Unschooling

I'm at the Cleveland Public Library, it is the color of cold, wet steel outside. Ample windows are letting in only a dusky light and the whole place has the ambiance of a tomb. I'm researching (well, really, I'm off task, but I CAME here to research) a new book on performance learning. It is the perfect day to do library research, it's too dank and depressing to do about anything else unless one is a bird discussing travel plans. Browsing the shelves I found (could it be?) The Idiot's Guide to Homeschooling. right next to Homeschooling for Dummies.

I'm not against homeschooling, not at all. But it might not be the best course of action for idiots (do ya think?). First they define "unschooling," which is taking a stand against dry texts. Next the guide recommends filling the home with books. Let the kid fix his own breakfast. Viola, the kid just had an hour in home ec. Then the kid can spend the morning playing with Legos, a lesson in engineering.

Okay, these truly are books for dummies. No joke. And pretty effective, I might guess, at unschooling youth, if anyone were so idiotic as to attempt to put them into practice.

Beware of grandmothers with glue sticks

Quote from writer/educator Donald Graves: "Too much of my life is spent in routine activities: get up, shave, dress, stagger down for my cup of coffee, write, eat, write some more, pile up my correspondence and teaching necessities in my canvas LLBean bag, drive unseeing to work, wonder about where I might be lucky enough to find a parking spot, walk into the office to check phone calls and correspondence . . . If someone were to ask me to write about my day at this point I would be forced to say, "There hasn't been anything new to it yet, no whys, just a kind of survival, like wading through a marsh. Sometimes I have a whole day like that, or a string of days with the edges of living knocked off. If someone were to suggest that I write about those days, I might have two reactions: nothing happened so why bother or it was too painful to revisit: "I'd just as soon forget it."

Donald Graves Discover your own literacy, The Reading/Writing Teacher's CompanionHeinemann)

Boy, ain't that the truth. Some days are so annoying they can block you up for an entire week! Take last Tuesday (please) when I checked into my flight with my lip gloss NOT in a plastic bag.
"But it is here in my hand, you can see it."
"Has to be in a plastic bag."
Some traveling Good Samaritan donated a plastic bag to my efforts to get through security, but I had to go out and around and through security a second time, lip gloss secure in a handibag. Only this time the vigilant screener found a glue stick in my rolling briefcase that she had missed the first time, thereby subjecting me to a wanding and total swipe down of all my goods for traces of explosives.

In fact all traces of explosives were inside of me at that point and about to detinate, but I held the fireworks securly behind pursed lips. I was about to miss my flight having been tagged guilty of suspicious activity.

Be it known here, Cleveland Hopkins Airport has a zero tolerance policy for grandmothers carrying glue sticks.

Now, don't you feel safer?

More from Graves: "But literate people don't want to forget anything; pain, sadness, joy, anger. They want to tell stories about these experiences to themselves and to friends, to write about them in a diary, a journal, or a short essay. Writing allows us to look at an experience from two angles: at the moment it occurs and and the moment we write about it."

Yeah. Well. Maybe. But just thinking about it now, three days still tweaks my latent explosive tendencies. However, now that I have told the story, maybe maybe I'll be able to see it from a different angle.

Disesteem

Here's the sentence: "She was a woman to admire and to desire, but the message in her eye and her bearing was unmistakable: offend or disesteem her at your peril." I'm still reading Shantaram, written by Aussie Gregory David Roberts -- it's nine hundred pages and I'm not traveling with long stretches on airplanes and waiting areas to read. In fact, I think this is the longest stretch I have had in my writing career without travel. Ah, yes, travel. The part of the writing life that Annie Dilliard skipped over in her book. The part that for many of us keeps our computers and cars updated and our dogs in kibble. Well, anyway, I've been home and home means that the laundry calls out to me and the sun and the sidewalk, not to mention the dogs who are as I write this pulling at my chair leg and rolling around like animals, desperate to sniff their way around the block on the end of a leash. But, extra time on my hands also means that while I don't have as much time to read without interruption, I do have more time to contemplate what I'm reading, even to think about select words, like disesteem.

