"The Homeschoolers Who Proved That School Is a Waste of Time"

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"Of course, there are disadvantages to homeschooling, too. If enough people do it, tattoo artists, body-piercing parlors, drug dealers, and abortionists may go out of business."
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Also, contrary to their constant whining, teachers are NOT underpaid. Moreover, these days, even the somewhat normal ones, the ones who aren't trying to recruit you children into sexual perversion, tend to be idiots.

I wasn't home-schooled, but three years of my schooling (8th-10th grades) was comparable to home-schooling. And, if not for those three years of absence from the government-union run indoctrination centers, I know that I would not have finished high school, much less college. By the way, overnight, I went from being a "C- student" to being a "straight A student" (and this was without "grade inflation").

The final straw (*) occurred when I was in 7th grade, and the principal told my father, "We don't need students like your son in our school", and my father decided, "You know, I think I agree that my children don't need to be in your school.". You see, I had dared to fight back against a kid who bullied me daily. And worse, I had dared to "call out" a teacher who was refusing to protect an unpopular kid from a mob of "vibrant youth", a few of whom intended to beat the shit out of him (**), and the others to watch and laugh at his pain and injury.

So, my father found places for us for the next school-year in a Seventh-Day Adventist school (we are not Adventists). This wasn't cheap. Or, rather, it *was* cheap, but it was also a *huge* portion of the family income (as I recall, the first year cost $1000 for the four of us).

This is how I think that that "religious" schooling was somewhat comparable to home-schooling: Each class was actually two grades, combined (1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, 9/10). Other than the 9th and 10th grades, a single teacher taught the combined classes: sometimes the two grades received the same lesson, but usually one grade had "study hall" while the other had active instruction, all in the same room. As I mentioned, I went from being a "C- student" in 7th grade, to being a "straight A student" in 8th grade. Moreover, I not only had time -- while at school -- to do all my school-work, but I also had free time to do what interested me. What interested me was history, and without knowing what it was, during that free time I read the entire history book that would be the text in 9th grade history class.

(*) Mind you, this was 55+ years ago. The public schools have been shit for a very ling time.

(**) You've surely seen some of the recent videos of gangs of "vibrant youth" knock someone to the ground and then kick the defenseless person in the head . This behavior is not new.

Selwyn Duke: The Homeschoolers Who Proved That School Is a Waste of Time

On Munchausen-by-Proxy and "Trans-kids"

When I was 4 (i.e. more than 60 years ago), I had a "baby doll", and I was very proud of it. But the time I was 5 or 6, I wouldn't play with my friend's GI Joe, because as far as I was concerned, it was a doll.

Thank God my parent's weren't fools. They neither freaked out because the little boy played with a "baby doll", nor freaked-out when he later despised anything resembling a doll.

EDIT: Isn't it odd that --

1) There are no such things as "boys' toys" and "girls' toys";

2) And, simultaneously, if a boy prefers "girls' toys", then he is clearly a girl.

More to the point, isn't it odd that in California, it is illegal for stores to have separate sections for boys' toys/clothes and girls' toys/clothes, because that would be "reinforcing the sex binary" or some similar codswallop. But, at the same time, in that same California, they will cut off your son's dick to further the lie that he is a girl (even though that also say that "some women have penises").

A Father’s Tragic Fight to Save His Son from Gender Ideology | Ep. 1493

Orphaned By Divorce

No matter how old you are, if your parents divorce, you eventually end up being orphaned twice! And the first orphaning feels like surviving a loved one's suicide.

Pervertitarians never rest

Alexander Boot (from 2015): German government says incest is best

LifeSite News (from 2007): German Government Publication Promotes Incestuous Pedophilia as Healthy Sex Ed

Christian Telegraph (from 2008): Christians stopped sexual depravity of German kids

I think "stopped" is probably too strong a word; "delayed" probably more accurately captures the nuance, for pervertitarians never rest in their quest to pervert all good things.


Now, Gentle Reader has been around the block a time or two. One knows, from repeated experience, that the very people who are continuously promoting this sort of thing -- the very human termites who are intentionally gnawing relentlessly at the roots of our civilization, which is the very thing that makes our comfortable lives possible -- will point to the fact the the German government was successfully shamed into withdrawing this particular publication and then say, "Ah-ha! You conservatives are just fear-mongering!" And the fence-sitters, the people who don't want to see what's right under their noses, will say, "Yeah! What's the big deal? It all woked out."

But, the point is, as Mr Boot put it in an email response to me, "what's staggering here isn't the dates, and not the fact that the booklets were eventually withdrawn, but that the government of a Western, formerly Christian, nation could have produced them in the first place."

