Honestly, What I really Want for my Birthday

Actually, I have everything I would ever need in life. I have the gift of discovering such a magnificent wild flower as this may pop on my way to retrieving the morning paper today, and the view of the rising water under the bridge, and the cacophony of frantic frog calls and an owl flying silently through the swamp trees heavy with rain. I have the love of a good man and the incredible beauty of the place where I live and children and family and grandchildren I love and the wonderful friends who decorate my life.

So, what could I ever want? I certainly have no needs for anything material. (We are always trying to divest ourselves of extra stuff!)

This is what I want: I need some service for my digital life! I want some one or some ones to help me down load, off load, up load sidewise load stuff, get rid of pop-ups, find out how to actually get the fancy HD radio I have to play classical music without cutting out every ten seconds, and a ton of other issues. I want someone (or a robot!) to help me on a lot of tech issues I have. I want (in the best of all possible worlds!) not to have to hold back, just ask.

For some reason this blog entry went haywire and it took me three minutes to recover it. Why does this happen?? Maybe no one knows why these gremlins spring up.  I have friends and family who just have opted out of all these issues, My sister doesn't  have a smart phone!

But I am not willing to give up on this. I love being connected, I love Facebook and all the rest. I just want to be more able!

So, for my birthday, don't give me fragrant gifts, candles, soap, baskets of fruit. Hold the cards. I want tech service!

I know this won't happen, actually. It is just a fantasy of mine that tech issues will magically be resolved. And I will thank everyone for the doilies and candles, and I will continue to make quilts and hand-made stuff for the ones I love.

Rain is still happening and life is green.

Food in Pouches! Yikes!

I read in the style section of the New York Times today that many 'up scale families' love those food pouches they can give to their kids on the fly. Lots of these pouches are organic and "fun". The kids suck up the pureed veggies, fruits, and so much else. (potato chips?) No fuss, no mess, no need to have a sit down family meal. Just feed the kids when they are hungry. They don't even have to chew those gristly bits we always used to secretly hide in our napkins. And their parents can tweet and text and drive while their kids get good nutrition.

Ah, I am getting so old! We still love those magical dinners when we all sit down at the long table, youngsters and oldsters, loving the stuff some grandchild has picked from the garden and another one may have cooked with the help of Grandpa. The only leftovers are the bones that go into the soup pot and the vegetable parings that go to the compost pile. No plastic pouches to go into recycling, nothing toxic from the insides of pouches comes from our meals. We love the talk from young and old.

The art camp was very successful, especially the food the kids made from scratch under the tutelage of Mr. Andy. On the last day everyone brought food to share and it was one of the best meals of my life! Hand made corn tortillas, all the fixings for fajitas, flan, guacamole, salsa, and the gringo things too.  Each day, all of us sat down together on the screen porch to eat lunch. (No pouches!) The end of camp was the triple exploding volcano cakes. So satisfying..

Real America, Unhinged

I am exhausted tonight, but in a good way. The second day of our annual summer Art Camp is over and I have been in the barn making sure the clay pieces are more than leather hard and ready for a firing tomorrow. I have put out two more 25lb hunks of red and white clay for tomorrow and located the whiffle ball bats and balls for the pool activities required for the next day. The paint brushes are clean and I have set out the materials for making flubber and various other interesting miscible solutions. We have checked out all the food stuffs we need and thought about what groups will do what, where and when tomorrow.

This week is a gift to our community from us, but mostly it is a gift to us. Each day we have had about twenty people, kids and parents, sometimes more. In this poorest of Florida communities, most folks do not know they should sign up, call, or tell us they can't come that day, or that they will come with many extras. Some parents just want to drop off their kids, and maybe or maybe not pick them up.

 These are not your Manhattan helicopter parents. They are druggies whose kids nag them into going to Ms Molly's camp and finally call an hour before the session begins.

But, yet, they help each other on car pooling, take home those kids whose parents have somehow 'forgotten' them. And they do not make judgments.

And then there are illegal Mexicans who have everything together and if only they had green cards..but still they have visions of college for their kids.
And they are the BEST! They would certainly give those NYC parents a run for their money (if only).

We have learned so much! Our family that hosts this- my husband and I and our seven year old grandson, have everything the American Dream could boast. We are Ivy league wasps, grandson named after a direct ancestor and an early American president. We are fairly prosperous, better off than our parents. We love to share our property and large swimming pool and art facilities and kitchen.

So, I hunker down in the clay studio, comfortable with the give and take of Spanish and English. These kids and parents are making some of the most beautiful clay pieces I have ever seen in a class. The kids get comfortable and range out to paint and build things from the many materials I have. We walk in the woods and collect moss and discarded owl feathers, wonder at turtle burrows.

 A group of kids cook the healthful lunches and prepare snacks. I hear my husband and his cooking group of little kids discussing how to hold a really sharp knife and why cooking from scratch is the best. Kids are swarming the vegetable garden to pick peppers and tomatoes.

Swimming is the best! The kids love Coach Joy who directs the pool. These kids do not have much opportunity to swim and they love every minute.

One child, fourteen years old, painfully shy, whom I'd met on a community clean up some weeks back, contacted me to say she'd like to come and help out. She was one of those people who are powerful in her silence (and made me feel anxious about what I perceived to be her neediness). I made every effort to include her. She was a non swimmer and had hair issues and she did not reach out to any of the other campers. Day two she asked me to teach her how to knit!
I am a terrible knitter, actually, and have only knit three things in my life (one of them an abysmal calamity). But I soldiered on, and this child, after one row, began to knit like a house on fire, row after row. Then she went up to the pool with the swimmers, put on an amazing swim cap to protect her about to be, used to be, might be, nappy hair, and proceeded to dive under water and swim! I held her up and said encouraging words. This kid will be swimming by the end of the week!

