Philosophy Teaching Award

Daniel received an award for teaching last Thursday during a ceremony on Graduate Student Day at USC. Here he is pictured with USC President Dr. Andrew Sorensen (in bow tie), Philosophy Dept. Graduate Director Dr. Chris Tollefson, and the Graduate School Dean Dr. James Buggy. I know how hard he works and how great of a teacher he is. It is really nice that he was able to be acknowledged by the department and the university. Congratulations Daniel, we are proud of you!

(Daniel speaking now)-There is an interesting little article on the rise in undergraduate enrollment in philosophy departments at Rutgers and NYU. This bodes well for future employment (not that I could work at either institution, but if their experience is representative the effects should trickle down).

You can find the article here.

I will let you be the judge of whether the article is on target regarding the reason for the rise in enrollment. I am just happy if it means a growing demand for philosophy professors. This, if the case, makes a Teaching award a bit more valuable on the resume ;-)

What I miss most when they're gone

First, my loving wife: I miss her friendship-the kind you have with someone day in and day out who can read you like a book even when you don't want to be read. I miss the daily encouragement and real belief-by real belief I mean the kind someone has in you when they really know your strengths, weaknesses, and quirks and can make an honest assessment. I miss the warm body at night. I miss sharing the labor of living. I miss feeding off of her strength and endurance...
Second, my loving girls. I miss the little feet, the little hands, the huge smiles, the soft sweet faces, the quick, strong, and fluid bodies. I miss the young energy, I miss the honesty, I miss the innocence, and the insight that comes with not knowing much. It's been days since I have heard a "Today I did X for the first time" or "Dad did you know X ?". I miss the surprise neck hugs from behind or the surprise tackle hug when I'm not looking.
And its only been a few days! But just imagine if three of your best friends took off for the beach. Now I am left here uninterrupted with my own mind. Yikes. (Cue the violin).
These are my days,
Daniel

Backyard Art . . . isn't it beautiful

Daniel took the TV outside and smashed it in. Then we all got out the paints and started making the TV beautiful. What a great family project. I don't think I need to explain why we did it. Most of you already know how we feel about media and advertising. I believe we waste way too much time with it on. It's so tempting to plop down in front of it when you are tired from life. But why are we so tired? Why don't we have the energy to do the things we really want to do? Maybe if we weren't staying up late watching the tv we wouldn't be tired the next day:)

We won't be missing much since we didn't watch it much. But I think we (Daniel and I)feel a little relieved to have it out of the house. The girls haven't even really noticed. And I think it's a nice piece of art for the backyard!
"American children and adolescents spend 22 to 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping. By the age of 70 they will have spent 7 to 10 years of their lives watching TV."
-- The Kaiser Family Foundation

I don't want to get to be 70 years old and regret the 7-10 years I spent watching tv when I could have been spending time with the kids, developing friendships, playing outside, or reading good books.

The Story of Stuff (click to see video)

This video has been forwarded to me from 2 different people. "It is a clear, simple, and yet devastating indictment of our current consumer habits," says Daniel. This woman spent 10 years traveling and researching where our stuff comes from and where it goes. Even if the statistics are only partially accurate they should encourage us to rethink how our need for stuff impacts the world. And it's entertaining to boot.
http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Halloween Soapbox

Now a days, October 31 is the end of a week long celebration. For example, the girls got halloween coloring sheets and candy on Monday at gymnastics, we had a halloween party with our playgroup on Tuesday that we dressed up for (we intentionally skipped a Halloween party last Friday with our homeschool coop), then on Halloween day we got some candies from their ballet class before going trick or treating.
There was also Boo at the Zoo, Hallowonka at the kid's museum, Tricks
and Treats at the State Museum and I'm sure many other events in
Columbia that we did not attend. In addition, any time we went
to a grocery store there were candies, packaged costumes, and
decorations literally talking to us as we walked by. Is it just me or
is it all a little much? Maybe it's always been like this? I guess as a parent who is concerned with her kids' sugar consumption, dental health, and overall awareness of America's consumerism obsession I find it a little disturbing. You might say, "But Halloween is a special occasion!" Maybe you could use that as an excuse but don't we say that about everything. Candy and sweets abound as we go to birthday parties for friends and family, vacations, and now we are heading into the holidays where we will be inundated with holiday sweets at every "special occasion." AND have you ever thought about what all the candy is doing to our poor kids' bodies. We load them up with candy which has no nutritional value and is filled with all kinds of preservatives, chemicals, and animal by-products (gelatin) then send them off to school and expect them to sit in their seats and pay attention. What about at home when they are bouncing off the walls and arguing about who's candy is who's and how much candy that get to have every day until their load is gone!? What about the obscene amount of calories?? Should we blame our nation's kids for being overweight and consumeristic (I don't think that's a word but I'm using it anyway.)??

