Living-Deliberately.com

Ours is a generation of big-box stores, cheaply manufactured facades, illusions for sale. You can see the evidence of it everywhere whether it’s that brand-new outfit that gives you the appearance of being affluent (that was made overseas by slave labor and is the result of unfair trade), the “durable goods” that aren’t so, the white bread that claims to be packed with nutrition.

We’re a generation that has brought the McMansion into being, lego houses all in a row, each a different shade of Easter Egg. Our cars are big, our diets designed for hedonistic pleasure rather than nutritional qualtiy, and we Wait for No One.

How deeply the lies have penetrated into our being. It is so hard to swim against the tide and dig to the truths beneath. Each layer, somehow revealing there is more to go before hitting the bedrock. I supose this is good for humility; none of us has “arrived” and airs of self-righteous piety are just that…….air.

Take this lie for instance: All Choices Are Equal.

Sounds nice on the surface. How rosy and all inclusive. This one can be sooo subtle. Heaven or Hell and the pathway into each? In my tradition, this one was easy to be black and white on. It was easy to be black and white on the stance against drunkeness. Not so much overeating. That was a definate “grey area” where “what is right for you is right for you and what is right for me is right for me”.

I love the quote by Mother Theresa that was my first dawning realization of this lie:

“It is a poverty to decide a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”

Women’s lib and a good portion of the pro-choice movement would like us in this generation to beleive that we can choose any option we want and no choice is better than another. The question that came to me those years ago was, “better for whom?”

See, it might be fine and good for that young woman to not have her life interupted right now. Her career, her body, her lifestyle. What about for the baby person? Was that an equal choice?

Hmmm….car payment current and boyfriend still here versus….death? Someone sure got the short end of that stick.
Let’s try something not so hot-button. Breast milk versus formula. There are too many studies to count that scientifically confirm what nature has shown all along: human milk is best for human babies. If it can’t be offered, will a human baby suffer from a man-made alternative? In most cases, no. Would they still be better off from the best offering out there? Yes. Breast milk *is* superior to formula. Enter the complication of formula ingredients contributing to sugar-dependency and allergies for the child. For one of the parties involved,  the choice isn’t equal.

The sticky wicket comes when you look at a “less than” option and debate if it’s “good enough”.

Or here’s one: “You can’t live without that!”

Who wins with this one? Usually it’s the one providing the good or service that would prefer for humanity, or least American humanity, to not realize that simiplification is not only possible, it’s downright rewarding. We love our year-round 70 degree environments, our grocery stores full of food, our cushy paper products and caustic chemicals that give the desired effect and hide the ultimate consequence. Give us whiter teeth, hunger-free weight loss, credit to ease our lack of cash. Give us dependance because we can’t remember how to live without it.

Another lie: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

The convenient part here is that if you rely only on yourself, you have only yourself to blame. And you can eliminate all that messy and sometimes uncomfortable “living by faith” stuff. Faith is the evidence of things unseen, remember? Going without seeing requires trust. It may not make sense to those watching. You won’t have all the answers.

Things may not get done to your standards. It may not be pretty and it may slow you down. Which of course, is why our frenzied and control-freak society prefers not to rely on trust and faith.

When a little child wants “to help”, and you won’t let them because you know there may be a spot on the dish when they’re done, who loses? Yes, the child, who learns their effort and motivation wasn’t good enough. But do we? I think so. We aren’t blessed because we’ve turned our nose up to the blessing we couldn’t predict. A strong relationship is more comforting than a row of clean dishes but we chose the short term, instant gratification answer. When a husband works hard at a job to provide and we either pilfer it away shopping or won’t find ways to live within it’s bounds, who loses? The husband, as he’s emasculated to feel “not good enough”? Is that all? Or do the women lose too? Do the children? What’s not getting said?

“If I want something done right, I have to do it myself.”

Peel it back, dig for bedrock. Underneath there is beautiful truth.

but will as soon as I can!

Once upon a time my dad was trying to convince me it was possible for me to achieve math greatness (as in, pass the class). Step one was to do my homework. It was a great lecture, hammering home the point “YAGOTTAWANNA and THEN SOME”.

I barely passed math. Problem was, I never bought in that I needed high school algebra to get through life. Neither did I believe I needed to do homework in the Real World. What did stick though were two of his mantras: “Do Your Homework” and “YAGOTTAWANNA and THEN SOME”.

