The Mom Weekly Volume 53: August 13, 2024
Note:
I love “From the Vault” so much. I wonder if you kids remember any of these happenings. I don’t think I would if I hadn’t written them down at the time!
Remember how much I love you,
Mom
From the Vault: The Epic of Gilgamesh (May 2007)
A month or so ago, we had a taste of The Epic of Gilgamesh in our history book, The Story of the World, by Susan Wise Bauer. This is an excellent series and I’m so glad we can use it as the “spine” of our study of history.
The accompanying activity guide has not just lots of fun hands-on activities and worksheets, many of which we do in our once-a-month co-op, but also lists for each chapter of well-selected extra literature selections.
Many are picture books, but they are so well-done all ages would enjoy them. I usually send a huge email about once a month to Glenda, our terrific interlibrary loan lady, an email filled with these books for about 3-4 chapters at at time, and we have a great time going through them when they come in from the library. Usually Homegirl runs off with six or seven of them, and I will read one or two to the others. Then we have lots of interesting reads for the upcoming days.
One particularly compelling trilogy of books we are reading (from interlibrary loan, though I might decide to invest in them) is by Ludmila Zeman. The first is Gilgamesh the King, the second; The Revenge of Ishtar, and the third The Last Quest of Gilgamesh.
Her illustrations are compelling; fierce and beautiful at the same time. She also wrote the words and her way with words is wonderful.
The Epic of Gilgamesh dates from about 2700 B.C., thousands of years before Christ. It tells the story of the Gilgamesh, a wicked but powerful king who learns about friendship and self-giving love by meeting his match in the equally strong but kind Enkidu. The themes of love, death, immortality and other “kid-friendly” themes (ha!) are part of all these books, and the children and I just loved them, and loved discussing them.
Now, I am the kind of reader who reads straight. I tend not to ask kids questions while I read. I will pause at certain times, explain occasionally, but really want to read the story itself. I always answer questions, but I tend to be pretty no-nonsense in my reading style. Sir could not be more different–I will suggest a short, short book to read to children late at night when I just want a quick read and off to sleep, and he will draw it out for hours (ok., I’m exaggerating). But I do kind of admire how much he can draw out of the simplest text.
This trilogy made it very easy for me to pause and discuss. The illustrations are so detailed we had to stop for awhile at each page. Every page brought up “big questions”. The last page in The Revenge of Ishtar reads,
“As Enkidu and Shamat flew into the night,
King Gilgamesh went out alone onto the river.
‘Death is the worst monster in the world,’
he thought. It has taken Enkidu from me.
Someday it will take me from my people.
I must find a way to destroy it.
I must seek out the secret of immortality.’
‘That will be my last quest.’ “
On this page, little 3-year-old Max began spontaneously a discussion about how Jesus killed death (his major theme at the moment), and the girls had to point out that Gilgamesh lived (or was written, as I told them, because it is a story and not history) thousands of years before Jesus. So we talked about how all people throughout time have talked about and wondered about all these things–life, death, love, and what to think about them. We talked about how grateful we are to have the fullness of faith and truth Jesus brings us, but people have always sought answers to these questions and sought the good and the meaning of everything. I wish I could have had a tape recorder going because I was floored by how insightful these three children, all under 10, could discuss these “big things.”
I don’t think it was necessarily how smart they are (though of course they are all above average :-)), but just a good book inspiring great discussion.
I feel so grateful to be learning alongside my children with so many great resources. Thank you, Ludmila Zeman!
Interesting/Notable:
Look at all those people taking care of themselves:
I made a costly decluttering mistake—The Minimal Mom (Youtube)
The tl:dr: Don’t be too annoyed when you get rid of something and you wish you had kept it. You can’t have both a peaceful, moderately uncluttered house, and also keep absolutely everthing. Not deciding to get rid of things is deciding, and can lead to problems!
The Well-Off People Who Can’t Spend Money–The Atlantic (gift link)
An action item: Check your Roth IRA
We haven’t had a Roth IRA item in awhile. So let’s take a moment to do two things related to Roths. As written previously , it’s easy to open and maintain a Roth IRA. The only requirements for contributing to a Roth IRA are: one: having a Roth IRA account two: earned income and three: not too much earned income (as the ability to contribute to a Roth phases out at higher income levels. There are even ways to get around that, but let’s stick with the simple for now).
Read this article to get the basics.
Two Roth-related things to do:
One: check that you are funding your Roth this year.
How much have you contributed this year so far? If you have an auto-deposit set up for this, would you like to bump it up by some amount ($10, $100, etc.) monthly before the end of the year? Recall that the 2024 limits for Roth contributions is $7,000 for people under 50 ($8,000 for those 50 and up).
Two: Make sure you are investing the funds in your Roth IRA.
It might be in cash or a cash equivilant. Don’t worry, we’ve all done this. That’s better than not having a Roth, but the beauty of Roth earnings is they are never taxed. So the sooner you can get it into a low-cost index fund or ETF, the better.
Some ideas for low-cost ETFs/index funds that passively index the entire stock market—these all have basically the same returns:
VTI: Vanguard Total Stock Market
SCHB: Schwab’s version total stock market ETF
FSKAX: Fidelity’s Total Stock Market Fund
If you need any help with any of this, or have any Roth-related questions, just let me know. I love answering these kinds of questions!
What are you doing this weekend?
So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:
*faith—when are you going to Mass?
*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?
*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?
*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).