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].

  • Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

    According to Mark, Oscar’s swimming instructor asked him last night how he spelled his name.

    Oscar, who is five, replied, "Aah – ess – cee – ay – are."

    This is a side effect of my decision, made a few years ago, not to teach him  the alphabet, or indeed the names of any letters, until after he had already made the connection between spelling and phonetics.   

    A lot of kids get confused by the fact that "B" is called "bee" but represents the sound /b/.  It’s pretty common for kids to see, e.g., "bat" and try to "sound it out" as "bee-a-t" or "bee-a-tee" before they learn to correct themselves.  Because of this, most phonics curricula emphasize working with kids to disentangle "name of letter" from "sound of letter" (and "sound of letter," itself, is problematic, but I won’t go into that here…) 

    For example, I just picked up an inexpensive "complete phonics curriculum" from a Catholic publisher (mainly to get the early readers that come with it — the curriculum and teaching methods itself are rife with the problems that are common to most over-the-counter reading instruction).  Here’s an excerpt:

    Say, "This is the letter A.  Its name is A, but it says aaaaaaa, as in aaaaaaapple"…..

    "This is the letter B.  Its name is B, but it says buh [permission is granted to cringe regarding the use of "buh" instead of /b/ – ed.], as in buh-buh-Bible.  Buh-Bible begins with B." 

    If you ignore letter names, you don’t have to perform this particular bit of educational acrobatics.  You can show the child a "b" and say, "This letter represents the sound /b/."  Much, much later, you can teach the names of the letters.

    But children are supposed to learn the names of the letters, and the alphabet song, and all that, BEFORE they learn to read! 

    Why?  What on earth is the point? As far as I can tell, the only reason we typically teach the alphabet first is because someone says we should.  What use are the names of the letters, or the memorized order of the alphabet?   All I can think of are:

    1. Spelling out loud
    2. Looking up words or phrases in an alphabetized list, such as a dictionary or certain bookshelves
    3. Reference to enumerated lists that use alphabetic enumerators
    4. Reading abbreviations, i.e., i.e.
    5. Decoding the (admittedly clever) book C D B! by William Steig

    None of these activities necessarily precede reading.   I have to conclude that knowing the alphabet, singing the Alphabet Song, and knowing the names of letters are regarded as necessary pre-reading skills for no other reason than we’ve always done it that way.  (I am not the first to make this observation, of course, although I came to it independently in time to avoid teaching Oscar the alphabet a few years ago.)

    Anyway, I have taught him the alphabet since then, but sometimes when he’s spelling he forgets and calls a letter by its sound instead of its name.  I’m not worried; his reading is going very well, and he will get the letter names eventually.   I’m planning to use a special mnemonic chant, or song, to teach the names of the letters.  Maybe you’ve heard of it.

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  • Fr. Altier comments.

    Honestly?  I’m disappointed in the comment (posted here at Bettnet), which sounds just a wee bit backhandedly snarky at the archbishop.  Some of the commenters on Dom’s site agree with me, others don’t.  Silence would have been classier, and humbler, too.

    HMS Blog agrees, too, in the midst of a post that (while this is somewhat off topic) accuses Fr. Altier of holding nutty conspiracy theories about American Freemasons.  I don’t know enough about either Freemasonry or about what Fr. Altier thinks of them to comment on that…

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  • Towels are the new mops.

    I hate mopping the floor.   Hate, hate, hate it.  So every time I have to do it, I spend the whole time fuming, scrubbing furiously, and thinking about ways I might make the chore faster, easier, less frequent, less odious, or (ideally) obsolete.   So I never seem to do it the same way twice.   

    Some of my experimental mopping methods, like the one described in this post, are more fun than others.  But after exhausting a dozen different ideas, ranging from schemes where I mop a tiny section of my floor every day to gadgets like the Swiffer WetJet, I think I’ve come to the following conclusion:

    The best way to clean a floor is on hands and knees.

    I know.  I know.  Yuck.  But bear with me. 

    Here’s the specific technique:

    How to really mop a floor clean

    1. Obtain supplies:  broom and dustpan, large bowl, detergent that is compatible with the flooring (dish soap is fine), rubber gloves (optional), edged tool such as putty knife or butter knife, and a supply of clean towels or rags. 
    2. Sweep well the section of floor to be cleaned. 
    3. Fill a large bowl with hot, soapy water.
    4. Pick a section of the floor.  Put your bowl near it and grab three towels.  Fold one up and kneel on the towel within reach of the bowl.  Put on your gloves if you’ve got ’em.
    5. Wet the second towel and wring lightly. 
    6. Scrub a two-foot-square section of floor with the wet towel.  Rinse and wring out wet towel as necessary. Use knife to scrape up any stubborn debris.
    7. Wipe dry and clean with the dry towel.
    8. Move to the next two-foot-square section of floor and repeat.
    9. When the water gets dirty, change it.   When the dry towel gets wet, demote it to "wet towel" and discard the old wet towel.
    10. Stop when you finish your section or when you get tired.

