Sphinx and surrounds

Here she is. Cairo cat, tail curling under her lion's body. She's not flawless. And she has not, as they say, had work done. Not on her face anyway. They have rebuilt her paws, only practical. But in fact, no make up artist in the world could fix the damage to her noble face -- and yet people come from all over the world to look at her in awe. Stately. Knowing. She has seen it all. And looking at her, I want to ask thousands of questions, one for each year she has had her eyes trained on the desert. If history is prologue, do we dig into it simply for understanding? As in, whose shoulders are under us on which we are standing? Or there a hint of the future in studying the past?

The pyramids -- there are over 100.  Big. Huge.  School kids around the globe make models of these four sided wonders.  But how were the originals made without forklifts?  Without tractors?  Some say they built the sand up around them and rolled the 2-7 ton stones in place.  Some say it was aliens.  How many died in their construction we can only guess.  



The picture of the man whose task it is to guard the entry of the empty tomb puts the size of the stones in perspective. These were mined from a quarry across the Nile, brought by barge and rolled on logs into positions over decades to erect the pyramid. Beside the great pyramid are smaller ones for several of the Pharaoh's wives. Below are Michael, Frank and me posing in the mummification temple located at beside the pyramid.



Outside the entry (I did not go in, asthma and a twinge of claustrophopia) instead opting to take pictures of Frank and Michael as they join a school group on their steep descent into the empty tomb. Beside the pyramids were the usual collection of vendors hawking small models and stuffed camels. One man gently caught my elbow as I walked past. I am used to shaking off vendors, so I kept walking until he said, "Obama." I looked down. I was wearing a campaign button. He put a thumbs up. "Obama." I replied. "Barook Obama." He said smiling. "Barrack." I said. "No Jack," he said. "Obama." We were in agreement. Egypt is the strongest democracy in the Middle East, a long standing ally of the US. Here, as all over the world, people are watching our election process carefully. The peaceful transition of power. The history of yesterday and the history that is being made on Tuesday all coming together as two strangers touch hands and exchange smiles.

The final photo is of Michael sitting outside the Museum of Antiquities in front of another Sphinx. Turns out there are lots of them. This is not a model, though smaller than her sister in the desert, this ol' girl is also thousands of years old.  

Cairo!

The trip was seamless -- Cleveland to Newark to Rome to Cairo.  Just like we knew the way by heart.  We were greeted at the airport by smiles and a welcome sign and then wisked off to (can you believe it?) to a Halloween festival at the school.  Today we toured the great pyramids and Sphinx and Cairo museum followed by a winding, wild ride through Cairo marketplace.  Frank almost became a hood ornament, but other than that, it was all fascinating.  

I have so much to write about, but it is later than I want to think about and we get to meet the students first thing in the morning, which is the most exciting of all. So, a couple more pictures and off to wash the dust off and to bed.

Virginia Association of Teachers of English VATE

The drive from Purcellville to Roanoke is peaceful with crooked fingers of The Blue Ridge Parkway tempting drivers to turn off the main drag and swirl through the rolling mountains ablaze in fall color.  The VATE conference was well orchestrated highlighted by a wonderful presentation by a student performance group doing Suesical (spelling?).

On Sunday morning it was my turn to speak at the breakfast and Sandra Whitaker gave me the most beautiful introduction, part of which I am sharing below.  I'm not sure if this is a copyright violation, but she was kind enough to give me a copy so here goes.  Since I also knew that the next day she would be defending her dissertation, it was even double, triple touching that she took time to write this beautiful prose.

"Performance poetry has its own special kind of magic.  As words hand in the air, begging to touch the soul, the poet and the audience linger in a space between being and becoming.  when words break past our defenses, tingle our senses and move our spirits, we change, seeing reality  through a different lens or in a new way."  She oh so kindly credited me with lending a hand in helping students and teachers "unleash the poet within, and to use performance poetry as a powerful way to understand academic concepts and the richness of life.  When children as her why she is teaching poetry , she says (and I do), "Because someday you will need it.  I can't tell you when, but you will."

