DIY Life Zine table of contents

You know how I was going to have the zine up today?  Yeah, well, y'see, there was a pretty major crisis earlier this week, which meant I've been dealing with high stress levels and lost sleep, but despite that it probably still would have been ready for today had my computer not been difficult.  So, as it is, I'm going to be getting some publishing software from a friend tomorrow, and I'll really really try and have it up tomorrow, or at the latest on Tuesday. 

Until then, I leave you with the table of contents: all the interesting things you'll find in the very first issue of the DIY Life Zine! :-)

1. Power To Change by Wendy Priesnitz (article)
2. Basics of Self-Defence by Stefan Latour (article)
3. Unspeakable by Josh Sterlin (poetry)
4. Zentangle by Cheryl Hulseapple (artwork)
5. Radicalize by Ze'v the Wonderer (poetry)
6. An Introduction to Safe Research and Computer Usage for Radicals by Artemis (article)
   
7. Winter Haiku by Emi (poetry)
   
8. Anger is a Gift by Ze'v the Wonderer (artwork)
9. Woman Not Seen by Cecelia LaPointe (poetry)
10. Seeing and Feeling the Ground...As Well As Other Things: Thoughts On Unshoeing by Michele James-Parham (article)
11. (Native) North America (Ours) by Josh Sterlin (poetry)
12. Unschooling and Trust by Eli Gerzon (article)
13. The Other Two R's by David Boone (article)
14. Excerpt From 101 Reasons Why I'm An Unschooler by ps pirro (article)
    
15. Dirt, Soil, Remnants by Cecelia LaPointe (poetry)

 I hope You're as excited about this as I am! :-)

Peace,
Idzie

Review of For The Sake Of Our Children

“How did we ever decide to deliver our children to strangers with questionable skills during the best hours of the day? In the same way, we agreed to have the birthing process taken away from us by the medical profession. In the same way, we agreed to have our dying taken away by this same profession and the directors of funeral “homes.” In the same way, we agreed to be satisfied consumers of processed food that has been so far removed from its original state that it is unrecognizable, consumers of biased information, misleading and enticing advertising for things like disposable gadgets. In the same way, we have agreed to accept the authority of the State-Mommy-who-watches-over-us.”

For The Sake of Our Children by Léandre Bergeron, translated by Pamela Levac

This is a book about unschooling. But this is not a book *just* about unschooling. It’s a book about attachment parenting, respectful parenting. About sustainable living and farming. It even has a good sized fistful of politics thrown in! In short, this is a book about one man’s life, led trusting and respecting both his daughters and the world around him.

Léandre Bergeron comes from an interesting background: born in Manitoba, educated at a Catholic school in the hopes that he’d one day become a missionary priest, and eventually becoming a teacher, his rebellious nature led him to put all that behind him and move with his wife to rural Quebec. It’s there, on their homestead, that his three daughters were born, and there that the story truly begins.

Léandre shares, in the pages of a journal he kept for a year, his daily life spent with his three teenage daughters, the flowing rhythms of their days that move with the seasons. He shares memories of the past, stories of raising his daughters from the time they were babies, stories of their business (a health food store), the circle of life on their farm... He also shares his very strong opinions on childrearing, education and schooling, and the processed lives so many people live in this modern world. His words are insightful, his writing poetic and flowing, and thus this book was a joy to read. I found it interesting that in most books on unschooling, I find myself nodding in agreement with pretty much everything, whereas in this book, my opinions where more mixed. Much of the stuff he has to say I agree with fully. But there was a fair bit that made me pause, and seriously consider my stance on the matter. Not for anything huge, just at small points throughout the book. This, I believe, instead of taking away from the experience, actually added something to my reading of this book.

I did find myself wanting to hear more about the *entire* family, mom included, because she was mentioned only briefly throughout the book. However, most of what I’ve read on unschooling seems to be like that, only usually it’s entirely from the mother’s perspective. Just one parent’s interactions with their children, not how their family works as a whole, so that isn’t really unique to this book. That said, I found it a very pleasant change to read a book, talking about hands on attachment parenting and unschooling, not just the theory, written by a father. That subject seems to be covered almost exclusively by mothers! I also really liked that this book was about a family in my home province (and current residence!) of Quebec. The translation was great, as you’d never know that it was originally written in another language from reading it, yet at the same time the book felt very *Quebecois*!

