Pocketful of Pinecones

Our new laminate flooring is dangerous! I have to be very deliberate when siting down on our wheeled computer chair so that it does not roll away from me. Yesterday I leaned against the cedar chest and that moved. I am not accustomed to that.

Our house is still not back to normal because we ran into a little snafu when they put the laminate into the living room. They found a strip of raised cement in front of the fireplace which had been covered by the carpet.

Short of grinding it down, there is no way to make it level. The new plan is to have them fill it in to make a slightly raised platform, and then tile it.  We are waiting for the tile to come in. We are also waiting for the steps to be finished, so until then, our bookshelves and couch remain cramped in the middle room.

Now a few things have happened because the house is in disorder. First, I have grown fond of the couch in its new location; it is warmer, it has more light for reading, and my husband has to sit on it with me when he is watching television. Coupled with a period of abstinence from Spider Solitaire, it means that I have been reading more. The second thing that happened is that three of our five bookshelves are blocked, forcing me to read not what I had planned, finishing that book The Vatican which I had started before we moved the shelves, and then going on to read Little Men. Instead I grabbed Karen Andreola's Pocketful of Pinecones which I had purchased years ago when I was homeschooling and never read. I figured now was the time, and that I would have one less book on the shelves when I was finished.

Karen's book was an easy read so that I was waiting to get back to it when I took lunch breaks or picked it up late in the evenings. It is written in the form of a diary of a mother homeschooling in the spirit of Charlotte Mason  in the mid 1930's. The emphasis is on nature study, but includes other ideas of Charlotte Mason as well. She refers often to Anna Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study, another book which I purchased for homeschooling, but used not nearly enough. Each chapter ends with scientific names of flora and fauna observed during their day, and often includes a related hymn or poem. She also includes questions to prod mother and students on in their studies. The back of the book contains source notes in the event that the reader wishes to track down originals.

The scientific names and quotes are not in a readily usable textbook format, They would only be useful insofar as they would be copied for a one-time reference. Their inclusion does serve as an example of items which might be contained in a nature journal.

I found many similarities between the examples given of Charlotte Mason, and methods used in Laura Berquist's Mother of Divine Grace homeschool program - narration and dictation in the early grades, use of a timeline, keeping a nature journal, and reading books written by a single author in addition to, or in place of text books for history and science. I assume Laura adopted these ideas after studying Charlotte Mason herself. Although we adopted Anne at an older age, I found these ideas very appealing when we homeschooled. I have already started nature walks with my granddaughter, and may have her start a nature journal when she starts first grade. I found that I had many of the books which Karen recommended for homeschooling because Laura Berquist had recommended them in her program. I had others, such as Thornton Burgess' stories and postcards of Audobon's drawings, because I like Dover Publications!

Since finishing Karen's book, I am thinking that I need to make much more use of my copy of the Handbook of Nature Study. Perhaps Anna Comstock will have the answer as to why the geese we saw the other day seemed to circle around and around instead of just flying south in their "V" formation.

One other fun reference which Karen threw in her book was the book, Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. I only know about this book because I found it in the library at St. Mary Help of Christians School when Anne attended there. I pulled it off of the shelf to read to the students coming in for library time. I had no idea it was based on a real story, but I share Miss Rumphius' love of lupines. Someone brings wild blue lupine seeds in packets with a lovely hand-painted picture to the Pioneer Arts Co-op at Silver Bay on the Minnesota North Shore. I buy at least one packet whenever we stop. I did have some beautiful lupine plants in my garden, but they died when I purged plants which were growing around them. I must have disturbed the roots.

I will not keep Karen's book, but it might be an interesting read for anyone considering homeschooling. It is an easy introduction to Charlotte Mason.

The Black Arrow

Last evening I finished reading Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow.  I am not quite sure what to think of it. I would not rate it as one of my childhood favorites, as Agatha Christie's Tuppence Beresford did. The language made it a bit difficult to understand, I had a hard time following characters, and there were far too many dead bodies for my taste. The expression, "by the mass" got old by the third chapter, particularly because the only other references to faith in the book were of a corrupt monk and a friar impersonator. Rather like the continuous use of OMG in present society when in every other instance God is banished from the culture.

The book is action packed and fast paced. The swashbuckling would probably be more appealing to young men.than to this middle aged lady.  Dickey comes out relatively unscathed peril after peril, battle after battle. At least he experiences hunger and fatigue, unlike the hero of a certain recent television series who could go 24 hours without even a bathroom break! Now I see that the numerous scripts of television programs containing pictures with moving eyes or people hidden in armor are probably plagiarized from this book and the eyes which Dickey sees behind the arras. The romance with Joanna is the typical medieval fairy tale of quickly falling into an everlasting love with almost no getting to know the other person first.  Of course Dickey has to rescue her from her wicked guardian and from her impending arranged nuptials before he can have her for himself.

I purchased this book while we were homeschooling Anne, since it was on the Mother of Divine Grace syllabus. Anne never read it. I was going to give our copy away after I finished it, but I think I will hang onto it for posterity, just because it is a classic.