An Obama Litmus Test?

One can't help but wonder if personal tax problems--or at the very least, questions--are a resumé requirement for Obama appointees.

HT: The Corner on National Review

Recommended

We watched The Singing Revolution last night. It's a documentary about the role that singing played in the non-violent liberation of Estonia from Soviet rule. Here's my previous post on the subject.

My Lutheran readers may also want to check out this review of the movie in Liturgy, Hymnody and Pulpit, where it is pointed out that the now sainted Rev. Dr. Kurt Marquart was born in Estonia.

The movie is a testament to the power of singing as well as the power of people to stand in the face of tyranny. I can't help but think Americans could learn a lot from this movie, things that may serve us well in the future. Problem is, we don't sing anymore in this country. At least, not like this. Instead, we have people sing to us. I suppose it's evidence of the importance and power of singing that we then turn some of our singers into near gods, looking to them for a sort of redemption. Then when they show themselves to be merely human, we are surprised.

Music can't save us. But when we make it our own it can nourish and fortify us in a way that not many other human endeaors can. May the Estonian people never lose the love for corporate singing that sustained and helped bring them out of the dark days of their oppression into the light of freedom. God bless them, and God bless all who thirst for freedom.

For Your Consideration

My liturgically and musically-minded readers might want to consider visiting Lutheran Kantor. He has a fine blog that is currently featuring some excellent topics and discussions.

Palin Prediction

There has been much speculation about Sarah Palin's decision to resign as governor of Alaska. Is she pregnant? Is there a scandal brewing? Has the proberbial kitchen finally gotten too hot for her?

Here is my theory, for what it's worth (which is probably not much, considering that I also predicted that McCain would pick Romney as his running mate and later, that McCain and Palin would win the election). I think that there is some truth to the "hot kitchen" theory. But I don't think the heat is getting to Palin as much as to her family. Sarah Palin has shown herself to be tough enough to handle whatever the media mudslingers throw at her. But she has also shown herself to be someone who champions family values. And how better to do that than to protect her own loved ones?

Mrs. Palin has had an incredible year. I think she is seriously considering a 2012 presidential run. If she decides to go for it, she will have to start the process next year. I think it is quite likely she is bowing out as governor now so that she can have a little time to devote to her family before stepping back in to the fray.

The Palin-haters are calling her a quitter and branding her as unreliable and fickle. I think this decision is just another sign of her integrity and her refusal to play politics as usual. I wish her the best and look forward to watching the Palin story play out.

Issues, Etc. Celebration

Last week my husband and I drove down to Collinsville, Illinois to help celebrate the one year anniversary of the new Issues, Etc. Some of the photos I took ended up at the Steadfast Lutherans site, but not all of them, so I thought I would post a few more here.

THE CAKE (from Kruta's Bakery)

The happy editors of the Steadfast Quarterly (me and Pastor Fred Baue)

Pastor Randy Asburry (l) and Pastor Bruce Kesemann (r)

I cannot remember the name of the gentleman in the middle. Anyone know?

Pastor Todd Wilken on the air.



Craig Feichtinger and Jeff Schwarz, making it all happen.

By the way, a couple of Pastor Rossow's statements in the Steadfast article need to be qualified. He called me an "English literature professor." I used to be a part-time college English instructor. "Professor" suggests a permanent, tenure-track position, which I never sought nor held. These days I am not teaching English at all except to my own children in our home school (Philipp Nicolai Lutheran Academy).

Secondly, Pastor Rossow referred to my "award-winning blog." You can tell that my pastor is relatively new to the blogosphere, since he doesn't seem to understand how EASY it is for a blog to win all kinds of awards. I don't mean to diminish my awards--I was thrilled to receive them--but they are viral in nature and require only a single reader (usually also a friend) to decide that one is worthy for the award to be granted.

Back to the topic at hand: CONGRATULATIONS, ISSUES, ETC.! And thanks for the free beer! :-) It was a wonderful party, and I am so glad I was able to be there! Can't wait until the second anniversary! See you then, if not before! (In the meantime, I'll be listening.)