The other enormities he mentions in the article are more recent -- because the pervertitarians never rest in their quest to pervert all good things.

And, in the meantime, with respect to Germany, it is still illegal, as per laws left over from the Nazi era, to try to remove one's own children from the open sewer that is "public education".

Does Gentle Reader recall the case, from just last year, of the Romeike family? This is a German family that fled to the US, seeking political asylum, to escape imprisonment by the German government for refusing to send their children to the sort of state-approved cess-pits that would "teach" them that parents ought to diddle their kids, so that they won't "be ashamed of their bodies." And the Obamanation was working with the German government to force the family back to Germany, to have their children stolen from them and to be imprisoned for daring to object.

The last I read of the case, the family had been granted "indefinite deferred action" status -- or, to translate that into English: "this case is presently too 'hot' to deport them back to Germany, so let's decide to not decide anything just yet; see if people forget about them, then we'll decide to decide."


Quoting Mr Boot's article:

For religion isn’t all about what people do on a Friday night or Sunday morning. It’s also about the way man defines himself.

If a father sees himself as the creature God made in His image and likeness, then he’ll raise his daughter to be proud of her humanity, not her vagina.

He’d try to instil in her certain eternal truths that can be best absorbed in a state of innocence, the longer-lasting the better. He’d try to teach the little girl that life has a profound meaning, and her genitals aren’t the place where it can be found.

If, however, a man believes that, when he dies, he turns to fertiliser and that’s it, then life to him can have no meaning - or rather the process of life becomes its own meaning.

Deriving as much pleasure out of every moment from the earliest possible age becomes the ultimate desideratum. In fact, the very definition of pleasure has to be pushed downwards, ideally all the way down to the crotch.

So why wait until the girl grows up and, God forbid, marries, reactionary as such a possibility may sound? Why waste the valuable years between 1 and 3, when she can receive hands-on tuition in what her clitoris is for? No reason at all.

Such is the ledger sheet of our much-vaunted progress, ladies and gentlemen. On the credit side, children operating computers with nothing short of wiz-kid dexterity. On the debit side, fathers encouraged to masturbate their one-year-old daughters.

You can't have "just a little bit" of sin -- as individuals, and as societies, either we must reject sin and perversion, root and branch, or we must become sin and perversion, which is to say, death. The choice before us is the same choice it has always been: life or death. Choose one, because you can't have both.

Render Unto Caesar

Douglas Wilson: Children of the Rainbow -- "As Voddie Baucham put it memorably, if you render your children to Caesar, don’t be surprised when they come back Romans."

People frequently quote the verse (*), "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" without thinking about the context.

Now, for sure, the overall context is that some Pharisees (and partisans of the Herodian dynasty) were trying to set a trap for Christ: they say only two answers to the question they posed him, both of which they could spin to his condemnation. His answer was to expose the question's false premise on which rested the dilemma by which they thought to trap him..

However, *that* is not the context to which I wish to draw Gentle Reader’s attention, but rather to a sub-context of that overall context.

What did Christ ask them? He asked, “Whose image does this coin bear?” What he didn’t ask explicitly - for in the context of people who live and breathe the text (even if not quite the spirit) of Scripture - it is always implied: “Whose image do you bear?”

So, here is how they understood has answer to them: “Here is a coin; it is marked as being the property of Caesar. And here is you, who are marked as being the property of God. So, if Caesar demands what is his, give it back to him. But do not give him what is God’s.”


(*) and frequently, just the first half; I think we can expect this frequency to increase in the near future


Edit 2015/07/05:
The Other McCain: What Education Teaches

Pray again for Ken Miller

Lydia McGrew: Pray again for Ken Miller -- If you're not already aware of the situation Mrs McGrew is discussing -- which has been on-going for several years -- please do read the linked post.

Putting the 'fun' in funeral

Laura Rosen Cohen: New From Pallywood: Hamas putting the "FUN" in Funerals!

What's really funny is that Western leftists *still* eat up this shit out of "Pallywood".

'Talitha koum!'

Susan D. Harris (at American Thinker): Hospital Spokesman Dictates Limits For Hope and Prayer --

Sam Singer, spokesman for the Children's Hospital Oakland, has taken it upon himself to dictate the limits of hope and prayer.

Singer is one of the players in the gut wrenching saga of Jahi McMath, the 13-year-old Northern California girl who went in for a tonsillectomy and ended up brain dead. The second girl in two years to suffer severe brain damage under similar conditions at Children's Hospital Oakland, the case obviously has the hospital on the defensive.

In a jaw-dropping statement, made on behalf of the hospital, Mr. Singer, speaking with greater authority than anyone could have imagined, told the world: "There is, unfortunately, no amount of hope, no amount of prayer that can bring her back."

