Tales From Shangri-La

Lit Bit: Parables, Fables, Folktales Class Letter to Parents

2011-09-07T15:43:00.002-05:00

Hi!

I wanted to send the parents in this class a basic introduction to the upcoming Parables, Fables, and Folktales class.

This year, we will be discussing these 3 literary types. Each endeavors to teach a truth or communicate a value through an engaging story.

We will first discuss the parables of Christ. While these are stories told to teach a lesson, unlike fables and folktales, they are the direct communication of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to teach truths about the Kingdom of Heaven. They are Holy Scripture. I want to emphasize this unique aspect of these parables on this e-mail and at the start of the class.

We will then cover some of Aesop's Fables, which are lessons about life and human nature, and they are often taught using animal characters.

Finally, we will discuss various folktales/fairy tales from around the world. These stories are longer and more elaborate, and often contain magic or talking animals (think Cinderella and Puss-in-Boots and Rumpelstiltkin). They were also passed on through generations to teach lessons about life and human nature.

Each week the students will receive an assignment to read, we will discuss it in class. At the end of the first semester, they will write a parable of their own and at the end of the second semester, they will write a fable or folktale of their own. This Friday will simply be an introductory lesson.

Should be a fun year!

Literarily ;-)

Anne

Letter to Manners Class at Co op

2011-09-07T12:14:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone! I am looking forward to Manners Class for the 4-6th graders this year. I wanted to pass on a few notes to the parents of the children who will be in my class.

Friday's class will be an introduction to manners and we will be answering the question...WHY should we even bother to learn manners!

As a parent, I am teaching this class because I know my own children need a basic primer and practice on simple, everyday manners -- meal times, greetings and introductions and conversations, church manners, class room manners, library manners, telephone and correspondence, etc.

Teaching these things at co op will help me be accountable to work on these things with my own kids at home.

Why Manners?

1. Manners communicate to people a basic, biblical truth that we were created as image-bearers of God. We are fallen and sinful, but we are still precious. In our culture, humans are lightly discarded: the elderly, the weak, the physically and mentally disabled, children, and the unborn are casually dismissed as insignificant or inconvenient. But as believers we know that humans have dignity and worth. Manners communicate to people that they are special -- they are God's creation, not to be dismissed or discarded.

2. Etiquette is a form of cultural communication. Manners vary from country to country, from region to region, from social group to social group, even from family to family.

As believers, we want to reach people with the gospel in the culture we are placed. But if we want to reach people, we need to learn to speak their language...and manners are part of a culture's language.

We are all "missionaries" in our own way -- even if we are missionaries to our own home town! The gospel never changes, it is an objective truth and reality. And the gospel is, by nature, offensive; it is a stumbling block for people. Given this, I believe people are more likely to listen to the message of a humble and gracious person than a rude one. In fact. I Corinthians 13 states something that Love is NOT. It is not rude.

3. Etiquette experts agree on the big things, but even the experts have points of disagreement on details. You may disagree with some of my approaches. And of course, within your own family you have and will establish certain standards -- create a certain culture -- that may differ from my approach.

That's fine!

Please feel free to use this class for your children as a jumping off point at home to discuss your own or others' approaches. This is an opportunity to teach children to show Grace to people (a bedrock principle of etiquette) who do things differently from the way they do. Love does not point out a wrong. Whether someone "goofs" or simply does things differently, a gracious person does not mock or gloat.

4. Practice at home will be part of this class. You can practice with just the enrolled child or with your whole family. The work will not be burdensome, but there will be something each week for the children to work on.

5. I will be using as my resource, *Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette*. It is a very detailed tome for adults, and not one you should purchase for the class.

[Though I do personally think it is wise for every household have a standard etiquette book on hand to help navigate through various situations. These books contain excellent ideas for how to word kindly thank you and condolence letters, how to address various officials, how to set a table, what to expect at a variety of engagements from casual to formal, etc.]

Our lessons will focus on every day situations, not white-tie balls and such!

I will craft lessons for the children myself and send home sheets so you can know what to work on at home.

Looking forward to a great class!

Politely ;-)

Anne

Poems for Homes: On the Brontes

2011-08-15T21:35:00.012-05:00

Dear Leigh Anne,

What fun that you are reading Jane Eyre for the first time. I am almost jealous of you!

You are always willing and curious. It's a pretty straightforward story, with some antiquated language. What do you think of St John, if you are there yet? (According to a former college professor, this is pronounced "Sin-jin.")

A question to ask yourself at the end of the book....Who loves Jane truly? The religious man, or the "reprobate"? Which man understands true love? How does this relate to Jesus' conversation in Mark 2:13-17, and also to his parable about the Pharisee and and Tax Collector in the temple?

The Bronte sisters were interesting and had an unusual upbringing. There was early death in their immediate family (a mother and two sisters). In particular, the tragic death of their beloved eldest sister, Maria, is mirrored poignantly in Jane Eyre, by the death of the older, sisterly orphan. The real-life Bronte brother, Branwell, was dissolute and died young. The sisters were devoted to him and heartbroken by his scandals. The father was a widowed vicar. The girls attended a hard, cold school very much like Lowood in Jane Eyre.

Rochester is a more recent picture of the ancient Assyrian, King Nebuchadnezzar. Bronte alludes directly to this later in the book, in case we should miss it. It helps to recall Nebuchadnezzar's story from Scripture, when he was humbled by the Lord. A similar humbling happens to Rochester.

Jane is such a heartbreakingly earnest character.

There is a modern novel by Jean Rhys which is a retelling of Jane Eyre from the perspective of a surprising character in the book -- and I won't tell you the title until you finish the book because it might give too much away! The retelling is NOT sympathetic to Rochester.

Wuthering Heights is a wild, bleak book about wild, lonesome, reckless people ravaged by strong but unwholesome love. In the end, families are finally "redeemed" by the youngest generation. E. Bronte's descriptions of Heathcliff have stayed with me long after first reading W.H. in college. She describes him as a "fierce, pitiless, wolfish man."

In Emily's and Charlotte's two books, "lost" men are redeemed by faithful women. I have wondered if their experience with their morally "lost" brother and widowed, and some say harsh, father gave them this sense of the importance of a "good woman" in the life of a man.

Sarah loved that you read Anne of Green Gables to her, and we all enjoyed your burrito-making and cookie-baking prowess.

Have fun with a new book!
Anne

Poems for Homes: "That memory may their deed redeem/When like our sires, our sons are gone"

2011-05-30T08:04:00.010-05:00

Memorial Day reading list -- pieces written and sung long ago but fitting for today:

"Concord Hymn" (Emerson)

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

"To Lucasta, Going to Wars" (Lovelace)

Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee (Dear) so much,
Lov'd I not Honour more.

Nickel Creek's "The Hand Song" is a modern, moving story about a young soldier who learned to give it all at his mother's knee.

Thank you, dad and John John for your lives of service. "If war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful." (CS Lewis)

Poems for Homes: Lit Bit

2011-05-19T07:48:00.009-05:00

Lit Bit Enrichment Class

Below is the syllabus from the enrichment class I taught to 4-6^th graders at our Fine Arts co op this year (2010-2011). In this class I sought to do a treeline overview of literary genres and devices, and found this approach to be a good way to demystify some terminology and introduce children to great works.

We first started with these descriptions:

Literary Device=Writing Tool (metaphor, alliteration, rhyme, etc)

Literary Genre=Writing Type (novel, play, poem, etc)

The class was meant to be a supplement only to the children’s language arts classes at home. It was comprised mostly of 10- and 11-year-old boys, and it took place Friday before lunch.

Hence we avoided writing exercises for the most part, and instead did some acting, reading aloud, drawing (hyperbole and onomatopoeia), a few games, fun worksheets, and had good discussions.

For example, we might discuss the definition of alliteration and then read a line or two (or three or 10) from a great work illustrating it.

This “treeline model” proved to be a great way to just introduce them to a few great works of literature in a way that was non-threatening and palatable to wiggly 5^th grade boys. (And it was loads of fun for their teacher.)

At the end of the year the children presented memory work – 10-30 lines they chose to memorize from several selections offered.

How delightful is it to hear the first 13 lines of Chaucer’s "General Prologue" from The Canterbury Tales on the lips of a skinny, 11-year-old, tow-headed boy in sneakers and baggy shorts? “When April with her showers sweet with fruit/The drought of March has pierced unto the root…” Or to hear a tousle-headed, tee-shirted boy who loves Bionicles recite Antony’s speech from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. ”Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him…”

How delightful to hear a wee little slip of a girl with a brown ponytail boldly recite “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” “Half a league/ Half a league/ Half a league onward/All in the valley of Death rode the 600…”

Or to hear a freckled boy with round glasses whose mom is battling cancer recite Robert Frost. This child chose “The Road Less Traveled.” “I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence…”

Yes, my dear, and so shall I.

In many cases, Wordsworth’s line that “the child is father to the man” is very good news.

Syllabus: Lit Bit, 2010-2011 academic year

Each semester we covered various aspects of literary structure. We discussed each aspect, read and analyzed samples from great works of literature, and in some cases, wrote our own samples.

Fall Semester: (a sampling of) Literary Devices

Simile

Metaphor

Hyperbole

Alliteration

Onomatopoeia

Rhyme

Allegory

Spring Semester: Literary Genres

This semester, in addition to studying the genres below, each child memorized a piece of literature from a great work. (They chose from a list comprised of pieces from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Byron, Tennyson, and Frost.)

What is The Western Canon?

Fiction vs Nonfiction VERSUS Truth vs Falsehood

Encyclopedia/Dictionary

Play

Novel

Poetry: rhyme, meter,

Haiku

Sonnet

Fairy/Folk Tale/Fable

Parable

Newspaper/magazine article

Propaganda/Advertisement

Sermons on Mark

2010-08-29T18:22:00.004-05:00

For those interested in studying the Gospel of Mark (we are studying Mark 9 under the insightful Peter Dietsch at our own church this month)... here are some sermons on the Gospel of Mark, from my brother, Scott Redd, who is a professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary:

Mark 2: Felt Need, Deepest Need

Mark 4-5: Sea Storm and Man of the Tombs

Those are audio links.

Coming soon...

2010-08-29T15:03:00.004-05:00

I apologize for my long absence.

The blog will be continue this later fall with some new, more organized content:

* "Poems for Homes" -- concise column with practical ideas to incorporate quality literature -- especially poetry -- into your life at home with children

* "What I Wish for You" -- wishes for my daughter based on Titus 2

* My favorite...I am working on a POSSIBLE guest blogger...a wise, time-tested, older woman and grandma comments on our culture and on family life and women's issues...developing... :-)

Our Towns: Station Stop Littleton, Colorado

2009-10-20T07:19:00.017-05:00

...a continuation of the people, places, and ponderings of a traveling family

Littleton, Colorado (Denver area)

Song: "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" (7th inning stretch at Rockies games)
Local values: Outdoor recreation. Nature and conservation.

We first took up temporary residence in the Denver area in January at a friend's condominium. She and her husband were traveling around the country in their RV, so we settled at their house while we looked for an apartment. I had no job, no car, no children, no books!, no working phone. I spent mornings watching the Louisiana Cajun Chef with the red suspenders cooking up delicious things in his roux, then walking to get groceries at Cub Foods.

Colorado is all about Vision and Perspective. We could see the Rocky Mountains from wherever we lived. The sun set in the west behind them, the last glimpse of the day being the dark profile of those mountains.

David settled into work on a magazine at Promisekeepers, another non-profit, where he made a lifelong friend, his boss, Rick Quintana. We attended a small Reformed Baptist Church because of its thorough and devoted teaching pastor.

I got a job walking distance away -- a shift manager at an Old Navy Store. To continue from my college working days, I also started a house cleaning business (which only ever had one customer).

Weekends we would drive out to the Red Rocks or to other spots just off the side of the road to hike or ramble in the beauty. There are whole fields of prairie dogs, too, that to this day are a delightful memory for me. Oh my goodness, they were so funny, all popping in and out of their holes and perched on their front stoops like little old men!

We soon found an apartment (right next door to an ostrich farm). I set up my first real home, and began to develop a lifelong delight in finding ways to make a home on a budget wherever we are. Home should be a place that is lovely but not at the expense of comfort: form and function, neither one should rule over the other. Sometimes the budget means you buy a discount slipcover for the 20 year old sofa and use the footstool as a coffee table. Sometimes it means you get to buy a new couch altogether! But your own personal touch and concern for comfort and beauty marks it as "home," no matter the budget.

In winter, the snow would fall outside, and the weather would be dry and the flakes would be dry, storybook flakes under the street lamps. Sometimes it seemed so impossibly, achingly beautiful. In summer, there were a few warm windy evenings at Rockies baseball games, the sun setting behind the mountains, the lights twinkling on the field...

So much to be thankful for, yet during this time in my life I felt lonely. For me to say this is a rare thing, I have not often felt lonely as an adult. My attempts to make friends did not avail for several months. We did not have a computer or e-mail in the first temporary home. And in the days before cell phones, we also had no phone service at our friends' house. I used a calling card once to call my mom from a roadside phone booth. The people we knew in Denver had already established friendships and the people I worked with did, too. In our second apartment, we had an Open House, but the people who came didn't linger and nothing came of it.

For young women who are reading, these lonely times are the times when God takes away your comforts and crutches, and wants you to look to Him for what you need.

This was also God's way of establishing our marriage, making it so that we really had no one else to look to but one another and Him. I am in favor of young married couples having some space at some point along the way from family and friends in order to establish themselves as first in each other's lives. I am not advocating seeking loneliness or moving away, but having a little space in a new marriage isn't a bad thing.

Moving has always done that for our marriage. It is a recalibration, a reminder: "We two." I think in a funny way it has kept the closeness and romance alive in our marriage.

Remember that poem by AA Milne? Wherever I am, there's always Pooh. There's always Pooh and me ...Let's stick together, says Pooh, says he, Let's stick together says Pooh

Things don't go one endlessly. (Another life lesson.) Right at the end of our time in Colorado, we made friends with a fun couple, Andrew and Ashley. They were southern transplants, and a we would have each other over for dinner. He has a great sense of humor, and she is a gracious southern hostess.

And after only 7 months in Denver, we were headed to our next station stop: Alexandria, Virginia.

General McChrystal's Speech in London

2009-10-13T15:04:00.003-05:00

General McChrystal's Speech on Afghanistan

It is an honor for me to be here and I would like to thank you for giving me the time. I would also like to thank not only my hosts but also all of you who took time to be here today. This is an extraordinarily important subject: we have young people – not only from the coalition but also young Afghans – in the field today, who depend on the decisions we make and the analysis we do. Taking the time to talk and think about it is always time well-spent, so I thank you for that.

I am privileged to speak here today as the Commander of NATO's ISAF forces, representing people from 42 troop-contributing nations. I represent them today and I hope to do that well. As you know, I have a British deputy, Lieutenant General Jim Dutton, who is coming to the end of his term and will soon be replaced by another great British officer, Lieutenant General Nick Parker.

Before I continue, I would like to recognize the enormous sacrifice that families here in the UK have made. As you know, the losses that we have suffered are significant in terms of those who have fallen, suffered life-changing injuries, or given up parts of their life just by being away from family. I am in awe of the performance of the British brothers whom I have been honored to work with for a number of years now.

I am humbled to be here because I do not claim to be in the same category as people who have been talking here, such as Prime Minister Brown and President Zardari, who expressed their views on this complex subject. I do, however, believe that I can offer some perspectives and will try to do that today. I will start by posing seven questions before attempting to answer them. If this works according to my plan, it will totally exhaust your appetite for this issue and I will leave the room to wild cheers and lucrative job offers. If my plan fails, as most of mine do, I will be happy to field any questions that we have time for.

[What is the Right Approach to Use in Afghanistan?]
1. People ask me this question all the time; many people offer their own suggestions. There is a multitude of approaches to what to do. Some people say that we should focus primarily on development; others say that we should conduct a counterterrorist-focused battle, given that this really started after 9/11 and Al-Qaeda's strikes. Other people say that we should conduct counterinsurgency (COIN). A paper has been written that recommends that we use a plan called "Chaosistan", and that we let Afghanistan become a Somalia-like haven of chaos that we simply manage from outside.

2. The Complexities of Afghanistan
a. The delicate balance of power

I arrived in Afghanistan in May 2002 and I have spent a part of every year since then involved in the effort. I have learned a tremendous amount about it and, every day, I realize how little about Afghanistan I actually understand. I discount immediately anyone who simplifies the problem or offers a solution, because they have absolutely no idea of the complexity of what we are dealing with.

In Afghanistan, things are rarely as they seem, and the outcomes of actions we take, however well-intended, are often different from what we expect. If you pull the lever, the outcome is not what you have been programmed to think. For example, digging a well sounds quite simple. How could you do anything wrong by digging a well to give people clean water? Where you build that well, who controls that water, and what water it taps into all have tremendous implications and create great passion.If you build a well in the wrong place in a village, you may have shifted the basis of power in that village. If you tap into underground water, you give power to the owner of that well that they did not have before, because the traditional irrigation system was community-owned. If you dig a well and contract it to one person or group over another, you make a decision that, perhaps in your ignorance, tips the balance of power, or perception thereof, in that village. Therefore, with a completely altruistic aim of building a well, you can create divisiveness or give the impression that you, from the outside, do not understand what is going on or that you have sided with one element or another, yet all you tried to do is provide water.

b. COIN mathematics
There is another complexity that people do not understand and which the military have to learn: I call it "COIN mathematics". Intelligence will normally tell us how many insurgents are operating in an area. Let us say that there are 10 in a certain area. Following a military operation, two are killed. How many insurgents are left? Traditional mathematics would say that eight would be left, but there may only be two, because six of the living eight may have said, "This business of insurgency is becoming dangerous so I am going to do something else."

There are more likely to be as many as 20, because each one you killed has a brother, father, son and friends, who do not necessarily think that they were killed because they were doing something wrong. It does not matter – you killed them. Suddenly, then, there may be 20, making the calculus of military operations very different. Yet we are asking young corporals, sergeants and lieutenants to make those kinds of calculations and requiring them to understand the situation. They have to, there is no simple work-around. It is that complex: where you build the well, what military operations to run, who you talk to. Everything that you do is part of a complex system with expected and unexpected, desired and undesired outcomes, and outcomes that you never find out about. In my experience, I have found that the best answers and approaches may be counterintuitive; i.e. the opposite of what it seems like you ought to do is what ought to be done. When I am asked what approach we should take in Afghanistan, I say "humility".

[What Environment Are We Operating In?]

1. Generally Accepted Truths
The answer to this question starts with some generally accepted truths about Afghanistan, which we all know to be true:

It is a graveyard of empires.

Afghanistan has never been ruled by a strong central government.

Afghans do not consider themselves Afghans.

All three are untrue. If you ask an Afghan what he is, he will say, "I am an Afghan" There have been strong central governments, although different from what you think of as central government. In the sense of governance, there have been periods when Afghanistan absolutely had a central government. Therefore, we have to start by not accepting any of the generally accepted "bumper sticker" truths.

2. Real Truths

a. Complex, difficult geography and demography
In terms of real truths, it is complex, difficult terrain, both in terms of land and people. It is also a tribal society with a culture that is vastly different from what most of us are familiar with. There are variations around the country; you cannot assume that what is true in one province is true in another. That goes for ethnic, geographic and economic issues. You cannot even assume that what is true in one valley is true in the next any more than you can assume that one neighborhood in London is exactly the same as another. We would not generalize here, yet sometimes, as outsiders, we want to do that.

b. A long period of conflict
I would also remind people that we have been waging a war for eight years, yet the Afghans have been at it for 30. Life expectancy in Afghanistan is 44 years, so not many people remember pre-conflict life in Afghanistan. Of those 30 years, about 10 were spent fighting the Soviets, followed by six years of "warlordism" and a further six years of Taliban rule and civil rule, and the last eight years have been eight more years of fighting.

One elder said something that really struck me one night as we were talking: "What you see in Afghanistan now is a reflection of pieces of each of those eras." It is now a mosaic of the experiences of all those eras. If you think about the impact of 30 years on people and on a society, calculations change. The certainty that you have when you walk through your neighborhood in London is not the certainty that they have. The expectation of the future is not the expectation that they may have. The opportunities to be educated and to associate with different ethnic groups, which have become more of a challenge in recent years, are very different.

c. A damaged society

The society is what I would call "damaged" Individuals may not be damaged, but the society is not as it was. It is not so uniformly; nor can you say "it is all different here." Tribal structures, relationships and expectations are uncertain now. When you go into a village in a Pashtun area, traditionally you could have predicted what the role and interrelationships of the mullah or the elders would be. That is no longer true. It varies based upon the experience of that area. In some areas, some have disproportionate influence and others have none. Some have been killed. In other cases, elements like the Taliban have come in and completely turned upside down the traditional structures. You can also not assume that traditional structures have disappeared, so you have to go in and learn what the structure is and how people deal with it.

3. A Uniquely Complex Environment
What we face, then, is a uniquely complex environment, where there are at least three regional and resilient insurgencies, with further sub-insurgencies. They have intersected on top of a dynamic blend of local power struggles in a country damaged by 30 years of war. You then run into someone who raises their finger and says "here is the solution" – they can have my job.

