The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome, by Susan Wise Bauer (W. W. Norton, New York, 2007)
Despite having some initial negative reactions to Susan Wise Bauer, I've continued to find her work delightful and invaluable. (See my reviews of The Well-Trained Mind, The Story of the World, and The Well-Educated Mind.) I haven't read more than a small part of The History of the Ancient World, but borrowed it from the library in order to determine whether or not to buy it for myself. I've so enjoyed—and learned from—listening to Jim Weiss read The Story of the World, which was written for elementary-age children, that I wondered if Bauer could bring as much delight into a history book for adults.
Time does not permit me to read through the book, much less review it properly, but let's just say I wish I didn't have to take it back to the library as soon as possible to remove temptation. The History of the Ancient World is delightful to read. Much of the delight, I think, comes from the philosophy of her approach, which she explains much better in the introduction than I have time to write, or even to copy, here. Bauer is interested in people: their lives, thoughts, fears, hopes, dreams, actions, and relationships. She minimizes the general and the theoretical in favor of the personal, and includes the myths and stories of a culture as well as verifiable facts. The stories that have come down with a people from before recorded time should inform our historical speculations as much as potsherds from an archeological dig.
This approach no doubt will anger many, some because she finds historical value in passages from the Bible, and others because she gives similar respect to the ancient stories of other cultures. To me, it makes for great story-telling. The History of the Ancient World has earned a place on my wish list, perhaps for the next time Borders offers me a 40% off coupon, and I certainly hope Susan Wise Bauer is working on a sequel.
Young Mathematicians at Work: Constructing Number Sense, Addition, and Subtraction, by Catherine Twomey Fosnott and Maarten Dolk (Heinemann, Portsmouth, NY, 2001)
I must return this book to the library today, and I don't have time to finish reading it, but nonethless it deserves mention. This joint effort of American and Dutch mathematics educators is often repetitive and sometimes wearisome to read, but includes ideas well worth exploring by anyone desiring to teach, or to learn, mathematics at its most basic levels. Their strategies for encouraging children to think mathematically are aimed at classrooom teachers—and show, incidentally, some of the advantages of group instruction—but many should be adaptable to home education as well.
When I learned of this book I had intended to order it as a Christmas present for our grandkids. (I know what you're thinking—such an odd grandmother!) However, while it is a great book to learn from, it's not that exciting a book to own. So do what I did, and turn to your favorite library—Interlibrary Loan, if necessary.Yesterday we capped a busy day (at church till mid-afternoon for a special event, followed by—oh, joy!—flu shots) with our second Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra concert of the year. I'm greatly enjoying Chris Wilkins' approach to concert programming: he chooses a good blend of old and new, familiar and unknown, comfortable and challenging. Well, just barely challenging, but that's okay; I prefer my musical challenges on a smaller scale and with explanation, as with Bernard Rands' Memo 8, which came to mind when I was pondering "challenging." That was one of my favorite Eastman concert experiences, and I would love to hear it performed again, but I don't see that happening; even a Google search nets little, and my favorite oboist has gone Medieval—not that I mind that! Ah, well—I have my recording. But I digress greatly.
Last night's concert showed Wilkins' programming strengths and his willingness to venture into non-traditional concert territory. The theme was Abraham Lincoln, and the program a collaboration with the Orange County History Center. (More)I love to cook, but that's something I keep forgetting. Maybe I need an audience; it hardly seems worth the time and effort when I'm eating alone, and even when I'm not we're usually so busy it hardly seems reasonable to spend much time cooking. But Porter keeps talking about how this is the best restaurant in town, so it seems only fair to work towards making that a reality. On Saturday, we had some of our favorite company over for dinner—the best kind to cook for, because they're always appreciative and don't mind being guinea pigs for whatever I want to try out.
