The Living and the Dead
Hailstorms, Summer Reads, and Conference Season
Welcome to my newest readers, fellow bibliophiles, and educators! A special welcome to those who have joined in the past few weeks!
A hailstorm can humble a garden. It can also humble a gardener.
In mid-May, my heritage yarrow and honeysuckle vines had been blooming already for an entire month. My annuals were small but in the ground while my perennials were gaining inches a day before mid-summer blossoms.
It is in-credible, past credibility, to see hailstones pulverize sedum leaves and break woody stems like Russian sage and hydrangea bushes. Everything was stripped, naked, a garden of stalks. I couldn’t even cry. I was awestruck by the work of ten minutes of large hail.
We have raked and gathered 25 bags of leaf bits, sticks, and green pinecones. The local joke is that we can call May first fall. Three weeks have passed, and the blessing is that I am finally seeing new growth on most plants. Yes, every tree and plant was traumatized, but they were rooted well, and praise God, I can count them (and myself) among the living.
Summer Reads
This is definitely not an idea original to me, but every year at the final chapel of the school year, I ask our students to consider how they spend their time in the summer. Time, after all, is the one quantity we all have in equal amounts.
“Don’t let summer simply happen to you. It’s a gift of time. Think about who you will spend time with. Who do you want to be? Who will influence you and who will you be influenced by? I'd like you to spend time with both the living and the dead.”
And by dead, I mean the words of the dead that live on in books—the Bible, classics, fiction, non-fiction, any century, any decade, especially biographies.
My summer reading and re-reading list reflects both the living and the dead and is still growing. I’ve already started three books!
John Grisham’s The Racketeer
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur
Vigen Guroian’s Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination, 2nd edition
Elizabeth Goudge’s The Scent of Water (my first Goudge ever!)
Robert Stewart’s Adventures in Statistics: How We Live in a World of Numbers
Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education
C.S. and W.H. Lewis’s Boxen
Around the web
In ✨Why This Summer Could Change Your Kid’s Life: Simple Steps to Create Life-Changing Moments,
writes about meaningful experiences for our children that are more than field trips. “In our homeschool, I call moments that unlock a child’s mind and reshape how they engage with the world keystone experiences. An experience a child will refer back to again and again as they encounter more complex ideas.” Yes, they spark curiosity and hunger for knowledge, but more importantly, these are moments that can “unlock a new passion, a new direction, a new sense of self.” I hope we are never too old to look for keystone experiences!Conference Season
This week I head to Kansas City for crisis management training with the Herzog Foundation, a definite need for a growing school. At the end of June, I get to go to the Society for Classical Learning national conference in Texas and hang with my favorite people—teachers! I’m delighted to return to presenting a workshop I first gave two years ago at The Classical Thistle conference, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast: A Glimpse into C.S. Lewis’s View of Education.” We read his biting essay from the Saturday Evening Post and enjoy a lively conversation. I’m looking forward to it!
What about you? What are you reading? What are you finding helpful? I would love to hear from you in your reading or classroom journey.
As always, thanks for reading! Don't forget that the List Library at my website is always available to you, my readers.
Christine
Perfect for beginners, this handy study guide for C.S. Lewis's novel is a blend of summary and scholarly commentary. The second edition includes leading commentary from Lewis scholars as well as key parallels from Lewis’s other works like The Four Loves, Surprised by Joy, and An Experiment in Criticism. Each chapter includes discussion questions designed for students, teachers, book clubs, and church groups. Available at multiple online stores or at Amazon.