4. A Crisis of Confidence
We also face a crisis of confidence. Afghans are frustrated after the most recent eight years of war, because in 2001 their expectations skyrocketed. Along with the arrival of coalition forces, they expected a positive change. They saw that initially and then waited for other changes – economic development and improvements in governance – that, in many cases, may have been unrealistic but, in many cases, were unmet. Therefore, there was a mismatch between what they had hoped for and what they have experienced. Again, as we learn in all societies, expectations and perceptions often matter as much as the reality.

IV. What Is the Situation Now?

1. Serious and Deteriorating
The situation is serious, and I choose that word very carefully. I would add that neither success nor failure for our endeavor in support of the Afghan people and government can be taken for granted. My assessment and my best military judgment is that the situation is, in some ways, deteriorating, but not in all ways.

2. Tremendous Progress
I can also point out areas in which tremendous progress is evident: the construction of roads, provision of clean water, access to healthcare, the presence of children in school, and access to education for females. All of these are up dramatically and hugely positive, and portend well for the future.

3. A Need to Reverse Current Trends
However, a tremendous number of villagers live in fear, and there are officials who either cannot or do not serve their people effectively. Violence is on the increase, not only because there are more coalition forces, but also because the insurgency has grown. We need to reverse the current trends, and time does matter. Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support. However, the cruel irony is that, in order to succeed, we need patience, discipline, resolve and time.

V. Who is Winning?

Battle of Minds and Perceptions
a. Not a game with points on a scoreboard
The answer to this question depends on who you ask. This is not like a football game with points on a scoreboard; it is more like a political debate, after which both sides announce that they won. That matters because we are not the scorekeepers: not NATO ISAF, not our governments, and not even our press. The perception of all of these entities will matter and they will affect the situation, but ultimately this is going to be decided in the minds and perceptions of the Afghan people of the Afghan government and of the insurgents, whether they can win or are winning, and, most importantly, the perception of the villager who casts his lot with the winner.

b. Villagers make rational and practical decisions
Villagers are supremely rational and practical people: they make the decision on who they will support, based upon who can protect them and provide for them what they need. If a villager lives in a remote area where the government or security forces cannot protect them from coercion or harm from insurgents, he will not support the government – it would be illogical. Similarly, if the government cannot provide him with rule of law, the basic ability to adjudicate requirements legally, or just enough services to allow him to pursue a likelihood, it is difficult for him to make a rational decision to support the government. The Taliban is not popular. It does not have a compelling context. What it has is proximity to the people and the ability to provide coercion and, in some cases, things like basic rule of law, based upon the fact that they are there and can put themselves in that position. The perception of the villager matters in terms of which side he should support, so winning the battle of perception is key.

c. Allowing the facts to speak for themselves
I also think that winning the battle of perception, as it applies everywhere but particularly to us, is about credibility. As I told you, the situation is absolutely not deteriorating by every indicator, but I will not stand up and say that we are winning until I am told by indicators that we are winning. For me to stand up and claim good things that are not supported by data in order to motivate us and make us feel good very rapidly undermines our credibility. Our own forces are smart enough to do that, so I intend to tell people the best assessment that we can, as accurately as possible, and allow the facts to speak for themselves.

VI. It Has Been Eight Years – Why Is It Not Better??
This is a fair question for the Afghan people and for societies that have supported this effort. It is true that, after eight years of tremendous effort and expenditure and the loss of good people, many things are worse. Why have eight years of effort not made things better? There are a number of complex reasons:

The insurgency grew.

Expectations – both expected and unexpected – were not met, which has created frustration.

It took us longer than I wish it had to recognize this as a serious insurgency. As the Taliban started to regain its effectiveness, we lagged in terms of accepting that as a clear reality.

Through our actions, we – i.e. the coalition and its Afghan partners – sometimes exacerbate the problems.

We have under-resourced our operations.

In some areas, we have under-performed; in others, we have under-coordinated.

We have struggled with unity of effort, national agreements and chains of command that are complex to say the least.

In some ways, we have not overcome some of our intrinsic disadvantages. We are operating in a very different culture, with language differences, relationships that do not exist and a complex situation that takes time to understand, yet we have not effectively developed enough expertise, continuity of people or sufficient numbers of language-trained people to deal with the situation as effectively as we could have.

Most importantly, our own operational culture – and by "our" I mean coalition forces – and manner of operating distances us physically and psychologically from the people who we seek to protect. We need to connect with people, yet physical or linguistic barriers make it increasingly difficult. Ultimately, our security comes from the people. We cannot build enough walls to protect ourselves if the people do not.

We must, then, operate and think in a fundamentally new way.

VII. Can We Succeed?
1. Protecting the Afghan People from the Enemy
We can succeed. We must redefine the fight. The objective is the will of the Afghan people. We must protect the Afghan people from all threats: from the enemy and from our own actions. Let me describe it: a few days ago, just before we left to travel here, a bus south of Kandahar struck an improvised explosive device (IED) killing 30 Afghan civilians. That is tragic.

On the one hand, you might say that the Afghan people would recoil against the Taliban who left that IED. To a degree, they do, but we must also understand that they recoil against us because they might think that, if we were not there, neither would be the IED. Therefore, we indirectly caused the IED to be there. Second, we said that we would protect them, but we did not. Sometimes, then, the most horrific events caused by the insurgents continue to reinforce in the minds of the Afghan people a mindset that coalition forces are either ineffective, or at least that their presence in Afghanistan is not in their interest. That does not happen all of the time. There are times when they feel differently, but you have to put things in that context to understand what we must do.

2. Protection from Our Own Actions

a. Respecting the people
We also need to protect them from our own actions. When we fight, if we become focused on destroying the enemy but end up killing Afghan civilians, destroying Afghan property or acting in a way that is perceived as arrogant, we convince the Afghan people that we do not care about them. If we say, "˜We are here for you – we respect and want to protect you", while destroying their home, killing their relatives or destroying their crops, it is difficult for them to connect those two concepts. It would be difficult for us to do the same. The understanding, then, must be that we respect the people.

b. Changing our mindset
We must assign responsibility because, ultimately, the Afghans must defeat the insurgency. As a force, however, we must change our mindset. Whether or not we like it, we have a conventional warfare culture – not just our militaries but our societies. Our societies want to see lines on a map moving forward towards objectives, but you will not see that in a counterinsurgency because you do not see as clearly what is happening in people's minds. We will have to do things dramatically and even uncomfortably differently in order to change how we think and operate.

In short, we cannot succeed by simply trying harder. We cannot drop three more bombs and have a greater effect; it is much more subtle than that.

3. Crucial Next Steps
In my mind, therefore, what we must do over the next period of time is:

Gain the initiative by reversing the perceived momentum possessed by the insurgents.

Seek rapid growth of Afghan national security forces – the army and the police.

Improve their effectiveness and ours through closer partnering, which involves planning, living and operating together and taking advantage of each other's strengths as we go forward. Within ISAF, we will put more emphasis on every part of that, by integrating our headquarters, physically co-locating our units, and sharing ownership of the problem.

Address shortfalls in the capacity of governance and the ability of the Afghan government to provide rule of law.

Tackle the issue of predatory corruption by some officials or by warlords who are not in an official position but who seem to have the ability, sometimes sanctioned by existing conditions, to do that.

Focus our resources and prioritize in those areas where the population is most threatened. We do not have enough forces to do everything everywhere at once, so this has to be prioritized and phased over time.

4. A Need for Resolve
As you know, the concepts that I have outlined here are not new, but if we implement them aggressively and effectively, we can create a revolution in terms of our effectiveness. We must show resolve. Uncertainty disheartens our allies, emboldens our foe. A villager recently asked me whether we intended to remain in his village and provide security, to which I confidently promised him that, of course, we would. He looked at me and said, "Okay, but you did not stay last time."

VIII. Why Bother?

1. The Risk Posed by Al-Qaeda
Afghanistan is difficult, so why bother? It is a long way away. It is not our business. As we know, however, 9/11 brought us here to the latest interaction, and transnational terrorist threats absolutely remain. I believe that the loss of stability in Afghanistan brings a huge risk that transnational terrorists such as Al-Qaeda will operate from within Afghanistan again.

2. High Stakes for Afghanistan and the Region
I also believe that the stakes are high for Afghanistan and for the region. An unstable Afghanistan not only negatively affects what happens within its borders but also affects its neighbors. Afghanistan is, in many ways, one of the keys to stability in south Asia. A state that can provide its own security is important to all international security, and certainly to that of the UK, the US and our international partnership. The Afghan people are worth bothering about and they deserve that.

IX. Conclusion
In conclusion, I am exceptionally proud to serve at ISAF. Within my office, I have a picture of a British battle group, led by Lieutenant Colonel Gus Fair, with whom I worked for a long time in Iraq. He is with his soldiers, who I had the opportunity to speak with when I visited them during operations in Spin Majid this summer in the Helmand River valley. I keep that picture because, when I looked into their eyes, which were bloodshot with fatigue, I remember the extraordinary professionalism, competence and sheer courage of those young men. Whenever I come to London, I like to run through the city, and I particularly like the statues that you have erected to heroes. I hope that you erect one to that generation, they have earned it. Thank you.
- - - - -

Our Towns

2009-10-03T20:32:00.022-05:00

Change is the Status Quo

David loves music, and he gave me a song, called "The Great Adventure," when he proposed. My second clue was when he interviewed for a job the second week we were married.

Next month we will have been married thirteen years. Thirteen years, 10 cities, 12 moves, 4 time zones, if you include local moves and apartments, which I have done for dramatic effect and to highlight different areas. To be less dramatic, there have been about about 7 "big" moves. (When I add my adult moves on to my Navy kid moves, I get somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 or 23 relocations, and 10 different schools in grades 1-12.)

And since I love adventures, this suits me perfectly.

Places, People, Ponderings

One of our hobbies along the way is to try to label and identify the leading cultural values in a new area we live in.

[A note: of course, each place has individuals devoted to different things. There are whole groups and movements of altruism in every place we have lived, and some amazing organizations dedicated to helping people. I am referring here to top-line, secular, local values, not laying a judgment on any one person who lives in any one area.]

A second thing I usually do is associate a song I know with a place I live. This just happens. I am driving along or doing the dishes, and I find myself singing this song and mentally attaching it to this place.

We live now in a town of trains and stations, so, following that metaphor, here are the "station stops" along the way in the times we have relocated in 13 years of marriage, with a description of the cultures, some local hot spots, and people we have lived with.

First Station Stop: North Hollywood, California

When we married in November of '96, David was already living in the Los Angeles area and working as an editor gathering and writing content for a start-up CD magazine called Sweet! Based in the San Fernando valley, Sweet! was a non-profit product created to reach unchurched kids with good messages.

Remember that scene at the beginning of ET when the movie pans up and over the mountains at night into a valley full of the grid of suburban and city lights? That is the San Fernando Valley. David drove me up in the mountains one night to see the Valley full of lights.

It is the home of the Valley Girl, of Burbank and Universal studios, and part of Los Angeles...the City of Angels. The home of money, power, beauty, imagination, creativity, poverty, immigration, hope and despair in greater extremes than maybe anywhere else I have lived, except Shanghai.

(Ed. note: The next time you see a Hollywood actor ranting to you about how this nation should get its house in order, ask yourself why overwhelmingly liberal, Big Hollywood --with all of its power, influence, imagination, and money -- doesn't get its own local Los Angeles "house" more in order.)

North Hollywood is next to Burbank. It is nothing like Hollywood itself, or Burbank either. For visual sense and more pop culture reference: we lived in the same general area as that giant lighted cowboy in one scene where the girl is on the telephone, in the movie Clueless. Visually, think of Reseda in The Karate Kid.

During the day I would unpack boxes, or drive the car out to the edge of the Valley through Burbank's groomed lawns, and clamber up for a hike in the desert hills.

Big wide sunny roads, traffic, smog, trucks, palm trees, Spanish, and really good food.

We loved a place called Tacos Al Carbon, with its amazing burritos. And of course, we had to eat at Duke's. Duke's is a diner downtown where you sit at long rows of shared tables and eat breakfast comfort food. Celebrities can be spotted here in ballcaps with newspapers, trying not to be noticed. And they are pretty much safe from being bothered here, I have heard.

And every day is a sunny day.

Local Cultural Values: Look beautiful. Play hard.

Song: Tom Petty, "Free Fallin'." Not that I related to the emotions of the song, but because of all of the local geographical references: Ventura Boulevard, Reseda, Mulholland and the breezy California sound.

House: We lived in a one-bedroom apartment with pink tiles, a brown hand-me-down sofa, a both motherly and militaristic landlady named Marge, and across the street from what (as far as we could discern) was a hub for the Jewish Mafia (locked and gated fence, dark cars, and bearded men in yarmulkes in and out all night).

Our small complex had about 20 units, open air hallways, and I loved the 1950's feel inside it. It felt like I was in an apartment in the movie The Right Stuff. The horizontal crank windows, the fixtures, the tiles, the cabinets were original. It was retro when retro wasn't cool! I wore an apron; I made big, hot breakfasts.

People: Marge was a leathery-skinned chain-smoker of indiscernible age -- we guessed 50 -- and she had a friend named Terry who lived in her apartment and slept on her couch.

Terry was, she insisted, not her boyfriend. A (very) quiet man, short and broad-chested, he did labor for Marge around the complex (about 20 apartments with open area halls), and they were together all the time.

Marge was especially kind to us. I believe this is because she decided we needed looking after. She ran a very tight ship: no loud noise, no nails in the walls unless she put them there, immaculately kept yard (absolutely no walking on the grass -- like in China!). Because of her tireless efforts, and Terry's muscular presence, the place seemed safe and clean for the single moms and other hard working people who lived there.

David did a good job finding a spot for us. Marge liked to look after people and was kind in a businesslike way. I have sometimes wondered what happened to Marge. I am not sure she was good at looking after herself.

After our first Christmas dinner (I laid out the wedding fine china, crystal, silver, and candles in our 4x6 foot dinette area), for dessert we walked to the 7-11 one block away in our shorts and got Hostess cupcakes and diet sodas.

We shopped for groceries at Ralph's, where we bought matches so we could light candles in our apartment (didn't broadcast this to Marge). We bought such a large pack of matches that we were still using the same Ralph's brand matches last year in Texas. How's that for a marital Strike-the-Original-Match metaphor! For almost 12 years I would pull out those matches and think of California.

We attended John MacArthur's Master's Bible Church where the doors sat wide open to the morning sun, the people wore shorts and brought coffee in paper cups to the service, and the sermon lasted 45 minutes and included detailed notes, outlines, and cross references. It was like going to seminary.

Sometimes, the light fixtures would sway gently. Laying in bed at night, we would hear the tinkle of the china in the cabinet under the influence of a very minor, otherwise unnoticed tremor.

And in the end, this was a very short train stop. David lived here for 8 months, we lived here as a couple for only 3 weeks, then moved. Funding for Sweet! had been drying up, and it was already time to go.

Next Station Stop...Colorado, to work at Promisekeepers...

Daily Schedule

2009-10-02T11:57:00.014-05:00

Below is the working schedule for our home school.

I usually run laundry loads through the day while doing school, and the kids handle dishes on breaks. We take breaks every so often to stretch legs and run around.

Do you have a schedule that works for you as you home school? Please share it! I love to read and learn from other people's ideas.

Do you have some good tips for managing your week? When do you grocery shop? When do you exercise? When do you clean? All useful advice welcomed here, whether you home school, work outside the home, or are at home without kids... please share your time management and scheduling tricks and tips!

This schedule does not include PE. (After all, our life seems to be one giant PE class!) Formally, the kids take classes at our gym. (They recently finishing up swimming and currently the boys are taking "rock climbing and gym games.") We have been sports leagues on over the years, soccer, baseball, and basketball variously, and had tennis lessons. This is our first fall with no one in a sports league for some time, because we did the gym classes this fall.

This schedule does not include Music appreciation or theory. At the moment, I am looking for a piano teacher in the area. For now, I expose them to classical music all throughout the day, and they each listen to a classical selection on headsets during school work each day.

Beautiful works of Art are included on the memory cards we use from Veritas Press, as we will look at those and talk about them, but I have yet to establish a formalized art class in our school this year. Possibly something we'll fold in to field trips coming up.

Here are some bullet notes on studying, from an occupational therapist I worked with in Texas....useful when learning and studying, or using as you read a book.

* Listening to classical music (no lyrics/voices) helps some people focus.
* Drinking water helps the mind learn.
* Chewing gum helps the mind learn.
* Books on tape help kids with auditory processing problems, and with listening skills. We listen to books on tape constantly in the car. (I love Harper Audio's entire Chronicles of Narnia set. Lynn Redgrave, Kenneth Branagh, and a other excellent readers really do justice to this great series.)

We also enjoy peppermints when we seem to have brain fog or need a little pick me up. :-)

Daily Schedule

Memory work and devotions:
Bible Verse/passage memory
Books of the Bible memory song, and Ancient History cards
Bible reading and short discussion: currently Luke
Prayer
Calendar/ Diagram sentence/Journal
Grammar Jingles
Latin roots
Poem memory (currently “The Road Less Traveled”)
Modern History cards
Science memory work

Math
Flashcards
Math facts drill
Math page (evens or odds, two sides)

Language
Spelling review/worksheet
Grammar/Language/Phonics/Explode the Code sheets
Writing assignment work

Science and History (we alternate Science and History every day, so History on Monday, Science on Tuesday, etc)
Science notebooks/workbooks
History notebooks, worksheets and reading

Story time
Read-Alouds from Ben and Sarah
SSR for everyone: Quiet reading time (for a tired kid this may turn into a cat nap)

Evening: Bible Reading (currently Judges), Book reading selection (currently Old Yeller)

FRIDAY: Tests and review, field trips and/or experiments

Homeschooling, in SALON

2009-09-29T20:55:00.008-05:00

We are back in the new school year, and here in a new town, so I find myself answering some familiar questions about home schooling from people I meet.

I am glad they ask, it means they are open and curious. Sometimes people seem disapproving, and there are certainly some assumptions made by people about home schooling. But most people seem genuinely curious.

The main questions I hear when we move to a new place and make new friends are: "Why do you home school?" "What about socialization?" and something along the lines of, "How do you do it? Do you start in the morning and go all day like in regular school?"

I thought I'd do a blog on these 3 questions at a later date. But first in this blog I'd like to link to two interesting perspectives on homeschooling from the left-of-center home school crowd, in links below.

For my more traditional friends, also want to add I am not advocating taking your children to bars late at night or "un-schooling."

But I digress...

There are some interesting points and perspectives in these links, especially about socialization (most famously and capably handled by Susan Wise Bauer in the homeschooling classic, The Well-Trained Mind, intended for non-sectarian home schoolers as well as Christian ones) and also specialization.

Home schoolers are a group of diverse people. After all, people rarely fit rigidly into one mold. There is a spectrum of people involved on home schooling -- politically, financially, and culturally -- and they overlap in areas. Going to a home schooling convention or meeting or support group can mean sitting next to people you would otherwise never cross paths with, and enjoying it. It is good.

I know of a home schooling mom whose children wear school uniforms and sit in a row in little desks. I have met moms whose children wear their pajamas until noon and do their school sprawled across the floor.

Most of us fall somewhere in between. Both of these approaches would make me a little crazy, though when we moved here before our furniture did, we had no choice but to do our workbooks on the carpet. (And you know, the good news is that the kids were able to do it. An unintended consequence of home schooling can be flexibility -- mentally and physically -- cue wry smile.)

I saw this diversity among home schoolers more in China than in anywhere else, where, due to the exorbitant cost of private schooling and the Mandarin and communist nature of public schooling, many expat. women home schooled who otherwise wouldn't.

Confessions of a Homeschooler

Sour Grapes

Top 10 Reasons to Home School

2009-09-16T19:47:00.003-05:00

10. Pajamas and pancakes during memory work and devotions.

9. You can safely doze off during afternoon SSR (sustained, silent reading)

8. I get to go on every field trip. Heck, I get to pick every field trip!

7. It is socially acceptable to cuddle during read-alouds.

6. The kitchen crew is available during morning hours.

5. My human encyclopedia, Will, is always at the ready with scientific data.

4. Three little words: Done By One.

3. No need to flatten down cowlicks except on Sundays.

4. Owning lots of good Kingfisher and DK books!

3. The town library, the nature preserve, and Starbucks are satellite locations.

2. Vacations in the off season!

1. The learning never stops...for mom, too.

Interval Training

2009-08-25T07:24:00.003-05:00

Here's a post on interval training that David sent me from NPR. This is something the gym recommended for 2 out of every 3 workouts:

NPR Interval

Eating and Exercising Wisely

2009-08-24T19:25:00.004-05:00

This post from "Pick up the Pace" does a very effective job putting forward a style and strategy of eating -- long term, not just for weight loss -- that makes sense to me. [Disclaimer: I have not read all the things at this site and I am not recommending the whole site, just recommending the one posting.]

Wade through the first couple of points, which you may have heard before, and see if the later points are interesting to you... especially her timing discussion and lawnmower illustration. She does a great job illustrating why nutritionists say what they do about eating. I love word pictures!

Workout Report

I haven't posted any lists of new strength exercises yet! Mea culpe!

