After Disaster

After disasters, people loot and riot, right? Well, apparently not. I was interested to read this blog post about a book that argues otherwise, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.

"Author Rebecca Solnit takes a close look at disasters including earthquakes, floods, and explosions. She finds tragedy and grief, but something else too, something rarely noticed. During and after these horrific crises there shines from the wreckage something extraordinary.

People rise up as if liberated, regardless of their differences, to act out of deep regard for one another. They improvise, coordinate, create new social ties, and pour themselves into work that has no personal gain other than a sense of meaning. While they do this, they often express strangely transcendent feelings of joy, envisioning a greater and more altruistic community in the making. Even those suffering the most horrific misfortune often turn around to aid others and later remember it as the defining moment of their lives. This is a testament to the human spirit, as if disaster cracks us open to our better selves."

The post details ways people are helping each other in the north-east United States in response to the destruction brought by Hurricane Sandy. In Haiti after the earthquake, it was equally heartening to see the way people took care of each other. In those moments of being "cracked open," people are also often open to deep connections with other people. Many people have commented on the depth of their "earthquake friendships."  But the strain, stress, and lack of sleep can also put people's worst sides on display.  It's not just buildings and livelihoods that are destroyed in a natural disaster; people's relationships and even their very sense of themselves can be, too. 

Solnit apparently draws conclusions about human nature (I haven't read her book). My conclusions about human nature are that people are capable of the most terrible atrocities and the most stunning goodness. I believe both in total depravity and in the indelible image of God on every human being. I think of the words in Prince Caspian: "'You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,' said Aslan. 'And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.'"

Lately I have the sense that all the time, somewhere, people are recovering from a disaster, sleeping wherever there is a space, gathering new belongings to replace the ones that are gone.  Creating new lives, too, the "new normal" everyone kept telling me about after the earthquake.  Cracked open, vulnerable, at their worst and their best.

City Full of Stories

After the Storm, a City Full of Stories. This article from the New York Times follows what happened to an assortment of New Yorkers who have been featured in the Times' regular Character Study column.

I'll Wait

Poetry Friday: Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?

From the first time I heard this song in the TV movie of "Cinderella," I loved it. On one level, I suppose, it's just a silly ditty, but the questions it asks are deeper than that. In addition to the questions that Cinderella and the prince ask each other about whether they are inventing what they see in each other (answer: probably, since you've only known each other for ten minutes), there is the question of what makes us love. Why do we love people, places and things? Is it because of their inherent beauty? Or do we see the beauty in people, places, and things as we grow to love them? Of course, the answer is yes. There's something beautiful that attracts our notice, but as we grow in love, we see more and more that someone who wasn't paying such close attention would miss completely.

Attachment theory tells us that the love between parents and their infants is a sort of dance. Our babies are beautiful, so we coo over them and cuddle them. They respond by being even more adorable, "attachment-promoting behavior," as it's called. We in turn love them even more.

Aren't all loves kind of the same way? In romantic love or friendship, something about us is noticed and appreciated, and we respond by doing more of whatever the other person liked. We reach a point, with people we love, where we don't even see what they look like any more. We just see a face that is familiar and dear. 

C.S. Lewis wrote about friendship:

..."Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other people; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing."

But enough philosophizing...here are three videos of this song, and the lyrics as well. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?
by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Do I love you because you're beautiful
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
Am I making believe I see in you
A girl too lovely to be really true?
Do I want you because you're wonderful
Or are you wonderful because I want you?
Are you the sweet invention of lover's dream
Or are you really as beautiful as you seem?

 Am I making believe I see in you
A man too perfect to be really true?
Do I want you because you're wonderful
Or are you wonderful because I want you?
Are you the sweet invention of lover's dream
Or are you really as wonderful as you seem?

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Reading Update

The four books I'll review in this post were all assigned for my Adolescent Literature class.  I've enjoyed taking a class with so much fun reading!

Book #32 for 2012 was Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi.  It's scarily appropriate with its "city-killer" hurricanes, which go up to Category 6.  (These days, in case you aren't a hurricane-watcher, the maximum is 5.)  The book is set in the Gulf Coast region of a future United States, where New Orleans, along with Orleans II, is drowned and replaced by Mississippi Metropolitan (MissMet), which they didn't call Orleans III because "even the most ardent supporters of the drowned city gave up on the spectacularly bad luck enjoyed by places called 'Orleans.'"  Nailer, the protagonist, works salvage on abandoned ships and lives like many teenagers do today in large third-world cities.  He doesn't really know or think about other lives until he and his friend Pima find a rich girl whose fancy boat has been washed ashore during a hurricane.  This dystopic novel is exciting and action-packed, but also full of thought-provoking ideas about whether we are doomed to remain in the world into which we're born.  Here's an interesting interview with Bacigalupi where he talks about writing YA science fiction, whether his books are really dystopias, and how what he writes connects with what's already going on in the world.

Book #33 was not originally written as a YA novel; it was chosen for an Alex Award, given to books written for adults but judged to be especially appealing to teenagers.  It's called Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, and it's the first novel I've ever read that is basically set on the internet.  Wade is a teenager living in 2044, a time when most people spend most of their time on the OASIS, which stands for Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation.  One of the creators of the OASIS has died and left a will in which he gives vague and confusing instructions to find an Easter Egg which he has hidden in the system.  Whoever finds it will inherit his entire estate.  He has filled the hunt with references to his teenage years, the 1980s.  This starts a worldwide craze for studying eighties lore, but when the book opens, nobody has made much progress in finding the egg.  But that is about to change.  Cline obviously had so much fun writing this book that you have to enjoy it too.  I did find myself wondering who, exactly, his target audience was, since there are so many references to the eighties, which I remember very well, thank you very much, but which to my students seem like prehistory.  But this book has sold amazingly and there is even a movie in the works, so it must be understandable even if you never saw War Games and don't know what PacMan is.  You can see  Cline's blog here, and once again, he's having so much fun that it really is endearing, especially if, like me, you like geeks quite a bit.

Book #34 is a new favorite of mine.  I've already shared it with a class, my seventh graders.  It's called Inside Out and Back Again, by Thanhha Lai, and it's the story of Lai's own childhood journey from Saigon in 1975 to Alabama.  Written in incredibly spare and yet evocative free verse, the story makes Saigon and Alabama come alive, as well as the characters, especially Ha, who narrates the book.  She's not always so grateful to be a refugee, and it's not easy for her to adjust to her new life.  As the mother of some earthquake refugees myself, I found myself identifying with Ha's mother!




Book #35 is another one that the author enjoyed writing, The Notorious Benedict Arnold, by Steve Sheinkin.  Sheinkin includes an afterword full of his sources, and writes, "I've been fascinated by Benedict Arnold's story for years and have long wanted to write my own version - I'm convinced it's one of the best action/adventure tales in American history.  In preparation, I compiled an absurdly large collection of books about Arnold, not to mention plays, historical prints, and other Arnold items I probably shouldn't have spent my money on."  C'mon, don't you like Sheinkin already?  He's clearly obsessed by his subject matter.  And his book is really a wonderful biography of Arnold, written like a novel.   Here's Sheinkin's website.

