Halloween Night!

Oh no! Mutant bugs got into the salad! 

Dried Werewolf Lice with Troll-Barf Dip

Dr. Frankenstein's Brain

Transylvanian Vampire Blood

Spider Webs

Blood 'n Guts 'n Gore

Bloodshot Eyeball de Ghoul

The feast is prepared; the Zombies expected ...

... and, from the shadows, they come ...

FARBLUNGET!!!

Today was "FARBLUNGET" -- a Yiddish word for running around like a headless chicken. I recently bought a first edition of a book called The Flablunget Chronicles (I'm told by one of my friends that "farblunget" is more correct) at my UU church from one of our members, Zisa Moglen. Zisa shares a birthday with Laura, but she will be 70 on 11-11-11 (her Golden Birthday,) while Laura will only be 14. My "farblunget" day consisted of taking Laura and Emma into the Springs for a vocal techniques class and then fetching them (two one-hour round trips,) rushing back to get Paige to harp, taking Laura and Emma to the grocery store while Paige was at harp, fetching Paige, doing the paperwork to get Laura into Colorado Calvert Academy (she's in as an eighth grader) by 4 p.m., and taking Laura down to orchestra in the Springs and reading in the car for the 1.5 hours she was practicing. I came home and made dinner and am now doing some schoolwork with Emma (who is reading beside me.) I suppose it's important to remember that "Farblunget" does contain the letters F, U, and N ...

I've been reading some good books lately by the Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo -- Birdbrain and Troll -- A Love Story. They're both rather dark, but fascinating and unusual. Then I've just finished the most appalling novel by Robert Goddard, Name to a Face. Goddard is apparently very popular in the UK, but not so much out here. The number of surprising coincidences in the plot really stretched credulity.

I'm looking forward to the Calvert curriculum arriving for Laura. I've been going through the training for "learning guides," and it looks simple to use. I'm happy with the Waldorf materials Laura has been using, but I think this curriculum will keep her on track and prepare her better for high school.

Yesterday we had a wonderful experience at Serenity Springs Wildlife Center. Only Paige and Emma accompanied me, so I want to make another trip out there in a couple of weeks with Daniel and Laura. I'll post more about it tomorrow (which should be a less farblunget sort of day.)

Leafs and Rocks

So today we all went up to Broomfield to test drive a Nissan Leaf. It's a wonderful car -- zero emissions, low maintenance (no oil changes or pumps to break,) very safe (low center of gravity due to heavy battery under the seats, no gas tank to burst into flames,) quiet and responsive to drive, and all sorts of neat gadgets like a rear view video that comes on when you go into reverse. The one we liked was electric blue, like this one:

They generally have a range of about 100 miles, so are great for running around town or taking kids to classes in the Springs (about a 40 to 50 mile round trip.) They're already available in twenty states, but we won't be able to get them in Colorado for another three to four months.

After testing the Leaf, we went to Cinzetti's, one of our favorite restaurants, for lunch.

Thereafter we went into Golden to visit the Geology Museum at the Colorado School of Mines. The museum was great! We appreciated the opportunity to take a look around the school, which is one the kids are considering. Being a state school, tuition is about a third that of private schools like Colorado College. Mines and Colorado College are both very appealing. Mines is a research school that goes up to PhD level, so there are likely more opportunities in Mines' specialty areas such as robotics and all types of engineering (environmental, biomedical, electrical, etc.). There are programs at Mines that allow students to take both a master's and a bachelor's degree in 5.5 years (our kids could perhaps knock off two years by going to community college first.) Students from Mines, with their training in engineering and applied sciences, are in high demand after graduation. Colorado College is smaller, perhaps more nurturing, and offers the block system. I spoke to a student at the museum who said a friend of his is at Colorado College. They're both doing geology, and the core classes are apparently identical. He did say that Colorado College has more money, so the students can do "outrageous field trips" -- even to other continents. Well, we'll see ... both look like good options.

Here are some pics from the Geology Museum:

Emma and Paige standing between two halves of a large geode 

Statue of a burro, once used to carry vast quantities of equipment, including sticks of dynamite!

Piece of aquamarine

Rhodochrosite: Colorado's state mineral

Ancient piece of Apatosaurus bone

Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts

This evening (Friday), Paige, Emma, and I visited an opening reception at Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts of Reven Marie Swanson's "Under the Water" exhibit, which featured five giant statues of figures that appear to be swimming. The figures were made from wire, clad in some sort of fabric swimsuits, and suspended from the ceiling.