To be honest, as time goes on...while I very much appreciate what the strength trainer taught me in those four sessions about 1. timing and coordinating my strength-training segments within a session, 2. how much to rest, 3. how hard to push myself, etc, the one thing I have not utilized are all of her more complex moves and innovative strength exercises, with special weights, straps, machines, etc.

I am by nature drawn to more of an organic approach rather than one involving machines or gear. And with complex moves and gear, I spend so much trying to remember the moves and trying to get them right, that I feel I am wasting precious time and energy. Seriously -- this girl (c'est moi) is not known for athletic coordination. I do use two of the trainer's ab exercises as I find them much more challenging than regular crunches and they incorporate balance, and I'll describe them in a future post.

So what I have done is used the exercises she did with me that I either 1. knew already and/or 2. perform naturally.

Upper body: various forms of push ups (including one kind that challenges the rotator cuff), planks, tricep dips, flies, those kinds of things. In a couple of sessions, she had me end with a nice long plank -- 60 seconds.

Lower body: I do a stairs routine she taught me and lunges with weights in hand. (And boy these lunges really getcha!) Just about every exercise I can do with light weights at home if I want, or at the gym which has a nice long flight of back stairs.

Initially, too, the people at the gym had me doing 3 days of cardio and 2 days of strength each week. But I quickly found that I wanted to added in a 6th day of training, and that I really missed cardio on my strength days and didn't want to give that up. Cardio is enjoyable to me, sort of a release.

Since I don't want to spend too much time working out, each day I have been doing 45 minutes of cardio plus either upper or lower body strength every day. So with respect to strength training, instead of one long strength training workout two days a week, I get 5-6 short strength workouts per week -- upper or lower depending on the day. I do abs most days.

Results?....from my more strategic workout plan

I feel great. I have more energy. I feel sharper mentally, and have a nice tight strength in my arms. My sleep is a little better.

My efforts have been motivated by a desire to be more strategic for my long-term health's sake. But I had hoped to firm up my middle a bit, which seems to be the whipping boy for all of my own personal nutritional sins. On me, that is the first place to gain and the last place to lose -- the classic heart attack profile.

I see, at this point, an increased tightness in my arms, shoulder, and legs and thighs, but my waste is barely perceptibly trimmer. Not much improvement there. So I eagerly wait to see if I can really see a drop a few inches there.

Anne

Matthew Henry quotes

2009-08-13T06:12:00.003-05:00

Quotes from Matthew Henry

I have a brand new Matthew Henry commentary on the Bible ("Nelson's Super Value Series!") which I got from Borders this summer.

From Romans:

"And we all know how soon a man will contrive, against the strongest evidence, to reason himself out of the belief of what he dislikes"

From Exodus:

"It is a sign of guilt to be angry at reproof."

"Sometimes the Lord suffers the rod of the wicked to lie very long and very heavy on the lot of the righteous."

About our attitude towards the church and the foibles of its members: "But we must take heed of being set against the ways and people of God, by the follies and peevishness of some persons that profess religion."

On Moses faithful mother and his little reed boat, "And if the weak affection of a mother were thus careful, what shall we think of Him, whose love, whose compassion is, as himself, boundless? Moses never had a stronger protection about him...than now, when he lay alone, a helpless babe upon the waves. No water, no Egyptian, can hurt him. When we seem most neglected and forlorn, God is most present with us."

Genesis and Dysfunctional Families

The kids and I just finished Genesis in the mornings, and we noted the following repeating themes coming down through the generations of God's people, starting with Cain and Abel and moving on down through the ages. Faith marks this family -- many of them have great faith in acting as God commands, and following His commands to move great distances, but there are some markers of dysfunction we took as a warning for all of us today.

* Brothers as rivals and competitors
* Jealousy and/or favoritism, as a partial cause of the above, and always simmering under the surface
* Trickiness! "Parsing" words
* Marital infidelity

"Back to (Home) School"

2009-08-06T13:31:00.004-05:00

Breakpoint commentary link

Escape from Presence

2009-08-03T21:18:00.003-05:00

Here is an amusing and insightful excerpt from an old Cary Tennis column in Salon. It is about the increasing inability of all of us -- in this virtual world -- to achieve Absence. (And here I am, blogging on it. Rich.)

...The problem is compounded by the fact that the very definitions of presence and absence have changed; absence has become contingent; presence has become inescapable. No matter where we are, our virtual selves remain under surveillance.

Until recently, one could actually achieve absence. One could go somewhere and be gone. The traveler would send postcards. The postcards would have pictures of beaches or statues. They would be eagerly awaited and gratefully received. Absence was simple. It was an absolute condition, soon relieved by presence. Presence was also an absolute condition.

No more.

Now absence and presence are contingent and variable, matters of degree and form. A person may cease responding to e-mail and achieve a sort of absence although he or she remains in place. Or a person may go to India and yet be as present as always.

A version of us is always present. We are over-connected. We spy on each other from afar.

The quality of our absence is thus degraded. Absenceness is a precious resource we are fast running out of. Soon there will be nothing but presence. We will wish we could go away but will not be able to. The pain of constant presence will be too much for some to bear; it will be a torture like that of sleep deprivation. There will be a rash of virtual suicides, in which people disconnect themselves and appear to be dead. We will have virtual funerals for them. This will all come in time...

Anatomy of a Training Plan

2009-07-08T05:40:00.021-05:00

Looking Back

This week I had my first two of four total sessions with a personal trainer, the culmination of a growing desire to strengthen my body and become more healthy as I enter this next stage of life.

I lead a generally healthy and active life. However, my dad has often spoken about not just working "hard" at a given task, but working "smart." And very often my health efforts have not been efficient or strategic or consistent. I became aware recently, also, of a family history of strokes. My suspicion: A generally healthy lifestyle and cardio work alone may not be good enough.

In fact, as in so many things, good intentions are not good enough. And when it comes to strength training, I am mostly in the dark.

Moving Ahead

So this Spring, with David's help and generosity, I embarked upon a plan to be more strategic about my health.

The first hurdle was logistical... what to do with the kids daily for a focused workout? I have a couple of more years before I can leave the kids alone at home, and finding a place for them to be safe while I exercise is an important factor on weekdays. So we signed up for a gym which is very near our house, and I began intentionally exercising at the same time every day while the kids play in the supervised play area.

Joining a gym costs money, but it is more important to me than discretionary expenses in other areas at this point. My long-term hope is not to be "gym dependent," but this does allow for me to be trained, in the meanwhile, and helps me through this season that the kids need supervision.

There are four aspects of fitness that can be measured easily at a gym: cardio, strength, flexibility...plus a measurement of body fat.

Our gym offers a "free" (once you join) body health analysis. For me, this is where the rubber met the road. With all of my healthy choices but noted lack of focus and strategy, was I actually achieving good health?

The answer was no. The results showed that while my strength and flexibility are "good," my cardio health is only "moderate" (though upper end, close to "good"!) and I have a slightly elevated body fat ratio. Furthermore, I do gain weight in my middle (a nice pillow for the babies!) and this is also a classic heart-attack disposition.

So I met with the manager to discuss a plan. As we talked, it became obvious that my workout plan was not efficient. I was working out hard (actually, too hard with respect to heart rate -- burning sugar not fat during my workouts), but definitely not smart.

The good news is that he said I was not far from my goal, and could quickly improve my body fat ratio and cardio condition by working out more efficiently.

In fact, in just 1 hour a day, 5 days a week I could significantly improve all of those things in 12 weeks and reach my goal. After I reach my goal, I can go on a less-intensive maintenance plan.

This is actually less time each week than I had thought I ought to be working out! So the key, for me, is doing the right exercises...working smart.

The Plan, or, Ashley the Wondergirl

In order to make the most of things, I signed up for 4 sessions with a personal trainer (the price is discounted at our gym for members) so that she could:

1. ...make a strength workout plan that doesn't waste my time -- I asked for a plan I could do that would cover strength training for all my major muscles in a one hour session, and thereby help burn fat and set me up with strength for the future. Time is key for me -- I am a homeschooling, homemaking mom who moves a lot and enjoys writing and time with my kids and husband. I don't have endless hours to spend at a gym tinkering with classes and machines. And really, who does?

2. ...teach me how to correctly do the exercises. I also asked that the trainer teach me how to use free weights and how to do exercises at home, so that I am not dependent upon gyms and expensive machines to exercise.

Frankly, I am afraid of overdoing things, missing something, or bulking up, and I am not someone who knows about weights and bands and balls and things, so this is an area where I really need help.

Thankfully, I was able to team up with a woman trainer, the lovely young Ashley. Ashley is smart and majored in Economics at Rutgers. She also wears very hip, all-black workout gear and towers over me in height and has legs that start at her chin.

She is also a nice person. I tell you this so you won't hate her.

We look like the Honeymooners. She is the tall and lean neighbor upstairs, Ed. I am the short, square Ralph Kramden. (And as I told David, "When she does crunches, the only thing that ripples on her body is her shirt." Pause. Amazing. I don't think my abs have ever looked like that, even when I was on swim team!)

With respect to cardio conditioning, the manager helped me figure out the best pace to work out at on my cardio days, and emphasized the importance of doing one full hour of cardio on the days I am not doing strength training.

So the weekly plan goes like this:

Monday/Wed/Fri: cardio -- 1 hour

Tues/Thurs: strength training (all muscle groups on each day) -- 1 hour

There seems to be some dispute about the necessity of a 6th workout/strength day. This is one of those mysterious things the experts seem to disagree on. Some say we should work out strength-wise 3 days a week. Some say 2 days of strength are fine. I think I'll just vary my 6th day activity -- use it as a fun day to do something different, like bike or hike with the kids, or do a strength-building yoga tape or something. The inestimable Ashley says Fitness Yoga is good for strength.

At our sessions, Ashley has been practical and cheerful and professional. (But not chirpy, thankfully!) So far, she has led me through two workout plans, both of which cover all of my major muscle groups (and -- bonus -- incorporate balance, which I know is important as we age).

She has taught me how I know it is time to stop, how long to rest my muscles, and to make the most of my time by training different muscle groups in succession (while one muscle group is resting -- you are working out another group).

In my next blog, I will post the plans she has made for me -- whole body strength plans. Maybe you can use these same plans at your house... A free personal trainer right on your computer!

So stay tuned for (shorter!) future entries with training plans and the real-life struggles and successes of this fitness adventure! I hope some of you will be encouraged and challenged by this blog as I record my struggles and successes. Maybe it will help you, too, to work out "smart!"

IHOP with Aunt Suzanne and Road trip from Texas to New jersey

2009-06-27T17:53:00.005-05:00

The kids and I had an overnighter in DC recently and got the chance to grab pancakes and laughs with Aunt Suzanne.

Up until the day we were to leave Texas, I expected to be driving myself and the kids out to New Jersey. David swooped in and drove back with us! What a guy!

These pics are all mixed up and I can't fix the order.

Leaving Old Friends in The Republic of Texas

2009-06-27T17:46:00.007-05:00

1. The Buffalo Springs Boys

2. Goodbye to the Lewises

3. Good bye to the neighbor girls!

A Trip to Anne's Old Camp, White Sulphur Springs

2009-06-27T17:42:00.001-05:00

Will's 10th....Or, A Boy and His Hamburgers

2009-06-27T17:39:00.003-05:00

A Little Help from My Friends

2009-06-20T07:13:00.008-05:00

Some good pieces of advice from people who know:

Bibles for NEW readers:

My mom recently suggested that I get my two new readers (one at a 1st grade level and one is at a second grade level) LARGE print NIV Bibles. Now, during our family Bible reading times they also can each read a verse instead of just listen.

We have been reading Genesis in the morning and Psalms at night, and these books of the Bible seem well-suited in content (minus the troublesome names and geneologies) and word choice to new readers. Since getting these Bibles, they clamor to get their REAL Bibles open and find their page. Sarah, the motherly little soul, gets all of the Bibles down and distributes them. They have been able to read most of the words, with help on the big ones. The version -- NIV --and the LARGE print (I actually purchased the GIANT print) makes the reading accessible and friendly to new readers. They can participate actively in the reading, instead of squinting down at tiny letters.

Dressing Up

I recently asked a friend with 6 children -- 3 girls -- how she guides her girls in choosing clothes. I asked this particular friend (I have known her my whole life) because she is perceptive, she is intentional, and she always looks great -- fashionable, never-frumpy -- with a definite, distinctive style and flair for dressing.

She said she has four goals that she and her girls discuss these when they go clothes shopping (they start discussing these things when the girls are little):

1. Is this outfit modest and glorifying to God?

2. Does this outfit look feminine? (to combat the occasional blurring of gender distinctions in our culture)

3. Is this outfit loud and intended to draw too much attention to me?

4. Would Daddy like it?

I realized in asking these questions, she is steering her daughters to...

-- enjoy pretty colors and fashions,

-- avoid legalistic or narrowly focused definitions (such as "only dresses allowed" or measuring hem lines with measuring tape, etc -- the things that infuriate and don't consider context)

-- be aware of context (workout shorts at the gym vs cut-off short-shorts and heels at the mall -- both are short, one is modest, one is not)

-- not be greedy for attention/self-centered

-- dress to please the trusted people in your life who matter to you, not the culture at large

-- think independently of the culture: to reject styles that are vain or stupid or trampy (the whole Bratz phenomenon comes to mind), and to select things that are pretty, fun, feminine

-- think carefully, creatively, to craft your own personal style with intention and design.

The fashion possibilities within these parameters are endless, and the girls can uniquely express their individual fashion sensibilities within the context of modesty and femininity. This approach encompasses a Bohemian look, a preppy look, a romantic look, an outdoorsy look, or combinations of all of the above and more.

She has given her daughters a gift, really, of power and dignity. It is the gift of understanding the power and beauty of the female body, the treasure of the human creation, and the sense of dignity we should have towards ourselves and others in how we dress.

This reminds me of another friend of mine, who grew up in a family of four girls. As teenagers, whenever they went shopping, they came home and modeled the new clothes for their dad. He had an opportunity to guide their choices (and reject some of them which were immodest)....and to oooh and ahhh over the beauty of his bevy of young ladies.

One day, back in high school, this woman's boyfriend reached over and casually laid his hand across her stomach while she was on a boating trip with her family. Later when the car pulled up at home, the father asked the boy to stay in the car as the others got out. The father then proceeded to tell this young man that he had been too "familiar" with his daughter, and also -- in no uncertain terms -- told him never to do that.

These young women had a father who was paying attention to them in the details, who wanted to preserve their dignity, and who was their biggest fan. No doubt they sought husbands who also did the same. In fact, my friend married that same boy, who learned - from her father -- to treat her with respect and tenderness rather than in a cavalier way.

Poetry readings, a photo film negative

2009-06-11T11:30:00.005-05:00

I acquired from Borders a cd on sale of modern poets reading their own poetry in scratchy worn recordings -- Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Yeats (!), Dylan Thomas.

I am struck by how, generally speaking, to be a poet is NOT to be a stage entertainer. The few poems I have listened to so far are read hurriedly, abashedly by poets who seem shy to be reading their own work. Frost fairly flies through his great poems, and dismisses his famous Two Roads poem with a hasty muttering at the end: that's "an easy poem."

After a few of these, I skipped ahead to Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" where pain enters the production and the broken anger of a daughter does scratch in her voice.

It is painful to hear, to listen to, painful to read. Dark, tragic, lost, pitiful soul. The poem is a wretchedly truthful portrait of the wretched state of mind a bad father bequeaths to his daughter, the inclinations to patricide (metaphorically if not literally), the heavy-hearted plodding in and out of relationships with bad men looking for one pitiful chance to redeem -- to win -- paternal love. We've all know women who have been burdened in life by a harsh or distant or tragically neglectful father -- girls born to pillagers (emotional or physical) instead of the shepherd.

This poem is a negative -- like on photo film; in displaying what can be wrong, it divulges the importance of fathers in viewing life, self and the divine..."a bag full of God," as she says.

And who could redeem a broken soul from this, but God himself?

"Daddy"
Silvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du. ...

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through. ...

A quote of a quote on homeschooling...

2009-05-19T08:16:00.011-05:00

Don't necessarily agree with everything here, but she makes some good points, especially about assumptions people make and insulting questions people ask...Here's the link...

Top 25 Things Homeschooling moms would like to say...

More thoughts from Anne on homeschooling

Speaking of homeschooling, I am continually reminded of the many blessings David and I have in our parents. I have personally benefited... exponentially... from the real-life experience of our "educator parents."

Case in point: David's mom, Millie, traveled out to Texas a few weeks back to watch the boys so David and I could come househunting in the NE. Millie is a lifelong educator and administrator.

More than her training (which is substantial!), what I appreciate is her personal experience, and that I knew she could handle doing review work with my kids each day while watching the house. (And even showing the house for prospective buyers -- bless her heart -- she deserves a trophy!)

This kind of thing does not faze her, and I knew I could leave for a week and they would stay academically fresh. She took the boys on all sorts of educational outings to the zoo and the aquarium, and did a series of our special exercises each day with one son who has had some minor learning issues. Through the years, Millie has faithfully sends us educational articles on topics of interest to the kids. What a blessing!

My mom is a long-time early childhood educator, one of the first Head Start teachers, and has loads of both personal and professional experience teaching wiggly little tactile-learner boys to hunker down and read. Her hands on work, especially with one son, and her wise, practical counsel and prescriptions for reading have often stepped in and saved the day for me during these early years. Right now my son is at her house having a reading workshop for the week.

Most (not all, of course) homeschooling moms are not proud or smug. Few things teach your own personal weaknesses and failings like homeschooling. Like you, homeschooling moms love their kids and have carefully weighed options and decided that this plan is best for their families for now. They cherish supportive friends, they seek out and and educate themselves in and generally devour wise educational advice, and they meet with experienced friends and relatives to talk over approaches. Many homeschooled kids attend a class here or there to fill out or supplement their curriculum -- science or art or music or writing workshops or PE class.

Homeschoolers are compliant with local laws. There is a large and influential homeschooling organization -- Homeschool Legal Defense Fund -- devoted to educating homeschoolers on local laws, advocating for fewer invasive laws, and defending homeschoolers in court cases when they are wrongly accused. Many -- I dare say most? -- homeschoolers join this group (and pay to do so). When you do join, you sign a statement that you will be compliant with the law. This organization is the first place I go to make sure I am compliant with state laws when we move.

(Generally speaking, homeschooling is not usually the first choice of negligent people. Yes, there are exceptions to every rule. But for every lax or negligent homeschooling mom, there are how many abusive or negligent public or private or parochial school teachers -- teaching hundreds of students year upon year? Should these bad educators harm or diminish or even inform our view of all of the host of dedicated, professional, loving educators in schools? Of course not. )

Most homeschooling moms do not judge people who don't homeschool, because, more than many groups perhaps, they understand that raising a family is something that requires considering and weighing all kinds of aspects of life. In many respects, they are far more open-minded than some might assume.

And it surprises me, though it shouldn't, how many non-homeschoolers are narrow-minded and will judge homeschoolers based on very limited information, one or two people they know, or very broad assumptions. We all tend to do this -- to judge and assume -- in different aspects of life, so it shouldn't be a surprise. It's a temptation we all face.

Homeschooling moms love to discuss curricula and the pros and cons of their choices. If you want to find out about homeschooling, consider asking a homeschooling mom -- honestly and with genuine curiosity -- what curricula she uses and why, or how she organizes her day. I bet you'll find her response to be enlightening and her approach to be creative. And you just may find that it teaches you something.

Move tips from FLY Lady

2009-04-29T04:35:00.016-05:00

There are some great moving tips in this blog link
from the FLY lady.

I really like her idea of color-coding boxes per room with bright stickers. Maybe I'll try that this time. (BTW, for people who struggle with managing clutter in their homes, she has come up with an incremental, day-by-day plan to get control of your home.)

Here are a few of my own tips on moving:

* One thing I always do is buy a sturdy, plastic, accordian-bottomed file pocket (legal size), where I keep all of my move papers and inventories, receipts, floor plans, business cards, phone numbers, hotel information, maps, a pen, etc. It becomes my own portable Relocation File and I can keep track of all of those papers in one place. I also know where to put anything I come upon that I need. I have even put my jewelry in there at night!

* Day by Day Schedule -- in pencil so you and add and subtract to-do's -- I just made mine up as we are one week out from our first move day. It helps me to realize how manageable it all is if I unload everything from my mind onto a list of things to do each day -- saving very few things for the last day as there will be unforeseen tasks and needs arising. I keep mine on a clipboard. It will also go with me and slip into my accordian folder.

* Save your servicing kit that came with your front loading washer -- It will have 4 or so long stabilizer bolts. The moving company will charge you $60 or so to provide these. Keep 'em and they're free. My mover told me many people ditch theirs and regret it later.

* Ahead of time, if you are moving across country, purchase things you'll need to have on had right when the movers arrive. I have on hand those felt tabs that protect wood floors, area rug pads, cabinet liners, scissors, special floor protectors for under the piano, etc.

* Another tip is to designate one cupboard area in the house for things that STAY with the house: paints, carpet bits, tiles, manuals for appliances, etc. Right now that is my utility room cupboard.

