Diversion

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this poetry diversion.

As Chloris full of harmless thought
Beneath the willows lay,
Kind love a comely shepherd brought
To pass the time away.

She blushed to be encountered so
And chid the amorous swain,
But as she strove to rise and go,
He pulled her back again.

A sudden passion seized her heart
In spite of her disdain;
She found a pulse in every part,
And love in every vein.

“Ah, youth!” quoth she, “What charms are these
That conquer and surprise?
Ah, let me—for unless you please,
I have no power to rise.”

She faintly spoke, and trembling lay,
For fear he should comply,
But virgins’ eyes their hearts betray
And give their tongues the lie.

Thus she, who princes had denied
With all their pompous train,
Was in the lucky minute tried
And yielded to the swain.

—John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
circa 1676

What a pretty vine!

Our care of our yard is always hit-and-miss at best. This year, we've been downright neglectful, so some really interesting weeds have taken over. This is my favorite, a glorious vine with dainty purple flowers and beautiful berries that go from one vibrant shade to another. It's taking over the house, using rhodies and drainpipes as its jungle gyms, and I've been pretty content to let it.

Turns out it's nightshade. But, hey, what's a little poison between friends!

Chloe is home!!!

Chloe got home from camp last night! It seems like she had an amazing time; she couldn't talk fast enough to tell us all about it. :-)

Memory lane

Look what I found in Oregon!

They are still fun, lo these many years later, but the scent of them has changed. It was disappointing; I think I bought them for the scent alone.

Hail, hail, the gang's all here

We had a lovely reunion weekend on the Oregon coast. Pretty scenery, decent weather, nice room, an amazing spread of food, and a wonderful time with the extended clan. As always, my happiest moments came from hanging out with the kids.

....

• To Mia and Heide — Thanks for the spinning and the licorice!
• To Emily — Thanks for a really fun trip to the beach!
• To Tre and Anja — Thanks for the baby fix! (She played peekaboo with me, he fell asleep in my arms. *sigh*)
• To Carl — Thanks for the song!
• To Laura, Kaylee, and Cassie (and Jackie, of course) — Thanks for the shopping!
• To Maria and Maria — Thanks for the smiles!
• To Chase and Ky — Thanks for the sand in my hair! :-)

....
And to everybody else, thanks for a really fun weekend. Hope
to see you soon!

Ciao

Two trips to Sea-Tac later, Chiara and Elena are on their way home. We had a good visit—on the busy side and too short, but good.

Care update for Marty

We received a note from Judy:

"Dad's been getting weaker & also a little more 'testy'. After 8 months, Gary's throwing in the towel. New game plan: I am taking FMLA (family medical leave act), the same thing you use for maternity or paternity. This will give me 3 months off. They have to keep my job & I keep my benefits while I'm out. During that time, I will be finding a sitter, so I can return to work...

"Lori is still going to come 1 day a week , but not necessarily Wed. We'll iron out the specifics later. My paper work goes in tomorrow. I've requested to start September 10. I'll call my supervisor tomorrow to let her know what's coming. I have to get the official OK from Team Member Health. I'm kind of looking forward to being home, but have mixed emotions about it. I plan to be optimistic & figure everything will work out like it's supposed to."

Frank and I appreciate very much the sacrifices that Judy and Gary continue to make to see that Dad gets the care he deserves. We are in their debt.

The right purse

Here's a problem most guys don't have: choosing the right purse. I imagine most guys have no clue what a difficult endeavor this is.

Come to think of it, maybe some women have no idea what a difficult endeavor this is! It's probably not a difficult endeavor for every woman. Some women buy a purse for every occasion, so the selection process comes down to finding the right look and color for a given outfit. That is not so difficult; the couple of special-occasion purses I own were easy enough to purchase.

But my *main* purse, my everyday purse—finding that is a real quest. I usually spend months at it, eyeballing bags wherever I go and carrying my increasingly ragged old purse around while I wait for inspiration.

It has to look good. Of course, it does. But I will sacrifice aesthetics in a heartbeat if I find a bag that works in all other ways.

It has to be comfortable.

It has to have compartments, with none too large, so I can pretend to be organized.

It should not have frills. Eww, ick, frills.

