Flubber! At Lacoochee on kids' time.

These kids are enjoying an afternoon last week of making and playing with Flubber. We made it from Borax and white glue and food color. This polymer has so many amazing properties that intrigue kids. They are playing with this amazing stuff, figuring out how it operates. We talked a bit about what's in the ingredients and why it might behave the way it does and I asked them to experiment at home with it, i.e. freeze it, put it in the microwave, let it sit, etc.

This week when I appeared some of the kids wanted to tell me about their experiment I had encouraged them to do at home. The flubber they froze became hard and when thawed was as usual. The Flubber they cooked in the microwave bubbled and never recovered its original property.

There is never enough time. I have an hour and a half to address these interesting observations. We could spend an entire week, all hours on this, and the kids would have an insight about the science of life! But, no, their remarkable teacher, Rachel, must hue to the exigencies of 'What one must do as a teacher in these days'.

In today's educational system, there is no paying attention to the 'teachable moment'. This is when a kid comes into class with a praying mantis he/she has captured. In the teachable moment the teacher puts aside the lesson plan for the moment and directs the kids to look carefully at this interesting insect. There are all sorts of ideas that can be pursued. Science? Ecology? General knowledge? So many ways to go! And where kids go shouldn't be always constricted by the schedule.

Each week I do a cooking project with these nine and ten year- olds. They love the chopping and the mixing and everything hands-on. And they especially like eating what they have made. It is worth it to shlep in all the pans and pots and ingredients. There are two volunteer parents who usually show up to help and I adore them!

Aside from this very satisfactory volunteer activity, and others, I am loving this wonderful Florida autumn when you don't die if you work outside. I spend an hour at least in the vegetable garden, a third of which is now given over to the butterflies who flit in the milkweed, red sage and zinnias. We eat every evening from a choice of broccoli, rappini, beans, collards, eggplants and lettuces.

When we visited Colombia I vowed to make in this year a renewed effort to really learn conversational Spanish. On line I found a program (Pimsleur) that would seem to fit. I ordered it for $9.00. And what a deal! I look forward to each day when I can do another unit. Now I am on lesson 7. There are only eight! Today at school I was able to actually speak to the volunteer women who help me in the cooking.

This program just sucks you in, it's so compelling. In a stellar program of marketing, they sent me the next twenty lessons just as I am about to finish the $9 program. They give you 30 days to review it, no money. Hey! I can do these next lessons, a day at a time, send it back for free. I would pay the $275 they want for this. It's worth it. But, if I continue tomorrow, and on, and I will, I'll have fluency in Spanish before my thirty days are up. (But, maybe they are on to me and will send the next bunch of CD's with a sheriff!)

Always interesting to be in my skin.

Hard Times

This has been a week of 'the drama' in two of the places I go. My old school was just having the dress rehearsal for this year's Shakespearean play, everyone's favorite, The Tempest. At Lacoochee elementary, Ben Aguilar's after school group was polishing their fifteen minute musical they will perform on Saturday at the Pioneer Florida Museum. The ages of the kids in both schools is about the same, and the level of excitement from the kids and parents is beyond bounds for both groups. Otherwise, these groups are on different planets.

I am so delighted to be back in the midst of 'doing the Play' at my old school. The children are brimming with health and good teeth and they have all so easily learned miles of Shakespearean dialogue (with the good parental coaching). Their speech is clear and confident. At dress rehearsal they are all in beautiful and imaginative costumes with tasteful make-up so their faces will not be washed out by the lights in the small professional theater they are using. They have learned how to manage the wonderful set, made by parents and painted by kids, that turns around to become a rocky cave or a forest glen. They know the stage lingo, and for the most part they move seamlessly as a team. Clearly, they are enjoying it all enormously and are proud of their efforts. One child plays a Celtic harp during the performance and the director wisely lets the piece run a bit longer than necessary. These are children who have every advantage, as kids should, as did my own.

So, I wept in the community task force meeting at Lacoochee when I heard about the girl who was in intensive care with a 'brain bleed' from an untreated ear infection, or the other one this week who was in the cardiac unit of the hospital from complications from an untreated thyroid problem. The Ronald McDonald health truck may be cutting back on visits, and the school nurse is now down to half a day a week. (the school has more than 700 students.) The school social worker is retiring and her position will go unfilled due to cutbacks. The new school psychiatrist is paralyzed with having to deal with so many presenting issues with these children. Where do you begin? And what about the number of homeless children? This amazing community organizer-principal has figured out how to get the funding to bus these kids to their old schools. ("With everything else they have to endure, they don't need to change schools and friends.")

This community school principal, not daunted at all, goes about working and persisting with these difficult things. She is reaching out on many fronts. She's getting Charlie Crist and Bill Nelson to do a drive through of this misbegotten town in the middle of nowhere. She leads the band at the County Commission meetings when she has an issue on the agenda. Next time it is the cutbacks in park funding. Parks are crucial to the children and families here.

Ben Aguilar and Rachel Kurtz teach third and fourth grades. They are not the ubiquitous title one teachers who are too tired to teach well and have long exhausted any spark of energy they might have once had. In their after school program they invite parents and kids to participate. I have never been there when any child was absent. They provide pizza and juice (I always bring fruit or vegetables for the kids to try.) These lovely young altruistic and idealistic teachers could be posters for the Obama program.

Neither of them had ever had any experience with drama, but they ploughed ahead with this motley crew of Hispanic kids and parents (no dads). One mom told me that this after school program was the most important thing she does as social life. Many of the moms do not speak English very well, and I do not speak Spanish very well. But we get along famously and help each other out linguistically. We smile a lot. These moms know that their kids must become fluent in English. When we are at an impasse about the costumes or any other issue, Ben can translate.

Everyone is set for the Saturday performance. The costumes are ready. I went to Walmart and purchased a lot of foam headbands to which we affixed faux cow horns or goat ears. I made chefs' toques and brought in aprons and old tee shirts of the appropriate colors and I showed the moms how to staple anything to anything. Voila! Pigs' ears or cow horns or chicken heads. They were on it! (Just like my private school gifted kids' moms)

This is another part of my life, not that I have left that other behind! I look forward to a few days in New York City and travels around the country coming up. I am so fortunate, though much less prosperous than we were. The really hard times are the ones I see around here in this small community.

I saw the first slow fireflies tonight, so beautiful and funny in the palmetto scrub. Yesterday, when I got off my bicycle to investigate the place I had seen bobcats, I walked into the woods to look for tracks. Along the cowpath trail I discovered a loaded handgun among the dead leaves. It was heavy and menacing so I put it into my bike basket and carefully rode back. We asked our ranch manager about it and he gave it to the Sheriff's department. When I returned from Lacoochee there was a sheriff's car in our yard. Apparently, there is an unsolved murder..

When I signed on for this life of mine I could not have said where I would go. But it is always intriguing. Even in hard times, there is much to do, much to think about, much to give, and much to be thankful for.