Poetry Friday: Philosophy

Philosophy

Over FaceTime,
my daughter and I
study for her
college philosophy class.
She has a list of quotes
she is supposed to evaluate,
explain in context.

I squint at her face,
listen to her voice,
amplified through my computer speakers
from 1800 miles away.
I look for clues:
how is she really doing?

Epictetus,
she tells me,
was a Stoic.
He believed in
non-attachment.
If, instead of an onion
or a shellfish,
you are given a wife or child,
that’s great.
Be glad.
But don’t get attached.

Epictetus,
I tell my daughter,
is trying to get us to fake ourselves out,
to pretend that the people we love
are as replaceable as onions,
as numerous as shellfish,
which back then,
in the first century AD,
were more numerous than they are now.

Yes, she says,
he taught that you shouldn’t wish
for things to be the way you want them to be.
Instead,
you should want them to be the way they are.
You should never say that you have lost something
but that it has been returned.
It wasn’t ever yours.
Don’t view anything as permanent,
but as a traveler views a hotel.

Epictetus was a slave
and couldn’t walk very well
and adopted a child when he was an old man,
and when he says not to wish for things to be
the way you want them to be,
I assume his advice is well-meaning
and that he took it himself.

My daughter smiles,
sighs,
moves on to the next philosopher,
but I am still evaluating,
explaining in context,
realizing once more
how far away she is,
and that she stayed in my home temporarily
as a traveler in a hotel,
and then swam away like a shellfish,
realizing
that I have a little tear in my eye
as though I had been slicing an onion,

realizing 
how attached I am to her,
Epictetus notwithstanding.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Epictetus, Source: Wikipedia.com

I had already written this post when I found this poem by Alice Walker called "How Poems are Made." It was such a perfect description of writing "Philosophy," and others I've written this week too, that I felt I had to include it.  How often have I felt I love too much? It's embarrassing. What a relief to be able to put that "leftover love" into a poem.

How Poems are Made

by Alice Walker

Letting go
In order to hold one
I gradually understand
How poems are made.

There is a place the fear must go. 

There is a place the choice must go. 

There is a place the loss must go. 

The leftover love.

The love that spills out

Of the too full cup

And runs and hides

Its too full self

In shame.

I gradually comprehend

How poems are made

To the upbeat flight of memories.

The flagged beats of the running

Heart.
 

Here's the rest of it. (You should click over and read it. Go on. It's short.)

And here's today's roundup. 

Poetry Friday: More About Windows

 Photo I took yesterday from my classroom window

Two years ago, I wrote for Poetry Friday about the first time I shared the poem "After the Blizzard, Outside my Window," by Lesléa Newman, with my seventh graders. You can find that poem in The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School. It's a sonnet, and it describes the natural world after a snowstorm, as seen through the window. It concludes with the couplet: "To think that all of this is mine for free/ The world is so much better than TV!" In my 2016 post, I told you about my students' response to this lovely poem, and to my suggestion that they could write about what they see out of their windows (not blizzards, here on our tropical island). I wrote a response to their response, and then last year I shared Newman's poem again with my new class, plus my sonnet. I asked them to write in their notebooks about what they see out their windows, and then I used what they said to write another poem. (A vocabulary note for the second one: a djab is a spirit.)

Today, I shared the original poem and my two responses with my current class of seventh graders. They didn't have much to say, but I'll keep you posted on whether I get some window poems from them in the weeks to come.

Here is the poem I shared two years ago, and the one I wrote last year.


Why I Can’t Look Out the Window

You say the world is better than TV
And I imagine that you haven’t lied
But when I go out on my balcony
My mother tells me to come back inside.
She worries about kidnapping and such
And anyway, all I can see is wall
Topped with barbed wire, painful to the touch,
And really, there is nothing else at all.

Well, there’s a power line, and there’s a bird
And blue skies way up there, with wispy cloud
But Mom is asking if I haven’t heard.
I’d look some more, but I am not allowed.

I will explore the world once I am able
But while I’m waiting, I’ll make do with cable.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Out The Window

I asked my students what they see when they look out their windows.

One said he sees a market,
with people who sell spaghetti
and get into fistfights over soap.

One said her window is a normal window during the day
but one night, something smashed into it and broke it,
and she doesn’t know what.

One said as she looks out her window,
her grandmother tells her to stop looking,
because the djab will see her
and take her soul.

One said he once saw thieves
taking the headlights off
the family car.

One said he saw
a cat catch a bird.


They all agreed there was nothing interesting outside their windows.


One said that whenever her grandmother visits from the United States,
she gazes out the window for hours,
staring at boring old Haiti.

“Granmè,” my student says,
“What are you looking at?”

“The mountains,” replies her grandmother.
“They are so beautiful.
And there’s always something different to see.”

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Brenda has today's roundup.

Signposts

Here's something I've recently started using in my classroom, with excellent results. It's from Kylene Beers' book Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading, written with Robert E. Probst. But honestly, I haven't even read the book yet, though it's on my wish list. A while back I joined a Facebook group of teachers who were using the book to teach reading. I read their posts and learned about the Signposts, six elements of plot. There's nothing new about these, but they are so clearly and simply explained in the materials. Here they are:

 http://mwp2013.pbworks.com/w/page/67503014/Notice%20and%20Note

The teachers on the Facebook group, being teachers, are full of creative ways to teach these Signposts, using short stories and videos and exercises. But all I did was to take a few minutes to introduce each one in class one week (one each day Monday through Thursday, and two on Friday). We had just finished our first read-aloud in each class, and so I used that book to give four or five examples of the Signpost I was discussing, and then asked the students to add some. In each class, kids were able to come up with some immediately.

