In the parts I left out above, something traumatic happens in the middle of the peaceful field full of shepherd's purse. Paul Perry is from Ireland, but traumatic things happen everywhere, in the middle of peaceful fields and peaceful streets and peaceful lives. I loved the way the poet here puts the emphasis on the traumatic thing and on the peaceful surroundings, both. Both are real. Forever after, seeing the shepherd's purse will bring back the traumatic thing, but that doesn't make the shepherd's purse any less beautiful. (Notice how he dismisses the word "weed.")
I love the way poetry has room for both: the beauty and the pain.
You should definitely click through and read the whole thing. It's short. Here's the link again.
Everybody is talking about vaccines these days. And particularly one vaccine. Are you going to take it? Aren't you? Are you worried about being a guinea pig? After all, we don't really know if it will work, do we?
As a child, I was fully vaccinated. Actually I was what you might call fully vaccinated plus. In addition to the regular vaccines everyone got, like Polio (remember the sugar cube?), I also had Yellow Fever and Cholera. That's because I traveled quite a lot as a result of my parents' overseas jobs.
When my children were small, I knew many people who weren't vaccinating, or were doing a delayed schedule. But we lived in Haiti, a place where childhood diseases can be killers, and my children were fully vaccinated. Fully vaccinated plus. You know, Hepatitis A, in addition to the standard Hepatitis B.
The one I turned down for my children was the BCG, an inoculation against Tuberculosis. That's because I had that one, and then as an adult in the US, had issues when my skin test for TB reacted and the medical types freaked out. Then at the beginning of the pandemic, there was speculation that the BCG might actually be protective against COVID. At that point I really regretted saying no to it for my kids.
I have many fears, but this vaccine isn't one of them. I will
get it the moment the opportunity presents itself, which may not be very soon, since I live in a place where it takes a while to get the latest
thing. I'm already rolling up my sleeve.
I'm positive that I won't be the only one to write about Amanda Gorman's poem today. It was, simply put, amazing. In a day of much to appreciate, Gorman stood out. First of all, she was decades younger than anyone else who spoke at the inauguration itself. Secondly, she wore an arresting yellow coat and red headband. And thirdly, her poem gave me goosebumps, even after I had heard it probably eight times.
I decided I must share this poem with my students, and I did that on Thursday. My students don't live in the United States but most of them have been there; some were born there. All are affected by what happens there. Of course, people around the world are affected by US events, but perhaps Haiti is more influenced than some places, for reasons that have to do with history and culture and that I won't go into right now.
I passed out a transcript of Gorman's presentation (which I found here) and asked the students to underline or highlight lines that they particularly appreciated. ("Or," I added because I didn't start teaching middle school yesterday, "maybe you will hate some lines, and if so, underline those.") It was so fun to watch some students highlight almost the whole poem (for love, not hate) as they listened. My very favorite moment was hearing an eighth grader say, as the video was just beginning, "Wait, she's Black?" YES my dear, she is Black! There is so much power in kids seeing people who look like them up in front of everyone being wonderful. After we watched the video, we shared the lines we had liked, and nobody at all said anything about disliking any of it.
But Amanda Gorman wasn't the only person who used poetic words. I loved hearing Joe Biden talk about his heart: "Hear us out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart." But it was even better to hear him talk about his soul. My favorite line from his speech was when he talked about Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and saying that if his name went down in history at all, it would be for that document. Lincoln added, "My whole soul is in it." And, said Biden, "My whole soul is in it today, on this January day. My whole soul is in this, bringing American together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the foes we face -- anger, resentment and hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness, and hopelessness."
Friends, I know he has his work cut out for him. I know the words spoken on Inauguration Day are often poetic, but that the work is full-on prose. But oh, wasn't it wonderful to hear the words, anyway?