I get a real power trip off of knowing I CAN do something. My earliest memory of having an idea and acting it out involved me grabbing my wooden music box full of change and walking down the sidewalk barefoot, my baby sister trailing behind me, to the corner convenience store for a candy bar. I wanted candy, I’d figured an idea of how to get it, and I attempted it. The sales lady wouldn’t sell me the bar. My idea didn’t work. My hysterical mother met us on the way back with wide open arms.

I was three.

My mom will probably tell you that the incident above was not the first time I had an idea and figured out a way to try it, just because I could. It’s just the first memory I have of that being the motivation. I like to know that I CAN. I like to know that if I set my mind to something, with enough “IGOTTAWANNA” and old “Heave-ho’s” I can pull it off.

I come by it honestly. I”m sure it’s in the blood everytime my parents rig something up to accomplish a task or make from the ground up something others can’t.

So through the years, I’ve learned I can:

• live without paper products (yes, this includes TP)
• have babies at home, naturally
• stay home with my kids
• keep city chickens (check out www.thecitychicken.com Misty, I’m hooked with chicken keeping for life!)
• make everything we eat from scratch
• bake bread
• make my own detergents and soaps
• live in FL without AC
• live on a budget
• move out of state without seeing where I’m going
• trust my husband implicity without loosing any of my identity
• garden and grow food
• stay flexible when things change radically, and fast!

The list is no doubt a lot longer than that. And life is in the midst of changing radically and fast! It is possible we are about to step into a major part of our greater dream at large. No doubt with a great deal of naivite…but we are willing to learn and try and get up when we fall. We “WANNA AND THEN SOME”.

There are numerous prayer needs, most of them for physical, tangible items that will be necessary through a transition like this. Any of you who would pray, please do. God gets every shred of glory and we are oozing with gratitude for the great things He has done.

So I still can’t do high school algebra. I’m fine with it.

“…for no matter how urban our life, our bodies live by farming; we come from the earth and return to it, and so we live in an agriculture as we live in flesh. While we live our bodies are moving particles of the earth, joined inextricably both to the soil and the to the bodies of other living creatures. It is hardly surprising, then, that there should be some profound resemblences between our treatment of our bodies and our treatment of the earth.”

• on the way to church we pass a place that has rolling hills in a valley. The wind blows across the tall grass like waves on water, the sun making bright spots of “whitecaps” and it takes my breath away.
• hanging sheets and blankets on the line this morning I was surrounded by bird song and chatter. Nothing could have been more fitting.
• Lilac and honeysuckle on the breeze every day is not getting tiresome….
• stroking the neck of a rust colored pony gave me a quiet moment to look into gentle eyes and to see mirrored back the beauty of a dream.
• we have baby Finches in the cage, baby wrens on the porch, and baby chicks coming in the mail (five Rhode Island Reds). Our oldest is chasing baby bunnies on the hill behind our house. My best friend is nursing little rosebuds at home. Spring is a wonderful season for new life.

Like, “what did they use for towels before terrycloth?”

I hate terrycloth. Wow, what a statement ‘eh? It’s thick and soft and comes in tons of colors. What’s not to like? Well, the price, for one. I got my last great terrycloth towels as wedding presents 12 years ago. They are all tired, tired, tired. New ones are way out of my price range so we have this most hodge-podge of “linen” closets, put together from hand me downs from the moms who’s great terrycloth colors had gone out of style and their empty nesting budgets could afford new ones. They are heavy, take a long time to dry, and you can’t fit enough into the washer.

That washer is a whole ‘nother post. Don’t wanna blow you away too much with my new idea…. so back to towels.

I want white. All matching, all bleachable, durable, boil-able, sunnable…white. Just like I like my cloth diapers hanging in a row on the line. White. And that diaper thing got me thinking…..I bet there was a better towel before the modern terrycloth offering at Penneys.

First i looked at my dishtowels. Hmmm…thin, white, absorbant. Most of my dishtowels are “flour sack” varieties. That got me thinking of the old birdseye flat diapers. The ones diaper hounds will pay tons of money for because even though they are old and not made anymore, they are still the best.

Very often, the old stuff is the best.

I called mom trying to figure out if I could buy dishtowel, or birdseye weave, by the yard. She thought they’d get too wet too fast and not really dry a body. Her suggestion was that I try some thin terry cloth to see how that would work.

I sat on that idea for a day or so. I hate terry cloth. Thin is better than thick: you don’t pay or expect too much from it. I was also wondering just how wet mom thought we were after a shower! I mean, my hair is a different story but if it works on dishes….

