Time Out for Books: The Demon Queen and the Locksmith

The last month has been so busy that I haven't even had time to update our reading lists.

This time of the year is crazy!
The High Holy Days have been upon us, and the Month of Tishrei (seventh Jewish month) is basically one long holiday. Rosh Hashanah (Tishrei 1-2), Fast of Gedaliah (Tishrei 3), Ten Days of Repentence (Tishrei 1-10), Yom Kippur (Tishrei 10), Sukkot Tishrei 15-21, Hoshanah Rabbah (Tishrei 21), Sh'mini Atzeret (Tishrei 22) and Simchat Torah (Tishrei 23). I get tired just listing them, let alone celebrating them all. Many Jews call the eighth month, Cheshvan, Marcheshvan (bitter Cheshvan) because it has no holidays except Shabbat. But it was not a Jewish baalboostah (mistress of the house) who made that up, let me tell you! I love the peace and quiet of Cheshvan.

And then there has been the additional duties that go with our involvment in the patriot movement. We've had the 9-11 commemoration, the 9-12 Rally, the Patriot Alliance Leadership Retreat, and now the Continental Congress Elections. (Have you voted yet? Here is voting information for this non-partisan, non-political citizen's congress).

And there's my work with Retake Congress. And the Engineering Geek's work that puts the bread and butter on the table. And the Boychick's education. And this week, to top it all off, on Tuesday I got a call from the school nurse. The Boychick had contracted H1N1. I brought him home to bed with his first real illness ever: chills, fever, cough and aches and pains. Well. We don't have to worry about the unproven vaccination. He'll be immune now.

Nevertheless, these past few weeks I have made a special point of taking time out for reading. Pictured above is an array of new books for the Guest Room/Library.

I just finished The Demon Queen and the Locksmith by local author Spencer Baum. Although it is a book written for young adults, I couldn't put it down! I got this book because Spencer is also a libertarian homeschooler and he wrote his book about an imaginary town called Turquoise that sounds a lot like Taos, NM. Complete with the mountain and the hum.
The book is an adventure story involving a high-school boy, Kevin Brown, and two homeschooling friends, and it involves the Ta--I mean the Turquoise Hum. It also features two radio personalities, one a lot like Art Bell, and of course, a Demon Queen. The underlying theme of the story is what happens when teens learn of truth that is unpopular and even considered "black helicopter" crazy by their peers and according to their previous understandings. However, this book does not lecture and it does not moralize; Baum allows the story to carry the theme with grace and humor. He's never preachy, and always maintains a sense of adventure and fun. I'd read it again, and right away, too; except that the Boychick has snapped it up.

I recommend The Demon Queen and the Locksmith for young adults and the young at heart! It can be found at Amazon here. I hope there will be continuing adventures from Spencer Baum.

I am now looking forward to dipping into Margaret Atwood's new novel, The Year of the Flood, as well as Karen Armstrong's The Case for God. And I have been reading The Anti-Federalist Papers in short bits and bites for a few weeks now. On my list is also a re-read of Nechama Tec's history, Defiance: The Story of the Beilski Partisans.

So many books, so little time! But truly, books keep me sane during this insanely busy time.

IRD: Are You a Real Teacher? Or Do You Just Homeschool?

Last year, teaching for the Institute for Reading Development was all-encompassing.
This year, it is part of what I'm doing. There are other parts as well.

The work itself has become more interesting because I understand the curriculum enough now to modify it (slightly) as needed to fit the real people seated in front of me. And this means that I have begun to think about individual students more, and try to figure out what makes them tick--at least as far as their reading goes. For example, is that middle school kid who is trying to outcool everyone a problem-child? Or is he sorely lacking in confidence in his abilities?

Whereas last year, I was struggling mightily to just master the curriculum, so that I only had time for a few fleeting thoughts about students, this year as I sat down to write my Book Level Assessments (pre-Reading through Grade 5), and my Book Level Recommendations (Grade 6 - Adult), I enjoyed being able to summon the face of each student (with help from my seating chart) and with it a sense of the reader and the person.

There are still some things that I am still surprised and nonplussed by when I encounter them. For example, people parading into class late week after week, even though they have paid tuition for the course, and even more puzzling, people who pay and then don't show up. Period. Strange.

Adults these days!

And then there are the parents who walk in with a chip on their shoulder. Despite my string of degrees, I will never be good enough to teach their Johnny or Suzy, the one going into honors English, you know. They demand: "Are you a real teacher?!"

I am always tempted to say, "Why, no! I'm a holographic teacher. You know, like the doctor on Star Trek Voyager." But then, I would hope that most people who love Star Trek would not be that dismissive and disrespectful. There are quite a few parents I have encountered who don't have their manners very solidly pinned on.

This year, I had a parent overhear my conversation with two homeschooled students about how I homeschooled my own son. She didn't talk to me. She didn't clarify her notions. She called the company and complained that I obviously "couldn't handle the class" because I was a "homeschooled teacher." Of course I couldn't, but it would have been great to walk up to her and talk about Abigail Adams, one of the most intellectually astute women in American history, who was also a "homeschool teacher."

By the way, the two homeschooled kids in that class, the ones deprived of "real" teaching? They are among the best readers in the class. Figures.

I have no idea what the IRD teacher support staff think about complaints like this one. My teacher supervisor asked me directly: "Are you a homeschool teacher?" Well, yes, but like most homeschool moms, or like moms in general, that's not all I have done my whole life.

It is at these kinds of moments that I have to repress that part of my that wants to list all of my degrees, honors, publications, and my annual income. But it would be dishonorable of me to play that kind of "one-up the Joneses" game. So I just smile and say, "Yes, I'm a real teacher. Yes, I did homeschool my son. And I still miss it."

And that is true.
I still miss it very much.

Now That School is a Choice: A Homeschooling Legacy

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

--Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, 1920

In the past few months, the Boychick has grown up a bit more.

He has added inches to his stature, his voice has deepened, and his interests have broadened to include socializing with girls. And he has taken more control of his education.

As I announced here, my Boychick has decided to choose schooling for high school.

As I go about the business of letting people know about the Boychick's decision, I am beginning to understand that most people outside the homeschooling world understand the decision as an indication of failure. The assumption seems to be that we are stepping back from homeschooling to a default position because N. was not learning or that homeschooling "didn't work."



Well, we all know that there are real problems with assumptions. First, I wonder how anyone can imagine a human being going for a whole twenty-four hours without learning anything? I cannot imagine it and I have been free from the clutches of compulsory education for thirty years. And as for the second assumption, that "it didn't work," nothing can be further from the truth.



