Not quite a walk in the woods

The trail was easy to follow at first, but my Tevas were not comfortable once they got wet and muddy , and we were heading downhill.

In honor of Columbus Day, our family went exploring.  We didn't discover any new lands, but felt like we were in the wilds on our hike, known as a boonie stomp in these parts.  This is because you literally have to stomp through the boonies to get to where you are going, in our case a couple of waterfalls on the east side of the island.  Taking a hike here is not like the kind of walk in the woods you do at a nice state park, or even a small wildlife refuge, where you walk along a well marked path with a clear idea of where you are going and what you face along the way. Instead you look for an opening in the brush and head towards water.

You know you are in the boonies by the deserted cars.

We weren't sure if this guy was friendly, so instead of cutting across his property, we walked through the creek.

Some friends who lived here a few years ago gifted us their “Best Boonie Tracks on Guam” book. Though printed in 2004, we were able to find the dirt track it described as the head of the trail.  But the rest of the directions were a little vague and in some cases, downright wrong.  Nonetheless, we were able to find the falls, if not climb down them, and enjoy the surroundings.

Trying to decide which way to go according to the book.

An abandoned structure. Is the carabao skull to warn away the taotaomo'na, the ghosts of the wild?

My 7 year old wondered if this used to be a daycare.

While walking through an abandoned structure, I wondered if this was what it was once like in England, when novel people set off across the countryside on an amble of a couple hours. Only hotter and more humid and buggier.

What looks like tangerines in the back are kalamansi, which are bitter when orange, and lemony when green.

Bananas or plantains?

One of the falls. The pool at the bottom was too shallow for jumping.

Excuse the bad date caption. I just loved the expression of our youngest hiker. 

Adventurers trying to figure out a way down. Only these two made it to the bottom.

Although the trek was only about a mile and a half, according to the guide book, it took us nearly three hours, including stops to play in the pools.  We made it back to the car in front of a torrential downpour, and only were lost once for a short time.  No one fell or was injured, other than a few sword grass slices, and we all enjoyed the adventure of exploring and the slight adrenalin rush of not knowing whether a mad carabao was going to rush us, or an angry boonie dweller chase us off his property.

I think we will have to have designated boonie stomp clothes and shoes: the mud refuses to be washed out of the white t-shirts the boys had on, and the shoes, although hosed off, are still tinted by the red clay.  

Must have been a wild big wheel ride.

According to the guide book, we still have a lot more waterfalls to discover, some mountains to climb, and some caves to explore, including a couple with ancient paintings and a replica of the cave where a Japanese soldier hid until 1972, apparently unaware that the war was over.

Scenes from our first boonie stomp, with just the older boys and me, when I led us all astray on the way home. Fortunately, we could just look for electric lines to lead us back to the road.

Although the trail was more discernible here, it split into multiple tracks, probably for mountain bikers, so we got a little turned around.

Colorful dirt. The blue isn't as vivid in the photo as in real life.  

I think this is bamboo orchid.

In which we take up homeschooling

I might have mentioned awhile back that I was thinking about home schooling again - well, here we are. The older two are going to school, eighth and ninth grades. But the 11, 9, 7, and 5 year old are staying home with me. They asked for it.

I couldn’t bring myself to commit until we actually arrived here. “I’m thinking of home schooling” I told anyone who asked. But really, the fact that I didn’t research schools before we left means that I already was committed. And I packed home school books in our advance shipment, so we could start as soon as we set up housekeeping.

My ambivalence about admitting we were going to home school may be partially rooted in a fear of the work. I knew I’d have at least one student who would rather read than practice math facts. I knew I’d be saying no to a lot of things I’d like to do. But I also didn’t have a lot of confidence in the schools here. I don’t have any basis for that, other than repeated testimonials from other Navy spouses about the problems in the public schools. But I haven’t met anyone who sent their kids to the Catholic schools, so I don’t have any first hand insights.

Now here we are homeschooling. And so far, other than one reluctant learner who regularly threatens to run away if he has to do anymore writing and one student who likes to claim to have done work that she hasn’t, school is going relatively smoothly. The older kids leave for the bus at 7:30, so everyone is up and mostly dressed by then. On the days when I jump right into action, everyone seems to cooperate better. But the days when something happens to distract me – a phone call, a late alarm, a message to respond to – we have a hard time getting on the rails. As soon as a moment arises for someone to slip away to play Legos, it’s had to return to learning.

