Complete Chaos

Welcome to our disastrous abode!

This is how we've been living for over a month, now. We're redoing one end of our house... while still living in it. Consequently, about 3/4 of our belongings -- the contents of the library, office, 2 bedrooms, and the attic -- is in the living room and dining room. Alarmed face.

It's pretty alarming.

How much stuff we have!!!!

It's pretty frustrating to live this way; there's no room for some necessary jobs like threshing our oats (that's a basket of harvested but un-threshed oats in the middle of the photo on the right), there's no room to dry the laundry when it's not dry enough outside (and unfortunately the weather has not been cooperating), there's no place to sit and eat dinner together, so we're just eating on the porch until dinner, when it's a bit too wet and chilly, at which point we huddle around the bare corner of our box-covered table, and try not to spill on the living room floor. And things get lost. You put something down, and invariably that means you put it somewhere on the pile of other stuff -- and you will never see it again! Like the hairbrush. That was lost for three days.

So -- just to document for ourselves, and to share with friends and family who might think we're exaggerating a bit... here are some photos.

The view from what normally would be the dining room! All the piles of wood are our dismantled beds, storage unites, shelves, etc. On the right you can see the free corner of the stored dining table with some stacked chairs beside it. In the evening we unstack them (but then it's impossible to get to the other side of the house) in order to eat dinner.

Part of the problem is that this little project has gone on long enough that the stored belongings are now getting waded and dug through, as the kids want to find things they supposedly need. (Bah!!)

But here is the silver lining -- or the plywood lining, I should say! Our attic now is lined with plywood (it used to be just rotting insulation and torn vapour-barrier) and it beginning to have some of the things put back into it! What you see below it is the partially-finished new office, with the lovely french doors going outside, which will now bring some beautiful light into our house from the west!

And here's our bedroom! Same shape and size, but the bed and closet have switched sides, and the rotten/moldy wall and floor have been replaced.

Now some spackle -- and then the fun begins when we we get to decorate it!!

Not-Back-to-School Day!

Today is the day we celebrate our decision not to go back to school.

Six years ago, at the end of a year of part-time Kindergarten for Taliesin (which we thought was sort-of-unschooling, or at least homeschooling, at the time), we swallowed hard and accepted that actually it was school. And we would never be happy with school. Tali wasn't happy; we weren't happy. It just wasn't for us. I had to find a way to tell the school's director. I put it off for days, until I suddenly found myself on the phone with him for other reasons, and nervously blurted out something like: "We've decided to try full-time-homelearning...?"

He grinned audibly. "Oh that's wonderful! I just know Tali and you will be so happy."
I felt like my feet were lifting off. I could feel wings sprouting under my heavy shoulder blades.
The joy felt like a whisper of feathers on a great, big, warm wind:

We're not going back to school.

We're not going back to school.

We're not going back to school.

Wow.

I didn't really know what unschooling was, and I fought it for the first while. I was afraid to be radical, but also wanted to embrace it. I called us life-learners. I set up what I thought were simple schedules, open 'learning times', even though I felt that learning happened any time... but every year we are growing.

Eventually we embraced the word unschooling as I became more comfortable with our radical nature. Yes I know we don't fit in. And quite frankly, that's why we're doing this: because I think the 'norm' is wrong. I will go right out there and say that even though many people feel it's right for them, I think having kids in schools is causing untellable harm to our society. It's wrong. I've looked on from the outside for long enough, now, that I see from a different angle. I know that will alienate people. But part of embracing the unschooling is embracing our authentic selves; our true feelings, and our true beliefs.

Unschooling is certainly not always easy. It means we have less income; there's less time for me to develop my career, and there's a lot more onus on us, as a family, to help our kids grow strong and healthy. We, like everyone, find and face challenges all the time, but the more I see that the challenges are only to be solved by changing myself (instead of re-working the kids' lives), the more we get through them intact, and the more we emerge stronger and happier.

And we are happy! Nearly every day I look at my life and I feel truly truly grateful for all that I have -- and our decision to unschool is right at the top of that 'all'. I love that my career is evolving around my kids and that they are witnessing exactly how one develops a career. I love that they see the downs and the ups. I love that we (and they) have so much responsibility, because I see how much they embrace that; how mature they are becoming in their considerations and dreams. I love that their dreams are intact. And I love that I can say that, despite the bumps along the way, every single year, on the whole, is even more wonderful than the last. I love that I am able to share my children's lives with them, and that we've found ways to grow, together.

Happy Not-Back-to-School Day, everybody!!

Tie Dyeing!

Tie Dyeing is one of my favourite ways to explore! Every few years I buy a bunch of excellent Procion fabric dyes, and we get together with other people and put a bunch of colour into our lives!

