Category Archives: Homeschooling

Office in a Bag- Outdated?

Let me know if this is still a good idea in this day and age, or if I am hopelessly outdated…

An Office In A Bad is a home organizer tool. It allows you to have everything you need to function at your fingertips. Mine is an old soft briefcase I used to use for writing group papers, and was repurposed into this.

Office in a Bag

It’s basically all I need to make my to do list easier to complete, where ever I am. I know so much is digital nowadays, and I don’t know how much anyone would still need one of these, so I am really interested in what Gen Z use or think of something like this.

It’s useful for grabbing for the library, running out, or even in the home if you don’t have the luxury of a full office or desk. It prevents a kitchen drawer from becoming an office drawer.

Mine has most thing I have realized I needed over the years. I have in various pockets:

rubber bands
paper clips
Post It Notes
eraser
sharpener
pens and pencils including permanent and highlighter and red/colored
ruler
binder clips
folder to put paper in
book marks
note paper and scrap paper
scissor
letter opener
thumb drive

All these things together in one place makes my life easier. But tell me, would you use a tool like this? What would you include or change? Is this as outdated as buggy whips?
Let me know!


Kids Today

I recently read a book that had been circulating in my face book feed called ‘Where Did You Go?’ ‘’Out’ ‘What Did You Do?’ ‘Nothing.’

At first I thought it was going to be a self help for finding balance and a chance to minimize and simplify a life, but it when it came in from the library it was labeled a ‘memoir’ in the vein of Mark Twain.

A disappointment in the self-help part, but still, oh my yes! I wanted to read this!

Most of the book seemed to be comparing the author’s childhood with modern children, and how different they are. Let me summarize what Robert Paul Smith has to say about modern children vs. his own youth.

He complains about school conferences- that school is school and home is home and teachers and parents ought not be expected to do each other’s jobs. He complains about what is commonly called ‘helicopter parents’ (he never uses the term himself), the people who follow their kids around and fight their battles and protect them from everything. He says we are teaching our children too early- that learning ought to wait while kids get to be kids. He says that modern kids spend too much time on their gadgets and not enough time playing and inventing their own games. He also says they waste too much.

Smith says that kids get too much assurance that they are doing well, and get pleasant smiles from parents when they used to get discipline. Sex and scantily clad women are now everywhere. And he says, “these kids are getting into so much trouble with the cops because the cops are the first people they meet who say and mean it ‘you can’t do that’.

When he was a kid, kids had ‘nothing to do’, unlike today, where adults keep kids on a frenetic schedule to keep themselves and their kids too busy to do nothing. Which was exactly my problem that I went to this book for!

There is no more distinction between the good and the bad, the respectable and the disrespectable. And when he was a kid, America was GOOD. Smith assumes that this is because modern grownups are so childish that there is no room for a kid to have a secret life, or even a separate one.

Not all is horrible, though. He thinks the modern idea of not always resorting to violence is a good one.

So now, I can only assume that you are nodding along and agreeing with him. Yes, let’s go back to the way things were when we were kids!

Hang on a sec. Let me show you the copyright date. He was 46 when he wrote this book, and the copyright is 1957, so….

copyright-394

He’s talking about a childhood in WWI and the turmoil beyond.

The more things change, huh? The ‘kids today’ he’s ranting about are the baby boomers.

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The Antelope Found!

When you live on the Great Lakes in North America, it’s easy to forget how amazing the area is. They are ‘lakes’ so we forget that they are huge and dangerous inland seas that happen to be 20 % of the entire world’s surface fresh water. And it’s easy when dealing with the wind and the snow and the rain whipping off of it to forget that these connected bodies of water were once major travel and transportation routes.

And it’s easy to forget as well that they are huge graveyards for both humans and ships.

 

The Antelope floating ...
The Antelope floating …

Like the Antelope, a 187 foot coal-hauling freighter which sank in rough waters in 1897 in Superior. Ken Merryman, Jerry Eliason and Kraig Smith have used a remote camera to film the nearly intact wreck, and have posted this for all interested to see.

It’s nice to know that this ship sank with so much warning that no lives were lost, unlike many other shipwrecks on the Lakes. It makes it a little less ghastly when you are enthralled watching the video exploring the hulk at the bottom of the lake.

It’s intact because it sank slowly and was carrying lighter cargo- ships carrying iron and steel would shatter when hitting bottom, but the coal and slower sinking let the explorers believe that they could find this wreck intact.

So, watch the first four-minute video they offer. And lets hope they can go back and film us more.

For more information:
http://www.twincities.com/2016/09/14/remarkably-intact-1897-shipwreck-discovered-in-lake-superior/