impractical types as the Dean of the College of Engineering at MSU and several millionaires next door. As the Dean of Engineering put it, "If you do what you love, you'll get really good at it. Somebody out there will notice and compensate you for it. It may not be the employer you have right now, but there's somebody out there who is willing to compensate you what you deserve for passion, skill, and experience." In spite of the "recessions" that's been going on for most of my life, I have to say that this advise is generally true. It might be awfully hard to find that somebody, and the compensation might not always take the form you expect, but it works out over the long run.
But the message from this book was 100% passion-free. "You're doing cruddy work for cruddy pay at a cruddy workplace. There's no chance of any of that ever improving. You will always be working for terrible bosses for miserable wages at dangerous worksites. Accept your fate. Be happy!" Not only is it a complete downer, that mantra comes perilously close to being a state endorsement of a religious message.
What the presenter said: "Micro-management is fun!"
State tests: "You are supposed to spend 100% of your time preparing your students for your state's test. Anything else is treason. Your students can't be allowed to think about anything else while they are at school. Even 6yos should not be allowed to ask questions or bring up any issue that is not on the state test."
Identifying troublesome students: "The child who has made trouble and been disciplined is no longer a problem in the classroom. They have been disciplined already, so they will not make trouble again. The REAL troublemaker is the quiet child reading a book in the back of the classroom while everyone else is finishing their assignment. There is the viper in your midst! That child incites trouble because he is not doing what you told him to do. It doesn't matter if he's already finished, he still shouldn't be reading. He should be going over his work again and again!"
Obedience: "Your students must obey you instantly. When you tell a child to stop reading a book, he should not take the time to read another word. Letting him finish the page is a sign of weakness. When you tell a child to stop writing, do not let him complete his sentence. That is a sign of rebellion on his part."
Discipline: "Keep your problem students in your classroom. Handle them by yourself. Don't send them to the office. The principal doesn't want to know about your problems."
Closure: "Always plan more for the day than you can possibly complete in the time you have available. The student must never, ever experience the satisfaction of successfully completing anything. Above all else, never, ever give them as much as a second to rest, think and regain their balance."
What my husband said: After a few days of this nonsense, he raised his hand and asked, "Excuse me, but there have been times when following that model would have cost me students. Once I had a teenager who came in on a test day in a state of total shock. Her mother had kicked her out of her house the night before. She had no car, no phone, hadn't been able to find anyone to stay the night with, and wound up sleeping on the sidewalk. The only reason she was at school at all was because it was the only part of her routine that she could cling to right then. I told her to not worry about the test, go put her head down on a back desk and rest, she could make it up in a few days when things had settled down. If I had put the slightest pressure on her that day, she would have quit school altogether. She was that close."
Presenter: "Uh that's good, but she should have taken the test".
Other teacher: "I can't afford to find out that much about my students' personal business."
DOE representative, glaring: "He did the right thing. That's exactly the kind of response we want to see from our teachers."
Presenter: "Uh, yeah. Let's move on to the next subject so we can get through early for lunch."
What the DOE rep said: The DOE representative talked the presenter into leaving early, then turned to the teachers and said, "Ignore all that. We're just trying to make the schools healthier. We want to get the soda and candy machines out of the hallways. We want to make sure the kids eat good food and get plenty of exercise. We would like to encourage them to eat supper with their parents so they don't get into social trouble, but who eats with their children anymore? I don't even eat with my second-grader more than twice a year! We eat takeout and they get theirs when they show up at the table. What good can we do?"
(Gee, our kids don't eat meals with us only when they're away on sleepovers.)
It was a very surreal and stressful week. I think you can understand why my husband was decompressing with massive doses of Doctor Who every night. "Even the Daleks are sensible compared to those people. All Daleks want to do is kill you. They usually don't bother messing up children's heads!"
Update - Presenter: "Reading non-assigned books is forbidden! Students should only read books they are assigned and will be tested on!"
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
The dog days of summer are here.
