Utterly Immersed

It’s all good. But regular life has been trumping internet lately. Here’s a quick rundown, in the event that I manage to finish this post before something else presents itself:

Contagious Illness Unit Study at an end? I’m hopeful. No one has developed an illness in over a week. We even managed to go camping over the weekend – yay! Pretty much been a record year as far as minor-but-disruptive afflictions go. That’s been my number one reason for internet silence; not so much a case of too-ill-to-post, as that caring for whichever family member has the latest strain of plague sucks up just that extra bit of time and energy. So we’ve held together the larger part of normal life, but some of the extras had to give way. Gives me lots of fodder for the homeschooling book . . .

. . . On which I am making progress. Albeit more slowly than I imagined. But it is a much richer work for all the real-life enrichment I’ve been handed. And very fortunately I have amassed a small group of people I can’t bear to disappoint, so it will get written. At this point I’ve got the bulk of an outline (quite detailed), one lousy opening chapter that needs to be scrapped, and one middle-area chapter that is getting full but still has a few more salient points to cover. (Topic: Housekeeping. And those who know me will assure you, when I say I am writing a book about realistic expectations while homeschooling, you can be entirely confident my housekeeping chapter will not set any unobtainable standards.)

Speaking of which, I am trying to clean out the house. Just way too much stuff. (All good – but more of it than we have house.) I finally figured out that all the cool things my neat, clean, clutter-free friends give as hand-me-downs? If I want a house like theirs, that stuff is the first to hit to the road. Luckily, such friends understand the need. The place does look better, but still needs a lot of work.

But I’m hopeful, because wow my yard is awesome. In addition to contagious illnesses, we’ve also been doing a gardening unit study this spring. SuperHusband built us a privacy fence, effectively giving a real back yard to our corner lot that was previously 90% front yard. I had been working on cleaning up that front yard anyway (mostly out of love for my neighbors, who have suffered long enough looking at our debris), and then after the fence went up we put in some blueberries and figs for landscaping in front of that, and meanwhile had been making headway on vegetable gardening and general civility in what is now the back yard. It is all very cottage-y, in an I-like-tall-grass-and-trees-the-birds-plant kind of way, but we’re pretty happy with it. And the front yard I’m trying to keep moderately civilized. Don’t mind the woodpile. (A real functioning woodpile — we will burn it next winter.) So all that to say: if I can tame the yard, perhaps I can tame the house as well.

Latin Watch: Verb conjugation is killing us. Same story in French. Oh, we’ll get through. But the pace has definitely slowed to a crawl. Mr. Boy and I were checking his homework on Verbix today, and I clicked on the Kreyol option just to have a look-see, and we observed that conjugating is much easier in that language. Mr. Boy immediately wanted to change his course of study. I told him not ’till he has plane tickets to Haiti . (Hint: We have no such plans.) And plus he’d need to know French anyway, so no getting out of it. But I will observe that the girls are absolutely loving learning ASL, which is, it should be noted, a non-conjugating language. I begin to see a pattern.

Concerning my own education . . . I finished the Sex Book. (This one). Good book, recommended for those who fit the target audience. I will get a review up here shortly. Summary: I’m glad I signed up for it, and it’s one I’ll be keeping on the shelf for my own reference. An interesting counterpoint has been reading Love and Control by Cardinal Suenens (The Newman Press, 1961), a find from the parish library. I’m about halfway through. Timeless observations, if, again, a little more theoretical than a married lady might hope. On the other hand, one doesn’t want one’s clerics getting too terribly practical concerning the details of the workings of someone else’s sacrament.

Also culled from the parish shelves: The Rule of Saint Benedict. Wow, you should read it. Surely it’s on the internet somewhere. The translation I had was very readable, quick to digest, and makes a great combo-pack of spiritual and historical insights. And as it happened, I also brought home St. Odo of Cluny (Sheed and Ward, 1958), which is a translation of the Life of St. Odo, written by his contemporary John of Salerno. Total page-turner. I kid not. One fascinating vignette after another, constantly making you wonder what zany anecdote is coming next. Lots of pillaging norsemen and monks who are fed up with eating fish. Just finished the segment on the armed standoff between a house of slacker-monks and the party of civil and church authorities trying to force the foundation to accept Odo as their reforming leader. Definitely need to read the rule of St. Benedict first in order to understand the action.

That’s enough news for now. I’ll check back with that book review. Happy June.

Someone remind me to add Catholic Free Shipping to the sidebar. And where to put it — humor? General Catholic? Reputable Vendors? Thanks to the Ironic Catholic for pointing out vocabulary entries such as this one:

“Mandatum”

What I thought it meant: A survey or questionnaire that by law one is required to truthfully complete, as the census.