Next, I started bringing up the Signposts with everything we read together. Sometimes when I had a few minutes left at the end of class I would ask, "Which Signposts have you seen so far in this book?" I started asking open-ended questions on quizzes about the Signposts. Right from the beginning, the kids came up with examples I hadn't even thought of.

I have the six Signposts on the wall in my classroom, and I refer to them all the time. They are easy to understand and they facilitate discussion. Since all they are is elements of plot, they work with picture books, novels, plays - even narrative poetry. They are a great addition to my toolbox, and I'm looking forward to reading the book and learning more about how to use them.

Poetry Friday: Personal

Since my last Poetry Friday post, we had an earthquake here in Haiti. It was a long way away from me, but yes, I felt it.

After that it was a pretty normal week, finishing up the first quarter of our school year, grading students' work, not writing anything much of my own because my head was so full. But I kept thinking back to that earthquake, those few moments of oh yeah, that's what it feels like.

Here's an article about Saturday's quake, which hit the northern part of the island. Seventeen people were killed, in the latest count, and nearly 350 injured. Reportedly, many of the injuries came when people, terrified by memories of the destruction in 2010, jumped out of windows when they felt the ground begin to shake. The experts tell you to get under something and stay put, but let me tell you: when you've been through a major earthquake, every single instinct you have is to get out.

 Poster in Kreyol from the Haitian Ministry of Communication

Goudougoudou, in the above poster, is a Kreyol word for earthquake. People started using it after 2010. It's onomatopoeia, based on the ominous rumbling noise when all that concrete shook with all that force.

On Thursday I spent some enjoyable time reading Tony Hoagland poems at the Poetry Foundation website, and I chose this one, "Personal," to share for Poetry Friday. My favorite lines are these:

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn't and I didn't and I don't
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I'm-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

(Here's the whole thing.)

I wouldn't exactly say I don't believe in the clean break; some people seem perfectly able to achieve it. They get over things and move on, leaving behind situations, people, traumas. At least on the outside, they seem unaffected. I think the compound fracture is more common, though, based on my own experience, and conversations with others, including a couple I had this week about the disgruntled, angry, overwhelmed, scared mixture of emotion we were feeling after the earthquake, icky unwelcome Saturday night visitor. Get over it, some say, and I reply, Well, I don't want to make a scene, but I can't seem to help it, some days.

Laura Salas has today's roundup.

Yes, I Felt It

The USGS has a webpage called Did You Feel It?, and that's the question we're all asking today.  Did you? Many of us here in Port-au-Prince didn't feel the 5.9 magnitude earthquake because its epicenter was a long way north of us, but I felt it.  I was lying on my bed reading, and suddenly the bed started to move. I typed "Earthquake" on Facebook, and within seconds there were many other posts affirming that yes, that's what it was. I wasn't imagining it. My husband came upstairs immediately and asked the same question: "Did you feel it?"

A Facebook friend in Cap Haïtien posted that it was raining there, but everybody was out in the street. A few minutes later someone commented that it was raining in 2010 also (not here in Port-au-Prince, it wasn't), and then that it was raining in 1842, referring to the major quake that destroyed San Souci Palace. Another northern friend recommended that nobody should sleep under a concrete roof, since you never know: is that it? Is there more coming? Will there be aftershocks, or, worse, was that a foreshock (yes, that's a thing) of something even bigger?

I don't mind admitting that I'm terrified of earthquakes. My floor-to-ceiling bookcase in the living room is bolted to the wall now, but I'll never forget the sight of it fallen on the floor in 2010, and my rocking chair where I nursed my son flattened in front of it. I'll never forget my husband coming home in tears after his first time driving in the city the day after, telling about bodies piled up. I'll never forget the sight of hundreds of Haitian people sleeping in the streets. My bed just moved a little last night, but all of those thoughts, and more, were immediately in my mind.

Yes, I felt it.

Reading Update

Book #71 of 2018 was The Summer Wives, by Beatriz Williams. I didn't especially enjoy this, and I don't think I'll look for any more of Williams' books.

Book #72 was The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. I wrote some more here about how and why I picked this book. The second one in the series, Sea of Monsters, was book #78, and I'm reading the third one now.

Book #73 was The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry. Victorians, friendship, strangeness: oddly compelling.

Book #74 was Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann, about people unlikely to be brought together; all they have in common is the time in 1974 when someone walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers. Beautifully written and winner of the National Book Award.

Book #75 was The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins. I hated this book. I didn't like any of the characters or care what happened to them, and I hated the loveless, nihilistic world in which they lived, or didn't live. I read more than half of it one night when I couldn't sleep, and needless to say, it was a terrible choice. I have no idea why I kept reading, and I don't think you should bother starting.

Book #76 was Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie. This is, to date, the only Salman Rushdie book I have succeeded in finishing. One of my friends from my writing group loaned it to me with high recommendations. I loved it, and it made me want to try some of the others again.

Book #77 was The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah. I read most of this in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep, too, and since it's about Nazi-occupied France and the Resistance, it was another poor choice for inducing restful sleep. While well-written and fascinating, it was also horrifying. And also, I'm tired of not sleeping.

Book #79 was a re-read, P.D. James' Jane Austen sequel, Death Comes to Pemberley. I gulped this down right after it came out back in 2012, and it stood up to a re-reading. It's better than most Austen fan-fiction, but the characters aren't as alive as in their original book, nor are they as alive as P.D. James' own creations. And yes, this too was partially read in the middle of the night.

