WRTR Day 2

Can you imagine my happiness (that's happ-short-i-ness) when I walked into the bedroom this afternoon and discovered Madison holding up the WRTR flash cards in her left hand, and the fingers of her right hand, and quizzing Ella about the pronunciations? And they were both having fun.

Area/perimeter of triangles

Madison was so enthused about learning about the area of triangles that she asked after lunch if she could spend the rest of the day writing a report/speech about the area of triangles. Who am I to say no? She's doing that now.

I loved the "click" moment she experienced today. It was when I gave her a triangle of base=3 height=3 and asked her the area ("Oh! It's 4-and-a-half"!). After that, a triangle with base 9 and height 7 was no problem. And everything else was easy.

Before I did triangles, I reviewed rectangle perimeter/area. (After she got that, I split one of the rectangles in half, into two triangles, and asked her what the area of the triangle must be.) Anyway, she was very pleased to figure out (with only me doing examples as guidance) that a 4 x 4 square was "the boundary" (her words) between when perimeter is bigger than area, and when area is bigger than perimeter.

Randy Pausch

Publishing KidsOutAndAbout.com is part of my personal mission to spread reason among parents. My strategy is to say things in such a way that they seem to be uncontroversial, and to say it warmly and cheerfully so that it's easy for them to believe that they *already* believe what I'm writing, and I'm just bringing their attention to it. I'm pleased to say that my Friday morning e-newsletter goes out to 6000 readers right now. This is from this morning's newsletter:

Have you heard of professor Randy Pausch, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh? Carnegie Mellon asks their great professors to think deeply about the important things in life, and to present hypothetical "Last Lectures." Pausch's Last Lecture had a profundity that some of the others hadn't, because Pausch has terminal pancreatic cancer. Pausch, who is a computer science professor and developer of virtual reality technology, has three children, ages 5, 2, and 1. His Last Lecture, entitled "How to Live Your Childhood Dreams," became a sensation around the world in the past week and a half, and thousands of people have already contacted him to tell him what a difference his talk made in their lives.

Jeffrey Zaslow reported on his talk in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal. Zazlow's article (which really got me thinking last week) can be found here:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119024238402033039.html

I found a link to the video presentation of Pausch's talk here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=362421849901825950&hl=en

Randy Pausch's web site says it will have an online link to the typed article soon.

Why was the talk so affecting? Professor Pausch only has a few months left of life, but he is happy with how he is using it. His Last Lecture reminds us how easy it is to put aside what is really important in life for "later"--which rarely comes. Pausch says that he has made sure to fulfill all of his childhood dreams, which in his case include winning giant stuffed animals at carnivals, walking in zero gravity, designing Disney rides, and writing a World Book entry.

He reminds us that even though it's so easy to say no to things our children want to do that are slightly inconvenient, he was profoundly affected by his parents' permission to decorate the walls of his bedroom any way he wanted; in his case, it was with etchings of mathematical equations.

Reading about Professor Pausch helped me reorient my own priorities as a parent: If (God forbid) my own child were dying of cancer in 40 years, what would I want *her* to say about her childhood in her Last Lecture? And how does that affect my day-to-day decisions and actions with the girls? It occurred to me that every action that we take, at root, is either good for us or bad for us: Even if only in a small way, it is either life-sustaining, or life-destroying. Professor Pausch reminds us that in even the smallest actions, we should choose life, for ourselves and our children. I have been finding it an interesting, and useful, filter with which to view the world this week. Think about it.

William of Ockham

Yesterday's Birthday of the Day was William of Ockham (well, it wasn't, really, it was Meatloaf's birthday, but when there's no one particularly worthy of the Birthday of the Day from a cultural literacy perspective, we substitute someone whose birthday we don't know). Then, at the end of the day, we give nickels for every correct answer.

"What was William of Ockham, Ella?"

"He was an inventor? The inventor of the Razor?"

Dumb mommy moment

As editor of KOA, I often get invited to opening nights or dress rehearsals of shows so that I can see them in advance and review them for my readers. I don't always have the time to write formal reviews, especially of performances that aren't stellar. I don't have time to write bad reviews!

One group that I've reviewed before is A Magical Journey Through Stages, which is a terrific Broadway-revue type performing group that consists of the very best performers from community theater from around Rochester. I wrote a review in the spring about their Times Square performance.