So a peek into our days: Rise early to exercise and make lunches for the older boys. Shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast before the younger kids are awake enough to start playing. Then get their stack of books from the closet and start the day with a little reading aloud. If I can catch them while they are still half asleep, they’ll sit and do school for much longer.

That last sentence reveals we are not unschoolers. I make the kids do worksheets and coloring pages, even though at heart I would like to dismiss these as unnecessary and have the kids do more experiential learning and more writing of their own. To my dismay, I have yet to birth a child who likes writing.
It’s interesting to me, if not to anyone else, to note how my approach has shifted since we home schooled last a couple of years ago. Much of what we’re doing is the same: We’re still doing Saxon Math for the 4th and 6th grader, although I haven’t been keeping up with mental math and the timed drill sheets. For the younger two, we’re using MCP, as we did last time around. It seemed to work, and I’m too intimidated to try a new program. I’ve got the books; keeps it simple.

Along those lines: I’m trying to avoid looking on the internet for home-school ideas. That was one of my pratfalls last time around. Too many good ideas translates into too little consistency. Focus, focus, is my mantra.

The biggest distraction: History and science materials. When we homeschooled in Virginia, we did a lot more subjects together as a family. I read history and science out loud and the kids illustrated what I read or answered questions. We went to art classes and science classes at a co-op and at museums. Here each kid is a little more spread apart, so the 6th grader works independently, while I follow up more carefully with the 4th grader. I read aloud to the 2nd grader and kindergartner, but they distract each other and don’t want to illustrate scenes from history.

So my approach to history and science needs a little more structure. We’re sort of taking a classical approach to history – we just finished a spending about 4 weeks on Egypt, and now we’re moving to the Ancient Middle Eastern cultures. But I have all these good materials: The Story of the World book I, A Child's History of the World by Virgil Hillyer, the Seton Before America book, the Catholic textbook All Ye Lands, Usborne Explorers books, Eyewitness books, Greenleaf guides, historical novels, etc., etc, etc. My own bookshelves are a distraction. I keep looking at all these books, but the kids ignore them. Although I have in my head a trajectory of what we want to cover this year, I really need to cull through my stuff and figure out what we’ll focus on, and then try to figure out how to make it interesting to my younger kids.

Here’s another shift: My older boys were verbal learners; they could sit and read and absorb the material. My younger kids need a more kinaesthetic approach. They love crafts and projects. Some of the Story of the World/Greenleaf ideas like making relief maps from salt dough and playing dress up appeal more to them than listening and making timeline illustrations, whereas the olders found crafts unnecessary. Since I’m not naturally crafty, I have to put more thought into this.

The same thing goes for science. I’m trying to keep it simple by using the Abeka science books for 4th and 6th grade that I already owned. Although I like the classical idea of focusing on one discipline at a time, this more traditional approach makes it easier for me, although since we are on a tropical island, doing some of the suggested activities like collecting leaves and flowers is a little more difficult because our varieties are so different from what is in the book. No seasons here. But I think the days are shortening. I was wondering if that would happen here or not. I guess we are enough north of the equator that we’ll notice a little solstice shift.

Since science was one of the subjects I taught at our co-op, you’d think I’d jump right back into that curriculum I had come up with. But it was geared toward a group setting with a short lecture, a demonstration and then an experiment. (I taught physics for middle schoolers, even though that was my weakest discipline. I had to do a lot of relearning. Same thing with Latin – even though I came up with all this stuff for the classroom last year, now with just 2 students, one ahead of the other, I’m finding it difficult to make things interesting.)

With the younger two, we had been reading one of those Little Nature Readers for science, which bored even me, and supplementing with library books. I have to admit I prefer Magic School Bus. Thorough for the age group and entertaining. More hands on activities for science are something to add to the plan. But I know in school they would be doing very little science in kindergarten and 2nd grade, so I don’t feel quite as driven as I did when my older kids were learning.

Ironically or not, for my favorite subject, language arts, I tend to rely on workbooks. I want to find or devise a unified language arts program, and I know some of them already exist but I’m falling back on pre-existing material. I like the Charlotte Mason idea of narrations and copywork and dictation, so I sometimes have the older two read and retell a story, but I’d like to work out an arrangement where I come up with spelling words that have a phonetic relationship or are enrichment vocab words that come from the reading selection for the week, so that one lesson could be a dictation from the reading that includes spelling words as well as an illustration of the grammar lesson for the week. My sixth grader does Lingua Mater, which I like for the most part, although it’s not enough reading material, and the grammar seems basic for a middle school text. I also bought him a diagramming book that we both like – makes grammar a game almost and brings out language’s structural beauty. I treated myself to Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences by Kitty Burns Florey, which I just started. It’s not quite as fun as Eats, Shoots and Leaves, but I’m not far into it yet.