    I know it sounds regressive, but bear with me.  There are several very good reasons why this method is superior to the "standard" methods of mopping a floor, such as this one, or this one (pdf); or to methods advocated by gadget/detergent peddlers.

    • It requires no special equipment.  Not only does this mean you don’t have to buy a gadget; it means that every kid or adult in the house can help "mop" at the same time, even if you don’t own enough mops for everyone.
    • You can scrub harder with your arm and hand than with a mop.
    • Because you’re not swabbing from the end of a long stick, you can see when you’ve gotten all the dirt.  It’s more like washing a countertop.  Also, you don’t have to bend down repeatedly to scratch at stubborn bits; you’re already down there.
    • Because dirty water is immediately wiped away with a clean, dry towel, you won’t push dirty water all over the floor, nor splash it on your walls and baseboards.
    • You can interrupt your work or stop altogether, at any moment, and anyone can walk on the floor immediately.  If the baby wakes up when you’re half done, you’ll have half a floor clean and dry and another half that you easily get to later — not a floor slick with soapy, dirty puddles that will slowly dry in place.
    • It’s simple and easy to clean a small section of floor.  You don’t have to feel that you should do the whole house while you’ve got the mop and bucket out.
    • When you’re done, towels go straight into the washing machine.   Some kinds of mop heads do, but not all — and most of those don’t last too long.  Other kinds of mop heads are disposable, which means that you have to keep buying them.  And traditional string mops become pretty nasty after a while.

    The major downside to this method is that it is hard on the knees.   You can solve that with a good cushion — such as those sold in gardening supply catalogs — or by squatting or sitting instead of kneeling.  Mopping, on the other hand, can be hard on the back; so perhaps it’s a tradeoff.

    Ever optimizing, today (since mopping the kitchen and dining area was on my to-do list) I divided the kitchen floor into several areas and timed myself from start to finish as I swept, scrubbed, and dried each one.  Here’s what I found:

    Behind peninsula      –          6 min

    End of peninsula       –          6 min

    Bar stool area           –           4 min

    Around dining table –         11 min

              TOTAL                      –         27 min

    Surprise!  Not only is the whole thing cleanable in less than half an hour, it sounds much less odious to clean the floor for six minutes here and four minutes there.  Maybe instead of doing the whole thing once a week, I should do one piece each day?  Now that I know it never takes more than 11 minutes to do any one piece, it sounds — well, not so bad.

    (I told Mark about this when he got home and he said I was far behind the times when it came to industrial-engineering fads like figuring out exactly how much time it should take to do every regularly scheduled task.   Well, what did he expect?  I wrote the code for my thesis in FORTRAN 77, for pete’s sake.  I do "behind the times" pretty well.)

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  • “Formation in Christian Chastity:” An alternative to “Talking About Touching” in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

    Introducing Primary Educators League:

    We are a group of parents representing more than 14 parishes across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis who are concerned about elements of the safe environment program being implemented in our archdiocese. We aren’t a formal organization, so we don’t have an official name or mailing address, but we share a desire to make parents aware of these programs.

    We are grateful that our Archbishop has given us alternatives to the official curriculum (that we find problematic), and we are working to make parents and pastors aware of these alternative options that are available.

    As many of you know, the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is recommending certain anti-sex-abuse educational programs for children in its religious education classes and schools.  Some parents and priests have raised concerns that the recommended programs are not age-appropriate and that they usurp the role of parents in directing their child’s education in sensitive matters.  (Opt-out is available, but will parents have a chance to review the entire curriculum before making up their minds?)

    Primary Educators League is trying to raise awareness of an alternative, already approved program called "Formation in Christian Chastity" (FICC). They provide some sample lessons on their website here.  More detailed information can be found at the website of the Diocese of Harrisburg, which employs the program.

    In FICC, all the instruction in grades 1-4 is done at home, while a mix of classroom and home instruction is done in grades 5-8.  Parents, without their children, attend informational workshops or meetings at which they are provided with the resources to teach the material to their children.

    It looks good — in any case, better than the Archdiocese’s recommendation.  If our pastor petitions the Archbishop — and, if what appeared in the church bulletin last week is any indication, he probably will — we may be able to substitute FICC for TaT.

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  • Anyone want to buy me a baby gift?

    Check out these baby tees.

    h/t NRO.  No, they’re not political baby tees.

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  • I learned something from this one.

    Educational post on the minimum wage over at Asymmetrical Information.

