Donna's Journey

Leaves are turning gold. I love it when the leaves change and turn gold. I parked the van on the street tonight, because the wind was blowing and I wanted to protect it from the possibility of falling branches.

I drove Jeremy to Salt Lake tonight for another Christmas Program rehearsal. We go back up on Saturday. I worked on the Princess Primer while I waited for his rehearsal to finish. I chatted with other moms.

I thought Monticello, had slipped on the back burner for a while. Roger prayed about it again and felt impressed. We may be going down to view a house, later this weekend. We will see what happens.

Friends, I came across a book published in 1959, and thought I would share its preface with you. The book– AN INTRODUCTION TO THE GREAT BOOKS AND TO A LIBERAL EDUCATION: THE GREAT IDEAS PROGRAM. As a young mother, I saw this program move into schools as enrichment for gifted children. I feel that this was lamentable. Why? I feel that most citizens can benefit from this kind of education. Why just children and why just gifted children? I feel Hutchins’ message is just as true today, as then, when he was President of the University of Chicago. This message is so important! Especially, as we look to solve the dilemmas that face us in education. He lived through WWII and saw what happens when you have a highly specialized society that lacked a truly liberal education, as did pre WWII Germany.

We can best help our society by getting a liberal education, ourselves, and helping our children to do so. I am hopeful and optimistic that if we really follow the counsel of President Gordon B. Hinckley and get all the education we can get, we will not be so narrow as to translate that into narrow specialization, only. We will follow his example and writings and get a broad education, as well. For more on his example, read STANDING FOR SOMETHING. Hinckley has a Liberal Education, and much of it was nurtured by parental example and in the library of his childhood home. As a result of doing the same, we will be better equipped to solve the challenges before us, and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Here is the preface of the book…

” This first Reading Plan is called A General Introduction to the Great Books and to a Liberal Education.

What is Liberal Education? It is easy to say what it is not. It is not specialized education, not vocational, avocational, professional, or preprofessional. It is not an education that teaches a man how to do any specific thing.

I am tempted to say that it is an education that no American gets in an educational institution nowadays. We are all specialist now. Even early in high school we are told that we must begin to think how we are going to earn a living, and the prerequisites
that are supposed to prepare us for that activity become more and more ingredients of our educational diet. I am afraid that we shall have to admit that the educational process in America is either a rather pleasant way of passing time until we are ready to work, or a way of getting ready for some occupation, or a combination of the two. What is missing is an education to be human beings, education to make the most of our human powers, education for our responsibilities as members of a democratic society, education for freedom.

This is what Liberal Education is. It is the education that prepares you to be free men. You have to have this education if you are going to be happy; for happiness consists in making the most of yourself. You have to have this education if you are going to be a member of the community; for membership in the community implies the ability to communicate with others. You have to have this education if you are going to be an effective citizen of democracy;for citizenship requires that you understand the world in which you live and that you do not leave your duties to be performed by others living vicariously and vacuously on their virtue and intelligence. A free society is a society composed of free men. To be free you have to be educated for freedom. This means that you have to think; for the free man is one who thinks for himself. It means that you have to think, for example, about the aims of life and organized society. These are the questions raised by this first reading plan.

Perhaps I should say a little more about communication and community. For every specialist is trained in the jargon of his specialty. The tendency of specialization is that it grows narrower and narrower. The old definition of a specialist as a man who knows more and more about less and less is only too correct. As specialties grow narrower, the field of communication of each specialist narrows, too. He can talk about his specialty and the language of that specialty, but unless he can find another specialist in precisely the same specialty, he must either become tongue-tied or become a dreadful bore, discoursing on the subject he knows about but the members of his audience do not understand, and doing so in a language incomprehensible to them.

And that is not all . On matters of common interest, like the activities of the community, the specialist is cut off from communication. More and more we hear the phrase,’ That is outside my field,’ even though the subject is one that may mean life and death to the commonwealth, like education, automation, inflation, and nuclear energy. The Constitution of the United States does not require that all citizens should be experts in everything. But its major premise, without which the whole democratic structure must collapse, is that people will be informed enough, and interested enough to judge the policies proposed to them by those whom they have chosen, with information, intelligence, and interest, to represent them.

