Spiritual Journey Thursday: Summer and Birds

Carol Varsalona, who's hosting today, has invited us to reflect on the topic "Nurturing Our Summer Souls."  

 

 

 

This summer has brought several reasons, some unexpected, for stress and anxiety. Nurturing my summer soul hasn't come quite as naturally as I had hoped. But one thing I have been doing daily is looking at birds, and somehow that always makes me feel better. 

 

I always appreciated Jesus' bird-themed words in Matthew 6:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

The birds aren't just sitting around waiting for their food to come to them. They are in constant, earnest pursuit of nourishment. But they seem peaceful to us, perhaps because they can fly, or perhaps, as a birding friend put it, because they are outside of the sphere of the things that bring us stress, and we can attach any story to them that we wish. 

Even though I always enjoyed reflecting on the ways the birds' behavior comments on human anxiety, it's only been in the last two or three years that I have started to find "considering the birds," as Jesus put it (or "Look at the birds of the air," in the version I quoted above), to be a prescription for anxiety, as effective on the best days as therapy or medication. Maybe it's as simple as turning my eyes away from my own concerns, but lately the words of Jesus cycle through my mind again and again as I focus my binoculars: "Do not worry about your life....Look at the birds of the air." 

Check out what everyone else has to say for today's SJT over at Carol's blog. 

 

 

Poetry Friday: What is so Rare as a Day in June?

What is So Rare as a Day in June?

 

AND what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days;

Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,

And over it softly her warm ear lays;

Whether we look, or whether we listen,

We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;

Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,

And, groping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;

The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over hills and valleys;

The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,

And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean

To be some happy creature's palace;

The little bird sits at his door in the sun,

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,

And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives;

His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,

And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;

He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-

In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? 

Now is the high-tide of the year,

And whatever of life hath ebbed away

Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,

We are happy now because God wills it;

No matter how barren the past may have been,

'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;

We sit in the warm shade and feel right well

How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;

We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing

That skies are clear and grass is growing;

The breeze comes whispering in our ear,

That dandelions are blossoming near,

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,

That the river is bluer than the sky,

That the robin is plastering his house hard by;

And if the breeze kept the good news back,

For our couriers we should not lack;

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,-

And hark! How clear bold chanticleer,

Warmed with the new wine of the year,

Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;

Everything is happy now,

Everything is upward striving;

'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true

As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-

'Tis for the natural way of living:

Who knows whither the clouds have fled?

In the unscarred heaven they leave not wake,

And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;

The soul partakes the season's youth,

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe

Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,

Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.

James Russell Lowell 

 

 

I posted this before back in 2017. 

 

Linda has the roundup today. 

 

Slice of Life Tuesday: Not Giving Up

Sometimes someone else's words help most.

 

Instructions on Not Giving Up
Ada Limón

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

 

I wrote some about this poem here.  

Poetry Friday: Hispaniolan Woodpecker

 

Photo Credit: Gil Ewing, eBird.com

I remember
the first time I saw
a Hispaniolan Woodpecker
in my yard:

the powerful beak
the yellow cartoon character eye
the black and yellow basketwork of the back
the bright red head.

It was the first time I knew
there was such a bird.
I imagined it rare,
perhaps unique,
an anomaly
about to burst,
phoenix-like,
into flame.

Now
I hear them every day
and often see them.
(Once, four on the same branch.)
Not a surprising bird,
but one of the most common.

And yet perhaps that gasp
from the first time,
that leap of my heart,
was the most appropriate response,
after all.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Buffy has the roundup today at BuffySilverman.com.

Slice of Life Tuesday: Striking the Set

 

Montessori teachers call cleaning up their classrooms at the end of the year "Striking the Set." Just like you have to take down the scenery after the last performance of a play, so you take down the carefully-thought-out scenery of your room, all the things you hung up or placed just so to facilitate learning. Of course, for us, as for teachers around the world, there have been multiple sets this year. Sometimes it was a Zoom screen where we taught, sometimes the online portal where we'd posted lessons, and sometimes - really quite often for us, thankfully - our classrooms. But really, every year there are multiple sets. You don't ever know where and when and how the learning is taking place, and quite often it's not where and when and how you think. I know that from kids who come back and tell me the thing they remember best about my class, and I lean forward, excited to find out what it is...and it's usually something like, that story I told (what story - could it have been from a different teacher?), or the fact that I had bean bag chairs in my room that they could use for silent reading. Rarely is there a word about the lessons I polished so lovingly.

