Year: 2009 Page 4 of 15

Yesterday afternoon we went to Troy’s and Youngin’s house for dinner after Sunday morning meeting.  Beside the fact that we ate fabulous Korean food complete with Kimchee, we got the chance to marvel at their new kitchen.  The pictures do not do it justice.  The thing that amazed us most was how much bigger the kitchen feels.  We did not realize that the whole process, from start to end, including the week or two wait for the granite to be installed, only took six weeks or so.  Congratulations!

We lived in Sherwood, Oregon on September 11, 2001.  Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita had been visiting us for a couple of weeks and were scheduled to fly back to Monterrey from Portland very early that day.  We left the house about 5:00 am and I dropped them off at the airport.  As I was driving in to work at ESI in Portland, I turned on the radio in time to hear that something crazy was going on in New York City.  It took me about a half an hour to get to work.  When I arrived, some guys already had the television on and were watching the first tower burn.  More and more people kept showing up to watch as the second tower got hit, then both towers collapsed.  Not much work got done that day.  We all just kind of walked around in a daze.

In the meantime, Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita got sent home in a cab.  They ended up staying with us for an extra week before they could get a flight home.  Since we did not have a television, Aunt Julia loaned us a little portable one so we could watch the events unfold.  What we did not know until later is that Aunt Jean and Uncle Rick were in New York City with Cousins Julia and Kylee.  They were taking Julia to catch an airplane to Madrid as she was scheduled to go there as an exchange student.  The whole family was spending a few days in New York to do some site seeing together.  They were all on a tour bus on the way for a tour and lunch at the top of the towers when they saw all the smoke.  They got stuck in New York City for several days before they could make their way home.

Kelly is currently at work preparing for the CLEP Western Civilization I Exam which covers the “Ancient Near East to 1648”. She has to read a lot of politically incorrect nonsense in preparation to take the test.  As an antidote to that, she will read a several books by Rodney Stark, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome and (as soon as it comes out) The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade.  We will try to find some similar treatments of the material she covers to prepare for the CLEP Western Civilization II Exam which covers “1648 to Present”.

Kelly wrote her first book report for this series of books which she posted here on this blog.  She will post reviews of all the books she reads in this series.  I think she did an absolutely stellar job and am looking forward to reading her other reviews.

I am sorry to say that I’m not a big fan of non-fiction.  I like it when Dad reads aloud non-fiction books and I will occasionally pick up a practical non-fiction book. But non-fiction just for fun? Never. Why read dry books about ancient Rome or engineering or the life of Paul when you can read Agatha Christie?  The only reason I would ever pick up a non-fiction book would be to feel self-satisfied and intelligent. Very sad. My views are changing now though.  After finishing The Victory of Reason, I can honestly say that I am very excited for my next scholarly tome. It’s not that the book wasn’t a drag to read, because I did have to slog through a lot of tedious material, but it was extremely interesting. Extremely interesting.

Rodney Stark explains why Christianity is the force that thrust the ancient world into modernity. Because of it’s fundamental doctrines and values, Christianity gave birth to modern capitalism, progress, freedom and enlightenment. Belief in progress is intrinsically rooted in Christianity, making practical innovations, logic and learning quite natural, even compulsory to Christians.  When tyrannical rulers were in power, the serfs and peasants under their rule had no reason to increase their productivity.  Why produce more if it was all going to be taken away? There were no banks for their money, no investments to make with what little they had, ergo no motivation. The logical (and Christian) alternative to this problem was freedom. When there is individual freedom and free trade there will be progress, learning, and prosperity.

What I found particularly fascinating was the fact that even in the times of kings and despots, early forms of democracy and political freedom could be found in parts of Europe, especially Italy. Medieval Venice was far ahead of it’s time with it’s five level pyramidal government.  An elected duke with limited powers at the top, then a six-member elected Ducal Council, followed by the Forty and the Senate.  The Forty were basically a court of appeals, the Senate was composed of sixty men who concerned themselves with issues of commerce and foreign policy. These hundred were elected from the Great Council, who were in turn elected by the General Assembly. The General Assembly consisted of all the voting Venetians. Participation in Venetian politics was limited to a few elites at first, but became much more inclusive over time, especially when guilds became more powerful.  Venice was also in a comfortable position physically, surrounded by marshes and water, so being attacked was very difficult.  They grew in sea power and trade and began to produce textiles, dyes, shoes, eyeglasses, crystal and much more. Rodney Stark explained:

The “rebirth” of freedom in some parts of Europe was the result of three necessary elements: Christian ideals, small political units, and within them, the appearance of well-matched interest groups. There were no societies like these anywhere else in the world.

