All Right Here

by Sara Groves

It's every loss and every love
It's every blessing from above
Here I am all added up
Oh, it's all right here

It's what I know and what I'm guessin'
It's half-truths and full confessions
It's why I choose to learn my lesson
Oh it's all right here

And I'm not God I'm a girl I confess that I don't have a sea of forgetfulness
No, it's all right here
It makes me stronger and makes me wince
It makes me think twice when I pick my friends
Oh, it's all right here it's all right here

It's caution and curiosity
And it's all the things I never see
Welling up inside of me
Oh, it's all right here
It's what is best and what is worse
It's how I see the universe
It's in every line and every verse
Oh, it's all right here

And I'm not God I'm a girl I confess that I don't have a sea of forgetfulness
No, it's all right here
It makes me stronger and makes me wince
It makes me think twice when I pick my friends
Oh, it's all right here it's all right here

Every heart has so much history
It's my favorite place to start
Sit down awhile and share your narrative with me
I'm not afraid of who you are

I'm all here and you're all there
Some of this is unique and some of it we share
Let's add it up and start from there
Oh, it's all right here

Oh, I'm not God I'm a girl I confess that I don't have a sea of forgetfulness
No, it's all right here
It makes me stronger and makes me wince
It makes me think twice when I pick my friends
Oh, it's all right here
It's caution and curiosity
And it's all the things I never see
Oh, it's all right here
It's what is best and what is worse
And it's how I see the universe
Oh, it's all right here
It's all right here
Oh, it's all right here
I'm all right here
Oh, I'm all right here
I'm all right here, all right • •

from Sara Groves' site

Enough Already

Flooding, mudslides, death, more loss of property. Here's a summary of the situation in the Port-au-Prince area. Don't be deterred by the bad translation; this is the most complete description I can find. Here's some more information.

Monday

It has been raining in Port-au-Prince as long as anyone can remember. Well, at least since last Wednesday. It is overcast, gloomy, gray, and miserable. The furniture feels damp to the touch. The forecast calls for rain through this coming Wednesday, too. Ugh.

Here's a poem I wrote back in November 2007 after a similar rainy period when we didn't see the sun for days. The first thing everyone in our neighborhood did after the sun came back was laundry.


November 2, 2007, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

After a week of rain
The clothes come out to sunbathe.
On roofs, on bushes
On clotheslines,
They luxuriate,
Enjoying the warmth:
Pink, lacy Sunday dresses,
School uniforms,
Shirts and skirts and trousers,
And blushing underwear.
After a week of rain
It feels good to stretch out in the sun,
Freshly laundered,
Ready for service again.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


I hope we'll soon see everybody's laundry all over, since that will let us know that the sun is back.

Of course, my ongoing refrain is, "At least I don't live in a tent." I can't imagine how much more miserable this weather must be for the tent-dwellers in the city, whether it's 375,000 or 680,000 of them. Most of the tents I see are no longer very waterproof; you can often see big holes in them. These tents were not designed for constant use for going on 17 months.

Having said that, you would think I wouldn't have the gall to complain about anything at all, but I am going to complain, just a tiny bit. I hope my readers will indulge me.

We had a transformer blow-up late last week, and the electrician who came over said that 160 volts of power were coming into the house. That would explain the smell of burning as two surge protectors bit the dust. It would also explain why we have no city power even though the people across the street, who have their own transformer, do.

I haven't complained about electricity in a while on my blog. I used to complain about it all the time, especially before I had been so open about my location. I feel that Haiti gets enough negative press and I don't like giving it more, so since I have now whined, I will tell you that EDH (Electricité d'Haïti) is working hard for everyone to have electricity! Here are two of the billboards in the current advertising campaign:


This one says: "Together, let's work for a country that's all lit up." (Or maybe even better: "an enlightened country.") Then at the bottom it says, "Haitians and EDH are working together to give more people more electricity."


And this one says: "EDH is working to give more people more electricity." (Literally, it's lifting its foot.) "More electricity = more work. More light = more opportunity. Let's start working for a different country where everyone has electricity.")

I couldn't agree more! Let's!

Poetry Friday: A Pie Instead?

Last Thursday was the first day I didn't have to teach. I wrote a poem instead. I wrote one the next day too. I loved having the time for my own writing and I kept going; every day since the end of school I have written at least one poem. I have a long list of ideas, and I find that when I am writing regularly, I'm constantly generating more. I am hooked!

I don't think I have enough distance from any of these poems to post them yet. Instead, today, here's a poem about a poet who decided to make a pie instead. I am extremely fortunate to have several people who read and appreciate my poems, but like Grace Paley I sometimes think something to eat might be appreciated even more.

The Poet's Occasional Alternative
by Grace Paley

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

You can read the rest of this wonderful poem here.

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

The Numbers

Haiti is in the news again, and as usual it's not for anything good. I feel a bit about this new story the way I did back in February 2010, when a certain woman from Idaho was arrested for stealing children in Haiti. We only get a certain number of column inches. Why do they always have to be filled with stories like this?

"This," this time, is the allegation that the Haitian government and NGOs exaggerated the death toll from the earthquake. Here is Time Magazine's article about this and here is the piece by Timothy Schwartz that Time quotes. While the Haitian government used figures like 230,000 and 300,000, the new report prepared for USAID says the actual number who died was between 46,000 and 85,000. (By the way, notice that that is still a huge range.)

While I am unhappy at the idea that officials would simply make up numbers (and we still don't know that for sure), I ask you to think about how things were in Haiti at that time. There were bodies stacked in the streets. Every government ministry had fallen down. Bodies were buried in mass graves without any kind of records being kept. Some bodies have still not been recovered from beneath rubble. The government was helpless in the face of the disaster and couldn't meet the most basic needs of the people; are we really going to criticize them because they couldn't do statistical analysis? When we talked about it back then, we always said, "We'll never know how many people died." And, USAID notwithstanding, we never will. Nobody even knew how many people were in the Port-au-Prince slums to start with; how do we know how many died? Schwartz's mention of NGOs and international organizations losing no one is entirely beside the point. People who have jobs with NGOs and international organizations tend to live in sturdier houses than the average member of the population.

And besides, in what universe is the number 46,000 (to take the lowest end) deaths ever preceded by the word only? When compared with 300,000, that may seem like a small number. But it's not. That many people died in a single event? What about the ones who died of injuries later; are they counted? And of course, what about the survivors who are still, more than 16 months later, living in inadequate shelter? Shouldn't we be focusing more on them than on quibbling over numbers of deaths?

Let's not use these new numbers to allow us to shrug and say, "Well, they lied. Obviously that earthquake wasn't a big deal, after all." Here's what Time has to say:

"The huge death toll and widespread destruction helped justify an international outpouring of aid for the impoverished Caribbean country, including $5.5 billion pledged during a March 2010 U.N. donor's conference."

While of course there are ongoing problems with aid and how it is administered, I would hate to see worthy projects not get funded because of this.

Every one of those people who died was an individual, a person who was loved by other people and who is mourned. We lost one student from our school and several of our kids lost parents. Every single one of us lost people we loved. Each one of those deaths mattered, mattered infinitely. Stalin said it best (and those are words you won't read on this blog very often): "One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic."

Cleaning Up

I've been cleaning up my room today, shutting it down for the summer. I'm about to go home for the day, and I have half an hour or so of work for the morning. I have to wait until then to have my walk-through anyway. All that's really left is covering everything with plastic to keep (some of) the dust off of it.

We made it. We got through. Now for the summer.

