Like a Feather LIfts from More Than Friends (co-author, Alan Wolf)

Love and Joy

It happened again. This time a young woman. College aged. She came up to me after our recent poetry reading at Bowling Green University Firelands campus.

"Do you believe?"
"Believe?"
"Religion. You know, Jesus. Are a believer?"
"I believe in poetry."
"That's it?"
"That's it."

It's true. I'm not particularly a prayerful person in the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John sense of the word.

Maybe my attention span is attracted to shortened lines more than chapters and verse numbers. Or maybe I just like the divergence of thought. But in poetry you can find all the best of the spiritual world. The 800 section in the library reads like a Bible in thousands of volumes (only a small fraction of which is available on your Kindle, sorry to say). A good day for me and all too rare are afternoons lost in places like the poetry section in the Oberlin Library or some used bookstore, pawing through poetry looking for . . .

Read Poe and you hear the cynical voice that proclaims from joy are born all sorrows. Adopt a philosophy of life like that and you can see why it was hard for the man to pull on his pants and face the day. And yet, that sentiment is true and it invades us all from time to time. In the reading is the realization that our dark selves are not operating in isolation. Somewhat of a consolation, I suppose.

But I don't find myself reaching for cynics in dark times. Dorothy Parker, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath -- they may all have some insights to share, but not at times when your head is already halfway in the oven. Not much to hang onto there. In dark times we want words that help us through.


I have a friend who is very ill. Within her shines a light that has illuminated classrooms and hearts of teachers, her friends, desk clerks and porters worldwide. She is that kind of person. Bonnie Campbell Hill.

Her family has kindly set up one of those Caring Bridge sites to keep her world of friends updated. I read the postings of her friends, many of whom are prayerful people, and I'm grateful (envious?) for their postings.

Were you ever out in the great alone when the moon was awful clear? And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear? Robert Service

Friendship is a bouquet of memories, some primary bright, standouts and dozens stems of green filler. On one of my darkest days ever, Bonnie threw my things into my suitcase, jammed $60 in my hand and put me in a cab to the airport to fly home to my granddaughter Stephie's bedside. Nothing could take away the pain or aloneness I felt traveling that day, but her loving kindness helped me get through it. Smooth and caring. Poetry without words. Prayer in action?

The end of life is a transition we all make alone, ultimately. It's hard to even think in times like this, let alone say (to others or to self) something/anything wise. We are too close up on it, like children sounding out letters, it's hard for us to find the big idea. Wisdom is retrospective.

I first met Rabindranath Tagore at the Erie Street Bookstore on a rainy Saturday afternoon and was almost disappointed to later find out that not only had he won a Nobel Prize in 1913, but some new agey types had rediscovered him and claimed my new friend as their own. Still, even though I didn't exactly discover him, every time I read his work, I find a new discovery.

In his book Sadhana, The Realisation of Life, Tagore uses the words love and joy interchangeably. He quotes the ancient seer-poet who sings, "From love the world is born, by love it is sustained, towards love it moves, and into love it enters." A few pages before that, he quotes the seer as saying, "From joy are born all creatures, by joy they are sustained, towards joy they progress, and into joy they enter." I once used this poem/song for inspiration for a poem for Kelly and Brian's wedding, a day of great joy.

But the meaning of a poem is in great part what we bring to it. And today, I bring my sadness and am reminded that transitions are part of the natural flow of life, even the great transition that each of us is destined to make. Spending too much energy on the seeming unfairness of it obscures our vision of the love and joy that radiates from such a luminary as Bonnie.

Bonnie has a Big Idea. She wants part of her legacy to be libraries in India built through the Room To Read program, for more information go here. She also wants to fund grants for teachers to attend conferences, so many of which have benefited from her presentations.

From love, by love, towards love and into love. The joy that is Bonnie.

The Monkey Mind

The next move, Lisa suggests, will help to quiet the monkey mind.

My monkey mind immediately scratches behind my ear, looking for possible escape routes. Orlando? Technology? McCarthy era? A power point show of flashing images Hanoi, Hong Kong, Bali, the garden. Make a note of Pickway, OH. The carpet in the bedroom is beyond salvage. Cleaning out Max’s room. . .what to save? Less clutter. The closet. The laundry room.

