Of Owl Pellets and Shakespearean Monologues
Reading updates, homeschool recollections, and solitary hours
A General Reading Goals Update
There are no updates, Captain. Moving on.
Bookish Moment of the Week
I read for an hour straight from The Last of the Mohicans. The Hurons just found their hideout. I’d seen the movie about ten years ago, but this is my first time reading the book. It’s one of my husband’s favorites, and after fifteen years of knowing this about him, I’m finally giving it a try. It’s very gripping! It’s hard to pick up but hard to put down, so it’s not a perfect fit for my preferred way of reading (ten minutes here and there while nursing a baby, or a very drowsy four minutes before I fall asleep at night). When I have more than ten minutes, though, it’s very immersive. I’m growing my attention for longer reads again.
Homeschool Tip of the Week
If you decide to dissect owl pellets with a first grader, you should know the following:
It will take 4,000 times longer than you think it will.
Don’t plan to reconstruct a skeleton. Just don’t.
Work outside on a not-too-windy day.
Good tweezers are a necessity.
Your toddler will want to help. On no account let her.
Domestic owl pellets are crammmed, and I mean crammed, with bones. I had vaguely remembered dissecting an owl pellet as a child that had a sparse but satisfying mouse skeleton. I think those were provided by the DEC, though, and not purchased from a shop on Amazon. The owls who regurgitated these pellets were evidently fed very well. We pulled out three skulls and a concomitant number of ribs, hips, vertebrae, and femurs—and that’s not counting the bones that accidentally got crushed along the way.
With such bounties, even the most patient, dextrous child will grow weary of pulling fluff off of bones. When that happens, hand her a glue stick and let her glue them to a piece of construction paper.
Let her be fascinated with what fascinates her. In my child’s case, it was the teeth.
On a different day, use your charts and pictures to label the bones and figure out what species were present. Your child will hope to see moles, frogs, and birds. They will all be mice.
Quote of the Week
Alexander Pope apparently wrote these lines to criticize a friend for retiring to the country. He’s describing my ideal living situation.
(Found in How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger)
My Solitary Hours
Sunday, September 1 (an afternoon hour)
wasn’t purely solitary, but close enough
read from Joan Bodger’s How the Heather Looks, chapter 3: “A Peak in Narnia”
completed a logic puzzle in The Commonplace Quarterly Gazette. I love how easy these feel at first, and then how stumped I feel halfway thorugh. If I have time to press on, the whole thing gets solved in a rush, leaving me feeling very smart.
Monday, September 2 (a morning hour)
I drafted an essay I’m very excited about. It’s part of a series I’ve been attempting to write for nineteen months now, so you probably won’t see it here for another few months.
I went for a walk down to a different stream.
Tuesday, September 3 (an evening hour)
The Hearth! I attend this bi-weekly online course led by Tonya Rozelle of the CiRCE Institute. She’s a veteran classical educator and homeschool mom. I’m learning about “The Canons of Rhetoric,” as delineated by Aristotle. I’m so excited to understand these foundational ideas of classical education.
Wednesday, September 4 (a morning hour)
I wasted twenty minutes hoping my computer would load fast enough to write, but I couldn’t even open the document. It’s a good thing I was writing about temperance, or I’d be tempted to declare I need a new laptop. Reign in that appetite and learn some patience, Madeline. Of course, it’s hard to have patience when you’re on the clock. This is part of why I didn’t want to spend too much time writing during these hours. I don’t want to get caught up in productivity and self-imposed deadlines.
So I went outside, pulled a dewy lawn chair into the sun, and listened to crows, jays, and catbirds while I journaled a bit.
(And the next day, I figured out how to put background programs to sleep, and my laptop is working quickly again. See? Temperance. I also credit my husband for reminding me to check which programs were using the most memory or whatnot.)
Thursday, September 5 (an afternoon hour)
I took a cold plunge in Cascade Pool again. I’m up to thirty seconds. I should clarify that the air temperature is still around 70°, and the water temperature is around 55°, so these are hardly arctic conditions. Cool plunges, if you will. Still, I shivered a lot more on my way back to the house to change.
The water level had dropped a lot since the week before. You can see it in the dark spot where the rocks are still sort of damp.
I walked around the property practicing “The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strain’d.” Got it down! I’m reading Charles and Mary Lamb’s version of The Merchant of Venice with my kids, so at the end of my time alone I declaimed the speech for my family. They were happy for me. Yes, I think that’s the best way to put it. They were neither impressed nor inspired, but they were happy for me.
