Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks (Week 4): Cry, the Beloved Country

I'd heard about this book for years but had never read it.  I even bought it for my dh, based on Gladys Hunt's review in her excellent book Honey for a Woman's Heart, wherein she cites this as one of her favorite novels.  Dh read it and liked it, and still I read other things.  Until last week.

Published in 1948, Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country was "like a shot heard round the world" (Hunt, p.53).  The story of two South African fathers, black pastor Reverend Stephen Kumalo and white farmer Mr. Jarvis, whose sons -- their only children -- die, this novel explores how we are all victims of racial injustice.

I was amazed at how successfully Paton, a white South African, depicted each father's story.  The introductory material explained how Paton, of British descent, worked as supervisor at Deipkloof, a large reform "school" for black boys aged nine to twenty-one and transformed this prison into a successful school and true reformatory.  He also worked for the liberal cause and wrote many articles, just like Arthur Jarvis in the novel, pointing to the disappearance of tribal and traditional family bonds within the native population as the underlying cause of crime in South Africa.  Paton's experience working in both communities enabled him to give honest voice to all his characters.

Two things bothered me about the novel, one of which was technical:  Paton utilized the introductory dash to mark dialogue, as opposed to quotation marks.  If the dialogue occurs within a paragraph, it is often difficult to distinguish from narrative comment.  Many times, I had to re-read portions to make sure what I'd read was, in fact, dialogue.  Since I am a fast reader, I found this distracting and irritating.  But it in no way dimmed my overall deep appreciation of the novel.  In fact, it may have slowed me down, made me consider more deeply, introduced an impediment to my reading speed in such a way that I paid more attention than I may have done otherwise.  Secondly, I wished that Paton had begun the story earlier in time, when Absolom Kumalo leaves his native village for the metropolis of Johannesburg, the first step in his path to destruction.  As it is, the story begins in medias res -- "in the middle of affairs" -- just like Greek and Roman epic poetry.  This is fitting, since some of Paton's writing reads like poetry.

Gladys Hunt deems Cry, the Beloved Country a "heart-breaking story of grace and forgiveness," and I concur.  This is a story that will stay with me for a long time.

Weekly Wrap-Up

We did things a bit differently this week.  Previously, I just kept a weekly schedule arranged by subject, not by day, i.e., all readings, assignments, etc., to be completed that week.  I was afraid that if I had a daily schedule, I'd feel like a failure if we didn't get EVERYTHING done for that day, so I stuck with a weekly schedule.  For some reason, though, this week I decided to print out a daily/weekly schedule for each of my daughters and for me.  And, shock of all shocks, it worked nicely.  We kept on task a bit more, and the girls had more "ownership" over their assignments.  Also, I discovered that certain subjects that tend to get overlooked or pushed aside ("we just don't have time this week for that"), like Latin or artist study, were scheduled AND studied.  We'll keep this going and see what happens.

We are wrapping up our study of the middle ages.  Although lapbooking/notebooking and others of that ilk deeply frighten me, each child is putting together a sort of medieval notebook.  We've only begun, but they are having a fun time with this project.  Since we don't do many hands-on projects (they give me hives), it's fun to shake things up a bit.  More on this later, because I'd like to share some of the resources we're using, in case anyone is interested.

We began English for the Thoughtful Child 1 this week.  We're only doing one lesson per week, but so far so good.  I also added in a parts of speech study.  I inherited a lot of books from my mother when she retired as a classroom teacher, such as a series of fun books relating to the parts of speech.  This week, the girls read Kites Fly High: A Book of Verbs.  They also each made a small verbs poster by cutting out verbs from some magazines.  (Hey, another project!  I guess I'm on a roll.)  We've studied nouns, verbs, and pronouns before, but it's good to reinforce.  We own the Schoolhouse Rock videos (multiplication and grammar), and they are not only educational but also a blast from my past.

Memory work is an area I have tended to overlook.  This week, though, the girls each selected a Sara Teasdale poem to memorize.  Also, Miss Priss is working on memorizing the Apostles' Creed for Sunday school recitation, and Tiny Girl is working on Psalm 23.  They have both memorized the Table Blessing in Latin, part of the Latina Christiana curriculum.

I'm finding that Miss Priss is open to reading some more materials on her own.  This is wonderful, since she will be in Ambleside Online Year 4 next year, which is quite a jump up from Year 3.  In fact, I am looking at Year 3.5 for Tiny Girl because I am wondering how she will do with Year 4.  I must say, though, it's so much easier with them in the same year!

