In honour of Mary Travers, dead of leukemia, age 72

No, I receive no monies for this shameless promotion :-)

This is the BEST coffee out there, bar none. And even better, it's marginally local AND 100 mile (to us). Okay, the beans came from afar, but the roasting is done here, in Kingston, ON. Even better, we can purchase it at our local Sobey's.

Eat (sorta) local; eat fresh!

"The Schoolboy" by William Blake

The Schoolboy

by William Blake

I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring!

O father and mother if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care's dismay, -

How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?

For no other reason than I am decluttering and just recycled my paper copy of this poem :-).  Love it!

Powerful quote ... just because...

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its trouble, it empties today of its strength." (Corrie ten Boom)

I'm sure we can all think of occasions where we were so busy worrying about possibilities, that nothing in real time got accomplished. I know I can. Love this quote. Here's to being strong in our days :-).

And to help us with this ...

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10

"Don't worry about anything instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:6-7

"Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? Of course not...Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don't worry or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't he more surely care for you?... Your heavenly Father already knows your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern. So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today." Matthew 6: 27-30, 32-34

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding." Proverbs 3:5

"Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world." John 16:33

"I am leaving you with a gift - peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn't like the peace the world gives. So don't be troubled or afraid." John 14:27

"Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls." Matthew 11:28-29

"Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you." 1 Peter 5:7

"God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear, even if earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea." Psalm 46:1-2

"They do not fear bad news; they confidently trust the LORD to care for them." Psalm 112:7

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." James 1:2-4

"We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us - they help us learn to endure. And endurance develops strength of character in us, and character strengthens our confident expectation of salvation." Romans 5:3-4

"Give your burdens to the LORD, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall." Psalm 55:22

"The LORD is my light and my salvation - so why should I be afraid? The LORD protects me from danger - so why should I tremble." Psalm 27:1

"Trust me in your times of trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give me glory." Psalm 50:15

"So be truly glad! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though it is necessary for you to endure many trials for a while. These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold - and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold. So if your faith remains strong after being tried by fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world." 1 Peter 1:6-7

Be strong TODAY, friends :-).

Can you hear this?

Created by Train Horns

What makes you cry?

I am on Facebook, partially to get in touch with old friends, partially to keep communication lines open with current friends in a busy life. I've looked over some of the "notes" that go around. These notes ask a long list of questions (and are annoyingly repetitive!) and appeal primarily to teenage girls. I was thinking of one question this morning that I've seen on many of these notes ... "When was the last time you cried?" The most common response to this is "meh" or "I dunno" :-).

Ummm ... in my case, about three minutes ago, as I read a story in the book "Messy Spirituality" that we are doing for small group, about a young man, uncomfortable with seniors, who ends up visiting a dying man once a month. When the man is beyond speech, his granddaughter comes to the seniors home to meet the one who her grandfather told her about ... "Jesus", who came every month just to hold his hand.

And yesterday, during the last half hour of "Titanic" ... a veritable sobfest (and I wasn't the only one, but I won't mention names!). What a tragic moment in history, and what an impressive movie. It truly gives face, though fictional, to what to me was a childhood rhyme and a set of statistics.

And Saturday, while reading the book "Shattered" ... many times I teared up, and several times I sobbed. This is an amazing book aimed at the teen market about a young, shallow, wealthy boy who ends up (by accident) helping in a soup kitchen. His journey leads him into learning about homelessness, rejection, genocide ... he is awakened from emotional sleep to the greater and more tragic world around him. So much food for thought, in particular how the book uses Joseph Stalin's quote as a springboard "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." At one point in the book, the protagonist is finally realizing the danger of statistics, and seeks to put a face to the genocide in Rwanda. (This happens to be the point where I lost it :-) ...)


I didn't used to cry as much. However, post-children, I cry. I cry for the rawness of life. I cry at victory and especially when ordinary people show moments of the heroic. I cry when I see glimpses of the Almighty in the day-to-day messiness of life, and in the ordinary lives of His motley followers. I cry when my carefully constructed walls are down. Apparently, I cry a lot ... but not always because I'm sad. Generally because I'm awed ... inspired ... sensititized to something that I've missed before ... and grateful.

Had a good cry lately? What makes YOU cry?

Update on Kev

Kev is having a great time meeting with people from all over the world, riding on elephants, river rafting and meeting Tribal groups such as the Karen tribe (lol) from Northern Thailand. What a rush! This has been a great opportunity for him. I'm hoping he'll come home energized, despite the jet lag :-). He has also promised lots of photos, which is amazing for him because he is not one to naturally remember to document his life that way.

A great link for a map of Thailand and geographical information ... here.

One more You Tube video this morning (thanks, Bev for sending this on)

Obama's Victory Speech, and a Christian university student speaks out

Thoughts on education ...

First, let me share this poem that my sixth grader, while in the school system, had to memorize. The kids were put in groups, and they created music for the prose and presented the result in front of their classes.

Homework! Oh, Homework

Homework! Oh, homework!I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could wash you away in the sink,
If only a bomb would explode you to bits.
Homework! Oh, homework, you're giving me fits.

I'd rather take baths with a man-eating shark,
Or wrestle a lion alone in in the dark,
Eat spinach and liver, pet ten porcupines,
Than tackle the homework my teacher assigns.

Homework! Oh, homework! You're last on my list,
I simply can't see why you even exist,
If you just disappeared it would tickle me pink
Homework! Oh, homework! I hate you! You stink!

--Jack Prelutsky

Now, it's not that I'm not a fan of kid poetry. My guys grew up laughing at pretty much everything written by Sid Silverstein, who borders on the irreverent :-). But from the head of a classroom? As an assignment? At the BEGINNING of the school year?

I've been contemplating this post for quite some time. I will not trash the school system. It is fine ... for some exceptionally strong kids. My girls are thriving in school .. however I am grateful they didn't start there. They are wise, and they are discerning, and they put up with the garbage because they love to learn and they have not lost that.

The teachers, however, at our local elementary school, are so interested in getting the kids to be interested in school, that they are dumbing the material down farther and farther. Guess what? It's at best, NOT interesting to the kids, and at worst, completely detrimental to their education (which, face it, is not just about school but maintaining an attitude of curiosity and desire to learn throughout your life).

My son was removed from public school six weeks into grade six. Academics were not the reason he was pulled. However, in the first week of his time at home, I was thanking God we decided to pull him when we did. He had completely lost his interest in discovery and learning. I'm not exactly sure when he morphed into a school-hater, but he sure memorized this poem with gusto. Unfortunately, he strongly identified with it as well. In his class, general consensus is that if you are male, you hate school. Learning is for losers (hello?). And because of his boredom in class, he started to act out and cut up. Sigh. As I've been working with him over the last few weeks, I've been horrified to discover that had reached a point where he just.didn't.care.to.learn!

His reading list from public school was a list of second grade level readers. "Oh, he's reading!" the teachers cheer. But he's not LEARNING when he's not even trying stuff at grade level. This is not the teacher's fault, of course; they are busy with the kids who are not yet reading at all. He became so lazy in this environment.

So he came home. And mom has been pushing this lad. It has been like pulling teeth to get him to do his work, and it hasn't been loads of fun for his teacher. Our three weeks have been filled with comments like "My teacher wouldn't make me do that!" ... "Why should I do that?" ... "You are way too hard on me!" ... or my personal favourite (NOT) "It's not fair". Whether setting up math problems, or picking a reader, or writing cursive, or even typing using homerow vs. the hunt 'n peck method he's been using, his goal has been the bare minimum.

But bright spots are appearing. Last week, he acknowledged that he has become very lazy. Earlier this week, he admitted that the novel I am "FORCING" him to read, "The Gammage Cup", might not be so bad after all. (Note, this is an older fantasy novel with quite complicated language and sentence structure; he started out absolutely refusing to read it. And the novel study will be serious and significant work!)

And today, oh glorious day, something magnificent happened.

I assigned Iain a project on Canadians in space. Basically taken from the Ontario curriculum, I outlined a project studying several Canadian astronauts, astronomers, and industries involved in the Space program. It was boring. Black and white print. Lists of questions that were going to involve paragraph answers. I was expecting a lot of flack. Today, he looked at it, read a few lines and said, "Wow! This looks really interesting!" then spent about 45 minutes researching new Canadian space developments. He was excited to discover a recent invention called Dextre, and now wants to do a field trip to St. Hubert, PQ to visit the company that designed it! Well, perhaps we'll make a trip to the observatory at Queen's instead, dear :-).

There is hope. And I'll hold on to this moment when it seems like we've back-pedalled again :-). And with God's help, we'll continue on our journey from "learning s*cks" to "learning rocks"!

A thought for today ...

We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
- Benjamin Franklin

Play hard today, folks, and have a good one!

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends! (and an interesting tidbit for all :-) ...)

http://www.kidzworld.com/article/2614-canadian-thanksgiving

So for years, I have thought (because I was TAUGHT) that the "first" Thanksgiving was the American one. I couldn't believe this link which my friend found. Our first Canadian Thanksgiving predated the Pilgrims by 43 years? Kewl.

Kev got an interesting phone call today ... (updated)

The receptionist called out to Kev, "Kevin, there's a Michael on the phone for you!"

Kev answered, and a polite Southern accent on the other end said "Hi Kevin, Michael Smith here."

Any guesses on who it was??? :-D

I'll await comments!


Janna got it ... BUT for those of you who don't know who Michael W. Smith is, here are some YouTube videos:

Michael's newest video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk5K-eTTkfM

And a blast from the past, with apologies to Kev ;-) (not his favourite song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbPKaIozS-c

Michael speaking about the slums in Kabera, Nairobi (Kenya) on behalf of Compassion International last year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_12H7ISnLo

It's fun movie trivia night (not a normal event on this blog!)

Tonight our family watched "Camp Rock", with the Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato. It was a fairly plotless, completely predictable teen romp, however we kept eyeballing the scenery and saying ... wow, that looks familiar. A few minutes on Google, and we came up with the filming locations of this movie, all in Haliburton/Minden, Ontario! One camp, a boys camp on Gull Lake, called Camp Kilcoo; the other camp called Camp Wanakita outside of Minden on Koshlong lake. Camp Wanakita (mom and dad, get this) is the YMCA camp of the Hamilton and Burlington area YMCAs. Here's a link to a map of the area ... I tried to embed it but wasn't able to.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Minden,+ON&ie=UTF8&ll=45.006564,-78.634644&spn=0.464115,0.64682&z=10

You'll see Gull Lake at the bottom. Minden is sort of centre. To the north of Minden is Boshkung lake; to the left is a very skinny lake called Lake Kuschog, a lake where I spent some time while growing up. My dad's two sisters own cottages on this lake. To the northeast of Minden is Lake Kashagawigamog. Kev and I stayed at a lovely resort on this lake for our honeymoon! And directly to the right of that lake is a small lake that doesn't have a name on the map, but it is Koshlong lake, where the other filming location was.

Just one more example of the long list of American films that have been shot in Canada. One of our personal favourites? "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was filmed in Toronto. "The Day After Tomorrow" was filmed partially in Toronto and Montreal. "Fly Away Home" was actually filmed in Prince Edward County (Sandbanks Provincial Park, as well as flying scenes over north county and Quinte area, and Toronto! It always struck me as odd that the movie "Chicago" was filmed in TO. "Fantastic Four" was filmed in Vancouver. Portions of "Titanic" were filmed in Halifax and Vancouver. Others are at this link (interesting article):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2007/nov/01/kellynestruckthursampic

It's a historic and bittersweet day today :-(.

http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/

The incredible comic strip, that my children and I have grown up with, is ... done.

This is it.

The Pattersons will no longer age, change, adventure anew.

And what is terribly poignant, for those who have been following this last storyline, and in particular this last strip, is that Lynn Johnston's husband left her last year.

For those who never followed this strip, it is truly exceptional. It will continue. Lyn is retraining herself with a simpler style; the characters will no longer age and it will be present day humour alone.

Adios, Patterson family ...

One of my all-time favourite artists, the late Keith Green ...

Bill Gates speaks on Life (WOW! This is not Bill Gate's work!!! -- Edited)

Yesterday, June 28, I was at Chapters, and pulled a book off the shelf in the education section. These rules came directly from the book. I have forgotten the author's name, but I will update later. I wonder whether he quoted from the book; I'll have to see if I can determine that.

Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this! Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.


Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Happiness

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

-Frederick Keonig

Lawn mowing in 2008

Since the price of gas is so high ...

(Thanks, Lona, for pointing out this cartoon!)

Dancing in the Rain

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
It's about learning to dance in the rain.

Love this quote I saw on someone's signature line today. And mom, it brings back fond memories of "dancing in the rain" with you on Waterloo Street when I was little :-).