The only connection is me

Just sayin'…
Earlier this month, I saw August Osage County in which the character of the only teenager among much older relatives says she doesn't eat meat because it's eating an animal's fear.

This week I'm watching the Robin Hood TV series from 1955. A character is eating his own food rather than sharing a feast, and says venison is bad to eat, because deer live in fear, which causes melancholy humors, "which when eaten causes a superfluity of yellow bile: gall."

I'm the juncture of those two; I connected them by seeing them both in a short space, and telling you about it.

I'm having lots of fun with this series. Because it's black and white and they were half-hour episodes, each disk has 13 episodes or so, and there are 143 in all. It will take most of the summer.

The music is good. Costumes are fun. Props are great.

They were made in a studio that doesn't exist anymore—Nettlefold—that sold most of its equipment to Shepperton Studios, where many favorite and famous movies of the past few decades have been made. I love following little trails like that.

Finding things in pairs, and old fears

I'm finding things in pairs lately, which partly seems great, and partly shows how much stuff I have to find/discover/rediscover.

Yesterday in my office, looking for something else, I found the original of this art. I had no idea where it had been, and I didn't think it was on website. I was right.


This morning, looking for some old code for a plain date count-down, I found the art. Its name was "carnival2." Ah… a blog carnival! So I looked around the code on that page and found a link to a blog, poked around, found it from a phrase… That's a lot of moves, and it's surprising that I found the art (on paper) AND online (by coincidence) in a short space of time and of… space.

I had responded to a blog carnival with a piece of art and one sentence full of links. It was August 2006. They linked me back to here: Trust and Freedom for Unschooling.

I slowed way down on my use of "freedom" after it was so misundersood and abused by other families whose lives were not freedom on top of learning, but freedom (it seemed) without regard to learning. Freedom to live without enrichment. Freedom to live without closeness with thougtful, attentive parents.

But my children did have lots of choices, and leeway, and options, and parents helping them safely navigate their explorations.

In the same "test" file with lots of snippets of html code and notes where the "everything" art was, I found another piece of writing about my fears and my confidence, as an unschooling parent, regarding my children. Just recently there was a chat on fears, and I hadn't remembered having written this:

I used to worry strongly about what would happen if I died, when my kids were eight and ten and unschooled. I was very fearful of leaving them in the lurch partway through the project. But as each has turned 14, give or take a year, the whole worry flowed out of me regarding that child. Each of them blossomed HUGELY right after the rough early puberty, and I think that right at this moment any of them would make it fine without parents. I wouldn't think the same of the schooled teens I know around me, who are suspicious and resentful of adults, who avoid eye contact and have learned to just say what they have to say to get adults to ignore them too.

My kids are, by contrast, direct and cheery, honest and responsible.

Often I'll look at them through the lens of something I'm reading about or thinking, or a period movie I've watched. Could the boys be sailors or soldiers if they were in another place and time? Easily. They would be among the best, if they had good reason to go and do those things. Either of them, right now, would make good parents. Holly's still a little young, at 13, but there are times in which she'd've been in the early stages of arranged marriages, and could she do that? Yes. She's physically young, but she's emotionally and mentally more aware of social issues and human factors than many adults, and she's not thinking maybe she understands it, she knows she has some clear understandings.

She knows.

That feeling of fakery and fraud that people have talked about for the past few decades seems absent in these kids. What they don't know doesn't scare them, and what they do know is solid.

Sandra

photo by Jasmine McNeill in Camden Market

Holly was 13 nine years ago, so 2005, probably. I don't know where I wrote it.
Found it! Always Learning, July 2005.
So here's a photo of Holly that Spring:

Unfinished projects

In my office, in my sewing room, on my computer, even on my iPad… unfinished projects, writing started, photos not uploaded, notes to myself, lists of things to do.

2014 is full.
I've already been (exhaustingly) to Texas, and then Australia and then Texas again. Now...
Rochester,Minnesota in late May/early June
Santa Clara, California in late July/early August
Camden, Maine in late September (when trees are showy!)
Las Vegas, Nevada in November for the Marty's wedding
Albuquerque ALLive at the very end of December.

