A New Find

I think my readers--the mommy types, at least--will like this blog. It belongs to this writer. I can't help wondering if she's Lutheran.

"Beneath the African Sky"

This is not one of my videos. I still need to upload the ones from the concert. This was taken by another mom during the final rehearsal. After being made available online it came to the attention of composer Paul Caldwell, who contacted the director of Caitlin's choir and expressed his enthusiastic approval, saying that it brought him to tears. For him to be thus affected is remarkable, since he not only composed the piece but has surely heard and directed it himself hundreds of times.

Some members of this choir will be traveling to Costa Rica next month to participate in a choral festival that the composers of this piece, Caldwell and his friend Sean Ivory, are leading. They have invited the very talented young oboe player in this video to play for the festival. Caitlin will not be attending but she will be there in spirit, thrilled for her friends and fellow singers to have this opportunity. She has been so blessed to sing with this group. She, by the way, can be seen near the back, right between the third and fourth riser rails: cute blonde, short hair, glasses, clearly enjoying this amazing piece of music.

I can't watch or listen to this without crying.

 

Evan's First Story

There is a Peanuts comic strip in which Snoopy starts a short story but doesn't finish it. The story is called "The Cabin. A Short Story." (That's as far as Snoopy got.) Today Evan decided to write Snoopy's story for him. Here is the result. I corrected capitalization (he did this on the computer and used no capitals) but nothing else.

The Cabin. A Short Story. 

In the great forest there was a wooden cabin. It was the only cabin in the forest.

Well, not necessarily. There was 1 other beat up and falling apart cabin.

In the first cabin there were 4 people living there. Here are the names. The adults were Mary and Jack. The children are Sally and Max.

In the second cabin lived nobody.

One day "Let's go for a walk" said Mary. "IN THE WOODS!?" shouted Max.

"Yes. In the woods," said Jack. Sally did not say anything. She was not afraid of the woods. She was also a quiet kid. 

Mary and Jack were not married. They are brother and sister. Mary is 41 and Jack is 42. Sally is 8 and Max is 7.*

When they were on a walk 4 people moved into the old and beat up cabin. The father was a carpenter. So he fixed the cabin.

When the family of the first cabin came back, they saw that the old cabin was fixed!

Sally and Max hoped there would be children to play with. There was! They were very happy that they had new friends.

Here are the new friends names. The adults are Emma and Sam. The children are Sky and Lucy. 

They all lived happily ever after. The end.

 *I asked him whose children Sally and Max are. He said they are Mary's children. I asked him where their father/Mary's husband is and he said their father doesn't live with them so their uncle is acting as their father. I find this really interesting since Evan has not been exposed to much divorce, although we do know a few families with absent fathers. I think the brother/sister thing reflects a hope he has that even when Trevor and Caitlin are grown they will continue living at home. I also think this story reflects a desire that Evan has been expressing lately to live where there is more nature and also to have friends in the neighborhood that he can play with. He doesn't have either of those things where we currently live.

And Not a Moment Too Soon

Several days ago Evan had an announcement.

"Mom, I want to get more serious about my life."

Well, okay! I asked him what he meant by that.

"I want to learn more things. I want to watch educational DVD's. You know, about earthquakes and hurricanes and the human body and cells . . . ."

He makes it sound as though we never learn anything around here. True, we are what is known in homeschooling circles as "relaxed." Some might even call us unschoolers, but strictly speaking, we aren't. We do impose a basic structure with certain requirements. Still, when things like this happen--when I see my kids using their freedom to follow up on natural curiosity--I feel like an honorary unschooler. Children don't want to sit around all day in a semi-vegetative state. (I would argue they can do that in school just as easily as they can at home.) They want to investigate and play and explore and create and if they are minimally encouraged and equipped, they will do so.

I reminded Evan of the DVD section of the library. (I have tried to interest him in those educational DVD's before, to no avail.) "We can check out DVD's on whatever you want to learn about!"

