January Favorites: Zombies, Racists, and Gay Achilles

Syd and I read "Romeo and Juliet" this month. She had to read on a school-sponsored website with reading comprehension questions embedded in it (blech!), while I got to read from this second-hand Complete Works of Shakespeare with all the important parts already underlined for me and the relevant notes already written. 

January is always such an oddly busy month! You'd think it would be a respite from the chaos of Christmas, but I feel like January is always when Will's high school courses start ramping up in intensity for their final push, and then just when you realize you can now spend a weekend not doing any Christmas crap, Girl Scout cookie season starts! 

Will's also doing another class at our local university this semester, so the kid is swamped! Nevertheless, here are her favorites from what she read in her precious free time in January:

And here's the rest of what she read!

I got a little more reading time in, because I'm not prepping for AP exams or taking a college class, yay! A couple of non-fiction books that I've been in the hold queue for SUCH a long time waiting for both came in last month, so even though they were both heavy and depressing, I tackled them right away so that I could pass them on to the rest of the city:

The New Jim Crow has, and I am not exaggerating, changed my worldview. I definitely knew that there were flaws in the criminal justice system, and I of course knew that there was a lot of unfairness targeted explicitly at BIPOC individuals, but... wow. The criminal justice system is deeply, deliberately flawed, in ways so intrinsic that it's hard for me to wrap my head around what a solution could even possibly look like. It turns out that the criminal justice system is essentially just a really efficient method to continue denying civil rights and social services to BIPOC individuals by the simple method of getting as many as possible labeled as felons and then just denying civil rights and social services to felons. BIPOC individuals are policed far more heavily and given far harsher penalties than white people, and then additional legislation is piled on that does things like denying convicted felons the right to vote, or denying them subsidized housing or automatically barring them from the majority of jobs. 

And then there's the whole business with the War on Drugs, the propaganda for which has buoyed up all kinds of legislation to erode our 14th Amendment rights. I would like to keep ALL of my 14th Amendment rights, thank you very much!

And THEN there's the whole business of turning the prison system into a literal business, so that there is a literal, tangible incentive to jail as many people as possible as cheaply as possible. 

As I was reading, it occurred to me that the kinds of peaceful protests that made up the Civil Rights era would never work today. John Lewis and his fellow protestors knew that they'd be arrested for their sit-ins and marches, but they also knew that when they were, the town would have to pay to house them and feed them and in the meantime, more peaceful protestors would arrive who'd have to be arrested and housed and maintained, all on the town's dime. Eventually, the majority of the communities would have to release their protestors for lack of other options, and when that happened the only way to stop the protests would be to work with the protestors to make their requested changes.  

Now... well, you've seen as well as I have how the BLM protests have gone. The police have plenty of military-grade weaponry to beat the snot out of peaceful protestors, and they'd be just as happy as clams to lock everyone up indefinitely and earn scads of money while doing it. The only exception is if you're white, because in that case you can invade the nation's capitol and poop on the floor and try super hard to murder elected legislators and people will fall all over themselves to pretend like you're antifa in disguise instead of a terrorist.

The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland is a more niche title, because it's really only about the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana in the 1920s, but it really hit on my interest in the secret white supremacists who live among us. The stupid thing is that the Ku Klux Klan didn't even focus on racism in Indiana, because there weren't enough BIPOC individuals to get the white supremacists all riled up over; instead, they focused on CATHOLICS. And IMMIGRANTS. And, like, everyone joined! When they wanted to recruit in a town, first they'd put on their Klan robes and walk into all the Protestant churches in the middle of their sermons and hand them a bunch of cash. And then they'd have a giant festival with a parade, and some speechifying, and a big picnic dinner prepared by all those church ladies they'd just buttered up, and then a concert, and then when it was nice and dark they'd have a festive cross burning and sign up all their new recruits. And in advance of the 1924 elections, they mobilized to promote pro-Klan candidates for every local election, and then mobilized even more to get them elected. Like, two Klan women would drive to some homemaker's house, and one woman would stay there to babysit the kids while the other drove the housewife to go vote. That is MOBILIZED!

