Poetry Friday

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Carnival

Mrs. Bluebird has the Carnival of Education today. And she's serving free food!

Winding Up

Yesterday was the due date for any remaining final pieces from my students, and now I have to grade up a storm for as long as it takes. The grades are due next Friday.

I had a sub at school because I went with the eighth graders on their retreat. This is something we do every year - we take the eighth graders somewhere with a pool and they fool around and eat and have a great time. We also do a little orientation for high school and a spiritual challenge. It's always a chance for the teachers that go along to see the kids in a different setting and to appreciate how far they have come since we first started teaching them at the beginning of middle school.

Afterwards, my daughter had her piano recital and every single student played beautifully and glowed with pride in front of family and people who love them. I congratulated the piano teacher and said that it must be a wonderful experience as a teacher to see every student succeed. It got me thinking that I need to give my students more chances to shine in front of others with the work they do. It was a goal of mine this year to give the kids more chance to publish, and I'm afraid I haven't done a good job of it at all. So that's something to think more about for next year. I do give them a chance to share work with their classmates and many of them love to do it. I haven't done that as often this year, though, because it leads to so much silliness, and kids who get up and giggle so much that you can't hear a word they say, and then when you do hear, the writer may be the only one who finds it funny.

As I grade my students' work I generally get more and more depressed - it's very easy for me to focus on what they still can't do, and what I should have taught them better. But with the memory of the piano recital in my mind, I'm going to make a point of looking more for the beauty in their work, what they can do now that they couldn't at the beginning of the year, and how they are growing as writers and as people.

Here's today's Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon.

Still Listening

This is one of my favorite Steven Curtis Chapman songs, and my son went through a phase when he wanted to listen to it every night. To me it talks of a childhood faith that goes the distance, a time when the words we spoke at bedtime when we were very small have to be claimed for ourselves. I am praying that during this time of crisis and tragedy for this family, they will remember that God is still listening.

This world is full of crisis and tragedy for many families today. I feel overwhelmed by the grief of so many, cleaning up from the earthquake in China and the cyclone in Myanmar. Oh God, please listen.


Still Listening

I would lay me down to sleep
And pray the Lord my soul to keep
And though I never saw Him there
I believe He heard each prayer
For God was great, And God was good
And I knew if I spoke the words
He would be listening

The years can take us far away
From the simple childlike faith
But I am longing to return
To the place where I first learned
That God is great, and God is good
So, I will speak the words

God, our Father, once again
I bow my head to pray
You are my Father and my friend, and You hear every word I say
A prayer for forgiveness, A desperate cry for help
Or praise flowing from a thankful heart
Like each time before, I come knowing You're still listening

I will never understand
How the words of mortal man
Can reach the ears of One so pure
And touch His heart, but they do I'm sure
For God is great, and God is good
And He is love

God, our Father, once again
I bow my head to pray
You are my Father and my friend, and You hear every word I say
A prayer for forgiveness, A desperate cry for help
Or praise flowing from a thankful heart
Like each time before, I come knowing You're still listening
You're still listening

Now I lay me down to sleep
And pray the Lord my soul to keep
Though I may not see You there
I believe You'll hear each prayer


Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Carnival of Education

Here's this week's Education Carnival. Lots of very interesting stuff this week, under the heading "Stranger in a Strange Land." Indeed.

Mango for Lunch

Today with our school lunch we had a mango. For the youngest children the mangoes had been sliced, but for the older kids and adults, we were just handed a whole mango. Yum. Except that today was hamburger and french fries day, with no silverware.

It's really hard to eat a mango without a knife. Unless, that is, you're in the bathtub. I ended up peeling off the skin and sticking my face in it. I was covered with mango juice for the rest of the afternoon and there were fibers from the fruit between my teeth, too. I really should have gone home to take a shower before continuing with my day.

Still, it was delicious.

Here's another post I made about mangoes, including why joy is a mango and a link to the correct way - or a correct way - to eat them. (Oops, looks like the link to photos of a good way to cut them is no longer working. Here's another one with photos.)

Just Another Manic Monday

Yesterday was a national holiday, the kind of holiday that involves dressing up in costumes and marching in the street in the blazing hot sun for hours. (No, I didn't march, but I watched many others do so.) Traditionally, the day after this particular festival is declared a day off as well. But this can't be done in advance. Oh, no. It must instead be done late in the evening before or even early in the morning of the day being so honored.

When you're kind of hoping a day is going to be a holiday, and even taking votes from everyone you know, and speculating endlessly on it, and then it turns out not to be...well, let's just say it's not easy to go into such a day with a great attitude. Because really, blessed are they who expect nothing, for lo, they shall not be disappointed.

Yes, we had school today. No, the government did not declare a holiday. While in theory I applaud this decision (we've already missed school for unrest, education is what this country needs, we have another day off later this week, yada yada yada), in practice I feel disgruntled and irritated that I had to work today. Because I'm not rational, that's why.

We're coming up on the end of the school year, and the usual mad rush to turn in writing has begun. I am carrying home large heaps of drafts each day. In addition, a couple of my students are interviewing me for the profiles they are writing. And I'm trying to get all my grades posted and various other tasks accomplished. But eventually they turned off the generator at school and I left my classroom.

I got home and was told that we were out of water. It turns out that a toilet ran today and emptied our château d'eau, our rooftop hoard that keeps us going while the power's off. It's hard not to cry when that happens - thinking about all that water, gone to waste. But hey, you can't cry over spilled water, and we just hauled some buckets from the cistern. (And yes, we are incredibly privileged to have water that we don't have to walk miles for.) My daughter loves the bucket baths - she says it's just like Little House on the Prairie.

Off to grade student writing!

Three Cups of Tea

"I was alone. I was covered in mud and goat blood. I'd lost my luggage. I didn't speak the local language. I hadn't had a meal for days, but I felt surprisingly good." - Greg Mortenson, in Three Cups of Tea.

You have to love a guy who talks like that, and I found my affection for Greg Mortenson, an MK from Tanzania turned mountain climber, growing all the way through this book. Terrifically written by journalist David Oliver Relin, this book kept me eagerly turning pages. It's the story of Mortenson's quest to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan after coming to know some of the needs of the people of the region while attempting to climb K2.

Of course it's never as easy as handing over the cash (even if you have some, which he didn't) when you want to help people change things, and Mortenson goes through his share of difficulties before his organization begins to have success. He rolls with whatever happens, whether being kidnapped by men with automatic weapons, having a fatwa declared against him, or, well, see the quote above. I smiled when I read the Mortenson is always late. Folks, this is the consummate adult MK. And the love story with his wife is not to be missed.

I have some experience with being in a country the media has portrayed negatively, and finding that they have left out a lot of the story, and therefore I appreciated Mortenson's positive picture of these people who have difficult lives, but are strong and courageous. (Or maybe I should say, who have difficult lives and SO are strong and courageous.)