Last night, I took the girls to see their dress rehearsal for Grease, which opens this weekend. Now, for pity's sake, I was IN Grease in high school. So there is no excuse for the fact that I took them last night, I just simply DIDN'T THINK. If I had thought about it, I might have remembered:

It's about kind of ratty kids who are romanticized as they struggle with growing up.

It's all about peer pressure. ("Do real teenagers act like that, Mommy, or is it just in the show? Is it just in the 50's?")

They smoke and drink on stage (although these kids just held the cigarettes rather than lighting them).

They use the word "crap" and other slang a LOT, plus sometimes make lewd gestures.

Stealing hubcaps and gang fighting is romanticized.

Danny is a bit aggressive in the car at the drive-in movie with Sandy. ("Mommy, what's he trying to get her to do? She already kissed him.")

Rizzo thinks she's pregnant toward the end ("Mommy, what does "knocked up" mean?).

The play (written in the 70s, I think) doesn't in any way come to any good resolution about what kids are supposed to do to sort through the issues that they all encounter. Danny joins the track team, although he leaves it in the end after making a rude gesture to the coach, and comes to treat Sandy a little bit better in front of his friends Toward the end, Sandy throws off her "good little girl" image and her poodle skirts after seeing what Rizzo is going through, sings "Goodbye To Sandra D" and starts dressing like a slut.

So, okay, I screwed up here. What was I thinking, taking them?

Ella is happy to listen to the music, generally follow the story ("how it's hard for teenagers to figure out how to act with each other when they're becoming boyfriend and girlfriend") and see the dancing and the costumes, and, as in all things, without needing to penetrate too deeply. Madison, of course, insists on figuring out *exactly* what is going on at every moment, which made it particularly difficult last night.

I will admit to (temporarily) taking the coward's way out when Madison tugged hard at my arm after the whole "don't tell anyone I think I'm pregnant" scene. "What's going on? What just happened? What's Rizzo singing about? Why is Kinicki upset?" "I'll tell you later," I whispered back. I confess that I was kind of hoping it would fade from her mind during the rest of the play. But as I was driving home, I realized that this can't be the way I deal with things. She's eight, I'm sure I'm smart enough to find some age-appropriate way to describe the things she wants to know. So as a matter of principle, I asked in the car:

"So, ok, anyone have any questions about the show?"

"YES," she said. "What was that, toward the end, before the song Rizzo sang that I didn't understand, before her conversation with Sandy? What was the thing with the secret?"

Sigh.

"Well," I replied. "Rizzo thought she might be pregnant. And she was really upset about that."

"Why?"

"Because she's a teenage girl, and it's bad for a teenage girl to be pregnant. People aren't old enough to be parents when they're teenagers. So she was very upset."

"Why was it a secret?"

"When you're really upset and you want to talk to one person, it can help. But you don't necessarily want everyone to know that you're upset, so you ask that person not to tell others. But her friend went and did that right away so everyone knew, and that made Rizzo even more upset." (Oh please oh please don't have her ask about why Kinicki was mad, and what Rizzo's comment, 'Don't worry, you don't know the guy' meant.) (She didn't.)

So...I should have known better. Of course, none of this is a disaster, but I'd prefer for them to experience these issues when they're a little older and actually interested in them.

Day 1 of Writing Road to Reading

I talked with Laura pretty extensively yesterday, FINALLY getting my bottom in gear to do a more formal investigation of The Writing Road to Reading method.

Ella has not been struggling with reading, but there has been no "magic" moment where she just reads, yet. Madison had a magic moment right before she was six, where she just decided she was damned well going to read the Boxcar Children books, and so she sat down and just forged ahead, ignoring the words she didn't know. Ella is 5 months past six and I know if she just decided to focus a lot and just try it on her own all the time, like when she encounters signs, then I know something would click. Don't get me wrong, she's a fairly competent reader and speller for six, but I know it could be better.

And for Madison, well of course she reads as well and as fast many adults, but I've written before about how she has not been focusing on spelling. When you give her something just out of context to spell, she's terrible. Even though our AVKO spelling has been working quite well and she's getting better, things haven't really "clicked" where she's spelling lots of words that she hasn't memorized. That kid needs a method and a theory for everything, and so that's why English spelling hasn't really progressed for her.

Well, I think this method will really work, for both of them. It's a combination of memorizing all of the possible sounds (in order!) for letters and letter combinations, and then writing words with their representational symbols to make it clear which letters make which sounds.