Fortunately-ish, it all went to hell starting in 1925 because it turns out that legislators elected entirely on a platform of hating Catholics and immigrants don't necessarily have any of the actual skill set required to govern, and the head of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, the guy who was the governor's right-hand man and everyone knew it... yeah, he was also a sex criminal and was directly responsible for the death of a woman he'd horrifically injured. So after his trial it wasn't so much cool anymore to be in the Klan.

The author makes very brief mention of our local scandal of the white supremacists vending at our farmer's market, and I would be so interested to read a further history that connects those two points in time, the early 1920s when apparently being in the Klan was the cool thing to do, and two years ago when it turned out that there were a bunch of people who still thought like that and had just kept their white robes hiding in the closet. I mean, did the Klan really die out, or did people just stop talking about it publicly?

Okay, here's what else I read in January that DIDN'T cause me to spiral into a deep despair about the state of the world (although not gonna lie: I cried at The Song of Achilles):

Here's what else made me cry: you guys, the hyperpop artist that I super like, SOPHIE, died! The artist was so young and talented and the music is so fun! This video is one of my all-time favorite music videos, full stop:

I've read a bunch more cool stuff already this month, and I already can't wait to give you my February update and wander on and on for fifteen paragraphs about the Trials of Apollo series that I just finished and that I now can't stop thinking about. Syd is right: I AM going to have to circle back around and start again with The Lightning Thief!

Every National Park Junior Ranger Badge You Can Earn from Home

My updated map of all the national park Junior Ranger badges that you can earn on-site, and my list of all the Junior Ranger badges you can earn from home by mail or email, lives right here!

P.S. Want more obsessively-compiled lists of resources and activities for kiddos and the people who want to keep them happy and engaged? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Crafting with Teenagers: DIY Pinback Buttons

 Okay, this isn't so much a teenager-specific craft, because Syd has been happily creating her own 1" pinback buttons since she was a brilliant and adorable three years old:

Check out my amazing little peanut in action!

Yes, she's always been a creative and mechanical genius.

Even though we never go anywhere to show them off anymore, Syd still likes making pinback buttons (here's the exact button machine I've apparently owned for over a decade now!), and I'm pretty sure that this is a universally appealing teenager craft. Here's one of the handmade Black Lives Matter pinbacks that she made near the start of the pandemic, when we were quarantining our way through a homeschool social justice unit:

I REALLY miss homeschooling that kid. 

A little while ago, Matt and Syd were cleaning out the garage, when Syd came across a box with the moveable type for my business card stamp inside (the one we own is the same brand and very similar to this one, only mine is self-inking, which after a decade of use I actually think I do not prefer!):

She asked if she could use my stamp set to make her own pinbacks, and even though putting the moveable type of my business card back on the stamp afterwards was a PAIN IN THE ASS, I told her yes because I love her.

Want to know what kind of custom stamped pinback a teenager would make?

This kind:

It's very on-brand!

And now I'm on the lookout for more fun stamped phrases that would fit on a 1" pinback button, EVEN if it means having to redo that whole entire business card stamp again, ugh. I also think they would be a great canvas for creating adorable and intricate little artworks... if only I can convince my local artist to make a bespoke creation or two!

I even found a way to display them that doesn't require going out into society:

If you, too, want to sneak some learnin' into DIY pinback button making, here are some ways we've incorporated homemade pinbacks into our homeschool:

• slogans. Syd did this for our social justice study, of course, but it would also be super fun to let kids make their own campaign buttons for civics or history studies.
• party favors and giveaways. One year, the kids designed their own Girl Scout cookie pinbacks and gave them out as "prizes" when customers bought a certain number of cookies. It was a terrific kid-led marketing exercise!
• moveable alphabet. When Syd was a pre-reader, I used an alphabet punch set and made several sets of moveable alphabets, using the button base but not the pins. The kids used them interchangeably with the rest of our moveable alphabet collection for all kinds of early reading exercises.

