Packing up a badminton net and poles to send it to school

This has not been pretty.

After a bit I announced that I would do it on my own, with absolutely no interference from anyone else. I was not going to waste a single brain cell on untangling then re-untangling the net and strings. Or on explaining my reasoning.

Now it is very neatly and carefully stowed in a big sports bag. Each stringy part has its own plastic bag to keep it separate from the next stringy nightmare. I have said that only the most logical and talented person at school is to touch it and set it up.

It took me about 3 minutes. The arguing beforehand took longer.

Make your own mind up

As the man says, make your own mind up about what this poem is about.

A few minutes from Bare Fiction live reading

Boyd Clack - 'Cold, cold is the wind that blows'

So that is why people go to live events. To have something unexpected break over their heads.

Born in Ormskirk

My timeline has thrown up some photos from Ormskirk. They are from 100 years ago. I was born 50 years ago, so it can't have been too different back then.

I don't think it suited my mother one bit. She is a Sloane Square sort of person.

Women commented on the little bald patch at the back of my baby head. I must have liked sleeping even then! She must have been so annoyed at any criticism of her perfect first production. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall and see those snippets of interaction.

http://www.osadvertiser.co.uk/news/local-news/unseen-photos-ormskirk-unveiled-new-7825900

Filing poetry

How do I do this? In straight chronological order of being written? That's simple.

What about the poems handed out in workshops, and the ones given as examples in the weekly 52 prompt blog? Or work coming from one course.

Maybe a file for each year and shove everything in it. If I am rewriting something or using someone else's poem to do an experiment I could move it to the front of the current file. If I always date when something comes in/is revealed/lands in my mental world, then even if I move it to another place it has an initial location.

This is the sort of thing which deeply confused and bugs me. I need it to be absolutely simple and foolproof.

What about titles, a search method? Writers' surnames?

Ooh wonderful - Arabic translation of Babies in the Tomatoes.... just what I have always wanted

Supermarket in California in Arabic. Only those who understand the need for this will understand the joy!

I follow this blog already, but hadn't ever thought to search for this in its archive.

Now to find a friend to translate Cid Corman with me. Should I just sit there in a cafe every Friday with my papers/CC all over the table and see if someone wonderful comes along, just like that, provided by the universe? In the same way that Cid Corman himself was provided to me by the universe..

Postcards - Finally doing a close reading

I am just talking a little break from writing in biro on my pad of paper held midair in front of my eyes.

After 2.5 weeks of ModPo, (second time around, called ModPoPlus), I have finally got to the point of slowing down and writing loads of notes all over my page about each single word in front of me.

It feels so good to be able to be on familiar territory, not rushing to gulp down each poem as I have been doing on the 52 Facebook page, or on the new Forum I'm on. There is no way to do more than glance at the river of words there. Quick thoughts, then replies, then move on.

So when you are ready, slow right down and write anything you like about all the associations which come out of the title. I am at line 4 now, but fancied a break to write a blog post.

Back to work.

Postcards - Rae Armantrout

Hallo to something (technology) in our schools

I am very pleased with myself for getting most of this blog title:

أهلاً بالتقنية في مدارسنا

The word I didn't get is 2nd from the right and I could have guessed it if I hadn't missed the fact it was a foreign word. They nearly always trip me up. When my brain is thinking along one track it misses the other track completely. Mistakes are interesting.

I have a daily diary now which has just enough space for one short sentence to sort out each day. Mainly I pick a news story and find out what the title is bit by bit. No instant reading yet, apart from very common words.

Hard to reflect on 2 books

2 books have troubled me for months. I read them early in the summer, then set them aside to deal with later.

I was expecting unfamiliar writing about an unfamiliar society. Instead I found my own kitchen. The food is processed and has brand names. The relationships are in my dna, the lack of connection is how things are. So I was appalled to be looking into the mirror.

The casual harshness, the dismissiveness towards others, the coldness, the fakeness, lack of knowing what matters, what is all this? How can it be so clearly laid out? Am I the only one to see this? Life in a palace of denial, so is our society in a similar state to the one in that country? What is going on?

If this writing demonstrates the symptoms, what is the disease? I feel ashamed and horrified.

Now I have written this I don't want to give the names of the 2 books or the country. Why is that? Would the writers be offended? Surely not. Having a strong reaction is a sign that I read carefully. I have a big problem though.

