I’m in the midst of preparing more detailed Stamp Talk columns, but in the meantime, I found this article very interesting. Most people think of postage stamps as being very innocuous parts of our daily life. In fact with the advent of email and other electronic communication, people only really use stamps when sending out wedding invitations or end-of-the-year holiday cards. So, it’s pretty crazy to think that the design of a stamp could cause two countries to almost start a war with each other.
As the world becomes more and more interconnected, it’s imperative to learn how to work with, empathize, and understand others who have different viewpoints, ways of experiencing the world, and personal and collective histories.
A huge step towards this is simply to be open to listening and learning.
MoonGirl loves the outdoors. I call her my little wild child because she likes nothing better than to be digging through the dirt. We spend time every day either taking walks, running around our front lawn, or playing in the back yard. The above photo is her box of outdoor toys. I like that they encourage open-ended play.
But most of the time, MoonGirl prefers to just improvise with the random things she finds lying around.
She’ll find empty icecube trays and fill them with dirt, sticks, and rocks based on her own criteria.
Or she’ll line up clothespins in-between the slats of our wooden picnic table.
Or she’ll fill up a sifter with her chosen pebbles.
I find it fascinating to see how her mind works. Aside from the toys, I didn’t give her anything for a specific task or project. She found them herself and improvised her own type of outdoor play. And it keeps her occupied for long periods of time, more than can be said for other more structured play.
It’s also a great way of working all her senses, improving her fine and gross motor skills, improving her focus as well as her imaginative thinking, and giving her the first inklings of quantity and size comparisons. There are other more-structured activities we do together that focus on these, but I find it it more satisfying when she creates for herself.
Most of all, she looks so content playing this way.
It reminds me to find imaginative ways to play and create to enrich my own life and fill it with contentment. Learning doesn’t always have to come from the grind of bookish studies or a specific set of classes. Sometimes, it’s enough to “mess” around and see what happens.
These are turbulent times, and I am so tired of it, of the constant hate and discrimination and the constant flow of social ills that I need to care about. But, when I am exhausted, I remind myself that it is much more exhausting to be the one oppressed, to be the one who lives in constant fear that they may not make it to the end of the day solely because of the way they look or the way they are.
I want to be an ally but, compounded with my social anxiety, I never know what to say or do. I want to be helpful and supportive, but I am fully aware that my help and support may cause more harm than good. So, then, how can I be an ally? I think the first thing, and most important thing, I need to do is to educate myself. I have been reading the articles written by those who are most affected and am committing to reading more, listening more, and trying to understand more, as well as incorporating what I learn into my own ways of thinking and doing.
I was trying to decide whether or not I should make a list here of all the resources I’ve been seeing online, but you know what? There are so many articles and lists online of how to help written by people more eloquent and more knowledgeable than me, that I will defer to them instead. What matters is that you and I are willing to search these resources out and use them.
Learning is not only about academic subjects. It is also about empathetically listening to other people’s lived experiences. It is trying to interrogate and understand the root causes of phenomena that touches our everyday lives, things we take for granted or as “obvious”. It is about trying to become better for others, and in that process becoming better for ourselves.
Black lives matter. LGBTQA+ lives matter. Refugee and immigrant lives matter. Your life matters.
2020 has been a “trash fire” of a year, in the sense that it has been largely tumultuous and generally not awesome for most people. However, it sometimes feels as if it’s an ongoing trend throughout my entire life. I’m in my mid-30s, and in the course of my admittedly short life, I have seen the fallout of the events of 9/11, two major recessions, the rise of the internet (for better and worse), and now a major pandemic (though who can forget SARS, H1N1, and the Zika virus, which kept me grounded at home while pregnant with MoonGirl).
I remember doing research for a project for my 1st grade class on the rainforest and my dad taking me to the local library to search through the card catalogs. And now, much of the world’s wealth of information can be found within minutes. On top of that, there is the rise of new careers that would have been incomprehensible even a decade or so ago (social media influencers, data scientists, rideshare drivers, etc.) at the same time many industries have disappeared or have changed beyond recognition. To be honest, I can’t even stay up-to-date on all the technology.
Acknowledging this constantly changing landscape, I have thought quite a bit about what that means for my own personal goals and the future. How do I “future-proof” my life against the unknown? The two words that I keep coming back to is “learning” and “flexibility”.
Today is my dad’s birthday, which is one of the reasons why I’m starting this column on this day. On my 7th birthday, my dad gave me a green book. Inside it was 7 postage stamps, each carefully wrapped in saran wrap. Those 7 stamps have now evolved into a rather extensive stamp collection, spanning multiple large binders (along with a multitude of other collections; stamp collecting was my “gateway drug” to collecting everything that caught my eye like a magpie).
One of the things that I love about stamps is that they are miniature pieces of art that also tell stories, stories of what we considered to be important, beautiful, and/or deserving of remembrance and celebration.
Stamps can also be a great educational tool. We can delve into the history contained within the stamp itself. We can discuss the shifting geography and world events reflected in the very country names printed on the stamps. We can discuss the context behind how and why stamp subjects are chosen in the first place. Postal history in and of itself is fascinating. We can discuss postal innovations and technology (such as recent stamp releases with cool features like scratch & sniff or ones that change color based on temperature). We can discuss art and design techniques. We can even just sort them by color and shape. And the list goes on and on.
I would love to explore all these possibilities in this monthly column. And I hope to inspire a few to join in on this fascinating hobby (where we can geek out together!). Let me know if there are any specific topics you’re particularly interested in.
