3 Ring Binder

I am always delighted to receive threats from the local school district. This most recent threat included criminal prosecution regarding my role in my daughter’s required attendance at the public high school.   As if the mandated public service hours weren’t far enough beyond the scope of education for me to question the actual goals of public education, I am warned that I must be an accomplice in the school’s arbitrary attendance policy. Yes, sporadic attendance will no doubt hamper a student’s ability to follow what was presented in class; particularly when what is presented is not part of a prepared or shared course syllabus. This is not the concern manifested on the notice, however; the concern is that each child be held within the walls of the school for the days and hours prescribed by the law under the guise of promoting public education – not that the child is actually educated. Somehow, within this tight scrutiny, time spent in public service is understood to be forgiven. ...

Have you seen the signs: articles and advertisements in the local paper for the special Blessing of the Animals ceremonies?   It happens every fall and is timed to pay tribute to the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of all animals. (Apparently, Saint Francis was religiously re-branded in  1992  and became the patron saint of animals and the environment! ) I don’t mind telling you that as a child, I held St. Francis above all the other saints because of his connection to the beasts; now I see how beastly it can all become. Here are just a few of the sites I found regarding this traditional ceremony in which the faithful gather to equate the lives of dogs with those of people: A Catholic organization in New York understands the connection and distinction between human and pet and blesses the animals for human comfort. A preacher in Washington takes a more practical approach with several blessings and theological “thinking about animals” resources. But an o...

1.   Jumped from 80 ℔ to 95 ℔ back squats this morning.   My lifting partner and I were in cahoots to make the jump—we figured we could handle it. We were right! Plus, there is something quite satisfying about putting on the big 25 ℔ weights rather than the pastiche of little weights (although the little weights do generate that satisfying “clang”). 2.   With a narrower stance and wider grip than the dead lift, I managed the 115 ℔ of the clean dead lift pretty well. Truthfully, I can’t even imagine getting that much weight OVER my head, but I’m not there yet, so I needn't fret. 3.   On seeing my handling of the clean dead lift, the trainer cheered me on with an “Atta Boy!” W hile I generally prefer, "You go , girl!" his exclamation struck me as a compliment. * ℔ Unicode character U+2114 ( ℔ ) is called the " L B Bar Symbol ", and it is a cursive development of this symbol.   (from Wikipedia )    Of course I have to use it...

With the sad dissolution of our homeschooling chorus, my daughter and I sought new opportunities to continue singing on a regular basis. For my daughter, this means private vocal lessons with a fabulously fun and talented woman who also runs a small theatre company nearby. For me, it means striving to sing with a local chorus, but with the added benefit of getting to do that with my husband!   As someone who is unable to sing by sight reading, I am quite challenged by the music in the chorus; however, I have no doubt that the end product will be wonderful. Our program this semester is The British Are Coming! , music from the 14 th to the 20 th century.   Here is a brief sample of one of my favorite pieces we’ve practiced thus far, based on an unnamed poem by Robert Bridges and composed by Gerald Finzi . BOOK IV. II. My spirit sang all day O my joy. Nothing my tongue could say, Only My joy! My heart an echo caught — O my joy— And spake, Tell me thy thought, Hide not ...

Autumnal Delights The sudden cool of morning brushes skin, Air scented thick with ripened apples mulls, Piquantly spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon, A breeze, a whoosh of fallen leaves, then lulls. Perhaps still green, remains a supple leaf. As maple bursts in orange-red, umbered oak, And aspen’s deepest gold, explode! In brief Calliopes of color: Nature’s cloak. Surrounded by the changing atmosphere, Imbibed in richly, flavored, shades of earth, Awash in subtle, brilliant, bracing air, My senses wake! I breathe autumnal birth. Outside grows cold as inside’s glow ignites, With Fall’s imbued sensorial delights.

After I quickly itemized three good things from this weekend, I realized that there were at least a dozen good things I could share. So here they are in chronological order. 1.       Friday night high school football – I go to support the band, especially the flute section, and the weather was perfect. It was an early game and we won. 2.       Friday night Family Movie Night – The Breakfast Club . Classic. “I pulled the *&@# trunk, and . . .” 3.       Saturday morning Crossfit workout – 6:30 to 8:00 AM, 3 sets of 5 back squats, 75 lbs. I’m working on it. I hate burpees – the name and the crazy-ass ultimate wind-sucking exercise – just thought you’d want to know. 4.       Early fall apple picking – with the whole family! Macoun, MacIntosh, Courtland, and Gala. Yum. 5.       September Poetry Night (really Poetry Day) – each of us read the sonnets we wrote for...

I have four minutes between lunch and orienteering to share my delight in just having received a package from Amazon!  I can't adequately describe the joy running through both my daughter and myself when I opened the package.  Yes, I ordered the books, and yes, I knew they would come eventually - but their arrival was met with no less enthusiasm than if they had been suddenly bestowed upon us! Thus, The Dog: 5000 Years in Art , The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet , and the boxed set of The Hunger Games Trilogy all now sit quietly on our table as we dream of the world of knowledge and adventure held between their covers and eagerly anticipate our return home.

"The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings." -- James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution (signed 223 years ago today), 4th US President via Liberty Quotes

As six Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts are slated for sale to a private equity firm, another coalition of hospitals in the state is seeking government interference in the sale to ensure that low-income quality healthcare is accessible.   Among the conditions being sought by the Healthcare Access Coalition are measures to prohibit the buyer, Cerberus Capital Management, from using “improper’’ incentives to recruit doctors from rival hospitals, a three-year ban on price increases for hospital services, and restrictions on “limited network’’ insurance contracts that exclude other providers. What exactly constitutes improper is not discussed, but what does the government have to do with improper? Illegal? Yes. Improper? No way. Why would a group of hospitals want to keep prices low at competing hospitals?   Clearly, they don’t want more of the lousy government insurance cast-offs that are causing all the bankruptcies! Using popularly proper prattle, the rent seeking...

To ensure your safety when casually reading through curriculum materials don't gesticulate wildly while your full cup of black coffee teeters on the edge of your lap desk as it rests across you in bed. Three out of those five circumstances might be okay, but adding the other two added approximately two hours of laundry and hard labor to my day.    On the plus side, my folly did generate this priceless juxtaposition of the trappings of homeschooling and some fabulously clean, lavender scented bed linens.

It wasn’t until I received a copy of our home appraisal that I realized I had a problem. What’s interesting to me is that it is neither the clutter, for which, happily, nothing was deducted from the appraised value of my home, nor my last minute whirlwind de-cluttering attempts that apparently amounted to nothing that is problematic. It’s my previously unrealized affection, or perhaps affliction, for dots. Included in the appraisal were five pictures: one into my daughter’s room, two of the room above the garage (East Wing: erstwhile school room), one of the upstairs bathroom, and one of our family room. Bedspread, blanket, kitchen towel, shower curtain, jar, bowl. There they were – in all five pictures. Dots! But why are dots a problem? Well, they’re not spots, as in leopard spots, or zebra stripes, or giraffe polygons. Colorful dots scream out to my bold graphic design sensibilities but cannot be neatly grouped with my established attraction to animal prints . They are per...

1)   Friday: Inspector Lewis I just learned about this Masterpiece Mystery last weekend when I caught a repeat episode of the new season on television.  I really enjoyed the interplay between the two detectives, Lewis and Hathaway, their different thinking abilities, and, I must confess, DS Hathaway's Alan-Rickman-like voice. 2) Saturday: Newport, RI It was a lovely, lovely day to meet friends along the mansion Cliff Walk in Newport.  I might as well admit upfront that it was also the first day of clog wearing season and in a sort of homecoming for my red clogs , which I bought there in February 2009, I made a grand statement in them by falling on my face on the cliff walk. Had I no hands, I would now lack teeth as well. Except for my pride, I remained uninjured. As I rolled over and off the path, I had to laugh my head off. As one of our companions offered, considering our location, 40-50 feet above the rocky coast of the Atlant...

