For the journey...

We'll be paying a visit home to Georgia for the next couple of weeks. I'm so looking forward to seeing both sides of our family there! As you can see from the two photos I've chosen here to represent them, they can be very different, yet I enjoy both.

But most importantly, Christ goes with us. He is our true home. And on our journey, we will celebrate his journey, his Incarnation. Visits home can be very full, so this is a helpful small thought for the "carry on bag," the things we keep near us at all times.

I hope you all have a blessed Christmas, too, wherever you are and whatever your circumstances. He was born for us, to make us his beauty!

He calls thing that are not as though they were...

Our pastor Dr. Keller gave an illustration in his Advent sermon yesterday using The Man of La Mancha. I've never seen the musical, but apparently it's where the song "Dream the Impossible Dream" comes from.

He described a scene in the musical in which Don Quixote meets a prostitute. But Don Quixote would rather be insane than accept a sordid world, so he treats her like a fine lady. At first she is bemused, then she is angry, and finally, she is transformed.

It may be a silly musical, but the illustration is powerful. I can really relate to Don Quixote's idealism, even though I suspect many people roll their eyes a bit behind my back.

I'm sure I get the balance wrong and come across as merely unrealistic, but Jesus doesn't. He is the only one who can fully enter into our reality without compromising his holiness. That's why he is "...the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were." (Romans 4:17) That's one of my favorite verses. I am so glad he took on our sordid reality, to rescue us and make us his beauty. It really is a fairy tale come true.

Here are some photos from our tree decorating yesterday. At Christmas, our homes get dressed up like fine ladies, too! Our ornaments may be paper and tinsel instead of fine jewels, but they reflect the glory of God, because he has entered in.

Blog Award

My friend Debbie at Artful Aspirations gave me a blog award! Thanks, Debbie! I've never gotten an award!

I'm supposed to answer the following questions in one word and then pass the award on to five other bloggers. But I'm one of those people who never can resist tweaking an assignment, so I handed out the questionnaire to my husband and daughter and had them complete it, too. Then I took the answers I liked best and combined them into this super duper questionnaire! Bob's answers are in blue, mine are in coral, and CZ's are in green:

Here are the questions:
1. Where is your cell phone? Non-existent
2. Your hair? Troubled
3. Your mother? Sociable
4. Your father? Solitary
5. Your favorite food? Salmon
6. Your dream last night? Moving
7. Your favorite drink? Coffee
8. Your dream/goal? Completing this
9. What room are you in? Cold
10. Your hobby? Italian
11. Your fear? Heat
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Here
13. Where were you last night? Home, home
14. Something that you aren’t? Perfect
15. Muffins? Yes
16. Wish list item? Muffins
17. Where did you grow up? South
18. Last thing you did? This
19. What are you wearing? Running clothes
20. Your TV? Gone
21. Your Pets? Past
22. Friends? Present
23. Your life? Future (hopefully)
24. Your mood? Positive
25. Missing Someone? Grandmother
26. Vehicle? 1 train
27. Something you're not wearing? Pants
28. Your favorite store? Kitchen (everything's free!)
29. Your favorite colour? All
30. When was the last time you laughed? 1 minute, 27.936 seconds ago
31. Last time you cried? Forgot
32. Your best friend? Laura, Bob, depends
33. One place that I go to over and over? work, home
34. Facebook? Never!
35. Favorite place to eat? Home or Spiga, home, home

Now, I'm supposed to pass this award on to five other people. But I don't like doing that, for the same reason I don't list other people's blogs on my sidebar--I'm just not comfortable picking favorites. But I've read all the blogs of the people who comment here regularly, I really do like them all, and there are probably about five of you! So if you are looking for something to stir up your creative juices and feel like answering this questionnaire, consider yourselves awarded! If not, no pressure!

Washington, DC in 14 hours!

And that's from door to door!

Bob had to go to Washington, D.C. on a business trip yesterday, and as our plans for an extended family trip there keep falling through, CZ and I took the opportunity and joined him. We would only be able to tour the Mall from 11:30 to 5:15, but there was at least enough time for CZ to get an overview.

We picked three sights: The National Gallery, the Library of Congress, and the Air and Space Museum. I know, that leaves out a lot of things well worth seeing, but this was a sort of reconnaissance mission.

