The History of the (Whole) World

I’m not sure why, but whenever someone calls me a prolific writer, it makes me cringe. Why is that? It has some sort of negative implication which I can’t quite tease out.

Anyway, I’m not feeling very prolific this week. After family vacation and back-to-back education conferences, my kind husband suggested that I go away for a few days and try to reconnect with the unfinished part of my medieval history manuscript….which is 1) far too much of the TOTAL medieval history manuscript so far, and 2) at the point where I have to concentrate on it and nothing else for a little while so that I can see my way through the details to the story.

So I’m in Manhattan, working at the Columbia library. Which is a phenomenal place to work and (honesty compels me to add) much more useful than my local university library. Need Charles IV’s autobiography because it has the first version of the Good King Wenceslaus legend in it? Got it. Need an English translation of Constantine Porphyrogenitus’s notes on running the Byzantine empire? Got it. Need all forty volumes of al-Tabari’s history of the Islamic empire? Got all forty, plus an index. Need the Chronicle of John of Worcester, just to check exactly what Rollo the Viking was doing in 909? Got it.

I have all the books I need, no domestic duties for a few days, no schedule to keep, and a dozen great restaurants within walking distance. (Think I’ll try this one around 10 PM tonight, when my eyes give out.) And I’m writing…it’s just SLOOOOW. Not prolific. Far from prolific. Four hours or so to dig out details on a particular people group which then ends up with a single sentence in the final version…except that I didn’t know that it would only be a single sentence when I spent the four hours digging out details.

I mentioned this to my editor. “That,” he said, “does not sound like good calculus.” You think?

Anyway. Back to detail digging. Just for your entertainment, here’s some juicy ninth-century royal gossip for you. (At least PG-13–fair warning before you read.)

MICHAEL III, EMPEROR IN CONSTANTINOPLE, 842-867

Michael III’s troubles were almost entirely self-inflicted. Since the age of fifteen, he had been sleeping with the same woman, his favorite mistress Eudokia Ingerina. However, his mother announced that Ingerina was not an acceptable wife, and instead ordered him to marry a woman she had hand-picked for him, Eudokia Dekapolitissa. Michael seems to have had trouble defying his mother; he agreed to marry Dekapolitissa, and then after the wedding ignored her and went right on sleeping with Ingerina.

The patriarch disapproved of this crowded marriage, and to preserve appearances, Michael married his mistress Ingerina off to his best friend, a horse-trainer from Macedonia named Basil. He continued sleeping with her, however, and so that Basil would not be deprived, he brought one of his sisters back out her nunnery and installed her at court as Basil’s mistress.

What with climbing in and out of each others’ beds, Michael III and Basil became closer, and Basil began to get a glimpse of what real power could be like. He began to suggest to Michael III that Michael’s uncle and heir had a little too much influence around the court, and finally convinced Michael to give him permission to murder the unfortunate man. In his uncle’s place, Michael made Basil his co-emperor and heir. In 867, he also legally adopted Basil as his son; he was twenty-seven, Basil was fifty-six.

This weird adoption made a twisted kind of sense. The year before, Ingerina had given birth to a son. Technically, the child was Basil’s. In all likelihood, he was actually Michael’s. So by adopting Basil, Michael became his illegitimate son’s legitimate grandfather, and the little boy, Leo, had a path to legitimately claim the throne.

Unfortunately, the path led through Basil. Now that he was adopted, co-emperor, and heir, Basil had no more use for Michael. After a drunken banquet one night later in 867, Michael III staggered off to bed; Basil’s men murdered the emperor in his sleep, and Basil claimed the crown for himself as Basil I, founder of the new Macedonian Dynasty.

I’m at the Southeast Homeschool Expo in Atlanta this weekend–with my mother, which is a treat because we don’t usually travel together (we tend to divide our energies and attend different conferences). So last weekend I promised the folks in Texas that I’d post my notes on high school rhetoric on my blog; this weekend I promised I’d post my list of middle-school science kits. Here it is. (Most of these can be purchased from Tobin’s Lab, Thames and Kosmos, Fat Brain Toys, or Science Lab.

Incidentally, in the next edition of The Well-Trained Mind, these will replace our current middle-grade science recommendations, which are (naturally) out of print.

Biology
Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method, Sally Stenhouse Kneidel (book)
Owl Pellet Dissection Kit
Bug Hunt Kit
Carnivorous Creations Terrarium Kit
Smithsonian Bio Dome Habitat
Basic 5 Animals Dissection Kit
Blood Typing Kit
Fingerprint Kit
Minds Eye: Optical Illusions & Human Perception..
Botanical Discoveries Science Fair Kit
Microscope & Biology Kit
Fetal Pig Anatomy Lab
Biological Inheritance and Genetic Engineering

Earth Science
National Geographic Earthquakes & Volcanoes Experiment Kit
Smithsonian Weather Center Science Kit
Volcano: Power Tech Series
Crystal PRO Crystal Growing & Crystallography Kit
Wind Power: Renewable Energy Science Kit

Astronomy
Primer for the Beginning Astronomer/Astromax Introductory Astronomy Binocular Kit
Space Exploration: The Planets, Moon, Sars, Solar System & Rockets
Slooh Telescope Card and Book

Chemistry
Thames & Kosmos CHEM2000 chemistry kit and 251-experiment manual
Mastering the Periodic Table: Exercises on the Elements, Linda Trombley and Thomas G. Cohn (book)

Physics
Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices, William Gurstel (book)
Physics Discovery
Physics Workshop
Physics Solar Workshop
Supercharged Science: Physics Kit
Supercharged Science: Electricity and Robotics Kit
Supercharged Science: Laser Show Kit
Introduction to Electronics
Kite Dynamics
Physics Pro

OK, all you workshop-attendees in Texas and Georgia, here is a copy of the overhead I put up at the end of the writing lecture. (For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, you can get the lecture here, and/or read this, and/or buy this. I promised I’d put this on my blog so that people attending my seminar on how to teach writing didn’t have to frantically copy it down.)

Update on the History of the Medieval World coming soon, I promise.

And although I don’t usually say this, here’s a reminder: this information isn’t to be redistributed or reproduced without my permission. If I ever finish writing the History of the Whole World, I plan to produce my own high school rhetoric and composition program. (Translation: don’t hold your breath.)

A PROPOSED PATTERN FOR HIGH SCHOOL WRITING,
USING THE CLASSICAL PROGYMNASMATA

Texts: Combine these two.
Frank D’Angelo, Composition in the Classical Tradition (any edition; good clear instruction and lousy writing examples)
Edward P. J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (any edition; instruction is more advanced and more difficult for high school students, but the writing examples are light-years ahead of those in the D’Angelo book.)

Grades 9-11: exercises in technique

Ninth grade:
The narrative
The description
Amplifying a saying

Tenth grade:
Amplifying an anecdote
Refutation
Confirmation

Eleventh grade:
The enconium (composition of praise)
The invective (composition of blame)
The comparison (combination)
Supporting a thesis using confirmation
Supporting a thesis using refutation.

Grade 12: forms of writing

The response paper
The critical paper

Literature:
Argument for an interpretation
Biographical analysis
Literary analysis

History:
Argument of fact
Argument of meaning
“Historiography” argument

The research paper

The fourth and final entry in my “Evolving Life of a Writer/Homeschool Parent” series. I highly recommend contrasting this with Entry One…

A DAY IN THE LIFE
2001: a day with four children aged 12, 10, 7, and 3.

5 AM I get up and go downstairs for coffee. Okay, I know this is revoltingly early, but I’ve discovered that getting up early and finishing up my own jobs allows me to lie on the sofa like a slug in the evenings after the children go to bed. This fall, I’m teaching two classes at William & Mary, so I have plenty of grading to do. This morning, I blow the grading off and work on my newest writing project instead: W. W. Norton has asked me to write a history of the world for grown-ups. The Assyrian Kings List is remarkably hard to convert into stirring narrative.

7 AM Emily wails. I go into her room; she’s sitting up in bed clutching her blanket. “I had a nightmare!” she screams when she sees me. “What was it?” I ask. “There was a dark dark CAVE!” Emily yells. “I was in a dark dark CAVE!” “It was just pretend,” I say; this is my usual response, but she’s not buying it today. “It was DARK!” she says, accusingly. So I turn on her lamp. “Were you all alone in the cave?” I ask. “No,” she says, in a voice of doom. “ALL OF THE BROTHERS were there!” Hmm. I’m not sure whether that’s part of the nightmare or not. I lay her down, change her diaper, and give her a bottle (I know, three is too old for a bottle, but she’ll drink it and go straight back to sleep).

7:30 AM Shower, dress, dry hair, put on shoes. This isn’t one of my William & Mary days, so we have a lot of school to get through. My husband Peter will take over at 3 PM to do math, geography, and handwriting; he’ll send Daniel (7) over to see my mother for a reading lesson and he’ll supervise some of the tasks that Christopher (12) and Ben (10)) can do on their own (typing, Latin vocabulary cards, spelling worksheets).

