The Elusive Laurie Bennett

I grew up in the Clan of the Pod People.

What this means is that my grandparents were all dead by the time I was eight years old, and that every couple of years we would make a long car trip back east to the New York area and visit our cousins, from both sides of the family. My mother is technically a fourth-generation Coloradoan through her adopted father, so I have those cute "Pioneer" license plates with the covered wagons on my car, which anyone with an extra $50 can now get. But since she was raised by her grandmother, she grew up in Colorado, and her mother got (re?)-married and moved to New York. There are a handful of my great-grandmother's family members who were in Colorado, but there wasn't much communication with them during my childhood.

Not having had very much contact with my extended family, and since my sister and I both married into fairly large families, spending holidays with them, and seeing how they all resemble each other and have common mannerisms, I have become curious about my own roots. Remembering some of my encounters with my cousins in the past (and thankfully more recently in the last year), and having been stricken by this feeling that these are my people, I really want to know more. My father and maternal aunt, apparently, were also interested, because they beat me to the punch in getting a subscription to Ancestry.com.

My father's entire family lives back in the Eastern US, within a couple hundred miles of where their family lived for a very long time. Except for his grandma Josephine's (or was it Marie?) parents, Albert Volckman (or Volkman or Volkmann) and Emilia (or Amelia, nee Wandke), who came over from Stolp in Pomerania (now called Slupsk, Poland) in 1881 on the ship Silesia, the other parts of the family had come to the area in the southern part of New York and northern part of Pennsylvania anywhere between just after the Revolutionary War, and about 1854.

Interestingly, the most elusive part of my father's genealogical puzzle has to do with the surname I grew up with, McMullen. Back when I was in high school, the Denver Public Schools required all freshman students in English classes to do a genealogical project, which required corresponding to at least two older family members about family history. One of the family members I contacted was my great-grandfather George Adam McMullen's second wife, Lola Adele McMullen (nee Wiggs), shortly before her death. I was so incredibly busy with all the things that are expected of a fifteen year old back then, that I didn't really have a chance to carefully read her response, and rather, I tucked it into my project and forgot about it until sometime last year. Ah, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. If I had been more present, I would have had it in my mind to write for some clarification on what she wrote.

So, when I restarted this investigation, the next obvious thing to do seemed to be to order George Adam's birth certificate. I knew that he was born in Coudersport, PA from his World War I draft card, which I had found on Ancestry.com. Hooray! Easy peasy!

Not so much. It turns out that the State of Pennsylvania did not start keeping birth records until after 1900.

However, and this is one of the neater parts of this story, my father remembered that George Adam had passed away during a trip to visit the family in Spencer, NY in the mid 1960's. I would have been relatively stuck here without his important clue, since he was buried in North Carolina with Lola, and they resided in New York (according to the Social Security Death Index entry for him, as well as the 1957 Rochester, NY City Directory).

However, I was able to contact the very tiny Tioga County, New York office where Vital Records are kept, and get George Adam's death certificate sent. His father was listed as John McMullen, and his mother was simply listed as "Bennett."

Their names may as well have been John Smith and Mary Jones. Even George Adam himself did not have a particularly unique name. There were at least three George McMullens who were living in that immediate area in 1900, if memory serves correctly. And, if you have not ventured even a tiny bit into genealogy, you probably are unaware of the fact that the most helpful records for researching families, the United States Federal Census, were destroyed for the year 1890 in a fire at the Commerce Building in Washington, DC in 1921 (which led to the formation of the National Archives).

So, turning back to step-great-grandma Lola's letter from 1990, we latched on to a few details to guide us in our search.

1) "He was born in Pennsylvania." (This is corroborated by his WWI draft card).
2) "When he was five years old, his father died."
3) "His mother was Laurie Bennett."
4) "They moved to New York State after the father's death."
5) "There were four McMullen Children."
6) "She later married Dr. Davies."
7) "From that marriage, there were three children."
8) "George often spoke of his favorite uncle, Adam McMullen, who was twice Governor of Nebraska."

While Lola did also say in her letter that the McMullens didn't talk about themselves much, and apologized for not having much information to share, what she did share would turn out to be critical in our search for our McMullen heritage.

I cannot even begin to tell you how many hours I looked for Laurie Bennett in the 1870 and 1880 census records in Pennsylvania, without luck. I did have a lead, or so I thought, with my father's closest DNA cousin match on GEDMATCH, a second cousin who also had Bennetts in his tree, and a large part of his tree is also in this area around this time. I tend to throw a lot of questionable stuff into my tree as "placeholders" (perhaps this makes me a bad genealogist), and at the time, I was pretty certain that our Bennetts (his from Sullivan, PA) were closely related. So, I forced a relationship there, in the interest of place holding, but never found a Laurie Bennett in his tree, only potential parents for Laurie Bennett -- a James Bennett, married to a Catherine Sullivan, and it was comprehensible that their first child might have been Laurie. But, that was pure conjecture on my part. Nonetheless, I left it that way for many months.

I looked for John McMullen deaths in the New York/Pennsylvania area on Ancestry and Find A Grave for many hours. No luck.

I looked for a Dr. Davis or Davies living with some McMullen children in the 1900 US Federal Census for many hours. Bzzz.

Finally, I decided to look into the family tree of Adam McMullen, who was twice Governor of Nebraska. Alas, he had an older brother, who would have been the right age to marry and sire a child (or four), and whose name was John FP McMullen. Only, as far as I could tell, John FP did not die. He married a sweetheart (Celia Clark) from his hometown of Wellsville, NY and moved to Chicago, living near his older brother Alexander McMullen. Did my second great-grandfather run away from his family, and did his ex-wife make up a story about his death?

On Ancestry.com, there is a kind of social networking function, where you can link your tree to cousins' trees to get updates. I got hints that the descendants of Celia Clark and John FP McMullen had trees, but I was so unsure about the connection (did Lola literally mean Adam McMullen was George's "uncle?"), that I did not connect the trees. Their only child married a man named Richardson.

On 23andMe, there is a cumulative list of surnames shared by cousins, and Richardson is one of the top matches for my father, so that made me more certain I was barking up the right tree. But then, upon closer inspection of my own tree, I found I had Richardsons in another branch. Ooops.

I decided I would flesh out "Uncle Adam's" tree, in the interest of finding any clues. Since Adam was Governor of Nebraska, it was possible to find enough information about him to research his tree pretty easily. A quick Google Search yielded a Wikipedia article, a bio on the National Governor's Association website, his grave at Find A Grave, a profile at NNDB (an intelligence aggregation tool), and a list of items related to him that is curated by the Nebraska State Archives. So, my dad and I had it in our minds that sometime we would take a quick trip out to the Nebraska Archives and see exactly what those 13 boxes and 44 items contained.