It has to be big enough for all the things I must have with me: money, cards, ID, and keys, of course, but also necessities for my life. These necessities include stuff for me (datebook, asthma medications, dental floss, stamps, tissues, photos) and stuff for my kids (Band-aids, hair bands, safety pins). Like the proverbial boy scout, I have to be prepared!

And most of all, it has to be fun.

Purse as metaphor for my life.

And in one of those wonderful, serendipitous happenings of Life, my current "right purse" is one I didn't even pick out. I had been engaged in one of my aforementioned purse searches for some weeks, when a package arrived in the mail from our most excellent friend Bob. He was hardly late at all for my birthday, and my present was The Right Purse. It's compact but big enough; reasonably attractive (red!); flexible enough to be purse, backpack, or fanny pack; and fun.

It's so nice to have friends who know me well! Thanks, Bob!

An almost perfect photo

Mine is cuter than this, with curves instead of corners, but you get the idea. The little pocket on the right is for my cell phone, and the front zipper opens to a wallet area with card slots and coin pocket. And if I only want to use one strap, the other tucks away neatly in the back.

From the mountain to the Mary Jane

What a week!

After I put in a little work Monday and Tuesday, we took Chiara and Elena up to Mt. Rainier on Wednesday. It was a glorious day for it, but I was sure overdressed. (How could I have known it would be 80 degrees at Paradise! There was nothing like that in the forecast!) Despite some mild overheating, and despite the mountain being as brown as I've ever seen it, we had a lovely day. We took a few short hikes, chatted with other tourists, communed with Nature, and got away from it all.

Friday was STUN day. We met at Wyatt Park in Lake Stevens and spent a couple of enjoyable hours swimming, playing frisbee, and chatting. We came home from there with a few extra people, STUNners Michelle and Robin and a couple of extra NBTSC campers. M&R stayed at our place long enough to meet the rats and let Michelle be convinced that, yes, Chloe's room is the messiest of all. The campers stayed overnight.

Yesterday, I hauled the lot of them down to Seattle to HempFest. When MJ first told me several weeks ago that they were planning to go to HF, I signed up as a volunteer there, just for the heck of it, working in one of the beverage booths from 12:30 to 4:30. By the time I got all those teens out the door (nearly an hour later than I wanted to leave), I was much less interested in the idea. But a commitment is a commitment, so I persevered.

We found a relatively convenient parking space for only $8 then joined the throng. At the entrance, Chloe (who had decided to join me in my volunteer efforts) and I parted company with the gang, and that was the last we saw of them. (After the festival, they got themselves and all their luggage to the Greyhound station and their bus to Portland. They attended a concert there yesterday and are meeting up with Chloe and the rest of the campers at the Amtrak station today for the trip to Eugene.)

Chloe and I ended up clad in snazzy purple "Staff" t-shirts, working the beverage booth nearest the main stage. It was great being able to hear the reggae and the speeches, but it was sure a busy spot! We worked so hard! It was our job to pass the requested drinks to the cashiers and keep the coolers full of stock. It involved lots of lifting cases of water and pop, reaching and stretching for the Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper that was down around behind all the other stuff, keeping our ears open to hear the orders, and scrambling to replace every bottle that was removed while breaking down empty boxes and adding more ice. Phew! We were really worn out by the end of it. I think the owner dude was pretty impressed with Chloe's work ethic; he gave her the $5 in tips that had come in during our shift. With that and the t-shirt, she made a decent hourly wage for her volunteer time. :-)

Sunday was for resting, laundry, and packing. Chloe is pretty calm about this whole camp adventure. She's going down with her good friends Logan and Kyla and knows several other campers. Plus, I think a one-week trip to Oregon is no big deal after doing nearly four months in England!

Last night, Chloe and I visited my grandma for a little while. She's a little gloomy and seems convinced that she isn't doing as well as her doctors and progeny tell her she is. We're told a little depression is normal in heart surgery patients, but it's still hard seeing her so low. No word yet on when she can return home, but I'm sure that will cheer her up immensely.

This morning, I dropped Chloe at the train station at oh-dark-thirty (as Frank calls it), so Frank and I are down to two daughters. Chiara and Elena return to Italy on Thursday. (Wah!) Frank and I won't really have a weekend alone, though, because we're driving down to Oregon ourselves for a family reunion. It will still be a weekend away, mostly restful, on the Oregon coast in August. I imagine we'll be able to steal a few romantic moments!