8 PM I go get everyone up. Christopher is already up reading; he’s an early riser and has already been out to do some of his chores. Ben is sound asleep; he’s a late riser, and when I try to wake him up he curls into a ball and puts his head under his knees. I get Emily and put her in his bed. Daniel comes out of his room and stands in the middle of the floor. “Time to get dressed,” I say. “I don’t have any clothes,” he says. I walk him back to his room, take out his clothes and put them in a stack on the floor. He looks at them. “Oh,” he says. “Those clothes.”

8:10 Christopher is waiting by the door to go out. All three boys generally take the dogs for a long walk before breakfast; we live on a farm, but since it’s hunting season, we keep the dogs in their pen for most of the day. Ben is dressing. Emily is in the middle of Ben’s bed making a stuffed animal pyramid. Daniel comes out of his room with no clothes on and a Lego robot in one hand. “Mom,” he says, “do you know why this guy is special?” “Get DRESSED,” I say.

8:15 Ben and Christopher are standing by the door. Daniel hops out of his room on one foot, wearing two socks and nothing else. “Mom!” he says. “If people only had one leg, they would keep falling over!” “PANTS,” I say.

8:20 Daniel is wearing socks and pants and nothing else. I tell Christopher and Ben to go out and start feeding the dogs while I dress Daniel.

8:30 I put Emily in her high chair with raisins and start on breakfast. By the time the boys come back in, eggs and toast are ready. Daniel goes and gets his two favorite Lego robots to keep him company. Ben and Christopher ask if they can read at the table. “Yes,” I say, pleased to see this love for words. They produce Bloom County and The Ultimate Guide to Spiderman: His Life and Ways. Oh, well.

9 I clear the table and run the boys through their chores: Christopher vacuums, Ben cleans up Emily’s room, Daniel sweeps down the steps. He’s still sweeping by the time the older boys are done. I tell Christopher to start on his Latin (we always do this first thing) and Ben to go do his reading. Right now he’s reading all the way through the Little House on the Prairie series. He’s up to Farmer Boy; this has nothing to do with the period of history we’re learning, but Ben is going through a comic-book-and-Star-Wars-junior-novel stage, so I’m doing my best to broaden his little horizon.

9:10 Christopher has forgotten all the Latin he ever knew.

9:15 I tell Christopher to go run around the house. He goes, sheepishly. When he comes back in he says, “Sorry.” “Is your brain in gear?” I ask. “Er,” he says, “mostly.”

9:20 Daniel is still sweeping the stairs. Christopher has forgotten what a direct object is. I give Emily crayons and paper and trace her hands while I make up about fifty short sentences with direct objects and make Christopher identify them. “Okay, okay,” he says, after sentence forty-five. “I get it.”

9:25 I explain the passive pluperfect to Christopher. He looks at the forms. “You have to be kidding,” he says.

9:30 Ben emerges, having finished his chapter, and asks if he can practice his piano. “What was your chapter about?” I say. “They went to a place and did something,” he says. “Go back and read it again,” I say, “and tell me where they went and what they did.”

9:40 Christopher has completed one of his five drill sentences. Daniel is still sweeping the steps. Emily announces, “I have to go potty.” I take her into the bathroom and sit beside her. Christopher yells, “Help!” “Try to do it yourself,” I yell back. There is a long silence. When I come back to the kitchen, he’s on Sentence 2.

9:50 Ben comes back out. “They went into town and sold WHEAT!” he says triumphantly. “Good job,” I say. “Go practice your piano.” I look up the stairs. Daniel is sitting on the fourth step, sweeping his head with the brush. “STAIRS,” I say.

10 AM Daniel finishes the stairs. “Go get First Language Lessons,” I say. Emily is now under the table tickling Christopher’s feet. “Mom,” Christopher says, “I can’t think.” He is now on Sentence 3.” I say, “Emily, what are you doing?” “I loving Pipher,” Emily says.

10:15 Christopher finishes Sentence 5. “Okay,” I say. “Good job. That only took you an hour and ten minutes. Can I give you a brain massage?” “I think I need some sugar,” he says. I feed everyone cookies and send Christopher to practice his trumpet. Emily is bored; I tell Ben to quit practicing his piano and read her a book while I do Daniel’s grammar. Today, his lesson is action verbs. We repeat, “A verb is a word that does an action, shows state of being, links two words, or helps another verb” five times; then I read action verbs while he acts them out. Ben and Emily abandon their book and join in. Christopher appears. “I want to do it too,” he says. Soon they are screaming, jumping, running, yelling, falling, wrestling, and singing all over the house. I try, “Whisper! Sleep! Think!” These are much less popular action verbs.

10:30 I send everyone outside while I drink a cup of coffee. Christopher offers to push Emily on the swing. While they’re out I look at their school lists; Christopher still has a massive amount of work to do this morning. I go outside too, and Emily and I feed the dogs Milk-Bones through the fence while the boys charge off into the distance.

11 AM I yell, “Time to come in!” Eventually the boys reappear. “Aw,” Christopher says, “we were just getting going.” “What were you playing?” I ask. “Space Age,” he says. “I’m a Space Age kitty!” Daniel announces. Christopher says, “We had to have Space Age kitties in the game so Daniel could play.” Then he stage-whispers, “Ben and I pretend he’s a Lizardman General, but he thinks he’s a kitty.”

11:10 Christopher goes back to his trumpet. I put Emily back in her chair with her crayons. She’s not buying it. “Want to go show Grammy my shoes,” she says. “Not right now,” I say. “Ben, go get your grammar.” “Want to show Grammy my ballerina skirt,” she says. “Not right now,” I say. Small silence. “Want to show Grammy my belly,” she suggests. “We’ll go see Grammy later,” I say. I put on her ballerina skirt and play “Hall of the Mountain King” on the stereo while she and Daniel run around the room in circles. Meanwhile I go through Ben’s grammar lesson with him; today he’s supposed to diagram sentences from the Rod & Staff fifth-grade book. His grammar has improved since we switched from the A Beka workbooks; he’s a very reluctant writer, but for some reason copying out the exercises from the non-consumable Rod & Staff book has proved easier for him than completing the workbook pages.

11:30 Christopher finishes his trumpet and comes back out. “Reading,” I say. “Yeah!” Christopher says and disappears again. He’s reading The Once and Future King, and has announced that it is his VERY FAVORITE BOOK EVER. This warms my heart. I adored this book when I was twelve.

11:40 Ben has done one of his eight sentences. I give him M&Ms. Sugar is a vital component of the successful home school.

11:45 Emily falls over while skidding around a corner and starts to bellow. I turn off the music, pick her up, and send Daniel to get his spelling book.

12 noon Ben has done two of his eight sentences. I set the buzzer and tell him that if he’s not finished in ten minutes, I’ll give him eight more.

12:05 Ben has finished his grammar lesson. I tell him to play with Emily until Dan’s spelling is finished.

12:20 Christopher’s finished reading. I don’t ask him questions about The Once and Future King; I clearly remember this book taking me into a universe so real that I didn’t want to talk about it. Instead I decide to do history with everyone simultaneously. I give Emily the math pattern blocks, which she pours on the floor and sits on. “These are my eggs,” she says. “I will have a baby chicken. Can I go show Grammy my baby chicken?” “Later,” I say. I tell the boys to get their colored pencils while I clear the table. We’re still doing medieval-renaissance history, because (like a lot of other people) we’re waiting on publication of Vol. 3 of The Story of the World. I give all three boys the map of the Franks and have them color the three separate territories while I read aloud. When I get to Clovis I give them the coloring page of Clovis’s baptism. “Was he really a Christian?” Christopher asks. “He promised to become a Christian before he even knew what Christianity was all about,” I say. “Listen.” I reread the story of the baptism. “What do you think?” I say. “Nope!” Ben says cheerfully. “We can’t know for sure,” I say, “but I think the chances are against it.” Daniel says, “Look! He doesn’t have any clothes on in this picture!”

12:40 I put Ben in front of the Usborne Internet-Linked History Encyclopedia and tell him to read the section on the Franks and write down the three most important things he learns. When I get the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia out, Christopher groans and says, “Do I have to outline today?” “You can do a composition instead,” I say. “About what?” “Er,” I say, thinking. “Er, how about comparing Clovis to King Arthur?” “That’s a lot,” Christopher says, dubiously. “You can type it,” I say, “and today you can make a list of comparisons, and then actually finish the composition itself tomorrow.” Christopher agrees and goes off to his room, where he has a computer (NOT connected to the Internet). Daniel says, “Can I go play with Legos?” “Who was the history lesson about?” I ask. “A guy without clothes,” he says. Emily announces, “POTTY!” “Okay,” I say, “go play Legos.”

1 PM Lunch. Christopher has made a list of comparisons, Ben has written two sentences. I tell him to write one more before he can eat. While everyone is stuffing down PBJ and chips, I decide that our diet has too much sugar and salt in it and bring out a bag of baby carrots. “Three for everyone!” I announce. There; that’ll balance out their diets, right?

1:20 PM It’s rest time. Pete will be back soon to take over school at 3 PM. Christopher hasn’t yet done his grammar or his writing. I pull out his Rod & Staff book, review the lesson with him, and tell him to finish it along with his Wordsmith lesson during rest time, before he does anything else. I’ll check it when he’s finished. Christopher’s independence level (except for Latin) has rocketed during this past year; I’m beginning to think that I might actually survive middle school. I settle Emily down for her rest, send Daniel to play with Legos (again) and sit down with Ben and his Prima Latina. Today we’re doing new vocabulary words and new endings. We talk about each word and I give him index cards to make new vocabulary flash cards. “Finish them in your room,” I say, “and then you can listen to your tape and play.” All of the boys are listening to books on tape during naptime; Ben is listening to The Dragonslayers, Daniel to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Farm, and Christopher to Cheaper by the Dozen.

With everyone in his room, I sit down to take stock of the morning. Christopher hasn’t done his logic; he has taken a scunner to Jim Nance, unfortunately, and I’m about ready to pitch it and try something else. My options are limited. Maybe I’ll do the Critical Thinking Press books with him for a year and then try to find a tutor. I did Dan’s spelling and grammar with him, but I didn’t get to copywork; my mother usually does some handwriting with him after his afternooon reading lesson, though, so I’ll ask her to fold copywork into her lesson. Although Daniel is seven, he’s a young seven (his birthday is the last week of October), and we’re hovering between first and second grade work with him. I see that Ben was supposed to do typing this morning for me because it’s a heavy math day for Pete, but I forgot. I draw an arrow on his chart over to Pete’s side of the chart and write in, “Typing if you have time?” Just then Emily yells. I go in her room. “I had a NIGHTMARE!” she bellows. “You weren’t asleep,” I tell her. At three, Emily doesn’t sleep any more during rest time; she plays with toys on her floor. “There was a TALKING BEAN in my closet!” she announces. “It’s a friendly bean,” I say. “It’s time to get up,” Emily says. “Not yet,” I say. “Yes, it is. I have to go see Grammy and tell her about the talking bean.” “LATER,” I say. When I go back out I write on Pete’s side of the school chart, “Take Emmy to see Grammy.” I go upstairs and prop my feet up. In a few minutes I need to go work on the grading I blew off first thing this morning. (Rest time comes first, though.)

Here’s Entry Three (of four…then we go back to talking about indexing and proofreading and other stirring pastimes…) in my “Evolving Life of a Writer/Homeschool Parent” series.

I first posted this on the Well-Trained Mind website eight years ago, and some home school guru (I can’t actually remember who) responded on another blog that this just showed how stressful and inappropriate classical education is for home schooled students. I was a little embarrassed by that. I do sound stressed. Now, looking back on it, I think to myself: Good heavens, I had four children under ten and one of them was a NEWBORN. I’d have sounded stressed even if I hadn’t tried to do anything that day except get my shoes tied.

A DAY IN THE LIFE
Fall of 2000: a day with a fourth and second grader, a four-year-old and a newborn.

7:30 AM. I wake up because my husband has brought me a cup of coffee and a hungry baby. This the only way I get out of bed in the morning these days, what with feeding new baby Emily at 11 PM and again at 2:30. She’s slept since 2:30, though, so I’m feeling semi-human. I sit up and drink my coffee while feeding the baby, while Peter gets ready for work. Today is my “long day” with the children. Peter and I both work; we used to divide each day in half, but since the new baby’s arrival we have divided our weeks so that I have the children from dawn to dusk on Mondays and Wednesdays, while he has them on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays we split in half; he works in the morning, I work in the afternoons. Since Peter is schooling the boys in math, reading, and art, he does double math and reading lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

8 AM. Peter leaves. He has a meeting at 8 PM that won’t be over until midnight, so I don’t expect to see him for the rest of the day. I get up, change the baby’s diaper, and put her on my bed while I dress. I can hear the boys rattling around in their room; they know they’re not supposed to emerge (except for necessary bathroom visits) until I come get them. When I’m dressed, I go in with the baby on one arm and tell Christopher (9) and Ben (7) to get dressed. I put out Daniel’s clothes; he’s four and going through a serious do-it-myself phase.

8:15. Christopher and Ben are running around in their underwear and giggling. Daniel has his sweatpants on upside down with both feet sticking out of the waistband. “Something is wrong here,” he says. I tell Christopher and Ben to STOP TALKING UNTIL ALL THEIR CLOTHES ARE ON and reverse Daniel’s sweatpants.

8:30 Breakfast; Emily was happy to lie on her mat and look at her mirror this morning, so everyone gets scrambled eggs and toast. On mornings when she’s fussy, they tend to get cereal with a spoonful of peanut butter for protein (disgusting, but effective).

8:55 I tell Christopher and Ben to STOP TALKING UNTIL THEIR BREAKFAST IS GONE because we are due to start school at 9 AM.

9 AM. No one is finished eating. I am now carrying Emily on my shoulder. She spits up all down my back, so I go change my shirt.

9:15 We start school. I have a chart for each of the older boys. Christopher’s says: Morning – Spelling, Grammar, Writing Strands, History, Piano Practice. Afternoon – Science, Latin, Penmanship, Extra Reading. Ben’s says: Morning – Spelling, English for the Thoughtful Child, History, Piano Practice, Phonics Pathways. Afternoon – Science, Spanish, Penmanship, Extra Reading. We vary the order in which we do these subjects, but I try to check them all off each day. I tell them that they can pick their first subject and I’ll pick the second. Christopher decides to start with grammar; Ben wants to practice his piano. Christopher’s grammar is about principal parts. Ben starts playing the piano, which makes the principal parts even hard to understand, so I tell him to go and play with Daniel until I’ve talked through Christopher’s grammar lesson. They disappear into the boys’ room. Christopher and I slog through the present and present participle. Emily starts screaming. We take the book over to the sofa and I finish explaining past and past participle while she nurses.

9:20 Christopher is doing his grammar exercises; he usually does two pages per day. I call Ben out to do his piano lesson. Emily is still nursing, so I tell Daniel to bring me a book. I read to him while Ben plays. This raises the noise level in the house to something approaching an airport runway. “I can’t think!” Christopher says. I tell him to take his grammar book into his room to finish.

9:30 Ben is finished with his piano (ten minutes is about all I can keep him interested in). I take Emily to the table to burp her, pour Daniel a bowl of Grape Nuts (it takes him FOREVER to eat Grape Nuts), and start explaining Ben’s spelling rule. Emily begins to scream, Daniel dumps out the Grape-Nuts, and Christopher appears in tears because he can’t figure out his next exercise. I tell Ben to get the vacuum cleaner, Christopher to take a break, and Daniel to stop yelling over the spilled cereal. I sit down and rock Emily until she drifts off to sleep, while Christopher vacuums and Daniel winds himself up in the vacuum hose and yells, “A snake! A snake is biting me!”

9:45. Emily’s in bed. I re-explain principal parts to Christopher and give him a handful of chocolate chips to keep him going. Everyone now wants chocolate chips, so I give Daniel a little cupful of them and tell him to go eat them in his “fort” (behind his bed). I put Ben’s beside his spelling book and tell him he can have one after each spelling word that he writes.

10 AM Emily is grousing again. I know she’s not ready to get up, so I decide to wait a couple of minutes and see whether she’ll go back to sleep. This drives Ben crazy. “Mom,” he keeps saying, “the baby is crying!” I get out his Phonics Pathways and tell him to think about his phonics instead. He’s reading me two pages a day, as a review of phonics and spelling rules. He reads the first two lines and then stops. “Mom,” he says seriously, “are you sure you know how to take care of a baby?”

10:10 Emily stops crying thirty seconds before I’m ready to go get her. When I look in at her, she’s sound asleep. I check Christopher’s grammar and give him his spelling book. Today he’s doing the second half of a lesson, so I don’t have to explain anything. I start a pot of coffee, sit Ben in front of his penmanship, and go to check on Daniel. He’s covered with chocolate, (so is his sheet) but he’s happy, so I don’t wipe him off. (I ignore the sheet, on the theory that it’s been hit with worse.)

10:30 We take a snack and coffee outside for the men working on the sawmill (I take the baby monitor with me.) Christopher and Ben go off to play. In five minutes they reappear with Ben weeping. “Christopher says he has to clean the bunny cage before he can play with me!” Ben wails. “Christopher, play with Ben first.” “But he wants to play that we’re sweet kittens playing in the woods,” Christopher says. “Why can’t you play sweet kittens?” I ask. “Because it’s stupid,” he says, “and I want to pretend that we’re raptors.” “Go play kittens for ten minutes,” I say, “and then clean the bunny cage.”

11 AM Break is over. I collect Daniel, who has been in the sawdust pile and now has sawdust sticking to the chocolate on his face. When I call Christopher inside, he says, “But I have to clean the bunny cage.” “What have you been doing all this time?” I ask. “Playing sweet kittens,” he says. Ben adds, “Sweet kittens being hunted by raptors.”

