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].

  • Homework.

    Oscar has a class later today at the local nature center, organized by the parish homeschooling co-op.    At the end of last month’s class about trees and leaves, the naturalist assigned some options for "homework," one of which was to draw an accurate picture of a leaf.  (I forgot about it; Oscar remembered, and produced his drawing yesterday.)

    As we were driving in the car today, Oscar asked me:  "What’s ‘homework?’"

    I started to answer, It’s schoolwork you do at home, then thought — no, wait, we do almost all our schoolwork at home.  That isn’t going to make any sense.

    So after a minute I said, "Sometimes, kids who go away from their houses all day to a school building to do their school work — you know, on the school bus — at the end of the day, their teachers give them more work that they are supposed to take home with them to do at their house.  They finish that work and they take it back to school and give it to the teacher in the morning.  That’s called ‘homework’ because it’s the part of their work they do at home."

    I tilted the rearview mirror to look at his face.  He was looking out the window, thinking about it.

    "And the teacher at the nature center class calls it ‘homework’ when he asks you to do some work at home to get ready for the class, because it’s work that you do at home, too."

    He didn’t say anything else.  I didn’t either, because the thought struck me that, when you put it that way, the notion of ‘homework’ seems completely absurd.  You mean that the kids leave the house in the morning, they don’t come back till late afternoon, and they STILL aren’t DONE yet?!? 

    I guess it’s what you are used to.  It seemed normal to me when I was growing up.  Undoubtedly it seems normal to all the families with children that do homework every night.   But from where I’m sitting now, it looks like just another drain on already-stressed families.  Why can’t they get the work done in six hours of school?  Why send more home?   

    I can see, maybe, an ideal whereby kids and parents will sit down and discuss the homework, parents will get to know how their kids are doing and kids can seek help from their parents, and it would be a few compensating moments of togetherness after a long day of separation… but does that really happen anywhere?  In many families, children’ll do it alone in their rooms (that was me).  In others, there’s so much chaos at home that they won’t be able to concentrate.   

    But you have to have homework! It’s another one of the institutional-education assumptions that is maybe correct, but maybe not, too.  And yet another one that works really well for some students, not so much for others.  What went on, day after day, in the homes of all those kids I went to school with who never turned in complete homework?  Day after day, I assumed they were lazy or stupid.  What was really going on there?

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  • Cesarean art and home birth memories.

    "Disturbing and Vivid."  That’s how Alicia headlined it in her link.  These images really resonated with me, especially this one, even though I’ve never experienced cesarean section — well, not as the mother, anyway.   

    The ghostlike and luminous, impressionistic (and yet hard-edged) quality of the artwork is very much like the mental images I carry from my second child’s birth about two and a half years ago.  That birth, at home, was almost textbook-smooth, uneventful really, but very intense, and I spent much of it in the altered mental state that a friend calls "laborland."  My strongest memory is of an almost synesthetic experience during the (fairly short) pushing stage.  I described it like this in my birth story:

    Suddenly I am hanging from them, squatting down, as a contraction comes over me. In surprise I shout, "Oh my God, I’m pushing!" My body surges deep inside, and I feel the baby descend. I have barely recovered when it happens again. Here comes the contraction, and I sink down, hanging, and at the bottom of it the baby drops through me just a little farther.

    And again. I can nearly see in front of me my own pelvis, not like a photograph but instead some internal mind’s eye picture of it, a fantastic hinged cage of ivory opening up (an ice cream scoop’s halves sliding one inside the other, an arcade’s claw game unclosing, a bracelet’s clasp retracting into itself). Each flex reveals a glimpse of a round red fruit, releasing it heavily inch by inch.

    Clicking through the art on that site seems, a little bit, like seeing a nightmarish alternative ending of the same dream.  The luminescent ovoid in the picture I linked above — well, that’s not far from the "round red fruit" I was seeing back then.

    My impression is that, if I can have such weird, disjointed, dreamlike mental images of my own peaceful homebirth, I can easily see how someone whose births went awry and were recalled with pain and regret and a sense of violation — could create art like this.

    UPDATE. More comments on Cesarean Art from VoirDire Subculture, another interesting blog. Check ‘er out.

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  • A bit of a puzzle.

    What’s particularly interesting about this poem?

    The pleasure of Shawn’s company
    Is what I most enjoy.
    He put a tack on Ms. Yancey’s chair
    When she called him a horrible boy.
    At the end of the month he was flinging two kittens
    Across the width of the room.
    I count on his schemes to show me a way now
    Of getting away from my gloom.

