How Computers Have Changed the Way We Find Books

In recent years, a lot of people have written about the way our reading habits have changed thanks to technology. I am so behind the times...I didn't get a e-reader until last year, following my cancer diagnosis...that I'm not sure I've done enough e-book reading to really weigh in on that conversation. I do appreciate e-books, though I still say it's no contest between digital and physical reading for me...I just love the feel and smell of actual pages!

One thing I have noticed, however, is how different my approach to discovering and finding books has changed in recent years.

I guess I am thinking about that because it's the season for "summer reading lists..." you know, the lists where well-known people, or people you've never heard of who nevertheless have great blogs, post their list of recommended reading for the upcoming season. Summer reading generally means more fun, fluffy reading, the kind of reading people want to take to the beach, or books they imagine would be good at the beach even if they can't get there. Or in the event of kids' summer reading lists (which lots of homeschool bloggers like to post) books your kids will enjoy getting lost in during vacation time following the academic rigors of the school year.

I was just looking at a summer list that a friend posted on Faceboook, and I realized that, without really being conscious of it, I have developed a way of gathering new books when I read lists like that. I look for authors I know or genres that interest me, I skim what the recommendations have to say, and then there are a couple of directions I might go.

If I'm still not sure the book sounds like something I want to read, I pursue reviews...often on sites like Amazon or Good Reads. Having written reviews for a lot of years, I'm pretty good at skimming those quickly to get to the heart of the what the review writer is saying. If the book author mentioned is the author of a series (I'm often interested in mystery series) then I look up the author's website or  find them on Wikipedia and go to their full bibliography so I can find a list of their books in order and discover the first one.

That's always an eye-opening moment, when you discover the author is either the writer of three books that started appearing five years ago or a veteran with twenty-five books that started showing up twenty-five or thirty years ago. In any event, if it's a series, I usually start at the very beginning ("a very good place to start...") note the title (and keep the window open in case I forget it) then log into my account on my library's home page. I am hugely blessed to be connected to an excellent library system which has dozens of libraries with great collections.

I can usually find the book I want and put it on hold so it will get sent to my local library for pick-up. If I can't find it in the system, as will occasionally happen with older, out of print titles, or very new titles that none of the local libraries has happened to purchase, then I put a request through the library's inter library loan. The book usually takes longer to arrive on the hold shelf, but it can definitely be worth the wait. I've been able to read some very good books thanks to ILL.

I've worked this way so long now that it's almost hard for me to believe there was ever a time...before book bloggers, before library hold systems you could access easily with a few clicks of the keyboard or your phone (even in the middle of the night)! I don't get too nostalgic for the old days when you just wandered into a bookstore or a library and browsed the shelves and hoped you'd hit something wonderful...because I still do that kind of book gathering too. Though I'm still more likely to put a book on hold at the library after finding it at the bookstore, unless it's something I know for sure I want or need to own for a certain project or learning season.

However we find them, books are beautiful. They add so much richness to our lives, something I've always felt and known, but am feeling more conscious of than ever as I go through my long season of illness and healing.

With all this said...will I make a list of recommended reading for this summer? Hmm....I'm not sure, but I have a feeling I might. Stay tuned!

Vegetable Lasagna from Love Your Leftovers

As I've slowly gotten back into cooking, following my long hiatus (can you call it a hiatus, when it was a break enforced by cancer and chemotherapy? hmmm...) I am experimenting with some new recipes. Some are from my cookbook collection here at home, and others are from cookbooks that I've borrowed from the library, my favorite resource for culinary experimentation.

Today's cookbook is Love Your Leftovers by Nick Evans, published by Lyons Press in 2014.

I came across mention of this cookbook while perusing recipes online, and was able to get hold of it quickly because of my terrific library system.

The premise behind this cookbook is a neat and practical one that I'm surprised I've never seen before. Author Evans offers 14 chapters in which he begins with a very basic food and then builds recipes off of it for the rest of the chapter. For instance, he gives you a good recipe for roast chicken and then proceeds to show you all the ways you can use leftover roast chicken in a variety of yummy ways.

The fourteen basics that he builds off include a nice variety for both carnivores and vegetarians (and everyone in between, including pesce-pollotarians like me -- look it up: I didn't invent the word!). The basics are:

• Roast Chicken
• Black Beans
• Flank Steak
• Potatoes
• Tomato Sauce
• Lentils
• Bread
• Pulled Pork
• Grilled Tofu
• Granola
• Rice
• Roast Salmon
• Beef Stock
• Ice Cream

There are 16 chapters in all, because he includes a "Kitchen and Pantry Basics" at the beginning, and a "Meal Planning 101" at the end. I haven't gotten to those yet; I dived immediately into the meat...er...fish...er....tofu of the book, and started with the recipes.

I thought I would go first for a black bean recipe, as I recently made a huge pot of beans from dried and have been trying to use them up. That's actually how I found the cookbook, while hunting for recipes in which I could use black beans. I still want to try the Black Bean Burgers and the Crunchy Black Bean Tacos.

But once I had the book in hand, I found myself drawn to the tomato sauce chapter, perhaps because I've made that from scratch a couple of times recently too. I decided I wanted to try the Vegetable Lasagna, partly because I hadn't made a lasagna in a long time (two years?) and it sounded yummy.

It was, though I ended up tweaking the recipe a bit. Former veggie lasagnas I've made have featured things like spinach and carrots. This one is all squash, probably another reason I gravitated toward it, since I had yellow squash on hand and knew I could quickly pick up eggplant and zucchini, the other two types this calls for.

Basically, you slice all your squashes thinly on a horizontal, bake them with olive oil and salt for a few minutes, then layer them between cooked lasagna noodles, marinara sauce, and a cheese mixture.

Besides the baking the squash before you layered it (an interesting move that makes it drier and a little saltier than the veggies I usually layer) I found the cheese mixture most interesting. Most of my lasagna cheeses are your basic mix of ricotta and mozzarella with maybe some salt and pepper (and I think I once made one that called for egg). This is the same mix of cheeses but it includes a good deal of lemon -- interesting, yes? -- both juice and zest. I used less than the recipe called for because I realized that for my little family of three, filling up my 9 x 13 rectangular pan was going to be quite enough of a noodle bake, thank you very much, which meant that I only used about half the noodles he called for (and fewer veggies, and less cheese).

