Ocular Athletics--The Perfect Game

This week we read The Perfect Game from Tremendous Trifles....

Croquet by Ken

Croquet is fun unless you are playing with someone who knows the rules. Also, if you are playing with someone who is annoying, croquet mallets come in handy.

You know, if I was the best player in the world it wouldn't be any fun because I could just hit the ball and easily go through the wicket. But if you are bad like me you have the pleasure of hitting the ball again and again. So you see, being bad at croquet is more fun than being good.

Amateurism by Joe

Amateurism is the playing of sports for pleasure. Amateurs are usually younger than professionals and it is not that uncommon for them to become professionals. Almost everyone is an amateur at something. I ,for instance, am an amateur baseball player, basketball player, an amateur golfer and an amateur soccer player.

Amateurs do not get paid, they play for fun and the possibility of some day being a pro. Olympic athletes are amateurs and don't get paid, Olympians are sponsored by companies such as Subway or Wendy's and in return they usually have to act in their commercials.

If you play a game such as croquet you can call yourself and amateur croquet player. In case you have never played croquet I will now explain the rules. To play croquet you must maneuver a ball through a series of nine wickets using nothing but a hammer. You try to get your ball through the wickets in as few turns as possible. Every time you go through a wicket you get an extra shot to try to go through the following wicket. You win the game by being the first through the first seven wickets, hitting the turning stake and going through the next seven wickets.

If you hit another player's ball you get two extra shots from where your ball is on the ground or you may pick up your ball and place it next to the ball you hit. Once you put your ball by the other ball you hit you may either take two shots from there or put your foot on your ball and then hit it with your mallet in such a way that the other ball rolls away and then you take one shot from your ball's resulting location.

Croquet is a fun game but it can drive you utterly bonkers if you are not any good at it.

On the Matter of Croquet by Adam

Have you ever played croquet? Well, if you have I guess the question is, did you like it? Then the next question would be, were you good at it? If you answered, yes, yes, no in that order, you are probably a lot like me. I'm awful at the game. Yet an irrational love of the confounded activity follows me through my summer days; but even so I don't spend my summer mallet in hand whacking a colored ball around the backyard. Far from it. If I did that I would quickly become proficient at the game and that is a fact I sincerely dread. I have played people who were good at the game who have played me once and quickly moved on. I would finally be able to celebrate getting the ball through the third wicket and he would be coming back around, barreling through wickets like a truck on the freeway, his pose perfect, his face somber, and his ball going through yet another wicket. I must say though, who do you think had a better experience? Me, who had a record time of thirty minutes around the court, or my somber adversary, who deemed it counter-productive for me to even continue the match? However, I can tell you that victory is not my objective nor, of course, is defeat. But the slow, methodical and often frustrating route of the game is quite enjoyable. I play for the fact of playing. I find that when the dog steals my ball and finally drops it at the next wicket it is not only helpful but exceedingly amusing.

Ocular Athletics--revisited

Our writing has been a little non-existent this year. We have had our collective noses to the grindstone and are making great in-roads in Latin and Algebra but have not had a lot of extra energy for anything creative. Blah! However, Jen over at the 4Real forums has started a study of Chesterton's Tremendous Trifles. I asked the guys if they wanted to sign on and got a very enthusiastic response. The first essay was A Piece of Chalk where Chesterton writes of drawing with chalk on brown paper. We used pastels on old bags but it was fun. (Something we were having to little of on these dark,snow less, winter days!) Tomorrow we write!

Poetic Knowledge Book Club--Descartes Part two

I've been pondering what to write about for this second half of the chapter on Descartes and his legacy. How nature study is fundamental to a poetic vision of the universe? How nature study grounds us and makes it harder for the promoters of scientific theories to waylay us on our journey to Heaven? My healing from my own public school education? None of these really formed a cohesive theme.