11:05 Christopher is upset because I told him not to check on the bunny until lunch time (“If you don’t do it when I tell you to, you’ll have to wait until your next break”) and he is now convinced that the bunny is dying of thirst. Emily is awake and crying. I sit down to feed Emily again and read Daniel another book while Ben plays with Legos.

11:30 Emily is happy, so I put everyone on the sofa and start history. Today we’re working on our Presidents Memorization Project – we color pictures of two presidents from the Bellerophon coloring book, Christopher looks them up in the encyclopedia and writes down two interesting facts about each president, and we all chant the presidents in order. We’re up to Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren. I tell Christopher and Ben to STOP TALKING UNTIL THEIR PICTURES ARE COLORED.

12:00 I fix lunch one-handed and call everyone to the table.

12:30 I tell Christopher and Ben to STOP TALKING UNTIL THEIR FOOD IS ALL GONE because they still have work to do before rest time.

12:45. I put Emily in her cradle and clear away lunch half-eaten. Ben bursts into tears because he isn’t finished. Christopher asks for dessert. I tell Ben to sit on his bed, Christopher that he can’t have any dessert, and Daniel to go potty. Emily is screaming. “Emily is screaming!” Ben yells from his bed. “Do I have to do my Writing Strands?” Christopher asks. “My pants are a little bit wet,” Daniel shouts from the bathroom. I yell at the top of my lungs, “Everybody be quiet before I lose my mind!” There is a short silence. Daniel says politely, from the bathroom, “You don’t have to be so loud, Mommy.”

12:50 Daniel has dry pants, Ben is copying three exclamations from his English for the Thoughtful Child Book, and I’m explaining Christopher’s Writing Strands exercise to him. He takes it off to do it in his room. I correct Ben’s penmanship and send him and Daniel to bed for mandatory rest time. Daniel is listening to “How to Eat Fried Worms” on his tape recorder; Ben is listening to “The Dark Is Rising” and playing with Legos. Christopher brings me his writing exercise. I tell him to save his piano lesson until after rest time.

1 PM. I leave the baby monitor with my mother (her house is attached to ours) and go for a walk.

2 PM. I get back from my walk and answer a couple of e-mails before Emily wakes up and wants to be fed.

3 PM. The boys get up. I’ve learned not to try to leap directly into school after nap time; I let them eat cookies and play for a little while until they start to bicker. “School time!” I say, and send Christopher to play his piano. I give Daniel scissors and colored paper, and he promptly begins to make a phenomenal mess all over the kitchen floor. Ben reads to me from his current “Extra Reading” book – a book that goes along with history or science (Peter does their imaginative reading with them on Tuesdays and Thursdays). Today he’s reading Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George? I sit down to listen, but Emily cries, so I get up and walk around the kitchen while Ben reads. Halfway through the first page, Emily dirties her diaper, my shirt, her blanket, and her sleeper. Ben follows me into our bedroom, still reading, while Christopher bangs out “The Bells” for the fourth time, Daniel sings along, I change the diaper, and Emily screams. The noise level has once again reached airport level. I say, in an unnaturally calm voice, “Ben, could you please stop reading to me until I’m finished with Emily’s diaper?”

3:30. Emily doesn’t want to be put down. I had intended to do another Latin lesson with Christopher today, but I’m starting to feel like I’ve HAD it, so I tell him to review his vocabulary cards and then send all of them outside to run around while I start supper.

3:45 I give up on supper and rock Emily.

4 PM I’m still rocking Emily. The boys come back in. “Go outside some more,” I say.

4:15 I nurse Emily again.

4:30 Still rocking Emily. The boys come in again. I tell Christopher to read Daniel a book and Ben to get his penmanship book out.

4:45 Emily is asleep. I threaten everyone with instant death if they wake her up. They think this is funny and start to howl with laughter at the top of their lungs. Emily cries. I go in the bathroom, shut the door, and count to twenty. Daniel sticks his fingers under the door and says, “Look, Daniel fingers!”

5 PM. I decide that we should all walk down to the mailbox instead of trying to do science. I give Mom the monitor again, and we borrow three flashlights from her (it’s already dark, and I have no batteries. Ever.) The mailbox is a quarter of a mile away, and the night is beautiful. By the time we get back I feel better. I fix everybody sandwiches and potato chips for supper. (They think this is great).

5:50 I tell Christopher and Benjamin to STOP TALKING AND EAT or I will take their potato chips away. They cram all the chips into their mouths. I decide that we will save manners lessons until Emily is older.

6 PM. Emily wakes up. I get out the Science in a Nutshell kit that we’re doing (Gears) and give everyone gears, then sit down and nurse Emily while we go through the project. Christopher loves to keep his Science Journal, but Ben has to be prompted for every question and answer. I’m still writing them down for him, since his penmanship is very slow and difficult; today my hands are full, so I tell him he gets the day off from recording his experiments. Daniel puts gear stickers on his head and says, “Look, I’m a gear machine.”

7 PM I tell Ben that we’re not doing Spanish (again). “We never get to Spanish,” he says. This is unfortunately true. Maybe I’ll outsource it to a neighbor next year. I check the lists; Christopher didn’t do his cursive practice, but I decide that his life will be complete without it. I tell the boys to get their pajamas on and clean up their room while I rock Emily, who is screaming (again).

7:15 Emily gets happy and everyone wants to hold her. We take turns while I read to Daniel.

7:30 Daniel goes to bed. I play Uno with Christopher and Ben while Emily sits on my lap.

8 PM. I read Ben a book and put him in bed. I rock Emily back to sleep while Christopher sits on the sofa and reads.

8:30 I send Christopher to bed and put Emily in her cradle. She immediately wakes up and howls. Eventually I pick her up and pretend I’m doing aerobics, which sends back to sleep. I put her back down and sneak out of the room.

9 PM Boy, it would be nice to go to bed.

9:30 Lights out for the boys. Daniel is asleep; I pray with the two older boys, listen to Christopher’s worries, and answer twelve questions from Ben. I know Emily will be up to eat again soon, so I decide to work on e-mail again until she wakes up.

Here’s Entry Two in my “Evolving Life of a Writer/Homeschool Parent” series. This takes place about a year and a half after Entry One…

A DAY IN THE LIFE
1999: a day with a first and third grader and a three-year-old

6:30 AM I meant to get up at 6, but I got to bed late last night and now I’m dragging. I drink a quick cup of coffee and go for the 3 1/2 mile walk I try to take at least four times a week. The boys don’t usually get up until 8 AM; if they wake up, they read in bed until I come to get them. Peter (my husband) has a breakfast meeting this morning and won’t be back in our home office until around 2. I ask my mother (who lives in an adjoining house here on the farm) to open the connecting door between our households and keep an ear out for screams.

7:50 I get back from my walk and decide I don’t have time to shower. Instead I do a load of dishes and go in to get the boys up. They’re all awake. Benjamin (six) wants to do school in bed this morning, so I get him a lap desk and serve his cereal and milk on it. Christopher (8) and Daniel (3) get up and dressed, and come into the kitchen for breakfast.

8:30 I’ve been shuttling between kitchen and bedroom for half an hour. I tell Ben that if he needs any more food, he’ll have to come into the kitchen to get it. Christopher’s finished eating (toast and scrambled eggs), but Daniel’s still working on his plate, so I start Christopher on his cursive penmanship (which he can do by himself) and get Ben’s books together.

8:45 Christopher finishes penmanship; Ben finishes breakfast; Daniel drops his plate. I give Christopher his grammar book, explain the rule in today’s assignment, and tell him to start the exercise. Then I wipe up the eggs and take Ben’s penmanship into his room. I still have to watch him do his writing, because he wants to do his circles backwards, so I stand beside the bed and say, “Up and around towards the wall! Up and around towards the wall!” while he writes. Daniel climbs up on the bed. Ben protests. Daniel yells. Christopher bellows from the kitchen that he’s done. I tell Christopher to be patient, Ben to be tolerant, and Daniel to stop grabbing Ben’s pencils.

9:05 I take Daniel into the kitchen with me to check Christopher’s grammar. He’s made two punctuation mistakes. I mark them and ask him to correct them and find me the rules that apply. Daniel asks for his markers, so I put him at the end of the table with his marker basket and a pile of scrap paper. When I get back to Ben’s room, he’s finished his penmanship and done all the remaining circles backwards. I make him write five more the correct way around.

9:15 Christopher’s ready to do his Writing Strands assignment. Today he has to do a Good Deed report, so I persuade Ben to get out of bed and bring his brother a little bowl of M&Ms. Christopher is supposed to write an account of this, but everyone now wants to eat M&M, so we have our snack break (way too early).

9:20 Daniel is covered with red M&M goo. That “Melt in your mouth, not in your hand” slogan is a LIE.

9:25 Daniel’s in the bathtub. I put Ben back in bed with his Spelling Workout book, explain what he has to do on the next two pages, and ask him if he can do it alone. He says he can. I go into the kitchen and ask Christopher to tell me what just happened. He says, “Ben brought me some M&Ms.” I say, “No, tell me exactly what happened from the beginning.” “Ben came in the room,” he says. “What next?” I ask. “He gave me M&Ms.” “Wait,” I say, “where did they come from?” “You gave them to him,” he says, looking at me as though I’m feeble-minded. “No,” I say, “you have to tell your reader that Ben was holding M&Ms in his hand, or else the reader won’t know where they came from.” “Ben had M&Ms in his hand,” Christopher says. Daniel yells, “I want my octopus.” I tell Christopher to think of a title for his story and write it at the top of his page. Then I find the octopus, check on Ben (who has actually DONE his work — I am astonished), tell Ben he’s wonderful and he can play Legos for a minute, and then go back to the kitchen. Christopher has written, “Ben Brought Me M&Ms” at the top of his paper. We talk through Ben’s “Good Deed” for a few more minutes, and then he begins to write the sentences down, one at a time. I start to make brownies — this morning, my father and grandfather and a couple of other men are outside running the sawmill, and we usually take them coffee and goodies around 10:30.

9:55 Christopher has written two sentences. “Isn’t that enough?” he asks. “No,” I say, “you need to finish the story.” I go in Ben’s room and listen to him read me a chapter out of “Owl Stays Home.” Daniel is pouring water on the floor, but since he’s out of everyone’s hair, I put down three towels and try to ignore it.

10:05 Christopher has written three sentences. “Isn’t that enough?” he asks. “No,” I say, “you need to finish the story.”

10:10 I start the coffee, and then call Ben out for a piano lesson. We work for about 15 minutes before his attention starts to flag.

10:25 Christopher brings me a nice paragraph-long story. I praise it and ask him if he’d like to see how to set it up as a newspaper story in Microsoft Publisher. He says he would, so we turn on the computer, open the program, and type “The Paper” as the title of the newsletter. He starts to type his story into one of the column (hunt and peck method). Ben puts on his boots and says he’s going to go tell the men that the snack is coming. Daniel appears in the living room, stark naked and dripping water. “The train got out of the tub,” he announces.

10:40 I finally get outside with the snack. Christopher wants to stay in and work on his newspaper story. Ben and Daniel and I eat brownies with the men and go for a little walk around the house. Both of them step in a puddle and get soaking wet.

11 AM When we go in, Christopher’s getting tired of typing. I show him how to save the program and tell him to practice his piano when he finishes. I put Ben and Daniel into dry clothes and go to take the wet ones down to the laundryroom. When I come back, they’re having a fight. I put Ben on his bed and have a talk with Daniel, and then sit Daniel on the sofa and go have a talk with Ben. “I can’t possibly practice with all this noise going on,” Christopher complains. “Tough,” I say.

11:15 It’s time for history. We’re reading about Michaelangelo today; I have a fairly difficult book with great pictures, and an easy book with not very good pictures. I read to them from the difficult book, paraphrasing when I can to make the text easier, and stopping to ask questions occasionally (to make sure they’re listening). Daniel climbs in and out of my lap the whole time. Ben thinks that having a saw that can cut stone is “cool.” He asks if he can draw a picture of it. I agree, and when we’re done reading he sits down to draw a picture of a stonecutter’s workshop. Christopher wants to write about the David. He’s a little overwhelmed by the statue’s….nakedness. We talk about Renaissance views of the body and of man’s greatness. When we’re done, he writes, “During the Renaissance, people painted pictures of naked people. They thought the body was beautiful. They also made statues of naked people.” I put this in his History Notebook. I write, “A Stonecutter’s Workshop” on Ben’s picture and put it in his History Notebook. Daniel falls down and bumps his head. I pick him up and carry him around (he weighs 35 pounds).

11:55 The boys go out to feed the rabbits. I look at the schedule. We alternate chemistry and history; today was a history day, so we’ll do chemistry tomorrow. Both boys have done their penmanship; Christopher did his grammar (he does spelling on alternate days), and Ben did his spelling (he’ll do spelling every day until he finishes Spelling Workout A and moves on to English for the Thoughtful Child); Christopher did his writing, and Ben his reading, and we all did history and piano practice. They’re supposed to do art today, but when I look outside they’re cleaning the bunny cage, so I don’t call them in. I sit down and read “Richard Scarry’s Word Book” to Daniel for the eighty-sixth time.

12:20 The boys come in covered with bunny hair. I make them both change (Christopher’s slightly allergic) and sit Christopher down to read a chapter in his current book (a biography of Paul Revere — it’s the wrong time period, but he listened to “Johnny Tremain” on tape and got interested, so I’m practicing flexibility). I make sandwiches while Ben and Daniel get into another fight. I make Ben sit on the sofa next to Daniel and read him a book, on the principle that good actions drive out bad behavior, but unfortunately Daniel head-butts him while he’s reading and they both start to cry. I sit Daniel in a chair at the table for another talking-to and send Ben in to play Legos. Christopher says, “I can’t possibly read with all this noise going on.” “Go in my room,” I say. He goes in my room and yells, “I can still hear them!” “Tough,” I say.

12:25 I talk to Daniel and then take him in to apologize to Ben. “I’m sorry, Ben,” Daniel says. Ben hugs him too hard. They both fall over and Daniel starts to cry again. I take Daniel (still howling) back to the kitchen and tell Ben to stay put until I get lunch on the table.

12:45 Lunch is finally on the table. Christopher has just finished his Paul Revere chapter. He goes and gets his Lego sub, and he and Ben have a big Lego battle in between bites.

1:05 Christopher and Ben wash their hands and get ready for quiet time on their beds. They have books on tape — Christopher is listening to the Redwall series, and Ben is listening to “The Mouse on the Motorcycle.” I put Daniel in his bed, read him another book, and turn on his tape recorder.

2 PM Peter gets home. The boys are still in bed. I have to go in to the university library this afternoon to work on a research project, so I put something in the crockpot and get bread on to rise. Peter will do Saxon math with both boys and read them a chapter out of their current literature book — a story about the Norman conquest. Christopher also has Latin vocabulary cards to drill. I leave around 3 PM, planning to be back about 6:30 for dinner.

After finishing off those third-edition revisions to The Well-Trained Mind, I took some time to sort through a bunch of related materials that needed filing…and discovered four different accounts that I’ve written, over the past ten years, about daily life as a writer/teacher/home schooling parent. I thought you might enjoy them. (I sure did. If only because life is SO MUCH EASIER now, deadlines not withstanding.)

So here’s the first. I’ll post the other three over the next few days.

A DAY IN THE LIFE
1998: a day of first grade and K-4 (with three boys under seven)

6 AM I’m up, drinking coffee and doing my morning reading in Thomas a Kempis. Peter (my husband) works this morning and won’t be in until two; he’s already gone. After I’m done, I decide I’ll do a bit of writing before the kids get up. Generally, Christopher (6) and Ben (4) sleep until eight; Daniel (18 months) wakes up around 7:30, but he’ll stay in his crib until I get him up.

7:20 Daniel decides he’s ready to get up. He yells so loudly that I go get him ahead of schedule so that he won’t wake up his brothers (they’re all in one big room). I haven’t showered yet, so I give him a bottle and sit him on the bathroom floor. He manages to unroll all the toilet paper, but I leap out of the shower before he can stuff it all into the toilet. By the time I’m out, dressed, and picking up toilet paper, it’s eight.

8:00 Christopher and Ben get up, get dressed, go potty, and wander in for breakfast. Christopher brings Gordon, his favorite stuffed animal, to help him do school. I tell him he can have Gordon as long as he doesn’t get distracted. Distraction’s a big problem this year. We eat breakfast; toast for Christopher with a boiled egg (if he doesn’t have the egg, he doesn’t concentrate very well), oatmeal with brown sugar for Ben (he hasn’t eaten anything else for breakfast in months). Daniel eats his cereal and then wanders off to pull toys out of his box. We do our catechism questions. By the time we’re done, it’s 8:50 — ten minutes before school time — so I turn on music for them to dance.

9:00 We start our math lesson. Ben is playing with his Thomas the Tank Engines in his room, so I leave him there. Gordon sits in front of Christopher’s book. Halfway through the lesson, Daniel has a catastrophic diaper, so I give Christopher a money-counting assignment and go to change it. While I’m in their room, I discover that Ben has pulled all the sheets off his bed to make a tent. By the time I get back to Christopher, it’s 9:45. Daniel’s starting to fuss. I give Christopher the rest of the lesson with Daniel hanging onto my leg, assign him the worksheet he does alone, and take Daniel back to his room for “crib time” (he gave up his morning nap some time ago, but I still put him down for half an hour of quiet play). Ben bursts into tears when I shoo him out of the room, but I promise him he can listen to a story tape.

10:20 We’re done with math, half an hour behind schedule. I tell Christopher and Ben to go ride their bikes for a few minutes while I fix a snack. When I call them in, I get Daniel up.

10:45 I start Christopher on his Spelling Workout book and then sit down to do a phonics worksheet from Modern Curriculum Press with Ben. Daniel crawls into the middle of the table and tips Christopher’s pencils over. I pull a chair up to the sink so that he can pour water in and out of cans. He pours water on the floor too, but I put a bathtowel under him and try to ignore it.

