Thoughts on Waldorf Traditions

As I mentioned a few days ago, I've been editing the Waldorf Education article on Wikipedia. There is a core group of editors, both supportive and critical of Waldorf, who have been involved for many months, working to improve the article's neutrality and breadth of content.

One of the editors who (if we were taking sides outright) would be on the "con" side, has pointed out that in many Waldorf schools, things are done out of tradition or dogmatic following of anthroposophy, the spiritual philosophy that is the basis for Waldorf methods. I've found this to be true as well.

One big example is the Michaelmas festival, which I wrote about here this autumn. I love this festival, which comes at my favorite time of year. I won't go into much detail about it, but the essence of the imagery is that Michael the Archangel overcomes the dragon. There are many metaphorical layers to this image: light vs. dark, spirituality vs. materialism, truth vs. deception.


Most (if not all) Waldorf schools in the US celebrate this festival, as I'm sure do most European ones. This festival is greatly appreciated in the anthroposophical world, and was lectured on many times by Rudolf Steiner, the creator of Waldorf education and anthroposophy.

However, I think this festival is currently celebrated by schools as a matter of tradition, where many other autumn festivals could be worked with equally well. This kind of tradition, coming from Steiner's (and the first Waldorf school's) Western European and Christian background, has been criticized as being overly eurocentric and Christian given the multicultural nature of modern America.

Steiner admonished us to think freely at all times, never to follow dogma or a guru blindly in place of our own free will. If we think freely about the Michaelmas festival, we may see that it is a celebration of light, of spirit. Many other festivals, or even newly created celebrations, could just as effectively represent these universal concepts. Several that come to mind are Hannukah, Divali, and Samhain. Extending the image to harvest time as a gathering of cosmic light into our food, I think of Sukkot, and Lughnasadh.


Don't get me wrong, I think the festivals as celebrated in Waldorf schools are wonderful, full of rich imagery that speaks to our spirits. And if Waldorf schools choose Christian European festivals, I have no problem with that in and of itself if that is the school's conscious choice, perhaps reflecting the composition of the student body. My problem comes when these festivals (and other practices) are chosen simply out of blind tradition, and do not truly speak to the multitude of cultures reflected in our population.

10 "V" things I like

Well, I'm just too fried right now to think very creatively, so I'll just take a stab at the "letter meme" passed on to me via Helen and Charlotte. I may have to bust out the dictionary for this one.

1) Violet. This kind of pastel color has steadily infiltrated my wardrobe since my kids were born. Waldorf early childhood theory says that babies need soft colors, more similar to what we think the womb is like, than the bright colors that are more appropriate for older children. So, I've come to peace with pink and violet after years of dark colors.

2) Vacation. I really like the sound of that. The last several vacations have been to see family, which is wonderful of course, but not the same as lounging on the beach with a fruity drink, or sleeping in all day with room service.

3) Velcro. Because it makes it possible for my toddlers to take off their own snow boots.

4) Vinculus. The grubby fortune-teller from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I like how he was the bearer of the prophecy of the Raven King, yet was a total mooch not above shouting for gin amongst gentlemen. (Not my favorite character though; that would be Childermass.)

5) Vis medicatrix naturae. (Oh yes, we're using the dictionary now.) "The body's natural ability to heal itself." I'm a big believer in that, though as I commented to Papa Bradstein recently, that might just be my stoic Swedish upbringing.

6) Volcanoes. While I've never been able to see an active volcano, I was thrilled once by finding lots of obsidian at the foot of Mt. Konocti, a dormant volcano in Northern California. And I take a certain satisfaction that SillyBilly shares my love for volcanoes and can even tell you about pahoehoe and a'a.

7) Valentine's Day. While I've never celebrated it much, it's hard to argue with a day that revolves around love, presents and chocolate.

8) Vasilissa the Beautiful. A wonderful Russian fairy tale, beautifully illustrated by Ivan Bilibin. I love Baba Yaga, the old cranky forest wise woman/hag/witch who travels around in a pestle, and lives in a house that can walk on its chicken legs!

9) Volkswagen. We had a VW squareback when I was a little girl. I could always tell when my parents were coming to pick me up from school by the distinctive sound of the motor. Very fond memories.

10) Vermeer. Every painting is a glimpse into the culture and daily life of 17th century Delft. He was a master of light and texture, making things like a woman's skin or a glass goblet luminous.

Slightly off topic

I realized recently that I haven't been posting much on my stated topic, all things anthroposophic. That's not to say that I haven't been thinking about it, au contraire, it has consumed most of my spare time and some of my spoken-for time as well.

As I recently confessed to (un)relaxeddad, I've been contributing to the Wikipedia article on Waldorf Education. It's been a bumpy ride, with the article currently blanked out due to arbitration proceedings regarding edit warring and other unkind activities (I'm not named in the arbitration; I just like to edit things!). But beyond the verbal sparring, I've been really pondering some of the issues being raised about Waldorf schools and anthroposophy. More on some specifics later.

Thanks to Anthropapa, I got a moment's respite from it all with this: isotope2.

It's entrancing, after you figure out the controls. Try to make something simple, and see if it "completes" itself.

Adventures at the mall

Today was Mama's day out. Well, Mama's 2 hours out, but still.

I had to get a few articles of clothing, so I ventured out to the mall. Now, this isn't just any mall. This is the third largest mall in the U.S. It has 4 stories, over 400 stores, an ice rink, and a ferris wheel. Inside the building.


I'm not a big fan of malls. They are usually crowded, noisy, and overwhelming to the senses. Not to mention being huge temples of materialism! But in this case the only location for a shop I needed was in the big mall. I've tried catalog ordering but for clothing I often have terrible luck getting correct sizes. So, off I went to try things on.

The clothes shopping went pretty smoothly for once, and I had planned on going to a craft store before heading home. As I got off the escalator on the third floor, I saw it and all my plans changed.

There was a Books Kinokuniya.

I had been to the store in San Francisco's Japantown several times. It was a wonderland of Japanese paper products, enormous loads of mechanical pencils and gel pens, and books. I remember it as an interesting glimpse into Japanese culture: beautiful washi paper alongside plastic Hello Kitty stuff.

Well, the West Nyack Kinokuniya was all that, and more. The juxtapositions were even more jarring: beautiful books about sushi and ikebana alongside manga and amigurumi. I love manga just for the titles: All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, Fruits Basket, and the ever-popular Super Dimensional Fortress Macross II. And the oddest of all: Japanese women's magazines with Italian names. Oggi and Domani. Today and Tomorrow. I...don't...get...it.


Needless to say, I did not make it to the craft store. I got sucked into the children's books section (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in Kanji!), of course the writing implements (sorely inferior the S.F. store) and the books (very weird crochet diagrams).

