Poetry Friday: Recess Duty Revisited

I surprised myself this semester by volunteering to do recess duty all the time.

Back in 2011, I wrote this grumpy post, mostly about how much I hated and despised recess duty, and how I was trying to redeem it by writing haiku.

Things are a bit different this year. Of course, as with anything, my motives are mixed. If I do recess duty every day, I don't get assigned any other duties, potentially even more onerous. If I do recess duty every day, I don't forget it, because it becomes part of my routine. When I have a random week of it, I often will be late for duty on Monday (or, worst case, miss it entirely) because it just slips my mind. If I do it every day, I am in control of when my kids come to my class, because I alone blow the whistle at the end of the fifteen minutes and shepherd the students back indoors (we have no bells). I'm not waiting in my classroom wondering what's going on when someone else's watch isn't synchronized with mine. (Plus, it sounds as though we had some difficult students back in 2011. My post refers to kids throwing stones! I don't think we have anybody this year who would do that.)

But in addition to these rather mercenary reasons, I also wanted to do recess duty because it is a lot more pleasant to me now. For one thing, I have developed a love of birds, and recess duty gives me a few minutes to scan the trees and the sky for them. For another, I have a camera phone, and can take photos, something else I love to do. Also, the weather is glorious right now - I may regret this a lot more when it starts to warm up in a couple of months. In my fifteen minute recess, I get a little dose of Vitamin D, some serotonin, some fresh air, and some bright pictures. Plus, I have no homeroom this semester. Recess duty is an opportunity to talk to kids in a non-academic setting and find out a little about what's going on with them.

Remembering my recess duty haiku of the past, I decided to share a couple of my recess photos and write haiku based on them. I can't share the best of them - the ones with kids! - but here are some nature-y ones and the words they inspired.

Blue blue blue above

Sky stretching to forever

And back down to me.

Pink shouts in my eyes

Raucous bougainvillea

Bright cacophony.

Chattering sparrows,

Come out and pose for pictures!

You're heard but not seen.

Today's roundup is here. Go visit and see what others have posted for Poetry Friday!

Poetry Friday: More about Hope

I am once again doing a Photo-a-Day project this year. For a few years I've been doing a daily photo on social media during Lent and Advent, and I noticed how it gave me a little boost every day and helped me start my mornings in a creative frame of mind. I went looking for some daily prompts that would last from January through December. Now it's my fourth year of this practice, but my first with a new set of prompts. I was using the Capture Your 365 prompts, but the owner, Katrina, closed that business at the end of last year. There's a new site now called 365 Picture Today, and that's where I'm getting my prompts for 2020. They're using the National Holiday Calendar, and each day they have taken one of the observations, some of which are serious and some frivolous, and turned it into a prompt.

Thursday this week (today, as I'm writing this post) was Handwriting Day. It was also a color day (there's one every month) and today's color was red. I wrote out a Lisel Miller poem I first read on Tabatha's blog, The Opposite of Indifference, in red, and then took a picture of it with some potatoes. I didn't have any of the other things referenced in the poem, like earthworms, or maple seeds, or mushrooms, or dandelions, but I did have ordinary, common, dull as dirt potatoes. And really, what better metaphor for hope could there be?

Here's a link to the text on the Writer's Almanac site.

I think hope has to be ordinary, because you have to keep mustering it again and again, day after day. If it were something exotic and rare, like a peacock landing on your roof, it would be hard to wait around for it. But if you can find it in your pantry, still with a little bit of soil on it from the earth, it's a lot more achievable.

On Thursday morning when I awoke, early, it was raining. It doesn't usually rain much in January here in Haiti, and it made me think of the Canterbury Tales, "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote," (When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root), except it would be January's drought that was being pierced. The rain felt hopeful, though not spectacular, more ordinary like potatoes, and it corresponded with a lot of other happy and hopeful thoughts. Those thoughts led to this haiku:

Dry, dusty season
pierced as soaking morning rain
fills up new puddles

Ruts in the road, the ordinary places of life, can become new puddles, new sources of life and joy. That's hopeful. That's joyful. That's worth a little poetry.

And here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: The Things With Feathers

My OLW for 2020 is HOPE, and Emily Dickinson famously wrote "Hope is the thing with feathers," so I'm looking forward to exploring some avian metaphors this year. I got a good start on that with two bird anthologies for Christmas:

This fun bird poem was on Tracy K. Smith's podcast, "The Slowdown," the other day.

The Birds of New York
by Francisco X. Alarcòn

the birds of New York
live out on cornices
chimneys and roofs
on top of tall buildings

amid granite and cement
every morning they sing
thanksgiving chants to
the busy sun of Summer

the birds of New York
are confused by so many
city lights and take turns
flying around day and night

Here's the rest.

At this link from Audubon magazine, there are some treasures on the avian poetry front. After an interview with Margaret Atwood, there are five new bird poems by her!

