Reading for confirmation

My neighbor stopped by today to borrow some books. Her daughter and my two older sons are in the confirmation class at the base chapel together.  While our last church had a 3 year confirmation program for high schoolers, this chapel has the superfast confirmation for eighth graders.  One of the hazards of moving is making sure you don't miss any sacraments.  So this program was supposed to be a year, but the archbishop for the military is coming in January, so it is being shaved down to a 5 month program, minus holidays.  Not ideal, but I feel like the boys have a pretty good grounding in the faith, and we're doing a little catechesis of our own at home on an irregular basis.

Meanwhile the neighbor's daughter is a little more precocious.  She is frustrated in the class because it rehashes all the catechesis that a regular participant in religious ed. should have picked up years ago, but because stragglers show up for sacramental classes, I guess the thinking is that basics like the parts of the Mass need to be covered AGAIN.  Meanwhile, she's being pressured to accept for life a faith that she's not sure she is ready to assent to.  From what my neighbor has told me, I guess after being a quick learner of all the Bible stories and faith as a child, as a preteen she is beginning to question the contradictions in the stories, the corruption in the history, and the apparent conflict between science and faith.

Since I'm not her mom upset by her doubts, I think she's showing a lot of maturity for an 8th grader. Questions about God's existence and Christ's divinity haven't come up at our house. If our boys have them, they aren't asking us.

Anyway, her mom and dad have a pretty good grounding themselves it sounds like, but her mom asked if I had any books at home to loan her. I sent her home with a stack, but I'm not sure any are just what she needs.  The one that came to mind first was Augustine's Confessions, maybe because St. Monica was just in our reading book.  Too hard for an 8th grader? Or will she relate to the story of another young adult's questioning, rejection, and final acceptance of the faith of his birth.

Since the Thomas Dubay book was written for someone seeking to deepen his faith, not accept it, I didn''t send that. But before I had finished Thomas Dubay's book, I had picked up a couple other books on faith at the libary.  I skimmed 15 Days of Prayer with Thomas Merton by Andre Grozier. I meant for it to be a part of this prescription for change, and the book is intended to be a guided meditation book, something to spend some time with, not to skim.  But while quotes from Merton provide plenty of substance for meditation, the questions this book asked were rather bland.  “Think about a time you felt… What do you remember about… How did you feel when….”  I should just read more Merton.  He is a fascinating figure, but I seem to only find books about him at the library and not books by him, except the Seven Story Mountain.

Perhaps what interested me the most in the 15 Days book were the last couple chapters about interreligious dialogue.   I also happened to pick up off the library shelf a book on the same issue, God is Not One by Stephen Prothero, out of curiousity.  This book is a comparative religion survey, meant to be an unbiased look at the teachings and characteristics of the major world religions.  It might actually be of interest to my neighbor's daughter if she is sincerely wondering what other religions teach.  Prothero begins with an argument against the idea that most religions are similar and share the same God, the God of Abraham. He also rejects the idea that all religions are different roads travelling to the same location – some sort of metaphysical state of transcendence.  He argues that it’s a fallacy to focus on similarities between world religions in order to downplay religious zealousness or superiority and to encourage tolerance. But instead, downplaying differences encourages misunderstanding.

Rather,Prothero argues that even though major world religions share the qualities that make them religions (ritual, community, creeds, metaphysical longing), at heart they are quite different. They are like members of a family who outwardly resemble each other, but whose personalities and talents are completely different. So while Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship one God, Prothero argues that because they worship in different ways, profess different dogmas, and describe God differently, it is a falsehood to claim that they have much in common.

So rather than diffuse radical fundamentalism by saying all religions are one, Prothero proposes to move toward understanding the differences in each religion by studying what each religion believes is the primary problem of human existence, its solution, its techniques to reach the solution, and its exemplars. It’s disingenuous to say that it doesn’t matter to true believers what god you worship because true believers are convicted.

I only skimmed the book, but it’s provocative.  Prothero does seem to evaluate fairly and without prejudice each religion, and seems to have genuine respect for believers. I would guess he’s an agnostic who appreciates the willingness of believers to ask big questions and seek their answers. I agree with him that it is important to understand what other believers profess and how they worship and live in accordance with their faith. 

I’d like to be able to hand a book to my older kids and say, here read this, and then ask them how they would defend what we’ve been trying to teach them.  But I’m not sure if they are quite ready for that challenge.  I remember being in high school and sitting in the library reading books about the Dao and Buddhism, maxims of Marcus Aurelius and the sayings of Confucius, and wondering what the Jewish holy days were all about, trying to figure out what my own answers to the big questions were.

