Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Back to Reality

I don't know why the holidays got out of control for us this year, but they did. I cut out many things to make room for other things.... We cut back on the shopping. We did not send cards, nor did we attend a slew of parties, but I still felt pressed and harried. Getting the flu the Sunday before Christmas didn't help much. *sigh*

The day itself came and we had a nice time. Lucy decorated a cake to read:

and we shared a chuckle over it as we sang.

It was good fun, but I was simply relieved to pack up the tree on Saturday and get back to school on Monday. I think next year I'd like to skip everything and go to the beach for some real R&R. (Hence the WW post below.) We took a wonderful vacation to St. George Island, FL last May. Today I am wistful for the sand and surf and extended, relaxed time with Peter, Edmund and Lucy.

Next year I want to chuck Christmas completely and go snorkling.

Is anyone with me?

Wordless Wednesday: If You Give a Kid a Cracker, There's No Telling Who Might Follow Him Home

Saturday, December 13, 2008

The Advent Conspiracy

I initially passed this along to a few friends after The Animator's Wife added it to her blog. Then said friends added it to their blogs and credited me, so I figured I'd give the credit where it is doo (as my sister-in-law says) and post it here fer real.

Thanks, Sarah!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Santa's Geographical Conundrum

Edmund has decided that it makes no sense for Santa to be from the North Pole.

Let me backtrack a bit. This morning at breakfast, Lucy offered up the tidbit of info that reindeer come from Russia, and therefore Santa Claus must be Russian. This led to a discussion of how reindeer roam in Alaska, Canada, and Scandinavia as well.

Edmund thought a bit and declared the South Pole far better suited for the jolly old elf. After all, he reasoned, the North Pole is water and the South Pole is land.

Makes sense.

Now then, should global warming affect the North Pole so drastically that Santa's digs break up and float southward, will anyone rescue him from his iceberg as he floats by, waving for help?

Wordless Wednesday

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Saturday, November 29, 2008

More than Conquerors are We!

I did it! I attacked my e-mail inbox and got it down to one screen's worth. I can see it all without scrolling down. It took me 3 days to archive or delete over 2000 messages.

I am thrilled with this happy turn of events and thought I'd tell the world. Now if I can do the same thing to our home office, we'll all be rolling in flowers. :-)

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Interesting Articles

Here is a report from The Guardian on a fascinating study about time invested and expertise, or what it takes to reach the top of one's field.

Well worth the read!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Racism or Cultural Divide?

"I never thought this would happen in my lifetime."

This is a sentiment I have heard echoed time and again from various representatives of the African American community. By the intensity of the emotional response to Obama's election, I think it's fair to say that this historic event has been a cathartic experience for many Americans.

This election season, I was a little miffed at being called a racist because I didn't intend to vote for Barack Obama. After all, I have fundamental differences of opinion with him. It is possible to disagree regardless of the hue of one's skin.... I am a Caucasian married to a brown man. My children from my own womb are not rosy colored as I am, but I love them for who they are, not what they look like. The suggestion that those of us who weren't voting for him were racists just irritated me.

In the past 48 hours, however, it seems to me there has been a sweeping away of the collective demons of racial divide in our society. I'm glad for this, despite the fact that I wish it were Condi Rice taking up residence in the Oval Office next year.

The thought occurred to me, however, that perhaps the separation African Americans have felt in our country in recent history has been, in part, a cultural separation. Before anyone derides me for this, please realize I am not minimizing racial attacks. Nor am I minimizing the blood, sweat and fears suffered by those who fought long and heard to gain equal rights since slavery began in our country in 1619. Our family has been in the uncomfortable position of having racial slurs yelled at us, and I have felt fear for my children and husband as a result. I am not trying to say that this doesn't exist. All I am saying is that if an entire nation elects—by majority—a man of color, we have to recognize that our differences are no longer primarily racial.

My melanin-enriched husband tells me he doesn't sense any day-to-day discrimination, nor is he treated as if he is rejected on the basis of race. He does, however, feel as if he lives on the outside of most social circles. He was not born in the USA, and didn't grow up in the context of our culture. We had numerous cultural barriers to cross within our marriage as a result. He has said repeatedly he feels like a man of the world, belonging neither here nor there.