Religion is the one subject that seems to be a more natural learning experience. Since the kids are doing the Faith and Life books at CCD, we’re paying more attention to the liturgical year at home, looking up the saint for the day or reading from a book like My Path to Heaven by Fr. Gregory Bliss, with the intricate illustrations by Caryll Houselander, and stories about how you can be like the pilgrim who tries to take the cart across the bridge and gets stuck or like the pilgrim who sells all his attachments and crosses the bridge with ease. It’s religion class for me, too - and more time to pray. And we even do crafts: the second grader is making a ten commandments book, the fourth grader is making a rosary book, and the sixth grader is illustrating the creed.

The rest of the day we fill with piano practice, quiet reading time from an assigned book, trips to the pool and the library, occasional geography lessons. Some days we do a little art appreciation or look up pictures that go with a history subject or the saint of the day in one of my art history books. This is a Charlotte Mason addition that I didn’t do with the older boys. I also just bought Mona Brookes’ book about teaching kids to draw, but we’ve only done two lessons and neither time did the kids seem interested in trying. I love the image of all of us sitting down to draw with quiet music playing and the kids focused and trying their best, but this remains a figment of my imagination.

In fact many of my home school plans remain imaginary. Most days the kids either rush through their work just to get done, or disappear to go play before their work is finished. My second grader especially despises anything that resembles work. I wonder if home schooling is the right choice for him. He didn’t have behaviorial problems at school, but at home he throws temper tantrums and threatens to run away and throws things as soon as he is frustrated. My biggest daily challenge is trying to remain calm in the face of his storms. I don’t succeed often. This takes a lot of the joy out of the whole project, and makes me question whether or not I should be doing this at all. We’re all miserable when I have to argue with him all morning. Everyone else gets whiney waiting for me. Then I get whiney waiting for my husband to come home.
The other challenge is saying no to invitations. I keep getting email and facebook notices about spouses’s club events: boonie stomps, book club, dive club, lunch bunch, events to raise money for charity, Bible studies. Since most of the military wives don’t work, and everyone is far from their families, the military community plans a lot more social events here. I probably wouldn’t go to most anyway, but I have to admit that there are a lot of days I’d rather go diving or on a boonie stomp than stay at home trying to keep a seven year old from losing control.

Now that I've written this, I have to admit that our current home schooling experience isn’t so different from our previous experience. Our routine is similar, but with the two girls now fully involved, we are much more organized. They do school like it’s a game, which actually is kind of nice. The biggest thing we lack is the great community of Catholic home schooling friends we had, although we’ve met quite a few other homeschooling families who attend one of the evangelical churches on the island. They’re all very nice, but since they don’t let their kids read Harry Potter or trick or treat, I fear they might consider my kids a bad influence. So we miss the friends we’ve had who have been almost like family who encouraged us in our trials. But people are always coming and going, and we’ve only been here a short time; we’re sure to find a community of friends soon. In the meantime, my goal is to try to forget the tantrums and record in my memory the pleasant moments on the couch when we all are reading and pouring over illustrations, when everyone is happy and engaged.

More books for young readers

My reading streak wrapped up with two other books that would be about right for older elementary school kids.  I just returned to the library The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly, another YA book that has garnered well-deserved praise.  I read multiple recommendations for it, mostly from homeschooling bloggers who like the book’s affirmation of nature study.  Although I wasn’t as moved by it as I was by The Book Thief, it was a delightful read - humorous, clean, well-written. I found nothing objectionable and plenty to commend: the writing, the plot, the humanity of the characters, the look into an exciting period of history. It kept me from going crazy for four hours while I was imprisoned in the waiting room at the ER waiting to hear about an X-ray that showed no broken bones.

I almost wrote "nothing objectionable," but then an image of some of the puritan home schoolers we've met flashed before me. This book is called "The Evolution," and it addresses the discoveries being made by Charles Darwin at the time of the setting.  The grandfather not only drinks whiskey, but he makes it and lets his preteen granddaughter try some. I suppose there are a number of people who would lump this into the Dangerous Books pile with Harry Potter.