Definitely a good read, and a good addition to any book collection on attachment parenting, sustainable living, unschooling, or homeschooling.

Peace,
Idzie

Watching, listening to, reading...

Now, I usually avoid memes like the plague.  Not the reading of them on other peoples blogs, I don't mind that, but the doing of them.  However, I finally found a meme that I'd actually like to share on this blog, because I think it's pretty damn cool!  This meme is called F.A.B share: Film, Audio, and Book share.  In other words, sharing what you're currently watching, listening to, and reading!  Thanks to the blog Holistic Mama for introducing me to it. :-)

Doing this in order, since I occasionally get an urge to do things in an orderly fashion, first up is film (which I'm considering to be "watching", so including TV shows)!

Last night, I watched the 6th Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  It just came out on DVD yesterday, and though I saw it in theaters, my Harry Potter nerd friend missed out on that experience, so really wanted to see it right away as soon as it was available!!

The 6th HP book was probably my favourite.  I felt the characters had really matured and were much more interesting to read about.  Because of that, I think I was expecting too much from the movie, so was rather disappointed.  A high point of the movie was Malfoy, though, since I felt that they handled his character very well!  I'd even go so far as to say that I liked the Malfoy of this movie better than the more cowardly one of the books...  Also, Ron and Luna were a pleasure to watch, as always. 

In terms of TV shows, we, as a family, have been majorly obsessed with House lately.  We've worked our way through season two...

Season three...

And now we've just started season four.

 

Emi, mum, and I simply LOVE the wonderful characters, terrific dialogue, and just find this show to be extremely enjoyable!!  We've even managed to drag my dad into the appreciation of this show, even if he doesn't share the actual *obsession*! ;-)

My mum, Emi, and I also just finished watching (because the season just ended on TV) the second season of Being Erica, which again, is more appreciated by the female members of my family. :-P It's a sweet, funny, moving, comedy-drama that airs on CBC, and we're thrilled with the fact that it's Canadian, as well!  So many of the shows that air on Canadian television are actually American, so it's really nice to find good shows that aren't!

Moving on to the audio section, there's been Christmas music playing near constantly in the our house, lately.  Most notably and by my choice, however, have been two great Loreena McKennitt Christmas CDs: To Drive The Cold Winter Away

And A Winter Garden.

I've been a fan of Loreena McKennitt for a long while now.  My mom has liked her since I was born, and at some point while growing up, I decided that she was pretty cool, too!  Lately I've been making an effort to collect all of her lovely music...

And finally, books!  I've read several very average teen fantasy books lately that I don't feel are particularly worth mentioning...  Other than that, I just finished For The Sake of Our Children by Leandre Bergeron:

It was a good book, and it was also a review copy.  Which means there will be a review of it posted on this blog soon (the only reason I haven't already is that I've been having trouble writing about any one subject for longer than a paragraph...).

I also *just* started reading Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto.

Because I'm barely into it, I don't really have much to say about it yet...

Hmmm, I think that's it for now!  Let me know if you think I should avoid all memes, even ones like this, in the future, or if I should put aside my usual aversions to memes if they're cool enough. ;-)

Peace,
Idzie

A day well spent

Today was wonderful!  I woke up to my sister getting ready to head on over to our friend Nick's house, to help him decorate his Christmas tree, so of course I decided that I wanted to join in the fun!  Last night and today heralded the true arrival of Winter for this area, as we got our first real snowstorm of the season!!  We've had about 25 centimeters (or about 10 inches) of snow fall in the last day (and it's still falling as I write this!), and as we headed out the door this early afternoon, it was simply gorgeous!  Lovely snow swirling everywhere.  We walked happily, singing Christmas songs, and being very happy that we could enjoy so much snow without putting up with so much cold (the coldest it's gotten today was -5C.  For most of the day it was even warmer!).

