Archive for March, 2008
March 18, 2008 at 6:02 am · Filed under island life
Carrie said in the comments of a previous post:
I just did a freelance assignment on the history of Hawaii - it’s fascinating! I have to admit I was woefully ignorant - especially of how horribly the Americans and Europeans treated the Hawaiian monarchy. Do any hard feelings remain over that?
I started to reply via comments, but my reply got long.
It’s pretty incredible that most Americans have no idea about the history of how we acquired these islands, isn’t it? I know that every region has its own histories and heritage, but it does amaze me that the overthrow that happened here has been so glossed over by history.
Yours is a hard question to answer. There is sometimes an assumption by mainlanders that the locals are hard on haoles (Caucasians), but we haven’t found that to be true. The local people we have had the pleasure of meeting have been warm and wonderful, and have hosted us at luaus and birthdays and blessings. That said, as haoles, we’ve been in the minority at those events! One friend of my husband’s was so pleased to have us attend his birthday party. He was buried in lei, and grinning when he told us, “not too many Hawaiians invite haoles to their parties!” This was priceless to my husband because it was a kind of acceptance, an acknowledgment that he’s a good guy, and not “one of THOSE haoles”. We were also the ONLY light-skinned people there.
Read the rest of this entry »
March 17, 2008 at 9:12 am · Filed under curriculum, books
It never ceases to thrill me to see my name on the cover of a new book on Amazon. Great Medieval Projects is now available for pre-order. 
March 16, 2008 at 8:13 pm · Filed under rants
A desk situation that puts my back to the wall with me looking out into the room so that when people need to talk to me they can do so without first feeling like they need to read what I’m writing. THAT drives me batty.
March 16, 2008 at 3:27 pm · Filed under island life
What do you say when a Grammy Award winning musician asks if your son can come to his workshop to help teach? Mmmmyessss! Brad is off today for five days of music and fun and food, and it’s entirely up to me to keep Evan occupied while he’s missing big brother. It will be a lonely week!
March 15, 2008 at 3:27 pm · Filed under island life
If you’re at all curious about the current eruption, go have a look, here. Beyond the lava flow that’s been reaching the ocean on and off over the last several weeks, Halama’uma’u Crater is giving off sulphuric gas that’s taking the air quality in Volcano National Park to dangerous levels. For reference, here’s a photo I took of some kids I know sitting in front of the crater:
The white you see at the edge of the crater is rock, not smoke.
Here, the crater as of today, looking in the same direction:
Click over to the USGS site and you can actually see the red incandescence.
UPDATE 3/27/08:
A number of people are clicking through directly to this post (Valley Moms, who are you??). I’ll add a direct link to the webcam at Halema’uma’u, in case you missed it here.
March 15, 2008 at 11:53 am · Filed under island life
I like to think this blog is charming in its randomness [insert sarcastic snort here]. I also like to think it’s beneficial, at least on occasion to the people who stop by. I know it’s helpful to me, as it kind of gives me a chance to think things through casually, warming up in a sense for the “real” writing I do.
I’m pondering a project (always) and would like to tap into your collective wisdom, if I may. Forgetting for a moment about my randomness, let’s focus specifically on my posts about Hawai’i. Assuming that you find those particular posts worth reading, what is it that you particularly like to read about? The fact that we were crazy enough to move here? Local culture? Food? The language? The history? Is it a chance for you to virtually visit the islands? Can you pinpoint it for me?
Taking another angle, if I were to ask you what I should share about our time here in my next post, what would you like to know? What question do you have about our Hawaiian adventure?
Please share your thoughts via the comments.
March 14, 2008 at 12:11 pm · Filed under home education
Dawn sent me off on a tangent today, thinking about what it is I want my kids to learn. This was a good exercise. One picture? Five pictures? The rules say one, but Dawn used five. Me, the visual person, took the opportunity to use five.
***
# Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
# Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
# Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
# Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce. (In lieu of tagging five people, if I’ve commented on your blog recently, I’m inviting you to participate - opt out or opt in, your choice!)
Goddess of Compassion - Children, have compassion for the people you meet in life.
Fear not - Be willing to take risks, look silly, be creative, step out of the box.
Tenacity - Follow your dreams, no matter how impossible they may seem.
Connections - Remember where you come from and know that your friends and family will always be a part of your lives.
Wonder - Maintain a sense of wonder in the world surrounding you, and use that wonder to further your understanding of the world.
**These images are all from Flickr, and each is linked back to its creator.
March 13, 2008 at 6:40 am · Filed under home education
Jon Carroll, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, does a nice job of saying what’s been rolling around in my head for the past week in light of the California court ruling. His column begins:
Let’s be clear about this: Some homeschooling is pretty dreadful. Some of it is basically: I’m too indolent to send you to school, my child, so I’ll say that I’m homeschooling you instead and you can help me sell greeting cards from home and make big money. Or scratch lottery tickets - something productive.
Indeed. I don’t think anyone who homeschools disagrees that there are some who give us all a bad rap. Some we don’t want to be lumped together with. But for the most part, parents who choose home education as the option for their family - no matter what it looks like - do so because they think it’s the best option for their kids.
In a very real way, most parents who homeschool are the best and the brightest. They care deeply about their kids, and they are willing to put in the time to teach them five days a week. They also develop innovative teaching ideas, and they can give each kid more attention than any teacher could. The public school system is unlucky to have lost parents of that caliber.
And what of the floundering public school system? Do we have a responsibility to that government program? Should we forfeit what’s good for our kids to fight for a better public education system that may or may not improve during our kids’ childhood? Jon Carroll, bless him, thinks not:
But, you say, how can our schools get better if the best parents leave and opt for homeschooling or private schools? It’s an extremely good point….And yet, and yet … parents do not want to put their children in holding cells or hellholes. They don’t want to overshoot the pocket of hope and end up in the slough of despair. It’s your kid, and your kid has one shot at this education thing, and if keeping the kid home (or sending the kid to a private school) seems like the best idea, then that’s what should happen.
It’s worth a click to head on over and read the entire column.
March 11, 2008 at 8:17 am · Filed under home education
Writing titles and headlines is my least favorite part of writing. And I am sure that writing headlines about politics got old right around the time of the Iowa caucus. But still.
“Obama Hopes for Win in Mississippi” (AP)
D’uh! What kind of news headline is that?
March 11, 2008 at 7:24 am · Filed under island life
The Hawaiian language, with its proliferation of vowels and diacritical marks, can be overwhelming. Especially to newcomers trying to follow driving directions! If you’re at all curious about how the language sounds, swing by this page to listen to twenty-five common Hawaiian words pronounced properly.
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