I already had the phonogram cards from way back when Laura first recommended this to me (YEARS ago), and so I started today just flashing them to the girls and getting them to say the various sounds for each in order. They actually liked this. Ella went up to Card 42 before I could see it was a little much, and Madison went through the whole stack of 70. They like it. I went online and bought The Writing Road to Reading : The Spalding Method of Phonics for Teaching Speech, Writing and Reading, volume 4 for 6 whole dollars today, including shipping. Eventually, we'll be writing words with the notation for the various sounds, which is a kind of method Madison should really like, and which should really cement the spelling in her head.

Laura, did I mention that you're right? You're right. As it says in the little blurb in the upper right-hand corner of the blog, I'm grateful for your expertise.

I don't often quote from other mom blogs

This, though, is from a post by Moreena, who writes "The Wait and the Wonder." This post from her blog is entitled "Pompeii":

Later, back at home with two advils dissolving in my stomach and Frankie stretched on top of my chest, I remembered this story I heard one time, who knows where, about a mother found in the remains of Pompeii. She was curled up, her back an arch, and under the sheltering bridge of her body was found her child, as if she hoped to hold back the unstoppable tide of destruction with just her body alone. As if love might be the protection, the miracle, or at least the easing of inevitable.

The urge to protect is so strong. Even when the volcano is hidden inside your very own body. Even when bending over your child in a sheltering embrace brings the volcano closer. When the goodnight hug leaves only the fragile border of your own skin between your child and that lurking disaster.

And rather than running from the horror, we bend and shelter and protect.

How clever I was to buy this

I'm feeling very clever to have bought these place mats of the periodic table:

http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Posters/index.html.



We have them on our kitchen table, and the girls can't get enough of perusing them. They have great descriptions on the back. You can get it as a poster if you want, too. And they take PayPal so it was like not paying anything at all for them. (Right? Isn't that the way it works?)

Hug O' War

It's Shel Silverstein's birthday. He was born in Chicago on September 25, 1930. He died of a heart attack in 1999. I was actually not aware he was dead. Where have I been.

Here is the poem we're memorizing today:

Hug O’ War
By Shel Silverstein

I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war.
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs.
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug.
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

My favorite book of his is The Missing Piece, although I don't think it's as profound as people seem to think.

My least favorite book is The Giving Tree.

Brownies

We had the annual Parent Meeting for Brownies today.

Have I mentioned that I hate Brownies?

Oh, yes, I have.

The girls have no idea. I kind of hope Madison doesn't want to do it next year, so that I don't have to have girls in two different troops. Double the fun.

The Cookie Mom is a dad this year, the husband of the troop leader. He is taking it very seriously.

Anyone want cookies? That's in October and November. Can I use my 6000-family KidsOutAndAbout.com email newsletter to sell cookies? No, I can't. Against the rules.

No gluten-free cookies.

We have a quota of 100 boxes per girl, or 130 boxes per family. Let's see, if I buy them all myself, that's...about $520, I think. They'd all be Thin Mints.

Piano arrives!

On the local homeschooling list a few weeks ago, a woman named Amy who is trying to declutter offered her old upright piano to a good home. I was skeptical, but went over and fell in love -- it's a 1913 piano that has *always* been in her house (a cool c. 1910 arts-and-crafts in Rochester near Writers & Books). I knew that piano had to be in our house.

David got three young RIT math guys (two of whom, fortunately, had muscles, because that piano is HEAVY). I was cooking a delicious dinner for them and their girlfriends as a thank-you. They got to the house and discovered that the U-Haul van was too small, so David called me, and I did some quick thinking and sweet-talked the local Home Depot into renting me their flatbed truck for a few hours. You know that everything always takes longer and is more difficult than you thought it was going to be, but at the end of the evening we had our piano and the kids had a nice (if late) pork dinner.

I will be having it tuned and the beginnings of repairs starting Oct 2. It needs new keys (ivories chipped away on half the keys), and some internal repairs, but I am so excited. I can't believe we got it for NOTHING. It's in the dining room now, we'll see if it remains there. The girls had been outwardly skeptical about our getting it, telling me over and over how they prefer their keyboard, but once it gone in the house they couldn't help going over and playing it, I had to drag them away this morning.

And, piano lessons with their new teacher start next Wednesday!

I will get photos up as soon as I find the darned connector wire for my camera to the computer. Still haven't downloaded the Bermuda photos.