I often joke with my husband that if MoonGirl read half the books we own and managed to retain 25% of what she read, she would probably be more educated than many people we knew (including us).
Books are the true time machines. By reading them, we are not only instantly transported to different times and places, but within the minds of those who wrote the words we are reading, even if they have long passed away.
Perhaps that is why books are so influential to so many of us, but they can also be revolutionary and controversial as well. My general viewpoint on reading is to enjoy and understand what the author is trying to convey, to keep an open mind and set it within the context for which the book is set, but to also interrogate and investigate with a healthy dose of skepticism (when needed).
What is your viewpoint on reading? What are your favorite genres of books to read (I love speculative fiction, while my husband devours what I call informational nonfiction)?
I finally found the time to turn in Lesson 5 of my Braille Transcription class. My instructor corrected it very quickly, and I was very disappointed to see that I made so many mistakes.
I try so hard to make each lesson perfect. I agonize over the spacing of the headers and page numbers. I complete the lesson, and then I wait a few days to forget the content, and then come back to it and re-transcribe it into English to try to catch any errors (and I always catch a bunch). And then, with bated breath, I send it off to the instructor, hoping that this will be my first perfect lesson.
And it’s never perfect. In fact, I am making more errors with each lesson, and it is…just…so…frustrating. At this point, I am contemplating whether I have the time to learn how to write my own Microsoft Word macros, so it can help me catch all the little intricacies I have to pay attention to in order to complete a good transcription.
The biggest issue I have are what are called groupsigns and contractions, in which one braille letter can represent a whole word in some situations or a single letter/group of letters in other situations. So, one braille letter can mean “m” when it is part of a word, but “more” when it’s standing alone, or “st” as part of a word but “still” if it’s standing alone. Or one braille letter can only mean “the” both as part of a word and when standing alone. And there are rules for when they count as standing alone or not. So, I keep missing instances when things should be contracted in the middle of the word or I should be using a groupsign instead of spelling out the word. Sometimes, I just stare at a word until it starts to blur and look weird because I’m trying to remember if there is anything in it I should be contracting.
I probably need to review all my lessons and maybe make myself a chart of some sort so I can remember everything (my memory just isn’t what it used to be). It’s still such a fascinating subject to be learning. I even read the braille signs at the last hotel I stayed at, which was exciting!
Anyways, on to Lesson 6, and if anyone knows a good free resource for learning how to write Word macros, feel free to let me know!
If you’re interested in learning braille and doing the braille transcription certificate, you can apply through the National Federation of the Blind (it’s free, but there is a time limit in which to complete the certificate). If you do join in on the fun, please let me know, and we can commiserate and celebrate with each other.
One of the things I have always wanted, even before MoonGirl was born, was to give homeschooling a chance. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, my husband and I have had experience in both public and private schools, and I have friends who have experienced both the benefits and drawbacks of homeschooling. While we had good schooling experiences in general, my husband and I have discussed some of our reservations about traditional schooling, and we felt that our own interests and knowledge were diverse enough that we could feasibly provide a well-rounded education at up to a 5th-grade level (around 10 years old).
Now that MoonGirl is over two and a half years old, I’ve started thinking about how to move ahead with her schooling. I have been going back and forth as to whether or not to homeschool, because I didn’t want to become too ambitious and not be able to provide a good quality education and stressing us all out in the end. So, my husband and I have come to an agreement that we would homeschool MoonGirl from the ages of 3 to 5 (traditional preschool through TK). And, if it goes well, we will continue on. If it’s an utter disaster, we would put her in the best school near us.
So, where to begin? I didn’t want something too rigorous. I am a big believer that children learn the best through unstructured play, which has been supported by various studies. MoonGirl is also my little wild child, who does the best when she’s outside and interacting with nature rather than sitting still in her room, so I wanted there to be a focus on the outdoors. Finally, I wanted a secular curriculum for personal reasons. I’ve researched various homeschooling philosophies such as Charlotte Mason, Reggio Emilia, and Classical homeschool, which all had various aspects that appealed to me. However, the curriculum that spoke most deeply to me is Unschooling (here’s a good introduction), or child-directed schooling, in which the curriculum follows and is informed by the child’s interests.
Now, I personally need structure in my life so that I know how best to direct my limited time and energy, so I’m instead doing a modified version of unschooling in that there are certain goals I want to meet with MoonGirl (though she will not know which goals I have set, so as to keep it more child-directed), and we will work within the activities she is most drawn to in order to reach for those goals. I will discuss how I came up with my “curriculum” as well as why unschooling is so appealing to me in future posts.
This month we have a mishmash of links. I think the common thread that may run through them all is that it is looking at how to learn something, as opposed to what to learn.
The key to learning anything is on how to approach the topic, no matter what that topic is. Every person is different, their style of learning, their interests, their approaches, so the first step to self-learning is knowing how one learns.
For instance, I’m a visual learner. Give me diagrams and charts, give me words and reference books and pictures. I can fix almost anything if I have the right diagram. When my husband tried to teach me to drive a manual stick shift, I had him draw me a flowchart of steps.
But if you stick me in a lecture hall with someone talking at me, I will retain very little. If I’m not understanding what you’re saying, then my brain starts automatically shutting down, often without me realizing it until afterwards when I’m trying to recall it.
These links may give you some interesting ideas on how to approach a subject differently from traditional methods of learning.
What is your learning style? How do you make sure information sticks in your mind?