The incentive to reading these books is not the acquisition of formal proofs of education that Americans are accustom to: credits, degrees, certificates, diplomas, etc. The incentive is simply your own desire to become as human as you can , for your own sake, and that of your country. I have no doubt that you will become more ’successful’ in the usual definition of the term, because I can not believe that it can be a handicap to a man to read and think, and understand the tradition in which he lives. But whether or not you make more money and become more popular as a result of trying to acquire a liberal education, I can assure you that you will become a much more satisfactory companion to yourself.

Can you do it? Many people have. The discussion groups conducted by the Great Books Foundation for the last fifteen years have provided inspiration to hundreds of thousands of participants. Today at Aspen, Colorado, and in many business corporations numerous Americans have accepted seriously the obligation to understand the tradition of the Western world, through these books.

Can you do it yourself? The purpose of this reading plan is to help you overcome your natural diffidence of any modest person in facing so impressive a collection as this set of books. You will see that the problems they deal with are current today. You will observe that the language is not nearly so difficult as you may have been told it is. The ideas are important; but they are not ideas that you have never heard of or have never thought about. These books were not written for specialist in philosophy or political science, or literature; they were written for ordinary people, and read by them until it became fashionable to say, as it has become lately, that they are too difficult for ordinary people.

These books are teachers. They demand attention, but if attention is given, they reward it. As you read on, you will find the reading easier, for one book leads to another.

These books are, I believe the finest written creations of the human mind. Our educational system largely disregards them. Even the names of some of the authors in this set, are never mentioned in the presence of college students today. Yet these are the books that have made the world in which we live, and it is impossible to understand that world without understanding the principle positions taken in them.

A great adventure lies ahead for you as you take part in the Great Conversation.

“” Robert M. Hutchins

What are the 15 works he considered vital that Mortimer Adler and Peter Wolff included in the book? I will post the list to my Called to Liber blog.

All this squabbling over less than one percent of the education budget. They are a government agency, and government agencies are notorious for waste. They would have us believe that a less than one percent of their mutli billion dollar budget will destroy public schools. Hogwash.

Both public and private schools have hard costs and since they both function in a market based economy that has a growing population, both of their costs will go up. Not all private schools can get voucher students. Since Moor House Academy is a Cyber School, it would not qualify. Vouchers are not available to home schoolers (and I would not want one, because I don’t want mediocre hoops directing what I teach). In the end, we have to be wise stewards and monopoly is not wise. Monopolies are fertile grounds for waste.

If you seriously believe that sharing less than one per cent of our education budget, is going to destroy and ruin our public schools then I am sad for you.

In the end, the education of our children and grandchildren, the future citizens of our community and nation is too important to be reduced to oreo cookie wars and less than one percent is a measly pittance to begrudge anyone. Especially, parents that are trying to do the best by their children, and thereby benefit the community.

There is a new oreo cookie commercial by a teacher. He posted it to my blog. I watched it. He did a good job on his money.

However, the money represented in vouchers by passing referendum 1 is less than 1 % of the entire education budget. I am sure there is more than 1 % waste in the system.

What are my thoughts? It may show the big picture of public funding of education, but I find that picture to be quite disturbing.

What is seen is the cost, with no consideration of whether all of those costs are costs we should be paying. We just do. We let someone else decide and we trust they are experts and will not waste.

What I saw was quite a bloated cost we pay for large factory model public schooling. Huge salaries of some support staff, and I do not recall you mentioning Superintendent’s salaries, and high cost buildings, with some things that may not be necessary.

My parents worked for the government, and I have worked on a school accountability committee and a district committee for the gifted. Government agencies are notoriously wasteful, educational bureaucracies are no different. Some superintendents make more the the President of the US. I have heard government employees rush to spend money, so they will not have a shrunken budget for the next year. Like inflated and bloated stock market, and home cost run up by investors, the public schools are in serious need of restructuring.

I feel public schools need a bottom up and top down overhaul. We as a community need to come to an agreement on what schools can and should be providing and what are parent and student responsibilities.

We need to consider a unified vision of education. I am sick of NCLB, Goals 2000, and Outcome Based Educational rhetoric.

Private schools have hard costs, as well. It is not like every penny from a voucher is profit. They have staff and physical plant considerations, as well as textbooks. Oh, and they have to pay staff.

The way I see it, vouchers will require both public and private schools to run leaner and more effectively. They will both have to look at how every penny is spent. They will have to seriously look at their vision and unify with the parents that choose them. Both are in a service industry and if they do not provide what the consumer is looking for, both will fail. If they fail it is because they fail to provide.

