Poor title...I make hats. I used to make one for every child I taught but this year I'm behind, maybe for spring. Anyway I've been making them today. Learning to crochet at 8 was a boon to me personally. At times I've been able to make ten in a day but you have to start early and just focus, great recovering from surgery. These are in some nice colors I just picked up on sale.


This photo makes that flower huge which it isn't.....




Great oranges and purples around now. Lovely.


There are no takers in my house for my hats, boo. But I think they are ok.
I decided to look in kid's books and link a few hat related books I know.
Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton
The Magic Hat by Mem Fox and Tricia Tusa
Sadly I do like Minerva Louise....
A Hat for Minerva Louise (Picture Puffins) by Janet Morgan Stoeke
The Baby in the Hat by Allan Ahlberg and Andre Amstutz
A Three Hat Day (Reading Rainbow Book) by Laura Geringer and Arnold Lobel
Madeline and the Bad Hat by Ludwig Bemelmans
The Rule of Hats by Amy McDuffie and Scott J. Stauber
Twelve Hats for Lena : A Book of Months by Karen Katz
Jennie's Hat (Picture Puffins) by Ezra Jack Keats
Whose Hat Is This?: A Look at Hats Workers Wear - Hard, Tall, and Shiny (Whose Is It?: Community Workers) by Katz Cooper
El sombrero del tío Nacho / Uncle Nacho's Hat by Harriet Rohmer and Mira Reisberg
Butterflies Under Our Hats (Paraclete Books for Children) by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso and Joani Keller Rothenberg
Hats, Hats, Hats (Around the World Series) by Ann Morris and Ken Heyman

Whose Hat? by Margaret Miller

Hetty's 100 Hats by Janet Slingsby

Gotta run and do some work!

Bowls matter to us somehow. So we make bowls thinking of ways to fill them. Try this way.


Since my daughter loves the Little Prince it is the subject of my first two attempts at pottery and I'm worrying over their getting fired in time. But I thought I might share the things I making...
Amid some Little Prince Quotes. I think a very profound volume... The potential to hold so here are my attempts at bowls......This year I'm trying ceramic forms to make gifts. My daughter and I love






Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essentail matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.


To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures…







It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

“Well, I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. It seems that they are very beautiful.”





To conceited men, all other men are admirers.

But the conceited man did not hear him. Conceited people never hear anything but praise.



“Why are you drinking?” demanded the little prince.
“So that I may forget,” replied the tippler.
“Forget what?” inquired the little prince, who already felt sorry for him.
“Forget that I am ashamed,” the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
“Ashamed of what?” insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.
“Ashamed of drinking!”



“When he lights his street lamp, it is as if he brought one more star to life, or one flower. When he puts out his lamp, he sends the flower, or the star, to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful.”

“Nevertheless he is the only one of them all who does not seem to me ridiculous. Perhaps that is because he is thinking of something else besides himself.”



What the little prince did not dare confess was that he was sorry most of all to leave this planet, because it was blest every day with 1440 sunsets!

All humanity could be piled up on a small Pacific islet.
The grown-ups, to be sure, will not believe you when you tell them that. They imagine that they fill a great deal of space. They fancy themselves as important as the baobabs. You should advise them, then, to make their own calculations. They adore figures, and that will please them.



The flower had once seen a caravan passing.
“Men?” she echoed. “I think there are six or seven of them in existence. I saw them, several years ago. But one never knows where to find them. The wind blows them away. They have no roots, and that makes their lives very difficult.”

“I thought that I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; and all I had was a common rose. A common rose, and three volcanoes that come up to my knees--and one of them perhaps extinct forever… That doesn’t make me a very great prince…”
And he lay down in the grass and cried.


“To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…”

“If you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life.”

“You have hair like the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…”


“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me.”

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“Only the children know what they are looking for,” said the little prince. “They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry…”
“They are lucky,” the switchman said.

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well…”



And as I gave it to him my heart was torn.

I felt his heart beating like the heart of a dying bird, shot with someone’s rifle…

"All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all the stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them--"

“I shall look as if I were suffering. I shall look a little as if I were dying. It is like that. Do not come to see that. It is not worth the trouble…”

He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound, because of the sand.

Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back.

There is a lot of cooking going on in my house. I wish you'd take some time an attach a recipe here.
I found I couldn't double a banana bread recipe to save myself.
But it turned out just lovely. This banana bread I'll share beats ANY I've ever had.

Mom contributed a new salad that was absolutely wonderful although I doubted her and so...once more she shows me that I'm wrong.

So onto the recipes.

Banana Nut Bread

3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cup mashed ripe bananas , the ones you were tossing
2 eggs well beaten
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour sifted
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4 chopped walnuts


Cream butter and sugar throughly
Blend in bananas, eggs and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda and salt together. Add to banana mixture alternately with buttermilk, mixing throughly after each addition.

Add nuts, mix. Pour batter into a greased and well floured 9x5x3 inch pan ( loaf). Bake at 325 degrees 1 1/4 hours or until done.



The variation I did today turned out lovely. I had no walnuts so I substituted pecans, a little shy on banana, I added a cup of raisins I soaked in run for a week. I put in a bundt pan, waited to turn out, iced with a white icing in little puffs on top, sprinkled with red and green sugar and
then topped with candied ginger pieces. Yum.
Seasonal.


Mom's Salad...now I credit this to her saying it was in the Charleston Daily Mail.

Cranberry Dream Salad


1 cup chilled heavy whipping cream
1 cup crushed pineapple, drained well
1 16 oz can whole cranberry sauce coarsely chopped
2 tbsp low fat may
2 tbsp sugar
6 ounces low fat cream cheese cut into large chunks
3/4 cup pecan halves toasted

( can be frozen a day in advance)

I'm going to take a little risk here.

My son Luca has been struggling in high school.
Nothing of the structure works well for him, but he certainly doesn't hate it. He's actually fond of it. His teachers don't complain of defiance or his attitude other than to find him unmotivated, not at all defiant, he just fell behind in a way a long time back. State scores are really great though. They can reap that, it gets him in "honors." He went to school at 4, not 5 and it's been the legacy of the late bloomer with a late birthday. His musical skills and his heart in sports all in this uber thin small guy is just really incredible. But high school isn't what he needs, yet.
At least not the way this is.

