Not throwing it out

There is a joke about an old woman, of a thrifty disposition, whose children find an envelope after her death that is labeled "bits of thread, too small to use".

I think about that when I am debating whether to keep something or to throw it out.  Yes, perhaps I can find a use for twist ties, bread clips, plastic bags, toilet paper tubes, and tiny scraps of fabric.  But I could also end up buried in piles of crap I'm saving in an effort to not waste.

In my living room there is an old dresser (very old - and very broken - but it's been in the family forever) in the corner that I use to store my fabric stash.  I tell myself, at the point I can't fit anything else in there, that's when I need to make some tough choices.  And when it got to that point again last month, I found a pile of old Tshirt strips.  I had taken these old stained, ripped, unusable shirts and cut them into strips, and then stored them.

Could I be that old lady someday, and when they are cleaning out my stuff they say "why did she keep these rags all these years?"

With the specter of Hoarders hanging over my head I have been busy actually using those scraps - sew them together into long rolls, then braid them together.  It will be a rag rug.

What do you keep, and hope to actually use some day?  Bottle caps?  The fortune strips out of fortune cookies?  Aluminum foil?

Being Elmo

We just watched the fabulous documentary Being Elmo, and it inspired some sewing and puppet making around here right away.  I love The Muppets and have a great deal of nostalgia for Sesame Street, but the beauty of this film is the picture it paints of the people behind the puppets.  I recommend this to everyone!

The Reading Life

'Tis the season of the summer reading program.  Besides the summer REading program I'm doing at church, the kids have forms for the reading program at Barnes and Noble and the one from the local library.  Barnes and Noble is giving out free books after they read 10 books and write a recommendation for each, and the library has a different coupon each week the kids can pick up when they come in and update their book lists.  At church they can pick a prize out each time they finish 7 Books - one for each UU Principle.




I question how much these summer reading programs really motivate kids.  I think a book is its own best reward, and kids who love to read will read in the summer no matter what.  Those who don't love to read aren't going to care about free books or coupons or little prizes.  And why do we try to encourage reading in the summer?  What about the winter - curl up with a good book in front of the fire?  The spring - rainy days are reading days?  The fall - the best harvest is between the covers of a book?

But no matter how ineffective the summer reading push may be, we continue to place books and stories in the center of our lives.  Our favorites recently:

Dark Life by Kat Falls creates an imaginative future where global warming has raised the water levels and led to a need to farm the ocean floor.  It's somewhat dystopian, but aimed for the tweens so the politics are a bit naive (and the love scene at the end of the book was painfully awkward).  Carbon loved it, however, and was intrigued by the idea of undersea living.  Too bad "liquigen" isn't a real option.

TinTin in America by Herge is a classic, but we did have to stop and talk to the kids about the portrayal of Native Americans in the book - it is simply awful.  Actually, I have all sorts of problems with TinTin, and yet somehow allow it to charm it's way past my normal standards.

Judy Moody and Stink: the Mad Mad Mad Mad Treasure Hunt by Megan McDonald has been a lot of fun.  I think I prefer the straight up Judy Moody books, which are aimed at slightly older kids, but in this crossover book the siblings are really a team, and not snarky rivals.  It's good for my sibling set and they are both enjoying it equally.

Urchin and the Heart Stone, the second in the Mistmantle Chronicles, continues the action right where Urchin of the Riding Stars ended.  This second book lacks some of the energy of the first, however.

A little walk around my front garden

I am blessed with this lovely homeplace, and yesterday we turned our attention to one little corner of it. A lot of this we've put in ourselves this spring, and much of it was covered with blackberry bramble up until very recently.  I'm loving how it looks as it gets cleaned up and made pretty, and I can look out my kitchen window on flowers instead of blackberry weeds.

Spoiled Rotten?

Elizabeth Kolbert has written a thought-provoking piece for the New Yorker, asking "Why do kids rule the roost?".  It brings up many really good points - not just about having "well-behaved kids", which has always seemed like a short-sighted goal to me - but about ending up with young adults who lack basic life skills and self-sufficiency.

The article also mentions the differences between American kids, kids from a Peruvian Amazon tribe, and French kids.  You can probably guess the differences that anthropologists have noted.

And my kids are definitely Americans.  They expect to be tended to.  They expect to get their way eventually.  They have too much stuff.

I don't like this, and I certainly don't like having to struggle to get them to do each and every basic task that life requires (brush your teeth, take a bath, come on now, don't make me ask 20 times!).  My husband and I were talking about what we can do differently, but there is also a culture that the kids are growing up in that influences all of this - some of this is out of our individual hands.

One thing I'm doing is teaching my kids to cook.  This week, after the crazy junk-food binge they had last week while I was away and Dad was flying solo, when I went to the grocery store I asked them each to use their snack budgets on something we could make together, rather than on pre-packaged snacks.  Hypatia chose Rice Krispie Treats - it's not exactly difficult to make or really from scratch, but I think it's a good first step with a 6 year old.  And as I type this she's behind me vacuuming, and my son is up cleaning his room, so perhaps it's not all hopeless.

Acts of Faith

Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation by Eboo Patel, is the UU Common Read book this year, and I just found the time to read it.

What It's About:


Patel explores what turns a young boy or man into a religious fanatic and/or suicide bomber, and concludes that the extremists are investing in reaching youth while pluralists are failing to do so.  He then explores his own story, and how he came to finally embrace his own identity as a Muslim and simultaneously establish the Interfaith Youth Core and work to bring youth of different faiths together through the experience of doing service together.

Why I Read It:

Like I said, it's the UU Common Read, and the UUA has also just come out with a high school curriculum based off the Interfaith Youth Core that looks very interesting.

What I Thought of It:

It's an interesting story, well-written, and nicely balanced between the personal and the well-researched.  For those interested in faith formation, Patel has gifted us with an open and honest memoir of how faith identity is developed alongside all the other identities youth and young adults are forming and balancing.  I really enjoyed reading the book.

Technical Note:

This was the first book I bought on my Kindle that I ended up wanting to highlight and take notes as   I read it.  Luckily, I was able to figure out how to highlight, and it turns out there is just as much satisfaction highlighting text on the Kindle Fire as there is in doing it for real.

My Take Away:

The book left me with so many thoughts.  First and foremost is that I am inspired to do more interfaith work.  We UU's spend a lot of time bemoaning how homogenous and white we are as a denomination, and I have heard many many people ask "why don't people of color want to come here?".  Acts of Faith did a great job of illustrating how much a part of someone's identity their family's faith can be - and how embracing that faith and that identity can still mean having an open, thinking mind and a willingness to explore and hear the perspectives of others.  If we want to be open to diversity, then we should seek that without holding up some sort of UU exceptionalism that says all others should convert to our faith.  Interfaith work, out in the community, will bring us all together without losing who we each uniquely are.

Now I really want to do the Tapestry of Faith curriculum with the youth group next year.

A brief tour of my garden

My garden at the new house has caused me much heart ache this year.  It just hasn't been good - I've planted three times and really nothing has come up.  The soil is bad, even after I worked in some good stuff, the drainage is bad, the weather has been too cold, and the slug population is out of this world  Bad, Bad, Bad.  A Learning Experience, except I really didn't need or want another freakin Learning Experience right now.  Enough with the Learning!  Give me instant success, already. :)

But here are a few good things from the garden: