bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • My swim bag.

    After I finished taking a year of swimming lessons a few years ago, and started trying to swim for fitness, I only managed to do it a couple of times a month.  Part of doing it more frequently has been developing a well-stocked, ready-to-go swim bag. 

    I started with the bare bones.  My bag had

    • one lap suit from the local sporting goods store
    • one ugly old beach towel (I wanted one I wouldn’t miss if I kept it in my bag), big enough to wrap up in
    • ordinary Speedo swim goggles from the local sporting goods store
    • one ordinary black latex cap from the local sporting goods store
    • my YMCA membership card

    This is, I think, the minimum that anyone needs to swim for fitness.  About 2 minutes into my first swimming lesson, I discovered that the swimsuit I bought a few years back mainly because it flattered my figure was no good for lap swimming; it wouldn’t stay put.  So I bought a proper lap suit on sale for about $45.    It took a few more lessons before I finally admitted that I would be more comfortable with goggles and a swim cap (if your hair is very short, a swim cap is optional).   The towel goes without saying.  My "Y" card represents, of course, access to a pool or body of water in which to swim.

    As I decided I needed them, I acquired a few more things to stuff in my bag.  Much would be good for any exerciser, not just swimmers.  Let me stress, though, that none of this is necessary — I could get a good workout with nothing more than suit, goggles, and towel.

    • A pair of "flip flop" sandals to get me from the locker room to the pool to the shower.  It’s safer to navigate the stairs (yes, there are stairs at my Y between the locker rooms and the pool) and shower room with something on your feet.   Also, I can slip them on to pick up a child from swimming lessons without breaking the no-street-shoes-on-the-pool-deck rule.
    • A second towel, one of those super-thirsty super-compact PackTowls, to help get my hair dry faster (or even to wear on my head out of the locker room in a winter hurry).  I still use the ugly old beach towel too.
    • A mesh hanging bag, full of all the stuff I need to shower and get presentable in the morning:  shampoo and conditioner, facial cleanser, moisturizer,  anti-perspirant, razor and extra blades, toothbrush and toothpaste, comb, and a handful of hair clips and a bandana for tying my hair up or back if necessary.   If I was a makeup wearer, I’d have that too.   None of this is actually necessary for most workouts — a good rinse in the shower is enough to get most of the chlorine out — but it’s extremely convenient to have it, especially for early morning.  Who wants to get ready twice when once will do?  (A nice bonus:  with all this stuff pre-packed,  it’s a snap to prepare an overnight bag on short notice.)
    • A waterproofed workout plan:
      • The plan.  It’s a piece of paper on which I’ve written out the drills and laps I want to do in the order I want to do them.  Ideally I would make a new one for each session, but it’s good to have a sort of "default" plan ready to go.  Mine is pretty simple and fits on a 3×5 piece of paper.  Having a plan makes the workout more interesting, and more beneficial than just "oh, I’ll swim for 40 minutes and stop."
      • The waterproofing.   You can laminate the plan — very effective but perhaps time consuming if you don’t own a laminator.  You can put it in a page protector — not too bad but bigger than I need.  You can put it in a Ziploc bag — an excellent and easy solution.  Or (my favorite solution) you can recycle old Tyvek envelopes:   Cut them up and write on the scraps, wet or dry, with a #2 pencil.
    • A one-touch lap counter.  This little toy was a bit of a splurge, but I love it for timed workouts.  I always lose count and then I don’t know how far I swam.
    • A combination lock.

      All these things live permanently in the bag.  When I get home from swimming, I take the bag right to the laundry room, where I either put the towels and suit into the next basket of laundry waiting to be washed or hang them up to dry and be re-used; the bag stays in the laundry room until the towels and suit are dry and I can repack it.

    There are a few other things I would like to put in the bag.  Here is my wish list:

    • A set of workout clothes, with sports bra and running shoes, kept dry and separate from the swim gear, so I could substitute a treadmill workout for a swim workout — for instance, if the pool turns out to be crowded or closed.
    • A set of spare clothes and a diaper for my toddler.   
    • Hand paddles and swim fins, a great way to increase resistance and also to develop stroke.  One of these days.

    But to put anything else in there, first I am going to need a bigger bag…

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    1 comment on My swim bag.

  • Finding the time to exercise: the love and marriage model.

    Swimming twice a week has been working out pretty well for me.  I have been going on Mondays and Thursdays most weeks, different days if the schedule requires.  I’m optimistic we can increase it to 3x/week after 2x has become an ingrained habit.  This morning as I hurried to my car — I went before Mark had to leave for work — I was thinking about magazine articles on "finding the time to exercise."  They always have lots of tips, but never the tip that turned out to do it for me.  For example, from this page:

    • "Once you have the motivation, you will have the time… define your goals.  Be very specific and very realistic."  (What, "I want to exercise twice a week" is not specific and realistic enough?)
    • "Wake up a half hour earlier."  (We all know how reliable that is with co-sleeping nurslings.)
    • Run with a friend.  (OK, so now we have two mothers’ busy schedules to coordinate…)

    Or from here:

    • "Use the childcare at the local gym."  (This sorta works.  It works for two of my children.  But the youngest is despondent when left there, despite plenty of effort on our parts to get her comfortable.  I won’t let her cry for an hour, and neither will the YMCA staff, God bless them — they will fetch a crying child’s parents post haste.)
    • "Put the baby in a stroller and go for a walk."  (Well, I can do that, but it’s hard to get up to a steady pace when there’s also a seven- and four-year-old to manage.  It’s fine for a pleasant stroll but not for serious exercising.  And what do you do in Minnesota in the winter?)
    • "Go for a hike with your baby in a front carrier or sling… Make sure your baby is well supported — a sling is fine for a walk around the block but not for a more rigorous urban walk or a hike through the hills."  (HAHAHA okay this site has lost me, clearly the author doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  Anyway, again, I love hiking, but all that stopping and waiting and coaxing and cajoling a tired four-year-old is not great for keeping your heart rate up.  The only kind of hiking I’ve found good for exercising both mom and little kids is a hilly route with a lot of neat rocks to climb on, and the closest one like that is about an hour away.)

    (Wait, while I was googling around, I did find a pretty cool stroller gadget that some of you with medium-and-little kids might like.  check this out…)

    And then there’s all that "you have to do it for yourself… make time for yourself…" me me me talk in a lot of motivational articles.  This has never worked to get me exercising.  For one thing, if my husband takes the children for an hour, there are a hundred things I could do "for my self" besides exercise:  take myself out to eat at a nice restaurant, go to a coffee shop with a good book, get my hair cut, catch up on school planning to buy more time later, blog, etc. 

    For another thing, I’m not convinced it’s a healthy attitude for me to adopt, the "I need to decide to do this FOR ME" attitude.  For some women, who tend to be very giving, selfless, and generous, yes, cultivating the habit giving one’s self permission to do a thing for their own well-being is important.  But some of us, ahem, have never really had difficulties putting ourselves first, and motherhood is the main training ground for the "love your neighbor" thing.  I’m not convinced it’s a good idea for me to start doing anything new FOR ME because I’m still hanging on to a lot of FOR ME already and am trying to let go of it.

    So.  Here is the tip — it’s really two parts — that tells how I managed to swim twice a week:

    I asked my husband to make a commitment with me, for the good of the family, to give me an hour at the gym twice a week.

    I guess it’s sort of understandable why magazines with names like, oh, I don’t know, SELF, wouldn’t be printing tips that amount to "Ask your husband to let you go to the gym."  It is pretty antithetical to the "do it for me" mindset.  I should add, by the way, that it’s not "instead of" active whole-family outings like weekend hikes, it’s in addition to them.  But let me take this apart a bit, and show you why it worked so well. 

    • The first part is the "good of the family" mindset.  Instead of me doing it for me, or even him doing it for me, Mark and I together are making this commitment for our whole family.  It is obviously better for the whole family when I get some exercise every week.   They say it lowers my stress and helps me sleep better:  everybody wins.  It improves my odds of living longer, which is also good for everyone, especially Mark.   It sets an excellent example for the children.  And it helps us meet our family goal of being active together as a family, because often we go to the gym as a family.
    • The second part is the asking for a commitment from him.  Mark is a sensible guy and if I ask for something that I really want and that’s good for our family, I can trust him to provide it even if it’s a sacrifice for him.  But he can’t read my mind; he needs me to ask for that particular block time when he must be in charge of the children.   And because it’s a recurring commitment, we have to schedule it each week, together. Along with "When are we going to do the shopping this week?" and "Who is going to take Oscar to his Wednesday night class this week?" we have to ask, "Which two days am I going to get to the gym, and what time?"  Once again, this is good for the family — it’s a weekly checking-in between Mark and me, it’s a thing I’m grateful he’s agreed to do for me, and it’s setting a good example for the children.   
    • The third part is receiving that commitment from him as a gift and using it the way we agreed on — giving it back, so to speak.  I asked for those two hours a week for a reason, a reason that was — I said this before — "for the good of the family."  I am accountable to that reason.   I can’t use them to get a haircut, or go shopping, or sit and read a book (unless on an exercise bike).    No matter how urgent, they aren’t allowed to displace this specific commitment that Mark and I have made to each other.  Not only must I use the time for the purpose we planned, I also have to use the time efficiently — five minutes to get into my suit, fifteen minutes to shower afterwards, means only forty minutes in the pool, and that in turn means that if I want that workout to be a good one, I have to get better at swimming so I can swim more yards in my allotted 4o minutes.

    Interestingly enough, this "tip" also happens to fulfill some of the chirpy tips at those other sites.  "Tell another person about your plans."  "Schedule exercise into your week."  "Go to the gym with a friend" (in this case, Mark, who does his time with the kids in the kids’ area and then goes to run after I come back from the pool).

    And doesn’t it seem to be a good metaphor for marriage, too?

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  • Literature-based American history through 1812 for the Grammar Stage. Part 4: Colonial Expansion and the Western Frontier.

    Previously in this series:  Introduction.  Part 1.  Part 2. Part 3.

    This is a much shorter section, to be covered in only two weeks. 

    • Seton, Chapter 8, "Colonial Expansion"
    • Foster, The World of William Penn
    • Daugherty, Daniel Boone
    • Gridley, Pontiac

    Genevieve Foster's book is not only a portrait of a very interesting personage, it covers the whole time period from 1660-1718 in a nice broad survey.   Marion Gridley's Pontiac is an easy-reader biography, very sympathetic to Pontiac, and well written for an easy reader, I thought.  The illustrations are a little cartoonish but not objectionable.

    James Daugherty's  Daniel Boone took me a while to decide on.  It is wonderfully written and beautifully, provocatively illustrated.  It was the first of all the books that I read, myself, cover to cover, for the sheer enjoyment of the riveting story.  But… it was hard for me to choose it, nonetheless. It contains frank treatment of the violence between frontier settlers and native Americans — the murder of settler families, retaliation by settlers against local tribes, etc.  (Read Wikipedia's article on Daniel Boone for some background).  This is, shall we say, an uncomfortable topic.  Am I a skilled enough presenter to cover this topic without giving my kids an Indians-are-bad-guys attitude?  Many of the illustrations are quite violent, depicting armed, scary-looking Shawnee. 

    At first I thought, "No way — the kids are going to remember these 'scary Indian' pictures more than anything else."  But I kept picking up the book and flipping through it again.  Even though the illustrations were very violent, I noticed that they were pretty balanced.  The colonists and European armies are depicted with their weapons too — my own bias, I think, led me to think of these "familiar" warriors as less menacing than the depictions of the Shawnee.  Furthermore, the more I looked at them, the more I saw that Daugherty had given all the people in his illustrations a tremendous dignity.  Whereas a lot of children's illustrators of that era depicted native people as childlike and primitive, Daugherty's Shawnee were… fearsome.  Powerful.  Worthy adversaries.   And if you look closely at the pictures, which are sort of whirling montages of images, you see that through his illustrations Daugherty has also tried to tell both sides of the story.   You see the settler with his rifle, pointing, giving instructions to his terrified wife through the crack of the cabin door as she's barricading herself and the children inside.  But another illustration shows the Shawnee warrior standing in resistance, over an image of a Shawnee woman crouched, face turned away, over the body of a child.  They're really quite amazing illustrations.