Right before we left on our trip to Lincoln, my father put in several more hours looking for the elusive Dr. Davies married to Laurie Bennett, living with some McMullen children in New York, and his persistence was rewarded. He found Anna L (or S) Davies (b Sept 14 1886 in NY), living with James G A Davies (b April 16 1838 in England), Mary E McMullen (b Jan 3 1886 in PA),  George A McMullen (b Jan 2 1888 in PA) and Mattie S McMullen (b July 6 1894 in PA) in Burns, Allegany, New York. When he found it, there was an indexing error, and George A was listed as Matilda.

This was a pretty exciting finding, on the eve of our trip to the archives, as Burns is very close to Almond and Wellsville, NY (both in Allegany County), where Nebraska Governor Adam McMullen's family lived before they moved to Wymore, Nebraska in the 1880's. Also, Lola's memory of George's family having moved to NY after the departure (?) of his father was accurate. Note that next to Anna's entry, she has indicated that she had five children, four of whom were living at the time, which is consistent with Lola's 1990 account.

Having found Anna "Laurie" Bennett Davies, I figured the task of finding her in the 1880 US Federal Census would be worthwhile. Indeed, I found, in Ulysses, Potter, Pennsylvania (not far from Coudersport where her son George Adam McMullen was born), Anna L Bennett (age 13), living with her father, E O Bennett (age 39), her mother Mary L Bennett (age 33), and her brother, William Bennett (age 7). They must have moved to Ulysses sometime between 1867 and 1873, as Anna was born in NY, and William was born in PA.

Sure enough, I found Edwin Bennett (age 28), wife Mary (age 24), and daughter Laura (age 3) in the 1870 US Federal Census, living in Starkey, Yates, New York, which is about 30 miles away from the epicenter of my father's NY ancestors.

Since I had established the origin of Anna Laura Bennett McMullen Davies, I was curious about finding the three Davies children (which would be related to my father and I, being half-siblings of George Adam McMullen), as well as the fate of my father's elusive second great-grandmother. Skipping ahead to 1910, I found them in the US Federal Census, living in Cohocton, Steuben, NY:  Anna L Davies (age 43, 9 children born, 6 living), Olwen Davies (age 9), Leona Davies (age 4), George McMullen (age 21), Mattie McMullen (age 15), Mary Foltz (age 23, 1 child born, 1 child living), and a granddaughter, Ruth Foltz (age 3). James GA Davies is not too far away, likely at his office (?) in Nunda, Livingston, NY (age 72, married).

New York had a state census in 1915, and Laura Davis (age 48) is listed on it in Cohocton, Steuben County, along with her children, Burton Davis (age 4), Mattie Davis (McMullen, age 21), Olwen Davis (age 14) and Leona Davis (age 9). I have not found any evidence of James Davies after 1910. He would have been 77 years old in 1915, around the time of this census.

I haven't found any data yet for Anna (Laura) in 1920. By 1920, George Adam McMullen was married and living in Detroit, MI, with his wife Marie J (age 27), son George R (age 6), and daughter Betty M (newborn). His sister Mary and niece Ruth were also living in Detroit, Michigan, Mary now married to a man named George Higgins.

Leona (age 14) and Burton (age 8) Davies were living in the Masonic Home in Attica, NY. If I were to make a guess, I would say that Dr. Davies had passed away, and Anna (Laura) was unable to raise them, and had to send them off to a home for some time. I believe I found Mattie (Louise) McMullen at this time living in a boarding house in Binghamton, NY.

But in 1925, Anna Laura Bennett McMullen has married Henry Johnson, who lived nearby in 1915 (listed on the same census page), and she is living on West Main Street in Cohocton, Steuben County, NY, with him (age 59, she is 58), and her daughter Leona Davis (age 19).

On the 1930 US Federal Census, Annie L Johnson (age 63) is living with Henry Johnson (age 63) and her son Burton J Davies (age 18), on West Main Street in Cohocton, Steuben, New York.

In 1940, the US Federal Census lists Annie Laurie Johnson (age 73) living with Henry Johnson (age 73) in Cohocton, Steuben, NY

According to the internet resource, FultonHistory.com:

From The Naples Record, Naples, NY, February 2, 1949:  "MRS. LAURA JOHNSON— Services were held Salurday at 2*00 p. m. in Dansville for Mrs. Laura Johnson, 82, a resident of Atlanta and North Cohocton, who died Thursday, January 27, 1949, while visiting in Detroit, Mich. She leaves four daughters, Mrs. Louise Moore, of Dansville, Mrs. Mary Higgins, of Detroit, Mrs. Olwen Davies, of San Antonio, Texas, and Mrs. Leona Tranquill, of New York; two sons, George McMullin, of Rochester, and Burton Davies, of Unadilla; five grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren. Rev. Dalton Scott, of St. Peter's Episcopal Memorial Church in Dansville, conducted the services. Burial in Clearview cemetery, in North Cohocton."

So, that is more or less what my father and I found just before we left for Lincon, Nebraska to look for evidence of an actual relationship with Adam McMullen, twice governor of Nebraska. It's no wonder we had such trouble trying to find "Laurie Bennett," given that she was married three different times, and flip-flopped between Anna, Annie, Laura and Laurie.

Stay tuned for the exciting next installment. Now that my scanner software supports Windows 8, I have a lot of content to share!

Thera Pee

An old friend recently asked me why I haven't been blogging.

Well, I've been a bit depressed since the holidays, so that's why.

I've had an internal struggle with how much of myself I want to share in public, and how I wish to spend my time.

I've been wrestling with whether or not I'm even comfortable with how I feel about anything, and how much of my struggle is okay to make visible to my children, since they're around me all the time. I am not a good actor; I wear my heart on my sleeve. So, I'm sure they've picked up on my melancholia.* It's for this reason I've never been a fan of the idea that homeschooling is the answer for everyone, and even though I wince a little when people say "I couldn't do that," I simultaneously wonder if I'm making a good choice.

February is always hard for me, and thank goodness it is over. I decided this year I would leap into February and hope for the best, but my birthday (very early in the month) hadn't even arrived before something awful happened. And, it didn't even happen to me, but to people who are very dear to me.

Last February was terrible, too, with implications for quite a few of my friends and family. And so I feel a bit like a bad luck charm, but I know it has nothing to do with me at all.

But anyway, it has me pondering various aspects of my existence and rearranging my priorities.

Life just seems too short to spend time reading about how blogger A is disrespectful to his readers and blogger B needs to go screw herself, or how eating a little bit of sugar is going to cause us all to rot from the inside out. I kind of wish more people would decide that it's not worth wasting our precious hours giving these actions and ideas any support. Feeding that type of energy absolutely will rot us from the inside out.

I post all this in the interest of transparency. I don't get a lot of hits on my blog, but I have enough that I would hate anyone to come away thinking I totally have my poo-poo together, because I don't. I'm thoroughly human.

I'm trying to rebuild.

Two words (for anyone who has seen So I Married An Axe Murderer): Thera Pee.

