Gambling on health care

"How much does this CAT scan cost?" I asked the lady with the clipboard.
"I have no idea. Please complete the form on both sides."
"I mean an idea. Ball park. Say if I didn't have insurance."
"Don't forget to sign and date the form. I really don't know."
"Oh."
"How much does this cost?" I asked the lady drawing my blood.
"Depends on what the doctor ordered."
"What did she order?"
"Standard workup."
"How much is the standard work up?"
"Don't know. Ask the lady out front."
That's the lady with the clip board, if she knows costs, she ain't tellin'.
"How much does this cost?" I asked the lady who operates the big machine that's going to take pictures of my belly in little slices.
"The machine?"
"No, this test."
"Didn't you get pre-approval?" She looked stricken.
"I guess so, I filled out the green form. I was just wondering about the cost of the scan.
"Gracious, I have no idea."

Next month my health care switches to a $2500 annual deductible, a new plan designed to lower my monthly premiums, gambling I won't encounter any health issues that require a knife, a drug or a bandaid. I'm sure the women today were honest when they said they didn't know the costs. I'm sure the costs change depending who is paying the bill. Kind of like when you go to a foreign country and they have one menu for tourists and one for locals, health care providers get a better price. In the land of diagnostics, I'm about to become a tourist fumbling with funny money and unable to read the menu. Even if I knew the language, I couldn't read the menu because it is all in the waiter's head and the prices change depending on who's paying the bill.

Michael and I got cheated at a restaurant in Almaty this way. I know this game and I don't like it.

The CAT scan was clear, the pain in my side was probably caused by tearing a muscle lifting weights (or books, or suitcases or my toothbrush, who knows about these things). It nags. But what nags me more tonight is wondering what the diagnosis cost. For real. And what I would have been charged next month. Would I have even gone for the test if no one could have told me in advance how much the bill would be? Or would I have just thrown the dice. Who wants to play those types of odds?

Abai and Aitys

"A clock is a ticking thief
stealing life daily, taking it unnoticed,
so that without love and constancy
life is nonetheless just fleeting deception."

Abai

Do you think now that (for the most part) we have taken the tick out of clocks and replaced the relentless metronome beat with a hum that we are more or less conscious of time passing? I used to have one of those clocks that dropped a slat every minute with a distinctive click. I threw it out within a week because it made me nuts, but was it the sound that made me crazy or the concept? I remember reaching into the belly of my cousin Karen's grandfather clock to stop the pendulum swing so I could sleep. Time may be passing, but I sure don't want to be reminded of it when I'm trying to sleep. Abai, Kazakhstan's most famous poetic son, lived from 1845-1904, and his writings now seem almost as ancient as the images of petroglyphs pictured above. (photo taken at a restaurant where I did in fact sample horse and camel meat and I don't want to talk about it.) He didn't much like the Russians invading, time passing or sloth. He liked summer. Who wouldn't dining on horse jerky and living in transitional housing, a yurt on the bleak steppes where temperatures nosedive below zero for more than a third of the year? His themes are universal, but his poetry is very dark.

I go down to the bottom, and thirstily drink

the venomous poison of days I've lived through . . .

Man, have I had days like that. If there is anything more wasteful than just cruising through days unmindful of the clock, it has to be savoring the poison of the past. And some days I just can't resist picking up that cup and gulping it down. This is why we invented TV and other mind numbing drugs, so our minds don't take us to belly up to that bar and overindulge on regret. Even in happy times, that cup is there, steaming, its aroma tempting the senses. Maybe this is part of what makes a poet, the nerve (or the obsession) to drain the cup, examine the tea leaves and write to tell about it. The inability to find one's way back from the past is insanity, always a constant threat.

Modern Kazakh poets compete in slam-like contests (Aitys) on television, ranting about all the same things poets rail against here -- the government, the corporations, lack of individual freedom. I didn't see it, but I did read about the poetic Aitys, which apparently the government tolerates because it is an age old tradition for poets to rant. Pretty surprising for a government that does not let anyone take photos of the post office. Rather than try and silence the poets with incarceration, apparently they buy them off with foreign cars and other rewards. Welcome to the twenty first century and the gulag of assets. For more information on the aitys: http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/4465

Time hums, poets rant, and the effervescence of universal themes bubbles up across cultures.

Kazakhstan, the marketplace

At the open air market place, some vendors keep candles in their vegetable cases to keep the cucumbers from freezing. That's how cold it is. Imagine doing your marketing outdoors at minus 20F. We did visit a couple of modern malls, but couldn't afford anything there. In fact it was at the Green Market, pictured above that we found the only bargain: pomegranates for 1/2 the price we pay at home.



Shopping for spices out of bags on a table and not packaged with little hints on the side like "poultry seasoning" betrays our ignorance. In general, the food packaging was much more sparse (and sensible) than it is here. Milk was sold in vacuum sealed boxes that don't require refrigeration until the seal is broken, or in plastic bags. The local convenient store did not have aisles of bags of chips and snacks, but had fresh buns on a tray, fresh potatoes and onions and an entire wall of vodka. Although there is a minimum drinking age, no one seems too concerned about enforcing it.

I'm not sure how we got out of the market without taking pictures of the horse meat, but somehow we did. Meat just hung in large slabs, tongues and heads prominently displayed. Why not? It was freezing, nothing was about to spoil in a hurry. It would have been fun to sample some of the fare being sold in these pots; we had no idea what was in them. Dishes seemed to contain meat, but in small chunks, not the large slabs we demand here.

Tonight Michael is going to attempt to cook a lamb/beef/noodle dish we sampled for lunch the last day there. We also went to a classic Kazakh restaurant and sampled camel and horse. I didn't like the texture of the horsemeat, found it strong and stringy, but that could just have been my attitude reflected in my tastebuds.



Some of the best food we had came out of the school cafeteria. Homemade mushroom soup, lasagna, home made apple pastries that really tasted like apples and not straight sugar. It is amazing what kinds of chicken nuggets dipped in cheezewhiz garbage we feed our kids at schools. We saw them pushing in a wheelbarrow sized basked of fresh veggies into the cafeteria to be converted into lunches -- nothing pre-packaged. We could definitely learn from that lesson.

So, mostly the US dollar did not go very far in the Kazakh market, but we did manage to score some beautiful felt products. I think my favorite souvenir is a hand decorated necklace from Uzbekistan that one of the conference attendees was kind enough to hang around my neck. I've worn it every day since. While I was happy to get home to my local Heinens this AM, I wish I had had more of an opportunity to sample more of what those ladies had cooked up.

Traveling through Kazakhstan with Lenin

Alamty, Kazakhstan does not have soft edges. It is not warm and fuzzy. The sharp air that pinches the nose matches the looks from strangers pushing in line and the spike heels on the women’s boots. The straight lines of the Soviet style high rises are persistently drab in a public housing sort of way and the traffic is merciless. Tension still exists between the Russians and the Kazaks and walking around in public with Michael attracts attention -- the consensus is, he looks like Lenin. When the driver told him that we thought it was an abberation, but then it turned out to be unanimous.

The internet connections are uniformly lousy. The wireless at the hotel was so slow I wanted to slit my wrists and most people here pay for their connection per download. I’m not quite sure what that means, but I think it means you don’t just cruise around reading using your stumble browser. We are having a good time, but it is because of the people we have met at the school, not any kind of delight in the surroundings. The cold ranges from shocking to piercing and the smog is so thick that we have been able to even see the mountains since Wednesday.

