Flash Of Beauty

This is the beach made famous in the novel Land of Love and Drowning. It is named Flash of Beauty. My son and I walked from the Big Bamboo restaurant and beach bar at the head of Loblolly Bay the full length of the bay to the point where Google will tell you that Table Bay begins and runs into Deep Bay. It's a .7M walk to that point. But on all the local maps the long stretch of beach beyond Loblolly Bay simple goes by one name: Flash of Beauty.

As I mentioned in my last post, the narrative in the novel is stitch together with mentions of this beach and it's supernatural powers. If you zoom in on the above and below pictures you may notice one of it's supernatural features: pink sand.

It's so fine it has the texture of talcum powder and feels like flower beneath your feet. Where my son is standing on the water line, you can see the true pink nature of the sand when wet. It comes from the crushed coral (white, red and black) and the pulverized shells (many of which are pink and or white). I found one pink, yellow and white shell deep in a crevice with the beak eating marks of an octopus. The shell was half chewed, with the interior critter removed, on top of a pile of other shells of various sizes and shapes. The sheen on this shell has not be buffed off, as I'm guess it was eaten a night or two before I found it (although, I wasn't lucky enough to find the satiated cephalopod).

The beach's barrier reef keeps the currents moderate, although on a full moon or during a storm snorkeling could be hazardous. But on a day like we had, the typical tropical tides were just a gentle current, like a lazy river. In the above picture you can see that beyond the barrier reef, an outer reef continues down the south eastern side of Anegada. There are not many people or buildings below this point and side of the island. The Atlantic starts to butt heads with the Caribbean as the reef encloses the bottom eastern side of the island. Spanish galleons, British warships and American privateers have wrecked upon those reefs for hundred of years. The local museum boasts over 200 wrecks on that side of the island alone.

The Arawaks, the larger of the two native Caribbean peoples before the northern european and north Americans slowly but steadily exterminated them, lived on Anegada for over a 1000 years. They remind me of the people of the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. That pueblo is the longest inhabited town in North American, over a thousand years. It's a perfectly protected natural phenomena, too. A large 300' high butte surrounded by a valley and then a mesa that forms a perfect circle around the valley. The Arawaks benefited from the atoll of Anegada being hard to see from a distance (their lack of height vs the Acoma pueblo's advantage of height); both peoples benefitted by  the natural topography; big valley and big reef to protect them from outsider's attacks. Yet the people of the Acoma Pueblo still exist, while the Arawaks of Anegada, on an atoll only 30' above the sea at it's highest point, only exist in the evidence of conch shell pilings on the south east side of the island that formed ancient burial grounds.

This beach, Flash of Beauty, holds a quiet allure with it's sea grape trees, wild flowers, birds and fish. The same shellfish, that give the sand it's pink color, are eaten in the salt ponds in the center and south east of Anegada by the flamingos; yes, Pink Flamingos! The climate change is drying up the salt ponds. What I remember as a cloud of birds in a large pond, close to the bridge on the road to Loblolly Bay and Flash of Beauty beaches, is now just a small flock of a dozen of so flamingos on a much diminished and distant pond. The sense of a cloud of pink has faded like the dawn and dusk mares tail clouds. Yet at Flash of Beauty, the frigate birds soar, shore birds skip, and the sugar birds cackle.

I must reread the section of the novel that refers to the birds and fish and their shape shifting ways, as I've lost my train of thought reliving my time, exactly a week ago today, on the beach and hearing the crashing waves and caribe breezes in my inner ear.....

Good Night, Native Peoples and Supernaturals, G'night

Le Bonne Vie

As some of you may have noticed, I've been silent, electronically, since the start of April Break. Writing continued, and I'll enter the blogs (post-dated) over the weekend, but I was enjoying the old fashion nature of writing with a pen in my Shakespeare And Company Notebook which I purchased in Paris last fall, while sailing through the BVI.

Books onboard boats, reading and writing in them, is a part of the charm of sailing. Le Bonne Vie is a 50' Beneteau with 3 cabins and a roomy saloon. For 8 nights, I had the distinctly decadent pleasure of having one cabin all to my self. Above is a picture of the books I was consuming and into which I was creating on the night stand in my cabin. The cabin had three lights (one over head and two reading) and three portholes (great for catching the trade winds and viewing the stars). Never used the blanket and partially used the top sheet. Stacked my two pillows to read and write, then down to one to sleep. My one carry-on duffle bag worth of bathing suits, sundresses and sandals neatly stowed. The smell of diesel grease from the engine, combined with the warm salt air from under the panel by my pillow, just transported me back to living on the boat 33 years ago.

On my boat, the 48' ferro-cement cutter, we had a floor to deck bookshelf screwed to the bulkhead between the saloon and forward birth. On the opposite bulkhead on this Beneteau there is a single shelf designated to books (aside from the ones in the Capt.'s Chart Table). Most sailors are readers. Comes with the territory. In fact, most ports worth their salt, have a tradition of lending libraries, both formal and informal. The rule of thumb in most sailors laundromats is this; if you take a book, you'd better leave a book.

