Dear Folks,
Trip:
My family took a trip Friday and Saturday, to an area near Mooresville, North Carolina, Home of the NC Racing Hall of Fame. An old juggling partner of mine invited us for a visit and offered to give my family some juggling equipment merely because I had asked his advice on which clubs would be better for my children. I was preparing to order some clubs.
He gave my children three unicycles and some other stuff, too, in addition to the juggling paraphernalia. He has two boys, 10, and 13, and they were very well-developed behaviorally, did not resemble the behavioral problems endemic to the population of the public school systems we have recently experienced.
My friend his wife have done a good job raising those boys. My friend spends a lot of time home with his children because he makes all his money by performing. They live on Lake Norman, which has over 550 miles of shoreline, as it were, per se. My friend is patient and hard-working. He taught my children to fish. They would catch a small fish and then use that as bait for a larger fish. One fish, which they have named "Gill," is a frequent biter on their lines, as they have caught him (her) five times. The boys got about ten or more strong bites, but could never reel in the larger fish with success. Still, they enjoyed the experience mightily, great glee and thus and such.
My Dandelion (daughter) had no interest in fishing, and I did not force her to participate. Rather, I suggested that she go with the wife of my friend for a walk on the road beside the lake. They did, and I believe they enjoyed it, a chance to talk. My boys enjoyed fishing, but did not talk any more than necessary. (Oops! Our lines are crossed.) On Saturday, my two older boys enjoyed playing a game where they wore goggles and protective head covering and shot at each other in the woods, with pellet guns.
My thirteen-year-old son, My Flagship, got shot twice in his trial, without scoring a single hit on his counterpart, one of the boys of my friend, who incidentally knew the game and woods well. My Flagship was happy, didn't mind losing, would like to have played all afternoon had time permitted.
It must be sobering, though, to realize that you may not be as good as you might have imagined, playing "army" with nothing but sticks all your life theretofore, sticks and the vocal sound effects which are de rigueur. And let's not forget the plethora of unsupportable claims of who shot whom first.
One good thing about our trip was that my wife must have enjoyed being alone for two days. She slept a lot and then cleaned the whole house!
Gender Neutrality Efforts in the Public Schools of Sweden:
I have an article link for you, Dear Reader, regarding Sweden's misguided efforts to remove gender influence from the children's public school program . . . as if the children were not already clearly partitioned into two groups with respect to possession of a Y chromosome.
They had to get rid of toy cars for the boys (This may have been in pre-school.) because the boys placed a higher value on those toys and there was nothing they could do to keep them from choosing the cars to play with, disproportionately with respect to the choices of the little girls. I guess it is a tough job to have to desex children in their development. But, if you think for a second, it is a job nobody truly has to do, thankfully.
Sincerely, Nathaniel
Dear Folks,
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