It's panic time over here at SHM headquarters.
Don't worry, things are fine. This is just the point when I start to completely flip out about the upcoming issue. Early labor pains, you know?
You don't need to hear about that, though. What you do need to hear, and to spread the word about, is the fact that this issue is going to lack some much-needed comic relief if I don't get some horrifying homeschooling stories, stat.
Issue #4 (the current issue) debuted a lovely column called "Homeschool Horror Stories: True Tales of Terror." It got a terrific reader response.
Unfortunately, it didn't provoke the response needed for there to be yet another HHS column. Said response sounds something like, "Hey! I find it deeply reassuring, not to mention hilarious, to hear excruciating details about how other homeschoolers are not paragons of perfection! I am moved to abase myself by sending in a humiliating homeschooling anecdote of my own!"
I am, as always, willing to contribute a tale from my own personal hall of shame. Maybe even two.
But the stories would really start to lack range and variety after a while if all we ran was stuff from my house. Plus I don't think that a column titled "Deborah's A Bad Mommy -- Pass It On!" has the right ring to it.
In case you have any interest at all in sending in a horrifying story -- or know a really good one you're willing to steal -- here are some guidelines, paraphrased from the current issue:
All the stories are completely anonymous. Not even first names. They'll never know it was you. Heck, I'll never know it was you.
Nothing too icky, please. Any stories involving more than three trips to the emergency room is a little too close to real horror for me.
Easy on the potty humor, and heavy on the euphemisms.
Send the kind of thing you'd be relived to hear someone else admit to, because then you'd know you weren't the only one who occasionally blows it as a parent, teacher, or (what fun!) both.
If I use your story, I can send you either five whole bucks or a free copy of the issue your story appears in.
Send anecdotes to editor @ secular-homeschooling dot com
(Be sure to suck all the air out of that email address before you try to use it. And put a real dot in.)
Friday, November 28, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Stamp Acts
[Editor's note: I wrote this a while back, and for some reason never posted it here. Please see the previous entry for details about the sale I'm currently having on issues #1-4 -- and if you already have those issues, please spread the word about the sale, as I really need to make a dent in my back stock. Sadly, said sale does nothing to knock out the supply of 10 x 13 envelopes around here.]
I just wasted about ten dollars on a box of envelopes it will now take me approximately thirty years to use up.
I thought I had perfectly good reason for laying in a supply of 10 x 13 envelopes. A lot of people have been buying multiple copies of SHM -- say, one copy of issue #2 and one of issue #3 -- and the 9 x 12 envelopes I use for single-issue mailings won't hold two magazines. I thought it would be logical to mail two magazines to the same address in a single envelope. I'd save paper, and even a little on postage. Right?
Look, that's how that kind of thing is supposed to work. If you send a letter that costs more than one stamp to send, they don't make you stick another first-class stamp on it; the second stamp costs a few cents less.
So I figured that one envelope containing two magazines would cost a little less to send than two envelopes with a magazine apiece.
I brought one of these envelopes to the post office, and it took me a minute to register the fact that it cost me more than twice as much as mailing one magazine.
I asked the man behind the counter to explain this to me, and he said something about how, because of the size of the envelope and the weight of the whole thing, we were now in parcel-postage territory now.
I still don't understand why that makes such a difference.
Someone suggested that the post office is trying to encourage people to use standard-sized mailing containers. The thing is, I'm not using bizarre, fifteen-sided envelopes that look like huge D&D dice. They're perfectly normal.
Periodically, I have to send boxes of the magazine to my advertising guru Gail for her to use in press packets. I once sent her thirty copies in a box I had left over from a print run. It cost me just under ten dollars to mail.
Yesterday, I sent six copies of the magazine in an envelope. It cost me almost twelve dollars.
Whoever makes the rules over at the post office is completely insane, anyway.
Remember when the postal rates went up a few months ago? Before that, mailing a copy of SHM cost $1.82.
Notice something about that amount? It's an even number. It's a dollar stamp, plus two first-class ones.
Nice. Easy. Cute.