A Vote for Referendum 1, is a vote for children, education, and adult responsibility.

When does a $20 Costume Cost Almost $100?

OK we have not done Halloween since 1997. I am not a big fan of the day. Holiday comes from the words that mean Holy Days, because they were set apart for sacred purposes. I am fully aware of the Catholic practice of placing Holy Days over Pagan celebrations to turn their hearts towards their new religion. After all, there was no need for the Celts to continue their human sacrifices and passing through the fire of virgins, on Samhain (pronounced sowain) to Beltaine the God of the underworld (Baal), for Christ was the ultimate human sacrifice he died once and for all, and had overcome death. I know that the Catholics established All Saints Day in place of Samhain, to remember those who died for their faith as martyrs. I have no problem with remembering Martyrs.

I know that Christmas and Easter were other pagan cover ups as well. I celebrate them, focusing on Christ. Halloween does not lend its self to that, because it has been so commercialized. My daughter pointed out, that many of the symbols were hijacked into pagan religions from the true original faith, so we were just hijacking them back. I do not see Halloween in that light.

My faith does not prohibit Halloween activities. As I pondered it this year. I realized that where God’s counsel has been given, we need to be unified. Where God has been silent, I need to be tolerant of where others are. My children will go out. My 9 year old will dress in her older sister’s Indian costume from 15 years ago when she was 9. My 12 year old is going to wear his grandfather’s WWII Naval Petty Officer First Class Quartermaster’s uniform. My 16 year old will be helping my daughter in law with my grandsons. So the 16 year old wanted to dress like a Jedi.

I bought 8 yards of brown fabric for 1.99 a yard at Joann’s Fabric Store, along with thread. I came home and started imagining and piecing the costume together with no pattern. I was able to sew the thing together, it was when I was finishing the edges and reinforcing areas, I hit a pin and bent the pin. My machine began to skip stitches. Thread was bunching. I changed needles twice. I re-threaded and checked tensions several times. It was no use. No troubleshooting and tweaking would work.
By that time, it was late and we had no dinner. So I had to buy food or stay up later. Add the costume, possible repair costs, and dinner, you rapidly approach $100. Ah, a mother’s love, and I was not even making this for a celebration I relish. He will make a great Jedi!

To top it off today, while my visiting teachers visited, Mary went out the door and caught her hand in the door. She ripped through the cuticle and base of the nail on her middle finger and tore the skin down her hand. It took over an hour to help her settle and stop sobbing. She will lose the nail, I hope it grows back well.

I did not think I would be able to pull my self off my mattress this morning, after a 20 hour day. I did get seven hours of sleep, I woke, got my makeup on, dressed and actually made it to church before the bishop started speaking! I did well.

The discussion in Sunday School, it was on the book of Hebrews. I love that book. There is is so much in there. I want to meet Paul someday.

This afternoon I worked on family history for a while.

This evening was a wonderful stake standards night for the youth. The speaker was the danish actor, Tomas Kofod, who played Christ in the movie The Testaments: One Fold One Shepherd. He joined the church 10 years ago when he was 25.

Tomas told the congregation that he would share standards in a way we probably have never heard it nor ever will. Then He raced through a cute animated speech on standards, given in Danish with hand gestures, pointing out modest lengths and what is a no-no, by waving his pointer finger, while shaking his head no.

He said that Satan frees us to bind us, and Christ bonds us to free us.

I have not posted in a few days. So much to say, so many thoughts, so many feelings.

Today, was a wacky day. I arose before 5 am, after retiring much too late. I drove Julia and I to the Provo Temple, only to discover that there was no 6 am session, and so we waited for the 7 am session. We sat in the temple foyer and read scriptures. Wow, two Saturdays in a row, I got to study scriptures in the temple. We took some time enjoying the celestial room after the session. Julia pointed out how the chandelier reminded her of a tree of life with the lights as the white fruit.

After the temple, we drove home to complete a baby quilt to get it to a baby shower, which, because we left the temple over an hour after we intended, we were an hour late to the shower. Just as we were walking out the door, Julia received a phone call from a dear friend. It was sad. She is a newly wed and just miscarried. My heart went out to her. I had made a deep green, red, and blue, Scottish plaid, flannel blanket for my friend, Carolyn’s expected son Soren.

We arrived home in time for brunch. Then off to Salt Lake. We went to Tuesday Morning for Julia to pick up a wedding shower present. We stopped at Taipan trading and walked through the Christmas displays.