The monkey scrambles over to my purse and starts pawing through the broken pens, gum wrappers and wadded receipts to fling out zippered bags full of lipstick, hairclips and lint. Is it time to downsize? We’re away so much anyway. How long would it take to clean out the house? Starting in the attic or basement? Could enough money be raised from a yard sale to fix the guest bathroom? Have the floors refinished?

Zip! The monkey jumps to the ceiling light and sits picking nits off of a half dead monkey that wasn’t even in my line of vision. “We used to be poets.” How am I getting back to the airport? What time is school on Monday? Need to update my website yesterday. Tax extension. Time to start the lettuce seeds. Urgency. This is insomnia with the lights on.

Unable to be still for more that a nanosecond, the monkey pinches its companion (yelp) before swinging down on one arm to land on an imaginary motor bike. Varoom Varoom. It cartwheels off to dance foot to foot before taking off through an open window. One look over its shoulder. Daring me to follow into the woods.

Breathe.

Lisa Lofthouse is my cousin and a master yoga teacher. Twice a year she conducts a yoga retreat workshop in the sweet sloped outside of Asheville. I went last weekend to try and get my pieces parts back together after a whole lot of travel and probably a little too much street food. For more information about her workshops, go here.

United Nations International School of Hanoi: Poetry Week

When librarian Joyce Miller contacted us about dishing up some poetry at the middle school in Hanoi for April Fool's Day she was not just foolin' around. She not only scheduled assemblies and a seamless week of workshops for both of us, she managed to convince French, Spanish and (gasp) calculus classes to try their hands at poetry.



Here Joyce welcomes students as they begin to filter in for the lunchtime poetry jam. The library is the heart of any school and Joyce proved it here big time as music throbbed drawing kids to words.



The poetry topics could not have been more diverse. One day the eighth grade dropped everything to break into teams to study the pros and cons of a proposed nuclear plant in Vietnam in light of the tragedy in Japan. The dangers were researched and laid out against the dangers of mercury poisoning from coal plants and the feasibility of solar and wind turbines. At the end of the day students participated in a UN style debate. Here I'm talking to one poet who is trying to find just the right word for his fortunately/unfortunately poem on nuclear energy.


But how do I write with the French students when I don't read/write French? Well, we learned together. I showed the a model of our poetry writing strategy in English, they wrote in French. What I learned is that in French, we don't say something "feels like." French don't speak in similies that way -- they go straight to the metaphor. I'm sure this says something about the French, but I'm not sure exactly what. Many thanks to the language teachers for making this a learning experience for us all.



Percentage poems. They're fun. They're specific. I've written them all over the world with kids of all ages. But I never before saw a student turn one into a pie chart in the (no exaggeration) blink of a cursor. UNIS is a one-to-one laptop school which opens up new possibilities for poetry research and composing.



Write what you know, we are told by the wordwise. Personally, I write what I know and what I wonder about. Here's the deal on calculus. I don't even know enough about the subject to wonder about it. As far as I am concerned, calculus is a more exotic language than French. At least I can mispronounce my way through good day and thank you in French, but I'm not even conversant in passing pleasantries in calculus. Besides which, it is hard (not rock hard, calculus hard) for a poet to talk her way into an IB (International Baccalaureate) high school language arts class let alone a maths class. (Yes, they call it maths)



So, I was one thrilled(and, okay, a little bit scared) poet to be invited into Melissa Griffin's 11th and 12th grade maths classes. Not only did I learn something of the language of calculus, (it's curvy), but I wanted to learn more. Isn't' that just like a good teacher, tricking you into wanting learn more. But this post doesn't do justice to our time together. For more in depth understanding of how the language of calculus can curve into poetry, visit Melissa's blog. Prepare to be astounded.



Finally, at the end of the week we relax over tea. Thank you to all the students at UNIS, the involved and engaged faculty and special thanks to Joyce who worked so hard to make it all work, including introducing us to street food dining.

And P.S. don't forget to visit Melissa's blog:
http://aodandmore.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/poetry-and-mathematics-%e2%80%93-who-knew/
.

Hanoi! On the move

How does the tourist cross the road? Or. Would you step into this traffic?











