All Potential

The empty table in my studio and the flats of emerging seeds are all potential, both awaiting development. The plant starts will eventually go into the prepared garden beds and, hopefully, bring an abundance of food for us and friends. The table will soon be spread with the many colored fabrics that will be another graduation quilt for a young person heading off to college, and who has given me his requests for the theme, the color palette and permission for me to add what I want. I love the beginnings of new projects.

Today I began the hardest project going on now. I inadvertently fell in love with teaching kids so many years ago when, as an art history intern at a museum, I was called upon to lead those school groups. I have never looked back. Over the years of teaching various ages in various places I have always had the energy to think about what it means to teach, read everything I can, try different approaches, seek opinions, and rejoice in the collegiality of the profession.

As a retiree, of course I do not want to get down to the gritty stuff each day. Been there and done that. (I have my quilts and my garden!) But I find it compellingly interesting to be a part of the current educational scene. As most of you know, this happens for me right now in one of the poorest schools in the nation; poor in income, but not in spirit.

Our new governor is cutting the per pupil funding, with more cuts for next year. He wants to grow jobs. I wonder how we in this state, in this nation, can grow jobs with the youth able to fill them, if we downsize our already lacking public education system? My vision is to have our president, our governors, our so-called statesmen put forth a HUGE program to get every citizen behind making U.S. education the best in the world. I think we could do it, but it doesn't include big cuts in education.

I am a frugal person by nature. I don't waste stuff, neither human nor material. Public schools waste so much! (One could save millions on this alone!) For example, today as I was volunteering to straighten up the classroom in which I work each week, I carefully sorted out huge clots of valuable math manipulatives, never used. Reams of copy paper are left splaying about. Many kits of this and that are shoved in back of stuff and others are lying fallow on the floor of the supply closet. There are no shelves of inviting art paper, and the only paints and clay are what I have personally provided. Books are everywhere, under tables, stuffed into nooks, crumpled up.

Is this the outfall of what the Big Publishing companies have wrought? They send all these FCAT materials and they keep coming and coming like The Sorcerers Apprentice. They aren't valuable because the teachers did not have the responsibility for them, did not order them, and I certainly see that they have no intention of using them. They are useless. (How I would have died for the chance to have some of these materials in the bare bones school I taught in for so many years!)

As I was starting in to make some sort of order in this room, several teachers gathered and all of them were dispirited by the marching orders they had been given to increase the numerical reading scores of their students. Interestingly, their task did not actually include real reading, fun reading, compelling reading. One teacher told me that he was not allowed to let kids (during reading time) to go to the school library to get books! None of these teachers 'have the time' to read aloud to their classes! These teachers could not tell me where I could look to see how each individual child was doing in reading. They knew, however, that the kids can't read well.

If those young folks in Egypt can make a revolution, why can't American teachers revolt? Let them teach, let them learn! All Americans, young and old, need to rise up and say NO to the grip of the publishing companies who for the last several years have dictated what happens in the classrooms across the country. This has effectively cut down our teachers at the knees.

I say, STOP! Kids are all about potential just as my plant starts and quilts are. And they are incredibly the most important.

No Sun

All day it has been overcast and spitting tiny raindrops that curl my hair into frizzy ringlets. This largesse also plumps up the resurrection ferns on the oak trees and paints the forest floor mosses in intense green. The pastures are greening up and new calves are on the scene. The pear tree is in full bloom with big thick white blossoms. Spring! Salad every night from the garden, and promises of more.
These days of thin sun are depressing. We need the full sunshine to feel alive.
At these times we revisit our thoughts about being here on the edge of the Green Swamp. How could we make a life being more often in our new carriage house in the city behind our daughter's house?
For twenty years or more, this has been a topic. I fell crazily in love with this place so long ago.. The ranch, 300 acres, the privacy, the visual plenitude, so many plants and creatures to know. And having my very own space, this studio.. just heaven.
Here, I can grow my vegetables and flowers, spend hours walking around in the woods and checking everything out. I can spend hours making quilts, painting, writing, and working on ceramics, and blasting out songs from my ipod, whatever I want. In my studio I connect to the outside world via computer and phone. My forays out are to connect with the local community where I volunteer and to see new friends. Feels like I have a purpose.
Since we left our work in the city, it's more difficult to think about what we could possibly do there. I always want to see my grandson and daughter, but they have busy lives. (Our grandson spends many weekends here.)
There is always volunteer work to be done there, but it seems right now to be so much less compelling than the work I do here. (I am not wanting to do more on boards of worthwhile non-profits.)
Lately, I have been trying to be present and affirming for my spouse who has health issues. I fall short, of course. We are wending our way. No sun, and retirement isn't easy.
Maybe tomorrow the day will dawn bright and clear. (Sally Sunshine speaking!)

Salad Bowl

This is really about a salad bowl, and here it is. It's not very large, just about the right size for two to four salad eaters.
This was given to me as a present from a graduating class of my students, and we have used it almost every day. It has the old and used patina of many wonderful oils and dressings. You can see the burned on names of these students around the rim. Each day when I bring in the salad greens to fill it I think of those wonderful kids who had been a part of my life for a number of years. I do know about some of these young people as they have wended their way to adulthood. Others faithfully connect. But I think of all of them and remember the good times had in the classroom and beyond.
And this is what it is to be a teacher- to love and care for generations of young people. And this is what I find so lacking in the schools I see now. Being a teacher doesn't mean that you must receive such a gift as this salad bowl that has decorated my life forever. It means that as a teacher you must have the energy and leadership and creativity to inspire kids who remember your message: Be Your Best! When your students do this, this is your salad bowl!
We are in a period when society doesn't respect teachers; government slowly and inexorably removes them from the rewards they should have as people who do the very hard work every single day with our children who are the future. For the teachers who are having a difficult time, we do not care enough to seriously mentor them. We just talk about ending teacher tenure. There are ways to tease out the teachers who are unable to perform.
This is a hard time in our country. We need to pare back expenditures. But I do think that it is a big mistake to reduce educational expenditures. We need to salute and empower our teachers, support them, pay them well and raise them to a new status.
There is no work as hard and rewarding as being a good teacher.

