(UPDATE) Heh, heh. This was a draft that I didn't mean to publish yet. I guess I hit publish instead of save! I was suffering from a headache and wasn't quite on top of things. Oh well!)
Saturday: left home about 11:00 a.m. Ran into traffic at the Bay bridge and then later in DE at Millsboro. Got here before 5. Granddad and Peggy arrived within 10 minutes. Unpacked and then left to go visit Noel at her house in Berlin. Had a very nice visit with her and Jim. They have a nice house. Rick took everyone out to dinner which I missed because I was at Noel's. I ate boardwalk fries and was satisfied with that.
Sunday: got up and went grocery shopping. Got everyone up in time and then walked to noon mass. Saw Alden's family on the street waving at us! They are vacationing here too! Ate a delicious salad with lump crabmeat for lunch. Sat out on beach in late afternoon. Very damp and cloudy but beach is beautiful and breezy. Rick grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner. On the boardwalk they had a Beatles band playing. Fun.
Monday: got up early and took a nice walk on the beach. Later walked around trying to find the place where they sell passes to the pools at Sea Colony. Couldn't find it so came home and got in a car to look. Turns out it was just one block farther than I had walked. Rick worked most of the day. I went to grocery store again to get things for Grandad's birthday. Rick burned chicken After dinner, Rick and I took a walk on the board walk and saw that they were playing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on a huge screen on the beach. We came home and made Josh take Becky up to see it. Joe and Sean had gone to the beach. Sean loves the water. Becky is rereading a lot of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.
Tuesday: woke up with a headache so didn't get to beach. Getting annoyed at my poor in laws who spend the entire time watching TV 24/7. I can't stand it. Made pancakes and bacon for everyone. Cleaned up a bit. Rick worked almost all day. I tried to read and nap with little success. Alden and his sister Olivia came over. Josh, Sean, Joe and Alden played Life all afternoon. Becky entertained Olivia. I was getting pretty bored. Waited for Hannah, Will, Peter and Johnnie to show up. They got here around 5:30. Suddenly, things didn't seem so dull. Rick got crabs and shrimp and I cooked corn. We had a big feast with Rick showing all the kids the proper way to eat crabs. After dinner Rick and I took another walk and went and ate ice cream.
Wednesday: I was going to try to go to daily mass but Rick got up early and asked if I wanted to go to breakfast. We had a nice breakfast date. Came home and he started working again. I made eggs for the others. Poor Will woke up with a very sore throat. I think he might have a little fever too. He's just sitting around playing his guitar or on the computer. Hannah and Peter took off on their own. Steve's been very quiet today. I walked to the farmers market and bought some melons, potatoes and tomatoes. We are having left over crabs, sloppy joe's salad and melon for dinner. It was quite chilly this a.m. But we went out on the beach around noon (Becky, Johnnie, Joe and Sean and myself). It was absolutely lovely. Sean, Joe and Johnnie played in the water a long time and went way out so I was a little nervous but they were fine. Becky found another little girl her age equally into gymnastics. They played together on the beach and now want to have their own gymnastics routine at the boardwalk talent show in Friday night. We keep running to people we know from back home. That's why it is crowded here. Everyone from North VA is here!
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Sunday, August 11, 2013
The Forgotten Founding Father - Book 38
(NOTE: I am at the beach right now in a house with a bad router. Forgive me if I don't link the book to Amazon. You'll have to look it up yourself!)
It took me a long time to get through this book. The Forgotten Founding Father; Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture by Joshus Kendall was both intriguing and annoying. The history of Noah Webster and his contributions to America was interesting, what was annoying was the author's cheap, amateurish and anachronistic constant psychoanalysis of Webster. Really at times I laughed out loud at the silliness of the author's insistence on stretching or twisting things so as to show Webster having some kind of psychological issue. At other times, I just had to put the book down for a while until I could get over my irritation. What kept me going was a real interest in the life of this remarkable man. And to Kendall's credit, he is very thorough in systematically leading the reader through Webster's whole life and explaining his connections to many of the great people of the day.
When I first started reading the book, I was so put off by the amateur psychoanalysis that I looked up the book at Amazon and was amazed to find that so many people gave it a good review. The author constantly tries to paint Webster as neurotic or, I don't know. something! Maybe he was somewhat neurotic. Aren't we all? But he kept trying to paint Webster as a loser, crackpot and obviously, Webster was not. For instance, the author belittles Webster's penchant for collecting data on the sizes of towns he visited during his long tours where Webster was promoting his Blue-back speller. He laughs at Webster's OCD tendencies to record the weather. Has this author read so little history that he doesn't know that back in those days people often journaled about the weather? Did he not know that in the age of the Enlightenment, many educated men collected data? It was the age of cataloging and organizing information. I guess any meteorologist or statistician has OCD! Another way that Kendall would exaggerate things: he'd describe Webster in a way that didn't fit with the facts. After pages and pages where we hear about all the letters that Webster is writing to various friends and family, Kendall calls Webster a loner. Then just a few pages later he brings up the fact that Webster is happily married and with seven children. Doesn't sound like a loner to me! Or another time, Kendall, when talking about the success of Webster's dictionary, says that finally he's made a comeback after twenty five years of a being a persona non grata in his own country. Yet Kendall has just told us all about the past 25 yesrs when Webster was a state representative, helped to found Amherst college, and got unsolicited funding from the Supreme Court justice John Jay. Is that how a persona non grata is treated? I don't think so! Webster had fallen out of favor with some people. But that is not the same as being a persona non grata in one's own country!