I love buying the dollar stamps, by the way. They sell them by the sheet, and apparently I'm the only one in the universe who needs them, because the person behind the counter always has to go get some from the back room. This one woman always looks really ticked that I make her get up.
I also love the fact that I have to buy them in such quantity. Well, I don't love that, actually. I'd like to just steal them. But since I'm clumsy and irredeemably honest, I at least like the expression that the person behind the counter gets when I buy them.
They come twenty to a sheet. Which makes me do math.
The last time I was at the post office, I had to think about that a minute, which is the kind of thing you're supposed to do before you get in line.
"Okay," I said finally. "I need twenty sheets of dollar stamps, please."
The lady smiled and presented me with one sheet. "Twenty," she said.
"No," I said. "Not twenty stamps. Twenty sheets."
All smiles stopped. "That is four hundred dollars," she pointed out in an injured tone.
"Yeah, I know," I said. "Hey, are they ever on sale?"
She got up to raid everyone else's work station, and finally came back with exactly as many stamps as I'd asked for, plus a very sour expression. I swear she was this close to rigging up a tip jar.
At least she actually went and got them. One woman told me she didn't have that many in her drawer, and actually seemed to think that in that case, I should just not need them after all. She looked really annoyed when I said I'd wait while she ordered them. It was the end of a long day, and I had a book and half a chocolate bar in my purse. I think she figured out I was serious, because all of a sudden she remembered where they might just have some.
Then of course I have to buy rolls of first-class stamps. The last time I went in and I said that I needed first-class, the lady got all perky and showed me about eight or nine different kinds, each one prettier than the next.
"These are beautiful," I said. "But I need rolls of stamps. Are any of these available in rolls?"
"No," she snapped, shutting the display book. I think she was mad because people who buy rolls of stamps are apparently going to actually use the stamps, as opposed to just having them around to look pretty and letting the postal carriers take a load off. At any rate, she gave me a bunch of those boring flag stamps.
Anyway. So then the postage rates went up. I expected to have to put one dollar stamp and two shiny new first-class stamps on each envelope. Same story, slightly different characters.
Except that for some reason, the price of sending one issue of SHM went from $1.82 to $1.85.
Can someone please tell me why a perfectly normal, ordinary weight and rate went from an even to an odd number?
"Ask them if they have 85-cent stamps," my husband advised when he heard about this. "They used to sell 82-cent stamps. And that way you'll only have to put two stamps on every envelope."
Dutifully I asked, and was told that, no, they didn't have that kind of stamp.
"Look, this is what I'm trying to mail," I said, handing her an envelope with a magazine inside. "And I have a lot of them. So what's the best thing for me to do?"
She thought for a minute, then brightened and showed me some pretty $2 stamps. Those, she suggested, would cover the amount of postage I needed, save me time -- I'd only need to stick one on -- and look cute in the bargain. I think they had foxes on them, which was perhaps appropriate for the situation.
"If I used those," I pointed out, "I'd be spending fifteen cents more per envelope than I needed to." Mental arithmetic isn't my strong suit, but I thought that just six or seven issues would cost me a dollar in cute efficiency. And I had hundreds of these puppies to mail.
Time is not money for me. Money is money, in my house. So I bought a gajillion one-penny stamps -- which come in sheets of twenty, just like the dollar stamps, but do have the virtue of costing far less -- and resigned myself to mailing sessions that feel like some kind of lame craft project. It's hard to take the whole thing seriously when I have to use three separate kinds of stamps (whose colors and designs don't even go together, by the way) to get exactly the postage I need.
What I really ought to do is just bring in all my stuffed envelopes, hundreds every three months and a few every week after that, and crash them down on the counter. "These need postage," I'll announce.
What are they going to do? Say no? Insist that I buy stamps and stick them on all by myself? They can't do that. They're not the boss of me.
I could bring my local post office to a grinding halt if I pulled a stunt like that. Believe me, it's tempting.
Which may be why my local post office has no parking lot. They're not going to help troublemakers like me.
Still, I guess I could always call a cab...
I just wasted about ten dollars on a box of envelopes it will now take me approximately thirty years to use up.
