Just me and the girls...

Today it has been just me and the girls!

Aren't they cute? They are currently sleeping on "their" daybed here in my office as I write. (They posed for their picture in the dining room).

The men in my life are at Angel Fire with the boy scouts, skiing, tubing and (snow) boarding. They are also freezing--the cold snap made it into northern NM today, but it is still above freezing here in the partly-cloudy center of the sunny southwest!

I was feeling that post-major event letdown today. Haven't had much energy. So I went into town and got my toes done. I also bought Loreena Mckennitt's new CD An Ancient Muse. I had Thai food with my daughter. She told me to leave the porch light on for her. That means she'll be home late. I'll be asleep. Funny, but today seemed like a quiet Holy Shabbat and last week was such a joyous, noisy one. We get approximately 52 Shabbatot a year--and each one is a little different!

We will be starting back with the routine on Monday. My university classes start on Tuesday. I am taking a course in Special Education Law and one in Neurobiology. I am not ready! Oh, I am so not ready for the daily round to begin again. But at the same time I know that it needs to or my energy crisis will continue indefinitely! Spring term--here we come!

Winter Break Field Trips

N. didn't really have a winter break during the holidays because he was so focused on the Bar Mitzvah. So this week we took a "winter break" and we will be starting up with school work next week.

On Sunday and Monday, while the relatives were still here, we took two field trips.

On Sunday we went to Old Town Albuquerque. Old Town is the original village that Albuquerque once was. Here's the five cousins and Grandma at the Gazebo in the middle of Old Town Plaza.

Old Town was also the site of a little-known Civil War battle. Although New Mexico was a territory at the time, the southern half was allied with Texas and the south and the north was indifferent. Two battles took place in New Mexico, first the one in Albuquerque and then a more famous one at Glorieta Pass.

Here are the boys, N. (at left) and cousins D. (ducking) and T. (at right). N. is pretending to set off the Canon, and D. is ducking. T. is looking at the plaque.

On Monday, the cousins went to the Lobo store to get Brian Urlacher T-shirts and UNM sweatshirts. Since they are from Illinois, they got T-Shirts with the UNM Lobo and Urlacher's number on the front, and the Chicago Bears logo and Urlacher's Bear's number on the back.

After the Lobo store, we went up to Sandia Peak on the Longest Tram in the World. (No Sherpas, No Oxygen Tanks, and Dinner at the Top). Here is N. on the tram. He was a little unhappy because I made him turn around so his face would be in the picture. Fish Rock is in the upper left of the picture.

The Sandia Mountains are about 300 million years old. They rose from an epi-cratonic sea long before the Laramide Revolution raised the Colorado Plateau 65 million years ago. They are fault-block mountains
that rose due to faulting along the Great American Rift, and they tilted as they rose, so that the Albuquerque side is steep and the East Mountain side is gentle. The rock that was exposed is pink granite and the mountains are capped with Pennsylvanian limestone. The same Limestone that is a mile above Albuquerque on Sandia Peak is about a mile below the surface in the Rio Grande Valley. Here is the mountain front looking south from the Tram. In the foreground you can see pressure ridges that were created by the mountains going up.

And here is the five cousins at the top of Sandia Peak. We had the perfect day for our Tram Ride. It was perfectly clear and there was no wind. It was actually warmer at the top of the mountain than the bottom.because of the solar heating of the west-facing rock. The kids took their winter jackets off.

After coming down the mountain on the Tram, it was off for Pizza and a movie. We saw Eregon together. The perfect ending to a very good day. Next morning the cousins flew back to Illinois.

It is amazing how much was learned during the two field trips. The history of Old Town. The geology of the Sandias. And what a perfect beginning to our new unit on Earth Science.

D'var Torah for Shabbat Vayechi

As promised, here is N.'s D'var Torah (Words of Torah = Sermon) about his Torah portion from the Bar Mitzvah. Our rabbi and I helped with the structure of the piece, and our cantor helped with editing and font, but the ideas are all N.'s. ("And they told me he would never read or write...")

D’var Torah for V’Yechi
January 6, 2007
by N.

