matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

Biltmore Fall 2021

Monday 18 October 2021

It has been a very long time since we were last in Biltmore. We went with my folks in 2006 with my parents (before the Girl was born)

Biltmore

and again in 2007 when Babcia was here from Poland.

Biltmore II

Of course, the Girl was too young to remember anything and the Boy wasn't even a thought when we last went there, so today being a teacher workday that I took as a personal day, we took the kids for a day at the largest house in America.

The house has looked like this for over a hundred years now,

but there was one significant change this time around, though. It was nothing in the gardens: they looked just like they did 14 years ago.

(Click on images for larger view, as always.)

The exterior really wasn't any different -- the limestone facade is just stunning and overwhelming.

What was different was that photos are now allowed on the interior. I guess in the 14 years since we last went there, the administrators realized with the advent of the smartphone that keeping people from taking photos was going to be impossible. Plus, why not get the free publicity that comes with social media posts.

As we strolled through the house, I kept thinking how "house" is such a poor word for what this is. It's more like a palace. I believe it's officially called a chateau. It's hard to imagine anyone building a structure like that for himself. Vanderbilt was still single when he began building the 170,000 square-foot home, and he and his wife only had the one daughter Cornelia. They took up three of the thirty-five bedrooms. What's the point of something like that other than to do it?

It's all so foreign and almost obscene to modern sensibilities. It would take 65 of our homes to equal the area of that house. What does anyone need with that? Nothing -- that's the honest answer. But why would they want something like that?

Yet it's a piece of art in and of itself.

Since we got year passes, we're planning on heading back in December for the Christmas decorations (which are already going up).

Working Sunday

Sunday 17 October 2021

More planting in the yard,

a new bookshelf for the Girl,

some re-decoration of the Boy’s room —

not our typical Sunday.

Around the House

Saturday 16 October 2021

In many ways, a fairly typical Saturday: the sun came up from the back of the house, washing everything in a soft morning light.

The Boy played computer games immediately upon waking up — it’s his Saturday morning treat, and considering the fact that we have no kind of gaming console whatsoever (no Xbox, no Wii, no Playstation), it’s a little indulgance we allow.

K and I (though mainly K) talk to Babcia. We talk about important matters (the energy crisis in Europe) and not-so-important matters (I can’t even remember).

I go and look at our front yard, covered with new grass that’s several inches high, thinking that I might finally be able to mow it today.

And then I start my chores. First up — seal up all the cracks in the chimney that I found last week, one (or perhaps several) of which let in enough water to damage the drywall in our bedroom. A serious matter, to be sure, but since it rained for a week a while ago with no additional damage, we think (hope) it was a one-time mini-disaster. Still, it’s best to seal everything as best I can.

In the afternoon, I plant some new shrubs for K and finally mow that yard. It’s a tedious task: the ground is still wet, and if I’m not careful, I dig out a bit of grass and mud every time I turn the mower. Still, once it’s all done, it looks magnificant.

In the meantime, K and the Boy are repainting the ramp that leads to Papa’s room. (We still call it that — probably always will.)

We don’t really need the ramp anymore as Papa no longer needs it for his wheelchair, but what else are we going to do? It would be absurd to get rid of it.

While they’re at it, they go ahead and repaint the small decorative fence that predates our chainlink fence and looks a little weird but a little sweet, too.

A busy, productive day.

 

How Much Time?

Friday 15 October 2021

Sometimes, I find myself wondering just how much time I need to give students to finish an assignment. If they're playing around and wasting time, then they're doing just that -- wasting time. Why should they get extra time? But if I assess what they do turn in, then it's so incomplete that it's more an assessment of behavior rather than skill.

Take our current project: we're writing about how the narrator effectively creates the voice of an uneducated slave girl in Nightjohn by judicious decisions in diction, regularly irregular grammar, and extensive use of fragments. We've gone over all this stuff. We've practiced finding it. We've found it. We've noted it.