Last night after the conference wrapped up, Michael and I spent some people-watching time at the mall. Imagine a mall populated by families and the usual proliferation of teenagers where a DJ sets up at 8:00PM and appears to just get rolling. Also try to imagine all these teenagers (lots) and not one single hoodie, no slouching balloon pants and all the girls in tight jeans and spike heels. The spikes are pencil thin and defy logic. Black is the uniform color rather than sweatshirt gray. None of the kids are overweight nor are the girls adorned by the characteristic American muffin top over their jeans. The kids seem affectionate to one another, girls often walking arm in arm or holding hands. There were no inappropriate displays of affection the mood and voices hushed with none of the loud posing that goes on at our local mall. This mall, that seemed so familiar in many ways, was also clearly not.

We were fresh from a dinner at an Italian restaurant where I had no hope of reading the menu and ordered what I thought was spaghetti with tomato sauce and turned out to be dark green spinach pasta with small salmon chunks, roe and a rich white sauce. What an insanely pleasant culinary surprise. And then I decided I had a taste for chocolate and attempted to buy an overpriced ice cream cone, but gave up as one person after another crammed in front of me. People here have a heritage of fighting their way to the fronts of food lines and the concept of lining up and taking turns is as foreign to them as the print on the Baskin Robbins menu was to me. I satisfied my need for chocolate at the grocery instead. The checkout girl was brusque, but at least I got waited on - even though I was traveling with Lenin.

Amaty Literacy Festival

This was a fun two days. Teachers from five locations in Central Asia were in attendance, some coming in on delayed flights and others after their bus was hung up at the border. Conference coordinator Maura Martin had requested that we bring coffee for the start of the conference. Coffee? Isn’t that a staple found on aisle six? Not here, here they have instant Nescafe. The Starbucks was was well received by the traveling teachers.

These teachers are risk takers by nature – they leave the security of home and their local grocery stores to travel to places I can’t even spell to teach children to speak English and study math, science and cultural studies all at the same time. Since it takes a kid an average of seven years to master English alone, this seems equivalent to keeping six balls in the air simultaneously, a remarkable feat of mental multitasking. I don’t know how they do it.

This area is growing so fast and the demand for English language schools is so great that one of the schools has gone from a population of 5 to 50 since September. I was humbled to be there talking to them about poetry and performance. We spoke in the cafeteria which had universal acoustic challenges of all cafeterias, and then in classrooms alive with student artwork.

In one hallway display, 9 year olds had colored in all the continents of the world in different colors, followed by a page where each drew a picture of their home country’s flag (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and places all over) followed by another sheet where the students listed their homeland’s best food, music and native dance. At dinner we tried to guess what the native dance of the US might possibly be. Square dancing? Clogging? Break dancing?

The teachers were uniformly and enthusiastically involved and wrote like crazy in all of our workshops. In the picture above the teachers had written a group poem about the skeletal system and then performed it with much bravado, the culmination being when the gym teacher dropped to the ground to demonstrate what a person would be without a skeleton – a blob!

The finale of the two days was a poetry slam demonstration where 7 teachers read with humor and pathos. Everyone applauded the poets and wanted to hang the judges, of course. And there was lots of laughter and good spirit spilling out everywhere. Many thanks to Maura, Russ and Dan for making it all happen.

What I will remember are the intense and friendly eyes of the teachers. Probing. Smiling. People you would want to go to dinner with. People you could entrust your children to for learning. I’m so glad we came.

Arriving in Kazakhstan

Inside the airport a gray mist hovers, gathering in intensity toward the vaulted ceiling. It is -30C/-2F outside and dark outside with few lights and no moon to reflect on the snow when we land at 5:30AM. The first person we are greeted by is a fellow in a soviet style wool grey uniform with an expression to match. He has a clipboard and not even a hint of a smile as the weary passengers trundle up the unheated jet way laden with packs and overstuffed bags. Another officer tells Michael to put his camera away in the airport, no pictures permitted. Not only does the customs agent not smile, he doesn’t even look up to make eye contact as he snaps his stamp, CHUCK CHUCK, on my documents. As we round the bend toward baggage we see one smiling face, Maura Martin, the teacher who has invited us, mouthing warm hellos and waving excitedly. The bags take forever, which might have been frustrating except we know the collapse of not having them arrive at all and we are grateful all of the books (and a few clothes) have miraculously managed to follow us 12,000 miles.

The sun rises late here, not because we are that far north, but because it has to lift its light over breathtaking mountains. We take a short nap and walk to the school, a building only four years old and decorated wall to wall in all kinds of student learning art. In every classroom the windows extend to the ceiling, welcoming all the sun has to offer. And everyone at the school is welcoming with broad smiles and the first impression at the airport is lost with the early morning mist. Tonight we will try to sleep a somewhat normal schedule and tomorrow we hope to go into Almaty to poke around. The conference begins Friday morning.

Packing

Packing the suitcases, weighing out what's most important, repacking. Taking Starbucks to the teachers in Almaty and books and more books. More books. Can I get by with two pairs of shoes? The official list posted on the fridge. We notice Max put his name there, as if we would go to Capital University, scoop him up and put him in a suitcase. I have set aside Three Cups of Tea to read on the plane. But what's really bugging me is that I don't have a knitting project secured yet. Not so much for the plane, but for the inevitable airport waits, knitting keeps me evened out. The back and forth predictability is soothing, like a mantra. Traveling means new experiences, new people, new ideas. Knitting is a way to internalize it all, to customize the real, the imagined, and the unanswered to fit in my memory. To relive and remember.

I just finished a sweater that I made from wool scored in Italy last December when we went to visit the Smiths in Croatia. I had to start three different projects to finally find one that I actually had enough yarn to finish. The sweater pictured above was finished with less than 3 yards of wool left over. The crime is, the sweater is too bulky to pack to go to chilly Kazakhstan because of all the (did I mention?) books!

So, yesterday dragged Stephie and Scottie (who were very very patient, all things considered) to two yarn stores to find wool for a sweater for Michael. But unfortunately it is late in the season and the specific yarn needed for the pattern he chose is all sold out. I considered trying to board the plane without yarn, but that prospect gave me chest pains. Obviously, I need my mantra to attempt a transcontinental flight. So, today I am off to the yarn store again to buy enough for a floppy cowl neck for me. The pattern I found is perfect, nothing tricky, straight knitting I can almost do in my sleep. Now all I have to do is fit the yarn in the with, oh yeah, BOOKS.

Ode to the Mosquito of January 2008

Oh lone mosquito
for whom love is but remote,
your translucent wings have brought you here
by some mistake.
By whose warm but
misguided invitation have you
come to visit my bedroom on
this January night?
Poised as you are beneath my light
I ponder your presence
knowing not where you are ought to be
in dead of winter.
Is it winter?
The temperature today stretched its
mercurial arms to sixty-six.
Were you fooled by the
compromised climate’s gymnastics
just this once
or are you now become a new
accomplice to winter,
replacing frost and chapstick?
Silent, you appear as stunned as I
to find yourself beside my bed.
Mosquito, were you but illusion
I could more easily find sleep tonight.

