The Newberry Medals: #1 The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

I wonder how many other people have done what I am proposing for myself: read the entire list of Newberry Medal winners in chronological order, from 1922 to the present. I may be alone in the non-editor, unpaid, unheralded category of readers. I do not even belong to the under 18 set of the target audience. So if anyone ever reads this blog, they may find their time slightly recompensed by the fact that I present a unique, if not keenly intellectual perspective. 

I don't pretend to be a literary critic or have a knowledgeable background from which to frame my opinions. I am just an ordinary reader, slightly attention-deficit, who, once upon a time was a poor reader, who over time and with practice has taught herself to first enjoy, then crave, then feast on the written word. I have begun where my interest waned in my youth: with children's literature. One day my brain will come of age and I may be able to read more of the McCulloughs and Hillenbrandts of the literary world. This project: to read the award-winning books written for my children's brains is in part an effort to grow out of them.

That is not to say I don't enjoy children's literature. On the contrary, I think the Children's category of literature is some of the most pleasurable to be found. No foul language or sexual minefields to navigate. Highly imaginative and full of attention grabbing sequences. Simple wording, yet figurative enough to train a mind to find alternate meanings and deeper understanding than what is literally written. So I set out on this reader's journey, excited to follow each hero's journey hoping to grow right along with them.

The first Newberry Medal winner was selected in 1922. I assume, but have no data to back it up, that the Newberry Medal might have been invented just to give honor to this impressive work. The title is The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon. It tells the story, in the opinion and understanding of the author, of the history of the world in a style friendly to children in a 592 page nutshell.

My copy, which I ordered from Thriftbooks.com, is the 1984 reprint of the original with a 90 page addition written by Hendrik's grandson Willem.  Hendrik's portion was better than Willem's. In fairness to Willem, his portion was from 1927 to 1984, and for him, those were current events. It is much easier to give a non-biased evaluation of  the distant past than the recent past. But Willem's part was so very liberally biased that I had a hard time pressing through to the end. I wish I had simply stopped reading at the end of the original publication. I did enjoy the explanation of World War II but the work went downhill from there.

On the other hand, the original publication by Hendrik went uphill. I could see Hendrik growing as an author. Near the beginning, the continual and incessant use of the passive voice was distracting and confusing. But at the end, after 6 years of writing and research, his use of figurative language animated the text and I thought to myself, "This man can write."

The book narrates the history of the known world, from the point of view of a midwestern-born white Christian as he understood it from research and tradition. The facts and dates are ubiquitous, but not overwhelming, as I easily caught the "gist" of most all chapters. There are 76 chapters in this illustrated text, so none but a couple are so long as to require a mid-chapter bookmark. After reading it, I can say without a doubt, I understand the history of Mankind markedly better than ever before, even as a Magna Cum Laude graduate from a State University in the field of Education.

I recommend this book to anyone who would like a not-too-simplified, but approachable narration of the past, with the caveats that bias is unavoidable, style evolves and illustrations do not always illuminate.

Family History Friday: Dad Was a Singer Too.

My Dad, a world renowned Immunologist loved Science, Cars and Baseball. He also loved to sing as a hobby. As he got older he always wanted us children to sing with him, but we would not always take the time. He eventually recorded 2 albums of his favorite songs just for posterity. My favorite of his was Edelwiess from The Sound of Music. I always thought he sounded a lot like Christopher Plummer. What do you think?

#52ancestors

Make it Monday: Pantry Spice Drawers

Storing herbs and spices is tricky. They require darkness to maintain their potency, so dusty, counter-top spice racks are out. They're small, so tall cupboard space would be inefficient. A drawer would be a better idea, but all my drawers are filled with essential tools and linens. That leaves the pantry, but I hate to take up valuable real-estate with small, random sized bottles that are easily disorganized.

So, one day I had a brainstorm. I have an ordinary 5 foot wide pantry with bi-fold doors. The white painted shelves are sturdy, but made of inexpensive particle board. My brainstorm combined with hubby's mad carpentry skills converted scrap particle board from our garage into spice drawers built under the bottom shelves of the pantry.

I re-bottled all of my herbs and spices into half-pint canning jars so they would be easily organized. I labeled their tops and put them all in alphabetical order. My collection is quite complete, but there is room for more.

When gathering ingredients from the pantry, I can easily get the herbs and spices I need at the same time.

This project has solved the long standing problem of spice storage in my kitchen. Maybe it will provide inspiration for your kitchen storage problems too. 

The Fruit Leather Lay-Away Plan: 

a simple way to reduce waste, and ensure tasty, nutritious fruit leather 

When freezing berries throughout the summer months, I always have a few smallish, irregular or slightly soft berries that are better used in fruit leather. Also, from my berry plants I glean berries a little today and a little tomorrow, just enough to eat and to freeze a quart or two at a time. When I have odd lots of berries or seasonal fruit, I pack them in a freezer bag and label it "Berries for Leather".