So anyway, I'm striking my set today, but before cranking the Paul Simon music to which I traditionally do this task, I first went out birding on our campus and saw/heard six species, all familiar friends to me by now: House Sparrows, Mourning Doves, Antillean Palm-Swift, Gray Kingbirds, Hispaniolan Lizard-cuckoo, and two tiny Vervain Hummingbirds. How did I learn all those names and how to recognize each one so easily? Months and months of daily birding, checking my app, reading my bird books, consulting eBird. 

Back to my room to strike the set, and to reflect on how glad I am that the other set will stay up all summer and still be there when I get back to start again: the trees, bushes, wires, roofs of our campus, all the places where I've loved seeing birds this whole school year.

Reading Update

Book #47 of the year was As Bright as Heaven, by Susan Meissner. This is a historical novel about the Spanish Flu pandemic of a century ago. I enjoyed the book, though it asks the reader to accept a pretty big coincidence at the center of the plot. Well, coincidences do happen. I always like stories about people healing from trauma, and I think ultimately that is what this story is about.

Book #48 was The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller. I loved this post-apocalyptic, post-pandemic novel even though it is violent and profane to a degree I don't usually choose. But it's so very well-written and puts you right there in this heartbreaking, destroyed world. And it is full of birds and poetry. I loved it so much that as soon as I finished it, I went looking for more by this author, and book #49 was his 2019 book The River. In this one the crisis is more localized and not quite as dramatic, but still plenty dramatic. Again, lots of violence. Again, many little perfectly-described bird sightings. Again, outdoors and survival and being pushed to the very limit. And more poetry! Here's a little snippet: "Last night's freeze had taken care of the mosquitoes. Wynn heard the knock of stone as Jack moved outside, and he also heard the slow creek making the faintest ripple. He thought of the Merwin poem about dusk that he loved so much. Merwin describes the sun going down believing in nothing, and how he hears the stream running after it: It has brought its flute it is a long way. It killed him. The one and only sun without belief in anything and the little stream believing so hard, believing in music even. What he loved about poetry: it could do in a few seconds what a novel did in days. A painting could be like that, too, and a sculpture. But sometimes you wanted something to take days and days." I've got more by Heller on hold at the library. Hope it takes days and days to read. 

Book #50 was Sky in the Deep, by Adrienne Young. This is a YA title set in a Viking-like world where Eelyn is a teen-aged warrior. Very violent, this book is nevertheless a gripping story of family and clan and being at home. 

 

Book #51 was A Vow So Bold and Deadly, by Brigid Kemmerer, the third in the Cursebreaker series, a Beauty and the Beast retelling. I read the first two books in December and January, and I've been waiting (none too patiently) ever since for my hold on the third one to come through from the library. I liked the third installment, especially the insights into what it's like to lead, not just to be in charge but to manage people, with all their expectations and needs. 

 

Book #52 was a teaching book and a reread (for the third time - here's what I wrote about it in 2011), The 9 Rights of Every Writer: A Guide for Teachers, by Vicki Spandel. This is a great book for teachers. I really love the way it refocuses what exactly we're trying to do when we teach writing. I especially enjoyed the chapter on why we shouldn't teach formulas for writing. Some curriculum teaches writing that way and I just hate it. No, good writing is never formulaic. "I know the argument: formula is better than no organization at all," writes Spandel. "This is like saying that thinking in a confused way is better than not thinking at all. Is it? Formulaic writing will take our young writers to the upper limits of mediocrity. . . . We cannot possibly create enough formulas to fit every situation. Nor should we. The very presentation of a formula or outline suggests a belief that writing is simple and reductive, when we ought to be teaching just the opposite. We ought to tell students the truth: that writing is complex, and that every single writing situation is different, and must be thought through as carefully and sensitively as a conversation with someone one has never met but would like to have for a friend." This last section is underlined in my copy and my handwriting in the margin says "Yes!" To the extent that I have ever allowed myself to be drawn into this whole horrid formula nonsense (and, in my defense, it wasn't all the way), I repent and make a new commitment not to do it again!