Hanoi!
Developing.
On the move.
New friends.
The Dragon Hotel is our home.
Motorbike shops.
Up with construction.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Motorbikes.
Open intersections of always,
all ways traffic.
Cross?
Here?
Now?
Don’t stop. Don’t run. Don’t hesitate.
Cross.
Buses.
Taxis.
Zipper Street.
Bucket Street.
Mosaic Wall.
Steaming pots of pho.
Conical hats.
A laid back dog.
Street-side barber shops.
Broom swept curbs.
Dust.
Lights reflecting on the lake.
1000 years old.
Monuments.
Colonial remnants.
Silk shops.
New bedspread.
Wires on wires.
Temple of Literature.
Rickshaws.
Motorbikes.
Motorbikes.
Motorbikes,
transporting
shops, mops,
families of four.
All kicking up dust.
Hanoi!
On the move.

EARCOS 2011 Borneo

If the above photo doesn't look like an attendee at a teacher's conference, prepare to expand your vision. EARCOS= East Asian Regional Council of Overseas Schools, and every spring they put on a teacher conference like no other. From snorkeling to blow darts to technological looks into the classrooms of today and the future, directives on how to outgrow old thinking and gender issues, cultural divides while maintaining room for read alouds and (yes) poetry and performance leading to understanding ourselves and our lessons.

Okay, the snorkeling was a side trip we took because we arrived a couple days early for the conference. But imagine a conference in this setting! Think no one would come to the sessions? Think again. The sessions were overflowing with ideas and participants, lively discussion by teachers from international schools. These schools hold themselves to a very high standard without being tied to "the standards." Here innovation and effective best practices trump scripted lessons. Who benefits? Kids.

Thank you to Dick Krajczar, Bill Oldread, and Elaine Repatacodo for including us and for all their hard work in putting together a spectacular event.

Under the Land Down Under

All the commotion, (laundry, packing, emails, phone calls, house sitters, doggie day care and a last minute trip to buy travel sized toothpaste that won’t pose a threat to national security) settles into a darkened drone for 15 hours over the Pacific and opens into the brilliant sun of Sydney, Australia. Landing at 5AM, it takes another 12 hours and two more stops to get to the island state of Tasmania, south off the mainland of Australia. I mention this for all my friends, who as I am, are geographically challenged. Tasmania is waaaaaay down there.

While our ride over the Pacific was smooth, when we touch down we learn the tragedy of what was shaking beneath us. So much devastation. Heartbreaking images coming out of Japan. Sad sad sad.

Here the sun is brilliant, the mountains are dark and rolling, and the people, wallabies, and wombats are very friendly. The famed Tasmania devils? Not so much. And just to put the endangered devils in an even better mood, the female population is in heat leading to overall agitation and grumpiness.



The wallabies have gentle mouths and are polite in taking turns being fed. They are gently curious about what other food you might have and nose around in purses and pockets. This herd is universally friendly with visitors (although they may not be in the wild and those back legs look like they definitely pack a mean kick) even the mother with a baby on board.





Looking for a metaphor for lazy? Sleepy? Lack of get-up-and-go? Here you have it, your branched out curl-up-and-sleep koala.



And here's animal I never even heard of before. A spotted quoll. I mentioned to a bus mate that quoll would make a good Scrabble word. She assured me others would challenge.



The wombat has a blankie. Seriously. It is an orphan (mother hit by a car, baby survived in a manmade pouch.) When it was reluctant to come out and take a look at the tourists, the keeper lured him out with (what else?) his blankie.



And Emus growl. They rumble, a group of them sounding like far away thunder. These we were encouraged to NOT handfeed.

Today, more to see. More to visit.




Tomorrow, school.

BALI

How many ways can you conjugate green? This is a view from our porch at Alam Sari Keliki. What I can't show is the soft sounds of wooden cow bells, the bird songs and the rooster who thinks that it is dawn at least once on the hour. Of course there is also the persistent buzz of motorbikes on the road below, which I'm sure I would find a lot more annoying if we didn't drive one too. Here we are following our Cleveland friends Larry and Rai Collins down a back road south of Ubud on our way to meet with their supplier of organic incense for their store in Cleveland Heights, City Buddha. The kids were just getting out of school at about 1PM. No snow days here, but the kids don't seem too upset about it.



The making of the incense is a fascinating process involving a secret recipe of flowers, herbs and spices. The house where we visit has to be one of the best smelling places on the planet. First the sticks are coated in coconut charcoal held together with tapioca, dried and then dipped in the secret recipe and then burn for over an hour with a rich but not overwhelming aroma that is pure Bali. Go here for information about City Buddha.