One question I'd like to ask Mortenson is whether he has continued to practice the Christianity he grew up with. I appreciated the respectful way he interacted with Muslims but I am curious to know more about his own spiritual beliefs.

This is a great book - book #21 of the year - read it right away!


Image courtesy Greg Mortenson, Central Asia Institute (See more at Mortenson's website.)

Saturday Review of Books

Here it is.

Poetry Friday - Summer

I'm getting lots of poems about summer from my kids right now - they are just barely hanging on for the last three weeks of school. Their minds are not here, but in the freedom and excitement of summer.

Here's one I like to read with them. I love the way it personifies summer as a tousled, active girl, and I especially love the ending.


Reading: Summer

Summer is with it,
she's wild,
she likes
bare legs and cutoffs
and camping
and hikes;
she dives in deep water,
she wades in a stream,
she guzzles cold drinks
and she drowns in ice cream;

...

she tastes the warm air
on the end of her tongue,

and she falls asleep
reading
alone
in the sun.

Myra Cohn Livingston

I left out the middle for copyright reasons but you can read the whole thing here.

And here's this week's roundup.

Five Things Meme

I got tagged for this meme by Writer2B.

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What were you doing five years ago?

1. I was staying home with an infant, a stage of life I absolutely love
2. I was nursing all the time
3. I was running on less sleep than the 8 uninterrupted hours I prefer
4. I had no internet at home, so I was walking every day to a nearby computer with my baby in the front pack to check email
5. I was adjusting to having two children

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?

1. Supervise standardized testing (yawn)
2. Grade student drafts
3. Finish up survey and make copies (committee work, yawn again)
4. Finish the book I'm reading so I can take it back to the library tomorrow
5. Post grades on the computer, work on summer reading assignments, do plans for next week, oops, that's more than five...

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1. Jelly beans - someone just visited from the States and brought a container of them, and I can't quit eating them
2. Chips and dip
3. Fruit - particularly a mango, a peach, or a tangerine
4. Cheezits
5. Chocolate in almost any form

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?

I don't think I can think about a billion. That number is too big. But here goes...

1. Arrange to have 24-hour electricity in the neighborhood where I live - I think the whole city would go beyond my financial reach even if I were a billionaire
2. Find some families doing difficult jobs in difficult places and support them financially so they wouldn't have to worry about money
3. Fund a public library system in the country where I live
4. Fund breastfeeding education so that babies could get the best start even if they live in impoverished conditions
5. Give random gifts to people, just because, the way others have done for me

What are five of your bad habits?

1. Worrying
2. Overthinking decisions because I see all the possible problems - because of this I can be resistant to change
3. Sarcasm
4. Impatience
5. Getting obsessive about whatever my current interest is

What are five places where you have lived?

1. Kenya
2. England
3. United States
4. France (OK, it was just for a summer, but I was 19, and it was a very important summer)
5. The beautiful, warm, friendly, poor, rich, tropical country where I live now

What are five jobs you’ve had?

1. Waitress
2. Telephone surveys and medical transcription (that's two different jobs, but I wanted to mention them both)
3. Library worker, in various different capacities
4. Teacher of every age from Pre-K through college
5. Mom

What five people do you want to tag?

1. Tara
2. Bridget
3. Amy
4. Lori
5. Laura

Quote

"I took them to the empty fireplace and crumpled up the wrapping paper, ready to burn them, my hands shaking in my haste. I rubbed at the tinderbox for long minutes before it caught, my fear rising at every moment. Then the flint sparked, and lit the tinder, and I could light a candle and take the flame to the paper in the grate. I held it under the corner of the wrapping paper and watched the flame lick it until it was blazing bright yellow.

I took up the books, planning to tear out a handful of pages at a time and burn each one. The first book, the one written in Latin, fluttered open in my hand. I took a fat handful of soft paper pages. They yielded to my fingers as if they had no power, as if they were not the most dangerous thing in the world. I tried to tear them from the fragile spine, but then I hesitated.

I could not do it. I would not do it. I sat back on my heels with the book in my hand with the light of the fire flickering and dying down and realized that not even when I was in mortal danger could I bring myself to burn a book.

It went against the grain of me. I had seen my father carry some of these books across Christendom, strapped to his heart, knowing that the secrets they contained were newly named as heretical. I had seen him buy books and sell books and, more than that, lend and borrow them just for the joy of seeing their learning go onward, spread outward. I had seen his delight in finding a missing volume, I had seen him welcome a lost folio back to his shelves as if it were the son he had never had. Books were my brothers and sisters; I could not turn against them now. I could not become one of those that see something they cannot understand, and destroy it."

from The Queen's Fool, by Philippa Gregory

Reading Update

I'm way behind on reviewing the books I'm reading, though there have been a couple recent ones that I'm intending to write more about at some point. Here's an update:

Book #17: The Kingdom by the Sea, by Robert Westall
Book #18: Interred with their Bones, by Jennifer Lee Carrell
Book #19: The Queen's Fool, by Philippa Gregory
Book #20: The Zombie Curse: A Doctor's 25-Year Journey into the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic in Haiti, by Arthur M. Fournier, with Daniel Herlihy

Fortunately, others have been reviewing the books they've been reading, and you can see some of those at today's Saturday Review of Books.

Carnival

I somehow missed this week's Education Carnival, which appropriately has a testing theme. We're testing next week.

Overheard

An eighth grader, typing at the computer in the back of my classroom, says to himself: "Oh, this is such a good story, man!"

He's talking, of course, about the story he's in the middle of writing. Is it good? Well, if you like action movies starring everyone in the class as various different kinds of mutants, then, yes. Definitely. Such a good story, man.

Poetry Friday - The Grass So Little Has to Do

This was the daily poem for Wednesday on the Classic Poetry Aloud podcast. I think it's a perfect choice for this week for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm incredibly busy, grading huge stacks of student drafts. I'm feeling kind of jealous of that grass right about now, having so little to do. And secondly, with the wonderful rain we've been having, the grass on our field at school is lush and beautiful. It makes me happy just to look at it. In the middle of a hot, smelly city that's mostly made of concrete it's an oasis, a little garden, a "sphere of simple Green."

The Grass so little has to do
by Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

The Grass so little has to do –
A Sphere of simple Green –
With only Butterflies to brood
And Bees to entertain –

And stir all day to pretty Tunes
The Breezes fetch along –
And hold the Sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything –

And thread the Dews, all night, like Pearls –
And make itself so fine
A Duchess were too common
For such a noticing –

And even when it dies – to pass
In Odors so divine –
Like Lowly spices, lain to sleep –
Or Spikenards, perishing –

And then, in Sovereign Barns to dwell –
And dream the Days away,
The Grass so little has to do
I wish I were a Hay –

The roundup for today is at Findings.

