Interview with Me (by Alkelda)

Alkelda the Gleeful sent me this interview meme thingy, and I thought it would be fun to participate. And, since it's been approximately an eternity since my last post (in this age of instant information, anyway) I thought this would be a good way to get back into the posting sphere. Or something. Here are her questions, and my answers:

1 )What fairy tale, myth or fictional story are you most drawn to as your own, and why? Tell me about childhood associations, parallels with your own life, fulfillment of wishes, etc.

Well, it's funny you should frame the question that way, as the stories that most often catch my attention are the ones which, on the surface, have nothing whatsoever to do with me. I have never, to my knowledge, read a myth, fairy tale or fictional story and said "That's just like me," or "that's what I should do." As a young child, I liked the darker type of fairy tale - my favorite collection was a set of four Russian Fairy Tales (The Firebird) replete with blood and guts. To this day, I mostly seek after stories that draw me as far away from the familiar as I can find. Those that relate closely to my everyday life make me uncomfortable, like someone else is spying on me.

2) What story makes you angry? How does it make you angry?

Dumbo, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other "overcoming abnormality" stories - oh sure, once you're famous everyone loves you. That's supposed to make me feel better about myself somehow? Instead, it increases my desire to make a spectacle of myself in order to win everyone's approval. These stories send an incredibly inappropriate message to children. Instead, all the stupid, blind, prejudiced people should perish because of their ignorance. Who wants those fools fawning all over us because of our special gifts? It's not like groupies can fill that need for genuine companionship. Heroes of those stories end up being broken, unhappy celebrities with empty lives. Dumbo probably becomes a herion addict in the end - now that's flying high.

3) If you could choose three books to be brought back into print, which ones would they be?

Hmmmmm. Three, eh?
1. The Plain Princess by Phyllis McGinly
2. The King's Trousers by Robert Kraus (illustrated by Fred Gwynne)
3. A Retreat for Lay People by Ronald Knox

4) Tell me about the movie you want to see that has not yet been created.

I want to see a Shakespeare movie that I like. It will not star Kenneth Branaugh, Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rupert Everett, Mel Gibson or Kate Winslet. It will not try to relate the ideas of Shakespeare to our modern age - Will took care of that himself, that's why his plays are so good. It will not have any sex scenes in it. It will look more like a play than a film. No one will appear naked.

Either that, or one of the above mentioned Russian Fairy Tales brought to life would be pretty cool. So long as the elegant language and glorious pictures are retained.

5) What are your specific views on higher education and how did you come to think the way you do?

By higher education, I am assuming you mean beyond high school. I guess I believe that a college education is unnecessary, and can be a big mistake if embarked upon immediately following high school (if indeed you went to high school, a trial I hope you managed to escape). The High School - College - Employment in your Chosen Field chain can be exactly that - a chain, forged by Other People's Expectations, from which it is frightfully difficult to extract oneself. It's just another way of letting Supposed To Know (or in this case, Supposed To Do) rule your life, and an ever more expensive one at that.

A high school senior of my acquaintance confided these sad thoughts to me a couple of months ago: "I just don't know where I should be going or what I should study when I get there. It feels too early to me to be deciding what I'm going to be doing the rest of my life, but that seems to be what everyone expects. What I'd really, really like to do is study music and drama, but that's so impractical. I guess that kind of fun stuff is going to have to wait until I'm finished doing what I'm supposed to do and I've gotten married and had kids." I fear that many college students go off to classes with this same feeling, perhaps not articulated, but at least in the back of their minds somewhere.

I would be happy if my girls opted for college, but they're going to have to want to go to college because there's some specific thing they love so much and want to learn more about badly enough that they want to pay the outrageous tuition fees. I won't do it. If that means they need to wait until they've saved enough, or until they're old enough to be considered finacially independant in order to get financial aid, well, so be it.

Myself, I opted out of college during my junior year, because I was doing something better with my time - starting my family. At times, I wish I'd finished, but that's more the "I want to finish what I started" bug than any actual desire to know more than I do. When I think about the things I was studying and the things I ought to have studied to prepare me for the course I ended up taking, I realize I was going about it all wrong. Even my second try, during which one would expect me to have a better idea of my own personality and more realistic expectations of the whole experience (I was 25, and had 3 kids by then), I still had it all wrong. I tried majoring in music performance, with the organ as my instrument, when I should have been going for the music education degree. I still had an unrealistic idea of my own talent level, my own desires, and the direction life was taking me.


Thanks for the interview, Alkelda.