Last night before leaving home for uni

i just ate hughs last tictac showing me the empty packet
just dont shout too loudly hugh was asleep on teh sofa next door


I need more pillows
Take any you like

I need to do a reconciliation
Its 100£ im not going to get my card until the amount seeetles
its 110£
its 150£
I think I will go and get my money card now

I am wondering whether I should go to bed tonight or not. It's a bit like Christmas Eve or being in labour, sleeping is just not relevant. We need to drive off at 8am tomorrow anyway.

---

I like this because it is just typed in quickly, typos and all.
I did have a proper night's sleep after all.
The trip went well, we are now two households, one here and one there.
A first labour brings a presence, this time it brings an absence.
I haven't been skyped yet.

Change, difficult stuff

This photo shows movement in a familiar place. It represents the shifting and changing around us at all levels at the moment.

I sat on the floor by the fridge and took several pictures at random after a talk with a friend at our village pub. I was trying to take photos of the heap of university equipment from down there, but it didn't work.

For a while I had the luxury of not needing a regular prayer plan (no words, I disagree with *all* of them, but a plan none the less), but that's changed. I even texted my mother to ask for her help. I sat in a cafe and stared.

H and I were nearly taken out on the A34 this morning by a plank spinning off from the back of the truck in front of us. So that was a lucky escape.

There is a Cid Corman webcast this evening. I'd better survive the drive this afternoon so I don't miss it. There goes Umm Kulthum in one of her amazing riffs.... The cat is plaguing me too, though she's finally stopped jumping on my desk and is purring between my back and the back of the chair. She offers me what she can. There is a lesson there.

A beautiful song from the film The Square

I actually don't know what home education is

I have been making a few notes on what we do and discuss. It is exactly the same set of things as a couple of weeks ago before the transition to being back in a formal place of education.

So as a result I realise that although we have been home educating completely autonomously for 6.5 years, all the notes I took and typed up for the Local Authority are useless. They are not evidence for home ed occurring at all. Just for living in a family household with me.

So what is home ed then? The absence of a greater authority than the mother and father? No, because I have been hyper-aware of the presence and threat of the Local Authority over our lives. There has been a big cloud of disapproval, fear and misunderstanding following us around for all this time from family and acquaintances. At best, confusion and awe.

My presence and commitment? That could be it. When H was deregistered both times, he instantly developed this look of a flower turning towards me as if towards the sun.

Yet this time H has gone to a place of formal education he has not switched off psychologically as he did last time, 6 years ago.

I still don't feel I have put my finger on it yet. So what is autonomous home education? What is it about home education which makes it such, beyond the legal status? Is it purely a legal construct? No more than that? All that fear, over a nebulous contemporary human definition?

Help me out in the comments box.

---

It is Monday morning now and I think there are 2 parts to this: the legal framework and the parent/child bond of loyalty and trust. The most important of those is this bond. If anything gets between the parent and the child it causes damage to both sides, irrespective of the type of education. If choosing home ed is the way to get the poison out of the relationship, then so be it.

Standing on the kitchen table - Photo of the day

That's better. I have removed the mountain of papers and camera equipment from the table, put a cloth on it and reclaimed the space. When I stand on it I have to bend my head over. The children used to be able to stand upright on it. When they were really small they had to reach up with their arms to touch the ceiling. Fun times as T likes to say.

To make it easy: here are the home ed blogs I follow

The home ed blogs are not obvious on my sidebar. So I have listed them.

1 http://wondering-wanderers.blogspot.co.uk/ HE family living on Rum, a Scottish island
2 http://gaither.wordpress.com/ Analysis of research papers on home education, mainly in US
3 http://learnasafamily.blogspot.co.uk/ HE family, I met her online
4 http://yes-i-can-write.blogspot.co.uk/ HE adult in Canada
5 http://atomicshrimp.com/ HE family, written by the dad, about everything but home ed
6 http://the-chicken-shed.blogspot.co.uk/ HE family, I know the mother, local to me
7 http://livinglearningandlovingsimply.blogspot.co.uk/ HE family in US
8 http://boyschooling.blogspot.co.uk/ HE family in UK
9 http://pspirro.com/ HE family, but blog is not about home ed
10 http://gritsday.blogspot.co.uk/ HE family in UK, and HK
11 http://notstrictlyhomeed.blogspot.co.uk/ HE family in UK
12 http://www.cagefreefamily.com/ HE family in US
13 http://www.thehmmmschoolingmom.com/ HE family in US
14 http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.co.uk/ HE politics and campaigns
15 http://pro-lernen.ch/blog/ About home ed in Switzerland, written in German
16 http://benhewitt.net/ HE family in US, written by the father, lots of shooting and skinning
17 http://parasombra.wordpress.com/ HE family, I know the mother, UK


I also follow blogs which have a particularly accepting attitude and/or a careful use of language.

