Category: Learning Lifestyle

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FFT: Assistant Director?!

Fuck, I curse too much for this gig.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. 

I’ve never acted, directed, written, built a set, played music, or been any part of a stage production. I’m sitting in on auditions this week and don’t know the material. The Pilgrim’s Progress is the most famous Christian novel in history and I hardly know the outline. I feel that pressure too, of not being “enough” of a Christian, whatever that means. And getting children to focus on a task is not an unschooling dad’s strongest play. Even though I’ve been assured that my role will be limited and it all seems manageable, I’m a bit terrified.

That’s why I volunteered. I’ve been a fan of theater since my best friend’s family took us to see Phantom of the Opera in Philly as high school freshmen. He got sent to boarding school and I started hanging with the drama kids. I became a casual theatergoer, from Evil Dead: The Musical to Patrick Stewart as Macbeth in London to many more Shakespeare productions with my sons.

Now I’m father to a couple of drama kids. Their bravery inspires me daily. They love an audience and they’re not afraid of failure. I’m not helping this production for their sake, but they have excited me to take on something new and scary.

FFT: Fucking First Time. New places, new people, new responsibilities…these are the things that frighten and exhilarate me.

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Thrice Malice

Michael Malice has evolved from a curmudgeonly hipster troll on late night cable news (Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld) to the most curmudgeonly optimistic troll in media today. It has been a joy to watch his public journey toward self actualization.

During a few hours on the road yesterday, I was able to listen to three new interviews with him. Each with a different flavor.

The first to grab my attention was Malice with Isaac Morehouse.

Michael Malice Thinks Things Are Looking Up

Morehouse is the founder of Praxis, a modern apprenticeship company expanding the options for young people to enter a productive and fulfilling adulthood. He talks with Malice about the broad concepts of the Red Pill and the White Pill.

The Red Pill is the mindset shift that occurs when one understands that the corporate media is lying to them about almost everything. One pill may have you realizing that reporters are ordinary humans who want to be liked by the celebrities, politicians, and power brokers they cover and will protect those relationships rather than chronicle dirty truths (e.g. Epstein, Queen Elizabeth II, Kate Middleton, and Prince William). Though Malice warns, “You’re supposed to take one Red Pill, not the whole bottle.” I’m guilty of recreational Red Pilling when the accepted bullshit is flowing my way.

The White Pill is the hero to the villainess Black Pill. Simply put, it is the idea that today’s methods of communication and information sharing have taken away the power of the few to control the narratives that lie us into domestic, international, and interpersonal conflicts. There will continue to be turmoil as the power structure is brought down, but the world will be freer and more peaceful on the other side.

As I don’t obsess over the latest fever dream of broadcast news, and Malice mentioned the storming of the Capitol in that podcast, I sought out commentary and eyewitness accounts of what happened recently in Washington, DC.

Storming the Capitol: Michael Malice, Karlyn Borysenko and Elijah Schaffer

Dave Rubin is a commentator who I have come trust through his relationship and discussions with Jordan Peterson and his public conversion away from ideology.

This roundtable includes two reporters who were at the scene on the events in DC on January 6th. These are not narratives, but facts from the ground that will not please those who want a tidy story. Malice rightfully puts this in context with the burning of DC and other cities in June.

Lastly, I found Malice’s latest episode of “Your Welcome” where he has a conversation with comedian Dave Smith.

Dave Smith – In The House 10.Three – Episode #136

Smith and Malice discuss the general mess that is the Libertarian Party. The Party missed a huge opportunity in 2020 and is floundering with an undercooked stew of bumper sticker ideas and desire to be “in the middle.”

One big takeaway from this conversation for me is the concept that libertarians have a position that can out right the Right and out left the Left. I have to give it another listen, but this may be the banner under which libertarians can gather a cohesive debate strategy.

That’s a lot of homework and I hate homework. The first discussion is really the one you want to introduce you to Michael Malice and a positive outlook for the coming storm.

Michael Malice’s books:

Isaac Morehouse’s books:

Dave Rubin’s book:

Dave Smith’s comedy special:

What I’m reading:

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LOVE

During a visit to Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida, we spent time creating art and music at their children’s garden.

I found instant tranquility in the watercolors placed on the pint-sized work table. Similarly, my sons dove into their projects.

Another child, maybe three or four years old, sat with me to create shapes no more complex than my own.

After his mom coaxed him back to his group, I noticed what he had painted. It was a padlock that had a heart in the space between the shank and the body (learning lifestyle bonus point: I had to look up the names of those parts). Children are clued into a deeper level of existence. Heart imagery has been trailing me for days and I know this is God’s way of refocusing me on love.

Meanwhile, the Zerbey creations were a bit more wild.

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Not Good Strange Times

There are moments when things feel almost right. Moments when we’re with the right people at the right place. Even then, in picture perfect scenes, the shadows of a twisted reality creep across our path.

Yesterday, we met a home educating family at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library for fun and exploring in the snow. Snowball fights, storytelling, nature appreciation, and my sons’ love of getting away from the grown ups ruled the children’s day.