The center offers some great art classes, including wheel throwing, acrylic painting, and digital photography.

Yahoo, We're Going to the Zoo!

Tuesday was just too nice to stay home. It was one of those gorgeous Colorado autumn mornings -- clear, sunny, and crisp. We ditched school and went to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. We joined as members and had such a good time that we'll definitely go much more often! It's such a beautiful zoo and is built up against the mountain, so one gets quite a workout climbing up from one exhibit to the next.

Some pics ...

Giraffe with baby

Grey crowned crane

Meerkat

Zebra

Paige and Laura looking at some monkeys

Mountain lion

Grizzly bear

Amur tiger

Amur tiger again 

Laura with a cockatiel

Paige feeding a cockatiel

Emma holding a cockatiel on a seed stick

Alligators

Gyrfalcon

The last picture was not actually taken at the zoo. It was taken last night (Wednesday) at an Aiken Audubon Society meeting at the Division of Wildlife building in Colorado Springs. Two falconers (cadets from the Air Force Academy) brought over a 19-year-old gyrfalcon. Apparently gyrs rarely live beyond 12 years in the wild. At the AFA, they're fed, protected from predators, and given veterinary care at Fort Carson, so they can live two to three times the normal lifespan. They eat quails that are defrosted and then cut open; beak, legs, and wings are removed. 13 falcons live at the AFA, including three pure white gyrs, some peregrine falcons, and a few mixes of different breeds. The cadets went to Abu Dhabi to learn about falconry, where they were offered $250K for one of the white birds. However, they don't buy or sell birds. All birds they have are given to them. Apparently only 1% of gyrfalcons are white, and gyrs are the most rare of all falcons. The cadets handle the birds at AFA sporting events and display the birds before the games and at half-time. On one occasion, one bird, Ace, didn't return to his handler. He wasn't hungry, so he didn't bother and took off.  It was dark and gyrs' main predators are owls, so the cadets were getting anxious. A couple of cadets searched for him for three hours using a tracking device and were eventually able to lure him back (by that time Ace was getting hungry, so he deigned to return for food.) In the history of falconry at AFA, which started in 1959 -- the same year the academy opened -- only one bird has been lost (it returned to the wild.) The gyr was fairly small. Apparently hawks are larger, and eagles are larger again than hawks. One of the cadets told us that if an eagle were on a jess and leash, it could dislocate one's shoulder by trying to take off. They've had limited success breeding falcons at the AFA. They artificially inseminate some of them once a year, but it's rare for a hatchling to survive. However, one of their peregrine falcons, Aurora, recently had a daughter, Athena. Both like to nip, apparently, and frequently draw blood. The cadets complained that "Athena has turned into her mother." We'll have to go to an AFA football game some time to see the falcons in flight.

Love Wins

I always enjoy our UU services on Sunday mornings. The theme this week was based on the book Love Wins by Rob Bell. Bell seems to have had much the same sort of sentiments as George Carlin expressed in this youtube clip, except that Bell decided to give God a bit of a pass -- not only on being mean and punitive, but also on not existing. Instead, he appears to promote the Christian Universalist view that everyone goes to heaven and all we need is love and Luke 10:27. We UUs aren't necessarily Christian, so our view of universalism is rather that we are all inter-connected, although the Golden Rule always applies. We also listened to the following poem by Stephen Dunn:

At The Smithville Methodist Church by Stephen Dunn

It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.

She liked her little friends. She liked the songs
they sang when they weren't
twisting and folding paper into dolls.
What could be so bad?

Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith
in good men was what
we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,
that other sadness.

OK, we said, One week. But when she came home
singing "Jesus loves me,
the Bible tells me so," it was time to talk.
Could we say Jesus

doesn't love you? Could I tell her the Bible
is a great book certain people use
to make you feel bad? We sent her back
without a word.

It had been so long since we believed, so long
since we needed Jesus
as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was
sufficiently dead,

that our children would think of him like Lincoln
or Thomas Jefferson.
Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief
to a child,

only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story
nearly as good.
On parents' night there were the Arts & Crafts
all spread out

like appetizers. Then we took our seats
in the church
and the children sang a song about the Ark,
and Hallelujah

and one in which they had to jump up and down
for Jesus.
I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain
about what's comic, what's serious.

Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can't say to your child
"Evolution loves you." The story stinks
of extinction and nothing

exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have
a wonderful story for my child
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car
she sang the songs,

occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do
but drive, ride it out, sing along
in silence.

