Gaashk
1d ago
I am not a stay at home wife, but both husband and I have tried it out, and it is not significantly easier than paid work, and we're both more prone to depression when house parenting than most jobs we've had.
Gaashk
3d ago
I haven’t observed it either, but it is rather difficult to raise small children Orthodox, everything s long and Sunday School is after Liturgy. It sounds like they have three kids and we’re homeschooling, I could see that being pretty rough if she wasn’t into it. Some Orthodox families I know seem to have the wife going along with homeschooling because the husband has strong opinions, but isn’t that into the actual teaching part.
Gaashk
3d ago
I used to see that a fair bit back when I was reading bloggers who were trained in marketing. My impression is that it's a reasonably common and effective style, though not on the message boards I prefer, such as this one.
Gaashk
3d ago
That's interesting. I read a lot of Rod probably eight years ago, though even then he was a bit inconsistent, and wrote way too much chaff, making it hard to find the wheat. I would go to his AC blog on my lunch break, and there would be a half dozen new posts, five of which were just blatant culture warring, but it wasn't instantly clear which ones. So I gave up reading him, especially when he moved to Substack, and I didn't care to subscribe. But I was still very much in the bubble that was interested in his work, and my church did a book study about The Benedict Option. I tried looking up what happened, but he's very vague about the whole thing, and seems to be almost entirely paywalled now.
Gaashk
4d ago
That brings up part of the oddity of the story about the homeschool prom. Do the teens not know each other? Are they strangers?
I don't remember ever dancing as a homeschooled teen. There was an evangelical youth group event where we were playing games like musical winks, where the girls were in a circle, and then the boys were around them in a larger circle, and when the music stopped we had to make eye contact and wink. Something like that. I didn't like it at all, but maybe they had a point. Several of the youth group members did in fact get married to each other.
Gaashk
4d ago
Asking a girl to dance shouldn't be anything like slaying a dragon, and if the social scene is managed appropriately, it's higher risk to stand there doing nothing while the girls are making eye contact from a few feet away, and then gossiping about how lame he was for not taking the hint. Clearly, it was poorly set up. Perhaps they should revert to the more conservative circle dances.
Gaashk
4d ago
Two hours isn't that long. If your daughter is old enough to be out of pull ups, she should be old enough to hold it for two hours. Don't give her a big cup of juice.
As far as the homeschool prom goes, before making any galaxy brained pronouncements about the sexes, one might want to enquire: have they taught the kids to dance? Did they teach them dances that are compatible with the songs they are playing? Do the boys know how to play the role of lead in a partner dance?
One prom I witnessed as chaperone, many of the kids had learned folklorico as kids, and maybe line dancing or something, but the DJ was mostly playing R&B. So they mostly didn't dance, or very badly, or by themselves, until some Mexican folk came on every great once in a while, and then they danced.
Once, I went to a Baptist ball for college students. They had three practice sessions before hand, where they taught the dances and organized the pairings if necessary, since everyone was expected to learn and dance every dance. It was polkas and waltzes and such. They were very explicit that the men were expected to dance at least half the time. Most people danced.
Another dance I went to was Greek Orthodox, with an emphasis on the Greek. They were circle dances, and the priest's wife taught them for a couple of weeks before hand at coffee hour. Everyone danced.
There was a quirky Alaskan group I knew that all sang and played music, and liked to dance things like the Virginia Reel. It was very clear that no one was making any kind of long lasting commitment by asking for a dance, and that the lame thing was to stand around while a girl looked around hopefully. Another Alaskan group I knew decided to play rap music at their school dances, but actually taught the kids fan dances to accompany a drum circle. They did not dance at the school dances -- it's really very difficult to dance to rap without looking a fool, and requires a high skill level.
In general, most people will dance the two or three folk dances they know and are comfortable with, and will not dance the ones they don't know, or especially lead when they don't know what they're doing.
The DJ is largely to blame in playing music intended for couples dancing when the kids were clearly not comfortable with that.
It probably is related to the larger social scene, where it's unclear how someone should go about asking for a date -- that the social script has become largely illegible.
Gaashk
12d ago
My sense is that all of the university teaching programs have been captured by folks who teach all the new teachers that the most important part of being a teacher is being an activist.
My sense is not that, based on acquiring an education degree and teaching in public schools for quite some time. The trainings lately are so anodyne they are actually contentless -- like to the point of having the ice breaker take up literally the entire training time. For hours if necessary. "Have you heard about the iceberg? Let's talk about your Meyers-Briggs type and your own set of lenses for a few hours."
My sense is more that the teachers lately are very low on autonomy, mastery, and purpose in respect to their main job duties, and some of them have a savior complex which comes out in things like that, or filing false abuse claims against families they don't like.
Gaashk
15d ago
He was never on my side, but he used to be able to show that he understands it.
That's true for me as well, but I really liked "The Colors of her Coat" a lot, and do enjoy seeing aesthetic takes from Scott, more than political lately.
Gaashk
19d ago
Orthodox Pascha aligns with Easter this year. No discount items in stores, but I got Holy Friday off. My daughter had half of last week and all of next week off, since this district is still proud of their Spanish Catholic heritage.
The Orthodox churches flip the Matins and Vespers services, so that Thursday evening is the Holy Friday service, and Friday evening is a funeral, Lamentations. Holy Saturday morning, we are already throwing bay leaves of victory, and focusing on the Descent into Hades icon. "Let all mortal flesh keep silence" replaces the Cherubic Hymn.