The story follows 11-year-old Callie Tate, the only girl in a family with six boys living in rural Texas in 1899.  Left to her own devices during an especially hot summer, she begins to study grasshoppers.  This awakens a burgeoning interest in the natural world.  Providentially – or by reason of genetics – she happens to have a grandfather who’s an amateur naturalist himself.  The rest of the family avoids him, but Callie up a friendship with the eccentric old man, who has a laboratory full of specimens and a pecan distillery in a shed behind the house. Callie discovers he is a treasure trove of natural history and has corresponded with Charles Darwin.  Together they study the flora and fauna of the area. Grandfather Tate teaches Callie and the reader about the wonders of nature and inspires curiosity and an appreciation for scientific rigor. Although the author spends a lot of time describing plants and insects, she includes enough anecdotes about school, Callie’s brother’s romances, a trip to the fair, and other domestic escapades, to keep the human interest high for readers who aren’t as inspired by species of vetch.

The story reminded me a little of books like Thimble Summer and Caddie Woodlawn, although it lacked the immediacy of those stories of innocent rural girlhood, since it is an imagined, instead of experienced, look at the past.  I couldn’t get any of my kids interested in reading it before the library due date; since the main character is a girl, the older boys didn’t want to read it, and my 9 year old is still not enjoying reading. Chapter books are a chore, and this one is a little more dense than she is ready for

.

The boys instead are reading Tony DiTerlizzi’s book The Search for Wondla that came out last summer. I have to admit to a fondness for his Spiderwick books and The Spider and The Fly, and Ted. And the epigraph to The Search for Wondla is the wonderful quote from Albert Einstein, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

But I have to admit, I couldn’t love this book.  It is set in the future when Eva 9 is the last human being in existence. She is tended by a robot called MUTHR. When her Sanctuary is destroyed she has to go out in the real world, where she seeks a place called “Wondla,” which she saw in a photograph.  On her quest she meets some strange, Stars Wars-esque creatures.  The book also has an online tie-in, which is a turn-off for me. I don't want to hold the little key illustrations up to my computer camera to decode some clue.  I don't want my kids to want to read a book because they want to play the computer game.  The illustrations are captivating, but the tale lacked charm, or maybe it had too much science fiction for my taste. Forgettable.

Now I'm turning my attention to some more serious books, which I'll write about later. 

A life of historical significance

The older boys were talking tonight at dinner about Steve Jobs’ death, and his short but amazing life.  I didn’t realize or just didn’t remember that he had cancer, which the men at the table informed me everyone has known for years.  Ironically, my 8^th grader just had to turn in a report and diorama about someone who has changed the course of human history. He chose Neil Armstrong, probably because he’s an iconic figure, rather than because of any interest in space exploration, but he commented that Steve Jobs would have been an interesting person to profile.  He certainly has changed human history.  Was his death a little more peaceful knowing he had made such a contribution to society?  And he lived a life of apparent virtue. A hero for modern times.

Perhaps I shouldn’t mention it during this time of national mourning, but I find myself asking whether or not Jobs changed history for the better.  I feel old because I can remember the introduction of personal computers. As a high school journalism student, I even became something of a Mac snob. I say something, because it quickly faded away when my foray into journalism ended.  I jumped on the email bandwagon in college, but that was the last time I was ever on the cutting edge of technology. It changes too quickly for me.  It costs too much to upgrade frequently, especially for something that I use primarily as a glorified typewriter and encyclopedia. Even the cell phone: I downgraded from the iphone to a little flip phone that doesn’t even have a camera after we moved here.  And I don’t miss it.  I've been having a down-on-technology moment for some time.

Obviously, I indulge in the social media stuff, but I’d really rather prefer if someone wrote or called to tell me about their lives.  I wouldn’t want to do away with all the improvements in medical care and research and criminal justice that computers made possible -- just the criminal activity that computers make possible. It’s certainly handy while homeschooling to look something up quickly on the internet or to show the kids a film clip or play a piece of music. But the information I seek could be located elsewhere were the internet still a figment of imagination.

