Tuesday, January 27, 2009

John Updike 1932-2009


AP Reports - John Updike, prize-winning writer, dead at age 76

By HILLEL ITALIE – 49 minutes ago

NEW YORK (AP) — John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday at age 76.

Updike, a resident of Beverly Farms, Mass., died of lung cancer, according to a statement from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.

A literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir "Self-Consciousness" and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams. He was prolific, even compulsive, releasing more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s. Updike won virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for "Rabbit Is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest," and two National Book Awards.

Although himself deprived of a Nobel, he did bestow it upon one of his fictional characters, Henry Bech, the womanizing, egotistical Jewish novelist who collected the literature prize in 1999.

His settings ranged from the court of "Hamlet" to postcolonial Africa, but his literary home was the American suburb. Born in 1932, Updike spoke for millions of Depression-era readers raised by "penny-pinching parents," united by "the patriotic cohesion of World War II" and blessed by a "disproportionate share of the world's resources," the postwar, suburban boom of "idealistic careers and early marriages."

He captured, and sometimes embodied, a generation's confusion over the civil rights and women's movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War. Updike was called a misogynist, a racist and an apologist for the establishment. On purely literary grounds, he was attacked by Norman Mailer as the kind of author appreciated by readers who knew nothing about writing.

But more often he was praised for his flowing, poetic writing style. Describing a man's interrupted quest to make love, Updike likened it "to a small angel to which all afternoon tiny lead weights are attached." Nothing was too great or too small for Updike to poeticize. He might rhapsodize over the film projector's "chuckling whir" or look to the stars and observe that "the universe is perfectly transparent: we exist as flaws in ancient glass."

In the richest detail, his books recorded the extremes of earthly desire and spiritual zealotry, whether the comic philandering of the preacher in "A Month of Sundays" or the steady rage of the young Muslim in "Terrorist." Raised in the Protestant community of Shillington, Pa., where the Lord's Prayer was recited daily at school, Updike was a lifelong churchgoer influenced by his faith, but not immune to doubts.

"I remember the times when I was wrestling with these issues that I would feel crushed. I was crushed by the purely materialistic, atheistic account of the universe," Updike told The Associated Press during a 2006 interview.

"I am very prone to accept all that the scientists tell us, the truth of it, the authority of the efforts of all the men and woman spent trying to understand more about atoms and molecules. But I can't quite make the leap of unfaith, as it were, and say, `This is it. Carpe diem (seize the day), and tough luck.'"

He received his greatest acclaim for the "Rabbit" series, a quartet of novels published over a 30-year span that featured ex-high school basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and his restless adjustment to adulthood and the constraints of work and family. To the very end, Harry was in motion, an innocent in his belief that any door could be opened, a believer in God even as he bedded women other than his wife.

"The tetralogy to me is the tale of a life, a life led an American citizen who shares the national passion for youth, freedom, and sex, the national openness and willingness to learn, the national habit of improvisation," Updike would later write. "He is furthermore a Protestant, haunted by a God whose manifestations are elusive, yet all-important."

Other notable books included "Couples," a sexually explicit tale of suburban mating that sold millions of copies; "In the Beauty of the Lilies," an epic of American faith and fantasy; and "Too Far to Go, which followed the courtship, marriage and divorce of the Maples, a suburban couple with parallels to Updike's own first marriage.

Plagued from an early age by asthma, psoriasis and a stammer, he found creative outlets in drawing and writing. Updike was born in Reading, Pa., his mother a department store worker who longed to write, his father a high school teacher remembered with sadness and affection in "The Centaur," a novel published in 1964. The author brooded over his father's low pay and mocking students, but also wrote of a childhood of "warm and action-packed houses that accommodated the presence of a stranger, my strange ambition to be glamorous."

For Updike, the high life meant books, such as the volumes of P.G. Wodehouse and Robert Benchley he borrowed from the library as a child, or, as he later recalled, the "chastely severe, time-honored classics" he read in his dorm room at Harvard University, leaning back in his "wooden Harvard chair," cigarette in hand.

