Political Tuesdays: April Horrors

On Political Tuesdays I let myself get more philosophical than most days on my blog, and range freely over the political and cultural landscape.  It's not my intent to give offense in such posts, just to record my interaction with current events.  But I reserve the right to think freely here, and if you are one who is easily offended by differing opinions you may be happier in a different corner of the internet, at least on Tuesdays.

I first learned to wonder, "What is it about April, anyway?" in 1995, the Oklahoma City bombing.  Waco, two years earlier, was just another mishandled aspect of the Clinton administration I tried not to pay attention to.  Then there were the school shootings; at Columbine, just down the street a few miles.  I remember pulling the little boys back inside for safety as helicopters circled until late in the night.  Little Elian Gonzales, stolen from his family at gunpoint, again a Clintonian blunder.  Then as a teacher myself, I became more aware of the rhythm of the school year, the "spring fever" phenomenon.  Yeah, kids do crazy and unpredictable things in the spring, just when you'd think they would see the light at the end of the school year tunnel.  The ancients called it "Naufragium in portu facere" - to make a shipwreck in harbor.  Why is that?  Why do kids drop out, run away from home, pick a fight with their families, or make a disastrously bad choice that will ruin their lives right before they reach a positive milestone?  I don't know more than anyone else.  But I've learned to cringe through April, both on the personal and the national scale.  Maybe national leaders are just overgrown children, making bad choices and doing random things in the spring just like so many schoolchildren.  And then there are the obvious bad guys.  They take random to a whole new level.

The carnage in Boston is clearly the work of a psychopath, and a very anti-American psychopath at that.  I would think an anti-government kook would target a federal building or an IRS convention; a deranged madman would stick with schools and movie theaters; but this attack on athletes and civic celebration has the feel of our terrorist enemies from the Middle East, and the methodology was designed to maim and terrorize more than kill.  Whether the criminals will be caught and brought to justice is uncertain.  Whether our current leadership is even competent to prosecute a campaign for justice, rather than a political campaign, is even more doubtful.  We know that the left is utterly opposed to using American military force to wage war on terrorist states, and the American public is at best flaky about supporting such efforts.  John Kerry would be the hard-headed negotiator in charge of any diplomatic solutions; I can just see him now, riding his swift boat to narcissism.  No, I don't have a lot of confidence in political solutions for the Boston attacks, any more than there are political solutions for school massacres.  I hope for justice nonetheless.

I do see a certain chilling parallelism in the terrorism of yesterday and the moral and cultural decline of the last 40 years. And before I am charged with saying that God is judging America for gay marriage and abortion, credit me with being a little more nuanced than that.  America is judging herself.  There is a retributive principle of justice here, one that has been ignored in this country for my whole generation.  We are simply reaping what we have sown.  For forty years the lives of millions of our youngest children have been snuffed out in the privacy of clinics and doctors' offices, if they were somehow inconvenient to us: the emanations and penumbras of the Constitution told us this was permissible.  Now we are surprised that we have enemies who want to kill our athletes in the flower of their youth and strength.  Kermit Gosnell collected severed baby feet in jars in his Philadelphia abortion clinic for years, never inspected by health authorities or questioned by journalists, who said they were too squeamish to deal properly with the subject.  "I am someone who cringes when I hear a description of a sprained ankle."  Now the severed limbs of adult victims scroll across our Facebook feeds for all of us to see.  C.S. Lewis had a profound observation about the moral bankruptcy of the 20th century: "We castrate, and bid the gelding be fruitful."  In the 21st century, we kill our children, and bid their surviving siblings build a just and enlightened society.

Auction quilt, to be quilted; and state of the stash

This is my auction quilt, not being quilted yet.  It has signatures on it, but I still need to mount it onto the frame.  Energy has been somewhat lacking for that this weekend.  I did select one of my vintage sheets for backing.  Now I need to cut the batting and put it on the frame.  And wind bobbins, and quilt it.  Really, it won't take long.  The auction is coming.  I can get it done.

I've been tracking my stash usage for awhile now.  I received a few things recently from Aunt Carol and Grandma that I'm not going to count towards the totals, just because I find it easier to track only what I actually buy. 

I actually bought the green yarn on the top.  I know I have no business buying yarn, but I did.  Aunt Carol gifted me the brown yarn on the bottom.

These lengths of machine-knit sweater-weight fabric were also from Aunt Carol.  I knew that I wouldn't ever be likely to make a cut-and-serge sweater from them, but I thought they would make very nice blankets.  I threw them in the wash.  The fabric on the right felted; the left fabric didn't.  So it looks like I will have two slightly different blankets.  They are both wool-nylon blends, but different lots of fiber, apparently.  Either way, I think they will be nice warm blankets.