Another interesting point made was that contrary to popular belief, the Dark Ages were not a time of superstition and ignorance. In fact, Stark postulates that during the Dark Ages revolutionary innovations such as fulling mills, renovated horse collars, eyeglasses and clocks were invented and put into widespread practice in Christian Europe. Real science, not alchemy or astrology, but real, organized, practical science, also came about in Christian nations.  In the beginning science and religion were inseparable because Christians were the only ones to not only observe, but theorize. Only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry, and astrology into astronomy.  Stark says this is because Christians “believed it could be done, and should be done” (emphasis his).  Christians believed that their God was a rational God, and so he made a rational world that they could work to understand. Other religions and cultures, including Islam, Greece, Rome, and China did not have this same belief in rationality. Their gods were mysterious and aloof.  The Greek gods were subject to natural cycles, and were not conscious creators. The Chinese Tao was a formless impersonal essence, unable to do anything.  The Muslim Allah on the other hand, was a very active participator in the world, thus creating a major theological obstacle. Natural laws were Muslim blasphemy, as they did not allow Allah freedom to act in this world. There was no room for science!

It seems that most modern scholars would like to forget about their Christian roots.  The Victory of Reason provides enough reason to forget about forgetting.

It is often difficult for us to describe how busy are our homeschool days.  The kids have a busy academic schedule that must accommodate a lot of interruptions.  Yesterday was one of those days with many interruptions.  The kids start their day at 6:30 AM.  It is a twenty minute drive to Kelly’s piano lesson that starts at 10:00 AM.  Everyone goes to the YMCA directly from the piano lesson, so they do not have lunch until 12:30 or 1:00 PM.  Then, they have to leave time for a thirty minute drive to Christian’s guitar lesson at 2:00.  Lorena needed to go to the bank and Costco after the piano lesson, so they did not get home until about 5:00 PM.  As soon as everyone gets home, Lorena cooks while Christian, Kelly, and I do our read aloud.  The kids work while they ride in the car, but it is much more difficult for them to concentrate when they have to pick up their books and move every half hour or so.

Every day has some such interruptions.  Today is a little less chaotic because the kids will only have to leave the house twice:  once to go to the YMCA for their workout and once to go to our Wednesday night bible study.  We kind of feel sorry for some of the government schoolers who are stuck in classrooms all day.  We wonder how they get any non-“Lord of the Flies” style socialization time at all.

Our weekend was interesting.  We spent two days at one of our churches conventions.  Between meetings we talked to lots of old friends and made a few new ones, too.  A lot of people seem to be struggling financially right now.  One of the recurrent themes of discussion was that times like these help us reset our priorities.  Then, when we returned home on Sunday evening, we heard that the brother-in-law of one of Lorena’s girlhood friends had been killed in a car accident.  He was the father of three children.  We really did not know him at all, but it made us think about our priorities even more.

In addition to all that, we were reminded of the shortness of life in a number of ways when we went to Oregon.  There were many, many people on whom we depended for so many years who are now old and struggle even getting around.  One of our dear friends had lost his wife and appeared lost himself.  Then on our return to North Carolina, we were reminded again of how quickly time passes when neither of a faithful old couple in our Sunday morning meeting were unable to get to our convention for the first time because of poor health.

It was just a very good reminder to me that there are some things that are very important and some things that are not.  We might have many years left, but we might have only a few hours.  Either way, it is good for me to be reminded that my time is finite and I better spend what time I have available on stuff that matters.

As often happens, Christian’s birthday falls on the three day Labor day weekend.  We are off to see friends and get recharged at a church convention for a couple of those days.  We hope to have some birthday pictures and the second video cast before the end of the weekend.  Of special note, Kelly has kicked it up a notch in her drawing for a story line about an art contest at her Betty Blonde comic.  Note the different points of view, the zoom levels, the improved lettering, and what I think is a funny and interesting story line.