Coming soon: books #36-#39. 

This post is linked to the November 10th Saturday Review of Books.

Promises, Promises

I was looking back at past posts about President Obama, and I found this link that I shared back in 2008. It's called the Obameter, and it keeps track of the campaign promises that the President has kept, compromised on, broken, or stalled. Twenty percent of the promises are rated "in the works." There's more detail, too, on each individual issue. You can browse the promises in several different ways.

And here's an excerpt from Obama's speech last night:

"It's not small, it's big. It's important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy. That won't change after tonight, and it shouldn't. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty. We can never forget that as we speak people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter, the chance to cast their ballots like we did today."

The speech ended like this:

"I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We're not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America."

I hope it's true, and I'm praying for the President in the big job he has ahead of him.

Election Day

I guess we know who Big Bird would vote for.

Voting

Like everyone else, I am very ready for this election season to be over.  It has dragged on as long as I can remember.  Was there ever a time before these men were arguing with each other and everyone I know was arguing too?

But as much as I dislike the polarization we've seen during this election, I can't be cynical about voting.   I think about people around the world who have no voice in their government; I think about the photos of eager first-time voters lining up across the hills in South Africa in 1994; I think about women in the United States who fought for years for the right to vote.

Source: http://qu301southafrica.com

Voting is a privilege, and I hope my American readers will go vote tomorrow.  I sent off my absentee ballot last week.  I admit that it gives me a thrill every single time I vote, even though my first election was -- ahem -- a long time ago.

Sunday Night

The problem with getting an extra hour of sleep last night is darkness coming early, depressingly, this evening. The problem with having two short weeks (hurricane days off, All Saints' Day, All Souls' Day) is that Sunday night comes, and tomorrow morning is Monday, and there's a five-day work week ahead.

Yeah, feeling a little gloomy, since it's dark and Novembery and we haven't had city electricity since yesterday afternoon (not the result of the hurricane, just the way things are). And I'm maybe just a teeny bit sleep-deprived in spite of the extra hour, because our neighbors had an all night bash last night complete with drumming until four AM.

 I'll try to be a bit more uplifting tomorrow.

Amy Wilentz on Sandy

I just recently found out that Amy Wilentz, author of the gorgeously written and controversial The Rainy Season, has a blog. I know I will be reading it regularly, because she writes so wonderfully and apologizes (in the post I'm quoting below) for being so Haiticentric. "I can't help it," she admits. Here she is on Hurricane Sandy. This is just a short excerpt from a much longer post, and she's also provided (in a separate post) the photo she refers to. Click on the link at the end to read the whole thing.  

"So when I look at the picture of a crowded gas station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, ... I feel that I have been here before; I’ve been in that gas station so many times, only it was always in Haiti, and no one ever cared. In fact, no one really minded: in Haiti, gasoline shortages are habitual, just part of the program of underdevelopment — Haiti can run out of gas nationally because a tanker is delayed. One becomes rather insouciant and even fatalistic about it. It’s perfectly normal to say that you couldn’t get to an appointment because you ran out of gas or because you were delayed at the gas station for hours. Often you borrow someone else’s car that has more gas, if your meeting is really urgent.
And in Haiti, people who are standing in line picking up gas for distant empty cars don’t have those nice handy red gasoline holders to fill up; they have old vegetable oil bottles or dilapidated white buckets. (Did you know some gasoline is pink? I learned that in Haiti.) Also the cars that converged on gas stations in Port-au-Prince or in the provincial towns (in inefficient circles and wedges resembling the pattern at the Brooklyn station above), are not recent models. Suffice it to say that it is not surprising to look down while riding in a Haitian “taxi” and see the roadbed passing beneath your feet as if you were the aptly named Barney Rubble.

Also, by the way, hospitals have always had huge power problems in Haiti, all the time. I loved reading about how Bellevue hospital dealt with Sandy; it was so Haitian — the bucket lines, going up and down stairs on foot, without elevators, rushing oxygen tanks first to one bedside and then the next.  Welcome to the world as it is."

Here's the whole post.

And here's an article from the Atlantic on the hurricane damage in Haiti.

Poetry Friday: Another Hurricane Poem

Amy from The Poem Farm posted this poem, by a Puerto Rican poet, on Facebook this week. It was perfect for us, drying out from the storm, and I hope it doesn't seem frivolous if you're in New Jersey or New York. Believe me, I don't make light of hurricanes, this or any other. The latest statistics show that there were 157 deaths from this storm, and 51 of them were in Haiti. The damage doesn't have such high cost estimates here because people don't start off with as much to lose. All that said, I love this poem, especially the last line, so be sure to click through to read that.

Problems with Hurricanes
by Victor Hernández Cruz

 A campesino looked at the air
And told me:
With hurricanes it's not the wind
or the noise
or the water.
I'll tell you he said:
it's the mangoes, avocados
Green plantains and bananas
flying into town like projectiles.

How would your family feel if they had to tell
The generations that you
got killed by a flying
Banana.

Here's the rest.

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

It's November! (Reading Update post)

It's November again, and since I have been a blogging slacker for the last several months (if it weren't for Poetry Friday, I would hardly post anything at all), I decided to try NaBloPoMo again this year.  Apparently this isn't really a thing any more; it's become more of a year-round challenge, and the official website just says something about "the birthday of this project." Never mind!  I will go by the rules I've followed for the last couple of years, which are, simply, to post something, anything, every day of November.

Since my last Reading Update post, I have read sixteen books, so I'm going to split those up over several posts and put one up whenever I have a day when I have nothing else to post.  I have time to do that today because we have All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day off from school. 

So here goes:

I actually read book #28 at the beginning of the summer but had somehow missed it in my blog list.  Ashfall, by Mike Mullin, is the kind of book that gives you nightmares.  In most dystopic novels, there is enough improbability (and part of that is the futuristic setting) that the reader can maintain some distance.  This book, however, is unblinkingly realistic, and set in the present day.  Did you know there is a massive volcano under Yellowstone?  I didn't.  Did you know what kind of results there could be if it were to erupt?  I didn't, but now I do.  Alex is forced to call upon all of his resources to survive the journey to find his parents.  On the way he meets Darla, and their growing dependence on each other is portrayed in an incredibly unsentimental, yet touching way.  You can read the first two chapters for free here, at the author's website, and you can also find previews of the second book, which came out a couple of weeks ago, and which I haven't read yet.  Having experienced an earthquake myself, and being immersed right now, like everyone else, in coverage from Hurricane Sandy, I am very much aware that this world is full of huge forces that are completely beyond our control.  This book reinforced that awareness.  Even so, I do recommend it for the way it draws you in from the first page, its believable characters, and its picture of human beings surviving because they have to, and even with a bit of hope in the midst of all the bleakness.