And look at the adorable Tardis full of yarn button that Joyce gave me!  So fun!

Stash Report

Fabric:

Fabric used this week: 4 yards backing for auction quilt

Fabric used year to date: 26 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 17 yards
Net used for 2013: 9 yards

Knitting yarn:

Yarn used this week: 0 yards
Yarn used year to date: 5900 yards.
Yarn added this week: 390 yards
Yarn added year to date: 1300 yards
Net used for 2013: 4600 yards

Randomday: What Secundus did on Spring Break

While most of us were relaxing on Spring Break, Secundus went with a group of Cedar Tree students to Mexico and built a house for a deserving family.  He's on the right with crossed arms in this photo of the dedication ceremony.

What a fine group of young people.

Secundus and friends, looking cool. 

As has always been the case, most shots of Secundus are action shots.  He worked hard.  The little toddler we used to call "El Nino" in the sense of "he's a force of nature" is now all grown up.  He tells me the little kids in Mexico said he was "muy, muy guapo."

After the walls went up, he worked with the floor team.  He dug drainage ditches under the house, he made trips to the riverbed for more sand.

They took a hike at sunset on their final day.  A great experience for all of them.  His words to me after we met him at the airport: "We take so much for granted."
This week, of course, it was back to school and other activities, like the Spring Social.  I took him shopping for clothes to suit his style, and chased after him to take this picture (it was an action shot for me, that's why it's blurry, I was breathless after running up the stairs):

He's probably one of the few who can look good in a hot pink tie.
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More random things:

At Bible study last night, Nancy and I were talking about her work with special ed. kids, helping them tap out syllables for long words like "amphibian" and "carbonation."  Tertia overheard us and demonstrated the technique on the kitchen table; six taps for six syllables, but over the background noise we couldn't make out any English words, so we asked her to repeat it twice more before I finally deciphered: "Expecto patronum!"  She's been reading Harry Potter.

Happy 83rd birthday today to Grandma!  Your cake is cooling as I type this.

National Latin Exam scores are in!  Steve is going to help me fix the bulky excel file and teach me how to use it to crunch the numbers.  I think it would take less time to figure out averages manually, but he tells me this will be easier.  Hoping to make a big deal about it next Friday at Grandparents' Day.

Daniel received a great grade on his English paper and raves from the professor: "Excellent defense of a significant thesis."  I'll stop before I embarrass him too much.  He's going into production week of Seussical for Children's Theater.  He's a Who.

My former co-worker, David Kuo, has passed away after a long battle with brain cancer.  He accomplished a lot in his short life; check out his obituary in the NY Times.  Although I disagreed with him in his critiques of the Bush administration's treatment of evangelicals (comparing it to the blatant ridicule of evangelicals led by President Obama himself and prevalent everywhere now, the Bush administration seems like an idyllic golden age), he was a gentlemanly fighter.  My heart goes out to his wife and four children.

Even more sobering is the media blackout of the trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell.  Utterly barbaric the crimes he committed; and beyond comprehension is the refusal of our news media to cover his trial.  I'll have more to say on this next week, but if you haven't seen the coverage, these links might give you some food for thought.  Kirsten Powers  Mollie Hemingway  Late to the party and trying to cover herself  At least World Magazine has been on this from the beginning.

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-Along: Unveiling the new machine

Look at what came home with us from Aunt Carol!  A Bernina 707 Minimatic, for Quarta to use.  I've been enjoying figuring out how it works.  It's solid, built to last.  What a great gift for a girl who likes to sew!

It has a bunch of feet and attachments I haven't figured out yet, and a manual and extension table that go with a different model of Bernina.  I was able to find the 707 manual online, but parts of it are illegible.  So I'm going back and forth between the two manuals to figure it out.  It's been a nice distraction from grading.  The only other quilt-related thing I've been doing is collecting signatures on the Cedar Tree auction quilt.  I had a 1st grader ask me how to spell his last name yesterday.  This was after telling them to print first name and last initial.  I had another 1st grader say she didn't know what her last initial was.  We worked it out.  Kindergarten tomorrow!

Quarta (before her 24-hour bug, anyway) enjoyed making some 6" string blocks on squares cut from an old phone book.

Taking the temperature this morning.  No fever, so hopefully tomorrow she'll be back to school.  She stayed in pj's all day long.  I would like to do that sometime.