For me, this will take the form of art, and at the very least a small, if not permanent, hiatus from health discussion groups (I think -- I have an ancestor with the surname Fickel, so that's my excuse). Here is my first watercolor painting in twenty-four years or so (using 29-year old watercolors):

*Another word for "melancholia" is "lugubriousness" which makes me giggle a little bit, and thus defeats the purpose. :)

Never-Ending Summer

I feel so much better having written about that school stuff -- getting it out of my head was so cathartic!

I didn't get to post yesterday, because I've been pretty busy.

We have this basement space that was a big reason we purchased this house. It's no big deal, it's just that it was actually *finished* space. I've never lived in a house with a finished basement; in fact, when I was growing up, I slept in a partially-finished basement until my parents had a second story put on our house when I was ten. When the construction work was being done, we had a burglar. He probably thought the house was vacant, since it happened on the night before Christmas Eve, and there was no roof on the house!

Anyway, I woke to some noises at the end of my room, where the basement stairs ended, and my mom (still) keeps her sewing machine, and saw a flashlight. I was terrified, of course. Somehow I didn't pee the bed. I just lay there, pretending to sleep as best I could, until I heard the footsteps go back up the stairs, and then was able to breathe again. The only thing that was taken was some cash from my father's wallet.

So, anyway, I have a strange relationship with basements. I see them as opportunity spaces. In the unfinished room next to my bedroom we did (and my parents still do) their laundry. There is also a kiln in there, and a kick-wheel for doing pottery. We did a lot of pottery at our house when I was growing up!

As long as they're not touching me, spiders don't scare me.

I think, too, I've always been a tad envious of homes with a nice comfortable basement space -- with a pool table, or air hockey, or foosball, and a place to watch movies, and a place for guests. So, we got this house.

On the day after we moved in, the sewer backed up into said finished basement. (Hello, Mr. Insurance Man, if you are reading this blog, your comapny doesn't cover this lonely problem my house has, so you can go on your merry way). Crap. Literally.

It took me three years of living here to see the pattern. Every November or so, we would have The Backup. Well, that would happen as long as I called the regular sewer rooting company, which used an auger-like device, to clean the sewer line. It involved going in through the basement window and across the carpet (ewww), so after that, we had the special carpet-cleaning company come and sanitize everything. But then, after having the sewer line camera run, we realized we had bellies in our sewer line. Our house was built within the last 30 years, so that's an unexpected bummer.

The next company I called used a pressurized system to clean out the lines, and the second time they came, we realized they could use the sewer access for the RV parking we have, so they don't have to come in across the carpet anymore! Hooray!

And, we figured out the problem... fat. Yep, all those bacon drippings and coconut oil, even the tiniest amounts I was washing down the sink, were collecting in the bellies and occluding the poo exit for our house, such that one overzealous wiping session could leave the basement filled with...

Yeah! So, anyway... I have them come clean the lines every Fall, and I am careful to wipe out all my pans carefully with a paper towel before washing them, and, (fingers crossed, knocking on wood), no problems! Except that I forgot to call last Fall, and I haven't called yet this fall. And it got cold. They can't do it when it's below freezing.

So, anyway, the space is pretty nice, and I have tried several permutations for keeping our junk (there's so much of it -- mostly books and crafting stuff and board games) down there. But we never seem to make it down there. And people don't really stay with us anymore, now that Erick's parents live across town. Which means I've gotten really lazy about keeping things clean. Especially down there.

We were working on learning electronics on one side of our big project table, and doing claymation on the other side. It was nice because we could leave half-done projects down there and not worry about picking up. Except that my sister would really like to come visit, and it's totally not toddler-friendly down there. Nope. In fact, one time when my other nephew came to visit once, he and my daughter got into the craft cabinet and spread all the beads all over the carpet. Thank goodness for vacuums.

And, there have been dog issues down there. Grr. There's a door, and keeping it closed eliminates the dog problems, but folks don't always close the door.

So, anyway, I spent last weekend and the earlier part of this week doing some major stuff-shuffling, because I wanted to move all of our messy stuff into the guest bedroom and take the bed out of there, so I can lock that door when we have young guests. And we moved L's daybed down into the larger rec room area, so there's essentially a king-sized bed down there, which we can sit on to watch movies. Lucy got the queen-sized bed which we were using as a guest bed. And that left a lot of space open... for a sauna!

The sauna arrived yesterday, and I was mostly ready for it. We were instructed by E not to put it together without him. He loves assembling things, much like I did at that age.

I've been thinking about getting a sauna ever since I had organophosphate poisoning when we moved here seven years ago, and E had arsenic toxicity. It's probably a good thing I didn't get it then; I was in much too delicate a place for sauna therapy at that time.

But now, I've become aware of the health benefits of infrared light; especially the near infrared spectrum, at 660 and 880nm, which helps recycle the copper moeity in the mitochondrial enzyme cytochrome c oxidase. We've been using "chicken lamps" around our house for recovering from illness, and reducing stress and inflammation, and counteracting the negative effects of blue light (which turns off cytochrome c oxidase), for about a year now. For a while, I was traveling to a nearby tanning salon for red light therapy, but it was quite costly, and I figured out it would only take about a two years of doing that to pay off a red light therapy bed.

Our summer this year in Colorado made this seem all the more important. In June we had a huge fire nearby which left our air quality in such poor condition that our county and neighboring counties were advised to stay indoors. Then, it was over 90 degrees fahrenheit for a record number of days -- well into the end of August, if I recall correctly. So, our outdoor time was pretty much zilch.

I figured we would see the bad side of that pretty quickly, and we did. It's been a frequent illness fiasco here this fall. But the good news is that we are recovering from these illnesses very quickly with fat soluble vitamins and chicken lights, and our moods are good.

L even had all the symptoms of strep disappear in about a day, sitting under a chicken light.

This is the kind of crazy stuff I think people need to know, but that I worry about posting in a public place, but here I am, posting it.

I get a lot of questions about chicken lights, so I'll just go ahead and post here what I got at my local Home Depot.

1) 250W BR40 Halogen Flood Light
There are also 125W versions, which will use electricity, but that also means less of this luscious energy for your mitochondria. There are red ones, which would mean less of the blue spectra, but this is what I prefer to use at my work and reading spaces.

2) 300W Brooder Clamp Light
This is just one example, and this is the one from Home Depot. I got other ones at my local farm supply store.

Oh, and I am getting rid of all those terrible compact fluorescent bulbs in my house, one at a time. I still have some in areas where we don't use the lights very often, but in our living spaces, it's all halogen and halogen incandescent. The halogen incandescent bulbs are available even at the local grocery store, and use about 20-30% less electricity than a regular incandescent bulb.

