EMINENT/IMMINENT/IMMANENT

I was aware of the word eminent, as in famous. I was aware of the word imminent, as in a coming disaster. Though, I did not realize these two words were spelled differently. I think I gave both a vague common definition of bigness and let that suffice in meaning, in my mind, justifying both as the same word. And until yesterday, I had never heard of the word immanent, which means suffused from within. 

None of which should be confused with emanation: to flow outward. Nor its opposite, immanation: to flow inward.

Everyone got that?

The Potato Famine

"In 1847, midway through the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), a group of Native American Choctaws collected $710 (although many articles say the original amount was $170 after a misprint in Angie Debo's The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic) and sent it to help starving Irish men, women and children. "It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had experienced the Trail of Tears, and they had faced starvation... It was an amazing gesture." Judy Allen, editor of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's newspaper." (wiki source)

There are a few things to understand about the Irish Famine. It wasn't a famine. The potato crop failed,  and potatoes were the only food poor people grew for themselves. So when that crop failed, they all starved--many to death. Meanwhile, the country of Ireland exported more than enough food---beef, pork, and diary products, to feed everyone. There was no famine. There was forced starvation in service to the wealthy making money to feed the wealthy. Huge implications in this for our current world economy and coming climate change, especially with regard to Monsanto's intention to monopolize DNA and seeds. 

Had the poor cultivated goats and chickens, animals capable of foraging most of their calories, the poor may have still been poor and possibly hungry. But likely not started to death. Cultivated crops deplete the land but livestock, well managed, increase land fertility in perpetuity. 

I tell ya, this series about New York history keeps pointing to issues frighteningly current. The things they fought about 200 years ago are still not settled today. And notice, as John Steinbeck points out over and over, its always the poor---the people who have been there---who turn to help the poor. The wealthy don't concern themselves.

My girl wanted to go shopping this weekend with her bff. Christmas money was burning holes in their pockets. So I took them to Target. While they were busy I perused the book section and chose 5 to buy on behalf of my kids. Not to make them read, not in service to some specific curriculum, but just to leave laying around. Because the things laying around home are things they will stumble upon. More like as not, books stumbled upon often get read. They surely can't be read if they aren't here. Yes, the kids do choose their own books from the library. But my choices are generally outside favorite genres and often above their radar. I tend to buy up and have never been sorry.

We are now working our way through the history of New York by PBS on Netflix. Last night we watched the first one, beginning in 1609. I chose this series randomly in the same way I chose five books at Target this weekend. I have a dim notion we will visit NYC one day and history can only enrich, right? I had no idea I was bringing in an excellent introduction to the history of the United States with special emphasis on our political heritage and the development of Republicans and Democrats.

Over simplified: there are Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Hamiltonians are civic oriented and believe investing money from the public into public works creates jobs and wealth for the community. Jeffersonians believe our strength as a nation is largely agrarian and the national government has no business concerning itself with the economy of its citizens. Perhaps ironically, Hamilton was an orphan immigrant and completely self made. He was a brilliant creator of wealth and brought the entire city (and it could be argued, our country) up with him. Jefferson inherited his wealth and died deeply in debt. Republicans love to tout their self made self reliance. ..Star Belly sneetches and all that.

The other thing I found rather electrifying was an explanation of The Grid. Sometime in the early to mid 1800s city officials decided to completely level the entire island of Manhattan. Every hill, every spring rivulet and pond, every quirk, every bank (The steep banks of Brooklyn?!), every thing was erased. They wiped it all in an effort to triumph over nature, and to simplify real estate and navigation. It was purely intentional. Some of that worked. To say they forgot about planning green space would be silly. The entire continent behind Manhattan was green space. They simply claimed the island.

Which is why I feel creeped out to the depth of my soul when I am in Manhattan. I thought it was just me being a country mouse. No, it is partly my culturally Jeffersonian roots, to be sure. But its also my inner perception of a profoundly perverse intention.

So, shopping and Netlix both offer excellent ways to do something unschoolers call Strewing. We sprinkle information all over the place. You have to walk around it to get the bathroom. And push it off the table to find a place for your drink. Enticing information is hopefully part of the atmosphere around here. At least, that's the basic idea.

This Kid's Reading List 2013

A Storm Of Swords  ~G. Martin
Too Many Curses  ~A. Lee Martinez
Monstrous Regiment - Our favorite Pratchett
Dog On It ~Spencer Quinn
Sick Puppy ~Carl Hiaasen
Fragile Things ~Neil Gaiman
The White Company - Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Nigel ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett
Four And Twenty Blackbirds ~Cherie Priest
Lock Down, Escape From Furnace I ~A. G. Smith
Wings To The Kingdom ~Cherie Priest
A Short History Of Nearly Everything ~Bill Bryson
The Golden Apples of the Sun ~Ray Bradbury
True Grit ~Charles Portis
The Disappearing Spoon ~Sam Kean
Interesting Times ~Terry Pratchett
Guards! Guards! ~Terry Pratchett
Basket Case ~Carl Hiaasen
Equal Rites ~Pratchett
The Kingdom of Bones ~Stephen Gallagher
The Truth ~Pratchett
Small Gods ~Pratchett
Borkmann's Point ~Hakan Nesser
The Kings and Queens of Roam ~Daniel Wallace
Life of Pi ~Yann Martel

This Kid's Reading List For 2013

Catching Fire ~Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay ~Suzanne Collins
Before I Fall ~Lauren Oliver
Dog On It ~Spencer Quinn
Just Listen ~ Sarah Dessen
Emily The Strange, Dark Times ~Rob Reger
Girls In Love ~Hailey Abbott
To Fetch A Thief ~Spencer Quinn
The Dog Who Knew Too Much ~S. Quinn
Prom Crashers ~Erin Downing
What Happened to Goodbye ~S. Dessen
Sleight of Paw ~Sofie Kelly
Shut Out ~Kody Keplinger
Ripped At The Seams ~N. Krulik
Glimmerglass ~Jenna Black
The Red Tent ~Anita Diamant
Real Live Boyfriends ~Ruby Oliver
Leap Day ~Wendy Mass
13 Little Blue Envelopes ~Maureen Johnson
I'm So Sure ~Jenny B Jones
dirty little secrets ~c.j. omololu
The Darlings in Love ~Melissa Kantor
Epic Fail ~Claire LaZebnik
Along For The Ride ~Sarah Dessen
The Bean Trees ~Barbara Kingsolver
45 Pounds, More or Less ~Kelly Barson
So Over My Head ~Jenny B. Jones
Shadow Hills ~A. Hopcus

Denigrate:

     Verb: Criticize unfairly; disparage: "there is a tendency to denigrate the poor".
     Synonyms :blacken - slander - defame - vilify - asperse - malign

I sent this definition to my son in an email this morning. Because last night at dinner I reminded my husband that job interviews resulting in no job should never be a source of self denigration. Job interviews, especially at his level, are a HUGE compliment. My son questioned the meaning of denigration. I pointed to the dictionary we keep on the coffee table. (Which we should probably rename the dinner table, since it's where we eat dinner.) It turns out denigration is not included in our unabridged dictionary.

Unabridged

     1: not abridged : complete <an unabridged reprint of a novel>

     2: being the most complete of its class

If someone were to try and explain unschooling to me right now, if I had never heard of it, I would assume I was talking to a crazy person. Unschooling sounds like unbounded and total bullshit, even to me. Even rereading my own writing here, unschooling sounds like unbounded and total bullshit. Of course, I have a lot to learn about writing...

As I write this morning I am also boiling presoaked beans to presoak them an extra hour while I'm out walking with a friend, (after I milk the goats.) And I'm making cinnamon oatmeal with currents for breakfast. I want to simmer and type at the same time, but I hate the sound of our timer. I'll have no alarms shattering this delicious quiet morning. So I had the bright idea to look for a youtube timer. They exist and I set one. When next I looked at it, it read 32 seconds and my first thought was: What bullshit, this thing doesn't work at all! There was a confused pause in my mind. My next thought was: Oh, four and half minutes have passed, right. 

While my son was looking up the meaning of denigration other words snagged his attention. Because that's what happens to humans who read the dictionary. He noticed that "cut" has 82 definitions, which reminded him of this day. 

I've just noticed my vision for homeschooling is permanently set forward, to the East. I can only see the coming days. Two days after we got home from Albuquerque, I announced with a feeling of shame that we had nothing planned for this coming semester. Which is true, we have nothing planned. For the first time I can remember since the children were quite small, I have not nudged them, unschooling style, into choosing plans. And it feels like a disaster about to unfold. Even though I call us unschoolers. What is up with that? 

I do like to point to concrete things. I like to say: Here There Be Kids Doing Things. See the book lists and the classes and the projects? Yes, we definitely are-be doing things. But what about the last three weeks? What about a four thousand mile road trip that included geography, history, sociology, hyper-enrichment, and a freaktastic balloon ride? Just how long do we allow for digestion, integration, simmering, and composting? If you never test, you never call an end point to learning. And the fact is, intellectual compost is permanent for the life of the human. 

The bigger danger is in doing too much. That was the very first homeschooling advice I got. And I can still remember my deep suspicion of that advice on a warm summer day in Texas in 2004. Oh yeah sure, I, the laziest human on the planet, should fear over scheduling, over exposing, over worrying, and generally over doing homeschooling? Yes. Doing too much is the very most common mistake in homeschooling. Which is a trait we share with institutional schools, by the way, the Arby's of education. 

Its easy to see why. Humans can see neither into the rising sun nor the future. Not even mothers, not even  Superintendents, no matter how long and willfully we stare. Planning up future time is all we can do. It gives us a cozy sense of pride and solidity. We have plans, we have the will to follow through, we shall proceed. But we have no evidence that much planning and following through without pause is good for children intellectually, neurologically, nor emotionally. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. 

Which is why we call ourselves unschoolers. Which is why, this semester, I'm taking plans as they unfold or as they originate with the children. And by semester I mean, for a while. My kids are never exactly forced. But coercion is strong with mothers and where do we draw the line? 

Here. I'm drawing the line on planning here. I am not paying for classes this semester. I'm supporting the will to learn as it arrives in the foreground, in focus, immediate, in the moment.