“And as if this were not enough in your sight, O God, you have spoken about the future of the house of your servant. You have looked on me as though I were the most exalted of men, O Lord God.”
~ 1 Chronicles 17:17
“Though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”
~ Psalm 37:24
I am at the Ohio Homeschool Convention. This is their 25th anniversary this year. I have been a part of 19 of these conventions, 150 over the last two decades. Congratulations to Ohio Homeschoolers!
My wife, Karen, and my son Peter have graciously excused me from my vendor duties so that I can write.
As I write and meditate I look around me. To the right of me a family is spreading its homemade paraphernalia on a table. Bologna, whole grain bread, apples, and water are carefully placed on the obviously aged table cloth that graces an otherwise beat up old chipped round wooden table. This family honors the old table and this old veteran with its presence. We both are blessed. The family of six corporately bows its head and gives thanks to our God.
To my left is a child gleefully throwing a red rubber ball with a corner torn out to his father. The child is screaming in joy. The dad is smiling. A little innocent game gives so much joy to its owners. And to this quiet observer who loves both of them for their gift.
Behind me is a mom quietly weeping. Around her table are four children eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I don’t know why that mom is weeping. I see she is speaking on an ancient Nokia phone. No iPhone for this mom! Suddenly she stops and prays. All four children, their grape jelly and peanut butter sandwiches hanging in mid-air waving to God, stop and pray, too. Obviously the kids don’t know what their mom is saying or why she is crying but they are neither upset or curious — they grasp the import of the moment and join their mom in this sacred moment. I can’t help feeling like God is answering their prayers.
In the corner is a teen quietly reading my worldview devotional Fire That Burns But Does not Consume that my son Peter no doubt sold her.
As I look around me on this late summer morning, I can’t help but feel that history is being made. Quietly, unpretentiously, with no cynicism, a people gathers in places all over this nation. Peoria, Columbus, St. Charles, Pottstown, and Boise. Indianapolis, Phoenix, Knoxville, and Birmingham. In a hundred places, thousands strong, they are changing history. And they are my people, my community, because I too am a homeschooler. I bow my head with them, I eat my peanut butter and jelly, and I dream dreams with them. I see history being made.
Grammar: Adverb Placement, Part 2
A very careful writer will so place the modifiers of a verb that the reader will not mistake the meaning.
The rigid rule in such a case would be to put the modifier in such a position that the reader not only can understand the meaning intended, but cannot misunderstand the thought. Now, when such adverbs as only, even, etc., are used, they are usually placed in a strictly correct position, if they modify single words; but they are often removed from the exact position, if they modify phrases or clauses: for example, from Irving, “The site is only to be traced by fragments of bricks, china, and earthenware.” “Here” only modifies the phrase by fragments of bricks, etc., but it is placed before the infinitive. This misplacement of the adverb can be detected only by analysis of the sentence.1
Tell what the adverb modifies in each quotation, and see if it is placed in the proper position:2
- “Only the name of one obscure epigrammatist has been embalmed for us in the verses of his rival.” — Palgrave
- “Do you remember pea shooters? I think we only had them on going home for holidays.” — Thackeray
- “Irving could only live very modestly. He could only afford to keep one old horse.” — Id
- “The arrangement of this machinery could only be accounted for by supposing the motive power to have been steam.” —Wendell Phillips
- “Such disputes can only be settled by arms.” —Id
Evaluating Essays
Score the following ACT essay and then discuss how it could be improved.
Has today’s abundance of information only made it more difficult for us to understand the world around us?
In today’s society, information, more information than could fit in any library, is available instantaneously, easily, and cheaply. Just moments after turning on a computer, one can arrive at millions of pages about giant salamanders, the principality of Monaco, or any other subject imaginable. But is this good for us? Does an abundance of information actually translate into greater understanding of the world around us? No, it does not and, in fact, it has quite the opposite effect: with so much information, we are actually less able to make sense of the world.
“Truth” in the Internet age is often shaky at best. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has become a commonplace reference for many. It contains volumes upon volumes of information, more than any print encyclopedia, and important articles are often current to the day. Wikipedia articles are always changing, and edit wars among groups of disagreeing editors can erupt on controversial articles. “Truth” on Wikipedia, unlike scholarly circles, is often a democracy. The side with the most numerous or most active editors, not necessarily the side with the most solid facts, wins out. Other areas of the Internet exhibit these same tendencies, although often to a much greater degree.