11 I give Christopher his sentence to copy, set up a train track for Ben behind the sofa, change Daniel’s shirt, and check Christopher’s sentence. Two words are so messy that I make him rewrite them.

11:10 Daniel’s sitting on Ben’s train track, and Ben’s complaining. I put on Peter and the Wolf for everyone’s music study and try to clean up the water on the floor. I’ve still got history and Christopher’s piano lesson to do today (I’m not doing Picture Study until he’s a little older; I tried it and he was bored, so I’ll introduce it a little later). I’m running behind.

11:30 I put Daniel in the high chair with a hot dog, send Christopher to practice his piano lesson, and sit down on the sofa with Ben to do a page of his reading primer.

11:45 Christopher comes back from practicing too soon, so I make him go do his scales again. (He’s not happy about this.) I make Ben lunch (he eats three times slower than everyone else), wipe up Daniel’s face, and give him his bottle. When Christopher comes back I make him a sandwich one-handed and tell them to both sit still and eat until I get back.

12:05 In the middle of putting Daniel to bed, I hear a great disagreement in the kitchen. I march out and tell the boys to keep their mouths closed until I’m done with the baby. “Can’t I eat?” Ben asks. “Can’t I breathe?” Christopher asks. I answer this as it deserves and go back to Daniel. When he’s settled, I turn on the fans in the room to block noise and close the door.

12:15 I give Ben his art stuff — push-pins, a small cork board, pipe cleaners, scissors, paper, and magic markers — and tell him to create art. He sits at the end of the table and works on it while I read Christopher his history lesson. This week’s lesson is about the Great Wall of China. When we’re finished, he draws a picture of the Great Wall and I prompt him through a narration. I write the narration underneath, and we put the page in the notebook. I bought him a China Treasure Chest with a paper model of the Great Wall; I tell him it’s for his next history lesson.

1:10 I have to be teaching at the College by two; Peter arrives at 1:15. Daniel’s asleep; I put Ben to bed with a set of tapes (the unabridged Charlotte’s Web) and his tape recorder. Christopher’s listening to the unabridged The Hobbit on another tape recorder. (We spend a fortune in AA batteries.) I turn both tape recorders down as low as I can and tell them to be quiet. Both boys stay in bed for two hours — it’s a habit they’ve never broken. Ben’s bed is filled with toys, Christopher’s with books.

1:25 I dress at top speed; I have a half-hour drive to the College. Peter will get the boys up at three and do Christopher’s reading with him this afternoon; they’re working their way through the McCaughrean retelling of the Odyssey. When I get back, I’ll find Christopher’s narration (in Peter’s handwriting) and a picture; Ben usually draws a picture to go with the story too (although we generally can’t tell exactly what it is).

Having finished proofing the indexing to The Art of the Public Grovel, I settled myself in last week to an equally exciting task: writing up the revisions for the tenth anniversary edition of The Well-Trained Mind (due out in February 2009).

For those of you who don’t know, The Well-Trained Mind was the first book I did (my mother co-authored) for W. W. Norton, almost ten years ago now. The book first came out in 1999, and we revised it the first time for publication in 2004, five years later–by which point we’d had the chance to hear from, literally, thousands of readers. The first edition was based on our own experiences; for the second, we had the great advantage of knowing how our recommendations were working for a much larger cross-section of parents and kids. (Believe me when I say: We had no idea so many people would READ it.)

So the second edition had a fair number of changes in the text, because we’d discovered where we were unclear, where we needed to include alternative methods and programs for different kinds of learners, where we needed to simplify. And between 1999 and 2004, a lot of books and curricula we recommended went out of print, or changed prices–including some of the core texts that we had described in great detail.

This time around, I honestly didn’t think there would be as many changes. I’ve been collecting curricula for the last couple of years, looking for anything new and earth-shatteringly wonderful, but while I’ve added a few new books and programs this time around, most of our recommendations still stand. And I hired a friend to help look up all of the prices and publication information so that we could update the details.

(One corner of my new-curricula pile. It’s threatening to spread and take over the third floor of the house.)

Despite that, the revision turned into a HUGE project. The big problem: Publishers let PERFECTLY GOOD BOOKS go out of print with astonishing regularity. Whole wonderful series of books that are only five or six years old, gorgeous art books that must have taken a FORTUNE to produce, science books that are well-written and clear–they all seem to fall off the backlist. And among the worst offenders are Usborne and Dorling Kindersley. I like Usborne books a lot, and I adore the DK reference books, but you just can’t rely on their titles staying around for any length of time. And this confuses me. After the first print run you’ve paid off most of your development costs; you’re just paying the physical cost of the book and the royalty to the author, and the rest is gravy. Why on earth let the books die?

Anyway, I ended up writing in an incredible number of changes, just because so many books are simply not available any more. And it was a long tiring process. In case you don’t know, a revision to an existing book is done–yes, in the year 2008–by HAND. Wherever there is a change, I am supposed to photocopy the page and write the change onto it in pencil. If the change is longer than a sentence, I type it out, indicate where it is suppose to go on the original page, attach a new page with the typed-out change to the original change, and then save the added text as a text file onto a CD. The result looks kind of like this (click for a close-up):

By the time I was done, I had a huge stack of photocopied pages with brief changes written on them in pencil,

and I had typed out and saved 199 separate text files with changes of a sentence or more.

My eyes hurt.

My HAND hurts. I don’t usually write that much in pencil any more. Seriously. I need to do some writing-muscle exercises so that computer use doesn’t atrophy my hands.

Anyway, I finally got the revisions done and out the door (here’s Mollie, my husband’s niece–she’s working for me this year–with the box, heading for UPS).

That’ll be another set of page proofs returning to be proof-read, sometime this fall–after I finish the History of the Medieval World, I hope. Remember the History of the Medieval World? My attention’s been a little distracted over the last few weeks.

Time to get back to feudalism…I mean it, this time…

So the next job in getting the Princeton book out: reading through the index.

Every publishing contract I’ve signed gives me two options: prepare the index myself, or else allow the publisher to hire a professional indexer and have half the costs deducted from my royalties. On my first book, I checked around with my writer friends to find out what the best option was. The vote was unanimous: everyone who had tried to save money by doing the index themselves wanted to put her head in an oven by the time it was done.

So I always take the second option. It usually ends up costing me in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars or a little more–which is a good thing, because the index rolls around at the point in the process when I’m thinking that I never want to see this leprous scabby book again.

AHEM.

It’s a good book. Really.

Anyway, even though the index gets outsourced to a professional freelancer, it then gets sent back to me for proofing. The indexing this time around struck me as very good indeed, but I did have a few suggestions. For example, here’s part of the A section, with my remarks in all caps:

Abbott, Lyman, 34
ABC News, 144, 153
abortion, 112, 113
Abzug, Bella, 113
African Americans, 175 I ASSUME THIS REFERENCE IS TO THE CLINTON CHAPTER, WHERE I COVER THE SUPPORT OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN VOTERS—IF SO, DOESN’T IT COVER MORE THAN ONE PAGE? (THROUGH THE END OF THE PARAGRAPH ABOUT LYNCHING.) I THINK IT WOULD BE GOOD TO ALSO INDEX WITH AFRICAN AMERICANS MY REFERENCE TO SOUTHERN BLACK CHURCH SERVICES (CH. 7).
Allen, A. A., 294n22
Allen, Steve, 119
altar call, 34, 65, 66, 109, 160
. See also revivals
America IS THERE ANY WAY TO DEFINE THIS ENTRY A LITTLE MORE AS “AMERICA, THE NATION” OR….SOMETHING LIKE THAT? THE WHOLE BOOK IS ABOUT AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC CULTURE AND AMERICAN EVANGLICALISM, AND WHEN I SEE THIS ENTRY I THINK THAT “DEMOCRACY IN” AND “EVANGELICAL RELIGION IN” AND EVEN ‘CATHOLIC CHURCH IN” SHOULD ALSO BE INDEXED UNDERNEATH IT, WHICH WOULD MAKE IT MUCH MORE EXTENSIVE. AS IT STANDS, IT STRIKES ME AS KIND OF A RANDOM SELECTION OF TOPICS. IF “AMERICA AND HAGGARD,” WHY NOT “AMERICA AND KENNEDY” OR “AMERICA AND CLINTON” OR “AMERICA AND BERNARD LAW”?
as decadent, 139
fundamentalist view of, 57
and Haggard, 211
and mythical Christian past, 125, 126
and popular culture, 67
renewal of, 57
repentance of, 6, 107, 127
American Catholic bishops, 186
American public, 158, 159, 162, 168, 177, 178, 181–82, 242, 243
American Puritans, 4–5, 26, 27, 127
American Religious Town Hall (television program), 296n35
Anderson, Jeffrey, 203
Angelus Temple, 38, 61
establishment of, 45
finances of, 41
and radio, 47
services at, 43, 44
tableaux staged at, 53, 54–55
anxious bench, 33, 34, 290n20
. See also revivals
apology HAGGARD ALSO OFFERED AN APOLOGY
and Bakker, 117, 133
and Clinton, 158, 163, 180–81
and confession, 2–3
and Kennedy, 79
and Law, 7, 188, 189–90, 191, 193, 195, 199, 265, 267, 269, 272, 284
as mainstay of American culture, 14
and Randolph, 199
The Apostle (film), 162
Armstrong, Ben, The Electric Church, 124
Armstrong, Neil, 90
Asbury, Francis, 32
Assemblies of God CAN YOU PROVIDE A “SEE ALSO PENTACOSTALISM” HERE? I TEND TO USE THE TWO INTERCHANGEABLY IN SOME CHAPTERS.
and Bakker, 137–38, 141, 142, 229, 232
and Christian Voice, 126
and Dortch, 231
and Fletcher, 233
and Swaggart, 143, 144, 145–46, 237, 238
Augusta Chronicle, 111, 140, 146
Augustine, 84–85, 108, 174, 180, 208, 209
Confessions, 84, 89
Azusa Street Revival, 53, 292n19