• chores. For a couple of years, when the kids were especially high-energy and rascally, I kept a bag of a billion chore buttons in a little bag on a hallway table. Each of the million times a day that the kids did something ratty--punched her sister, left her half-eaten lunch in the middle of the floor, lost her shoes for the fiftieth time that hour, etc.--instead of dealing with the emotion or reasoning or whatever behind the infraction like a good parent, I'd just wearily tell her to go pull a chore. They were all small and random tasks that would take anywhere between 5-10 minutes to complete, stuff like picking up all the sticks in the backyard, or spray cleaning the bathroom sink, or vacuuming the couch with the handheld minivac. When the kids weren't in trouble they could also pull a chore to earn quarters, and if a kid's infraction had been something ratty towards her sister and I was mad about it, I'd sometimes make her pull a chore and complete it, and then hand her a quarter and make her GIVE IT TO HER SISTER, MWA-HA-HA! I don't necessarily think chores as punishment is a sound discipline strategy, but each time I did welcome the chance to lower the everyday chaos in our household a tiny bit.

Interested in even more unsound but highly effective discipline strategies? Well, you'll barely even find those on my Craft Knife Facebook page anymore, but you WILL find a bunch more random craft and homeschool projects and a lot of chaos energy that will probably make you feel a ton better about your own household!

The Girl Scout Vest That Lasts for Seven Years: How It Started and How It's Going!

 Girl Scouts have the opportunity to wear the same Girl Scout uniform, vest or sash, from the Cadette through Ambassador levels. That's sixth grade through twelfth grade, all in the same uniform!

Here's how that started, way back in 2015:

And here's how it's going!

Seven years gives an active Girl Scout like Will a LOT of time to earn a LOT of badges and fun patches, and running out of room is a very real possibility. Some Girl Scouts add extensions to their uniforms, like capes, sashes stacked onto vests, lengthened bottom pieces, etc., but I don't like the idea of altering the body of the uniform. Instead, I'm just overlapping the snot out of the fun patches, which for some reason feels fine to me.

And yes, I also need to admit right here that I COULD have simply put Will into a new vest when she Bridged to Senior. In fact, I SHOULD have put her into a new vest, because during the three years that she was a Cadette she grew, I swear, at least a foot, and by the time she was ready to Bridge that vest that had seemed so roomy once upon a time now barely reached her midsection.

But because I am so weird, my kid, like, barely even had to breathe the tiniest word of disappointment about having to change vests and lose all the evidence of her Cadette accomplishments before I was all, "NO YOU WON'T! I WILL BUY YOU A BIGGER VEST, AND I WILL RIP ALL OF YOUR OLD BADGES AND PATCHES OFF OF THE SMALL ONE, AND I WILL SEW THEM ALL ONTO THE BIG ONE, AND I WILL MAKE THEM PERFECT!"

Don't even talk to me about how silly that was. I know! But dang it, I enjoyed helping her earn all that Cadette stuff at least as much as she enjoyed earning it all, and I want to see it all and enjoy it again every time I look at her uniform. Heck, if she had been allowed to keep her Junior badges on her vest, I'd have happily switched those over, too!

So now we are five-and-a-half years into this tan vest's seven-year mission, and I think there will be *just* enough room for everything. This winter, however, when I bought a new heavy-duty sewing machine, I did stitch back over ever single thing I've sewn onto both kids' vests over the years, essentially quilting everything in parallel lines of invisible top stitching:

Some of those older patches really needed the extra reinforcement!

Here's what the front of Will's vest looked like just two years ago:

And here's what it looks like today!

Somehow, I'm an even worse photographer than I was two years ago. I just cannot seem to get the hang of correct lighting for my photos!

I'm thinking that I'll put Will's Ambassador badges, as well as any WAGGGS badges that she earns, on top of the Cadette badges, but I'll probably keep the IPs she earns over on the Senior side until I run out of room, at least.

Syd's not been as active in Girl Scouts as Will for a while now, so I don't think she's in danger of running out of room on her vest:

Check out this bull crap that I just noticed, though:

At some point, the whole front of her WAGGGS pin snapped off! Guess I'm paying for that again...

Girl Scouts is one of my favorite things to do with my kids and their friends, so I guess it makes sense that I spend this much time and effort on something as low-stakes as their uniforms: to me, they represent all the time we've spent together doing community service and art projects, camping and going on field trips, learning about weird stuff and having adventures. They've got a fun patch for the time I thought I was going to die on a high-altitude obstacle course, a badge for the time I thought that I was going to drown in the lake, another badge for that night that I thought we were all going to die in the woods after I led nearly a dozen kids on a late-night hike somewhere unfamiliar and our flashlights suddenly shone on a row of headstones.

We did NOT go back the next morning to see if they were still there in the daylight.

