Old stuff

On Friday, we were learning about Texas history and geography. I found a 10-minute video online from the 1950s about the Southwest states (Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma) that was quite interesting for its historical value. For starters, it is all in black and white. That's unusual to my children. When talking about agricultural products, it shows a line of black men picking cotton--calling them "Negroes", incidentally, which is a term my children never hear--but nowadays cotton is mechanically picked in the USA. Cotton is only picked by hand in developing countries. It's sobering to realize that my mother and father grew up in a country that was similar in many ways to today's developing countries.

Among other fun parts of the video, all the people, male and female, walking down city streets wear hats, and the women are all in skirts. It talks about the large herds of Angora goats being raised in Texas to meet the demand for mohair; I'd bet those herds are quite a bit smaller now. The Northeast is described as being the source of manufactured goods for the Southwest; nowadays, it seems we get most everything manufactured from Asia, especially China.

Venezuela and Communist Ideals

Venezuela has an enormous amount of wealth in oil reserves, but the people there don't even have enough toilet paper. I sincerely hope that they oust Maduro soon. They're never going to get a perfect president, but surely they can get one that doesn't destroy businesses like nationalizing Chavez (who enriched himself to the tune of a billion USD by the time he died) and Maduro have done.

If there is one thing that last century's history teaches us, communist systems do not work for long. Even voluntary communes (kibbutzim, United Order, Brook Farm, etc.) fall apart or move away from communist ideals over time. People are, on the whole, beings that look out for their own interest. People need to be able to profit from their labor and investment, or they will not labor or invest. People need free markets, or they will create black markets.

Happies

My baby just turned two. She says "Please!" when she wants something, draws "happies" (happy faces) on pieces of paper (we think she might finally have figured out that she really isn't allowed to draw in books, especially library books), and likes to dress up in dresses and pretend to be a ballerina.

I love seeing my children grow up. Sometimes the process seems so slow--I blame pregnancy and postpartum fatigue for that--but as I put old-fashioned clip-on earrings and a grown-up necklace on dd9 last night for a church "tea party" (no actual tea, just water, but lots of sweets and flowers), I had a momentary vision of her in ten years, a lovely, fun-loving, and self-assured 19-year-old dressing up for a special evening.

I think she actually will be a confident young woman. I'm very grateful for the chance to homeschool/part-time public school her these past few years. She has an Aspie streak and exhibits social delays similar to those which made some of my school years miserable, and I think our current schooling arrangement is going to allow her to skip a lot of that misery herself. Children need socialization time in a group setting of peers, but it's torture for some children to have to be in those situations 35+ hours a week (much more if one counts extracurriculars and social media interactions). I didn't really start recovering from my "pariah years" in grades 5-6 until I was homeschooled for a semester in 8th grade. Sometimes kids just need a break. Emotional wounds are like scabs in that they need to be left alone for a while in order to heal.

Weaving

Dd9 learned to weave on a cardboard loom at her part-time school program today. She was so delighted with the product (a little 2x8 inch four-color weaving) that she taught dd4 and dd6 to do it this evening. They spent around 2 hours or more on it. Dd6 was very frustrated several times, but dd9 patiently helped her, as well as doing most of the work on dd4's weaving. 

I would have never attempted this craft with such young children, but dd9 can sometimes be quite dogged about things she is interested. Glad it worked out well tonight!