First Week and a Half in March

I recently read Moll Flanders.  I picked it off the shelf at the library because I was wanting to read a classic and Defoe's name swayed me.  Not knowing what to expect, I skimmed the introduction (written by Virginia Woolf) and dove in.  The thing that surprised me in the introduction is that Woolf referred to Robinson Crusoe as a book everyone has had read to them as a child.    No one read Robinson Crusoe to me as a child.  Should I read it to my kids?  Maybe, but I won't be reading them Moll Flanders!  The book is about what she has to do to get by in life - sleeping with men who'll take care of her, marrying men who are good investments, lying, cheating, stealing.  But somehow she's likable.  It's the kind of thing I like because I know it's authentic.  Not that I don't like historical fiction, but it's very interesting to me to see real historic life discussed in real time terms and attitudes.  (Of course that meant the book had more footnotes than pages, but I'll forgive it that.)


We took our entries to the Youth Fair.  I need not have stressed over the process because it was very relaxed and easy.  Some of the departments immediately assessed our entries and each of the kids have at least one ribbon.  I never entered anything in a fair, so I don't know if this is a normal way to do it, but they give multiple 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place ribbons (there are thousands of entries).   It seems each item is judged on its own merit and if one is especially great it may get a special ribbon, but not every category will award this special ribbon, only if an entry is really deserving.

Caleb caught a few fish last week:

And some blue crabs:

And some tadpoles:

 So we are doing the tadpole thing again, eating homegrown tomatoes, in the home stretch with Lewis and Clark (which is not the same thing as being almost finished with the film), and entered in the youth fair.