Weekend Again

After Thursday's pleasant midweek holiday, we had an in-service yesterday. I've done all my planning and sent out my progress reports. Still grading to do, but when isn't there?

I've been getting over some kind of virus that's going around school, so it was especially nice to have a day off. Today we have guests coming from the US, and I'm glad to be feeling better.

Here's today's Saturday Review of Books.

Poetry Friday - May Day

Yesterday was May Day, a holiday where I live as in many parts of the world. It celebrates spring time in some places, and honors workers in others. Everywhere in the world, the sentiments of Sara Teasdale in her poem May Day are a good reminder to live each day in awareness of beauty, since we don't know how long we will be around to enjoy it.

"Oh I must pass nothing by
Without loving it much.
The raindrop try with my lips,
The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure
I shall see again
The world on the first of May
Shining after the rain?"

Here's the rest of the poem.

Today's roundup is at Big A little a.

Favorite Books

My eighth graders had to do one-minute speeches about their favorite books, attempting to convince others to read them. Here were the books mentioned:

American Chillers series, by Johnathan Rand
Forbidden Doors series, by Bill Myers
The Wish List by Eoin Colfer
Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
Artemis Fowl series, by Eoin Colfer
The Manny, by Sarah L. Thomson
Lucas, by Kevin Brooks
Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
The Haunted (I'm not sure who wrote this)
The Contender, by Robert Lipsyte
The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton
Ice Station, Area 7, and Contest, by Matt Reilly
The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin
The Freedom Writers Diary, by Erin Gruwell
The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan
The Thief Lord, by Cornelia Funke
The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Chicken Soup for the Soul series
The Inheritance Cycle, by Christopher Paolini

DP Theme Day - Numbers

It's the first of the month again, and that means a new theme day at the Daily Photo City blogs. This month's theme is Numbers. Here's Eric's post from Paris, with links to all the other participants.

Saturday

As I was walking over to school this morning, I saw a dead rat on the road. It looked just like characters in cartoons look after they have been run over by a steamroller - flat, but still recognizable as the creatures they used to be. Except that in a cartoon they generally bounce back from this treatment, whereas this rat was very much dead. A big brute, it was. I was not so sad to see that its life was over.

When I got here I saw another teacher arriving with a basket of laundry. She, like me, is here to take advantage of the generator to get some work done, but her work is ironing. I'd rather do my work than hers.

Well, I'm off to grade and enter grades on the computer and plan for next week and do a new seating chart for my seventh graders.

(Here's the Saturday Review of Books.)

Excess Commas, All Over

Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere, according to The Onion.

That's really interesting because in the student writing I've been reading lately, a lot of commas have been missing. Perhaps now I have the first clue about where they've gone...

Poetry Friday - From My Classroom

I had intended to do reviews of poetry books for each Poetry Friday in April, but I diverged from my plan last week in order to honor Aimé Césaire. On the first Friday I took some books off the shelves and my bedside table to review and on the second I wrote about some of our favorite children's poetry books.

I had to come home early again today, as almost every day this week, to be with my sick child, but on my way out the door I grabbed a pile of poetry books to blog about, as this week I had planned to write about poetry books that are in my classroom. I have far too many for one post, but here are a few representative ones.

I do a Daily Poem with my middle schoolers, and while I get these from many places, Nancie Atwell's book Naming the World is an excellent source. As well as work from professional, published poets, she includes many pieces written by middle schoolers. She has great ideas for presenting the poems and following up afterwards. Paul Janeczko's Opening a Door: Reading Poetry in the Middle School Classroom and Poetry from A to Z: A Guide for Young Writers are valuable as well. Then there's R is for Rhyme, a poetry alphabet book full of background on 26 different kinds of poems, with an example for each.

Normally I don't much go in for cutesy writing exercises, but I enjoy using something every now and then from Kindle the Fire: Writing Poetry with Middle School Students. Tucker provides frameworks for various kinds of poems, as well as examples written by other kids.

I keep my copy of Pablo Neruda's Fifty Odes in my classroom, but I often wish I had it here at home. I love Neruda's focus on simple, ordinary things, and his beautiful language (though, sadly, I'm reading these poems in translation, and not in the original Spanish - this book contains both the original text and the translation, but my lack of Spanish sends me to the English versions). Here's a bit from Ode to Scissors:

There
in the house
and within their nest
the scissors crossed
our lives,
and then
how much
cloth
they cut and cut
for the brides and the dead,
the newly born and hospitals
they cut
and cut,
the peasant's hair
tough as a plant growing in stone,
the flags
which later
fire and blood
pierced and stained,
and the grapevine
stalks in winter,
the thread
of the
voice
on the telephone.

Some forgotten scissors
cut your navel,
the thread
of your mother
and gave you forever
your separate existence:
others, not necessarily
somber,
will some day cut
your burial suit.


The Miss Rumphius Effect has the roundup today.

Happy Birthday

...to Shakespeare, of course - 444 years old!

...and to me, since as of today this blog is two years old.

Whoosh

How can it be Monday again already? Where did that weekend go? It must have been the shortest weekend in history.

Hungry Planet

Across globe, hunger brings rising anger. Article from the International Herald Tribune.

Saturday

This is going to be a busy day. As well as the regular catching-up work I always do on Saturdays, we have a big event at school that will take much of the day.

Here's today's Saturday Review of Books.

Adieu, Aimé Césaire

One of the French teachers at school asked me yesterday if I'd heard that Aimé Césaire had died. I hadn't, but soon found these articles. People at Global Voices Online are remembering him. Here's some more on his life and work (in French).

Aimé Césaire wrote in the 1930s:

Eia pour le Kaïlcédrat royal!
Eia pour ceux qui n’ont jamais rien inventé
pour ceux qui n’ont jamais rien exploré
pour ceux qui n’ont jamais rien dompté

mais ils s’abandonnent, saisis, à l’essence de toute chose
ignorants des surfaces mais saisis par le mouvement de toute chose
insoucieux de dompter, mais jouant le jeu du monde…


Here's an English translation of these lines (from here):

Eia for the royal Cailcedra!
Eia for those who have never invented anything
for those who never explored anything
for those who never conquered anything

but yield, captivated, to the essence of all things
ignorant of surfaces but captivated by the motion of all things
indifferent to conquering, but playing the game of the world...


The Cailcedra, according to my Littérature Francophone Anthologie, is a large tree in West Africa, under which people often meet to tell stories and talk together.

Adieu, Aimé Césaire.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is at The Well-Read Child.

Education Carnival

Here it is. I probably won't have time to read it myself - too busy grading - but you go right ahead.

Back to School

It was good to see my students again after our enforced holiday. Most of them, when asked whether they had enjoyed the break, responded with the word "boring." It seems that even school is better than staying home for days on end.