What he has been doing however I wish I could tell a teacher about.
I wish he had one that cared to hear it from a "me." Free of a lecture to either of us on "responsibility." I know it, that talk, I teach too.
One teacher referred me to an on line grade check rather than this kind of a dialog.
But I'd like to tell them my blocked intestine and the cancer might be on his mind, up coming operation, the vomiting, a bit like a shadow.
Maybe.

I'd really like them to help him with something else. Something impossible. Something too much for me to know how to deal with at all.
My son is very bonded to my mother who, because I was so ill really helped raise him. Or stepped in with comfort. Butter boy has been the apple of her eye since the day he plopped into her arms. And for a school project Luca interviewed my mom all about the second world war and her remembrances. She also was his "hero" in a project not evidentially so well graded this year. In that piece my son again went to her and she shared something very timely, the story of the death death of her younger brother to war in Korea. Something very rare for her to speak about. It might not seem timely on the surface until sitting on a Sunday as you watch an AM news program present the US deaths for the week. Look at kids that just stopped in time. And then you see the why it is right there for her. The clock that ticks for all of us it tolling for my mum. And after one big strokes through this last months mini strokes are telling her her time is at hand.
It kind of got me to see his score on this project with her be lower, he put so much into this. To a person unable to say to him, "that matters." in truth they have invalidated our family in a great show of ignorance, but I am mostly silent. It was such an invalidation, but from my child not a word,not a bit of that at all. He "likes" them. But, then, I haven't met the teachers. And I can check the grade on-line.

That's high school. I guess for some.

Luca has continued to dig to find out about a 19 year old PFC lost in Korea that doesn't even have a tribute written about him in the Memorial sites. Marshall R. Lucas died in Korea on patrol. That's all we knew. We knew Harold Osterud was the older brother, a medic, to a close friend of Marshall's from their town of Ashland Va that first got to him after death sending word to my grandmother, Gladys Pearl H. Lucas, that he died "instantly." We knew that. We knew that another soldier told my mom that prisoners weren't taken, they were made to kneel and shot in the head by the Chinese soldiers. Her brother was shot in the back of the head at close range. Just that way.
We don't know what a day was like for him, what the sun rise looked like there, if he knew people of the country, if he was comfortable or not. We know he had been to R and R in Japan. What could he have seen there? Did he understand the conflict? Do we ? My mom probably does she spent her life discovering this thing I call national reasons and rhymes. She had a few letters from him I once read but I will tell you what I remember of this was they were like peeking into a young person keeping something from their mom. They sound like my daughter talking to me about her life now at 19 in CalTech. Ultimately just reassurring. And making the best of something. Theses were not revelatory. And how I saw those was utterly by stealth when I found them in my father's closet. I think for years he held onto hem for my mom, because she could not bring herself to read the youthful voice of a kid sent to war. he has the strength for that.



And we as a family each in our way know that our parents, my cousins and I, we know this tore the fabric of the entire family. You can't really know because I can't capture it. I will say this I have never heard my family condemn other people, blame others, call for war....I have heard them speak of WW2 and the loses, the families destroyed, the necessity of that after attack in the face of loss of civilian life and the horror in Europe, the nightmares faced. But of these actions after this, I have heard almost nothing. My father lost friends in Korea, friends serving with him years on Guam. I've heard him tell of that in a sentence or two. I've seen his eyes mist. And they seldom really told us everything because they don't know it either. It was a misting that enclosed us, shrouded us. This loss and hurt included a different kind of remembering in the naming of my cousin for this lost murdered soldier boy. Not entirely understood in anyway andnow my son looking as all of us do at the puzzles of family, then has found some different pieces to reveal and try to fit into his part mostly because he was willing to go look. And he cared so much about my mother's pain.

During the time he talked to her she told him things I never heard before. And I'm an oral history lover, well I value trying to understand. When you talk of war that is not expressed by that sentence. It is so horrifying a thought, I value trying to understand it's effect on us all. Because from every position it is something that cannot be undone. But you don't always think of the story of the killing of your uncle to war as "history." You think of it as pain. Some things I never asked her.

Mom talked to Luca about why she herself went into the service.
She was in the Air Force. Both her brothers were in the service at the time of Korea, as was my father. Her younger brother was drafted out of VA, though he really was living in Florida with my grandmother who had moved to St. Pete. He was drafted out of Hanover County, Virginia. Mostly because the papers weren't changed in her recent move to put him in St. Pete's system. Mom wondered if this didn't appeal to the VA draft board in sending him off (in my mom's words) "to be slaughtered." Mom's kind of bitter. You would be too if you considered that where he died, the hill that was taken, just impotently reverted back to the enemy. She says in many ways that stands for how she sees war. I gather when MacArthur was stopped in his march into China...and boys lives were lost in the mishigas of this. I don't want to appear unaware this is felt all the way around, I want it however understood that so often you just know nothing.

Now I have to write carefully. I just learned more about her deep anger, feelings, pain than I really knew drawn into words ever in my living with her lifelong. I learned how they told the family of his passing, where she was. How it was that 5 days after he died, Eisenhower was elected on a campaign to stop this war. As a promise. She joined the service somehow in a form of solidarity with brothers she feared might lose lives to , in her words, "Try to keep myself occupied." Learned to fly a plane. Became socially conscious, involved, aware. She had fear and she read a letter sent by the Service signed by Truman saying her brother was dead, the day before Halloween (my most hated holiday a time I wish I could wipe away for her forever so she might not each year live it as she does.) Losing a young brother at 19 with no girlfriend or wife yet or baby to mourn him, lost to times, to a bullet. Stopped, almost forgotten, as her generation passes. No one aside from my cousins, her family,  have ever written or contacted her about this life, this brother so dear to her. She carries in her the wish it all meant something.
And she knows it doesn't, in her words, mean "anything." "He died for nothing."

War, in my mother's words, should be fought by us oldsters.
Or ceases to exist. Pass away like a bad thought. Fought by those instead that might send in kids to die as a "solution." These things I heard her talk to my son about this last few months, and I watched my young historian hold her gaze as a priest might, or a confessor. As a child fully engaged in the greatest of life's learning lessons might hold onto the hand of time. A child becoming the balm and the memory, the receptacle of this job of helping her to ready herself at over 80 for her journey into no time by gathering her greatest sorrow, to release it, and being willing to witness this, to carry it into the days ahead. So it might not be forgotten.

And then I can check the grades on-line.

I don't know what grade to give my son.

He found the description of the battle that his uncle fought and died there on patrol. It was called Operation Showdown. Its commander got a Medal of Honor, he took it for the men like my 19 year old Uncle Marshall Lucas who died there a lowly PFC that now isn't recalled. I just don't know how to feel.

