Joy in the Classroom

When I drive up to Lacoochee Elementary School on my afternoons of volunteering in a second grade classroom, I never fail to feel those delicious small hands reaching out for me. "Miss Molly! Miss Molly!" Many of these children are known to me from years past and from the summer camp I have had at my house. I know them, and their parents. We are always happy to see each other.

Today, as on many days, I have tons of stuff needing to be delivered to Rachel's class. The kids are returning from lunch and they hold open the classroom door so I can bring in the large pumpkin, 25 pounds of clay, and a bag of apples and peanut butter for our snack.

Seth always runs to me for the first of many hugs, Xavier with the amazing dreadlocks hangs back, confident he has a big place in my heart. Sky is full of dimples and smiles. Daniel, who has some kind of language disability regards me with such an inviting expression. He knows that clay is his Thing and just for this afternoon, all will be right with the world. Today there is a new student, Cassie. She is a petite child with that pale country visage and haunted eyes of a child in turmoil. What I think of as the Mexican girl posse, those extremely cute and competent little girls with the bouncing pony tails, sit tight in their seats, just knowing that they are so good they'll get the very first pieces of fresh moist clay. Which of course they do.

After we hollow out and carve the pumpkin and install a flashlight inside and turn off the classroom lights to admire the effect, we get on to the clay project. This is the second time we have made and glazed clay. They are old hands and now know a few techniques. They get right to work. The challenge is to fashion some kind of reptile using all the clay they are issued. I give huge hunks to some kids and smaller amounts to the children who work on a smaller scale. I show them pictures from my Florida reptiles book and we talk about lizards, snakes and turtles.

By now, no one at all asks can they make a heart or a cross or an I love Mom piece. They are really into the reptiles and I see giant lizards and turtles and snakes happening. There is a lot of checking of the photographs in the reptile book. How do those alligator legs come out of the body? How can you make a snapping turtle have those things on it's shell? They know how to attach the smaller pieces so they won't fall off in the firing process. And they are thinking about what colors they will use in the glazes. At one point they sing to me a song about fireflies, something they are practicing for a forthcoming school musical. I could die at the sweetness of their voices. And all the while we are discussing reptiles and facts about them.

This is NOT FCAT prep. This is just life with kids (who are sponges) who take in everything, especially hands-on everything. And there is joy in this room that buzzes. Rachel, their teacher, is busy fashioning a salamander like the ones she caught as a child in a creek up north.

Everyone helps in the clean-up and then we are ready to end the day with a snack of peanut butter and apples. We talk about what is going to happen at the end of "Charlotte's Web" that we are reading to the kids. They know that I absolutely cannot read that last chapter, Rachel will have to do it. Seth sidles up to me and says, "You would cry, right?"

"Yeah, Seth. You're right." And I have promised them that at the end of the book we'll have a video afternoon to watch the movie and eat popcorn. Next week, for sure.

Earlier in the day I attended the usual monthly community organization meeting. I was struck with how many local initiatives have received grants for library services, community food, help for people needing computer services, sports, scouts, child centered stuff. These grants come from our state and national government, much of it from the Obama stimulus program. This money is our safety net for poor folks. When you are on the ground seeing this funding help folks who need it, it seems so mean spirited to vote for the tea party philosophy candidates who want to rein in this spending. Makes one wonder what they are thinking.. (or if they think at all)

There are many of us all across America who give our time and money to help the less fortunate. For example, I think of our school Officer Friendly who gives and gives of his time because he believes in kids now and in the future. The projects he promotes must be funded somehow, as do those of Mike Brittingham who runs the Girls and Boys Club. There are so many other projects in our communities all of which need state and federal grants to survive. Think of how impoverished we would all be if this went down the drain with Rick Scott.

In the Garden

Here is the patch of broccoli raab, stretching toward the sun. We have many lettuces of all kinds for dinner every evening. We'll have broccoli this week, and there are peppers as well. The swiss chard is over the attack from the grasshoppers, and soldiers on. The collards are huge and we eat a lot of them. The tomatoes are coloring up and the peas and beans are in the offing. I even see the butternut squash so tiny yet, and all potential.

The vegetable garden gives us daily food, and it is beautiful to see this bounty with the butterflies zooming into the zinnias and red sage that grow amidst the vegetables.

This wonderful experience of the fall garden this year is such an antidote to the rest of life- politics and the crappy issues of health.