* We have a moving budget from our company, but whether you have a budget of your own or a company budget, you can stay under the limit by getting rid of stuff you don't use and don't need to pay to move. In our case -- this is something to check out with your company -- for the first time, our company will give us the difference in $ that we don't spend on this move (taxed at a high rate, of course). So I have an incentive to keep things low -- any leftover can help pay the rent or mortgage! With our movers, I got 3 estimates and talked one guy down $4000 to meet the other two estimates. Be sure to negotiate with your mover! Things are very competitive, pricing-wise, these days.

* BTW, your mover should give you an estimate that is a "guaranteed not to exceed" price. That is, if your actual weight is over that estimated weight, they will not charge you more. Only pick a mover who will give you a "guaranteed not to exceed."

* I also go through the house with two trash bags (black and white), room by room. Each day is assigned a few rooms. I think to myself: do I really want to PAY to move this stuff?

...Into the WHITE trash bag go things to GIVE away, into the BLACK trash bag go things to THROW away. The different colors help me NOT accidentally throw away the good stuff (...or give some charity a bag o' trash!)

(On a complete and total tangent: Does anyone remember that Dan Akroyd skit where he is the unscrupulous president of the children's toy maker "The Mainway Company," which sells inappropriate things in their Bag O' line, like the popular items Bag O' Glass and Bag O' Sulphuric Acid....and Jane Curtain is a Consumer Advocate...)

* This time I set up a (free) "Neighborhood Store" for my friends to come by and gather whatever they want to take off my hands -- any left over foods, cleaners, garage fluids, bug spray, spray paint, etc. My Neighborhood Store is right now set up on the tall recycling bin in the garage, and I invited the neighbors can come by and take what they want!

* Sometimes moving companies give you DO NOT PACK stickers or PACK LAST stickers. These are great, but I am very visual and it helps me to have bigger signs. This year I am photocopying DO NOT PACK signs on to fluorescent paper and attaching them with painter's tape to things. I hope this will help me and them with big, bold, visual cues

Please share your own moving tips!

1899 Farmhouse

2009-04-21T18:12:00.005-05:00

Some friends of ours here in North Texas, a fun and talented couple, just opened their new business. It is a facility for events like weddings, reunions, parties, and so on in a lovely country setting with an historic old farmhouse and large covered area and pool on the property.

Locals, check it out if you are looking for such a venue! Here is the link!
1899 Farmhouse

More Krauthammer (from Wash Post). Because I can.

2009-04-20T18:25:00.003-05:00

It's Your Country Too, Mr. President

Friday, April 10, 2009

In his major foreign policy address in Prague committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama took note of North Korea's missile launch just hours earlier and then grandiloquently proclaimed:

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive. What "strong international response" did Obama muster to North Korea's brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 -- "binding," as it were -- U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?

The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a U.N. statement that dared express "concern," let alone condemnation.

Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the United Nations -- a fiction and a farce, respectively -- what was Obama's further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the "realism" Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy.

He certainly has a vision. Rather than relying on America's unique technological edge in missile defenses to provide a measure of nuclear safety, Obama will instead boldly deploy the force of example. How? By committing his country to disarmament gestures -- such as, he promised his cheering acolytes in Prague, ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Really, now. How does U.S. ratification of that treaty -- which America has, in any case, voluntarily abided by for 17 years -- cause North Korea to cease and desist, and cause Iran to turn nukes into plowshares?

Obama's other great enthusiasm is renewing disarmament talks with Russia. Good grief. Of all the useless sideshows. Cut each of our arsenals in half and both countries could still, in Churchill's immortal phrase, "make the rubble bounce."

There's little harm in engaging in talks about redundant nukes because there is nothing of consequence at stake. But Obama seems not even to understand that these talks are a gift to the Russians for whom a return to anachronistic Reagan-era START talks is a return to the glory of U.S.-Soviet summitry.

I'm not against gift-giving in international relations. But it would be nice to see some reciprocity. Obama was in a giving mood throughout Europe. While Gordon Brown was trying to make his American DVDs work and the queen was rocking to her new iPod, the rest of Europe was enjoying a more fulsome Obama gift.

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his bridge partner behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?

When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?

After all, it was Obama, not some envious anti-American leader, who noted with satisfaction that a new financial order is being created today by 20 countries, rather than by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy." And then added: "But that's not the world we live in, and it shouldn't be the world that we live in."

It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country's decline. A few more such overseas tours, and Obama will have a lot more decline to celebrate.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Ben Turns 8...Belated posting

2009-04-16T11:07:00.002-05:00

Surrounded by neighbors and friends at our kitchen party...And with his Puppy cake at our family party

Dallas Arboretum

2009-04-14T19:09:00.010-05:00

With friends and nerf guns at the Dallas Arboretum on (and after) a hot day this Spring:

Pic 1: The menfolk cool down in the car after a long day and a hot walk...

Pic 2: The Eragon (a fantasy novel written by a homeschooler) House built at the Arboretum Storybook House exhibit...

Pic 3: Will finds a shady spot in the sod house at Texastown..

Pic 4: Sarah "Runs With Horses" Chamberlin and friend "Golden Sun Ray" Lewis in front of a wigwam at Texastown...

Recent pictures

2009-04-14T13:26:00.006-05:00

Sarah and Cousins at the Girl Cousin Extravaganza sponsored by hosts Nonna and BB in DC last week and Kids at the Dallas Arboretum this Spring...Still don't know how to straighten out the order or layout of this blog.

God our Father

2009-04-13T18:28:00.006-05:00

Pondering sovereignty

So often it seems the question comes up -- when discussing God's sovereignty with respect to salvation -- "Why does God want His people to share the gospel if He is actually the one who gives unbelievers the faith to believe? What is the point of telling the Good News if God Himself does the regenerating?"

I wonder is the following picture does not help explain this in imperfect, human terms...using the very mundane, motherly, housewifely task of making beds every morning.

As a parent, I currently have 1 goal with respect to the making of beds.

Goal 1: The children need to learn to be responsible for making their own beds, and to do it as well as they can within their limited abilities.

They need to grow in their ability to do this well. This is a goal in which the process -- bed-making -- is more important than having the finished result of a perfectly made bed. In fact, the learning process -- learning responsibility and skill, being part of a team -- is the result.

They are not yet skilled enough to make the beds look perfect, and I am not so tyrannical or unfair as to expect that. In fact, I am immensely pleased with their efforts, even though so often they fall short of what an adult would achieve.

I praise them for remembering to do this without my asking, and for any little special achievements in this arena (which varies depending on the skill level of the kid. For instance, if Ben remembers to get all of his lumpy fluffy stuffed animal into his stuffed animal basket, I praise him. Big achievement.)

As a homeowner trying to sell her house, I also have a central goal with respect to bed-making, which conflicts with the goal I have as a parent...

Goal 2: The beds need to look ship-shape and crisp and tidy as can be...evidence of a well-maintained home.

Currently, I am hoping to sell this house (our 4th one we've had on the market in 12 years) during an economic downturn. In showing a house, it is important that the house itself, and all about it, be appealing and convey that it is well-maintained and pleasant. This means the bedrooms should to look lovely, ship shape, and orderly. Lumpy or lopsided beds defeat this goal, and smooth, tidy beds achieve this.

So after the children have labored to do their best, I go upstairs, investigate, praise their successes, and leave it at that...lumpy and imperfect and delightfully so to my loving parental eyes....

BUT if we have a house showing, I myself breeze through the bedrooms and straighten any lopsided sheets or covers, or straying pillows at the last minute.

Within this little microcosm of home, I am sovereign over the sartorial splendor of the beds, if you will.

I myself bring about the actual, finished objective result of a well-made bed. I am the only one, aside from David, that can actually bring about a completely orderly bed. You might say, as the mom, I am responsible for Bed Regeneration.

But that does not change the fact that I want for my children to labor at this work. And, in fact, the harder they work, the more their bed making resembles mine. Though their beds never or rarely look as good as they do when I make them, it doesn't matter to me as a parent -- and it pleases me immensely to see their happiness at a job well done!

I enjoy having them be part of our housekeeping team! I want them involved in our family goals of learning to care for a home, learning to be responsible with their things, learning skills, and sharing my value of an orderly existence....even if it means, at this point in our lives as homeowners, that I need to go back through before house showings and do the bed myself.

Is God this way with us, when we share the gospel? Does He desire for us to join Him in His efforts -- feeble and ineffective as we may be -- so that we can learn to become like Him? Does he desire to have us labor with Him? True, He steps in and effects regeneration, but how much sweeter it must be to our heavenly Father if we have been with Him in the process, learning and growing and giving Him glory as we go? Working alongside Him. How pleasing it must be to Him when we work to bring about His kingdom here on earth.

This is not a perfect metaphor -- no metaphor is -- but I think it may be a good one. What do you think?

2009-04-02T07:20:00.003-05:00

On current events

2009-04-02T07:12:00.004-05:00

But where can wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?

...It cannot be bought for gold, and silver cannot be weighed as its price

...From where, then, does wisdom come?
And where is the place of understanding?
It is hidden from the eyes of all living
And concealed from the birds of the air.

...God understands the way to it, and he knows it's place.
For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.

...And he said to man, "Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding"

Job 28:12, 15, 20, 21, 23, 28

Final centerpiece pics...

2009-03-29T19:25:00.001-05:00

More Centerpieces

2009-03-29T19:06:00.007-05:00

The first in this row of pictures is a happy bouquet of pink roses. The plaid tablecloth and tea cozy on this table perfectly matched the Desert Rose dishes. The woman who decorated this table had handmade the tea cozy to match the cloth! Wow! (You can bet that wasn't my table, I who use stitch-witch to make hems.)

The second is a simple and lovely Peace Lily. The tableware was casual, bright Fiestaware, each place setting a different color. The simple, dark green leaves set off the bright colors well.

The final centerpiece is mine. As a wedding gift from dear friends years ago, I received some gorgeous silver estate pieces -- one of these a delicate soup tureen. I put a Gerbera daisy plant (in it's pot) in the tureen, and an ivy garland around the base, and nestled the top of the tureen in the ivy. On the other side of the centerpiece are 3 kinds of herbs, which were "door prizes" for the person at my table who had a certain mark under their tea cup.

There were even more pretty tables there, which I'll put in my next posting.

What a nice morning to get away with "the girls" and enjoy yummy treats, conversation, and music.

What's your favorite way to decorate a table?

Tea Time!

2009-03-29T18:39:00.005-05:00

The Women in the Church (WIC) at our own church, Redeemer Presbyterian here in North Texas, each year hold a Ladies Tea under the direction of the gracious and organized Linda Teasley. The Tea is for all women in the church, including the tiniest "women," our little daughters. There were some gorgeous, fluffy dresses on display that day!

There are round tables set up, each with a white cloth. Women who are interested sign up to host a table, and table hosts provide their own dishes... and decorate the tables anyway they like.

The result is a room full of gorgeous, bright color, which varies from table to table and from casual to formal. One of the fun things about the Tea is walking around looking at each table, and getting ideas, and just enjoying the pretty things.

This year, also, we were privileged to have a teenager from our church, Miss Bajema, an accomplished harpist, provide amazing music for us. The powerful sound that comes from a harp and its rich tones are surprising and lovely.

I thought you might enjoy getting a look at some of the centerpieces at the tables -- you never know when you'll pick up a good idea.

The first table: white flowers and little bouquets of candy confections in sherbet colors!

The second: a gorgeous natural spring green and fresh white bouquet set off by royal blue and cream china.

The third: a big bottle of Jelly beans with a very perky, old fashioned Peter Rabbit perched atop!

More in my next posting -- I have learned to only post a few pictures each time...

Yahweh, Yahweh...

2009-03-22T16:48:00.004-05:00

Yahweh. Yahweh. Still I'm waiting for the dawn.

Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit

Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean

Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn

Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist no

Take this mouth
So quick to criticize
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
...

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?

Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it pray

(This is a U2 song. Usually it is David's provenance to quote U2, I know. Surely these words are for us all in the church.)

From a homeschooler to her homeschooling friends

2009-03-14T21:53:00.001-05:00

Tim Hawkins, A Homeschool Family

Goldberg on Gitmo: How Terrorists think

2009-03-14T09:55:00.002-05:00

Not criminals, not soldiers...terrorists

Ben's First "Story"

2009-03-11T10:31:00.012-05:00

First Ever 'Written-Down' Story by our First Grader:

Abraham Lincoln
by Ben Chamberlin

Abraham Lincoln lived in a cabin in Kentucky. He read the Bible. He was brave and honest. He was President of the United States.

Short and sweet: Hemingway would approve.

Family Business: Ben's Birthday

2009-03-09T08:07:00.004-05:00

Dear family far and wide....

Ben had his 8th birthday last week. He asked to go to Chuck E Cheese and at Kroger he picked out a cake that looks like Lucy but is all white (Kroger doesn't make cakes shaped liked white dogs with black heads).

We had a super time at Chuck E Cheese -- we timed our visit for just the period when it is pretty quiet there (quiet being a relative term, of course) and the boys ran around and shot hoops and played the jet fighter games. Ben won loads of tickets and picked out some fun toys.

Sarah is not exactly an "arcade" kind of girl, so she asked for a cross stitch lesson, and we worked on cross stitching in the booth. Previously, she had picked out a small pattern at Hobby Lobby of a large pink flower with "Girl's Rule" written across it in black. Twenty-first century home ec, I guess you might call it.

We had just enjoyed a visit from Grandad and Miss Cathy, and they took Ben to Target and had him pick out his presents. What a fun time! They are easy people to have and enjoy: I was spoiled sitting late with them over coffee in the morning and putting off chores and just chatting. We had a short hiatus from home school while they were here, though Will kept up his math sheets. And of course we managed to find time for Sonic and Marble Slab!

Ben is now happily virtually buried in Star Wars legos and nerf guns. And we will still plan our very casual (chips, salsa, iced tea) neighborhood get-together for Ben. We like to have some neighbors over for Ben's spring birthday and everyone can spill out on the deck -- a good way to welcome Spring. But we decided to wait until we will have fewer house showings so we are holding off.

Thanks to all of you for your fun gifts and packages! Ben will be writing thank you's soon!

My eyes continue to feel great and heal well. What a thrill and release to not have dependency on eyewear!

Love, Anne

The Wood Between the Worlds: Reflections on Moving

2009-02-27T17:22:00.006-06:00

...About to embark on my 23rd move (I think that is the final count). This one is from Texas to somewhere in the NYC metro area. Growing up I attended 10 schools from 1st grade on, and as an adult I have continued in the moving tradition, albeit in the civilian world.

In bit of cosmic humor, one week after the For Sale sign went up in the yard, the Allen, Texas (our town) "Welcome Wagon" called to send me a packet and welcome us to Texas. That's how we roll. We relocate before the Welcome Wagon can catch us!

The house is up for sale on MLS, and the bedrooms are abnormally clean and half empty (thanks to underbed storage). Lamps are tastefully lit in rooms where there are no people. I am burning vanilla on tinfoil in the oven on purpose. Come in to my house, said the spider to the fly.

It's like a pretend family lives here, like that house in the desert in that recent Indiana Jones movie, the set of a movie. The computer is set to all of the online listings sent by our realtor in New Jersey several times a week.

Here, in this sunny southern town -- a town where we have played little league and bought groceries and attended congregational meetings -- we suddenly have now have become short-timers.

And I have begun especially appreciating the things I always liked about this house that I am about to vacate. There are big brown bunnies that come right up to our long kitchen windows for bird seed...right where we do the pledge of allegiance and our calendar each day! I'll miss the woodpecker that lives in the tree behind us on the creek, and his little red head and his busy work at his hole. I'll miss the gorgeous, rich and textured, handscraped hardwood floor the last owners installed. It feels nice and gently bumpy on barefeet. The soft, warm pale yellow color of the walls. My neighbor who is always good for a mid-day chat session by the mail box.

I look at the folks in our loving church and see them with a certain warmth and affection brought by new distance. I suddenly notice that there is one lady at church who seems to help with everything. That is, I vaguely knew it before, but now it hits me with the force of clarity. I notice the new people at church, and suddenly realize they almost belong here more than I do. I notice that an elder looks tired and that the Hot Topic everyone is caught up in will actually probably work out fine either way. I think I begin to see things from the perspective of "When We Stop Back To Visit In Two Years."

And within myself, I feel a drawing back, and moving ahead, even as I realize I have no home yet to go to. It's a funny, Navy kid feeling. An in-between feeling, like the Wood Between the Worlds in that CS Lewis book about the dawning of time.

A softness steals over me as I withdraw -- not my affection, but something else -- like ownership. There is sadness, yes, and, strangely, also a bit of a relief, an almost spiritual sort of shedding of cares. When you are forced to say good bye to things and people you love and don't want to leave, you find you are a little sharper in thought, a little more streamlined in your life and person, a little more dependent on fundamentals.

The busy-ness suddenly becomes more internal, now that I am withdrawn from ministry obligations, from kids' sports, from whatever good and right plans I would have been making for a Texas summer. I find my focus narrowing. I am still busy -- actually more so -- but in a focused, wagons-circled kind of way, an inward way, and my outward view broadens and perhaps clarifies.

I am even more simply a wife and mom concerned with making and finding a home and a church -- discussing options and plans with David, schooling the kids, working on the special issues with them, keeping the house very clean, calling movers and getting estimates, finishing up with doctors and dentists.

We both, David and I, go back to some our old timeworn jokes and ways, we revert back to our more original selves. "Love yer show babe," I say. I think about when we were engaged. I think about the Ryder truck to California. I think about the drive to Denver.

I remember that sometimes this kind of thing would happen when I was a working girl, with respect to work concerns. Some giant issue would suddenly loom up at work, and we would all drop our other work concerns and hunch together and give all of our days to handling this event, or paper, or issue. There is a sort of purgative relief in streamlining like this.

And yes, it makes the eventual falling back into the variety of settled cares a relief and a novelty, too. Vive la Variety!

Eat, drink, learn, reflect. The Wood Between the Worlds.

2009-02-25T19:07:00.002-06:00

Re-posting in honor of my friends who have recently had children: Jenn, Cindy, Laura... and Sarah, who is about to...

Drawing Room

It seems to me that babies are sprouting forth in other families all around me, so here I sit thinking about babies and pregnancy, of all things.

I am thinking, pregnancy is masculine. This is only right, for after all, a man is closely involved. The womb is New York City, it is a large, rumbling construction site of vessels and muscles and belly, swollen with doings and slow traffic and shut down for days, months, longer than predicted. All kinds of activities and such re-routed, things grind to a standstill, then a rush of activity.

Mom at Work! There should be orange Detour signs, No Traffic Today, Not This Month, Not This Summer, Expect Delays! Go the other way! Ok, Stand and Watch, but Stay Back behind the tape. We should all be wearing hard hats and giving cat calls and surveying the scene with our thumbs in our pockets. The baby finally emerges and looks like he has been in a brawl, red and blue and puffy and gasping and clenched.

But, of course, pregnancy is also feminine. It is, as the Psalmist says, like knitting.

There is fine needlework being done deep down in the womb -- a genteel drawing room, private and hushed. There are delicate, tiny, original stitches... the infinite, infinitesimal, industrious click-clicking of molecule upon molecule weaving and fitting, a little friendly gossip between the soul and body, the DNA taking tea.

Did you know, the face forms itself from the outside in? It meets in the middle and leaves it's little calling card, which is the dimple and bow of your upper lip. In a child born with a cleft lip, like my boy, Ben, you can see where the face did not meet, the introduction wasn't properly made, and there was a scandal. And always the placenta pours the precise mix of blood and vitamins in, the little toes and hands grasp and push away the cup. There is the clink of saucers, a polite chuckle, a murmur. Then -- shhh -- the baby is sleeping!

***

An Inch and a Universe

I write this on an old spiral after a day at dog obedience school, clearing out branches and logs from the storm, and shuttling to and fro the repair shop... the flotsam of suburban life.

I look down at my Vestal belly, untroubled by improvements and besotted with metaphor. It is Greek Hestia's belly, or the Victorian "Angel at the Hearth," or the Hearth itself where babies are warmed, a Garden where babies are grown.

In college it was tight and brown and good to look at, good for tanning and pink bikinis. But it has been about more important business since then. Now it is good for holding babies. It is good Rx for scraped knees and stubbed toes, a pillow for tired brown heads in church, a place to bury your face when you feel shy or afraid, a warm and friendly place.

It is stretched and functional, criss-crossed with the lines and shiny stretches of 3 babies and some surgeries. It bears the haphazard tic-tac-toe of gestation and trauma, the hard work of hammering out and making people. My dad remarks (a military man), "Your Marine friends would be jealous!" But surely if I hung out with Marines, I wouldn't be showing them my belly!

William, once and years ago you were a baby inside, elbowing my abdomen, forcing me to take up your desperate agenda. One inch of skin separated me from you. One inch of skin and womb between mother and son, and it may as well have been a mile. There was a human pressed to my heart and kicking my ribs, and I had never met him. I hadn't met you.

I'd seen many strangers and never you. And there would be no hurrying our introduction -- that grand introduction. The brutal miracle, this labor of desire, forged by your father's heat and shaped in your mother's lap -- and you, a different soul, separate from us, little squawking man. And now my tall and lanky brown-eyed boy, catcher of baseballs, reader of science encyclopedias, eater of large cookies... irrevocably you.