In fact, I see the Boychick's choice as one that fits as well into the trajectory of our homeschooling journey as would homeschooling high school. As we progressed in homeschooling 'middle school,' we also progressed in handing over more and more of the decision making about his education to the Boychick. Over those years, we moved from being "sages on the stage to guides on the side" as our philosophy evolved from school-at-home to a certain kind of unschooling. The Boychick has become used to thinking of himself as the master of his education, as well as the learner. He has learned to take responsibility for his learning methods and goals. He did not decide to go to high school because homeschooling was a failure; rather, he was able to choose because homeschooling was a success.



Unlike most of the students who entered East Mountain High School this morning, the Boychick sees attending school not as something he must do, but as something he has chosen to do. He knows that the responsibility for his successes or failures lies on his shoulders, and that although there are people ready to help him and guide him, in the end, the secret to his education lies within. He has become a self-directed learner. I watched him in action last week at registration, when he took control of the meeting with his advisor and me. He spoke about what he needs to be successful and how he plans to accomplish his goals.



As a student, I was envious of my son in that moment, and as a mother I am proud.

I am envious because I realized that because I thought of education as compulsory during my own school-girl years, I did not reach such a state of self-direction until I was well into my first years of my first graduate degree. And for this reason, I wasted much of my time blindly following paths to goals that I had not set for myself, with no clear direction for how to accomplish what was only an inchoate idea of what I wanted for my future.

I am proud because I have come to understand how spectaculary successful our decision to take the road less traveled was for us.


It is not an easy decision to take "the road less traveled." Homeschoolers know that to defy the social givens means that a person must be prepared to articulate and defend their decisions in the face of ignorance, hostility, and assumption on a near daily basis.

Of course, as with all such decisions, the rewards are equal to the the risk taken.

Homeschooling, regardless of the individual's reasons for it, is a political act.

Making a choice against the received wisdom of the dominant culture forever changes how one views that received wisdom, as well as how one views the locus of control over individual decisions. In so doing, a person steps outside the herd mentality and lives liberty in reality. And succeeding in doing so means never being quite so willing to let others assert control over individual choices again. This is the legacy of homeschooling for us, just as it is the legacy of homebirthing, the legacy of living Judaism, and the legacy of growing up libertarian.



In a sense, one could say that we are no longer homeschoolers as of this morning.

Our last child has made a decision that has dissolved the Los Pecos Homeschool and he has gone forth into the world of organized schooling. And yet, there is a difference. Because the Boychick knows that his high schooled education is not, and cannot be, compulsory. It is a choice. When a person consciously makes a choice, he also consciously takes on the responsibility for it. The Boychick is no longer homeschooled, but he has developed an unschooled mind. He went to school today knowing that everything he learns is his own choice in his own hands.



What about us? We have also made a choice. And a journey. We have gone from accepting the assumptions that are social givens to questioning them, as good Ragamuffin Students do. We are no longer homeschoolers--because we gave our son a choice. But we have become educational anarchists in the process. We have become social libertarians. And once you have lived the richness of liberty, there's no going back. Not even the occassional whiffs of the "fleshpots of Egypt" are enough to give up the joyous responsibility for one's own life.

This, then, is the legacy of homeschooling for us, as we stand at the ending of our direct involvement in Los Pecos Homeschool, and as we give Boychick the freedom to try his fledgeling wings.

Even as I feel a sense of loss for our homeschooling years, I recognize with joy it's legacy: our unschooled minds as we continue on the 'roads less taken' of our unschooled lives.

Road Construction Complete: An Ode to Practical Genius

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

The heavy equipment is gone and the
road signs are up!
The Los Pecos Trail extension and
Los Pecos Loop are complete!

The utilities are humming at the side of road.

Until Los Pecos Homeschool made a project

out of following all the phases of

road construction across previously undeveloped land,

we had no idea what really goes into building a road. It has been a great learning to experience this project from start to finish. Such learning does not come everyday.

It is kind of amazing to consider that ten months ago, this road was a line on a map, and before that it was a spark of inspiration in the developers head as he walked through the tangled woods.

Now, it is something new under the sun!

Everything is in place: the grades, the drainage, the utility lines underneath. Soon we will forget that this hill was a tangled mass of juniper and scrub-oak, and very difficult to navigate. It is already beginning to seem like this road belongs here; that it has always been here.

And therin lies a certain danger. Many people in this country have no idea what is required to have roads, utilities and houses. They do not understand the creativity and ingenuity that go into our modern infrastructure.

And thus it has been neglected. From highways to levees, we just expect it to be there. We often don't stop to consider the amazing work of the human mind and imagination it takes to build even a simple road. We don't believe we should have to put up with the cost and inconvenience that go along along with maintaining infrastructure. And so we don't appreciate this kind of practical genius that makes our lives so rich and full, and immensely easier.

IRD Term II Week I: Mid-School Loss of Confidence and Curiousity

Yesterday I segued in less than 12 hours from my second term, week one classes to substituting for another teacher for week two. (I finished up my week one by arriving home at 8 PM last night, and was out of the house by 7:15 this morning to drop Bruce off at work before continuing to UNM for subbing). I am sure glad that this is a one-time deal. The extra money will be nice, but boy, am I tired! And I actually start my own week two classes with a full day tomorrow and a drive to Santa Fe on Wednesday, before I have a break.


Before you tell me I'm crazy, let me assure you that I know it. Most of the people teaching for IRD are young whippers, just out of college. Ah, to have their energy! I remember working two shifts at my summer job (16 hours), sleeping and reporting the next day to the third shift and then partying that night. That was when I was a young whipper. Now I am the old lady of the bunch.


The first week of my classes has been pretty good, though. Now that I have the curriculum in my gut, time has shown various Einstein effects in that I do everything I am supposed to get done in 10 minutes, but I feel like I have had twice that time to work with. I think I will truly enjoy the next few weeks.


As I started this last week, I vowed to pay close attention to the Level 5 - mid-school classes that I have. So far, in every class, I have had several boys who appear to have lost both their confidence and curiousity about learning. In one of my classes this week, I met a young man who was so lacking confidence that he refused to do a timing for reading and told me to "just put in a zero." He sat with his head down during our discussions of Banner in the Sky. I spent more than a few brain cells trying to figure out how to include him so that he would begin to respond.


I got exactly nowhere.


In order to get some interaction with him, I admit to the subterfuge of assigning myself as his partner for partner discussions (there was an odd number of kids in the class) so that I could talk to him about what I like to do and find out what he likes to do. I did get a few short but informative answers, whispered into the table top, while I leaned over a bent head, struggling to hear.


I came home feeling profoundly sad about the encounter. Here is a young man who clearly has some passions and interests but he does not have the confidence to tell a teacher about them.

Here is a young man, who having been on the planet for twelve or thirteen years, has already decided that he is a failure. His mom later confirmed for me what I already suspected, that he is failing in school and has been since the beginning of his school experience. (I wonder: How can you fail Kindergarten, for heaven's sake!). She is tearing her hair out trying to figure out what to do to help him. She admitted to extreme anger at the schools, the teachers; all of those who have written off her precious boy.