From Wikipedia:

"According to the European Commission Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) in 2008, CFLs may pose an added health risk due to the  ultraviolet  and blue light emitted. This radiation could aggravate symptoms in people who already suffer skin conditions that make them exceptionally sensitive to light. The light produced by some single-envelope CFLs at distances of less than 20 cm could lead to ultraviolet exposures approaching the current workplace limit set to protect workers from skin and retinal damage. Industry sources claim the UV radiation received from CFLs is too small to contribute to skin cancer and the use of double-envelope CFLs "largely or entirely" mitigates any other risks.^[49]

"A 2012 study comparing cellular health effects of CFL light and incandescent light found statistically significant cell damage in cultures exposed to CFL light. Spectroscopic analysis confirmed the presence of significant UVA and UVC radiation, which the study's authors conjectured was attributable to damage in the bulbs' internal phosphor coatings. No cellular damage was observed following exposure to incandescent light of equivalent intensity. The study's authors suggest that the ultraviolet exposure could be limited by the use of "double-walled" bulbs manufactured with an additional glass covering surrounding the phosphor-coated layer.^[50]"

And let me just say, the sauna is awesome. The winter is not only *dark,* but *cold,* which is a metabolic stressor. I have some local friends who saw the benefits of getting a regular hot tub a few years ago. I think it is just a regular hot tub, but the larger of the two lost a significant amount of body fat using it every night throughout the winter. We do tend to lose metabolic momentum over the winter. We usually blame that on overeating through the holidays, but living in Northern climates, we have the additional metabolic stressors of darkness and coldness. So, the sauna is my plan to combat that stress.

Meditation and music are also regularly touted as ways to combat stress. The sauna I got has a sound system in it, and it's nearly impossible not to melt into the music and let my mind go blank while sitting in there.

We're also interested in the possible effects on some skin problems we've experienced, so I am eager to see what becomes of those.

Today, we pushed the 500 pounds of sauna into the corner of the basement where it will reside. I guess that makes it official. We own a sauna. To celebrate, this afternoon, I shampooed the carpet.

If you don't have space or money for saunas or chicken lights, you can simply go for walks near dusk or dawn year-round and get the benefit of more red than blue light. But if you're on the blue-light-emitting computer screen reading about all this weird stuff, and seem to miss the appropriate windows, then maybe some chicken lights are in order.

LEARN THIS!

This was a crazy, hopeful, and exhausting day.

I am so fortunate that my mom-in-law is here, so she could play with the kids today, and get them to their acting class. It was like cloning myself, except much better, because I got to spread the exhausting wealth.

(Really, Java? Update EVERY DAY? Is that really necessary?)

So, the day started out by meeting at the local coffee shop with Monika and my school board member. I was really nervous about it. People are usually confused as to why a homeschooling mother (or relaxed or eclectic or unschooling, or whatever I am at the moment) would have any business talking to people like the local school district superintendent, or the other administrators, or the school board members. They themselves are puzzled at first. If I have such a sweet deal on my end, why talk with them?

Well, because... I think more people can have this sweet deal. It's not out of reach.

Research shows that what standardized tests measure best is socioeconomic status. If that's true, then my kids were going to "be fine" (on the basis that doing well on a standardized test means "being fine") no matter what. And, no matter how much song and dance we do, are we going to raise the test scores of kids in the lower socioeconomic levels, if that's what is really being measured?

Judging from the information that a child's likelihood of staying in school through adolescence is directly related to whether or not he or she was talked and read to by an adult before age 3, it's my opinion that the school system, whether or not its true purpose these days is to make factory workers or not, is trying, the wrong way, to minimize this "achievement gap" which is really a resource gap from early childhood.

I think it's safe to say that most teachers become teachers because they have a passion for making a difference in the lives of children. Only now, because of legislation like No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top, they are slaves to standards and bureaucracy, rather than serving the young souls for whom they care so much. So often, the finger is pointed at them.

There's a lot of finger pointing going on, because everyone is under so much pressure. We could try pointing fingers at the administration, but I can tell you that those folks are doing more than we know, too. These are also people who went into the field to serve young people, but instead, they too are slaves to standards and bureaucracy. They collect all the information given to them to report to the State so that the schools can get money, so the teachers can eat and clothe their families, and the school buildings have light and heat and cafeterias with food.

Every cent that goes into schools has to be justified by hours in a seat (that is the October Count, if you are in Colorado), and now test scores.

So, if we are incapable of changing the achievement gap through forced education, the schools with the lower test scores and attendance (from the lower socioeconomic strata) are going to continue to have less and less funding.

Rather than be a slave to the almighty dollar (which is easy for *me* to say), because we really can't get in a time machine (a TARDIS!) and go back and make sure that child was well-nourished in the womb, or that his or her parents only had to work one job a piece, so that they would have time to read and talk to that child, there are two major things we can do to remove barriers to success for these learners.

We can provide opportunities. We can provide resources.

Well, unless your school district is one that has decided that after-school programs will now pay rent. Then, the lower-income schools and families will automatically be locked out of using that *public space* after school. And, if your school district has decided in addition that after-school programs must be attended by a certified teacher employed by said school district, and said teachers are already overextended, then you might just see most of the after school programs disappear.

And, of course, if you have too much homework to participate in after school programs, or there is not adequate transportation to where they happen, because the school district cannot provide buses to take you where things are happening.

The school day, in general, entailed much boredom for me. Like everyone else, I lived for that last bell. That's when the fun began. So many opportunities for growth and learning were provided after that bell, like drama club, Odyssey of the Mind, Optimist Club, Mathletics, United Nations, dancing, art, gymnastics, piano... all the things that don't "count" in traditional schooling, but serve, rather, to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to college applications.

In our city, we have a fairly large pool of retired individuals, many of whom worked in engineering at the original Hewlett-Packard facility. We have many talented artists, too. But these folks aren't considered useful as mentors by our current school district policy. They have a system for background checks in place. Why not use it?

Liability. Nevermind that most of the big news-making stories of late, the ones that, when I hear about them, drain the blood from my body as fast as light leaves a room when I flick a switch, happened in schools, and were perpetrated by people who are part of the school system.* People who would have passed a background check. Before they cracked. Students, or teachers. The people whose performance we are watching so closely these days. The people under a great deal of pressure. (*Note that because so many of us are affiliated with the school system -- a third of the world's population is school aged -- the chances are pretty high already that tragedy will somehow be associated with schooling).

We have essentially put community and school in separate silos, not allowed to intermingle during the September through June, 7 am to 4 pm time periods. So, for most of a child's life, he or she is not allowed to interact with the whole of society; rather his greatest connections come from those he makes with other immature humans. Any connections he makes with adults are usually fleeting, and fraught with assessment. Every adult has an agenda when they meet a child. We're all consumed with worry about the future of the planet and these children, we can't help ourselves. "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" And then we give our stamp of approval, or we don't.

So, when I brought up this troubling situation of tweens entertaining the idea of suicide, I thought my school board member would be surprised, but he was not. He knew all too well of this phenomenon. And he also said that he hears over and over in his position with his church, the message that "Nobody knows me" from the youth.

Teen angst. Adolescence. What if these are manufactured, and not natural, phenomena? What if they are the natural outcome of an existence without relationships in which one can be authentic? What if they are the natural outcome when every adult in our life has some sort of agenda for us?