Sandra writes that "poetry is truth"  affirming with her hard earned PhD and wise words what I have always felt, that the overwhelming majority of poetry is non-fiction.  "The funny encounters, the heartbreaks, the tragic losses, and the blessings . . . poems (and blogs) are a testament to how much the soul needs poetry."  That it "isn't the state standards, or lack thereof, that make us need poetry.  It isn't  that old dusty books of poetry reside in many of our personal libraries.  We need poetry because it is through poetry that we express what we can't say, that we shed the tears our eyes won't cry, and that we dance life's rhythms without tripping over our own feet . . . [Poetry] reveals our darkest secrets veiled in universal truth.  It is the common thread weaving together all of time and place, uttering what we dared not say, giving voice to the human experience."  Where upon she quoted from my poem "If I were a Poem" and handed me the mike.

Follow that!  It was such a beautiful piece of writing, I wanted to just sit down and digest rather than talk.  Thank you so much for filling my heart with words of poetry put into paragraphs Sandy.  And thanks to Brent for lending his voice to a performance of a poem for two voices and to all the teachers who warm smiles and hugs welcomed me back to VA.  And I came home with a rock from Tinker's Creek in hand and poetic words in my heart.  

Tight End Poet Number 37

Here's what I know about football: Someone shouts out a number, another guy hikes the ball, and then everyone either makes a break for it or they fall in a pile. They get four chances to score and then they have to turn over the ball and let the other team have a chance to break for the goal. That's the sum total of what I know. Mostly I have always felt that football was invented to keep the men folk occupied on Sundays so that I had that time to myself, which is the sole source of any warm feelings that may have visited my heart over the oh so many football seasons of my life.

That was up until Ben put on pads, and there I was last week, under the lights at Fireman's Field in Purcellville, VA (and a quilt) trying to learn what exactly a tight end does. Exactly. Which definitely puts me in the category of being not smarter than a third grader, because all those guys seemed to know exactly what they were doing and who they were supposed to hit when. Impressive. Ben's team didn't chalk up a win because of the (are you kidding me?) passing game of the other team, but they fought right up to the horn blasting in the fall air.

So, what do you think?

Can a tight end make a pencil point conversion and write poetry? Can a clear eye and determination on the field translate into words on a page at school the next day? Yeppers. Look at ol' 37 as he bends into his writing, creating a Swirl of a poem.

This was the first time I ever tried writing definition poems with a third grade class -- and they were so great. I learned that a swirl is not cardboard or a straight line and that teeth can't grow hair. Working from their vocabulary words for the week, conferring with partners, co-composing, and writing on their own, the whole class teamed up to make some pretty cool poetry.

KSRA Poetry Around

As Michael and I were driving to Keystone State Reading Association this week, (well, let me amend that, as Michael was driving and I was taking in the colorful hills and valleys along the PA turnpike) anyway, while we were traversing the oh so long state of PA, I tried to count how many times I have attended this meeting since 1991.  It was definitely one of the first teacher conferences I ever attended.  Can't remember.  Lots of times.  What I have no trouble remembering are the fine friends and poets I have had the honor to hang out with during the meetings and at the evening poetry around

One of the best is Will Mowery who this year read lively, insightful tidbits from his writer's notebook.  Michael also pitched in with a few poems.  Will says that the important thing about poetry for kids is that a good poem always requires inference.

The event has been better attended in past years, but this time most of the teachers were commuting, the creaking economy has his both teachers and school professional development budgets hard.  Attendance at teacher conferences is down in general.   Hopefully this will change next year when KSRA returns to its old home in Hershey.  Here's hopin'.

Meantime, I appreciate the opportunity to connect with old friends, meet new ones, and share good words.  The importance of teacher conferences can't be overstated -- it's a place to learn new ideas and feed the spirit, both benefits of equal import.  

Oh, and on a different note, congratulations to Mary Ann Hoberman who has just replace Jack Prelutsky as the children's poet laureate.  Who even knew there was such a thing?  News to me.  But still -- cool beans.  She's a fine choice.  

Where do you find the words? Black River Schools

The question came during magic time, the final question and answer session after the assembly. Good question! Sometimes I can find the words and other times they tumble around in my head and refuse to commit themselves to paper. Other times the words seem to have sleeping sickness and are too lazy to even attempt to kick it around on the page. Which is kind of where I have been lately. The best cure I can think of for not writing is to write -- which I did -- right along with the students at Black River elementary and middle schools this week.

The second day I was there another student asked if I had ever written a poem about bullies. I told him that, funny you should ask, but in fact I was working on one right here -- and held up a piece of paper with words jumping and skidding all over it. What inspired me to write? Joining a writing community and that simple directive, "we'll just write now for about 5 minutes. I invariably stretch this five minute promise to at least 10 -- just enough time for all of us to get something down on paper.