It is ironic that Webster himself was all about clarity in language and being very accurate in defining words, because while reading this book, I often found myself wondering over the word choices of his biographer! It was jarring that the author has to try so hard to conform Webster to his own seemingly pre-conceived notions and couldn't just write about him. How he had ups and downs in life. How he could be cranky. How he changed his political beliefs as he aged (nobody does that, do they?) without having this silly box he (the author) was determined to wrestle every fact into.
I did feel I learned a lot in this book. The author is thorough and it was very interesting to see famous people like George Washington and Ben Franklin from a different perspective. Webster was connected to so many different people in one way or another. I own an old copy of my grandmother's Blue-back Speller from 1919. And I have always loved a good dictionary, so when I saw the title of this book, I knew I wanted to read it. I am glad I did, in spite of Joshua Kendall's very annoying faults.
For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.
It took me a long time to get through this book. The Forgotten Founding Father; Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture by Joshus Kendall was both intriguing and annoying. The history of Noah Webster and his contributions to America was interesting, what was annoying was the author's cheap, amateurish and anachronistic constant psychoanalysis of Webster. Really at times I laughed out loud at the silliness of the author's insistence on stretching or twisting things so as to show Webster having some kind of psychological issue. At other times, I just had to put the book down for a while until I could get over my irritation. What kept me going was a real interest in the life of this remarkable man. And to Kendall's credit, he is very thorough in systematically leading the reader through Webster's whole life and explaining his connections to many of the great people of the day.
When I first started reading the book, I was so put off by the amateur psychoanalysis that I looked up the book at Amazon and was amazed to find that so many people gave it a good review. The author constantly tries to paint Webster as neurotic or, I don't know. something! Maybe he was somewhat neurotic. Aren't we all? But he kept trying to paint Webster as a loser, crackpot and obviously, Webster was not. For instance, the author belittles Webster's penchant for collecting data on the sizes of towns he visited during his long tours where Webster was promoting his Blue-back speller. He laughs at Webster's OCD tendencies to record the weather. Has this author read so little history that he doesn't know that back in those days people often journaled about the weather? Did he not know that in the age of the Enlightenment, many educated men collected data? It was the age of cataloging and organizing information. I guess any meteorologist or statistician has OCD! Another way that Kendall would exaggerate things: he'd describe Webster in a way that didn't fit with the facts. After pages and pages where we hear about all the letters that Webster is writing to various friends and family, Kendall calls Webster a loner. Then just a few pages later he brings up the fact that Webster is happily married and with seven children. Doesn't sound like a loner to me! Or another time, Kendall, when talking about the success of Webster's dictionary, says that finally he's made a comeback after twenty five years of a being a persona non grata in his own country. Yet Kendall has just told us all about the past 25 yesrs when Webster was a state representative, helped to found Amherst college, and got unsolicited funding from the Supreme Court justice John Jay. Is that how a persona non grata is treated? I don't think so! Webster had fallen out of favor with some people. But that is not the same as being a persona non grata in one's own country!
It is ironic that Webster himself was all about clarity in language and being very accurate in defining words, because while reading this book, I often found myself wondering over the word choices of his biographer! It was jarring that the author has to try so hard to conform Webster to his own seemingly pre-conceived notions and couldn't just write about him. How he had ups and downs in life. How he could be cranky. How he changed his political beliefs as he aged (nobody does that, do they?) without having this silly box he (the author) was determined to wrestle every fact into.
I did feel I learned a lot in this book. The author is thorough and it was very interesting to see famous people like George Washington and Ben Franklin from a different perspective. Webster was connected to so many different people in one way or another. I own an old copy of my grandmother's Blue-back Speller from 1919. And I have always loved a good dictionary, so when I saw the title of this book, I knew I wanted to read it. I am glad I did, in spite of Joshua Kendall's very annoying faults.