While studying on full scholarship at Harvard, he headed the staff of the Harvard Lampoon and met the woman who became his first wife, Mary Entwistle Pennington, whom he married in June 1953, a year before he earned his A.B. degree summa cum laude. (Updike divorced Pennington in 1975 and was remarried two years later, to Martha Bernhard).

After graduating, he accepted a one-year fellowship to study painting at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts at Oxford University. During his stay in England, a literary idol, E.B. White, offered him a position at The New Yorker, where he served briefly as foreign books reviewer. Many of Updike's reviews and short stories were published in The New Yorker, often edited by White's stepson, Roger Angell.

By the end of the 1950s, Updike had published a story collection, a book of poetry and his first novel, "The Poorhouse Fair," soon followed by the first of the Rabbit books, "Rabbit, Run." Praise came so early and so often that New York Times critic Arthur Mizener worried that Updike's "natural talent" was exposing him "from an early age to a great deal of head-turning praise."

Updike learned to write about everyday life by, in part, living it. In 1957, he left New York, with its "cultural hassle" and melting pot of "agents and wisenheimers," and settled with his first wife and four kids in Ipswich, Mass, a "rather out-of-the-way town" about 30 miles north of Boston.

"The real America seemed to me 'out there,' too heterogeneous and electrified by now to pose much threat of the provinciality that people used to come to New York to escape," Updike later wrote.

"There were also practical attractions: free parking for my car, public education for my children, a beach to tan my skin on, a church to attend without seeming too strange."

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Friday, January 23, 2009

Schedules and Lists and Things

Funny things happen when you begin to take away the structure from a previously-over-structured kid. I don't think I would have ever been able to grasp just how programmed my child is/was - that is, until we began homeschooling. It also hadn't occurred to me that Cole has been picking up my organizational habits and methods his entire life, and more pertinently, since he's been home with me, working, almost every day.

When we made the decision to pull Cole out of school, I knew I wanted to pursue a classical ("trivium") method of homeschooling combined with an unschooling environment. I spoke to experienced homeschooling parents and hung out with their families. I liked what I saw - open, loving, intelligent and engaged families. Four months later, this is still my ultimate goal.

Though I know it will realistically take years to achieve, I hope to provide a true unschooling environment for Cole with rich and diverse resources, activities, and groups available to him. I know in my heart this is the key to his success and joy in learning. There have been glimpses of it from the beginning. So, I'm starting to relax into our new life, and this new calm gave me the courage to begin loosening the reigns in Cole's daily schedule and giving him the opportunity to naturally discover learning situations throughout the day or an opportunity to create them to his liking as the ever-nagging boredom monkey on his back dictates.

I wasn't quite sure what our days would bring, but I knew Cole would be excited by the freedom, and I was excited by the new lesson in self-direction and responsibility Cole would find in occupying his time productively. For six long years, someone else has always told him what to do and when to do it without bothering with the why to do it, necessarily. This was going to be a tremendous change. When I told Cole of my idea, he was, as expected, very happy and proud to be trusted with this almost incomprehensible freedom. What would happen the following day, I could never have guessed.

.....

The next day found me up early working at the computer as usual. Cole lumbered out of bed, mumbled a good morning, and plopped himself down on the couch. I replied and kept working away. I was in the dining room, and I could see the top of Cole's head just above the couch in the living room. He was so quiet and hadn't moved; I assumed he fell back asleep as often happens during the week. So, I kept working.

Pretty soon, I was startled by Cole jumping up abruptly to make his way over to me. He was carrying a spiral notebook and pen, and I realized about half way through Cole's trip from the living room to me that he was describing the schedule he had just worked up for himself for the week!

SCHEDULE! Schedule?!

really? Hadn't I JUST abolished this idea of restrictive and prescribed learning? I thought I'd liberated us both from constraints and deadlines, but alas, after covering the 20 short feet from the living room to the dining room, the kiddo had reinstated...The Schedule. LOL.