I thought about the Amish. I bet they didn’t have access to the great terrycloth mills and I doubt with their “non electric” washing systems they lugged thick terry cloth around sopping wet. Unfortunately, the amish don’t publish how they do everything online either.

I hit something when I went with “old fashioned”. It got me to a period website for civil war buffs. And thus entered the term “huckabuck”. Remember pictures (or really using them if you are old enough) of the cloth on a roll in restrooms before paper towels? That’s huckabuck. “Huck Towels” for short.

It turns out huck towels are the preferred towels for the medical field, everything from surgery to nursing homes. It comes in a few patterns and weaves, is WHITE (sometimes with a red trim) and is highly accessible. Fabric stores carry the cloth if I want to make my own sizes and so do several online suppliers. And can we say “not expensive”? SIX freakin’ dozen are just 50 bucks on one site! Six dozen yard sized towels.

Absorbant. Easy to care for. Aethsetically pleasing. Yes, I know I spelled that wrong ;-). Big families everywhere should pay attention. I think it highly likely that i just stumbled onto yet again another example of how the mainstream does it might not be the best way…..

My “linen” closet is soon going to look quite nice, all white folded and in a row.

well, not really. Not really even close. Here it was: why, when I could cook so many things well, even complicated, foreign things well, could I not master simple basics like Our Daily Bread, gravy, and southern iced tea?

My tea tastes like dishwater, as my well-meaning but too-honest lover told me. Even when people came to my house, took my tea bags and my water and my kettle and showed me every step, I could not make mine taste like theirs. It’s been a mystery.

My gravy was lumpy and tasteless. That is, when I actually got it to thicken. I tried every thing I could, every recipe, every tip on the cooking shows. I eventually gave up.

Bread should have been basic. I was convinced of the health benefits of making our bread, even grinding our own fresh wheat, heck, even growing our own wheat a very long time ago. And yet, even with fresh milled flour, with additives and whole books on the subject, and much advice, all I got were bricks. I gave up.

What changed? Well, my tea still tastes like dishwater, as my lover so honestly pointed out tonight. But one day when I was pregnant with Rowan I was playing around with pan sauces. I was making a sauce with chicken drippings and I drizzled some olive oil and rehydrated morels and some butter and then I took a shot at thickening it and….

well, it was so good that my honest man was in speechless bliss. And pan sauces became gravies and now I”m an old pro, as my baby has turned 18 months.

But what about bread? I don’t have high aspirations; I just want edible. As in, “not a brick”. And something must’ve happened with that wierd pregnancy that had me craving fruit and country music because suddenly I could make a bistro-worthy pizza dough. That turned to a full-bodied foccacia. I was finding my feet.

Tonight I made a loaf of half white/wheat golden egg bread. I didn’t use a recipe and I think that was the breaking point. Somewhere while making pan sauces and pizza dough and growing my fifth wonder I realized I understood the process and no longer needed to measure. No more books to tell me how it’s done. I could do it by feeling it. That shouldn’t surprise me too much, as that’s how I do all of my cooking…and other stuff. And success, the kind where my man says, “Man…it sure is good to come home” while his happy eyeballs roll back in his head and he munches on fresh from the oven bread with a thick smear of butter, is all mine.

He left his glass of sweet tea untouched. Some things need more time to…. steep?

Today as I stood hanging sheets and pillowcases, little t-shirts and overalls, on the clothesline, with numb fingers from the morning’s chill breeze, I was doing something I commonly find myself doing: talking to myself. Not really just “talking to mysellf” as in, “don’t forget to buy butter” or “don’t forget to call so and so”, but replaying old conversations I was a part of in the past. Sometimes I go over them as they happened and sometimes I replay them as I would now like them to have gone. And, more often than not, I eventually utter part of it out loud, which is how I wake up and realize what I”m doing.

Almost weekly I go over a conversation I had in the doorframe of my bathroom while I was in labor with Rowan. Something didn’t feel right; the vibe between midwives and I was “off”. I’d had births enough to feel it but was a little occupied at the time and couldn’t articulate it. I guess I’m still trying to do that by going over it in my head; the words were between the assistant and I. She was by my side almost the entire time and was my primary support through his labor. The convo went like this:

She’d asked me how I was doing.
(breathing through a contraction, then shaking it off), “Fine. I just can’t figure out what I’m feeling. It’s strong…like anger. Why would I be angry?”

We went into the bedroom so she could coach me through several more standing contractions. Within 24 hours my friend and midwife of many years had dumped me and left me sobbing hysterically while I nursed my fifth baby, not comprehending what had happened. Over and over that moment I go because it was the moment I sensed something was wrong and I wonder if anything I’d done differently would have changed the outcome.