If Mr. Singer wants to tell us she is brain dead, fine. If he wants to tell us that an independent physician also declared her brain dead and "there was no question of that," - fine. She was indeed pronounced dead only three days after she underwent surgery to treat sleep apnea. The "complications" she suffered have not been detailed, but we do know she went into cardiac arrest. We also know that after an independent review of the case, a judge gave the go ahead to remove the life support that was keeping her alive. It was at this point that hospital spokesman Sam Singer threw down his theological gauntlet.
...
It is not uncommon for medical miscalculations to be made, or for God to be underestimated. Just last year, a young man in the U.K. was declared brain dead by four specialists after he suffered devastating injuries in a car crash. His parents refused to give up hope, his father begged doctors to check again, and two weeks later faint signs of brain activity were detected. Seven weeks later, he was released from the hospital. If not for his parent's perseverance, he would be dead.

We don't know what will happen in the case of little Jahi McMath; but with every ounce of my being, and for the sake of everyone who dares to hope and pray for loved ones around the world, may God prove the doubters wrong once again and say "Talitha koum!" - "Little girl, I say to you, arise."

Whatever the outcome, may we never lose hope, nor our faith in the power of prayer - and may we never be guilty of that greater sin...causing others to lose theirs.

As one wag put it: "The problem with living in a less religious society isn’t that people don’t think about God but that they think God has a position in their bureaucracy (below theirs)."

Your society on feminism

Wintery Knight: Psychologist claims father is an unfit parent for refusing to yield to son’s demands for fast food -- The cases W.K. discusses (and the millions more like them all across North America) are the direct result of the deliberate goal of feminists, and leftists in general, to destroy the family, to destroy fatherhood, to destroy masculine authority.

Most women reading this next sentence (by which I mean 'women' of whatever chromosomal compliment) are going to shriek like banshees at my “sexist” heresy, but the truth is that ultimately this sort of thing, and much else that is destroying the nation, is the result of our great-grandfathers giving in to the demands of perpetually-dissatisfied females by giving all “women” (*) an acknowledged public voice in the running of the polity. The sad fact is even if a society starts out with almost all its females actually being mature women, once it gives women the vote, human nature – and the politicians’ race to the bottom for votes – ensure that within three to four generations most of the “women” in that society will be exactly the sort of worthless, weak, utterly dependent, yet-continually-boasting-of-being “strong, independent women”, females-stuck-in-junior-high-school that we see around us everywhere.


(*) My intent is to make a distinction between women – mature persons who happen to be female, and who really are "strong, independent women", and of whom there are precious few living in this age – and “women” (some of whom even have XY chromosomes) whose minds are stuck in junior high school.

'The tunnel led right to the kindergarten.'‏

Via Laura Rosen Cohen, The Jerusalem Post: IDF uncovers Palestinian terrorist tunnel leading from Gaza to kibbutz in Israel -- "Underground passageway - built with Israeli concrete slabs - took over a year to build, say army sources, was 3rd discovered this year."

As I commented --
Well, you know, it's all the fault of those perfidious Jooo... , er, Zionists, because the Zionist entity won't allow enough concrete into Gaza to build both tunnels and kindergartens.

'Circumcision is one of the oddities of the Royal Family'

The Telegraph: 'Circumcision is one of the oddities of the Royal Family' (myself, I have known about this "oddity" for a number of years)

It is one of the oddities of the Royal Family -- shared by the majority of the English upper classes -- that for many generations they have circumcised their male sons, invariably using a Mohel, the Jewish word for a circumcision practitioner. It was rarely done on medical grounds, nor on religious ones, but was a matter of class.

... Indeed by the time the Duke of Cambridge himself was born in 1982, it is understood that Diana, the Princess of Wales, refused to continue the tradition, in keeping with the then medical opinion that it was an unnecessary procedure whose risks outweighed any possible benefits.

The NHS now tries to guide parents away from the practice and the most recent figures suggest just 3.8 per cent of male babies are circumcised in the UK. This is down from a rate of 20 per cent in the 1950s, when there was a belief, especially among those who could afford to have it done privately, that it was more hygienic. ...

As someone who isn't -- my family haven't been Jewish for a number of generations -- I can assure you that it is. At any rate, I can assure you that it's reasonable to believe that it is.

When I was a little kid, one of my father's means of compelling/teaching me to develop the hygienic habits I'd need as an adult was to threaten to have me circumcised if I didn't develop those habits. Had I had sons, I'd not have circumcised them -- not because I'm one of those fools who call it a crime -- and I'd have used the same threat to teach them to learn to keep themselves clean.