Since I taught that Level 5 class immediately after teaching a Level R (ages 4-5) class, I could not help but notice a difference between the kids. Some of the little ones are shy, some are bold, some are quiet and some are active, but all of them are eager to learn. They have great curiousity about, well, just about everything, and they also display confidence that they can learn just about anything. I think their great curiosity comes from their sense of confidence that they can learn. And that confidence sustains them through the many trials necessary to become effective doers of what they have learned.


In thinking about the difference in demeanor between those little fours and fives and these middle school boys, some of whom have just about given up on life, and others of whom are heavily investing in pretending that nothing really matters, I cannot help but asking myself what has happened in the five or six years in between? These boys were once those cute little bundles of energy, with that glint of curiosity in their eyes, bolding going out into the big, big world with their big, big selves.


I think that sometimes we comfort ourselves by saying that these kids are just going through a stage; that the loss of curiosity and confidence is normal. That kids this age tend to see learning as either impossible or as some kind of terminal dullness to be survived until they can escape school. But I don't think any of this is true.


My first piece of evidence is the occaisonal middle-school kid who, while desperately trying to maintain coolness, will burst out with little bits of irrepressible enthusiasm for something. You see it sometimes from the front of the classroom, when you mention something that sparks someone's interest. I see it as a teacher's reward for managing to let the student know that you think he's good and funny and has something to say.


My second piece of evidence is the many mid-shool age homeschoolers I see around our mountain community. The ones at the library who walk out with piles of books, talking a mile-a-minute about the latest project. The ones at the "Merc," who will discuss their latest 4-H project in stunning and passionate detail with a total stranger (me) who asks an innocent question. The homeschoolers at Boy Scouts, at Home-school science classes, and even at the grocery store. Most of these kids seem to have never lost their curiousity and their confidence that it can lead them to good places. They know with every fiber of their being that they are capable, interesting and that adults are on their side, eager to help them accomplish their 'impossible' dreams.


You do see some kids who start middle-school just like that. But as school wears on, most of them become heavily defended, with terminal coolness masking their loss of confidence in their ability to accomplish, to do, to learn. Someone has taught them that they are not capable and cannot be effective.


And I am afraid that it is indeed, as John Taylor Gatto so eloquently puts it, 'the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling' that is cunningly planned to dumb schoolchildren down. Gatto teaches that this hidden curriculum is designed to teach our children confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and the acceptance of constant surveillance (Dumbing Us Down, 2005). By middle-school, this hidden curriculum is well on the way to being internalized, and the kids understand that being "normal" is a narrow, gray area of not so quiet desperation.


When I think about this, I am so very thankful that I came to my senses when I saw my son being taught as a third grader (the year of the teacher from hell) that he was not capable, that he was not smart, and that his passionate special interests were part of his disabilty rather than part of his strength. I remember looking at him and wondering to myself, where did the little boy go? The one who used practically beam with pride at every new accomplishment. The one who would spend hours working and failing, picking himself up and trying again, in order to perfect a new learning or skill. And from somewhere I was given the grace of taking a different perspective that allowed me to frame the question as "what's wrong with his schooling?" rather than "what's wrong with him?" And once I framed the question that way, it was easy enough to see that the petty officialdom of school was quite capable of blaming the child, calling him names like lazy and stubborn because he had learned their hidden curriculum only too well. I am grateful that I took him out and that my son has never seen the inside of a middle-school as a student.


Because as I sat there, listening to a boy very like my son in age and size whispering to the table what he is passionate about, I realized that in another reality, one in which I had made another decision, that would likely be my boy.


And I know that no matter what choices N. may make about his education in the future, we have given him a great gift at very little cost. You see, my boy is fourteen and is still possessed by enthusiasm. He knows, somewhere deep down inside of himself that is capable of doing things in the world. He walks with the confidence of a tracker and the curiosity of a scientist.


And when I think about that, and then about some of these lost boys--the ones who have been told otherwise--I feel very sad, because I cannot imagine what magic I can pull out of my hat that will hold up through another 180 days of being judged wanting.

Wrong Question: What's wrong with him?

Right Question: What's wrong with schooling?

Summer Plans and Projects

June is here, and early summer has finally come to our rambling Hobbit-Hole in the Sandias.

The scrub oak turned from brown to green while I was in Chicago, and the flowers are blooming in the meadow.Our plans for this summer's homeschooling are project based, just as last year's were.

N. is taking the first weeks of June as a break--which means doing archery and Kamana, and reading on the porch during the long, summer evenings. Taekwondo and Boy Scouts continue.

In late June, N. will be attending BSA camp with his troop, where he will be working on Riflery, Scuba, Advanced Horsemanship, and First Aid merit badges to add to his collection. Merit Badges have specific, rigorous requirements and when a boy has earned one, he has learned both content and skills related to the particular badge.

At the beginning of July, N. will hop on a plane for a two-week visit with his cousins in Bloomington. This is a pleasure trip, but my sister has several day trips planned that will be educational as well as recreational. One is to visit the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, as well as Lincoln's New Salem. The other is to visit the Illinois-Michigan Canal National Trail, where the boys will learn all about how canals were built, operated for commerce, and how locks work.

During the last two weeks of July, N. will get on another plane and fly from Illinois to New Jersey. In Jersey, he will spend Shabbat with our former cantor, and then go to two Children of the Earth Foundation Camp sessions: The Way of the Woods and the Way of the Gatherer. There he will be learning content and skills related to tracking and being at home in the wilderness.

N's summer learning plans are quite uncoventional. The education is not at all academic. However, I am continually amazed at how much he learns from travel and from camp. These experiences seem to cause quantum leaps in his maturity. He is taking greater and greater responsibility for who he is becoming, intellectually, physically and spiritually, from these less conventional learning opportunities.

I am glad we can continue to widen his horizons through these travel adventures.

And at the same time, I will miss him. Every summer when I send him off, I know I am saying good-bye to another piece of the little boy I knew forever. Every August, when he returns, he has incorporated another part of the man he is becoming.

The pictures above are all from the meadow behind our home. I am amazed at how summer snuck in while I was gone!

Proud to Claim the Title

There has been much discussion in recent months about the California ruling that might have required all homeschooling parents in that state to obtain a teaching license in order to teach their own kids. That ruling was decertified.

However, I just learned over at Corn and Oil that the California Teacher's Association filed an Amicus Brief that claimed, among other things, that allowing homeschooling would cause "educational anarchy" in the old Bear Flag Republic. This assertion is discussed further at Principled Discovery.

Now, I am a certified teacher in my state. I also hold an MA in Special Education, alongside advanced degrees in Biology, and I am currently teaching reading programs for IRD, a private company founded expressly to help people of all ages become absorbed and proficient readers.

