We have about an inch of tempera paints in our paint jars, but it has dried to a sticky mud/clay consistency in the Texas heat during our 3-month absence. Can it be resurrected? Google is not being my friend in this regard.

A wild suggestion: Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. My dd14 and I just read it together. (So many of my books end up with two bookmarks progressing through the pages simultaneously....) The subject matter and the size (600+ pages, and that's only Parts I and II!) are off-putting, but not only is it a page-turning read, Solzhenitsyn maintains a tone of gallows humor throughout that makes reading details of the murderous insanity of the Soviet regime more than bearable. I am so, so grateful for picking this up off the bargain table on a whim. Very educational, and I promise that you just can't put it down.

It's pretty easy to find the old edition used and cheap; here it's under $10. Good luck!

I had always assumed she was referring to Jane Werner Watson's Golden Press The Iliad and the Odyssey, with its notable Provensen illustrations. There's a sort of homage to it here.

We use Mackey's Pronunciation of 10,000 Proper Names. I found an old copy for a dollar; bookfinder.com has it for $7.

Yes! Thank you. Well, to think that I was stuck on primary-level joined-up writing all those years. It was a lot neater than my (never very good) cursive, anyway.

We are using Sonlight for the first time, Core 3 just for U.S. history and science. Dang SL has a lot of reading for history. Are you really supposed to have up to four books going a day, what with spine, readers, and read-aloud? I'm starting to think there's such a thing as too much history.

Back in the early '80's our family lived in Glasgow, where I was handed back my assignments written in American cursive because the teachers couldn't read them. One kind teacher wrote out the alphabet for me in the handwriting I was supposed to use and showed me how to join up the letters. Each letter ended with a little 'tail,' so that they all joined; but you still picked up your pen for starting each letter. It was nicely legible and faster than you would suppose. For years I've been trying to describe this writing to Americans, but I don't know what it's called or where to find an example of it (except in my own writing, which is sort of a combination of U.S. cursive and what I think of as my "weegee" writing.:) Can anyone help?

We'll be doing US history with SL3, replacing Landmark History with Golden Book History of the United States, accompanied by Landmark history volumes (the other Landmark!) and Vision books for the period.

Bl. John Newman (well, Bl. in a few weeks!)

While I'm being all defensive ... :) I bet if a member of one of those churches were asked why they don't have children in the main services, she wouldn't say "because we want to tell them over and over they're not welcome in here." I would imagine they have what might seem quite reasonable explanations for the practice.

Good advice. I think it could even be stated in more general terms, thus: Instead of clucking over evils one thinks might be going on in someone else's faith, pay attention to weeding one's own church garden. :001_smile:

To each his own, I suppose. It's never occurred to me to draw conclusions about someone who did or didn't put something in the plate, any more than I would draw conclusions about whether someone received Communion or not, or their manner of praying or dressing for services. It's not news to me that some do watch others and make uncharitable inferences; but I hope we can all agree that such behavior is directly contrary to the teachings of our faiths. But it is their obligation. It is a solemn obligation for the faithful to support their local congregation, as they can. There have been years when, for my family, that's meant in-kind support (teaching Sunday School, or groundskeeping); other years, we are better able to assist financially. This may not be the teaching of your faith, but it's mine; and I hope we can all respect each other's beliefs even when we may disagree. No, it isn't. It may be against your interpretation of Scripture, which is a wholly different matter. If we begin announcing that the teachings of other churches are "against Scripture," this is going to turn into a whole different kind of thread. Let's refrain. I agree that you should definitely stay far from churches where the congregation does such things. Many churches, including mine, provide envelopes to remove the temptation of looking to see how much someone else is putting in. Personally, I have never in my life heard someone in my church remark on the amount someone did or didn't appear to be putting in the plate. Most of us are busy praying during that part of the service (the prayer is called the "Offertory"; we are offering ourselves together with the gifts of bread and wine). No, there isn't. There are a lot of sad stories out there, and a lot of ecclesial and human failings. Some of these stories can lead us to demonize other faiths as being all about the money. I've heard a lot of stories about hurt and damage at the hands of people believing they were doing God's work, and I don't think I know of a single exception. Maybe Zoroastrians; I've never heard anyone say they were hurt by their fellow Zoroastrians. I've heard of a lot of people hurt by people in my church, and in yours. Money is one way of hurting people. There are lots of others. It's not quite fair to condemn churches that take up collections and caricature them as hounding elderly and disabled people for their money, and then ask people not to get defensive. Especially when you explicitly address your post to a member of a church that expects its members to support it. I will defend my faith, thank you.

It's a little surprising to see concern over the collection plate/basket. At our parish it's so common to use the "e-plate" (electronic payments) that the plate will pass up whole rows without anyone putting physical money in. Maybe it's the techie nature of the city.

There was an incident at a pool in the next county four years ago where a nursing mom was asked to stop breastfeeding or cover up. The pool staff first claimed they hadn't asked her to cover up (the mom stood by her claim that that the lifeguard did), and that it was a safety issue because she wouldn't be able to reach her 5yo child if she were busy nursing; then the City Parks Director came up with the greatest statement ever about why it was really all about safety: "All it was was a safety issue. When you see something like that, it draws people's attention from the pool. You kind of take a double take, triple take, then you sink to the bottom of the pool." The public apology and ritual self-flagellation of all officials involved followed soon after. I still hear moms quoting the "double-take" line from time to time. Still hilarious years later.