Not the same as disrespect. Not a loss of esteem, low esteem or lack of esteem. I love a good word choice! I was writing to someone a couple weeks ago and she used the word wretched in an email. This is a word more familiar than disesteem, but not really common in usage anymore. I decided that week I was in love with the word wretched. I don't feel wretched nor is my life wretched, I just like the word. Disesteem is more rare, its existence too wretched to earn a space in spell check, although it does own its own place in the dictionary. (Then again, how can anyone trust a spell check that wants to replace Annie Dilliard with Dullard.)

Choosing words is like shopping at the grocery. When you are in a hurry, you just run in and grab what you have always bought and race to the checkout line. But when you have extra time, you can read the packages, check the new products section, and taste the samples. Words like wretched and disesteem don't hang out with the hamburger, they are in the gourmet section of the dictionary. The area that takes some time to prepare, to present, and ultimately, to savor.

'Course the writer of this book was incarcerated during its writing, so presumably he had some time on his hands to shop for just the right word to describe this woman pulled from the shelf of his memory in his fictionalized autobiography (aren't all of our autobiographies, even the unpublished recollections, fictionalized? Really? Although it was responsible of him to make note). Incarceration of an adventurer may well be why the book is 900 pages and rich with detailed observations, painting a panoramic picture of India that no reader could possibly view with disesteem.

Under the cover of darkness

I swear, they do it at night. I'm not sure who THEY are, but for sure THEY don't want to be confronted by those of us enjoying our fall walks, watching the leaves take on attitude before they dry and take flight and listening to the birds discussing travel plans. Those of us who are scuttling between sun spots in sweatshirts do NOT want to be reminded of what is coming by THEM. But sure enough, right about the time the Christmas decorations show up at Drug Mart (about now) up go the posts.

People who live in the south or as I did for many innocent years, outside of the infamous northern Ohio snowbelt, (it could be worse, it could be Buffalo) don't know about these metal warning flags. These are the four foot metal bars that THEY attach to the fire hydrants so that the things can be found in the deep snow. These posts are associates of wind chill factors and lake effect snow. Like undercover spies, they invade the neighborhood. Of course the locals recognize them immediately and know that the rest of the crew is amassing over the hill like an invading brigade, sending us into a flurry of yard, gutter, and window preparations.

Last weekend, I noticed the subtle intrusion, which is always the way it is. You never see these defiant little posts being installed, just one day, the posts are well. . . posted, putting us all on notice.

An inner alarm trumpets, "Life is temporal. Fall is fleeting. Winter's coming." Bony little know-it-alls.

No wonder THEY do this under the cover of darkness, whoever THEY are.

To the woman in the blue dress

To the woman in the blue dress walking in front of the empty strip center store on Route 20 who did not tie back her auburn hair letting it fly behind her like a lacy cape -- to the woman who led with her chin and whose smile was reflected in the way she swung her canvas bag timed perfectly with each stride -- to the woman who chose to defy the gray sky with a dress the color the sky could if it were Greece or Italy or some place besides Cleveland -- to the woman in the hip grazing, long blue dress with stars bursting from the cotton, in the dress that was slit to the knee but no further -- to the woman with crinkles in the corners of her eyes who did not require footnotes, who gave today's potential a slight-handed, encouraging nudge without even looking -- to the woman in the blue dress -- thank you.

My hood

My Hood

The neighbors in my hood had a celebratory potluck tonight. The developer, whose family in the past has performed surgery on this old village with the delicacy of a bulldozer, burying the old grist mill to put up a Kinko's and erecting stripmalls with spreading lawns of asphalt from one end of town to the other, has compromised on our old school site.

On the ballot in November will be a zoning change -- not to the 10 units per acre he was proposing (code R-10) but to a new zoning designation, OV for Old Village, that will put restraints on him and help preserve what little is left of the old village (Kinkos not withstanding). He will have to play nice, not put in dense housing and preserve the integrity of the local architecture.

This was a major victory for grass roots organization and neighborhood solidarity. So tonight we celebrated with fried chicken, salads in our finest tupperware and fudge brownies. Modern neighborhoods are populated with commuters who try not to run into one another in the street rather than stopping to chat. We were no different -- but we are now.

What a gift that developer gave us, really. He may have taken away the playground, but he gave us more of a neighborhood.