However, given the state of public education today, I am proud to claim the title of Educational Anarchist. Public education in the United States has become a political boondoggle in which the interests of those who gain power and treasure through the Educational-Industrial Complex are paramount, and the interests of those being educated counts for very little. As in many other areas of life in these United States, the Federal Government has claimed for itself the power and authority that ought to be held by citizens making decisions for themselves as to what constitutes the good life.

According to dictionary.com, the word anarchy is derived from the Greek word Archon, which means an absolute ruler, a tyrant. I am opposed to tyranny in all forms, and bow to no earthly absolute ruler. I believe that the increasing centralization of power in public education is destructive to the very idea of education, and I have written extensively about that on this blog.

I am a proud educational anarchist!

Long live liberty and the freedom of thought that made this country great!

The Educational Anarchist logo above was designed by Imperceptibility and was found at Principled Discovery.

Another Quarter, Another Color

While I have been preparing to teach reading this summer, homeschooling has continued.
N. has been been reading quite a bit about the ships and airplanes of WWII, as well as working on Kamama Naturalist Training.

And the "carschooling" aspects of N.'s education have also continued. A few weeks ago, N. made the First Class rank advancement in BSA and he finished up the year in Machon Jewish studies with a 6 week study of the Shoah (Holocaust).


N. has been diligent in his Taekwondo practice as well, and last week he tested for advancement from the Purple Belt to Orange Belt. He is breaking boards now, and intrepid as always, he decided to break three boards at once in testing although he had not done so in training. Although he tried several times, he did it only when he remembered to keep his hand moving fast through the boards.

Today, N. participated in the belt advancement ceremony. In the picture above, his group of Blue belts stand ready to bow at the beginning of the ceremony. N. turned to listen to Master Blackman just as the Engineering Geek snapped the picture.
In the Blackman Dojang, children 12 and under study in separate classes from adults 12 and over. N. studies with a small group four who have persisted together. They are becoming close-knit, working together on the forms, Hapkido (self-defense moves), breaking and sparring.

Here, N. is putting on his new Orange Belt, after removing the old Purple one and honoring the work he did while wearing it.

After testing, Master Blackman talked to the group about the circle of forms and sparring, and how one must control the energy of the opponent, and vice-versa so that the energy moves between the two as a circle for practice.

He also talked about the open hand. "You hold your hands close to your face," he said, "And open to show that you do not want to fight. But your hands are ready for different punches or grabs if the opponent insists on a fight. Fighting is always the last resort because even when you win you get hurt."

I really like the confidence and discipline and the ethics that N. is learning in Taekwondo.

One of his teachers, Mrs. Crates, told me that she is very pleased with his progress and intensity. He is certainly doing well. He has advanced from white through yellow and purple and now to orange, all in less than nine months.

We're proud of his progress.

This is physical education at its best!

Update: Road Construction

April, and warmer, dry weather has arrived. Although in the spirit of complete disclosure, I must add that the March winds have not yet figured out that is is time to "Go, already!"


And among other activities at the Los Pecos Homeschool, we have been watching as the pace of the Building of the New Road had increased.


Fans of John Deere, Komatsu, and Caterpiller, rejoice!


The trench along our road is now 3 feet deep, as two feet of dirt was laid atop the electrical and fiberoptic phone lines, and water pipes were laid atop of them.

N., in his ongoing conversations with the workers, set me straight on this issue. The giant mains laid last fall were for the fire hydrants only. A completely separate system will supply the houses. This is so that in the event of a wildfire or housefire, pressure to the houses will not be disturbed, nor will "household use interfere with fire fighting capability." Is it just me, or is N. beginning to sound like a young civil engineer?

Here we see three water lines bundled near the property lines to two lots. We are not sure what the third line is for. It could be for a lot that lies behind these two, and contacts the road around the bend. Or it could be something else. N. is happy to have another question to ask when "the guys" show up on Monday.






Familiar heavy equipment has been brought down from the fenced storage area up on the ridge by the water tank. Even as the water lines are being laid, rock is being moved, and the road is being flattened and prepared for the underbed materials, layers of rock and gravel that will be covered with asphalt.

N. gets a big kick out of our developer, who is from Canada, and pronounces it "ashphalt." N. is starting to enjoy and appreciate regional differences in idiom, usage, and pronounciation. This is one those great steps forward for an AS kid who is obsessed with rules.


We are all impressed with how 'gianormous'... (Yes, usage Yekkes, I am aware that this is not a "real" word--but I like it anyway). Ahem! ...but as I was saying, how gianormous these machines really are.

N. and my dear Engineering Geek both confess that the immensity of machines makes their hearts go pitter-patter shepping naches* at what human beings are capable of making.

shepping naches: Yiddish for rejoicing the accomplishment of another.

Together, they make a blessing: "Blessed are you, Eternal One, Creator of space-time, who has endowed the human being with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding." This is the same blessing I make when the airplane takes off. I mean, really, how safe can G-d make me if the engineers didn't do their calculations correctly?

Some interesting geology has been temporarily revealed in the trench-cuts. Geologists gravitate toward road cuts, railway cuts, and construction excavations like flies towards you-know-what.

Here you can see a weathered layer of sand and gravel that lies atop a much more consolidated clay layer, under which a gray caliche stripe runs. The caliche shows us an older ground surface, as caliche is formed from mineral rich water evaporating out of the soil surface under the intense New Mexico sun. It leaves behind calcium salts originally dissolved in the water, which forms a hard natural cement, the bane of gardeners across the southwest. The more poorly consolidated rock and gravel above the clay indicate local stream flooding in the near past, and above that the completely mixed top is due to the construction disturbance.

In this picture, there is the construction distubance on top, a pitted layer of surface clay mixed with sand and gravel, and below that a lens of poorly consolidated sand and gravel. That lens is an old stream bed, and the size and angularity of the exposed rocks indicates relatively recent arroyo-type flooding, probably due to summer monsoon flash-flooding. The geomorphology at the surface indicates that this is still an area of run-off, confirming what the rocks are telling us.

This spontaneous, informal Road Construction Unit has also been extremely useful for teaching N. a little bit of geological reasoning. He goes outside and makes his inferences, and then he checks them out by using my old college Introductory Geology text, The Earth's Dynamic Systems.

When he's not talking like a Civil Engineer, he sounds like this. "Hey, mom, would you say that old arroyo activity is Holocene? Or might it go back to the last pluvial? (Pluvial means the lake period associated with the Wisconsin Glaciation. That would be very latest Pleistocene). I think I can detect that those rocks saltated (rolled and jumped) due to the force of the water."

I refuse to speculate, and instead I haul out the Geological Map of New Mexico.

Who knew that (un)school could be this fun?

