The View From Kalamazoo

Earth, peeking over the horizon, as seen from the surface of Mars.

Wow

When Zero Tolerance equals Zero Common Sense. Boy gets expelled for bringing scissors…to sewing class. Some days homeschooling looks better and better…

As a Salt Lake mother‘s unborn twins got closer to birth, doctors repeatedly told her they would likely die if she did not have a C-section. She refused, and one later was stillborn. I just don’t know what to say about this one…

Dread: Indiana faked me out. I came home and saw the corner of a 9 X 12 envelope sticking out of the box with Indiana U’s return address. I was excited for the few seconds it took for me to pull it out and realize it held one lonely sheet of paper. 200 applications for 25 spots. I’m 0 for 4. It’s getting depressing – my GRE scores are respectable; my CV lists regular conference participation, mostly giving papers; I’m published in a juried ejournal (albeit pretty darn small); I have even coordinated THE academic conference for medievalists for several years now…So do I have three eyes and a curse on my head, or what? 3 to go – but I can’t say that I’m looking ahead with anticipation. I feel like a mylar balloon someone left in the corner…barely hovering above the floor and far from fully inflated.

John McGeoch, guitarist of Siouxsie and the Banshees, PiL died this week.

Dave Blood, bassist of the Dead Milkmen killed himself this week.

Granted I was more upset when I learned of DeeDee Ramone’s passing, but these were talented people, and these bands were near and dear to my heart in my youth (so, like The Ramones, I feel a certain angsty attachment, even now…when as Someone’s Mother I rarely have time to listen to much more than whining and NPR – and that’s just at work!)

Of course, I’m waiting for the other (third) shoe to drop now…

So I suppose I should mention the gig I did in Emma’s class in more detail.

A little history: I’m not the PTA mom type. I am, howrver, a geek…specifically a geek who has had experience working with little kids as the art anchor at day camps, so it’s not hard for me to translate that into my field of medieval studies. Get the little buggers interested in history before someone tells them it’s boring, that’s what I say.

Last year I went in to her kindergarten class and read a great book I have, The Glassmakers of Gurven, a medieval-ly set book about three glassmakers (each specializing in a different color of glass) who have to cooperate to make a beautiful window for the new cathedral of the town. (It’s a gorgeous book…but out of print and extremely hard to find, so if you see it at a yard sale or a used bookstore – snatch it up!) I used transparency film the teacher sent home with Em to make them a little project. By hand I duplicated the shape of the window in the book on the three sheets (set together like overlapping pie pieces), split the kids into three groups (red, yellow, and blue. like the colors in the book) and they colored their part of the design – when put together the three made one round window and a color wheel at the same time. 🙂 It was very pretty taped on to their classroom window. They made knight masks and ‘galloped’ through the hallways – a whole day of medieval fun was had by all.

So this year I thought illuminated letters would be fun. I brought each child a page I’d put together with an illuminated initial for their first name on story paper so they could write a sentence out that included their name (‘Emma learned how books were made,’ each using the individual child’s own name, of course) and lots of copies of knights, ladies, and other things from the Coloring Book of the Middle Ages. I told them all about how books were made in the middle ages (a description of vellum got a great round of “EEEWWWW!”), brought in a manuscript page I have to show them what they really looked like, and they were suitably impressed that every book was written out by hand, since they are just getting going on writing and still find it very cumbersome. I had made a cover for the book (titled ‘Our Medieval Book’ and this will be important), all pages had holed stamped out so the book could be sewn together with yarn…a tidy little project for a class book. Not as cool as a color wheel, but what can I say.

So when we got the ‘This Week In…’ letter home the following week there was a little thank you to Emma’s mom for ‘showing us how books were made in mid-evil times.’ *twitch*

I figure future installments of ‘Emma’s Mom is a Geek’ include heraldry (I can give them examples and they can create their own crests or knight’s shields), building balsawood trebuchets and having contests on who can shoot the ping-pong ball farthest, and in 5th or 6th grade I’ll try to work out a deal with the art teacher, get donations of tile and do a big Byzantine mosaic project. 🙂

crossposted in My lj]

Arlington, Virginia; The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, the world’s largest organization of anthropologists, the people who study culture, releases the following statement in response to President Bush’s call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as a threat to civilization.

“The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.”

Some Texans Boycott Girl Scout Cookies

CRAWFORD, Texas – Some families are boycotting Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos and other Girl Scout cookies. Troop 7527 is down to just two members after the other girls were withdrawn by their parents. And Brownie Troop 7087 is no more.

…The two troops in Crawford, population 700, decided not to deliver the cookie
orders that they had already taken.

But cookie sales have skyrocketed this year as many people bought cases just
to show their support for the Girl Scouts, said Becky Parker, a troop leader who
is the cookie distributor for Waco-area troops.

Read down to the reference to soft-core porn. It’s all just faaabulous. [I’ve already put my cookie order in this year!]

I suppose I should do some catching up: Made it to the gym today. Yay me. Didn’t go Saturday, although I had rather intended to, since childcare is only til noon, and we (and by we, I mean Emma) were just not moving very quickly that morning. Ah well. So I missed last week entirely and only went once the week before – but that’s largely because of the nasty cold/sinus Monstrous Thing I was suffering under. Back to the grindstone. I upped a couple of reps today, and upped my outer thigh weight to 100lbs. from 90lbs. Otherwise same-old-same-old. I’m taking a belly dance class starting Thursday for the next 5 weeks – fun, a great ab workout, and an hour away with adults.

This weekend I spent some time to organize and catalog my scholarly books. I need to be thwacked – I have so many brand-new doubles both because I mislaid books I had just bought and then bought second copies and bought myself books and forgot to take them off my Amazon.com wish list so I got them, again, as gifts. I am such a dumbass sometimes.

Between that, and having to get started on that paper I agreed to give in June, the Latin practice is suffering. I found the Tractatus de superstitionibus long-winded, not-to-the-point, and generally annoying. [Blah blah so we were sitting his this pleasant garden after brunch blah blah crapola. Piss on that.] I guess I’ll putter through something from the Vulgate and just get back in the swing of things. I have some microfilm to work with when I get time to play with paleography, and did just manage to find my books and notes in a box in the basement so my reference materials are handy again, but time, damnit, time!

Last week I attended a local MACED meeting. The speaker was someone from our public school system, and she discussed verbal de-escalation. It was mostly targeted at adolescents and teens, but I still got some good info I can try to apply to Miz Thang and her perpetual Attitude (with a side of Temper). This month the local CHADD folks are having a one-day conference, “Living and Learning with AD/HD.” I need to come up with $50, but I think I’ll go – it looks like a useful thing. I swear, between meetings with/calls to/keeping up with her school, and all of these information gathering exercises, plus the books I need to read/buy….it’s like having an extra part-time job.

And I have received my first thin envelope: The University of Notre Dame has declined my offer to join their History Ph.D. Program. Ah well – they weren’t my first choice, anyway, and they were my “reach” school (and at the suggestion of PESz), so I’m far from crushed. One down, six to go!