I cut the lemon he called for in half or even less, and I still think I could have cut it a bit further, though I did like the citrus note it added to the cheese. I think that's what really set this dish apart, along with the deliciousness of the summer squash and the fun of the three colors -- green, yellow, purple -- that the multiple squashes brought to the party.

Here's a similar veggie lasagna recipe from Macheesmo, Nick Evans' blog. Clever blog name, yes?  I notice it doesn't include the lemon, which I guess is a tweak he came up with later. I'm glad he added it.

We served this hot with a bit of a green salad on the side (mixed greens and some cucumber). It was a a hearty meal and left us plenty of leftover lasagna for another dinner. 

Vacation Notes from New Normal

We did it!

We managed our annual three night/four days vacation at Presque Isle.

If anyone had told me back in February (or March, April, or perhaps even May) that I would make it on this year's trip, I would have said there wasn't any way. That I was able to makes me feel grateful beyond imagining.

It was a lovely trip, though very tiring. Since I now dwell in the land of "new normal," there were things about the trip that were harder than I expected, or just plain different.  A sampling:

* We couldn't stay at our usual campgrounds, both because they were booked pretty solid by the time we realized we could attempt the trip, and because we weren't sure I could handle the beds and cramped accommodations of our usual trailer. We missed the rustic camp, especially the starry nights outside and the campfire we usually lit each night to roast marshmallows. I didn't have to don a long-sleeved jacket once while we were there, and nobody came home smelling like smoke.

* We stayed in a very moderate priced hotel not far from our campgrounds. While it wasn't rustic (we had wi-fi and cable, for goodness' sake) the beds turned out to be an adventure for me anyway. They were incredibly high off the ground, high enough that I had a very hard time climbing into them without leg pain. I felt like I should get a pole and vault into bed (an idea borne of the fact that we spent most of our late nights watching the Olympics on the aforementioned cable). I devised a kind of leap-into-bed-drag-your-bad-leg-behind-you style that probably would not win me many points for athletic form, but which amused my husband and daughter (and me) no end.

* Speaking of the bad leg (and I feel badly calling one leg "bad" when it's trying just as hard as the other leg that doesn't have bone cancer) the hotel had only two floors...and no elevator. And non-smoking rooms were on the second floor. Whoops. I had stairs to manage up and down whenever we left or arrived or when we went to breakfast. I got used to standing aside to let other people go ahead of me on stairs so I wouldn't hold them up. The first morning we were there, I was going down a short flight of steps toward the dining area, holding onto the railing and carefully bringing my right leg (that's the "bad" one) down to the step where I'd already placed my left leg. It's a very halting way to walk, but it's the only way for me to tackle steps responsibly right now, especially with my feet so numb from neuropathy. An elderly gentleman coming my way saw me managing the steps and called out cheerfully, "That's the way I have to do stairs! Bad knee, eh?" I just smiled and said, "Well, bad leg, anyway."

* No campfires meant no s'mores. We compensated by heading to Sara's (the beach themed hamburger/hot dog joint we love to frequent while there) for ice cream cones. More than once. Oh, okay. Pretty much every day. It was HOT, and ice cream hit the spot.

* The car wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Once upon a time, riding in a car meant pain for my hip. Now it's mostly just achey and uncomfortable but bearable. It was worse for my feet than my hip. I should have followed a friend's suggestion and taken my weight balls so I could have something to roll my feet against and keep them moving.

* Speaking of moving, movement in the car makes me really drowsy. I am more drowsy than usual because of medications, I think, but I wasn't aware how long stretches of time in the car would affect me. I basically couldn't keep my eyes open. I struggle with that at other times too -- including sometimes while I'm typing (which can make for some comical spelling errors, especially if I'm typing on the Kindle keyboard). I think the combination of medicines and deep down physical tiredness, which seemed deeper than I expected once I "let down" for vacation, kept me really sleepy much of the time we were away. I slept a lot on the beach.

* The beach! So beautiful on the peninsula, as always. So lovely to hear the waves and feel the wind and chuckle over the antics of the gulls and pick up rocks worn smooth by the lake water. I did all of those usual things, but I didn't walk much. The hot, gritty sand hurt my feet, and when I attempted to get near the water, just the waves coming in made me very unsteady. So I kept to my chair and read a lot (a reading round-up of my beach fluff probably coming soon). I slept a good deal in the sun, which made me feel a bit like a cat.

* I did have one wonderful beach walk with my dear daughter, who woke me up for the express purpose of meandering over to "our dune" -- the sand dune we have always explored together since she was very little. I'm so glad it meant enough to her to ask me to do that with her. She patiently took my arm and helped me manage the walk. I even made it up the incline to the top of the dune, where S bent down and unstrapped my sandals so I could feel the softer sand of the dune as well as I was able (not terribly well, but it was such a sweet gesture, I couldn't refuse, and I could tell, even with my neuropathied feet, that it was softer -- or perhaps my brain supplied the softer sand memory).

* I wasn't the only one who "let down" my emotions while we were there. The sweet girl discovered that trying to relax after this long, hard year meant some tears. They came at odd times (perhaps because she fights so hard to keep them in at other times, bless her heart). But they came, and I think it was good. 

* Time with friends was also lovely....it was just so good to see them and to spend time in their presence. Some parts of New Normal, thankfully, look and feel a lot like Old Normal. I'm glad, or otherwise I'm afraid I'd get lost a lot more often!

June Reading Round-Up

I'm so excited that a) I feel well enough to write a reading round-up; and b) I am reading enough to have plenty to write about. One of the beauties of regaining some energy, post-chemo, is that I am both writing and reading again!

I am like a kid in a candy store when I go the library right now, or when I peruse books online (to put on hold at the library). I probably will not finish half of these, but it feels so good to have multiple books going again, per my usual reading habits. Right now, here's what I'm "reading at":

The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American Aviation by Thomas Kessner. It was inevitable that I'd pick up this book once it made its way into the house as D was prepping the sweet girl's 1920s history unit. Lindbergh, for all his controversy, has long been one of my favorite American figures to read about. In my college years, I became so fascinated with the Lindbergh family that I read the complete journals of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I like Kessner's approach, which is to look at Lindbergh not just for his individual accomplishments but as part of the bigger picture of the growth of aviation in America.