Gauss .... and me

Question: what is the sum of the first 100 whole numbers?? how am i supposed to work this out efficiently? --

The question you asked relates back to a famous mathematician, Gauss. In elementary school in the late 1700’s, Gauss was asked to find the sum of the numbers from 1 to 100. The question was assigned as “busy work” by the teacher, but Gauss found the answer rather quickly by discovering a pattern. His observation was as follows:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + … + 98 + 99 + 100

Gauss noticed that if he was [sic] to split the numbers into two groups (1 to 50 and 51 to 100), he could add them together vertically to get a sum of 101.

      1 +    2 +   3 +    4 +    5 + … + 48 + 49 + 50
100 + 99 + 98 + 97 + 96 + … + 53 + 52 + 51

1 + 100 = 101
2 + 99 = 101
3 + 98 = 101
.
.
.
48 + 53 = 101
49 + 52 = 101
50 + 51 = 101

Gauss realized then that his final total would be 50(101) = 5050.

The sequence of numbers (1, 2, 3, … , 100) is arithmetic and when we are looking for the sum of a sequence, we call it a series. Thanks to Gauss, there is a special formula we can use to find the sum of a series:

S=n(n+1)/2

I had essentially worked out this pattern as a very young child, by third or fourth grade, using its principle to more easily sum rows of numbers. One of my sisters also has always used this arithmetic shortcut (we can't recall whether I taught it to her or she independently discovered it), and taught it to her daughters when they were kids.

When I was in eighth grade, our teacher told us all (both eighth and seventh grades shared a class room) to write down the numbers one through one hundred and then sum them. I started applying my habitual method for summing long rows of numbers (finding '5s' and '10s' in each column) ... and then realized that I could group entire rows by '100s'.

That is, whereas Johann Karl Friedrich "Gauss noticed that if he [were] to split the numbers into two groups (1 to 50 and 51 to 100), he could add them together vertically to get a sum of 101", I noticed that I could sum the numbers in this manner: 0+100 1+99 2+98 ... such that a formula to solve the problem was 50(100)+50. I spent more time double- and triple-checking my reasoning ("Is it really that simple?") than on working out the answer.

Cutest Little Things

This 'Facebook' thing mostly seems a total waste to me. But, every once in a while it's worthwhile.

I've never met them (and their mother was just a kid when I saw her), but I recently saw a picture of the granddaughter and grandson of one of my cousins. They're 1/4 Chinese (*), my cousin having married a Chinese woman. Anyway, they're just so cute.


My cousin is a Miller, and his daughter married a Smith. And I find that hillarious.


(*) We're a very diverse family.

Finding his voice

Laura Rosen Cohen: Miracles -- I'm verklempt

32-Year-Old Actor Interviewing Himself at Age 12

32-Year-Old Actor Interviewing Himself at Age 12 (the adult version, though not the kid, very much reminds me of one of my nephews)

You Can't Tell Them Apart

You can't tell them (my sisters) apart, so don't even try!


In this photo, we're in birth-order, not the "proper order" as mentioned previously, left to right: Troy, Gary, Karen, Sharon. This is at our "Uncle B's" place, he being one of our father's older brothers. It's chilly and I am not smirking (as has been suggested), I'm squinting -- bright sunlight is painful! As you can see, Karen agrees.

I have no idea what our ages are, but I'd guess 8/9, 6/7, 4/5 (my sister thinks the lower number, or younger; she's probably right).

"Uncle B" is/was L B Miller -- those are not initials, that's his name. His kids (he and Aunt Lou (Benson) had 9 kids: 3 sons and 6 daughters) always thought it was funny that we called him "Uncle B." I suppose it sounds like "Uncle Bea." Blame our mother for that. Damn Yankees!

It's rather an accident that we four even exist! Dad had come North to visit "Uncle B" (who had come North for factory work) for two weeks. For whatever reason, he got himself a short-term job while visiting, and just never returned to his "hard-scrabble" land in Missouri -- 40 acres in the Ozarks that had never been logged, except for one tree, the "tree rustler" of which was caught in the act and sent to prison, before Dad bought the land when he was 16. Then he met and married our mother, and here we are.


This is at "Dice St," showing the house. We're older here -- this is clearly after I was well into my "growth spirt" and the different parts of my body were growing at different rates. I was in constant pain for a number of years (fortunately, it was a low-grade, rather than excruciating, pain).

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I can tell my sisters apart in this photo. And well, the quality of the photo isn't all that great. But, you can tell that Dad took it -- there is his ever-present shadow in the foreground. But, I *think* Karen is on the left and Sharon the right; meaning, they're not the in "correct" order. Those gunny-sack looking dresses they're wearing proabably are ;-). No, they're made of regular fabric. I think. Whichever, Grandma Brown (Dad's mother) made the dresses.

