Archive for September, 2007
Wonderboy had an appointment with a genetics specialist yesterday. This was an appointment his neurosurgeon had urged me to set up, even though I explained that the genetics department at our former hospital had done extensive testing and ruled out chromosomal reasons for my boy’s many "abnormalities." Their best guess was that Wonderboy’s issues are the result of a developmental glitch early on in utero, some influential cells marching to the beat of their own peculiar drum. Much as everyone would like a name to attach to Wonderboy’s collection of atypical physical characteristics, a name with a nice clear road map to show us the best route to take in nurturing this odd little man, the consensus was that no such name, no predefined syndrome, exists.
Wonderboy, I’ve been told by many a specialist, is a one of a kind.
But this neurosurgeon was insistent, and the geneticist he wanted us to see is, he declared, one of the most esteemed in the world. I set up the appointment, and I’m glad I did.
I loved her, loved her warm and easy manner, the instant camaraderie she struck up with my son. I loved the gleam of understanding in her eyes, and the shrewdness of her questions.
During the course of the appointment, I realized something about genetics specialists, something that was as true of our experience with that department back in Virginia as it was in Dr. J.’s office yesterday. All the other specialists we see—and don’t get me wrong, I am a very big fan of your specialty doctors, your surgeons, neurosurgeons, cardiologists, otolaryngologists, developmental pediatricians and the rest of the lot—though honesty compels me to admit I have yet to meet a neurologist who didn’t treat me like a pest, and my child like an interruption to his research—all those other specialists, I was saying, focus by definition on one little piece of the puzzle.
The genetics doctors are looking at how all the pieces fit together. What I realized during yesterday’s appointment is that Dr. J. was not just taking a history, she was eliciting a narration about my son. She wants his story, two or three generations back, if you please.
A doctor whose passion is story is a doctor I can relate to. A great deal of my life revolves around interpreting the cryptic, adorable, worrisome text that is my son. I study the pages of his life like a scholar, with a scholar’s passion for his subject. Dr. J. took a look at this book and found it every bit as compelling as I do.
And she surprised me. I raised the question I’d discussed with the neurologist: hadn’t Genetics already ruled out genetics as the explanation for Wonderboy’s alphabet soup of issues?
Not necessarily, says Dr. Jones. I told her what tests had been done in three years ago, and she nodded and said that yes, that sounds about right in regard to what processes were available in 2004.
"The thing is," she explained, "we’re good at reading chromosomes. But we’re not so good at reading genes."
But there’s a new test that decodes a bit more of the genetic cipher, and it’s possible—not likely, but possible—that cracking that code could tell us more about Wonderboy.
Something else about Dr. J.: delightful sense of humor. She didn’t even mind when I said, begging her pardon, that we see so many specialists it sometimes feels like trying to walk a bunch of dogs all pulling in different directions. "Forgive the analogy," I hastened to add, but she laughed and said that oh, no, it’s the perfect description.
I walked out of her office feeling like I’d found someone who could lend a hand with all those leashes.
Just read at Lindafay’s blog (the always excellent Higher Up and Further In) that Jacci of An Educational Life has begun a biweekly Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival. I am so there!
Submit entries here by Monday night. The first edition will appear at Jacci’s blog on Tuesday, September 19. This issue’s theme will be "The Great Outdoors." Hmm, I just might have an entry on that topic…
September 11, 2007 @ 7:17 am | Filed under:
Books 
I first heard about this delightful-indeed book from the Deputy Headmistress at The Common Room. A Child’s Delight
, by Noel Perrin, is a collection of essays about children’s books that ought not to be missed. The DHM’s review suggested that Perrin’s book ought not to be missed, either, so naturally I took her advice. She is, as always, as good as her word.
I loved this little book. Perrin wrote a column on books—"neglected minor masterpieces" is how he described them—for The Washington Post. Not children’s books; that came later. His column, "Rediscoveries," recommended books Perrin thought everyone should read but which had seemed, for various reasons, to slip under the radar.
Eventually, Perrin shifted his attentions to children’s literature. The Deputy Headmistress elaborates:
Years later he was invited to
revisit the topic, only this time, to look at neglected children’s
books that deserved greater attention.
