A Desultory Phillipic

I've been bumping around the book of Philippians. I do this sometimes; get stuck in a passage. sometimes it's a psalm, or one short verse. Recently it's been in the fourth chapter of Philippians. Note to self: next dry spell, remember that the more scripture you read, the more you love it, and the more juicy goodness you get out of it. This passage is like a strong drink to me.

Warning: biblical obscurity alert! Forgive me while I geek out a while.
I usually read out of the Jerusalem Bible. Reading a certain passage in Zephaniah that was so beautiful it took my breath away won me over to this outdated, Catholic translation. I have a copy of it that is just falling apart but I can't bear to part with it, and it is very hard to find. I finally realized that my falling-apart bible was so much work to read, what with the pages falling out and everything, that it was keeping me from reading the Bible much at all! So I bit the bullet and have started reading out of a different, intact, but very large and unwieldy copy. I made myself a beautiful new ribbon bookmark to entice me into the new book, and it worked. Little things, like the edition of my bible, or an ugly cover, or the lack of adequate bookmarks, often keep me from deep quiet times! (ok, I also like the Jerusalem Bible because J.R.R. Tolkien worked on the translation team. How cool is that? I only know it because I'm such a nerd that I was reading the translation notes. The text notes are mostly bunk; watch out!)
Anyway, I don't recommend the Jerusalem translation for this particular passage. Here is my own paraphrase:

Rejoice! And again, I say, Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and with thanksgiving, present your requests to the Lord, and the peace which passes understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally brothers, fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, anything that is excellent or praiseworthy, whatever is lovely and honorable, whatever is virtuous, whatever is good and pure. Fill your mind with such things.

I was once in a choir. The lowliest choir, really, at St. Olaf College; the only one I could have been in, as I didn't have to audition to join it. Antoine Armstrong, the fabulous conductor described to us how the lyrics, by John Donne, to a piece we were doing, were like a world inside of a nutshell; metaphysical. This passage is worth letting oneself sink into so one can wander around it, marvelling at all the delights therein:
-permission, even exhortation to rejoice! as in God we have great cause to do!
-The Lord is near. How beautiful, to be with God! He is so tender to me, so lovely and sweet.
-Only the voice of God can settle down my worried heart. No one can really tell me not to worry but one who can take care of me, one who knows a lot more than I.
-He gives me something to do with my heart, a practical alternative to worry!
-The closest I can describe the advent, or coming, of the God of peace, is right at the end of Till We Have Faces, when Orual finally meets Eros.
-I very much want help in keeping my heart and mind in the peace that often seems so fleeting.
-That bit about filling the mind with everything good and beautiful and excellent; Yes! This could be the vision for our homeschool, and for my own continuing education. To be filled with all sorts of goodness.

The baby comes with spring

I wrote this while waiting to have a baby, our third.

Due at easter
before the lillies?
before the lilacs.
but there may be crocuses,
fiddleheads, stretching up in curls
out of papery-brackeney nests,
out of damp dark dirt and leaves
the beginnings of lacy green on the trees?

Will the baby come with wet sidewalks,
nights warm enough for noise on the streets?
open windows?

even rain?
Thank God, thank God! The babe came. He sent us this baby--oh, I am filled with wonder--
and he carried me through that birth!
He answered my call and delivered me from my distress. Oh, I thank him with all my heart. God is my only treasure, and my great reward. He has been so good, so good to me.

The Only Salt Seas in Northern Lake Country

Written while waiting to give birth.

Small Whale
surfaces near my boat as I stand watching, waiting.
A fin slides along, just under the skin,
rides the length of the keel.
Sometimes bumps--push--
against the gunwhale.
Sitting astern, on my knees,
I wait for another sighting.
This silent companion,
more felt than seen,
glides along with us.
My paddle in hands, grasped firmly
to pull as hard as I can,
forward in great surges against the water.
We will slice though the grey,
splashes echoing against and under the small boat.

Perchance, if the wind picks up,
under this lowering sky,
we will ride peaks curdled with warm white foam,
slapping hard from one grey glassy hill
to another.
At our backs wind drives us,
faster than a runner to the far shore.