We UUs don't necessarily "have stories nearly as good." Our pastor suggested that we create our own stories with passion that tell of our own belief systems and keep us away from cynicism and despair. I'm not sure this is any less of a Hobson's choice than George Carlin's description. I guess that's part of the attraction of UUism to me -- that we know that we don't really know. We embrace rather than reject cognitive dissonance. 

Friendship

We had an excellent sermon on the theology of friendship at our UU church yesterday. The pastor talked about abandonment (dropping one's guard,) accompaniment (being there for friends,) and awakening (growth through friendly advice) as aspects of friendship. The children's story was from A. A. Milne's collection and was about friendship between Christopher Robin, Piglet, and Pooh. Our pastor read the following poem by Polish poet and 1980 Nobel literature laureate,  Czeslaw Milosz:

Christopher Robin

by Czeslaw Milosz

I must think suddenly of matters too difficult for a bear of little brain. I have never asked myself what lies beyond the place where we live, I and Rabbit, Piglet and Eeyore, with our friend Christopher Robin. That is, we continued to live here, and nothing changed, and I just ate my little something. Only Christopher Robin left for a moment.

Owl says that immediately beyond our garden Time begins, and that it is an awfully deep well. If you fall in it, you go down and down, very quickly, and no one knows what happens to you next. I was a bit worried about Christopher Robin falling in, but he came back and then I asked him about the well. “Old bear,” he answered. “I was in it and I was falling and I wore trousers down to the ground, I had a grey beard, and then I died. It was probably just a dream, it was quite unreal. The only real thing was you, old bear, and our shared fun. Now I won’t go anywhere, even if I’m called in for an afternoon snack.”

Climate Change

       Now I've got the blogging bug again, so I'll sound off on anthropogenic global warming. As part of our home school, we watched a DVD course from The Great Courses  called Earth's Changing Climate and taught by Professor Richard Wolfson. The statistic that most stuck in my mind was that we're putting about 90 Gt of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, while only about two of those get absorbed back into the ground via the carbon cycle. Unlike water vapor, which cycles in and out of the atmosphere in a matter of days, carbon dioxide hangs around in the atmosphere for decades, so it's accumulating. The current scientific consensus on climate sensitivity appears to be that doubling CO2 causes an increase in global surface temperature of approximately 3ºC. (Water vapor has a significant effect on increasing temperature, but is a feedback and not a forcing in that increased temperatures from CO2 lead to more evaporation.) Current temperatures differ from Ice Age averages by only about 6ºC, so relatively small changes can have huge effects. Houston, we have a problem!
       I'm always a little puzzled by the vehemence with which AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is denied, usually with the same old, oft-debunked canards that blame solar activity or claim Earth's surface has been cooling since 1998, etc. These claims have been made so often that their refutations have for convenience been collected here.
       Forbes magazine and all the Rupert Murdoch news outlets love climate skepticism, so it was no surprise to learn recently from Forbes that New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole in Climate Alarmism . Well, maybe not so much. The article was written by Heartland Institute journalist, James Taylor, and the NASA article he was referring to merely indicates that aerosols in the atmosphere have a slight negative forcing that is causing global surface temperature to rise a little slower than was predicted. Then Real Climate jumped in with a refutation of the original paper published in a journal called Remote Sensing and written by Roy Spenser and Danny Blackwell. The comments are of as much interest as the article.

Tennis!

I haven't blogged since April, but since then we've visited the Grand Canyon, Bryce, and Zion, have had cousins from Chicago to stay, and have been busy with all sorts of music recitals, summer activities, etc. Shame on me! I'll go back and post some older photos at some point, but in the meantime I'm going to jump into the present with Emma's tennis. She started out this summer playing tennis with Grampa Bernie and attended two week-long tennis camps. This morning she played over at the local high school with her grandfather and dad. Here are some photos:

Emma says that when she's about to hit the ball, everything else leaves her mind and she feels totally focused. It was so pleasant over at the courts this morning (I didn't play -- just took photos) that I'm inspired to join her, so I'm going shopping for tennis shoes this afternoon. Emma and I plan to play every morning. Go Em! 

Break a Leg!

Paige, Laura, and Emma have been busy with drama classes over the last few months. Between them, they have taken vocal techniques (singing,) acting, and musical theater. On the 15th and 16th of April, they presented their performances.

Emma disguised as a window cleaner in Women Who Won the West

Above: Paige and Laura as Dr. Holmes and Dr. Spacey in Chicago E.R.R.