He and his editor had
some trouble coming up with a list they both agreed on. Perrin came up
with a list of 17 books, but the editor rejected eight of them as too
well known. The editor, a well read man, didn’t want books that were
too famous. The point was to recommend pieces that everybody didn’t
already know.
The story of just how Perrin came up with the final list of books, recounted in the introduction to A Child’s Delight and summarized in the DHM’s post, is fascinating reading in itself.
I had read about two thirds of the books Perrin discusses. Our taste seems to run on similar tracks, for many of his most enthusiastic reviews were of books I get pretty excited about myself. I’ve been tracking down and reading the other books on his list, and I owe him (and the DHM) a debt of thanks: these are indeed books not to be missed.
The DHM talks in detail about a little picture book called Johnny Crow’s Garden
, by Leslie Brooke, reviewed with joyful rhapsody by Perrin. Their descriptions jogged my memory; I remember reading—and adoring—Johnny Crow when I was a tiny girl. I scored a used copy on Amazon marketplace (it is no longer in print, unbelievably, but you can view the whole book at Project Gutenberg) and had goosebumps when I turned its pages and saw those familiar old animals, the storks, the lion, the dapper Johnny Crow. Beanie quickly claimed the book for herself, and we have shared many a chuckle over it already in these few weeks.
Another Perrin pick is Millions of Cats
by Wanda Gag, well known in homeschooling circles because of its inclusion in—hmm. I was going to say its inclusion in Before Five in a Row
, but I just checked the booklist, and the other FIAR booklists, and it isn’t there. Another Wanda Gag book, The ABC Bunny
, is in BFIAR, so that must be what I was thinking of. But you remember Millions of Cats, the Caldecott Honor Book about the little old man and the little old woman who are all alone, and they want a cat, and the husband goes off to find one and encounters
hundreds of cats,
thousands of cats,
millions and billions and trillions of cats—
who all follow him home, which is when things get grisly. But charmingly so.
Perrin gives a very interesting biographical sketch of Wanda Gag, whose personal story was new to me. I’m even more intrigued by her work now.
Those two are picture books, but most of Perrin’s essays are about middle-grade novels. His taste runs toward fantasy, which suits me fine. Some of his choices surprised me because I wouldn’t have thought they were in fact under the radar. Watership Down
is one such novel. You know I agree with Perrin that everyone should read that book, but before that Google search hit popped up on my sitemeter, I might have thought such advice was redundant. Perrin wants to make sure no one misses it, so it lands a place in his book.
As do Noel Streatfeild’s "Shoes" books: Theater Shoes
, Ballet Shoes
, Dancing Shoes
, and the others. I have probably blogged about those books before. They are enchanting. My girls are in the thick of them now, especially Beanie. I never encountered them as a child; my introduction to Streatfeild came during my first months on the job as an editorial assistant at Random House. My boss was involved in bringing three of the Shoes books back into print. All we had was hard copy, old out-of-print editions from the company archives. Someone needed to type the manuscripts into a Word document—and that someone, as it happens, was I. This was a freelance job, not part of my salaried employment, and I remember sitting up late at night in my little Queens apartment, typing away to earn extra money for the wedding I was planning. Talk about a cushy job. The only drawback was that my fingers couldn’t keep up with my devouring eyes—the books were so good that I kept finding myself drawn in, turning pages when I should have been typing.
Perrin’s quite right; if Streatfeild has slipped under your radar, you should treat yourself to a delightful read. Ballet Shoes is my favorite, I think (though I’ve a fondness for Dancing Shoes, with that insufferable little twit Dulcie Wintle and her maddening "baby dance"). Ballet Shoes is the story of three unrelated orphan girls—Posy, Pauline, and Petrova—who are adopted, one after the other, by an eccentric English explorer who spends most of the book off exploring, leaving his charges in the care of a sweet great-niece. Exploring doesn’t bring in much income, so the niece fills the house with interesting boarders, one of whom just happens to teach ballet…
But I don’t want to reveal too much. One of the things I appreciate most about Perrin’s reviews is that he is careful not to give away plot surprises.