Getting into Lindbergh again also made me turn to the chapter on aviator-writers in David McCullough's Brave Companions: Portraits in History. These are based on lectures and talks he's given over the years, so they don't go as in depth as a lot of McCullough's books.  But it was a good chapter nonetheless and made me think of a lot of the aviators whose time I spent company in during those years in my 20s when I was reading so much about that era.

As I turn my thoughts toward long term writing projects again, I am revisiting the idea I had years ago to write a book about several mostly 20th century women authors who excelled at writing family stories. Some of the writers I've been contemplating grouping together include Sydney Taylor, Elizabeth Enright, Eleanor Estes, Beverly Cleary, Madeleine L'Engle, and Jeanne Birdsall. I've had a special fascination with learning more about Elizabeth Enright, so I was happy to read her 1939 Newbery acceptance speech in Newbery Medal Books 1922-1955, which also included an autobiographical note she wrote around that time.

I'm also reading Mary Oliver's Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse. More on this one soon, as I think I will want to post some choice quotes.

I seem to be thinking a lot about books and authors I loved in my twenties. I was a big fan of Herman Wouk in those years (though I always, always! fought with his novel endings). I've been dipping into his recent memoir Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author.  This is a nice book for dipping because he is writing snippets and scenes more than a full autobiography. You can almost flip it open at random and read a few entertaining anecdotes.

At long last, I am finally reading Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory.  It's a good chronicle of science writing down through the ages, and may be a book I decide we need on our shelves for the sweet girl's high school years.

I am also meandering my way through a not very well written cozy mystery (which shall remain nameless). Although I love the portability of my Kindle, I have discovered I do not really enjoy reading long e-books (I love the Kindle for things like my daily Scripture readings, poetry, and checking in on social media). However, I've signed up for notifications from BookBub, and they do include free ebooks in some of their selections, so every now and then I give it a go.  Fluffy mysteries are fine e-book fare, but the more I read in the genre, the more I long for the golden years of mystery writing and for books with the literary punch of modern writers like P.D. James and Deborah Crombie. Cozies are cute and fun, but the writing in them seems awfully lazy. I used to think that was a quirk of one or two writers, but I'm beginning to think it's a mark of the genre. Part of the fun for me, when I read them, is that I get to think about how I would edit the stories and revise the writing.

Eve of Eighth Grade

I've had at least three potential posts percolating in my mind this week, but I can't ever seem to let a new school year start without marking it in some way on the blog. It's funny to realize that I have actually been posting on this blog for so many years that our homeschooling journey hadn't even started when I began!

And yet, here we are on the eve of our ninth year of the learning journey together: 8th grade. Ready or not, here we come!

I think I (mostly) feel ready, though I'm not sure how ready the sweet girl feels. She's had a very good summer in many ways and is reluctant to let go of it. I am hoping that some of our new learning ventures will spark her curiosity and her love of learning -- still there, I know -- and that will help to propel us forward.

Here are a few of the things we're using in the journey this year...for fun, I am mixing up the tangibles and intangibles. (And yes, this is just a small taste of our resources.)

• Lots of love and prayer!
• Patience and gentleness!
• Seeds Family Worship Scripture CDs
• Dad taking the lead in history! (Mom doing overviews, literature and church history tie-ins)
• Horizons Algebra 1
• A new location for the sweet girl's desk (in our living room, in what she calls "the thinker's corner")
• High speed internet (coming soon! The installation got delayed a week)
• Forgiveness
• Laughter
• Middle School Physics (and a whole bunch of other great physics resources)
• Word Up! Latin and Greek root words on DVD
• Chocolate 
• More drawing and poetry time (I hope)
• Second year Spanish
• Some international cooking
• Philosophy for Kids 
• Seventh and final year of Writing With Ease/Writing With Skill Program
• Hugs
• Youth group 
• Family read-alouds
• Ticonderoga pencils
• Irish Dance class (out of the beginners! Onto to Group A!)
• New whiteboard markers and new whiteboard
• Old whiteboard turned into place for verses and encouraging/inspirational quotes
• Loving help and support from so many friends and family members
• First day of school muffins (could we start the year without them?) 
• Perspectacles (eyes fixed on Jesus!)
• Lots of love and prayer! (just to bring it full circle) 

One Child at a Time: Reflections After VBS

We had a tiring but terrific VBS week. This was the fourth year we invited in a local CEF team, recognizing that we don’t have the people power to design, implement, and carry out an original program right now. I also like that it connects us to other churches and a wider community of faith. Yes, there are differences in presentation and emphasis within different Christian communities, but sometimes I think we gain more by working together, even in the tensions, than we would working separately. At least that’s one of the gleanings I took away from this week, in which I sensed the Lord was working in me as much as he was in the kids.

The kids had a great time. With the exception of the first night, when we only had 8 children, we had about 18 coming every night, with a good core coming back multiple times and being there the whole week or at least 4 out of 5 nights. A number of these kids came last year as well. It was a good reminder that, as my dear husband says, when we open the doors, the children come!

There are years (and this was definitely one of them) when I wasn’t sure we were prepared to open our doors; we hadn’t had the energy to do much preparation ourselves and our pool of volunteers to draw on seems to get smaller every summer. Our little family has been feeling a bit burned out lately, and D. and I have been asking ourselves some questions about our ministry call and the best way to carry it out in this season. I have also been struggling a good deal with some physical issues and extra tiredness on account of them.

And yet a marvelous thing happened when we did open our doors and step out in faith. The children came, and God was there to meet them, exactly where they were. God was also there to meet us. He gave us energy, enthusiasm, a renewed sense of realization about how deeply these children need an encounter with his love and a chance to hear and see the gospel.

Since we weren’t doing the heavy lifting as teachers, he also gave us time to just sit and be with the kids during meals (at least some nights; S. and I ended up handling the kitchen for the last three nights) and during the lesson time. That meant time to listen to them and laugh with them and ask them questions (in addition to directing and guiding them…and keeping them out of the bathroom when they shouldn’t be in there…and keeping them from clunking each other on the head or shoving each other around too much when they got frustrated or mad at each other). It meant time to do the goofy hand motions to the songs and to encourage them to repeat the Scripture verses. It meant time to observe and interact with and pray for some of the kids who came with extra special needs: we had a deaf boy as well as two boys who were autistic.