It just makes me wonder how much of the "racial" divide is not as racial as it is cultural nowadays. Echoes of Africa and African culture still persist within the African American community. Could it be that what has been traditionally attributed to racism could partly be a natural, normal, and very real tension between two cultures?

What do you think?

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Monday, November 3, 2008

In Pursuit....

...of the most successive jumps on a pogo stick.

Edmund got over 200 the other day, a bar set high by Lucy. He did her one better by multitasking—phoning Gramma while jumping.


That's okay, Lucy had other fish to fry.


What good is living in horse country if she doesn't get to ride?

Bugs.

I'm not a real fan of insects, but Edmund thinks they're marvelous. I am glad someone does, because this world needs exterminators, and entomologists fit the bill—like this guy, author of the blog Yucky Nasty Bug Facts. Check out his videos, they're an 8 year-old boy's dream.

Anyhoo, I thought I'd post a couple of insect pictures from this summer. We had a lot of cicadas, for some reason. I thought they were only supposed to show up once every 17 years, but we've seen them every year since we moved to Kentucky. They make quite a racket.

Here is one, just out of its shell, hanging on the side of our chicken coop:

Here's a crane fly, on our kitchen table:

Sometimes I feel like we run a Bug Motel or Insect Hostel around here, what with the creatures we have showing up at the hands of Edmund. I can't complain too much, though. They are easier to deal with than the snake he left coiled up "resting" on a board in Lucy's room about three years ago.

What about you? Is there something you do for love that you wouldn't normally, if you could help it?

Friday, October 31, 2008

Osmosis: An Experiment

Did you know you can remove the outer shell of an egg, leaving a membrane which is tough enough to hold? It is also permeable, thereby letting air and water through.

We did this experiment sometime ago, and it was interesting. Thought I'd post some pics for your intellectual edification—or whatever.

Here we go.

Step One: Take an egg, and drop it in vinegar. The vinegar will interact with the calcium in the outer shell, dissolving it and leaving a membrane. We used apple cider vinegar because we didn't have any of the other stuff.

See the bubbles? Maybe not. Well, trust me, they are there! The shell bubbles off over the course of a day, and soon, you have a shell-less egg. Edmund has it here in his right hand, and an untampered-with egg in his left.

We did this to two eggs, then measured them carefully.
The larger of the two, we put into a thick sugar-syrup. The smaller, we put into water. Eggs are mostly water. If the membrane allows for osmosis, the larger egg should shrink as the water inside it escapes into the syrup, trying to bring the two into a state of equilibrium, until as much water exists inside the egg as outside it (in the syrup). The pores in the membrane are too small to allow the sugar to get inside the egg.

The smaller egg should remain unchanged, as the water in the glass and the water in the egg are pretty much the same amounts.

Here we see day one. They look about the same. The water is on the left and the syrup on the right.

Now here is day two. You can see the egg in the syrup, this time on the left, looks wrinkly and shrunken, while the egg in water on the right, looks normal.

The larger egg shrunk by about a centimeter, but I didn't get a picture of the measurement. You'll just have to trust me on this. Then we stuck it back in water and it reconstituted itself. It was fun to watch the water come out of the egg and form a halo around the it, between the egg and the syrup.

Then we threw it out on the compost heap. An ignoble demise for such a useful educational tool, don't you think?

Dentistry 101

Lucy had a wiggly tooth and wanted it out, so Edmund tried to help. The effort was unsuccessful, and we all waited another day before seeing success.

Ahhhh. Sweet, isn't it?

Man's Best Friend

Meet Isabelle, our newest family member. She thinks she's a kid, and gets lonely if she's left out of the fun.

Here is Isabelle being the fun. She doesn't look that enthralled, does she? Hmmm.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Ichabod

"And she called the boy Ichabod, saying, 'The glory has departed from Israel,' because the ark of God was taken...."
1 Samuel 4:21

As this dismal political season grinds on ad nauseam, I can't help but wonder if our once great country has the word "Ichabod" painted across its portals in large neon lettering.

I am an American and a patriot. Two watershed experiences shaped me in this way. First, at the impressionable age of 18, when most young women go off to college and experience more freedom than they have ever known, I flew to a Muslim country to live with a local family for a year as an exchange student. My rights and freedoms were voluntarily curtailed, and I gained a new appreciation for the freedom that was mine as an American woman.

Second, when I returned home from my year abroad, I was not quite ready to go to college. Instead, I joined the United States Air Force as a linguist, planning to take advantage of the GI Bill for my university tuition at a later date. I learned in four years of wearing the uniform how much the men and women in our armed forces sacrifice their own freedom to guarantee ours.

I was stationed in South Korea during the first Gulf War. Most service men and women are sent on a couple "unaccompanied" overseas tours of duty—without their families and for no noble purpose other than it is time to do their rotation. Nowadays we point to Iraq and Afghanistan and shake our heads over the separations and dangers that these families face for our sakes. Such separations have happened for years, though, albeit on a more limited basis. In my mind, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the assignment for many of these men and women. Mothers were shipped off from their families, fathers sent from theirs, for an entire year. One family I know took years to recover from those twelve months without Dad because of what was happening in their family at the time he was sent. They needed him at home, and he couldn't be both places at once.

What struck me in these situations was that, for the men and women who served, orders were orders. They voluntarily signed up for the military, and they were fully prepared to do what was asked of them, despite hardship on all sides. They did and do have my full support.

Given these two shaping factors of my life, I suppose it's not unusual for me to be a bit more sensitive about what I see are the eroding foundations of American life as I know and love it. Last year the kids and I studied early American history with some intensity. I was deeply impressed by the commitment our forefathers had to freedom, particularly freedom of religion. We are English speaking Americans (as opposed to German or French or Spanish) because a handful of people wanted freedom so badly they were ready to risk everything for it. It could be argued that some had nothing left to risk.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
—Jim Elliot (American missionary killed in the jungles of South America)
Jim Elliot was writing about giving up his life for an eternal reward, but we might apply it to the first freedom-loving Americans in that they gave up the known to embrace an unknown for which they turned out to be horrifyingly under-prepared. Nevertheless, they persevered to win freedom for future generations. We see echos of this a century or so later, when we began to fight the Revolutionary War. Death was preferable to bondage, and the cry went forth from Patrick Henry's lips defining it for all,
"Give me liberty or give me death!"
This reverberated through the years, and by the time of the great westward expansion, men and women went in droves to establish new lives for themselves with not much besides hard work and time. In book after book, we read how our land was built on drops of sweat and perseverance (and, unfortunately, upon the lands of noble people who didn't understand private ownership—but that's a post for another day).

It's interesting to note that underneath the hard work, there was faith. It was faith that drove the Pilgrims to the Mayflower and the New World. It was faith that motivated the patriots in the Revolutionary War. It was faith that accompanied many of the first pioneers, like Aunt Clara Brown—whose faith won her freedom from slavery and whose sweat turned her into the wealthiest woman in the West.
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Romans 5:1-5
The men and women who built this nation lived the above passage. I just don't see it happening today. A man from Brazil once commented to me that a full belly has done more to hinder the Gospel than any other thing. I am inclined to agree with him. Prosperity and ease have lured us away from faith and hard work. Events including and following September 11, 2001—for example the tragic loss of our space shuttle over Texas, the mortgage debacle and the resulting financial earthquake—lead me to wonder if ICHABOD is not emblazoned over our beloved country.

The land of the free seems to have become the land of the addicted, as people sit upon their couches channel surfing, or at their computers gawking. The home of the brave looks like a nation with its head in the sand or a group of children with their fingers in their ears singing "LA LA LA LA I can't hear you!"

Like the Pilgrims, we are ill-prepared for the winter we now face. I am no prophet, but I see only two options out of our current mess. Either we sign on for hard work and personal sacrifice, or we beg our leaders to be our saviors as we slide down the bank of eroded freedom. Collectively, we don't want to do the hard thing. Practically, we're already crying on the bank.

The glory has departed.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Hope Defined

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Philippians 3:20-21