In our faces, we pull straight into the wind,
riding up and down the great swells,
now nigh four feet high,
one at a time, straight through and over
each solid hill of water,
nose high in the air,
pulling to the utmost,
from deep and low in our bodies,
in unison, singing strategy and courage to one another,
stroke and stroke and stroke and pull
across the long windy open water.

Or, given calm skies,
we may enjoy the gentle shelter of the quiet sunsteeped bay.
Along fingers of lake reaching through mats of hairy grassy rooty turf,
gentle through the sliding lillies,
sitting queenly open to the sun,
even slip, easy as a carved toy boat
past the narrow steep rocks,
right on by hidden tearing rocks,
under a low snag;
just around submerged deadheads
glide out into the open calm of the next lake.

Then--breathe easy,
rub our eyes
refill our water bottles from the deep still
open water
drink deep and long.

Overheard

Ezra: Wanna go adventuring in the woods?!
Fiona: I like the woods. I have a picture of me with my friends in the willow tree and we were in the woods.
Ezra: It's special when someone gives you a picture.
Fiona: No, my picture is something that really happened to me.

Basket of Eggs

Baby, you were so worth it! I worried so much. That birth was so hard.
You are so beautiful. I love you.
I wrote this while pregnant, hopeful and wondering about the child to come, trying not to count my chick before he hatched.


Crafted slowly, tenderly thoughtfully
this one is gilded, beauty-bright

This, covered in sugared violets, sparkles
in the Easter breakfast light.

Here, fern-green, unfurling fronds wrap around
this one, dark red, a soaking, velvet crimson.
This plain one, warm, hums like a honey bee.
One dew-damp from the morning chill,
another ringed with a quadrille of curliques

They nestle in the straw
in a circle softly mother-lined.

Behold! Tokens of inner wealth
glory-filled
vigil-waited
sunrise-light---

yet what's inside,
the treasure lasting,
is not ours yet,
till in our hand.

Sup with me: Honey Baked Lentils

Hrmmph. Dislike cooking?

I'm not a gourmand, and this is no Smitten Kitchen, but I think I might do some posts of cheap, healthy, easy quick dinners. Recipe at the bottom of post--skip down if you don't want my rambling commentary.

This one can be made, for me, without a trip to the store. It's because of our well stocked pantry, which could just as easily be a cupboard. Here's how it works: I always have onions, (I don't know how anyone functions if you don't have a couple of onions waiting for you!) garlic, spices, and the grains and oils and baking stuff I use all the time, on hand. When I use up one of these ingredients, I just write it on the grocery list that we keep running, on the fridge. I have tied a pencil to the magnet that holds the list, because otherwise I can't find anything to write with when I use up the ingredient, and I forget about it and don't have it the next time I need it. Things that are sold in bulk at the coop where we shop, like lentils and honey, I write a b next to, with a little circle around it, so Paul, who does the grocery shopping, will be alerted to bring the appropriate container. If I were really organized, I would put the empty container in a certain place, like the grocery bag, so he wouldn't have to hunt around to find it!
I haven't planned this recipe into this week, but if I needed to, I could go downstairs and make it right now. It can be baked in the oven, or a crock pot (which I don't have) or in a solar oven if it's too hot to heat the house.

I think the key to not loathing cooking is only making food that you personally like to eat! I don't even try cooking things that seem weird or gross to me. When I have, it is invariably a disaster.
I enjoy preparing meals for the family infinitely more if I know where my food came from, and can feel good about serving them something delicious and nourishing. I also like touching good fresh food. I am a bit like a preschooler--my favorite thing about this recipe, is running the lentils through my hands when I put them in the dish! (If the kids aren't too messy, one could let them play with the dried beans while one gets the rest of the ingredients together. It's like a sensory bin in the nursery school! My kids like to put their plastic snakes and dinosaurs in grain and make little diorama scenes! Afterwards they want to help put everything together, and then they have a better chance of liking the food, since they helped cook it.)

Also, a sharp knife, and a good wooden butcher block. It's no fun to cut an onion with a dull knife. That makes me cry. And then I'm liable to cut myself, or go ballistic when the kids flip the lentils I gave them all over the kitchen floor. Life with little children is really more enjoyable with a good sharp knife. I have one plain good chef's knife that I use for almost everything. I sharpen it with a round steel I keep right next to the knife. I haven't taken a class in sharpening, (I know, I'm really just straightening the edge, Imad!) but it stays keen enough for me. I use a wooden butcher block to cut, for everything. A damp towel under the cutting board can keep it from sliding around if that's a problem.

