Tuesday, January 30, 2007

My Head is Full of Children

I'm back! Last week we were in Vashon, an island in Puget Sound, taking care of the family of our oldest son, whose wife slipped on the ice and broke her ankle in three places. They have two kids under three. The other grandparents had been there for a week. It was our turn to be there while Chris took Natalie for the surgery to put in pins and a plate. Their house is in the midst of construction to double the size. Total chaos! It couldn't have been a worse time for this accident. Natalie was putting in the final touches on a major graphic arts project, and even in severe pain, she was looking at proofs, painfully dragging herself on crutches to the computer to finish the project.

The kids are quite wonderful. Caroline, at ten months is just cruising the perimeters of her world, smiley, loves to eat with her facile fingers. Her big brother Joe, almost three, is so precociously verbal, you don't understand right away that, really, he is just a little guy. He was so worried about his mom. When she returned from the long day of surgery and was reclining on the couch, Joe tried tapping and then hitting her cast. I said, "Joe, I know you hate this thing! We all hate this bad ankle! But it will get better soon. Meantime, we need to be so gentle so it will heal fast." Joe is angry about the disruptions in his life. But he has the security of two parents who work at home. He has always been welcome in the shop a few steps away where his dad works, or in the house where his mom works. I am in awe of these two parents who have produced these secure and loving kids!

Andy and I spent time doing the relentless child care. So many meals and shopping, so many diaper changes, so much stuff to pick up off the floor, so much laundry and cleaning, so much time watching kids who want to fling themselves down stairs, or climb up them for no apparent reason, poke fingers into sockets, so much energy getting kids to nap and go to bed, take baths. Just getting two kids into and out of the car seats was major. (Our life is so easy!) And then there are books to read, clothes to find, tiny cars to pick up off the floor. But mainly, you have to be constantly vigilant, making sure they are safe and loved. We never want the parents to come home and find a dented child!

After our week we were pretty tired, especially after the twelve hour trip back across the country. I was so looking forward to being home! I wanted my place, the garden, the owls and coyotes howling at night, the sandhill cranes calling wild and free. I wanted our dog to snuggle down at the foot of the bed.

I wanted to connect with our daughter and her partner and our grandson, Quincy. Nothing is easy, however. Our daughter is struggling with what could be a serious autoimmune problem, and we are worried about that. As I walk out from my studio to look at the almost full moon in a crisp night, I think about how intensely I love my children. I would be devastated to lose any of them. (What are we thinking to send so many of our children to war?)

And the Lacoochee kids I worked with today are as valuable as any creatures on the planet! Children are in my head (and heart).

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Twisting our Children

Today at Lacoochee Elementary where I volunteer once a week in a first/second grade classroom, I am, as usual, astonished by these good and patient children. This group of seventeen youngsters is now a cohesive group one loves to be embedded with. They strive mightily to please and 'do right'. They have learned the etiquette of this particular classroom and they love their teacher who respects and enjoys them. They are mostly hispanic, a few African-Americans, some whites. All, are from blue-collar families, some from dire poverty. Some of their parents are in prison or gone from the family for one reason or another. There are no lines of Lexuses at the drop-off.

On Tuesdays when I come all the kids are all present. These kids like to come to school. A fifth grader, Dynasty (yes!), is the Tuesday classroom helper. She comes in after being a safety patrol and helps out for thirty minutes. She waits for me on Tuesday mornings to help me carry in my voluminous bags of stuff for the classroom. She really loves the art projects I always have and would dearly love to partake of the food project we always do. Dynasty- skinny, freckled and totally appealing, is one of those quintessential eleven year olds who is competent, confident, and interested. She told me about her winning science fair project (went all the way to County!) When she was a first grader, we didn't have those nose-to-the-grindstone FCATs.

Today, I was particularly saddened to observe how this system is trying to bend and torture like bonsai every child into the same mold. Seven year olds! FCAT expects that every single one of them WILL be able to read on a certain level. Breakthrough to Reading! Relentlessly, the reading schedule goes on in the scripted form. This includes so much tedious stuff that even I am about to lie on the floor and kick my legs up. But these good and patient kids try their best, and clearly, their best is definitely not good enough some of the time. The kids take their turns at the computer program that has no opportunity for anything creative or interesting. (This is teaching kids about the wonderful world of twechnology they'll inherit??)

What I want to bring to this classroom is mulch for minds: hands-on stuff, information from discussion and books, the tastes of cooking, real art (not colored in work sheets)AND OPPORTUNITIES TO SPEAK TO AN ADULT ABOUT ANYTHING INTERESTING!

But, in public schools, silence is golden, pretty much. You walk a group of kids to a class or lunch, and it is forbidden to talk or get out of line. But what if you see an interesting bug or a lizard or a kid wants to tell you that her mother had surgery yesterday?