Well, sorry about that. I try to keep my radical opinions out of the blog for the most part but sometimes I just can't help myself. We did go trick or treating last night. We went with some friends who have similar values. All the kids got dressed up in borrowed or their own costumes and we went to about 5 houses. We made a deal with the kids before trick or treating that we would exchange the candy they got from that night for some natural candy, gum, and organic vegan chocolate. I can hardly believe how much candy they got from just those few houses. The girls were happy to make the exchange. I think they trust us and are just happy to be together as a family and the candy is a bonus.


Ellen was a witch and Arianna was a princess.

pet sitting and no TV

we are pet sitting for some friends this week. The guinea pigs are Cindy and Layla and rabbit is Dora. The girls have had so much fun with the animals, especially the pigs. They go get them first thing in the morning and pet them, take them out of the cage and bring them in the kitchen to run around for a little while. They are a lot of work though. It has been fun but we will not be getting any little animals like this for our own house.

The pet sitting has been a good transition into life without TV. Daniel and I have been talking about getting rid of the tv for a long time. We finally did it last week. We never really watched it much. I used it with the girls in the mornings while I brushed and put up their hair (so, usually about 30 minutes a day). During the season we loved watching America's Funniest Home Videos together on Sunday nights. I would then spend several evenings a week (after the girls were in bed) watching shows while Daniel was studying. This doesn't mean that we arent's watching DVDs and youtube:) We like checking out the new stuff on youtube every once in a while. The Office clips are our favorite right now. We've also gotten season 1 and 2 of The Office from our library. We also have the cheapest membership to netflix so we get 2 movies a month.

I'd have to say that the nicest thing about not having tv is not having to watch commercials! The other obvious thing is that instead of turning it on when I'm (we're) tired and just want to zone out we usually just do something else. I've been going to bed earlier, reading novels, browsing the internet, reading the paper, planning and organizing for the school year. . . I'm not saying that we'll be tvless forever. I guess we could change our minds one day. The girls haven't really missed it. Like I said they can still watch DVDs and this week they've been totally entertained by our borrowed pets. It's just so nice not having the big box taking up space in our den and our lives.

scavenging, collecting, and conserving

Daniel thought I was going to think he was crazy when he asked me to use the van to go get a load of broken up concrete. He had already made a bed out of some other old concrete he collected before. I thought it was beautiful. So instead of giving him a hard time I offered to help. We drove a few miles down the road to where someone had taken up the sidewalk and loaded huge chunks of sidewalk into the van. Altogether Daniel has brought home 3 loads of the recycled blocks. He then began cutting it with a hammer and chisel and stacking it.

Around this same time he saw a bunch of bamboo that someone had chopped down from their backyard. It was stacked up on the side of the street. So he asked the homeowner if he could have some and he carried home 2 big bushels of it. It makes great steaks and teepees for the garden.



Even before we got the concrete and bamboo we started thinking about how nice it would be to have a rain barrel or something to catch rain water and use on the garden. We've seen them in gardening books but they are very expensive to order and seem so simple to make. The hard part is finding the barrels locally. We heard from a friend that we might could get one from a pepsi, coke or beer plant in town. So daniel began calling and even went by there twice until finally someone knew what he was talking about and was happy to hand over 6 large food grade plastic barrels. We'll keep you posted on how the project goes. We know several people who are looking to get a barrel from us already:) By the way, Ellen took this photo.
This is obviously a picture of the garden. Notice the sunflower is blooming and it is at least 7-8 feet tall. Look at the monster squash plant to the right of the pic. Can you believe how big it is? We've already started eating it and it's kinda scary to think of how much more we will be eating:)

Racism and the Ns

Several weeks ago Jennifer and I got wind of a N rally taking place on the Capitol steps. I had attended a protest several years ago in Raleigh and decided it was worth the effort for us to protest this one as well. Good education for the girls as well. There are few things that sicken me more than racism especially of this blatant sort. My grandfather fought bravely in WW2 to prevent just this type of ideology from spreading and now the government protects their right to recruit and rally on the most hallowed of civic spaces where equality and justice are at least symbolically represented.
Here is the problem with racism: it misses its target completely. There simply is no scientifically verifiable "race" criteria. In other words, if one were to look at the genetic factors that map on to skin color one would find them completely irrelevant to ancestral ties. So that a "white" and "black" person might be genetically closer to one another than a "white" to "white" comparison. The point is that "color" marks NO significant indication of any other traits. YOU CAN'T USE IT TO MAP or CARVE groups. Doing so is akin to collecting people based on some other irrelevant factor like number of hairs on the back of the hand. What would this have to do with intelligence, ability, or anything else? There simply is no RACE. RACES do not exist.
Now, and quickly, for all those who are screaming out that there just are differences between "groups" that must be accounted for let me address your point. YES, people are different. Yes, nature has created people of quite a variety within the incredibly limited domain of the human species, but what is important is that color of skin bears no indication of that ability. Difference abounds. It abounds so much that the similarities between members of different "races" would make them more genetically homogeneous than marking the groups by color. Race does not exist. In order for their to be "races" there would need to be some mark, some "essential" property that members of that group all had. NONE EXISTS, PERIOD. SORRY.