Once at Nick's house, we set to work decorating the tree...If something that's so much fun can even be called "work". :-)












I am a total sucker for reflective ornaments.  I can't resist taking a ton of pictures of them!



"Look! All three of us are in this one!"

 


We had a brief hot chocolate break, and then continued with the tree decorating (while struggling with the two very inquisitive dogs who are VERY good at getting in the way, and seem strangely attracted to the most breakable ornaments...). 





We even decorated the rest of Nick's house with ribbons!



Then, once we were done with all of our that, we surveyed our finished work...



The three proud decorators, me, Nick, and Emi. :-)

After a (fairly large considering it was nearing supper time) snack, we settled down to watch a favourite Christmas movie from Emi and my childhood, The Muppet Christmas Carol.

We couldn't finish it before supper, so Emi and I headed back through the snowy wonderland (well, the mostly wonderland.  We did have to move into a driveway to avoid a snowplow at one point, who, though we were in plain sight and had not just popped up in front of him, showed no signs of either veering to avoid us or slowing down.  A very common occurrence with snowplows around here...) for a (very quick) supper of homemade lentil soup.  I uploaded my photos from the afternoon, then we headed back over to Nick's house, where we were joined by Trev as well for the remainder of the movie.

When we finished the movie it was still snowing, and looked simply lovely from the window, so there were no complaints from anyone when Nick decided he wanted to go play outside in the snow.  We had a snowball fight, ran around in the middle of the streets (one of my favourite things about snowstorms is how few cars are on the roads), and decided to venture into the woods.  And that was beautiful.  So beautiful!  Even though darkness had fallen a while ago, it was still very easy to make our way through the trees, since the reflection of light from the crisp white snow made it almost as bright as dusk.  Sound is even more muffled after a snowfall in the woods than it is on the streets, and it felt almost holy...  I was sad when we had to head back towards a warm house when Emi's feet started to get too cold.

After getting warmed up with some hot chocolate and cookies, I was still quite happy to head outside yet again for the walk home, despite a bit of wet clothing...  I just adore the first real snowfall of the season!

All in all, it was a day very well spent.

Peace,

Idzie

Introducing Emi

I've been feeling lately that what I share of my personal world on this blog is not all that fleshed out, because although I'll briefly mention my family members, I've hardly talked about them as *individuals*.  I'll just say that I went downtown with Emi, or had a conversation with my dad, but neither of those things says much about who I'm actually sharing my life with!  So I decided to do a bio of sorts on each family member.  My apologies if this isn't the most fascinating subject ever (I mean, *I* think they're fascinating, so maybe you will too! ;-)), but I want to give more of a background on my life, so I plan on having the links to each family members 'page' on the sidebar once I've written them all (they'll probably be spread out over the next couple of months).  A neat list of those people (animal people included) most important to me.  But enough with introductions.  Or maybe not.  Just a different *type* of introduction... 

Meet Emi.

She's a self proclaimed Otaku, one obsessed with manga, anime, and Japanese culture in general.  She loves to "cosplay" (dress up as characters from a manga, anime, or even video game), and adores going to the annual Montreal anime convention.  In full cosplay, of course.

She's also learning to speak Japanese (she'll greet and say goodbye to people in Japanese a good portion of the time, and regularly decides to confuse her poor family and friends by throwing in random Japanese words and phrases into normal conversation), and plans on visiting Japan in the next couple of years.  She says that in her learning of the Japanese language, she's come to understand the intricate workings of the English language better, and to really gain a whole new respect for the power of and beauty of language.  Oh, and have I mentioned that she loves Japan?  Yeah.

Emi is a writer, and a good one at that.  She's been doing writing "role-playing", where two authors collaborate online to create a story, scene by scene, since she was something like 10 years old, and thus has written hundreds of thousands of words of fiction.  That's her main form of writing, but she also occasionally writes non-fiction in the form of really good responses in online debates and discussions, has recently developed a love of poetry, especially haiku, and has turned out a couple of haiku that I really like, though she's more critical of them (unsurprisingly).  She also tackled NaNoWriMo this year, and finished victorious on November 29th (one day before the deadline!) with 50,014 words.

