Undocumented

It's a safe bet to say that most of the children here are undocumented. Certainly most of their parents are.
These kids come to school like any others. Here they are cooking vegetables from the school garden, and as with any other kids, they understand in their inchoate way that everything will be available to them.

For most of my life I never thought about the issue of immigration other than the Ivy League courses about the beginnings of America and the waves of immigrants coming from various places, finally making it to the Statue of Liberty and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. How naive I was!

Now I struggle to figure out how to make it happen for undocumented Mexican children to be able to go to camp. They don't have health insurance, a requirement even for camperships.

I wish that our elected representatives could know how it is to live in constant fear of deportation. I wish these elected officials could experience how it is to have dangerously crossed the border with the kids on your backs because you wanted a better life for your children and you couldn't see any other way to do it. You were willing to accept less than a second class deal because you wanted so much to be here where your kids would have a good chance at the brass ring.

My friend, Maria (not her real name), and her husband have two truly gifted kids, and their life is a struggle against fear from the deportation issue. Of course they do not have driver licenses, social security numbers, library cards. They are afraid to take vacations - one small lapse and they will be deported, separated from their kids. They have saved for their kids' college expenses but who knows if even this backward state of Florida will actually let undocumented students get into higher education?

We have such a huge group of Hispanics in the U.S. They drive our agriculture and they work everywhere. Their kids are our treasure.

Immigration reform must be at the top of our list of American priorities.

Memories of Travel

The four of us- my brother and his wife, Andy and I- have been traveling together for many years. Here we are in a garden in New Zealand just about to enjoy an extraordinary lunch. Everything about that trip was perfect.

This evening here in Florida we are again together for a wonderful homely meal of soup and salads from the garden and amazing conversation. Brother Brooks and Carolyn are here for two weeks. They live on the other side of the country and for many years, long before any of us retired, we have gotten together twice a year.  One of those annual visits with each other have been to go to some fantastic place.

We are getting older and the prospect of spending long hours folded up on airplanes is less appealing. Our trip this year was one to explore the end of the Lewis and Clark expedition in Oregon. We flew there, and now Brooks and Carolyn have come east to enjoy some Florida sunshine and the magic of life in the Green Swamp. We take interesting day trips and come home evenings.

It was always my pleasure to plan the trips, arranging for a rental house and car, researching everything to do and see. Italy! (multiple times and places), France, New Zealand, Alaska..

Tonight we sit around the table, the candles burning low and our bellies full and we recall some of those details (and what we ate) on those amazing trips. All we need to do is utter some word, and we are off on the flood of wonderful memories. "Flat white" - and we are recalling how on our New Zealand trip we stopped every morning to buy coffee with hot milk. And remember the blue penguins that arrived every night flopping through the surf to scurry back to their nests?

During those years I also made annual trips with my dearest friend, Marie, never on any planned tours, to exotic places in central and south America. Those were the rugged and just dangerous enough treks to the Amazon, the Galapagos, remote places in Costa Rica and Panama, Peru and Brazil. We would look at each other upon arrival wherever it was and say, "We're here!" In many ways my trips with Marie were the most challenging, and also the most truly carefree. We had no family to please or look out for - it was just purely us. If we chose to walk out by ourselves into the rain forest with a man dressed only in a loin cloth and packing a bow and quiver of spears, we did it because we had the chance to see a harpy eagle. And in what other circumstances would one happily eat guinea pigs?

Our heads are stuffed with these memories, so much more valuable than things. My good friends here are off on a trip to India on Monday. I envy them this and I will be first in line when they get back to hear all the details and view the photos. They are going on a group tour, possibly the best way to go.
Travel is the best for one's mind.  I hope to be remembering all the places I've been and all the people and ideas I've met until I'm past ninety-five!

Bad Jacket

At the end of October I was looking forward to wearing those wonderful Chicos jeans in size zero. I could cover up my wrinkled legs, browned from gardening in cargo shorts, frayed from ten months of life outdoors.

So, here we are in another frosty morning and close to freezing. The beloved jeans are old news and getting frayed on the bottoms. When I go out the mile long driveway to get the morning papers I grab the dreaded bad jacket.

I bought this jacket on line. It seemed like just the thing- a subtle plaid or solid with a fleece lining. But they didn't have it in a solid color, only in this bright red screaming plaid. I was cold at the time, so I bought it. I am not a plaid person. However, it is warm. I hate wearing it; it makes me feel ugly like a dumpster diver or a bag lady. It is not me. This jacket is tough and could be wearable for years and years. As a frugal person, I could just keep on wearing it for season after season.

