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The Upstairs Archives

~ A random repository of how-to-write and geekery, with an occasional snippet of accidental wisdom.

The Upstairs Archives

Blog Archives

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A few thoughts on homeschooling

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Uncategorized

≈ 37 Comments

Tags

completely random posts, homeschooling, humor, life, rambling musings, small rants, wisdom, yay

I was commenting on Rachel Carrera’s blog, and we got to talking about homeschooling. (I also was talking about it with pinkdoughnuts15, too. HOMESCHOOLERS UNITE!!!) Anyway, I somehow (it happens, sometimes,) came out with this pithy piece of wisdom:

At public school, kids learn stuff. Homeschooling kids learn how to think.

I don’t know how I got to that conclusion, but that’s how I feel. At college last year, I met other students, and was in the top 10% of all my classes. About my lowest grade was a B+. People thought I was really smart, but I think it was partly because I had already covered a great deal of the material before, and partly because being homeschooled had taught me good thinking strategies.

Also, for some reason “homeschooling” is accepted as correct by this stupid word processing program, but not “homeschooled” or “homeschool.” What’s with that?

Hooray for homeschoolers! X-D

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Thoughts from a fortune cookie

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Tales of a Wandering Bard

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

david foster wallace, insanity, mindless selfishness, rambling musings, small rants, very short posts

This past Saturday evening, not unlike many other Saturdays, my family had Chinese for dinner.

And, as everyone knows, once you’ve had Chinese takeout, then you have to have a fortune cookie.

When I opened up my fortune cookie, I found myself looking at (besides the Chinese learning thing; does anybody else think that’s stupid and buy a Chinese grammar book instead?) this thing:

You will have many friends when you need them.

And I just thought, heck! What good is that if I’m not there for them when they need me?!

So, I’m going to try to be there. I know I’m not perfect, but I will do my best.

Anybody else hate unintentionally self-centered thinking like this? Please, let’s commiserate in the comments! 🙂

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Mocked Guardian Meaning

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

c.s. lewis, disney, g.k. chesterton, j.r.r. tolkien, lord of the rings, pixar, poetry, star wars, the chronicles of narnia, wreck-it ralph

Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that the dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that the dragons can be slain.

~~~~G.K. Chesterton

Trapped

Two days ago, I posted a poem I called Mocked Guardian, and I asked people to guess its inspiration and its meaning. Some guessed it was situations from stories (specifically involving Obi-Wan). No. Others guessed it was a life experience, or a dream. Not quite.

Mocked Guardian, in essence, is a collection of themes from nightmares, certain stories I’ve read, and life experiences, but there is a broader message. Mocked Guardian is a commentary on a trend in popular culture, something that is all too common today; the destruction of all safeguards against evil, and the defamation and vile slander of all childhood heroes. You could say it was the outcry of a man’s silent, boxed-away conscience; it could be the ignored guardian angel whose existence is denied. It could be the lament of an Aragorn whose necessity is denied, along with the existence of real, present, vicious evil. It is also the cry of pain of a child whose heroes are cruelly ripped away and defaced, while the villains are glorified. It is a nightmare in which all the heroes have been removed, all the protectors have been banished, allowing the myriad evils of the world to come down in shrieking hordes, ripping, tearing away like harpies, bringing fear, while the undefended children have not so much as a Rosary to fall back on.

But it is also a ringing cry of defiance, a rallying cry, a lament with a background message of hope.

To me, storytellers! To me, lovers of art, literature, and fiction! To me, lovers of history and lore! Don’t let them take away our heroes. Keep fighting. Because if we don’t protect our heroes, who will?

If you don’t agree with this message, if you feel attacked, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to attack you. Like Galadriel, I’m not dangerous myself. You brought your own danger along with you. And if you feel attacked… this is some friendly advice… maybe it’s time to drop the baggage?

And to those who don’t believe in moral absolutes, no offense, but your ideas are a boatload of eggsy moonshine!

About the picture: The above drawing is sort of related to the poem. Only sort of. Depending on your point of view, it’s either a nightmare Obi-Wan had a few months after his master’s death on Naboo… or it could be a Star Wars and Wreck-it Ralph crossover fanfiction that I haven’t written yet. You decide. 😉

I know that the proportions are wrong, and the line thickness is somewhat distracting and also a bit too variable, but compared to some of my other art, it’s pretty good. I still need to practice my poses, and drawing shouting people and crying people and people in despair, etc., though. 🙂

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Thoughts For Lent #4: Palm Sunday

13 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Tales of a Wandering Bard, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

catholic culture, j.r.r. tolkien, lent, palm sunday, roman catholic, st. john the evangelist, st. john's gospel, the gospel according to john, the lord of the rings

[Edit: I realized that there’s an error in this post. I said St. John’s Gospel when the Passion narrative this year was taken from St. Matthew’s. Oops. But this post is about St. John’s gospel, so I’m not changing it now!]

I recently attended an Introduction to the New Testament class at a local college, and while the instructor there had several valid points to make, I strongly disagree with something they said. They commented on the Gospel of St. John, saying that it was

heavy and rich in symbolism; jeweled and bright, you won’t see the blood, dirt and grime in this gospel.

I strongly disagree with this statement.

Today is Palm Sunday, and for today’s gospel was read the entire Passion narrative from the Gospel of St. John (though, if you go to the Novus Ordo, you’re more likely to have encountered a truncated version. It takes less time to say things in Latin than in English. Nyah! :-P) Re-reading St. John’s gospel, I find it jarringly different from what was described to me by my instructor.

Another of my teachers once said that St. John’s gospel is the crucial gospel. It shows us the greatness of the God-Man by its rich and varied symbolism, which, given enough background material, is no less rich than it was almost two thousand years ago, when it was first written. It is considered the most beautiful of the gospels, and there is the reason why, in my opinion.

In St. John’s Gospel, there is ugliness and dirt, but there is also beauty, which seems the more beautiful for the horror around it. St. John the Evangelist’s style is reminiscent of Tolkien, who drew us lovely pictures with his words: a stone statue of a king, broken, scarred, defaced, masked by an ugly, leering skull, its broken head lying on the ground, but with a crown of yellow stonecrop blossoming in the crevices of its stony hair–a broken sword, nonetheless cutting the Ring from Sauron’s hand. In the Gospel of St. John, too, there is beauty amid the blood and grime; the last words of Jesus, which are sweet and lovely enough to bring tears to the reader’s eyes, and Our Lord dying at the same time as the Paschal lambs were being slaughtered.

Perhaps the teacher of my class merely meant that the blood and grime wasn’t graphic, in an attempt to draw in those of my class who had seen The Passion?

The world may never know.

To do this instructor justice, however, I particularly liked one thing they said:

The Gospels are like separate facets of one gem, each revealing the same truth in a different way, giving us a more complete viewpoint on the life of Christ.

(Okay, they said “Jesus,” but I like saying “Christ,” so there! Hah!)

Check back in tomorrow and the rest of the week for a week of poetry! I may as well just write my disclaimer here:

The author of these posts and poems does not have a PhD in theology or Bible history, and she humbly begs the reader’s pardon for any inadvertent historical and doctrinal errors that may be contained herein. Thank you!

Anyway, thanks for reading, and God Bless!

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Two Steps Back

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Tales of a Wandering Bard, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

accidents, accidents happen, bad keyboard, internet modem usb fob thingummy, laptop, noveling, star wars, swats upside the head

A great leap forward often requires two steps back.

–Obi-Wan Kenobi

Hey, look at that… *points at all the pretty gorgeous serviceable handwriting*

Sorry, but that’s always what I imagined Obi-Wan’s hand to be like. Not the messy handwriting he annotates his textbooks in…

signatureBut the neat, elegant hand of a gentleman, from a more civilized age… *shakes self out of reverie*

What was I going to talk about, anyway? Almost certainly not how much more gorgeous Obi-Wan’s theoretical handwriting is than mine… *gets swatted upside the head for excessive praise of the beauty of the text*

Oh, right. A great leap forward often requiring two steps back. Well, here are the two steps back…

  • My laptop getting damaged by the water I spilled on the keyboard, thanks to Raya and her habit of leaving her clothes everywhere (and also the fact that I thought I had put the laptop away when I actually hadn’t… *swats self upside the head for excessive stupidity*)
  • The fact that we can’t find the Internet modem fob USB thingummy for the computer downstairs. Double gah! *gets swatted upside the head again, this time for using the word “thingummy” and the sound of dubious status as a word, “gah”*

So, what’s the great leap forward?

How about 5k more words on my novel? How’s that for progress, eh?!

So yeah, I feel kind of good about that… *gets swatted upside the head by Han, for getting cocky* Hey! Han, I thought I had banished you from my mind palace until you’re needed!

Well, hope you enjoyed this post… I have to go chase Han and arrest him for trespassing on private mental property. ‘Bye!

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