Friday, 23 December 2016

A Reading Plan for 2017

My tentative plans, subject to change, but set down here with a sincere desire to execute said plans and to participate in the Challenges described below.

A Year Long Read - Norms & Nobility by David Hicks. The Ambleside Online (AO) Forum is reading through this book over the year. It's short but dense and I've wanted to read it ever since I read that the creators of the AO curriculum drew from his work and ideas in the planning of their curriculum (which I use and highly recommend) in the upper years. I probably won't be joining in the online converstion but will use the study notes that Karen Glass will be posting as we progress through the book. I've been listening to the Classical Homeschool Podcasts which discuss David Hick's definition of classical education and they have a good mix of philosophy and practice.




Back to the Classics 2017 - hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate, this will be my third year for this and I've thoroughly enjoyed finding books to fit into each category as it made me read some books I probably wouldn't have read otherwise. I'll post a more definite plan after Christmas but I'm going to try to choose books that will fit with the next two challenges:





Russian Literature Reading Challenge 2017 - hosted by Keely @ we went outside and saw the stars   (What a great name for a blog!). Keely has a comprehensive list of Russian literature to help you choose. I'd like to read:

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzenitsyn - I read this when I was about 18 and the USSR was in its prime. Solzenitsyn impressed me then and when I found a secondhand copy of the book earlier this week I decided it was time to read it again.

Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzenitsyn - I wanted to read this last year but didn't get to it.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Some short stories - eg. Gogol, Tolstoy.



Cloud of Witnesses Reading Challenge - hosted by Becky

 For an author to qualify for this reading challenge, they must be among "the cloud of witnesses".... in other words, they must be dead. (They must also be Christian.)

The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) is one book I'd like to read this year. I'll add in some others when I have had a good look at my bookshelves.




Reading the Histories - hosted by Ruth at A Great Book Study - this is a three year reading challenge and I'd like to read a couple of books over that time eg. Plato, Bede, Machiavelli. Ruth has a list of study questions to help with your reading.




Once a year, Brona @ Brona's Books has a month long Australian reading challenge in November. This will be the fourth year for me. Hope to see some of you there and if you need some suggestions just ask.





I forgot to mention my ongoing Classics Club Challenge:












Monday, 19 December 2016

2016 European Reading Challenge - Wrap-up Post


The European Reading Challenge is hosted by Rose City Reader and is on again next year. See here for details. These are the books I've read for the challenge this year that were either set in Europe or were written by a European author:


Greece - Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes

Austria - The Third Man by Graham Greene

France - I Will Repay by Baroness Orczy

Germany - All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Netherlands - The Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Turkey - The Road From Home by David Kheridian

Czech Republic - The Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka

Russia - Russia's Man of Steel by Albert Marrin

Poland - The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly

ItalyThe Confessions of St Augustine - Augustine lived and taught in Rome and afterwards Milan, where he was converted to Christianity.



Friday, 16 December 2016

A Week in Review


We're winding down prior to Christmas and holidays. Benj has finished his Liberal Arts course and has his graduation ceremony tomorrow.
Last weekend he was involved in a performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night as part of this course. He got to choose a role and decided to play Valentine, Duke Orsino's servant, mostly because there weren't too many lines! Acting isn't something he enjoys too much so it was a bit out of his comfort zone but he performed his part well.
He spent half the day yesterday trying out keyboards at the music shop. He finished 8th grade piano and passed the exam with Honours so he gets to choose an instrument. We've done that for all our children although our violinist daughter ended up with her choice of a violin before she finished her studies because she needed a good quality violin for the higher grades.

Moozle is finishing up part way through her term of work and we'll just pick up where we left off in January. She had her orchestra audition last week and was given the choice to either move up to the Symphony - she's just old enough, or stay in the Strings & Sinfonia and have the role of lead cellist. She chose the latter, which surprised me, as she tends to want to grow up too quickly being the youngest of seven.

Last week my sister-in-law and I went to a live performance of Handel's Messiah which was excellent. We had a huge storm come over and in the middle of one of the tenor's solos, a great crash of thunder overhead caused us all to gasp and jump - not the tenor. He didn't miss a beat. We were impressed with both him and the storm. It was a very fitting accompaniment to such majestic music.

About a year ago I read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and it was one of the hardest books I've tackled. This week I found this and thought it would be a good way to 'read' the book again. It's one of those books that needs to be read and re-read to appreciate its depths:





We'll be visiting family in Northern NSW and Queensland during the Christmas break and finding this book was timely as it's set in the Tweed Valley are where we will be spending some time.

Pastures of the Blue Crane by H. F. Brinsmead (1964) is an enjoyable 'coming of age' story which is suitable for around ages 15 and up. Ryl is a 16 year old girl whose mother had died years before and  has had virtually no contact with her father, except for one letter a year. From a very young age she was put into a variety of homes for children and then into boarding school. When her father dies suddenly she is called into his solictor's office where she meets her grandfather for the first time. He and his son had had a disagreement when Ryl was an infant and had not spoken to each other since. Ryl had no idea that he existed. The two had been left a run down old farm and ended up moving from Melbourne to the Northern NSW coast. Now they had to get to know each othe which was not an easy task as both of them are hostile and stubborn.
The descriptions of the area and the journey of the two as they learn to care and rely on each other makes for an interesting read. There is an unlikely twist to the story but I appreciated the way the author explored the growth of two misanthropic characters in their relationship with each other and the issue of race relationships. The author touches on the 'Kanakas' or 'Blackbirds' and the White Australia Policy.