Shabbat Shalom! My parasha is called V’Yechi. V’Yechi is the last parasha in B’reshit, which is Genesis in English. In my parasha, the action takes place in Egypt. Israel, who is also known as Jacob, knows that he is about to die and he makes Joseph swear to bury him in the cave of Macpelah in Hebron, in the land of Israel. Near the time of his death, Jacob claims Joseph’s two sons as his own and blesses them, crossing his hands so that Ephraim, who is younger, is favored over Menasheh, who is the older boy. Then Jacob calls his 12 sons to him and blesses them, telling each son something that is important about him. After Israel dies, Joseph and his brothers take his body up to Hebron to the cave of Macpelah to be buried with his fathers Abraham and Isaac. At the end of my parasha, Joseph makes his sons swear that when they are redeemed from slavery in Egypt, they will take his bones with them to the land of Milk and Honey.

The part of my parasha that I find the most interesting is the last part, where Joseph asks his sons to return his bones to the land of Israel. I think that this is a story about assimilation. According to dictionary.com, assimilation is the process in which a minority culture adopts the customs and attitudes of the prevailing group. Minority cultures are often pressured to assimilate because it can make the dominant culture more powerful and more unified. When Joseph and his brothers went down to Egypt, the Egyptian Empire was busy making itself richer and stronger by assimilating conquered peoples. Joseph was assimilated into Egyptian culture and he even became the prime minister who ran the government for Pharaoh. Joseph had an Egyptian name, an Egyptian wife and children, he spoke Egyptian and he dressed like an Egyptian. He probably even “walked like an Egyptian.”

When I think of Egypt, I think of the Borg: “We are Egypt. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile!” In the Star Trek series, the Borg is a culture of evil. It destroys worlds and assimilates other intelligent life-forms into the Borg Collective against their will. The Borg has the hive-mind, a collective in which there is no individuality at all. The Federation and its allies, fight the assimilation of the Borg. In Star Trek Voyager, there is an episode in which some Borg are infected with a virus that allows them to go to a place called Unimatrix Zero. Infected Borg come to Unimatrix Zero and are able to remember their individual cultures. The Borg collective tried to destroy Unimatrix Zero and three Voyager crew members went to the Borg ship and infected the hive-mind with a virus that allowed the infected Borg to remember Unimatrix Zero all the time. In order to continue to be who they were, the Voyager and the infected Borg had to continually fight total assimilation. For Jews, the Torah and the synagogue are like Unimatrix Zero. When we read the Torah and come to pray and study in the synagogue, we can remember who we are all of the time.

The story of Joseph in Egypt is like the first encounter with the Borg. Even though he seems to be totally assimilated, Joseph had a kind of Unimatrix Zero in his bones. He knew deep down that he was really a Jew. Because of that he was able to save Egypt and rescue his brothers. And he knew that G-d would eventually bring Israel out of Egypt. So he told his sons to bring his bones out of Egypt because he knew he was a Jew.

Jews throughout history have encountered the Borg. They were Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Europeans and Nazis. The message was the same as the Borg: “You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.” But we have Torah, which like Unimatrix Zero, helps us to remember who we are and defend our values. Jews have always stood for the value of life and human freedom. The story of Joseph teaches us that it is vital that we remain who we are in order to bring holiness into the world.

My education at Congregation Albert taught me that I do not need to allow the dominant culture to dictate my values. By becoming a Bar Mitzvah, I have accepted the responsibility of being a Jew and living by Torah. I am now a member of the congregation and it is my responsibility to serve the congregation and be an example of Jewish values to others. One Jewish value is to keep on learning! I will continue my Jewish education through confirmation and beyond.

Another Jewish value is Tikkun Olam—doing something to make the world a better place. My Mitzvah project is volunteering at the Albuquerque Animal Care Center in order to help homeless animals. My dog, Lily, was rescued from the shelter. I am collecting needed items to make “welcome home” baskets for people who rescue dogs from the shelter.

Many people helped me to become a Bar Mitzvah. I want to thank Cantor Finn and Rabbi Black for teaching me Torah. I want to thank my mom for always being there, tutoring me in Hebrew and teaching me to pray and chant Torah. I want to thank my step-dad Bruce for encouraging me and driving me to religious and Hebrew school and for taking me to get my T’fillin. I also want to thank my sister because she is the one who insisted that I go to camp! And I really want to thank my teachers, especially Cookie Gillespie, for seeing my individuality and finding ways to teach me so that I could learn. All of you, my parents and family, my teachers, and Congregation Albert, are part of my Unimatrix Zero!


