Inspirations of the Week - 7QT & 100th Post!

Happy Friday 7QT link up with Kelly over at This Ain't the Lyceum.

1

Y'all, we finished choreographing the ballet for showcase!!

And it's not even the week of dress rehearsals. Boo ya.

2

I recorded the whole adventure in my first attempt at a day in a life post.

Things I learned.

* I get more done before 10am than I do the whole rest of the day.

* A lot of my day is spent having my plans thwarted and changing gears quickly.

* Yet, somehow I typically manage to get done what needed to get done.

3

I went to a talk last Tuesday at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology on Matteo Ricci SJ and his work in the Jesuit China missions.

Apparently he was also a map maker, and he created the oldest surviving Chinese map that shows the Americas. 

4

The talk got me all inspired to check out the China at the Center exhibit going on over at the Asian Museum of Art in SF.

They are exhibiting the Ricci map, and the 1674 Verbiest Map: A Complete Map of the World. It's on loan from the Library of Congress and has this is the first time it has been exhibited in history. 

Nerd time!!

I love these old maps  because of the annotations. They're full of information about the current assumptions about animals, people, and cultures. It's the stuff assumed to be so obvious and clear that it might not be recorded elsewhere.

5

Other thing that has inspired me this week: The Well Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer.

I picked it up off the new books shelf at my local library branch assuming it was a homeschooling book. (I had enjoyed her other book The Well Trained Mind.) Come to find out, it is a homeschooling book - just for homeschooling yourself.

It takes the Great Books lists that are floating around everywhere, puts them into chronological genre lists, and explains how to get the most out of each book. The genres are: fiction, autobiography, history, drama, poetry, and science.

There are some books I've read before, but plenty more I'm guilty of referencing all the time yet have never fully read (Roussesu and Plato are my worst offenders.)

Time to just read them!

6

I am starting with the fiction list, which begins with Don Quixote. Oh my goodness, that's a thick book!

I have a rule that all books need to grip me by page 50 or I'm allowed to quit. I've decided that rule is going to hold true with completing these lists. There's a history book coming down the line that is over 1800 pages long....so that better be a good one.

7

Matt is going out of town for a business trip next week. Gearing up for some solo parenting time!

I should probably take some of my own advice and just throw a party. 

Still in a Southern kind of mood following the New Orleans trip. Bet I could find something that goes well with mint juleps.

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Bonus: Blogger tells me this is my 100th post!! Whoop whoop!