True Grit

I was uneasy today on my first day of volunteering at the Lacoochee Boys and Girls Club. I had been by to see it several times to donate stuff, and sometimes I do the drive by in this bleak neighborhood near the elementary school.
Noticing such deficits in how the kids are doing in math in the school, I have long wanted to do a hands-on algebra program there. But I could drum up no interest at the school (they are always consumed with FCAT procedures). So I took it on the road, just up the road, actually, to the boys and girls club.
Michael B. runs this place. To my mind, he's a saint, tall, handsome, black and with a beautiful voice I cannot imagine ever being raised in anger.
This club is located at the end of a neighborhood of small run down, hanging by a thread homes with yards full of the detritus of poverty. There are some large oak trees with chairs, benches and crates populating the beaten earth beneath. Everyone in the community knows what happens in these places, and it isn't a lovely community barbeque.
The clubhouse is a larger version of the typical houses, block construction, bare earth surroundings. But there is a nice playground structure and some picnic tables under a porch roof.
I enter and am immediately greeted by Michael and some of the kids. The after school snack of hot dogs is being served and I notice that the kids are of all ages from tiny to huge and they fairly represent the demographic of this community, African American, Hispanic, a few Whites.
My first impression of this place where so many kids (50-60) spend every afternoon is that it has no natural light, it's grim and grimy, and nothing is new and shiny. The tables wobble, the pool tables are patched with tape, the window blinds are splayed and disfunctional. Everything has the feel of being either half used up or resurrected from some sixties yard sale.
So, I am welcomed into the place where my visions of great math afternoons will happen. Michael has promised me a "helper", and she appears on cue. She's lovely and talkative and I know I'll like working with her.
Here, just an aside from Grandma. I have such a hard time with the modern names kids have! I simply cannot remember those names that are partially African, partly invented, have capital letters and apostrophes in strange places. Could someone really have the name 'Dimen'sha'? I probably heard wrong. So I hopefully toss my kushball at everyone, trying to elicit a name, any name, I can possibly remember. No use. Onto the meat of the lesson.
I arrange all the ten kids, ranging from about fourth grade through middle school, at the wobbly makeshift tables I have tried to balance with dice and I announce that there are only two rules: Bad behavior and you're out, no second chances. And you're out if you don't show up. The goal is to finish the course and then there will be a great field trip to see real professional math people somewhere. Their eyes brighten.
I pass out large envelopes with balance scales drawn on them. They write their names on them. I ask them to write the equal sign (hardly anyone knows what an equal sign is) in the center of the balance and then I pass out small blue 'risk' pieces I have pirated from our game at home. I hold up one of these and ask, "What is the name of this?" They look blank. "This is X", I say, "X is the mystery number!" And on and on I go telling them about how one side of the balance (equation) must equal the other side. I hand out dice to represent the numbers and I introduce the very first algebraic equation they have ever encountered in their lives: X+2=4. What is the value of our mysterious X?
"X equals 2", says David, a middle school student. He smiles, confident. Some of the other kids are scuttling around, diddling with their risk pieces, not sure what to do. Then we get into some more equations, and now everyone is paying attention, but I can see that plenty of them are not comfortable with addition facts and are working on their fingers. So be it!
One girl, whom I have known from other volunteering gigs and I wanted her to succeed, lost her chance by flinging dice at a boy across the table. "Time to go", I say. She leaves the room. They know the rules, and I have to be constant. Now everyone is really up for the next problem. We go on to several and with every success, the mood builds.
"This is fun!" say three of the kids. When they get the answer, they know! High fives all around. For this time the grim grittiness of this place is gone. I know that I'll be back next week.
When I am leaving the parking lot, several of the kids crowd around my car and I roll down the windows. "See you next time!" I say.
These kids, Michael, and all the folks who help out in the community are making a difference. Physical places don't look lovely, there is never enough money, but I know there really is enough love. I just hope that tea party politics will eschew mean spiritedness and policies that are just about "me" and realize that the safety net is full of children who are our future. We cannot pull that away.

Catching up

It seems we have so few of the glorious days of Florida winter we used to have. Too many freezes and rainy overcast days. My three sweaters are all needing a wash and the drying in the sun out on the picnic table. I am proud of being able to bring fresh vegetables to the cook without fail every evening, though we are down to rutabagas and brassicas and just enough salad greens for a salad. I have my spring garden in seed sprouting flats in the house where I can find some sunny spots. The entire orchid collection is still inhabiting the kitchen, lots of blooms, but I really want it all to go back outdoors to the orchid "tree" next to the pool. Maybe in a month we'll be frost free.
Thanks to all of you who send me your comments. I am glad that I can connect. I am searching my brain to come up with a more disciplined approach, but it seems I fly off in many directions- political, environmental, grandchildren, education. This is the joy of blogging.
I am thinking sometimes that I would like to address more of the issues of being retired (and getting old!) But then I seem to become immersed in my active life here locally.
So, here is a stab at it. I like being retired in some ways. I feel it is important to have a chance to do "another thing" and let go of the years and years of a compelling work life, leave that to the younger generation. I love having a freer schedule, though this is tricky sometimes when you have to decide every day over and over what you'll do, what you have promised to do. I love some of the routines we have at our house: reading the papers on the sunny porch in the morning, taking long walks, knowing that when I go up to the main house every night there will be some great meal awaiting only my armload of salad greens. In these few years of retirement so far I have gotten to know this long term husband of mine in ways I never knew him before. We really talk, we exchange books and this is far from those days with so many kids to supervise, jobs we spent long hours on, and not much left at the end of the day but procedural conversations. ("The a/c seems to be failing", "Did you pay this or that bill", "Can you do the car pool on Thursday?") Now, the procedural conversations are just a minor part of life.
I love having some moments just to explore my surroundings, watch birds, tend the ever enlarging gardens, wonder and marvel at the big world and the intense stars on clear nights. I love having the freedom to be an artistic dilletante and explore with all my art materials. I love my new life in this community, the volunteer teaching, working on community development with inspiring people I would never have met in my old life. I love making new friends. I love the connections I have with young people. I love having my grandson visit.
What I do not like about retirement is that I have pretty much become invisible. I do not love not having an income except for the pittance of SS. I find it hard to have to be glued to a calendar dinged with odd events in various parts of the state. To make social connections, it's all up to me- none of that easy sociability that comes from work. I don't like facial wrinkles and yes, I do feel bad about my neck. I do not like having to think about and discuss our health issues. I have the horrifying vision of us as really old and fixated on our symptoms!
I think we made a good decision that we would, for the most part, try living here. We have traveled some, but not as the main thing some retirees do. You have to flop around a bit, discover what you want. Moving to a retirement community, playing golf, going on back to back cruises- that might fill a temporary void, but eventually, you have to do a certain amount of soul searching, forget the chicken neck, and get on with a pretty compelling part of life if you're lucky.
Right now, I'm going outside to spend some time observing the bat house and see if I can see some big brown bats out there. Then I will walk up to the main house and find my husband and the dog warming the bed.

The Dispiriting State of Public Education

Yes, yes, I am old and crabby and devoted to high standards of education. Our president has said that this is a 'Sputnic moment'. His children attend one of the best schools in the nation, where every classroom is vibrant with educational energy.
Our local elementary school is a lackluster affair. Most of the kids are Hispanic and get free lunch and breakfast. But! These kids can be as stellar as any at Sidwell friends in D.C. where Sacha and Malia go.
I love our local school. I volunteer there every week (in the second grade). I am appalled by the complete takeover of the FCAT materials. These are large books that tell every single teacher what to do by the minute of each week. This is the ultimate disrespect of teachers having any mind or intelligence or control about what to do. Staff meetings are all about the FCAT materials.
Are we saying that these teachers are so stupid and uneducated that they cannot be trusted to teach? Or are we saying that we have bought into the Big Education Machine of publishers of textbooks?
Everything in this local classroom and school is driven by FCAT and the big E machine. Think of what we could save by actually requiring those teachers to consider closely what they teach, come together as colleagues, hammer out a changing curriculum to meet goals they all agree on. We might be surprised to have an outcome of excited kids, excited teachers, and a bunch of kids (and teachers!)who ACTUALLY READ. They could get into math and science. There might be time to write on a daily basis.
I fear that this 'sputnic moment' will be nothing if we do not respect our teachers. We need to get those teachers on board as excited and committed leaders of the next generation. Right now, so many of them are drones, fearfully following the constrictions of the FCAT curriculum. Set them free! Get rid of the ties to the textbook industry. Reward creativity and energy and innovation of our teachers. Pay them well and respect them. And we will all be surprised with the progress of our children (who deserve the best).
Sputnik going to the stars!