Now I can't lay a finger on what convicted me about Catholicism. Reading magazines at Crisis and First Things at my grandparents' house probably had something to do with it. The example of my parents.  The Christian emphasis on love and serving your neighbor matched well with all the novel reading I was doing.  Confirmation retreats.  Lots of little pieces.

So a prayer that my sons' and my neighbor's daughter will pick up and put together some of those little pieces, too. At least my neighbor's daughter is honest about it and doesn’t want to be a hypocrite by taking the sacrament just to make her parents happy.  My husband and I sat down with our boys the other day and asked them some questions about confirmation and what they would say to an unbeliever, and they were able to parrot back the idea of a First Mover, and the idea that the order of the universe suggests an Original Designer, but from our conversation it was hard to tell if these arguments are personal to them.  At the cusp of adolescence and young adulthood, they seem ready to start taking ownership of what they believe. It’s an interesting age. 

Island Fair

This past weekend we were able to experience a little more of Chamorro culture on Guam at the Micronesia Island Fair.  I was expecting something a little more extensive, more like a county fair, but it was not quite that large. There was a plant booth, but no animals, other than the carabao available for $3 rides.  The other booths sold arts and crafts, food, and books about the islands.  The kids were disappointed that there were no carnival rides - I wonder if there are carnies on Guam. Since the event was small, we were able to linger longer at the booths selling shell crafts, coconut candy and oils, wooden carvings, and other crafts.

Coconut candy in a biodegradable container

Shells for sale for those who aren't divers

Watching the dancers

A man carving a walking stick in a hat that reminded me of Don Quixote's helmet.

A handmade proa - a traditional boat like a canoe that can be sailed.

Workers constructing a new proa

We also enjoyed the interactive children's booth, where an organization that promotes the teaching of Chamorro culture in the schools taught us some weaving skills and coconut shredding.

Learning to weave palm fronds

My oldest learning to shred coconut from a man in native dress - or undress.

Completed slipknot bracelet

Coloring pages that teach Chamorran for Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas.

The dancers' ornaments

Orchids for sale.

The best part of the day were performances by dancers from some of the nearby islands, which include Yap, known for its stone money, Palau, famous for coral reefs, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and Chuuk.

More photos at the local paper's website.

On Motivation and Prayer

Some time ago I posted about Walking the Literary Labyrinth, a book in which the author talked about “providential books.” The phrase felt familiar at the time, but I couldn’t think of a particular example. But I just finished a book that definitively belongs in that category.  I want to go around proclaiming it as a great book, but I don’t know that it would strike anyone as particularly brilliant. It’s just that I’ve read it at a time I needed to hear what it had to say.

Is it also  providential that my mom sent Thomas Dubay’s Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer to me just when I was ready to put aside the youth fiction and turn back to some spiritual reading? (after being disgusted by Dork Diaries, which my daughter snagged at the library.  I have to admit I found Diary of a Wimpy Kid somewhat amusing, but this knock-off was bad enough that I want to flush pages down the toilet and pay the library fine, so they wouldn’t have it on the shelf.)  I’ve been stuck in a malaise for some time, in need of spiritual renewal, which I suppose my mother intuited, because its message was just what I needed to hear.

With our recent move, I’ve been focused on material things, organizing, furnishings, schedules, etc, to the detriment of my soul, or at least to its neglect. I’ve had this nagging feeling that I need to be doing something, to living my faith more radically in some way – not necessarily selling everything I own and heading out to proclaim the gospel, but something akin to that.  On the other hand, I’ve found it hard to feel rooted in the faith when feeling rootless in the world, although I suppose that is just the time to turn to God as a safe harbor.
   

Now that we finally have found a home and are unpacked, I can read this book and focus on making some of the changes it recommends – which are simple really.  Dubay writes for the person who recognizes his or her life does not live up to Christ’s call to “be converted and accept the gospel” (Mk 1:15), who sees that change is needed but doesn’t have the motivation to enact it.  Dubay quotes St. Bernard’s famous saying that “There are more people converted from mortal sin to grace, than there are religious converted from good to better.” So this book is directed to the person stuck in venial sin who repeatedly gossips, is lazy or wasteful, overeats, is habitually late, or simply puts little energy into the state of his soul. 

Sounds familiar.

Fr. Dubay even accuses that person of confessing these venial sins and then falling right back into them, as if true penitence and the firm resolve to amend their souls was absent at confession.

Uncomfortably familiar.

Like the person who knows all the healthy foods to eat and has access to them, but still binges on junk food, the person who knows what a saintly life looks like but doesn’t change has a greater culpability than the hardened sinner who doesn’t know any way out of the dark depths.  I cringed as I read this.  I’ve read plenty of books about saints and theology and prayer. I shouldn’t be so halfhearted in my attempts to become more loving, more forgiving, more prayerful.

