|
||||
RSSArchive for the ‘features’ CategoryPeace DefinedPosted August 15th, 2010 by Jen in features, religion11 Comments » Practice what you preach, sister. Just when I thought perhaps I was far enough removed from a particularly difficult time to write with clarity, BAM, I’m back, feet tripping and mind swaying, in the midst of trial. It seems I have to write honestly and come with words that aren’t backed with the full confidence and assurance I thought I had. I had wanted to share some secrets to peace, secrets like these:
So, the secrets say Keep your mind on God and you’ll have peace. Go to God with your anxieties and He will give you the peace that dissolves all confusion. These are the words of my source of help and strength — I’m not mocking them, I’m just saying that there is clearly much more to these “secrets” than meets the eye. Maybe my definition of peace is incorrect. I’d like to think that when a bump in the road comes along, I’ve equipped myself with big, fat tires and a great suspension system that diminishes the jolt and it feels more like a sway to the music than a bump in the road. But somehow, I still feel the rise and fall of every trial, despite my human attempts to reach the mind of God and that elusive “peace.” If I readjust what I call “peace,” I might find some understanding. I’ve imagined peace to be a thing that eliminates the pain of life. I’ve imagined myself Dorothy in the center of a tornado being swept into the throes of a violent wind, feeling nothing but tranquility. Ah, Dorothy. I’m learning that peace may not be the drifting on a cloud of calm that I had hoped for. It may be a certain grit and courage I have to bring to the situation to navigate the delusions and anxiety of the trial. Behind the grit and courage is a word I missed in the verse I quoted above from Isaiah: trust. There is a steady faith and understanding that has to be clearly intact for peace to prevail. If I am shaken in my knowledge of the fact that God loves me and wants the best for me, if I am shaken in my belief in myself and my destiny, there will be no peace. I may still have to feel the jolt of a speed bump, I may still feel the aches and discomforts of this life. I will surely be swept into tornadoes now and again. I can expect to feel some pain, but I pray that as I trust in the truth of who God is and who I am, I can find the peace that paves the way for me to bravely steady on.
Technorati Tags: Christianity, faith, God, peace  When your daughter finds a baby jackrabbitPosted July 21st, 2010 by Jen in family life, features, the ranch5 Comments » The dog brought a baby jackrabbit to our lawn. Miraculously unharmed, the small gray creature with eyes wide open was a gift to my 9 year old animal loving daughter. She has wanted to raise a baby rabbit for years, and this appeared to be the genie in the magic bottle that answered her deepest wish. Appearances can be deceiving and wishes can be answered in other ways.
I learned several years ago when same dog unearthed a wild jackrabbit nest that it’s never recommended and nearly impossible to raise wild rabbits on your own, not to mention that it’s illegal to possess Oregon wildlife without the proper state and federal permits. The survival rate is miniscule. I had foolishly and greenhornedly gathered up two of the babies and brought them home, only to have them cry all night, and then I wanted to cry when I researched online and discovered that I was now party to the likely demise of the sweet bunnies. I got up before dawn the next morning and returned the babies to the very spot beneath the junipers where I found them, following the instructions I had read, and believing that, as stated, the momma would find them even though she had obviously moved her nest elsewhere by this time. Having learned this lesson, I knew JJ couldn’t keep the baby jackrabbit that our dog was so pleased to deliver. I let her hold the baby, and little sister JoJo gave it some love too, as I reminded them of the literature that clearly counseled the return of the jackrabbit to its nest. The problem was, we had no way of knowing where in the midst of the hundred acre wood the nest could be.
These are the beautiful moments of our lives. There is something precious and priceless about loving a wild thing that must be let go, and making that decision on your own. The children decided upon a location for the return, an area of junipers where the dog had been recently spotted. JJ and JoJo prepared a safehouse for the newly orphaned bunny who would hopefully soon have a reunion with a mother who would be calling her baby for a midnight feeding. A careful hole lined with soft grasses, some twigs meticulously set across the top of the child-made nest, and some tender goodbyes and goodlucks were the scene.
Goodbye, wild bunny who brought a thrill of delight and a living nature lesson to my children.
Technorati Tags: baby jackrabbit, Central Oregon, family life Skunk Cabbage at Clear LakePosted July 6th, 2010 by Jen in family life, features4 Comments » Our family had a great trip to Cold Water Cove, a beautiful, quiet area around Clear Lake, the headwaters of the McKenzie River. We had driven from Central Oregon over the Cascade Mountains to get to this scenic getaway in the Willamette National Forest. One fun discovery was skunk cabbage, which we found growing in swampy areas near Clear Lake, the “lake born of fire.” I don’t know if the volcanic rock sediment makes it grow so huge and odorous…there is a reason it’s called skunk cabbage. Don’t eat it. It won’t kill you, but you’ll be sorry.
To give you some proportion, here are the kids with their cabbage leaves. Can you believe I let them take these home with us IN THE VAN as we traveled for several hours? What a migraine.
The leaves are now shriveled up on the front porch, but it was fun while it lasted! Technorati Tags: McKenzie River, Clear Lake, Cold Water Cove, Cascade Mountains My High Desert Wildflower TourPosted June 6th, 2010 by Jen in family life, features, the ranch6 Comments » Spring in Central Oregon has been wet and wonderful! Yes, I felt like I was back in Eugene, but for desert dwellers, we can’t complain about the rain. It’s produced some lovely wildflowers on my property, some of which I’ve never seen before. Here is a photo tour, and I hope to update this post with all the names of all these specimens, but for now, please enjoy the beauty. Over the next week, I’ll be working with the kids on creating a nature journal with the proper designations for each flower. I don’t have in hand a Central Oregon Wildflower book, but I’ll pick one up tomorrow. First up, this pretty long-stemmed flower was discovered by my daughter growing amongst the sage.
This gorgeous lavender colored wildflower appeared in a few different locations, and has a short blooming season. I believe it’s called a “phacelia,” and it almost seems to glow.
Next, I almost stepped on this miniature deep purple-petaled beauty. It’s called a monkeyflower. It was all by itself, I believe the only one I saw. Barely a stem, it seemed to have sprouted straight from the grains of sand. Another low-growing flower called Bitter-Root was discovered near some volcanic rock. This specimen was confined to a small area, and only grew next to the moss-covered stones. It’s the closest thing to a desert rose on my property. There were both white and pinkish varieties. Traditionally the roots were peeled, then cooked and eaten, or dried for future use by the natives. This was an interesting white daisy, with only three distinct petals at this point. Isn’t it pretty? It might be a blackfoot daisy. I wish there were enough to pick a bouquet and place on my kitchen table, but as with all the wildflowers here in my desert, they show up as a rarity with a bountiful rain, so I leave them where I find them. We go out for hikes nearly every day, so I do get to enjoy them while they last! I almost missed this next bunch of pink blooms with yellow centers, but luckily I had my children’s eyes. Lower to the ground - perhaps this is why they seem to uncover more than I do? These are Mohave Asters. Ah, I loved this next one before I found out what it was, the first wildflower I saw this spring! The tall blades it grows within, the puffy oblong yellow cluster of blooms, reminds me of a tiny version of the yuccas I grew up with in Arizona. But it’s HIGHLY POISONOUS! Yes, it’s called Death Camas, and for good reason. Beautiful to behold, deadly to ingest. The final bunch of wildflowers I discovered were the brightest yellow delicate tassels near the edge of the cliff. These are called “Oregon sunshine” and it’s a terrifically happy flower! Each petal was like a spike, each flower beginning with arms reaching straight to heaven, then slowly opening as the day unfolds. I hope you enjoyed my Central Oregon wildflower tour. We are blessed with such beauty in our backyard. “…Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.” Mt. 6:28.
Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, high desert, wildflowers Ein Deutsches Requiem!Posted May 16th, 2010 by Jen in features, germany, music1 Comment » Today was full of beautiful things, the highlight being attending the Central Oregon Symphony’s presentation of Brahms’ German Requiem, joined by the Cascade Chorale and Central Oregon Mastersingers. My dear friends Jane and Julia were my company, along with the heavenly music, from cellos and violins to the lone harp that Julia was so happy to be just five rows away from. My mom was supposed to go with Jane and me, but wasn’t feeling well, so I called Julia at the last minute, and she was able to meet us there in a moment’s notice! She was really meant to be there, I told her. She has a thing for the harp, and had the best seat in the house for harp viewing! Due to our late arrival, we were instructed to go down to the front left, directly in front of the lovely lady plucking the long strings. And I learned that Julia hadn’t been to the symphony since she was a child, so this was a treasured time. I totally owed her for taking my kids for me when Luke had his surgery last month, so the requiem was my requital. The Requiem begins: “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen, denn sie sollen getrostet werden,” or “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” I do wish that I’d had the program to follow along with (being late the ushers had left their places), as I don’t understand German, but I’m sitting here tonight going over the text and translation, hoping to someday hear this again with more understanding. But music does transcend translation, and it all still spoke to me.
I had worked in my garden for several hours just before heading out for the concert, and returned home to a refreshing spring rain. I had been fretting about not watering my little seedlings prior to leaving. Oh, for patience. Michael Gesme is the music director and conducter of the Central Oregon Symphony, and if you ever have the opportunity to see him, it’s an entertaining treat. He is an active conductor, so energetic and lively, and I did see him jump fully several inches at least once! Thank you, Johannes Brahms, for a lovely afternoon.
Technorati Tags: Central Oregon Symphony, Michael Gesme, Johannes Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem, A German Requiem The Pixie Chicks and other signs of springPosted May 7th, 2010 by Jen in family life, features, the ranch3 Comments » I call these these the Pixie Chicks:
Here are some more harbingers of spring around our place:
How is spring turning in your part of the world?
Technorati Tags: catching snakes, chickens, spring Women of The French ResistancePosted April 18th, 2010 by Jen in features, france/french, history, persecuted church2 Comments » Ooops, sorry for those of you who came to this post yesterday or today and found it empty. It was set to auto-post and my whole family was down with the stomach flu. Not much computer time happened in the wake of one kid after another (and then mom) dropping with this horrible vomiting, diarrhea mess. So, I will repost the article I wrote last year on the subject of the French Resistance. You may have noticed that I am fascinated with France, I am gripped by the Holocaust, and captivated by WWII heroes. Thus, the subject of the French Resistance is of great intrigue to me, especially the women who gave their lives in this effort. Please read this post on Berthe Fraser, a brave housewife who contributed to the salvation of her country from her simple domestic position. You will learn about what exactly the French Resistance was, as well as the trials and triumphs of such persons. The subtitle of April’s blog is “What you do matters,” and Berthe truly exemplifies this saying. You do not need to have a position of power or wealth to make a difference, you just need a willing heart of courage and valor. Behind Enemy LinesPosted April 12th, 2010 by Jen in features, france/french, persecuted church2 Comments » I can’t do justice to a complete review on this book at the moment; however, I’d rather give a quick word than to delete this scheduled post. I wish my week wasn’t as full as it is right now, or I’d have so much to tell you! History is simply the story of people, and I’m so curious about people. Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany by Marthe Cohn with Wendy Holden is an autobiographical book about a woman of the French Resistance - those mostly underground forces in France fighting Hitler and the Nazis in World War II. I first mentioned this book on my blog last year in this post on Berthe Fraser, as part of a series I wrote on the women of the French Resistance. At the end of the post on Ms. Fraser, I recommended several books to those interested in other accounts of these brave women of the Resistance. One of these books was Behind Enemy Lines. A few times in the life of my blog I’ve reviewed books and been contacted by the author to thank me. But nothing prepared me for receiving an email from the author of Behind Enemy Lines, Marthe Cohn, grateful that I’d included her book in my follow-up list of recommended reads. Folks, the woman is 90 years old and still living! And she knows how to send an email! Hallelujah! We exchanged an email or two, and she agreed to do an author Q & A for me on this marvelous book of hers. Well, I’m here to tell you that I’ve not yet put that together, and shame on me for that! Which is why I simply cannot do a complete review yet on this book. However, this being Holocaust Remembrance Week, I had to bring this to the table and let you know it’s on my mind, and I’ll be following up, because as we know time is of the essence. One question that I know I have for Marthe Cohn concerns the aftermath of the liberation. There’s a part in her book where she talks about seeing groups of ragged, skeletal, filthy, unrecognizable people with big, empty eyes roaming the streets begging for help. They were ignored. No one believed them. These were the remnant left of the Jews, hanging on by a thread, slowing making their way out of the liberated concentration camps. By this point, didn’t people know about the Holocaust? This was a gut-wrenching and scary moment for me, realizing that still, after all that, people could still turn their backs on humanity. There will be more to come on this story, but I must sign off for now. God bless your week.
Technorati Tags: France, French Resistance, Holocaust, Behind Enemy Lines, Marthe Cohn, World War II Suite Française and Irene’s StoryPosted April 4th, 2010 by Jen in features, france/french, history, persecuted church, politics/world news, religion2 Comments » Suite Française has three parts: the two main novellas, “Storm in June” and “Dolce,” and the Appendices that provide essential details about author Irène Némirovsky’s plans for the book as well as gripping correspondence that highlights the tragic story unfolding in her own family. Suite Française portrays life in France from June, 1940 to July 1, 1941. The early German occupation of France and its impact on the daily lives of those involved is told with clarity and deep understanding of a depraved humanity and human conduct under significant pressure. The story opens with residents realizing the Germans are at the gates of Paris. The narratives of a few people are followed as chaos ensues. The reader gets a sense of both the individual and the collective panic, with banks failing, railroads being bombed, houses being overtaken by Nazi soldiers. The mass exodus from Paris is described in “Storm in June” with a beautiful, expressive tone, as the author relates a scene from a boulevard where families are moving with a dizzying agitation to pack up their families and belongings:
The second novella, “Dolce,” describes a subdued and defeated French people in the village of Bussy who must live with an incoming garrison of Wehrmacht troops. We see a settling, an adapting to the new reality of an occupied country. There are collaborators and resisters, and all the characters in between. Suite Française ends with the German regiment leaving the village of Bussy to continue their fighting in Moscow. The final scene describes the village onlookers watching the enemy pull out.
About the Author: Irène Némirovsky, a Jew from Ukraine, was born into a wealthy family that eventually fled the country during the Russian Revolution. The family ended up in Paris, and Irène quickly became a celebrated author in France. Irène was not what one would consider an observant Jew. In fact, some have called her a self-hating Jew. Her willingness to convert to Catholicism for protection, her unsuccessful attempt to become a French citizen, her usage of anti-Semitic publishers to promote her books — all reveal a woman who was trusting in France and not Yahweh to save her. But no matter, none of this diminishes the important place in Holocaust literature of Suite Française. You won’t find the spiritual Jewish perspective of an Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel in Irène’s writings, but this just highlights Hitler’s insanity. He didn’t care if you loved or hated being a Jew. The Nazis dealt the same hand of death to both. Married to Jewish banker Michel Epstein, Irène had two daughters, Denise and Élisabeth. It was these two daughters we have to thank for the survival of the manuscript Suite Française. By 1940, Jews all over Europe were deeply persecuted, and so it was with Irène’s family. She could no longer get her books published, and her husband could no longer work at the bank because of their Jewish ancestry. Despite having converted to Catholicism and being a popular literary figure in France, Irène was arrested in July 1942 as a “stateless person of Jewish descent” and sent to Auschwitz, where she died on August 17, 1942. Her husband shared the same fate a few months later in the gas chambers. And what of the children and this book, Suite Française? Denise and Élisabeth were hidden in schools and convents until the war’s end. Their father, before he was taken away, had given them one possession to guard with their lives: a little suitcase which contained a special notebook. Can you imagine these two little orphan girls, about 13 and 5 years old, in hiding and in possession of this one family memento, too afraid to leave it, too afraid to examine its contents? In fact, for over 50 years, the leatherbound notebook which contained Irène’s two novellas which comprise Suite Française, written in microscopic print to save precious paper, remained unopened inside of this suitcase. Irène’s daughters thought it was their mother’s journal, and knew that reading it would be too painful to bear. Upon preparing to give her mother’s papers to a French archive in the late 1990’s, Denise finally had the courage to open the notebook. She discovered this extraordinary work, incomplete yet whole, written under the most formidable circumstances. The two novellas were intended to be the beginning of a series of five stories which would encompass the whole of the war, to its end. Irène wrote that the rest of the oeuvre was “in limbo, and what limbo! It’s really in the lap of the gods since it depends on what happens.” Irène’s writing in Suite Française is remarkable not just for its brilliant composition but its perspective. Irène did not begin writing this book until 1941, literally as these events were unfolding before her. However, Suite Française reads not like the diary of one writing contemporaneously with the historical events, lacking a certain coherence, but it presents a viewpoint usually reserved for one who is a generation removed from the time in question who has had time to reflect. I wonder if Irène’s placement in the timeline of human history prepared her for such a task? She had already lived as a persecuted Jew through a major war, and experienced firsthand the full circle of events. After the 1918 Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks seized her father’s bank and the Nemirovsky family had to disguise themselves as peasants and flee to Finland. Denise reported after publication of Suite Française, “For me, the greatest joy is knowing that the book is being read. It is an extraordinary feeling to have brought my mother back to life. It shows that the Nazis did not truly succeed in killing her. It is not vengeance, but it is a victory.” Universal Pictures has acquired screen rights to Suite Française. I think a better choice might be to make a movie about Irène Némirovsky herself, whose real life story is much more moving than the fiction she wrote. sources: In other blogs:
Technorati Tags: France, Irene Nemirovsky, Nazi Germany, Suite Française, World War II When Ginger Came Flying My WayPosted March 10th, 2010 by Jen in family life, features, health/cooking/food9 Comments » It was one of those days when I’m glad to live in a small town; and believe me, there are days when I wish I didn’t. I was shopping at my local grocery store this evening when a friend approached as I lingered over the apples, and with a quick word she tossed a mesh sack of ginger across the produce aisle. In a big city, a lady tossing food at you in the grocery store might cause a riot, but here in my cow-town, it means you’re loved. I barely caught it, but firmly caught the advice she gave me on how to make ginger tea. “Just grate some up in pan of water, heat and simmer it for a bit,” she suggested. She claimed it was great for arthritis, and I wondered if I possibly looked arthritic at the moment. Perhaps frenetic, as my four kids were scattered hither and there, grabbing goat cheese off the shelves and bumping into strangers’ carts. I do remember being told when I was pregnant and facing morning sickness that chewing on a bit of ginger would do a world of good for nausea. I’ve drank plenty of ginger tea, usually a ginger-lemon or ginger-honey variety, but always brewed from a bag. I looked forward to this homemade brew from a rhizome that my little boy thought was a bag of doggie treats. Okay, I confess I was going to say ginger root, but upon further research, I discovered that only “common” people call it a ginger root, as it is botanically not so - it’s a rhizome because whole new ginger plants can self-generate from budded sections, whereas a root will die if split into sections. I had a flashback to that time in my childhood when I went through a phase of wishing I had a different name - the name I had inexplicably chosen was Ginger, and my dear Mom humored me and called me Ginger until I grew tired of it. At any rate, I promptly grated up a pile of ginger (way too much) and threw it in a pan of water and made some tea. With neither lemon or honey on hand, I added molasses to to my brew. Voila, Ginger Molasses Tea, the finest, spiciest, and most aromatic tea I’ve had in a long time! I prepared a cup for my mom, telling her how good it is for her, especially if she has arthritis. She looked at me askance, but with her memory, she doesn’t know if she has arthritis or not. What she does have, however, is apparently much benefited by ginger - poor circulation, migraines, chills, and more. After looking up the health benefits, I realized how grateful I am that my friend send ginger flying my way tonight. Here are some of the benefits of ginger:
Cheers, have a cup of ginger tea! Dear March - Come in!Posted March 1st, 2010 by Jen in family life, features, poetry, the ranch6 Comments » How are things in your part of the world? It may not feel like spring, but I know it’s coming, the calendar tells me so. And also the sky, the birds, the tiny signs of life I see poking through the ground. Are you still covered with snow? Is the wind chilling you to the core? Take heart, it’s March! That means April and May are just around the corner. Are you thinking about what you’ll plant in your garden this year? I am, and I hope to add a few things to the mix this year. We started some vegetables last week, but here in Central Oregon, the rule of thumb on when to plant outdoors is “when the snow is gone from Black Butte,” which tends to be about June 1st! Here is a lovely poem by Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest poets to ever write about nature, next to David. Enjoy these lines, and enjoy your March. Dear March, Come in! Dear March, Come in!
I got your letter, and the bird’s;
Who knocks? Technorati Tags: nature, March, Emily Dickinson, outdoors, poetry I Am FromPosted February 13th, 2010 by Jen in family life, features, poetry16 Comments » I AM FROM I am from dusty country roads, I am from clothes on the line and Kick the Can, I am from Tucson and Scots-Irish and English blood, I am from Mama’s stitched up album, I wrote this poem in response to the meme over at Chrysalis. Tonight is the last night to enter her contest, but I hope you’ll write your own and share it with me. The template for this poem is here, and the original poem of this style by George Ella Lyon is here. Technorati Tags: family life, I Am From, poetry The holocaust of timePosted January 10th, 2010 by Jen in family life, features, religion8 Comments » Note: this blog post turned into an essay. If you don’t have TIME to read it, then don’t. But it just might save you some time. What a harsh word to use - holocaust. I think about my comfortable, wise viewpoint of 2010 as I look back upon the Holocaust of the 1930s - 1945 in Europe. HOW could the bystanders and the apathetic and the scared and the collaborators have EVER let it happen? And then I thought about what evil forces are at work at this moment in history, a very different holocaust, the annihilation of well-spent time, and I believe that my descendants will have the same judgement: HOW could the bystanders and the apathetic and the scared and the collaborators have EVER let it happen? Time is…what? Even the greatest physicists don’t understand the nature of time. Time is clearly more than a hand on a clock. It is motion, logic, and life. Time is perhaps a dimension, an eternal state. Whatever it is, in our daily life we understand that we are limited in our access to time, and if more time is consumed than we have accounted for, we are left motionless, logic-less, and lifeless. Oh, how often people say “I don’t have enough time” or “I ran out of time.” Time is a commodity that is essential to life itself, and so I’m not surprised that the Enemy of our soul would like to destroy our time. Since there is nothing new under the sun, I suspect that the modern version of time-wasters have some kind of past counterpart. I’d like to try to identify some of the biggest modern time-wasters, then discern what it is that makes us human, and next, distill some basics of life that must be done before all else. I think this progression of thought will be helpful in eliminating those elements that steal time, and hope that we can make some radical changes to avoid a time-crisis of holocaust proportions. Finally, I’ll look at the elements of a holocaust. First, what are some of the biggest time wasters? Here’s a short list I came up with, and by the way these are all probably addictions:
A friend recently sent me an email ending with this pronouncement that says it best: So when you want to talk in real time, using real voice and ears, please feel free to dial us up. E-mail is OK, but you won’t find us on Facebook, tweet, twitter, or twerp; nor on YouTube, the boobtube, or at Jiffylube.