Linking up at Weekly Wrap-up


Monday, 12 December 2016

Back to the Classics 2016 Wrap-up Post




This is my wrap up post for the 2016 Back to the Classics challenge. I diverted somewhat from my original post on the books I intended to read, although that was what I expected would happen.
So here are the books I actually read:

1.    A 19th Century Classic - Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874)

2.    A 20th Century Classic - Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1943-1944)

3.    A Classic by a Woman Author - The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy Sayers (1931)

4.    A Classic in Translation - The Confessions of Saint Augustine by Augustine

5.    A Classic by a Non-White Author - Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (1956)

6.    An Adventure Classic - The Tragedy of the Korosko by Arthur Conan Doyle (1898)

7.    A Fantasy, science fiction , or dystopian Classic - The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (1951)

8.    A Classic detective novel - Cover Her Face by P.D. James (1962)

9.    A Classic which includes the name of a place in the title - Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes (1960)

10.    A Classic which has been banned or censored - The Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka (1915)

11.    A Classic you read in school (high school or college) - All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929)

12.    A volume of Classic short stories - A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor









Friday, 9 December 2016

The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354-430)


The Confessions of Saint Augustine is the final book I've read this year as part of the Back to the Classics 2016 challenge. It's taken me all this year to get through it, not because it is a difficult read, (except for Book Ten which made my head spin) but because it is meaty and needs time to be chewed.




For those unfamiliar with the story of Augustine's life, this book records the backward looking thoughts and musings of a gifted intellectual and sensual man who lived a dissolute life for many year before saw Christianity as a religion fit for a philosopher. He recalls his struggles with moral difficulties and inordinate desires, and the crucial events in his life leading up to his conversion to Christianity, all against the backdrop of the decaying Roman Empire.
The foreword to the above edition of the book says:

His stories serve as hooks on which he hangs his big ideas, so that his journey from first rejecting to eventually embracing the Christian faith acts as a structure for him to teach his readers what it means to remember, to be human, to fail, and eventually to make peace with themselves and with God.

Confessions is less autobiography, and more performed theology. It delivers weighty theology, but it refuses to separate dogmatics from devotion, and embodies within its firm the message it conveys - that Christianity is a matter of relationship, conviction and action, not merely of intellectual belief.


Confessions is made up of thirteen books but the edition I read only includes the first ten. Some editions end with Book Nine as that is where the narrative of Augustine's life ends. Book Ten is included in Blaiklock's edition as it highlights that Confessions was not merely intended as a story, but its purpose was to teach the Christian faith. Book Ten also recalls Augustine's comments on 'Remembering' in his opening chapters.

I won't attempt to 'review' this book but rather share some comments thoughts that stood out to me and to recommend this particular edition as very accessible and readable.
Each Book has a short introduction that gives us some background on the times, and the events of Augustine's life. 

Book One

...You made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you.

The house of my soul is narrow for your entry. Let it be enlarged by you. It is in ruins. Rebuild it.


On the beginnings of sinfulness:

That I was innocent lay rather in the frailty of my limbs than in my mind's intent. I myself have watched a very small child manifesting jealousy. It could not speak but glared, pale and hostile, at its companion at the breast.

In my very childhood, however...I had no love for learning and hated to be driven to it. Yet I was driven, and it did me good...


You have decreed, and so it stands, that every man's undisciplined spirit is his own punishment.

...some man seeking a reputation  for eloquence before a human arbiter, with an audience of men around him and in the act of assailing his foe with hate, takes the utmost care not to commit a fault of speech, but no care at all lest, through the rage if his spirit, he should destroy a fellow-man...

Book Two

On his parent's ambitions for him and his father's pains to ensure his education:

Their sole care was that I should make the best possible speech and be a persuasive orator.
For who did not praise the man, my father, when beyond his family's means, he provided whatever was needed for a long journey for my studies' sake? For many citizens of far greater wealth took no such trouble for their children. Yet the same father took no thought of the kind of man I was becoming in your sight, or how chaste I was, provided I was cultivated in speech - though uncultivated in your field, God, you who are the only true, good husbandsman of that field which is our heart.


My sin oozed like a secretion out of fat.

Emulation contends for the top place, but what is higher than you?


Book Three

Augustine goes to Carthage at the age of seventeen where 'a whole frying-pan of wicked loves sputtered all around me.'
He lives with a girl who bears him a son, '...not yet in love, but I was in love with love.'
Verse and poetry I can change to real nourishment - this sentence jumped out to me. Poetry is a form of nourishment, at least I know it is for me & is something I expressed here.

Augustine writes about his mother Monica's prayers for him, especially when he became deceived with the Manichaean cult. When Monica went to a saintly bishop for counsel, he advised her to pray to the Lord for him. The bishop himself had been deluded by their teachings at one stage but she still pressed him, weeping, that he should speak to Augustine. His reply was, 'Leave me, and God go with you. It is not possible that the son of such tears should perish.'

Book Four

This book covers Augustine's life from the ages of nineteen to twenty-eight where he taught the art of rhetoric in Thagaste and Carthage. He tells of the 'disgusting an unruly lack of discipline' among his students, the illness of his close friend, his scorn of his friend's baptism and then his anguish as that friend had a sudden relapse and died.

For I felt his soul and my soul were one soul in two bodies. That is why life was a horror to me, because I did not wish to be only half alive.

Book Five

Augustine 'escaped' to Rome in 383, tricking his mother by going secretly by night so he could get away from her without her knowing. Later he became ill and almost died. He wrote of this episode:


If my mother's heart had been struck with such a wound, it would never have been healed. I cannot find words to express what her love for me was...I cannot then see how she would have been healed, if a death like that had struck through the heart of her love.


At this time too, Augustine became disillusioned by the Manichaeans when their great leader, Faustus, couldn't address Augustine's intellectual difficulties.
Augustine took up a position at Milan as a professor of Rhetoric where he met Bishop Ambrose, a man he admired and who was to greatly influence him.

Book Six

Monica arrives in Milan with Alypius, Augustine's former pupil, to find her son deeply influenced by Ambrose, who had been helping the young man address his moral difficulties. Monica also came under his influence and renounced her superstitious practices.
Alypius, although he had avoided such sports, was dragged along by some friends to a gladiator show. Augustine said that although Alypius forbade his mind to contemplate such things, it was his ears that he should have closed . As a result he becomes intoxicated with the gladiator shows and encouraged others to go as well.

