The other day on Facebook, someone mentioned the phrase “crafts for kids” and I got the cold chill of terror that phrase used to always strike into my heart when I was a stay-at-home mom to two preschoolers.

Then I breathed a sigh and remembered that we’re past all that now and I no longer have to worry about nurturing the tender flowers of craftiness in the gardens of my children’s brains, or whatever.  Because frankly, when I was a stay-at-home mom with young, impressionable kids, nothing struck terror into my heart more than parenting articles about cool crafts to do with your kids.

It’s not that I’m not creative. I’m creative, right? I write books. I write blogs.  But except for a brief foray into counted cross-stitch in the early 90s, my creativity has  never been the crafty kind.  Combine complete lack of visual sense with very poor fine-motor skills and you get someone who dies a little inside whenever anyone says, “Let’s do a craft!”

The parenting magazines, not to mention the chit-chat from other parents, made it quite clear that by the time my kids were old enough to hold a pair of blunt scissors, I was supposed to be Doing Crafts with them. Guiding them through a clear Step-One-Step-Two-Step-Three process which at the end would produce something beautiful, or at least recognizable.  Even that woman on TV with her stuffed raccoon friend struck terror into my heart as she walked kids (and raccoon) through the steps to make a sheep out of a milk jug or whatever (I got off easy on that one.  Milk doesn’t come in jugs in Newfoundland).

Instead? What actually happened, when I decided it was time to “do a craft” with the kids? I would throw an armload of construction paper, crayons, markers, glue sticks, and the aforementioned blunt scissors on the dining table, yell: “Time to do crafts!” Then, as they dived into the pile of art supplies, I would sit down nearby and read a book.

It always seemed to work for them, although I will admit we were a little short in the “produce something recognizable department.”  They had fun; I got some reading time.  But it didn’t stop my soul from shrivelling up a little every time another mom would say, “Oh, I learned about the greatest craft to do with my kids, let me tell you about it,” or “Do you have any good ideas for crafts with kids?”

Now, I know my blog readers well, and I know some kind soul out there is probably going to post in the comments and say that I did the best possible thing for my kids. Rather than forcing their young minds into the mold of some preordained craft I simply left them free to roam, discover, explore and create on their own terms.  And I guess that’s true, if you want to put a really good spin on it.  But let’s not forget: that was never the plan.  The lack of organized craft time in our home was always driven by two things: my laziness and my incompetence.

The good news is, it actually worked out really well.  Both kids are not only wildly creative and artistic, they can do Actual Crafts.  A couple of weekends ago I came back from a writing/relaxing retreat with the Strident Women to find Christopher urging me to play with this absolutely beautiful, detailed role-playing board game he’d designed.

Meanwhile, Emma wanted to show me the latest in her ever-growing (I think it’s up to 95 now) collection of fashion designs. (Yes, the daughter of the woman whose stated goal is to wear jeans and a T-shirt 365 days a year, is an aspiring fashion designer).

I’ve included pictures above as a comfort to all those non-crafty parents out there … just so you know that even if you can’t keep up with the parenting magazines and you can’t make a milk carton look like an alligator, you may still have a shot at producing talented offspring. Read a book and stay out of their way, I’d suggest.

At one point a couple of years ago, in our communal kitchen at work, we had a sign on the wall that said, “MILK IS NOT FOR DRINKING.” The sign went on to explain that while it was OK to use milk in your coffee or on your cereal, you should not drink glasses of milk.

There was a reason for this, of course. The adult-education centre I teach at provides free breakfast food to any participants who want/need it. This is funded by a grant from the Kids Eat Smart foundation. While we’re all in favour of people getting calcium in their diets, we found we simply couldn’t afford to keep up with the demand for milk.  So, to reduce the milk burden, we tried to encourage people to use it only for cereal and coffee.

This wasn’t explained on the sign. It didn’t need to be, because most people understood the context, and those who didn’t, could simply ask one of the staff about the reason for the milk ban (or ignore the sign, as people generally do with signs in communal kitchens).

