As you know, I’m a cheerleader for being an active producer vs. a passive consumer and education definitely falls in that active category.  (It takes effort to think/process new information!)  I’m bringing back the Mother Culture Commonplace Book series to share some of the things I’ve been learning.  Here’s what I’ve been reading/watching/listening to lately…

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What is Truth?

Hannah Arendt, who studied totalitarian regimes, said as much in an interview in 1974: “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.”  But a population that no longer believes anything is robbed of its ability to think and to judge, and ultimately of its capacity to act.  As Arendt says, “with such a people, you can then do what you please.”  These are the ideal subjects – or the ideal opponents. – We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State, p.18

The Consequences of Fast Fashion

Australia’s Most Baffling Missing Persons Case

I’m in the middle of listening to the podcast, The Lady Vanishes.  A quick description from the website: “Marion Barter, an Australian mother and teacher, vanished in 1997.  She was 51 years old.  The ex-wife of Australian Soccer captain Johnny Warren, Marion suddenly quit her job, sold her house and went to England for a year-long holiday.  Then she simply vanished. For 25 years her daughter Sally has been searching for her.  This is Australia’s most-baffling missing persons case.”

So many questions!  How can a person run away from their life, leaving their family wondering if foul play was involved?  Does a person have a right to start fresh without telling anyone?  How far can an investigation go?  Where does it cross the boundaries of privacy?

Sneaky Little Blue Jays

This common songbird sure is beautiful with his blue back and soft white belly.  But did you know he has a naughty side?  Blue Jays are known to take and eat eggs and tiny chicks of other birds, sometimes even from chickens!  I went down a rabbit hole about frustrated homesteaders flabbergasted with the continual issue of pecked eggs.  After stakeouts and cameras, they discovered the culprit was none other than a blue jay!  So interesting.  Another fun blue jay fact: crows are part of the same family (the Corvidae).

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“Mother Culture,” an idea from Charlotte Mason and coined by Karen Andreola, simply encourages mothers to keep learning and growing, even while raising children.  Andreola describes it this way: 

Mother Culture® is a way-of-life, the skillful art of how a mother looks after the ways of her household. With a thinking-love she creates a culture in the home all her own. A mother does a lot of taking care, so she needs to take care of herself, too. Much depends on how she manages her life. 

✔ ASSIGNMENT #1: Crack open a classic novel.
Back in 2019, I started reading The Well-Educated Mind and was so pumped to start the “The Story of People: Reading through History with the Novel” reading list.  I ordered a beautiful hardcover copy of the first book, Don Quixote, aaaand…read the first few chapters and put it away, ha!  In August, I decided to tackle it again.  This book is a brick (over 800 pages!), so I gave myself the goal of reading just 50 pages for the whole month.  Sounded easy enough!  As of this writing, I’m on page 87, so about 10% finished.  I definitely don’t find it a page turner, but it is a good one for reading a chapter or two a day.  I actually think the writing is somewhat humorous!  Who knew?

✔ ASSIGNMENT #2: Discover and listen to a new type of music.
I popped around the Internet for some inspiration on this one and ran into Mildred Bailey, a Native American jazz singer during the 1930s.  A few fun facts about Mildred:

• She grew up in Washington, but often visited relatives on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation in Idaho, where her mother was an enrolled member.  (Her mother was also a devout Catholic.)  
• She was known as “The Queen of Swing” and “The Rockin’ Chair Lady.”
• This little tidbit made my smile: “Whatever the reasons may have been, superstardom eluded Bailey. The singer blamed her plumpness for her lack of commercial success, while others suggested that it was really Bailey’s temper and sharp tongue that were her undoing. There’s plenty of evidence that Bailey felt especially bitter towards better-looking female vocalists, many of whom she felt lacked her talent. Throughout her life, Bailey blamed her obesity on a glandular condition, although many of her friends attributed it instead to her great love of food.”
• She suffered from diabetes and died of a heart attack at only 44 years old.
• She had many popular songs, including “Rocking Chair” and “Thanks for the Memory”, but I loved (and could relate to!) another of hers called “It’s So Peaceful in the Country”.  All three songs are below!