Mom's Memorial Service

For anyone who wasn't able to attend, I have uploaded an MP3 recording of the service at Galilee Baptist Church.

I hope it is a blessing to you.

Download Sally Burchard's Memorial Service.m4a from FileFactory.com

New Audio Book Finished

Woo Hoo! I have finally, after a rather unmotivated month, finished my reading of Booth Tarkington's Seventeen: A Tale of Youth, Summer and the Baxter Family, mainly William"

It can be found for download here. It is a very funny book. With a really nice twist in the tail end.

Another Audio book

I said in an earlier post that I would post whenever I finished an audio book or when an audio book project I was involved with was finished. Well another book is done. It is entitled THE TURMOIL, by Booth Tarkington. It is a dramatic work, rather than the humorous ones I have been reading. It is volume one of the Growth Trilogy, which includes The Magnificant Ambersons, which was a movie starring Orson Welles.

To download this book, click here. I read eleven out of thirty two chapters. You can download the entire book as a .zip file by clicking on the link that says as much, right under the introductory paragraph.

Family Trees and Stuff

Just recently I became interested in doing research on my ancestry. Maybe the fact of my Mother's passing away has something to do with this, or it could be another one of those things that I pick up like a pit bull with a bone in its mouth for a few months, and then move on to something else. On my Dad's side, on his father's side, I have traced back 5 generations from me. My Great-Great Grandfather was Hezekiah Burchard. He was a Union Officer in the Civil War, born in New York, and was a farmer in Michigan. His wife was Ellen Eliza Davis Burchard, and they had 5 children. One of them was Glenn, who was the father of Harold Ward, who was my dad's dad, my grandfather. They also had a daughter named Ethylin. I have attached their photos. Something else I have discovered that I didn't know until recently. My grandfather had a brother. (I know that is not a surprise, except when you don't find it out until you are 43) So now I discovered I have a second cousin in Seattle that I have never met. It is a funny thing about families. How can the descendants of 2 brothers become strangers within 2 generations? There was no bad blood between my Grandfather and his brother. My great uncle lived in Alaska. He was, if not a World War 2 hero, very brave. He was in the Army - a Warrant Officer, and he was captain of a ship. (yes you read that correctly) The Army had its own Navy in those days. He was based in the Aleutian Islands, and was on board a launch that got its bottom blown out by a Zero, but no one on board got a scratch. The Japanese actually invaded the Aleutians at one point in the war, so the action up there was probably pretty hot. My dad told me he gave him several war souveniers, including a Japanese Grenade. This is funny. My dad took it to school for show and tell (in the 40s)at Lake City Elementary School. He lost it that day, and then in the 60s they found a grenade in the bushes at the school, and my dad thinks that was probably his. Needless to say, he didn't step up to claim it. Can you imagine someone bringing a grenade to school for show and tell in today's post Columbine High School paranoia? I just have to chuckle.

So it is interesting to check out your family tree. Go for it. You might find out something interesting about yourself.

The Pictures, in order, are Ethylin Burchard Shelton and her father Hezekiah Burchard, and his wife Ellen Eliza Davis Burchard. She looks quite severe. But Ethylin could be classed as a beauty of her day.

Saying Goodbye to Oscar

Oscar went to his new home today. With mixed emotions we packed our lambie up in our car and headed 90 minutes northeast of Perth to the town of Toodyay (locally pronounced toojay). Oscar went to join another lamb named Barbie that was born on the same day as him. Oscar having been so sick was probably about 2/3 the size of Barbie. He will be living on about 11 acres, with some Cockatiels, and three dogs, a German Shepherd named Molly, and two Boxers named Dottie and Sebastian. My daughter was beside herself as we left. It is the first time she has had to say goodbye, maybe forever, to someone that she really loved. Fortunately the prospect of going to Albany, Western Australia for a week starting tomorrow lessened her grief. I'm not joking about her grieving either. Poo and Pee aside, we had become very attached to Oscar, but we know giving him up was right. He needed to be with other sheep - even though he is going to be neutered. Poor Guy. I feel ambivalent about that, because I wanted him to be able to make lots of other lambies. Oh well, he is not ours anymore. So that is the end of our time with Oscar the foster lamb. So what have we learned?

1. Farmers Deserve our respect. The work we put in to making one lamb survive makes me wonder how a bloke can get 5000 to survive.

