Stuff We Like :: 3.22.19

I’ve been working away on the spring issue of HSL and on the chemistry curriculum for next year’s high school, so I am not crazy about the pollen attack that happens every time I walk outside. I am loving the sunshine, though!

What’s happening at home/school/life

• on the blog: Suzanne is obsessed with novellas right now, and these are some of her favorites

• on patreon: We have a chat coming up this weekend!

• at the academy: If you’re in the Atlanta area, you may want to check out our spring open house (and we have some openings in our online summer classes still!)

• from the archives: How to write a high school transcript for an unschooler who suddenly needs a traditional transcript, a review of Your Business Math (spoiler: All math is more fun when it involves kittens), and helping children cope with fear

Links I liked

• I got a little obsessed with the whole college admissions scandal when it broke last week. (See: Kids photoshopped as athletes.) But I think this was my favorite response to it: “The point is to prepare the kid for the road, instead of preparing the road for the kid.”

• I really appreciate the slow, steady, painful work of historians and activities who are bringing the dark side of U.S. history to the forefront. It’s much happier to read about brave pioneers than about lynchings of Mexican people in Texas or about the heroes of D-Day than about Japanese internment camps, but history is never about what’s happy. It’s about what’s true. At least it should be.

• “Here’s another definition of irony: It’s when the woman who writes the story of her life feels she has to prove that the story is hers.”

• How Gabriel Garcia Marquez began to write.

Things I didn’t know but now I do

• The Black Death may have had a big impact on medieval Sub-Saharan Africa, too.

• We can hear what music actually sounded like in ancient Greece

• The abolitionists had a poster girl in the antebellum United States, and you may be surprised by what she looks like.

• BOOKS ADDED TO MY TBR LIST THIS WEEK

• The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (I usually try to hide from books that everyone is recommending until the buzz is quiet, but I’m putting this one on my list)

• Night of Fire by Colin Thubron (this looks right up my alley)

• Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo (I’m trying to read more Native American literature)

WHAT’S MAKING ME HAPPY

• Take my money!

• Cats in medieval manuscripts

• Peacebunny Island

• “I got told what to call this poem by my male colleague”

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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