Utrum Siestae Necessae sunt pro salute...

and cute Paddy pic, too.

Liam's Graduation

Clare took a few pictures of Liam's graduation.











Unfortunately my camera was acting weird -- at first I couldn't take any pictures at all, then I ended up with some purple-tinted ones , as you can see below.

It was a beautiful day, though.

(Paddy, Liam and Clare)

(The chapel of Our Lady of the Trinity)

scoil chois claí

That's one Gaelic name for the Irish Hedge Schools of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Raised on Song and Story by Alice Gunther is a keeper post, and I was thinking about blogging it, but my daughter Clare saved me the trouble. Her post said it better than I would have. By coincidence, Liam was just telling me about a conversation he recently had with another member of an American Celtic family, and her memories were much the same as Liam's and Clare's. Different family, different experiences, but something of the same heritage.

Reading Little House in the Big Woods, I was struck anew by how much Laura Ingalls was raised on "song and story" and how rich her life was in lore in spite of the fact that they had only two books in their cabin -- the Bible and a big green book on Natural History.

Songs and stories and lore provide something irreplaceable in a family -- a unique, individual reception of the best things of the past.

I was just reading with Kieron the section in George Washington and His World where it talks about Poland and its revolutionary heroes of the 18th century. When I was reading about Pope John Paul II's youthful days in Poland, a country overrun first by Germans and then by the Soviet Union, it struck me how clear the young Karol Wojtyla and some of his young compatriots were in recognizing that culture -- song, story and in their case drama -- is a remedy for and resistance against the absolutist encroachments of modern governments.

But more proximately, "song and story" build memories and family solidarity. And they impart a rich texture to daily life. And children are naturally receptive to that form of learning from their earliest days... even the youngest members of the family partake. As Alice says, these things become part of who they are.

Developing Minds and Coherent Narrative

A few links on early memory, what The Developing Mind calls "implicit memory".

I think I originally planned to write a whole post on the book but now it's gone. But I wanted to save the links anyway in case I ever pick up that research trail again.

• What Your Child Remembers -- implicit memory
• Oh Where, Oh Where Have Those Early Memories Gone?
• Memory and Learning
• Training Mothers Improves Childrens' Memory and Narrative Skills
• Psychology Today: Article on Memory.

What I got from the book on a quick first read (I think the book's worth studying more carefully) is that a coherent narrative of one's past is a crucial sign of either natural or "earned" security in attachment theory.

Here's an article that explains a bit of that. How attachment helps children thrive.

Communication patterns form the basis of early parent-child attachments, Siegel explains. In a process called "contingent communication," a parent perceives the signals of his or her child, processes them and responds to them in a timely fashion. This sensitive form of caregiving makes the child feel safe and understood, and secure that his needs will be met.

Five processes that parents can use to help their children:

• Collaborative communication, the sharing of non-verbal signals such as eye contact, facial expressions and tone of voice.
• Reflective dialogue, talking with their children about thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories, sensations, attitudes, beliefs and intentions, all of which help kids develop compassion.
• Repair, reaching out to a child and apologizing after a misconnection.
• Emotional communication, accepting and sharing both the child's positive and negative emotional states and helping the child regulate his emotions.
• Coherent narrative, delving into one's past to better understand oneself and one's children.

The "coherent narrative" is particularly important:

Research shows that successful parents have gained insights into how their own childhoods -- and relationships with their own parents -- influenced their development as an adult and a parent. Adults who have "made sense of their lives" tend to raise kids who are securely attached to them.

It's not necessary to have had a securely attached background in order to have a coherent narrative of a background. I personally have quite a few friends who came from insecure or dysfunctional backgrounds and were able to "earn" this coherence in their lives. It takes work, but it is GOOD work.

A review of the book.
A PDF article by the author, Daniel Siegel, called Toward an Interpersonal Biology of the Developing Mind -- it's really more reader-friendly than the title indicates.

The Heart of a Father and Teacher

Enjoy yourself as much as you like - if only you keep from sin. -- John Bosco.

St John Bosco is a particular friend of our family's. For one thing, my husband's birthday is today, on John Bosco's feast day. I don't think it's an accident! for in many ways my husband's way of doing things reminds me of the kind saint who evangelized through fun and laughter and games as much as by an honorable way of life and a kind of strict loving standard in his fathering that doesn't really need many words or overt disciplining tactics to be an excellent influence on his children.

