Be n Love With Yr Life-- Dec. 1st until Solstice

I love walking home in twilight, under a wide, high cloud sky, watching all of the lights come on in and around houses.

Be in love with your life:

Teaching Green Club how to write an email to an elected official, using Sara Acres Gelser Blouin as my source.

Be in love with yr life: latkes cooked in saflower oil for extra crispy Ness.

Be in love with yr life: local veg for dinner. Beans, carrots, onion, celery, tomatoes, cornmeal, and, yes, garden zucchini.

Be in love with yr life: Some cold, damp days, Mr Beezhold decides that, really, the hutch is the best place to be. Especially if there is an apple quartered just for him in there.

Be in love with yr life: Therapy hand putty. After two broken arms in four years, I have not one, not two, but three containers of it. They sit on my desk at school. Every day, in every class, a couple of kids snag them, roll long logs, create spirals, shape ramps for hot wheels, make art, and just fondle the stuff during class. And then, it comes back to my desk for the next round.

Be in love with yr life: Watching the Forestry class take out the bushy, falling over into the garden trees that will be replaced by a Fall Fruit Orchard in the CHS garden.

Be in love with yr life:

It is raining outside, cold, dark rain. Inside, the twinkle lights dispel the gloom, bean plants line the windows, ninth graders are bent over papers and chromebooks, encountering Alan Ginsberg and the Witicha Vortex Sutra. The task begins with looking up five people Ginsberg calls upon to help him. This is a bit of a teacher dilemma....one person he calls upon for help appears on Wikipedia naked and covered in ashes. Do I call attention to him by telling the students to not go there? Do I remind them to Be Mature? Or do I figure, with at least twenty people to choose from the odds are low that someone will stumble across him?

We are about 15 minutes into the task when four girls gasp, laugh in delight and horror, and slide to the floor. They found him.

Be in love with yr life: HOT WATER! Mark is taking a shower.

Be in Love with yr Life: Lucia Day in the rain...cocoa, buns, a dog, and brave friends who gather despite the weather.

Be in Love with yr Life: I live with a Stud Muffin in a sweater vest, who wanders around creating vocal bass riffs on funky songs from the 1970s.

Be in Love with yr Life: if you make one pie shell, you might as well make two, and use up the cherries in the freezer.

Be in Love with yr Life: browsing the public library.

Be in Love with yr life: walking to the end of the street to buy our tree from the boy scouts and walking it home.

Be in Love with yr Life: Yule begins on the afternoon that student interactions end.

Be in Love with yr Life: Chard on a sunny Friday afternoon. And then, we went for a walk. Snow covered Cascade mountains against the high clouds and almost full moon rise while the sun went down. We live in a beautiful world.

Be in Love with yr Life: Saturday...Kayli has brought in 78 twigs since November 18th.

Sunday: newspapers, tea, toast, and birds on the feeder outside the window.

Be in Love with yr Life: The moment when the City recorder pauses, then says, "All councilors present" and the meeting begins. I love democracy.

Be in Love with yr Life: The Light begins to return on Tuesday.

8Laurie Kaptur Chaplen, Stewart Wershow and 6 others