This looks like an interesting documentary exploring one small town’s various approaches to inclusion (and exclusion). Here’s the trailer:
“It’s about what small town values really mean.”
“Out in the Silence”
July 17, 2009 at 3:20 am (Christians, Family, homosexuality, religion)
Tags: homosexuality, out in the silence, small towns
Passing 8th Grade in 1895
September 8, 2008 at 5:07 am (Family, Kansas)
Tags: 8th grade, education, Kansas
Here’s a test given to Kansas students back in 1895 to determine if they could graduate the 8th grade. I could not, by the way! You? Some of the questions are mercifully obsolete, but I wonder what knowledge we have replaced this data memorization with – and whether we are as rigorous overall with our youngsters as we used to be? Any teachers out there who have ideas about this?
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas – 1895
This is the eighth-grade final exam* from 1895 from Salina, Kansas. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas and reprinted by the Salina
Journal.
Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10.Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?
Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u’.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e’. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10.Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.
Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10.Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.
The top of the test states > “EXAMINATION GRADUATION QUESTIONS OF SALINE COUNTY, KANSAS
April 13, 1895 J.W. Armstrong, County
Superintendent. Examinations at Salina, New Cambria, Gypsum City,
Assaria, Falun, Bavaria, and District No. 74 (in Glendale Twp.)”
Welcome, First Cousin Once Removed!
July 27, 2008 at 9:54 pm (Family, baby)
Tags: baby, Family, handsome, Ryan Marcus
Baby Ryan Marcus is now of this world! Congratulations, mom Karin, dad Gerard, and grandma Rita! We on this side of the Atlantic are looking forward to meeting Ryan soon.
And, yes, his shirt says “Handsome, just like daddy.”
Halloween brings out the geezer in me.
November 6, 2007 at 1:36 am (Family, Oak Park)
Tags: Family, geezer, Halloween, Oak Park, rant, trick-or-treat
Is it politically incorrect to say that I think I will make a FABULOUS old lady? Once I’ve gotten to the age when (white, English-speaking) women can get away with much more ludicrous behavior, I am going to have fun. I already know what I’ll be like. I won’t feel propriety restraining me from going with my gut and sitting there on my front porch while the adorable trick-or-treaters come by, crotchety commentary about the kids’ costumes muttered out all the while, handing one piece of nasty orange and black hard candy to each kid, with a devilish look in my eye that says, “I’m keeping the chocolate-almond-caramel truffles inside. Mwahaha.” When the girls approach in their oh-so-clever ‘Dead Bride’ costumes, with lace smattered with fake blood, I’ll bend over, face in hands, mock-sobbing, as I scream about ‘my daughter who was killed on her wedding day!’ to make them realize the traumatizing potential of their garb. I can see it all now.
Halloween this year was wonderful. I was home in Oak Park, not on the silly, autumnless West Coast, so there were colorful leaves crunchy underfoot all along the sidewalk, dozens of kids from infancy through high school swarming up and down the block, crisp cool air that gently reminds you to be sensible and put on a sweater if you’re going outside, dearie.
Oak Park does trick-or-treating right. They only allow t-or-t-ing from 4-7 pm, i.e. during daylight. That means the packs of kiddies are concentrated, which not only makes the sidewalks teem beautifully with the wee masses, but also means you can focus on treat distribution and then rest for the evening.
We ran out of candy. Well, candy and pencils: we gave out at least 80 candies, and 70 pencils. (Given a choice, most kids chose pencils, which may be sorry commentary on Oak Park school funding.) We would have run out even earlier if the roving band of high schoolers
hadn’t skipped our house (for whatever reason of herd mentality they were operating by, since my mum was sitting out on the porch waiting to give out the treats). It was pretty desperate: we were getting down to airline crackers and granola bars.
The best costume on the block was a baby as an iPod, a white suit with a black operation panel on her torso, with her mom’s ear buds plugged into the top of her white cap. Pretty cute, even though the technology will be obsolete by the time the baby’s old enough to read the word ‘MENU.’ There were also plenty of Spidermen, Power Rangers (are they even on teevee anymore?), and whatever you’re pretending to be when you just slap an animal-ears-headband on your head and grab a plastic bag to collect the treats. I went as the crazy daughter the mom locks inside while she sits on the porch passing out candy, the one who peers with her big tinted glasses out the front door window at the families as they make their way up the porch steps, smiling to herself and planning her blog post on it all.
Inheritance of Faith
October 7, 2007 at 9:48 pm (Christians, Family, church, religion)
Tags: , Book of Timothy, Christianity, faith, Family, religion, UCC
2 Timothy 1
The sermon this morning at the First Congregational Church of San Rafael explored the opening verses of the Second Letter to Timothy. The greetings in these epistles are always interesting, but this one is especially so, because of the way the pseudonymous writer (i.e. NOT Paul) bases his claim that Timothy stay faithful as he commences his new leadership project. He reminds Timothy who he is by reminding him of the long line of faithful followers of the way who are his genetic lineage. Most remarkably (to me, always stunned by feminism in the Epistles), the two ancestors he names are Timothy’s mother Lois and his grandmother Eunice. These two women are Timothy’s faithful forebears.
The preacher, my seminary friend Jeanette, told of how her own mother had gifted her with an inheritance of faith, even though her means were not explicitly devout. In sturdy, no-nonsense Midwest fashion, her family went to church and Bible study, but didn’t talk about it at home. Yet, they still lived out their faith, just without the Christian lingo attached to it. She would quilt and crochet blankets, for her children, for her grandchildren, and for women at the local domestic violence shelters. (If I wanted to be painfully cheesy, I would point out here that in doing so, she warmed both bodies and hearts.)
At the end of her sermon, the preacher offered time for congregants to share ways they had inherited their faith. I shared how much my family patterns resonated with the description of the Midwestern values she had described.
My grandfather, the astronomy, chemistry, and geology professor at the local Brethren college, always served as expert guide on our family hikes in the North Woods. From the time we could walk, he would make our hikes nature lessons. He would bend down on one knee to point out the slimy mushrooms on logs, or he would pick up branches to show us how to identify the trees around us. The leaves of the forest showed us curious children the beautiful complexity of God’s creation as well as the pages of the Bible ever did.
Until seminary, I didn’t recognize the lessons in my family’s interactions for what they were: the living out of a Christian faith so deep it got beyond the business of talking about it.
Growing up, I thought it was rude that my mother didn’t say “Bless you” when someone sneezed. But then I realized that instead of just saying “Bless you,” she would get up and get the person a handkerchief. She responded to the bodily need represented in the sneeze, not with trite words but with what those words should represent: a commitment to the person’s health. She revealed an inclination too few Christians exhibit: not to recite the ‘perfect’ lines of doctrine and dogma, but (dare I say it?) to feed thousands, to heal ailing beggars, to raise children from the dead.
Amen for the faith of our families!