(Happy Birthday Dear Husband)

There is some information about John Bosco's life at Catholic Culture.Pope John Paul II named Don Bosco "teacher and father to the young." This punctuates his life witness and teachings as recommendable to all teachers and parents.

He is the patron of schoolchildren and the young folk.

Son of Venerable Margaret Bosco. John's father died when the boy was 2 years old, and as soon as he was old enough to do odd jobs, he did so for extra money for his family. Bosco would go to circuses, fairs and carnivals, practice the tricks he saw magicians perform, and then present one-boy shows. After his performance, while he still had an audience of boys, he would repeat the homily he had heard earlier in church.

From this site about Blessed Luigi Guanella and St John Bosco:

"There I had the example of so many virtues, and the spiritual direction of Don Bosco who did so much good to all. Don Bosco's heart was like a magnet which drew all to himself; his words, few and well-pondered, were as lightning flashes to the mind. My eternal gratitude to Don Bosco and his works."

From this Life of St John Bosco

The greatest heritage that Don Bosco left the Church was his "preventive system" for the education of youth. When asked for the secret of his success, which transformed big institutions into a family of love, he answered with three words: reason, religion and kindness. When reasoning is used instead of threats, when God is the housemaster and when there is no fear but rather love, the end result is a true family.

A letter written by John Bosco near the end of his life described his attitude towards the boys from the streets he provided for:

Let us place ourselves in their service. Let us be ashamed to assume an attitude of superiority. Let us not rule over them except for the purpose of serving them better.

This was the method that Jesus used with the apostles. He put up with their ignorance and roughness and even their infidelity. He treated sinners with a kindness and affection that caused some to be shocked, others to be scandalised, and still others to hope for God’s mercy. And so he bade us to be gentle and humble of heart.

They are our sons, and so in correcting their mistakes we must lay aside all anger and restrain it so firmly that it is extinguished entirely.

There must be no hostility in our minds, no contempt in our eyes, no insult on our lips. We must use mercy for the present and have hope for the future, as is fitting for true fathers who are eager for real correction and improvement.

In serious matters it is better to beg God humbly than to send forth a flood of words that will only offend the listeners and have no effect on those who are guilty.

There are more details about John Bosco's method of Preventive Discipline in this pdf.
And here is another pdf, an article by Katherine O'Brien-Johnston -- Christlike Discipline.

And more here from the Salesians -- how a saint corrected children (another interesting connection -- that one of my heroes, St Francis de Sales, was the inspiration for St John Bosco in his gentle, loving and high-expecting style of guidance)

This saint of the day site about Bosco quotes GK Chesterton in reference to education:

“Every education teaches a philosophy; if not by dogma then by suggestion, by implication, by atmosphere. Every part of that education has a connection with every other part. If it does not all combine to convey some general view of life, it is not education at all” (G.K. Chesterton, The Common Man).

Finally, we have a little book around the house called The Life of Dominic Savio. It is a biography, BY St John Bosco, ABOUT one of the boys in his school, who is also now a canonized saint. So it is a saint's life written by a saint, which makes it unusual. Here is an online version of the book. The book made an impression on my oldest son, so much so that Dominic Savio is his confirmation patron. (And St Francis de Sales is my second-born son's confirmation patron).

God of mercy, You called Saint John Bosco to be a father and teacher of the young. Grant that inspired by his ardent charity we may serve You alone and never tire of bringing others to Your Kingdom.

St John Bosco, pray for us!

ETA: There is a good article about John Bosco at Castle of the Immaculate

"Let me face the truth"

Clare writes about her little brother Aidan in Facing the Truth.

Has Aidan made our lives extraordinary, exceptional, in spite of every hardship? Was it worth the dark days, the hair-pulling, the tempers, the door wars? For Aidan and everything he has given, am I forever indebted to God in a way that I can never repay?

Also see Clare's perspective on Aidan's story.

Watching Bleak House

We didn't get around to playing Robo-Rally. I made pizza and ginger cookies and it all took a long time. But we did watch 3 episodes of Bleak House while we ate dinner, and that was fun -- the older four kids and I -- the youngers were in their bedrooms, and Kevin was working. Usually it is me off somewhere while Kevin is watching movies with the kids, but Clare knows I am more likely to sit down for a classic book adaptation than for most anything else.