Finally, recognize the basics of life that must be done before all else. See, because time is in fact limited by the nature of our finite lives, it would be wise to do the things that have to be done first, those things essential to being human, then, whatever time is left, tend to the non-essentials. You may discover there actually is no time for the non-essentials. Sadly, we’ve reversed this precept, and are left with the essentials hanging out to dry. So, earn a living, take care of your family and home, and get enough rest, good nutrition, and exercise. That’s about all you’ll really have time for. If there is a holocaust of time, who or what is the perpetrator? In the midst of a holocaust, it seems there are four main groups of people: the strong minority perpetrators, the weak majority victims, the mass of unassisting spectators, and the few and brave of the resistance. My mind screams, “Hollywood!” “Consumerism!” “Gluttony!” But who can I point a finger at, where is the evil Hitler who is the diabolical villain behind the extermination of quiet evenings at home reading to your children and the massacre of talking to your neighbors after work instead of garage door up, garage door down? Is it just modernity? Declining morality? Certainly there is a particular greed surrounding the monetizing of time that can be found in Hollywood and the corporate gadgeteers. There’s money to be made off of people wasting their time on your latest fad, gadget, game, icon, celebrity, or cereal. The weak majority of Americans who fall for these artifices are suffering intensely. We have anxiety over the stress we feel on our time, so we’re perhaps on some kind of medication, we fail at family life, maybe turn to drugs or alcohol. It takes time to be healthy mentally, spiritually, and physically! What about that mass of spectators that is typically found in a holocaust? I would describe the unassisting spectators as those whose heads are buried in the sand and think nothing is wrong. They love their sitcoms and sit idly by while their kids play violent games on the X-Box and become entrenched in a depraved culture with little likelihood of finding their way out. And the resistance. I’m a big fan of the heroes of the French Resistance, the Dutch Resistance, and others who bravely fought to defeat the Nazis. They worked underground, through stealth and reconnaissance, and turned the tide. True, they were also betrayed, tortured, and killed. So, to complete the holocaust analogy, this is where it happens. It’s the Resistance who need to be courageous in this battle for our time. Resist the time-wasters and for heaven’s save, do not allow your children to succumb to them. Get rid of your TV if you have to. Unplug. Kids do not have to join organized sports at age three. They don’t need to check Facebook and text their friends twenty times a day, nor do you. Blessings upon your time, my friends. Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. - Benjamin Franklin
Technorati Tags: faith, family life, God, time, time management Scene and HerdPosted December 22nd, 2009 by Jen in family life, features, holidays, humor4 Comments »
J: No, no, the angels are looking at nothing! L: Well, let’s move the shepherd back here, he’s a lesser one anyway. J: The Wise Man can’t be giving his gift to the cow, move him! L: Oh, here’s the little lamb that broke last year. Oh well. It’s just one. J: How cute, the camel is peering through the gate! L: If only the angel could sit on top of the stable, there’d be more room and she’d be looking right down at Jesus. But she’d fall. J: Everyone has to be looking at the baby Jesus! (after many minutes of shuffling, conversing, and pondering the cramped quarters, the children reach an agreement) L & J: It’s perfect! Technorati Tags: Christmas, creche, manger scene Revisiting the Magic WindowPosted December 9th, 2009 by Jen in family life, features, religion, the ranch3 Comments » I wrote about my Magic Window last December, and guess what? I found it!
I wrote last December:
Here it sits, right at home in my bedroom window, a magical melding of past and present. This was the first day of snow in Central Oregon, several weeks ago now. Gazing out my windows at the crystalline air and bustling winterish activity, I had an epiphany. Something I can’t put into words, but a full circle was realized on this day. My littlest made the first cheery snowball of the season. His big brother followed suit in a grand way with his own ambitious snowball. Who knew my little Magic Window circa 1975 would be a foreshadowing of such delightful affairs? I thought of a passage from Paul’s writings in the New Testament:
Here’s to a continued revealing and clarifying of the “magic window” of our lives. May unspoken dreams come true. May dark days get brighter. May we soon be face to face. Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood memories, Christmas, Magic Window Our Oregon DucksPosted November 14th, 2009 by Jen in education, features9 Comments » My class at our small country school hatched out the cutest little baby ducks a few weeks ago. After 20 some days of the children carefully turning the eggs twice daily, checking the temperature and humidity, and barely checking their excitement, the eggs cracked. Several of them hatched right before their eyes, and can you even imagine the squeals I heard?!
They have now returned to the farm. After two weeks and ducks that tripled in size and smell, their time had come. But not before many little children drew pictures of them, wrote stories about them, and even dreamed about them. Next up, a visit to the farm to visit Chloe, Blackjack, Stripe, and the others. Technorati Tags: classroom projects, Central Oregon, Oregon Ducks, hatching ducks, education The Advent of Freedom: celebrating 20 years of the fall of the Berlin WallPosted November 9th, 2009 by Jen in features, politics/world news2 Comments » Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this Thanksgiving month, what a reminder to give thanks to God for freedom, wherever it exists, both on the face of the earth and in our spirits. Where there is no freedom, there is death in every sense. You can click here to view President Reagan’s “Tear Down this Wall” speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.
Where were you in 1989? I was a freshman/sophomore in college and remember the winds of freedom and the breath of the Spirit of God sweeping across Eastern Europe. The topic was on the lips of everyone I knew, yet I was too young to realize what a momentous and once-in-a-lifetime event this was. I heard about miraculous events in Poland, not understanding exactly what “solidarity” meant, but loving the word. The collapse of communism, as it unfolded before this young woman, was like a great revival movement, the product of much suffering, much prayer, much sacrifice, and great boldness. I wish I could go back to that scene for a moment and feel again what it felt like, this time with more wisdom and experience. Celebrate freedom today!
Technorati Tags: Berlin Wall, collapse of communism, Ronald Reagan October’s PartyPosted October 2nd, 2009 by Jen in education, features, poetry4 Comments »
Isn’t that just entertaining to read aloud? I love it! It’s been a long monthPosted September 25th, 2009 by Jen in education, family life, features, religion6 Comments » I see it’s been exactly a month since I posted here. I look forward to October and a time when September will be but a memory. This past month has been long and arduous, painful and exhausting. Sleepless nights, numbing days, and the kind of stress that makes one physically ill. It’s been a month of classic “what not to do” trials as I have undertaken starting a new Christian school. I will not post any advice here except to say that you should begin with a rock-solid vision that you don’t compromise on. There are lots of great visions out there, but you have one unique to what it is that you want to accomplish, so stick with it. It would also be a great benefit to have a mentor who has gone before you to help in navigating the known and unknown. How I wish I had had this person at the beginning of this venture. I have her now, and she has been incredibly valuable. A former administrator with a great deal of experience and expertise in education, she brings a lot to the table. Imagine that the tablecloth had just been jerked out from under an apparently lovely meal, and food went flying and every dish was broken. This mentor came and swept up the mess, repaired the dishes as best she could, pointed out that the food wasn’t that great to begin with and not really food I even liked, and set about restoring order to the kitchen. I was handed a classic cookbook and began, with her practiced oversight, to prepare a simple meal of all my favorites. I learned, among other things, to not order caviar when what you can afford is rice and beans. Like I said, she brings a lot to the table. Above all, God has been meeting me in this place. A dear friend sent me the following passages from 1st and 2nd Corinthians to encourage me in the midst of my trials:
I am so grateful for my friends who have called and said, “For some reason, you’ve been on my mind and I’ve been praying for you,” and for those who have helped out in some other very tangible ways. I am walking in that perplexing truth that when we are weak, He is strong. Boy’s eye view of sciencePosted August 25th, 2009 by Jen in education, family life, features, parenting, science9 Comments »
My favorite photo from last week is my 10 year old son putting together his “Snap Circuit Set.” He needs a more advanced electricity kit because he does this one by heart and so fast it would make Franklin and Faraday spin. But he still loves it. What is it about boys and energy/power? Not that girls aren’t into this, I do have a daughter who loves to dabble with this electricity kit as well. But notice I said “dabble.” I certainly give my girls every opportunity I give my boys, and my 8 year old daughter rides a motorcycle right there with her big brother. But still. Anyway, just look at his intensity and concentrated tongue as he eyes the invisible current; curious, so curious. My blog theme this month was supposed to be something about mothers being present with their children. I haven’t written much, I’ve been busy. But a good sort of busy and doing what I can with the kiddos in the midst of busy-ness. I suppose I would just recommend to moms out there to include your children in whatever it is you are doing, and include yourself in whatever it is they are doing. The jobs I give my children I do with them as much as I can. The girls are responsible for the kitchen. Since they can’t reach the cupboards, it means I have to be in there as the hand-to person, grabbing each plate and bowl as fast as they pass them up. As my boys tend the garden, watering and weeding, I will sit with my coffee and marvel with them at how tall the sunflowers have grown, and rejoice with them over the size of the squash. I was careful to let my son know that I would love to take a picture of him as he constructed a current. This meant a lot to him. My daughter wanted to know that I took a picture of her, too, which I did. This wasn’t about them being proud of being in the spotlight, it was about Mom caring and noticing that they did something noteworthy. The French Revolution and the Marquis de LafayettePosted July 13th, 2009 by Jen in features, france/french, history7 Comments » Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. July 14, 2009 marks the 320th anniversary of the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. The French Revolution lasted about six to ten years, depending on who you ask. And the Marquis de Lafayette is involved in another revolution, having returned from a successful round in the American Revolution. I wrote about Lafayette’s triumph in the American Revolution, and while he returned to France a hero in 1792, the embodiment of hope for France and a French Revolution, he did not live to see France become an independent republic. Lafayette had seen what revolution could accomplish. He had witnessed the freedoms enjoyed by the new America. His legacy could be that he brought this light to France, but he ended up losing the public’s confidence and becoming an ineffective revolutionary. In the years leading up to 1789, Lafayette became a leader in the campaign against the monarch. But here is what I think went wrong. First, the French had been too horribly oppressed for too long. The revolutionary movement became extremely radical and vengeful, and Lafayette didn’t know how to turn this raw, bitter force into something controllable and beneficial. He went for a more moderate course, and this ended up killing his popularity and driving him into exile. I think an extraordinary person was required for this job, one who could move beyond the compromise of a constitutional monarchy into true democracy. Someone with preeminent diplomatic skills who could harness lightning like Benjamin Franklin. Second, when Lafayette became a member of the French legislature, he wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (similar to the Declaration of Independence), and I believe he made a grave error. While the declaration stands as monumental in terms of setting forth fundamental human rights for all men, a first for France, it makes no mention of God as the source of human rights. The U.S. Declaration of Independence asserts that human rights are derived from the “Creator” and the duty of government is to protect these God-given rights. The problem I see with not being specific about the source of human rights is that it de facto becomes the realm of the state. France struggled in emerging from the French Revolution with a democratic republic firmly in hand in part because France, while willing to completely turn its back on the Ancien Régime, the old order, it held onto bits that denied true God-given human rights. The country suffered through the bloody Reign of Terror, in which the guillotine was used for mass execution of “enemies of the revolution,” then France allowed herself to be swept under the dictatorship of Napoléon for a time, and then a constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe (unfortunately and regretfully with the help of the Marquis de Lafayette). The first stable republican government wouldn’t happen in France until almost a hundred years after the French Revolution began, the Third Republic, and even this was wrought with crises and controversies. France is now in the Fifth Republic. The Marquis de Lafayette did continue to fight for democracy for France and his dying desire was for a pure republic in France. No two revolutions are the same and Lafayette is blessed among men in history to have lived through the many uprisings and changes in paradigms.
Technorati Tags: Bastille Day, France, French Revolution, Marquis de Lafayette The American Revolution and the Marquis de LafayettePosted July 5th, 2009 by Jen in education, features, history, politics/world news3 Comments »
Historians all agree on the fact that without the significant economic and military aid of the French government, the fledgling United States of America would have likely lost the Revolutionary War against the British. And this particular Frenchman, the Marquis de Lafayette, was perhaps the most crucial piece of French support. Born in 1757 as Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, he suffered the death of his father before he was two years old and the death of his mother at age 12. His family belonged to the French nobility, so he was left with quite a fortune. In addition, at the age of sixteen, he married into the very wealthy de Noailles family. There was no need to seek fame and fortune in a faraway land on a dangerous mission, so why on earth would this young man, only 19 years old, be so resolved to volunteer for the colonies in the American cause of freedom, a land he had never seen, a people he did not know? I’m sure the reasons for Lafayette’s service in the American Revolutionary War are complex, and I’ve tried to search out some of his motives. The first thing that comes to mind is his youth. While at first glance it’s his age that strikes me as so uncommon for such a glorious cause, there is also a freshness and vigor and sense of invincibility that comes with youth. However, he did have a wife and young son he left behind when he first landed near Charleston, South Carolina in June of 1777. Being orphaned at a young age and married with child certainly matures one beyond his years. There must be more. I turned to the issue of revenge. I considered the tragedy of his father’s death–his father was killed by a British cannonball during the Seven Years’ War. For a young man who likely longed to know his father and who he must have revered as a hero, I wondered if Lafayette had found vengeance for his father’s death. To support the American cause of liberty was to defy and destroy British domination. Revenge can only carry one so far, however, and reflecting on how Lafayette put his very life on the line, as well as spending his personal fortune to buttress the American forces, I searched still deeper. When considering the whole of Lafayette’s life, well beyond the American Revolution, I found in him a profound and immense freedom-fighting spirit that must have propelled him even from youth. Were the American Revolution just about personal glory or youthful fantasy, Lafayette’s quest would have likely ended there. However, as we see him fight for representative government in the French Revolution, it’s clear that Lafayette was one of those unique persons in human history who was born to fulfill an instinctive yearning for freedom, no matter the time or place. Independence and self-government are ideals that simply resonated with Lafayette. As he served under General George Washington, these two men developed a life-long friendship and considered one another as father and son. Great people like these do find each other, invisibly drawn together by the same passion and intellect. Lafayette participated in key battles of the Revolution, including those at Brandywine and Yorktown. In addition to military expertise, he exercised great diplomacy in convincing the king of France to increase his support in substantial excess of his original intent. As Americans celebrate their Independence, I do hope they remember France and one particular Marquis de Lafayette. sources:
Technorati Tags: American Revolution, Fourth of July, France, French Revolution, Independence, Marquis de Lafayette Little of This and That: Train, Garden, France.Posted June 21st, 2009 by Jen in family life, features, france/french, the ranch7 Comments » Happy Father’s Day to all the amazing dads out there! I have a little of this and that to write about today. TRAIN.
A little train depot we pass nearly every day had a surprise for us one fall afternoon last season. The regular train was on vacation, and this beautiful steam powered locomotive, called the Mount Emily Shay #1, was there to greet us. Built in 1923, she worked for 30 years on a logging railroad in southern Oregon, then spent some time in West Virginia running tourists on the Cass Scenic Railroad. The “lockie” has since been retired to the Oregon Historical Society, which leases #1 to the City of Prineville Railway to occasionally pull its Crooked River Dinner Train. There’s the facts, and for you train lovers, you will appreciate the history. My kids appreciated the power and beauty up close.
GARDEN. I transplanted what I could into the garden, and reseeded almost everything. I may not have enough days to make it to harvest before a fall frost, but I’m taking my chances. No matter the outcome, I love working with my kids in the garden. My husband shared my pain over those lost seedling leaves. He found a Maine Coon Cat on Craigslist. Apparently this enormous (seriously, it’s like a dog) feline mouser is the thing to have, and there’s a free one in Springfield, Oregon. To further protect against critters, he’s out right now putting boards around the bottoms of the garden, and I’ll be joining him shortly to help place rocks around the garden base. FRANCE. Getting her room cleared out is the number one priority. It currently holds several dozen boxes of …. stuff. I love having a pressing reason to get things cleaned up! I mean it. After having Elise as our guest, I also realized that the French have a certain expectation about food. Like, it should be prepared at home, not acquired at the drive-up window or in a frozen cardboard box. So, I need to get my menu in order. Finally, language lessons are always fun for me, so the kids and I will spend some more time with French lessons. But that’s not a huge concern, since I already figured out with Elise that these Europeans nearly always speak English better than we will ever speak their language. As far as activities, we just plan on living our normal life. The expectation of this particular exchange group is to just have an immersion experience with an American family as they go about their day. I will certainly show her some highlights of Central Oregon, but I have no plans beyond that. Do you want to host a French exchange student? If you live in Central Oregon, get ahold of me right away, because there are still a few students needing to be placed here immediately.
Technorati Tags: family, France, gardening, ranch, seedlings, French exchange student, steam engines, trains PAXPosted June 3rd, 2009 by Jen in features, religion4 Comments » I fly out of PDX (Portland International Airport) soon, not to be confused with PAX (Latin for peace). It’s PAX that’s on my mind, even as I prepare to board that flight out of PDX to attend a memorial service for my aunt. As I listened to a friend of mine speak this morning about attaining peace, I closed my eyes and imagined myself approaching the throne of God with every care in the world bulging in my arms. With each step, I laid something down. First, my big box of “school stuff” I bring home every night, from papers that need grading to literature books waiting for lesson plans to emerge. I took another step toward the throne and cast aside my cell phone with all its distractions and bad news. My house was dumped, my laundry, the future of my children, my finances, every anxious thought. There are so many thoughts and fears that can crowd my mind. I have to be conscious of these words:
Peace of Christ to you. Memorial Day: taking a minute to writePosted May 25th, 2009 by Jen in family life, features, the ranch7 Comments » Life has been incredibly busy, but I wanted to take a minute and record the days. Memorial Day weekend has been wonderful. Family came to visit from the valley, and my kids enjoyed some precious times with their cousins and grandma and uncle. Lots of dirt and many baths later, we said our goodbyes. Today, I took the kids for a bike ride down the gravel drive and onto an old BLM road. We stopped to pick cattails and JJ found a 1966 quarter half-hidden on the dusty trail. Further down, we came upon an old campsite of some former cowboys or pioneers - actually, that is the children’s hope, because it was likely just a place where many decades ago, people dumped their trash. Here are a few photos I’d like to share:
I think my children will have their own fanciful notions about this land where we now live, and I hope they share these impressions with me as they grow up.
Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood memories, Cochise Stronghold, gardening A bowling lessonPosted May 21st, 2009 by Jen in family life, features, religion0 Comments I took my sixth graders bowling several weeks ago and was reminded of something about the Lord. One of my students said, “Mrs. T., do you want to bowl with me?” I wasn’t officially bowling because I wanted to be available to float around and watch over all the kids. But this child let me in on his game, and even though I threw a few gutter balls on him, he invited me back! God spoke to me about my position with Him. How gracious and merciful of the Lord to keep inviting us back into His “game” and His calling and kingdom work, even though we throw gutter balls now and again.
It’s by His grace. Not by any merit of our own that we receive God’s favor. I am not invited to partner with the Lord because I have a perfect game–whether I bowl a 300 or a 30, I have still been “chosen in Him, before the foundation of the world” and I am loved no more or no less for the game (Eph. 1:4). This is truly glorious, as many versions put it, “glorious grace.” I love Ephesians chapter 1. It’s a passage that I read to my firstborn nearly every night while he was still in the womb–it’s a passage you would truly want someone to speak over you, believe me. If you or someone you care about struggles with feeling a condition on the love granted to him/her, Ephesians 1 is a great place to begin correcting that. These are such soul affirming words, and my bowling lesson the other day reminded me of this. I don’t want you to have to look too far for these life-giving, power-filled, blessing-bestowing words, so here is Ephesians Chapter One in its entirety: Ephesians 1 2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Spiritual Blessings in Christ 3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. Thanksgiving and Prayer 15For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
Technorati Tags: Bible, bowling, devotions, Ephesians 1 Be blessed as you servePosted May 10th, 2009 by Jen in features, religion9 Comments » God is meeting you and has some things to teach you even as you are ministering to others. It’s not just about teaching the kids. Be open to and be prepared for the Lord’s ministering over you. When I was with the doctor a few weeks ago, as he was fixing up JoJo (who needed a tick removed, eeewww), he still turned to me and said, “How about YOU? Any questions, anything for you, how are you?” So the doctor turned his attention to me and set me up with a regimen for some physical things I’m dealing with…”You need magnesium, Vitamin D, Potassium!” God was meeting me right in the midst of my ministry to others (which in fact has exhausted me). Galations 5:13 says through love serve one another. This is a command from the Lord, but there is a blessing attached to our service. The servant will be first in Heaven, and it’s important in this life to set our eyes on Eternity. Mathew 20:16 states that “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” Even Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve (Matt. 20:28). What are some spiritual blessings that you would like, if you could pick? I think I would like the blessings of wisdom and faith, which are connected in a way: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.” (James 1:5-8) Wisdom comes through experience, and often through serving and enduring difficulty. Knowing this should increase your joy as you serve, knowing that the blessing is great! James goes on to say that “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” Be blessed today. Fun with Seeds and SeedlingsPosted April 25th, 2009 by Jen in education, family life, features, science, the ranch10 Comments »
All of these cups of seed and soil are sitting in our sunny mud room, busily sprouting in preparation for the big move to the outdoor garden after the last frost. Whether we will time the transition correctly, have the proper soil amendments, possess a well fortified fence to keep out the ever encroaching deer and jackrabbits, and be left with sufficient growing time for full maturation of the vegetables, all remains to be seen. Central Oregon is not a gardening paradise and there are odds to overcome, but it’s not impossible (even though my neighbor says it is). This is our beginning.
