Archive for October, 2008

General: private, K-8 pre-preparatory school.

Enrollment: 239

Founded: 1982

Tuition:  $$$ (explanation)

Financial Aid Program: on the basis of demonstrated need

Educational Philosophy:  incorporates innovative and traditional methods.

Local Reputation: whole-child approach, strong parent-teacher collaboration, and modern education theory.

Accreditation: Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS)

Location: Southwest Fort Worth, about two miles south of Bryant Irvin and the I-20.

Academics: The school uses a small-classroom (average class size is 15), active-learning approach to education. By the time students graduate from middle school, they will have acquired proficiency in Literature, Composition, Speaking, Listening, Mathematics, History, Geography, Social Studies, Earth, Life and Physical Sciences and Spanish. Every middle school student receives their own laptop PC to use at school and home.

Extracurriculars:  Music, drama and band. Interscholastic middle school athletics with teams in baseball, basketball, football, soccer, track and field, softball, and volleyball.

Website: www.fwacademy.org

Where:  In the garden of Unity Church, at the southeast corner of Wooten and Trail Lake, 5051 Trail Lake Drive right off the I-20 in southwest Fort Worth.

When:  Daylight hours.

What: A small but practical labyrinth outlined with marble bricks and paved with red gravel. Walking a labyrinth is often used as a meditation exercise or form of prayer.

How: Follow the path that opens on the east side of the labyrinth around through many twists and turns until you reach the center, pause, then walk slowly out again. At a slow pace, the entire process takes 10-15 minutes.

Etimology: The word “labyrinth” comes from ancient Crete, where King Minos is said to have kept a Minotaur (a local monster which was the son of a human woman and a bull) in a maze called the Labyrinth.

History: The truer ancestors of the modern meditation labyrinth are the mosic floor labyrinths in Cathedrals such as Chartres in the north of France,. It was in these holy spaces that mazes were designed not as a way to get lost, but as a way to find a personal truth by pushing ever forward as the path wound in complex patterns toward the central goal.  

Purpose: To say that the meditation labyrinth is supposed to be a metaphor for life itself would be one approach, but they are also used to contemplate difficult problems, as a form of penance, or opening oneself to divine revelation. Visitors may bring their concerns to the labyrinth and put them into mind as they trace the paths.

My visit:  I showed up at the Unity Church Labyrinth ready for a spiritual exercise. I wasn’t sure it would help with the things I was facing, but I was intrigued by the idea.

I started my walk at the beginning. At the Unity labyrinth it is easy to find the broken place in the circle, leading into the matrix of paths. No chance of getting lost here; despite the many turns, there is only one path in to the labyrinth, and upon completion, you turn around and follow the same path back out. I paused after entering, looked ahead. Yes, the way was clear. All I had to do was follow the path on its winding way around and around until I reached the center.

I thought of people as I walked, people I loved, people who made me angry, and various organizations, and life and death.

Twice I seemed to approach the center, then was led back out to the edge. But finally, after a long walk along the back, I stood in the middle of all, and waited, hoping for an awareness, a message. I felt a breeze blowing across me. I had not noticed it before; had the wind been there all along?

The wind blows where it will. I started walking back out. I had not worried since I entered the labyrinth; I had not thought of doing anything except putting one foot in front of the other, and freeing my mind to go where it would. The marble blocks were laid carefully in the gravel, making the smooth curves into a kind of Celtic design. The labyrinth was more than it appeared to be, I thought, this simple diagram of earth and rock. I felt soothed, as if things that were weighing me down didn’t matter quite so much. Though upon emerging, The Universe had not struck me with a revelation, still, I felt deeply at peace. And somehow, even though there was no one else in the garden, I did not feel alone.

Other Fort Worth labyrinths can be found at:

St. Stephen Presbyterian Church

2700 McPherson Ave.
Fort Worth, Texas 76109

University Christian Church

2720 South University Drive
Fort Worth, Texas 76109

Cook’s Children’s Hospital

807 Seventh Avenue

Fort Worth, Texa 76104

682-885-4000

8:45 a.m.