Poetry Friday: Antidotes to Anxiety

There's a lot to be anxious about these days, isn't there? I sat at lunch yesterday with three other mothers, and we talked about the things we worry about, the things that threaten our children. They are real things; we live in a dangerous world. We talked about trusting God and being prepared, that balance that is so hard to find.

I'm not going to tell you what our specific concerns were, because maybe our list isn't yours, and I don't want to add more worries to you, my friend. You have enough already, if you watch the news, or love other human beings, or live on this planet. Today, instead, I have some antidotes: a Wendell Berry poem that's been on my mind lately, a Mary Chapin Carpenter song I just downloaded, and some photos I took yesterday to focus myself on the beauty of the here and now.

So here you go. I hope something here works for you. Feel free to share in the comments any additions to my offerings.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Here are the words to this beautiful song:

Sometimes Just the Sky
Mary Chapin Carpenter

Noises in my head
And endless should-haves rain
On me like a storm
Like a hurricane
Losses piled up like wood
Stacked stories high
Feels like I've been framed
I have no alibi

Used to be that all I needed
Was what I didn't possess
Yearning makes you who you
End up as, more or less
Whatever choice I made
That worked out
Was just a lucky guess
Just a lucky guess

Adventures half-discarded
Half held onto now
Dancing on the ledge
To the edge somehow

I can still pick out the faces
Though I forget the names
And places that I've gone
But the urge remains
To throw caution to the wind
Or is it to the stars?
To hold out my open hands
Despite my empty arms
To wear my heart down on my sleeve
Just like a battle scar
These are battle scars

There's comfort in a late night
Kitchen's radio
And in a letter sent
Lists of what you know
When you don't know anything
You make another one
It's good to write it down
Starting with the sun
And sometimes church bells
Trees and seasons
Marking times gone by
Sometimes starlings swell
Some tidal moons
And filled up eyes
Sometimes everything at once
But sometimes just the sky
Sometimes just the sky


I've written here before about my daily photography habit. Today's prompt is "One View, Four Ways," and it was a good one. I woke up Thursday morning in a severe funk, and taking several sets of four photos - our gate, a tree, hibiscus flowers - helped change my perspective. I picked the hibiscus to share, and I hope it does the same for you.

Each day is a hand-made treasure, and that's true even in the middle of the mess that the world is. Do something that won't compute. Laugh. Make lists of things you know. And gaze at beauty. Each hibiscus flower (or autumn leaf, or whatever you have handy - even if it's just the sky) is worth gazing at, and then gazing at again.

Tabatha has today's roundup.

Spiritual Journey First Thursday: Humor

For October's Spiritual Journey First Thursday, our host Jan has asked us to write about humor.

Humor is a gift from God, but like all His gifts, it can be used well or badly. One of my favorite scenes in the Narnia books is the one where all the old heroes of Narnia are gathering in The Last Battle. 

Everyone you had ever heard of (if you knew the history of these countries) seemed to be there. There was Glimfeather the Owl and Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, and King Rilian the Disenchanted, and his mother the Star's daughter and his great father Caspian himself. And close beside him were the Lord Drinian and the Lord Berne and Trumpkin the Dwarf and Truffle-hunter the good Badger with Glenstorm the Centaur and a hundred other heroes of the great War of Deliverance. And then from another side came Cor the King of Archenland with King Lune his father and his wife Queen Aravis and the brave prince Corin Thunder-Fist, his brother, and Bree the Horse and Hwin the Mare. And then - which was a wonder beyond all wonders to Tirian - there came from further away in the past, the two good Beavers and Tumnus the Faun. And there was greeting and kissing and hand-shaking and old jokes revived, (you've no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years) and the whole company moved forward to the centre of the orchard.

I love the old jokes being revived after five or six hundred years. I've never experienced that, but I have experienced old jokes being retold after twenty-five or thirty, and it's pretty great. There's nothing like laughing with friends or family.  Proverbs 17:22 says, "A joyful heart is good medicine."

We heard in the news this past week, though, about another old joke; this one was from 36 years before. It had been written in a high school yearbook, and it was a joke about someone else, a demeaning joke. It made some people laugh, but it hurt the girl who was its punchline, even all this time later.

Humor can heal, and it can wound. Maybe some good tests of a joke are whether we'd like to hear it repeated five or six hundred years from now, and whether the punchline is another human being that God created.

But we have to laugh; the best kind of friends are the ones who help us to see the funny side of whatever we are obsessing over at that particular moment. I love the Wendell Berry quote: "Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."

Of course, what makes us laugh is quite idiosyncratic. I am very blessed to be married to a man who makes me laugh, to have children, family, friends, and students who make me laugh, and to have a sense of the absurd that keeps me snickering much of the time. Laughter helps me regain my perspective when I've lost it; it helps me have patience with my goofy middle schoolers; it takes my mind off whatever has me tied in knots.

As I've been writing this post, so many examples have come to mind of times when humor has been life-saving, but they are hard to write specifics about because of the "you had to be there" quality that so many jokes have. I thought about a fellow teacher who would sit next to me in faculty meetings and pass me notes or mutter a word or two under his breath as though we were in seventh grade; a large part of the humor would be the deadpan expression on his face as he would slide me a piece of paper with his comment on it, and the obvious pleasure he took in watching me try not to laugh aloud. Faculty meetings have never been the same since he left our school. I thought about a friend who took me out to lunch a couple of weeks after the earthquake and had me smiling and laughing even though at that point the world seemed a very dark place to me. I thought about a certain meal during that same time period with my parents and my brothers and their families where we all ate Ethiopian food and joked until we hurt both from overeating and from laughter. I thought about today (Sunday, the day I'm writing this post), when my husband made me laugh, and when I took a screenshot of my daughter and me laughing together over FaceTime. I thought about my son laughing in his sleep when he was a baby, just that pure delight.

Laughter really is one of those "good and perfect gifts" referenced in the book of James: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." I'm so thankful for laughter. The things we laugh at may change; the people we laugh with may change; God's faithfulness to give us what we need never changes.

Let's laugh today, even though we have considered all the facts.

You can visit Jan, our host, here.

What I Learned in September

We go back to school in August - early August - but it's really in September that things get into full swing. The honeymoon is over; nobody's on best behavior any more. We've started to get the routines down, and to irritate each other (students and teachers; students and other students; teachers and other teachers, even, sometimes), and, yes, to learn. I'm sending notes to parents and carrying home kids' writing and grading notebooks in huge stacks and doing the endless logic puzzle that is the ongoing attempt at a perfect seating chart.

So much gets learned in September: habits for the whole year of how to turn in your work and what to expect from a class discussion and what I will and won't tolerate in my classroom, my queendom. I learned everyone's names back in August, but now I'm learning their handwriting, their particular writing struggles, the kind of books they like to read. I'm learning the kids who will push and push and push me in class, ignoring my instructions and apparently not listening to me at all, but then turn in an amazing piece of writing, full of voice. I'm learning the ones who are full of ideas, but then don't follow through with the actual words on paper. I'm working on figuring out the personality of each kid, and also the group personality of each class.

In September I played with my camera. It's a pretty fancy one, and there's a lot I don't yet know how to do with it. I read an article a while back that suggested treating your camera as though you're a toddler - pressing buttons, trying things out. I'm thinking whoever said that hasn't had a toddler recently, and I'm a lot more careful with my camera than a toddler would be, but I've been trying to be less afraid of it, and to read about photography and try more new things.  In September I learned how to do manual focus, and what white balance is, and some new things about shutter speed. 

In September, Addie Zierman asked her readers to think about the expression "Let Go and Let God."  Sort of like playing with my camera when I don't really know what I'm doing, letting go isn't easy for me. Holding on comes much more naturally: to my routines, to my ideas, and, especially, to the people I love. I have written about this topic at great length over the last few years, here and elsewhere, and I intended to write something for Addie's link-up about it too, but I was too busy doing the holding on and gaining control of the first full month of school.  That's quite a balance in middle school: when to hold on and when to let go. That's quite a balance in life, too.

In September I read a Rick Riordan book for the first time after a student of mine, an eighth grader, walked over to the library and checked out The Lightning Thief for me in his own name.  He pressed it into my hands, saying, "Miss, you've just got to read this." After that, how could I not? I heard Rick Riordan speak back in 2013 on why mythology is especially appropriate for middle schoolers, and had always intended to read these books which are so perennially popular with my kids, but I just hadn't done it yet. I enjoyed this book immensely, actually much more than I had expected to based on the opinions of other adults that I'd heard. I was able to return the book my student had checked out because I had the title on my Kindle; I'd bought it in 2011 for my son. Now I'm reading the second one, The Sea of Monsters.  

I'm sure I learned many other things in September, too, but as usual my list was sparse when I came to write my post. I'll try to do a better job of keeping track of what I learn in October.  

Here's what I learned in January, February, March, April, and May.  And here's what I learned in the summer.

Poetry Friday: Sea Grapes

I spent last weekend at the beach. The ocean is timeless, even though we've warmed it up and filled it with plastic. The ocean helps give me a long-term perspective, a helpful gift in the middle of the news these days. This poem by Derek Walcott, a Caribbean neighbor, addresses both the timelessness and its limits.

Sea Grapes
by Derek Walcott

That sail which leans on light,
tired of islands,
a schooner beating up the Caribbean

for home, could be Odysseus,
home-bound on the Aegean;
that father and husband's

longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is
like the adulterer hearing Nausicaa's name
in every gull's outcry.

This brings nobody peace. The ancient war
between obsession and responsibility
will never finish and has been the same

for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore
now wriggling on his sandals to walk home,
since Troy sighed its last flame,

and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough
from whose groundswell the great hexameters come
to the conclusions of exhausted surf.

The classics can console. But not enough.

Here's the poem, and you can read others by Walcott here as well.

Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Gerard Manley Hopkins

My Own Heart let me more have Pity on

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather - as skies
Betweenpie mountains - lights a lovely mile.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I shared this before back in 2015.

This week's roundup is here. 

Poetry Friday: Hurricane, Again

Problems with Hurricanes
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.

Here the rest of the poem (including a killer last line), written by a poet from Puerto Rico, where they know about hurricanes.  This particular hurricane isn't threatening us, and let's hope we can say that about all the hurricanes this whole season, but we do pray for those in its path, having been in that place many times ourselves.  I shared this poem back in 2012, when I believe the storm in question was Sandy, but I've also written here about Irma and Isaac and Matthew and countless others.

Stay safe and dry, everyone.

Amy has the roundup today.

Reading Update

Book #61 of 2018 was a reread: Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words, by Brian McLaren.  You can read my review from the first time I read it here. "How much higher and wider and deeper and richer our lives become," writes McLaren, "when we awaken to the presence of the real, wild, mysterious, living God, who is bigger than our tame concepts of God."

Book #62 was Son, by Lois Lowry. Though I had read the other three books in this series, billed as The Giver Quartet, I hadn't yet read this one, largely because the reviews had convinced me it wasn't much good. That will show me to listen to the reviews. I loved this one, which revisits some of the scenes and characters of the first book. I particularly loved that this was mythic in all the best ways, just like The Giver.