The National Gallery was our first stop, because I knew it would take a full two hours, and that was the amount of time we had before Bob could join us. Besides, I wanted to make sure CZ was fresh, since she gets dragged into art museums a lot. (By me, of course.)

Two pleasant surprises there were the Raphaels and the 18th C. portraiture (the American and especially the English). These are two areas where the National Gallery's collection exceeds even that of the much larger Metropolitan Museum.

First, the Small Cowper Madonna and Child:

You can't really see their thin gold haloes, which really bring out the geometry of the painting, in this reproduction from the Gallery's website. Raphael was a master of circles. And of course, one thing you never get in a reproduction, but I love seeing in real life, is the glowing color of an original oil painting, especially, in this one, the reds (they're in the skin tones, too). It's hardly the same piece on the web, so I'm really glad I got to see it.

And then there's the dear Miss Willoughby by George Romney, long a family favorite because I once copied it in watercolor and it's been hanging on various walls at my inlaws' house ever since. (This is the sort of thing that happens when you "temporarily" move to an apartment in Manhattan.) The reproduction I used for my copy looks a lot like this web image, but when I saw the real thing for the first time yesterday, I was startled by the amount of pink (same shade as in the sashes) in the sky, and also the warmth and light of the yellow-gold trees in the background. Still, finding her there was like meeting an old friend.

Other highlights included the first five presidents by Gilbert Stuart, some stately Van Dycks, and of course, the Vermeers. I guess you can see why CZ gets exhausted in museums! Still, she liked a particular Italian Madonna and Child statue in which the Christ Child is hiding shyly in his mother's robe.

We grabbed a quick lunch and coffee at Starbucks, met Bob, and walked a long way to The Library of Congress. One thing I didn't realize about Washington is that everything is much farther apart than I remembered. Not that many people were out walking around. And it wasn't very crowded for a prime tourist spot. Maybe the wind chill yesterday had something to do with that?

Anyway, we were just in time for a tour of the library's (main) Jefferson Building. We learned a lot more about the building itself than we would have just walking around. Also, you get to see the reading room on tour, which I'm not sure you get to do otherwise. CZ was excited to hear that you could get a pass to do all the research you wanted, because she had found out about some music manuscripts in the Madison Building just before the tour. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to visit another building on this trip.

As it was, we saw a Gutenberg Bible, the first map (1507) in which the New World was labeled "America" (it included a lot of terra incognita out West), and Jefferson's Library, which included a 1571 Bible with a hand-lettered spine (I'm assuming this one didn't have the miracles excised) and a surprising number of titles in French.

Here are some photos of the 1897 Jefferson Building, which was modeled after an Italian Renaissance villa:

These children personify America and Africa, respectively. There were also little putti all around them that represented various professions. Very 19th century touch to make them all cute and chubby children, I thought.

One of several lunettes and murals by Frank Benson, the noted American Impressionist.

Our last stop, in the fading light and increasing cold, was the National Air and Space Museum. As befits a military interest, we had three main objectives to accomplish in short order (one hour): See the Apollo mission spacecraft, the Wright Brothers' plane, and a particular fighter jet that Susan's son Aaron had recommended. We did!

While viewing the Apollo Lunar Module, we made the surprising discovery that there really was life on the Moon after all. Pardon the blurry photo, but it rather adds to its authenticity, we think.

Aaron gave us very specific instructions for viewing the F104 Starfighter, his favorite childhood plane. It looks best from the front, above, or underneath. Unfortunately, the first two views were completely inaccessible, and the last was possible only by going up and down the escalator repeatedly, which we of course did. In order to save CZ from injury, however, I had her take this photo from the floor below, where it's more at an angle.

Also, I just couldn't help but include this photo of a very early passenger plane (1926). I think you'd have to be pretty intrepid to have flown on one of these--it looked almost like a tin can!

The ride home on the Acela's Quiet Car, as I had supposed it would be, was much more subdued than on the way down (we had a loud guy next to us then; he even typed loudly!) The passengers, mostly business travelers, were all talked out. I was grateful, because my head was quite full and the ride gave me time to think through our whirlwind tour before going on to the next thing during a busy Christmas season.

Compared to the Acela, though, the 2 train home from Penn Station was a veritable party. It gets that way sometimes, especially at night. And when we emerged above ground in New York---ayyyieeeee! We were greeted, in our light jackets, by a twenty-mile-per-hour blast of wind and newly freezing temperatures. But we made it to DC and back, full of new sights, in one day.