He still needs to build the gate, secure the bottom with boards, and string some baling wire at the top to deter the deer which can easily jump a 6 foot fence. We also have to bring in a ton of compost and nutrient rich soil, but I can see the finished product, and it’s beautiful. I’m sure you are getting the picture that gardening can be a lot of hard work, but it’s best to know the challenges before you begin. For a no-nonsense look at this from someone who has years more experience than I, read The Joys and Trials of Caring for your Seedlings. Here are some tips on gardening in Central Oregon from the Oregon State Extension Service:
Now, on to some fun seed activities to do with children. These three ideas are from The Family Game Book (1967, Doubleday-out of print). I think these are appropriate projects for all elementary grades. I just planted vegetable starters with my sixth graders (as well as my own children), and from ages 4 through 12, they all were totally engaged. One of my sixth grade students called me at home a few nights ago just to tell me how beautiful her new plants were! 1. See how seeds actually grow. When a seed is buried in the ground, you can’t see exactly what is happening to it. Here is a simple experiment you can perform to watch the seed develop into a little plant. Get a sheet of clean blotting paper or a small sponge. Put the paper or sponge in a drinking glass so that it is pressing against one side of the glass. Fill the other side of the glass with gravel or sand. This should press the blotting paper or sponge tightly against the glass. Now get some fast-growing seeds like lima beans. Force them between the blotting paper and the glass. They should be pressing tightly against the glass so that you can see them through the glass. If the seeds don’t stay in place, you do not have enough sand or gravel in your glass, as its purpose is to keep the seeds in place. Keep the blotting paper or sponge moist. In a few days you will see the seeds sprout roots. These are called root hairs. They help absorb food for the plant. After the roots become longer, carefully transfer your seeds to a dirt-filled flowerpot or even the garden–if it is warm enough. You will have a little bean plant. Just think how much you will know about this particular little plant! 2. How strong are seeds? A rock is broken in two, and a healthy tree is growing in the split. Have you ever seen such a sight–a tree growing in a rock? Perhaps you have seen a sidewalk with a crack in it, and a plant growing through it. Chances are that the seed of the plant split the sidewalk. It’s hard to believe, but here’s an experiment to prove that seeds can really exert great force. Get a small flat bottle. An empty medicine bottle will do. Pack the bottle right up to the very top with dried beans, for beans are really seeds. Get a piece of cloth and tie it over the top of the bottle in place of the cap. Stand the bottle upside down in a glass partly filled with water. Watch your bean bottle from time to time, and in a day or so you will discover that the bottle has burst. The beans soak up all the water and become swollen. As they swell they push against the walls of the bottle, and when they push hard enough the bottle bursts. That is what happened to the rock and the sidewalk. Do you believe it now? 3. How important are the plant’s first leaves? By now you have had some experience with plants. Have you noticed that all the different kinds of seeds you planted (flower and vegetable) start growing with the same kind of leaves? They all have what look like two thick leaves that dry up and fall off when the seedling develops other leaves. Have you ever wondered what these first leaves do? A little experiment will answer this question. Plant three quick-growing seeds, such as bean or cucumber seeds, in a flowerpot. Water them and one day you will notice you have three little plants, all with the same two first leaves, which are called cotyledons. Now, leave one seedling exactly as it is. From the second seedling, cut off one leaf. From the third, cut off both leaves. Continue to take care of your plants and you will discover something interesting. The seedling from which you cut off both leaves will be very small. The seedling with one leaf cut off will be a little larger. The seedling you did not touch will be the largest and healthiest. From this experiment you can gather that the cotyledons are storehouses for the young plant and should fall off only when the plant is strong enough to get nourishment by itself. Losing first leaves too soon hampers a plant’s growth. I hope you enjoy your seeds and seedlings this spring! Do your homework on best growing practices for your region, and don’t forget to have fun with the kids along the way. There are so many life lessons and spiritual truths to be learned from planting a garden. Related post: Gardening With Children
Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, education, family, gardening, outdoor activities, planting, plants, plant experiments, seedlings, vegetable garden, science Reflections on the ResurrectionPosted April 10th, 2009 by Jen in features, holidays, religion7 Comments » I helped my 9 year old son plant part of his garden today (indoors in little planters until the last frost). He carefully dropped seeds into the fresh, rich soil– carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, watermelon, radishes, pumpkin, sunflowers, corn, peas, and a few others. Wow, we’ll see how it all does in this tough growing climate. But, I was thinking about that little seed the whole time. AMAZING, that tiny seed that is SO powerful that it can be life giving and fruit producing. What a fantastic representation of the RESURRECTION power of Jesus Christ. It looks like this dead, dry little ball, and yet with the aid of some water, sunshine, and good earth, has the force to manufacture this product which can sustain a human being with its harvest! I just can’t get over how mind-blowing that is! How can something bigger than itself be brought forth out of dirt? How can something come from nothing? When this son of mine was in-utero, God led me to a certain passage which I read over him almost daily. It was Ephesians Chapter 1. Recently, I heard a sermon on this scripture, and as I realized that I knew it so well that I could almost predict what the pastor would say next, I recalled this season of prayer and intercession over my firstborn.
I’m sitting here marveling at how God in His wisdom and foresight brings all things together in His time. I have this swirl of thoughts and memories…visiting OMSI at ten weeks into my pregnancy and seeing the developing baby exhibit, realizing for the first time the fullness of life that was inside me. Attending an outdoor sunrise Easter service when I was about 10 years old, shivering on a hard chair with childlike wonder at the thought of the risen Christ, somehow symbolized in the sun rising over the Arizona mountains in all its brilliant colors. Wondering at how little seedlings poking up through a sidewalk could have had enough power to crack the concrete. All of these reflections are tied to the power, the potency of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Did you catch the promise in Ephesians chapter 1? The Resurrection power of Jesus Christ is available for those who believe!! Do you understand the kind of power it takes to raise someone from the dead?? It is power over sin and death. Power over every fear, sickness, unbelief, bad habit, and inherited disease. This assurance brings hope beyond belief. I hope you have a transforming Resurrection Sunday~many blessings to you! Jen @ diaryof1.com Technorati Tags: Christianity, faith, family, God, Ephesians 1, Easter, Resurrection Sunday, planting, gardening Finding My Inner AmishPosted April 6th, 2009 by Jen in family life, features, religion10 Comments » This was a scheduled post to fit into my April theme~a magical, simple, and refreshing time of renewal. The dream began a few weeks ago with the gift of an Amish friendship bread starter. You take care of the dough starter for about ten days, then split it into four new starters (three to give away, one to keep) and bake a batch of the sweet bread for yourself. This enchanting, pastoral scene led to an all day baking session with a friend to stock up on meals and fill our freezers for those days when company is coming or time is scarce. We even wore cute aprons. I became delusional that I was born for baking and meal planning and living, well, sort of like the Amish. Simple, slow, homemaking and picking daisies. (Excuse me while I go pull a frozen pizza out of the oven.) However, at this moment, I’m finding that I have no inner Amish and it would be all but deceitful to write such a post. I’ve had a rough few days and maybe rougher ones ahead. My house is a disaster with clothes, toys, and random items strewn helter-skelter like a really bad hair day. I feel far from the peaceful Amish that I picture in my mind’s eye. I passionately miss my husband, who’s working out of town, my live-in mother is convinced the house will burn down just because a bad battery sent every alarm screaming through the night, and the dog has worms (the cat is suspect as well). I have parent-teacher conferences in two and a half days and a performance evaluation in one. And I can’t even come up with three more friends to give the next batches of Amish friendship bread starters to. If you find my inner Amish, you can send it packing to Pennsylvania, because it would not be at home here. I’m so glad that next week I get to celebrate the Resurrection, and, as you can see in my sidebar excerpt, I’m hoping for the power of the living Christ to be at work in me. I NEED it to be, and I hope (I know) that the resurrected Christ is more meaningful than my Amish fantasy. Technorati Tags: Amish friendship bread, simplicity Expressive Social StudiesPosted March 25th, 2009 by Jen in education, features8 Comments » Oh boy, I’ll have to make this a quick post, but I hope to come back to this subject another time when I can deal with it more in depth. For now, here’s a short list of some methods I’ve had great success with in regards to bringing some life to the history and social studies lessons. I vary the method I use to add interest, and only do one of these at a time. 1. Act it out. As I read aloud the lesson from our textbook, I have my students stand at their desk and create motions to go along with the words. If we are studying about Alexander the Great crossing a vast desert on his way to conquer another nation, I’ve seen students galloping on their horses, brandishing swords, or taking a victory stance. A word of caution–if you don’t want this to get too out of hand, let your students know ahead of time what the boundaries are. After dealing with kids racing around the room, falling to the floor with gasps and spasms as they “die,” and engaging in hand-to-hand combat, I had to make some rules! Extra points went to groups who acted silently (so as to hear the teacher), stayed behind their desks, and if they must die, they do so with a minimum of fanfare. Just sayin’. 2. Group skits. This is a modification of number 1 above. Instead of each student acting individually, I assign sections of the text to groups of 3-4 students (about 1-2 pages per group) and give them 15-20 minutes to come up with a skit to represent their section. This is not meant to be an extended project, and must be accomplished within that timeframe. Each group has up to five minutes to present their skit, so with about five groups of students, this fills the social studies period. Twenty minutes to read their section and prepare the skit, plus 25 minutes of group presentations - 45 minutes. Much more fun than just reading and filling out a worksheet. And truly, the retention is miles beyond the traditional approach. A note on the skits–visit with each group as they are preparing, and point out the main ideas that should make it into their skit. They will need some guidance o this, especially if they are new to this activity. Names of characters should be stated, location and date should be made known. As your students become familiar with what you require, the quality of their skits really improves. 3. Poetry. From prose to poetry is the goal here. When we go the poetry route, we read the chapter aloud, then I offer a poem starter to get the kids in the right frame of mind. I’ve been requiring just six lines of poetry for now, because this is a more difficult one for my kids. As they become more comfortable with this method, I would expect my students to write eight lines for every page of the lesson. Let’s try a quick lesson here. Go the the Alexander the Great wikipedia page and read the intro. Write six lines of poetry. Here’s my poem, done in less than five minutes.
It’s amazing how much you have to examine the words and think about synonyms to turn prose into poetry. I think this is a method I will continue to explore! 4. Jeopardy! Who doesn’t love a good game? We read the lesson aloud to get the big picture. Then break into groups of three or four students each. Each student must write at least three Jeopardy questions, which are then submitted to me to choose from. Sometimes, to get good coverage, I will assign groups the pages their questions must come from. I also typically have them label their questions Easy, Medium, or Difficult. On the whiteboard, I draw a modified Jeopardy game board, with group names and points. We play a simplified version of the TV game show. Some other ideas for teachers to explore…reader’s theatre, songs, puppet shows. The bottom line for me is this: how can I engage my students in a subject that is typically called “boring” by a huge number of young people? I know how critical it is to know our history - how else can we know ourselves? History is anything but boring! If you have some great ideas for spicing up the social studies, let me know. And do you have an Alexander the Great poem for me? Technorati Tags: education, history lesson ideas, creative social studies, teaching Inspired Book Reports: Lapbooking Where the Red Fern GrowsPosted March 17th, 2009 by Jen in book reviews, education, features11 Comments » A fun, creative way to do book reports–it’s called a lapbook, or a folder full of mini-books to organize the main ideas and story elements of literature. The lapbook can be the whole book report for younger to middle ages, or a tool for gathering information as the student reads before he writes a formal report for upper grades. I’d like to show you an example of a lapbook for Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. I created this for my 6th grade students, and they are loving it. What I like most about the lapbook is the myriad of options available–all sizes, colors, shapes, and topics, all to be worked out according to the book and limited only by your imagination. As a logistical note, I chose to make the entire lapbook right upfront, rather than make one mini book at a time, because with the way I set this up, the students are adding a bit to almost every mini book each day. You’ll need to gather two manila folders per child as well as the pre-printed templates which I’ll reference below (just follow the links). I would set aside two class sessions of 30-45 minutes each to set up the entire lapbook. Start with a letter size manila folder. Open it up, and fold each flap into the middle and crease. And because I wanted an extra pocket in the back, I taped up the sides of a second manila folder and glued it to the back of the first folder. Here is what the lapbook looks like from the front:
I picked three main characters from Where the Red Fern Grows - Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann, and as we read the book together in class, I prompt the students to stop and make notes on 3×5 notecards when they learn something new or important about each character. The 3×5 notecard must be folded in half or cut to fit into this pocket. Here are examples of student entries on their character cards:
Here is the link to the template for the pockets. Open up the lapbook and you’ll discover a treasure of little books:
I’ll start on the left inside flap. There is an Author mini-book, called a rectangle petal book. On the four outside flaps I wrote the words birth, early childhood, writing, and my one regret. Under each of these flaps, the students are to write a sentence or two about Wilson Rawls on that subject. I handed out this study guide for Where the Red Fern Grows which includes information for several of the mini-books, including this author mini-book. By the way, Wilson Rawls’ one regret was that his father died before Wilson could show him a copy of his book. Under the author book is “the Ozarks” mini-book (the hexagon mini simple fold book), which in a traditional book report would be the setting. In this little space, the students will share details such as how the Ozarks are a highland region, and in Where the Red Fern Grows, the part of the Ozarks described is in the northeastern section of Oklahoma. Thick forests of oak, hickory, pine, and maple, caves, mountain streams, and abundant wildlife should all be mentioned. The wheel book under the Ozarks book is for Sequence of Events. It is divided into eight sections, and meant for students to think hard about boiling down the main events of the book into just a few steps. For example, the first event listed could be The adult Billy has a flashback to his childhood after rescuing a redbone hound. The second event could be Billy works hard for two years and earns money to buy his hounds. Right away you probably noticed the bright, multi-colored layered book called Chapter Summaries. We made these out of colored construction paper following these easy instructions. This is where the students record a few concise sentences about each chapter as they go, touching on the main action, thus creating an entire summary of the book by the time they have completed the last chapter. I cut off a smaller section of the original layered book and used it for the skinnier multi-colored layered book to the right called Fave Quotes and Phrases. I encouraged my students to be on the lookout for figurative, expressive language, for which Wilson Rawls is famous, fun plays on words, or thought-provoking quotes. Examples that made it into some student’s lapbook are:
Under the chapter summaries is a Daily Journal, made using the same method as the chapter summary mini-book, except with plain paper. I typically give a writing prompt for this exercise, and here is an example of the prompt I wrote for Ch. 9:
The Book Report mini-book in the center of the lapbook is the most simple of them all. It’s a basic flap-book, and here is what’s under the cover - a place to record the nuts and bolts of the book: title, author, illustrator, publication date, setting, main character, and what I thought of the book. Directly under the Book Report mini-book are two index card accordion books (very easy!). It’s hard to make out the writing, but they say Vocabulary Words. Listed here are words from each chapter the students may not be familiar with and should know. As you pull open the index card, there is a place for the student to write the words I’ve assigned, as well as their own personal list. Here is the word list from chapters 1-7 as an example: allot v. to parcel out A lapbook on Where the Red Fern Grows would not be complete without a mini-book on the coon! At the top right of the inside of the lapbook folder you’ll see the Raccoon flip-flap book. As you lift the cover of this mini-book, you’ll find three flaps to label, and under each flap the kids will write a description. For the coon book, the three labels I chose were Description, Behavior, and Eating Habits. Another pocket is under the Raccoon book, labeled Spiritual Truths. Where the Red Fern Grows is chock full of biblical and moral truths and opportunities for spiritual growth. For example, after reading chapter 3 and learning how persistently Billy works for two years to earn the money for his hounds, students could write Proverbs 14:23 on an index card: In hard work there is always something gained, but idle talk leads only to poverty. The final mini-book I’ve included in the lapbook for Where the Red Fern Grows is a must–a redbone coon hound book, and I chose the template of a T-book. Inside the flaps of this book are a square in the center for a picture of a redbone coon hound, and three other flaps for information about the breed. The study guide I mentioned earlier has a nice section on the redbone hound. A word on attaching the mini-books to the base folder: Students either glued them down or stapled them. What happens if a student fills her journal and needs more room? She would pull off the mini-book, place it in the folder which is glued to the back of the lapbook, and make a new journal to affix into the lapbook. If you think you have wordy kids on your hands who will fill up their little books, think about attaching the mini-books with velcro for easy removal. The folder is also the depository where the student will empty out her pockets when they are full (the character cards and spiritual truth cards) to make room for more. How does the teacher grade a lapbook? I periodically check on each student, walking about the room and inspecting a bit of each student’s book every day we use it, to ensure they are keeping on top of it. I also invite volunteers to share what they have written, which they enjoy tremendously. When we are finished with Where the Red Fern Grows, I will collect each student’s lapbook and grade each mini-book on a simple scale, giving an overall grade of up to 100%. The breakdown of points is as follows: All mini-books except the Chapter Summaries and Daily Journal receive up to 5 points each, and the Chapter Summaries and Daily Journal receive up to 20 points each. That’s about it! I hope you were able to follow this lengthy description of a lapbook, and if you have any questions or ideas for improvements, please let me know. Where the Red Fern Grows is a fabulous book for a project like this, and is a book that should not be missed, whether you lapbook it or not.
Technorati Tags: book reports, education, lapbooks, literary log, mini books, Where the Red Fern Grows The Masters and the ClassicsPosted March 8th, 2009 by Jen in arts & crafts, education, features12 Comments » “Get your journals ready,” I tell my 6th grade students every morning. From 8:00 to 8:10 a.m. most school days, I have a short piece of classical music on queue in the CD player, along with a work of art from one of the masters displayed on the music stand at the front on the classroom. I feel that this beginning part of our day is perhaps the most important thing I do. I had to work hard to squeeze it in, because if you work for a school, you know that your schedule is very tight with all the other subject requirements and content you are obliged to cover in a given year. But the beauty this brings to my classroom is worth every bit of effort. Music feeds the soul, and art, well, a good long look at a masterpiece could be the equivalent of reading a 300 page classic novel. I have to make clear that this 10-15 minute art/music journal time is meant to be a broad overview to simply expose kids to the greatest works of art and music of all time. I figure that by the end of the school year, they will have been introduced to more masterpieces than most adults ever will be familiar with. On the whiteboard, there is a section on the left side reserved for the daily journal questions. In bold letters I write “Look” with little eyeballs in the o’s, followed by the title of the painting and the journal question. Below this I draw an ear icon next to the word “Listen,” along with the title of the musical piece and a query. Writing prompts help them to get started and stir up ideas. Here are a few examples of how it works: Day 1: LOOK: The Dancing Couple, by Jan Steen, 1663. Journal Question: Jan Steen loved to paint life “as it is,” and used painting as storytelling. What details of this painting tell you that Steen captured daily life with all its messiness? (My students noticed broken eggshells strewn on the floor, a stray spoon, turned over containers, and a general chaotic, merry feeling.) LISTEN: Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080, by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), from Classical Kids, Mr. Bach Comes to Call. Journal Question: A fugue is when you have have more than one musical line going on at once, and they all use the same theme. It’s called imitative counterpoint. Bach is the prime example of the fugue. Can you hear the themes? (I will generally have the kids write in their own words what a fugue is for this journal entry, otherwise it would simply be a yes or no answer.) ***** Notice that the above painter and musician come from generally the same time period. I like pairing them like this. Even better is pairing the artist and the musician from the same country and time period, and aligning this with your history curriculum. Day 2: LOOK: Red Boats in Argenteuil, by Claude Monet, 1875 Journal Question: Pure black is rarely used by the impressionist painters. Monet would instead combine several colors to achieve the appearance of black: blues, greens and reds. What color are the shadows in this painting?
Journal Question: Write down each character and the musical instrument that corresponds to it. Which is your favorite? ***** One of my proudest moments came earlier this year, just after the Super Bowl, actually. During the Super Bowl, a cute Coke commercial was aired, the one with the insects in a meadow who steal away with the sleeping guy’s Coca Cola. The entire commercial is set to just one sound, with no voices: the music from Peter and the Wolf. It was Peter’s theme, the most recognized piece of the composition. That Monday, I asked my kids if any of them watched the Super Bowl and noticed the Coke commercial. A few of them made me jump for joy - Yes! they chimed in–it was Peter and the Wolf! A few parents even noted to me how surprised they were when their children recognized the tune. This small incident highlighted for me why I do what I do. Now, I’d like to share some resources that make this art/music series possible and mostly FREE. I don’t have a written program I follow at this point, but I hope to develop one to make this much easier for teachers to replicate, along with journal questions for each piece. For now, I gather materials as I go, and decide about a week ahead of time what to present, trying to align this with our history/social studies units. Here’s a short list to get you started. 1. National Gallery of Art. Most folks are unaware that the National Gallery of Art has a free lending program. This has been invaluable to me! So far, almost all of my art, with the exception of some books I own, has come from this fabulous program. Most teaching packets come with a teachers guide, a CD of images, slides, and large color study prints. I sign up online for the programs I want, NGA ships them right to me at no cost, and I’m responsible only for the cost of returning them media mail. Can’t beat this. If you don’t have a slide projector, look for one. Or just use the large prints. If you are fortunate enough to have a projector for your computer, you certainly have an easy job! Some of my favorite teaching packets so far have been: Painting in the Dutch Golden Age 2. Your local public library. This has been the source of nearly all my classical music for kids. If you have a collection built up already, you’re in luck. The most difficult part of the music for me was coming up with journal questions. I loved the classical kids CDs that incorporated a story with the music, because this made the journaling so much easier for the kids. This way, my questions can also be about details from the composer’s life, which are typically included in these CDs, or questions about the storyline if it’s an opera or ballet. Here are my favorites: Famous Composers, written by Darren Henley, read by Marin Alsop.
More Famous Composers, written by Darren Henley, read by Marin Alsop.
Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev, by Stephen Simon and narrated by Yadu.
The Story of Swan Lake, by Tchaikovsky, from Maestro Classics.
I hope you’ve been encouraged today to devote some teaching time to the classics of art and music. Just a few minutes a day, with consistency, will achieve more than you can imagine. Some of you may have some other great resources to add to my short list - if so, let me know about them! Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education. Plato The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle
Technorati Tags: art education, music education, classical music, the master painters, journaling John Sanford: retired Cornell professor shows up DarwinismPosted February 24th, 2009 by Jen in book reviews, features, religion, science11 Comments » Dr. John Sanford, retired professor from Cornell University, has done brilliant work in the field of genetics. His research and studies have led him to refute “The Primary Axiom” upon which modern Darwinism is built. The Primary Axiom is that man is just the result of random mutations and natural selection.
Dr. Sanford begins his book with this Prologue:
This reminds me of the battle of wits about the poison in The Princess Bride. If Darwinian evolution is true, life is meaningless and therefore the doctrine itself is meaningless. If it’s false, it’s more than meaningless, it’s been a catastrophic blow to the sanctity of human life.
Sanford ends the Prologue with a grave remark about the consequences of our thinking.
Exactly how Dr. Sanford unravels the mystery of the human genome, the “book of life,” I will leave for the author to reveal to you. As I said, the book is readable for a lay person, but the complexity of biological and genetic information that is built up chapter upon chapter is too much for this space. Sanford covers topics such as how mutations consistently destroy information, how selection capabilities are very limited, and how mutation/selection cannot realistically create a single gene. There is a helpful glossary of terms in the back of the book. And most importantly, Dr. Sanford ends with a personal postlude giving an answer to replace a false axiom - Jesus Christ, our only hope. Technorati Tags: Intelligent Design, creation, evolution, faith, Genetic Entropy, John Sanford, human genome, The Princess Bride Benjamin Carson: star neurosurgeon sees God in sciencePosted February 8th, 2009 by Jen in education, features, religion, science15 Comments »
Dr. Benjamin Carson is one of the world’s best neurosurgeons. He made history in 1987 when he accomplished what every neurosurgeon before him had failed to do: he successfully separated Siamese twins who were joined at the back of the head. Many other “firsts” followed this, and Dr. Carson continues to blaze a trail in the field of pediatric neurosurgery. He is currently a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and he has been chief of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for nearly a quarter of a century.
