Lake Vacation Journal

My stream of consciousness journal:

Sunday:
We left yesterday right at 11 a.m.  We celebrated Grandad's 85th birthday on Friday.  He, Peggy, Tom, Susan, Theo and Andrea all came over for fried chicken, mashed potatoes and cole slaw (Thank you Harris Teeter!) and a lovely white and chocolate mousse cake from our delicious local bakery.    Then we all went off to see B in Oliver!  Me for the 4th time.  Grandad was very proud of her, when he finally could spot her on the stage!  His eyes aren't so good and then she was wearing a costume!

Anyway, because we'd have a late night not actually getting to bed until midnight, we got a late start on Saturday.  We couldn't get into the house until 3 anyway.  The trip down took a bit longer than we thought and we didn't get here until almost 5.  I drove, S, V and little D who hardly cried a peep.  Rick drove his dad and Peggy in Grandad's car.

The funny thing was that I didn't realize we'd be driving through Lynchburg (well, I did it by accident.  I didn't get on the bypass by mistake) but we drove right by Lynchburg College which is were Tracy Lee Simmons teaches and I am currently reading a book by him!  So that was kinda cool.

Our view of the lake

Smith Mountain Lake is beautiful and our house is so big, quirky and charming.  I can't wait for J, B and H to get down here.  J is coming today and H and B tomorrow.  Grandad and Peggy are leaving Tuesday though.    We ate out at a nearby marina which was crowded and noisy and had good food.  Sunday, I got up at 6:30 and went shopping for breakfast food and other staples.  Got back and put away all the stuff.  Then I made coffee and sat outside looking out at the lake.  I got super sleepy and have been feeling really sleepy and lethargic all day.  R and V made pancakes and eggs.  I don't know what S has been up to.  Tonight we go to 4 p.m. Mass which is the only Sunday mass they have in this town.  J just called.  He hasn't left yet.

Josh got here.  We wound up going to the 4 p.m. Mass at the little Catholic church here.  Then we got take out at Subway.  There are not a lot of restaurants, etc like at the beach.  S and V went swimming, they took the little guy but he wasn't too happy after a few minutes.  V never learned to swim so she was nervous at first but then relaxed, but she said the fish kept biting her.  I think maybe because it was at night?  R was watching the Olympics.  I just stopped caring about it.  I think it was too many doping incidents.  Whenever anyone wins I think, wonder if they'll take the medal away eventually.

Rick and Dylan on the boat

Monday:
I got up and drank my coffee looking out over the lake  Then I took a walk up the lane.  It was nice because I could glimpse the lake through the trees and see all the houses built along the shores.  It wasn't too hot yet.  I took Grandad, P, V and the little guy to see the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford.  It was amazing.   They saw Grandad's walker and set us up with a free cart tour.  Our tour guide was 86 years old, one year older than Grandad.  He was amazing!  He knew everything.  He was a paratrooper during the Korean conflict.  I was so absorbed in his tour I completely forgot to take pictures!  If you ever are anywhere near Bedford, like Lynchburg or Roanoke, go see this Memorial.  It is huge!  Every single thing in it has been thought out and has symbolic meaning.  The reason the memorial is in the tiny town of Bedford, VA is that this town lost more of its young men per capita on D Day than any other place in the U.S.  Peggy was really pleased to see it because June 6th is her birthday and she turned 11 years old on D-Day.  She still has what she wrote in her diary, where she noted that it was an very important day in history.

The worse thing is Grandad is absolutely obsessed with hating Trump and watches CNN all day long at a loud volume.  He alternately laughs at him or gets so upset he has to walk outside to cool down (except it is really hot outside!).  We tried suggesting that he could just not watch CNN all the livelong day but he looked at us like we were crazy.

Went shopping at the Food Lion to get the next couple days' meals.  We determined that we actually weren't required to go to Mass today, the feast of the Assumption.

H arrived.  Very stressed from stressful week of stressing in laws visit.  Also sad that P couldn't join us due to work.  She brought B.  R rented a boat but then we had thunderstorms so we couldn't go out in it.  Rain is very pretty on the lake.  He was able to grill hamburgers and hotdogs before the rain.  The rain did cool things off.