Poetry Friday: Love is a Babe

School is out. One thing I have been looking forward to, while grading the mounds of work, entering the grades, writing the comments, was writing a poem. It had been so long since I had written one, and yesterday I did.

I listened to this, Why Write?, today, after receiving it in my weekly NCTE email. It talks about how the best moments in life are when we communicate, and that writing is a way to do that. I write for many reasons, but that's one of them, the chance to communicate with other minds.

Isn't it amazing to read a poem written hundreds of years ago, or in another language, or by someone very different from you, and to find it still communicates with your mind?

Today I am posting a Shakespeare sonnet, written some four hundred years ago, that speaks to me today as I find my love for the people in my life growing stronger and deeper. I've used this one with middle school students, and I find they really appreciate it when you read the second last line in a certain way: "Love is a babe." Yes, yes it is.


115

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer;
Yet then my judgement knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning Time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in 'twixt rows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
Divert strong minds to th'course of alt'ring things!
Alas, why, fearing of Time's tyranny,
Might I not then say, "Now I love you best"
When I was certain o'er uncertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow.


I'm glad Shakespeare wrote this, and that I can read it today and connect with his mind. The poem I wrote yesterday wasn't in Shakespeare's league, but it communicates with other minds too. And that makes me happy.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

First Day

The last day of one thing leads to the first of another, and today is the first day of summer vacation. Officially, it really isn't; today is a teacher work day. I showed up dutifully on campus, and met my husband (who had gone in far earlier), who greeted me with the dreaded words, "Hi. You're not going to be happy with me." It turns out that a visiting organization needed a room for a seminar, and my husband had allowed my room to be elected. Since I can't do the work I had planned for today and tomorrow, I have been lounging and reading. Nothing very intellectual, either: Facebook, and a copy of People magazine (a friend sent me the commemorative edition from the Royal Wedding, and I thoroughly enjoyed it).

This afternoon I think I might take a nap.

Last Day

Today was the last day of school. We had our Eighth Grade Promotion this morning, and then we had a DVD for the kids, but most of them just hung out together, waiting to be picked up.

Tomorrow is a teacher work day, and I have a full day's work ahead of me shutting down my classroom, but I went ahead and pulled down my bulletin boards, and then sat looking around the bare room. What a year it's been. It feels like a great achievement to have just survived it, and almost a bonus if anybody learned anything. At the beginning of the year many of the kids were jumpy, panicking at sounds or vibrations caused by passing trucks. I sympathized because I was exactly the same. Some days they wanted the door open so they could make a quick getaway in case of an earthquake. Some were grieving huge losses; some had been under the rubble themselves. We were all fragile, our lives disrupted; we were finding new ways to live. Now we're certainly not "over" the earthquake, but the problems and drama of each day were more normal by the end of the year, more the way things used to be before January 12th, 2010. The speeches in Promotion mentioned that day and how it marked all of us, but the earthquake wasn't the focus; the kids were. Kids who, while crazy-making, are brimming with potential and are going to be fabulous adults in a few more years.

On their final quiz, I asked my students to tell me what they had written this year that made them the most proud, and their answers were wonderful to read. Some spoke of speeches they had made, some of poems that expressed who they really are in a way they hadn't done before, some of stories or profiles into which they'd put a lot of effort. Few mentioned grades; they were telling about what they were proud of, not what their teacher appreciated. The pieces they valued most were the ones that were most personal, which is exactly why I do Writer's Workshop. One talked about her earthquake piece, which, she said, was "engraved on my heart." Reading about their favorite books made me happy, too; there was so much variety, and so much excitement in their recounting of plot twists. One student talked about the "BFF feeling" her book had given her. (I love that! What teacher doesn't want students to have a book as a BFF?) On Tuesday I finished the read-aloud I was doing with my seventh graders, with about ten minutes to spare in our last class period together. I couldn't have made that work out so perfectly. (It was Peak, by Roland Smith, book #18 of the year for me.)

In general, this last couple of weeks contained many positive, encouraging interactions with kids, after a month or so that had been difficult. I'm ending this year the way I began it, loving my kids and hopeful about their future. Sure, many of them still have iffy punctuation (sorry, ninth grade teachers, I really tried; next year's eighth graders will still get some attention before you deal with them), and my middle schoolers have lots of growing up to do. But we made it through the year, our first post-earthquake year, and as I said goodbye to them and prayed for their summer, I thanked God for bringing me back to Haiti for this school year.

Pretty soon, I'll start thinking about next year; I'm already making my shopping list. But for right now, as I clear the debris in my room, cover my shelves with plastic, and put everything away, I'll be praising God for this year. We made it. He brought us through. I'm so grateful.

Poetry Friday

I'm awfully busy today, since it's the last full day of classes. I don't think I'm going to get around to a Poetry Friday post of my own, but fortunately other people did better. Go here for the roundup.

Happy Haitian Flag Day!

Reading Update: The Help

In her afterword to The Help (which was book #17 of the year), Kathryn Stockett quotes Howell Raines:

"There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism."

That's basically what this book is about: relationships between white families, but mostly the women and children, and their black house help in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s. The good, the bad, and the very ugly. Stockett says:

"Regarding the lines between black and white women, I am afraid I have told too much. I was taught not to talk about such uncomfortable things, that it was tacky, impolite, they might hear us....I am afraid I have told too little....What I am sure about is this: I don't presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960s, I don't think it is something any white woman on the other end of a black woman's paycheck could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity."

I can relate so well to Stockett's angst here, and I admire her courage in writing about the cruel, complicated world of her childhood the way she has, almost to the same degree that I admire Nadine Gordimer for writing the book July's People. I relate as a privileged, spoiled (and yes, bleeding heart liberal) white woman writing about Haiti, and feeling always that I tell too much and too little. Stockett uses the analogy of her mother: she says that she can complain about her mother, but nobody else had better try. For me that's complicated even more by being a foreigner and not even being able to call Haiti my mother the way she calls Mississippi hers. I relate as well as a person with a lovely, lovely lady who works in my home and whom I love like a sister. (I know, it sounds as though I am protesting too much, but it is really true.)

But enough about me. Let me say something about the book.

Skeeter Phelan is a member in good standing of the Junior League of Jackson, Mississippi. Like every other white person in town, she was raised by a black maid, and this woman, Constantine, was the person she loved most in the world. When Skeeter went to college, Constantine disappeared, and Skeeter can't get anyone to tell her exactly what happened. There are lots of other things about Jackson life that are starting to confuse and disturb her, too, and this discomfort and her need to find out about how to clean houses for her newspaper job, lead her to begin talking to the help in her friends' homes. The book is told in Skeeter's voice and also in the voices of Aibileen and Minny, two maids. As I am thinking about the characters in this book, I realize what a great job Stockett did of showing us the whole gamut of Jackson society. Most of the people are presented even-handedly (although Hilly Holbrook doesn't seem to me to have any redeeming qualities and it's hard for me to understand how she and Skeeter ever got to be friends, let alone best friends). We see families who love their maids and treat them well, or at least as well as they can figure out how to, given the horrible attitudes which prevail in the town. There are others who treat their help in ways that are painful to read about. Aibileen takes care of children, and like Constantine did with Skeeter, she tries to raise them right, to compensate for the neglect and mistreatment they get from their mothers, to communicate to them that they are lovable the way they are.

This was a thoroughly engrossing book, full of memorable characters. I recommend it.

Poetry Friday: J. Patrick Lewis

I was excited to hear last week that J. Patrick Lewis was the new Children's Poet Laureate. I was going to post about it this morning but Blogger wasn't cooperating. I just said goodbye to my seventh graders, and I can't remember all the eloquent things I was going to say, but I did want to link you to an interview at the Poetry Foundation site with Lewis. You can read that here. Here's a quote to whet your appetite:

"Great poetry is a circus for the brain. It’s ten pounds of excitement in a nine-pound bag. But children won’t know what that means unless we offer them the best. Soon, they’ll be asking for second and third helpings. Even though few children will become poets, poetry helps them realize that one of the most phenomenal gifts humans get free of charge is the English language. And there is nothing in any language more beautiful, more inspiring and thought-provoking than poetry."

At Lewis' own site, you can find some bookmark poems to print out and laminate. My favorite is very appropriate to the mosquito situation in my classroom:


Bzzzzzzzz!

Never
never
keep a
trick pet
mosquito
for you'll
never
sleep
once
she has
turned
torpedo.

J. Patrick Lewis is going to be a great Children's Poet Laureate. He's an excellent choice.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: Angels

In this post I shared two poems that asked angels questions. I said I was going to write my own poem asking angels questions, and I did. Here it is:


Questions for the Angel

Excuse me?
Guardian Angel?
I have some questions.

You know how people say
"Your guardian angel's been busy"
When you escape an earthquake
Or when lightning barely misses you?
Well, what about all those other people?
The ones who didn't escape,
The ones whom lightning struck?
Where were their angels?
On coffee break?
Do angels drink coffee?

And why, Mr. Guardian Angel,
Why aren't you enough for me?
Why do I need powerless human beings
When I have your muscly guardianship?
Why am I not satisfied by your cool angelic touch
Or the brush of your wings?

Speaking of wings, why can't I fly?
Sometimes, Angel, it would come in very handy;
Maybe you'd be less busy then,
Because it would be easier for me to dodge.
And maybe I could stumble less, be more graceful,
More like you, in fact, though only an earthly angel.

Do you feel anything, Angel?
You look impassive in the paintings,
Alabaster smooth and white,
Calm, unruffled, free of the storms
That shake me.
Is it that you know how things really are?
And if so,
Would you tell me, please?

You don't talk very much, do you, Angel?

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


I asked if anybody else had an angel poem to share, and Janet sent these.


Denise Levertov's poem "St. Peter and the Angel" starts like this:

Delivered out of raw continual pain,
smell of darkness, groans of those others
to whom he was chained--

unchained, and led
past the sleepers,
door after door silently opening--
out!
And along a long street's
majestic emptiness under the moon:

one hand on the angel's shoulder, one
feeling the air before him,
eyes open but fixed . . .

You can read the rest here.

And here's Steven Curtis Chapman's reminder that even though there may be lots of questions we want to ask angels, there are some things humans know that angels wish they did:

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Reading Update

Book #14 of the year was the new edition of the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. This edition came out last year, and I finally got a copy (downloaded on my Kindle). All the hype was true: this complete rewriting of the venerable WAB is just as reassuring and helpful as the original, but with a much more modern tone, and with tons of new information based on the latest research. Although packed with science and references, the book emphasizes the art of breastfeeding, too, and the fact that each breastfeeding experience is a unique relationship between mother and child. Highly recommended for all breastfeeding mothers (of which I have not been one in quite a few years now), whether they read it straight through the way I did, or just dip in for information and inspiration.

Book #15 was a read-aloud to my seventh graders. I don't usually do this, but I read the book for the first time while I shared it with my students. This would normally be terribly risky, but I had read several of this author's books before and I also researched it thoroughly beforehand, reading lots of reviews. I have to say that I enjoyed the experience of discovering the book along with my students, and modeling the way I read a book for the first time, how I predict, the kind of first impressions I get about characters, and many more things which don't come across as clearly on a second or third or subsequent reading of a book, which is what a read-aloud usually is. The book was Scat, by Carl Hiaasen, and my students and I enjoyed it as we have his previous books. He is really a perfect author for seventh graders, with his combination of gross-out humor and concern for the environment. And his characters are always memorable. This book was a lot of fun.

Book #16 was another one on my Kindle, and I can't remember why I picked it; I think I read a recommendation somewhere. The book was Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson. I enjoyed this quirky romance set in a village in rural England, but also modern, multicultural England. The dramatic climax was a little forced, I thought, but I liked the characters.

I have now read several books on my Kindle and I like it more than I expected to. My favorite thing about it is that the books come in under two minutes, instead of spending six weeks in Customs, as my Amazon orders used to do. But I do miss the ease of flipping around in the book, sticking little scraps of paper in all the places I want to quote on my blog, and most of all, passing the book on to someone else. (I know that all those things can be done with the Kindle, but so far, not as easily as the way I can do them with a physical book.)

This post is linked to today's Saturday Review of Books.

Poetry Friday: Recess Duty Haiku

I was supposed to post my angel poem today, but I didn't get it written this week. I'll postpone that, and meanwhile if any of you would like to send me one, you have some more time. Here's that post.

I had lunch duty this week. It's my least favorite duty at school, because it involves a whole hour of supervision of screaming middle schoolers, through lunchtime (which, thankfully, we eat outside at picnic tables - this helps a lot with the crowd control) and then during a break outside in the beating sun in the dust. They find throwing stones a great idea. They like to pour their water bottles over each other. They want to keep going in the building, with a hundred reasons why they really have to, now now now. OK, I know, this is not a big deal. But lately it has been inspiring some haiku. (Technically, senryu.)

Haiku, or senryu (the term for a haiku-like poem without the traditional elements of haiku, which include a nature subject) is fun to write, and the space limits focus the attention wonderfully. As my friend Matsu puts it, "Making a haiku is like poetry meets limerick meets Buddhist monk." Perfect description.

Here's what I wrote the last time I was on lunch duty:

Supervising kids
Time stretches eternally
Endless lunch duty.

This week, I got a little more creative.

Sun, dust, yelling kids
Eternity at the swings
Dante's lunch duty

And then, later, when it finally was time to blow the whistle and usher the kids back into the building:

Kids go back to class
Eternity ends! Perhaps
I exaggerate.

Yesterday's effort:

Beans and rice eaten
I patrol the hot playground
I am lunch police

And then later, after I had a student ask me a question, I incorporated that into another one. I have harped on count and non-count nouns, giving many examples, but I still hear "How much minutes" on a regular basis.

"How much more minutes?"
Seventh grader wants to know
I know how he feels

Today, Poetry Friday, is the last day of my lunch duty, and this is the last time I'm on the calendar for this particular job this school year. Hooray!

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Angels

As I wrote in this angel post, I considered the name Angels in the Architecture for my blog (from Paul Simon's song "You Can Call Me Al"). Just like the name I eventually went with, that one suggested God's presence everywhere, even when we aren't aware of it.

Lately I've been listening pretty much constantly to Paul Simon's latest album, So Beautiful or So What. I love it. It grows on me more and more as I listen, and while I can't ever like any album more than Graceland, this one is wonderful.

One of my favorite songs on the new album is called Questions for the Angels:

A pilgrim on a pilgrimage
Walked across the Brooklyn Bridge
His sneakers torn
In the hour when the homeless move their cardboard blankets
And the new day is born
Folded in his backpack pocket
The questions that he copied from his heart
Who am I in this lonely world?
And where will I make my bed tonight?
When twilight turns to dark

Questions for the angels
Who believes in angels?
Fools do
Fools and pilgrims all over the world

If you shop for love in a bargain store
And you don’t get what you bargained for
Can you get your money back?
If an empty train in a railroad station
Calls you to its destination
Can you choose another track?
Will I wake up from these violent dreams
With my hair as white as the morning moon?