Then something in the readings took hold. It was this quote by Emerson,"I advise teachers to cherish mother-wit. I assume that you will keep the grammar, reading, writing, and arithmetic in order; 'tis easy and of course you will. But smuggle in a little contraband wit, fancy, imagination, thought." Now, Taylor considers this a reactionary statement, but it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from G.K. Chesterton," As long as wit is mother wit it can be as wild as it pleases." This is from Orthodoxy, the chapter called The Ethics of Elfland. Frankly, Taylor was beginning to depress me so a foray into Orthodoxy seemed a good antidote and I re-read that chapter.

Still, I wasn't sure what I wanted to say here but as I opened my Google News homepage I saw this article about Stephen Hawking Heaven is a Fairy Tale?? In the interview Hawkings states,"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is just a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." It seems to me that Stephen Hawkings represents the logical conclusion to Descartes reliance on the mind. Living in the mind has certainly been his experience and I think he is very brave, but also very wrong and lacking an understanding of fairy tales and (I hesitate to say this!) the universe in general. I just don't understand how anyone can look at the complexity and creativity of the universe from cell regeneration to the spiral of a galaxy and not see a Creator. I just can't. I have never been able to envision no God. Just like Chesterton says of elfland, 2 + 2 must equal 4 and the universe must have had a creator. It defies reason to think it is random. Chesterton, of course, says it best," There are certain sequences or developments (cases of one thing following another), which are, in the true sense of the word, reasonable. They are, in the true sense of the word, necessary. Such are mathematical and merely logical sequences. We in fairyland (who are the most reasonable of all creatures) admit that reason and that necessity." But to return to mother -wit or what we would call common sense I'm going to thank Rousseau here. He, I think, saw through Descartes sterile rationalism and sensed ( and promoted, although certainly didn't live himself) an education for children that Incorporated the family. As a homeschool mom I've come to appreciate educating my own children and realize what a great opportunity it is for healing and educating myself and for grounding my children in the "laws of elfland" and so protecting them from the "laws of educational theorists".

I'll close with a quote from Charlotte Mason, "Whatever extravagance he had seen fit to advance, Rousseau would still have found a following, because he had chanced to touch a spring that opened many hearts. He was one of the few educationalists who made his appeal to the parental instincts. He did not say," We have no hope of the parents, let us work for the children!" Such are the faint-hearted and pessimistic things we say today." Parents and Children.

Ocular Athletics

This week we tried something a little different. I read the list Chesterton made of his "equipment for starting on a journey to fairyland" which he wrote to his fiance, Frances (Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward) It starts with:
1st. A Straw Hat. The oldest part of this admirable relic shows traces of pure Norman work. The vandalism of Cromwell's soldiers has left us little of the original hat-band.

Here are the Hobbits' offerings.

Things I have in my Pockets by Ken
A rather battered jack knife.
A wrist watch or not a wrist watch anymore. It has lost its strap.
A wallet which has eight dollars in it.
And a lot of lint.

Stuff in my Bed by Joe

1. In my bed there is a sleeping bag that is in a very sorry state. But I like it because it is slightly longer than me, shoulder to toe, so I don't have to curl up. It has been with me on many exciting adventures including a sinking boat and many car rides.

2. Pillows not nearly as heroic as my sleeping bag.

3. A compass which has been on even more adventures than my sleeping bag but is not as interesting. (It points North)

4. Four pocket knives. (Not much to tell there, all new)

5. A blob of aluminum that melted in a fire.

6. A wallet.

7. A Crucifix broken in more than one place but lovingly repaired by my brother, Adam. (Who has good hands.)

8. A couple of bits and bobs that are less interesting than the wallet. (See item 6)



The Inventory to my Humble Sleeping Quarters by Adam

The many and strange things I keep in my sleeping quarters is about to be confided. This is the very first time I have ever even attempted to fathom my small but mysterious bed.

1. A flash light. Why I keep it I have no idea. It is useless in the fact that it does not work.

2. A small blue sleeping bag, looking torn and sorry but unpacked none the less.

3. The usual sleeping requirements. I just thought I would mention the sleeping bag just because it is important to me for some strange reason.