    Here’s a hint:  It was penned by Neal Whitman, who blogs about linguistics and phonology at Literal-Minded, at the request of an acquaintance in Hollywood.

    Give up?  The answer’s in Neal’s post here.

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  • Tech ed.

    Minnesota is, according to Education Week (as reported in the Star Tribune), second to last in "technology in schools:"

    In today’s first-ever grading of educational technology for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Minnesota is just barely ahead of Nevada in its emphasis on technology and use of data in education. Minnesota lags behind much of the country when it comes to student access to computers and high-speed Internet, infusing technology into graduation standards and requiring that teachers and administrators be trained in how best to use technology in the classroom.

    To give the Strib credit, though, they point out why we should be careful not to take this too seriously:

    But the report says nothing about a link between technology and student achievement. In fact, the report’s authors acknowledge that many of the lowest-scoring states on this list have some of the highest student test scores.

    And some of the top-scoring technology states — such as West Virginia and Arkansas — have a tradition of struggling schools.

    I am extremely suspicious of proposals, like one mentioned in the article, to  "better prepare students for jobs in engineering and other technology-aided careers" by spending more money and getting students to sit for more hours in front of computer screens.  If you want to prepare students for jobs in engineering, then make sure they graduate with a solid background in mathematics and the natural sciences.  And what do you mean by technology-aided careers?  What career isn’t aided by technology?

    And while we’re at it, let’s have none of this conflation of "science and technology."   They are not the same.  By "technology" is usually meant, imprecisely, "computer use," which is a far cry from understanding anything about Newtonian physics or inorganic chemistry or cellular biology or how to apply calculus techniques (or even algebra) to physical problems.  Now, computer programming courses in high school — provided they don’t make a boneheaded choice in computer language — is another thing, and can be part of a balanced approach to mathematics.  But for the most part, especially given the nearly-criminal gaps in student achievement, time and money spent on "tech" is time and money that’s clearly not helping.

    That’s not to say that there’s no use for intensive skills training in computer applications in high school.    The best use I can imagine would be for vocational/technical programs that hope to train students to enter a decent-paying job right out of high school, or to prepare them for a technical college.   Imagine, for example, a clever partnership with local businesses — businesses that might hire the young people as summer interns, assist the school district in purchasing licenses for specific software applications (moving beyond Word, Excel, and Powerpoint and into, say, the specialized software that tracks inventories at the regional hospital; or the suite that manages human resources and payroll at the local university; or the CAD program that the techs use at the manufacturing plant just outside town…), and ultimately interview graduating seniors for entry-level positions.

    Still, much of the hand-wringing that will no doubt be heard in Minnesota school districts over this "D" in "technology" is probably ill-founded. 

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  • Parental discretion is advised.

    My grandmother, bless her heart, is one of those people who goes about her day with a song in her heart.  Or at least on her lips, that is; she is constantly humming cheerfully, filling up the quiet with some little tune, at least every time I have ever been around her.  And that includes the time I spent three weeks with her in Europe and North Africa, when I was fourteen, so I’m pretty sure it’s not just something she does to drown out the chatter of all my relatives at holidays.

    I don’t know what she hums.  Just little tunes I don’t recognize. 

    I think perhaps my grandmother is smarter than I am.   Because I have inherited this from her, and I notice it more and more now that, instead of trying to wrap my mind around sets of n + 1 nonlinear partial differential equations, I’m at home doing things like cleaning out closets and cutting up raw chickens. 

    Only I never learned to channel it into humming.  And my brain is full of the music that I fed it when I was in college.  (Trying to wrap my mind around different partial differential equations, among other things.  I blame math.)

    This has some unpleasant results, for example, when I am standing at the kitchen counter spreading peanut butter on pieces of toast for my two hungry children who are standing right in front of me and I catch myself belting out

    I got big balls

    Big old balls

    Balls the size of grapefruit, balls the size of pumpkins, yes sir

    which is, of course, the first few lines of "Tiger Woods," by Dan Bern. Which just may be one of the catchiest progressive-rock tunes that ever emerged from the nineteen-nineties.  Which is, of course, the problem.  (link to audio)

    If I am really on my toes, I catch myself before I get to the part that goes

    I got a friend whose goal in life was to one day go down on Madonna

    That’s all he wanted, that was all; to one day go down on Madonna

    But let’s face it friends.  Am I really on my toes?  No.  I am not.  At these moments I ask myself:  Does Heather B. Armstrong, of Dooce, have this problem?  And then I think: If she does, I bet she doesn’t feel guilty about it.