During my free period on Friday, I was trying to get in a little birding. I was over by the elementary building with my binoculars when one of the elementary teachers walked by and narrowed her eyes at me. "Were you here yesterday?" she asked. "Because there was this huge black bird out here in the tree, squawking, the whole afternoon, and it was so loud!"
Something about her manner suggested that she blamed me, as the resident bird-lover, for inviting the White-necked Crow to perform. Because that is what was in that tree, though she didn't seem impressed when I told her. And I don't blame her, because they are very noisy.
Source: Merlin app
The White-necked Crow, which I saw for the first time a few weeks ago in that very spot, is the Caribbean's largest corvid. You can see photos of it, and listen to how it sounds, here. It has very distinctive red eyes, and it's really big, 17-18 inches long.
Yesterday morning I went out before school and saw two White-necked Crows in the same tree, cackling away as the day began. I smiled as I looked at them, and I thought about how those distinctive bird sounds will be part of the kids' memories of these days, whether they are fully aware of them or not.
I've only read three books in the first two weeks of 2021, but one of them was over 900 pages. Here are the first three books of 2021:
Book #1 of the year was A Heart So Fierce and Broken, by Brigid Kemmerer. This is the second book in the Cursebreaker series, a Beauty and the Beast retelling. I read the first book at the end of last year, and you can see what I thought of it in this post. The third one in the series is coming out next week!
Book #2 was Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell. This is the story of William Shakespeare's marriage and the death of his son Hamnet from the plague, but Shakespeare himself is never named in the story. We meet his wife, Agnes (she's usually called Anne in the information you'll find about Shakespeare's life). Hamnet's death isn't a spoiler because we know it will happen from the beginning. Another interesting fact is that the names Hamnet and Hamlet are basically the same, just two different versions of the same name. This is brilliantly written and has the advantage of being about an epidemic/pandemic. (You may or may not consider that an advantage.) I really loved this book and highly recommend it.
Book #3 was the 900+ page one, Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith, who is really J.K. Rowling. What I love about these Cormoran Strike books is the character development of the ongoing characters, and that is here in spades. I could do without the excess of gore, but this is so meticulously worked out, much more so than most whodunits. You're not asked to take giant leaps of logic, but you see how the detectives find each tiny piece of information that ends up as a solution. In addition, the agency has other cases all the time, and those aren't neglected in the narrative either. This is the fifth in the series. I read books one and two in 2018, the third in 2019, and the fourth later in 2019.
Tuesday was the eleventh anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. I teach middle schoolers, so this year's students have no memory of what happened. But I remember.
I'm in a group right now working through the book The Artist's Way. The first chapter is about feeling safe to create. It's so interesting to me that the time when I felt safest to create was also the time when I felt in the most physical danger. It was after the earthquake that I began regularly to share my personal writing, and especially my poems, online. It felt like something I could do to bring Haiti to people's minds when there was so little I could do on the ground. All the fears I'd had before seemed to evaporate.
Today I'm going to share some of my earthquake poems, as I've done for the past few anniversaries. All the way at the end, you'll find the new poem I wrote this year.
In May I posted Morning, about missing my husband while I was in the US and he was still in Haiti doing relief work.
In November I was back in Haiti, still struggling with the emotional aftermath, and I wrote Wave. Later that month I wrote Ordinary, about how much I appreciated the normal day to day aspects of my life after being away from home for so long.
In January 2013, for the third anniversary, I shared This Quilt.
In December 2013, I posted Sounds from this House. This is an example of a poem that I didn't expect to be about the quake at all when I started writing it.
In January 2014, I shared my poem about being evacuated from Haiti after the earthquake, called How to Pack an Evacuation Bag.
In March 2015 I posted Tears. This one wasn't explicitly about the earthquake, but that's certainly one of the things I do still cry about, even now.
Last year, in 2020, I posted Tenth Anniversary, about a man I read about in a Miami Herald article.