That is Grandma Brown (née Eunice Jay [or J. or J, I really don't know] Price) with us. She was 65 when I was born, so add maybe 10 years to that to get her age in this photo. She used to pat me on the shoulders, beaming, saying something like, "Oh, your hair is turning so dark! I hope it gets jet-black, like your Grandfather's." It never did get that dark ... and I suppose she was purposely ignoring (because my mother was one of those damned Yankees!) that my mother also had very dark hair (our mother's father was said to be 1/2 Indian, though that probably really meant that his mother was part Indian and part white by ancestry, but was born to one of the few registered "Indian" families left in Indiana).

I ask you, does she not look like a squaw? I asked her once, when I was young, whether she was part Indian; she strenuously denied it (when she was growing up, it wasn't "cool" to be Indian). Years later, at my mother's funeral, I asked my "Uncle B" whether she was part Indian and he said, "Yes, her people were Indian" (which, understanding what he said does not mean he was saying she was "full-blood" Indian). I don't know which nation her people were descended from, but I'll take a wild guess at Choctaw (based on nothing more than where in Tennessee her people lived). It's also through Grandma Brown that we have Jewish ancestry.

That grandfather with the jet-black hair was also part Indian (1/4 according to the family) ... which would be where the jet-black hair comes from. He was 50 when our father was born, and died when Dad was nine, that is, about 21 years before I was born. His name was was Joseph (1877-1936); his father (said to be 1/2 Cherokee) was James. I have no idea when or where James was born, just that he was "old" when he married my great-grandmother, Margaret Elizabeth James (I've also seen her name as "Margaret Isabella Elizabeth James"), and died either before or soon after Joseph was born. I've never seen this image before, but this photo is of great-grandmother "Maggie James" and our grandfather Joseph's youngest sister, "Aunt Zubie" (Zuba Sesile Ward). [ another photo edit: this is the only photo of her I'd seen before today]

Dad is/was Samuel Jefferson Richard Joseph. Technically, he was "Baby Boy," because our grandfather was angry that the clerk wouldn't put all that on the birth certificate, and so told the clerk to just leave it as it was. Fortunately for Dad, the county courthouse burned down and took the records with it.

Our father had an older full-brother named Jackson (I don't know the rest of it), who died as a young child; apparently killed by rats (one always thinks of rats as an urban, rather than rural, problem). As I recall it, Jackson was about two years older than Dad and died at age four.

[Sharon says Jackson lived from August 2, 1925 to September 1929. She thinks he got into some moonshine, which killed him; I don't recall anything like that. As I recall it, the family found him dead one morning; there were bite-marks on his face and it was "all black"]

Our grandparents divorced when Dad was very young (they were going to remarry, and Grandpa had the license, but then died of pheumonia contracted putting out a fire burning down his cabin; he was working as a logger at the time). Dad was aware of seeing hs father only once, when he was four, and Joseph took him to visit his grandmother, "Maggie James." Every time Dad talked about that, he'd mention how enchanted he had been by her "beautiful white hair." So, most of his life, he didn't even know what his father looked like. But, when he was in his sixties, someone who had known his father (I think it was the younger man who had shared the cabin with Joseph) sent Dad a photocopy of a photograph of him. Personally, I think my brother Gary looks a bit like him (I take more after Mom's people).

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Edit, and shocker (in that I never expected there to be *any* relationship, as 'Ward' is so common a name):

I was Googling, to try to verify that I had the birth-name of great-grandmother "Maggie James" correct -- and also so that I could link to an photo of her I once found on the internet. Anyway, I happened to come across this page, according to which we *are* related to Nancy Ward; though, in our case the relationship is by marriage rather than direct descent. Specifically, some of our cousins are descended from Nancy Ward's Scots-Irish husband, Bryant Ward. Our grandfather's step-father, Charles Rufus Ward, was a great-grandson of that man Bryant Ward.

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Edit2:
Sharon just sent me this photo of Grandma Brown, at about age 88 or 89, to better show her Indian-like appearance; I think I may have been there (home from college) when that picture was snapped:


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Edit 3:
Ah! These next two are more like what I had in mind for showing off "The Twins" (that's how my brother and I referred to our sisters, but there came a time when they *insisted* we use their names).

The date on this one is July 1963 -- that's when it was developed, not necessarily when it was taken. But, as the girls were born in January 1961, this date has to be fairly close to when it was taken. That may be the only time Dad got pictures developed in a timely manner. Still, are these not some cute, and happy, kids? Near to far: Gary, Karen, Sharon, Troy.