The noise entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes...the sight of blood was like drinking barbarity. He did not turn away but fixed his eyes on it. Unknowingly he gulped down the Fiends of Hell.

Book Seven

Augustine is thirty-one and still wrestling. His is an inquisitive but undisciplined mind and I found it so interesting that he was influenced by Platonist writing to seek for 'incorporeal truth.'

With strongest hunger then I laid hands on the venerable writings of your Spirit, above all the apostle Paul...I began and found that whatever I had read in the Platonists was said in Paul's writing along with the praise of your grace...

He also takes pains to enumerate those things that the Platonists knew nothing of:

Those pages do not hold the face of holiness, the tears of confession, 'your sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a broken and contrite heart', the salvation of your people...No one sings in those books: 'Shall not my soul be subject to God? Of him comes my redemption, he is my God and my salvation...
In the Platonist writings no one hears him call:'Come to me all that labour.' They scorn to 'learn of him because he is gentle and quiet in heart.'


Book Eight

"Give me chastity and self-control but not yet."

Augustine's story comes to a climax as he hears the story of Victorinus, a former idol worshipper, who makes an open profession of faith in Rome. This inspired Augustine to want to do the same but the chains of his own making bound him.

...for I was afraid you might quickly hear me from afar, and swiftly heal me from the malady of lust, which I preferred to be sated rather have have extinguished.

Augustine is very honest and doesn't flinch in acknowledging his wilfulness and moral dilemma. This is so refreshing to read.
Augustine converts to Christianity and the rest is history, literally. Today he is regarded as one of the greatest fathers of the church and also one of the most important figures of Western Christianity.

Book Nine

There is an overview of Monica's life: her upbringing, marriage, conversations with her son and then her death.

Those who would find heir happiness outside themselves fade easily away and dissipate their persons on the ephemeral things before their eyes...If only they could see the eternity within their hearts.

Book Ten

My soul's Virtue, enter my soul, and shape it to yourself to have and to hold it without spot or wrinkle.

Men go to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the huge billows of the sea, the broad sweeps of the rivers, the curve of ocean and the circuits of the stars, and yet pass by themselves...


Augustine's thoughts on memory makes up the bulk of Book Ten. This was the most difficult part of the book for me and I had to continually go over what I'd read to make sense of it.

What shall I say when I am convinced that I remember forgetfulness? Shall I say that what I remember is in my memory? Shall I say that forgetfulness us in my memory fir this very purpose, so that I shall not forget?

Late I came to know you, Beauty ancient yet new.


Augustine returned to Africa in 387 A.D. and later became Bishop of Hippo. He died while the town was besieged by the Vandals in 430 A.D.

Blaiklock writes:

This us what fascinates the classical historian. Augustine's cameo pictures of Thagaste, Maduara, Carthage, Rome, and later of Hippo are of sombre interest...
How little does the present know of the future! No one knew, when Augustus was establishing the frontiers of an imperial world, frontiers which were to hold precariously through four vital centuries of history, that the pivot of the human story had been moved one night from the Palatine to Palestine. No one knew in Thagaste that the frightened schoolboy, who was bad-tempered Patricius' son, was to leave behind him writings six times as voluminous as the whole corpus of Cicero himself, established theology through a millennium and more of strife and strain, and form one of the bridges between a dying world and that world's rebirth.

The Vandals scattered and slew Augustine's parishioners. Two centuries later the Moslems came that way with the desert trailing behind them. Augustine's work did not perish. It was blowing in the air. It steadied Medieval Christendom in varied ways, shaping Gregory, Charlemagne and Aquinas, and gusting more widely to touch Calvin, Luther, Pascal...



This is my Classic in Translation entry for the Back to the Classics 2016 challenge. (Confessions was originally written in Latin)

Also linking this to the 2016 Reading Europe Challenge





Tuesday, 6 December 2016

Back to the Classics: Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (1956)


The Partition of India in 1947 is something I've been interested in for a long time but it wasn't until I read Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh that I had any idea of the scope of the tremendous upheaval, tragedy and heartache it caused. An arbitrary line drawn by an 'Empire on whom the sun was setting,' divided a nation and created the twins countries of India and Pakistan. Former neighbours and friends became deadly enemies, people lost their homes, and an estimated one to two million lost their lives.
The author chose a true-to-life work of fiction to tell his story. Every character in the story was modelled on a real person that passed through Khushwant Singh's own life. He was about 32 years of age at the time of Partition and witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed by Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, and records them without taking sides or showing favour. He and his family were forced to flee from Lahore in 1947, leaving behind his home, his belongings and his closest friends.


The Story

In 1947 the new state of Pakistan was formerly announced, setting in motion the mass exodus of ten million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. Northern India was in chaos and only in the remote villages on the frontier was there any semblance of peace.
Mano Majra was one of these villages, known mostly because it boasted a train station. Not that many trains stopped there. In fact, it was only two slow passenger trains, one from Delhi to Lahore in the mornings and another from Lahore to Delhi in the evenings, that were scheduled to stop and then only for a few minutes. The express trains and the morning mail train rushed through without pausing. Goods trains shed and collected wagons on the sidings, and throughout the night the villagers could hear the whistling and puffing of engines and the clanging of metal couplings. The trains were the villagers' alarm clocks, signalling their mealtimes, their siestas and their prayer times. That is, up until the summer of 1947.

After Partition, the trains became less punctual, disturbing the rhythm of the village. A unit of Sikh soldiers arrived and machine guns were mounted at the railway station. Trains coming from Delhi stopped and changed their drivers and guards before continuing on to Pakistan. Trains from Pakistan heading to Delhi with their Hindu and Sikh refugees would run through without stopping.
But one morning, the train from Pakistan stopped at Mano Majra and the only person to emerge alive out of the fifteen hundred on board was a guard from the tail end of the carriages.

It was a botched up surgical operation. India's arms were chopped off without any anaesthetic, and streams of blood swamped the land of the five rivers known as the Punjab.