At least it was a schedule to HIS liking, and being the overly-organized person I am, I smiled proudly at the little man for his wisdom in planning out his day. It may have been scheduled learning, but it was still his day filled with his choices. And, how smart to plan to have all of your studies done just in time for your friends to be home from school? I believe Cole was so excited by his new control; he expressed his joy in meticulously rendering this detailed agenda in which Monday included reading, language arts, math, and art; Tuesday was much the same with a little computer work and time outside with the dogs; and so it went.
What did I learn here? There is a difference between being programmed to do something a certain way every day verses scheduling a list of chosen activities.

Cole asked what his daily "Special" was going to be every day for three weeks after we pulled him out of school. A Special is an activity outside of normal classwork such as Library, gym, computer, art, and music. It's taken Cole about four months to realize that if he wants to make a poster or work on a drawing rather than doing his math at any given time, he can. If he wants to go hang out in his den and dig on some music while playing with his Army men, that's great. Cole is allowed to go outside to play with the dogs at any point in the day. He knows when he's antsy and needing to burn some energy.
In fact, as long as Cole completes a certain amount of reading, writing, and math each week, he can do as he pleases most of the day. We are all learning that Cole knows more of what he needs than anyone (including US). That's not to say he doesn't need some direction; he is only 11, but my point is that given a learning environment rich in resources, he will take advantage of it - and not just the art and music and time with the dog - though all of those are wonderful learning experiences. Two weeks ago, Cole asked if instead of looking up spelling words in the dictionary if I would consider making a crossword for each list. !!! Brilliant! Cole still learns the definition of the words and gets to work a puzzle in figuring it out. He never complains about this weekly task as he has ultimate buy-in; it was his idea!

So, what did we learn from this experience? In the most basic terms, I learned that even unschooling can exist within a scheduled environment (and I like it that way too! ha ha ha - no surprise there.), and Cole has found there are days when there's nothing you can do but set aside the worksheets and the pencils and the schedule to simply hang with the dogs, listen to some tunes, and think. Cole and I are finding our brains work so much more effectively and creatively if we allow our tasks to mirror our moods and to stop worrying so much about checking off the list; rather, we use the list as a map in the event we feel lost.
We are truly independent adventurers in our own journey in learning!



Monday, January 19, 2009

2009 Presidential Inauguration

My return plane from Dallas lands around 7:30 p.m. tomorrow night, so we're having a low-key dinner with the fam, working on the DC puzzle we have yet to finish, and watching all of the hype on TV. It's a very exciting time in America! Give us a shout if you'd like to stop by.

Happy MLK Day!


Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The Less-Homework Revolution

This was on the Today Show today and is also posted on Parenting.com.

As most of you know, the ridiculous amount of homework and in-class busy work Cole was required to do was one of the many reasons we opted to homeschool.

For those parents not in a position to homeschool, this article provides compassion and guidance in addressing the homework problem experienced by most publicly and privately educated children (and their parents) in the US today.
.........................................................................................
The Less-Homework Revolution
How fed-up parents are changing the way schools think -- and how you can, too

By Nancy Kalish, Parenting

I used to be extremely pro-homework. In fact, I once wrote an article for this very magazine telling readers how to get kids to stop whining and knuckle down to work. Back then, I could afford to be smug: My second-grader was happily zooming through her ten minutes a night. But a few years later, Allison started coming home with four hours of homework each night, and everything changed. Now there was not only whining but also begging, yelling, and crying -- sometimes from both of us. The worst part: hearing my previously enthusiastic learner repeatedly swear how much she hated school.

I'd always assumed homework was essential. But when I finally looked into the research about it, I was floored to find there's little to support homework -- especially in vast quantities. While not every child gets too much, many kids are now overloaded as early as kindergarten. I was appalled (I even co-wrote a book about it, The Case Against Homework), so you can bet that this time around, you won't be getting any "how to be a good homework cop" tips from me.