My Friend's Son's Wedding

A friend's son got married this weekend. He's a soldier who has served in Iraq, so it was fitting that the wedding was on Independence Day! I took a few photos at the reception, presented here in no particular order.

My daughter Caitlin, looking at the camera, and her friend Mary (the groom's sister) leaning over.

Dancing at the reception (Mary is front and center):

Mary, Caitlin, and friends.

Mary and a rather tall, handsome friend.

The bouquet toss.

Melody (mother of the groom) after a wardrobe change (sorry I didn't get one of her in her dress!)

Mr. and Mrs. P. the older.

Mr. and Mrs. P. the younger.

Phillip and Barb K., eating low-carb at the reception.

Clara and her froggy friends.

Clara with her mom and dad.

Future leaders of the resistance.

MIA

Summer is supposed to be when my life slows down. Ha! I've been so swamped lately I can't think straight. Today the family and I are off to a wedding. My good friend's son is getting married, and my husband is going to play organ for the wedding, and the rest of us are going to party! I hope I can also be of some help to my friend, who seems remarkably organized and in control, considering the reception is going to be AT HER HOUSE! Hang in there, Melody! See you soon!

So my already spotty posting will probably remain so for a few more days. I do have some great photos from the Issues, Etc. anniversary party, so look for those to go up either here or at Steadfast (or both) in the near future. And who knows? Maybe I'll manage a blog post on the road. Because thanks to a near-dead cell phone, my generous husband, and a new T-Mobile service contract, I got my birthday present early (by almost three weeks) yesterday: a new Blackberry Sidekick LX. In addition to the phone, it has web capability, GPS, camera, video recorder, email, instant messaging capability (which I'm not subscribing to), personal calendar/organizer, and music player. Woo-hoo! Twenty-first century, I've arrived! Now my daughter and I can quit fighting over my Sansa and I can download Issues, Etc. podcasts right to my phone!

(Full story: it wasn't my cell phone that was about to die, but our other one, which has to date been our "house" phone; that phone has been replaced by a T-Mobile "At Home" wireless system, while my former cell phone will be shared among several family members depending on circumstances. I find it amusing that the phone I ended up choosing is aimed for a teenage demographic; I chose it because it had the biggest screen so is easier for me to read with my failing eyesight!)

Another great quote on education from To Kill a Mockingbird

"The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem called the Dewey Decimal System was school-wide by the end of my first year, so I had no chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only look around me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything--at least, what one didn't know the other did. Furthermore, I couldn't help noticing that my father had served for years in the state legislature, elected each time without opposition, innocent of the adjustments my teachers thought essential to the development of Good Citizenship. Jem, educated on a half-Decimal half-Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a poor example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from getting at books. As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at home, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me."

--from Chapter 4

I'm all for parental rights . . .

. . . but this is ridiculous.

Swedish parents keep 2-year-old's gender secret

HT: National Review

The To-Do List Will Have to Wait . . . Again

Have you noticed a change in my blog?

These days it seems I'm writing much more about my immediate sphere--the family and personal stuff--than about the world beyond. I suppose I'm just finding it too depressing to think about the state of the country and world and trying to find consolation in the day to day. The ancient Greek philosophers believed that the cosmos was interwoven in such a way that events in one part had a ripple effect on everything else. The belief was adopted by the Elizabethans, and you can see it in Shakespeare when events in the human world (the microcosm) are reflected in the natural world (the macrocosm), so that when the kingdom is out of whack (kings getting murdered and such), nature is also distressed (earthquakes, storms, etc.)

I am thankful that I am not seeing that macrocosm/microcosm connection in my own life right now. The world is messed up, but here on the home front we just seem to be floating along as usual in our little Lutheran homeschooling bubble. I thank God for the freedom and ability to do that and pray that events in the world at large don't invade and take it from us. And since I don't seem to have much power to affect the world right now, I'm trying to affect my immediate sphere. Problem is, it's almost July and it seems like I haven't made much progress yet this summer. I always seem to start the summer with a list of things that I want to get done that I wasn't able to get to in the busier part of the year. And every year it seems I come up short, not having made nearly as much progress on the list as I had hoped.