God's creation. Holy to the Lord. Never early, never late. I wait.

"As it is written, 'Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.'" Luke 10: 23

Step by Step Lasik: details for those considering it

2009-02-23T11:53:00.012-06:00

This will be a boring post for anyone not interested in having Lasik eye surgery. I am writing it because a few be-spectacled friends have asked for details of my recent Lasik surgery here in Dallas. I learned some good information from bloggers, myself, before I had the surgery.

Before I had Lasik (on February 6), my eyeglass prescription was 20/750. The next morning after Lasik, I was seeing "20/20 plus" -- ie, a little better than 20/20.

The only complications for me have been occasional dry eyes -- the expected complication for up to 3 months following -- and a blood clot/streak on my eye, mostly covered by my lid, which I don't feel at all. This is also supposed to go away. I have been warned to expect to wear reading glasses a bit sooner than I would have.

Background

I spent years looking into this procedure and was screened by 3 different places -- Johns Hopkins, a Texas Laser Center calls Cornea Associates (recommended by an opthalmologist -- just a preliminary screening), and UT Southwestern (Zale-Lipshy) Laser Center.

My prescription was steep and my corneas moderately thin, so when I was screened at John's Hopkins 3 1/2 years ago, the doctor recommended I wait until the next generation of machine came out. This would allow me to take advantage of the best "Wavefront" machine possible and get the best results, rather than settling for a different, less precise kind of surgery. (More on that later)

I settled on UT Southwestern while here in Texas, because it was recommended by 2 trusted people and because it is a teaching hospital. I had heard that a teaching, university hospital like this would be more likely to have a long-view towards eye care, and also would not be as profit-driven. In other words, if it would be wiser for me to to wait, or not do, the surgery, I wanted the doctor to be very likely to so advise, and not be concerned about making money.

It is also important, as you search, to find a place which publishes their results, and to find a place where a surgeon, not a tech, will perform the procedure.

I was screened preliminarily, then later in-depth, at UT. Because of my still-borderline cornea thickness issue, the doctor decided to take measurements the day of surgery again, before he made a final decision on type of procedure. He would then determine, that day, whether to do conventional Lasik or the more "tissue hungry" Wavefront (more expensive by $350 per eye, better, more precise results, but uses more corneal tissue to get them).

Day of Surgery

The day of the surgery, the doctor took me in for some more measurements, and gave the go-ahead for for Wavefront. Hooray!

I understand many places prescribe Valium. UT did not offer that, and I didn't request it, as I don't like how it makes me feels.

The first step on the day of surgery was taking the basic measurements again. Then my eyeballs were numbed with drops and the doctor marked on my eyeball with permanent marker. (Funny!) He said he does this, because when we lie down, our eye shifts a bit, and this pre-marking would allow him to get his bearings.

Before I went in, they asked if I had any questions, and I requested that the doctor verbally walk through everything he did as he did it, so that I could know what was going on during the procedure. The doctor told me afterward that it is actually his policy to verbally walk through things, so that his assistants can catch him if he misses a step. I liked knowing that, even later!

This particular doctor is also a professor and has an entourage of interns and an experienced assistant or two following him around and assisting him. So along the way he explained different technical things to them out loud. He also had an assistant double check certain things he had done -- measurements and settings -- before he proceeded to do them. Two thumbs up! I'm all in favor of reducing human error!

After having the measurements done, my eyes were marked, and my eye balls numbed with drops again, and I was led to a room for the first part of the procedure, in which the corneal flaps are cut on each eye. This is the first of two parts of the operation where you have to hold yourself very still for a few seconds. This is also the part of the procedure where your eyes are open, but your vision goes black.

When I was laying down, one of the nurses gave me a teddy bear (I must confess, I thought this was extremely silly, but apparently this is standard operating procedure. It gives you something to clench onto if you feel the need to -- and I did end up clenching it at points, so I guess it made sense). A speculum is put in your eye to hold your eye open and your eyeball still.

The thing to know about this first part of the procedure is that there is pressure and significant manhandling of the eyeball, but it doesn't hurt. The eyeball itself has been numbed. The manhandling is more disconcerting on the first eye. When they do the second eye, it is not as disconcerting. (Because it has happened before! Like so many things in life.) In this first stage, the flap is cut and suddenly things go dark. I saw golden stars, too. (A special treat?)

After both eyes have their flaps cut, you are told to lay still for 15 minutes. I asked why and I can't remember what the answer was. David had asked after me out in the lobby, and so a nurse came in to tell me, which was sweet. The nurses were very diligent about putting numbing drops in my eyes frequently all during the procedure -- maybe 3 or 4 times or more during the time I was having the procedure done.

There are clear plastic goggles on your eyes while you are waiting, but you can "see" again (still with poor eyesight but things are not black anymore). After 15 minutes, I was moved to a new room and I lay down under the special Allegretto laser machine, and the room was darkened.

At this point began the second part of the procedure. The machine's "coordinates" (my word choice) were set for my eyes. (Basically, my measurements were entered in a computer.)

The beauty of Wavefront technology is that the computer is able to precisely re-sculpt the eye to not only correct the basic prescription, but also to smooth and correct other natural irregularities (and all eyes have them, even 20/20 ones). This makes vision even clearer and cuts down on night vision issues and haze issues -- essentially making a smoother eye than found in nature.

I believe (this is my lay understanding) the special thing about the Allegretto version of Wavefront is that the wave pulses are faster than ever, and even better at correcting/accounting for tiny movements of the eyeball. Apparently, even when you hold very still and look at one point, your eye moves a tiny bit. These newer machines are able to account for that to a greater degree.

The machine came on, and I was told to look at the green light and not to stop looking at the green light, and to hold still. This "holding very still" was just for a 22 seconds, and the nurse kept updating me on elapsed time. It is not long at all.

But this was the time I felt a little bit of panic. For some reason, my mind played that horrible trick on me in which it wants to do the exact thing it is not supposed to do, and I felt driven to look away from the green light. Sort of the "Don't think of a pink elephant" phenomenon. I kept feeling an almost irresistible urge to look away from the green light! I prayed fervently -- that I would keep staring straight at the light -- and I did. Whew!

The second eye went much better, especially since I had experienced how short a period of time the whole process really is. This is not a painful process either, but one does smell a mild burning smell while the laser is cutting. I don't know if the smell was the machinery or my eye tissue.

The flaps are pulled back, and then a funny thing happens. The doctor takes, essentially, a tiny squeegie, and spends a good bit of time smoothing down the flap's edges and pushing out any air bubbles. In fact, the funny thing is, you get to watch the tiny squeegie at work on your eye, and you don't feel it because of the numbing drops!

After sitting up in the darkened room, I was given goggles to wear, told not to rub my eyes (I scrunched them when I shut them and they all exclaimed " don't do that!) and led to an exam room.

I sat down in the exam room, looked at the doctor and promptly started to cry. I could see him well without any lenses! (I am one of those who could not see the big E on the eye chart!)

All the interns were crowded round smiling, and the nurse. The nurse got teary, too, what a dear, and the doctor was simply beaming. He said tears were ok -- good for my eyes.

Pause.

What a moment!

When he could get me to stop thanking him and shaking his hand, he measured me, and I was seeing 20/80. After total dependency on glasses and contacts since 4th grade -- for 30 years -- I could now already see fairly well without any lenses!

Afterwards

Before I left, I was given a prescription pain killer to take with food. As the numbing wears off, it really does feel like someone has taken a brillo pad to your eye. I was also handed darkened sunglasses to wear home. They advised me to keep my eyes closed for the trip home, though I confess I peeked a few times, and saw I could read license plates! Not even the "Tabasco-in-the-eye" feeling could dampen my mood!

But I have light-colored eyes, and the light was way too bright to handle, even with my eyes closed and the sunglasses, so I wrapped a sweater around my head to block out the light and get home comfortably. As soon as I got home I headed straight for the dark bedroom.

There I took the painkiller -- hydrocodone (ie generic vicodin) -- with food. But I had a reaction to it. My eye pain was significantly reduced by it, but I also spent the next 4 hours nauseous and vomiting. This is something I have frequently experienced with certain prescription painkillers and also anesthesia, so I wasn't surprised. Still, I was already so cheered by my vision results that I didn't care very much -- maybe the one time in life I have felt cheerful while vomiting!

This kind of reaction to Vicodin is not common, I don't think. Unless you're allergic to it, what I recommend is that you do take the painkiller before you even leave the laser center -- bring some food to take with it --so that you can manage your pain ahead of time.

I was also given steroid drops and antibiotic drops, to apply very frequently at first, and less frequently later. Everyone naps right after the surgery but I did not feel at all like napping -- obviously.

After explaining the whole process to my eager and curious children ("Gross, mom! That's cool!") in the darkened room, finally recovering from nausea, and chatting with my sweet mom who came to watch the kids while David helped me, I went to bed that night with goggles on. These goggles are to keep you from rubbing or scratching your eyes in your sleep. You wear them at night for a week.

The next morning, I could see with sunglasses on. As we drove to the clinic I found I could read street signs. At the exam, I was able to read part of the 20/15 line!

The weeks following this procedure I have diligently used my eye drops and the moisture drops (given by the clinic) to alleviate the occasional very mild discomfort. I did have some light sensitivity for the next day or so, no longer than that. I do wear my sunglasses a little more frequently as it is windy in Texas and that is mildly uncomfortable in terms of dryness. It's only been a few weeks. I found, for the first week, that my eyes would tire more easily, and computer work was more draining. But things have quickly settled out.

For 3 months, I need to avoid water sports and not get water in my eyes. I can shower and bathe as usual.

The benefits of this outpatient procedure -- for someone with allergies and also someone who loves the outdoors and swimming and yard work -- are huge! It is a daily, hourly delight to just go about my business without worrying about my contacts getting blurry or "goopy," and without thinking of glasses. It is wonderful to wake up and see immediately. I still get a tiny thrill each morning when I wake up and see right away!

Hanging out at the State Dept, 8th Floor

2009-01-29T18:05:00.003-06:00

There is no special order to any of these images as I don't know how to put them in any certain order. They are not even showing up in the order I selected them. Need a little blogger tutorial on that.

Oval Office Lobby and Roosevelt Room

2009-01-29T17:59:00.003-06:00

The first 3 pictures are in the Roosevelt Room adjacent to the Oval Office. The last picture is in the Oval Office Lobby.

A visit with President Bush on his last working day in the White House

2009-01-29T13:08:00.011-06:00

A few people have asked for a blog on my trip to DC a few weeks ago, and some of my friends want details..so here goes...

My dad received the National Security Medal from President Bush January 16. He received it the same day as other Intelligence Community leaders, among them John Negraponte and Mike McConnell. Dad had 4 invitations, and so my mom and my brothers and I were able to attend.

We arrived at the White House early. After proceeding through several detailed security checks, we then waited in the lower level (seemed like a basement level) entrance. As were were milling there and waiting inside to be taken up to the Oval Office lobby, the guard (firmly and suddenly) told us to step back and wait. I was around the corner from the hall and couldn't see why. Then around the corner sauntered -- no other way to describe his stride -- President Bush. He was munching on a handful of nuts or something and had an easy, jaunty stride, and a few staff/security in tow.

He stopped, smiled, greeted dad, mentioned that he'd see us in a bit but was heading down to thank the folks in the Mess. He looked at my brothers and me, pointed to my dad and said, "Cool Dude." And off he went.

The security guard then decided we were ok to walk on up without an escort, and Dad led us up.

The Oval Office lobby is 2 rooms and one hall away from the actual Oval Office. There are oil portraits of American Indian scenes on the walls, couches, and a desk with a secretary and a phone. There are Marines in the room, and Secret Service coming in and out constantly. This is where you sometimes see the President walk out through doors to talk to the press.

We waited for a while, then "they" (two badged young people, interns perhaps, with clipboards and the job of managing people) moved us into the Roosevelt Room which is in honor of Teddy Roosevelt, though there is one bronze of FDR in the room. There is a big oil portrait of TR on a rearing horse above the fireplace, a large conference table, flags, TR's framed Nobel Peace Prize, and his medal from the Mexican American War. Pics in a following blog.

Our family was the last to be received in the Oval Office (no personal pics of this, but an official photographer will eventually send pics I am told). We first walked into a little hallway and waited with a Secret Service man, then were ushered into the Oval Office through a door on the hallway. Bush was in there, with some of his staff gathered along the back wall across from his desk (among them, Josh Bolton).

The Oval Office is (was -- not sure if they have started redecorating yet, which I think is the norm for new presidents) a golden/creamy room. The carpet has golden rays on it, the couches are yellow, and there are -- I think I remember this -- dark pink roses on the coffee table. The windows make it even brighter.

Bush asked dad where he'd been lately. Dad reminded him that he had retired to get his knees fixed a year ago, and Bush joked, "No, I meant in the last 30 minutes."

He presented the medal to Dad (for his work as the first Senate-confirmed director of the National Counter Terrorism Center -- coordinates the Intelligence among the various groups). He mentioned my mom's long service alongside my dad. (She has moved about 33 times in her life as a military kid and then military wife.) He then walked over, greeted mom, and told each us to tell him who we are, where we're from, and what we do. He engaged each of us on our answers.

Scott, Jr was first in line and told him he was a pastor. Bush responded warmly and qualified, first, how one could be a member of another religion and still be a "good American."

Then he talked at length about the power of prayer in his life and a portrait in his office loaned by a friend called, "A Charge to Keep." He and Scott discussed a writer they mutually admire, and some other things.

Adam was next, and he told about himself and his work as a software developer in Georgia.

Then I was "up." I told him I was a home schooling mom from Allen, Texas. He commented immediately on the Allen High School win at State in football, congratulated me on being a home schooling parent, and talked about how he was looking forward to moving to Dallas. He said that "Laura" had picked out the house, and that he hadn't seen it yet. He said that made the house his first faith-based initiative post-presidency.

He is quick, knows details, and is warm and seeks to connect personally. He discussed several other topics.

I would characterize him in person as having an easy, open demeanor. He makes funny quips, and was quick to find connections with each one. He naturally seems to put people at ease, so that you find yourself becoming casual in conversation with him. He has an unusual cadence in his speech -- but you have heard this already yourselves.

He gave us all trinkets for ourselves and for the husband and wives, he said. And gave us each little lapel pins and bookmarks for the kids -- mentioning homeschooling favorably again.

We all thanked him for protecting us. I personally thanked him for working to keep us safe. Then we walked out of the Oval Office and along the portico by the Rose Garden, which was lovely in the cold, clear winter light, our feet loudly clacking on the walk.

...Back to get purses, back to the car, and over to State.

It truly was a special day for my family. We are thankful to my dad for his life of service, extending into his post-military years, and his dedication to working hard, long hours in the war on terror. I know Dad represents so many others who serve us to protect us daily.

We are thankful to George Bush for his focused commitment to protecting our country. This day was a day for me to thank two men who I admire.

ARC

Krauthammer on the Bush legacy

2009-01-18T13:54:00.001-06:00

Exit Bush, Shoes Flying

By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman leaves office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman's rehabilitation took decades. Bush's will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.

Vindication is being expressed not in words but in deeds -- the tacit endorsement conveyed by the Obama continuity-we-can-believe-in transition. It's not just the retention of such key figures as Secretary of Defense Bob Gates or Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner, who, as president of the New York Fed, has been instrumental in guiding the Bush financial rescue over the last year. It's the continuity of policy.

It is the repeated pledge to conduct a withdrawal from Iraq that does not destabilize its new democracy and that, as Vice President-elect Joe Biden said just this week in Baghdad, adheres to the Bush-negotiated status of forces agreement that envisions a U.S. withdrawal over three years, not the 16-month timetable on which Obama campaigned.

It is the great care Obama is taking in not pre-emptively abandoning the anti-terror infrastructure that the Bush administration leaves behind. While still a candidate, Obama voted for the expanded presidential wiretapping (FISA) powers that Bush had fervently pursued. And while Obama opposes waterboarding (already banned, by the way, by Bush's CIA in 2006), he declined George Stephanopoulos' invitation (on ABC's "This Week") to outlaw all interrogation not permitted by the Army Field Manual. Explained Obama: "Dick Cheney's advice was good, which is let's make sure we know everything that's being done," i.e., before throwing out methods simply because Obama campaigned against them.

Obama still disagrees with Cheney's view of the acceptability of some of these techniques. But citing as sage the advice offered by "the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history" (according to Joe Biden) -- advice paraphrased by Obama as "we shouldn't be making judgments on the basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric" -- is a startlingly early sign of a newly respectful consideration of the Bush-Cheney legacy.

Not from any change of heart. But from simple reality. The beauty of democratic rotations of power is that when the opposition takes office, cheap criticism and calumny will no longer do. The Democrats now own Iraq. They own the war on al-Qaeda. And they own the panoply of anti-terror measures with which the Bush administration kept us safe these last seven years.

Which is why Obama is consciously creating a gulf between what he now dismissively calls "campaign rhetoric" and the policy choices he must now make as president. Accordingly, Newsweek -- Obama acolyte and scourge of everything Bush/Cheney -- has on the eve of the Democratic restoration miraculously discovered the arguments for warrantless wiretaps, enhanced interrogation and detention without trial. Indeed, Newsweek's neck-snapping cover declares, "Why Obama May Soon Find Virtue in Cheney's Vision of Power."

Obama will be loath to throw away the tools that have kept the homeland safe. Just as he will be loath to jeopardize the remarkable turnaround in American fortunes in Iraq.

Obama opposed the war. But the war is all but over. What remains is an Iraq turned from aggressive, hostile power in the heart of the Middle East to an emerging democracy openly allied with the United States. No president would want to be responsible for undoing that success.

In Iraq, Bush rightly took criticism for all that went wrong -- the WMD fiasco, Abu Ghraib, the descent into bloody chaos in 2005-06. Then Bush goes to Baghdad to ratify the ultimate post-surge success of that troubled campaign -- the signing of a strategic partnership between the U.S. and Iraq -- and ends up dodging two size-10 shoes for his pains.

Absorbing that insult was Bush's final service on Iraq. Whatever venom the war generated is concentrated on Bush himself. By having personalized the responsibility for the awfulness of the war, Bush has done his successor a favor. Obama enters office with a strategic success on his hands -- while Bush leaves the scene taking a shoe for his country.

Which is why I suspect Bush showed such equanimity during a private farewell interview at the White House a few weeks ago. He leaves behind the sinews of war, for the creation of which he has been so vilified but which will serve his successor -- and his country -- well over the coming years. The very continuation by Democrats of Bush's policies will be grudging, if silent, acknowledgement of how much he got right.

The Utilitarian Case for Evangelism in Africa (forwarded by my brother)

2009-01-11T16:34:00.000-06:00

Here's one to think about (hopefully it publishes better than the Rove article!)

From The Times

December 27, 2008

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset

Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. "Privately" because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: "theirs" and therefore best for "them"; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the "big man" and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? "Because it's there," he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Let's Be Worthy of Their Sacrifice 'The wounds I received I got in a job I love.'

2009-01-11T16:21:00.000-06:00

By KARL ROVE

Wall Street Journal

This holiday season, home in Texas and surrounded by close friends and family, I often found myself thinking about virtual strangers.

I met them this fall when I spoke at the Naval Special Warfare Foundation (NSWF) dinner. The NSWF supports naval commandoes with scholarships and assistance for families of Navy Seals killed or wounded in combat or training.

During my White House years, I came to know of the heroic actions of the Seals and other special operators in the global war on terror. These men willingly follow evil into dark and perilous places. They volunteered to be on the front edge of the conflict whose outcome will shape this century.

The highlight of the NSWF dinner was a video of "snatch and grab" operations in Afghanistan. It showed helicopters lifting off to pounding music, night footage of Seals jumping onto roofs and rappelling into dusty fields, the breathtakingly destructive power of American missiles and machine guns, and compound doors blowing open and terrorist suspects being rounded up.

The Seals who prepared the video had carefully mined President Bush's speeches, using his voice and words as narration. I was touched by this and knew the president would be, too. So when I met the Seal who'd produced the video, we exchanged email addresses. Later, before he left for Afghanistan for his umpteenth deployment, I asked for a copy of the video to show the president.

He was happy to supply one but had a request in return. Could the wives and children of his unit's members see the White House Christmas decorations while their husbands and fathers were deployed?

The First Lady readily agreed and with NSWF's help, 75 Seal family members were greeted at the White House just before Christmas by the president and Laura Bush. It was one of the high points of Mr. Bush's last holiday in Washington.

On Christmas Eve, I received an email from Afghanistan, with thanks for helping to facilitate the tour. Attached was a picture of the videographer and his team, ready for that night's mission. Bearded and scruffy, covered with weapons and standing in a rude shelter, they were all wearing bright red Santa Claus hats. It was the best gift I received this Christmas.

I met another Seal at that NSWF dinner. He'd been shot eight times in Iraq and had undergone nearly two-dozen operations. One bullet had taken off part of his cheek and nose. He was destined for reconstructive surgery in a few days.