This is the recipe that got me started tolerating beans. I first found it on HappyFoody. For some reason, I grew up loathing them. But this is so tasty, I like to lick out the pot after it's all gone! I brought this to a church dinner once, and people who claimed they hated lentils had seconds and asked for the recipe. No guarantees that you or yours will like it, but I and mine do! I find that my hungry children like almost anything, whereas my children who've had their fill of crackers and sweets are bound to complain about even their favorite dishes!

Honey Baked Lentils
Good for the cooler months. Serve with good rice, or pitas, or fresh whole wheat bread and butter, or as a soup, with a spoon! Great with a nutty or grainy bread. This does take some time in the oven, so it's not a last-minute dish, but it is low effort! Good with carrots or winter squash or sweet potatoes. Winter vegetables could be cooked into it. But honestly I just make it plain and simple.

I cup Lentils, I use brown
Onion, chopped
2 Tbsp Honey, could also be made with maple syrup
2 Tbsp Soy sauce or tamari
2 Tbsp Olive oil
1/2 tsp Ginger: grated fresh or the powdered spice is fine too
2 cups Water
Salt and pepper to taste

Put all the ingredients in a covered dish, in a 350F oven, and bake until fragrant and tender, about 1 1/2 hours. Lentils should be very soft.
If desired, blend or run through a food mill to make it smooth; for some reason my kids like smooth things best.

Contentment and the Cardinal Virtues

Pretty:
I love that life springs up everywhere! This is a patch of sweet green sprouting in something--ahem--mostly dead, in our backyard. I love that this is what god does in the lives of his people; make life grow where all was dead.
I don't want to say it too loud, lest I incur the wrath of neighborly weed-haters, but I cherish a secret love of creeping charlie. As a kid, I mourned when Dad cut all the lovely purple flowers in the lawn just when they were starting to get nice. I like to lie in it, and I love it's charming fragrance. I don't like it in my vegetable garden, though you couldn't tell that by looking! So lush, verdant, and luxuriously green.

Happy: I am happy to have good friends in our neighborhood. I am happy my kids have sweet pals. Look at them! The tutu! The sword! The hands held, the valiant smile and the determined chins! Doesn't the picture of childhood in summer just warm the cockles of your heart?

I am happy we are learning so much together. These are great kids, and we love learning together!

They learn whether I want them to or not! For instance, I would sort of rather the learning-via-digging-under-the-clotheslines stop pretty soon. Or at least before the clotheslines fall over! But, oh, you wouldn't beleive the discoveries that have been made in this pit! It has been dug and redug. Bones unearthed, floods, mud games, bridges, secrets galore! I haven't had the heart to put a stop to it yet. Today, Ezra went ankle-deep in delight and mud-lusciousness.
Real:
I've been thinking about the four cardinal virtues Leila from Like Mother, Like Daughter talks about: Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice. Mostly thinking what a woefully short supply I have of them! Honestly, I had heard of the four cardinal virtues before; my Grandpa Roy liked to extol them. But his weren't the ones listed above-- I won't discuss Grandpa's cardinal virtues in mixed company!
Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice. These are solid.
I've done a lot of working on Peace, Joy, Love, and Hope, but they so often elude me. How can one work on peace? I can't generate Joy, you know. I wonder if Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice might not give me a handle with which to grasp, to receive the sweet gifts of God.
Fortitude to let go of the doubts and recriminations that steal the joy he's given.

Can I see the beauty, the glory of God in the midst of real life?
Funny: I've seen so many lemonade stands this summer! I love the way they hawk their wares.
I never had the chutzpa to set out my shingle like that, but I think these kids are making bank! My kids far prefer lemonade stand kool-aid to my fresh-squeezed. I think my husband does too! Ha!
Way to go kids!