Many island restaurants or wharf rat bars, internationally, have the same policy. On this trip, I only noticed once such book exchange. It was at the Big Bamboo in Loblolly Bay on Anegada. There, screwed to the wall in the main dining area, is a glass bookcase full of books. Some are old and tattered, others recent bestsellers in hardcover. There were easily 7 shelves of books  inside the case. On the outside,  there was a not yet sun-faded sign: "You take one ~ You leave one." Fairly basic common civilized courtesy of people who live on a rock or in a harbor.

Anegada isn't even your typical tropical volcanic island. The name ins Spanish means "Drowned Land." It's really only an atoll made up of white sand from the Atlantic hitting the Caribbean waters over the reefs that surround the island (the reefs that have claimed sailing vessels for hundreds of years). This winter, knowing I'd been returning to Anegada after a 18 year absence, I read Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique. In it she writes about the beach around the point from Loblolly, Flash of Beauty. In it she shares the folklore and legends of the coral reefs that line the shores. She also creates a narrative thread throughout the novel that keeps tugging one back to that beach, like a selky to an irish sea shanty. The life of the mind is active when the tv, wi-fi, electricity and satellites may be not working. Some escape with rum, others with music and words.

Last night, or rather early this morning, I arrived home (1AM). Worked all day and diddley-squat tonight. Now I'm going to hold onto the books, images, sun, waves, wind, weather, conversations, and words I captured in the islands as I fall asleep on my bed, no longer my cabin bunk, that still feels like it's gently rocking at anchor......

Good Night, Book and Boat Lovers, G'night!

Checkin' Off ~

Yes, that sounds about right. I've been checking items off my list for close to 20 hours now. Never a dull moment as a single mom, High School English teacher, dog owner and trying to be healthy human.

I'm so tired that I don't have much to write tonight...

Frogs, cool breezes, buzzing in my ears, and the rapid key snap of my MacBook Air are all I can hear.

The light of my laptop, the reflection of the table lamp, the backlit keys and my blanket are all I can see.

The whisper of wind on my cheek, the square plastic keys, the warm cotton sheets and the bridge of my reading glasses on my nose are all I can feel.

My mind wanders towards vacation, my feet slide down towards the foot of the bed, my elbows relax and let my wrists decide it's time to call it a night.

And that is all...My 100th post on the Ides of April, no less.

Good Night, List Checkers, G'night!

Who is in Want of Whom....

Been teaching Pride & Prejudice for better part of a decade now, and each year I find a new nuance or subtlety that is lost on the current generation. But this year, they have missed the humor all together! When I try to explain to them that Jane Austen 200 years ago was the Tina Fey of her day, they come close to understanding the humor. When I show how it was a comedy of manners, much like Ms. Fey's Mean Girls, it rings a little more loudly in their consciousness. However, the women of Pride and Prejudice are not catty or conniving. In fact, a great deal of the appeal to me in this Austen novel is the dearth of catty details; those few exceptions are brought on by the single elderly woman, not one of the protagonist's peers.

The book, even as a romantic comedy was so ahead of its time. Having Lizzy speak her mind, challenge a suitor, reject a proposal and have the unconditional love of her father for acting that was, and remains, a solid feminist role model to introduce to young men and women alike. The joking, teasing banter between the Bennet parents is also wonderful and a sign of a happiness in their marriage that goes beyond mutual chance. They are aware of each other's strength and weaknesses and accepting of both.

It's hard to teach entailment to this generation; post-modern, post-feminist, modern primitive, post-marriage and taking classes with pregnant classmates. I have a PowerPoint I put together of the monarchy which shows the chain of succession via the entailment process. I've had to change it this term, as a new law took effect in Britain, an amendment to the Crown Act, which makes it possible for a daughter not to be skipped over as a possible primogenitor. Basically, a hundred years after entailment made it's way into the English Dictionary and just under 100 of women receiving the right to vote, gender is being removed as a royal roadblock. With the "baby-watch" for William and Kate's 2nd child upon us, the students could wrap their heads around this new, and historic, development.

What is interesting to me, is that for the first time some of the young men in my classes are anticipating that Darcy is being reserved, not arrogant. That he may have "been burned" in the past and has put up walls as a result. Again, not much sympathy to the humor, until it becomes borderline slapstick nearer the end. I think modern American teenage boys are feeling less like they hold the purse-strings or power in any romantic relationship and more like they have to be the supplicant and amiable beau. Today's men are more like Jane and women are more like Lizzie...

Yet many of us are still longing for a Darcy. Not to rescue us, but to mirror us. To be challenged and to challenge us. To spar wits and share the life of the mind while walking in dewy fields at sunrise.

I'm tired, no surprise, but as I teach this to yet another generation, it strikes me that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Good Night, Lizzys and Darcys everywhere, G'night!

Summer Breezes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsHuV3Aj1os

When the title song, Summer Breeze, was released I was 10 years old. It was a pivotal year for me. I moved from the only home I'd ever known in a rural town, to a new home in the suburbs of Boston. After three years of summering in Maine with our new blended family, we bought a summer house on an island attached to the mainland by a causeway when I was 10. Both the suburban house and island house have become the two most constant places for me over the last, almost, 43 years.

My father built a house in Maine when I was a few years younger, and sold it a few years ago. So perhaps they are tied. In my most centered self it is the rural house and the summer house where I learned who I was and what makes me who I am now.