Alex

Alex is one of my oldest youngest friends. I have known her since kindergarten and now she is in her third year at New College. She is worried about her resume, and what she can do about this for the upcoming summer.

I know Alex, she is a girl under my heart, she is so giving and intelligent and loving. So, this blog is for her. I have made a few suggestions about any number of things she could do, and I am sure she'll land butter side up whatever she decides.

Alex needs to know that a person of her age needn't go to Berlin to make a difference (though travel is incredibly important!) In one's own community there is much to be done, many interesting issues to address.

Today I attended the monthly community organizing meeting at the local school, Lacoochee Elementary. I always find these meetings so affirming. Here are twenty folks or so who come from local organizations, and all of us are trying to make a difference and succeeding!

Alex, you are part of the global youth, and whatever you do, think about what you can do to make this world a better place. Travel, read, write. Get fluent in a language that matters.

These young people are our future. And this is why I and those awesome others keep on doing what we do- volunteering.

Where has civility gone?

Here is my lettuce garden, even after a few frosts. It gives me strength (and lots of salads!).
The Republicans in the House are still talking about "job killing". This is so unseemly. Seems we are back to slogans with a violent twist. I would really like to see an intelligent dialog about health care. It seems to me that the Republicans in the house are not thinking clearly about the real issues. The bottom line for them is that folks who are poor, have preexisting conditions of health, or who have grown kids, should twist in the wind.
On NPR tonight I heard about one of the two persons who are in the suit to repeal this. This is a guy in S. Florida who says, "I can pay everything on my own dime, why should I pay for those others?"
How sad that this man is the litigant, the flagship for health care repeal! Is everything all about him? Does he never have a thought for the less fortunate? The reason we should all have health care insurance is that we care that all our fellow Americans have access to the care they need. This man may not have a child with expensive medical needs, he may not have young adults in his family who cannot afford health insurance, he may not have a wife with ovarian cancer. What he does have is a poverty of soul that keeps him from thinking generously of others. (he went to Harvard!)
What have we come to? Have we not been the people who give generously to anyone on the globe in need? Have we not been the people who thought not about what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country?
While waiting for a haircut today I picked up a magazine and found that so much of it was thick with ads for prescription medicines I could barely find any content! Overactive bladder, thick toenails, and malignant flinders. Whatever it is, Big Pharma will have a cure. And it will cost you a lot. (Ask your doctor.) We have been duped, not only by the drug companies that control so much of our medicine, but by our politicians (and doctors) who stand to benefit.
I believe that Americans are practical about what works for them, generous to the less fortunate, and, finally will not tolerate spurious polemics that don't make sense.
I believe that if a collective selfishness prevails we are doomed.

Little boys!

Just finishing a long weekend with our grandson, Quincy, six years old and amazingly handsome with that shock of red hair and blue eyes. He's tall for his age, going for a size eight. We look back on so many times we have had him at the ranch, from the time he was eighteen months old, still in diapers, and we were on the tether of the intercom at night from his room to ours. Those times were hard for these grandparents, no time for us at all.

But we have come to a lovely place now. No need to worry about toilet issues or getting dressed or brushing teeth or sleeping through the night.

What's left of the darling little boy is the night time rituals when we cuddle up after his bath, on his bed in the room that once was his mom's, and read the bed time story and talk about this and that. The last thing we discuss is what to have for breakfast tomorrow. French toast or pancakes? He wants to have a light left on in the bathroom. We tell each other we love you, and then he's out for twelve hours. Just before I go to bed I go upstairs, situate the covers over this dear child, kiss him one last time.

He was so excited that this weekend we would be having guests- two boys about his age. These are the sons of good friends from New Zealand, and Quincy knows them already from his school.

Those three boys had a wonderful time, running around every moment to catch frogs and bugs, climb trees, swim in the pool, and put together a "museum" of bones they collected from the property and installed in a remote cabin on the place. They climbed trees, shouted with glee, ran up and down the compost pile. They all ate prodigious amounts of food from the garden, squeezed oranges for juice and when they were in the house they constructed miles of trains and games and interesting conversation.

It was a lot of effort. We love those people, the wonderful and talented parents of these boys. What would life be without having these young people in our lives? I was charmed by the nice manners all these kids have. They all are so affirmed by being with folks who appreciate having family be there for them. It was fun for us to see Quincy as a part of this.

The Shooting in Arizona

I think that this is an opportunity to examine our 'civility'. Yes, this guy who did violence was clearly a nut case, but it is to our credit that we Americans also are searching our souls.

I am heartened that so many of us are taking the high road. Hard to put into this equation the remarks of Rush Limbaugh, but still..Sarah Palin is not to blame. An ordinary person could make a bad judgment, and she did. So have all of us. We need to get over the finger pointing and the smarmy blaming and lies we saw so much of in the mid term elections.

We need to hug more and be less judgmental and stop characterizing what we don't like with a word or slogan. "Job killing!", "He's a jerk!" "She's an idiot!" This stuff is neither kind nor helpful in our private or public dialog. It's respectful to all to try and say what we really mean.

I am accused of being a Pollyanna and a Sally Sunshine, but so be it. And wouldn't it be grand if this moment in our time could really make a difference, though at such a price?

That little nine year old girl- she could have been my grandchild-was the iconic thing for me. How can one bear it? It's devastating.

We are a people who believe in the rule of law. Our Constitution is revered. We understand that our nature is still pretty raw and territorial, but in no way do we ever want our country to devolve into chaos as so many others around the world do. It's a hard way to go and from time to time in our history we have had to do a lot of soul searching, but we have always some how made it work.

As a people we are so crabby and disparate. This is our strength, and also the hardest thing about this amazing country. I want to live forever to see how it all turns out.

A Proposal for Public Schools

We hear this nonsense about dismantling the public schools in Florida. From the beginnings of our American society we have relied on our public schools to acculturate each new generation to be American citizens. By and large, this has worked.

And now we are invited to question this in our state because of finances and because the public school system, in many cases is not working to educate our citizens to take their places as educated and responsible people. I do not think that we should abdicate our civic responsibility on this, but we could rethink..

We could truly make a difference as we pull back financially

What if we gave to each school the amount of money per pupil we have allocated? Let's take an example - Lacoochee Elementary School in Pasco County. The school gets whatever the state mandates per pupil by how many students there are. Then the school is responsible to make this amount of money work! Of course, the school must make the mark about the state standards about testing, physical standards, health and nutrition, etc. But each school could do this however they think best, and not be afraid of the dreaded System!

The principal has to work initially with the staff he/she has. Over time, this principal can trade teachers with another school. But the idea is: each principal is on their own! This principal can take any kind of leadership that works for them in whatever community is their school. What an interesting challenge this would be!

I envision each school with a leadership that makes it possible for the staff and community of parents to have a real voice in the education of our kids. We already have some of this in place at Lacoochee Elementary School: parent/ teacher committees and the Parent University in which parents get "credit" for working in the school, leaning English, etc. It could be vastly expanded under a creative administration.

When an organization, in this case a school, must hue to a budget for his/her school you'll be surprised at how seamless it is to save money. The kids can clean their own spaces, cutting down on janitorial fees, teachers can get on board for being frugal, those unused FCAT booklets can be returned, many school supplies can be scrounged for, volunteers can do a lot. And why do we need an entire room to contain supplies that are never be used? If a school has to do its own budget, in no time at all there will be solar panels on the roof, major recycling, maybe a school garden of the scope that can truly make a positive difference in the lunch room. A lot of creativity comes from necessity.

