So Do Not Fear, For I Am With You (Isaiah 41:10)

A few minutes ago, a friend posted this verse on FB. It's one of my favorites, and has been for a long time:

"So do not fear, for I am with you;
    do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
    I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

I pasted it here in the New International Version (NIV) because that's the version I learned via this wonderful music setting of the verse from Seeds Family Worship.  

Of course, this will now be in my head all day long. Somehow I think that's probably a good thing!

Hard Times Come Again No More

I first learned the beautiful song "Hard Times Come Again No More" from Emmylou Harris. It was written (in case you don't know -- I didn't until recently) by Stephen Foster, the wonderfully prolific 19th century songwriter who also penned "Beautiful Dreamer," "I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Camptown Races," and "O! Susana!"

Oh, and "Slumber my Darling," which you really need to hear here, performed by Alison Kraus with Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O'Connor, and Edgar Meyer. 

The sweet girl and I were listening to Foster's music today as part of her 1850s history unit. We played the Emmylou Harris version, of course, but we also listened to the deep, rich tones of Mavis Staples and the gravely gravity of Johnny Cash.

This is a song that travels well.

And I don't know -- but on top of all the heartbreaking news recently regarding Syrian refugees and escalating terror attacks in so many places -- I heard this song with a bigger lump in my throat than ever before. Those first two lines feel like a siren call to prayer.

Hard Times Come Again No More
(Stephen Foster)

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh! Hard times come again no more.
Chorus:
'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh! Hard times come again no more.

2.
While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh! Hard times come again no more.
Chorus

3.
There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,
Oh! Hard times come again no more.
Chorus

4.
'Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
'Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
'Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave
Oh! Hard times come again no more.
Chorus

Stephen Foster and the Rare Library Fail

My gratitude for public libraries is immense. I'm particularly grateful that we live within several miles of a public library that ties into the Carnegie library system, which has to be one of the best in the country. I love that I can find most (not all, mind you, but most) of the resources and books I go looking for, put a request through via computer, and within several days (or a little longer depending on popularity) have that resource hit the shelf.

I honestly don't know how anyone homeschooling (on a nonexistent budget or elsewise) gets along without libraries. We use the library for everything we study, from science to history to art and music, and lots more besides. One thing I love about exploring the library system is that I often turn up resources I never knew existed. We've fallen in love with many a book or recording that I just happened to stumble upon while looking for something else.

I've gotten so used to that serendipity and to the library's impeccable service that I'm astonished when a little glitch, or a little human error, creeps into the system. Take today, for example...

Friday is art and music day, and I was excited to be introducing the sweet girl to composer Stephen Foster today. He not only wrote some of the most memorable American folksongs, he's from our area. And (as a cherry on the sundae topping) while scrolling for library resources I'd found a version of his "O Susanna!" on the CD The Arkansas Traveler by a group called Pa's Fiddle Band.

Yes, that Pa. And yes, that Fiddle. This group apparently has three CDs out, all recordings of music from Laura Ingalls Wilder's wonderful Little House series. Given the sweet girl's love of all things Wilder right now, and the fact that we just last night finished the last page of These Happy Golden Years ("THAT was the BEST BOOK EVER" she pronounced, with her hand over her heart) I was really excited to introduce Foster by way of this CD. In fact, I gave it a really big build up (not something I usually do) before I opened the case with a flourish and...

discovered that the CD inside the case was a copy of Puccini's La Boheme.

After the requisite weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, we settled down to enjoy some other Foster music I had happily picked up. (It's amazing to listen to his work and to realize how many of these melodies have seeped into your consciousness over the years.) I'll return the CD to our library this week, so they can send it back to the lending library that provided it, hopefully with a note for them to check their Puccini. I'm hoping it's a case of simple mix-up and we can still check out Pa's Fiddle Band.

Meanwhile, I'll keep being grateful that mistakes like that are rare, and try not to take our library system for granted!

You Say Conjunction, I Say Interjections!