Dr. Carson has been a leader in scientific research his entire career. He has over 120 major scientific publications in peer reviewed journals, almost 40 books and book chapters, and grant awards of about one million dollars. With his clear intelligence in the fields of medicine and science, I think his opinion on the origin of life deserves to be heard. Does evolutionary theory have any direct bearing on his daily work as a neurosurgeon? Only philosophically, I would say, but can you tell me one field of science where evolutionary theory actually makes a tangible, measurable difference in how that scientist works and contributes to society? It merely plays out in a theoretical or metaphysical or political way. A lot of people believe in evolution because most scientists do (or at least it’s the common perception that most scientists do). I don’t know the statistics, but I suspect the number of scientists who do not believe in evolution is large and growing. I am not speaking of microevolution, but the general theory of Darwin that all life originated and evolved by gradual and chance advantageous mutations - which is entirely void of factual support. Back to Benjamin Carson–I’m more than pleased to know that this distinguished man speaks openly and honestly about his faith in God and belief in a Creator and Designer. He looks to the facts and wonders at Darwin’s own assertion that within fifty to 100 years of his lifetime fossil remains would be found of the entire evolutionary tree, displaying an indisputable step-by-step evolution of life from amoeba to human. As Carson points out, this does not exist:
Dr. Carson is certainly a risk-taker in more ways than one. In fact, his latest best-selling book is called Take the Risk. In his surgical field, he continually pushes forward with innovation and new techniques. For example, with hemispherectomies (removal of half of the brain to prevent untreatable severe seizures), he significantly increased the safety of the procedure by coming up with better ways of controlling bleeding and infection, as well as developing a system of incrementally removing specific brain parts. In his willingness to explain his creation views, he is also a risk taker. He addressed the National Science Teachers convention in Philadelphia and the very prestigious Academy of Achievement, which includes many Nobel scientists. Dr. Carson’s basic message was that “evolution and creationism both require faith. It’s just a matter of where you choose to place that faith.” If you’d like to find out more about Benjamin Carson, there are some fantastic resources available. Just this past Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009, TNT aired Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. Superbly played by Cuba Gooding, you will be inspired to learn of Carson’s upbringing in extreme poverty in Detroit, raised by a single mother with a third grade education. Ben Carson’s story is also told in his autobiography, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. Visit the Carson Scholars Fund for information on Benjamin Carson’s education initiatives and scholarships. Resources:
Technorati Tags: Benjamin Carson, Christianity, creation, evolution, faith, neurosurgeon, science Zakaria Botros, unafraid to defy IslamPosted January 25th, 2009 by Jen in features, persecuted church, politics/world news, religion7 Comments »
However, mass conversions to Christianity as a result of his ministry are the reason for the label. About six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, and an Islamic cleric admitted on al-Jazeera TV not too long ago that many of these conversions are attributed to Botros’ public ministry. What is his secret, and how has he survived? I believe his greatest asset is his command of classic Arabic and his TV show broadcast in Arabic into the heart of Muslim territory. Born in Egypt, Botros has been hosting Truth Talk since 2003, a weekly 90 minute show where he expertly exposes the inherent contradictions of Islam. Because Zakaria Botros knows Arabic and has read all of the teachings of Muhammed, the Quran, and countless other Muslim books, he is in an unusually strategic position to counter the inconsistencies of Islam with Islam itself, not just the Bible or Christian teaching. Botros is ultimately interested in saving souls, but is aware that a traditional evangelical approach will not work. He explained this recently:
One example of how Botros will expose Islam with his polemic, debating style, was his lengthy exposure of a certain embarrassing aspect of Islamic law, which Islamic authorities are unable to rebut:
Another telling illustration of how Zakaria Botros forces Muslims to examine the roots of their faith is this:
Whether Zakaria Botros is confronting universal jihad or the inferiority of women, he is always careful to painstakingly cover all the sources, quoting the original Islamic texts and inviting a response from the ulema, the expert Muslim theologians who articulate sharia law. Al-dalil we al-burhan, evidence and proof, is what he demands. You may wonder how Zakaria Botros is still alive. You must know that any one of his statements would bring death if he were to be roaming the streets preaching in any Islamic town. He’s been jailed twice for preaching the gospel to Muslims, and was sentenced to life in prison. Miraculously, the judge instead released him on the condition that he be forced into exile - Botros had to leave Egypt for good. After having ministered in Cairo for over 30 years, Botros moved to England. Since then, he “retired” into his airwave ministry. It seems the threats are just beginning. Botros is sure he’d be dead were it not for broadcasting from an undisclosed location. Jihadist groups have posted death threats worth up to a reported $60 million for his head. Zakaria Botros knows the seriousness of this. Growing up as a child in Alexandria, Egypt, Muslim attackers killed his young teenage brother. His response:
Botros does more than defy Islam. He offers an alternative, the truth of Christianity, and he consistently opens and closes his show with an invitation to his viewers to come to Christ. With the growing worldwide hostility to anyone who speaks out against Islam (for example, the Dutch lawmaker currently facing prosecution for anti-Islamic statements), Botros is truly fearless. “Fear? I fear nothing,” says Botros. “My dictionary does not contain the word fear. I believe in God and I believe that the epistle of Ephesians says we are created in Jesus Christ for a plan, which was engaged from the early beginning. No one can cut it, and when it is completed no one can continue it.” photo: World Magazine
Technorati Tags: Christianity, Islam, Zakaria Botros, Muslim, evangelizing Muslims Berthe Fraser, from Housewife to French Resistance HeroPosted January 18th, 2009 by Jen in features, france/french, germany, persecuted church, politics/world news11 Comments » In Nazi occupied France during the dark days of WWII, there was a group of valiant and daring individuals known as the French Resistance. They dared to defy the vice-grip of Nazi Germany (as well as the French collaborators) using stealth, reconnaissance, infiltration, and whatever means necessary to save their beloved country and fellow man from destruction. Most of these brave souls were subject to betrayal, unspeakable torture, or death. One of these members of the French Resistance appeared to be an ordinary housewife, but Berthe Fraser was anything but ordinary. Berthe Fraser was among hundreds of people who rose to the treacherous task of defending France. Be they a housewife, a mother, a Catholic, a Jew, a communist, an artist, or a politician, these resistance fighters came from all layers of society, both male and female, young and old, and without their heroic acts, Hitler’s march through France may not have been halted. The French Resistance took many forms, from groups of armed guerilla bands who escaped to the mountains, known as the Maquis, to organizers of escape networks for Jews and other targets of the Nazis, to publishers of underground newspapers, to those who carried out sabotage operations, to couriers who carried coded messages back and forth between Allied members. Mrs. Fraser’s story begins with her birth in 1894 as Berthe Emilie Vicogne. She married an Englishman and thus became a British subject. When the rumblings of WWII hit France, Berthe Fraser was going about her domestic life in her hometown of Arras, France, all the while organizing an underground network that saved the lives of countless English agents and pilots. Her husband reported later to an English newspaper:
Twice betrayed but never broken, Berthe Fraser was an unshakable woman for whom I have the utmost awe and respect. I can relate to where she was in life; a woman in her 40s, tending to her home. I don’t know if she had any children, but as a woman, I feel the risks of undertaking the work of the Resistance were doubly perilous. I wish there was more information available about this woman. I know she suffered extreme torture during her second capture, and this trauma surely accounts for the lack of details. Who wants to recall the horror? I can find no record of a public interview. I discovered in the back matter of the book SOE in France by M.R.D. Foot, that Berthe Fraser died in 1956, her health never restored. In 1941, someone betrayed Berthe, and she was arrested by the Gestapo. She spent 15 months in a Belgian prison, and was released in December 1942. Did this imprisonment deter her? No. Berthe immediately jumped back into the work of fighting Hitler’s campaign of death and terror.
From the Charlotte Gray website, an excellent Warner Bros. movie about a Scottish woman living in England, parachuted into France by the British Government (SOE) to support the French Resistance. Berthe was betrayed again in 1944, unbelievably by one of the very English agents whose life she saved. She spent six months in solitary confinement at Loos where she was tortured every day. She was stripped and flogged in front of Nazi troops and condemned to death. Never did she betray her friends in the Resistance or the English army. How many lives she saved through her own afflictions will never be known. When the Allies stormed the prison on September 1, 1944, Berthe Fraser was just hanging onto life, and she is reported to have said, “Thank you boys, you are just in time.”
Sisters in Resistance, a documentary film by Independent Lens.
Charlotte Gray, a Warner Bros. film.
For Freedom, a novel by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. An excellent young adult book for grades 6-12.
Outwitting the Gestapo, a memoir by Lucie Aubrac.
Sisters in the Resistance by Margaret Collins Weitz.
Code Name Christiane Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance by Claire Chevrillon.
An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia D’Albert-Lake by Virginia D’Albert-Lake.
Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany by Marthe Cohn.
Carve Her Name With Pride by RJ Minney. Also on film.
A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm.
Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France by Rita Kramer.
Technorati Tags: Berthe Fraser, French Resistance, France, Nazi Germany, Hitler, women in history Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: literary giant, light of truthPosted January 13th, 2009 by Jen in features, politics/world news, religion6 Comments »
Just over five months ago, the Russian novelist and historian, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008), died in his homeland. What a loss to the world, this giant of the twentieth century who wrote from a Christian worldview to change the world. Through the writings of Solzhenitsyn, the West became acquainted with the Gulag, the forced labor camps of the Soviet Union, in which he served an eight-year term for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter to a friend. Solzhenitsyn’s experiences in the labor camps formed the basis of his groundbreaking novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. His masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, came about a decade later, a scorching detail of four decades of Soviet terror and oppression. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. At the end of Solzhenitsyn’s term in the labor camps, he was sent to internal exile in Kazakhstan, a common fate of political prisoners. During his imprisonment and exile, Solzhenitsyn turned deeply philosophical and spiritual and threw off the Marxism of his former days as a Red Army captain. His story sort of parallels that of Dostoevsky, who also spent time in exile in Siberia and had a quest for faith a hundred years before Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was finally freed from exile in 1956 under the Khrushchev regime, and spent his time teaching and writing. However, after the ousting of Khrushchev in 1964, things took a turn for the worse once again. The KGB began seizing his manuscripts, and by 1974, Solzhenitsyn lived in exile once again. Once the KGB found the manuscripts for the first part of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, deported, and stripped of his Soviet citizenship. He found refuge in Germany, then Switzerland, and finally, the United States, where he ended up spending almost two decades.
The entire text of this speech is brilliant and prophetic for 2009, and I do hope you take the time to read it. This portion of that Harvard address, in which Solzhenitsyn speaks of courage, or the lack thereof, is especially insightful:
One who has seen the depths of evil and is a person of any courage must tell the truth of the matter, as Solzhenitsyn has done time after time. From various writings and interviews I’ve come across, Solzhenitsyn is best characterized by Truth–he is compelled to reveal it. Being the remarkable, profound writer that he was, his words cannot be paraphrased by anything I could attempt to cobble together, so here are some more choice morsels from his pen:
Issues in Solzhenitsyn’s writings revolve around matters of conscience. He writes of God, justice, how people should live rightly in a corrupt nation, how the state has taken the place of the church, and always, truth. Technorati Tags: Russia, Christianity, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Truth, Stalin, The Gulag, faith, Soviet Union Helen Suzman, voice of freedom for South AfricaPosted January 4th, 2009 by Jen in features, politics/world news4 Comments »
Suzman served in the South African parliament from 1953 to 1989, and fought a long, brave battle against government oppression of the country’s black majority. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and was one of the few white lawmakers to fight against the injustices of racially discriminatory regulations and ways of life. For 13 of her years in parliament, Helen Suzman was the only lawmaker opposing the endless racist legislation introduced by the National Party government. She was called a “vicious little cat” by former South African President P.W. Botha and “An enemy of the state” by Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe - titles she wore a bit proudly in her maverick way. Her story reminds me of another member of parliament in another country in another era. Just last week I watched the moving Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), an evangelical Christian who was a member of the English Parliament. For 18 years, Wilberforce regularly introduced anti-slavery motions in parliament, and was also a lonely voice who fought on despite enormous odds. Wilberforce eventually passed a motion to end the slave trade in Britain, and in due course, an end to slavery itself in the British empire. I first learned of South Africa’s practice of apartheid (social and political policy of racial segregation enforced by law) during high school. I read Alan Paton’s deeply moving novel Cry the Beloved Country for an AP English class, the greatest piece of literature to emerge out of South Africa. As a teenager, this was the most profound book I had ever read, and even now, over 20 years later, I still have not read a more penetrating, insightful, or beautiful novel. Paton tells the story of a Zulu pastor searching a corrupt city for his son Absalom, and their lives intersect with a white landowner and his own son in a most tragic way, highlighting the racial divide of South Africa. The movie version of Cry the Beloved Country is also outstanding, with a brilliant performance by James Earl Jones as Rev. Kumalo. What Alan Paton did for raising popular awareness of the plight of black South Africans through poetic prose, Helen Suzman did through tireless work in parliament. Back in 1967, Suzman visited Nelson Mandela in prison on Robben Island, where he served 18 of his 27 years in prison for anti-apartheid activity. Nelson later recalled of Helen Suzman:
Helen Suzman’s tireless crusading for the cause of the repressed black South Africans paid off, and apartheid began to be dismantled from 1990-1993, and Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Suzman was at Nelson Mandela’s side in 1996 when he signed South Africa’s new constitution. Mandela later awarded her with his country’s highest public honor in recognition of her years of campaigning on behalf of freedom for all South Africans. Sunday, January 4, 2009 was the funeral for Helen Suzman in Johannesburg’s West Park cemetery’s Jewish section. Hundreds of mourners gathered to honor this courageous woman who fearlessly battled against apartheid. I hope you have been encouraged by the story of Helen Suzman, and inspired to be a courageous truth-seeker in your own world. The Magic WindowPosted December 15th, 2008 by Jen in family life, features, holidays11 Comments » The blacktop road swirled in wisps of powdery snow as I drove home this mid-December evening. The biting chill of the arctic wind was numbing, but not piercing enough to cut off the beauty of the glacial billows hovering above the road, suspended for a moment in a wintry waltz. I was immediately transported back to a long-ago Christmas, the Christmas of the Magic Window. It’s one of just a few childhood gifts I remember. This simple, hard plastic paned oval window encased blue and white sands that would swirl in amazing designs with just a turn of the hand, the colors never mixing, an ever-changing landscape of ocean waves, sand dunes, mountains, clouds.
The Magic Window is now considered a “vintage 70s toy” and I pondered how the simplicity of this object kept me mesmerized for hours in childhood wonder, and how the Magic Window earned such an esteemed place in my memory. What was so magical about this double-paned case of shifting sand? For a little girl in a rather impoverished and remote desert region of the southwest, I could dream, carried away to nowhere in particular but someplace beautiful on every twist and flow of those magical grains. I longed to touch the sand that surely was silky smooth and would flow through my fingers like fairy dust. Thirty years later, as I drove home enshrouded in the real-life Magic Window that was the road before me, I realized I was in someplace beautiful, the ever-changing landscape of my life cresting in new loveliness upon loveliness. Here a drop, there a rise, but always an intelligent design. I wonder, do you hold a special Christmas gift or childhood toy in your memory? Technorati Tags: Magic Window, childhood memories, Christmas gift, Christmas Christmas Music: Annie Moses Band!Posted December 6th, 2008 by Jen in education, family life, features, holidays, music, religion3 Comments » Do you have a favorite Christmas song or album? I discovered my latest rave last Christmas, as I heard a completely unique rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” come over the airwaves.See what I mean? I’m talking an amazing mix of contemporary Christian with classical strings that is now called “chamber pop,” delivered up with the voice of an angel, and to top it off, this is a family band. I love family bands, and this one, the Annie Moses Band, goes well beyond what you might see at the county fair. About the Annie Moses Band: First, this is a family outfit, whose members include parents Bill (composer/arranger/pianist) and Robin (lyricist/vocalist) Wolaver and their children: Annie, Alex, Benjamin, Gretchen, Camille, and Jeremiah, in ages ranging from twenty-four down to ten.
Their music is fused with jazz, bluegrass, classical, celtic, country, and pop sounds, and is hard to define, but overall, there is a message of hope and love through Jesus Christ. Their latest Christmas album, This Glorious Christmas, was just released in October, and includes God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and other classics, as well as another of my new favorites, the soulful Bethlehem House of Bread. The lead singer, Annie Wolaver, is named after her great-grandmother, Annie Moses. Annie shared about her namesake:
What an inspiring story! I am addicted to their sound, stirred by their spirit. The Annie Moses Band cares deeply about the next generation, and hosts a Fine Arts Summer Academy where students can play with the band and other teachers and mentors.
If you’re in the Nashville, Tennessee area, and would like some fun, challenging music training for your young one, ages 4 through college-age, don’t miss this! Mark your calendars for July 10-25, 2009. I’m on the other side of the country in Oregon, and this isn’t an option for me. However, I have friends here in Central Oregon who attend a similar, smaller-scale, music camp with another amazingly talented local family, so check out the Booher Family Music Camp held in Sisters, Oregon. So, tell me, what music is awakening your soul this Christmas season? Had you ever heard of the Annie Moses Band before? Technorati Tags: Booher Family Music Camp, Bethehem House of Bread, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Christmas music, music, music education, Annie Moses Band My Star of BethlehemPosted December 2nd, 2008 by Jen in features, religion, science12 Comments »
I felt like a modern-day shepherd, or maybe a wiseman, as I drove home last night, the brilliance of the convergence of Venus and Jupiter juxtaposed next to the crescent moon causing me to breathe deeply at the magnificent sight. What a perfect and fitting way to herald in the holy season as we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. My children noticed, I noticed, people around the world noticed this awesome spectacle in the night sky. Did you see it? Look tonight…it won’t be nearly as perfect as last night, but it will be there. Before You GoPosted November 11th, 2008 by Jen in features, holidays, politics/world news7 Comments » Before You Go, a Tribute to our aging veterans. For my Grandpa T., who served in WWI, and Uncle Doug who served in the Korean War. Do you have friends or family members who have served in wars to protect our country and our national and individual freedoms? If so, be sure to thank them today. Perhaps a phone call, a letter, a small gift to convey your gratitude. From our local Veteran’s Day Parade:
From my blog post from Veterans Day last year: I remembered an old poem my mom wrote, and rummaged around this morning and thankfully found it. Her father was a WWI veteran. He spent the last decade of his life confined to a wheelchair, the result of mustard gas from the war. My grandpa died before I had the chance to meet him. But, thanks, Grandpa. ODE TO VETERANS Have you survived the overflowing banks Then I salute you, veteran of earth’s day. Also, you may want to look at my post on the Veterans History Project; here is an excerpt:
America, please honor your veterans. Remember. Give thanks. Understand that the freedoms we hold dear were paid for, and the price was very high. Oops, sorry about the mess up there!Posted November 1st, 2008 by Jen in blog stuff, features20 Comments » Give me a few days and I’ll have the mess up there on my header fixed. I just need my tech guy (husband) to finish the hunting season and then we’ll clean it up. I’m looking forward to a Saturday of catching up around the house. It’s as bad as my header at the moment. Boxes from our move fill one room and are scattered throughout the house and garage as well. I took one van full of “stuff” to Goodwill yesterday, and I hope to gather another van load today. I’m setting aside nicer things for our school’s rummage sale, but other than that, I don’t like to take the time to put on a garage sale, so typically, the bulk of things I give away. My husband has been listening to Dave Ramsey lately, and keeps telling me, “rice and beans, beans and rice!” Basically, pare down, live simply and frugally, and within our means. Part of the issue in our family is time, which translates into an economic product if you really think about it. An enormous amount of time (and thus money) is wasted in organizing our “stuff,” finding it, putting it away neatly again. A move is a fabulous time to get rid of the non-essentials, as your possessions are being eyed in their entirety, perhaps for the first time in five or ten years. My sister visited last week, and I was able to finally begin to purge my linens of my endless collection of baby blankets. She has a young one, and just as the little girl happily took my pile of pint-sized blankets, I was lighthearted to be free of the emotional attachment. At one point, though, I did snatch back one of my first child’s blankets, saying, “Wait! This was Little L’s crib blanket, I can’t get rid of it!” However, the thought of perpetually carting this baggage through life for no good reason won out, and the girl took home the blanket. (Don’t worry, all you memory-lovers, I’m keeping one special hand-made baby blanket per child!) Will you leave me a comment and share with me what five non-essential items you can get rid of today? I’ll leave notes in my comment box for you, and tell you about some of my belongings that I clear out today… The Child’s Inventor’s BoxPosted October 12th, 2008 by Jen in education, features, science7 Comments » An “inventor’s box” full of odds and ends that has a permanent place in your home play area or in your classroom–this is the child’s invention kit, the perfect tool for science exploration and innovation. The idea is to create the atmosphere of an inventor’s workshop, where there is no fixed set of materials and no particular goal established in advance; rather, the bountiful collection of materials is there for the child to explore, experiment, and give creative expression to his ideas. And voila, an enthusiastic and independent science mind is being created in the process. I. For the frugal and simple approach, here is a list (in no particular order) to get you started. These materials can be gathered over time from a craft store, RadioShack, around your house and garage, thrift stores, garage sales, lumber yards, and more. Let me know what else I should add to my list, and some simple experiments to go with this list!
Now, what can you do with all these materials? Here are some ideas cards to keep handy, if your child/student wants a specific activity: 1. Human conductor of electricity Supplies: Directions: 2. Periscope-mirrored tube that lets you see over walls and around corners: Supplies: Directions: For more amazing science activities for the home or classroom, visit The Exploratorium.
The PicoCricket Kit uses a tiny computer which allows the student to make things spin, light up, and play music; you basically make your creations come to life with simple robotics. The price tag is $250 for the complete kit, which includes the following: motor and motor board, display, beamer (send programs from your computer to your PicoCricket), resistance sensor, sound sensor, colored lights, sound box, PicoCricket programmer (to control your creations), touch sensor, and light sensor. Also included in the kit is easy-to-use software for programming the Cricket (PC and Mac compatible), USB cable, a collection of craft materials and lego bricks to create motion modules, and ten project placemats with sample Cricket activities. This is a reusable kit–only the craft materials are consumable, but are inexpensive to replace. Mitchel Resnick, an MIT professor who worked on the project, made an important point about the accessibility of the PicoCricket kit: We knew that lots of kids are interested in art and music, so we wanted to make sure that there were lots of ways for them to be able to use art and music as an entry point to explore math, science and engineering. Wow~whether your budget is small or large, there are options. The basic inventor’s box is more time consuming to put together, but cheaper; and the pre-packaged kits offer efficiency but at a cost. I hope you’ve been inspired to provide some creative science outlets for your child or classroom! Frugal Field TripsPosted August 20th, 2008 by Jen in education, family life, features, parenting, science, the ranch12 Comments » Local field trips for children are lurking around every corner, even in some everyday places if you recognize the opportunity. Every town will have its own unique chances for family excursions, but here are a few around my Central Oregon town for the budget-minded. The Greenhouse
If, like me, you’re not looking to schedule a full-blown field trip, just try asking questions, and you’ll probably discover that the employees are fairly eager to pass on some knowledge, especially when you have children asking their own questions as well. You may want to take a few minutes before entering the greenhouse to prep your kids for the experience, and “plant” some questions in their heads to get them thinking, and encourage them to be inquisitive (but polite). The Ranch
So, our friend Alisha invited my family and a few others out for a “horse lesson,” as my daughter said. This daughter is my equine lover and longs for her own trusty steed. My girl was counting down the days until this trip, dutifully marking her calendar. I only wish the cowboy boots from Grandma had arrived before this trip–but it’s okay, the boots have seen plenty of action since. Alisha did a fantastic job of walking the kids through her stables and introducing the children to the various horsey things that seem to enchant young ones.