Yet he didn't feel sorry for himself. He was full of charisma, confidence, cockiness and joy. After all, he confided, when you're a wounded Seal, the world's best doctors want to operate on you so they can brag about it. Besides, he explained, he was just showing that a Seal really could catch bullets with his teeth.

He said that after a couple more procedures, he'd "be back in the game." I asked what he meant. He was amused and said he was going back into action. "My team needs me," he said before letting out a laugh. But you knew he meant it, and you knew his team did need him.

He went off to get a drink for his wife. I didn't want to pry, but I asked her how she felt about him going back into action. She said she was all for it because that's what he was made for. I had to fight back tears.

The next day, I got an email from the retired Navy Seal buddy who'd talked me into speaking at NSWF. He shared a picture of the sign the wounded Seal put on his Baghdad hospital door.

On it, the Seal had scrawled that visitors shouldn't "feel sorry" for him. "The wounds I received," he wrote, "I got in a job I love, doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough." And on his sign he promised "a full recovery" and wrote that his hospital room was a place of "fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, GO ELSEWHERE." He signed it "The Management."

I keep this picture with me so I think every day about those I met this fall. And I thought about them often during the holidays.

When I did, I felt awe that such men and women exist, and gratitude that they put themselves in harm's way for our nation. I hope America continues to be worthy of such staggering service and sacrifice.

May the New Year bring safety to all who wear our country's uniform, success in the missions they so passionately believe in, peace and comfort to their families, and reunion with all whom they love.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. NSWF can be found atnswfoundation.org.

For Sale, North Dallas area

2008-12-30T15:54:00.001-06:00

* Women's Schwinn Shimano (medium size frame) hybrid, blue
* Trailer/trainer that attaches, making an adult bike a bicycle for 2 (1 adult, 1 child), silver
* Boy's Schwinn (about 20" size)
* Boy's Mongoose (about 20" size)
(Both boy's bikes need brakes tightened/worked on).

Whole lot (all 4 items), as is: $100 total and you pick it all up

Questions, Contact: Anne Chamberlin, 972-390-7764

China Again

2008-12-20T10:30:00.001-06:00

The fancy Scroll Store. Those of you who have scrolls from me can see the store they came from!

Three Chinese Brothers: The Scroll Man was born pre-one-child policy. One brother paints, one brother carves, and he, the third brother, sells the scrolls and carvings.

The next picture is Will in front of our grocery store, the Lotus, decorated for Chinese New Year. (Red, is, well, lucky...and good and festive. Brides wear red on their wedding day. White means death.) Lotus sold eels and fish fresh to eat, and when you bought one, the fish clerk put it in a plastic bag and pounded the bag on the floor to kill the fish inside. A dreadful spectacle to watch. Lotus sometimes played Christmas carols sung by Chinese Children's Choirs in Mandarin, and Ave Maria sung by an American. Bizarro world.

The next picture is a very happy shot of me in front of the lovely Hong Kong Disney at Christmas, and the final one is of the kids and me in the wind-ey streets of Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a fun slice of Americana and western-ness right at the time of year we needed it. We walked into the lobby of the Victorian Disney hotel and a man was playing Greensleeves on a grand piano and a gloriously large Christmas tree was covered in sparkling white lights.

More Pictures of China, While I Am On the Topic

2008-12-20T09:49:00.000-06:00

The top photo is of Will and Ben sitting in our apartment with our ayi ("eye-ee' "), named Ai Ping ("eye-peeng' "). Ayi means "auntie" and it is what the Chinese affectionately call anyone who helps in any way in the home.

Diminutive Ai Ping came and helped with laundry and house cleaning a few times a week (!), and sometimes with the grocery shopping. She also helped me with my Chinese! She spoke a tiny bit of English and taught me how to ask the clerks for things. She greatly disapproved of us for sometimes keeping our shoes on in the house, for not wearing slippers to keep warm, and she told me that I could lose weight by eating more vegetables and less meat. I am a size 6-8 and was considered large -- fat, almost ("da" they say when something is big) -- by some of the ladies in China, who aim for extreme tiny-ness!

The next picture is Sarah, and her own picture of her home...a tall tower!

The next two pictures are of the Pearl Tower, the emblem of Shanghai. We lived about 2 km from it. It is about 350 m high, and sits right across the HuangPu ("hwong-poo") River from The Bund (think Nixon and ping pong diplomacy). One picture we took from within the tower, its shadow stretched across the river.

The next picture is of Will and Sarah in Hong Kong. We went there for Christmas. What a beautiful island. More in the next blog.

A Flood of Memories and Images of China

2008-12-19T08:22:00.000-06:00

We lived one year in Shanghai, from January 2006 or February 2007.

We moved there in a whirlwind amount of time, giving away stuff, storing stuff, selling our house, driving out to Ohio to say goodbye, vaccinations every week for 3-4 weeks, passports speeding our way, and a quick respite in DC with my family....then a big gulp and the kids and I jumped on a Korean Air plane from the 22 hour exodus to meet David there. We had no prior particular interest in China or Asia, had no cultural training, and had never been there. And we were so busy trying to get ready in record time that we didn't read or absorb much about the culture ahead of time.

David ran an office there staffed entirely by Chinese nationals, and 2 westerners, though he hired another westerner along the way. We touched down in Pudong airport, grasped a big glorious bunch of flowers, climbed into a tiny van, and were suddenly living in a high rise in what looked to me like the biggest, sprawling-est, noisiest, poorest, richest, smelliest, fantastical city of lights.

Jetson towers and trains and a sitting beggar with no legs and a wide grin. Next to the Coach store knelt a woman selling cartoon-decorated shoe inserts off a folded sheet on the curb. The brown and wrinkled and work-worn man who cut hair and cleaned ears out (with a bit of wool on a stick -- shared between customers) worked alongside the granite and marble facade of a high class high rise. Chock-a-block concrete apartment hovels squatted by gleaming gorgeous lobbies and fountains and sleek high rises.

When the kids and I would head out to explore and wind down the back street hutongs -- narrow off-street alleys geared to locals -- we found little close, tinkling shops with very clean dirt or concrete floors -- ears, clothes, hair may not be fresh, but floors are always clean as can be -- selling goldfish, cigarettes, crickets, art scrolls, statues, pots, key rings, cages, puppies, plastic washbasins, raw meat, familiar and unusual vegetables and fruits, Hello Kitty baubles, tea, and red paper decorations and silken pillows.

I would point to a given bauble or symbol and shrug my shoulders and point to gesture -- what does that mean? Always the answer: "Lucky." (After a few months I stopped asking. I shared a joke with a western friend -- "If anyone shows me something that means 'unlucky' I will surely pay mounds of money to buy it.") This was a special afternoon treat and mini-adventure, to take a detour down one of these hutongs, though it was easy to get lost in the teeming centers of every colossal street block.

We decided to settle in a complex populated mostly by Asian expats (Taiwanese, Japanese), a few westerners (a Brazilian family, an Australian family, one-two American families, a Brit family), and a very few wealthy Chinese -- so we were with other foreigners, but not to the point of living in "little America" or "little Britain." I didn't want to move to China to live in an American-style home with other Americans, but I knew we weren't ready to plunge into a sheerly local area having had no exposure before to this part of the world other than an art history course in college.

The kids and I were thinking back yesterday on our more vivid memories...

...We remember the man across the street who would fix our bike tires for 1 rmb -- the equivalent of 2o cents. He worked outside in his spot on the corner no matter the weather. He wore a hundred layers of jackets and caps, and on cold dreary wet days in January he was steadfastly out there with his little folding chair, grocery bag of tools, and big wide smile. David always insisted on paying him more than he asked, and that plus the 3 children always made him happy to see us. That is him at the top of this page with Will. I hope that man is doing well.

...He worked next to the Family Mart, where we paid our utility bills and cell phone bills in cash and bought Dove chocolate bars and Nestea in bottles. We could have purchased green eggs fermented in lime in the ground, or pigs feet, or eggs boiled in tea, too. But we didn't! I have eaten duck foot and cow brain, but I personally draw the line at questionable eggs. I never have figured out why we paid all our bills there but the rent. I just don't know; it was basically a 7-11. I always had so many questions, that when we'd come across a knowledgeable westerner, I was tongue-tied and stymied and forgot them.

...Don't let the English writing confuse you, rarely would a shop clerk or taxi driver or anyone on the street speak English. It's a trick of the eye -- having an English sign is a cue that a place is or wants to be considered hip and upscale. And the translations can be abysmal -- we shopped regularly at a bookstore -- with signage, cards, flyers, bags -- all printed boldly with the words "Chater House." I suppose a Brit or a Kennedy said "Charter" and the Chinese wrote down what they heard.

...I think, I see China the way a child looks at the world. I half-understand. I see how things are done before I understand why they are done that way. And I want to know why and what.

...What are the carts that drive around ringing bells with flattened boxes in the back? (picking and delivering old appliances) Why is that woman carrying bundles of trash on her bike? (hopes to sell the things somewhere -- findings from trash cans) Why don't the people follow the traffic laws at all? (only follow the rules if the authorities enforce them, otherwise don't bother) Why do I pay for my electricity at Family Mart? (still don't know) And what the heck is that pan of meat doing sitting by the heavy traffic on a muddy day on the dirty curb? Is no one concerned? (apparently not) Why do the restaurants cut up all of their vegetables and meats out on the sidewalk at night? (it's cooler outside and less crowded) And what exactly is bean curd, after all? (not sure, but it tastes good) And why do they rot the eggs before they eat them? (ancient Chinese tradition, I guess)

...We paid our rent in the office of our apartment complex. We paid it in cash, a large wad of bills which I would put in an envelope, and they took the large sum and put it in a tin box. They wrote out a receipt for me on paper with carbon under it, and inscribed what we'd paid in a lined ledger, by hand. There were computers in that office, but apparently they weren't used for these huge rent transactions, and there were always 4-5 workers in uniforms in that tiny room and a work table with a dressy cloth banquet skirt on it. Everyone smiled and nodded as I paid while one person handled the transaction. Then they would give my kids a hard candy, make much over them, and we'd be off.

...In China, everything is handled by Informal Committee, but the rulings are firm. Any dispute, any simple question, any car accident, any injury, any repair -- requires large numbers of workers and onlookers to involve themselves, listen to the parties, heatedly argue or joke with one another as well as those involved, and agree on a plan of action. (It's interestng, everyone seems bent to get to where they are going in a mad hurry careening and whizzing all around, until they happen upon an event of even small magnitude -- then everyone is most eager to stop and discuss. I have seen Committees consisting of a hundred people when there is a big traffic accident.) You must bend to the Committee's decision. I wasn't afraid to drive, but I didn't, because in any car accident, the foreigner always somehow is the one to blame, according to the Committee and and police. In fact, we were in a few car accidents, one medium-bad-ish one, and as the kids and and I sat as one does, a bit stunned and baffled in the short moments immediately after the impact, the taxi man urgently waved us to get out and hurry on away -- before the Committee arrived, I assume. I was happy to oblige.

...We remember how on hot summer nights, all of the cramped families, grandparents especially, would come out onto the city sidewalks, unfold tin lawn chairs, and sleep, or talk, or maybe dance -- ballroom dancing on the corner by the one department store, Ba Bai Ban.

...Caught in the pouring rain, cold and wet and no taxi to be had, far on the other side of town leaving FuDan Children's Hospital, the children and I are crammed under a storefront. It was one of those lonely, fatiguing moments. Then... a stranger gives us his umbrella. A generous act in western countries, this is a magnanimous and really huge act of kindness in a country where basic needs are never taken for granted and incomes are severely limited.

...Eating at Element Fresh every Sunday morning (church was in the afternoons) at the "Super Brand Mall" (with a shrine to the Buddha out front -- that's the mall up top decorated for the Year of the Pig) -- hot western style coffee (ie NOT nescafe powder), smoothies, and the kids would order bacon by the platter, and astound the Chinese at the hugeness of their appetites!

...Everywhere, people shouting across the street or murmuring as they passed -- "SAN GA HAI ZA!" -- my pigeon pinyin Mandarin spelling for "Three Children!" Women and men -- strangers - hugging and even taking up the children to embrace them. A few times I was asked, "All from your belly?" "Ooohhh." Camera's flashing at every national holiday and tourist-y area, and posing with strangers. One lady said, through a translator, "Your children have eyes like Bambi."

...White collar, English-speaking women coming up to me and saying to me -- sometimes matter-of-factly and sometimes -- no other way to describe it -- forlornly: "In China -- only one child."

...We remember the smoke and flying papers from Chinese New Year, slapping and pluming against our living room window, and becoming so thick we couldn't see out our window anymore on the 15th floor, which was actually the 13th floor (since the 4th floor and 13th floor were so unlucky, the builders just skipped them when they labeled the floors). We remember that the next morning the city workers -- one per block, with bamboo brooms -- had cleaned the city streets so effectively, that you would never have known of the chaos and papers the night before. No other firework demonstration will ever compare to that one we watched casually out of our living room window.

Chinese New Year is coming, so we wish you all, Gong Xi Fa Cai...Happy New Year!

Of Boys, Bendy Straws and Balloons:

2008-12-18T20:10:00.001-06:00

Here is our Christmas house. It is not related to the story, but better than no picture, eh?

Quotes and Asides: Of Boys, Bendy Straws, and Balloons

-- Will, sucking down a big glass of milk: "These bendy straws are great. We should buy them every time. Because the next time I break a bone in my hand or arm... [we are the kind of family that says "the next time I break a bone" not "if I ever break another bone"]...I can use a bendy straw to scratch inside my cast."

-- Will, "I did the math, and I figured out if each day each kid uses two straws, we will have 16 days, and then there is a remainder of 4 straws, so the last day, 17, two of us will be very kind and let one kid have 2 straws and we will each have one."
Anne, "That's a great plan, Will."
Will, "It's a good thing I have the vision."

-- Anne, "What are you boys doing in there?" (thumps and bumps and hoots stop)
Boys, casually, "Oh, we are just pushing the giant balloon into the ceiling fan."

-- Ben roaring, "OH HAH! I'M DOIN' IT!" we look over, he is blowing bubbles into his milk with the bendy straw in his nostril.

-- Anne, "Sarah, what do you think of your brothers? Are they a little bit..."
Sarah, "Crazy?" She says in her matter of fact way, "And you are very good at snuggling."

And there it is, though it does not follow. Well, we all have our own version of "a little bit crazy," says my neighbor. And I am inclined to agree.

The Heart of the Matter

2008-12-03T08:20:00.001-06:00

A Big Hearty Slice of Humble Pie

This fall I have been the recipient of forgiveness for big and small mistakes and hapless errors. I have missed details, been late, been forgetful, been downright wrong, been careless, been socially clueless and contextually unaware. It's just been a time of failure in small areas.

This last year my mind has been caught up with mostly small and middling concerns and also minor health issues in our family. It seems the accumulation of these items has led finally to a sort of mental laxness. As if my brain cells heaved a collective sigh and died this fall, with the yellow leaves.

And it is very good for me to find myself regularly begging forgiveness for slip-ups. I tend to be the classic type-A, eldest child, rule-following, detail-minding individual. I think the oldest child in a military family tends to feel like a mini-parent as soon as the first sibling is born. This is how I see myself, as the "helper," not the "helpee." And now as a mother, I see myself even more in the role of helper. And I have also found myself becoming tinny and peevish with people in my home, more so than usual.

But the final failure is the Big One: the sin of pride -- hating that I am the one that people can't count on. I don't tend to judge others in this area, but I do tend to find a sense of personal satisfaction about my own general ability and role as "the helpful one."

I mention this as a follow on from my last posting about marriage, because these are the times -- when little matters weigh and pile up in the mind -- when I see my basic human frailty and sin. Sometimes in the big things we see frailty (a death, a terrible sickness, a huge loss). But sometimes it is in the gradual accumulation of the small-to-middlin' things that frailty and weakness shows through.

This compels me to ask the questions, to address this before the Big Things come along:

Had I been mentally relinquishing these matters into God's hands more regularly, would I now be facing this mental fatigue and distraction?

Had I been trusting Him more and myself less, had I been praying more regularly, communing more faithfully, might I be refreshed mentally and alert and at ease?

And most importantly, had I been focusing more before on my need of Christ in the area of sufficiency for daily tasks, would I now be wrestling down this sin of pride about my failings?

I don't think we can escape our human-ness, but perhaps I could more effectively plow through it if I were more fixed on Him.

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee." Isaiah 26:3

Marriage at Twelve Years

2008-12-01T16:24:00.000-06:00

Last week was our twelfth anniversary. We went away for a romantic night at a dinner and a local hotel, and we then had to return early.

For, yea, verily, the master bathroom toilet had flooded and filled the bathroom, carpeted bedroom and carpeted closet with toilet water. In fact, so efficient at putting out water is our toilet, that it had swiftly trickled right through the closet, across the shoes, and out into the garage.

So we spent the day swabbing, sponging, ripping up baseboards, and working alongside the very nice and efficient ServPro man of few words, George, and my visiting, very hard-working mother-in-law, Millie (who also probably had other hopes and dreams for her Sunday). We pulled up the carpet, removed the soaking padding, disinfected, dried and fanned, dehumidified and otherwise did what we could to clean what remained and prevent mold growth in the flooring and baseboards. (Anyone want to buy a box fan or 5?)

This fall I have been teaching a course on biblical womanhood to our youth girls. While there are some different approaches the Bible takes with men and women -- and these shouldn't be glossed over -- I am struck by how most of Scripture is non-gender specific in terms of commands and approaches.

Now this minor event at our house is hardly cataclysmic in the big scheme of things. It is but a small sample of hundreds of similar events in the life of any married couple. These are useful and good things: they make you less pointy and sharp around the edges; they make you a touch less confident in your plans; a touch less prideful about tomorrow; a touch less sure about your own efforts; a touch more aware of your own peevishness and selfishness.

They make you look at your 6 year old and love her even though she "used too much toilet paper" while you were "at the nice hotel having a special time with daddy."

I just mention it because it seems the secret of marriage and relationships (from my deep and profound relationship with David to my brief and fleeting labor alongside George) mostly has to do with basic, eternal principles for all human beings.

Repentance, forgiveness, trust, telling the truth, true love (which "never fails" and "covers a multitude of sins"), joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control, and courtesy.

The lack of these things will harm relationships, including marriage, and any married person can attest to that.

And the presence of them will sweeten the dullest chore, the "mundane-est" day. And, should you need, they will soften and strengthen in the hardest trial.

Oh Lord, make me an instrument of thy...peace.

Advice from the Experts and Products I Love Part II

2008-12-01T11:24:00.000-06:00

Advice from the Experts

There is so much information out there it gets overwhelming for a "bear of very little brain" like me. So I have taken up the habit of asking people who are experts in any given field what one or two things they wish other people could know. Here are some of my results from people I've known over the years:

Hairdresser:
My hair dresser became very animated about this...
1. If you can help it and don't have very oily hair, don't wash your hair every day. Every other day or even "every other-other" day keeps hair healthiest.
2. Take a little extra time on your hair, it is not that much time, but the results are much better. "For Pete's sake, can't you spend an extra 5-10 minutes? I mean, How busy are you? Are you the President?" She said something like that. :-)

Policeman:
1. Best single step for home protection is to get a dog with a good, deep bark. (This means our dog Lucy would not qualify.)

Interior Decorator:
1. The single thing people most frequently do wrong in their homes is hang their pictures way too high. Pictures should be right at average person's eye level at the highest.
2. Have a friend look over your home and give ideas. One decorator told me she does this, since everyone needs "fresh eyes" to see their home.

Dental Hygienist:
1. Floss every day. My hygienist says, if you can't find time, carry floss in your glove compartment and do it during a down moment in carpool line. Or do it in your bed at night right before bed (keep it in your bedside stand).
2. Drink water.

Nutrition:
1. There is just no substitute for eating well and exercising, my neighbor, a nutritionist says. Sorry, no way around that, she told me. :-)
2. A book I have on general health, a recent edition, says if you take NO OTHER supplements, take Vitamin C and cod liver oil.
[I think, if you're a lady, and you just add a multivitamin and calcium (not taken at same time in the day as Vit C) you should be in good shape. ]
3. An article I once read said that you will get better health results from aerobic exercise 30 minutes a day than from quitting smoking! Not kidding! Though of course you should quit smoking.

Moving:
1. Make up the beds in a new house first of all on the day of moving in.
2. Label boxes, when packing, to be unpacked first with linens for everyone's bed and a few towels. Bring soap for showers, and paper towels and t.p. on the first day.

First grade teacher:
1. Read aloud every day, and have a quiet personal reading time every day.

WHAT'S YOUR AREA OF EXPERTISE? PLEASE SHARE ONE OR TWO THINGS YOU WOULD ADVISE OTHERS TO PUT INTO PRACTICE!

Products I Love Part II: Clothes Edition

1. Dansko shoes. For walking all around on errands or trips or whatever. Sort of ugly, very functional-looking, and amazing relief for the legs and back.
2. Air Pegasus women's running sneakers (half size up). Oh, they are good. So cushiony!
3. My new Nike thermal running tights. Just got these yesterday at an outlet, a new favorite. Toasty warm, soft, and I never once felt too hot on my first run in them!
4. Liz Claiborne button front, no-iron blouses. My 2 have lasted about 4 years, never need to be ironed, never fade, always look fresh. They even survived Chinese washing-machine water, which famously "dingifies" everything.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITES?