Miscellany of Frugal Food tips

Our family of five spends $400 a month and I feel like we live like kings. We shop at our co-op or farmers' market. We shoot for local, real food. I say amen to all the folks I meet who want real food! Do you wonder if it's possible to eat fresh, local, ethically grown food without being rich? I think it is!
-planning is huge. I make the most I can out of all our meat. A roast, salad and sandwiches from the leftovers, broth and sauces from the bones, fat, and juices. We look to buy whole birds/small animals and split half or quarter cows/other large animals with neighbors and family. I look at what's leftover when planning the next shopping trip--we buy exactly what we need
-plan ahead for snack food and lunches. I like to have grabbable snacks around for emergencies and busy days. I have found it useful to package up leftovers into meal-sized containers before we eat. Otherwise if it's good, it just gets all eaten, or only
the unpopular bits are leftover.
-when we have beans, I make tortillas the next day. I make a bunch extra, wrap them up and freeze them for good quick meals.
-Gardening! It's not as hard as it seems! The garden gets a little better every year, as I learn from my mistakes. Really, the first year I planted tomatoes, I was amazed that these things grown with next to no assistance. It's like a miracle every year. You plant things, and they grow, and make fruits! What a gift from God!
-we never buy prime cuts. Luckily, our neighbors we are buying beef with this year want exclusively prime cuts! Jack Sprat and his wife, you know.
-we planted strawberries, mullberries, raspberries, blackberries, juneberries. I get blueberry bushes for friends who have better yards for growing them. Berries are so expensive organic, we can never afford to buy them, even locally and pick-your own. Once planted, they get better every year and come back on their own. (did I mention I love perennial foods?!!)
-we have a small yard, so glean from other people's fruit trees. Most people with fruit trees don't seem to know what to do with all the fruit! Some people are happy to let me harvest their whole crop instead of letting it fall on the sidewalk. This has worked for me with apples, pears, crabapples, grapes. One good little tree gives us a year's supply of applesauce and apple butter. Fruit is really important to us! I have gotten fruit from vacant lots.
-We get WIC. I know lots of people qualify for this who would never think of getting assistance--we love the program. they are always very respectful, and we can buy all the food at our coop. they also give vouchers for our local farmers' market.
-we make everything we can from scratch. little by little I've built up skills and habits. for instance, I realized we used a lot of ketchup; when I canned tomatoes I put up a year's supply of ketchup for not much extra work. pickles, jams, sauces--this type of stuff is way more expensive to buy than to make. yogurt, fresh cheeses. I don't know if fermented grains would be better nutritionally for you than other grains, but they are for us. I started a lot of this reading "More With Less", the mennonite cookbook. They also have a seasonal cookbook, "simply in Season".