I especially enjoyed learning that she and her husband Graeme Gibson (who died recently) used to go birding together. He wrote a book called The Bedside Book of Birds, in which he said that "birdwatching can encourage a state of being close to rapture." In the interview the author (Jessica Leber) asks Atwood to reflect on moments like that with her husband. Atwood's response: "You don't stop in the middle of watching a bird and say, 'Hey, are you having a rapturous moment? Yeah, gee, so am I!' It's not how life goes."

Here's to seeking birds, and rapture, and recognizing both when we find them.

Today's roundup is here.

Keeping Track of My Reading

I recently listened to an episode of the What Should I Read Next? podcast where Anne Bogel, aka Modern Mrs. Darcy, talked to guests about how they track their reading, and I decided to write a post about how I track mine.

Every time I finish a book, I write it down in a TextEdit file. When I have a little collection of them, I write a Reading Update post here on my blog. I also save these posts on my computer so that I can access them even when I don't have an internet connection. 

I wrote a few posts in 2006 about the books I was reading, but 2007 was the first year when I kept a complete list on my blog of everything I read. That means that for the last thirteen years, I know every book I finished (984 books). Before that, I used to keep track sporadically, mostly when a teacher required it, and I have some paper lists from adulthood. But the blog is the perfect place for a record. Usually I write a little review of each book, though there have been times when I have just written a list. As in most of the aspects of blogging, I am the biggest beneficiary of this. I like being able to look back on my reviews to remember what I was reading at particular times, what I've read by a specific author, and what I thought about something the first time compared with my opinion when I reread it. It's also interesting to see which years were high-volume reading years and which ones weren't. I often have people tell me that they like to be able to look at my reviews, too, and that they head to my blog when they want some ideas on what they should read.

At around the same time as I started blogging about my reading, I started an Amazon Wishlist that functions as a kind of To Be Read (TBR) list. It's actually more a list of everything I hear about and don't want to forget, rather than a plan of what I'm going to read. There are some books that have been there since the beginning, but there were many others that I read and deleted. When I'm placing holds on library books, I often check my Amazon Wishlist to get ideas. I also use it when someone gives me a gift card.

Did you know that Amazon keeps track of page views when you read on a Kindle? I found that out because a friend started publishing her books there, and that's how she gets paid, based on which pages the readers access. I spent a few minutes contemplating the fact that Amazon keeps track of what I want to read in the future, what books I buy for myself and others, and what and when I read on my Kindle and wondering what this means for privacy, and then I laughed at myself when I realized that I also blog detailed thoughts on what I read, and certainly I wouldn't do that if keeping my reading private was a huge concern. But it is interesting to speculate on what could be done with all that data about people's preoccupations and thoughts. Someone should write a novel about that.

What did I read before I started this system? I have only the vaguest idea. I wish I had complete lists of all my reading through my life. I encourage students to keep such lists, though most don't really get on board. Nothing brings back a period in my life more vividly than looking at a list of the books I was reading.

Poetry Friday: Earthquake Poems

Sunday marks ten years since the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince. "The earthquake," we call it, as though it were the only one. For us it is the only one, and we hope that is always the case, that no others will come to replace it in our memories.

To honor this date, I'm posting a few of my earthquake poems from the last ten years. At the bottom of the post, you'll find a new poem from this week.

These are about my own experiences.  I wrote about what happened in prose here and here and here, and then rehashed it again and again through the whole rest of that year.  There are many posts in my archives about the situation in Haiti and what was happening to other people, but my poems are very personal and don't reflect anybody else's views or experience. 

In April 2010, I posted Earthquake Vocabulary.

In May I posted Morning, about missing my husband while I was in the US and he was still in Haiti doing relief work.

In November I was back in Haiti, still struggling with the emotional aftermath, and I wrote Wave. Later that month I wrote Ordinary, about how much I appreciated the normal day to day aspects of my life after being away from home for so long.

In January 2013, for the third anniversary, I shared This Quilt.

In December 2013, I posted Sounds from this House. This is an example of a poem that I didn't expect to be about the quake at all when I started writing it.

In January 2014, I shared my poem about being evacuated from Haiti after the earthquake, called How to Pack an Evacuation Bag.

In March 2015 I posted Tears.  This one wasn't explicitly about the earthquake, but it's certainly one of the things I do still cry about, even now.

In 2017, I wrote Memento Mori and How Long Healing Takes in Port-au-Prince.

Last year, I wrote The Last Normal Day.

We thank God we survived. So many did not, and we grieve them.

Here's a new poem I wrote this year, after I read this anniversary article in the Miami Herald.


Tenth Anniversary

“This is not me,”
said the man,
gesturing towards the tin dwelling
where his family has lived for
ten years.

“This is not me,”
he said,
indicating the
tent city
with no name
and on nobody’s list.

“This is not me,”
he said,
of his home
where the earthquake
sent him,
the place
where temporary
became forever.

“This is not me,”
he said in surprise,
for who can understand
why time and chance
and tectonic plates
have brought him here
to this hillside
under this sky
on this tiny island?

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

I'm not sure who made this photo; lots of us use it on Facebook in the days around the earthquake anniversary.