New drama class

I found a (cheap!) drama class for Madison on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next five weeks at Penfield Recreation. She started Tuesday, and she LOVES it. There are about 9 kids age 8-12, and they're doing some crazy fractured fairy tale as a play. Quite involved, 60 pages of script. Each kid is doing two roles; Madison got cast today as Splenda, the good witch (and the mother of the star of the show, Brenda, a tall 12-year-old) and the Fairy Godmother. They'll do a show on a stage in late October, with costumes and everything. The director is a calm, lovely woman named (like her last theater arts teacher) Pam, who seems to know what she's doing, and the other kids (I think 3-4 boys, 4 other girls) seem enthusiastic and nice.

Did I mention Madison loves this? She already has some of her part memorized, and given how great she's been at poem memorization lately, I think she's found one of her niches.

I wouldn't mind spending the next 10 years as a theater mom, either. The kids who get involved tend to be nice, and focused, and mature. A good group for the girls to associate with.

I think I'll take them to the dress rehearsal of Grease next Wednesday night, to which I've been invited as publisher of KOA. There have to be some perks, after all.

AAARRRR

It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

http://www.talklikeapirate.com

I'm looking for some Pirate Poems for the girls to memorize.

Poem memorization

Another day of school under our belt, except for Gym & Swim at 1pm, karate at 4:30. We have an hour and a half in between G&S and karate, so we're going to celebrate a good day by going to the corn maze at the farm that's right next to the Y.

I realized today that the girls, especially Madison, are astonishingly good at poem memorization. Last week, Madison heard Ella working on memorizing a poem, The Caterpillar, by Christina Rossetti, from the grammar book we're using. She wanted to memorize, too. We did it two days, Wed and Thurs, two weeks ago. This morning, Madison absolutely remembered the poem she'd worked on, The Goops, without any intervening work on it.

The Goops they lick their fingers,
The Goops they lick their knifes,
They spill their broth on the tablecloth,
Oh, they lead disgusting lives.

The Goops they talk while eating,
And loud and fast they chew.
And that is why I'm glad that I
Am not a Goop - are you?

Ella, with just two minutes of work to remember, could remember her poem,

The Caterpillar

Brown and furry,
Caterpillar in a hurry.
Take your walk
To the shady leaf or stalk.

May no toad spy you,
May the little birds pass buy you.
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

Madison also knew that poem, just having listened to Ella do it almost two weeks ago. One wishes she could apply the same method to remembering how things are spelled.

Our Body: The Universe Within review

I wrote a review of the traveling exhibit, Our Body: The Universe Within and figured I'd post it here.

The review is at http://rochester.kidsoutandabout.com/main-reviews/OurBody.html.

After seeing the exhibit, I have a new resolution to drop about 20 pounds. Want to keep that machine inside me in top condition! It really helped me not go nuts with food on the cruise.

Settling down to normal life

We had a great time on the cruise. I have day-by-day notes, but I won't bore you with those.

The beginning part of the academics was taught by the director of the HotS (Homeschool on the Seas) program, a homeschool mom from Connecticut. To adults, it was clear that she'd done about 15 minutes of internet research on the history and culture of Bermuda, but the kids couldn't really tell. Later on, there were some actual experts from the University of Miami who had an oceanographic/atmospheric research lab right on board, and they were fantastic. I even went to the adult lecture by Hans Graber, a U Miami researcher who is an expert in using radar imaging with hurricanes, which was great.

We had lots of stuff to do. The ship had an ice rink and a mini-golf course, pools, an arcade (where games cost $1.50, so FORGET IT), and shows. We all tried to have an astronomy lesson but we couldn't find anywhere on board that was dark enough, and I didn't ask but assumed that they didn't even try to get the Royal Caribbean folks to dampen the lights on top of the ship for a little while.

Bermuda was really interesting. We were there two days; I opted for science over history, although there are tons of cool forts and things like that, and we took a ferry and then a bus to the Crystal Cave and Fantasy Cave, and then back. I'll be uploading some photos soon. (I had gotten Madison a digital camera for her birthday, a decent one, and so she took about 100 photos.) The second day, we stayed near the ship because it took so long to get around, and we had to be back on the ship at 4pm, so we went to Snorkel Park, to which you could walk from the ship. The girls learned to snorkel, and we saw some great fish, especially in the morning. We did that in the morning, went back to the ship for lunch, went back in the afternoon, and Madison and I got sunburns on our backs (lesson: don't trust little girls to put the sunscreen on your, or their own, back). We also saw a glass blowing demonstration at a place nearby.