As the season progresses, we go through harvests of strawberries, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, blackberries, peaches, and pears from our garden. I supplement with market bought fruit as needed for storage, and there are always soft (not rotten) fruits and small amounts of leftovers from the canning or freezing process. I throw them in the same baggie until it is full and I then start another one.

Finally in September when the apples are ready, I make applesauce with my imperfect apples. Then I thaw the contents of the "Berries for Leather" bag, puree' it and stir it into my applesauce. I usually have about 3 times as much applesauce as other mixed fruit. I use 12 cups of fruit puree' to fill 8 dehydrator trays. Your dehydrator will be different. I use the Nesco Professional Food and Jerky Dehydrator with 12" trays with the fruit leather liners installed. On each tray I use 1 1/2 cups of puree'. This makes a nice, just-right thickness, which has a great chewiness without being sticky or brittle.

BTW, the reason I have 8 trays is because after 16 years of faithful service, my old Nesco fan died. I bought a new dehydrator with identical trays, saved the old ones and stacked my dehydrator higher, allowing me to dry more at a time.

Christmas Village Stocking Holder

It's August, the kids are back in school and it's time to start thinking about Christmas, right? Ahem, just getting around to posting this from last year...

I love to decorate with houses. They remind me of my Main Thing. I have 2 "house" quilts, miniature resin houses here and there, cross-stitched houses, patriotic houses in my Americana basement, and a ceramic Christmas Village painted over the course of a decade by me, my DH and my 2 DD's.

Problem #1: I lacked a way to hang stockings from my mantel without damaging the wood, so last year I decided I wanted "house" stocking holders and went online to find a do-able project or an affordable purchase. No luck.

Problem #2: My house has no place to set up a 17 piece Christmas Village.

The conjunction of these two problems at once led me to this solution: Make Stocking Holders out of our favorite Christmas Village Houses.

This project turned out to be one of my Best Ideas Ever, and this is how I did it: and I did it only with materials I had on hand. It was, at the time of construction, free to me.  Yayah!

First I unpacked the Christmas Village.

 There are about 17 pieces all created to make a Bedford Falls scene complete with

Martini's Place, Gower's Soda Fountain and Drug Store, The Emporium, The Movie House showing It's a Wonderful Life, 

The Library,

The Bailey Building and Loan,

The School, The Church, The Movie House the Train Station and The Bedford Falls homes

This one is 320 Sycamore.

If you don't know what these buildings refer to, google "Bedford Falls" and then spend a few hours in remedial Iconic American Culture school. No offense but, good grief, how in the world???

I asked my DH to whip up a base for the stocking holder custom fit to my mantel. It included knobs from which to hang the stockings. The knobs were salvaged from a previous furniture re-hab.

I decided to make things complicated so I asked DH to create space under the board for the lighting wires. We have a TV above our fireplace complete with an electrical outlet, so "rigging up the lights" is a definite go.

Meanwhile, I asked each family member to choose a building from the Village Set to have above their stocking. We ended up with the Church, the Railroad Station, the Library and 3 random houses. I laid them out on the board with a few accessories: sign, trees, footbridge, gazebo and lamp posts.

I marked with pencil the position of each building and each lamp post so DH could drill the holes for the wires.

Then, I glued the houses in place. We first used hot glue. It shook loose easily, so we brought out JB Weld which will hold the houses in place FOREVER. 

I taped off the front of the board because it was stained and finished and I didn't want to paint over it. Then I painted the top of the board white...

...added textured snow, removed the tape and let it dry. 

I was sure to put plenty of snow on which covered all my accidental messes with deliberate messes. 

After it was dry, DH rigged up the lights. We lifted the board onto bar stools so he could work under it. 

I used a broom handle to support the center due to the now substantial weight of the piece. 

Then we set it in place on the mantel.  This stocking holder was able to easily support 6 filled stockings with no chance of tipping over. I love the way it looks all lit up!

And even though it looks like it, it does not block the view of the TV and we can enjoy our traditional viewing of  It's a Wonderful Life 

I displayed the remaining Christmas Village houses on our bookshelves with LED votive candles underneath each one. This Christmas I will take and post a picture of them. 

My Grocery Method: The Pantry Prinicple and Know The Store

My favorite grocery store just pulled a fast one! They actually had the nerve to move to a bigger place with a new and improved(?) store layout. Whether the layout is improved or not remains to be seen. However, no amount of whining on my part will, I'm sure, convince them to revert to the old arrangement. As a result, I find myself needing to update my Pantry List.

My Pantry List is a Word Document that lists all of the groceries I normally use to prepare our family's favorite meals. It's a list of staples and other necessaries that my pantry never wants to be without. When I sit down to plan my once-a-month "Big Shop",  I use one of these lists to help jog my memory. I simply go down the list, decide whether I need to stock up on each item and, if so, I circle the bullet mark in front of it. If I need more than one, I write a number next to the circle. I make sure to evaluate the status of everything on the list so nothing is forgotten. Then I'm set to shop with a list that I can rely on to be complete. I really have no patience for lazy, unreliable lists. 