-seasonal eating. Buy what's cheap when it's cheap, in quantity. We eat a lot of squash and beets in the winter! Mushrooms and beef in fall, chickens, dairy, eggs, and onions in spring. Vegetables galore in the summer. I recommend "Full Moon Feast". and "Midwest Gardener's Cookbook".
-free and cheap garden ideas: buy green onions, save the rootbase and the bottom inch of stalk. Stick these in the ground, and next year enjoy fresh green onions! An herb garden has a big payoff--once planted, perennial herps just come back on their own, with no extra money and harldy any work. I don't ever buy fresh herbs from the coop, but cook with them every day for free!
-I haven't yet successfully started tomatoes and peppers from seed, but all the gardeners I know who do this often have lots of starts they want to give away for free.
-alfalfa sprouts and other bean sprouts: I grow these in a jar with a screen lid on the dish drainer. Great for the winter when fresh greens are so pricey and shipped across the country
-I seed coriander/cilantro from the bulk whole herbs at the coop. also coop garlic is way cheaper for planting. than garden suppliers, and usually open-pollinated, heirloom varieties. Ditto onions and potatoes. If I have some spouting or getting all soft, I just plant them out. I say amen to a lot of what has been posted and will try to only add my extra bits:
-we buy all our food at our co-op or farmers market. we shoot for local, real food.
-We get WIC. I know lots of people qualify for this who would never think of getting assistance--we love the program. they are always very respectful, and we can buy all the food at our coop. they also give vouchers for our local farmers' market.
-planning is huge. I make the most I can out of all our meat. A roast, salad and sandwiches from the leftovers, broth and sauces from the bones, fat, and juices. We look to buy whole birds/small animals and split half or quarter cows/other large animals with neighbors and family. I look at what's leftover when planning the next shopping trip--we buy exactly what we need
-plan ahead for snack food and lunches. I like to have grabbable snacks around for emergencies and busy days. I have found it useful to package up leftovers into meal-sized containers before we eat. Otherwise if it's good, it just gets all eaten, or only the unpopular bits are leftover.
-when we have beans, I make tortillas the next day. I make a bunch extra, wrap them up and freeze them for good quick meals.
-we never buy prime cuts. Luckily, our neighbors we are buying beef with this year want exclusively prime cuts! Jack Sprat and his wife, you know.
-we planted strawberries, mullberries, raspberries, blackberries, juneberries. I give blueberry bushes to friends who have better yards for growing them. Berries are so expensive organic, we can never afford to buy them, even locally and pick-your own. Once planted, they get better every year and come back on their own.
-we have a small yard, so glean from other people's fruit trees. Most people with fruit trees don't seem to know what to do with all the fruit! People are often happy to let me harvest their whole crop instead of letting it fall on the sidewalk. This has worked for me with apples, pears, crabapples, grapes. One good little tree gives us a year's supply of applesauce and apple butter. Fruit is really important to us! I also get fruit from vacant lots
-we make everything we can from scratch. little by little I've built up skills and habits. for instance, I realized we used a lot of ketchup; when I canned tomatoes I put up a year's supply of ketchup for not much extra work. pickles, jams, sauces--this type of stuff is way more expensive to buy than to make. yogurt, fresh cheeses. I don't know if fermented grains would be better nutritionally for you than other grains, but they are for us. I started a lot of this reading "More With Less", the mennonite cookbook. They also have a seasonal cookbook, "simply in Season".
-seasonal eating. I buy what's cheap when it's cheap, in quantity. We eat a lot of squash and beets in the winter! Mushrooms and beef in fall, chickens, dairy, eggs, and onions in spring. Vegetables galore in the summer. I recommend "Full Moon Feast". and "Midwest Gardener's Cookbook".
-free and cheap garden ideas: when I buy green onions, I save the rootbase and the bottom inch of stalk. Stick these in the ground, and next year enjoy fresh green onions. An herb garden has a big payoff--once planted, perennial herps just come back on their own, with no extra money and harldy any work. I wouldn't ever buy fresh herbs from the coop, but cook with them every day for free!
-I haven't yet successfully started tomatoes and peppers from seed, but all the gardeners I know who do this always have lots of starts they want to give away for free.
-alfalfa sprouts and other bean sprouts: I grow these in a jar with a screen lid on the dish drainer. Great for the winter when fresh greens are so pricey and shipped across the country
-I seed coriander/cilantro from the bulk whole herbs at the coop. also coop garlic is way cheaper for planting. than garden suppliers, and usually open-pollinated, heirloom varieties. Ditto onions and potatoes. If I have some spouting or getting all soft, I just plant them out.
-I look for recipes that have just a handful of ingredients, most in my pantry, playing backup to whatever's in season. Simple but really good.
-I don't feel at all bad about being cheap. It is a delight to have good, fresh food. I like my food better since I don't get everything year-round. By the time it finally warms up enough for minnesota greens or chives and peas, or cools off for apples and soups, we're all so hungry for them!

Engines of Mordor

The engines of Mordor are at our gates. It was really hard to be at our house today. By the end of the day, the lot in the picture below is barren of house and trees.

We woke to the noises of destruction. I ran from bed to the window and saw a large yellow machine taking a giant bite out of a house across the parking lot from us. This particular house is one whose demolition I have been dreading. It was built in 1900, the same year as our house. It has been empty for a few years, but the windows and doors were mostly original and intact, not boarded up. It had wood floors, lovely woodwork. It was a nice, plain, old house. Bank-owned but not listed for sale, it apparently cost less to demolish than to repair.

I asked the men who were tearing it down if we could have a few windows and doors, since our house is still missing some of them. They declined. The house was too full of fumes from the SWAT team training exercises done there last week for them to be inside the house. The operator of the wrecking machine also told me that the wood could not be reclaimed or reused in any way because he would pulverize it. The entire thing was trashed, and they tore down the lot's large trees.Walking away from this disappointing encounter, I saw trucks pulling up to the bungalow across the street from us. This nice little house has been hard used as a rental, although it was drastically rehabilitated less than two years ago. The trash-out team of young men smashed every piece of furniture that had been left in the house by its previous occupants, and piled large trucks, all bound for the trash, full of things of every description. One said, "We'll take out all the trash, and then they'll tear it down. I don't *&%#ing care." He seemed to think the house being full of other people's abandoned things merited its demolition.