Wednesday night, midweek, felt a little overwhelming. We had a large attendance with no one to sit and be with the kids except us and the CEF team, two of whom were very young this year. Some of the kids got loud, rowdy, and rambunctious and just keeping order became the main task of the evening. In the midst of it all, you could tell there were kids who were doing their best to listen, drinking in what they were given. We quickly recognized that many of them had little to no familiarity with the evening’s Bible story, which happened to be Noah. 

At the end of the evening, I was grateful when two lovely ladies in our church who do outreach to the deaf community came downstairs from the Bible Study they’d been holding. I had contacted them to let them know about the little boy who was attending who is deaf, and they were able to have a conversation with him. One of the ladies was able to come back the next two evenings and really forge a connection with this little boy; she signed the lessons to him and also just spent a good deal of time with him in signed conversation. She also made some beginning connections with his family, who is in need of the some of the resources and personal help she can provide. That turned out to be one of the huge blessings of the week.

Still, by the end of the evening, I felt discouraged. I kept thinking “there is so much hunger here, and we have no real way to meet it. There is so much need for attention and presence, and we have so few people to provide it. Even just attempting to reach the children within a few block radius of our church feels overwhelming.” That feeling persisted for me until the following morning, when I opened the daily intercessory email I get from an amazing mission organization working in India. Guess what the first line read? “How do you transform a nation of a billion+ people? You start with one child.”

Suddenly, our task didn’t seem quite as daunting. Or if it did still seem daunting, God had at least given me the “perspectacles” I needed. Our task is truly not as overwhelming as the task of church planters and Bible teachers in India, but with them we share a common task and calling, a common gospel. And even, in one sense, a common strategy. “You start with one child.”

That phrase changed the whole way I looked at the next two nights, even when they seemed to feel overwhelming. One hungry little boy prayed to accept and trust Jesus the next night. And that night, and the next, there were other opportunities, some of them small, to tell and show individual kids how much God cared for them.

In the midst of all of that, God directed my attention some other words I needed to hear. One was in the book Discipleship in the Present Tense (by James K.A. Smith) which I’ve been wending my way through this month, and the other was in an old seminary magazine.

Let me mention the words from the article first. I’ve been going through old magazines, some of them years old, pulling articles or photos I want to keep and recycling the rest of the pages. I was skimming through a nearly ten year old interview with an alum from my seminary who was talking about his own then-daunting task of a particular ministry, in which he had humbly realized he lacked “tools, talents…and finances.” (Sounds familiar!) But he went on to say that because of that, they had constantly relied on “seeking God’s provision and direction” (also sounds familiar!). He finished with the words “This is a ministry bathed in intercessory prayer.”

The other light bulb that went off for me was in Smith’s book, which is really a collection of essays and interviews. I was reading an interview in which he recapped much of the terrific content from his book Desiring the Kingdom, which I read last summer. Toward the end, he commented that that no matter how small you or your community might feel, it’s important to remember that “you’re in a story of immense cosmic significance.”

Yes.

• Remember you are in a story of great cosmic significance
• Bathe the ministry in intercessory prayer
• Focus on one child at a time

I don’t know entirely what the future of our church’s or even our family’s ministry and calling may look like, but it seems to me that these are wise and important reminders that I know I needed to hear this week.

Reading Round-Up: Early Summer Edition

Summertime! Our recent trip to Virginia to see family, coupled with the fact that school is out, means I am getting some long overdue reading time. Even though I have a heavier teaching load this summer than usual (at the seminary) I am still enjoying some good reading time.

Here's a peek at some of what I've been reading lately.

Young Fiction

The sweet girl (aka Jedi Teen...who by the way truly has officially reached her teen years now!) has been busy recommending books to me, deep into her own summer reading. Some of these she's found on her own and some we've ferreted out together via book lists. So far I have really enjoyed Savvy by Ingrid Law and One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, two mid-grade books I might not have read but for the sweet girl's encouragement. I enjoyed Savvy, an interesting mix of fantasy and realism, for its creative story-line and highly creative use of language. One for the Murphys, the debut novel of author Hunt (whose second book Fish in a Tree the sweet girl and I both enjoyed earlier this year) is the story of a young girl in foster care. It reminded me a little bit of Katherine Paterson's The Great Gilly Hopkins, though Gilly had less overt sentiment.

Jedi Teen and I reviewed the graphic novel Smile together, and she's gone on to read two other graphic novels by Raina Telegemeier (I've started Sisters, but haven't had a chance to finish it). We both also read the seventh (and perhaps last, though we're not sure) Clementine book by Sara Pennypacker, Completely Clementine. It's so funny to realize that the sweet girl started reading these when she was about Clementine's age. Clementine has only made it through her third grade year in these seven terrific books, while my daughter has shot past her by years. But we both still love them, almost the way you love to and return to a good Ramona book. And that's saying something.

Mysteries

I've needed a lighthearted return to mystery reading this summer, and decided to dive back into my exploration of the books of Patricia Wentworth.  I'm not sure quite how many of the Miss Silver mysteries I've read now, but I know I've done three since late spring: She Came Back, The Gazebo, and Out of the Past. All of these were written in the 1950s, I think, and she definitely had her formula down by then. I'm cottoning on to what makes a Wentworth a Wentworth -- I actually managed to guess the murderer in the last one -- and I'm very much enjoying the camaraderie between Miss Silver and Inspector Abbot, who looks upon this school-teacher-ish maiden-aunt woman with both amusement and awe. I love that he trusts her detecting instincts so completely that he'd pretty much follow her blindfolded in a snowstorm. It's a great early example of an amateur and professional partnership.

Non-Fiction

So much really good non-fiction on my plate right now...it's sort of an embarrassment of riches. I'm inwardly singing with joy over the beautiful essays in James K.A. Smith's Discipleship in the Present Tense, which seem to be "speaking my theology" in ways I've only felt with a few authors in the past. I'm revisiting a gem of a book I loved years ago and recently rediscovered in a library book sale: Henri Nouwen's Return of the Prodigal -- and I need to hear what he has to say just as much as I did then. It's one of those beautiful gospel-centered books that we all need to revisit from time to time for the good of our hearts. And it's reminding me how much I love the artistry of Rembrandt and his Prodigal painting in particular.

