This thread is making me want a glass of tea. Think I'll go get some Lipton's from the fridge. Temps at 100+ again today...

Happy anniversary, NoseInABook!

I wouldn't bet the farm on Adolf being gone forever. Adolfo is a common name in this part of the country, and I can see Adolphus working its way back. At some point, time will make every name acceptable again.

As I predicted, The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci is going pretty quickly (for me, that means I might finish it in a week ... or so...). But I wanted to put in a book recommendation from Wee Girl, who asked what my book was about, then ran to get her Leonardo Da Vinci pop-up book. This is not your ordinary pop-up book! You remember our discussion a week or so ago of the Provensen-illustrated Homer? This was written by Alice Provensen, and illustrated by both Provensens. Besides the standard pop-ups, there are clever "three-dimensional movable pictures." It's all very well done, interesting, and attractive. Wee Girl gives it two thumbs up.

Yes, I've never seen any reason to think there's a TM. I've been treating it as a multiyear book for pre-high school (Word Wealth seems to be the high school version). For a typical unit, the child tries out the little "pre-test" and tries to match the words correctly. Then we go over the Study guide together, with special attention to words she didn't know or wasn't sure of, making sure she can spell and pronounce them. Often we break the Study Guide into two lessons. The Practice Set and final exercise are also often done on separate days. We use the final tests only occasionally. It's been key to go over the Study Guide together with the child, as this is when you have the useful discussions and discoveries. The child needs to hear and say the words out loud, not just passively read about them. Likewise, we go over the exercises orally when she's completed them. I skipped the Word Building units with Great Girl, who had excellent spelling and word construction understanding, and didn't need them; with Middle girl, we spend a lot of time on them. They cured her of her terrible spelling, because she finally understood the underlying patterns. I found that a week per unit, with daily attention to the words, leads to good retention. Also to more fun. But you do have to go over the units yourself ahead of time, or have a dictionary at hand and admit when you're unsure of a meaning or pronunciation. And sometimes we will both get stuck on a "quest," but discussing what we think the answer might be has led to even better retention. Did that help?

We've started the academic year, so I suppose we're committed. Middle Girl is using: English: Galore Park, So You Really Want To Learn English Warriner's Composition: Models and Exercises Prentice-Hall Handbook for Writers Word Wealth, Junior Math: AoPS Intermediate Algebra AoPS Intermediate Counting and Probability Programming: Python for Kids Latin: Artes Latinae French: Tutor + Rosetta Stone Greek: Tutor, when dh gets around to hiring one Science: Various TOPS units Fun With Chemistry (1956 Gilbert chemistry set) History: reading through the rest of her Landmark histories Music: Piano lessons Art: Drawing lessons - haven't quite figured this one out yet Religion: Baltimore Catechism + My Catholic Faith Exercise: Running, swimming, biking

Hatch chilis from New Mexico. My dad always has a freezerful for me. They're overpriced around here. Last time I also picked up a big batch of pico de gallo; the stuff sold under that name in Texas is completely unspicy. Not so in NM.

This week I finished Boccaccio, which I think brings me to 31 for the year. Next up, as I think I promised Stacia some time ago, is The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci, by a Russian - Dmitri Merejkowski - reputedly a source for some much later book about a code, or something. It's pretty long, but looks like easy reading.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1525/78420/

Join me in the Bolgia of the Bad Catholics.

Still reading Boccaccio. This week hasn't left much reading time; I've taken on an extra student, and it's not working; she needs so much more intensive remedial one-on-one work than I can give her, and I can't manage to combine lessons no matter how I try it without someone getting utterly lost or bored out of her mind. All my free time is going into lesson planning that doesn't work. I am so not looking forward to telling her mom I can't, after all, homeschool her. Fortunately the academic year hasn't started yet for the private school alternative. Dh has the private library. His spacious office is in a building from the pre-air conditioning days, with huge opening windows and high ceilings (and hardwood floors, and brass fittings, and...). So he lined the walls with ceiling-high bookshelves and put in comfy chairs. He gets a lot of visits. Once the university offered his department one of the newly constructed buildings, with quiet elevators, carpeting, low ceilings, fluorescent lights, outlets in every wall, every modern convenience. The faculty turned the offer down flat.

Sure. But I'm not talking about it being a useful option, but rather about its misuse as the primary method of mass education, replacing actual teaching.

