Thanks

 

November, the time for bringing in the harvest and giving thanks for making through another year with provisions for the winter. And I have been thankful, lately, in many aspects of my life. More to come, each day this week.

1.       I am deeply thankful to be able to browse the public library once again, to haul home a stack of books that I stumble upon while wandering through the stacks. I will never take browsing for granted again.

2.       I am thankful for ninth graders who are returning to “normal” after a year and a half of fear, restraint, and silence. They are sharing cookies before class, laughing at each other’s jokes, and rocking pink powderpuff football shirts.

3.      

I am, as always, thankful for the people who grow our food—beans and grains, winter greens and squashes.

4.       I am thankful for leaves and cornstalks which pile onto my garden beds and become living soil by spring planting time.

 

Leaf Moving

  

              Last weekend was glorious—dry, sunny, and bright. When I came home from school of Friday afternoon, after two hours on the Spartan Garden blackberry bramble, our neighbor had lined up all of his leaves from the linden trees in a neat windrow along the road. Leaf Time! We gathered our tools—wheelbarrow, shovel, rake—and began moving leaves until dark. The next morning, we looked at the leaf pile, the back yard, and the housework list. I crossed off everything inside and we moved outward. Mark shifted leaves. I cleaned out beds. He chopped up compost. I pruned grape vines. Then we ate lunch and went back outside. Right before dark, we washed and hung the last storm window. The yard and garden were snug for the winter. The next day, we went for a long walk at Finley Wildlife Refuge, basking in the late fall sun while eating a picnic. We watched white swans take off against the blue sky when a coyote crept up on them. In the late afternoon, we carved our pumpkins to protect the house and gardens on Halloween night, then came inside for lasagna and apple pie by the fire. It was a lovely weekend.

 

               This weekend, the clouds have come in, so we did all of the housecleaning we avoided last week. Mark cleaned out the fridge. I washed the floors. We folded the last of the laundry drying in the living room, put away all of the small objects that tend to float towards the bench in the living room, and watered all of the plants.  The house is clean and tidy. Tonight, we may have another fire and smores while we read The Economist and begin knitting the purple sweater vest I have been planning to clear out my yarn stash. Winter is coming.

The Second Coming

      

          I have been haunted by “The Second Coming,” written by William Butler Yeats at the beginning of the last century, for a week. In so many ways, it feels, “the centre cannot hold” in 2021. Politically, the gyre widens every day—we have lost the sense that we are all pulling for the same ideals, even if we do not agree on the paths to get there. The worse are full of passionate intensity, the centre is missing. The climate crisis continues to grow. The pandemic is not over; we have not begun to reckon with the fall out economically or socially while we argue over masks and vaccinations. The words I hear at school echo this falling apart—students cannot regulate themselves, children are feral after two years at home, away from the order of the classroom. Mere anarchy.

                 This afternoon, I left the house, stepping into a wild and windy afternoon. There had been one downpour. Clouds suggested that another might be on the way. I tucked my poncho into my bag. The sky was huge and grey, ocean driven clouds. The streets were slippery with fallen leaves. It all swirled around me as I began to walk, caught up in the whirling world, my mind matching the air around me. Then, the walk settled in. The rhythm of my steps, matching the beat of my heart. My mind followed my feet, settling down. Where is my center—the center I can hold onto? My feet. The earth. The cycle of the seasons, thinking about how the leaves flying around my head would soon settle onto my garden beds, break down, become next season’s greens and tomatoes.  How do I bring this center into the widening gyre of the world, as I am called to do, every day, in the classroom? Because the poem shifts, in the second stanza, towards a Second Coming, perhaps, out of all of this violence, a second chance to do thing correctly, to have a second birth in Bethlehem, a second savior that just might, this time, pull the world out of chaos? Surely, something good must come out of this?

     Yeats, like me, is not sure—the monster, slouching towards us, feels pitiless and violent, hot and dry as the sun or a wildfire. Darkness follows it. Hope is not a guarantee. It was not in 1919. For those of us trying to hold the center, on the front lines of this anarchy, it is not in 2021.

 

Be kind.

 

The Second Coming 

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

 

Classroom Numbers

 

I have been trying to figure out how to explain or describe the amount of extra energy my job is taking this year. This is one class, by the numbers. They don’t really like to read or write the assigned work, although one loves to write confessional poetry and they all love to read text messages on their phones, but that’s not reading. There are about 21 kids in class.

·         1 kid who wafted through before class, to check out the vibe, so that he might come to class at some unknown time.

·         2 kids who needed to discuss plans to deal with stress if they need to leave class because of an incident on Friday.

·         Several girls peacefully eating breakfast—juice and a sticky roll.

·         1 student in a lovely velour jacket, who decided to come to class for the first time in two weeks. He had read ahead, so it could be worse.

·         1 student who is being observed by admin because of anger issues in class. He left for a long pep talk in the hall.

·         2 kids whose masks “slip off” their noses all the time, but who put them back up if I look at them.

·         2 or 3 kids who like the mask beard look and argue about masks.

·         1 couple who like to sit very close together—I told them last week they cannot hold hands in class.

·         2 kids feeling guilty about being butts on Friday.

·         2 kids NOT feeling guilty at all about Friday.

·         2 kids who have to leave class because of anxiety—one who talked to me before class, the other who talked to me weeks ago.