I'm learning a ton of history I never knew from David Garrison's A Wind in the House of Islam, a book that is both challenging and encouraging. It's a carefully researched and well-written account of some of the many amazing things that God had done among Muslim communities in centuries past and is currently doing among Muslims in this century. I was going to call it a book of mission history (which it is) but I'd rather give it the bigger parameter of Christian history or just history (thinking about Justo Gonzalez' reminder that we too often separate the study of missions from the rest of church and world history).

I'm still working my way through N.T. Wright's Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, which is taking me longer than I expected, mostly because I find myself wanting to chew thoughtfully on his insights. I keep meaning to jot some of the things that are particularly speaking to me -- from Wright, Nouwen, Smith, and Garrison especially -- here on the blog. Maybe I will have a chance to do that soon.

End of Another Year

Well, we've done it! Today was homeschool evaluation day, which for me always feels like the official end of our school-year, even if we finish actual schooling earlier. This year the sweet girl has had dribs and drabs of things to finish, mostly in math, so she's actually been doing a bit of "summer school" (about an hour a day) but even that is almost over now. With the official sign-off from our terrific evaluator, who loved seeing how much S. has "grown and matured," 7th grade is DONE! Thanks be to God!

It Must Be June

We turned the calendar to a new month today. To all intents and purposes, our school year is "done" -- at least officially. I've tallied up attendance records and we've hit our requisite number of days. All that should be left is portfolio and evaluation.

But S. still has some things to wrap up: she's still writing her final research paper for her writing course, she's got a review unit still to do in math, a few stray grammar lessons to finish up to complete the workbook, and some ongoing work in Spanish (ditto). What makes me happy is to see her willingness to keep going with all of this, in a good, disciplined way, even though it's June and we're both oh so ready for a break. The nice thing, of course, is that she can tackle these things pretty systematically on her own and still have plenty of time leftover to begin some relaxation.

The other nice thing is that we're not feeling rushed in the mornings. Which, wonderfully, means more chances to explore learning trails. This morning we lingered at the breakfast table and had an awesome conversation about missions history and the shifting of the Christian world from global north to global south, which got her so excited she actually did a little cheer for our "missionary God!" (which made my heart want to sing, naturally). At lunch, we tackled the Smithsonian magazine that arrived on Saturday and I read her the Pluto article while she ate. She did a big paper on Pluto last year, so I knew she'd find it fascinating, and she did. We're excitedly looking forward to July 14, the big NASA encounter with the dwarf planet.

So yes...it must be June. Learning continues, but it does so in a more relaxed, chasing-your-passions-down-learning-trails way. That's good for us both.

June also marks the beginning of the summer diaconate course I'm teaching, along with four independent studies. Considering I'm still grading for spring, I'm feeling like I'm not getting much of a breath, but grateful for the work. I've got final edits on some S&T work too, and a doctor's appointment this week. Never a dull moment!

First Day of Seventh Grade!

Year Eight in the homeschool journey begins! Yes, I know it's Labor Day, but we're starting late this year due to travel, and D. planned to be working today anyway. The sweet girl and I agreed we'd rather get a jump on things and get in a whole week, so here we are on a Monday morning.

I love the first day of school traditions we've put in place over the years: first day muffins, pictures, hand print (such a laugh now to see those little hand prints from earlier years!), new Scripture verse CD. For the first time ever this year, we listened to a Scripture CD that wasn't from the Harrow family, as we finished all the volumes in Sing the Word. Our first listen to the first verse in "Songs of Courage" earned a thumbs up from us: we liked the music a lot. And of course Jeremiah 33:3 is a wonderful verse: "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." Seems like a very appropriate verse for the beginning of a new season of our lives!

Let's not forget the new Ticonderoga pencils, one of which is being used even as I write. The sweet girl is tackling language arts this morning with great gusto.

The years seem to pass more swiftly the older I grow, and one way I know that's true is how quickly this day seems to roll around each year. Thank you, Lord, for another new beginning.

"Teach Us to Number Our Days..."

Home yet again. This past journey was very different than last week's relaxing time, and if we could have ordered the two trips differently, we surely would have. But life has a way of happening unscheduled! And it was very important that we got to Virginia to see D's mom before fall schedules are upon us in full.

I am so thankful for so many things as I look back on those exhausting few days. Most of all, I am thankful that D's mom is currently in the respite section (being moved to rehab soon) of the assisted living area, and that she is being more fully evaluated. She was in need of care and attention, even more than we realized. Her physical, mental, and emotional decline have continued at a frightening pace. I had not seen her since last November, and even with the knowledge of her difficulties and with what D. shared with me after her saw her a few weeks ago, I was shocked at how much she had aged in those relatively few months. On the other hand, there are still a lot of moments when she is perfectly cogent and very much herself, with that mischievous smile peeking through and even a bit of what I think I would term healthy snark over her current situation. She's not terribly happy about being where she is, but she also seems to recognize on some level that she really needs the care.

I spent most of the days there working my way through the piles of paperwork that had accumulated over the past few weeks and months -- junk mail, bills, notices from the retirement community, etc. It was my self-appointed task to find and sort all that I could so that it all made some sense for my dear husband, who is her medical and financial power of attorney. He and his sister were in various meetings with the lawyer, social worker, accountant, etc., and it seemed to be the best way I could help. Since Grandma has sometimes taken to putting papers and cards and keys in places where you least expect to find them, I discovered that the sweet girl's keen eyes were very helpful. She prowled the shelves and some small drawers and discovered some things that were missing or that we otherwise needed to know about, so I was thankful for that. We also had a few moments of just sheer grace in terms of things "showing up" right when they needed to.

I was also thankful for how beautifully the sweet girl handled the trip. It was not easy for any of us to see D's mother struggling so much, and there were lots of times of stressful waiting, missed signals, places we needed to be, sitting around and talking through things ("boring adult talk" as she terms it) and paper shuffling. S. was a trooper. She had a few times where her stress got the better of her, but then we all did. Mostly it was good, growing trip which she handled with much grace. Even under the circumstances, she was so glad for time with her grandmother, aunt, and great aunt, as were we all.

