Schoolless

Saturday is a sad day

After a birthday, a day of sadness.

43

I made it.
No, I didn't make it to an hour yet. But I did run 43 minutes on my 43rd birthday. I survived both.

Crossing the finish line (actually, my front stoop).

I would say that's not bad for someone who in February could not manage more than two minutes of continuous running. But, in case you're gasping in awe and disbelief, let me tell you, I am hardly marathon material. I ran significant portions of my distance today at the granny pace (no offense to some grannies who passed me along the way).
No matter. This is, in fact, the longest I have ever run in my life.
OK, I'm going to blow out my candles and figure out my new iPod.

Not-so-minimalist

As someone who has never gone on a self-supported bike tour, I harbor perhaps a somewhat distorted image of such an endeavor. I imagine a lone figure against the dusky horizon, with panniers holding only the barest of necessities: tent, sleeping bag, change of clothes, some cooking utensils. Spare, self-sufficient, autonomous, economical.
Add a spouse and two school-age kids, and the picture changes radically.

Two, count'em, two BikeFriday Family Tandems being readied in our garage.

I have done car camping with my family. We have all the stuff. Regardless of the duration of the particular camping trip, you just throw all the stuff into the car, and go. It doesn't matter that we're only going for two nights. The car always looks like we're going on a cross-country road trip. But we don't care, because the car doesn't care.
We have read about and admired families that travel together by bike. Ironically, even though (or is it because?) we own a bike shop, we have never tried this ourselves.
So now that our youngest child is seven, we had this idea that we would go on a camping vacation by bike. A short little trip, just to get our feet wet: bike the I&M Canal to Starved Rock, camp a couple of nights and come back. You wouldn't think we need much for a trip like this; just the essentials.
Unfortunately, most of our car-camping equipment is unsuitable for towing in a bike trailer, and our planned 4-day trip has resulted in a mountain of equipment that had to be bought, begged, found and borrowed.
I have a feeling that with all the stuff we need, our bike tours will be no different that our trips by car: even if we're only going overnight, we'll look like we're ready to go around the world.
Maybe one day, we will.

Garden variety

I was going to post these pictures as these flowers were blooming. A long time ago. Last month... last week...
After this long winter, that dragged in one monotonous, snow-sodden day after another, you would think we deserve the have the pleasures of spring linger on. But she is a tease, and here are some of her cohorts.

This lilac is called Beauty of Moscow. She's also the beauty of my back yard. Can you just smell her? Gorgeous! Stays that way for about a week, then all this profusion turns brown and limp, and it is done for another 51 weeks. A nondescript, rather leggy bush in the corner of the yard.

The peony buds, big as golf balls, and seemingly as firm, burst open into their vulgar, gaudy display.

The magenta ones are the most obnoxious, but the white ones are not far behind.

They're even worse than the lilac. Once opened, the petals last only a couple of days (during which there invariably come violent thunderstorms which beat them mercilessly to the ground), and the they droop all over the surrounding foliage, as if a large bird had taken a rest there to commune with nature.

The shortest bloom award, however, has to go to the poppies.

Spectacular! But even in the best of circumstances, their blossoms don't last more than a day or two, but since they bloom at the same time as the peonies, they also fall victim to the storms.

I love these extravagant flowers, but I have to admit that I find them a little stressful: the anticipation while the buds take their sweet time to open, the high drama of the peak bloom combined with the constant fear of impending storms, and the keen disappointment after the flowers fade...

Although I vastly prefer this ever-changing display to the monotony of a lawn and its constant and unvaried maintenance, I breathe a sigh of relief when these drama queens are finished, and summer brings in the somewhat plainer, but more dependable summer cast.

Full Moon

I didn't know about the Full Moon Jam. When a friend called and invited us to come along, I thought is was just gonna be some kids gathering on the beach to watch the moon come out of the water. Which would have been cool too.
But this was a different and more tribal experience. It started innocently enough, with a few people trickling in a starting to settle in a loose circle around some musicians.

Pretty soon, drums were beating, and some kids and other adventurous souls were doing dance moves in the center. It was still fairly mellow. We were sitting around with some other unschoolers we ran into, ate pasta salad, and observed the kids take in the sounds, sights and smells:
"Mom, what smells like smoke?"
Hmmm. What indeed?
"Mom, this lady has earring, and her ears go around the earrings."
Uh-huh.
As the sun went down, more and more people came out of the woodwork. Some sporting festive attire.

Like Carlos. We know him from the bike shop: he's one of our oldest customers. What you can't see in the photo is that he's also wearing a bunny fur vest. There were a whole bunch of other people wearing bunny ears. But his were the longest. And orange.

Once it got completely dark, it got harder to people-watch, and the fire came out.

Fire spinners against the dusky skyline.

Man-turns-fireball.

They look like topiaries, don't they. Wonder if this is what Moses saw.

Goodnight, y'all. Don't play with fire.