For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Becky's Curriculum for 7th Grade
This week I've been in a bit of a homeschool nesting mood. You know, where you suddenly get the urge to clean out your bookshelves so you can move in the books you'll be using in the upcoming academic year? You start thinking about what kind of notebooks to use and where is the best place for the electric pencil sharpener? That sort of thing. I actually ordered a couple of last minute books for Becky. Here's the lowdown:
Math:
We're going with Saxon again. I don't even know if this is the best way to each Becky but she is insistent. All my kids have at one point or another asked for Saxon. They like it even if it is dull and busywork-y at times. Becky especially needs lots of repetition. She does not retain mathy things well. The other day she asked Rick to help her with multiplying fractions. She couldn't remember step one. Rick was trying to prod her and she said: Dad! I have learned this already 6 or 7 times! I don't know why but I can never remember it! The problem is math bores her deeply. You can see her struggling to keep her eyes from glazing over. But she insists that Saxon is for her because she saw all her older siblings doing Saxon and she wants to follow in their footsteps. But thank God, we have a math tutor! Yes, I will no longer be teaching the math directly. Our lovely, fun, creative math tutor will be doing that job! There is hope for Becky! the bad thing is I couldn't find my Saxon 7/6 textbook. I tried to borrow someone else's but they only had the 3rd edition and darn it, I have the solutions and tests/quizzes for the 4th. So I just broke down and ordered new textbook from Seton. Luckily it is paperback and only $32.
Science:
I don't usually focus on science much at all. And Becky isn't a science person either, though it's better than math. This is the one subject I am predicting will fall off the radar screen at some point during the year. However, I am eternally hopeful and darn it, this is my last homeschooling child. You'd think I'd be able to stick to it for just one kid, right???? Anyway, I plan to use Seton's 7th grade science book. It isn't overwhelming, it is pretty well written and it jives with a certain blogger's science program. If you haven't visited LaPazFarm you are in for a treat. Theresa is a former science teacher and she's all about making science a pillar of her homeschool. She's creative and she knows her stuff. I plan to tag along with her. I got the A Really Short History of Nearly Everything and it is a great book. So dear Lord, help me stick with science this year!
History:
We'll be using the Catholic Textbook Project's A Light to the Nation; The History of Christian Civilization, Part 1. We are following the syllabus that Aquinas Learning is doing. So hopefully, Becky will be taught history one day a week at Aquinas Learning and then we'll follow up with reading and homework during the rest of the week. I think our Aquinas Learning Center is planning on a couple of field trips. We want to go to the Medieval Times show as a group and we also plan to visit the Franciscan Monastery in Washington D.C. I hope to supplement at home with maybe a movie or two and maybe some crafts. Oh also we are going to visit the tower on the Shrine of the National Basilica on 9/9. I think learning about church architecture is a good tie in with our history studies. In addition to the textbook I think Becky also has to read St. Margaret Clitherow; The Pearl of York. Not sure if there are other supplementary readings out there that I've missed.
Geography:
Becky likes Geography. This is a separate subject in the K-6 program of Aquinas Learning and it was always one of Becky's favorites. At the 7th grade level though it gets completely wrapped into History. So I thought I'd continue with it a bit as a separate subject too. I have this wonderful old map skills curriculum that I bought from a teacher's store (which has since gone out of business, sob) a long time ago. Hannah and Will did this program, but it then got buried away where old curriculum goes to collect dust. I just unearthed when I was looking for the Saxon 7/6 textbook and I thought, wow, this will be perfect for Becky. It is a really cute program that teaches a lot of practical stuff. The older kids enjoyed and I think Becky will too.
Cursive:
I don't know why, but my kids still need to practice their cursive well into high school. We just don't take to it! Actually, Rick never did take to it and still prints. Hannah resisted it mightily but realized in college it really helped with speeding up note taking. All the boys rejected it eventually. But with Becky I am determined to continue to force her to practice it. I was looking around at programs for older kids and decided on Seton's. What's great about it is that it ties in with geography because the copy work you do is all about various geographical facts. Because she likes learning that kind of thing, I think it will soften the blow! I don't like the way the Seton handwriting books are bound though, so I plan to take it to Staples and get the binding cut off and changed to a spiral wire binding at the top of the page.
English:
I will be teaching this class at Aquinas Learning. We are going to use The Lost Tools of Writing which is a great program based on the classical study of rhetoric but beautifully simplified for us modern folks. Should be a good year for writing. Some of the writing will be tied to the literature we read. The line up of books for this year:
The Children of Odin by Padriac Colum
Beowulf retold by Ian Serraillier
The Son of Charlemagne by Barbara Willard
A Proud Taste of Scarlet and Miniver by E.L. Konigsburg
Lay Siege to Heaven by Louis de Wohl
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by J.R.R. Tolkien
Henry V by Shakespeare
Stories from Dante by Mary MacGregor
Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
Latin:
Becky will be taking the Intro to Latin course with Aquinas Learning. The base text is Wheelock's but a high school Latin teacher wrote her own adaptive workbook to go with the first half of the text. Plus, she teaches the children directly via video lessons that we access through the Aquinas Learning course site. So it really makes Latin easy to teach at home. I'm looking forward to really delving into Latin with Becky this year. We've kind of skirted around it for years so she only really knows a little bit here and there. It will be satisfying to get into the meat of it!
Logic:
Becky will be using the text The Discovery of Deduction put out my one of my favorite resources Classical Academic Press. I'm looking forward to relearning all this alongside her. I took Logic way back in college and barely got a C. I tried to study it with Hannah and William and simply couldn't keep up. Now's my chance! This will be taught during the one day a week Aquinas Learning co-op day. We'll follow up with homework during the rest of the week.