It's too hot to sleep, and I'm exhausted all the time. Brighteyes is fussy all the time, probably for the same reason. My husband is getting ready to go back to teaching Thursday with new guidelines in place, some of which are wonderful and some of which are so lunatic he retreated into Doctor Who for a sanity break. I'll post on those changes to the school system as soon as I wake up enough to write them down.
2005 Dr. Who Summary: Heroes
The 2005 season was unquestionably the best acted Dr. Who ever, with several of the best stories. That said, there were pacing problems; some of these were fixed and some of them were not. The show also desperately needs an "unpaid scientific advisor" of it's own to work with the script editor. The number of bonehead scientific errors was hard to forgive in a show that calls itself "science" fiction. While there's no need to bog the show down in endless technobabble, a basic understanding of elementary science built into the script would have made some scenes both more exciting and funnier. But these sorts of problems can be expected when the crew hasn't done this sort of show before. Hopefully they'll be corrected in the second season.
There was a noticeable problem with overused memes, including zombies, pregnant brides, and out-of-wedlock pregnancies. A more obnoxious overused meme had to do with aliens and villains. The only nice aliens were in the 2cnd episode, after that nice aliens disappeared from our screen. And while the redemption of villains and other people was mentioned, it was only the humans who perused that redemption, i.e. Captain Jack. Alien villains were either scene as uninterested in redemption or unredeemable. That is a serious bias which needs some attention.
The season reintroduced/reinvented the major elements of the Doctor's universe and established that the Doctor is a hero not a god. It also hammered home that anyone can become a hero if they're willing. But what kind of hero is the Doctor?
There are many different kinds of heroes, but some of the toes that have been prevalent in pop fiction lately go way back to the Classical era. These include:
HECTOR - Hector's a family man who's just doing his job. He's the one who has to get other people out of the messes they've gotten themselves into from their own stupidity because nobody else will bother. He makes a great sheriff, and he was all over the screen in the early days of film and TV. We haven't seen many Hectors lately though.
ACHILLES - "My name is Bond. James Bond." Nope, it's Achilles.
Achilles is the snotty brat who's never been beaten. He's the former schoolyard bully grown up to become the unstoppable killer who happens to be on your side. He's a gangster with a government contract. These days the contract is usually an exclusive "license to kill" with one government or another.
Achilles made a splash on the big screen as James Bond and Dirty Harry. By the 1990s he was all over the place, played by Clint Eastwood, Schwarzenagger, Bruce Willis, et al. Such overexposure brought out his twin flaws.
The first flaw is that he's unstoppable. This means his enemies have to get bigger, meaner, and more ridiculous. And since he doesn't really know what it's like to lose, he has a limited supply of empathy for others. "Hasta la vista, baby."
The second flaw is that Achilles has no moral center. He'll do anything to fulfill his contract, and only the terms of his contract restrain him. Anytime you hear a variation of the line, "His tactics are completely out of line, but we keep him because he gets results", beware. You're approaching Achilles' territory.
Since he has no scruples about killing anyone, who are you going to put him up agains?. Only Homer was brave enough to put him up against Hector. Every other writer since then has wimped out and put him up against villains who are supposed to be more viscous than he is. Then the next villain has to be even more viscous. It's an unending downward spiral into blood, violence and depravity.
Can you tell I despise Achilles?
HERCULES - The former snotty brat who's had the snot beat out of him. He knows what it's like to lose and this tempers his action. Most of the Classic Marvel superheroes are Hercules types. Hercules may be a whiny drunk, but he usually makes more of an effort to think than Achilles does. He may not be that good at it, but at least he tries and he gets better with practice. I'll take Hercules over Achilles any day, but there's someone else I'd prefer over both of them.
ODYSSEUS - Odysseus is the veteran of the group. He's the most reluctant to start a fight and prefers diplomacy, but he's ruthless when he thinks it's necessary. He usually finds himself in the position of cleaning up the messes Achilles and Hercules can't think their way through, and he hates that job.