Even so, I didn’t read more than the first few paragraphs of the essays about books I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading. Perrin sent me running to the library website to see which titles I could track down. The girls and I are just getting into The Children of Green Knowe, which Perrin praises most enthusiastically, and others on my list include T. H. White’s Mistress Masham’s Repose (I’ve only read White’s The Once and Future King) and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. (I know, I know, I can’t believe I haven’t read it either!)
Perrin’s essays have an E. B. White quality about them: their calm, good-humored simplicity; their elegant prose. I do believe I enjoyed his essay on Diana Wynne Jones’s ripping good tale, Dogsbody
, almost as much as I enjoyed the novel itself. Coincidentally, Jane was reading Dogsbody about the same time I was reading A Child’s Delight, and when she finished, she wanted to discuss it, as we are wont to do. It had been probably ten years since I read that book myself, so I had to re-read it for Jane. ("Had to" makes it sound like an obligation, but you know if it’s Wynne Jones, it’s a privilege.) When I finished I really wanted to sit down with Jane and Mr. Perrin over a cup of tea for a nice long confab about Sirius, the luminous being who was banished to earth—in a puppy’s body, no less—for a crime he didn’t commit, with only a dog’s short life span in which to clear his name.
Other gems on Perrin’s list include Margery Sharp’s The Rescuers (much better than the movie), Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, and my favorite Edith Nesbit novel, The Railway Children.
September 9, 2007 @ 6:01 pm | Filed under:
Music 
…of Mama Squirrel. Look what’s playing in the Treehouse: a music study on pianist Glenn Gould, with emphasis on his Bach performances.
I showed the post to Scott and asked if he thought we should tag along, so to speak.
"Oh, absolutely!" he replied without missing a beat. (A beat, get it? I’m so very musical.) Scott’s the classical (and other kinds of) music buff of the family, and I usually look to him for suggestions on what pieces of music to play (over and over and over—that’s the sum total of our "music appreciation" method) for the children.
(No, wait, I guess there’s more to it than just listening to the music—we also listen hungrily to the interesting stories Scott tells about the composers and performers. All those evenings when I’m nose-deep in educational philosophy? He’s reading musicians’ biographies.)
"I’m kind of psyched to see some of those Gould performances myself," he added, still scanning Mama Squirrel’s list.
He says Gould is interesting to listen to, because he often hummed along—not in tune!—as he played. I’m intrigued. And also eager to hear all that Bach. I love Bach. Listening to Bach is like what St. Francis said about singing: It’s praying—twice.
(Scott just looked over my shoulder and told me—wait, say it again, honey, I’m taking dictation—that when Gould played Bach he didn’t use the sustain pedal, so it sounded very dry and crisp, like the harpsichord. And also! Rumor has it that his mother introduced him to the composers in chronological order, so he became intimately acquainted first with the Baroque, and then the Classical, and then the Romantic, and then the Modern composers, as opposed to the scattershot method most of us in this century are used to where we probably heard Mozart before Bach, or Tchaikovsky before—oh shoot, that’s as far as I can remember, and Scott just left for Mass. Ah well. You get his drift. See what I mean? Fascinating!)
So there’s that plan. Gould and Bach. :::rubs hands together briskly::: Gosh, thanks, Mama Squirrel!
(Another terrific resource for classical music studies is Helen over at Castle of the Immaculate. We rode the wave of her Elgar study last year. Oh! I still get goosebumps at the thought of that cello concerto played by Jacqueline du Pre!)
September 9, 2007 @ 1:50 pm | Filed under:
Bloggity I’ve been thinking about being nice.
Wait, that didn’t sound right. I mean, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be nice.
Two very kind blog friends* have given me a Nice Matters Award: Margaret Mary Myers and Michele Quigley (who knows me by my married name, not just my pen name, as you’ll see on her list). Both of them are awfully nice to have included me among such stellar company. Go look at their lists and you’ll see what I mean. Some of my favorite women on the internet (and in real life!) are included there.
And so of course this got me thinking about whether I’m as nice as those other wonderful women. If someone named me for a Well-Organized Woman award, or a Punctuality award, or a Never Gets Cranky award, I’d have to decline on grounds of honesty (after I picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard).
But nice? You know, I really do agree with the sentiment behind this award. Nice does matter. Just ask my children; I have been known to holler about not caring whether they grow up to be smart or rich or good-looking as long as they are nice people. "DO YOU HEAR MEEEE??? JUST BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!! BEEE NIIIIIICE!!!!!!!!" (Thus do I qualify myself for the "Do As I Say, Not as I Do" Award. Heh.)