·         2 kids who have to slip out for medication during class. They are subtle.

·         1 kid who shows up with his mother an hour into class. Mom has no pass, so I send her back downstairs. Really, we should not have any one in the school right now.

·         1 mom who come back with the principal, who proceeds to lurk outside my room for the last twenty minutes of class.

Not all of my classes are this weird, but all of my classes have very high levels of anxiety, low turn in rates, and an underlying feeling of tension as well as exhaustion. We shine some days, but it is hard.

Council Shawls

         

I have a confession—I have been knitting during council meetings for months now. I started when we were receiving Covid updates at the beginning of the pandemic, because we were off camera and no one could see that I was working away on my sweater jacket under my desk. When we came back on camera I was good for a while, just doodling on my notes, but….my new shawl was calling to be finished and I wanted to see how the final design would emerge; I broke it out at a work session.  We were looking at slides, which are always too small for me to read anyways, so….

I have finished two shawls.

I have long known that knitting, doodling, playing with the putty they give you to strengthen your hands after an injury, all helps people focus. I have never stopped a student from knitting in class—we have gone through several cycles in my years at CHS—and have occasionally helped out with a dropped or a weird stitch. One common beginner mistake is still named after Thomas, who was working on a scarf for his girlfriend in class for several weeks. I also know that Eleanor Roosevelt, a model of political productivity if there ever was one, knit blankets during long meetings. So, why should I hold back? Hauling wool, needles, and pattern down to Council Chambers along with a big packet could be daunting, but I am at home. Who would know?

And that is what I thought for several months. If you were not watching me every moment, you would not see the occasional long arm reach to free a tangle of yarn or the shawl emerging from under my desk to settle the needles. And then I saw a screen shot of council one night. Everyone else is scowling at their second monitor, trying to read the slides. But there I am, serenely working under the desk, Knit Faced, just listening. You can tell.

I have finished my second shawl now. I have a third planned, but then….if three skeins of Brown Sheep yarn landed on my doorstep, you too could have a Council Knit shawl.

Equinox Rains

 

 

               The Equinox Rains came through on Friday night, shifting the seasons once again. Inside, the changes had already begun; outside, we spent the afternoon preparing.

                When I came home on Friday afternoon, after working with students in the school garden to lay down some cover crop, I found Mark up in the fig tree, picking ripe fruit. “I thought we could get one more round in the dryer,” he called down. “You know, before the rain creates Fig Bombs.” I agreed and wandered into the back yard to finish picking the tomatoes, tuck away the electric lamp, and pull the potted plants out to where they would catch the rain when it fell. Mark finished his compost sifting project and moved his favorite chair inside. We tucked the rabbit in early with a bag of baby carrots I pulled out of the school trash can and went inside. Let it rain.

                That evening, I shifted the mantle and table decorations from Lammastime—or the early harvest—to the Fall Equinox. Every six weeks, the decorations evolve. I will change the plates, the candles and holders, the fabrics that sit under the lamp on the kitchen table to reflect the seasons. Right now, the mantle is green and gold and orange with my mother’s old glass pumpkin and the orange candle holders. Dried foliage from the coast and two brown and green plates from the 1940s, plus the turkey butterdish. Late Harvest.

                The clouds were moving in fast over the moon when we went to bed, chased by the wind. Just before I fell asleep I thought “wind in the corn.” An hour or so later, the rains came in a rush like the high tide, smelling of salt water and wet forest and far clear spaces. Rain. Rain like the sea. Rain like a blessing. Rain to shift the seasons, once again, from summer to fall, right on schedule.

               

Canning Season

 

                When I was 14, we lived in an old house with a crab-apple tree in the back yard. I gathered the apples in the fall and attempted to make applesauce. It was awful. The apples were tart and wormy; I was dismayed. “Wrong apples,” my father muttered when he saw the results. “Crab apples are for cider.” Who knew?

The next weekend, we made our first trip to the apple orchards, where I picked half a bushel of beautiful MacIntosh apples under a bright blue New England sky. I even climbed up in the tree to reach the highest, ripest fruit. My father pretended not to notice. When I came home, I had apples. After consulting Betty Crocker c. 1958, I made real applesauce for the first time, peeling the apples and tossing the unbroken skins over my shoulder. I had read that the skins would fall into the initials of the person you would marry; it was worth a shot.  The puree bubbled in the new harvest gold crockpot, sending the sweet scent of cinnamon throughout the house. Once the sauce was frozen, I moved onto pie, making a crust for the first time. Then I tried turnovers. And we ate apples for days. Next year, I vowed, a full bushel.

Picking apples and making sauce became an autumn ritual. When I was in college, my room mate woke up at six on Saturday morning and peeled all of the fruit before I even rolled out of bed. We ate applesauce for a late breakfast that morning and on pancakes for weeks.

These days, I make far more than applesauce in late August and early September, as school starts up again. Every day, something is processed. Salsa. Tomato sauce. Dried pears. Pickles of all sorts. Whatever overflows from local gardens and old trees finds its way into our house, waits its turn in the dining room, and becomes something we will eat this winter. Tonight, it was dried pears and salsa verde. Tomorrow will be another batch of tomato sauce, cooking down in the crockpot that looks exactly like my first one, that I made my first batch of sauce in, back in high school.