SCHOLA: Ho hum. Another hurricane.

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Ho hum. Another hurricane.

Riding the storm out takes on a literal meaning when the house begins bucking underneath you, shaking you out of your weekend plans to sleep in. I was up at 5:00 AM to take a shower and blow my hair dry before the power went out. (Remember my renewed commitment to beauty?) The electricity is currently on, but has been intermittent, cutting in and out at least twenty times in the last two and half hours. I have been listening to the weird harmonic effect of the wind blowing a bass vibrato across our eaves. Low E maybe. Rain pelting the window sounding more like hail, followed by a rattling sound as the gusts die down. Something, maybe more siding or a piece of soffit, has blown loose. The local news reported tropical force winds, around 38 mph, in our area three hours prior to the time I was rudely awakened by Jeanne, long before the house began rocking and the chandelier started swinging. We must be up to about 60 mph by now.

We had noticed cracks appear in the joints between the walls and ceiling, and a spot where the front gable’s truss had been pushed inward causing the drywall screws to protrude after Hurricane Charley, so we know this building has been compromised somehow. With the continuing exposure to high winds, I’m wondering how much more this structure can take and half expect it to break loose of its twenty foot high pier foundations and do a Wizard of Oz. On the up side, if I ever need to go looking for my heart’s desire, or my roof, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.

What do the kids do during a hurricane? S camps out on her bedroom floor for fear of being cut to ribbons should her window implode. L watches her PBS kid shows complaining when the broadcast signal is briefly interrupted that the TV has gone all “fluffley.” G sleeps snuggled up with Orlando, the marmalade cat, who’s enjoying a respite from rat catching in the plentiful, large debris piles heaped about our neighborhood.

What does Mom do? She settles in with the best hurricane supplies of all, her books.

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SCHOLA 101

schol' a: 1) An intermission of work, leisure for learning, learned conversation, debate, disputation, lecture, dissertation. 2) A meeting place for teachers and pupils, place for instruction, place of learning, school. 3) The disciples of a teacher, body of followers, school, sect. 4) An acronym for my tortuous blog title "Secular Classical Homeschoolers' Odyssean Learning Adventure." 5) How my Boston cousins pronounce "scholar." 6) Someone who studies at 10 o'clock for a dilla or a dolla.

These are the blatherings of an introverted, autodidactic, champion of The Enlightenment raising three daughters. At one time or another we have homeschooled, public-schooled, Catholic-schooled, cyber-schooled, unschooled, and even threatened boarding school. We have been inspired variously by The Well-Trained Mind, A Thomas Jefferson Education, and Climbing Parnassus, tempered by the writings and wisdom of Charlotte Mason, John Holt, Benjamin Franklin and Michel de Montaigne.

I try not to get wrapped up in labels, but we are secular and we are classical-ish.

We travel. A lot. Sometimes to the other side of the state and sometimes to the other side of the planet. Join us on our journey as we search for our home, navigate the waters of self-education, lounge with the lotus-eaters, and bash a Cyclops or two.