Luca found this description of this battle for a hill and gave it to mom. He found out that Dr. Osterund , the medic that couldn't resurrect a man shot in the head, but could tell his mom it was "fast" went on to dedicate a life to medicine in Oregon, to public health. His bother Carl, my uncle's buddy, we don't know. We hope he lived, and lived well. For both of them perhaps.

Luca found where we can tell his story so it isn't forgotten, and he wrote all of it into a form that will remain for him written inside, there all of his life, may I never be faced with sending his tender being off to war or into things I do not know off to die. He wants to join the service. It's tough. I am mostly silent with this.

My son believes in things I don't always see. He is young but all of his life he has known what he believes, been a "self," he believes in love, his family, in Christ, in doing right things. And in service.


So......here is the story of where my Uncle died, it's taken from the web. It is more than we ever thought to know. I hope I can be forgiven for placing it here:

Showdown on Triangle Hill: twelve days of intense combat in October 1952 cost the U.S. 7th Infantry Division 365 KIA for a piece of turf that ultimately remained in enemy hands

In October 1952, the U.S. 7th Infantry Division occupied a sector of the Main Line of Resistance (MLR) in central Korea near Kumhwa. Opposing the division, the Chinese 45th Division held elevations to the north, including Hill 598, also called Triangle Hill. Both sides were well dug-in. Battle lines had not changed significantly in almost a year.
After peace talks began in November 1951, the Eighth Army assumed an "active defense" posture and combatants on both sides marked time awaiting the outcome of the talks.

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The "War of the Hills" had begun. For six months, this war played out as artillery/mortar exchanges and minor skirmishes that did little to change the situation. Then, in spring 1952, as frustration over the failure of peace talks increased, "active" defense gave way to active engagement. Operation Showdown began to take shape.
Col. Lloyd Moses, commander of the 7th Division's 31st Infantry Regiment, relates in his memoirs, "Not long after my arrival in the 31st Infantry, the division and corps commanders talked to me about an attack on Hill 598." By June 1952, Moses wrote, plans were under way "to move our MLR forward ... On 23 July, I began to make serious plans to capture Hill 598, should we be called upon to do so."
Hill 598 was a formidable objective. The apex of its 2,000-foot triangular crest overlooked U.S. 7th Division positions on a line of hills about half a mile away to the south. From this apex, two massive ridges extended to the northeast and northwest. The ridge to the northwest was dominated by a hill called Pike's Peak.
The other terminated with a pair of hills that had been dubbed Jane Russell in honor of the well-endowed American actress. A less prominent ridge, named Sandy, sloped down to the east. About 1,000 yards across the valley from Sandy stood Sniper Ridge, which, because of its strategic location relative to Triangle, also was an objective of Operation Showdown.
On Oct. 8, Far East Commander Gen. Mark Clark approved the operation. By then Maj. Gen. Wayne Smith, 7th Division commander, had selected the 31st Infantry to conduct the assault on Triangle Hill. The attack on Sniper Ridge was assigned by the Corps commander to elements of the South Korean 2nd Division.
`Shower of Grenades'
Operation Showdown began on Oct. 14. Although the original plans called for a single battalion attack on Triangle Hill, the objective was too large and too well-defended for such a limited force. So Moses ordered his 3rd Battalion to take the west sector of the objective, including Hill 598 and Pike's Peak. The east sector of the complex, including Jane Russell and Sandy Ridge, became the objective of the 1st Battalion.
In spite of two days of preparatory air strikes and artillery barrages, the two assault companies on Hill 598, L and K, met fierce resistance from the Chinese as they made their way up the hill's steep south slope. Small groups from the attacking force repeatedly assaulted the crest of the hill, each time being repulsed by "a shower of hand grenades, shape charges, bangalore torpedos and rocks."
Within the first half hour, all of L Company's officers became casualties. After two hours, with both assault companies still bogged down, I Company was committed to the battle.
Taking advantage of earlier gains by the 1st Battalion, I Company attacked the hill from the east through Sandy Ridge. L and K companies, pinned down throughout the day, were finally ordered to withdraw. I Company held into the evening, but faced with repeated counterattacks, also abandoned the assault.
In the 1st Battalion sector, A Company led the attack on Sandy Ridge and Jane Russell. Pinned down almost immediately by small arms fire from Hill 598, the platoon on Sandy sustained 25 casualties in the first few minutes. When the remainder of the company was also stopped short of their objective, B Company was sent into battle.
Sandy Ridge was finally taken and consolidated, but the attack on Jane Russell remained bogged down. C Company was then pitched into the maelstrom. After three hours of combat against intense resistance, "the crest of Objective `B' (Jane Russell) was in friendly hands."
On that crest, 1st Lt. Edward R. Schowalter performed feats Hollywood could not duplicate. He led platoons of A Co., 1st Bn., 31st Inf., up Jane Russell Hill. "Right through the hail of grenades and small-arms fire he led us," recalled one GI.
Nearly killed twice, he at one point found himself stacked among dead Chinese. Severely wounded, he spent six months in the hospital recuperating. Modesty was Schowalter's hallmark.
"I always figured I was awarded the medal as the representative, of a superb fighting team," he said. "We took that hill together. I wear the Medal of Honor on behalf of all the men who fought and died on that hill. It's really theirs."
Repeated enemy counterattacks, however, finally forced the 1st Battalion to abandon its positions, and by the end of the day, the enemy remained in control of all 31st Infantry objectives.
from page 1. Previous | Next
Unit's Deadliest Day
In terms of casualties, it had been the most costly day for the regiment in all of its more than two years of action in the war: 96 KIA and 337 WIA. It could have been a lot worse. For the first time in the history of modern warfare, every combatant in the assault force was wearing an armored vest.
The following day, the 1st Battalion of the 32nd Infantry, placed under the command of Moses, assaulted Sandy Ridge and Jane Russell, while the 2nd Battalion of the 31st attacked Hill 598. E Co., 31st Inf., reached the trenches on 598 and, reinforced by F and G companies, secured the position. Strong resistance, though, continued from the enemy on Pike's Peak.