Introverts in the Church

Today I've been reading and marking up a couple of really interesting articles that I found by following links from Tonia's blog. One of them is a sample chapter from a new book by Adam McHugh. The book is called Introverts in Church, and the sample chapter is called "Extroverts in the Church." The premise is that Americans' admiration for extroverted behavior, especially in leadership, has spilled over into they way our churches, and especially our evangelical churches, are structured. The result is that introverts sometimes feel spiritually inferior because they can't keep up the level of involvement that others do, or because they don't like to share every detail of their thoughts.

While McHugh rightly points out that no one should use personality as an excuse for stagnation, I found the article inspiring. Renewal often comes from within the hearts of quiet and thoughtful Christians as they seek the will of God in prayer. And many Christians badly want to know that they can work for the good of the Kingdom without having to force themselves into a mold that feels not merely like a stretch, but like a round peg in a square hole. McHugh encourages introverts not to automatically disqualify themselves from leadership positions, because sometimes their steadiness and insight is just what a group needs.

I've put a link at right in the Delicious bookmarks.

If I don't post again for a while, it's just because I'm finding that my thoughts are too slow and tentative to make posts lately. I'll be back when the atmosphere becomes conducive to posting once again.

Good Advent to you!

Metropolitan Museum today

Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–1675)

The Milkmaid, about 1657–58

Oil on canvas; 17 7/8 x 16 1/8 in. (45.5 x 41 cm)

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Purchase, 1908, with aid from the Rembrandt Society

This morning we made our annual pilgrimage to see the Angel Tree at the Metropolitan Museum. Again, we took no photos. But we still noted the variations in the figures. CZ never seems to get too old for the Angel Tree or the Nutcracker, which we'll go see tomorrow night. They are her childhood Advent memories.

We were also there because Bob wanted a chance to see Vermeer's The Milkmaid, on loan from the Rijksmuseum. CZ and I had been to the exhibit before, but you can never go too many times, because it's always crowded and you only get a glimpse of the small, intimate painting. I am always struck by how clear and vibrant the color is in the painting compared to its reproductions, so I look mainly at the color and luminosity when I go. Everyone else, it seems, is looking for the tile with Cupid on it, which I guess explains why someone's head is always six inches from the painting. I think the next time they create an audio guide, they ought to talk about some esoteric effect that can only be seen from ten feet back.

;-)

After Vermeer and the Angel Tree, we wandered around way upstairs in the Early American section, to escape the crowds. I hadn't thought about it beforehand, but when CZ and I were standing in the Wentworth Room, I noticed some similarities between the furnishings in the room and those in the Vermeer paintings downstairs. "Hey, do you notice anything in particular about these furnishings?" I commented to CZ. (I was trying not to be too obvious, because sometimes she thinks I am.)

"No," she responded.

"The furnishings are like those in the Vermeer paintings," I pointed out, again trying not to be too didactic. "Like the rug on the table. And the tankard on the mantlepiece..."

"And the Splenda packet on the floor," she added.

I looked down, and there was indeed an used Splenda packet just on the other side of the railing. I remember reading somewhere that this was where E.L. Konigsburg got the idea to write The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. She and her sons were in one of the rococo rooms on the first floor and saw a piece of popcorn in a chair...

Thanksgiving

Having started and abandoned several thoughtful posts because of interruptions, I am going for the newsy.

It was a lovely Thanksgiving. I took not one photo of turkey, wild rice salad, pumpkin pie, or any of the rest of it, but if a turkey doesn't get blogged, it's still a turkey. We had another family over for dessert, which was a nice compromise between preserving some tradition for just the three of us, and sharing hospitality. When she wasn't involved in preparing the dinner, CZ was strolling through the house with her violin, alternating between 19th century violin concertos and "Old French" or the hoedown. I thought the fiddle pieces fit the feel of the day nicely.

In between dinner and dessert, I called my sister, who entertained me with a story about how she and my parents had agreed not to cook a Thanksgiving dinner this year and only have dessert, yet each had privately started cooking, and they wound up with more than enough dinner for two families after all.

