Lift Up Your Hearts!

That's what we did this morning.  We arrived at the Pittsburgh Zoo with a crab and left with a jellyfish, but in between Jonathan was a perfect little boy, just the right age to delight in all the exhibits.  He could identify many of the fish as well as the animals, and explained to me—thanks to a Magic Schoolbus book that's currently one of his favorites—that the clownfish can live inside the sea anemone because it's covered with mucus which protects it from the anemone's sting.

Noah, on the other hand, could take or leave the animals.  What fascinated him was everything mechanical:   the big power cords at the entrance, the lights along the walkway, a child-proof outlet cover (which he promptly removed, then replaced when asked), emergency exit doors, a machine that made bubbles, and anything else with buttons, cords, switches, lights, or moving parts.  This is the same child who won't talk, but eloquently asks me several times a day if he can record his voice on my computer.  What he really wants to do is plug the headphone and microphone cords into the computer.  The headset was one of the first things he helped me unpack, and he grinned delightedly when he discovered the plugs, then pointed to the computer, which, incidentally, was still closed up and anonymous-looking.  He quickly found the jacks, and needed only a little guidance to make sure the plugs were going in straight.  (To be truthful, that was my paranoia; he could have done it all on his own, but I was a little nervous.)  One lesson in pink-to-red, black-to-green was sufficient; he's done it correctly ever since.  First thing this morning he came excitedly into my room, big grin on his face, running straight to...Grandma?  No, Grandma's computer.

John C. Wright is one of the latest entries in my feedreader, and frankly I've forgotten whom to credit and am too busy/lazy to try to figure it out.  But thanks, whoever you are.  John's entries are almost always well-written and interesting, and often give me a fresh perspective on issues.  His latest is too rich for me to give it more than a quick read at this point, but I'm posting it here so I won't lose it, and for the benefit of others.

And when the Laws of England Are Flat, and the Devil Turns on You? 

Fans of A Man for All Seasons may recognize the title; if not, there's a YouTube link to refresh your memory.  If you're told "this video is no longer available," try again; it worked the first time for me, and not the second, but the next time I had no trouble.

One of the reasons this post resonated with me is that this is the second time I've run into the idea that Classical Liberalism is nearly the opposite of what we call Liberalism today.  (The first was in a Teaching Company course on Western Civilization.)  That and the fact that it reminded me of this line from Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night:  "The first thing a principle does, if it really is a principle, is to kill someone."

Isamu Fukui doesn't make lemonade out of life's lemons, he makes the whole lemonade factory.  As a fifteen year old high school student, he vented his frustrations by secretly writing a novel about a dystopia in which the world is run like a school.  Unbeknownst to him, his father found out, and instead of sending his son to a psychiatrist (I'm extrapolating here), sent the manuscript to a publisher.  Three years later, Fukui is still in high school with a critically acclaimed, published novel and a contract for two more.

Write a book for yourself alone, so you can say just what you want, let someone else promote it, and have the publishers come begging you for more.  Works for me!  And a far better use of teen ambition than working for gender-blind college dorm rooms.

Thanks to Jon who directed me to the GeeK Dad article on Fukui's book, Truancy. 

My morning routine often includes the SAT Question of the Day; the mental exercise is not only fun (at least when your future doesn't ride on it), but also, I'm assuming, good for my brain.  But I've begun to worry about the system, because it's too easy.

Mind you, I didn't find the Scholastic Aptitude Test easy when I took it in high school; I did quite well but not close to a perfect score (which was 1600 back then).  What's more, I would expect to do better now, since I've had some 40 more years of experience since then.  So I'm not really complaining that the questions are rarely challenging for me; what I find concerning is that they don't seem to be much of a challenge, period.  The number of respondents who get the question right is almost always more than half, and often quite a bit more for the Verbal questions.  People don't do as well on the Math questions, but still far better than I would expect for an exam that's supposed to be challenging our brightest high school students.  I realize those who undertake the daily question are a self-selected population, which may explain their success.

Nonetheless, the level of difficulty still surprises me.  I recall the SAT being interesting and even somewhat fun, but not a cakewalk by any means.  It's true that I studied quite a bit more math after taking the test in 10th grade, but so far I've not seen a question requiring higher math—often they can be done with common sense and/or grinding through the multiple-choice responses

So, my questions:  Has the SAT really become that much easier over the years?  Is the Question of the Day deliberately taken from the easier parts of the test?  Is the idea that our faculties decrease once we get out of school just a myth?  Contrary to popular belief, is motherhood actually a challenging and stimulating profession that keeps the mind agile?  I rather like those last two ideas.

Not a proper post today, but I must keep my readers checking in.  :)  A post on Random Observations led me to this Boston Herald essay by Michael Graham: Campus "Activism" Redefined.  As one commenter remarked, it's too late to be an April Fool joke.  Not content with co-ed dorms on college campuses, the latest push is for gender-blind dorm rooms. Whoopee!