And that brings me to exactly why I am so passionate about this topic. I was working on a PhD in Neurobiology and Molecular Biology in the mid 1990's, having completed an undergraduate degree in Psychology. My specific interest was the biological basis of Learning and Memory, and our laboratory was interested in the mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's Disease. My specific research was on the relationship between estrogen and memory. In the background research I did to prepare my hypothesis and research design, the groundbreaking work had been done on one particular topic -- that stress hormones, particularly the glucocorticoid cortisol, block memory formation.

That's right. So increasing the pressure on every child to do better, and every teacher to *make* those children do better, may be accomplishing the opposite of what we intended. Instead, our "achievement" (since we like that word so much) yielded adolescence, teen angst, low test scores, and a population who has learned to be helpless. Because the harder the system tries -- the more stress is placed on achievement -- the harder it becomes to "achieve" or even remember what was "achieved." So, why try at all?

For this reason, whenever I sense stress in my children, during a learning situation, I encourage them to take a break. And, well, nothing is compulsory for them, so any learning they do is usually in the context of neurotransmitters of pleasure. It's amazing how much they remember.

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On the biological front, I've been studying a text written by Gerald Combs. The Vitamins: Fundamental Aspects in Nutrition and Health was published earlier in 2012. I purchased it -- the first current textbook I have purchased since I left the educational system in 1999 -- because it looked like it had a good recent summary on the research done on Vitamin K2. I was not disappointed! I read that chapter back in April of this year, and after a busy summer, have finally picked it up again.

Related to the rest of my post today, and heavy on my mind, are the long-term effects of malnutrition in utero. See for yourself (from page 318):

"Animal studies of long-term potentiation, a synaptic model of learning and memory, have revealed that maternal deprivation of the vitamin during gestation and lactation specifically reduces the development of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor subtype in the young. Although the metabolic basis is not understood, these effects appear to be related to the loss of dendritic arborization in vitamin B6 deficiency. These lesions are thought to underlie reported effects of impaired learning on the part of the progeny of vitamin B6-deficient animals and humans."

Considering how I was wasting B6 on a low-carb diet, I wonder about the potential effects on babies born to mothers in similar situations. More research for another day.

On GAPS and Safety

The Gut and Psychology Syndrome diet was created by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride for her child who suffered from learning disabilities, and was based on Dr. Elaine Gottschall's Specific Carbohydrate Diet, a popular intervention in the "biomedical community" of parents treating their kids on the Autism Spectrum. Below is a letter I personally wrote to the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) in response to the growing popularity of the GAPS diet with WAPF members for treating all manner of health issues.

If you want to see the Weston A. Price Foundation's response, you will have to get your hands on Volume 13, Number 3 -- the Fall 2012 Issue of Wise Traditions.

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I think the Foundation's endorsement of GAPS has pushed the Carb Wars further in the low carb direction. People appear to be making the illogical conclusion that because it is effective for some children with Autism, not only is it good for all kids with Autism, but it will cure everything. In 2006, I successfully treated my own son in the context of a well-rounded Weston A. Price Foundation recommended diet, which included fruit, maple syrup, honey, rapadura, raw milk and soaked grains, so I don't see the utility in GAPS for all Autism Spectrum Disorders. From my online forum experience and as a past Chapter Leader I have endless feedback that GAPS has become a panacea rather than a temporary therapeutic approach.

In 2009, I personally got swept away in the low-carb wave, and by Spring of 2010, was battling fatigue, depression, hair loss, dry skin and menstrual problems. My son's anxiety returned, and my kids have since not been as healthy as they were in 2007 and 2008, on a well-rounded Weston A. Price Foundation-inspired way of eating. All the broth and liver in the world did not make up for the effects of the lost glucose. We are still recovering from that experiment!

WAPF is itself is a non-profit organization. I believe its most important contributions are in the areas of connecting consumers with local, nourishing foods, underscoring the importance of animal foods and saturated fats in the diet, and highlighting the destructive effects of food additives. Those recommendations alone have the potential to make a great impact on the health of any individual. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the Chapter Leaders are in the health business and are thus biased, more apt to follow trends, or recommend things that worked for them personally, without understanding that there may be no universal solutions. Quite a few of them are demonizing carbohydrates. Many benefit from the client base attracted by the Weston A. Price Foundation. All of the "Real Food Bloggers" (like the ones who try a diet on the bestseller list because it mentions Green Pastures CLO) and tangentially-related health professionals (Chris Kresser, Paul Jaminet), even if they don't speak at the conference, definitely affect the direction the organization is trying to take. People turn to these sources to recreate the kind of support they get at local chapter meetings. Their well-marketed messages, in the interest of attracting hits, advertisers, and clients, are becoming louder than the organization's message.

While Price himself discovered that there were healthy individuals all over the world eating many different types of foods in different combinations, Chapter Leaders, bloggers and Paleo gurus are spreading the message that "carbohydrates feed yeast, fructose causes fatty liver disease, and glucose spikes insulin!" This type of fear, coupled with the rapid weight loss one experiences on a low-carb diet, is driving people to try extreme diets in the name of improving their health, rather than taking a balanced approach. GAPS, for a person who is still struggling on a well-rounded WAPF diet, looks like the perfect solution. The basic tenet that glucose fuels a healthy metabolism via mitochondria and thyroid is now overlooked. Somehow we've made this all about the intestine, and for folks who are unfamiliar with the context of a whole organism, these scientific arguments are difficult to sort out. I got sucked into it, too. Scientists are fallible. They make mistakes in their research and in their conclusions. The idea that there is a perfect solution at all is a logical fallacy in itself.

I am suspicious that these low-carb approaches do not support hormonal health in menstruating, pregnant, or nursing women. Furthermore, its safety during pregnancy and breastfeeding has not been established. Pregnancy ketosis in animals is analogous to toxemia in pregnancy, and can be induced by simply reducing a pregnant animal's feed ration. This organization's mission, from what I could tell when I originally joined, was especially to prevent the malnourishment of mothers and children, and thus, I cannot understand why so many "volunteers" would advocate the use of a diet which promotes ketosis, specifically in this population. I think if the organization is going to support the use of the GAPS diet for "curing" all these health problems, at the very least, its safety during pregnancy and breastfeeding needs to be investigated before harm befalls unborn children.

Amy Lewark, MS
Ohio University Neurobiology '99

Make it from Scratch - Scratch @ MIT 2012

The kids, over the last year and a half or so, have become prolific "Scratchers," members of a growing online community using MIT's Scratch programming platform. My son had learned several other programming languages before a recommendation for Scratch had been passed my way. So, when he became interested in what looked to me to be a dumbed down version of much more complicated programming he was already doing, I was a little nervous.

Why was I nervous? I think that person in me with eighteen years of formal education was concerned that he would lose skills he had gained using something so simple. It seemed akin to building things with Duplo when one had been building complicated robots with Lego Technic.

He would quickly show me that I was absolutely wrong.