I've planned out everything so that what they have to do is less figuring-out-how-to-do-it and just doing it. We determined potential topic sentences as a class. We found evidence in groups. (Much of the evidence they already had -- it should have taken them about 5 minutes to find evidence because it was in earlier work.)

At this point, students who have been focused and working well are almost done; those who haven't are not close to done. They should work on it over the long weekend. Will they? Of course not. How do I know this? Fifteen years of teaching eighth grade at this school has shown me that 85% of the kids in on-level classes just won't do anything on their own at home. Anything at all.

English I students, on the other hand, finished up their analysis of "Sonnet 29" with an examination of the elements of a sonnet:

We then turned our attention to "Sonnet 18" -- undoubtedly Shakespeare's most famous sonnet:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

The difference in what they're working on is striking, but it's less striking when you see the difference in how they work. The kids in the honors classes, by and large, are focused and studious. They do homework when I require it. They pay attention when I'm demonstrating. They stay on task when I ask them to cooperate on a task. They remain silent when I tell them I want them to do some step or other on their own.

Reimagined

Thursday 14 October 2021

More playing in Photoshop. I turned this

into this

using only a few layers.

1973

Wednesday 13 October 2021

The Trinity

Tuesday 12 October 2021

If God is the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost was the one responsible for impregnating Mary, and Jesus is the child, then God is both the lover and son of Mary.

It’s an idea ripe for memes.

May be an image of 1 person

Taking a Chance

Monday 11 October 2021

I took the kiddos to the library today to get their first independent reading selections for the second quarter. The librarians came up with a clever game for the kids to play: they chose cards at random that “dared” them to get particular books.

“Get a book with a red cover.”

“Get a book by a female author.”

“Get a book from a friend’s recommendation.”

“Get a book with a one-word title.”

I talked the librarians into adding a new one: “Get a book Mr. Scott selects for you.”

For two girls I selected Ender’s Game — a science fiction masterpiece. I first read it when I was their age, and it thrilled me. What a shocking ending! I chose it for the two girls because they had never really read science fiction. “I’m more a dystopian fiction girl,” one of them said, “But I’ll give it a shot.”

Boys, Dogs, and Holes

Sunday 10 October 2021

A boy and a dog have to dig. It’s in their nature. Millions of years of evolution have implanted in them an irresistible craving to put holes in the ground Entire YouTube channels are likely devoted entirely to digging holes.

Clover digs these holes when she’s frustrated. If she’s been outside most of the day and is aware that we’re home, she wants to join us. If we don’t let her in, she digs. We open the window in the kitchen and shout down the hill, “Clover! No!” This stops her for a short time, but it’s never more than a few minutes before she starts digging again.

“You’re digging your own grave, dog,” I’ve muttered to her countless times when E and I are heading down to take out the compost, and at this point, the dog has just about gotten a whole big enough that she does indeed fit into it.

As for the Boy’s holes, they’re a different story. Occasionally he’s on a golf kick and wants to have a hole to shoot for. Never mind all he’s got are a cheap driver and iron from the thrift store. He uses them both as putters and sometimes decides he needs a hole to shoot for.

Other times, he’s building something. Tonight, he was working on a lean-to because he’d see it on his favorite YouTube channel. That involved a number of power tools and a bit of elbow grease, and we got very little of it done. But the hole — the most important part of the day — was completed.

Chimney and Date

Saturday 09 October 2021

A good bit of the afternoon I spent on the ladder, trying to figure out how water is getting into the wall in our bedroom. It's against the chimney, so I assumed the water was leaking in through some crack somewhere.

"Some" crack is hardly the word. Once I'd cleaned off all the moss that was growing there, I saw we had multiple cracks through which water could easily seep.

In the evening, date night: sushi and a stroll around downtown. This weekend is Fall for Greenville, which meant the streets were packed. But it was a lovely, cozy evening nonetheless.