But, really, the thing is to get every single teacher on board, and that principal will have to make this school be the very best. Every school can be a challenge! Even the weak teachers can be brought up to a high level if they see the collegial worth of it and get peer mentoring. Such a challenge for the principal! In the case of Lacoochee, every teacher must be able to operate in Spanish as well as English.

What I am advocating is that each school is autonomous (with a few reservations!) Get the community of parents and friends on board because they are your constituents. It will be hard for the principal to just strike out and do some different things without fear from HEADQUARTERS. Hey, why not break through the roofs of those terrible classrooms and get some light in? Why do classes have to be all one age? Why are there no animals in the classrooms? Why can't kids actually work in the cafeteria and learn to make nutritious food? So, there are lots of strange and wacky ideas out there, but we need to hear them and consider them. Our kids are that important, and we can't be hampered by our little fears.

I believe that our teachers are the best transmitters of our culture. They work so hard in situations of fear and stress. Often they are the targets of our social anxieties and we blame them. But our teachers are US. They have the same lacks in education and experience we all do. The difference is that those teachers get up every single day and do their best with a bunch of kids who are hard. Just think of how much more effective this cadre of educators could be if they had the sense of being in charge, not having to be on task every minute to the texts of the FCAT. What creativity we would see!

I salute all teachers.

Building the last nest

Today we moved, I hope for the last time. (I will not be moving to a retirement home or some such place any time in my life!) Our small apartment, aka the garage, has been transformed into an elegant, 1000 sq. ft. living space. We are several steps away from our daughter's house. The movers brought dozens of boxes and large pieces of furniture from the storage unit where they were awaiting this move. We hadn't seen this stuff for eight months, and never missed it.

After lots of going back and forth with our truck and the movers, dropping off large pieces to friends, the rugs to the cleaners, we settled in to unpacking and figuring out where to put everything and thinking about what to discard. We couldn't believe how much stuff we had that we didn't want or need. We are paring down, going light. Break down those cartons, take the old t.v.s out to the alley, trade tables and lamps and couches with our daughter. I start to unpack the kitchen and put everything away and wonder what I was thinking when this stuff was packed up months ago.

What still astonishes me is the beauty of the place, especially the stairs to the top floor. The stairs are of the same soft cork flooring we have throughout and they are wrapped with bamboo edgings. The ground floor has a fairly low ceiling (this was once a grotty garage!) but oh, how lovely it is now with the compact kitchen and the wonderful lighting. We kept on unpacking so that we could see the entirety of the living room and the dining room. And why do we have so many tables? The top floor with its high ceiling under the rafters looks great and spare.

After a full day of this, we were dog tired and had to go home to the ranch to regroup. Tomorrow we'll go back and finish unpacking all the cartons of dishes and books. Lola, our little dog, was pleased to find her old couch and her passel of toys.

Still nest building, even as seniors! But the best thing is that Quincy, our grandson, lives so close and will be here on a regular basis.

We worked all day, and at the end of it there are still six large cartons to unpack.

The Best Christmas

He's just six, and sits in the back seat of our car crammed with leftovers from the Christmas celebrations and the dog kennel and a very few of the many gifts he received yesterday at his mother's house. I wanted more than anything to take him home with us to our ranch, and he was eager to go despite having a cold. For his Christmas gift we gave him an outfit to wear to be "Ox-cart man" (his favorite book): tan pants, white shirt and black string tie, green vest, black hat and boots. We had made him a real ox cart out of an old canoe carrier that was too big to bring to his house, but we brought some photos. Packing the car, Quincy checks to make sure that the deer skull he received from the Meylans, being fragile, is packed correctly. It's going to be part of the museum.

Coming home we drive slowly past the barn where the ox cart is. "I have been thinking about this the whole way," says Quincy. I am looking at the incredibly stormy sky spitting droplets of the impending cold front. "And, also, I am thinking about my museum. My mind goes back and forth."

" It's so cold and raw," I observe. "Not a good day for being outside." I am envisioning a hot cup of coffee and reading the Sunday papers before the fire. "First we have to unload everything."

After many bags brought into the house, Quincy immediately puts on his jacket and boots and ox-cart man hat and sets out to investigate the ox-cart. This is light enough to haul around and when I next look out he is picking oranges and arranging them in the back of the cart. Soon he is knocking at the door with his load of fruit to sell to us. "It's for free!" he says. But my husband trades him the oranges for a fine wooden box. This goes on all day with acorns, Spanish moss, hickory nuts. All the while there is much conversation about why these products are needed, and by the minute the temperature is dropping and the wind is picking up. Quincy is not cold, but invigorated by the elements.

I finally get him to come in for lunch. (He eats to live) And then he's wanting to get a remote helicopter working. His grandpa helps with this and periodically we have a large dragonfly-like thing buzzing around the living room, dive bombing the dog, crashing into the plants while I am still trying to read the paper. But he's really interested in the ox cart. And his museum. And being outdoors.

This museum. The Quincy Museum of Natural History at Woodhills Ranch. We have been talking about the possibility of it for several months. We have a derelict cabin on our place, far from everything. We call it The Dentist Cabin. (Another blog.) Wild critters have pretty much ruined the place, crashing through the screening and soiling the floor. But I have long wished for having it restored for some purpose. Quincy is the guiding force for this and it is never far from his mind. (This is his second home and he knows just about every place on this 300 acres.) The Meylans have given me the wonderful gift of labor to make the museum happen.

Quincy loves collecting things- feathers from wild birds, and especially bones! Our dear friends, the Meylans, scientists, who are the ones who 'get it' about living on the edge of the Green Swamp, and are the principal inhabitants of our guest house, gave Quincy an incredible deer skull for a Christmas gift, and with it official tags. This skull had uneven antlers! So! The beginning of a museum has begun. In the cold windy afternoon we went out in the truck to assess the cabin where the museum will be. Quincy was clutching another bunch of bones (from an armadillo). We discuss how we can make the screening stronger, where we'll put some shelving, where we'll put the sign that says "Quincy's Museum of Natural History". And when we returned he insisted on tagging this new skull with the official tag.

Later, after supper and his bath, Quincy and I lie on his bed and read three books. By the time we have finished Knufflebunny free, Ox-Cart Man (for the hundredth time), the book Obama wrote for his kids and we have discussed how the Obama family took their dog to Hawaii, Quincy's eyes are at half mast, and I am done for the night.

In a perfect world I would have many such encounters with my other five grandchildren, but they live far away. I love them beyond imagining and think about them all the time. So, for now I feel blessed to have the day to day connection with Quincy. And I am blessed to have the community of friends who are nurturing this boy.

In a perfect world I would not have to think about the kids I know in this community who are cold tonight, maybe hungry after the Christmas blast of the holiday boxes of food are gone.. Our gigs of making food, funding jackets, providing gifts are never really enough. It humbles me.