Techno Trauma

My phone stopped taking a charge. I know this feeling, understand it in my core. When the sun is perky and I am too comfortable under the comforter. When no amount of caffeine starts my engine. The time I fell asleep at the only professional football game I ever attended, crowds around me calling for blood. The times I've dragged my feet in the face of deadlines. Filed extensions. Just said, no to hysteria. Failed to take the charge. So understandable on a human level -- so absolutely intolerable in a machine. How dare that Motorola turn it's back on me!

So, I did what every good electronics consumer does, I tossed the old and bought new. Not the same model, the new improved model with windows, excel and 2 gigs of memory. Keep in mind that my first computer had a mere 4 megabytes of ram. Then I upgraded to 8, 16, skipped 32 and went straight to 64 because the computer salesman told me that was all I'd ever need. Wonder where he is now and if his beard ever came in?

I now have a phone that is more powerful than what NASA used to launch the first man into space. I have synchronized my life into this little machine. But like the columnist (Anna Quinlen?) who once commented that she was afraid if they put the whole of world knowledge on an IPod, she would be sure to lose it in her purse, I am not certain I am competent or capable to handle this thing, let alone make a phone call with it.

Also awaiting the arrival of my new computer. Stay tuned, I hear it has dual exhausts. I probably won't know how to drive that thing either. Sigh.

"the smell of hope -- the opposite of hate"

I've been feeling depressed lately about the state of the world. News articles and television conspiring to remind us daily about the vulnerabilities of mother earth and all her minions -- human, fish, reptile and fowl. From polar bears to tropical frogs to children in Afghanistan and green space in Ohio, it seems so much and many are in a persistent state of peril.

Yesterday I spent at the Lake County Farm Park with my daughter Katie and her children Stephie (5) and Scotty (almost 3). There is something about small hands reaching out to pet the knees and necks of the unbridled kindness of workhorses -- an act of mutual trust -- that seems hopeful. Like the walk through the corn maze, each stalk holding but one or two ears, reaching with pride to heights of nine feet. Young kids nursing from their mothers and sheep dogs that can control their universe with a look, no technology required. So much of what we have we do not need and so much of what the world needs they do not have. To go to the farm park is like looking the word "balance" up in the dictionary. Just for a reminder.

Started a new book yesterday, a recommendation from my dear friend Bonnie Campbell Hill. Shantaram. On page 4, the author Gregory David Roberts observes when exiting the airport in Bombay, that it smells of "the sweet smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love." That phrase has followed me everywhere since I read it.

And that line followed me to the farm park where I caught a whiff of what Roberts was talking about. And (gratefully) it has followed me back home.

"way back when, in '67"

Name that song. If you can name Steely Dan, you were probably alive and musically aware in the 70s, as was most of the audience at the outdoor concert last night. Gray ponytails and speading foundations filled the lawn at Blossom. The temperature was in freefall, but Hurricane Ernesto's leftovers didn't reach the Northcoast until this AM. I think if someone had taken the loudspeaker and asked everyone wearing denim to leave, there would have been 8 people left. So much for us free thinking boomers.

It is bizarre for me to think that 1967 is as far back for kids today as the roaring twenties was for me as a kid. Has the world changed that much in 40 years? Musically, yes. Rap was invented replacing soul train. But I don't remember as the Beach Boys were rocking and the Beatles were on the upswing, before the Stones qualified for AARP covers, anyone still listening to Al Jolson. The modern world has so many more options, and every year we drag more cultural baggage to pass to the next generation, who can't wait to drop it and step up to the running board on the next SUV. But more remains each year, celebrated by the oldies but goodies.

Except blue jeans. This movement has real staying power. I wonder what people wore before we all dressed alike? I guess I need to talk to someone who can still remember -- when? The forties?

just a Wednesday

No rushing, no deadlines. The cats are out, the dogs are in. Summer is slowing down to turn the corner into fall. School is open, the pool is closed. My neighborhood is far from peaceful.

Mentor's school district is in financial crisis and decided to sell our neighborhood school at the firesale price of 700,000. Last week the backstops for the ball park came down, so sad. A developer has purchased it and wants to put an unbelievable 127 units on the property. This is a very old neighborhood, doesn't even have storm sewers. In order to have storm sewers, all of our ancient trees lining the streets would have to go. 127 cars added to the busiest intersection in town during rush hours. Quiet streets disrupted. www.mentorvillage.org

While others turn to lawyers and engineers, I turned to Wendell Berry who asks, "where's the benefit to the community?" Indeed. There will be a benefit to the developer, to the people who own the adjacent property who are selling their land to him, but to the rest of our community and to Mentor as a whole? Where's the benefit?

