Anisoptera

"Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky."

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Silent Noon

It's so disappointing when you are disappointed

"Never judge a book by its movie."

J.W. Egan

The boys and I recently finished reading Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, which we thoroughly enjoyed.  I can remember Mrs. McGinley reading it to us in fourth grade after we had come back in from lunch recess.  Amazingly, we would all sit quietly while she read to us for a good 30 minutes.  Most of us would draw pictures while we listened, while a few were content to just put their heads on their folded arms and listen. 

I realized quickly that I did not remember a lot of the story, which was strange to discover since I distinctly remember drawing a picture of a rather large peach rolling across the landscape...

Anyway, it didn't take long for August to become completely enthralled with the fantastical story and characters, nor did he tarry in discovering similarities between it and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  The short chapters were notorious for leaving us hanging and so it wasn't uncommon to find ourselves stilled wrapped up in the story an hour later (wonderful on a lazy afternoon, not so wonderful when you realize it is suddenly 10:00 p.m.).

As we sprinted through the book we found ourselves pausing, every now and then, just to muse on what images were coming to mind.  It was fun to listen to each other and build upon one another's fantasies.  And every once in awhile, one of us would say, "I wonder how they would make this into a movie...?"  Inevitably, each of us would slowly grin as we wandered back into our own reveries, imagining how what we "saw" might come to life.  Somehow, in some deep, intangible way, I knew that it wasn't possible to pull off the craziness of this book.  It was as if the story, as it played out in my brain, was only truly capable of existing within that realm--in my head.

We discovered, much to our disappointment, that we were completely right.  The movie version (1996) that we watched this evening was partly live action, partly animated.  The boy who played James was good enough, I suppose, but all of the other characters simply failed to live up to their bookish counterparts.  Aunt Sponge wasn't nearly as obese as we had imagined and Aunt Spiker, although sufficiently frightening, was not tall and skinny enough.  Needless to say, there were many changes to the plot which meant that important details were left out, confusing scenes that were not part of the original story were added, and the overall mood just didn't fit.  At one point I actually said, out loud, "Why are they doing this to the story?  I don't understand."

After the movie was over and I was tucking the boys in bed, Aidan shared that he "did not care for that movie one bit!"  When I pressed him for details he paused, shook his head and said, "It was just so different from the book and it was not at all what I imagined."  He was right and I suddenly regretted that we had watched the movie at all.  I felt like I had stolen his interpretation of a wonderfully crazy tale and replaced it with a very cheap knock off.  I wanted to take back the cinematic experience and go back to the place where the real story lived.

Oh well, lesson learned.  I believe that I will think long and hard about watching a movie version of a beloved book from now on.  It's so hard though.  Books are these incredible living organisms that breathe into you, become part of you, change the way that you look at the world around you and it is only natural to want to make that experience tangible and real.  Short of acting it out myself, I watch a movie (and its production company with its much bigger budget and its computer graphic capabilities...) to, hopefully, make some of that happen. I suppose that the best place for that to really blossom is where it belongs anyway, in my head.

"Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes."

John LeCarre

FINALLY some pictures!

I can now share pictures with you again!!!!  It's a long story about why there haven't pictures on my blog for the last six months and most of it doesn't reflect well on me.  Simply put, we have purchased a new computer with something like 4 million times the memory as the previous sloth machine. Now I will be able to illustrate more of my blog entries as I have been wont to do for eons...

As a way to celebrate, I thought that I would share some shots of the natural happenings around our place.  I LOVE my camera and I am so impressed with its incredible ability to make me look like I know what I am doing behind the lens.  Granted, Mother Nature provides the perfect material.  I'm just lucky enough to stumble upon it.

"My profession is to always find God in nature."

Henry David Thoreau

It's been quiet around here...

As if not writing for months on end weren't enough to keep this space so vacant, I am now attempting this post for the second time after my computer just turned itself off on me in the middle of my composing.  AARRGGHH!!!  I suppose it's better than my computer having crashed, which is what I thought was happening before my very eyes.... but still!

Oh well, maybe my computer was playing editor to my rambling nonsense and now I'm forced to curtail and straighten up whatever it was that I was going to share with you.

It had something to do with what we've been up to the last month or two and that being the reason that I haven't darkened the door of my personal space on the "Inter-mi-net"...

