Things Worth Remembering The three habits that lead to success are: Patience, Application, and Vision.
It is always better to be underestimated.
There are three things that are better than riches: Health, Freedom, and Honor.
Think swiftly, speak softly, act wisely.
All from: The Book of Celtic Wisdom
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Echo Base Officer: “Your Tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!”
Han Solo: ”Then I’ll see you in Hell!”
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
I just shoveled snow on my little city driveway and sidewalks for 2.5 hours. I’m going to go pass out now. We’ve been promised a one day reprieve before the snows return on Sunday.
Update: After a lovely half-hour nap, Dad Windu and I went out for another hour and a half, to help dig out a couple of the neighbors after they got home from work. This is what I love best about this neighborhood. Everyone pulls together to help each other out. After she cleaned out her driveway, the lady across the street let our neighbors use her snowblower. Another neighbor parked in our driveway while he cleaned out his drive, and then he cleaned out the elderly lady’s drive next door to him. Padawan Learner, Dad Windu, several neighbors and I have been pushing cars out of the no-pass zone at the end of our street for most of the afternoon and early evening. The plows haven’t been through yet and our road is a complete mess of roughly 15 inches of snow. I hope they can get to it tonight.
Now I’m really tired, but in that good, work-induced way. I remember often feeling like this as a kid, after working in the barn all day. I’ll sleep well tonight.
“Anakin, escort the Senator back to her planet of Naboo. She’ll be safer there. And don’t use registered transport. Travel as refugees.” – Mace Windu, Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones
Sheesh. Travel. Don’t even get me started…
Well, you just had to get me going didn’t you. I hope you’re proud of yourself.
OK. This past Saturday, Dad Windu’s company had the annual charter bus trip to Chicago. The company pays for a charter bus and driver to show up in the company parking lot at 6:30 a.m., our cruise director loads it up with doughnuts, bagels, coffee, juice and water, and Mr. Bus Driver Man rolls out at 7 a.m.
For the first couple of hours, the bus is quiet as everyone sleeps or reads or listens to music or talks, but when we’re about an hour outside of Chicago two things happen. First, there’s a raffle. The pot begins at $60 and tickets are sold at $1 each or 6 for $5. The pot got up to over $300 and was split two ways. We, alas, did not win. Second, our cruise director begins the mettle-testing, present-stealing, White Elephant game. The week before, she hits the town looking for enough small gifts as there are seats on the bus. After handing out a playing card to each person (kids included), she begins to pull cards from another deck and when it’s your turn, you can either pick a wrapped present or steal someone else’s present (and then they get to pick which of the two options to do again). The hot items this year were gift cards to Victoria’s Secret and Starbucks. I got a box of Good and Plenty and a puzzle book. Dad Windu got a gift card to a pretzel place at the mall. Padawan Learner got a can of Monster energy drink. Seriously. I, being a BadMom made him wait to try it until the next day at home. Nothing like tempting a migraine when you’re hours and hours from home and have a several hour bus trip ahead of you. He tried just a little on Sunday and didn’t like the taste it – too intense. Can we all say, “Whew!”
We spent most of our afternoon at the Field Museum and spent a little bit of time walking the Magnificent Mile (yawn), ducking into stores when the cold, cold wind got to be too much. After dinner, we hustled back over to the bus stop where we waited for a while in the cold until the bus driver could muscle his way through traffic to pick us up.
Our poor Mr. Bus Driver Man earned his pay on this trip. Because of white-outs, snow-covered roads and black ice, the trip took 2.5 hours longer to get there than expected and 2.5 hours longer to get back. We slowly proceeded passed cars that had slid off the road and rolled over, semi-trucks that had skidded and jack-knifed, and were passed by people driving far.too.fast.for.the.conditions. The lights from assorted police cruisers, fire trucks and ambulances – especially on the dark return trip – made for a distorted carnival atmosphere.
Ooh, the pretties. Oh, I hope all those people are alright. Ah, the danger of travel in the Great Frozen Midwest.
[flying across the deserts of Tatooine]
Han Solo: “I think my eyes are getting better. Instead of a big dark blur, I see a big bright blur.”
Luke: ”There’s nothing to see. I used to live here, you know.”
Han Solo: “You’re gonna die here, you know. Convenient.”
Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi
I was listening to the songs on my computer this evening, letting them shuffle through the entire catalog and Sweet Home Alabama, by Lynyrd Skynyrd, came on. Frankly, even as a rather unemotional and detached mid-western woman, I must admit that I love that song and feel just a wee bit Southern (with a big S) whenever I hear this song. I have been known to belt it out with gusto when alone in the car or at home.