Poetry Friday: Vanishing

This poem by Brittney Corrigan is about the ongoing decrease in the number of birds in the world. I've been wanting to write my own poem on this topic for a while, but in the meantime here's part of hers:

Vanishing

by Brittney Corrigan

... the birds quietly lessen

themselves among the grasslands.

No longer a chorus but a lonely,

indicating trill: Eastern meadowlark,

wood thrush, indigo bunting --

their voices ghosts in the 

chemical landscape of crops.

...Color drains from

our common home so gradually,

we convince ourselves

it has always been gray.

Little hollow-boned dinosaurs,

you who survived the last extinction...

Click on over to read the rest.

 

I have been attending some of the Zooms put on by BirdsCaribbean and learning so much. Today I heard about birding on Abaco, one of the islands of the Bahamas, and the progress in recovering from Hurricane Dorian. A couple of weeks ago I watched as a woman teared up describing her first sighting of a hummingbird after the hurricane. 

 

The vanishing makes what's left even more precious.

 

Carol has this week's roundup.

Slice of Life Tuesday: Is It Almost Over?

 

I started doing Slice of Life back in September, and I hadn't missed a week, until the last two. Somehow it got to be too much, and producing a slice of life felt like being asked to slice soup, or ocean water. A few things happened, like we went back to online school, and everything for my son's graduation got canceled or went online, oh yeah and my family got sick (that feels like a long time ago now, being at the beginning of the two weeks I missed).

Here in Haiti, the COVID numbers soared, and the hospitals got overwhelmed, and there was gang fighting (nothing new, but it intensified). 

Normally we get done with school at the end of May, and the first week of June is final exams and cleaning our classrooms and segueing into summer, but this year we started three weeks late, so we're not done yet, even though we're finishing earlier, because of the COVID numbers, than the calendar says. It is almost over, but oh, it feels eternal. Especially now that we're back to Zooming, and sending out assignments that aren't getting done. 

And yet at the same time, the days are flying by, as my son graduated, and as he goes through the books in his room and chooses the ones he wants to donate to my classroom library, and as he sorts his clothes that don't fit him any more and in various ways ends his time living at home. Is it almost over? Yes.

Poetry Friday: There Are Birds Here

Things fell apart this week, and as the week ends, we are back 100% online to finish our school year. The government has shut down schools as of June 11th and banned graduations and other end-of-year gatherings. All this is due to our COVID numbers going way up again. 

I'm trying to focus on the fact that we spent almost the whole year doing in-person school; we were really only online a few days here and there. We did hybrid school at the beginning; we masked and distanced; we put lessons online all year for the kids who were at home off and on. But we were mostly in each other's presence way more than we thought we would be, back in August when we were contemplating this year.

 

I read this poem that Jamaal May wrote for Detroit, and it made me think of the city where I live, so often defined in print by what it doesn't have. It doesn't have wealth, at least not spread around. It doesn't have infrastructure. It doesn't have vaccines. 

It does have birds, though. 

There Are Birds Here

by Jamaal May

For Detroit

 

There are birds here,

so many birds here

is what I was trying to say

when they said those birds were metaphors

for what is trapped

between buildings

and buildings. No.

...

And no

his neighborhood is not like a war zone.

I am trying to say 

his neighborhood

is as tattered and feathered

as anything else,

Here's the rest.  (You should really go read the whole thing. It's short.)

I spent a lot of time with this poem. Jamaal May is saying many things in it, but I think one of the things he's saying is that just because people aren't wealthy doesn't mean they aren't fully three-dimensional, existing in the world as complete human beings. And it doesn't mean they are pitiful and "ruined," as he says at the end of the poem. And also, they get to make their own metaphors.

At least, I think he is saying those things. 

He's definitely saying that there are birds in Detroit. And we definitely have birds here in Port-au-Prince, too. 

 

Here's another poem about birds that aren't metaphors.

 

 

My Crow

by Raymond Carver

 

A crow flew into the tree outside my window.

It was not Ted Hughes's crow, or Galway's crow.

Or Frost's, or Pasternak's, or Lorca's crow.

Or one of Homer's crows, stuffed with gore

after the battle. This was just a crow.

Here's the rest. (This one is even shorter than the other one.)