Earlier this summer, my nephew had feasted us on Hazelnut-Crusted Chicken with Raspberry Sauce, a Bon Appétit recipe from Epicurious.com. The taste was even more amazing than this beautiful presentation (click on picture for larger view):
It was a recipe I knew I had to add to my repertoire, so that's what I served. Sort of. Well, actually, that was the starting point, but I never can resist changing things along the way. One of our guests doesn't eat meat, so I used salmon instead of chicken. I had the store take the skin off the filet, then sliced it into pieces about two inches wide. I could have bought hazelnuts, but had pecans in stock, and I used raspberry balsamic vinegar instead of white wine vinegar, canola oil instead of safflower, Cherchies' Champagne Mustard instead of honey mustard, Penzeys' Florida Seasoned Pepper for half the black pepper—you get the picture. And because it was fish, I baked it for about 20 minutes instead of frying it first.
Despite all the changes, the end result was still really, really good. I'm going to go raid the leftovers now....
I've never been to the Blue Ribbon Tavern in Grove City, so this isn't really a review, despite the category. But I hope to get there someday, and since it sits nearly at the intersection of I-80 and I-79 in Pennsylvania, it's likely I will. Taverns aren't at the top of my list of places to visit, but this one eliminates a huge potential problem by not allowing smoking on the inside. (Not that they necessarily get credit for that, since I believe it's Pennsylvania law.) However, this one has a few special attractions. (More)
Last night the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra presented Fanfare, its 2008-2009 season opener, featuring the U.S. Army's Herald Trumpets. As always, it was an enjoyable concert, though odd in a way, since I often found the orchestra too loud. I'm accustomed to that in everyday life, and carry earplugs with me nearly everywhere I go, because whatever is amplified is nearly always amplified too much for my taste. Yet this was live, acoustic music, and it wasn't just the guest trumpets that were too loud. Orchestras are supposed to be too loud only if you're sitting directly in front of the percussion or the trumpets—not when you're far away in the balcony. Weird. Perhaps my ears are getting better as my eyes are getting worse.
As the oboe section is of primary importance to our family, we immediately noticed a gaping hole—where was Principal Jared Hauser? And Laura Hauser was not amongst the bassoons, either. There turns out to be a good reason for their absense: Jared left to take the position of oboe professor at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. Good for them, but very sad for us. I'm particular about oboe playing, and I loved Jared's sound. This reminds me of when Principal Flute Aaron Goldman left to become Assistant Principal Flute of the National Symphony Orchestra. The OPO seems to be a sending-off point for really good (and nice) musicians. I'll never forget the fun we had listening in one night when Jared and Janet played baroque oboe duets together. I was hoping for a repeat some day—but now one is in Nashville, and the other in Switzerland.Oddly enough, in a concert that featured such greats as Verdi, Shostakovich, and Richard Strauss, my favorite work was Tromba Lontana, by the living composer John Adams, whose Short Ride in a Fast Machine I had enjoyed when Janet performed it at Eastman.
Added 2008-09-29: Stephan was kind enough to point out that I had written "Tromba Iontana" instead of "Tromba Lontana." It comes of not knowing Italian, I suppose. (The title was translated as "Distant Trumpet.") I will grumble just a bit and ask why the program chooses to use a lower-case letter in a font where the lower case L and the upper case I are identical, and in a publication where most of the other titles have all major words capitalized—but I checked in the pdf version and it is, indeed, a lower-case L.
In my efforts to confirm the true title, I discovered these two YouTube videos, which you might enjoy. I wonder, just a bit, about copyright issues when works like this are put on YouTube, but for now I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Tromba Lontana
Today we celebrated the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Day by visiting The Maitland Historical Society's Waterhouse Residence Museum. If you're going to get in for free, why not check out a museum you didn't even know existed? The Maitland Historical Society's museums are located on lovely Lake Lily in Maitland, and we enjoyed a walk around the lake after our tour. I believe we can call Museum Day a hit; everyone in our almost-crowded tour had brought web-printed admission passes, and for most of us the museum was a new experience.