Sally Murphy, in Australia, has today's roundup.  Although the disaster they are going through there is very different from ours, to me it has a similar apocalyptic quality; it feels as though the world is ending, to us watching from a distance, and how much more so to them? Love and prayers come from us in Haiti.

What I Learned in 2019

As I was working in my classroom getting ready for my students to come back to school tomorrow, I realized that I hadn't written a post linking my "What I Learned" from 2019. I was faithful about them at the beginning of the year, even though things fell apart a bit with the extended political unrest starting in September. (There was political unrest all year, and we were kept home by it for a couple of weeks in February, as you'll see if you read that month's post, but it was in September that the real lockdown began.)

But here are the posts I wrote before then:

What I Learned in January
What I Learned in February
What I Learned in March
What I Learned in April
What I Learned in May
What I Learned This Summer
What I Learned in September

I have lists on my desktop for October and November, but somehow I couldn't get my act together to write the posts. And December doesn't even have a list.

Oh, 2019, I can't say I'm sad to see you go. But you sure taught me a lot.

Poetry Friday: Jack Gilbert and Me

Happy New Year! On this first Poetry Friday of 2020, I'm going to share two poems, one by someone else and one of my own. My OLW this year is Hope, and the first poem is about that. I love the way it hints at emotions all co-existing, all jumbled together, and hope in spite of the facts. The second poem, mine, is about a friend we lost at the end of 2019. I was talking to a mutual friend, and the poem came from a memory she shared with me about him and from our subsequent conversation. In my first draft, the "he" and "she" are replaced by their names, and I like that better, but I share this version for the sake of privacy.

Horses at Midnight Without a Moon
by Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.

Here's the rest.

Here's the last time I shared it, in 2012.

Emotions

by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

When they were in college 

He told her that emotions

Are like unruly children,

Running wild in the playground. 

He became a psychologist 

And helped people with their emotions. 

She had lots of children, by birth and adoption.

Nobody knew better than she did about corralling children. 

They didn’t talk any more but she often thought about what he’d said. 

He died. 

She found out on Christmas Day. 

She cried while she made dinner for her husband and children. 

The emotions and the children mingled freely in the kitchen,

As she thought about the years 

And how life is harder than you think it’s going to be. 

And the children.

The children you try to guide and teach 

And yes, sometimes control,

Sometimes they peacefully gather around 

And play ring around the Rosie

But other times they huddle timidly in the corner 

Or run amok 

And get into fights.

Sometimes there are tears in the gravy. 

He would have understood.



Carol's roundup.

OLW 2020

This is the twelfth year I'm choosing One Little Word (OLW) to focus on for the new year. My previous choices have been LOOK in 2009, LOVED in 2010, TRUST in 2011, HEAL in 2012, SHALOM in 2013, GARDEN in 2014, UNAFRAID in 2015, LOVED in 2016, ROOTED in 2017, ENOUGH in 2018, and POSSIBILITY in 2019. Each year, I've written here about what I hope to see in the twelve months ahead, and each year I've ruefully admitted that I just keep on being me, with all the same stuff. I just hope I'm making some progress somewhere.

Here's last year's post on POSSIBILITY.  And here I reflected on the year as a resident of Haiti, and on why a better choice might have been FUTILITY or perhaps IMPOSSIBILITY or DESPAIR.

As I was thinking about those words, I focused especially on the last one. In French it's désespoir, the opposite of hope, un-hope. Hopelessness. I don't really want that to be my focus for the shiny new year, so unspoiled and fresh. So I decided to take a leap and go against the way things feel, choosing HOPE for 2020. Not because I'm full of hope or see lots of newness or solutions on the horizon to Haiti's political and economic impasse, but because I'm going to have to look outside myself, to seek hope where it's not obvious.

Last year in my OLW post, I quoted Henri Nouwen on hope. "I have found it very important in my own life," Nouwen writes, "to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me. To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear."

I love the largeness of Nouwen's vision, but it's not easy to grasp on a daily basis. There are so many outcomes I hope for, and pray for, and don't see coming to fruition (in Haiti and in my own life). But to simply let go, and trust God with a more open-ended hope for His purposes to be achieved: that's more challenging. I tried it last year, and I try it every year, and I'm going to try it again this year.

And in case I feel like being less theological, HOPE is also the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson wrote:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked - a crumb - of me.

On second thought, I'm not so sure that's any less theological. But at any rate, I've been thinking a lot lately about the things with feathers, as my interest in birds has grown. 2019 seemed pretty hopeless for the birds, as a study came out showing that the bird population of the U.S. and Canada decreased in the past 50 years by about 2.9 billion breeding adults, or 29%. Those are some sickening statistics, and yet if you follow that link to the study, you'll see that it immediately switches the focus from the sickening to the hopeful: "Bring Birds Back." There are so many things that can be done to improve the outlook for these "things with feathers" with which we share our planet. And the birds themselves, the hardy survivors, seem to have been doing some adjusting of their own: this article from last month's Discover magazine reports that all the species studied had decreased in size over the past 40 years (you've got to read about how they found this out - it is so fascinating). The scientists analyzing this data hypothesize that the reason for the smaller sizes is the increasingly warm temperatures in the birds' habitats.