If I could write a book-lenth manuscript on the road in two weeks, on a two day campout I guess I can get pretty close to the longest essay magazines ever run.  I am cold now, which is strange when you consider that I’ve been up for the better part of three hours.  Also, my feet are freezing as a result of having worn no socks on this suitcaseless “vacation.” Back at home I would be playing on my computer and maybe making something like donuts for breakfast, or coffee cake, with the kids.

So .. I am in the truck, because I thought it would be warmer and because I could wrap my feet in a sweatshirt. Now my feet are warming up but my hands are cold, perhaps as a result of touching the computer keys which are freezing, the computer having spent the night outside. My environmentalist streak does not allow me to start up the Suburban and warm myself up with the heater, so I am sitting here and hoping that things will get better in the heat department just on the basis of my body heat and perhaps the sun.  

I tried to get an extra pair of socks from Brand but he said he only had two pairs and one was soaked with dew because he left it out overnight. I hung those socks up on a stick. Hopefully by noon they’ll be dry and I can wear them for the orienteering meet. I’m thinking of driving into Walmart in Decatur and getting a couple of things. Socks, for example. And a toothbrush. The rest I can probably do without. 

I sense that the others in the group think I am a little weird. Of course, that just shows that they’re paying attention. I am a little weird. The strangest thing about the trip to me is that we have almost no interaction with the kids, making me wonder why we’re out here. I look over the troop and determine that considering current management levels the operation could be run with maybe two scoutmasters and one or two Venturers (senior scouts). Then the rest of us could be in the house, enjoying, you know, heat, electricity, a full wardrobe of clothing, assorted shoe choices, running water, all the stuff you come out here and look around at the wilds and suddenly feel desperate for.

Mr. M saw me typing away on my computer and said “I wouldn’t bring my computer. I come out here to get away from that.” Of course, my computer is my escape. 

This is the same dad who told me he lived in California for thirty-three years and he’s grateful to have gotten out. “Like rats, rats in a box,” he said. “It’s no place to live.”

“Everyone I know in California seems to want to get out,” I agree. I tell him my entire family left. I tell him my theory about geography, that geography is destiny and the reason the character of the Texans is tougher is because we have a less generous geography here. You want a party in Texas, you’re going to have to work for it. You want a party in California, you just go to the beach.

He doesn’t look like he agrees with me and I think to myself, he must be one of those California conservatives who thinks the problems of the state are purely political. I know it’s not that simple. California is a victim of its easygoing dreamscape geography.

I know I complained incessantly about the camping trip we went on to Washington DC but I do miss adults and kids working together. Mr. Cox tells me that he believes if you do anything for the boys they will not learn to take care of themselves. I don’t know about this. I feel a nagging worry that this is a variety of Rosseauist thought, and since I was raised with a similar attitude and made a whole boatload of judgment errors, I worry it’s not a safe bet. But my first mandate for myself in groups of this type is “if someone else is running it, do not get in their way.”  That’s a variety of Catholic philosophy: obedience in all but sin. Respect hierarchy as long as you have a conscientious choice to do so. 

When I get up, my first impression on seeing the bathroom is wonder that they have flush toilets out here in the wilderness. My second is despair at seeing that there is no lady’s room. But come on, this is a boy scout camp, so duh! Also, the stalls have a half door only, and I look on this as truly rustic. Luckily there’s no scouts awake, so it doesn’t matter.  Much.

Now I make my way up to the camp kitchen, where scoutmaster Mr. B is making coffee and slicing onions. My fingers are a little cold as I type but overall it’s not very bad out here. The moon is huge, more luminous than it was last night, and the stars are still burning bright. On the horizon, a yellow glow has begun to herald the dawn and far off is the hum and rumble of a railroad train as it trundles on, rolling, rolling, rolling. 