Adventures at Home

Well, not entirely at home. At Aunt Becky's. On New Year's Eve day, the entire grand-crew (minus Sara Kelly) went for a ride out to Michael's sister's barn to visit the three new sheep, the goats, the horses and the three tortoise eggs (don't touch). Becky is a vet her family has a menagerie! Steph and Ben rode the miniature draft horse around the riding arena and Dan, Thomas and Scott were content to pet the goats. The sheep were too shy to let anyone pet them. And finally, in the last photo, everyone came back to our place to clean up.

It was colder than it looked when we left home, but the snow and the scourge of little Sara Kelly's pink eye contagion held off for another couple days, which was a blessing. I put this collage together to remind me of the day and that many and most fun adventures are right at home if we just take time to seek them out.

Long Underwear and Sun Screen

No, we are not planning a trip to ski the Rockies. We are planning two trips almost back to back and now that the holidays are over, we are beginning to organize ourselves for travel. First, we are off to Kazakhstan where the temperatures are -10F. Then we are home for a week and off to Jakarta International School, Bali for four days of vacation, and then back to Jakarta, Singapore for one night (night safari at the famous Singapore Zoo) and then Michael comes home and I'm onto Kuala Lumpur for two days and home. Hence, long underwear and sun screen are on the stack with neck pillows for the plane and plenty of reading material.

The picture of the Jakarta International School I found on fliker, taken by someone who calls himself thebigdurian. As another visiter to his site noticed, it looks like all the campus needs is hammocks and outdoor fans. Very un-Cleveland.

A teacher sent me a poem written by students from the Jakarta school about their field trip to Cairo. Keep in mind, a significant field trip in Cleveland amounts to a bus trip to the zoo not a flight to the pyramids! They did such a good job of capturing the moment that I was immediately transported, inhaling the blowing desert sands and hearing the tinkling camel bells. I know we are going to have a great time writing and sharing poetry. While we are there, our friend Georgia Heard will be visiting the elementary, an extra bonus.

Because of the Chinese New Year, we will go on holiday, too! We are traveling to Bali for some relaxation, exploration and sunshine. The teachers in Jakarta have been so helpful in providing direction for this leg of the trip.

Finally, I'm visiting students in Kuala Lumpur. This was the last stop on the trip to be scheduled and truly is a bonus. Can't wait to meet the students there.

Last night I talked to the school principal in Almaty, Kazakhstan and we discussed final plans for the teacher workshop. I almost didn't pick up the phone because the caller ID showed a number beginning with 999 and I thought for sure it was a solicitor. But no! It was Maura and she sounded like she was right next door. I never fail to be amazed at the wonder of telecommunications.

Although we are going to foreign ports, we have made email friends already. Isn't amazing how you really begin to feel like you know someone from notes that pop up on the screen! Cruising blogs and fliker sites have given us a whiff of familiarity, but like a field trip in good ol' Cleveland, it is the people we will meet that will leave the most lasting impression. Can't wait.

Three Words for 2008

I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert . I don't know if it is because of the book or because of some spotlight on ABC news last fall, but people seem to be into this three word thing. So I got to thinking about three words for 2008 -- and how I need to write them down and put them on my computer screen, the back of my hand, and on the refrigerator and everywhere else to keep my focus where it will bring me the most inner satisfaction and not feed my inner demon brat who tends to rear her ugly head at odd hours stomping around screaming like an angry punk star.

I have a computer screen roughly the size of a drive in movie screen, a gift to my eyeballs last fall. I have been utilizing this wondrous window way too much for Scrabble. That's right. Scrabble. Not writing, not blogging, not even photoshop. I suppose some argument could be made that Scrabble increases the vocabulary. but only (as Michael loves to remind me) if you really study the words and not just use them for points. Mostly the game is just that, a game. And when you get done with it, you have nothing to show for it but a score that vanishes as soon as you press "new game." Not so satisfying (although I did get a 240 point word last week, not that I remember what it was). Scrabble is one of many mind games I play with myself, some more useless than others.

Which is all to say, I think I need to narrow my word focus. So, here are my three words for 2008:

Hope, Love, Create.

Hope because I can get so discouraged by the news (economy, war, environment, hatefulness) that Hope becomes a breeze I can no longer feel. Love is about taking care of myself, surrounding myself with people and activities that I truly love. To Create is to problem solve, not problem list. It is to make something out of nothing. It depends on the other two for survival. If I don't nurture hope and a loving environment, nothing new can take root.

So those are my words.

The Globalization of Family

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Enraged crowds rioted across Pakistan and hopes for democracy hung by a thread after Benazir Bhutto was gunned down Thursday as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her armored vehicle.

The news came just as Michael and I were in cleaning mode -- Kelly, Brian and the kids would be here any time and CNN was on in the background. The story was updated -- the last photo before she was shot displayed -- appropriate experts were consulted (Guiliani???), I believed she was pro democracy and I'm not so sure that the corporate interests that support her incumbent opponent are. After all, Pakistan is a major go-to place for cheap labor for the war profiteers.

Meantime, the van full of Weists arrives. Excited hugs, stories about what Santa brought, how long the drive from D.C. and who gets the bathroom first. In between cold drinks and family talk, the Bhutto story stays on in the background. Even after CNN is replaced by the Wii for a couple of quick bowling games, the grownups continue to talk about the former prime minister's rise in power, who was most corrupt, the failure of the incumbent to provide protection. We watch as each pundit warns of new dangers in our neighborhoods on the flip side of the world due to her assassination. In my neighborhood? The only Pakistani I know I bought milk from that very morning and he seems a most pleasant man. Recent arrival. We laughed because neither of us could figure out the price of a pack of gum and I agreed to come back later, thereby negotiating an on the spot chewing gum deferment.

What news did people greet one another with before the news was globalized? Did we only have Aunt Mildred's operation and Cousin Jack's infidelities to jabber about as the guests settled in? Seasoned of course with pinches of weather and travel times. Instant access to global news has not only impacted how we do business, it's changed the way we welcome one another, "Did you hear . . .?"

It's possible such disconnected greetings may not be all bad -- being met with "Oh, I guess you really have put on weight," as my tactless father said to me one time reaching out to pat my belly and plummeting my precarious self esteem and 8 years of therapy to that scary place in the basement populated by dragons, where the furnace growls and the water tank spits fire. It took weeks and another full year of therapy to drag myself up from that darkness. And then there was the time he arrived apparently having bragged up my haphazard housekeeping to his fiance Baby Blue Betty for the whole trip. From Florida to Ohio, that's a long damned trip. Unfortunately his final climactic revelation was to be whipping open my front door to my home's usually chaos. But this visit coincided quite nicely with my introduction to Mighty Maids.

When Dad, who was a Grand Master of I Told You So, discovered there was no evidence to back up his case (the Mighty Maids had even sorted out my silverware drawer, a final disappointment), he shrunk down into my too soft sofa, glowering, without even taking off his hat, Baby Blue sitting beside him like a cheer leader at half time and me wondering if I could still find my spoons in those neat little stacks. Dad's planned conversation starter foiled, the three of us sat staring uncomfortably at the heightened patina of the freshly excavated coffee table. An assassination might have come in handy in that case, and it's entirely possible one or more was contemplated. It was 20 years ago, who remembers these things.

But this case is different. We all like each other. I want to know everything that is happening in their world, with the stuttered, word twists unique to 2-4-8 year olds. Then we can talk about the business of the rest of the planet.