What's to be learned from this, things with feathers? Anything that can help me be more hopeful in this coming year, in spite of obstacles and circumstances beyond my control? I'll think about it.

Ultimately, though, I don't believe having hope is about me; I think it's about God working in me. In Romans 15:13, Paul writes: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." It's by looking outside myself, by turning to God, that I can have hope this year.

Margaret is hosting a roundup of the OLWs chosen by my Spiritual Journey Thursday pals. Here's a list at Two Writing Teachers of contributors' choices. What about you? What's your OLW for 2020?

Reading Update

I doubt I'll finish any more books this year; if I do, I'll add them to the bottom of this post.

Book #115 of 2019 was The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. I really enjoyed this verse novel about Xiomara, her twin Xavier, and the boy, Aman, she's starting to like.

I wanted to tell her that if Aman were a poem
he'd be written slumped across the page,
sharp lines, and a witty punch line
written on a bodega brown paper bag.

His hands, writing gently on our lab reports,
turned into imagery,
his smile the sweetest unclichéd simile.

He is not elegant enough for a sonnet,
too well-thought-out for a free write,
taking too much space in my thoughts
to ever be a haiku.

Book #116 was Opening the Stable Door: An Advent Reader, by Dale and Jonalyn Fincher. I last read this one in 2013.

Book #117 was The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. I had read it before, ten years ago (here's my review from back then), but this time I read it aloud to my husband. We both enjoyed it immensely.

Book #118 was The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo. I loved this story of siblings and their parents' marriage. It took me a while to get into it; I didn't like the first few pages at all and almost didn't continue. But I was very glad I didn't give up. I am not sure how she managed it, but Lombardo structured this book so brilliantly. It jumps all around in time and from character to character, but without confusing the reader at all (once you get past the beginning). We see major events through the eyes of each of the daughters, and we see the relationships as living, growing organisms.

Book #119 was a reread of Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times, by Henri Nouwen. I bought this in January and I've already read it three times (it's short). Highly recommended.

Book #120 was Comfort Ye My People: The Real World Meets Handel's Messiah, 26 Readings for Advent, by Kay Bruner. I've read this a couple of times before during Advent, and it's so good. Each reading includes a link so you can listen to a YouTube video of the section of the music she's referencing.

Book #121 was a Christmas gift from my son, Consider the Birds: A Provocative Guide to the Birds of the Bible, by Debbie Blue. This reminded me of Lauren Winner, and, bingo, Lauren Winner wrote the Foreword. I am a sucker for this kind of midrashy reconsidering of familiar texts. The lovely woodblock illustrations by Blue's husband, Jim Larson, are a bonus.

This was an excellent reading year. Being unable to go out for days at a time makes for prime reading conditions. One thing I especially enjoyed was how many books I read with my husband. We have always read books together, since our dating years, but this year we had a lot of extra time at home together, and this was one really nice result.

Here are links to my previous Reading Update posts.

Books #1-#5
Books #6-#11
Books #12-#16
Books #17-#29
Books #30-#35
Books #36-#41
Books #42-#50
Books #51-#61
Books #62-#71
Books #72-#79
Books #80-#92
Books #93-#100
Books #101-#114

What did you read this year that you think I should add to my list for next year? Where did you disagree with my opinions? I love to talk about my reading almost as much as I love to read! Talk to me in the comments, here or on Facebook!

Poetry Friday: The Last Thing

I'm ending the year with this poem by Ada Limón, "The Last Thing."

The Last Thing
Ada Limón

First there was the blue wing
of a scraggly loud jay tucked
into the shrubs. Then the bluish-
black moth drunkenly tripping
from blade to blade. Then
the quiet that came roaring
in like the R. J. Corman over
Broadway near the RV shop.
These are the last three things
that happened.

Here's the rest of it, leading up to my favorite part, the last three lines...

I can't help it. I will
never get over making everything
such a big deal.

Michelle Kogan has the roundup today. See you in 2020!

Poetry Friday: OTR and Me

I just counted, and this is my fifty-first Poetry Friday post of the year. Once in July it was only a link to the roundup, but all the other Fridays of 2019 (so far, and there's just one week left after this one), I posted some actual content for Poetry Friday. To be honest this was kind of a crummy year in most ways, but that's a little achievement, right there.

I was listening this week to some Advent/Christmas/Winter music, and this Over The Rhine song caught my attention and made me think of a poem I wrote a few months ago. So I'll share both of them with you.

Worry Poem

“No need to worry,” he told me.
“You never need to worry.”

I wondered what would happen
if I listened, and never worried again,
calmed and relaxed,
knew deep down I’d always be safe,
breathed in and slowed down my heart rate
submerged myself in a warm bath of love,
rising up shiny and clean,
snorting and blowing bubbles
like a mama hippo.

I wondered what would happen
if I kept on worrying,
fretted and agonized,
built worst-case scenarios in the air,
clutched with sweaty fingers
all that I fear losing,
rolled myself up in a stressed-out ball,
raising my scaly defenses
like a mama pangolin.