Book #29 was A Guide to the Birds of East Africa, by Nicholas Drayson. Many reviews have compared this book to Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books. It was reminiscent of those books, and it also reminded me of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson.  Like Alexander McCall Smith's books, this one has an African setting that is not riddled with misery (though there are some glimpses of the problems of contemporary Nairobi), and like Helen Simonson's novel, there's a romance (or is there?) between non-youthful characters.  This was as light and amusing as the previous book was dark and terrifying.

Book #30 was another Alan Gregory book, Higher Authority, by Stephen White. Alan Gregory is a clinical psychologist who somehow is around a whole lot of murders. His girlfriend (wife in later books) is a DA, so that explains some of the mayhem that surrounds him, but seriously, he makes psychology seem like a very dangerous profession. Like most of the murder mysteries I read (mostly just Stephen White, P.D. James, and Elizabeth George), I like these books for the character development and relationships. I often forget the details of the murder plot immediately after reading them. This one had the additional interest of its exploration (mostly negative) of Mormonism.

The next bunch of books were assigned for a class I'm taking in Adolescent Literature.  One of the best things about taking a class or joining a book group is getting introduced to a stack of new authors and titles.  Some of these I wouldn't have chosen myself, but I'm glad I read all of them.  The professor chose many award-winners from the last couple of years.  Book #31 was especially excellent, and I recommend it highly.  It's called  Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science, by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos.  This is one of those books that made me see the world differently and made connections between disparate elements in my thinking.  There's a major Haiti component to the history of sugar, which explains part of my interest, but I was also fascinated to learn that the history of sugar is the history of slavery and industrialization and revolution.  Because human beings crave sweetness, the world changed.  I see abolitionism in a new light after reading this, as well; yes, abolitionists went without sugar in their tea to urge an end to slavery, but if a new way of producing sugar (from beets) hadn't been developed, would we still have the evils of plantation slavery?  Our craving for sweetness continues unabated.  This book reads like an action-packed novel.  You can see the authors' website here.

Coming soon: books #32 - #35!
This post is linked to the November 3rd Saturday Review of Books.

Poetry Friday: Siblings

School is called off today for the second day as we are pounded by Hurricane Sandy.  She's not hitting us directly, but we are getting an unbelievable amount of rain.  The latest I heard was that nine people have died in Haiti as a result.

I found this poem about hurricanes.  Be sure to click through and read about the others that year - including the most famous one, perhaps ever, Katrina.

Siblings

By Patricia Smith

Hurricanes, 2005

Arlene learned to dance backwards in heels that were too high.

Bret prayed for a shaggy mustache made of mud and hair.

Cindy just couldn’t keep her windy legs together.

Dennis never learned to swim.

Emily whispered her gusts into a thousand skins.

Franklin, farsighted and anxious, bumbled villages.

Gert spat her matronly name against a city’s flat face.

Harvey hurled a wailing child high.

Irene, the baby girl, threw pounding tantrums.

Here's the rest.
And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: The List

I read the poem in this post earlier this week with my eighth graders, and later in the same day saw this blog post linked on Facebook (it's a list of the "Ten books you absolutely must read" and includes such items as "every single book by your favourite author" and "the one that a friend recommends").  Both express my view that people should read what they enjoy.  I have read books before because they were good for me, or because I wanted to be able to say I had read them, and there's nothing inherently wrong with those things, but reading is also a great pleasure, and I want to enjoy it.  I don't believe that there is some list of books everyone should read.  Everyone should read the Bible (because there's so much in it that is so amazing), but other than that, people's lists are, and should be, idiosyncratic.

Here's Naomi Shihab Nye's take on that:

The List
By Naomi Shihab Nye

A man told me he had calculated
the exact number of books
he would be able to read before he died
by figuring the average number
of books he read per month
and his probable earth span,
(averaging how long
his dad and grandpa had lived,
adding on a few years since he
exercised more than they did).
Then he made a list of necessary books,
nonfiction mostly, history, philosophy,
fiction, and poetry from different time periods
so there wouldn’t be large gaps in his mind.
He had given up frivolous reading entirely.
There are only so many days.

Oh, I felt sad to hear such an organized plan.
What about the books that aren’t written yet,
the books his friends might recommend
that aren’t on the list,
the yummy magazine that might fall
into his hand at a silly moment after all?
What about the mystery search
through the delectable library shelves?
I felt the heartbeat of forgotten precious books
calling for his hand.

Here's today's roundup, hosted by the lovely Irene Latham, who is celebrating her new book. Congratulations, Irene! And I'm so sorry I never sent you a couplet for the zoo poem. When you're too busy to write a couplet, you are too busy.

Poetry Friday: About Education

I am too busy these days.  I can tell because I'm not writing, I'm not blogging, and this week I didn't even read the Poetry Friday posts until Thursday evening (and I just skimmed a few).  I'm teaching and taking a class.  My grades are due next Wednesday, too, and teachers need no more information than that. 

Here's a poem for this week.  It seems appropriate.

To David, About His Education

By Howard Nemerov
 

The world is full of mostly invisible things,

And there is no way but putting the mind’s eye,

Or its nose, in a book, to find them out,

Things like the square root of Everest

Or how many times Byron goes into Texas,

Or whether the law of the excluded middle

Applies west of the Rockies. For these

And the like reasons, you have to go to school

And study books and listen to what you are told,

And sometimes try to remember. Though I don’t know

What you will do with the mean annual rainfall

On Plato’s Republic, or the calorie content

Of the Diet of Worms, such things are said to be

Good for you, and you will have to learn them

In order to become one of the grown-ups

Who sees invisible things neither steadily nor whole,

But keeps gravely the grand confusion of the world

Under his hat, which is where it belongs,

And teaches small children to do this in their turn.


Today's roundup is here.

Poetry Friday: October

October where I live brings some slightly cooler weather, but nothing like the drama of autumn in the north.  Here's Paul Laurence Dunbar on October, who is "whole-hearted, happy, careless, free."  Here's to October living this weekend!

October

OCTOBER is the treasurer of the year,
And all the months pay bounty to her
store;
The fields and orchards still their tribute bear,
And fill her brimming coffers more and more.
But she, with youthful lavishness,
Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress,
And decks herself in garments bold
Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.
She heedeth not how swift the hours fly,
But smiles and sings her happy life along;
She only sees above a shining sky;
She only hears the breezes' voice in song.
Her garments trail the woodlands through,
And gather pearls of early dew
That sparkle, till the roguish Sun
Creeps up and steals them every one.
But what cares she that jewels should be lost,
When all of Nature's bounteous wealth is
hers?
Though princely fortunes may have been their
cost,
Not one regret her calm demeanor stirs.
Whole-hearted, happy, careless, free,
She lives her life out joyously,
Nor cares when Frost stalks o'er her way
And turns her auburn locks to gray.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: Earthquake Poem

After the earthquake I wrote here, here and here about hearing my friend Magalie Boyer on the radio, being interviewed on the American Public Media show The Story. Hers was one of the respectful, loving, and deeply sorrowful voices coming out of Haiti in those terrible days, an articulate Haitian woman speaking her sadness about what had happened to her country. 