Above: Laura takes the stage in Hairspray

Publish Post

Southern California

I know it's April, and we went to Southern California back in January, but I still haven't posted some of our holiday pictures, so here goes ...

These were taken at Disneyland:

These were taken at the Marriott resort:

These were taken at sunset on the beach:

China Overtakes Japan as World #2 Economy

Here's a good reason to learn Chinese. And here is one place to learn it.

Suzuki Piano

I want to make good citizens. If a child hears fine music from the day of his birth and learns to play it himself, he develops sensitivity, discipline and endurance. He gets a beautiful heart.

—Shin'ichi Suzuki

Much to my joy, Paige, Laura, and Emma have decided to return to piano:-) Jennifer, our wonderful strings teacher, will be teaching them using the Suzuki method. I'm so excited that I'll be learning too -- Emma and I are going to take lessons together! I dropped by the music store today to pick up the books and CDs. Being a beginner and largely self-taught, I've developed the method of scrutinizing the score and then simply trying to plunk out the notes in correct sequence with little regard to tempo, phrasing, dynamics, or even rhythm. The Suzuki method emphasizes playing by ear rather than by "eye" and has some similarities with natural language acquisition, so I listened to one of the songs on the CD several times. It sounded quite different from my initial rendition and gave me a model to imitate. 'Thrilled to have this opportunity!

Sloth Mothering

       I've been reading some fun articles about sloth mothering (as opposed to tiger mothering.) In The Lullaby of the Sloth Mother, the author confesses to finding grades irrelevant and allowing her children to play with flour and pretend it's "pixie dust." In The Surrender Hymn of the Sloth Mother, the author just admits we Americans are all spoiled brats and that it's easier to let one's kids run free than it is to, you know, control them or encourage them or something. "I am Sloth Mother, hear me snore," she concludes. And in The Battle Hymn of the Sloth Mother, the author suggests that loving one's children so much that one cannot assess them with "dispassionate objectivity" and accepts them just as they are is more important than constantly evaluating them, critiquing them, and pushing them to their limits.

       While I have a definite affinity for sloth mothers, of which I am one, I think I've been too hard on Amy Chua. In her book, she says she gets accused of pushing her kids for her own sake, rather than theirs. "Do you do this for them or for yourself?" people ask accusingly. She says she always wants to turn that question around and ask whether others neglect their kids for their children's sake or for their own. She makes a good point. It can't be easy to dedicate hundreds of hours of one's life to supervising instrument practice sessions, to attend one's children's music lessons and take notes and draw diagrams so one can guide them to improve, to research and select the top music teachers (as opposed to the closest or cheapest) and spend hours each week driving one's children to lessons with them, etc., especially when one is employed full-time as a Yale law professor. There does seem to be an element of self-sacrifice there, even if Chua's methods are not those I would recommend. 

       Also, she's being judged by members of a culture so very different from her own. She says she "has a family name to uphold and aging parents to make proud", concepts quite foreign to our cheery, relaxed, optimistic western culture where "the pursuit of happiness" is enshrined as a human right. 

       Well, now that it's after 11:00 A.M., this sloth mother should probably try to round up her sloth children, who have spent most of the morning playing with their pets (I think one sloth child is still asleep,) and plead with them to do a very modest amount of schoolwork. It seems I have to agree to having a puppy in bed with us if my youngest is to condescend to do some history.