As we head into the weekend and beyond, as this week starts to puddle into last and the week before, as the sharp edges of our memories begin to fade -- none of us will go forward empty handed. Thanks to Principal Tammy Starkey -- it was great working with you again -- and thanks to the kids in Black River for welcoming me into their writing community.

Bountiful Harvest

Arms full of basil, red, yellow, and green peppers. Tomatoes of all shapes and sizes. Lettuce and even some banana peppers. A few choice strawberries and lots of flowers. And the only fertilizer used came from worm castings. I'm not quite ready to enter the county fair, but this labor of love netted some fine eating this summer. Here I am with almost the final harvest, though I'm still pulling a tomato or two a day. I put up 24 freezer bags of pesto and we have had abundant salads.

Already I am planning next summer and how I can rearrange rows so that the spinach doesn't get so leggy and that the tomatoes get more sun and I want to put in more peppers so that we can stuff more with that yummy rice concoction we came up with and put them in the freezer.

All last week I was obsessed with the economy in free fall. I wrung my hands and spent waaaay too many hours watching growth charts plummeting like pelicans, hoping the next economist they put on the panel would have one positive thing to say. Not one did. The campaign kept getting nastier. The news was just bad all around, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. And I twisted my knee, which didn't help my mood or my ability to walk off my anxiety. Even when I turned off the flat screen fear machine to escape into fiction, it was bad news. Reading a fictionalized biography of Nefertiti (in anticipation of the big trip to Cairo) wouldn't you know the court of Egypt came down with the plague and four of the six of Pharaoh's kids died. I know it is a few thousand years late to feel bad for them, but I did. I was just feeling bad all 'round.

Here's what I almost forgot. I forgot this picture that Michael had snapped the week before. That these cool breezes that will ultimately be followed by warm ones -- and another planting season.

'Course next year I may be planting with a little more sense of urgency if the economy doesn't turn around, but it's comforting to know that Mother Nature and the worm bins in the basement have our back.

Anatomy of a speech

Missouri Reading Association is a warm, inviting event. Michael and I are on the docket to do the kick off keynote. Tick Tick the Clock. Teachers filing into the ballroom. And I race to make one more change. Michael (owner of the watch) says to let it go, but I know that in the face of the hotel coffee that can't stand up for itself and the unfortunate ballroom carpet that if I don't make this last change, all will be lost. It is a matter of extreme urgency that I adjust the program with 7 minutes to show time. I have to. I must. Or else.

Or else what?

OR ELSE! You know. The world as we know it will end, the stock market will crash, and a you betcha chick with a come hither wink will be nominated for Vice President.

Oh, wait a minute. I made the change, we began on time and all those things happened anyway.

Oh well. You never know.

The coolest thing about this event was really the next morning when Smokey Daniels had all the teachers write down their ideas on what we should do to improve education and then divided the letters into two piles and then into two envelops to be mailed to the Obama and McCain campains. You never saw a ballroom of teachers scribble faster and with more intensity in your life. Any other time I might have thought that it was simply the astigmatic anxiety oozing up from the carpet that had them wound up, but there was no doubting the genuine passion of the teachers as they put their ideas down on paper.

Off the Books

Yesterday a big Yellow Freight delivery truck (way big) pulled up in front of the house and the nice delivery man wanted to drop off two pallets of books, (value $80,000). In fact, all I was supposed to receive were 3 text books. I’m not certain of the value of these books, but a fair market price would be $90, or about $30 a piece.

Wow. $80,000 worth of books. My neighbor is standing outside and says, “wahoo. garage sale.”

"Nah." I say. "I really only have rights to $90 in books."

But, my imagination takes off. She's so right. In fact, if you break these pallets of books up and sell them individually, a conservative estimate of the books’ value would be $112,000 (with the standard 40% mark up).

She leaves for work and I decide it wouldn’t be fair for me to actually sell the books, they aren’t mine. But I can act like the big boys, I can take a loan out against this asset I am holding just like the bank takes out loans on other people's savings accounts. That's not theirs either. Since I am holding the books on pallets in my driveway, I go to the local bank and take out a loan against this asset. The banker makes commissions on the size of the loan, not on my ability to pay the loan back so he says, “that’s a Class A asset, you have the books in your possession. When are you planning this garage sale?”