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Pfc. Ralph E. Pomeroy, a member of E Company, manned a machine gun at the end of a trench to protect his platoon's flank. When the enemy attacked, he kept up heavy return fire, killing many of them and slowing the assault.
Shortly after, he was severely wounded from a mortar burst, and his gun mount rendered inoperable. Still, he removed the gun and aggressively moved forward. After suffering a second wound and with his ammunition depleted, Pomeroy took on the enemy in hand-to-hand combat--using his weapon as a club--until he was killed.
Pomeroy earned the Medal of Honor.
On the northeast arm of the complex, A and B companies of the 32nd Infantry were unsuccessful on Jane Russell and had to withdraw to Sandy, where C Company had established a foothold. At that time, Moses ordered I Co., 31st Inf., into the battle. No units, however, were able to do more than consolidate positions on Sandy.
Early on the 16th, Smith transferred command of the operation to Col. Joseph Russ, commanding officer of the 32nd Infantry, and the two idle battalions of the 31st were ordered to replace the 17th Infantry in the west sector of the division's front. The 2nd Battalion of the 17th was placed under the command of Russ and secured Jane Russell Hill that afternoon.
Attack and counterattack continued for the next eight days as Russ continued to rotate units into the battle. Then, on Oct. 25, the Republic of Korea (ROK) 2nd Division relieved the 7th Division on Triangle and, after 12 days, U.S. involvement in Operation Showdown ended.
The best available U.S. casualty estimate for Operation Showdown is 1,540: 365 KIA, 1,174 WIA and 1 captured.
A week later, the ROK division that was struggling to hold Triangle, even as it continued its battle for Sniper Ridge, was finally forced to abandon the hill.
An objective planned to be secured by two battalions in five days had required an entire division. And it was only partially occupied after 12 days and could not ultimately be defended. For the remainder of the war, the battle lines around Triangle Hill remained essentially where they were before Operation Showdown was conceived.
RICHARD ECKER is a 7th Infantry Division veteran of Triangle Hill and author of Friendly Fire (Omega Communications, 1996).
COPYRIGHT 2002 Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learn

My uncle was:

LUCAS MARSHALL R Rank=PFC Serial Number=US53080856 Branch=Infantry
Military Occupation Specialty=01745 Year of Birth=30 Race=Caucasian
State of Residence=VA County of Residence=Hanover
Unit=31st Inf Regt Division=7th Inf Div Type of Unit=Inf Regt
Place of Casualty=North Korea Date of Casualty (yymmdd)=52 10 30
Type of Casualty=Killed in Action
Detail of Casualty=
Group of Casualty=Killed in Action

The deadliest day. Oct 30th.

And that's about enough information to send my Mom into greater waves of memories' pain, but also the other evening when sharing this with my son, she was generally talking about the real cost of war. Trying to make the insanity of this absolutely clear. She could tell about the differences in these two wars she knew pretty well, her 21st husband serving in WW2.
Mom who herself served, who married a serviceman, who gave America the ultimate sacrifice brought to my son her thoughts on Vietnam, on Korea, on Iraq. Mostly Mom asks questions. One of her questions involves those who do not know this cost firsthand as often willing to commit others to pay it. But......her exact words were
"You can't understand until you've lived this."

And my son, who has dedicated months to holding her pain, struggling to get in his assignments, sat through her talk I suppose more sure than ever we are a place, nation, worth risking a life to continue having.I felt perhaps this differently too. But I don't know because he's a pretty wordless boy, a force of nature, a kid sans language that did not really speak until 4. The year he went to school, that year he started talking.
Luca has been willing to look at the injuries and pain we hold as a family. Quietly. To absorb it, to try sincerely to bring it his heart, energy, and sincerity.

When I became so ill with gastric bleeds, with the undetected cancer as the tests, the pain,and the awful struggles through it all drug on and on.... he'd just sit with me. He was cheering, he was accepting; he seemed so free of judging, so open to interpreting your pain as something he sees with compassion and care. In this way we have to say he has been since his birth just the best thing that has happened both to Ma and to me. Our sweetheart.

Yes, I could check the grade checker, sure, thanks, but I'd like to tell his story of these last few months to a child's teacher. One that might better know him, to understand him. Just as I might want Marshall in his 19 short years to know he will be remembered.I wish I knew his thoughts. He was ever missed and recalled for his humor and warmth, for being a good person, his passing in war the ultimate tragedy. By a sister and her kids. A sister that loved him.

Where ever we stand right now, we stand on a planet that is very old, compared to our individual lifespan with a great story to reveal to us. If you ask 1st graders during circle sitting in November to "hear" the story of their place in space it can lead you to several days of moving around our sun, turning around and finding yourself amazed at the most interesting of moments when a child remarks, "I am more like a trickster than I am a hero." Pretty interesting. Or hear another child say, "My people came from Africa so the story Zomo spoke to me, it was about my beginnings." Or how about this, " No matter what we read we seem to find the story is telling us to protect our home and our Earth."

I've been recording kids again, as they chat, talk, read, write, work, figure out problems and then taking these little clips usually 30 seconds in length, recording the content and looking at what this is telling me within different sets of considerations. It's actually an effort to improve my 2nd language instruction. I am listening so I might see how they speak, phrase, produce, understand, relate. I'm interested in who speaks, how, in how they work socially together. My class is almost completely very limited speakers of English, thats changing , taught in English. Since data reveals our school to fail my particular group pretty effectively, I'm working on language the heart of the problem.

Well last year I told the world about our classroom pets, Ike, Tina and Herman. The hermit crabs. A great part of our science and reading in 1st grade.

Today I was out of teaching again...throwing up ( long story ending in upcoming surgery) and I decided to pick up my daughter and get the finches bird seed.Nothing in their cups to eat I had to go get it. I just CANNOT get out so it's rare to go to a place even as trying as a pet store, and I did it. Well I picked up an 11 dollar tank for the hermit crabs, we have 13 now at school. They keep escaping from our cage. So I got new bedding and then saw The Hello Kitty and Big Busta. I couldn't resist. So tomorrow I'm bringing over the new tank and introducing these fellows. And I'm quite delighted actually. I even told my dad.



There goes Hello Kitty, who I call "the Kitty"



This is Busta, he is actually huge.



Kitty is shy, nice shell, very natural.



I made some movies.
I hope they come out.

I blogged rather extensively last year about teaching observation through classroom pets. The hermits are interesting and pretty fascinating overall. I know some find them "boring" but they really are not boring. Shell changes are incredible. If you take them out and have a little crew caring for them, misting them, it is a pretty cool rotating responsibility.

Ok, movie time, Get some popcorn.

