Instead, I'm here to call you to action. You can change things for your child -- even for the whole school. There are more and more frustrated parents and wised-up schools around the country, so why should your child keep suffering through hours of work? A less-homework revolution is brewing, and you can join it.


taking back family time

Like me, Christine Hendricks, a mother of three in Glenrock, WY, had always believed in homework. Then her daughter, Maddie, entered elementary school. "By the fourth grade, she had so much, there was no time for after-school activities, playing, or simply enjoying our evenings together. We were always stressed, and I knew many other families were also miserable." Hendricks decided things had to change -- and she had a unique advantage: She's the principal of Glenrock's Grant Elementary School. Together with her teachers, she looked into the research and found what I did: Homework's not what it's cracked up to be. "We decided to do an experiment and eliminate most homework," she says. The one exception: occasional studying for a test. "This is only our second year without it, but there have been no backslides in the classroom or in test scores," says Hendricks. "Parents say their kids enjoy reading again because there's no pressure. In fact, there have been no negative effects whatsoever. And there's much less stress at our house, too." We're not all in a position to fast-track a solution as Hendricks did, but we still have power.

In Toronto, Frank Bruni decided to do something when a pediatrician told him that his 13-year-old son should exercise more. Says Bruni, "I thought to myself, 'And when would he do that?' " So Bruni organized other parents and lobbied the Toronto School District to hold public meetings, presenting the research behind homework. The result is a new policy that affects more than 300,000 kids, limiting homework to reading in elementary school, eliminating holiday homework, and stating the value of family time. Canada's education minister now wants all the country's school boards to make sure students aren't being overloaded. "It's so gratifying to know that this year, Toronto's kids are going to have a life," says Bruni. "It shows you just how much parents can do when they try."

why it's worth a fight

Homework is such an established part of education, it's hard to believe it's not all that beneficial, especially in large quantities. But the truth is, a recent Duke University review of numerous studies found almost no correlation between homework and long-term achievement in elementary school, and only a moderate correlation in middle school. "More is not better," says Harris Cooper, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and neuroscience who conducted the review. In fact, according to guidelines endorsed by the National Education Association, teachers should assign no more than ten minutes per grade level per night (that's ten minutes total for a first-grader, 30 minutes for a third-grader).

Pile on more and it can backfire. "Most kids are simply developmentally unable to sit and learn for longer," says Cooper. Remember: Many have already been glued to their desks for seven hours, especially at schools that have cut gym, recess, art, and music to cram in more instructional time. If you add on two hours of homework each night, these children are working a 45-hour week. Some argue that we need to toughen kids up for high school, college, and the workforce. But there are other ways to teach responsibility, such as the chores that parents often have to let slide because of studying.

And too much homework is actually sapping our children's strength, natural curiosity, and love of learning. "Kids are developing more school-related stomachaches, headaches, sleep problems, and depression than ever before," says William Crain, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the City College of New York and author of Reclaiming Childhood: Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society. "We're seeing kids who are burned out by fourth grade. Soon, it will be by second grade." Too much homework also means that kids miss out on active playtime, essential for learning social skills, proper brain development, and warding off childhood obesity.

All this work doesn't even make educational sense. "It's counterintuitive, but more practice or the wrong kind of practice doesn't necessarily make perfect," says Kylene Beers, president of the National Council of Teachers of English and author of When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do. For example, children are able to memorize long lists of spelling words -- but many will misspell them the following week.

"Instead, they should spend the time reading and writing, and practicing words that are at the appropriate level for each child," says Beers. According to the U.S. Department of Education, most often a math teacher can tell after checking five algebraic equations whether a student has understood the necessary concepts. Even more important, whether it's algebra or addition, five problems is enough to tell if a student doesn't understand a concept. Practicing dozens of homework problems incorrectly only cements the wrong method into his brain. Naturally, some kids need more practice before math skills become automatic, but pages of problems rarely help the whole class. In addition, teachers who assign large numbers of problems are often unable to do anything more than spot-check homework. That means errors are missed -- and some children truly are left behind.