We went to the debate between Sink and Scott the other night. Oy Vey! All political discourse is now down to tiny sound bites; it would be great if any one of them could have the arena to really trade their thoughts on policy and philosophy! I fear for our state! Total weirdness is happening here.

So I am glad that we have our conservation easement on our hundreds of acres in the Green Swamp, no guns, our paradise with many birds and wildlife. Our near neighbors will never come here for a social occasion because they know that we harbor such friends as blacks, Hispanics, lesbians, gays, children, and maybe even transgendered, and certainly Obama Democrats. Folks, this is the American electorate. It depresses me.

The moon is waning but bright and the bats are out. I love this place.

Really cranky about medicine

Seems to me that medicine is so much about the blind man and the elephant. One goes to a specialist and they immediately recommend invasive tests for whatever their specialty is. I am wary of this and I ask, so uncomfortably, what might be found, and if it is, what's next and do I want to deal with it? Why should we have radiation ( a great risk)? Why should we sign on to be perpetual patients?

I am a seventy year old woman, weighing the same as I did at twenty, seemingly in good health. No lumps anywhere, I poop on schedule, I have all my parts, and I have more energy than lots of people far younger than I. My years outdoors have begotten some low level skin cancers and I deal with those. And I am not about to unearth marginal ailments that will make me a chronic invalid until I die!

But in the last two years my husband and I have had some major issues with sinus infections. We have taken antibiotics for pneumonia and ear infections. But the sinus problems persist. He coughs and deals with asthma, I blow my nose. For three months one of my ears was plugged up, so horrible. At times my husband's cough is so loud, all conversation stops. I am particularly concerned that no doctor considered that we both had the same problems! What does this mean? (Do we have whooping cough? Are we allergic to the same thing?) I have asked and gotten a blank stare. Might a sympathetic doctor help my husband control the volume of his cough? So many unanswered questions!

We have seen specialists who don't really have a clue. My husband has had everything x-rayed and cultured in his lungs and sinuses and all that can be said is that nothing vile was found (so more invasive procedures must be done!)

I wander along the aisles of any drug store and see how many nostrums there are for sinus and allergy. Seems that lots of other folks are in our boat.

Here is what I would wish for. I want a doctor (or equivalent) who would be interested and attentive to the whole person! This person needs to ask such questions as the regular things about smoking and exercise and life style and diet (none of our doctors have ever asked this!) It is probably key in the diagnosis about why we cough, that maybe this is an environmental concern? How long have you slept with your dog? Do you use A/C? Do you change your filters often? Do you spend much time outdoors? What do you eat?

Consider an allergist. I could go on and on. Our doctors are so time stressed they cannot ask or listen to answers and think about all possibilities. They cannot diagnose anything. They just rely on the blood work and the radiation and the recommendation that we do another invasive thing.

No thanks, we'll have to go it alone for now. We need Obamacare as it plays out over the years when our doctors can be free of the healthcare for profit and we can get real sensible answers to our health needs. This will take time and meanwhile we have to pay attention and suffer no fools.

Taking Stock

Today we said our good byes to the last guests (and the porta potty) who were here for what we thought of as "the Big Bash" of our fiftieth wedding anniversary. Our three children really wanted this. Initially we thought that this anniversary would be perfectly fine if the primary players just had a really nice dinner together. But this celebration took on a life of its own and we all got interested in having it happen. Our daughter and two sons and all their kids and all our relatives came and we had many out of town folks staying in the local motels and here at the ranch; every bed was warmed.

It was a really great gathering of all the people we love, old and new. Of course there were aspects of the event that I would have changed. The band was too loud and the guy who manned the photo booth was such a snark. And there were too many weeds in the flower beds, and too many armadillos digging holes in the lawn. I didn't get to talk to enough of those wonderful friends. But still, it was amazingly great, way better than the frugal backyard wedding we had those fifty years ago when we were just kids, recently turned twenty.

So here we are, the mainstays of an enormous family. How did that happen? We have been prosperous and generous over the years and we enjoy the tumbling of love we have from our children and grandchildren and all the other kids who have been in our lives. We have had just as much sadness and disaster as the next couple. And we have been lucky! No skeletons in our closet, but an intense interest in each other and in the other world. We have been able to change with the times, and we were fortunately oblivious of some of the issues that others in our generation struggled with.

Our family loves to celebrate! The night before the Big Bash we had an incredible Puerto Rican dinner ending with an exploding volcano cake in honor of the birthdays of two grandsons. (My signature offering!) Those puffs of steam from the center of the cake and the red lava flow were so awesome. Those little boys had wide eyes. I am the fun Grandma for sure.

