peripheral visions

R.I.P.

2010-12-30T14:21:00.000-08:00

.

Deconstruction
© Renee Goularte ~ Sept 2010

Last week my father
watched his son and grandson
prime the pump that would
siphon the fuel from an oversized tank
that had been unearthed the week before.

He watched
from a dusty office chair
three generations at work
dismantling the business
piece by piece, truck by truck.

He said,
This is my life’s work,
all gone now.

We looked at his face, his eyes
scanning the concrete yard,
the weed-invaded pier blocks,
the giant hole where the truck scale
had weighed each load before it left the yard
until the day when it was sold and hauled away.

And so goes the family business....

... started in 1958, closed down in 2010, the victim of urban progress combined with an economic downfall, with no construction going on to keep it alive. In a short period of time it devolved from a thriving business to essentially nothing.... as trucks and equipment were sold, buildings dismantled and demolished, and finally the concrete was ground up into a pile of rubble. And there you have it ....

.

thrill the world 2010 ~ chico

2010-10-25T18:31:00.000-07:00

.
On Saturday, Oct. 23 my friend Sharon and I, along with hundreds of other people, participated in Thrill the World Chico, part of a world-wide attempt to set a world record for the most people simultaneously dancing Michael Jackson's Thriller dance. Our group's performance was in the City Plaza in Chico, California, but there were groups all over the world dancing at the same exact time.

We had practiced twice a week for six weeks to prepare. At first we were skeptical about whether we were going to learn the whole dance (and be able to actually do it) but, as it turned out, thanks to a couple of very good dance teachers and some awesome "learn the dance" videos online, we managed to put it all together.

In our little corner of North State California world, it rained the whole time, and we got soaked to the bone. But we had a great time dressing like zombies and getting involved, and we're both looking forward to doing it again next year.
.

retired

2010-09-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

.
I am an Art teacher.
I was An art teacher.
The Art program was eliminated, and my job along with it.

Last month I retired from teaching.
Now I'm looking for a job.

Contrary to what we read and hear in letters to editors, on television, etc., a great many teachers and other public servants do not have retirement benefits that will support survival. It all depends on how long you have worked. I changed districts after ten years, losing my permanent status and my seniority. But the economy was good and districts were hiring, so I was optimistic about building my reputation in a new place. Then everything went to hell after the 2000 election and I got caught in a series of education cuts that kept me working part-time. With no full time teaching positions available in my area, I was lucky to land a part time job teaching Art to young elementary students. California had sent aside money for the fine arts, and once again things were looking up. Until they headed down again, and the state decided to let school districts use that fine arts money for whatever they wanted.

The money that funded the art program was no longer dedicated to art, and the art program was axed, along with my job.A creatively-thinking principal thought he would be able to add an art program to his school using federal money, something that is supported by the U.S. Department of Education. But the California Department of Education, in its wisdom, says the money can only be used for language and/or math. Those almighty test scores, apparently, are the only things they care about.

It is utterly ludicrous that people in power don't understand that true learning is broader and deeper than what can be shown on a bubble test. While the children of California suffer and are denied a true well-rounded education because of bureaucratic nonsense, I guess I will be taking some naps. And making art. And looking for a job.
.

loosening up

2010-07-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

I love tall bearded irises and have been wanting to paint some. Or even just draw some. So when they started blooming this spring I took about 746,925 pictures and then looked and looked and looked at the shapes and colors and lines and then I finally did a watercolor painting of three irises.... which I promptly threw away. Then one day in watercolor class the instructor had us do some wet-on-wet "splotchy" exercises and I decided this technique would work for irises.

So I did splotchy iris colors and some green leafy colors on wet paper. And then I looked at the splotches for about four weeks before I was brave enough to add to them. Finally, I decided to just draw the iris shapes over the splotches with pen and ink. Actually, it's not pen AND ink. It's just ink pen. I like those micro pens with the permanent black ink. Anyway, after drawing the iris shapes I looked at the painting again for about a week, and went in and added some background color, darkened the leaf shapes a bit, and quit.