I find myself not just tired and grateful today, as I play catch-up on a host of household chores and try to think my way through organizing for the new school year (that should have started this week but instead will start next week) but realizing anew how precious our lives are. Even if we're given threescore and ten years of relatively good health and sound mind, it's such a short amount of time really. I found myself renewing my heart's commitment to living as healthfully, fully, and passionately as I can in whatever years I'm allotted. So much living, loving, kingdom work, creative work, I still long to do. As Psalm 90:12 reminds us, "teach us to number our days," dear Lord, "that we may gain a heart of wisdom."  Or as it says in the Message: "Oh! Teach us to live well! Teach us to live wisely and well!"

Of Cottonwoods and Mallorn Trees

We had a beautiful long weekend in Erie. We spent almost every moment we could outdoors, from drives on the peninsula to shore time by the lake to playtime on the sweet girl's favorite sandy playground to s'mores around our trailer-side firepit at the campgrounds in the evening. We also got to see wonderful friends for dinner on two successive nights. Despite some stressed moments (we continue to be very concerned about D's mom's deteriorating health and will be making another trip soon to see her) and our usual sparse accommodations in the trailer (made even more rustic this year since they'd opted to improve the bathroom facilities but take out the shower) we really had a lovely time.

One of my favorite parts of the beautiful flora and fauna on Presque Isle are the cottonwood trees that seem to grow everywhere. These are tall, beautiful trees that rustle with a hushed music in the frequently strong winds. It was the sweet girl who pointed out that the back of the green leaves seemed to shimmer with silver -- the leaves are a kind of greenish-gray. Coupled with the few eager leaves already turning yellow in anticipation of the autumn, there was a lovely silver-gold quality to some of the trees. It made us think of the Mallorn trees of Lothlorien, and S. and I ended up calling them Lothlorien trees every time we traipsed under another stand of them near the beach.

I love seeing S. learn to love Tolkien. We're nearing the end of The Two Towers, and every time Tolkien stops to describe the phase of the moon and the quality/timing of its light, she practically shivers with delight. I love that our daughter, so like us and yet so uniquely her own self, loves him as much for his scientific accuracy as she does for his poetry. She is so impressed that here, at last, is an author who cares about those kinds of details!

School Books Beginning to Arrive!

We spent the weekend resting and playing, including a day-trip to an historic French and Indian War site a couple of hours away. Though the end of the first week of July is really way too early to be thinking about school again, we have occasional happy blips when boxes of books arrive. I suppose that's one good thing about having to order things a bit at a time, as I'm paid for various writing and teaching projects...the books trickle in rather than crashing down on us like a waterfall!

Today made me smile because the grammar books arrived. (I know. I'm a geek.) The sweet girl struggled with grammar last year, not because it was too difficult, but because it was too easy. Her grammar skills are strong, and it turned out that Saxon and Hake 6 did a lot of review, too much for a student who didn't need it. Having invested in the books, and still wanting her to keep her hand in with some skill practice, I tried my best to steward the resources we had and utilize them for drill as needed. But I knew we needed something different this year, something that would be less rigorous and more supplemental. I also knew that I didn't want to purchase a full grammar curricula because those tend to be tied to writing programs which we don't need, since we already have a rigorous and fully-formed writing program (Writing With Skill) that really, really works for us.

What I ended up ordering was Exercises in English (grade 7) from Loyola Press. It's a supplemental workbook set to their larger curricula Voyages in English. S. wanted to take a look at it as soon as it came out of the box, and her assessment of it made me smile. She noted right away that it had a bit of color (it's printed as a one-color workbook, green, rather than just black and white) and that the quality of the paper felt and looked great. (Saxon uses a rather gritty and grayish newsprint, probably to cut costs, which I appreciate, but it's quite flimsy and tears easily. And it just doesn't feel substantial enough somehow.)  She also noted that it had graphics, and that the lessons looked short enough that she really can use it as a daily drill. So my visual learner was really happy with the choice. All the things she noted were a big part of the reason I chose it! I've slowly learned over the years that the way information is presented really matters.

I noted the various sections were well-organized and seemed to cover grade-appropriate concepts, both some review and some newer concepts. I also liked the fact that many of the sections involving practice sentences cover good, appropriate topics or themes which I know she'll find interesting. Three topics that I happened to note at random involved outer space, Helen Keller, and the Chronicles of Narnia. It even concludes with a unit on sentence diagramming, something I find valuable and she finds enjoyable and not every curricula includes. All of this bodes well for less frustration and more actual grammar practice in the coming year. Yay.

Thankful Heart

 There are times when I am very hard on myself as a parent. When you have a dear child who struggles, sometimes intensely, with anxiety of all sorts, it's very easy to second-guess yourself at every turn. My daughter struggles hard every day to come to terms with brokenness and uncertainty, and the older she gets, the more she becomes aware how much life is full of both. I have an internal dialogue that goes something like this "Am I pushing her too hard? Am I not pushing her enough? Is she ever going to reach a place of enough healing on some of these issues that she will be able to make it through this life, which is filled with uncertainty, with more joy and peace than anxiety?" I can have those kinds of thoughts even in the midst of a relatively good day or week, when I realize how far she's come, but they especially whack me on the hard days.

So sometimes I just need to sit back, take a deep, trusting, cleansing breath, and remember what a delightful person she is and how hard she is trying to engage life with courage and creativity.

I love it that my almost twelve year old is coming up with creative ways to spend her summer, even in the face of disappointment over changes to long-standing summer plans. I love that she

• is boldly taking a art class at a local art center, where she's never taken a class before
• has an eighteen book TBR stack in her room
• has begun reading Moby Dick just to see if she can 
• is learning new embroidery stitches
• wants to begin daily drawing times again with me in July
• is looking forward to the celebration of her birthday
• is gardening with me again in the community gardens
• is excited about building a model bridge with her dad (they've been measuring things to make it to scale)
• will be taking workshops later this summer to keep her Irish Dance skills fresh
• is loving our family read-aloud of Lord of the Rings
• thinks it's cool that we're learning about the Lord's Prayer from a book by Kenneth Bailey
• is working on an entry for the county library picture book contest

Thank you, Lord, for all the ways you're growing her to be the young lady you want her to be. Thank you for giving me grace as a parent, and for filling up all the places where I know I lack strength, patience, and skill.

Tolkien Summer

I've begun blogging about our family's summer reading of The Lord of the Rings. We began reading Fellowship of the Ring on Sunday night, and I've gotten a couple of posts up since! If you'd enjoy following along, you can find what I hope will be a daily (or at least regular) log here.