Blessed are You, Adonai our G-d, Sovreign of the Universe, who has given us life, sustained us, and brought us to this joyous time!

Bar Mitzvah

The party is over, the relatives have departed for California, Illinois, and Orgegon. And I am still kvelling! N. became a Bar Mitzvah on Saturday morning, January 6, 2007. He lead the service, read from Torah and Haftarah...and he made it look easy!

To the left is a photo of my husband Bruce adjusting N.'s tie after helping him don his tallit (prayer shawl) before the service.

Here is N. pointing to the first word of his portion with a yad (pointer) before he practices reading his portion. (We do not take pictures during the service, so this one was posed on Friday morning).
The Torah is written by a scribe and does not have vowel marks or cantillation marks, so the student of Torah must chant with the proper cantillation without these aids. Leyning (chanting Torah) takes much preparation.

To the right is a picture of N. putting on his tallit in the Cantor's study just before going into

the sanctuary to begin the morning service. He was very proud of his new suit and the Tallit, but he was just a tad bit nervous!

Praying with a Tallit is a commandment for adult Jews, so this was the first time that N. donned the Tallit while saying the blessing for fulfilling the commandment. Some communities have reserved the tallit for a married man and others for anyone over the age of Bar Mitzvah. Our community follows the latter custom. We ordered the tallit from Israel. I had N.'s Hebrew name embroidered on the shoulder of the tallit.

Here is another picture from Friday's practice. N. is chanting from the Torah and the Cantor is preparing the roll the Torah forward for him. His portion was Vayechi, the last portion in Genesis. The Torah had to be rolled to the very last line: "...And Joseph died at the age of 110, and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt."

In the foreground is one of the Torah crowns, called "Rimonim" (pomegranates). Just as a pomegranate has many seeds, so Torah has as many meanings as there are people to interpret it.

Here is Netanel ben Elisheva, Bar Mitzvah, holding the Torah before the open Ark on the morning of his Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Rabbi Joseph Black is on the left side of him and Cantor Barbara Finn is on the right.

My baby boy...in a suit and tie. He looks so grown up!

And he did such a good job of his Bar Mitzvah responsibilities...I am still kvelling!

Our New Year: Digging Out, Home Improvement and Puzzlemania

It's been a quiet New Year in Sedillo. On New Year's Eve we woke to clear skies and 32" of snow. We took the picture above as we started out on our morning walk on December 31, 2006.

This is what the road up to the top of our ridge looked like on Sunday morning. Great for walking, but horrible for driving, although our friend K. did drive it with his 4-wheel drive vehicle. Most of Central and Northern New Mexico was like this. We decided on a quiet New Year's Eve at home. As of today (January 3, 2007), the city of Albuquerque is still digging out.

We did not lack for things to do while waiting for the snowplow. We are putting in a new tub for the master bathroom. On New Year's Eve,we

moved the tub into the bedroom so that DH would have an easier time making measurements for the plumbing and the tile. The bathtub is still in the bedroom tonight because of difficulties with the cutting of tile. It breaks every time that my husband touches it with a drill. He says he'll need to call in a tile expert. And I have relatives coming in less than 48 hours! Oy vey iz mir!

DH says that we'll move the tub back to the garage and he will get everything else ready to go. We will then deal with it AbM (After the Bar Mitzvah. I can clean tomorrow.

We have already spent a good deal of energy on this weekend (?) project.
It has been four (4) weeks since the old bathtub was taken out. Here is DH working on cutting the tile in order to fit the new bathtub. That job and the using a rented jack-hammer to cut the concrete in order to accomodate the new plumbing created so much dust that I had to vacuum twice--and wash every towel and piece of clothing in the bathroom. It will be worth it when we get the new tub up and running. I am just wondering when that will be....

DH has big cracks in his hands from the drying effect of the concrete dust, the wood, and the tile.

My bathroom looks pretty bad at the moment. But I have been promised that I can get in there and clean tomorrow.

We have had other amusements over the New Year holiday, however.

N. received three different puzzles for Hannukah and his birthday. He is a great fan of puzzles and his current wish-list includes a three dimensional puzzle (and a snow board). He set us his new map of the world puzzle on the coffee table in the living room on his birthday. Since there was no place else to go (Let it snow!) we all had a hand in working the puzzle on New Years Eve. Here is DH and our dog Zoey supervising while N. finds a piece of Greenland.