World Famous

So, I've been thinking about the little ClustrMap in the sidebar. I found this fun little thing on Zygote Daddy's blog, and thought it would be cool to see where people are coming from when they visit my humble blog.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing that I had penetrated every continent (excepting Antarctica-- I somehow doubt anyone at McMurdo Station is interested in toddlers)--thank you Brazil! Thank you Egypt! And some unlikely places: Sicily, Iran, Guatemala....


One problem I have with the ClustrMap is that the resolution is pretty bad. It's hard to tell where some of those dots are: Is that someone from Iran or Oman? Hong Kong or Guangzhou?


And then I wonder about some of those unlikely places...are the hits from countries like Iran or China caused by trolling internet censors? Or are there people interested in Waldorf education or something else I chose to write about?

Memes are quick, memes are fun, here comes another one

This one courtesy of Charlotte's Web. I had drafted a "25 things about me" post back in September, and never got past #13. Not sure if that's an indication of extreme banality or lack of creative thinking, but anyway...I trimmed the list down to 6 and now I feel successful.

1) I was in a Polaroid advertisement Christmas 1975. There was a full-page ad in both National Geographic and Time magazines, and a largish ad in the Los Angeles Times newspaper. The ad company evidently came to my school looking for kids and chose me. All I remember was having to sit on this old man's lap while holding an empty box wrapped as a present, and being told "pretend he's your grandpa". That might explain the slightly contemptuous yet confused look on my face.

2) I used to belong to the Society for Creative Anachronism. My persona was Venetian. I used to attend wars and help my friends make armor. Lots of medieval country dancing and mead-drinking.

3) I've never been to another country, not even Canada or Mexico.

4) I had a joint injury once every seven years: hip dislocation at birth, fractured wrist at 7, both knees dislocated at 14. Then the curse was broken!

5) In college I used to attend the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Nuart Theater in West L.A.

6) I have designed and/or sewn Medieval, Renaissance, and Victorian dresses and costumes including a dog, snake (with 3 foot long tail), trees and bushes, and a ball of flame!

Another green meme

Thank you to Jennifer (ponderosa) for this wonderful meme, also called the Ethnobotany Meme by SandyD. I love learning about native plants so this is particularly welcome.

Think of the plants (trees, flowers, etc) which grow within 50 yards of your home. Which is your favorite?

The maples...I think they're Norway maples, not a native like the Sugar maple. I'm feeling a bit abashed that I can't properly verify this. One problem is that it's 10:30 pm and about 35F out so I'm not inclined to go check the bark, buds or leaf shapes (if I could find any still in one piece on the ground).

Is any portion of this plant edible in any form? Can you boil the root, eat the berries, make tea from the leaves?

We can make maple syrup from the sap.

Can you use any portion of this plant to make something that would be truly useful for you? Alternately, can you use any portion of this plant to make something just for fun, just one time?

For fun, we made leaf crowns this autumn. Maple wood would be extremely useful for making furniture or other durable wood products (like flooring).

Can this plant survive on the groundwater available to it, or does it need to be watered?

We don't water anything around here...plenty of groundwater and precipitation.

Do you see any other creatures -- birds or bees or squirrels -- using this plant?

I've seen squirrels and chipmunks eating the seeds; nuthatches, bluejays, hawks and woodpeckers using the trees for food and/or shelter.

What does this plant look like right now, during this season and at the time of day you're writing?

Right now the maples are bare of leaves but quite colorful with lichens of many sorts. (Of course, right now it's pitch black night so I'm conjecturing from what I see in the day!) The bark is a grayish-brown, a bit furrowed but not greatly so. The branches make incredible patterns against the sky, particularly when it's cloudy.

So Little Time

By way of explaining why it's been so long between posts, here's what's on my plate right now:

1. Getting over a nasty cold that included an entire weekend of laryngitis. Even a week later Napoleona is still asking "You can say it louder Mama?" and Papa is very pleased that at least one part of me resembles Demi Moore. (Sorry Papa, as soon as my raspy throat recovers, she's outta here.)
   
2. Helping Napoleona through nightly bouts of coughing as she gets over the same nasty cold. Sucked it up and bought conventional cough suppressant after homeopathics didn't do much.
   
3. Working on a freelance editing job. (Finally! A paying job! Woo hoo!)
4. Trying to find a permanent editing job.
   
5. Reading and commenting on all my favorite blogs.
6. Editing and commenting on a Wikipedia article. (Won't say which one, too much acrimonious stuff going on behind the scenes there. I want to tell these people: come on, it's only a collaborative encyclopedia, back away from the keyboard and take your happy pill of choice.)
7. Reading all the cool books being recommended on my favorite blogs.
8. Trying to convince SillyBilly that I'm not a mean Mama, I'm just THE Mama and a 4-year-old doesn't get to tell me what to do. Toddlers, grrrrrr.
9. Figuring out what clothing items we still need to get for the Huntlings now that we actually have started winter around here. Currently 22F with 20-30 mph winds, crusty remnants of Friday's snow shower littering the ground.
   
10. Shipping books out to BookMoochers.
11. And then there's the cleaning, cooking, diapers, shopping, etc. that still must be done every single day, day after day, endless days upon days. Must...take...a...vacation!
    

The Green Meme

This meme was created by charlotteotter. I've added #10 at the end.

1. What do you for the birds and the bees?

Not much right now, I'm afraid. We planted a few annuals in the garden this summer, but otherwise since we're renting and most of the surroundings are foresty, we're not gardening much. I'm teaching my kids all about birds and bees though. They've learned that bees are our special friends, without whom we'd not have most of our food.


2. Household products. Chemical or organic?

Organic mostly. I use baking soda in the kitchen constantly. It works wonders on the crusty stove gunk. I use Seventh Generation cleaning spray on the toilet. We use chemical laundry detergent, mostly because of price. I can't believe how many loads of laundry four people generate.


3. Do you junk?

We get junk mail, though not so much. Moving several times in the last few years has helped. What we do get goes to be recycled.

4. Air-dry or tumble-dry?

I use the dryer for everything except woolies and unmentionables. We just inherited a massive drying rack that is now proudly standing next to the dryer. I'll use it more in warm weather.


5. Old gadgets. Recycle or toss ‘em?

We try to buy things that will last. Then if they're truly unwanted, we either donate them to a thrift store, or use Freecycle, which is particularly good for old baby things.


6. Lightbulbs - incandescent or fluorescent?

My husband has a problem with the quality of the light from fluorescents, so we use incandescents. But I'm pretty dogmatic about turning lights off when we're not in the room.


7. Meat or veg?

Well, we eat meat in many forms. But we also eat a lot of organic vegetables and fruits, and I try to have meat-free days often.


8. Loo paper. Virgin or recycled?

We've tried recycled toilet paper and paper towels, and frankly the quality was lacking. We use cloth bags at the grocery store, and we recycle paper and cardboard. We've got a pretty comprehensive recycling service here so our trash volume has gone way down. We used to use cloth diapers, then Seventh Generation paper diapers, and now we buy mainstream paper diapers.


9. Tap or bottled water?

We only buy bottled water for long car trips. Otherwise it's the tap, though the chlorine is pretty yucky here. We used to use a faucet filter but now our sink is too shallow for that! So we're trying to figure out what else might work.


10. Dating - metrosexual or ecosexual?

I'm not sure I totally understood this one, but our family is all on the same page as far as environmentalism.


11. Compost?

We have two huge compost bins about 50 feet from our front door, but we're still trying to figure out how to fit a compost bin in our tiny kitchen. The compost goes over to the biodynamic garden next door from whence we get vegetables and honey. So, it's my goal to increase our level of composting.

Well, looking over my answers, I'm not too impressed with myself. Many of my unsatisfactory answers come down to cost, meaning we don't have enough income to buy certain ecologically sound products. However I think we're doing some other things that are equally important. We only have one car, bought used, and driven only a few thousand miles a year. We cancelled most of our magazines and newspapers, and get our news and entertainment online. We use mostly rechargable batteries. Unfortunately we're all well aware of what we should be doing, but there's a disconnect between that and what can actually happen. Onward and upward, I guess.

An Odyssey of Eating

When Anthropapa and I were first together, we ate food that was, well, at least filling if not nutritious. I remember many Boboli pizzas, McDonald's breakfasts, bean burritos, steaks and pasta. We would buy vegetables with all seriousness, and then let them rot in the fridge for laziness and ignorance. And I remember at least one week when we visited our favorite sushi bar four times. Ah, the days of wine, roses, and disposable income.

Then at some point we started to eat in a more healthy way. More vegetables were cooked instead of thrown out. Boboli disappeared in favor of brown rice. This happened, to be honest, partly due to changes in the disposable income arena. But I'd say we had become more conscious of many things in our lives: around this time we stopped watching TV, started using alternative medicine, and became much less acquisitive in our spending habits.

Now that I am staying at home with the Huntlings, I've turned another corner food-wise. I've developed an interest in making things from scratch. Last night I made turkey-vegetable soup with dumplings. For dessert we had apple-pear-cranberry crisp. I can make sauce Béchamel, and from that, sauce Mornay--the snooty French version of cheese sauce which makes all vegetables instantly edible to toddlers.


Now, I'm saying this not with hubris, but with a modicum of amazement. Our diet regularly includes such oddities as kale and rutabaga. I can cook quinoa. And I make possibly the yummiest roast chicken around. Where did all this come from?

Some of my major inspirations include Joy of Cooking, Nourishing Traditions, On Food and Cooking, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and the Little House Cookbook.

And a plug for Anthropapa: he makes rockin' kombucha!

The Anonymizer Has Spoken

I've just gone through all my posts and changed my kids' names to nicknames. My son is now SillyBilly and my daughter is Napoleona. I know there are still links to our photo blog, and I'm sure their names are in the comments somewhere, and I'm not sure if this action even increases our privacy or security, but it somehow makes me feel better.

I found through Technorati that a very, very weird site had linked to one of my posts about my son. I never wanted to go this route, trusting in the universe and all, but in the immortal words of Beethoven and Milan Kundera, Muss es sein? Es muss sein.

Wordy Meme

Thanks to Helen and (un)relaxeddad for passing this one on, I couldn't resist.

A word that describes me is:

Wooly. Because I love wool sweaters, wool knitting yarn, needle-felted wool toys, sheepskin rugs, etc. Love love love winter!

My favourite word is:

Oh, how to pick just one. How about this: raunchy. It's got such a great crispy sound, yet the meaning is so grubby and smutty.

My least favourite word is:

A tie between mischievous and irregardless. Because it's NOT mis-chee-vee-ous, and somehow I don't think people are really trying for a double negative. Maybe people think they can make themselves sound better or more educated by adding random syllables.

Use these two words in a sentence:

Irregardless of his politial persuasion, the mischievous blogger felt no compunction about posting raunchy pictures of the senator.

A word I have to think twice about pronouncing is:

Cavalry. I always want to say Calvary, and I'm pretty sure there were no mounted units with Jesus at the Crucifixion. (Though that reminds me of the funniest line from Love, Actually: "We've been given our parts in the nativity play. And I'm the lobster.")

Dictionaries. Printed or online?

Printed. I rely on The New Oxford American Dictionary, though it would end up at the thrift store in 2 seconds if I could ever afford the ginormous, amazing Oxford English Dictionary (and a house big enough for it). Now on sale for only $850.00 for the 20-volume set!!

A word whose meaning I cannot seem to retain no matter how many times I look it up is …

Sesquipedalian: adj., given to or characterized by the use of long words, a word with many syllables. Not a very useful word unless you're trying to sound overly erudite. Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditiones habes!

Open a dictionary to a random page and find a word you don’t know. Post the word and its meaning.

farruca: n., Spanish. A type of flamenco dance.

Use the word and the word you can never remember in a sentence.

She was too breathless from dancing the farruca to respond to her partner's sesquipedalian conversation.

One of the most overused words in my area of work/study is …

Poop. We're potty training.

Children and Food

I think it's clear that we have a problem with eating in the US. Either we are obese McDonald's-eaters, or we are anorexic-bulimic fashion model wanna-be's. Somehow we have lost the ability to just enjoy a variety of foods in moderation. And not surprisingly, this problem has filtered right down to our children.

When I read about 6-year-olds worrying about their weight, I feel sick. Children should learn to love food and to eat in a reasonable fashion. They should not worry about being too fat or too thin, or about calorie intake or fat grams. They shouldn't have to think about food much at all, other than how yummy it is.

Evidently even those public officials concerned with our children's health can't seem to see clearly:

Here, in the rural Southern Tioga School District, the schools distribute the state-mandated [body mass index] reports even as they continue to serve funnel cakes and pizza for breakfast.

Um, OK. Part of the problem is economic: the article goes on to say that the district tried to offer field greens and kiwi fruit in cafeterias, but due to high costs they went back to the old iceberg lettuce and canned fruit. Because of government subsidies, processed foods are often much cheaper than whole fruits and vegetables, undermining any public health drives toward better nutrition.

Part of the problem is cultural. I remember savoring baloney/mayonnaise/white bread sandwiches as a child. Now I couldn't choke that down, but that's after many years of reprogramming my taste for healthy food. I imagine many of the kids in the NY Times article eat more pizza at home than kiwi fruit.

