Obese Nation

Yesterday I dug up all these lettuces that had become rank and tough and bolted in the heat of late spring. Now we are harvesting those thick succulent black krim tomatoes and all those tiny yellow pear tomatoes and those small orange ones, so tasty. The cucumbers on our table every night are so sweet with the taste of the sun. And we pick the last florets of the broccoli and add some onions that still poke through the tangle of tomato vines. We are still harboring the giant collards, now four feet tall! We are beginning to pick several types of peppers. Our dinner table is a bounty of the earth.

Visiting our local superWalmart, it seems that the shoppers are even more immense than usual, bad health outcomes waiting to happen. So many of the obese shoppers are in the motorized carts they can pick up at the front doors. Very fat kids with small seeming heads walk behind. Their attached carts are full of big loaves of soft white sliced bread, chips in plastic bags, "Great Value" soft white hamburger buns, frozen fried chicken and pizza, frozen hamburger patties all from the same cookie cutter, cheetos, cartons of soda pop, and pet food. Not a fruit or vegetable in sight along the checkout conveyor belt.

This kind of food consumption is a major problem! People do not want to be so fat! People want good health. It is fine for me to wax euphoric about our family garden from which we eat daily. But, how many folks can have the space and the knowledge and the ability to plan ahead for good family nutrition?

One of my first memories was working with my dad in his 'Victory Garden' everyone had after WWII. And ever after, our family grew a large part of our diet, canned and froze a lot.

We have forgotten how to do this. Now, families who have little money for food buy most of their calories in the dollar stores. (sodas, cheetos, slim jims etc.)

Two years ago I organized a school garden in our neighborhood school, and now it is bursting with collards, tomatoes, carrots and peppers. The people who tend this garden (I installed an automatic watering system) really do harvest the vegetables, but they are still somewhat tentative.

I am thinking that in the next garden cycle I could put my best energy to making a really huge community garden! We could have meetings to explain how these vegetables can be cooked, how important it is, and so much cheaper than buying the calories at the dollar store.

Eating well, taking care of your teeth-these are the keys to health. Throw out the candy, never eat anything with more than three ingredients or that your grandmother wouldn't understand. Grow something to eat. And get out of those Walmart carts! Just walk some.

And,of course, we need to have schools be in the forefront! Couldn't we just serve natural vegetables and fruit at schools? Kids are beginning to think that nothing is good if it does not come packaged in cellophane or plastic!

Remember Memorial Day. Our troops endure unimaginable hardships, and one day soon, I hope, they will all be home, and we will need to mark their sacrifice. We'll need to welcome them back, vote for the huge amount of money it will take to rehabilitate the wounded and reintegrate them into our lives. Never forget.