What Do You Feed Hungry Boys?

2008-11-17T20:28:00.001-06:00

This is Ben on a horse in Iowa, and may be his first time on a horse. It has very little to do with my blog below, but I like it.

My boys are 9 1/2 and 7. They are active -- when not in official sports or playing in games, they are running, biking, shooting hoops, wielding lightsabers or guns, playing "War," or "Relay Race."

And it seems as soon as we are cleaned up from a meal, they are asking for more food. Ben just shuffles around (when not playing sports) bleating like a mournful lamb..."I'm hungry, mommy, I'm hungry." This after a hot breakfast of grits and bacon and yogurt and fruit.

Help.

What do you feed your boys to keep them full?
What is your policy w/r/t snacks and so on?

They truly need more food than the average person, they are growing almost visibly, by inches and shoe sizes. Their pants are highwaters, their toes get crunched in their cleats far too soon, their wrists dangle out of their sweatshirts before they are well worn. Will consumes milk by the gallon and orders 3 hamburgers when we hit the drive thru (between our 807 kinds of sports practices, of course).

Christa D., Kathy E. -- this is your cue... Advice? Ideas? Do any other moms with hungry boys have good ideas or advice? What fills? What can they have on hand to grab? What do you make them? Non-wheat ideas especially appreciated, but all ideas helpful.

ARC

End of a Century: Marian Loeser Wheeler

2008-11-16T16:46:00.000-06:00

Marian Loeser Wheeler would have been 99 years old last Friday, but she passed away last September. David's Grandma ("Mom" Loeser to some, "Grams" to others) was famously shrewd about money and investments, and while she didn't see the recent vagaries in the stock market, she certainly saw her share of ups and down in her 99-year career as a hard-working, well-dressed, tough-nosed, fine-arts-appreciating New York State dowager.

Born in 1909, she was the precocious and well-loved only daughter of a German immigrant butcher. Her mother died when she was young, and she took over handling the books for her father's business and managing the home. She spoke English though her parents were German, and her father doted on her. Marian outlived husbands, World Wars, cancer, and saw the coming (and perhaps the going?) of tv's, phones, filament light bulbs, mainframe computers, cars that crank, and other antiquities. The daughter of a working class immigrant, she became a propertied New York State matron, with children with PhD's.

Up until her last few days she was mentally sharp and enjoyed reading without reading glasses (!) and watching Lawrence Welk. Her hearing was going, but her mind and eyes were sharp, and, if she heard you, she could have a completely lucid conversation about any number of topics. A person of tremendous wherewithal and a capable businesswoman in her own right, she consulted with acuity -- almost up until the end -- with her accountant and lawyer as well as her nurses and doctors and friends and family.

She was adamant that her family eat nutritiously and her physical power until the last days is a great testament to basic German engineering, of course, but also to eating your vegetables 3 times a day. I think she told me to be sure and eat them at least a few times in the 12 years I knew her. Grams told all of us more than a few things, I suspect, in the years that we knew her, as she was outspoken about life's material practicalities -- meals and nutrition, finances, clothing. Grams enjoyed lovely things -- nice fabrics, delicious meals, jewelry -- and wanted us to be smart so we could enjoy those things, too, one day.

Grams loved to play bridge and travel on cruises, and she traveled all over the world. I have seen happy pictures of her in ornate caftans presiding over cruise ship dining tables. She looks eminently at home in those pictures, to me, and I suspect that was a particularly home-y spot for her: a woman given a manly sense of adventure and forthrightness, but living with a controlled and old fashioned idea of what is proper for ladies when traveling.

It's amusing and touching to me how I see much of that little, tiny firecracker of a lady -- last propped up in her wide, white hospital bed -- in my tall manly husband. ...In his practical and dogged and frugal German sensibility, his quick intellect and tactical, pragmatic approach, his bluff speech, and physical strength.

Grams was a small but powerful bundle of hard work and true grit -- an outspoken character that fitted a novel better than a nursing home, so she couldn't really have gone on much longer at sweet St. Ann's. And even her formidable grit couldn't wrestle down that Final Appointment. When we lost Grams, we lost a family legend.

Slow-Cooker Beef Stew

2008-11-14T10:20:00.000-06:00

My sister in law, Suzanne (this is one of my favorite pics of her from a while back) and her husband, Bob, served this and said it was delicious! You could double it if you have a large slow cooker. They are good cooks so their recommendations are trustworthy! I think this would be good over rice.

Beef Stew with Zinfandel and Green Olives
Submitted by: Safeway
Prunes dissolve to form a rich, deeply-colored gravy for slow-cooked,
tender beef stew.
Servings: 4

Ingredients:
1 (3 pound) Rancher’s Reserve(TM) Tender Beef Top Round or chuck
roast
1 tablespoon coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons Safeway Vegetable Oil
1 cup red Zinfandel wine
1 cup Safeway Low-Sodium Fat Free Chicken Broth
1 1/2 cups pitted prunes
1/2 cup pitted green olives
3 cloves garlic, smashed
1/4 cup coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Directions:
1. Season roast with salt and pepper. In a large frying pan over high
heat, heat oil. Add beef and cook, turning, until well browned on all
sides, about 15 minutes. Transfer meat to a slow cooker.
2. Reduce heat beneath pan to medium. Pour in wine and broth and, using
a wooden spoon, scrape up any browned bits stuck to pan. Add prunes,
olives, and garlic, bring to a boil, then pour mixture over beef in slow
cooker. Turn slow cooker to HIGH setting, cover, and let cook until meat
is tender when pierced, 3 to 3 1/2 hours.
3. Lift out roast from slow cooker (it may come out in pieces).
Coarsely shred with two forks. Return meat to liquid. Stir in parsley.
Serve over mashed potatoes or buttered noodles.

Domestic Generalist: The Broadening

2008-11-11T15:31:00.000-06:00

Here is a GK Chesterton discussion as a response to those women who find domestic toils to be demeaning. What do you think?

The Emancipation of Domesticity | G.K. Chesterton | From What's Wrong With the World

"...Unless the Socialists are frankly ready for a fall in the standard of violins, telescopes and electric lights, they must somehow create a moral demand on the individual that he shall keep up his present concentration on these things. It was only by men being in some degree specialist that there ever were any telescopes; they must certainly be in some degree specialist in order to keep them going. It is not by making a man a State wage-earner that you can prevent him thinking principally about the very difficult way he earns his wages. There is only one way to preserve in the world that high levity and that more leisurely outlook which fulfils the old vision of universalism. That is, to permit the existence of a partly protected half of humanity; a half which the harassing industrial demand troubles indeed, but only troubles indirectly. In other words, there must be in every center of humanity one human being upon a larger plan; one who does not "give her best," but gives her all.

Our old analogy of the fire remains the most workable one. The fire need not blaze like electricity nor boil like boiling water; its point is that it blazes more than water and warms more than light. The wife is like the fire, or to put things in their proper proportion, the fire is like the wife. Like the fire, the woman is expected to cook: not to excel in cooking, but to cook; to cook better than her husband who is earning the coke by lecturing on botany or breaking stones. Like the fire, the woman is expected to tell tales to the children, not original and artistic tales, but tales--better tales than would probably be told by a first-class cook. Like the fire, the woman is expected to illuminate and ventilate, not by the most startling revelations or the wildest winds of thought, but better than a man can do it after breaking stones or lecturing. But she cannot be expected to endure anything like this universal duty if she is also to endure the direct cruelty of competitive or bureaucratic toil. Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook; a school mistress, but not a competitive schoolmistress; a house-decorator but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker. She should have not one trade but twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests. This is what has been really aimed at from the first in what is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women. Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one mass of narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs. It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she was enabled to play at five or six professions and so come almost as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades. But the woman's professions, unlike the child's, were all truly and almost terribly fruitful; so tragically real that nothing but her universality and balance prevented them being merely morbid. This is the substance of the contention I offer about the historic female position. I do not deny that women have been wronged and even tortured; but I doubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the absurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive clerks at the same time. I do not deny that even under the old tradition women had a harder time than men; that is why we take off our hats. I do not deny that all these various female functions were exasperating; but I say that there was some aim and meaning in keeping them various. I do not pause even to deny that woman was a servant; but at least she was a general servant.

The shortest way of summarizing the position is to say that woman stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance. The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable. And many of the phenomena which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the center and pillar of health. Much of what is called her subservience, and even her pliability, is merely the subservience and pliability of a universal remedy; she varies as medicines vary, with the disease. She has to be an optimist to the morbid husband, a salutary pessimist to the happy-go-lucky husband. She has to prevent the Quixote from being put upon, and the bully from putting upon others. The French King wrote--

"Toujours femme varie
Bien fol qui s'y fie,"

but the truth is that woman always varies, and that is exactly why we always trust her. To correct every adventure and extravagance with its antidote in common-sense is not (as the moderns seem to think) to be in the position of a spy or a slave. It is to be in the position of Aristotle or (at the lowest) Herbert Spencer, to be a universal morality, a complete system of thought. The slave flatters; the complete moralist rebukes. It is, in short, to be a Trimmer in the true sense of that honorable term; which for some reason or other is always used in a sense exactly opposite to its own. It seems really to be supposed that a Trimmer means a cowardly person who always goes over to the stronger side. It really means a highly chivalrous person who always goes over to the weaker side; like one who trims a boat by sitting where there are few people seated. Woman is a trimmer; and it is a generous, dangerous and romantic trade.

The final fact which fixes this is a sufficiently plain one. Supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior. Two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

But though the essential of the woman's task is universality, this does not, of course, prevent her from having one or two severe though largely wholesome prejudices. She has, on the whole, been more conscious than man that she is only one half of humanity; but she has expressed it (if one may say so of a lady) by getting her teeth into the two or three things which she thinks she stands for...One's own children, one's own altar, ought to be a matter of principle-- or if you like, a matter of prejudice. On the other hand, who wrote Junius's Letters ought not to be a principle or a prejudice, it ought to be a matter of free and almost indifferent inquiry..."

Westminister Confession of Faith: Of the Civil Magistrate

2008-11-06T06:58:00.000-06:00

A document produced in 1647 still has wise words for us today, particularly #s 1 and 4...

1. God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, hath ordained civil magistrates to be under Him, over the people, for His own glory, and the public good: and, to this end, hath armed them with the power of the sword, for the defense and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evil doers. (Romans 13:1-4, I Pet. 2:13-14)

2. It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate, when called thereunto: in the name of managing whereof, as the ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth; so for that end, they may lawfully, now under the new testament, wage war upon just and necessary occasion. (ie, magistrates may wage and fight a just war. Prov 8:15-16, Rom 3: 1-2,4, Psalm 2:10-12, I Tim. 2:2, Psalm 82: 3-4, 2 Sam 23:3, I Pet. 2:13, Luke 3:14, Rom 13:4, Matt 8:9-10, Acts 10:1-2)

3. Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, or, in the least, interfere in the matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of the civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger....[2 Chron 26:18, Matt 18:17, Matt 6:19, Heb 5:4, John 18:36, ad so on)

4. It is the duty of people to pray for magistrates, to honor their persons, to pay tribute or other dues, to obey their lawful commands, and to be subject to their authority, for conscience' sake. Infidelity or difference in religion does not void the magistrates just and legal authority, nor free the people from their due obedience to them: from which ecclesiastical persons are not exempted, much less hath the Pope any power and jurisdiction over them in their dominions, or over any of their people; and least of all, to deprive them of their dominions, or lives, if he shall judge them to be heretics, or upon any pretence whatsoever. (1 Pet 2:17, Rom 13:6-7, Rom 13:5, Titus 3:1, I Pet 2:13-14, 16, Rom 13:1, Acts 25:9-11, 2 Pet 2:1, 10-11, Jude 8-11)

Two recent postings from The Corner

2008-11-04T17:46:00.000-06:00

A Complete, Foolish Waste Of Time [John Hood]

That's the appropriate description of reading any leaked exit polls with anything other than amused detachment. They are a hopeless guide to what will actually occur when states start counting the votes. Early voting, absentees, and a variety of biases render them useless until they are weighted, later on, by actual vote totals.

Believe me, lots of Democrats in 2004 read the leaked exits to their great disappointment — and in some cases, to their great derangement.

Re: Exit poll data for real [Mark Steyn]

Jonah, there's no such thing as exit poll data "for real". As I said right here at 5.22pm Eastern time on Election Day 2004, "the key word in the phrase 'exit poll' is 'poll': that's all it is." ...

"Big turnout in New Hampshire—not a good sign... Early down arrows for Dole... Talent losing in MO... Townsend (arrgh!) looking good in MD..."

And that's just Rich.

The GOP swept NH, Dole won NC, Talent won MO, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lost MD for the Dems.

Polls are open. People are voting. Pundits at a loose end should find a goat to sacrifice and read his entrails. It'll be as accurate.

Pundits at a loose end should find a goat to sacrifice and read his entrails. It'll be as accurate.

Does the Military Count? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

An e-mail from the USS Ronald Reagan:

Good Morning Kathryn,
I just received my ballot on the 4'th of November. I did mail a
federal write-in ballot two weeks ago, but am not certain that it will
make it there or be counted. The generic form asks for a Notarized
witness, and the county elections website did not say whether our state
is one that requires a notary or just a witness. Good luck with that in
the Indian Ocean! I had a Lieutenant Commander, who the Navy considers
to have notary authority, sign the witness block, but without the
embossed stamp, who knows. Even though I just got my ballot yesterday,
every junk mailer from those running for office made it to me with weeks
to spare. As did my primary ballot.

From Texas: Shortened Homeschooling on Election Day

2008-11-04T08:38:00.000-06:00

Here's the line-up at the Chamberlin Election Returns Central Processing Station...

Drudge is up on one computer
The Corner (National Review online) is up on another
Fox/MSNBC (will switch between channels) will be on the TV... when we are done with journals, math facts, and some reading aloud, then we'll being doing crafts on the back patio so mommy can keep up with news updates.

There's a hum around this smallish north Texas town today. Starbucks is giving out free coffee if you voted and free coffee to law enforcement people, too, so the Starbucks nearby was humming with lots of activity and cool Texas sheriffs in their tan ranger hats when I went to grab a coffee today. (I ran out of beans! The horrors!).

The kids went with me to early voting last week. The polling place was quietly busy, orderly, and running smoothly. Our short street is covered with election signs, about 50-50, with maybe 1 more sign for McC. than for Obama. Some of our favorite neighbors are Obama supporters, and it is great to for the kids to see that we can all be friends even when we disagree. Free discourse between free people.

No matter what happens, we are in a country where we can speak and vote and campaign freely. I do not want my kids ever to take that for granted.

ARC

From China: a non-partisan personal word on our election

2008-11-03T17:08:00.000-06:00

The following arrived in my e-mail box today from some American friends of ours living in China (13 hours ahead of Central time):

"We are writing at 7:00 AM November 4th, extremely mindful of the events unfolding on your side of the planet. As we mailed our absentee ballots last month, we were reminded again of our duty as Americans to exercise this unique privilege and responsibility. No one in our local acquaintance here has ever, or ever expects to participate in the selection of their government. Those who would choose to 'serve' in government [in China] are first required to swear life long allegiance to a party that denies you even the right to your own conscience.

Regardless of the outcome today, a peaceful transfer of power will take place in Washington, the rule of law will still be supreme, you will still enjoy the freedom to speak out and actively, publicly work to change your government, without fear of reprisal. What a unique experience in the history of mankind!

So, please, on behalf of the tens of millions of people around the world who have no say in the leadership of their countries, be sure to vote."

We do not vote because we think our candidate will or will not win. We do not vote because we are happy or unhappy with exit returns in polling stations back east. We do not vote because of surveys, fears, focus groups. I believe we each will be held personally accountable for the vote we cast...whether it was wise, informed, and even cast at all. We vote because we cannot, we must not, we should not ever scorn so great a privilege. -- ARC

Surgical Vision Correction

2008-10-29T10:27:00.000-05:00

Has anyone ever had laser or prk or any of those kinds of permanent laser vision correction procedures done? Or have you researched these options?

If so, I would like to hear about your findings and/or experience! You can e-mail me at annechamb@yahoo.com.

Thanks!
ARC

A Little Help for Our Friends: Good Realtor

2008-10-28T13:16:00.000-05:00

We had an excellent realtor on our most recent move here in Texas. We have moved many times so we know a good one when we get one!

She is... a Crown Ministries leader at her church with her husband and a grandma herself who sanguinely made 8 million potty and snack stops with our active crew. She frequently showed us lovely homes on the low as well as the high end of the price range we gave her. She was out to help us, not squeeze out an extra buck for her commission. When/if we move again, we'll sign her.

If you are looking for a realtor in the Dallas/North Dallas area or one anywhere else (she can refer you to someone in your town) -- we recommend:

Kathy Cowan
Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage
4701 W. Parker Road, Suite 650
Plano, TX 75093
972-758-2084 Office Direct
214-244-0169 Cell

Krauthammer on the choice in November

2008-10-24T14:43:00.001-05:00

October 24, 2008
McCain for President

By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq .

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran . A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the last year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia , to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

Posted on www.realclearpolitics.com

Vocation IV: Biblical Womanhood, Youth Session 1

2008-10-23T12:13:00.000-05:00

This fall I have been leading a discussion with our youth group girls on Biblical Womanhood. We have had 3 sessions, and each session handles a different topic. Due to time constraints, each week we discuss the general approach of Scripture and then focus -- not on all relevant passages -- but on just one or two.

Formed by God and Filled with the Spirit. Here are the notes from Session 1:

Week 1: Scriptural Foundations of Womanhood

Scripture Focus: Genesis 1 and 2 and Romans 1:18-32

General overview...this is a foundational truth for all of us...

Worship God = order, and true health and intimacy in relationships

Worship self or created things = debasement, shame, depravity, fractured relationships

Genesis 1 and 2: God formed and filled the earth from nothing, creating an abundant and orderly world.

God created humans in His image, enjoyed fellowship with them, and commanded them both to “fill the earth and subdue it.” Don't we all have this inner drive in some way, to create order or parameters and form in some way... and to fill and grow and create in our limited human way?

(One interesting way to look at Genesis, is John Frame's Framework view: Frame contemplates the days of Genesis in 2 categories: Days 1-3 were Forming days -- creating order and framework. Days 4-6 are Filling days: filling the framework and plan with creation that "fits" the place.)

God created the woman with a special commission to provide companionship and help to the man in subduing and filling. We need each other.

The woman and the man rebelled and rejected God’s rule, and this ushered in disorder, chaos, sin, need.

The Anti-Genesis: I call Romans 1:18-32 "the anti-Genesis" -- not to say that Scripture is opposed to itself, but that the events recorded therein are the spiritual anti-thesis to God's creation in Genesis.

Romans outlines again what happens when men and woman reject God’s rule and instead worship themselves or created things. Making a god of ourselves (denying God's rule) or some created thing has profound ramifications for relationships and even creation.

The result is the demeaning of humanity and chaos, and sexual depravity and relational breakdown, including greed, envy, lust, gossip, cruelty, etc. This is the opposite of God’s perfect creation and the delightful fellowship between the humans and God in the garden.

God's walks in the cool of the day in the green garden with the whole and unashamed man and woman are the exact counterpoint to a chaotic, demeaned humanity scrabbling for ourselves, scratching out a hard grey existence at enmity with each other and God.

What does this have to do with worship and self denial?

We learn in this basic outline of human history: the antidote to chaos, sin, disorder, is the worship of God, as demonstrated and enabled by our Savior Jesus Christ.

This starts and ends with Christ and His example of humility as expressed in Philippians. Emptying ourselves in worship of God, as Jesus Christ did, causes us to be filled by Him, and enables us to be a part of God's noble calling of once again subduing the earth and filling it, men and women together.

You Goin' to the Game Tonight?

2008-10-11T08:30:00.001-05:00

That's what the Target cashier asked me yesterday. "Which game" I asked. She was flabbergasted that I didn't know -- the Allen High School Homecoming Football Game!

How could I forget? I have been driving around town last week surrounded by cars decorated for Allen Homecoming and stores filled with Allen Homecoming paraphernalia.

We're still living in Texas, and it is "Friday Night Lights" time again (ie Fall) in Texas and definitely in our town of Allen. You may think you come from an area that likes football, but until you live in Texas you probably haven't lived in a town where football is such a fundamental part of the culture of everyone from babies to grandparents.

The five and 6 year olds on our street start taking football in the fall and play on local club teams (flag football). The little girls in the kindergarten classes join cheerleading squads and cheer for the tiny 6 year old football players. The moms on the teams organize thank-you gift bags for the tiny cheerleaders in their uniforms.

At school lunch the boys in Will's school play organized touch foortball in the sideyard. After school in the evening the kids gather on our street to play tag football -- the girls and boys come to ring the doorbell and ask our kids to join in the game.

On Friday nights, our neighborhood is quiet. Families -- whether they have high schoolers or not -- all go out to the local football game.

At Homecoming, the boys make "Mums" for the girls and the girls make "Garters" for the boys. Moms gather girls together for Garter making parties and provide supplies. Dad's drop the girls off then come back and mill around the front yard on a warm fall night talking to other dads waiting for the girls to come out to the car.

