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By Mom Unplugged, February 14, 2008 10:18 pm

A quick post tonight. I have spent far too much of my little free time today trying to figure out what all this “tagging” business is about. I have categories, but I guess tags are meaningful for search engines??? I am learning a lot and that is good, but I have things to say that I don’t have time to say when I am learning a lot!

My sister just gave me these two books for my birthday: The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution (Alice Waters) and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (Barbara Kingsolver). I am very excited about these books because I feel that I am in an unhealthy “meat and potatoes” cooking rut. Do any of you ever get in a cooking rut? Perhaps Alice Waters can assist me in thinking a bit more broadly (but simply). Also, I have been wanting to read the Barabara Kingsolver book for quite some time, so that is a happy gift too.

Have any of you read these books? If so, what did you think of them?

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By Mom Unplugged, February 1, 2008 11:48 am

The post I had planned for today will have to be postponed (no pun intended). Tonight it is my turn to host book club which means I must spend my day shoveling junk out of my living room and making my house look somewhat presentable.

Why? I don’t know. Most of the members have children so they know what it’s like! Who am I trying to fool by tidying up my house? Do people really think I live neatly all the time?

Oh well. Whatever flaw of my character compels me to attempt to make my house a model of child-free, elegant perfection, then so be it. Now I am off to collect stray legos and excavate the dining room in an effort to find the surface of the table.

By the way, this month we read The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden. This was a refreshingly humorous change from the long list of depressing books we seem to have gotten into lately. If you are a gardener and want a laugh, you’d enjoy it.

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer Keshan Gunasinghe for this still-life (taken in China)

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By Mom Unplugged, November 12, 2007 10:08 pm

Last week I announced a new series of posts entitled “Christmas Unplugged.” Actually any major holiday can be inserted in place of “Christmas,” but I think it will be easier for me to just focus on one holiday and allow you to generalize.

For several years now, I have really been trying to figure out how to simplify Christmas. Christmas just seems so over-the-top sometimes. Even without TV I am irked by the commercialism and the messages of spending money as the only path to “The Perfect Christmas.” I don’t like all the massive exchanges of gifts that often are unwanted or unneeded.

Before children, I could ignore my discomfort. After all, it is just one day a year. But ever since I have had children, I have felt the need to focus my thoughts much more on how and why we celebrate Christmas.

I think I will write more on this topic next time for it is the starting point of any transformation of Holiday traditions. Today, I want to begin this series by introducing a very interesting book that has helped me think more about my “issues” with Christmas and what to do about them.

When I first announced my Christmas Unplugged series last week, several of you commented that I should read Unplug the Christmas Machine. Well, I already had (or nearly had, I think I still had one or two chapters to go), in fact it was one of my inspirations for writing this series.

I accidentally found Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season on Amazon a while ago. I wish I could remember how. I put it in my “Wish List” for future reference and finally bought it back at the end of September, as my thoughts turned to yet another round of holiday confusion.

I have really enjoyed this book, and have found it very useful for helping to sort out my thoughts. I guess I am not alone in feeling empty and miffed at the holidays.

Unplug the Christmas Machine covers all the bases. Whether you are an exhausted overachiever, a guilty underachiever, have annual family conflicts to deal with, hate the commercialism, want more spirituality in your Christmas, male, female, with children, childless, etc. etc. etc. I think you will find some helpful thoughts and ideas in this book.

I always like reading chapter titles when I consider a book, so if you like that too, then here they are:

Intro: The Christmas Pledge
1) “A Christmas Carol” Revisited
2) Women: The Christmas Magicians
3) Men: The Christmas Stagehands
4) The Four Things Children Really Want for Christmas
5) The Homecoming
6) Inside the Christmas Machine
7) The Gift of Joy
8) A Simple Christmas
9) Christmas Revival
Appendix: Resources for a Simple Christmas

Each chapter ends with exercises for helping you determine your feelings about the particular subject of the chapter. There is also always a question and answer section that often contains concrete ideas and helpful resources.

The Appendix is a book unto itself and is packed full of ideas and resources that the authors have found useful for helping to simplify Christmas. The subjects covered are:

-Decorations, broken down by category (Greens, Tree, Candles, etc.)

-Music

-Christmas Cards

-Entertaining

-Food (includes recipes)

-Gifts, includes great “alternative gift ideas” and “easy homemade gifts” (as far as I’m concerned, this book is worth buying just for this “Gifts” section alone!)

-Alternative Christmas Activities for Churches

-Making a Christmas Budget

If you feel really energized by the message of this book, you can help enlighten others by buying a Leader’s Guide ($20) and hosting your own “Unplug the Christmas Machine” workshop.

I could go on and on about all the useful, concrete information and encouragement that is in this book. But the main point of my post has to be that if you have any doubts at all about Christmas, try reading Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season to see if you find some inspiration.

You could get it from the library or go all out and buy it. I decided just to buy it and am glad I did, since I view it as a reference book to be pulled off the shelf whenever I need a bit of encouragement or a useful idea.

One thought on buying it: new at Amazon it is currently $10.36 (paperback). I purchased a “Like New” copy from an “Amazon Seller” for about $5.00 (including shipping) and honestly I couldn’t tell that it was not a brand new book! So if you want to buy it, shop around.

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By Mom Unplugged, June 26, 2007 7:53 pm

There has been a lot of press and controversy surrounding this book. I first heard about it in an interview with one of the authors on public radio’s On Point (click here to listen). I found the interview to be vaguely annoying, in part due to one of the “guests,” but I also felt that the moderator was not handling things well either. However, the subject matter and theory behind the book sounded so interesting that I absolutely had to check it out. It seemed to be fitting for our unplugged family, and for Unplug Your Kids.