My heart was at least partially in Georgia already, since between cooking tasks, I sat down and read most of the journal I kept for CZ between the time she was born and our move to NYC when she was three. I thought to do this because of a conversation I'd had with a friend about CZ's funny habit of memorizing states when she was two. So I went back to make sure I had the timing right, and then read the rest of the journal as well. The two-year-old CZ was, of course, endearing, and I even came to the conclusion that I was a better parent then than I am now. (Maybe the job was simpler.) I also came to the conclusion that CZ's personality was well established before her third birthday. Simply by writing what I observed, I had made an uncannily prescient sketch of who she is today.

But what struck me most was the simplicity of our lives. When we lived in Georgia, our lives had a definite and given structure due to our status as a student family, our roles as the parents of a toddler, and the small size of the town where we lived (Athens). I had never heard of the MacLaren stroller that is the staple of Manhattanites, much less the Bugaboo. I was happy to have something decent to wear and didn't worry about being hip. CZ wore hand-me-downs. About the only extra-curricular offering for toddlers was a gymnastics class, and our other outings included watching the UGA marching band practice and going to the library. I spent CZ's naps painting portraits, for grocery money. (CZ carried on conversations with these two-dimensional children, as though they were dolls, and tried to share her sippy cup with them.) I cleaned a lot, left the windows open and turned the heat down, and cooked really inexpensive food. And when exam time came, I went to Grandma's for a few days.

I was reminded of all this yesterday, not only because I read the journal, but because I spilled some water from the drip pan into the oven and smoked up the whole apartment. We opened all the windows as wide as they would go, and somehow with the cool breeze and the smoky smell, I felt was in Georgia in fall. Smells can evoke very specific memories, and these were just what I needed to get some perspective on our busy fall.

Window shopping

Bob took a business trip to Germany a couple of weeks ago, mostly staying in Mainz and Munich. He usually gets a little free time during these trips, but only an hour or two, so he tries to walk around and get a feel for whatever city he's in. And he takes along our camera so he can bring back a bit of the flavor to us. Bob has his favorite subjects to photograph, and one of them is shop windows. I think this is because New Yorkers spend a lot of time passing by display windows, so it's interesting to see another country's twist on the same theme.

We were rather amused by this ad, which is obviously supposed to evoke New York. The photo editor must have thought red would stand out better than orange, though, because he/she changed the color of the subway line.

I can tell Bob must be looking forward to ski season. The Germans have such techno-style!

Anyway, I have a few more of these I may post as I have time. We are still much busier than usual, but every now and then I have a bit of time to reflect, and it's so nice!

Recording session

One of the things we did last week was to record C.Z.'s jury pieces, a Bach Partita and the first movement of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3. I'm posting the Partita below. (Thanks, Rick, for helping me upload this music file!)

The Partita is spare, unaccompanied, and lasts about four-and-a-half minutes. The recording isn't perfect, but it's a good first try for a student, and shows what kind of quality recording is available in New York City for young violinists.

The make-up jury seemed to go well, and C.Z. got some nice compliments, though she probably won't get her jury score for a week or two. It's a really nice way to mark the passage from last year's injury setbacks to what we hope will be smoother sailing this year. We'll still be going to physical therapy for a while, but I'm glad to see C.Z. practicing again, because that's what she likes to do.

Oh, yes, and there was an orchestra concert, too! Nutcracker, Merry Wives of Windsor, and Weber's Konzertstucke with the solo performed by last year's piano concerto competition winner. Bob's mother came up from Georgia, we had some family friends in attendance, and we invited C.Z.'s stand partner's mother to sit with us as well. They just moved here from China two months ago and speak almost no English, but luckily, our friends spoke Mandarin and were able to translate. Great fun!

An American wins the New York City Marathon!

Here are a just few pictures from today's New York City Marathon. Meb Keflezighi became the first American to win the New York City Marathon since Alberto Salazar in 1982. And the Americans did very well overall this year, taking six of the top ten men's places, and four of the top ten women's places.

Robert Cheruiyot and Meb Keflezighi on Fifth Avenue in Spanish Harlem, just before mile 23. Cheruiyot is still ahead, but Meb is right behind him! (You can enlarge any of these photos by clicking on them.)

Ryan Hall is in fifth place here, but he finished fourth. (I put this photo in just for you, Susan!)

The lead women, including Paula Radcliffe, Christelle Daunay, Ludmilla Petrova, and eventual winner Derartu Tulu. (Paula Radcliffe sustained an injury during the race.)

