tenderfoot has requested that we do more number work. so we’ve visited hobjolia again: a land i created some years ago that is entered through a portal. the portal is found on trees with ‘posted’ signs, and only the ones that have direct sun or moonlight on them act as a gateway to hobjolia. you have to jump into the tree to get there. hobjolian trees exist in the wilde woods where lightfingers, sugar plum, whispering wind, sally and suzy sullivan, and the tottly family live. these are all characters i made up that feature in many stories that get told in our family. hobjolia is peopled with hobjos and the sky is green, the grass is blue, the moon shines during the day, and the sun at night there. there are seven hobjo clans, distinguished by their different colored hair: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. their king has all seven colors of hair plus a streak of pure white.
in hobjolia there are very few trees, only the portal trees. the grobjos: green haired hobjos, are the caretakers of the trees. while tending the trees the grobjos begin to notice the different numbers of branches and how some are a part of the trunk. and thusly is how i’ve introduced her to the factor trees block, found in the files at the waldorf home educators yahoo group. we’ve spent long moments looking at the trees around here and finding the pines are just like the one trees, the tulip poplars are twos, sometimes even threes, and the apple trees can be threes or fours. so the factor trees have begun and she is enjoying experimenting with the many ways that the trees can be made.
over the past two months we’ve done stories for how the days got their names. i told the tale of rabbit and the sun, from native american myths and legends, for sunday. the washerwoman who disappears, only to go to the moon and return with moonshine to put sparkle into the clothes, for monday. tews, loki, and the imprisonment of the fenris wolf in ragnarok for tuesday. how woden traded his one eye for wisdom for wednesday. thursday’s tale featured thor besting the giant at four challenges. friday was the story of frigga and her son,baldur’s, death. and saturday was a tale of saturn, who looks after the farms and things that grow via agricultural means.
so the children wanted to know how did january get its’ name??? for this i told the story of romulus and remus, twin brothers being raised by a she-wolf until a shepherd found and raised them, then romulus going on to become king of the city of rome, which he founded. this led to many discussions on: how do you make a city??? lots of exploration there, but eventually i told of janus, the being who could look both behind into the old year and forward into the coming year at the same time, guardian of doorways, portals, gates, and entrances from one place to another. i tied it together with romulus coming to capture the sabine woman and janus coming to the women’s aid. january: named after janus.
The Coddiwomplers Cauldron 
Throughout this awesome design of things you receive an A+ with regard to effort and hard work. Where exactly you lost me personally was first on your particulars. As the maxim goes, details make or break the argument.. And it could not be more true at this point. Having said that, allow me reveal to you just what exactly did deliver the results. Your article (parts of it) can be incredibly engaging which is probably why I am making an effort to comment. I do not make it a regular habit of doing that. Second, despite the fact that I can certainly notice the leaps in logic you make, I am not necessarily confident of how you seem to unite your ideas which in turn help to make the conclusion. For the moment I will subscribe to your point but wish in the near future you link your dots better.
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wonderful! your comment is validating to me in that i am succeeding in my tone/style of writing. it is with intention that i leave out particulars. the leaps of logic are deliberate. my aim in writing in this particular way is to evoke a conversational feel that is reflective of a face to face conversation we might have. i speak in this way you see, and want to see if i can write as i speak.
now, when writing, it is easy to catch one’s thoughts, group them, collect them, unite them, fill in details, and so on, in ways that cannot be done with the spoken word. but my goal here is to be oral in writing.
that being said, what i enjoy most about conversations (at least of the kind i have) is that details and particulars get introduced in the dialogue at the behest of those engaged.
rather than give away all the details exhaustively from the onset, in a bombardment of facts, i leave that breathing space. from there you can chew, ponder, digest and enter as you will. also, consider this: with four children coming and going, interupting my speech with their needs, i find myself economizing with words, speaking what is neccessary to get my conclusion across minus the process of how i got there. for the time being i have found this to work for me, especially since those in between spots can be returned to as needed.
it is my way of honoring myself, my family, and the listener as well, who can thus be actively engaged in dialogue, as he chooses, rather than monologue. when reading it is easy to passively process the information presented. my hope is to nullify the passivity through the style of my writing, enabling an ongoing conversation with the reader via the writing medium as it were.
now i shall bound and leap again, to invite you to fill that space by asking: what is it you want to have filled in?
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