But the radio played in all these houses, and the cars that shuttled me between them. Music was a constant in my childhood. Rock, jazz, soul, classical and top-forty, which is what Seals & Crofts falls under in my mind. Just like I have a memory etched in my mind of riding in the front seat of my mother's green '67 Mustang convertible through the streets of Boston with the song Georgie Girl blaring from the dashboard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-GApOqzgWM. It seems that summer and melancholy wishes blowing in the breezes are a deep part of my psyche.

And yet it was on the island with the causeway, that one January, when I was 17, I met a man at a New Years Eve Party. He was 13 years my senior, and yet a half a year later we'd be dating and I'd move on board his yacht that summer and sail off into the sunset with him two years later! So some of the ideas of making hay while the sunshines so that you can reap what you sew stuck!

I could go on for hours with other 60's lyrics that were sewn into my mind and make up. How the band of Chicago, Frank Zappa, Eagles, Jackson Brown, The Who, The Stones, Beatles, Gordon Lightfoot, Joy of Cooking, Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Emmylou Harris, Billy Holiday, Steppenwolf, Bonnie Raitt, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Ricki Lee Jones, The Pretenders, Denise Williams, Jonathan Edwards, Crosby & Stills & Nash & Young, James Taylor, BB King, Creedance Clearwater Rival, Otis Redding, The Smiths, James Brown, Elvis, Janis Joplin, The Doors, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Grace Jones, The Monkeys, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Bruce Springsteen, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Jimi Hendrix, Annie Lenox & Eurythmics, Weather Girls,  REM, U2, Madonna, Kate Bush and so many others shaped my sense of self. Then there were the Musicals. Ahh the musicals that our entire family would sing at dinner or in the car or in the woods at the top of our lungs: Hair, Jesus Christ Super Star, Oklahoma, Carousel, Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, and so many more. Then, of course, Fantasia! Where image met music in perfect harmony.

Music and seasons. I understand why some writers add playlists to their novels and memoirs. It makes sense to me, as I can hear the sound track of my life really clearly. I can also hear the music mentioned in memoirs, and it does inform the reader to another layer of the person's state of being in a given situation.

So tonight, Seals & Croft's Summer Breeze, with it's kids piano playing (it sounds just like the toy piano I gave my wasband as a first gift) is peregrinating though me while the temperate breeze blows through my window.

Good night, music and memory lovers, G'night!

Ryan's Magic Touch

My biggest indulgence is a monthly appointment with Ryan. When I first started going to see him, I'd just broken my wrist, was frustrated with how it had impacted my body, mood and ability to exercise. I'm some one who has to move every day, in multiple directions, or my body gets cranky. So being limited to walking, sitting, standing and laying about was reeking havoc on my sense of self.

He asked me all the usual questions a massage therapist asks, what do you want me to concentrate on, do you do a repetitive form of physical exercise or work, have you been injured or ill recently,  and so on. My wrist was just out of a cast. I'd been swimming in the waterproof cast, but no running, biking riding, hiking, kayaking, sailing or any of the other usual summer active adventures.

From when he first touched me, I saw things. I was very quiet at first and so was he. Then at some point I asked him if he'd even gone to Pow-Wows. His hands briefly stopped, fluttered and lighted again. He said, "Ah, so you're reading me, too." I asked what he had to do with Pow-Wow's and he said his husband was Native American and that is where they met and still attend them regularly. I asked him what he had been seeing in me. He said a friend of mine, he described her, was in trouble and needed to know she'd make it through the ordeal. I knew exactly who and he continued to describe her as if reading my mind. We went back to being quite after I told him I was actually going to call her later that night, and had already planned to do so, prior to my appointment.

Ryan is a great sports massage therapist, as he has competed in many races of various types and has studied the effects and remedies for injuries and over use of different muscle and tendon groups. He's wonderful at approaching it all holistically.

So in the 8 months I've been seeing him, once a month, we've continued to have this immediate and intimate relationship. Tonight was different though. We became one. Not sexually or physically, but spiritually. I was ragged when I arrived tonight. Been fighting off a flu that is going around, been playing taxi, running errands and the terms changed at work. Just mentally and physically running on fumes. He looked better than last time, as a bout of carpel-tunnel had been getting the best of him and he had to scale back his schedule for recovery.

Usually we talk while he goes over my limbs, back, extremities and neck. Briefly, intermittently and specifically about our common points of interest. But tonight, even before he'd re-entered the room, after I changed, I was practically asleep. We had discussed him doing some energy work on me the last time I'd visited, as he'd snuck some in and I'd felt the effects immediately. This time we'd agreed he'd go for it and I was along for the ride.

Colors. I saw lots of colors. Mostly Indigo and Gold. Alton colors. They swirled around my consciousness, while my eyes sank deeper into my sockets and my mind opened. Tunisian rooftops, and starbursts of light kept competing for my attention as he used pressure points, deep massage and healing touch to line up my chakras or whatever you call it.

I've only had this experience twice before. Once with a masseuse at the YWCA in Portland, ME in the 1980's and once during a massage while I was pregnant at a 5 Star Hotel in Maui in 2000. Colors, lightness of being and energy coursing through my veins hours after the massage has ended. This time it wasn't our emotional thoughts colliding through the air for the wellbeing (of others), but rather our spiritual energy swirling and blending together for my better health.