2. There is a difference between cats and dogs and livestock. They may all be domesticated, but cats and Dogs can be trained to go to the door, whine or meow to go out and do their thing, or even go to the sandbox. Sheep just go. Wherever they happen to be, whenever they feel like it.

3. Most importantly, we discovered why Jesus is portrayed as a lamb. When Oscar was washed and clean, he was truly as white as snow. Oscar never cried out in pain. I was trying to catch him one day, and I made a grab for him and I know that I must have hurt him (not intentionally) but he didn't make a sound. The Bible says that "...as a Sheep before its sheerers is dumb (mute), so He opened not his mouth." The absolute humility of Jesus is truly personified in the person of a lamb.

Will we do it again? Maybe. We know what to expect now. We had no idea when Oscar came home that he would travel right to the point where he was within a day or two of being put to sleep; and then to see him turn around like he did, and just start eating like there was no tomorrow. We shall see. Take Care now.

The Mystique of Second Hand Goods

What is it about Garage Sales and Second Hand stores that is so fascinating? I have never actually found a treasure at one. I have heard of guys going to a garage sale and coming away with a mint condition set of Taylor Made Golf Clubs for 25 dollars, because the wife of a recently deceased man didn't know what she had there. But usually, it is nothing like that. Sometimes I think Garage sales are actually travelling shows. They go from house to house and set up with the same junk. Like the commemorative dish of Charles and Diana's visit to Sydney sometime in the 80s. Or spoons...you know the ones with the commemorative picture or something on the handle. Here is a good one. Records....I am talking vinyl here. Thousands. We went to three op shops (what we call second hand stores in Australia) today, looking for a cheapish sewing basket for Becky. I was browsing records. I would say that Tom Jones, Percy Faith, and Mantovani, if they could make a royalty off records given to second hand stores, would make more money than they did the first time around. Do these records breed, perhaps? I am a classical music lover, and I found a set of 10 Reader's Digest records, and a 2 record set of several different composers best known works. Funny, now that I think of it, I don't even own a turntable...at the moment. I am planning on getting one, and conntecting it to Audacity and capturing all my vinyl as MP3s. Then what? An op shop maybe....no. And what is it about Tea and Coffee cups and other glassware that makes people so afraid to throw them away? I mean, I doubt there is more than say, 3 people in the world who are going to walk into a second hand store and say, you know I have been looking far and wide for a set of America's Cup commemorative coffee cups from 1985! Oh look they are here! Somehow, I think not. I mean, have you ever purchased a coffee cup from a garage sale or second hand store? Today I did find a Delonghi Cappachino maker for $12.50. I put it on layby. Meaning we ran out of cash and the store didn't have a debit card machine and it was 3 minutes to 5 and the atm is a kilometre away. So we can go back and get this stuff tomorrow.

Honestly, with kids growing like weeds, the only place where it is worthwhile to get them clothes is the second hand store. That is the one thing that they are good for. One of the ones we went to today DID have some first edition books. But were they Dickens, or Jane Austen or anyone I had ever heard of? Nah. I can't even remember who it was now. But they were first editions, for $50 per book, under glass, right next to the chintzy costume pearls. They do say that one person's trash is another person's treasure, but really you would have to do a lot of digging to unearth a treasure in one of these stores. But still we go there, and we like it. Maybe it's the chance of finding a Reader's Digest condensed book of some famous novel...or maybe it is that decorarive tea towel from Ayer's Rock.

Oscar isn't everything... Some thoughts on Mark 9 38-40

In case you think my life is made up only of Oscar the lamb, rest assured, it isn't. He is just taking center stage at the moment. I wanted to take a minute to talk about something our Lord said in the Gospel of Mark. But let me give some background first.

I was associated with a group of Baptist Churches here in Australia that were cultish, if not a cult in themselves. There were many problems, and after a while, my eyes were opened and we removed ourselves from them. One of the beliefs they held was that, if one was not Baptised, not just in a baptist church, but an independent baptist church, and some even stretched it further to say not in a BBF church, then one's baptism was not valid. Now I am not going to go deeply into that here. In Mark chapter 9:38-40 we read...

"38: And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us.
39: But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.
40: For he that is not against us is on our part. "

Pay particular attention to verse 40. "He that is not against us is ON OUR PART."