From there (I usuallly scold myself not to think about it) I thought about Jenna. I went to high school with her; we were on the color guard together. She was friendly to everyone, let me bum rides home with her, and was laughing and smiling more often than not. She graduated a year ahead of me, gave me a senior picture, and she disappeared into the mist along with the majority of everyone else I knew in high school.

About 3 or 4 years ago I bumped into her at story hour at the library. I said her name out loud before thinking, before even surveying how she’d changed. I only saw her big smile and blurted her name out. She was wearing a long denim dress, her hair was covered under a scarf and she had three kids. She seemed uncomfortable to chat in front of the person she was sitting by. It was awkward but I went home and kind of forgot about it.

A few days later I bumped into her in the grocery store. It was weird because we always lived only a few streets away from each other, hadn’t seen each other for years, and suddenly we are crossing paths again so quickly! I typically read into things like that so I reached out, tried to invite her for a play date, tried to see if this shell matched in anyway the girl I used to know. She declined my offer and was barely polite.
I can’t remember how the dialog went. I’ve never shaken the feeling that something was very wrong and if I’d said or done differently I’d know, or be able to help, or something.

Anyway, in the midst of talking it over again with Jenna in the frozen food aisle, I drifted into audible words and woke from the reverie.

It must a theme today though…conversations with the past. W was begging me to read to him and picked The House At Pooh Corner. There was an envelope sticking out of it, which was odd because having moved twice and packed it, handled it, I should have seen it before today.

It was addressed to me, the me of 2004, by me in 1996. I told you I’m a freak.

The letter is from the 22 year old me to the 30 year old me and was apparently meant to be some kind of check point to make sure my priorities were still in place. I must have been one obsessive 22 year old and very afraid of the big old “THIRTY” and what I’d have done to myself without corrective measures.

It starts out, “Today you are 22 years old. It is August 7, 1996. You’ve been married to David for a year and a half; Andrew, your first baby boy turned 5 months old yesterday. You are six illustrations into “It Happened One Fall” (a children’s book I wrote and was trying to see published).Based on where you are today, where do you think you will be June 24, 2004, your 30th birthday?

Andrew will be 9 years old and you will have had three more children; still waiting for one or two more….

Spooky. Andrew was 9, I’d had three more, and on my 30th birthday I was pregnant with number 5.

You and David will have reached a new high in your marriage, thick with love and romance between routines and practicality….

Oh puh-leeze :-). Yes, after nearly divorcing in year 7, by year 10 were were back on a new high. Lots of love, lots of routine, lots of practicality and as for romance? Well the 30 year old me knew that pracaticality IS romantic! :D.

Busy with homeschooling your generally well-behaved and respectful children, you’ll stay neat and organized…..

Quite the expecations for myself ‘eh?

You will still fit into a size 10 between preganancies; definately no bigger than a 12!

Well, I did. But thankfully I also shed quite a lot of the harmful eating disorder tendancies I’d had at before and at 22 and would not require the same of a mom of 5 (even myself LOL) today.

David will be a sucessful salesman….

This is odd. I don’t remember even once talking about sales that early on. But, he’s a salesman today and out performing everyone else in his office.

You will become disciplined enough to sustain a vegetable and flower garden, as well as houseplants.

“Disciplined enough”??! Oh My… well, the gardens are flourishing and my houseplants are alive thankyouverymuch :D.

You will be alive and vivacious, taking time each day to be with each individual child. You will maintain strong friendships with those near and far away. Your prayer life will be strong and fruitful. David will be proud of you. You will not get stuck in a “rut”. Things like having friends over, organization, clean closets, and baking will still be important to you. You will be joyful and happy and energetic.

Sound like a tall order? I hope you achieve it. These are things that are important to you today and I hope they always will.

Sigh. I’d like to sit her down. She had alot to say that endured. And, she was pretty caught up in externals. I wonder how many other sealed envelopes await me in inoccuous places like my children’s books!!!

My disappointment over the fact that Chris is gone from AI no longer even registers on the scale!!! My friend Anna had her TWINS today!!!!!

Rachel and Lillian were born today around noon, a natural delivery that was against the odds. They are 5 lbs and some ounces and 6 lbs even, respectively, and I”m SO PROUD and happy for my friend!!!!

