Christmas Tree Farm
general
Indoors and Out, Sort Of
The day began with Polish lessons, with Babcia taking over for this particular round. This has its advantages, to be sure, the main one being her inability to speak English. Since the Girl can't speak Russian, the only language Babcia and L have in common is Polish, so it forces the language out of L, squeezes it out of every little necessity.
Once that was out of the way, it was playtime. The Girl's favorite play location of late has been the livingroom couch, somewhat transformed.
"It's a fort! An E-proof fort!"
Something tells me that this will soon be a favorite of E, as well. He certainly stayed in the "fort" for a long time, and he seemed content the whole time, as did everyone else. The OCD version of Tata, though, was going just a little crazy with the mess. Good clean fun doesn't really exist with a six-year-old and a toddler.
In the evening, we decided it was time we finally went to Hollywild's famous Christmas light safari (their term, not mine). We'd tried some years ago, but we'd given up and turned around after wandering about in the middle seemingly of nowhere for long enough to drive me batty.
It's a strangely American concept: set up an incredible number of lights -- snow men, rocking horses, various Christmas scenes, various winter scenes -- and let people drive their cars around in the display.
"What a waste of gas!" some non-Americans (and likely some Americans as well) might suggest. "Why not get out and walk -- you missed a chance for good exercise."
And that's probably true, but this evening was particularly cold, and the Boy would not have fared well in such cold weather: he gets sick just thinking about getting sick. No, he gets sick with anyone around him thinking that he might get sick. It's suggestive illness.
And so we played along (as if we had a choice) and drive through the presentation, behaving perfectly cordially with all the other drivers (what a change) and patiently oohing and ahhing at all the right spots.
"Look at the reflection!" L pointed out, right before Babcia did the same in Polish. Or was it the reverse?
In the middle of the safari was the Enchanted Deer Forest, which was an odd term for the plot of muddied, treeless ground all the cars wandered about in as if they migrating animals, separated and lost from their herd.
The enchanted deer part, though, was easy to see. They clumped around cars and ate from people's hands, walking in front of slowly-moving cars without a care.
We tried to get a few to come to our car, but the closes we came was a short, semi-attentive stare.
To get really close to the animals, we had to get out of the car and into Santa's Village. Who knew Santa had camels and bison and strange cattle?
The Boy, though was strangely apathetic about the animals. He was much more interested in running, running, running. And falling. And running again,.
"We'll come back in a couple of years," K laughed as we headed back to the car, "When the Boy is interested in more than just running."
Future in the Past
Some of the names are unfamiliar; some are vaguely familiar, but we don't necessarily know off the top of our heads what the person did. And some are infamous.
Wilhelm Frick was responsible for many of the laws that consolidated the Nazi regime. Shortly after the passage of the Enabling Act, Frick helped create a law taking power from individual state governments in Germany, thus federalizing power under Hitler. This accomplished, Frick played an important role in the racial policy of Nazi Germany, helping to create laws against German Jewish. For all this, he was determined enormously responsible for the existence of concentration camps and was hung.
Fritz von Epp abolished the government of Bavaria on Hitler's and Frick's orders and set up a Nazi government. He died of natural causes while in Allied custody.
Martin Mutschmann was the Nazi governor of Saxon and was shot by the Russians in Moscow in 1947.
Julius Schaub was chief aide and adjutant and was responsible for destroying all of Hitler's personal belongings and papers. He died in Munich in 1967.
Otto Strasser is something of an anomaly in this picture. He considered himself a leftist Nazi, and lacked the virulent anti-Semitism of the rest of the group. Hitler expelled him from the Nazi Party, and he helped form the Black Front, an attempt to split the Nazi Party. He spent the war outside of German, eventually settling in Canada. Goebbels declared that Strasser was the Nazis' "Public Enemy Number One" and put a price of $500,000 on his head. He returned to Germany in the fifties and died in Munich in 1974, all the while calling for a renewed Nazi party.
Those are the men we don't know. The other four are arguably among the most evilly influential men of the twentieth century, responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions upon millions. Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels constituted the very upper echelon of the Nazi party, and as such, are responsible for the Second World War, the Holocaust, and in a very real way, the Cold War. And not a single one of them faced justice of any kind. All four committed suicide, Hitler and Goebbels killing themselves (and their wives, and in Goebbels's case, children) before the fall of Berlin, and Goering and Himmler committing suicide after their capture.
Yet the past threatens to become our future as well. Gudrun Burwitz, daughter of Himmler, is an unrepentant neo-Nazi and works hard for years to help the remaining war criminals escape justice. It's people like that who feel that Hitler didn't go far enough, mourn the fact that Jews still exist, and cheer at the thought of Iran following through with its threat against Israel. "Have we learned nothing?" is the only thing that comes to mind in situations like that.
Thanksgiving 2013
A late lunch, some family games, a walk, a creative Girl, an inquisitive Boy — perfect Thanksgiving.
The Day Before
“I think it’s about time we take over the Thanksgiving dinner.” K and I were talking about what we would be doing this year, what plans we thought the Elders might have/desire. Christmas Eve had always been our responsibility, and the Elders sort of took Thanksgiving by default. But this year, we decided to charge, make plans, and cook dinner ourselves and invite the Elders as opposed to the opposite. More to the point, K always takes are of Christmas Eve (by and large), so I decided this year I would do the whole Thanksgiving dinner myself.
The morning’s weather might have seemed like an omen for the less convinced. Snow in late November, in South Carolina?
Before Thanksgiving? Yet the chill in the air somehow made the work go easier: a mental thing I guess. What else can you do but stay inside? What else can you do while inside but cook?
And so I started. First, the garnish: cranberry sauce with dried cherries and a few dried blueberries.
Butternut squash soup, freestyle. I looked at some recipes, but none of them had the I-don’t-know-what I was looking for. So I made my own recipe, which included leftover ricotta cheese and some curry powder.
By the time I was ready to move on to stuffing, the snow had stopped, the sky had cleared, and the dusting of white on the ground had disappeared, as had L’s excitement.
“If it keeps snowing today, and tomorrow, and maybe Saturday and Sunday, maybe we’ll be out of school Monday!” I thought that we might be lucky if the snow lasts until the afternoon, but I said nothing.
By then, I was busy with the dressing, using a recipe I’d found online that included the magic, attention-getting word: sausage.
Two casseroles popped into and out of the oven as well, and by the time we were putting the kids to bed, I’d started the final element for the day, the giblet gravy.
Tomorrow, the potatoes, the green beans with shallots and almonds, and something else. Seems I’m missing something. Oh well. Hopefully, we can live without whatever it is…
Queen Mab
Students' drawings of Queen Mab.
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
Apologies
Dear Teresa,
Two observations.
First, not all apologies begin with I’m sorry. In fact, some of the most graceful and moving apologies have ended with those words.
Second, and more significantly for you, not all utterances including “I’m sorry” are in fact apologies. For example, if you were to get in trouble with a teacher yet feel that you had done nothing, saying “I’m sorry you think that I…” only feels like an apology because it includes those sometimes-deceptive words. It is, in fact, an accusation.
Mildly amused and annoyed,
Your Teacher
Polish Sunday
Babcia
has arrived.
Friday Night
Journal reading: sifting through the layers…