Why I don't watch t.v. (mostly)

Most nights I clean up the kitchen after the wonderful dinner my husband cooks. Sunday nights, it is Sixty Minutes on t.v., a program I generally like, being the news hound I am. Tonight, at exactly seven p.m., there is no Sixty Minutes, only football (where they knock their heads silly for now, later for Alzheimer's) By the time I get the kitchen extra super clean, football is still on. As I say, "I am out of here.", my husband says that Sixty Minutes is about to start. I edge into the t.v. room and see that there is the beginning of multiple ads: Ciallis (don't need that!), cars ( my ancient Honda is just fine.) Health care opportunities (crap), and fast food (we eat everything from scratch and from our garden).

So, I am gone down to my studio, walking the several hundred yards in the moonlight to the warmth and squalor of my studio full of Christmas presents wrapping, ceramic glazing and finalizing the costume and sewing for Quincy's Christmas gift of the Ox-Cart Man extravaganza. (A whole costume and an actual kid sized ox cart) I wonder how we will transport this thing for him to see it on Christmas?

I am thinking about all the others, those dear others I know and care so much about in this holiday time. Have I included them in my thoughts and presents?

Nothing on t.v. is as interesting as the lives of you people I know; family and friends. This has been an incredible year.. I am still in love with this place where we live. I look up at the stars and and still weep for my friend Nidia who died before her time. I am amazed that our daughter and we sold our houses and found a home site we love. I am honored to be the grandma of so many wonderful children, especially Quincy who lives nearby and is constantly in our lives. Life tumbles on and we are so fortunate to have many friends and a huge family.

Who needs T.V.?

The Silence of a frosty night

This is the second night of this series of freezing weather. The moon, barely gibbous, illuminates the fields growing only frost, and the stars here in a place so far from any man made lights are awesome. I smell the smoke from a fire in the main house and I am cozy in my studio, happy to be finishing a quilt that I quite like.
There is a particular silence in very cold weather. I used to love the silence of new fallen snow when I lived in the north, and even here with frost brushing the land there is that silence of the land hunkering down and waiting, inviting me to think.
I think of the kids I know from volunteering in a local public school who are probably trying to keep warm this night in ramshackle trailers and shacks. Some of them do not have warm jackets. They are probably gathered around space heaters and the oven, if they have one. I think of the kids who actually have jackets but they need to have zippers fixed or a button replaced. I try to do this for them, but really, they need so much more.
I leave a check in the school office so that ten jackets can be bought. One cannot fix everything. It's just bird by bird trying to help.
And then I read about this disaster of a governor we now have who is putting on a multimillion dollar inaugural party, and wanting to dismantle our public schools. I just wish he would spend one cold night with Miguel and his seven siblings in a very small dwelling with little food and nothing comfortable where anxiety is the dominant emotion.

Winter Begins

The last couple of mornings there has been frost on the fields, and driving out to get the newspapers from the mailbox, I am glad for the heated car seat I set on "high". The thermometer says "38" this morning. There are brilliant reds of the grape leaves on the vines, chickens in the road, cows coming out of the swamp and hawks hunting. With my early cup of coffee I stop the car and get out to see what tracks are on the sandy road today. And I think about what needs to be done this day.
This is my life, my beloved routine in winter. Andy will have picked the oranges and squeezed the juice for breakfast. Lola, our little dog, will be nagging me to fix her food, no waiting! I put on the oatmeal and dispense the kibbles, start the laundry. I look out at the vegetable garden and I know that more frost damage is inevitable.
Later, I discover that the tomatoes are gone, as are the beans and the zinnias. But most of this fall garden are hardy collards, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, rutabagas, kohlrabi and peas. The lettuce looks fine too. Peppers are mostly gone. Later, as I walk out on the property, I notice what shrubs and plants have been bitten by the frost of last night. I do not mourn them. I know they will be back in February. Around the house and in the vegetable garden I can place covers over my favorites, bring in the orchids and tender things, but more and more, and not out of laziness, I let nature take it's course.
Working in my studio, I listen to NPR (all the pundits). Hearing yet another dissection of the "don't ask, don't tell" issue, I can't help thinking of the civil rights agony our country went through. I hear John McCain (who, by the way, has a lesbian daughter..go figure) saying that we can't let gays be human beings yet. They have to keep on lying about their sexuality. This kind of raw prejudice is so sad. My young friends have no problem, apparently the major ranks of the military have no problem. McCain is an old guy with who knows what issues, and he is out of step with the times.

Privacy and the wikileaks

I am following the wiki leaks stories in the papers and on NPR. There is such a voluminous amount of stuff and no sensible person could read it all. Actually, does it really matter?
I think about how the young people I know have to share everything every minute on their smart phones and other digital devices. It is the age of sharing every moment and there is so much data going back and forth(I am in this store, what do you think about buying this broccoli and where are you right this minute right now?)
In this age if you want to have any privacy you can think that there is so much data out there that in the sheer voluminous of it, you are anonymous. Actually, do you think that your parents would have the commitment to the drudgery of checking all those texts?
We live in a world of sharing every little thing thanks to the cell phone and instant computer communication. But I do believe that there are eyes out there watching us. Google Street view is creepy, I know that every transaction I make in a store is forever filmed. I take some comfort in the fact that anachronistically we live far away from civilization but I know that the fences are breached by Florida State vehicles because our land is in the public domain.
I have always been amazed as political scandals play out that the players just wrote on e mail or some other public connection about their actions. Doesn't anyone know that the only security is in face to face communication while in a walk in the woods? If you have such a huge data base for sharing information as the U.S. has had, it was bound to be breached. Probably not such a bad idea.
Believe in this day and age that everything you do is being watched by someone. So get those skeletons out of your closet. They will come back to haunt you.

What really interests me

"Do you think that this place is paradise?" asks my youngest sister as we are walking in the woods this morning.
"Yeah, it really is for me", I answer. "I cannot imagine another life." We are walking in a glade where the palmettos fold into the cypress swamp. I know this place well, I know what grows there and I can name the plants I see. My eyes sweep the scene from the forest floor to the tree tops and I am looking and looking, invited to that sunny glade, to that thickness of Spanish needles and perhaps a sandy place where I will see the footprints of all the critters who were there last night.
I am always asking the young people I know what really interests them. If one knows this, they can take it from there. No one asked me when I was young what I really was interested in. But a discerning person might have known that as a child I spent hours in the woods picking plants and looking at them. In all the places I lived, it was the plants I remember. I know when the snowdrops would appear by the side of the first house I lived in up north, where the hollyhocks would bloom. I fell in love with a man who cared about the magic of fiddle heads just emerging from the snowy earth and I fell in love with his mother who knew where lady slippers could be found in the woods in the spring.
In so many places it has been the plants I remember. From the trees in the parks of Rome when I was a child, to the mosses in Turkey, to the large forests of France, to the wonderful blonde landscapes of northern California, and the wooded trails we hike in the south east, I have examined it all with such interest.
So, as my sister knows, I am happy to be here, constantly doing my own kind of research on the plants that are here in paradise.
Follow your star.

Thankful

Here are kids at Lacoochee school preparing a Stone Soup meal. They are chopping and paring vegetables that will go into soup pots with some meat and seasonings and the stones, of course. Whoever gets a stone is lucky. The story of Stone Soup is well known, a sharing experience of how many hungry folks came together to make something all could enjoy.

Forty kids pared and peeled and chopped those vegetables I brought from our garden. While some kids did the prep, others were working on Thanksgiving cards, so everyone was busy.

I am amazed that the classes in this school do not celebrate holidays in the ways that connect school to home. They do not make sure that kids make gifts for their families. Nor do they decorate and celebrate for the usual American holidays. I am thinking about why this would be?

But I am thankful to be a volunteer in this remote school where I have learned so much about our culture. I am thankful to know so many wonderful kids who have taught me so much.

I am thankful that I have such a large and loving family who will surround the table tomorrow and eat the traditional turkey and salmon

Being Grandma

Quincy has just turned six and he's here for a few days while his mom studies for her law school exams. He's spent many many days with us over the years and he feels very comfortable here, building up memories that will take him beyond the lives of his grandparents. At six he's competent, observant, polite and funny. He really fits in here.

When we went today to a local nursery to purchase three memorial trees, Quincy and I walk into the office and the first thing we see is a large aquarium, kitty litter on its floor, and a large clean bowl of water. What could be living here? Quincy peers into a rock shelter and says, "Yellow rat snake!" Of course he's right and I feel so proud that he is beginning to know these things and recognize so many of the critters that live here. He knows the routes we take to get to things around here, and he knows the names and habits of many plants and human inhabitants. He's fearless about catching frogs and insects and as he flings his body around and gets scrapes and bruises I always cringe, and he always emerges from these accidents pretty much intact.

Now he wants to spend the night in his tent he's set up in the yard outside-the very last thing I want to do. So today, I hope that this idea will be forgotten as I tempt him into the house with the idea of watching "Charlotte's Web" before bed.

But tomorrow night I think I will have to be the grandma who really steps up to the plate. I will cram myself into the dratted tent (that I gave him for his birthday, what was I thinking?) and we will be more intimate than I'd want. I will curve my seventy year old bones into the back of this wiggly six year old, and we will listen to the sounds of the deer and the armadillos huffing and snorting in the yard. We will slap mosquitoes and I will tell Quincy the latest part of the story he finds so fascinating about how tools started.

We will admire the full moon and look at Orion. And then, finally, there will be total silence as he suddenly falls asleep in mid sentence. And I will be so thankful on the evening before Thanksgiving for all the blessings that are mine, even the shuffling of the armadillos and the lumps under my sleeping bag.

When will there be good news?

This is the view I see out the window over my desk. In this season the huge pink zinnias that grow in an old claw foot bathtub are covered with butterflies, relentlessly cheerful to remind me of the predictable repetition of the natural world.

And such a comfort that is in this last period when all the news was bad. My dear Friend, Nidia, died unexpectedly. She was sixty-one and there was so much left for her to do, so much of her joy to share. Her hundreds and probably thousands of friends are wild with grief. We gathered last evening for a memorial. So many hugs and tears and recollections of her life. Her three beautiful daughters and her husband and her Chilean family were magnificent, their faces so grief stricken and reflecting that strong beauty of this incredible mother who was so competent and generous to us all. The children in our school, where Nidia taught Spanish for so many years, wrote touching letters of condolence and decorated them with drawings. Producing these was not only such a gift to our community of Nidia's friends, it helped them- kids and friends through such a hard time.

So, today in the glorious blue of Florida fall, I took a long walk to look at the river and think about all Nidia meant to us, the person she was and how her life touched ours. It's going to take a long time for me to knit this knot into the fabric of my life. When someone you love dies before their time, it's so hard. And we vow to appreciate every day and every person more.

My daughter went to the memorial service with me. She knew Nidia well, and her small son was in Nidia's Spanish group. When he heard about Nidia's death, he cried and asked "How am I going to learn Spanish?" He drew a love heart for Nidia and I included it in my letter to the family.

I am realizing all over again how important it is for me to still stay connected and generous to family and friends. And the news will be getting better.

Cold Front

We are supposed to have cold weather tonight, even in the forties! Such a thrill for us here in the heart of global warming. The broccoli plants are heading up and the garden is bursting with all kinds of greens, peas, beans, chard, onions and salad greens. Right now there is no need to buy any vegetables except tomatoes and pumpkins.

The baby squirrels come out in the morning and play, running and chittering and wrestling like middle school siblings. The regular cardinals and titmice and wrens are at the feeders. The chimney swifts left shortly after the hummingbirds, so now we can make a fire in the fireplace tomorrow evening.

Steve the painter and his son are renovating all the teetering banisters and steps up to the porches. I am impressed with the high quality of the work and the careful attention to detail. These guys move everything, clean everything, put stuff back, fix things they see, and vote Democratic. They have a faithful group of people who want their work, but as with everyone these days, they are eager to be employed.

Such a lovely day after the heavy rains of yesterday that brought magic green to the pastures. I am always depressed on rainy and overcast days. And this week that brought irritating and hard things left me flat. So, this day of brilliant sunshine and blue sky and time to work on my latest quilt and walk in the fields was welcome.

I am coming to accept the reality of this election. There is either a mean spirit or a total lack of appreciation for helping those in our American society in need. Kind of feels like a selfish fear, a stoppage of moral feeling at the third grade level. Or probably ignorance.

This week in the classroom where I volunteer, there was a small skinny seven year old who had complained all week of pain in his back. Even in the midst of a lovely and exciting project he seemed wan. When he approached his teacher and said he wanted to go to the office and "check out", I said to him, "Can I look?" and I raised his shirt and saw raw scabs where he had clearly been beaten. (He said that his sister had pushed him.) Probably this child, who had complained of pain all week, was trying to make the best of a really bad situation. He may have cracked ribs, who knows? But this child's parents are probably illegal Mexicans with so many issues, who knows? I wonder if Rick Scott looking at these wounds on the skinny brown back of a seven year old, could in good conscience cut off funds for the American social safety net?

I want to believe that Americans, independent and cranky as we are, are good hearted. But as of this moment, I am not sure. What I am sure of is that the people who voted in the tea party candidates must be fearful and not thorough thinkers. Their lives are metered out in sound bites and tweets.
As I have said, the garden grows magnificently.

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.

News from the Green Swamp

I have been in a funk for the last couple of days since I heard that our beloved Lacoochee Elementary School principal, Karen Marler, was summarily jerked from her post. Officially the superintendent of schools here in Pasco County, Heather Fiorentino, says nothing. The official word is that Karen will be gone for a short time.

When I went to the school today, the mood was black bunting, though no one can say, no one knows Lips are sealed.Certainly not Sunshine! Felt more like a Chinese scene to me.

Of course we all speculate about what has happened and we think of possible causes for this sudden recall. Political? Karen is an independent thinker, her bottom line is the kids and the community that is pulling itself up by the bootstraps. She has been out in front in the energy required to get it happening. She has also been a vocal critic of the relentless FCATs, though on her watch the school consistently made good grades - until this year when the school rating plummeted from an A to a C. Some teachers tell me that the reason for this is an influx of non English speakers.

Whatever, no one ever examines what, if anything, this means.

I am profoundly unhappy with all this. Here is one of America's extremely poor communities and the real leader is the elementary school principal who truly cares about the kids and their families. Amazingly, Karen and many other community citizens have begun to fashion a renaissance. This has attracted state and national attention!

I know nothing about what happened this week. In this case I cannot imagine that there were the usual anomalous sins people get caught up in.

But, despite the general depression in the school today, I had a wonderful time with "my second grade group". After several weeks of examining insects and spiders, the kids really know how to observe. The classroom bristles with cages , of dead and live bugs, shoe boxes punched with holes, and full of grasshoppers and katydids.