An order came to evacuate all the Muslims in Mano Majra to a refugee camp and from there, be placed on a train to Pakistan. Sikh agitators arrived in the village after the Muslims had left and drummed up support for a revenge attack on the next train to Pakistan. For hundreds of years the Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims had lived together as neighbours in this village and now those former neighbours and friends who had just left were to be murdered.

Iqbal, born a Sikh and educated in England, came to Mano Majra with his head full of theory to spread his message of communist reform. Learning that the train to Pakistan was to be sabotaged, he found he had nothing to say to the people of Mano Majra:

Should he go out, face the mob and tell them in clear ringing tones that this was wrong - immoral? Walk right up to them with his eyes fixing the armed crowd in a frame - without flinching, without turning...
Then with dignity fall under a volley of blows, or preferably a volley of rifle shots. A cold thrill went down Iqbal's spine.
There would be no one to see this supreme act of sacrifice...It would be an utter waste of life! And what would it gain? A few subhuman species were going to slaughter some of their own kind - a mild setback to the annual increase of four million...
In a state of chaos self-preservation is the supreme duty.

If you really believe that things are so rotten that your first duty is to destroy- to wipe the slate clean - then you should not turn green at small acts of destruction. Your duty is to connive with those who make the conflagration, not to turn a moral hosepipe on them - to create such a mighty chaos that all that is rotten like selfishness, intolerance, greed, falsehood, sycophancy, is drowned. In blood, if necessary.


It was left to another, a most unlikely character, the local 'budmash' or worthless thug, to put his life on the line for the sake of someone he cared about. 

Final thoughts

This was a brutal, gross, and at times crude novel. It's not the sort of book you'd leave sitting on your coffee table and I don't recommend it unconditionally, but it was a heartfelt, candid and literary account written by an excellent author. I learnt more from this one book of fiction than I would have gleaned from a shelf-full of political or historical titles. It was a powerful and awful account. Although there wasn't a political theme to the book, I couldn't help imbibing the political atmosphere of those days. Mano Majra was a miniature India that mirrored the whole nation. It also mirrored humanity in its portrayal of the fluidity of human reasoning - we can justify anything we decide to do. We are so readily manipulated by the opinions of others and the voices of those who stir and agitate.

The photography in this edition of the book is the work of Margaret Bourke-White who lived and travelled in India during 1946 and 1947. She was sent by Life magazine to cover the emerging nations of India and Pakistan after spending four years in Europe during World War II where she witnessed the Nazi concentration camps. According to one of the articles below, some British soldiers and journalists who had witnessed the Nazi death camps claimed Partition’s brutalities were worse.
The copy I have above is out of print but available secondhand or there is this edition here which doesn't include the images by Margaret Bourke-White. The images are online here.

Further reading:

The Great Divide: The violent legacy of Indian Partition

Khushwant Singh (1915-2014) - Obituary

BBC article - The Hidden Story of Partition and its Legacies




Train to Pakistan is my pick for the Back to the Classics 2016 category for a Classic by a Non-White Author.

Friday, 2 December 2016

'You see but you do not observe.'


My 11 year old daughter is full of Sherlock Holmes' quotes this week and included this one in her nature journal after quoting it at every opportunity:

You see, but you do not observe.






Flannel flowers in bloom - so named because they have a lovely soft, flannel-like feel to their petals.




Not a great photo but I was excited to find this and identify it when we got home: Lambertia formosa commonly known as Mountain Devil or Honey Flower. It was quite striking and the first time I've come across it. It belongs to the Grevillea family.




New growth after controlled backburning in the bush





Australian Magpie - there is a website to track aggressive magpies. We've never had a problem with them, thankfully!



One of our regular visitors, the laughing kookaburra




Oops...I forgot to add, 'Tis the season of the shedding of bark for the Angophora costata, or Smooth-barked Apple...'
It's an Australian native, doesn't produce apples and is notorious for dropping its branches and making an awful mess at this time of year.






Linking up with Celeste at Keeping Company



Sunday, 27 November 2016

Little Brother by Allan Baillie


Allan Baillie's book Little Brother was published in 1985 and tells the gripping story of two brothers, Vithy and Mang, aged about eleven and eighteen years respectively, who were the only members of their family left alive after the communist Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in 1975.
Renaming the country Kampuchea, the Communist Party set out to establish a rural based utopia and systematically annihilated anyone thought to be intellectual or educated, the wealthy and the religious leaders. The cities were emptied and people were placed into labour camps out in the country or executed if they were not able to work.




Little Brother begins with Vithy and Mang running through the forest after their captors were attacked by Vietnamese soldiers. They were pursued and forced to separate when Vithy fell and hurt his foot. Mang hid him in the undergrowth and then ran off to divert the soldiers - but Mang didn't return and Vithy was left on his own to follow his brother's last words - 'Follow the lines out of the war...go to the border.'

Finding books that deal with situations such as those experienced by children in Cambodia that are suitable for younger children, allowing them to get a sense of what happened without traumatising them in the process, is quite difficult. Allan Baillie has managed to do this so well with this book. He tells the story through Vithy's eyes and employs a sort of flashback technique where Vithy recalls conversations with his brother or memories of certain events that fills in the details for the reader, without imparting the real horror that occurred. The character Vithy is based on a boy the author met at a refugee camp in Cambodia.

Mang had told him, many months ago, that the only way to survive in the Big Paddy was to be careful and dumb. Work hard, never let them know that you can read and write and handle arithmetic. Always rememeber your kid sister, Sorei. And above all, never think. But now he had to.

Vithy eventually finds his way to a Red Cross camp on the Thai border and wins his way into the heart of a crusty Australian doctor. I won't tell you any more but the book has a very satisfying ending...

Allan Baillie was born in Scotland and came to Australia when he was seven years of age. He has a background in journalism, has travelled to various parts of the world and many of his stories were inspired by his travels and experiences in foreign countries.

Recommended for Years 5 or 6. I use it as an Ambleside Online Year 6 free read.


Linking up with Brona's Books for AusReading Month 





Thursday, 24 November 2016

Those who would see wonderful things must often be ready to travel alone...

