handmade life

I don't have the time to have an all handmade life, but I love the idea. Tonight I used a washcloth that I knit for myself to wash quince that grew on the tree in our yard that we planted over Carbon's placenta 6 years ago. We had a great crop this year, and we got to try three different recipes for sauce and put up many jars. Tonight I made marmalade with them. A bit of peaceful, handmade life.

Quote of the Day

On this point we cannot be too earnest. We must shun the spirit of sectarianism as from hell. We must shudder at the thought of shutting up God in any denomination. We must think no man the better for belonging to our communion, no man the worse for belonging to another. We must look with undiminished joy on goodness, though it shine forth from the most adverse sect.
The angels and pure spirits who visit our earth come not to join a sect, but to do good to all. May this universal charity descend on us and possess our hearts; may our narrowness, exclusiveness, and bigotry melt away under this mild, celestial fire.

William Ellery Channing
"The Bond of the Universal Church"

Found in Great Companions V. 1

Carbon's favorite author

I checked out some books on CD to listen to in the car, as I had noticed that the kids were having more little spats as they are strapped in next to each other. I am a much calmer driver listening to quality children's literature with quiet children than I am when I am yelling "stop it, don't touch each other, look out your own window, etc".

So we listened to a very well read CD of The Van Gogh Cafe. It is a charming story of a cafe where magic happens - simple magic such as a cat that falls in love with a sea gull and very strange magic such as food that cooks itself and poetry that predicts the future. A ten year old girl works there with her father the owner, and she "sees everything" with her calm gaze taking in the world and all the people who come in to the cafe.

The story had another magical effect - it kept the kids spellbound as we drove around town! We had a few "driveway moments" when we had to stay in the car until a bit of resolution had come to the story, and we were all sad to come to the end of the story.

After the book ended, the CD ran the "credits" and said "written by Cynthia Rylant". Carbon exclaimed "Cynthia Rylant!? She's my favorite!" He hadn't realized why I checked out that story, but of course she is his favorite. He adores all the Henry and Mudge books, and when either of the kids plays with our dog they call it "playing Henry and Mudge". Carbon will also inform you that she wrote The Lighthouse Family books.

I think Santa may be slipping a Cynthia Rylant book into somebody's stocking this year ...

Sunday - a little Children's Chapel

Tomorrow will be busy, so I'll just post my Sunday Religious Education post now. One of my tasks is to create meaningful and developmentally appropriate worship experiences for our kids. I mostly focus on simple themes of connection and wonder, and try to find creative ways to engage all their senses. In fact, I'm quite fond of meditations involving mindful eating of something. The theme this month is "Just Breathe", and then I've got a little satsuma orange for each child and we will do the "meditation on an orange" from A Pebble for Your Pocket. This meditation starts with looking at the orange and thinking about where it came from, smelling it, slowly peeling it, tasting it, and all the while thinking about the tree and the rain and the soil, etc. It's very lovely - I love Thich Nhat Hanh. Here is the script for the Children's Chapel I'm going to do tomorrow (supposed to be about 15 minutes long):

Children’s Chapel 10/25-2009

1. Opening Words:

Life is a gift for which we are grateful.
We gather in community
To celebrate the glories and the mysteries
Of this great gift.
---Marjorie Montgomery


2. Chalice Lighting
For the things we know and the things we won’t,
We light this chalice
For questions that have answers and those that don’t,
We light this chalice.
For friends who get knocked down and get up again,
We light this chalice
We light this chalice for peace and for friendship and love in our world.
We light this chalice
---M. Maureen Killoran


3. Song – When I breathe in
When I breathe in, I breathe in love
When I breathe out, I breathe out peace
(Keep going as a chant)


4. The story of air

In the beginning, our planet earth was not surrounded by a pillow of air. There was no oxygen to breathe. But then something happened. Small plants in the sea learned how to make energy from the sun, and when they did that they breathed in carbon dioxide and they breathed out oxygen. Then the plants moved to the land, and they kept breathing out oxygen. But there was a problem, because after awhile there was too much oxygen! Many species went extinct and died out because so much oxygen in the atmosphere was toxic for them. The earth was out of balance.
Then something else happened. Life evolved that could breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. That life became animals, and when animals came out of the sea and onto the land they breathed in oxygen, and they breathed out carbon dioxide. And the plants kept breathing in the carbon dioxide, and breathing out the oxygen – and they were in harmony. Air in, air out.