So, a few days ago I ordered a new jacket. This one is in powder blue, close fitting, fleece, from sustainable machines. They said it would arrive in a few days, but so far I am still using the dreaded red plaid jacket. Maybe tomorrow it will come, and maybe tomorrow the weather will improve and I will have to inspect those old cargo shorts.

Here in Central Florida we are hard hit by continual cold weather. Our homes are not meant to be warm - unless it is summer. We complain about the dry cold and we stoke the seldom used fireplaces and give thanks for our dogs who sleep in the bed (and run hot as dogs do).

Keep warm.

Frozen!!

We are all anxious because there has been a freeze warning! So, of course all our yards look as if strange ghosts have appeared - our sheets and beach towels are covering our favorite plants. They are kept by clothespins from blowing away in the wind.

We have unearthed strange arrays of clothing layers Floridians wear in case of freezing in emergencies. Usually these are florals and plaids and/or really ugly reindeer sweaters that for months or years hide quietly in the back of our closets, discarded a few years back because they were so ugly and still are, but you have to keep them "just in case".  So, if you go to a local Walmart in Florida during cold weather, you'll see us, wearing that riot of stout colors..

No matter what the forecast says, we are looking forward to spring. There are azaleas blooming in our yards and buds are swelling.  At some point we can get back to shorts and flip flops.

Wherever I go there is small talk about local gardens, chicken trading, livestock issues and lots of comments about rural political concerns.  So different from my last past urban life!

Our community/school garden is doing well. Patty (one of the garden ladies) and I met early this morning at school before the cold front came in, and we spent a companionable hour weeding and checking and being entertained by the sandhill cranes who are in the vicinity in huge numbers. They have drilled hundreds of holes all around the garden, but they seem not to have wrecked any of the raised beds.

As the new semester unfolds we will continue to have our junior garden club meet after school. Looks like we'll have so many greens we can supply the Girls and Boys Club for a long time.  We also have the commitment from the Dade City Garden Çlub to fund ten kids to go to Camp Wekiva, a state ecology camp, for a week this next summer.

What's on my mind is thinking about what some of the folks who work so hard and generously on the community garden think about this "camp thing".  The Dade City Garden Club will fund ten camper ships, a deal I think is incredibly generous. (each one is worth $250 for a five day sleep-away camp experience.)

But we have more than ten kids in the garden club! And they are devoted kids. So how can we pick up the other six kids?

Interesting. Some of us say that everyone should be included - we'll find a way. Others say that kids should compete to get to the top and go to camp. But some think that kids cannot compete considering the dysfunction of their parents. Kids are not responsible for their parents! And the others say that this is tough love. The bottom line must be drawn.

I used to think that this was a Republican voice, mean spirited - but now I'm not so sure. I see so many good people who carefully think about how our democracy should be..

But I still think that we people who are the "haves" must take responsibility for the "have nots" and not be too judgmental, especially when it comes down to kids who have had no choice about who their parents are.

Still thinking (and freezing).

The Garden in Winter

Who would ever think there would be pumpkins and tomatoes this time of year? But there it is, the big pumpkin, getting fatter every day. We have already harvested several others and made pies and soup. And the tomatoes keep coming, though they are not nearly as prolific as they were in hot weather.

The vegetable beds are bursting with sparkling greens and lettuces and broccoli and it all keeps us eating well.

We have had a few cool nights, some rain, so everything in the vegetable and flower gardens is happy and growing despite the shorter days.

My grandsons and other young friends have worked on transporting huge quantities of mulch for the veg garden floor so it will be awhile before the dollar weed surfaces. I keep on planting more lettuces and mesclun. Quincy, the nine year old vegetarian, spends time in the garden picking and always eating the pea pods there.

The flower gardens are evolving as well. The orchids are mostly in full bloom on the pool deck and the native orange shrimp plants are just getting into full throttle by the screen porch.

Up north where folks are battling below zero weather, ice storms and such, they do not have to think about their gardens! All is silent and dormant there.

But here, we have continuous garden activity, ever changing and always needing something.

This place is amazingly beautiful in all seasons - so lush during the summer rains and heat, and now just at neutral. We always expect a freeze or two here in central Florida, but so far it has not happened and the pastures are still green. Red bud trees are beginning to flower and we are seeing flocks of redwing blackbirds and robins. Every night there are at least a dozen tree frogs on our bathroom window.

The alligators and turtles in the pond are basking in mid day and the reptile world is everywhere.

After a two week period of major family visits and incredible happiness to see them all, I am content to hunker down on my beloved land.