When Father Rick saw the part in the mandatum inquiring how many children he had, he thought he ought to write down the two thousand people he serves in his parish.

What it really means: The new commandment Jesus left with the Twelve Apostles at the Last Supper, to love one another as Jesus loved them (John 13:34-35); it also refers to the priests’ washing of his parishioners’ feet during Holy Thursday Mass.

If it were possible for every single one of his flock to be honored during the mandatum, Father Rick would have washed each foot with great humility.

*****

Meanwhile, speaking of reputable Catholic vendors, my new Catholic Company review book is Sex Au Naturel by Patrick Coffin. So far so good, though I’m afraid it is not nearly as racy as Dark Night of the Soul. Or, say, the Bible. On the other hand, it seems to fill a different need. And plus, married ladies should be made to read something a little tamer every now and then.

In other catholic vendor news, I’m sorry to see that Requiem Press is closing. Would some technically-knowledgeable person please beg Jim Curley to make the titles available via e-book going forward? Sad to see good books going out of print.

Mater et Magistra (et other news first)

The big news first: I’m out of the hole! Yay. I can do things like check my e-mail, or water the garden without getting out of breath. Actually the mowed the lawn Monday, which involves more miracles than we need discuss here. (But, note to self: When in doubt, marry a man who can maintain heavy machinery. One more reason we call him the SuperHusband.) Was back to fighter practice yesterday after about a month off — won’t say I was 100%, but wow it sure cheers me up, getting out and trying to stab people for a little while.

***

Now for our topic: Mater et Magistra magazine. My first issue arrived right when the baby was up with croup — she and I went out in the early morning hours to fetch the newspaper, and look, I’d forgotten to check the mail! New magazine! Which said 3-year-old immediately claimed, and for the first few hours I was okay with that. Until she hid it in her room someplace to keep it safe.

But we eventually cleared up that little misunderstanding, and wow, I had no idea. This is a great magazine! Written by actual homeschooling parents (as the better homeschool magazines are), the tone is very practical and honest. When you read an article encouraging you to respond to God’s grace, or persevere through a struggle, it is written, you discover, by a person who openly admits to dirty laundry.

The articles in this issue ran the gamut — encouragement, general practical tips, specific study ideas, and lots of reviews. The style is Catholic Lay Intellectual — this is the place where all the catholic nerd moms gather to compare notes. So think of articles a little longer, a little deeper, than what you find about anywhere else in the publishing-for-parents industry.

The Catholicism seems to me to be just normal catholic Christianity — I didn’t detect a particular strain to one extreme or another, other than a sincere desire to follow God. In my opinion, a non-catholic who was comfortable with Catholic-y stuff might also enjoy the magazine.

The format is small — half-size, like a Reader’s Digest — and very reflective-feeling. Lots of words, smallish print, no hype, a few pictures, mostly traditional artwork. Interior is all black-and-white or black-and-special-color-for-the-unit-study-insert. (Curiously: the color scheme and general format remind me a bit of this blog . . . I suppose if you hate this place, you might hate looking at the magazine, too.)

This is a small, low-budget production. But a really nice magazine. If you like to read here, or places like Darwin Catholic, Eric Sammons, or anything by Amy Wellborn, and you homeschool, you will probably like Mater et Magistra. Highly recommended. Maybe ask someone to give you a subscription for Mother’s Day?

More applied healthcare studies . . .

The Miracle of Mid-20th Century Medicine. Croup for baby –> bronchitis for mom. But, through the magic of amoxicillin, I went from a person who got winded checking e-mail and had to go lay down, to a more or less normal person who cooks dinner and potters in the garden. Within about three days. I’m a person who crusades against antibiotic overuse, but there’s definitely a time and place. Still not 100%, but getting there.

As it relates to health care reform:

a) I was definitely happy to have a $25 co-pay instead of a huge office-visit bill, in order to go see my GP and get dx’d and prescribed. (Yay Publix pharmacy, though, for free oral antibiotics. Not that amoxicillin is all that expensive to begin with.)

b) But really, there’s got to be a better, lower-cost model for delivering this kind of basic care. Health insurance makes it easier for one to afford the office visit — mostly by spreading out the cost over time and among buyers — but it doesn’t actually lower the cost of care. Just as I wouldn’t go to the ER for something that can be treated by the GP, there ought to be a widely-available step-down option for conditions like this one that didn’t require all the training and equipment of the GP even.

c) Prescription Drugs and Responsibility vs. Safety (Or: What do I do with my leftover cough suppressant?) The way we set up our prescription drug laws is a real cost-benefit trade-off. In the interest of safety, the law, as I understand it, says that you’ve got to destroy perfectly good medicine if you don’t need it yourself for your current condition. From a purely economic standpoint, this approach prevents harm, and therefore makes us wealthier. But it also makes up poorer, because we have to destroy valuable property in the interest of safety.