4. A small wooden cache box screwed into my wall. (Did I mention we (my brothers and I) all have a nice sturdy wall in our keeping?) It is crammed full of every object I can fit in it, which consist of: a pen knife which I have to had to bend back into position twice due to the fact that I carve too much. An arrow head which makes a rather bad necklace due to size and coldness. A box of quarters. A wallet which is regrettably empty. That is it for the box, but not half the bed. I guess it will remain mysterious. I like it that way.

Uncle Chestnut

We've been enjoying The Inconvenient Adventures of Uncle Chestnut by Paul Nowak. It is based on stories from Chesterton's Tremendous Trifles among other of his writings and is written like a memoir of a small boy who follows Chesterton around and learns alot about life at the same time. It is an easy reader and the 10 year old could easily read it to himself but we are reading it aloud so we can experience it together. A great addition to our Ocular Athletics! You can get it on amazon or here.

Feast of the Holy Rosary

Or Battle of Lepanto Day!! We'll be celebrating with an afternoon tea party and of course a reading of Chesteron's Lepanto.

Poetry Monday

I love October and not just because it is the most beautiful month. It's because it is the month of the Rosayr and that means it must be Lepanto season!

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

What we've been up to

We started school a few weeks ago and have been trying to establish a routine. It is going pretty well so far. We had a good routine going last year and it has been fairly easy to fall back into it. We are moving ahead in Latin with Latina Christiana II. I meant to add more English grammar but there doesn't seem to be enough time in the day so for now this will have to cover that too. I'm hoping to cover about 500 years of history--1500 to 2000--this year. However, the Renaissance is impossible to rush through! We'll see how it goes.
The high school years are looming ahead of me and I want to use as many of G.K. Chesterton's books on authors and saints as I can fit in. To that end we are reading (or are going to read) alot of Stevenson, and Dickens. Kipling, too. The hobbits are already familiar with St. Francis and St. Thomas Aquinas. And of course, Chesterton himself. More Father Brown, definitely and maybe some of his other fiction. Napoleon of Notting Hill perhaps. No point in over planning!!

Our Mr. Chesterton

This post by The Blue Boar reminded me of the first time I read The Ballad of the White Horse. It was a few years ago and the littlest hobbit was only 5. I was multi-tasking, as usual, and while waiting for his older brothers to finish their Tae Kwon Do lesson I was reading the ballad in the hopes of keeping up with my highschooler and having a rousing literary discussion later. Little Hobbit was bored so I started reading outloud to him. He was enthralled! That night at bedtime he asked for the ballad instead of stories. It took a couple of days but we made it through the whole poem and twin hobbits joined us. Baby Chestertonians were born!

Lepanto or why this is the month of the Rosary

It's Battle of Lepanto week at the Hobbit Homeschool! Today, we studied maps of the Mediterranean circa:1571. And we read the entry for the battle in Great Moments in Catholic History (The Neumann Press) and we read the poem by Chesterton out loud. We also started the day with a decade of the rosary (as usual) and read Lovely Lady Dressed in Blue by Bell, Brindle and Lademan. That lead to an emotional discussion on abortion,the presidential election, what a Knight of Our Lady can do to fight the good fight today, Saint Dominic, the power of Eucharistic devotion (when an abortion clinic attempted to open locally, a group of Catholics started an Adoration Chapel nearby, wherein the abortion clinic had no end of trouble getting staff, proper certifications and whatnot to open and eventual gave up, hurrah!). Tomorrow we will re-read the poem with explanations line by line using the excellent annotations by Dale Ahlquist in the Ignatius Press edition.

I was planning Lepanto week anyway but it seemed especially needed after reading this from the Church er..Faith Community bulletin--October is the Month of the Rosary but did you know it was also National PIZZA Month? --well, no I didn't, but I know why it is the Month of the Rosary...St. Michael's on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north. (Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)