P.S. A note about HempFest — Our participation in this event is a reflection not of our lifestyle but of our belief that our current drug laws are hypocritical in the extreme. If our government is going to endorse and even subsidize the alcohol and tobacco industries—industries that account for SO many injuries, crimes, and economic losses in our country—we don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to marijuana. Plus, HempFest is a great place to hear reggae.

Gut check

Frank found this article today, written by Charles P. Pierce (great name!) and featured in Esquire magazine. I thought it was worth featuring here. It's something to think about (emphasis on the word think).

Greetings from Idiot America

Excerpts:
"They have come from Indiana, one woman says... because they have been home-schooling their children and they have given them this adventure as a kind of field trip... [T]hey are greeted by the long neck of a huge, herbivorous dinosaur. The kids run past that and around a corner, where stands another, smaller dinosaur.
"Which is wearing a saddle.
"It is an English saddle, hornless and battered. Apparently, this was a dinosaur used for dressage competitions and stakes races. Any working dinosaur accustomed to the rigors of ranch work and herding other dinosaurs along the dusty trail almost certainly would wear a sturdy western saddle.
"This is very much a show dinosaur."

"The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise."

"In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows."

"The Gut is the basis for the Great Premises of Idiot America. We hold these truths to be self-evident: 1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units. 2) Anything can be true if somebody says it on television. 3) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it."

"'You can just as easily have a faith-based, or ideologically driven, policy,' [David Phillips of the State Department] says today. 'You start with the presumption that you already know the conclusion prior to asking the question. When information surfaces that contradicts your firmly entrenched views, you dismantle the institution that brought you the information.'"

"'We went in blindfolded, and we believed our own propaganda,' Phillips says. 'We were going to get out in ninety days, spend $1.9 billion in the short term, and Iraqi oil would pay for the rest. Now we're deep in the hole, and people are asking questions about how we got there.'"

"On the same day [8/19/2005], across town, a top aide to former secretary of state Colin Powell told CNN that Powell's pivotal presentation to the United Nations in which he described Iraq's vast array of deadly weapons was a farrago of stovepiped intelligence, wishful thinking, and utter bullshit.
'It was the lowest point in my life,' the aide said."

"And the president went on television and said that nobody could have anticipated the collapse of the unfortunate city's levees. In God's sweet name, engineers anticipated it. Politicians anticipated it. The poor bastards in the Ninth Ward certainly anticipated it. Hell, four generations of folksingers anticipated it."

"For Idiot America is a place where people choose to live. It is a place that is built consciously and deliberately, one choice at a time, made or (most often) unmade."

I'm speechless (but probably not for long)

Bulletproof backpacks for kids returning to school:
http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_13653.aspx
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=1016084

Oh, yeah, school's a good place for socialization.

This is me breathing

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water.

If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup,

you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle,

you put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot.

Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

— Bruce Lee

A mighty heart

My grandmother's heart surgery yesterday went well. They replaced two valves (mitral valve damaged by childhood rheumatic fever and one other) and did two bypasses. She's 86, so her recovery will be slow, but she's making small, steady improvements already. Frank and I are off to visit again now.

UPDATE 8/12
I spent a couple of hours with my grandma last night. Her wonderful night nurse had me coax her into eating some chicken noodle soup. It was pretty bad soup, so I bribed her with alternating bites of yogurt. After this had gone on for a while, I said, "We've got this soup about licked, Grandma," and she fired back, "Good, then throw the rest out."

He also had her up and walking while I was there. She liked that even less than the soup, but she got the job done. So, she's pretty miserable but doing well.

The plan is for her to move into transitional care on Tuesday, be there for ten days, and then return home. She'll need daily help there for a while, which I don't think we've quite figured out. She really hates having strangers messing about in her home (and who can blame her).

From sea to shining star

Catch a falling star

And put it in your pocket

Save it for a rainy day...

We've been having some good times with "our Italian girls." (I don't know if they like being referred to thus. They are women, not girls, and they certainly belong to only themselves, but we can't help feeling a little possessive!)