Our Advent Reading



'...But his friends looked on with strange and alien eyes. A veil of doubt and mistrust came over their faces, like a fog creeping up from the marshes to hide the hills. They glanced at each other with looks of wonder and pity, as those who have listened to incredible sayings, the story of a wild vision, or the proposal of an impossible enterprise.

At last Tigranes said: "Artaban, this is a vain dream. It comes from too much looking upon the stars and the cherishing of lofty thoughts..."

But Abgarus, the oldest and the one who loved Artaban the best, lingered after the others had gone, and said, gravely: "My son, it may be that the light of truth is in this sign that has appeared in the skies, and then it will surely lead to the Prince and the mighty brightness. Or it may be that it is only a shadow of the light, as Tigranes has said, and then he who follows it will have only a long pilgrimage and an empty search. But it is better to follow even the shadow of the best than to remain content with the worst. And those who would see wonderful things must often be ready to travel alone. I am too old for this journey, but my heart shall be a companion of the pilgrimage day and night, and I shall know the end of thy quest. Go in peace."'



We started this story this morning and later in the day Moozle was finishing up the last couple of chapters from her AO Year 6 free read 'The Story of the Trapp Family Singers' by Maria Augusta Trapp. She suddenly called out to me, "Come quick, and see this Mum!" I thought perhaps she'd seen a wallaby or a bird outside but when I went to where she was, she held up her book opened at the last page to show me these words:

Whatever faults may be committed, big or small, whatever clouds may pile up on the horizon, dark and threatening, love will overcome all.

"Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul,
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal;
While he who walks in love may wander far,
Yet God will bring him where the blessed are." *

* From the Story of the Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke.

I love it when this sort of thing happens!



Wednesday, 23 November 2016

AusReading Month: Silvertail: The Story of a Lyrebird by Ina Watson; illustrations by Walter Cunningham (1946)


Silvertail is a lyrebird. As everything has a beginning, I am going to start by telling you where Silvertail lived, and about his people, for of course he had a family just as you have.




Silvertail, a superb lyrebird, was born in a forest deep in the hills of Southern Victoria. Suberb lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) are ground dwelling birds that have an amazing ability to mimic other birds - the calls of scrub wrens, parrots, kookaburras, cockatoos and whip-birds, are to be found in their repertoire. Although they can fly, their wings are rounded and not suited to any great distance. They build their nests in old tree stumps and roost in trees at night.

Silvertails's father and mother had a real name - one belonging to their family. They were called Mr. and Mrs. Menura...
They were a handsome couple...But the pride of the family was father's tail. It was very long and consisted of sixteen feathers...two broad, outside ones...twelve, very fluffy filmy feathers, and two lone, wire-like centre ones. On top they were the same colour as the rest of the bird, but underneath they were a beautiful silvery white.



The story of Silvertail began with nest prepartions mostly carried out by Mrs Menura while Mr Menura spent his time building his dancing mounds. A few weeks after the nest had been completed,  a solitary egg was laid in the nest and about six weeks afterwards Silvertail hatched out of his shell.
He spent about five weeks in his nest and then it was time for him to leave his cozy, safe home and begin the most dangerous part of his life. His mother taught him to find his own food and began to acquaint him with some of the other animals and birds that lived nearby and to avoid others such as the wily fox.

 


Mr Menura didn't spend too much time with his offspring at first, although he kept an eye out nearby for both the youngster and his mother; but as Silvertail grew, his father began to take more of an interest in him and to teach him how to sing. He also taught Silvertail how to use his tail in the dance but it would be a little while yet before he could boast a tail like his father's.
The seasons came and went, Silvertail grew and then one day, Silvertail found a mate...

Through all his own calls and the many others that he could now mimic perfectly, he pleaded his cause...





Silvertail is a delightful story written in such a way that a five or six year old would enjoy. There is just enough detail, depth and factual information embedded in the lively narrative for that age group and Walter Cunningham's illustrations enhance it even more.
In the foreword to the book, Australian naturalist, Crosbie Morrison writes:

Miss Ina Watson...is not just a casual caller on the Lyrebirds of Sherbrooks; over the years she has become a friend of the family. She knows them so intimately that they no longer whip off their aprons and stuff them behind a chair and show her into the front room when she calls - they let her come into the kitchen, as it were, and help with the washing up. It is not until you know people - or birds - like that that you can write of them easily, and naturally, and entrancingly, and truthfully, as Miss Watson has done.

The book is out of print but available secondhand (eBay & AbeBooks)




Some links of interest:

Lyrebirds Mimicking Chainsaws?

Lyrebird Facts

The Royal Australian Mint - the suberb lyrebird is featured on our Australian ten cent coin.

Winter Call of the Lyrebirds



Linking up at Brona's Books for the AusReading Month 2016. Come and have a look if you're looking for some great Australian titles to read.


Saturday, 19 November 2016

Weekly Review

We've just finished an exam week but as our scanner is defunct I'm not able to post any examples at present.
Instead, here are some places of interest and other links I hope you will find useful.

The High Quality Global University which costs next to nothing. Very interesting...our eldest daughter is nearly 28 years old and has just finished paying off her HECs debt from her degree. When my husband went through university in the 1980's, the universities in Australia had no tuition costs. It's a very different situation for our children now so we were very interested to read this article.

Their website is here.

Enjoying this audio:



David Clarke also narrates some other great books. See his page at Librivox.
There are some books that really need a British narrator (or someone who can make themselves sound British) - Sherlock Holmes is one of these, of course.
Ruth Golding is another British narrator and she has a list of other Librivox narrators she recommends on her blog.

I enjoyed listening to this Podcast during the week. Folksongs have always been a part of my life, growing up and afterwards. Some good thoughts here:

https://www.acast.com/circeinstitutepodcastnetwork/the-mason-jar-16-folk-music-with-heather-bunting


Moozle has been paper crafting and making Christmas presents (and much mess...)
This is a video she's used, one of the 'Sweet Bio Design' series on YouTube that she enjoys. It's in Italian but has English subtitles:





This is another she used for ideas...mostly for the actual box and then added her own decorations.





I've started putting together a page with all of the Australian/Asia Pacific living books we've used. It will take a little while but it's here in its beginning stages: Towards an Australian Charlotte Mason Curriculum.



Linking up at Weekly Wrap-up




Wednesday, 16 November 2016

AusReading Month 2016: Miles Off Course by Sulari Gentill


Miles Off Course is the third book in Sulari Gentill's Rowland Sinclair Novels set in Australia in the 1930's.
Rowland and his three Bohemian friends were enjoying the serenity of The Hydro Majestic in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, far from the scene of their previous troubles and misadventures (which you can read about in A Few Right Thinking Men and A Decline in Prophets) when their peace was interrupted by the attempted abduction of Rowland.




There had been a run of kidnappings in Sydney in recent times, and as the Sinclair family was known to be very wealthy, it was concluded that this was an attempt to obtain a ransom. On top of this, Rowland's older brother, Wilfred, turned up unexpectedly to ask for his brother's help. One of Wilfred's most trusted men, Aboriginal stockman Harry Simpson, had vanished and Wilfred needed Rowland to go to the High Country to investigate and take charge of the drovers looking after the Sinclair stock.
As usual, Rowland friends were adamant they go with him and so the whole party headed off unaware that they are about to become caught up in a web of betrayal, treason and mystery.


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hydro-Majestic_hotel_Medlow_Bath_hunt.jpg#mw-jump-to-license


As with the author's previous books in the series, the setting of this novel brings Australia in the 1930's alive, and her skill in weaving a cast of characters into the storyline continues to impress me. A feature of these novels is the use of extracts from the newspapers of the day at the beginning of many of the chapters. One, for example, was about the Lindbergh kidnapping, while others mentioned politics and business.
Miles Off Course features characters such as the artist Norman Lindsay, August Eichorn, Miles Franklin (in cognito and working on her novel later published in 1933 as 'Bring the Monkey') and the sculptor, Frank Rusconi.
It is connections like these and Gentill's enjoyable and thoughtful writing that keeps me coming back to her books.
The next book in the series is 'Paving the New Road,' which takes Rowland Sinclair to Germany at the time of the rise of the Nazi Party. It's not necessary to read the books in order (although that's what I've been doing) but starting with the first book helps to introduce the main characters who feature in each of the books.

Some interesting historical topics in this book:

Mark Foy and The Hydro Majestic

August Eichorn: 'The Snake King' - here & here

Frank Rusconi & The Dog on the Tuckerbox  

Norman Lindsay - Lindsay illustrated Franklin's book, 'Bring in the Monkey.'
  
Miles Franklin - wikipedia biography





Friday, 11 November 2016

Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington (Nugi Garimara)




Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington/Nugi Garimara is the true story of the author's mother, Molly. In 1931, Molly, aged about 15 years of age and her younger sisters Gracie and Daisy, about 12 and 11 years,* were removed from their remote Aboriginal community at Jigalong in the north-west of Western Australia and taken to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth.
(*There's some discrepancy in the girl's ages as their births were not registered.)

The Story

The first three chapters of Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence sketch a picture of the early days of white settlement in Western Australia in which a military outpost was established at Albany and the Swan River Colony was founded at Fremantle.

By the 1900's the boundaries of white settlement were extended and government policies were introduced that allowed large areas of land to be claimed by farmers and pastoralists. No provision was made for the traditional landowners which meant that the Aboriginal people in those areas became dispossessed of their traditional lands, and therefore their social structures.
In 1907, Jigalong, in the Pilbara region, was established as a government depot and base for the men who maintained the rabbit-proof fence. The Superintendent of the depot was also the Protector of Aborigines for the area. It was into this community that the first 'half-caste' (muda-muda) baby to be seen amongst the Jigalong people was born to a 16 year old Aboriginal girl named Maude. The baby's father was a white maintenance inspector, Thomas Craig.

Molly grew into a pretty little girl. Her mother was very proud of her and her father brought her gifts of clothing and pretty coloured ribbons...
As she grew older, Molly often wished that she didn't have light skin so that she didn't have to play by herself...The Mardu children insulted her and said hurtful things about her. Some told her that because she was neither Mardi or wudgebulla (white man) she was like a mongrel dog.

One morning, when Molly was about four years old, her mother told her some exciting news. Two of her aunties had babies, little girls and they were both muda-mudas like her.


At this time, the Chief Protector of Aborigines was the legal guardian of every Aboriginal child in Western Australia up to the age of 16 years, and he had the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families and place them in Homes or in 'service' (work).

The Superintendent at Jigalong had been taking a great deal of interest in Mollie and Gracie and he noticed that the attitude of the Mardi children towards the girls was unfair and reported the situation to the Department of Native Affairs in Perth saying that the girls would be better off if they were removed from Jigalong.

The common belief at the time was that part-Aboriginal children were more intelligent than their darker relations and should be isolated and trained to be domestic servants and labourers. Policies were introduced by the government in an effort to improve the welfare and educational needs of these children. Molly, Gracie and Daisy were completely unaware that they were to be included in the schemes designed for children who were fathered by white men. 

When Molly was about 14 or 15 years of age, the Protector of Aborigines came to their camp to announce that he had come to take the three girls down to the school at the Moore River Native Settlement north of Perth. A car and a train ride took them to Port Hedland and from there a ship conveyed them to the Port of Fremantle. They were then transported by car to Moore River.

It was intended that this would be their home for several years, and where they would be educated in European ways.
Only twelve months before this...the Superintendent at the Government Depot at Jigalong, wrote in his report that, "these children lean more towards the black than white and on second thoughts, think nothing would be gained in removing them."
Someone read it. No one responded.