The folks on board were wonderful about making Madison feel special on her birthday. They scattered rose petals on the table, put balloons on the table with Happy Birthday Madison, and then the whole room (hundreds of people) sang to her while she blew out the candles. Mike, the guy from Alumni Cruises (which sponsored HotS), sent her chocolate-covered strawberries.

Throughout the trip, both girls (especially Madison) would wander over to a window, or to our balcony from our room, or to the railing, and gaze out over the water for a while, and THINK. I think it was worth it just for that.

Another thing, about which I can brag because about 3 people read this, is that the girls were no question the *best behaved* kids in the group. People even commented on it. The director was putting together groups of kids for an educational scavenger hunt on board, and she was talking to me afterward about why she put which kids with which, based on maturity, and ability to behave with decorum. "...and yours are just angels, so it didn't matter which group they were in, no one needed to look after them." True. I was really proud of them. They were as roudy as the others when time called for it, and sat there and listened when it was time for that, too. Never gave anyone trouble. Madison was very concerned when two of the big brothers (on opposite teams) called each other "losers" and thought that her team ought to give up its winning status because the brother on her team had started it.

I discovered, by the way, that Ella has an excellent sense of direction. This was a huge ship, with 14 floors, starboard and port, fore and aft...and by the second or third day, she was navigating around it with no difficulty. She knew where she was, and she knew where she needed to go and how to get there. Our dining room was third floor starboard, and if she got cold and wanted her sweatshirt, she could take the room key and go up to sixth floor port, where our room was.

All in all, this was a good thing to do.

And now I must go and write a long, detailed article about it, as I told the HotS people I was going to do, which gave me my discount.

Oh, wait, first I must educate my children. Then take them to Gym & Swim. Then take them to karate.

Feeling pretty murderous, here

This afternoon, some bastards hijacked the weekly KidsOutAndAbout.com email newsletter I sent out this morning, and then changed the title to something filthy and sent it out to Hotmail addresses all over the place. At the bottom, masquerading as the thing you click on to unsubscribe, is a link to porn sites. So I'm getting tons of emails ever since 6pm tonight, with recriminations for MY having sent out something like this, with stuff for kids on it.

What seems to have happened is that some kind of virus/trojan on one of my recipients' emails did this, sent the email along to somewhere in Brazil, where it was modified and sent out again to Hotmail addresses, which are probably programmed to send it along to still more. My web site hosts say that it looks like it was manually manipulated to have that title and some of the links before being re-sent out. So this probably is something deliberate, rather than just some computer reassigning a title and then sending it out. Makes it worse.

I panicked when I first started receiving the TAKE ME OFF YOUR EMAIL LIST demands. But then I realized that all of the people requesting to be taken off *weren't on my list in the first place*. This is good, because I was picturing the public humiliation here in Rochester that would arise from my sending porn out to a significant subset of my 6000 readers. Excellus would, I'm sure, have demanded the site come down instantly. But fortunately, there was no breach of our email server, and none of my readers were emailed. I literally felt sick to my stomach for a while, and couldn't eat much dinner, and here it is 1am and I still can't sleep.

Gross, totally gross. The bastards. If anything, David was more angry than I...I was mostly upset and horrified, whereas he was psychologically ready for actual violence. It's that absolute impossibility of even finding out who did this, much less punish them, that is so very frustrating.

I desperately hope this doesn't snowball through Hotmail. Having my newsletter circulating around the globe, with my email address above some disgusting contents, is really...unappetizing.

At least we're going on the cruise on Sunday.

Of course, Tropical Storm Gabrielle is currently meandering off the East Coast...here's hoping that we miss it on our way from New York to Bermuda.

Notes on the Second Day

This often happens, I fall asleep by mistake with the kids and wake up 7 hours later, unable to go back to sleep. So here it is 4 in the morning and I'm at the computer. Why not make some notes on Day 2.

Madison claims that she likes this year of homeschooling much better than last year. I can't get her to pinpoint why. She says it's more fun. I have this sneaking, guilty suspicion that it's more fun because I've been able to devote much more uninterrupted time to school time. (No clients called on Labor Day, only one called on Tuesday.)

Hmmmm. Will have to think more about that.