Angelface

Have you met Angel?
She's our dog-in-law. She belongs to auntie Lisa. Lisa adopted her from a shelter, and now Angel enjoys a truly heavenly life.
The reason I'm thinking about Angel right now is that I am itching.
Angel is much too well cared for to have fleas, but I am remembering that the occasion when I last saw her was when I got bitten. We traveled to join our relatives in Indiana to celebrate a milestone anniversary with Lisa.
After a lovely dinner we were relaxing in the screenhouse enjoying cake and cocktails, and feeling somewhat bad for my mother-in-law who spent the better part of the afternoon afternoon applying anti-itch remedies to her limbs. It did not occur to any of us that whatever had bitten her might be hanging around for more. Protected -- so we thought -- by the screens, we were lulled into a false sense of security, and enjoyed our beverages and conversation without the slightest thought of insects.
It was on the drive back to Chicago that night that we realized we had fallen prey to some miniscule, vicious and voracious little creature, that made us look like we were coming down with the measles. Even worse was the way the little bites felt. All the tried and true remedies for mosquito bites failed to bring appreciable relief.
The insects attacked only those parts of use where skin was exposed. Did Angel's thick, beautiful coat protect her from the indignity?

Secrets of the logbook

Last fall, I decided to keep a logbook of our homeschooling activities: what we planned, what we did, how it went, etc.
It is my understanding, that in the state of Illinois, I am not required to keep any such record of our activities. Pretty early in the game, I realized that the desire to keep a logbook stemmed from my own insecurity about the "success" or our homeschooling adventure. I needed concrete evidence of our accomplishments and progress, a tangible proof that we were accumulating a growing stack of knowledge.
Here it is:

In looking back over my logbook at the end of the traditional academic year, I realize this document reveals more about me than about any learning my children may have picked up along the way.
I am really extremely conflicted about how I see my role as a homeschooling parent. I am in awe of the mothers who can say with conviction: "It is not my job to make choices for my child. It is my job to present the options, but the choice is up to them." To those of you who have read some other entries on this blog, this may seem somewhat disingenuous of me. After all, I have written a condemnation of worksheets, a stern critique of punishments and consequences, and a heartfelt plea for letting our children follow their dreams. I've managed to convince you, didn't I?
Well, let me fill you in on a little secret, shall I? There is a fierce tug-of-war going on between my private logbook and my public blog.
But first, another tug-of-war is taking place within the pages of the logbook. Every few pages, the logbook presents evidence of my intense efforts toward controlling the learning process: lesson plans, lists of questions to explore, painstaking notes, in my own hand, on the process and outcome of experiments and activities.
Between my notes there are numerous clues that my children's learning is taking place on a bit of a tangent.
Math worksheets morph into karate master comic strips:

Book reports rely rather more heavily on illustration than on the written word:

Worksheets are abandoned in favor of projects created from scratch:

Pencil studies proliferate when a small guidebook is accidentally discovered:

As I flip through the entries in the logbook, I am struck by the interest my kids show in the visual and tactile arts, and anything that involves hands-on exploration and participation. Looking back at the year, I realize that our greatest successes were not the mastery of fractions, or adding multi-digit numbers, or composing a paragraph. The biggest successes were those things we did that did not involve a plan or an agenda, that grew out of a genuine curiosity, and maintained momentum from our own internal drive. Things like Peter's stop-motion films, Nadia's novels and learning how to read, playing survival of the fittest with legos, looking for and dissecting owl pellets, making recycled paper, making a vacation travelogue, creating a Tree of Life book and other nature books, building a clay undersea coral reef, filling a mailbox with popcorn, and, of course, going back 4,600 million years to understand the history of  our planet.

And this brings me, in a circuitous sort of way, back to the original tension I noted between the secrets of the logbook, and ideas voiced in the blog you are now reading.
The blog expresses my more rational ideas, considered and formulated at relative leisure, after I've had a chance to reflect on all the facets of a particular challenging event. At that leisure, and in a clear frame of mind, there seems little doubt to me, that we all -- children and adults -- learn and do our best, and become better, when we are free to follow our own choices and make our own decisions.
On the other hand, the logbook contains the tangle of mixed emotions, indecisions, questions and self-doubt, with which I react, as I try to balance the interests of my children and family against the demands and pressures of our society.
Maybe one day I will stand unequivocally with the moms I quoted earlier. But not yet. Not quite yet.

enormous incomprehensible overwhelming

What does this have to do with Barbie dolls?
Visit chris jordan photography. You'll find an answer to this question, but you will also find many more questions unanswered, as the artist grapples with the issues of consumption in modern society. This from his own statement:

The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.

Check it out. You won't look at statistics the same way again.

Attracting wildlife to your garden

I'm not sure this is what they mean, but I'll take whatever wildlife I can get.

What I learned at girl scout camp

Spending a weekend camping with 32 girls is illuminating in all sorts of ways. For me, the biggest lesson was linguistic. I learned a new word.

Ew.

Well, the word wasn't entirely new to me, but I learned it previously in a completely different dialect. The word I knew, and very occasionally used, was more like eee-eww, each of the two syllables distinctly enunciated, with stress on each, spoken with plenty of inflection and appropriately exaggerated facial expressions.

The new word I learned may be in the same family, and is also used to express a level of disgust. However, it has a completely different ring to it. Or no ring. No inflection. No expression. Maybe the slightest sneering curl of the upper lip, only enough to get the word out of the mouth.

Ew.

A junebug fell in the fire.

Ew.

And now it's sizzling.

Ew.

There is a dead junebug in the toilet.

Ew.

Wait, you've got a spider on you.

Ew.

This mattress has maggots.

Ew.

Would you like a breakfast sausage?

Ew.

Who belched?

Ew.

The perfect, brief, compact way to let the world know your sensibilities have been offended.

I have to go now. I have so much to do. After just two days of camping, my daughter and I have brought back five loads of laundry.

Ew.