You can read the rest of the lyrics, and listen to the song, here.

Listening to this song made me think of Billy Collins' poem "Questions About Angels."

It starts like this:

Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time
besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin
or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth
or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.


Here's my favorite stanza:

If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive
in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume
the appearance of the regular mailman and
whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?

You can read the whole wonderful poem here. And here you can listen to Billy Collins read it.

I am not setting myself up in competition with the Monday poetry stretches at The Miss Rumphius Effect (as if I could!), but I think this would make a wonderful poetry stretch. What questions would you ask the angels, or ask about the angels, if you could? And while you're thinking about it, here's Tiel Aisha Ansari's poem, "Living with Angels", one of my favorite angel poems, and one to which I linked in that angel post I referenced back in the first paragraph of this post.

So what do you say? Will you write a poem about angels this week? I'm going to try, and see if I can post it at the end of the week for Poetry Friday.

Easter, In Heavenly Love Abiding

Today we celebrated Christ's resurrection here in Haiti. It was a beautiful day, a day of praising God, a day of remembering, a day of spending time with friends and family.

One of the things I remembered was last Easter, which my children and I spent in the United States. Today was very different: much warmer, for one thing. I rejoiced in the sun baking my shoulders as we stood outside after church. Last year I shivered at the sunrise service.

In the afternoon we attended a hymn sing with a group that hadn't been together since the earthquake. I have written here before about how music spoke to me after the earthquake at a time when I could hardly read the Bible or pray. The same thing happened this afternoon, and I cried as I remembered God's faithfulness over the past fifteen months, the way He has provided for me and loved me.

In Heavenly love abiding,
No change my heart shall fear,
And safe is such confiding,
For nothing changes here.
The storm may roar without me,
My heart may low be laid;
But God is round about me,
And can I be dismayed?

Here's the rest. (Oh, and we sang this one too.)

Today I had on a necklace that a friend (someone I know online and have never met) made me last year and sent me for my birthday. It was a thoughtful gift because when I hastily packed my evacuation bag, I didn't put any jewelery in it. I don't wear much jewelery ever, but I found I missed having a necklace. The one my friend sent matched what I was wearing when I opened the package, and I put it on and wore it almost every day for weeks. Today it felt like an artifact from another world, almost as though I had traveled in time and brought something back from the past. In some ways, singing with the little group who had gathered today felt normal, as though the last fifteen months hadn't happened. But I knew that wasn't true; I knew we were all different now. Every one of us had faced the storm in the last year, and found God round about us. The necklace reminded me of what I lost, and what I gained, since January 12th.

As we drove home, we saw tents, tents, tents. There is still much to be done to clean up from the earthquake and to return people's lives to normal. Will the city still look this way next Easter, so dilapidated and wrecked? Will there still be 680,000 people living under canvas? (That's the latest estimate, from this article, which talks about the plight of the camp-dwellers. Even those who have moved on from the tents are not necessarily living in good conditions.)

Christ is Risen. Hallelujah! And at the same time, oh, life is hard. I fear I can all too easily be dismayed, in spite of the songs that I sing. But I continue, every day, to abide in heavenly love. Safe is such confiding.

Happy Anniversary to Me

Today, April 23rd, is Shakespeare's birthday, and it is also the anniversary of the day I began this blog, five years ago.

Poetry...Um...Saturday?

I had big plans for yesterday's Poetry Friday post. It was Good Friday and Earth Day, so there were several directions I was considering. Somehow, between sleeping in, and hanging out with our visitors, and pretending to work in my classroom (didn't get much done), and taking a long nap, I didn't get around to it. But here's yesterday's roundup.

Say It Ain't So, Greg

When you read my review of Greg Mortenson's book Three Cups of Tea, it sounds as though I have a bit of a crush on him. I even used the word "affection" and said "you have to love a guy" like that. What can I say? I have a thing for adventure-loving adult missionary kids. Fortunately I have one of my own at home. But mine was never kidnapped by the Taliban.

Turns out, Greg Mortenson probably wasn't, either. (That link doesn't work any more, but you can buy the book here.)

Aw, Greg. Why? The real story was exciting enough!

Less Like Scars

by Sara Groves

It's been a hard year
But I'm climbing out of the rubble
These lessons are hard
Healing changes are subtle
But every day it's...

Less like tearing more like building
Less like captive more like willing
Less like breakdown more like surrender
Less like haunting more like remember

And I feel you here
And you're picking up the pieces
Forever faithful

It seemed out of my hands a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
look less like scars and more like character

Less like a prison more like my room
Less like a casket more like a womb
Less like dying more like transcending
Less like fear, less like an ending

And I feel you here
And you're picking up the pieces
Forever faithful

It seemed out of my hands a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
look less like scars

Just a little while ago
I couldn't feel the power or the hope
I couldn't cope, I couldn't feel a thing
Just a little while back
I was desperate, broken, laid out
Hoping you would come

And I need you
And I want you here
And I feel you...

And I feel you here
And you're picking up the pieces
Forever faithful

It seemed out of my hands a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
look less like scars
And in your hands the pain and hurt
look less like scars
And in your hands the pain and hurt
look less like scars
And more like character

Poetry Friday: Happiness

Again this week I'm sharing a poem I got in one of the two daily poem emails I'm receiving for National Poetry Month. (You can find information on signing up for these in this post.) Tuesday's poem from Knopf was called "Happiness Writes White." The poet, Edward Hirsch, explained, “The French novelist Henry de Montherlant coined the maxim, ‘Happiness writes white,’ which suggests that happiness is a blank that can’t be described. It simply doesn’t show up on the page." This thought reminded me of Tolstoy's famous line: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Tolstoy finds unhappiness more individualized and therefore more interesting; Hirsch wanted to show that happiness can be written about.


Happiness Writes White
Edward Hirsch

I am a piece of chalk
scrawling words on an empty blackboard.

I am a banner of smoke
that crosses the blue air and doesn’t dissolve.

I don’t believe that only sorrow
and misery can be written.

You can see the rest of the poem here.

I thought a lot about this idea of happiness being hard to write about. Is it boring? Is it banal? Do I write more when I am miserable? My level of blogging lately would suggest that I do, since as life becomes more normal, I write less. I am writing a lot off-blog, though: more than I have in years. I think I tend to produce more when I am emotional, whether the emotions are positive or negative. I do sometimes choose topics that make me happy, and recently I did the following poem about a gift from a student.

Mangoes

My student brought me
a plastic grocery bag of mangoes
from the tree in his yard.
They were green and smooth
and curvaceous.
He told me not to keep them in the bag
because they don't like to be hot.
I took them home
and put them in a wooden bowl
and watched them disappear
as we cut them up into orange chunks
and ate them for breakfast.

Teachers everywhere plan and grade
and hold their audience
with not much more than their voices
and get the occasional mealy apple
deposited on their desks.
I get a bowl full of the tropics,
delicate (keep them cool),
beautiful (look at them nestled there,
and see if you can help touching them),
fragrant (sniff),
melt-in-your-mouth delicious
(want some?).
Life sure isn't fair sometimes.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Thursday

When I start to write my Poetry Friday post on Thursday night and realize I haven't posted since the previous Poetry Friday, I wonder where the week went. I was going to write about the fifteen month anniversary of the earthquake on Tuesday, but there were too many electrical problems for me to have the time to do that. For the second week in a row, we had several days without city power, and our generator wasn't working. The battery backup we have didn't last long with no charging at all. Now the power seems to be fixed, but this evening when it came on, it stayed on only minutes before flashing off again.