Not too long ago, I read this passage in John O'Donoghue's Eternal Echoes: " The instrumentalization of contemporary life pushes us ever farther away from Nature. Even farmers do not really get their hands dirty anymore. Years ago, when you looked at a farmer's hands, they were like miniature lexicons of the landscape. The hands were worn and roughened through contact with soil and stone. . . . It was a powerful image of living hands reminding us that those hands were originally and would again be clay. People dressed in their Sunday best to go to Mass. Serving Mass, you would see perfectly dressed men come to the altar for Holy Communion. They would stand reverently and offer a pair of withered earthened palms on which the white host would glisten: the bread of life on hands of clay. This is a vignette from a vanishing world. Generally, when we lose individual contact with Nature and with each other, we gradually lose our depth and diversity of presence." 

What has me riled up lately is that the director of the Department of Defense schools, a  woman with a business degree who moved up through the contracts department, recently visited the boys’ schools to promote the use of tablet computers in the classroom so that students can take better notes and become more organized.

So that they can become more distracted, is what I would say.

Can’t they just use an agenda? A little notebook to write down their assignments in?  Isn’t there a study somewhere that shows students learn more when they write something down?  

I’m sure teachers can be instructed in getting the most out of tablets for education, but I imagine students might enjoy getting what they can out of them without the teachers catching them playing apps or checking Facebook.  I can’t think of one thing about classroom instruction that would be improved by giving students tablets.  They are there to be educated, not entertained. They need to be encouraged to use their brains a little bit instead of making it easier for them to find answers.  They need the "depth and diversity of presence" in the classroom, not the mindlessness that comes from spending too much time attached to a screen.

I’m know I’m a minority on this issue. I’m sure there are a million and one ways that tablets can be used to enrich learning.

I’m just not sure that students will learn any more than they did in 1991. Or 1981. Or 1901. 

Steve Jobs was still amazing. May he rest in peace.

Food and other differences

Another quick takes on some things we have discovered about life on Guam:

1. Our life has changed in many ways since we left the continental United States. I now pay $4.50 for 3 quarts of milk. That's at the commissary. Not organic, not even fresh, but ultra-heat pasteurized.  I thought at first I was buying a gallon in a trim container, and then I read the oz’s. Ouch. 

2. I also cannot discover fresh chicken at our commissary, even though there are scrawny chickens running wild all over the place here. I'm not sure if anyone actually eats these things or gathers their eggs or keeps them just for looks.  My kids keep trying to catch the ones that slip under the fence into our area. They probably taste gamey.

3.I also am a little mystified by the fact that bananas are $1.19/lb and are shipped from South America. There are banana trees everywhere here.  We have a baby one in our back yard. My kids tell me their friend said these things are plaintains, but they look like and taste like bananas to me.

4. Mangoes are also shipped from South America, although I’m told the mangoes here are delicious.  They are out of season though. Right now the papayas are ripening, but the one we tried was not particularly sweet. The papaya we tried to transplant collapsed the other day. 

5. One last grocery note: I will not pay $2.99/lb for sweet potatoes. When I saw the $17.83 charge on the computer, I asked the checker to void them, even though it meant waiting for the manager. Later, I thought maybe I shouldn’t be so cheap. Sweet potatoes are really good for you. But are they as good as a nice bottle of wine?

6.We are still wearing t-shirts, shorts and swimming suits nearly every day. I keep seeing pictures of people on facebook wearing jackets and talking about apple picking.  None of that here.  Plaintains, anyone?

7. As far as I can tell, we do not have any deciduous trees here. I’m not sure how one could tell if it never gets cool enough for leaves to fall.  This makes it a little difficult to work on a tree identification project for school. BUT we do have a variety of palm trees. Such a variety I did not know existed. We have coconut palms with green and yellow coconuts (apparently the yellow variety is male – or female – or medicinal.). We have palms with little red things – undried dates? We have Manila palms with no fruit. We have palms that don’t have trunks. I don’t know all the kinds we have, but they are starting to grow on me since they look so pretty in a sunset photo. I'm going to have to work on getting a good shot though. 

Some other notes:

• Although we live on a small island, it can take a long time to get places you don't really want to go, like soccer practice. Rain doesn’t stop outdoor play. 
• Tile floors are great for cleaning up mud, but not for echoes. I thought hanging pictures and laying rugs would help but I think I need banners. 
• If you go snorkeling, hot dogs make great bait.  Little colorful fish swarm in from all directions. But if you don’t want to attract barricudas, use corn instead.
• You really can eat fresh yellow fin tuna raw and not get sick.
• No recycling of paper here - someone needs to seize the opportunity to develop a paper recycling plant.
• Red rice is a dish served at nearly every meal here.  I’ve heard it is colored red from a pepper powder, but it is not spicy. It’s a little extra sticky and almost tastes bready. But what we have all been loving is jasmine rice. I'm not sure what makes jasmine rice different, but it has a cleaner rice taste and is slightly stickier. Needless to say, we've been eating a lot of rice.