When I saw them carrying out a large oval mirror framed with carved wood, Paul stopped me from running out to ask for it. He knows I wouldn't know when to stop. They threw it on the pile and efficiently crushed it underfoot. (Mary snagged some fishing tackle and equipment. Paul saw some young neighbors of ours covertly making off with stacks of board games. More power to the scavengers!)

All day long we were literally surrounded by the sounds of destruction. Smashing, shattering, tearing, crushing.

We also got the sad news that a pile of construction materials were stolen from the yard of our new neighbors who are trying to breathe new life into another neglected property.

I ask for your prayers for new life here. I pray for the redemption and rebirth of these properties. For a renaissance of truth and beauty in this corner of the world. For us to recognize our history and learn from it. For families and neighbors to come together and protect, salvage, rebuilt, replant.How does the destruction of an old house, even a good old house, compare to greater evils? Senseless destruction of any kind is sad and wasteful, irresponsible. It is a little picture of a bad thing. Today, here, it was a noisy picture of a bad thing.
The above photo of Paul and some neighbors was taken by a neighbor kid we really care about. He used to live in one of the houses I was talking about today. I hope we will see him again.

pretty, happy, funny, real

Capturing the context of Contentment in everyday life:
Pretty. Jess and WillemMoses. Pretty isn't really enough. Golden! Glorious!
Happy. We made these little animals, a dragon and a bunny, with modelling wax boughten from the late toy shop, Wonderment. They were sweet and were cherished and played with for a brief morning before being smashed back into balls of wax.
Funny. William Moses' little head bobbles on his neck, his eyes are wide and focused. His grin without restraint. He practices holding his weight on his two sturdy little feet. He practices his Jazz Hands. (The photo here only captures the smiling eyes.)
Real. The "foreclosure crisis" is quite tangible on our block, where 16 out of 24 homes have been foreclosed upon. This is one is actually on the upswing. The property is being rehabbed by a family who will be living there, just two doors down from us! They took this little doomed house down by hand. It had only one narrow window on its whole eastern face.
We do not begrudge them this demolition, the first promising one we have seen, and are so thankful for their presence. Already, this family adding to the love and life and enthusiasm of this corner of Frogtown. Also, they have two young kids who look like they'll be great playmates!
Look at the grandeur of those trees!

Pretty, happy, funny, real is a weekly link thing from Like Mother, Like Daughter. That blog is one of my lifelines.
Too often, my operating goal is to be happy all the time. Contentment, however, means the acceptance of every circumstance and season and weather and mood, including the difficult and unhappy ones: working, creating, crying, raging, comforting, resting, enjoying, waiting.
Contentment comes from clinging to the one constant through all changes; the love from which none of those things can separate me.
Making the best of things, and celebrating the good and beautiful doesn't hurt either!

Our Projects

Looking at our pictures from our little family getaway with Jessica, our doula, (yeah, now we call her our life doula. ) I noticed that we all have projects we work on for fun. It's how we roll.
Even in the woods, you bet Paul has fun making mighty fine coffee.

Ezra and Gibbie did a very involved work involving corn cobs and fire. The hay meadow was planted, I think, to field corn last year, but it never dried out well so it was left on the stalks and little animals grabbed them and now the cobs are strewed all over the woods. They took these and charred them in the fire, and then Gibbie brought them to Ezra who had a station for scraping them. It was all very systematic and satisfying.
Empty pop cans became ammunition. Ezra hoarding cans. It was quite a battle.
They made torches. Sticks with dried leaves tied on with grasses. They really worked, though more smoke than light.
I like to make flower crowns.
Scouts tending the fires.

Don't tell me nursing isn't a project. I know better. This little one is still in the making.

Bill Watterson on Selling out

Bill Watterson, an artist who wouldn't merchandise his work despite heavy pressure and substantial enticements, and fought hard for having a real life:

"Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards. The so-called "opportunity" I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I'd need. What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts."

The above, quoted by Nevin Martell in his unauthorized biography of Bill Watterson, Looking for Calvin and Hobbes. I almost included two paragraphs of rather pointed analysis of said book but Upon Reflection, I'm not sure those thoughts are worth airing. I'll just say, "Hear, hear!" to Watterson's words.