This book is coauthored by two British brothers who wanted to share with the world the activities that they enjoyed, and subjects that had fascinated them as children. According to the interview I heard, the authors are frustrated with plugged-in children, interested only in x-boxes, computer games and TV.

The book soared to the top of the best-seller list in England and now is climbing steadily here. Apparently certain subjects were altered to appeal to the American market (ex. cricket was removed, baseball was added). It is really sort of an encyclopedia of activities and knowledge “for boys.” The “for boys” part is what seems to have stirred up all the controversy.

Call me a wimp, but for better or worse, I am a very non-confrontational person and I really don’t want to get into a feminist, nature vs. nurture, girls vs. boys, or any other kind of debate here or anywhere else. All I can say is that the title does not bother me in the least. Might some girls like this book? Yes. Might some boys NOT like this book? Yes. Could/should the authors have called it something else? I don’t know. End of subject. I want to talk about the book, not the controversy.

This book is a bit of an encyclopedia, or guidebook, to certain activities and knowledge that might be considered lost on today’s youth. Even the cover and marbleized end papers of the book recall a bygone era.

The introduction is wonderful and explains the whole premise of this book: unplug your kids! Here is the first paragraph:

“In this age of video games and cell phones, there must still be a place for knots, tree houses, and stories of incredible courage. The one thing that we always say about childhood is that we seemed to have more time back then. This book will help you recapture those Sunday afternoons and long summers-because they’re still long if you know how to look at them.”

Here, here! I so agree!

As for the rest of the book, it contains an odd array of activities (for example: Making a Periscope, Coin Tricks, Charting the Universe, Making a Battery, Marbling Paper, Secret Inks, Making Crystals, and Making Cloth Fireproof) and very diverse information (ex. Famous Battles, Navigation, The Fifty States, Baseball’s Most Valuable Players, The Rules of Rugby, Latin Phrases Every Boy Should Know, Books Every Boy Should Read, Navajo Code Talkers Dictionary, and The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). There is even a brief, two page section on advice about girls which might offend some, but I found quite amusing (for example: “Avoid being vulgar. Excitable bouts of windbreaking will not endear you to a girl…”).

I have spent quite a few evenings reading this book in bed, and have learned a lot. It is really fascinating to me! The book is too advanced for my just-turned-5-year-old boy and also for my 6-almost-7-year-old-girl. We could maybe try a few of the activities together, but they won’t be reading it cover to cover for a while yet.

When they are older it will definitely be a fun reference for them. We’ll skip the sections on “Hunting and Cooking a Rabbit,” and “Tanning a Skin,” but some of the other information and activities will be perfect later on down the road.

The whole point is simple: kids should be out in nature and experiencing life, not sitting in front of a screen. The aim of this book is to provide a little non-preachy inspiration and some fun ideas for things to do with your kids that don’t involve a screen or a joystick.

If you are at all concerned about the political correctness of the book, or the suitability of any of the suggestions or information, then I would advise you to check it out of the library before buying it. Make sure that you are comfortable with it and that it is right for you.

I, however, love it and think it will be a fun book for us.

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By Mom Unplugged, March 18, 2007 12:37 pm

It is another lovely day here in the Arizona mountains, but cold air and a winter storm are headed our way. We need to enjoy this warm weather while it lasts, so today is a great day to be outside on the deck with a cup of tea, some magazines, a pollen-filtering mask and a big bottle of Claritin. What a perfect time for that magazine post that I have been planning!

In general, I am not a fan of “mom” magazines. When I read the big-name magazines, I feel belittled, inadequate, talked down to, stupid. I dislike the “Must Have Toys” sections, obviously sponsored by major manufacturers like Fisher Price and which feature all the loud, flashy, obnoxious toys I hate. I do not spend my days wondering how to decorate the perfect cupcake or whether my little ones are following the latest trends in kiddie fashion (am I supposed to?).

For those of you looking for some alternatives, check out the following:

Wondertime (“Celebrate Your Child’s Love of Learning”): Pretty new publication, unfortunately dubbed by the New York Times at its debut as a “magazine for education-obsessed parents of the very young”. As a parent who obviously cares about education, I find this target audience description to be rather demeaning. However, I have looked at one issue of Wondertime, and it is not bad (See? I guess I AM the target audience!). There was some thoughtful content and the photography was appealing. Although it is put out by Disney Publications, I saw not one single “Disney Princess” or Baby Einstein product. Wondertime has just been nominated for an “Ellie.” If you are not ready for anything too radical, start here. This one seems a little more mainstream than the other two I suggest.

Brain Child (“The Magazine For Thinking Mothers”): I used to subscribe to this one, but it piled up unread and fell victim to my magazine subscription tidy-up. Brain Child is radically different from the traditional “Mom magazine.” Three or four years later, I still remember a fascinating article about a women’s prison and its revolutionary new child-care program. The articles are sometimes edgy, often controversial, but they do promote thought and debate.

Mothering (“Natural Family Living”): I have only looked at this one a few times. I like a lot of the ideas they promote, however I found it a little too “crunchy” for me. I felt like a disappointment as a reader since I could never live up to the “natural,” eco-friendly expectations of this magazine!

I am sure there must be other alternative magazines out there that people more “with-it” than me can recommend. Is there a cool and different parenting/mom magazine that you enjoy? If so, please leave a comment and I will add it here. Thanks and have a peaceful Sunday!