Road Construction: A Real Life Learning Experience

Contractors have been working most of the past month to complete a new road that will access the new phase of our development in the high meadow. The road is an extension of our road, Los Pecos Trail. It runs south of our house, where it will join a new road, Los Pecos Loop, that will access the hillside east of the end of Los Pecos, and the meadow west and south of it. N. and I have decided to make the best of the noise, dust and inconvenience in order to learn about how developments are planned and roads are built.



Neither N. nor I have seen a road completely built, and since our developer is a civil engineer of great skill, we are seeing a road built RIGHT.

Last fall, before the snow, the worker cleared the right-away of vegetation, and rocks, and created the road bed.

To do so in our area, they had to stabilize the clay soil by mixing it with lime.





In our mountains, the soil is a clay-loam neosol that sits on top of the Pennsylvanian Madera Formation limestone, which is faulted, cracked and pitted with solution basins. The soil on top of the Madera is full of expandible clay minerals that hold cations on the surface of each crystal. The anionic lime attracts and bonds with these cations and makes the clay less likely to expand in the presence of water. This is important to keep the road bed on top of it from cracking and slipping and slumping.



Another important part of building a road from scratch, is the job of bringing utilities along it and up to the property lines of the new lots.

According to the East Mountain Plan, all utilities must be brought in underground for added safety and to preserve views. So in the past two weeks or so, five-foot trenches have been dug along one side of the right-away, along the entire new road.
In this trench, you can see the conduits through which run electrical lines, and fiberoptic cable for telephone and internet service. Cable television is not available in this area, so if folks want luxury TV, they get satellite networks installed.

The water lines were installed separately last fall. We actually had a trench across our driveway for a little while for that job.

In most of the East Mountain communities, there are no sewer systems nor is there a municipal treatment system, because most of us do not live in municipalities. So each homeowner installs a septic system and leech field. Some communities do gray-water processing, and those residents put in a partial, black-water septic system. One community here has an organic waste processing system that recycles both gray and black-water. They use it to support a golf course.



Here in the high meadow, the utilities can be seen at the property lines. In the center, are conduits that contain electrical wires and fiberoptic cables. On either side, the white cylinders are protective casing for water line check-valves, that will eventually be hooked up to water meters. Here, our water is provided by a water co-operative, and each lot owner must buy a membership.

Yes, even here in the boonies, we have fire hydrants. They are required as part of the East Mountain Fire-Wise Plan. Each development must not only install hydrants, but also puts together a fire plan that includes rules about vegetation, and also an evacuation plan in case of wild fire.

In our neck of the woods, natural gas lines are also uncommon. Most of us have a propane tank leased from a proprane company, and many of us have alternative heating, such as passive solar and/or wood and pellet stoves.



We also learned a lot about drainage issues that come with the development of roads. Dirt roads drain more naturally, but become rutted and impassible during mudtime in the spring. And even the grade of dirt roads can block arroyos and small drainages.


Asfalt roads are more convenient but creat greater drainage problems because runoff is rapid. The head of the Sedillo Canyon drainage runs right through our development, and the new road crosses it. The drainage itself will be open space, so as not to impede the movement of water downstream. But the road needs a culvert, about 100 yards above the canyon proper. The upstream side is pictured.

This is the most serious culvert I have seen in our development. The pipes are about four feet in diameter. The rocks are placed on a liner in a sag-pond arrangement, that will slow down the flow across the culvert in times of heavy rain, rationing the water that runs into the canyon in order to preserve a more natural flow rate.



At other points along the road, small rock walls, small dams, and artificial rills have been created on the upstream side, in order to slow the flow of water onto the road. This will prevent pooling and flooding, and also will prevent mudslides onto the road. (Yes that is snow above the rock dam. It is taking a long time to melt even with the recent warm weather).

Mother nature destests unnatural flat zones on hillsides, and will use weathering to even out the slope again. So roads on hillsides require constant maintenance to keep them clear.

What is really cool about this project, is that no rocks have been brought in. All of the rock used for preparing the roadbed and for drainage was dug out of the hillsides to make way for the roadbed.

Unschooling means that we can take the opportunity to learn from what is happening right here and now. In fact, not only is N. studying numerous subjects in unconventional ways, but I am learning something new every day. Through our talks with the work crew and our study of the new road, we are learning about Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Civil Engineering, Physics, and more. Think of the social skills N. is practicing by asking intelligent questions of the work crews, and seeking to know about their lives and work. And he is learning about difference cultures and languages, too. Many of the workers speak excellent Spanish. I never thought I'd learn how to say 'front-end loader' in Spanish.

This is all, as N. puts it, "Way too cool!"

The Spring of Our Discontent

We've been talking and thinking about politics around here lately.

It makes sense.
N. and I are studying the founding of the United States and the Constitution.
And it's an election season.
And then there is the economy and the way our politicians are (not) dealing with it.
And the war. Oy. This is truly a discontented spring for the American electorate.

And since we are studying the founding documents of the US--in our haphazard and conversational, unschooling way, I also have gotten interested in reading about that time in our nation's history. When I was a schoolgirl, it was the Civil War period and aftermath that really captured my imagination. After all, I grew up not 60 miles from Springfield, Illinois. It was the "Land of Lincoln." Somehow, although I had read the founding documents, and could recite the Preamble to the Constitution, my study of the first years of the United States got short shrift.

Last week, when I was browsing the new books shelf at one of our branch libraries, I found an interesting looking book: A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign by Edward J. Larson. So I picked it up, figuring that if I get nothing else from it, it would at least provide background for our conversations about our country's early history. But when I picked it up and started reading it this weekend, in between Shabbat and Purim Carnival activities, I realized that it was going to be much, much more.

It is the story of the end of a friendship. It is the story of the beginnings of partisanship in the American election process. It is the story of a fundamental controversy that has been with us since the ratification of the United States Constitution. And, although I have not finished the book, I can see already that there is much wisdom for us, the primary-weary American voters, in knowing what has gone before. And in knowing what has been survived. I am enthralled.

But this is not a book review.
I can't do a review until I finish the book.
And in between the beginnings of cleaning for Pesach, and preparing for Purim, and writing papers, there is precious little time this spring break to sneak in a few pages but for my morning and evening reading.
But my reading so far has got me thinking.
And I wanted to write a little bit about this spring of our discontent in light of what I have learned thus far.

One piece of my musing is about the Federalist-Republican/Democrat controversy that made the election of 1800 so wild and woolly, and has been with us ever since. The Federalist position (simplified) was (is?) that a strong federal government is necessary and that the Constitution did not make it strong enough. Coming from the dour religious views of our Puritan founders, Federalism assumed that people with too much individual liberty were liable to fall into sin, becoming frivolous and dissolute in their personal and political behavior. The Federalists at the time of the "electioneering" for the 1800 presidential election looked to the French Revolution, and seeing the extremes of the reign of Terror and Jacobinism, were determined to restrict the individual liberties of the hoi polloi in the nascent United States, in order to prevent such chaos. The High Federalists toyed with the idea of having the Senate and President of the United States serve for life, and together with the more moderate Federalists such as President John Adams, managed to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts in direct violation of the Constitutional guarrantees for Freedom of the Press, because of the danger to the country of a possible war with France. Sound familiar?