Lake swimming

They have an ice cream boat!  It plays the same music as a good humor truck.  I can't figure out how people actually get their ice cream from it though.  After dinner everyone went swimming except me and Rick, Grandad and Peggy.  Lots of fun.  Wish Will was here.

Moonrise over the lake

Right after I wrote that I didn't care about the Olympics, I wound up putting on the TV and watching it.  And I started to get into it.  Watched a lot of running and gymnastics.  Don't think it's exactly sportsmanlike to dive over the finish line like that.

Tuesday:
Woke up with a darn headache.  It is muggy and cloudy out.  I think it's the weather.  Grandad and Peggy left around 8:30.  Peggy has a bar mitzvah to go to on Friday in Atlanta.  I hope they get home safely.  I admire them for being such intrepid travelers at their ages, but it also worries me them driving all that distance.  Went for a walk, walked twice as far as I did yesterday.  Was feeling intrepid myself so I asked R to take me out on the boat.  It was lovely.  It started out overcast with hardly anyone else out on the lake.  We just went at idle speed up the little creek by our house which went surprisingly far.  I liked the little pontoon boat.  R said it was like going on a kiddie amusement park ride with me.  LOL.  I just don't like speed boats!  By the time we got back, suddenly everybody was out in their speed boats and jet skis.  R called J to come down and help us dock.

Went to see the birthplace of Booker T. Washington.  First, on the way there we stopped at a pizza place.  This was a whole boardwalk type plaza with lots of gift shops, a putt-putt golf place, arcade and climbing wall.  We ate looking out over a marina.   A storm came in but we were under a big awning.  It was fun watching the ducks and especially the big fish that would jump out of the water.  I'd never seen fish jumping like that in real life.  Then we drove to the Booker T. Washington park, just a few minutes down the road.  It was very interesting.  I think I got Washington mixed up with George Washington Carver.  It was very interesting learning about his life.  We saw the movie and went through the little museum which is mostly aimed at school children.  Then we walked around a bit.  They have the farm set up like it would have been when Washington lived there.  He, his mother, and two siblings left after the Emancipation Proclamation and went to live with his step father who'd run away to freedom in West Virginia.  Booker was a salt and coal miner for a while before he left to go study at the Hampton Institute.  Even though the rain cooled things down considerably it is still incredibly muggy out.  Everything feels damp to the touch.  We stopped and got ice cream on the way home.  Once again, forgot to take photos!

Once home, didn't do much.  All the others except H went out boating/swimming.  H and I watched little D.  Then we all decided to just scrounge for food and eat leftover or whatever was in the fridge. While everyone else watched Edward Scissorhands, I watched Gran Torino the beginning of which I had seen several years ago.  I just caught it on TV and it picked up pretty much where I had left off before.  It was an edited version so not too much cussing.  Good movie.  I have never really liked Clint Eastwood, but I kind of forgot it was him as the main character.

Wednesday:
Do nothing day today.  Got up read, blogged, puttered around.  Rick and I took a walk around 9:30.  We walked over 2 miles but it felt like more because of the humidity and the hills.  Everything is so damp to the touch.  Nothing dries out completely.  Came home, wound up talking a long time with H.  Then everyone got hungry so I ran to Food Lion and got stuff to eat.  H made grilled ham and cheese and we had fruit salad and iced tea.  Then the others all went out swimming but I was sleepy.  Now a thunderstorm is rolling in so they are getting out of the lake.  Poor R rented fishing stuff.  I do hope someone goes fishing with him!  He wanted to go out in the boat but between everyone sleeping late, H wanting to swim before she leaves at 4 and the thunderstorms, I don't think he'll get out today.  And he has to return it tonight.  Wait.  How does he do that in a thunderstorm???

So, yes R and J took off on the boat in a thunderstorm.  I had to go pick them up at the marina.  I kept thinking well I haven't actually seen any lightning.  But then the minute I got in the car and started driving I saw this big streak of forked lightning.  I prayed the whole way, thinking of all the worse case scenarios.  But they were fine when I got there, just a little wet.  They said it was kind of fun zipping over the water in a storm.  Came home, said good bye to H.  Then we sat around a while, decided we were hungry again and went back to the plaza with the marina to eat at a sandwich/burger place there.