Right now, even though my piano students have lightened up for the summer and my various choir practices have ceased (so I should have more time on my hands), it seems I'm only managing the essentials: the laundry, meals, and running around. The deep cleaning remains to be done (heck, any level of cleaning remains to be done). So do the filing, and the organizing of books and homeschool supplies, and the printing and sorting of photos and putting them in albums, and the learning/practicing of something on the piano for my own personal development instead of because I have to, and the completing of one of the books I have been trying to read for months, and the multiple miniature home improvement/beautification jobs I have in mind, and the homeschool subjects we didn't get to during the year (we're still trying to finish up the things we DID get to), and the letters/thank you notes that have yet to be written, and . . . well, you get the picture.

And once again, today it will all have to wait. And for good reason. Because my husband and I are heading down to Collinsville, Illinois to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the rebirth of Issues, Etc (after it was so rudely snatched from the airwaves by a synodical leadership that continues to perturb anyone who is paying attention to it).

I'll have a report and pictures in a few days.

Bursting with Parental Pride

I think I sent this to just about everyone in my address book yesterday, but in case you don't hold a place in that highly exclusive club, here's a link to an article that our local newspaper ran about my firstborn, who continues to amaze with his talent and dedication.

By the way, in the near future I'll be posting similarly about my second born, who has also recently accomplished something remarkable.

Tumbling Class

For the Evan fans out there . . . a 1-minute video of him in tumbling class yesterday. We decided to enroll him because he seems to have a knack for it--he has been doing cartwheels and forward rolls and headstands around the house for several years now. Notice in the video that he elects to hop across the beam. The instructions (followed by everyone but Evan) were to slowly walk with arms stretched to the side to help with balance. But of course that was too boring for this kid.

I think you can pick Evan out, but just in case, he's in yellow.

And You, Miss, Are No Lady

This one is too good (and too long) for Evan Essence.

My five-year-old is all boy. He is rough and tough and physical. Sometimes his "playfulness" is downright painful to those around him. So last night I was trying to teach him about being a gentleman. I told him that some day he was going to grow bigger and taller and stronger than me, and that he needs to learn to be gentle with me now so that he will know the right way to treat a lady when he grows up.

He just looked at me and said, "But Mommy, you're not a lady."

O-kaayyy. Thanks, honey, you really know how to flatter a girl. I told him that I most certainly was. His response?

"But ladies wear shoes that are high off the ground, like this." As he said this, he lifted one of his feet in the air.

Great. He's only five years old and he's already a leg man.

Time to set this boy straight. I'll show him. I am, too, a lady! My mistake, however, was that I bought into his premise. One of the first rules of winning the argument is to attack the other person's premise. Evan's premise is that ladies wear high heels. But rather than challenge him on that, I took him for a tour of my closet.

"See, Evan?" Opening a shoe box and brandishing a particularly strappy, fashionable pair. "Mommy has high heels. I wear them to church sometimes."

He looked at me, dubious. "No. Those are only like this." (Holding hands a couple of inches apart.) "A lady wears shoes like THIS." (Spreading hands to about four inches apart.)

Elephant's Child, if Sparkle wants a future with this boy you better get her started on the heels now.

And to Sparkle or whoever the "lucky" girl turns out to be, my deepest apologies. I tried.

My Day

It's been a good day. Here's what I did:

1) Woke up at 5:15 a.m.

2) Spent about 45 minutes on email, blogs, and coffee.

3) Did final corrections on the Steadfast Quarterly. It's off to the printer!

4) Did some laundry and household tasks.

5) Made two loaves of banana bread.

6) Took a walk with my husband.

7) Took my 5-year-old to his swimming class.

8) Read the 8th and 9th Commandments and their Meanings in the Large Catechism while said 5-year-old was swimming.

And that was all before lunch!

Then it was off to church to drop off Evan with his dad and sister (who were there for our week-long morning music camp/singing school) while I took Trevor to his orthotics appointment and then to a nearby junior college to do placement testing (he will be enrolling for college math this fall). While he was testing, I enjoyed some time on the library computer (a little more email and blogging). Trevor did great on his test and received permission to take college calculus (or something of equivalent level) this fall! He will be taking only the one class, attending as a high school junior on early admission.

