Room to Write

ODIORNE WINTER

2012-02-25T21:41:00.002-05:00

Odiorne Winter

Beyond stark branches,

rocks and grasses, where gray meets

gray and line is lost,

shapes in shadows trick the eye

as three black ducks pass me by.

TELL ME A STORY OF PIGS

2012-02-17T08:34:00.000-05:00

Adventures with Pigs

Dear Aimee and Millie,

You asked me what pigs eat. That's a good question. When I was a little girl, my grandfather and Nana raised pigs on their farm in Pittsfield, New Hampshire. In this photo, I'm about 3 years old. I wanted to take this little pig for a walk, but he was more interested in eating leaves in the path. I don't look very happy.

I remember I helped my grandfather feed the pigs. We mixed grain, molasses and water into a sweet-smelling mash. My grandfather poured the mash into a long wooden trough and the pigs stood side-by-side eating. They made snuffling and snorting sounds when they ate. They also had a fenced-in field in the summer where the pigs could run and eat green plants, leaves and other tasty bits. They always had water -- both in the field and in the barn.

Some people think pigs are dirty animals, but I remember how clean they were, especially outside in the fields. One of the big jobs on the farm was keeping the pens in the barn clean and full of straw.

My grandfather had a horse named Pancho, chickens, geese, and a cow. My Nana milked the cow and made butter from the cream. I loved visiting them on the farm. When I was older, I stayed for a few weeks each summer. Then, I helped in the garden. I picked peas and cucumbers. My Nana taught me how to make pickles and we entered a jar into the local fair. Our pickles won a blue ribbon!

I'm glad you asked about pigs. I had fun finding this old photograph from the summer of 1950. I like sharing stories of when I was a little girl. Ask me more questions!

Politics 2012 - and it's only January

2012-01-30T14:57:00.003-05:00

January 10: The New Hampshire Primary. It's a big deal here. We're the first in the nation to vote on the presidential candidates.

I'm an Independent who votes the Democratic ballot based on its history, principles and traditions. It's a vote that demands I keep my voice alive and "out there"... not falling into "silence is complicity"... not letting my responsibilities stop with the one act of voting.

This year, the Republicans had a roster of candidates that filled our hearts with dread -- Gingrich, Santorum, Paul, Romney, Huntsman, Bachman. We face extreme politics that could strip away everything I value -- public education, women's rights, single payer health care, environmental safeguards, conservation, a social agenda that protects (in deed not only mouth) the civil rights of everyone in this country.

Voting in an old New England Town House makes me feel connected to my country, my town, my roots. It's quintessential New England -- the wood stove, food, a bake sale, jeans and fleece. The talk is civil, more or less. It's where we live, after all, where we see our neighbors, police + firemen, town officials, teachers, young + old, face-to-face.

January 19: Real Heroes. This lady, a widow from northern New Hampshire, refuses to sell her farm to the Northern Pass Project. Northern Pass is offering huge, inflated sums of money to create high-tower transmission lines from the Canadian border to Groveton. There are no existing Right-of-Ways to this point, so Northern Pass thinks it can buy out local landowners. This private venture promises big money to landowners in a poor part of the state.

She lives on a farm that's been in her husband's family for generations. She doesn't want to sell it to Northern Pass for many reasons. Her grandson wants to farm it again. She loves where she lives. She doesn't in believe this project -- or its tactics of threatening eminent domain and turning family members against one another.

After she said, No, she had legal expenses. She became dragged into controversy. But today, she's recognized for the heroine she is. The Northern Pass Opposition held a fundraiser and turned over a check to help her with those legal fees and other expenses.

This is what freedom and choice and doing the right thing is all about.

January 25. New Hampshire State Senate Votes and strengthens the law protecting landowner rights. The final tally was 23 in favor and 1 opposed. But it was no easy victory.

HB 648 needed to pass. Without it, Northern Pass would have an easier time taking the land it wants for its transmission lines. Even with this new law, the lobbyists and influence-hucksters will simply turn their attention to other avenues -- federal regulators, their friends in the courts and on regulatory committees, their lawyers, who knows...

Can you spot the lobbyists? The landowners?

Here in the gallery, we are carefully shielded from the Senators' eyes. The space is full: the orange of opposition, the sleek black of power, lawyers on Smartphones (making luncheon dates with lobbyists), and older residents of the North Country who left homes and farms before dawn to be a presence here.

Here's my message to the Senate: "I'm not paid by anyone to buy or influence your vote. I'm one of the people you represent. Let's not forget that. It's simple, back to basics. Politics 101."

Winter

2012-01-07T14:18:00.000-05:00

The New Year blows sweet, although a bit cold. There are no questions for me now. I am in the right place at this particular time of life. On a chilly Thursday morning, Barry's birthday, we head north.

Franconia Notch
Cannon Mountain

Crossing the Pemigewasset River
near its source

We walk to the Basin over a thin layer of ice. There's a woodpecker hole on this pine tree to the left. The air is crisp and bites my nose. I wear my new "retirement boots", lumberjack leather, thick sturdy soles -- and I don't fall.

We warm up at the Littleton Diner and feed our minds at the wonderful independent bookstore down the street. We come away with books on mushrooms, writing, and log drives down the Connecticut River. I buy myself a "Congratulations on your retirement" card. It just seems the right thing to do.

Barry treats himself at the local antique-curio shop where he finds the sword of a long-deceased swordfish. It just seems the right thing to do -- and it is.

Count the Birds

2012-01-02T10:27:00.002-05:00

January 1, 2012: It was warm for a January day in New Hampshire. The sun slipped in and out of the clouds. Brown leaves underfoot held a memory of October or early November. I wore a fall jacket, no gloves, no boots. It's unsettling for this old New Englander to be so free this time of year.

Then, another marker of change appeared -- this red-bellied woodpecker, a bird we knew from Maryland where we lived in 1971. We had seen one last week in western Massachusetts where we celebrated Christmas on a warm, spring-like day. No Currier and Ives this year! No sleigh bells, no skiing, no snow, no ice -- just an unfamiliar bird in an untimely landscape...

Red bellied Woodpecker

January 2, 2012: Today is the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, a time for birders to scour their areas and take count of the birds they see. Across the world, ornithologists and citizen scientists share their data and study the changes in the numbers and the species recorded year by year.

Changes -- like this red-bellied woodpecker, a bird of the southeastern forests, now at home hundreds of miles north of where his ancestors thrived.
Changes -- like waterfowl now swimming in open water on the big lakes of our region.
Changes -- robins staying all winter and feeding on different foods, like the true survivors they are, adapting to new conditions in their lives.

Where I find no change is on the human side of the equation. The New Hampshire Legislature is now considering a bill to limit how evolution is taught in schools. The parade of presidential candidates fall all over themselves denying climate change and its consequences.

We bulldoze wetlands, destroy mangroves and then bemoan the flood damage that follows. Think of fracking, Northern Pass Transmission Lines, strip mining...

This red-bellied woodpecker has a lot to teach us about adaptation and survival, limited resources and conservation, destruction of habitat, and knowledge of where we live and what we need to survive.

After all we're merely another species amongst the many, subject to natural laws and consequences.

Let's teach that in our schools!

Colors of the Season

2011-12-30T23:02:00.000-05:00

Evergreen

This time of year celebrates light and birth and promise. We burn the fires and sing the songs to chase away darkness and welcome back light. The old mysteries linger in blood-red berries, flames like the sun, and boughs that stay evergreen, even in the hard cold truth of a northern winter.

***

2011 was a pissant year in so many ways, but I am caught by the demands for freedom from people across the world. Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Syria. Wall Street and Oakland and Washington and Boston. One generation passes, and we seek the next Vaclav Havel, the young Mandela, the leaders with heart and morals and the courage to do what is right for us all, not act just for the few, the rich, the lobbyists, the spoilers.

I'm disgusted by liars and false gods, guns and pepper spray, bullies and corrupted elections. I want leaders -- real people -- who stand up and stop the violence that is done in the name of "national security", "public safety", "too-big-to-fail", and "family values".

I want to hear truth. Someone, say:
"There were no weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons were made here, at home, paid for by our taxes, and unleashed by our own sons and daughters. Truth: We cannot keep destroying peoples' jobs and then expect them to be the good consumers needed to fuel our economy. Truth: The emperor has no clothes, never has, never will, no matter how many tailors and handlers he/she employs."

From One Year to the Next

2011-11-26T11:52:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving Snow

After many years of traveling for Thanksgiving, we stay home now. It feels just right to be here in celebration of the harvest, the woods, the land, and our New Hampshire lives. The twist for 2011 was a snowstorm the day before Thanksgiving. Six inches of heavy, wet snow weighed down trees and took the power out for ten hours or so. Our teacher friends were delighted. Our cooking friends wondered when they could get back to the preparations. We carried on doing house chores by kerosene lamp.

The next morning, Thanksgiving Day, I took this photograph out the south window. Then I baked anadama bread and finished canning the rest of the applesauce (16 pints). I thought about past holidays -- Gram Dorrington's apple pies, big and small family gatherings over 60-plus years, awkward times, unhappy times, old and new traditions, the many warm and loving memories.

I thought about change -- how our landscapes change year by year. Snow. Misty, brown woods. Frost, rain, a pale November sun.

The people change, too. So many are gone. Some have left-- geographically and otherwise. The elders have died and the next generation moves into the places left empty at the table, the kitchen, the heart.

My joy comes when I pack the warm loaves of bread and walk up the road with Barry. We pass the small graveyard, the huge bull pines, horses, deer track, woods that stretch on either side of us. The skies are darkening, but the lights shine from Ellen's windows. We join old and new friends and neighbors at a long table by the open fireplace where we share a feast and fellowship in a brave new world.

Search for the Muse

2011-11-11T22:41:00.000-05:00

The Writing Retreat

We are four intrepid writers on a weekend retreat at a local vacation spot near the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This is our third retreat -- with more to come, we know. We're encouraged by the freedom to write and the fearless stroke of pen on paper, fingers on keys. There's a quiet, meditative quality in the room, broken by laughter, awe and appreciation when one of us reads what has appeared on the page.

Who knew the Muse sits among us, opening portals to heart and mind, singing us to write among our friends and colleagues! No more solitary desk in the pristine setting -- we write amidst scraps of papers, books, words cut from magazines and pictures culled from everywhere. We sit. We write. We share. We have a respectful audience. We have just what we need.

Bittersweet Realities of Being Retired

2011-09-28T12:50:00.003-04:00

This morning I listened to National Public Radio, checked the local news and read BBC News on my computer. In my initial days of retirement, I make time to savor a cup of coffee and consider the state of the world.

Here's what I learned today:

A young man I knew as an elementary school student is now a felon
The Wall Street protests are not covered by our big mainstream media -- even after an officer approached a group of young women cordoned off by other officers and sprayed his can of pepper spray over the unarmed, unprotected women. No one came to their aid with water or cloth or any kind of protest.
In Mexico, decapitated heads were left outside a school
Coffee may be helpful in "preventing depression".