See S there just beyond the dock?  

S and B decided to go kayaking.  S took to it like a duck to water.  B was a little more intimidated but was not to be outdone by her brother.

Here's B after she'd just gotten into the kayak, still trying to figure out how to use the oars.

I went in for a swim.  I don't think I've been swimming for several years.  The water was warm.  S is like a fish and B was having a good time.  R got his fishing rod and tried to fish, with not much success.  V and little D just hung out on the dock.  V didn't feel like swimming and the little guy was getting fussy.  Maybe sleepy.  As I was going in, J came out to swim.  If I had a backyard pool, I was swim all the time.  It is really relaxing and at the same time good exercise.  The problem with pools is you have to get into your bathing suit and all the paraphernalia to with that, drive there, deal with yucky bathrooms and other people.  If you have a pool in your yard, it is so much easier.  We've actually looked into building a pool but because we are on a Chesapeake watershed run off (it isn't exactly a stream) we'd have to get all sorts of exemptions from ordinances, etc.  Too many hurdles to jump through with no guarantee of success.

Thursday:
While sipping my morning coffee, looking out at the view, who do I see come out of the house but my beloved husband, with his fishing rod.  He fished, again unsuccessfully.  I went for a morning walk.  Didn't go as far as we did yesterday.  My knees were feeling creaky.  But it is a bit cooler and dryer today.

Went to Smith Mountain Lake Dam.  Fifty minutes of driving narrow roads that got narrower and narrower and turned into gravel roads at one point.  We were in the boonies.  I could hear Deliverance playing in the background as I passed old broken down homes with rusted pick up trucks and Trump signs on the front lawn.  I felt very vulnerable with my #nevertrump bumper sticker on.  But when we finally arrived at the dam, it was extremely cool.  No one was there at the visitor center, so we took ourselves through the exhibit and then out to climb the long ramp to the look out.

This is what we saw.

The water was a gorgeous green.

It was very cool to look down on this enormous dam.  This is what created Smith Mountain Lake.  They ended construction on the dam in 1963 but the lake didn't fill up until 1967!  You can see in the second photo how high the water was on the one side.  While we were looking down at all this, suddenly an air raid type horn sounded.  We wondered what was happening.  After a couple minutes of that, suddenly chimes sounded, like the ones you'd hear on a train telling you the doors were closing.  Then suddenly water rushed out of the dam!

Here is the water rushing under the dam.

Some other random photos, since I remember to actually take pictures.

The power lines above the dam

Bad photo of everybody on the look out platform:  Rick, Viviane (Dylan's in the stroller), Josh and Becky.  Sean chose not to come with us.

This was really cool.  As we were driving away a huge bird flew in front of us and landed on the roof of a shed.  We knew it wasn't a hawk.  I looked it up and I am pretty sure it was an immature Bald Eagle.

B shot this photo of the eagle

Came home, everyone was famished, so I went to Subway and got subs.  We ate and then I took a nap.  The others went swimming and kayaking.  D woke from his nap too, so I watched him a bit.

Boy, V sure is helpful.  We decided to leave a day early because we want to be sure to get back in time for B to audition for Little Women and for S to get to his piano lesson Saturday.  So now comes the dreary part of cleaning up the rental, but V has been doing it all!  Tonight we are just going to eat what we can that is left in the fridge/freezer,  take home what we can in the little cooler R bought and throw out the rest.

Tomorrow we hope to leave early, take a detour to see Appomattox where Lee surrendered to Grant and then get home in time to get B to her audition.

Yo Yo Ma Meme

Remember when blogs (and I think I even saw this on facebook) first started people would have these questionnaire memes and then tag other people to also do them?  Well on vacation here at the lake there are lots of magazines.  I picked up one, a Vanity Fair, a magazine I never read.  On the very back page they had one of the questionnaire type memes for Yo Yo Ma.  I've always liked Yo Yo (who doesn't?), so I enjoyed reading his.  But then I started thinking about how I would answer the questions.  I am sitting here sipping coffee staring out at the lake while everyone else is asleep, so I thought I'd go ahead and write out my answers:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?  