So, a shortened list of what has been distracting me as of late:

*John's garden  

I have named it thus because I must stop referring to it as our garden, or even, the garden.  The truth is this--that garden wouldn't be here if it weren't for my sweet husband.  For all my pining and longing for a verdant garden that drips with produce I really don't know the nuts and bolts of what said garden requires.  What I do know, I know through John.  I take phrases and sentences that he has said to me and then repeat them as if I had acquired that knowledge through diligent study and practice.  I'm officially outing myself in regards to gardening.  I live vicariously through my husband.  Now you know.  But I won't let that stop me from bragging on it or taking pictures of it or eating its harvest.  I do the flower beds, he does the garden.  And boy does he do it well (take that however you want).

*Swim lessons

This is the summer that the boys decided that they were tired of trying to swim while simultaneously trying to keep any part of their body above their neckline completely dry.  I suppose this is the kind of thing that one just has to learn on their own.  No amount of maternal suggestion, illustration or bribery was able to break through the stubbornness that fed this obsession.  On the first day of swim lessons they both just decided it was time to put on their big boy panties swim trunks and face the music.  Oh, the goggles from grandma and grandpa probably helped, too.  Whatever the motivation, for it doesn't matter to me what it was, they moved ahead when they were ready.  It's amazing how often this truth screams its way into my smallish, stubborn brain.

*Learning all the time...

My boys really don't understand the concept of "school" in any formal way.  I've tried in the past to "do" some of that but it always blew up in my face.  It has only been in this last half of the year that I have seen what we do for what it is.  And what it is is simply--us being ourselves. 

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.  ~Johann von Goethe

When we decided to keep our learning based at home, I had to begin a de-schooling process that still continues. I am constantly questioning how we do things and not in a way that is helpful.  It is always with an eye for what is wrong, rather than what is right.  But yesterday I had the most wonderful visit with a friend that I met through our homeschool group last year.  We went to her house for a time of "joyful play" for the kids but what I received from her was a wonderful gift of acceptance and affirmation.  She asked me some about how we do things around our house.  I've gotten somewhat better about describing what a day looks like at our house but I still find myself trying to couch it in educational terms, for fear of being judged as a slacker or incompetent.  She was so quick to tell me that she thought that what we did was great and even, that there was a part of her that wished that she could do things kind of like we did.  What keeps her from being more of an unschooler is that she, by nature, is a very structured person (I think the term she used was neurotic but I think that is a bit harsh) and she craves an organizational structure on which she can hang their learning.  I totally understand that.  I even have my own moments when I feel the same way.  But the beautiful thing is, both of us are right. (see above quote)

So for now, we will continue to learn what we want, as we want, at the pace we want.  I believe that my boys are better for it.

So that is a brief little ditty to catch you up to the present day.

One of these days I'm going to fix it so I can bring you some pictures again (I've got some good ones for you).

In the meantime, I'll see if I can get myself back in the swing of things, blogging-wise.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer full of rope swings, swimming holes and sweet, drippy watermelon.

The Truth hurts

In one of my online binges I stumbled across this gem. 

Some of you might not find this very funny.

You've been warned.


6 yearold stares down bottomless abyss of formal schooling

Planting seeds

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."

Robert Louis Stevenson

It's been an interesting Spring around here.  We are still navigating the huge learning curve of last year's garden.  The hardest thing to accept has been the much shorter growing season of our gardening zone.  We were spoiled when we lived in Atlanta.  We enjoyed an extended Spring that allowed for much longer growing opportunities and a bit more grace, in terms of frost dates and such.

But here, it's been much different.

This is the second year that we have not had our garden fully planted by this time.  We've been plagued by either rainy weather or threatening temperatures.  If you ask any old timer around here they will insist that you should never plant your garden before Mother's Day.  When I first heard that I literally laughed out loud.  Surely they couldn't be serious!  

They were dead serious. 

Mother's Day morning blew in freezing temperatures in these parts.

Amazing.

So, we are forced to take a breather and be patient.  

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:

...a time to plant and a time to uproot"

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-2

Many of our learning experiences this year have been hidden in these breaths.

Much like the seeds that we have been able to plant thus far, there is important work going on, underground.

It would be absolutely ridiculous of me to ready my soil, plant my seed, water it gently and then expect instant growth--evidence of my attempts at fruitfulness.
Even under the best circumstances, a seed can only grow as fast as it, as an individual, was designed to emerge.  If you've ever planted a row of seeds, you've witnessed this first hand. Given the exact same soil, and the same amount of moisture and sunlight and prayers and petitions, certain seeds will burst forth precious leaves of hope before others. 