“Dunno.” I answer, honestly. "I don't actually own the books. I'm kind of book sitting."

“That’s okay,” says Mr. Banker. “If you did own the books, you think you can unload them in say 5 years?”

“Sure.” I answer, thinking five years is a long time and heck, it’s only 500 lbs of books. That’s only 100 lbs a year, that would be reasonable. If the books were mine. My neighbor would help and we'd all make out.

“Kewl,” says the banker. “Tell you what, I’m going to loan you $150,000 on those books because the price of books is going up and you’d probably be able to sell them for more than you are thinking. You just pay us a little every month on the interest.” Mr. Banker gets a healthy commission and I have $150,000 in my checking account. Meantime, by this time the shipper has realized its mistake and collected the books.

But I'm so excited, I pay bonus’ to my cats and dogs and still have lots left over. I go to Bank B. I say, look I'm rich. I have all this cash. I want to borrow money for a boat and a car and some new shoes. Bank B extends these loans to me by borrowing against my neighbor’s savings.

Meantime, Bank A takes my loan and places a mature value on the loan of $500,000 (asset plus interest for 5 years). Bank A bundles my loan with a bunch of other people’s loans on temporary assets sitting in driveways around town and wow, that adds up to say, $5 million. So, they take these dollars and buy stock in the company of my neighbor’s employer.

After they have purchased a lot of this stock, at first it drives up the price. Then people start to spread rumors that the stock really isn’t worth so much, so Bank A goes back into the market and bets that the stock will fall. Banks B and C see what Bank A is up to and even though they don’t really own any shares of this stock, they decide to bet that the stock will fall, too. The stock falls. The bets pay off. They pay big bonuses to the traders.

Time passes. I answer the phone and it’s the bank. “You know that loan?”

“Yup.”

“It’s time to pay up.”

“Mmmm. I spent the money. And I have all these other loans I took out using the money you gave me as collateral, and I’m a little over extended.”

“Uh oh. We're over extended, too. Oh, well, time for that garage sale. Just sell those books you used to secure the loan.”

“Well, I didn’t really OWN those books. I told you that. They were just parked in my driveway.”

“And?”

“And, they’re like, gone. You know. You want to take back the shoes?”

“Shoes are a depreciating asset. You owe us $500,000.”

“I thought I owed you $150,000.”

“That was before we sold the loan as a derivative asset for $500,000 to Bank B and they used that as collateral for this $5 million loan we took out to buy stock in your neighbor’s employer.”

So, my neighbor loses her job because her company can't make payroll. The banks have cut off the company’s credit because the stock fell. She goes to her savings account to take money out to pay her house payment, car payment and for her kid’s braces and her bank says, “not only can we not give you your money because we used it for collateral and loaned too much money to the lady with the books in her driveway. BTW, would you mind chipping in to pay for the losses on her books?”

My neighbor is a little annoyed but says, “$90? Sure, I’ll chip in. She’s good for it. Can I have my money now?”

“Not exactly,” says the bank. We need you to chip in at least $500,000 for her and we might as well clean up all this other debt, too. Can we have $5 million to recapitalize the bank? Come to think of it, we may need $6 million. All those bonus’ and commissions, you know. Don't ask me to explain how this happened, I don't understand it myself. Very complicated. Everybody's going to have to pitch in and if you don’t? This is a very fragile situation. You’ll never get another job or be able to pay for those braces for your kid.”

“Wait a minute!” My neighbor is extremely annoyed now. "You loaned her $500,000 on a $90 asset? Are you nuts?"

"She's irresponsible. What can we say. We actually only loaned her $150,000. But that's beside the point. That debt is now up to $500,000 and we need your help. It's too complicated for you to understand."

"Understand this. I’m unemployed. And you want me to pay $6 million dollars for an asset that’s worth $90? There ain't a garage sale in the world gonna make that kinda money.”

This entire scenario flashes through my mind as I explain to the Yellow Freight delivery guy that he has to take the books back.

My neighbor keeps guns in the house.

Spot the difference?

"Business or leisure?"
The question appears on every country's entry form, and you have to choose. One or the other. Walking through an airport it is easy to pick out the strictly leisure types, cameras around necks, Hawaiian shirts and flip flops walking through O'Hare in January. It used to be easy to spot the business types -- suits and ties or the classic khakis and blue sport coats (male and female versions). But today's leisure traveler is just as likely to be hauling a computer case as the business traveler is to be clutching a Fodor's guide. Whether it is the proliferation of home offices or the invasion of the gen-x "I don't need no stinkin' suit" mentality, the travel world is a different place than it was in the eighties when I took my first trip overseas.