This week Magalie shared a poem with me that she wrote about the earthquake, and I immediately begged her to let me share it for Poetry Friday. Here it is.


Postmortem
by Magalie Boyer

Some things we lost in the earthquake:

The Ministry of Planification and of External Cooperation and the Ministry of Public Health

The Ministry of Finance and of the Economy and the Palais de Justice

The Primature and the DGI

The National Palace

Canado

Sainte Trinite and Sacre Coeur

The Wesleyan Church of Carrefour-feuilles

Maxo’s records, complete with his new-born picture, from Chancerelle

And Mario, who was 17 and albino

Marie-Lucie, a nursing student, Marie-Lucie and her 98 classmates

The habit of hearing harmony in the city’s cacophony

(As if the ensemble of tap-taps and 4x4s could be a choir!)

Our casual relationship with rank misery

The ability to match our tears to our grief

Jacmel’s invincibility

The mask of sufficiency

The fig leaf of society


 Here is today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: Elizabeth Alexander 2

I'm back with Elizabeth Alexander today, after finishing listening to the podcast I linked to last week. Again, I enjoyed learning more about Alexander than that she was the poet who read a poem at Obama's inauguration. I loved so many of the things that Alexander had to say, and the poems that she read, that I had to feature her once more. Here she is on poetry as a poor people's art:

"So but I think poetry — you know, what I also like to continue what a number of writers — Lucille Clifton, Wanda Coleman — they've talked about poetry as an art form that is a poor peoples' art form, which is to say you don't need — you can't write a novel without a lot of time to yourself. They don't get written any other way. But I love how these women talk about how you can snatch time to make a poem. That doesn't mean that they aren't hard to make, but it means that they are like grass or flowers coming up in the sidewalk cracks. Wanda Coleman says, 'I can start a poem if I'm waiting on line. Poor people spend a lot of time waiting on line. I couldn't write a novel waiting on line, but I could start a poem waiting on line.' Lucille Clifton says, 'The best conditions for me to write poetry are at the kitchen table, one kid's got the measles, another two kids are smacking each other. You know, life is going on around me.' And not only is that the stuff of the poems, but also that she can snatch little tiny snippets of space for the poems. She had six children and she was very, very funny. She said, 'Why do you think my poems are so short?' Because that's what results when you're grabbing time like that. But, I mean, they are incredibly, powerfully meditative, amazing, amazing poems. So I think that there's a way that poetry — you don't make any money from writing it and you don't need any money to make it."

I liked this quote because I have been feeling lately as though I don't have time for poetry - for any of my own writing, really. Of course I'm teaching poems to my students, but I'm also grading their work and taking an online graduate class, and that doesn't leave much time for thinking and creating. But I need to "snatch little tiny snippets of space" more often. Later she talks about writing with a newborn:

"You just realize like, well, if you're gonna do it, just do it. Don't even think about doing it. Don't talk about doing it. Just do it. So actually, it was with my first child and nursing in the middle of the night and being, of course, so tired, but also wonderfully unguarded. I found that actually being that tired was fantastic for my poetry because I had no filters. You know, I'd have the baby in one arm and it would be three in the morning and I'd write some things down on any scrap of paper. I just grabbed the time I had."

Speaking of birth, here's the beginning of Alexander's poem "Neonatology."

Neonatology

 by Elizabeth Alexander

Giving birth is like jazz, something from silence,
then all of it. Long, elegant boats,
blood-boiling sunshine, human cargo, a handmade kite —

Postpartum.
No longer a celebrity, pregnant lady, expectant.
It has happened; you are here...

Here's the rest.


And with the combination of poverty and birth, I have to share this post too, written by my friend Beth McHoul. Yes, giving birth is like jazz, in all its improvisation and beauty and joy, but for too many women around the world, giving birth is terribly dangerous. Here's a poem I wrote about a scene I witnessed in Port-au-Prince right after the US election when Obama became president.

 November 7, 2008, Port-au-Prince

The Friday after the US election
 We were driving home on Delmas
And I saw a little family:
A man carrying a newborn with infinite gentleness
And a woman walking slowly behind him.
She had the doughy belly of recent childbirth.
My body felt that familiar soreness as I watched her.

Some women are pushed to the curb In a wheelchair
After the hardest work they'll ever do
And then helped carefully into a car
With a car seat awaiting the floppy-headed baby
And driven by a husband who tries to avoid every bump in the road.
This one walked home
With a towel tied around her waist
To hide any evidence of postpartum bleeding.

I wondered as we passed if she had named her baby Obama?
I wondered what his life would be like
With such a strong mother
And with a father who carried him home
With so much love and pride.

 by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Alexander says about poetry,

"I think that one of the great things about poetry, and many black women poets have written about this, that human beings have always made song. Communities, tribes, peoples, have always told each other the story of who they are in song."

This week, Elizabeth Alexander and Beth McHoul and Haiti have me thinking about poetry and song, birth and death, life and loss.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: Elizabeth Alexander

Yesterday I started listening to a podcast featuring Elizabeth Alexander (you can find the podcast here), and I heard her read her poem "Ars Poetica #100:I Believe." When I went to her website to look for the text, I also found another that I liked even better. It's called "African Leave-Taking Disorder." I grew up in Africa and have witnessed this "disorder" many times, and even developed it myself. Far from being a disorder, it's a wonderful feature of the deep, satisfying relationships that people have with each other in traditional African culture, where hurry is not valued, and people matter more than things or events.

The poem begins like this:

Ars Poetica #28: African Leave-Taking Disorder

The talk is good. The two friends linger
at the door. Urban crickets sing with them.

There is no after the supper and talk.
The talk is good. These two friends linger

at the door, half in, half out, ‘til one
decides to walk the other home. And so

they walk, more talk, the new doorstep, the
nightgowned wife who shakes her head and smiles

from the bedroom window as the men talk
in love and the crickets sing along.

You can read the rest here.

The only Elizabeth Alexander poem I had ever heard or read before this podcast was her inaugural poem, "Praise Song for the Day". When Obama was inaugurated, I searched out all the poems that have been read at inaugurations (there aren't many) and read them with my eighth graders. After listening to the lovely conversation in the podcast (I'm still not finished; I'm listening to the one that's an hour and a half long, and I just can't ride the exercise bike that long), I am sure I am going to be seeking out more of her work.

Here's today's roundup.

Have a great weekend. Here's hoping you develop "African leave-taking disorder," and spend some time in deep, satisfying conversation.

Poetry Friday: The Sciences Sing a Lullabye

Last week I posted a poem my son shared with me; this week it's one from my daughter.