    It’s not that every song I find myself singing aloud is sexually explicit or celebrates drug use or is otherwise unsuitable for children.   There are a few sweetly innocent songs too.  Like "I Love You, A Bushel And A Peck" from Guys and Dolls!  (If you can ignore the fact that the character who sings it is a burlesque-show stripper.)  And I think there are some… um… Beatles songs in there.

    Oh well.  At least I can blame some of this on my husband.  Cue piano:

    He sees his children jump off the stations one by one

    His woman and his best friend in bed and havin’ fun

    Ha ha!  No, actually, the Jethro Tull stuff — unlike, say, AC/DC, yes, thanks, honey — doesn’t tend to be in a key that I can easily sing in front of the kids.   But now that I’m learning the recorder, well.  Stand back.

    (No, actually there is some stuff equally burned into my brain that I can sing in front of the kids without embarrassment, at least until they turn thirteen or so, stuff that I have programmed into the manual override on my Brain Jukebox.  Thank goodness, yes, for They Might Be Giants.)

    This is, I think, related to the phenomenon that Dave Barry described so well in his book Dave Barry’s Bad Songs:  "[S]ongs evoke powerful feelings, both positive and negative.  I think the negative ones tend to be stronger because, as I noted in the preintroduction warning to this book, your brain, as part of its lifelong effort to drive you insane, insists on remembering the songs you hate and playing them over and over." 

    Except in this case, it’s part of my brain’s effort to warp my children, or perhaps even my grandchildren, who will someday grow up and reminisce to each other.  You remember that song that grandma used to sing?  You know, every year when she was carving the Thanksgiving turkey?  How’d that one go?

    Oh, that one?  Wait, wait, it’s coming back to me now.  What was it?  AC/DC?  Ah yes.  (Sings) "Dirty deeds and they’re done dirt cheap, dirty deeds and they’re done dirt cheap."  Remember how she always got that fake Australian accent when she sang that song?

    How could I forget?  Hey, remember that other one about the fat-bottomed girls? 

    Oh, yeah.  I can almost hear her now. 

    (pause) Hey, turn off that radio, will you?  And pass the turkey.

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  • This sounds like a yummy idea.

    Go to this post at The Girl Who Ate Everything and scroll wayyyy down, past the Hamsteroids, past the deep fried cheese, past the two tasty-looking pizzas, and get to the dessert:

    Even though we were totally stuffed from eating all the pizza, we decided we could shove in a dessert if we moved around our stomach contents a bit.  The crepe cake ($5) of about 10 crepes layered with light cream was a nice way to end the meal as it wasn’t heavy.  The flavor was milder than I would’ve liked (because I would’ve liked…more sugar), but the texture was great.  Each layer was soft and easily gave way to my spoon, but the cake held its structure until the last few bites.  It was rather impressive; I expected the layers to moosh apart and look like a mess.

    The picture looks yummy.  I’m tempted to try this as it sounds like a fairly uncomplicated, yet yummy, dessert:  cook up a bunch of crepes, ahead of time, layer them with (sweetened) whipped cream, and drizzle the stack with chocolate sauce or maybe raspberry. 

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  • “This form of worship has more than just a cerebral or emotional appeal. It appeals to the whole person.”

    Orthodox Christianity is attracting converts in the Twin Cities:

    To outsiders, the Orthodox churches — Russian, Greek, Serbian, Ukrainian, Romanian — that dot the landscape might seem like exotic hallmarks of a fast-fading ethnic past.

    In fact, an influx of converts is rejuvenating the Orthodox Church, here and around the country. Today, converts make up about half the students at the nation’s two largest Orthodox seminaries.

    The converts interviewed in the article cite telling examples of what attracted them:

    Lotti first encountered Orthodoxy as a college student when, on a lark, he worked for a summer at a Russian Orthodox monastery in Finland. "I thought the liturgy was strange but very beautiful," he says.

    "Almost every service included Psalm 51, the great penitential psalm: ‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love; according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.’ "

    "At first, I thought the repetition was crazy," Lotti says. "But after a week, I realized that I had memorized the psalm, which asks for repentance and rejoices in it. It had seeped into my consciousness, and the words became my own."

    People are drawn to the Orthodox Church for many reasons. But the primary attraction for converts such as the Lottis is a direct connection to the spiritual wisdom of the past. Michael Lotti gives examples: the ancient monastic tradition, the seven sacraments, the opportunity to have a spiritual guide or father confessor. "It’s like a spiritual ocean in which you can go deeper and deeper," he says.

