There’s no quicker way to lose a teenager’s interest than to bring up the subject of history.

But say the words, “Graphic violence,” and suddenly they’re paying attention again.

History is already filled with violence (seriously, take all the wars out of a history book and you’re left with a thin pamphlet). Now all you have to do is make it graphic, and you have a brilliant way of teaching history to kids.

That’s the aim of a new book by Wayne Vansant, The Graphic History of Gettysburg. It’s an exciting, fast-paced telling of the landmark Civil War battle, told in comic book form.

And, yes, it’s got guns and explosions and blood spraying everywhere. Just enough to keep kids tuned in like it’s an episode of The Walking Dead.

The book describes the period leading up to the Battle of Gettysburg, and includes charts and portraits of all the major players in the battle.

But Vansant wastes little time getting to the heat of the battle. His illustrations put you right in among the troops on both sides. The descriptions and dialogue are simple and straightforward, allowing readers with no prior knowledge of Gettysburg to follow the action and to understand why things happened the way they did.

Gettysburg is widely recognized as the turning point of the Civil War, so it’s vital for kids to learn why and how it happened. With the 150th Anniversary of the battle coming up in July, The Graphic History of Gettysburg is a great introduction to an important time in our nation’s history.

If you have a kid, or an adult, who nods off at the mere mention of history, these kinds of books might just be the spark that gets them interested.

Thanks to the good people at Zenith Press, I have TWO COPIES of The Graphic History of Gettysburg to give away! Simply leave a comment on this post, telling me your favorite time period in history, and why. I’ll pick a winner next week!

We took a late spring break vacation to Disneyland, and all my son wanted for a souvenir was a caramel apple.

However, I don’t think it’s a souvenir if you eat it.

Either way, he was happy.

File this under Things That Make Me Sad:

I was listening to a group of boys talk about plans for the summer and beyond. One of them mentioned a goal-setting exercise they had recently done in school.

Another boy piped up with, “Goals? I don’t set goals. That way, when I don’t reach them I won’t be disappointed.”

He doesn’t understand that you don’t set a goal just to reach it. You set a goal to give you direction.

I hope he soon realizes that wandering aimlessly through life will produce much more disappointment.

SOL REPUBLIC and tokidoki, the Japanese-inspired lifestyle brand, have fused art with music to design and create two new Tracks HD on-ear headphones featuring SOL REPUBLIC’s signature interchangeability, amazing sound, and virtually indestructible design.

These headphones integrate colors, characters and trendsetting designs that are signature tokidoki. They were personally designed by Simone Legno, tokidoki’s creative director and co-founder.

SOL REPUBLIC has graciously offered a set of these amazing headphones to one of my readers!

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post, telling me what new tunes you’ve been enjoying lately.

I’ll pick a winner next week.

Check out the video below to learn more about the collaboration between SOL REPUBLIC and tokidoki!

I was reading through my old blog posts, and came across this one from 2006. Our reasons for homeschooling have remained the same over the past seven years.

As my son finishes the 9th grade, we can measure his success by how well he stacks up academically with other kids his age. Would he be #1 in his class if he was at the local high school? Probably not. But, based on test scores, writing quality, and general knowledge, he would be in the top 5%, for sure. I don’t believe he would be as well-prepared if he had remained in the public schools. So, our goal of a better education through homeschooling has been reached.

Anyway, here’s my original post, from 2006:

We are entering our seventh week of homeschooling our 8-year-old son. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s all going very well. Better than expected, in fact.

Through IDVA outings and activities, we’ve met many other homeschooling families and have heard just about every reason as to why people choose this option for their kids. Most of them are homeschooling for religious reasons. Others live in remote areas. Some had bad experiences with the public schools.

Our reason for homeschooling falls into none of those categories. Our religious beliefs didn’t enter into the decision. We don’t live on some isolated mountain top. And, in the three years our son was in the local public schools, we never had a single bad experience.

Quite simply, it came down to a realization that the education my son was receiving in the traditional classroom was merely good, bordering on average. Three years of watching him, being involved, and volunteering in the schools opened my eyes to the fact that our schools can only do so much. Some kids thrive in that system. Other kids get lost. Most kids do well but never excel.

My son always did well in school, but there were too many days when he was bored or ignored. Too much time wasted and opportunities squandered. Over the past year we explored the various forms of homeschooling and it didn’t take long for us to decide that this was the way for us to go.

We’re lucky enough to be in a situation, with one at-home parent, that makes it easy to homeschool. If we couldn’t do it I wouldn’t feel too bad about leaving my son in the traditional public school setting. With limited resources and crowded classrooms, they do a good job educating children. But I can do better than just “good” for my kids.

And that is why we homeschool.

“As a society, we are making decisions based on our perception of issues, and not based on the science underlying those issues. In 2007, we are preoccupied with West Nile virus, avian flu and mad cow disease. We worry ourselves sick about things that are not going to happen. Meanwhile, obesity is epidemic, smoking of cigarettes causes 400,000 deaths a year, and drinking alcohol causes 85,000 deaths in the U.S. alone, and we allow these.”

- Dr. Mickey Gunter, University of Idaho

What do you worry about? Are most of your worries based on perception rather than reality? I’ve found that since I no longer watch TV news, my list of fears has decreased dramatically. I used to dwell on things that had very little chance of actually happening to me, just because the talking heads on the TV news told me I should be afraid. But then I’d forget about the slippery bathtub in my house or the artery-clogging hamburger I was eating.