This calls to mind the work of an advocate, or a lawyer. Someone who is acting "on one's part" is acting in one's best interests. And Jesus certainly knew the heart of the man who the disciples saw casting out devils in His Own Name, being Omniscient and everything. So if Jesus said to his (for instance) Baptist Apostle John (not John the Baptist), don't stop the Calvary Chapel guy over there because he is acting on our part, then what business does an earthly pastor have trying to tell his congregation that theirs is the only right church? There are lots of churches around today that are doing things a little differently than we used to do. Is that wrong? Ritchie Miller, the youth pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida while I was a student at the college there, and now is the founding Pastor of The Avalon Church, in Atlanta, Georgia, told us in class that a church could and should be culturally relevant (I think that was his favourite phrase actually). Today's culture is different from the 90s, the 80s the 70s (praise the Lord for that) and especially different from the 50s and 60s. I am not saying to not preach against the world, the flesh and the Devil, but it has to be done in a way that gets the attention of the people who live today, playing their xboxes, listening to their Ipods and posting their facebook statuses every two seconds. Another church that has done things differently is the Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I haven't been there, but I have read their statement of Faith and it doesn't seem any different to what I believe. Granted, the video church service might not be everybodies cuppa tea, but there is no denying the fact that thousands of people each week are hearing the preaching of God's word at Mars Hill. In possibly one of the strongest bastions of politcal leftism in the country, outside of say, San Francisco or Los Angeles.

So what am I saying? Basically I am saying that all Christians should be more concerned with how they are worshipping our creator, not how other people or churches are doing it. Of course there are false religions. Mormonism, Islam, Seventh Day Adventists...the list is long and Walter Martin has covered most of it already, and I am not advocating alignment with these...and I am not advocating tolerance of sin either. But gluttony and greed are no different than homosexuality and stealing. There are no degrees of sin. There is no sin which is worse than another. And they ALL will be forgiven with just a word to God in repentence.

So walk with God the way you feel he would have you walk with Him. As Christians, we are our own priests. We come directly to God in prayer. We do not go through an intermediary. Confession may be good for the soul but only if you confess to God himself, not to a priest in a confessional. God Bless everyone, and I will talk to you later.

Jonathan

Oscar

Well, it has been 8 days since my last update on Oscar the Foster. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Oscar is thriving. He drinks a 250 ml (1 Cup) baby bottle in about 30 seconds. Then he drinks another. First thing in the morning he drinks another half bottle. He is gaining weight exponentially and shows no sign of stopping. He had two doses of anti-biotics, and although at the start of the weekend things were looking grim, it seems that God wants our little lambie to hang around for just a little longer.

Now the bad news. All this food has to go somewhere. Unfortunately a good deal of it ends up on our floors. Fortunately they are cork tiles and very easy to clean. The trade off from this gorgeous little lost lamb not dying is that he has turned into a pooping and weeing machine. In fact he is peeing right now...Fortunately it is on a tarp. That I just brought in to make his bed on. I am sitting in another room and I could hear this pulsating noise. I thought my wife was giving him another bottle. No...he is having a slash. So I just cleaned that up...interestingly, as long as it took him to go there was only about a six inch puddle on the tarp. I just gave him two bottles. He guzzled one that was 250 ml in about 1:30. Amazing. I have posted a video of this last feeding session. Pay particular attention to his tail.

Update on the Oscar Update Update....good neighbours...or not.

Well, Oscar is sick. He has pneumonia, and we are concerned. He has been to the vet and gotten a long acting Penicilin injection, a B12 shot, and an anti inflammatory. He perked up by mid afternoon, drank almost half a litre of milk/formula, and was skipping around and having fun. He woke up Sunday flat again though, and has been again throughout today. He will probably go to the vet again tomorrow. It seems the road from lamb to Ram is only travelled by about 80% of newborns that don't get neutered in their first week of life. Most newborns do get that done right away. Otherwise, Oscar is loving life at home. He has adopted the old leather couch in our sitting room (we call it "the Nook"), because it is a foyer like room that comes in from our garage that is too small to be a living room or dining room, (although I think it was built as a dining room) but has a sofa and a coffee table in it. It is nice and cozy for visiting with friends or sitting quietly in the morning with a book or laptop and a coffee...or with a baby lamb snuggled next to you. Which is the most amazingly warm thing.

An elderly neighbour lady came over this evening and told us (didn't ask, lol) that she was going to take baby lamby and bring him through. She grew up on farms and with animals, so we have accepted her "offer". She is a lovely old thing and she and her husband would give you their last cup of flour or egg, (they have actually, although when I did ask for AN egg, I got half a dozen.)