That is a gifted set of hands. Ryan the Rieki Master. I salute you and will see you next month, per usual!

Good night, Man with the Moon in his Hands, G'night!

A little night music...

This afternoon for the first time in 6 months, I heard peepers! Yes that lovely frog sound that starts just before dusk that lets you know that Spring has sprung and Summer is coming soon on its heels!

Growing up in Bolton, we had a little pond that was fed by a little brook. This time of year the woods could get swollen with vernal pools that are ripe for frog, salamander and toad eggs. The tree frogs could basically hibernate under logs or inside bark, mostly frozen, for the winter. But as soon as a big thaw came their music would sound.

First the males, who make a twangy-croak, randomly, usually in March. The winter has lasted so long and cold, that I'd only heard a few before tonight. Then, within days it seems the female frogs wake to the sound of the males warm overtures. Next thing you know, the night air is full of frog music and  eggs will soon be present in the vernal pools, round the edges of bogs and lodged on stick in a pond.

The babies are so cute with their pollywog tails still attached as they learn to climb. I've only seen that once in my life, when I was working at Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, as an Audubon Naturalist. That Spring I was monitoring the daily development of the population of tree frogs at the Farm and explaining the cycles to elementary school kids. It was that year that I saw some of the young frogs making the transition from water to land frogs, and one maturing frog starting to climb with it's tail still attached!

Now living in Acton, there is a 60 acre Arboretum three house lots from my door and attached to it, and stretching all the way to our street, is a great bog. The Arboretum has two ponds connected by a lively brook, as well as the bog and a sizable kettle pond, that appears to be spring fed. I taught my kids how to catch frogs, first with nets and then with their bare hands in the larger stream fed ponds. I'll never forget when they first caught them and could hold them long enough for the frogs to whine-croak to be let go. The kids thought it was hysterical!

The frogs are also a good snack for the Great Horned and Barred Owls that nest in the Arboretum. Usually they go for furry tidbits, like squirrels, chipmunks, moles, voles and shrews, but I've seen some funny looking bones in some owl pellets that I think were of the frog persuasion.

The frogs and bats keep my yard fairly free of bugs. I'm a no pesticide gardener. I love it when the tree frogs and ladybugs move into my tomato plants. A sure sign that everything is in balance!

So tonight, for the second night in a row, I'm going to sleep with the window open. Faint strains of Peeper's music at the periphery of the cool dark night air.

Good Night, Chorus Frog, G'night!

Ode to Murakami

Reading the Master,
Haruki Murakami,
as I fall asleep.


Friday Night, I'm totally wiped, as I rest my copy of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running on my chest. Murakami's words are so close to thoughts and insights I deeply share, that it's as if I've written them down before and here I'm finding them again. Training, goal setting, pushing limits, recovery, commitment to self and craft. All this on top of our "busy lives".

This afternoon I went shopping with the Lenora at Trader Joe's for dinner food and the making for a cake. Asked her to make it all, as I was freezing and tired as we walked the aisles. Lenora took the basket, as she said, "Mom, it's not cold in her." Came home and fell asleep for three hours, until Frank gently came and asked if I wanted to sleep all night. Woke up to a plate of Indian food served to me in bed by Lenora with a smile.  Later when I walked into the kitchen, I saw she'd made a decadent and beautifully decorated cake for her friend's 18th birthday. They have both been sick this week and are now recovered. No long dog walk, hike or run. Just this very short haiku and note...

I guess my body may be resisting what the kids, and half my colleagues at work, have been suffering and struggling with for weeks.....plus it's a Friday in April, it snowed yesterday and 4th Term is upon us! Tomorrow should be, finally, warm and sunny. A perfect day for a stroll in the fresh air!

Short and sweet as I'm fighting to not succumb to the spring sickness still trapped in the schools!

Good Night, back to my book, G'Night!

Dream Reef...

Tonight I held the second to last meeting before our tour to Australia, New Zealand and Oahu. I'm calling it our Native People and Nature tour. I feel that it's important for my own children and the students (ranging from entering High School to mid-way through College) to experience these natural wonders and native cultures before they have become extinct. My first tour was to the Galapagos and Andes of Ecuador. My next will most likely by to an African nation.

Jacques Cousteau inspired me to see the underwater world when I was 12 years old. Now, 40, years later I'm making it to the largest reef in the world. So large that when superimposed onto the North America or Western Europe it's immensity become profound for those of us used to scope of these Northern Hemisphere landmasses. Imagine: a reef longer and wider than California or from the toe of  Italy to London!

There are more unique ecosystems and critters associated with the GBR than we may every truly know. Unfortunately, 50% of the coral has died in the last 30 years (Cousteau was tragically correct with many of his prognostications), so what we'll be seeing will be a shadow of it's former glory. Have of the damage is due to invasive species (starfish the bore holes in the coral, for example, that have arrived on the hulls of boats) and much from global warming and other effects of man-made environmental scale-tipping.

I'm hoping that the piece of it, off Cairns, that we'll be visiting will be fairly well preserved by UNESCO, just as they'd been doing in the Galapagos. Although I know that places we took our boat and snorkeled in the Galapagos three years ago are now closed to visitors due to the rapid disintegration of the reefs there. Just to see a segment of the magnificent 1000's of km that make up the reef will be thrilling. Dusk and dawn critters, including my favorite 8-legged wonder of the world, will be life lasting for me.