The odd thing is, the only thing council seems concerned about is Rick Osborne's right to make a profit. The entire discussion revolves around, how can we enable him to make a profit with fewer units. Naturally, the council people take plenty of money for their campaigns from this developer and his wealthy family. It is a microcosm of American politics.

With a 7.5 month housing sales lag in the Cleveland area, we hardly need new condos. Want and need. Who benefits? Global questions on a local scale.

It is important to fight on a local level -- maybe there will be trickle up benefits if we win in our resistance move. Hope springs eternal.

Outspoken!

The book is at the printer. There are hardly better words an author can hear. It means all the work that the writer can do is done. Books start out in pieces, ideas, outlines, proposals, chapters, rewrites upon rewrites and then they come back in pieces, galleys, designs, finally, a printed cover. Then there are calls from friends, "hey, I saw your new book advertised." Thursday we received an extra piece, a copy of the DVD of Michael working with his kids at Playhouse Square and going to the Youth Slam in NYC. The DVD will be included in the book and its production has actually delayed the production of the book by a month or so, but now seeing the DVD, the delay is so worth it. I only have a blip of a non-speaking role in the DVD. The most powerful moments in it are the interviews with the kids. I know there are lots of DVDs about slam floating around, but most of them are geared to adults and spoken in VERY adult language, what my grandmother used to call "sailor talk." But this DVD gets the fun and teamwork message of slam across in classroom ready form. The kids are soooo great. It made me cry.

Three more weeks they are saying and we will have the finished book and the DVD all packaged together in one piece. In our hands. With other projects now in pieces, it's important to take a minute to just sigh and feel satisfied.

Oh. And wait for the reviews. Yish.

Home is where the washing machine is

Outgoing suitcases are a study in organization. Socks in this pocket, folded jeans, t shirt rolls framed by shoes turned business side out. Incoming suitcases on the other hand look as if they have been gathered from trees, bushel basket dumped then stir fried. Unappetizing at best -- and after a day of serving as an open-mouthed cat bed, they wander sheepishly, piecemeal into the laundry room trailing loose hair. And even though I know the answer, I just want to hiss through a curled lip, "where have you BEEN?"

Still, I'm okay with that. It's what is at the bottom of the suitcase that drives me nuts. The receipts that need to be sorted, wrappers, loose brochures and business cards, ubiquitous lotions and pens that all need to find homes. Even if that home is the trash, it all seems too tedious to sort through.

Called Continental to complain about the bigot in Austin. They were polite, told me he needed more training, knew exactly who had checked us in at exactly what time (a little spooky) and gave me a case number. 2967727.

Today we did banking and grocery errands on bikes -- no check-in needed. Sure is nice to be home.

It's official.

I could never be a migrant. First of all, my intestines tend to over-dramatize ingestions of bad food. Second, after a couple of days of that drama, I almost threw up with dehydration and heat exhaustion on a 2.5 mile hike on the desert trails. In order to hike from Nogales to Tucson, I would have to make it 60-90 miles to a pick up point.

Michael and I spent one afternoon in Nogales this past week handing out burritos, water and directions to shelters to deportees. Their stories will break your heart, families left all over the place, separated. (Please note, Michael ate all the same food I did, but he can scrape food off the ground and chew it like gum and it doesn't bother his insides. A really annoying characteristic in a partner).

Ed was our tour guide on another day. With his GPS and knowledge of the back trails we hiked around Arivaca, AZ. Ed knows everything. He is the former dean of arts and sciences at the University of AZ and a geologist. He knows it all, but is not a know-it-all; the perfect wilderness companion.

He also explained how corporations load politicians coffers so that they will not clamp down on the companies for hiring illegal workers at less than minimum wage, force those companies to pay for health care benefits or retirement, while simultaneously promising US citizens that they will work to protect the borders by building walls to keep out the workers the companies want. Caught in the middle are a whole lot of folks desperate to feed their families, willing to risk their lives for even low wages (upon which they DO pay taxes, but are unable to collect any benefits since they are not citizens). One has to only try and walk the terrain of the desert for a couple of hours to realize what desperation really is.