Top 10 Flavor Pairs

Really quick, while it's on my mind, are there ANY better flavor pairings than the following ten:

1. Raspberries and Cream
2. Dark Chocolate and Strong Coffee
3. Red Meat and Red Wine
4. Garlic and Butter
5. Eggs and Onion
6. Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese
7. Milk Chocolate and Mint
8. Bacon and Mushrooms
9. Beer and Pizza
10. Salt and Vinegar

Mmmmmmmm...

Prejudice

I suppose I could have entitled the last post "Pride," which would have made this bit kind of high-brow. Heh. Oh well, the opportunities we waste.

There's a deep-rooted sense of "ought to know" in all of us, I think. When a woman is pregnant, she constantly thinks things like "should I be throwing up at this stage? Should I be feeling kicks yet? Is it time to start feeling contractions yet?" Then she has the baby, and all the anxiously-awaited milestones - smiling, rolling over, sitting up, crawling, clapping hands, waving bye-bye, and so on - come and go, according to the child's own inner calendar. If things are a little delayed, worry sets in, because of this rigid sort of in-born sense of what's "supposed to be" happening at this point in time. If you can't learn to let these things go, parenting can be torture.

But it doesn't get any easier. My two older daughters were reading things at the level of Green Eggs and Ham by their fourth birthdays. My third daughter is closing in on five, and she's only half-way through the book we use to teach our children how to read, cleverly entitled Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. Six months ago, I was almost in a panic - she's not reading yet! She hasn't even shown signs of wanting to start, and she's four already! Will she ever learn to read??? It's crazy, I know.

Then there is a whole set of books - What your first grader needs to know, what your second grader needs to know, what your third grader needs to know, and so on. What an enormous responsibility! Your Third Grader NEEDS TO KNOW this much information, or else... or else you're a failure as a parent, I guess.

So my oldest daughter is eight. She should be learning her times tables, right? Sorry, we're still working on subtraction. Why? Because she hates math, and she won't do her math when I tell her she has to do some Math. But she Needs To Know her math, of course. Won't she ever learn her math? What if she never learns her math? Oh my Gosh, what am I going to do if she hasn't learned her math in time for... the time when she's supposed to need her math?

This one, for some reason, is harder to argue against than the reading thing. In the first case, it's easy. Settle down, mamma. Your daughter is four. Most children don't read by their fourth birthday. There's plenty of time for her to learn to love books. However, the Math Thing seems more commonly accepted. Your child Needs To Know her times tables by a set age. Why? because They say so, of course.

So my precious philosophy, Don't Impose What They Aren't Interested In, comes into direct and violent conflict with the school of Needs To Know. I know my philosophical ideas are sound, but the Needs To Know has such a strong moral advantage in this case.

Incidentally, those books, What Your _____ Needs To Know, are in fact terrific books, and my children love them, and read them regularly, under the threat (imagined by them, not me) of not knowing something they Need To Know. Except as it applies to the Mathematical sections, of course.

Philosophy vs Prejudice (vs Practical Application)

Time for that promised post on curriculum, if only to sort out and air my own thoughts.

Homeschooling is becoming a mental tangle for me. I have an educational philosophy, some deep-seated educational prejudices, and a certain housekeeping style, and they're all in conflict at the moment.

Philosophy: perhaps nothing more than a series of related but somewhat disconnected ideas, my philosophy centers around a single point: you can't make a child learn something they don't want to know. If the child somehow manages to remember long enough to pass the quiz, if the subject truly holds no interest, she will forget as soon as is convenient. Forcing "knowledge" on a child, at best, is a waste of time. At worst, it's a great evil, as it can sour the entire subject, or worse, the whole learning experience.

Learning is not a passive experience. Education is about the forming of a disciplined mind that knows how to find the knowledge it seeks. Standardization brings everyone to the lowest level. There's no such thing as "supposed to know by now." And so on.

So my philosophical goal in home schooling is to encourage the asking of questions (something I've certainly succeeded in), to cultivate interest in a wide variety of subjects, to develop reading and comprehension skills, and to enjoy watching my children grow.

Speaking of growing children, I've got four of them downstairs. Ergo, Prejudice and Practical Application will have to wait for tomorrow. Then we can all watch the fight.

Free Things Rock

Something to add to my list (which I haven't made yet) about why the internet is awesome - Free Things websites. Today I found one of the ultimate Free Things sites - free printable classical sheet music. I was able to find the thing I wanted within hours of deciding I wanted it. This is far, far better than getting something you've wanted for a long time. Because after all, if I just decided I want it, then it disappoints, it's not like I've been looking forward to it for ages and ages. It's a disappointed whim, not a shattered dream.