Speaking of neighbours...We have some. They are all pretty good, but some unwittingly are not always that way. There is one particular house where a Malamute Husky lives. He is a lovely dog, and is very friendly, especially when i give him left over bones and stuff. The problem is, when the owners are gone to work all day, he howls all day. I think that a new boyfriend has moved in and he doesn't work, so lately ha has stopped. We shall see, as I start my week of nightshifts tonight, so will be home all day. Sleeping. We shall see. Get this though, last Thursday night, the stereo with subwoofer came on at...11 pm. Stayed on until 2 am. Called police at one-ish, but I don't know whether they came or this eejit had a sudden onset of common sense. I am thinking of watching something with lots of noise, like maybe a dvd of an Opera, at full volume on my 5.1 surround sound Home theater system (wharfedale speakers!) at about 7.30 on a Sunday Morning. With my patio sliding doors which open directly towards this neighbours house, wide open. WWJD?

Anyway, hope all is well with all, and will post more.

Oscar Update Update

Well, Oscar is 10 days old now. He is also part of the family. It turns out my wife is not allergic to him. She is very susceptible to laryngitis, paharyngitis, Bronchitis, and a few other 'itises. So Oscar is staying. I am actually thinking about keeping him. I took him to the Farm School at our local High School today for a checkup. He was a hit. Two HS students asked if they could take him home. The supervisor told me he looks fantastic. We can also enter him in our local agricultural shows, and they would like to use him to breed their ewes that they have at a more rural location than the High School. They also have a shearing facility at the school. They probably will shear him in exchange for the wool. He got his eyes sprayed for conjunctivitis again (so he looks like a blue masked racoon now) and he is starting on baby pellets now. He likes them but he is a bit of a sloppy eater.

I have done some research on Merinos. Originating in Spain, they were so highly valued by the Spanish that taking them out of the country was a capital crime. The first Merinos exported were sent as a gift to the king of England. Closer to home, a single Merino Ram sold for $485,000 in New South Wales. Merinos have some of the finest wool in the world. There was some information about microns and stuff that I didn't really understand. But Oscar is like a living blanket, so I guess that means he has high quality wool.

There is a lot of talk about how sheep are dumb. Not true. Oscar is house trained...almost. He has a few accidents, but if he needs to go, he bleats at us in a certain tone of voice, and we put him into a box with a layer of straw and he does his business. The stereotype of dumb sheep is due to the fact that they have a herd mentality. If one or two sheep panic and run over a cliff, the rest of the herd will follow...a bit unfortunate for the ones caught in the middle looking at each other saying, 'where are we running tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...." Sorry...that was a bad joke. He also has his hungry voice, his lonely voice, and his "where are you Kirsten?" voice. It has a distinct interrogative inflection to it.

So anyway, Oscar is doing well, and maybe even might pay a visit to the Wagin Woolarama next year. Wagin is a town in south west Western Australia that boasts a statue of the largest sheep in the world. A Merino Ram, by the way....and anatomically correct. This is a picture I took of The Ram with my daughter standing in front of it.

Oscar Uppdate

Well, Oscar has visited the Kelmscott Senior High School farm. They have given us a lot of help, tips and a source of free milk. They also will take Oscar when he is weaned. That is nice because they are only five minutes from our house. Turns out Oscar had conjunctiveitis (pink eye) which can kill him if it goes untreated. They sprayed his eyes with an anti-biotic (which is blue) so now Oscar looks like a bandit. He has also had a bath (in Woolite...go figure)and looks a lot better. There is a problem though. My wife is allergic to him or something about him. Or she could just be sick. Anyway, I am thinking that we may give Oscar to the school farm early. It will be heartbreaking to my daughter, but my wife is more important to me. I have to say though that he is very cute, and is taking to domestic life very willingly. More to come.

Oscar the Foster

So we have gotten ourselves into more trouble. One of Australia's biggest exports is living livestock. Muslim countries have certain views on how sheep and cattle are to be slaughtered for food. It is called Halal. I won't go into details here, nor will I elaborate on the teachings of a false religion. It is what it is. I won't go into the rights or wrongs of the live sheep trade either. I look at it this way. They are going to import live animals from somewhere. Might as well be from here.

