the education of henry

John Green

2025-11-09

Back to school this week after our week off. And everything went fine. The weather was nice, although we did not have recess. Mom and I started the new and improved baking and cooking class, and that is good. I really like it. We made a few other minor adjustments to how things are operating after taking a week to reflect, but everything is going well. This has been the best homeschool year yet!

Dad took a picture of the library when he went in to work.

And this tree is two blocks from our house.

The big story this week was getting to meet John Green. He came to campus to give a talk and we were able to get him to sign Tuberculosis Is Everything and talk to him for a few moments to tell him how important Crash Course has been for us.

No one is here: we are first in line!

We scored seats in the front row. Jonathan, Ned, and Caroline were right behind us.

Impatiently waiting.

John Green in real life!

The moderated Q&A after the speech.

Telling John Green how much I love Crash Course and how it got me really interested in history.

The rest of the week was normal, although we did go to the history center for a talk about the Battle of Shiloh.

Sunday morning the tree across the street started dropping all of its leaves.

I let Dad sit in the chair. I'm not sure I will get it back.

And Mom was puzzling again this week:

This was another week off of reading while I am catching up on my papers for To Kill a Mockingbird and Henry V. Dad and I did read a few chapters of Discipline Is Destiny by Ryan Holiday, and we put in several hours working on writing my paper. And it paid off - I got my best grade so far!

For viewing, we switched to watching No Reservations from Anthony Bourdain, and we started with the episode on Iceland. Anthony was not a fan of the rotting shark. And then we watched a new show, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern - and saw him eat some really gross stuff in the Philippines, like a duck embryo still in the shell and some giant mangrove worms. Ew. Happy to be a vegetarian.

We also watched a Frontline documentary from 2004 called The Persuaders, which was about how advertisers manipulate us into buying things and in deciding who to vote for. I thought it was bad enough in the documentary, but it is much worse now with cell phones and social media. And to wrap up the television, we watched one episode of Battlestar Galactica on Sunday night. We would have watched more, but we are at the end of season one and did not want to split up the two-part season finale.

For films this week, it was all about food. We watched Babette's Feast on Friday night. It was very fun to watch - all that food she made for those dour, unsuspecting Danes! And then on Saturday night we watched Chef, which was also really good. The story with the little boy and his dad was my favorite part. Plus it had actors I recognized - Happy, Tony Stark, and Black Widow from the Iron Man movies. And I want that grilled cheese Chef Carl made in the movie - it looked so good!

And that was my week. Take care and stay warm: winter is coming!