Yet More on Tiger Mothering

       I finally got my copy of Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" from Laura, who read it with absolute disgust. I've finished reading it and am still sorting through it in my mind.
        Amy Chua doesn't come across as quite the monster she appears to be in the Wall Street Journal article, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior. She has made it clear that she didn't select the title for that piece and that it is misleading, which is partially true. 
       In the book, she reaches an epiphany after her younger daughter, tough little Lulu, then 13, publicly melts down at a restaurant in Moscow. She screams at her mother, throws a glass on the floor, and embarrasses Amy so severely that her mother is shocked speechless and runs from the scene. As Amy runs sobbing across Red Square, she realizes that she is going to lose her daughter unless she modifies her approach. She realizes that she has been too demanding, particularly in her insistence that Lulu become a violin prodigy. For the first time, she questions her own omniscience and considers the situation from Lulu's viewpoint. She begins to understand that Lulu sees the violin as a symbol of oppression. She eventually returns to the restaurant and announces, "Lulu, you win. It's over. We're giving up the violin" (note the use of the first person plural:-O).
       This is the climax of the book and a turning point in the relationship between Amy and Lulu. Lulu decides to continue with the violin, but on her own terms, and makes the decision that tennis is to be her chief interest. Amy accepts this reluctantly at first, but soon starts up her "Tiger Mom" antics as Lulu proves herself a talented tennis player and begins winning tournaments. This time, however, Lulu is forewarned and forearmed. She firmly communicates to Amy that tennis is her world and that she needs to keep it free from maternal interference.
       I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for Amy Chua. Yes, she seems nuts, but look at her own background. She grew up never being good enough. To come second was to shame her family. When, in eighth grade, she came second in a history contest, her parents attended the award ceremony, where someone not named Amy Chua won the prize for best all-around student. Her father's response was to tell her, "Never, never disgrace me like that again!" As a result, she became a perfectionistic over-achiever. 
       She went to Harvard as an undergraduate and then a law student, but felt she then became trapped in a high-status career she didn't enjoy and that she found unfulfilling. She admits to having a hard time enjoying life. She seizes on her young children as a way to fill the emptiness in her life. Through them, she decides that she will achieve, so she starts them on piano and violin at the age of three and then pushes, pushes, pushes.
        In his article, Beyond Chinese Mothering, David Shenk quotes psychiatrist Peter Freed as saying, "The parent beams when the child performs well and then withdraws love when he's underperforming. The kid becomes addicted to pleasing the parent. When he doesn't live up to the parent's expectations, he feels his parent go cold, which of course is totally devastating. That on-again, off-again feeling about how love works sets the stage for narcissism."
       Amy Chua describes being raised with just this approach, which, right on cue, appears to have produced a narcissist. She basks in the reflected glory of her children's achievements and depends on their success for her own happiness. She sees her children as extensions of her own ego. When Sophia, her elder daughter, comes in second (oh, the shame!) on a routine math facts test in fifth grade, Amy is so personally wounded that she has the poor child doing 2,000 timed math problems per day until she starts coming first again. Amy writes in triumphalist tones that Yoon-seok, the offending math competitor (she insists on pointing out that he is Korean), eventually returns to Korea. The unwritten sentiment seems to be that he retired in defeat from "the battle field," leaving ueber-competitive Amy fully vindicated and dancing in gleeful triumph.
       In the early days, with both Sophia and Lulu excelling, she received many compliments about her girls. She describes those times as "some of the best days of my life." Problems began as the girls improved and began competing against other top music students, meaning that they started to hit walls. When Lulu, after years of psychotically intense coaching and a brutal schedule of lessons and practice, was not accepted into the Juilliard pre-college program, Amy was devastated. It was thereafter that her struggles with Lulu became unbearable.
       In many ways, Sophia and Lulu were and are incredibly privileged. They had traveled all over the world before they reached their teens and had been taken to see the cultural highlights of many major cities. Their parents must have spent tens, possibly even hundreds, of thousands of dollars on their music lessons, and Amy gave enormous amounts of time and energy trying to accelerate them and extract every last drop of musicality from them. They go to one of the most expensive private schools in the country. However, as Lulu kept telling her, Amy appears to have done most of this for herself. 
       Family therapist, Jane Shua, in her response, Why You Shouldn't Follow Amy Chua's Parenting Advice, suggests that parents can choose "power and control over another to boost your ego, or connection and closeness built upon encouragement and respect." Another response, Paul Buchheit's The Two Paths to Success, suggests either finding ways to make achievement fun or finding ways to do something else. 
       I love this advice. An english professor once advised me never to finish reading a book I was not enjoying. His justification was that there are too many books I would enjoy to be able to read them all in one lifetime, so why waste times on those that aren't fun? So too, I think, with all endeavors. I think that was the lesson of Chua's book -- a lesson that she, with some ambivalence, ultimately came to accept. 

Dolphin Mothering

       A number of responses to Amy Chua's new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, are circulating the web.
       One I particularly like is Erika Christakis's The Call of the Dolphin Mother. Dolphin Mothers apparently appreciate the value of play for their young, are nurturing, and are protective while encouraging independence. They are creative, flexible, and can develop new teaching tools. And, man, can they develop tools and teach their young how to use them. Check out this National Geographic article: Dolphin Moms Teach Daughters to Use Tools. Top that, Tiger Moms!
       Christakis also points out that Tiger Mothers sometimes cannibalize their young. Now please do not tell me that Dolphin Mothers occasionally do the same. I don't want to hear it! I'm still getting over learning, after virtually worshipping sea otters for their cuteness for years, that sea otter males are complete Neanderthal cavemen in their intimate relationships:-O Please don't shatter my faith in another marine mammal.
       I love the Dolphin Mother idea. When I used to sail at Hout Bay back in South Africa, dolphins would often frolic in the wake of the boat. They always gave the impression of being so happy, enthusiastic, playful, friendly, and full of joie de vivre. Their lives seemed to be filled with sheer delight and fun. I hope my children are able to lead "dolphin lives" that allow them to happily follow their own stars (or wakes of boats.)



versus



       Then Ayelet Waldman came up with a tongue-in-cheek essay, In Defense of the Guilty, Ambivalent, Preoccupied Western Mom, in which she describes how she readily allowed her children to quit piano and violin and appreciated thereby being delivered from having to endure her children's music recitals. Unlike Ms. Chua, Ms. Waldman also allowed her children to have sleepovers and enjoyed the resulting savings in babysitter costs. She's honest, self-effacing, and amusing, and leaves me thinking that none of us really has a handle on this parenting thing. Maybe not even dolphins.

"Extreme Parenting"

       The article, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, by Amy Chua, a Yale law professor, is making the rounds. My reaction to it was quite negative, although I think it was probably written somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Imagine making a 7-year-old practice piano hour after hour, pushing her past the point of exhaustion, forbidding her to go to the bathroom or to get a drink, just so she could learn to play "My Little White Donkey" perfectly! There are so many things in life that are both beneficial to children and fun. Why push a child into performing a task that might have some cultural merit, but that makes her miserable? 
       A counter-article, Amy Chua: Model Chinese Parent or Insufferable Elitist came out that makes fun of Ms. Chua's aspirations. I loved some of the comments, especially, "Consciously find ways to make your upbringing and your strengths into your competitive advantage. Otherwise, be prepared to work for a violin-playing, emotionally repressed, socially-retarded perfectionist for the rest of your life," and "Classical violin and piano lessons …the bane of the offspring of China’s parvenu nouveau riche."
       Another counter-article, Is Amy Chua right ..., was more depressing. One of the respondents described how her perfect, straight-A, high-achieving sister suddenly committed suicide at the age of 30. Other respondents drew attention to the unusually high suicide rate among high-achieving, young Asian-American women:-( 
       The article leaves me conflicted. In part, it makes me want to raise my kids to be street sweepers so that they never, ever have to experience this sort of stress and misery and violation of self. In part, it also makes me concerned that they'll be left in the dust by ueber-achieving, over-disciplined little robots.   
       Ms. Chua would probably think I'm a terrible mother. I never make my kids do anything. I break every one of her rules. We encourage the kids to have playdates and sleepovers and get involved in acting and play instruments other than the piano or violin (they have a little rock band going on.) It's an absolute given to me that my children choose their own extra-curricular activities. Waldorf education, in which children are encouraged to exist in a dream-like state until the age of about seven, and then to learn experientially and holistically until about 14, is very appealing to me. Within the Waldorf system, rigorous and traditional academics don't really start until age 14. 
       In spite of their relative freedom, my kids seem to be doing OK. Laura practices her viola for about an hour a day because she loves doing so. I know that falls short of the three hours expected of Ms. Chua's children, but Laura is progressing beautifully without any pressure. Paige does occasionally play her harp for three hours a day -- always and only by choice. Daniel has an exceptional GPA and mostly owns his own schooling. Emma reads a great deal and enjoys writing spontaneously. 
       I'm sure Ms. Chua, as we all do, genuinely loves her children and believes she is doing her best for them. Given that they're excelling musically and academically, she does have a point to make. However, I don't think one should forget that the work of childhood is play. Childhood is both brief and precious. It seems sad that it should be spent in a drab, gray world of repetition and pressure and coercion, rather than in having fun. One of the responses I've always enjoyed from my children when I ask them to do some home schooling is a slightly impatient, "Sorry, we're busy playing."

Legoland day!!!

       Craig is going to take a coalition of the willing (Daniel, Laura, and Emma) to Legoland, while Paige and I relax at the resort.
       Yesterday, Paige and I walked down to the beach and played in the tide pools.

Paige at Crystal Cove State Park

The Pacific Ocean

       It's interesting to be back in a big city after living in a little town with a population of about 8,000. It seems to me that people here in the LA area become desensitized to having people around them, just as animals in the zoo become oblivious to the crowds staring at them. The animals know people are there, but they become so accustomed to the fact that they develop a degree of detachment. People here are pleasant and friendly if contact is initiated, but usually it's not. Back home, people are much more inclined to acknowledge the presence of others with a nod, a wave, or a greeting.