Now, we live in a ridiculously literate society, in which people are able to write and record the minutiae of their lives in excruciating detail — unlike most people in history, who left very few written traces behind.  But let’s just imagine that some computer holocaust in the future wipes out all records of our websites, blogs and Facebook pages, and after the collapse of fossil fuels society breaks down and people have to burn all the billions of books in the world to keep themselves warm. So most written records of our society get destroyed, placing us in the same bracket as people in antiquity.

Now let’s assume that two thousand years later, society has rebuilt itself and historians of the future are digging through the debris for clues to early 21st century culture.  Among the traces found by archeologists is a sign, bizarrely preserved in the ruins of what was once The Murphy Centre in St. John’s, Newfoundland, that says: “MILK IS NOT FOR DRINKING.”

Interesting. Maybe it ends up in a museum display along with various other fragments salvaged from the period.  Scholars puzzle over the meaning of these fragments, write papers, analyze them in light of what they know about our time and culture.

BUT … let’s also imagine that when humans rebuilt earth society after its great collapse, there was much debate and controversy over some of the practices we used to take for granted.  Like raising dairy cattle for their milk.  People in the year 4000 are wondering if they should do that again. Is it ethically justifiable to do this to cows, or is it a relic of barbarism? Is it even healthy for humans to ingest the milk of other animals? Some say yes, some say no.  In short, milk consumption is a hot,  hot topic in this future society.

Suddenly, the little piece of printer paper with the message “MILK IS NOT FOR DRINKING” becomes important. It becomes a flashpoint in this argument, as the anti-dairy lobby points to it and says, “Look! Here’s clear evidence that even back in the early 21st century, people recognized that mlik was NOT for drinking! Could you ask for a more clear and straightforward statement? Archeological evidence suggests that the building where this was found was some kind of educational institution, which means that educators of the year 2009 felt it was important to warn their students against the evils of dairy consumption!!”

The pro-dairy lobby would, of course, have evidence of their own to call upon.  They might scrounge up surviving contemporary references to milk-drinking — maybe a “Got Milk?” poster that survived (the meaning of this piece of advertising would be hotly debated), an ancient photograph showing schoolchildren drinking milk, someone’s diary entry describing the nice glass of milk they had before bed.  “You’re wrong!” they would tell the anti-dairy crowd.  “Milk-drinking was alive and well, even encouraged, in the early twenty-first century — especially in schools.”

But none of that would matter to the anti-dairists.  The phrase “Milk is not for drinking!” would become repeated like a talisman. It might even start to appear on T-shirts and bumper stickers. When the pro-dairists tried to talk to them about context they would say, “You’re just muddying the issue to support your own milkist prejudices. The fragment states clearly that milk is not for drinking — how much more obvious can it get? It’s a perfectly clear statement!”

I think my blog-readers are generally a pretty smart bunch so I won’t belabour the point, but: this post is not about milk. (And I know, it’s also not a perfect analogy).

It’s about context, and the difficulty of understanding ancient texts in context when we’re so far removed from time and place. Without context, isolated lines and phrases (like, oh, I don’t know, “Let the women keep silence,” or “I do not suffer a woman to teach or have authority”) can be bandied about as slogans, even when confronted with textual evidence suggesting that the same person who wrote those words also worked and taught alongside women and counted women preachers, teachers and ministers as his valued co-workers.

Context. It’s more complicated than shouting slogans at each other, though maybe not as fun. Have a nice glass of milk while you think about it.

This awesome video blog would be even cooler if I hadn’t cut the top of my own head off…

Remembrance Day is always an odd, conflicted time for me — as a confirmed pacifist who considers almost all wars stupid and wasteful, and also a confirmed softie who cries at “In Flanders Fields” and a variety of war-related triggers.

This makes me cry too. Nothing sums up the stupidity and tragedy of war better:

If you’ve seen Blackadder, you’ll remember how six episodes of ridiculous slapstick farce in the World War One trenches (highlighted, for me, by a very young and fresh-faced Hugh Laurie) suddenly faded to that very poignant ending. If not … well, we’ll leave it at that.  Remembering is complicated, but for me it’s always coloured by the certainty that war is not glorious and heroic, even though the men and women who fight and die often are heroic — as well as frightened, confused, even angry. I try to remember and honour them while holding to the hope that we can work to prevent more such deaths.