So, we went to protest the rally. Fortunately this group was more like a circus than a well organized scary machine. Hitler would have been embarrassed. Unfortunately, I was at times embarrassed by the circus that I was surrounded by. My sign read "Support a hate free Columbia" while my fellow protesters chanted "N- should die!" It was rather sad.
But, my real point for posting this, besides sharing another glimpse of Kruidenier life, is to alert people to the continued existence and growth of terrorist groups within our borders. Yes, and lest you think this is a Southern problem, N- are based in Michigan and growing more rapidly in the North and Midwest. It is their outright and public ideology that Israel should be "nuked", that there should be a racially "pure" America, etc. They prey on poor "white" Americans in hopes of deceiving them into thinking they are fighting the good fight against the evil races destroying high Anglo-Saxon culture. It is a sad commentary on our culture that we so passively allow such groups to thrive.
The rally also generally sparks widespread "free-speech" debate. That is a whole-nother topic, but one I have been thinking about intensely. I think it is best though, to remember three things: First, the issue is speech not thought. Second, speech is an action, and like any other has consequences. Third, there is no such thing as completely free speech. In other words the question is not whether to have free-speech or not, but to create a criteria that fairly delimits the difference between censured and free expression. There is no getting off the see-saw.
OK, for those of you who made it, you'll be glad it will be some time before I post again.
Daniel

great moments of the week

The other day Daniel was sitting on the porch after walking around the yard and a big grasshopper was on his jeans. Ellen was so excited that she went and got her little bug catcher and they put it in a container so they could get a closer look. Then I told her we needed to put it back outside. A few minutes later she walked back in with it on her arm! Instead of letting it out she said she put her hand out and he walked right onto her. She loved it. Arianna has always been a little unsure about holding any bugs besides ladybugs.

Something else very exciting happened this week. Ellen asked me if she could read a book to me! We always spend a short time each morning practicing reading. Ellen has been knowing all the letter sounds for a while but she didn't really like putting them together. So, she would sometimes protest when it came time to do our "reading". She would do the same thing when she was learning to ride her bike. I kept reminding her that when you first learn something it is hard work but eventually it is easier. That is a hard lesson to learn--I'm still working on that myself. But lately she really has started to recognize words and it's getting easier. I felt like it was a great relief and a great moment in my life when I saw that she wanted to read to me. Arianna is doing the same thing of course. She's still learning letter sounds and recognition. I'm sure she'll be reading soon since she wants to do everything Ellen is doing.

problems and solutions

So after the hard drive failed on our mac laptop, the hard drive began to fail on the pc that mom gave me! We took our mac in to "compugeeks" to see if they could get the data off of the hard drive after the computer completely shut down last Sunday. We were a bit worried since daniel had his writings from the past few years, all his students grades, I had pictures, and we both had tons of music and of course most of it was not backed up! Thankfully they are able to get our stuff off of the hard drive (hopefully as I will know for sure tomorrow when I go pick it up.) We were very thankful to have the pc but it soon showed the same error message "smart drive failing." That happened at the beginning of last week and I called mom on Thursday complaining about our problems and she offered to give us her desktop pc that she doesn't use. I had my first dance class and was the host for this weeks early learners coop so I couldn't drive up there to get it so mom volunteered to bring it to us. About an hour later mom was on her way with the new computer! She stayed the whole weekend and played with the girls and even took them out yesterday to give me and daniel the afternoon off so we could hang out alone. It was a very relaxing ending to what was a very stressful week! THANKS MOM

Daniel found this snake in the yard yesterday while cleaning up. Ellen was not afraid to hold it and as you can tell she loved it!


This is a picture of us eating lunch the other day. We like to sit out on our back deck when it's so warm back there. The girls were being silly and I had to get a picture of the outfit that Arianna had on. She picked that out. She loves to wear things that are colorful and I love to see what she comes up with. I think this was the second or third change of clothes that she made for the day.