Wild Geese

You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile teh world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
voer the prairies and deep trees,
teh mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are deading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination.
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Teaching With Fire

Yesterday between subbing and teaching the after school reading program, I picked up the book: Teaching With Fire" in the teacher's lounge.

A compilation of teacher's favorite poem's and their insights that help them find the courage to continue. So I took off my heels and cozied up on the couch for the spare hour I had and filled my cup.

Here are the notes I scrawled in a notebook to preserve:

"I don't remember precisely what my teacher's taught me in grade school, but I remember the realationshiops I had with them and thier individual charcters." (p.26)

"Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure." Lucille Clifton (p. 58 shared by Maren MacCurdy)n

First Reader meant a lot to the teacher, Linda Lantieri, who worked with young children whose 'lives have been largely untouched by books and whose backgrounds are amazingly diverse'. The last line of the poem she loves says: ".. we were forgetting how to look, learning how to read." by Billy Collins. See the whole poem online.





"Your very flesh shall be a great poem." Walt Whitman

Dream Deferred


What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisen in the sun

Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
OR crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

OR does it explode? Langston Hughes

I am seeing the inception of these little explosions and witnessing some of these kids already there...

"As teachers we feel the children in our classrooms become part of our lives. We witness them growing , learning, and becoming. Sometimes we witness and expereince their tragedies as well."




Fueled

Fueled by a million
man-mad
wings of fire
the rocket tore a tunnel
through the sky
and everbody cheered.
Fueled
only by a thougth from God
the seedling
urged its way
through thckness of black-
as it pierced
the heavy ceiling of the soil-
and launched itself
up into outer space
no
one
even
clapped. Marcie Hans

Al Zolyneas referring to a line that he had experienced toward his students: "And it hits me out of nowhere - a sudden, sweet, almost painful love for my students." (Love in the Classroom for my students.)

I have had that feeling hit me and it is painful. It makes me want to be the kind of teacher that feels like a shoe that fits, a warn coat that zips easily to put on for recess,

A teacher that exudes the shine of being scrubbed in a tub of warm water and lathered in yummy smelling lotion. Hair free of lice so that it is not a distraction to learn, and I could go on and on. But that is what comes to me this morning.

Election Gratitude

So last night's bad attitude melted away when I was at the polls.

The day started with a sweet view between two booths of a bald eagle. Perched a top a dead tree close to the river. it stood sentinel on the tips of the wind blown branches that eerily reached upward like the palm of a hand the fingers pointing to the sky. Looked ready to hold an apple, instead an eagle magestically watching. A smaller one showed up later and then they never returned.

Thanks to people like the blind man that came at the last minute, the man who had to have the ballot taken to his car because he is so close to death, but has never missed in 30 years. Chuck told me about his service in the marines during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

It was worth the 14 hours. And thanks that Jaden can read so he can do his homework with out mom there the whole time. Miracles all around.

Election Eve

Ugh

West Piney Girl's Camp

Initiation

A long silver slide runs from the front door of the large log house down the hill of West Piney Girl's Camp.

Close to 100 hundred steps had to be ascended in order to sit on a square piece of carpet and whisk down at a reckless speed.

Each summer we would attend girls camp at the end of August and take day hikes to locations such as Table Rock, The Monument, and others.

My fourth year of camp we decided to ‘initiate’ each new yearling. One part of it was feeding them bad tasting baby food and smearing their faces with the left over orange pumpkin and squash.

One afternoon etc., put bugs in their shoes outside their tents, and polished up on Grizzly Bear stories. We chuckled at this little initiation process.

On the last night we sat around the camp fire; faces glowing an orange hue against a black backdrop, telling ghost stories. We told the newest members that we were going to take them on a hike up a trail on the opposite side of the camp. It was a fairly good incline up the mountain.

Reaching the trail required walking down the sloped hill that held our tents in places and crossing wood bridge painted brown. A small stream gurgled with the help of several large rocks underneath.

Flashlights dancing up the hill like fireflies I suddenly turned to my friend Rebecca with a great idea I had concocted: “Becca,” I Grinch-ishly said, “we should hide underneath the bridge and then knock on it when the girls come back down the trail. Wouldn’t that be hilarious?” We chuckled as we held back slowly from the rest of the group.

(The story of the fable ‘the billy goat’s gruff’ coming to mind?)

We turned off our flashlights as we fell back behind the group and groped our way in the dark; sliding underneath on our backs, balancing on the rocks precariously strewn above the water. Trying to muffle our laughs, we listened to the sound of the water rushing below and shivered in the night. Between the water and being anxious to scare the girls I held onto a full bladder. The distant sound of the girls meandering up the trail wafted through the dark air.

