Welcome to our #HomeCrazzyHome…
This blog is about one facet of our complex lives – urban farming & homesteading based upon permaculture ethics of Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share.
But you’ll learn all about that on our blog. This is about the other stuff…Who are we?
Water gun fights at dawn…hiding Mom’s coffee…teaching via Minecraft…craftivism…saving the planet…and loads of…
- Laughter
- Love
- Acceptance
- and Cwtches (Welsh for hug…but so much more than that)!
And we would not have it any differently.
So, let’s introduce ourselves…
PanKwake has just entered her teens. She is multiply neurodivergent. Meaning she has been diagnosed with autism, specifically Pathological Demand Avoidance, as well as dyspraxia and ADHD. She is also dyslexic, severely so.
Which along with bullying during her one year is school is why I home educate her. In the beginning I tried all those schedules and workbooks, dragging her from group to group, taking her to museums and parks. But that just created stress and tension which made learning impossible. Life seemed one long meltdown.
Then I relaxed. It began as a ‘break’ to allow her, me, and my new partner to adjust. Then I discovered Dr. Peter Grey and his book Free to Learn as well as the grandfather of unschooling John Holt. Somewhere along the way, I discovered PanKwake was learning the things she wanted to…in the ways that worked best for her. Such as YouTube, gaming, and doing.
In fact, just when I start to scratch my head and worry about how she will ever learn something I think is important, I get proven wrong. Like my concerns about PanKwake learning place value in math, especially higher ones like millions and billions. Along comes Bee Swarm on Roblox with billion robux backpacks that she must work for days to earn. She got so excited about it that she asked Google what the highest number was. Of course, it replied…a google with 100 zeros.
If you want to learn more about that facet of our journey, which surprisingly ties in with those permaculture ethics, then my other blog Self-Directed Learning & Neurodiversity.
And if you want to learn more about PanKwake, she can be found on YouTube:
PanKwake – her thoughts on various subjects including neurodiversity/autism and home education.
Prankwake – her practical joker side.
Speaking of Google and tech, that takes me to my partner, Alan Cox. Alan is…well just look at his Wiki profile. The truth is that to us, he is just Alan. Intelligent. Compassionate. Involved. And our rock in the storm. Yes, he too is Crazzy. He can just hide it better than we do.
The thing that is important for this blog is that Alan is a modern Renaissance man. He keeps abreast not only of the advances in technology but also politics, science, and a bit in the arts. He is the one most likely to bring the voice of reason to our debates. But he is also open-minded.
One of my favorite stories is the debate between Alan and PanKwake about the origins of Pokémon. I was fast asleep (my lesser brain seems to need more of that than theirs do) when Alan commented that Pokémon looked like aliens. PanKwake proceeded to explain to him how they were actually evolved from real animals. In the end, she won the debate. An eleven-year-old autistic girl convinced one of the best techie minds of our times. That, folks, is our HomeCrazzyHome.
And me? I am Tara. I coined the phrase HomeCrazzyHome to reflect who we are. (Take a deep breath here…) I am a homemaker-feminist, Transcendentalist, creator, writer/blogger, activist, urban farmer, and homesteader who is passionate about the environment, self-directed learning, neurodivergence, and craftivism among other things. Like my Transcendentalist forepersons such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Margaret Fuller, I believe that society, in particular religion and politics, corrupts the basic good of humanity and nature.
But don’t let my down-home appearance and Southern twang fool you, I hold a bachelor’s degree in health and a master’s in public administration with an emphasis on the environment. I have certifications as diverse as teaching adults to doula. For over a decade, I worked as a senior fundraiser and event planner for charities in the US and UK.
I can be found in way too many places on the internet:
YouTube – My HomeCrazzyHome vlog focuses on permaculture, the environment, the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse & Recycle), and on fun upcycling projects that families can do together.
Medium – I write about, well, pretty much everything: the environment, feminism, Transcendentalism, neurodivergence, writing, and pretty much anything else that I have an opinion on, which is most things.
Tara Cox is my writer’s blog. I write what I call Literary Erotica. Never heard of it? I made that term up. Imagine if literary fiction and erotica got together and had a ‘love child.’ That is Literary Erotica. On here you will find serialized versions of my WIPs (Works In Progress) as well as finished works. All FREE to read for the brave of heart. But yes, there is sex and cussing. My tagline is…Real-life, hot sex, deep meaning.
Yes, all that as well as Crazzy and free-spirited. One way that free-spirit reflects itself is my commitment to free and unrestricted sharing of knowledge. All of my writings and photographs are free to share under Creative Commons licensing. Photographs are CC BY-NC-SA and writings are CC BY-NC-ND, meaning they cannot be used commercially or changed in any way.
And when it comes to self-directed learning, it is not just PanKwake. I spend at least one and more like two or three hours each day exploring everything from gardening, photography, the Black Death, Gnosticism, or whatever catches my fancy through online courses. My reading right now is focused upon feminism and Transcendentalist. If I live to be a thousand, I still won’t have time to read all the books on my ever-growing list or sew and craft the stuff in my utility room, another of my passions.
One final point…everything on this blog is a joint venture. PanKwake and Alan are both active in the process and approve the posts before they appear. Same for photos and the like.
What I hope in making these changes to the blog is that others will use our conversations to engage their families in discussion…and that some might find the courage to let go of two-centuries (or more) of educational ‘traditions.’ To find the freedom to learn through living…
HomeCrazzyHome 