Did you know that there is no LEGAL way for a Mexican to apply to work in the US? I wonder why that is not discussed by the news people who want to put all the blame on the immigrants rather than those corporations, builders, cleaning companies, landscapers, manufacturers, which are really just trying to get cheap labor and bust unions?

Anyway. I tried it. The trails. I couldn't make it. It's official.

"And some go both ways" to quote the scarecrow.

Word needed

If an anti-semite is one who hates, disrespects, discriminates against Jews, what's the word for one who hates Muslims? We need a word for that, a shaming, Mel Gibson condemning, horrifying word.

As Michael and I were traveling from Austin to Tucson, we had an ugly encounter with a Continental ticket agent named Russ (we think) in Austin. We were chuckling with him about the new security procedures when he said, "You know what everyone is saying, this could all be eliminated if we did one thing."

I'm thinking, what -- give grandmothers and poets a free pass? We both asked him "what" at the same time.

"Eliminate a religion," was his shocking reply. He was smug. Efficient. Snapping staplers and drawing out adhesive luggage strips.

Michael and I looked at each other, knowing that this bigot stood between us and our destination. I opted to not say anything to him, but go over his head and write to Continental (which I'm doing next with a link to this post.) I hope they find a way to eliminate his job. Not him, just him in that position of authority.

We need to find a way to live in this world without the need to eliminate anyone. What's word for that? I think it is Peace.

National Poetry Slam

I entered the world of Slam poetry after some motivator told me that I couldn't, that it simply was not something that "middle-aged white women from the suburbs" did. I ran right out and signed up after that. Now, 11 years later, I went back to the National Poetry Slam in Austin, TX. This is the same location where Michael and I were on the finals stage in 1998. It was a hoot and a holler, as Austin always is. Instead of being competitors, Michael worked behind the scenes (a lot) as did I (a little). However we were both featured in a "Legends" showcase.

Legend?
Sheesh.

It was great to see old friends and hear some amazing new voices. Also really enjoyed hearing Whammo's band, the Asylum Street Spankers and their parody of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'round the old Oak Tree" only it is "Put Magentic Stickers on your SUV." I downloaded it from their website, it was my first musical download.

Okay, I'm a bit behind the technology on cybertunes. But, hey, I'm a legend, whadayaexpect?

Walloon

Four days of learning and fun in rural Wisconsin. No cheesy jokes about WI needed, it was just plain fun. Did some workshops, danced my feet off and sang (badly). Was introduced to two new books that are exciting:
From Disability to Possibility by Patrick Swartz. He is a dynamite speaker and specialist in special education and the inspirtation for my (still unsold) picture book about "My Cousin Nick Zay." (note to self, get that back in the mail).
Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males by Alfred Tatum. Also a great speaker and full of no-nonsense advice for hooking reluctant readers by understanding and meeting their cultural needs.

Thanks to Smokey Daniels and all the Heinemann crew who work so hard to make this work every year. More info at http://www.walloon.com/.

Hamline University

THIS is why I am always on a diet. People treat me too well. Who knew that Minneapolis has such good Italian food? Who could say no? Not me.

Teacher after teacher came up to me at the literacy conference at Hamline and told me that this is a conference that they look forward to every year and as a speaker I could feel the responsiveness of the audience as they flowed into the theater. Most of the participants were from the Minnesota area and I got a first hand sampling of "Minnesota nice." Everyone was friendly, even when the projector and overhead decided they wanted to talk over one another during my break out session. I loved everything about this conference, a genuine learning place.

Did I mention the food?

the heat

The heat is everywhere this week. In the sock drawer, the cabinet in the bathroom, seeping out from under the fridge and toasting my toes. It's straining at the windows and blaring through the skylight. Cleveland does heat in a very wet way, hair adhering to the neck, shoes stuck on the feet, sweat running downstream along ever appendage. Tomorrow I go to Minneapolis, maybe it will be cooler. Rain is predicted. Ah, cool mist in the face.

I haven't had to bring out the suitcases for two whole weeks. It's almost okay, but still . . . After next week in Wisconsin, I will be basically off duty until October. I have a couple of projects going, now all I have to do is clean my office so I have a clear surface to work. Looking in my office door at a clear surface would feel like a cool mist in the face. Writing is my business, clutter is a side job and (sadly) I'm good at it. Amassing that is, not managing. Sigh.