Becoming competent in reading or math or science doesn't happen in silent controlled classrooms with testing always lurking on the horizon. It happens when kids have lots of experiences, opportunities to read on their own, hands-on messy projects. This is mulch for the mind!

As a teacher for thirty years I can attest that some kids learn to read quite well when they are four years old and others not until they are seven or even older. But if all of them are being mulched with experiences and hands-on learning, they'll all eventually be good and dedicated readers. When they want to they'll go to fine colleges.

What are we thinking that all kids of a certain age should be making a certain score on a standardized test? Are we mad to even THINK of testing kindergartners? Are we MAD not to let them play and have experiences in social play and with manipulable things? What is the hurry? Have we totally forgotten all the child development science?

I see those good and patient kids who want to please. But some of them are really not yet ready to read. They need to snuggle down next to an adult and have a good story read to them. They need conversation. They need to have experiences, be outdoors to wonder and ask and explore. They need to run around and make up their own games and feel the tugs of social interaction. They need to make things which are not 'canned' and generated from worksheets. They need to dream and invent.

Sad to say, I see none of this at Lacoochee. The teachers are driven by rules and the FCAT. I see no joie de vivre, no interest in pedagogy. In the lunchroom all the teachers ONLY talk about their physical ills or how dissatisfied they are with the bureaucracy of FCAT or the school administration. One woman who tells me she has worked in the lunchroom for thirty years still has a lovely gentle smile and warm manner for the kids. When I told her that I noticed, her face lit up with such a smile.

What would happen if a principal of such a school as this just said, "Hey, staff! Let's have fun, forget the FCAT. Let's try to really be good teachers, a team. Think of all the interesting things we can do to engage kids and ourselves. Hey, we could paint an amazing mural on the school walls. We could break out a few windows so we could have some damn AIR in here. We could put on a Shakespearean play! We could grow vegetables in a real school garden so we don't have to eat that brown-edged inedible lettuce we now serve. We could even have kids cooking! We could have an amazing science center, a weather center, animals! Our technology could throw out those tedious canned reading programs and kids could use 'Word' or some other program to generate a truly good school newspaper. Photographs- no problem, the kids can do it. The media center would hum with activity.

And, most important of all, BRING BACK RECESS! This should happen every day for every child. It keeps kids thin and fit, socially and emotionally.

Public school as I see it, seems scared and strangled. Our wonderful children need to see a generous, inclusive and audacious bunch of adult models. As a volunteer, I'm working on it. What do you think?

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Our Florida Home

Looking out the big window in my studio I see the long shadows of a late winter afternoon. The setting sun backlights long strands of Spanish moss waving from the huge live oaks. A hickory tree, magnificently gold in winter, sheds its leaves and they shower down in the breeze, all in a bunch, bright coins covering the ground. I hear the dry scratching sounds of the cabbage palms roiled in the wind.

I have traveled to many places in the world, stayed in many wonderful and beautiful places, but our Florida home is the best. We are in love with our home all over again. We bought the property more than twenty years ago when land was cheap, especially this ragged cattle ranch with no amenities. It was love at first sight. We drove through the property on white sand tracks with all those fern covered oaks curving overhead. With quite a lot of creative financing, and maybe some misplaced confidence, we bought it.

It was a love affair from the start. We camped out for the first few years, and very soon it was the only destination for the weekend retreat from our usual city life. We took down the barbed wire cross fencing, fixed the mile long driveway,and built a pole barn. Gradually, we made improvements so that our campsite had power and water. When we paid off the first mortgage, we began to plan for a real house. We longed to have a home with a roof and a/c, hot shower, a kitchen. Camping gets old. We all remember rainy nights with a wet dog and cots that inexplicably gave out in the middle of the night. We were slapping mosquitoes, picking off ticks, avoiding the masses of poison ivy.

But we became addicted to this place, THIS PLACE! It isn't the man made stuff, it's what's here, and has always been here. There are orchids living on trees, sandhill cranes nesting on ponds, fox squirrels leaping through the trees, deer on the margins of the woods, eagles riding the sky,and fungus to stagger sextillions of infidels (in the words of Walt Whitman) Gradually, in long and short forays, I am coming to know this place- the birds, the wild plants, the nocturnal creatures, the reptiles. As far as I can see in any direction, there is no one here but us. And, of course, the cows who keep our pastures open.

We built our house, a sturdy cracker-style house, no mansion. It has spacious porches on two sides, a tin roof, and the idiosyncratic comforts of people who make things and do not hire a decorator. There are three bedrooms, all large, and a big center 'dog-trot' hall. The 'eat-in' kitchen can accommodate many guests who participate in the preparation of meals.