Now, if my local friends see me running around with a big goofy grin, you’ll know why!! Even hundreds of miles away I’ve got a birth-high for her!!!! :D

I have never yet written anything, long or short, that did not surprise me. That is, for me at least, the greatest worth of writing, which is only incidentally a way of telling others what you think. Its first use is for the making of what you think, for the discovery of understanding, an act that happens only in language.

The quote is by Richard Mitchell, in The Gift of Fire, and I saw it today on The Common Room, a blog I frequently read.<

On Monday my cupboard was bare. Or so I thought. I’d meal planned through our familys’ visit and Monday morning and by lunch I was out of pre-planned ideas and supplies. There was more space than food in our fridge. Unfortunately, there was also *just* space in my cash envelope system.

If I’d had the funds I’d h’ve run right out to the grocery store. That’s what one does on grocery day. But being “cash only” these days meant I was going to have to try to find a way to make it until the next pay day. Thus the dubbing of this week a “Manna” week. Some people call it a CORD week: Clean Out the Refridge Dinner.

Monday morning my lanlord brought me 2 dozen of his homegrown eggs. And I found a long-lost 5 dollar bill in the box of hand me downs. I stashed that away for milk later in the week.

I keep a stocked pantry for the most part, though we do frequently use all but the spices up. After two visits from family I had a few unusal items in the cupboard still. I came into the week with a jug of milk, something that is almost never true of Monday morning. And so, rather than plan by the week, I”m going by the meal.

And I”m ashamed. I”m embarrassed. In this week when we thought we had so little, we are finding we have much. I am constantly remembering the other countries of the world were they not only don’t have the same variety but they often don’t have even half of what we’ve had to eat.

We’ve had big plates of oatmeal with dried fruit sprinked on top. I’ve not had to do without coffee.  I used up the last of the root veggies with sesame oil and maple syrup and roasted them for a family “Hit” recipe that thanks to my necessity, sparked creativity. I baked two loaves of the best wheat bread I’ve ever made. We’ve had fresh strawberries from last week, popsicles we’d saved for days warm enough. I discovered biscuits made with  the crumbled package of cream cheese pushed to the back of the cheese drawer and diluted buttermilk taste just as good as those made with butter and full strength buttermilk.

My mind is swarming with fresh inspiration for making the most of what we have. My laundry smells like the honeysuckle that is blooming near where it’s hung. We’ve renewed our committment to be less dependant on the TV for entertainment as these beautiful days stretch before us. The children spend long hours down in the hollow at the bottom of our yard, rolling hysterical with laughter down the hill or working on thier fort. We’re connecting with neighbors on our front porch, with friends over for a few hours, with each other as bedtime gets pushed back.

“Manna” is our daily bread and we have plenty.

Imagine a 5-year-old child whose current passion is building with Legos. Every day she spends up to an hour, maybe more, absorbed in complex construction projects, creating farms, zoos, airplanes, spaceships. Often her friends come over and they work together. No one assigns her this project. No one tells her when and how to do it. And no one will give her creation a grade. Is she learning? Of course. This is how many home-schoolers explore their subjects.

Now suppose some well-intentioned adults step in to teach the child a thing or two about Lego building. Let’s say they assign her a daily 45-minute Lego period, give her a grade at the end of each session, maybe even offer a reward for an A+ building. And why not bring in some more 5-year-olds to teach them the same things about Legos? Why not have them all build their own 45-minute Lego buildings at the same time, then give them each a letter grade, with a prize for the best one? My guess: Pretty soon our 5-year-old Lego lover would lose her passion. Her buildings would likely become less creative, her learning curve flatter. This is how many conventional schools work — or, I guess, don’t work.

The well-meaning adults have squelched the child’s freedom to play and learn and discover on her own. She’s no longer in control. She’s no longer having fun. Countless studies, particularly those by University of Rochester psychologist Edward L. Deci, have shown that kids and adults alike — in school, at work, at home — lose the intrinsic motivation and the pure joy derived from learning and working when somebody takes away their sense of autonomy and instead imposes some external system of reward and punishment. Freedom isn’t a detour from learning. It’s the best pathway toward it.

Stay with our Lego lass a moment and think about authenticity — the basic desire people have to be who they are rather than conform to someone else’s standard. Our young builder has lost the sense that she is acting according to her own true self. Instead, she has gotten the message. You build Legos for the same reason your traditionally employed father does his work assignments: because an authority figure tells you to.

