LUCY FAULL

Strong
And sure
Her words come
Through. Echoing
Stars that shone for you.
Treading paths alone and
New. Celebrating, fasting,
Feasting, living every moment–
Do you see a rose pushing through snow?
That’s how Lucy’s spirit is sure to go.

B.P. Daniel (1929 – )

Words cannot imprint
The world on me.
Only life can register
A blackbird in a tree.

Yet when the blackbird’s gone,
Words can make me see
His red wing flash in summer
Just as it used to be.

Words are not the same,
But they will have to do.
Life keeps disappearing.
Words bring it back to view.

B.P. Daniel (1929 – )

I had promised a March Madness of my mom’s poetry, and here we are with just a day remaining of her birthday month! So, I’m squeezing a few more in today and tomorrow, and I hope you enjoy these.

DOORS

When I am tired of opening and closing doors,
Of doing all life’s endless little chores,
I steal away to the fastness of my mind,
And manufacture doors of another kind.

I pile up words, hinge them with a phrase,
Then swing away, into my choice of days.
It is I who decide what weather there shall be,
And who shall sit with me beneath the tree.

It is an empire fit for a king and queen,
This land of words, that lies behind, between,
Just out of sight, in the forest of the mind.
Forever through its pathways would I wind:

Seeking to capture in its branches, taut and
still,
Songs that would haunt the lonely whip-poor-
will.

B.P. Daniel (1929 – )

Photo credits: Emily Blaylock (one of our wonderful nannies who took these photos on our last vacation to Victoria, B.C.)

And what of the new German case of the Brause family?! What in the world? Two parents with college degrees, a judge who acknowledges the children are “well-educated,” yet the court has taken custody of the five children away from their homeschooling parents (though not yet removed from the home)…The crime, again, is not providing the children with a public school education. (Just in case you haven’t been following, homeschooling is illegal in Germany.) The fears of the International Human Rights Group, and so many others, have come true. The German state has been emboldened by the court’s decision in the Busekros case, and continues to TERRORIZE homeschool families.

What planet am I on? “Stop the world, I want to get off!” When I read of the Brause case, on the heels of the Busekros tragedy, I immediately thought of Randy Stonehill’s song, “Stop the World.”

STOP THE WORLD
Well it’s okay to murder babies
But we really ought to save the whales
We’re putting crimials in office
Cause it’s way too crowded in the jails
T.V. is our teacher now
The schools are overrun by thugs
And children skip their innocence
and graduate to sex and drugs
Right is wrong and wrong is right
White is black and black is white
I think I just lost my appetite
Stop the world I want to get off

Stop the world
I want to get off
This is too weird for me
Stop the world
I want to get off
I get the defininte impression
That this isn’t how it’s meant to be

No, no

Written By Randy Stonehill
© Copyright 1984 by Stonehillian Music &
Word Music (a division of Word, Inc.)

and there are several other verses, but I had to add my own verse here, if that’s okay, Randy.

In Germany you can prosti*ute
but don’t dare teach your kids at home
The state will put them in a psych ward
and rally up the Reich in case you roam
Parents are breeding machines
They seem to have no human rights
All German children are public domain
Oh, pray for families with sleepless nights.
Right is wrong and wrong is right
White is black and black is white
I think I just lost my appetite
Stop the world I want to get off

Well, I think I’ll go throw up now. I certainly can’t sleep after thinking about this.
***************

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A big misconception I hear about homeschooling is,”What about your time for yourself?” People seem to think that I require all this time alone, or time to shop, or time to visit with friends, or get my nails done, whatever. So, supposedly, homeschooling infringes on your time to yourself, and thus you will suffer from an overburdened life.

Well, first of all, nearly all the people I know who don’t homeschool and don’t have school-age children at home, are working outside the home. So, the kids are gone to school all day, Mom and Dad are both gone to work all day, and come home to the most hectic scene you can imagine. Racing to get kids to afterschool activities, racing to get dinner on the table, racing to help with homework, and on and on. It’s exhausting just thinking about it! So where’s all that extra “time to yourself” that you’re supposed to get when you don’t homeschool?

Also, I LOVE being with my kids all day! They shop with me, visit friends with me, and usually come along on whatever errand needs to be done. They are learning how “real life” works, and are around people of all ages, instead of being isolated in a classroom all day, which stunts their emotional growth.

Of course, Mom does need time to do her own thing, I won’t deny that. I do have the luxury of having a husband who is self-employed and flexible. I also have other homeschool-Mom friends I can swap “afternoons out” with. And after the kids are in bed, I have plenty of time to be with my husband, read, relax, (do dishes!). People needing time to themselves is NOT a problem unique to homeschooling moms!