Last week we went to the dentist, putting us in a part of town we rarely visit. I saw houses which have not apparently been touched at all since the earthquake. We saw tent cities which are becoming more and more permanent; in some cases, the tents have been reinforced with corrugated iron or plywood.

A year ago today I wrote this post, about how hard it was to be where I was, not constantly focused on Haiti.

Poetry Friday: The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon

I have been enjoying getting two daily poems in my email (for information on how to sign up, you can see my Poetry Friday post for last week). I liked this one from Monday:

The House was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon
by David Young

Someone was reading in the back,
two travelers had gone somewhere,
maybe to Chicago,

a boy was out walking, muffled up,
alert on the frozen creek,
a sauce was simmering on the stove.

Birds outside at the feeder
threw themselves softly
from branch to branch.

Suddenly I did not want my life
to be any different.
I was where I needed to be.

You can read the rest of it here.

I love those moments when we know we are right where we need to be, and life feels just right. As you'll see later in the poem, the persona has not won this sense lightly.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is here.

Teaching about Earthquakes

Not that I exactly want to do this, but the Miss Rumphius Effect has a great post on resources for teaching about earthquakes here.

(Bonus - J. Patrick Lewis left a poem in the comments!)

National Poetry Month

As anybody who reads this blog regularly knows, I read and love poetry year-round, but I do really enjoy National Poetry Month, and the extra attention that poetry gets. I put the NPM poster up in my classroom already, and gave my extra copy to a high school English teacher. I don't love it as much as I did the one two years ago (you can see that here). Last year's is here. You can see (and download) this year's and ones from previous years here.

Sunday Snippets

On Saturday we had lunch with a friend who lost his wife in the earthquake. In some ways he is doing amazingly well and in other ways he is struggling. That's probably a good description of all of us, nearly fifteen months after January 12th, 2010.

We had some tax people at school a couple of weeks ago doing an audit. They were offered a quiet, comfortable conference room, but instead chose a smaller, less comfortable, more cluttered space because it had better access to an exit. Hyper-vigilance is the new normal, especially when you're in a place you don't know well.

We're looking at Japan, or at least, those of us who can bear to. NPR produced this photo feature showing similarities between our earthquake and theirs.

Theme Day - Edges

Today's Daily Photo Blog theme was Edges. Here you can see thumbnails of the participants' photos.

Poetry Friday: April

I am writing this post on the Monday before it will be published, since I'm home sick today and have the time. (Oh, I do hope I'll be back in school by tomorrow, let alone by the time this appears.) While lying in bed I have been reading Emily Dickinson poems, and this one seemed particularly appropriate. In spite of earthquakes and tsunamis and radioactive contamination, the cherry blossoms are coming out, writes a Facebook friend in Tokyo, and this poem celebrates that reality.


April

Emily Dickinson

An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads, -
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus' mystery
Receives its annual reply.


Nicodemus' mystery? Nicodemus was the teacher who came to Jesus in the night and asked for an explanation of the concept of being "born again." "How can a man be born again when he is old?" he asked. Springtime every year really is a picture of how that can be, how God can bring new life out of deadness.

The video below, also about April, tells you how you can sign up for a daily poem this month from Knopf. Of course, you can always sign up for the Poets.org Poem-A-Day too, here.



Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

My Daughter, the Writer

Today I finished my fourteenth book of the year, but I can't link you to it because it isn't published (yet). I read the book my 13-year-old daughter wrote for Nanowrimo last year. I had already read an early version, but the book is now completely finished, edited, and ready to be enjoyed. Nanowrimo, short for National Novel Writing Month, is a yearly event in which writers challenge themselves to write a whole novel in the month of November. (Here's a FAQ with more details.) My daughter wrote 50,000 words in a month, and let me tell you, it took a lot of perseverance for her to do that. I was very proud of her for completing the challenge she had set herself, and I'm even more proud that she continued past the excitement of Nanowrimo and did the hard work of revision and completing the novel. And yes, I know I'm her mother, but I'm also a writing teacher and a reader, and I think the world is going to be hearing from this author in the future.

My Classroom

A year ago today, I posted this, which includes an excerpt from an email from a friend who was in Haiti and had been in my classroom. I missed my classroom so much while I was away from it.

I'm away from it again today, home in bed with something unpleasant and intestinal. I am lying here missing my classroom and my kids and wondering how the sub is managing.

A Year Ago Today

A year ago today I posted this about daffodils. Spring was coming where I was, in my place of exile from home. It made me smile. Other things made me smile on March 26th last year, too; I spent the day with family and friends, and it was the first day after the earthquake that I didn't cry at all. I thought about other things, talked about other things, enjoyed being with people I love, and started to feel that life could be good again, that I could be happy again.

I thank God for healing, for renewal, for springtime. Life is so hard, much harder than we are led to expect, those of us who have basically happy childhoods, where we are loved and cared for. And yet, after the worst setbacks, provided we survive, so often we can get up and keep going. And eventually, our "new normal" (people kept using this phrase with me this time last year) can be better than what we had before.

Yesterday we had parent conferences at school, and I spoke to several people specifically about the earthquake and how they and their children are coping. It's not over; we are still recovering, on a personal level and certainly as a country. We still cry about it; we still grieve. In many ways, we will never be the same. And yet, we can and do find healing.

I look at the news from Japan, and I have to look away. It is too much. A parent I talked to yesterday said the same. She said she feels guilty about not reading all about it, as though she is hiding from reality. It's just too much, more than she can bear. Another parent said that he can't look away; he is obsessed with every story and every article. He reads it all and suffers for what the Japanese people are going through. Whichever way we are, the situation in Japan brings back in full force the memories that have still never completely gone away. But we can also say to the people in Japan, Hang on. It won't always be as awful as it is now. There really will be a new life for you on the other side.

God is good; He can bring good out of the worst situations. I thank Him for the way He does that in my life. I thank Him for this day, a year ago, and for this day, today.

I Don't Know Why

On Thursday I was teaching a lesson to my seventh graders, and a fly was buzzing around. I was swatting vaguely but not paying too much attention to it. Suddenly, it wasn't there any more, because it had flown down my throat. I sputtered a little bit, coughed a few times, and then went on teaching.

Mostly I felt proud of myself, though slightly grossed out by thoughts of where that fly might have been. I swallowed a fly and kept right on with my lesson! How professional of me! The kids didn't even know it had happened!

Of course my colleagues and my Facebook friends made every possible joke, from calling me an old lady (thanks, folks) to suggesting that perhaps I would die, to prescribing all kinds of chasers for the fly ("You should swallow a spider next," wrote my brother. "It's the right thing to do."), though someone said I really shouldn't go as far as a horse.

I don't know why I swallowed a fly. I seem to be surviving the experience, though.

Poetry Friday: Sutra

I got this poem in my Poem-A-Day email from Poets.org last Friday. (You can sign up to receive that here.) I had to look up the word sutra: a sutra is "a distinct type of literary composition, based on short aphoristic statements, generally using various technical terms". Sutras are associated with Hinduism but this one seems to me perfectly compatible with my own faith, Christianity. Marilyn Krysl's words speak to me of a life lived too cautiously, out of fear instead of faith. I don't want to "hoard my days;" I want to live each one abundantly, as Jesus taught. In fact, this poem reminded me of a quote from Brennan Manning: "But Jesus says: if you will let the real God come into your life, then you will experience a huge freedom from the anxiety over survival; none of the usual concerns over livelihood will furrow your brow or weigh you down....Open yourself to my God whose passionate love is unreasonable and trust Him wholeheartedly."