Describing conversion as a change from vice to virtue, Dubay writes, “from the point of view of attention to and intimacy with God, supreme Beauty, supreme Delight, conversion includes a change from little or no prayer to a determined practice of christic meditation leading eventually to contemplative intimacy, “pondering the word day and night, ‘ leading to a sublime “gazing on the beauty of the Lord” with all its varying depths and intensities.” (Ps. 1;1-2, 27:4)

So basically, the real goal is to move from moral mediocrity to moral excellence, which requires developing a deep prayer life and turning away from the little sins that distract us from this goal.  These little sins all signify a deeply rooted selfishness and egotism. In other words, a lack of real, selfless, sacrificial love.

Dubay's prescription is to offer a list of motivations to prayer. When people pray, they learn to love truth and goodness. "When we come to love objective truth and goodness, we have made progress toward conversion from our radical 'I-ism'. This fundamental transformation is completed with the love of beauty, first the beauty of God, and then the beauty of man and the rest of creation Altruism and egocentrism are opposites.  . . . When honest men love objective reality, the way things actually are, and then go on to pursue the goodness of all the virtues and are sensitive to genuine beauty, they are like a starving man sitting before a banquet. He immediately sees the answers to his needs. When people who love truth, goodness and beauty hear the gospel, they spontaneously love it. This means of course that they immediately see its attractiveness and splendor, how it magnificently fulfills their human aspirations and needs." We naturally want to overcome mediocrity, and are drawn to the unity and beauty of  the gospel.

Just a few pages into Dubay’s book, I was convicted with guilt for the selfishness and lukewarmness and laziness that Dubay describes. I also recognize that desire for beauty that Dubay says is the beginning of conversion.  I just struggle with moving out of the inertia of selfishness.

My husband and I were talking about selfishness, and he commented that it’s a part of being human, like having hair. We’re all ego-centric, we all have a deep-ingrained selfishness. The manifestations I see in myself: Ignoring my children’s requests, ignoring my husband in preference for reading or blogging or whatever distraction is at hand, a messy house indicating misplaced priorities, wanting to talk about myself, a fear of getting asked to do stuff,  but also a desire to do stuff just to gain recognition, envy, etc. I won’t list all my confessional items, but you get the picture.

So I know, and have known, I need to break these bad habits, and to silence that voice that says, hey, those aren’t really anything to get worked up about; why bother. It is going to take a sharp tool to uproot that vice.  This is where I wish Dubay’s book were a little more inspiring.

Rightly, Fr. Dubay points out that love is the inspiration for change, and that love for God is nourished with prayer and contemplation.  If my love for God were more intense, I’d have more motivation to shut my mouth or turn off the negative voices in my mind. For example, married couples don’t get married believing that they’ll grow more selfish and demanding. They believe they’ll become more selfless and giving. But so many marriages don’t improve as time goes by because people forget the intoxication of early love that encourages selflessness. Dubay even writes that "real love is uncommon in our world because full conversion is uncommon." I certainly see in myself the tendency to become more protective of my time, more stingy with my affection, more demanding of my own desires, instead of more willing to make sacrifices.  My kids probably will remember me as being a grumpy, nagging mom, not a calm loving mother, unless I can kick myself into gear, beginning with spending more time in contemplation  But what will make me pray?

Dubay's list of reasons that compel a deep conversion includes contemplating the shortness of life and endlessness of eternity, studying the "sheer goodness and beauty of the saints," describing the joy inspired by deep conversion, envisioning the evangelical effect of becoming a person infused with real love, the improvement of human relationships especially within families when spouses are of one mind about the nature of real love.

But we slip so easily back into egocentrism, just like the Hebrews complaining to Moses, and the lukewarm Christians scolded by St. John, so Dubay also exhorts his reader to be specific and persevering.  People spend billions of dollars and hours of time on physical beauty; we need to spend just as much energy on our spiritual beauty.

Actually, that image of what my kids will remember is perhaps one of the biggest motivators for me. I want them to see me as someone who was joyful and generous. I want them to recognize the beauty of creation. I want them to see how acts of service bring joy, to see the face of Christ in the people they serve, to feel the person of Christ acting through them when they serve another. And getting down on my knees more often is probably the only way to move from someone motivated by selfishness to someone motivated by love.


As I'm typing this up, I'm aware of how often I've read the same advice. I've written this advice down to remind myself before. And I've failed to persevere time and again.  But here we are in a new place with a new routine. So here's to a new start.   

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

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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.