Emi has been playing the snare drum for four years now, and the highland snare specifically for two years.  She goes to drum lessons once a week at a pipes and drums school, and drum practice once a week with the pipes and drums band she belongs to, that does paid gigs I might add.  She earned her first money ever for playing drums just a couple of weeks ago!

I should also mention that Emi has a crazy non-biological twin named Trevor.  They decided they were twins last year (he's the cute twin and she's the smart twin), and like to do similar things, wear similar clothes, claim each others mother for their own, and say all personality traits that they have in common are thanks to their shared DNA.  They even fight like siblings! ;-)

She also has three adopted big brothers, one of whom she's actually informed of this fact. ;-)

In case you were wondering, Emi is 16, and unlike me, with my half a year of kindergarten, has never been to school a day in her life.  She's probably the best in my family at arguing in favour of unschooling, because unlike me, she's pretty good at not putting people on the defensive.  Obviously, sometimes that reaction can't be avoided.  But when it can be, she'll usually manage to!  She's just generally good at debating, as well (usually issues of unschooling or green anarchy, since those are the two most contentious things she's likely to talk about).  She argues both logically and calmly.  She just doesn't usually get ruffled or angry, and if she does, she hides it well!

Most importantly to me, Emi is my best friend.  We talk late into the night about things both vastly important and deep, and things merely gossip worthy.  We argue over which guys are cute or not, people watch together, talk about our shared love of writing, about human behavior, about politics and religion and a million other things...  I'd seriously be lost without her!

Oh, and I have to mention that she also loves art, loves spending time on the online artists community deviantART, and loves making plushies.  Check out her dA account here!  

And that is my introduction of Emi.  In case you didn't gather it from what I've written above, she's a majorly cool person.  Friendly, talkative, loyal, intelligent, fun and funny.  I think I'm pretty lucky to have her as a sister, personally!

Peace,

Idzie

Swirling ideas and a new poll

In case you didn't notice, I just put up a new poll, asking What Are You Celebrating This Holiday Season?  Go on and vote!  And by the way, I *thought* I'd put a "nothing" option (I know I was planning to when I posted the poll...), but I forgot...  Just so you know, I *do* realize that some people don't celebrate anything at this time of year, it was just an oversight on my part, and now that people have voted, it won't let me change the poll...

In other news, I have tons of post ideas swirling around in my head, and if they continue to swirl around in there they will soon actually make it into blog posts!  Some of the things I'm planning on writing about are:

• A bio post for each of my family members, because they're incredibly important to me and important in my day to day life, but I realize that I've very rarely talked about each of them as individuals!  That means a post for my mom, my dad, my sister Emi, the cat Henry, and the cat Minni...
• As you may have noticed, I've also put a tidy "about me" link at the top right of my blog.  Following that, I want to have a link to a post talking about each of the labels I use most often, and that are listed in my blog description: unschooling, vegetarianism, animism, green anarchy, and being a hippie. ;-)
• A post talking more about my personal spirituality, creating your own spiritual experiences, rituals, and ceremonies, and similar stuff like that...
• Language usage, grammar, spelling, etc., how people look at people who use *good* versus *bad* grammar, how important (or not) I think all that is...
• Swearing, *bad* language, my feelings on all that.

And I know that I'm forgetting at least a couple of the things I've been thinking about!  I'm rather tired and feeling a bit under the weather, so please excuse me for general poor communication. :-S Anyway, hopefully most of this will actually makes its way onto this blog soon. :-P

Peace,
Idzie

A brief description of the difference between relaxed homeschooling and unschooling

I love this description by Ren Allen of the difference between relaxed homeschooling and unschooling (found on Sandra Dodd's page on the subject), so I wanted to share it!

"....How are relaxed homeschoolers different from unschoolers? In my brief searches, they seem to be very similar. ..."

They are and they aren't.
I've been both so I feel qualified to answer this.:) 

When I was the eclectic/relaxed homeschooler my focus was still about making sure we were doing "educational" types of activities. Yes, we did mostly hands-on fun stuff the kids liked, but I was still seeing it as a way to touch on "science" or "history". We DID have a lot of fun but sometimes we'd hit walls where the kids didn't get all excited about something I planned and it made me all grumpy.