A couple of years ago we got this Charles Dickens collection. So far we've watched Martin Chuzzlewit, which the kids absolutely loved and have watched twice, and Our Mutual Friend, which was quite good too.

Our Mutual Friend was fun because we watched it during Lent, the year before last, I think; we had given up videos and most sweets for Lent so we watched an episode each Sunday and Clare planned a round of teas and dainties -- like, lemon bread and lemon ginger tea for one week, chocolate caramel chai and oreo-frosted tea cake another time, and so on. She printed it out on a pretty itinerary, and we would bring our little tea pot and goodies upstairs every Sunday afternoon. The second to last episode, we were visiting Liam at college and bringing Sean to a football combine in the same area, so we stayed at Ventura beach overnight and watched the penultimate episode along with almond poppyseed muffins and chicken salad rolls and some kind of tea which we brought with us and made at the hotel. It is a nice memory.

Bleak House is a bit odd.... quite dark in the filming. The London scenes are so slimy and grey and grotesque that it feels to me a bit like the second Pirates of the Caribbean. You expect to see people growing barnacles or merging into walls. The pacing is odd in places, and you can really feel the persona of the director in the way he plans the camera shots. We're on the 5th episode now and all the multiple Dickens characters that make these movies quite brisk to keep up with visually are moving towards their Dickensian plot revelations and unravellings of mystery. It's very worthwhile to watch, but not quite so much a tea and muffin type movie, nor quite as hilarity-inducing as the kids found Martin Chuzzlewit. Of Bleak House, Chesterton writes:

Bleak House has every characteristic of his new realistic culture. Dickens never now, as in his early books, revels in the parts he likes and scamps the parts he does not, after the manner of Scott. He does not, as in previous tales, leave his heroes and heroines mere walking gentlemen and ladies with nothing at all to do but walk: he expends upon them at least ingenuity. By the expedients (successful or not) of the self-revelation of Esther or the humorous inconsistencies of Rick, he makes his younger figures if not lovable at least readable. Everywhere we see this tighter and more careful grip. He does not, for instance, when he wishes to denounce a dark institution, sandwich it in as a mere episode in a rambling story of adventure, as the debtor's prison is embedded in the body of "Pickwick" or the low Yorkshire school in the body of "Nicholas Nickleby." He puts the Court of Chancery in the centre of the stage, a sombre and sinister temple, and groups round it in artistic relation decaying and frantic figures, its offspring and its satirists, An old dipsomaniac keeps a rag and bone shop, type of futility and antiquity, and calls himself the Lord Chancellor. A little mad old maid hangs about the courts on a forgotten or imaginary lawsuit, and says with perfect and pungent irony, "I am expecting a judgment shortly. On the Day of Judgment." Rick and Ada and Esther are not mere strollers who have strayed into the court of law, they are its children, its symbols, and its victims. The righteous indignation of the book is not at the red heat of anarchy, but at the white heat of art. Its anger is patient and plodding, like some historic revenge. Moreover, it slowly and carefully creates the real psychology of oppression. The endless formality, the endless unemotional urbanity, the endless hope deferred, these things make one feel the fact of injustice more than the madness of Nero.

Also, I did finish Kant and the Nineteenth Century today as I had hoped to, though I had to stay up late to do so (and once dozed off with my reading glasses on my nose, and now it's even later and I'm wide awake).

Sierra Minutiae

My brother-in-law made a drink called Atholl Brose and handed it out in bottles to the family clan. It's pretty good, at least I think so, at least the slightly-over-half of me that is Scottish. I think it's a bit like mead.

You make it like this (at least the individual portions -- he must have multiplied it):

Ingredients:

• 3 rounded tablespoons of medium oatmeal
• 2 tablespoons heather honey
• Scotch whisky

Method:
The oatmeal is prepared by putting it into a basin and mixing with cold water until the consistency is that of a thick paste. Leave for half an hour and then put through a fine strainer, pressing with a wooden spoon to extract as much liquid as possible. Throw away the oatmeal and use the creamy liquor from the oatmeal for the brose.

Mix four dessert spoonfuls of pure honey and four sherry glassfuls of the prepared oatmeal and stir well. (Purists insist on a silver spoon for stirring!) Put into a quart bottle and fill with malt whisky; shake before serving.