Because I happen to be a responsible person related to a number of intelligent, responsible, honest people, I tend to lean towards liberalizing the law. I travel in circles where you really could borrow some prescription cough supressant from your in-laws, and it would be done safely and honestly, and hey we even have the same GP so he could chart it. I don’t know the details of what I am proposing. But I know that a lot of people (not myself) violate the laws concerning sharing prescription drugs, because they find in their particular situation the law does more harm than good.

–> And it is damaging to the fabric of society, when large numbers of would-be law-abiding citizens feel it is acceptable to break the law, and in fact do so in order to do genuine good. Prescription drug laws are not like laws against robbery or murder. Helping another person by freely giving them what their doctor has prescribed is not inherently evil.

Now I realize the law is there to protect against fraud, and to protect against the injury or death that can occur if you use the wrong medicine, or the right medicine in the wrong amounts. I understand this. I do not propose we eliminate all safeguards.

What I’m saying is that our current laws don’t seem to quite match-up with our best interests. As far as I can tell.

Topic on which I do not have a firm opinion at this time. Still thinking about it.

Croup

We seem to be running a ‘healthcare’ theme to fit the national mood. Trying to predict what will happen once everyone has affordable, decent health care coverage? Here’s our experience:

-When a small child nearly sheared off her pinkie, why yes, we did spend two surgeries, PT, etc etc to get it back in order. Knowing full well it was was only a pinkie. Felt a little extreme, but on the other hand, we’re glad to have a pretty useful little finger in exchange. If said finger hadn’t survived the attempt, we’d feel like we had been extravagant. But it did and is faring quite well, so instead we feel like it was money well spent. That said, sincerely doubt anyone — us or doctors — would have put such an effort into the little finger if we lived in a place where we expected to pay the full cost out of pocket. We are quite grateful for insurance.

-When a much smaller child came down with croup in the middle the night (4th child, but our first run-in with croup), the first instinct was to run to the ER. Which is close to home, well-run, and for which we have insurance. But, would have involved being out for hours, and probably would have ended with “Your child isn’t on death’s door. Go home and put her in the shower”. Luckily we had a handy baby book and DH remembered a co-worker telling us what to do for croup. Between the two, we were set. Shower did the trick first time, out into cool wet night air did it the second time, and in between we (I) just stayed with her through the night to make sure nothing worse developed. Next day I considered calling the pediatrician (no charge) for some advice and reassurance, but decided we had it under control and didn’t need to speak to the nurse in order to be told what we had already figured out. Croup summary: Even with a kinda scary incident and inexpensive or free healthcare, the hassle factor outweighed the need for reassurance. [I assure you, we’d be in the ER in a second if the baby was showing signs of distress.]

My brilliant economic analysis based on those anecdotes: I don’t have any idea what will happen post-Obamacare. I know that good insurance does encourage us to seek treatment we otherwise might decline. I think in many cases we end up with a better health care decision as a result. More accurately: we end up with better health. I also know that “just because it’s free” doesn’t always mean we’re going to seek the treatment or professional advice.

My best guess on health care usage is that we”ll see an increase in visits for more “minor” situations. Including much more preventive care, which means we’ll see a corresponding decrease in last-minute emergency care for people who put off going to the doctor. I think on the whole, this will help with our nation’s overall physical health.

I’m hopeful that the health care exchanges will help the economy by allowing individuals to start small businesses without the fear of losing corporate health care. I’m concerned that this will be run about as well as we run our other government functions: sometimes quite well, but sometimes quite badly.

I think that financially it is all very much part of the current national habit. Take a look at this year’s 1040 forms. Have you noticed the creep in complexity over the past decade? (Have you noticed that an awful lot of people don’t do their own taxes anymore? Um, excuse me? How have we gotten to the point that a worksheet of basic arithmetic has generated an entire profession?) I think we have reached a point where we expect our government’s work to be complex and burdensome, and we expect to be in debt. As long as we think all that is normal, we should not be surprised our economy isn’t so healthy.

Which reminds me, I need to go clean my house. Happy Holy Week.

Book Review: Saint of the Day

Our pastor included Saint of the Day (6th edition, Leonard Foley ed.) on his recommended reading list this past Advent. I’ve never gone wrong in taking his advice, so when the book showed up on the Catholic Company’s review list, I saw my big chance. The result was consistent with Father’s track record: Not something I would have chosen myself, but I’m glad to have given it a try.

Saint of the Day is a compilation of lives of saints spanning from the time of Jesus through our day. Most entries are about one page front and back, and include a brief biography, a reflective commentary, and a quote which is either from that saint, or which is connected in some way with that saint’s life and teachings. There are also entries for most (but not all) of the event-related feasts. (Think: the Visitation or the Immaculate Conception.)

To answer the most common question I received while reading this book: No, there is not an entry for every single day of the year. So, for use as a daily devotional, it will meet many readers’ needs far more precisely than we would like to admit.

Because the entries are brief, the editors naturally had to be selective about what information to include. The general pattern is this: If it is expected that the average reader already knows about the saint, the focus is on analysis and spiritual lessons to be learned. If the saint is either relatively obscure or relatively new, the entry provides more concrete biographical details. Certain major saints and events don’t make the book, either because they are too specialized (St. Genevieve – Patron Saint of Paris) or so well known they needn’t be discussed at all (Feast of the Incarnation).

I found the book most helpful for learning about new saints — especially those newly canonized, but also some of the more obscure historic saints. I found that if I already knew quite a lot about a saint, invariably the editors had chosen to leave out some crucial detail I thought terribly important. I was also frustrated with some entries that omitted even bare biographical details such as where the saint lived, in favor of more reflective commentary. For example, the entry for “Teresa of Jesus” never tells us that this Teresa of Avila — I was only sure they were one and the same because I happened to have The Way of Perfection sitting on the bathroom counter, which work was mentioned in the “Teresa of Jesus” entry.

I was very happy to confirm the commentary is all 100% straight Catholicism — neither to the left nor the right. Because the book was assembled from the work of many contributing authors, and because my mood is highly changeable, sometimes I found the quotes and reflections a little wanting, other times they seemed to be dead-on. For many entries, the related quote comes from a papal encyclical or other modern church document. I found myself frustrated at times by their ponderous style, but also glad the editors chose to introduce the reader to these momentous and undeniably relevant works.

I’m still looking for the perfect one-volume, general-interest saints book. Saint of the Day takes an honest stab at that effort, and if it isn’t perfect, I wasn’t able to find another book on the shelves of my local catholic bookstore that did as well. For the fairly informed catholic adult looking for a combination devotional and historical brush-up, this is a sound choice. It probably will not be the one book that meets all your needs, but it is reliably catholic, and certainly does what any good saints book will do: it points you in the right direction.

causes for rejoicing

Two links that are no help at all to those of us who lack a little in the Lenten Spirit department:

Ed Peters explains why you can eat meat this Friday. (Hint: Solemnity of St. Joseph.)

And then Ruth of Wheelie Catholic fame has a blog to make NBC blush — paralympic coverage better than you got last month for the other olympics. You can click on the link in her sidebar to watch live.

[Sadly, there was neither sound nor captioning when I tuned in to a hockey game, so I do not know the story behind the player being rolled off the ice in a stretcher. Am I consoled or discouraged with yet more evidence that hockey is basically rugby for cold places? I do not like the cold, but I sure would like hockey.]

BTW, book review coming soon. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

So many vices, so little time . . .

And a couple more links

Long overdue:

St. Xavier Society for the Blind – provides Catholic literature in braille & audio format. Free service, available for anyone whose disability interferes with reading printed material.

Universalis – the Liturgy of the Hours (aka The Divine Office). Free online, or you can download to your various devices at a relatively affordable price.

Enjoy.

Blog Maintenance

Added a couple links:

The Lewis Crusade is written by John C. Hathaway, who can transform wading-pool duty at a parish picnic into an intellectual feast for the busy catholic brain. Great guy who has a thing or two to say to you.

Uncommon Adornments & Phos Hilarion are the twin businesses of jewelry-maker Ann Rinderknecht Miko. Very nice work, take a look. (And if John’s not available, she’s right up there in the entertaining-conversation department.)

Thanks to Julie at Happy Catholic for pointing readers to Unhappy Hipsters. I actually like modern architecture, and have no particular bias against literary fiction, either — but it’s still pretty funny. Adult humor in the proper sense of the word — parody it takes an adult to appreciate.

Just so you know, I’ve been sneaking in other links here and there and forgetting to tell you. So if you are a feed-reader, you might want to click on the blog and peruse, one of these days when you are hard-up for reading material.

***

Speaking of reading material, I just finished Saint of the Day. So expect a review soon. (And yes, it did take me a mighty long time to finish it. But hey, I read a year’s worth of saints in less than one year. How many years of saints have you read this winter? Hmmn? People smarter than me don’t answer that.)

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: