Colourful Threads

At the end of January, I posted a list of what was on my Reading Shelf. My friend Ash asked if I’d return to the post and write my thoughts about the books. Here they are:

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn
This book was an excellent introduction to meditation, the best I’ve read (and I’ve tried quite a few by now.) It was clear, well written, and easy to implement. I really enjoyed Jon Kabat-Zinn’s encouraging tone. If anyone is looking for ways to relieve stress, this book is a must read. I want to own my own copy (because the library one is always on hold!)

Wherever You Go, There You Are also by Jon Kabat-Zinn
I actually couldn’t get into this one until I read Full Catastrophe Living, above. Then this book became like a daily encouragement – something to dip into when I was looking for a little boost. This has turned out to be an excellent Christmas gift. (Thank-you Heather.)

Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg
This one needed to go back to the library before I could read it. It will reappear on my shelf in the future.

Time Management from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern
I love Julie Morgenstern’s books. She makes me feel like someday I may really understand how to organize my time and stuff. I am still working on my time map in Chapter 8 (because where am I supposed to find time to write down every fifteen minutes what I am doing?) but maybe if I can successfully implement some of her ideas, I’ll be able to go back to school, earn my masters, start my sewing business, and open an alternative education center!

Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD
This book is simply mesmerizing. Dr Remen is wise and insightful and her stories are real and heartwarming. They show show how all sorts of people have and are still dealing with the life issues that we all must face. I found it hopeful and courageous and peaceful.

Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World by Craig and Marc Kielburger
I didn’t get to this one either before someone else requested it from the library. It will also make it’s way back onto my shelves.

Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
These are quirky, odd, philosophical parables disguised as children’s stories. Definitely worth re-reading again in a few months and then again in a few years. I think I will discover something new every time and may even finally get a few of them.

Confession Of An Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
I really enjoyed this book until the ending. It built steadily and rather tantalizingly until it exploded all over the place. The descriptions are poetical and the story original, but I’ll be passing this one onto the Goodwill Store.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Still sitting there, waiting forlornly for me.

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier
Dang it, this one got called back to the library as well. What I did peruse of it I really enjoyed. I think this will be required reading for my high schoolers at some time.

Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse by David Ferry
I actually really enjoyed this one. I read it aloud to the children alongside some picture book versions of the tales. It was fascinating to think that we were reading one of the oldest stories ever recorded. Gilgamesh lived in 2700 BC and the most complete story (the one we read) was recorded in about 650BC for Ashurbanipal’s library (the first one ever built!)

The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas
I didn’t get to this one either. Didn’t even crack the book before someone else requested it. It shall return someday as well.

Now I’m off to read other books from my shelf. Maybe I’ll write about them too.

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1. On My Reading Shelf
2. Library Love
3. The Road to Damietta
4. Library Elf – No More Overdues

I have over twenty books waiting on my shelf for me to read and enjoy. After a discussion on one of my home school boards, I thought I would share my list here.

Here are some I’m working on right now:

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Wherever You Go, There You Are also by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg
Time Management from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern
Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD
Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World by Craig and Marc Kielburger

Here are a few that my children asked me to read so we can share the adventure:
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
Confession Of An Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Here are some I am reading for educational purposes (mine and my children’s)
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier
Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse by David Ferry
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas

What are you reading?

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1. Quick Reviews from Reading Shelf

Best garage sale find: Twenty place settings of Corelle in an acceptable pattern! It included two sugar bowl, a creamer and the teapot. Our old set was quickly disappearing as pieces broke and I wasn’t looking forward to budgeting for a brand new set. I was telling MrPages at the garage sale, that the price the seller was asking was really good, when the seller yelled from across the yard that she would give us the whole set for half of what was on the tag. Best twenty bucks we’ve spent to date!

Best recipe find: Hamburger Helper – Home-style from my beloved More with Less: World Community Cookbook. (I love Extending the Table and Simply in Season as well.) It seemed kind of plain and simple, and I confess I thought the troops might not be impressed, but they all raved. It quickly became a weekly staple.

