The Un-Vacation

I've never cared for amusement parks. It's not because I'm old. This has been happening since I threw up on a roller coaster in fourth grade. My stomach hates curveballs. It has rejected its contents on a windy road on the way to Neueschwanstein castle in Germany, on Navy ships and sail boats, on a Navy training propeller plane and helicopter, and on a P-3 mission over the ocean near Russia. I even have to close my eyes during intense Imax moments. For many years, Steve and I tolerated amusement parks for Pamela's sake, hoping David would take on our role when he got bigger. He inherited my weakness so we take turns escorting Pamela until we all turn green.

I know families who love this kind of vacation. We're not one of them.

When I think of amusement parks, I think hot, sticky, sweaty, waiting in line, trying to block out what is offered to entertain us. The food is expensive and must be avoided for Pamela's sake. Everything is overpriced and, even if you pay for everything in advance, you end up paying for more than you intended. Lately, we've stopped at unusual places in our travels. We decided to make our weirdness official: over the holiday weekend, we attended a retreat called "Marvelous Mozart" at a Benedictine archabbey, located about half way between Kansas and South Carolina.

What about Pamela?

She loves all styles of music. Her i-Touch has every genre of music imaginable. On long drives, she chooses classical stations on Sirius with occasional dips into the broadway channel and kids' music. Pamela adores Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and too many to list here.

The retreat location was perfect and the grounds were lovely. The guest rooms, dining area, and classroom were all in the same building. Since Pamela knew how to find our room and get in with a key card, she could take a break whenever she pleased. If Steve and I lingered over coffee longer than she liked, she asked to go to the room. If she got a little bored with a session, she left early. The Benedictines built many breaks into the schedule, perfect for Pamela and I since we are both recovering from colds.

What did she do during a session? She watched a documentary about Mozart with us and watched several clips of his operas. She listened to some music as well. While some people took notes or read the handouts, Pamela doodled. She loves to doodle!
Archabbey accommodations lacked a few things. Since we pay for television at home, having no television in the room worked for us. The Internet was down, and monks aren't the most technically savvy people, which is more than balanced by their gracious hospitality. The bathrooms had a shower but no bath, just like two bathrooms in our house. We had no idea where the nearest store was, but we left the windows open at night and awakened to sweet birds. We ate our meals cafeteria style: simple, nourishing, filling, and good for the waistline. One night we had corn fresh off the cob — delicious!

How did Pamela do on the un-vacation? Very well. She had one moment of frustration during a lecture when someone who shall not be named was trying to figure out his complicated travel schedule. Pamela watched his every pen stroke and commanded him to stop after he made one too many changes for her taste. She demanded him to put it away and settled down after he did. She also had a mini-melt during the last lunch. She was out of sorts because she had planned for us to leave after breakfast. I had to stay for the Requiem session (a highlight for me). She rushed during lunch and dropped her tray on the floor in the serving area. I gave her a big hug to calm her because I walked her to her seat. Steve and kitchen staff cleaned up her spilled salad. To help her recover, we went ahead and got food for her. Up until this point, she had had no problems getting her own tray and serving herself.

Pamela and I took a quick nature walk around a little lake on the grounds. Steve had been spied it during his morning run and urged me to see it. Isn't the weather and view gorgeous?



I spotted several new things in this short trek: two new species of dragonflies and crawfish holes in the grass near the water. The dragonflies were moving so quickly I'm shocked my camera picked up anything. These short, stubby dragonflies are called eastern amberwings (Perithemis tenera). They hung out above the water's edge.



I've never seen anything like these black and prom-tuxedo-blue dragonflies. The widow skimmers (Libellula luctuosa) buzzed over water and fields like tie-fighters in a Star Wars movie. They went so fast all I could see was a blur of color. Apparently, the males defend their territory aggressively.



These crawfish holes remind me of mud castles I used to make at the beach as a child. If we ever come back, I want to bring a picnic lunch and watch for the crawfish to come out.



Can you tell that Pamela was in a hurry to go home?



And, in case you haven't had enough doodles....

Reflections of an Odd Year

Like my friend, Amy in Peru, I prefer doing reflections at the end of the year instead of resolutions at the beginning. I spend more time blogging the resolution of my camera, which captured the lovely reflection of sunshine on Lake Warnock to the right, than I do blogging New Year's resolutions. In fact, not one post talks about them!

