A Potluck Life

Category: Uncategorized

  • Happy Pride Day

    Here in Boston, it’s Pride Day, a day to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. Pride events are fun and joyful, but they’re also serious. They happen in June to commemorate Stonewall, a significant event in LGBTQ+ history and a reminder of the work that still needs to be done to ensure acceptance and equality for all.…

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  • ‘Unschoolers’ in the news

    We’ve been getting some great feedback since Unschoolers came out on March 30. First, Patrick Farenga mentioned us in a nice review of fiction inspired by unschooling and John Holt specifically. Then we chatted with Kristen Tea for a piece in Mothering. Michelle Ristuccia wrote a great review for the summer issue of Learning Tangent. Sophia…

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  • Dylan, literature, Moby-Dick, and homeschooling

    Bob Dylan finally got around to delivering his Nobel Lecture. No surprise, it focused on literature. Why the wait? It took him some time, he said, to reflect on how his songs relate to literature. He ended by cautioning that songs are fundamentally different than literature, “meant to be sung, not read,” like the words in…

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  • Kids and theater, as they like it

    I remember the afternoon my youngest child, Abby, told me she wanted to put on a production of Hamlet. We were in the kitchen on a beautiful spring day, and Abby, who was 13 at the time, said, “I think I’m going to do Hamlet in the backyard this summer.” The declaration seemed to come…

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  • Gimme shelter

    A headline caught my eye today. Even For Homeschoolers, There Is No Happily Ever After. The writer, Linda DeMers Hummel, had a job answering phones for a curriculum company whose clients were homeschoolers. Most of the questions were about math, but then she got a call from a mother who wouldn’t let her eighth grade…

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  • Bathrooms and trust

    Bathroom business. It’s pretty basic stuff, a part of every human being’s daily life. When my eldest daughter, after years of homeschooling, enrolled in public high school, she had to deal with the restrictions placed on all students about their bathroom use. By the time she was an upperclassman, I guess she was a little…

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  • ‘Unschoolers’ launch day

    Dear Readers, My co-author Sophia Sayigh and I have been working on Unschoolers for a while and I’m delighted to announce that it’s available now. Visit our website for various ways you can purchase the book in e-book and paperback formats. I hope you’ll consider spreading the word among your friends in conversation, on e-lists,…

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  • Arlington, Medford authors to celebrate book launch

    Arlington resident Sophia Sayigh and Medford resident Milva McDonald will celebrate the publication of their new book “Unschoolers” at a Book Launch Party at 7-8:15 p.m. March 30 at the Robbins Library, 700 Massachusetts Ave., Arlington.Admission is free. For registration and information: https://unschoolersbook.com. In the United States, millions of people home-school their children and numbers…

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  • ‘Good Housekeeping’ on unschooling

    I grew up with Good Housekeeping. It was the one magazine my mother subscribed to, and since there wasn’t a lot of reading material around my house and I liked to read, I read it. Perhaps my familiarity with the magazine’s style contributed to my lack of surprise about the article it just published about unschooling.…

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  • Another look at ‘Captain Fantastic’

    Warning: Captain Fantastic spoilers follow! Last summer, I went to see the movie Captain Fantastic. There was much I enjoyed about it, but I also took issue with its portrayal of homeschooling. I wrote about my thoughts in a review. Several commenters disagreed with my interpretation of the ending, so I took another look. After…

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