    In any case, too, Daniel Boone's story is really a very fascinating one — it's hard to believe that one man could have so many different experiences — and his story, which takes place in Kentucky and Tennessee at a time when it's easy to forget that anything was happening outside the 13 colonies, is really worth telling.

    So… I recommend it.  There are still caveats to be made about the language — read it aloud, because you might choose to substitute for certain charged terms used to describe the native people.

    Next up:  we return to the 13 colonies for "Life In Colonial America."

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  • Late-seventies salmon loaf, plus a bleg at the bottom.

    Whole Foods for the Whole Family, published by La Leche League International, is one of the weirdest cookbooks I own.   First, there’s that goofy photo on the front cover, with wild-n-crazy Dad scooping spaghetti right into chef-hatted Junior’s mouth, while behind her simpering mug Mom is clearly resigned to thinking, "I’m never going to get that dress shirt clean."  Then there’s the style:  from the bright-red comb binding to the names and hometowns of the ladies who submitted the recipes, it screams "PARISH FUNDRAISER COOKBOOK." 

    And when you get past all that — what an odd collection of recipes it is.  It’s as if Betty Crocker had a separated-from-birth twin sister — Rainbow Crocker — who was raised by hippies on an organic farm.   (Catholic hippies, though.)    Betty gives you "Guidelines for Proper Freezer Storage,"  "Timetable For Blanching Vegetables," "Food Safety Tips" and a glossary of such technical terms as "shred," "cube," "bake," "scald," and (I kid you not) "refrigerate."  Rainbow, on the other hand, provides helpful articles on churning your own butter, growing your own sprouts, identifying different kinds of tofu, introducing solid food to a nursing baby, dyeing Easter eggs by boiling them with onion skins or blueberries. 

    There are a lot of seventies-style health food ingredients like soybeans and bulgur and wheat germ, with comments from the submitters like "I tried for years to find a soybean-based casserole my family would eat, and finally I tried this and now everyone loves it!"  There are a lot of casseroles, containing not cream of mushroom soup but Medium White Sauce made from scratch.  There is a recipe for Beef ‘n’Liver Sloppy Joes. 

    All this is to say, despite the very weird nature of this cookbook, there are a handful of recipes — even some of the weird ones — that I make again and again.   If you want a whole-foods version of an Americana recipe, it’s the first place to look.  For example, suppose you are a beginner cook and you want to make 100% whole wheat pancakes.    Normal cookbooks tend to instruct you to make pancakes with all-purpose flour and suggest that you could substitute "up to a quarter" of the flour with whole wheat, you know, if you can stand that sort of thing.  This one, well, it just gives you the whole wheat version.  (Takes a bit more liquid than white flour pancakes.)

    OK, so:  one of the recipes my family loves is the salmon loaf.  I’m not guaranteeing you will love it.  It’s kind of a weird recipe with weird seventies health food ingredients.  But it’s very easy, and a nice way to fit a bit more fish into your diet with little forethought required.  I think it comes out of the oven a little dry (especially if you’re expecting something like meatloaf or, conversely, like fried salmon patties) but that is easily overcome by serving it with some kind of a sauce or condiment.  My kids and husband are perfectly happy with ketchup.  I have served it with cucumber-yogurt-dill sauce — like tzatziki.  I have served it with white sauce made with dill and a little horseradish.  I have served it with aioli.  Tonight (while my kids and husband put ketchup on theirs) I used tartar sauce from a jar, and thought it perfectly fine.  We had it with olive-oil-and-lemon-sauteed asparagus and summer squash, buttered bread, and sliced tomatoes.

    Here’s my slightly adapted version of their recipe.  Serves 6-8.