It never occurred to me until yesterday that lambs will be born on the trucks that take sheep from the stations (ranches) to the wharves for loading. It's really quite elementary though. Wherever you have a "B double" road train loaded with ewes, there are bound to be some that are with lamb. These can't be exported as there are rules concerning this on both ends. So what happens to these lambs? Think Canadian Harp Seals. Okay, they are just livestock. They are not endangered species. Still, seems a tad harsh.

Well, yesterday we found out about a guy who takes a truck down to the docks, and 'rescues' the lambs before they are clubbed. He has a network of carers, and yesterday we joined them. So now we have Oscar, a four day old male Merino lamb. He is as cute as a button. He has already commandeered my son's bean bag chair, and a scrap of...wait for it...sheepskin rug, that our cats commandeered from us. He appears to have imprinted on my daughter somewhat. Follows her around the house, bleats if she is out of the room. That sort of thing.

That is the trouble we got ourselves in. Hopefully, it will be all good, and Oscar can be sent to a farm in a couple of months. I am betting that by then we will be so in love with him that we will ask to keep him. It would save me on lawnmowing bills, fertiliser and weed pulling. It would also add a third vet bill to the annual budget. And who is going to shear the thing? So we shall see what happens. At any rate it will teach the children first hand about the responsibility of hand raising a baby animal. Take care. I will keep you posted.

Restitution VS Grace

Something I am trying teach my children about is restitution. That is, if you are using something that does not belong to you, and you break, damage, or lose it, you take responsibility for what has happened and make it good to the person who lent it to you.

Another thing I want to teach them is about Grace. That is, the favour that God shows to us in light of the fact that we are willing sinners, and do not deserve heaven, and the fact that Jesus made restitution for our sins on the Cross, and we are now free to choose Him or not. Of course the consequences for not choosing Him are somewhat more dire than the consequences of say, damaging you dad's laptop.

So today, as a special treat, I connected my laptop to our plasma TV screen so my son could play Lego Drome Racers on the BIG SCREEN. He was suffering a considerable onslaught (undeserved) from his younger sister, and coming out of the bedroom where I had been sleeping (I work an overnight shift)until awakened by her screaming at him, I de-fused the situation by offering this to him. So after hooking it up and making sure everything was working, I went back to bed. About 30 minutes later there is an almighty crash from the family room. My son had tried to move the wireless keyboard/mouse transmitter closer to him, and has pulled the laptop off of the stand and broken the AC adapter cord where it goes into the computer. The computer is working, and I didn't think to look at the battery light. About 45 minutes later the whole thing dies. I realise that, with 2 hours left before I have to be at work, where in order to stay sane I need my laptop, I have no ac power and the battery is dead. So I made a few calls, and went to a computer shop to see if the plug could be soldered. It might have been able to be, but I would be left with a dodgy plug, that might break again, much more easily this time. Did you know that a new AC Adapter for a laptop costs $100? I didn't. I do now.

So now I am faced with a dilemna. Clearly it is my son's fault that this was broken. I was never angry, but my son is characterised by this kind of carelessness. Do I make him pay the whole $100? Do I forgive him and not make him pay any? Well, when I was 12, $100 was...25 Mariners games...it was a fortune. What does it mean to him? So I get home from the computer store and I tell him, first off, that he is going to have to pay for this. I tell him half now and 5 dollars a fortnight for 24 weeks. He gets ten dollars a fortnight in pocket money. He is stunned, because he is saving for something. Then he starts negotiating. "What if," he says, "you pay half because you put the laptop on the speaker?" I said I would think about it. My wife says it is my call. Was the laptop unstable? Not if you don't pull on the CORD! (in my best Brian Regan voice). That is like the police saying, "If you didn't live here, the burglars wouldn't have robbed your house." (That actually happened to some missionaries I know who lived in Iran before the revolution).

So I am sitting here thinking. If God had made US pay full restitution for our sin, we would all be going to hell. But I want my son to learn about making things good. So I call a friend of mine, who has a 16 year old son, for a second opinion. Yep, make sure he gets both messages. Restitution tempered with Grace. I still feel bad making my son pay half, but I feel good in knowing that he is going to learn two things here. Well more. He is going to learn that I love him...I mean he already knows that, but I told him that I am cutting his debt in half because I love him so much, I can't stand to see him hurting.

Now if only the guy I loaned my CD player to in Bible College and got it stolen was reading this.....

Homeschooling. Autism. Fun.

