Today is a Very Fine Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Northwest frontier of New Hampshire

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

"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

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

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

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

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?

Burma

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

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...