 

Margaret has the roundup this week.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: How Are You Doing with Your OLW?

This month's theme is to revisit the OLW (One Little Word) we chose for the year. Was it a good choice? Has it been helping shape our thoughts this year so far? Would we like to recalibrate, refocus, or even choose a new word? (Or would we rather write about something completely different and ignore the theme? That's fine too!) I am hosting today's roundup of SJT posts; leave your link in the comments and I will round them up. Comment Moderation is enabled, so don't worry when your comment doesn't show up right away. I will get to it as quickly as possible. 

 

My OLW for this year is Flourishing. I wrote about it back in January here.

As predicted, 2021 has brought as many obstacles to flourishing as 2020 did. Well, maybe not quite as many. When the 2020-21 school year started, we were back teaching in-person, at first in a hybrid mode and then with everyone there at once - so that was better than the previous school year, when we were in lockdown all but 15 weeks (political lockdown, then COVID lockdown). And now I am chock-full of Vitamin B12, after being diagnosed with a deficiency of it last year, a deficiency that had been getting worse for some time without me realizing it. But of course, tough things continue to happen. That's just called being alive. 

And it's fine not to be flourishing all the time. Someone posted this article the other day which includes the quote: "It is a mistake and a misreading of nature to think that you, a living creature, will be flourishing all the days of your life." (One thing that happens when you choose an OLW for the year is that you sit up and take notice any time that word appears in anything you're reading, and I appreciated this new way of thinking about it.) 

Nevertheless, I have been flourishing so far this year, in spite of terrible news, sickness, challenges of all kinds. You can't discount Vitamin B12 as a factor in that; having basically good health is something I don't take for granted. It helps me face difficulties with more strength; it helps me stay cheerful; it helps my body fight off sickness when it comes. And God continues to show Himself to be good. People, not always so much. But God, yes. 

One thing I'm learning is that sometimes, you can't evaluate a season until it's over, or even until a few years later. Often, as new information emerges about what was really going on behind the scenes, you have to rethink whether a given incident was helpful or unhelpful in your overall development. You may learn something new about someone you trusted that leads you to question everything, for example. Suddenly you're seeing everything from a new angle. Since this is something you couldn't have predicted or controlled, what's the best way to live to promote flourishing, knowing that at any time you could get thrown off balance?

I keep coming back to an effort to live one day at a time, to make choices that I know are right without trying to look too far into the future and imagine all the possible outcomes, to avoid wallowing in the could haves and should haves of the past. I'm trying to flourish today, with God's help. As I pointed out in my post back in January, the Bible urges us to "abide in the vine," to stay connected to God. It's not always obvious how to do that, but that's what I'm trying to do.

I'm about to face a big destabilizing event, my second (and last) child leaving home to go to college. I would like to keep flourishing as my life changes enormously. I'm trying to do all those things I wrote about in January to help that to happen. 

 

And I'm adding an edit on Wednesday night just because it feels dishonest not to. I wrote this post last week and scheduled it to go live today. We've just learned we're going to have to close school early, and do everything these last couple of weeks virtually, because the COVID cases are skyrocketing here. I'd be lying if I didn't say that right now I'm pretty down about how this super-challenging year is ending. But...let's flourish anyway?! 

What about you? 

The posts of my SJT buddies started coming in overnight, so now, on Thursday morning, I have the honor of rounding them up. 

Fran's OLW is Awe, and here's her wonderful prose poem detailing some of the things that are awing her these days. 

 

Margaret's is Inspire, and here's her update on how she continues to be inspired and to inspire others.

 

Denise is checking in from Bahrain with her word, Gratitude. 

Carol's word is Begin, and she shares some of her new beginnings as she's recently moved.  Instead of being overwhelmed, she's rejoicing in the newness!  

Karen has received some good gifts and some curveballs. She's giving thanks. 

Donna is trying to figure out if she's on track, and what to do next. Sending you love and prayers, Donna!

 

Chris chose the word Results  and is finding the results mixed.   

I love that Linda chose the word Ox. She has a poem about what that means - quiet, steadfast, dependable.  

Ramona's word was Comfort, and it's so great to read about all the comfort that's coming her way these days!