…and then there were a number of queries that the indexer had for me–he caught a good number of problems and inconsistencies. Such as the ones below (again, with my answers in all caps…)

QUERY
93: I assume that this is her last name: Wagner, Helga CORRECT
108.1:–this line doesn’t seem to make sense: SHOULD BE secular humanism?
“The political goal of religious humanism is a one-world government controlled by man, not God,” declared Christian evangelist and educator Bill Gothard. IT SHOULD BE SECULAR HUMANISM
125: Is this an advocacy group? If so, why italicized in text? Christian Voice (advocacy group) IT IS AN ADVOCACY GROUP, AND IT SHOULD NOT BE ITAL.
188-189, 265-266: I assume that Law’s press conf. took place on Jan 9, not Jan 10 (as stated on 188), and in 2002, not 2001 (as stated on 188). THAT IS CORRECT. THE PRESS CONFERENCE WAS JAN. 9, 2002. THE COVERAGE OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE APPEARED IN PAPERS ON JAN. 10, 2002, THE FOLLOWING DAY.
Law, Bernard Cardinal: press conference of January 9, 2001, , 265–68}
201: I assume that these are the same: U.S. Catholic Conference AND United States Conference of Catholic BISHOPS YES, THEY ARE THE SAME. THE ORIGINAL TITLE WAS THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS AND UNITED STATES CATHOLIC CONFERENCE. WE SHOULD ALWAYS USE UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS FOR CONSISTENCY.

That’s the week’s excitement, folks. Indexing. If something more thrilling were going on, I would certainly tell you.

So the next thing that happens should be…the arrival of the ARCs, or galleys–these are the prepublication copies of the book, sent out to reviewers. When they get here I’ll take a picture. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how to write about feudalism in a manner that doesn’t cause people to drop off to sleep as though hit by a somnolence virus.

I’ve been in Seattle since Thursday, first speaking at the Washington education conference, and then spending a few days with my brother and sister-in-law and their baby. Daniel and Em came with me to this conference, since they’ve never met their cousin.

(Em is thinking about this whole another-girl-in-the-family thing)

The flight here was…long. Word to the wise: If you fly AirTran, there will be no food and no movies, not even on six-hour flights in business class. I can’t believe I shelled out all that money to fly business class in exchange for two packs of Pepperidge Farm cookies and hours and hours of being ignored by the flight attendants. (Granted, the seat was nice and big, but after nine hours of entertaining two children on planes sans electronics or meals, AirTran has lost my business.)

The conference, which was in Puyallup, was a particularly friendly one (here’s half of the room full of people who are getting ready to listen to my “What Is Classical Education” talk):

and I spent a lot of time at the book table afterwards, talking to parents. I’m continually impressed, whenever I go to these conferences, by the amount of dedication on view. So many parents, all putting tremendous effort into curriculum choices for their kinds, trying so hard to tailor education to each child’s needs. This is the bright counterpoint to all those dark pronouncements about how America’s kids can no longer read, write, or think. These conferences remind me that the desire to learn is still very much alive.

ADDENDUM:

Random thoughts about the Pacific Northwest….

1. The weather here is GREAT. Yeah, I know there’s all the rain and clouds and stuff, but in Virginia it’s been over 100 degrees for most of June so far, and here it is COOL. I would actually come and live here if I could figure out what to do with the farm in Virginia. I’ll take clouds over sun and 95% humidity, thanks.

2. We’ve ended up eating out a lot on this trip. The food is great. The service, not so much. Is there some kind of northwest ethos out here that causes waiters to SAUNTER towards your table, and to forget that your order is, in fact, waiting to be picked up and brought to your table, until your hungry niece begins to hurl forks on the floor? The one constant in restaurants so far has been that it takes FOREVER to get the food. I’m ready to make a general statement about waitstaff in Seattle: They’re not in a hurry. Ever.

3. When the cash machines ask you to confirm that you’ll pay the $2 fee for making use of them, they don’t give you the options of “I decline” and “I accept.” They say, “No, thank you,” and “Sure!” (This makes me giggle every time.)

When I came back from L.A., the first pass proofs of the Art of the Public Grovel were waiting for me. (Those of who’ve been reading this blog for a while may remember the arrival of the first pass galleys for the History of the Ancient World.) So I’ve spent this week reading carefully through the typeset pages and comparing them with the copyedited manuscript pages, trying to catch typos and errors.

The first pass galleys are the pages that will eventually be bound into the book; the typesetters create them from the electronic file of the manuscript that I sent, and they’re supposed to incorporate into the galleys all of the copyeditor changes made in pencil on the hard copy of the manuscript pages. This creates plenty of opportunity for new errors to creep in. Like this one (you’ll need to click on the picture and look at the large version to get the full effect):

(What do you think the copyeditor’s blue insertion says? Now, have a look at what the typesetter THOUGHT it said…)

Yes, that’s right. The copyeditor wrote “penetrating.” The typesetter–trying, I guess, to read the handwritten letters–typed “revetrating.” Which is not, so far as I know, a word.

Due to the struggle I had with the copyedited pages and the tight production schedule that the book is on, I didn’t get to approve all the copyedits before they went to the typesetter, and this is one of the changes I hadn’t seen before. So I changed it back to the original wording anyway. I had written “infiltrating,” which is different from “penetrating,” and I guess I’ve taught too many freshmen classes to ever pick that particular word (they all giggle when you use anything that might possibly be interpreted as a double entendre).

The typesetter on this particular job seems to have been very literal-minded: he (or she) incorporated changes into the text whether or not they made sense. Here, for example, is a copyedit I accepted:

(The copyeditor changed “work” to “strove”…)

(…and the typesetter saw “store,” which turns the sentence into gibberish.)

Here’s a word reversal that the copyeditor didn’t mark clearly enough…

and that the typesetter reproduced faithfully.

And here’s a copyeditor notation that I don’t quite understand.

Neither did the typesetter.

Yeah, that’s right, it now reads, “The Father of Lies. Hair.” I don’t know why.

These are the kinds of mistakes that make me scared to open the book, once it comes out. If I miss something like this, I will sound like an IDIOT.

And then there are lots of smaller changes, like this one: the copyeditor deleted the first comma but forgot to take out the second, which makes the sentence incorrect…

and there are changes that I can live with, but wouldn’t be my choice, like this one…

Webster says that “appendix” can be made plural as either “appendices” or “appendixes.” The copyeditor chose the second. My five years of Latin are shouting NO, NO, NO! but I’m not listening.

Princeton has graciously agreed to let me have a look at the second pass galleys to check on whether corrections have been made, so I’ll be waiting for those to arrive.

In the meantime, I’m getting ready to head to Seattle at the end of the week for the WHO conference. I’m taking Dan and Emily with me so that they can meet their baby cousin for the first time. Will report on that shortly (if I survive the coast-to-coast flight…)

So the big excitement at BookExpo for Peace Hill Press is that Christopher got Garrison Keillor’s autograph,

which was even more exciting than Alec Baldwin waving at Dot (as I walked by his signing table with her on my hip–I didn’t know he was there) and saying, “Baby! Hi, baby! Look at the baby!”

(Dot, with Bob, not Alec)

There are always celebrities at BookExpo, signing their latest book, but there’s a particularly high celebrity-factor here this weekend, probably because it’s in L.A. Bob ran into Doctor Ruth, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy have both been doing signings, Jamie Lee Curtis and Cheech (of Cheech and Chong) are around somewhere–oh, and there have been some actual WRITERS doing signings too. (Ray Bradbury and Neal Stephenson, for you SF fans–although I didn’t make it over to either booth. Drat.)

We’ve talked to a lot of booksellers who weren’t familiar with our books, and to a number of foreign publishers investigating translation rights. I’m hoping that the press from India follows through, and also that one of the two contacts we made with Spanish-language publishers will pan out. I’d love to see the books in Spanish.