So there you have it. Hermit crab movies that are fresh off the press.
Or whatever we call this strange medium.
The crabs are

Yesterday I really physically overdid it and went both to Occidental College for a tour to see the college with my middle daughter (who loved the messages of multi-culturalism as well as the curriculum,it being teaching based and "meaning of life" based) and then went to Huntington Garden's and to downtown Pasadena. More on this school tour later I'm making a walking Mom's perspective piece. Obama attended this school, Occidental, and they were obviously delighted he was elected. After two years, from the school, he transfered to Colombia. It appears early on he was quite good at moving on and upward toward his goals.
Far more self-possessed than I felt at the time.

I went shopping in their University bookstore with a school supplied 20 % off coupon saving a bundle on books I'm going to read this next few weeks and share right now. Ahead of being fully read, I'm just calling this an "I'm excited to read" this new book group. If I ever have $500 I'm going there to get myself about twenty I had to leave behind. After going ahead and splurging then sat for a part of the tour to read as both my husband and daughter had "the energy to go to the next session." I'm really suffering the blocked intestine blues.

After this lovely lunch there, they put on a really amazing day for families, we went to tour the Huntington Galleries and Gardens (again I fished out) and had dinner at Buca di Beppo's in Pasadena . I'm so struggling today. But it was so good to see my babe, Sylvia. Happy. CalTech is so good for her. She explained E to me, the square root of -1 and some long differential equation work as well as a relationship that oscillated in a mathematical progression she has been working on. It was good to listen to actually. I do like theoretical math but I need the lessons really, really simplified and slow. Although I annoyed her, the work she does in physics is great.

So I got to go in a bookstore, as I said, and spend $150, incidentally Occidental has a terrific bookstore ...again...
and that is so rare as to be like the sighting of a bluebird, treasured.

My gosh sitting with my bag of books brought me back to my college days when I never, ever could AFFORD the books that I needed to read. One thing I did realize was somehow we advanced opportunity for these kids of mine in a lot of ways, freed them to get to places like this, gave them a softness and freedom from so much I knew at this time when I took on responsibilities that were overwhelmingly impossible. Imagine how my parents might look on that, or their's.

You know on the surface Occidental was so mixed in it's applicants. Just wonderful to see touring, so actually refreshingly diverse, I could see kids just like I teach there. I sat reading these books in that mix watching kids, thinking that I have worked really to give my own children the access that we all should really look much harder at providing broadly to all children that work for it. A richness of personal meaning was found yesterday for me despite the failing body.....So the books...



This was the one I started sitting under a tree reading. Drinking my bottled water.
It is called Education's End, Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up the Meaning of Life

Written by Anthony T. Kronman, this book is posing a question that I see filtered into the public elementary school and that is why I bought it. Also it began heavily embedded in the concept of CARE. This seems to me to be the center or heart of why we even do this, educating, and it seems to be almost so invisible and unspoken. It's not tested and therefore not really very important at all to the "powers that be." Care based education is suffering deletion, denigration, shrinking and marginalizing.

In my reading and then application into my contexts the book of this former Yale Law Dean's looks at why we have moved from talking/teaching "meaning of life" in colleges ; we are eschewing seeing this higher level training of our students as pathways to live happier and healthier lives over highly skilled ones. I saw this into my own dissonance with turning school into a rote skills center ( as my daughter's and son endure). I do see parallels in the loss of instruction in the legitimate pursuit of care and happiness in "institutions." The high price of that appears to have some serious issues in responding to the challenges of the new age, an age requiring we address our brother now.

I cannot yet present the book but I do think after I complete it I may have a tiny slice of understanding how this prof. saw this change go down in his perspective, that at least on the surface, has come at such a high price. saw his determination to "do something."
It's a very enjoyable, personal and meaningful read. It begins with this quote. I'd like to share it:

The pleasures of the intellect are notoriously less vivid than either the pleasures of sense or the pleasures of the affections;and therefore, especially in the season of youth, the pursuit of knowledge is likely enough to be neglected and lightly esteemed in comparison with other pursuits offering much stronger immediate attractions. But the pleasure of learning and knowing, though not the keenest, is yet the least perishable of pleasures;the least subject to external things, and the play of chance, and the waet of time. And as a prudent man puts money by to serve as a provision for the material wants of his old age, so too he needs to lay up against the end of his days provision for the intellect. As the years go by, comparative values are found to alter: Time, says Sophocles, takes many things which once were pleasures and brings them nearer to pain. In the day when the strong men shall bow themselves, and desire shall fail, it will be a matter of yet more concern than now, whether one can say "my mind to me a kingdom is"; and whether the windows of the soul look out upon a broad and delightful landscape, or face nothing but a brick wall.
-A. E. Houseman, 1892

You know I was in a certain frame of mind yesterday. Wishing for my daughter an education in skills but also in something "else" to make "a life" over a specific narrowed discipline alone. I suppose because I know what helped me and what life has called upon me to face. There seems to me something of the foundation for "who am I?' necessary. I see that we work in a rapidly changing world and value knowing both who you are and what you are about, but also what is/can be my meaning and how to work toward that. But just in a model about gaining skills to work in complex and evolving dynamics as a cog, without personal ethic and ability to act on your values in contexts in what we do, I'm not sure...really a book to help this thought comes at a good time. I'm very disappointed in a money driven end. My children don't want that. They want to know themselves. I see that universities have made extraordinary compromises as they have been wedded to getting the corporate and donor buck. I see that they have almost completely lost the idealism of my youth, along with the struggle, the sense of edginess, the ability to think critically. But also I see good there. Amazing research gains. I do.

So this book was having a conversation with a parent looking at our young people and the "trading" they are going to engage. It reminds me of the song...teach your children well. We are not them though. If we ever ask them why, you know that we would cry.

So I think this is a lovely book to say "You know, We love you."

I like this from page 45...