I'm tired....was at school 10 out of the last 16 hours, with 2 hours spent driving!
Longer missives and more internal reflections over this no deadlines weekend (and fingers crossed, warmth and sunshine)!

Good Night, Dreamers of Thriving Reefs, G'night!

Bingo is my Name-o!

Tonight I've calculated all my grades into my Engrade account, and bright and early tomorrow I'll transpose them to the School's X2 account for them to be locked and loaded before High Noon! Done playing Bingo with rubrics and ready for bed.

Seems that no matter when you close grades in the classes, there are always a few stragglers, absentees, field-trippers, and college visitors that have to make up work in the 11th hour. This isn't a problem normally, but between all the Juniors being tested with PARCC, as well as Career Day and College Prep Days, many hours of class time and make up opportunities go by the wayside.

Plus, being an English teacher, I don't give many multiple choice tests, matching or true false quizzes. The unit and end of term tests are supposed to see how much they have actually mastered and added to their knowledge on a giving period, genre, term, era and so forth. Thus I need to measure that by how they own it, use it and create it in writing. Thus laborious task of wading through the stacks of multi-page tests that start with the lowest level of knowledge acquired, defining, and progressing to analysis with synthesis to show a complex comprehension and command.

I'm very tired, the sleet is falling on my skylights and I know I must wake up early to windows of grade sheets where I'll carefully enter, recheck, and post my grades. I'll try not to think if the district is measuring me by the numbers that are generated and aggregated with this post. Whether it's bell curves or percentages of too-high or too-low that my catch a search bot or pointer finger. These days it's not only the student who have to measure up to high stakes standardized tests, but the teachers and, slowly but surely, the administrators, are having their professional performance constantly measured by the students in our charge performances, as well.

It seems I've gone from publishing, that was one form of professional gambling, to education where no one strategy is in played long enough to see if it works. No sooner does one start to get traction, than the Dept. of Education (State or Federal or both) cries out, "Bingo we have a winner", and what every school of thought has become the new standard (often an old system with a new name) gets the machinery turning in a new direction!

I'm chasing my tail tonight....And Bingo was her name-o!

Good night, Gamblers and Graders, G'night!

Game of Quarters....

The 4th Quarter. For me, now, it's the final term of the school year. It has been a term I used when playing basketball in High School. I've never been a football player or watcher, so the four finger salute holds no superstitious power with me. Q4 was an annual segment by which I paid my taxes when I owned my own business and  the quarter I took stock on how the agency was doing. Each year I broke even with enough for comfort in the kitty. It's also dangerously close to that season of my life...

Today was the first day of the '14-'15 4th Term at LHS. I've only three more sets of quizzes to grade before they have to be locked and loaded in the district computer by High Noon on Thursday, so I'm feeling quasi-relaxed. My 2014 taxes are complete and I've received my State and Federal refund checks. And, Game of Thrones resumes this weekend, snow is in the forecast for tomorrow and I can feel my own Winter coming, while at the same time savoring the human autumnal season.

Where does Q4 start for me, I mean really. One set of grandparents didn't make it out of there 60's-70's, while the other made it deep into their 80's. Both my parents are living, vital, active, healthy people.  So I guess for me it could be less than a decade (grandparents minimum age) when I am hip-deep in Winter, or as late as two decades when I stroll into Winter. I'm hoping for the latter.

Either way, I feel Winter Coming. On the one hand, I embrace it. I'm enjoying coming into the full  Fall fruit of my powers. I can physically do most anything I want to do. I'm active in the life of the mind and feeling relevant. My big question is will I have some one to share it all with before I enter Winter? In the same window of a decade (worst case scenario), I envision my children developing their flight feathers and eventually leaving the nest (although I've heard so many boomerang stories, I'm won't be surprised if the return frequently and for spells of time). In just over a decade, 12 years to be exact, I think I could retire (if all things stay as they are and I down size the scope of my nest).  Then I can see a pleasant 4Q. Will I want to share my small space with someone special, if that person presents himself between now and then? It's been three years (4/12ths) that I've been single. I've been on 4 dates. At this rate my odds of still being single are high....

Yet I see a sunny 4Q. The books of Game of Thrones compile a fantasy series called  the Song of Fire and Ice. I guess I see myself a bit as the Mother of Dragons and Breaker of Chains. Yet when I take the crazy Facebook quizzes, I always come up as Jon Snow! They are both characters who are coming into the Q2 powers, so I"m fooling myself to make any comparison. But that is what happens as you get older. The mirror and epidermis tell you Q4!, while your imagination, energy and desires tell you Q2!

I've got to go to bed, as I have to wake at 5:30.....as I age 6hrs is my bare minimum on sleep to function.

Good night, Queens of fire and nearly Q4 Women, G'night.

