mindaTHINK

Mi'kmaq, Acadien, Scots, freemen and Evangeline

You may remember me speaking briefly of our encounter last weekend with a show at the Ordway called DRUM! which was an intricately woven carpet of music from a region I know little about.  NorthEastern Canada, primarily New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and a little further to the east, Newfoundland are locations that are described in the few ficition books I've read about them, as harsh and unyielding.  In E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News and Anne-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees, the people are painted as divisive and wordless. I admit not pursuing much knowledge of the area.

Then I saw DRUM!

The tale DRUM! weaves is entirely different.  And it piqued my interest.  So I started doing a little research today.  In addition to studying maps to learn a little more about the area, and ordering the very few books I could find on the subject from the library, I learned some interesting literary facts:

Henry Wordsworth Longfellow's Poem Evangeline was written as a ficitonalized account of the french acadien expulsion in 1755 from the area by neighboring Brits.  Longfellow learned of this event through his friend Hawthorne, who did not wish to take up the cause of writing a fiction based on it. 

Here is the lyric and compelling opening to that poem, published by Wordsworth in 1895.

Evangeline.

A Tale of Acadie.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

 

THIS is the forest primeval.  The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?
Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean.
Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.

 

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion,
List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

I am going to print off this whole poem, which is available for free at Project Gutenberg, and study it with Andrew along with our geography and history research on the area. 

The second interesting fact I discovered was the Anne of Green Gables is set on Prince Edward Island, which although I have read several of the books and even seen a play version of it, I had forgotten.  I ordered part one of the Anne of Avonlea BBC series from the library, should be fun to watch together.

The Mi'kmaq indians were the native inhabitants of the area known today as New Brunswick, Newfoundland, labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Maine.  Before outsiders arrived, they were part of an alliance with four Algonquian nations. Once the colonists began to arrive in the middle of the 17th century, they became allies with the french and intermarriage was common.  One of the more famous Mi'kmaq indians was Rita Joe, who passed away last year at the age of 75.  She grew up an orphan, went on to obtain doctorates in three subjects and wrote many books of poetry beginning in her 30's, so her eight children would not only see the natives portrayed in the harsh ways that were then in vogue.

Here is a lovely montage paying tribute to her and her poetry.  Parts of this poem were used in the DRUM! production:

 

Beyond Machu Picchu

Andrew is scheduled to do a presentation on an explorer on the Friday I am out of town.  Because I will be away, we decided this was a great opportunity for Scott and Andrew to work together on the project, something they get to do infrequently.

Tonight all three of us were working to formulate a plan for his presentation.  First step of course was to pick an explorer.  Andrew wanted to study a Rainforest Explorer, and we started to look into what that would mean.  Then he specifically said he wished to study someone who is exploring in the mountains and forests of Peru.  Okay.  Huh.

After some stumbling around the internet we came across a man named Paulino Mamani.  Mr. Mamani is a native of the Province of Calca and is one of only three international explorer fellows from Peru of the prestigious Explorers Club based in New York City.  Mr. Mamani has been helping lead expeditions into the regions extending beyond Machu Picchu in the Andes for over 20 years.  There is precious little information about this frontiersman/cartographer/explorer.  Andrew wrote an email with my help to the Chair of the New England Chapter of the Explorers Club asking him for leads on information about Mr. Mamani.  Gregory Deyermenjian has himself been on over 2 dozen expeditions to Peru, and has been interested in exploring since he was a boy.  A great quote from an interview of Mr. Deyermenjian is:

So what happens as you become more immersed in other cultures like this? How does that change how you see the world?

DEYERMENJIAN: There are two ways in which getting immersed down there can grab you. One is the interpersonal, in that while there are such advantages to being here in the United States—and I'm very much the patriot—nonetheless, when you start spending time in a place where the culture is still as it was many years ago, you come to so appreciate everything being on a man-to-man, person-to-person, eye-to-eye, handshake, your-word-is-your-bond kind of level, and where the joy is not in what's the current movie, but in interacting with those around you. Just as it is on an expedition where your entertainment is the entertainment that the person sitting right across from you is providing. So, on that level, it's just becoming addictive. And in a country such as Peru—although I've made expeditions in Brazil and in Ecuador—you're treated like a king, being from the United States. And you're only limited by your own energy.