The girls had only been two nights at the settlement when Molly made up her mind that they were not going to stay. On the morning of what was to be their first day of school, Molly announced to her sisters that they were going home. They would find the rabbit-proof fence and follow it all the way to Jigalong. Molly's father had told her the fence stretched from coast to coast, south to north across the country, and though stupefied by the idea at first, the two girls trusted their older sister and said they would run away with her.
Barefoot, wearing two dresses and two pairs of bloomers each, with no food, maps, or supplies, they made their dash for freedom in the rain.

Almost nine weeks and 1500 miles later, two of the girls returned home to Jigalong having avoided capture by police, an Aboriginal tracker, and a plane search in the course of their travels.




The author made use of oral and archival records to reconstruct the events of her narrative: interviews with Molly and Daisy who were in their late sixties and seventies when the book was written, and records of geographical and botanical explorations of the area, for example. There were so many factors that had to be taken into account by the author, not least the fact that the Aboriginals used the seasons, incidents and events to measure time, not dates and numbers. Illiteracy and lack of numeracy skills were major obstacles to be overcome before the events of the story could be determined. However, the author managed to accomplish this daunting task and write a compelling, heartfelt, and vivid account of this incredible episode in Australia's history.

The book was published in 1996 and the film based on the book - 'Rabbit Proof Fence' was released in 2002. The film departs from the book in places and having read the book, I think it was a more powerful story than the film as it focussed on what actually happened rather than trying to make a political statement.

Any discussion of the 'Stolen Generation' opens a massive can of worms and I spent a lot of time reading various articles and thinking back on the time my family spent in the Pilbara region when I was a child in the 1970's.
The school we attended was separate from the Aboriginal school situated almost next door where 'full blood' Aboriginals were taught in their native language. The 'mixed blood' kids were in with the rest of us and didn't identify at all with those in the other school. We lived next door to an Aboriginal family and I was good friends with their daughter. We didn't consider them to be any different to us any more than if they had been Italian or Greek.
My mum doesn't have a racist bone in her body. Her stepfather was a Pakistani and married my Grannie after he moved to Scotland around the time of Partition, I think. Inter-racial marriage was very unusual at the time and mum had a terrible time at school because she had a black dad, so she was sensitive to this type of treatment. However, when we moved to Australia and eventually went to the Pilbara region for dad's work, I remember mum commenting with disgust on seeing Aboriginal men in the pub spending their welfare cheques on alcohol while their wives and children sat around outside, sometimes getting into fights, and often leaving young children to their own devices.

The prominent and respected Aboriginal leader, Noel Pearson, has said that more should be done to empower Indigenous communities, and thinking back to my own experiences I can see the truth in what he is saying. While I believe that there is a definite place and need for acknowledgment and redress of past injustices, it can't be at the expense of fixing today's problems. However, the truth remains that it's not a simple issue and there is no simple solution.

The book is recommended for Year 9 students but it could be saved for a later year so that some of these very important issues could be explored when the student is more mature. Chronologically, it fits into Year 10/11 of Ambleside Online but regardless of that, it's one of those important topics that needs to be covered in a balanced way by Australian students.
This unabridged audio narrated by Rachael Maza is excellent and her Torres Strait Island background gives an authentic and intimate feel to the story:







Linking up with Brona's Books for the AusReading Month



Wednesday, 9 November 2016

Unconsidered Aspects of Moral Training: School Education by Charlotte Mason (updated)


'We too are under authority and there are limitations to parental authority.' 
School Education by Charlotte Mason

The limitations to the parental authority we exercise over our children in the area of moral training become more evident as our children mature. When our children are little we have broad overarching responsibilities which tend to obscure these limitations. As our children mature our parental authority is not so black and white anymore, and if I treat my 14 year old the same way I'd treat a 6 year old in how I wield my authority, he is not going to develop any moral muscle.

One of the biggest strains of parenting is adjusting our authority as our children mature and knowing how, when and where to extend or limit the boundaries we have in place.

Morals don't come by nature:
'An educated conscience is a far rare possession than we imagine.'


A sobering thought!

'An educated conscience comes only by teaching with authority and adorning by example.'

Our authority needs to be paired with example. I can't hide behind my authority for very long. They'll spot hypocrisy or double standards a mile away.

I haven't tried to come up with 'lessons' for transmitting moral training or even done much in the way of pre-planning times for this, but something I've purposely tried to do is to live in a devotional context. Every day I have opportunities for devotional living and moral training. Reading quality literature and discussing the various characters and their actions is a way to develop an educated concience. So is taking the common little incidents of daily life and using them as tools for both our children and ourselves. Often these incidents seem like interruptions but I've realised that part of my own moral training has been to see these things as God might see them and ask, "Lord, what can I learn from this?" and "What can I teach my children in this situation?"

God's Word, poetry, biography and the use of mottoes are some suggestions Charlotte Mason gives to help us in the moral training of our children.

Mottoes

I grew up with one or both of my Grannies in the home for many years and both of them used many little sayings or proverbs that were in common use in their day. I now rarely hear anyone quote mottoes or proverbs in everyday speech. 
It's a similar situation with Folksongs - they've almost died out in general society; mottoes even more so, and if we are to keep them alive we need to make a conscious effort to use them.

A stitch in time saves nine.
Good, better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better and your better best.
Do the next right thing.
Leave it better than you found it.
Even a child is known by his actions by whether his conduct is pure and right.
A soft answer turns away anger.
Is it true, is it kind, did I really have to say it?
Let another praise you and not your own mouth, someone else and not your own lips.
Treat others the way you'd like to be treated.
Honour one another above yourselves.
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
Civility costs nothing.
Practice makes perfect. 
Tomorrow, tomorrow, not today - that's what lazy people say!
Make hay while the sun shines.
Laughter is the best medicine.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Good things come in small packages.
Measure twice, cut once.
Slow and steady wins the race.
Pretty is as pretty does.




The biographies of famous Greeks and Romans by Plutarch and the reading of poetry have opened doors for moral instruction in our home. I might read a poem aloud and something will resonate with me so I'll share it with our children. Sometimes I'll give some background information on the poet or the poem and why it was written and we'll talk about that. Or we'll be having our Plutarch reading and we'll get into a discussion over one of the questions in the study notes.