I'm doing my best to encourage my kids to have healthy appetites for a variety of foods. I acknowledge that I have unusually game children: for lunch we had homemade seaweed salad sushi rolls made with brown rice. For dinner we had homemade split pea soup and whole wheat biscuits (savory scones not cookies, for my UK and Australian blog friends!). They regularly chow down on mixed green salad. I know it's not uncommon for small children to want nothing but, say, yogurt three meals a day. But I think the key here is to serve nutritious food, model the behavior of enjoying the food, and not make a big deal of it.

And get off your duff and play outside!

Chaos in Everyday Life

It seems like most of my days are spent doing housework. With four people, it's incredible how many dishes and loads of laundry pile up, not to mention cooking, sweeping, cleaning up toys, vacuuming, making beds...the list goes on.

It's a challenge not to be overwhelmed and uninspired by the endless nature of housework. But I've got a few resources to help me practically and spiritually.

The title of this post comes from a wonderful article by Linda Thomas written for Kindling, an early childhood journal from the UK, available online through the Online Waldorf Library. Linda is the manager for cleaning services at the Goetheanum, the headquarters of the General Anthroposophical Society, in Dornach, Switzerland. This is a huge building, which includes a 1000-seat auditorium. So, this woman knows about cleaning on a large scale.


The inspiration for me comes in her words about the deeper meaning of cleaning and caring for a space and its inhabitants.

"Order seems to have this special quality of merging into disorder without much effort, yet the opposite never occurs. I have to consciously intervene in order to re-establish the lost order."

Oh yes. It's as if she's in my house, after a few hours of the Huntlings playing and scattering toys about. The thing that strikes me is that creating order needs to be a conscious activity, whereas chaos can be created without much thought at all.

"When I clean, I do not simply want to remove dirt. I consciously try to create space for something new."

I've noticed that when their room is very messy, the kids have a hard time playing. It's too distracting and chaotic for them. But if we spend some time tidying up then they can begin playing again.

"If we are unable to lead the meditative, spiritual life we wish to lead, we can try to find a spiritual attitude towards everything we do in our daily lives....Often it is not the work we have done which tires us. It is the mere thought of all the things that still need to be done that really exhausts us."

This rings true for me. I've been a big-league procrastinator all my life (still haven't sent out 2006 Christmas cards, oh well) and have always felt overwhelmed and depressed by big cleaning tasks. Of course this leads to a downward spiral of bigger, more intimidating messes. I've learned to break things down into manageable bits, and usually find that I can finish the big tasks even if they looked insurmountable before I started. So I've discovered it's all in the attitude. And if I can remember that caring for my home is a loving act toward my family, then it's all the easier.

Another inspiring book is The Spiritual Tasks of the Homemaker, by Manfred Schmidt-Brabant. He looks at homemaking on an esoteric level. Just as many people believe we have guardian angels, Schmidt-Brabant talks about the elemental beings that surround us. Some of these beings are represented in the old stories of house brownies or gnomes, or in fairy tales like the Elves and the Shoemaker. While we won't actually see brownies in our homes, Schmidt-Brabant says "...the elemental world is everywhere where there are processes going on within matter." When we fail to clean a forgotten corner of the house, movement stops in that place, and the life seems drained out of it. We joke around our house that sometimes a certain shelf or corner becomes "invisible", because we've stopped paying attention to it and it's cluttered or dirty.

Schmidt-Brabant looks at the homemaker as the center of the home, the creator of the family unit. Through the work of the homemaker, the material world of the home is humanized, and therefore spiritualized. He also describes the home as the carrier of modern culture. Previously culture was shared and strengthened through geographical proximity. Now with our pluralistic societies (I'm assuming he's speaking of Western culture primarily) we no longer have this community support, and must develop our family's cultural life ourselves.

And then, there's the scarily practical, big yellow book: Home Comforts : The Art and Science of Keeping House, by Cheryl Mendelson. Scary because, while a very helpful reference book, it also includes such minutiae as three ways to fold socks; a chapter titled "Peaceful Coexistence with Microbes"; and schedules for daily, weekly, monthly, semi-annual and annual housekeeping. Oh my.

Respecting the little people

Sometimes I marvel at how hard it is to be respectful of my children. I mean, I birthed them, still change their diapers, and can pick them up and carry them. So it's hard to remember that they aren't little beings for me to control.

I try to think about it like this: if this child were an adult, how would I be acting and speaking in this moment? Would I be yelling? Probably not. Would I spank them? Probably not (consenting adults excepted, of course). Would I constantly be telling them what to do? Probably not.

It's easiest for me to remember this on occasions where my child might need help. Usually when one of them falls down, I watch and wait instead of rushing in to pick them up and make a fuss. Perhaps I acknowledge their fall verbally, "Oops, you fell down. Back up on your big strong legs!" (this last comes from my neighbor Heather, a nice affirmation of their physical capabilities). But otherwise I don't intervene unless they seem truly hurt or upset, just as I might do with an adult who trips and falls. And even then I tend to be on the calm side, so that they don't become total drama queens, or at least any more than their natural proclivities!

When my son was born, I took a parenting class through Rudolf Steiner College, where in addition to Waldorf methods, I learned about RIE, or Resources for Infant Educarers. The amazing thing about RIE was that it taught me that children, even infants, mostly need us just to be present, but not necessarily actively directing them. When my son was an infant and needed a bit of extra help with his physical development, I found just letting him move freely on the floor, with a few toys for motivation, and me sitting quietly nearby, allowed him the space to learn and grow at his own pace. I think it allowed him to be confident in his body, and secure that I was there for him without interfering.

Nowadays it's a bit harder, with two toddler/preschoolers full of emotion, needing to assert independence whether it's convenient or not, and way too smart for their own good! I need constant reminding that they are human beings, albeit small ones, with their own agendas and destinies. I am here to keep them safe, be a role model, and shower them with love. Everything else is just my stuff getting in the way.

A tree severely pruned

I've been getting back into genealogy research lately, because I don't have enough projects to keep me busy, yah right.

On my dad's side, I can trace one shoot back to about 1600 in England, with very early immigration to what would become Massachusetts. Pretty exciting stuff, reading about long ago ancestors fighting in King Philip's War and the Revolutionary War, owning large farms and mills, and generally being interesting colonial people. (With the family name Blood, how could they not be cool? Still looking for any links to pirates.)

On my mom's side, I can trace her father's ancestry back about as far back in Sweden, thanks to a cool hand-written family tree her father passed down.