Sutra
by Marilyn Krysl

Looking back now, I see
I was dispassionate too often,
dismissing the robin as common,
and now can't remember what
robin song sounds like. I hoarded
my days, as though to keep them
safe from depletion, and meantime
I kept busy being lonely. This
took up the bulk of my time,
and I did not speak to strangers
because they might be boring,
and there were those I feared

would ask me for money. I was
clumsy around the confident,
and the well bred, standing on
their parapets, enthralled me,
but when one approached, I
fled. I also feared the street's
down and outs, anxious lest
they look at me closely, and
afraid I would see their misery.

You can read the rest of the poem here.

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Reading Update

Book #10 of this year was Thoreau's Walking, a free download on my Kindle. While it had some interesting parts to it, and some nice aphoristic writing, I mostly found Thoreau a little irritating in the way he looked down on those who didn't have the opportunity he had of frittering his time away because they were obliged to earn a living. He spent four hours a day walking, and sniffs,

"When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and the shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon - I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago."

To be honest, I never really got over finding out that Thoreau, such an apologist for solitude, always took his laundry home to his mother.

Books #11 through #13 were a trilogy about Alexander the Great by Mary Renault, entitled Fire From Heaven, The Persian Boy and Funeral Games. This trilogy was a gift from my high school Latin teacher and I know I read it when I was 16, but I can't remember what I made of it then. Alexander emerges as a vivid, unforgettable character. The second book is told from the point of view of Bagoas, a eunuch Alexander inherited from Darius' court. The third book all happens after Alexander's death, as everyone fights for the right to be the successor to this charismatic leader who proves irreplaceable.

This post is linked to today's Saturday Review of Books.

Poetry Friday: About Suffering

I posted this poem back in February 2008, excited that I had just learned the word "ekphrastic." An ekphrastic poem is one that is about a work of art, as this one is. It refers to Breughel's painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," which you can see above.

I chose to post this poem again this week because it so perfectly describes what this week has been like, teaching and doing my regular things while all the time grieving over the situation in Japan. Suffering always happens in the middle of everything else, papers to grade and kids to feed and "somewhere to get to." If only we could just stop everything and grieve, but then I kind of did that last year when I was evacuated from Haiti after our own earthquake, and that was really no fun either. I don't know the answer, but I know that it's hard to find the balance between living and suffering. The Old Masters knew that too.


Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Here's today's roundup.

Fourteen Months Later, Japan

Today marks fourteen months since the earthquake in Haiti. And for the second morning, I am immersed in coverage of the earthquake in Japan. This week's Tohoku Quake was seven hundred times more powerful than the one we experienced here in Haiti. I look at the photos and feel completely overwhelmed by the destruction and by the fact that these huge forces are so far beyond human control.

My husband grew up in Japan, and these images are, for him, images of home. In a sense he is experiencing some of what I went through last year when I was evacuated to the United States and was observing from a distance, that helpless feeling that he didn't go through during our disaster because he was actively involved from the first moment in helping to make things better.

Everything I have been thinking about for the past fourteen months feels even truer to me now: life is precious, people are precious, it could all be gone in an instant.

Poetry Friday: Reading and Writing Need My Help!

Last week I got a breathless email from the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). It was headed "Reading and Writing Need Your Help Now." It detailed how funding is being cut for the National Writing Project and for Striving Readers, and asked for "an outpouring of outrage" from NCTE members, of which I am one.

I don't want to mock this email. I think spending government money on literacy is an excellent thing to do. If we had literate citizens, we could have more thoughtful dialogue and that would have to be a good thing. And there's a very real sense in which Reading and Writing have my help, since I spend my days doing my dead-level best to teach my middle school students both. (Just to show my good faith, here's a link to the NCTE website where you can find out what you can do to help restore funding for these programs.)

This week, I got a robo-call from Michel Martelly, who is running for President of Haiti (where I live). Introducing himself as Tet Kale (shaved head), and addressing me as ti-cheri (little darling), Sweet Mickey (his stage name in his highly successful musical career) informed me that education in Haiti will be free if he is elected. Hmm. I believe that free education is one of the essential cornerstones of a developing democracy, but I have a hard time imagining that Martelly can bring this about. Reading and Writing Need Help in this country of below 50% literacy. So many children never even get to go to school at all.

So all of that preamble to say that I get it, I know that education needs to be funded, I know that many children can't read. But I was just fascinated by the title of the note, and I kept it in my in-box all week, looking at it every day. Reading and Writing Need My Help Now.

Finally I wrote this, using all true examples from my own classroom:



Reading and Writing Need My Help

Reading and Writing Need My Help Now!
Funding is going to be cut!
Literacy hangs in the balance!

A fourteen year old boy writes a Valentine poem.
He says she smells good and he loves her.

A girl grabs eagerly at a note passed by her neighbor.
What will it say?

"If I couldn't text you," writes a girl in the back row
In a poem to her boyfriend,
"My life would be empty."

"Tell my daughter to stop reading so much," a woman begs.
"She hardly sleeps!"

Two boys fight over an Alex Rider book.

There's a moment during Silent Reading
When I hardly want to breathe
As twenty-five brains focus on twenty-five different books
And turn the page to see
What happens next.

Reading and Writing don't need my help.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Lenten Thoughts

This time last year, on Ash Wednesday, I remembered that I am dust.

This year I am still remembering, but I am also getting back to normal. I am dealing with the ordinary, everyday, beautiful frustrations of work and family and life. Sometimes I feel guilty for feeling any kind of negative emotions about my obligations, when I think about how desperately I missed my ordinary life when I was away from it.

It was in this frame of mind that I read this article, which reports on a new study that found that parents exaggerate how rewarding parenthood is. Apparently many studies show that non-parents are happier by most measures. And yet, parents talk about parenting as the best thing in their lives. In this study, parents who were given entirely negative information about parenting to read reported higher levels of satisfaction with their lives than those who read positive information. John Cloud writes:

"Why? For the same reason you keep spending money to fix up an old car when it just doesn't work — or keep investing in the same company when it's failing. Humans throw good money after bad all the time. When we have invested a lot in a choice that turns out to be bad, we're really inept at admitting that it didn't make rational sense. Other research has shown that we romanticize our relationships with spouses and partners significantly more when we believe we have sacrificed for them. We like TVs that we've spent a lot to buy even though our satisfaction is no lower when we watch a cheaper television set."

In other words, parents really are not as happy as non-parents, but they can't accept this; they have to pretend they are happy so that they won't feel bad about the foolish choice they have made to have children.

Cloud makes it quite obvious in the article how he feels about this, as does the title of the article: "Does Having Kids Make Parents Delusional?" But could it simply be that God has wired us to be happy when we are sacrificing ourselves? Since we are dust, and since the only lasting importance is found in God and in the human soul, is it possible that investing in our children, and our families, and our friends, and people in general, is the best way to be happy long-term? Even if in the process there is pain and irritation sometimes? Cloud says: "All parents know that having kids is a blessing — except when it's a nightmare of screaming fits, diapers, runny noses, wars over bedtimes and homework and clothes." Yes, I had a war with my son last night over bedtime, but I don't believe I am fooling myself when I say that having kids is a blessing. My life would be quieter, and cleaner, and less complicated, if I had no contact with other people, my children included, but it would also be infinitely poorer.

I am dust. Everything I have could be gone in a moment. All that matters is God and human beings.

Carnival

I stayed home today and read and napped and generally had a wonderful day off. Since I can't give any first-hand reports on how Carnival went, here are some articles.