Furthermore, the pages that appear at the top of Internet searches are often not the most reputable, scholarly, or even factual, but rather those that match the search term best or receive the greatest number of visits. It is often difficult to sort out the worthy sources from the rest.
So much information makes it quite difficult to sort out any decent approximation of truth.
“I did very well on the ACT because I practiced several weeks and then spent some time in prayer where I got in touch with God and myself. Finally, I memorized Scripture that really helped me calm down on test day.” — a testimony from a student who made 32 on the ACT.
Science Test
Several scientific tests have proven that familiarity alone with a test will increase your score. No portion of the ACT is more responsive than the science section. To that end, there are three parts of the ACT science test.
Data analysis: The ACT has three data analysis passages with 5 questions each for a total of 15 questions. The data analyzed is a table, diagram, or graph followed with a minimum of text. You will be asked to analyze the data in the table, diagram, or graph. Strategy: it does not matter if you are analyzing shoes or microbes, the data is all that interests you. Typically, data is measured in a graph that includes a Y and an X axis. A diagram or table is merely a modification of that concept.
Research analysis: The ACT has three research summary passages with six questions each. In other words, this section is about one-half of the entire science section of the ACT. Research analysis questions, like data analysis questions, include tables, diagrams, and graphs. Now, however, you are asked to evaluate the veracity of the research. This research will also include the purpose of the study, the design of the experiment, and the results itself.
Experimental design: In an experimental design question all factors remain constant — except one — and you will need to determine the outcome. For instance, if you have a block of ice in an ice chest, and the outside temperature rises 50 percent, you will need to predict the result. Everything else is the same — the ice is the same and the ice chest is the same — but the outside temperature rises. Be sure and predict changes that are unequivocally related to the rise in temperature. For instance, if you said that the water was “salty,” that change would not be related to the temperature rise.
Life on the Mississippi3
Mark Twain
Released in 1883 by James R. Osgood & Co., the first edition had 624 pages and 316 illustrations. Twain incorporated passages from other books on the river when he discovered he didn’t have enough material to fill out the book; he also included a portion from his unfinished Huckleberry Finn manuscript.
In the early 1870s, Twain wanted to write an account of his piloting days in an effort to preserve the memory of the rapidly disappearing steamboat era on the Mississippi. The result was the “Old Times on the Mississippi” serial, published in seven installments in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875. This novel is full of several genres: essays, biography (non-fiction), and fictional narrative. You will surely enjoy it!
Suggested Vocabulary
(Young Mark Twain is learning about how to be a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Mr. Bixby is his captain.)
Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things. Said he, “This is Six-Mile Point.” I assented. It was pleasant enough information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another time he said, “This is Nine-Mile Point.” Later he said, “This is Twelve-Mile Point.” They were all about level with the water’s edge; they all looked about alike to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would change the subject. But no; he would crowd up around a point, hugging the shore with affection, and then say: “The slack water ends here, abreast this bunch of China-trees; now we cross over.” So he crossed over. He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and got abuse.
The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed. At midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night watchman said, “Come! Turn out!”
And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary procedure; so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. I was annoyed. I said: “What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle of the night for. Now as like as not I’ll not get to sleep again to-night.”
The watchman said, “Well, if this an’t good, I’m blest.”
The “off-watch” was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter from them, and such remarks as “Hello, watchman! an’t the new cub turned out yet? He’s delicate, likely. Give him some sugar in a rag and send for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-baby to him.”
About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here was something fresh — this thing of getting up in the middle of the night to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this new phase of it.
It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarly reckless outcast. Presently he turned on me and said: “What’s the name of the first point above New Orleans?”
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.
“Don’t KNOW?”
This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I had to say just what I had said before.
“Well, you’re a smart one,” said Mr. Bixby. “What’s the name of the NEXT point?”
Once more I didn’t know.
“Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of ANY point or place I told you.”
I studied a while and decided that I couldn’t.
“Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to cross over?”
“I — I — don’t know.”
“You — you — don’t know?” mimicking my drawling manner of speech. “What DO you know?”
“I — I — nothing, for certain.”
“By the great Caesar’s ghost, I believe you! You’re the stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of you being a pilot — you! Why, you don’t know enough to pilot a cow down a lane.”
Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.
“Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points for?”
I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation provoked me to say: “Well — to — to — be entertaining, I thought.”
This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was: because he was brim full, and here were subjects who would TALK BACK. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such an irruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and farther away the scowmen’s curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said to me in the gentlest way, “My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time I tell you a thing, put it down right away. There’s only one way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just like A B C.”