Which shall I choose,
I asked myself,
thoughtfully,
like a mama person,
accustomed both to the kindness of others
and my own insecurities,
longing for worry-free living
and peaceful serenity,
but
not
quite
there
yet.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Buffy has today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Reflections on Gardening, Growing, Teaching

I've been grading, and that's always a bit depressing, because I focus on how far short I fell of my teaching goals. This quarter that feeling is multiplied by a billion, as we're wrapping up our distance learning, forced on us by riots and peyi lok (locked country) here in Haiti. (I've been writing about it for weeks and weeks, so you can get more information on the details by scrolling down on my blog.)

In the midst of these thoughts, I read Amy Ludwig VanDerwater's post from last week about planting bulbs in November. Six hundred bulbs, to be precise. Can you even imagine how wonderful that's going to be in the spring? Amy's title was "Choose Good Work, Write About It." That started me thinking about a poem I wrote two years ago comparing teaching to gardening. Here it is.  I talked about how growing is mysterious. We do our part, like Amy, but then there's the magic that takes place out of sight.

As part of the self-evaluation I had my seventh and eighth grade students do at the end of this quarter, I asked them to write about something they had learned during this time that they wouldn't have otherwise. That's due today, so I've only read a few of the responses, but so far I've found they learned about how hard it is to do your work when the external structure is taken away. One said he learned about how to keep his mom from being mad at him: by doing his assignments! One girl simply wrote that she learned to be grateful.

Here's a poem that came out of all this ruminating:

Distance Learning, Fall 2019

This growing season,
it felt as though I took the seeds to the window
and just flung them out,
and the wind blew them away,
or the birds ate them,
or they landed on the road and got trampled.

Did any even hit soil, I wondered,
as, each day, I opened the window
and chucked out another bucketful of seeds?

And so I am happy
to see, here and there,
plants springing up.
I don’t know what they are,
if they came from the seeds in my bucket
or from somewhere else entirely.
I don’t know how they’ll do next week
or next month
or at the harvest.

All I know is that I didn’t hoard the seeds
in brightly colored Tupperware.
I sent them out.
I did.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Liz Steinglass has the roundup today.

Reading Update

Book #101 of 2019 was Ask Again, Yes, by Mary Beth Keane, the story of Peter and Kate, who grow up next to each other outside New York City with their cop fathers and their suburban families. There's trauma in this book, but it's ultimately uplifting, and I enjoyed the believable character development.

Book #102 was Soaring Earth, by Margarita Engle. This is a verse memoir by the current Young People's Poet Laureate, originally from Cuba. It covers her adolescence during the Vietnam War. Here's a taste from an early poem in the book, "Daydreamer."

After those childhood summers in Cuba,
when my two-winged freedom to travel
was lost on both sides of the ocean,
I learned to imagine wholeness
by settling
into the weight
of motionless
earth.

But the world isn't heavy, not really,
it flies
through the galaxy
orbiting around the sun, spinning
on an invisible axis and soaring far away
all at the same time, while floating people pretend
that we feel safely
rooted.

Book #103 was a teaching book, Focus Lessons: How Photography Enhances the Teaching of Writing, by Ralph Fletcher. I was so excited when I first read about this book, because I have done a lot of thinking about the connections between photography and writing, and even written some posts here on the topic. Fletcher's book is gorgeous (filled with his photos) and helpful; he writes about some of the same things I had thought of, and also goes in directions my mind hadn't taken me yet. He's a way more accomplished photographer than I am, for one thing, as well as being a widely published writer. The book includes a wonderful collection of Craft Lessons, ready to use with kids. Highly recommended for teachers, no matter what age your students are.

Book #104 was Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, by Gary D. Schmidt. This book has been in my classroom forever, and I am Gary Schmidt's #1 fan, so it's surprising I hadn't read this yet. I have had students read it at various times, and it's been well-received. It's so good, but also so sad. It's based on a true story, and set in 1912; the main characters, Turner Buckminster and Lizzie Bright Griffin, are compelling and memorable. I'm glad I finally read it.

Book #105 was Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir, by Ruth Reichl, the story of Reichl's connection to Gourmet magazine, of which she was the editor in chief. This is beautifully written, and Reichl's narrative voice is irresistible, so even though it is about a world in which I'm frankly not that interested (glamorous food publishing from 1999 until Gourmet magazine's demise in 2009), I loved it. My favorite part is towards the end, when Reichl goes to Paris on a shoestring, though I strongly suspect her idea of a shoestring differs quite a bit from mine. And while I will never make any of the recipes, it's fun to read almost anything about which the writer is this enthusiastic.

Book #106 was the first draft of a novel by someone in my writing group. It was really good but I can't say more about it yet!

Book #107 was The Last Romantics, by Tara Conklin, a story about siblings navigating crisis together, and then the way the rest of their lives unfold.

Book #108 was Summer of '69, by Elin Hilderbrand. While this one was a less serious novel than the last (it even has a beach scene on the cover, as opposed to the twining plants of The Last Romantics), I actually enjoyed it more and found the characters more believable.