To be fair, I think they're actually talking about letting you choose your own roommate regardless of sex, rather than yet another big shock when a freshman meets his or her roommate for the first time.  Still, it remains a stupid idea.

I suppose it's one way of dealing with the complications of housing homosexual and lesbian students, but I'd prefer colleges just get rid of the archaic roommate idea and provide single rooms for everyone who wants one.  They could solve the subsequent housing crunch by instituting very stringent and strictly-enforced visitation policies that would drive off campus everyone who thinks he's in college for sex rather than studies.

The article reminded me of a story I heard back when co-ed dorms were first being proposed.  One college dean—I have no idea who, or where—after listening patiently to the case as presented to him by a couple of student representatives, turned them down.

"You don't trust us," they complained.

"No, I don't," he replied.

"Why not?"

"Because one of you is male, and the other is female." 

Our newly-found Smith Genealogy manuscript, which I mentioned in a previous post, is proving a treasure not only of facts but of stories.  Here's one about my great-great-great grandmother, Margery Irwin, who was the author's grandmother.

Grandmother was born east of the mountains we think, in Lancaster County, Pa.  She was brought west of the mountains when five years old, packed in a wallet on a pack saddle.  Grandmother on one side and her sister on the other and a bottle of milk and skillet with them. 

My teacher readers have permission to roll their eyes now, but I've finally figured out the reason for those stupid vocabulary exercises we did in school—look up the word, define the word (don't just copy the dictionary), use the word in a sentence ("XXX is a vocabulary word" doesn't count), test on Friday.  I dutifully complied, but don't believe I learned any new word that way.  I'm very good at remembering something long enough to pass a test, but what increases my vocabulary is reading, hearing, and using new words in context.

Having subscribed (thanks to my father) for many years to A.Word.A.Day, and recently extended my random vocabulary fun to Free Rice (thanks to my brother), I realized that the point of vocabulary work is not to learn new words!  The purpose is to increase one's awareness of new words.  Perhaps slower, more careful readers do not have this problem, but I devour books, and any word I don't know is glossed over, its general meaning derived from context and the word itself forgotten.  However, if my awareness of the word has been raised through seeing or hearing it before, even if I don't know the meaning it will begin to pop out of the page at me, and gradually become incorporated into my working vocabulary.

So for me, and I suspect many others, vocabulary lessons are useless outside of the context of an environment rich in words, but given that context they are a useful tool after all.  I wonder, however, if they are of any use at all to children who will not go on to encounter the words in real life.  Another example of the rich getting richer and the poor poorer, I suppose.

Thanks to the Prodical Kiwi(s) Blog for alerting me to this video of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson on nurturing (or not nurturing) creativity.  It wasn't as informative as I had hoped, but it hits some high points and is at least amusing.  Not everyone can take the time to read John Taylor Gatto's phone book sized The Underground History of American Education.  My apologies to all my teacher readers (who no doubt wish they had more freedom to nurture creativity) and epecially the university professors.  :)  I really like the story of dancer and choreographer Gillian Lynne.

The other day we were told, by one whose buisness it is to predict these things, that no matter who wins the upcoming presidential election, our taxes are going up.  He may be right.  If they're serious about stimulating the American economy, raising American taxes seems a foolish approach, but the public keeps demanding more services, and there's always a bill for services rendered.

So I got to thinking, at lunchtime, as I munched on my barbecue potato chips, about Switzerland.  They have some wonderful potato chips there, somewhat like our barbecue variety, but better—though that impression may have been due to Favorable Emotional Circumstances.  One day I made a hasty stop at the grocery store and grabbed some food for a train trip, only to discover, too late, that I had paid over $5 for a medium-sized bag of chips!

The bag I was munching from was more than half again as large, and priced at $2.50.  I actually paid half that; I generally don't by chips unless they're on sale.  It occured to me that a price tag of $7.50 would be a significant deterrent; I would probably still buy them for very special occasions, but casual purchasing would defintely be out.  Thus it would be in my best interest, health-wise, if the potato chip manufacturers decided to triple their prices.  But they wouldn't do it.  Without illegal collusion in the industry, competition would force the price back down immediately.

Unless the government stepped in.  Imagine a $5/bag tax on potato chips; applied to all, no one manufacturer could undercut the market, and suddenly Americans just might start reducing their consumption.  I only pick on potato chips because they are my own weakness, but let's not stop there:  corn chips, soda, candy, cookies, Happy Meals—all those top of the food pyramid, artificial ingredient, and preservative heavy "foods" that make up so much of our modern diet and have nutritionists and health professionals wringing their hands.