In 2015 (an early resolution) I hope to Stay Home a lot. More than I have for years.
It doesn't mean I won't do things for family, and for unschoolers. It means I will (I hope) do them from home, and in the process, finish some of the hundreds of small and large things I've started.

"What do you do?"

In February, a guy was piercing my ears, I said I was going to Australia, and would speak there. He asked what I speak about, and I said "I help parents be nicer to their kids," or some such.

Even though I've been doing what I'm doing for many years, I haven't come up with a clear picture of what it is. On a site that wanted a description of me, I wrote:

I write about peaceful parenting and unschooling, on a blog, website, a weekly chat, and two ongoing discussions. I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Is that it?

In a video made in 2009, I said "My whole life had been about learning and about education. That's what I always wanted to do from the time I was six— to be a teacher. My other backup plans were to be a missionary or a journalist. Pretty much I cover those three every day."

A commentor on that video wrote:

this chick is of the influential breed. she doesn't seem to be out to prove her intellectual prowess as much as share her positive experience with the natural learning phenomenon. imagine if we had to teach our stomachs to digest what kind of trouble we would be in.

but I think he might have been talking about Holly (about another video, which has some really foul, rude comments and it makes me cranky to go there).

I help people, usually in my own way, on my own time.

---

Here are links to the itemized list from that first quote above:

I write about peaceful parenting and unschooling, on a blog (Just Add Light and Stir), website (SandraDodd.com), a weekly chat Unschooling Chat), and two ongoing discussions Always Learning on yahoogroups, and Radical Unschooling Info on facebook.

Learn while you can.

THREE MONTHS. Get ready.



The Seventh Time.

A couple of fibs, from Australians

A guy on a show about advertisements said that Australia was the premier vacation destination for Americans. I hadn't heard many people I know talk about Australia. Marty would. Keith used to want to visit New Zealand. I know half a dozen people who've visited Australia, and I'm 60. My guess would have been Europe—UK, Italy.

Turns out it's Hawaii, then Europe, then Australia. Or it was recently, and it was in 2008.

Hawaii Tops List of Dream Vacation Destinations (report of a Gallup Poll in 2006)

And the first link I found is why I knew there WAS such a Gallup poll.
Where Americans Want To Travel And Why (2013)

It's not where Americans DO go, internationally. One of those would be Mexican resorts, or Caribbean cruises, because there are specials and packages offered all the time. Lately, cruises on European rivers, because they're advertised all the time, and people who have been on them say good things.

The question the Gallup poll asks is if money were no object, where would one like to go.

Part of what that second article says is "3. Australia – This answer surprised me. Not because I disagree, I love Australia. It surprised me because it’s not a trip to be taken lightly. It’s far away, on the expensive side and requires at least a couple of weeks to visit. Americans don’t typically travel that far away and we definitely don’t have multiple weeks of vacation to spare."

True about vacation. People who are old enough to afford that sort of vacation probably have three or four weeks of vacation in a year. Not like Germans with six weeks from a young age. People in their 20's *might* have two weeks' vacation in a year if they have great jobs.

So people can tell the Gallup poll "Australia," but it doesn't mean they can get there, so the claim baffled me. But it sounded good, in its context, I guess.

The other claim was that Australia's school system is exemplary and other nations look to Australia. I had never heard a peep about Australian schools in my life, outside of knowledge of "school of the air" for kids on remote cattle stations, when I was little. Public school by radio. That's been a while. The remote-school still exists, but it's online now.

Friends and strangers were all friendly in Australia. They reminded me of people in the southwestern U.S.—talkative and generous with time and knowledge. These two claims of "premier" status both seemed bravado, and maybe each speaker believed what he was saying as he said it, but I don't think either is nearly true.

Australia has commissions or organizations to promote education (studying in Australia) and maybe that's where the propaganda originates. If "propaganda" is too strong a word, perhaps there is rhetoric that is spoken and heard and sounds like truth.
http://www.austrade.gov.au/Education/Home
http://www.innovation.gov.au/internationaleducation/Pages/default.aspx
http://australia.gov.au/topics/education-and-training/international-education

Windmilk, windmild...

I have no explanation.