As for Ella, the summer gap in formal learning has made noticeable two new strides:

1) In logic: Ella is able to manipulate abstract ideas much more readily. I have a Mind Benders Warmup logic book for K-2 which went nowhere last year. But this year, she is having fun solving problems like:

Mrs. Jones is Henrietta's mother.
Mrs. Pembroke is Mrs. Jones's mother.
What is Mrs. Pembroke's relation to Henrietta?

and

Jane and Henry have two professions: Bricklayer and skycap.
The man is not the bricklayer.
Who has what profession?

For that last one, I showed her how to use charts, with Xs and Os. Madison has been using this since late first grade, and it happened she heard me doing Ella's first one with her while she was working on logic, too. She came over and showed Ella the complicated chart *she* was using. Ella was impressed.

Also with Ella:

In terms of reading, I kind of take back what I said in a recent post about her having regressed. She's gotten right back into the swing of things with much more enthusiasm than she had last year. In terms of skill, not only is she reading faster and, with two days of practice, recognizing words much more than before (not just deriving them from first letter and context), but she's also learning new words a lot faster. Last year, she would have had to re-sound-out a word that she had already sounded out at the top of the same page, but now she just recognizes it from the work she had done. That seems mundane, but I think it's a pretty big step.

Second, she actually *wants* to read. I did what I did this spring, I had her start again WAAAAY at the beginning of the EPS Phonics books series, at Set 2. (Each storybook set has 10 books of 16 pages each. I love this series.) She had read, painstakingly, up through Set 5 last fall/winter/early spring, then I made her start again in the mid-spring and she progessed through them much faster. I'm doing the same thing now, to build up her confidence. The first day she read five books. Yesterday, she wanted to start really early in the morning, while we were still snuggling in bed, and so she actually read the last five books in Set 2 before setting foot on the floor. Then she wanted to bring more of the books with her to the lawyer's office (David and I had to sign some will documents yesterday morning), which she did. So maybe she is in a period of actually wanting to do this reading stuff. Fingers crossed.

Note to self: Stop feeling frustrated when we're out in the world and she doesn't try to read signs and other things that she could actually read if she put just a grain of effort into it. Patience, Grasshopper.

First day of school, 2007-2008

I decided to use Labor Day as our first day of school, mostly because we're going on the homeschooling cruise all next week, and I thought it would be a good idea to get a week of routine in beforehand.

We're in the middle of the morning, and all has gone swimmingly. The girls were excited to start school; Madison didn't even want to take a shower and do breakfast first. But the fact of the checklist routines that I've printed out really motivated her to get it done and checked off. I like crossing things off lists, myself.

The thing that has excited them most, to my surprise, has been the fact that I gave them each their own little journals. They even want to bring them on the cruise next week. "I'm going to write in it every single day!" said Ella. They've finished karate practice, decorating their folders, and handwriting so far (it's 10:30), and they were so wild to write in their journals that I'm letting them do it now. Madison just came up to me.

"Mom, can I write crazy nonsense words in my journal and spell them any way I want?"

"Yes, of course. You can do anything you want in a journal. No one is even going to look at it."

"OK, good. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't breaking any Journal Rules."

Despite how pleased she was to get the journal and adamant that no one should ever look in it, Madison just read to me the first part of her first entry.

Update: Those journals were the best 50-cents-apiece that I've ever spent. (Yay Michael's Crafts!) We went to the last Red Wings game of the season this afternoon as a celebration of a successful first day, and both girls brought their journals. We got back at 5pm and Madison has been outside the whole time, writing her story in her journal and stopping to play on her own to "get inspired."

Ella did some writing as well, but after cooking with me for a while is now exploring the model of the human body I got this summer. She can't wait until tomorrow, so I let her do it on her own. It has a stethoscope that you can really use.

C.S. Lewis

How bad is it to be very impressed with a Bad Guy? I feel that way about C.S. Lewis, even though he's a regular Ellsworth Toohey.

What a storyteller this guy is. Moreover, even though I know what is behind all of it is religious, I don't object to my kids listening to it. I thought I would, but I don't.

We're making our way through the audio Chronicles of Narnia, and we're almost done with Book 6, The Silver Chair.

Knowing the outlines of Lewis's apologia arguments in Mere Christianity, which I really should read one of these days, I've been having a fun time making the cultural literacy connections where his stories are retellings of Biblical stories.