Mr. B pours me a cup of camp coffee which is pretty good, then digs out some milk from a cooler. I ask him how he manages making decent percolated coffee over a fire in an automated drip world. He says it’s in the slowness of the brew. You can’t let it go crazy, boiling up like mad then pouring grounds over the rim of the percolator. You have to take it slow.

Now Mr. McC comes in, says that we need to get the scouts out of their beds so they can see Polaris, the North Star, before it fades in the dawn light. “I want to see that North Star,” I say. I step up and stand in for sleeping scouts and am taught the following:

You can find the North Star, Polaris, by finding the Big Dipper. The two bottom stars on the Dipper, that make the edge of the bowl away from the handle, point to the North Star. It’s the brightest one in the sky, you can’t miss it. If you stand facing the North Star, you are facing Polar North.

Orion is on the other side of the sky from the Big Dipper and the North Star. You can identify Orion by the three stars in a row which are his belt, which form a line east and west. So if you were lost out on the wilds on a starry night, and you were out there and paid attention to Mr. McC’s star instruction, you could find either North, East, or West. Of course, it would be dark, so you couldn’t actually go anywhere very fast, especially if, like me, you forgot your flashlight.

Now Mr. M, who snored in the Mt. Everest tent, comes up. He gets coffee with Coffee Mate mocha. The gasp of delight as he takes the first drink is one of true gusto, a great burst of air which says “okay, let’s start this day.”

6:06 a.m  October 18

Sleeping on the rocks of “Sid” wasn’t as bad as you might think. I didn’t have any on the back or hip, which is where it matters, and the general sensation of sleeping outside was just what it always is – turning this way and that, trying to fall back asleep, waiting for the night to end.  I did regret at some point choosing one of the lighter sleeping bags, as I was none too warm. I wrapped the mouth of the bag tight around my neck and bunched it up under my head as pillow for a simulated mummy bag.

This is probably how the guy who invented the mummy bag realized the potential: out on a camping trip, bag was 5 degrees too lightweight for the weather, he closed the mouth of the bag manually by twisting it like the top of a jelly jar, then realized this wouldn’t be a bad way to tie off a sleeping bag if you had a casing and a string running through it. 

In the Mt. Everest tent next door, there is the sound of snoring.  I realize as I listen that Dean doesn’t snore. I mean, like never. Whatever it is that causes snoring he doesn’t have it. 

Except for Scout mistress Ms. B, I am the only woman on this trip. All the kids are guys. I have to level with you: There’s a part of me that doesn’t think I should be allowed out here. Perhaps I’m like those superstitious Japanese fishermen, who think if you allow a woman on the boat, it is bad luck. But I’m here, so I’m going to go with it. 

The cicadas continue their wing-scratching action, but they’re quieter and a little slower now in the morning. Do they ever stop? I consider going out of the tent. I have heard that as early as 6, there will be coffee in the kitchen. That is a positive.

On the other hand, after a night of relative coolness, the temperature inside the tent has reached a comfortable zone. One of the givens of camping, in my book, is it will be a little bit too cool outside when you wake up. My usual way of coping is to get up and make a fire. But the camp kitchen here runs on propane. There will be no real camp fire until tonight, when a detail of scouts will dig a fire pit and line it with rocks, etc.

I am here, supposedly, to spend time with Brand, but actually, I haven’t seen him once since I parked the car at Sid. I hope he is okay. But for seeing him, really, staying home would be better. I think this might be like that quality time thing.

You know, that whole myth about you’ve got to spend “quality time” with the kids, and that means taking them somewhere interesting? I mean, yes, you’ve got to spend quality time with the kids, but it had nothing to do with the type of activity you’re on. Quality time means the quality of your interaction with them, and my best quality time that I’ve ever discovered is driving in the car.

I consider working on my novel. Then the sound of a zip comes from the snoring tent. Someone else is beating me  to the kitchen! Perhaps there’s coffee over there right now. I put off working on the novel. The story I am working on seems wrong in this context anyway. That story is a romance; this is an adventure.

by Antonia Jacob

General: Private, K-12 preparatory school. Mascot is the Trojan. Colors are Columbia Blue and White.