Here's to the rest of the school year being uninterrupted...

Roots

I'm staying home from church today with a sick child, and while she dozed off (though when she woke up she denied that such a thing had ever happened), I took the time to experiment some with the camera we were just given. (Thanks, guys, if you're reading.)

This ficus tree has roots that will not quit. They have broken through the bottom of this concrete pot and snaked down into the concrete below and the earth below that. You have to be careful not to plant them near a cistern, because the roots will break it.

I want to sink down my roots into God's love in the same way.

"...that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:16-19

Somewhere I'd Like to Go Today

I found out about this little tea shop in Paris on Paris Daily Photo yesterday and ever since I've been dreaming of going there.

Recent Reads

Book #12: The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz
Book #13: The Appeal, by John Grisham
Book #14: Bleachers, by John Grisham
Book #15: Jesus Land: A Memoir, by Julia Scheeres
Book #16: One True Thing, by Anna Quindlen

Ah, the Sweet Sounds of Evening

The neighbors' generators roar. Books are read and bedtime stories told. The lullabies play softly.

Shots ring out! The children ask, "What was that?" We reassure them that someone was just shooting a gun and that they shouldn't worry. My husband calls a neighbor to make sure she's all right.

The water pump starts up with a whoosh as the city power comes on.

You Are a Question Mark

You seek knowledge and insight in every form possible. You love learning. And while you know a lot, you don't act like a know it all. You're open to learning you're wrong. You ask a lot of questions, collect a lot of data, and always dig deep to find out more. You're naturally curious and inquisitive. You jump to ask a question when the opportunity arises. Your friends see you as interesting, insightful, and thought provoking. (But they're not always up for the intense inquisitions that you love!) You excel in: Higher education You get along best with: The Comma

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Saturday Review of Books

Here's today's edition.

Poetry Friday

Hooray! The electricity came back on! I don't know what the problem was, exactly, but we got fifteen minutes on Wednesday night and then nothing since until this afternoon. With all the chaos in the country right now I was sure it wouldn't get fixed, but I am happy I was wrong.

Last week I started National Poetry Month with some poetry reviews, and today I was going to review some books from my classroom. Then when we were stuck at home, I decided to review some children's poetry books from my kids' shelves. Then we didn't have power at home, and I went to school since things were calmer on the street, and then I couldn't get Blogger to work there.

Anyway, I decided to stick with Plan B, now that the power's on, and talk about some children's poetry. My children have always enjoyed having poems read to them and we have a reasonably large collection, but here are some my daughter chose as her favorites, plus a couple more I added because I like them.

As a child I loved When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six, and I'm happy that my kids like them too. I memorized Disobedience, about James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree and his mother. My daughter's always quoting from poems out of these books.

One Hundred Years of Poetry for Children includes some lovely, unexpected choices: Rabindranath Tagore, for example, and Patricia Beer's Abbey Tomb. Some of the poems are more an adult's idea of what a child should like than what children of my experience actually do like, but on the whole this is a good anthology.

Treasury of Children's Poetry is edited by Alison Sage and includes some traditional choices and some surprises. The illustrations are wonderful. The categories are "Nursery Rhymes and First Poems," "Rhymes and Poems for the Young," "Poems for Older Children," and "Older Poems and Classic Poetry."

My daughter got Children's Classic Poetry as a gift for her second birthday and it has been well-used since; it's falling apart. This is her absolute favorite, with such poems as Mr. Nobody, William Blake's The Tiger, and I Eat My Peas with Honey. It seems to be out of print, but you can get it for one cent on Amazon, so go ahead!

A recent addition to our poetry library is Here's a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry. Jane Yolen is one of the compilers, and she's such a beautiful poet herself. Polly Dunbar did the fun illustrations. It includes Langston Hughes' April Rain Song (which my five-year-old finds hilariously funny, for some reason), A. A. Milne's Halfway Down, and lots of poems that were new to me. This is a terrific choice for a first poetry anthology.

Poetry Friday is at A Wrung Sponge today. After I link this post I'm getting offline - city power is already off again!

Eek

Yesterday I spent lots of time online but we only got 15 minutes of city power last night, so it looks as though I'm going to have to cut back today! Things are quiet so far except for the neighbors' generators. Let's hope they stay that way.

Education Carnival

Here's this week's Education Carnival, which is the closest I'm coming to teaching today.

Two Articles

This morning a friend sent me this article. It seems that Marvin, North Carolina, voted not to allow a certain subdivision to be incorporated into their town because the homes only cost $300,000 to $400,000. Letting in this area would be introducing "a certain element," they felt.

A few weeks ago, another friend sent me this article. It's about how people fight hunger by eating cookies made out of clay.

How can these two situations exist on the same planet?

It Must be International Riot Week

Here's the news from Kenya.

Crazy Day

I started fourth period with twenty-two kids and ended it with fifteen. And they didn't leave all at once - oh, no. Every three to five minutes the office would call, or a sibling would come to the door, or a parent would call a kid's cellphone (apparently someone told the kids to turn on their cellphones this morning because there was unrest forecast for today). Of course as more and more of their classmates left, the ones who remained got agitated. It wasn't really an environment conducive to learning!

There was looting and mob violence all around the city today. At lunch time the cafeteria workers were listening to the radio; one had a radio held between her ear and her shoulder as she was dishing up rice. In the early afternoon a business right across the street was looted as people on our campus watched. The police showed up just as the looters were finishing carrying everything away that they could lift. As school ended probably two thirds of our students had already been picked up, but there are still some at school whose parents have not been able to get there yet. Roads are blocked and people are calling ahead to make sure that their route is safe.

No school tomorrow. We hope by the end of the week we'll be back in school, but only time will tell.

It's a World-Wide Problem

I read this article last month - it explains some of the reasons for food prices rising around the world.

Political Days

It's been a pretty quiet year so far, politically speaking. We haven't missed any days this year due to unrest. Today, however, there were demonstrations downtown and some of our families at school were a bit nervous. People are protesting the high cost of living. Food prices have skyrocketed in the last couple of months, and for people who were already poor, life has become intolerable. Now they don't know what to do, or where to turn, so some have taken to the streets, burning tires and, in some places (not our city, as far as I know), looting.

We have been getting phone calls asking if school is going to be canceled. In some ways, this is similar to a snow day - the way you sit with bated breath listening to the radio or watching the school closings scroll across the bottom of the TV screen. But political days aren't benign holidays, times to sip hot chocolate and go sledding. They are days of anxiety, often. They are days when we wonder what's coming next, and our students wonder even more than we do because they hear their parents speculating on the direction the country will take, obsessing over the radio news, calling their friends and sharing the latest story they've heard.