A couple of our own local heroes. Bob and his friend David engaged in a bit of banditry by jumping in for four miles with their friend Roberto.

This was the first time in ten years that Bob hasn't run in the marathon, so although he got to see the lead runners for once, we could tell he missed it. I think he and David are already making their training plans for next year!

And just for fun, here's Mayor Mike Bloomberg's limousine. Bloomberg is behind the second windshield, so you can't really see him. A bit of campaigning, perhaps? The mayoral election is Tuesday.

Fall leaves nature journal

The leaves are finally starting to turn riot in Central Park. Watching them turn always reminds me of a tradition C.Z. and I had in our early days of homeschooling. Anyone could think of it, no doubt, but what I like about it is that though it is extremely simple, it isn't dumbed down or silly in the least. A child (or even an adult) can do as much or as little with it as he likes, and it's a good exercise in observation. I think Charlotte Mason would approve!

• The procedure is simple enough. You take a walk in the park and gather a few leaves. Of course, C.Z. preferred to gather a few hundred, but after a while I'd say, "Well, okay, but you'll have to carry them, and...hmm, do you suppose maybe we should leave a few for the other children?" (Young New Yorkers have to learn very early to share with a few million people.) So, we tried to come home with only our very favorites.

These was one of the last leaf pages we did, after C.Z. had already learned to mix colors pretty well.

• When you get home, have the pencils, watercolors, field guides and paper ready. Children soon learn that leaves shrivel overnight, and parents soon get busy with other things, like dinner.

• Place a leaf on a piece of paper. Sometimes we used sketch pad paper, but often enough, we used printer paper, because that's what we had. After a while, we learned to arrange several leaves on the paper to create a composition. Trace the leaf's outline with a pencil.

• Get out the colors and try to imitate what's going on in the leaf. Here, it might help to know basic color mixing. Not only do blue and yellow make green, but they look better mixed loosely on the paper than dutifully colored with a straight green pencil. Brown leaves usually have a lot of bright yellow shining through. And a touch of contrasting color, like red or blue, often makes the shadows look interesting, but too much muddies the color. But don't be afraid to mess up. Experimenting is half the fun, and the beauty of it is, you can always get more leaves and paper!

• Sometimes we used more pencils, sometimes more watercolor, and sometimes we used both. And sometimes we looked at D'Aulaire books for color-mixing ideas. I feel fairly confident suggesting that you can do this, because C.Z. doesn't consider herself to be a particularly good draftsman, but tracing the leaves gave her just the right amount of encouragement to do the rest.

• After you've done all that observation through tracing and coloring, identify the leaf. Many leaves are easy enough to identify with a field guide--the maples, the oaks, and gingkos, for instance. But we eventually came across a few that stumped us, like the ailanthus that hung over our old building's back patio. Eventually we learned to bring home a bit of the seed pod from the park if it was available, or to take a good look at the tree's bark. Since we were usually in a public park, and at any rate shared all our trees with others, we only took leaves that were on the ground, and we didn't shave off any bark. So we had to be very observant on the spot.

To be honest, we're still not 100% sure this is an ailanthus leaf, but we learned a lot about shapes and pods while trying to identify a branch that fell onto our building's patio!

• Then we wrote the name of the leaf below the drawing. C.Z. was not enthusiastic on the subject of penmanship or spelling as a young child, so sometimes this was the hardest part, but it did give her practice using something real, and to this day we know what some of these leaves are only because she took the trouble to label them the day we brought them home.

• When we finished, we simply slipped the pages into a small notebook with plastic sleeves. We added a few pages each year for three or four years. In the end, we had a nice little leaf nature journal, and lots of happy memories of crunching and sloshing (depending on the weather) through leaves on fall days in the park.

The opening page to C.Z.'s old leaf notebook

(You can tell she already had strong opinions about the colors of her letters.)

I'm sure New York City isn't the first place most people think of when they consider nature education. (For one thing, kids aren't even allowed to climb the trees, and even the prospect of jumping in a pile of leaves can be unsavory considering some of the trash one finds underneath.) And I've heard more than one New Yorker proudly claim to have no interest in nature whatsoever. But our family has always liked nature, and the challenge of finding nature in New York City rather invigorated us than defeated us. We've always been a little contrary, but really, it's not nearly so much the pleasure of being obstinate that drives us outdoors as the smell of wet leaves, and the jewel-like contrast of bright red maple leaves with their gray surroundings of fog, looming park rocks, and sodden sky.

You know it's fall when...

...you see the Winter Wren

...you go to the park and all the fall birds have arrived--White-throated Sparrows, Juncos, and Titmice. The ubiquitous and year-round House Sparrows have started flying around in puffed and close-knit flocks, and if you look closely, you see a migrant or two, like this Black-throated Blue Warbler, stopping on its way south:

The little Winter Wren (at top) is only 4 inches long. When it stretches out its neck at the foot of a tree (they're bush dwellers), its whole body moves. It's not really big enough to move just its head. Luckily, its tail sticks up for balance. I saw one Tuesday--a real treat, because I've only seen one once before!

Some birds are just around in unusual numbers, like the Phoebe and the Blue Jay. The Robins haven't left yet, but the Grackles have arrived, and so has the Sapsucker. Even the Pigeons are flying around in circles instead of barely getting out of the way of the buses. It's a gregarious, bustling moment.

But I'm holding out for the Golden-crowned Kinglets, my favorites of all the songbirds. They usually pass through in flocks at about this time:

All photos from Wikipedia Commons

UPDATE, October 11: We saw our Kinglets today! They were all over the North Woods of Central Park, both the Golden-crowned and the Ruby-crowned. They were extremely cooperative, hanging upside down off branches at close range and at eye-level. They almost seemed to be following us!

We also saw another Winter Wren. We were actually there because someone had reported a Sedge Wren, a bird which hasn't been seen in NYC in forty years. We knew where it had been seen this morning, but alas, it was a no-show. Still, a lovely day with lots of birds!

***

Whenever we've had a moment this week, C.Z. and I have been looking at everything we can find under the microscope. I doubt this is systematic enough to "count" as lab science, but it's really fun! This week we've seen hair, mold, an onion tip, leaf cells, bacteria, diatoms, other unidentified micro-organisms, and a Euglena. I suppose high school science teachers wouldn't be impressed, but I thought it was hilarious when C.Z. put down her violin right in the middle of Nutcracker practice, put her eye up to the microscope and started talking to the light-shy Euglena, whom we had to constantly chase down, "Oh, you're so cute! I see you found something to eat. That's great!" And who knew that protists could dance to "The Waltz of the Flowers"?

School year so far...

One skill C.Z. has picked up this year: How to read on a moving train.

So far this has been the school year of logistics. Honestly, I'd rather be doing something cozier, and I still think we can get there. But a mother's job is also to provide her children with the skills they'll need as adults, and right now I'm trying to help C.Z. to budget her time wisely, so as to open up those (very important!) opportunities for adventure, serendipity, and yes, even coziness.

During the past two or three weeks, I'd noticed that C.Z. is having to spend the whole of Sunday afternoon catching up with assignments instead of family. So yesterday I added up her workload for each day, and consistently came up with over seven hours per day, including the music school day. I hadn't realized this before because she had been doing her own schedule on iCal, but I made my own spreadsheet so that I could see it better. Our first job was to get a true picture of the situation, so we could figure out what to do about it.

Now, I know that some people would say that the typical high school student is supposed to study more than seven hours each day, that of course they study on Sunday, and that we need to be realistic. But (respectfully) our family is not going for the typical Manhattan-style achiever described in The Organization Kid. We are realistically admitting that we can't do everything well. And that since the default direction of our culture is towards over-scheduling, it takes active planning to avoid it. So here are my first draft thoughts (feel free to add to them):

A lot (even most) of C.Z.'s current busyness is violin-related (even injury-related), but a good bit is also related to outside academic classes. And some of our busyness was quite unpredictable, as busyness often is. I'm so glad we said no to some perfectly good classes and activities that we were considering! Even so, I have identified one class that we could possibly drop if necessary. Also, there are some very creative books and activities that I'd love to add to the mix for depth, but I know from experience that adding them now would just compound the logistical emphasis, which would defeat the point.

Also, despite the fact that this fall's schedule is not my ideal one, there are some decidedly good things that are coming out of it. They are, in fact, just the kinds of things I was hoping for when we allowed more outside classes, and more formal classes, this year. Here are a few:

• C.Z. has found that she can write, and even likes to write. She has a kind, but firm, and really intelligent literature teacher, who "velocitizes" the kids, as my husband would say. Each essay gets just a little longer, until they're writing full length expository papers with confidence.