The problem with Odysseus is that he can't find his way back home. Every hero spends some time in the wilderness, but Odysseus stays there the longest. Sometimes the journey home is long and arduous. Sometimes "home" is on the other side of a sealed border, or he is in exile. Sometimes "home" doesn't exist anymore, and sometimes the problem is all in his head. Odysseus has a keen intellect. His mind knows he can't go back home, but his heart refuses to accept it and settle down anywhere besides Ithaca. The same conflict causes him to hook up with a string of women only to leave them for not being Penelope. Anytime you're dealing with a "wandering hero" or "wandering monster" (the difference can depend on where you stand) you're probably dealing with Odysseus.
Late 20th-Century American pop fiction broke out in a flush of Odysseus-types after every war, especially Vietnam. Americans never could get the hang of it though, and got bogged down as technological advances made the premise less workable. Britain pole-vaulted all the high-tech quibbles with Doctor Who.
The Doctor has always been Odysseus, smart, refined, pragmatic. He is an Odysseus who somehow could never find peace back home after the incident that left him in semi-exile, maimed, and without a name he felt he could mention in public. He takes up with a string of Nausicaas and the occasional Circe, but he can't ever settle down.
Eccleston's Doctor cleaves to the Odysseus image stronger than any of the others, building on elements that were in original season but that have become muted over time. He and Davies have taken the character back to his thematic roots. The result is a strong, fresh, complex portrait that takes the core elements and builds on them in a sophisticated way. The result are stories meant for children that don't talk down to children. That seems to be the rarest thing in moving pictures, and I love it.
I also love how they've revamped the old swashbuckler stereotype with Captain Jack. I loved the swashbuckling heroes from the classic movies as a child! What child doesn't? But the ones in the old movies tended to be too sexist. Modern action heroes are usually just as sexist (if not more so) and a whole lot meaner. They have no charm at all. Honestly, if I saw one of those guys on the street I'd run and hide. Captain Jack is sweet, charming, funny, heroic, commanding when he needs to be, and definitely not sexist!
Of course he's in the sidekick's role, and that doesn't give him much chance to be dark and brooding. I realize they're going to flesh his character out more when they give him his own show this fall, but I hope they don't take away his kindness and charm. I never understood why I was supposed to trust a mean gun-toting "hero".
And it's wonderful to have a show that doesn't make a big deal over people not being heterosexual. One of my favorite parts of the whole season is where the Doctor runs through various stratagems to stop Jack from hitting on Rose all the time before finally coming up on one that works: when Jack flirts with Rose, he flirts with Jack. It works like a charm to disrupt Jack's intentions without an unkind word having to be said. The world could use more solutions like that.
There was a noticeable problem with overused memes, including zombies, pregnant brides, and out-of-wedlock pregnancies. A more obnoxious overused meme had to do with aliens and villains. The only nice aliens were in the 2cnd episode, after that nice aliens disappeared from our screen. And while the redemption of villains and other people was mentioned, it was only the humans who perused that redemption, i.e. Captain Jack. Alien villains were either scene as uninterested in redemption or unredeemable. That is a serious bias which needs some attention.
The season reintroduced/reinvented the major elements of the Doctor's universe and established that the Doctor is a hero not a god. It also hammered home that anyone can become a hero if they're willing. But what kind of hero is the Doctor?
There are many different kinds of heroes, but some of the toes that have been prevalent in pop fiction lately go way back to the Classical era. These include:
HECTOR - Hector's a family man who's just doing his job. He's the one who has to get other people out of the messes they've gotten themselves into from their own stupidity because nobody else will bother. He makes a great sheriff, and he was all over the screen in the early days of film and TV. We haven't seen many Hectors lately though.
ACHILLES - "My name is Bond. James Bond." Nope, it's Achilles.
Achilles is the snotty brat who's never been beaten. He's the former schoolyard bully grown up to become the unstoppable killer who happens to be on your side. He's a gangster with a government contract. These days the contract is usually an exclusive "license to kill" with one government or another.
Achilles made a splash on the big screen as James Bond and Dirty Harry. By the 1990s he was all over the place, played by Clint Eastwood, Schwarzenagger, Bruce Willis, et al. Such overexposure brought out his twin flaws.
