Children are naturally curious creatures and with so many under one roof coupled with the fact that we homeschool, we are frequently looking things up to answer the various questions that arise. For instance, the children found that one of the chickens had laid an egg the size of a cherry tomato. We looked it up and found out that such an egg occurs on occasion, that there is no yolk inside and that they are called – by some – fairy eggs.
Here are some other fairy eggs we found this week:
- The first Catholic Cathedral was built in Baltimore, Maryland under the direction of Bishop Carroll, the first American Bishop. Bishop Carroll hired Benjamin Latrobe who, at the time, was building Washington D. C. Latrobe presented Carroll with both a Gothic design and a neoclassical design. Bishop Carroll, very sensitive to the anti-Catholicism of the time, chose the neoclassical style so as not to upset the Protestants with anything too Catholic going up in the neighborhood. (Everyone knows if you put up a Gothic Cathedral, it won’t be long before things like “fun” and “color” will be popping up in America too). One historian described the physical building as similar to the American Catholic Church at the time. Republican on the outside, orthodox on the inside.
https://www.archbalt.org/parishes/all-parishes/basilica-of-the-assumption/
- While doing a language arts assignment, there was a question about rabbits girdling trees. Since we live in 2022 American suburbia, we had no idea what they were talking about and had to look it up.
https://www.purdue.edu/fnr/extension/winter-damage-of-the-furry-kind/
- My son is learning a poem about Benjamin Franklin. One of the lines is “At the ladies in their furbelows, the gempmum on their horses.” and made us curious – what is a furbelow? While looking it up, we came across this gem of a website that poses questions to old books. Important questions like: “How to recognize a werewolf?” “How to avoid the plague?” or “How to garden with lobsters?”
- We learned a bit about Homer Plessy of Plessy vs. Ferguson fame. He was a light-skinned black Catholic from St. Augustine’s parish in New Orleans, a cobbler and a man who was not down with discrimination.
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