I wish I felt this way about my hometown. I try to make myself look past the the ugly bits – the monotony, the grime, the poverty, but that is all I come up with. I moved away the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school and, despite knowing these kids for 10+ years, couldn’t maintain those friendships. Those 35 miles seemed an impossible distance to we 15 year olds. It took less than 4 months before they and I had moved onto different tracks. One’s high school can seem so self-contained.
My mom also grew up there, even went to the same high school as me, and couldn’t wait to move back a few years ago. She loves the place, even while acknowledging the area’s rather severe socio-economic problems. But then, it’s still full of people that she grew up with and who have been her friends with for most of her life.
How do you feel about your hometown? or do you feel you moved too much to have one?
Han Solo: ”We don’t have time to discuss this as a committee.”
Princess Leia: ”I am not a committee.”
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
Vander Kitten has shown two of my favorite traits, the courage to ask questions and the courtesy to do it well. She writes:
What about discussion with other learners? I tend to learn most when interacting with others, and hearing the questions they come up with.
I hope you don’t think I’m jumping on this because I disapprove. You of course don’t need or seek my approval. Instead, I’m in such awe of what you and PL are doing, that I just want to learn all I can about it.
Did you see how she did that? She asked her question, giving it a personal touch, and then followed the question up with a softening clarifier, which shows that she’s all too aware of the risk that someone might misinterpret her tone as judgmental. Now, I know for a fact that Vander Kitten isn’t like that in any way, but it was still a mighty kind thing to do regardless.
First, I’m really sorry, Vander Kitten. I have been meaning to answer this for the last week, but just haven’t taken the time to do so.
Second, I agree. Discussion – even a heated discussion – is one of the greatest ways to learn something. I really have to talk things out to make sense of complex ideas. Dad Windu might say I have to talk things to death, but that’s a different issue.
So yes, we do a lot of discussing between the three of us – as we read, watch or hear about things we discuss them in varying degrees of detail, sometimes once and sometimes again and again. Obviously, a fair share of the discussions between PL and I have to do with our formal learning, but we also do a lot of just talking about “stuff”. Stuff meaning things we see on the Discovery or History Channel, movies that we watch, Science Friday on NPR, books on tape, family/friend conversations, and the assorted things that we wonder about that are just rolling around in our brains. I know that you were probably thinking of other students his age, but remember that I’m doing a lot of learning right along side of him, so we’re often discussing and debating what we think something means or has meant. We had a great talk a couple of weeks ago about why the verbs “to be”, “to have” and “to eat” are irregular in languages that conjugate verbs (such as the English, Dutch and Latin languages that we’re studying).
PL and I were talking yesterday afternoon about the different “histories” you get from a variety of biographies of the same person. He had just finished reading a couple of biographies about Mozart and said, “I think it’s really interesting that each of these books is about Mozart, but each author picked a different thing to focus on. So even though they’re all about the same man, you only see the parts of his life that each author thought was most interesting or important. Why do you think people pick one thing over another? How do they decide what to include and to exclude? What makes someone decide that someone else’s life is worth writing about anyway?” Now that’s a discussion! (It was excellent, by the way, and although it pushed one of my planned lessons completely aside, I didn’t mind in the least.)
More to your intent, PL and his friends talk about what they’ve been learning frequently, asking questions and bringing up points from their own learning in the same subject or related topics. I’ve been really pleased to see how they are willing to challenge each other’s assumptions, while also letting someone have the time necessary to draw his thoughts out. From some other hs’d kids down the road, he’s also learning to hear someone else’s (crazy) ideas and decide when to push a point and when to let it go. That’s a lesson that’s best learned early, in my opinion. 
He also goes to a monthly book club at B&N, where he discusses books (and ideas and games and movie adaptations) with anyone else that shows up. Our librarian, one of the hippest male librarians ever, is always pulling him aside to talk about new books that are in, or “Does this book sound interesting?”, or about what we’re studying and what topics PL wishes there was more info about.
So discussion, it’s a really big part of our lives and our learning.
[Obi-Wan regains consciousness to find himself hanging precariously inside an elevator shaft]
Anakin Skywalker: “Easy. We’re in a bit of a situation.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi: “Did I miss something?”
Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
I love to travel. That’s nothing new to anyone that’s known me more than, oh, seventeen minutes or so, but sometimes new places can be a bit intimidating. There’s nothing like the romance of a foreign language, the beauty of foreign architecture, the thrill of standing at the entrance to a labyrinth of interwoven, narrow streets or the enchantment of bakeries, butcher shops, cafe’s and sweet shops selling all manner of unknown delicacies. Put them all together, however, and they can be downright overwhelming, leaving your feet frozen to the tried and true tourist track and your hands clutching a simplified sight-seeing map. Sometimes, the best method is a short, organized tour to get a feel for the place (and to learn about some of the unwritten rules of the area) followed by lots of time out exploring on your own.