But on my mom's mother's side? Her grandparents are the oldest generation, and for them and their relatives I have almost no information. Thanks to the Holocaust, it's a complete dead end. The only thing I can find is that some of them indeed died, in Auschwitz and Riga, Latvia. Thanks to some combination of luck and pluck, my grandmother made her way to Shanghai, China where she met my grandfather and continued our family line. Otherwise we'd all be not even memories, just some tiny bits of data about lost grandparents in some backwater of the internet.

Bleh. Maybe I have reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I'm depressed because of lack of show and balmy weather!!

The stuff that's been littering my brain

Last night as we went to the the car for a dinner out (no-one was up for cooking or cleaning) Napoleona took a flying header as she ran down the road toward the parking lot. She cried for a while but all seemed well. Then this morning as I'm changing her clothes I discover a huge bonk on her upper forehead, complete with puffiness and those little red spots from the rough concrete. Felt like a very lame Mama for not checking under her bangs last night. Have been assiduously applying arnica gel ever since.

I've been reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Such a depressing book really. For purely financial reasons we've been eating less organic foods lately, and for some reason more meat, and now it all makes me feel queasy reading this book. So now my brain is filled with thoughts of the interdependence of cheap corn, feedlot animals, fractionated corn products comprising most processed foods, farmers going bankrupt, cows heavily medicated to accept food they were never meant to eat, why potato chips and Wonder bread cost less than fruits and vegetables, and the fact that there are now more "overnourished" people in the world than undernourished. Can't wait to get to the section about hunting and gathering, hopefully much expanded from his article in the NY Times Magazine of 3/26/06.

Funniest holiday moment: the 10 minutes it took the kids to notice the play kitchen next to the Christmas tree, because they were too distracted by passing out presents and opening stockings. Grandpa literally had to say, I think there are more presents under THAT BIG THING OVER THERE!!!

Saddest holiday moment: the night before Christmas eve, spent cleaning and soothing Napoleona as she spent the whole night throwing up in her sleep every 20 minutes.

Most Christmasy holiday moment: singing Silent Night holding candles in Grammy's church with the kids.

Most annoying holiday moment: realizing that the only snow we were going to see for the entire vacation was on the day we were leaving to go home. Grr!

All Quiet on the Holiday Front

Well, things have been really quiet here in blogland. We spent 7 days in New Hampshire with Grammy and Grandpa, which was great overall.

However we all got some sort of stomach flu, so that at any one point in time at least one of us had either vomiting or diarrhea. Luckily on Christmas day everyone felt OK, and we were able to fulfill SillyBilly's wish to cut down our own Christmas tree.

I had true intentions to post here while on vacation, but it never happened.

On a completely different note: anyone have any opinions on blogging with WordPress?

What I'm doing instead of wrapping presents...

I found a link to these incredible Goddess dolls on Strollerderby. I've never seen something so original in "Waldorf" style toys.

Whoever can make a cool little doll out of Kali (complete with skull necklace), Tethys (with tentacles and cowries) or Boudicca (torc, woad and all) is simply awesome.

I've been thinking a lot about how the Waldorf world is a bit stuck in convention and dogma (another future post), so it's refreshing to see someone branching out a bit.

Yet another meme...

I'll have to add memes as another reason to blog! This one courtesy of White Thoughts.

Yourself: wheezy

Your partner: unsettled

Your hair: shiny

Your mother: silly

Your father: happy

Your favourite item: shell

Your dream last night: lonely

Your favourite drink: coffee

Your dream car: biodiesel

Your dream home: tidy

The room you are in: stuffed

Your ex: none

Your fear: inadequacy

Where you want to be in ten years: farm

Who you hung out with last night: Anthropapa

What you’re not: slim

Muffins: chocolate

One of your wish list items: space

Time: naptime

The last thing you did: breathed

What you are wearing: angora

Your favourite weather: cold

Your favourite book: magical

Last thing you ate: chocolate

Your life: transitioning

Your mood: curious

Your best friend: Anthropapa

What are you thinking about right now: blogging

Your car: surviving

What are you doing at the moment: breathing

Your summer: green

Relationship status: working

What is on your tv: dust

What is the weather like: cloudy

When is the last time you laughed: 11:30

What's a Blog For?

I've been trying to figure out why anyone blogs. Here's what I've come up with:

1) To keep in touch with friends and family, especially with pictures.
2) To express their opinions.
3) As a creative expression.
4) To disseminate information.

Those are all nice reasons, but what's missing for me is true dialogue. I love reading comments on this blog (LURKERS: please quit hiding and tell me what you think! I know all those ClustrMap hits mean something.) I love posting comments on blogs of friends and strangers alike.

Maybe I'm just missing something about the technology, but blogs don't seem to engender real dialogue. Perhaps threaded messages work better, I'm not sure.

The Blogger function where I get an email every time someone comments here is great, except unless I have that person's email address already, I can't respond to them other than commenting in my own post.

O ye 3-4 readers, what do you think? Why do you blog?

Wasting time instead of making Christmas presents...

Congratulations. You are 38% dork.

Almost, but not quite, entering the realm of dork-dom. You know that computers are capable of some nifty stuff, and you've even tried to partake in it. Ultimately, however, you enjoy natural lighting too much to really clinch the title of 'dork'.

The dork/nerd quiz
Quizzes for MySpace

2-year-old non-sequitur land

We like to expose the Huntlings to many cultures and religions, so they're familiar with Jesus and Buddha (I have to read up a bit more on Mohammed), Christmas and Hannukah, etc.

Yet the following comment from Napoleona still amazed me:

We're sitting at the dinner table, talking about nothing in particular that I can remember, when all of a sudden we hear a little girl voice say

"The Buddha said, life is suffering."

Whoa nelly, we've got a live one.

...On a stack of Bibles?

I just read about the incoming Muslim Congressman who is already under fire because he wants to carry a Koran at his swearing-in ceremony. I can't help but comment.

Asking a Muslim to swear an oath on a Christian Bible would be completely illogical, because the Bible is not sacred to Muslims.

Now, we here in the US have a powerful cultural image of our politicians taking oaths on a Bible. However, as the Monitor points out, this is actually a cultural image (from the swearing in of the President) and not an actual requirement of office.

Au contraire, it would actually be a violation of the US Constitution to require anyone to swear any religious oath: "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

I feel that I have to quote Dennis Prager, something I would not normally do, in order to most aptly express the opposition to Keith Ellison's consitutionally protected religious expression:

"Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress."

Last I checked, America has about 300 million people. Saying that "America" is interested in only one thing is ridiculous. Does Prager think we work on absolute consensus here?

I agree that a nation can have shared values (shared by a majority and/or historically in that culture). And I agree that the Europeans who first colonized this country were Christians.

However I disagree that for the US the Bible is the only religious document that expresses our values. President Bush's first campaign focused on "compassionate conservatism." What better to teach us about compassion than the Dhammapada? Where can we find a better guide to ethical, generous charity than in the Torah?

