Tiny Grass

It’s strange to think of myself as being unschooled, but it seems to be true. It was part of an interesting dual existence - part-time schooling and part-time unschooling. I didn’t even think of it as unschooling until an astute parent pointed it out at our local unschooler’s support group. I think it accounts (on some level) for my general disregard for authority and groupthink. Read more »

A few weeks ago, when it was still so warm that we hadn’t busted out our winter coats yet, I found this fellow sauntering across our dining table. Sauntering extremely deliberately, possibly due to a missing forelimb. It was pretty cool, and the colors on its wings were gorgeous (something I haven’t quite been able to capture on, er, ‘film’).

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I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately, thanks to two books I’m reading at the moment: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals . Subject-wise they are very different - the former is an indictment of education in America, the latter traces the origins of 4 meals, revealing a lot about agribusiness and nutrition in the process. Yet both books spend time extolling the virtues of community.

This morning we read some terrible news - our local volunteer fire department had been robbed of the profits from their Christmas tree sales, and the thieves also made off with one family’s Christmas presents that had been hidden in the firehouse. Who would do something like that? As I’ve been reading Dumbing Us Down on and off all day, I started to think of community and whether it makes a difference when it comes to something like theft. People do steal from people they know, but is it less likely if you know someone well? For instance, would it make a difference if you knew the fireman’s name, how hard he works to earn his money and that he freely risks his life to help keep the community safe?

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Early last week we got a subscription renewal request from National Geographic - except our subscription hadn’t even started yet. We knew they’re very thorough in their subscription renewal mailings, but this was a new level of efficiency.

OK - the title over-dramatizes our life without mindless tv watching, but it was coincidental that our current subscription started the day I cancelled the satellite tv. They seemed to have paused a bit after cashing our check (a sweet $10 subscription that came out of nowhere) and sent 3 at once. I think we last had a subscription maybe 3 years ago, and it’s like welcoming an old friend back into the house. Except this friend never runs out of cool stories and let’s us decide which vacation slides to skip.

This year we told the folks that we weren’t going to be exchanging gifts, except for giving to the kids in the family. This was primarily due to budgetary reasons, but it’s been oddly freeing. The way it worked in our family was everyone exchanged lists, which family members consulted when buying. This resulted in no unwanted gifts. Upon further reflection, this method is a total sham since there wasn’t any thought involved in the giving. So it seems like we were just spending money with the end result of us getting gifts that we might as well have bought, wrapped and given to ourselves. (At this point, I will credit Trish’s younger sis with bucking the status quo and getting me a book by one of my favorite authors last year.)

This year, the only shopping we did was for our kids, our nephews, and our grandmas. And we’re happy to not have overriding thoughts of where to get a specific gift for a specific person and so forth. It’s not that we don’t want to give, but there should be something more involved than the way it’s been. We can buy things for ourselves all year long, and we’d been using Christmas as little more than an excuse to get more stuff for ourselves in the guise of giving. Next year, we’re thinking of proposing something much simpler - a $10 or $15 budget per person with no lists involved, for small, truly thoughtful gifts.

However, we are REALLY looking forward to Christmas this year. M had been asking occasionally ‘Is Christmas tomorrow?’ so we used that as an impetus to print out and teach him the concept of the calendar. We have a Lego Advent Calendar, but the numbers are all jumbled up so there’s no actual sense of the passage of time (note to Lego: countdowns are fun too!). M’s plan is to stay up all night, waiting for Santa and his reindeer. I remember those days, having a hard time getting to sleep and then rising WAY early the next day and finding out that Santa did come and he left presents for me. I don’t remember specific presents but I do remember the sense of magic. It’s this belief we love seeing in M’s eyes, for however long this dream lasts.