Tertia grinning to show off her teeth.  She had lots of practice holding her mouth in odd ways at the orthodontist yesterday, and she got two little expanders put in between her back teeth.  Temporary bands will go on next week, I guess.

New socks for Steve, started on the last leg of our Spring Break trip.  These are from the Knit Picks yarn that they sent to replace the sadly felted first socks of 2013.  It's Stroll tonal in Kindling.  The pattern is Farmer McGregor from Socktopus.  I am breaking with the book's instructions and making them toe-up.  I will probably have to knit them one at a time after I get past the instep, and figure out how to adjust for the twisted stitch pattern as it is carried over from back to front.

And of course, I'm celebrating having finished my argyles.  Just to sneak a gratuitous argyle photo in if you haven't seen it already:

On break in the car we listened to two audiobooks: The Man in the Iron Mask by Dumas, and The Innocence of Father Brown, part 2, by Chesterton.  I have a certain bias against Dumas (and this book did nothing to improve it), but Chesterton is always fun.

Sustainability; or, the Midlife Crisis of a Worker Bee

Koyaanisqatsi is a 1982 art film on the theme of the frenetic and suicidal pace of modern Western life.  I had to watch it in Intro to Film class in College.  It's worth watching, even if you are not an environmentalist or neo-hippie... and for the record, I am not.  I often think of it on days or during weeks like this, where there is no let-up of the stress and it is hard to see any positive results for my hard work.  Those blurry images rushing by, that impending sense of doom.  The 7th grader who lost the make-up final exam.  And this was even before Quarta got sick.  People at school were telling me, "well, she was lying down on the cot for awhile... she didn't want any lunch... but she went back to class."  Not until after Tertia's first orthodontist appointment and forking over a 4-figure down-payment for that whole process, and then she got sick.  So, it looks like Steve will be staying home with her tomorrow, because I sure can't.



On the subject of hard work, I consider myself a worker bee.  Definitely not a queen bee.  I dislike queen bees and their close cousins, the bossy and domineering types.  You may not know it, because I have been well-trained to be polite to everybody, but if you are the bossy, domineering, queen bee type, I am humming "Prima Donna" inside my head when you are around.  Seriously.  Long, long years of being in the chorus at work here.  Support staff, auxiliary teaching staff, yup, been there, done that.  I don't even rank high enough to process with the important high school teachers.  It doesn't bother me... except when it does.

It's probably a mistake for worker bees like me to go on vacation, especially to places like Disneyland.  We start to get ideas above our station, and resentment starts to build.  We start to do the math.  Like how my annual salary now, after 13 years of teaching, is less than half of what I earned when I was fresh out of college, also working at one of those jobs that could be described as a ministry -- so what I'm saying is that I didn't earn a whole lot then.  And if I saved every penny of what I earn now, my entire year's salary would be enough to pay for one third of Daniel's yearly college expenses (and he's at Grove City, remember, so that's a lot less than other places).

And yet, for what I earn, I'm being asked to put in an additional 20+ unpaid hours of grading, correspondence, or conferences during some weeks.  I have to somehow bring new students up to speed with the class and keep the stragglers from straggling too far behind.  Of course, my own daughter is not smart enough to be at my school, but other kids, the ones who average less than 40% on quizzes -- somehow I have to make sure they don't get discouraged.  I have to catch the cheaters, and there have been several of them lately, and follow up.  I have to make the class appealing and fun enough so that the students like it.  And then there are the smart ones whose parents want them to take the Latin SAT or AP test -- after 8th grade Latin finishes.  I'm not sure how to break it to them -- in one way I'm flattered that they think 8th grade Latin with me is the equivalent of a Senior AP Latin course, but I'm not really a miracle worker.  Eighth grade Latin at Cedar Tree means you are translating edited passages from Caesar's de Bello Gallico in the Henle Latin 2nd year book.  That's pretty darn good, but if you want 3rd and 4th year Latin and all that goes with it you would need to expand the program into High School.  And if I were going to teach such a program, I'd want about triple what I'm getting now, and the flexibility to take time off to take care of my kids when they're sick.  Maybe I don't need to sacrifice the best interests of my own family to teach, but it sure feels like it on days like this.