It's always nice to get an unexpected day off in the middle of the week, for whatever reason. Even if you deplore the reason, you can't help but enjoy not having to go to work. We've had these breaks in the past for demonstrations, days of reflection called by the government, strikes, times when too many children were being kidnapped, days when foreign troops were arriving, even an attempted coup d'état. People who have lived here longer have had many more, for successful coups, for staying indoors while tanks were rumbling down the street. But as much as we like sleeping in and a change of pace, I hope that this year will end without any political days. I hope we'll have a normal, boring school year this time around, when kids complain about not having enough excitement.

Saturday Review of Books

Here's today's Saturday Review of Books.

Poetry Friday

The cynical say that National Poetry Month is all about selling poetry books, and of course there is nothing wrong with encouraging people to buy more poetry. I thought that I would post some reviews of poetry books this month - not necessarily new ones, but some of my favorites. I'll start this week with some of the poetry books on my nightstand and my bookcase.

Poem A Day: Volume 2, edited by Laurie Sheck, has, as its title suggests, 366 poems in it, one for each day of the year, including February 29th. The subtitle promises "a wide range" of poems, and the book delivers. The poem for April 1st is by William Carlos Williams, the one for April 2nd is by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a Brazilian modernist poet who died in 1987, the one for the 3rd is by Ellen Bryant Voigt, who was born in 1943, and today's is by Henry Vaughan, who lived in the 1600s. Tomorrow's is a Haiku by Oshima Ryota, from the eighteenth century. It's fun to find new poets this way, and while I don't read this book every day, I do find myself turning to it quite often.

The anthology Good Poems for Hard Times was edited by Garrison Keillor. Many of these poems show up in the Writer's Almanac. Keillor's Introduction is wonderful and I love his section headings, too - "Kindness to Snails," "Whatever Happens," "Simpler than I could find words for." All are quotes from one of the poems in the section. I think most of the poems in this anthology are great choices. Some were already familiar to me - there's some Donne, Shakespeare, Stafford, and others. Many were delightful new discoveries.

I started reading Billy Collins a couple of years ago. Nancie Atwell introduced me to him (and to many other authors and ideas, I should add). Since then I've acquired a couple of his collections. One I just pulled off my bookcase is The Art of Drowning. I love Billy Collins. Here he is talking about how glad he is that he won't be going to Italy this summer: "Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice, I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning paper, all language barriers down, rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way." (From Consolation, which you can read the rest of here.) In Thesaurus (which you can read here), he writes: "It could be the name of a prehistoric beast that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up in its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary." How can you not love a guy who writes stuff like that?

Billy Collins also wrote the preface to Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems. I couldn't resist buying this book. For one thing, it's in a wonderful Everyman Pocket Poets Edition - hardback, with a ribbon bookmark attached, and the inscription on the front endpaper: "Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide, in thy most need to go by thy side." And for another, it has such great poems in it. Ever wonder what the love replied to the passionate shepherd? Christopher Marlowe wrote the original poem, which begins, "Come live with me, and be my love," and his contemporary Sir Walter Raleigh wrote The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd, where she essentially says, "You've bought me a bunch of cool presents, but I have a bit more sense than that, thanks." Here we see several other replies, and different versions of the original invitation, too. But that's just the beginning. The book is full of responses - poets replying with their work to something another poet wrote, participating in the "Great Conversation," as Collins' preface points out. To Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts, Randall Jarrell answers, "About suffering, about adoration, the old masters disagree." Billy Collins himself writes, "As far as mental anguish goes, the old painters were no fools." Both go on to discuss other paintings. Annie Finch makes the Coy Mistress respond to Marvell, beginning with these words, "Sir, I am not a bird of prey: a Lady does not seize the day." Edward Hirsch writes the letter back to the River Merchant's Wife of Ezra Pound's poem, saying, "Sometimes the world seems so large, you have no idea." This anthology is so much fun - go buy it and support a poet or two.

Here's today's roundup.

DP Theme Day: Water

A while ago I saw a meme where you were supposed to post the first sentence of your first post of each month in the previous year. My first post of the month is always to draw your attention to the Daily Photo Blogs' theme day, and this month will be no exception. It doesn't make for a very thrilling response to that meme, but there's always plenty of lovely photography on show. April's theme is water.

Why not start over at Sharon, CT? Jenny has provided links to all the other DP blogs participating.

Poems in your In-box

Tomorrow starts National Poetry Month, and you know what that means! Lots of yummy poems! Below is the information on signing up for two different Poem-a-Day emails. Last year I found there were quite a few I didn't like at all, but also a lot of great ones.

Visit this site at RandomHouse.com to sign up for the Knopf Poem-a-Day email.

And go here for the Poets.org Poem-a-Day. I love their graphic, a daily pill organizer.

It's Saturday

I have to go to the dentist today, which isn't likely to be much fun, but here's the Saturday Review of Books, which is likely to be lots of fun!

Poetry Friday

It's Friday again - already! We had conferences today, which made for a rather prosaic time - but here's today's Poetry Friday roundup anyway.

Carnival Time

Apparently some people are still on Spring Break. A hearty phooey to those people was my first reaction, but then I tried to concentrate on feeling happy for them. Nah, my emotions are still in the phooey range.

This is not helped by the fact that we only got three hours of electricity last night and that my house is overrun by ants AND mice in spite of my conviction that these two creatures are not supposed to coexist. We are having very Spring Breaky weather, though, so that's something.

Here's this week's Education Carnival, the Teachers Gone Wild Spring Break Edition. I'm hoping reading it will make me feel a bit more charitable.

Reading Update

This weekend I finished books #10 and #11.

Black Baby, White Hands: A View from the Crib is the story of an African-American boy adopted into a white family. (Or "White family" as he would write it; he always capitalizes "Black" and "White.") I borrowed this from the bookshelf of a friend who works setting up adoptions and taking care of children who are waiting for their paperwork to go through so that they can join their new families. Almost all of those adoptions are trans-racial, and certainly this would be a good book for those new families to read while they are waiting. Jaiya John doesn't say that his experience is universal for trans-racially adopted children, but his experience is one that people adopting children of a different race would do well to consider. He is honest to the point of painfulness, and he is clear that his journey did cause pain to his adoptive parents. We get to see the process he went through to come to self-acceptance, and in the process we learn some ways that parents can work on making things easier for their adopted children. You may be offended by some of John's observations about race in America, but go with it; you'll learn a lot by reading this book.

Carpe Diem is Autumn Cornwell's first novel, and it's a lot of fun. I read it as a potential read-aloud for my eighth graders, but I'm not going to use it for that - we just read a "girl book" and this is definitely a "girl book." However, I think lots of my eighth graders will enjoy reading it on their own. Vassar Spore is an over-achiever who's never traveled, and she spends this book traveling in South-East Asia and learning to LIM - Live In the Moment. She has a bit of a toilet fixation, and we learn a great deal about the options in South-East Asia for taking care of one's toilet needs. Cornwell grew up as a missionary kid, and that background explains where she got many of her ideas!