Homeschoooling is certainly a journey and in the beginning a mentor can be invaluable. With that in mind, here’s a tour-guide offering an in-depth tour to Newbieland. Bring along some comfortable walking shoes and a bottle of water, because it’s going to be a marathon introduction.
Much thanks to Diane Flynn Keith, founder and moderator of the Homefires Yahoo! homeschooling group, for posting this link today.
“I’m going there to end this war. Wait for me until I return. Things will be different, I promise. Please wait for me.” – Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
I’ve been mulling over one of the questions from the 20 questions meme. It had to do with trust. “Do you trust easily?” I didn’t (and don’t) like admitting it, but I’m not trusting by nature. As a matter of fact, I’m rather distrustful by nature. Who knows why, but it’s probably as a result of trash from my childhood. Everything can be blamed on your childhood in the end, right? “Tell me avout your vader…” Seriously, Jung would rise from the grave if he could to have a go at my battered psyche.
Values = words = actions is the best way that I can define my sense of trust. And that generally takes time to figure out. Time to see, to notice, to incorporate. Because of the relationship between the three, it takes me a while, sometimes a looong while, to trust someone. I watch. I listen. I circle around conversations looking for those moments of duplicity. Probably most people don’t notice any change in how I perceive them, when I go from hmmm to trust because until that point I can be friendly, social, silly, outgoing and helpful, even flirty (if I’ve had perhaps a glass or two of something full-bodied with a cherry or plum overnote). But then again, sometimes I never do decide that I can trust someone and I keep a perpetually watchful eye open.
Then there are the few, the very few, people that I have trusted from the minute I met them. My buddy Ed is one; VanderKitten is another. I don’t know why, I just did. I trusted them in the very core of my being from day one. What is it about them? I don’t know. I haven’t a clue. A few more people fall into this category, but I won’t mention the rest. Keep ‘em guessing. ;-) And then there’s people, most of my people, that I learned to trust over days and weeks and months and years of knowing them. People that grow.on.me like English ivy grows on a brick house, deep and strong and intertwining. While it takes a bit of its nutrients from the very bricks it feeds on, making the building a little more open and susceptible to harm, it is beautiful in its own right. I feel like that about trust. It leaves us open and exposed a little bit, but is so lovely to have in our lives. Until the trust is gone and a little chunk of me is tore away too. The loss of trust is devastating. Heart-punishingly painful. Can you really learn to trust someone again like you once did?
“Things will be different, I promise.”
“Your father… was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true… from a certain point of view.” Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi
Warning. The rare rant follows.
OK, I generally have a self-imposed rule of not discussing national politics or religion on my blog partly because they are things that a) I do not find terribly interesting on a general basis; b) cannot be quickly summed up in 900 words or less; and c) rarely bring much pleasantness from discussions about them with people who don’t see eye to eye - and I have more than enough political and religious unpleasantness in my life as it is, thankyouverymuch. However, I am going to break that rule right now and say that I find it absolutely rude, obnoxious and unbelievably loathsome when Christians call non-Christian people (like myself) ”lost.” It is just as boorish and repellent as when Muslims refer to non-Muslims as “infidels” and when skeptics speak of the religious as “mindless idiots.”
So.stop.it.
I swear it takes every bit of my personal strength and integrity not to spit in someone’s face, hack their blog full of Triple X Nastiness, and steal their dog when I am referred to as “lost.” I have been hearing this a fair amount again and have been seeing it on more and more homeschooling blogs lately. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of homeschoolers are religious. Yippie ki aye. Go have an ice cream cone to celebrate. To equate my reasoned, read, and studied beliefs with some dolt who went hiking up a mountain-side without bothering to take a compass and topographical map is simply insulting.
For the record, I can easily equate “the Dark Side of the Force” with anyone’s irrational belief that their own special blend of dogma has all the answers, to everything, for everyone, everywhere, always. And just so we’re all on the same page: it appears to me that the universe, this planet and all its people are nothing more than a couple of fascinating, long-term science and social experiments. Disagree with me it you wish, just as I may disagree with you, but don’t insult me in the process.
Update: Dad Windu said after reading the above that he has always found it annoying when people say that he has “lost his faith”. Deciding that he doesn’t believe in a supernatural deity wasn’t like a twenty dollar bill that fell out of his pocket. It was was more like a favorite t-shirt that his parents bought for him when he was a kid. As the years went by, he grew out of it and, because it didn’t fit him anymore and had some pretty big holes and a couple of rather nasty mustard stains on it, he chose not to hand it down to his own son but rather threw it away. You see, he decided it wasn’t very useful anymore.
There, rant over.
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