I could write for hours about all they've been up to (EMP, SAM, parties, visitors, shopping), but I don't have hours, so I'll just share a couple of highlights.

Sunday, we caught the free ferry (a thrilling 90-second ride) over to Jetty Island and hung out on the beach for a while. The tide was going out, so they got to experience the incredible feet-swallowing sand/muck of the tideflats. What a treat! They also got to enjoy one of Puget Sound's rare sandy beaches. In the sunshine!

We came home on the second-to-last ferry back and decided our sea proximity had put us in the mood for sushi. Well, Chiara, Derek, and MJ were in the mood for sushi, Elena and Chloe were game, and Frank and I knew we could find something delicious and cooked to enjoy. So, we piled back in the van and went to Daruma, a nice little Japanese café right there by the Everett Marina. Yum!

Last night, Frank made us another delicious dinner, but with fish from the river this time. Trout! My very favorite! Our meal was accompanied by the very nice white wine Elena's dad sent to us. (And we still have a nice red to look forward to!)

After dinner, we went in search of some dark. It seems August 8th is the Feast Day of St. Lawrence, traditionally celebrated in Italy by watching for shooting stars. After being cloudy all day, the weather cooperated nicely and provided clear skies. There's too much light pollution in the city, though, so we piled in the van (we do that a lot!) and headed east. A park on Lake Stevens was our first stop. It wasn't perfectly dark there, but we saw an amazing meteor—with long, luminous tail—before we got kicked out of the park by the cops. (Yeah, we knew it was closed, but we took a chance moonpie.) Once they realized we were a family group rather than (only) a pack of "dangerous" teenagers, they were very nice and turned off their blinding spotlights. Then they directed us to Lake Cassidy a few miles to the north. It was significantly darker there—and creepy with mist rolling off the lake and making us all think of every slasher horror movie we've ever seen—but we didn't see any meteors to rival that first amazing flasher.

It was really fun, so we'll probably head out for more stargazing when the Perseids come through about August 12th.

And that's the news from Party Central!

New toys

I've been playing with the sidebar again. Hope you enjoy our new features!

Update 8/12 about the Quote Zone:
I've made a place where I can archive the featured quotes. It's here (and you can always get to that page by clicking the Quote Zone header).

What unschooling looked like in the middle of the night

I usually try to avoid making a big deal of the schoolish moments that happen in our house, because it tends to make non-unschoolers (schoolers?) think that unschooling *only* works when schoolish moments happen. But this was too cool, so I have to talk about it.

Last night, Chloe confessed that she isn't sure she's acquiring skills marketable enough to land a job when she's old enough. We talked about her options some, then I made an offhand comment about her abilities as a proofreader. One thing led to another and we were soon huddled around the computer playing with words. I typed out a series of flawed sentences, then Chloe corrected them. It was so fun! We played with changing punctuation to completely change the meaning of a sentence, and we found some badly written paragraphs on the Internet that she and I fixed in different ways. This went on until three in the morning!

Here are a couple of examples that made her laugh. The first I borrowed from a recent discussion of punctuation on Grammar Geeks.

Woman without her man is a savage.
Woman: without her, man is a savage.

Real men don't eat spinach, but I like it.
Real men don't eat, Spinach, but I like it.

I discovered to my delight that Chloe knows how to punctuate speech perfectly, and she—normally the queen of lowercase—knows perfectly well that the pronoun "I" is always capitalized. What can I say? Such things are near and dear to my heart.

She told me one of her pet peeves from reading fan fiction. I will share it here in the hopes that somebody somewhere will see the error of his ways. She says fan-fiction authors often write spoken questions like this:

"Are you crazy" he asked?

That is very bad indeed, and I can only thank my lucky stars that I have never come across such wretched punctuating. Here is the corrected question:

"Are you crazy?" he asked.

With Chloe reassured of her skills, we talked about how this is one of the perils of unschooling: sometimes unschooled kids have little idea of how much they have learned. Kids in school get regular validation (or correction), and they are constantly compared to their schoolmates, so they have some feel for where in the spectrum their knowledge falls. Unschooled kids know that they are experts or budding experts in the areas they are passionate about (manga, music, karate, Swahili, whatever), but they don't always realize how much general knowledge they've acquired. So, Chloe had no idea she is an expert at grammar and punctuation, and she will tell you that she is bad at math, just after she's added a column of numbers in her head or worked a fraction problem effortlessly. We'll work on it.