Backyard Birding Bonanza

(Yes, I am well aware that's a silly title, but I liked the alliterations, and it's my blog, anyway.  Right?)

We have had lots of bird action at our feeders in the last few days!  I wasn't able to get good photos of many of our visitors, so I've only a few to share.  But what I have, I pass on for your viewing pleasure.

These Eastern bluebirds, which I adore, only visited for one day.  I don't have a bluebird house, so they don't hang around.  (I really need to get one!)  The vivid one on the right is, of course, the male, and there are two females as well.  I didn't notice the downy woodpecker in the upper left hand corner until after I uploaded the photo to my computer.  I couldn't have taken that shot on purpose in a million years!

Here's a closer shot of one of the females.  The male didn't stay long at all, so I was thankful to get a photo of him.

The downy woodpeckers love our homemade suet and eat it exclusively.  This is a female; males have a red splotch on the backs of their heads.  Downies and hairy woodpeckers look remarkably alike, but downies are 5 inches and hairies are 7 inches.  We get downies far more often than hairies.

 

We've had a lot of goldfinch action over the last several weeks.  They eat a bit of the black oil sunflower seeds, but prefer nyjer.  The males are starting to get their warm weather feathers in, that bright gold we associate with goldfinches.  Their numbers will increase as we inch toward spring.

I was really excited to get a passable photo of this brown thrasher, the state bird of Georgia.  Thrashers are typically quite shy and also groundfeeders, but this one (I'm assuming it's the one -- for all I know there are several who come!) visits at least once a day.  It likes the black oil sunflower seeds and my homemade suet.

I took about a zillion photos of this guy, and this is the only one that came close to sharing. But at least I have the one!  This is a male house finch.  He came alone for about two days, then his missus joined him.  I didn't get a photo of her.  Females are a grayish-brown and white, with a streaked breast and belly.  He ate a bit of nyjer seed, but they both preferred the black oil sunflower seed.

As usual, we had our share of titmice, Carolina wrens, male and female Eastern cardinals, American robins, Carolina chickadees.  But we also had a cute little brown-headed nuthatch, which was so fast I was never able to photograph it, and our first yellow-rumped warbler of the season.  Also, a female Eastern towhee has been munching on our black oil sunflower seed.  They are groundfeeders, and the male never ventures up to our tray feeder; but she has several times!  I've yet to get a decent photo of either of them.

As we get closer to spring, our feeders will become like fast food joints, and we'll be refilling them at least twice a week (sometimes more).  I'm looking forward to seeing the male goldfinches burst into color, and the arrival of the cedar waxwings, who stripped our holly tree of its berries in a matter of three days.

Backyard birding is one of our family's joys and is a great way to sneak in nature study with your children.  If you haven't done so before, have a go at the Great Backyard Bird Count this February (click on button at right for more info).  You may get hooked!

Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks: Week 3

I've been reading all the time (which I do anyway) to get caught up in the Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge, as I started a bit late.  The first three titles I selected are by the same author, Miss Read:  Village School, Village Diary, and Storm in the Village.  All three are set mid-twentieth century in the environs of Fairacre, a small village in the English countryside and are narrated in the first person by the character Miss Read, the village school's headmistress.

These warm, wise, and funny stories were exactly the tonic I needed this winter.  My friend, Jackie, who recommended them to me was "on tenterhooks" awaiting my reaction (I'm going to write about the dangers of book recommendation at some point), but her anxiety was needless.  I am now a Miss Read fan.

There are no plot crises, no denouments, no grand resolutions, although there are plenty of scrapes, conundrums, and sticky situations.  There is no Grand Question that is asked and answered (or, in the case of many modern works of literature, asked with no answer apparent).  What there is, in abundance, is life: the everday ups and downs of living on this planet and being in relationship with other human beings (and animals, as it were).

The author (whose real name is Dora Jessie Saint) has an extraordinary gift for creating characters.  These people are not characters; I'm convinced they are real.  Beyond that, her descriptions are so vivid (no minimalism here, thank goodness) I had no problem at all visualizing each scene:  I could hear Mrs. Pringle "mooing" a hymn "lugubrious contralto" as she cleans the school; I could see the children making their straw bunches for the harvest festival.  Each detail is perfect, and I was sad when I came to the end of the third book.  Happily, Miss Read several more books, and I look forward to reading them all.

Now.  This does not mean that I am going to chuck all contemporary fiction from my To-Read list on Goodreads.  And I'll always love a good, shadowy gothic tale.  Life may not be always sweetness and light, but it's not all bitterness and dark, either.  The Fairacre novels do a wonderful job of reminding me of that truth.