So, two things to remember: I intend to become quicker on that red button on the remote when family pulls in the drive, I also have to be conscious that family news (Thomas' latest new word, Danny's domination in video bowling and Ben's latest achievements on his basketball team) gets its due. More than equal billing with the global news. Family always deserves premium space.

And an always reminder that in the midst of any crisis -- be that a remote tragedy as today's, a health crisis, or economic crisis - - it is the store of moments of undistracted joy we absorb through family connections that will steady us all.

The Story of Stuff

Last night Michael and I were up at the mall (again?) and he remarked, "isn't it amazing how this season just gets people to go out and buy stuff? Look at this place." And it is. I'm a victim myself. Stuff. Lots of it. Piled in the aisles, marked up and marked down. Shoppers elbow to elbow sniffing around for bargains. Occasionally and more recently, this is really beginning to nag at me. And I admit to being a lifelong shopper, a just in case, you never know what you'll find, store cruiser. But my visceral discomfort is disrupting my natural internal browser -- I can't even look around with guilt free pleasure any more.

I wrote a poem, Don't Bury Me on Brookpark Road, sometime in 2001 after the President told us to go shopping after 9/11. Excerpt:

When I’ve punched the snooze button for the last time,
I don’t want to wind up pew-wedged between the honk and wheeze
of Mr. Donut and Mr. Muffler, across from the pawn shop,
marooned at the crossroads of more. More billboards, more tacos,
more mattresses, nail shops and temporary stops on this path to the land fill for
rental cars, wastebaskets, and girls baring a** for more.
More cat beds, more tennis racket teddy bear welcome signs,
collectible designed for ease in obsolescence.

When the non-transferable terms on my desk drawer
of lifetime warranties run out, don’t plant me beside this
hurried stream of humanity, its pace accelerating frantically
as it tapers into the purchase of today at crazy low prices, guaranteed to satisfy
(for six months or ten thousand miles whichever is lower) . . .

Which is a pathetic place to be in life -- not buried on Brookpark Road, but walking around the mall mentally quoting myself from five years ago wondering why I haven't been heeding my own words. Which reminded me of this little 20 minute video that I stumbled across, that is so succinct and precise, it is a poem in and of itself.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

There are a lot of amazing observations in the video, but the one that smacked me the most firmly is how happiness goes down as advertising goes up. It is as if our entire media culture is producing generations of malcontents. I'm a poet, so I was born a malcontent, but I hate to see the rest of the planet pushed in the same direction. What fun is that?

Well, apparently, not much if the commercials for antidepressants are to be believed. They are almost as scary as their warning labels. Michael point out one drug advertisement to me the other day that lists "urge to gamble" as a possible side effect.

I think we all must have this affliction -- we are all gambling wildly with our futures every time we buy more of this stuff. The other day we walked into Walgreens to get a prescription and up and down aisles of stuff that no one needs. I mean no one. Plastic flowers, flashing greeting cards, synthetic garlands, all harvested from -- where? All going where?

My new year's resolution is going to be to think harder about purchasing stuff. I'm going to write that down and tuck it in the same pocket as my credit card. We'll see if that works better than just feeling guilty.

Emerick Elementary

Not just any elementary, Emmerick is my grandson Ben's school, in fact that's his head right under the first O in Holbrook. I had a great time. First, the kids all knew my name (thanks to librarian Elizabeth and all the teachers) and a lot of ground work by the PTO, Cheryl, Marcy and my daughter Kelly. Thank you thank you.



I don't think that I was too embarrassing for Ben -- I refrained from any public displays of affection and only called him Benny once. He seemed okay with the visit.

Kelly talks to schools all over the country and arranges my school visits and book sales, but this is the first time she had ever run the book sale herself. "That's a lot of work!" was her assessment (and it always is). From now on she is going to recommend that TWO PTO moms run the book sale, particularly if they are also running car pools!

But, getting back to the great time part of the day -- what nice kids -- and responsive! It was fun to meet Ben's friends and have lunch with him. I had the opportunity to write with the fourth graders and the teachers were all very involved, writing with the kids and coaching them along. They had been working on color poems and were anxious to share some of those (lucky me).

Tomorrow I drive back to Cleveland and the weather is looking a bit threatening. Hoping that the mountains of PA treat me with as much kindness as the students and faculty of Emerick!

Holiday Wishes

This morning I played around with a photo from Kelly's new camera (above), thinking about last weekend. I had Katie's two oldest, Stephie and Scottie, on Saturday. I needed to buy a filter for the fridge at Sears and pay a bill at Penney's. You don't have to know my mall to know that these stores lay at opposite ends of the shopping maze. It's like that everywhere, and the playground for the kids is right in the middle. Talk about taking kids into a candy store -- try the mall at holiday time. "Can we build a bear, buy a Webkin, this Mickey the size of Godzilla?" How can they resist? People get advanced degrees in how to drive kids into a feeding frenzy, the goal being to turn them into credit addicts before they can multiply and divide. How early do you explain to kids that those build-a-bears were made by kids their age, kids who were denied schooling and sunshine for their pleasure. If our bright eyed kids are too tender to know this, what about the tenderness of the faceless others? Do I always have to be a wet blanket on fun? Am I just a wet blanket? I stood there in the mall holding Stephie and Scottie's hands, both of them holding slurpies in the other and just said, "no, no, no," conflict raging inside of me. How much to you tell them? When?

Years ago I wrote a Christmas poem that is entirely too sentimental to ever publish. But I'm going to put it up here as we all head into another weekend of shopping. CNN will be charting our progress on Monday, weighing it against last year's binge, a report card for all the high cost marketing degreed.

December comes.
I non-stop-shop.
To guard against a yuletide flop.
When all the gifts I give go back.
I sigh. But, hey –
who’s keeping track?
What do you give to those who have?
Computers, bikes and skates –
Enough sweaters to warm Cleveland,
DVDs and tapes.
Sneakers, games and books,
magazines and jeans.
What could Christmas bring
that’s well within my means?

What if I give you patience
the next time you get stressed?
What if I say, okay,
I know you did your best.
The next time you fall short,
what if I lend a hand?
Or if things get confused,
I help you make a plan.

The next time you act smart,
what if I try to learn.
If my gift is kindness,
would that be returned?

sara holbrook

copyright 1995 all rights reserved

Worm Food

Last July I bought an indoor worm composting system from Worm Firm. http://wormfirm.com/id1.html Not just any worms, mind you, red wigglers, the Rolls Royce of worms. And fat and juicy looking squirmlies they are. It quickly became apparent that we had so many kitchen scraps, we would need two bins, so I bought another. We feed the worms veggie and fruit scraps, no pasta, meat or bread. Worm Firm, I should say, is owned by Michael's ex-wife and her husband Jonnie, both Brits and much more eco-conscientious than I will ever be.

So, after 6 months, it has now come time to harvest the worms. Or really, to harvest the worm castings and save the worms to garbage down more garbage. Or really really, to harvest the worm poop, which is what a casting is. Before you run to grab a clothes pin for the nose, be aware, this process doesn't smell. I mean, I've been pawing through worm poop for the past hour (in rubber gloves, mind you). At first I was one finger at a time tentative, but before long, I just dug right in.

