Unschooling NYC

Today is Learn Nothing Day.    Learn Nothing Day was started by Sandra Dodd in honor of unschoolers who are learning  24 hours a day 7 days a week – these kids need a break!

But, as she said, “we have had no reports of any great success thus far.”   Which is, of course, the point.   It is impossible to go even 24 hours without learning anything.   As we were returning from a birthday party this afternoon Maya listed all the things she’d learned today, pronouncing that she had ‘failed’ Learn Nothing Day in miserable fashion.   She must have learned at … Read more

Last night I got a long email from my friend Karen telling me about her daughters and also mentioning that she’d started listening to Amy Winehouse’s first CD, “Frank” again.  She wrote that she used to listen to it all the time with her daughter Katherine when they would drive into Manchester from their former home near Leeds.   This morning I answered and told her that because of her email I would go to iTunes and download “Frank”, which I didn’t yet own although Karen had mentioned in the past that she liked it even more than “Back to Black”.… Read more

We topped out at around 103 degrees here in the city today.  Walking home at 8:28pm the time and temperature sign near 72nd St said it was still 98 degrees.    It was humid and awful, and I can’t imagine living in a place where this is typical summer weather.  (And the mood of the people outside today supports my theory that many of the world’s most volatile areas are that way because it’s just too damn hot.)

Despite that, and in direct contradiction to what I just said, the day was a roaring success;  Maya and Ben both had … Read more

It’s 9:40pm and it’s 90 degrees outside.   Too hot to think.     As Matthew Broderick (playing the role of Eugene Morris Jerome)  said in the movie Biloxi Blues, “Man it’s hot.  It’s like Africa hot.  Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot.”

Tomorrow we will top out at over 100 degrees.   The last time I remember heat like this in the city was the summer after Joshua and I were married, when my friend Tina came to visit.     I have photos of us taken in Central Park where our shirts looked wilted and our skin is glistening.    I feel sorry for … Read more

Because of a real estate closing (we sold a property we owned in Harlem – hooray!) my presence was required at an office in Long Island at 10am this morning.   This meant I was dressed in business casual attire and leaving my building at around 8:15 to pick up coffee from Starbucks, pick up my car from the garage and drive the 30 miles or so to the closing.      Since my kids and I are hardly ever awake before 9am, let alone out of the house, I never see the neighborhood in its’ ‘on the way to work’ mode.  The … Read more

This post has nothing to do with my usual life learning topics and not much to do with my kids.   Mostly it’s about me and one of my friends.

I’ve mentioned her before – she separated from her husband going on two years ago, and began dating almost immediately.   The very first person she went out with turned into a boyfriend -a jealous one with whom she had little or nothing in common except for an intense physical connection.   Whenever she spoke to me about him it was in terms of ‘I don’t think we have a future’, ‘we have … Read more

Six or seven years ago, my friend Michael and I had a conversation about kids and their rooms.    Michael is a Scientologist, and though we have never had discussions about origin stories that involve aliens colonizing earth, we’ve had lots of talks about relationships of all kinds – spousal, work, friends and kids.    His study of Scientology informs pretty much all of our conversations, which is why I mention it.   Mostly what I hear from him sounds less like religion and more like common sense stuff that many people have forgotten, or never knew in the first place.   No hocus … Read more

Conversation overheard (by me) last night between Ben and his friend Jonah, who stayed here for an overnight.  The boys were playing chess.

Ben:  Jonah, have you ever seen the movie “Searching for Bobby Fisherman?”

Jonah:  No.

Ben:   You should see it.  It inspired me to play chess.

Jonah:  What’s it about?  Who’s Bobby Fisherman?

Ben:   Well, he was this chess player and he won the championship of the world.   And then, after he won, he disappeared.  And not even his wife could find him!

My giggling had to be disguised with a burst of running water from the … Read more

I’ve mentioned in the past that I read Heather Armstrong’s blog at www.dooce.com.   She is labeled as a ‘mommy blogger’, based, I guess,  on nothing more than the fact that she is  a mother.   She started her blog well before she had kids, so I wonder what they called her back then?

Last night I discovered another blog called Go Go Gadget Zen at gogozen.blogspot.com .  This is also considered a ‘mommy blog’.   While I enjoy both these blogs because the women writing them are sarcastic and funny and sometimes very politically incorrect  (refreshing in a world of far too … Read more

There may be no such thing as fun for the entire family, but Deathly Hallows Part 2 comes pretty close.  (Joshua, having never seen Part 1 and not being a huge fan of the genre, didn’t go, so….)

Opening day is the best experience when it comes to movies with a devoted following.  When “Return of the Jedi”  opened in theaters, my friend Tricia and I arrived 2.5 hours early in order to be first in line.   I still remember the chills that ran up my spine and the cheer that went up when that one of a kind Star … Read more