A post just for Randi

Yes, I'm a slacker!

The visit with Chiara and Elena is going great! Our two airport runs Friday were complicated by heavy traffic and a certain lack of flight information, but by midnight, we had two Italian women tucked into our house and family. Yay!

Saturday was for sleeping off jet lag, settling in, and making contact with friends we haven't seen in two years. Saturday evening, C&E went over to Jared's house in downtown Everett to visit with buds from Everett High.

Sunday day was for family. We had a little festa out at the beach, letting everybody get acquainted with Elena and reacquainted with Chiara. Sunday evening, Ryan came over to show off his newest tattoos and entertain us all (we love Ryan). We finished up the day by watching "Love Actually," which C&E had never seen.

And yesterday, I dropped C&E off in downtown Seattle 'on my way' to work. They spent the day wandering through Pike Place and other shopping meccas, talking to "weirdos" down on the waterfront, and trying out the express bus home.

As for us, well, we're just happy. Our family is whole again. (If we could shake off the dregs of the cold that's been beating us down for more than a week, we'd be even happier.) And I'm loving all of the language-and-customs conversations we've been having. Chiara has lost just a bit of her English—she says she doesn't think in English any more and has to translate from the Italian—but all the slang is coming back to her quickly. She's a fricking genius! (that's an inside joke) And Elena's English is almost as good, so we're doing lots of talking.

Tomorrow, C&E are going to join us at our STUN gathering on the Pilchuck River. It's supposed to be 80, so we picked a good day for it!

Chiara is on her way!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Chiara's flight from Paris is well under way. She'll be here in about eight hours!

Harry Potter 7 part 2

Okay, we've finished it. This post contains spoilers, so I've hidden it. To read, click and drag your mouse to select the blank space below; my words will be revealed as if by magic! For those who don't want to be spoiled, I'll just say that it was a fabulous book, perhaps the best of the seven. But it's not for the faint of heart.

Here's an amazing fact: Chloe chose to be the Gray Lady at the release party for this book, and the Gray Lady (otherwise barely a footnote in the books) plays an important role in this book. How cool is that? Chloe is psychic!

J.K. Rowling is an amazing writer. She did everything that was required to make this book satisfying and complete. All the questions are answered, all the stray details she included in earlier books are wrapped up into a neat package, and there were numerous times when we were moved to tears.

Of course, some of those tears were over the heart-wrenching deaths of a few beloved characters. I wish she'd been a little kinder to our old friends!

But others were over amazingly written sequences, moments of such profound significance to those of us who have lived and breathed Harry Potter for a decade that we couldn't do anything but cry. In this book, we got to revisit almost every scene in the preceding six books, so it was both retrospective and conclusion in one tome. Awesome!

Also, she spread the triumph around. It was great! Neville came completely into his own, winning even the admiration of his crotchety grandmother. And Luna shines as usual. And Mrs. Weasley kicks ass! And a number of people are redeemed for past failings.

Jo said in an interview about a year ago that the last word in the book was "scar." That, like so many of her comments in interviews, has proven to be less than the whole truth. I really admire the way she has protected her own secrets, even to the point of misdirecting her devoted fans.

I can hardly believe it's over. My kids grew up with this saga. We read our first one before the girls were in school! And now they have to muddle their way into adulthood without Harry. On the other hand, Chloe is already talking about re-reading the whole series.

For me, it's done. I know some people take consolation from having two movies still to come, but the movies have never been my thing. It's the end of an era.

It's not easy being green

I thought I was losing it! I took a bite out of my almost daily Snickers bar just now and the filling looked green. Ewww! Fearing a food poisoning trip to the ER, I Googled "green snickers" and learned it's a Shrek 3 promotion. That's when I noticed that the label even says so. Duh!

Reception of the green Snickers has been mixed. Here's my favorite review, even if it doesn't quite rhyme:

I do not like them on a cardboard box.

I do not like them near my tube socks.

I do not like green Snickers bars.

I do not like them Sam-I-am!

(credit goes to shyvixen on this Stewart Copeland forum)