"...Even a half century ago, the question of life's meaning had a more entral and respected place in higher education than it does today. It was not always given this name. But the estion of how to spend one's life, of what to care about and why, the question of which commitments, relations, projects, and pleasures are capable of giving a life a purpose and value: regardless of the name it was given, and even if , as was often the case, it was given no name at all, this question was taken more seriously by more of our colleges and universities in the middle years of the twentieth century than it is today. It was a question that instutions of higher learning felt they had the right and duty to address in an explicit and disciplined way. The responsibility for doing this fell in particular to the humanities. A half-century ago, many teachers in these fields still believed in the possibility and value of an organized study of the mysteries of life. But under pressure, first , from the modern research ideal whose authority today dominates the humanities as it does all branches of learning, and , second, from the culture of political correctness that has been so particularly influential in those disciplines for the past forty years, the question of the value and purpose of living, of the sources of fulfillment available to us as mortal creatures with ambitions of the most varied kinds, has been pushed to the margins of respectability even in the humanities. It has been stripped of its legitimacy as a question that teachers of the humanities feel they may properly and competently address with their students in a formal program of instruction. It has been exiled from the classroom and kicked out of school, so that today it survives only in private, in pianissimo, in the extracurricular lives of teachers and students, even in those libelal arts programs whose distinctive purpose presupposes the vital importance of this question itself: the depressing conclusion of an historical development that has privatized a subject the humanities oce undertook to investigate in a public and organized way, before the modern reseaech ideal and cultue of political correctness made it an embarrassment to do so."
-Antoiny T. Kronman

Something I want to understand better.



Of course the rest of these are books I either wanted to read or that caught my eye. Many books did that yesterday. I get out soooo rarely it becomes quite a treat. But I'm paying today of course. when you lose your health you know this. Storming the Gates of Paradise, Landscapes For Politics by Rebecca Solnit

It had some good reviews. What is this about? I do not yet know. Essays. Beautiful pags I open full of references I know. Listen to this intro to one

"The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say , stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell."

This goes on into an essay on metaphors. It is so good I am keeping it here under my arm to go curl and read to distract me from feeling so ill.

I cannot wait to read.






This book Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds, Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America by Gregory Rodriguez I debated.
I thought, well I teach that so I really could wait and read in the library. But picking it up I thought about something Syl said about CalTech and home . She said she misses hispanic kids. She feels a bit disoriented. I have been hearing that for several weeks. How can we know the lives and stories of those we do not know? If i did not teach where I do would I know this?

No, I wouldn't.

So what it appears to do is tell the story of becoming Mexican Americans, the immigration, difficulties, perceptions.




I intended to read this so many times. This book explains the philosophy of care as the cornerstone of educating, basing our work in what we know from a construct of "home." This Stanford educator plows through these times when Standards/tests define, into the foundation of what we do and why. A read that will be affirming and challenging.




I suppose it would be silly to tell you that the paper this is printed on is awfully nice. It kind of sucked me in. Should recall this, but it fades. so I'm going to read it again. Or for the first time.
To quote a movie I really like.




NPR, I thought had an extended interview with the author and it was terrific. Really. But I cannot find it , I did find this, equally good. It definitely made me want to read this bok. Besides loving biographies, and especially auto-biographies.

That interview told me a great deal I never knew. She spoke to having this relationship. It was something to me worth hearing. I've read several pans of the book, but the interview was compelling and I'd like to read it.




This book is called "Happy Families" by Carlos Fuentes
I think it will affirm for me the goodness I find in the families I teach. The jacket alludes to the richness that comes from the variety of lives and settings, this set up of stories appealed to my love of story.




In a section labelled Occidental writers I found this one.
If I get an operation this is first on the recovery reading list.
I've read everything I could find on Hellman and all her associations. liking her cookbook the best :) This biography will be terrific to refresh reading that is a bit past for me now.
There is a line I found there today about her mind, one former lover saying "was the sexiest mind alive." I would think that quite the compliment. Many men were devoted to her.
She to them. Interesting to read.




This I just do not know. But it tells in a way the author's story and I would like to know more.
Anthropology remains one of my "wish i could have done that" loves. I read there whenever possible.
So it took a day of dealing with tummy nightmares to get this here. Disappointingly slow going and I'm missing seeing a friend out here because I'm just too sick for guests.
It seems yet another causality of health.

But getting to the bookstore was an amazing treat.

Actually said the raven ...it was all was a "writing idea" motivator I had here on the fly this week. It followed something I've wanted to blog for a few days.I want to share our days in 1st grade so much is going on. I'm way behind on getting to my blogs the things that I want to share. WAYYYYYY behind due to illness and hard work.
1st grade require a great deal of me, endless testing and almost no time to reflect or prepare.
By Raven I do not mean Poe, I'm talking of a Pacific Northwest Indian tale!

(A little note of pleasure this week, my husband was selected to present at AERA and that on our shared project in my room on the orbital calendar and watching a year in shadows cast in an observation of the analema. Basically a year of more hard work. I'm late starting the project this year, rather discouraged in doing so by rigid site changes. But as they say the show must go on, info here..

Sun and Shadows

The 2nd observation, Shadows, ChalkArt

The 1st Observation, Explaining that watching Shadows has interesting meanings

Looking at Morning Light)

So I do want to start with November, what's been going on this year. This year I'm collecting my students together in a circle 1 time a day to share stories of immigrants, Native Americans and what I like to call the ways many people over time have "explained" things through their art and writing to the young.

I have an enormous set of books and children are using. In this they are both learning another genre and choosing their books. Choosing is fun! Additionally they chart this by title, author, likes, and in time then can do this after January in their own individual reading logs for "their" independent reading. It's a way into this future goal.
Contrast this with an effort of ours also quite planned and involved to teach the science the District adopted. There we work with a scientific method. And we really start careful observation and stopping the inclination to reach for invented explanation by starting to watch the earth go around the sun, using shadows. I got ahead of myself and almost wrote this as the "sun around earth." Yikes. In both experiences however we see our earth as central, figuring out, explaining, understanding a part of who we are.But there is in this an opportunity for differentiation of myth over method. And in our world this seems to hang a lot of people up.

First off this year has had a few absences on my part. That's hurt a great deal So we are reading and making in roads into finding out how to relate to each other........with lots of boys who like to get to and into things. And sometimes maybe do a somersault too...

In November, as stated, we read books that represent Native American cultural groups, thei art, wisdom, philosophy if you will. It's rather interesting in our circle U Pick It Time in my classroom. I know for a FACT many children do not hold yet the capacity this year to understand "past" if only from observing the daily restating of our routines.

Quite frankly my group doesn't yet really grasp that we have built this world through time. That there were those before us, even in their family many do not know ancestors as a construct beyond those they know, this year overall many are sill trying hard to meet daily needs. To understand my language in English, to figure out how to do what is in the minute. Imagine past tense introduced into that. Infinitely difficult.
It is a year where switching to a talk of "long, long ago" sounds a lot like adults in Charlie Brown..." ummhummah ummm" I know this. Our social studies standards requires we address community, the past. So my work is to provide the contexts. And believe me it is work.