The Sciences Sing a Lullabye

by Albert Goldbarth

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you're tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Here's the rest.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

More After the Storm

“I put the baby under a table, and we tried to go under the bed, but there was water coming up from the floor,” said Ms. Millien, 35. “In past storms we could stand in the corners where the leaks are not too bad to stay dry, but with this storm there were no corners, there was no escape.”

from this New York Times article.

It's been a week since Isaac paid us a visit. I spent most of last Saturday sleeping, since I had spent most of Friday night awake. Our aftermath, as I wrote in an earlier post, involved cleaning up fallen branches and dealing with electrical and internet outages. We still don't have electricity back properly, though it's been on for five minutes here and there. Our neighborhood is full of the sounds of many generators. Anyone who can afford it here owns a generator, since power cuts are so common even when no storm has passed through. Our generator is running now, and it's loud and smelly, and I am so thankful for it.

But I never had to put a baby under a table, and I never had to stand in the corner to stay dry, and although it felt like the windows might blow out, I never thought my roof would blow off. And I don't live in a tent. And I know every single minute that the world isn't fair, and that I am outrageously privileged.

Poetry Friday: The Castle-Builder

My son showed me this poem, in a book we have called The Children's Own Longfellow. It seems appropriate in a week full of never-ending work.

The Castle-Builder
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A gentle boy, with soft and silken locks,
A dreamy boy, with brown and tender eyes,
A castle-builder, with his wooden blocks,
And towers that touch imaginary skies.

A fearless rider on his father's knee,
An eager listener unto stories told
At the Round Table of the nursery,
Of heroes and adventures manifold.

There will be other towers for thee to build;
There will be other steeds for thee to ride;
There will be other legends, and all filled
With greater marvels and more glorified.

Build on, and make thy castles high and fair,
Rising and reaching upward to the skies;
Listen to voices in the upper air,
Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries.

Here is the roundup for today.

After the Storm

I've lived in Port-au-Prince for sixteen years, and Isaac is the worst storm I have ever experienced. There have been many storms that have done more damage to the country as a whole, but never any that battered Port-au-Prince quite this savagely. My husband and I were awake almost all night on Friday as the gusts of wind grew stronger and stronger. It wasn't as bad as an earthquake, but it was still pretty bad.

On Saturday my husband and kids cleaned up fallen branches from our courtyard and we eyed our solar panels dubiously; they didn't look good, but there wasn't any sun, so we couldn't check on whether they were working.

On Sunday afternoon we had a little bit of sun, enough to find out that the solar panels were still working. We also went over to our school campus to get online, since our internet at home is still down. I talked to the man who cleans my classroom, who was moonlighting as a gate guard. I told him that we were surprised by how bad the storm was, and he agreed that he was, too. I said, "They always say hurricanes are coming, and it's never anything," and he nodded. He said it was the worst he'd ever lived through, too.

I asked him how he and his family had fared and he said they were fine, but their roof blew off. They went next door and spent the rest of the night with their neighbors, and then in the morning he bought a tarp, which will serve as a roof until he can get his replaced. I asked if any other school employees had had damage to their homes. He said he only knew of one, who hadn't had a roof to start with, just a tarp. And of course, his tarp blew away. There may be others, he said. He'll find out when they come to work on Monday.

Before the earthquake I didn't even know the Kreyol word for tarp, prela, but now it's very much a part of my vocabulary. Many people continue to live under tarps or tents, two and half years after goudou goudou shook our city. There was money donated to help our employees, and all of their residences were surveyed; those who had earthquake damage received money for repairs. I don't know if the employee still living under a tarp chose to use the money for something else which he needed more, or if he lost his roof since then, or if he just feels safer sleeping under a lightweight tarp after seeing how many people were crushed under concrete roofs on January 12th, 2010.

You'd have to be a lot dumber than I am to miss the the contrast between the post-hurricane concerns at my house and those of my janitor. While I fret about internet access and solar panels, he drapes his home, containing all his possessions, with a tarp, and prays that this hurricane season won't bring any more unpleasant surprises.

Poetry Friday: Storm

Today, since Tropical Storm (formerly Hurricane) Isaac is bearing down on us, I will link you to my friend Robbie's poem about storms, and this one in particular. Here it is.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is here.

Poetry Friday: An Ancient Gesture

An Ancient Gesture

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

You can find a poem I wrote about Penelope here.

And here is today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: The Junior High School Band Concert

This poem makes me laugh and cringe a little as I get ready for my middle schoolers to descend on my classroom on Monday. What a wonderful, terrible time of life those early teens are. I wouldn't go there again for any money myself, but I get to experience it vicariously every year through my students.

The Junior High School Band Concert
by David Wagoner

When our semi-conductor
Raised his baton, we sat there
Gaping at Marche Militaire,
Our mouth-opening number.
It seemed faintly familiar
(We'd rehearsed it all that winter),
But we attacked in such a blur,
No army anywhere
On its stomach or all fours
Could have squeezed through our crossfire.

I played cornet, seventh chair,
Out of seven, my embouchure
A glorified Bronx cheer
Through that three-keyed keyhole stopper
And neighborhood window-slammer
Where mildew fought for air
At every exhausted corner,
My fingering still unsure
After scaling it for a year
Except on the spit-valve lever.

Here's the rest, and you can also hear the author reading the poem at that link.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Saturday

I got home to Haiti yesterday. Don't ask me how it's going for another week or two, please. Then I hope to have something good to say. In the meantime, working on fixing and setting up and getting going on a new school year.

Here's yesterday's Poetry Friday roundup.

Haiti Earthquake Survivor Lovely Avelus Finally Meets her Saviours

by Catherine Porter

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI—Some mysteries are like religion. They linger, forever out of reach, promising only possibility and puzzle. Others are like calculus problems, requiring investigation and pencil scribbling before proffering concrete answers.

There are many mysteries about the story of Lovely Avelus and the earthquake that cleaved this country 21/2 years ago. How did her little 2-year-old body, so small and bird-boned, survive the weight of two stories of concrete without even a scratch? How then did she survive there, trapped for six days without food or water or someone to buoy her little spirit with songs of hope and solace?

Here's the rest of the article.

What is Saving Your Life Right Now?

I never even heard of a synchroblog before last week, and now I'm participating in my second. Sarah Bessey wrote:

"I wrote a little post, late in the afternoon yesterday, in the stolen 30 minutes between my real-work for Mercy Ministries and the time when I had to head home to make supper. Just one of those quick, say-it-hot kind of posts, everything I was feeling and thinking condensed in a few paragraphs, it took about 20 minutes, and then I walked away. The crux of the post was a question that I lifted from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book 'Leaving Church' which I had recently re-read: 'What is saving your life right now?'. . . Write your own post on your own blog, answering the question: What is saving your life right now? Write it quick, don’t overthink it, just spill it all out, it can be pictures if you want, whatever. If you’ve already written one, feel free to link that up, too."

So here goes...what's saving my life right now?