Prager again, in a more recent response: "The Bible is the repository of our values, not the Constitution ... and I'm asking him to honor that and include the Bible along with the Koran."

Last I checked, things like freedom of speech and religion, both protected in the Constitution, were American values.

Books We Love

As we are surrounded by gifts at this time of year, I have been thinking about one of my favorite things: books. We are a big bookish family. SillyBilly, who is 4, wants to read but can't yet. We're not pushing him, but if he wants to, he will (I learned when I was 4 as well).

So, I've been thinking about desert island books. The ones we couldn't live without.

Huntlings

Anything by Shirley Hughes
These books are marvelous for young children. Alfie and Annie Rose happen to be just about the same ages as my children, so we delight in reading about their adventures. The books have a lot of humorous situations and detailed illustrations. We love Out and About for its seasonal poetry and images.




Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel
These stories are very funny for kids and parents, and are short enough to be good bedtime reading. Frog and Toad are sort of like amphibious toddlers: they can't stop eating cookies, they have tremendous misunderstandings, and they love both a good walk outside and a warm bed at night.






Seasons books by Gerda Muller
We especially like these books because they have no text; we can make up stories and talk about the detailed pictures afresh each time. They are large board books so that they are sturdy yet not too "babyish" for big brothers to read!



Anything by Jan Brett
These books have very detailed illustrations and are full of good humor. Often there are little surprises, like the animal-shaped mountains in Daisy Come Home, or the hedgehogs that appear at least once in almost all of her books.

Anthromama

Any fiction by Wendell Berry
The stories about the fictional Kentucky town of Port William make me laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page! The characters are so well developed that I believe these are real people that Berry knows. The stories are beautifully intertwined and reflect a deep love for traditional farming communities.




The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
I keep coming back to this book time and again. I love how the characters are so richly drawn, written with both humor and sympathy for their foibles. The three protagonists could not be more different in background and personality, yet they forged friendships that lasted decades.






Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea

This book is full of Irish myth and legend in a contemporary setting. Some of the characters are unforgettable: a talking earwig who thinks he's Napoleon, and the gods Angus Og and Brigid disguised as tinkers Patsy and Boodie. The plot is full of adventure and good bit of horror for a "children's" book. I also like the beautiful and tender way the older brother looks after his little sister.



Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
I have read this, along with the subsequent Green Mars and Blue Mars, again and again. I'm not a huge fan of techie science fiction, but these books balance the science with intriguing socio-economic ideas and enough plot to keep things going. I'd say the first book of the trilogy is the best.





Belinda by Anne Rampling (Rice)
Pure, unadulterated escapism. An erotic/romantic suspense novel about rich artists living in Italy, San Francisco and New Orleans. I read this when I don't want to use too many brain cells to enjoy myself.

Equal time for goofballs

Because little girls can be just as silly as their brothers...

Random goofy pictures of the boy...

because he's been away with Grammy and Grampy for a week and I miss him!

A boy and his dress

I just finished reading this article on gender confusion in small children (from a link at daddytypes).

Wow. What to do? I'm torn between the idea that a young child should be supported emotionally, and the idea that as parents part of our job is to teach our children about the culture in which we live. What's the happy medium between self-esteem and social ostracism?

My son has expressed the desire to wear pretty clothes, including his favorite red flowery dress. However he doesn't say he wants to be a girl, and most of his other chosen activities are typically masculine (as defined in our culture) such as playing with tools, toy cars, going to Home Depot with Anthropapa, and trying to sneak in gun play whenever he thinks I'm not looking.

We decided to compromise on the dress-wearing thing. I told him it was for "dress-up" time only, when he and his sister put on play clothes, fairy/butterfly wings, funny hats, etc. And the other boundary is that we only play dress-up inside the house. I feel like I'm protecting him from negative social judgments, while giving him a safe boundary in which to express that part of himself.

However, I have also made a point to tell him gently that "where we live, usually only girls wear dresses." (We did know a man back in California who would regularly wear sarongs, but I don't think SillyBilly remembers that!)

I feel like I'm helping him learn what is expected in his cultural milieu. But am I making him feel bad about himself at the same time? The NY Times article said "Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood grow up to be gay". I've felt strongly from before his birth that I will support and love him in whatever paths he takes -- though we joke that we won't support him being a pimp, killer-for-hire, or right-wing Republican : ) -- but am I subtly telling him that wanting to be more feminine is wrong?

Holiday traditions

It's that time of year again. The time when I struggle to create traditions for our family.

I struggle because there are too many conflicting sources of symbolism, ritual and custom to choose from. I grew up with a completely secular Christmas celebration. Now my mother celebrates Hanukkah, and in the Waldorf community many people celebrate both Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas/Holy Nights.

One year before the kids were born, we combined Advent and Christmas by putting up a live (in a pot) Christmas tree at the beginning of Advent, and each week added decorations based on the kingdom for that week (mineral, plant, animal, human). That was nice, but impractical now.

With the kids we've started having an Advent calendar, and on their nature table I will be adding the kingdoms each week until it's time for the Nativity figures. We're not religious, but the Nativity is such a basic image of life, birth, light, family, etc. that we've chosen to incorporate it.

The symbols of Christmas are so rich, and so full of ancient wisdom. I love to sing old songs like "Green Grows the Holly", "The Holly and the Ivy", "Deck the Halls" for the kids because they are so full of winter images, pictures of the triumph of life over death. And then the more religious songs are wonderful too. Rebecca sits oh so still and gets a far-off look in her eye when I quietly sing "Silent Night" to her. Even if she doesn't understand all the words, the mood of the melody says something to her.

Then there's Santa Claus. Not an image that has remained unscathed in our materialistic society. However someone once reminded me that he could be seen as a visitor from the spiritual world, flying about the starry heavens bringing gifts from above. So for now, Santa brings the little things in our stockings, and the presents under the tree are gifts for each other. When the kids get a little older I'll bring in the relation to the gifts of the Magi a bit more.

Now that we live in a cold climate, we've started to focus more on snow and winter. Last year we made borax snowflakes, a very cool craft. Candles and strings of lights pop up all over the house to drive back the darkness of the winter.

Another part of the struggle is that we have been away from home every Christmas. We're always with one set of grandparents or another, so it's hard to feel that the home celebrations are complete. We're not home for the last week of Advent, or the week after when I would put the Holy Family and the Three Kings on the nature table. The Advent calendar goes unopened, unless we bring it with us. We've not had a Christmas tree since we're not home to attend to it (and it would just become a big, messy cat toy.)

Privacy

It's funny how little comments can stick with you. Over the holiday weekend, Grammy asked if we ever worried about putting our kids' pictures and names on the internet, because of "predators".