This is a lot like the paper-folding play I posted about, recently: Through experimenting (in this case with chemical combinations, colours, fabrics, process and social interaction), there is endless growth and delight to be had by people of all ages. We might not be able to quantify and record the specific skills we acquired, and by how many levels our skills have increased, but the skills, inspiration, and confidence that we have gathered from the experience will be invaluable for our next life experiences.

Late-Night Phosphorescence Birthday Party

One of our favourite things to do in the 2nd half of the summer is to go swimming late at night in the sparkling flashing brilliant phosphorescence. So this year, Rhiannon suddenly requested to have her birthday party early (because her birthday doesn't actually come until October), so that she and her friends could swim in the phosphorescence. That would mean a very late party, but we delightedly agreed, and last night we made it happen!!

A rather squat-looking whale cake...

Arriving at the beach at 8:30PM!

Most of the intrepid night-time partygoers, trying to sit stone-still for a flash-less night-time photo...

Glowstick madness.

Glowstick insanity.

Post-swimming wet people.

Happy birthday my beautiful girl!!

Closing comments, while walking up from the beach, sometime late in the night:

Rhiannon: "That was a great birthday party!!"
Mama: "It was a wonderful idea!"
Rhiannon: "And wonderful people!"

Little Boxes: Hexaflexagons the Inspired Way

That kid is a genius. She's a math-savant. That one over there has a learning disability. Just like that other one, only she's a bit further behind. Those two over there require tutoring. That one has been skipped ahead a grade...

We're all about putting ourselves in boxes. Names, ages, races, grades, careers, professions, hobbies... the list goes on and on, and to some extent it's useful for finding like-minded people. As homelearners, unschoolers, life-learners, etc. we tend to put ourselves (and our children) in boxes, too: My son is a budding physicist! My daughter is a budding writer! Oh wait! Librarian! Maybe she's a budding educator!! Wait! I'll figure it out! (Why am I trying to pigeon-hole her??) We like to say "Oh look at all the math we're doing with this recipe!" or "...been reading the whole ________ series from beginning to end; he must be great at reading!!" Maybe he's just happy with ________. As a teacher I have become very good at identifying the "core subjects" that we cover in our explorations during Wild Art sessions. This validates what we do for parents and the inevitable curriculum requirements of our province's school system. Some people cut up their days into time for working, time for playing, and (though I think it's ridiculous) time for 'learning', (as if 'learning' only happens at that time...). We unschoolers sometimes even coach our children on how to identify themselves to others, to help avoid conflict, and promote healthy relationships. These boxes create part of our identity. But they also mask it. And they definitely prevent a lot of understanding.

So here's a box for you, and we're going to deconstruct it. 

With abandon!

Hexaflexagons.
OOOOOOOH! It's one of those excellent "math activities"!! It's a flat paper with 3 or 9 sides!!! Or 27!!!! Wait. What? Now you're getting interesting. So let's follow a template. They're all over the internet. Easy to find, just like the templates for paper models of polyhedra. You get to cut out on the solid lines, fold on the dotted lines, and... ta da! You made a polyhedron! Just like you were supposed to do!!! Or a hexaflexagon! Or a tri-hexaflexagon. Just like the recipe.

It's obvious where this is going. Don't do it! Save yourselves!! You've put yourself in another perfectly 20-sided little box!!

Here's what I would do, instead:

How to Make Hexaflexagons and other Math-Crafts:
Watch Vi Hart videos. Yes, they're kind of instruction videos, but she goes so incredibly fast that you simply can't follow. And she has awesome style. You can only watch and get inspired. :-)) Excellent. My kids love her videos so much that they just sit and watch them for entertainment!

Next, retire the videos, and get out materials: glue, tape, scissors, paper, big papers, thin papers, thick papers, coloured papers and white papers, maybe some fabrics or plastics or whatever other scraps you have lying around... rulers or a straight-edge cutter... and pens or pencil-crayons... anything that suits your fancy!

If you have friends who already have some inspiration in cutting-and-folding-and-glueing, get together with them and have fun letting them show you what they like to do! Then show them your own innovations!

Now play.

Maybe you will make hexaflexagons; maybe you will make polyhedrons; maybe you will make flip-books, comic strips, curly paper decorations, paper chains, paper earrings, paper clothes for your pet hamster -- maybe you will eat the paper. But you will have FUN. And you will get to the end of this messy paper session having had fun. And THAT is what is important.

Yes, sure, you're going to get some math skills in doing this. And science. Physics.  And communication skills, and dexterity practice, and colour theory, and maybe even writing and poetry, depending where you go with it. I could go on. But who cares? In trying to pigeon-hole it like this, you've probably killed the enjoyment.

So... back to that enjoyment. HAVE FUN!!! You might even be making boxes - literally! Differently-shaped boxes, differently-sized boxes, boxes with many many evolving sides and inside-out boxes that jump into different dimensions?! You might start out making a hexaflexagon "just like Vi Hart's" and end up with something really quite different, due to your own experimenting!