• She's learned to read on the subway. For years, C.Z. said she couldn't concentrate well-enough to read on the train, but I think necessity was the mother of a new skill, and now she enjoys it. Last week she even read Great Expectations while "surfing," because the train was so crowded she couldn't find a bar to hold on to! This is a good development, because we've been spending a lot of time on trains lately.

• She seems to find textbook biology easy. I was somewhat surprised, as I didn't ever think we were doing what I'd call "enough" science. It was mostly an informal hobby of ours, and mostly hands on. I'd expected her to know, say, bird species already, but not polysaccharide chains. Where did that come from?

• After a long hiatus, C.Z. is taking music composition again! (Even though she has very little time to work on composition. But she can take things she's already done for critique, which is a good start.) I like to see her taking composition, because I think it's such a strong interest, and it's not always easy to find opportunities for it.

• Generally, C.Z. seems up to the challenge of this year, even though the work is taking a lot of time. It helps, no doubt, that she chose the classes. And it shows me that informal education in the early years can lead to success in formal work once a child is old enough to want to.

I'm still looking for a bit of cozy learning this year, but we'll find it somehow. Ideally, what I'd like to see is that C.Z. realizes she can work hard, sees the wonderful opportunity for leisure (in the true sense) that the next four or so years hold, and goes beyond the presently necessary emphasis on logistics into the realm of very real, connected, and deep learning.

Ideas for sketching

Do you like nature journaling? The image at left is by NYC artist Tommy Kane. (I hope he won't mind my reproducing it here as a bit of free publicity.) It's from a website called Urban Sketchers, which I only just discovered yesterday.

Another interesting artist on the site is John Wooley. Wooley just happens to be ten years old, but that's not the point. I am utterly impressed with his free sense of line, composition, and sheer inventiveness. I could draw realistically when I was ten, but I couldn't invent like he does. I wonder if I could even do it now, with an extensive art background and many years' worth of images in my head. Looking at these drawings makes me want to try.

Most of these sketchers seem to make their living in the advertising world. And Kane is unfortunately the same man who did those Steve Madden ads a few years ago that looked like Bratz dolls. Makes me wonder how we can open up better opportunities for artists to make a living.

Meanwhile, I think this website makes great inspiration for nature journaling! I know it's urban journaling, but I posted it even so for two reasons: 1) The drawing styles are more creative than on most nature journaling sites I've seen, and 2) urban journaling looks like fun, too! Enjoy!

Sketch by John Wooley, from Urban Sketchers

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I haven't had a whole lot of time lately to sketch medieval manuscripts, but I have done a three or four. I hope to do more sketching as time permits, perhaps even post a few eventually. For that, though, I'll need a scanner.

Riding for Hope for New York

Updated photo: Here's Bob finishing the bike ride today (Saturday the 26th). He enjoyed himself immensely and now I think he's looking forward to a nice nap and then some dinner!

As you may know, my husband Bob is just a little bit goal-oriented. This summer when he sustained a minor calf injury and took up cycling to make up for miles lost running, he really got on the band--um, bike. Now, as part of his goal of becoming more involved at Redeemer Presbyterian Church here in NYC, he's signed up for the Hope for New York (HFNY) Cycling Team for this Saturday's Escape New York bike ride.

Bob plans to do the full 100 mile route. He's created a sponsor page for himself so that anyone who’s interested can donate to HFNY through this event. To make things more interesting, an anonymous donor has agreed to make a $500 matching gift for the first 40 riders who raise $500. (We’ve made sure that the threshold amount has already been donated so that we’ll receive one of these $500 anonymous donor donations.) In addition, Bob is matching each additional dollar donated through his site, up to $1000. You can also click the logo at the top of the page for more information on the Bike-a-Thon.

Hope for New York is a Christian organization which donates time and money to the poor in New York City. If you've ever been to Redeemer, you’re undoubtedly familiar with HFNY. It's a good cause, and a good opportunity to make your donation dollar go farther. This is Bob's first time to try fundraising for a charity, so he just wants to spread the news. But please do not donate if the time or event, or the whole idea of donating through a blog, is not right for you.