I got this piece of wisdom in my fortune cookie yesterday:



I don't like change very much. I'm about to change countries, after a summer break in the US that went lightning-fast. I'm not ready. There were so many things I was going to accomplish, books I was going to read, words I was going to write, thoughts I was going to take the time to think. I don't want to be back in the whirlwind of school again, not yet.

And then there are some other changes ahead. My teaching schedule is going to change completely this year, after about six years of a similar way of doing things, with a new setup which I'm not entirely sure about. I'm going to have new classes to teach, plus I'm going to be taking a class online, with all the time-sucking and technological frustrations that entails.

And yet it's OK. One of the good things about being...my age...is that I'm finally learning a thing or two. One of them is that God is with me, and we'll get through this. It doesn't do a lot of good for me to become anxious, and more and more often, these days, I just don't. I'm getting better - not perfect yet - at taking my life one day at a time. Because as Jesus put it, each day has enough troubles of its own.

It's not dramatic, but not worrying is saving my life right now.

Poetry Friday: Olympics

So I was searching for something sporty to post today, in honor of the Olympics, and I found this from December 2010, explaining about how there would be a poetry wall in the Olympic Village. I did some more research and found this site, Winning Words Poetry. It turns out there's not one but many poetry walls.

Did everyone know this but me?

Here's the archive of poems from the site. You can search by sport or themes.

Here's a poem I found in the archive. This one isn't so much in celebration of sports but of London itself, shining during the Games which begin tomorrow.



Upon Westminster Bridge

Sept. 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth


It may be still in the morning, but there's going to be plenty of activity the rest of the time! I love this picture, though, of that deep calm before the day begins.

The roundup is here today.

Edwidge Danticat on Art

This is a great interview Tavis Smiley did with Edwidge Danticat about her book Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. She explains why art is both a necessity and a luxury.

"Art is another way, besides breathing, that we let people know we are alive."

Poetry Friday

I was out all day today having fun, and I have nothing for Poetry Friday. But fortunately lots of other people posted. So go enjoy what they wrote!

Reading Update

Book #21 of this year was All is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir, by Brennan Manning. I haven't read much of Manning's work, but I know that he has written extensively on being a ragamuffin, a sinner saved by grace and not by any of his own merit. In this book he is painfully open about the flaws and sins of his life, including his alcoholic binges during a time when God was using him enormously in ministry. My favorite part of this book was the letters from his friends included at the end, where they testified to the difference his friendship made in their lives. Here's a quote from the book:

"My life is a witness to vulgar grace - a grace that amazes as it offends. A grace that pays the eager beaver who works all day long the same wages as the grinning drunk who shows up at ten till five. A grace that hikes up the robe and runs breakneck towards the prodigal reeking of sin and wraps him up and decides to throw a party no ifs, ands, or buts. A grace that raises bloodshot eyes to a dying thief's request - 'Please, remember me' - and assures him, 'You bet!' A grace that is the pleasure of the Father, fleshed out in the carpenter Messiah, Jesus the Christ, who left His Father's side not for heaven's sake but for our sakes, yours and mine. This vulgar grace is indiscriminate compassion. It works without asking anything of us. It's not cheap. It's free, and as such will always be a banana peel for the orthodox foot and a fairy tale for the grown-up sensibility. Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try to find something or someone it cannot cover. Grace is enough. He is enough. Jesus is enough."

Book #22 was Unfinished Desires, by Gail Godwin. I've read all or most of Godwin's other books but hadn't seen this one, which came out in 2010, yet. It's very much like her others, filled with a deep spiritual sensibility and an awareness of the imperfections of human beings. I appreciated the character development and the focus on the inward drama of seeking God.

Book #23 was Anne Lamott's latest book, Some Assembly Required. I enjoyed Lamott's memoir of her son's first year, Operating Instructions. In that book, Lamott chronicles her life as a single mom to baby Sam. In Some Assembly Required, Sam is all grown up and now a father himself, at 19. Lamott is learning to be a grandmother, and trying not to interfere too much in the life of baby Jax, whom she adores, but whose parent she is not. Lamott bugs me (and herself) sometimes, but I like her authenticity. A couple of observations: first, in Lamott's writing, seventh grade is always the objective correlative for misery. Here she is on her baby grandson:

"For Jax, at nearly a month, nothing is wrecked. His skin is so ethereal and smooth, and he is not required to do anything or make decisions, so he doesn't have a history of screwing up yet, and all of his needs and desires are fulfilled, almost immediately : wet to dry, empty to full, edgy to relaxed, rocked asleep and then awake. You'd almost want to be Jax, if you didn't know what he was in store for - namely, a fully flawed human life. Stubbed toes, seventh grade, acne, broken hearts."

And later she writes, "I said to Karen that you're instantly in a bind once you arrive here on earth, of need, of self-will, a body and a separate personality, even before the crippling self-consciousness kicks in, even before seventh grade." Second, it was a strange experience to read about Lamott's reaction to the earthquake in Haiti, since that passage threw me into my own memory and sent me to the exact day she was talking about. I had just arrived in the US on January 18th, 2010, having just been evacuated from Haiti. Lamott, on the other hand, was getting ready for a trip to India.

"January 18. I got cold feet at the airport. It was only days after the earthquake in Haiti. I was reeling with the global unimaginable tragedy of that one, and I knew I was about to fly into the heart of another. So I called Bonnie. 'Where is God in Haiti? Where will God be in the slums of Delhi?'

She said that in Haiti, as a result of the devastation, we've seen the care with which people treat people in trouble, with which we attend to our families and others, in chaos or sorrow. And I would get to see that in India."

I have to admit that I don't know what to think about "our earthquake" being co-opted to teach a lesson, even though the lesson she learned is one that I learned too. Of course I don't expect her "reeling" to be as extensive as my own, and certainly her reflections are just the sort of thing I often do myself in response to something I'm following in the news. It was just strange to read. I'll leave it at that.

Book #24 was The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman. I enjoyed the characters and relationships (and the bookstore and cookbook details) in this book and would read more by Goodman. The September 11th connection, which I saw coming from the very beginning of the book, had a similar effect to the Haiti earthquake connection in Lamott's book. An event like September 11th, which everyone remembers clearly, is tricky to handle in a novel. It's still so close to us.

Book #25 was recommended to me by my daughter, who sobbed her way through it. I read it in the car on our most recent roadtrip, and sobbed a lot too. The book, The Fault in Our Stars, is written by John Green, one of my daughter's favorite people. He and his brother are The Vlog Brothers, founders of the Nerdfighters. (That is, not fighting against nerds, but an army of nerds fighting "worldsuck" and increasing awesomeness.) Given how goofy all of this sounds (and believe me, I have heard a lot about this whole Nerdfighter thing from my Nerdfighter daughter), this book was not at all what I expected. It's about kids with cancer, and Hazel and Augustus are incredibly real, incredibly affecting characters. There's not a single ounce of sentimentality in the book. These kids are tough, brilliant, and compassionate, and there's a lot more to them than that they have cancer. The blurb on the cover says, "John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love." I can't do better than that.