The first flaw is that he's unstoppable. This means his enemies have to get bigger, meaner, and more ridiculous. And since he doesn't really know what it's like to lose, he has a limited supply of empathy for others. "Hasta la vista, baby."
The second flaw is that Achilles has no moral center. He'll do anything to fulfill his contract, and only the terms of his contract restrain him. Anytime you hear a variation of the line, "His tactics are completely out of line, but we keep him because he gets results", beware. You're approaching Achilles' territory.
Since he has no scruples about killing anyone, who are you going to put him up agains?. Only Homer was brave enough to put him up against Hector. Every other writer since then has wimped out and put him up against villains who are supposed to be more viscous than he is. Then the next villain has to be even more viscous. It's an unending downward spiral into blood, violence and depravity.
Can you tell I despise Achilles?
HERCULES - The former snotty brat who's had the snot beat out of him. He knows what it's like to lose and this tempers his action. Most of the Classic Marvel superheroes are Hercules types. Hercules may be a whiny drunk, but he usually makes more of an effort to think than Achilles does. He may not be that good at it, but at least he tries and he gets better with practice. I'll take Hercules over Achilles any day, but there's someone else I'd prefer over both of them.
ODYSSEUS - Odysseus is the veteran of the group. He's the most reluctant to start a fight and prefers diplomacy, but he's ruthless when he thinks it's necessary. He usually finds himself in the position of cleaning up the messes Achilles and Hercules can't think their way through, and he hates that job.
The problem with Odysseus is that he can't find his way back home. Every hero spends some time in the wilderness, but Odysseus stays there the longest. Sometimes the journey home is long and arduous. Sometimes "home" is on the other side of a sealed border, or he is in exile. Sometimes "home" doesn't exist anymore, and sometimes the problem is all in his head. Odysseus has a keen intellect. His mind knows he can't go back home, but his heart refuses to accept it and settle down anywhere besides Ithaca. The same conflict causes him to hook up with a string of women only to leave them for not being Penelope. Anytime you're dealing with a "wandering hero" or "wandering monster" (the difference can depend on where you stand) you're probably dealing with Odysseus.
Late 20th-Century American pop fiction broke out in a flush of Odysseus-types after every war, especially Vietnam. Americans never could get the hang of it though, and got bogged down as technological advances made the premise less workable. Britain pole-vaulted all the high-tech quibbles with Doctor Who.
The Doctor has always been Odysseus, smart, refined, pragmatic. He is an Odysseus who somehow could never find peace back home after the incident that left him in semi-exile, maimed, and without a name he felt he could mention in public. He takes up with a string of Nausicaas and the occasional Circe, but he can't ever settle down.
Eccleston's Doctor cleaves to the Odysseus image stronger than any of the others, building on elements that were in original season but that have become muted over time. He and Davies have taken the character back to his thematic roots. The result is a strong, fresh, complex portrait that takes the core elements and builds on them in a sophisticated way. The result are stories meant for children that don't talk down to children. That seems to be the rarest thing in moving pictures, and I love it.
I also love how they've revamped the old swashbuckler stereotype with Captain Jack. I loved the swashbuckling heroes from the classic movies as a child! What child doesn't? But the ones in the old movies tended to be too sexist. Modern action heroes are usually just as sexist (if not more so) and a whole lot meaner. They have no charm at all. Honestly, if I saw one of those guys on the street I'd run and hide. Captain Jack is sweet, charming, funny, heroic, commanding when he needs to be, and definitely not sexist!
Of course he's in the sidekick's role, and that doesn't give him much chance to be dark and brooding. I realize they're going to flesh his character out more when they give him his own show this fall, but I hope they don't take away his kindness and charm. I never understood why I was supposed to trust a mean gun-toting "hero".
And it's wonderful to have a show that doesn't make a big deal over people not being heterosexual. One of my favorite parts of the whole season is where the Doctor runs through various stratagems to stop Jack from hitting on Rose all the time before finally coming up on one that works: when Jack flirts with Rose, he flirts with Jack. It works like a charm to disrupt Jack's intentions without an unkind word having to be said. The world could use more solutions like that.
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