We all helped at one time or another, although N. has done the bulk of the work. This puzzle is really cool because there is no picture, so N. has had to learn the geography of the world in order to put the puzzle together. On the oceans, he used longitude and latitude lines as well an piecing together geography facts that are printed on the ocean pieces in order to find the right pieces. To the right is the puzzle as it looked at 12 AM, January 1, 2007. It is now nearly finished. This is good because I need my coffee table back! Tomorrow! As my contribution to the puzzlemania that has overtaken the family (my DD helped yesterday), I bought a puzzle map that rolls up around a central pillar so that the puzzle can be rolled up rather than be taken apart. (Target, $5.95). This has been our sole non-Bar Mitzvah educational activity in the past 3 weeks.

N. did not take a winter break yet--we have been too busy with all of the learning surrounding the Bar Mitzvah. We are going to take next week off. Monday and Tuesday we will be accompanying relatives to old town, and other interesting places. Wednesday-Friday we will be resting. We will start schooling again on Monday, January 16.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thoughts on Standards and Credentials

Well, I am at it again! I read a newspaper article from Seattle that profiled a program in which the public schools provided some services to homeschooling families in the area. Foolishly, I went to the discussion board for the article. Naturally the discussions used the article as a starting point for discussions about a lot of concerns regarding homeschooling. One such discussion was about standards and whether "amateurs" could teach their children properly. In other words, the concern is about credentials for teaching.

I couldn't help it--I just spent about 2 hours crafting an essay in response. It that forum, it is probably pearls before...well, it is probably politically incorrect to finish that sentence, but you know what I mean! :) Here is an abbreviated version of what I said:

About Educational Standards:
There has been much discussion about standards. I hold a public school teaching license (Secondary Science/Math/Social Studies and K-12 Special Education).I taught public school for 10 years. In my experience, the standards we are required to teach to are often vague, poorly stated, or so numerous that they cannot be met in the 180-day school year. I served on an advisory board for the science standards in my state when I was teaching genetics at the university level. I learned that the development of standards is often a political process in which it was more important to use politically correct jargon and to make sure not to offend anyone than it was to make sure that our students graduate with the content knowledge and skills necessary to function in an increasingly "flat world."

Am I against the very concept of standards? Not at all. The standards that I use to educate my son are higher than those of the public schools in which I taught. I demand that he can not only read and report back what what he reads (decoding and comprehension), but that he gains the background to ask questions about what he reads and compare the ideas in a particular piece of writing to other ideas that he knows about. I am educating my son to participate in the "great conversation" that is Western Civilization, and to appreciate how his life and his ideas are part of something much greater than himself; something that preceded his stay on the planet and that will continue after he is gone. My issue with the current standards movement is not that standards are bad. It is that standards ought to proceed from an integrated set of ideas about what education is and what it ought to accomplish. I do not see that in the standards that are being promulgated in my state at this time, and I do not believe that that the the current emphasis on testing can solve our current educational problems because the standards upon which they are based do not rest on a solid foundation of a well thought out set of ideas. I have many other concerns about NCLB that are tangential to this conversation about standards, but that is another discussion.

Are parents amateurs if they do not hold teaching credentials?
Most of the parents I know who are homeschooling their children are college educated people who have at least a BA or BS in their field. That is what is required of a public school teacher. The courses in education that I took focused primarily on classroom management, discipline, the legal responsibilities of a teacher, testing and other topics of importance to someone who is going to need to teach and manage large groups of other people's children. These skills are not terribly important in the situation of homeschooling because the parent is not managing large groups of other people's children. In this case, the concern about "amateur" v. "professional" is like comparing apples to oranges because the situations are not the same. The characteristics that made me a "good teacher" in the sense of being someone who could organize and convey information in a way that students could understand were not taught to me in any school of education. Rather, they came from my content knowledge, my experience and the experiences shared with me by veteran teachers. Much of what it takes to be a good teacher in this sense comes from the ability to observe a child and learn what it is that he (or she!) needs in order to learn. When I was teaching, parents were often my best source of information about the children I taught, because they knew their child intimately.

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There it is!