In the meantime, since he seemed especially interested in cells, I reminded him of a book that we already have in our home library. We have done some microscope studies, and I have previously called his attention to this book, but it was quickly rejected because of the picture on the cover. (Remember, I have an HSC. We have been reading Diane Stanley's children's book on Michelangelo, and Evan refused to look at the page with a drawing of Michelangelo preparing to do a human dissection--something the artist did many times to learn about human anatomy and thereby become a better sculptor. The drawing is not at all graphic, but it was too much for Evan. Maybe that's one reason he is becoming increasingly passionate about studying computers. They don't bleed.)

This book was rejected again. But after promising I would skip over the pages with bugs, I did manage to have him look at some magnifications of viruses, bacteria, and blood cells. After we were done, I accidentally left the book in his room. He brought it to me a little later, face down, and asked that I please put it away.

Maybe for now we better stick with the weather. And there's always hex editing, something he has been pleading to learn about for months. The risk there, of course, is the bleeding from my skull as I try to wrap my brain around something that was clearly not meant for human understanding.  

A Singing Weekend

Sunday was the culmination of a semester's worth of work with the children's choir organization we are involved in. It is a truly excellent musical enterprise that nevertheless is more concerned with teaching children to sing and to love music than it is with creating a perfect sound (though I must say they achieve the latter frequently enough). Young Naperville Singers currently comprises eight children's choirs; I accompany Evan's beginning level group as well as an intermediate girls' choir, and Caitlin sings with the top group. This made for a busy week of rehearsals and a full day of performances (it is necessary to have three concerts to accommodate all the choirs). Here, for those who are interested, are videos of Evan's choir from Sunday. I am playing piano, although I don't think you can ever see me; Evan is in the third row right, second from the middle.

The theme of the concert was "Under the Same Sky" and included both American and world music. Evan's choir director decided to focus on songs about sleep since we all sleep under the same sky. The first song was sung partly in Finnish and included some props and sound effects intended to evoke the sea.



"Silent Fish (Salaisuuden Kala)" from Cheryl on Vimeo.

The next two songs utilized the same text by Robert Louis Stevenson in two very different musical settings. This gave the children a chance to learn about musical style (modern v. folk) and to consider how the music reflected the text. The first piece was especially fun to play.



"Bed in Summer" - I from Cheryl on Vimeo.

"Bed in Summer" - II from Cheryl on Vimeo.

Our fourth song was a beautiful lullaby in two-part harmony.



"Good Night" from Cheryl on Vimeo.

For our fifth piece the director combined two pieces evocative of Africa, and the children were joined by an older choir for the background harmony.



"Uhura" and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" from Cheryl on Vimeo.

It has been a great year for Evan, and he has matured so much socially and musically. Next year he will be joining the Boys' Choir, and I can't wait. Here is a short video I took of them rehearsing the day before the concerts:




I will try to put up videos of Caitlin's group in a few days.

Yes, Virginia, There Really Are Bullies

Certain topics seem to wax and wane. Bullying is one. It has come around again, which is fine with me since it is a topic I care a lot about. But what I have noticed is that it is rare to come across a balanced handling of the issue. There are two extremes: those who see bullying where it is not, and those who refuse to see it where it is.

Let me explain. The first category consists of people who use the allegation of bullying to silence freedom of thought and expression. Another name for it is political correctness, and it consists of commandeering the means of discourse so as to mold the way people think. With this strategy, certain words or points of view become synonymous with hate so that the mere expression of them is seen as proof of guilt. Thus, if you disapprove of homosexuality it must follow that you hate homosexuals. There is no acknowledgement of the distinction between an opinion regarding a certain type of behavior and the people who engage in that behavior.

The second category consists of those who deny that there is such a thing as bullying or who broadly dismiss its significance. The attitude here may be that one who alleges bullying is a wimp or crybaby who just needs to buck up and learn how to handle the bully. Or it may even be said that people who level the charge of bullying are bullies themselves, falsely accusing as a means of attacking their opponents or avoiding a substantive discussion. I find this argument to be amusingly circular since it denies the reality of bullying by labeling those who allege bullying as bullies. Huh? With this argument also comes a different kind of political correctness wherein the very use of the word "bully" is pointed to as proof that whoever used the word ought not be taken seriously.