Quitting is the hardest part. But I am learning how to stop while I'm ahead.
.

skies

2010-06-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

Last week I announced in my watercolor class that I am planning to be the van Gogh of skies. Disregarding for a moment that I am not likely to be the van Gogh of anything, I do have to say that I paint some pretty interesting skies. It seems no matter what the lesson is, I manage to incorporate a sky. This painting was actually a lesson in painting grasses using many alternating layers of watercolor wash and masking fluid, and once I got going on that, I knew it was going to be one of my favorite scenes.... tumbly cloudy sky, sweeping expanse of landscape, and far-away trees. I love the colors, love the sky, and love the way it looks on my wall. I was so anxious to get it framed that I didn't even photograph the last version with the finishing touches, some dark brown and green grasses overlaying the lighter ones.
.

painting rocks

2010-01-08T12:44:00.000-08:00

I love rocks. I pick up random rocks from sidewalks, from beaches, from roadsides, and even from my own backyard. They find their way to glass jars or bookshelves. I carry a particularly smooth and symmetrical black stone in my purse that I like to touch. I even wrote a poem about that one.

Now that I am taking a watercolor class, I look at practically everything through a lens of wondering whether it would be good subject matter for a watercolor painting and I've started carrying my digital camera in my purse so that I can preserve images or ideas for myself.

My latest watercolor was inspired by a photograph I took on the beach at Asilomar in December. I started with a general layout of shapes using a flat brush and a very watery burnt umber, followed by a series of layers to create the curves, shadows, and depth. I had a good time mixing colors like purples and greens to create interesting grays and browns. It's not finished yet. Or maybe it is. But I think probably it's not.
.

watercoloring

2009-11-21T13:29:00.000-08:00

A month ago or so I started taking a watercolor class at the local Art Center, mainly so I can discipline myself to take at least some time each week for getting back into an art mode. The teacher's style is completely different from what I learned/did in college (about a thousand years ago) so I am having to stretch myself right out of my own box. It feels good and a little weird at the same time. I'm experimenting more than maybe I ever did, which is a good thing. So anyway here are two of my favorite watercolor paintings so far.

The inspiration for this one is from a photograph I took one day several years ago when I was driving home from work. The clouds were awesome and I loved the colors in the layers of the hills.

This one is a still life that I basically copied from a picture that I found in a Sunset magazine.

I left out all the background and tried to mess around with the greens and reds in the leaves. This is also an experiment in using a lighter hand, since I have a tendency to overdo. I think I like it. :-)
.

nostalgia

2009-07-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

Recently I spent a great deal of time scanning a whole box full of my mother's old pictures. This started because I needed a certain picture of my grandmother for a book of poetry I was putting together for a family gift, and turned into one of those mushrooming projects that, of course, is still not finished because now I am looking at scanning all my children's baby pictures plus other random pictures laying around in baskets, boxes, and albums. Anyway, in the process of going through my mom's collection, sorting through pictures of grandparents, great-grandparents, various cousins, aunts, uncles, and family friends I could almost barely remember, I found this picture of me which 1. I did not know existed, and 2. I just love! I seem to have one of those "can't you just leave me and my cat alone and put that camera away?" looks, and I must note that I still have those eyebrows today. And I wonder just how long the cat put up with hanging there in my arms before it rebelled. In reality, I have no memory of this cat or any other childhood cat, a lack for which I am making up today. Still, this cat must belong to someone, or I know it wouldn't allow itself to be subjected to this sort of handling. :-)
.

poem a day: 25 through 30

2009-05-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

I made it all the way through the Poem a Day Challenge in April, although I did have to make up a few days that I missed. These are the last six poems with their respective prompts. No pictures this time, just words:

April 30: farewell poem

Farewell

Don’t placate me with
fond farewells and promises
to be friends. When you
walk away it will be for good.
There’s no mistake. Someday
when I ask for a moment
we’ll see what kind
of promise you can keep.

April 29: Never _____

Never

Dangerous finality of thought
this nevering, this stomping of feet
this gnashing of teeth

over the silliest of things. Eating
broccoli or brussels sprouts or
making nice with relatives

who long-ago did something so horrid
so insulting you don’t even
remember what it was anymore

only that it was their fault. Never
is the black and white of those
who refuse to accept a life in color.

April 28: sestina

Defiant,
I refuse
to write
a sestina
today
or tomorrow.

Tomorrow,
defiant
like today,
I will refuse
a sestina
to write.

Writing
tomorrow,
a sestina
in defiance
I’ll refuse
just like today.

Today
I’ll not write
I’ll refuse
again tomorrow
in defiance
to write this sestina.

A sestina?
Today?
(defiantly)
I cannot write!
Nor tomorrow!
I’ll still refuse!

This refusal
to write a sestina
tomorrow
or today --
a sestina to write --
I can only defy.

In defiance I refuse
to write any sestina
today or tomorrow.

April 27: a poem of longing

Longing

With no wish to travel to exotic places,
to win the lottery, to drive a fancy car,
I can stand at my own deck railing
or the edge of the sea, and wish
for just a little more time.

April 26: miscommunication/misinterpretation

Lapse of Clarity

A choice is made,
life-changing, permanent,
the result of an off-the-cuff comment
misunderstood in a moment
of confusion. It is a pivotal decision
to walk away, to choose
the inevitable.

April 25: poem about an event

Gold Nugget Days

Hard to imagine the hauling
of a fifty-four pound gold nugget
up a steep mountain
on the back of a donkey
to a northern California
cul-de-sac mining camp
called Dogwood. Hard to imagine
this glittering rock was plucked
from the side of Sawmill Peak
a full ten years after the beginning
of the California Gold Rush.

.

poem a day: 13 through 24

2009-04-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

.
The "Poem a Day Challenge" marches on. I've had to play catch up on the Poetic Asides website as well as here. The prompts have not always been instant grabbers for me, but mostly I've been doing other things. But here's a group, with the prompts, in backward order:

April 24: a travel-related poem

Some days
the farthest I go
is to the mailbox and back.

The mailbox being
at the end of the driveway.

Which is about thirty feet long.

Which some days is just far enough,
thank you very much.

April 23: a poem of regret

For Nancy Jenks

We did not visit you
after surgery, knew
there would be plenty of time
when you came home.
We went about our ordinary days,
shopping for bargains
stopping for lattes
getting books from the library.
We’d ask friends,
“How’s Nancy doing?”
and they would say they thought
you were coming along
that your hip was mending
that you’d be healed soon.
“We should visit her.” we’d say,
but we were so busy.
Who could have imagined
a common hip surgery would lead
to our writing an obituary
for the local paper.

April 22: a work-related poem

Kindergarten Teachers

Day after day
they sing the morning song.
count heads, count blocks,
count lunches,
make calendar patterns,
sort blocks, hand out snacks,
tie shoes, zip up zippers,
show child after child
a good way to hold scissors,
hold a pencil, hold on a minute.
They read six books a day,
spread out nap mats.
pick them up fifteen minutes later.
They invent songs, read poetry,
teach the alphabet, manners,
how to flush the toilet.
Kindergarten teachers
do not work. They just
play with children
day after day.

April 21: a haiku

Kindergarten class
a garden for children
or so they say.

April 20: poem of rebirth

Rebirth

When I return
I plan to be water,
to be level, to flow
wherever there is
open space, settle
into the cracks in rocks,
flow easily into dark caves.

April 19: angry poem

I’ve no use for anger
for slamming doors
for cold shoulders,
for strung out grudges.
My time is better spent
with glasses half-full.

April 18: interaction

Feline stands at the base
of a tall Ponderosa Pine.
She is a statue,
frozen, her head
tilted back, her eyes fixed.
She doesn’t so much
as blink.

Squirrel perches on the trunk
faces down, twenty feet up.
He is equally still,
locked in eye contact.
His tail twitches
only slightly.

April 17: All I Want Is...

All I Want

To relive
that one moment

More than a daydream
played
replayed
with no new end.