One thing that has also changed are the ubiquitous examples of bad translations. T shirts splashed with English saying like "sports is happy time" or my personal favorite from a coffee mug I purchased in Tokyo years ago, "Various types of dogs are here, let's play with us!" Was that supposed to say Dogs are Fun? Dogs! Let's play! Who knows. Translators (like the rest of us) have become a bit more worldly and these one liners are getting more scarce.

I snapped the picture above in the Kuala Lumpur airport and found it in my picture sorting. One can only hope this is a bad translation and should really read "a business advantage" rather than an "unfair business advantage." But I have to say, it is that "unfair" business rubric that gets me sputtering whenever I hear someone saying we need to reform schools on a business model. Really. The Enron business model? The hedge fund business model? I used to cite the savings and loan crisis but that is so many corporate disasters ago that it is fading into a vanishing point. I once worked at a big, healthy law firm whose main task was save the corporate hides of businesses in trouble -- and that law firm is one of MANY.

Is playing fair the stuff of picture books? Pure fiction? Or is it an aspiration? If so, then the business world could take some lessons from schools.

Now, the fact that our schools are so disparate in resources, that's truly unfair. But it's going to take more than a "business model" to fix that -- especially as advertised.

Death of a Loved One Day 115

Lists of reasons to not write are long, most of them written by people on deadline. This past week, in order to avoid doing my work (writing) I cleaned out folders on my computer and finally (this is really digging deep) the supply closet in my office. Stuck in here and there among the dusty old floppy discs and transparencies were pictures of Stephie, pictures hastily filed in the closet when new ones arrived. There was always an endless supply. I didn't intend to invest hours grieving this week. I intended to work. Pictures are loose boards on the bridge of intentions.


Cleaning up computer files is less dusty work. Move. Delete. Make New Folder. Delete. Delete. That's the easy part. The time consuming part is looking through the pictures. It's like trying to walk holding hands with a toddler -- you want to go one way but you're getting tugged in a million directions. What I relish in these family photos are the smiles, the open eyed, pure happy, sometimes toothless, sometimes covered in frosting, smiles.

A friend wrote a bit ago to express belated condolences and I told him the problem with losing a child in the family is that we love them with such reckless abandon, holding nothing back. Kissing their toes, sniffing their necks while we hug them until they almost pop. (Exactly the same parent/grandparent behavior that drives kids crazy). An investment that is guaranteed not to bottom out.

Until one day, the missing board. The water rushing beneath. The sharp intake of breath as you catch yourself and try to not fall into that hole. And you remind yourself that others have suffered worse losses, whole families have been sucked into nothingness. You remind yourself of all that is good and hang onto the railing, stepping very carefully.

Our family photos taken this past summer still show us smiling for the camera -- at the pool, at the birthday party. But something has seriously changed about everyone's eyes. Each and every pair of them. Less giddy. More watchful.

The Teacher's Life

Mrs. Henderson, my sixth grade teacher, had sensible lace up heels, salt-n-pepper hair and permanently embedded chalk in her torn and ragged cuticles. I remember studying them when I would be summoned to her confused desk for a conference. We repeatedly conferred about how messy my desk was, we didn't do any writing to confer about. It was the height of the baby boom and she had 35 of us at Berkley Elementary School; Mrs. Henderson stuck to worksheets. The school is gone now, replaced by a parking lot for the high school. Along with the building went the worksheets, the ditto machine and (in all probability) Mrs. Henderson. RIP

I wonder what she did for peer support? Surely she didn't turn to Sherk the Jerk, (the fifth grade teacher). I can't imagine Sherk being any more supportive to her peers than she was to us. Zero.

I wonder if she could have even imagined a world in which she could pop in ear buds and get professionally juiced through a podcast? How about an international Teacher Life nation? She probably only had one electrical outlet in the room so she could occasionally use the film strip machine -- how could she have even have dreamed of what Bobby Norman, (second grade teacher, AZ) is so skillfully putting together?

Follow these links to some really cool teacher connections!
The Teacher's Life Blog
The Teacher's Life Nation


Sign up for new podcasts.