Sampling flavors of incense and sampling Balinese coffee and incredible little cakes. Yum.

This is the picture of the inside of a Balinese house -- which is really outside. A series of little buildings with a wall around it. You can see the incense drying in the sun -- not a quick process as this is the rainy season.




Our first trip to Bali about four years ago only lasted three days and was basically consumed by doing all the first time tourist stuff. The fire dance, the gamalongs, the jaw dropping vistas -- all with the help of the hotel minivan. On this trip we had a chance, fun-filled encounter of the Facebook kind -- Larry happened to see that we were going to be in Bali, not only in Bali, but very close to where they live in Ubud. Here are Larry and Michael standing on the path by their house. These little streams run all around and outside of the city we see people bathing and washing clothing in them.



And yes, we did negotiate this path on the motorbike. Well, Michael did. I just hung on.

For better or worse, the movie Eat, Pray, Love has had a big impact on Ubud and we are very grateful we came here in the off season. The traffic can be pretty intense. But no one gets angry, The flow is very organic and many many smiles. Here are some kids we met. They wanted to practice their English -- Hello! What is your name! And they could all count to 10. At Michael's urging I taught them my shortest poem, which they acted out and thought was hilarious.



Shampoo
Boo Hoo.

A universal.

Hong Kong

The thing about us Americans is that we just plain need to get out more. Seriously.

While we are in Hong Kong riding spotless subways, double-decker buses, viewing the latest in technological gadgetry and neon, some bonehead in congress is introducing legislation to force teachers into teaching creationism. Where did anyone ever get the idea that the road to the future runs through limiting our scope of knowledge to a single book written thousands of years ago? Hasn’t this woman seen the latest from Afghanistan? They used to be among the leaders in math, engineering, and poetry.


Nighttime streets of Hong Kong

That said, Hong Kong is a lesson in contrasts. Eye popping high rises and open air markets. The well-heeled go to private schools, the general population goes to public school if they can afford the fees. Everything is for sale here except fresh air. The taxi driver tells us that the smog is floating in from mainland China, land of few (or non-existent) environmental regulations. It is ubiquitous. A lesson to us all on the true costs of zero pollution controls.


View from our hotel window.

Still, Hong Kong is a destination I would like to revisit and explore, if only for the restaurants we didn’t get a chance to sample. And I’d love to bring a boatload of neighbors, friends and family with me.

Canadian International School of Hong Kong

To paraphrase that NPR philosopher Garrison Keillor: The Canadian International School of Hong Kong is a place where the faculty is bright, the facilities are ultra-modern, and all the poets are above average.

Every new school is an unknown destination – whether it is across town or on the other side of the world. But setting up a school visit in Hong Kong means emails, phone calls, travel agents, and a certain amount of risk taking on everyone’s parts. After all the front work (not to mention the 15 hour plane ride from Newark) you sure want everything to go well.




And it sure did. We wrote in groups, we wrote individually, and we practiced our oral presentation skills. The school itself is a ten-story testament to modern learning technology. From the school issued laptops to the well-stocked library the school is all about learning in the 21st century. So here was my question to the students: Why Poetry?

I mean seriously. These kids are multilingual, more digitally literate than your average poet and on the fast track to world citizenship. Why do they need poetry? I asked.

Among the answers:

It helps release what is inside of me.
Poetry helps with self-expression.
It helps us appreciate each other’s differences.
It is fun.
Poetry makes beautiful times more beautiful.

Thank you to Joanne, Tanya and Myrna for all their good spirited hard work in making this visit happen. Thanks to Stephanie for showing us some cool classroom technology tips. Most of all, thanks to the kids for their eager curiosity and welcoming enthusiasm.



Maybe the best part? Michael and I silently standing to the side and watching kids requesting and checking out poetry books in the library after our presentation.

Cool.

Voices in the Virtual Silence

It wasn't on the calendar in advance. No prior knowledge on my part. But as the weather cooled and the travel escalated, I kind of withdrew from my blog and facebook. Virtual silence. I've been lurking around, reading, an occasional comment, but I was putting my creative energy into other buckets. And then came the holidays and family and ahhhhhh relaxing.

The first week after the new year Michael and I flew to Aiken, South Carolina for the first school/teacher visit of the year. What a great way to come back into the world, not the virtual world, the real one. Real kids. Real classrooms. Real words put on paper. Thank you Beth and Sue and Joanne for all your hard work in putting the visit together.