    • 2 cans (14.75 oz each) "traditional" salmon, e.g., with the bones and skin — I prefer the more expensive red sockeye, but pink is ok.  Trust me, you won’t notice the bones.
    • About 3/4 cup milk
    • 2 eggs
    • 1 cup each:  rolled oats, oat bran, and wheat germ
    • 1 1/2 (that’s 3/2) Tbsp lemon juice, more if you like
    • 2 Tbsp finely minced onion, more if you like
    • 1/2 c roasted and salted sunflower seeds
    • Salt and pepper to taste

    Drain salmon, reserving liquid.  Mash salmon with its bones and skin in a bowl.  Mash it really well.  Try to make the skin and bones disappear.   I use a potato masher.  Mix salmon liquid and milk to make a little bit less than 2 cups.   Add remaining ingredients and mix very well.  Let the mixture sit for 15 minutes or so. 

    For a drier, firmer loaf:  Line a 9×13 glass baking dish with parchment paper and oil it or spray with nonstick cooking spray.  In that pan, form the mixture into 1 large or 2 small flattish, ovalish loaves.  OR for a moister, crumblier loaf, divide the mixture between 2 oiled loaf pans.  Bake at 350 degrees until firm, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

      Now for the bleg.  When I make meatloaf, I top it with a ketchup-vinegar-sugar glaze and run it under the broiler till it’s bubbly and a bit caramelized.  It’s terrific and everyone raves about it. I would really like to figure out some sort of sweet glaze that would work like that for the salmon loaf.  Only not tomatoey like ketchup.  What do you think might work?  Something teriyaki-ish?  Or fruity, like a chutney?  Or should I just stick with the tartar sauce?

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  • Recommended links.

    I really wish I had time to comment more on each of these not-very-related links.

    Sister Mary Martha dispenses advice to a godparent Godparent who asks, "[M]y godchildren aren’t going to Mass any more and aren’t learning about their faith. I’m concerned about this, but unsure what to do, as I live hundreds of miles away, so can’t take them myself, and don’t really feel as though I should tell their parents what to do. Do you have any advice for me on being a good Godparent to the children of a lapsed Catholic?"

    CJ responds to a line about "appropriately draped nursing" in a churchy magazine:  "If you ever want to push my buttons with a nuclear-powered cattle prod, you can just call me up and read that sentence to me.  It is wrong in so many ways I can’t even count them, though I’m certainly going to give it a try…." (link to CJ giving it a try)  I share in her rant — it ought to be acceptable for a young baby to nurse in a church pew.  (Thank goodness for magazines to warn us that we should be ‘appropriately draped’ when nursing in public!  Otherwise I know I’d have gotten in the habit of stripping to the waist every time the baby cried.)

    Finally, Amy has a thread about why substitutions like "Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier" for the Name of the Triune God just don’t cut it.  The comments on the thread are fantastic, much worth reading, and I’m not just saying that because one is from me.  I particularly like the insight that, as much as the words "Father," "Son," "Holy Spirit," we need to consider the introductory "…in the name of the…"  Fruitful meditation, that.

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  • Logistics.

    Melissa:  "I was thinking about signing L.  [her nearly-six-year-old] up for harp lessons in the fall.  The teacher’s about a mile away from you.  Would you be open to watching my other kids for an hour once a week while I take her to lessons?"

    Me:  "Hmmm.  We’ll have to get together with Hannah and talk about how to make the schedule more efficient.  Whatever day it is, we could make that day the day when all three of us get together.  Or you could make it the day that Hannah’s over at my house."

    Melissa:  "Oh, those are good ideas.  If it’s on Thursday we could make that our three-family day, and then it would be pretty easy for Hannah and I and the kids to leave from your house to St. Paul for the Irish dance lessons.  We’d all be on the same side of the city then."

    Me:  "Yes, that would probably be the most efficient.  Might be too busy for you to relax much those days, though."

    Melissa [makes face]

    Me:  "Well, does the teacher give classes in the evenings?"

    Melissa:  "I don’t know.  Chris [her husband] really wants me to cut back on lessons and things in the evenings because our family time is already stretched enough."

    Me: "OK, well you could have your whole family come over to our house one evening a week while you take L. to the lesson.  Chris and Mark could play chess or board games with the kids or something.  Then it’d feel more like family time."

    Melissa:  "Ooh, that could work!"