One of my favorite things about Facebook are the spontaneous little conversations that erupt in the comment boxes under status updates. Sure, people can post all sorts of notes to tell you about themselves, but you really learn things about your friends in these casual, chatty asides!

Yesterday, for my status update, I posted a line from the old grammar rock song about unpacking our adjectives. Remember that one? "He was a hairy bear, he was a scary bear, we beat a hasty retreat from his lair..." This has caused a totally friendly disagreement between two of my dear friends (one of them my husband!) about their favorite grammar rock song of all time. It cracks me up. And I can't even cast a deciding vote because I love both Conjunction Junction and Interjections! (Hooray! Eeek! Aw, rats...)


We have the whole Schoolhouse Rock collection on DVD and have been playing it lately as the sweet girl is learning about the kinds of things that get a lot of airtime in the songs. Adjectives, adverbs, the multiplication table and gravity have been big hits at our house this month.

If you're a person of a certain age (come on, you know who you are!) you grew up with these little gems singing through your brain. If you saw them enough on Saturday mornings, it's possible you still wake up with some of them singing through your brain from time to time. "Lolly Lolly Lolly get your adverbs here!" "Three is a magic number, yes it is, it's a magic number!" "Take your powder, take your gun, report to General Washington..."

So if you loved Schoolhouse Rock, what are you favorites? Inquiring minds what to know. If you can't remember all the lyrics, you can go here to find them. And once you're done telling me some of your favorites, you can actually head over here to cast your official vote on the Schoolhouse Rock website. Who knew?

And hey, did anyone else ever have to take an American civics quiz on the preamble to the Constitution? At some point in high school I did, and I'm pretty sure the whole class was singing under their breaths as they wrote. Oh go on...you still know it by heart...you know you do!

And just for the record, though it's really hard to choose favorites, I'm partial to "A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing," "Electricity" (though "Victim of Gravity" is also wonderful), "I'm Just a Bill," and "Figure Eight." Though I must confess "Sufferin' Till Suffrage" does buzz through my brain more often than you might guess. Yes indeed, I am a child of the 70s!

Relaxed Friday: Art and Music

We're continuing our studies of Chopin and Van Gogh. Today we spent time looking at Van Gogh's painting titled Olive Trees With Yellow Sky and Sun. We enjoyed looking at it so much that we spent time looking at other Van Gogh tree paintings. Doesn't this one: Branches of an Almond Tree in Bloom, just make you crave spring? It did me!

I've come up with a good mnemonic device to help the sweet girl remember Chopin: we call him the "poet of the piano from Poland." Last week we found this beautiful version of his Polonaise Op. 53 "Heroique" on YouTube. Does anyone know what language the commentator on the video is speaking? I gather the pianist is Polish.

Great Moments in Homeschool History

There are so many things I love about teaching. High on the list are those moments when all cylinders are firing, communication is clear, and your student goes above and beyond what what you're asking them to think about or do!

The sweet girl and I had one of those moments this morning. On Fridays we do art and music appreciation...i.e. we listen to music by a certain composer and look at a painting by a certain artist. Today we were going into a new four week segment on Beethoven and Cezanne. Today was our first day with both.

Our daughter is becoming an artist. She's really amazing us lately with her ability to draw, her eye for color and design, and her desire to "do art" as much as possible. But she also loves to look at paintings. This morning she was sitting at the computer zooming in and out on Still Life With Compotier on the artchive site (great website). I was several feet away, jotting down some notes on our art worksheet/narration page as we talked about the painting together.

As usual, I asked her "What do you notice in this painting? What do you see?" I confess I was expecting her to say something like "apples" or "I see some fruit in a bowl." Instead she gestured at the painting and said, oh so enthusiastically, "What I notice are the bright fruit colors against the darker background."

Seriously. My six year old said this. Yes, I am beaming. What made it even more fun (besides the very astute observation) was how she really found excitement in this. She went on to talk about the different colors and to make sure that I really "saw" what she was getting at about the bright and dark.