I'm already feeling bummed that I've only got another year and half of memories to put on Will's vest, but yesterday, driving her home from a long afternoon of helping hand out kits for the Take-Home Cookie Rally that we planned and then going door-to-door to leave door hangers advertising contact-free Girl Scout cookie delivery to her best customers, Will mentioned that she, too, was a little sad about the inevitable end of her time as a Girl Scout.

And immediately I was all, "Oh! As soon as you're an adult, you can have a Girl Scout troop of your own!"

I'll buy her a Girl Scout leader vest, you guys! And I'll help her sew all her patches on it, all nicely lined up and organized!

December Favorites: Glee, The Heroes of the Olympus, and Whatever the Actual Teenager Loved, Too!

 Check out what we did over winter break!

Never mind that our giant DIY wall-mounted bookshelf is for sure going to crash through that floor pretty soon (pro tip: when you put something super heavy in your house, you should definitely stand its legs on top of a joist, and not on top of, like... apparently nothing but 1980s-era laminate flooring...), because look how crowded it is! I needed Matt to build me MORE space for MORE books!

And he did!

Yes, we vacuumed up all those cobwebs later. We did it after we emptied all the shelves and stacked all the books up in piles! Fiction is organized into alpha by author, nonfiction is organized by Dewey Decimal, and biographies/autobiographies/memoirs are alphabetized by subject's last name. Comics are more roughly organized into alpha by series or title; same with magazines.

It's GLORIOUS now, all tidy and organized and with plenty of room for new acquisitions.

When I wasn't putting my hands onto every single book that I own, I was apparently channeling my inner teenager, because other than this interesting (and depressing) book about anthrozoology--

--I spent the entirety of December fangirling my way through Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series, ending up just about as wildly obsessed with it as Syd is:

As I was nearing the end of The Blood of Olympus, I asked her what I was supposed to do next.

"Read The Trials of Apollo series," she texted me (from two rooms away, as you do).

"And then what?" I texted back, meanwhile looking for suitable Percy Jackson gifs to send her.

"Start back again on The Lightning Thief!" And then we got distracted with Percy Jackson cat memes, so that ended that.

I LOVE Rick Riordan. If you haven't read him, his world-building is on level with J.K. Rowling, only unlike her, his depictions of various social issues are enlightened, normalizing, and compassionate. There's a lot of depth in his postmodernism, making his works meaty and thought-provoking, but they never read as too dark, they're not disturbing, and you don't have to sacrifice lots of adventure to watch interesting relationships develop between the characters. 

And Syd tells me that Apollo is a literal cinnamon roll, so I'm pretty excited to start his series next!

Our public library is still closed to in-person visits, and Will is still dreadfully missing those long days she spent wandering the stacks and reading everything that struck her fancy. Here are her favorites of what she was able to scrounge up to read in December:

That Trevor Noah memoir is SO GOOD, by the way, and I've heard that it's even better as an audiobook, because he narrates it himself. Will actually wrote her final paper in her African Studies class on this book... and she earned an A+, yay!

And here's the rest of what Will read!

I finally got back in the habit of taking a long morning walk, although I now have four different routes that I take depending on where the loose dogs are on any given day, sigh. Some of the Trump signs have also come down, too, which helps me feel a little less like I'm about to be axe-murdered and disposed of in a gully. I had to stop listening to anything at all scary or suspenseful on my walks, though, because I'm already jacked up enough about dog attacks and Trump terrorists. So instead I've been binging this podcast as I walk:

It's funny and casual and the banter is pretty fun. They're still on Season 1, which I've seen all of and remember disturbingly well--I'm sure there are important facts that should actually be living in the places where all of my accurate recaps of Season 1 of Glee live!

That podcast led, indirectly, to me searching out Glee clips on YouTube, which led me to learning that there is a Vietnamese remake of Glee! I only watched the first episode, but in some places it's a shot-by-shot remake of American Glee! I found it highly amusing to watch:

Winter break was so lovely (all those Heroes of Olympus books!), that it's been kind of a bummer to get back to the real world this month, and Girl Scout cookie season is also about to start, so I'm about to have to figure out cookie season during a pandemic. That's going to be... something. 

Perhaps I should save The Trials of Apollo for a post-cookie season reward?