Justice

From "Justice," The Cardinal Virtues by William DeWitt Hyde, 1903

The essence of injustice consists in treating people, not as persons, having interests and ends of their own, but as mere tools or machines, to do the things we want to have done. The penalty of injustice is a hardening of heart and shrivelling of soul; so that if a person were to treat everybody in that way, he would come to dwell in a world of things, and, before he knew it, degenerate into a mere thing himself. Lord Rosebery points out that this habit of treating men as mere means to his own ends was what made Napoleon's mind lose its sanity of judgment, and made hia heart the friendless, cheerless desolation that it was in his last days. We have all seen persons in whom this hardening, shrivelling, drying-up process had reached almost the vanishing point. The employer toward his " hands"; the officer toward his troops; the teacher, even, toward his scholars; the housekeeper toward her servants; all of us toward the people who cook our food, and make our beds, and sell our meat, and raise our vegetables, are in imminent dan- ger of slipping down on to this immoral level of treating them as mere machines. Royce, in his Religious Aspect of Philosophy, has set this forth most forcibly, among English writer ; though it lies at the heart of all the German formulas, like Kant's "Treat humanity, whether in thyself or in others, always as an end, never as a means," and Hegel's "Be a person, and respect the personality of others." Royce says: " Let one look over the range of his bare acquaintanceship; let him leave out his friends, and the people in whom he takes a special personal interest; let him regard the rest of his world of fellow men, — his butcher, his grocer, the policeman that patrols his street, the newsboy, the servant in his kitchen, his business rivals. Are they not one and all to him ways of behavior toward himself or other people, outwardly effective beings, rather than realized masses of genuine inner sentiment, of love, or of felt desire? Does he not naturally think of each of them rather as a way of outward action than as a way of inner volition? His butcher, his newsboy, his servant, — are they not for him industrious or lazy, honest or deceitful, polite or uncivil, useful or useless people, rather than self-conscious people? Is any one of these alive for him in the full sense, — sentient, emotional, and otherwise like himself, as perhaps his own son, or his own mother or wife, seems to him to be? Is it not rather their being for him, not for themselves, that he considers in all his ordinary life? Not their inner volitional nature is realized, but their manner of outward activity. Such is the nature and ground of the illusion of selfishness."

This passage from Royce lays bare the source of the greater part of the social immorality in the world, and accounts for nine-tenths of all the world's trouble. . . .

. . . The most fundamental question a man can ask about our character is whether and to what extent we habitually treat persons as persons, and not as things.

Thankful

I'm resting at home today after foot surgery this morning.

After dealing with foot pain for several years with less aggressive measures (cortisone injections, orthotics) not helping sufficiently, I decided to go forward with surgery to remove a neuroma in my left foot. The particular issue I have is known as a Morton's neuroma. My podiatrist says that mine is less common in being between the second and third toes instead of the third and fourth as in the diagram. I have several friends who have had this surgery and report that it was very helpful and they would do it again. I hope I will eventually be able to report the same! Right now I am still nicely numbed up, but I have great caregivers, pain medicine at the ready if I should need it, and the next few days emptied of commitments. I am already taking short walks with a protective shoe. I go back in Tuesday for a post-op visit. Until then, sponge baths only (so local people, be warned!).

I find myself feeling very thankful for many things today. First, for a son who is able to wait on me while his dad, who stayed home much of the day, goes in to church to practice a few hours. Another perq of homeschooling! Evan made me lunch: ☺

Second, I am especially thankful for a husband that decreed 2016 as the "Year of Cheryl" healthwise. Our health plan is such that we have great coverage for one person. It is a high deductible policy but has an expense reimbursement account that partially covers the deductible. The thing is, there are only enough funds to cover part of one person's deductible. If more than one person needs care, the family deductible kicks in and there are no funds for it. And given our current budget, to cover a second deductible would be a difficult thing to do.

So even though he is older than I and has some of his own issues looming, my dear husband stepped aside and pushed me ahead of him in line. Thankfully, no one else in the family has had any serious health concerns. So far this year I have had a full physical (first one in years) including blood work, female stuff and mammogram (other than some anemia and Vitamin D deficiency everything looked good); allergy testing (confirming I am pretty much allergic to every grass, tree and mold in the world) and desensitization therapy (third time I have done this, but allergens are different in Oklahoma); a bone scan to check for any signs of the osteoporosis my mother had so badly (all looks good); a baseline colonoscopy (good), and an upper GI scope to check on previously diagnosed issues (hiatal hernia, esophageal stricture).