I have noticed a distinct pattern in the past decade of my life. The oddest things happen in odd years: major changes of job for Steve (necessitating a move), amazing projects landing in my lap or dwindling away, switching churches (not often I am glad to say). Some of the most surprising shifts that I could not have predicted in a million years (and, yet, God knew all along) happen in odd years.

The year 2013 was no exception. Some things, I have already shared. At the beginning of the year, I had no idea that two friends and I would found a school based upon a Charlotte Mason style of education. God clearly had been carefully laying plans for years, but He did not bother to tell us until June. Watching Pamela integrate into a class (more on that in another post), helping other families with autism, and seeing children get excited about the world makes the hard work worth it. It also keeps me busy when Steve is working in Kansas (and started working there in 2011—another odd year).

While it stinks that eleven hundred miles separate us from Steve, we are enjoying being able to see so many wonderful things on the long trips back and forth as regular readers of this blog know. This time, we are doing something different and, as my friend Di points out, change gives our older children with autism a chance to think and become resilient. Steve scored uber cheap tickets, so Pamela and I are flying back to South Carolina. What luxury!

About a week before we were due to drive to Kansas, Pamela realized that the babies could not come. She has flown enough to see the disadvantages of hauling five babies through TSA. She asked her brother David, who planned to stay home and rack up some overtime, to babysit for her. She also told me she could only carry one backpack, instead of two or three or four. Since we are without typical schooling materials, Pamela texted the following to Steve, a week after our arrival: "I am getting journel, pencil, chip, hamburger, pickles and coke cola."

Two things I loved about Pamela's mindfulness: (1) she spotted the problem and solved it and (2) she shared her plan with me. If your child in the spectrum struggles with being mindful, Di came up with two important questions and changes you might want to try: What am I doing? Why am I doing it? The poster she created summarizes what has helped Pamela learn to think for herself.

Some exciting changes have been brewing all year, but I cannot share them until January 2014. Years are like road trips. You never know what is going to happen along the way. Steve and I took turns driving through two weather fronts on the long trek from Carolina to Kansas. We left pleasant, sunny weather in Carolina. While going through Kentucky, we discovered that the weather app on his phone makes a loud noise when severe weather alerts are issued. A tornado watch and flash flood accompanied the heavy rainfall. The next day, we saw vehicles, askew in odd positions with parts flung every which way, on the icy leg from St. Louis to mid Missouri. [Notice how I subtly worked in another photograph of a reflection.]

Since the ice storm had already blown through, the road conditions were better than we had expected. When we stopped for coffee on the icy section of the trip, we spotted thick layers of ice, coating the branches of the tree. As we headed to Kansas City, the precipitation shifted to six inches of snow. The ginormous Angus cow statue sported an icicle goatee and a white blanket. The temperature on Planet Hoth was a brutal ten degrees and simply getting out of the car sucked the breath out of me.

At sunset, about a half hour from Steve's place, the Missouri river bridge leading to Kansas offered a neat view. Wave upon wave of black birds flew over us. The procrastinating geese that had gotten caught in the frigid weather traveled in their V-formation.

What surprised us most was how uneventful the drive was in spite of all the wide and varied road and weather conditions. The smooth journey ended at Steve's place. The landlord had failed to have the neighborhood and public parking areas plowed. In eleven hundred miles of traveling across half of our country, we nearly got stuck in the driveway when we backed out to make a supply run.

God sure has a sense of humor!

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?
Job 38:22-27

Making *GOOD* Time on the Road

Nancy Kelly's wonderful advice for rich holiday reading has inspired me to share tidbits for rich holiday travel as well. Pamela and I are making two trips to and from Kansas this season. As the drive is twenty plus hours one way, we include an overnight stop. We also take advantage of inspiring rest stops like Carl Sandburg's home, the house that Manly built, a replica of Little House on the Prairie, the National World War I Museum, Gettysburg, just to name a few. While some stops cost a little and last an hour or two, we never regret making the effort. As one of my friends says, "I like to make good time on the road—emphasis on good!"



Taking time to stretch our legs, our eyes feasted on beauty at the St. Louis Art Museum for nothing more than a voluntary donation. I chose to keep ten dollars for parking underground in my pocket and walk in the bitter cold because of the plentiful free parking. The added bonus was this gorgeous view of the reflecting pool in front of the museum.

While we had planned to visit a couple of dear friends (van Gogh, Monet, Millet, and Winslow Homer), the first painting that captured our attention was this ginormous painting of King Charles I by Dutch artist Daniel Martensz Mytens the Elder. This trip revealed that art is a shared experience, not just with your companion but also with friends from afar. When we spied this commemoration of his coronation, I recalled a conversation with the elementary class at Harvest Community School last week. The students are very much aware that Charles I lost his head, so they were intrigued that Carolina and Charleston are named for his son, Charles II, who managed to keep both head and throne.



