Messing About

Monday, our homeschool group met at Stone Mountain for a picnic. Watermelon, home made ice cream, brownies, and even some sandwiches. Then we played at Widow Falls 'til the parents were worn out (the kids would have been good for a few more hours!).

Miraculously, none of the kids fell off the rocks and broke anything. The water is very low due to the lack of rain, and it would have been a bad day for one of the boys (you know it would have been a boy) to decide to show off his manliness by sliding down the big rock. I don't think Travis would actually do it, but just to be sure (and to give him a handy excuse), I forbade him to slide from the top.Many of the kids wore garbage bags, so as to slide faster. Don't they look silly?Ruby ran and splashed and played 'til she dropped.

Yesterday was Prairie Girls. We are reading The Long Winter. In this book, the Ingalls are in South Dakota, and they move into town before winter when they realize that their claim shack will not be warm enough in the harsh winter expected. Even in town, though, things are looking pretty iffy (we are only halfway through the book), especially because the train keeps getting stuck in snow.

The girls started work on their braided rag rugs. I think Katie's will be the right size for Barbie's house, when it is finished.(She didn't want to smile for me. But finally she had to laugh at her own stubbornness.)

They also made buckwheat pancakes, which turned out wonderfully, probably because there was a high proportion of wheat flour to the buckwheat.

Tuesday morning I got an e-mail from the mom in our book group who will be leading next Monday's meeting. We are going to try to use Teaching the Classics to improve the quality of our book discussions, and so the next five meetings are going to be lessons in aspects of literary study. Next week will be the introduction to style and structure, using Paul Revere's Ride. Then comes: Plot and Conflict, with The Tale of Peter Rabbit; Setting, with Rikki-Tikki-Tavi; Character, with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (an excerpt); and Theme, with Martin the Cobbler, by Tolstoy (the program uses an adaptation of this one as well). Then we have a Practicum using Casey at the Bat, and we are all ready to analyze anything. That is the theory, anyway.

Anyway, in this e-mail the mom leading next week's meeting requested that we all have our children memorize Paul Revere's Ride.

Paul Revere's Ride

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower, as a signal light, --
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the somber rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, --
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, --
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and somber and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British regulars fired and fled, --
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1860.

Anyone still there? That is a long poem. I vaguely remember memorizing it in 4th grade, but I don't remember anything of it at all past the second stanza. And in less than a week? Not likely. I asked my friend, usually a very reasonable person, what had possessed her to suggest this crazy thing. She said, "If I asked you guys to "be familiar with it", you would read it through once before the meeting. If I asked you to try to memorize it, you would have your kids learn a stanza or two. But if I said you needed to memorize it, I figured your kids would at least be very familiar with the whole poem." I want to be annoyed with her for her lack of faith in us, but the truth is that she hit the nail right on the head. So now I'm off to help Travis and Katie memorize The Epic.