I think this was the favorite field trip of the year. All the families involved were so thrilled to have this visit to the ranch. I know this isn’t a feasible option for many of you who don’t live in the country or know ranchers/farmers. But I’ll bet if you sat down and really thought hard, you’d come up with someone you know in an interesting field of work who just might welcome a few kids into their daily routine, and maybe even enjoy it as much as the kids. The State Park
There is a perfect covered overlook with several large picnic tables which looks down on this breathtaking view you see here. I love this spot for the chance to have the kids sit and sketch the scenery and really notice the amazing rock formations and the gentle curves of the river. Sometimes, I’ll have the kids stop and gather some leaves to look at later, but mostly it’s just a tremendous location that we never tire of.
The kids will of course discover caves and rabbit trails and rocks to climb. There are several large boulders they routinely climb up, nearly giving me a heart attack, but I forget what I was like as a child. The older I get, the more cautious I become and the more afraid of heights I get!
My kids often ask as we drive by Smith Rock, “Mommy, how did that get there?” and I can remind them of the plaque we read, with the illustrations of the volcanic explosion, and it all comes back. My older son now stops to read the plaque aloud to the other children and plays tour guide. Oh my, there are so many other wonderful little trips we make around town. I may have to do another post to tell you about the museums, the free concerts, the goat farms, and even how to turn a trip to the grocery store into a field trip. I spend very little money on these outings, and I mostly stay local, but I’m discovering that what makes a valuable experience for one’s family is an eager attitude about learning. The ability to spot a teachable moment paired with an inquisitive spirit will bring many frugal field trips to your front door. What frugal field trips does your town offer?
Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, education, family life, Clydesdale horses, nursery, greenhouse, outdoors, field trips, frugal, plants, ranch, Smith Rock When sleeping on the living room floor felt like campingPosted August 11th, 2008 by Jen in family life, features, the ranch9 Comments » The plan was to pitch the tent in the yard, gaze at the stars, enjoy a campfire, roast some hotdogs and marshmallows, and generally enjoy the great outdoors. We almost made it, and did everything but pitch the tent. I know, that’s probably the most important part, but we were tired. In our case, sleeping on the wood floor in the almost-done house, not yet hooked up to plumbing and just one or two electrical outlets functional, it was still quite an adventure. It helped the effect tremendously that this house is set among a twenty-acre juniper forest with regular visits from deer, jackrabbits, owls, and the howls of coyotes, kept at bay by our dog. We had to use the outhouse, eat over a fire, and brush our teeth out by the teeth-brushing-tree. We all felt like we were honest-to-goodness-camping. We reminisced around the campfire about the summer we lived on this property, just two years ago, in our travel trailer, parked right there by the teeth-brushing-tree. Back then, we were off the grid and had to haul in water, use the propane tank for heat and electricity, and make regular trips to dump the sewage. So, of course, we performed as many bodily necessities out-of-doors as we could, so as to cut down on the trips to the sewage dump place. Thus, the teeth-brushing-tree. “See there, kids, remember when there was no house here?” Dad asks the children. They have a hard time remembering. “Yes, there was just a pile of concrete,” JJ responds. “No,” Dad has to jog her memory. “It was just dirt and trees.” Good thing we have pictures to prove it. We did a lot of stargazing in the camp trailer days, and the kids talked about how they hope once we move into this house, we’ll still have campfires every night and look at the stars. “Mommy, did you know the Big Dipper isn’t actually a constellation?” JJ inquires, eager to display her knowledge of the night sky. “Well, tell me about it, honey!” I urge her on. “It’s really just a piece of the constellation called the Big Bear,” she proudly informs us. “And the handle of the dipper is the bear’s tail.” Big L can’t let a seven-year-old control the information, so he adds, “The Little Dipper is also not a constellation, it’s part of the Little Bear.” I need to teach them to say “Ursa Major” and “Ursa Minor” and maybe we can impress some friends. So, the sky darkened to black with just our fire and the stars to brighten the night, helped out by the moon now 3/4 full, and the children grew tired and all wanted to climb into Daddy’s lap. I had mopped the wood floor of the living room earlier, the one patch of the house not covered with a fine film of dust, the residue of new construction. I snuck into the house to lay out the sleeping bags as Little L cried, “Mommy, where’s the tent?” I had explained to the kids that we’d truly sleep in the tent soon, just not tonight. “But aren’t you so excited to be having a campfire and sleeping in our new house for the first time?” I chattered happily, hoping to draw attention away from the absent tent. “Yes!” the children all chorused. “Whew.” I breathed sigh of relief, meltdowns averted. My husband had already broken the news to me that indeed he would not reset the sprinklers which would have soaked us all in the wee hours of the morning, nor would he be breaking down a tent when he needed to be off to pick up his construction laborer early the next morning, not to mention he was dog-tired. This was the perfect opportunity to set aside my well-formed plans and realize the particular season we’re in, which I call the mad-dash-to-the-finish-line-please-don’t-give-up-now season. There will be plenty of other occasions to pitch a tent. In my incredible foresight, I had packed the laptop computer, and busily settled the children into their bedding to fall asleep to the original 101 Dalmations. I felt a small twinge of guilt as I recalled my idyllic vision of camping out in the tent, totally into nature. Jolted back to reality by the fact that now I could steal a quiet moment with my husband, I could avoid sibling rib-poking and other silliness, and for crying out loud, the kids spent the whole day outside already, I smiled a contented smile. Displaying even more incredible foresight, I had packed our coffee maker and some excellent fresh grounds. This first morning in our new home, I awoke to the opening rays of the sun, children still in dreamland, and using one of those available outlets, brewed a steaming pot of coffee for my husband and myself. We took simple pleasure in how the gurgle of the coffeepot echoed across the room, and basked in the morning sun, amazed at how the sunlight lit up the kitchen and living room, and how its beams played on the mountains in the most delightful way. My first thought was, “I’m so glad we didn’t sleep in the tent!” Even though my back was stiff from the hard floor, and it certainly wasn’t the best night’s sleep I’ve had, experiencing what it will be like to have morning in our new house was worth it. My husband and I chatted over coffee, walked the house and talked about the future. We watched a family of deer come to munch on the lawn, and a shy jackrabbit made his way forward as well. Just as I was about to snap a picture of three adorable young fawns in the side yard, the dog started them up. It did our hearts good to see the dog finally have a job. He’s a cattle dog with an undeniable instinct to herd and chase. His tongue hanging out and a spring in his step, he bounded back to the dining room door, checking to see that we were watching his prowess. The deer were not that intimidated, and returned in a short while. It was a lovely show. Somewhere in there, the kids awoke. They immediately asked if we could have a sleep-out again the next night. As I pulled a half-gallon of milk from the cooler I brought, stashed in the empty space soon to be occupied by the refrigerator, I said, “maybe.” I think it worked. I think they actually felt like they were camping. Once the new-house-feel wears off, we’ll get the tent out. Summertime Recipes From the Family CookbookPosted August 4th, 2008 by Jen in family life, features, health/cooking/food18 Comments »
Frank, could you have known when you came over the Oregon Trail from Kansas in 1896, at the awkward age of 14, your family creaking along in a covered wagon and you riding alongside on a pony the whole way to Sweet Home, Oregon - a trip that makes a man out of a boy…could you have known your legacy?
Frank and Hilda owned a grocery/feed store in the 1930s, and Mina still reminisces about working there, packaging up 50 pound containers of lard and sugar for customers. I found the perfect summer dessert salad that Mina handed down to her family, a sure hit with the kids. Don’t worry, there’s no lard. Here is Mina’s Orange Jello Salad, submitted to the cookbook by her granddaughter Holly:
Frank lived to be almost 93, but his beautiful bride Hilda, who was just 17 when they married, died at the age of 46 from a cerebral hemorrhage, her last child only a tender five year old. But Hilda clearly taught her children well, because they expertly took over the household after her death, the older girls caring for the younger ones. Here is one of Hilda’s simple recipes, passed down to her daughters and submitted to the cookbook by one of her youngest girls, Marian.
If you have a garden full of tomatoes, then this next recipe will make a great summer dinner. It was submitted by Carla, the daughter of Norma, who was the second of Hilda’s children. Like her mother, Norma was blessed with an abundance of girls, having six daughters and just one son. Norma recalls needing money for college and occasionally receiving from father Frank a $100 bill rolled up in a walnut shell.
If you have a summer pie-baking tradition, you need a good crust. My Grandma-in-law, Frank and Hilda’s sixth child as I showed you up there with my husband, has a Never Fail Pie Crust. I would have married into this family just for Donna’s pies. She brings them to every family holiday gathering–berry pies, apple pies, pecan pies, you name it–they are mouthwatering delights held together by this magical flaky crust. Here’s the recipe, but I doubt you can even come close to Donna Alice’s pies:
Donna’s great-grandkids love her pies, too. I suppose you need a pie to go in that pie crust! Donna’s Strawberry Pie made it into the family cookbook, submitted by her niece Lyn. Apparently this pie gets rave reviews at parties and potlucks.
In the beverage section of the family cookbook, I noticed Joe’s Home Brew. Joe would be Frank and Hilda’s grandson, and his mother Bonnie was girl number eight. Bonnie must share Frank’s spirit of the Oregon Trail, because she’s had some crazy adventures in her lifetime, including rafting down the Grand Canyon and working in remote Alaska. Joe’s recipe is for homemade root beer, and I’ll include his description and directions –it gets a bit lengthy but this is well worth it.
Have you had a family reunion this summer? Do you have a favorite family recipe? Enjoy these last days of summer with some good food and family fun! p.s. Don’t you think my daughter JJ looks just like her great-great-grandma Hilda?
Technorati Tags: children cooking, family tree, family life, food, Oregon Trail, homemade root beer, recipes, pie crust recipe Parents RightsPosted July 26th, 2008 by Jen in features4 Comments » The subject of parental rights can appear to be an unnecessary discussion, for of course, a parent has authority over her child. Or does she? I’d like to take a closer look at this. But not today. I apologize, but I’m going to have to work on updating this Parents Rights post next week. We have family things to attend to all weekend, and I won’t be back to blogging until Tuesday, July 29 or so. I think I’m supposed to host the Homesteading Carnival on Monday, so I have to see how I’ll manage that away from my home computer. At any rate, here are some of the issues I’d like to examine: 1. Parental rights in education: What happens when a family’s firmly held religious beliefs conflict with State curriculum, and students are not permitted to be excused? Are parents allowed adequate input into their child’s curriculum/education, especially for special needs children? Is there reason for concern about encroaching government involvement in oversight of private schools or homeschools? 2. Government intrusion as a threat to parental rights: the balance between government protection against child abuse and infringement on parental authority over child-raising. Also, a look at some egregious Child Protective Services cases of children injudiciously and erroneously removed from parents. 3. Is a Parental Rights Amendment necessary? Can parents rest assured that their authority to control the education and upbringing of their children is covered under the “inalienable rights” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence? Or is an explicit Parental Rights Amendment vital, and what are the problems with the language of the current Parental Rights Amendment being attempted? 4. International Law: Is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child truly in the best interests of the child (not yet ratified by the U.S.)? Should the burden of proof be upon the parent to prove they are good parents, or upon the State to consider a parent fit unless proven otherwise? If you have any thoughts on these issues I’ll be covering, please let me know. If there’s a particular matter/case you’d like me to address, leave me a comment here. This post is going to take some thought and research, so please bear with me. We’ve had a week full of birthdays, and are heading over the mountain for more family time. Enjoy the last weekend of July!! I love July and I’m sad to see it go… Technorati Tags: Parental Rights Amendment, parental rights, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, education, homeschool Free SpeechPosted July 18th, 2008 by Jen in features, history, politics/world news, religion14 Comments » Some ramblings on free speech…pardon the lack of a cohesive statement. Today I’m thinking about the potency of the tongue, the desire of those who seek to censor it as a political power move, the double speak going on with regards to who should have free speech and who shouldn’t. This is not an academic piece of writing, so please, keep the lawyers away.
Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech, The Four Freedoms, dated January 6, 1941, Norman Rockwell (who I wrote about here) painted a series of freedom paintings, the first of which was The Freedom of Speech. Here is that segment of FDR’s speech mentioning the four freedoms:
I think it no coincidence that freedom of speech and expression is at the top of his list. Certainly, with Hitler’s tyranny against the slightest criticism and silencing of all forms of expression but Naziism, and with WWII then raging, Roosevelt saw a need to aggressively defend this particular freedom. The Guardian UK published an interesting timeline of the history of free speech a few years ago. Here are a few dates that caught my eye:
Hate Crimes Hate crimes, also known as bias motivated crimes, occur when the victim is targeted because of his membership in a certain group - racial, religious, gender, age, etc. I’m thinking of the lynching of African-Americans, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the Holocaust. History of hate crimes legislation: The federal hate crimes statute (18 U.S.C. § 245) was originally created to protect civil rights workers in the 1960s. There were serious issues of violence regarding African-Americans enrolling in public schools, enjoying public establishments, travel issues, and more. This statute deals with racial, ethnic, national origin, and religious bias, and does not include sexual orientation. However, almost all states have much broader hate crimes legislation that does include sexual orientation. The hype today is hate crime legislation targeting anti-gay sentiment. As far as assaults on gay people or destruction of property, or other violence toward homosexuals, there are already laws in place to deal with these crimes. So why is legislation being considered that criminalizes one’s moral or religious opposition to homosexuality? This clearly conflicts with the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. If someone is inciting others to violence with their speech, this is another issue, but anything less than that is simply criminalizing one’s thoughts. Is this America? The expression of moral judgment is the right of a free person in a free society, whether one agrees with it or not. There are community standards and a consensus that help guide social mores, and clearly, there is not consensus on the homosexual issue. In 2007 the House passed HR 1592 before it was put away by the Senate. This was an attempt at expanding federal hate crime legislation and will be back. I like what Congressman Ron Paul had to say about HR 1592 (emphasis mine):
McCain-Feingold Have you ever wondered recently why Dr. Dobson won’t support John McCain for President? It’s partly because of the federal legislation that John McCain (R-AZ) pushed through in 2002, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known as the McCain-Feingold Act. It basically restricted political free speech by placing new regulations on the financing of political campaigns - both in how much money can be raised and how and when groups can place political ads. For example, the Act requires advocacy groups to name their financial donors if they run ads within 60 days of a general election or within 30 days of a primary, if those ads were targeting candidates. In effect the McCain-Feingold Act limited the ability of groups like Focus on the Family to contact constituents about upcoming legislation. George Will commented on it last November:
Has anyone noticed how left-wing political speech (especially if you’re a Muslim) is protected and conservative political speech (especially if you’re a Christian) puts you in jail? And did you notice how House Speaker Pelosi exercised her free speech to call President Bush a “total failure” yesterday (inciting and fueling hatred of America?), yet Pelosi referred to conservative talk-radio as “hate” radio and wants to bring back the Fairness Doctrine (effectively censors conservative opinion on TV and radio). It’s only “hateful” speech if it’s anything under the sun the liberals disagree with; otherwise it’s “fairness.” Apparently only liberals/Muslims/gays/anybody-but-conservative-Christians deserve free speech (and deserve to hate). Are you disturbed about infringements on free speech?
Technorati Tags: faith, McCain-Feingold, Nancy Pelosi, free speech, First Amendment, Four Freedoms, Norman Rockwel, hate speech, hate crimes, Ron Paul, Dr. Dobson, Focus on the Family Religious FreedomPosted July 6th, 2008 by Jen in features, history, persecuted church, religion14 Comments »
I don’t promise much better at this point because the topic of religious liberty is so vast and convoluted by bizarre interpretations of the First Amendment that I can’t think straight. I’ve been looking at early original writings on religious liberty, a church history book, and modern writers on the subject. Then there’s the ACLU, the atheists, and the activist judges who muck it all up. Here’s what we all know from the First Amendment:
The horrors of the Old World still near in their minds, the Founders in the New World wanted a fresh approach. The high price of enforced religious conformity, with its untold thousands of martyrs, was the climate in which the Founders were seeking true religious freedom of conscience. I was listening to a Focus on the Family broadcast a few days ago, featuring historian David Barton, in which he talks about the large percentage of people who actually think the term “separation of church and state” appears in the Constitution, and mistake the Founders’ intent for the government to leave people alone in regards to their religion, with some twisted idea of a religion-free public life. Here is an excellent piece on the Founders’ view of religion in public life:
The phase “separation of church and state” comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association, and can be read here in its entirety. In fact, this letter is the only record of Thomas Jefferson ever mentioning this phrase, and none of the other 90 or so men involved in the writing of the Constitution ever talked in terms of a “wall of separation between church and state,” but in the past 50 years, it’s been cited over 3,000 times by the courts, typically to justify the eradication of religious expression from public life. Here’s what’s taken terribly out of context: these Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut were opposed to a “religion clause” even being in the Constitution at all. The reason is because they feared that religious privileges would thus be viewed as “favors granted” from the state, not as inalienable rights. They felt that the government guaranteeing religious liberty was a “degrading acknowledgment” and “inconsistent with the rights of freemen.” Jefferson replies that the Danbury Baptists need not worry, that he completely agrees with them that “religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God.” The assurance of the “wall of separation between Church and State” that Jefferson mentions in this letter is a promise and commitment to this group of Christians that the language of “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” was simply meant to “restore to man all his natural rights.” Coming from the religious tyranny of England, it’s no wonder the Founders felt a need to be very explicit about religious freedom. I discovered an interesting phrase in this very letter in which the “separation of church and state” is mentioned by Thomas Jefferson. It’s an overlooked phrase, one that has incredible bearing on current events regarding religious liberty and free speech. Are you ready?
Wow. I’ll be discussing Free Speech next week, but for now, I’ll just say that I find it quite ironic that the “separation of church and state” phrase has been latched onto and used mercilessly to eject any and all Christian thought from American public or political discourse, but this phrase has been conveniently disregarded. This phrase, were it made law by the Supreme Court, as has the “separation” phrase, should preclude such religious intolerance and government meddling like telling public schools what prayers they can or can’t say, what language is acceptable and what is not, or telling a private photography company that it violated state law by refusing (for religious reasons) to take a job photographing a lesbian commitment ceremony. Those Danbury Baptists had some very valid concerns and clearly anticipated the religious/political landscape we now call Post-Modern America. I’m grateful for the inclusion of the Establishment Clause, however, America needs a return to the intent of the Founders before her people find themselves again under total religious tyranny at the hands of the government.
Technorati Tags: American Revolution, religious liberty, religious freedom, First Amendment, Establishment Clause Finish StrongPosted June 23rd, 2008 by Jen in features, the ranch9 Comments » By My Husband The walls are up and the paint is on - now it’s time to head for the finish line, so to speak. It feels really good to have the structure done, the wires in the wall, the pipes in and the shingles on the roof. If only this last stretch didn’t seem to go on forever. You’ll constantly hear the phrases “You’re really close” and “You’re almost there” but it doesn’t feel that way. The finish work takes a lot of detail and scheduling that can suck you dry. Now’s the time to buck up and stay strong. TRIM
FLOORS
We did about 500 sq ft of hardwoods. I tried as hard as I could to find a hardwood I really liked under $4 per square foot. We ended up closer $5. You can get a hardwood for $3 but it will be a narrower plank and typically available only in standard colors. As I mentioned in a previous post, we have a rustic country style and so I wanted something wide planked and a little distressed. The Manchurian Walnut we went with had all of that at the best price we could find. Carpet is a science. From 50 cents per square foot to several dollars you have to consider what’s important. To be blunt we went cheap. The carpet looks nice but is not a heavy pile. With four kids under the age of 9, and our entries and main living areas all hardwood or tile, we decided the carpet just needs to make it 5 or 6 years at which point we can replace it with something better. The money saved went back into hardwoods and tile that are both something you only want to put down once. FIREPLACE AND FAUX STONE
For the fireplace mantle I bought a large timber from a small sawmill and then roughed it up to give a distressed look. It took a full Sunday to do this. Basically, I set it on a couple saw horses and used my grinder, belt sander, vibrating sander and hand planer to form it. After planing and sanding the initial shape, I used a chain and hammer to put some marks into it and the grinder to put some divots here and there. Then a propane torch and spray paint to accent the edges and mars. The vibrating sander then took off the excess paint and burn marks and we stained it. It did take two or three revisions to get each side just right but we are very pleased with the look, it has a very authentic appearance. LANDSCAPING
After getting things leveled out, I walked out my sprinkler heads, putting flags wherever a sprinkler was needed. You have to know how many gallons per minute your water system, public or private, can provide and then add up your sprinkler heads required gallons per minute, as stated by the manufacturer, usually betwen 1 and 3 GPM each. Our well is 60GPM but the water line from the house to the barn gets about 20 GPM in a 1″ pipe - I used that figure for the sprinklers as they have similar distances and pipe sizes. So I was safe at 20 GPM but kept each branch at 12 GPM or less to be safe.
I took his advice and saved a lot of time and money. Where they had specified 15 small heads for the front yard, with several in the middle of the yard, I put 5 large adjustable heads in each corner and it was fine. A lot less trenching, pipe and time. I did the same on this project and it still took me 2 full days just to put the pipe and sprinkler heads in the ground. I always use 1/2″ funny pipe to connect each sprinkler. This makes it really easy to raise and lower a head or reposition it later if need be. It also will keep your PVC from busting if someone drives over a sprinkler head or drops a rock on it. Once the lines and sprinklers are in you’ll want to groom your topsoil one last time. Use a landscaping rake and make sure there is loose topsoil to accept the seed or sod. I prefer to seed over sod. It is easier and more gratifying, although you need to do it in spring or fall, plus you have to wait for your lawn to become established. To seed, just spread it with a broadcast spreader and then rake it back and forth with a landscaping rake to work it into the topsoil. Ideally the grass seed will be 1/4″ under where it can stay moist and germinate. If you keep your soil moist and the weather stays in the 60 - 80 degree F range, you’ll see some grass shoots in 7 to 10 days and put your first cut in 4 to 6 weeks. When I seed, I over shoot and simply rake my edges after about 3 weeks. The grass has shallow roots and comes up easy and this is a fun way to shape your lawn. FINAL WORD It’s hard to believe we’re almost done. I still have fears of something going terribly wrong, and thus will not feel “done” until we sign the final mortgage documents. I’ve learned a lot, and while I have enjoyed the experience, will not be looking to do it again any day soon. My hat is off to those who make a living building, it takes someone special to do it day in and day out and to do it well. We hope to be moved in within the next 30 days and hopefully get back to normal schedules and routines soon after that.
Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, construction, window trim, baseboards, finish work, carpentry, landscaping, underground sprinkler system, hardwood flooring, travertine tile, fireplace mantle, faux stone, seeding lawn Drywall and PaintPosted June 18th, 2008 by Jen in features, the ranch10 Comments » by My Husband
We received 3 drywall bids and they were all very close in cost. There is a typical industry standard of pricing drywall by the square foot. So assuming the drywall contractors measure your house the same, you should see comparable figures for the base bids. You’ll want to ask the drywallers to specify what thickness of drywall they are using, if they will be using nails or screws, and finally to make sure they will be sealing the drywall before texturing. You’ll need to specify a texture as well. A nice light orange peel is fairly common and also the least expensive. We would have liked to have had some nice hand textures throughout, but it adds considerably to the cost. We reasoned that with a light texture we could always go back and retexture in later years as a remodeling project if we really felt like it. I know it sounds funny to talk about remodeling when building a brand new house, but it’s my way of letting things go at this stage, as I am a perfectionist and like everything done just so, even though my bank account often does not agree.