Every time.

Those first seedlings are not necessarily "better" than the ones to follow, things just jelled for them sooner than the others.  There is even reason to believe that, in some cases, that later emergence will benefit the plant in the long run by providing deeper roots.  Or, even more interestingly, bigger leaves that help to absorb more sunlight and, thus, enable the plant to better feed itself throughout its life cycle.

So, as we ramble down this road of organic learning, I'm learning to let things be.  I'm trying to extract the industrial yield expectations of traditional education from my scorecard and replace them, instead, with ones that are sustainable.

I'm witnessing, daily, that there is more than one path to follow to learn the same thing and one way is not, by its nature, superior to another.

I've seen that hours and hours of quiet reading on one's own, following one's particular interest, spins a matrix of paths and trails that lead to more subjects and facts than makes sense to my limited mind.

I'm, now, humbly aware that five year old kids can master the concept of global warming and all of its ill effects, while still not 100% confidant of all the letters of the alphabet.

And I've come to accept that all of the elements in a day--the sunshine, the wind, the pelting rain--all serve a purpose.  All are needed at some point on the journey to grow something beautiful and unique.

"Don't try to force anything.   Let life be a deep let-go.
See [God/Spirit/All That Is] opening millions of flowers
every day without forcing the buds."
-  Bhagwan Shree Rayneesh

What are we really after?

"Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one."

E. B. White

I've been doing some thinking lately about what it is, exactly, I hope to accomplish with this whole learning at home business. There are the obvious answers--children who can read, write and compute, of course. And then there are the extra credit answers--the ability to write creatively, reason intelligently and to become the kind of people that everyone wants to have on their Trivia Night team.  

But with the obvious and the hopeful outcomes aside, what am I really hoping will emerge?

As I've thought about this I've decided that, until just very recently, I have put an inordinate amount of weight on tangible intelligence.  You know, the kind that everyone can see and admire (or loathe, depending on the circumstances).  The kind about which grandparents can boast to their friends.  The kind that justifies to your friends (whether the parents of public, private or homeschooled kids) that you are not ruining your kids potential and that you are "qualified" to do this learning outside of the norm.  The kind that, according to popular wisdom, gains you entrance to great institutions of higher learning and, as a by-product, even more admiration and respect.  After all, that's how I did it.  Those were the expectations placed on me by those whom mattered most and they were the hopes that bolstered my actions and hard work.

Only because of the incredible clarity that comes with hindsight am I able to pose this question, to myself and anyone else:

But what did I really learn?  Really?

I obviously learned how to do what it took to progress from one grade to the other.  I learned how to stay out of trouble (there was that one really bad instance my sophomore year, but that was the exception) and hang out with "smart" kids which helped show others that I was serious about my education.  I learned how to take my natural interests (scouting, volunteering, political activism and public interest) that I would have pursued regardless of outside pressures and turn them into vehicles for personal advancement (college applications). And I learned that if I kept on this path of "do right-ness", that I would most likely succeed and earn the love and respect of people.  

In many ways, those were valuable lessons.

And, in many ways, I was successful.

Successful at playing the game, that is.

But what if this intelligence we're after has nothing to do with all of those things I mentioned?

What if I want, more than anything in this world, for my children to not be intimidated into playing a game that doesn't really have winners?

When my son discovers that other kids his age have already "covered" a particular topic, how do I want him to respond?  Do I want him to quickly read up on the subject so that he can be considered on par with their "age appropriate" subject matter?  Do I want him to be able to say, "Oh yeah, I know that too"?

No.
Well, that's what my better self would answer.
The person with whom I'm most acquainted, the person within whose skin I've lived most of my life, would say, "Well, that would be the way to know you were on track."  But I'm beginning to know better.
I'm beginning to see how to respond in that way would be playing the game.

If I want this education business to be more than what I experienced, my children have got to be motivated by something much deeper.

He is more than welcome to run out and read up on the water cycle or fractions or Alexander the Great.  Go for it.  Be my guest.
But only if he wants to do it for himself, borne out of his interest and his desire to know more. 
Because the truth is that to do it for any other reason is to play the game.

I'm tired of games.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less slowly. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggest that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of colored paper, or plant straw trees in flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences. - Anne Sullivan