Stuff We Like :: 7.7.17
The summer issue is in final edits—hooray!
around the web
This piece about aging and women in Tudor England was both hilarious and fascinating. Case in point: “Contemporaries had only to consider the wildly popular Women’s Secrets to know that old women should be viewed with suspicion. Best keep these crones away from infants, cautioned the learned text, since they could ‘poison the eyes of children lying in their cradles by their glance.’ All women were ‘entirely venomous,’ readers were told, but in earlier years menstrual blood at least served to dilute these evil humors. With the onset of the menopause, the poison was left to stew fetid in the body, with the worst toxins escaping malignantly through wrinkled eyes.”
A feminist biography mixtape (I’ve read some of these, but the rest are going on my TBR list, reasonable life expectancy considerations be damned.)
Really interesting read that doesn’t end up where you might necessarily expect: Are coding toys useful?
at home/school/life
on the blog: Teaching what you don’t know
one year ago: Our favorite campfire readalouds
two years ago: Organizing your reading lists
three years ago: Find the Beauty in the Mess and Chaos
reading list
My Library Chicken game was pretty weak this week, but I am cranking out the summer issue, so maybe I could get a point for that? My summation: The Adventures of Sally (+0, on my Kindle, a little non-Jeeves Wodehouse fun but I missed Bertie); Monster, Human, Other (+0, advance copy, but I’m looking forward to doing a full review of this); The Power of the Adolescent Brain: Strategies for Teaching Middle and High School Students (-1, returned unread, but I do still really want to read it); Mrs. Sharp's Traditions: Reviving Victorian Family Celebrations of Comfort & Joy (+0, on my shelf); The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (+1, really well written and interesting and I’m glad I read it, but I think I need to stick to Wodehouse for a little while because this made me so sad)
Homeschool reading: None! Summer issue holiday for the kids, which they are mostly using to build Hogsmeade in Minecraft
at home
We spent the Fourth of July getting a new hot water heater, so I am enjoying my Very Expensive Showers for the next couple of weeks until the cost-per-shower returns to more normal numbers.
I don't want to be all self-promote-y, but if you are in Atlanta and looking for middle or high school classes, you should check out The Academy. I've been spending a lot of time helping get it up and running, and I think it has really amazing classes.