Not only did he continue to work on projects in C#, JavaScript, and other languages, he figured out to do some pretty powerful stuff using Scratch. He created a game which can be downloaded onto two computers using the Mesh functionality, which allows playing over a network, so it even includes the ability to chat. He's experimented with both physics and math simulations, as well. He was inspired by other users to created his own operating system using Scratch, which he called OllieOS. He even embedded it in his website (although it's still under construction, he tells me).

Not having to worry about semicolons and right parentheses freed him up to really tinker.

In the process of all that tinkering, he came up with a list of things he would improve in Scratch. So, I asked Monika if she knew anyone on the Scratch Team, and she got us hooked up with Karen Brennan. We did an interview on Skype with Karen and another graduate student from Harvard, Mylo. It was less of an interview and more of a one-hour Scratch geek out. My son and daughter had so much fun, and ever since then, the Scratch Team has been elevated to celebrity status in my kids' minds (my husband joked that Karen Brennan is my daughter's Justin Bieber). Just a few months later, we had the opportunity to see Karen speak at a Donnell-Kay educational discussion, "What Matters and What Counts in Education" held at the Denver Botanical Gardens.

So, when Karen recommended we attend the Scratch @ MIT 2012 Conference, we immediately knew what we would be doing in July. This conference was designed for educators, but did have a handful of kids in attendance. It was really the perfect conference for someone who is trying to change education, surreptitiously or not. And I say that because all around me were the people in the trenches; I could feel the awkward adolescent nature of this revolution. There were plenty of discouraging things happening, alongside plenty of inspiring ones. There were over 400 attendees from 31 different countries.

Here are quite a few highlights from the conference:

• My daughter and I attended the "Physical-Digital Chain Reaction: WeDo and Scratch" session, where during the course of three hours, we created a giant Rube Goldberg Machine, which passed a bouncy ball through the physical and virtual space of nine computer stations (computers from all over the world -- our neighbor's computer had entirely Japanese Text). We used the Lego WeDo sensors and motors to interface with Scratch, sensing when we received the bouncy ball from our neighbor on the left, and then passing a ball to our neighbor on the right, after it crossed through the Scratch program on our screens. That's my daughter and I counting to start the machine.

• My husband and son attended the "Diving Deeper With Scratch 2.0" session, which I assume was intended for more advanced users to discuss technical aspects of the upcoming Scratch 2.0 release. Whatever went on in that session got our son really excited to attend college someday. Apparently he asked a lot of intelligent questions, and then got to share some of his hard work with people who could appreciate it! One of the people attending that session was Mariana Ludmila Cortes, the President of One Laptop Per Child in Mexico. It turns out she is a homeschooler, too!

• Karen and Mitch Resnick, director of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT were the first Keynote session. For those of you who are unaware, the Logo programming language and the idea for Lego Mindstorms were born at MIT, under the direction of Seymour Papert. I wish I had taken notes, but if I had, that probably would make my blog post longer than necessary. :) Suffice it to say, everyone was pretty pumped after Karen and Mitch discussed the history of Scratch and how it has made its way into schools around the world, influencing the development of computational thinking in our next generation.

• Joanne Barrett of the Out-of-Door Academy in Sarasota, FL gave a 5-minute Ignite talk entitled "Getting Computer Science into the Curriculum" -- the most important points being that the focus on learning standards is crowding out time for technical education (a theme we would see repeated many times during the conference). I honestly thought I heard her say that Florida was dumping STEM education in 2013-2014, but I can't find any references to that online, only references to the University of Florida axing its Computer Science Department. On a more practical note, she said that getting students to understand the x/y axis was the hardest part of getting them going in Scratch. Here is a little game that shows the concept pretty well.

• Barbara Manchee from Pittsford Sutherland High School in Pittsford, NY discussed promoting self-directed learning in her classroom in her presentation "Creative Thinking thorough Game Design and Multimedia." She said that using an ice-breaker activity helped students to loosen up and feel comfortable exploring. She advocated use of video tutorials and Scratch Cards (see links on her web page).

• In "Design-Based Learning, Computational Thinking, and the MIT Scratch Curriculum Guide" Judy Hoffman, Melissa Nordmann, Russ Clough, and Tyson Spraul discussed their experiences using the newly released Scratch Curriculum Guide. While I tend to avoid using curricula myself, it was clear that the Scratch Ed Team had put a lot of work into developing this 70+ page curriculum guide for use around the world, and that it had been used quite successfully by Judy, Melissa, Russ and Tyson in their classrooms. My impression was that the curriculum fostered creativity and enjoyment, while simultaneously introducing basic programming skills. Each teacher's experience has been preserved on the Scratch Ed website -- just click on the teacher's name above.

• Stephen Howell from Ireland, Nobuko Kishi and Manabu Sugiura from Tsuda College in Japan and Anders Berggren from Sweden wowed us all by demonstrating Scratch's new ability to interact with the Xbox Kinect using the plugin Kinect 2 Scratch that Stephen made for his son. The Japanese team held workshops at their women's university, using pairs of students that created games during the workshop which was several hours long. Here's a tutorial that Stephen put on Vimeo.

• A poster session capped off the first day. These geeks really enjoyed connecting with Wolfgang Slany, Austrian creator of Catroid, a version of Scratch for the Android phone, chatting a bit with Brian Harvey, from UC Berkeley, programmer of "Snap! A Grownup Programming Language Based on Scratch," Alessandro Colombi from Brazil, creator of the PicoBoard Simulator, and peeking over shoulders at Kazuhiro Abe, Tomo Niimura, Koji Yokokawa, Kazunari Ito, and Daisuke Kuramoto's NanoBoardAG, a less expensive alternative to the PicoBoard, which quickly sold out!

• Friday started off with a bang -- the Keynote Speakers were Connie Yowell, Director of Education for U.S. Programs, MacArthur Foundation, and Jan Cuny, Program Officer, National Science Foundation. According to Cuny (referencing the Bureau of Labor Statistics), one half of all STEM jobs in the year 2020 will be in IT, and two thirds of the *new* STEM jobs will be in IT. Cuny believes that pretty much every discipline will require a foundation in computing in the future. Currently, only 19% of students take an academic computing class in high school. About 20,000 high school students take the Computer Science AP Exam each year, compared with 240,000 who take the Calculus Exam. Most schools have something called "Computer Science" in their coursework, but in most schools, it is not programming, it is keyboarding or word processing. Most of the funding for STEM classes is targeted at middle and high school grades, but kids have usually chosen a technical field by the time they are in 8th grade, so in that sense, the educational system is missing the ball. Well, that's just the beginning of a very interesting talk which delved into the topic of Badges, as well.

• A resourceful team of people from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, Margaret Low, Philip How, John Rendall, and Marie Low, gave a great presentation called "Sensing Our World." There was a huge turnout, and only an hour of time, but in that hour, we learned how to use the PicoBoard along with an index card and pencil to make a slider control in Scratch. Other controllers made from household materials are listed on their website. An important concept discussed in this session, as well as in the poster presentations is that touching the real world with programming makes it more enticing to new learners. There is something magical about interfacing with reality; perhaps that is why robotics programs have become so popular, with computer science lagging behind. But, the really profound thing about this group of individuals was the approach they have taken. They have set up a network of volunteers that go into schools in their area, and create these educational opportunities for the students there. Really, they just barge into the school and ask them for a time when they can use the computer lab, educate the teachers about these things, etc. I found it very inspiring -- rather than resting on their laurels, lamenting the fact these skills are being overlooked in the schools, they are providing the opportunities for the kids who may want them in after school programs. It's a lot like what Ken and Liz Rayment are doing in Loveland, CO with their non-profit company, Action-Works, which has brought robotics to all but two schools in our district. It's a testament to the power of community.

• I didn't get to attend the session on "Getting into the Digital Music Game with Scratch" run by Jesse Heines and Gena Greher from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, but my informant (Dianne O'Grady-Cuniff from Virginia) said it was also spectacular. All of the resources needed are on the website. But the other interesting tidbit Dianne shared with me is that because of the grant money they acquired, Jesse is able to refund educational expenses for any tech educator who brings along a music teacher to their workshops!

• Saturday morning was a Keynote session I think a lot of people were eagerly awaiting. Several teachers, students, the STEM Coordinator and the Superintendent from Ramapo Central School District in Hillburn, NY presented on their experiences using Scratch in their STEM curriculum. The students shared their projects, including the difficulties and triumphs they encountered while making them, which elicited a lot of delight from the audience. Ramapo's motto is "Educating for Personal Excellence." They had quite the impressive STEM curriculum for their 2nd-4th graders, including multiple units from EiE and NSF for each quarter. Overall, I left this session feeling thankful that kids were getting to experience these sorts of things more than once a week or once a month (as I did in Gifted and Talented special sessions in Elementary School), but still feeling a bit unsettled about it, particularly when one of the teachers displayed her rubric for assessing the students' Scratch projects. I think a lot of my son's projects wouldn't have been given a very good assessment using the litany of requirements contained on her rubric. For one thing, he very rarely uses sprites he draws himself. But I certainly wouldn't place less value on what he has learned through his experimentation with Scratch because of that.

• After that, we attended the Show and Tell session, which was a lot of fun. First, user randalpik shared his very detailed cat and mouse game, Basement Showdown. Then my daughter, puppypaws, showed the wolf drawing tutorial she made. User warriorbunny shared a fish simulation she made. Some Japanese middle school students shared hotsoup's project, which models natural human movement. Japanese users masaishi and kyrie0513 wanted to share a mesh game they had made, but for some reason, the network in the Events Space wasn't supporting mesh at the time. My son, who is knector, shared a game he had made called Fruit Scratch, which worked with his web cam. (You can't see it on the website, because it is only on Scratch 2.0, which hasn't been made public yet). He ended up showing it because the first project he made vanished into the ether due to a bug when he saved it, and the second one used mesh (we figured out watching the Japanese folks struggle unsuccessfully to get their mesh project working, that he needed to think quick and show something else).

• And, it turned out that the mesh not working enabled us to connect a bit with Junya Ishihara who helped start the first Coder Dojo in Tokyo. 

That was really all just the tip of the iceberg, but we sure did have a lot of fun! The atmosphere at the Digital Media Lab was so hopeful. Sure, there was a certain amount of frustration, but I think, for the most part, there was a shared feeling that we're on to something really promising, and I've never seen such a gathering of people so dedicated to changing the future. I wish I could bottle that inspiration and share it with everyone I know.

Mylo made a video of his impressions of the Scratcher Space, the area where the Scratchers tinkered which was played during the Closing Keynote, and you can see it here. You might see someone familiar, and his creation in Scratch 2.0, around the middle of the video, if you pay attention.

Well, those were my impressions at the conference, but you can delve in deeper:

Mitch and Karen shared their impressions on the MIT Media Lab Blog.

The Conference Twitter feed, Flickr photostream and Storify.

Matt Arnold's Storify and blog.

Kim Wilkens' blog.

History in context

My daughter has developed a keen interest in the lives of others. It began, I think, when we took a trip to Washington, DC, and in the National Air and Space Museum, we were fortunate at the very beginning of our visit that day to catch the start of a docent's tour, at a plane built by the Wright Brothers. The charismatic older gentleman then took us over to the beautiful cherry-red plane flown by Amelia Earhart, described the woman's bravery, and Lucy was simply captivated. At the end, after hearing the story of the Mars Lander, we went over to the gift shop to see what was there. It was there she spotted it -- the Doring-Kindersley biography of Amelia Earhart. Up until this point, at just seven years of age, most of her reading revolved around cartoons like Garfield and Peanuts, children's fiction novels in the Warriors series, and any book about dogs.

My parents, with whom we had traveled, and Erick and Everett, all had things they still wanted to see. But since it was my third journey to the museum, and Lucy's feet had long ago exceeded their quota of steps for the day, we headed to our rendezvous point within the museum and waited for the others. It was only a few seconds after finding a place to sit that she eagerly pulled her new book out of the bag and began reading.

Sometime in the next few days, we went to the Lincoln Memorial, and naturally, its gift shop, a tiny little closet of a place, hid many biographical treasures, as well. A biography on Lincoln himself, from the same series of books I mentioned before, was the treasure found there.

We didn't have a lot of time to hang out at the place we rented near Union Station, but when we did, she was reading. Some mornings, it was difficult to get her to leave, as she was busy reading her "bio-graffies."

When we went to the National Museum of American History, which had wonderful things like the original Muppet Puppets, we saw a wooden boat -- The Gunboat Philadelphia -- which had been sunk in Lake Champlain during the Revolutionary War, and had been in Brigadier General Benedict Arnold's fleet. I'm never sure exactly what she is thinking when we are traveling through these very educational, yet fun, and sometimes overwhelming, places. But standing there, reading the sign at the bow of the Gunboat, she announced, "Wow. So this ship was sunk about 100 years before Lincoln was President." I think I've only done two pages of Singapore Math with her in her entire life, when she was about five years old, so her proclamation came as a huge surprise to me. Somehow, she has picked up this ability outside of the context of endless math drills.

A segue -- I loved that museum. I hated history as a teenager. Learning it was a requirement to apply to the prestigious universities I once wished to attend. In the early afternoon, I simply was not able to force myself to listen to the stories told by my teachers. If the lights went down and a movie was shown, I took the opportunity to take a nap, almost every time. Trying to read those dry textbooks at home after a long day of school didn't go much better. In fact, my focus and attention were so poor during those classes, although the rest of my grade point average was excellent, at some point during every history class I took, I risked passing with a "C." Apparently, what I did learn stuck pretty well, because when the kids ask me questions about history, I am usually able to give them an accurate answer (I always double-check, because I'm just not confident in that area). History, to me, is much easier to learn in the context of something meaningful.