Spiritual answer would be heaven, but in terms of every day life here on earth, I think it would be those fleeting moments of contentment.

What is your greatest fear?

Dying in a horrible car accident.  It really is and is why I am such a nervous driver.

What historical figure do you identify with the most?

So many to choose from.  I am going to arbitrarily pick one:  Jane Austen

Which living person do you most admire?  Bishop Robert Barron

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

I get can get anxious over anything even ridiculously stupid stuff.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Cruelty

What is your greatest extravagance?

Having our bathrooms remodeled.

What is your favorite journey?

The journey of faith.  (Ma said the journey of the mind so I am imitating him on this one)

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Consistency

On what occasion do you lie?

When telling a story I sometimes exaggerate and then realize later that I did!  Must be the Irish in me.

What do you dislike about your appearance?

My weight

What living person do you most despise?

I am not supposed to despise anybody.  But I guess Trump bothers the heck out of me the most right now.

Which word or phrase do you most overuse? 

I don't know the answer to this.  I'll have to ask someone.

What is your greatest regret?

I wish I hadn't let my kids watch so much screen growing up.  I really used that as a babysitter way too much.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?  

Earthly life would be my husband, eternal life though would be God.

When and where were you happiest?

 So many different times.  I could say right now.  But a time I remember as gleaming with happiness was last year after Will's graduation, when we went to Stockbridge, MA.  It was an amazingly stress-free visit where we all relaxed and got along happily.  We were utterly charmed by everything there.

Which talent would you most like to have?

Stamina.  I don't know if that is a talent though.  But I've always been a low energy kind of person which gets in the way of what I want to accomplish.  (one reason why I let my kids be in front of screens so much!)

What is your current state of mind?

Worried because my laptop is on low battery, but I don't want to walk downstairs to retrieve the power cord!

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

To be more courageous.

If you could change a thing about your family, what would it be?

I wish I could promise them golden futures.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Having five children and being happily married for almost 28 years so far.

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?

A cat.  Then I could nap all the time.

What is your most treasured possession?

My antique books.

What do you regard as the lowest depths of misery?

When people are inexplicably cruel to each other.

Where would you like to live?

Some place with a beautiful view that I can look at while sipping my morning coffee!

What is your favorite occupation?

Reading a good book.

What is your most marked characteristic?

I don't know this one either.  Have to ask someone.

What is the quality you like most in a man?

Integrity.

What is the quality you like most in a woman?

Integrity.

What do you most value in a friend?

A good sense of humor.

Who are your favorite writers?

Austen, Heyer, Wodehouse, Sayers, C. S. Lewis

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?

Elizabeth Bennet (to stay with the theme here.)

Who are your heroes in real life?

I admire my oldest son because he helped to start up a ministry for the homeless.  He really tries to live his faith.  So people like that, who don't let doubts get in the way but just start something they think will help others.  The woman at our church who started her own program to help homeless families is another hero.

What are your favorite names? 

Hannah, Elijah, Joshua, Sean and Rebecca.  I am fond of the name Richard too.

What is it that you most dislike?

Laziness

How would you like to die?

In grace, ready to meet my Maker.  At home, in bed, with loved ones nearby would be good too!

What is your motto?

Live Jesus! from St. Francis de Sales  Or maybe Jesus, I trust in you.  Saint Faustina.

I am not going to tag anyone.  But if anyone happens by here and feels like doing this meme, please let me know!  I'd be happy to read it!

Mere Motherhood - Book 23

Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins might be the best book I've ever read on homeschooling.  It is brimming with wisdom, practicality, love and honesty.  The full title is:  Mere Motherhood; Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes & My Journey Toward Sanctification.  This is her memoir of over 30 years of homeschooling her nine children (8 boys, 1 girl).  Rollins kind of stumbled into a Charlotte Mason/classical way of doing things.  It all stemmed from her love of reading aloud.  She read and read and read.  Then she decided to put a little memory work into things - so her children memorized Bible verses and poetry.  Eventually she added in math and Latin and set times for the kids to read independently.  Her morning time though was when they read and they read a lot.  While doing this they also did copy work and nature drawing.  She read Shakespeare and Plutarch, though it took her a while to screw up courage for tackling those two.  Eventually she did, and was very happy about it.