You just need to have the will power and the tenacity to stick with it and not lose your cool when things appear to be all going wrong and the officials are all denying you entry. Just stay cool, never be insulting, never be pompous or high and mighty, just stick with it, and eventually, at the last minute, it all just falls into place.

There are undocumented ruins, unknown ruins, ancient Inca ruins. And so you can do something that no one else has ever done, but it's up to you. And so you're not bound by a lot of strictures that there are here.

Sounds to me like great advice for life in general.  I so dig homeschooling!

In November, we write a book.

This year our family is participating in NANOWRIMO, or National Novel Writers Month, where during the month of November you seek to write an entire novel, start to finish. 

As a way to launch this off with Andrew, we are hosting writing workshops for kids his age, where we will help them write their first story and get it published.

This is all inspired in part by my cousins, who are older homeschooled kids who have participated in this challenge in the past.

Now I just need to figure out what my novel will be about!

Westwood Nature Center

Well, no scrapbook pages as promised, but life is like that!  Here are three cool pictures from our homeschool outing to Westwood Nature Center last Thursday where we did some birdwatching.

I'm gonna wrangle them into two layouts right about now.

This is just my contact sheet for printing.

You may wonder why I have pictures of toads and a naturalist for my birdwatching layouts.

Well, that is just how birdwatching goes sometimes!

More on that later.  I do love the classes at the nature center.  The naturalists are all so good with the kids, they always find an adventure as we are out on the trails, and they have those kids in the palm of their hand throughout the 90 minutes we are together.

I mean really,

when was the last time

you saw this many little ones

all so intent on

the very staid

hobby of bird watching

"Be quiet kids, or you will scare the birds away.

See the warbler?"

Sometimes in my lovely apartment life which I adore, I forget about how much I love the outdoors.  How much I was almost that naturalist girl right there.

But then I wander back to my air conditioning and computer and yeah, I'm just not there.

Scott and Andrew have been spending ALOT of time out in the woods these days.  Thanks to allergies, unfortunately they've been doing it without me.

They have been hunting.

This is their quarry.

Yep, some good ole Morel Mushrooms. Andrew loved hunting them, and is quite good at it, but he FREAKED when Scott brought them home to eat.

The boy DOES NOT GET the eating fungi thing.

Scott did extensive research to make sure we weren't about to eat false morels, which will give you one whopper of a tummy ache, and we were off.

Had them two different nights for dinner.  The biggest problem with them is those brainlike tops.  They LOVE to collect dirt and sand as they poke their heads out of the ground.  Very labor intensive cleaning needed.

So now in our very suburban apartment we have eaten two wild foods out of our backyard.

If you WANT to interact with nature you can, even in an apartment.

Which reminds me, the beetle Andrew was raising as his own...yep, it died last night.

I asked him, when he came rushing into my room to wake me up (at 10pm folks) to tell me the sad news, "How do you know its dead?  Maybe its just sleeping!" (and maybe I can go back to sleep if you believe that little tale, bubby!)  "Because he's doing this mom!"(Teary-eyed little boy doing a perfect mime of beetle on his back, his little black legs in the air, his eyes with x's on them)  Yep, that sucker was D-E-A-D.

Yesterday evening Andrew got to take the adorable little CD case mini book to his Uncle Bren.  He hadn't seen him since Easter.  He hadn't seen him all through the recent run in with brain surgery.  He walked into the room, took one look at UB and said, "Wow!  Its really good to see you, I've been very worried about you ya know!"  Cute kid eh?

The minibook was Cat themed, OF COURSE, because Andrew and Uncle Bren both love kitties.  I didn't take any pictures of it, but it was VERY nice. He's quite the artist that boy!

Okay, enough bothering me already, this girl's got to scrap!

Field Trip Friday

Over the last few weeks, we've developed a new habit in our weekly routine that has been a fun addition to our homeschooling.  Friday is Scott's best day of the week for spending time with us, and we have started Field Trip Friday's as a way to include him in homeschooling as well as have adventures around town.

I believe I've written about our day in downtown Minneapolis on that first warm weekend in March.  Think TV Plasma/Peavey Plaza and Brits Pub.  Then, a week later it was downtown St. Paul with a marathon Science Museum visit and some skyway fun.