Books #26 and #27 were Brian Selznick titles. I recently saw the movie Hugo, which I loved. I hadn't yet read the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, on which the movie is based. The book is told in words and pictures, so although it is 550 pages long, it's a quick read. The pictures are amazing, full of loving details which the movie replicates. Selznick got the Caldecott medal for this in 2008. I'm glad I finally read it. After I put it down I immediately picked up Selznick's next book, Wonderstruck. I didn't love that one quite as much as Hugo's story, but it was another amazing book. Again, the pictures are very important, but in this book, there are two separate stories, one told in words and one in pictures. The two collide by the end.

Somewhere in the middle of all these, I started reading Middlemarch, by George Eliot. This is a chunk of a book, but I'm not sure how long it is, since I'm reading it on my Kindle (the lack of pagination is one of the things I don't like about e-reading). All I know is that I read and read and read and the percentage at the bottom of my screen doesn't change! The only Eliot I've read before is Silas Marner, and I'm enjoying this one so far. It may take me a while to finish it, though, since I keep reading other things between chapters.

I wanted to read at least 52 books this year, and I don't know if I'm going to make it. But I have been enjoying my summer reading!

A Love Letter to my Body

This letter is part of the SheLoves magazine synchroblog here.

Dear Body,

So, the assignment is to write you a love letter. I'm not sure I can do it. Perhaps the best I can manage is a grudging acceptance letter. But here goes.

For a long time now, probably since my teens, I've dealt with insecurities about how you look by thinking of you in purely functional terms. You're healthy and strong, you can eat anything, you get me where I need to go, you can do a 5K (walking, not running, but still). So I have a "not appealing to look at, but useful" paradigm. My hands may not look like the perfectly manicured visions of loveliness my students' moms (or my students themselves) carry around, but mine can use chopsticks and type extremely fast and make a perfect cup of tea. You can extrapolate from that hands example to how I see some of my less public body parts.

Sometimes I wonder why God chose to put these beautiful souls of ours into bodies. They (you, all of you bodies) complicate matters so much. No offense, Body, but it's true. You get tired. You have hormones, which affect behavior more than I'd like. And there's all that business about how to clothe and adorn you, finding the impossible balance between being attractive enough and drawing too much attention to oneself, thus becoming a source of temptation. I remember a friend sharing with me that her husband had told her that some women caused temptation not only by how they dressed, but even by the way they did their hair. That's a lot of responsibility for a body, isn't it? And different Christian communities I've been a part of in my life hold different views of what is and is not acceptable. We have to think about what to feed you, too, so you don't get too fat or too thin or too unhealthy. And no matter how well we maintain you, you get sick. You get old. You die. You, Body of mine, will die some day.

But then I remember that Jesus took on flesh. He had a body. He didn't have a woman's body, but He was born of one; He had a placenta and a belly button and He nursed at His mother's breasts. He wasn't some ethereal spirit alone, not just a beautiful soul, but fully human, with a respiratory system and a blood type and hair and fingernails that grew and had to be cut. He had appetites.

But I'm avoiding the topic here, Body, because it's easier to talk in general terms and philosophize than it is to talk about us, you and me, the particularities of our love/hate relationship. I have to admit that when I think about you, there are many negative images that come to mind, times you've let me down, embarrassed me, shamed me. Years of P.E. classes, when I was awkward and uncoordinated and couldn't do any of the things that it seemed everyone else did effortlessly. Puberty. Acne. Dressing to hide you. Bathing suits. Your clumsiness that caused me accidents and injuries. And, I hate to bring this up, because I know it technically isn't your fault, but I guess I do blame you for the loss of my second child, who died at eight weeks gestation. You failed me. You didn't hold on to that tiny daughter (even though I don't even know she was a daughter), whom I already loved.

There are positives too, though, Body. It helps that I have a husband who's been appreciating you a lot for almost 23 years now. He doesn't care that you're getting older and saggier, either; He seems to like you more now than when I was 21.

And oh, Body, here's where I can use the word Love, capitalized, with hearts and flowers: you carried my babies, my beautiful children. Even though you were sick and miserable through those pregnancies, you carried them, and you birthed them without drugs, and you were amazing. Truly amazing. That husband I just mentioned was completely in awe of you, of us, and what we did, body and soul. And then you nourished those babies, you made them fat on your milk and nurtured them for - well, let's just say for longer than the average American baby breastfeeds. You were a miracle.

For those kids, Body, I'll forgive you a multitude of sins. The parts that are too big, too jiggly, too stretch-marked, the galumphing, the fall down the stairs that broke my leg (and by the way, that leg still hurts quite often, thank you, more than fifteen years later). Your whiteness - yes, I've always used the image of a creature who's been living under a rock to describe how pale you seem to me, compared with the beautiful dark skin of those I grew up with and those I now live among, as a child in Africa and now as an adult in Haiti. I've always wanted to be black, like them.

Body, you're the one I've got, for better or worse. I know what size you are, give or take. I know what styles you can't ever wear. I know how careful you have to be to wear the right shoes, to avoid pain. I know your patterns and cycles. I know you can't see without glasses, and even though the optometrist got my hopes up years ago about how you might get to stop wearing glasses in your forties as you got more far-sighted, I know now that's not ever going to happen. I know you'll react to a TB skin test, because you had that BCG vaccination in England as a teenager, and I know how health care providers in the US freak out at that. You've had dengue fever and you've been anemic and you've downed years worth of antimalarials. You've done a long bike trip and you've hiked many miles and you've survived an earthquake, although you still react independently of me to noises and movement, and you still catch me off guard every time.

And let's face it, Body, now's the time. If I don't appreciate you now, as I didn't when I was younger, what am I going to do when you age even more? We've passed forty, you know; it's all probably downhill from here.

Can I say that I love you? It feels a little embarrassing, doesn't it? And yet, I'm at home with you now, more than I used to be. I enjoy good food, and sunshine on my shoulders (yep, it makes me happy), and the feel of people I love in my arms. I couldn't experience any of those things without you. And I have a daughter now who looks just like me, and she's beautiful, so I can't insult you the way I used to.

OK then, I'll say it. I love you. I do. Thanks for everything. Hope we have many, many more years together.

Love,
Ruth

Poetry Friday: How Would You Live Then?

A little Mary Oliver. Click on the photo to read a larger version.

How would you live then? I wish I could live all of life the way I live these summer days...

Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Glow-Worms

The Mower to the Glow-Worms
by Andrew Marvell

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;

Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass’s fall;

Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame
To wand’ring mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;

Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.

I love this sleepy summer poem, and the "country comets" that feel no need for a high purpose: it's enough for them to shine while they can, since summer will soon be over. The mower isn't paying any attention anyway; Juliana has "displac'd" his brain and he's wandering literally and metaphorically.

It's going to be a hot day where I am, even hotter than in Haiti. Maybe it will cool off enough this evening to chase some glow-worms.

Here's today's roundup.

Photo Credit: www.firefly.org

Poetry Friday: Tintern Abbey

As we sat on the porch of the cabin, looking out over the woods, my husband said, "This reminds me of Tintern Abbey." He read the poem aloud to us. From now on whenever I hear or read it, I'll think of our friend P. killing bugs in a kind of rhythmic counterpoint.

Here's the whole thing. Some excerpts:

LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY
William Wordsworth

...

Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.

...

And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.

...



Our vacation provided much "life and food for future years." I wish you the same, this summer.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Missed Poetry Friday

I was away from the internet for Poetry Friday but here's the roundup. And I'd just like to report I had a wonderful day, in spite of missing the poems.

Poetry Friday: Two Places

I'm traveling today, going between the place where I live most of the year and the place where I spend several weeks traveling in the summer. The first place, Haiti, the place I'm leaving, is where I've spent 15 years of my life and two-thirds of my married life, given birth twice, experienced some of the most beautiful and definitely the most terrible moments of my life. The other place, the United States, my destination, is printed on my passport, and it's the home of many of the people I love most in the world.

These two places are not even the only ones that have made me who I am - I'm leaving out my African childhood, my British high school years, my summer in France. But for today, two places are enough.


where we are (for edward field)
by Gerald Locklin.

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland.

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope.

I posted this poem once before back in 2008.

The Poetry Friday roundup is here today.

Reading Update

Book #9 of this year was The List, by Siobhan Vivian. This book came out at the beginning of April and by the time I heard the author speak at the IRA conference at the end of the month, it was in its third printing. The book has hit a nerve, with its portrayal of life and judgement in an American high school. The story takes place in a school where, for years, a list has come out annually, the week before Homecoming. There are eight names on the list: the prettiest, and the ugliest, girl in each class. This book is about how we let others define us, and how we define ourselves, based on physical appearance. While this book contains themes that are too mature for many of my middle schoolers, it would be fascinating to discuss with older teenagers.

Book #10 was The Future of Us, by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler. I heard Jay Asher speak at the IRA conference, too. Emma and Josh use an AOL CD/ROM to get on the internet, and suddenly they can see their future Facebook pages, even though of course Facebook won't be invented for years. This was a lot of fun, although I would imagine that much of the AOL humor would be lost on people who don't remember 1996 as clearly as I do. It also includes some interesting ideas about how what we do right now affects our future.

Book #11, Thirteen Reasons Why, is also by Jay Asher, and also makes use of outmoded technology.  

A few days after a girl from school, Hannah Baker, commits suicide, Clay Jensen receives a box of cassette tapes in the mail. Each one was recorded by Hannah and explains her reasons for choosing to take her own life. Asher read us emails from readers of this book, many of whom found it helped them to feel empathy for others and to realize that their actions, and they way they treated people, had consequences.

Book #12 was Heidegger's Glasses, by Thaisa Frank. This was a strange and somewhat confusing book about Nazi Germany. It's not entirely clear to me how much of the premise is invented and how much is historical, but the story is about a group of people spared from concentration camps because of their linguistic abilities. They are required to answer letters from dead people. Apparently, before being murdered, many inmates of concentration camps were forced to write letters to people back home. The Heidegger's Glasses of the title refers to a pair of glasses made for the philosopher. Heidegger's letter about his glasses comes into the compound, with serious consequences. I loved the end of this book but I found many stretches of it hard to follow.

Book #13 was Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of his Trip to Heaven and Back. It seems clear that Colton Burpo had some kind of experience when he was clinically dead for a few minutes. He went somewhere and saw something. However, I'd be hesitant to draw many conclusions from his story about what Heaven is like. Time changes and distorts our memories, and many of the "revelations" Colton shared were years after he had experienced them. I also thought this book was rather stretched out, as though it would have made a nice article, but was turned into a book. It's a quick, easy read, and the Burpos seem like a very sincere, sweet family.

Book #14 was Three Black Swans, by Caroline Cooney. I used this as a read-aloud with my eighth graders, and it didn't hold their attention the way other books by Cooney have. That could just be because it was the end of the school year! Many of the students did say that they found the premise interesting. Missy and Claire are cousins and they look a lot alike. Missy decides to perpetrate a hoax, pretending that she and Claire are actually twins. A fellow student posts a video of the two girls on YouTube and suddenly they begin to find out that their lives are full of secrets.

Book #15 was Carl Hiaasen's latest, Chomp. Hiaasen's books are sure-fire winners with my seventh graders, who have enjoyed Flush and Scat. This one didn't disappoint, with its crazy characters, its focus on ecology, and its Florida setting.

Book #16 was Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan. I always enjoy Tan's books, and this one was very entertaining. It's about a group of tourists who travel to Myanmar/Burma and have a bit more of a cross-cultural experience than they had bargained for, and it's narrated by a woman who is recently dead, but whose spirit is still hanging around.

Book #17 was Not That Kind of Girl, another one by Siobhan Vivian. This has some of the same themes as The List. Male/female interaction, stereotyping, power and control. I didn't enjoy this one as much, though. It isn't easy to be a teenager today, that's for sure, and while adolescence wasn't ever easy, I think the choices and expectations facing teenage girls today, particularly with regard to their sexuality, are daunting. Again, this one is too mature for my middle schoolers.

Book #18 was yet another Siobhan Vivian title. This one, Same Difference, is about a girl who loves art and is just learning that she has a talent. Emily goes to a summer art program and finds a world very different from her suburban origins. She's trying to figure out who she is, and whether she can create a new identity that includes both her past and the art that is opening her mind. Her old best friend, Meg, and her new best friend, Fiona, pull her in different directions. Frankly, both worlds seemed a little stifling to me, and like many of the books in this post, this one made me so thankful that I'm no longer a teenager.

Book #19 was Look Again, by Lisa Scottoline. Ellen Gleeson has adopted her son, but when she gets a "Have You Seen this Child?" mailing, she sees the photo of a child who looks just like hers. Was her adoption legal? Why are people around her dying? Why does she run off to Florida to collect DNA samples? I didn't find this book believable or compelling at all.

Book #20, Love and Other Perishable Items, by Laura Buzo, is set in Australia. The American edition won't be out until December (the Australian title is Good Oil), but I got an ARC at the IRA conference. Amelia is fifteen and works in a grocery store, where she has developed a crush on Chris, her trainer. This book is an example of how reading can pull you into a completely different word from your own. I won't be sharing this one with my middle schoolers either, largely because of all the drinking, drug use, liberal use of the f-word, and other assorted bad behavior, but Buzo has created a world that I could see, hear, and smell. The book is saturated with sheer longing. I thought about the Roddy Doyle books as I read this; how did an author fill me with so much sympathy for characters who spend large amounts of their time drunk? I have no idea, but Buzo, like Doyle, knows how.