Happy New Year to you all!

Nine

Here is Anna, nine years old, with the pumpkin she carved all by herself with a sharp knife and her personal vision. Anna has a sturdy sense of herself. 

Among all these twenty kids we deal with two times a week in the junior garden club at the elementary school, Anna stands out. She is the one who can plant seedlings, no problem with extricating them from the nine packs. She seems to know the spacing, the depth, how to firm the earth around them. Anna's spouts will always grow. She knows how to plant seeds at the right depth and pat them down. 

Last week the garden club had a soup extravaganza featuring vegetables from the garden. We had spent an hour cooking everything and setting up for the expected parents and friends who would attend. 

This was a beautiful event. Many of the parents and siblings came, and by now the kids have learned a few table manners and are not so wild. 

Near the end of the afternoon, when everyone was full of collards and had said how much they loved this soup and salad and garlic bread, all made by the kids, Anna came up to me and asked could she say a few words. 

So we got everyone quiet and Anna stepped up in the front of the room. Anna's family did not attend, but if they had, they would be so proud of her.  With no notes, no hesitation, Anna proceeded to tell everyone how much the garden meant to them all, how thankful she was to have had this experience, how much she treasured the fellowship. I was blown away! Worth living for.

My own grandson is also just nine, and this time when he is staying here (not just a visitor, he has his own room), we have noticed such a change. He is no longer just a lovable kid. Yes, he's still that, but now he is a real partner in the workings of our place, takes his place in the chores and business of being a part of this household. And we have such wonderful conversations and partnership in learning new stuff.

One dinnertime he asked us something very few of our friends or family ever have: "When no one else is here and you are just here together what do you do?" He really wanted to know! It's still a big stretch for him to think that we have a routine that includes an hour of exercise, foreign language learning, etc. But he can relate to the hours we spend outside in the gardens and mending fences and tending to the land. He wanted to know when we did this. For all the many years he has often visited, he has known us as the folks who make delicious breakfasts, engage him in many activities, read aloud to him for far longer than a parent could, and try to explain just about anything. I think it is the greatest affirmation when someone, even a nine year old, really asks about you.

So, this is the beautiful NINE! I love it.

The Madness About Gift Giving for the Holidays

This stuff about shopping for the holidays is crazy! Why do we think these ideas of blockbuster sales, get this or that in the next nine minutes, leave your Thanksgiving table to stand in line overnight for that flat panel t.v. are all so great?

My daughter came for the weekend to hunker down in my studio to make many wonderful gifts. There were bags and puzzles and useful holders for this and that. There were stuffed animals, all amazing and lovely.

"Who are these things for", I asked her. They are for distant family members she barely knows, but she feels obligated.

Where did this come from? This obligation everyone seems to have this time of year?

When I was a kid soon after the end of WWII, no one had any money. My folks strived to make Christmas special for their five kids. My dad, who was never a carpenter at all, sawed maple 2x4's into a huge set of blocks. He spent his evenings from Halloween until Christmas in a neighbor's basement, sanding these and waxing them. A month before Christmas my mom sneaked away all the dolls my sister and I had and made new clothes for them, and dresses to match for us, to reappear on Christmas morning. One Christmas I found an entire Girl Scout  outfit my mother had made right there above my stocking. Another Christmas there was a bicycle for me - a lovingly restored used bike. To tell the truth, I was always just a bit disappointed because I really wanted the new and store-bought.

Now that I am old and have no need of anymore stuff, I find it harder and harder to understand what this impetus is to GET MORE STUFF!

I think that many folks rely on the holiday gift exchanges to  get things they need and luxuries they crave. We spent last Christmas with some in-laws of our family and we were amazed at the sheer volume of the gifts and the obvious expense and thought that had gone into this extravaganza. Giving these things (and receiving them!) is a part of doing the expected thing in so many families.

So, back to the hand made items, the repurposed things, the regifted and the giving of old family treasures. Everything has a place in this crazy holiday frenzy. I just wish there was not so much stress about it.

Free Day!

Once in awhile I have a free day, no meetings, no classes for kids, no commute the 65 miles to see friends in my old community. And so, I hunker down in my studio and paint. Right now I am painting a large vision of Victorians, stiff and sitting for their portrait. Right now it is all potential. Tomorrow I will have to remove it from the table so it will be free for a clay workshop when ten people will come to make earthenware planters. These folks will come and have some hours of creativity, energetic talk, and a soup and salad lunch from the garden.