The Republicans, the party of Thomas Jefferson (not the party of Lincoln--the first Republicans later called themselves Democrats), believed that a weak and contentious federal government, whose power should be contained by checks and balances among the branches, was vital to the protection of the rights and liberties of the citizenry. Sons of the Enlightenment, our Republican founding fathers looked to the French revolution as a confirmation of our own struggle for liberty. They thought that the citizenry would only lose their liberty if their rights were restricted by elites. They opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts, and it was the editors of the Republican newspapers that courageously went to jail, and then continued to inform the American public about the restrictions placed on their liberties, in defiance of what they termed the "tyranny" of the Federalists.

As I have been reading, I have been thinking that the Federalists and the Republicans are still with us, to this day. Since the Civil War, and even more so since the Progressive era, it has been the 'Federalists' who have been gaining in power, and the Federal government has been strengthened at the expense of the liberties of the citizenry. The Federal system now includes a central bank, the Federal Reserve, that was once opposed by the Jeffersonian Republicans as the sure road to tyranny. The Federal government has taken an increasingly large role in telling the states how they may govern, as well as in directing the economic, social and personal lives of individual citizens. The Nanny State is well on the way to removing our remaining liberties, all for our own goods, of course.

And so we find ourselves, in this 'the spring of our discontent,' dealing with a falling dollar, a housing market in chaos, 'billions and billions' of dollars in unfunded entitlements strung like an albatross around our childrens' necks, and in a costly and bungled war, wondering what in the world our self-appointed leaders are planning to get us into next. (Oh, but we are being told that the check is in the mail. Of course it's our money, but we'll have to pay it back).

It is somewhat comforting to know that we are not the first generation of ordinary Americans to deal with this kind of fight. And although we are much nearer to tyranny now than the citizenry was before the election of 1800, we do have the example of those who went before us to strengthen our resolve.

It is a balancing act. That is what maintaining a cohesive national government and at the same time maintaining that government as the servant of the people requires. In 1800, the revolution was still fresh in the memories of the people. The failures of the Articles of Confederation demonstrated that a stronger central government was important, but the Alien and Sedition Acts showed that if the government become but a little too strong, the bright and shining experiment upholding the rights of man would certainly fail.

As I read, I am comforted by the fact that those people, our political and spiritual ancestors, did not meekly follow one or another of the parties. Vigorous dissention, strong debate, and an ongoing argument--these were the order of the day. But I know how it came out. Jefferson was elected and the excessive restrictions on the liberties of the citizenry were halted. But the question was not settled.

It will never be settled.
The balance must be maintained.
Stray but a little one way, and tyranny will ensue.
Stray but a little the other, and anarchy will prevail.

I think that now, in this spring of our discontent, as the party ends and the fiddler's bill comes due, we are leaning a little too insistently toward tyranny. We have been for much of the last century. We want someone else to pay the fiddler for us. And the presidential candidates we have to choose among seem happy to promise to do so. They all want to solve our problems for us, bail us out of our present difficulties, and stave off economic problems for a while longer (at least until the election is over) using quick fixes and expensive programs. They want to give us stuff to distract us from the loss of our national sovereignty and our individual liberties. And if we accept then we are sacrificing our children on the altar of the expediency of the moment.

As I read, I keep thinking of those people who were "rocked in the cradle of the revolution." They were hardy people, and prudent. If our ancestors could face pain and sacrifice in order to make a better world for their children, surely we have the same strength to do so. They did not prematurely give up the argument, and allow tyranny to prevail. Nor did they sit back and let chaos ensue. We can do the same, and maintain the balance in order to "secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity."

So I am feeling a little better. I feel that I am gaining some strength and resolve to face the coming wake-up call. And it is coming, no matter how many times we roll over and hit the snooze. But a look at history can strengthen a person. And listening in on the arguments and battles of our founders, can make one realize that contentiousness is our lot.
And it's a good one, if we can keep the balance.

"Wasn't that a time, wasn't that a time?
A time that tried the souls of men?
Wasn't that a terrible time?"
(The Weavers)

"We cannot choose the time we are born to, we can only choose what to do with the time we are given."
(Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring, Movie Version)



Now I just have to figure out who to write in next November.
Thomas Jefferson is not an option.

And Now For Something Completely....Purple

Last week, N. fulfilled the requirements to test from 11th Gup Yellow Belt to 10th Gup Purple Belt in Taekwondo.

He has been a very eager student at the Dojang, although he had to miss several sessions this quarter due to bad weather. Still, he managed to learn all of the right moves, and he has been practicing with his DVD at home.

Last Wednesday, he tested and did well. Very well. So well that he not only passed to the Purple Belt, but he received an outstanding student award for testing so well. I am really happy for this previously test-avoidant young man!

On Saturday, the Dojang had a graduation ceremony.
In this first picture, he is saying good-bye to the yellow belt. As the kids removed their belts, Master Blackman asked them to think about what work had gone into that belt, and what it meant to them.

And here he is, putting on his new belt.

Again, the Master asked the students to think about what the achievement meant to them, and what kind of dedication they would put into the work toward the next level.

N. seems to be very good at Taekwondo, and he has learned some very important skills there, including the Martial Arts. For one, he has learned a confidence in himself, and he has also been developing leadership skills that have stood him in good stead in other areas of his life. For example, recently, he was challenged to a fight by a rather impulsive boy his age at scouts, and he refused the bait. He knows what he can do, and did not need to prove it. I think that's quite an accomplishment for a kid who several years ago could be easily lured into not so socially acceptable behavior. And of course, his social awkwardness meant that he was the likely one to be caught and blamed.

Here is the happy Purple Belt with Master Blackman, and also his teacher, Mrs. Blackman. We did not catch his other teacher, Mr. Crates, on camera.

It is interesting how as homeschoolers, we choose different curricula, methods and philosophies, not really knowing at first whether they will work out. We have made numerous choices in the past two years, and we have made transitions as necessary. However, the choice of Taekwondo seemed right from the beginning. Placing N. in the Black Belt club was definitely worth the expense, although it seemed like a leap of faith at the time. N. has learned so much more than physical skills.

And, of course, the learning goes on. Tomorrow he will be measured for his sparring gear. And toward the end of this new journey towards orange belt, he will begin breaking boards with his bare hands. I am always impressed by the students I see doing that!

It's so great when a kid finds his passions and strengths, and it is really cool as a parent to watch him grow into himself through them.