The cartoon comes from the wonderful Dave Walker at CartoonChurch.com. And it expresses how I’m feeling this week.

I hate, despise, and loathe church politics.

Actually, that’s not even 100% true. I hate church politics a lot,  and I want to have a complete and utter hatred of church politics, because I believe infighting in the church is contrary to God’s will.  But there is a tiny, evil part of me that loves church politics, that raises its head like a racehorse at the starter’s pistol when controversy drifts my way.  The better part of me shrinks away, but there’s still that tiny part that loves a fight and wants to dive in to the fray.

I try to keep that part in check, and not listen to it.  In my younger days I was more willing to fight over issues, and it never made me feel better, happier, closer to my fellow Christians or closer to God.

In recent years I’ve tried to step back from such conflicts.  I try to make my church time more about worshipping God and trying to love others as best I can, rather than winning battles or scoring points. 

That’s not to say I always agree with my church as an organization (local or world-wide) or with the individuals in my local congregation.  But my disagreements tend to fall into one of two categories. 

First category: I disagree, but the issue is too trivial to be worth fighting over. Someone once said, “In the average church it is easier to introduce a fourth Person into the Trinity than a new colour of carpet in the church foyer,” and the sad truth is that many church fights fall into this category.  Case in point: our congregation wants to build a new church. I think this is A Bad Idea and a poor use of our resources.  I said so, once and with some conviction, at a business meeting called to discuss the issue, and when a vote was called I voted against it. I was one of a tiny minority to do so, and if the majority wants to go ahead, I’m going to put up and shut up and be as supportive as I can, because in the end it really doesn’t matter.

Second category: I disagree, but my views are so far from the mainstream of the church thinking and teaching that I will never effect change on this issue. Case in point: the fact that I accept gay marriage. I know I’m out of step with this, but I’m OK with being out of step.  When I’m involved in discussions I may try to nudge the church in the direction of more charity, less judgement, but I know realistically this is not a fight I could ever win in this church, so I have no intention of trying.

So when I find myself disagreeing with my church as a whole or with individuals in the church, I usually keep quiet. Which allows me to stay out of most church politics.

But there is a third category: issues where I disagree with individuals in my church, I believe I’m right, and I think it really matters.  When those issues arise, it’s time to speak up.  Even if that means playing the dirty, messy game of church politics, trying to define who’s on which ”side” and rally support.  And I still hate it — I hate even thinking of my church in terms of “sides.”

But I hate even more the idea of allowing a small but vocal minority to dictate policy and move the church in a direction I believe is morally wrong, just because those who felt differently were too passive or apathetic to speak up. Case in point: the ordination of women as local church elders — approved by our world church, but sometimes still opposed by conservative factions within individual churches.  Frankly, it’s hard to believe in 2009 we’re even still having this debate (or rather, having it again) but my disbelief is not going to stop this from happening.

So I feel called, rightly or wrongly, to take up my over-ripe tomatoes and wade into the fray.  I try to pray that I can do it with the right spirit, that I can quell (or ask God to quell) that nasty little part of me that is actually spoiling for a fight, and to strengthen the side of me that is able to disagree with fellow Christians while still having a spirit of sisterly love towards them.  I’ll admit it’s not easy, with one part of me wanting to fight dirty and another part not wanting to fight at all.

But sometimes staying silent isn’t keeping the peace — it’s cowardice.  I pray for discernment, for the wisdom to know when to speak and when to be silent.  And I can only hope I pick the right battles.

I’m not sure how the rest of the world is doing this week, but here in Newfoundland there’s only one news story. The H1N1 “swine flu” virus has hit, just ahead of the vaccine and accompanied by truckloads of confusion, fear and hysteria.

We have sick people, people who are afraid of getting sick, people who want to keep their kids out of school on the off chance they might get sick, people who want schools to be closed till the virus passes.  We have people who believe the vaccine is an evil government plot, and people who are jumping the lines to get vaccinated illegally.