See Jen at www.conversiondiary.com for more. It's her anniversary, and I think updates are in store.

From the stacks

Life has settled into a routine here for the most part: rise, run, school, run around for errands and practices, eat, and then organize stuff with my husband or tend to busy work in the evenings while he works on building desks and lofts and bookshelves for the boys' room. But I broke out of that routine the last few of days and ignored a to-do list and piles of books and photos and knickknacks that need a home to indulge in escapist fiction.  I actually started to post part of this on Reading for Believers last week and pulled it down while I read more. But now I'll throw it up here, since I haven't written anything else lately. 

First: the best book by far was The Book Thief, which I did post about on Reading for Believers.  It really caused my heart to pause. It's the story of Liesel Meminger, a young German girl during WWII, who "steals" books she can barely read.  As she learns to read and learns the power of words, she also relearns how to love others after losing her little brother and being abandoned by her mother.  Even though the book was not suspenseful - it is narrated by Death who tells you what is going to happen - you don't want to stop reading because you care about each character. And Markus Zusak writes beautifully about the power of language.

The beauty of this book stood in stark contrast with the books I read right before and right afterwards that weren't nearly as redeeming. I don’t know why I persist in reading books that I don’t really like. But I devoted a substantial amount of time to finishing Anne Rice’s Feast of All Saints, because I bought it new, and I wasn’t going to let my $8 go to waste, gosh darnit. 

The story of Rice's book: I bought this lengthy novel over a year ago when we visited Faulkner House Bookstore in New Orleans, a delicious bookstore full of delights. I walked away with Faulkner’s first book Soldier’s Pay, of which I’ve read about a chapter and never finished, and this Anne Rice book. Why this cheap mass market paperback, when there were so many good books there for the choosing – lots of Faulkner, of course, but also Welty and O’Connor and Percy and the other big-name Southern Classic authors?  I guess I was in the mood for something light and wanted to read something about the city. Plus, I have to admit the title lured me in. Rice had just denounced her Catholic roots again, but the title of this book, published in 1979, seemed to presage her reversion 20 years later. Or maybe her inability to escape the Catholicity of her upbringing and life in New Orleans.

Sad to say, the book has little to do with saints and a lot to do with sinners.

The book’s story: The novel is historical fiction about free people of color, gens libre de coleur, in the late 1840’s - early 1850’s New Orleans.  The main characters are Marcel, the son of a rich white planter and a free Haitian named Cecile, his sister, his friend Richard, an undertaker’s son, and his teacher Christophe, who has just returned from Paris where he made his name with a romance novel and was free from the burdens of being colored and gay in 19^th century America. The most likable character was Annabella, the girl whom Marcel loves but who is too dark to be his wife.

You could argue that this is a bit of historical fiction, but it has way too much melodrama to be read as serious literature. It really belongs on the romance novel shelf, although the bits of historical information about the Haitian diaspora were interesting, and I did enjoy reading about life in the French Quarter prior to its becoming a tourist attraction. I almost gave up on it more than once when the tortured love affairs were dragging on and on. I couldn’t hold a good image of Marcel in my head, which is a problem since he was the main character.  And I really couldn’t get a good handle on why it was title The Feast of All Saints, other than maybe the irony of all these conflicted souls meeting up at Mass and funerals. I put this book in the giveaway pile without hesitation because I don’t see myself ever going back to read it or handing it to my kids to read. Not one sentence stood out as beautifully written, nor was there one bit of dialogue or description that stood out as particularly luminous.  Entertaining, but empty.

The other book that I haven’t finished but can’t bring myself to give up on totally is Eternal Echoes by John O’Donohue, an Irish poet whom I heard interviewed on NPR awhile ago. I was loving the interview in which he was talking about the relationship of beauty and transcendence, so when I saw this book at a rummage sale, I scooped it up. However, while it has some beautifully written lines – he is a poet after all – the more I read, the less I get out of it and the more fed up I get with the unnecessarily poetic diction.  It’s supposed to be a book of spiritual insight, and I first I was taken in by the description of the soul’s desire for a place of belonging, but the initial promise is never fulfilled. Lots of “join the dance” type drivel. It’s still sitting on the back of the toilet seat, where occasionally I take a look at it for some brief inspirational message, but I think it will soon join Rice’s book in the giveaway pile.

