Weekend Work List

 

“I woke up this morning, started going, and never stopped,” Mark observed last night. It was accurate and I suspect he will have the same observation tonight. We have been doing Yard Work. And I can’t tell that I’ve made dent in the overall appearance of the yard. Because of this feeling of futility, I made a list. Starting at 6:30 AM on Saturday, when the cat woke us up, I have:

·         Cleaned the living room and bedroom

·         Shopped the farmer’s market

·         Spent two hours in the library for Government Corner, where I talked to three people

·         Folded laundry

·         Planted the vines

·         Planted some lettuce and bean and herb seed

·         Moved the orange mint

·         Watered all of the starts

·         Rabbit fenced a garden bed

·         Cleaned up the strawberries

·         Cleaned the coop, the hutch, and the back forty pool

·         Pulled moss off of the shed roof—that is obvious

·         Moved a pile of bamboo to the front of the house next door and posted a Free sign on Facebook

·         Cleaned up the greenhouse

·         Painted some garden signs

·         Walked to the top of Bald Hill this morning while it was cool

·         Checked the home irrigation system and nothing exploded!

·         Cleaned up the front garden bed of spent bulbs

·         Trimmed the side barrels

·         Created a huge pile of green trimmings in the compost area

I think, next weekend, I just want to lay around, talk with people, and eat.

Small Steps

 

                We all know: it’s been a rough few years. Pandemic responses, growing inequality, climate change, school classroom chaos…the list goes on. Many of us feel like we are fighting all the time on all fronts, and losing.  I certainly do. The conversations at my house often spiral into despair. What do we do in the face of so much Work To Be Done?

                Sunday night, I went on my school email to post a note about the Great Tomato Giveaway. There was a chat from a ninth grader. I succumbed and opened it. “Hey,” it read, “we made a compost container at the track meeting today.” Complete with a photo of a small mound of orange and banana peals.

                Small steps.

Red for Ed.

 

Red for Ed.

I am wearing my red converse sneakers, given as a birthday present when Ellie was a ninth grader, before she interviewed Noam Chomsky for her Pure Dissidence  underground school newspaper, back in the Old CHS, where my room had huge windows that opened, wood trim everywhere and not one, but two, real slate chalkboards. It might have been 2003.

My red sneakers are beat, battered, and frayed. They have walked thousands of miles, mostly around classrooms, nudging and encouraging writing and reading and focus. They have walked down empty hallways, hours after school let out for the day. They have walked back and forth from my house to school, day in, day out. I have worn them to graduation several times, where they peaked from beneath my black robes, suggesting that I am not formally dressed for the occasion, while we watch students walk across the stage. We cheer—some we always knew would go far; some we are surprised to see. The cycles and circles of our lives in education. They show their wear.

These red sneakers look like teachers on the second to the last staff meeting of the year. Tired. Frayed. But still in the game for one last push. They sag a bit in their chairs, drift off, dream of summer. Of bare feet, shoes resting by the door. After the meeting, we head back to our rooms where the late afternoon spring sunshine filters through our windows, to be sure that we are, if nothing else, Ready for Tomorrow.

Red sneakers evoke the Beat Poets, in all of the variations of their name. There is the beat of feet, walking through life; the Beatitudes of praise that we hear when we least expect it; Being beaten down, but not out. Still in the game.  As Jack Kerouac would say: Be in love with your life. It’s all you are going to get.

Red for Ed.