Tricotomania and more

Parvana’ Journey is the 2nd book in Deborah Ellis’ trilogy set in Afghanistan in the mid-’90s. We read The Breadwinner in the fall, while we were on our trip, and somehow hadn’t got around to acquiring the other two books until recently.

In my review of the first book, I suggested that the nature of the story might make this more appropriate for a day time read aloud. The second book comes with a similar recommendation. The subject matter might be disturbing for many children and the book doesn’t leave you thinking about stuff you generally want to think about right before going to sleep. It is a children’s book, written to be accessible to children (of probably 10 and up) but it is set in wartime with all that that entails. Use your judgment about your own child’s reaction to what used to be called “man’s inhumanity to man”.

Parvana’s Journey takes place some time after the action in The Breadwinner. The main character is still dressing as a boy for social and economic reasons. The book opens as she is burying her father, leaving her alone travelling through Afghanistan searching for her mother and sisters. The rest of her family had gone from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif at the end of the first book for a wedding but there were bombings shortly afterwards and Parvana and her father were searching for them. This book is the tale of Parvana’s journey through her war torn country to find them. Some of this she undertakes alone. Some with other children she meets along the way.

Ellis treats this difficult subject with compassion. She does not spare us difficult details of life in war but she deals with them in very sensitively. Although I was sometimes moved to tears, I did not find the book dispiriting. The relationships are well drawn and give reason for hope in difficult times. Somehow Ellis manages to show us that there are universal qualities to relationships that endure despite significant differences in context. The relationship between Parvana and Asif, a boy she meets on route who joins her, is particularly funny.

“It would probably really annoy you if I came with you, wouldn’t it?” Asif said. “You’d probably hate it. You’re probably wishing and wishing that I’ll stay behind.”

Parvana smoothed the wrinkles out of one of the washed diapers. She didn’t say anything.

“In that case,” Asif said, “I’ll come. Just to annoy you.”

Parvana felt a strange, surprising relief. She had known, deep inside, that she wouldn’t have been able to leave him behind.

“Please don’t,” she said.

“Forget it,” he said. “My mind is made up. And don’t try to sneak away without me, because I’ll catch you, and you’ll be sorry.”

(page 73-74)

The book raises some important issues that you might want to discuss. About the morality of stealing when you are very hungry, for example. Or the fact that bombs and landmines often kill non-combatants.

They watched as a group of planes streamed across a corner of the sky. A moment later there was a sound like thunder rumbling in the distance. They saw dust rise up from the far hills.

The girls had seen these planes before. They were nothing special.

“Grownups killing each other,” Parvana said, and she turned away to look for her mother in the other direction.

“I kill,” Leila said.

Parvana looked at her.

“I kill pigeons,” Leila said. “I don’t like to do it, but it,s not hard. It must be much harder to kill a goat or a donkey. It is hard to kill a child?” she asked suddently.

“It should be,” Parvana said, “but some people seem to find it awfully easy.”

“As easy as killing a pigeon?”

“Easier, I think.”

“We eat dead pigeons,” Leila said. “What do they do with all the dead children?”

Parvana didn’t even try to answer that question. She put her arm around her new little sister, and together they watched the bombs go off, way in the distance.

Or the nature of family. There are also more mundane issues like the importance of hygiene and how housework makes life more pleasant.

“Mother wouldn’t recognize me,” Parvana laughed, “doing housework without being told.”

I have been reading this to Tigger as she works on beading. We haven’t really talked much about the broader historical context of the setting of this book, though Tigger is aware that there is still war going on in Afghanistan. Issues get discussed as they come up. But then I often find that Tigger will recall things like this some time later and bring it into a conversation about something else. But that is one of the joys of homeschooling. We can just read things together and enjoy them. If we want to discuss them, fine. But if that doesn’t seem appropriate right now, we can do it another time.

Read alouds have also tailed off a bit in the past several weeks. We still read at bedtime but that is dominated by the Agatha Christie marathon that Tigger and her Dad are on. Day-time non-fiction read alouds have been few and far between. So it has taken us a while to finish The Road to There: Mapmakers and Their Stories by Val Ross, which I tempted you with back at the end of June.