Pursuing van Gogh, we came across this version of the madonna and child by Davide Ghirlandaio. The Roman numerals, MCCCLXXXIV, painted on the stairs caught Pamela's eye, and she quickly read the date as 1486. Again, I thought of the elementary students at Harvest because they want to learn Roman numerals since some books number chapters in this manner.



Monet's Water Lilies were gorgeous, and seeing someone notebooking increased my delight as I revel in The Living Page by Laurie Bestvater! We finally found three van Gogh's in a row. Pamela said her favorite is the one to her right, Factories at Clichy. Van Gogh included two tiny figures in front of the factory, hard to spot, but logical when considering how small we are beside the mechanical wonders made by our hands.



While the dancing grapevines in Vineyards at Auvers (shown clearly in this detail) tugged at my heart, my favorite is Stairway at Auvers, a painting which quivers with delight. Again, I am reminded of our school for the primary class adored this painting by the artist they call "Rainbow Man." When I texted a picture of Pamela standing beside the stairway to a friend whose children attend Harvest, her kids were amazed that we saw the masterpiece with our own eyes.







On the way to Millet, we spied greyhounds painted by another realist Gustave Courbet. We had to take a picture for our friend Eman, the ultimate dog lover. We even texted a picture of Pamela and the greyhounds to his mom. The other day, when we were walking with him to pick up lunch, we saw this cute little white dog named Lily. He could not contain his delight and said, "It's a Maltese! I love her!" As she was wearing a brown sweater, I let it flow into an impromptu Spanish lesson with the teen who had joined us. We figured out how to describe the encounter in a second language, "Veo una perrita blanca con un sueter pardo. Su nombre es Lily."

Right next to Knitting Lesson by Jean Francois Millet, we saw Girl with Mandolin by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Seeing the mother teach her daughter to knit brought to mind the finger-knitting lessons on the porch swing at school. One student taught another, and, before long, the entire elementary class knew how to make scarves and belts. I had to take a picture of the Corot for my friend Leslie adores this artist. I tagged her once I posted the shot on Facebook.





Before reaching our final destination, we met George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, pictured on Pamela's left. Apparently, Stuart cranked out so many of these portraits that he called them hundred dollar bills! Pamela and her class has been reading a short version of his biography in Four Great Americans. How serendipitous to find his portrait on the way to Winslow Homer's The Country School, which brings to mind Understood Betsy, a book that our entire school just finished reading.



I will conclude with this collection of arms and armor from the Middle East and Far East, which remind me of the boys who spend recess imagining themselves as heroes and villains in battles, real, fictional, literary, historical, and invented. Making GOOD time is not about how fast you finish a journey. It is about making good memories, reflecting on past experiences, and sharing your discovery with friends.



We study art for its own sake! However, if you must find a utilitarian reason to visit art museums in this standardized-test-obsessed world, this article might convict you. "Students who, by lottery, were selected to visit the museum on a field trip demonstrated stronger critical thinking skills, displayed higher levels of social tolerance, exhibited greater historical empathy and developed a taste for art museums and cultural institutions."

Plugging the Gettysburg Address into my GPS

By the bivouac's fitful flame,
A procession winding around me,
Solemn and sweet and slow;—but first I note,
The tents of the sleeping army,
The fields' and woods'dim outline,
The darkness, lit spots of kindled fire—the silence;
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving;
The shrubs and trees,
(As I left my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me;)
While wind in procession thoughts,
O tender and wond'rous thoughts,
Of life and death—of home and the past and loved,
and of those that are far away;
A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
By the bivouac's fitful flame. ~ Walt Whitman

I just counted the number of miles I drove between July 30 and August 30 of 2012 (not including two deliveries of meals on wheels and the times I took a wrong turn): 4,700 miles. That is the equivalent of driving over 150 miles a day! Whenever we travel, we always try to find interesting places to visit. Our recent trip to Pennsylvania, we drove through Gettysburg, so we had to stop there on the way home. As is typical in a Charlotte Mason paradigm, we had just finished reading about Gettysburg and Lincoln's address the week before we headed into "Yankee land" as our parakeet sitter called it. Our stop in Gettysburg ties into a visit to Vicksburg, Mississippi five years ago and Fort Sumter (a place we will revisit when the weather is more humane) four years ago.