The harvesting process means to turn the worms out on a plastic sheet, angle a goose neck lamp down at one corner and all the worms will gravitate towards the heat. Then you scoop up the squirming worm ball and transfer it to new shredded newspaper bedding with some veggie scraps, apple cores, coffee grounds and enough of their old castings to make them feel at home. Most of the worms followed the crowd within an hour, some however obviously have ODC tendencies and were reluctant to move toward the light. The little baby worms were (naturally) rebellious and happy to be left behind to party hearty with their baby friends unsupervised.

At first I was exasperated, stupid worms. I started to transfer them one at a time. And then this kind of calm realization came over me that you just can't rush nature. That even though this task was on my to do list for today, it might take more than one day for the worms to migrate.

Here's what else I've learned: Worms love watermelon and cantaloupe, they can dispose of the rinds in a matter of days. Teamwork. Avocado skins, not so much. Peanut shells, not at all. They want to make nests in the corn cobs, and if you don't pulverize the egg shells, they nest in those too. Apple peels go quickly, onions not so fast, leeks they have little taste for. And all of our kitchen scraps, piles of it, tupperware bin full every other day or so, has been reduced to maybe a bucketful of what looks like peat. Very rich peat. In the process of their munching, they produce something called "worm tea" which is the best fertilizer there is. I put that liquid gold in milk cartons for the flowers.

So, when I complete this harvesting, I'm going to put the castings outside so that the dirt can get a taste of Cleveland winter and will be ready for the garden in the spring. There are a lot of other things I suppose I could have done with my afternoon, but I have to say, playing in the dirt, smelling it, feeling it between my fingers while the icy winds were blowing outside, was not only a comfort, but a lesson in the patience of nature.

Kazakhstan Travel Plans

Kazakhstan lies in the north of the central Asian republics and is bounded by Russia in the north, China in the east, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the south, and the Caspian Sea and part of Turkmenistan in the west. It has almost 1,177 mi (1,894 km) of coastline on the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan is about four times the size of Texas. The territory is mostly steppe land with hilly plains and plateaus.

In January, Michael and I are traveling to Almaty, Kazakhstan to visit The Almaty International School http://www.qsi.org/kaz/ and speak at a teacher's conference. Already I am impressed by the school and its philosophy which leads with an emphasis on kindness. Kindness is not a word that gets airtime in US school goals. How do you develop a standardized test for kindness? If you go to the website, be sure and check out the online student newspaper which is very informative and the little video.

Airline tickets all booked and new down coat purchased, we are ready to go to the cold cold steppes -- in January (did I mention?) The trip will be long -- what the travel agent calls an "over over." Overnight to Amsterdam, get on another plane, and overnight to Almaty. The flip side of the world.

So, naturally we are looking for some background reading material to help activate and assess our prior knowledge (which amounts to zip) of this area to help increase our comprehension. Unfortunately, Lonely Planet does not have a guide. Neither does Fodor's or Frommer's. Mmmmm.

So when we went for our visa pictures at AAA and (just thought I'd ask) I asked the travel agent there if she had any brochures or travel information for Kazakhstan, she replied, "What country is that in?" Mmmmmm.

We politely informed her that Kazakhstan IS a country -- in fact the 8th largest country in the world. Casting a suspicious eye on both of us, she informed us she only had information about Europe, which looks to be only a launch pad for this trip.

Filling out the VISA application, I notice that the word for NO (as is "have you ever visited Kazakhstan before?") is OK. OK means NO? That'll make your number two pencil turn backflips. Mmmmmm.

Our contacts at the school have been warm and inviting -- in direct contrast to online descriptions we have read about the geography in January. Lonely Planet online has this caution: If you do decide to battle the winter, be aware that many domestic flights are grounded and finding food can be a problem since lots of eateries close for the season. Mmmmmmm.

But then there are the rich descriptions of the food, the hospitality, the friendliness -- all in direct contrast to the weather. Just now, I was back on the site looking at the buildings and the faces of the students, getting excited.

So, here's my today thought to ponder: Is January considered winter in a land when OK means NO?

Thanksgiving

And there we are. Left to right: Scottie (aka Scooter), Stephie, Thomas, Sara Kelly, Sara Ellen, Danny, Ben. Ready -- Swing! A little unsure. Holding on. A lot to be thankful for this year.

I've read a lot of articles about people boycotting thanksgiving because of the dastardly acts the settlers committed against indigenous peoples, but I like the idea of taking a day of the year to be thankful. It's the outdated textbooks and folklore that we need to leave behind, not the extra helping of gratitude. A day to celebrate the harvest of another year. This year I'm thankful for the above, for all my extended functioning dysfunctional family, for a warm home to come home to with running water and lights. I'm truly fortunate and pausing to be grateful is important for every reason I can think of, including a way to stave off the blues that often drag in on the skirts of winter. Something to keep us all laughing and hanging on.

NCTE Middle School Mosaic

Thirteen minutes. That's the time Kylene Beers allotted for poetry during the 2.5 hour event at NCTE in NYC this year. Thirteen and a guillotine was to descend at 14. I can't explain how much I obsessed about this time limit. I made power point slides for a read along. I deleted them. I added more. Deleted. I celebrated by not sleeping the night before so that I arrived 1.5 hours early with cotton candy for brains.

I downloaded photoshop brushes. Emailed just the right font to moderator and Goddess of YA literature, Teri Lesesne. Let me just stop for a moment and say, in case you were wondering, that this is THE best read person not only in YA lit, but probably in the galaxy. I lurk on her blog occasionally, but too often and it makes me depressed that I don't read more at traffic lights. I have no idea how she reads as much as she does. Go here to fact check: http://professornana.livejournal.com/

Once the mosaic began, I relaxed into listening to Christopher Paul Curtis and Pam Ryan, Jeff Wilhelm and Janet Allen and others. A whole lot of talent was packed into that hotel ballroom, much of it carried into the room in canvas bags on the weary shoulders of teachers. It was a great afternoon and those 2.5 hours flew by. When it came time for my 13 minutes, I jumped up and raced through the whole thing in 10 minutes. Zip zip. And back to enjoying hearing others talk about their passions.

I started on the performance poetry circuit (could this be?) 16 years ago and I know that people assume I am beyond being nervous. But not true. Believe it or not, I get more nervous to deliver a poem for a small audience, say a dinner table of folks, than a ballroom. That I've known forever. But now I know that I can get EXTREMELY twisted over 13 minutes, when an hour is a breeze. Who understands these things?

Things to do to avoid writing . . .

Get a snack. This is a long list.

