The Peaceful Gnome

I just wanted to make the location of the Group Pool of photos from Good Vibrations a bit more obvious: It is right here: Good Vibrations Unschooling Conference Photo Pool.

I've uploaded some more photos to my Good Vibrations Flickr page here . Also there is a "pool page" of photos here that I hope to add mine to pretty soon. On Monday we left San Diego and traveled up to San Simeon where we stayed overnight at the Motel 6. Today we visited Hearst Castle, very cool, and that counts as "history" for our "schooly" family and friends ;-) Then we had a picnic at the beach in San Simeon where we watched hundreds of pelicans diving into the water after fish. A short way up the coast we saw 60 or so Elephant Seals, or as Serenity and I tend to call them "Sea Elephants." :-)

We are on our last day at the Good Vibrations Unschooling Conference in San Diego . We're having a great time, learning lots of new things, meeting new people and making new friends. It's a nice hotel, nice city and all in all I'm really glad that we have come. I have not been taking many pictures because I've been way too busy to do it. I have a few posted up on Flickr right now but that's mostly from the Thursday beach potluck. I think I'll take some more tonight at the dance and maybe this afternoon poolside. Or not :-) I'll post and let you know if I do.

Over the weekend, Mom, Serenity and me all went up to Fiddle Creek campground on the Yuba River north of Nevada City. We had a great time! Serenity especially loved meeting the two rats that Jaden brought, Russia and Rose :-)

Well, it looks like a consensus is forming in California, we are going to ignore those closed signs on the parks :-) From the SF Gate: The question on everyone's mind seems to be, "How do you close a beach?" One imagines giant tractors hauling away the sand, or armed guards standing sentry at the shoreline. I'll admit I've entertained visions of Schwarzenegger himself stomping on toddlers' sandcastles. The reality is far less dramatic. "There will be nobody to clean the restrooms and haul away the trash," Stearns says. "Parking lots may be barricaded." But people will still be able to walk in and out of the parks, just as they've always done. Even if there's no toilet paper in the restrooms, I daresay beachgoers will find their way to the dunes. Northern California is uniquely equipped to maintain its gnarly vibe despite the loss of funding. After all, this isn't Malibu. On Bay Area beaches, lifeguards are as scarce as the su...

Great article on schools as prison and unschooling by Peter Gray Published on Psychology Today ( http://www.psychologytoday.com ) “Why Don’t Students Like School?” Well, Duhhhh… By Peter Gray Created Sep 2 2009 - 4:40am Someone recently referred me to a book that they thought I'd like. It's a 2009 book, aimed toward teachers of grades K through 12, titled Why Don't Students Like School? It's by a cognitive scientist named Daniel T. Willingham, and it has received rave reviews by countless people involved in the school system. Google the title and author and you'll find pages and pages of doting reviews and nobody pointing out that the book totally and utterly fails to answer the question posed by its title. Willingham's thesis is that students don't like school because their teachers don't have a full understanding of certain cognitive principles and therefore don't teach as well as they could. They don't ...

So, Bible Logos software is having a bible giveaway , which reminded me that I can link to scripture from within my blog, which I think is cool but I don't use it much. Which then led me to ponder, why not? I suppose it's because I post about daily life and political rants more than I do about reading God's word. Which is really lame because I do read the Word each and every day after all and could probably find something to say about it every day at that. So then, Ephesians 1:9-11 was part of my reading this morning. It reminded me that God really does have everything under control and that it's all going to come together in the end to His glory and my good. :-)

Cool photo, not so cool fire...

Here is an awesome Pastor's round-table from Issues Etc. on the Holy Spirit:

Americans have become terrified of all risk, just look at any airport or watch kids riding bikes or skating with pads and helmets and being tracked via GPS... We've become a nation of cowards whimpering for big mommy government to protect us from the nasty scary real world, giving up every vestige of freedom in exchange for the mere illusion of safety. We need to risk failure or even injury, we should enjoy a little bit of danger, otherwise life is just too pathetic to bother with. IMO.

And the pig responds, "It ain't no more." Nice.

SFGate: Day in Pictures Source: www.sfgate.com Careful, somebody spilled some freedom: The correct translation of these characters at an art exhibition in Beijing is "Caution slippery," but this one works too.

C S Lewis and Galileo by Hobbits, Narnia & Spirituality Examiner, Mark Sommer Source: www.examiner.com Today marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope, an invention which helped promote the Copernican view of the universe. It also is seen by many as the start of the divergence of religion ...

What's it all about, where are we going? The journey is the thing after all. Or so I think anyway, and I'm certainly enjoying the journey even if it's not the point, so for me it works :-) Here's a bit from Alan Watts Theater , a few little cartoon presentations, Matt Stone and Trey Parker -created, of recorded passages from Alan Watts presentations. I found this on Sandra Dodd's web sit after doing a Randomize me search. That's a good way to find cool things on her site, it's so big and full of unschooling wisdom I never know what to look for, but since it's all good anyway random works ;-)

Warm and sunny buy its nice under the oaks. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I am hiking on Pleasanton ridge right now. Alone for once as no one else wanted to come with me. It is sort of peaceful actually. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

So, whenever I want to embed audio from Issues Etc. the embed button is missing. I don't know why. Anyway I'm trying to fake it by pasting in the url of the mp3 that is up into an old embed. Lets see if it works ;-) Update, it worked! :-) This is Issues Etc. reviewing a sermon by Pastor William Weedon who writes Weedon's Blog . It's about the proper way to respond to things like the ELCA apostasy: Click here if you don't see the embedded audio player to go to Issues etc. on demand page.

Here is some perspective about just what a $100,000,000.00 cut from the Federal Budget means.