It was at this time that I began to think about the possibility of what lived under the thick over hanging,like a bat. I stated this thought out loud to my partner in crime and simultaneously turned on my flashlight.

On cue several bats or some other unknown black winged animal flew into our faces! In a huge disarray; we scurried and scraped our backs against the rocks, trying to shimmy out from underneath the bridge. Screams alerted the campers on the trail and they came running.
Once to the top of the bridge; having danced in a few circles; we fell in a clump of fearful laughter out of breath. Once the yearlings reached us, we had been fully initiated.

My Mouse Story and Roald Dahl

BOY Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl. I grabbed this audio book the other day at the IF public Library for one reason: To burn the name Roald Dahl into my memory.

Why? Because on a certain occasion with Mr. Pediatrician we discussed books and I was asked if about Roald Dahl and I pulled a blank. “I don’t know who he is.”

Mr. Pediatrician didn’t say: “Willy Wonka Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach Roald Dahl.” But he studied me like a counterfeit bill.

He didn’t realize that yes I sat entranced in elementary school looking up dreamily at my teacher while she read about James’ adventures. My hands holding my slanted head as I too fell into the book she’d opened.

So when I was at the library and I saw his book as my eyes hungrily searched the backs of books on shelves I saw the name. I pulled it and last night as I drifted to sleep I chuckled as the voice of Andrew Sachs came through my old black Sony speakers.

I held my breath for the Mouse Plot he schemed just as the elementary kids stood spell bound for mouse story.

Which I will include here, for you:

I stayed in a basement apartment in Rexburg while I went to Ricks College. The Grover’s house was located by a large field that invited little rodents during the fall when the weather cooled off.

The scratching in the walls of the house let me know that they were “gathering” their stores of food somewhere by my bedroom for the upcoming winter. I imagined that in the night they would crawl up my bed and nibble at me so I figured I’d have to put the bed on top of silver coffee cans so if they did, they’d slide back down to the ground.

Instead, I told Mr. Grover about our predicament and he set a small trap with cheddar cheese on the kitchen floor next to mouse hole. Which wasn’t like Jerry’s from the cartoon a perfect rounded top but a square opening in the floor board next to the old stove.

One night around mid-night as I was studying I heard a small: “Clap!” Holding my breathe I put the book down on my lap and sat up in bed. I knew that in the kitchen was the culprite. I tiptoed to my door and slowly opened it. I peered into the dark kitchen halfway through a slit in the door.

Sideways I walked through it and then climbed on the arm of the couch and then flicked on a light. Shiny little eyes looked at me from the kitchen floor! I raced back to my bedroom and flung the door shut while I devised a plan.

I wasn’t going to touch it. I need something to trap it. A box. I searched my closet and found an orange Nike shoe box and then went back into the living room. I grabbed the chairs from around the table and like lily pads set them in a straight line into the kitchen.

The mouse watched me expectantly and I him. Once I was closer he started to tremble.
On the counter was a generic can of green beans. I grabbed it.

Then I lowered the box and beans over the mouse. The beans were the dead weight to keep the mouse from lifting the box! Aren’t I smart?

Then I hopped each chair back to my bedroom, left the light on so he’d think I was still there and went to bed.

The minute my alarm sounded I dashed up the stairs in my pajamas and knocked on the Grover’s door. Breathlessly I told the story to the Grover’s who then accompanied me down into the kitchen. He grabbed my can of beans and with me on a chair he held his arm back as if he were going to use the can to wallop the mouse!

He pulled back the orange Nike box and there on the floor were little splats of blood and as soon as the mouse had a chance he ran into his square leaving a trail of blood and his lone leg.

The mouse had chewed his leg off in the night! I about fell off my chair. Not only did we have a mouse loose but a three legged mouse!

It took me a couple days to clean up the mess. (I kept it covered with the Nike box) And even longer to eat in the kitchen again.

A few days passed and Mr. Grover knocked on the door to inform me that he’d caught a mouse! It was dead by the time he got to it he said, but he knew it was our culprite because it had three legs and in its front two paws it stil clutched the cheddar cheese bait!

This might be more scary if you imagine me dressed up like Sally telling you it!

Where David Shannon lives

I finally found the answer to J's Q the other day. "Where does the artist David Shannon live?"

Los Angeles, CA. little Jaden. With his wife and child, Emma. AND I made the connection that he drew for the book: The Rough Faced Girl.

Good kid's book. Older kids because it involves a girl whose face becomes scarred.
Check it out.
Literally. At your library.