I really enjoy these adults, so different from the needs of the kids in my class you see in the photo here who made scarecrows to discourage the sandhill cranes from all their pecking in our community garden for kids. But what they all have in common is the desire to make things. The kids have made wonderful clay planters, kind of rough, and they are waiting in the queue to be fired.

I have rolled out the clay slabs in anticipation for the group to come. I love it that adults who have no experience with sculpture/clay take a chance and end up loving it! Unlike the kids' classes, I do not have to get my energy up to make it happen. It is a gentle thing to conduct a class for adults who want to be here.

Free days mean I can exercise my three miles with weights, do my language lessons, do my meditation walk in the woods, and anything else. So great to be retired!

Beat with a buzzard

Here is Lola, fifteen years old. Today she had ten! teeth removed. Maybe it was worse for me. Used to be when I asked my mom how her day had been, if it was awful, she'd say, "I feel like I was beat with a buzzard".

Well, today I was beat with a buzzard. I had no choice. It seemed that this wonderful one blue eyed lovely dog had major tooth infection and she was in pain. When I signed her into the vet, I assented to the disclaimer that sometimes something happens!  So I went to a political luncheon in Tampa with my phone on vibrate.

The vet's office called me and said that all was well, she was in recovery, and I could pick her up that afternoon.  When I got there and she heard my voice from the office she began what we call the dog opera. I was so glad to hear her saying that she was o.k. I could hardly pay attention to the post operative instructions. (Do you want to save the teeth for the tooth fairy?) Gak!

We all love our animals so much. As I left off Lola this morning there was a couple in the next car in the parking lot. They were telling their huge black dog goodbye and they were shaking with tears. I touched the woman and told her how very sorry I was. I know that I will be there in that same place sooner than I'd like.

Even this evening, I have hunkered down next to Lola's crate where she's holed up in some pain. I stroke her ears and tell her what a good girl she is, how much I love her, and that tomorrow will be better. A small amount of blood from the surgery drips from her mouth and I am not sure she'd do well sleeping in the bed with us (as she has for her whole life). But I will ask her. I know I will check on her many times during the night.

I had thought that at Lola's advanced age this kind of dental surgery would just be over the edge. But our vet said that this would be fine and she'd feel a lot better for it. So, you take your chances. I keep feeling Lola's side to see if she's still breathing..

I am imagining that young dachshund who ran and leaped and had fun with toys, who spent many miles with us as we walked in the Green Swamp. Don't think this will happen again, but, hey, she loves her rides in the golf cart!

Grandma with the Middle Ones

Three cousins, second, third and fourth graders now get together a couple of times a year (they live at opposite sides of the continent) and I am in wonder at how they take up just where they left off! They swim like fish and spend hours in the pool and hot tub. They have amazing and inventive games going all the time. This year it seems to focus on Greek gods and goddesses. These imaginative games seem to seamlessly segue from the fields and gardens to the pool to the upstairs playrooms and bedrooms where they have spread out Legos and blocks and villages and trains. Then, suddenly, like birds taking off, they all ride bikes like mad up and down the road and over the fields. Or they appear at my studio where they can find anything they want - paper, paints, clay, glue, scissors, yarn for some project or other.

Our usually tidy place suddenly has bikes thrown in the bushes, swim towels left in heaps, tiny bikinis on the couch. At the end of the day I grump around and all is put back in some semblance of order. I love to read to them before bed- seems like something I have done forever with kids. I always try to read some book that has not been made into a movie or game. The three older grandchildren remember when we read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. And there were many others. Because my grandson, Quincy, lives nearby and spends a lot of time with us, we've been through the whole Little House series and a whole lot else. Cuddly night by night.

Our children, who had been read to through all of their childhoods really seem to understand how important this daily event is. But they are tired at night after their work and some of the time this daily reading doesn't happen with their kids, the books pile up and get scattered under the laundry etc. So, I am pleased to have this grandmotherly task, among others.

I always knew that I would be a rotten home school Mom. And I never was.  So being Grandma all day for a number of days is a new and exhausting experience.

When I awake I think about all the stuff we'll do today. It begins with enormous breakfast that lasts for an hour. (Usually, I would be into my exercise routine for an hour, then half an hour of Spanish on line, then some brain games, and then tending to the many gardens.) So, none of that today. Pancakes or French toast it is.

And todayI have promised to fix the stuffed horse made so beautifully and lovingly a few days ago by my granddaughter out of an old cashmere sweater. It has suddenly gotten a tear in her neck.

Today we'll go to the library and then visit Patty Cakes (the Cake museum) and then do a few errands. Every time we have to get out of or into the car there are the issues of the booster seats etc. I forgot about this.