OK, so maybe that’s a lesson better modeled than screeched. I try to be nice, really I do. Sometimes being nice can get complicated, though.
There’s a Carole King song called "Child of Mine" which I’ve loved since Jane was a baby, but there was one line that always bugged me. "I know you will be honest if you can’t always be kind." When I crooned that song to wee Jane, I used to change the lyric to "I know you will be honest, but you also will be kind"—clunky, yes, but it scans.
I’ve been thinking about that line a lot lately, about the sometimes thorny marriage of honesty and kindness. Sometimes being honest doesn’t seem very kind. The kids and I watched an Andy Griffith Show episode the other day, in which the town drunk was turned on to mosaic art by an earnest young deputy, and his newfound passion for making pictures became a magical detox program—until the former drunk presented Andy with a perfectly dreadful picture to hang over the fireplace, and later found out Andy had hidden it in the closet as soon as they guy left.
It would have been kinder of Andy to leave that picture over the mantel, but the truth was he hated looking at it.
Of course the punch line of the episode was that the guy went back on the sauce—and began creating perfectly marvelous mosaics under the influence. But that’s not relevant to my train of thought here. I’ve just been pondering, as I said, what it means to be nice, and where that intersects with honesty.
Sometimes being nice means keeping your opinions to yourself. ("Those are the ugliest shoes I’ve ever seen.")
Sometimes it means speaking up in the face of injustice, even if you have to tell a friend a hard truth.
I guess what "nice" really means is playing fair, which is another way of saying "observe the Golden Rule." Doing unto others as I’d like them to do unto me sometimes means speaking up when there’s a problem. If I’m screwing up or hurting someone, I’d like to be made aware of it (gently), so I can put things right.
As hard as it can be to be the person being corrected, I think it can be even harder to be the one doing the correcting. There’s such an inner wrestling match involved in the process of discerning whether the little voice that urges you to speak out is the voice of conscience (to be obeyed) or pride (to be slapped down). When do you turn the other cheek, and when do you take up a cause?
I guess it depends on whose cheek, whose cause. We’re supposed to turn our own cheek, and seek to right wrongs committed against others. But that’s hard, too, both of those things, for lots of reasons and in lots of ways.
Maybe the lyric should be: "I know you will be honest, and you’ll try darn hard to be kind."
It doesn’t scan, but it speaks more to the point.
Because I do try to be nice, I find it impossible to name other deserving people for the Nice Matters award. There are too, too many of you out there who are far nicer than I am. I fear that if I start naming names, the people I leave out (for lack of space) will be hurt, and that wouldn’t be nice.
Actually, for that very same reason I ditched my blogroll this morning. It was long out of date, and when I started trying to catch it up I realized it was going to be pages and pages long, and still I’d probably miss someone I meant to include. So I scrapped it altogether. There are a few other link lists still lingering in my sidebar, but those, too, are out of date and incomplete. I’ll think about them another day. Sidebars don’t matter so much anymore anyway, now that most blog-readers are subscribed to a feed.
Anyway, Michele and Margaret Mary, thanks so much for the award. I’ll try darn hard to deserve it. I will certainly continue to reflect upon what it means, which I guess means I definitely qualify for the other blog award I was granted recently: the Blogger Reflection Award, compliments of two extremely nice blog friends: Elena and Alice Cantrell.
Thank you both. I do love a nice reflection.
*Make that three! It seems Christine nominated me for the Nice Matters award this very morning, before she read my post! Thank you so much, Christine. So nice!
Why do mother opossums dread rainy days?
Because the children have to play inside!
Heh.
Lord knows we deserve ’em, the way we spend money on educational resources!
Barnes & Noble, as most of you probably already know, offers a 20% discount to educators, including homeschoolers. Usually you need to show some kind of proof that you’re homeschooling—in Virginia I brought in the letter the school district always sent to acknowledge receipt of my Letter of Intent. Sometimes individual employees aren’t clear on the store policy, so you might have to politely educate them. (Further qualifying you for the card, LOL!)
