Lift Up Your Hearts!

I've occasionally wondered what we might be doing to ourselves by prolonging daylight with the use of artificial lights. A study by the U. S. National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences presents evidence that the use of artificial light during the hours of darkness is a signficant risk factor in the development and progression of cancer. (More)

It's been a while since I've posted a Frazz comic here (I always worry about the line between fair use and copyright violation), but it's one of the best comic strips ever, and deserves all the publicity it can get. Though set in a public school, it often captures what homeschooing is all about, and today's strip made me shout in acclamation:

We gave Jonathan a copy of the Three Billy Goats Gruff story, and if the words aren't exactly as I remember my father reading them to me ([sung] "Who's that tripping on my bridge? Trip, trap, trip, trap on my bridge? [spoken] Oh, it's YOU, little Billy Goat Gruff. I'm going to EAT YOU UP!"), it's still a fun story to read. Jonathan asks to hear it a lot, and has some of the lines memorized already. After he'd only heard it twice, however, he didn't quite remember the title, so he asked if Grandma would please read him "Two Horses Woof." (More)

A recent New York Times article on the effort to promote breastfeeding includes this interesting line:

Nursing may even produce a euphoric feeling

So if you can't convince them with the overwhelming evidence of breastfeeding's benefits for the baby, try suggesting it as a new way to get high!

In honor of my father, who knew to display an iris on this occasion.

I know hurricane season began June 1, but really, we're not supposed to have to think about this till August, at least! Yet here is Tropical Storm Alberto, with the potential to become the earliest hurrcane in 40 years to hit the United States. Oh, well, my Brother the Insurance Specialist did warn me that Florida has had an unusually easy 40 years. Guess he can say, "I told you so."

On the plus side, the long-delayed rainy season may finally be upon us. My garden should be happy, if Alberto doesn't beat it into the ground.

I'm too busy playing with Jonathan to write much about him, but here are a few delightful Jonathan-isms:

I'll friz it to you and you friz it to me. If there's a word for what you're doing when you throw a Frisbee back and forth, it can't be any better than Jonathan's.

There's an emery board in there. He was looking in my travel kit, and he was right; I just didn't expect "emery board" to be in a 2.5 year old's vocabulary.

The baby's head is pressing on my bladder; I need to go to the bathroom again. His baby brother or sister is due in less than two weeks, so I guess he's heard this phrase a few times....

Oh, you DO have nipples! He took a nap with Grandma, and I had to explain to him that, unlike Mommy, I couldn't provide him with any milk. Later, he was with me when I was changing into my pajamas, and that's when he came out with this statement, an expression of amazement and perplexity on his face. Boy did that make me feel old: all the right equipment but totally useless.

While Mommy was cooking, Jonathan and I made up the Word/Horse game. We spread some of his word cards around on the floor, I get on my hands and knees and he climbs on my back. Then he directs his horse, pointing to a word and telling me to go there: Go to "Mommy," now go to "Aunt Janet," now to "loves." He made the game more interesting by asking me to make new cards for "tickle" and "fall off"; you can imagine what happens when the horse and rider arrive at those cards! He also has great fun with the difference between the cards and what they represented. For example, if I trot up to the Mommy card and say, "Hi, Mommy!" he laughs and says in a "how can you be so silly" voice, "That's not the REAL Mommy, that's the WORD Mommy!"

We went to the Orlando Science Center last weekend. Because they had three new movies we hadn't seen, we didn't have much time for the exhibits, but that's okay since we know them all pretty well. However, they do have a new traveling exhibit called Invention at Play, at which we spent all the rest of our time, and which is one of the best new exhibits I've seen in a long time, at any science musuem. (More)

Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World, by Lee C. Camp (Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2003)

Because I believe Mere Discipleship to be an important book for Christians who are seeking more from their faith than "fire insurance," I want to deal with some of its problems first. There was enough that I found really annoying that I want to get some of it out of the way, so anyone who feels as I do will be encouraged to read past that and receive the good therein. (More)

This Memorial Day I honor my grandfathers, who served our country in World War I.

Howard Harland Langdon, 219th Aero Squadron

George Cunningham Smith, Sr., 5th Engineers, Co. B

Click here for a previous tribute. (More)

During my lifetime I've watched the Deaf community teach the world to see them as people, rather than as people who can't hear. This was brought home most forcefully to me in the story of the two young children, one deaf and one hearing, who met one day, and each went home to report the other's disability. The hearing child explained to his mother that his new friend could not understand him when he spoke, while the deaf child expressed to his own mother his amazement that his playmate could not understand him when he signed.

Today's Orlando Sentinel showed me that blind people are beginning to accomplish the same feat. An article on teaching very young blind children to use a cane describes an encouraging departure from the conventional model of mobility for the vision impaired. In the old, vision-centered model, young children are taught to depend on those who can see to lead them around, and only later learn to use a cane. This trains blind children in habits of dependency at a stage in life which for most children is the golden age of mobility. The new method introduces the child to using a cane at an early age, even as young as when he first learns to walk. In this way the skills needed for independence come naturally and thoroughly. According to advocate Joe Cutter, retired from the New Jersey Commission for the Blind, "What matters isn't the vision you have. What matters is the skill you have. You have to observe your own movement, do it solo, to get those skills."

In her Christianity Today article, "Faith Like a Child," Scottie May reviews two books on children and faith: O. M. Bakke's When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, and Rich Lusk's Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation. In the process she offers some challenges for today's churches as they seek to integrate children into the life of their community. (More)

Yep, hurricane season is almost upon us, though I doubt there'll be much to be concerned about before August. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts an above average season, with 13 - 16 named storms, four to six becoming Category 3 or higher.

As NOAA National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield said, "One hurricane hitting where you live is enough to make it a bad season."

I rode my bicycle to church! One of our two churches is still out of reach, 20 miles away and much of it not well suited to cycling, but the other is only 10 miles distant and almost all of the ride is along a lovely bike trail, so this weekend I decided it was within my reach. On Saturday I made a dry run, in order to know what time to leave home Sunday morning. Turns out it's almost exactly an hour's ride, give or take a minute or two where the trail crosses major highways. I was psyched; If Janet can ride an hour each way to church, so can I!

The first time I biked that distance the last half of the trip was so miserable anyone who saw me had a right to doubt my ability to make it home. This time I felt so good I made a two-mile detour in order to pick up something at Home Depot. I eagerly awaited repeating the trip Sunday morning. (More)

When we lived in Rochester, New York, we had one car and could go for days without using it. We rode our bicycles to work; we walked to the grocery store, the bank, the post office, the doctor, and to church. Rochester's public transportation was (and probably still is) minimal, but its buses did get us downtown, and to the dentist, and a few other places we wanted to go.

I don't claim any particular righteousness for these ecologically sound actions, as much of my motivation came from the driving phobia I had at the time (that's another story); what matters is that they were possible, even convenient. (More)