I am too exhausted by now to be able to think about going home and figuring out lunch, cleaning up after it, so I say I will take them to McDonalds. (They are aghast! They know that I never do this. Well, this is the first time in three years.) We order for the two vegetarians, after asking about what fat the potatoes are fried in, the really picky eater who eats only white food. My bottom line is no sugary drinks. Actually, it was O.K. We threw away the trash and all was easy. I love those conversations I have with kids and at lunch we discussed David and Goliath. And, also, was Jesus real?

So, we try to pick up the tire that was supposed to be fixed, and then head home. I was imagining a period of lying supine on the couch and reading the NYT. It kind of worked but I heard lots of small shrieks as the posse went from here to there.

But there is a whole afternoon to explore in the fields and in the garden and swimming in the pool before dinner. My husband monitored the pool to give me a break.

The best time of the day is when they are in their p.j.s, teeth brushed, ready for the story to be read aloud.

I love thinking that these kids and the other older grandchildren who have also spent so much time here will have these idiosyncratic grandparents to remember. And I look forward to having those very youngest ones have this experience too.

Overwhelmingly Grandma

Here is Caroline, seven years old. You can see the stuffed horse she made today out of some old mice eaten cashmere sweaters. She loves it and takes it everywhere. This is a grandchild I don't yet know very well; she lives across the continent as far as one can go from here and still be in America. So I treasure her visits.

I think our time (a whole week!) will be spent in my studio where she is already feeling comfortable finding out where everything is. She drew the picture of the horse she wanted to make and we carefully translated it to the soft knitted cashmere and I sewed it up on my sewing machine - the body, the head and the legs. Caroline carefully stuffed everything with polyester filling, I sewed them together, and then she decided on the ears, nose, eyes and the mane and tail. And, suddenly everything came together and she now has this wonderful horse (Esmerelda) that now goes everywhere with her.

Yes, I am deft (daft?) to eagerly help kids make stuff. But it is so satisfying to send him or her off with a real product they have had major input in making.

Caroline is fascinated with everything that hops, wriggles slithers or flies. Our tables are covered with shed snake skins, screened jars of monarch caterpillars about to pupate and containers of tree frogs who are just visiting for a little while. After two days this little girl knows everywhere to find lizards, skinks, frogs.. Of course, I love this child after my own heart!

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?  Such joys of being a grandmother!

I could keep this essay purely about Caroline, but, actually she did bring her dad and brother with her, and this weekend there were many relatives visiting. But maybe my time so far with Caroline is pure. We connect - who would have thought?

NOT FUNNY

O.K., I am an old fart with lots of experience in the world. I am not of the millennial generation.

To dismiss and make fun of anything that might help the poor and disadvantaged as as been done by the Daily Show and others is just plain unconscionable. Those folks in the media go home to their expensive Manhattan apartments, smiling like cheshire cats. What do they know about empty bellies and empty minds? Their kids go to private schools, get picked up in limousines, and eat wonderful food. Eventually the kids will go to Yale.

Here, in this poorest of rural communities in America, kids are hungry. They never have enough of anything. Many of these kids and their families are undocumented. They live in fear every day.

But these parents, like all of those at the Daily Show, want the best for their kids.

The Affordable Care Act has many problems, we all agree. But, please give this idea of helping so many a chance.

The other day I was in a place that cares for kids after school. There was plenty to like there, but what was so bad was a staff member who made small kids feel small and incompetent when they were doing what little kids do.

To me, it is not funny to make fun of the best instincts we Americans have. Seems to me that it dismisses the best about our young generations. Should we think that they can only connect to the important issues of the day with broad satire, tweets, etc.?  What is happening is pandering to the commercial and the money.

I would love to have some of these folks who make fortunes from japing serious problems in our society to live for a week in public housing with $100 a week for a family of seven.

Empty Bowls

It was one of my best teaching days but it broke my heart. Here are kids at the Lacoochee Boys and Girls club, where they come every afternoon after school. This day I was to bring clay so that the kids could make little bowls for the Empty Bowls project, which in this community funds the money for food for these kids. So they are making these bowls for a fundraiser that will take place in town at the steps of the courthouse next month. And they understand that they will not be there to experience it.

Prosperous folks will come and eat soup and bread contributed by philanthropic souls. For a contribution everyone will get one of these clay bowls to take home. The kids ask, "What will they do with the bowls?" I say that they will put paperclips in them and remember that lots of kids (including you!) may not have enough to eat sometimes. They don't really know that the food they eat at the Boys and Girls Club must be paid for.