Now, look at all the kids in your classroom as the school year begins and try to imagine the communities and communication systems they are likely to create after -- after -- well, you know.

American Prayer

Educational TV

“Kids just don’t know how to work,” I hear my friends complain. They have no desire to learn nor do many of them have the desire to do much of anything beyond staring at some kind of screen, complain the teachers.

The first teacher professional book I ever read was The Disappearance of Childhood by Neal Postman where the author points out that prior to television, adults were the storehouses of knowledge and (hopefully) at least a little wisdom. Responsible adults would pass this learning along to children at the appropriate time and childhood was one long apprenticeship to adulthood. How to use a chain saw, fire a weapon, cook a goose, lessons were given on a need to know basis, complete with new words and real reasons to learn. Life and death issues taught as they came up.

Such was the way of learning throughout the ages, Postman pointed out, right up to the advent of the television. Some might argue that it really started with the Little Rascals, but I suspect those shows were not created just to entertain kids, and were certainly not developed to be a vehicle for selling products to kids. That came later.

Of course words, reading, and books factored into the learning process. But this type of learning was also scaffolded in accordance with the maturity of the kid, the difficulty of the text precluding most second graders from mastery of quantum physics at the corner library even IF (big if) the librarian let would allow the kid into the adult section.

So, along came television, effectively changing the direction of the knowledge stream. And within a couple of generations of sitcoms, Roseanne, Archie Bunker, and Maude came along to replace I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best as broadcast parents who dispensed knowledge with no deference to the viewer’s age or need to know. While parents were working somewhere out of the sights of their kids, kids took to learning on their own from fake parents first, and then simply from each other.

At some point, Madison Avenue went from being in the business of selling during breaks in the television shows to driving the programming for children. Can’t you just see the lightbulb going on over the pink power tie of some ad exec after a focus group for Sugar Pops.

PING! Kids don’t like parents around. Let’s take the parents out of these programs – kids will like the shows more and we can sell more cereal.

Bingo. The advent of the Disney channel, one of the most successful sales vehicles to traverse our screens. In shows such as The Suite Life and Hannah Montana, knowledge is imparted by peers. The vocabulary is limited, the topics narrow. Work is never modeled and viewers are never asked to stretch beyond what they already know.

Responsible parents restrict their children to this kind of programming thinking they are doing a good thing by not letting kids learn how to party hearty with a beer bong on MTV or commit a sex crime ala CSI.

But is it a good thing? Really? When the only adult role models students see in their fictional TV literature are ineffectual, plainly idiotic, or absent entirely, why are we surprised when our real life kids give us no respect? From three to six hours per day, PER DAY, kids are being schooled that adults are dumb and it is their peers who have all the smarts. The days and plots of their lives revolve around avoiding any interaction with adults.

I have this discussion with my daughters all the time. I know they think I’m annoying (and I probably am) complaining about the Disney channel, but there is something about my grandkids watching this programming that makes my teeth itch. The way they depict young women? The shallow values? The insular lives that rarely venture outdoors? This type of learning can never replace what adults can impart to kids.

It can be argued that television has replaced teachers and parents as the greatest educator, but even with the shows featuring murders and Springerized paternity tests blocked, what is most children’s programming really teaching kids except that adults are simply the straight guys and the joke is always on them?

Oh, I know the response – what the heck. That’s just the way it is. Yeah, it is. But up until about the last 30-50 years, guess what? That wasn’t the way it was. Kids actually learned from adults.

Am I getting old and cranky or what?

Olympic Obsession

I love the Olympics. Particularly the summer games. I hear that music and it is like a trumpet call to make popcorn, sit down and go "WOW." The training. The years. The hours. The sports I never heard of. A handful of contenders in their forties! One might think it would be a call to go out and get it in gear to soar to great heights at record-breaking speeds on my own.

One might.

Nah.

As the athletes discipline themselves, so do I. My discipline involves not letting myself watch during the daytime hours. So far, I'm reaching for the gold in that category. I've actually been focused on a revision of a novel, maybe not with the intensity of Phelps in the butterfly, but pretty intense.

Marge Piercy says to become a writer, you have to like it more than being loved. I have never had the desire to push it that far, but I suspect the Olympic athletes face similar choices. Such is the intensity of their commitment. I don't think I made anyone not love me this week, but I might have been teetering on the edge. So, Wednesday we took off to take Scottie to the county fair where he was very impressed by the chickens and corn dogs and not so impressed by the smell of manure.