Tigger is the grand-daughter of a high school geography teacher (retired) and her dad is kind of into maps. So a history of maps and map-making was likely to be popular around here. There are 13 chapters beginning with one about forgery and the Vinland map as a way to introduce the importance of maps. The following chapters are arranged chronologically and take us from the 12th century through to the present day. Each chapter begins with a short anecdote (in bold text to set it off from the rest of the narrative) before providing a detailed narrative of this particular contribution to map-making. There are relevant illustrations, often in colour, and text boxes providing extra detail on particular elements of the story. The early chapters focus on particular individuals considered important, including Cheng Ho, Gerard Mercator, Captain Cook, and others. But the history of maps is as much about technology and changing economic and political landscapes as it is about individual mapmakers.

Ross weaves the story of mapmaking into a broader history in an interesting way. There are plenty of points of connection to other subjects: the sciences of astronomy and mathematics, especially as the link to navigation; exploration and the discovery by Europeans of Australia and the Americas; changing trading relationships; wars and empire building;  the opening up the western U.S; the Cold War. While the book stands on its own, it would also make a good complement to your history studies more broadly.  As such, even those who like to plan out their curriculum might find it a useful addition to the bookshelf, whether its in the plan or just an interesting book someone might pull off the shelf.

Highly recommended.

I started First You Build a Cloud quite a while ago and it got put down with a couple of chapters to go during all the kitchen reno. I also switched to the history book because I knew I wouldn’t be able to renew it at the library. This was one of those impulse buys after someone on the Living Math yahoo group posted a list (with links) of good books that they’d found at a good price at Book Closeouts. I thought I’d give it a try. And am I ever glad I did.

K.C. Cole is a science journalist and writes very engagingly about physics. Some of this material is pretty hard to understand but she takes you through a lot of that difficult stuff slowly and carefully, explaining in an engaging way some very complicated concepts. Of course, the most complicated issues in physics (as in a lot of science) are epistemological (how we know what we know). She tackles those issues head on with 5 chapters in part 1 “The Art of Knowing”. And the final chapters return to some of those big questions about order and disorder, cause and effect, and the importance of (some) small differences. As she states in the introduction, “The idea that science is inseparable from philosophy is a theme that pervades this book.” (p. 4)

This is reading that I’m doing for myself to get more comfortable with the big picture of science and mathematics so I can help guide Tigger through some of this territory in interesting ways. As I’ve said before, I’m not happy with the way a lot of science textbooks are organized, but I need more knowledge of the subject to be able to go text-book free (or to work out what we can use and what we can ignore and where to supplement).

This book won’t tell you how to teach physics to your kids. Nor will it give you all the physics knowledge you need to do so. But it will give you a deeper appreciation for what science is, how scientists think, and what scientific questions look like. Along with Nathalie Angier’s The Canon (reviewed by Becky here) and a range of other books, it should help you build up some sort of confidence with the scientific enterprise that will enable you to have interesting discussions about important topics or at least feel like you can begin to take part in those.

It seems that the popularity of classical education of various sorts is related to its simple goal that education should enable us to take part in the Great Conversation. So much of that conversation in the 21st century is about science and yet so many of us feel utterly unprepared to engage in that part of the conversation. This book would be a good first step to building our own ability to engage in this broader conversation. The beauty of Cole’s approach is that she treats it as the same conversation, linked in with humanist concerns with metaphor, truth, and argument.

There hasn’t been as much reading going on around here while the kitchen was in pieces (and I had work on my desk) but I have a couple of things that I have been meaning to write reviews of. First up Margaret MacMillan’s The Uses and Abuses of History.

I found out about this book from a review in the Globe and Mail that a colleague passed to me at a conference recently. (I talked a bit about that here.) We had been talking about kids and things over dinner and one thing led to another. The article was interesting enough that I ordered the book from the library. The length of the wait list was also promising. It was well worth the wait.

MacMillan is a respected Canadian historian, best known to the general public for Paris 1919, and I was expecting a bit of a heavy read. Not at all. This book is a published version of a series of public lectures she gave at the University of Western Ontario. There is a list of further reading at the back but the book is pretty well footnote free and written in accessible language.

