Following the last post, I present this headline in the NY Press:

Greet The Devil

A new musical allows the homeschooled the chance at a friend—via Satan

Oh homeschoolers. So awkward in social situations, so pumped-up with their own inflated sense of self. Is it any wonder that calling someone “homeschooled” is now the PC-version of “retarded”? But even the most dense and unaware of them must occasionally have the sense that other people look at them askance. And maybe, as Rob Broadhurst and Brent Black have envisioned in their infectious new musical I’ll Be Damned, some of them are desperate enough for friends to make a deal with the devil.

I looked to see if this was from The Onion.  The author sounds extremely bitter and jealous.

So go check out the The Carnival of Homeschooling - The Punctuation Edition at the Carnival founders’ site: Why Homeschool.  The submitted posts tend to be intelligent, insightful and not ummm…"retarded".  Who’d have known there was a PC-version of "retarded"?!

My husband found some fun geekiness and I’m going to brag on our local university, because sometimes we forget to acknowledge the cool stuff going on, despite our current State of Illinois govermental affairs. 

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 Bill Hammack examines the first transistor ever built - borrowed from the University of Illinois Spurlock Museum. He explains how it works, and its impact on our world today. And, also, he even tests it out using a large battery.

University of Illinois Professor Bill Hammack seems to have an appealing Bill Nye-like nerdiness.  He reminds me  of my U of I engineering brother, who used to wrap his younger siblings in hay bale twine with pulleys overhead, to see how we’d fly.  That was painful sometimes, but generally entertaining.

I’m going to sneak this WSJ article ditty in about Sharron Angle.  I’m still confused about whether she actually homeschooled in Nevada, but I do appreciate her homeschool advocacy.  I can only imagine how many find my obsessiveness with Angle not unlike fingernails on a chalkboard.  So it goes in these turbulent times.  It appears there is an Anybody but Harry Reid movement in Nevada, and I appreciate that thought too.  I think she has more going for her than that.  Here’s the Stephen Moore version of Angle’s early political history:

Sharron Angle’s first foray into activism was when her son was held back in kindergarten in 1983 and "the poor little guy was made to feel like a failure. He hated school." She wanted to home school him, but the school system and the courts said no. Her response was to open a one-room school with a Christian-based curriculum. It soon had 24 students.

"I didn’t realize how many other parents were angry with the school system," she recalls. She charged $125 a month to cover the cost of supplies but taught for free. (Mrs. Angle has a degree in education from the University of Nevada, Reno.)

In 1985 she rallied hundreds of parents behind her successful effort to pass a bill through the Nevada legislature allowing parents to home school anywhere in the state. The result of her effort is that in Nevada home schooling has become a popular alternative to the public schools, and Mrs. Angle is referred to as the "home school heroine."

"I was just a mother, and the government had gotten between me and my child, and that’s like getting between a mother bear and her cubs," she says. "I think that’s what activates the tea party movement. What they see is the government interfering with their lives, and with the inheritance of their children. Are we going to pass down liberty or deficits? And that’s really what this movement is about." The cub - her 6-year-old son - now has a masters degree and teaches high school history in Yerrington, Nevada.

We’re coming into our stretch of summer where we don’t have many scheduled activities to prepare, except 4-H meetings, Farm Tours, Minutes, Reports and the like.  4-H Fair is over.  We just need to keep the Veterinary Science poster intact for the State Fair judging. 

I have 3 hens brooding, with no plans to stop them; despite our over-abundance of chickens.  Some of the remedies to stop brooding seem to involve hanging the hens upside down for 2 days and clicking your heels together 3 times.  Not interested. NO incubating next spring, for sure.  We’ll do it the old fashioned way, since some of our hens seems to enjoy it so much.  This little one hatched out yesterday.