So, when we got down to the basement of the museum, and I got to see the plastics revolution in the 1950's, and the advent of the Birth Control Pill (which I like to call "The Bitter Pill") in the 1960's, coupled with the atomic bomb, and all the things made from coal tar (toluene, trinitrotoluene or TNT, food colorings), I was in Nerd Heaven.

A trip to Washington, DC was more educational for me than many years of schooling, with regard to learning about history. This was my third trip, but it was my first trip in the context of owning my learning, and having some life experience under my belt. It was my first trip in the context of being an adult, having to pay bills, actual taxes, and really seeing suffering that happens in the world.

Most of the great learning experiences there are free -- the monuments and the Smithsonian Museums -- but there are a few which cost a pretty penny that are worth the price. The International Spy Museum was out of this world. Now, I was a big fan of Agents 86 and 99 when I was a kid, and read all the Encyclopedia Brown I could get my hands on, and geeked out on Mulder and Scully as a young adult, but this museum brought my appreciation of spies and spy technology to a whole new level. It's clear that the spy industry drives technology, for one thing. But it's also interesting that espionage has been a huge part of history. (I would love to write more, but I don't want to spoil anything, in case you decide to go).

Another great, but not free, museum to visit is The Newseum. Admission gets you in for two days, and if you're not with little kids, you will need two days to see it. I have a few journalist friends, but never really thought about how important journalism is. If you are even reading this, you are so lucky. There's a big map in the museum showing which countries have uncensored internet, for example, and those countries are few and far between. The fact that I can write this blog, which in many ways has information which flies in the face of the American Educational System and Medical Establishment, is amazing. Forget about TV news and newspapers -- the next time you complain about the partisan news establishment, imagine living in China.

Continuing my segue, we were there on the weekend that the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was opened. Erick and I took an evening after seeing the Kennedy Center with the rest of the family, to walk around and see all the monuments at night. I think we walked four miles that evening. We met the family one last time to see the Einstein Memorial in front of the National Science Foundation, and the kids sat on Einstein's lap. Then, we forged on.

Since my last visit to DC, with the National Young Leaders Conference in 1991, a monument to Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been installed, inscribed with his quotes from a time the nation faced similar problems as it does today. How could we have forgotten? How?!

We got to walk through the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial the night before the opening ceremony. We could hear James Taylor rehearsing (which sent chills down my spine, as his album was the one I chose for Lucy's birth), and walked to the brightly illuminated area, filled with African Americans from all over the country, many crying, taking it all in. Earlier in the day, we had heard Al Sharpton giving a speech at the base of the Washington Monument (which was closed for repairs from the damage during the earthquake) on the President's American Jobs Act. It felt like we were witnessing history in the making. Again, these things Martin Luther King, Jr. said... how could we forget?!

All that to say, for less than the cost the federal government pays a local school district to educate one child for a year, we took four people to Washington, DC, and had a profound educational and cultural experience. Perhaps it is not worthwhile, though, because nobody has tested us to see if we learned the required bits.

This spring I was feeling a little stir-crazy, and took a trip up to Avon, CO for a week with the kids. The plan was to drive right up there, settle in, and do whatever it was the kids wanted to do. But as I was driving west on I-70, nearly at Genessee, I was suddenly overwhelmed with nostalgia, and took a detour. As a kid, we regularly drove up to the mountains, not because we were skiiers, but because my father worked for the Colorado Highway Department (before they changed the name to the Colorado Department of Transportation, or CDOT) as a bridge designer for 33 years. He designed the retaining walls in the Glenwood Canyon, which keep the mountain from sliding down onto the road. He designed or checked the designs of all of the bridges in that corridor. So, we stopped to see the Buffalo Herd Overlook, and then went to see Buffalo Bill's Grave. Unfortunately, the museum itself was closed, but the gift shop was open!

"Oooh, Mom! Maybe they have some bio-graffies!"

Yes, they did. They had Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill. Lucy woke diligently each morning before the rest of us, to read them. I was very surprised to find her laying on the sofa, reading. I never asked her to read those books. She wanted to read them. When she saw that I was awake, too, she would share what she had read.

"Mom, Annie was adopted by this person who promised her mother that he would put her through school, but he didn't!"

Before our trip, she had decided she wanted to be a journalist. She carried a notebook with her, and write down everything we did and said for the first day and a half.

We made sure to stop on the way home and catch the museum on its open day. I didn't know that Buffalo Bill was the first comic book superhero.

She hasn't exhausted her enthusiasm for learning about people and history yet. We watched all of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s genealogy shows on television -- Finding Your Roots, Faces of America, and African American Lives 1 & 2, and the NBC show, Who Do You Think You Are? After watching those shows, she was so interested in learning about the history of families that she wanted more shows, and we started watching a genealogy show on Brigham Young University Television called The Generations Project. She still enjoys that show, even though it's about everyday people, rather than celebrities.

We ended up visiting a local homeschool curriculum store and discovering a series of historical fiction books about regular people throughout history, called Dear America. She has read about a French Slave in Nova Scotia, traveling on the Oregon Trail, and is currently reading about the voyage of the Titanic.

We watched all of A History of US on Netflix, and when that was done, she wanted to watch biographies. Last week, after watching National Geographic specials about the White House and the Presidents' Photographers (which ended up being an extension of an exhibit we saw at The Newseum), we watched documentaries on Nancy Reagan, and then on Jimmy Carter. The next day, she wanted to watch two two-hour long documentaries on John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. She had exhausted my patience. I could no longer pay attention. I didn't know how she could possibly want to watch any more. I wasn't sure she was actually getting anything out of them anymore.

Many of the topics covered, even in the children's versions of these biographies, are very serious. I do not censor what my children read; for one thing, I am not able to read books as quickly as they do. For another, I have no dreams of protecting them from the "Real World." I don't want there to be too many surprises when they finally leave this nest. I would rather help them navigate these difficult topics while we are close, and use them to help grow our foundation of trust. I want them to know that no discussion topic is off limits with us, that our love is unconditional -- that we are a safe place.

Her brother had recently read Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to Economics: Microeconomics, and since then, the Cartoon Guide to Economics: Macroeconomics had been released, so I got it (along with a huge stack of other books) for him to read. He still reads a lot of Peanuts and Garfield when he doesn't feel like reading "more serious" subjects, but as soon as that book on Macroeconomics came, he read it. Not having studied economics myself, I asked him the morning after he read it, what the difference between micro- and macro-economics was.

"Well, microeconomics is like personal finance and businesses. Macroeconomics is like countries and planets," he explains.

"Oh," I said, "Well, what's something interesting you learned from reading those books?"

"The government can help control the economy by raising or lowering taxes in a recession."

"Really?" I said, thinking of the current economic climate in this country. "What does the government need to do right now?"

"Uh, I don't remember. I may have to read it again."

And then, right on cue, Lucy came into the doorway of the kitchen from the next room, where she was listening, and said, "Well, when the government lowered taxes when Ronald Reagan was president, it *created* a recession."

<Ba-doom-boom, ching!>

She has since given me a list of about nine more biographies she wants me to procure.