    …

    The Rev. Harry Pappas of St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church in south Minneapolis says beauty plays a central role in Orthodox worship. "The integration of art, architecture, music, incense, vestments — it’s highly multi-sensory," he says. "This form of worship has more than just a cerebral or emotional appeal. It appeals to the whole person."

    Let’s see.  The attractions of Orthodox Christianity include repetitive prayer, connection to the past, a monastic tradition, seven sacraments, confession to a priest, art, architecture, music, incense, vestments.

    Tell me again why modernizing the liturgy is a good idea?

    "Unlike the old-time sanctuaries, which changed no more than the steeple, the environment in a thoroughly modern Catholic church is apt to change from week to week. And not just the flowers. Even the altar and the flexible seating can move. This change arises from a philosophy that the liturgy changes with both the seasons and the circumstances of the people."

    Uh-huh. 

    Side note.  The site linked in the above paragraph defines "liturgy" as "Greek for ‘work of the people,’" and I have no doubt that they mean to make a point by that.  An actual definition, rather than an etymology, would have been more useful.  From what I can tell, "liturgy" comes directly from a Greek word meaning simply "public service," and more distantly, from "work in a public building."  Unsurprisingly, "public building" comes from a word meaning "people," but that does not mean that "liturgy" is "Greek for work of the people."

    Etymological abuse bugs me.

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  • I’ll have to remember this one. Or maybe not.

    Neal at Literal-Minded parses "need to pee like a racehorse" and in the process mentions a way he likes to tease his kids:

    Of course, if need to pee like a racehorse is ambiguous in this way, so is need to pee really bad. I have fun attaching the really bad down low instead of up high, producing dialogues like this:

    Doug or Adam: I need to pee really bad!
    Neal: OK, go pee really bad!

    Now that I think about it, I suppose that’s not such a good thing to tell little boys.

    Nope.

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  • Quit harshing my mellow, man.

    Kathy Sierra writes a fascinating post:  "Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain." 

    The three reasons are:

    1. Mirror neurons: 

      It’s what these neurons do that’s amazing–they activate in the same way when you’re watching someone else do something as they do when you’re doing it yourself! This mirroring process/capability is thought to be behind our ability to empathize, but you can imagine the role these neurons have played in keeping us alive as a species. We learn from watching others. We learn from imitating (mirroring) others. The potential problem, though, is that these neurons go happily about their business of imitating others without our conscious intention.

      Think about that…

    2. Emotional contagion:

      "…social scientific research has largely confirmed the thesis that affect, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour can indeed spread through populations as if they were somehow infectious. Simple exposure sometimes appears to be a sufficient condition for social transmission to occur. This is the social contagion thesis; that sociocultural phenomena can spread through, and leap between, populations more like outbreaks of measels or chicken pox than through a process of rational choice."

    3. The nature of happy people:

      The idea [of skeptics] seems to be that "happy people" implies those who are oblivious to the realities of life, in a fantasy of their own creation, and without the ability to think critically. The science, however, suggests just the opposite.

      Neuroscience has made a long, intense study of the brain’s fear system–one of the oldest, most primitive parts of our brain. Anger and negativity usually stem from the anxiety and/or fear response in the brain, and one thing we know for sure–when the brain thinks its about to be eaten or smashed by a giant boulder, there’s no time to stop and think! In many ways, fear/anger and the ability to think rationally and logically are almost mutually exclusive.

    Kathy’s conclusion is "Be around the change you want to see in the world."  It’s a good reminder, too, that we do a disservice to the people around us when we coddle, feed, and broadcast our own negative attitudes.

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  • Disclaimer: I’m a little “biased.”

    Towards the First Amendment, that is.

    But with a single comment like this, any politician destroys nearly all good will and respect I might have for him.

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  • Now that’s foodblogging.

    A recipe for self-medication at Dooce.

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  • Bilingual signage.

    I stopped in Sears today, sans kiddos, to get a couple of pairs of maternity pants.  It’s been a while since I shopped there; the place has a new look; and one new thing I noticed was that all the signs for the different departments had a Spanish subtitle in smaller print.  For example:

    JUNIORS

            jovenes

    and

    WOMENS

    tallas especiales

    and

    MISSES

    ropa para damas

    The first thing I thought when I saw those signs was:  "Thank goodness.  Now I know what those categories actually mean."

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