We went on an official treasure hunt in the woods behind the school, looking for critters, and almost every team came up with every item. They know the parts of insects. (Ms. Molly, how you spell abdomenthorax?)

We passed the parents who are working on the community garden and the kids asked if they have seen any caterpillars?

And then, as we were making our books about the stuff we had collected, one kid announced that there were apples in the boys' bathroom toilet.

An uproar, of course. Seven year olds do not have front teeth! Silly me. They do not want me to think ill of them, so throw it down the john.. So, we can use the net we have for butterfly catching, and viola! no apples in the john.

I love those kids and their wonderful teacher. Something in me will curl up in a frizzle if that amazing principal is ground into dust by the "system".

My sister, the Pilgrim

My youngest sister took off a couple of months from life this summer to walk the Santiago Pilgrimage trail across northern Spain. It was a life dream. She went with her daughter, Grace, who is a student at Evergreen College, and who got credit for her experience! Tomorrow, she'll be heading back to her life as a tile artist in the northwest. And Grace will be heading off to adventures in Egypt!

When she gets home she will, no doubt, be punished for doing this amazing and selfish thing. It's part of the territory for those of us who take off from time to time.

I have been so interested in their travels as I have heard from emails along the way. Irene is soon to be sixty three, a master swimmer and up for anything. What an adventure!

My littlest sister has done an awesome thing and her grandchildren will love the tales about it. I have had a teeniest bit of envy I won't deny. But I have had many adventures as well, and I am not at all sure I could have walked 800 miles in two months as they did. I loved hearing the answers to my questions about the trail, the people she met, the conditions, the food .. The religious part of it is hard for me to understand, but the artistic part is so real.

Just think about this. Irene, a tiny, fit woman, walks all this distance wearing a handmade dress every day that has emblazoned on it a large virgin Mary on the front and on the back. Early on in the trek she shaved her head in front and made dreadlocks in back. And so, she was known along the trail.

I salute this! I think of the treks I made with my best friend through the Amazon forests at night, pawing through the vines, looking for snakes,dressed in jungle gear,(not thinking about hair-dos) and never encountering so much as a smidgen of Catholicism. We were pikers!

All these two months Irene has been on her pilgrimage, I have followed her progress on my map. I dream about her, I think about where she is now, she is in my thoughts. I know she has put one foot in front of the other for so many miles it must have put her soul at ease.

I am hoping that Irene will make a tile composite about the pilgrimage.

Back here in the Green Swamp we are preparing for the party of a lifetime and Irene will be there! I shall make time to hear in detail about the pilgrimage.

Not to be too smug, but everyone ought to have sisters. My two are so amazing in their special ways.

Alone at the edge of the Green Swamp

I tried to write a few minutes ago and the internet crashed due to a rain squall. The flip side of paradise.
There was a barred owl on the fencepost, quietly watching for the mice and rabbits scurrying around the yard. It is gently raining and I think of the vegetables I planted in the last few days, now drinking in the rain water that is so much better than anything we mortals can provide.
I love being here so far away from anything commercial, plastic or noisy. I do hear the trains in the distance when the vapors are right, and sometimes planes overhead.
In the suburban and urban places I have lived I loved the sound of church bells in the morning and the clinks and clanks of people getting up and moving here and there and tending to their lives.
But I love this more! I love the silence which isn't silence at all. I listen to the thousands of frogs calling at night from the ponds and the swamp. I hear the deer with their sharp whistles, the bark of the fox, the whir of the hummingbirds, the funny snorts of the wild pigs and the grunts of the armadillos. In the barn there is the tinny music of the mud daubers arguing in their shoots they have attached to the siding. I love hearing the turkeys emerging from their night roosts, and the ibis squawking in the dawn.
This is so much better than hearing the "Four Square" garbage truck that trundled its way through our suburban street.
I love the darkness at night. Depending on the phase of the moon it is sometimes so bright I can walk for miles without a flashlight. Other nights when there is cloud cover I don't even have to close my eyes for total darkness. When I turn on my flashlight I sometimes see banks of bright cow eyes low to the ground.
Though I love to be here in the Green Swamp, I do have to get my urban "fixes" from time to time so we travel every year, sometimes just to New York for a weekend, and sometimes to somewhere more ambitious such as Asia or Europe, maybe this next time to Australia.
I couldn't live here without the internet and phone, my lifeline to friends. But I am mostly accepting that these links often do go down and then I just go out and listen to the frogs and take a deep breath, so happy to be here.

Whatever happened to facts?

It alarms me that people pay no attention to facts right now. Politically, people have made up their minds with no regard to facts! Is this because that they think that facts are fluid and schmoozy, no need to pay attention to them? Just, whatever..
Maybe it is because facts are second to the feelings about life as it is lived right now. Lots of folks can't stand people of another color or ethnicity or religion because in these times they are scared. They want to have theirs. To me this seems mean spirited.
I am trying to understand. I know that Glen Beck and his ilk are saying that we need to renew our values as Americans. I would certainly agree with that, but I cannot help knowing that what he is really thinking and promoting is the message of fear and racism. And this always resonates with the disaffected. Bowing to the crazy bloggers who keep saying that Obama is a Muslim, not an American Citizen is just nuts!

These events are always couched in piety (god), but I wonder how many of the folks there at the Beck event, are truly invested in the message that all religions promote-that the almighty cares for all humans and wants good will for al
Sorry, but I continue to think that organized religion is detrimental to the good will that can happen with us humans. I believe in the soaring spirit of Americans and I devoutly hope we really can get back on track as the inclusive

Anniversary

This week we celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary, and also the birthday of our eldest child, born exactly five years later. We are looking forward to having a huge bash of a party, what our frugal wedding wasn't, and we wanted to wait until the weather was cooler than this mid August soup that passes for summer here.

We shall have good food, dancing and music and other fun stuff. No one will have to obsess about what to wear and they will bring nothing but themselves. Guests will not have to look up a special website with directives about what to order for gifts. There will be no expensive flowers, just what the meadows have on tap. And there will be no ceremony, just good fellowship among the folks who have supported us over the years. I will NOT be wearing my old wedding dress (that, in fact, was long lost to a dramatic performance of ten year olds.)

Our three children have sparked this event. At first when it was presented as an idea, we recoiled in horror. (Oh, pshaw, all we're going to do is give each other new gardening tools. Not a big deal.)

So now I am definitely up for this celebratory event. Much less expensive than a wedding and a lot more than a sure thing. Much less stress for all..

I have loved this husband of mine for fifty years, in sickness and health, for better or for worse, we are in it for the long haul, so why not celebrate?

Life in the Slow Lane

Many times a day I am frustrated by the internet access we have here in the boondocks. We have satellite, our only option, and daily the bandwidth slims down. So we can do business in the mid morning, and then it is iffy the rest of the day into the evening. If I wait to download a photo, mostly everything goes up to god or wherever and never returns.

A couple of evenings ago when I really wanted to connect on my blog, and the internet was down, I wrote to our president, basically asking if we rural folks were chopped liver and did not deserve to have access to the world out there. We are too far from a cell phone tower to connect on any reliable basis.

Anyway, this is the flip side of paradise, and I am trying to be more tolerant. The vegetable garden is being prepared for the fall planting. It is so hot I can only work for a couple of hours between seven and nine a.m. We have removed the weeds of summer and put down the old funky jute mats no longer presentable on our porches. These are great mulch and weed suppressors and we just cover them with mulch. Then when it is time to plant, we cut holes and apply some of the wonderful compost that has been percolating all summer, and stick in the seeds or seedlings I have been cultivating in coir containers. It is all potential!