Ha ha, now where is my claymore?


Clare did a Pygmalion photo shoot today, with Liam; Kieron took most of the pictures, I took some; they are here. We had a lot of fun. I took this photo of Clare uploading photos; it turned out soft focus because of the light, but I thought it was cute -- the basket, the old-fashioned flower girl clothes, and the laptop.

I wish there more than just two more proper days of the holiday -- on Monday, Sean goes back to school, and though Liam has one more week, he has to start buckling down to get things done before he takes the train ride back.

(sigh)

I am learning Flash.... using this ActionScript 3.0 Game Programmer's University -- and I finished my first lesson today. Fun!

I did the first day of my January Challenge -- and did all right, not great. It will be easier when the candy and honey oatmeal liquors are gone.

Kevin and the teenagers have been watching Errol Flynn movies the past few days -- Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk.

Did I say that I wish there were more days of holiday left? Christmas isn't officially over until Epiphany. But maybe Paddy will be better off with less screen time and sugar so readily available.

Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. -- Henry Higgins.

Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas to all!

Two Days Till Christmas

Here in the Sierras, we managed to dig our way out of our ice-covered driveway with the help of the three big boys in the family, and drive down to town, getting through all our remaining errand checklist for before Christmas, including:

• Aidan's bi-monthly blood draw,
• Clare's monthly orthodontist appointment,
• pharmacy pick-up of Aidan's anti-seizure med, and
  
• the last bits and pieces of shopping.

We got back up to our log home yesterday evening and this morning the streets were newly covered in snow, which we can enjoy peacefully without having to drive in it. Oh, the rewards of getting things done : ). I won't think about the wrapping I still have to do.






















The boys, the ones that aren't down with the virus, playing pick-up nerf football in our loft.

More photos of the boys outside in the new snow, taken by Clare.

First Snow!

Snow and the newly stained logs : )

Thanksgiving

From the Carnival of Homeschooling #152:

Test from a Curriculum, Not Standards (and I like the name of the blogger's book not yet released: Why Don't Students Like School:A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom).

Also, games to implement with sight words. I like the idea with the popsicle sticks for word families.


For how we celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday:

Thanksgiving photo-journal by my daughter Clare

Season's End

Clare took some pictures of Sean's Final Game of the Season. Sean is in the foreground in this picture which I borrowed from her-- he is #14.

Today, he will turn in his football gear. Today, he will get back home at 4 pm instead of 6:30 pm. This will make it a lot easier for him to get everything done before the next day. Extreme time management was a way of life last term -- come home, eat, take his shower and get his homework done and be ready to get up at 6 am the next morning.

Unfortunately, early home because of no football is like cutting off your head to lose a few pounds of weight. School with no football ....? where are the priorities there? : ). Something's wrong, somewhere. A new, quieter time will start. No tension about the upcoming game, but none of the expectant electricity either. Just school. Interesting to find out how that will be.

It will be happiness to see him walk into the door before dusk -- Kevin and the older kids had gotten into the habit of going down through the dark (COLD) forest to meet the late bus, and now Sean can head up by himself in the late (still cold) afternoon. But it will be a bit sorrowful, too, to know what is missing from the day for him.

Yesterday I gave Sean some dividers for his school binder and it he was quite pleased by this simple solution. He takes notes in class but then can't always find them when he needs them -- a couple of the teachers ask for them on occasion. Now he can put the relevant notes behind the proper color coded, labelled divider. He was happy about that. Football, for Sean, is enough to make it OK to have to go to school and get used to a significantly different way of learning.

Next week is Thanksgiving Break -- the high school kids get the whole week off, and Liam will be home. Sean is looking forward to that. We all are.

Homeschooling for us has always been most essentially about family. I wish I could find the Chesterton quote where he said that education was primarily about equipping the person to live in a family. He said it way better than that. I think part of it is that the education of the child also is a stage in the education of the parents. Someone said "Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your kids." I think learning is like that, too. Because learning is a matter of forming relationships, raising kids brings a whole new richness to relationships, to others and to the world.