When I use my own experience and am honest about my weaknesses and flaws it has helped my children deal with their own. I tend to have a quick temper and have had to learn some hard lessons about keeping myself in check. I have two children who have a similar disposition, although one of them has had a harder time dealing with it than the other. He knows I've had a similar struggle and I've had some good opportunities to educate his conscience in his teachable moments ie. not when he's in a passion!
I took some words to heart as a young Christian from something Edith Schaeffer wrote which was along the lines of, "In your anger, don't say something hurtful that you would never say if you were under control," and have impressed that on him.

Bible

Besides using the Proverbs, memorising scripture is an obvious way to train moral character.
'I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You.' Psalm 119

The accounts of men and women in the Bible, the good, the bad, the faithful and the unfaithful are there for our benefit but,

'In the matter of the ideas that inspire the virtuous life, we miss much by our way of taking things for granted.'

We know the story of Noah inside out and because of this familiarity we sometimes miss things but the other week we heard a sermon on love - 'Love Covers.' The speaker talked about Noah preaching for 120 years, building an ark before it had ever rained on the earth and the ridicule he received while he did it. After all his efforts only eight people were saved. After the deluge, Noah planted a vineyard and then he got drunk. He wasn't a wicked man. Perhaps he was discouraged. It was a moment of weakness. Later one of his sons came along, saw him drunk and naked, and called his two brothers to witness their father's condition. His brothers came but the two of them took a garment and placing it over their shoulders, walked in backwards so they didn't see their father's nakedness and covered him up. Their love covered their father's weakness. How easy it is to broadcast another's weakness as the younger son had done. This message was so powerfully conveyed that we won't be forgetting it, but we'd passed over it when we'd read it in Genesis the week before.

A mistake I made in the early days of mothering was placing too much emphasis on the outward appearance of virtue. Issues of the heart often go unchecked when we do this. I read this in Whatever Happened to Worship by A.W. Tozer:

'Benjamin Franklin...a deist and not a Christian...kept a daily graph on a series of little square charts which represented such virtues as honesty, faithfulness, charity and probably a dozen others. He worked these into a kind of calendar and when he had violated one of the virtues he would write it down. When he had gone for a day or a month without having broken any of his self-imposed commandments, he considered that he was doing pretty well as a human being.

A sense of ethics? Yes.

Any sense of the divine? No.'

In all of my thoughts and intentions regarding moral training, I want to inspire the children God has entrusted me with to godliness, and not just give them ethics.

"Lord, help me to see the things I need to see today in my children and give me the wisdom to reach their hearts in those areas."



Thursday, 3 November 2016

AusRead Month 2016: Magpie Island by Colin Thiele; Illustrated by Roger Haldane


Magpie lived in the open countryside of the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. He would fly high into the early morning air and swoop down the sky like a jet plane and then invigorated by his downward rush, he would stand upon a high branch and pour out his joy in song. Looking to the south west, Magpie could see where the trees dwindled away and the Nullarbor Plain began.
One day Magpie and his fellow magpies saw a giant bird come sailing out of the Nullarbor, and as it cast its dark shadow over the land, Magpie joined his companions as they gave chase to the proud wedge-tailed eagle who just kept flying higher and higher.




One by one the other birds gave up the pursuit - all except Magpie, who continued squawking and snapping and following the great bird, the north wind speeding him along. When at last he stopped chasing the eagle and looked below to the earth, he found the wind had carried him to the coastline and soon he would be out over the sea. He began to panic and tried to turn back into the wind but before long he was exhausted. As he began to lose ground, the wind took him and carried him far out to sea.

Magpies are land birds and are not built for roaming across the sea, but the Magpie in this story reaches an island and finds himself marooned with penguins, bull seals and ferocious terns - a Robinson Crusoe Magpie.
Sad and lonely, Magpie didn't have it in him to sing his lovely songs. The island was no place for a land bird. But one day a young boy on a fishing trip with his father saw Magpie, and a year later the fishing vessel returned bringing a mate for the lonely bird.

Colin Thiele (1921-2006) was a wonderful Aussie author who wrote mostly for children. If I were to ask any of my children to name the book that they liked best out of the hundreds we've read to them over the course of twenty plus years, they would all agree it would be Thiele's book, Sun on the Stubble. His books are realistic and unsentimental, but he had an ability to inspire sympathy for the people and the animals he wrote about. After reading Magpie Island you come away with a love and appreciation for these garrulous, dive-bombing birds that can be so aggressive during their breeding season.





Magpie Island was written for a younger audience than Storm Boy, but like Storm Boy, it is sad in places (Magpie's mate is killed when she flies into a plane). The book fits well into a term of Year 1 or 2 of AmblesideOnline (my daughter was 7 when we did Year 1) and it offers an opportunity to learn not only about the South Australian Magpie, but also the geography of the region.

'He lived high and free in the open countryside in South Australia where a big triangle of land called Eyre Peninsula pushes out into the sea. He was young and happy. He had been hatched in a wide scraggy nest made of sticks that were as hard and knotty as knuckles. His mother had laid two eggs in it; beautiful eggs they were, with spots on them, and touches of lovely colour - blue and grey and lilac. Magpie hatched out in three weeks.'

58 pages, including illustrations in colour and black and white.

Points of interest:

*  Magpie Island could have been one of the many islands off the South Australian coast.

*  The Australian Magpie has one of the world's most complex bird songs and a lifespan of about 20 years.

*  The white-backed magpie (Gymnorhina tibien hypoleuca) is on the official emblem of the State of South Australia. It is a close relative of the black-backed magpie found mostly in eastern Australia.

*  Over 15 whaling sites have been identified in coastal South Australia. The author briefly mentions previous whaling activities in the book.

*  The book's illustrator, Roger Haldane, had a background in commercial fishing and his family pioneered the tuna fishing industry at Port Lincoln. He drew on his broad knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Eyre Peninsula's for his illustrations.


 The Eyre Peninsula is the triangle of land on whose point Port Lincoln is found: