Who Do you See?

I know that I am often guilty of ignoring the people around me, while being "social," via some technological device. I know that at times the ringing of phones and clicking of keys has replaced the family sitting around and chatting, or playing a game, or even just making eye contact.  I wrote this poem when I was feeling especially frustrated by my own choices, and especially invisible to the people I live with.

The heavy woman steps
off the curb
in front of the car
and you scream, "Mad Cow Alert!"
and'
"Hey, Get Out Of The Road!"
and you never know
that today
she wiped the butt of her
dying 
mother
and lost her job
for taking yet one more day off work.


The teenager who lives,
under your roof
and once grew under your heart
sits sullen and silent
through dinner
and you miss the flash of humor, 
the twinkling fingers
send out via a text to anyone
but you


The dirty, grizzled man
approaching in the parking lot,
you dart past
with eyes averted
although
out camping last weekend
another, dirtier man
walked up to your camp, carrying a hatchet
and you smiled a welcome
the setting,
and being "out of service"
defining how closely you look.


Do you see me?


Sometime you passed my way
under the florescent lights
of the grocery store
and saw a germanic hausfrau
a tired teacher
no-body interesting
so you forgot me.


Sometimes you turn away
from the people in your house
eager to hear what I have to say
on-line, 
curious how I will reply to your post
where we share dreams
and hopes
common experiences
and individual fears


You don't know my name
or even suspect
I might have been the cow
who blocked your car.

I can recharge my batteries, but can our kids?

 I think of myself in a lot of different roles and a lot of those are roles that drain my energy and exhaust me.  I am a Mom, a wife, a teacher, a daughter, a friend, a writer, an artist, an Aunt, a pet owner . . . and the list feels like it doesn't stop.  But when I feel emptied and listless, those are the same roles that turn around and give back to me, until my joy and energy are filled to the brim and ready to be shared out once more.

When I can't think of a new thing to teach, or another detail to put in my story, when I pick up my pencil and swirl it listlessly across the page and toss both the pencil and paper away, When my sons seem to generate one call after another from frustrated school administrators and my Mom is sick and so is the dog

That is always when I suddenly walk down a new path and come face to face with wonder.  When a child makes me laugh and a giant wave makes me reach for my camera as it floods my vision and my imagination

There is a waxing and waning of energy.  I give and receive it so often that I usually don't notice exactly how often I am met with the very thing I need.

  so what am I concerned about?  I have always been around schools.  i was a teachers daughter, a student in public schools, a college student, then teacher and a mom. My focus and my life flows to a calendar that begins the year around labor day.  But schools change, slowly they shift back and forth along a pendulum, responding to the needs of the students, the values of the community, the budget, etc. 

I don't like the changes I see lately.  I see the same things a lot of you do. There are concerns with anger and bullying and defiance.  There are budget shortages and teacher cut backs and huge class sizes, and huge and out-of-shape students.

 I love the kids I work with, but I caught myself breathing a sigh of relief that my own children are not just starting school.  I wouldn't want them to face the sad state that I see ahead of so many students in the lower grades now.

     Recently I was asked to come in and talk to some middle school classes and some upper grade school classes about my novel.  Instead of coming in as their teacher, they saw me as a writer, and there was a degree of fascination and awe in the way they talked to me, and a different set of topics than I talk about when I teach them.  I was saddened to hear their response to my questions about "Have you ever taken play dough and rolled a snake or a ball, and then flattened it?"  Of course they had, Right?

 NO!!

And in a kindergarten room, I pulled out a box of water color paints, In JANUARY, and the first response was the universal one, "What's That?"    Half way through kindergarten and they had never painted?

I looked at the kids and asked if they could tell me where the music room was, and no-one under 5th grade knew.

I look around my house, at walls overcrowded with my kids paintings, and shelves of amateur pottery and I remember the delight in singing Raffi and Hap Palmer songs for the millionth time.

They told me they wanted to be writer's and artists, but their teachers tell me they have to follow scripted lessons, heavy only on the subjects that will be tested.  The teacher who spent a year in Japan leaves her Japanese items at home because it won't be tested.  The former soccer star, never takes her class outside, because the day follows the script provided by the publishers of the textbooks.  The field trip to the marine mammal rescue center, no longer has time to happen, until those last two weeks, when the tests are finally over and a bit of real education can slip in.

We all know in our hearts that the things we loved in school were the creative moments.  We dreamed of painting, or doing experiments, or singing, or winning Red-Rover, (Can't play that, someone might get hurt) or spinning on the merry-go-round, (those are too dangerous too).

We didn't long to go to school to sit packed in rows of desks and recite formula learning, so that we could vomit it back out onto the scantron bubble test answer form.

And in a lot of ways, we are failing our kids by focusing so Damn much on if they can pass!

