often write about learning in community but have limited my scope to the Charlotte Mason homeschool framework. The greater community is much larger than this yet is often neglected by homeschooling moms as they seek opportunities for learning for their students. Wendell Berry describes community as, … the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that Continue Reading
Andy Catlett and Reading Aloud
ast night, I enjoyed Rikki Tikki Tavi with my little girls. I read this over and over to my oldest when he was about five, but I guess it had gotten buried somewhere in the library. When A-Age-Seven brought it out last night, it was as if I'd never read it before; only E-Age-Ten remembered it. They were all enraptured.It was a much better ending to the day than being angry at a goat for stepping in the milk bucket during the evening milking.But I digress.I've been thinking a lot Continue Reading
Wendell Berry’s Andy Catlett
Anytime I start to think I can write, or that I might qualify as a respectable writer, I read something written by someone who excels, and then I remember why I am only a Mere Blogger. Last week, I began Wendell Berry's Andy Catlett: Early Travels. I am only a third of the way through, and I am already in love. {My husband always questions my fidelity when I am reading Berry.}Berry is interesting to me because he is so simple. He doesn't spend a thousand pages developing his characters Continue Reading
Quotables: Home Economics
Home Economicsby Wendell BerryAgriculture deals with living things and biological processes, whereas the materials of industry are not alive and the processes are mechanical. That agriculture can produce only out of the lives of living creatures means that it cannot for very long escape the qualitative standard; that is, in addition to productivity, efficiency, decent earnings, and so on, it must have health. {p. 123}[T]he best farms have always been homes as well as workplaces. Continue Reading