Stuff We Like :: 8.11.17

You guys know that I was really hesitant about offering a print subscription, especially at such a high price point (and I totally understand everyone who’s commented that the price is just too high, believe me!), so I just want to say a big, huge, gigantic THANK YOU to everyone who has subscribed to the print edition. I promise that we will pour our hearts and souls into making these the best issues of HSL ever. 

around the web

I don’t know, maybe you won’t find this brief (filed by the ACLU on behalf of John Oliver who’s being sued by a coal magnate over one of his shows) as funny as I do, but you should definitely read the table of contents.

Totally relevant to my life: Freelance achievement stickers (Y’all, I did NOT get the Put on Pants sticker today.)

This is the kind of mash-up of journalism and academia that I live for: How the pink plastic flamingo became an icon

Have you heard about this new alternate history show Confederacy that's coming out? I have issues with it for a lot of reasons, but Roxanne Gay explains several of them better than I could.

In case you’re wondering what to get me for Hanukkah: E.B. White’s farm in Maine is for sale

at home/school/life

on the blog: A day in the life of Shelli’s homeschool

in the store: Speaking of Shelli, our awesome senior editor has written a brilliant guide to homeschooling the early elementary years

one year ago: The Girl Who Drank the Moon is one of those gorgeous books that you can’t help falling in love with 

two years ago: Great books about the Gold Rush

three years ago: How do you homeschool through a financial crisis?

reading list

This (lackluster) week in Library Chicken: Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life (+1), What Katy Did (+0, on my shelf), The Power of Myth (again—I had to pick my class readings!—+0, on my shelf), Invisible Cities (+1), All the King's Men (again—also prepping for class!—+0, on my shelf), Mythology (also class prep—0, on my shelf), The Iliad (also class prep—are you noticing a theme?—+0, on my shelf), 4:50 from Paddington (I am watching Miss Marple, which makes me want to reread all the Miss Marple books—+1). Basically, I’m super annoyed at Suzanne because she keeps reading really interesting books that I do not have time to read right now.

at home

We are crazy busy getting all the final stuff organized for Jason’s school—there is a lot of “one more thing”-ing when you are starting a school! (Actually, there is a lot of “one-more-thing”-ing in my life in general these days.)

It’s also a busy planning-for-a-new-grade season here. I’m sure I’ll go on and on about what we’re doing next year, but I’ll give you a brief rundown: Non-Eurocentric World History, Latin, creative nonfiction (reading and writing), Beast Academy, and critical thinking for my soon-to-be-4th-grader, and AP U.S. Government and Politics, World History and Literature (she may end up taking the AP World History test at the end of the year, but I didn’t put in an AP syllabus for this one because I really wanted to focus away from traditional Euro/white/hetero/male-focused history), Introduction to Critical Theory (I wrote the curriculum for this, and I am so excited to get to teach it—like, making-up-little-songs-about-it excited), Japanese, Algebra II, and Biology for my almost-10th-grader.

I am always trying to balance talking about our homeschool with protecting my children’s privacy, so I won’t tell you how my daughter ended up doing on the AP U.S. History exam. But I WILL say that I’m really glad we did it, and if you are thinking of aiming for the AP test, you definitely should — it ended up being a very happy experience for both of us with the class and with the exam.

---