Book #109 was Turn My Mourning into Dancing, by Henri Nouwen. There was a quote from it posted on Facebook that caught my attention, and it turned out to be just what I needed to be reading right now. So much so that in addition to being the 109th book of the year, it was also book #114. And I'm reading it again.

Here's a quote from it: "For in our suffering, not apart from it, Jesus enters our sadness, takes us by the hand, pulls us gently up to stand, and invites us to dance. We find the way to pray, as the psalmist did, 'You have turned my mourning into dancing' (Ps. 30:11), because at the center of our grief we find the grace of God."

Book #110 was a re-read, Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words, by Brian D. McLaren. I wrote about it before here and here.

Book #111 was Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, by Michael Pollan. This book has a lot of fascinating thoughts in it, but since I'm not a gardener, I'm not sure I fully appreciated it as it should be appreciated. It was my first Michael Pollan book. Here's a quote I underlined: "Proust wrote somewhere that the reason beautiful places sometimes disappoint us in reality is that the imagination can only lay hold of that which is absent. It traffics not in the data of our senses, but in memories and dreams and desires." Hmm. I'll have to think about that one some more.

Book #112 was The Illusion of Separateness, by Simon Van Booy. This was another book full of fascinating thoughts, in this case about how we are connected with other people by the past. I think I was too distracted while reading it to appreciate it fully, and I hope to reread it some day when I am in a more focused state of mind.

Book #113 was The Next Right Thing, by Emily P. Freeman. I listened to almost every minute of the podcast on which this book was based, so it wasn't new material to me, but I still found it helpful and beautiful and calming. Plus, I could hear it in my head in Emily P.'s soothing voice.

Poetry Friday: Blessing in the Chaos

Things have been pretty chaotic around here lately. In the world, and also in my heart. This poem by Jan Richardson helps. 

Blessing in the Chaos
Jan Richardson

To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be
a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,

that go with you
even to the
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you
cease.

Here's the rest at Jan's blog, The Painted Prayerbook, plus some of her thoughts about the poem.

Tanita has the roundup today.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: OLW 2019

Our theme this month for Spiritual Journey Thursday requires us to revisit the One Little Word we chose for 2019. So the first thing I did was go back and read my post from the beginning of the year. Here it is. My OLW was Possibility. I quoted Henri Nouwen and Nichole Nordeman and Emily Dickinson and Pharrell Williams and the Bible, and just generally went on and on in a fashion that now makes me roll my eyes at the irony of it all. A better word for 2019 would have been Impossibility. As I start to consider words for 2020, perhaps Impossibility should be my choice, or Despair, or maybe Futility.

I mean, sure, we made the best of it this year. As we went through week after week of lockdown and political unrest and stress (just scroll through the year's posts for evidence), we, my colleagues and I, did our best to keep teaching (in disrupted days, then half days, then distance learning). We learned about the intricacies of Google Classroom and adapted lessons. I read lots of books and watched birds in my yard. I wrote updates in email and on Facebook and tried to keep Haiti in people's minds. I spent extra time with my husband and son and rode the exercise bike and attempted to maintain my mental health. I invited near neighbors over and served them chai. I wrote poems and short stories. I encouraged my students and their families as much as I could.

And last week, a lot of schools in Haiti opened, some for the first time this school year. (Here's an article in English about it and here's one in French.) And that's great. But only about a quarter of the kids were there; parents were cautious and scared, and there were still threats against the safety of students venturing out. Schools recommended that their pupils not come in uniform, since uniforms draw attention. Are you getting the picture that schools opening doesn't mean that things are back to normal?

While I recognize that difficult times help us grow spiritually, I am also sad that so many children have missed so much school this year. Children get one childhood, and it's already short. And school is only one aspect of the disruption in Haiti. Health care and the economy have been affected, too. There's a looming food crisis. There's been violence and fear. I'm not quite ready to wrap up this year with a bow and say it was all OK. (Please don't hear me making political statements or taking sides; I don't know the solutions to Haiti's problems, of which there are many.)

If you read my post from January, you'll see that I wrote about how some of the possibilities for the year were always negative. I used the metaphors of tornadoes and earthquakes (and earthquakes are not always metaphors in these parts). It didn't take any prescience to envision yucky possibilities for the year; we were already in the throes of political crisis when 2019 began. It just kept getting worse, and as the year ends, it's not resolved.

And yet. It isn't wrapping it all up with a bow to say that God never let go of me in 2019. In spite of everything. Even on the worst days. Listen to Andrew Peterson's song (and read the lyrics on the screen in the video), and that's my testimony too.

Irene has our roundup today.

Poetry Friday: Ode to my Work

Every year I read Pablo Neruda odes with my eighth graders around Thanksgiving. Here's last year's ode post, with links to other ode posts, and odes, from every year since 2010. Of course, this year I'm teaching my students over the internet because of Haiti's unrest, but that doesn't mean we can't read and write odes. I sent them some links to ode videos on YouTube, like this one:

and this one:

I suggested they choose something to write about that they really, really love. And then I tried to do the same. As I'd advised my students, I made a list of things I was thankful for, things I really, really love. And I kept coming back to teaching, and my job, and, well, them. Those students.