I thought I had perfectly good reason for laying in a supply of 10 x 13 envelopes. A lot of people have been buying multiple copies of SHM -- say, one copy of issue #2 and one of issue #3 -- and the 9 x 12 envelopes I use for single-issue mailings won't hold two magazines. I thought it would be logical to mail two magazines to the same address in a single envelope. I'd save paper, and even a little on postage. Right?
Look, that's how that kind of thing is supposed to work. If you send a letter that costs more than one stamp to send, they don't make you stick another first-class stamp on it; the second stamp costs a few cents less.
So I figured that one envelope containing two magazines would cost a little less to send than two envelopes with a magazine apiece.
I brought one of these envelopes to the post office, and it took me a minute to register the fact that it cost me more than twice as much as mailing one magazine.
I asked the man behind the counter to explain this to me, and he said something about how, because of the size of the envelope and the weight of the whole thing, we were now in parcel-postage territory now.
I still don't understand why that makes such a difference.
Someone suggested that the post office is trying to encourage people to use standard-sized mailing containers. The thing is, I'm not using bizarre, fifteen-sided envelopes that look like huge D&D dice. They're perfectly normal.
Periodically, I have to send boxes of the magazine to my advertising guru Gail for her to use in press packets. I once sent her thirty copies in a box I had left over from a print run. It cost me just under ten dollars to mail.
Yesterday, I sent six copies of the magazine in an envelope. It cost me almost twelve dollars.
Whoever makes the rules over at the post office is completely insane, anyway.
Remember when the postal rates went up a few months ago? Before that, mailing a copy of SHM cost $1.82.
Notice something about that amount? It's an even number. It's a dollar stamp, plus two first-class ones.
Nice. Easy. Cute.
I love buying the dollar stamps, by the way. They sell them by the sheet, and apparently I'm the only one in the universe who needs them, because the person behind the counter always has to go get some from the back room. This one woman always looks really ticked that I make her get up.
I also love the fact that I have to buy them in such quantity. Well, I don't love that, actually. I'd like to just steal them. But since I'm clumsy and irredeemably honest, I at least like the expression that the person behind the counter gets when I buy them.
They come twenty to a sheet. Which makes me do math.
The last time I was at the post office, I had to think about that a minute, which is the kind of thing you're supposed to do before you get in line.
"Okay," I said finally. "I need twenty sheets of dollar stamps, please."
The lady smiled and presented me with one sheet. "Twenty," she said.
"No," I said. "Not twenty stamps. Twenty sheets."
All smiles stopped. "That is four hundred dollars," she pointed out in an injured tone.
"Yeah, I know," I said. "Hey, are they ever on sale?"
She got up to raid everyone else's work station, and finally came back with exactly as many stamps as I'd asked for, plus a very sour expression. I swear she was this close to rigging up a tip jar.
At least she actually went and got them. One woman told me she didn't have that many in her drawer, and actually seemed to think that in that case, I should just not need them after all. She looked really annoyed when I said I'd wait while she ordered them. It was the end of a long day, and I had a book and half a chocolate bar in my purse. I think she figured out I was serious, because all of a sudden she remembered where they might just have some.
Then of course I have to buy rolls of first-class stamps. The last time I went in and I said that I needed first-class, the lady got all perky and showed me about eight or nine different kinds, each one prettier than the next.
"These are beautiful," I said. "But I need rolls of stamps. Are any of these available in rolls?"
"No," she snapped, shutting the display book. I think she was mad because people who buy rolls of stamps are apparently going to actually use the stamps, as opposed to just having them around to look pretty and letting the postal carriers take a load off. At any rate, she gave me a bunch of those boring flag stamps.
Anyway. So then the postage rates went up. I expected to have to put one dollar stamp and two shiny new first-class stamps on each envelope. Same story, slightly different characters.
Except that for some reason, the price of sending one issue of SHM went from $1.82 to $1.85.
Can someone please tell me why a perfectly normal, ordinary weight and rate went from an even to an odd number?
"Ask them if they have 85-cent stamps," my husband advised when he heard about this. "They used to sell 82-cent stamps. And that way you'll only have to put two stamps on every envelope."