    Me:  "Although it’d probably have to be not on an evening when we have swim lessons.  Although I can move those around some, they can be on Tuesdays or Thursdays or Saturdays.  And on Wednesdays Oscar will have religious ed classes.  Maybe, I mean, we haven’t decided for sure whether to do the classes next year or just teach him at home."

    Melissa:  "Okay, well, how open are you to having the kids for one hour just, you know, on the days when you’re just home with your own family?"

    Me:  "Mm.  Well.  You know, Melissa, I work very hard to keep my days that we’re with the other families down to two per week."

    Melissa:  "I know."

    Me:  "So if I agree to watch your kids for an hour on, like, a Wednesday, it has to be an hour."

    Melissa:  "It would be.  Just an hour."

    Me:  "You can’t come in and have a cup of tea and a chat."

    Melissa:  "I don’t want that either! I have my own things to do at home and M. to teach and… why are you laughing?"

    Me: …

    Melissa:  "What’s so funny?"

    Me: …

    Melissa: …

    Me:  "Because we’re such good friends that we can have a conversation that goes, ‘I don’t want to invite you in for a cup of tea!’ and ‘Don’t worry, I don’t want to have tea with you either!’"

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  • Literature-based American History through 1812 for the Grammar stage. Part 3. The Spanish, French, Dutch, and English settlers.

    Previously in this series:  Introduction.  Part 1.  Part 2.

    James Loewen’s two books Lies My Teacher Told Me: What Your American History Textbook Got Wrong and Lies Across America: What Our Historical Sites Get Wrong heavily influenced my thinking about the teaching of history. They are part of the reason I chose to do a literature-based study, and they have helped me form some ideas of what I don’t want to do.

    One example that I remember Mr. Loewen highlighting is that American history texts, by the order in which topics are presented and the emphasis placed on certain topics, tend to give the impression that American history began on the East Coast and swept westward (propelled by Manifest Destiny no doubt) until it reached the Pacific, filling in various south- and northward gaps along the way, and punctuating the conclusion with Alaska and Hawaii. I have that sense of the sweep of U. S. History myself, and I didn’t even notice I had it until Loewen pointed it out. This muddied thinking can lead you astray; a passage from Lies Across America presents this example:

    Along West Virginia 3, two miles east of Union in Monroe County, a marker commemorates:

    "REHOBOTH CHURCH

    Indians were still about when Rehoboth Church was dedicated by Bishop Asbury in 1786, and rifles as well as Bibles were carried by the worshipers. This is the oldest church building west of the Allegheny Mountains."

    Rehoboth Church may be west of the Alleghenies, but so is California, and by 1786, Franciscans had founded ten missions in California alone. Catholic churches in Texas date back another century…For that matter, by 1786 Russians had founded St. George (now Kasilof on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska and were probably holding Russian Orthodox services there.

    Of course, his point is that the overall perspective of textbook writers is largely Anglophone and Protestant. I’d like to put a significant emphasis on the early Catholic settlers of the Americas, rather than making them a footnote to the history of California or Texas by the time the "sweep" gets that far west.

    So we have the following, over four weeks:

    • Seton, Chapter 5 "The Spanish Influence"
    • Jones, Protector of the Indians (novel length). This is a biography of Fray Bartolome de las Casas, truly one of the most interesting personages in the story of Spanish contact with the Americas.   I learned about de las Casas from one of Loewen’s books and was thrilled to find out there was a children’s biography of him.  It’s not in print but my library has it.
    • Whiting, Junipero Jose Serra.  I already own this biography, that’s why I picked it.  Any bio of  Serra that you like will do. 
    • American History for Young Catholics Grade 1, Seton Press, 2007, Chapter 3, "The Conversion of Mexico."  This slim paperback reader is a series of fairly disconnected chapters, most covering topics that tell of the Americas’ Catholic heritage.  For example, Chapter 3 tells the story of St. Juan Diego.  I plan to use some of the chapters but not all, as supplementary independent reading.
    • AMHFYC, Chapter 4, "St. Augustine:  Oldest City in the U. S."
    • Seton, Chapter 6, "The English Settlers"
    • SOTW Chapter 40, "New Ventures to the Americas"
    • SOTW Chapter 41, "Explorations in the North"
    • Seton, Chapter 7, "The French, Dutch, and English Settlers"
    • Optional:  Orfeo, St. Isaac Jogues: With Burning Heart.  This is a biography from the "Encounter the Saints" series.  We’ll do it if we have time; the point is to discuss the role of French missionaries in the Northeast. (More on St. Isaac Jogues)
    • Foster, 1620: Year of the Pilgrims.  Genevieve Foster is another author whose works you’ll see again and again.  This is the story of a single year, not just in the Americas but all over the world.  It is not without its language problems, but they’re mostly just a word here and a sentence there — easy to fix as you’re reading aloud.  Pre-read sections on Galileo and on Squanto — they might be a bit more problematic and need a little updating or extra discussion.
    • Dalgliesh, America Builds Homes.  Alice Dalgliesh is commonly recommended, but the only book of hers I liked was this one.  It compares the homes that were built by colonists from different European countries.
    • Fritz, Who’s Saying What in Jamestown, Thomas Savage?  This is a somewhat-speculative story of a real colonial boy.  I don’t want to use too much fictional stuff, but this is a really great story.  It has, by the way, one of the better tellings of the story of Pocahontas. 

    Now, here’s what I investigated but decided not to use.

    • Maldus, Colt of Destiny (a novel of the Spanish settlement) — too long for my purposes, also I want to limit the fiction I use
    • Henty, By Right of Conquest (another novel)
    • Ziner, Squanto (also called Dark Pilgrim  in earlier editions) — seemed okay, not without problems, but it was quite long.
    • Hays, Pilgrim Thanksgiving and Christmas on the Mayflower — a little too precious.  This author also wrote one called Naughty Little Pilgrim, which I couldn’t even bring myself to check out because of the title.
    • Bradford, History of Plimouth Plantation.  This is, of course, a fabulously valuable primary source.  I am sure it would be valuable for older children to read, for example, Bradford’s account of the first Thanksgiving.  I decided it would be over the head of my eight-year-old. 
    • Commager, First Book of American History, chapter 2.  This would definitely need to be censored while reading aloud.  I cut it only because it seemed I had enough stuff already.  But the chapter is pretty good.

    Next up: "Colonial Expansion and the Western Frontier."

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  • Useful skills.

    You really never know which ones they’ll be.

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  • An important post

    …from Heather B. Armstrong of dooce — it should be required reading for all of us who post our families’ lives, and for everyone who worries about that, or is critical of it.  It is one of the long series of monthly "newsletters" she has written on her website, all in the form of letters to her daughter.   

    Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it’s like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.

    Read the whole thing.

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  • Bibles for Chinese Catholics.

    Via Amy Welborn, a positive story from Beijing:  Chinese officials have given permission for Bibles to be printed and distributed, "one for each Chinese Catholic."  Apparently Pope Benedict is sponsoring a number of the Bibles, which come with some other materials including a booklet entitled "Discovering God in Chinese Characters."

    When I first read that I didn’t parse "character" = "chunk of written language," but "personality."  It made more sense to me when I read the comments. Blogger Jen Ambrose (who is really a must-read in the Catholic blogosphere, and who lives in Shenzhen) commented on the thread: 

    I wonder if I qualify for the distribution. I’ve heard tell of a Christian Chinese character book from people at my Chinese parish and also my Chinese teacher, but no one seems to have a copy of it. It is really quite fascinating when people can use Chinese characters for catechesis. One notable one is all the places the character for “fu” (blessings) appears inside of other characters. Many Chinese Christians look for it to see what are blessings from God. Another one is the character for boat, which contains a number of characters related to the story of Noah. Hen you yi si (very interesting).

    Yes, interesting.  I am fond of linguistic coincidences or other kinds of coolness.

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    4 comments on Bibles for Chinese Catholics.

  • Encyclopedias without screens.

    Commenter SteveG asks:

    First, you mention using good Pictorial Encyclopedias for history, and specifically reference Usborne and History Odyssey….but do you have/use a more general Encyclopedia as well (beyond history)?…Both the boys (7 and almost 5) are in the mode of constantly asking ‘how does that work?’ or ‘how do they make that?’ type questions. The response is often…’We’ll have to look into that.’ But more often than we’d probably like to admit, life gets in the way of follow up.