No photos, no anecdotes, today!
Tomorrow I will be more chatty! Today, I just had to put my thoughts down--somewhere!

Still Snowing!

Snowstorm number three!

Are we done, yet?



It started snowing on Thursday, December 28 at about 3:30 PM and it has not stopped since that time. The whole state of New Mexico is closed!
According to NOAA and the National Weather Service, a slow-moving storm with a lot of moisture in it stalled over the Sandia Mountains this morning. We had gotten 30" at our house by this morning--and it is still snowing. Above is our truck, parked at the top of the driveway and completely buried!



To the right is a picture of snow falling on the rain guage last night. I like the effect of the flash on the snowflakes. There is also a "ghost" just above the guage, a drop of melting snow on the lense just as the picture was taken.
Last night, we heard that I-40 westbound was open for a little while but it was closed before our daughter could even think of going into town.

We took a walk with the dogs this morning. My DH shoveled a path to the top of the driveway--but the county had not plowed since Friday morning, so we had to break a trail on our cul-de-sac to Via Sedillo Road. There, a lone 4-wheel-drive pick-up had driven down the road and we were able to walk in his tire-tracks. The dogs love the snow!




To the left is a picture of a fence with about 18" of snow on the top rail. The rest of the snow had fallen off behind the fence. Cedro Peak can be seen in the distance.





News Flash!! The neighbors are outside using their snowblower to make a path to the road! Awesome!! I will have to make them some cookies!







Here is a view of Via Sedillo heading north toward I-40 (and Old Route 66), both of which were closed yesterday and are still closed today! You can see the tracks of the neighbor's lone pick-up in the middle of the virgin snow. These are the tracks we were walking in. The ridge of Sedillo Hill is visible, but the Sandias behind it are hidden by clouds and falling snow.
This is awesome! (Just so long as we have clear weather next week for the Bar Mitzvah.




To the right is a picture of our daughter's car.

She parked it at the end of our cul-de-sac on
Thurdsay evening. By this morning, ML's car was buried under all the snow we got.
Beyond the barricade is the National Forest land. We saw some people heading that way with their cross-country skis this morning. N. wants to learn to snowboard and DH and I are thinking of getting some snowshoes. Oh, I do hope we are out of the drought! This is like the New Mexico winters I remember from the '80's.




Here is a picture of our house taken this morning. You can see how heavy the snow is from the tree in the right foreground. This storm brought a lot more snow than the Hannukah snowstorm. The snow was also wet and heavy, whereas the Hannukah snow was light and there was more wind and drifting that happened. There are no drifts with this snow; it is deep everywhere. There are deeper patches where it fell on top of the snow that had not melted from Hannukah.



To the right is a picture of the snow against and on top of our retaining fence. It filled up the basketball net--I wonder how you calculate those points! The trees in our yard there are weighted down by the snow. Every now and then, the snow slides off and makes what N. called "a mini-snow explosion!" It is no fun being under one when it happens. Snow down the back, snow in the face...definitely a "snow bomb!"



This is "lively Lily." She loves the snow so much that last week when ML lost the leash,


she took the kids on a merry chase into the National forest. (At least, Lily was merry! The kids weren't counting on a three mile walk in deep snow). Getting her to hold still long enough to snap a good picture was difficult, but I just kept snapping away--the joy of a digital camera--until we got a good picture.

Below is Zoey. She is not quite as enthusiastic about the snow. Could that be because she

was breaking the trail for everyone? Actually, she is a greyhound-dalmatian cross. She does not have an undercoat, so she gets cold faster than Lily, and is usually ready to come in after about 30 minutes. Lily, on the other hand, being a hound-shepherd cross, has a thick undercoat and could probably play in the snow all day without getting cold.

Guess what? The sun has finally broken through at 2:30 MST! We have had about 40 hours of continuous snow, but it looks like the storm has finally moved to the east and we can dig out. I wonder how long it will be until the state gets the freeway open? Once that and Route 66 are clear, the county will plow our roads.

I think the third snowstorm of the 2006 -07 season is coming to end for us.

Stay tuned for pictures of our saintly neighbor, Dave the Dentist, and his labs, ploughing the driveway! Wow--is that?--could it be?--BLUE SKY!

I accidentally downloaded this twice and I cannot figure out how to get rid of it! Cut does nothing!

So Here it is again. Oh, well.