The best part, though, is that I have taken the time to organize my Pantry List to match the aisles of my favorite store which always gets my Big Shop business (hence the need to also re-arrange the list). The products from each department are listed together so I only visit each part of the store one time. Even better, my pathway through the store follows my pathway down the list.  I start with produce, move to shelf stable and non-food items, saving cold, frozen and light, squish-able bakery items for last (they go on top of the pile in the cart).  I save time because I rarely need to backtrack; and, I save money because I can walk right to the items I need without hunting through tempting displays of things I don't need. The only drawback is that I can never plan on my grocery shopping to count as a workout.  This method just doesn't elevate my heart rate that much.

I always keep my pantry stocked with the ingredients to make plenty of our favorite meals.  So if I decide to change my mind about what's for dinner at 3:00 p.m. I don't have to run to the store, I just go shopping in the pantry.

Each week I still need to stock up on milk, bread, eggs, some produce and anything for a special occasion coming up, but I limit my staples purchases to once a month if possible. 

The most effective way to save money is to just not go to the store. Having a well-stocked pantry and an efficient list from which to work will keep your time in the store to a minimum.

You can take a look at my Pantry List below. It includes lists for both of the stores where I shop on Big Shop Day. Of course, you will want to build your own Pantry List based on the best stores in your town and your personal eating habits. So get to know your store.  Make note of where things are placed in it. Plan your shopping trip, shop your plan and get out of there as fast as you can.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/cuna3br0j6u2j48/Pantry_List.pdf

Kids CAN Help In The Garden!

Newbie garden parents might be wary of trying to include their children in their new gardening adventure. If you are one of those, don't fret. Children have been helping their parents with this kind of work for longer than recorded history. They ARE capable, and they CAN learn to work (even if it seems hard) no matter what sob story they use to convince you otherwise. So what can children do to help in the garden? It all depends on their age:

What Can Kids Do To Help In The Garden?

Age 1-3: Their Help is Like No Help At All. They are really too young to be much help and they might actually be a hinder. These kids are sure to get very dirty, and are somewhat at risk of getting hurt. They need constant supervision if they are out in the garden. At this age, it's usually better to bring out a play tent and some toys or send them to an appropriate play area in your yard that you can see and monitor while you work.

If they are in the garden with you, these children can:

• pick things up off the ground
• eat a little dirt and build up antibodies (harmless in an organic garden. If a child eats a lot of dirt and will not stop, they probably are lacking in an essential nutrient in their diet.)
• dump water from a tiny watering can
• chase cats and birds away :)
• "thin" seedlings either by trampling on them or pulling them up whether you wanted them pulled or not (such great helpers)

Seriously, my advice is find something else for them to do, or garden during nap time. While my youngest children were in this age group, I sometimes used 1 older child as a babysitter. Their whole gardening job that day was to keep the baby out of the dirt.

Age 4-7: The Passive Resistant Helper: works s-l-o-w-l-y or pretends it's just too hard for them. Whines. At this age, you are in training mode with your kids. Don't count on their help to be very productive. The point of having a child this young in the garden is to teach them how to do the work and teach them that they are expected to do it, that the yard work is not going away, that they have a job which nobody else is going to do for them and they must do it. Nip the lazy entitlement attitude in the bud. Plan for these kids to max out at about 20 minutes of work. Acknowledge their good effort and reward them with freedom.

These kids can:

• rake
• trowel
• plant large seeds
• weed with supervision
• use a watering can
• harvest by picking
• snap beans
• pod peas
• get excited about bean teepees, raised bed mazes, eating fresh peas straight from the pod, hunting strawberries, riding in a wheelbarrow
• get a ride in a wheelbarrow
• roll pumpkins out of the garden

Age 8 to 15: really becoming a True Helper: starts out grumbling, but as he/she matures, accepts the work and just gets to it. Sometimes a kid this age even has fun with it. You can expect 30-60 minutes from these kids several times a week.

These kids can:

• shovel
• hoe
• rake
• trowel
• plant all seeds
• weed with instruction
• drag a hose
• use a watering can
• harvest by picking or digging
• snap beans
• pod peas
• stem strawberries
• top carrots
• corn "Chuck and Shuck"
• give a little kid a ride in a wheelbarrow
• help design the garden layout 
• plant seedlings
• tend their own planting bed from seed to harvest

Adult Jobs -16 and up and only after training: The Helpful Leader: knows how it's done, does a decent job and can help direct younger kids.

These people can:

• Perform and supervise all of the above jobs
  Ferlilize
  Rototill
  Prune
  Use chemicals if necessary
  Use power equipment
  Drive a tractor

Congratulations, Mom and Dad! You have raised a competent gardener and passed this skill to a new generation.