Or take accountability. The child is no longer fully accountable for her own Lego creating. Whatever she has produced is by assignment. Her creations are no longer truly hers. And what about those Lego grades? That A+ may motivate our girl to keep building, but not on her own terms. Maybe she liked the B- building better than the A+ creation. Oh well. Now she’ll probably bury that feeling and work to measure up — to someone else’s standards. Should she take a chance — try building that space shuttle she’s been dreaming about? Probably not. Why take that risk when, chances are, it won’t make the grade? Self-defined success has no place in this regime. But for many home-schoolers, success is something they can define themselves. (This is true even though, as I mentioned, home-schoolers score off the charts on conventional measures of success — standardized tests in academic subjects.)

To be sure, some things most kids should learn are not intrinsically fun. There are times in life when we must eat our Brussels sprouts. For those subjects, the punishment-and-reward approach of traditional schooling may be in order. But too often, the sheer thrill of learning a new fact or mastering a tough equation is muted when schools take away a student’s sense of control. In home schooling, kids have greater freedom to pursue their passions, less pressure to conform to the wishes of teachers and peers — and can put themselves on the line, take risks, and define success on their own terms. As more parents realize that the underlying ethic of home schooling closely resembles the animating values of free agency, home schooling will continue to soar in popularity.

Free Agent Teaching

Several other forces will combine to power home schooling into greater prominence. One is simply the movement’s initial prominence. As more families choose this option, they will make it more socially acceptable — thereby encouraging other families to take this once-unconventional route. The home-schooling population has already begun to look like the rest of America. While some 90 percent of home-schoolers are white, the population is becoming more diverse, and may be growing fastest among African Americans. And the median income for a home-school family is roughly equal to the median income for the rest of the country; about 87 percent have annual household incomes under $75,000.

Recent policy changes — in state legislatures and principals’ offices — will further clear the way. Not only is home schooling now legal in every state, but many public schools have begun letting home-schoolers take certain classes or play on school teams. About two-thirds of American colleges now accept transcripts prepared by parents, or portfolios assembled by students, in lieu of an accredited diploma.

Another force is free agency itself. Thanks to flexible schedules and personal control, it’s easier for free agents than for traditional employees to home-school their children. Free agents will also become the professionals in this new world of learning. A carpenter might hire herself out to teach carpentry skills to home-schoolers. A writer might become a tutor or editor to several home-schoolers interested in producing their own literary journal. What’s more, the huge cadre of teachers hired to teach the baby boom will soon hit retirement age. However, perhaps instead of fully retiring, many will hire themselves out as itinerant tutors to home-schoolers — and begin part-time careers as free agent educators. For many parents, of course, the responsibility and time commitment of home schooling will be daunting. But the wide availability of teachers and tutors might help some parents overcome the concern that they won’t be able to handle this awesome undertaking by themselves.

The Internet makes home schooling easier, too. Indeed, home-schoolers figured out the Internet well before most Americans. For example, my first Internet connection was a DOS-based Compuserve account I acquired in 1993. Before the wide acceptance of the Internet and the advent of the World Wide Web, the most active discussion groups on Compuserve were those devoted to home schooling. Using the Web, home-schoolers can do research and find tutors anywhere in the world. There are now even online ventures — for instance, the Christa McAuliffe Academy (www.cmacademy.org) in Washington state and ChildU.com in Florida — that sell online courses and provide e-teachers for home-schoolers. Physical infrastructure might also accelerate this trend. Almost three-fourths of America’s public school buildings were built before 1969. School administrations might be more likely to encourage some amount of home schooling if that means less strain on their crowded classrooms and creaky buildings.

I don’t want to overstate the case. Home schooling, like free agency, won’t be for everyone. Many parents won’t have the time or the desire for this approach. And home schooling won’t be for all time. Many students will spend a few years in a conventional school and a few years learning at home — just as some workers will migrate between being a free agent and holding a job. But home schooling is perhaps the most robust expression of the free agent way outside the workplace, making its continued rise inevitable.

• one of our neighbors got a big, black rooster this weekend. The bad news is that we think they got him for cock fighting. The good news is that this morning we woke up to his crow. The moist morning air was on our legs from the open window and we snuggled on this day of the week that doesn’t involve a 4:30 rise time for David. Hearing that rooster with his quite robust crow just brought a smile.
• my wonderful landlord and his wife stopped by this morning with 2 dozen of his most delicious homegrown eggs. This has become a weekly habit for them and not only is it a huge savings, but I am full of gratitude that it is such a “detail” to be blessed with. My food-conscience beleives I should feed my family organic eggs but I can not afford them. That I get a bucket of them for free just about reduces me to tears every week. And this week, they are manna.
• While digging through the box of “next size up” clothing from big brother to middle brother I found a wadded up $5.00 bill! Always fun to find money!
• I took advantage of a day without rain and hung two loads up on the line. It didn’t take long, just the time to wash the second, for the first to be full of that sweet fresh air smell. Of all frugal habits, this one is my favorite.
• my garden is thriving! Alas, the onions are kaput and I have no idea why. But the green beans all popped up over the weekend at turbo speed. The peas are starting to climb the trellis strings. The corn is a foot high. The cucumbers are dark green and vibrant. And my 28 tomato plants all look healthy and beautiful.
• My bestest friend Anna (and I can botch that grammar just fine when we’ve been friends as long as we have :-P) is going to have her little twin gal-babies on Thursday!!! I”m so excited for her!! And I can’t wait to hear what she’s naming them!! TWO!!! Amazing!
• Hubby made it home on time to eat dinner at a good pace and then head out for the homeschool group’s finale night with us. I always like it when I don’t have to wonder why he’s late and start worrying.
• This one deserves it’s own blog but I’ll just shout it out here: MY SISTER IS PREGNANT!!!!! :D Which means, I’ll be an Auntie!!! Which means, I get to cart my baby gear to HER house! Which means, I get to hold a newborn and smell that sweet smell in 8 months and have all the joy without having to go through labor myself, which is just dandy. Did I mention my sister is pregnant? She is! She’s really pregnant! As in, Gestating. As in, cooking the bun. This rocks.
• The finale went great. I love our group of homeschoolers and the kids and the support we have for one another. I love that I moved here less than a year ago and they took me in just as if I’d always lived here. I love that my kids have friends who run up to sit with them and to sit in the corners giggling together. And, I love Adele Richardson’s  buttery cookies and must have the recipe…..

So when we step into the typical school today, we’re stepping into the past — a place whose architect is Frederick Winslow Taylor and whose tenant is the Organization Man. The one American institution that has least accommodated itself to the free agent economy is the one Americans claim they value most. But it’s hard to imagine that this arrangement can last much longer — a One Size Fits All education system cranking out workers for a My Size Fits Me economy. Maybe the answer to the riddle I posed at the beginning is that we’re succeeding in spite of our education system. But how long can that continue? And imagine how we’d prosper if we began educating our children more like we earn our livings. Nearly 20 years ago, a landmark government report, A Nation at Risk, declared that American education was “being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity.” That may no longer be true. Instead, American schools are awash in a rising tide of irrelevance.

Don’t get me wrong. In innumerable ways, mass public schooling has been a stirring success. Like Taylorism, it has accomplished some remarkable things — teaching immigrants both English and the American way, expanding literacy, equipping many Americans to succeed beyond their parents’ imaginings. In a very large sense, America’s schools have been a breathtaking democratic achievement.

But that doesn’t mean they ought to be the same as they were when we were kids. Parents and politicians have sensed the need for reform, and have pushed education to the top of the national agenda. Unfortunately, few of the conventional remedies — standardized testing, character training, recertifying teachers — will do much to cure what ails American schools, and may even make things worse. Free agency, though, will force the necessary changes. Look for free agency to accelerate and deepen three incipient movements in education — home schooling, alternatives to traditional high school, and new approaches to adult learning. These changes will prove as pathbreaking as mass public schooling was a century ago.

The Home-Schooling Revolution

“School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.” Those are the words of John Taylor Gatto, who was named New York state’s Teacher of the Year in 1991. Today he is one of the most forceful voices for one of the most powerful movements in American education — home schooling. In home schooling, kids opt out of traditional school to take control of their own education and to learn with the help of parents, tutors, and peers. Home schooling is free agency for the under-18 set. And it’s about to break through the surface of our national life.

As recently as 1980, home schooling was illegal in most states. In the early 1980s, no more than 15,000 students learned this way. But Christian conservatives, unhappy with schools they considered God-free zones and eager to teach their kids themselves, pressed for changes. Laws fell, and home schooling surged. By 1990, there were as many as 300,000 American home-schoolers. By 1993, home schooling was legal in all 50 states. Since then, home schooling has swum into the mainstream — paddled there by secular parents dissatisfied with low-quality, and even dangerous, schools. In the first half of the 1990s, the home-schooling population more than doubled. Today some 1.7 million children are home-schoolers, their ranks growing as much as 15 percent each year. Factor in turnover, and one in 10 American kids under 18 has gotten part of his or her schooling at home.