Here in the Morgan-Cole household, what we have is one sick boy, now improving, and three people who are desperately hoping not to get sick.  Chris has been down since Sunday morning with fever, aches, fatigue all the typical flu symptoms. The fever lasted three days, the fatigue most of the week, and now he’s left mostly with a nagging cough. He’s missed a full week of school, and plenty of his friends are in the same boat.

It’s so hard to sort out everything you hear about the flu, to know what’s true and what’s hype.  To vaccinate or not? It is “just another seasonal flu” or something much more serious? We’re bombarded day and night by constant news updates, discussion, commentary, and new bulletins from Eastern Health two or three times a day.

Loving history as I do, it’s hard not to wonder what it was like here nearly 90 years ago, when the Spanish influenza epidemic passed through.

They called it the Spanish flu, though it appeared in the US, China and France before it ever got to Spain. It was a particularly virulent strain of H1N1, unusual in that unlike most flus, its victims were more likely to be young healthy people rather than the old, sick, and babies. Sound familiar? It spread pretty much world-wide, with a first wave that was not too serious and a second, much more serious wave of infection passing through months later (as some people predict will happen next year).

Between 20 and 40 million people died worldwide.  Of those, about 600 people died in Newfoundland over a five-month period.  62 people died in St. John’s and 170 in the outports, but the majority of deaths were in the hard-hit native communities in Labrador.  In Hebron, Labrador, 86 of the 100 inhabitants died. So far (as of my writing this today) no-one has yet died in Newfoundland of this year’s H1N1 epidemic, but once again it’s Labrador and our native communities that seem to be hit hardest.

There was panic in those days, too.  The flu was brought to Newfoundland by sailors in September 1918, and “by mid-October, Medical Officer of Health N.S. Fraser had closed the city’s schools, theatres, concert halls, and other public buildings to help prevent the virus from spreading.” (Check out Heritage NL’s website on the 1918 flu

I’d love to have people who know more about disease and epidemiology tell me how the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic differed from this year’s strain.  I know a little about how society differs.  I know that now, thanks to the brilliance of scientists, we are blessed to have vaccines to prevent viruses, and antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, although I also know that scientists have to work hard and fast to be smarter than the constantly-mutating viruses and bacteria.

I also know that the sources of information we have available to us today are infinitely more vast and varied than they were in 1918.  Back then, they pretty much had to rely on newspapers and word of mouth.  There must have been panic and confusion as people were unsure what was happening and nobody knew what to believe or what was going to happen next.

Fortunately, in 2009, we have endless sources of information … newspaper, radio, numerous television stations, and of course constant updates on the internet … Facebook … Twitter.  As a result, there’s panic and confusion as people are unsure what’s happening and nobody knows what to believe or what will happen next. It seems too much information is just as dangerous and confusing as too little. The fear of the flu, so far, seems to be doing a lot more damage than the flu itself.

I think the ideal time for a world-wide flu pandemic would have been sometime after most forms of mass media were introduced, but before the Internet and the 500-channel universe.  Maybe if we had had a good pandemic in the 1960s or 1970s, everyone could have tuned into the nightly news, gotten their information from a single trusted news source, and things would have proceeded in an orderly fashion.  Now, it’s just too late.

I guess we’re all hanging our hopes on the possibility that the widespread vaccination program will halt the spread of the disease and avoid a repeat of a 1918-style devastating pandemic.  As for me, I’ve got one kid who seems to be recovering from it and another one I’m getting vaccinated later today.  And watching with interest to hope history doesn’t repeat itself!

(No! No! Not “moron books”!! These are very intelligent books — or books for intelligent people, anyway).

First thing: I finally updated Compulsive Overreader with reviews of the books I’ve read in the last few weeks.  Some of them are really good, so go check out the reviews and join in the comments.

Second, remember Tina Chaulk’s novel and the copy of it I gave away? Well, Tina is giving away copies too, and she has a really neat contest on the go inviting people to send in stories about women in non-traditional occupations (like her character Jennifer, an automotive mechanic) and win copies of both her books.  Something else for you to check out: Contest rules here.

So, financial responsibility and money management are big things with us — with me and Jason, that is.  With the kids, not so much, but we’re working on instilling it.