End of School, End of Spring

When I arrived in the school office today it was clogged with young mothers who were anticipating the "awards" ceremony for the kindergarten through third grade. Many of these sweet and beautiful women had babies on their hips and toddlers stuck to their sides, uneasy in the forest of legs.
I was there, not for the awards, but to attend the monthly Community Action Team meeting in the multi purpose room. It was the shortest meeting ever, few in attendance. Most of the regulars now only attend the community development meetings that happen outside of the school and are chaired by the former school principal who is so gifted in community affairs. CAT is probably moribund. I only went today because I had thought we'd get some information about the layoffs of so many staff members.
But this did not happen. Rules! Directives from god (the superintendant of the county schools.) Maybe people will know by Friday, maybe not. Lots of folks twisting in the educational wind.
People in the public schools have no respect at all for our governor, to put it mildly. They are more tolerant of some of the ridiculous directives that come down from "the office". In no way, never, does common sense prevail. The god in the Office of the Superintendant has decreed that henceforth no real food will be served in any circumstance in these public schools. No dad could come in and make pizza with kids, no teacher can make smoothies in the classroom, no popcorn in the microwave, no watermelon freshly cut and dripping off kids' chins. Of course, no magical mornings of so many moms cooking and serving a Cinco de Mayo lunch. No aroma of garlic. Cellophane rules!
The CAT meeting got my blood up just in time to then proceed into the last time I'd be in this second grade class I have loved so much since the beginning of school.
This class is quite typical of public schools. Certainly there are the usual 20% of those kids who are loud, hyperactive or needy in some way. It takes far too long even at this late date to marshall everyone to do the simplest task.
 The teacher, so exhausted at this time of the year, is clearly happy to have someone else take charge of this popcorn of kids. While I am there she hunkers down at the needed tasks to end the year. She knows her classroom needs a lot of work and organizing to end the year well. She also knows, that as a teacher in the public schools, she is not respected. She doesn't yet know, really and truly, where she'll be teaching next year, and what grade. She doesn't yet have the data from the FCAT tests to do the report cards!
Who is to blame for this? I don't know- the testing companies? NCLB? Our society? The lack of common sense?
But the kids, as usual, were great. We made self portraits, and all of them were so wonderful! I had brought in a couple of kids' works for inspiration and these kids worked on them for much of the afternoon. They included such detail! They were so careful in the coloring in and the outlining in permanent marker. Any parent would love to have this self portrait, framed and hanging in their house. But, of course, it will never happen. Maybe I can get some of them into the school office!
We went outside to run around and eat the popsicles (all natural) I had brought. Some of the kids showed me the awards they had been given earlier in the day. The goodest little girl had a medal on a green ribbon and the baddest little boy had received nothing. (Why do we keep on doing this??)
So, full of this, I went on to the Girls and Boys Club for my last appearance. This gig has remained very hard for me. I have gotten used to the marginal neighborhood, the institutional smell, the trash and the kids wandering aimlessly. I do love the sense there that common sense prevails, but it is still hard to find a place where kids can have a chance to focus. Six kids have stayed with me to do math!
Today it was hard to pay attention to what we are about. Lots of kids were tromping and yelling through the space in the hall we now have. Furniture inadequate, incredible discrepencies in abilities, so I am flying between groups of kids, hoping to engage them.
Towards the beginning, another boy, not a part of the math group, comes up to me and says, "Can I speak to you privately?"  He asks me when I will be done with the math group. This is a boy that I have driven upon occasion to soccer practice in Dade City on my way home. The first thing that hit my mind was that he wanted to find out when I was leaving so that, on this last day of my volunteering might in some way say "Thank you". He just wanted a ride to soccer.
The math group really tried to focus. David and Javier and Javelin are making such progress! After forty-five minutes in the din, I called it a day and we went outside to carve the watermelon I had brought. We shared it with the football players and everyone had a good time. The kids will be coming to my summer art camp and the boys who have been there every week will be going on a field trip to a local college and out to lunch with me!
So, after the class, Raoul finds me and we get into the car. He has no athletic bag, nothing. I am assuming that I should drop him off in Dade City at the soccer field. But then, he says I should drive him to Zyphryhills, ten miles down the road. I say that I cannot do this, I am not his chauffeur, it is far out of my way and I have other stuff to do. I can drop him off at his house in Dade City. He doesn't seem to know the address of his own home. I pull over in the middle of town and say that I'll leave him off here, he can walk. Then he says I should drop him off at his aunt's house 'straight ahead'. He doesn't seem to know this address either. He keeps shifting on the specifics.  By now I am pretty sure that this large fourteen year old kid with a mustach does NOT belong in my car. He is begging me to drive him to Zyphyrhills to god knows where. He asks to use my phone, but I tell him my phone is out of juice (true). I should drop him off at the Taco Bell, he tells me. So I drive him there, stop the car. He says he has no money so I give him $3. "Call whoever you want", I say.
I feel guilty having abandoned this fourteen year old child at Taco Bell. But I think he'll be O.K. For now. I really think that he is in the initial stages of being lost to this society and there is not anything I can do about it.
My last day volunteering in the Lacoochee community has come to an end. In my bag of leftovers from the day I find one pencil drawing on lined paper from a student. It's a castle with crenelations and in the middle is a very small queen. "Thank you, miss Moly"(sic). I will treasure this.

Graduations, Moving On

This week is the last one of the year for my volunteering in this classroom at Lacoochee School. Bernice, Kimberly and Elissa are showing you strawberries they are about to pop into their mouths. Going there week after week has been such fun, such affirmation for me. I think I have brought some joy and adventure to their classroom (and also many fruits and vegetables!). We have made clay objects and painted and constructed and made unimaginable messes we all loved. We have collected bugs and watched flowers. I have given away books, rocks, trinkets. I have looked at the scars on small backs that tell of abuse. I have held many small grimy hands. We have read a lot of books and played a lot of games. When I come there is no mention of FCAT.
So they are moving on, and so am I. I will see some of them at my summer art camp; others I will hug in the corridors next year and they will tell me what they are doing.
And, too, my own family is moving on. My daughter graduated from Law School last weekend, and my oldest grandchild will soon be graduating from high school. Quincy, now six, is graduating from years of speech therapy.( Now he talks all the time!) These are events to make us proud.
And so we keep on keeping on, worrying about the family things, always alert to what's happening in the world and trying to make sense of it. The Rapture didn't happen as expected by some this week but still, my own rapture is every single day in this place in the Green Swamp where the swallow tail kites soar and the purple passion flowers are in full bloom and friends are just around the corner.

About my Blog

I recently read a profile in The New Yorker of a blogger (Pioneer Woman) who has taken her blog to the stratosphere. So, I am mildly envious, but really, I write this blog because I enjoy saying what is on my mind. I have no particular theme: environment, politics, education, family.. I write on no particular schedule, probably when the internet is up.
Several years ago, just after I retired, I was casting about to see what I could do that interested me. Spent some time flopping about and then wrote a memoir in six weeks. That was a fun project but after it was done I had no interest in book tours, publicity, making money on it.
I thought doing a blog would be interesting, and it has been. I have found a number of people on line I would never have dreamed of! People from far parts of the world, people who knew me from the past. So fun. More interesting than Facebook.
I have learned a lot about privacy issues. You have to walk a fine line between divulging too much or too little. You have to figure out what you want.
A week ago I sent off my hard drive to my daughter who graciously offered to clean up the files I have neglected. And then it occurs to me that this hard drive has all my-?