Enrollment: About 1000

Founded: 1959

Tuition: $$$ (explanation)

Financial Aid Program: for qualified students

Philosophy: European classical approach

Local Reputation: For academics and drama program as well as athletics, in which it competes in the Southwest Preparatory Conference.

Accreditation: Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (ISAS)

Location:Southwest Fort Worth, in the “Cityview” village, and about two miles south of Bryant Irvin and the I-20.

Academics:The Lower School focuses on the core subject areas of language arts, reading, writing, mathematics, science and social studies and uses the Junior Great Books program. Writing is emphasized and class sizes are small.

In the middle school and the upper school every class is taught as an honors class. There are 16 AP classes offered in the upper school, nearly every student takes at least a few. The academic requirements from middle school through upper school encompass English, history, mathematics science and foreign language. Geography and two years of Latin are also required in the middle school; Government, Economics, and Physics are required in the upper school.

By graduation, all TVS students have completed 5 years of a foreign language – Spanish, French, Latin, and Chinese are offered. Each will also have gone through four years of high school math – perhaps as far as second-year calculus. Through their junior and senior years, all students are aided through the college admissions process by two full-time college counselors.

Extracurriculars: There is a strong community service program in the upper school, as every student is required to make 60 hours before graduating. Art and music are taught to all through middle school; in middle school the drama program begins with a large musical every year. The high school produces a musical and various plays throughout the year. Many students are involved in Trojan Athletics, offered from seventh grade on. Teams are open to all who wish to play. Trojan Outdoor Experience gets students from second grade on involved in the “great outdoors.”

Friday, 9:15 p.m.

We arrive at the campground, known colloquially as “Sid” or more specifically Sid Richardson Scout Ranch. Sid Richardson, a legendary oil man, was the founder of the Bass family fortunes and apparently he or his family donated this land. We pull up and Ryan, a member of my son’s patrol who’s riding shotgun at this point, looks out into the dark. “Oh no, we’re not camping there,” he says.

‘Why?” I ask.

“Because, look at all the rocks.” 

It’s dark out there and I can’t see anything but I assume from his tone that Ryan is speaking in the voice of experience, and I reflect with some worry about my decision to bring only a thermarest pad and not an air mattress or cot. Brand and his patrol run off into the dark, while I unpack the tents and sleeping bags onto the hood of the car, and survey in the camp chest for the lantern. There is none. Oh no. No flashlight, no lantern. I am feeling uneasy again. But if worst comes to worst, we can always sleep in the car, which in many ways is the most comfortable place in a campground. 

What will really happen is probably that the other adults will have to help me, shake their heads, say ‘poor thing doesn’t have it together,’ etc. I really want to avoid that.

I see older scouts walking around with headlamps on and think to myself, if only Vince had come, he has a headlamp he would loan me. But he didn’t. So what should I say? In the words of our day, ‘it is what it is.” 

I get out of the car. You can smell the dirt. I see two of the scoutmasters – Mr. R and Ms. B  – rummaging in their kit, pulling out a chrome coffee pot.  “So we drink coffee here?” I ask.

“Oh yes, there will be coffee,” they say. So that is good.

Two small flying insects are attracted to the computer screen, and land on it … now there are three. This settles definitively the debate between Brand and Ryan, whether it was now too cold for bugs. It’s not too cold. The tough Texas bugs do not give up so easily – 50 degrees is not enough to deter them. Wait ‘till it freezes, then they’ll give up. But at that point, I will not be camping with the scouts. 

The scouts have a badge for camping in the rain, and one for camping in the snow, and I hope to avoid both of these. A fourth bug joins the three. I suppose I should end this missive for the moment, before I have a dozen crawling around.

–Continuing on the Boy Scout Campout thread begun at Outsider Mom Goes on Boy Scout Campout

Friday night, around 8:30 p.m.