Reading Update

Book #42 of this year was Rodham, by Curtis Sittenfeld. I'd read two books by this author before; one was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice that I liked (I wrote a bit about it here). The other was Prep, which I wrote about here. I really disliked that one; I used the word "excruciating." My daughter asked me why on earth I had chosen to read alternative reality fan-fiction about Hillary Clinton by an author I hadn't really loved in the past. I'm not sure why. And while it's fascinating to consider, as the author does, what might have happened to Hillary if she hadn't married Bill Clinton, it felt a little uncomfortable to read about all these real people (who are still alive) doing fictional things. Especially when you're not quite sure where the fiction begins and ends. If you're a public person, does that mean authors can just write whatever they want about what you might have done in a different situation? (Sort of the same kind of argument you could make about the TV series "The Crown.") I don't know - all I can say is I kept reading to the end. 

Book #43 was The Bronze Bow, by Elizabeth George Speare, which I was teaching to my sixth graders. I read this book when I was their age, and I still like it now. 

Book #44 was Dark Tides, by Philippa Gregory, the second book in the Fairmile Series (I wrote about the first one here). Gregory has written, about this series, "I wanted to write a different sort of historical fiction: actually a series of books tracing the rise of a family from obscurity to prosperity." This one was fascinating and fun to read. I especially enjoyed the character who had left England and gone to the New World. With a lot of Gregory's books, I was reading about history I know well (in the case of the Tudor stories). The Plantagenet history was less well-known to me, but still, since I was reading about real characters, there was a certain inevitability about what was going to happen to them. With these fictional characters, though, absolutely anything could happen. I can't wait to read the next book; Gregory gives some idea in an interview at the end of the book about what might be coming. And it sounds like this series is going to be one of those endless sagas - yay!

 

Book #45 was a book of poetry, Alive Together, by Lisel Mueller. I got it for my birthday back in February, and managed to stretch it out this long by reading just a couple of poems at a time. Wonderful stuff! Now I get to go back and read it again.

 

Book #46 was In Broken Places, by Michèle Phoenix. This is the story of Shelby, who grew up with her brother Trey in an unstable, violent home. After suddenly becoming a single mom, she decides to move to Germany to teach at a school for missionaries' children. I enjoyed reading this, and watching Shelby start to find healing for her past. My favorite part was her relationship with Trey.

Poetry Friday: Carrying Stuff and an Ekphrastic Poem

During National Poetry Month, I got a poem in my email from Knopf Poetry called "Flowers," by Cynthia Zarin. It ended like this:

 

It seemed especially important

not to spill the coffee as I usually

do, as I turned up the stairs,

 

inside the whorl of the house as if

I were walking up inside the lilies.

I do not know how to hold all

 

the beauty and sorrow of my life.

 

You can read the whole poem here.

 

It's true; holding all the beauty and sorrow of life is never easy, and this week was a doozy. So that's a bit about where my mind was as I worked on the prompt for May from the Poetry Peeps, which I read about here. It involves writing an ekphrastic poem using a photo you've taken at a museum. I have so many of that kind of photo, from so many museum visits through the years. I picked out several, and I think I'll go on writing them for a while, but here's one I wrote this week.

 

I took this photo in 2014 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The photo is blurry - I took it with my iPod - but I like it better than the much better photo you can see here at the Cleveland Museum of Art's website, because their photo doesn't have my kids in it.  In addition to looking at their website, I watched a video you'll find at that link, called "On My Mind: Monet's Water Lilies," in which Heather Lemonedes Brown talks about how much the painting means for her as she's isolating at home.

So here's the poem, or at least a first draft of it:

Water Lilies, Cleveland Museum of Art


Sit here
for a moment.
Look at the
water lilies.

The world
doesn’t go away
while you look at
water lilies.
It’s still there,
right outside the garden.

At Giverny,
Monet could hear the guns from the front
as war raged.

But he kept painting
water lilies.

Kept thinking of a future
when all these
water lilies
would be in one room
for people to stare at,

surrounded by
pure color,

hearing
not fighting,
but
peace.

So
sit here
for a moment.
Look,
look
at the
water lilies.

Michelle Kogan has this week's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Mary Lee Edition

Today's Poetry Friday is dedicated to Mary Lee Hahn, who is retiring after 37 years of teaching. As well as being an amazing teacher and an inspiration to all of us, Mary Lee is also a fabulous Poetry Friday participant and organizer. She's a wonderful poet. So we're celebrating with #PoemsForMaryLee! 