I'm sure you were really interested in all that. I share it to illustrate several other things for which I am thankful--that the health issues I do have are quite treatable, that we have insurance that provides for sufficient coverage to treat them, that we have the freedom to choose the doctors we want to carry out the treatment, and that those doctors are providing excellent care. I was very nervous about both last week's scopes and this week's surgery as I have had very little in the way of anesthesia or surgeries in my life. But so far everything has gone incredibly smoothly (those drugs do what they say!) and the care has been great. I am looking forward to feeling much better next year, and with the foot and allergies under control, being able to get outside and exercise more. But I worry for the future of health care in our country and pray my children will be able to have the same quality of care when they are my age.

Next year is supposed to be the "Year of Phillip" but now he is talking about putting someone else ahead of him again, as Evan seems to have some of my allergy issues and could also benefit from allergy testing and desensitization. But maybe we can get him through another year with just antihistamines and staying indoors during the worst times. Dad deserves care, too, you know? I married a good man, and I want to keep him around a long, long time.

Thank you, dear husband, for being "God with skin on" for me. P.S. I am still a little groggy and disavow all responsibility for mechanical errors or poorly constructed sentences.

Seventh Grade

For my fellow homeschoolers, here's what Evan and I have planned for seventh grade.

Bible/Catechism - The next couple of months will be spent preparing for Confirmation! Evan recently completed all his required sermon reports (yay!) and is now studying for his Confirmation test. This weekend he is going on an overnight retreat with his class. Confirmation here coincides with the celebration of Reformation. Evan also turns 13 on October 29 (wowzers), so we are planning a combined birthday/Confirmation party for the end of October. After Confirmation I would like to start a home Bible study that we can do together--maybe a book of the Bible using one of CPH's People's Bible Commentary series.

Grammar - Rules of the Game. I know this series has been around forever and is a staple for homeschoolers. I had never looked at it before. I like the inductive method it employs, prompting the student to look for patterns and then figure out the rule from the pattern. The first book looks to be quite a bit of review of what we have already studied, but I decided to start with it anyway and just go rapidly through the stuff we know until we get to the stuff that's new. There are three books in all.

Handwriting - Evan still prints unless I make him do otherwise. He can copy cursive and make it look nice, but he doesn't use it naturally. I am hoping this year to have him make the transition to using cursive in more of his written work. We are still working our way through last year's handwriting curriculum, 44 U.S. Presidents, Zaner-Bloser style.

Vocabulary - We didn't like Memoria Press's Roots of English. The chapters seemed to drag on, the pages were too busy, and the amount of information overwhelming. This year we are switching to Vocabulary from Classical Roots. So far, so good.

Math - Finishing up Teaching Textbooks 6, moving on to Teaching Textbooks 7. I love this curriculum as it is computer based and requires almost nothing from me. Evan likes it, is doing well, and it is self-grading.

History - Given the events of last year (house purchase, move, death of my mom) we did not complete everything we set out to do, including Volume 4 of A Child's History of the World. But I've decided we can revisit that time period (20th century) within the scope of U.S. history, so this year we are going to do a rapid run through American history using this series from Angela O'Dell. The series is a conversational in tone and makes for easy reading. My goal is not to get too deep in the weeds but just to have Evan get an over-arching sense of the big picture of American history and a command of the major dates. He is reading on his own and constructing a timeline as he does so. Next year we'll do the same thing for world history. Then in high school we can do some more in depth study of the how's and wherefore's of it all.

Geography - A neglected area in our homeschool so far. We're going to start with the basics in Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography. After that, I'm not sure. Stay tuned!

Computers - We are still working our way through KidCoder. Hope to finish by Christmas and go on to the game design book.

Science - This year we are going to use the series by John Hudson Tiner, starting with Exploring Planet Earth. 

Reading - In addition to readalouds and novels, we're going to use a school reader, published by Macmillan, that I picked up somewhere along the way. I am not sure of the exact grade level but judge it to be junior high content. It has poetry, fiction and non-fiction from a variety of sources plus a number of language-oriented lessons on things like dictionary usage, figurative language, logic, and the like.

My plan of incorporating some sort of art instruction last year was a big bust. We will try again this year, beginning with some lessons from the classic, Drawing with Children.

In addition to the above, Evan will have P.E., piano, organ, and French (Evan's first year) taught by Dad. We're going to keep this kid busy this year!

"Fiddler Jones"

"Fiddler Jones" by Edgar Lee Masters THE EARTH keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?	5
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.	10
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I till my forty acres	15
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in my life	20
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,	25
And not a single regret. Gerard van Honthorst, The Merry Fiddler