This is the first homeschool update of the 2009/2010 school year.  We finished our first week on Tuesday and are off to a good start.  There were big changes for both of the kids this year that are a continuation of some things we started last year.  Those changes all have to do with the kids taking on more of the responsibility for planning their studies.  I still direct the material they study, but they plan how and when they engage with the material.  An example of that is the way we the kids are assigned books.  In the past, I always assigned a specific number of pages or chapters to read on a given day.  Last year, I assigned Kelly a book with only a completion date and the assignment of a way to show me that she had read the book usually in the form of a book report or a discussion of what was read.  That worked well for Kelly and Christian has switched over to that very same method for this year.  The kids are getting more adept at negotiating their studies so they can perform the work successful.

For instance, when I assigned Christian one book per week for the entire 36 week school year, he came back to me and said, “Dad, these are not all one week books.  Some of these books are two or three week books and some of them are two or three day books.  Why don’t you let me arrange my reading so that I am always reading two books at a time.  That way I won’t be stuck reading way too little one week and way too much the next.  The order that I write the book reports might change a little, but I should still be able to delivery on report per week and even out my reading load at the same time.”

That sounded like a very good idea to me, so that is what we are doing.  We have upped the ante with Kelly quite a bit in hear reading.  Since she will be in college full time next year (ala Ruthie’s Tisse), I am giving her a fixed reading schedule of scholarly books.  She is actively working through methods to get through heavier material, Rodney Stark’s Victory of Reason being the first, than she has read in the past.  She has looked through some of her “how to study” books trying to find better ways to do the reading.  The material is interesting, but sometimes it gets more technical and uses vocabulary that makes comprehension a little more difficult.

The things that have not changed so much are the math, science, music, memorization, bible, and exercise.  Both of the kids are more heavily engaged in CLEP preparation.  The kind of work they have to do to prepare for those tests is the same, there is just more of it.

Christian and I are doing weekly video-casts now! Here is the first one. It’s about the origins of Betty Blonde:

We will definitely be working on the professionalism and quality of the videocasts. We’re very excited to see how this, like Betty Blonde and this blog, progresses.

We’ll have to skip next week as we will be at convention, but we’ll stay on schedule after that!

Enjoy!

Christian’s birthday is on Saturday.  Yesterday, he went for his normal guitar lesson with Alex Gorodezky and got an early birthday present.  The Orpheus Valley Fiesta FC guitar was hand crafted in Bulgaria.  Alex recommended the guitar and, after having read a number of reviews (here is a typical one), we went ahead and bought it.  We are ALL enjoying it very much.  Christian’s guitar playing has improved pretty dramatically over the short time he has taken lessons from Alex.  He was pretty faithful in his practice before we found Alex, but now he not only does his regular daily practice, but picks up the guitar just for fun to work on different songs the he or someone else in the family wants him to play.  Last night, he worked several versions of Greensleeves that all sounded great on the new guitar.

We took the beautiful Yamaha guitar Kendall had lent us back to him on Sunday (Thanks, Kendall!!).  I think Christian was pretty sad to have to give that back and went through several days of pain and frustration playing his steel string guitar until we got the new one.  When I got home from work, Lorena and Christian piled into the car, ran down to the music store, and got a nice hard shell case like the one Kendall has for his Yamaha.  We are looking forward to Christian’s continued efforts on his new instrument.

Some differences (and some similarities) noted while vacationing on the west coast.

North Carolina lacks sidewalks, soda can eating machines, gas station attendants and Douglas Fir trees. Oregon lacks sweet tea at convention, accents and y’alls, churches, and square rocks. North Carolina has BoJangles, Biscuitville and Chick-Fil-A. Oregon has Baja Fresh, Burgerville, and Elmer’s. North Carolina is humid. Oregon is wet. Oregon does not have Kitty Hawk, but North Carolina does not have Crater Lake. North Carolina houses have garages on the side. Oregon houses have garages in front. North Carolina rednecks are loggers. Oregon rednecks are loggers. North Carolina hippies live in Chapel Hill (or so I’ve been told) Oregon hippies live in Oregon. Real Oregonians are Beaver fans. Real North Carolinians are into Nascar or something. I’m not sure. All I know is that they’re definitely not Tar Heel fans. Barbecue is a specialty of North Carolina. Marionberry jam is an Oregon specialty. Harris Teeter and Safeway are very similar, but Safeway has better Chinese food, and Harris Teeter has free cookies.