Sad. Shy. Proud. Crazy. Here kids acted out an emotion before they wrote to put their movements into words, focusing on the motions of emotion.

Days like we had in Aiken, surrounded by a tumble of kids and ideas are what I need to feed my spirit and enable me to be strong and hopeful in the face of societal tragedies like what happened in Arizona.

Today we pack and get ready for our big trip to Hong Kong, Bali and Jakarta. Two big cities with paradise sandwiched in between. More excited writers and a vibrant green respite to do some of my own writing in Bali.

HONG KONG! See you soon!

What's Wrong with this Picture?

Is it true that the wisemen brought pumpkins to honor the infant?
Is that the Holy Ghost dressed up as a scarecrow for Halloween?
OR
Does this image beg the question: How was it that the parable of the scarecrow-as-cheerleader was somehow omitted from my Sunday School lessons?
AND
Why do most passion plays eschew the pom poms?

These and other pressing questions occupy my mind as I walk the dogs around the block. Whatever this display represents, it scares the persistent barking out of Lili. In her mind, any scarecrow suspended and presiding over a cradled infant cannot be good.

To the Young Poet Standing

To the Young Poet Standing

“Failure drives a Nissan Cube.”
Your opening line is succinct.
Neither made up in a slather of cosmetic adjectives
or itching to shake off an entanglement of adverbs.
Personification plain and simple.
You have written to your audience.
Read the lines with clarity and intonation.
Everything that was asked of you.

Since Failure has not enlightened you
to the vertigo induced by hunger,
the clinging stench of falling face first
into a cold hallway ripe with urine,
or introduced you to those
who remain uncompensated for stolen trust
or whose fast track to success was barricaded by
some unrepaired cleft . . .

Given that Failure has never taken
your straight-toothed, winning smile for a tour
of a refugee camp in its ninth season,
or even the other side of town.
Hasn’t pointed out where
it had the snot beat out of it as a kid,
where it broke its teeth on the curb
after being pushed down by minimum wage,
or pointed out the exact sidewalk square
where it gave up trying . . .

That you cannot see that Failure
has limited the lessons
taught in this brick building
to what is fitting for your neighborhood,
and knowing that under that T shirt logo
label you may wish for something else,
but at thirteen-years-old
you don’t know what. . .

Mindful of all of the above,
I leave this lesson contemplating
Failure.

End of Daylight Savings Time

While reading the news online this morning, I found a cache of poems allegedly about the end of daylight savings time. (click here) I'm not sure these poems were all written for this purpose, or indeed if any poem has a purpose. Most honored poets seem to be all mournful about the death of summer, anticipating rebirth, following classic poetic lines of thinking (some to the point of exhaustion on the parts of readers). I don't know if I've just been spending too much time in the company of oppositional middle schoolers or at grooming the dogs' shedding coats off of the animals and my clothing, but I'm (famous last words) ready to be transported out of autumn. I think the trees are with me in this.

Ahead of Time

Smug.
I walk the dogs at 7:46 on a Sunday,
beside trees ankle deep in confetti.
Not the least bit forlorn,
they seem ecstatic to be shed of their
shady responsibilities.
Masts fully trimmed,
they bolt from their roots
and reach freely
into the wind
with jazz hands,
ready for the icy voyage,
begging for adventure,
cheered on by puddles,
generally so unassuming,
now glittery with excitement.
I receive this advance notice
in a quick sniff,
grateful that this morning,
this one morning,
I am ahead of time.

Gatekeepers Through the Ages

Once upon a time in the long long ago, parents were the gatekeepers of knowledge for kids. Sharp knives and matches were dispensed to kids on a need to know basis by grown-ups.

Over many generations, that dribble of knowledge begot kids doing their own thinking and writing books which begot libraries. Libraries begot gatekeepers called librarians who could say things like “ask your parents,” when kids wanted to check out bomb-making instruction manuals.

Then the little bomb-makers grew up and begot television which blew up a lot of gatekeeper duties until that medium begot the FCC which also gatekept things like movies and music which begot a lot of frustration among the next generation of bomb-makers. So they begot HBO and kids suddenly had full frontal answers to all their questions. This begot parent controls about the same time the Internet was being begot (begotten?) and that begot file sharing and blogging and that exploded old gatekeeping traditions such as editors and editorial standards and that begot a lot of nervous parents who rushed to their school boards who begot sheets of educational standards designed to limit the fire hose of knowledge streaming into the brains of our kids.