Blessings at the Beginning of June

It's been a while since I've been in a regular writing rhythm here, but with the turn into June and our summer schedules, I hope to change that!

We had a beautiful...and I do mean BEAUTIFUL...(note the bold letters!) time celebrating the marriage of our dear friends Erin and Will this past weekend. We've known Will for the better part of three decades and love him dearly, and Erin has been a kindred spirit for close to a decade now too. Witnessing them pledge to live their lives and love together was a lovely moment of grace, and celebrating with them was just plain fun. I think the sweet girl told me it was her "best weekend ever."

Following on the heels of two days of preparation and celebration, we decided to meander our way home rather than to bolt...and it was a good decision. We took Sunday just to rest and enjoy the day and each other. We slept till we felt like getting up, breakfasted at the hotel, packed up, and headed to the peninsula for several hours of sun, wind, sand, and birdsong. We love Presque Isle.

We might have stayed a tad bit too long, but days like that are so rare and precious, it was hard to want to rush anywhere. Plus we all knew we'd sleep well whenever we finally did make it home to turn in. It was a bit hard to hit the ground running again yesterday, but we're moving into gentler summer schedules anyway, and that helped. We're still in transition regarding ministry this summer, which is making us all feel a little bit up in the air, but we're somehow even managing to weather uncertainty with more grace than usual. Thanks be to God! I think the beauty of the wedding has had lingering good effects.

And I can't get Mark Heard out of my head (he serenaded us much of the way up and back): "Love is not the only thing...but it's the best thing."

Summertime Learning: (Or, "We All Get To Be Unschoolers!")

A homeschooling forum I like to visit often makes me smile. I love seeing the posts from parents new to homeschooling who are raring to go and wondering how they're going "to fit it all in." I love seeing the "relax and calm down and let learning happen" posts from the veterans. And I especially love the occasional posts from the veterans who, in that beautiful human way we all have, sometimes lapse again into the "argh! how am I going to fit it all in?" cry.

As educators and parents, homeschoolers or not, I think we've all been there about a hundred times: there is just so much we want to show and teach and inspire our kids with (and in our information age, so much of it seems right at our fingertips) and yet our time is limited. The length of days and our own quotas of energy are finite. There is only so much learning one can bring into a day, week, month, or school year and still have it be effective. There comes a time when we have to take a break, relax, and play -- and yes, I know learning happens in those times too, because really learning never stops. We're always people in formation.

I know some people school year round with intermittent breaks. But for those who take long summer breaks, like we do in our household, I think it's important to remember some of the great ways more formal bits of learning can still infiltrate the summer hours. This is good news for those of us (pointing to myself) who occasionally freak out because we didn't quite make it through that last history or science unit at the end of the school year because we were just too tired -- and our kids were crazy with spring fever.

First, the obvious ways:

Camps/Family Trips/Gardening

Because all of those are great opportunities for learning new skills, seeing new places, and making new friends.

Summer Reading

There are so many ways to inspire your kids to summer reading: bookstore programs, library programs, family generated programs. And then, of course, there is just the old-fashioned way: put a lot of books in front of them and give them copious amounts of down time to read. Yesterday morning, my daughter woke up and didn't feel like getting up for the day, so I let her stay in bed an extra hour and read. She loved it. So hard to imagine doing that in...say...November...but it fits with July.

Quiz Games

My daughter loves trivia games, the question and answer kind like Brain Quest. I've come to love them too. We've been doing Brain Quest cards a lot this summer, using some of the 5th grade level ones we found at a recent library sale. They're not only fun, they help me see what "gaps" exist in my rising sixth graders' knowledge. Yes, sometimes that means I'm recalling the units and subjects we didn't get to as much as I planned last year (Native Americans, botany....) It's also fun to realize all the things your children know that you had no clue they knew. And it provides some mental math practice.

Creative Prompts

Summer is a great time to inspire your kids to write in a journal or to paint or write. If they need creative prompts, there are a variety you can use, online or homemade. We've been having a lot of fun with a set of "Story Cubes" my sister got for us during her recent birthday visit. It's a set of nine dice with different images on each surface. Roll the dice and let the images prompt you to wordplay and storytelling. You could make your own similar set of prompts. Picture prompts, household item prompts...whatever works.

Learning Links

There are so many good online sites that provide regularly updated or daily links. We use some of these during the school year, but in the midst of busy, routine days (when you're trying to make sure you get in all the grammar you need to) it's easy to forget. Summer is a fun time to refresh or update your bookmarks and to let yourselves spend some time just enjoying those resting places for hearts and minds. For instance, this summer my daughter has been making the re-acquaintance of Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Learning Trails

This might be my favorite part of relaxed, "down-time" learning -- the opportunity to chase down learning trails. Theoretically, we try to build this into our school year too -- if something really sparks a learning passion, I try to find ways to guide my daughter to learn more about it. Practically speaking, this is harder to encourage during the school year unless you're an unschooler who lives by that method of learning. The cool thing is that in summer, we all get to be unschoolers for a while! When you're not needing to make sure that the math test is completed, it's a lot easier to say "sure, why don't you learn everything you want to about the Apollo space missions?"  That's been my daughter's favorite learning trail this summer. She's also enjoyed learning about Helen Keller.

There are lots of other ways to build relaxed learning into the summer: cooking projects, craft projects, museums, sporting events, a poem a day. The possibilities are endless. And yes, a lot of these can be elements of a learning life no matter what time of year. There's just something about the less structured season of summer that lends itself to thinking outside the box.

The Beauty of Discipline

Our family has been catching as much of the Olympics as time and our awful television reception will allow. Actually it's been coming in better than I anticipated, though we've had some fun moments of needing to stand (yes, stand) in a very specific place to the left of the t.v. set in order to improve reception! The sweet girl and I have been experimenting with occasional movement to see if that helps. We call it our Olympic dance.

I've been really struck by something during these games in London, and that is the beauty of discipline. There is something truly lovely, sometimes even awe-inspiring, about seeing someone do so well at something that takes a great deal of skill, practice, and dedication. Watching Kenya's Tiruenesh Dibaba win the women's 10,000 meter race this afternoon, with such grace, poise, and joy, I found myself in tears -- and thinking of Eric Liddell's phrase "When I run, I feel his pleasure."