But this book is not about method.  It's about family and the wisdom gleaned from motherhood, marriage and homeschooling.  It's about looking back at mistakes and successes.  It is about the mystery of love and family.  It is chock full of quotable lines.  A lot of this book echoed my exact experiences.  The author takes the words right out of my mouth.  If you are an old hand at homeschooling, you will recognize so much in this book.  If you are new to it, you will derive so much inspiration and sound advice from it.  If you are burnt out, it will offer you hope.

My advice is:  read this book!  You will not regret it!

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Contrasting English Courses

My high schoolers are taking outside English courses this year.  B, my rising 10th grader is taking online courses with Homeschool Connections.  My rising 12th grader, S, is dual enrolled at the local community college.  He tested into an honors class there and he is kind of excited about that.  In spite of the fact that he is dyslexic, he has a gift for writing.

Yesterday I found the books each course would need.  The class for Homeschool Connections is entitled Mythology in Literature (a semester long course). The two books required (I think the other readings might be works like essays the teacher will give them on line) are Dante's Purgatory and C. S. Lewis' Til We Have Faces.  I was thrilled with that.  We happen to have both those books already.  Even the right translator for Dante.

Then I checked out what my 12th grader would need to read.  Everything is the bleakest kind of writing ever.  What is it with English teachers that they are always assigning the most sordid, depressing literature they can find?  I just don't get it!  The books are:

Metamorphosis by Kafka - we all know this one.  Bizarre, disorienting, leaves you with a feeling of how absurd life is.

Fight Club - I haven't read this one.  The reviews do make it sound interesting.  Still depressing, violent, etc. though.

Monster Calls - about a child, his mentally ill mother and a monster who visits the child.  I mean this could be good, but it sounds pretty bleak!

Things They Carried -I started to read this one but I couldn't control my blubbering through the darn thing so I stopped.  It is about young 18 year old boys drafted to fight in Vietnam - most depressing book ever. The first quarter of the book that I did read still haunts me.

Civilization and Its Discontents by Freud - One of the reviews said that this is a seriously depressing book and not good for people who are easily depressed because of the Nietzschean world view so eloquently espoused.

Thanks English teacher!  Gee, how many student suicides/attempts are influenced by the depressing reading teens/young adults are forced to do?  I wanna do that study!  I mean I can see having one or two books assigned that are heavy and depressing, but every single freakin' one!  As examples of good writing?

Did I mention my 12th grader struggles with depression and anxiety?

Plans for Starting Up Again

This summer we schooled right through June and July.  We had exactly one month off before having to start up again.  I was so hoping that all the construction would be done before we began, but things are not looking good for that.  Looks like we'll still be in construction mode into September.  Argh!

Well, I must be cheerful about it, since it can't be helped!  This week there are many last minute fires to put out.  Next week we go on vacation (God willing and the crick don't rise!).  The Monday after we get back, we start up again.  This is mostly driven by Sean enrolling at the community college which starts classes 8/22.

Monday 8/22
S starts Music Theory and College Composition
I will be focusing on uploading Latin 2 curriculum to co-op website
S has Physical Trainer
S has Dr. appt (need to check on this)

Tuesday 8/23
Breakfast school
I think we'll start back up with Latin since we didn't get as far as we had hoped
Upload Latin

Wednesday 8/24
Breakfast school - Latin
Upload Latin
B starts back up with math tutor
S Physical Trainer

Thursday 8/25
Sean has Music Theory and College Composition again
B has voice lesson
Upload Latin

Friday 8/26
Upload Latin
Becky math tutor

Saturday 8/27
Upload Latin
S Physical Trainer
S Piano lesson

Monday 8/29
My classes begin in Theology
Breakfast school
Latin
Sean - classes
Upload Latin (hopefully, I am done with this by now!)

Other dates:
9/6 - 1st high school classes - Biology and Government
9/8 - B's Mythology on line course begins (1 to 2 p.m.)
9/8 - AL orientation
9/12 - 1st AHG meeting
9/15 - 1st Latin 1 class @ AL

Jamaica Inn - Book 22

This was a fun, absorbing read, though I was a little disappointed in the ending.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier is a gothic romance, full of mystery and foreboding.  I had only ever read Rebecca by this author (I think I've read it two or three times) which is indeed her masterpiece, but I'd never ventured into any of her other novels.

Mary Yellan is the heroine of this story.  Her mother dies and she goes off to live with an aunt she barely knows who is married to the landlord at Jamaica Inn on the moors of Cornwall.  Even on her journey there she realizes something is not right.  When she arrives she finds her aunt a shadow of her former self and her uncle a boorish, violent, and cruel man.  But Mary has pluck.  She wants to run away but she can't leave her aunt.  So she looks for a way to save her.  The story takes place over maybe six or eight months.  During that time Mary begins to perceive just how horrible things are.  She befriends a local vicar who is strange but whom she thinks she can trust.  And she falls in love with Jem, her uncle's much younger brother, who is a horse thief.

There are many scary, surprising moments and the book is a quick read because it is hard to put down.  I know these type of stories are always a bit contrived and the author's skill is in not letting you, the reader, notice how contrived they are.  I thought Du Maurier did a great job up until the very end.

Still, I highly recommend this book.  I'd call this a thumping good read!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

It's Dangerous to Believe - Book 21

It's Dangerous to Believe; Religious Freedom and Its Enemies by Mary Eberstadt is an incisive analysis of the growing hostility toward religious freedom in modern society in the wake of the sexual revolution.  Her premise is that this conflict between progressive sexual understanding and traditional sexual understanding does not reflect a mere non-religious vs religious approach, but rather progressives have adopted a new religion of sorts, which has its own first principles that must be followed if one is a believer in this new 'faith.'  These first principles are pleasure and self-will and anyone who denies these is a 'hater' or a 'bigot.'

The first part of the book traces the history of this rise in hostility.  The author cites case after case to illustrate her point.  The evidence is pretty damning.

Eberstadt compares the hysteria to impose these new beliefs on everyone to the moral panic of the Salem Witch Trials or McCarthyism.  The enemy is everyone and the mob rushes to protect itself from the imagined dangers.  This accounts for events like the hounding out of Brendan Eich from his company because years before he'd made a modest contribution to the Proposition 8 campaign. Or, even more concerning, the shutting down of Catholic social services in various cities because of the Church's teachings on marriage.  The poor here are carelessly disregarded, since Christian work with the poor is an enormous part of our safety network.  Forcing these organizations out of business (often through exorbitant fines or long drawn out lawsuits) places an unrealistic burden on the government and the taxpayer.  But the poor are ignored casualties in this ideological battle.

Eberstadt points out that the progressive sexual ideologues have a long battle ahead of them.  For example, during the first 300 years of Christianity every single pope was martyred.  And still the church persisted.  She looks at the failure of communism to stamp out faith.  It turns out a remnant (and often many more than a mere remnant) of people are always willing to sacrifice for their faith rather than give in and this willingness makes it very hard to ever get rid of religion.

The end of this pretty bleak book does hold out some hope. The author takes comfort in the fact that moral panics do not last long.  They tend to burn out fairly quickly (albeit with lots of violence and destruction).  Once they do, people look back in bewilderment at what has passed.  So even in the worst case scenario, things will eventually get better.

But she also points out something that should be common to both religious believers and sexual progressives:  our common heritage of tolerance given to us by the founders our country, who themselves were scarred by the intolerance of the Reformation wars.  The founding principle they arrived at in order for disparate people to get along peacefully is:  to agree to disagree.

Fortunately, in this country we have a tradition of constitutional law that usually, though far from perfectly, finds the a way to balance conflicting points of view.  Hopefully, this tradition, grounded in the very foundation of our national self-perception, eventually will triumph over oppression.  We are in the thick of the moral panic right now and we have no idea how high the hysteria will swell, but for future generations, we hope that both sides will at some point come to the conclusion that people should be allowed to disagree on their understanding of human sexuality.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.