Having been on both sides of this, I've found the trick is to be as above-board as you can, and as easygoing about the other person's personal faith or lack thereof as you can. So for the picnic, something like, "We often have church picnics; would you want me to let you know when another one is coming up? And if you just don't do churchy stuff, that's totally cool." This leaves space for either, "Sure, sorry we couldn't make the last one, but please let me know if another picnic comes up," or "Yes, sorry, I just don't do church activities; but do you want to get the kids together for a museum trip?" And if it's the latter response, the inviter needs to just thank the invitee for letting them know, and drop it. I've been very grateful for straightforward responses like "We can't attend the event because our faith doesn't allow us to enter other houses of worship; but we'd love to come to the reception!" And I foolishly went through agonies as to how to invite an atheist friend who was a serious choral music fan to a Requiem Mass featuring a professional schola; but finally I just said, "I know you don't do church, but we've got a Faure Requiem scheduled for November, and it should be awesome, if you'd like to go." (She brought a date, and a good time was had by all.) Unfortunately, I've found that my own inability to attend worship services not of my faith has been met by hurt feelings and even anger and argument more often than not; so I don't always practice the straightforwardness that I preach.

"The life of the mind is essentially solitary." --Richard Mitchell

Prediction: The future will increasingly feature on-line mass education, in K-12 classrooms, colleges/universities, and continuing education. This is already showing up: large numbers of high schoolers and undergraduates being "taught" by a screen, with human teachers acting only as monitors. Only a small percent of fortunate students will get actual teaching from a person. When the current euphoria over the educational wonders of the "flipped classroom," Khan Academy and its progeny, and the supposed benefits of on-line learning starts to give way to disillusionment, new catchy explanations as to why this is The Best Thing Ever will be invented.

Spiral, every time. Composition notebooks won't lay open flat. Loose paper gets lost and tears out of binders; and binders are bulky and annoying. I just flip the spiral notebook over and use it from back to front, so the spiral lies on the right side instead of the left. One year, the girls gave me a set of notebooks for which they'd made pretty 'covers' so the fronts of my notebooks wouldn't be plain brown.

Barbecued rattlesnake, and recently, haggis. Haggis wasn't too bad; but it was served with mashed turnips and mashed potatoes and frankly it was just too much soft-textured food on one plate. I felt like I was 80 years old.

I have poor vision and have to upsize the screen frequently to read things, especially in the evening when my eyes are tired. I've misstarred threads (I am so sorry!!!), given posters whom I adore low personal rankings, visited the profiles of dozens of posters, and frequently begun to report perfectly innocuous posts (fortunately *that* can be retracted). Did I mention that I am so sorry? I will give this thread many stars now. Or perhaps some random number. We'll see how it turns out.

We love you. We especially love you at SXSW and Austin City Limits and the like. Please come, enjoy our beautiful city, let us show you the best we have to offer, spend freely, and tell all your friends about us when you Go Back. :D Seriously, even us locals usually came here from somewhere else. Heck, I was all of seven years old when I breezed into town and started being a burden on the infrastructure.

Austin, Texas. Finally, all the Californian transplants will have left, and the freeways will be clear.

Of my three best friends in high school, I married one; another is the godmother of my children and we're having dinner with her tomorrow; and the third I had to let go completely for the sake of my family. :(

Last night I finished W. E. B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk, which (of course) was deeply moving and thought-provoking. If you haven't read it, it's a collection of essays, connected by the recurring symbol of the Veil, the barrier between black and white in America, but not in a sociological sense. Rather it's an obscuring of vision that prevents the races from seeing the lives of the other, and interferes with self-understanding. The chapter on the death of his infant son from diptheria made me want to go cuddle my girls and cry. Wee Girl just read Stuart Little for the first time. She said it was better than Charlotte's Web (death makes her anxious), but she wasn't sure about some of it and would have to read it again. That's my girl!

My dad is a retired chemical engineer, and this is the kind of thing he breathes. Materials! Look kids, here's paper that doesn't tear, a rubber ball that doesn't bounce, and why? Well really the intriguing question is why normal paper does tear, why a normal rubber ball does bounce.... I may have to tip him off about the book, so he can start his Christmas shopping for the grandkids. Bernarda Bryson's version is also a good older children's version. http://www.amazon.com/Gilgamesh-Bernarda-Bryson/dp/1477589864 I see Alasdair Gray's Lanark is on the list; that's the last book from my Scottish reading pile and probably a sign I should get to it soon! Anecdote wins the thread.

That's good to know.

IANAL, but wouldn't this be a straightforward question of whether there was an employment contract and/ or handbook? Then it's a question of whether the employer violated the terms. Otherwise, it's employment at will, termination for "good, bad, or no reason," so long as the employer hasn't run afoul of state or federal antidiscrimination statutes. You can be fired because your employer finds out you're a Capricorn, or root for the Yankees. Discrimination, but not illegal.