It took myself and son L almost a full day to get them thrown into a pile outside the house. It also took me half a day, using my tractor, to load my neighbor’s large dump trailer and haul it to the dump. It was hard earned savings. Once the drywall is hung, the mudders come in, before they do make sure to check the hangers work. I called them and made them come back off and screw off in several places where they had gotten too light with the screws. There are codes for how many screws or nails need to be applied per feet with a given drywall thickness. I walked through the house and found a few closet walls and corners where they were missed and I could hit the wall with my fist and hear the drywall slapping on the studs behind.
After the drywall mud is on, your texturer will come in. If, like most, you are having a sprayed-on texture, be sure to clean your floor first. The texture gun will blow up junk, dust and dirt from your floor and into the wall texture otherwise. We had a lot by our back staircase that got on the walls and made a mess. Luckily we used a wide base board/runner up the stairs that covers it - but be prepared. When you’re ready to start painting buy a gallon or quart of every color you intend to use. It will look different once on the walls and, as in our case, it may look too different. Anyone need 20 gallons of off-white? If you are going to paint your ceilings a different color, typically a white, then paint your walls first and then mask - it is much faster than trying to cut in (paint) the transition line from wall to ceiling. I hope this was helpful. I’ll wrap this up next week, and we’ll be just about ready to move in!
Technorati Tags: construction, painting, drywall, wall texture, paint, mudding Foundation to RoofPosted June 11th, 2008 by Jen in features, the ranch3 Comments »
Before You Start Once you have your takeoff done you still have to go through it and make changes. A big one I missed is exposed beams. Our porch has big beams all the way around and the engineer had only specified the minimum size, which is what the lumber company ended up putting on my order. So, a few of the beams ended up being 7″ tall because they required less load than the 9″ tall beams they connected to. That just did not work when it came time to frame the porch and we had to end up building up the beams to make them meet up. Brackets are another example. My supplier sent ugly galvanized post to beam brackets out when I had visualized nice powder coated ones. I exchanged and all is happy but it could have been smoother. When you have your takeoff, give it to 3 or 4 lumber stores. Tell them you want a contractor’s account with terms and make sure they specify how long prices are guaranteed and return policies. You’ll see lumber and material prices go up and down a lot in the course of a year. Try to buy when it’s low as much as is feasible - that will require a little research and planning but it can payoff a lot if you are savvy. What To Do and What Not To Do Knowing what to do and what not to do on a building project is key. There is so much to do it can seem overwhelming. My advice is to focus on efficiency. Looking back, I spun my wheels a bit worrying about details - things I should have just left to the sub-contractors to figure out. You’ll be able to get done faster and save more money by getting at least 3 bids (I recommend 4), making sure you have negotiated the best material prices and coordinating and scheduling. Stay on the job but focus on pushing things forward. Do not think you are going to save a bunch of money by doing everything. If the task requires a lot of specialized tools and intricate know how, you’ll be better off hiring out most of the time. Try to get things setup for the subs so they can get in and get their job done, and sell them on this. Make sure they know you are here to make their job easy. Dealing With “Subs” Make sure to absolutely require the sub contractors put in writing a finish date and who pays for overages. I learned this when my foundation contractor kept pushing out an extra day and then went over on his bid for concrete by $900. We ended up working it out but it was a hassle and stressful. I would also be cautious of handing over control of framing material purchases to a framing crew. These guys may be good but their task consumes the most material by far. My framing sub wanted me to let him do the material ordering - I told him no. No offense, but I didn’t know him from Adam and an open ticket at the lumber store sorta scared me. Some subs will order material on one job and move it to another to cover shortages or they may markup your lumber to make a little more since they get a discount from the lumber store, but you can do the same if you take in a materials list. I made myself the point man for materials on framing. I was on the job every day and asked for any materials they needed daily, which I would order or pickup. The lead framer had my cell number and it worked out quite well. When you request a contractor give a bid, give them an outline of what you expect in spoken word or a cover letter along with your plans. Request they include any parameters you specify in their formal bid. They are not doing you any favors, so don’t feel bad about letting them know how you want it done. You’ll get a gut feeling when you talk with them, go with it. I didn’t a few times and it bit me. If a sub is grumpy and rather rude when you offer him the chance at your business, don’t expect him to be cheery once he is on the job.
Foundation to Roof Quick Tips When the foundation goes in make sure it is spot-on with the plans. Check the layout before pouring and make changes if necessary. I triple checked every wall length and angle one evening after the sub had left for the day. I found a few small errors and one big one. The foundation forms should also be plumb, level, greased and well braced. Check for all of this. A bad form setup will give you a foundation stem wall that is very difficult to build on, wastes concrete and looks rough when the form boards are pulled.
That’s it. Hope this was insightful and useful to some of you out there. Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, construction, subcontractors, roofing, framing, bids, foundation Planning & PrepPosted June 3rd, 2008 by Jen in features, the ranch6 Comments » by My Husband
So, the first bit of advice is to pray. Pray for yourself and your significant other to have grace, patience and latitude towards one another when making these choices. Try to start by agreeing on broad rules and making your concessions here. Agree on an overall color and decor theme and in general an overall feel. Look at magazines; we went through a lot and clipped out everything we liked. We went on the Tour of Homes and just talked - “Oh I like that” or “Man, that bath tile looks too fancy for my taste.” We also liked to go through new developments and tour the model home. It’s a great way to find all kinds of ideas and to see what the current hot design ideas are. You’ll soon find common ground and have learned what you both like. Once you have a good feel for what you’re shooting for, you need to make sure it fits with where you’re building. Our lot is very, how should we say, cowboy. It’s high desert, there is sage brush, craggly old junipers and coyotes and rattlesnakes to boot. I love rustic and wanted a house that complemented the sage greens and desert tans all around us. As simple as this seems, it really helped to define our style before we started looking at things like siding, paints and stains. SITE PLANNING These types of decisions can be hard to make, especially if you have a larger lot where you have more possibilities. I spent a lot of time driving to the property and walking it over and over. I brought ladders and climbed trees to try and get a feel for what second story views would look like at different locations. I was also very mindful of how much privacy the trees in different locations offered. I really didn’t like the idea of having to put blinds on our windows to obtain privacy when we lived on 20 heavily treed acres. When considering locations, I also thought about how much it would cost to get utilities and a road to any particular building site. I had a 100′ tape measure and had already called the power company to see what they charged to put in power. If you’re too far way then they have to bring in more equipment, lines and transformers, which translated means more money. I also borrowed a friend’s laser level and checked elevation to see where I could put my septic system’s drain field without requiring a pump. After collecting all of this information and weighing the options, we made the decision to build about 500 feet further up on the property than we had initially planned. What seemed like an obvious building location at first glance became less attractive as we really looked. The location where the house now sits is, without a doubt, the right spot. It has great views that weren’t initially apparent but came into their own with some selective thinning of trees. It also has a great amount of privacy. Finally, the location was the most economical spot for connecting to utilities, installing a septic system and building a driveway. HOUSE PLANNING We really were hoping to find a stock plan that we liked, but it was a useless venture. The fact that I work at home and thus need a separated space for an office, combined with the need for a full master suite for Jen’s mom, limited our options. Nothing seemed right for our needs. Having done design, 3D and a little CAD over the years, I thought I would take a crack at trying to design our home. After a few frustrating weekends, a bit of wisdom broke through as I figured out that I had no idea about how a house should flow and what standard dimensions were. Instead I found a small design company with a nice portfolio who could listen to our wants and come up with a plan for us. House designers are less expensive than architects but can still do great work. If you want to save money with a stock plan, find house designers in your area and view their stock plans. These plans will already be engineered to your local building codes and you’ll find styles that match your locale. We had an initial meeting with the designers, showed them some styles we liked and gave them some rough parameters – the rooms we needed, our overall square footage and budgeting goals. I made it clear that while I wanted an aesthetically pleasing house, I didn’t want a lot of complicated angles and open beams and so forth that would really add to the cost. It took a few meetings and revisions to get things tweaked just right, but it was, in all, a fairly painless experience. One final item to note is energy savings. I am not a “green” advocate but I hate paying my electric bill. As a result, I investigated several energy saving building strategies. Solar passive design is fairly easy to incorporate into a home design and is an easy way to seriously cut your heating and cooling costs. I simply made sure the house’s southern exposure was maximized and that there were enough windows on that side to collect solar heat in the winter months and enough window overhang to shade against solar heat in the summer months. I’ll touch more on this in a future article, but for now just bear in mind that for decades homes were designed without any consideration of that huge ball of energy that our planet revolves around. Take advantage of free heating energy from the sun in the winter and block it in the summer and you’ll keep a lot of greenbacks in the bank. CONCLUSIONS For anyone who might be starting down the path of building your own home at anytime in the future, I would offer the following advice. First, realize this is just a house, wood, paint and tile. It is not eternal and thus should be viewed as temporary. I heard a great sermon on the radio one day as were just breaking ground. The pastor talked about how we often talk about things in a possessive nature, like we somehow earned it or own it. He used the example of a piece of land (how fitting) and how he found himself referring to it as “his” property, and that the Lord corrected him and reminded him that it was someone else’s before him and will be someone else’s after him, and that in truth all things are from God and are God’s. This is instrumental. Treat your building project as a blessing for this season and you’ll find it easier to let go of the incidentals. Second, spend time considering how to get the most out of your lot. The footprint and positioning of your house will affect many things, especially on smaller lots. Moving your home toward the street on a small lot will give you more of a back yard, but haphazardly plopping it right in the middle for no good reason may eat up valuable usable space. Think of windows and sunlight. Do you like sun on your toes in the morning on those cold winter months? If so, consider where the southern exposure is and how to situate your home to maximize this. Third, choose a designer to work with, even if you go with a stock plan out of a magazine. You’ll most likely have to have it re-engineered to local code and that means things like walls and roofs might need to change and this is where a designer can make it look right and save you a ton of headaches down the road. You may be able to find an architect that fits your budget, otherwise the designer will make the changes and have an engineer calculate the loads and put his stamp on the plans. Technorati Tags: building a house, Central Oregon, construction, country, house plans The Farmer’s WifePosted May 26th, 2008 by Jen in family life, features, the ranch17 Comments »
In the high desert of Central Oregon lies one small valley, so green and fertile that one forgets for a moment which side of the Cascades this is. The fields are grassy, the elk wander down from the hills to graze with the cattle, and the verdant hills rise up to meet the juniper and sage which overlay the bluffs, the only visible reminders that this is, indeed, the desert. It’s here in the heart of the Lone Pine Valley that I caught up with Connie Hegele, who, with her husband and sons, owns the Walking H Ranch. Connie has three grown children and one daughter-in-law, and in a rare situation by today’s standards, has her entire family working, in some capacity, in the family business. Businesses, I should say. The Hegeles also own American Sprinklers, in operation since 1975, and Lone Pine Clydesdales, now the second largest breeder in Oregon. One of her sons, Travis, runs SAR, an environmental consulting corporation.The Hegeles also own commercial property in Portland as well as Central Oregon. Connie and her husband, Chuck, are both native Oregonians, and I would be hard pressed to find another family that so well represents the pioneer spirit for which Oregon is famous. Had they lived in the 1840s, I’m sure they would have been blazing the Oregon Trail. Here in the Lone Pine Valley, the Walking H Ranch sits on 277 beautiful acres, and they farm 106 irrigated acres. Connie’s boys are in full charge of the farm, and I see this as the mark of a wise woman, that her children continue her work and are themselves productive citizens. Growing up on a farm with milk cows, horses, and goats, Connie is no stranger to farm life. She spent her childhood summers at her granddad’s 100,000 acre ranch in Burns, rounding up cattle and cutting hay to load on the wagons still pulled by draft horses. Connie always loved those draft horses, and for her birthday about a dozen years ago, Chuck gave her a little black Clydesdale, and the rest is history. For their 36th anniversary four years ago, he gave her (they actually gave each other) a pair of buffalo, so we’ll see where that goes! Connie is a woman who seems to be everywhere at once, and it was hard for me to pull this post together. Her work is often behind-the-scenes, and all the details that seem to magically come together are because of her untiring efforts. Let me just give you a snapshot of one of her days this weekend. If you had happened to be driving by, you would have been invited, too. Later that evening, at my table sat four strangers - a man who had been motoring by on his Harley the week before and noticed Chuck’s cannon (he builds cannons and I’ll need an entire post just to fill you in on Chuck). Chuck showed the man his shop and gave him the full tour, along with an invitation to the Memorial Day weekend party. Here he was, and he’d brought his wife and son and daughter-in-law. I heard him comment, “These are the friendliest bunch of people I’ve ever met.” At the next table over, I noticed one of the Hegeles’ farm workers and his family. Behind them sat an old couple that Connie’s son, Rocky, had sold cattle to years ago. And Connie feeds them all. “Growing up on Granddad’s ranch, they always did that,” she said. There are the nuts and bolts of what Connie does for the family business: she does the books, the bulk of the paperwork, running supplies, bidding projects, handling phone calls, showing their real estate in Portland and here. Then there are the intangibles, the truly significant features that can’t be defined in a job description: she has raised children who love and respect her and stick around to work in the family businesses, she has taken in other kids who’ve temporarily lost their way or are in need, she labors side by side with her husband, supporting him in all things, she is back and forth to Portland caring for her ailing mother, she is generous and hospitable even to the undeserving.
I presented a few questions for Connie to answer for my readers, and her responses are short - because as you know, the farm wife barely has a moment to sit - but sensible. Jen: The culture of the family farm is dying, and your family is one of the only ones I personally know that is making it work. In the truest sense of a “family farm,” the family and the farm are inseparable - what does this look like in your family?
And I should add here that I see this with the Hegele family - whether the project is renovating an old schoolhouse or raising horses, I see this unity - whether it’s Connie’s daughter, Candy, picking out the new paint for the school or her daughter-in-law Alisha helping a mare give birth, they are all working toward the same goals. Jen: One of the unfortunate casualties of modern agriculture is that a family can hardly make a living on the farm anymore. How does your family overcome this economic reality?
This would explain all those other businesses - it’s extremely difficult these days for individual families to make a living solely on a farm income. Jen: We talked a bit about a husband and wife working together in the family business, as you and I both do. And we’ve both heard the comments about “I could never do that.” What makes this partnership work for you and Chuck?
Jen: I’m impressed with the fact that your grown children are so involved in what you do, especially in a modern culture where families are, more often than not, scattered or estranged from one another. What advice would you give to a young family regarding ways to build community and a culture of “togetherness” within the family unit?
Great advice, thanks Connie! I hope you’ve enjoyed this visit to the country; stop in and say hello.
Technorati Tags: Clydesdales, American Sprinklers, Central Oregon, country, Lone Pine Valley, farming in Oregon, family business, family life The ArtistPosted May 21st, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, family life, features, religion9 Comments » My kids were picking up old tin cans on the other side of her field. I watched with some admiration how the owner of the field, a strong, determined looking woman, was quickly moving pipes to irrigate the field for her cattle. I had seen her before on a tractor pulling a plow, and before that digging trenches. An Oregon farm woman, not an unusual sight around here. What I didn’t know was that she was just as accomplished with a paintbrush and oils as she was in handling the workings of an 80 acre ranch. This was Pixie Gullickson, and she’s just as cute and sprightly as her name sounds. I think she’s such a fine artist at least in part because of her full engagement in life and her many interests. She must have a third lens through which she views the world, picking up on the intricacies of nature and the handiwork of the Creator, and before this ever hits the canvas, it comes forth from her heart, gathering expression and spirit as it goes.
I love how Pixie painted this Indian woman in a canoe, which painting hangs regally above her bed, as if on watch through the night. It’s an enormous painting with bold and confident color, and I didn’t even fit it all in here. Her father was half Choctaw, and Pixie’s Native American heritage is evident in much of her work. Scattered throughout her home are many Indian artifacts, arrowhead displays, beads, feathers, leather work. These two paintings I found in her studio, one of a warrior and one of her father: I was able to get Pixie to sit still long enough to answer a few questions for you (a difficult task, I can assure you, as this woman never seems to stop), and I’m sure you’ll enjoy this interview. Jen: What are your earliest memories of art? Was this a childhood interest? Was it a hobby, an artistic outlet, a therapeutic thing?
Jen: Are you self-taught, or have you had any art training?
Jen: What advice would you give to other budding artists regarding how to further their skills?
Jen: I know you work in several mediums, but what is your favorite artistic expression?
Jen: You are very giving and generous; however, you have earned money from your art. How did you begin to establish art as a career, and what advice would you give to a starving artist trying to make his/her way?
Jen: Art can be a powerful tool for ministry. Can you share a testimony about some way that your art has been used to touch someone’s place of need with the love of God?
Thank you, Pixie! Technorati Tags: art ministry, art, nail art, murals, art education, murals, Central Oregon Making MusicPosted May 11th, 2008 by Jen in education, features, music12 Comments »
Julie teaches private piano lessons, and she was kind enough to answer some questions for my blog readers. She is in high demand and has a waiting list for after-school hours, but for homeschooled students who can fill in earlier school hours, you’re in luck! Julie and her husband, Cory O’Neill, run Joyful Noise Music Studios in Redmond, Oregon, and between the two of them, offer a wide range of piano and guitar classes. A side note on Cory: coming up is his fabulous summer guitar camp for beginning and intermediate students, June 16-20. Classes are for 9 - 14 year old beginners, 15 year old - adult beginners, and then an intermediate class. Class includes 5 hours of instruction, CD with all the music and a binder with all the music. Held at Redmond Music Supply. For more information, contact the O’Neills at corynjulie[at]gmail[dot]com. I asked Julie to include some details here on her little bro, David Klinkenberg, who, if you haven’t heard, is the most amazing fiddle player ever, and shares his sister’s really awesome, silly sense of humor. I can’t remember when I’ve been to a concert and seen such a dynamic connection between a performer and his audience. Jen: How did you get started with teaching private piano lessons?
Jen: You and your husband are both involved in music ministry and music education; with your children, are you able to trade off the childcare and the teaching and cover for each other, or how does this work?
Jen: I’d love for you to share a little bit of your latest adventure with touring with your brother, David Klinkenberg. I’m a big fan of his (and yours) and want to make sure my readers get a chance to hear about this piece of your life.
Jen: It’s neat how both you and your brother are such musical talents, and I know your brother started really young. What advice would you give to parents of young children who don’t have a lot of money to spend on private lessons but still want their kids to get a music education?
Jen: You have many interests besides music. You’re an avid runner and you also like to write, educate people on health issues, do photography and quilting, and you’re a soccer mom, among other things. How do you find balance?
Didn’t you just love this time with Julie? If you’re lucky enough to live in Central Oregon, and have kids, you may want to explore the possibility of music lessons with Joyful Noise Music Studios. If you’re a stay-at-home mom with musical talent, and have been wondering how to bring in additional income, I hope you’ve been inspired to take the leap and start teaching. And I’ll be sure to let you know if Julie and David are coming to a town near you.
Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, guitar camp, Kindermusik, David Klinkenberg, piano lessons, music education, music The BakerPosted May 4th, 2008 by Jen in family life, features, health/cooking/food5 Comments »
Welcome to Buffy’s kitchen, where she bakes about 3,000 cookies a week and makes a nice addition to her family’s income. As long as I’ve known Buffy, she’s always loved cookies and cookie dough, so when she told me she was thinking about starting a home cookie business, it seemed a perfect fit. Being a full-time mom with three little cookie monsters in tow, she still manages to keep things running smoothly, but with the irresistible aroma of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies constantly drifting from her home, I don’t know how she keeps the entire neighborhood from invading the kitchen. My first thought, actually, was “it’s so simple!” What is any more basic and American than baking and selling cookies? My local grocery store has about 100 varieties of cookies to choose from, attesting to our national past-time of cookie snacking! But there is always room for a good homemade product, and Buffy has found a smart niche. She has one corporate client, a large jewelry store chain with stores in Oregon, California, Idaho, and Washington, which give the cookies away as gifts to their customers. Again, this adds to the simplicity of Buffy’s business model, and streamlines the process into a successful enterprise. I wanted to share a few words from Buffy, especially because the topic of women in business is near and dear to me. I run a business with my husband, and many of my friends and readers are women who are home taking care of their children - I so often hear these ladies commenting about their desire for a home-based business to add to the family earnings, so here is Buffy sharing a bit of her experience: Jen: How did you decide to choose the cookie/baking business?
Jen: What are the greatest benefits and greatest challenges of having your own small business, and how does this business fit into family life?
Jen: Tell me about one particular hurdle you had to overcome.
Jen: What do you see for the future?
Jen: I know the “family business” runs in your family (and your husband’s family). Do you think your background was helpful in giving you the courage/motivation to step out and do this?
I also like Buffy’s attitude of “as long as it’s working.” I wouldn’t stick with an idea for the sake of principle if you’re hating it and it’s more trouble than it’s worth. That being said, there is work to be done and there will be difficult seasons in all things. A young mother has the extra burden of working her business in with the often overwhelming task of raising children. However, it’s good to look at the family business as a teaching tool, and it’s a marvelous way to train your young ones in so many life skills, financial skills, and relational skills. Well, as the Cookie Monster says, “C is for cookie, it’s good enough for me; oh cookie cookie cookie starts with C.” And as for my dear friend’s cookies…these are such a delicious treat that you might have to go buy yourself a new piece of jewelry just to get your hands on one of Buffy’s cookies! Technorati Tags: baking, cooking, cookies, home-based business, family business, women in business A Strawberry Tea PartyPosted April 27th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, family life, features, health/cooking/food, holidays6 Comments »
Little girls love tea parties, but so do big girls like me, and even the little boys in my family want a part in the fun — my eight year old son would like to be the server, and my three year old son just wants to eat the goodies. We are planning a strawberry-themed tea party, at the request of the girls, and would like to share the menu and details with you. The tradition of teatime is a long and cherished one, and our tea party, which will include the children, a few friends, and a few mommas, will open with a bit of the story of tea. The first known reference to the sale of tea in Britain comes from a 1658 London Gazette, with this historic news:
It was from China that tea came, and the exact origin is lost in the haze of legend, but one story traces this charming drink to an Emperor who lived almost 5,000 years ago.
There is so much more to the fascinating history of tea, from China to Japan to Holland, to England and the rest of Europe, and to the United States. For you home educators and history buffs, you may want to incorporate more of these details into your party, and perhaps even have a “Tea Unit Study” beforehand. I have listed some resources for you at the end. But we must get on the party!
An assortment of teas will include, of course, strawberry tea. Small pitchers of cream, sugar, and honey will be set out. For my little ones, I’ll brew a not-too-strong tea. Depending on the weather, we may indulge in the glory of tea al fresco, taking advantage of our large wrap-around porch and spacious yard.