I have a real affinity for story and for the struggle we have to "be," so the Native people have quite a lot for us to hear.And quite a lot to add to the November ideas.
We might be learning to keep an identification with who they were, who they are and how this speaks to others ( us) as the fundamental values of a group are conveyed through oral story.
It is interesting to me that The Earth is so core here, because in our readers that springs forward homogenized though it may be....the earth will be a theme 7.

So in my 1st grade we have this mentioned time called U Pick It. ( we have tummy vision too but it's entirely different) I have not altered this, though I was mandated to do so, in that the "new" structures did not use literature pieces presented by the teacher at all. No real shared reading besides some rather poor "passages" that intro these themes. Right now we are in "Let's Look Around" I have a giant box of books, each child chooses a book, we gather in a circle and I share ( ok I read it) the story. Each month I focus on story and book skills such as finding author, title, tracking...identification of genres, deciding if fiction or non-fiction and as time goes on this grows more complex. Right now children vote on a scale ( thumbs way up, to thumbs wayy down-hey it's a rubric) after the book to decide their likes/dislikes. In this way they begin their way into book reports. Essentially as we model the process of listening actively as well with questions, discussion, multiple requests for polite listening...ugh.. Engagement and authenticity are the heart of this. Teach Read Aloud along with many fine things has been hit hard in the Bush-capades years.(sorry)

The first book I want to recommend oddly was the first chosen. It is called Raven. Today my kids worked to make a response in art. A pacific Coast tale it's wonderful and the "stylization" of the art a real opportunity to talk about how art can evolve "norms" or styles by groups of artists. Not at all lost on a very good group of makers. My class is a maker group.

You no doubt know the book:

Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest by Gerald McDermott, Gerald McDermott (Illustrator)

Raven is really totally revealed here. If you go to that link you'll see how great the story really is.
I was delighted to start the month listening to the story of how light was tricked from the Sky Chief 's abode into the realm of "the people" by the raven. Outside our room we watch ravens, huge and mysterious one often when we walk in late after the school is tucked away, one raven openly talks to my class and we have spread some different seed for him. His fury with us after recess is often evident and his willingness to remain near us quite vexing. So in some ways my class already sees the raven as a trickster figure.

In the story something is mythologically "explained" that one might call a force or a gift of nature, in this case the sun. That process of turning to man for self referential explanation seems as old as man himself and is i gather biological. And it's something I am in a way revealing. We are bound in contexts. Our story, language, meanings express this. We are within our cultural values, we can look at this. We can experience thankfully outside our own set of glasses, if you will, through shared story.

The class found the story a good one giving it a total thumbs up. And a bit of clapping.
Unsatisfied I decided to try making the raven. Then we added in writing what we thought the story told about. That was cute. I'll try to place a bit of that ear. I used chalk with them. I don't know why...Just felt like it. Boy was that interesting.
A few thoughts on using chalk, it helps to have baby wipes hangy to clean up. They smudge it with their hand so it helps to practice this so they can gain awarenesses. It also is a challenge to deal with "building up" layers. But all in all I enjoyed the results. Later today after I return from a trip to Cal tech I'll put in what kids said in the story "retells." I'm still transcribing them!

The next book chosen was this one...so I'm taking from past writing. This was also very interesting for them. They loved the DRUM!

The People Shall Continue in Those We Call The Young

Do you think the Native American perspective on Thanksgiving would teach us all something?
Something to make us stronger?
Do you know this book?

The People Shall Continue (Paperback)
by Simon Ortiz (Author), Sharol Graves (Illustrator)

I wrote a little about it a year ago.....

I am a teacher, in 1st grade, that has used my copy of this book in November for 12 plus years in multiple grade settings and really love it.. It was sold by The Children's Press out of San Fran which put out excellent tales of bi-literacy and stories from minority and immigrant cultures. I hope they still are going strong.

In this story, one that stood the test of time for me, a kind of poetic Prufrock unfolds...a song really of Native American tradition in our world from then to now...a sad song...a flowing tale of bittersweet truths and perseverance....I usually read it with a child gently keeping a rhythm of a drum I was given a few years ago by a Native Sioux family.

What does it teach to make it worth the reading journey?

The relationship to the earth, nature, care of this relationship, responsibility to care for our children and their life spaces and places, the traditions of tribal members in the beginning prior to times when native cultures were literally pulled to pieces (tho that tone is not struck in this sensitive story), the arrival of the white men, the change this wrought, dissension, unrest, new religious practice, relating to the American government, scattering of tribal culture, reservation life, suffering of Native peoples, ultimate desire for unity and peace. It's really an elegy.

Why do I use it? I think this text alone is one of the most powerful ways to try to bring into the primary room a kind of talking back story, a kind of story like understanding about history and past and awareness that will take many years, many stories, many kinds of experiences to be able to fuller absorb and understand. It's a validation of something. It's a story of message, of empowering by acknowledging, it's a story of the kinds of things history can deny or do a great job of telling in another way.

I use it to bring to the story of the first Thanksgiving the story of the giant change these times signaled to Native American's...and to begin talk about indigenous peoples, immigration and all the complexities of societies and communities.

The tone set inside the text is unique...listen...

" But one day, something unusual began to happen.

Maybe there was a small change in the wind.
Maybe there was a shift in the stars.
Maybe it was a dream that someone dreamed.
Maybe it was the strange behavior of an animal.
The People thought and remembered,

"A long time ago, there were Yellow-skinned men
who came upon the ocean to the Western Coasts"
The People Thought and remembered,
"A long time ago , there were Red-haired men who came upon the ocean to the Eastern Coasts"
But these visitors had not stayed for long.
They met with some of the People
and soon they left upon the ocean for their homes.".......

You can see the way the story unfolds the perspectives of these events and allows a teacher to drop in the facts and the fictions, the then, now and the kinds of pieces needed to bring students into awareness of cultural perspectives. It's a treasure, hope you can find and use it with a child..

sunday as i rotated around and thought about care

Yes Sally, you are called upon to sign the petition so the kid's can have water

it's at hand

when you think about what you are
it's tough
belonging to anything that can't
follow it's charter
it's tough
doing it today, because it is this day
it's tough
holding water in your hand
it's tough
walking on water
who does that help?

now baby, it's in your hands now



i'm you

it was whispered in my ear
i'm you now
do you feel my pain
i'm you now
what i do i do for you
i'm you now
the lash hits my back
i'm you now
the hunger in your belly
I'm you now
the gaze upon the house on the hill
i'm you now
your anger, your life
i'm you now
your gifts and the blight
i'm you now
when you are cheated, abused
i'm you now
and when you carry my weak dark lies
i'm you now
cannot raise my hand in hate
i'm you now
cannot fail to see how weak
i'm you now
must see the glow of your being
i'm you now
look for the heart
i'm you now
my arms enfold us both
i'm you now
let me whisper in your ear
i'm you now



last first

no class ever went into a frenzy
to be the last one in their line
beating pushing frantically
to fall back to the one
that brings up the rear
they have no line ender notions
it's loathed

yet upon the importance of failures of our designing, of the cabooses
a last place people founded a belief system
with a non leader that said
while dressed in a discarded cloth
how you treat the least of us defines us
don't lead from celebrity and
never fail to be here now

so it is stated he lived it
depending upon the kindnesses of strangers
optimism in their offering
taking on their demons
a cloth to their brow, cool the fever
not consumed by his death
deeply aware of the money changers

a teacher and a preacher
saying that his love was a beautiful stinking weed
that grew into a kings garden
choking away the selectively bred
a metaphor maker
clear in the message of care for others
non accumulation of wealth as wealth

teaching about this
your simple grandmother that freezes her
bananas in the fridge
gives you her life meaning in oral stories
bandages and nurses her lifetime
serving others to fulfill herself
saying this is really living our purposes here

a last place finisher in a rat race
penniless buried on borrowed time
lived life, her brisket life well
she read, loved, tried, cared for me, this drives the now
in the moments she touched the face of her god
by baking a pie of sweet potatoes

and inviting you to the table



heal me


if you cannot feel or care
with me
can you heal me

if the last become first
in the life of this child
are you there

if you had everything perfection
would you give it away
to know its loss

what is love
without the body to carry it
and thus be redeemed

if a love made me not feel this teachers pain
so sharply
could this lift us

or would it be felt
in its rejection
when cruelly realized as nothing changes

bliss and pain came
as i asked again
can you heal me


tend the sick, clothe the poor, feed the hungry

yeah hard words to believe in
harder still for anyone to follow
resisted by titans and totalitarians, by titled and cameoed
photo opted and photo shopped.

but bringing a case of waters or some nice coloring books
to a classroom of kids
a nice mac to allow them to talk to the world
it doesn't spring from word to deed

easily and freely in this world
of critical scientific reason
it takes something more
you have to care enough to give.


own nothing, give it away

giving a lot here to the landlady
for her investments she'd like some understanding
it's been a real hard few months

we got to talking about it when the toilet blew
and it was time to negotiate the fix
not that she would talk about my teaching, life

her mind is filled with her money
her expectations for it, her investing
as Thoreau said her house our home owns her

i just enjoy it as i pay the rent
and consider ways we lose ourselves
as we grow into adults that have too much

that we can't see the rest at all
but its okay because it's not a lost or even bad thing
she's just struggling to figure things out like me

and she's been fair enough
and helpful enough this wasn't fair to her
it was just the way to a poem




life of service

it's a little hard to know
what that means now
...................... or what means more
the teacher with the test score
and class, my service...

or that day when old thin drunk
joe, who I once long passed befriended on the bus,
in morgantown west virginia
and down by the square.
he was so proud of me
for designing a county seal
he got a ride from a buddy
and drove up on our hill
bringing to me an enormous roll of blank newsprint
that had been in his tiny room
he rented it for $25 a month
i paid that rent for him once
helped him just a little with a sandwich
he'd have a little thing he found for me in return
we liked to talk
but he was a drunk, not that i saw that
i never did except in his thinness
weighing just maybe 100 pounds at 6 feet
he died shortly after
bringing me that paper to draw on
he was partly polish
he lived a hard life
was a good guy to talk to
about anything
listened, my friend
his brother and i attended the memorial we both held
in our loss

there was a lot of
joes, another kind of ordinary joe stayed with
me on a night of news and police helicopters over a classroom where i taught his boys
one named Canaan with a K
he married a gal 20 years or more his junior
nice, nice gal, called me in the hospital
he was from virginia, saw her from his truck out here
and it stuck
had a passel of kids that had a dad old man
and a lovely mom medicating away being black
poor and stuck in poverty
one son was angry,
two were calm and trying to love everyone
as their Dad showed them to do
he stayed with me that night just to protect me
bombs were being taken from the hood
a house or two away was hot
enough to blow several city blocks the DA said later
FBI removed it

So we sat, he looked so thin, thin as you get
so sick he had no money
he had no care
until a few weeks later the cancer in his lungs and the rest
of his body killed him
Robert Yarborough Sr. was gone
one of his last acts as a man was one of kindness
to watch over me
in that night of crime
as i unknowingly was saying goodbye

to his days with us
in my days of service
i served many
but the acts of care and love that came to me
exceeded anything i ever did
i've known us at our moments of true humanity
of a kind of beauty
hard to convey the silent testimony of these moments


water

after working 4 years in a portable with no water
while the big building had it
i decided resenting the incivility
of teachers who had it and didn't allow hand washing anyway of their students
or who yelled and nit picked my kids
when I 'd be daring and send some over to go by their door noisily on the long
long walk in to wash their hands
screaming at me a game to them,
(as they do/did 6 year olds)
i got off my can and wrote a petition
and activated parents
risking my husband's job
(he worked in that school district and that's how they are)
at the other schools in the district where this was also going on they
got the water in the 1st year
(those parents nearer the base were whiter)
so we sat in our 8 rooms waterless 3 years waiting
someone to prioritize water for kids
not even drinks
and so in desperation i spent and spent on wipes, bottled water and on and on
this teacher that has "a rogue bad attitude"
trying to deal
until we got a petition
and teacher sally stopped me
she did not want to advocate for her class
"i've never done anything like this, never signed a petition,"
she said angrily,
"I'm a Christian."
i politely explained she should consider if her leader
her christ, if he would not want for a child
water
it would seem he'd demand at the least a petition she sign
for membership in the club
and a place to stand up was his real "message" always
he died standing
she was so angry about that news she ever after
then attacked me as a teacher personally
as if i lost my abilities
to teach suddenly, awakening her
to the good news of advocacy
and care
really pissed her off
she signed
and really treated me like hell
for that ever after especially on the grapevine

we got the water in a day


cause we had to get up


its way past time to put some values and beliefs into action and turn on the water of learning in a place with bad food, mandated pulp, narrowed and invisible science, math and a bunch of goofing tactics....at a high cost to the thirst that should be on everyones mind