count and non-count

The days are simply whooshing past me at present; filled with grammar reviews, curriculum plotting, projects with my darling niecelet, family dinners and exploring my new 'hood.

 Happy breakfast of polenta & 'shrooms.

Happy cousins, apres dinner.

warriors & words

Have been pondering strong women lately.  Have so many among my acquaintance to admire; whether for their mad mothering skills or kick-ass career maneuverings or walking quietly through chemo.  Their strength is worth of some kind of awe.  Also stand amazed at my gentle teens who have chosen to fly far away from home, around the globe, to study courses in a second or third language.  Brave souls. 

If I were not so tired, I would write a clever tie-in between that and the war poetry which I've chosen for today's reading, but I will leave that to the reader's brain power.  It has something to do with being a warrior:  

[wawr-ee-er, noun] a person who shows or has shown great vigor and/or courage.

When the war is over
We will be proud of course the air will be
Good for breathing at last
The water will have been improved the salmon
And the silence of heaven will migrate more perfectly
The dead will think the living are worth it we will know
Who we are
And we will all enlist again

"When the War is Over" by W.S. Merwin, from The Lice.

 There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

~Sara Teasdale

And in a completely random segue, today is 11/11/11!  Must be auspicious for something!

beaches of Normandy

As the students have tomorrow off for Veteran's Day, we spent part of the class period reading a Pyle essay on the carnage on Normandy.  The students were most pleased that they can all now pronounce 'beach' in the proper English way.

After class, I went for a stress-reducing walk (supposedly our only day of sunshine in the next stretch) along my beach.   With the words from the essay rumbling around in my brain, the juxtaposition between them and the scene in front of me was astounding.

"The wreckage was vast and startling.  The awful waste and destruction of war, even aside from the loss of human life, has always been one of its outstanding features to those who are in it.  Anything and everything is expendable.  And we did expend on our beachhead in Normandy during those first few hours."

"But there was another and more human litter.  It extended in a thin little line, just like a high-water mark, for miles along the beach.  This was the strewn personal gear, gear that would never be needed again by those who fought and died to give us entrance into Europe."

(Both excerpts from Ernie Pyle's On the Road to Berlin.)

 

Happy Veteran's Day to any and all who served.

mini-delights

 While babysitting last Friday, got to make Shrinky Dinks, which I hadn't done in decades.    We had a fine selection of crabs, mermaids, turtles and seaweed to colour.  Here, we are waiting all agog to see if they will really curl up, shrink and flatten out.

Success!

Some random shots of downtown Poulsbo.  I picked an awful month to cut out sugar, moving this close to a divine Norwegian Bakery.   But all I did, this time, was take longing photos of all that butter fat goodness.

The little black blob causing the ripples was a frolicking seal.

Yes!  That is a pool of browned butter with some tasty butternut lasagna and crisped sage leaves.

And a rather divine piece of chocolate torte...yes, the sugar fast was broken for this one meal.

Finished grading papers tonight and thought it would be nice to crawl into bed with an interesting read, but Bogart has preempted the cosy spot.

adventures in teaching

I love me some technology.  Let me just say that at the beginning of this entry.  However, today, it proved to be most frustrating.  I arrived early  at school this morning to avoid such irritations, but as my laptop is still sick, I left it at home....not realizing that all my passwords are automatic and I don't know any of them.

And I had given email assignments to all my students for an in-class presentation on their favorite local place.

And then, when I went to the library to use their computers to print out some material--one computer froze and the other refused to print.

Fortunately, the copier was behaving.

We innovated in class--many of the students had their laptops, so we jury-rigged one to the projector and voila!  Photos galore.

We got hysterically derailed with one student having difficulty talking about his favorite 'beach'.  He kept using a short vowel sound.  One thing great about seniors is they have the maturity to make that into an amusing moment.

Had a fun and productive day.  What could be a better thing?

eulogy

Kenneth Dull was my teacher from 1986-88.  (Do not care how old one becomes, it still feels odd to call high school teachers by their first names.)  He brought such zest and creativity to each classroom. 

In U.S. History, he divided us into delegates from the original colonies and we had to debate and write a constitution of our own.

He also taped (yes, children, this was the era of video tapes) the opening segment of GMA and showed it to us each day; prying open our little teenaged minds and showing us a bigger world.

For Washington State History, he gave us each a county to research;  I thought of that as I recently moved back to this region, but sadly have lost my fine folder on Island County. 

He devoted months of his time in coaching our small drama group through a melodrama, a Christmas play, culminating with a fine production of Wilde's Earnest.

ASB was also a place where he poured hours of his time/energy into the myriad activities that that encompasses.

Am not sure where Patrick McManus fit into our curriculum, but he would read frequently from these books until we were all crying with laughter.

Beyond all of the great high school memories I have of Mr. Dull's classes, the greatest gift he gave was that he was still interested in his students (a trait which many of my teachers from the Columbia era share).  We had just chatted last week about Mt. Rainier; he loved the photos I would take of the mountain from my balcony in Seattle and he would tell more mountain-climbing tales.

It is only now that I've accumulated fifteen years of teaching experience, that I realize what a marvelous and creative energy he gave to all of us.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Dull.  The earth is a better place because you were here.

strung out to dry

 
Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

by Barbara Crooker

Do not remember if I have posted this poem before; it was shared with me earlier this year and it seems apropos as yet another death notice drifted into my inbox.  One of my high school teachers suddenly died this week.   This is the third unexpected death in six weeks in my realm of friends.  Hope that completes the axiom that bad things come in threes.

I will write a proper eulogy later; still searching for the words to share. 

All Saints.  All Souls.