 

 

My contributions are both golden shovel poems that I wrote for Mary Lee's birthday back in December. For both of them, the strike lines are from Mary Lee's own work. The first strike line comes from a haiku she posted here, and the second is from her poem "Spiral Glide," published in The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School.

 

Colleagues in poetry
We meet every Friday
Gatherings digital,
Faceless, and virtual.
Only our words interact, and still
The moments are magical.

Poetry Friday: digital, virtual, still magical.

 

 

Teaching Like a Hawk (from the point of view of one of Ms. Hahn’s students)

Ms. Hahn in fifth grade is not
The type of teacher given to flapping.
She provides me space for my
Own choices, lets me spread my wings.
Her decisions are just.
In her class we are leaning
On each other and turning
Our struggles into motivation to keep on rising.

Not flapping my wings, just leaning, turning, rising. 

Happy retirement, Mary Lee! 

Check out what everyone else is posting for Mary Lee this week here.

Slice of Life Tuesday: Fête Drapeau/Fèt Drapo

 Happy Haitian Flag Day! Here is some history of the Haitian flag.

 

I did an hour of leisurely birding this morning on my front porch with a cup of tea. I will catch up on my grading today. It's supposed to get up to 93 degrees.

I am happy to have a day off. 

Reading Update

I just posted an update on my reading the other day, but here's a brief one on the two books I finished this week.

Book #40 of the year was Write Like Issa: A Haiku How-To, by David G. Lanoue. I really enjoyed this look at the haiku of Issa, who lived in the eighteenth century. Illustrated with haiku by Issa and by many modern writers who aspire to write like him, this book gives six inspiring lessons from Issa's life and work. 

 

And, finally, Book #41! I've been reading The Far Pavilions, by M. M. Kaye, aloud to my husband for months and months. It's 1200 pages long, but we finally finished it this morning. For me it was at least the third time through, but he hadn't read it before. We both enjoyed it immensely.

 

Our edition was a bit the worse for wear, and it got worse as we went along. Just before we finished it, I suddenly realized I had lost track of the last page! I posted on Facebook and asked friends who owned it to send me a photo of the last page, and two friends did. But then I found the paper version again, so we were able to read every last word.

Poetry Friday: Ted Kooser

Recently, a conversation with a new friend about Ted Kooser sent me on a Kooser binge. I have one book of his poetry (I wrote about it here), but I hadn't read much beyond that. Here are three of his poems that I particularly enjoyed.

 

In "Daddy Longlegs," he tries to imagine what a passing bug might be thinking, and succeeds in thinking what he might be thinking if he were that bug. All that in three sentences! I'll quote the first, and link you to the second and third.

Daddy Longlegs

by Ted Kooser

Here, on fine long legs springy as steel,

a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill

that skims along over the basement floor

wrapped up in a simple obsession.

Here's the rest.

 

 

In "Abandoned Farmhouse," he uses the clues in that farmhouse to imagine what kind of lives were lived there.

 

Abandoned Farmhouse

by Ted Kooser

 

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes 

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room, and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

(Intrigued? I sure was. Here's the rest.)

 

 

The third one is about a kitchen, and a grandmother.

 

A Room in the Past

by Ted Kooser

 

It's a kitchen. Its curtains fill

with a morning light so bright 

you can't see beyond its windows

into the afternoon. Here's the rest.

 

I'm thinking about acquiring another book of Kooser's work, because I sure did enjoy that deep dive into his poetry that's available online. 

Irene has this week's roundup.

 

 

Slice of Life Tuesday: Of Standardized Testing and Birding

 

We're doing standardized testing this week. It's been a long time since we've done any, because last year the pandemic began right before we would normally have done it. I'm sure many schools are in the same boat right now. The kids can't remember how it works to sit still and fill in bubbles with number 2 pencils, and maybe aren't too thrilled to learn about that now.

I recognize the benefits of having some data to track kids through their years in our school, and also to see how we're doing in our instruction, but I also remember very well that this time last year, many were saying that skipping testing was the best thing that could have happened to all of us. Do you remember that? Or was I just thinking those things in my head? 