Boy's moms help them make the Mums for the girls. Mothers of teenagers comb the hobby and craft stores to find supplies for their kids' Garters or Mums.

So what is a Mum?

I received a history lesson from my neighbor 3 doors down who has grown up in Texas.

A "Mum" was originally an actual bundle of Chrysanthemums that the boys would give their dates to wear to school on the day of the game. But over the years the tradition has evolved and Mums are now intentionally gaudy, dinner-plate sized fake mums with 1-2 feet of ribbons, streamers, and trinkets and tchotckes hanging down. In Texas, the motto is: Bigger is Better (NOT Less is More)!

The plastic trinkets on your Mum might have something to do with your school, such as a mascot trinket like an Eagle or a Tiger, or they might have something to do with your interestes -- a soccer ball if you play soccer, a ballet slipper is your dance, etc.

Garters are just like "Mums" but they are dessert plate sized, so the boys can wear them tied on on their upper arm the day of the game.

This tradition is not just for football players and their dates -- everyone does it. A girl may receive more than one Mum -- perhaps one from her date and one from her best girlfriend.

Homecoming is an event involving mothers from around town. Mothers go to the school to decorate, set up, and do who knows what else. Motherhood in Texas is not a spectator sport, and not for the faint of heart!

Mothers go to the football and soccer and basketball games school colors and cheer and holler and boo as loud as the rest of 'em. Mothers in Texas put painted wood yard signs in their front yards announcing what sports their children play and for which school. These signs, sometimes more than one, are part of the garden on many pretty houses. Mothers put stickers on the back of their SUV's which tell which sports and clubs their children are in.

Being in band and sports is a very big deal here -- it seems like a much bigger deal than it was back East when I was in high school. High School bands are very good, and they are a big feature at the Homecoming game, along with the color guard and twirlers and cheerleaders and dance groups. Girls begin learning to cheer, as I mentioned, early on. By the time they are in high school, cheering is quite athletic (they do things like towers, jumps, etc)... and very competitive.

I am struck again by how diverse America is. We are a nation of mini-cultures, and yet we are joined by our desire for freedom and independence. Every place we've lived we have tried to identify the "cultural markers" of that area -- the things they particularly value and prize. We've found each place to be different from the last, but we have always found friends. We have found a lot of friends in Texas.

Woolly Bully

2008-09-29T19:13:00.000-05:00

This is our Labradoodle, Lucy. She was the last of litter, and her markings are not desirable to those who pay attention to such things. However, we like them.

She has a particularly large, black, Lummox of a head, like the head of a buffalo, affixed, as if by some Faustian genetic engineer, to a white body with black irregular spots. One black spot is right above her tail conveniently marking where all dogs like to be scratched. Micro-evolution. But otherwise, she looks like a genetic mistake. Like the love child of a Portuguese Water Dog and a Scottie.

She weighs about 50 pounds, smaller than estimated initially, but big enough to find morsels on the counter when the kitchen is vacant.

She is a bad dog. She is finally over a year old, so she doesn't chew my prescription eyeglasses anymore (3 pairs). If you say, "Come," she goes. If you say "Down," she jumps. If you want her to come, you can say "Treat" and that works.

We went to dog obedience school and practiced on the back patio. But Tedd Tripp didn't write a book about dogs, so I find myself at a loss with this one, which feels like a personal failure. I successfully trained and received high praise for the behavior of our giant male Akita, who weighed as much as I did. But I can't get this little, curly maniac to stay off the front sofa. It would seem we got all the bad traits of the Labrador and the Poodle when we got Lucy, so we took an idea from my uncle and sometimes call her a Poodledor.

But just when we are fed up, she gazes at us with soulful, reproachful eyes which make it hard to stay mad at her for very long. She has soft, silky wool to pat and stroke, and she is extremely bouncy -- a hybrid of Tigger's body and Eeyore's demeanor.

She has a highly active tail, and courageously barks at people at the door, lizards, possums, and other passers-by. And she follows me faithfully from room to room while I clean. Sometimes she lovingly licks my knee for a very long time when I am doing sit-down work. She is a good dog!

Lucy has not an ounce of repression or sense. She looks like a little bit crazy, and acts "a lot crazy." If Lucy were a poet, she'd be Lewis Carroll. Her soft paws slide on the wood floor, and she regularly careens into walls for lack of an ability to stop herself once headed after a tennis ball. If Lucy were on TV, she'd be Kramer. Or she'd be Will Ferrell doing Harry Carey. If she were a painter she'd be Picasso. If she were a celebrity she'd be Lucille Ball.

Lucy's behavior has been tamed by arranging play dates with our neighbor dog, Luke, a very large white dog. This is one of the signs of the apocalypse: I arrange play dates for my dog.

Some say the world will end in fire, says Robert Frost, and some say ice. Or, possibly, fur?

Luke is twice the size of Lucy and is male, but Lucy is often the dominant one in the relationship. I think this is simply because Luke gets tired more quickly, so after they have played they stretch out together on our cool back patio and watch the squirrels and green lizards.

When Lucy darts out of the house because Some People are not looking or because Some People forget to latch the garden gate, she bounces straight for Luke's house, and looks for him through his fence. It makes it easy to find her. It never occurred to Lucy to play hard to get, unless that is, I am trying to get her. She is truly a very bad dog.

Lucy knows she is not allowed on the yellow sofa in the front room, which is why she jumps down as soon as we get home. She knows she is not allowed to eat things off the counter, which is why she waits until we leave the kitchen. Lucy knows how much Ben loves his Thumper stuffed animal, which is why she looks for every opportunity to chew on Thump. Naughty Lucy!

Lucy runs to meet me like some kind of a woolly, bucking, black lamb when I get home, and lays on my toes when I am sitting at the kitchen table. She rides next to me in the Honda sitting up tall and putting on her best manners for the people passing by. She makes an attempt at dignity for her public. She is so funny looking that people take pictures of her with their cell phones and smile and wave and call questions out of the car window. Such a good dog.

I say fur is also nice

And will suffice

(Apologies to Frost.)

Nut-Brown Grandmas

2008-09-27T10:54:00.000-05:00

My mom read my last entry and said, "Anne, you will never be a nut-brown grandma. You are too fair-skinned."

She is right. In fact, she is actually the nut-brown Grandma. See her picture?

She is still chic. Great hair, great skin, somehow eternally young-looking in her khaki shorts and New Balance tennies.

And truly, we all want to look good, you know, in our 30s, 4os, 50s, 60s. We dress attractively, we spend time on our hair, and put on muted make up when we go to church. We wear heels occasionally. But there comes an age when, aside from working to be healthy, it is time to just be comfortable.

My mom thinks I will be a pink Grandma one day when I am old, because I am fair. So, below, I will amend my Grandma statements accordingly.

I do believe in my 70s or 80s I will become a soft, wrinkly pink Grandma with some freckles, and some face powder, a flowered dress, and pale blue cardigan, and very comfortable shoes with rubbery soles and laces. I may wear red lipstick because a person gets to do whatever they want at that age, and red is pretty and cheerful. Or I may wear pink pearl lipstick! or I may wear no lipstick.

I intend to maintain my health by briskly walking! I have good role models for this. My own Navy grandma was a great example, walking the track briskly every day to keep herself strong and fit. But also I expect to become a bit squishier around the middle, so that when grandchildren lean on me, it is soft there. I will let my hair be simple, I will wash it with a nice, fruity shampoo, brush it out until it is soft, and not think about it again.

When I was growing up, my red-haired Iowa grandma always had fragrant lotions on the little tables in her bathrooms. So I too will wear lotions from the Avon lady, choosing all the ones that smell nice to me.

I will invite the Avon lady in the house to visit and sit and listen to her, and buy some of her products, and I will take my time smelling them all while the cookies I made with real butter cook in the oven. No Smart Balance for me anymore, when I am 70! I will keep little tubes and bottles around the house for all of my granddaughters to rub on their hands and arms, and dishes of costume jewelry for them to play with.

I will keep my wedding rings and give the other nice jewelry to my daughter and daughters-in-law. The young women should have diamonds and gold, for I intend to wear a short strand of fake pearls every day because I like them, and when I am in my 70s, it won't matter if that is appropriate for the grocery store any more.

I will invite Mormons in the house and give them tracts and make a deal to read their tracts if they read mine. And they'll get cookies, too. Cookies for everyone!

There will be strawberries and blueberries at my house for breakfast, and I will eat 2 eggs every morning. Like my Iowa grandma did, I will have little cut glass dishes of gum drops around for grandchildren.

In my 60s I will take grandchildren on trips to interesting places. But in my 70s I might go to Africa, once I am an older Grandma, and be a missionary at a village with AIDS children who need to be loved, or I might go to an orphanage in Asia or Romania and hold orphaned babies all day if they'll let me. I might have gotten a nursing degree by then, and I might go to South America and help children who need healthcare and a nice, loving lap to sit on. Or I might stay right here in America and sit with very old, lonely people stuck in their wheelchairs and listen to them. They can tell me whatever they want to tell me for as long as they want to tell it. I've got no where to be!

I will carry a big bag with inside pockets full of lifesavers, gum, tissues, a deck of cards, and crayons and paper for children who need to be amused. I will learn how to make fun things out of a simple handkerchief. Also in my bag I will carry McDonalds dollar coupons for homeless people, a good book, and a dollar to give to children I know sometimes. I will ride my bike to the grocery and walk around the block every evening. I will have a cat, if David lets me. (He'll be working as an usher at a baseball stadium when he is 70; taking tickets and talking statistics.)

You know, there is a lot to look forward to, when you grow older!

Operation Smile

2008-09-25T01:08:00.000-05:00

Some of you who are familiar with Ben's cleft lip have donated to Operation Smile. For those of you that don't know about Operation Smile, I have included a link, in the links sidebar.

Doctors from all over the world travel to out of the way places to correct cleft lips and cleft palates. They change the lives of families in doing this sometimes very simple surgery. The pictures are worth a thousand words.

If you are looking for some way to give in a way that makes a big difference, let me encourage you to consider this organization.

Politics and Persuasion

People are getting angry. Supporters on both sides are behaving shamefully. Some people on both sides are picking a candidate based on the color of their skin. Some people are voting for McCain simply because he is white. Some people are voting for Obama because he is black. The former is a lower instinct, but both are plain wrong and condescending to voter and candidate.

When you join a group, you get to be linked with all the people who joined the same club. That's nothing new and we have all experienced it. We all know people in that share our religion, alma mater, sports team, department, neighborhood -- who make us wince.

Likewise -- regardless of if you agree with them -- when you join the "Democrat Club," you get to be connected with Jeremiah Wright, ACORN, and that obnoxious co-ed kid who hacked Palin's e-mail. When you join the "Republican Club" you get to be linked with Ann Coulter, random white racists, and that obnoxious TV guy Bill O'Reilly, (Or that angry tenor on am radio who they call "The Great One"? Oh my word, spare me.) The list goes on.

It's always this way -- you join a group, you become linked to all the members of that group. But it doesn't mean you are like them, or that you support the bad apples that find their way in your group.

Let's not forget that most people on both sides intend to make a good choices. You might believe they are foolish, wrong-headed, deceived, or easily manipulated. But they don't intend to do wrong or harm to the country.

It is right to think you are right -- why else would you make that choice? It is right to think the other person is wrong. It is right to discuss and seek to persuade people to change their mind. It is even right to be angry about policies you believe to be bad. But when you get angry at people who you think are muddled, you can't be persuasive. Peggy Noonan is right about that.

America is that it is a country whose leaders are the sum of it's parts. So, still, the way to change our country is to convince our citizens, not to scream at them or "get in their faces." I think it may be that people still respond to calm and reasonable discourse, especially as tensions heighten and people get angry.

If the citizenry countenances bad policies, approaches, ideas, they will get what they want. And if 20 percent of Americans are somehow still undecided, that means 20 percent of Americans have no basic political philosophy. And folks, if you ask me, that is a or maybe the major problem -- or the symptom of the major problem.

Voting should come down to: what is my political philosophy, my top priorities, and who lines up with them the most -- including priorities? If that person is not a crook, then you cast your vote in that direction.

Twenty percent of Americans apparently haven't worked this out in their minds. It's time for some basic education and persuading. This is something we can all do.

Fall

2008-09-24T10:26:00.000-05:00

We are talking about Autumn in home school. I can't decide if I like the word "Autumn" or the word "Fall" better.

In my imagination:
"Fall" is an EB White and a Hemingway word.
"Autumn" is a Tennyson and Wordsworth word.

I naturally use Fall more, so I must like it better. As I write, I do believe I do, though I like Wordsworth very much. I understand him much more than I understand TS Eliot, because I am too lazy to read "The Wasteland." (Should italicize that, I expect, it's so confoundedly obscure to me and big and complex. It deserves it's own leather cover and binding.)

But we did "Autumn" crafts and "Autumn" journaling today, since the kids need to learn that word.

"The autumn winds blow chilly and cold."

That's our entry. Our copywork and journal entry is taken from the song, April, Come She Will, by Simon and Garfunkel which is great for seasonal journaling. Simple, melodic, easy rhymes, nostalgic. And -- bonus! -- we listened to the song as the kids copied and drew pictures of the season.

Journaling and copywork is a great way to introduce simple lines from lovely poems to young children.

April, come she will
The streams are ripe and swelled with rain

May, she will stay
Resting in my arms again

June, she'll change her tune
In restless walk she'll prowl around

July, she will fly
Give no warning to her flight

August, die she must
The autumn winds grow chilly and cold

September, I remember,
A love once new has now grown old.

Each of those seasons in life we know... responsive, restless, changing and uncertain, and finally stable and an older soul. As we grow in our bodies and souls we leave our prowling June and increasingly settle into our own September...that solid, comfortable core of person.

We grow down, not up. From a spring flower to a tree root.

And so it is natural, when we think of Fall, we move on to think of Death. Of course. We grown down to the root. And then further down, to the grave.

Most of us, when we see the dried yellow leaves, think the kind of thoughts that the narrator wrote to that famous little Margaret in the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, "Spring and Fall" (to a young child). Margaret is sad to see the leaves falling, though she doesn't know why.

"Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
...It is the blight man was born for
It is Margaret you mourn for."

So what does it mean, after all of this life and growing, just to become a root and then a grave?

If I empty myself, unleaving if you will, and over the years I shrivel up into and old nut brown grandma, perhaps the little heart of me is most alive, more so than it ever was as a little girl or a student or a young mother.

I suppose if things are done right, our hearts should be most alive at the last hour, containing a wealth of life lived well, a heart that loved without heeding itself, more and more through the years. Perhaps, the more wrinkled and work-worn and cracked and handled and stretched the body, the truer and stronger and better the smooth, tested core.

That same unusual, unexpected economy of God: If you would find your life, lose it -- metaphorically speaking. Following that Death, the real Life -- literally speaking.

Like the seed from the tree that falls in Autumn, drives down into the earth a dried, hard, little nugget, and waits there. CS Lewis argues that in Winter the world is most alive, all shored up and simmering under the bark and missing leaves... not yet spent, but instead brimming and waiting to burst. The stewing life is covered by hard grey bark.

Daily dying -- the golden "unleaving" of dying to self. To Death and then to that eternal Spring again.

Oh grave, where is thy victory?
Oh death, where is thy sting?

Indeed. Oh Death, where is thy Spring?

Mona Charen column on abortion

2008-09-19T20:18:00.000-05:00

Mona Charen (taken from yahoo news)

Fri Sep 19, 3:00 AM ET

Appearing on C-SPAN last weekend I mentioned that Barack Obama had opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act when he was an Illinois state senator — a position he has attempted to deny or obfuscate ever since. The liberal blogger who appeared on the program with me erupted with indignation. She didn't deny that Obama had opposed the bill. She denied, hotly, that babies are ever born alive after an attempted abortion. Since I have actually met Gianna Jessen, who survived an attempted abortion, I invited viewers to contact me directly if they wanted evidence. My inbox has been bursting.

The denial goes very deep. Any number of e-mailers expressed their contemptuous certainty that "born alive" infants were an invention of pro-life activists. OK, enter "abortion survivors" into your browser and see what you get. Or, if you prefer a traditional media source, consult the Daily Mail in Britain. The Mail has reported that in just the past year 66 infants had been left to die after abortions in Great Britain.

When Congress was considering the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Jill Stanek and Allison Baker, two nurses at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. They described several instances in which babies who were moving and breathing after induced abortions were left to die. The committee report quoted Jill Stanek: "Mrs. Stanek testified about another aborted baby who was thought to have had spina bifida, but was delivered with an intact spine. On another occasion, an aborted baby was left to die on the counter of the Utility Room wrapped in a disposable towel." The committee report also quoted Shelly Lowe, a lab technician at Bethesda North Medical Center in Cincinnati. A young woman who had undergone just the first cervix-opening phase of a partial-birth abortion gave birth in the emergency room. The doctor placed the 22-week-old baby in a specimen dish to be taken to the lab. According to the report, when Ms. Lowe "saw the baby girl in the dish she was stunned when she saw the girl gasping for air. 'I don't think I can do that,' Ms. Lowe reportedly said. 'This baby is alive.'" Lowe asked permission to hold the baby until she died. She wrapped the child she dubbed "Baby Hope" in a blanket and sang to her. Breathing room air without any other supports, Baby Hope lived for three hours.

I've received a number of letters from viewers. This one caught my eye: "I am a pediatrician. When I was a pediatric resident on a neonatal intensive care rotation, we were routinely called to … resuscitate infants. In one instance I was called to pronounce a baby dead who had been born an hour earlier after a failed abortion. We were not called to resuscitate the baby immediately after the delivery as the intent was abortion. … I write to attest that babies are sometimes born alive after abortion and then put aside to die."

The BAIPA was designed to ensure that in those rare cases in which a baby marked for abortion happens to survive — that the child will be immediately accorded full human and constitutional rights. The measure passed the U.S. House by a vote 380 to 15 but was blocked in the Senate. When a "neutrality clause" was inserted to the effect that the law should not be construed to limit the scope of Roe v. Wade, the measure was passed by unanimous consent and signed into law in 2002.

At the time, Barack Obama was an Illinois state senator. An almost exact copy of the federal bill was introduced in 2001. Obama opposed it, saying, "I mean it, it would essentially bar abortions because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute." Even though the baby would be completely separated from the mother. In 2003, the Illinois legislature added a neutrality clause to the bill, making it a virtual clone of the federal legislation. As chairman of the committee considering the bill, Obama again opposed it, saying, "… an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman …"

Barack Obama is a charming and intelligent man. But there is no other way to interpret his position on BAIPA than this: A woman who chooses an abortion is entitled to a dead child no matter what. That is an abortion extremist.

To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Pregnancy Revisited

2008-09-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

Just for fun, here's a re-posting of two of my essays on pregnancy.

***

Drawing Room

It seems to me that babies are sprouting forth in other families all around me, so here I sit thinking about babies and pregnancy, of all things.

Li'l Texan

2008-09-14T21:02:00.000-05:00

Ben, who was born in Plano, Texas before we moved to Delaware and China, now resides in his home state again. Here he sports his cowboy boots.

New Gear for Boys, New Hairdo for One Little Girl

2008-09-14T17:45:00.000-05:00

David is a biking enthusiast.

This summer he bought matching gear for the kids and a new bike for Will who had grown too tall for his old bike (left).

Ben inherited Will's old bike (left).

Sarah's still puttering away on the hot pink lightening bolt. Today she did 6 miles on it with the guys! Here is a picture of her with her her new haircut from that cutting edge hair salon, Chez Mommy (see top picture).

Pictures! In Which the Blogstress Joins the 21st Century

2008-09-14T17:10:00.000-05:00

...And Learns How to Upload Pictures

Top Left:

We all made a Back To School cake together in August ("Happy School!")

Left:

Sarah had a Birthday (6) and made her own cake this year with a LITTLE help from mommy and a LOT of sprinkles.

Marriage and Sexuality in Proverbs

2008-09-14T10:43:00.001-05:00

I want to recommend to you the link, below, to one of Tim Keller's sermons on the Proverbs. (You will have to pay a small amount if you decide to download it.)

This is a clearly articulated description of the beauty of marital sexuality and a discussion about the various good and bad approaches of men and women to sexuality and marriage.

If you are married, single, or a teenager...this message -- especially toward the end -- is a powerful counterpoint to the common secular approach to beauty and sexuality in America today.

I will also put the link in the right hand LINKS sidebar.

http://sermons.redeemer.com/store/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=18384

Fowl Humor

2008-09-10T16:48:00.000-05:00

Some things get said by 6 and 7 year olds, randomly, in the back seat of the car. And really there is just no answer to them.

Ben in the car to Mommy: "Can you tell that story again. But in chicken language?"

Riddles. Ben and Sarah are inventing "riddles" these days:

Ben: "OK, OK Mommy. What is yellow like a duck and quacks and has triangle points on it's back?"
Mommy: "I don't know. What?"
Ben: "A Quackasaur!"

Sarah: "What has 10 bodies and is yellow and has eyes and looks like a duck?"
Mommy: "Well, I don't know that one. What?"
Sarah: "Ten ducks stacked on top of each other!"
Mommy: "Of course!"