But they love making anything out of clay! They are starved for creative work. They hunker down and, middle school students down to five year olds, work hard on these bowls. Most have forgotten the goal and some of the little girls are putting clay eggs in their bowls and the boys are thinking how they can include a stele. All the time this is happening (75 pounds of clay, yikes!), there are many wonderful conversations and I am charmed by the beauty and outgoingness of these children. Some of them know me from other venues and we are so comfortable together.

But I look around this place, that a year ago was so dismal and actually frightening to me, and see such improvement. But everyone really looks foreword to being in the new community center that will be complete by the year's end.

I look around and see that the space for the little kids has less richness than our upstairs hall playroom for visiting grandchildren that is full of books, blocks, Legos, games, trains and trucks and dolls. I could cry.

Most of the folks who work here are tender and supportive to kids. But there was one staff member who seemed so toxic to kids. She never was polite or respectful to them, outright angry. I thought I would never let a kid of mine be anywhere near her. I felt the devastation that the five year old kid who spilled his meal might have felt. He couldn't help it! No one offered to help him clean it up ("Hey, no big deal. Let's clean it up. You get the broom, I'll get the dustpan. And you can still have lunch!) But no, that tiny kid's day was ruined. When I spoke of this to the administrative staff they said they were working on it..

Empty bowls.. The food that is served there daily does fill bellies. What I saw being served today was a menu of doughy cheap hot dog buns topped by the cheapest of generic hot dogs, melted velveta cheese and ketchup on top. On the side were generic crinkle cut fries from a big box store. I had brought $10 worth of grapes and they were served as well. The drink was kool aid. Lots of empty calories but those bowls were really empty. I could cry. This is not food for growing bodies and brains!

We nourish our grandchildren with fresh organic foods from the garden, no manufactured food, certainly none of those hot dogs made out of who knows what? We are so privileged!

So, I keep on trying with the community garden. Keep on being there for the kids.

You Are What You Were

Elderly grandma that I am, I still inhabit the soul I was given. From the time I was aware at a very young age, I was always outdoors looking at everything. In our first family house there was a large unkempt yard out back. We kids had a huge sandpile in which we made habitats with small toys. What interested me more were the hollyhocks that bloomed next to it. I watched those wonderful blooming flowers and I noticed when they evolved into those round seeds closely nestled next to the stalks. I would peel these off and look at them, wondering at their disk shaped seeds. I planted many of them, but I don't know if they ever came up. I was four.

Throughout elementary school when I had a huge range to explore in our small town, I rode my bike daily to the woods on the edge of town, usually with friends. We explored, observed, made fires and smoked corn silks. All the time I was observant of the plants that grew there in upstate New York. I looked for the rare pink lady slippers, the white bloodroot that bloomed in early spring. I loved the trillium that bloomed in the woods.

Back in the town I noticed when the earliest snowdrops bloomed, and then the scilla and then the crocuses. I could go back there right now and tell you where to find them.

But many years pass and these interests in the natural world took a back seat to changing locales, the business of coming to be a grown-up, having a career and a family. But these interests have always been with me.

Today as I was walking in the woods, which I do every day, I rejoice in the wildflowers that I know like the back of my hand. Here are the snakeroots, the blue curls, the farewell to summer, the Caesar weed and all the mosses and epiphytes. I have to dodge the huge golden orb weaver webs where the inhabitant is large and getting ready to make an egg sack for the next season. I see a lovely red rat snake dancing across the barn floor.  The deer and the turkeys and the fox squirrels are always there somewhere. This is where I was meant to be!

I think that people need to look at their earliest interests to know where they are meant to be. I have always told my students that they need to examine what their passions are to see what they should study and pursue. Sometimes I am talking to a student who seems to be interested in manicures and hair and I think.. O.K. you are interested in the personal and physical lives of people. Maybe healthcare?

When I am doing my volunteer activities with kids I can sometimes clearly see where a given kid is going. That girl who is such a great observer may be going into science. That lovely little nine year old boy who cradles a bug in his hand may become an ecologist. The boy who talks only of violence, guns, and mayhem might be..a tea party person, or could surprise everyone and be a good dad and a birder?

We need to ask kids, and each other, what their real passions are. Whatever age you are, if you reflect on this, you'll know more about yourself.

Short Timer

Sunday night and I'd like to watch Sixty Minutes but the football games go on  and on.. I have no time for that. Long ago I decided that my opinion of football (with the concussions and greed), could be not mentioned.

