The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter
Earlier this summer, the Manchester Pocket took a trip into the Lakes region to visit this lovely spot, a “natural playscape” at the edge of a woods. About ten ladies came and spent time, over the course of the day, with many more children, and we all breathed some fresh air.
This awesome tree house was the most structural structure there. Other than this, an excellent wooden play kitchen (including metal pots and pans floating around, in which kids were able to make pine needle-and-bark stew), and a wooden teepee, the actual playground was minimally built up. Otherwise, there were just a lot of spots set aside for kids to do their own building and dragging around of big sticks and assembling of rock piles, and one excellent bench swing that could accommodate about 8 kids piled on top of each other (we tested this).
Hilariously, when we first arrived (and none of us knew exactly what to expect), one of the bigger kids asked, frankly, “We drove an hour for this?“
Most of them stood around for a good bit at first, and we had to just shake them off by saying, “go play! Just go play!” Sure enough, a few hours later they were all entirely engrossed and had developed some elaborate game involving teams and a fort within a fort, etc…
Have you connected with your local St. Greg's Pocket yet? If you don't have one yet, could you start one? Take it from me, it is so worth it!
Are you meeting up with other ladies and forming a Pocket? If so, please remember to snap a photo of your group sometime and send it in — we would LOVE to hear from you and share your story here on the blog!
This week's links!
Faith, culture, all that good stuff:
- Want to be surprised by how the Medieval era provides a model for modern medicine? Read Rediscovering the Ideal Healthcare Plan. Religious orders make a difference. We'd think so differently about hospitals — and schools — if they were again run by those vowed to religious life.
- As we began to study (then) Cardinal Ratzinger's The Spirit of the Liturgy, we could not have foreseen the explosive effect of Cardinal Sarah's words at the Sacra Liturgia conference regarding the ad orientem (towards the East) posture at Mass — priest and people facing the same direction. You can read the whole speech here.
- A good reflection on the events in Dallas and “the line that runs through every human heart” from my parents' friend John Zmirak.
- Now is a good time to assess the use of trendy technologies, especially the latest one that represents a massive shift: Pokémon Go isn't a fad. It's a beginning. Look, people used to “escape” from reality by reading a book. And even that can develop into a bad habit. But we need to be very wary about a different kind of escape that, unlike a book, doesn't pause for us when we put it down — the fast-paced, web-connected, transient nature of it is just fundamentally much more addictive.
Education:
- Fun and useful cooling system using plastic bottles. The kids could study some good principles of physics and cool things off at the same time.
- This professor at Rutgers Law School is banning laptops from his classroom come the fall. Make sure that your rising college student is equipped to take hand-written notes in the lecture hall this fall, whatever the policies at his particular university!
Miscellany:
- Craving Leo Tolstoy's favorite dessert? I thought you were! Turns out it's Anke Pie. (I love that, in Russian fashion, this recipe measures a quantity of water as “a shot.”)
- How Stephen Colbert met his wife. If you have ~6 minutes to spare for a sweet, well-told story.
Liturgical year:
- Today we remember St. Bridget of Sweden, royal mother of eight (including St. Catherine of Sweden), patron saint of widows, later a nun and foundress… Read more about her here!
From the Archives:
~We’d like to be clear that, when we direct you to a site via one of our links, we’re not necessarily endorsing the whole site, but rather just referring you to the individual post in question (unless we state otherwise).~
Dixie says
You know, I love Bits & Pieces. Thanks for doing this every week!
Karen says
Thanks for posting Stephen Colbert’s love story. My husband and I met 45 years ago in College. He took French to find a girlfriend and I took French to learn French. What did I know at 19 years old and he at 23? And we’ve lived mostly 🙂 happily ever after. Now we’re taking ballroom dance lessons together. It’s like marriage counseling and a date once a week. He has to lead and I have to follow.
Deirdre says
That’s adorable about the ballroom lessons! I hope you get a lot out of them — I love ballroom! 🙂
Lisa G. says
It seems you have to have a subscription to the WSJ to read the laptop article. I loved the homemade air conditioning system! Wonderful.
Deirdre says
Hmm weird. I definitely don’t have a subscription, but I guess they allow different reading/access at different times…
Anamaria says
The wsj is very weird with linked articles. I’ve found following links requires a subscription but I can get the whole thing if I just google it!