Who can resist a headshot with Honest Abe?

But, I digress.

As we walked up to the museum, we were greeted by a chipmunk! Can you see it sitting on the rocks in the picture below?


We are in the middle of several books and things to heighten Pamela's understanding of the Civil War. Our poet Walt Whitman helps set the mood of many battles. Last month, we listened to a slower-tempo version (thank you, Audacity) of the Pa's Fiddle version of When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again, which was published in 1863 (we used lyrics from The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook). We have nearly finished a book with six stories about slavery and the Reconstruction era, and you can see Pamela trying on chains in the picture on the left. This visit is perfectly timed with what we have been studying for two years.

We are reading the closing chapters of for South Carolina history, Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter, and we bought its companion at the museum in Gettysburg (Yankee Girl at Gettysburg). Here are two pictures I took to tie into the Civil War and South Carolina. The flag is especially meaningful because the heroine of the book got kicked out of school for refusing to salute the Palmetto flag.



A couple of things struck me about the visit. The cyclorama astounded us. What is a cyclorama, you ask? In the late 19th century, this popular entertainment venue featured ginormous oil paintings, created in the round. Imagine standing inside an empty circular swimming pool with the walls depicting a famous historical scene. Most cycloramas portrayed dramatic religious, historical, and literary events. The advent of motion pictures caused interest to wane, and most cycloramas were lost or destroyed.

The Gettysburg cyclorama survived. French artist Paul Philippoteaux depicted the final Confederte assault on July 3, 1863. He came to the city in 1882 and spent the next year exploring the area, sketching, hiring a panoramic photographer, and interviewing veterans of the battle. The painting debuted in Chicago in 1883, made even more realistic with a three-dimensional foreground of dirt littered with battlefield debris, stone walls, shattered trees, and broken fences. Bringing it into the 21st century, the National Park Service has added sound effects, smoke, flashing lights, and a recorded narrative to the experience. The skyline above the painting allows the lighting to change as the day begins and progresses.

Pamela and I followed fellow visitors from all over the world into a theater that played a twenty-minute film narrated by Morgan Freeman. The guides herded us through winding passages and up ramps and stairs to a platform inside the cyclorama. The lights dimmed, and we watched a gorgeous sunset in the east. Then, confusion erupted. Unlike soldiers and citizens trapped in the battle, we heard a narrative, explaining how the skirmishes unfolded. This experience was so impressive, that I plan to stop in Atlanta's cyclorama on our next trip to Kansas.

The biggest idea I learned during our visit is how the battle was set in the middle of the town of Gettysburg. Battles were fought in the middle of farmland, where there were fences, barns, and homes. Since many roads converge and meet in the city of Gettysburg, the location of this battle makes sense. The town provides cover in its natural ridges and hills. The names of various skirmishes reveal how interwoven the battle was into the town: the peach orchard, wheatfield, cemetery hill (a graveyard), seminary ridge (a Lutheran seminary was located there), etc. The fact struck me when we first drove into the park and noticed homes within the boundaries of the park, which this map illustrates well.

After the two armies moved on, two thousand citizens crawled out of cellars and hurried back from nearby towns. Their community was wrecked: damaged property, looted homes, destroyed crops, and stolen food. Even worse, they found tens of thousands suffering in homes, barns, and public building. Dead bodies littered the ground. Animals feasted on some dug up from shallow graves. The stench sickened everyone.







The people of Gettysburg quickly realized they were standing on holy ground, consecrated with soldier's blood. A month after the battle, attorney David McConaughy's purchased the heights of Cemetery Hill for reinterring the battlefield casualties. They dedicated Soldiers' National Cemetery in November 1863, which is when Lincoln delivered his famous lines, "Four score and seven years ago...."



At the museum bookstore, Pamela picked up two books and I paid for a truly living book on the Civil War recommended to me by one of my study group friends: The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote. I have already found myself delaying housework, laundry, and blogging reading the opening chapter narrating the life of Jefferson Davis and that of Abraham Lincoln. The author's take on literature and history are spot on to what Mason educators believe,

The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth — not a different truth: the same truth — only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us how it was: to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them.

Pamela made her Book of Centuries entry and I love how she shows a ball flying out of the cannon.



Pamela made her Book of Centuries entry, and I love how she shows a ball flying out of the cannon.

Even though some of my Facebook friends believe Pamela was consoling Lincoln, I think she was exploring how bronze hair feels.