Here's my first draft. Their first drafts are due tomorrow, so I've only read one so far, and I can't wait to read the rest.


Ode to my Work (first draft)

Work to do,
problems to solve,
a place to belong:
my job.

A paycheck is good,
but oh, Work,
you are so much more to me than that.
On days when burning barricades
keep me from you,
how I miss you!

I miss greeting my students,
learning their language,
finding ways to reach them.
I miss the conversation.
I miss the words:
the books we read together,
the mentor texts,
the new vocabulary.

I miss school lunch,
break duty with my whistle hanging around my neck,
meetings with my colleagues,
managing my classroom library.

I miss creating my lesson plans,
planning how I want the time to go.
Of course,
sometimes it doesn’t go
exactly the way I had in mind,
but that’s the best part,
adapting and adjusting,
explaining it a different way,
figuring out how to make it work.

Figuring out how to make it work, Work,
that’s what I love about you.

I miss stepping into my room,
a room to which I have the key,
a room with my name on the door,
a room I set up,
a room with my handwriting on the board,
my fingerprints everywhere.
I miss the me-shaped space.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

When I wrote "I miss the conversation," I meant the literal conversation with my students, but I also meant the Great Conversation, and our little part in it. But of course, that Conversation goes on. I'm inspired by Neruda (by way of Nancie Atwell), and last week my poem about the ovenbird, inspired by the bird itself (by way of Robert Frost) and illustrated by a photo from eBird.com, inspired Michelle Kogan to create this wonderful picture, which she posted on Facebook one day last week as a greeting to all her friends with a birthday that day (and which she graciously granted me permission to post here, also):

Here's this week's roundup, all the way from Switzerland.

Poetry Friday: Ovenbird in Haiti

This morning I sat on my rocking chair on my front porch, clutching my binoculars, looking for birds. I didn't see much life today, but I did see one guy whom I'd never seen before, an addition to my list. I quickly identified him with the Merlin app on my phone: an ovenbird.

Here's a photo from ebird.com to show you how he looked; he was a perfect specimen.

I immediately thought I remembered that Frost had written an ovenbird poem, so I looked it up and found it a little bit of a downer after watching this confident, cheerful bird. After his, I'm going to share my poem about the ovenbird. Although Frost spelled the name as two words, all my bird sources spell it as one, so I'm sticking with one for my poem.

The Oven Bird
by Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.


Ovenbird in Haiti
by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Greetings, winter visitor to my yard,
jauntily strutting about in search of bugs to eat,
holding your orange stripy head up!
You don't seem to me to be talking about diminishment,
whatever Robert Frost had to say,
but then again, you're on a Caribbean vacation,
relaxing over your exotic snack,
so perhaps you're saving your philosophizing
for another time.
Make yourself at home, beady-eyed tourist,
puffing out your pale chest,
streaked with brown.
Welcome to a new November day!

We're still not having regular school here in Haiti, but doing our best with distance learning. I just can't wait to get back to teaching in my classroom and seeing my students' faces. But in the meantime, I'm learning new things every day.

I forgot that our host today, Rebecca at Sloth Reads, had asked us to write about food. I decided my poem counts, since my visitor from the north was definitely eating. My books and app told me that these birds are usually found on the ground, looking for food, and sure enough, that's exactly where mine was. Head on over to Rebecca's site to see what others have to share today.

Poetry Friday: First Frost

Here in Haiti this fall of our discontent drags on. We are still not having school, still sitting at home smelling burning rubber as angry protestors man flaming barricades and demand that motorists pay for the privilege of passing. This week was a bit calmer in our area, but not in other parts of the city and the country.

Meanwhile, far north of here, winter seems to be getting an early start. A friend took some photos of the first frost and sent them to me, and it felt so good to think and write about something other than what's going on here (my largely stalled NaNoWriMo project, like my life, consisted of Haiti topics). I got permission to share the photos along with my poem.

Photo Credit: Matsu

First Frost

Into my tropical reality
comes a glimpse of another world,
a stillness before the day’s business begins,
first frost,
every surface edged with a fuzz of ice,
your mother’s tree outlined with a fringe of cold,
the garden hose lying idle,
the withered yellow flower that somehow still manages beauty
and you, crunching across the grass to document it,
following the visible puffs of your own breath,
taking dozens of pictures to freeze this moment
because, like all moments,
it will thaw and pass away.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Another reminder that life goes on in spite of the stalled political, economic, and educational situation here in Haiti came this week with a transmission from Nokomis, the great blue heron banded in Maine who likes to spend her winters here in the sunny Caribbean. (Here's my post and poem about her from exactly a year ago today.) She hadn't been heard from in a while, but now they found out that she's in Cuba and on her way south.

Source: Heron Observation Network of Maine

And another thing happening the way it's supposed to: today's Poetry Friday roundup! Head over there to see what people are sharing today, and to join in the celebration of the arrival of The Best of Today's Little Ditty: 2017-2018!