Lest one think that our homeschool mornings are always full of non-whining (ha!) enthusiasm and clever answers, let me hasten to tell you about the other moment this morning that made me laugh in a different way.

We'd moved on to listening to some Beethoven. Our loud, exciting piece this morning was the Allegro movement from symphony no. 5. As a good contrast, I thought we'd play the quiet "adagio" from the Moonlight Sonata.

I should mention that the sweet girl truly enjoys music, but it doesn't seem to come close to her passion for visual art right now. Which is fine! I often let her color while she listens to music as it helps her to focus. She was coloring when I moved to the Moonlight Sonata track. I thought I would introduce it briefly, since I love it so much. So I explained what it was called and then (getting a bit misty) mentioned that it was one of my very favorite pieces of music in the world.

At which point she looked up a bit vaguely from her drawing and, without missing a beat, mused "I wonder how llamas get water? You know, when they're up in the Andes..."

Hee. All I could think of was that old Gary Larson cartoon "what we say to dogs" and "what dogs hear." Remember that? "Blah, blah, blah, Ginger..."

Yes, teaching is full of those moments too. Which doesn't make it any less fun or rewarding.

Young Mozart

During this first grade year I'm using Harmony Fine Art's Arts and Music Appreciation program. One of the many things I appreciate about the program is that it provides various options for picture and music study. Although some require use or purchase of various books and materials, there are plenty of options available so that even the most budget-conscious (read: budget-strapped!) parent/teacher can find all sorts of ideas. In the arts appreciation area, the program offers one option that relies almost exclusively on picture study online. They provide links to websites where you can find pictures and artist biographies as needed. We've utilized these extensively, along with materials we've found at our library to supplement what we're learning.

One of the things I've enjoyed is finding picture books to accompany our studies. We're a picture book loving family, and picture books provide yet another creative entrance into thinking about the lives of artists and musicians. There have been some lovely ones published in recent years, though I've been amused to see that we have a good selection to choose from for some artists (perhaps those considered more "kid-appropriate" or fascinating) and almost no choices for others. Case in point: finding any picture books or biographies of Manet for a first grader seems to be a nigh unto impossible task. But writers and illustrators for young children LOVE Mary Cassatt!

This month we're learning about Cassatt in art and Mozart in music. I thought I would briefly review the picture book Young Mozart, written and illustrated by Rachel Isadora.



We've known some of Isadora's other picture books about the ballet, and have always been impressed by her artwork. The pictures here are beautiful, as you can probably tell from the cover. I'm guessing they're watercolor: at any rate, she appears to use washes of color, a very light, almost pastel palette. The visual details of clothes, hairstyles, rooms and instruments do a wonderful job of evoking Mozart's time period (the latter half of the 18th century: 1756-1791).

The text is also well-written. What I like most about this as a book for young children (say, 4-8 years old) is how much the text concentrates on Mozart's early childhood. Of course it continues the story into his adulthood and shares about how great a composer he becomes, but the emphasis stays consistently on details that would interest a young child. Isadora highlights how Mozart learned to write music before he could write words (a concept that fascinated my daughter) and how he and his father would play singing games at night before bedtime. She relays a wonderful scene in which little Mozart, with his child-sized violin, wants to join in and play with his father and some of his father's friends, who are making music on harpsichord and violin. Since Wolfgang had not yet taken any violin lessons, his father discouraged him, but one of the other adults, moved by the little boy's tears, invited him to go on and play. And of course he shocked them all by being able to play beautifully. He'd taught himself how to play the violin!

Since Mozart was a child prodigy, composing and performing before audiences (even royal ones!) before he was seven, his story lends itself well to a children's biography. Not that most children will be able to relate personally to Mozart's genius, but they can relate to his growing love of music and to his desire to play it and write it. Most children have at least one special thing they too love to do (for my daughter right now, it's drawing). This book gave me an opportunity to introduce the words "prodigy" and "genius" to my six year old, but also to talk about giftedness in general...and how gifts are meant to be developed and shared.