Jo-Ann’s Fabric has a Teacher Rewards card that homeschoolers are eligible for. I had one once, a few years ago, but I forgot to renew it. I’ll have to get right on that, what with sewing being at the top of Rose’s request list for New Things to Learn. Here’s the scoop:
Jo-Ann Stores is proud to support teachers and education in each
and every community. We are pleased to offer our exclusive Teacher
Rewards Discount Card to make purchasing supplies more convenient and
affordable.
Sign up for the Teacher Rewards Discount Card to become a Preferred Customer
by using the form below.
As a Teacher Rewards Discount Card holder and Preferred
Jo-Ann Customer you will receive these great benefits:
- Teacher Rewards Discount Card for 15% off your total purchase*
- Receive advance notice of sales & special events via email
and mail
- Money-saving coupons
- Inspiration for future creative projects
Your discount card will arrive in your mail within 6-8 weeks, as well
as your sales flyer. Watch for the next available email in your mailbox
for online and store offers and money-saving coupons.
You can apply at the link. The fine print at the bottom makes it sound like you have to be a member of PEAH, but that isn’t the case.
Homeschooling on a Shoestring has a nice list of other available educator discounts.
September 5, 2007 @ 2:43 pm | Filed under:
Books My to-be-read pile is approaching Tower of Babel heights, and yet, like those foolhardy Old Testament architects, I keep adding layer upon layer. If I should disappear from this blog you will know the tower fell over and crushed me in my sleep. Whatever happened to Melissa Wiley? She died as she lived, buried in books.
My parents are in town (yippee!!), and yesterday Scott and I left the kids in their energetic hands and went for a drive in the mountains. On the way home, we stopped at a bookstore. We had a $50 gift certificate to spend and wish lists a computer-screen long. But we left without buying a single book. Why? We weren’t sure. Both of us walked into the store eager and drooling, and we walked out subdued, pensive, puzzled. We didn’t know why we weren’t buying anything; we’d each collected a few books on our slow stroll through the aisles. But we put them back.
Option paralysis? I guess. I couldn’t remember what was on my wish list. Of course I could have recited it line by line as soon as we were back in the car. An Egg Is Quiet; Mistress Masham’s Repose; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; Never Tease a Weasel; the entire Melendy series by Elizabeth Enright; a dozen other titles.
I did almost buy a copy of Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, which I had not heard of before a very large signboard just inside the store entrance informed me that I will find it Spellbinding, Beautifully Crafted, and Mesmerizing. Judging the book by its cover, I was inclined to believe the ad copy. Besides, I’m assured the novel is also Tender and Delicious, which makes me think of asparagus. I love asparagus. I also love magical realism and Southern writers (you know how I feel about Fred Chappell, for instance), so really, I have very high hopes for Garden Spells. And I could be reading it right now, but I didn’t buy the book.
That gift card is burning a hole in my bag, so maybe I’ll go back to the bookstore.
I also almost bought (for five dollars in the bargain section, so again: why didn’t I?) A Widow’s Tale by Margaret Frazier. I have never read any of Frazier’s work but I am almost certain I’ve heard one of the other book bloggers raving about her recently. Which one of you was it?
Then! I came home to my bloated Google Reader and saw all those tantalizing Under the Radar recommendations, and oh! There are so many books I want to read. I will raid the library and add them to the tower, my darling, my nemesis.
September 4, 2007 @ 7:48 am | Filed under:
Math 
As Karen has noted, I can wax pretty enthusiastic about Math-U-See. Here’s what it looks like in our house. Jane is not in the picture; she prefers to take her algebra book off somewhere after she watches a lesson. I’m a floater, available to answer questions and prevent small unit blocks from entering the baby’s mouth.
Rose didn’t happen to have her dry-erase board out the day I snapped this, but usually she gets herself all set up with the markerboard, markers, eraser, and remote control before she turns on the DVD (as I described in this post). When she was seven, I’m pretty sure the markerboard was a huge part of math’s appeal—that and the bubble gum. She really likes to work problems on her board while Mr. Demme is solving them on his. She pauses the DVD and works it out, then [snatches the remote away from her little brother and] hits play to see [because now she can’t hear above his outraged shriek] if she was right.
Beanie, meanwhile, makes sandwiches.
Brain food!