We’ve been friends for years and probably share more common interests with them than any other family I know. The kids love each other, I’ve played innumerable hours of soccer with the dad, and the mom has been one of my best spiritual and emotional supports in widowhood.

The mom and I walked and talked at a healthy distance from our rabblerousers and couldn’t seem to stay off of sad topics. My recent breakup, wrestling with depression, the aggravations of Zoom school (they are educationally diverse), and the unreality we are experiencing.

We only saw another dozen or so people during hours in the thousand-acre expanse, but they were mostly masked. Couples, hundreds of yards from other humans, walking along with their faces covered. There was no breeze and the sun was brilliantly warming, although the air was chill. It’s troubling and scary that this behaviour is being normalized. This particular oddity of covering our skin from the vitamin D-producing sunlight our bodies so desperately need to stay healthy is worrisome. We’ve known for months that vitmin D deficiency is rampant in hospitalizations. It is difficult to get the necessary exposure to sun in the winter, why are we covering our faces?

I take heart in the example we’re setting for our children. We teach them that health and freedom are not mutually exclusive. We teach them that health is an individual responsibility. We teach them that you must first care for yourself before you can be able to care for others. More importantly, we model these principles in our own words and actions.

In March of this year, just as the world was turning to fear and I watched fellow Christians recede from one another, I had the opportunity to help a homeless family. The mom wasn’t feeling well and needed to be seen by a doctor. Her children and mine piled into my minivan and we headed to an urgent care in heavy morning rain. It wasn’t open yet, so she asked to go to the bus stop to get to a hospital. She wasn’t in need of emergency care, but that was her only option. I almost dropped them off at the bus stop, but thought better of it. I insisted on driving her to the hospital and she begrudgingly acquiesced, her pride was worn from little sleep and respiratory distress.

I didn’t think about being in danger. I didn’t think I was putting my children in harm’s way. It felt much more dangerous to walk away, or leave them at a bus stop.

Later, I Iearned that she had a strep infection. My wife and sons had suffered strep infections two years previous and she didn’t survive. Maybe we survived in order to help that mom. I don’t know.

I don’t know why we’re hiding from each other now. Maybe people need the illusion of safety and security to go about their lives. I don’t ever remember being blinded by that lie, but going through tragedy has stripped away the delusion that existence isn’t integrally bounded by suffering.

Today, I’m going to do my best to accept neccessary suffering and work to relieve unnecessary suffering in myself and others.

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It Ain’t a Break

There is a lot of talk among homeschoolers this time of year about what kind of “break” to take. As much as I agree with the concept of taking a break from formal homeschooling, it’s not a “break.”

It’s a shift of priorities. In the wake of losing the mother of my two young sons, I shifted all my focus to our emotional, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing. There’s a lot of work in that. I’ve come to believe that learning the skills to cope with tragedy is more important than any book-based lesson.

An emotionally balanced, psycholgically self-aware, and spiritually grounded individual is unstoppable in whatever learning they desire. That individual can never be “behind.”

That work isn’t just for those in the throes of trauma, it is for everyone. Our society is sick with worry over where each of us exists in the rat race. The only real race is the one against ourselves. Finding deeper peace in each day will bring us ever greater riches until our last day.

The work is in yourself, always.

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Little Library Christmas Cheer

We got a wonderful surprise when one of our local Little Libraries started holding wrapped books.

My younger son found a Christmas book during his explorations and we drove my older over to find something.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

He was super excited to get two Roald Dahl books, The Magic Finger and George’s Marvelous Medicine. He hasn’t read either, but we are all big fans.

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Thankful for Unschool Adventures

We met with a new group of home educating families today. The children learned about their bodies and had a lot of fun. It was a simple exercise and we followed it up with a hike through some interesting woods at Killens Pond State Park.

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Grateful for Time to Build

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

We’ve been hosting unschoolers for a weekly Lego club called Time to Build and I’m going to start documenting their creations and our experiences.

Below is a fun scene I found after club that involved the LEGO Marvel Spider-Man Far From Home: Molten Man Battle set.

This challenge was equal parts fun and dangerous and produced a laser canon that my son was happy with.

I got in on the building when one of our younger guests requested a giraffe. I grabbed The Lego Ideas Book and copied this design as closely as I could.

I love this time with friends. The home education community is incredibly diverse and I love getting to know other parents and how they go about facilitating their children’s education.

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Grateful Deschooler

Deschool yourself, unteach yourself about what education is. It’s not an easy process to let go of the assumptions we have absorbed. “Preschool” wasn’t a thing 40 years ago. Kindergarten was voluntary in many places at that time too. The mandatory “school” mentality is shockingly new in human history, this isn’t how we have learned for millenia.

I don’t “teach.” I learn out loud, ask questions, model curiosity, model good behavior, model self care and self improvement, model good eating habits and physical fitness, and, most importantly, I listen. Listen to the child’s desires and needs, try to fulfill those and you will be on the right path. The hard part will be when his/her desires don’t match your expectations.

So that’s at the root of deschooling: releasing expectations and assumptions about what education looks like. I was public schooled for 13 years and deschooling is an ongoing process. We have been filled up with so many assumptions about the way things aught to be, when our hearts and minds know they can be better. That is the path to freedom.