This year's poem is called "Eleventh Anniversary." Here it is:
Eleventh Anniversary
That night we slept on the ground on the soccer field It was cold and we were afraid The ground kept shaking - more than 30 times that night We heard screaming and crying We held our children and told them stories A woman died that night on the soccer field Her injuries too severe to recover from That night
Tonight I will sleep in my bed I will be warm and fear will be easier to dismiss The ground will not shake (we hope and pray) Our children will be in their own beds; in their adult minds will be their own stories I will think of the woman who died on the soccer field that night And the voices crying, wailing Again and again In Kreyol, “The Lord gave, the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Tonight I will remember
Eleven years ago today, on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010, I went home after a long day at school. Before I left my classroom, I wrote on the board, "January 13th, 2010."
As I entered through the gates of my yard, at 4:53 PM, the earth shook. I held on to my daughter, saying again and again, "It's OK. It's OK."
It wasn't OK. Our city was devastated by the earthquake. But we were OK. Our whole family was unhurt. As the days passed, and we learned the extent of the damage, and the number of people who died (we'll never know how many; I wrote about that here), and we heard the stories of what others had gone through, our grief grew and grew.
Today, eleven years later, I reflect once again that January 12th will never be just another day. It will always require quiet, mourning, feeling the pain again.
The next time I walked into my classroom to get it ready to teach again, it was six months later. The date I had written, January 13th, was still on the board. (I wrote about this back then, here.) In between, I left the country with my children. In between, I struggled with what had happened. In between, I recognized that the lives of so many had been changed forever. So many had suffered infinitely more than I had. So many had lost everything.
This is a slice of life, of my life, and of the life of Haiti. For us who were there, and for many who weren't, it's a slice we will never, ever forget.
(You can read in my archives the posts I wrote in January 2010 and in the months after, if you want to know more about how my family experienced those days.)
My OLW for the year is FLOURISHING. I posted more about that here.
Part of flourishing is being adapted to your environment. One of the things I have been loving about my environment lately has been the birds that live here. Many times recently I have thought of the words, referring to a bird, "He sings each song twice over, / lest you should think he never could recapture / that first fine careless rapture." It's such a perfect description of birdsong and how joyful and abandoned it seems to be.
I recently went and looked up the poem, and I'd kind of forgotten that the title is "Home Thoughts, From Abroad." Robert Browning wrote it from Italy, in a homesick mood. It's a time when he doesn't feel like he's really flourishing where he is.
It's easy, when you feel homesick, to romanticize the place you miss. It looks better, brighter, more welcoming, from a distance. In your mind you know that things aren't perfect there, but you'd like to be there anyway.
I have to say that the US is making it easier lately to live a long way away. Between COVID and the political situation and ... well, Wednesday ... I am quite OK staying where I am. But there are always places and people to miss. Here's the homesick Browning.
Home Thoughts, from Abroad
by Robert Browning
Oh, to be in England,
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England -- now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops -- at the bent spray's edge --
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon flower!
Song Thrush, from eBird.org
In high school I read a parody of this poem called "Home Truths from Abroad," ending with the couplet "For English spring sets men and women frowning / Despite the rhapsodies of Robert Browning." In other words, springtime in England isn't quite as idyllic as he says. It rains a lot, and it's still very cold. One time I went in the ocean at Weymouth in April, and I thought I would lose my toes, it was so cold!
Flourishing involves being where you are. Sure, you'll feel homesick sometimes; even if you've never lived anywhere else, you may long for new places. But you have to appreciate the birds and flowers -- the circumstances in general -- where you live. And I do, especially in the winter, when it's breezy and beautiful here, with lows in the upper sixties. That makes it easy to flourish.
In 2020, my OLW was HOPE. I reflected on how it went here. To summarize, in spite of everything, this was a great word for the year.
This year, I've chosen the word FLOURISHING.
In some versions of the Bible, Psalm 92:14 uses the word "flourishing." Here's the NKJV rendition. Referring to the righteous, the text says, "They shall still bear fruit in old age; They shall be fresh and flourishing."