But the most astonishing thing to me was hearing some of the back stories of the Mexican parents who are still illegal. Before this I never actually knew anyone who had walked across the border from Mexico, enduring ten days of thirst and hunger and fear. I had never personally heard about the fears these people have on a daily basis, and the raw anxiety they have about their gifted kids who may not be able to go to college. I heard about these parents' quest to get a GED, and being turned down.

Also, there are the parents who are legally citizens, and they are golden!

So, here we are with our bilingual community camp, every socioeconomic class, gender, age, and color. We are the global community and we have more in common than not. On the last day we will have a pot-luck lunch for all the families and we will wear our camp tee shirts and produce an exploding volcano cake.

Maybe Romney should be here. Politicians don't get it.

Crazy in the rain

The weather forecast was for 90% rain today. I was worried about Bob, our yard bird sand hill crane who spent twelve hours yesterday tediously bugling alone outside the vegetable garden. And today he was back,  bugling for who knows what? Where's my family?

The morning began spitting rain and I knew that a troop of Girl Scouts was due to arrive to spend the day in my studio sewing merit badges onto their uniform sashes. I also knew that my husband and I had several important errands to do in town. I knew that the girl scouts were intent on having a swim in the pool between thunder and lightning. And I knew that the state Audubon director was due to arrive at 3.

But I kept an eye on Bob, the crane, who was still making that wild wonderful cry. Usually, Bob is in the company of his mate, Emily. I have wondered whether they raised a chick this year, but as far as I could tell, their nest was not on our nearby pond. Just as it was about time for the scouts to arrive, Bob looked to the skies and saw Emily approaching. He shouted and danced! And, then Emily glided down with their teenager chick!

By now, it was really a frog drowner. The kids had a brief swim in between thunder storms and ate lunch at tables in the barn. They spent hours sewing on the badges and doing girl scout stuff. I am worried that they will be mired on their way out in the four inches of rain that has  already fallen (and they will have to SPEND THE NIGHT!)

The girl scouts leave and we await the Audubon guy who, as everyone coming to this faraway place does, calls repeatedly to get directions. He is 2 hours late, and since we have been up since 6 a.m. we are really looking forward to supper. He arrives in a pounding rain and grins! Passes my first two tests (no suit and tie, no portfolio of glossy materials about how you can donate to Audubon.) I really liked this guy! He was observant and friendly and we had lots of mutual friends. We invited him to stay for supper, but he could not. I gave him some heirloom tomatoes, and I hope we'll see him again. For all I know, he is struggling in a muddy rain swelled ditch up the road, but I think not.

We are getting ready for our week long summer art camp, beginning next Monday. This is our gift to the community, and we expect up to 40 people to come- kids and parents. I have many pounds of fresh clay, paints, paper, materials for sculpture and constructions. I have awesome nature activities. My partner, Andy, will be the master chef, who with kid helpers, will prepare local organic meals from scratch.

Many wonderful community volunteers will help out. I know we'll be tired each evening - and so will the kids. This Audubon guy asked when we told him that we were doing this camp, "Who knows about this? It could be an inspiration to others." I don't know about that. This is just what we do.

The American Dream

Cautious and disbelieving that I am about the direction our country is heading, it affirms my optimism about life here to meet so many young people who still believe that they are on the right track.

Here is Jomesha Isles at a banquet honoring folks who have served on the board of the local community college. Jomesha's story makes the film "Precious" seem tame. Here is this absolutely beautiful young woman, a Lucy Morgan scholarship recipient, head of all honor societies, academically top of her class.  Jomesha has four kids (one of whom was there at the dinner and has already graduated with her AA degree and will go on to bigger things.) Jomesha had such a terrible childhood and adolescence - her mom died of an overdose of drugs, leaving her and her sister at a young age to make their way to a new home with grandparents. Then, there were horrible  and abusive and homeless times, having her first child at 17, working at fast food, and trying to make a life for herself and her kids. Who knows  what epiphany she had?  In  any case, she decided to get on with education, get that high school diploma and begin the long journey toward having the kind of life and work that will provide for her family.

So, here she is, about to be launched as a health care administrator. When she told her story to the group there was not a dry eye in the room! The American Dream.

Yesterday, a young woman and her husband and four year old daughter came by our house for a visit. This young woman is the daughter of Mexican tomato pickers. Somehow, this family began to believe that they should stop moving all the time. They had three daughters and a son and these kids needed to be in one place. So they stayed here in Dade City and began a stable life so their kids could attend school. I came to know this family through a wonderful community activist in the Hispanic community here.(" Here are these three extraordinary girls, all valedictorians - they need sponsors!") So we embarked on a long term financial and friendly contact with them. They went to college and we helped her older sisters get good jobs. There were times when we were in constant contact. They were always such wonderful friends! 

So, I am most interested to find out how everything has turned out, though we know this is always a work in progress. The youngest, Vicky, who came to visit yesterday, is not at all the shy one she used to be. She is the primary breadwinner for her family, office manager in a law firm, but wishes to get her law degree, an opportunity that was denied her (probably) for reasons of ethnicity. But she is optimistic! She and her husband are leapfrogging ahead, have a vision of excellence for their child. 

Who could not believe in the American Dream?

And, so, I keep on trying to give kids a sense of vision, a life they can have if they work hard. Seeing these young people who have succeeded against all odds makes me exceedingly humble.