Dutifully I asked, and was told that, no, they didn't have that kind of stamp.
"Look, this is what I'm trying to mail," I said, handing her an envelope with a magazine inside. "And I have a lot of them. So what's the best thing for me to do?"
She thought for a minute, then brightened and showed me some pretty $2 stamps. Those, she suggested, would cover the amount of postage I needed, save me time -- I'd only need to stick one on -- and look cute in the bargain. I think they had foxes on them, which was perhaps appropriate for the situation.
"If I used those," I pointed out, "I'd be spending fifteen cents more per envelope than I needed to." Mental arithmetic isn't my strong suit, but I thought that just six or seven issues would cost me a dollar in cute efficiency. And I had hundreds of these puppies to mail.
Time is not money for me. Money is money, in my house. So I bought a gajillion one-penny stamps -- which come in sheets of twenty, just like the dollar stamps, but do have the virtue of costing far less -- and resigned myself to mailing sessions that feel like some kind of lame craft project. It's hard to take the whole thing seriously when I have to use three separate kinds of stamps (whose colors and designs don't even go together, by the way) to get exactly the postage I need.
What I really ought to do is just bring in all my stuffed envelopes, hundreds every three months and a few every week after that, and crash them down on the counter. "These need postage," I'll announce.
What are they going to do? Say no? Insist that I buy stamps and stick them on all by myself? They can't do that. They're not the boss of me.
I could bring my local post office to a grinding halt if I pulled a stunt like that. Believe me, it's tempting.
Which may be why my local post office has no parking lot. They're not going to help troublemakers like me.
Still, I guess I could always call a cab...
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Sale! Sale! Sale!
I'll be posting this week about how completely insane the post office is -- I know, you're shocked -- but as a quick summary here, let me just say that part of the reason SHM's price hasn't gone down yet is because, well, the post office is completely insane.
I have explored all my options in terms of bulk mailing, media mailing, and passenger pigeon, and at this point in our circ numbers, I'm pretty much working with what I've got now, which is that postage accounts for a hefty chunk of SHM's cover price.
I wrote a lovely rant about the ins and outs of the filthy moolah involved in sending out multiple copies, which I'll be sharing soon.
But first I wanted to announce that between ordering too many back issues for a conference I ended up not being able to go to and finding a small but significant loophole in the postal system, I'm having a sort of sale.
If you check out the purchase/subscription page of SHM's site, you'll see that you can buy issues #1 - #4 for $21.00, as opposed to the $28.00 such a purchase would ordinarily cost:
http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/purchase.html
I can only offer this as a domestic purchase -- that is, within the United States. All four issues must go to the same address (at least from me -- you can send them wherever you want once you get them). And this offer is only good while supplies last.
Can I just say, as a disinterested observer, that nothing says "holidays" like a heapin' helpin' of Secular Homeschoolin'?
Well, excuse me, Mr. or Ms. Marketing Genius. My sparkling writing skills aren't what they ought to be this morning. It's still early over here.
(Okay, okay -- it's past noon. But it feels early. I'm trying to cut down on my caffeine intake, and my eyes feel all squinchy.)
Please spread the word. Oh, and send chocolate. Southern California is scorching, and I'm thankfully well clear of all the fires but it's still scary and the air is an icky orange mass. I'm not going out any time soon, which is good since I've got a bleep of a lot of writing to do. So extra, extra dark on the cacao count, please.
I have explored all my options in terms of bulk mailing, media mailing, and passenger pigeon, and at this point in our circ numbers, I'm pretty much working with what I've got now, which is that postage accounts for a hefty chunk of SHM's cover price.
I wrote a lovely rant about the ins and outs of the filthy moolah involved in sending out multiple copies, which I'll be sharing soon.
But first I wanted to announce that between ordering too many back issues for a conference I ended up not being able to go to and finding a small but significant loophole in the postal system, I'm having a sort of sale.
If you check out the purchase/subscription page of SHM's site, you'll see that you can buy issues #1 - #4 for $21.00, as opposed to the $28.00 such a purchase would ordinarily cost:
http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/purchase.html
I can only offer this as a domestic purchase -- that is, within the United States. All four issues must go to the same address (at least from me -- you can send them wherever you want once you get them). And this offer is only good while supplies last.