I had hoped to bring my 5 year old to Pascha, and she wanted to, but it's been snowing all day, we're up a twisty mountain road, and I'm not up to driving back at 3 am, or staying until sunrise. We've got a fire going, and baked tsoureki together today.
Gaashk
24d ago
Since it's Holy Week this week, it might be worth visiting a service if it's feasible -- Friday evening (Lamentations), Saturday Morning (Descent into Hell), and Saturday night (Pascha) are all highlights, but next Sunday is also very Paschal and lovely.
Gaashk
27d ago
It’s like having a family budget, and saying you’ll make big changes to protect yourself from too much debt, and never getting around to asking if you’re spending too much on housing.
This is very common, though?
Hence all the back and forth about "you're accusing me of eating too much avocado toast, but I can't rent a tiny apartment for less than $3,000 a month." Or people with 30 year mortgages -- they aren't usually just going to sell their home and move to a cheap house in the rust belt.
In the case of home economies, the solution is often more earners -- move in with their SO, crowd more roommates in, AirBNB the casita. In the US economy, the main thing coming up is increased automation, and I'm a bit surprised that after hearing so much about US economic policy changes, and so much about AI driven economic changes looming, that there seems to be so little overlap in the conversations as of yet. Or perhaps I've just missed them?
Gaashk
30d ago
I do recall a lecture at SJC about Hume and Eastern thought, I don't remember which strand.
Gaashk
30d ago
St John's main program is indeed Western Classics based, though they have an Eastern Classics MA program at their Santa Fe location, which looks pretty interesting. You imply there isn't a language requirement, but there is -- Classical Greek and a bit of French, as I recall. The way they study science, math, music, art, and language aren't entirely captured in the book list, since they are actually working their way through some of the texts as textbooks (or listening to the musical selections and singing them), not just reading them.
Mainly, they can't necessarily update their Books List in Current Year, because they know perfectly well that if they do that, it will open up the floodgates to the kind of purges many libraries have been going through, which would kill their niche.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Electricians have to pass trigonometry. Plumbers must be able to contort themseves into rather small, awkward spaces, which is more weight and age than IQ limited. Poster Plumber on DSL said there’s a standardized test to become an apprentice plumber in CA.
Gaashk
1mo ago
I'm finally starting to appreciate baby toys with baby boy (7 months).
The girls basically ignored their toys until they got dolls, and I wondered why all the rolling things, sliding things, wooden gears and whatnot even existed. But baby boy is into them! He has something with gears on it, and he actually turns the gears!
Gaashk
1mo ago
It's perfectly reasonable for a parent's preferences to run artist>engineer>war>400 lb NEET who acts like an ungrateful wretch>homeless addict.
A son who reads poems at coffee shops and has interesting friends is nice. A son who's mostly known for eating all their family's food, messing up the plumbing and leaving it that way is not. The latter is surprisingly common among the working class families in my life.
Gaashk
1mo ago
I’ve had a messenger bag from Timbuk2 for a decade or so that I still use every day, and like.
Gaashk
1mo ago
I don't know if there's any research into especially fast and effective methods for learning to draw. Art education is in general not very interested in finding out, since there isn't a shortage of people who can draw well enough with the current methods.
A drawing course will include something like the following:
- A shaded sphere
- Cubes in one and two point perspective, a hallway in one point perspective, the corner of a rooming two point perspective.
- Negative space drawings. The space around a tree. The space around a set of easels. This is pretty important, and one of the things someone might not encounter by looking up individual topics. Especially, whenever there is an edge, you have to decide if the figure or the ground is darker/lighter, and provide contrast. Speaking of which
- Contrast! Always figure out a way to have reasonably high contrast.
- A draped cloth, preferably in charcoal. Preferably large. My drawing instructor made us draw everything on 18x24 inch paper. That's extremely tedious with pencils, but lovely with charcoals and pastels.
- Basic anatomical proportions -- proportions of a face, proportions of a body, how many heads high is a person? How many eyes across is their face? DaVinci's human in a circle.
- Some still life drawings, preferably with some reflective surfaces, perhaps silver, perhaps glass.
- Preferably a landscape; some classes have students drive to a better location for this.
- Figure drawings. The model might move every minute for warm ups, and then stay put for 20 minutes for a longer study. Sometimes after a few classes they stay put for over an hour, to allow a more finished drawing.
- Critiques.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Indeed. And since all the students surround the owl in a circle, you should also draw a slightly different angle than anyone else. Only you will know what your angle is, exactly. The teacher might make a mark or two and comment that since their head is near yours but not superimposed, those marks they made might not be exactly right.
Most of this doesn't sound right.
I'm not completely sure what this is supposed to mean. PMC Americans and aspirants take it very seriously. Others take it pretty seriously, but from what I've heard there are a lot more PhD graduates or MA graduates than positions that really need that level of education. The government takes it seriously and pours enormous amounts of money into the project. Teachers generally take it pretty seriously, roughly proportional to how much they can get their students to do. Perhaps lower class blacks and hispanics and trailer type whites don't take it seriously enough. America and the various states keeps trying to push at these groups, inspire them, prod them into loving books and whatnot, but it mostly doesn't take. There have been a lot of educational reform movements. It is perhaps not very effective in terms of value for money.
What would greater seriousness look like? Perhaps more removal of disruptive children from classrooms? That is, of course, very political.
It is. People are very happy when their kids do well in school. They get awards, congratulations, eventually scholarships. Lots of kids are not involved in sports.
That is a description of current reality.
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