Noble Dr. O'Connell

Tonight I took a break from grading papers to listen to Caitlin O'Connell live from the Explorers Club in NYC. Caitlin had invited me to tonights event and to last Friday's event at Hunter College, but I couldn't make it to either. Third Term closed today, and grades are due in the grade book and computer shortly.

https://explorers.org/events/detail/nyc_public_lecture_series_feat._caitlin_oconnell

Caitlin was the last author I represented as an agent. I was becoming a High School English teacher and it was my last year of part-time teaching and on the cusp of my first year of full-time teaching when she approached me. She seen my name in Hannah Holmes' book, The Secret Life of Dust, and figured if I could successfully agent that, I could help her with her book, The Elephant's Secret Sense.

Hannah and I had been childhood friends, worked on the same newspaper in college and after we graduated I went to NYC to enter publishing while Hannah rose up through the natural science magazines. When she was tired of being a jet-set reporter, I said I could get her a book deal if she picked a topic. She called with two: Dust or Dirt. I went with dust. You see without dust there would be no rainforest canopy, no life on the ocean floor, no connectivity of species over great bodies of water or land. We are all truly indebted to first the cosmic dust from which we all sprung, and not the constant redistribution of it.

I guess Caitlin thought if I could wrap my head around that, I could understand and appreciate the invisible language of the elephant and the greater significance and applications that understanding it could bring to light. My one fear was that I was  teaching a 3/4 load, going to Graduate School, my kids were young and I was slowly closing down my agency ~ so I didn't know how much time and attention I could really bring to the book, and yet I believed in it and her fully. So I asked her if she'd mind if I co-agented the book with respected editor/agent friend in NY. When she found out John Michel, was her Stanford mentor's, Robert Sapolsky, editor (Why Zebra's Don't Get Ulcers was the book they collaborated on), Caitlin was delighted with my choice.

Most of what I represented was nonfiction. Nonfiction affords an agent to be able to represent fiction only 10% of the time. Caitlin came to me with numerous book ideas in various stages of development, as well as screen/script ideas. I committed just to the one book. Tomorrow her first thriller is being published, 20 years in the making, http://www.amazon.com.au/Ivory-Ghosts-Catherine-Elephant-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00OEXM6Y2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1427697231&sr=8-2&keywords=ivory+ghosts, and I'm sure it will be wonderful (it's on my summer reading list).

The fall I looked at her manuscript over Thanksgiving, and then John looked at it over Christmas. The giant Tsunami hit at the end of December, 2004 and took over the airwaves in early 2005. The BBC, as well as various science and nature periodicals were reporting that the Indian Elephants in Thailand seemed to know the Tsunami was coming. There were even reports of the Elephants herding the people and animals that were nice to them to high ground (not those who were cruel and violent towards them). Not only that, they seemed to know how high the water was going to rise.

Caitlin's book, with the science, experiments of Malaysian and African Elephants being pitched to NY publishers at that tragic moment, generated many offers from the publishers. Now I'm proud to say Caitlin has written, produced and compiled works of photography, film, young adult and fiction. I believe her work is noble, valuable and desperately needed in a time where the dust in the wind can bring toxic rain to the watering holes, the climate change is shrinking the habitat of the African plains and Oceans reefs and we're only scratching the surface of what our fellow mammals can teach us about the wonders of the world....

Brava, Caitlin on tonight's lecture. Some day I hope to a) volunteer with you for a stint, and b) come up with a worthy exploration or endeavor of my own.

Good night, to noble & adventurous women world wide, G'night!

Mad Men & Women

 #4 Haiku

My alter ego
A Hockney-esque Mad Woman
Poolside with coffee!

Short and sweet tonight...theme music reverberating in my brain.
Don Draper will enter my dreamscape again and my own timeline of half a century will start to form into manageable building blocks ~ each decade with it's own personality, sensibility and culpability.

To think I once longed to work on a magazine and in advertising, and did indeed. My first job was assistant to a publisher at SPORT Magazine and basically helped him and the admen to sell ads in the pages of the book. Instant shallow expert territory......and yet the big wigs, true Madison Avenue guys, where sharks of such stealth and cunning that I never had the stomach to go anywhere East of Fifth Avenue!

Good night, Life of the mind and power of suggestion people, G'night!

To be Wise, Kind & Swift!

Every Easter this is the book I've read. First it was read to me, later I read it, later still I read it to my children and now they read it when I remember to pull off the shelf. This weekend they are not at home. They are with their father, so I'm reading it to myself, again, like I'm a girl on Easter Eve.

This book was published when my mother was two years old. As it says on the back cover flap; "It is difficult to believe that this very modern feminist tale was originally written in 1939. A gem of a fantasy in which kindness and cleverness win out over size and brawn."--Learning Magazine. As I grew up to become a mother myself, I looked to the Country Bunny as a role model of perseverance, patient parenting, teaching responsibility and assigning common chores to each of her 21 babies. She is also a single mother. No mention of father bunny or any grandparent bunnies to help her. 

However, the book starts when she is a young brown bunny. She grows up with the local folklore, that if you grow up to be wise, kind and swift that someday you may be one of the five Easter Bunnies. Yes, according to this tale, there are five Easter bunnies that do more work in one night than most people do in a year. A singular white "Grandfather" bunny holds a competition whenever one of the bunnies has to retire. As a girl, the country bunny was discouraged to entertain the notion of auditioning (the elder & rich white rabbits and the male jackrabbits tell her to go back to the country and eat a carrot). 