Ask me about flossing! It's like asking an ex-smoker, who at last can fill her lungs with pure clean air and run uphill without gasping, if she thinks that cigarettes are really bad for you or if it's all just hype. Prepare for scolding!:D No, actually, I'd say that if your dentist agrees with you that your gums are in good shape, just keep doing what you're doing. But I wouldn't assume that would be true for your kids. Tightly placed teeth run in my family, and converting to the true faith of regular flossing has not only improved my gum health, but my general well-being: my dentist credits that to no longer having to fight low-level mouth infections.

The Open University's Discovering Science (s103) (middle school). Block 4 (biology) doesn't teach evolution as an extra chapter, but teaches biology based on the evolutionary process: evolution is thus central to the course's biology.

Well, speaking as a Catholic, I don't think it would be the proximate cause of sending them sprinting to the nearest Baptist church. Besides, I heard much more heretical, non-Catholic stuff while sitting in on the dds' CCD (Sunday school) classes.;) I had Baptist teachers in my ps all my young life, and one LDS teacher, who were very open about their faith (not proselytizing, but not feeling like they had to shut up about it either), and all it did was confirm for me that I could be as comfortable with my own convictions as they were with theirs, and that neither Baptists nor Mormons were scary, alien people. This is one reason I'm so happy with my little hs support group in my town. We include an atheist, a Quaker, a Moslem, an Episcopalian, a Wiccan, a Baptist, and a few flavors of non-denom Protestant. We discuss faith openly, in the hearing of our children, and I can't imagine anything bad coming out of it. We care for and respect each other's beliefs or lack thereof. ETA: Can't believe I forgot our Dutch Reformed mom! ETA2: ... and our Baha'i mom. We're like the United Nations at park day.

Dh-to-be and I were grad students with absolutely no money, living far from the city where we grew up together (& all our family and most of our friends still lived). We only had a short break from classes, and needed to make the arrangements from across the country. I needed a dispensation (don't ask) to marry dh, which involved two bishops worth of red tape (the diocese where we were living & where we were marrying) plus an interview with the priest in my home parish whom I had never met (he had just arrived) and who needed to give a thumbs-up to dh before I could get the dispensation ball rolling. And what happened: -Fr. Hensy was magical, okayed dh (they discussed Thomas Aquinas and got along famously; I wasn't sure by the end of the interview that I was going to be found fit to marry him), and promised to handle all the bureaucracy, even (wink, wink) go forward with the ceremony if the paperwork hadn't quite come through entirely, so long as he got verbal confirmation from the diocese. Whew! -Being broke, there was no being a bridezilla, and I left all liturgical decisions to Fr. Hensy: in retrospect, the wisest thing I could have done. It was a simple and beautiful ceremony. I found out later he undercharged us on the usual rental fee for weddings. -Since it was just past Christmas, the church was already decorated with poinsettias and a gorgeous ornamented tree; Fr. Hensy said he'd leave up all the flowers and the tree if our friends could pitch in with taking it all down afterwards. -My only choice for dress was my mother's, from the early '60's. It was exactly what I had imagined wearing, and my grandmother, who had made it originally, altered it as necessary. -A friend made all the food except the cake, as her wedding gift to us, and it was simple and beautiful and tasty, in keeping with the tone of the wedding. She worked at a local hotel and got us the honeymoon suite so we could rest before heading back. -We had only just started grad school in a part of the country where people went for honeymoons anyway, so our 'honeymoon' consisted of seeing all the fun touristy things we had been living near but hadn't had the time to visit, in the week before classes resumed. It was fun without being exhausting, as we returned each evening to our own apartment. We had a lovely, merry wedding day without going into debt, surrounded by friends and family. Nothing but warm memories.

One of the support staff where dh worked was ineffective and offensive. He especially liked to show photos of his latest trip, and 'accidentally' include photos of himself semi- or entirely nude. Oops, how did that get in there! They couldn't just fire him because he'd been a whistleblower, so they had to get all their ducks in a row to get rid of him. Finally he told one of the employees, in a bar, that he fantasized about coming to work with a gun and taking care of the people he didn't like. That did the job.

Our local Catholic hs support group used to have an informal Statement of Faith. When somebody would ask the group leader what the policy for non-Catholics was, she would answer, "If you don't mind that we're Catholic, we don't mind that you're not." I often wished we had t-shirts with that.

My crowd debates every year whether one should celebrate secular, nationalistic holidays (Thanksgiving, Independence Day, etc.) or not. Personally, I plan to celebrate the feast of St. Elizabeth of Portugal with barbecue and fireworks.

Some ideas that worked for competent but reluctant readers, culled from my girls and a friend's son: -Precede reading requests with reading out loud; child may be concerned that learning to read means the end of mommy reading to him. -See if child will read to a younger child, or even a pet. Three Stories You Can Read To Your Cat was very popular here, and is hilarious. (There's a dog version too.) -Leave a stack of books in the backseat on longish car trips, and then put radio on "City Council Smackdown" or the like. Boredom can help. -Hand child book you'll read out loud, and tell her you'll get to her in a few minutes, while you work with older child. Often this will get younger to start the book herself (boredom again). -Have older child snuggle up with younger and be the one to ask younger to read book.

:iagree: Beautiful. May I quote you on the next mantilla thread I see?

The bag-over-the-head comment makes me think how long it's been since I got to be part of one of the "Why Real Catholic Women Wear Mantillas To Mass" threads on Certain Other Forums. (I actually wear a veil, despite the best efforts of some to make me tear it from my head in rage at their misogyny.)