Even though Lewis was the most famous Christian apologist of the 20th century, I find it fascinating that none of the books are heavy-handed with a Christian sense of ethics. (That, alone, would make it as unappealing as Rainbow Fish.) No, the characters just do what the situation objectively calls for. Lewis sets it up so that obedience to the will of Aslan (a lion, who represents God or Jesus depending on the context) is what is required for success in the world of Narnia. But see, that's ok, because in these books, there really is an Aslan and he really did create Narnia, with creatures with free will, and he really knows what's best for it.

That Lewis is a crafty guy. I kept looking for Biblical references in The Silver Chair and finding hardly any, until Chapter 12. The Lady of the Green Kirtle is very annoyed to discover that the our three heroes have freed Prince Rilian from her 10-year enchantment, and sets out to convince them that there was never such a thing as Narnia, after all. Other sources have said that this is a parallel to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, but I see it more as a twisting of arguments people have made against the existence of a God. I transcribed this:

"It is all a dream," the witch said, thrumming [on an instrument]. "There never was such a world... There never was any world but mine."

...

Puddleglum was still fighting hard. "I don't know rightly what you all mean by a world," he said, talking like a man who hasn't enough air. "But you can play that fiddle till your fingers drop off, and still you won't make me forget Narnia, and the whole Overworld, too....but I know, I was there once, I've seen the sky filled with stars, I saw the Sun coming out of the sea of a morning...I've seen Him up in the midday sky, when I couldn't look at Him for brightness."

,..


"Why, there it is!" cried the prince. "Of course! ...How could we have forgotten it? Of course, we've all seen the Sun!"...

Then came the witch's voice, cooing softly like the voice of a wood pigeon..."What is this Sun that you all speak of? Do you mean anything by the word?"

"Yes, we jolly well do!" said Scrub.

"Can you tell me what it's like?" asked the witch...

"Please it your Grace," said the prince very coldly and politely. "You see that lamp. It is round, and yellow, and giveth light to the whole room, and hangeth moreover from the roof. Now that thing that we call the Sun is like the lamp, only far greater and brighter. It giveth light to the whole overworld and hangeth in the sky."

"Hangeth from what, my lord?" asked the witch. And then while they were all still thinking how to answer her, she added with one of her silvery laughs, "You see, when you try to think out clearly what this Sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your Sun is a dream. There is nothing in that dream which is not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing. The Sun is but a tale, a children's story."

"Yes, I see now, "said Jill in a heavy, hopeless tone. "It must be so." And while she said this, it seemed to her to be very good sense.

Slowly and gravely, the witch repeated, "There is no Sun."

After a pause, and after a struggle in their minds, all four of them said together, "You are right. There is no Sun." It was such a relief to give in and say it. "There never was a Sun."

[Jill brings up the subject of the lion, Aslan. The witch replies:]

"I see that we should do no better with your lion, as you call it, than we did with your Sun. You have seen lamps, so you imagined a bigger and better lamp, and called it the Sun. You have seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it's to be called a lion. Well, 'tis a pretty make-believe, though to say truth it would suit you all a bit better if you were younger. And look how you can put nothing into your make-believe without copying it from the real world of mine, which is the only world. Come, all of you, put away these childish tricks. I have work for you all in the real world....To bed, all, and let us begin a wiser life tomorrow."

[Shortly thereafter, Puddleglum comes to himself, and proclaims:]

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up all those things...suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's the funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game if you're right, but four babies playing a game can make a play world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can, even if there isn't any Narnia. ... We're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think. But that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

If there really were some objective, demonstrifiable God as there is (in the story) a Narnia, then the argument parallel that Lewis is cleverly trying to draw would hold some water. But that's one awfully fraudulent straw man that he's setting up there.

I don't object to the girls listening to this, because in the story it really is true: We have all the evidence that Narnia is real. So, given the fact that there really is a Narnia, the witch is an evil deceiver in the story. Her arguments are all just tricks to make you think that what is real is not. (Like those atheists must be doing, Lewis is implying, when they argue against the existence of God.)

Of course, Puddleglum's proclamation in that last passage is pretty bad; I certainly wouldn't want the girls to take anything positive away from it. But it really is all the Christians have. They decide to live their lives as if there were some supernatural, because they think it's better than what they've been convinced is a dull old terrible empty lonely existence here on the Third Rock.

Then again, none of them have lived with Madison and Ella.