Anyone who has ever watched the film Amadeus knows that Mozart's personal life, as he grew older, was quite troubled and troubling. Isadora doesn't gloss over the fact that Mozart struggled with personal discipline (she mentions that he spends too much money, hence his need to keep teaching, giving concerts and composing) but she doesn't keep our focus there or on anything that would be inappropriate for young children. I don't see this as revising history as much as knowing one's audience. There will be time enough later for children to grow in their understanding that not all artists, even those endowed with tremendous gifts, are always morally upright or mistake free. My daughter already knows that all of us are sinners; she's beginning to learn that even people (and characters in stories) that we admire are not always perfect or necessarily good role models. Human struggles don't have to negate someone's gifts or our appreciation for how those gifts have touched us. And thankfully Mozart's gift of beautiful music has lasted long -- long after his very short life (he died at 35) came to an end.

Young Mozart is a thoughtful book to help a young child get to know more about Mozart's life and work. It's also a book that can open up fruitful conversations about gifts and giftedness.

Mahler's 7th Symphony

I've fallen in love with a "new" composer. Well, one that's new to me anyway!

I can't recall ever hearing any of Gustav Mahler's work, at least not hearing it and being conscious that it was his. He lived 1865-1911, which puts some of his work firmly in the beginning of one of my favorite eras.

The sweet girl and I have been reading and listening to Robert Levine's The Story of the Orchestra. This is a book/CD intended for children, but I've been learning as much or more than my little one (though she's loved it too). Each morning we talk about a different instrument in the orchestra and after learning about it, play the appropriate track on the CD that highlights it. It's been a great exercise in learning to pick out instruments as we hear them in orchestral work, something I never really learned to do.

A couple of weeks ago we learned about the tympani, those wonderfully huge drums played in the orchestra. The sweet girl has an ongoing fascination with percussion (seriously...she is longing to play drums and has a great sense of rhythm, though I'm not yet sure can carry a tune!) and so we were both excited to hear the featured track for this one. It happened to be the opening minute of the finale to Mahler's 7th symphony. If you've never heard this particular piece, try! It's one of the most exciting and heart-rending pieces I've heard in a long time. As we've played that one minute over and over, I've had odd but powerful sensations when I listen to it: it makes me feel excited to be alive, hopeful about the future, and (no kidding, though it's hard to explain this about a piece of supposedly secular music) jazzed about heaven and the kingdom of God. I think some orchestral music, because of its communal nature and often majestic brass tones, just gives me a heavenly sense.

The agonizing thing was we only had this one minute excerpt. It trails off tantalizingly, leaving me wanting to know where the music would go next. I hurried to our online card catalog to see of the county system had this particular symphony anywhere. They did, though it took them several days to get it from another library after I requested it.

I picked it up from the library hold shelf this morning. And I did something I basically never do with a good book, I went to the last chapter first. I had to hear that stunning finale, the final movement of the symphony. I felt like I'd been left hanging for two weeks, waiting to find out "what happened."

And it's wonderful. All 18 minutes of it. Now I need to go back and listen to the whole symphony, which lasts over an hour (so stretches my still growing musical appreciation skills). Mahler apparently wrote some of the biggest, longest, most complex symphonies ever. Wouldn't you know it!

The other great thing was how excited the sweet girl was about this CD too. I picked it up downstairs while she was up with her Daddy in the children's section. So she didn't see me get it. She must have remembered it during her rest time this afternoon though. A little while ago when she got up from a nap, the first thing she said was: "Mommy, did you get the rest of that symphony today?" She too wanted to hear the rest of the finale. It's playing in her room right now!

Edited to add: it must've finished. Right as I posted this, she came running into the living room, smiling brightly. "Mommy, can I hear the tympani again?" Time to go push the play button on track five one more time...!