I love Sunday afternoons in the fall. I know it's not officially fall, but the cooler weather is here, the local apples are prime for picking, and the Patriots are on the TV while Stephen does food prep for the week. Over the past few years I have really come to enjoy watching football (great play Guyton!), and I enjoy analyzing the commercials as well.  Mostly, the beer commercials are so dumb, they're not even fun to watch, but they seem to be getting slightly better. And I've always enjoyed a good play on words. Hope you're appreciating your Sunday afternoon, too.

Go git it.

by Christina G. Rossetti I wish I could remember the first day, First hour, first moment of your meeting me; If bright or dim the season it might be; Summer or winter for aught I can say. So, unrecorded did it slip away, So blind was I to see and to forsee, So dull to mark the budding of my tree That would not blossom, yet, for many a May. If only I could recollect it! Such A day of days! I let it come and go As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow. It seemed to mean so little, meant so much! If only now I could recall that touch, First touch of hand in hand! - Did one but know! New York Times photo I met my husband when I was in the first grade. Awwww. I know. He was not yet in the first grade when he and his twin brother came into my classroom and showcased their reading skills while their mother talked to Sr. Noelle, our teacher - in French, no less. One of those boys, doesn't really matter which, had the audacity to read over my shoulder from my very ...

I'm attracted to spicy language: particularly gritty, pithy sayings such as “drop it like it’s hot.” But even with the assistance of Urban Dictionary, I'm afraid that I may use it incorrectly and divulge my otherwise secret middle-aged-suburban-mother identity.   Does anyone have any good example situations in which this expression would be appropriate, or better still, complete sentences that I can model?    I will deduct points from your score if you have to begin the sentence with, “Yo! Bitches!” to make it work.   I don’t like that, or gangsta crap in general. But I do like the sound of the expression itself and so I want to drop it like it’s hot into my everyday speech. For what it's worth, that rates a C+ for effort.

4+0+1=5 That's not too many people that Shea suggested I round up for the Objectivist Round Up . Okay, the friends  count might be a little low, but friends-who-might-be-interested-in-the-Objectivist-Round-Up-who-have-not-already-read-it might be even lower. As a homeschool mother, my co-workers and sexual partners are one, and I mean one, and the same. And here's a little trivia regarding sexual partners: how many is too many? Over six. I know this is the official number because I saw it on Oprah. And, people, just as a point of clarification, that wasn't six during the same time period, but over a lifetime! Okay, so I imagine that a lot of you who aren't Catholics or ex-Catholics are feeling pretty scandalous about now. You're welcome. It's all in a day's work, my friends.

How can it be her fire we’ll see no more, In colors red and gold ablaze in life? A bird in song, a trusted hand, adored, A teacher, singer, friend, and Mother. Wife. Her fiery passions warmed souls near to match; Her wisdom never ceasing to amaze. When questions came, ‘twas she who did dispatch, With twinkle, smile, and nod to proven ways. But now must I contend that she is gone; So hard to reconcile her life with death. When vibrancy abounds then  she lives on, In those who walked with her and shared her breath.                 For in my ears her voice will e’er return;                 For in my mind her fire will always burn. In honor of my friend, Mary Kate (1961-2010)

“The forms of tango are like stages of a marriage,” explains Barbara Garvey as she rests on the sidelines. Garvey, a true tanguera, and her husband Al go on an annual pilgrimage to Buenos Aires just to make the rounds of the milongas. “The American tango is like the beginning of a love affair, when you're both very romantic and on your best behavior,” she says. “The Argentine tango is when you're in the heat of things and all kinds of emotions are flying: passion, anger, humor. The International tango is like the end of the marriage, when you're staying together for the sake of the children.” As she and Al ocho crisply over the parquet, it's clear that after 34 years of marriage, they're still in the Argentine phase. The tango is more than a dance - it's a moment of truth . Smithsonian   24.n8 (Nov 1993): p.p152(9). 

Cheeks as bright as rowans are Brighter far than any star, Fairest o' them all by far Is my darlin' Mhàiri. from old Scottish traditional, Mhairi's Wedding .