Friday, July 29, 2011
No time for much writing; my granddaughter Ingrid is with us, and we received the call earlier from her Papa that she has a new baby sister, Imogene. At 5 pounds, 11 ounces & 18 inches, she must look like her mother, tall & slim. We're happy all is well, in fact, we're ecstatic! It's a lovely day when a baby arrives in this world. We'll take Ingrid in to see her new baby sister this evening. It will be interesting to see what she thinks.
Time to make some phone calls!
Friday, July 29, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
The Baby's Coming!
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Our third grandchild will be arriving soon. I couldn't help but write about it.
The Baby’s Coming!
It almost is the day that
the baby’s coming!
I need to change the appointment,
because the baby’s coming!
I haven’t done the laundry either;
the baby’s coming!
Forget the dusting and the scrubbing;
the baby’s coming!
I’ll have to cook that chicken, but
the baby’s coming!
Maybe I’ll get up early to exercise;
did I tell you the baby’s coming?
I’d like to sit and rest to get ready for
the baby’s coming!
I want to tell my daughter that I’m thrilled
her baby’s coming!
And give my son-in-law a hug;
his baby’s coming.
We’ll play with older sister because
the baby’s coming!
It’s just the most wonderful thing that
the baby’s coming!
I’ll tell you more about it after I see
this baby coming!
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Early Morning Gift
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
 |
| sunrise - July 26, 2011 |
I’ve spent a lot of time this summer taking photos of sunsets, here at home & with my grandson at the beach. Whenever we’re going somewhere and it’s time for the sun to set, I take the camera. In the Rockies with the mountains to the west, the sunsets are indeed amazing.
Yesterday morning I was up almost before the robins’ chirps, carried my coffee to the patio, and sat to watch the sky, light just arriving. We live by a park and the backyard faces east, and there’s always a clear view that way, of sunrises, moonrises, etc.
There is nothing like the gift of being alone for a while, contemplating so many ideas that roam around in my mind, taking them out one by one to examine them as with a magnifying glass, satisfying myself that each idea will be explored in its time, perhaps only a small chunk, until resolution. As minutes rolled by, the sky grew lighter, a summer spread of clouds appeared in the east, flowing up above the horizon where the sun was to appear. These clouds, like stretched cotton balls with a hint of lace at the edges, seemed only there to break the image of a clear sky. They were first gray with a hint of pink, and then the mixing colors turned the sky lavender. The sun was on its way, I could tell. Among the things on my mind, this moment carried me far back to people who greeted the sun with gratitude, appreciating that this precious thing had returned again. No longer do those in my culture celebrate the sun’s rising, but at this moment, I did send my own little message of thankfulness, for this beautiful sight at least, for the blessings of the day to come, the happy moments of my life and all that it encompasses. The sky’s lavender faded, and the sun’s rays blew over the horizon, shooting up into the clouds, brightening now into gold. The heat of the day began, and I turned into the house to start breakfast and call ‘good morning’ to my husband.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Lots of People Write About Shoes
One of the pleasures of teaching writing is finding satisfying lessons that give writers ideas to play around with in their writers notebooks. In addition to the bone, heart or hand lesson that Ruth and Stacey at Two Writing Teachers and Ruth Ayres Writes have written about in different posts, some beginning lessons can be more specific. In workshop, although I offer the ideas, they still remain a choice, but I do ask students to jot down some ideas about the topic that would help them return to it if desired. The topics presented help students jumpstart their memories of things important in their pasts, like particular events connected to food, travel, siblings, birthdays, etc. Sometimes in class, we just have conversations in order to share favorite memories, and then I might send students off to record what the talk helped them remember that was important. And other times I’ve collected prose and poetry pieces to share about a topic that might spark an idea. One of those topics I’ve found of continuing interest for students is shoes. Through the years, I’ve managed to collect a few pieces about shoes, and students always seemed to have a personal story to tell about shoes in their lives.
Here are some poems I’ve collected about shoes and the links or directions for finding:
“Ode to Pablo’s Tennis Shoes” ~Gary Soto
“Shoes” ~Cynthia Rylant from Something Permanent by Rylant and Walker Evans
“Johnny Laces Up His Red Shoes” ~Cornelius Edy
“The Need for Shoes” ~Molly Bendall
“New Shoes” ~Linda Hogan from Earth power coming : short fiction in native American
literature Simon J. Ortiz, ed.
“Bound Feet” ~Janet S. Wong, from Good Luck Gold and Other Poems
And here is my own memory:
There was a lovely pair of red shoes that I spied in a shop window, red flats that would make me a star to others, and let them know that I was a grown-up girl, ready to give up the socks and tie shoes I had worn almost all my grade school years. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, but every time we went into the big town near the little town where I lived, I managed to walk by this store for a peek in the window. These weren’t the times when children begged and begged until their parents bought what they wanted. Only three times during the year did I receive things: Christmas, my birthday, and the beginning of school. It was not even near the time for any of those days when I saw the red shoes. I didn’t say anything to family about the shoes, but I kept a diary and a sketchbook as I grew up, and I wrote about them, along with sketching them. When I sketched, I put them on a young girl and dressed her up quite well! I sketched her with the shoes more than one time, and my mother must have seen the pictures. One day, when I opened my closet, there, along with my pair of brown tie shoes, sat the red ones. I turned around and there was my mother, watching. I believe her smile was as big as mine. The shoes were such a surprise because I hadn’t even realized that anyone had noticed how much I had wished for them. I remember wearing them and wearing them. They were just perfect, although I did get a few blisters from all the wearing, and parts of my feet turned red for a while from the dye. I didn’t care; I had my grown-up red shoes!
Monday, July 25, 2011
Old TVs and Teaching
Monday, July 25, 2011
This past week we had a wonderful guest, a friend from college. We keep in touch and see each other every few years. She is from Boston, and along with visiting her in Boston with my husband, I’ve been lucky enough to see her also when I traveled there with students. We spent the past four days visiting, catching up, sharing details about our own children and their spouses, and much about our grandchildren. Her oldest is now in college while mine is just finishing elementary school. It was great to re-connect and to have so many hours of talk, about old times we shared and some things I didn’t know she had accomplished in her career, about today’s times, and what is going on right now.
One funny story my friend told happened last year when she called a tech person to her house to help her connect the black box to her old TV so it could convert from analog to digital feeds. She said that he kept turning her TV off and on, off and on, and finally said he thought it was broken. She told him to just turn it on and wait a minute to give it time to warm up. He looked at her quizzically, not sure what she meant. He’d never heard the term, warming up. She did some quick calculations and realized that her TV was possibly older than this young man, and had never seen anything that wasn’t an immediate turn-on. We laughed and talked about some other things where this might possibly apply.
Since then, I’ve been wondering if I use any words in the classroom when students have no idea what I’m referring to? Could it be that connecting with certain old things metaphorically is so out of date that students today would have to do some quick research in order to understand, or need some quick explanation? It may be important as a teacher to understand that if one is a generation or more older than students, or even some colleagues, conversation can grow to be awkward sometimes. It’s like thinking about Clark Kent, and wondering where he might change into Superman when all the pay phone boxes have disappeared. What in our world will he do? Or, in the song “The Telephone Hour” from the musical “Bye, Bye Birdie” some of the lines wouldn’t make sense, except that because they are brief enough, I suppose today they could be sent in a text. The song can be found here. Does “pinning” still happen? Does anyone “go steady” today? I believe my middle school students just say “going with”. One final example concerns another form of communication, slow mail. From my earliest teen-age days, I remember a Pat Boone song, “Love Letters In The Sand”. Has someone already written a song about heartache from a tweet? I’m not sure, but when we teach about metaphor in our writing lessons, perhaps we should begin to find new connections for student lives today. I hope readers will think of other examples.
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