Soon, we discovered that we really needed more space for guests so we built a guest house not too far away from the main house. Our large family, now adults, really needed more space when they came to visit. This was a great decision. It's occupied almost every weekend. It is self-contained, only two large rooms with kitchen and laundry, but it looks out over a particularly lovely view of the big pond.

Next, we built a large swimming pool with a hot tub. Everyone in our family loves to swim, and this is perfect for laps or for twenty kids having water fun.

Last year we added two workshops for Andy and me. He has the dream workshop for making furniiture, and I finally have my fantasy art studio. These two buildings flank the barn with a contained yard in between, great for toddlers.

I am a fanatic gardener so we have not only spaces for native plants and wildflowers, but an always producing vegetable garden. After so many years of battling the deer, rabbits and armadilloes who also appreciate great veggies, the vegetable garden is now enclosed by a seven foot fence. Each evening I announce what is ripe and Andy picks.(He's the cook.) Eggplant? A salad of new greens? Peppers? Collards? That wonderful broccoli? Need any herbs? A ripe heirloom tomato?

I especially love the 'country' things I encounter each day. I comfortably share space with the huge gopher tortoise who lives at the end of the garden. I hear his huffing as he moves his heavy shell out of his burrough. Some of the cows come to the fence hoping I'll shoot weeds over the fence, maybe some yellowed collard leaves, or orange rinds from the morning juicing. I love seeing the deer leap across the road when I go to get the morning newspaper. I'll pause to watch the sandhill cranes come down for a raucously loud landing, or search the trees for the pileated woodpecker I hear. I stop to carefully observe the royally green chrysalises of monarch butterflies, or a blue sided fence lizard. I know where the hugest golden orb weaver spiders live. I spend moments observing ant lions at work with their carefully constructed traps.

I have many favorite places I visit each day. Sometimes I go down the lane in back of my studio because I love to see the incredible array of fungus on downed logs, the reindeer moss in a certain place, and in the mornings I check for tracks of what animals have been there during the night. Deer, raccoons, and what are those teeny-tiny foot prints?

Every morning promises a new adventure, a new chapter. I love this place way too much! Since Christmas I have been here everyday, a real record for me. I had never been here for more than a week. And I can't stand to leave tomorrow when I must go back to the urban life for a couple of days. I know that I'll have that breath-holding feeling as I go through the gate. Whew! I'm home!

I suck in my breath, awed by the overwhelming paradise we inhabit in so many ways. We are retired from very good and rewarding work, our children are a joy to us, and our six grandchildren are wonderfully evolving and ever more interesting. We still feel useful to our community. Who could ask for more?

We could hunker down and just enjoy this life in paradise. To a certain extent, we do. But the outside world is in an awful place right now. Can we get over having this truly bad and inept president? I may just have to leave 'paradise' to go and demonstrate in Washington. For peace.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Happy New Year

We have a fairly new t.v and it comes with three remotes, each having forty buttons. We wanted to simply watch a movie- the kind of DVD you just feed into the slot, and I was pissed. Neither of us could make it play. Andy stormed out and went to bed to read his book. I took the opportunity to take the dog out for her evening walk. Suddenly there was a lot of barking, even from this tiny weiner dog. I called her repeatedly and looked out to see a blinking red light where I knew nothing was supposed to be.

"Lola? Lola!, Come!" She obviously had something treed. I went out and discovered a hound with an electronic collar. We brought her inside to the laundry room where I was able to get the phone number from her collar. I called the number and got the owner who said she had been missing for three days and would come pick her up, but he was in Plant City, half an hour away. This guy seemed a bit out of it so I had to repeat my phone number several times before he got it right. He is supposed to call me when he gets to our gate so I can take the dog to him there. Meanwhile I gave the dog water and some kibbles and she seemed friendly and grateful. (My hands now still smell like dog)

This is a scenario we've been through many times before during hunting season. All these lost dogs are lovely and friendly, and well trained. They are always thin and grateful for water and food. I know that some farmers just shoot them or pay no attention,hoping they'll go away. But, as a dog owner, I know I'd want someone to call if they found my dog. So I am waiting for the call at an inconvenient time, and I will put the dog in my car and take her to the gate and her owner.

If I did not like these small adventures of the rural life I would not live here. I enjoyed watching the guys unload many round bales of hay for the cows, and I am fascinated with round-up time when the cowboys on horses with their dogs work the cattle. I love going out at night with my huge flashlight to see alligator eyes in the pond, and I don't really mind sharing the shower with frogs.I love to hear the hiss of deer. I am interested to see what I have caught in traps, though I don't like setting those critters free miles from here. Those opossums have such