Tuesday Takes

It has come to my attention that some readers are checking this blog regularly for baby news. No news to share yet! I'll try to get news up about the baby as soon as it happens. (Could be any day now, or could be a couple weeks from now. Patience is a virtue, right? Ha!)

I've been feeling "dry" in the blog-post ideas department lately. I'm getting pretty baby-focused now -- nesting and all that, which is pretty boring to blog about. I do have a few random thoughts, none of which rise to the level of a complete post, so I'll share some of those:



Senator John McCain was the guest in the first hour of The Diane Rhem Show today. I wouldn't vote for him because we differ too greatly on the issues, but boy is he an easy man to respect and even admire. I really enjoyed listening to him. Would that more political figures were as concerned with integrity and honesty as he seems to be. He unabashedly defends positions that he believes in -- even unpopular ones -- with rationality and civility. He also candidly admits to times when he was guilty of doing wrong, not just having "poor judgment" or some other vague phrase intended to downplay his culpability. (I thought for a moment he was actually going to use the word "sin".)

The big question is, would the American people actually elect someone with these qualities (not necessarily McCain himself), or do we insist on something more deliberately constructed for the national political scene? Is the *appearance* of folksy integrity easier to accept than the sometimes uncomfortable real thing? Real integrity generally involves humility and even changing one's position from time to time based on new information or insight. Qualities that one's opponents are quick to spin into "softness" and "flip-flopping". Can a "good man" or a "good woman" win these days? I hope so, but I wonder...

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Also heard on Diane Rhem today was Ira Flatow, science reporter. The tidbit that caught my ear was about Bernoulli's Principle. Bernoullis' Principle describes the pressure of flowing liquids, and is very commonly cited to explain how air-flow and pressure around an airplane's wings allows the plane to stay aloft. I've read about this several times from different sources. Well -- turns out that Bernoulli's Principle has very little to do with planes staying aloft! Good thing for a homeschooling mom to know, since that myth is *everywhere* in science materials for kids! Here's a better explanation of the physics of flight. Watch out for the Bernoulli flight myth -- your kids may very well still encounter it at school, and certainly in library books and on the internet.

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Brianna has begun a geometry segment in math. She's getting to use a drawing board with a T-square and triangles. She asked to do math today at 9 am -- before breakfast! Guess she likes geometry! :o)

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The new First Day School (Sunday School) year has begun at our Quaker Meeting. We are trying some different formats this year in preparation for being in a new building without defined classrooms some time next year. We kicked off with a whole-group session we called "The God panel", in which 3 adults were invited to share their experiences and beliefs about God with the children (who ranged in age from 3 to 12). I was a little nervous about how it would go, but it turned out to be a beautiful experience. The kids remained engaged for the whole hour, even when the adults were trying to convey pretty complex ideas. I was struck by how much we grown-ups underestimate the spiritual depth of our youngest Friends.