Can I just say, as a disinterested observer, that nothing says "holidays" like a heapin' helpin' of Secular Homeschoolin'?
Well, excuse me, Mr. or Ms. Marketing Genius. My sparkling writing skills aren't what they ought to be this morning. It's still early over here.
(Okay, okay -- it's past noon. But it feels early. I'm trying to cut down on my caffeine intake, and my eyes feel all squinchy.)
Please spread the word. Oh, and send chocolate. Southern California is scorching, and I'm thankfully well clear of all the fires but it's still scary and the air is an icky orange mass. I'm not going out any time soon, which is good since I've got a bleep of a lot of writing to do. So extra, extra dark on the cacao count, please.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Planning ahead, just this once
People often contact me wanting to know if I have a particular theme in mind for the upcoming issue.
The strange thing is, I usually don't have one in mind — but then things fall together and it just works out that way.
Issue #4, for instance, turned into a beautifully balanced "not back to school" issue, with articles about homeschooling pretty much every subject imaginable — plus a piece about transitioning from public to home education. Didn't plan a bit of it — it just happened.
Issue #2 had several articles about Charlotte Mason homeschooling. I did pursue those; but the funny thing was, a couple of wonderful articles about homeschooling in the great outdoors just happened to wander along right on time to be included. (Charlotte Mason was a huge proponent of nature study and the idea that everyone, children and adults, should spend significant time outside every day.)
Still, serendipity can't do everything; so for once I'm going to get off my duff and help her out a bit.
This upcoming issue is the "tough issues" issue. It's a tight squeeze to get in, but if you have an article that you think would fit the theme, I'd love to see it. Just to give you an idea of the kind of thing I mean: I mentioned that I'm working on a piece about helping children learn about, and cope with, death in a non-religious household; I've also already received an article about sex education, and a lovely, tender piece from a parent who shares her struggles to teach her daughter about religion without teaching her religion.
This issue is already coming together; for another, I'll need a lot of outside help.
I'd like to do an "International Homeschooling" issue. This will be by and about homeschoolers all over the world, including Americans homeschooling abroad.
I once said that I felt confident I could churn out enough material to fill an issue myself if I needed to. Obviously this hoped-for theme issue is one I can’t do alone. (I mean, I suppose I could try faking it, like that nineteenth-century woman who wrote a whole book — The Clumsiest People in Europe, I think it was called — about people all over the world, and it turned out that she never left her home town. But as I’ve said before, I’m a lousy liar.)
If you're a homeschooler who lives outside America, I'd love to hear from you. If you're not up to an article, I'd be honored to interview you.
I can pay a little for an article — plus of course a free copy of the issue your piece is in. And I can send interviewees a free copy.
If you'd like more information, or to set up an interview, drop me a line. My email is deborah @ 2ds dot org —just take the spaces out and put in an actual dot instead of spelling it.
Can't wait to hear from you!
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Update on stuff nobody but me cares about anyway
It's a working weekend for me, as if there's any other kind. The Y-chromosome carriers are out having fun, and I get to stay home reading books about death on this beautiful sunny day.
I'm working on an article on how non-religious parents can help their children cope with the idea of death, and just as an aside: there were a few books that I really thought would be helpful, but were a little pricey and could not be found at the library. I needed them quickly, so there wasn't time to fuss around with interlibrary loans. It's not that I mind buying books, but money's tight and books (my drug of choice) are one thing I'm trying to be a little more frugal about.
Then I thought: people are shelling out seven bucks a copy for SHM because they like reading it enough to pay that. And these are books I really need in order for this article to be as good as it possibly can be.
So I ponied up almost a hundred dollars for three books; and just as a wonderful coincidence, that day I received more than enough in subscription orders to cover the cost of buying said books.
Pretty cool.
Anyway: before I settle down to my dire reading, just wanted to tap out a quick Mad Editor update.