I am so weary. I am thinking of how much I loved having my three children together, talking their heads off, loving each other, plotting for the next time they'll meet. At my age I can now sit back and enjoy them, not even feeling I have to know everything about them.

Yesterday, we saw an eagle on our place. And just after that I found a newborn calf all alone. We rescued him, reunited him with his mother, and today he is well, not fodder for vultures. This evening we had collards out of our garden for supper.

Could life be better than this?

Time to regroup

I spent the afternoon at a second grade at Lacoochee Elementary School where I returned the twice fired and glazed lumps of clay the kids had lovingly made. They were excited to see how shiny and wonderful their pieces now were. This was their first foray into ceramics. The kids who settled down and actually produced things and carefully glazed them had many finished pieces. The kids who weren't there or had been yanked out to do special tutoring, or just couldn't get down to the task, had little to show for it. Natural consequences.

Each week we have been studying insects, capturing them, looking at them. When I get there to the class they always have something interesting to tell me or show me. Today it was a praying mantis eating a small grasshopper. "Gross!" This is a lively class of about sixteen kids, very doable. Sky, the tiny seven year old has captured a dead rhinoceros beetle. She can identify it and is pleased about this.

We play several rounds of Hangman and I am appalled at the lack of word skills these kids have! Maybe this is partly because I have always taught somewhat older kids, but shouldn't second graders at least know that every word has a vowel? (Forget rhythm) And consonants? I give the kids hints, discuss vowels and consonants. So we go on. Next guess? "Z", says Miguel. I explain that if you see an NG at the end of the word, it's a good bet that you need an I before to make ing.

After a while I see that four of the kids are actually focusing and can make pretty good guesses. One kid, Xavier, has a pretty good overview and tries and succeeds in predicting the word from the clues. In this activity every child was on task and interested.

I often browse around this classroom and see the lovely and unconscionably expensive reading materials from FCAT. The words and directives these things use are of no interest and use to non readers such as these kids. I also see magically interesting big drawings on paper their teacher has them do for literacy and math. These things and the attention to the bugs in the science are what grabs these children.

The rest of this post, the political part was stolen by Hughes Internet.

Kids!

Nothing makes me happier than knowing my favorite youngest grandson, five years old, is sleeping upstairs. We read four chapters of "My Father's Dragon" and giggled about the wonderful images and then discussed plans for tomorrow. We will have a breakfast of french toast with maple syrup, made by Grandpa, then we'll go to a garden gig, and we'll have plenty of time for him to grind up various things in the old fashioned coffee grinder he's found somewhere in our house. I'm thinking we should try acorns. Kisses and suddenly he's asleep, cuddled up under the quilt, his red hair peeping out from the covers.

My head is full of children. I am so looking forward to next weekend when all my children and grandchildren come to celebrate our fiftieth anniversary. But day in and day out my children are the ones I know from volunteering in a local public school. Now in October I can easily identify each child by the shape of their hands, and the whorls of their dark hair. Jesus and Xavier and Abigail and all the others are becoming so dear to me as they become better and better at observing the natural world we explore each week. I come into their class and they excitedly show me the insects they have collected, how their books are coming along. This is such a joy to me. Their parents work in the school garden and are harvesting many peppers and planting a new fall garden.

This week I have been involved in the politics of public school. To our dismay, our Lacoochee principal was summarily removed, and at the end of the second week we have heard nothing! Parents and community members organized to write petitions and send messages to the school board, demonstrate daily. Attending the first ad hoc meeting of people of all ages, colors, walks of life just blew my mind! This principal, Karen Marler, has been a leader of the community action to renew this small and impoverished community. She is a beloved principal and knows every child and their family histories, and is plugged into state and national sources of help. She is a steel magnolia and brooks no fools. What she cares about most is her kids at the school. We want her back!

Rumors and tid bits of information are all we have at present. Reading the comments to the blog from the St. Pete Times reporter, I am thinking that the person bringing the grievance is an evangelical religious nutcase. But none of us knows anything.

Been a pretty interesting week. Today was REALLY the first day of fall as we Floridians know. Everyone is energized by the cooler weather and lower humidity and somehow everything seems possible. Maybe those tomatoes will produce before frost. Maybe we can even manage to elect some folks who are ethical and pass some initiatives that will help our society. Maybe, in the next few months, I can get a reliable internet connection. Sally Sunshine speaking.