OK. Yesterday just couldn't be allowed to pass by without checking in here, with some random thoughts from the last few days and last 8 years:
My children have not known a world without GWB as their president. OK, not exactly true, as R was almost 1 year old when he was sworn in, but for all intents and purposes....
Eight years ago, we had only enough solar power in our house at the time to power a small radio and a few lights. The only news media I exposed myself to was CBC radio and occasionally NPR So, it wasn't until several weeks after he became president that even came across a picture of him in a newspaper and saw what he looked like.
R has written and emailed his opinions to GWB several times in his own young lifetime. One year, probably when he was 5 or 6, while listening to a state of the union speech on the radio, the phone rang and he picked it up. I can't quite remember who was on the other end, my brother or C's dad, I think. They asked him what he was doing and he replied, "Just sitting here on the couch listening to the president tell lies." (Hmm. Not sure if he came up with that one on his own or heard it from someone else in the family.....)
You just don't see a whole lot of campaign signs in people's yards around here in rural Montana, at least not ones for the presidential race. Local campaign signs, well, that's another story. I think I saw only one for John McCain and one forBarack Obama within about 60 miles of our house. On the other hand, there were Ron Paul signs practically every where you went during this past campaign "season".
Last October, there was much discussing of the presidential election of course, but also a lot about how we elect local and state representatives as well. One day around then, R piped up from the back seat of the car with something to this effect: "You know those people we vote for to go speak for us in Washington D.C.? Are they kind of like those guys who act as Santa and then go tell him what kids tell them they want for Christmas?" My response: "Yeah. Something like that.", smiling and knowing that he "got it", then realizing that, yes, we have an almost 9 year old who still fully believes in Santa.
On November 4th, only a few months ago, I stayed up after all else in the house were asleep, listening to XM radio's coverage as the results came in.
Thank you also to Amanda for turning us on to this book.
It looks like you've had this book close at hand recently as well. We've had it out from the library for over a month and have barely
scratched its surface. Monday, our annual watching of Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech online, was followed by much discussion and readings from
this book about how the White House was built by slaves, how some of
our first presidents were slave owners themselves, how now we were going to have an African-American as the president in that White House.
Yesterday, the boys and I watched the inauguration day proceedings online (using the radio only as backup when I accidentally unplugged the computer just minutes before the swearing in. ACK!) It just so happened that we upgraded our DSL last week, enough to allow mostly unbroken live streaming. We periodically checked in on a GWB countdown clock online, and the boys also set their own timer (seen above), counting down the last couple of hours of Bush's presidency. Then, after the swearing in, we refreshed the White House web page to see the change over there as well.
Far too much of my own elementary education was spent on US history. I was in first grade in 1976, the bicentennial year, after all. We're mostly using Story of the World as our history curriculum which, by the way has been quite a learning experience for me, as well. I'm afraid, however, we've been missing out by not covering our own country's history with a little more depth. If nothing else, the past few days have been quite an education, both for the boys and for myself, and I have a renewed interest in making a better effort to
teach the boys more about the history of theirown country as well.