Not the best atmosphere for learning. I couldn't see that the video games they were fascinated with were more valuable than the homemade solar cooker I had planned.;)

I was always the most hands-on, relaxed parent of EVERY group we ever belonged to. I really wish we'd run into some real unschoolers earlier in the journey because I think it would have been a fairly easy transition from an academic standpoint.

The part that is missing with the relaxed/eclectic approach is still trust. It's just being more creative with how you get information into children,that's all. Better....but not quite the complete trust that unschoolers have in the human ability to learn.

We may still raise butterflies or garden or go to museums, so to an outsider we're doing some of the same activities. The difference is my kids can show zero interest and that is just fine. The difference is that I'm not trying to check of some subject box or define their learning experiences for them. The difference is that we do these things to have fun and trust that learning happens when we're alive and breathing.:)

My family started off as relaxed homeschoolers as well, then drifted into full-fledged unschooling, and our experiences sound so much like Ren's!  Right down to our always being the most relaxed family of every group we attended.  And it would have made a big difference in our journey towards unschooling had we met other unschoolers earlier on, as well...  That's one of the reasons I'll happily answer questions over email and hang out with any new unschoolers who want to connect with families who've been doing it longer, as well as meet older/grown unschoolers who can be the "proof" they need that unschoolers do not have two heads. ;-) The other reason being that unschoolers are generally really great people to hang out with! :-)

Peace,
Idzie

Christmas, Solstice, celebrations...

Wow, long time no post (compared to what I usually do, anyway)!  And I don't even have a good excuse! ;-) But anyway, I did not decide to write a post about the fact I haven't been writing posts, so I will move on...

My family is not Christian.  Not even close, really!  I'm animistic and generally spiritual without being *religious* at all, my dad comes from a Catholic background but isn't exactly a believer, my mom is spiritual and doesn't really like to label herself, and Emi refers to herself as a "superstitious agnostic".  Quite a bunch, aren't we?  However, like many North Americans, we celebrate Christmas each year.  Both sides of the family are Christian to a greater or lesser extant, so I suppose it's logical that we do.  And I love Christmas, I really do.  The glorious music (even the religious music.  I just love Christmas music!), the Christmas tree glowing softly in a darkened room, great feasts, glittering decorations, and yes, Christmas presents.  I can't imagine, and wouldn't want to, stop celebrating Christmas!  However, I don't feel a special significance in WHAT Christmas is celebrating.  I could honestly care less about the birth of the baby Jesus.  So for the past couple of years, I've wanted to celebrate the Solstice.  Marking and taking joy in the natural cycles of the Earth.  Now that makes more sense to me. So, although I know few people who live nearby who would appreciate such a celebration (and when I say "few" I mean one, other than my immediate family, unless someone else I've overlooked pops into my head), and actually take it seriously, I'm still going to have a small celebration myself.  I will drag my family along for the ride, make some lovely decorations out of natural materials dragged out of our local woods, cook some tasty food, light some beeswax candles (I've been moving away from petroleum based ones), and just have a good time.  So that is my plan for the Holidays! :-)


In zine news, I now have all the stuff I need!  Woo hoo!  I want to send out a big thanks to everyone who sent stuff in. :-) I now have the slightly intimidating task of putting it all together in an actual *zine*, instead of just a pile of papers.  I say slightly intimidating because there has been A LOT of interest.  I find it slightly unnerving that there are many people enthusiastically waiting to read it... :-S Also, I've been putting thought into what style I want it to be.  It could be more *magazine-y*, with columns and a more professional look, or more traditional *zine-y*, with scissors and glue and different fonts and handwritten bits, and I've decided after very little thought to go with the latter.  The unique, artistic, free-form style of zines is what drew me to them in the first place, so I don't think going for an overly *shiny* look is the best idea! :-P

Oh, and I just have to mention that I can't believe it's December already!  Time passes too fast!  I need to be thinking about buying gifts, and helping to clean the house, and all those other holiday preparatory things...

Peace,
Idzie