In 2002 my wife and I made the decision to homeschool our two children, who are autistic. This was the main reason. The school we were in was dictating to us what they were going to do with the children, and we did not feel, as their parents that what the school was proposing would meet the needs of our children as we saw them. Of course the administration,as the school was a private Christian school, was not supportive of the decision, as it would take money out of their coffers. Frankly, we have spent far more on homeschooling than we ever did at the school.

So here we are, 7 years later. What have we accomplished? Well, instead of a daughter who sits and withdraws into herself when she can't cope with what is going on around her, we have an outgoing, gregarious, lively girl with a sparkling personality who participates in plays, debates, rides horses and fights with her brother. Which is normal behaviour, isn't it? What about my son? Well, he is a funny boy. He wants to know about a lot of things. He wants to know about Time Portals, wormholes, and stuff like that.... Questions like this often arise. "Dad, if time portals existed, what would it feel like to go through one?" You know how in cartoons, when someone gets rattled and shakes their head really fast and goes "i-e-e-e i-e-e-e i-e-e-e"? That is what I feel like when I get questions like that.

He wants to learn to program computers. I am working on getting a copy of the language that they make Xbox games with. Whether or not we will be able to use it is another story.

Is homeschooling rewarding? Well, I will be honest with you, my wife does 97% of the work. She is often worn to a frazzle. At those times she would more than likely say no. When he comes to me and tells me how rabbits have a bifurcated uterus, and can carry more than one litter at a time, I am in awe of the things he knows. At those times, homeschooling is way rewarding. Being autistic, he is fairly socially unaware, and often entirely socially innapropriate. If he was at school, he would be bullied mercilessly.(I know because I was the same way and I was - not physically beaten up, but often pushed to the fringes and frequently made fun of).

I often call my son the round mound of sound. He makes awesome sound effects. One time he was making all kinds of noise, and it was semi rhythmical and had drums, guitars and other instruments in it and I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was making his own background music. Talk about the soundtrack to our life.

The biggest question asked about homeschooling is Socialisation. Tell me, what does sitting in a desk for 6-7 hours a day listening to teachers drone on, and then having a 30 minute lunch period where you are free to talk have to do with socialisation? Then picture this. A network of people who can get together anytime, any season of the year to play together, study together, do art, science, sports, and other subjects together in a...wait for it....SOCIAL setting. One time my son and daughter and I were at our local hardware store on a Saturday where they have a weekly barbecue to raise funds for local clubs and organisations. (Each week a different one does the bbq and raises funds for themselves). My son said, "MMM dad, smell those sausages." So I asked him if he wanted one. He said he didn't know yet. (Huh?) So he went right up to this big bruiser of a tatooed man running the sausage sizzle, and said "Excuse me, do you have margarine to put on your rolls?" The man looked gobsmacked, and said to him "You know, I really don't like children who are so polite!" Of course he was joking, and complimenting my son at the same time. So who needs socialization? Of course the sad thing was was that the kids didn't understand why he said that. My daughter asked me on the way in why he didn't like polite kids. That was the autism speaking. I had to explain to them that he was actually complimenting the boy on how polite he was.

So tonight we implemented a new system for homeschooling. It is called the box system. Each child has a stack of six clear plastic boxes. Each night we put the workbooks they need to work in in each designated box - science, math, etc, and write the pages they need to do on a post-it on the cover of the work book. As they work, they can see the workload getting less. They put their completed books in an in-tray on the desk. My daughter actually asked for MORE work. (we just gave them a small sample in 4 of the 6 boxes.) My son actually stayed on task for more than 30 seconds and got quite a bit done too. They have an incentive. An Aurora AFX slot car track if they do the work for a month straight. Without (much) complaining.

So homeschooling. Autism. It's all good. It's fun. God has blessed us beyond measure with these children. If Jesus were on earth today, and healing like he did in His earthly ministry, I would not take my kids to him for healing. Exorcism perhaps....those of you with or who have worked with special needs kids will get that joke. The rest of you will just have to take my word for it.

Social Networking? or living in the past?

I have been on Facebook for a while now. On facebook I have made contact with scores of people with whom I went to High School, College, was in the Air Force with, went to camp with, etc.