So why are schools ignoring all these guidelines? "Many teachers are under greater pressure than ever before to assign more homework," says Beers. "Some of it comes from parents, some from the administration and the desire for high scores on standardized tests." And here's a surprise: Your child's teachers have probably never taken a course that covers what constitutes good or bad homework, how much to give, and the research behind it. "I'm disappointed to admit that colleges of education simply don't offer specific training in homework," says Beers. Cooper adds, "Teachers are winging it."

4 waste-of-time assignments

typical assignment: Keep a reading log
why it's busywork: Writing down the title is one thing; adding on the author, publisher, and other info turns reading into a tedious activity. Rather, let kids write a line or two about why they liked or didn't like the book. The time would also be better spent reading another book.


typical assignment: Play an "unscramble the word" spelling game
why it's busywork: If a child sees a spelling word with the letters scrambled, he could end up remembering it that way, says National Council of Teachers of English president Kylene Beers.


typical assignment: Answer the questions at the end of the chapter
why it's busywork: This can encourage kids to "skim and scan," hunting for answers and ignoring other content. The exception is questions that help kids infer meaning.

typical assignment: Create a diorama/model/game board/anything that requires craft supplies and a glue gun
why it's busywork: Such "fun" projects usually involve a frantic trip to the crafts store, expensive supplies, too much parent participation -- and too little educational value to justify the number of hours they take (with the possible exception of science-fair projects). If it's all about how it looks, it's probably not worth it.


the start of something big


A revolution has to begin somewhere, and as Christine Hendricks, the Wyoming principal and mom, proves, that somewhere isn't only on the coasts or in big cities. It's in communities and schools all over the country.

After teaching math for several years at South Valley Middle School in Liberty, MO, Joel Wazac realized that his students were rarely finishing the reams of problems he sent home. So he and other math teachers decided to eliminate homework and concentrate on making class lessons more engaging. "I had more time for planning when I wasn't grading thousands of problems each night," says Wazac. "And when a student didn't understand something, instead of a parent trying to puzzle it out, I was right there to help him." The result: Grades went up and the school's standardized math test scores are the highest they've ever been.

In some cases, entire schools, such as Mason-Rice Elementary in Newton, MA, have limited homework according to the "ten-minute rule." The Raymond Park Middle School in Indianapolis has a written policy instructing teachers to "assign homework only when you feel the assignment is valuable. A night off is better than homework which serves no worthwhile purpose." Others, such as Oak Knoll Elementary in Menlo Park, CA, are eliminating elementary school homework altogether. If these schools can do it, why can't yours?

Many parents are the ones leading the fight against homework overload…and winning. In Danville, CA, Kerry Dickinson, a mother of two, spearheaded the effort by organizing more than 100 parents to convince the local school district to revise its homework policy. The policy still exceeds the "ten minutes per grade" rule, but it discourages weekend and holiday homework and stresses the value of family time. "Is it perfect? Not even close," says Dickinson, who has a teaching credential herself. "But it's progress." You may feel more comfortable starting smaller -- but that's a great way to get the revolution brewing in your community. Aubrey King is a mom who found that teachers can be more responsive (and sympathetic) than you might think. "Normally, we have no time for after-school activities, the park, or even getting an ice cream cone," says King, the Colorado Springs mother of a third- and a sixth-grader, as well as three younger children. But when one child's homework interfered with the family's preparations for Christmas, it was the last straw. King e-mailed the teacher, who promptly eliminated all assignments for the entire class until after winter break.

Another step in the right direction: Krisi Repp of Gray Summit, MO, sent each of her three children's teachers a letter detailing her family's already busy schedule and gently informing them that homework was interfering with sleep, exercise, dinner, church, and precious time together. "Several teachers commented 'I never thought about that' or 'You're right,'" Repp reports. "Many don't have school-age children yet themselves. They're not going to know any better unless we speak out."

Joining the revolution

Fewer than 60 percent of schools have official homework policies, which means that it might be a lot more negotiable than you think. Keep your approach nonconfrontational and cooperative, and you have a good chance of success.