This bleacher picture is titled by Aidan:
Bleachers with nobody on them... Nothing. Football has been a way to tie our family together even when Sean is gone 11 hours times 5 every week. Every Friday evening was about sitting on the bleachers cheering for our team, celebrating their highlights and agonizing with their difficulties. Now the rhythm of the week will change. It's sad to see a season drawing to an end, even when we know it will be replaced by a new season that will bring good things of its own.

Football and Starfall

Aidan is helping me embed this, the second to last game of the season:



Sean's team won this time (they're the ones in white since it's an away game, and he is #14 playing QB). He got to make some nice passes.


Here's Aidan watching the game.

Now he wants me to let him play Starfall. His favorite game right now is matching sight words.

And Sean wants me to make him a protein drink. He's gained 6 pounds recently and wants to maintain. He's also grown an inch, it looks like, but may not make it to Brett Favre size. He's trying though!

Signing off!

Invisible Balloons

Paddy at our homeschool Halloween party last week -- Clare took the picture.

Yesterday's JV football game went well. It was a fine warm autumn day and our team played decisively. They won by a margin.

On the stands, Paddy pointed and tugged my arm and said "Look.... it's an invisible balloon!"

I looked where he was looking. Over the field, caught and illuminated by the stadium lights, was a gossamer strand. I think it was one of those long single-threaded spider webs that drift around until they find a place to settle. Paddy saw the strand and deduced his own explanation.

I still call him a "baby" sometimes since he is our youngest and I'm still catching up in time -- my pace of assimilating changes seems to have a 3-year lag to it -- but looking at him last night, I realized I have a young person on my hands.... a curious, sometimes sarcastic or demanding, questioning, thinking philosopher. A real person, with eternity ahead of him.

I am an older mom, 40 years older than this little son of mine, so my prayer is that I never get socaught up in the "dailiness" and middle-aged complacence of life that I forget the invisible balloon behind the floating strand.

Nine Years Ago, and Now

Nine years ago today my family was in the middle of the whirlwind. My son, Aidan, had just come out of 12 hour liver transplant surgery on the morning of October 1st, 1999. He was four months old at the time. His heart had stopped for a second time just before surgery the night before. It turns out that the transplant was just the start of a tougher longer road instead of the solving all of his medical problems...


In a couple of days ... Aidan will be up in the stands watching his brother play for the JVs. He is now nine although mentally he is probably about four. He will enjoy the whole experience. He will stand up for the kickoff and love it when the crowd cheers and the band plays. Normal life is good. There is nothing better than being up in the stands on a Friday cheering for your team.

I mentioned over here that a star running back in our region, who read the above message that my husband posted on a highschool football board, sent Aidan a football and a team sweatshirt and a nice note expressing admiration for Aidan's courage.

Clare took some pictures of our little hero so Kevin could send some photos with a thank-you note Here's a couple that turned out particularly cute.

Aidan's starting technique for his 40 Yard Dash.





















Aidan just about 9 years ago, October 9th 1999, a few days after his transplant.

Aidan surrounded by siblings just before his transplant

Aidan's Transplant Story

I guess I am thinking about how many people stood in persona Christi for us through the years, often without even knowing it. Their prayers and kindness made things happen.

Mother Teresa wrote:

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in an ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

I am trying to remember that. ... the power in doing little kind things that could easily not have been done at all. Those things enrich the world.

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.

Language of Little Ones

I love the language of little ones, so much that it's difficult for me to correct them.

Aidan: Mama, grant me some cheese!

He means GRATE, but I always hear his words and suddenly the world around me is tinged with King Arthur tapestry-like colors and and I feel like replying something like, "With a hearty good will, gentle Sir!"

On a scarier note, Paddy had me read some Calvin and Hobbes comics to him and is now mimicking Calvin. I heard him bumping his way downstairs the other day saying, "Here comes the human slinky!" Kieron and I both zipped over to make sure he wasn't suiting the action to the words, and I heard Kieron explaining a moment later, "Things that work in comics don't always work in real life..." I think, I hope, Paddy already knows that.

Friday is for Football

Friday is SO much football day to me now. It's like a glamorous shadow cast over the whole week. Who would have thought I would care about JV football? But I do, just as I learned to care about reptiles, and giant sequoias, and vintage fashion, and the spare-tires-hitched-on-the-back-of-some-SUVS, because of what Charlotte Mason calls "the science of relations" (but perhaps, it should be called an art in a way). In other words, because my kids care about those things. Aidan's the spare-tire fan, in case you are wondering, and the day that our neighbor across the street allowed him to open the back DOOR of the SUV with the spare tire hitch was another day wrapped in glamor.