These school boards begot a lot of regulations limiting what teachers and textbooks could discuss with kids. But then the Internet begot knowledge gold-mines such as Google, Amazon, and the Discovery Channel. Of course the Internet also begot a lot of fool’s gold, so often when kids of all ages are doing research they have to act as their own gatekeepers in ascertaining if information contained therein has any merit beyond the perimeters of the Land of Urban Myth.

Which brings us to today where the Texas School Board has begot regulations dictating the number of times the word “Islam” is mentioned in a text book hoping this will limit kids learning about Muslims and begot the removal of udders from cows in textbook pictures to limit kids' HOLY COW knowledge of natural functions. A school district in OH can claim victory after winning their court case to limit teachers from deviating from the dictates of her school board and for letting kids read and discuss in a structured setting fiction that students could easily find themselves through a “if you liked this, you might like this” search on Amazon, whereupon that same student might buy the novel to be downloaded onto his/her phone and read or listen to it on the (gasp) school bus, without the guidance of a grown-up (a teacher, with Dancing with the Stars on, what parent has time for novels?) helping said student sift through the words to find what's true.

This outcome might beget frenetic knee-slapping, jester jumping hilarity if it weren’t so pathetic.

Cousins Take Manahattan

English Companion Ning

Michael found this and I am pasting it right in here because we are THIS excited about our book club discussion about our new book on the English Companion Ning. If you are teacher and you haven't seen all the great resources available on this ning go there adn check it out! Developed by Jim Burke and some very dedicated teachers such as my friends Lee Ann Spillane and Gary Anderson, it is the best place to get answers, support and ideas for classroom teachers.




Vocabulary instruction out of the box! Notice how the creator of this video (Michael's son Frank) shows what the word is and does and also what it does not do.

I took this picture with my cellphone about a week ago beside the driveway. It was the first week of October and this stubborn little dandelion wasn't being shy at all about crashing fall. Not a bit. And I've been wracking my brain to find this poem about dandelions standing around on street corners like rebellious kids and I can't find it on the internet. On my shelf. In my brain.

I found that Ray Bradbury sold newspapers on streetcorners and Yeats has a line in a play about a fool blowing a dandelion to tell time. Roughly a gazillion people liken writing ideas to behave like dandelion seeds (note to self, never use THAT metaphor).

So, I asked Salinger passing down the hall -- trying to find this poem, I tell him. Do you know it? "No," he says. "Give me a minute and I'll write one for you." Sure he could. So could I. But I'm sure the one I'm remembering is better. It is sterling. It captures the rebelliousness of the dandelion perfectly. Vachal Lindsey was into dandelions before he got into drinking Lysol and May Swenson had me noticing their little lion heads, but lost me at calling them sweet. I have now spent 2 hours looking for this perfect dandelion poem.

The dream of perfection pushing me beyond logic -- kinda like a dandelion blooming in October.

Where were you on 10/10/10?

Where were you on 10/10/10? This seems like an important date, and I almost missed it. I mean, I was here, but where was I? In computer update limbo. Kicking with my software. Holed up in front of this blinking cursor. What kind of a memory is that?

A big date like this should be like a cornerstone in which we lay memorabilia, photos, reflections, artifacts evidencing the way things are today, on this day, on 10/10/10.

My grandmother used to tell me (and I heard this story SO many times and wish I could hear it just one more) that she turned 19 on the 19th day of October in 1919. She wore a white dress with lace on the sleeves. It was a big day.

Yesterday I wore khaki pants and a grey T shirt. What kind of an image is that to pass along to the grandkids? Surely there were songs sung, poems written, pictures drawn, stories crafted to commemorate this milestone? Balloons of fancy rose somewhere. Happiness squirmed. Where? How? Who?

I need some images to put in my memory bank to override this mess.

Help!

Found Poem

Comment
I NEED A JOB
The Great Recession
or
The Great Depression?
To just one does not all credit go.
Changed
Great Recession has affected way in which we live.
Try
finding words
that describe goals,
plans.
We want jobs now.


I'm not usually into these things, but this one kind of jumped off the pages of the Lake County Herald.