Amid the usual complaints that I am the meanest, strictest, most overprotective mom EVER, Christopher handed out a little badge of praise the other day when he told me that he gets more allowance than most people in his class.  He and Emma both get $10 a week, which seems generous for elementary school kids. What they don’t realize is that most of their friends who get $5 allowances get to actually spend their money on whatever they want, while parents foot the bill for school milk and other delicacies.

In our house, we’ve worked on the premise of giving the kids a bigger allowance but requiring them to pay their own expenses — which usually works out to between 50 cents and a dollar each day for milk at school, and a little more on Fridays when they can buy pizza for $1.25 a slice. They are also required by household law to pay tithe and offering at church, and if they have any left over after that, it can be saved up for toys and frivolous pleasures. The plan is that this is supposed to teach them something about budgeting and money management — like, that even an apparently generous allowance doesn’t stretch that far when you have expenses.

When they were younger, they often accumulated quite a bit of money out of the few dollars left from each week’s allowance, because their wants were few.  As they have grown older, they come up with more and more ways to spend their money, so their savings aren’t as vast.  Another thing I’m tough about is buying toys — unless it’s Christmas or a birthday, I’ll rarely spring for a toy but will insist instead that they buy it out of their savings. (Sometimes I’ll compromise; recently they both wanted diabolos, and since the current diabolo-craze seems like a healthy, skill-building sort of thing, I subsidized those, requiring each kid to pony up $10 for their diabolo while we covered the rest).

So last Sunday afternoon found both kids with wants, and only one with much money. Chris had about $30 saved which he wanted to spend on a light sabre (I thought the Star Wars craze had passed in Grade Four, when he had the two light sabres he already owns, but it seems it’s come back around again).  Emma wanted a Puffle (if you don’t know what a Puffle is, you probably don’t have a nine-year-old, but let’s just say it’s a shapeless plush toy which, sort of like a Webkin, can be registered online to have a whole “second life” as a character on a website called Club Penguin). But she didn’t have much money — only about seven or eight dollars, and she knew they cost more than that at Toys R Us (or, as I insist on calling it, T’ys Is We).

But Emma had a plan! She knew there was a machine at the mall where for a dollar, you could drop a claw into a nest of random stuffed toys, and some of them were Puffles. So she could get a Puffle for just a dollar instead of the usual exorbitant price!

I explained that this was a game of chance and there was a good chance she might not end up with a Puffle, but Emma was determined — the possibility of failure never ever entered her mind.  She blew four dollars on four unsuccessful tries at the machine and got nothing when I insisted she stop spending (she had run out of loonies at that point anyway). Along with money management, she got a free (well, $4) lesson on the Evils of Gambling — bonus, from Mom’s point of view. Off we went to T’ys Is We to get Chris’s light sabre.

There, we found a bin of Puffles for $7.99 (plus tax) each. She could almost have afforded one if she hadn’t spent her money on the machine, but she now only had about four bucks in small change left.  She wanted to know if I’d cover her shortfall.

I said no; the only thing I could do was advance her five dollars from the coming week’s allowance, but I didn’t recommend that course of action, since she would be spending money she needed for the upcoming week’s expenses. I gave a capsule summary on Why Debt is Bad and suggested, as always, that she save for a couple of weeks and come back when she had the money.

But Emma really, really wanted that Puffle, and as I am a big fan of Learning Through Hard Experience, I fronted the money, once again reminding her that she might be left without enough to pay for school milks and treats during the week.  No, she said she’d be fine.  So Chris got his light sabre, and $10 allowance for the week, while Emma got her Puffle but only $5 allowance.

All went well till Friday morning — Pizza Day — when Emma looked in her money box to discover — gasp! — only about 75 cents left in there.  “Mom!!” she wailed.  “I don’t have enough money to buy pizza!!!!”

It was time for a little recap of the whole Debt is Bad, Saving is Good lecture.  “Remember, I told you if you spent half your allowance on that Puffle, you might not have enough to buy things you wanted during the week?”

She didn’t seem to remember.  Or at least it didn’t stop her crying about it as if her heart would break.