Book #63 was Mozart's Starling, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. I found it while browsing through the e-books at the library, a practice which will never be the same as browsing the actual books on an actual shelf, but which sometimes leads to picking up a surprising new find. This was one example.  Did you know that Mozart had a starling?  I didn't. That was just the beginning of things in this book that I didn't know, from all about starlings, how they are pests but also beautiful and lovable, to all about Mozart, in his complexity as a son, a husband, a musician. Highly recommended.

Book #64 was A Most Wanted Man, by John Le Carré. I find Le Carré's books a mixed bag. I wrote a little more about that in this post. This book was sort of an in-between one; I didn't find it completely impossible to follow, as I do with some, but I also didn't love it.

Book #65 was Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth, by Hugh Halter. I started reading this a long time ago, but was put off by Halter's use of the Haiti earthquake to make one of his points.

Book #66 was Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill: A Brief Account of a Long Life, by Gretchen Rubin. I really liked this concept for a biography, and would love to read others in the same vein. Rubin takes various questions about Churchill's life and then answers them, from the evidence, in more than one way.  Was Churchill's depression a major influence on him, or was it not?  Was he a good leader or not? Was he a good father or not?  I loved how this led to a complex portrait of this great man. Just like people we know personally, he was not one thing or the other.

Book #67 was Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf. Wolf divides her fascinating study of reading and the brain into three parts. The first part is entitled: "How the Brain Learned to Read."  In this section, Wolf discusses the way reading and writing developed and how human brains formed new pathways, never needed before in a culture which was largely based on hearing and oral learning.  She explains the reference to Proust in the title with a detailed examination of a description of a reading childhood in one of Proust's books, as she develops the description of how the human race became literate into a study of how individual children learn to read in part II, "How the Brain Learns to Read Over Time." Here she writes about each stage of literacy development, from being read to in the "beloved lap" of a parent or caregiver from infancy, to the formal stages of instruction. Most fascinating to me was Wolf's explanation of how Socrates believed that learning through reading was far inferior to learning through the oral method.  He thought that reading left too much to the individual, and to interpretation.  "I came to see," she writes, "that Socrates' worries about the transition from an oral culture to a literate one and the risks it posed, especially to young people, mirrored my own concerns about the immersion of our children into a digital world."  She goes on to explore how students today must form new pathways in their brains as they process information and knowledge differently using digital media.  Part III is called "When the Brain Can't Learn to Read."  Wolf, the mother of a dyslexic child in addition to being an expert on reading and the brain, discusses dyslexia: its possible causes, its adaptive elements, and how teachers can respond to it when they meet it in students.  The squid in the title refers to the way scientists have used squids to study the brain.  This book goes into a lot of detail about the brain and how it works - really, more than my own brain is equipped to comprehend in much depth.  One thing I learned is how plastic the brain is, and how we are designed to figure things out.  "We are," Wolf writes, "it would seem from the start, genetically poised for breakthroughs."  How encouraging for a teacher!  I was further encouraged by Wolf's explanations of how reading, study of the morphology of words, and discussion can help students. This, like book #63, was one I found while browsing ebooks at the library, and was another great find.

Book #68 was The Other Family, by Joanna Trollope. This is the story of a musician who dies and leaves his two families scrambling to decide how they are going to continue their lives. His first wife and their son form one of the families, and the other is made up of his second wife (who turns out not to have been his wife at all in a legal sense) and their three daughters. I always enjoy Trollope's clear-eyed looks at complicated emotions and personalities.

Book #69 was The Long Way Home, by Louise Penny.  This was the tenth in the Inspector Gamache series. I can't say I love these books, but I put the eleventh one on hold at the library anyway.

Book #70 was Breathing In, Breathing Out: Keeping a Writer's Notebook, by Ralph Fletcher. This one was from my shelf at school. There's a lot of emphasis in recent books for writing teachers on the teacher as writer. Because I myself write, I am able to give my students ideas and strategies that wouldn't be as clear to me if I didn't have that experience. This book is in that vein; it explores the idea of the writer's notebook and gives many suggestions and models for using it more effectively.

Poetry Friday: Unimportantly Beautiful

I'm writing this Poetry Friday post on Thursday, my second day this week staying home with a bad cold.  I croaked my way through my teaching day on Tuesday, drinking lots of water and sucking down cough drops, until at some point during the twelve or fifteen minutes of 8th grade Silent Reading, my voice gave out completely.  I tried to speak up to dismiss the kids to their next class, and there was just no sound at all.  I wrote "Folders" on the whiteboard, and pointed to the drawer where the students by now know to put them, and waved goodbye. 

Tuesday's photo prompt (here's some more information about my daily photo habit) was "With Manual Focus," and, after looking up how to focus my camera manually, I took the above photo With Manual Focus.  It depicts a straw angel which I bought in a shop in Jacmel.  I bought it because the owner of the shop said the proceeds would benefit a program for nursing mothers, and also because I love it.  It sits on a shelf in my bedroom in front of a row of poetry books.  As I looked at the photo appreciatively this morning, my eye was drawn to that Derek Walcott book right behind the angel.  Her wing hides the end of his name.  I decided that this morning was the perfect time to take the book down and read some Derek Walcott, since someone else is dealing with my students at this moment, and I am here in the quiet of my room. 

Here's something to share, from "The Prodigal," a book-length poem of which only a few excerpts are included in my book.  Walcott wrote about his travels around the world, away from his Caribbean island of St Lucia.  He always felt he was somehow being unfaithful to his home by traveling the world and seeing other sights.