Alberstons and Fred Meyer are Oregon stores. Food Lion and Lowes are North Carolina stores. Ginger Rogers and Beverly Cleary and Herbert Hoover are from Oregon. Dolly Madison and Andy Griffith and Michael Jordan are North Carolinians. Krispy Kreme was founded in Winston-Salem, but Nike’s headquarters are in Beaverton. They cancel each other out, don’t they? Oregon state motto: She flies with her own wings. North Carolina’s motto: “To be rather than to seem”  Both Oregonians and North Carolinians seem to like country music.  Oregon has mountains. North Carolina has hills. North Carolina is very neighborly, only all across the state, not just in the small towns like in Oregon.  Both North Carolina and Oregon grow great peaches.  North Carolina has a history full of pirates and explorers and indians. Oregon has a history full of cowboys and pioneers and indians.

I’m sure there are many more differences and similarities. Feel free to add anything you like!!

I have been trying to figure out how to combine our fish barrel project with the GaugeCam project on which Christian and I work with NCSU.  The object of that project is to measure the level of water in rivers, lakes, barrels, etc.  Eventually, we will want to measure the surface velocity of the water with cameras, too.  Right now, we always have to get the images we want to evaluate from the server Christian set up in the Ag Engineering lab.  It would be kind of nice to have a setup of our own.  I think we can kill two birds with one stone.  The idea I have is to set up two half barrels that hold goldfish.  We could put a series of bamboo troughs and pipes between them and use a camera measure the water level in each of the barrels and our little Arduino controller to control the movement of water between the two barrels.  It would have an appearance with sufficient aesthetic appeal for Lorena to allow us to put the thing on the front porch.  I like it.  We could even put some lily pads in it!

This weekend, we did not do much.  After a wildly eventful summer, it was very nice to just hang out with the family for a whole weekend.  We went to the Holly Springs Library on Saturday morning and bought some school supplies at Staples after meeting on Sunday.  It was very restful.  So restful in fact, that the kids were sufficiently bored by the end of the weekend that they started, on their own, a project that is way over due.  I will not steal their thunder by describing what they did.  Actually, I am looking forward to seeing the fruit of their efforts myself.  Kelly and Christian took over the living room yesterday afternoon to work on their project while Lorena and I took a nap.  All we heard was some shuffling around and hushed talk for a couple of hours.  It was kind of nice.

Earlier in the day, Kelly’s piano teacher, Brenda Bruce called to assure Kelly was back from vacation and change her piano day from the normal Tuesday to today.  Christian will have his first guitar lesson of the school day with his brand new guitar on Tuesday.  Everyone except me will start their workouts at the YMCA later this morning–Kelly and Christian are preparing for a 10K race in the spring.  I bought another CLEP preparation book from Amazon this morning.  It really does feel that we are back to our school year routine.

Today my schedule was very vague on what I should write in the blog. It said: Craft, Fashion, or Girl Stuff. I get the feeling that Dad thinks that those three words sum up all of my extracurricular activities. He is mostly correct to tell you the truth, but ‘Girl Stuff’ can cover a broad range of things. Anyway, I’m going to follow my schedule and tell you everything that’s been happening in Crafts, Fashion, and Girl Stuff lately.

Crafts
I made most of a tiger amigurumi on the plane ride but it doesn’t look very good and it still needs legs. I’m also planning to make some of these cute headbands . I already found a great idea for handmade Christmas gifts for the year on Martha Stewart.com.

I’m not too crafty as of late actually. I have craft highs and lows. Right now I’m sort of medium. Outside of Betty Blonde, I’ve actually been drawing quiet a bit. I made my third annual convention drawing and put it on Facebook. It’s six pages long since there were like 45 kids that I wanted to draw. Very epic.

As for fashion, I’m afraid I’m not much of a fashionista. I like to look nice and I think shopping is fun as long as I have something in mind that I want to buy, but that’s about it. I suspect Dad put it in my schedule because fashion is to girls as football is to boys. 😉

Girl Stuff. I think I’ll just write anything I want here, because I’m a girl, and so naturally when I’m writing about stuff it will be girl stuff.

I think Dad already wrote this, but I’m reading The Victory of Reason to review on the blog later. I wish I could review it now because I have been enjoying it so much, but I’m not even through the second chapter. Because of it, I’ve been thinking about things that I never would have even considered before. It’s answered a lot of historical and even a couple of spiritual questions already and it’s given me a healthy list of vocabulary words to look up. And I thought non-fiction was a drag!

Also, I started Rosetta Stone French today! I’ve learned how to say how girls, women, men and boys can eat, run, read, write or swim! I feel very smart and culturally savvy at the moment.

La fille (moi) mange!!
Lunchtime 🙂

Aunt Jean, as much as she hates to admit it, is one of those rare nerds with finely honed people skills.  An electrical engineer with an MBA, she manages a group of support engineers for a company that makes very specialized circuit design and verification tools.  She was telling us that the people she hires need to have strong object oriented programming skills (java or c++), the ability to write code in a scripting language (Python, Perl, or tcl), and know how to design logic circuits.  I asked her if she thought that was something Christian could handle.  She, with the help of one of her engineers, sent us a bunch of resources to study.  They matched pretty closely what we are already doing with our Arduino project.

Christian and I are going to look into formalizing a study program to get him (and me–I want to learn, TOO!) ready to do that kind of work.  Aunt Jean said they sometimes hire interns to do that kind of stuff.  If we spend a couple years learning about these kinds of circuits, not only will we be able to use them in our water project, but Christian might be able to get a summer job.  How cool would that be?  The other thing is that Aunt Jean is a hard core runner.  Maybe Christian could do some of that if he goes to Oregon for  summer, too.

On another note, we got the new Version 3 Rosetta Stone French loaded up on our homeschool computer.  I started last night and absolutely loved it.  Lorena and Kelly are going to jump into it today.  Christian will probably wait until after he finishes taking the CLEP Spanish test, but we are all pretty excited about the idea of getting ready to do a semester of immersion French in Quebec or France in a couple of years.

Kelly and Christian got off to a good start in their school yesterday.  As always, there were a few hiccups.  The Rosetta Stone French program did not get completely installed, Christian spent several hours doing Geometry corrections from last spring, and so on.  But, when I got home last night, there was a very good level of enthusiasm for the new program.  I think we did fairly well this year calibrating how much to put on their plates.  Still, I am sure we will have to make some corrections as we go along.  One very good surprise was that Kelly LOVED here new humanities/history reading program.  She actually wants more reading so, on her own suggestion, we are going to go to the library every other Saturday to pick up some classic literature.

After the bible study last night, Kelly and I got to talking about what she might do in college.  It is still pretty early to be trying to decide what she will do for the rest of her life, but it is fun to speculate.  The one thing we have figured out is that she wants to do a hard science undergraduate degree in something like math or statistics with the idea that she will study as broad a range of things like history, sociology, and philosophy as she can with the electives she has available.  That way, she will be able to make a more informed decision about what direction she wants to take when she gets to graduate school.  We all love the start of the school year when these topics are particularly exciting to discuss!

Yesterday morning we got up very, very early and went to the Portland airport to get on a plane back to Houston and Raleigh. The plane ride was uneventful, except for the awesome little breakfast they gave out and the cute little sandwich they gave us for lunch. I’ve always thought food tastes better 30,000 feet up in the air.

Oregon was fantastic. It was great to see all of my old friends! One thing… It’s a really odd feeling to say hi to all of your old pals expecting them to be the same as always, and then they say hi back and they sound like Darth Vader. Creepy.
Anyway, we had a great time. 🙂 Monday evening we went over to Aunt Jean’s house and took some awkward family photos and had some funfetti cake for Christian’s birthday. Funfetti cake is like sugar cookies on steroids. It definitely helped with the awkward family photos.

We had a wonderful convention. We heard lots of lovely things, made starburst chains, took walks in the woods with the gang, sang hymns with everyone, and got jobs. Christian washed dishes as he always does, and I got to serve bread in the food line for the first time ever!!! I felt very important in my apron and gloves. It was great.