Sin taxes have their problems, I know.  The last thing I want to do is create yet another opportunity for organized crime to fluorish.  (Pssst!  Wanna buy an Oreo?) But it would be my favorite kind of tax:  likely to provide significant income for the government, yet completely avoidable simply by eating as we know we should. 

I hesitated (briefly) to post this, for fear the person concerned might, if she ever came this way, think I was making fun of her.  That's not it at all; she has, I'm sure, an important and respected job and I know she does it well.  But perspective is everything.  Having changed plenty of diapers in my day, not to mention my grandchildren's more recently, this auto-response to my e-mail struck my funny bone:

I will be out of the office beginning March 25th.  I will return to the office on April 3.  I will not have access to email or voicemail.  If your question pertains to diaper raw material, market or premarket requests, please contact K---.  If your question pertains to Wipes, please contact B---.

Somehow I think neither K--- nor B--- want to hear my diaper and wipe questions: Is it wet or dirty? Are we out of clean covers again? and Where do I put this?

As with much of my life, my genealogcial work goes in spurts; I love to get deeply into a project and run with it until the demands of life pull me, reluctantly, away—or until I get heartily sick of it and must set it aside for a while.  Genealogical research is not all success and great discovery; documentation and data entry are mostly tedious gruntwork, and mining for new data produces much more gangue than ore.  I'm now at a stage where what's needed most is organization and the above-mentioned gruntwork, so naturally I'm finding other projects more attractive.

Thus it is amusing as well as delightful to find myself showered last week with more new data than I can do justice to in a month.  Perhaps it's a case of casting one's bread upon the waters, for it began when, as part of my e-mail backlog reduction project, I organized and cleaned up my data on the descendants of Louisa Curtiss and Benjamin Wells for someone who had requested it.  (That was one of the e-mails from 2005!)  In the process I happened upon a piece of information that led to a major breakthrough in my Rice line, about which I will write later.

The very next day I heard from a cousin the amazing news that she, doing some housecleaning after my aunt's death, discovered boxes of pictures (alas, mostly unlabelled) and two exciting documents:  a professional genealogy of my Vick line created in the early 1940's, and a genealogy of my Smith ancestors done probably in the early 1890's by a family member.  The Vick information is almost totally new and pushes that line back quite a ways.  I already knew much of the direct-line Smith information, but there's much that is new on the collateral lines, some great details and family stories, and gratifying confirmation of several guesses I'd made from existing data.

Wiping the drool from my mouth I rushed over to my cousin's house to borrow the treasures, thinking I could scan the pages and the useful photos and return them in a day or two.  Ha!  I'm doing what I can to get the material back to them in a timely fashion, but I'm up to 150 scans so far and not halfway through.  This is just scanning; analyzing and entering the data will take much, much longer.

Not that I mind in the least.

I've added a new category to this blog:  Genealogy.  This won't be the first post, as I've reclassified some earliers ones to which that designation applies.  I haven't said much yet about this hobby of mine, but this may be the best way to keep family members up to date on what I'm discovering.  While you're waiting for another Christmas CD, that is.  :)

If this is the first of my genealogy posts you see, click here for a is a quick summary of why I found myself, against all odds, caught up in a hobby that is not only delightful and challenging, but also would have shocked my younger self.

The Cult of the Amateur arrived from the library yesterday, not that I've had time to crack it open yet.  But I thought about it when I read today's perspicacious post from "Et Tu?" on Mommyblogging and the water well. It may be debateable whether the amateur works of ordinary blogging folks provide a valid community for otherwise isolated people, or merely distract us from the more difficult task of creating real, physical communities, but there's no denying their significance in many of our lives.

I treasure communities of both kinds, as does the author of "Et Tu?".  One important dimension added by the Internet, I find, is the ability to interact with people who are dealing with the same issues as I am, and/or have perspectives similar to mine.  I value beyond measure my short-distance, in-the-flesh friendships, but in all the contacts we have had locally—church, school, work, music, sports, neighborhood,  Indian Princesses and even other homeschoolers—we have found, yes, good friends, but also big, aching gaps with no one to understand, discuss, struggle, and rejoice together.  A broader net was required to gather that community.

Many thanks to Liz at Smithical for directing me to "Et Tu?".  And thanks to my feedreader (Bloglines), without which I wouldn't have allowed myself to indulge in yet another interesting distraction.

I wouldn't have thought to search the pages of USA Today for Good Friday inspiration, but Google News thought otherwise and led me to this article on the decline of sin in modern times.  Not a decline of sin itself, sad to say, but of the idea of sin as a fundamental break with objective, universal, and time-independent standards.  Relativism is not new, but it is getting more pervasive, as if most people are thinking, "We'll never know for certain what's right and what's wrong; we have to make it up as we go along, and change it as circumstances change."  Which means, of course, that we have traded the tyranny of God-ordained standards for the tyrrany of mutable public opinion.  Good Friday and Easter provide a path to forgiveness for sins against God; for offenses against rules-of-the-month standards our only hope is short memories and a good public relations campaign.

