Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Sickness Schedule

Allie had pneumonia last week. She's fine now, but the danged bacteria surely slowed our school progress! We did do some history and science, since she could relax and listen, but she didn't seem to be able to concentrate, so lessons were short and simple. At least we did accomplish something!

Allie was at the doctors getting meds on Monday, and playing soccer madly by Friday. Makes me glad for modern medicine, since her form of pneumonia could easily have been fatal or seriously debilitating a hundred years or so ago.

Wondering how we're doing with the enormous  materials list for our units? Needless to say, they've been greatly simplified in real life. We've just finished Genevieve Foster's William Penn, which was a treat. It's wonderful to see how the lives of those people fit together. Wm. Penn actually met Peter the Great?

I did object to Oliver Cromwell being portrayed as a decent ruler, though. He was fine, I guess, if you like theocracy, loss of freedom, and genocide. It was only a one-line mention, so I'll forgive. She did show how ridiculous the Sun King became.  That made me think of the Allan Sherman line, "What else can you expect from a king in silk stockings and pink satin pants?"  ("You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louis")

2 comments:

Renee said...

Sun King = Louis XIV
Pink satin pants wearer in the song = Louis XVI
Louis XIV (Sun King) reigned longer than any other European monarch. Louis XVI had his reign cut off along with his head.

Unknown said...

Quite true...but the sentiment is the same for both the Fourteenth and the sixteenth...except that the Sixteenth did actually try to improve things. He was just too late. His ancestors had looted the country pretty thoroughly. He gets a bit of a bad rap, I think.