Where was I going with this?  These are my own, personal issues, born out of 13 years of very tough, very frustrating work, and triggered by a rough couple of days (that aren't over yet).  But I think Classical Christian Education has arrived at a turning point where, put very simply, it needs to grow up.  I know there's a clause somewhere in my employment contract that says I am not supposed to be critical of my employer, my students, or their parents.  And I'm not intending this to be a rant.  I like all these people, I love my work, and I think I'm good at it.  But it's not sustainable.  I would discourage my best students from considering a teaching career in Christian schools, because it simply doesn't pay enough to support even a young single in today's world.  At my stage of life, it's not really about the money... thankfully, Steve's job is stable and he is a good provider.  I taught several years for no pay other than my children's tuition.  (Yeah, I know, I'm a sap).  More positive feedback would be awfully nice.  More family-friendly flexibility would be ideal.  Health benefits, maybe even sick leave, less of the reflexive "blame the teacher" policy.  I already get a basket of flowers every June.  Realistically, though, the only concrete measure of my success is the paycheck I draw, and that will continue to be small.  Because charging more in tuition would mean fewer students.  I can do the math.

Oh well, I need to go to bed.  Maybe the space cadet will have found the missing final by tomorrow and I can get my grades in.

What I really need is the time to devote to some kind of stress-relieving hobby.  I hear knitting and quilting are really fun.

Finished Argyles!

For some reason I think of the Wicked Witch of the East when I look at this picture.  But I love these socks!  My first argyles, and they will probably not be my last.  They were finished over Spring Break during the car trip and used approximately 400 yards of yarn (Knit Picks).

Argyles are knit flat, which goes against just about every modern sensibility.  They have a seam up the inside of each sock -- the sock on the right has the seam facing the camera, but I was able to make it pretty inconspicuous.  I sewed in the ends after completing the colorwork, joined for knitting in the round, and finished the toes up that way after seaming the sides.  Now my biggest worry is that they will shrink during washing.  Other than the general fiddly-ness of the intarsia, these were not difficult socks to knit.  I enjoy colorwork in most forms, and of course they're preppy, which is more or less my style.

Today was the first day back at school after Spring Break.  Sigh.  It was nice while it lasted.  Now it's back to wrassling with contrary 7th graders and hours of extra unpaid and unacknowledged work.  Grades are due Wednesday and I still have one student who hasn't turned in the final exam yet.  Tomorrow is Tertia's first appointment with the orthodontist.  I think we have to have ready our bank statement for them to set up automatic payment withdrawal before they will treat her.

Stash Report

Fabric:

Fabric used this week: 0 yards

Fabric used year to date: 22 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 17 yards
Net used for 2013: 5 yards

Knitting yarn:

Yarn used this week: 400 yards for argyle socks
Yarn used year to date: 5900 yards.
Yarn added this week: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 910 yards
Net used for 2013: 4990 yards

Randomday: Spring Break Recap

We left a week ago Thursday, and our plum tree looked like this...

... and our daffodils looked like this...

... and Smudge looked like this.  Poor kitty, he had to stay outside and fight the raccoons for his food while we were gone.  We drove until fairly late Thursday, Tertia had a bit of stomach upset at the hotel in the middle of the night, but recovered well to drive all day Friday.  Saturday we met up with the Grove City Touring Choir at their concert at the 7th Day Adventist church in Costa Mesa, CA.  Here are some shots of the beach we visited first:

Daniel was with us for the trip down; Secundus went to Mexico with a service group from the school over Spring Break.

There were dolphins!  A whole bunch of them.  Quarta freaked a bit when Daniel happened to mention the word "shark."  I  had never seen dolphins in the wild before.

It was a nice bit of beach, just enough to get barely wet feet before going to the Touring Choir concert.  Which was awesome, as Touring Choir always is.  We drove on to Scottsdale, arriving late Saturday.

No shark-infested waters in Scottsdale!

Lots of visiting with family in Arizona.  In addition to my dad and Grandma Deb, there's Grandma Deb's parents, and now my aunt Carol and uncle Chuck, and Steve's sister Kristine and her family.  The only sad thing was having to drop Daniel off at the airport Sunday evening for his red-eye flight back to Pennsylvania.

Cousins!

I didn't take as many pictures as I should have, probably.  I did finish almost all of my grading, but still will have make-up work to grade in a hurry come Monday.

Aunt Carol gave us lots of cool stuff which will be featured in a future post.

We left Wednesday morning and drove to Anaheim; California Adventure Wednesday evening; Disneyland all day Thursday and then a late-night drive to get out of the LA metro area; driving all day Friday to Medford; and arriving today to do laundry, feed the pets, do Latin and Greek homework (maybe), and pick up Secundus at the airport late tonight (we hope).  It's been a bit of a weird taste of empty-nesting, with both boys gone.