Home from the Beach

We had a much-needed family getaway to the beach this past weekend. Today was a holiday, so we didn't leave for home until this morning after breakfast. The weather was perfect - not too hot, and not so cold that I could barely get in the water, like it was at Christmas.

We found a group of missionaries having a retreat at our hotel, so we joined them to celebrate Easter morning. The chocolate eggs on our table at breakfast were nice, but the songs of the resurrection were even better!

We got our replacement electricity counter on Thursday, so we're back on the grid and very happy about it. When they left, the electric company workmen bid us farewell "until next time." We hope there won't be a next time, but realistically, there probably will.

Poetry Friday, Good Friday

George Herbert seems the perfect choice for Good Friday. In this poem, he tells us the effect that Christ's death had, for Christians, on thoughts of our own death.

Death
by George Herbert

Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,
Nothing but bones,
The sad effect of sadder groans:
Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

For we considered thee as at some six
Or ten years hence,
After the loss of life and sense,
Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.

We looked on this side of thee, shooting short;
Where we did find
The shells of fledge souls left behind,
Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.

But since our Savior’s death did put some blood
Into thy face,
Thou art grown fair and full of grace,
Much in request, much sought for as a good.

For we do now behold thee gay and glad,
As at Doomsday;
When souls shall wear their new array,
And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad.

Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust
Half that we have
Unto an honest faithful grave;
Making our pillows either down, or dust.


Here's some information about George Herbert.

Click on the button below to get to today's Poetry Friday roundup.

The Education Carnival is Back!

I'm sticking with the headlines with the exclamation marks!

Actually, the Education Carnival didn't go anywhere - I have just been too busy to visit for the last few weeks. But this week is the Spring Break edition, so I thought I'd check it out.

Robbed!

I just love dramatic headlines like that, don't you?

On Tuesday morning at 3:30 AM, my youngest child suddenly began screaming and rushed into our bedroom, complaining loudly that it was dark. I guess he had had a nightmare, but after I had settled him down I went into the bathroom and noticed that the water was just trickling out instead of coming out with force, as it should have been at that hour because the power should have been on. Then I looked in the kitchen, where the indicator light is to show that city power is on, and sure enough, it was dark. At first I thought maybe the power had gone off, but no, the streetlights were still glowing and it looked as though all the neighbors had electricity.

I restrained myself enough not to call the electrician until later in the morning (though he has told us to call him any time of the day or night "like a doctor" - this guy does so much work for us that his kids recognize my voice on the phone, and he called us on Christmas Day to wish us a Merry Christmas). He came in the early afternoon and noticed immediately what the problem was. During the night someone had come and stolen our electricity counter and a length of our wire! This counter was one we had had for about a month, since the old one burned up at the beginning of February. (You may be surprised to hear it, but I spare you many of our electrical adventures.)

Since we're starting a holiday period, the likelihood of anyone coming out to do anything about this problem is even lower than usual - and it's usually pretty low anyway. But I called. I explained the problem to a very nice gentleman, and he asked a bunch of questions and took all my information, told me that we'd have to buy a bunch of cable because, of course, the electric company doesn't have any electrical cable, and then gave me another number to call where to this day nobody answers the phone.

So back to the electrician, who assures us that he could hook us up to the power without the counter, and we may end up going that route but we are hesitant to because we are likely to get in trouble with the electric company. Which, if you remember, is probably not going to do anything before Tuesday at the earliest, since everyone's already gearing up for the Easter break and Easter Monday is a holiday.

The generator that we bought new in the fall has been recalled and we are waiting (patiently) for a replacement, but last night my husband took the battery out of the car and got the generator running (of course the car doesn't run, but that's another problem for another time). So we were able to get a couple of hours of charge for our batteries and we had fans all night.

Today the electrician is moving the wiring inside the gate, and when the electric company provides us with a new counter, there will be a place all ready for it. Since this isn't in the street the way the other one was, we hope it won't get stolen again. Meanwhile we are also hoping not to spend our whole Easter break in the dark.

Quote

This was in today's Writer's Almanac. It's a quote from Nigerian novelist Ben Okri: "Literature doesn't have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer.... The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens' characters are Nigerians. ...Literature may come from a specific place but it always lives in its own unique kingdom."

Saturday Review of Books

Here's today's edition.

Poetry Friday

Here's today's roundup, a special edition in honor of Bob Dylan.

The Wednesday Wars

Today we finished The Wednesday Wars here at home. Last week I started reading it to my seventh graders. It says a lot about this book that all of us at home - a preschooler, a middle grade kid, and two adults - loved it, and that my students are hooked after just one chapter.

My seventh graders want a book to grab them immediately - there aren't many second chances with them. If they don't like the first few pages, they just won't pay very close attention for the rest of the book. They like non-stop action and they like the book to be funny, too. The occasional gross-out humor doesn't hurt a bit. This book delivers on all counts.

Holling Hoodhood is attending Camillo Junior High in 1967. The Vietnam War is in full swing. His sister listens to the Monkees and wants to be a flower child. His dad is a successful architect and expects Holling to follow in his footsteps. Life at school is difficult, particularly Wednesdays, because half of Holling's class attends the Catholic church in town and the other half attends Temple Beth-El, and on Wednesday afternoons the Catholic kids go to Catechism class and the Jewish kids go to Hebrew school, leaving the lone Presbyterian - Holling - to hang out with the teacher, who was thinking she'd have Wednesday afternoons off.

There's a lot going on in this book. The sixties and the Vietnam War, baseball, even Shakespeare. It all works together into a wonderfully satisfying story that, if our experience is anything to go by, can be appreciated by people of all ages. It's hilarious but it brought me to tears a few times, too. I will be looking for more by this author, Gary D. Schmidt, who deservedly won a Newbery Honor for The Wednesday Wars.

This was book #9 for the year. (Only nine and it's already March!)

A Story from Kenya

On International Women's Day, read the story of Mercy Moses in Kenya.

Reading Update

Book #6 was Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale. I read her book Princess Academy aloud last year to my seventh graders and although lots of the boys were put off by the title, everyone ended up enjoying it, especially the last third of the book. Now I'm reading Book of a Thousand Days to my eighth graders (the same group that listened to Princess Academy last year) and it seems that many of them are finding it a bit slow. I expect them to perk up their interest in the last third when the action heats up. I enjoyed this one for many reasons, not least of which was the focus on sound and smell imagery. Dashti is very sensitive to senses other than the visual because of the time spent locked up in the tower in near-darkness, but also because her culture focuses on smell. Their greeting includes breathing in the scent of the other person.

