Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

  What does a family culture of curiosity mean? What does it look like to have shared family interests that lead to real-life learning and skills? What have you observed about what kids do with freedom? So my friend Myra did a cool project for her Masters about unschooling and homeschooling and she kindly let me read her thesis and it has me, as usual THINKING THOUGHTS ABOUT THINGS. Did ya'll know I was homeschooled? Not forever, not from stem to stern. More like, I dropped out of high school and then haunted the basement for two years. I messed around on my brother's weight-lifting set-up, listened to my dad's record collection (Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkle, Joni Mitchell on repeat.) I played around on our 1994 desktop computer and used a CD-Rom to learn the anatomy of the human hand and post dramatic poetry to AOL forums. I read my mom's college textbooks from when she taught Freshman English ( Flowers for Algernon , The Rise of Silas Lapham , and Walt Whitman). I...

Liko has found a pair of long Johns, and is carefully patting a small brass cup, top and bottom, to listen to the set or ringing noises it makes on the table. A tiny metal teapot next to her is half-filled with milk. The cool liquid inside makes a dewey shadow on the outside, and Liko refills her small cups. Two toy cats are discarded on the floor, their chins suspiciously milk-drippy. Liko's two blond French braid's are fraying. Earlier this morning, after we dropped the big kids off on the long morning trek from North Eugene to South Eugene, through clogged arterial highways and wide fog swept river roads, backdropped with gradations of mist-fading pines, Liko sat on my tummy as I lay on the couch, and her blond hairs flew around her like a wild halo, her bangs in her eyes. We watched two squirrels in the back yard. One weighed down a drooping sunflower, and it bounced near the ground while the squirrel worked. Then pop! The sunflower head was off! The other squirrel step...