I do admit I require less “time to myself” than most. I brought my children into the world to enjoy them, train them myself (with my husband), and be with them! Not to put them in school 8 hours a day and let someone else shape them. I don’t tire of teaching them new things, laughing at their silliness, or even changing diapers.

Isaiah 41:31 is a great verse to lean on: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.” True, there are days I’m feeling exhausted, and that’s when I get to trust the Lord to renew my strength – just like any other person, homeschooling or not.

******
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We were too inspired to pass up Smith Rock after seeing this, so the next day we headed over to the climbing mecca of the Northwest. Yeah, we go here a lot, and you would, too, if this was in your backyard.

Here I am with the kids, about to head down into the gorge where you see the Crooked River running through.

This was part of our school day, and so here we are sketching the amazing spires of rock (…how did this get here, the kids ask). A local artist happened to be hiking by as the kids were happily engaged in their creative drawings, and had some kind words to offer.

What you see here is a wonderful little snapshot of the flexibility I love about home education. An inspiring moment with a train can lead to an afternoon of hiking, exploring, discussions about volcanic origins, creative art, and more nuances of my children’s development than I can know.

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Our adventure began nearly two years ago, when we first saw the owl. My husband and I, along with our children, were looking at some real estate in Central Oregon. We fell in love with this big juniper filled parcel the minute we set foot on the rugged soil. The rock outcroppings, the tall, scraggly juniper trees, and the untouched feel of the land had us mesmerized. Then, suddenly, a screech, a whoosh, and gone in a flash. We knew we had an owl.

We ended up purchasing the property. Over the course of the next year, we discovered the owl’s nest high in one of the thousands of junipers – maybe 50 feet up. My husband and I had at least six sightings between the two of us. But, as you know, owls are nocturnal, so evening sightings are a glimpse at best. Our oldest boy collected several of the owl’s feathers, and we went on many hikes to look for any other possible nesting places. On one such hike, we disturbed the resting owl, and with a screech, he took wing. How exciting for the kids to hear the noise, and they raced around in a vain attempt to find him again.

I’m not sure I realized it at the moment, but as parents, we were shaping and developing our children’s scientific thinking. Our owl hunt was just an everyday activity born out of natural curiosity, but more valuable than any classroom science lesson.

We visited our local High Desert Museum during this period of time, and were thrilled to discover a Birds of Prey exhibit. There were live birds to study, and even recorded vocalizations to listen to. By now, we were narrowing the field of possible owl varieties – our kids really wanted to know what we had on our hands! We knew the coloring, the habitat, the nest, the call…we had either a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), a Long-eared Owl (Asio otus), or a Western Screech-Owl (Otus kennicottii).

The kids and I visited the Museum again last week, and spent most of our time with the Birds of Prey exhibit, naturally! We decided that most likely (but we could totally be wrong!), our owl is a Long-eared Owl. He sounds like a Screech-Owl, but those owls nest in natural cavities in trees, and ours has a nest. He looks a bit like the Great Horned Owl, but their strongest Oregon habitat association is grassland with fir and ponderosa interspersed. And the Long-eared Owl has a high nest, typically an abandoned nest of another large bird of prey, and their strongest Oregon nesting habitat association is in western juniper woodland.

That fits! At first, we nearly discounted the great nest we discovered, because it looked old and abandoned. Yes, exactly what our owl likes – these nocturnal creatures do NOT like to build their own nests. And of course, the juniper woodland describes our property to a “T.”

I can’t stress enough the idea that when families pursue scientific inquiries together, and when children are carrying on their own intellectual quests, a natural and deep science foundation is taking root. If you’re lucky enough to have an owl, all the better.

**********

Mom adds another year every ides of March, and here she is at 78! I caught her by a great old Juniper tree on our property that is about as much a character as she is. She said this particular tree “looks like it could be the backdrop for a horror movie.” Well, maybe at night it might look scary, but it’s one of my kids’ favorite little fort areas. For her birthday, we’ll spend the morning hiking around at Smith Rock, because it reminds her of Stone Mountain (where she lived for a bit and of which she has the fondest memories), and then enjoy some pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

I couldn’t find a poem she’d written about junipers, but here’s a lovely one about willows (because we grew up with a willow in our yard, not a juniper):

THE WILLOW TREE

When God made trees, so long ago,
The world was not yet full of woe.
But God in his foreknowledge knew,
And so He made the willow too.

There are trees so tall and straight and proud
They speak of courage strong and loud.
But there are moments, not a few –
For them, the willow weeps with you.