Hamburger Helper – Home-Style
Serves 4

Brown in Skillet:

3/4 lb ground beef (or ground turkey)
1 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper

Add:

1 T. finely chopped onion (left in large pick-outable chunks or omitted for my crew)
1 stalk chopped celery
1/4 c. frozen or canned peas (We have used whatever chopped veggies were in the fridge or freezer.)
2/3 c. fresh ir canned tomatoes, chopped

While beef is browning, cook in salted water:

1 c. crinkly noodles (we use whatever pasta we have. I used some left over macaroni and cheese the other day – well actually, it was KD – and omitted the cheese below. It was really yummy.)

Drain noodles and spread over meat mixture. Sprinkle over all:

1/2-3/4 c. shredded cheese or 1/3 c. grated Parmesan cheese

Simmer uncovered 15 minutes to blend flavors. Serve from skillet.

submitted Marie L. Berg, Kan.
A program on world hunger motivated the contribute to invent her own economical skillet dinner.
Taken from Page 121 of More with Less: A World Community Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre, commissioned by the Mennonite Central Committee and published by Herald Press, copyright 1976.

Best used clothing find: Bathing suits for three of us in November! It was an exciting moment for those of us who desperately needed more coverage in the pool!

Best website find: Book Closeouts. I got the entire Narnia series in hardback for far cheaper than anything else I’ve found! The LittlePages have been building their Little House collections. The site’s catalogue is huge and I don’t usually browse there, but I always go there first when looking for in-print books that mainsteam booksellers no longer want.

Best used book find: Lord of the Rings trilogy in paperback. MrPages has been waiting years for his own copy.

Best used household find: A cast iron dutch oven which will be perfect for period appropriate cooking at living history. No more mooching off the other settlers.

Best music-related find: Zen Creative 2GB MP3 player. This mp3 player, while less popular, is actually more functional and offers more flexibility that an iPod (which MrPages refuses to buy). It has a slot for SD cards (like in cameras) so we can have a card full of our Librivox recordings, and one with classical music, and one with Christmas music. We have it plugged into speakers that are in various places around the house, or we use a small FM transmitter to listen in the car. You don’t need special software to use it, you can just drop mp3 files onto the thing and go. Audiobooks on the highway are the best time-killer ever.

Best techno-geek find: MrPages sometimes does gratis computer work for friends and friends-of-friends. He often comes away with old, mostly unusable hardware, which he, in turn, takes somewhere to be properly disposed of. Just before Christmas, someone dropped off an old broken laptop. It apparently worked find, but the plug-in jack was broken. MrPages made a few $10 Ebay purchases, dismantled the whole laptop down to shiny metal parts and lots of tiny screws, managed to put it all back together (just to have to take it all apart again to fix that one incorrect screw), and now we own our very first laptop! We plan on using it as a portable DVD player. (Our fifteen year old TV is hard to lug around the house.)

And I think that about uses up my creativity and so sums up our year.

Related posts:

1. The Year in Review: Work and School
2. The Year in Review: Holidays and Events
3. The Year in Review: Film, Movies and other DVDs
4. The Year in Review – Books

MrPages is still working at his job. He missed two large rounds of layoffs just before Christmas. Both were in sectors that his company had recently acquired and therefore didn’t need the extra staff. His partner of almost ten years, who is also a telecommuter, recently told their supervisor that if someone had to go, she would volunteer. She works because she loves it, but doesn’t “need” the income the way MrPages and their other coworker do. They both have younger families to support. Who said their aren’t any heroes anymore!

Work on the house is a more steady job, with no layoffs in sight. It is looking good though and I do expect that we will be moved into the basement for winter next year, if not earlier. After the basement the main floor walls and flooring need attention. Ten years of finger prints and toys, mini-cars, and tubs roving across the hardwoods are beginning to show. Significantly. And then the kitchen desperately needs to be attended to. It is in a sorry, sorry state. For all the renos we’ve already done, the kitchen is the most daunting. While we were willing to be without a functional basement for four years, I really can’t imagine washing the dishes in the bathtub until NotSoLittlePage1 graduates.

Decluttering is also going slow but progress is being made. It took me four sick pregnancies in five years to get to the point we were at in December of 2005. So I am trying to remain upbeat about it taking three years to get back. (I thought about posting pictures. I have some from 2005, but I’m not yet ready to admit that it was that bad, and that it’s still not as good as I would like. Perhaps next year.)

