These vases will soon be full of beribboned limes and lemons…

I also have been working on my Ignite Boise presentation and frantically planning out the last few details for the wedding. Decisions are all made and now it’s just a matter of doing everything in the right order and not forgetting anything. Fortunately my (and Quinn’s) lovely friends are all pitching in a bit and my mother-in-law is taking a couple of days off work to help out. My house should be clean, the food cooked and the yard beautifully decorated. Should be. We’ll see how it goes…

From bottom to top:  Summa Theologica by St. Thomas, The Discarded Image, Medieval and Rennaissance Literature, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century-all by Lewis- The City of God by St. Augustine & A Book of Hours by Merton. I’ve already read most of City of God and am not sure that I’ll read English Literature in the Sixteenth Century but I still think that’s a lot to get through in a month; in a month where I’ll also need to deliver an as yet unfinshed speech, host a wedding and remodel a bedroom into a library. Should be a breeze right?

This book has many elements that tend to set my teeth on edge: cries against a vast conspiracy, a shiny new cover, lots of praise for the author printed in it and an insistence that the vast majority have it wrong and only our author is standing for truth and reality.

And yet…it was a very compelling book. I have spent most of my “schooling” years outside of the system. I attended a tiny, private Christian school for a few years, was homeschooled through high school and though I graduated with a BA from college I did so in an aggressively independent way – testing out of fully a third of my college credits.

John Taylor Gatto writes of what he sees as the institutionalized horror of compulsory public education. His complaints are numerous but fall into three main areas. One: compulsory education fails to educate; students are more ignorant today than ever. Two: compulsory education is a tool of social engineering keeping the social classes seperated and opressed. Three: compulsory education destroys family, community, and religion. I won’t rehearse his arguments (the book is a mere 200 pages and readily available) but I will say this: I look forward to a future where we in America have many options for educating our children, where we excercise those options regularly and responsibly and where politics and bureaucracy have nothing to do with it. I won’t work for a political solution to this problem, trying to legislate my views, but I will simply work for solutions; teaching my own children, working to found alternative schools and talking about this subject whenever helpful.

I have just finished this book which is an unusual venture for me. I don’t often read sci-fi or fantasy unless it is authored or recommended by Lewis or Tolkien. But my good friend Brent proffered it and his recommendations are nearly as reliable so I read it. And…I’m not sure what to think. The book was fascinating. Several times I didn’t want to put it down. The language was archaic although the atmosphere was futuristic. The moral universe was different but recognizable. The book was like Kafka filtered through the imagination of a lesser Tolkien. I am intrigued to read the sequel.

My sister-in-law (the other Amanda Patchin) is in Wales and graciously gave me permission to raid her closet while she is gone. She has impeccable taste in clothes and has the good manners to be my exact size. I love it.

I usually am delighted by Ignatius Press’ books. They publish high-quality and hard-to-find titles and, while they do print mostly (only?) paperbacks, all their bindings are sewn. However this book – those terrible middle ages: debunking the myths – was definitely a bit uneven. The topic was interesting and the writer obviously passionate but the prose was clunky and the reasoning easily drifted over the head (mine). The fifth chapter, on women, was fantastic. It has made me change my mind about whether or not I could have enjoyed living in another era. Turns out that the 20th century was not actually the first to recognize that women had brains. The “dark ages” for women were the 16th through the 19th centuries; not the 6th through the 15th.

The book has other high-points including a 40-years-early take down of Dan Brown. So do read it but don’t give up hope in the first few chapters.