Summer Solstice

 

We celebrated the Summer Solstice well this year.  Winter Solstice we have had down for many years, but the summer has been more challenging. Winter is about turning inward, reflection, and hoping for more light. Summer should be moving outward, growing in the sunlight, and building towards the harvest.

On Saturday morning, we cleaned the house, putting our space back in order. Laundry flapped on the line; Mark cleaned the bathroom; I scrubbed the kitchen sink and hauled some notebooks up into the attic because you never know when you will need your 2006-2007 school year planners. We returned the chicken feed to the basement and swept the back stairs.  I was even able to hang the huge sun mask that has been over my classroom desk for many years; it now graces the high point in the dining room. While we were cleaning, I watered the back garden and the front bed under the persimmon tree. After we were done inside, Mark mowed the yard with the electric mower that he repaired because it is such a tidy cut and it collects all of the mulch. We were ready for guests. We had a potluck on Saturday evening, bringing people together over good food. Friends spread out over tables in the back yard and voices rose to the sky. Positive voices, telling stories and laughing, building community, solving the problems of the world. The light lingered for hours, finally fading to a quarter moon rising while Mark washed dishes and I brought in the tables and chairs.

On Sunday, we took the bus to the coast and wandered around Newport for the day. We listened to sea lions barking, walked along the tidal mud flats where the river meets the sea, picked up trash from the dunes, and wandered down the beach to lunch outside. Fish and chips eaten in the shade while a small dog watched—very politely—and the birds observed every French fry with greedy eyes. The cashier in the local co-op wished us a Happy Solstice when we stopped in to buy an apples and some fizzy water in the late afternoon. We sat in the sand to read for a while and were buffeted by sun and wind all day long. It was glorious.

Sunday night, we set up a fire in the back garden after dinner. Fire swirled in the chiminea while I pulled the tarot card for the next six weeks – The Wheel of Fortune—and Mark considered what he was grateful for that day. All around us, the garden plants were growing, reaching towards the sun, at peak explosion before they begin to set fruit in the next few weeks. Rustles in the night. Maybe plants. Maybe cats. Who knows. We read, watched the flames, and considered this moment of the year, full of light, and love, and possibility.

Free Piles

 

                I have always been a fan of the Free pile. I can’t walk by one without peering in, rummaging around, evaluating. You never know. In fact, most of my classroom supplies came from free piles. So, last Monday, as I was clearing out my space, I pulled a table from the staff room and began piling stuff on it. Art supplies. Props.  Yarn and knitting needles. A very fluffy black and pink prom dress (a couple of boys had to try it on). The electric kettle and a glass tea pot….My neighbor, who was also clearing out, added some games and play dough, but most of it was mine. Students swarmed over it. Items disappeared rapidly. It was amazing.

                Then, something else happened. I began to hear where the items had landed. One girl was thrilled to find the oil pastels because she wanted to try them out over the summer. Another found the Juliet dagger (plastic, retractable, a perfect prop of the end of the play). The wooden swords went down the hall. The skulls became a prop in a final video, and then went into a backpack. The unbelievably ugly Christmas t shirt showed up the next day on one of my most creative dressers, complete with the required furry tail attached to the belt. Everything that I had collected was moving on, finding a new home.  High school may be the perfect place for a Free Pile. By Friday, all that was left was a very ugly polyester green jacket, the turn in basket, and some knitting notions. Even high school students have standards.

                My books joined the table on Tuesday. During slow days last winter, I pulled out the few I wanted to keep, then I told Green Club they could sort through them and take books home. For the last two weeks, books have been leaving by the armful. Two boys stayed in my room after I left for a meeting one afternoon and left gaping holes in the science fiction shelves. My OSU student observer took several boxes that would work for middle school. And there were still piles of good books, so we carried them out into the hall and lined them up on the second table. Again—swarms of students, slowly picking through the collection. I bribed my juniors with five extra credit points on their final to drop an armful into their local little free library.  By Friday, I was down eighty percent, with some good reads left on the table. I left some for summer school and bagged the rest up.

                Friday afternoon, I took the last two bags of books on my bike downtown. The Rotary club has transformed some of our old trash containers into little free libraries-- which is a cool idea, but little libraries need love and decent books. They take more effort than you would think. Most of them are empty and a bit dirty. I looked around, found one by a coffee shop window, and pulled my bike over. Totally empty. Kneeling down, I loaded it up with books, tucked the canvas bags into my bike basket, and headed off. When I glanced back, two guys who had been waiting in line had exchanged glances, moved over, and opened the door.       

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Graduation Speeches

 

                Graduation speeches…although I have never really wanted to stand before thousands of people and address the graduating class, I have pondered what I might tell them, given the chance.  This might have been the hardest year of all. Even the principal, known for nailing his speech every year, struggled. How do we bring a note of hope in this difficult time?

                When I first started teaching, I thought a great deal about the choices we make in adolescence that ripple through our lives.  Maybe it was because I had just come off years of working with ELL students and people working on their GEDs. One night, one of my best GED students mused on the years he lost to drugs, sleeping outside, and what a wonder it was that he still had his brain when he returned to the working world. We both knew what could have happened.  I had friends who had children early and were moving into a freer time as those children grew up and graduated. So, I thought, choosing wisely was important.  This is not wrong, but outside forces loom larger to me now. We can choose “correctly” and still struggle because of actions beyond our control.

                And so, I thought about shifting to the idea of recycling. Recycling alone will not save the planet; we know that there are warehouses full of “recycling” waiting for a market and, for many years, we shipped trash to China. But, I do believe that the practice of recycling can shift our thinking in profound ways. When you have to stop and consider where every item you throw away goes, it slows you down. Can I get a couple more months out of those shoes? Probably (then suddenly, no, they are leaking…) What do I do with this?  Can I repurpose it? Repair it? Where did all of these binders come from?!   Do I really NEED that item, or do I just want it? When we get to the needs vs. wants question, we have hit the crux of a life well lived. What do we need to be well? What do we think we want to be well? Are they the same? How do we get to a place where everyone has what they need before we work on what we all want?  

                I have always believed that we should do work that we love. Work that feels meaningful and, in a quiet way, world changing. That can be just about anything, really. There is as much worth in being a deli clerk, handing over the 2/3 of a pound of thin sliced roast beast to a person with a smile as solving for world hunger. It’s just smaller. I have always been blessed with work I love—or, if I needed to do something less positive to me, the knowledge that I am working towards a change in occupation. I want to encourage everyone to love their work, but I wonder if that is possible. It’s hard to put a positive spin on  work life these days.

                I have been teaching people to read for thirty five years. It took me some years to come to this occupation but I knew, in second grade, that this is what I wanted to do. Because, as Tim O’Brien and The Things They Carried, his best novel about war, and friendship, courage, and the nature of story says,  In the end, stories can save us. They allow us to keep the dead—and missing-- alive through our memories: hear each other’s pain and joy through a true telling of past actions (Norman Bowker commits suicide, remember, because no one listens to his stories): help us make sense of our world. Your life, in a story, is both unique and universal. Maybe I need to circle back to the seven year old in the basement, beside her chalk easel, teaching her dolls to read on a winter afternoon, and, as all teachers do point you to the information  and allow you encounter  it yourself. Because that is how we learn. Four words, people. Shortest graduation speech on record.

“Stories can save us.”