A tea party is not complete without the delicacies and pastries, and this is my simple menu: Strawberry Gems
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Thoroughly combine flour, butter, egg yolks, vanilla and brown sugar. Spray a 9-inch by 13-inch baking pan with cooking spray. Press the mixture into the prepared baking pan, trying to keep an even thickness. Spread the strawberry preserves on top. Sprinkle with chopped pecans, gently pressing them in. Bake (at 350 degrees) for 30 to 35 minutes. Let it cool in the pan completely before cutting into squares. Creamed Scones
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Lightly spray a heavy, large cookie sheet with cooking spray. Sift together flour and baking powder into a medium bowl. Mix in sugar. Add the butter and rub between your fingers until the mixture resembles fine meal. Pour the milk, whipping cream and egg yolk into a small bowl and blend with a whisk. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and stir just until combined. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and press to a thickness of 1 inch. Cut out rounds using a 2-inch or 2 1/2 inch cookie cutter or biscuit cutter. Gather together the scraps and press them together to a thickness of 1 inch and continue to cut out rounds. Place the rounds on the prepared cookie sheet, spacing them apart evenly so none are touching. Brush the tops with the glaze (beaten egg). Bake (at 450 degrees) until golden brown, around 15 minutes. Transfer scones to a wire rack to cool slightly. Serve with butter and strawberry preserves. Cucumber Sandwiches Loaf of Country Style White Bread Cut good quality white bread into thin slices. Butter one side of each slice and remove the crusts. Thinly slice seedless (hot house or European) cucumbers and place one layer of slices on 1 piece of buttered bread. Put another slice on top, butter facing the cucumbers. Cut on 2 diagonals in the shape of the letter X to produce 4 triangle-shaped finger sandwiches. Fresh Strawberries
Strawberry Tea Strawberry tea, which contains no caffeine and is easy to locate in specialty shops, natural-food stores, and many supermarkets, is an especially appealing iced drink. You might serve it bejeweled with strawberries. Yield: 6 to 8 servings
In a large saucepan, bring the water to a full boil. Add the tea and sugar, cover, and let stand for 5 minutes. Strain the tea into a large pot or pan. Stir in the lemon juice, and let the tea cool to room temperature. Serve the tea over ice, garnished with the sliced strawberries. Tea Concentrate for a Group When you are preparing for a large group tea, you can brew this concentrate up to two hours ahead and still serve hot, perfect tea to your guests. This recipe makes about fifty cups of tea, but you can make more or less concentrate according to your needs. Just remember: To make tea in quantity, don’t brew longer — use more tea.
Pour boiling water over tea in large non-metallic container such as an earthenware crock. Let steep for five minutes, then strain the tea leaves or remove the teabags. Store concentrate at room temperature until needed. To serve, use about two tablespoons of concentrate per five-ounce cup — or about three parts of water to every part concentrate. Simply place the desired amount of concentrate in a cup or pot and then add hot water. Note: This concentrate also makes delicious iced tea. Put four tablespoons in an eight-ounce glass of water, then add water and ice. Hospitality is at the heart of tea time, so the best part of your Strawberry Tea Party will be the care the hostess shows for her guests, the conversation that flows, the giggles among children feeling so grownup-ish, and the memory of tea. Resources for this article: Talking of Tea by Gervas Huxley
Technorati Tags: children, tea time, tea party, children’s tea party, strawberry tea, creamed scones Simple Spring DecoratingPosted April 20th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, features, holidays, product review16 Comments » There is nothing like the changing of seasons to make me want to freshen up my home décor. And with spring now in full swing (despite the brief flurry of snow today), I went hunting for some simple home decorating ideas to fit my frugal budget.
Something to keep in mind about this particular plant, however: Bromeliads are “monocarpic,” meaning they die after flowering, but it’s a slow process, usually taking up to 3 years. During that time, however, 1 to 3 offsets are produced which can be re-potted to continue the species. Second, some spring color can be splashed into your living room by way of throw pillows. This is an inexpensive way to give a new look. It’s time to store the winter throws and pillows and replace them with pastel colored or lively spring patterned pillows. Like I said, I’m on a budget, so here is what I found at Goodwill, for a mere $1.99 for the red flowered one and .99 for the purple beaded throw, and $2.99 for the new wooden chair cushion. I tossed these pillows in the wash, and they’re good as new to me.
Next, I turned my attention to the kitchen. Put away are the holiday and winter napkins and table decorations. These new table linens - a set of 4 cloth napkins - caught my eye. I adore hydrangeas, so I snapped this set up for only $1.99, also at the thrift store. I looked for some porcelain to be a permanent spring table decoration, and I almost passed this lovely salt & pepper set by, thinking it was made in China. But when I turned the set to check the bottom markings, I was ecstatic to see “Made in Italy.” This, my dears, is the thrill of thrifting! The salt and pepper set was just $2.99, and the small matching pitcher was $2.99.
Not to leave the children’s bedroom out either, the kiddos were all with me while I did this shopping spree. JJ picked out this wooden-framed picture of the vase of red tulips (.99) and JoJo wanted this decidedly spring-y girl picture (the matted frame was $1.99 and the picture was $1.99, and I put them together - the girl came in a very ugly gold frame that had to go). One of the kids also grabbed this .99 orange button-framed picture for big brother’s dresser top.
I almost forgot the smell of spring! The fresh flowers may do the trick, and some people like the flower scented plug-ins. For myself, I’m allergy-prone and artificial scents give me terrible headaches. So, I opt for essential oils or natural candles. I love the scent of lavender, and with a drop of the essential oil on the lightbulb, I’m suddenly skipping through lavender fields in Provence. I already have several essential oils on hand, but they can be purchased for about $5/vial. Another natural scent tip is to place several cinnamon sticks and a few drops of vanilla in a small pot of water and simmer it on the stove. So, there you have it - a simple spring home make-over on a budget for less than $40! Of course, if your finances allow, you certainly don’t have to be as frugal as I was, and I know that not everyone is willing to shop at thrift stores. But it can be done, and I would love to hear about your own spring decorating ideas, whether budget-minded or deluxe.
Technorati Tags: spring color, home decor, frugal decorating, spring decorating, spring The Child’s Spring BookPosted April 13th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, book reviews, education, family life, features, giveaways, science16 Comments »
I present to you today the fruit of our outdoor adventure. We made several ziplock-bag-books yesterday, full of specimens of Central Oregon, in particular, Smith Rock State Park, where we had our outing. For those of you who already have your children keep a nature journal, you’ll find this project to be a perfect companion. (I’m giving away two of our books - an Oregon one and a blank one; leave a comment below by next Sunday if you’d like to enter!) The Zip-Lock Bag Book Supplies:
How To: The Pages:
Assembling the Book:
JoJo is so proud of her book, and slept with it last night. She couldn’t wait to decorate the cover with the foamy letters she received for her birthday. The other kids chose to use markers and pens to create their cover art. Some other ideas:
The hardest part about this project was the identification. Now, is that an arnica mollis or an arnica parryi? Sometimes, we just made our best guess. The rest of the project took no external motivation at all - this was such a delight for them. But certainly, the identification was one of the most valuable pieces of this book. The kids learned to look critically at a plant and really notice things they hadn’t before. The shape of a leaf, the texture, the number of petals. By the way, we are not done with the identifying - we need to check out a few books from the library. Like I said above, I’m giving away two of our homemade books, one filled with Central Oregon specimens and the other one blank for your region. Keep in mind that when I do crafts, it’s a fairly practical endeavor - just whatever is on hand - so these books will not be perfect, beautiful things! My 8 year old son will probably be doing most of the work. This is my plan: I’d like to give these two books to someone with a child who’s interesting in learning about Oregon plant life, and who will use the blank book to create his own regional book. I’m hoping that this child will then create an extra ziplock-bag-book from his region, and another blank one, and pass them on as well. And so on. Leave a comment below by next Sunday, April 20, if you’d like to win these books. My son will draw a random name and I’ll email the winner. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about our spring ziplock-bag-book! I think this is an ideal science/nature/art project for students of all ages. If you have any ideas to add, let me know. Resources:
Technorati Tags: art activities, art for children, Central Oregon, giveaway, home education, homeschool, outdoor play, ziplock bag book, nature journal, Smith Rock, spring Gardening With ChildrenPosted April 6th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, book reviews, education, family life, features, giveaways, parenting37 Comments »
This picture here is my little JoJo who spent several hours last week with her pint-sized rake and shovel. I was working on the main garden area, while she staked out a small spot of her own. The other children were doing likewise. I hesitated a moment when suddenly all the children wanted their own garden space in addition to the main garden. Was this okay? Would I be teaching them to be selfish and looking out only for themselves? I ended up deciding that the sense of community and family in the main garden would not at all be diminished by each child’s ownership in their own scratch of earth. In fact, it would probably deepen their respect for the family garden, knowing the responsibility and effort their own gardens require. I found a wonderful book to guide me through some activities to do in the garden with children. It’s called Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: gardening together with children, by Sharon Lovejoy. The book covers not only the basics of how to plan, plant, and care for your garden, but the top 20 plants for kids, theme garden ideas, and many little bits of garden wisdom. (I’m giving away a copy - leave me a comment on this post to enter.)
I would say that my first tip for gardening with children is to involve them in every decision. Where should we put the garden? Is this spot too shady or too sunny? This area is nice and level, but we’ll have to dig up some rocks, is that okay? What shape do we want the garden to be? What should we plant that will thrive in our region? Let’s test the soil and decide what supplements we may need. All of the issues that arise in the planning of the garden are incredible teaching tools, and there’s no better way for your kids to really understand the complexity - and joy - of it all than to walk through it with you step by step. And the sense of ownership will be there from the start - the greatest motivator I know. I never have to twist their arms to go work on the garden. Let’s jump right in to the top 20 plants for children to grow. This list comes from Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots, based on the fact they are proven winners:
1. Pumpkins Do keep in mind your climate - some of these will fare better than others depending on where you live. In Central Oregon, for example, root crops like potatoes and carrots grow well with our short growing season and cool nights; but for some vegetables like corn or tomatoes, a short-season variety is a must for your plant to mature. Theme gardens can be a joy for children, and I’ll highlight just one of the themes from Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: the pizza patch. The Pizza Patch: gardening in the round is sure to delight children who are used to seeing a straight-row vegetable garden. This pizza patch garden is a giant sized six-foot-wide wheel shaped plot, divided into seven great wedges and edged with a thick rock crust. Ms. Lovejoy suggests the following ingredients for your pizza patch garden, but you can add other favorites as well:
Divide the garden into slices: mark spots at 32 inch intervals along the outer edge. Draw a line with a stick from each of the seven marks to the center stake, to denote the seven slices. Then place rocks along those lines for a permanent boundary, and you can remove the center stake. Place the five tall vegetables in each of the five slices on the northern side of the wheel - the plum tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, and zucchini. In a slice on the south side, plant the herbs, onions, and garlic. Set aside one slice to be the pathway for the little feet tending the garden. The bright gold marigolds and Calendulas can be filled in around the vegetables and herbs, the “cheese” of the pizza. To plant each slice, start from the center and work your way out. Plant tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, and zucchini 12-18 inches apart. In the small herb slice, space them 6 inches apart from the onions and garlic. The flowers are scattered throughout each slice, but allow 3 inches between them and other plants. When harvest time comes, you can throw a big pizza party with toppings straight from the garden!
Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, children, dirt, garden, gardening with children, giveaway, homesteading, outdoor play, Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots, pizza patch garden Altura Maxima: High Altitude Viticulture in ArgentinaPosted March 30th, 2008 by Jen in features, health/cooking/food, history, product review3 Comments »
After a visit to the southern part of Salta in 1996, with his wife Ursula, Don Hess was directed to Cafayate, the center of wine production in the region. It was there that he drank an intriguing Malbec-Cabernet blend from Colomé, and there that he began fermenting the idea that he could plant a world class vineyard at over 9000 feet. As Hess explained,
Hess now owns a vineyard in Colomé, along with a stunning hotel and art gallery which he built, about a four hours’ drive from Salta, in northwest Argentina. Colomé’s vineyards include century old vines that pre-date the deadly vine disease phylloxera, being planted on original French rootstock. This land encompasses about 96,000 acres, and then, of course, there is the 60,000 acres at Altura Maxima (near Payogasta) and another 865 acres at nearby El Arenal. Currently, just under 300 acres are being cultivated. It’s the Altura Maxima property that is gaining fame these days, as this vineyard currently holds the world record for vineyard at the highest altitude. In a country where bottles of wine are marked with the specific altitudes of their vineyards, there is a machismo contest going on amongst the landlords over who can go the highest. To give an idea of the heights, the California vineyards top out at 3,000 feet, and Europe at 4,300 feet. In Argentina, vineyards average 5,500 feet, and Altura Maxima boasts vineyards at close to 10,000 feet. The high altitude, while still a very experimental thing, is thought to be viticulturally advantageous. The extreme elevations give the vines an abundance of solar radiation, and some researchers think this increases the level of healthy polyphenols in red wine. The thinner air and lower humidity seem to cause the grapes to develop thicker skins, resulting in a more flavorful, aromatic, and tannic grape. Argentina is clearly a special place for Donald and Ursula Hess, who now spend half the year there. They love the people, and in fact, when they bought Colomé, they inherited not only the oldest winery in Argentina, dating back to 1831, but also its 400 inhabitants. Hess has been kind to these natives, who previously were forced into slave labor. Colomé employs at least one person from each extended family. Hess takes time to train them, provides them with health insurance and has built facilities to meet their needs: a clinic, community center, and church. Hess also takes great care of the land itself. At Colomé, he installed an Italian-made hydro-electic turbine for energy, he grows everything from the vines to the food he cultivates for the hotel using traditional biodynamic principles, and the entire estate is self-sufficient. You’ll find sheep and cattle there producing organic meat and milk, and their manure fertilizing the vines and gardens. If you think you might want to go start a vineyard, keep in mind the timetable. Hess realizes that Argentina will probably be the cap of his career, because these ventures take a great deal of not only money, but time. Here is his projection:
Time will tell if Donald Hess’ high altitude experiment will pay off. As he battles the unique hurdles of the region - frost, hail, wild donkeys, minimum oxygen, and the Argentine leaf-cutting ant (which destroyed 13 acres of his first planting), Hess still presses on. The Hess Group produces four wines at its Colomé vineyards, just three of which you can find in the United States in very limited quantities: Colomé Torrontes, Colomé Estate Malbec, and Colomé Reserva. If you have the opportunity to travel to Argentina, you’ll want to stay at Hess’ Estancia Colomé. photo credit: Estancia Colomé and USA Today Technorati Tags: Argentina, biodynamic viticulture, Coloma, Donald Hess, organic farming, high altitude viticulture, Salta, vineyard, viticulture, wine making, winery Feudi di San Gregorio: Southern Italy’s Ancient VinesPosted March 16th, 2008 by Jen in features, health/cooking/food, history, product review3 Comments » Italy’s tiny village of Sorbo Serpico in Campania’s Irpinia region is home to the highly acclaimed Feudi di San Gregorio estate, established in 1986. For many years this southern Italian area was overlooked by other winemaking powerhouses to the north, but the folks at Feudi have tapped into the incredible potential of Campania’s unique terroir and ancient varietals. Close to Mt. Vesuvius, the land is layered with mineral-rich deposits of volcanic ash, remarkably favorable to vines, producing a grape with very distinctive flavors and aromas. Many of the vines used by Feudi di San Gregorio are centuries old, including the oldest Aglianico vines in the country, a grape with origins in ancient Greece. When a food writer and wine lover set out to find Italy’s oldest vineyard, his quest eventually led to one of Feudi di San Gregorio’s vineyards, about which he was told:
This is an ancient grapevine, not a tree:
Enzo Ercolino and his wife Mirella Capaldo started Feudi di San Gregorio, and along with Italian enologist Riccardo Cotarella, they have taken every advantage of the natural conditions of Campania, and added a modern technology twist to make exquisite modern wines from ancient vines. You will not find them stomping grapes with their feet, despite the ancient history. Feudi di San Gregorio took a high spending approach, building a $25 million winery and hospitality center.
And the wine, ah, I hear it’s good.
photo credits: New York Times, Vinography
Technorati Tags: aglianico, Campania, Feudi di San Gregorio, Italy, ancient vines, viticulture, technology, vineyard, wine making, winery Maragas Winery: An Oregon High Desert ExperimentPosted March 9th, 2008 by Jen in features, health/cooking/food, product review5 Comments »
Doug, a Greek/Italian with a long family history of wine making, and his wife Gina, half-Italian herself, seem the perfect couple to be taking on this historic task. The idea for Maragas Winery was first dreamed up by the couple in 1999, and by 2001 Maragas had produced its first vintage - out of a four-bay garage on the east side of Bend, and by 2003 in a nice downtown Bend location. But all this with grapes from outside of Central Oregon - currently the Maragas wine is made from the grapes of Western and Southern Oregon, and California.
So, I can imagine Doug Maragas paying the great amount of money that winemakers must pay for grapes, and saying, “I can do better.” And like his grandmother, doing it all against the odds and with great tenacity, despite the risks. You may wonder why Maragas Winery is the only one operating in Central Oregon. Goodness, vineyards abound in the Willamette Valley of Oregon where the Pinot Noirs are as famous as anything from the Napa Valley. The freezing winter temperatures are probably the biggest deterrent. Spring and fall frosts can also be deadly to the crop - as Gina says, it can frost here at any old time, and lastly, Central Oregon has a short growing season. There simply must be enough heat to ripen the fruit. There is some encouraging news, however.
With help from the Oregon State University viticulture experts, Maragas carefully picked 16 of the heartiest varieties most likely to survive and thrive and produce an excellent wine. The Maragases opted to not plant any hybrids at this point (which are actually more suited to cold-climate growing), instead cultivating the traditional Vitis vinifera varieties because of their status as the best-tasting wine grapes. So far, they have planted a one-acre pilot vineyard, to test the varieties before choosing the vines for the remainder of the acreage. It will take about three years to know the results. The first vines are now springing forth with new buds, a hopeful sign of an agricultural breakthrough that will someday soon christen Central Oregon as wine country. photo credits: Maragas Winery, Google Images, Wines and Vines. Technorati Tags: Maragas Winery, Central Oregon winery, vineyard, wine making, winery Rouge-Bleu: A Newbie Vine Farmer in ProvencePosted March 2nd, 2008 by Jen in features, france/french, health/cooking/food, history, product review8 Comments »
I stumbled upon Jean-Marc’s blog recently, and was excited when I saw that he and his wife were doing a west coast tour! But, I read his blog a few days too late, as he had already passed through Portland, just hours from me. I left a comment on his blog anyway, mentioning our dream of a vineyard on our property someday. I was so surprised to see an email several days ago titled Vineyard in the desert, from Jean-Marc! He asked the telling question:
I knew immediately I was in trouble. I responded that it was quite doubtful, since we had to drill through over 60 feet of solid rock, plus another 200 feet, to hit water when we installed our well. Monsieur Espinasse is a gracious but straightforward Frenchman, and gave me no-nonense advice:
Ah, well, let’s talk about Rouge-Bleu! Their “Dentelle” Cuvée is scheduled to be bottled in just over a week, and I imagine everyone is very excited. Organic and ancestral practices at Rouge-Bleu call for some interesting viticultural procedures. Jean-Marc’s latest post involves egg whites — don’t worry, they won’t end up in your bottle. Evidently, the albumin contained in egg whites aids in the clarifying process, and using them allows Jean-Marc to avoid too much filtration, which kills the natural sediments so vital to their natural wines. What are the benefits of organic grape farming? Jean-Marc says that the combination of natural cultivation and harvesting at low yields allows the vines to produce their very best. The result will be good levels of alcohol, high levels of acidity, the right balance of sugar, and a promising aging. Another term you’ll hear around Rouge-Bleu is biodynamic viticulture. It’s hard to define, as each grower will modify his practices to suit his needs, but it seems to go beyond organic farming. Biodynamic farming will also take into account timing, and, for example, apply certain soil applications according to traditional seasonal markers. A biodynamic approach to a vine disease, for instance, would be not to focus on how to kill the disease, but to ask why the plant is sick in the first place. There is something depleted in the soil, let’s fix the soil, instead of, there’s just something wrong with the vine. This makes sense, but biodynamic philosophy can also lead into mysticism, at which point I would depart. Here’s a nice sampling of how Jean-Marc practically applies his farming philosophy:
If you have any questions about Rouge-Bleu, be sure to check in at Jean-Marc’s website. I think I’ll be asking how to get my hands on some bottles of the upcoming Dentelle Cuvée and also the Mistral, which is scheduled to be released later this year. If you live in Houston, Texas, you’re in luck — French Country Wines imports the Domaine Rouge-Bleu wines. photo credits: Rouge-Bleu Technorati Tags: bottling wine, Provence, organic farming, biodynamic viticulture, Rouge-Bleu, vineyard, winery Norman Rockwell: The People’s PainterPosted February 24th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, book reviews, features, history, politics/world news, product review10 Comments »
However, passing time and a view through a lens clarified by our own humanity is providing a fresh take on Rockwell. Are we not in need of art that springs from sentimentality about American values? Is there not a desperate call to understand the dignity of the common man? Isn’t this a time to celebrate democracy and the individual? Do we not need hope for our nation in the face of economic and international uncertainties? The engaging power of Norman Rockwell paintings are for such a time as this. If one judges Norman Rockwell by popular appeal, he has always been wildly successful. Though derided by the art world, he was embraced by the people. Though his storyteller style was out of fashion in the modern, abstract art establishment, Rockwell was clearly understood. Rockwell wrote in 1936:
Norman Rockwell was best known for his Saturday Evening Post covers, of which he painted hundreds over a period of 47 years. Of these, there are four from 1943 that are among his most famous and influential works. The Four Freedoms series, published in 1943, was inspired by president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech in which he set forth four principles for universal rights: Freedom from Want, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, and Freedom from Fear. The wartime effect of the bold statements made by these powerful paintings cannot be underestimated.
Lest we forget what American life was like in the 20th century, we have Rockwell. We can remember the best of America and the worst of America, but always with benevolent affection. The everyday happenings of everyday people were the subject of most of his work, painted with accuracy and an appealing sense of tradition. Resources:
Technorati Tags: art history, Boy Scout calendar, Norman Rockwel, Saturday Evening Post, The Four Freedoms Leonardo da Vinci For KidsPosted February 17th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, book reviews, education, features, history, science37 Comments »
There are volumes written about the genius of da Vinci, and it can be hard to know where to start, but if you’re interested in a unit study on this magnificent artist, I would begin with Janis Herbert’s book Leonardo da Vinci For Kids, His Life and Ideas - 21 Activities. Only 90 pages, Herbert’s book neatly breaks up the study into four sections, each including historical and artistic information, and activities for students to do at home or in the classroom: 1) A Boy in Vinci; 2) The Young Apprentice; 3) A Genius at Work; and 4) “I Shall Continue”. Herbert takes some literary license in her book, and creates some wonderful dialogue and scenarios, that while not authenticated, brings Leonardo da Vinci to life for young minds. I’ll highlight some of the activities Herbert has created for each section. ONE: A Boy in Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, in the small village of Vinci, in a region of Italy called Tuscany. He was the illegitimate son of a peasant woman and an ambitious notary. Probably because of his illegitimate status, Leonardo had little early education, other than the local priest teaching him how to read and write and use an abacus. Shuffled around to various family members as a child, Leonardo was left to himself quite often, and perhaps this solitude is what we’re still grateful for five centuries later, as he spent his days outdoors studying birds, plants, and nature. Activity: Brush up on Birds (pp 4-5) When you draw or paint something, you notice things you may not have seen before. That’s why Leonardo grew up to be a great artist and a great scientist. He was one of the first artists to draw things exactly as he saw them in nature. While sketching and painting birds, he learned a lot about their anatomy, or body structure.
TWO: The Young Apprentice
According to the artist biographer Vasari, Leonardo and Verrocchio worked together on the painting Baptism of Christ (1472-1475). Vasari wrote that Leonardo painted the young angel holding Jesus’ robe so skillfully and with such superior quality to his master that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again. New ideas in painting, and indeed culture, were rising up in Florence around this time, as the Renaissance was blossoming. Oil painting had just been introduced to Italy from northern Europe, and Leonardo spent a lot of time mixing different materials, and soon surpassed everyone in his use of the new medium. Leonardo also brought new perspective and depth to painting, as he used his skills in math and geometry to calculate the placement of lines in his drawings and paintings. And perhaps foremost to the new Rensaissance art was Leonardo’s passion to draw things as realistically as possible. He sketched incessantly and was an ardent observer of nature, animals, plants, people. Activity: Animal Art (p. 20) When Leonardo was a young apprentice in Florence, he spent all of his spare time drawing. Often, he went to the Medici family’s private zoo and drew the animals there. Take a trip to the zoo to sketch the animals or draw your pet at home. Materials:
Go over the shapes, building on them with heavier lines. Hold and move the pencil in different ways to get different effects. Draw soft, shaded lines lightly with the side of the pencil. Press down hard and move it back and forth for a hard, jagged line. Pencil in the distinctive features, such as the hooves and tail. For the horse, use soft, short strokes with the pencil held slightly at an angle to capture the texture of his hair. Use longer lines of different sizes for his flowing mane. THREE: A Genius at Work When Leonardo da Vinci was 30 years old, he left Florence for Milan, where he spent the next 17 years. At the persuasion of Lorenzo de’ Medici (hoping to secure peace between Florence and Milan), Da Vinci presented himself to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico il Moro. Leonardo wrote a letter to Ludovico, offering himself as a military engineer, and came before the Duke with a lira da braccio, lute, which he made himself and beautifully played before the court. Leonardo’s letter told of all the weapons and fortifications he could design to keep the city safe.
Leonardo’s love of music led him to study the science of sound, and he was one of the first to liken it to the motion of waves. He was also one of the first to note that il sole non si muove, the sun does not move - a remarkable observation in a day when people thought the sun revolved around the earth. In 1484 the plague struck Milan, and the thousands of dead people were left to rot in the streets. Leonardo, being the ultimate problem solver that he was, turned his attention to disease prevention. He designed a layout of the city that had wide streets and canals in place of the narrow ones, wide enough for proper sewage disposal, and a system for washing the streets automatically with locks and paddle wheels. It was a two-tiered town design, with the top streets for homes and churches, and the bottom streets to be used for deliveries and wagons.
Leonardo also received a commission to paint an altarpiece, for which he created Virgin of the Rocks, a stunning work which reflects his interest in nature. One of Leonardo’s most famous paintings, The Last Supper, was also painted in Milan. It took him over three years to complete this painting. Leonardo’s work habits are best reflected in The Last Supper. He often didn’t even finish his work, so the world is fortunate to have this masterpiece. Here’s how Herbert describes his work on The Last Supper:
When Leonardo finally finished, the painting was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece, with superb design and characterisation. However, because Leonardo had used tempera paint over a ground of mostly gesso, instead of the more reliable fresco, it rapidly deteriorated. The Last Supper has undergone extensive restoration over the centuries, but is still one of the most reproduced works of art ever. Activity: Leonardo’s Lute (p. 31) Leonardo’s silver lute captured the heart of Ludovico. You can make a musical instrument from items found around the house. Adult supervision is recommended for this activity. Materials:
FOUR: “I Shall Continue.” With Italy at war with the French, Leonardo returned to Florence in 1500. In 1502, Leonardo entered the services of Cesare Borgia, the Duke of Valentinois. Borgia helped the French conquer Milan, and had ambitions to conquer all of central Italy. Borgia hired Leonardo da Vinci to be his military engineer, and Leonardo traveled all over Italy with him, examining castles and fortresses, and suggesting improvements for fortifications.
It is now known that the identity of the woman in the portrait is Lisa di Gherardini, the third wife of a Florentine silk trader named Francesco del Giocondo. Lisa di Gherardini was 26 years old at the time of the sitting and had recently lost a child. Herbert invites students to question the portrait: And what is she thinking? Why does she smile? A story is told that Leonardo had musicians and clowns in his bottega as the woman sat for her portrait, so that she would smile as he painted. But this smile has appeared in other paintings by Leonardo. Is he trying to tell us something? Is this a peaceful smile or is it a little disturbing? Why does she smile when she wears a black veil and all around her is dark and gloomy? Leonardo was back in Milan by 1508, and then moved to France at the behest of King François in 1516. He settled in the Loire valley in the beautiful manor house Clos Lucé, near the royal chateaux in Amboise, France, and became First Painter and Architect and Engineer of the King. Leonardo and King François visited together often, discussing philosophy, art, science. Though now paralyzed in one arm, Leonardo could still draw and supervise the work of his pupil. Leonardo wrote in his notebooks, “I shall continue,” and he never gave up his studies or his work. Leonardo died on May 2, 1519, and French legend tells us that he died in the arms of King François. Activity: The Craft of Cartography (p. 65) When Leonardo became a military engineer for Cesare Borgia he created many maps. Mapmakers are also called “cartographers.” Leonardo was one of the first cartographers to draw maps from a vista d’uccello, a bird’s-eye view. Materials:
I highly recommend Janis Herbert’s book, Leonardo da Vinci For Kids. These and many more activities can be found in her engaging book. She includes biographies of other famous Renaissance artists and historical figures, web sites to explore, and a helpful glossary. Other Resources: WebMuseum, Paris
Technorati Tags: art activities, art for children, art history, inventions, Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, The Last Supper Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669)Posted February 10th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, features, history5 Comments »
| ||||
This painting 
They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and the story of the Marquis de Lafayette fits this expression well. His is the tale of a teenage orphan who travels to a foreign land to offer his services in a David versus Goliath type battle. Winning that battle, he returns to his homeland where he is a key player in the French Revolution.
We are watching the vegetable starts every day, the children with intense wonder at the new growth, me with a mix of hope and apprehension– will we succeed in this gardening adventure? The sunflower in this photo has been the subject of the greatest amazement, as my son was standing right in front of it when the shell of the seed popped right off the plant as the seedling stretched its tender leaflets in a show of force.
As you can see, your child or student can decorate the front cover and also include some mini-books. I chose to affix three pockets for what I call “character cards.”
Basically, by demonstrating that the human genome is deteriorating, and always has been since its origin, the theory of human life arising from random, beneficial, and increasingly complex mutations simply can’t be true. If we take an honest look at the human genome research, we will discover profound implications about our views of life, and we must conclude that The Primary Axiom is false.
The story and person of Benjamin Carson makes me so happy because he is just one more amazingly brilliant and talented individual in the field of science and medicine to blow a hole in the tired argument that Christians who believe in God the Creator and not evolution are just uneducated, fundamentalist religious whack-jobs who don’t know what they’re talking about.
He has been named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1″ by al-Insan al-Jadid, an Arabic newspaper, and by merely looking at this elderly Coptic priest, one would fail to see why.
Helen Suzman lived long enough to greet 2009, by one day. This extraordinary anti-apartheid activist from South Africa, whose name is as great as that of Nelson Mandela in the fight for true freedom for black South Africans, died on January 1, 2009.
II. 
Many greenhouses offer organized field trips for school groups, and this one was no exception. While my group (my family) just walked in as customers to make a purchase, they were still very accessible and education-minded. It’s important to note that this was a small, locally owned nursery, and these are the best ones, in my opinion, to approach for an educational tour. 
Before the kids left, they had all helped to groom several horses, feed them, pick their hooves, ride around the corral, and choose their own horseshoe to take home.
If you go to this particular state park in the summer (Smith Rock in Terrebonne, Oregon), plan an early start to avoid heat stroke, and pack a picnic lunch and a sketch pad/pencil.
One nice feature about most state parks are the plaques of geologic or historic information planted along the way. Don’t rush past these if you want to get the most out of your field trip. I usually have a different opinion about some of the geologic timelines given in the typical state park plaque, but what a great learning opportunity to discuss these issues. 
Two summers ago, my husband had a family reunion, and I received a cookbook compiled from that great gathering. My husband’s grandma, Donna Alice (pictured on the left there with my hubby), was the sixth out of twelve children of Frank and Hilda, and eleven of those twelve are still living and showed up with their sprawling clan at that reunion. They all cooked and brought their food, and it was mighty good.
Here are Frank and Hilda with their first daughter, Mina, in 1917. Mina would be the first of 10 daughters. The couple had just two boys, one of whom died in 1991. Mina is 92 years old now and in a wheel chair, widowed for 11 years. 
Sorry I posted a blank Religious Freedom article earlier. It was set to auto-publish, and I lost track of time - it came and went without me noticing. All I had at that point was a poorly written document that started out something like “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Trim really brings out your walls and makes things feel solid. I had initially wanted to do knotty pine trim but ended up going with a painted trim to save money. We wrapped our windows all the way which is becoming less common these days and man did it make our windows stand out. In our first home we replaced all of the doors, windows and trim, and so I know a good finish carpenter is everything. There are tricks to getting things fit and look good when they aren’t perfectly square. A good finish guy can hide a lot. My friend Matt took the honors and went to work, spending a lot of time with his tape, finish gun and chop saw and did a great job.
By luck 18″ travertine went on sale at the local Home Depot just in time - $2.49 per square foot. The quality was about 80/20 that is about 80% of the tile was good to great and about 20% was bad to not usable. We strategically placed the good tiles in the most visible places and put the not so pretty ones in out of the way places like our utility closet, the corners of the pantry and under counters and appliances. Some of the tiles will be great except for maybe one edge or section, save those for places you need to trim a piece then just cut off the bad part.
Our entrance and fireplace both have faux stone and man there’s a lot of it. As of this writing we have finished the fireplace and it looks great. It took a little bit to get the rhythm, but once we got going it wasn’t too bad. We went with a sorta country rubble stone with wide grout lines as it matched the natural stones around the property. I found two or three magazine pictures I liked and tried to emulate them, which really helped as I could show the two guys helping me exactly what I was going for.
This being our third home, I pretty much knew how I was going to attach the yard. This property was very challenging, however, as the amount of rock made trenching and tilling extremely difficult. I brought in a lot of loam and used a single spade plow on my tractor to turn the soil, pop rocks and then to trench. Trying to use a ditch witch would have been impossible. After turning the soil and getting it fluffed up a bit, I chained three logs to the back of the tractor and drug them around our yard for hours to level things out.
The first lawn I put in was at our first house and I had sent in all of my dimensions to Rain Bird, as they would design your system for free and send you a plan and parts list. Off to Home Depot I went, and after having nearly filled two baskets with tons of small parts, a guy down the aisle walked up to me. He was wearing a jacket with the name of a local landscaping company on it, and the Rain Bird logo embroidered on the front pocket. He said, “Did you send in for one of those free system plans from one of the sprinkler companies?” I told him I had and he dryly responded that I should put it all back and just get a couple of larger heads to shoot across my yard and call it good. He said “Look, all ya wanna do is flick some water out there, try and hit your corners and get double coverage and you’ll be fine.” 
Framing is done and the electrical wire is in the wall. Now it’s time to put some “rock” on the walls. Before you do, be sure to check your walls for warped studs and other defects. Most can be fixed with a handplaner or by shimming, and this will make your walls look nice and straight once the sheetrock goes on.
We saved a little money with the drywall company by doing all of the cleanup. This was a chore, especially after the hangers got done. The drywall hangers left screws and dust and chunks of cutoff drywall everywhere - and I mean everywhere. 
The mudders will plop mud everywhere and once it dries it is no fun trying to get off the floor and bath fixtures. Be sure they mask and cover all of your tubs and showers and put down paper or drop clothes over your entire floor. The mudders will need heat or at least a decent temperature to make sure the mud dries between coats. If it is the middle of winter and your furnace is not hooked up yet, then you’ll need to rent a heater to keep the house warm. 
The very first thing to do once you have your plans done is to get a lumber takeoff. Looking back I wish I would have done just one of these. Instead I gave a set of plans to 3 different lumber retailers and they all did separate bids for all of my lumber, siding, posts, brackets, housewrap and sheeting. Problem is, the takeoffs (materials list) were all different. Also, these takeoffs had a lot of assumptions in them. There is, for example, more than one brand and style of lap siding - all with different prices, benefits and so forth. So, pay a couple hundred for a takeoff to be done.
Do make sure you check the work of your hired help and tell them early if you want it done differently, better yet tell them before they start how to do it if you have a specific desire. Every single sub I worked with wants to get in and get out, and often they don’t mind cutting corners to get it done quicker. I made it clear that good enough was not good enough. We can have a good working relationship, but that doesn’t mean I am going to smile when you do something the wrong way. I also think the work is done better when there is knowledge that the owner will be checking it thoroughly on a regular basis. I am sure if you can pay for a true master carpenter, this isn’t necessary, but most likely you’ll be on the other end of the spectrum.
Framing crews are in a league of their own. I hadn’t listened to so much 80’s rock since high school. Stereo blasting, nail guns thumping and saws ripping, these guys want to turn it out fast. A good framer will check for plumb and level quite a bit. A not so good framer will use shortcuts used on track homes and say good enough when doing so. These types of small errors add up and magnify as you go up. A good framer will be conscious of the lumber warp and wane and then strategically utilize less acceptable lumber.
I did roofing for a summer and considered doing ours. I am glad I didn’t. I found a good deal and ran with it. It got done in a few days and I was able to work on other things in the meantime. For your roof, you can vent with standard roof vents or with ridge venting. Ridge venting allows for more airflow at the peak and thus is preferred - keeping your attic cooler in the summer and saving you money. The cost difference is a little more but it wasn’t too bad. Make sure your sub tells you what type of valley flashing he will do. There are a lot of methods, some cheaper and some better - take a pick. I would recommend not skimping on this as a leaky roof means a lot of trouble. Check with local roofing supply companies and ask them what they consider to be adequate and what is subpar. This will differ depending on where you live as climate is the determining factor. High winds and/or freezing temperatures for example, need to be addressed in roofing to ensure ice and snow doesn’t dam up and water doesn’t blow into the building structure.
Strangely enough, when undertaking a building project you’ll receive a flood of marital counseling. For me, it came from a few friends, first the realtor and then the mortgage guy. They all say, with a certain seriousness, to be careful not to let the building experience ruin or even destroy your marriage. They profess to have actually seen it happen. It seems so odd when starting out, but the story goes that as the project progresses, the endless flood of decisions can lead to conflicts between you and your spouse. Fighting over such things as wall colors or door sizes, cabinet styles or floor coverings may seem trivial, however if we really look at the pettiness of most of our day to day arguments, they are usually of even less importance. 
Depending on your lot size and local building codes you’ll need to determine where your house will sit, where the driveway will go, how you’ll hook into utilities and a myriad of other topics. We were required to submit a site plan to the county that showed all of these things drawn to scale, along with easements and setbacks, as well as where our well would be drilled and where the septic system would be located.
I met Julie at a church women’s retreat a few months after moving to Central Oregon. I’d seen her leading worship on several occasions, and thought somebody should turn up the mike. I was thrilled when we ended up rooming together at the retreat. That first night was the typical stay-up-half-the-night-talking-women’s-thing. It seems like I’ve known Julie forever, but I guess it’s only been about 3 1/2 years! This is a picture of us last summer at Drake Park in Bend, catching up while our kids played with the ducks.
I’ve sat in Buffy’s kitchen many a time (and never want to leave), and truly, her cookie business is just another extension of her gift of hospitality. She loves baking and is an excellent hostess. This is important to mention, because my advice for those of you considering a business is to choose a venture that you have a passion for or a natural interest in. Be willing to make adjustments, as Buffy has done, but try to stick to your vision.
Strawberries are soon in season, and if you grow them yourself, how easy and delicious this tea party will be! An elegant bowl filled with fresh strawberries will grace the table, along with the table settings of tea cups, saucers, tea pots, dessert sized plates and forks. Mugs will not do for tea, but your tea cups do not need to match. It’s funny how tea tastes best when sipped from thin bone china. A white linen or lace tablecloth is a lovely touch, I mustn’t forget the soft linen napkins.
My first suggestion is to get some living color. Fresh cut flowers are always nice, but I prefer a plant that will continue to give me enjoyment beyond a few weeks. Cost-wise, a large bouquet of flowers is about the same price as a large flowering plant. Here is what I chose, an easy care Bromeliad Guzmania “Rana.” You can find these plants for about $10, depending on where you shop. Better deals will be found at your local nursery versus the grocery store plant section. 
I didn’t want to leave the bathroom out of all the fun, so I bought a new shower curtain with a wonderful spring look. It was $4.99, brand new at Goodwill, and truly needed because the upstairs bath currently has no shower curtain at all. The kids always take a bath in there, and the downstairs bathroom for the guests already has a shower curtain.
Spring is here! It came, then ducked under a series of freak hailstorms and a blanket of snow, only to emerge this weekend for good. The kids and I basked in a perfect April day on Friday, obeying the chipper call of the season to go for a hike.
Voila, you have a lovely child’s spring book! One neat thing about this style of book is that it allows such easy access to the items. Each piece of cardstock can be taken out and handled (as children can’t help but do), and easily returned to its proper place. And of course, the see-through ziplock bag is an essential as well, giving full visual stimulation.
We’ve been spending some time in the dirt getting the soil ready to start a garden. And no surprise, children are drawn to dirt like nothing else! You mean you want me to dig holes? I’m allowed to get filthy and mucky? To direct that childish energy and wonder into a productive endeavor like a garden is not only smart on the part of the parent, it’s a lifelong gift to both of you.
Here in Central Oregon, we’re still in the planning stages. We’re working with virgin land that’s never been planted and we have our own obstacles to maneuver. We have a lot of land to work with and can experiment with several ideas, but the ground itself has some limitations. Giant boulders being one. A very short growing season being another. 
To begin this project, select a flat 10×10 foot plot of ground that gets at least 6 hours of sun a day. Place a stake in the center of the area, and tie a 3-foot string to it. Your child can take hold of the very end of the string and walk in a circle, while another child walks behind with a hoe to mark what will be the outer boundary of the garden bed.
You can find more fabulous garden ideas and activities to do with children, such as a sunflower house, container gardens, and a moon garden, in Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots. Would you like to win a free copy? Leave me a comment and let me know you’d like this book! I’ll draw a random winner next week.
The multimillionaire Swiss-born entrepreneur and winery magnate Donald Hess is switching his attention from Napa to a remote region of the Andes foothills in Argentina, in the province called Salta. In 2001, Hess added the Argentina holdings to his existing vineyards in California, South Africa, and Australia.
The sleek new wine cellar has capacity for 5,000 barrels, and their state-of-the-art technology includes vineyards equipped with solar-powered meteorological stations which are constantly gathering weather data. This high tech method actually minimizes the need for artificial viticulture. The Feudi di San Gregorio estate also includes a gourmet 
The face of Central Oregon farming is changing, and wine grapes are the newcomer. Doug and Gina Maragas are the owners of 
At this point, it’s helpful to know that Doug Maragas had a very industrious Greek grandmother. Anna Maragas and her husband owned a grocery store in Canton, Ohio in the 1940s. When good oranges were nowhere to be found, she said, “I can do better,” and set off to California. By herself. And came back with a train car full of delicious oranges, somehow obtained on credit. Anna began brokering fruit, and eventually grapes, up and down the west coast, her tenacity landing her with the only train car permit to do so during the war. Once the good lady had her hands on some fine grapes, she did what any industrious woman would do - she began to make wine.
The new Maragas Winery and Vineyard, completed in November 2006, is located about 20 miles north of Bend in a fortuitous microclimate. The 40-acre property is at a lower elevation and gets more sun than other parts of Central Oregon, possesses a beneficial sandy loam, volcanic soil, and most advantageous, is protected by rock cliffs that serve to draw cold air away from the vines.
This begins the story of 
Provence is an ideal location for wine making, as Jean-Marc is discovering. The Mistral, which is the strong, cold northwesterly wind that blows through southern France and into the Mediterranean, can be deadly; however, the dry Mistral winds minimize vine disease and can return health to the vineyard. The stony ground and soil rich in calcium carbonate is quite amenable to vines and little else. The Mediterranean climate is famously favorable to the vines.
Rockwell was born in 1894 in New York. He was a prolific painter, producing over 4000 original works. It’s fitting that one of his first jobs was art editor for the Boy Scouts of America, and Rockwell’s annual contributions to the Boy Scouts’ calendars between 1925 and 1976 have earned him a permanent place in the hearts of millions. Steven Spielberg has said that Rockwell’s scouting paintings inspired him to pursue his life’s work.
When Leonardo was 14, his father sent him to Florence, where the young boy became apprenticed to the renowned master 
Draw the animal using geometric shapes. For the horse, you might start by lightly drawing a large circle for his rear, a long oval for his body, and another circle for his chest. Draw his neck and head as ovals. Draw narrow cylinders for his legs and small ovals for his feet. While making this preliminary sketch, notice proportion (for instance, the size of the head compared to the body). 
Leonardo was fascinated by technology and the workings of machines. He invented fire throwers and missiles, and made an early design for a machine gun. Hundreds of inventions were sketched out in his notebooks - tanks, helicopters, bicycles, submarines, hang gliders, pulleys, cranes, bridges, and more.
Anatomy was another passion of Leonardo. He went to hospitals to watch operations, he visited morgues to dissect bodies of the dead. He measured muscles, diagrammed organs, discovered the way blood flows through the body, and made important conclusions about lungs and oxygen. His knowledge surpassed the doctors of his time. Leonardo applied this deep understanding of the human body to his art, and excelled in drawing proportional anatomy.
Throughout all of these other pursuits, Leonardo da Vinci continued to paint. His patron, Ludovico, was invaluable during his time in Milan. Ludovico had Leonardo paint his friend Cecilia Gallerani, and Leonardo called the painting Lady with Ermine. It was so lifelike that a poet commented that “Nature herself was jealous.”
Draw a horse’s head (approximately 3 by 3 inches) at one end of the lid of the shoe box. Ask an adult to help you cut the shape out carefully with a utility knife. Make a 1 1/2 inch slit in the lid of the box 3 inches from the other end as shown. Make a bridge for the lute out of the small square of cardboard.
Around this time, Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa, beginning in 1503, the most famous painting in the history of art. Leonardo took the painting with him everywhere. Many historians say the Mona Lisa wasn’t finished when he left Florence, and that he completed it during his final stay in France. After Leonardo died, the painting was given to the king of France, and today, it hangs in the Louvre in Paris. 
Things to consider when making a map are direction, scale, and symbols. With these things in mind, you can make a map of your neighborhood, showing the way from your house to your friend’s house or from your house to school.