School is going extremely well this year. I spent most of the spring and early summer praying over our school direction and what it should look like. The results are that we decided to use Ambleside Online. Again. I had used it in the very beginning of our home school journey, but was uncomfortable with some of the book choices. I’m older and wiser now and realize that it’s okay to just not do a part of the curriculum that I don’t like! So we’re are happily back at Ambleside. The children are each doing their own year, which makes for a busy day for me, but more ownership for them. SO we are currently working on a combined Year 1 and 2, Year 4, Year 5 and Year 7. I’ve made quite a few substitutions (since we focus on secular education), but any replacements would be similar in scope, so you can get a real feel for what the Pages are doing. As an aside, I recently asked them if they liked the “new way” of doing school. They generally agreed that things are harder and they have less free time, but they all love it and wouldn’t go back to a more informal way. Someday I may find to time to tell you all about how I plan and execute four different plans simultaneously.

Related posts:

1. The Year in Review: Best Finds
2. The Year in Review: Holidays and Events
3. The Year in Review: Film, Movies and other DVDs
4. The Year in Review – Books

“Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu’un long discours” or “A good sketch is better than a long speech” -Napoleon Bonaparte

Our Fourth Year at Winter Family Camp. Small, intimate and usually cold. We’re already booked for 2009.

Homeschool Conference Workshop on 10 Ten Things to Do Before Age 10. MrPages came and worked the information table. People love how encouraging he is!

Our Second Purim. Over the years we have often celebrated Unusual Holidays. Purim is a Jewish time to dress up, have fun and eat good food!

A Trip to Narcisse to visit the snakes!

Living History Welcomes the David Thompson Brigade

Our first visit to the local Exhibition and Fair.



A month at my Great Aunt’s Cottage. It rained most of the time and the puddles and mosquitoes were pretty bad, but we had a lovely time. We tried to help weed the gardens. I got to use my other Great Aunt’s 1925 sewing machine, which is still in working condition. It was such a thrill thinking of all the things she must have made on it. We also got a few days in at the beach. My two great Aunts are incredible people whom I admire and desire to be like. They have given of themselves freely to make the world a better place. And they made our summer absolutely wonderful!

Living History Settler’s Weekend. We get to dress up and try to imagine what it must have been like here two hundred years ago. We always have a roasted buffalo and period appropriate potluck. The fencing association comes out for a display and lessons, but mostly we just spend time learning from one another and enjoying each others company.

Two Trips to the Penner Farm, friends who moved so very far away. We went out for a day in the fall, and a weekend just before Christmas. Both times were mini-vacations – relaxing and encouraging. We look forward to future visits.

Join us next time for The Year in Review – Work and School

Related posts:

1. The Year in Review: Best Finds
2. The Year in Review: Work and School
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Hazel an “outskirter” rabbit from Sandford Warren, and a small band of rabbits leave their home warren to escape the destructive dangers foreseen by another rabbit, Fiver. On the way to start a new warren they meet many dangers: rats, stoats, other Elil and finally Efrafa.

Watership Down
by Richard Adams
(The four pictures) Illustrated by David Parkins
©1972
ISBN 978-0-141-38222-7
Type of book: Hardcover, 474 pages
Reading Level: 10 and up
Awards: Carnegie Medal, 1972

Negative Elements
The rabbits have a “god” called “Frith”. There is no bowing down and worshiping “Frith” But they do tell storys about how he created the earth. The rabbits also take the name of their “god” in vain. There is mild bad language but it is in Lapine (rabbit language) and does not need to translated. There is fighting and some of the rabbits get hurt or wounded. Also rabbit tragedies happen where rabbits get shot at and some rabbits get snatched by predators. I found though, that nothing was described in too much detail. Fiver has visions.

Positive Elements
The rabbits are always loyal even in the most dangerous situations. One of the rabbit tries to be cheerful no matter how bad the situation. Some of them risk their lives to save other rabbits even when it’s not necessary. They try to be peaceful and fight only if necessary. The rabbits always think their plans through very well and come up with some wonderful plans.

Our Take
I love this book! It is one of my very favourites. I think the good points out weigh the not-so-good. The heroes in the the story have character traits worth copying.

Rating
Buy it!

Learning Opportunities
This novel would make an interesting study on how government affects society. There are also many formal novel and unit studies available for this book. We found one online that looked interesting here. Check google for ones you can purchase.

About the Author

Richard Adams was born in 1920 in Newbury. He served in the British Army during World War II and then went on to University, where he recieved a master’s degree in Arts. After university, he took several positions in the British Civil service. It was during this time that he told stories to his two daughters about a group of rabbits living in the countryside of Newbury. The girls insisted he write the stories in novel form and Watership Down was born. After 13 rejections from publishers, the book was finally published in 1972. The novel went on to earn him the Carnegie Medal. Other books followed, including a sequel, Tales from Watership Down, written in 1996, but none have been as successful as his first, which has sold 50 million copies worldwide. He now lives, with his wife of fifty years, Elizabeth, near Newbury, where the story was set.

Reviewed by LittlePage1 (12)

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I think I’ve blogged about this before,but every time the K9 Blocked Page page comes up, I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s doing it’s job, and it’s doing it well.

K9 Web Protection from Blue Coat Systems is a free Internet filtering system.

A few years ago, before we had K9, the LittlePages opened an E-card from a friend that took them to the American Girl site. I let them poke around the site while I prepared dinner in the kitchen. (The computer is temporarily living at the kitchen door. We have been temporarily without baseboards for ten years. Sometimes it’s the small delusions that keep me going!))

Suddenly I heard one of the LittlePages say”Let’s go to the American Boys site”. They typed in a web address similar to the American Girls site and then I heard a comment about how it was sure taking a long time to load (the computer savviness of my children sometimes concerns me) Somehow, my dinner-drenched brain kicked into action and I went flying across the room screaming, “NO! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!”

In fear, my little ones slammed off the monitor button and scattered. I hit the reset button on the computer and rebooted. I checked the web address they had typed here. It told me that someone had rated the site as p0rnography. I’m so thankful that the Holy Spirit protected us. I’m so thankful that those images never loaded. And now I knew we needed some internet filtration.

I tried all the paid ones out there. When some of them were installed, they wouldn’t let me go to their competitor’s sites! Some of them were easy to break. Some of them were just too expensive.

Then I stumbled upon K9.

K9 offers an impressive, fully-customizable array of blocking categories. You can set them from high to none, or customize which categories or sites you want blocked. It will email usage reports and alerts, if you wish. It has a three-strikes-and-you’re-out option. It also allows custom overrides for blocked categories, either permanently or temporarily. It will monitor Peer2Peer and Instant Messaging. It can automatically set all online searches to a safe mode. You can limit time spent on the internet and prevent phishing. It maintains both a comprehensive list of categorized sites as well a real-time dynamic rating system for uncategorized sites.

Pheww. There’s probably more that I’m still not aware of, but for now I think I’m set.

K9 does not monitor email at all, but we solved that by having a single log-in on our computer. Nobody has their own desktop. We all share one desktop. Which means we all share the same email program. We all have our own email addresses, but we all use the same email program to look at them. That means I can read my children’s mail. And my children can read mine. Mutual accountability. Mutual respect.

None of us uses online chat or instant messaging. None of us maintains any social networking accounts, like Facebook (I hate being trendy!) I want my children to value fellowship and accountability, which I don’t think happens online. Many may disagree with me, but I’m not sure that you can really get to know someone online. You can’t be true friends with someone you have never met. You are merely acquaintances, if that. But I digress into another post.

Please be careful about what little eyes in your home see. Get K9. It’s free. It works.

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A young boy, Ronnie, and his Aunt Martha agree to look after a lighthouse in early December, but as Christmas approaches and the keeper does not return, Ronnie begins to worry that they will not be able to spend their Christmas at home.

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Two children decide to runaway from home and hide in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Along the way they try to discover the truth about a mysterious piece of art.

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Thirteen year old Jessie Bollier is kidnapped and forced to work on a slave trader heading to Africa for a shipment of slaves to be delivered to Cuba. Surrounded by men of questionable character, he learns lessons about the cruelty of men and the evilness of the world, and yet still manages to withstand the hatred that surrounds him.

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This is the story of a young noblewoman who believes she is in love with Francis Bernardone, who goes on to become the humble monk Francis of Assisi. In her wildly prideful passion, she pursues him, is sent to a convent, and then escapes to follow Assisi to Damietta, Egypt during the Fifth Crusade. The books paint a vivid picture of twelfth century Italy and the horror of the Crusades.

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