With this first/top one, as infants, I have to admit that to me they just look like babies (and almost all babies look identical to me); if I didn't already know they were my sisters, I'd not guess it. My sisters usually wore their hair long, but one year our aunt convinced them or Mom that a "Pixie cut" would be "so cute," so that's what's with the short hair in the outside photos. Sorry about my sister's rudeness in the center photo (girls!) -- you know, that is probably the *only* photo of Sharon in which her eyes both are open (instead, Karen's are closed)! Maybe this was one of those take-one-another's-place that twins like to do.

Speaking of twins trading places, they did that once in school, I think when they were in the second grade. As I recall the story, at the first break, the one dragged the other into the rest-room to insist they trade clothes and then go to their assigned classes, because the other's teacher was a right witch.

The World Was Younger Then -- Snowforts and Mortality

My brother and sisters and I made a number of snowforts over the years (we also once made a "rabbit warren" as our fort, and once an "ice cave"; and we also once set the back lot aflame to make a "prairie"); it think the fort in the accompanying photo, its remains, at any rate, may be the first. When I saw this photo the other day, the thought that came to me was, "The world was younger then;" and hence the title of this entry.


This photo was taken at "Dice Street," as we generally called the place to distinguish it from the other places we lived (if I recall correctly, the address was 20135 W Dice St). This was a one acre property out in the suburbs that our father had bought from the first friend he'd made after moving North, and for whom I am named. We lived there in two periods; the first from "whenever" until after the birth of my sisters (we moved back into the city before or around my fourth birthday in 1961), and again from when I was 6 until 11.

I think this photo may be from February or March of 1964; if so, I'd be 6 1/2 (that 1/2 is vitally important when you're that age!), my brother soon to turn 5, and my sisters recently turned 3. Yet, do those ages look right?

On the other hand, I don't think the photo can be from the winter of 64-65, when I'd have been 7 1/2. In my memory, that winter was snowier; more importantly, that's the winter I "discovered" my own mortality (and, thus, I'd not have been out in the cold air, unless this was taken just before that). And, were the photo from 65-66, I'd have been 8 1/2 and my sisters 5, which doesn't seem at all right.

So, the photo is probably from late winter/early spring of 1964, but may be from the next year; and we are seen sitting in the sad remains of our (very modest) snowfort, perhaps on the remains of our thrones. There didn't fall much snow that winter, so this fort never amounted to much. We had pretty much stripped the yard bare (as can be seen in the background) in rolling the snowballs of which we constructed it.

This picture is no exception to the general rule for pictures of us: there exist almost no photos of all four of us which do not reflect that Karen is "Gary's Twin" and Sharon is "Troy's Twin." That is, in all but the rarest of cases, Karen will be beside or in front of Gary, and Sharon will be beside or in front of me.

Ah, but those darling little girls were also very assertive of *their* ownership rights -- to Dad. In their minds, they jointly own him, and Gary and I had no rights to him without their express permission! And, budding little private property rights advocates they were, too: for, they discovered "the tragedy of the commons" all on their own. That is, they later realized that joint ownership of Dad caused for conflict when their interests diverged; so they "divided the assets" in a mutually agreeable manner: one claimed his head and the other his feet.

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Even though we were born and raised in South Bend (Indiana), as was our mother, we apparently had a recognizably Southern accent in those days. Courtesy of Dad. One of my sisters has told me that when they were hospitalized for a tonsillectomy (need I mention that when we visited them, my brother and I were focused on the fact that they getting as much ice cream as they wanted!; I'd don't think I'd have been up for it, but I'd not be surprised if he had been willing to get in on such a sweet deal), a nurse asked them, “So, how long have you been up North?” and she, being a child, had no idea what she was being asked.

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When I "discovered" my own mortality --

One winter afternoon when I was 7, I saw that Dad was pulling into the drive, and so I ran out to greet him (that is, jump all over him), as little kids do. After all, I hadn't seen him *all* day! But, the thing is, I ran out in jeans and tee shirt -- I mean, not only without putting on a coat, but also without putting on shoes.

I awoke in the middle of the night -- and woke the whole family -- unable to breathe. And I *knew* that I was dying. Now, I known about death for forever, and I understood that I, too, would die. But that knowledge had been conceptual, now it became visceral. I wasn't terrified, really; I just didn't want to leave right then.

In thrashing around in my discomfort, I managed to find a position in which I could finally get some oxygen -- with my head and upper body hanging over the side of the bed. So, that's how I was taken to the hospital; half lying on the car's back seat, half lying on the car's floor.

At the hospital, I was put in an oxygen tent (for the next three or four days), and was again able to breathe without standing on my head. The hospital's patient capacity was apparently on full, at least in the "children's ward;" I was initially placed in an alcove off a main corridor devoted either to adults in general or to just women (I don't recall seeing any men as patients).