I've never given that much thought. Perhaps I'm naive but I just can't imagine anyone taking the time to track down some random child. I know my kids are gorgeous and brilliant, but what could follow from someone reading this blog?

But then Anthropapa pointed out that all of our favorite parents' blogs use pseudonyms for themselves and their kids. So I'm wondering, what level of privacy is necessary? What are the assumptions behind the privacy of information on the internet? What are the actual risks?

Any thoughts, O my loyal 2-3 readers?

Thinking Thanksgiving Thoughts

We're starting to get ready for Turkey Day around here, busily stuffing the fridge and doing strategic cooking planning. It will just be 4 adults and 2 kids, but we'll still cook the whole shebang. We decided on a mostly native foods menu this year, with turkey, bread stuffing, cornbread, wild rice, green beans, peas & pearl onions, cranberry sauce, apple pie and pumpkin pie. Lots to give thanks for.

I got a little book for the kids about Thanksgiving, but what a hard decision. There were many to choose from at the local chain bookstore, but most of them are either too cartoony, or don't seem to be telling a story even remotely close to the real history. The one I chose seems to be trying to tell most of the bits that would be comprehensible to young children, without the religious persecution, Manifest Destiny, King Philip's War, native peoples ravaged by smallpox, etc.

I did find a cool website about The First Thanksgiving, as part of my research into my latest burning question: Puritans vs. Pilgrims. I thought that they wouldn't be called Pilgrims until they left Europe, and that they were called Puritans in England.

Turns out in England the initial Protestant splinter group was called Puritans, which then split further into an even more radical reformist group called Separatists who sailed on the Mayflower, then in early Plymouth they were First Comers, then Forefathers and then Pilgrims.

I also learned that the first settlers were heavily indentured for many years by merchant investors, and that they had already moved to the Netherlands more than 10 years before sailing from Southampton, England. There is no evidence that the Pilgrims landed on any rock in what was later named Plymouth.

Anyway, now I need to find a little ritual with the kids to help them remember what they are thankful for. Any suggestions?

But then, they make up for it...

Tonight before bedtime SillyBilly made a little bed on the floor for his most beloved friend, Banjo the puppy. He then proceeded to sing lullabies (Oh How Lovely is the Evening and This Little Light of Mine) in a quiet, off-key, little boy voice. He also played the pentatonic lyre very gently and softly to complete the bedtime mood.

Tantrum Land

Well, we've reached a new phase in the Anthrohaus....tantrum land. Napoleona has decided that it's her way or the highway, about every living thing. Today at Target she wanted to ride in the giant carts with two kids' seats in the front, and when I said no she started freaking out. Those behemoths weigh about a thousand pounds and invariably one wheel has given up the ghost. So using one is pretty much like steering a water buffalo through quicksand, and I just wasn't up for it.

So now my challenge is, how do I work with her to 1) calm her down so her shrieks don't pierce my eardrums, 2) get her to listen to what I am trying to say, and 3) remember to not freak out the next time, all without resorting to major violence?

She is pretty stubborn, but luckily she's only 2 1/2 so I can still rely on some mother's helpers: distraction, her complete lack of rationality and logical thinking (oh yes, that's actually helpful sometimes), and my newest friend, Consequences.

We've been becoming more and more acquainted with Consequences lately...

"If you can't stop screaming and sit calmly in the cart, we will have to leave and go home."
"If you hit your brother again, you will go sit in your room."
"If you step into the brook and get wet, we will have to stop playing and go inside."
"If you don't start using nice words and an inside voice, Mama's head will explode and you'll have to clean it up." (Haven't actually used that one yet, but it's been tempting.)

Sometimes distraction works well: "Hey look, those seagulls are eating up all the french fries that lady just dumped out of the back seat of her car!"

Sometimes irrational thinking works: "If we keep our house neat and clean, the monsters will be repelled by its beauty and stay away!" (Caveat: I'm not big on scaring kids into submission, so I tread carefully with this one. I have never said "If you don't clean up your room, the monsters will come for you!"...but I have been tempted.)

And then there's the bonus action of the big brother egging her on or having a tantrum of his own....

Light and Dark

I’m finding myself a bit melancholy this autumn. I think in some way I’m experiencing a true autumn, in that the profound changes in nature in this part of the world in this season have really penetrated my emotional life. Though I don't celebrate any festivals honoring the dead like Samhain, All Soul's or Dia de los Muertos, I still find myself thinking about people I know who have passed over the threshold.


Since this area is primarily mixed deciduous forest, we have incredible leaf colors. Burning scarlet maples, yellow walnut and weeping cherry, and every color in between. Our feet scuffle through thick layers of rotting leaves on the forest paths near our home, and the little brooks become clogged and even dammed by the piles of leaves. After rainy days, mushrooms pop up through the earth, and after windy days the paths are littered with sticks and branches.

Though we are blessed with the bluest skies of the year, our attention seems drawn down to the earth along with the falling leaves. The warmth and light of the sun now decreases in the heavens and comes closer to the earth, in the bright colors of falling leaves and autumn harvest foods such as pumpkins and apples.


Autumn seems to me to be a time of hard thoughts. In summer we are more physically active, outside most of the time, and full of the same abundant life forces we see in nature. In autumn, those life forces are dying away in the outer world, and we must struggle to maintain our inner light in the face of the coming cold and darkness.


In Waldorf/anthroposophical communities, we celebrate an unusual yet ancient festival, Michaelmas, at the end of September. In the Bible we can read in Revelation about Michael casting out the dragon from heaven down to earth. This image corresponds to the modern struggle between spirit and materialism, light and darkness. The scaly, cold, earthly dragon opposes the fiery angelic spirit.

I see a correlation between this casting down to earth of darkness and the festivals of light at this time of year. We are surrounded by jack-o-lanterns, bonfires and candles for the dead on Samhain and All Soul’s Day, the lamps of Divali, and lantern walks for Martinmas, another ancient festival celebrated in our community.


Two nice quotes about autumn:

St. Martin recognized the divine spark in the poor man of Amiens, and gave it the protection of his own cloak. When we make a paper lantern, we, too, may fell that we are giving protection to our own little “flame” that was beginning to shine at Michaelmas, so that we may carry it safely through the dark world.
-All Year Round, Druitt, Fynes-Clinton, Rowling.

The season of hope and promise is past…We are a little saddened because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries.
-Henry David Thoreau

A knotty knitty problem

Maybe it's the trees almost devoid of leaves, bare branches against darkening skies, and the cold winds blowing from the north hurrying us indoors. Maybe it's the time change, where more hours of the waking day seem to be spent in darkness, within the small pool of light that is our home.

Or maybe it's that Christmas and Hanukkah are only a few short weeks away, and I've committed myself to many home-made presents this year, but right now...