Speaking of potential, our garage apartment in St. Pete is progressing. The demolition is awesome! Now I can get a faint glimmer of what this small place (not quite 1100 sq. ft.) will be. I rescued an old claw foot bathtub from the previous apartment and as it sat by the dumpster, lots of people came by wanting it. No way! This is going to be a planter for salad greens.

It's a wonderful life here. So much to share.

Being Connected

Another fraud?

Today I volunteered at my local public school, helping a young teacher set up her second grade classroom. Basically, she had everything in mind and just needed a pair of hands to move shelves and cabinets where she wanted.

But there were enormous amounts of slick thin books, many FCAT materials, empty binders, and kits from various text book publishers, and she had no interest in them, though she told me that they might be full of interesting little things. She has reams of the same kind of stuff, now updated and fine in new plastic.

All this STUFF is overwhelming! Most of it is from the text book publishers, and now out of date. There is little in the way of inviting art materials, no aquarium waiting for a gerbil or some fish, no blocks or Legos.

We placed the current reading materials in the teacher shelf and sorted through the books, filling three boxes with books she didn't want and will give away to the kids (which is probably the best pedagogical thing she can do this year!) The rest of the books we placed in attractive bins for the kids to grab and read. She has a vision of a reading corner here with pillows and an area rug. I have promised some brightly covered pillows.

We are in most states so strapped for money we are laying off teachers and hunkering down THEY SAY. But I cannot help thinking that there is some kind of fraud going on here, not unlike in the medical world, not unlike in the insurance world. Someone is selling all that excess educational stuff: Houghton Mifflen, Harcourt Brace, etc. I think that the textbook companies are feathering their nests, people are being paid off to unload all this unnecessary stuff to school systems that don't need it! And, basically. they can't afford it.

Why in the world, for example, would a school system pay $50 for a classroom 'calendar kit' when a teacher could easily make a classroom calendar on his own? Why would a very poor school have an entire store room filled with math gadgets that few teachers need or know the purpose of?

I think that we could save millions of dollars by looking into the amazing largess of the suppliers of school supplies. Someone is being paid off to provide this stuff! Just look at how the purveyors of the FCAT test results fell short! The actual teachers and principals have little or no say in what they get in the way of supplies and textbooks.

School supplies and books need to be lean. Kids love to go the library and select books and they treasure that special 'one' book they can take home at night. Teachers and kids can make almost everything they need in the classroom. Anything is more important and treasured if you make it yourself!

I imagine the time when our wonderful public school teachers and principals can be more autonomous and call the shots, unfettered by the greedy textbook companies that now dictate even when they can take a breath.

Wouldn't it be great if every school was just issued the funds from the state and could do with it what they wanted? I guarantee that we'd see a lot of creative uses of the money, and there wouldn't be the vast excess that no one wants or needs. (And maybe the powers that be at the textbook companies would not be flying around on corporate jets.)

In the words of our man, Hooper, that's all I'm saying.

Sex and War

Dog days of Summer

We took a few days off of all electronics to make a fleeting visit to the mountains of North Carolina where we very much appreciated the cool weather and the company of old friends and the joy of being with our daughter and grandson.

The moment we returned our niece and her partner and baby arrived from Australia to stay for a week. We had been awaiting this visit since we do not see them very often, and we were so eager to hear about her life now that she has a child. In Australia, way more child friendly than the U.S., the mom takes an entire year off with full pay, and the dad takes three months off with pay. No charge for delivering the baby, and no charge for all medical things. When my niece left the hospital, she received $5000 for the child! This is "socialized" medicine! So, they pay more taxes than we do in the U.S., but not a lot more. (WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH US?) No wonder that this baby, little Seattle, is so secure and loving with his family.

But, with us, the beat goes on. Little by little, small things happen, and they pile up. My community, Dade City merging into Lacoochee and Trilby had a Day To Remember today. It was the day of Visioning when three bus loads of federal, state and local folks took a tour of the Lacoochee area and saw the needs. We had put together a proposal for the redevelopment of this area that may rival Haiti in human needs. These folks looked and took notes and then they came back to the conference room at the local power company that has been so instrumental in making this happen. They looked at a full room of hundreds, many locals (identifying themselves with their green shirts) and told us of all the money that could be ours if we could identify the needs and apply for the money that is there.

I think that eventually this could all work. An amazing photographer and gadfly, Richard Riley, has documented the landscape of Lacoochee in all its grittiness and beauty, and this has been a key factor; his photographs lined the conference room, reminding everyone of the importance of this convocation.There are so many other locals who relentlessly volunteer and make their stands.

It is really hard to think about what may work in getting the funding for this major project. We heard today that the money is there but we must identify the individual projects and make application for the grants and loans. Some of the speakers seemed to drone on to put everyone to sleep as they explained every program that could be funded. I think, who can do this?

All will be revealed! The day was an incredible affirmation of what a small segment of America can do! I imagine the day when this small town will have work for the adults, good places to live, and a healthy life for kids and everyone.

I felt so connected to mankind as I sat in the 'green shirt' section of the convocation. There was the great grandma next to me and the dad who came back for this occasion because he was born in Lacoochee and his folks still lived here. There were teachers there and retirees and parents, and just good folks of all ages and colors.

And now we have to get down to the hard work of making all these dreams happen.

Getting Ready for the Big Seven O

Next week will be my seventieth birthday, but I am still really at heart and soul a ten year old kid, but with a lot of baggage dragged along through an amazing life.

When my husband asked me what I wanted as a birthday gift I could not think of anything I do not already have that I want, so I muttered into my hand, not even thinking, "If you love me you would know." But several days later as I was on line, I heard about an amazing trip to Ruanda. I said to him, "What I would really love would be a trip to Ruanda. I could visit Paul Farmer". Deafening silence.

Of course, this is not a good idea in any way, so by the next day I had put the idea aside. I have made many outrageous and dangerous and fascinating trips to South America and the memory of them is such furniture for my mind. The idea of setting out by myself to see stuff I have only read about, maybe doing some good, is powerful to me.

On this birthday, though the years say 'OLD!', I am still vital and energetic and healthy but I don't know how much longer this will hold. I am not tethered to "meds" and I have all my parts (so far!). I am not scooting around Walmart in a wheelchair with my fat hanging down.

My youngest sister, divorced, well into her sixties, is making a two month hiking trek through Spain this summer. She's doing a trail for a saint, 800 kilometers, maybe even a hair shirt. I envy her this. But she is single and her children are grown..

My kids are also grown up. Among them we have six grandchildren for whom we have a certain amount of financial responsibility. You can't have it all! The mutual responsibility my husband and I have for each other sometimes limits our wild desires to be ten years old and free to explore anything. But we have every morning to read the papers on the porch on the edge of the swamp in this interesting and beautiful place we have made, with the loud birds and frogs calling, enveloped with wild flowers and the long shadows of early morning. And we talk our heads off about politics and everything else.. And we have the nights in our high bed with the dog! These are the rewards of a long and interesting marriage.

But it still is spice to travel yonder to swim with pink dolphins in the Amazon River or dance on top of the world in Peru, or walk for miles in Bologna. I'm not done yet!