MacMillan brings historical knowledge to bear on a series of contemporary debates, elucidating the nature of historical knowledge in the process. As a homeschooling parent, I think it gives a good sense of what we might want our children to know about history, not necessarily in terms of facts and figures but in terms of how we interpret evidence and make arguments using historical knowledge. I’m not sure whether I would assign it to a high school student (if I did things like assign books) but I would certainly recommend it to parents as an aid to thinking about the kinds of questions you might ask your children and the kinds of discussions you might want to have about history in your home. I suppose that would go for any parents who aspire to have interesting discussions with their kids that aren’t about quizzing them on what they are learning in school.

Given that history is often included in state standards and national curriculum because of a perceived need to teach our children who they are, it is particularly helpful that there is a whole chapter in this book about History and Identity and another about History and Nationalism. I’m sure we are not the only family that struggles with these issues.

Overall, this was a relatively quick but satisfying read that will bear reading again in relation to specific needs. I am seriously considering making it one of those books that are on the shelf in case the cat every decides he needs to know some of these things. Or in case I need to remind myself of some of the detail of these arguments. I highly recommend it.

Warning: Photo heavy post

The plumber came this morning and after a little bit of grumbling, it is all installed and I have running water in my kitchen again. Hurray! So here is the photo tour…

This is the run of cabinets that we just put in. You can see that I have even done the dishes in the new sink. The dishwasher will go in that space at the near end. I was standing with my back to the cabinets that I showed you a week or so ago when I took the photo.

This is what is under the sink. The garbage will sit to the left of it. And the top shelf has to remain half full because of the drain. This is only a 24″ cabinet because I figured I’d rather have more cupboard space for other things.

Next is a 21″ cabinet with pull out wire baskets. Those are pretty sturdy baskets, which I’m pleased about. I’m seriously considering getting some for the Stage 1 cabinet. Makes the stuff at the back actually accessible.

And, in the corner, a cabinet with a carousel, making the space back in the corner accessible. These don’t feel as sturdy as the others, though. And that makes sense as they are held on in the middle of the straight side. My trays fit underneath the bottom one and the pan lids fit on the door nicely.

The drawers above those two cabinets have baking related tools (beaters for the electric mixer, measuring spoons, etc.) and a drawer of aluminum foil, waxed paper, ziploc bags and so on.

Opposite that is the peninsula we put in a couple of years ago. It has been extended by one unit which opens to the other side. The coloured bins are for (top to bottom) compost, plastics/glass, and paper recycling. And next to those are pan drawers with drawers for wooden spoons, knives and things above.

I have rearranged the contents of the wall cabinet above the new run to have things that we need access to when cooking or working at that counter.

The other side of the peninsula has items we mostly access from that side, like dishes. The cabinet nearest the door to the hallway is full of beer, booze, and cat food. (That’s the beer stock. I do keep several bottles in the fridge at all times.)

The cat food dishes are not usually there but underfoot on the other side. They have been very disturbed by all the construction and Donner, in particular, is not keen on eating in what is effectively a hallway. I think Blitzen likes the fact that his bowl has been near the refills.

To round off the tour a photo of the pantry cupboard. As you can see, not all of the drawers are attached to the door. But they all pull out for easy access to the back of the shelf.

I guess the tour would not be complete without a view of the new and improved plumbing.
You only saw the old stuff once the cabinet had been taken out but the cabinet itself had no back and a big U had been cut out of the bottom to accomodate all the pipes. This meant that all kinds of junk could fall down into the space under the cabinet. Not pretty. Not so with the new improved model, where the plumber drilled holes for the pipes in the assembled cabinet and tried to make it all as convenient as possible. All the hook-ups for the dishwasher are there so we can install it ourselves when it arrives.

Details, for those who are wondering, All cabinets came from IKEA. Akurum units with Nexus Birch doors. The handles are Attest. The counter top is Pronomen Beech. All those funky interior fittings are from them, too. So is the sink. Beware, their sink strainers didn’t come with all the right stuff so my plumber put in different ones. Also the tap came from somewhere else and is made by Kohler. (Although IKEA in North America seems to do standard North American bed sizes and measures all the kitchen cabinetry in inches instead of metric, the fittings for the plumbing are European. And they didn’t seem to come with adaptors.)