I am a short timer! I want every day and every hour to count! I have no time anymore to sit through meaningless awards ceremonies or banquets. Been there and done that. I would rather be out working in my extensive gardens and walking through the woods to admire the fall wildflowers. I would rather be in a group of kids I can teach and learn from. I would rather be in a conversation with good and old friends. I have never been good at 'hanging out' when folks speak of inanities and sometimes keep checking their phones.

This evening, the dining table had been newly refinished and the coating was still tacky so we ate our wonderful dinner on the screen porch at a table there. We had candles and great food, lots of green beans and lettuce from the garden, and a pork stew with potatoes and carrots. The dog at our feet. And we had great conversation about the news today and family matters. I love every minute of these times we come together. On the screen porch. eating dinner, the birds and the owls were at full throat, and we felt so happy with it all. Such are the pleasures of a long time marriage.

When I was out weeding in the vegetable garden today something stung me on the hand. It hurt, but I paid no attention, but now, my hand has ballooned to twice its normal size. Maybe I am really a short timer! Stay tuned.

Everything changes all the time!

These kids are two of my eight grandkids. Next week they are coming to visit, and now, they are much bigger, several million words advanced from then - and still, just as cute, now connected to Kindle Fire.

I wish I could say the same about my life in the digital world! Everything changes, but it is not as cute. A couple of months ago I replaced my old p.c. laptop with a new and wonderful desktop Mac with a huge screen. There were no instructions whatsoever - because Apple is intuitive! It always works fast, no problems with viruses.

But I have so many issues! With my iPhone and iPad I have been charmed by their seemingly seamless interfaces. However, since my iPhone was recently updated, I can no longer download photos to iPhoto on my computer. I don't know how to make the wireless printer work with these things. I can't send email on my iPad. And in the iPhoto program I still can't send photos as an album. Of course there are many ways around Robin's Hood barn with a Mac and I try all of them. No luck. I have asked my young friends with Macs who visit to have a go at helping on these issues, and eventually, they seem as clueless as me. The outcomes are strange and I have to reconfigure what I know. On line help is useless to me.

Yes, I could take some classes on Mac use if I went on an hour and  half commute each way to Tampa, but there I would not have my own computer or my own internet access or printer - aargh! I really need some friendly knowledgeable person who could come here, hunker down with me for a couple of hours, and fix these issues.

Many of my elderly friends have taken a different route. The have basic cell phones, old computers that at least do email, maybe print out stuff. But I want more! And I want to know how to do it!

But I have a pretty good attitude about all of this by now. Life goes on and mine is pretty good, and maybe, one day soon, a Mac person will show up (or I'll figure out how to find him or her) and all my issues will be resolved.

Everything changes all the time, it's true. I want to be in the midst of those changes and that's true too.

Overload

As I was out doing errands today to buy stuff for my volunteer gig at Lacoochee Elementary School, I was listening to the Diane Reim show on NPR and a caller on the line asked a sort of 'the emperor doesn't have any clothes on' question: why are the republicans in congress so against the ACA?

Seems like everyone dodges this question. Why, indeed, would we not want to have affordable health care for everyone?? Yes, this law will have many glitches as it moves into our lives just as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have done. Along the way there have been many tweaks to these programs. We forget.

So, there is the philosophy of conservatives that less federal intrusion is better- a tenable stance. But what is happening here and now, tonight, is the dregs of folks who want to thwart Obama in anything. Why is this? I believe it is about race and a fear of elitism.. It is also about the perceived need to pander to the tea party base. I believe it is also about deep ignorance. (These tea party folks do not "believe in global climate change' or the science of Darwinism. They are creationists. They are afraid of gays. They are afraid of women's' rights to control  contraception. They are afraid of tree huggers.)

These folks are profoundly entitled.  "I've got mine" could be their motto. Probably, most of the House Republicans, all white, mostly men, have never walked in the shoes of so many Americans, the poor, the undocumented, the people of color. They have never had to do without medical care because they did not have two nickels to click together. They have never had to wait for hours in an emergency room with a sick kid. They have never had to forgo orthodontia or glasses for their child because they could not afford it.

The tea party folks are mean spirited.

Hair

 

I love hair! I love looking at it and touching it. It is our crowning glory to have it.  My husband has a full head of curly white hair, though he often states that it is getting thin on top. In the sixties and seventies and beyond I cut his hair when it became too much. Now, we both go to a local salon and Angie and Danny tame our locks.

My own hair stays the same, blonde going to white, curls all over my head so that I never even need to comb my hair after a shower. My hair is the only thing that stays the same as I age.