After the fair, we made a bee line to Michael's parent's pool to wash off the ambiance of pigs in pens, where Scottie and his step-cousin Edison practiced synchronized diving. Even without seeing their faces, any spectator can see they are loving it. So, how many more dives before they get this down?

Five Hours

Three days in Albany at a Writing Conference for teachers -- a wonderful opportunity to share ideas for ten whole hours with third and fourth grade teachers. A luxury of time. Enjoyed every minute. Even arriving at the airport early was a welcome event -- new book by Anna Quindlen, Rise and Shine, time for dinner. Uh oh. Delay. Oh well, what's another hour? And then that hour turns into three, four, more hours. The only travelers left at the gate are those who are headed home -- the missed connectors are all rebooked for tomorrow. The holiday travelers went back home for the night. The rest of us know the score. How long has the plane been on the tarmac? Can't go over 3 hours or they have to turn back. How long has the crew be on duty? What time will they max out? We are all weary, one deranged woman is screaming at the desk clerk while the rest of us roll our eyes. We don't care about the food vouchers or if they want to charge us for blankets, we just want to get home.

Many of us wired to outlets, eyes too tired to read, minds to spent to think. We are now a community. We collectively groan as each delay is announced and the warning is made every 10 minutes to not leave our bags unattended and then we watch each other's stuff as we take turns leaving our bags unattended.

Finally, it is announced that the plane has left Newark and will arrive in 25 minutes. The community cheers. But wait . . . could it be? Yes! Storms in Cleveland. Any minute we will board the plane not knowing if we will face the same fate as the last passengers, stranded on a tarmac until the weather clears. What we do know is that the crew will max out at 1:00AM and it is a 1.25 hour flight west.

At the conference we talked about the importance of leisure time to foster writing -- but what good is leisure time when eyes are tired and dry and brains are mush?

Image compliments of explodingdog.com. Go there and buy this guy's stuff -- he is more than a little twisted and totally amazing.

Update: Mechanical difficulties. This is a phrase you never want to hear after being seated on an airplane. And they didn't mean the overhead light above my seat that didn't work either. They meant the de-icer on the left wing. So the airline had to bring a maintenance crew in at 10PM and fix it -- we didn't take off until 12:30 AM arriving at CLE at 2:00AM. I don't know why I am even recording this story -- it is so common. A five hour delay. Ho hum.

What's five hours? We get almost 5 of those segments everyday. I can wait for a plane for five hours, but I couldn't bike for five hours. It's a short time to sleep, a long time to stand. Five hours would be a short work shift, but a very long time to not work during that shift. Five hours is a time period that has been on my mind lately.

I was seated in the same seat, 3A, that I was seated in as I flew back from Atlanta after receiving the call 3 months ago that Stephie was beyond critical and in crisis. Three months ago today. The window of the airplane was like a movie screen to me last night -- a series of tragic images reflected in the cloudy night sky.

What happened to July?

Kelly snapped this picture of Sara Kelly this week and it perfectly captures my image of July 2008 -- peeking out. I can't believe it has been a month since I've posted a blog. The month went to biking, triathalons (Michael competes, I stand on the sidelines and say "go michael"), beach walks, Walloon teacher camp, gardening and occasional walks. A LOT of private time, occasionally peeking out.

I was all set this past week to really get down to some serious (or not so serious) writing, but on Sunday we all decided it was time for Kelly and the boys to come so we could fill up each other's tanks with love and support. It was just time. So that's what we did and I'm soooo glad that we did.







Walloon was the greatest. It is a summer camp run by Harvey (Smokey) Daniels & Co. where teachers go to recharge, review and learn anew. Serious talk, new data, new ideas all mixed together with (frankly) corny songs and a rockin' sock hop. Here I am rockin' out with Steph Harvey.



Here is Michael, still smiling, heading into the final segment of the Fairport Harbor Triathalon, the 5K run.



July 2008.

Everything you ever needed to know about relationships you can learn from picking raspberries

Everything you ever needed to know about relationships you can learn from picking raspberries.

Don’t be fooled by all that greenery, there is more there than meets the eye. But, be gentle lifting the branches to see what’s underneath. The good ones may fall or something might get broken, spoiling future growth. While the lifting can reveal amazing clusters of sweet surprise, watch out for the thorns. Be careful, but don't let those little things send you running.

Those showy sprouts? Not productive. Cut them down to size.

