Summer Pondering

                                                           Summertime

...it's here.  Dusty fields & gritty meals, windy days, S'mored fingers dressing baby kittens in bonnets, playing in the river, shiney hineys, snow cones, chocolate syrup, hard work, dirty pool, dirty nails, late nights, silly jokes and gobs of everything difficult, summer and satisfying.

                                       Sustaining                                 

I'm here.  Our ranch is here.  Did it take a complicated plan to make it work? No. But it did take wise decision making and a simple basic plan:  "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without". Being frugal along with God's blessings has helped us sustain for the past 120 years.  If we made bad decisions we changed course, rethought our methods.  Adaptability = Sustainability and Sustainability= Profitability.

                               Common Core...Eat My Dust

What I'm learning about Common Core has me more than worried about my grandkid's future liberties and freedoms. I'm fearful, I'm mad, I'm fed up with it all.  So I'm teaching them anytime I can get my hands on them.  I'm not in control of their educations but I can augment it.  Deuteronomy 11: 18, 19 says, "Therefore shall you lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign on your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the door posts of your house, and on your gates: …


I'm a thrift store junkie , I love creating something from nothing.  I buy VHS tapes  by the truckloads.  They're cheap and the variety is endless.  I begged Brad to let me drag this $3.00 dino Sharp T.V. home. He told me to leave it there. I twisted his arm.  Kasse thought it was one I'd donated several years ago...not sure but I have been guilty of  paying for and dragging a previously donated oil painting back into my house. 

So that's what I'm doing and with God in control I'm betting on a bright future for all of them!
I'm using  The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by W.W. Norton  as a guide. We are memorizing scripture, using a timeline to chronicle events in history.  We start the period with The Pledge, both American and Oklahoma (they had to teach me the Oklahoma pledge I'm ashamed to say)

                                         Incrementalism

I open a new box of tea bags. New and unimproved...slimmer,  thinner, tinier- less. 
I open a can of tuna or minnow perhaps?
I pour my cereal from a shorter, trimmer box.
I look for God in our schools, in our government, he was here...just yesterday.   
I strain listening for prayers at school. I heard them...only yesterday.
I channel surf hoping to catch a "G" wave.  Movies-commercials suited for little eyes...didn't they exist?
Nudging not shoving
I hear silence; watch numbness usher in incrementalism
But who will notice?

                                  Calling All Grasshoppers        

Once again I am hosting my perpetual annual Summer Grasshopper Gala where locals are offered their choice of Sevin or Tempo. Each year guests find it not only delicious and nutritious but completely satisfying.  Tell your friends...