Friday bullets - Oct. 23, 2020

I'm still here. It's been a busy week, and frankly, I just didn't have anything to write about. It seemed more fun to sit and read a book instead. Some weeks are like that.

• We have all voted now. Some of us stood in line and voted early, others of us voted by mail and mailed the ballot, and still others used the mail-in ballot, but dropped it off at the county building. We have covered all voting bases, it seems... at least the early ones.

• I am suffering from my annual longing for the Twelve Days of Christmas ornament patterns... as well as the wool felt to make them. Someday.
• P. has decided on which working student position she is going to take and will be heading to South Carolina in early November. This is one of those happy/sad parenting moments.
• I will also miss P., my resident horse whisperer. She has been working with Emmy and has made some great progress getting her (Emmy) calmer under saddle. This past week I went along with a lead rope as P. made a first attempt at taking Emmy into the forest preserve. I'm not sure the forest preserve is currently Emmy's favorite place, but everyone made it back in one piece. 

(Photos by TM who had Aster out at the same time.)

• Today, because we were learning about Ancient Greek pottery, we also read and discussed Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn. We did it in the poetry pass style that was so successful last year. I am always amazed at how interested everyone is when I ask them to annotate a piece of poetry. They are much more engaged with the actual poem as a result. Poetry pass is something I learned about when I read Notebook Know-How by Aimee Buckner a couple of years ago. Essentially, the teacher reads the poem, the class discusses it, the teacher reads the poem again, then it's time to annotate. Everyone has their own copy and during the 3-5 minutes given, they are to circle, underline, mark whatever words or passages they particularly like, they are to ask questions, they are to write comments about what a passage makes them think about, etc. Then, at the end of the time, they pass their paper to the next person, read those comments, then add their own. It continues until everyone in the group has annotated each person's copy. I thought it was intriguing, so decided to give it a try last year, and it was a surprising hit. Everyone agreed they all enjoyed doing it and would like to do more. So here we are.
• The other thing we did was to draw Greek vases. I used an idea I got off Teacher Pay Teachers, which is that you roll a die for each component of the vase, then draw that. Here are a couple of them.

K.

Y.

G.

• L. did not want to draw or paint a vase, she wanted to make one out of clay. (L. loves making things with clay and is constantly badgering us for a real pottery wheel.) So that is what she did. She used an odd conglomeration of clay that was left over from various of her other projects, but she thought is was mostly polymer clay, so decided to bake it. It wasn't long before I hear great wailing. There evidently wasn't as much polymer clay in her mixture as she though because it melted rather oddly. After some grief over her melted project, she was able to think more clearly. I will admit it looked kind of cool the way it melted, and ultimately, she did too. So she has now made it into the beginnings of a diarama of old pots. I think she has bigger plans than this, so I'm not what it will look like by tomorrow. 

• I finally ordered Y. the new math books she needed and the new English books that Y., K., L., and G. needed. I will admit that no one was really badgering me about getting them new grammar books.
• We are on fall break for school next week and I am very happy. We'll have two science lessons to do in order to get caught up, but I think we can manage that. 
• A book I'm reading reminded me that MIT makes much of their course material available for free. I've known this for quite some time, but it never occurred to me that they might have neurology courses available. They do! Of course this is just one more thing that I would love to be able to do, but probably don't have time for. 
• Finally, I'm reading another book, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values that Root us in the Way of Jesus by Rich Villodas. I'm very much appreciating what he has to say. Here are a couple of quotes from the book which struck me.

"'The read question of Christian discipleship is not can I be your brother in Christ, but can I be your brother-in-law?' I first heard this statement in a seminary class. Who can't your child marry? Who do you feel uneasy about having in your home? Questions like these help us get to the core of our racial situations. It's one thing to be in close proximity to someone who looks, thinks, or even eats differently than you; it's another to be in dep relationship with that person, and still another to work for a world (that is, Christ's Kingdom) in our which our differences are not placed on a hierarchy that regards some as superior and others as inferior. Racial sin and hostility in our world is very real." (p. 43)

"There can be no true reconciliation without justice. For relationships to be fully restored, things have to be made right. Justice is the presence of right verdicts and right relationships, and it's characterized by undoing power abuses and redressing sins against oppressed people. Many who sincerely yearn for reconciliation can want to merely name the sins of the past, wash one another's feet, and then just move on without further thought of action towards justice. While these gestures may be beautifully moving, the larger systemic social injustices continue unhindered, creating fragmented relationships and ruined lives. It should be noted that working for justice should not be restricted only to taking up one's cause with those in political power (as necessary an act as that often is). The pursuit of justice more often is about taking up one's cause with whoever is in power in whatever context and seeking to work collaboratively to bring about fairness, just policies, and equitable community life." (pp. 60-61)

It is a hopeful and challenging read.