I’ve been to a few seminars–one on multimedia supplements to children’s books (The Story of the World Role Playing Game? ), one on changes in book distribution (incredibly unhelpful, as the presenters stood up and said, “There are big changes coming in book distribution!”), and one last night where Ron Sider, Randall Balmer, Marcia Ford, and David Gushee talked about evangelicals and their involvement in politics. That was the best, and the most sparsely attended, of any of the sessions.

Wandered over to say hello to the folks at Princeton who’ll be selling The Art of the Public Grovel,

tried out the Kindle (keep an eye out for Peace Hill Press books in the Kindle format–we’re working on it),

investigated a number of of the parties that seem to break out around 4 PM at the bigger publisher booths. They bring in caterers and a portable bar, and everybody storms the aisle.

I’ve been going back to the hotel and collapsing afterwards, but apparently there’s been quite a bit of wild partying going on. The guy across the aisle was on his way to the “Ted Turner party at Larry King’s house,” and Prince hosted a house-party (so I hear) that went on until 5 AM.

Weirdly enough, I didn’t get any of those invitations. Hmm…

At 4 PM today, we’ll break down the booth and send the essentials (the PTSB and a few other things) back to the Norton warehouse. We’re trying to take back as little as possible, since it costs an arm and a leg and another leg to ship it all back to the east coast, so we’ll probably donate most of our display books to First Book, a great charity which will box them up and distribute them to kids who need them.

Christopher and I flew into LAX yesterday, met Bob and Heather (my brother and sister-in-law), and headed straight for the LA Conference Center to get our Peace Hill Press booth set up for BookExpo. After a few culture shocks on the way,

we arrived. The hall was divided up into publisher spaces, and the exhibition company in charge of running the show had delivered all of the boxes/furniture/posters shipped ahead of time to each publisher’s spot.

Bob and Heather set up the PTSB (the Portable Trade Show Booth–it’s a metal framework with a blue velvet surface that forms a backdrop for our booth),

and we spent a couple of hours unpacking boxes and trying to figure out how to turn blank space into an attractive display.

By this morning, Norton had finished setting up its space too (we’re distributed by Norton, so our booth is actually within their aisle, which means we also get to benefit from the their plushy blue carpet instead of standing on the concrete floor.) Compare this with the night-before photo up top!

I’ll take a few more photos today and report on the day’s happenings as soon as I can…

Tomorrow morning I’m up at 3 AM to catch a plane for L.A., where I’ll be at Book Expo until Monday, manning the Peace Hill Press booth. (See here for last year’s BookExpo adventure.) At the beginning of this year, my brother and sister-in-law came into the business with me, so they’re coming down from Seattle to meet me there. I’m also taking Christopher, who’s going to man the booth/get food for us/play nanny for my niece Dot/collect give-aways from other publishers’ booths.

Anyway, today I’m running in circles making sure that everything’s done here before I leave. (Pasture fence fixed, galley proofs for Art of the Public Grovel packed so that I can read them on the plane, dry cleaning picked up, cookie jars filled.) Regular updates commencing tomorrow. Stay tuned.

My friend and neighbor Charlie Park (whose wife Sarah draws the BEAUTIFUL maps in my history books) has just launched his own company, Pear Budget. Go check it out: it’s an easy-to-use family budgeting system that’s perfect for all of you out there who keep MEANING to budget but can’t quite bring yourself to wrestle Quicken into submission.

You can read reviews at The Simple Dollar, About.com, and BoingBoing.

I’m still second drafting. Which means I’ve been putting off answering reader emails for a couple of months now; I like answering them, but lots of things get delayed when I’m trying to get out a coherent draft. This week I made a start on the emails. And I also went in and checked my box at the English department at William & Mary; I didn’t teach this semester (I’m back to it in the fall, though), so I haven’t been to pick up my mail in a while. And a lot of readers send mail directly to the College, since my affiliation with William & Mary is on my book jackets.

There was a HAUL there. So I thought I’d share with you a few random quotes from the letters and emails.

***
I am journeying through your delightfully readable book, “The History of the Ancient World” where I learned Assyrian soldiers made a standard practice of blinding their war captives (bottom of page 250). Elsewhere, I had read that the Byzantines did this regularly, including to their 15,000 Bulgarian captives in AD 1014. These acts would have resulted in extraordinary amounts of suddenly blinded people in one place. What happened to these soldiers next?

(That is a FINE question.)

I am reading your new history of the ancient world and enjoying it very much, but I am puzzled by the title. I am particularly interested in late antiquity and “fall of Rome” studies, so I am confused about why your book is billed as ending with the fall of Rome, when in fact it does not.

(I lobbied for the “End of Rome,” actually, but my editor overruled me.)

So, as I was reading about the ancient Sumerians and the years their kings ruled, a question arose: How do we know the ancient Sumerians kept time as we keep time, today?

(Huh. Well, we don’t, really. I’ll have to think about that one a little more.)

I’m in the middle of reading The History of the Ancient World. I must say I have never been so better informed and enlightened of the origins of the human race. I’d just like to thank you for making ancient history such an interesting experience for me.

(You have just made my day.)

I was enjoying your book on the history of the ancient world until I discovered your description of ancient Sumeria. Once again I find the same old uninformed tripe that all other scholars write. When will you stop trading ignorance with each other and actually research the facts?

(Probably won’t answer that one.)

Why don’t you use Bishop Ussher’s dating? You should show more respect for the great scholars who have come before you instead of ignoring their contributions.

(Sigh…)

I am going to be teaching Medieval History in a 9th grade history class and an 11th grade West. Civ. class. What topics from this significant era should be covered with high school students in a classical school?

(That is a great question, but it makes my brain hurt.)

I found your book, “The History of the Ancient World”, a delightful and thoroughly engaging narrative. I look with great anticipation toward your next installment which hopefully will cover “The History of the Middle Ages.”

(”Hopefully” is the operative word at this point…)

Are there any self-help books you recommend?

(None come to mind.)

Would you mind sharing with me some of your time management ideas? I’m feeling quite overwhelmed by trying to find time to do it all.

(You and me both.)

I’m 14 and I would just love to say that I love your book: “The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome”! I have never read another book as easy to read and as informative. I am wondering how your current book on medieval history is going along. When do you think it will be released?

(I was really enjoying that one until I got to the end.)

Hi Ms. Susan, I am 6years old. I read your book called the story of the world .I really liked it. Anyway one chapter called The mystery of Mohenjo-Daro I think they fled because they wanted to be ruled by a king.

(AWWW….)

I’m curious about your timeline and where you would put the Ice Age, caves of Lascaux, ancient Europe nomads, etc. How do these events reconcile w/ Creation account in Genesis and the young-earth philosophy of the earth’s age?

(Believe when I say that I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA.)

I am enjoying reading your new book, “The History of the Ancient World.” But on page 32, it says, “…the Indus, which flowed northwest through India into the Arabian Sea.” Is this correct?

(Well, er, no, it isn’t. Thanks for pointing this out.)

I am a huge fan of your book the Well-Trained Mind. I just wanted to know, without taking too much of your time, about your thoughts on video games.

(Still formulating those. Should have a coherent answer as my last son is leaving for college.)

***

You know, I really like my mail, even when it makes my brain hurt.

I’ve also come to a conclusion about readers who take the time to write when they find an error. 90% of the time, they are either retired doctors, or retired army officers. Retired doctors point out the error nicely and tell me how much they enjoyed the book. Retired army officers point out the error with indignation and inform me that they will never buy a book of mine again.

I’m sure there’s some sort of cultural studies essay lurking in that phenomenon.

I’m back to getting up at 4 AM and writing, writing, writing. The History of the Medieval World is CRAWLING towards completion. I am slightly relieved, on going back and rereading some of the earlier chapters, that they are not quite as dead awful as I originally thought. It gives me hope that my current dead-awful prose will sound better, a few weeks down the road.

I’m sitting down in my office listening to the wind howl outside. Branches are lashing against the roof, water is pouring down the windows. I’ve got my heater on to keep my feet warm. This happens every spring: we get a cold, wet week or two that feels more like February than May. My grandmother called it blackberry winter, and sure enough, it comes when the blackberries are in full bloom.

We get a blackberry winter pretty much every year, but it always surprises me when it happens. It’s been cold and dark and grey for ten days now,

and it has rained, and rained, and rained, and rained. And rained. The horses are standing in ankle-deep water in the paddock,

so I turned them out into the pasture, where they stood out in the rain all day instead of coming in and spending the afternoon in a nice, dry stall.

(Our draft horse Max now has a friend–this is our very sweet-natured new horse, a thoroughbred with such a naturally calm disposition that he’s practically comatose. The kids haven’t named him yet, so I call him Minimus. He looks a little muddy and cold here, but if the sun ever comes out again I’ll post a nice picture.)

To close, a few late History of the Ancient World bits: a nice review from About.com, a review-essay from Books and Culture, and I’m a nominee for the Library of Virginia awards. Also, you can now pre-order The Art of the Public Grovel in Canada, should you be so inclined.

Conference se