1 http://autism.typepad.com/autism/ Particularly accepting, Kristina Chew writes this one, US
2 http://sweetsky.net/ HE, not being updated, read the archive, AUS
3 http://mamauktalesfromwales.blogspot.co.uk/ HE, not being updated, read the archive, UK
4 http://outsidethewindows.blogspot.co.uk/ Important to read this, US
5 http://xkcd.com/ Hilarious

Just for fun : nuf rof tsuJ

nuf rof tsuJ
nettirw si meop siht

 .hsilgne/cibara ni

,thgir eht morf tratS

tuo dnuos dna 

 .drow hcae

 pu kooL 

 .seno wen eht

That is roughly how I feel when I am reading Arabic. I am exaggerating, but not by that much. In fact I should be using English words I have barely heard of to make it more life-like. 

Really it is kjldf laskjdl

and lks lksd lkjkslsld man

after that oero oqow but ,mxcn

and qowi  ,mxnc Baghdad.

This is more to the point:

Yesterday morning ,mn asdas erwer Islamic State

asds and oiuo weasd John Kerry asds dfdfaf leader gfdgd

Riyadh, and after that wqw lkjl zzxzxv Sunna,
military, kkjg, military hjhgjhg army iytitl war oiuoiu.

Happy learning.

Or, a programme so good I hit on it twice by accident, only realising once the English words arrived:

Good morning, hallo qrqwq asfa gay poipoi zxcxc

lakjsd  qrqwq queer pipoi afa erqe xbxfg... ok, I get the message from the key words.

Catching my parents - Photographic breakthrough

This time I caught them driving from Arras to Calais to get on the train under the Channel. They had just had lunch. We swapped news until they needed to pay attention to a peage I think.

Big day: H took a photo of me and I think I have worked out how to send it to this laptop and upload it to this blog.

That is fantastic, now I can include photos again after a few years of darkness.

Writing exercises from the Poetry Foundation

I am saving them here for another day when I decide to settle down and do them. Why delay? Because I am swamped with good things already.

"Exercise 1: Dive into this exercise, called “Six S’s,” from Catherine Wagner in Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook. It’s just as useful to a solitary writer as it is in the classroom—all it requires is taking a poem out of its lineated form and writing it out in prose. For an example, here is William Stafford’s poem “Traveling through the Dark” with all its line breaks removed.

Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road I hesitated. The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights; under the hood purred the steady engine. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; around our group I could hear the wilderness listen. I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—, then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Now your task is to break the poem up into lines in six different ways—one for each of Wagner’s six S’s: speed, sound, syntax, surprise, sense, and space. This won’t take as much time as you think, especially if you print the above text six times and just use slashes (/) where you want the lines to break. You’ll get very different results depending on how you interpret those six S’s. For instance, if I choose to break lines in regard to the text’s “syntax,” I have to decide whether I am breaking lines to encourage regular syntax or to upset it. There’s a big difference between

Traveling through the

dark I found

a deer dead on

the edge of the

Wilson River road.

And

Traveling through the dark

I found a deer

dead on the edge

of the Wilson River road.

Or even

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

Exercise 2: Choose a traditional sonnet and relineate it to de-emphasize its rhymes. You might try Casey Thayer’s “The Hurt Sonnet,” Dan Beachy Quick’s “Poem (Internal Scene),” or Adam Kirsch’s “Professional Middle-class Couple, 1922.” What’s the effect of the new lineation compared to the original published version? Does it alter the meaning or tone of the poem? Does it retain the feeling of a sonnet, despite the change?

Now that you’ve spent some time playing with line breaks in other people's poetry, turn to your own.

Exercise 3: I’ve already mentioned the value of reading another writer’s poem aloud and pausing at its line breaks; I suggest you try this with your own work as well. You might feel a little silly and sound portentous (and pretentious too!), but the exercise will encourage you to consider why you are breaking a line where you are. If you can’t find a reason, consider those six S’s: speed, sound, syntax, surprise, sense, and space. Is there one or more of those you could emphasize or play with by changing your breaks?