What was it I got? Oh, the music for Bach's Trio Sonata V in G Major, BWV 529, for organ. This was an astonishing triangulation of technology here, this discovery. I got an iPod for Christmas. So I was recording all my CDs, and among those CDs is a box set of the complete organ works of JSB. One of them souonded nice, with a relativelky uncomplicated pedal part except for a couple of murderous passages - the kind of thing I could master in a year, maybe. So I look it up on iTunes, and find it conveniently arranged by BWV number. I enter "Bach bwv 529" into Google, up comes this free sheet music site. 800+ pieces of music. Free. YAY! I love technology. When did wish-fulfillment get so easy?

So, here it is: http://www.mutopiaproject.org . While I'm at it, here's my other favorite Free Stuff website: http://www.cpdl.org . This one is Choral music, and has thousands of scores.

So. Now. Time to tackle the Trio Sonata, which, I hear, is one of the most difficult forms of organ music to play. But I have confidence in myself.

Let me Explain...

No, there is not enough time. Let me sum up. (50 points to you if you recognize the movie reference.)

So, here we are, all moved in, and have been for 2 months now. House is small, still feels a bit like a play house, but it's homey, especiallt since we have our traditional decor of books *everywhere*. Seriously, whole walls of 8 ft bookcases in the living room, dining room and master beedroom. Surprisingly enough, we found room for all our books. But if we want to buy more, we're going to have to find additional niches for bookshelves.

My baby turned one in November. That's kind of cool. I don't really have a baby now, but for the first time since I started having the little critters, I have no longing for another. I'm fairly certain that this will change at some point - some subtle shift in body chemistry will demand some helpless little being to coo over, but for now, I'm all set. (tempting fate, urg.)

Christmas came and went in a frenzy of hurried spirits. Extra choir rehearsals, shopping trips, online sprees, wrapping, cleaning, decorating, baking, entertaining. It came off well, though my favorite day of the season remains New Year's Eve, which we have spent at the same friends' house now nine years in a row. Next year I'll dress more formally.

Now for the List: my new year's resolutions.

1. Stop eating between meals and after dinner. Hungry for a snack? Fill that daily milk requirement.

2. Collect, label, sort and file all those loose pieces of sheet music all over the house and in the garage. Then at least I'll know what I've got.

3. Convince the husband to let me hire a cleaning lady twice a month. There's only so much I can do. If I have to give up some other major expenditure, then so be it. Which one to give up, though? Maybe I can afford it if I take in a couple more piano students.

4. Play more classical music for my kids. They listen to too much icky stuff. I think it's warping their minds.

5. Alcohol goes with meals only. That should cut down on the wine bills.

6. Concentrate harder on schoolwork for the girls. Girl #3 has got to learn to read, Girls #1 and #2 need to learn to love math. How does one induce a child to love math? I thought that I wouldn't have the "but I HATE math" battle if I kept them out of school and the whole Certain Subjects Are To Be Deplored mindset, but maybe it came up in one of the books they read. I know that's where Girl #1 got the idea that girls and boys are supposed to tease each other instead of being friends. Sigh. My educational philosophies are conflicting with actual practice. Life is hard.

7. Implement that long planned laundry strategy. Everything has been set up and ready for it in the garage almost since we moved in, but laundry still manages to exist in every place in the house except for dressers and closets. Havew I ever mentioned that laundry is the biggest source of stress on my marriage? I tell ya, it's the little things that get to you.

8. Blog more often. Obviously.

Actually Moving Isn't So Bad

Turns out there's something a whole lot worse than moving. Not Moving. Yes, that's right, at this point I'd rather be moving.

Our Escrow keeps on getting extended. I'm not sure if that's the right way to put it, but it's what's happening. Every week, they tell us "Escrow will close next Tuesday," and then Tuesday comes around and the thing is not closing. Oh no, *next* Tuesday. Oh sorry, it's going to have to be pushed back to the Tuesday after that.

I've cancelled three weeks of piano lessons so far, I've missed two voice lessons of my own, my husband has already taken his week off to move two weeks ago, and every day, we get closer to The Big Day of my girls' entire lives - Halloween. And guess what? My sewing stuff is still packed away, I still have no place to sew, and the costumes are not made. I was supposed to have time to make them after moving, on the 10th of this month.

So, as of now, our escrow is supposed to close on Tuesday (I've heard that one before), our U-Haul has been rebooked for the third time, and we're moving in 9 days.