Every now and then it’s good to remind ourselves of what’s real and important in our lives, and what deserves our genuine concern. Shake off the false perceptions and focus on what you can do for your family to make them safer and happier. You might be surprised at how close to worry-free you can become.

Making dinner is always a chore for me. Breakfast is easy – cereal, toast, juice, bacon. Lunch is fun, a time to be creative, even though my kids usually just want turkey sandwiches and apple slices.

But dinner, I never have any good ideas. When I do come up with something good, chances are the kids will complain about it. They’d be happy eating spaghetti every night.

What I need to do is make one truly horrible meal as a benchmark for their complaints, so they can always say, “At least it’s not as bad as what Daddy made that one night!”

I thought I had already made a few bad ones, but now I believe I’ve found something even more horrible…

An all-time dinner horror classic:

What I want to know is, was there really a time when this meal was considered “inspiring”… I wonder how many marriages ended because of this recipe.

I might not even have to make this. Just showing the picture to my kids should bring a whole new appreciation from them for my cooking.

Over the years, we’ve heard all the negative homeschool stereotypes. You know, like we’re just a bunch of anti-social gun nuts teaching our children that the Earth is 6,000 years old and the President is a Muslim communist.

Okay, so that may actually be true of a few homeschoolers I know, but it’s just not the case for the vast majority of us who are simply trying to give our kids a better education.

I’ve talked with my kids about stereotypes, and how unfair it is to label a person based on misplaced assumptions.

Apparently, I’ll need to have that talk with my daughter again.

After I stop laughing.

Yesterday, we were driving down a residential street when I spotted a group of three or four teenagers throwing rocks at a cat trying to escape up a wooden fence into the safety of someone’s backyard.

I brake for cat abuse, by the way.

Actually, I yanked the steering wheel hard to the left, did a 180 in the street, and roared our van back to the spot where the kids had been.

They scattered like cowardly rats before I could even roll down my window to chew them out.

Watching them flee, my feline-worshiping daughter piped up from the back seat: “That was really mean of them. They must go to public school.”

First published March 10, 2010

I need $20,000.

Who doesn’t?

I’ve been trying to raise it as part of a fundraising campaign for the past 10 months. This is something I have no experience with, so it’s been interesting, to say the least.

Sometime about a year ago, I was attending my son’s Scout meeting when the parents began to talk about the need for some sort of high adventure trip for the older boys.

For some reason, people looked at me. Why, I don’t know. I’m not an outdoorsy person, and I’ve never been on a “high adventure.”

This is what I told them. And then I hesitantly followed with the word, “However…”

Because, in fact, I had been on an adventure of sorts, and very recently. As some readers may recall, back in the summer of 2010 I set out for a very long walk across England. It was a charity walk, raising money for the Joseph Salmon Trust. Good fun for a good cause.

I hadn’t really thought of it as being something a bunch of Boy Scouts from Idaho would do. But once I started talking about it, I could see a bunch of parents becoming very interested. Once the boys heard about it, well, that was it. There was no way I was going to get out of walking that wall again.

Which is funny, because at first I wasn’t too keen on several aspects of a return trip to Hadrian’s Wall country. The biggest was the cost. But the thought was that by setting a date for two years in the future, there would be plenty of time for all participants to raise the money through Boy Scout fundraisers.

The other thing I wasn’t looking forward to was getting back in shape for an 84-mile walk. But it’s good for me. Having a goal gets me to the gym.

However, I quickly learned that the only thing I really had to fear was the fundraising. As I said, I’ve never done this before.

And it’s hard. Annoyingly, unpleasantly, frustratingly hard.

We’ve sold popcorn, honey, and BBQ dry rub. We’ve had car washes and pancake breakfasts. There have been yard clean-ups and chili feeds. And all of that just in the first year.

I’ve learned a few things about fundraising. First, working for the money is so much easier than trying to sell stuff for the money. I’d much rather haul dirt in a wheelbarrow than stand in front of a store pleading with people to buy a bag of caramel popcorn.

Second, I’ve learned that you can easily get burned out on fundraising. Two years of doing it is a year too much.

But we’ll keep marching on. Because the boys are more than eager to make the trip, to visit the birthplace of Scouting, and to walk the path of the ancient Roman Centurions.

When I do stop and ask myself why there’s no “fun” in fundraising, I think about these boys who are looking forward to the adventure. It’s one that most of them would not have a chance to do otherwise.

Some of these kids have never even been out of the state of Idaho before, let alone on the other side of the world. It will be a life-changing trip for them. I try to remember that when I’m arranging yet another table sale or calling around to see who needs their yard weeded.

By the way, anyone want to buy some lovely creamed honey or tasty BBQ dry rub? Need some dirt moved? How about a nice plate of all-you-can-eat pancakes and sausage?

Hey, I’m trying.

I’m not entirely sure what happened, but for a few days last week this blog was lost.

As in, completely gone, right off the Internets. Nine years of musings lost forever.

A part of me wasn’t too upset that I might not have this blog anymore. Life has been far too busy this past year to write on a regular basis.

But I was quite disturbed that all of my writings may have vanished into thin air.

I know, back up your files! Well, I’ve backed up everything else that was important: family photos and music. I hadn’t gotten around to making copies of my blog posts.

Luckily, I discovered that Google has kept a cached copy of my blog feed for the past 1000 posts. Good enough, I thought. But then, after three days of head-scratching, the technicians at my host company were able to reset the database on my site, and everything was back to normal.

Now to back up those blog posts properly. At the very least, I think my kids might want to read back through them some day. Just for giggles. Or for parenting advice.

I’m glad my blog isn’t lost.