My cup of coffee does not have that power. Even if it did, I don't want to be numbed or complacent or "cured" in the face of such human misery and abuse.

Time for Reflection

2011-09-03T10:03:00.002-04:00

I have passed the 185 pennies to another teacher friend to be used "when she is ready" to consider retiring from public education. As I learned over this past school year, retiring is a process that starts long before the decision, the announcement and the farewell party.

We laughed when I told her "the pennies worked". But they did work for me -- transferring one penny a day, each workday, kept me focused and honest about what I was doing. I was leaving my life work, colleagues, kids, parents, and that oh-so-familiar environment of school.

Since that last official day in June, I've taught in the National Writing Project in New Hampshire Summer Institute. That was a great way for me to transition from special education testing to working and writing with teachers. The National Writing Project's model is "teachers-teaching-teachers", and this work inspires thought and deep reflection.

That's where I am today, reflecting on education, rather than thinking about the daily school details. I have left a specific job description. I have left a climate of testing-is-teaching and public rants on teachers and schools. I've left restrictive rules that make no sense in the "real world" of the classroom. I've left budget cuts, bad policies, and animosity among communities who could be working together to support their future, their children, our world.

But I'm not going away. I'm exploring and traveling through my writing, politics, cultural change, voice, telling my stories and owning my truths. I feel rich beyond belief -- rich with books, arts, friends, ideas, curiosity, freedoms. And, unlike the new barbarians who make war upon our country's principles and peoples, I'm not afraid.

The Field Office

2011-08-09T22:58:00.001-04:00

When you call for me now, I'll be in the Field Office... in a room of my own... awash in memories of travels, dear friends, good books, and words, lots and lots of promising words. I find myself studying pictures of older women, like the Inuit elders and a woman drinking coffee after finishing a solid morning's work. No more collections of young hunter-women -- now, it's time for Recasting, Revisioning and Renewing the Vows to myself.

The stove is named Volcano -- really -- and it lives up to its name during the winter.

The window looks northwest to where the cold winds of winter blow. I see sunsets, the garden, a pine and a cherry tree. I hear birds, chipmunks, mice in the roof, and the contented beat of one human heart.

Gloria Steinem said: "The truth sets you free, but first it pisses you off." I agree...

2011-06-02T22:52:00.000-04:00

Politics --The Personal, Cultural, Environmental, and Global

Fund the Arts,

the National Writing Project,

programs for social change and justice.

Single payer health system.

Choice for Women's Reproductive Health.

Planned Parenthood and global family planning.

Free, public education funded as if it mattered.

Money and respect for libraries, museums, and PBS.

The Liberal Arts as a way of building a tolerant world.

Diversity. Ecology. Wilderness.

Respect our place within the Web of Life.

Sustaining. Conserving. Preserving.

Act responsibly for the sake of the future.

NO NORTHERN PASS

No Eminent Domain Extended to Private, for-Profit Companies -- None

No Corporations Allowed to Take Public Lands for Their Own Projects/Profits

No Corporations/ Anyone Allowed to Destroy or Interrupt Wildlife Habitat and Corridors

This is just a taste of what is at stake. Get pissed off ----
and join us.

Moments in May

2011-05-30T20:48:00.000-04:00

Early May in New England

It was a cold, rainy start to May. The sky stayed that flat, steely gray and then it rained for days on end. We savored every green sprout and bud. My grandfather always said it was time to plant when the leaves were "as big as a mouse's ear". That took some powerful waiting this year.

Now, at the end of the month, we're awash in green. The temperatures these last few days have been summery -- in the 80's F. The garden yields lettuce, chives, mustard greens, garlic tops, rhubarb, asparagus -- and the best parsnips we've ever grown.

Memorial Day 2011: There's My Dad!

2011-05-30T20:23:00.004-04:00

Earth Day 2011

2011-04-22T09:55:00.000-04:00

Smithsonian Museum. Washington, D.C.

The National Museum of the American Indian reads like a holocaust, a genocide, a sweep of colonial powers across a ravaged land. Yet, there is the powerful message that the Earth endures even as its people fight and die and destroy what should be revered.

Now, over two hundred years later, our ancestors still speak the truth. What we must do is listen. Heed the words. Act from those "better places" in our heart.

My Prayer for Earth Day

"I am alone in the woods.

I find solace, safety and beauty there.

I rest in the knowledge that our ancestors were born here.

I am grateful to be Home."

Storm Clouds over Washington

2011-04-04T00:42:00.002-04:00

April 1, 2011 -- The Theatre of the Absurd

I wish it were an April Fool's joke, but it's not. The young, spiky-haired legislative aide with the parochial school background couldn't be bothered to listen or take notes or do his damn job while we presented our impressive data on eighth grade reading gains and fourth graders' writing and a first grade's campaign that kept a neighborhood library open + alive.

He told us his boss, the new Representative, only comes to Washington to vote. I'm disgusted -- that's not why he was elected, to sit home in New Hampshire. He was elected, after all, not appointed by God or the King. I can only hope he gets fogged in and misses the key votes.

I'm in Washington, D.C. for my third Spring Meeting of the National Writing Project. However on March 2, NWP joined the ever-growing list of educational programs cut from the federal budget. NWP is the only professional development program for teachers of writing on a national scale. It has been a 30-year investment by the federal government. There are over 200 sites across the country. There are a million reasons why this program works, but we are not in the world of reason any longer.

In meeting after meeting, in auditoriums and small offices, we heard how crazy, how difficult, how impossible it is to do the right thing. This budget is a war where you and I and all those kids lose everything we need for a future. It's Partisan Politics and no one seems willing to stand up and stop this reckless destruction of our society.

We also spoke with three thoughtful and interested young people who are legislative aides. I think of them, too, as I offer this challenge.

Study the photograph of these Kindergarten-Grade 1 students. Consider that in twenty years, the boy in red is your tax accountant. How well-educated would you like him to be?

The little girl in pink wants to be your heart surgeon. The girl on her knees will teach your first grandchild to read and love books. Maybe one of them will be your hospice worker or an automobile mechanic in the age of solar-electric-robot-driven cars.

This is not a frivolous exercise. These kids are the future -- your future and my future. I want them to be well-educated, compassionate, creative, and smart. I'm willing to pay so these children have a quality, public education.

What about you?

Home from the Dominican Republic

2011-03-06T13:23:00.000-05:00

A week ago, I was here on Playita, a small gem of a beach in the town of Las Galeras, in the northeast of the Dominican Republic. The water was that warm, turquoise-blue of the Caribbean Ocean. At one end of the beach, there were the European tourists, French and German. At the other end, a Dominican family celebrated 27 February, Independence Day. And in the middle, under an almond tree, four American teachers marveled at their good fortune.

We had walked a country road from the main street in Las Galeras. We passed small farms and cows in the fields. One family sold pan de coco and pina in a roadside stand. We bought the warm bread and a pineapple, and the man gave us a tour of his farm. We had admired his enormous pig the day before, and now we met the pig, the dog, the chickens. He had a plot of land with bananas, pigeon peas, papaya, mango trees, and yucca. Everywhere we looked, we saw small crops of fruits and vegetables for the family. His daughter was doing homework on a table outside, and his wife cooked on an open air stove made of metal. It was, after all, a Sunday afternoon.

We saw no Americans for the five days we stayed in Las Galeras. We enjoyed the company of a Canadian family at the bed and breakfast, along with the Swiss proprietors and a French man and his wife. We ate fried fish at the shack on the end of the beach and drank superbly cold Presidente beer with the local fisherman and taxi drivers. Our traveling companion Jen speaks fluent Spanish and some Creole, so the language barrier was open for a rich and different kind of experience.

Las Galeras was pure vacation -- sunning, swimming, eating local foods, walking back roads, and generally enjoying the company of friends, old and new. Karen and Jen found a frog in the shower and a big spider on the wall. We were there long enough to recognize people as time passed. We also saw the invisible division -- Dominicans on one end of the single main road, Europeans on the other. The Dominicans always had more fun, and the music was distinctly better...

Now we are home and it's March in New Hampshire. The skies have been gray for three days. Today, a Sunday, it's raining. The snow is still several feet deep, but it rains and in the rain is the slight promise of Spring.

On days such as these, I marvel at life.

The Countdown Continues

2011-02-12T11:19:00.001-05:00

99 days and counting

Midwinter. We just passed the 100th day of school, a time full of counting and sharing 100 "things". We use pennies, blocks, cubes, paper clips, shoes, books, pencils and crayons. We make patterns of 5's and 10's. We count all together in those big outdoor voices. We put a fat red 100 on the number line that snakes around the classroom wall. We mark what we have learned and what we have learned to love.

It's all in the joy of learning... and for me, the joy of leaving.

Clink.

Sparks Fly

2011-01-13T23:19:00.000-05:00

New Year's Eve

There was just enough snow for a bonfire on New Year's Eve. It was cold and clear and quiet until someone lit fireworks on the lower road. We stood in the garden and celebrated the end of a decade. We burned pine logs and branches. We threw on rotten rafters from the shed and hunks of plywood ceiling. The fire burned brightly and snapped in the cold.

This year's ritual holds more weight for me. 2011 is a change year, a big marker, a time to leave one stage of life and enter another. In June, I'll retire from my profession as an education testing specialist, work that has engaged me fully for all my adult life. Working in schools with kids, teachers, parents and administrators hasn't been a "job"; it's been Who I Am, a definition of me down to the bones.

So, I've been preparing for this big transition and in the process, I'm stirring up all kinds of thoughts, memories, regrets, disappointments, anger and proud moments -- all the stuff of life.

For the bonfire, I hauled three boxes of files out of locked storage and fed them one by one to the flames. There was nothing easy or light-hearted about this. We read the names aloud and watched bits of educational history curl and burn and fly skyward in flurries of sparks.

There were notes from parents who couldn't make meetings, old pink telephone messages, a few complaints, and one or two 'thank you' notes. This hoard of yellowing paper -- WISC's and diagnostic reading tests, VMIs and first grade screenings -- has no meaning now. Yet I saved old files and reports. I told myself, I might use them. Research?

Study? A Reminder of the glory days?

Whatever the wish or deception, it fades. The important work was done years ago, face-to-face, when we were young and in a very different world and time.

There's a homily that says, the student always leaves the teacher. Well, this teacher is leaving, too. The sparks are flying -- and I have other things to do.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T14:16:00.000-05:00

Today, January 1, 2011, I celebrate the special parts of my life.

TRAVEL

MY LIFE PARTNER AND INSPIRATION

MOOSE ON A MISTY AUGUST MORNING

ART AS POLITICAL ACTION

ANCIENT MYSTERIES: STONES AT CALLINISH

ENCOUNTERS WITH WILDLIFE -- ON THEIR TERMS

BOOKS, ART, KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING

CATS!

HOME

FRIENDS and FAMILY WHO ENRICH OUR LIVES IN SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS

Come Winter

2010-12-11T22:30:00.000-05:00

COME WINTER

The air is crisp,

the earth, a drum

taut against the cold.

From the east,

pale beacons shine

through birch and beech

oak and pine.

Darkened skies.

The seasons shift.

The sun stands still.

We slip towards Solstice

and the light,

and the Moon of Long,

Cold Nights.

Burma - Three Years Later

2010-11-14T11:08:00.000-05:00

Aung San Suu Kyi

My blog entries of September + October 2007 spoke of this woman.

She has been under house arrest for the past 15+ years. She and her political party won the 1990 public election in Burma, but the military dictatorship refused to give over its power. They crushed the democracy movement and put her under arrest while the rest of the world watched, mute as usual.

Today, she is freed from house arrest. She tells her people, "Do not give up hope."

Desmond Tutu, another Nobel Laureate well-acquainted with the ravages of political abuse, had a wonderful statement. He said, she is beautiful, demur and the model of integrity-- and the generals are so frightened of this unarmed woman with a belief in the equality of people. She believes governments need to listen to all the people. Freedom of speech. Freedom from fear and repression.

What she needs from us, now, is our total attention and our voices -- to keep her alive and to learn from her.

I am looking for the Aung San Suu Kyi of my country. Who among us has this integrity, belief and quiet persistence? I want to believe: "Do not give up hope."

Democracy

2010-11-06T23:29:00.010-04:00

Where I vote

This is where I vote, in a quintessential New England meeting house. It has a huge circular wood stove, along with a few modern additions. The wooden floor creaks. We vote in small cubicles with plywood doors painted that battleship gray I remember so well from my childhood. It's been on the Registry of Historic Buildings since 1998.

Inside, it's one big open space with a stage. The windows have 16 panes on top, 12 on the bottom. Soon they will be shuttered against winter wind and storms.

When we first moved to this town, 33 years ago, we attended town meetings here. It felt like a direct link to those early patriots who had overthrown a colonial power and its abuses.

We did the town's business during these meetings. Residents met to argue about money, the road agent, the fire chief, and the schools. Over pie and coffee, we talked mud and maple sap runs, face-to-face with people we may not have liked or agreed with; but we all lived in this town and shared in the responsibility of paying its services.

And, if you weren't there to vote, then the hell with you. You didn't get to complain later.

Over the years, I have come to this building to vote on town matters, state and federal elections. I've cast so many ballots for people or issues on the losing side. I've had my celebrations, too, but somehow they seem short-lived.

After last week's mid-term elections, I am back to fighting mist. But, fight I will -- because I was there to be counted on the side of health care for all, women's rights, abortion rights, gay and lesbian marriage rights, social security and Medicare rights, immigration rights, global responsibility, turning around climate change by taking responsibility for our actions, job rights and labor unions, educational reform that builds on collaboration and children's real needs.

I went and voted against the sordid influence of corporate money in elections. Four billion dollars. Stuff that into the deficit. Send the shame of it back to the Supreme Court and change the law.

I was there, I voted, and now I have the right and the responsibility to complain. I don't care about political parties.

I care about heart, values, courage, and our ability to step back and make decisions that support all life, not just mine or your's or some narrow band of buddies.

350.org goes to the Sandwich Fair

2010-10-24T13:07:00.000-04:00

On 10/10/10, we joined with old friends to make our statement and participate in the international Climate Solutions campaign 350.org. The day was glorious -- sunny and cool. We marched in the 100th Sandwich Fair Grand Street Parade, surrounded by the colors of a New Hampshire autumn and the heritage of 100 years of an small agricultural fair in an early New England town.

We gave away seedling trees and lots of positive suggestions on how to stop the madness and become alive, responsible citizens of one world.

In planning, we wondered what kind of reception we might face. Too political for a Sunday parade? Dismissed in this pre-election climate of conservative rhetoric?

But the fair goers were of a more open mind and we, people of a certain age who have been peaceworkers for a long, long time, felt welcomed and supported and cheered. I came away more hopeful than I have been for many years.

At the end of the parade, we hauled the earth back to our spot by the Mocha Rizing cafe. In this picture, I see us -- a small group straining uphill in the aftermath of the show, getting back to work and the next phase -- because this is work that is never done.

October 15, 1969: Moratorium March

2010-10-15T15:25:00.012-04:00

October 15, 1969. Millions marched to protest the Vietnam War.

Forty-one years ago today, I was working at a radio station, recently graduated from college and married for just a month. Barry and Rob marched in parades held in Springfield and Amherst, Massachusetts. I burned a candle at my desk.

What we didn't know then was the war would last 6 more years. The following May, students would be killed at Kent State by Ohio National Guards. We still had to look forward to Nixon, Watergate, a draft lottery, and more war.

My friend Michael was already dead by October 15, '69. Johnny was not. He was alive that day, but not for long.

The One Penny Opera

2010-09-20T15:41:00.008-04:00

The One Penny Opera

I've been working in special education since 1972. I started as a learning disabilities tutor in Brattleboro, Vermont, when the field was very new and I was supervised by dynamic women professors who would later become important researchers and authorities in Learning Disabilities.

From the Brattleboro public schools, I moved to Greenfield, New Hampshire and was part of a new movement in residential treatment at the Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center. We designed after-school activities for 200+ deaf, multiple-handicapped and LD students ages 5 to 18 years old. With a team of recreational specialists and dorm counselors, we carried out a rich menu of activities to complement the academics.

Later, Public Law 94-142 was passed and all students were guaranteed the right to a "free appropriate education in the least restrictive environment". The LD kids left outside placements and went home to neighborhood schools and I went with them.

I learned the testing and diagnostic side of learning, and that's what I've been doing for the past 35 years. I do individualized evaluations and observations to find what students are good at -- where are their strengths -- and how to design school/classroom programs that build on these strengths and minimize the weaknesses. The work almost sounds simple when I write this, the bare bones of the job. But simple, it's not.

Now I've decided this is my last year of testing and special education consulting. I have so many other things I want to do -- like rabble rouse for better practices in education and travel and write and teach in the National Writing Project New Hampshire and read and drink coffee on the deck at 10 a.m.

As soon as I said, "Yes, this is the year", the inner drama began. Reasons to stay, reasons to go. Evidence of bureaucracy and stupid decisions. The joy of kids and learning. The years and years of my life I have given to this work. Some days, it's very easy to leave, while other days make me wonder...

So, I'm creating my own plan for maximizing strengths and coping skills. I'm honoring the past and remembering the anecdotes of different schools and students, the small joys and sorrows. I'm writing -- my way of thinking.

Best of all, I'm marking the big transition in a hands-on way. My good friend, also a master teacher still in the trenches, gave me these two little pots this September with 180 pennies, one for each working day in the school year.

Each day, I move another penny and the little pile grows.

Day by day. Monday through Friday.

One penny at a time.

The Power of Place

2010-09-06T21:40:00.062-04:00

East Inlet

At 6 a.m. the East Inlet waters are still. Mist hovers and then disappears into the morning sun. A family of loons fishes the length of the waterway, while I drift nearby and watch the adults teach their young to dive and how to strengthen their wings for the coming migration to the sea.

In early September, the water grasses and wild rice go to seed. The geese fly in the characteristic V and hawks circle overhead, soaring on thermals and gathering for their own change of place.

It's the end of a long, hot, dry summer and the beginning of a transition time for me. As a teaching/testing consultant, I begin a new school year. As a partner, I celebrate a wedding anniversary. As a writer, I dance the dance with time, responsibilities, and the stories that spill out of dreams, conversations, experiences, glimpsed moments and vistas, memories, and all those other places where the words + images abide.

But first, we make a pilgrimage to the East Inlet in far northern New Hampshire, just a few miles below the border with Canada, where The Nature Conservancy maintains the Connecticut Lakes Natural Reserve.

We've been coming here for 25 years, and yet it feels timeless -- the smells, the surrounding firs, the backdrop of mountains and sky, the rising and setting sun, the quiet. It still feels remote, a place where we see moose, deer, fox, coyote, osprey, ducks, heron, hawks, otters, turtles and loons.

To my great relief I am a very different person, today. My kayak lifts gently from the beach into the dark water. I hear crows, a woodpecker, a loon's call. A belted kingfisher hurls himself from a far branch and spears a minnow. The sun breaks through the clouds in its promise of another warm day.

Over the week, I will gather strength for my own migration south. I'll settle into the season and meet whatever it brings to my life and surroundings, knowing I can return to this source again and again. This is why we need protected places in our world, sanctuaries, reserves where nature can be nature

in all its glory and grand indifference.

The End of the Summer Institute

2010-07-28T22:54:00.002-04:00

Robert Frost, Poet

We've come to the end of the Plymouth Writing Project Five-Week Summer Institute. It was a brilliant experience. We arrive as individual teachers and leave as a collaborative force. We've laughed and cried, listened hard and worked even harder. We have written thousands of words, hundreds of stories.

We've shared our teaching, our research, our thoughts and our teacher hearts. I wrote:

There is a myth of the isolated writer, locked into himself/herself, door closed where he/she fights dragons and demons, alone.

But the experiences I am having in the writing project have exploded the myth -- blown a hole smack through the wall that separates writer from writer, artists from artists, the writer-me from myself.

The Writing Marathon at Dartmouth College was so much fun and so deep and so, so collaborative. I loved the writing task: Find a sculpture. Observe closely. Ask yourself questions. Write and share. I love the rituals. Introduce yourself and say, "I am a writer."

At the end of the reading, your companions say, "Thank you." No comments. No critique. Just simple gratitude: "Thank you for sharing your world with us".

Outside the Rounds Building where our classes are held, there is a bronze sculpture of the poet Robert Frost to honor his teaching time at Plymouth State University and his legacy of words, images and New England thinking. I remember watching him read his poem for John F. Kennedy's Inauguration as President of the United States, January 1961.

It was very cold that day. The sun was so bright, Frost found it hard to read from his paper. I was fourteen years old, witnessing the giants of history on a black and white television screen.

I remind Frost of this whenever I pass him at his bench.

Obama's High-Stakes Teacher Bashing - COLORLINES

2010-07-10T11:17:00.000-04:00

Read the full article on: http://colorlines.com/archives/2

Never, never did I expect to be facing this kind of attack on teachers from this President. I do not support Race to the Top. My lifework has been as a testing specialist, mainly with special needs students. I started in 1975, so I feel I am a "credible witness" to the damage inherent in "standardized" testing.

There is a place for reflection, assessment, and evaluation, but it's not this punitive, controlled and utterly political agenda that started with No Child Left Behind. I can tell you we are leaving a generation of children behind. No question.

We need to humanize our schools, not turn them into narrow-minded and competitive entities. Our children's learning depends on all society. Support your teachers, especially the good ones. Keep the special programs -- art, music, sports, drama -- especially in public schools! Those people who put their children into private schools will have all those opportunities -- increasing the gap between the rich and the poor and the rest of us in the middle.

Good teaching, good parenting, good governing depends on collaboration. We need to share good ideas and practices, not hold back and compete against other schools, other colleagues.

The corporate world does not create good teachers or good education. Their goals are not "for the good of the public".

Bottom line: Who controls education, controls the culture. Ever wonder how much money these corporate testing companies make? A lot.

Earth Day 2010

2010-05-15T18:05:00.002-04:00

In the tropical rainforests of Costa Rica, I sit surrounded by green. Even the air I breathe is green. The shadows reflected in Dante Creek shimmer like emeralds. The mosses, ferns and smooth waxy leaves wrap me in colors that have more shades of green that I have words.

I am here in the tropical lowland rainforest on the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica to honor Earth Day. For me, this is the Source, the Garden, a place rich and lush with life.

Everywhere, we witness big and small miracles unfolding -- fronds of a new fern, macaws pairing for life, a hummingbird's tiny nest wrapped in lichen and spiderwebs.

Over eleven years, I have returned to this place, and time and time again discovered something new, something fantastic, some part of the natural world I could never have imagined -- only experienced.

This year, in late April, we walk the beach path at Corcovado National Park and listen to a din of low repetitive calls. Not birds. Not mammals. Frogs. Costa Rican Gliding tree frogs have parachuted into a small swamp to lay eggs in their short, frenzied mating. We watch lime green-colored frogs with huge orangey webbed feet launch themselves from trees and glide, limbs outstretched, to land near the larger females.

For hours, they leap and mate. Eggs, like luminescent pearls, line the leaves and tree bark. Later, I read how the tadpoles hatch from these eggs and slither into the water just below. They are, of course, a species threatened by habitat loss.

Gliding tree frogs

Corcovado National Park

Costa Rica

That's the other message of this 40th anniversary of Earth Day: LOSS.

Loss of habitat and diversity. Species lost, forever. Loss of respect and connection to the natural world. Loss of awe and reverence for life. No more trust in engineers, politicians, words and vows.

Humans are the only species who destroy where they live and foul resources they must have to survive -- like clean water and unpolluted food supplies.

I write this blog 26 days since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. That's 26 days of oil spewing, unchecked, into the ocean -- and there is no known way to stop it. The "experts" flail, point fingers and whine. "Well, it's not that bad..."

The oil companies, regulators, designers and builders have lied endlessly and profited from their deceit. They have no way to stop this oil. Now, they want to spread offshore drilling into the Arctic and off the eastern seaboard. What mockery. What utter contempt for anything living -- people, plankton, fish, coral. The ocean?

There's a big price to pay for this explosion -- and it's not going to be satisfied by any currency or BP's gesture of throwing dollars at a few states.

The real price will be exacted by the same force that creates 100-foot trees, laden with bromeliads, mosses, entire ecosystems from root to crown. This same force drives frogs to glide and salmon to hurl themselves back to original spawning streams.

It's the force of volcanic ash from Iceland, Java, Hawaii. This force can shift tectonic plates and change everything in nine seconds or less. Even the oil gushing from that broken pipe driven deep into the ocean floor belongs to this life force -- not to us, not to the puny humans.

The sooner we learn our place in the natural world, the better it will be for everything living or not.

Think Twice Before You Draw

2010-03-01T10:21:00.028-05:00

At 5:45 a.m. I catch the end of the BBC WORLD NEWS UPDATE - on Vermont Public Radio 89.5 FM. A few weeks ago they aired "The Gunfighters' Dilemma" -- my favorite kind of story where popular belief gets turned upside down and tied to higher-order principles and we all get to reflect on big issues.

It seems Danish physicist and Noble Laureate Niels Bohr used to take breaks from quantum physics + atomic bombs to watch cowboy movies. Being an alert and curious scholar, Bohr noticed that the first man to draw a gun in the inevitable showdown always died. This suited the moral high ground of good guys and bad guys in 1950's westerns, but it was also a puzzle to be solved by physicists and their graduate students.

Sure enough, after a series of carefully controlled lab gunfights, the gunslinger who drew first, died. It had to do with response time -- "reacting to your opponent's movement was significantly faster than the conscious decision to draw your own gun".

Professor Andrew Welchman studies reaction time and other brain function at the University of Birmingham, England. He conducted similar research with the same results. Draw second in a western-style gunfight and you win and live... maybe.

For a more practical application, he spoke about instinctive reaction and response time and how it plays out in life/death situations -- you jump to safety when the bus careens down the street at you. You don't stop to think, you react.

This talk of gunslingers brought me back to 1950's Saturday morning TV. Hopalong Cassidy. Roy Rogers. The Lone Ranger. We played cowboys and Indians, complete with fringed shirts, boots, hats and leather holsters with plastic guns. Later things got more complicated, as they do with age. Rawhide. Clint Eastwood and the "spaghetti westerns". Movies and life started to blur good guys and bad guys, but we still believed the popular logic that "first to draw, wins".

Then came 1963 and Kennedy's assassination. April 1968 and Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed. June 5, 1968: Robert Kennedy shot and killed. May 4, 1970: Kent State massacre where students were shot by the Ohio National Guard. All the while there was Vietnam and it didn't matter who shot first or second or third.

This litany of my coming-of-age pales in the light of today's guns and warfare and popular culture. I think we still believe the fastest gun -- the first to strike -- wins. Too bad we don't listen more carefully to our scientists and teachers and thinkers.

My vision: Put the two biggest warmongers (from countries, neighborhoods, whatever) face to face, each with a gun, and let them wait for the other to draw first. Then, maybe the rest of us will be able to live, thrive, and survive in peace.

Illustration by Frederic Remington, 1861-1909. "A Dash for the Timber".

Connecting the Dots

2010-01-11T08:00:00.004-05:00

There's a lot of talk these days about "connecting-the-dots" as part of our national security. As every Kindergarten teacher knows, connect-the-dots is a timeless practice that teaches essential skills -- sequencing, step-by-step problem-solving, realizing consequences of a missed step, and enjoying the surprise of a finished image.

It's all about taking the single steps and building up to the Big Picture. Adults don't seem to value Big Picture Thinking these days. It's easier to fight about the small steps and go off on tangents. If we focus too much on details and don't look for those next connections, we can avoid lots of things -- Change, Responsibility, Moral Choices.

So, I'm interested in Big Picture Thinking and Connections. As part of this blog, I'd like to offer a dot to connect. Read this and ponder where the next dot might be waiting:

January 11, 2010: Today it is warmer in Montreal, Canada than it is in Florida, USA.

Carrying Water

2009-11-29T13:10:00.009-05:00

Over the next few weeks, well-polished people will debate the state of our planet at the Copenhagen Summit. What climate change? Carbon offsets? Oil? Nuclear? Solar? What dance shall we do to fend off the truth and fool ourselves for yet another day or year or decade.

Meanwhile in eastern Africa, women carry water in containers strapped to their heads. It's important work. They walk to a place where they can find clean water and haul it back to their villages. These women know the value of a cup of clean water. The want of water hangs heavily on their necks and backs and in their hearts. It's etched into their foreheads by fiber straps. They feel its scarcity in hot winds that ravage their soil and weaken the cries of their children and animals.

These women should be at the table in Copenhagen; but they are too busy carrying water, too busy surviving. Copenhagen should go to them. Ease the straps from their backs. Dig wells with them. Carry water with them. Share the burden of a common survival -- you and I and the water-bearing women of this one earth.

Today is a Very Fine Day

2009-09-27T13:02:00.012-04:00

I have been following a terrific blog, "No Telling", created by a writing project teacher named Monda who has a wicked sense of humor and a keen eye for irony. She makes me laugh, cry, and shake my head with her dead-on portrayals of life as a teacher and woman-of-a-certain-age. So I am happy and very gratified to be one of her Editor's Picks for the September Easystreet Carnival of Writing.

Writing is tricky business. Whenever I put pen to paper or, now fingers to keys, I lay open a bit of heart, soul, dreams and unintended warts. If then I share my writing, I take a big leap of faith and hope that somewhere, sometime what I have written will touch another person and create a spark of connection, interest, feeling, wonder...

It's like so much of life . We go about our days and have little sense of how we influence and touch other people. Every now and then, a student or parent from my past will send me a note to share a triumph or an update and I am so pleased to be once again reminded of my small part of this big world.

So, check out Easystreet Prompts at http://easystreetprompts.blogspot.com/2009/09/first-easy-street-carnival-of-writing.html

Enjoy the writing and bits of heart + soul you find there. And, know that there's one writer in New Hampshire who is feeling really fine today.

Somewhere above the Rio Madre de Dios

2009-09-21T19:55:00.002-04:00

Southeast Peru. We're flying into Puerto Maldonado, a frontier city near the borders with Brazil and Bolivia. From there, we travel upriver by boat into the Tambopata National Reserve, a protected area that is part of the southern Amazon Basin. We have flown inland from Lima on the Pacific Coast, over the Andes Mountains to Cusco, and now south into the jungle.

From the air, I see vast stretches of green -- broken only by the winding rivers that feed the Amazon. There are animals and birds and even indigenous people who are rare, endangered, and specific to this region. But even as I revel in the strangeness and the beauty, I think about the changes coming from the east. A transoceanic highway is being built that will cross South America and link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The road will pass through Puerto Maldonado and open this area to trade, transport, malaria, people, and a more modern world.

Manifest destiny. I am completely cynical about the aims and outcome of this road, this progress. Who profits? Not the local people. Not the jaguar, nor the macaws nor the monkeys, nor the vast diversity of plants and animals of this region. Who stands up to the mining companies and the big oil and gas and lumber conglomerates? Who refuses the drug trade, the animal trade, the human trade?

Wanted: A new breed of human beings. A paradigm shift. A critical mass. A new definition and model of progress that improves more than it destroys. Needed immediately across the globe. Needed urgently in the tropical forests of South America. Matter of life and death.

Apply now.

Passion

2009-08-20T10:03:00.006-04:00

This summer I taught a three week course, Writing Workshop for Teachers, as part of the Plymouth Writing Project. We do research as teachers of writing and present a teaching practice based on the research. In the afternoon, we write, respond to others writing, and explore ways to nurture ourselves and our students as writers. In the spirit of the National Writing Project and our Plymouth site, we all write and share together. It's a powerful model and it changes the way we teach - and write - and live.

For me this three weeks in July was simply the best teaching experience I have had over my 30-odd years in education. It's an amazing feeling and I find myself, a month later, still in awe. So, what was different?

We were a small, diverse group of educators. There were young people starting their careers with two or three years of teaching behind them. One woman was head of a university department in the Dominican Republic and she was responsible for improving instruction throughout her country. One woman was a long-time first grade teacher. I came to this group with years of special education testing, primary school teaching, and writing -- always writing. Part of our curriculum involved writing with the larger Summer Institute, students in the Writing Camps, and Pakistani educators attending a leadership seminar at PSU.

Over and over, I found our "small but mighty group" offered a Quality of Attention not possible in larger classrooms and bigger settings. We could go deeply into topics, follow tangents, and take time for reading + research. We talked and listened carefully and asked questions of one another. The ideas and opinions of the newest teachers were as valuable as the experiences of the veterans.

We built a place where it was safe to question, share and risk. No tests. No red pens. No dismissive put-downs. High standards supported by respect for the learner... and we're all learners in the end. One of us was able to share a personal writing piece. One of us changed the style of writing from reporting to storytelling. We wrote about our passions, our challenges, deep experiences and questions.

I learned a lot about myself as a teacher this summer. My teaching starts with the physical environment of the classroom. When I taught Kindergarten, I had centers for work + exploration. I brought in stuff for five-year-olds to taste and touch and mess with. I put posters at five-year-old eye level and watched to see who became interested. There were sticks chewed by beavers and puppets from different lands. Maps. Life-size footprints of elephants, giraffe, gorilla, babies.

I realized I do the same with adults -- put out books and photos, pictures and found objects. We had snacks and went outside on sunny days. We used writing prompts, questions, readings and teaching demonstrations. The physical environment feeds the intellectual environment and the lines blur, no matter the age. We're all in this learning-teaching-writing thing together.

As I think about my experiences this summer and over my years in education, I have a few things to say:

For the administrators, pundits, and policy-makers, I say: Trust your teachers. Encourage collaboration, not competition. Build opportunities where every teacher's voice is heard and valued. Be kind. Be fun. Be interested in what seems difficult or different.

For the current culture, I say: Testing is not teaching. Testing does not make us more human or thoughtful. Interaction does. Openness does. Understanding, listening, valuing, respecting another's experience does. This is the kind of learning that moves the world forward in positive and sustainable ways.

I know this because it happened to me this summer for three marvelous weeks in July. Deep teaching. Deep learning. Deep, compassionate listening and sharing. Writing deeply as a way of thinking and being.

My passion is right out there so everyone can see.

So, where are you in this passionate world?

A Path of One's Own

2009-07-19T08:40:00.004-04:00

I've done some walking in the past. England. The Yorkshire Dales. We walked the old ways, over stiles and through farmers' fields, careful to latch the gates and skirt the cows. The footpaths led us from one small village of thatched houses and a pub to yet another and another.

Walking and walking. We bathed our faces and soaked our hats in an ancient spring. Here we found a "cloutie well", festooned with bits of bright cloth. Hang a rag at the cloutie well, and you heal yourself and others. So, we left a sock tied to a branch and traveled on, more secure, more protected.

Walking, walking. We walk history and the Freedom Trail. We walk the Mall in Washington. From Georgetown, we walk the old canal towpath to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, where once mules strained and pulled barges of cargo from Rocky Creek to Cumberland.

Home in the north, a path leads from our back door up to the summit of Hersey Mountain to a granite slab of a lookout. We hike by vernal pools, a seasonal brook, signs of moose and deer, old logging yards, and an abandoned cellar hole. We go back down, down to our own small woody house and hang our sticks by the door.

As I said, I've done some walking in the past.

Long before I had a driver's license, I walked. I walked to school and to the "Y". I walked to the library and to Aunt Mary's, on to the dentist and piano lessons.

I walked because I had to -- no one around to give me a ride. But, I also walked because I could. It was out of freedom. Stubborn pride. Independence.

Walking was personal. No one could take it away from me.

Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-25T21:16:00.069-04:00

This Spring, I visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. for the first time. I went to honor young men I had known who had fought and died in that hell. I also wanted to acknowledge my own part in the protests and marches. It had been a time of huge upheaval, torment, and rage -- my own rage against an unjust war and an impersonal system that drafted my friends and haunted our futures.

I walked from the Capitol Building and kept the Washington Monument in my view. It was cherry blossom time -- a warm and beautiful April afternoon. The city was alive with visitors, student groups at the Smithsonian, and the homeless at Union Station.

For an hour I followed a path I had walked 42 years ago. In October 1967, I marched in Washington, D.C. to protest the Vietnam War. We met at the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial and marched upon the Pentagon, where it was rumored Allen Ginsberg and a group of friends were planning to levitate the building.

I was with my friend Trish, in our tan trenchcoats, like the good journalism students we were. We had travelled all night on the bus from Syracuse. I was taking a first step in the long march that has become my life. I wanted to be counted -- against the war, against the military draft, against colonization and "manifest destiny" and all those other excuses we use for taking what we want, when and where we want it.

I marched for Jeff who had enlisted after losing his scholarship freshman year. I marched for Lenny and Mike and Johnny and Jim. I marched for what the draft did to young men and their families. I marched because I had been radicalized and I was furious at the betrayals in my life.

So, in April 2009, I retraced my steps along the Reflecting Pool and was caught by the irony of the Vietnam Memorial being placed just over the berm from where we had sung and yelled and beat our fists into the air. "One, two, three, four. We don't want your fucking war." Over and over and over.

Who could have imagined that 42 years later, I would return to open thick, waterproof books neatly printed with the 58,256 names of the dead. Who knew I would search and find two men from my youth -- Michael who teased me about my high school editorials and Johnny, my neighborhood friend from when I was five.

Michael was to die early, on May 24, 1968. Johnny -- and eleven other young men -- died on June 22, 1970. Their names are engraved side by side on the same row. There are coordinates on each panel so you can trace that one death, that one name, that date and your unique heartbreak amongst the thousands.

Who could known it would be so organized...

I started walking the path next to the polished black stone. First, I passed rows of names at the height of my ankle. I found Michael on a slab that reached my waist. Johnny was lost in waves of names on a stone far above my head. May 1968 to June 1970 was a bad time for young men aged 18 to 25.

An airforce veteran stood nearby and talked about his experiences. Most of these men, he said, were shot down while on secret missions over Laos and Cambodia. Like Johnny, when they died they were listed as "Missing in Action" -- and certainly not missing in the jungles of Cambodia. We weren't there -- remember?

The airman did a rubbing for me and I carried that sad bit of charcoal on paper in memory of my friend. I called Barry and told him I was so grateful I wasn't bringing home a rubbing of his name, because we both knew how easily it might have been... could have been... would have been...

I sat on a park bench for a long time. A bird sang in the thicket nearby. I remembered me, at age 20. I cried a little for what had once seemed promised and for what we had lost.

Later, much to my surprise, I left the park feeling relief and closure.

I flew out of Washington the next day. From the air, the Reflecting Pool meets the Lincoln Memorial. Beyond an access road and a clump of trees, the Vietnam Wall slices a deep gash into the earth. Further out, Arlington Cemetery rolls over green hills speckled with small white crosses.

Arlington still yields her soft soil and embraces dead soldiers from conflicts, old and new, current and future. Pearl Harbor to Basra. Kabul to Iwo Jima. Normandy to _______. War is so persistent. So tenacious. So universal and eternal. I might have guessed.

The True Faces of War

2009-05-20T14:23:00.004-04:00

I saw this photograph on the BBC News website. It's an AP photo of a Pakistani woman soothing her baby as they wait to be interviewed for the refugee camp.

The face of this baby breaks my heart. He/she is already traumatized and so confused. Think of it -- you, your baby, your husband and a few family members have just fled your mountain village in northwest Pakistan. You have spent months debating, worrying, hiding from the Taliban and from the unreliable government forces and even hiding from your neighbors because war brings out the spies and fearmongers. People you have known all your life now interpret your actions to the "authorities".

The girls' school where your niece was a student was attacked by men with acid in bottles. She wasn't at school that day, and you can barely breathe when you think what might have been.

You had to pack a lifetime of memories and possessions in five minutes time. You have so few things wrapped in woven blankets. Your baby, this light of your life, keeps whimpering and clutching at your hair. You murmur, Shush, shush, your momma is here... and the fire starts at your heart and sweeps outward.

You are Mother and Child -- Somalia, Bosnia, India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Dafur. New Orleans, Kabul, Nairobi, Rwanda. Basra, Warsaw, 1940's Europe. You could be Roma, Tamil, Nicaraguan, a 1920's black woman from the backwoods of Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia.

Memorial Day 2009. Remember this woman and this baby. Cry for casualties of living wars -- dislocated Now... threatened Now... dying Now... even as we pray and parade and lay our flowered wreaths on cold stone graves.

Show this photograph to your family and friends and politicians and Congress. This is the violence we do by staying silent and allowing armies to war on our behalf. This is the cost of our "national security".

This is how we nurture the future.

Early Morning

2009-03-29T12:38:00.005-04:00

I wake in the morning and find frigate birds and a sea lion sharing the same buoy. I heard the sea lion haul himself out of the water some time last night. We, the Rumba boat, also spent the night tethered to this buoy. It was a safe harbor for us all.

What Memories Stay

2009-03-29T11:40:00.004-04:00

The Galapagos Islands are a world unto themselves. I get swept away when I think of what we have seen and experienced there. This time was all about green sea turtles hovering offshore, waiting for night when they lumber onto the beach and lay their eggs. It was snorkeling and swimming with small Galapagos penguins, white-tipped sharks, turtles, and eagle rays.

The marine iguanas were in full mating colors -- greens, reds, black. We saw a feeding frenzy in a small inlet where blue-footed boobies and pelicans plunged into three feet of water to feast on schools of silvery-colored fish.

A mother booby fed her ravenous chick as we stood on the path, agog. We were stung by small jellyfish in a bay overrun with boats. Sea lions swam by me. Huge frigate birds flew next to and behind our boat like escorts or guards with unknown motives.

But, what lingers in my memory is the wonder of night. From our cabin on deck, I could see the stars -- so many more, it seems, than in our northern skies. When it was hot, I opened the door where two feet straight ahead was the railing and the water beyond. Often, I woke at night and stood in that open door watching dark shadows and land masses pass by. I heard splashing when sea lions came close to the boat. I was in another world of hot, dark nights full of stars and the wild.

This is what I carry in my heart now.

Galapagos Islands

2009-02-04T10:58:00.006-05:00

Here I sit in the February sun. It's 14 degrees F in New Hampshire. I'm watching a flurry of birds at our feeders -- bluejays, chickadees, titmice, and downy woodpeckers. The juncos scurry along the surface of the snow, eating sunflower seeds scattered from the feeders above. Flocks of goldfinch swoop and take over the trees. Mourning doves cover the ground, 14 of them at last count.

Soon, I will be in the Ecuador sun again. It's 80 degrees F at the Galapagos Islands. I'll be watching very different birds -- blue-footed boobies and magnificent frigate birds, flightless cormorants and Galapagos hawk. The famous finches and their beaks may have a message, as they did for Charles Darwin. Will I notice? Will I know what is significant and what is mere fancy?

I don't think Nature indulges in fancy. She has a purpose to every creature, every system, every feather, scale and cell. It's we human animals who ignore this truth, at our peril.

When we visited the Galapagos five years ago, I felt as if we were in another world, on a distant planet. Here, swallow-tailed gulls coexist with marine iguanas and masked boobies. The dark spot in the waves is a surfing sea lion. These animals survive together on isolated volcanic islands with more civility than we find in the marble halls of Congress.

Another fact of Nature we Democrats and Republicans, Fascists and Liberals ignore at our peril.

IT'S A NEW DAY

2009-01-19T07:27:00.003-05:00

I want to pay tribute to those people who came before -- those millions of people who struggled, sang, preached, and died. This inauguration of Barak Obama belongs to those who came before -- those millions of people who were stolen, humiliated, tortured, and damned. This day belongs to the lynched, the terrified, the grieved. It's a call, a chorus, a testament to what is possible.

As we are seeing today, we can never underestimate what is truly possible. This is a gift -- and I have a host of people I hold in my heart, my mind, my memory. They have inspired me and given our world a new day.

Today belongs to: Peg Dobbie, Arthur Newcomb, Berta, Ruth and Bud, Barry, Ginny, Trish and Laurel, outspoken teachers and professors, the children at Head Start in Westfield circa 1968. Frances Crowe. Caesar Chavez. Father Albert and the Community Action Program in Springfield, circa 1969. Simon and Sue. The Reverend Barry Stoddard. Neal, Sheryl, and their extended family.

Beyond War. Peggo and Paul. SNCC. The Berrigans. Pete Seeger. Those thousands of singers who refused to be silent. Unions and churches. The Smothers Brothers. Mason Williams. Holly Near and Makeba. Baez. Ochs. Marion Horne. Unnamed jazz and Delta Blues bands. Grape Boycotts and strikes. Vietnam and "one, two, three, four - We don't want your fucking wars".

Martin Luther King, Jr. - What a fitting tribute to this man's life! John and Robert Kennedy. Harriet Tubman. Quakers and abolitionists along the Underground Railway. Immigrants who came (and still enter) into a well of suspicion and fear. The marchers of Selma and Birmingham. The writers who wrote after their presses had been smashed and their books burned.

For years, my vision of a just world soured into cynicism and impotence in the face of the Bush Presidencies, the Reagan years, Nixon, Cheney, Rove, Palin -- and the minions who remain nameless and faceless except for their signatures on bits of paper that seemed to destroy whatever I valued. Education. Environmental issues. Wolves and whales. Children. Possibilities.

But it's a new day and I am alive to revel in its glory.

I look at my lists and I know there's more. So, send me names. It's a Whole World movement, and I'm back to being a Believer.

Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T19:22:00.005-05:00

It's one of the most solemn nights of the year -- so full of anticipation. We hold our collective breath as Hope is born yet again into a needy and strife torn world. At this moment of Miracle, I discover gifts -- light, snowfall, laughter, music, and the tiny heartbeat of a titmouse at my window.

Peace to you all.

Fall Morning

2008-11-30T19:53:00.007-05:00

The air is sharp with cold and mist rises from the mat of wet leaves. Rays of light, like beacons of old, pierce this early morning gray and illuminate a path to the east where the sun pales day by day.

We slip towards Solstice, Yule and the Moon of Long, Cold Nights.

Vote! because Silence is Complicity

2008-11-04T08:00:00.005-05:00

I'm off to vote for Barak Obama. It's history today in my conflicted country where race, gender, age, background, disability, who your parents are still matters with a deep, mistrust of anyone "different". I wanted to be voting for Hillary Clinton, a woman of my age and politics. But, I will vote whole-heartedly for Barak Obama, an African-American man.

I have been moved by the stories and interviews with black Americans, who say they never expected to vote for an African-American presidential candidate in their lifetimes. The oldest have ties to grandfathers, great-mothers who lived and died as slaves. We met people in Kenya last year who were proud of this man who had ties to the Luo tribe.

It's what our world should be -- meeting its promises to all peoples.

I am reading E.L. Doctorow's THE MARCH -- about Sherman's march across Georgia and up the Carolinas. It's a brilliant book that mixes history into stories that leave such a bitter taste of war and its aftermath. So, I read about our Civil War and its brutalities. I think about what happened after that War -- into Reconstruction, into the push west where the same warriors (like Sherman and Custer) turned their weapons onto Native Americans... where force, fear, humiliation, poverty, Manifest Destiny, the KKK, Jim Crow, lynchings, political cowards, and that endless racism gave one kind of people the perverted power to lord over others.

So, as I said, I am going to vote for Barak Obama and then, I will be present and active in this endless struggle for peace and dignity and human rights -- in a sustainable and healthy world.

And, if the old white men who have ravaged our people and resources think they can steal this election too, I'll be there on the streets, as we should have been in the year 2000, but weren't.

Visual Haiku

2008-09-01T16:01:00.008-04:00

In writing, we talk about Voice, the unique way our writing sounds on the page. When I use pictures, I wonder what is the equivalent of Voice. Vision? Light and shadow?

Here, it's late afternoon. I stand at the edge of Small Greenough Pond on the northern border where Maine meets New Hampshire. Black Mountain looms to the west and swallows the sun earlier than expected. The air is fresh and still. Pickerel weed tells me it's summer, and the faint ripples hint at the rich life below the surface, beyond what I can see.

Voice and vision. Image and word. I need both.

AUNT SASSY SINGS

2008-08-19T21:43:00.007-04:00

From Cranberry Lake to Oswegatchie,
Indian Stream and Stillwater,
We found Big Moose and the Enchanted Wood,
Not that we was looking, mind.

Up to Whetstone. Carthage. Phillie.
Driving fast and sleeping light.
I held that knife to my bosom.
Held it firm. Held it tight.

"Damn that man," my sister muttered.
"Damn all Hell," Aunt Sassy cried.
Race past Plessis and Keywaydin.
Getting close. I'll give you that.

Drive in slow-like. Cut the lights.
Creep like possums, bite like lice.
Sassy slammed the old screen door.
Listen to that dead man snore.

Grab them papers, deed, the box.
Rifle money, break the lock.
Race that Packard, black as sin.
Fly through Oxbow and Bonaparte.

Sassy sings us like the lark.

Author's Notes: This poem came from a workshop with Liz Ahl. She gave us parts of road maps, four odd words and one object. My object was a small, delicate pocket knife. We had to use two of the words we were given. I used "screen door" and "black". The prompt was: write a road trip poem using your object and two words. I love what happens when I have wide boundaries and seemingly unrelated ideas to put together into a nourishing stew. I really don't know where this one came from -- but I like it!

Summer Mind

2008-08-06T11:45:00.005-04:00

Nothing says summer like a walk on the beach. Bay View in Saco, Maine.

On the Northwest frontier of New Hampshire

2008-07-11T21:08:00.009-04:00

Last night I joined in a writing activity with Pakistani educators who are attending an institute at our local university. It is teachers-teaching-teachers in the finest tradition -- global in nature, respectful, and open.

We wrote about our cultures' traditions and ceremonies, and then shared our writing pieces with those at our table. We listened to one another's reflections on weddings, funerals, Thanksgiving, the Solstice. We spoke of big changes happening in our countries. We said later, you see how many things we have in common.

One man wrote of his homeland in what the British named the "North-West Frontier". It's where Pakistan and Afghanistan share a border, a place of long-lasting conflict and struggle. It's also a place of beauty and contrasts. It will soon be renamed Pukhtunkwa to cut away another mark of colonial rule.

Today, Barry and I rode to northwest New Hampshire to explore and kayak. We found a small lake with a noisy beaver, a silent loon, and a quiet family of Canada geese. We paddled there much of the afternoon, just the two of us with a chorus of birdsong from the trees that crowded to the shore.

It was a place of beauty and peace. How utterly different from the northwest province of Pakistan where my government, its allies, and local rivalry wage war even today.

In our history, this corner of New Hampshire would have seen war between French, Indian, English and colonists. The Connecticut River was a marker, a way to move people and goods. The indigenous peoples were driven out and the rich bottom land became the immigrants' farms and created wealth and power for a few.

It is an ancient struggle and a question to be answered by each generation. How do we live with one another without killing and coveting what they have? What is peace? And why is it so difficult to live.

I wonder if one day, a man and wife in northwest Pakistan will be able to walk freely in those mountains. Stop for a picnic. Admire the views and the quiet day. And return home with the full hearts and peacefulness that comes from such simple, human pleasures.

May this come to pass -- and may we all in the world do our part to make this happen for all peoples.

Fire and Ice

2008-01-27T12:15:00.000-05:00

"What is dying? A ship sails and I stand watching till she fades on the horizon, and someone at my side says, 'She is gone'. Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all; she is just as large as when I saw her. The diminished size and loss of sight is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when someone at my side says she is gone, there are others who are watching her coming. Other voices take up a glad shout: 'There, she comes!' ... and that is dying."

Godspeed, Ruth. "Look," they cry, "she's here!"

("What is dying" is part of a poem written by Bishop Brent, an Episcopal bishop in the Philippines. He lived 1862-1929.)

On the Cusp of a New Year

2007-12-31T15:31:00.000-05:00

In 1831, a storm uncovered a store of hidden figures on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. They seemed at first to be "little people" buried in the sand. But, they were chessmen carved from walrus ivory and whale teeth, some stained red. It's thought they were carved in 12th century Norway and traveled to Lewis by ship. Most of the collection is in the British Museum in London. Some are in the Royal Museum in Edinburgh.

During the summer of 1995, there was an exhibition of Lewis Chessmen in Stornoway. The chessmen had, in fact, come home for a short time. I saw them there in a small museum where signs and Mac computers offered explanations in Scots Gaelic. I was captivated by the gloomy Chessmen -- the queen with her "O, my god" expression and the rooks, biting their shields like Viking "berserkers". I brought home a stone-carved King and Queen and they have been on my desk ever since.

Today, I have a full set of Lewis Chessmen, a gift of the season. They are now my companions and Muse for the year to come as I write a story with them, about them, inspired by them. They will captivate Maddy Tucker, a restless teenager who tags along with her biologist father on his latest research project in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. I hope you will be captivated, too.

On this New Year's Eve, these gloomy medieval faces fit our troubled world. But, as ever, I am the determined optimist -- writing a novel, writing for change, challenging those who would keep us silent and at war. Tonight we burn away the old year.

What shall we bring to the New?

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2007-12-12T11:51:00.000-05:00

Here's one of Barry's photos to mark the season. For the past few years, we have set our Christmas tree on the deck where it serves as shelter to red squirrels, birds and an occasional mouse. One year, the tree became a nesting site for two mourning doves and we watched that miracle of small eggs later hatch into a new brood.

I am thinking about Winslow Homer who said: "In the end, what matters most is the Sea."

I'm asking myself, "In the end, what matters most is _________" and I don't know, yet. Ask yourself this question and send me your comments.

Peace.

Aggie's Footsteps

2007-11-18T11:37:00.003-05:00

It was a hot, dusty day -- just one more in that long line of hot, dusty days. There had been no rain for at least a year, maybe more, it was hard to say. Harder still, Kina thought, to remember the feel of a soft, gentle rain when she turned her face to the sky.

Kina perched at the edge of the village, surveying the length of rough road that led out of the park to the long track through open land that eventually reached Isolo. She knew once there in the city, she could find her friend, Aggie. Aggie had left this very spot last spring, before she could be married or bartered off. Kina had stayed to watch the bright figure in blue disappear into the bush.

Aggie had said many times she wouldn’t be able to stand not choosing her own husband. She refused to wait for the old chiefs -- old goats she called them -- to make that choice for her.

The other girls were shocked to hear Aggie speak that way about the elders, but not Kina. Kina knew exactly what Aggie meant. Kina lived the no-choice every moment, but especially at night when she entered the small dung and hide-covered hut she shared with her husband.

“Tourists!” The call echoed through the village. The young men had waved in two white minivans full of tourists -- plump, white tourists -- of different ages.

Kina sighed and hurried to her hut. She wrapped a colorful striped cloth around her body and slipped on her grandmother’s heavy bead necklace. The rows of red and
white clay beads rubbed her neck. She quickly brushed back her hair and joined the line of women ready to perform the Welcome Dance.

The young men brought the guides to Kina. She was one of the few Samburu women who spoke English. She had been to school longer than the others in her age group. She would have stayed but for her marriage, her lack of choice.

“Americans. Canadians. Swedish,” said the guide.

Kina knew him, Peter. He often brought groups to their village. She knew the thing to say. “Ten dollars each one. Okay photos and a tour.”

Peter nodded. “I’ll be sure they buy things from the store. These people are okay.”

She watched Peter return to the vans. The white people pulled out bills and cameras. They approached the line of colorfully dressed village women, almost shyly. Then she heard the cameras and the foreigners talked excitedly among themselves.

Kina took a deep breath. This is the last group I dance for, she promised herself. Tonight, when my husband sleeps, I’ll be gone. Gone to find my friend Aggie.

She clapped her hands and turned her face to the sky. Her clear voice rang across the dusty scrubland. Weaverbirds in the acacias startled and rose above the parched landscape like a dark cloud. Kina called again, and the village women answered her with the welcome chant. They moved forward, stirring the dust with their feet.

Kina’s words soared over the line of women. Like a great fish eagle on the wing, her song of freedom flew north, following the rough track through the bush and beyond.

Author’s Note: Kenya, again. This time I took a photo from our visit to the Samburu National Reserve and turned it into a writing prompt. This is my favorite way of writing and finding out what I’m really thinking.

November Light

2007-11-10T15:04:00.000-05:00

The woods stretch for miles, unbroken and unspoiled. I stop at the old stonewall, a last outpost of industry, covered now with lichen and leaves. Once the boundary for a farmer’s field, this rock wall still marks the edge of the wilderness at the place where someone long forgotten drew the line between civilized and wild, familiar and unexplored.

The house and barn lie safely at my back, and late afternoon sun slants through the forest before me. The landscape turns gold and rust and brown. Only the firs are softened by green. The other trees stand plumb and square, stripped of their autumn finery.

It’s November and I can see far into the woods to where the ledges rise and where lightning split the big pine.

People around here tend to curse this time of year. “Depressing month,” they grumble. “Think of what follows,” they warn.

But I sit on the old stonewall with a secret: I love November. I wait for a day like today when the sunlight cuts clean to the bone and exposes things usually well hidden.

Behind me, the garden rests under its winter dressing of leaves and aged goat manure. It still yields kale, leeks and carrots, but the main harvest is done. My pantry overflows with jars of jam, relish, juice and shell beans. The woodshed hugs its four cords of red oak and maple, cut and split and dried and stacked, and the barn is crammed with hay and cornstalks.

Even the root cellar rivals King Solomon’s mines. Its shelves glitter with the colors of rare jewels. In place of golden chains, I hang braided onions and rather than rubies, I pack apples in straw and beets in damp sand.

From where I sit, summer no longer lingers and there is a pause, a silence, one quiet but full moment suspended between seasons.

My path to the woods touches the pond. No ripples today, just that hard black clarity, prelude to ice. In the distance, Cardigan Mountain looms big and barren. Some mornings, she dresses in startling white and on others she wears her usual grays and browns. The late autumn sun sharpens her features and reveals new majesty.

Here is why I come to the edge of the wilderness in November. It’s too easy to be lost in the mist of a September morning or lulled to sleep by July’s lush green.

The October sun plays on golden aspen leaves, and its light shimmers and dazzles, as if on water. Come January, snow alters the landscape and I’m awed by the blues and whites of deep winter.

No, it’s this rich, warm brown of dried pine needles that carries my vision farther and farther into woods where life has been pared.

Another shaft of light cuts through, and I see ancient stumps, logs and, everywhere, bare trees.

Illusions shatter in November light. Illusions about love and loyalty. Permanence and loss. Delusions of judgment. Control. Questions of right and wrong and who’s to blame. Like so many leaves they drift to the forest floor and turn, eventually into good, dark compost.

Sitting here, watching and waiting, I find this a deeper harvest to reckon. There can be no root cellars for dreams or storage boxes for promises. My garden will not yield up truth, and canning jars do not preserve hope. Instead, I’ll measure the distance between heart and deed and count my wealth by the peace that comes when what I say and what I do are one.

Warm sun falls on the rock wall and I look at the old stones and wonder. Why stop here? Someone years ago set these markers for their world, not mine. Yet I have believed in these walls, these borders, these safe limits and kept well within their lines.

The air is rich with the smell of wood smoke and rotting leaves. Afternoon moves slowly towards dusk, and the woods fade to gray. But for me there’s light enough -- and time.

From the stonewall I walk first to the ledges, then to the big pine struck by lightning, and then to the horizon beyond. The quiet moment suspended between seasons is over, and I’m moving on.

Author’s Note: “November Light” appeared in Convergence Magazine, Winter 1992 issue. I read it again and love it still. I am also very moved to know that these words and images touch others as well.

Today, the pond is gone, but the rest -- garden, barn, Cardigan Mountain, stonewalls, me -- thrive.

What can we tell these young monks?

2007-10-11T20:16:00.000-04:00

Burma

2007-09-26T12:02:00.000-04:00

Aung San Suu Kyi: Noble Prize Winner. Rightful leader of Burma.

I feel so small and so humbled by the tens of thousands of Buddhist monks marching for peace and political change in Burma. Where have we all been since the last uprising in 1988 when the democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was arrested.

World leaders know how brutal and inept this military government is. We need more than economic sanctions. We need someone with the will to stand beside the monks and the Burmese people and say, Enough. The military junta is over.

But, I live in a country that is waging war in the Middle East. Our government has started a relentless campaign to war against new countries, like Iran. We have squandered moral will and basic principles. We have our own junta. We just don't acknowledge it yet.

In my heart I am marching and marching and marching.

End of a Summer

2007-08-28T10:10:00.001-04:00

It's time to reflect before moving into another school year. This image of the East Inlet in late August settles me. I'm feeling satisfied, ready, pleased to have had two months of challenges and community among writers and teachers. I'm already doing different things, like leading writing workshops. It's time to put new skills and new insights about myself into action. It's Praxis in the true meaning of the word -- reflection and action together to create effective change.

So, read Paulo Freire. Nel Noddings. Mary Pipher. Pema Chodron. Kids' writing. Canoe the East Inlet at dawn. Wander off the path and come back to this blog from time to time...

Blessings on Mt. Batur

2007-06-14T15:15:00.000-04:00

In Bali, the spiritual realm and the physical world intertwine. At times, it's hard to tell where one stops and the other begins. There are flowers, temples, offerings of sticky rice and spices, and everywhere, the reminder of what we owe to the unseen.

This small deity on the side of Mt. Batur has an impish look. I 'm grateful for its presence and memory in my life. I too honor the place where spirit and body meet - with flowers, small statues, stones, and sayings-reminders of what is known and unknown, half a world away.

A Time for Peace

2007-06-03T22:36:00.000-04:00

This is a crazy time in the school year. I will be writing reports, one a day, over the next fourteen days. As part of my save-my-sanity strategy, I decided to post my favorite photos, especially those that give me great peace.

June 2002. Machu Picchu. Peru.

It's Looking a Lot like Vietnam

2007-05-09T08:13:00.000-04:00

In my work this past week, I have met two boys whose older brothers are going to Iraq. One brother is in the Air Force, the other is a Marine. The younger boys are solemn and worried, although they don't say that aloud.

The high school now has a highly polished granite marker/ gravestone in the front of the building to honor graduate-soldiers who die in Iraq. There is one name carved on the stone face -- with plenty of space for more.

Watching Goats

2007-04-15T14:11:00.000-04:00

We're in the midst of a major snowstorm here on the east coast. We can expect anywhere up to a foot of snow, heavy rain and dangerous winds. We have had three big snowstorms in the past three weeks. Not your typical April -- even for New Hampshire.

Despite this, the goldfinch turn bright yellow and the chickadees collect bits of thread and string for nests.

Half a world away in the Masai Mara, young boys watch over their families' goats and cows. It rained there longer than usual this year. Tourists had been stranded in their minivans in mud. Two weeks after that, we enjoyed sunny weather under brilliant blue skies. Not your typical March -- even for Kenya.

Despite this, humans argue among themselves and make pitiful bargains that will not change anything. Who do we think we are, anyway?

Learning Curve

2007-04-08T10:02:00.000-04:00

Fear makes us stupid,
shuts minds,
closes doors.

Stupid makes us fearful,
spawns the mob,
no dissent.

I think that's the way
some people
like it.

What Was Once and Now...

2007-03-14T10:44:00.000-04:00

At the edge of the vast plains of the Masai Mara in Kenya, I felt as if I stood at the beginning of Time. In all directions there was the savannah and herds of different animals. It was a powerful but bittersweet image, this vision of time before humans, before the fall.

Before I Sleep in Africa

2007-03-12T16:34:00.000-04:00

Before I sleep in Africa, I set aside Mau Mau.
Zulu. Saturday matinees where Tarzan meets
Jane and reasonable men in pith helmets,
crazed by heat and quicksand and the lion’s roar,
tame a dark continent. “Dr. Livingstone. I…”
but, you know the rest.

Before I feel African sun, I let go stories
from years gone by. Hemingway. Lessing.
Dinesen and Van der Post. Teddy Roosevelt,
our very own Great White Hunter. Adventures
on the page, on the screen, in the flesh,
but mostly, in black-and-white.

Before I walk African soil, I shed my leather
shoes. Trace the steps of Jane Goodall. Dian
Fossey. Albert Schweitzer. My generation went
into Operation Crossroads. The Peace Corps.
Here I am, dogged visionary from the ‘60’s,
still hopeful, still yearning.

Before I hear the voices of Africa, I think Nelson
Mandela. Biafra. Rwanda. Soweto.
Somalia. Darfur. Chad and De Beers.
Soldiers in black boots with automatic weapons.
Ordinary people in everyday life. Will I hear
children, laughing?

Before I go to Africa, I ask, what went wrong
in this place where humanity has lived longest?
Malaria. AIDS. Water. Refugees. I wonder
if – after Africa – will I come to know poverty
and colonial legacies and maybe, just maybe,
glimpse why we are here at all.

Thoughts for the Day

2007-02-09T07:16:00.000-05:00

THOUGHT FOR OUR EVERYDAY LIVES
FROM THOMAS MERTON

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence [and that is] activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form of violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

No More Troops

2007-01-10T08:04:00.000-05:00

The New Year inspires me to think carefully about my life -- past, present, future. It's always been a marker. We celebrated the end of 2006 with a bonfire in the garden. Burn away the old year. I like that image. It seems pagan and elemental. We stood under the dark sky and watched flames illuminate the pines at the edge of the field.

Ten days later, I feel ageless, wandering in that strange been-here-before fog. How can our country allow more troops to be sent to Iraq? Who is George Bush? WHERE is the outrage? Refuse him and remove him.

I read today on Common Dreams that Richard Nixon ran this course before in 1970 when Vietnam was already lost. He authorized the bombing of Cambodia. He escalated the war. Killing, despair, devastation continued for five more years.

There was a huge student response -- and out of that protest came Kent State where the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four students. Remember this.

Over the weekend we saw a brilliant movie: "Children of Men". It's not such a far-fetched view of the near future. Many people we tell about the movie say they won't see it --"too much violence. Too depressing." Don't be squeamish. Go see it and be outraged. That may be the only way we pull ourselves out of the mud.

Happy New Year.

Taipei Afternoon

2006-12-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

We were surprised by the beauty of Taipei. It was definitely one of those trips full of paradoxes. Here, in the early afternoon, homing pigeons are called back to roost. We saw homing pigeons everywhere we traveled around the island. We were also very lucky to see the mountains surrounding Taipei. They are too often hidden by clouds or mist.

One Small Victory

2006-12-10T08:03:00.000-05:00

We visited our friends in Taipei in February 2006. As always in travel, we met people from all over the world, doing amazing things to make this a better world.

We took a city tour of Taipei and our one companion on the tour was a woman who worked for an organization that improved labor conditions in southeast Asia. She talked about projects like microcredit banking where people can borrow money -- the equivalent of twenty-five, fifty, maybe a hundred dollars -- and turn that loan into life-changing projects. Women buy a flock of chickens or a cellphone or sewing materials and create a local business. With their earnings they send their children to school, improve their homes -- and pay back the loans.

She talked about the struggles and successes. We shared our frustrations over world politics and especially over the damage done by U.S. policies railroaded by the Bushes and company. That damage is so deep. We (U.S. citizens) have lost and squandered and damned ourselves by allowing this government to wage war on the world in our names.

But today I celebrate a small victory. John Bolton, the Bush representative to the UN who was rammed into place by political maneuvers, has resigned. I know this will be great relief to this woman in southeast Asia, nevermind to the rest of the UN and to thinking, caring people worldwide.

I sent her an email in the spirit of the season -- miracles do happen -- especially when we keep faith, speak out, vote, think, listen, and don't cave in to despair.

Pandagaran, Java

2006-11-20T09:48:00.000-05:00

On the southern coast of Java, we stayed at a local fishing village. Everyone goes to the beach at sunset to watch the thousands of fruit bats (flying foxes) fly from the forest to the fruit plantations across the bay.

These young men were fishing in traditional ways. They walked chest deep into the sea and seined. This time they came in with two small fish, a collection of plastic bottles, a shoe, and other debris. Someone told us they used to fill their nets and sell to the big cities inland.

Fishing and tourism have been important in this area. However, Pandagaran was heavily damaged in the May 2006 earthquake that hit nearby Yogajakarta. I call this photo, "Two Fish" to honor the catch of that day.

Bogor, Indonesia

2006-11-20T08:35:00.000-05:00

This morning I listened to the BBC news report on George Bush's visit to Indonesia. My initial reaction was to apologize to the Indonesians (and the world). The global community and America desperately need better-than-Bush. Now!

But beyond politics, I was drawn to the report because I have been to Bogor. In February and March 2001, Barry and I visited our good friend who was teaching at the Jakarta International School. It was my first time in Asia and the experiences changed me forever.

Here's the Bogor I remember: We saw flying foxes (tropical fruit bats) hanging in huge trees. The Presidential Palace is a large white mansion, a remnent of colonial rule. There is a wide main thoroughfare, vast lawns, high fences, and roe deer roaming the grounds. We walked through botanical gardens and saw a raffesia (corpse flower) well beyond its bloom.

We were the only people from a western country in the gardens that day. Two men approached us, one selling postcards and one selling small silver spoons with figures from Indonesian puppetry. The two men spoke English and we spent the next few hours with them as they became our guides.

One man had been a teacher and the other, an engineer. When the Asian markets crashed in the late 90's, these men lost their jobs and like so many others now sold souvenirs. They told us few tourists came to Bogor those days, especially after Suharto was driven out and the American businesses fled.

We rode back to Jakarta on smooth highways. As we approached the city center, there were tall, western-style skyscrapers, emblazoned with the names and logos of American banks and insurance companies -- and all were abandoned. There's a river/ canal that also runs through the center and along its banks were cardboard huts where families lived and ate and washed. I watched an elderly woman dip water from that brown sludge that carried the refuse of 12 million people to the harbor and on to the Java Sea.

It wasn't all poverty and stereotypic images -- not at all. There were trees and vibrant markets and everywhere, families together. We visited museums along with multiple school groups, all dressed in different uniforms. We visited the largest mosque in Southeast Asia. We were a great curiosity and that created so many memorable, thoughtful conversations.

My credo is: We are all just people. This is what I learned in Asia, across the length of Java and Bali, in the botanical gardens of Bogor.

I still have those tiny silver spoons. I wonder what George Bush will bring back from Indonesia?

FINALLY

2006-11-07T23:57:00.000-05:00

This is one of the best election nights I have ever had! New Hampshire has elected Paul Hodes over Charlie Bass... and Carol Shea-Porter over Jeb Bradley. John Lynch is our Democratic Governor, and for once, I am very proud to be a New Hampshire Democrat.

Now, let's go after those miserable hypocrites in the White House.

Merry Hell, indeed!

Full Moon in November

2006-11-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

It was a full beaver moon this past weekend and the night landscape was gorgeous -- and eerie. It was a dark silvery light, like a kind of parallel universe glimpsed only at times like these.

I often write about November. It's a transition time, before the holidays and Winter Solstice, yet beyond the brilliance and abundance of October and the harvest. I see brown fields, bare trees, and a pause between seasons.

One of my first stories, "The Goat Woman", was all about that November sense of time and mortality. This led me back to 1986, when this story was published. Twenty years ago. Guess I thought life would be different, somehow, twenty years hence.

Here are bits and pieces of that story. It's still one of my favorites.

"She awoke with the fire in her bones. Her Granny had called such pains, miseries. But Natty knew she suffered more than a misery. The devil himself poked at her spine. Every morning he tested to see if she were ripe, ready for the stewpot."...

"Outside, the morning sun crept over the brown weeds in her yard. She counted the twenty-five paces it now took her to reach the barn. She slid the door to the right and stepped into the cool, dark cavern. She closed her eyes, as she did each morning, and slipped back forty years."...

"A low bleat broke into her daydream. She opened her eyes. Gerta, the last of her French Alpine-Toggenburg cross, called. The doe pointed her long ears at Natty and tilted her head as if to say, Well now, old woman."...

"....hard to figure, said Natty. You came back alive, but Tom was dead. Cut down by his own heart right in the middle of sugaring season. Thin year that was."...

"Will Dove shook his head. 'I saw a goat. A big silver goat, mind you, running with the deer on Bridgewater Mountain. I had it in my sights, mind you. She looked just like that big doe of yours. Never saw anything like it, a goat running with deer...'."

"The Count had been Tom's idea. Natty never liked it, but she understood. So even with Tom dead she did the Count, year by year. She tucked the book under her arm and went to the barn, repeating Tom's charge:

"Count the hay. Count the goats. Count the grain. Count the goats. Count one winter's worth."...

"Your November light cuts right to the bone."...

"For supper she cooked a soup of onions, oatmeal, carrots and dried beans. She wished she had a piece of bread to sop up the broth, but things like fresh bread belonged to the days when Tom was alive."...

" ....she opened the fire and laid on chunks of maple. She washed with warm water from the bucket. She stroked her feet, legs, arms and face. She put on clean longjohns and fresh socks. She tucked dried fruit and nuts into the pouches of Tom's hunting coat. She combed her white hair and pulled on the purple hat. She checked herself for gloves, scarf, extra socks. Before she left, she blew out the lamps.

"Outside her breath showed in little white gusts. The full Beaver Moon had risen, bathing her yard with silver light."...

"Gerta bounced like a kid. She kicked her heels sideways and tugged at Natty's sleeve. Now, old woman, she seemed to say.

"Natty leaned on her walking stick, a smooth piece of hornbeam Tom had cut for her years ago. Under the light of the full moon, she pushed off and slowly followed Gerta past the maples and through the overgrown orchard. Ahead she saw the silver line where a well-trodden deer track led up Bridgewater Mountain.

"She was certain Gerta knew the way."

2006-10-31T08:59:00.000-05:00

I'm experimenting with photos. For me writing and images are one and the same. The challenge is always to find the words to create and share the image on paper or in blogger space.

East Inlet, late August. It's one of my favorite places on earth -- a Nature Conservancy site in northern New Hampshire. That morning the mist was thick on the water. The rising sun cast a lavender-pink light that eventually broke through the fog.

On the eve of Halloween

2006-10-30T22:34:00.000-05:00

It's a quiet night. A bright half moon settles in the southwest. I see it through dark, sketchy branches. Over the weekend we had winds that stripped the trees. Only the beeches and a few oaks are hanging onto brown and gold leaves. It's just right for Halloween.

A big brown mouse has been eating our sunflower seeds. The cats saw him first, of course. I used a flashlight and the beam caught him in the open milk jug. He ran so easily up the twine to the branch and then down the trunk. He's a fat, sassy mouse.
I expect he has a number of admirers -- me, the two cats, and maybe a barred owl or two. We'll see.