The other thing I wanted to write about this week was birding, because Saturday was Global Big Day, which takes place every year in the second weekend in May. Birders around the world go out and see what they can see, keeping track of how many species they can find in 24 hours. It's a particularly good time to do this because it's at the peak of spring migration (in the northern hemisphere). And as I thought about these two topics, standardized testing and birding, I started to see some connections.

Our kids aren't standardized, not at all. Each one of them is unique and different. So comparing them to each other, or to kids across many schools, is of only limited value. What if, when I was looking at birds on Saturday, I had compared them to each other? What if I had decided that some were more valuable than others, or more skillful, or just plain better? What if I had placed each in a percentile, a chain of being in which, say, a Mourning Dove didn't get quite as many points because there are plenty of them around, or a White-necked Crow got marked down because of how very noisy it is? 

In the class for which I was proctoring on Monday morning, there were all kinds of kids. There was a cartoonist. There were several skilled soccer players. There were some excellent gamers. There were some great readers, and some other kids who have trouble sitting still long enough to read anything, but who have other strengths. Maybe they don't know about those strengths yet, or maybe they know perfectly well, but haven't revealed them to their teachers yet. Many of the students in that room were taking the test in their third language. All have been through a couple of extremely challenging years, living here in Haiti through a time of political, security, and medical crisis. Ranking them wouldn't make any more sense than ranking the beautiful birds I peered at through my binoculars on Saturday. 

There's nothing wrong with testing students, as long as we realize that evaluation is only one of our goals. Maybe we should also take some time to just appreciate them, in all their variety. Maybe that kid who couldn't seem to focus his attention on his test booklet won't do brilliantly on this particular test, but there is still something to appreciate about him. The testing may help me learn how to teach him better, but I also need to remember that the results are only one aspect of the humanity of this child. 

One of the things that's so great about birding is discovering the variety of birds that exist. The more differences we see, the happier we are. We stop, and stand still, and look, and say "Wow." We let the birds teach us about themselves as we stay quiet and observe. Let's do that with our students, too.

Reading Update

Book #34 of the year was The Overstory, by Richard Powers. This is a novel about trees and people who love them. There was a lot in this book that I loved, but there was also just a lot in this book. Ultimately I think some of the characters and some of the events could have been cut out without the book losing much. I don't mind books being enormously long, but I like everything there to feel as though it needs to be there. I did enjoy the writing about trees.

 

Book #35 was Just Like That, by Gary D. Schmidt. I have been waiting for this book for a long time. My family and I, and several years of seventh grade classes, really enjoyed Schmidt's book The Wednesday Wars, about a seventh grade class, and specifically a kid in the class called Holling Hoodhood, in the 1967-68 school year. The sequel to that book, Okay for Now, is about another kid in the class, Doug Swieteck, who moves to a new town at the end of seventh grade. Several years ago I read in an interview with Schmidt that he was going to write another novel about a girl in the class, Meryl Lee. This is that book. I loved many things about this book, but I didn't love it as much as I had hoped. Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind. For one thing, I could hardly get over the revelation in the first chapter, and I don't know if I've forgiven Schmidt for it yet. (Sorry, I'm not going to tell you what it is.) For another, it seemed as though this was two separate books. (That insight comes from my daughter, and she's absolutely right.) It's definitely not as perfectly crafted as Holling's and Doug's books, but I do love Meryl Lee. 

Book #36 was Lovely War, by Julie Berry. A friend recommended this in the context of Iliad/Odyssey retellings. This isn't exactly that, but it is a story of World War I told by a group of Greek gods, each admitting his or her part in the plot development. Aphrodite, Ares, Apollo, and Hades talk about how love, war, music, and death work together in the lives of the characters. There are interesting themes like racism in the military at this period, USO performers, and PTSD. I did enjoy this one.

 

Book #37 was a reread, Fire, by Kristin Cashore. I think I enjoyed this book just as much as the first time I read it, described here.

 

Book #38 was The Wright Sister, by Patty Dann. It's the story of Orville and Wilbur Wright's sister, Katharine. While this is based on true events, it's not really an effort to be accurate to the historical truth. The author read about Katharine getting married in her fifties, and that after her marriage, her brother Orville never spoke to her again. While I really enjoyed the book and found it convincing, I was disappointed to learn at the end that the author hadn't done much research at all on the actual story. I really do want to know more about Katharine. 

 

Book #39 was a verse novel, Clap When You Land, by Elizabeth Acevedo. It's set partly in the Dominican Republic (the neighboring country to Haiti, where I live) and partly in New York City. The title comes from the fact that Dominicans clap when a plane lands at the airport in their country. Haitians do, too, so this detail really grabbed my attention. There's also an important Haitian character in the story, and I enjoyed that, too. The book is about a plane crash. A Dominican man who dies in the crash has two daughters, one in DR and one in New York. The girls don't know about each other. This story completely drew me in and did a great job of exploring the differences in the lives of these two girls, based solely on where they were born and the circumstances of those different geographical places.

Poetry Friday: The Poet Laureate Writes

In April as Americans were celebrating National Poetry Month, the British had another poetic occasion: the death of their 99 year old Prince Consort. Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was celebrated in many ways after his death on April 9th. One of the ways was by having a poem written by the official Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Simon Armitage. 

The role of Poet Laureate is a time-honored one in Great Britain. It has been held by many famous men (and one woman) since 1668: to name just some, Dryden, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Hughes, and Carol Ann Duffy. It used to be that the Poet Laureate was required to write about all the royal occasions, but now there is no official job description. (You can read about that, and various other FAQ, here.) So Armitage wasn't required to write about Philip's death, but he chose to, anyway.

 

Writing about royal events is a bit more of a tricky proposition than it used to be. There are mixed feelings about royalty in the United Kingdom these days. I read several articles during the funeral period about how the BBC had received many complaints about their coverage being too long and extensive. But of course, there are others who couldn't possibly get enough royal coverage.

 

I thought Simon Armitage hit a nice compromise with his poem, in which he eulogized (or eulogised, as they spell it in England) not just Philip, but his generation. The poem begins this way:

 

The Patriarchs - An Elegy

by Simon Armitage

 

The weather in the window this morning

is snow, unseasonal singular flakes,

a slow winter's final shiver. On such an occasion

to presume to eulogise one man is to pipe up

for a whole generation - that crew whose survival 

was always the stuff of minor miracle,

who came ashore in orange-crate coracles,

fought ingenious wars, finagled triumphs at sea

with flaming decoy boats, and side-stepped torpedoes.

 

You can read the rest here. And/or, you can listen to it as you watch this video released by the Royal Family, including photos of Philip from throughout his long life.

Of course, many towns and cities and countries and other bodies have Poet Laureates, too. Who's your favorite Poet Laureate of the past or present? And do you think you'd like a job where you're supposed to write poems for official events? Would you thrive with all those built-in poetry prompts, or would it give you writer's block?

 

You can see this week's roundup here.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Blossoms of Joy

 

This month's host, Carol Varsalona, has asked that we reflect on Blossoms of Joy. (You can see everyone else's posts at that link.) I have already been reflecting on blossoms, because at this time of year, our flamboyant trees (poinciana) are starting to be in bloom here in Haiti. They aren't anywhere near as bright and beautiful as they will be in a month or so, but they are starting.  This past week I took a picture of the first flowers on our campus and wrote a haiku to go along with it.

You can see pictures of the flamboyant in more dramatic colors, as well as a poem I wrote about these gorgeous trees, here. 

 

I really do see these blossoms as a gift from God each year.  And the blue air mail paper, in my childhood, was a joyous thing, as I spent so much time in a different country from people I loved. Those blue air mail letters appearing in the mail were always welcome. It's something my own children haven't even experienced, not because they aren't in a different country from people they love (they are), but because air mail letters seem to be a thing of the past. They are much more likely to do an online chat instead.

Flowering trees are a wonderful thing no matter where you live; probably every location has some that are particularly treasured. In Tokyo, it's the sakura (cherry blossoms). I reveled in the beautiful photos again this year, some in the news, and some taken by people I know who live there. But I also got a little bit of a shiver when I read that they were early this year. Not just early - the earliest ever. And lest you think that means the earliest in some weatherperson's life, no. They have been keeping records for twelve hundred years. When they say it's the earliest ever, they mean it. (Here's an article about that.)

Sakura blooms pink

Festival dates changed this year

Spring warmth came early.

The blossoms still brought joy. We can feel more than one thing at a time.