If your child has too much homework tonight... stop the suffering with a note. If he's been working longer than he can bear, don't push him further. It'll only make him dislike homework more. Instead, write a note to the teacher on the homework, saying that Jonathan tried but couldn't complete the assignment and that you felt it was more important that he get a good night's sleep. There usually are no negative consequences.

If homework overload is a continuing problem... speak up. E-mail the teacher to request a meeting, and ask how long she expects her assignments to take. Compare that to the ten-minutes-per-grade-level guideline and how long it actually takes your child. Then when you meet, try not to be accusatory ("Your homework is killing my child!") but to enlist the teacher as an ally ("Lucy can't concentrate for more than X minutes each night. After that, she starts to hate the work, and the learning stops"). Together, perhaps you can decide that your child will tackle reading first, do only five math problems, and stop once she's reached her limit. Another strategy: Describe a typical night for your family. This might be enough to help the teacher realize there isn't enough time (for any kid) to finish all of the assignments.

If homework overload is a widespread problem at school... find strength in numbers. If your child is miserable, chances are other kids in his class are, too. Ask the other parents to e-mail the teacher or approach the principal with you. Sometimes that's all it takes. If that doesn't work, you might want to organize a homework forum at your school or speak before the school board, with the goal of establishing a reasonable homework policy. Ask parents to fill out a survey first so you have documentation of how much homework the children are doing.

Click here for a sample one from The Case Against Homework. Another great site, StopHomework.com, is run by less-homework advocate Sara Bennett; it has the latest research and can give you personal advice for making change.

Nancy Kalish is the coauthor, with Sara Bennett, of The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Children and What Parents Can Do About It.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

This Stuff Really Works

We're now about four months into our homeschooling experience, and the rhythm and benefits came much sooner than I ever expected!

For instance, Sample A. Cole (above), woke up with nightmares at 4am from playing video games he got for Christmas last night that he, no doubt, should not be playing. Doug and I were, of course, aware of the fact that these mature combat games would most likely prolong Cole's need to have someone assist him in falling asleep and cause nightmares and sleepless nights for everyone. However, we had a plan.

So, the Burrito woke up at 4am and dragged me out of bed and back to his to snuggle up and fall asleep a bit more securely. Even at the early hour, as we tried to get comfortable, Cole had what I'm now calling a "stretch" moment (when Cole finds the solution to a problem he is experiencing without adult influence or suggestion). To my delight, he asked me to "take away" a couple of his new combat video games until he is older and can handle the content more appropriately. Cole heard of our friend Josh's son having similar issues from a movie scene he saw on accident just this week, but I really thought the draw of the newness and obvious leniency we were providing in allowing him to play the games would keep him into them for quite a while if not until he eventually tired of them. Instead, Cole had been examining his own behavior, feelings, and possible influences in what was going on and made a sound, mature decision in addressing the issue at hand. WoO HoO!

It was a tough situation for all of us. Doug and I knew what the initial result in playing the games would be (nightmares and little sleep for us all), but we also knew that if we tried to tell Cole he couldn't play the games, he'd simply play them at his friends' houses as he's done in the past. Who could blame the kid? We really didn't want to set him up with an unrealistic expectation that would invariably lead him to being dishonest with us. Too tangled a web. Trust the process! Cole's a smart kid, and he's been doing a lot of self-discovery lately, albeit unbeknownst to him. : ) His decision to put aside the new and borderline-taboo games he'd been allowed to play is big! This was a moment you read about in homeschooling literature that seems pure fantasy until it actually happens. I'm so tired right now; I wonder if it actually happened. LOL...kidding.

This type of thinking reflects some of the methodology we've picked up for parenting through homeschooling. The benefits for Cole seem pretty obvious to me. We all have to admit that a lesson learned through experience and through one's own choice is the most resoundingly learned sort, and as Cole finds resolutions for problems himself that are successful, the more confidence he'll have in his own decision making capabilities and in his ability to manage his way through obstacles. Of course, there are limits to what we'll allow him to experience as much as we can, but in this instance, I'm pleased we made the choice we did. I don't think there's any permanent damage done, and Cole will find something else to occupy his imagination soon enough.

