I think I would have just imploded if I was home schooled. First of all, I don’t think that there would be anyone at home to home school me. Secondarily, as a child of Korean immigrants, it was the other way around – I was often home schooling my parents. I can definitely recall quizzing my newly immigrated Korean step-mother on the naturalization questions. Or preparing the tax returns for the household. Or interpreting for my parents when they pretending that they didn’t understand English (even when they really did). You try arguing with a child who is interpreting for their parents. It shuts people down.
I think that I would make an awful home school teacher, but I applaud those that do. Teaching Paige would be something akin to this:
Me: Math is important.
Paige: Nuh-uh.
Me: Uh-huh.
Paige: Nuh-uh.
Me: Uh-uh.
Paige: Nuh-uh.
Me: Math is important BECAUSE I SAID SO AND I’M THE BOSS.
This week’s Momversation highlights Facebook. See Rebecca Woolf, Asha Dornfest and I hash out our thoughts on the topic.
If Facebook was around when Paige was a toddler I think that I might have just died and gone to heaven. I have to admit that it was (and is) lonely being a single parent and a young mother sometimes. Especially so in those early years when all of your friends are getting drunk and doing illicit things late at night while you are stuck at home cleaning up barf and finding random pieces of Goldfish crackers stuck to your ass. I think it would have been nice to have a better social utility than an AOL chat room (*cringe*) or the trusty Yahoo! forum.
Suffice to say, my ears still perk up like a Pavolivian dog when I hear the words, “YOU’VE GOT MAIL!” But nowadays, I am reducing my dependence on computers and trying to live a reallife first.
Last night I went to see Mark Bittman speak about his new book called Food Matters: A Guide To Conscious Eating. If you have never heard of Mr. Bittman, he is a James Beard Award winning author and has written a litany of books like How to Cook Everything, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and The Minimalist Cooks at Home. He also is a columnist and blogger for the New York Times, as well the star of a companion new media show called The Minimalist. I know all this because I am crushing on Mr. Bittman. (He’s probably a fuddy duddy of a man who has an acerbic personality, but I’ll live in my fantasy for now.)
Mr. Bittman wants to help save the world. Or rather, he wants to save YOU and I. The world will still be here if the human race dies out. You can see a version of his lecture here:
I don’t like to preach or get all up on the high horse, but it is humbling to hear the statistics behind the general concept about food/diet that we all know already:
American’s eat like shit.
We definitely eat too much meat.
Meat production produces 1/5 of the world’s greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gases causes global warming.
Global warming can have catastrophic affects.
The conundrum is is that I like to eat meat.
But I also like the planet.
And I care about my kid and your kid too.
So what do we do?
What do you do when you start thinking about this stuff?
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