Starting with: Get a snack. Walk the dog. Stare out the window. Play solitaire. Knit something that is destined to fit no one. Crochet a cover to fit a tennis ball. Mend socks. Swim. Read a magazine about something you already know or don't care about. Feed the dogs, the family, the worms (another story), the plants, yourself (nothing healthy, see above). Clean off desk by putting everything in neat stacks and then shuffle the papers up again. Do taxes (only works once a year, but provides weeks of obsessive hand wringing). Answer email. Read the news anxiously as if reading can change the world and as if in not reading every little announcement, you have abandoned the world and in its last final gasp, everyone will blame you. Write blog entries. Sweep under the dining room table without moving the chairs, no use overdoing it. Get to the airport too early or too late, both are distractions, but the late option messes with your blood pressure longer. Reboot. Run a virus check on the computer. Call the kids so you can say, well, that's it, I really didn't have anything to say. Check the time on the clock on the kitchen stove, the one in the office isn't good enough. More solitaire. File nails. Search for just the right pen. Take a finger shriveling bath long enough to knock off a Tolstoy or a couple of Shakespeares. Count the pores in your nose. Remove a kitchen wall (deadlines require extreme measures). Walk the beach and collect glass. Put the dogs out in the backyard, it's been hours (days) since walking them last. Clean out that little catch basin in the car where three pennies are fused to the plastic by a month old coffee spill. Plan a trip. A long trip. A trip requiring visas and multiple calls to travel agents and visits to cranky websites. Read other people's books that have been sent to you and marvel at how they ever got them done. Wow. Watch a rerun and to see if it turns out the same way it did the last time. Rewash the load of laundry you left in the machine a couple days ago and is beginning to smell like sauerkraut. Satisfy your desperate need to go by vitamins to make you think clearer. While you are out, go to Home Depot and buy any project that requires installation and tools you can't find. Gather up last seasons clothes and put them in tubs all over the bedroom. Belly crawl under the bed looking for stray socks. Attempt to learn photoshop. Do this without classes or a book that would make the process go smoothly. Use hours, days, weeks wandering art sites on line and downloading brushes.

In fact, if you really get into the photoshop thing --just hand the dog a leash and tell him/her to take a hike, because Photoshop will eat your entire day, days on end. No problem. Photoshop is the best time sucker there is.

Democracy: the votes are in

Carolyn Bucey finished off her slimy opponent Bill Snow with a knock out punch of truth and we won. Not only that council seat, but two others, also. It was a sweep of local proportions.

A commenter on my last post suggested I name names, so here we go. Our neighborhood was unhappy with our councilman Bill Snow for failing to stand up for us against the over development of a former school property by Junior Properties, ltd. Junior's daddy, the Big Shot, Osborne, gave a pile of money to the financially crippled school district, earmarked solely for the football stadium. Period. No books, no AP teachers hired back, no computers or classroom remodels. Football. In exchange for this "contribution" he was gifted Center Street Elementary School and surrounding properties for development by good ol' Junior, who has proposed squeezing in 50-60-70 (depends what day you ask) condos onto the former playground.

Why is our council representative so important? It is council who will decide how many units go onto that land. In our minds, rubber stampers need not apply. And rubber stampers who have a whole lot of unexplained cash in their election campaign accounts should get lost.

Most people think the Osbornes bought Center Street School for the fire sale price of $700,000, but that's unclear. Nothing was ever recorded. Did the district gave it to them as swag for the gift to the football team? Who knows. Very fishy. And Mr. Snow and the rest of council just kept smiling and rubber stamping approvals. Keep in mind that this neighborhood is still reeling from 2003 when 63% of the town voted to stop developers from plugging a different development (Newell Creek) into our limited green space. The developers took the case to court and a judge OVERTURNED the popular vote. To say the neighborhood is a little skeptical of sincerity of developers is an understatement.

And now this new Junior Properties development at Center Street School threatens to overwhelm our ancient sewers, threaten our trees, and increase our population density and traffic flow at one of the busiest intersections in town beyond the point of safety. We've already sacrificed the playground I used to walk to with my grandkids and the ball diamond that throbbed with T ballers on any given summer evening. And guess what? Osborn also owns the bank that is doing the financing and owns the gas company which is also drilling (with council approval) at more and more sites in this semi-urban neighborhood. Could it be that Osborn rhymes with Halliburton?

Carolyn Bucey was party to a lawsuit against the Newell Creek developers and in fact she and her husband received a small settlement for loss of value to their home due to the Newell Creek development. So, wasn't it a surprise to all when a glossy, four color copy of her confidential settlement check was mailed first class to the entire Ward along with an implication that she was taking payoffs? How did Snow get a copy of that check? Who paid for the expense of mailing? Who would want such a person as Mr. Snow to represent them after he did such a thing?

Well, guess what. The majority of voters do NOT trust Mr. Snow to represent them anymore. Here's the best part about grass roots efforts, Bucey's committee was able to xerox a simple letter explaining that the copy of the check was obtained underhandedly, that the check was NOT a payoff but a perfectly legal settlement, and get that info hand delivered to the entire ward, 1/4 of Mentor inside of two days. The majority of voters decided.

And that is what democracy looks like.

This is what democracy looks like

It's people meeting at one house in the neighborhood at 9:00AM on a Saturday morning to pass out literature. The smell of coffee from one of those 30 cup stainless towers. A plate of coffee cake cut in 2 inch squares. It's pulling your scarf up over your mouth and snugging on a hat and gloves because the morning frost has finally caught up with the calendar. It's talking to your neighbors about the polls, the rumors, the fact that the republican party has paid for a first class mailing, a glossy, four color smear campaign (all untrue) and robo calls, over $20,000 for a measly, supposedly non-partisan city council seat in a mid-sized suburb. Why? Whose corporate interests are they protecting this time? Is it the SOB (son of a big shot) who is trying to overdevelop the neighborhood? Are they planning to develop the wild lagoon wetlands again? This council seat only pays a few thousand a year; who in their right minds would spend that kind of money on such a campaign?

It's shaking your head and reaching for a stack of literature and a list of addresses to hit the streets. It's mentioning that you will be out of town for the election and having your neighbors take the literature out of your hand and telling you to get your number 2 pencil to the board of elections and vote early because (new policy) they are open on Saturday for early voters and this election is SO small that every vote, every single pencil mark, counts. There will always be more little guys than big guys in this country, but we have to make our marks.

And the best part about voting early, we actually were able to make a mark on a paper rather than a touch screen that swallows votes and doesn't spit them out again, which is an whole other issue.

Too many of us are inclined to complain about a loss of democratic rights and not actively involved in the democratic rites -- like standing on street corners and passing out literature, trying to engage neighbors in real conversation. I'm just as bad. I'm spotty in my involvement in this mud-wrestling match called democracy. But every time I put myself up out of my chair and away from my computer and TV where pundits shout their opinions, every time I get around to expressing mine by jumping into the process, this time only by showing up at my neighbor's house to be sent away to vote early, I am grateful for the experience. It all seems so reasonable. It makes me hopeful.

Neighbors actually talking to one another. It's a great concept.

A First in Performance Poetry

Stephie is Katie's daughter and like her mother, she likes being first. She likes to walk first when we go to the woods or the beach. She likes to cartwheel the fastest and swing the highest. Stephie loves first grade.

Her teacher has a great plan for helping kids with reading -- every week the children are assigned a poem to read, re-read and then perform. Then the kids take the poem home and perform it for parents who record their written applause in a response journal. It's about the funnest approach to homework I've ever heard of. AND a true assessment of her knowledge of word mastery. Stephie is great at this and reads with intense drama and expression.

I will have to ask Stephie's teacher if there is a source I should cite for that classroom idea, but it is a fabulous one for primary kids.

And oh so much better of a way of assessing her reading fluency than taking a stop watch to her reading nonsense syllables, where reading with expression and drama only slows a reader down. And how much drama can a reader put into sounds with nothing attached to them? No bugs, no pumpkins, no mystery, no enchantment? Just sounds. Where the only skill being tested is speed, as if speed could ever equate to interpreting the real meaning of words. This testing practice is inflicted on her, a political mandate by the federal government, every other week so that there is a score to write next to her name, so that people in suits can brag that her building's scores are up. Not the children's reading, not their happiness, not their love of learning. Their scores.