1. I'm sitting around on a gorgeous autumn afternoon reading about death not only for the article I mentioned, but for another one on teaching our children about the Holocaust. If you write and you don't hear back, you can safely assume I'm in the tub trying to think of a reason not to do myself in.
2. Since I was in danger of being too happy about the election, California (my home state) obligingly denied gays the right to marry. As a former Catholic who still feels a connection with her father's church (and what Catholic ever feels completely separate from that group, regardless of how long ago or why she left it?), I'm angry at how much support the church as a body gave Proposition 8, and how little irony they see in this stance. I grew up in a church that had no problem at all with the idea that its ideas about who could marry whom were utterly distinct from the government's. My in-laws married in the Catholic church, drifted away from it, had a civil divorce, and went on to marry other people. In the eyes of the church, they're still married to one another. In the eyes of the state, they're not. The church is fine with not having their own position on this particular marriage be legally binding, and it's highly inconsistent of them to push for the state to reflect a religious idea about marriage. I assume they now want to make it actually illegal for priests to marry?
3. I'm growing my bangs (fringe, for my Brit readers) out, and they're not going quietly. I see do-rags in my future for the next twenty months or so.
4. There isn't enough chocolate in the world to make me any less bummed out about any of these things, but I did just bake a huge batch of brownies based on a recipe secular homeschooling goddess Kathy in PA was good enough to send my way. I'll be posting about that soon on my BellaOnline chocolate page (if I haven't already by the time you read this). If you didn't know I had an alter ego, and/or are morbidly curious to see what the bleep I look like, you can check out my weekly chocolate column here:
http://www.bellaonline.com/site/chocolate
If you were too busy to read all that and just skipped to the end hoping for a summary: please send chocolate, hats, and a separation suitable for lodging between church and state to California, care of SHM.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
She said it best...
The election is over, and Michelle said it best:
CELEBRATE!!!
My last posting may have sounded cynical, but I’m crying. So happy.
I can’t believe it. I do believe it.
It just keeps hitting me.
It really happened.
And we got the results of the election the night of the election! Is that even allowed?
For those who are disappointed in the election results, I truly, truly hope that this presidency will be a good one for you and for all of us.
CELEBRATE!!!
My last posting may have sounded cynical, but I’m crying. So happy.
I can’t believe it. I do believe it.
It just keeps hitting me.
It really happened.
And we got the results of the election the night of the election! Is that even allowed?
For those who are disappointed in the election results, I truly, truly hope that this presidency will be a good one for you and for all of us.
Don't vote! Unless you're not American!
I know it's hardly an original sentiment, but I'd like to take this historic election-day opportunity to say: please, please, for the love of humanity, if you're an American and you don't want to vote in today’s election, or don't have any strong feelings or reliable information (and if you still think that Obama is a Muslim and that that makes him scary, I'm definitely talking to you) -- don't vote.
I only want thinking people out there, and of course by "thinking" I mean “people who agree with me.”
Now: if you're not American (okay, or even if you are, but it's kind of cooler if you live somewhere else), you should most definitely vote in America's presidential election. Go to a wonderful site I just learned about, "If The World Could Vote?":
http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com
Cast your completely legally non-binding vote, and take a look at who people are voting for all over the world. If you're a homeschooler, this is an awesome educational opportunity for so many reasons that I'm tired just thinking about them.
I have to go finish the laundry. And then I have to go vote. And then I have to bake some three-chocolate brownies. I figure I'll need them tonight: either to celebrate, or to drown my sorrows.
I only want thinking people out there, and of course by "thinking" I mean “people who agree with me.”
Now: if you're not American (okay, or even if you are, but it's kind of cooler if you live somewhere else), you should most definitely vote in America's presidential election. Go to a wonderful site I just learned about, "If The World Could Vote?":
http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com
Cast your completely legally non-binding vote, and take a look at who people are voting for all over the world. If you're a homeschooler, this is an awesome educational opportunity for so many reasons that I'm tired just thinking about them.
I have to go finish the laundry. And then I have to go vote. And then I have to bake some three-chocolate brownies. I figure I'll need them tonight: either to celebrate, or to drown my sorrows.
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