    I’m embarrassed to admit that I thought of the issue a lot more simply than seems to be the case — as a tension between wages and employment levels.  There’s more to it than that.  An example:  "[M]ost people working at minimum wage are supplementing their studies, or their spouse’s income, rather than trying to support themselves with such a job. So in order to get to the relatively small number of people who need the money, we provide a subsidy to the 71% who do not. This is not very efficient social policy."

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  • Did I write it on their foreheads?

    Last week a woman commented to my son and husband, "Wow, you two look a lot alike."   

    Oscar replied, "That’s because we have the same genes."

    She said, "You’re homeschooled, aren’t you?"

    Huh?  What gave it away?  I told her, surprised, that he was, and she explained, "One of my children is homeschooled."  I suppose if one of her children is homeschooled, she may be able to see some difference that I can’t… 

    This isn’t the first time that’s happened, maybe the second or third.  I told Hannah about it this week.  She speculated that homeschooled kids stand out, not because they are smarter, not because they have a larger vocabulary, not because they are more articulate, but because they are more comfortable talking to adults. 

    They expect that an adult who asks them a question is requesting a meaningful answer; they expect that an adult who addresses them directly is initiating a genuine conversation.  After all, homeschooled children are socialized primarily by adults, not primarily by other children their own age.

    I would expect that some homeschooled kids would have a fairly tough time, conversely, engaging in conversations and other social activity with institutionally-schooled children their own age.   Of course, so do plenty of institutionally-schooled children!

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  • More on Archbishop Flynn and Fr. Altier.

    The Hadleys at Our Word and Welcome to it, who attend St. Agnes here in the Twin Cities, have a few more posts up about Fr. Altier.  This one is especially good for you out-of-towners.

    I’ve never met Archbishop Flynn; the only personal contact I’ve had with him is his response to a letter I wrote to him several years ago regarding something I witnessed during a funeral Mass at St. Joan of Arc Church. The abuses are too numerous to mention here and are more appropriate to another post. Suffice it to say that I outlined what I saw, wondered if he knew about these things, and asked why this was allowed to continue. The return letter I received amounted to a literary pat on the head. Thanks for your comments, don’t worry yourself about it, bless you.

    I had a similar experience.  I wrote a letter to him in 2004 regarding problems we saw over several years at St. Lawrence Church and Newman Center (we’ve since left that parish).  He wrote a reply, along the lines of I have concluded that there are no serious problems at that parish.   (Note:  I got a friendlier response from Auxiliary Bishop Richard Pates, whom I copied.)

    To be fair, however, my friends who still attend St. Lawrence tell me that the new Paulist pastor has been steadily diminishing the liturgical abuse problem (though I hear that not everyone at the parish has been happy about the implementation — but what do you expect — there are bound to be differences in opinion about administrative and pastoral style, and a lot of people aren’t even aware that the Church has rules that were being broken).  I do not know how much of this is a response to behind-the-scenes pressure from the Archdiocese, and how much is the new pastor’s initiative — but it’s heartening.

    As the years have passed, I have become less and less confident that Archbishop Flynn could or would handle the problems in the Archdiocese that needed attention (the Rainbow Sashers, pro-abortion "Catholic" politicians receiving Holy Communion, etc.). In his defense, I have read and heard stories about his pastoral skills; about how he would go in the middle of the night to comfort the loved ones of someone on the verge of death, ministering to those in need. And, he supports the Marriage Amendment.

    I’ll add two more points in the Archbishop’s defense.  First, in my experience he is an excellent homilist who tries to say mass at every parish in the archdiocese at least once per year.    (I well remember a moment in the middle of his "guest homily" at St. Lawrence, perhaps five years ago.   A mother was trying to make her way out of the pew to carry a loudly crying baby out of the sanctuary, and he interrupted himself mid-sentence and said to her, "No, stay.  I want to hear the voices of children in the church.  So many of them have been silenced."  And he meant it, too — she stayed, with the baby, and no one would have dared to glare at her!)   

    Second, according to some folks at my parish who are in the know, he’s been pouring a lot of work — mostly behind the scenes — into St. John Vianney Seminary.  The fruits are already ripening there — you know, fifteen men were ordained priests last year.    The opinion of those I talked to was that Flynn has a long-term view — that the most important thing, and the best return on the investment of his time and energy, isn’t to discipline wayward parishes, but to form a generation of good, solid priests.  That seems to be paying off at the seminary. 

    I don’t think it’s okay to ignore problems at parishes.  Folks in the wayward parishes, especially those who are "stuck" — people who have difficulty with transportation, who live in rural areas with only one parish, children and youth who must go where their parents go — have needs that are not being met; to ignore the problems isn’t to indulge those people, it’s to harm them.  But it’s also true that no man and no archdiocese has infinite resources, and he has to apply them in the places where he believes they will do the most good.  You and I may disagree with his choices,  but — at the end of the day he’s the one who has to answer for them.