After the college visit it was back home. I grilled brats (um, that would be bratWURST) for supper while Evan played in the water hose and Phil rehearsed in the living room with one of our best singers from church, who will be performing for and talking to the children at camp tomorrow. It's not many ladies who get to listen to a live performance of Leonard Bernstein's "I Hate Music" song cycle while cooking supper!

The teenagers cleaned up the supper dishes. Husband worked in the garden. I read bedtime stories to Evan. We are on a Dr. Seuss kick right now, so tonight it was Hooray for Diffendoofer Day and On Beyond Zebra.

Even a presidential news conference on why we need nationalized health care was not enough to cast a shadow on this day. It was busy, but satisfyingly so. Thank you, God, for days that are full of such earthly gifts as this one.

Progress!

May



June



This is only our second year of vegetable gardening. I think we overplanted a bit. But things are looking pretty good, don't you think? (The credit for soil preparation, planting, and garden care thus far belongs entirely to my husband, altnough I did go buy the plants.) We have tomatoes, peppers, basil, rosemary, chives, sage, squash, collard greens, and cantaloupe. We are hoping to expand the plot next year--maybe add a strawberry patch. Hey, gardeners out there, what else might we successfully grow in a backyard plot in Illinois?

Is it just me?

Or does my blog look funny?

For the last few days the font has not been showing up uniformly. Several posts down, at the point at which I used a smaller font for the excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird, everything from that point on is smaller--all the rest of the posts on the page, everything in the sidebar, etc. But I have not made any layout changes, so I don't get it.

Are you seeing the same thing I am?

Repeating History

So let me get this straight.

The federal government wants to give money to people to buy new cars that they probably can't afford because if they could, they would have already bought them.

Sound familiar?

Singing the Catechism

Last year my husband wrapped up a composing project in which he set Luther's Small Catechism to music (I think most of my readers know this, but perhaps a few do not). The songs--66 of them--were first included piecemeal in Concordia Publishing House's Growing in Christ Sunday School curriculum, but now they have been compiled available independently in CD and songbook formats. It is my understanding that both have been selling well. (We wouldn't know firsthand as my husband was paid for his work on a stipend basis so receives no royalties from sales.)

But the fact that something is purchased does not mean that it is used. (Just ask any homeschooling mom.) So my husband loves hearing from real life people that they are utilizing the fruits of his labor and that these songs are actually doing what they were written to do: helping children learn the catechism.

Over the last few years he has heard from a number of people who have told him just that. These stories are worth more to him than you can possibly know. I heard a few more of them at the Concordia Catechetical Academy Symposium this week. What a joy it was for me to hear how parents and their children have been blessed by my husband's work, especially after having had a front row seat to see the many hours of inspiration, craft, and sweat that went into it. He has given much to his parish and to the church at large over the years, but I am beginning to think that this may be his most lasting contribution.

Here's a recent blog post from a Lutheran pastor (of one of our sister synods) on how he has used this resource both in his parish and his home.

Homeschooling 101

I started reading To Kill a Mockingbird to my teenagers this week. It's our first readaloud in a while. I'm hoping we can actually finish it this summer.

It's been quite some time since I read this book, so re-encountering this passage in Chapter 2 was a pleasant surprise (the narrator is remembering her very first day of school). I think a few of my homeschooling friends may appreciate it. My children especially liked the third paragraph.
Then she [the teacher] went to the blackboard and printed the alphabet in enormous square capitals, turned to the class and asked, "Does anybody know what these are?" . . .

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name [due to an earlier run-in]; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.

"Teach me?" I said in surprise. "He hasn't taught me anything, Miss Caroline. Atticus ain't got time to teach me anything," I added, when Miss Caroline smiled and shook her head. "Why, he's so tired at night he just sits in the livingroom and reads."

. . . Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying. . . . "Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage--". . .

I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church--was it then I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above [my father's] moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Law, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow--anything [my father] happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

First Swimming Lesson

(Note: if you have trouble picking Evan out in the group pictures, just look for the fluorescent white skin.)