Home schooling has become perhaps the largest and most successful education reform movement of the last two decades:

*While barely 3 percent of American schoolchildren are now home-schoolers, that represents a surprisingly large dent in the public school monopoly — especially compared with private schools. For every four kids in private school, there’s one youngster learning at home. The home-schooling population is roughly equal to all the school-age children in Pennsylvania.

*According to The Wall Street Journal, “Evidence is mounting that home-schooling, once confined to the political and religious fringe, has achieved results not only on par with public education, but in some ways surpassing it.” Home-schooled children consistently score higher than traditional students on standardized achievement tests, placing on average in the 80th percentile in all subjects.

*Home-schooled children also perform extremely well on nearly all measures of socialization. One of the great misconceptions about home schooling is that it turns kids into isolated loners. In fact, these children spend more time with adults, more time in their community, and more time with children of varying ages than their traditional-school counterparts. Says one researcher, “The conventionally schooled tended to be considerably more aggressive, loud, and competitive than the home educated.”

“Home schooling,” though, is a bit of a misnomer. Parents don’t re-create the classroom in the living room any more than free agents re-create the cubicle in their basement offices. Instead, home schooling makes it easier for children to pursue their own interests in their own way — a My Size Fits Me approach to learning. In part for this reason, some adherents — particularly those who have opted out of traditional schools for reasons other than religion — prefer the term “unschooling.”

The similarities to free agency — having an “unjob” — are many. Free agents are independent workers; home-schoolers are independent learners. Free agents maintain robust networks and tight connections through informal groups and professional associations; home-schoolers have assembled powerful groups — like the 3,000-family Family Unschoolers Network — to share teaching strategies and materials and to offer advice and support. Free agents often challenge the idea of separating work and family; home-schoolers take the same approach to the boundary between school and family.

Perhaps most important, home schooling is almost perfectly consonant with the four animating values of free agency: having freedom, being authentic, putting yourself on the line, and defining your own success. Take freedom. In the typical school, children often aren’t permitted to move unless a bell rings or an adult grants them permission. And except for a limited menu of offerings in high school, they generally can’t choose what to study or when to study it. Home-schoolers have far greater freedom. They learn more like, well, children. We don’t teach little kids how to talk or walk or understand the world. We simply put them in nurturing situations and let them learn on their own. Sure, we impose certain restrictions. (”Don’t walk in the middle of the street.”) But we don’t go crazy. (”Please practice talking for 45 minutes until a bell rings.”) It’s the same for home-schoolers. Kids can become agents of their own education rather than merely recipients of someone else’s noble intentions.

between courage and desperation? A balance has to be walked, a carrying of the secret reality no one but God sees. It’s hard to swallow down the longing that someone else would, that the wind would change, that hope was worth having for more than the mood elevation it produces. My back is tired.
Tonight on the way home from the Psalm Sing we were surrounded by blue haze…the first dewey haze of the season and the lush green all around made the air seem to glow. It was beautiful. We drove home in silence, our glazed and watery eyes absorbing wise but discouraging counsel we’d received. Words that rang true but the depletion of  our hot air balloon was painful nonetheless. I’m loathe to hear the limit of the times we can get back up again for fear we are near it’s end.
I think May will always be pungent with memory for me. This Tennessee country was full of promise a year ago; it changed our lives and almost wholly for the better. I supose it’s a reflection of the depth we needed to come that we still feel there’s so much more in the journey.

May is more than a month of promise. It is the end of The Longest Month. For reasons almost all joyful, April seems to go on forever. It was one total month of Clara’s life that  didn’t include a birthdate or a death date. One month where there should have been years. And May 1 comes and I sigh because I know the long spring is over and all of a sudden it’s early summer. Butterflies fade. The days tick away quickly as this is always a busy time and more so as the years pass. But one year, the first year, it didn’t.

I cried from eyes that wept without ceasing. I even cried in my sleep. My cat took to sleeping in the crook of my arm and would lick my cheeks as the salt dried. His warm body was a strange comfort. And then one day my swollen eyes just stopped. Like my breastmilk they’d dried up. And summer laid like a blanket over us all and I suffocated and just…sort of…..disappeared for a long time.

It’s that injury that gets insulted when hurts come. It’s a dark place that always feels it fresh. I’m not the only one who it strikes and sometimes this load of ours is too much. Just too much.

It’s for times like this that Elizabeth Elliot uttered the words, “do the next thing”. And, being strong, I will. I just wish it wasn’t so heavy.