In this poem from part 4 of "The Prodigal," Walcott is visiting Italy.

I wanted to be able to write: "There is nothing like it,
to walk down the Via Veneto before sunrise."
And now, you think: he is going to describe it.
I am going to describe the benediction of June,
the grey cool spring air, its ages at prima luce,
too early for coffee from the hotel
and from the locked grids of last night's cafés....

He's up so early because of jet-lag, and he's taking advantage of the morning to walk and observe, reflecting on the similarities of the scene with his home village, Gros Islet, when he himself gets observed.

...a man came out and examined me
as I copied the name down, a bald young man
in an orange windbreaker who scowled
because of my colour and the terrorists,
and because my village was unimportantly beautiful
unlike his city and the Via Veneto.
...
I lived in two villages: Greenwich and Gros Islet,
and loved both almost equally.  One had the sea,
grey morning light along the waking water,
the other a great river, and if they asked
what country I was from I'd say, "The light
of that tree-lined sunrise down the Via Veneto."

I love the way Walcott has captured the combination of feelings: delight in his surroundings, a sense of not belonging, insecurity about where he comes from (so unimportantly beautiful, his Gros Islet), and complete assurance that he does belong.  That light of that morning is his own country, whether his passport would acknowledge it or not. 

Imagine if you asked someone what country he was from, and he launched into a description of the "tree-lined sunrise" as though writing an impromptu "Where I'm From" poem.  I can't decide if that would be irritating or endearing.  But I do know that I enjoyed reading Walcott in my "unimportantly beautiful" room, with sunlight streaming in my windows, and the calm assurance that my students were all right with a sub.  Perhaps there was a slight leftover of my nighttime cold medication adding to the sense of peace; there was definitely the fuzzy brain of a cold.  Tomorrow I will deal with the inevitable pile of papers I'll have to read when I head back to school.  For today, I'm from the light of my room on this goat-lined street of Port-au-Prince, with the fans droning and the stack of tissues by my bed and a book of poetry clutched in my hot little hands.

Carol has this week's roundup.

Spiritual Journey First Thursday: My Path

When I read the email from Donna giving the topic for this month, "My Path," the first thing I thought of was the verse from Psalm 119: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."

You can tell that this comes from early in my life, because I memorized it in the King James Version with all the thees and thous.  This verse is also a song, which ensured its place in my memory.

I remember being taught as a child that the lamps referred to in this verse were little clay ones, casting a small amount of light just adequate for a few steps.  They were not spotlights or floodlights or even flashlights.  They illuminated the next tiny portion of the path, and not the entirety of the freeway.  The link under the lamp photo explains the substance of what I was taught. 

Source: http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2014/08/26/The-Lesson-of-the-Lamp.aspx

Of course, there are times when our journey is dramatic and leads us across windswept vistas.  Such journeys are best undertaken in daylight, and a camera crew would be a big plus.  This verse is talking about stumbling around at home, in the place you know best, where it's easiest to step on a Lego and get mad at whoever left it there.  I don't know about you, but the majority of my spiritual issues are the ones on that path: irritation with the people in my life, jealousy of the people in my life, lack of love for the people in my life.  A predictable path where perhaps I'd prefer the unpredictable one, populated with camel trains and exciting tasks and romantic strangers.

But no, my path is so often the same from one day to the next, facing the same temptations and the same challenges, needing the flashes of light that will give me just enough guidance for that moment, if I will pay attention.

Check out Donna's blog to see what everyone else had to say about this topic. 

What I Learned this Summer

Since January, I have been imitating some of the blogs I read by posting a monthly summary of some things I've been learning. At least, I produced such a post in January, February, March, April, and May. When June came, somehow I wasn't able to summon the energy to write one, perhaps because I was recovering from school, getting ready to travel, and then traveling. The travel spilled over into July, and I got home, jumped back into my life, and then started school at the beginning of August. I did have a list on my desktop, however, and a few times I added to it.  So here goes, my attempt to share some of What I Learned this Summer.

This summer I learned more about immigration and asylum-seeking.  I listened to reporters and experts talk about the mess at the Mexican border, and I grieved for those people who had walked hundreds of miles with children in tow, seeking a better life, and then had those children taken away from them as soon as they reached the promised land for which they had longed every day of their journey. I learned facts and figures, pros and cons, laws and statutes, but I kept coming back to that shocked, grieving surprise in parents' eyes: the people I thought were good guys really aren't. My daughter would come back from work to find me obsessively clicking on video after video, article after article. "Mom," she said, "I try not to watch the news all the time like that. It's too much." It is too much. I turned it off and enjoyed precious time with her.

I learned that on a Sunday morning in a small midwestern town, before most people are up for church, and when you're walking to an early service, the level of quiet and emptiness of the streets suggests that an apocalypse just happened. It was a gentle apocalypse, leaving all the buildings intact.  It was a recent apocalypse, and none of the grass has had the time to grow a micrometer past the perfect length required for a gorgeously manicured lawn. But an apocalypse it must be, for how else to explain the total lack of human beings other than my daughter and myself, strolling down the street?  At home in Haiti, the road wouldn't be this quiet and deserted even at four in the morning. Everything is lovely, so exquisitely kept, the flowers I have to stop and photograph, the play equipment, the shiny cars, the homes just right there without high walls topped with barbed wire or broken glass, without gates.  And yet, there is a slight edge of creepiness, too. Where is everyone? Get up! It's a beautiful day!