B.P. Daniel (1929 – )

And also, a birthday poem, which she wrote for herself in a way, because I’m giving her a birthday card with this poem inscribed inside! She may have forgotten that she wrote this…uh, probably not. She can forget what day it is but never a poem she’s written. She actually thought we forgot her birthday, because on March 14, she thought it was March 15.

May your birthday be:

Slow as molasses in January so you
have plenty of time to enjoy it,

Fast as an ostrich so you can cover
a lot of ground,

Sudden as a pheasant flushed to
wake you up,

Brilliant as a herd of flamingoes
to please your eye,

Chipper as a sparrow to give you
hardihood,

Wild as a wild goose to give you
adventure,

Beautiful as a swan to give you
serenity,

Strong as an eagle so you can reach
new heights,

Exotic as a parrot to show you the
strange unknown,

Wise as an owl with listening ears,

Happy as a lark singing,

Haunting as a whippoorwill so you
will remember it

The famous words from Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), would be helpful for the German judges to take to heart: “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” This landmark case held that the Oregon Compulsory Education Act that required attendance at public schools was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. There have been a string of other courts cases which have solidified the rights of parents to homeschool their children.

An interesting note in the Pierce case is that it was the Ku Klux Klan that was behind the amendment to Oregon’s Compulsory Education Act which would have made it illegal for students to attend private schools. Of course, we know the strong ties during WWI between the KKK and the Nazis. It seems like the same types of people are intent on passing the same types of laws.

The head of the German Youth Welfare Office (Jugendamt) insists that the Busekros case is not about homeschooling. Their psychiatric evaluation of Melissa portrays her as “a highly disturbed girl who obediently and faithfully obeys the idealistic statements of her father and who describes the State as being despostic and ‘fascist-like’.” The biggest problem the Jugendamt appears to have with the Busekros family dynamics is, as they stated, that “Melissa demonstrates loyalty towards her father and unconditional solidarity with her family.”

Aha! So the German State has further indicted itself, and this is even worse than just saying homeschooling is illegal. They have just violated their own Basic Law (Grundgesetz). The Basic Law, by the way, is the constitution of Germany, and came into effect in 1949 after being ratified by all the German states (Lander) – with the exception of Bavaria, where not so coincidentally, the Busekros family resides.

Right off the bat, Article 1 of the Basic Law says “human dignity shall be inviolable.” Skip to the heart of the matter and read Article 4: “Freedom of faith and of conscience, and freedom to profess a religious or philosophical creed, shall be inviolable.” Saying so doesn’t make it so. It’s violable, all right. It says right there that everyone should have the freedom to say that their State is despotic and fascist!

Everything the Busekros lawyers need to back up their case is spelled out in the German constitution. Or they can look at similar wording in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which, I must point out, specifically addresses parental rights in education: Article 26(3) says “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” Prior rights means the parent’s right is prior to the state’s right.

So what in the world is wrong with these German judges?? I have no idea what German case law looks like, or what legal precedents are in their courts. Is this judicial tyranny? Is Germany still too “newborn” to stand up on it’s wobbly legs of democracy? Would their judges show enough wisdom and humility and look at some of our legal rulings? (At least look at them now, before the tide turns over on this side of the world).

“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”
Justice McReynolds, Pierce v. Society of Sisters.

Mom called Piranesi’s work “black and white ink” and said “he drew prisons, with staircases winding about and going up.” This sounded really awful to me. Why did you like these, I had to ask. “I don’t know, they just appealed to me. They were very spacious looking.”

A bit of research on Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) revealed an Italian artist famous for his etchings of Rome as well as the Carceri d’Invenzione (imaginary prisons). There’s a whole stack of these prints (16 total) which are said to record a series of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Someone else called them visual metaphors for the endless creative inspiration of the past. Whatever they are, I did not find them appealing, or spacious, but that’s just me.

ART

Art is a mixture of paint and oil,
The color of forgotten soil;
The smile of loveliness long dead,
The coffin waiting in the shed,
A face against a windowpane,
A lover in a country lane,
A looking in and a looking out
The silence of an unheard shout,
The sense of an impending doom,
The unreality of a room,
The lights and shadows of all our days
Pinpointed in infinitesimal ways,
Fixed in a painted pantomime
Plucked from the gutter of merging time.
Art is a mixture in the mind
Of images that twist and wind;
Evidence of an exploring heart
Tentative, lest it be torn apart.
Here is a smile, received over there,
Coloring two bits of separated air.
Here is the shadow for this degree of light.
Some form of shading makes up our sight.
Here is the height, and the depth below,
And here is the horizon that makes it so.
Our lives are so bound in intricate ways,
Bordered with gold and indigo days,
Flushed with the sun’s most fetching red,
Of art enough cannot be said.

At any rate, what’s the rate? I mean, what’s the tooth fairy paying these days, I *must* know. Is there a limit on the number of teeth she can carry at once? Three, four, five? I guess she must have a bank somewhere to get all the money she leaves the expectant, gap-filled little children.

This is all too bizarre for me.
*************

I’m a terrible poet, and can barely judge good poetry, but I hope I choose some that will brighten your day. Here’s Mom by an abandoned house down the lane from where we live. I took this picture two weeks ago, and ironically, there’s an enormous bulldozer out there as I write, tearing that old house down to make room for a hay shed. A subtle lesson to enjoy the old, weathered, beautiful things while you can.

The Poet

A Poet is a man who tries
To cut the universe down to size
But yet retain the sense of space
While putting it in a certain place.
A poet with a little verse
Captures and giftwraps the universe.

A poet is a man who sees
The enchanted forest in the trees.
He sees the bird of happiness fly
In the land where people do not die.
These things and more the poet doth tell
In a poem that fits in a little nutshell.

A poet is a man who stores
Ideas in his dresser drawers.
With words he combs his tangled hair
And starts the day with “Change,” “Compare.”
And when the words begin to fuse
The poet melts into the Muse.

B.P. Daniel (1929 – )

A family business can blend well with homeschooling, as many have discovered.
We have an online sports merchandise company, TeamMASCOT.com, that I have to juggle along with the needs of the family every day. But as far as jobs go, this isn’t too bad. It’s online only, so no need to keep store hours or tend to walk-in customers.

I thought I’d give you a little glimpse into this part of our life. First, a few FAQs:

1. Are you big sports fans? No, we just have a sports store because, well, other people (lots of them) are sports fans. The sports marketing industry is enormous and rapidly growing. My husband just came up with the idea, along with another buddy of his, and he built the website (it helps to be a computer programming genius).

2. Where do you keep all your products? Well, up until a year ago, it was the home office, the hallway, the bedroom (yes, my bedroom full of NFL trashcans…very romantic), the garage. You can imagine the tripping that occurred, so we now have a warehouse in town where we keep it all.

3. What’s your role in the business? My job is mostly product management. We carry various items, from bumper stickers to wall clocks, with team logos (NFL, NCAA, NBA, MLB, NHL, and NASCAR). I order products to maintain our inventory, look for new vendors, manage customer service, and pack orders on the days our part-time help is out. There was quite a learning curve when I came on to help my husband over two years ago, since I didn’t know whether the Steelers belonged to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, or whether they played football or baseball. I’ve learned a thing or two since then, and can now fairly accurately predict the contenders for the Superbowl, the World Series, the Bowl Championships, etc.

4. How do you fit your business in with homeschooling? This is a question that some days I ask myself as I’m ready to throw that Indianapolis Colts hammer out the window. I have to spend an average of 2-3 hours a day on TeamMASCOT, depending on the season. Less during the offseason, much more during the Christmas rush. I have a computer set up at home that is remotely connected to the warehouse, allowing me to order products from my vendors, add new products, reply to customer inquiries – really anything except pack up the order. So, I try to work very early hours and very late hours and save the bulk of the day for the family.

OK, there’s a little run-down. The kids come to warehouse on the days I have to go in, for a few hours, and I’m training them to work. I consider this part of their education. My son pictured above, who is 7, is very capable of learning the various teams and their logos, and can pick orders for me. He’s learning about buying and selling – wholesale, retail, and profit margins. Even my five year old daughter is eager to help:

Is this the Steelers, Mom?

And right down to my three year old, who LOVES to put the labels on the packages (I won’t even go into the large packages that require packing peanuts, such fun for a three year old):

Some customers might get a crooked postage tag!

There are actually a lot of skills to teach, and I think that figuring out what size box to use for what product is a great math lesson.

By afternoon, the snowgirl was gone, but I luckily recorded the making of her, for we’ve had no occasion since then (no snow) to build another. In fact, this bit of snow a few weeks ago is the most we’ve had all winter (my apologies to the Midwest and Eastern U.S.).

It took some endless rolling of snowballs to create this small carrot-nosed frozen girl, since the snow had a crusty top and powder was hard to come by.

And I’m not sure how the snow creature ended up being a snowgirl – I think we just had pink things handy (along with two girlish daughters), but my oldest son didn’t even mind having his picture taken with her.