She does go back to the countryside, grow up, grow wise, and have 21 children. She gives each of them jobs to do each day, mostly in pairs; painting, planting, washing, cleaning, sewing and so one. The runty boy is the only one who pulls out her chair for her at night. The illustrations are lush, sensitive and very inviting. Then one day there is news in the woods that a competition will begin for the next 5th bunny. 

The Country Bunny is so excited, she takes all her children to see the event (the cover illustration is how they arrive in town to watch). Grandfather bunny watches all the jackrabbits compete. But he's also studying the Country Bunny and her kids, while they are watching the games. He approaches her and says that she must be kind and wise to have such well behave children and have them hold their ears so prettily. He adds a throw-away line to the affect of too bad she must not have time to train to be swift, too. She whispers something to her kids and they scatter to the wind. Before he can understand what she's done, she's collected and returned them all, in single file before him. 

She is selected, not only as the 5th bunny, but also for a special mission to send a special diorama sugar egg to a child who has been sick for a long time. This involves a heroes journey that is not usually set for young women, especially in the 1930's! Only once, when the Country bunny become's injured, so close to completing her mission, does the  Grandfather bunny appear to her, like Athena does to Odysseus several times during the Iliad, to to help with finishing the task. 

Numerous times I've channelled my Inner Country Bunny when I've been injured, told I can't do something, or tried to model a way of being for my children to follow. 

When I was a girl the Easter Bunny used to bring me and my sister sugar diorama eggs like the special one delivered to the sick boy. It was magical to wake up to it resting on top of a basket full of grass, candies and perhaps a small toy. The egg would have a little plastic viewing window or be wrapped in cellophane so that one could peer into the spring scene and not disrupt the interior. The outside was frosted with flowers and the sugar often glistened like a stack of powdery snowflakes. 

Several times the Easter Bunny has found and delivered the same such eggs to my children. I believe they ate them, something my sister and I never did. I can remember having the egg on my bookshelf well into summer and it seemed to disappear sometime before Halloween. 

So tonight, I'm reading The Country Bunny to myself, then I'll continue reading Haruki Murakami's memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Tomorrow, I'll take the dogs for a brisk hike on a trail that winds near a lake, past a horse barn, through some woods and around a large egg shaped rock....

Good Night, Single Mother Bunnies, G'night! 

Snowdrops & raindrops...

Tonight, with the aid of my phone's assistive light, I saw another sure sign that Spring was taking hold: Snowdrops just below my mother's porch! They were closed for the night, but up and fully blossomed. My mother, to honor the changing seasons, had also put away the sleigh and in it's stead a basket with the dinosaur egg. This is the first year, ever, that I've born witness to whole neighborhoods still decked in Christmas lights, some still half buried in the snow, while also sporting Easter flags or Egg Trees. It's been a long, cold and deeply snowing Winter!

Three of us went out to dinner tonight; a pre-celebration of Easter and a belated celebration of my stepfather's birthday. Just the three of us. The two meals I ate today were both with my Mother.

Just as I was about to drive to my mechanic this morning, Mom pulled into my driveway. She offered to drive me back, as I was going to walk the mile, which is my way during tune-up & oil changes. I was going to drop in on the bagel shop, too during the walk home to get some treats for breakfast for the kids, as we didn't have school today.

I accepted her offer and invited her to have breakfast with me at the bagel shop, as the kids were still asleep, and it would be nice. We had a yummy and leisurely meal together.

Mom had dropped my stepfather for an appointment and didn't plan to stay long. So after breakfast we returned to my house in her car. Mom had come with a basket of Easter gifts for our house, as my kids we going to their father's this afternoon. The basket was full of middle eastern treats, cheese, fruit rolls and three dark red eggs my Mother dyed. The classic red dye is no longer being sold by the Lebanese grocer where we've always bought it. It's been deemed "not healthy", so they are going back to red onion skins and wine vinegar. My mother used beet juice, wine vinegar and red food coloring to get them so deeply red. Then she polishes them with olive oil to give them an added luster. She left shortly after delivering the basket and giving the kids a hug.

She also brought us a dozen hardboiled white eggs and some colors of dye and a paraffin stick. After she left the kids and I spent engaged in our spring ritual of creating design, coloring, texturing and dying the eggs. Each an individual work of art and a wonderful way to spend time together. Every year the art changes as we continue to do so with each season of our lives.

The afternoon was spent with each of doing our own thing. I had bills to pay, Educational Travel details to tie up with my consultant, SAT courses to register for and loads of other little things that are best done online or on the phone during hours I'm usually at work.

Their father came earlier than usual, picked them up, I continued to tie up loose ends and then drove to Mom and David's to pick them up for our dinner date. The drive over was dusted with raindrops. None too big and mostly a sprinkle. By the time I got them into my car, there were no raindrops, only snowdrops. Dinner at a fancy-ish Italian place was nice. Reasonable people watching, delicious fish, mussels, risotto ball and veggies. We all shared everything. I let David pick the dessert, as he was the birthday boy: 84yrs young! Turns out I don't care for Tiramisu, but he loved it, which is all that mattered!

Lots of talks of family and friends. Little talk of work and books. Just passed last night's book, All the Light We Cannot See, to Mom and it triggered great fodder for discussion of WWII.