Last week we went to Alma, Wisconsin.  Waa?  Well, we were looking for a short road trip and Andrew wanted to climb around in the woods and I wanted to be by the river, maybe check out a lock and dam.  Scott came up with Alma.  It is located at Lock and Dam number 4, we could pass through Red Wing on the way down, an old favorite of ours from our without Andrew days, and it was only about two hours away.

It turned out to be such a great trip.  We love short car trips because Andrew EVENTUALLY settles down and Scott and I love the relaxed talking time.  We got a late start, so we didn't end up getting out in Red Wing, just driving around a bit.  Alma was such a treat.  There was a great park up in the bluffs called Buena Vista and it was lovely.  We hiked around and enjoyed the views of the river and climbed around at the dam.  Scott told Nessie stories and we ate at a cool restaurant that had good food and beer.

This bird?  Its NOT a turkey vulture, contrary to what our resident bird expert originally stated.  It is some kind of duck (Scott knew, but he is sleeping and I forgot!)

This on the other hand, IS a turkey vulture!  Well, they both ARE ugly!

The hike was almost magical.  After meeting up with a few people at the top of the bluffs taking pictures, we headed down the path through the woods and didn't see another living soul the rest of our hike.  It was like we were transported into a secret woods all our own.  This trail felt ancient and the trees looked like they were holding a secret, or mothers sitting on their nests protecting their young.

Soon an interesting rock caught our attention.  It was huge and round and we sensed something was hidden inside it.  We tried and tried but we couldn't get into it, so we rolled it off the cliff. 

Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy and stupid, but at the time it was fun and made us giddy and we headed further down the path, finding a turkey vulture feather, looking for owl pellets, and picking up a few interesting rocks.  We took a break at another overlook that was lined with some beautiful rusty limestone cliffs.  We played hide and seek with the turkey vultures drafting overhead.

Then in a burst of energy we ran back up the trail, first one back to the car will probably be having a coronary!

We learned about some new rocks we hadn't seen before and I think we got a little bit of the rock fever a few others I know have demonstrated.  We learned more about the dams that line the Mississippi, and remembered parts of Huck Finn and his trek on the river.  We talked about Lake Pepin and Laura Ingalls Wilder and we found each new cliff on each new bluff beautiful in its own way.

Now this week for Field Trip Friday we went a whopping 1 mile from our house and spent the entire afternoon at Moir Park, digging in the mud, retrieving shoes from Nine Mile Creek, hunting for crayfish, throwing rocks, rolling in the sand.  A little more visceral experience, but equally as fun.  To add a little culture to the mix, we stopped off at home for a shower and some sand removal and then headed to the patio at the Black Forest Inn in Minneapolis with the Ogden/Armstrong clan.  Good times.  Good beer.  We were all in bed before 9pm. (and now I'm back up because my body thinks three hours of sleep is plenty!)

Pictures to follow, I think I'm finally getting sleepy again!

Boggle Jr. Champion

Because we homeschool unschool-style, the competencies that Andrew has don't always get shown to him on a regular basis.  Yesterday while we were shopping at the thrift store for a few nicer shirts for him for our trip to Seattle, we bought a Boggle Jr game for a dollar.

His friend Ronan has Boggle and I knew that Andrew had heard Ronan liked playing it, so I banked on that giving the game an edge and spent the buck.

SO WORTH IT!

We played after dinner and I have never seen him so happy.  We started by playing the absolute hardest way that game allows, which is to have the pictures showing and the words covered up the whole time.  Then he has to look at the picture and spell the word without any assistance.  Because we are talking all three and four letter words here we made it more fair by only allowing me one card per turn, while Andrew could keep playing if he kept getting words right.  Final score:  Andrew 25, Minda 4.  Yep, he got only four words wrong and you should have seen him.  He was squealing with delight and bouncing around and was so pleased with himself.  After we played he kept playing by himself, wanting to conquer Bowl and Shoe the two words he got wrong twice.  He even ran over to his computer at one point and tried looking the spelling up by typing in his guess on Google Images...and was successful after about five minutes of near misses.  So good to see him that pleased with his progress.

Muy Sobresaliente!