Book #7 was The Steps, by Rachel Cohn, a loaner from one of my students. Cohn is good on the mixed feelings that Annabel has towards her divorced parents and "the steps" in her father's new family. The Australian setting makes a nice change, too, from other books of this type.

Book #8 was The Uncommon Reader: A Novella, by Alan Bennett. What fun! The premise is that the Queen of England discovers reading, not just reading that she must do for her job, but reading for pleasure - with unexpected consequences.

Here's the Queen at the beginning of the book: "Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy."

Here's what happens when she decides to read in the palace library. "But though it was called the library and was indeed lined with books, a book was seldom if ever read there. Ultimatums were delivered there, lines drawn, prayer books compiled and marriages decided upon, but should one want to curl up with a book the library was not the place. It was not easy even to lay hands on something to read, as on the open shelves, so-called, the books were sequestered behind locked and gilded grilles. Many of them were priceless, which was another discouragement."

I marked lots of other great quotes but I'll stop there - but this book is absolutely delicious and you should read it!

Right now I'm reading Black Baby, White Hands, Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles, and (still) Kids Are Worth It. I'm also reading The Wednesday Wars aloud to my children and the whole family is loving it. I haven't started a new grown-up novel yet but maybe today if I can get through all the other stuff I have to do...I got a pile of projects yesterday I have to grade, my planning for next week must be done, lots of the regular grading, and some other have-to reading I promised to get done this weekend...

Here's today's Saturday Review of Books.

Poetry Friday

Here's today's roundup.

New DP Blog

Go visit Wilmore, KY.

DP Blog Theme Day - Street Art or Graffiti

At the DP Portal you can see the entries for today's theme day.

Poetry Friday Roundup

Here it is.

Hallelujah!

Finally there is an agreement in Kenya, and although there are questions about how things will work, this has to be a step forward. Mzungu Chick thinks it's cause for celebration, and most bloggers at Kenya Unlimited who have commented would agree, though many are only cautiously optimistic.

Obama Dresses Up

In regards to the whole Obama in tribal gear story (Turbangate?) what he said.

Reading Update

It's been a long time since my last reading post. Here's what I've finished:

Book #2 of 2008 was Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan. This was well-written but I found the story depressing - people in search of their own fulfillment to the detriment of everyone around them. The end was completely unexpected.

Book #3 was Brother, I'm Dying, by Edwige Danticat. This was a wonderful book, my favorite of hers. (I've read and enjoyed all of them.) Her prose is spare and totally unsentimental, but she puts you right in the middle of the action, and breaks your heart. This is a memoir about Danticat's childhood, when her parents went to the United States and left her in Haiti with her uncle, about her father's and uncle's illnesses, and about her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter, and always the backdrop is the turmoil of Haiti. Beautiful and highly recommended.

Book #4 was Look Me in the Eye, by John Elder Robison. I had read an essay excerpted from this in the New Yorker, and that made me want to read the book. It's fascinating to see the world through the eyes of an adult with Asperger's Syndrome. A couple of the chapters felt like padding to me, but overall I found it compelling reading.

Book #5 was Small Steps, by Louis Sachar, a follow-up to Holes, containing the continued adventures of X-Ray and Armpit. This is aimed at slightly older kids than the first book, and it just isn't nearly as good. I'm sure it will make a great movie, and it seemed as though that was the raison d’être of the book. Many of the scenes are very cinematic. I'd give this one a so-so.

By this time last year I'd read twenty-three books. Clearly, there's too much going on in my life right now. I need to be making more time to read!

Here's what all the cool kids are reading and reviewing.

Friday

I never got my act together enough today to participate in Poetry Friday, but lots of people did and here's the roundup at Big A little a. I did, however, finish enough work in my classroom that I'm not going to go over to work there at all tomorrow! I brought some grading home, but not much. I'm planning to have a relaxing weekend. We'll see if it really works out that way.

We've been trying half this week to get some water delivered, and it finally came today - 3,000 gallons pumped into our cistern. The level in there was low enough that I was starting to worry that the pump wouldn't be able to reach it any more to move it up to our roof. Since it's the dry season, we're being very careful with our water - we save bath water to water plants or flush toilets, and those toilets only get flushed when they really need it. (Should you be interested, you can read more about the water situation in our neighborhood and in other parts of the developing world here.)

This evening I read this post about the blogger's personal experiences in Kenya recently. And still no settlement announcement from Nairobi. I'm starting to wonder if Kofi Annan's optimism was really warranted.

Now off to watch something mindless.

Plagiarism

I discussed this quiz with my eighth graders today. Many of them saw no problem with the scenario of buying an essay - after all, if you bought it, it's yours, so that's not stealing. They also frequently used arguments which included some permutation of "everybody's doing it" or "if the technology makes it possible, what on earth is wrong with it?" Interesting discussion, anyway, though perhaps they weren't really convinced by my point of view.

Women in Kenya Demonstrate for Peace

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"All of you -- wear your white dresses, carry your food. Tomorrow (Friday) we shall go to peace house," said Violet Mavisi, an activist with the Coalition of Women for Peace and Justice, referring to the Nairobi hotel where talks are ongoing.

"We will circle their cars and make sure that those guys do not come out of there without a peace settlement."

Read the rest of the article here.

Carnival Again

This week's Education Carnival is up over at Sharp Brains. It takes the form of a briefing for the next President of the United States on what exactly are the issues facing teachers and students.

Poetry Friday - Ekphrastic Poetry

I learned a new word this week from listening to a podcast from Poets.org. The word is ekphrastic and it refers to a representation of one piece of art in another medium. Ekphrastic poetry is usually poetry about a painting or sculpture.

While I have read and enjoyed many ekphrastic poems for years before learning the ten dollar word for them, my favorite one remains Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts," which refers to the Pieter Breughel painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus."


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.

Poetry Friday

Click on the button above to go to today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Valentine's Day and Roses from Africa

Many of the roses given in Europe today will come from Kenya. Here's an article about that and here's another. And Africa Expat Wife weighs in on the issue.

Education Carnival

Here 'tis. Have fun.

Buzz from lack of sleep
Equal parts joy and terror
Baby in the house

We Heart Kofi Annan

Lots of love for Kofi Annan is flying about the blogosphere. Mzungu Chick is smitten and R at What an African Woman Thinks is thinking about starting a cult. And he's got a rhinoceros named after him! Now how many world leaders can say that?

Saturday Again

And here's the Saturday Review of Books.

Médecins Sans Frontières

If you are looking for a place to donate hard-earned money, let me suggest this one. I have no connection with this organization, but I have been privileged to watch them in action this week. I was still in a third-world hospital, but it was wonderful to see how respectfully people were treated, the high-quality medications given free, and the hundreds of women and babies being helped. Life is still hard, but MSF is trying to make it easier. There was a poster in the hallway that said that you shouldn't have to die while giving life. Amen to that. Here's their US website - Doctors Without Borders.