I must say that this time together was important. I cried as I listened to her share her hopes, dreams, feelings, and fears. She will be 25 next week. She is lovely, gifted, has domestic skills, has lived on her own twice, and is a returned missionary. She has spiritual depth. She would like to marry and create a home and an eternal family. She feels that God is true to His promises to her that He is preparing someone for her. Yet, she realizes that these men still have their agency. They may have chosen not to get to know her. So, she tries to remain prepared, cheerful, and move forward with her life, and trust in the Lord and his timing. She does not have a long list. Spiritual maturity is high on that list.

I worked on my Princess Primer all evening.

I have been up near twenty hours….

I received a phone call this morning, the computer repair guy called. He came. He found that the broken fan in my computer resulted in several issues. The bevel around my screen is warped so he ordered a new one, along with all the rubber bumpers and pads. He was here and fixed the fans in no time. I am a happy camper.

With these issues behind me, perhaps my mind can work on the Primer today.

This morning I looked through my journals for the in depth notes I took on the Proverbs 31 woman, so I could use the insights in the Princess Primer. When I came across this entry, I thought of Sister Beck’s talk in General Conference. This entry was written after returning from a Saturday weekly morning colloquia, with a handful of mothers, in Salt Lake. These moms really were trying to be the best they could. My thoughts naturally went to mothers, this day. I could write a piece on fathers. However, it was mothers I was thinking of, and this does not mean that fathers have no responsibilities.

7 February 2003

“…mothers are to serve their families — but not waiting on their every whim, treating them as royalty, and mothers their handmaids.
Mothers are to serve with all their hearts and souls, is true. However, that service comes in the form of nurturing, teaching, training habits, and guiding the daily walk of children. Mothers are to work with and train the children to work. Yes, our children are a royal generation, held in reserve, but so are we. it takes a great sacrifice for a child to grow up in righteousness, for it is a full time task for mothers to teach, guide, and walk beside– to mentor and nurture.”

Ok. I am guilty. I can type emails, write articles, publish to pdf, blog, I even figured out how to add things to blogger before they automated everything. I am not a hardware person and am likely to call things do-hickey and thing-a-ma-gig. I do not know html, php, or web design. I do not know how to use my adobe CS2 nor do I know how to use my Corel. Now that I have pleaded techy ignorance, I know the remedy is within reach, but time this year does not permit. These are all new cyber languages. I have operator error, because I have not stopped to learn the technology.

That said, I have had a cyber nightmare of a day. It started with when I logged on to get someone’s phone number this morning. My home page did not load, which is my school and blog. The server was apparently down, but I thought I was having internal internet card problems with my laptop. It took me a while to figure it was the server and not my laptop. Simple solution, contact my admin. Only he was driving to his new home in Texas. So, I sent an email and trusted/knew that he would resolve things when he could. No worries there.

I then decided to call Dell and let them know I had a dead fan in my laptop and I had internet card problems at two venues this year and lost quite q bit of money, it is still under warranty so I thought I would get it fixed. Well, we started with the internet card. We spent a few hours working through it. The guy in India was able to take the helm of my laptop from India and fix the wrong internal settings on my internet card. Then he transfered me to another hardware area to troubleshoot the fans in my computer. We verified my video fan had died, so they will send out a computer tech to fix it. After I hung up I discover my touchpad scrolling was no longer working. I spent a few hours trying to track the issue down. Then I discovered all the drivers in the bottom tool bar were missing. Try as I could, I did not know enough about computers to track it. I even had a computer geek friend, who stopped by, see what he could do. Nope. I finally called Dell again. I got the same tech! He talked me through the run menu to drivers and one button activated everything again.

I started this at 10 am. Finished at 5:00. Except for a half an hour to the bank and Macey’s. At Macey’s they had boneless skinless chicken breast on sale for 1.29 lb in a 40 lb box. I brought a box home and sealed them in family meal sized portions. A friend visited and shared how he pressure cans chicken and turkey when its cheap. The containers are reusable, they do not require refrigeration, and they are fully cooked. Perhaps I will try my hand at canning protein. He also told me how to do turkey. Looks like I get to learn some new skills.

Julia cooked chicken scampi fettucini for dinner. Then Julia, Roger and I took a long walk. I needed it. The computer issues were way too much. The hardest part was to consider all the lost hours of productivity today. I am pushing a Princess Primer publishing deadline.

Goodnight!