Now, 50 cents would not have been much for me to pass over at that point, but I thought if I did, the impact of the Valuable Life Lesson would be lost. So instead I helped her make a sack lunch and sent her off to a Pizza-less Friday at school.

As always with these wise parenting moments, I’m left with more questions than answers. Will my daughter grow up to be a terrific money manager who never spends more than she can afford, and will she live to thank me for the excellent life lessons I taught her? Or will she someday wind up on a therapist’s couch moaning, “My mother was so mean, she wouldn’t give me fifty cents to buy pizza at school in Grade Four!!” ??

Hard to tell, at this point.

Last week I ran a contest to give away a copy of Tina Chaulk’s new book A Few Kinds of Wrong.  The book was won by a blog-reader by the name of Mary Ward, but so far Mary hasn’t contacted me to let me know how to get the book to her.

Mary, if you’re reading, please post in the comments or email me at trudyj65@hotmail.com .  If I don’t hear from Mary by Sunday night, I will draw another winner.

I was raised on situation comedies.  As soon as I graduated from Sesame Street, my formative years were spent watching the great sitcoms of the 70s, usually with my dad.  My role model for life as an independent career woman was Mary Richards of The Mary Tyler Moore Show; my ideal dream guy was Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H.  And my political views were the opposite of whatever Archie Bunker thought.  (All of which explains quite a lot about me).

The last sitcom of that era I can remember getting avidly involved in was Cheers, but that got interrupted by me going away to college, where I didn’t have a TV in my dorm room.  By the time I finished college and got my own place, Shelly Long had left the show and been replaced by Kirstey Alley, and it just wasn’t the same. I found I didn’t really care what was on TV and didn’ t have one in my apartment until about 1992.  I thought I’d outgrown situation comedies and my tastes had become more refined and sophisticated — till I got into Mad About You, and then Friends debuted in 1994.

Mad About You is not as remembered as it should be these days, and Friends is reviled largely because of the ridiculousness it slid into as a result of being on the air too long.  They were both very, very funny, well-written shows in their prime, and for a long time they were the last sitcoms I watched.  Their declining years, in both cases, left me with more bad memories than good, and I realized that I was tired, at last, of sitcoms.

The obtrusive laugh tracks telling you which jokes you should respond to, the contrived situations, the jokes with their obvious set-ups and punchlines — there just wasn’t a sitcom from the late nineties onward that I found funny anymore.  In the last few years almost all the TV I’ve watched has been on DVD, and most of it has been sci-fi or drama series — all the recent Star Trek series revisited through the magic of DVD, Battlestar Galactica, Rome, House — not a lot of common threads there except that all were well-written, innovative shows and none of them were the situation comedies I cut my TV-watching teeth on.

The few half-hour comedies I have watched in the last couple of years have been very different in style from the traditional sitcom — the British imports The Office and Extras, and the U.S. comedies Arrested Development and Scrubs. All very quirky, two of them mock-documentaries and two of them with voice-over narration, lots of very subtle humour (as well as some very ridiculous over-the-top visual humour and fantasy sequences in the case of Scrubs), and not a laugh track to be found anywhere.  To be honest, I’d actually forgotten networks were still making traditional sitcoms — it just seemed so retro.

Then The Big Bang Theory came into my life — first through a few friends mentioning it and saying they liked it (friends who shared my geeky tastes), then through a borrowed Season 1 DVD from my aunt and uncle.  I loved the premise of the show and liked the characters, but the format just threw me. I sat through the first couple of episodes thinking, “Can I really watch this? Sure, the science nerd jokes are intelligent and funny but … the set-up is so obvious! The laugh track is so intrusive! In short, it’s such a … sitcom.”

I have to admit I have come to adore The Big Bang Theory even though I still find the format annoying.  The characters and writing are great — I just wish there was an option on the DVD to turn off the canned-sounding laughter (apparently it’s a life studio audience, but it sounds canned and I hate TV telling me when I should laugh).  I think I really have outgrown the sitcom format and prefer my comedy in a more sophisticated package — but BBT is proof that you can put some mighty good stuff in that tired old package, even in 2009.