I found myself in a church classroom today. How and why I got there is unimportant to this story. The important thing is that I was sitting there in a little kid’s plastic chair, and I looked over at the various propaganda posted on the wall for the children to read, stumbling on the following:
“Out,out damned spot!” howls Lady Macbeth in one of the most overplayed and psychologically transparent scenes in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. The story up to that point involves some troublesome witches, and the murder of a King that both Lady Macbeth and her husband, apparently, have some issues over. Ms. Macbeth just can’t seem to get the [...]
Today, a black cat crossed my path (I live with three, so it happens pretty often), and a murder of crows called me outside to check the landscape for trouble. The wind was blowing from the west, so I checked the clouds for signs, but they seemed to be holding steady, with only the usual [...]
Privacy is a much-touted concept, an intangible property we all feel we have a right to own. But is it really that important? How much privacy can we really expect, in a world where more and more of our lives take place online? How much do we really care? Right now, I know that an [...]
The standard American parenting advice is directed toward one specific end: get your kids as independent as possible, as fast as possible. Let them cry it out, schedule their feedings, put them in preschool as soon as possible. Once in school, the rush begins to inundate them with as much “knowledge” as we possibly can, [...]
Once upon a time… This is how the stories begin, and from the first four words we know the ending we expect. No matter how old we grow, we continue to be affected by the tales of our childhood. These stories fill us with dreams and expectations which, even as we take our knocks and [...]
In “civilized” society, we know that one of the cardinal rules is that there are certain topics one just simply does not bring up: politics, religion, money, and sex. The problem, of course, is that without these subjects most dinner parties devolve into inane conversations about the weather, and online communities such as Newsvine would [...]
I am occasionally asked to explain my reasons for homeschooling my son. I am sometimes asked to explain how it works. I am often accosted by well meaning individuals who want to know why I am warping my child socially by not sending him to school. And every now and then, I meet people who [...]