Ask yourself sometime: what motivated you to read? What excited you? What made you want to learn new words. Now ask yourself -- was it a stopwatch, a list of nonsense syllables and a stranger keeping score? Was it you sweating it out every other week to read sounds with no meaning faster and faster? This is DIBELS, "the worst thing to happen to the teaching of reading since the development of flash cards," according to P.David Pearson in Ken Goodman's book, What's the Matter with DIBELS. (Heinemann, 2007). Yesterday I was reading this book with my lunch and it gave me an upset stomach. Seriously, I couldn't finish my salad.

Thankfully, Stephie's teacher has not allowed this test to totally dictate her methods of instruction. Thankfully, Stephie wound up in a class with an experienced teacher, not a newby who was trained to believe that this bogus assessment plan has any impact on actually teaching kids to read. Thankfully, Stephie's teacher is countering this testing madness by leading a group of "firsts" in performance poetry.

Now there's a medium that can really get kids jazzed about reading!

Travel dreams

It was a big event in my life when the National Geographic came every month. I can't recall ever seeing my mother reading one, or my dad. I suppose they did, or maybe the subscription was just something they did for the kids. I didn't come home from school to video games or online chats. I came home to snack on pretzels and apples, maybe some peanut butter spread on whatever was handy (just the tip of a knife if mom wasn't looking) and avoid my homework by either making up dance routines involving chairs and stools in the living room to the accompaniment of Rogers and Hammerstein or reading my mail. How much mail could a 10 year old kid get beyond the $5 card from granny on my birthday? Let me tell you -- boxes. I got mail almost everyday.

On the one day a month when the National Geographic came I'd snatch it up immediately. I'm sure I gleaned some educational benefit from the magazine. I looked at the pictures of the volcanoes and hummingbirds, the camels with flies on their eyes and oh yes, the naked indigenous people. It was there that I read about the space shots which lead me on a wild goose chase to find space food at the grocery store. That was before you could find your wildest desire on the Internet and Kroger's had yet to stock food in flavor saving pouches.

After a quick flip through, I would get down to studying the last few pages in the magazine where there were columns of 1 x 2" ads for countries all over the world beckoning American tourist dollars. They wanted those dollars so bad that they offered travel brochures, maps, coupons and other enticements to anyone for (get this) FREE.

Free was just what I could afford. Some of the poorer countries asked for a self addressed stamped envelope, but stamps were only a nickle and I could sneak one of those out of the middle drawer of the desk easily enough. I'd spread out my clipped coupons from the back of the magazine on my bed and slip them into envelops, guaranteeing a continual stream of mail. I dreamed of traveling to all those places.

Last night Micheal reports that once again I was dreaming of travel -- spouting numbers in my sleep. We have three big trips in various stages of planning: Kazakhstan in Jan., Jakarta in Feb., and Istanbul in March. Figures and itineraries were dancing in my brain all night.

One thing I never dreamed when I sat down at the kitchen table to write poems for Katie and Kelly was that those poems would take me to places like Vietnam, China, Italy, Croatia, Sumatra, Vancouver, Toronto, Bahrain and Tell City, Indiana -- to name a few.

All I know is that this travel dream has been with me since I memorized every word to South Pacific. I just never dreamed it would come true. And I NEVER dreamed that the coupon that would get me there would be a poem.

jack kerouac's words turn 50

I never liked the man. Personally, I think the beat poets were a self-absorbed lot both in their writing and their lives. Pumped on drugs, alcohol, and their own selfishness -- the myth surrounding the beats collective genius still makes it hard for a sober female to be taken seriously. These words are spoken with tongue firmly planted in cheek and squinty eyes -- half serious because to be otherwise is to invite an avalanche of are-you-freaking-kidding-mes from all those who have been inspired by Kerouac and the rest of the beats to write, explore, and at least dream about casually abusing the emotions and intellect of women. Substitute broad and dame for B* and ho and Jack is the misogynistic rapper of the 50s.

Maybe it's because I never studied him in high school in my formative years when the natural instinct to go on the road yearns in the adolescent soul -- to leave all responsibility behind -- when it is a comfort to read affirmations of self-centeredness. I'm not sure I EVER would have identified with his relentless pursuit of women, but I can see how many an adolescent male has. Instead, I was introduced to Kerouac in a modern literature class in college during the decomposition of my parents marriage due to the anguish of my mother's alcoholism and drug abuse and in the midst of my own struggles to shed that pain and become a responsible adult. When the professor popped the top on ol' Jack's writing, I took one whiff and fled. Rendering humor out of drinking, drugging, and ridiculing the ones left behind to clean up the puke and keep the lights on was not my idea of a good read.

So, my rejection of Kerouac is personal. I know he influenced a generation, that his writing style spoke for a literary time period and went on to influence the next. And let's face it, literary icons are often people you would never want to ask to dinner -- Hemingway would have torn the place up and insulted everyone before using the table cloth as a bull fighter's cape, Dorothy Parker would have passed out in the powder room, and Byron slept with his sister -- I've read and enjoyed all of them. I was in a bad place when Kerouac and I were introduced, like meeting someone when you are a little cranky -- we just made a bad impression on one another.

Which is all to say, I went to two events this weekend commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road expecting to be, well not really expecting to be anything. So many people spoke of how Kerouac had touched their lives. Cavana said he read him in HS and asked himself, "could poetry be like this?" Ray has spent residency time at the Kerouac house and spoke in jazz rhythms of the vibe. Kisha never read the man before and gave an appropriately sardonic interpretation. Nina Gibbons lived in San Fransisco in the 50s and was THERE for readings at the City Lights Bookstore. Salinger alternately growled and blasted through 35 sentences from the text that contained the word "window" in his very best Burroughs impersonation. I was thoroughly entertained. And maybe (maybe) a little tempted to see if perhaps time has enabled me to acquire a taste for vintage Kerouac.

Take my mike -- PLEASE

Ah, the bold, the reluctant, the hesitant, the seventh grade poets take turns at the mike at Oakwood Middle and Glenwood Middle in Canton. We wrote, we projected, we loosened our minds and our voices and finally the few, the brave, the wordsmiths came to the mike to read their poems of personal conflict. This poet, after bravely reading his newly written piece into the mike, couldn't wait to get rid of that thing. But you know what? I think he'll be back.

I wish I had more pictures from the day, but the fact is I bought a new camera and experienced as I am with my old PhD (press here dummy) camera, this one actually has a manual (yet unread) and comes with a class (yet untaken). Obviously, I had the wrong setting on because this photo was not photoshopped, that's the way it came out. But I love the action of it. You can almost read the "OMG what was I thinking" in his eyes.

After visiting both schools, I spoke at a reading at the HS which houses the public library (now there's a concept!). A woman came up to me and asked if I could remember her. Like the poet in the picture above, I could read her eyes, but she had to remind me of her name . . . Cindy Horne is retired now, but she is one of the very first educators that took a chance on a self-published poet and invited me to her school (we estimated) in 1991 and then was kind enough to pass my name along to others. She graciously accepted a thank you hug oh these many years later. How often do we get a chance to thank someone who really made a difference in our lives?

Big thanks to the friends of the community library for sponsoring my visit and for all the writers and performers in Canton. Great day.