Other versions replace
"flourishing" with "healthy and green," "full of sap and green," even
"succulent." (Hmm, maybe I should choose the word "succulent." It just
sounds a little too ... fruity.)
The
fruit connection, plus the etymology of the word itself that suggests
flowers, makes me think biologically. I've been studying birds a lot in
the past couple of years, and each species has a different set of
requirements for it to be able to flourish. Its habitat must be right,
and that means planted with the right trees, with the right climactic
conditions, with the right food to eat. What causes one species to
flourish would kill another.
What
causes me to flourish, other than God's goodness? Well, it all comes
from God's goodness, but I'm also responsible to arrange things in ways
that make me flourish. There are going to be times and seasons that are
less than optimal. I like to think of myself as a hardy plant that can
survive some adversity, kind of like bougainvillea, that does better in
drought than it does when the rains are good. (I played some with that
idea in my poem "Self-Portrait as Bougainvillea.")
I can't expect conditions to be constantly ideal. But I can make sure
that I get enough sleep, that I eat right, that I exercise, that I read
plenty of books and spend time with people I love and who love me back. I
can make sure I am doing activities that make me feel creative. I can
drink tea with friends, even if we have to be distanced from each other.
(Zoom teatimes are a thing, and I have a long table too, for local
friends - we sit at opposite ends of it.) I don't have to put myself
continually in situations that I know are not going to be conducive to
my flourishing.
I
don't want to make it sound as though flourishing means
self-indulgence, or as though I will wither up and die if my wishes are
crossed. Not at all. But I do a hard job, and I live in a place that can
be challenging, and 2020 was only the latest in a series of difficult
years. I do need to make sure that what I can control, I do. I am
sometimes too invested in my self-concept of being low maintenance, so I
put up with things from others that I shouldn't, or I fail to
prioritize taking care of myself.
I
am newly physically healthy, having just been diagnosed with a vitamin
deficiency in the summer, and being physically healthy has resulted in
being emotionally far brighter than I was. That's one thing that made my
thoughts go in the direction of this word.
But
the main thing I have to do in order to flourish, even if the environment isn't ideal and the world news continues to be full of terrible things (which it will), is to remain in the
Vine. Jesus used many agricultural metaphors, and one of them is the
Vine. In John 15:5 He says, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by
itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless
you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the
branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit;
apart from me you can do nothing." Like hope last year, flourishing isn't all, or mostly, about me.
I'm looking forward to exploring this word this year.
Here are the lyrics to Sandra McCracken's song "Flourishing":
Teach me, oh God to follow your decrees Give me understanding, your word, I wanna keep Direct me in the path, of your commands For there I find delight, my will is in your hands
Turn my heart away from worthless things Preserve my life, according to your ways Take away disgrace You hold me in my place--flourishing
Fulfill your promise to the ones you love Within your ways we walk, for your laws are good Temptation loses pow'r, my soul's revived In righteousness, oh God, preserve my life
Turn my heart away from worthless things Preserve my life, according to your ways Take away disgrace You hold me in my place--flourishing
Yesterday I went back to work, or rather I stayed home to work. We had a Zoom faculty meeting in the morning, and then we worked getting ready to start back to online teaching today. It's supposed to be just a week - we'll see - but it's kind of a letdown after the fun and enthusiasm of the holiday and the new beginning of January 1st. It's just the same now, not a new beginning. Just Zoom and emails and blah.
I've been privileged to live in three of the world's great cities (Nairobi, Port-au-Prince and Asunción, Paraguay) as well as spending time in many others (including nine weeks in Paris as a college student). I just moved to a new city: Kampala, Uganda. I've also lived in smaller towns in three countries. In all of those places there have been difficult days, but I've never found a city or town yet where God is not, and I don't anticipate finding one in the future, either. The name of my blog comes from the song "Love is Always There," by Carolyn Arends.