5. Song – from you I receive
From you I receive,
To you I give,
Together we share,
And by this we live.
(keep going as a chant)


6. Meditation on an orange – by Thich Nhat Hanh (in A Pebble for Your Pocket)

7. If needed for time, yoga

International Day of Climate Action

Today, people all over the world gathered to do something to draw our leaders' attention to the need for action on climate change. We did our own small part, with a bike/walk rally at a park, but I'm awed by the amazing photos and stories from around the world available at 350.org

The personal (and the political?) - laundry

My last "personal and political" post made sense to me as being an issue that spanned both realms, but how many of us think of laundry as being a political issue?

Well, it turns out it most certainly is in this article about bans on clotheslines. Just one more reason why I wouldn't want to live in a managed community, but it does make me wonder. Is how you wash your clothes a sign of poverty? Is there a class issue at play here? (I expect there is). There is definitely an environmental impact.

Here is how I do laundry now:

I do not sort by color anymore. Too much work for me, and I don't see my clothes all turning pink or anything, so it seems OK. There is one laundry basket in each bedroom and one in the laundry room, and I am just always running whatever is looking full.

• I wash everything in cold water only, with environmentally friendly detergent. I have an energy star, front-loading (water efficient) washing machine.

• In the summer I have a retractable clothesline across the yard, and a folding laundry rack that I set out on the patio. This usually means I don't use the dryer at all in the summer. In the winter I use the clothes rack indoors. The only place it fits is in our living room, so some folks have said things like "that's so country of you" which I interpret as a slight. Oh well, whatever. To keep up with the flow of dirty laundry, I do have to use the dryer in the winter. We don't have an energy star, but we do have a fairly new and fairly efficient dryer, and I keep it vacuumed out so it will run with more efficiency.

• I fold on top of the dryer, and then I carry the piles to everyone's room. Every now and then I get the kids to help me fold, but mostly I am the only one who does. I put everything away in the drawers also, for everyone. (I know I should be getting more help, but my husband is a hopeless case and the kids are still struggling to open their own drawers).

• Socks go into a shoebox on a shelf above the dryer, and later I will sit and match socks. Ironing goes into a basket and waits for once a week ironing, and anything that needs mending goes into another basket.

• I iron all my husband's shirts for him. He doesn't know how to iron (crazy - how do you not learn growing up?) whereas I grew up ironing my father's shirts as one of my chores. My husband's preference would be to take his shirts to the cleaners, but he would need me to do that for him. I would rather iron than run extra errands, actually.

• Most of my mending comes from Carbon, who is rough on his clothes. I darn his socks and sew patches (lots of patches) on his pants.
• And I have a very few things that need drycleaning, so I get that stuff cleaned about twice a year. My love of cashmere sweaters is my undoing, and I am aware of how bad drycleaning chemicals are for the environment. We have one place in town that advertises itself as "organic and environmentally friendly" and that's where I go.

Laundry is a daily chore for me. I am always just trying to keep up with it so it doesn't overwhelm and then require more dryer use. My goal is to keep my family dressed decently on the minimum possible amount of energy, water, and consumables.

A bit of our homeschooling - math u see

For Carbon's math practice, we use the Math U See program, and I really like it. We've been taking our time moving through the primer, as I believe in mastery of math facts and I don't see any reason to rush him, but really this program is fantastic.

There are base 10 blocks that you can buy to go with the workbooks, and the blocks are very nice because they are ridged so you can count how many units are in each block and the ridges sort of hold together almost like a lego brick, so they are very satisfactory for Carbon to handle and please his tactile senses.

But even if you didn't have the blocks, the workpages are laid out with wonderful visual cues for the math problems. It's clear all along that the numbers represent a unit of something and the number line and place value have been beautifully shown as well.

And while Carbon is working on his math, I give Hypatia a pair of dice and have her roll them and then "build" that number from the blocks. It's always nice to have a way for the toddlers and preschoolers to stay occupied while you're trying to work with the older child. :)

Math is one of our easiest subjects right now, mostly because there is no stress in following this program. We love it!