Up North -- The Upper Peninsula Reading Association

Traveling from Florida to the Upper Peninsula is like going from the nation's left ankle to its eyebrow. When I was a kid growing up outside of Deeetroit, we used to call everything above Flint, "up north." But this trip took me REALLY up north, about as north as you can go without taking a dip in Lake Superior. In between the airport and the car, I got my first whiff of winter. Believe it or not, it smelled pretty good.

But inside was all was warm and cozy. Loved listing to Marc Brown and his tales of Arthur and the gang -- most interesting was his story of tangling with Bill O'Reilly who misrepresented and detonated an episode of his PBS series on tolerance in which one of the characters came from a home with two mommies. The entire right wing media machine came down on his head, funding dried up and perhaps most frightening -- 5 large envelops arrived in his mailbox from the IRS. He and all of his companies were being audited.

We live in frightening times. But as long as we keep speaking out -- the poets, the kind hearted aardvarks on PBS, and all the teachers spreading peace and tolerance, there is hope that calmer, more just philosophies will prevail. That's what all this testing is about if you ask me -- it's putting restrictions on teachers so that kids can't find independent voices -- so that they are trained to reiterate only limited information, and in the case of the dasterdly DIBELS, nonsense syllables. More on that topic later. Anyway, all of this drilling threatens to murder a kid's natural sense of curiosity and love of learning -- the tests loom over their heads like a relentless continum of IRS audits.

But Up North I met a lot of teachers and student teachers dedicated to helping kids find their own voices. A group of U-ppers are studying my book, helping kids develop their own poems in response to learning across the curriculum. Thank you thank you to Mandy, Sandy, Lucy and all the teachers who are putting my meager poems and ideas to Superior use. And this picture, with all the post-its sent me through the roof!

Fern Creek Elementary

This picture was taken at the end of the school day. Notice who is looking tired and who is looking bright as sunshine.

I LOVE visiting the classrooms of my friends (that goes for Katie aka Mrs. Lufkin, too). You know someone in a certain setting. You can see him/her as a person who empties the dishwasher or drives a car or likes to order steak. You may even know how that person likes the steak. But nothing prepares you for watching how that individual steers a classroom of kids toward learning. It is like trying to organize lint in the bathtub -- every kid comes in with a separate agenda. How a single teacher gathers the group and gets them focused is like watching a magician -- the polar opposite of how I felt when I once saw my algebra teacher at the movies with a date -- OMG, she had another life outside of school!

I loved visiting Steve Czerniejewski's fifth grade classroom. I have known Steve for 12 years as part of the traveling troop of teachers working with the Janet Allen Literacy Institutes. As a group, we've hiked in Alaska, picnicked in Arizona, sweated in Baltimore, swatted mosquitoes in Florida, watched the sunset in San Diego, toured in D.C., sucked down lobster rolls in Maine and gotten lost in more cities than we can count. But, I'd never been to where he does his teaching thing. As soon as I arrived, I knew it was going to be good.

The kids all checked themselves in, committed themselves to learning by moving a clothes pin on a chart and set to work solving a math problem on the board that had me stumped. Okay, here it is:

What number is a multiple of 80 and 100.

It is a square number.

It is less than 500 and more than 100.

Solve that, and you are officially as smart as a fifth grader. The kids worked independently and then discussed the possibilities, solving the problem and setting the stage for a successful day.

Decorating the widows were poetic reflections -- pictures and textual responses to my poems where the kids used crayons and words to make connections. They were ALL great -- much better than my ability to take pictures into the light -- here are just a couple that came out clear enough to see. Click on the pictures to see them up close.

Extra bonus: I got to meet Steve's gorgeous, charming, smart family. I always thought he was just flashing around the pictures that came with his wallet -- but Kim and Carissa are real and they are really wonderful.

To Kim, Carissa, Mr. CZ and all of his students -- xxoo

Atlantic High School, Daytona, FL

Two photos -- both taken by teacher Meg Roa who was kind enough to invite me to her school. Although this is common place in Southern climes, it still seems odd to me that the school hallways are on the outside of the buildings, the classroom doors opening to the elements like Motel 6. Atlantic HS circles its classrooms like Conestogas. Within the inside courtyard students lounge on planters and gather in clusters, same as in Cleveland -- except with a whole lot more sunshine. So when we began to write our poems of conflict and an "almost fight," I had to ask, "What do you call that area where you pass between classes?" Answer: They call it the hallway. A remnant of the old days -- kind of like calling an ITunes release an "album" when hardly any kids around have ever laid their hands on one of those giant CDs.

Great visit, great writers. Wish I had had more time to hear more of the poems. Time goes so quickly. Whoosh. We wrote some, performed some. Hope some more poems are loosened up by the exercise. Hope hope hope.

IUP -- which is not in Indiana

This is Dr. Lynne Alvine's adolescent lit class at IUP (that's Indiana University of PA) where I had the privilege of speaking on Thursday. Not only were they patient enough to sit through my poetry, they even sat through readings from unpublished manuscripts and in one case a rejected manuscript. On Friday night at Dr. Lynne's house one student teacher asked me if I had any advice for her as a new teacher and my answer was YES. YOU HAVE TO STAND UP FOR YOURSELF! Believe in your own intellect and abilities no matter what. It's a tough time in teaching today, but happily new, dedicated teachers are still following their hearts into the profession.

The next day on Friday IUP played host to 17 local high schools who sent students there for a day of writing and learning. It was fabulous. I spoke in the morning with some help from Michael and he hosted a sharing session at the end of the day where students shared their writing. In between they were treated to break out sessions on everything from Diary writing to poetry to Harry Potter fantasy -- and stacks -- I MEAN STACKS of pizzas.

Thank you to my dear friend and inspirational mentor Dr. Lynne and to Sue Johnson and the Northwest PA Writing Project for all their hard work and dedication to making this a terrific day.

I can't imagine having an opportunity like this when I was in HS. Had I, perhaps I wouldn't have waited until I was 40 to launch a writing career. There really are so many opportunities for kids these days, but too many don't even know the opportunities are out there. A day like this widens horizons beyond the cafeteria table and the bank of lockers in the hall. Truly valuable.

Ben turns 8

Ben had his 8th birthday today.

He is the oldest of Kelly's three sons, a sportsman, football player, soccer player, basketball player who has electric guitar dreams and a GREAT imagination for stories. I love Ben's stories and for his part, he is patient with mine. He seems to take my idol worship in stride and just goes about the important business of second grade.

Last weekend Michael and I traveled to D.C. to babysit for Ben and his brothers Dan and Thomas while Kel and Brian went to Houston for a wedding. Thomas is potty training -- been a long time since I been there and done that! Danny is obsessed with Tom and Jerry, playing soccer and his favorite drink: chocolate milk. All the boys like a good turn on the playground equipment.

Danny is 4 and Thomas is 2.5 and both need more attention than Ben these days. He's pretty self sufficient in the food, shower, brush your teeth department. I came home wondering if he felt shortchanged while we were visiting because the younger ones (aka the diaper boys) issue a continuous stream of mandates totally appropriate for boys their ages. I wish (as I always do) that Ben and I had more time together.

Today when he arrived home from school there was a new bike in the driveway, a combination gift from grandparents and parents. A really nice bike. I can't wait to see him ride. Oh, the places he'll go.

I hope he sends back word.