I have meaningful "relationships" if it can be called that, with about 10 of them. I mean, there are dozens of people with whom I have attempted to start chat conversations, to no avail. I am sure there is always a reason that they don't respond...didn't see the chat window, or whatever. But it makes me wonder about this whole social networking thing. Is it really all that healthy? I mean, my wife looks at facebook as borderline voyeurism. I try to tell her that only people who have been selected as friends can see the content one puts on there, and that Facebook is only what you do with it. I mean, you can put as little or as much information as you wish on it. But that is not the healthy I am referring to here. I am referring to the skill of actually relating to people. Someone put on as their status the other day... So and So is getting ready to go to the annual general meeting at church... And we wanted to know this...why? Some people put things like So and So needs coffee.... Well who doesn't.

Are people who have 500 Facebook friends more social than someone who has 150? Do they even really know half their friends? I go through my list from time to time, and cull out people with whom I have had no contact with for an indeterminate amount of time. With some people, I won't ever cull them, because of the value I placed on their friendship when we were actually friends who saw one another, or whom I went to school with.

Am I living in the past, trying to keep in touch with people who have not been a part of my life for more than 20 years? Recently I became friends with a guy who was in our carpool probably something like 26 years ago or more. Being a Christian, I believe God brings people into our lives for a reason. Whatever the reason, there are no accidents.

Interestingly, as I have grown older, I have had fewer and fewer physical friends. Right now I can think of only two men that I hang out with. I am such good friends with my wife that I have found that the need for outside friendship has gotten less and less. I still need a couple of guys to do the guy things with, but even the guy things, like going to football games, and golfing, etc, are becoming less and less a priority as my children get older. Soon I will be able to do some of those things with my son, if I can drag him away from the computer. My daughter already loves going fishing with me...she won't bait her hook or touch a fish, but she loves going just the same, and those times out with her are amazing, even if we don't catch anything. So far she hasn't, and I have only caught one small herring that I threw back.

So will I continue on Facebook? I don't know. It is a tool. But it also wastes a lot of time. That is a good thing when I am at work, or late in the evening when the kids are quiet. But I find that a good book still gets my attention.

Just a few thoughts.

Jonathan

Slot Car Racing

Yesterday I took my kids to a local slot car track. It was a Scalextric track that was probably about 200 feet in circumference. So now they want their own scalextric cars...NOW. My daughter was asking me how much money was in her account because she wanted to buy her own car right then and there. I told her that we could look on ebay and in the Quokka, and in the Sunday Times Reader's Mart, because certainly we can find a car that would be, if not cheaper, at least better quality at a reasonable price. HAHA. Try explaining that to a ten year old. Anyway, we have set up our Tonka slot car set. This is a cheap and nasty one we bought for Christmas a couple of years ago that is the most fiddly thing to set up that was ever invented. And the cars want to fly off on every turn....But they are having a ball with it. Oh where oh where did my Aurora AFX and Tyco slotless car racing sets from yesteryear go? Anyway, looking for a good set to buy.

Audio Books

Recently, I started recording audio books for Librivox.org I have recorded two complete solo works, and done several chapters of a collaborative work. I am also working on a third solo. Librivox is a project that brings public domain books (which means it was written more than 70 years ago) onto audio in order that people can enjoy them. I record using Audacity - I think that most of the readers on Librivox use that, as it is free and easy.

You can find my finished works by clicking on the links below

Penrod By Booth Tarkington
Penrod and Sam By Booth Tarkington

When I have finished the other book, Which, ironically, is also by Booth Tarkington...I will post a link to it, and the collaborative work...also by Tarkington...will also get a link.

These two books were written in 1914 and 1916, less than slightly more than 50 years after abolition. Some of the views expressed by the author regarding people of colour in no way reflect my, the recorder's, views. I, however did not deviate from the text, so there are some words used, such as nigger, that I would never, ever use in day to day conversation. Other than that, there is nothing to offend in either book. You might wet yourself laughing though. I nearly did a few times.

Starting Out

I have been reading my friend Rick's Blog. He has a baseball Blog. I thought that I could have a blog about golf and other things that I do. Facebook is ok, but they change the format so often that it is hard to tell what is going on there. Plus...except for a few games I like to play, and people I like to chat with, I don't really get into it all that much. And no way am I going to be one of those people that update their status every five minutes by mobile phone (Jonathan is putting syrup on his pancakes...Jonathan is putting salt on his Egg McMuffin).

So I am going to blog. I don't know how this will turn out. It will have some spiritual content. It will have observations on parenting. It will point you to other things I might be doing elsewhere in cyber space. Or it might just have an interesting photo I have taken recently...or not.

I hope it is fun. I am looking forward to it.

Jonathan