Polls to the contrary, it's hard for me to believe that most people don't carry with them, however deeply buried, the knowlege that they are not living up to anyone's standards, especially not their own, and that they are in need of radical repair to be consistently or even frequently good, however they might define the term.  Perhaps what we need is not so much an understanding of sin, but encouragement to turn off the televisions, put away the iPods, get away from our omnipresent distractions and take time to consider who we are, what we think we should be, and what to do about the chasm between the two.

I’ve been a fan of the Mars Hill Audio Journal since the early 90s, though only an intermittent subscriber.  I enjoy and appreciate its insight into life and culture, but generally prefer to receive information in printed, rather than spoken, form.  Plus I was tired of finding places to store the cassettes.

Recently I re-subscribed, because they now offer an mp3 version.  This I can take with me on my walks, and it takes up no physical space in the house.  Works for me.

Mars Hill also has more free resources, audio and print, than I have time to handle.  Here’s one that came to my inbox recently:  A Culture of One, a review of a book by Andrew Keen entitled The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture.  I’ve ordered the book from our library, but haven’t yet read it, so this post will not be commentary on the book, per se, but on some of the ideas expressed in the review, which I believe to be worthy of comment and on which I seek your opinions.

Although he doesn't use the phrase, Keen's book is about the loss of cultural authority. He believes that the survival of the very best forms of cultural expression, in journalism, music, fiction, and other disciplines, requires a network of mediation and accreditation. Cultural institutions that nurture the production of the best cultural artifacts maintain teams of editors, critics, producers, and teachers who have advanced in their careers through years of training and evaluation within a guild or tradition. Over time, some of those institutions earn more trust and respect among their peers than do others, their expertise and ability are acknowledged through an organic process of accountability and recognition. Those cultural institutions can be corrupted and standards can become debased. But without some form of institutionalized judgment established over time in communities of expertise, without, that is, some knowledgeable person to tell you your work isn't good enough to be published, cultural expression easily becomes mere self-expression.

I would respectfully cry, au contraire!  Perhaps I’m being a bit defensive here, as I am one of those who “can self-publish by putting up a few bucks for a website, [and] don't have to face the humiliation of rejection slips.”  He’s talking about blogging, but also about amateur music and other forms of cultural expression.  In this and all of life I fear the Cult of the Professional much more than the Cult of the Amateur.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m a strong proponent of excellence, and of training our children (and ourselves) to appreciate the best in music, art, literature, and life in general.  I readily admit that developing such taste usually requires deliberate effort; scattering random seeds on unprepared ground is not equivalent to planting and tending a garden.  In a world dominated by Doritos and Coke, children will not naturally prefer edamame and milk.  Similarly, much that is excellent and worthy of appreciation does not immediately captivate us, but must be assisted by experience and education.  Keen’s concern that the true ore is being buried in a flood of dross is valid, but the solution does not lie in letting a guild of professionals control access to the mines.

Professionalism is good, and professional certification is good when it provides information about minimum standards to those who otherwise would be ignorant.  When choosing a surgeon I would want him to be board certified; when purchasing raw milk I would like the dairy to have a governmental imprimatur.  However, the freedom to choose outside of official sanction is equally important; all the obstetricians in the world should not be able to stop a midwife from exercising her skills, and no state should make it illegal to buy milk from my neighbor’s uncertified farm.

We are too much overwhelmed by the professional in all of life.  We blindly trust our health to our doctors and our children’s education to their schools.  We watch; we do not do.  We watch professional sports; few of us play.  More of us watch the productions of professional actors, directors, set designers, and sound technicians, and fewer of us participate in amateur theatrical troupes.  We pay large sums to hear musical superstars perform, but who of us—besides Irish seisiún participants—gathers with friends to make joyful, informal music?  Mothers hardly sing to their babies anymore!  Professionalism has also put its mark on the amateur performances we do indulge in, and not always for the better.  Well-organized, scheduled, and rule-laden children’s sports may have their place, but they’re not a substitute for neighborhood pick-up games.

By all means, let’s encourage the development of excellence, discernment, and good taste in ourselves and our children.  (“By all means”—what an odd expression, when you think about it, because I don’t really mean “by all means”; I’m about to state an exception.)  But don’t close the door.  Above all, don’t assign as porter those in whose interest it is to keep others out of the business.

There’s a lot of junk on the Internet.  Some wicked, some dreadfully bad, some merely insipid.  And I’m not even going to talk about American Idol!  (There’s another odd expression; I just did.)  But to the extent that YouTube, blogs, amateur music publishing sites, and yes, even American Idol encourage people to become participants rather than observers, they are providing an important service.  Life is to be lived, not handed over to others and watched.