The drive up here was not a bad one, though much of the first half consisted of the kids trying to find songs they wanted to listen to on my LG “Chocolat” cell-phone-mp3 player, an apparatus that my husband bought last Christmas in response to a pitch from a fast-talking salesman in a booth set up at Best Buy. The scouts quickly discover that our musical tastes are not similar, and that I have only one “rap” song, “Where is the Love?” on my music catalogue, and it’s not real rap, it’s “soft-core.”

We stop at Whataburger in Decatur, where I am told that the scouts sit together and so do the adults, so I sit down with Ms. B and Mr. R, two scoutmasters. They are apparently old friends, having been in Troop leadership together for five years, and each having sons in the oldest rank of scout, the last two-years-of-high-school variety.

It’s worth noting that the scout numbers are highest in the lowest ranks, where Brand is currently serving, and by the time you reach the older ages, there are only one or two guys. The disappearance of Vince, who’s a medium-aged scout, has been duly noted and there is some anxiety, on my part, at least, whether he will ever return.

Mr. R tries to start up conversation by asking why Dean and I decided to have 6 kids. I am caught flat footed. “Suicidal insanity?” I try. Then I try to explain a whole host of factors, which include California public schools, home schooling, world travel, Catholicism, and just really liking babies … and come out thinking “it would have been better to have kept your mouth shut and let them think you’re crazy, instead of trying to explain yourself and removing all doubt.”

Nevertheless, they take me to Starbucks with them, putting the three of us in a group of people who can drink coffee close to bedtime and still get to sleep. Whether this is because we’ve drunk so much over the last 20 years that it no longer effects us, or because we’re so exhausted in general that we could steep 15 minutes later even after taking a hit of speed, I don’t know.  I get back in the Suburban and now another scout, Ryan takes his turn riding shotgun in the front, letting Brand sit in the back.

Ryan and I have a good conversation, including such topics as his old scout troop in Weatherford, and after a while he steers the conversation to dead people and what happens after they put them in the box. Do rats run around among your bones?

“No, that’s why they bury you, you know, to keep that from happening.”

“But, can you like ever get unburied?”

“Uh … sometimes if they don’t do it right and there’s a flood and the coffin is unearthed. But generally no. Just don’t be buried in the region of New Orleans, or any other flood plain, you should be okay.”

This seems to comfort him. 

by Outsider Mom

October 17, 2008

I decided to attend my first-ever boy scout campout this weekend. My son Brand wanted me to, and they are doing orienteering, which sounds like fun. I don’t know how to do orienteering, but I’m a learn-on-the-fly kind of gal. 

But doing things on the fly is inimical to the Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared.” What will happen to a woman who signs up to go with her son’s scout troop without due consideration? Will I-can-do-it bravado actually get me anywhere?

Here we are on Friday night, 6:07 p.m. at the Scout storage shed at the church, packing the gear. Boys are running around loading up trailers. Parents are talking quietly among themselves. Scoutmasters are directing scouts. Apparently there are five cars going up tonight and it’s an almost two hour drive. So: we’ll be pitching our tents in the dark. 

And that’s when I realize that I’ve forgotten my flashlight. How could I have done this?  I’m pretty sure Brand doesn’t have his flashlight either, he’s the kind of kid who has to be reminded about everything, and I didn’t remind him to bring the flashlight around the same time I wasn’t reminding myself. I want to run and hide! If only my older scout son, Vince, were here. He remembers things. But Vince isn’t coming this time.

Having no flashlight wouldn’t be an emergency, actually, except for the problem of pitching the tent in the dark. I probably will be able to get help from someone. But overall, I’m not sure if things are going very well. And I really don’t want any of the scoutmasters and parents to know that I’m the kind of person who forgets their flashlight.

Now it’s 6:30. I observe scouts standing in their patrols, knocking each other’s hats off, making dismissive remarks about one guy who’s wearing the new uniform which has cargo-style pockets on the chest. Okay, I admit, it doesn’t look great, but there’s no reason to be so smug – it’s the new standard issue. My son’s patrol is making plans to each cook their own breakfast, so they can get the cooking requirement signed off.