Tamara says
Thanks for all the bits and pieces you gather for us! And, thank you for the link to a post from the archives. I am pretty sure I have read every post already (some several times) but I still enjoy following that trail to re-reading posts.
Deirdre says
I re-read things of my mom’s frequently, too… 🙂
Cristina says
I loved the piece by the law professor in the WSJ and I was very surprised at the responses in the opinion section that they published later. Apparently there are a fair few (probably undergraduate) professors that think educators just need to be more engaging/exciting/provide their students with busywork tasks that require laptops so the poor dears can pay attention to a lecture.
My husband had the exact experience described in the article when he got to law school. He always hand wrote his notes and had to sit in the front row so as not to be distracted by everyone else playing on the Internet during class. I think he owes much of his success there to those habits…..and also not going to law school straight out of undergrad 😊
Anitra says
It’s funny, I studied COMPUTER SCIENCE in college, which you would think is a perfect fit for computerized notes – but I took notes for most of my classes by hand. I definitely remember more of the material that I *wrote* than that which I *typed*.
I saw my fair share of other students being distracted in class, whether by the internet (this was long enough ago that smartphones weren’t a thing, but recent enough that most students had laptops and wireless internet), games, or books. My personal favorite was my former pastor’s son, who was reading the Westminster Confession & Shorter Catechism, during a computer language class! It was around this time I came to the realization that if I knew I wouldn’t pay attention in class, I shouldn’t bother coming. I had better ways to spend my time than suffering through a class I didn’t care about or a professor I couldn’t stand listening to. (Like doing the work for that class so I could graduate!)
Donna L. says
I was not really aware of this Pokémon craze…until a friend from church asked us to pray for a young man who walked right in front of a vehicle as he was transfixed on the character on his phone. He has left this world. So tragic, and for what?
Deirdre says
That is so awful! I have heard absurd stories about people getting lost in their alternate, Pokemon reality, but that is certainly the most tragic yet. 🙁
Denise says
We drove an hour for this? hee hee! I have heard that before in my lifetime as a mom, but then they all end up having a good time.
Pokémon Go…..just another thing to add to the depressing mess that just somehow keeps lapping at the shores of moral sanity this summer from the modern world. sigh.
Catie H says
I love the article on the Medieval model of healthcare! Although I am struck that Catholic families are no longer churning out Religious children as they were during Medieval times. I wonder why that is. I have an inkling that our current model of education – both on this issue, and also how we educate our children in general – has something to do with it. Any thoughts on that?
A few years ago I was blessed enough to read TAN’s “Religious Vocation: An Unnecessary Mystery”. I think the argument put forth there has great insight.
Deirdre says
Catie, a first thought that springs to mind is just that there’s more of a place in our society for single people to live as bachelors/single ladies. In a time when being alone was a much more daunting prospect, — economically, emotionally, etc. — it probably made more sense to look at the convent or the monastery if married life didn’t seem to be happening or appealing…
Leila says
I think that’s true — it’s a false sense of finding your place in the world — whereas before, there was more of an urgency to find shelter, literally and figuratively. I think religious life seemed more doable and practical.
I also think that biologically speaking — I mean, speaking of the hard-wired biological need to preserve the species — when parents have only one to three children, those children feel the pressure to reproduce. Whereas when there are more children in the family, it makes sense to choose the celibate vocation — and “makes sense” to our physical natures.
This reality renders the “overpopulation” argument null, I think. Over the whole population, if the people who could have more children did have them (and keep in mind that not everyone has a lot of children, even if they don’t contracept), you wouldn’t find the population exploding, you’d find people entering religious life and doing the rest of us a tremendous amount of good, while glorifying God!
IF — and this is a big IF — they are taught that they’d be choosing the better part, as they would be!
Lisa G. says
Back sixteen years ago, when the new millennium was approaching, I read a book called “The Year 1000” by Robert Lacey. About what it was like in England back then. The thing which I remember most was there was one priest for every ten people. Doesn’t mean they were all good priests, but……. It boggles the mind.
Lucia Zimenova says
Deirdre, I just love reading your posts here, especially this weekly great selection of good reading stuff. Thanks for that! Greetings to you and your family from Lucia from Slovakia (yep, we met). Keep up the good work!
Leila says
So good to hear from you, Lucia!!