Learning to Read

I've loved Leila's recent posts on learning to read. Never taught anyone to read before, but Gibbie and Ezra are on the cusp! I learned to read in first grade. I remember longing to read around five years of age, but it didn't then occur to me I could learn before they taught us in school. Maybe I wasn't ready to any earlier. By second grade I was reading chapter books late into the night.
What we're doing: reading out loud, lots and lots and lots. Picture books, poetry, comic books, favorite novels. This is seriously my favorite pastime. I basically married Paul because he would read books out loud with me. Gibbie won a little prize at his school last year among kids his age for reading the most hours during a reading fundraiser. The tricky thing was remembering to write it down. Our family chapter book really put us over the top because it means we read in the car and while doing dishes and other otherwise unliterary moments.

We are going through some popular phonics-early readers, but mostly the kids seem to respond best to tailored instruction. For instance, I've noticed that Ezra breaks words down into sounds orally, but has trouble sounding out written words, and is sounding out and writing his own phonetic words in a way Gibbie never did. Gibbie, when we work on reading, always wants to write out the words we sound out on his slate or in his notebook. We did get them each a special notebook and pen, just theirs, in which they do plenty of practicing and playing around.

I would like to read Uncovering the Logic of English by Denise Eide because her premise makes so much sense to me; that English is phonetic if you really learn the actual rules of phonics. (I think; I haven't read this yet!) This makes so much beautiful sense to me.

These boys are both writing lots of letters everyday, and have many of the building blocks of reading in hand. They seem to be synthesizing those elements into bona fide reading in different ways. All very exciting, and we're just not going to push it, or worry about comparing them to any brilliant friends of ours who all were fluently reading years earlier than us, all right?

Polaroids, new baby survival skills

Well, awesome Paul has found a way of making his old (old, old) Polaroid camera work again. I love how iconic and vintage the pictures look, as if viewed through decades. They are already nostalgic to me because the last time I saw Polaroids was when I was little, so the flaws of the images look to me like the essence of childhood.
Life with a baby; how does one do it? I met a family at the beach with nine children. I want to know: what are their secrets? They didn't look like they were at their wits' ends. They seemed happy and un-desperate, but didn't share the magic beans with me.

Willem is the sweetest baby. He is a daisy, a lamb, a child already. I delight in him, and cherish holding and caring for him. But I can't put him down! He sleeps wonderfully throughout the day, but wakes up in bare minutes if I put him down. He loves to sleep wrapped on to me with cloth, but I can't chop vegetables that way, knead bread, clean the bathroom, do anything that requires two hands in front of me.

When he does get into a deep sleep, I find myself paralyzed with all the things I could be doing! Beginning tasks is getting harder, as the interruptions are constant!
I've done this before--former me, how did you do it? Oh yeah, I cried a lot.

William Moses

So, William Moses arrived! A while ago now, and just finding the time to post now. It has been beautiful. The birth, thank God was quite and agony and an ecstasy, and both I and the baby were remarkably unscathed. He nurses and sleeps and smiles, and we are overflowing with thankfulness. And relief! Many thanks to all who help us, and pray for us, and love us.
Willem has soft brown downy hair. He has almost-brown looking-eyes. They look and look and look, in wonder at all things. He has a little rosebud mouth, which likes to smile. He has a soft voice, with which he talks to us once in a while.

Willem's big brothers are wonderful. they are laughing, jumping, swinging, dancing, drawing, singing, and creating their way through summer. I have been treated to breakfast in bed, and the baby is constantly regailed with songs and smiles. He is oh-so-loved already. We are stretching into our new size as a family, and learning how to live again with a baby. I am attending to enjoying and being present to each beautiful member of our family. Noticing and soaking up who they are today. I hope that out of this, which itself is an abiding in the presence of God, will come a new rhythm for our days. I'm winging it day by day.

I am feeling a familiar lowering of spirits; a vulnerability, a neediness of the heart for cheer and love and joy. I remember, just as in birth itself, to sink into it rather than clench against it or work to overcome it. Acknowledge the rain, and open my eyes.

Don't Worry- We'll let you know!

Waiting can be hard. We know.
We're all ready to go!
Really quite well prepared.
I promise, we'll let you know when there's anything to share.