If you have to pull too hard, they are not ready. Berries are best savored one at time, right off the vine. Flavor is lost with the addition of refrigeration and other mechanical devices. Without a human touch, some will mold on the vine. Pile them up in a bucket and many will lose their integrity and become mushy.

Always leave some behind. Those are for the birds.

Death of a Loved One: Day 46

"Keep the machine running." This is a quote given to me from Michael and to him from a veteran machinist. When Michael asked the older man (back in his machine shop days) what the secret was to his reputation for high production, he advised, "just keep the machine running."

This has become a joke around the house, the perfect answer to substantial progress against a frightening blob of laundry, clutter, yard work, or phone calls that need to be returned -- one of us has really bent to the task and kept the machine running.

At first, when death doesn't knock politely, but kicks through the door as it did with Stephie, everything stops. Details to be taken care of: necessary arrangements, who needs to be called, who needs shoes for the funeral, what do we do with all these flowers? The machine just runs, by what power, who knows. But it does run.

The sputtering starts weeks later. Brain sputters trying to answer email. Heart hesitations. Knee weakness in the grocery. For my part, I haven't been able to write at all except for a few blog entries. Poetry demands feeling, and I can't risk it (see above re: knee weakness). And I spend a lot of time wrestling with the what-ifs and I worry about what is: About Katie. About Doug. About Kelly. A lot about little Scottie.

Granana, will you turn on the TV for me?

You can do it, sweetie.

No, only Stephie is allowed to turn on the TV.

When he was shown the video about Ben before Granny camp, his response was:

Is Ben dead, too?

Visiting Michael's mom: "I remember when we came here last summer. That was before Stephie got dead."

Scottie is four. He doesn't even know what forever means and developmentally he won't for another two years. He still believes in Santa. He thinks that Spiderman can save the entire city and that being a pirate is just as serious job aspiration as becoming a fireman. His daycare provider pointed out to Kelly last weekend that if someone were to tell him Stephie would be back tomorrow, he would believe it. His entire life revolved around doing what his big sister wanted him to do or negotiating a way NOT to do what his big sister wanted him to do. At night, when he lays down his head to sleep on Stephie's pink princess pillow, what does he dream?

How will this play out in his life? Will he have trust issues? Will he be angry? Will this keep him from caring because caring sometimes hurts? Who knows?

Who knows?

The day after the funeral, the day formerly known as Wednesday, as a family we backed out of the drive and turned separate ways into the unknown. We talk all the time, but ultimately we each need to find our own way and there are no maps, no single directive that is right for all. Little Scottie, like the rest of us, will just have to find a way forward.

A teacher at the Ohio Writing Project at Miami University asked me last week why I blog. Some of is it very personal, she observed. I don't remember what I mumbled in response, not sure it made any sense at all, in fact. My lips were moving, but my brain is still sputtering. As I think about it, I guess I blog because writing prose is like swimming the sidestroke compared to writing poetry. I'm all caught up with the laundry and my garden is doing well (see lettuce and strawberries above). We are all fed, bills are paid. I'm being a bit more reclusive than normal and have a tendency to turn the other way when I see someone I know. It's getting a little better and I'm sure (hope) that the part of me that can focus on book commitments is going to kick in here one of these days. Meantime, every morning and several times each day I just remind myself of the wisdom of that old machinist.

Granny Camp: A Retrospective

Fill your hat
with water
dump it on your head,
watch the sunset
fall in bed.

Kick the horse
to make it go,
hike and sing,
explore and show
off your
painted shirt,
and decorate
one of Sophie's gourds,

eat mac and cheese,
gather
tadpoles,
rocks
geez
110 degrees
is really hot!
How 'bout a swim?
Do your ears hang low?
Can you see Saturn?
How far are we from Mexico?

Road Runner,
Jack Rabbit,
Coyote, Owl,
Turtle,
Mountain Lion,
who's on room checks?
Hang your suit and towel!

Granny campers are bold.
Granny campers are brave.

We stay on the path
and watch for bats
in Colossal Cave.
Hayrides are bumpy.
FIRE ANTS BITE!

Limestone
dripping down
becomes
stalactite.
Wear hats and sunscreen
and we won't get burned.
These are some of the facts
we never stopped to learn
while covering ground
at Granny Camp,
instead we picked them up
on our desert run,
mining unknown trails,
where
we struck FUN.