Andrew's Spanish Test Scores from today:

Spanish (Lat. Am.)	1-2	A1 Test	99.0	1.0
	13:31	05:47	Spanish (Lat. Am.)	1-3	A1 Test	94.0	6.0
	13:30	03:25	Spanish (Lat. Am.)	1-4	A1 Test	95.0	5.0
	13:34	03:27	Spanish (Lat. Am.)	1-5	A1 Test	94.0	6.0
	13:38	03:05	Spanish (Lat. Am.)	1-6	A1 Test	95.0	5.0

Quite the little hombre!

?Why is Spanish better than English?

Okay, pretend that uno question mark is upside down, I can't figure out how to do that symbol here on typepad.

So, one of the reasons Spanish is better than english is that they warn you at the BEGINNING of the sentence that it is a question!  So if you are reading out loud you know right away what inflection pattern you will be using.  Handy!  ?Si?

And hey, 12 years after I went there, I now know that Isla Mujeres means Isle of Women!

Homeschooling Can Be Fun and Interesting!

Here we are playing Lord of the Rings Two Tower game.  Some construction skills needed, some number sorting, lots of addition, lots of reading.

We also are listening to the soundtrack and discussing the attributes of each character while we play.

Fine motor skills, math, reading, story construction, character analysis, music.

Sounds like homeschooling to me!

I didn't spend much time with Andrew yesterday, just a quick half hour of test prep and a few short discussions over lunch and breakfast.  So today I decided to spend the whole morning with him.  He chose to play this game, which we've never attempted before, and I chose to call it homeschool.

We are going to play some more after lunch.  It will take up half the livingroom floor once it's done.  And this is just one of three games that all can be played together.

Hmmm...

I don't think I wrote about Ruggies birthday party last week.  Ruggie turned six on December 8.  I want to remember that because Ruggie has a birthday every couple of months, or at least Andrew tries to give him one.  I keep forgetting to write down when his birthday is, so we have to keep going along with it.  This time it will remain firmly on December 8.  It makes sense because Brendan gave him to Andrew when Andrew was a week away from a year old at Christmas, and I'm sure Brendan bought him early and kept him at home with him to enjoy his company a little before wrapping him up. 

We had cupcakes and sang THE song and Andrew made Ruggie a present which he wrapped.  We toasted to Ruggies health.  We wore staticky balloons in our hair to add to the festive occasion.

So when my bigs come over, they bicker the whole time.  Yesterday it made me sick to my stomach.  I hate seeing how they show no respect for each other.  I love them both, find them both very funny, but don't know how to tell them that the bickering, which they say is in fun, is not a good thing.

Several times I catch myself being drawn into it.  Yesterday I fought that hard.

It made me sad.  Sigh.

Any ideas gang?

Okay, back to my massive quantities of fun crafting for Christmas.  Can you believe how close we are?

I will leave you with this VERY imperfect picture of Andrew from one of our Advent stocking nights.  We have been very faithful with this, only getting behind once, and then catching up right away.

Only six spots left on our stocking chain...wow.

No dance student living here

Andrew had a hip hop dance workshop that started today and will run next Monday too.  He seems to like to get his groove on, and so I thought he might enjoy learning some moves from a dance instructor.  Not so much.  He participated for about 20 minutes, then decided it was too hard and just gave up.  One thing I've found out about his character is that if something comes easy to him he's all over it, but if he isn't quickly successful at a new activity then he just won't try. 

I happen to have the same character flaw.  I found out at an early age that I was not very naturally athletic, so I didn't ever pursue physical activities for example. I don't like to see this same flaw in Andrew.  I'll be thinking of ways to encourage him to push himself even when he isn't in his element, and to keep on practising to be the best he can be in any activity. Any ideas anyone?

One cool thing that happened at the dance workshop is that I got to hang out with two great homeschool moms.  Deanna is one of my favorites, and we always talk a mile a minute when we hang out. Christine is a mom of six girls, and she had her 12 day old baby there.  She's a digital scrapper, so we talked scrapping sites and marveled at Wes' rocket to fame in the scrapping world.  It really blows my mind how quickly he has gone from NOBODY in the scrapping world to hanging out with the stars.  I'm so happy for him.

Here's another page from the weekend:

This was a fun and easy one.  Just a record of a fun playtime I overheard recently. Letters by Cricut again, paper by Autumn Leaves, journaling by me and my little hand.

I hope to be better about catching moments like this and recording them, as these are the kind of stories we forget over the years.