From the LA Times: "Carnival Returns to Haiti, With Some Darker Themes."

From Time Magazine: "Amid Year-Old Ruins, Haiti Resumes its Carnival Celebrations."

Carnival is Coming

Last year, Carnival happened exactly a month after the earthquake. Instead of the usual celebration, the government called for three days of prayer and fasting.

This year, Carnival is on again. Not everyone is happy about it.

Poetry Friday: Dizzy in Your Eyes

For today's Poetry Friday, I have a book review. Except...it feels funny calling it a book. I haven't actually held this book; instead, I downloaded it onto the Kindle which I got for Christmas. I have enjoyed reading on my Kindle much more than I thought I would. I've already read two complete books on it. But reading poetry on it is just not the same experience.

I have two books of poetry on my Kindle. The first is the complete works of Emily Dickinson. This was one of the first things I downloaded, and I even paid for it. And I was a little disappointed. I wouldn't have expected that the appearance of the page would matter much to me; it's all about the words, I would have said. But I find the layout of the book annoying. I don't like it that one line of a poem is on one page, and then I have to turn the page (this is an expression which will soon be gone, I guess, or just persist in the way we still say "dial a phone number") to see the rest of the poem. The great Emily's words are still fabulous, and I love having all of them at my fingertips, but I think I'd rather see them on an actual page.

I can't resist sharing this Emily Dickinson poem, by the way, which I just read while looking at the Kindle and composing the above paragraph:


We play at paste,
Till qualified for pearl,
Then drop the paste,
And deem ourself a fool.
The shapes, though, were similar,
And our new hands
Learned gem-tactics
Practising sands.


Sigh. Isn't it wonderful? But it did annoy me that the last line was on the top of the next page.

So, anyway. The second book of poetry which I downloaded for my Kindle was one which I had seen reviewed on someone's blog and put on my wish list. I'm always looking for poems that my students will love and relate to. I give them lots of classic works, but it's always fun to introduce them to something a little more accessible. So when I got a gift certificate for my birthday recently, I used part of it for Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems about Love, by Pat Mora.

As I said, I haven't held the actual book in my hands, and perhaps in the book the form descriptions actually are on the page preceding the poem itself. But I doubt the last line of the first page of the preface is on a page by itself. These things are small annoyances but they do affect my pleasure in the poems, even if only slightly.

However, I did find pleasure in the poems. They are all about love, but many different kinds of love. We see the boy hedging his bets by courting three girls at the same time, with disastrous results. We listen in on the self-doubts of adolescents struggling to figure out how life works and how to love themselves. A girl writes to her father, remembering dancing with him at her cousin's wedding. Another watches her brother's best friend from afar and muses:

I watch Billy's hands
hold the basketball, and I imagine
my hand in his, my eyes
floating in his brown eyes.

No one has felt like this. Ever.


That poem captures some of what I love about teaching middle schoolers; it's such a privilege to get glimpses of the experiences they are having for the first time, when it really does feel as though nobody, ever, has felt the way you do.

Other poems in the book talk about the loss of a friend, misunderstandings, breakups. And Mora plays with forms: a sonnet, a sestina, haiku, and more. These will be fun to share with students.

Ultimately, the poems are about the words, and I enjoyed these. I'll probably swallow my petty annoyance and keep downloading poetry to my Kindle.

Others are posting poetry on today's roundup here, at The Small Nouns. Take a look!

Aftershocks

This morning the seventh graders were full of the news that there was an aftershock this morning. I can't find it on the USGS website, but apparently Haitian radio news reported it. I didn't feel it this time.

I did feel an aftershock yesterday afternoon, though. I had an interview with my college alumni magazine and had the opportunity to retell the story of the earthquake and what happened to my family in its wake. This is a story I have told a hundred times, at least, and I didn't anticipate how I would feel this time. I teared up a few times during the story - that's normal - but when the Skype conversation was over, I was sitting at my computer and glanced at the time. It was 4:51. The earthquake happened at 4:53. The words "earthquake time" came into my head and I started to cry, hard. The rest of the evening, I felt shaky and extra-emotional. (I thank God for the people He sent me to talk to.)

Aftershocks. When will they end? Will I feel them forever? I laugh at myself when I read what I wrote last year (Here's what I wrote a year ago yesterday.), and how I seem to be congratulating myself sometimes on how much better I'm doing. Almost fourteen months after the 12th of January, 2010, I am still fragile, still shaken. Still suffering aftershocks.

Theme Day - My Favorite Part of Town

It's the first of the month - theme day. Take a look at the favorite parts of town of the Daily Photo bloggers.

Alive

A year ago today I posted this for Poetry Friday, talking about how grateful I was to be alive.

Poetry Friday: A Quiet Life

In times of crisis, I appreciate the ordinary. So now, when my life isn't particularly in crisis, I am trying to appreciate the ordinary, too, instead of waiting until it is gone. This week as I read about the earthquake in New Zealand and hurt for those people, as I understood exactly what they were going through, I thought of how grateful I am for a quiet life. Baron Wormser's take on that concept is to focus on a properly boiled egg. (I posted this poem once before, in June 2008.)

For the people of Christchurch, I wish a properly boiled egg, and other features of ordinary life, soon.


A Quiet Life

by Baron Wormser

What a person desires in life
is a properly boiled egg.
This isn't as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
and furnaces and factories,
of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
of women in kerchiefs and men with
sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
the ace in any argument for God.
Only God could have imagined from
nothingness the pang of salt.
Political peace too. It should be quiet
when one eats an egg. No political hoodlums
knocking down doors, no lieutenants who are
ticked off at their scheming girlfriends and
take it out on you, no dictators
posing as tribunes.
It should be quiet, so quiet you can hear
the chicken, a creature usually mocked as a type
of fool, a cluck chained to the chore of her body.
Listen, she is there, pecking at a bit of grain
that came from nowhere.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is here, at Read Write Believe.

A Year Ago Today

I wrote this post a year ago today, about aftershocks. I'm reading about the ones they are experiencing in New Zealand. The most recent aftershock I know about here in Haiti was January 31st, 2011. The metaphorical ones continue.

Reading Update

Books #7 and #8 of this year were Confusion and Casting Off, by Elizabeth Jane Howard. These are the third and fourth books of the Cazalet Chronicle, an enormously entertaining and engrossing series about the Cazalet family in the years before, during, and immediately after the second World War. Howard's great strength is her characters, whom the reader comes to know. I also enjoyed her attention to the details of the historical period.

Book #9 was a YA title, Sarah Dessen's Someone Like You. Dessen's books are very popular among my middle school girls. Her characters are believable and motivated by the things that really do motivate teenagers. This book deals with friendship, the appeal of "bad boys," and teen pregnancy. I found myself groaning at the birth scene - it just screamed "teen movie." However, I cheered for Halley's growing awareness that "someone like her" is worth much more than she thought.

This post is linked to today's Saturday Review of Books.

Poetry Friday: Rain

I didn't post a poem last week, but I'm back today with a poem about rain. It's been raining every night here in Haiti - way too early for the rainy season. Everyone keeps saying, "Wow, isn't it good that it didn't rain like this last year?" There are still many people living in tents and in less than adequate shelter, but nothing like the millions who were sleeping outdoors last February. In French they use the expression à la belle étoile - under the beautiful stars - to talk about sleeping outside. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? The reality is somewhat different. Here's what I posted on February 11th, 2010, the first time it rained after the earthquake.

Today's rain poem has the perfect attitude towards the rain.



Before the Rain

by Lianne Spidel


Minutes before the rain begins
I always waken, listening
to the world hold its breath,
as if a phone had rung once in a far
room or a door had creaked
in the darkness.