In the "School is Different from Home" category -- the other day Sean, home from school at 6 pm as usual, had finished dinner and was sitting around talking to us. His eyes landed on Paddy and he remarked incredulously, "Paddy is just this little munchkin that never stops talking!"

To us this was not news, of course, but I suddenly realized how odd a 5- year old must look to a 15 year old who spends the majority of his time with much taller people -- adolescents and post-adolescents, people with gruff voices who say "Dude" instead of well, whatever Paddy says all the time (we usually tune him out, I guess).

In the same category, Sean is not taking Health, but a lot of his friends are, and a few weeks ago they had to carry around an egg for 24 hours and bring it back unbroken. And this was supposed to teach....? Something along the lines of "babies are VERY tiny munchkins that are very fragile and can't just be tossed into a backpack which is then tossed onto the ground when you start football practice after school." But if you didn't already know that from personal experience, I am not really sure the egg would help.

(Here is the away game 2 weeks ago -- Kevin got around to uploading it. Sean is #14, in white -- he plays quarterback and also the defender against the wide receiver -- whatever that's called, I'm an amateur enthusiast. Anyway, they won 28-14).

Off till October

I'm going to be mostly off-line for two or three weeks so this blog will be quiet until early October. I am traveling to a family reunion and also, I have a few other things going on that are using the part of my mind that usually is devoted to writing on here ;-).

A few links to leave on -- at Real Learning, Mary M has collected some resources for the Pauline Year. (logo at the left).

Also, so has the Love2Learn Blog.


My daughter wrote a nice reflection about past journals and growing up at A Maiden's Wreath: From Four Years Ago.

Kevin videotaped Sean's first scrimmage. He is the quarterback on the left side, maroon helmet. The team did pretty well, and Sean made some nice passes. I'm testing video embedding here-- something rather different for this blog, video embedding and football! --- and it appears to be working.



October 1st is the 9th anniversary of Aidan's liver transplant. He went through some rough times. Perhaps you could say some prayers for this little girl who is going through a rough time now.

Now that I'm signing off temporarily I will probably think of all sorts of things to blog about.... oh, well! I will probably still be blogging school stuff over at Schola et Studium.

A Deep Breath

It's been quiet on here, hasn't it? I have been blogging, but mostly on Every Waking Hour (my journal) and Schola et Studium (my planning and record-keeping blog). Our school year started last week with my 15 year old's first building-school experience and will continue this week as we start our homeschool year, and return my oldest to college for his senior year at Thomas Aquinas College.

At this point the flow of this post seems to encourage some sort of retrospective/ perspective about the changes in our lives, but I can't seem to do that yet, since I feel like I'm still in the middle of it right now. I don't have a sense of where things will go from here, and am still getting used to the ongoing changes. I still feel like the Holy Spirit is moving so fast past me that I can't get a breath. (Our vacation by the lake, and the visit of our friends, was like the calm in the eye of the storm -- "calm" might not be the right word, but it was a sort of retreat and respite in a way).

The picture is Gustave Courbet, Le Coup de Vent (Gust of Wind).

The 14th was the feast day of St Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life at Auschwitz to save another prisoner. If you had thought ahead, which I didn't, you could have made the total act of consecration to the Immaculata yesterday, on the Feast of the Assumption. The next chance will be September 8th, or September 15th. Here is the Rule of Life he composed, which I have had posted on my bulletin board ever since Kolbe Academy sent it several years ago. I always come back to it when things are going in a troublesome way, and so obviously, it's time again!




All things considered, I think Kolbe will be the proper choice for our patron for this school year. ...along with St Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein), who also died at Auschwitz. Ooh, this last was a sudden inspiration, but I think it's a good one, since formerly, I was considering St Teresa of Avila and St Benedict as possibilities, and Edith Stein's chosen name incorporates both of them. Serendipity, or the breath of the Spiritus Sanctus.

It seems to me that with 3 graduates moving out into the "real world" in one way or another, and 1 highschooler facing the peculiar world of the rural public high school, that these two modern saints will be great intercessors for us in matters I can't yet even foresee.