We didn’t buy any appliances from them either. We like to buy the most energy efficient ones possible so we research it online (NRCan has a good list) and then go to an appliance place. The fridge is a Kenmore (from Sears) that we bought when we moved in. The stove is a Frigidaire that we bought second hand from friends. The dishwasher (on order) is a Bosch.

So now we take a break. Probably not for long but Tigger is around next week so maybe we’ll do nice things with her. She takes off again on the 2nd for a week at Camp Davern (run by the Y). We need to do something about the flooring in the recently refinished part at least and I want a tiled splashback. I suppose we should paint the rest of the walls as well.

When I walked into the living room this morning, I saw some evidence of how unschooling works. As far as I can work it out, you acquire resources and leave them somewhere accessible. You make sure folks know they are there but you don’t make too much of a big deal about them. One day, they get taken off the shelf and used. Usually at really odd times.

In our house, it seems that even Blitzen is interested in learning some chemistry.

For those that are interested, that is The Periodic Table: elements with style. I suspect this means that, as tiring as Shakespeare camp is, Tigger (who is not a cat, just to be clear) was reading it at 8 a.m. this morning.

The quilt in the background is one I made for her when I was pregnant and that Tigger still uses as a lap blanket. The shawl Blitzen is lying on is Peacock Feathers knit in some fingering weight alpaca I got from Elann several years ago.

We’re so close I’m not going to post photos today. But we are ready to call the plumber back to hook up the pipes for the sink. The 8 foot counter top was about 1″ too short for that run of cabinets so we’ve had to piece it in the end. It looks pretty good. The hole has been cut for the sink. The faucet is all in place (and looks pretty snazzy, which is should for the price). I’ve put a carousel in the corner cabinet and pull out wire-basket drawers in one of the other cabinets. The doors are still not on the sink cabinet but that will happen after the plumbing is done.

Now we just need to think about flooring and tiles for the back-splash. That won’t happen right away. Maybe when Tigger is away at camp in a couple of weeks.

One day I would like to hire a tradesperson, have them come into my house and NOT say (with furrowed brow) “Why would they have done it like that?” I suppose it is a good thing it wasn’t us that did it like that, but still. It takes 10 minutes to get over the bafflement and on to the decision about how to fix it and make it work for what we are trying to do now.

The green stop-cock is for the exterior tap and cause the most brow-furrowing. (click to get a better view)

So, we need to cut some holes in the ceiling of the room downstairs. One will need an access panel and will have the stop-cock for the exterior tap, near the wall the tap is actually on. And with a stop-cock that actually turns all the way off. Another hole will allow access to the pipes that come up to our sink. They will then come back on Monday, saw everything off above the kitchen floor, saw them and cap them temporarily below the floor to be reconnected later and get rid of all the nasty pipework that caused all the furrowed brow.

We will then install the rest of the cabinets, cut the hole in the countertop for the sink, screw everything down and set (but not secure) the sink in its hole. Call back the plumbers and they’ll come and plumb everything in and set up the plumbing for the dishwasher so we can hook it up ourselves when it arrives. He’d plumb in the dishwasher, too, if it was here but it won’t be.

The tap we bought from IKEA is going to be returned. European connectors and no adapter (we may be metric in Canada but we are in a North American market so all the building stuff is mainly Imperial). So I have sent Mat off to the hardware store to get a new tap. Not too expensive. Single hole. Nice small fitting on top (the decorative part). And in brushed stainless like the fan hood and cabinet handles.

The counter around the stove is done. (Kettle temporarily next to stove while other counter is being oiled.) The counter on the new bit is done. A bit uneven down one edge but I’m hoping that some wood filler will work. Otherwise a bit of scotia moulding might be in order.I’m finishing up the extra cabinet for the peninsula.

The plumber doesn’t want to come on Friday (especially if we buy a Grohe tap; I guess they take more thinking than is feasible on Friday) but he’s going to tell the guy that does the booking that he is likely to be coming here on Monday. We have to phone to confirm when we’ve done the ceiling holes (this afternoon or early Monday morning). That will give us Tuesday and Wednesday to install cabinets and counter (and maybe part of Monday) to have him come back on Thursday. This means that the whole thing should be done by the end of next week. Hurray.