I think the truth of the matter is somewhere between these two extremes. In the same way that I believe there is such a thing as a hate crime, I think there is such a thing as a bully. But in the same way that the concept of "hate crime" can be misapplied and abused, so can the charge of bullying. A hate crime is a crime that is motivated purely out of animosity for a specific group. So if someone targets a black person because he or she is black, that is a crime motivated by hate. It does not follow that every time a black person is targeted it is necessarily a hate crime. Similarly, there are marks of bullying that, in isolation, may not mean bullying is happening. Bullies may call people names; it doesn't mean that everyone who gets called a name is being bullied. But the fact that some allege bullying where it has not occurred does not mean therefore that every charge of bullying is spurious.

I have met a few bullies in my day, both in my youth and in my adulthood. I have personally been the target of bullies, and I have seen people I love be bullied. I have researched the topic rather thoroughly and think I know a bully when I see one, especially if it is one I have known and watched for a very long time. Here, for those interested, is a list of behaviors that in my opinion are highly indicative of bullying behavior. The more these behaviors are repeated by the same person in a continuing, systematic way, the more likely it is that you have a bully on your hands.

Bullies . . .

. . . engage in serial name-calling. Sometimes the names may not be obvious insults but may masquerade as lighthearted nicknames or teasing. But the ongoing refusal to use a person's proper name and to replace it with a carefully selected nickname is a means of dehumanizing and objectifying the person whose name is not being used and of elevating the nickname user.

. .  . intentionally keep people off balance. They run hot and cold. Think of how an abusive husband treats a battered wife. Some days he makes her feel like dirt. Other days he showers her with affection and gifts. This is done to make her feel insecure and to maintain the abuser's position of power in determining the state of the relationship. This may happen in the workplace or in personal relationships, but the common denominator is that the relationship is always on the bully's terms and never on the other person's.

. . . run in gangs. If you're in the gang you are made to feel as though you are special, part of the bully's inner circle. To maintain that favored status, absolute loyalty is required. If you question the bully or do anything that he deems a threat to his power, you become the object of a whispering campaign whereby you are marked and marginalized and eventually thrust out of the inner circle. You are then one who must be avoided, and those who are still on the "inside" will be threatened and intimidated into not associating with you for fear that they, too, will be punished.

. . . like witnesses. Bullying can happen in private. But bullies thrive on an audience because it significantly enlarges the scope and effect of the bullying. The target of the bully feels embarrassed and ashamed; the bully's assistants feel empowered; and onlookers or bystanders are terrorized: "That's what will happen to me if I cross this person." So bullying often happens in public or in a situation that has been previously determined and set up to achieve the maximum levels of shock and awe.

. . . are great judges of character, and they will analyze yours to see how best you will serve their purpose. Will you be more useful as a target or as a member of the gang? A bully may test the waters by name-calling or making fun of others in your presence; if you tolerate the behavior, you have proven that you may serve well as an accomplice. Object to the behavior, and you may suddenly find that you have become a target.

. . . are often people who were bullied themselves. Formerly victims, they have decided that the best defense is a powerful offense. In the same way that victims of child abuse may themselves become abusers, victims of bullies may grow up to themselves become the bullies or, at the very least, to align themselves with the bully. Better to be on his side than to become the target. This strategy is not only psychologically unhealthy and morally wrong, but it usually has a limited period of success. One who lives by the bully usually ends up dying by the bully.

You can expect future posts. I have more to say on this topic.

Adding Compliment to Injury

Caitlin told me today that on occasion when Evan has been angry at her he has yelled, "Caitlin, you do not make a good mother!"

I think it says something rather wonderful about them and their relationship that this is the worst insult that he can come up with to hurl at his sister.

(And for the record, Evan is very wrong. God willing, she is going to make a great mother some day.)