    It would be great to have a resource that’s more handy (that doesn’t involve a screen) that we could readily turn to.

    I don’t have a general encyclopedia (yet), except for the Dorling Kindersley Children’s Illustrated Encyclopedia, which is okay but not at all comprehensive.  I bought it not so much to be an encyclopedia as to be a "browsing" book — something interesting that kids could pick up, leaf through, look at pictures and read as they like. 

    As for answering kids’ questions without a screen, you could do what  my friend Hannah  does (she also knows too well how distracting the "screen" can be).  When her son (age 8 and reading well) asks her a question, she Googles the answer and finds a good website written at his reading level.  Then she prints out the page and gives him the paper.  🙂

    Do you have a regular routine of visiting your local branch library?  Another idea (also Hannah’s) is to keep a Question Book — write down the questions in it and take it with you to look up the answers when you stop by your library, or wherever the answer can be found.  If you’re really together, the Question Book could be a record of the answers too, and serve as a scrapbook or journal of your investigations.

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    3 comments on Encyclopedias without screens.

  • Literature-based American History through 1812 for the Grammar stage. Part 2. Europeans Get Interested in the Americas.

    Previously in this series:  Introduction.  Part 1.

    This time period, like the first, is covered in many otherwise good books with objectionable language and/or illustrations.  I will be using the History Odyssey curriculum for this as well, even though I will have to redact as I read.  For explanations of abbreviations see the previous posts.

    In four weeks, we will cover

    • Seton, Chapter 3, "The Holy Land and Beyond," parts.  This chapter describes the Crusades and their role in expanding Europeans’ horizons.
    • SOTW, Chapter 28, "The Kingdoms of Spain and Portugal," section about Henry the Navigator
    • SOTW, Chapter 31, "Exploring New Worlds"
    • SOTW, Chapter 41, "Explorations in the North"
    • SOTW, Chapter 33, "Spain, Portugal, and the New World" (lots of redacting here)
    • Child’s History of the World, Chapter 62, "A Sailor Who Found A New World"
    • CHOTW, Chapter 63, "Fortune Hunters"
    • The Discovery of the Americas by Maestro
    • Optional:  Around the World in a Hundred Years:  From Henry the Navigator to Magellan by Jean Fritz.  This might be a decent, more-detailed supplement to Maestro’s book, if you want a more in depth look at the explorers covered, which includes first a brief mention of Vikings et al, then Henry, Diaz, Columbus, da Gama, Cabral, Cabot, Vespucci, Ponce de Leon, Balboa, Magellan. Like Fritz’s Columbus bio, again critical of European attitude, omits atrocities.
    • Optional, if a biography of Columbus is desired:  Where do you Think You’re Going, Christopher Columbus? by Jean Fritz.   If you are going to do a Columbus biography, you could certainly do worse than this one. It is not an unalloyed tale of heroes and I think gives an impression of interculturation; it describes and disapproves of the conqueror’s attitude, but it omits serious atrocities.

    It is worth noting that children’s author Jean Fritz has single-handedly made my job a heck of a lot easier.  You will see her name pop up again and again in my bibliography.

    Now, let’s talk about what I didn’t use.

    I didn’t use Seton’s chapter 4 about Columbus.  It was a far too heroic treatment of a man who actually enslaved people.

    D’Aulaire’s Conquest of the Atlantic had some good points, particularly in the technical details and a discussion of the longitude problem, and like all the D’Aulaires’ books is well written, exciting, and lavishly illustrated.  It might be used, if you’re willing to glue pages 24-25 together.  The illustration on that spread is very objectionable to modern eyes.

    I rejected a slew of Columbus biographies, including Alice Dalgliesh’s The Columbus Story and Enid Meadowcroft’s fictionalized Shipboy With Columbus.   I rejected Rich’s The First Book of New World Explorers mainly because I preferred Maestro’s more sensitive treatment of the same subject matter. 

    Next up:  "The Spanish, French, Dutch, and English Settlers."

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