Today I started 10th grade and Christian started 8th grade. All of my friends thought Dad was crazy for making us start school the day after we got home from Oregon, but it’s actually not a huge adjustment. My schedule has been working really well. I’ve already finished Bible, Chemistry, Pre-Calc., both CLEPS, and Spanish. I was going to install Rosetta Stone French, but realized that it would take quite a while so I decided to do that after I had finished everything else. Betty Blonde has been kind of wonky because of the trip, so I’ll be working on straightening that out today as well. I’ve also got to study the PSAT book and the driver’s manual. Everyone else my age has their driver’s permit except me, and it is making me feel behind the times!

The big news today, is that Lyle is back in the game with his first post on the Weight Loss Death Match chart in several weeks.  With Christian and Kelly (and even Dad) training to run in a 10K this spring, we need to figure out some way to track our times and running the way Lyle does on his blog.  Our problem is that none of us have iPhones.  Well, he is the king of that kind of stuff, so maybe we will ask him for some ideas.  With all our summer travels coming to an end, we are moving back into a more normal routine and I have adjusted my eating habits to start trying to shed some of last winters fat in time for this winter.

School starts today.  I made out some GREAT schedules for Kelly’s and Christian’s the first two weeks.  I am sure they will require a little adjustment because they are significantly different from anything we have done before.  We have tried to kick up the intensity a little in terms of the reading load because that is something they will have to deal with when they go to college.  Kelly’s history/literature theme this year is Western Civilization.  I am particularly excited about her first book.  It is Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.  I have started a search for other such books that both cover the material we want to cover and are not saturated with a humanistic, post modern worldview.  It should be great fun.

Lorena, Kelly, and Christian will arrive home from Oregon this afternoon.  They are getting on the airplane in Portland as I write this email.  Now, maybe I will have something a little more interesting about which to write.  We have a busy September ahead of us with new projects, new goals, new daily homeschool schedules, and and another new Betty Blonde t-shirt to give away.  One of the big changes in my life is that, when Lorena and the kids are here, Rubix and Kiwi, the twin cat sisters will give me a little peace.  Talk about high maintenance cats!  I will start talking a little about our projects over the next week or two.  They include Lorena’s upholstery project, Christian’s robotics project, and my programming projects.  We need to think of a good and difficult new project for Kelly, too.  In addition to all that, Christian’s guitar lessons and Kelly’s piano lessons are about to kick into high gear again, too.

It is really not much fun to be stuck at home without the family.  They spent the last four days at one of our church conventions in Oregon.  They saw a lot of old friends, made a bunch of new ones, and generally had a fun and fruitful time.  I talked to Lorena three or four times per day between meetings and meals to hear what was going on.  The kids both got to help out–Kelly served food in the cafeteria line and Christian washed dishes.  I promised to try to send us all back there again next year.

I did not waste ALL my time at home alone feeling sorry for myself.  I spent some time programming, but mostly I put our 2009-2010 school year together.  Our math and science will continue in a similar fashion to years past, but the rest of the materials will be fairly different.  For math, Christian will finish up Geometry and move on into Pre-calculus while Kelly will finish Pre-calculus and move on into Calculus.  For science, Christian will do Apologia Biology and Kelly will do Apologia Chemistry.

After that, just about everything changes.  Kelly has already passed to years worth of college level Spanish.  She will continue to study Spanish daily, but the bulk of her foreign language effort will move to French.  Christian will continue in Spanish through most of the year, but should be able to take the CLEP test and move on into French sometime this spring.  Lorena and I want to start studying French, too!  The kids and I are reading a U.S. History textbook right now to help Christian get ready for the U.S. History I and II CLEP tests.  When we finish that, I will find him another textbook to read through on his own.  We will find a Western Civilization text to read aloud together (after we read a cool book on interpersonal relationship skills).

One of the fun parts of our program is to find books on economics, history, sociology, and other topics from great scholars like Rodney Stark, Ben Witherington, and the like.  Kelly will read one of those every two weeks, then post her thoughts on the books on this blog.  We will also continue with memorization, poetry, physical education (preparation to run in a 10K race), and other such materials.  I will start my homeschool update posts right after labor day.