Exercise 4: Try writing to the extremes. If you are normally a short-lined poet, try writing long. Read the poems of Walt Whitman and C.K. Williams to get into the mood. If you are normally a long-lined poet, get short. Does your subject matter differ for a long-lined poem versus a short-lined one? Your tone? Is this a “fast” poem or a “slow” poem in terms of pacing? Do you find yourself breaking lines for different reasons?

Exercise 5: Now re-break your “extreme” poem as its opposite. Think about how changing the line length does or does not affect the poem’s character. Do you find yourself revising as you change the line lengths?"

The whole article by Rebecca Hazelton is here:

 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/ 

I have become a font of all knowledge all of a sudden

Today I quoted the line 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' in the car to H on the way to school. He asked me how I knew it. From having it read out at my school when I was 15 or so.

Two nights ago we had some intensive Periodic Table learning. He asked me what various initials meant and I got a good many right. He was most impressed with me. I was impressed with his new passion.

That poster of the Periodic Table has been up on our wall in the kitchen since the first days of home education, gathering grease and dust and making the place feel home educational. I carefully cleaned it off and gave it to him on his sofa. I shared my wisdom from the other sofa.

It's very gratifying to find that this one poster has finally come in handy. It seemed important to me to have it there on my wall as a statement.

Here's a tip on family life: have 2 sofas. That's it. How did we manage for 16 years with just one sofa in the sitting room? Smaller children fit with one mother all together on one I suppose, all under one duvet, using both ends.

I would love to be jailed here - Samuel Shimon

'That afternoon I became captivated, as I walked between the shelves in the library, with books of literature, of cinema, music and art, dictionaries, even cookery book grabbing my attention. "I would love to be jailed here," I said to myself as I sat on the floor leafing through several books at a time about making films, writing scripts, about the lives and memoirs of actors, directors and film-makers.'

from An Iraqi in Paris
by Samuel Shimon
Banipal Books 2005

"Fuck off! Don't go!"

As every parent will recognise, this is a very expressive term of endearment from son to mother. I took it as such immediately and it made me smile. Made my day actually.

My revenge/appreciation/sign of love is to use it as a blog post title.

Non-parents, I can hear you rolling your eyes from here. I promise, you'll be laughing one day when you get the pleasure of hearing similar words. Big smile.

Anthony Wilson - Life Saving Poems

This man just shares and shares. If you need something, try his list of some of the poems he put in his own handwritten book of must-keeps:

http://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2011/06/07/lifesaving-poems-2/

He seriously wants to help others and keeps on doing it via his blog, doing what he needs to do.

LVS Oxford - A new school

Let people know about this new school. Particularly anyone who has a young person in their family who might want to know it is there as an option. Also Local Authority officials, teaching staff, home educating families, medical staff, CAMHS, your neighbour, the post man and the person you always chat to but don't know their name.

Let people know about home education too, that's a legal option. Again all the same suspects as above. You might need to tell yourself about home education too as it's not such a familiar option. One approach does not exclude another.

http://www.lvs-oxford.org.uk/

he-special On the right there is a button to take you to join the discussion. This is an online list which bends over backwards to listen and help those home educating or thinking of doing so when their child has special needs of some sort. Once you have some expertise you might find yourself offering that same careful and hard won support to others. It is in English, but you could try google translate if necessary.

Were I to compile a short booklet of what I have learnt over these past years, I would work from my posts there and the wonderful compassionate replies.

Mumsnet - the home ed board and the special needs board. Just roam around and use your common sense. Some people are so aggressive and some are wise and kind. Learn to read and assess what is written. A wonderful resource. You can search back many years too.

Gilgamesh - Jenny Lewis

Well, this makes me cry and is so complex I can't quite sing along properly. Oh man, what a voice, Jenny, you're amazing. The guitar does this to me too, from the first note.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0rLG80jQko

Denise Levertov was home educated

Now I must read her.

This week's prompt on 52 sent me to one poem of hers, on Essex, which led to her biography. It is rather long, so I only skim read it, but I recognised and liked all the poets referred to.

The repetition of the words 'clear' and 'direct' jumped out at me too.

Ana Blandiana - My Native Land A4

'I feel that I'm the prey,
But I don't know whose,'

from Hunt in Time

'You were so lovely,
Almost translucent - '

and

'Time builds up in the soul
Like an hourglass, with falling grains of sand,
Each one born from the thoughts, the sparks,
That you
Constantly weave,'

from Requiem

Requiem is the one which means the most to me in the collection. It is a series of 12 poems.

When my grandmother died my oldest son, then only 5, discussed the name on the head stone with me. We agreed that it was like details in a phone book, only with no phone number, because no phone call were possible.

When my grandfather died I thought that he'd been the roof on my house (as if I were a building), because I knew he prayed for all of us. I assumed that feeling would disappear after he'd died. It never has.

Having seen so much of my grandparents, I didn't fight against their deaths, because they were in me anyway. We had had years and years together. Their changing ways as they got more frail didn't bother me either, it all seemed part of the whole story. Maybe I was protected from most of the hard parts. That must be it.

Fog is lifting - 3 x 3 haiku

Fog is lifting
Yet how much
Fog there is

Picking out words
Flipping to 'translate'
Dictionary on knee

This is new
Never seen before
A new certainty

I know that
Not the meaning
But the sound

Just stop trying
Flick through words
Put on done-heap

Sounding out carefully
Frowning a bit
Aha it's 'television'

Wondering about 'Bashar'
It must have
A real meaning

I already know
'Assad' means lion
What's the plural?

Doing these means I am not thinking about anything else, so it is a form of meditation, keeps my mind focused. If I write on paper I can acknowledge all thoughts as they come along, then let them go to see where my attention will go next. I can try to be as truthful with myself as possible, no censorship.

Nothing like sitting here able to type out my own stuff on my own blog. I'll enjoy this one day in the future. I wish I could persuade my mother to write one though. It would only be a fair swap for starting to use a mobile after much pressure.

I gave in eventually and now use a mobile phone after being given one for some Christmas, more than once in fact... Talk about not giving up on me. I had small children though and getting calls while I was busy, and I was always busy, was the last thing I wanted.

Reading book titles = hoovering

It's a small step each time and includes just one verb or noun, sometimes one of each. Also an author's name. So that's why it is useful to read a review of a recently published book.

I found out the word for sweet coffee today and got it written down too. The man wrote it down really slowly and carefully. Total opposite to my hurried scrawl in English. urid qahwa halwa minfadlak. I guessed entirely wrongly in London last weekend, but now I know what I was misunderstanding.

I used up all the sugar and did a careful manoeuvre with my little cup so that all the grounds went back into my main pot and settled down before starting again and pouring more carefully. I had been too greedy and had tipped loads of grounds into my little cup. This all makes sense if you have made yourself cough with trying to drink the grounds out of ignorance.

Watch the long handle though, one day I will send it all flying. I nearly did several times during lunch with a friend at the cafe.

I have been teaching this for 3 decades and I still don't know what this line means...tell me. - from 10th Sept 2014

You make me smile. And laugh. This is the sort of teacher I like the best. You're good.

Arabic for non-beginners in Oxford

A class is due to run on Thursday evenings in central Oxford from 2nd October 2014. Please share the details with all social networks you know to ensure the best chance of a full class. I have put it on Twitter and Facebook so far.

Oxford Department of Continuing Education

Mineral oil computer fish tank cooling systems

While buying a phone today I got chatting and found out about this option for upgrading your home built computer:

Images of computers bathed in mineral oil

YouTube video of the

So today was a good day for all sorts of reasons. And it hasn't finished yet.

Day 1 of post-home-ed-era. I need a better phrase, because once in the home ed world, forever changed.

Back to school or not back to school

I can't believe it but 6 1/2 years of home education are over, just like that, from one minute to the next. I have all these home ed blogs on my side bar. You are so, so lucky, even when it is going unpredictably, everyone is unsure about what exactly the purpose of all this is and there is no obvious achievement of goals.

Believe me, all sorts of things are growing and changing while you have a confusing day or year. I am about to get my reward after all these dark nights and out on a limb days.

Somewhere ages ago I read a tiny snippet from an old Nordic saga or some such mysterious voice from the deep about boys lying in the ashes by the fire for their teenage years.

This image from many centuries away struck me as a glimpse of how things really are and how it will be ok to let things progress in their own ancient way. I got the image years before I needed it, but it was there in my mind, ready for me.