Well, I hadn't planned on moving, but with a variety of niggling things bothering me about being on other spaces, I decided to learn to use WordPress and establish my blog on my own Web space. Juanita inspired me, although I didn't go the same direction she did. I have to say that I love using WordPress.
Oh, I guess it would be good to direct you to the right place:
http://hobbits8.com/patti
My girls will probably be shortly following me.
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Sep. 3, 2006 Nate & Amy's House
Ben purchased this house in Lafayette, Indiana. It has two bedrooms and one bath and lots of closet space. Yesterday he scraped and painted the garage door.
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Aug. 18, 2006 Truth Through Metaphors
This morning I've been listening to the CD's in The Lost Tools of Writing by Andrew Kern of Circe. Something he said there clarified in my mind the agrarian vs industrial models I've mentioned before.
God designed us to think metaphorically. This is a very important thing.
[There is an ]Analogy between the material, physical realm we live in and the spiritual world. God created us to understand the spiritual realm through the physical realm. That's why the agrarian metaphors are so important and why the industrial economy undercuts the human spirit. We start thinking in factory metaphors instead of agrarian metaphors. But look at Jesus' parables. He doesn't talk about how the factory owner goes into the factory and lines things up. He talks about the sower going into the field because our spiritual lives are organic not mechanistic.
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Aug. 15, 2006 Ideas Have Consequences--again
I don't know how much sense this will make outside the context of the book, but I liked this:
It has been well said that the chief trouble with the contemporary generation is that it has not read the minutes of the last meeting.
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Aug. 14, 2006 Articles Related to Education
Notice the new links I've added to articles related to education by David Crabtree. David is one of the tutors at Gutenberg College where my third son will be returning as a second-year student next month.
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Aug. 14, 2006 Ideas Have Consequences
I've enjoyed re-reading a couple of books this summer. One is Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver. At the time I read it about four years ago, I thought it was so good that I bought a copy for each of my oldest two boys. There are so many good thoughts in it, it's hard to choose one thing to write here. Weaver quotes De Tocqueville concerning different social ideals:
In ages of faith, the final end of life is placed beyond life. The men of those ages, therefore, naturally and almost involuntarily accustom themselves to fix their gaze for many years on some immovable object toward which they are constantly tending; and they learn by insensible degrees to repress a multidue of petty passing desires in order to be the better able to content that great and lasting desire which possesses them...This explains why religious nations have often achieved such lasting results; for whilst they were thinking only of the other world, they had found out the great secret of success in this.
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Aug. 9, 2006 The End of an Era
Well, we've come to another milestone in life. Six years ago my oldest son went off to college in Idaho-- two years later moving on to Rolla, MO. It still felt like he lived at home since he was home for holidays and summers, and many of his belongings still were here. He had a bedroom to come home to. Two years later Ben left for college in Ohio; two years later he also ended up in Rolla, MO. It wasn't 'til the last two years of college that the boys weren't home in the summer.
When my kids left for college, I was excited enough for them that I didn't think of sorrowing over a loss of not having them at home. I missed them, of course, but I was excited for their new opportunities. But it was a bit of a shock the first summer that they had internships when they came home for a short visit but then moved to their respective summer locations two summers ago. That's when if felt as if they were gone from home....but not quite since they still had things here. Since Nate married in December, I could no longer harbor any delusions that he lived at home any more although he still had some things here since they were living in a very tiny house.
Just this last week the final notes have sounded. Nate and Amy came to get the rest of Nate's belongings over the weekend since they will be moving to State College, Pennsylvania for graduate school. Tonight I'm packing up Ben's books in preparation for loading up the rest of his belongings tomorrow night to leave on Friday for Lafayette, Indiana where Ben has just purchased a house. I guess buying a house really means he doesn't live here anymore.
I am still very excited for the boys, but also a little sad. However, we move on to a new phase in life. It just so happens that the boys will be in areas near which we had ancestors. So I'm looking forward to new places to visit, new people to see (okay...so they're dead), and kids to drop in on.
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Aug. 7, 2006 Education and the Industrial Model
I've been reading The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul (he's taken a back seat to books I'm reading in preparation for school right now). There were some connections I made between that book and things said at the CiRCE conference. Although I didn't want to give away the conference with people like Cindy doing such an admirable job of telling about the workshops, I was so struck at the timeliness of one of the themes of the conference. Education was likened to cultivation rather than production. We have such a production-oriented mentality because of the assumptions we have which have been molded by the Industrial Society. Although I'm not sure I'd want to be a true agrarian and go back to the land and do everything ourselves, I do want to make sure I'm not letting my mind be controlled by industrial models in education. Ellul demonstrates how technology has reached it tentacles into every area of life. One example is the production of the car. Once the car was built and was made more efficient, the demand arose to make roads better because the efficiency of the car was wasted and limited by the poor roads. The roads are then made better, but had to be paid for by taxes which required legislation. So we have technology affecting commerce, economics, and politics. In other books, I've read how business came to be so influential in education and how modern educational philosophies reflect business ideals. The CiRCE conference juxtaposed an agrarian model to the industrial model. An industrial model is concerned with the most product for the least money: efficiency. It's concerned with uniformity, not craftmanship. We should never view life that way. We're dealing with living people, not objects to be manipulated.
I was thinking about this this last weekend in looking over what I accomplished last week. I felt that I hadn't gotten much done. I had looked back over the many things that seemed to interrupt my purposes and realized that all those things were important. They were the interruptions of life and involved relationships with other people. SAHMs can particularly have difficulty seeing the importance of what they do because they don't bring home a paycheck or do something in the world that's deemed important by our society. But where does that mindset come from? I believe it comes from buying into the lie of the industrial model into all of life.
I was touched by something one of my sons told me last week. He has stumbled across a blog where the woman was staying at home with children, but she felt that she wasn't doing anything really important *out* in the wide world. He posted that he thought she should never think that what she was doing was not important and not impacting society. Then he said that he felt that his own mom (me!) had a great impact by being home with him and his siblings. It's sort of like the pebble dropped into the pond. There are repercussions beyond which we will ever know. But I think that if we think about what kind of important role we're playing in our children's lives as something we're crafting or cultivating and not something that we're trying to do with the greatest amount of efficiency with the greatest amount of end product, the more satisified and content we'll be in the lives we live.
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Aug. 7, 2006 Book Disclaimer and Circe Conference
I ought to say that my book recommendations do not mean that I recommend them for all people and all ages. Some of the language in Jayber Crow is earthy. If I owned my copy and wanted to let my kids read it, I'd probably go through and use a marker on a half-dozen sentences or so. It's true to life and that's where Wendell Berry shines. He's a master of characterization and capturing the essence of the setting (time and place). The Cherokee Trail has about three sentences that I used a marker on my son's copy, and there's a couple of paragraphs in The American Promise that tells about the practices of a utopian colony that were a little more graphic than I wanted my son to read. Since I'm reading ahead, I don't have trouble catching these things...and obviously you have to own the book to do that. (sometimes I buy two copies and sometimes I get a library copy to have an extra).
As far as the CiRCE conference goes, I wanted to recommend one of my fellow ClassEd friend's blog site. I've put her link in the side panel. She's blogging about it, and I will probably just comment on her site unless I want to talk about something she's not. I've listened to two of the Laura Berquist lectures on CD today.
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Aug. 3, 2006 Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Jayber Crow and Wendell Berry were mentioned frequently at the Circe conference. I checked it out from our local library and wanted to give a quote here:
I didn't come clean about anything, really. What I wanted were courses in book-reading, and I wasn't particular which. Once I got over there in the actual presence of the classroom buildings and the library, it seemed to me that I hungered and thirsted to hear somebody talk about books who knew more about them than I did. I didn't mean I wanted to be a schoolteacher. I just made that my pretense to be there, for I had never heard that anybody ever went to a university just to read books. There had to be a real reason--namely something you wanted to do later. Anyhow, I never took any courses in the college of education. I signed up for literature courses
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Aug. 3, 2006 Trip-May 2005
These are links to the webpages of photos of our trip last May 2005.
Niagara Falls I
Niagara Falls II
Fort Ticonderoga, New York
Saratoga National Battlefield, New York
Boston, Massachusetts I
Boston, Massachusetts II
Boston, Massachusetts III
Boston and Quincy, Massachusetts
Rhode Island I
Rhode Island II
Point Judith, Rhode Island
Gilbert Stuart Birthplace, Rhode Island
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
Antietam, Maryland
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Aug. 2, 2006 School Planning for the Year
Most of my school planning each summer goes towards our history studies which I try to create into an integrated humanities course. So we do writing, history, philosophy, and literature. Sometimes the literature is quite different--it is hard to integrate because there's little literature for the large part of early history and much literature for the relatively small part of later history. We try to read extra books--particularly biographies. I was gratified to hear James Taylor at the Circe conference recommend biographies as a good way to bring poetic knowledge to bear in history. I've always intuitively known that, not knowing that it's called poetic knowledge. It's good to hear someone like Dr. Taylor say it, and of course, expand upon it.
Normally I'm not a huge fan of text books for history particularly in the younger grades. However, I do use them to tie the larger events together to understand the flow of history better. Now that I understand history better, some of the times which seemed bereft of events were really times rich in ideas slowly moving to the next climax in the American story. (I'm not as well versed in world history). So with my high schoolers, I've been able to add some books dealing with ideas more.
We take two years to cover US history. Last year my son Jed and I went through the first half of US history. Even though there are political events in the fifty or so years before the Civil War, they are rather sparse. We think of the Oregon Trail migration, the California Gold Rush, the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision. One book I've actually read three times now, once with Jed last year, is Arguing About Slavery by William Miller. This book chronicles lesser known, ongoing events in the 1820's through 1840's, much of it spearheaded by the great efforts of John Quincy Adams. It is a wonderful book for understanding the political events (including the Missouri Compromise, idea of popular sovereignty, Dred Scott) that were steamrolling towards the Civil War. The Amistad trial took place during this time period. Other books we read were Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, Cherokee Trail of Tears by Ehle, The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth Stampp, and Crisis in American History by Allen Guelzo. We also used the two books I will talk about later.
I've actually never done the second half of history very well with my kids, and so my time this summer has been spent in reading and learning about that era. Just as there were many philosophical things happening in the forty years before the Civil War, there were a lot of philosphical things taking place in the late 1800's and early 1900's. I'm looking forward to learning more. The reason I bring all this up though is that I have found a text book I really like. It is The American Promise published by Bedford/St. Martin's Press. It has many elements of more-vibrant "real" books--the ideas are developed well dealing with opposing sides fairly. It presents a very human view of history so that interest is captured through the stories of the people involved. Opposing Viewpoints in American History by Greenhaven Press forms the basis of our primary source materials. Along with these, we will be using The American Mind a course on DVD produced by The Teaching Company and taught by Allen Guelzo. Of all The Teaching Company "faculty" Allen Guelzo is my favorite. That he's knowledgeable is a given, but his manner conveys his great interest in the subject manner. He speaks as if he is speaking extemporaneously without reference to notes, often slipping into the role of the person about which he is speaking. His vocabulary is wide-ranging and rich, and his manner of speech is elegant and almost poetic. I plan on using other things, but these form the basis of our history studies this year. Now to work on what I'll be doing with my 9th grader.
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Aug. 2, 2006 Update on the "Kids"
It's hard not to call them kids even though three of them are all grown up! We've always homeschooled and so it may be that homeschoolers feel that they have more to prove since sometimes they haven't had the support of friends and family. Many people who don't have supportive families feel they just have to trust that they're doing the right thing. At this point in my life, I've never been happier to have homeschooled my kids. With three more at home left to graduate, I find that I still love homeschooling more each year. I learn new things all the time and my understanding grows. Each year presents new and unique challenges, but the Lord has been gracious to us.
Nate was married last year to an always-homeschooled girl whom he met through church while attending the University of Missouri-Rolla. He graduated in May with his degree in electrical engineering. He's working for a company in Lebanon, MO which he will leave in a few days to move to State College, PA where he will be starting graduate school at Penn State.
Ben also graduated in May (Nate attended an unaccredited Christian college for two years before UMR) from University of Missouri Rolla with a degree in mechanical engineering. He attended Cedarville University for his first two years. He is working for Caterpillar in Mossville, IL this summer and will soon be leaving for Lafayette, Indiana where he'll be attending graduate school at Purdue. Ben is in the process of buying his first house!
Sam just finished his first year at Gutenberg College in Eugene, Oregon. Gutenberg is unique among colleges. It is a different paradigm in education, but one that focuses on greater understanding by the student in an environment of caring tutors who see each student as an individual--all in the context of a Christian worldview. The way education plays itself out is manifest not only in the content of what is taught, but also in the way it is conducted. Truly a marriage of idea and action.
The three still at home are Jed, Abbie, and Grace.
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Aug. 2, 2006 Circe Conference
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I returned Saturday night from one of the best events I've ever attended. It was the annual conference held by the Circe Institute headed up by Andrew Kern. Not only did I learn more and was inspired by this conference more than any other I've attended, but attending with seven other ladies from the ClassED email list made it the most fun conference I've ever attended. I may try to post more about the conference, but for now, I'll just give the link for one of my friends who has written about it on her blog: Dominion Family
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Mar. 13, 2006 The "Kids" at Antietam
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I may or may not add information to this blog. I do like the set-up better than Blogspot's. However, right now anything I've blogged about can be found HERE.
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