Poetry Friday - Chinua Achebe

I didn't even know that the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe had written poetry until this week, but his novel Things Fall Apart is one of my favorites.

Here's Achebe's poem "A Mother in a Refugee Camp."

No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She would soon have to forget...
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labour steps
Behind blown-empty bellies.

You can read the rest of it here.



Click on the button above to read the rest of the Poetry Friday posts, all neatly rounded up for you.

Beginnings are Hard

What a day. I spent much of it becoming more familiar with the options for the care of a sick newborn in this city. And being reminded once again what a cushy life I have, and what a wimp I am.

The story isn't mine to share in such a public place, but there's a baby who could use your prayers tonight, and a mother who has been through an ordeal. And there are so many more in the world who don't have the luxury of a "birth plan" and a "good birth experience" but who just hope to make it through alive and with a living, healthy baby.

Of course my thoughts are never far from Kenya these days, and I thought of the women who have had to give birth in fields during this past month - several news articles have referred to cases, and I'm sure there were many more.

And I am so thankful for my healthy children and the peace and privacy in which I delivered them.

Carnival of Carnival

It's Ash Wednesday, so it's a good day to recover from Carnival and read this week's Education Carnival.

Cornelius

I just listened to the reading for the day from Readings of the Church. Today we remember Cornelius. Which of course makes me think of the song Cornelius by the Newsboys.

Yeah, I don't have to go to work today. :-)

Crying for Africa

The African Union summit ended, amid reports of violence from Kenya and now Chad.

"What can we do for Kenya, for the Comoros, for Chad? This is painful for us, as under the eyes of the whole world we kill each other," said Gaddafi.

OK, I know you have preconceived ideas about Gaddafi, and maybe you dismiss his sadness as crocodile tears. I have no way of knowing how sincerely he mourns the suffering in his continent, though I hope it is sincere, since he's someone who can do something about some of the problems. But I can assure you that I and millions of others feel what he says he feels.

Then there are those who just find it amusing. Here are some comments on an article in the Houston Chronicle. I guess there's nothing wrong with being happy to live in the US, except that to me it smacks of "Forget about all those people." Another person recommends reading Robert Ruark, otherwise you "don't have a clue" about the situation. I have read Robert Ruark, but I suggest that quite a few things have happened since he wrote his books and I'm disgusted at the commenter's thought of dealing with Africa only in relation to its commodities (wait, that's what the majority of the world already does). Someone else says that the continent has already been flushed down the toilet, giving for evidence that the gang recruiter in the news story they are all commenting on was wearing high heels and designer sunglasses. Someone else makes a mocking remark about how that's not really the de rigueur outfit for a gang recruiter.

Meanwhile, millions of people suffer. The vast majority of them are just living their lives and have nothing to do with causing the problems their continent faces. And the world looks on and says, "Just more Africans killing each other."

Saturday Review of Books

Here's what folks are reading and reviewing this week.

Days, by Philip Larkin

There's too much going on in my life right now to make it easy to find an appropriate poem. I am keeping one eye on death and destruction in Kenya and another on a baby expected any minute (but I'm not the mother, I hasten to add).

Finally I've chosen this one by Philip Larkin, who asks "What are days for?"

Poetry Friday

Just click on the button for access to the Roundup. I'll post my entry later.

When People Think of my City, they Think of...

It's another theme day for the Daily Photo blogs. Today folks are supposed to post something that represents their city in the world's eyes. Here's the entry from Sharon, CT, and Eric from Paris posted a montage of quintessentially French scenes. Of course, both included links to the other DP blogs participating. Enjoy a little trip around the world today.

News Ban

Vagabond has banned the news after some conversation with his nephew.

And Some Good News, for a Change

Hey, guess what!? Purgatorio is back!

After this post a year ago when I sadly said goodbye to Purgatorio, I checked back a few times, but finally gave up hope and hadn't visited in months and months. Just now I looked again, just because, and found out that Marc started posting again last month!

Carnival Time

Here's this week's Education Carnival to read while you get ready for the real Carnival. And yes, we do have time off for it. Don't you? (Don't be jealous - we didn't get MLK Jr. Day or Presidents' Day OR Labor Day.)

Pole Sana

This is the picture of the day at Reuters Alert Net. Kenyan women laid flowers on the ground after a peaceful demonstration in Nairobi's Freedom Corner. I read that many of the wreaths said "Love," "Peace," and "Sorry." I was hoping to find a photo of one that said, "Sorry," because that's such a Kenyan thing to say. Whenever you have any problem, however big or small, and Kenyans find out about it, they always say, "Pole," which means "Sorry" in Swahili. It's not an apology, but it's an expression of sympathy with you. I still say "Sorry" to people for just about everything, and so does everyone in my family. It sometimes sounds weird to Americans, who think you're apologizing and will often respond, "Well, it's not your fault."

I'm saying "Pole sana" - I'm so sorry - to Kenya these days.

Weekend

Well, I don't know where this weekend went. It seems as though it just began, and now it's over. I worked in my classroom as usual, but there were internet problems at school and I couldn't even get on my blog to correct a spelling mistake - yes, I know it's supposed to be "hallowed," not "hollowed," and it's fixed now. I didn't even look at this week's Saturday Review of Books until this evening. At home, our internet connection wasn't working at all, but oddly it worked fine when we switched the computer on this afternoon.

My unreachable spelling mistake, which I could look at but not repair (kind of like an itch you can't quite get to), was clearly not the most important thing going on in the world. Tara had a baby in the hospital with meningitis (I'm so glad to see she's doing better), things got worse in Kenya, and assorted bad things happened all over the place.

Just as well I couldn't get online.

Eating Local or Buying Kenyan

I just read a very interesting post from Nairobi about how the whole eating local movement could damage economies in third world countries. I posted Steven Hopp's response to this objection back in November but I'm not fully convinced by what he says.

Poetry Friday

This is the fourth week that I've put up a Poetry Friday post about Kenya. The first week, it was the national anthem of Kenya, complete with the music. The second week, I linked to poems about Kenya from blogs. Last week, I thought about poetry for refugees.

This week, here's a poem from William Stafford.


Untitled

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed – or were killed – on this ground
hallowed by the neglect of an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.


Today is an international Day of Prayer for Kenya, so please join us in praying for this beautiful country and its beautiful people.

Pray for Kenya

Tomorrow, January 25th, has been declared an international Day of Prayer for Kenya. Please join Kenyans and friends of Kenya around the world in prayer.

Wednesday

Here's this week's Carnival of Education.

Carnival of Children's Literature

Here's the January edition of the Carnival of Children's Literature. This month's theme is Book Awards.