The next day, I was better and rested, and able to pay some attention to the goings-on around me. Though, when you're only 7, there is only so much entertainment value to be extracted from watching old(er) women in hospital-gowns walk back and forth past the alcove in which one has been stowed. This day was the first time I heard someone (one of the patients to another) refer to me as "pretty" -- and I was outraged: "I'm not 'pretty!' I'm a boy!" And, as Gentle Reader can see from the photo, I'm not, and wasn't, pretty (yet I have been accused of it more than once; one of those mysteries of life, I guess).

I was later moved for a couple of days to the "children's ward." That was really boring, making me long for the alcove; for, the other kids were either too sick to care about anything outside their own discomfort, or they were "babies." That ward is where I *really* learned that friendly behavior does not indicate friend; I mean, I was also learning that from neighborhood kids, but here I learned it from an adult and the lesson really sunk in.

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Speaking of snowforts and mortality, that "ice cave" I mentioned could have been the death of any number of us! Our *dogs* were smart enough to not want to go into it. The younger, larger one really put up a fight when we dragged her in with us. This was several years after the one in the photo, after we'd moved back into town; it was one of those winters with particularly heavy snow fall. After the snowplaws had been through, there was this too, too tempting pile of snow and ice ... and we burrowed tunnels into it. And, if it had collapsed, it surely would have killed someone.

But then, we used to jump off the roof! We were some wild kids! We weren't bratty, we were generally well-behaved and polite, we were just really serious out our playing.

The Introverts

I mean to write more about shyness or introversion, including drawing on my own experience and perspective, but for now I wish to draw Gentle Reader's attention to this article by John Rosemond: 'Fixing' Son's Shyness. I used to read Mr Rosemond's articles religiously when the local paper carried them (and I still bothered with the local paper); I'm delighted to have noticed recently that Jewish World Review has added him to their roster.

I want to strongly endorse Mr Rosemond's point: if your child is 'shy' or 'introverted' (or as I prefer to call it, 'reserved'), don't work yourself into a tizzy over it. If that is all that is "wrong" with him, then he'll be fine -- and, in fact, your attempts to "cure" him are more likely to turn it into a real problem than to ever "cure" it. In this regard, it's similar to stuttering: most stuttering is caused by self-conscious awareness of the fact that one *did* stutter. Well-meaning drawing of attention to the child's stuttering by his adults -- and that's exactly what "working with him" to "cure" the stuttering does -- serves only to make him even more self-conscious of his stuttering.

The proper response to these "problems" is almost always: "let it be, don't draw attention to it, it will cure itself."

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When I was a kid, starting at perhaps ten, my father was convinced that he needed to help (make!) me get over my "shyness." One of his methods was to take me with him when he went downtown to pay the bills -- when we'd get to the places we were going, he'd give me the billing statement and the money and make me go in alone to do the transaction.

I gotta tell ya', this was most annoying!

Sure, having some one-on-one time with Dad (without "the kids" to hog him) is cool, but being made to do some silly task to "cure" you of something you know isn't a problem ("Da-ad! When I grow up and wanna pay bills, I'll pay bills!") is just annoying.

My "shyness" is/was made of multiple factors, including:
1) my basic personality;
2) I enjoyed the company of adults;
3) I enjoy the company of those I already know (why add more people to the mix when there is still so much more to be discovered about these?);
4) learned response; with a major lesson delivered when I "discovered" death (a story for another time).

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In all those "personality profile tests" that educationists and some employers have required me to take over the years, I always "test out" as 'introverted.' I could have told them that the very first time had 'introverted' and 'extroverted' been explained to me.

As I mentioned above, I prefer the term 'reserved' to either 'shy' or 'introverted' (while 'introverted' is a technical and non-judgmental term, most people misunderstand the term as indicating "socially flawed"). Part of the reason I prefer 'reserved' is that I am reserving judgment as to how far to extend myself in this social setting until I studied it more, and understand it.

Tangentially, the educationist 'gospel' that children need to be imprisoned in public indoctrination centers, lest they miss out on "socialization," is such an utterly false (yet, oddly, self-serving) concept; this "socialization," as it is practiced today, actively harms your child. But, even if it were neutral, the concept is utterly flawed. FOR, children are truly socialized only in relation to adults -- and, after all, the goal of childhood is adulthood -- not in relation to other children. Everyone spends the majority of his life as a chronological adult; he needs, as a child, to learn adulthood, not childhood. He's already a child, and he has childhood down pat; he's a natural at it.