It's all about the crafting.

I have about 42 projects going on at once, including knitting a sweater vest, a pair of mittens, a hat, and a teddy bear sweater; a truly cool knitted/embroidered/latch-hooked farm landscape for the kids about 1/16th finished, and one cross-stich project as yet unbegun. I also want to make a flannel dress for Napoleona, a sweater vest for myself, hem about 10 pairs of pants for Anthropapa....


It all started back in August when I was visiting my mom. When I found out she didn't have a Hanukkah sweater for her favorite holiday teddy bear, I promised to make one for her. Then Anthropapa gave me some red wool yarn for my birthday. Then I found a funny little cross stitch project to make for one of the grandparents. Then I took a class on knitting in the round at the Sunbridge Craft Studio so I could learn to make mittens for the kids. Then Anthropapa complained one too many times that I never knit him anything, so I had to start on a sweater with some great yarn I found on sale. Then at the Eurythmy School Rummage Sale I found a cool book about knitting fantasy figures and landscapes (knit a castle, how cool is that?), which included the farm landscape that just begged to be created.

It's all snowballed into a bit of crafting hell, where something I love to do is slowly but surely being overshadowed by a looming deadline. Anthropapa kindly let me off the hook (ha!) by saying he didn't expect a whole sweater by Christmas, and I know that really the kids don't need the farm landscape right away either. But still, that's a lot to do in the few weeks I have left.

I can't decide if it's just a problem of short attention span and lack of focus, 2 weeks gone by either sweating out a fever or visiting with grandparents, or just that I need to learn to knit much, much faster.

Whomped by the Flu

For the first time in my life, I got the flu. Yes, you read that right, I have never had the flu, ever. Always big snotty colds, but nothing else.

Now I've made up for lost time. Fever of 102 for 3 days, 100 for a few more. Chills, aches, and now that oh-so-special dry hacking cough. And major fatigue on top of sleeplessness.

Now, I know I should be grateful. Wise anthroposophical heads have decreed (just kidding, it's all about the freedom) realized that fevers are our friends, bringing profound transformations to body and soul. Particularly for small children, they are key to healthy development and allow the child to "burn out" their inherited physical bodies in order to create new ones for themselves.

As I lay in bed for days, sweating and staring out into space when I wasn't dozing, while Papa took badly-timed time off work to take the kids out of the house so I'd have quiet, I thought about being grateful, but I was too miserable.

I've never had a real fever before. I'd seen them both in Papa and the kids, and knew what to do. When I felt cold and shivery despite a wool hat and sweater, I pulled that blanket right over me. When I wasn't hungry for 4 days, I ate a little applesauce to keep me going, otherwise nothing. Drink lots of water, sleep as much as possible.

I think that if I could be, I'd still be in bed. But, with toddlers, that's not going to happen.

Plus, now Papa's sick.

Outdoor Autumn Fun

Somehow autumn is always a busy time for us. Not summer, but autumn. Right about the beginning of October, weekends start filling up.

Last weekend we decided to take a day off from chores, errands and such and take a little family jaunt. We went up to Bear Mountain State Park, about 30 minutes north of us. It turned out to be a pretty awesome day. We drove up the Palisades Parkway, probably one of the prettier highways I've been on. Fall colors, woodchucks rooting around by the side of the road, and best of all, no commercial vehicles allowed.



After checking out the information center for maps, we noticed the indoor merry-go-round. Couldn't pass on that. Napoleona hung on for dear life, but Duncan had a good time. In addition to carousel horses, the ride features locally indigenous animals like deer, otters and bears. SillyBilly, true to his strange little self, chose a turkey.


Then we ambled by the Bear Mountain Inn, unfortunately closed for restoration, which has (to my jaded, stuccoed California eyes) charming Adirondack-style architecture. The Inn was one of the first examples of "park architecture," using materials found on site such as stone for the foundations and chestnut logs for the posts and beams.

Then after a snack we walked over to the zoo. All of the animals there are native to New York and have been injured or orphaned. The kids enjoyed the grey and red foxes, swans, frogs and toads...and then there were the turkeys and deer. We witnessed a turkey pecking and chasing a deer away from the food bin...I always knew turkeys were full of themselves! Probably the most interesting were the three black bears. They had many toys to play with; we saw one bear work very hard to get a small metal keg out of a hole in the ground.


Then it was time to walk back toward the Inn, where we stopped by Hessian Lake for an apple snack and a potty break.



We were excited to learn that the oldest section of the Appalachian Trail runs through the park and zoo. SillyBilly has had a mild obsession with the AT after Papa told him about it recently. Then we took a drive up to the summit of the mountain, which by then had become very crowded with people coming for the Octoberfest activities.

Needless to say, there was some snoozing going on in the back seat on the drive home.

And now, some gratuitous pictures of the kids, just because they're cute and autumn-ey. Besides leaf crowns, we've been raking, raking, raking. Then jumping and throwing the piles around and raking them again. During one of the jumping and throwing phases, SillyBilly yelled out, "I'm Mother Autumn!!" as if he were personally responsible for the leaves falling from the trees.

Out of the Mouths of Babes, V

SillyBilly: I want to go into space. To look at the moon and find moon rocks, and look at meteroids and shooting stars.

And I want to go camping on the big trail. [Papa had told him about the Appalachian Trail.]

I would get into a rocket in a big hole in the desert, and burn off into space: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, HKHEEOOHH!!!!

Napoleona: And I want to go too!!

***

So we're sitting in a Starbucks in lower Manhattan, having a snack after going to the Status of Liberty. The following conversation occurred after seeing a tour bus with an ad for the Bodies exhibit, and having discussed Egyptian mummies recently:

SillyBilly: Mama, is that a mummy?
Mama: No, it's a body preserved with chemicals.
SillyBilly: Did they use oil?
Mama: No, they don't use oil and resin anymore.
SillyBilly: What's resin?
Mama: Sticky stuff from trees, like on pine cones. Remember how at Christmas the Three Kings bring gold, frankincense and myrrh? Frankincense is a special resin they used to use. [Now that I read up on it, it was myrrh they used in embalming. Oh well.]
SillyBilly: Maybe they used that on King Tut.
Mama: Yes, that was a long time ago.
SillyBilly: Was that before God made the world?
Mama: No, there wasn't anything before God made the world.
SillyBilly: Does God die?
Mama: No. But some people like Hindus think that the world is created, then lives, and then is destroyed. And some people say God is dead.
SillyBilly: Who?
Mama: Nietsche.
SillyBilly: Who's he?
Mama: A philosopher.
SillyBilly: A philosoraptor?
Duncan thinks for a while about all this....
SillyBilly: Frankenstein is a special resin.