I learned more about the delights of having a grown-up daughter, with her own wisdom and routines, her own delicious recipes, her own books (some of which, admittedly, used to be on my shelves at home), her own apartment, oh my goodness, when did this happen? My baby is right there in front of me, and yet she's a beautiful woman with a whole life of her own. She slept on the floor on a mattress her landlady had let her borrow, and I slept in her bed. The first morning I was there, she climbed up into bed with me and went right back to sleep, and I hugged her and went back to sleep too, and I guess it probably isn't possible to feel any happier than I felt right then.

I learned more about riots, as Haiti had some early in July when I was still far away from home. Trust me when I say it's more complicated than it seems.  And that is all I'm going to say right now. (Here are some thoughts from a Haitian friend.)

I learned again about how much I rely on glasses, when a riptide knocked me down and took mine while I was beachgoing with my parents. I wrote a poem about the whole adventure that you can read here.  I also learned more about riptides, and how dangerous they can be.  I'm thankful all I lost was my glasses, and I'm thankful that I was able to get new ones quickly. And I'm beyond thankful that I have worn glasses since I was nine years old, because without them I would be effectively disabled by my poor vision. I think often of how many others in this world do not have the opportunities I have had in many areas, and this is one.

I learned to identify a bananaquit, and I wrote about that here.  I am trying to learn more about the flora and fauna around me. I want to know what every tree and flower is called in English and French and Kreyol, to identify every bird. I ask people, and I try Google, and every once in a while I learn a new one to add to my store.  Being able to put specific words to things makes my life feel richer, as though I own them without possessing them, as though they are mine and yet I won't exploit them or do anything to them except take a picture and love them from a distance.

I learned, once again, as I've learned every year of my life, that "summer's lease hath all too short a date." I came home from my trip with photos and thoughts and memories to last me all year, and I spent hours and hours with my at-home family, and I read a big pile of books, and then suddenly it was over, and I was back at work. 

What did you learn this summer? Share it with me, so I can learn it too.

Poetry Friday: Sonnets

When the world seems overwhelming, write a sonnet.  I learned this from Jane Yolen, whose book Radiation Sonnets I wrote about here.  While her husband was undergoing radiation for his cancer, she wrote a sonnet each day.  It felt like something she could control during a time that was completely out of her control.  Those fourteen lines, the iambic pentameter, the predictable rhyme scheme, all leading to the couplet at the end that sums it up: there's something comforting about a sonnet.

I wrote one this week in response to the evil in the news.  Yes, I'll use the word: evil.  How do people come to terms with the evil that has been done to them, and still move forward, and have a life that isn't forever marred and ugly?

After mine, I'll share one by a master, Shakespeare.  I wonder if he found writing sonnets helped with all the drama of his life, whatever the real story is of the Dark Lady, the Young Man, and so on.  Maybe sorting his thoughts into those fourteen lines helped him to clarify them.  The one I've chosen is a favorite of mine, and I shared it before a few years ago as I bewept my outcast state.


Healed

"Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.”
Naomi Shihab Nye

“Far more can be mended than you know.”  Francis Spufford

The goal is not a mess that’s been concealed,
A mess that still torments your sleepless nights.
The goal is fixed, repaired, all better, healed,
Returned to Eden, mended, put to rights.
Is there a scar?  Perhaps; it’s smooth, it shines.
It’s made a road where once was gash and gore.
Walk safely through the field where once were mines.
Don’t worry; they’re not dangers any more.

Can it be true?  I want to think it can,
But evil’s strength is great, and terrifies,
The villains are in charge, that smiling man,
That smiling woman, wrapped in smiling lies.

Yet still we hope, we long for sins forgiven,
For waking, all our nightmares gone.  For heaven.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Sonnet XXIX

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

William Shakespeare

The roundup is here today.

Poetry Friday: Poems from my Daughter

I got a letter from my daughter last week. An honest-to-goodness, hand-written letter in an envelope with a stamp. It was such a lovely treat. And she included some poems in her letter. She had been reading the letters of Edward Gorey, the author and illustrator, and he really enjoyed Japanese poetry. Here are some poems that he shared with his correspondents, and that she shared with me:

Princess Ōno, 7th century

How will you manage
To cross alone
The autumn mountain
Which was so hard to get across
Even when we went the two of us together?

Izumi No Shikibu, 11th century

Out of the dark
Into a dark path
I now must enter:
Shine (on me) from afar,
Moon of the mountain fringe!

Saiyyō Hōshi, 1118-1190

My pony's tracks
Being buried
Under the snow that has fallen since,
Those whom I have outstripped
Will be puzzled which way to go.

When I first typed Edward Gorey's name above, I added the adjective "Victorian," but when I looked him up I found he was actually much more recent than I had realized. He only died in 2000, so he was definitely not Victorian. (Edited to add my daughter's response when she read this post: "Victorian? He was a devoted fan of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'!") Still, he did come from a time when letter-writing was common. I would love a time like that to return, but in the meantime it made me so very happy to get this letter from my daughter!

Here's a time when she texted me a poem.  And here's another time.

Today's roundup is here.

Poetry Friday: Birds and James Bond

This week our Poetry Friday host, Christie, has asked for poems about birds, so I wrote one about a bird in my yard.

Bird in the Bougainvillea

When I need to identify
the little yellow bird in the bougainvillea,
I turn to my Birds of the West Indies book,
written by James Bond.
Ian Fleming had this book on his shelf, too,
in his home in Jamaica.
When he was naming his super-spy,
the book caught his eye,
and the ordinariness of the name
made it perfect.

The ordinariness
of the little bird in the bougainvillea
makes me long to know it.
It was there poking around the fuchsia blossoms
before I noticed it
and it will still be there
when my attention is, inevitably,
distracted by something more urgent.

The little yellow bird
is called a bananaquit.
James Bond says it is common
in Central and South America,
and is sometimes known as
Banana Bird,
Yellowbreast,
Paw-paw Bird,
Sugar Bird,
Bessie Coban,
Yellow See-See,
Reinita.
Its song is “sibilant or wheezy,
such as zee-e-e-e-swees-te,
but sometimes a simple trill.”

A spy ought to blend in,
it seems to me,
not stand out with his martinis
and his flashy cars.
James Bond the ornithologist,
binoculars in hand,
puttering about in the garden,
would learn far more about
what was really going on
than James Bond the spy.

Here in Haiti,
where Audubon was born,
I snap a picture of the ordinary bananaquit
in the bougainvillea,
and give thanks
for people who pay attention
and birds that wheeze softly
among the leaves.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Honesty compels me to admit that I didn't identify the bird by looking in the bird book. I sent the photo above to my brother, who is a birder, and who lives in the bananaquit's zone too, and he identified it for me, and then I looked it up in the bird book.  I find it hard to look up birds in the book because I don't know where to start, which family the bird might come from. When I page through the descriptions, and even the pictures, nobody stands out; they just all look like birds. But now that I know this guy's name, I am seeing bananaquits everywhere, in just the same way that once you learn a new word, suddenly it's in everything you read. How strange it is to live in a place for twenty-two years, and be unable to name one of the most common birds there. There are always new things to learn, so many of them. I'm giving thanks for my brother, and James Bond, and my family, and my students, and my friends, and everyone who teaches me every day.

Here are some links with more information about the ornithologist James Bond and the bananaquit, plus an opportunity to hear the soft wheezing.

James Bond's Wikipedia page
Birds of the West Indies and the James Bond Canon
"The Real James Bond"
A photography exhibit about the two James Bonds and their love for birds (birds, get it, get it?)
The Audubon page about the bananaquit

I can't wait to see the bird poems others have today.  Check out the roundup here.

Reading Update

When I posted my last Reading Update, last month, I mentioned that I'd been in a reading slump. Then I proceeded to have a bit of an end-of-summer last hurrah. Here's what I've read since July 16th.

Book #52 of 2018 was The Punishment She Deserves, by Elizabeth George. I saw this at a bookstore while I was visiting my daughter, and immediately put it on hold at the library; I hadn't realized that Elizabeth George had a new novel (it came out in March). I always enjoy these books, particularly the relationships among the police officers, and this one was no exception.

Book #53 was The Language of Sparrows, by Rachel Phifer. This story touches on mental illness and suicide and religious persecution and unjust accusations; somehow it still manages to be a sweet, touching, believable book.

Book #54 was Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, by Mike Schmoker. Isn't it fascinating how when you are assigned to read something, you start out with a negative mindset?  Even when you're my age and love to read and learn? Yeah. In spite of that, though, I ended up finding this book a useful read. As the title suggests, it's not going to give you new ideas - they are the essentials - but it's a good reminder of what matters and how to teach.

Book #55 was Peony: A Novel of China, by Pearl S. Buck. I love being introduced to whole new worlds, and that's what this book did. It's about the Jewish community in China.

Book #56 was In Harm's Way: A View from the Epicenter of Liberia's Ebola Crisis, by Nancy D. Sheppard. Sheppard worked in a hospital in Liberia during the Ebola crisis, and was a colleague of the Americans who came down with the disease and were flown to Atlanta. This happened in 2012 and at the time was the subject of a great deal of breathless media coverage. This book gives a personal perspective on what happened and I enjoyed it.

Book #57 was an exciting one: the first draft of a novel by someone in my writing group! Shhhh...I'm not allowed to say more at this stage, but it was very entertaining!

Book #58 was Love and Ruin, by Paula McLain.  This is the story of Ernest Hemingway's third wife, Martha Gellhorn, a writer and war correspondent in her own right. I found out about this book when a friend posted this essay on Facebook.  I was fascinated and wanted to know more. I read a Martha Gellhorn book, The Weather in Africa, when I was a teenager, and before I had read any Hemingway.  I still prefer it to Hemingway, and I'd like to read more of Gellhorn's work.  Obviously with the word "Ruin" in the title, this doesn't have a happy ending; Hemingway had four wives. (McLain also wrote a book about his first wife, which I read in 2015, and one about Beryl Markham, which I read in 2017 and reviewed here.)

Book #59 was 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in my Head, Reduced Stress without Losing my Edge, and Found Self-Help that Actually Works, by Dan Harris.  I thought this book was really interesting, and enjoyed learning about Harris' journey from crazed, stressed-out broadcast journalist taking drugs and having a panic attack on the air to a calm, peaceful regular at meditation retreats.  I was fascinated to read about his sort-of Buddhist ideas; I say sort-of because he doesn't believe in the supernatural at all.  I thought most of the ideas and practices based on Buddhism were about a very clear, realistic and accurate view of how our minds actually do work.  I'd love for some friends to read this so we can talk about it.

Book #60 was a re-read, Shauna Niequist's Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, more Soulful Way of Living.  I'd been thinking about Niequist and wanted to read something of hers.  Here's a link to the time I participated in a blog tour for one of her books, Bread and Wine.  I've read all her books and liked them all. 

Obviously things are about to slow down in the reading department as the school year gets into full swing, but I'm glad to have had some extra time for books this summer. 

This post is linked to the August Quick List post at Modern Mrs. Darcy.