Poetry Friday: An Incomplete Picture

I read an article this morning with the headline: "International Media Often Paints an Incomplete Picture of the Situation, says Haitian Studies Association." It's not really surprising that that should be the case. Every picture is incomplete; every sound byte is from one person's perspective; every opinion is formed by one person's experience.

Like everywhere else, most people aren't as concerned with the politics as with their daily struggle to get to work, to earn a living, to provide for their families. Some people feel strongly; presumably they are the ones out demonstrating. Others are just waiting to see what will happen and don't necessarily think that a change of who's at the top will change their lives much one way or the other. I've heard people speak passionately on both sides of the current struggle, and each one was giving an incomplete picture.

Right now children in Haiti can't go to school. Businesses can't function normally. Hospitals can't treat people. Yesterday in my area things seemed almost normal, but then I talked to someone who had taken two hours to get to work (about seven miles), and she said they had to weave around all different back roads and cross several barricades (sometimes paying for the privilege).

Here's a six minute video in English giving some background.

Even in my own head and heart, any moment is an incomplete picture. Sometimes I feel hopeful and encouraged. (A student sent me some writing that was such a good start!) Sometimes I am discouraged and can't see any hope anywhere. (I got an email from an administrator at work with the word "predictable-ish" in the subject line!) I read about street merchants having their artwork cut up and burned by protesters. But I also had a chai party with a bunch of colleagues and people were speculating that maybe the worst was over already. Yesterday I read about people getting burned by an attack on public transport (both sides blamed the other). But then also yesterday, there was traffic out and "people were timidly resuming their activities," as the local media always expresses it. (I love that word "timidly" because it really is perfect. You can sense the tension everyone is experiencing, and people are ready to run and hide at a moment's notice.)

And today I saw a bird in my yard that I'm pretty sure was this guy:

Like the timid people in the streets, he flew away when I attempted to examine him a bit more closely.

It's all partial and incomplete.

I've been trying to do NaNoWriMo, with very limited success. I'm to the point where I hate everything I write and know for a fact that I have no words worth reading. Since my own writing is going so badly, here's someone else's for Poetry Friday this week. As Douglas Dunn says in this poem, "I Am a Cameraman," each sentence of mine "shrugs off every word I try."

I Am a Cameraman
by Douglas Dunn

They suffer, and I catch only the surface.
The rest is inexpressible, beyond
What can be recorded. You can't be them.
If they'd talk to you, you might guess
What pain is like though they might spit on you.

Film is just a reflection
Of the matchless despair of the century.
There have been twenty centuries since charity began.
Indignation is day-to-day stuff;
It keeps us off the streets, it keeps us watching.

Film has no words of its own.
It is a silent waste of things happening
Without us, when it is too late to help.
What of the dignity of those caught suffering?
It hurts me. I robbed them of privacy.

My young friends think Film will be all of Art.
It will be revolutionary proof
Their films will not guess wrongly and will not lie.
They'll film what is happening behind barbed wire.
They'll always know the truth and be famous.

Politics softens everything.
Truth is known only to its victims.
All else is photographs - a documentary
The starving and the playboys perish in.
Life disguises itself with professionalism.

Life tells the biggest lies of all,
And draws wages from itself.
Truth is a landscape the saintly tribes live on,
And all the lenses of Japan and Germany
Wouldn't know how to focus on it.

Life flickers on the frame like beautiful hummingbirds.
That is the film that always comes out blank.
The painting the artist can't get shapes to fit.
The poem that shrugs off every word you try.
The music no one has ever heard.

 

Irene has today's roundup.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Saints

Today our host Margaret asked us to reflect on the subject of saints. I become more interested in saints all the time; not just the ones the church has designated as saints, but the people around us, alive and dead, whom scripture calls the "great cloud of witnesses."

Here are the two songs that come to mind most when I think of saints.

Great Cloud of Witnesses

by Carolyn Arends

I was just four, my grandmother’s place
I knelt by her sofa and started this race
And now I’ve been running for such a long while
I’ve kind of lost track of the miles
Sometimes I press on, sometimes I look back
Sometimes I just lie in the road on my back
When I’ve got to get up and I don’t know how
I hear in the distance the roar of a crowd

It’s the great cloud of witnesses
Cheering me on each step that I go
It’s the great cloud of witnesses
They say the finish is worth every inch of the road

Moses is there, up in his seat
With my Grandad Wilfred, my Nana Bernice
There’s Abraham, Isaac and my buddy Rich
And I think they’re shouting "Don’t quit!"

So if you are tired, and your back is sore
If you’re not so sure you can run anymore
Then just take a moment and listen real close
Do you hear a sound like a heavenly host?

It’s the great cloud of witnesses
Cheering us on each step that we go
It’s the great cloud of witnesses
They say the finish is worth every inch of the road

It’s friends and relations and each generation of saints who believed
And received The Prize
They have looked into His eyes

It’s the great cloud of witnesses … 

This world is so full of discouraging facts, but I am thankful for the people I can look at as inspirations, role models, sources of encouragement, those people who are following our progress, praying for us, thinking the best of us and for us. 

Be sure to check out what others have posted on this topic.