School Shooting, Bullies, and Violence in Books for School Kids

  I am 48 years old, but I have never been away from books for young people.  As a Mom and a teacher and a writer - but most of all, as someone who loves books, from picture books to Paradise Lost.

    In writing, Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog, I gave myself permission to play around in the world of fantasy and to use some traditional features from the types of Fantasy novels that I enjoyed as a child, but also to use some of the issues that the world is dealing with today.

     One of these issues is the fact that, "School Shooting" is a term which was unheard of when I was a student, but which is sadly a common thing to hear about on the news today.  As a teacher, I have to practice safety drills with students, and along with "earthquake" and "fire" drills, we also practice "Gunman on Campus."  I hate this reality, but my hating it makes it no less prevalent.


    There were guns at my High School, a lot of them, and no one cared.  I grew up in Wyoming, close to Yellowstone Park, and the students who lived out of town, on ranches or farms, carried shotguns and rifles in gun racks in the window of their unlocked pick-up trucks.  The targets were beer bottles, jack Rabbits, magpies, stop signs, coyotes.  There was never any thought that the target might be a student or a teacher.

    We had bullies, we had school fights, we went to school while the Vietnam War was on the news every evening and assigned for current events.  We knew that teenage pregnancy and hard core drugs were issues.  We read books where there was violence and favorite characters died.  And yet, it was more innocent still.

   In Junior High I loved, The Outsiders and, The Chronicles of Narnia, and, Bless the Beasts and the Children, and Johnny Tremain.  In High School I delighted in being terrified by Jaws, and Christine and, Carrie and Flowers in the Attic.

    But rogue sharks, and evil automobiles are a million light years away from the violence in The Hunger Games or City of Glass or the second quartet of Tamora Pierce's "The Circle Opens" books.

    And I have to ask myself, if reading so much violence, and hearing it on the news every day, and being saturated in it, doesn't make these kids vulnerable to being involved in it.  Do they come to see that as inevitable.  Yet here I am, selling my book, with a 9 year old turning his gun on a school assembly.

     I don't believe that violence is inevitable, or that suicide is a good response to being bullied, or that life can not be mostly about life and growth - and yet I wonder what the kids believe, and hope that my book gives them more than just a ray of light in the dark.

     I hope, that like Duffy, with his crutches and his Cerebral Palsy, that they find themselves realizing that they can be the peace and the good in the world, not just in-spite of their weaknesses, but often because of them.

    I know that I became a strong, loving woman, because I was bullied and threatened and ridiculed as a child, and while I do not wish any child to suffer as I did, I hope my books shows them, that there is life after school and a whole world just begging you to let it love you.

December 2010

I grew up with White Septembers and an Occasional June snowstorm and even trips to the snow up on the Beartooth Mountains on the 4th of July

 but where I live now, Christmas is green grass and red maple leaves.

It is no less festive

 and yet, there are times when I miss the need to stay indoors, bundled into the living room, huddled around a board game with my family as school is cancelled and hot chocolate is simmered.

There are very few times that we have had snow at the high 25 foot elevation of my Redwood coast home.

But we have a tradition of visiting loved ones over the school break, and that nearly always includes visiting snow as well.

 The Mountains around Ashland, Oregon are where we found it this year.

and what could be more in keeping with the holiday that the acres of oak trees wearing their mistletoe kissing balls?

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our friends who are as close as family, in their warm, sunny home in Ashland, OR

but our own Christmas Tree was there to welcome us home afterward.

Then as New Year neared we headed up the Oregon Coast to Visit Uncle Wince, (a nickname from being the wrestling partner of choice when the boys were tiny)

We stopped in Old Town Bandon, OR to buy fudge and walk on the pier.  We have often dropped our crab pots there, but this time the ice chest was already filled with Dungeness crab

 and the goal of the day was to visit the state park, close to Coos Bay, at the Old Simpson estates known as "Shore Acres" in Charleston, OR

The surf there constantly pounds the cliffs and carves surreal shapes in the sandstone

even the trees are sculpted by the wind and weather

both mansions burned but the gardener's cottage remains, and the three gardens are decorated with thousands of lights each winter.

 The oriental garden is my favorite as it reminds me of my days as an exchange student in China.

 Inside the cottage, Santa was discovered bathing on his cap, amid a pool of bubble wrap.

 Up into Salem to the Uncle's house, we took a walk and saw this Dr. Seuss style tree in a yard near-by!

 and shared our third Tree of the Holiday season.

and watched the sunset from Uncle Wince's window

and found this charming scene across the street from the cemetery

 We had such a lovely Christmas break, that even the rest area we usually stop at, had been made beautiful by the arrival of snow.

In my Novel, Duff Barkley hates being at his Aunt's house for Christmas, and is frightened to stumble out of her attic and into a strange world, but in my beautiful world, being welcomed into the home of uncle's and friends, added a magic to the season and gave me memories of love and laughter to carry on into "the bleak mid-winter."