I think I have been careful to not save sometimes. It's a new age.
Here's a photo of the flowers lining the walk into the back door, what I look at many times each day, a joy.

What a week!

Olivia and Xavier, eight years old, were not even a twinkle in their parents eyes on September 11, 2001. This world, since that awful day, has been what they know. They have been brought up to be careful. They know about lock downs at school when there is the faintest hint of danger, and no doubt they know how their parents may suddenly clutch them close because we all fear for our kids. They have begun their journey through a childhood of strict parameters and helicopter parents and taking your shoes off at airport security. Lots of rules guide their lives.
Here, these kids are doing what kids do in the moment. They have mixed cornstarch and water and they are exploring that strange delicious sensation of dry and wet. They have made a real mess all over everything and they are having a grand time at it! Seems we can't entirely kill childhood, but over the last ten years we have certainly tried.
The week's news was amazing. Beginning with a royal wedding of rather dim but attractive participants, and then the startling assassination of Bin Laden, we went from fancy tea cakes to a grizzly murder of an entirely evil person.
So many of us did not go into the streets to celebrate Osama's death. But we are glad he's gone from this earth.
Personally, I do not need to see photos of Osama's bloody body. Eventually those photos will surface. We live in our era after all. I feel somewhat hollow after this week. The Royal wedding was such fluff. I am still exhausted by terrorists and the way they changed our lives. We were certainly cheated out of a decade, and maybe more to come. We have spent our money and the lives of so many in battling this evil.
This decade changed our country. I think the political polarization we now see comes from a large component of fear. What I think of as the mean spirits and solipsism of the extreme right may come from a profound fear. We were attacked! I need to protect my own! Get guns! Keep the women in back (men dictating women's options), be suspicious of anyone different from you- liberals, especially elite blacks, muslims, gays, anyone brown and speaking another language but English. Man the barriers! Get rid of threats, including those nasty bugs, snakes, threatened wildlife of all kinds. Need to protect our own, the American way of life. Drill, baby, drill! Too scary to think about changing one's ideas about how we use energy, too scary to think about the facts of climate change.
Nine Eleven was indeed scary! Such a horror was bound to change us.
I just hope that we can move on. I want us to get out of the middle east and address the humanitarian problems of this earth, and even of this country.

Why We Volunteer

This is why we volunteer. Here are my second graders in full size along the wall to the cafeteria. Today I brought in many rolls of craft paper, petrmanent markers and paints. The kids lay down on the paper and their teacher and I drew around them with markers. They were incredibly still as we tenderly went around their bodies and paid such attention to each child. Then they began to fill in the details and paint in the large color blocks.

We had to mix colors. What is flesh color, actually? So we are comparing our arms. Xavier, who is Jamaican, is the same color as I am. Who would think? Elissa, in those red stripes, is really fair and she is involved in painting in all her freckles. So we mix up a number of shades of brown and everyone is satisfied. Those kids worked for a full two hours on this project.

As we finished each one we toted them to the wall outside the cafeteria where we hung them to everyone's satisfaction. We had to traipse through several classrooms on the way. (This is one of those horrid 'no-walls' schools), and the kids in the other rooms always looked up longingly wishing they could do this too.

I come into this particular class of second graders for a long afternoon once a week. I bring everything I need (art materials, science stuff, paper goods, a watermelon and a knife.) I am constantly amazed that there are no materials whatsoever that kids need here. (except FCAT booklets). One could not find a roll of paper towels, and there is no soap in the dispenser and the paper towel dispenser is empty. The so-called supply closet is a jumble of discards from FCAT. The tape dispenser is empty, no staplers, no scissors etc. So I bring everything I might need.

I must say that this gig is very affirming to me. I love those kids and they love me. We always have a great time and produce amazing artifacts. Time flies and before we know it it is time to clean up and get ready for dismissal.

A couple of weeks ago I told the kids that I was going to have an 'art camp' for five Saturdays during the summer at my house-for free! Swimming and art projects. Here's the form, sign up, first come first served. All you do is get there. I had envisioned only having fifteen kids at most. The entire girl scout troop signed up, six second graders, and all the middle school boys from my math group at the boys and girls club have signed on the be 'counsellors'. Plus some others who heard on the grapevine. Suddenly, moms have called to say they will be glad to provide transportation, help cook lunch, be the phone tree, etc. My husband is on board to mastermind lunch of p and j sandwiches and monitor the pool.

I think that partly this is because the kids have such a great time on my volunteer gig, and partly because I am inviting in Spanish

I don't quite know how to handle this! Certainly I have an excess of art/craft/science ideas. How many kids can we handle? The sign up list grows, and apparently it is the thing to do!