Smoothing the Stones: Wrestling with the History of Education

First, a favorite quote:

"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing just because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its philosophy will hold water."- John William Gardner



This semester, I have been thinking about the ideology of inclusion in special education in the public schools. And in my thinking and reading about the issue, I had come to the conclusion that the mindset of the inclusion ideologues--those who would have us essentially deconstruct special education in favor of full inclusion in the face of contradictory evidence about what kind of instruction works for many students with disabilities--is the consequence of a shoddy philosophical foundation for American education. Essentially, the epistemology (theory of knowledge) embraced by modern American education has been positivism--which has its philosophical origins in Pragmatism. But Positivism is an incomplete philosophy that has neither metaphysics (a theory of reality) nor ethics that are grounded in the foundational axioms of the philosophy. And worse, Positivism does not simply neglect metaphysics, but actively rejects them. An incomplete philosophical basis makes the philosophy unable to "hold water" as John Gardner says in the quote above, or more to the point, it cannot hold its own against the incursions of post-modernist (deconstructivist) thought.



As my thinking on this issue has evolved to this point, I realized that for my Trends and Issues in Special Education class it might be useful to look into the foundational ideas of modern American education, a review of the history of the field, so to speak, in order to understand how we got to this point where advocates for children with disabilities could, with the fervor of the true believer, want to tear down the field entirely, and reconstruct it as a kind of place in which every child will be treated the same regardless of their differences.



And so I have been reading. I started out with secondary sources, such as Diane Ravitch's Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, and then went to primary sources such as John Dewey's Democracy in Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education.And as an antidote to the "schooling" mentality, I also pulled out John Taylor Gatto's An Underground History of American Education. I had ordered this book last year, along with A Different Kind of Teacher, and I read part of it, but got busy with other things and did not finish it then. Although it is not a scholarly book in the traditional sense, Gatto does cite his sources in the text, and presents a compelling view of the aims of modern American education from his experience, as well as from some of the same sources that I am reading.

And this is where it all gets so very interesting, because in the past few weeks I have also

read the columnist Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. (I just realized that I was reading an "underground" history and a "secret" history at the same time. I am hearing the Twilight Zone theme in my head). This book is about the American progressive movement's foundations in, and admiration of European fascism, the history and consequences of progressive politics in the US, and the consequences of a marriage of progressive policy and the American character. Although I am not going to review the book here, I will say it is a fascinating read and that I learned a lot about the history of the early 20th Century in the United States that I did not know previously.

Reading both of these books at the same time produced one of those moments of serendipity that seem almost prophetic. I began to notice that I was reading about the same people and the same big ideas. John Dewey. William James. Jane Addams. Woodrow Wilson.
Of course it was not a complete confluence of thinking--Gatto also discussed the founders of American education as we have it today, and Goldberg was outlining the progressives of the same time period. But the interesting thing to me was that many of these people were the same. Or they knew each other. And they had the same pragmatic, statist world view. Essentially, the goal was to overthrow the "cult" of individualism, and create humanity anew, as cogs in the wheel of the state. If you had to read Bellamy's Looking Backward in high school (a very boring dystopia meant to be a utopia--I admit I read the first 50 pages and then used "skippibus" to pass the test), use that to get a picture of what these people envisioned.If you have not read it, think of the dull, gray monotony of the Soviet Union in its waning years, but without the KGB and the Gulag. Or think of the movie GATTACA.

Of course Education (with a capital "E") was to be the principal way this would be accomplished. In the system envisioned by these reformers, schools would be used to separate the children from their families, their particular cultures and belief systems, and made into useful slaves of the state. Woodrow Wilson said: "The chief job of the educator is to make your children as little like you as possible." In other words, the point of schools at least from the point of view of the educational establishment at Columbia Teacher's College, Stanford, and the University of Chicago, was to destroy the sovereignty of the family, and train (I will not use the word educate) students to think of the state as their true home. Only a few, elite people would be educated in the true sense of the word, those who would have the wisdom to order life for everyone else.

These are scary ideas. And they can be found in the primary sources that I have mentioned. This is not some wild conspiracy theory made up by Gatto, Goldberg or others on the right. Gatto presents a much darker view of the envisioned "nanny state" education, the pernicious violence of empty minds, and the dull unreality of Disneyland. Goldberg believes that an American fascism would be 'totalitarian-lite': Less of the jack-booted brownshirts, and more of the social worker mentality. Less of "Sieg Heil!" and more "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

One ray of light in all of this, is that the teachers and school administrators do not necessarily share these ideas nor do they agree with the incomplete philosophies upon which they are founded. In fact, most schools of education do not teach this history of education in the United States. In my own experience in graduate education (although I cannot speak for the undergraduate level having come by my teaching license in an alternative way) at the master's level, the focus was on methodologies and curriculum, and the history of educational thought was not considered. And although some of the ideas could be gleaned from these very methodologies, I suspect the average teacher working on a project for a class after a full day's work, was not likely to even begin to think about the big ideas at all. Since I was in Gifted Education, we did consider some larger ideas about teaching, and we did discuss the hostility inherent in American education toward the gifted. It was clear to me that American educational philosophy was anti-intellectual, but we did not explore the roots of this, leaving the student to think that it was engendered in the ordinary citizen. We were not let in on the "secret" "underground" history that would make it plain that the anti-intellectual bent of American schools comes from the social engineers of the Progressive movement, not from the farmers and factory workers who wanted their kids to be educated for a better life in the singular, individual sense.

Do you dectect some frustration on my part? You are correct. It is part and parcel of the rearrangement of my internal "maps" of the world. It is the sense of betrayal that Adam and Chava must have felt when they partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and discovered another layer of reality.

Ah, well, this is an education in the true sense. It is the need to grapple with the big ideas of a field, and consider how those ideas shaped the reality we call school and schooling. Certainly, with respect to the current trends and issues in special education, the problem is an incomplete philosophy. But there is an even larger problem to consider. The argument on this larger level is about the purpose of public education in the United States. Is it about preparing our children for the future, teaching them to read and write, to think and to take their place as free citizens of the Republic? Or is it about re-making humanity, and creating a utopia controlled by those who know best what's good for us? The first idea is what the general public thinks about education, and the second resides on the level of progressive social planning. And that leads to another question: Which one of these goals does school, as we currently know it, best fulfill?

And that brings me in a round about way to a personal insight about my choices with regard to my career as a teacher and my choices about the education of my own son. In my years as a teacher, my job choices were toward smaller classrooms where I could teach kids using methodologies that were different than those commonly in use in this day of educating to least common denominator. By teaching special education for children with learning difficulties, behavioral difficulties, and then, the gifted kids, I placed myself outside the mainstream. The first such class I taught were the throw-away kids, the ones that no one cared how I taught them. And the gifted kids were those that the system did not worry about--they'd already met the minimum standards. In this way, I was perhaps, a guerrilla teacher, although certainly I did not think of myself as engaging in subversive activities. My purpose was simply to get through each day with these kids without boring either myself or the students to death. That required the use of 'stealth' methodology. "When an administrator comes in," I'd tell the kids, "look serious. When we close the door, though, we can have fun and get something real accomplished."