Perhaps the genes of some forebear
startle in me, some tribal warrior
keeping watch on a crag beside a loch,
miserable in the cold...

Here's the rest of it.

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Hello, Ordinary

A year ago today I wrote this post, called "Ordinary." I was longing for ordinary, for my daily life as I had known it before the earthquake. I missed my husband and my students, my home and my routines.

Today is a blessedly ordinary day. I ate breakfast at home with my family (we are out of propane, so I didn't get a cup of tea), came to work where I taught and graded and interacted with students and generally did my job, ate beans and rice sitting at a picnic table in our snack shop area. How beautiful all of that is!

Was your day ordinary today? Did you appreciate what a blessing ordinary really is?

Valentine's Day in Middle School

I have to admit, this is a day that I am often quite glad to see the end of. The massive amounts of sugar, the rose deliveries during class, the teddy bears which say "I love you": none of these things are conducive to great academic progress. Today as I was teaching eighth grade, there were serenades going on right outside my window during high school lunch. Eighth grade is a little more trying on this day than seventh, anyway; my observation is that for the seventh graders the holiday is still mostly about candy, whereas for the eighth graders, hormones have become a part of the festivities.

As often happens, Valentine's Day coincides with Teacher Appreciation Week this year, so we started the morning with a Teacher Appreciation Breakfast that was fabulous. After school I went to a Valentine's party. And in between there were several surprises which ensured that I had a great day.

Anniversary

Yesterday it was thirteen months since the earthquake. I didn't write about it, on purpose. It was the first time since that day in January 2010 that the 12th came around without me obsessing about it for a few days before and thinking about it instantly the moment I woke up on the day itself. I thought about it early in the morning, but it wasn't my first thought. Is this progress?

Thirteen months. Everyone I talk to says both that it seems more recent than that, and that it seems a very long time ago. I can hardly imagine a time before the earthquake. What kind of a person was I back then? How did I see the world?

Every time we drive to church we pass many signs for a school called the Life Goes On Institute. I don't know how good the school is, but I know that its name speaks truth: Life Goes On. It doesn't stop just because everything falls apart. Life has gone on for the past thirteen months. We took a strange road today and my husband said he just wanted to try it; the last time he had been down that road it was impassable because it was full of rubble and tents. Now there was some rubble, but no tents; those people have moved on. Other places in the city are still crammed with tents. For those people, too, still living thirteen months later in a way that might be fun for a weekend but not at all for month after month, life goes on.

This time last year, Haiti was observing three days of prayer and fasting, replacing Carnival. This year, preparations are on track for Carnival. The theme this year is An'n Selebre Lavi: Let's Celebrate Life. (Carnival is much later this year than it was last, not until the beginning of March.) Let's Celebrate Life. I do, every day, because it does go on for us, though not for so many others.

Poetry Friday

It has been months and months -- I think more than a year -- since I missed a Poetry Friday, but somehow I'm just not feeling it today. Maybe I'll be able to get my poetic fervor back later in the day, but meanwhile, plenty of other people are posting. Here's the roundup.

Grumpy but Grateful

A year ago today, it was four weeks after the earthquake. I wrote this, reflecting on how I had changed. Of course, it was a little early to say that.

Today, I thought about those days a year ago, when I was so desperately missing my job and my students and my classroom. Today I yelled at my eighth graders (not just raising my voice to be heard above them, but yelling, which I do about once a semester and hate myself for immediately afterward). The other day I commented to my seventh graders that it seemed they were having a hard time listening, and one of them said, "We're behaving better than we usually do." Another one added, "Yeah, you're just in a bad mood."

I took a moment, while I was on lunch duty and policing the playground, to be thankful for meaningful work, for papers to grade, for reading and writing. (This time last year I could hardly read a book.) I also thanked God for my students, for who they are (noisy, maddening, lovable), and for who they are becoming. I wish I could say I won't ever yell at them again, or ever be in a bad mood again, but I know that's not realistic. The earthquake didn't turn me into a flawless teacher or a flawless human being. But I can promise that I will always be grateful; I will always remember, if not every moment, at least every day, to thank God for my life, for my work, and for the young people in my temporary care.

Life Goes On in Haiti

Every day when I ask my seventh graders for prayer requests in the morning, I hear, "The elections." These seem to be the most drawn-out elections in history. The first round took place in November. The second round is now officially to happen in March.

Emily Troutman wrote this very good article about the mood in Haiti right now. It begins:

"After exhaustive delays, Haiti's electoral council announced today that presidential candidates Mirlande Manigat and Michel Martelly will go forward into the next round. The candidate promoted by current President Rene Preval, Jude Celestin, was scrapped.

By now, though, many seem too tired, and too sad, to care."

If you're looking for political information, this blog is always great for that, as well as amazing photos.

I'm just going to work every day and trying to teach my middle schoolers some things about being literate citizens. I hope that makes a difference some day.

Poetry Friday: The Road Not Taken

What choices have "made all the difference?" Who knows? When I was choosing my path, "both that morning equally lay." I thought I might come back, but you never do.

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Thursday, and Five Kids in Middle School

So we have more problems in Haiti. Yawn. What else is new? This time it's the announcement of the official election results. (Yes. The election was in November.)

The announcement was supposed to be at 8 last night, but it didn't happen until nearly 8 this morning. And it's as expected: Martelly and Manigat will be in the runoff in March. The question is whether Celestin will accept this gracefully or whether he will get his supporters out on the street. N'ap we. We'll see.

Meanwhile I have three seventh graders here and there are two eighth graders. The math teacher took them all for first period and I'll get them all second period. Time to break out the games.

And yeah, I haven't written about Baby Doc being back in Haiti, or rumors that Aristide is coming back too. Sometimes I just don't know what to say. The sheer craziness is too much to believe. So let's just play Taboo and not think about it.

If you want some actual political information, this blog is always very informative.

Why it Matters

I have been having difficulty blogging lately because of internet problems at home, but I wanted to link to a post by Jess responding to a book I recommended, Francis Chan's Crazy Love.

Jess wrote (in this post) about Chan's quote of his wife's grandmother, who went to see a play and then said, "Oh honey, I really don't want to be here right now. I just don't know if this is where I want to be when Christ returns. I'd rather be helping someone or on my knees praying. I don't want him to return and find me sitting in a theater."

Does life have to be virtue OR art, Jess asks? Can't it be both?

On this subject I love Sara Groves' song "Why it Matters," in which she describes her view of art, which she considers "small ramparts for the soul."

Why it Matters
by Sara Groves

Sit with me and tell me once again
Of the story that's been told us
Of the power that will hold us
Of the beauty, of the beauty
Why it matters.

Speak to me until I understand
Why our thinking and creating
And our efforts at narrating
About the beauty, of the beauty
And why it matters

Like the statue in the park
Of this war-torn town
And its protest of the darkness
And the chaos all around
With its beauty, how it matters
How it matters

Show me the love that never fails
The compassion and attention
Midst confusion and dissension
Like small ramparts for the soul
How it matters

Like a single cup of water
How it matters


Why does reading matter? Why does art matter? Why do drama and painting and all those efforts of narrating the beauty of God's world matter? God put some of His own creativity in us. We don't create ex nihilo like He does, but some of us do our best to fight against the chaos around us by writing, or drawing, or making something. When we exercise the talents God gave us, we honor Him. We bring "compassion and attention" to His world. And the art we produce really can be "small ramparts for the soul." For our own souls and, sometimes, for the souls of those who read, or listen, or look.