Since Mr. Waterhouse came originally from "the north," I can't help wondering if he was a descendant of my eighth great grandfather, Jacob Waterhouse, who immigrated from England to New London, Connecticut in 1676. He had a nice house, much more so than would be expected for a middle class family, because he was a carpenter and buit much of it himself. Part of the museum is his shop, which is filled with antique tools. "Antique," I'm sure—but it let us know how old we are when we found ourselves giving a sotto voce commentary throughout the tour: "This house is the same age as the one I grew up in," "My aunt had a stove like that," and "Those tools look just like the ones in my dad's workshop."
Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, by Michael Ward (Oxford University Press, 2008)
It is hard to overstate the excitement with which I read Planet Narnia. I'll return shortly to Michael Ward's discovery of the pattern and scheme under which C. S. Lewis wrote all seven of his Narnia books, but it's also worth noting that Ward's writing itself was a delight to read. I am so very, very tired of the recent trend of informal, conversational writing that appears to have been put together in haste, without benefit of editor or even proofreader. That style is good for blogs, but in a book the lack of consideration for sentence and paragraph structure, the grammatical mistakes, the impoverished vocabulary, and what often comes across as a condescending tone detract significantly from the message proclaimed. (More)
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is a simply made but powerful German film (with English subtitles) about a young woman arrested for treason after distributing some anti-Nazi leaflets. Don't expect a happy ending; the setting is Nazi Germany, where happy endings were few. Nonetheless I recommend the movie highly. Such depictions of goodness and heroism are rare—much less without resorting to graphic violence or sentimentalism.
Four things struck me in particular: (More)
Confessions of a Medical Heretic, by Robert S. Mendelsohn, M. D. (McGraw-Hill, 1979)
A quick review of this so I can get it off my desk and back on the bookshelf: There's no doubt that modern medicine has lengthened and improved our lives; the underside of that story is that modern medicine has also shortened our lives, and in many ways diminished their quality. If you're not already half convinced of the second part of that statement, you'll find Dr. Mendelsohn's style hard to get through. I believe him, and I still wanted to scream by about the 40th time he beat to death his otherwise illuminating analogy of modern medicine as a religion. (More)I love student recitals. Our kids attended the Suzuki Music Institute of Central Florida for nearly 10 years, so I think I've heard more than my share of recitals. Granted, the quality of music and musicianship was nothing compared with the Eastman School of Music recitals we subsequently enjoyed, but I can honestly say I was never bored, not even by the beginners, nor by hearing the same beginning songs again and again. It was fun hearing the differences, not only from one child to another, but particularly as each child grew and advanced from one recital to another.
Nonetheless, I know that to many people the phrase "student recital" evokes horrifying thoughts of squeaks and off-pitch notes and shaky rhythms, over and over again as student follows student in a seemingly endless parade of classical or modern pieces the audience doesn't know and doesn't understand. (More)Last night we enjoyed an outing to the Texas de Brazil restaurant. This is not what I would normally call my kind of restaurant: although I find salad bars, buffets, and all-you-can-eat establishments appealing for their wide variety and options, the high price and the encouragement of overeating make them generally unattractive to me. However, our friends had two-for-one coupons, which brought the $45-per-person price down from the outrageous to the merely ridiculous-but-acceptable-for-a-special-occasion. So we celebrated Father's Day one day late. (More)
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen (Doubleday, 2007)
It's past time to get this book back to the library; I actually finished it quite a while ago, but have been putting of this post because I haven't known quite what to say. It's a complex book, probably an important one, but it covers so much territory I'll never do it justice. The book is far more than a diatribe against amateurism, but I will skip over the sections on Internet gambling, Internet pornography, privacy concerns, and the demise of an iconic record store. Except for Tower Records—it's hard to mourn the disappearance of something you never knew existed—I'm aware of the other issues and tend to agree that they are, indeed, serious problems. Whether or not the proliferation of amateur voices is boon or bane is a bit more complex. (More)
Prince Caspian, One Sentence Review: Not a bad movie, but several times I had to wonder where the story line came from.
A few more thoughts: (More)