Of course I have bunch of work to do, too. So maybe I need to ramp up into workaholic mode.

Tigger had her birthday yesterday. It was a pretty good day. We began by opening some gifts after breakfast and then it was business as usual. She took chocolate chip cookies to camp to share with everyone.

Last night we went to a friend’s for a barbecue. I had baked a lemon cake the day before to bring for desert and my friend provided sparklers for it. It was a very nice evening and Tigger got dressed up in pretty clothes and wore her new sparkly bracelets. Our friends live near our closest transitway stop so I took her over there before dinner to show her where she needed to change buses to get the bus home from camp. Friends of Tigger’s that are also at the Shakespeare camp take the bus and live down near the transitway so she could come that far with them and get another bus up to our house.

She was a little bit nervous about it when I first suggested it last week, but I think it was mostly because she couldn’t picture the transitway station. She’ll get off on the lower level, come up the stairs and get the other bus from the top level. Once she’d seen it, she seemed pretty happy about the whole thing. And we took the bus down there last night for the barbecue so we got to see that it really is only a 5 minute bus ride (if that) up to our place. The logistics of meeting up with her friends on the way to camp seem more complicated so we’ll continue to drive her over in the morning. This saves us about 15km of driving a day and it means we don’t have to stop work on the kitchen at 3:30 to go fetch her but can keep going until she gets home sometime before 5.

So we got the other cabinets ripped out, patched what needed patching on the wall, and got some paint up (since the old counter had a built in splash-back and this one doesn’t. We started examining the work to be done in detail this morning, making measurements, etc. We downloaded the PDF of the installation instructions for the dishwasher we have ordered (fancy German engineering, maximum flexibility in the interior racks, and, most importantly, very good energy and water consumption; but it is expensive so they don’t keep them in stock).

The hiccup is that the pipes come out of the floor a little bit too far to the left. We did every kind of mental gymnastics possible to figure out if we could fit the dishwasher beside them and still get the fridge door open but had to admit defeat. We’ve called a plumber to move all that stuff over a couple of inches. S/he is coming tomorrow morning. I hope it isn’t too disruptive but it has to be done.

In the meantime we have assembled the corner cabinet and put it where we think it is going to go (4″ from the wall at the right hand end to give clearance for the gas pipe to the stove) but haven’t screwed it into the wall so we can adjust it if necessary. Mat has just gone out to by a heavy duty jigsaw blade and we plan to measure up for the counter that goes along the wall with the stove. It’ll need a U cut in it for the stove. We’ll cut that this afternoon and then measure and cut the cover panels that will hide the gaps at the side of the oven. We can secure the one to the right of the stove but the other one will have to wait until we determine the final position for the corner cabinet.

Also, because they were out of 6′ lengths of countertop we bought 2 eight-foot lengths and a 4′. This is going to work better anyway, with fewer joins, though we’ll have over 2′ left over. But it does mean that we can go ahead and cut the 18″ piece we need for the finished section that I showed you yesterday and fit that. We might even put in the other 18″ cabinet that extends the peninsula since we’re going to reposition the counter on that. All of that should be enough to keep us busy until the plumber gets here sometime before noon tomorrow. Then hopefully we can get the other cabinets and the sink installed either tomorrow afternoon or on Saturday.

Luckily, our laundry room is on the ground floor. So I can do the dishes in there and get water for cooking and so on. We also discovered the cause of the low water pressure in our outside tap. We bought the house in the winter (of 2004) and the former owners must have turned off the valve from the inside. The valve doesn’t turn off all the way, though so we always thought it was just low pressure. When I was turning off the valves to remove the old sink there was a third one under the sink. I had Mat go outside and turn on the outside tap. Sure enough, that valve is for the outside tap and turned all the way on, we have plenty of pressure. Not that we use it much anyway, preferring to water using watering cans filled from the rain barrels.

So life is not too disrupted though the kitchen is in disarray and there are boxes of kitchen stuff in the living room. Hopefully, the plumbing is straightforward and I can show you some “finished” pictures soon.