The other books I gobbled up were the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, which I finished in a couple of sittings. They are the kind of books you can't put down, and because they read quickly, and each chapter ends with a cliffhanger, I stayed up way too late a couple of nights thinking to myself, “just one more chapter, just one more chapter.”

I think a movie is being made based on this series. The Hunger Games is the first of a trilogy, followed by Catching Fire and Mockingjay. It's easy to see why these would make good movies: they're plot-driven, apocalyptic tales about a young girl, Katniss Everdeen, who gets drawn into a reality show-type game run by “The Capital.”  She survives to get drawn into a revolution.  There's action, suspense, hints of romance, moments of nobility. 

I wish I could love these books more. The concept: sometime in the future, most parts of the world have reverted to a more simple, impoverished existence because "The Capitol" conquered the world and divided it into districts that have distinct economies: mining, farming, orchardists, etc. Every year two teen-aged contestants are picked from each district to fight to the death in the Hunger Games.  When her younger sister is chosen in a raffle, the main character, Katniss, volunteers to take her place in the Games, even though she is her family’s main food provider.  At first I was loving this book – self-sacrifice! Familial duty! References to classical myths! Great themes for YA lit. 

But as the book goes on, some things concerned me.  My older boys already read the trilogy last spring, so I’m sorry I didn’t read the book earlier, but I think most of the implications went over their heads. For instance, the games involve violent deaths. Katniss and her co-contestant, the son of the baker who’s in love with her, are long shots to win because they are from a very poor coal mining district.  Of course, you can guess whether or not Katniss dies in the games.  That bit is not a part of the suspense. But some of the deaths of the other contestants are not pretty.  Katniss only kills one contestant directly and that is in self defense, but she is willing to kill innocent people in order to survive.  In the end, a suicide pact is threatened by Katniss and Peeta so that one will not have to kill the other.  While the baker’s son is in love with Katniss, she doesn’t have romance on her mind. There’s some kissing, but they sleep in the same cave without any suggestion of uncomfortable feelings.  

Violence in YA lit was the topic of a Wall Street Journal piece a few months ago.  The author suggested that the newer YA fiction is too explicit in its violence. Compared to The Book Thief, the amount of violence in The Hunger Games isn't especially greater or more explicit, but it seems less meaningful. The beating of the Jews in The Book Thief didn't strike me as glorified, and really I can't say I felt very squeamish about the deaths of the other contestants in The Hunger Games.  They seemed cartoonish in comparison.  

I was interested enough in what happens to Katniss that I checked out the second and third books from the library.  They were easy to finish in a couple days.  Neither the violence nor the relationship between Peeta and Katniss elevates to a concerning level. More concerning is the lack of higher ideals.  Rarely is Katniss's will to survive and defeat the Capitol articulated in terms reflective of a belief in human dignity. Rather, she just wants to live. She doesn't want to be hungry or for her family to be hungry. She doesn't want good people to die in vain. But she doesn't have any qualms about killing her enemies, even though at a few points it wasn't really clear who was her enemy. No vision is offered for what kind of society will take the place of the Capitol if it is defeated. In fact, if anything the alternative government, the rebel District 13, is just as totalitarian.

So while I enjoyed the story, and Collins’ style is engaging, although not particularly distinctive, but a few ideological quibbles prevent me from loving this one and wholeheartedly recommending it.  It took me awhile to pick up on, but finally the use of Roman names for people in the Capitol (Seneca, Octavia, Caesar), the name of the regime for the outlying area (Panem, short for Panem et circenses: bread and circuses, ie. please the masses to keep them under control), and the whole idea of fighting to the death in an arena hit me over the head with the fact that the worldview of this society is modeled after ancient Rome: a dictator, a profligate and superficial upper class, a warrior class, suicide as a higher good than death at the hands of the enemy, a lot of slaves in the outer edges of the country, and finally the use of propaganda to motivate and frighten the working class.  And fighting against Rome is the untamed nature girl, Katniss, named for a plant, her sister Primrose, Haymitch, Gale, Peeta (named for a peat bog?) So nature vs. civilization?  

That idea is kind of fun.  The action is exciting. The characters are interesting. I just wish they were fighting for a higher cause. 