Even beyond this great learning experience, due to the fact that I work from home and Cole is homeschooled, we didn't have to stress out about the fact that we were awake at 4am. Cole and I eventually got out of bed as we couldn't fall back to sleep and went out to the living and turned on Out of Africa. Cole is fascinated by the cultural and technological differences between then and now, and the story really is captivating. We fed the dogs and had breakfast and chatted until he finally passed out. Of course, I've been working since then, but I'll call it a day very early today. Maybe we'll go catch a matinee - a comedy!?

This homeschooling stuff really works for us. : )

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Chinese New Year Soup

Cole and I made and devoured this soup for lunch today. Try it! You won't be sorry.

Basic Ingredients:

3 small cans chicken broth - approx. 1 quart
(I recommend reduced salt..and then salt to taste)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 eggs
2 scallions, sliced
1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger (optional)
1/4 guar (optional - makes the soup thicker as you would expect of an asian soup)

1. Put cup or so of the chicken broth in blender, turn it on low, and add the guar (if using). Let it blend for a second, then put it in a large saucepan with the rest of the broth. (If you're not using the guar, just put the broth directly in a saucepan.)

2. Add soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger, and scallion. Heat over medium-high heat and let simmer for 5 minutes or so to let the flavors blend.

3. Beat eggs in a glass measuring cup or small pitcher - something with a pour-lip. Use a fork to stir the surface of the soup in a slow circle and pour in about 1/3 of the eggs, stirring as they cook and turn into shreds (which will happen almost simultaneously). Repeat three more times, using up all the egg, then serve!

Yields: 3 biggish servings, or 4 to 5 small ones (but this is easy to double!)

4 servings has each: 2g carbs, trace of fiber, 8g protein

For a more Thai-like soup:

Add one or all of the following to the above: sliced cooked chicken or tofu, roasted peanuts, cilantro, roasted garlic, rice noodles, top with bean sprouts.

A New Look for a New Year

With the coming of the New Year, I decided to start afresh with a new design template for the blog. Hope you like it!

A few things to kick off the year:

1. Most importantly, thank you for all of your wonderful comments about the blog, on Cole's work, on how you've seen Cole grow and change in positive ways, etc.! It's great to hear from you, and it keeps us motivated.

2. When you receive an e-update with an article, if you chose not to go to the site, you'll sometimes miss out on photos that post with the article. Just an FYI as I do try to keep this site visually stimulating as well as verbally! A lot of what you see is original art by Cole and me. (no pix on this one though!)

3. Later in the year, Cole will have an area on the blog where he'll post a weekly update on what he's up to. We're working on some more advanced pc skills, so Cole can begin to use his new laptop, Little Guy as he's entitled him, for more projects. I'll send out an announcement when we launch his segment.

4. Look for add-ons to the site: my 2009 reading list, blog list, and more to come!

5. If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see on the blog or for projects for Cole, let me know. We're always looking for ideas.

Thank you again for your continued support in our homeschooling endeavor! We are so fortunate to be able to educate Cole in such an organic and impactful fashion. It may seem contradictory, but as much freedom as homeschooling has given Cole, it has given me the same. This experience has changed me in a powerful and inspiring way.

My very best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year!!

Diane

Monday, January 5, 2009

"Emancipate Yourself from Mental Slavery"

The title to this post are the lyrics from one of my favorite Bob Marley songs, "Redemption Song". With Martin Luther King Day and the Inauguration of President Elect Barack Obama approaching, Marley's hopeful lyrics reflect the my own hopes for the New Year and for the years to come.



I have no idea of the quality of this recording as my volume
isn't working currently. Hope you find it enjoyable.

JANUARY - Dates of Note

January: National Book Month
4th -11th: Letter Writing Week
11th: Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Pacific
19th: Martin Luther King Day
20th: Inauguration Day
26th: Chinese New Year