It's all a bit existential, really. You could try transcribing existential poetry or bendable stories onto your boxes and wig each other out with your weird performances...

You can even get together with your friends around the world and make hexaflexagons over Skype.

Really!
This is education!
This is fun!
Play!

Syria, Thicke, and Cyrus

Yeah I'm talking about it.

Everybody's up-in-arms. Everybody has something to say. If it's not about the ridiculous (or shameful, or brave and commendable) performance of Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus at the VMA, (for reasons of sexism, racism, slut-shaming, etc.) or about Syria, the Arab Spring, and the debated potential for World War III, then it's about which of the two is more important. Even in humour, that seems to be a thing. So here's my thing: They're BOTH important.

Pop Culture
Honestly, I didn't know this song existed until I heard Jian Ghomeshi interview Robin Thicke on CBC last week (listen here), and I've seen way too many naked girls (she wasn't naked anyway) and arrogant men with no dancing skills making un-coordinated moves at them to be even slightly alarmed by the performance. It was just a publicity stunt... which would be completely in line with Thicke stating (about his video for Blurred Lines) in his interview on CBC: "...and uh, you know luckily I'll be able to put my kid through college, so... thank you everybody out there." I guess we all have to do what we have to do, eh? I hope his kids are happy he did it. I don't find the VMA performance shocking, nor to I find the Blurred Lines video shocking. It's not any different than the ads on bus shelters, the covers of magazines in grocery store checkouts, or the TV shows that sell us pop-culture and shock-culture along with consumables.

War
It's everywhere. Is it surprising that there's political pandering all over the place, and leaders seek to align themselves most favourably, and all the rest of us hang on their words, trying to predict when the next World War will come, and where it will cause the most damage? No. We're just people being scared.

The Combination of War and Pop Culture
This is where things get real, for me. We feed our children war in their cereal in the mornings. We pump up the controversy to make money and make hype for our egos and our wallets. We lounge around with slave-made technological devices typing our arrogant thoughts onto our blogs (yes that's me) and we post slogans and alarming articles to our Facebook pages. A few notices come my way every day, just relating to significant ecological threats to my own tiny corner of this province. There are so many of these alarming news items that they are now as cluttered as the stage of Miley's teddy bear performance (were there white teddy bears or only black? People can't remember; this seems to be a topic for debate...) and we don't know where to look.

Look here: Drone Operator describes how he killed more than 1600 real people remotely, from a desk on another continent.

That is real.

People don't just train for the military by playing video games, they also kill people using similar technology. And it looks like a video game. We have lost touch with ourselves as humans. War IS pop culture. Pop culture IS war. Robin Thicke is wrong. This is not just entertainment. This is where we play out the real wars that are really killing real people. War is entertainment. And we are OK with that.

We're all about healthy body-image and promoting good, safe sex for our kids; helping them to feel good about themselves and brave enough to stand up to bullies. We're all about giving them emotional, intellectual, and physical weapons to protect themselves, but WHEN do we, as parents, stand up for them? When do we stand up for ourselves?

When do we, as a global culture, stand up and say NO MORE?!
When do we, as a global culture, stand up for US?

It's not even about not buying guns and barbies, or telling our children to be kind to each other.

It's about maybe not buying anything at all. It's about realizing that every single item we buy, use, or promote has a political, cultural cost.

It's about realizing that this little laptop - in its materials alone - has cost our culture and our future much more than I paid for it. The media it accesses costs untellably more, again.

It's about realizing that we can't just shield our children from the pop culture that we consume ourselves; we have to LIVE the way we want the world to be.

It's about knowing that Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke are us.

It's about knowing that the Syrian rebels and Al Qaeda and the al-Assads and the Obamas and the little girl sitting in her Syrian house wondering who Robin Thicke's children are... are us.

It's about knowing that when she dies, a piece of us dies, too.


We can't tell other people to change.
We can only change ourselves.

The Nature of Taliesin

Treasures we Choose to Pass On

I write a lot about what we pass on to our children, because I think it's one of the most important things in the world. It's how evolution happens. So I want to be careful about what I choose to pass on.

Tali and Rhiannon using their instruments at our campsite.

I am trying to pass on my love of traditional folk music. Folk music = people-music. And I'm trying to pass of my love of the people I share it with. This is one of the gifts my mother gave me.

My lovely Mama, Lyn van Lidth de Jeude

We have some wonderful friends, Jon and Rika, who are magnets for BC's traditional folk scene... and no wonder, since they've dedicated their lives to collecting, preserving, and promoting BC's, North America's, Britain's, and some of Europe's traditional music. Wherever they go they seem to create a folk festival, and it's pretty much guaranteed to be mostly attended by musicians -- many of whom travel great distances to participate -- as well as to be a good kernel of raw traditional music in a field that is now very much populated with pop music. They are in many ways the heartbeat of this music genre in our corner of the earth.

Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat

So these days they're living in Princeton, BC, and that's why we go there every summer for the now 6-year-old Princeton Traditional Music Festival.

Dancing in the evening with

Orkestar Šlivovica

-- which happens to include our dear friend Morgan Bartlett on euphonium!

My Mum and brother and I like to perform there. We watch all kinds of fabulous performances, we hang out at Jon and Rika's house making and enjoying music and good company late into the night(s), and most of all, we find the old friends who have been such an important, though infrequent, part of our lives. These friends aren't the people we have over for tea or family celebrations; in fact we nearly never see them except at folk events. But there is something in the sharing of this music that connects us.

Barry Hall

One of those people is Barry.
Once, when I was a teenager, I saw a long-haired man walk into the room at the Vancouver Folk Song Society's annual retreat, and felt as if I'd known him all my life, despite having no recollection of him. He played amazingly beautiful blues guitar, that day, and eventually I had to ask my Mum who this man was. I was sure I knew all my uncles, but really -- could I have forgotten one?
She laughed. That's Barry! He and I used to sing together when you were a baby and you spent a lot of time playing around our feet. Ah. So he is family. Musical family. Barry Hall turns out to be a hugely respected musician (this took me a while to realize, as a teen), who is credited by some with inspiring a generation of banjo players, after his record, The Virtuoso 5-String Banjo came out in the 60's. But more importantly to me, he is one of the kindest people I have ever known, and I guess such people never leave my heart!

This year I was delighted to discover that Barry was coming to Princeton. I hadn't seen him in many years, and it was a wonderful thing to be able to introduce him to my husband and children. He allowed me to film some of the pieces he played, for this blog post.

Enjoy!

Just Because You Have To

Tali climbed this against my advice and had a very scary descent!

There seems to be a common perception that kids need to learn to do things 'just because they have to'. People tell me there are lots of things we do just because we have to, like cooking food, math practice, driving safely, paying taxes, etc.

As adults, we don't do things because we have to; we do things because we choose to. I don't want to do my taxes every year, but I choose to. I certainly don't have to pay taxes; sure somebody will be angry and try to punish me or take my money if I don't pay them, but that doesn't stop plenty of other people from refusing to pay or simply hiding away their money. I pay taxes because I choose to. I know I will feel better about myself as a contributing member of society, if I pay. So I do. (Though I may not often like the way the current government chooses to use my money!)

This is how I make every choice. I look at my circumstances and figure out what course of action will serve me best, and proceed. What better skill to teach my children than to make wise choices! Forcing them to do things 'because they have to' is only telling them that they have no choices, and then when the time comes for them to be responsible adults, who will they turn to, to make their choices for them?

But what if they fall? What if they fail? What if they're hurt... or worse? Of course we don't want them to make unwise choices and run into problems. But how will they learn if they are never given freedom to explore? I give my children plenty of advice, but they don't always follow it. And I keep open arms and a good first aid kit around for when their choices don't work out the way they hope they will.

The likelihood is that my children will fall. They will fail. And they will hurt. I try to minimize the hazards, but in the end the pain will teach them to make better choices the next time. There will be no 'just because you have to', and in its place there will be wisdom.

Wonderful Unschooling Moment

As registered year-round homelearners, our kids get certain student rates, and we often have to explain why we still use these discounts during the summer, when most kids aren't in school.

Today, as I was requesting our discount, a clerk said "oh, summer school, eh?"

To which I replied, "no, we're just unschoolers".

"Hey? Homeschoolers?"

"Well, yes, we're registered as homelearners, but in practice we're unschooling." I prepared for the usual sarcasm, bewilderment and/or disbelief.

Instead, the woman looked me in the eyes and said exactly this: "Unschooling? I've never heard of that. So it's like learning by experience or something?"

Yes. That is what she said.
I smiled, and said. "Yes. Exactly."

Of course she had the usual worries and fears about learning math and getting into university, but within less than a minute of conversation she was enthusiastically nodding her head and grinning. What a wonderful day! I love meeting people with open minds!!

Wildflowers

I love photographing wildflowers. Just love it. I used to keep a blog for it (see it here), but... other pursuits got in the way. So I basically just do it once a year while camping, now! Here are some shots from this weekend:

tiger lily

lupine

arnica

paintbrush

fireweed

northern checkerspot butterfly

bunchberry

pyrola

pyrola

twin berry

one-sided wintergreen with twinflowers in the background

twinflowers

seedpods! Looks like a lily but not sure what! (Tigerlily?)

alpine rhododendron (not sure which)

white bog orchid

alpine willow (not sure which)

alpine willow (not sure which)

lily? solomon's seal? (not sure which)

false lily of the valley