Ordinarily his body lacked a soul – or, if he did possess a soul, he seemed to keep it elsewhere than where it ought to have been; so that, buried beneath mountains (as it were) or enclosed within a massive shell, its movements produced no sort of agitation on the surface. Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls […]
There is a silent alarm that goes off when I have had an unusually challenging day, and all children come running to help—now dropping eggs onto the floor, now licking the hand that touched the raw chicken. My daughter transcends the laws of physics to somehow touch everything in the room at once like an
“What are you going to do with your degree?” After many years I have at last finished my coursework for a master’s in Great Books, but I have not yet come up with an answer to this question that is both gracious and honest. What they are really asking is: why does a homeschool mom
There are three things that I swore that I would never do: return to my current hometown, attend my alma mater, Florida State University, or homeschool my children. I was not against homeschooling in the abstract, but I had a long list of valid reasons why I never would. (Mostly because I didn’t want to.)
Five Practical Tips for the Homeschooling Parent Read More »
As a new Grammar School Teacher, I was requested to make any handouts that I gave seem “fun.” A so-called happy font and a Microsoft Word-generated border would trick any child into thinking work was fun. After all, what shining-faced schoolboy was not moved to rapturous delight over practicing grammatical concepts once he caught a
Snack mats. We were gathered at a beautiful, rural wedding in the rustic style that was popular some years ago: mason jars and baby’s breath, hanging lights and candles. Jazz standards crooned through the speakers. The men were inclined into animated conversation. And, with a pale smile, I was stuck with the other mothers of
Thomas Howard, the author of Dove Descending: A Journey Into T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, was a notable writer, English professor, and early C.S. Lewis scholar. Brother to the well-known missionary Elizabeth Eliot, he became a Catholic convert, chronicling his spiritual journey in his book, Evangelical Is Not Enough. Lewis’s influence in Howard’s writing is
Words Are the Thing: The Sacramentality of Language Read More »
Evelyn Waugh’s literary masterpiece Brideshead Revisited opens upon a melancholic scene in the life of middle-aged Captain Charles Ryder. His company is amid the latest in a long line of reassignments across England. They are impotent – running drills and writing reports as their countrymen die on the battlefield. He has lost his love for
It’s hard to compete with an airplane. From the observation deck, we had a view of each taxi, take-off, and landing; there was a great deal more activity than one might expect from such a small airport. With every movement of an aircraft, the airport staff would pause the tour. The oldest in our co-op
It is that time of year. Soon, the lean days of Lent will have passed. I will blink and the new leaf growth will have turned a deeper, settled shade of green. The padlock has not yet been removed from the neighborhood pool, and I find myself asking the same question once again: How do
What Does It Mean to Finish the School Year Well? Read More »
In my yard, there are two worn foxholes. These are not holes that provide foxes with a route of ingress and egress from their dens; no, these are foxholes for the Allied soldiers. They are the result of many hours of my children tearing up a portion of our yard with every sharp implement in
If you have spoken to me recently, you have heard me complain about David Hume. No doubt there was a collective sigh of relief when I finished my course in the hopes that at last my hatred of Hume would no longer be a topic of conversation. I studied Descartes’s and Hume’s philosophies of imagination,