And I still had to leave the classroom. Not because I was a bad teacher, nor because I disliked teaching. I was a pretty good teacher, I think, and I enjoyed the teaching. But dealing with the educational establishment became more and more joyless and wearing, though I did not understand why. And there was my son to think about. He was not making it in the classroom. This was partly because he had disabilities that the school had difficulty dealing with, but it was mostly because they could not capitalize on his unique strengths.

But when I took N. out of school, I did not fully realize the implications of our choices. As we evolved toward unschooling, I still did not recognize the revolutionary nature of what homeschooling means. Only now, as I reflect on how it has impacted the growth of my son, who has become a confident, self-reliant, adventurous learner; and the impact on our family, for we have become people who like each other and want to be together--only now do I have an inkling of how revolutionary homeschooling is. It appears to be a political act done for deeply personal reasons. It is a repudiation of the fascist notion that people are interchangable parts, who exist for the purpose of some greater "utopia" governed by those who always know what's best for everyone. And it is a very personal journey from the narrow places where my son's future could be predicted by IQ scores and standardized tests, to a vision of the high places of individuality and choice.

And is there hope in this field? How will I continue in it, knowing that everything I believe stands in opposition to the philosophy and to the commonly held beliefs about the field I have chosen? And yet, within me there is a sense that this is an important pursuit. And I take hope from the very sources that have made me wrestle with my internal maps.

"A relative handful of people could change the course of schooling significantly by resisting the suffocating advance of centralization and standardization of children, by being imaginative and determined in their resistance, by exploiting manifold weaknesses in the institution's internal coherence: the disloyalty its own employees feel toward it. It took 150 years to build this apparatus; it won't quit breathing overnight. The formula is to take a deep breath, then select five smooth stones and let fly. The homeschoolers have already begun."
--John Taylor Gatto, "I Quit, I Think" from The Underground History of American Education.

This wrestling with a philosophy that does not hold water may have its uses. After all, it is water that smooths the stones.

Road Trip: Gran Quivera

Tuesday was the last day of a long weekend for N.'s friend, A., and the forcast was for a warm but cloudy day. It is February, that time when winter seems to be hanging on forever, and the routine begins to feel unbearable.

It was, in short, a perfect day for a road trip. So we picked A. up at home in the morning and stopped at Smith's in Edgewood for some junk food. That's right, what's a road trip without junk food?

And it was off to the south for a Visit to the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument--Gran Quivira Unit--about 70 miles south of Tijeras. Gran Quivira is the most southeastward set of ruins of three Indian villages that comprised the Salinas District of the Spanish Colonial Missions. The Tompiro speaking natives of this village had traded salt from ephemeral lakes left behind when Glacial Lake Estancia dried up about 7000 years ago. They had first come to Chupadera Mesa (south of Mountain Air, NM) between 1200 and 1400 CE, and were then made a Spanish possession in the late 1500's. The first mission church was built in 1630.

This picture, looking south from the village ruins, is of the ruins of the first church (built 1630) right next to a ceremonial kiva, the center of the Puebloan religion. The boys commented on how odd it must have seemed to the Tompiro natives, to build such a large structure for two men with no wives or families, when the Puebloans, far more numerous, worshipped in the intimate spaces of an underground kiva, and lived in small 'apartment' rooms in the pueblo.

This is the nave of the larger church, built with an attached "convento" in 1670. This church is set apart from the pueblo village, and a little to the northwest, whereas the first church was located right next to one of the larger ceremonial kivas near the village center.

By this time, Gran Quivira was an important trading center for the Spanish, salt being an especially valuable commodity. It was also a jumping off point to trade with the native people of the plains to the east, although missions did not get built among those people, as they were not settled and were also quite fierce in defending their territories.





Here are some of the ruins of the Tompiro speaking pueblo, Cueloze, taken from the partially excavated upper village. The boys had a great deal of fun on the upper village, following the maze of walls so that they might identify kivas hidden beneath the peublo 'apartments'. Although the Fransciscan missionaries had tolerated the larger, open kivas and their ceremonies to begin with, they soon forbade the "pagan" rituals practiced there, and the Tompiro who had not joined the new church were forced to hide the practice of their own religion. In 1601, one Marcello de Espinosa wrote:
"There is a sweat room (kiva) painted all over with large and small idols in the same manner that they paint devils here. In the middle are sculpted large idols of stone or wood to which they offer maize...and when they make a 'sacrifice' they all join in a circle to dance..."

The boys asked many questions about theway that the conquering Spaniards forced their religion on the natives, and were quite interested in learning that many of the Pueblo Indians identify as Christians to this day. They speculated about how that compared to the way that near-eastern religions were spread by conquest, and also Christianity to Europe, and Islam to North Africa and Asia. They drew parallels between the hidden kivas, and the conversos, the hidden Jews of northern New Mexico, some of whom retain their hidden Jewish practice to this day. They were very happy to discover that the Katchina dances of the nineteen Pueblos of the Rio Grande are the religion of the Puebloan peoples, practiced to this day.


These are the steps of the convento, leading up from the south courtyard and gardens to the common areas and cells. The boys were also fascinated by the windows, which had very thick walls that slanted inward, to make shadows so that the summer sun would not overheat the rooms inside.
N. also pointed out that the shape would work well for defense, with two bowmen able to creat crossfire from either side of the window, and yet remain hidden by the angled walls.

I am often taken aback at how much they have learned about history, about religion, and about warfare without me being much aware of it. In visits to many historical sites in New Mexico, they have learned that the Puebloans, and later the Spanish and then the Americans, had to always be aware of the raiding Apachu--a Tewa word for enemy or thief--the fierce Apache, Athabaskan speakers who hunted the plains and raided the stores of the settled peoples.

It was indeed a beautiful day for a road trip,
and at Gran Quivira it was 60 degrees.

Although partly cloudy, the sun did shine on Chupadera Mesa, as we stood above the newly built ramp to spot golden eagles hunting the vally and hills between. We tried to imagine what it must have been like to be the Tompiro people, meeting the Spaniards for the first time.

And what it must have been like to be a Spanish mission priest, out here on the edge of the empire, sitting outside the church on a February day, watching the eagles hunting from the top of the Mesa.

And so our road trip, undertaken to break the monotony of blustery February, became a field trip, a chance to delve into New Mexico history, and to think about issues of colonization, economics, warefare, and religion.

As N put it: "History. It's everywhere you want to be."