So that’s the latest from here.  Has anyone else read Hunger Games or The Book Thief? They’d be great books for discussion because of some of the difficult themes.  I'm willing to reconsider my take on The Hunger Games. And maybe The Book Thief isn't quite as good as I think. But other than enjoying nostalgia for New Orleans, I can't raise my evaluation of Rice's book.

Quick Takes Moving Edition

Our stuff arrived; our boxes are unpacked. Except for some boxes of files that we keep dragging around, most of our stuff is put away, if you don’t count the piles of books waiting for shelves. It’s been 3 months since we left Mississippi. It will probably be about another month before our routine runs smoothly. Add in a couple of months prior to the move that were spent organizing and researching for the move, and you come up with about six months spent relocating.  About average.  After 9 or 11 moves, depending on if you count temporary duty orders, I thought I should make some notes on things that I should have learned by now.


1.       First of all if you think the packers are not being cautious with your stuff, you should probably speak up.  They may stuff your linens into your bookshelves, or toss your sewing machine in a box with knickknacks from your dresser, or put your crockpot on top of your game boxes, so that both your game boxes and your crockpot are broken.


2.       If you have forgotten that you own something, you probably don’t need it. Stuff is work. It seems like I had a lot more free time before all of our stuff arrived. Our first two weeks here without our boxes, I had time to hang out at the park and fiddle in the garden. Now I’m constantly shifting piles of stuff, mostly little things that don’t have a place or a purpose.  Sometimes I just want to throw everything away and start over. But almost everything has an emotional association. When you move around a lot, your stuff is what makes you feel at home when nothing about the climate or the neighborhood is familiar. It makes me happy to see pictures on our walls that used to be at my grandparents’ house.


3.       While unpacking, just keep chanting, like goes with like, like goes with like. When you gather all your pencils in one spot and see that you have enough to fill a shoebox, you probably can afford to throw some out.  When you seen that you have about 50 photo albums, you realize you probably need to develop fewer photos. Or start making photo books online because they take up less space. But then what if you need print for a project or…. I’m struggling with photo storage solutions.


4.       You can go almost 3 weeks without cleaning a new house before you start to notice rings around the faucets, handprints on the light fixtures, sticky spots on the tile, soap scum in the shower. I thought new houses might be self cleaning or at least dirt resistant by now. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a solution to keep grout dirt free? One exception to that 3 week estimation: the boys’ bathroom needs a scrub after about 2 days before the stink gets too strong.


5.       I got a little excited about getting organized and spent about $100 on bins and baskets when we first moved in. They sat in my closet waiting to be filled with stuff. Then our stuff arrived, and I realized I had plenty of baskets and bins.  Those matching organizers look so professional and clean in the decorating magazines, but how often does anyone look in my closets? The people who see my closets are people with children who have similarly arranged closets: plastic bins, cardboard boxes, toy boxes full of odds and ends. So I took back all of those organizers with an apology to the clerk for making extra work.


6.       There’s something to be said for having a system for organizing that makes it easy to unpack and put stuff away. But sometimes you have to press restart, and relocate some items. The bottom of our corner cabinet has held dishes and videos; now it holds art supplies. A shelf that had been in our office for a couple years with oversized books is working better in the boys’ room with school books and supplies. A wrought iron shelf that once held cookbooks, and then plants, works pretty well as a muddy shoe organizer on the porch.  Shoes are pretty much permanently covered with red clay mud here.  Just as in the Chicagoland area, snow rarely stopped anyone from doing what they wanted to do, here rain and mud aren’t deterrents to playing outside.


7. Although the physical work has gone relatively smoothly with this move (note to self: the movers seemed more motivated when offered a batch of chocolate cookies and plenty of Gatorade), the emotional upheaval of moving has been a little more disruptive. One minute I’m enjoying the tropics, happy about the variety of vegetation and the possibility of snorkeling and diving, looking forward to the next adventure, and the next minute, I’m frustrated by the rain, the time change for making calls, the time wasted redoing things, the difficulty of having to find new piano teachers, figure out extracurriculars, look for the best place to find bargains.  Those are just superficial things to complain about when you can’t figure out how to express the unrest caused by dislocation and disconnection.  But then I think back to those first weeks in our last locale, and remember the happiness we eventually found there. So I could complain about the wasted time, or I could let it be part of the experience. We’re here together, we’re healthy, the kids are adjusting well.  The stuff makes us feel like we’re staying and that this is home base for now.  We have much to be thankful for.


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