Watching a great athlete perform with tremendous skill reminds me of those moments I have sometimes as a reader or listener. When you read a beautiful stanza of poetry or elegantly crafted passage of prose, when you hear a motif in a piece of music that pulls through your heart like a bow gently pulled across violin strings, there is something wondrous about it. Sometimes those moments happen when we're experiencing tried and true classics, but other times they sneak up on us suddenly -- in the middle of just a solidly crafted piece of work. I had it happen to me the other day when reading the detective novelist P.D. James. I waded into a descriptive paragraph and by the time I got the end of it, I was just filled with delight that someone had crafted words that carefully and well.

As I writer, I've not had many moments like this -- but there have been a few. And I'm convinced that those moments happen more frequently when I am in the most disciplined seasons of crafting. Talent matters in all sorts of endeavors -- from running to writing to making music -- but the discipline of working at a skill day after day after day eventually pays off. And so does the ability to abandon oneself to the sheer joy of doing something well, even if (on any given, particular day) we don't win a gold medal."When I write, I feel his pleasure." Those are the most golden days of all.

Meeting Trixie Belden (A Good Reading Summer Continues)

We are on the eve of our last day of arts camp. Our last day! Seven weeks ago, I would have told you, fainthearted as I am, that we would never make it. But the last day is tomorrow, the closing program tomorrow night, and by this time tomorrow we will all, I hope, be exhausted but happy. Instead of just plain exhausted.

Seriously, it's been a good but highly tiring summer. I'm battling a headache and sore throat and feel like I am limping to the finish line, so I will save my lengthier arts camp ruminations for another time. Tonight I just had to pop in to celebrate the ongoing richness of our family's reading summer. Because the sweet girl has fallen in love with the Trixie Belden books.

To fully understand my glee over this, you'd have to be transported back to a pink bedroom circa 1976. There's a rocking chair in there, a window overlooking the back patio, a record player in a tan plastic case, and a shelf full of Trixie Belden books I'd inherited from my oldest sister.

How I loved those books. I read the eight we had -- devoured would be the better word -- and then began scooping up more. Fortunately there were lots to be had in the 1970s because Trixie was back "in" -- so much so that they'd begun writing new books in the series. I read them all and loved them all (well, except for the last four or five) and I still have some of my old copies, including the battered cameos I got from my sister. How I wish I had them all.

Random House reissued some of the earlier books in the series back a few years ago, and I picked up the first two to give as gifts to the sweet girl. I put them in a closet and -- well, I didn't forget about them exactly, but somehow they faded from prominence (stuff in closets tends to do that). The time finally felt right this summer and she got them for her 10th birthday. We were in the middle of our Prydain summer at the time, so everything else had to go on hold, but a couple of weeks or so ago, we took the dive. Knowing how much these books meant to me in my childhood, the sweet girl asked if we could begin them aloud -- and it has been SO much fun to read these to her. I practically know the first half-dozen books (written by original author Julie Campbell) by heart, and reading them aloud has been terrific fun.

And she's fallen in love with them too. At first I thought she was being extra kind to Mommy -- but no, I can tell. She's laughing in all the same places I laughed and on the edge of her seat in all the same places too. Honey is her favorite character so far, though she just met Brian and Mart, Trixie's older brothers, last night. (We're in the middle of Gatehouse, the third book and my favorite.) We've got Mysterious Visitor, the fourth book, on hold at the library already. (My copy, one of the "uglies" from the 1970s, is in too bad a shape to read -- those were the cheaply made hardbacks that tended to fall apart after your read them twice.)

It's been such a delight to introduce Trixie to my daughter. I had a lot of literary friends when I was a girl, a lot of them far more high-brow than Trixie, but she was the girl I could most easily picture myself actually being friends with. And the books were such a constant of my pre-teen years that I have distinct seasonal memories from a lot of the books -- times when I read Trixie in a patch of grass in the summertime yard, or curled up next to a small space heater in winter, or -- and I'm pretty sure this is a real memory -- after eating a thanksgiving dinner.

Now I can add another reading memory -- sitting on the front step of our little apartment, reading Gatehouse in the twilight while the sweet girl sipped tea in the big folding chair on the sidewalk and a bright moon smiled at us over the sycamores across the street. I hope there will be lots more Trixie reading memories to come.

Community Gardens (Our Little Patch of Green in the City)

Although this summer has been almost completely taken up with arts camp, we are involved in a few other things. For the second summer in a row, we're participating in the local Community Gardens project.

I love having a garden again. Having grown up with one (the big one my parents always planted in the backyard, and my own little garden space) I have spent the past nearly two decades yardless and so missing the chance to plant and grow things. We've got a good sized plot in a raised bed, and we're trying all sorts of things this year -- zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, basil, a few flowers (the sweet girl loves to sprinkle flowers in amongst the veggies, and I'm happy to oblige with easy growing zinnias and cosmos). We attempted carrots -- twice, from seeds -- but they didn't come up either time. We failed with carrots last year too and I thought perhaps it was because we sowed too late in the season. But this year we were well within planting time, and from everything I can tell, we should have been able to get in more than one planting. Still nada. Apparently we are not destined to grow carrots.

The terrible heat wave we recently went through (along with much of the rest of the country) pretty much wiped out our largest zucchini plant, but then it had flourished early, threatening to take over the whole bed, and has already given us several large, delicious squashes. So it has served its purpose. We need to dig out the drying plant soon which will leave room to try something else.

I'm so utterly thankful for this little garden plot. Though I have tried hard to adapt to my urban transplanting and to root out ingratitude wherever it tries to take over the garden plot of my heart, there is just something in my genetic makeup that has made almost fifteen years surrounded by asphalt really hard. I can get physically worn down by the constancy of pavement, tar, and traffic -- the sights, smells, and sounds can make me feel so weary. And I am realizing anew lately how physical weariness can feed into spiritual weariness -- our bodies, minds, and spirits are so connected.

So having a small patch of green and soil I can head to whenever I need to is a true blessing.

 The Garden glows
And 'gainst its walls the city's heart still beats.
And out from it each summer wind that blows
Carries some sweetness to the tired streets.

~Margarent Deland

Yes, and some sweetness to tired me.