A group of older scouts sits nearby. They are talking about killing someone by puncturing their heart with a staple gun. It’s amazing how long they can stay on this one fairly simple topic. The light is falling and I am getting hungry. I feel reassured since I found in the camp kit not a flashlight but a lantern with propane. Now we’re pulling out, they say. I get in the line of cars and drive. With my son’s patrol, the Spartans, in the back of the Suburban, it will not be a dull trip. 

Tomorrow:  Driving to “Sid”

Editor’s note: The exhibit runs through November 2. The Kimbell will be open until 8 on Tuesdays through the end of the exhibition. Half-price exhibition admission is offered on Tuesdays (all day) and on Fridays from 5–8 p.m. 

Ah, yes, the Impressionists!  Where would museums be without them?!  In many ways my visit to the Kimball’s current exhibit “The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago” felt as if I was coming full circle after decades of visiting art museums in North America and Europe.  The Chicago collection definitely makes good on its claims to being a major repository of Impressionist art, and the 92 pieces available for viewing at the Kimbell include a few of the best known works in the genre. They are all here: Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas, Van Gogh, Gauguin, etc.

It seems that every major art house in North America must produce at least one exhibition of the Impressionists and their immediate successors (preferably with the name “Van Gogh” in the exhibition’s title), if the ticket-buying public is to continue with its patronage.  My own personal aesthetic debutante party happened over twenty years ago at a sensational exhibit of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces from the Soviet Union. These Frenchmen (and would-be Frenchmen) from the previous century were just what a budding elitist snob needed as an entry-level introduction to the joy of looking at art. At the time, my favorite was Renoir, whose oeuvre, I later discovered, was least appreciated by current art critics, allegedly because he was a bit too saccharine and sentimental—surely an unpardonable offence, if the “art world” could conceive of one.

Over the years, under the influence of the critics, I came to be just a tad suspicious of Renoir, but recently I have been rethinking things.  After all, sentimentality is unquestionably an ingredient in a full life. The problem is not that there is sentimentality, but only that it can be cloying if overdone. Sure enough, emblazoned on the wall of the Renoir room of the exhibit, were words straight from the artist’s mouth: “Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.” Without a doubt, one of the highlights of the exhibit is Renoir’s Two Sisters.

http://impressionists.kimbellart.org/exhibition/works/pr_sisters.jpg

This is a prime example of why it is necessary to go and see paintings, rather than merely look at photos in books: the colors leap out of the painting and dazzle the senses, as they twinkle in the light, an effect which is accentuated by the canvas’ unexpectedly large size. 

Another highlight, no doubt, is the canvas by Gustave Caillebotte Paris Street; Rainy Day

http://impressionists.kimbellart.org/exhibition/works/gc_paris.jpg

The painting’s large size creates quite an impression (no pun intended), which does not overwhelm the viewer on account of the artist’s choice of a muted palette. 

For those who prefer the raw to the cooked, there is always Paul Gauguin, whose Tahitian paintings line the walls of the exhibit, together with a quote of his own: “I have escaped everything that is artificial and conventional.  Here I enter into Truth, become one with nature. After the disease of civilization, life in this new world is a return to health.”

http://impressionists.kimbellart.org/exhibition/works/pg_angry.jpg

For those who have never seen a series of Monet’s paintings of the same subject at different times of the day and year, a group of six Stacks of Wheat

http://impressionists.kimbellart.org/exhibition/works/cm_wheat.jpg

should prove to be a real treat, as well a pair of paintings of Waterloo Bridge.

All in all The Impressionists is a must-see, even for those that may feel that they have had their fill of the Official Iconoclasts of the art world.

Next at the Kimbell: Love and Art in Renaissance Italy.

The Elitist Snob is a Renaissance and Classical historian who teaches at the University of North Texas.