An interesting observation I have long noted is that in many social situations, it is actually we 'introverts' (who are in the minority) who "carry the ball" and keep the thing working. For instance, I can't tell you how many times in class-room or seminar situations, I -- the "introvert" -- have asked the question that helped make clear the point the instructor wished to make, or induced the instructor to better (or correctly!) explain a point, or got the instructor to slow down on some complicated or difficult matter, and so on.

It's a conundrum

The recent news of the (Palin-hating) Columbia professor recently arrested for an incestuous sexual relationship with "a young relative" above the age of 18 -- which is to say, his daughter, whom he apparently began to schtup after her 18th birthday -- (discussed here, among other places) is surely a vexing conundrum for the "liberal" "mind" (as well as for consistent libertarians, though not for exactly the dilemma examined here).

On the one hand, "What's wrong with you bible-thumpers that you can't stand to see others (who are your moral and intellectual betters, in any event) express their 'love' as they see fit?" -- This horn of the dilemma applies to consistent libertarians, as well as to "liberals," for both groups operate with essentially the same intentionally-busted moral compass. The point here being that neither group can stand on any moral ground more firm than "Eeeew!" by which to condemn the incestuous relationship.

On the other hand, on the "liberal" view of reality, there is a very dangerous "slippery slope" involved here – that is, while it is surely as "unjust" to refuse to redefine marriage so as to include incestuous relationships as it is to refuse to redefine marriage so as to include “same-sex couples” or multiples (for, since when is “love” limited to two?), nevertheless it must be admitted that redefining marriage so as to include incestuous relationships would eviscerate the entire estate tax (death tax) regime. I mean, OMG! what if rich white conservative old people married one or more of their children just before they died?

That Answers That Question -- Gauss and Series Summation

For years, I have mildly wondered what was the name of "a mathematical genius" (the teacher's words, not mine) to whom my 8th grade math teacher had accidentally or inadvertantly compared me.

Almost off-handedly, in a recent post by David Friedman, I learn that it was Gauss (as a child).

Here is Mr Friedman's comment:

... I am now imagining that instructor as the schoolteacher who tried to keep a class of children-among them the young Gauss-quiet by having them add up the numbers from one to a hundred.

And here is why I had been wondering at the name for so many years:

Early in the school-year of my 8th grade (it was private/religious school into which my siblings and I had just been enrolled), the math teacher instructed the class to sum the numbers 1 through 100 (inclusive). I turned in my answer within just a couple of minutes (most of which I'd spent verifying that I really had hit upon such a simple and time-saving way to get the correct answer). This prompted him to ask whether I'd already been taught about this before transfering to that school (I hadn't). Embarassingly to me, he referred to Gauss, whose name I didn't catch, as "a mathematical genius" ... you know, embarrassing because of that whole social structure of children-in-groups thingie: one is allowed to be smart, but not too smart; being "too smart" is almost worse than being "dumb."

I'd calculated the correct answer by modifying a method I'd invented years before to more quickly sum a column of numbers -- when presented with a column of numbers to sum, I mentally rearrange them so that I can count/add by 10s and 5s. At least one of my sisters also does this, but we don't know whether I taught it her (I'm 3.5 years older) or she independently hit upon it.


So, googling Gauss' name, I found this page, which says:

The formula, if you will, is to add 1 +100, 2+99, 3+98, ...48+53, 49+52, 50+51. So, we have the number 101 fifty times or 5050.

In my case, because it was my habit to mentally rearrange a series to be summed into multiples of 10s, the "formula" I came up with was (0+100) + (1+99) + (2+98) + (3+97) ... + (49+51) + 50 = 50 * 100 + 50 = 5050


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In another recent post, Mr Friedman links to this excellent essay: 'Why nerds are unpopular,' which offerers a thoughtful analysis related to my comment about "that whole social structure of children-in-groups."

And, incidentally, a *huge* part of the problem of children-in-groups has to do with the fact that the educationists (that's a curse word, in case Gentle Reader isn't yet aware) have a fixation on consolidation, of herding their defenseless charges into larger and larger schools in larger and larger school districts -- so as to justify larger and larger bureaucracies of educationists.

In that religious school my siblings and I attended for three years (and it wasn't even my family's denomination), the problem of cliques just wasn't a problem ... for a clique with but two or three members simply isn't.

The school was grades 1 through 10 (with two grades in each classroom, both taught by the same teacher). With the four of us, the student population came to about 130, in a school originally intended for 100 pupils. My particular grade/class had 10 pupils, with two of us being "smart" enough to be "nerds" in a public school (the other guy would have been toast in a big public school) and one being "dumb" (he'd have been pushed by social pressure into being a real trouble-maker and ultimately a drop-out).

In that scool, including the principal (who was also a teacher, and the paddler-in-chief), the cook, and the (part-time) custodian, there were 8 adults supervising the 130 children.