Catechism:
I have to register Becky as a homeschooler in our parish. She's officially on the Confirmation track. The Aquinas Learning catechism for this year looks great. I think we will get some deep learning in.
As for extracurricular stuff, Becky decided she did not like being on the competitive team at gymnastics. The coaches were mean and she felt inferior to the other girls which made all the intensive practicing really uncomfortable. She shed a lot of tears. We decided that this was supposed to be FUN and not something that made her miserable. So I plan to sign her up at another gymnastics place that has a class for older girls but isn't part of being a competitive team. That class meets on Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons. She's supposed to go twice a week.
I am trying to set up a graphite drawing class for Becky. I need to get a couple more students to get a class going. The teacher was Becky's AL mentor last year for the 4th-6th grade class. She's an awesome artist! Becky likes art but her previous art class was much more focused on projects and was just getting, well, too boring. It is pretty much the same thing every year and she's done it for 3 years now. This class will really focus on the skill of learning to draw realistically.
I also am hoping to sign Becky up for guitar and voice lessons. This may happen on Tuesday mornings which I don't really like because I wanted mornings set aside for academics, but it can't be helped. So we'll have to work around that. The teacher though is the musical director for a very popular and beloved community theater. I think Becky has her eye on being in one of the performances at some point, maybe next summer.
Lastly, Becky is now a Pioneer in her American Heritage Girls troop. This troop is fantastic. I am going to be a co-leader but thank God there are two other leaders as well.
So Becky will be busy, busy, busy. The hard part will be disciplining ourselves to buckle down and do our work. Becky will resist mightily at first, however, she loves to be busy and with the exception of math (and science somewhat) she loves learning. We just have to get over the initial hump of getting into a routine. I told her since she was my last homeschool that I was determined she would be the best educated 7th grader ever! She kind of liked that idea!
The house is going to be weird this year. Sean will be going to high school. I know I'll have to be up to get him launched each day. He'll be gone the bulk of the day so it will just be me and Becky rattling around the house. Hannah will be home but she's going to school full time in the evenings and hopefully working part-time during the day as well as studying like crazy for all those evening classes. So really we don't know when we'll actually see her. Josh and Will will be off at their respective colleges. So it is good that we'll be busy. We really function much better that way.
This took a long time to write! And this was a day I decided I'd stay off the computer!
Math:
We're going with Saxon again. I don't even know if this is the best way to each Becky but she is insistent. All my kids have at one point or another asked for Saxon. They like it even if it is dull and busywork-y at times. Becky especially needs lots of repetition. She does not retain mathy things well. The other day she asked Rick to help her with multiplying fractions. She couldn't remember step one. Rick was trying to prod her and she said: Dad! I have learned this already 6 or 7 times! I don't know why but I can never remember it! The problem is math bores her deeply. You can see her struggling to keep her eyes from glazing over. But she insists that Saxon is for her because she saw all her older siblings doing Saxon and she wants to follow in their footsteps. But thank God, we have a math tutor! Yes, I will no longer be teaching the math directly. Our lovely, fun, creative math tutor will be doing that job! There is hope for Becky! the bad thing is I couldn't find my Saxon 7/6 textbook. I tried to borrow someone else's but they only had the 3rd edition and darn it, I have the solutions and tests/quizzes for the 4th. So I just broke down and ordered new textbook from Seton. Luckily it is paperback and only $32.
Science:
I don't usually focus on science much at all. And Becky isn't a science person either, though it's better than math. This is the one subject I am predicting will fall off the radar screen at some point during the year. However, I am eternally hopeful and darn it, this is my last homeschooling child. You'd think I'd be able to stick to it for just one kid, right???? Anyway, I plan to use Seton's 7th grade science book. It isn't overwhelming, it is pretty well written and it jives with a certain blogger's science program. If you haven't visited LaPazFarm you are in for a treat. Theresa is a former science teacher and she's all about making science a pillar of her homeschool. She's creative and she knows her stuff. I plan to tag along with her. I got the A Really Short History of Nearly Everything and it is a great book. So dear Lord, help me stick with science this year!
History:
We'll be using the Catholic Textbook Project's A Light to the Nation; The History of Christian Civilization, Part 1. We are following the syllabus that Aquinas Learning is doing. So hopefully, Becky will be taught history one day a week at Aquinas Learning and then we'll follow up with reading and homework during the rest of the week. I think our Aquinas Learning Center is planning on a couple of field trips. We want to go to the Medieval Times show as a group and we also plan to visit the Franciscan Monastery in Washington D.C. I hope to supplement at home with maybe a movie or two and maybe some crafts. Oh also we are going to visit the tower on the Shrine of the National Basilica on 9/9. I think learning about church architecture is a good tie in with our history studies. In addition to the textbook I think Becky also has to read St. Margaret Clitherow; The Pearl of York. Not sure if there are other supplementary readings out there that I've missed.
Geography:
Becky likes Geography. This is a separate subject in the K-6 program of Aquinas Learning and it was always one of Becky's favorites. At the 7th grade level though it gets completely wrapped into History. So I thought I'd continue with it a bit as a separate subject too. I have this wonderful old map skills curriculum that I bought from a teacher's store (which has since gone out of business, sob) a long time ago. Hannah and Will did this program, but it then got buried away where old curriculum goes to collect dust. I just unearthed when I was looking for the Saxon 7/6 textbook and I thought, wow, this will be perfect for Becky. It is a really cute program that teaches a lot of practical stuff. The older kids enjoyed and I think Becky will too.
Cursive:
I don't know why, but my kids still need to practice their cursive well into high school. We just don't take to it! Actually, Rick never did take to it and still prints. Hannah resisted it mightily but realized in college it really helped with speeding up note taking. All the boys rejected it eventually. But with Becky I am determined to continue to force her to practice it. I was looking around at programs for older kids and decided on Seton's. What's great about it is that it ties in with geography because the copy work you do is all about various geographical facts. Because she likes learning that kind of thing, I think it will soften the blow! I don't like the way the Seton handwriting books are bound though, so I plan to take it to Staples and get the binding cut off and changed to a spiral wire binding at the top of the page.
English:
I will be teaching this class at Aquinas Learning. We are going to use The Lost Tools of Writing which is a great program based on the classical study of rhetoric but beautifully simplified for us modern folks. Should be a good year for writing. Some of the writing will be tied to the literature we read. The line up of books for this year:
The Children of Odin by Padriac Colum
Beowulf retold by Ian Serraillier
The Son of Charlemagne by Barbara Willard
A Proud Taste of Scarlet and Miniver by E.L. Konigsburg
Lay Siege to Heaven by Louis de Wohl
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by J.R.R. Tolkien
Henry V by Shakespeare
Stories from Dante by Mary MacGregor
Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
Latin:
Becky will be taking the Intro to Latin course with Aquinas Learning. The base text is Wheelock's but a high school Latin teacher wrote her own adaptive workbook to go with the first half of the text. Plus, she teaches the children directly via video lessons that we access through the Aquinas Learning course site. So it really makes Latin easy to teach at home. I'm looking forward to really delving into Latin with Becky this year. We've kind of skirted around it for years so she only really knows a little bit here and there. It will be satisfying to get into the meat of it!
Logic:
Becky will be using the text The Discovery of Deduction put out my one of my favorite resources Classical Academic Press. I'm looking forward to relearning all this alongside her. I took Logic way back in college and barely got a C. I tried to study it with Hannah and William and simply couldn't keep up. Now's my chance! This will be taught during the one day a week Aquinas Learning co-op day. We'll follow up with homework during the rest of the week.
Catechism:
I have to register Becky as a homeschooler in our parish. She's officially on the Confirmation track. The Aquinas Learning catechism for this year looks great. I think we will get some deep learning in.
As for extracurricular stuff, Becky decided she did not like being on the competitive team at gymnastics. The coaches were mean and she felt inferior to the other girls which made all the intensive practicing really uncomfortable. She shed a lot of tears. We decided that this was supposed to be FUN and not something that made her miserable. So I plan to sign her up at another gymnastics place that has a class for older girls but isn't part of being a competitive team. That class meets on Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons. She's supposed to go twice a week.
I am trying to set up a graphite drawing class for Becky. I need to get a couple more students to get a class going. The teacher was Becky's AL mentor last year for the 4th-6th grade class. She's an awesome artist! Becky likes art but her previous art class was much more focused on projects and was just getting, well, too boring. It is pretty much the same thing every year and she's done it for 3 years now. This class will really focus on the skill of learning to draw realistically.
I also am hoping to sign Becky up for guitar and voice lessons. This may happen on Tuesday mornings which I don't really like because I wanted mornings set aside for academics, but it can't be helped. So we'll have to work around that. The teacher though is the musical director for a very popular and beloved community theater. I think Becky has her eye on being in one of the performances at some point, maybe next summer.
Lastly, Becky is now a Pioneer in her American Heritage Girls troop. This troop is fantastic. I am going to be a co-leader but thank God there are two other leaders as well.
So Becky will be busy, busy, busy. The hard part will be disciplining ourselves to buckle down and do our work. Becky will resist mightily at first, however, she loves to be busy and with the exception of math (and science somewhat) she loves learning. We just have to get over the initial hump of getting into a routine. I told her since she was my last homeschool that I was determined she would be the best educated 7th grader ever! She kind of liked that idea!
The house is going to be weird this year. Sean will be going to high school. I know I'll have to be up to get him launched each day. He'll be gone the bulk of the day so it will just be me and Becky rattling around the house. Hannah will be home but she's going to school full time in the evenings and hopefully working part-time during the day as well as studying like crazy for all those evening classes. So really we don't know when we'll actually see her. Josh and Will will be off at their respective colleges. So it is good that we'll be busy. We really function much better that way.
This took a long time to write! And this was a day I decided I'd stay off the computer!
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Escape from Camp 14 - Book 37
Harrowing would be an apt adjective for this book. Grim and horrifying would be two other words to use. Escape from Camp 14 is the story of Shin In Geun, a child born and raised in a North Korean prison camp and the only known prisoner to successfully escape and make his way to freedom. His father's crime was to be the brother of someone who had defected to South Korea. In North Korea if someone in your family commits a crime the whole family gets punished to the third generation, so that means you can be born into a prison camp because of something your grandfather or great uncle did. Shin is the product of his parents' 'reward marriage.' The only way to get married is if you are being rewarded for something, then the guards get to pick out a bride for you and for a few nights a year you get to have conjugal relations. Everyone in the camp is rewarded for 'snitching.' Shin was raised to snitch, seeing his parents as only competitors for food. In the prison camps you don't live much past your forties anyway because everyone is essentially a slave given subsistence amounts of food. Hunger was an always present thing to Shin. Brutality was just part of life. Guards had the power of life and death over you and at any moment you could be beaten to death or shot. Torture was also part of life.
How Shin managed to survive such an inhumane place, and then astonishingly escape, and get to freedom eventually, is a really gripping, heart-wrenching story. He is currently living in South Korea helping with human rights causes. It has taken him years to emotionally and psychologically recover enough to really be able to function at a basic level. He continues to try to heal and has chosen to dedicate his life to trying to help those he left behind.
This is a bleak glimpse into the cruel and evil darkness that humans are so very capable of. It's terrifying but something everyone should be aware of. Pray for North Korea. If you want to help out in a more practical way check out Liberty in North Korea.
For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.
How Shin managed to survive such an inhumane place, and then astonishingly escape, and get to freedom eventually, is a really gripping, heart-wrenching story. He is currently living in South Korea helping with human rights causes. It has taken him years to emotionally and psychologically recover enough to really be able to function at a basic level. He continues to try to heal and has chosen to dedicate his life to trying to help those he left behind.
This is a bleak glimpse into the cruel and evil darkness that humans are so very capable of. It's terrifying but something everyone should be aware of. Pray for North Korea. If you want to help out in a more practical way check out Liberty in North Korea.
For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Good News - 8/6/13
I just started reading a wonderful gem of a book for my morning prayer. It is The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, translated by Ronald Knox. I have heard about this book all my life but have finally gotten around to reading it. Wow, is all I can say! I think, for me, this will rank right up there with Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales and The Secret Diary of Elisabeth LeSeur in terms of practical heart to heart, profound advice on how to grow in devotion. I can't take in language that is too mystical or lofty. I am just not that smart, but these books are written to regular everyday people and they really resonate with me.
Here's what I read today:
Good stuff! It is hard to believe this was written back in the 15th century. It is so fresh. I am sure that has something to do with Knox's translation, but also it is a good reminder of how humans are all essentially the same no matter the age or place. Wisdom transcends time!
Here's what I read today:
As for knowledge, it comes natural to all of us to want it; but what can knowledge do for us, without the fear of God? Give me a plain, unpretentious farm-hand, content to serve God; there is more to be made of him than of some conceited University professor who forgets that he has a soul to save, because he is so busy watching the stars. To know yourself - that means feeling your own worthlessness, losing all taste for human praise. If my knowledge embraced the whole of creation, what good would it do me in God's sight? It is by my actions that he will judge me.
Good stuff! It is hard to believe this was written back in the 15th century. It is so fresh. I am sure that has something to do with Knox's translation, but also it is a good reminder of how humans are all essentially the same no matter the age or place. Wisdom transcends time!
Monday, August 5, 2013
The Art of Freedom - Book 36
The Art of Freedom; Teaching Humanities to the Poor by Earl Shorris is sort of his memoir about how his humanities brainchild was conceived and grew into an international program. I had never heard of Shorris before but apparently I was just ignorant! He passed away last year. He was a respected teacher and author who spent the last 17 years of his life promoting his Clemente program which originally was a year long humanities course taught to the poor. The idea for the program began from a conversation Shorris had with a woman prison inmate in New York. She said that what the poor really needed to get a head in life was 'the moral life of downtown.' By this she meant the ability to appreciate plays, classical music and art museums. Shorris agreed with her. To him the humanities are truly freeing; they reflect the true humanity of man and by studying philosophy, literature, history and art history, the students learn to think for themselves; their horizons are broadened so that they can negotiate the obstacles and vagaries of life in a much more intellectual way. Free men make better citizens. He believed democracy can only truly flourish if people are educated in the humanities.
Shorris wrote about the actual Clemente curriculum in his book Riches for the Poor. I think that I would have understood The Art of Freedom better if I had read this book first. Art of Freedom is really about Shorris' challenges in promoting the program. It started in New York then moved to different places in the U.S. and Canada, including Native Americans in Oklahoma, and Native Alaskans as well as to Muslims in the Sudan, Mayans and Aztecs in Mexico, the poor in Australia (including the Aborigines) and Seoul, South Korea. I didn't understand a lot of the details. It was a glimpse into the world of academia fund raising. I didn't even know there were such things as Humanities Councils and the like where people meet and seriously discuss things like offering free humanities courses to the poor. Shorris lists a lot of names of people he met and became friends with. At times, The Art of Freedom almost reads like a long acknowledgement section of book. He's busy thanking the many people who helped get this program up and running in various communities around the world. While I found the inner workings of academia mildly interesting I found the glimpses into the different cultures a lot more fascinating.
Shorris had this wonderful way of holding together two distinct threads in constant tension with each other: one is the idea of the classics of Western Civilization and how rich and profoundly important they are. The other is the value of non-Western culture. I really appreciated his ability to love both! I always thought the traditional classical way went a little overboard in that it completely ignores humanity outside its own tradition. For instance my daughter just graduated from the University of Dallas where she was steeped in Aristotle and Aquinas, which is all very wonderful, but she does feel ignorant about the rest of the world. On the other hand, the promotion of multiculturalism to the point where anything smacking of 'dead, white males' is immediately condemned goes too far the other way and in fact amounts to academics scorning the very shoulders they stand on. There has to be a happy medium out there somewhere! Mr Shorris seemed to have found a way to marry the two in a just and balanced way. His life is devoted to the classics of Western Civilization but he also is fascinated with all types of culture and has a real love for people of all races and creeds.
The other really interesting thing about this book were the testimonials from the students themselves. Students who had grown up marginalized, as drug abusers, homeless and really, what we would consider the dregs of society, but they longed to pick themselves up. They longed to be rescued and to have some part in rescuing themselves. Somehow they found out about the Clemente program, applied, were interviewed and then enrolled. And for many of them, it was an absolutely life changing experience. Wouldn't you know? Turns out the poor are people too who think and question, who crave beauty and knowledge. They want to discuss Socrates and Plato, read and understand Shakespeare, learn to appreciate art and have a greater understanding of history. Some of these testimonials are amazing and very moving.
This book gave me a lot of hope. There are many, many good people out there and there are many ways that we can help our fellow brothers and sisters. Earl Shorris is a real hero in my view.
For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.
Shorris wrote about the actual Clemente curriculum in his book Riches for the Poor. I think that I would have understood The Art of Freedom better if I had read this book first. Art of Freedom is really about Shorris' challenges in promoting the program. It started in New York then moved to different places in the U.S. and Canada, including Native Americans in Oklahoma, and Native Alaskans as well as to Muslims in the Sudan, Mayans and Aztecs in Mexico, the poor in Australia (including the Aborigines) and Seoul, South Korea. I didn't understand a lot of the details. It was a glimpse into the world of academia fund raising. I didn't even know there were such things as Humanities Councils and the like where people meet and seriously discuss things like offering free humanities courses to the poor. Shorris lists a lot of names of people he met and became friends with. At times, The Art of Freedom almost reads like a long acknowledgement section of book. He's busy thanking the many people who helped get this program up and running in various communities around the world. While I found the inner workings of academia mildly interesting I found the glimpses into the different cultures a lot more fascinating.
Shorris had this wonderful way of holding together two distinct threads in constant tension with each other: one is the idea of the classics of Western Civilization and how rich and profoundly important they are. The other is the value of non-Western culture. I really appreciated his ability to love both! I always thought the traditional classical way went a little overboard in that it completely ignores humanity outside its own tradition. For instance my daughter just graduated from the University of Dallas where she was steeped in Aristotle and Aquinas, which is all very wonderful, but she does feel ignorant about the rest of the world. On the other hand, the promotion of multiculturalism to the point where anything smacking of 'dead, white males' is immediately condemned goes too far the other way and in fact amounts to academics scorning the very shoulders they stand on. There has to be a happy medium out there somewhere! Mr Shorris seemed to have found a way to marry the two in a just and balanced way. His life is devoted to the classics of Western Civilization but he also is fascinated with all types of culture and has a real love for people of all races and creeds.
The other really interesting thing about this book were the testimonials from the students themselves. Students who had grown up marginalized, as drug abusers, homeless and really, what we would consider the dregs of society, but they longed to pick themselves up. They longed to be rescued and to have some part in rescuing themselves. Somehow they found out about the Clemente program, applied, were interviewed and then enrolled. And for many of them, it was an absolutely life changing experience. Wouldn't you know? Turns out the poor are people too who think and question, who crave beauty and knowledge. They want to discuss Socrates and Plato, read and understand Shakespeare, learn to appreciate art and have a greater understanding of history. Some of these testimonials are amazing and very moving.
This book gave me a lot of hope. There are many, many good people out there and there are many ways that we can help our fellow brothers and sisters. Earl Shorris is a real hero in my view.
For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Weekly Plans - 8/4/13
Life has really thrown me off my blogging stride these past couple of weeks. I haven't blogged my 52 Books because I haven't managed to finish the 4 books I am reading at present! I haven't even posted in the Intentional Disciples Group Read for two weeks! Not quite sure how that happened. . . . anyway, I've been taking a look at my schedule for next year and if it includes getting Sean to high school by 7:45, that means we'll be getting up much earlier than we ever have before and I won't have time in the morning like I usually do to blog and get on line. I'm thinking this is a good thing. I might really reduce my blogging/internet surfing a lot come August/September.
This weekend I got to visit with my sisters Lisa and Sharon for a bit Saturday morning. It was so nice to catch up with them. Today after Mass, Becky and I are going to see a local community theater perform Bye, Bye, Birdie. I've never seen that particular musical. The music director also teaches guitar and voice and we are going to meet her because we are hoping Becky can take lessons from her.
Also today, Josh needs to watch two more lectures in The American Identity, read more Frederick Douglass and mow the lawn. The weather is supposed to turn nice. Yesterday it was very rainy and cool. Today, dry, nice temperature and sunny! Sean needs to listen to one or two cds for To Kill A Mockingbird. I think he's enjoying the story.
Monday - In the a.m. I hope to clean up the front hall and living room. In the afternoon, I have my doctor's appt to check on my stitches, and at the same time Will needs to be picked up at the airport. Hannah will probably spend a good portion of the day doing homework/studying for her class on Tuesday. Josh needs to continue with his academic stuff, as does Sean. Also, the Solara needs to go to the shop.
Tuesday - personal trainer at 10:30. I'm dreading that after a week off! I also am supposed to meet with the new RE Director at Church but don't know when. I need to take Josh shopping. Haven't done that yet. Hannah has her class. Will will be back. Josh should probably finish up anything he hasn't yet. He needs to write his 5 paragraph essay. Sean continues with To Kill a Mockingbird. Becky is a free as a bird this week! I do want to tackle bathrooms that day. (Trying to get house clean before vacation).
Wednesday - Josh has 9:15 doctor's appt for his check up. Get doctor to fill out papers and then send along to Christendom. I want to really tackle the house, vacuuming, dusting and washing floors. I want everybody to pitch in. CLC in the evening.
Thursday - Clean bedrooms, perhaps more shopping for Josh.
Friday - laundry in prep for the beach. Tidying basement would be a good idea. Personal trainer at 5:00 p.m. Getting everything packed up and ready. Peter is staying to housesit. He doesn't want to give up working. At some point this week Rick will be back in San Francisco and won't be home until late Friday night, possibly.
Saturday off to the beach with some combination of my offspring!
I need to try to finish up Cheaper by the Dozen before vacation. I've been reading it off and on now for several weeks to Sean and Becky.
This weekend I got to visit with my sisters Lisa and Sharon for a bit Saturday morning. It was so nice to catch up with them. Today after Mass, Becky and I are going to see a local community theater perform Bye, Bye, Birdie. I've never seen that particular musical. The music director also teaches guitar and voice and we are going to meet her because we are hoping Becky can take lessons from her.
Also today, Josh needs to watch two more lectures in The American Identity, read more Frederick Douglass and mow the lawn. The weather is supposed to turn nice. Yesterday it was very rainy and cool. Today, dry, nice temperature and sunny! Sean needs to listen to one or two cds for To Kill A Mockingbird. I think he's enjoying the story.
Monday - In the a.m. I hope to clean up the front hall and living room. In the afternoon, I have my doctor's appt to check on my stitches, and at the same time Will needs to be picked up at the airport. Hannah will probably spend a good portion of the day doing homework/studying for her class on Tuesday. Josh needs to continue with his academic stuff, as does Sean. Also, the Solara needs to go to the shop.
Tuesday - personal trainer at 10:30. I'm dreading that after a week off! I also am supposed to meet with the new RE Director at Church but don't know when. I need to take Josh shopping. Haven't done that yet. Hannah has her class. Will will be back. Josh should probably finish up anything he hasn't yet. He needs to write his 5 paragraph essay. Sean continues with To Kill a Mockingbird. Becky is a free as a bird this week! I do want to tackle bathrooms that day. (Trying to get house clean before vacation).
Wednesday - Josh has 9:15 doctor's appt for his check up. Get doctor to fill out papers and then send along to Christendom. I want to really tackle the house, vacuuming, dusting and washing floors. I want everybody to pitch in. CLC in the evening.
Thursday - Clean bedrooms, perhaps more shopping for Josh.
Friday - laundry in prep for the beach. Tidying basement would be a good idea. Personal trainer at 5:00 p.m. Getting everything packed up and ready. Peter is staying to housesit. He doesn't want to give up working. At some point this week Rick will be back in San Francisco and won't be home until late Friday night, possibly.
Saturday off to the beach with some combination of my offspring!
I need to try to finish up Cheaper by the Dozen before vacation. I've been reading it off and on now for several weeks to Sean and Becky.
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