David, at the time of the novel, 1944, was 13 years old at a Summer Camp in Vermont. He was receiving daily mailings of a progressive New York newspaper, that his parent subscribed him to, with writers like I.F. Stone and introducing Walt Kelly's PoGo. It also had a tiny map of Saint-Malo in Brittany with the lines of the allies advancing with each arrival of the post. David, at the time, was the Editor of the Camp's newspaper: The Thunderbird!

Mom has only just begun the book, but it emotionally started to pull her back to an earlier age. Mom used to tell me stories of how growing up in a house on the top of Edgemoor Rd in Belmont, she'd see stars appear in windows of her neighbors houses and it meant that older brother's of friends in the neighborhood had been killed in the war. Tonight she didn't mention that story, but the intensity of the  emotional effect the opening chapters had on her, made me believe those stories and boys will resurface as she dives more deeply into the pages and narrative.

Drove them home, gave David his gift and each of them a little sweet something. Leaving the drive way the rain start to fall in earnest. By the time I hit Walden Pond, still covered in ice and melting to form a low ground fog, the drops were getting heavier. At the Concord rotary, the wipers needed to be  on medium, and by the Ice Pond at the end of my street, full blast.

Now I lie in bed, with a snoring dog at my side, thinking of Easters of my youth, War novels I've read & taught, and how wonderful it would be to have one day where there was no war on earth. All could rise safely, with purpose, expect to grow old and have fresh water falling from the sky be a sign of life.

Good Night, Passover/Easter/New Year folks, G'night!

The Bearable Lightness of Being...

Just, this minute, finished reading this novel. L.O.V.E.D.  I.T. !

Rich, sensuous sentences. Deep, rich vocabulary. Imagery and History Galore
Humans. War. Individuals who ultimately connect....The Sea...always the sea.

It took Anthony Doeer 10 years to write, craft and deliver this book and you feel the mindfulness of that when your read it.

I'm just going to soak in the revery of reading it as slowly, yet continuously, as I could.
Now I'm done.

Not to swim in the remains and sleep after a very long short week.

Tomorrow night will be a bigger production of words and thoughts.
Tonight I'm lolling in the languid angle of repose that follows a very good read.

Good Night, Readers and Writers, G'night!

Surfing the Sea of Humanity

I love the above image. Is shows a herd of humans swimming towards a goal during an open water race. I often feel in races (on land, over obstacles, in the water) that I'm experiencing time differently, especially surrounded by other human animals. Even though our true self is timeless (if you concur with the ideas of Buddhism and the natural order of living things), we live and experience in sequential time. As Deepak Chopra says, when we synchronize individual awareness with the timing and rhythm of the universe anything is possible. 

Dividing our time into segments or slices of pie each day can help us to be more successful. There are seven important slices, according to Dr. Daniel Siegel, a neuroscientist at UCLA. He looked at how we can use our time so that it supports our wellbeing and inner growth. He list seven ways to spend time:

• Sleep time – Getting a full night’s restful sleep

• Physical time – Taking time to move and let your body be active 

• Focus time – Being alone for a while to concentrate on what matters to you

• Time in – Taking time for meditation, prayer, or self-reflection

• Time out – Setting aside time to simply to be here and rest into existence

• Play time – Time to have fun and enjoy yourself

• Connecting time – Intimate private time between you and those you care for and love

This seems simple and common sensical, yet it's mighty hard to manage if you're not mindful of how your day runs. Like the swimmers above, they know the race course and perhaps have even swum it before or measured it out in their minds. Much like we imagine our day unfolding while we're having our first cup of coffee. But then there are the variables; currents, winds, weather, jellyfish, a rogue kayaker....Or for most us; traffic, an extra errand, an unexpected meeting/call/deadline and so on. How to insure that the goals of your day, that must happen to finish properly, still allow time for you to partake of the 7 slices of pie? How to race in a herd of a 100 people and still watch the harbor seal peering at you, or savor the warm currents as you find them across a frigid bay? 

Basically one has to make time for the time; all 7. It becomes a habit of mind and movement. 20 minutes a day to meditate. 30 minutes to write. 7-12 hrs to work. 1 hour to play. 1 hour to be physical. 1-2 hrs to focus on those you love. Using the commute to commune with yourself or take a personal time out. 6-8 hours of sleep; so the body, mind and spirit swim fluidly. 

What's interesting to me, is when I take the time to be mindful, it seems as if the universe acknowledges it and rises up to meet me. Things general go more fluidly. Even when I hit road blocks (traffic in the car or financial hurdles in the mail), they flow over me instead of tripping me up. I know there will be time to address them and I'm not in an anxious or impatient state, so I'll be clearer and quicker in finding a solution.

It's like watching a school of fish. They are minding how the sun, wind, current and each other are moving. If a predator comes, they surf around it or make stealthy moves to cover the momentary alarm. I find that surfing as a metaphor for life comes in handy quite often....swimming, too. 

Right now is also the season where course selections by students are leading to course assignments for teachers. We're also in the process of a Principal search. So, as one might guess, there are many whirlpools, to navigate; some will bring opportunity and others obstacles. Both will be best surfed with a  refreshed mind, body and spirit. 

Good Night, Body Surfers & Swimmers, G'night!