A few decades ago we all had wild and unkempt hair. Our beautiful sons had shoulder length hair until I chopped it off. Our daughter had long blonde hair - such a trial to braid it or tame it into something manageable.

Then I came to know about black hair and all the issues with that! Straightening! Chemical doses! Can't swim! What happened to those beautiful little black girls in my class who sported lovely 'naturals'?

My favorite hair styles were those of little girls with very long hair whose moms or dads carefully braided it every day. I love the cornrows of so many black girls in my class. I love the wild curls parents allow on their boys and the straight dark falls of hair on the Asian kids.

And I especially love the longish hair on boys. I know that in the cities of this country parents prefer to have their boys wear longish hair. It is a marker of socioeconomic class. When we picked up my grandson from his (elitist!) camp last summer, I noticed that all the boys had shaggy hair. Of course these kids had been away from barbers for several weeks.

In my volunteer work with a poverty stricken stripe of rural America, I notice that hair is definitely a marker. Boys with buzz cuts or strange buzzes and long hair, sometimes dyed, always catch my attention. These kids are often the troublesome ones and I have to look at their families. (Why is their priority to have their child have a blue-tipped Mohawk hairdo?)

How people do their kids' hair tells me a lot. But, really, it's only hair.

Philanthropy and Volunteerism

Here are Lily and Deshawn planting some of the new seedlings we have for our fall school garden. Another child is getting water for her newly planted starts. When the beds were planted they looked so promising, and now, a couple of weeks later, and many inches of rain later, they are up and perky.

This group of kids, almost twenty of them, come to the 'Garden Ladies' two days a week after school. We are planting and caring for this school garden, cooking and eating the harvest, learning about nutrition and botany and each other.

At least, this was our vision! The photo you don't see is the one when we made popcorn and constructed lovely bean artworks. Total chaos! The kids glued their multicolored beans onto paper plates in less than five minutes. No one had listened to the instructions and they poured on the glue and scattered the beans over it. Done! They looked like preschool creations. No matter. On to the popcorn with so much grabbing and screaming and pushing. No child wondered why popcorn pops. Many of the kids sat at the tables and screamed for us to bring cheese and butter, more popcorn. No child helped in the massive clean-up.

Regroup. Several of us, all retirees and volunteers from our local garden club, have committed for this project. Most of us have teaching experience and we feel responsible to bring good food, nutrition know how and expertise to this very poverty stricken community. The kids are far behind the ordinary middle class kids I have taught for thirty-five years. These are hungry for food and attention and they have no idea how to behave or listen or focus or tend to their own needs or those of the community in which they find themselves. The idea of cleaning up their spaces is unknown to them.  It seems there is no room in their desperate world for curiosity and wonder. And the child world of today, even among the less fortunate, is quite different than it was.

So we garden ladies are addressing these issues. Yes! The garden will be spectacular, and when the harvest is coming in, those kids will have some tools of competence and cooperation. No more chaos, just conversation about the tasks at hand.

It is way easier to just press the Donate Now button to give to one's causes. It's harder to be out there on the line doing community clean up projects, hosting a community coffee shop, constructing a garden, reading to kids in a classroom, working on a food line and in a food bank. It's harder to make  commitment to deliver meals on wheels.

But everything philanthropic is part of making the world better. The Gates Foundation, Doctors without Borders, Heifer, and so many other megabuck outfits are out to change our world for the better. But, drop by drop, those of us who are "there" in our communities make a difference.

Credo

The assignment in our printmaking class was to choose something that had meaning for us and make a 'broadside' of it. Of course, this was not something one could do in an evening or a week or even a month. We were young! Who knew what would have meaning for us? Professor Feldman told us that this major work could be an etching, a monotype, or any other kind of medium in the printmaking range.

I chose to make mine as a woodcut, so tedious and time-consuming to do, so fraught with the possibility of cutting oneself with the tools. I chose a large three by five foot board and for many weeks I thought and lived with mirror writing as I carved out those words and image and the curls of displaced wood fell to the floor.

My quotation was from Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass':

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars, and the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand and the egg of a wren and the tree toad is a chez d'oeuvre for the highest and the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, and the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, and the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, and a mouse is enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

To this day, more than fifty years later, this woodcut hangs on the wall in my studio and I see it every day and wonder afresh. This quotation has more meaning for me now than it did then as a newly aware person beginning to understand how important in my life these ideas would be.

What I would add to this Credo now would be: I believe that all children born are perfect, and have the right to become healthy people of dignity and opportunity. This I believe.