    The lesson we can take from this is from Fr. Altier himself, who when he was told to stop his comments in the media, did so, obediently and humbly and immediately. What a role model, especially in this time of Lent as we reflect on our Lord who went to the Cross without opposition or complaint. We are called upon to pick up our cross daily and follow Him and that is precisely what Fr. Altier has done.

    Absolutely.  I hope the rest of the archdiocese’s priests are taking notes.

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  • Awwwwww.

    Here’s a nice baby gift idea for all you godparents out there.  (Maybe if you email them, they’ll make one for you.)

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  • Maybe that bit about “when you fast, wash your face” helps bring us into compliance with OSHA regulations.

    In the comments over at Ten Reasons:  whether or not the priest is, technically, smearing some lye on your forehead along with the blessed ashes on Ash Wednesday.

                         H2O (holy)  +   Na2O (hosanna!) —>  2 NaOH (ow!)

    I am really, really surprised, and a bit ashamed, that this never occurred to me before.

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  • Laugh of the day.

    Via Happy Catholic.

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  • Gag order.

    A few days ago I mentioned that my parish won’t be doing any of the archdiocesan-recommended anti-sex-abuse programs, and wondered how it would all come out in the press.  Today in the Star Tribune an article described a curious situation involving a fairly well-known and respected priest at St. Agnes, Fr. Robert Altier, who has commented unfavorably about the children’s portion of Virtus, the Archdiocese’s sex abuse education program (links below added by me):

    A St. Paul priest’s opposition to an Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis anti-sex-abuse curriculum has led to a request by Archbishop Harry Flynn "to take some time off" from his radio and web ministries, the archdiocese’s spokesman said Friday.

    The Rev. Robert Altier of St. Agnes Catholic Church has condemned the children’s component of the Virtus program, which is mandated for all Catholic schools and religious education programs.

    Altier’s "Voice in the Desert" website… said he has chosen "obedient compliance" with Flynn’s request to refrain from posting commentaries or broadcasting them on Relevant Radio, 1330 AM.

    "Father Altier is an honored priest, and has not committed any improprieties," archdiocese spokesman Dennis McGrath said. He said Flynn will not discuss the issue publicly because it is a "personnel matter, but I surmise that Father Altier’s contrarian position on Virtus is the issue."

    Father Altier is a great priest — I can say this from personal experience, as I’ve heard his homilies and I’ve been to him for confession.  He has posted transcripts of his homilies, which are intelligent, reasoned discussions of the Gospel, for a long time, for anyone to access via the web.  (Now they’re down.)  He is a regular guest on — in my opinion the best part of — the Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio, fielding all kinds of questions about Catholic practices, theology, current events, you name it.  (Not for the time being.)

    This is an example of it all going both ways, I suppose.  I have criticized some in the past for complaining when the archdiocese stops comment or activity by priests who push the envelope of Church teachings in the "left" direction.  They work for the Church, the Church issues their paychecks, they ought to expect that it will dictate their activities to some extent.  So when criticism comes from priests on the "right," and the archdiocese requests that they quiet that criticism, the same principles apply.  (Except, nags one side as I write this paragraph in an attempt to be fair and balanced, Fr. Altier isn’t left or right of, but centered on, the magisterium; he’s trying to encourage the archdiocese to be faithful to the magisterium.)

    Of course he’s chosen "obedient compliance" with Archbishop Flynn’s request:  the archbishop is his superior, and Father Altier is a faithful priest, and he vowed obedience, after all.   The ones who are outspokenly faithful to the magisterium are the ones who will be quiet when the bishop asks them to… which is as it should be, but sort of frustrating.

    I’m guessing, however, that a large number of Catholics — locally and nationally —who like what Fr. Altier has to say, and who are not bound to the same kind of obedience, will be writing and talking a lot about Fr. Altier’s enforced silence.

    (But cheer up!  Even though we can’t read Fr. Altier’s homilies anymore, text versions of the speeches made by guest speakers at St. Joan of Arc during Sunday Mass are still available!  And there’s plenty we can learn from them… for example, that the only important reason why we follow Jesus instead of John the Baptist, the most important difference between them (after all, they were similar in every other way)  is that John preached a God of vengeance.  Or that Mary’s "yes" to the angel of the Annuciation is not properly translated as "Behold the handmaid of the Lord"— which would imply that women should not have control over their bodies — but rather as "I am a partner of Holy Mystery unfolding.")

    OK, that was snarky, I admit it.  <sigh>

    UPDATE:  Alicia tells me that some of Fr. Altier’s homilies have been cached and put online at Catholic Light.

    UPDATE:  The Catholic blogosphere is awakening:  Regular Guy has comments and links.  Our Word and Welcome To It, local, has a brief, weary statement.   

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