A chance to know
what might have been
if only

I had stayed
one moment more.

April 16: write about a color

Green

It sprays across the hills
in early spring. Pinpoints
on dogwood still half asleep,
wave upon wave of grassy slope
and humble weedstrewn yard,
a pointillist display on
branches of black oak.

April 15: change the title of a well-known poem

The Brownie Not Taken

Two brownies sat upon a plate;
one got left, and one got ate.

April 14: a love poem or an anti-love poem
I wrote one of each :-)

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I hate love poems.
How about you?

**************

Sixty years of marriage.
She still makes his lunch,
he still makes her coffee.
It must be love.

April 13: poem about a hobby

Free Bookmarks

It started as a practicality:
free bookmarks picked up
from cashier counters
in book stores and libraries.
They would arrive in the mail
with every order from amazon,
or be tucked into books loaned
by friends or bought at book sales.
They began to appear in other places:
on restaurant counters, at the gym,
at real estate offices, conventions,
there for the taking, the advertising.
I have hundreds now, sorted by size
and find myself choosing
just the appropriate one
for every book I read.
.

poem a day: 12

2009-04-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

.
April 12: a poem that begins with "So we decided to..."

So we decided

to get another cat
because she was sleek black
because she purred when noticed
because she was hungry, abandoned
and because five isn’t really too many.
.

poem a day: 9 through 11

2009-04-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

.
April 11: poem about an object

The Rock at the Bottom of My Purse

The way it sits in the palm of my hand
smooth-polished by some unknown
water source, tumbled by river or ocean
to become this talisman, this totem,
this reminder to be patient. The way
it falls accidently into my fingers
when I search for lipgloss or a pen
keeps me mindful of small miracles.

April 10: poem about Friday

Unemployed

The days of the week are of no consequence.
Friday, Wednesday, Monday all the same to me.

What day is this? I ask. You say it’s Sunday.
Ah! No work today!

April 9: a memory

One stolen night
twenty years ago:
rain on the windshield
Tito Puente on the radio
3 am patty melt at Denny’s.
Conjured up at will
it sustains an idea:
Love on the run.
.

poem a day: 1 through 8

2009-04-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

.
The "Poem a Day" challenge is on for the month of April, and like last year I intend to make it through the month and post my daily poems here, along with the prompts. So here are the first eight, in reverse order, with a couple of pictures thrown in:

April 8: poem about a routine

Feeding the Cats

Once it was easy:
keep the kibble bowls full.
That was before the onset
of Buddy’s diabetes.

Now five gather at 6 am,
arrange themselves near empty bowls
before my morning coffee.
I dole out kibble in quarter cups
because the diabetic one must eat
only high-protein food, which costs
more than a pair of sneakers.

Used to grazing,
they eat like they’ve been fasting for weeks
as though kibble might disappear
from the universe two minutes hence.

Except for the one
who takes three bites and goes outside
while the rest clean their bowls, then returns
ready to eat now, thank you,
and the one who will not eat
while being watched
by those whose bowls are empty
who are ready to do clean up
the minute she walks away.

April 7: clean or dirty poem

My mother always said
if you make the bed and wash the dishes
people will think your house is clean.

I can go one better:
if you leave the vacuum near the front door
people will think you are planning to clean.

April 6: poem about something lost

Sock

It seems absurd to hang on to one
lone sock when its mate is lost.
In the odd chance it's stuck
to some item of clothing
unworn for the last two years,
I keep it folded neatly in a corner
among mated pairs.

April 5: poem about a landmark

Golden Gate Bridge

From 19th Avenue, somewhere
in the middle of the alphabetical streets,
I can see the tips of the towers
rise above the fog;
red-orange rectangles beckon me
to come closer.

Just before the Marina turnoff,
looking at Marin across the Golden Gate,
it is not possible to forget about
the men who died during construction, or
to ignore the wild swinging of the roadway
in slow-motion documentaries.

I drive onto the span
guide my car to the middle lane
and take in every detail:
art-deco towers, waist-thick cables,
a gap between road and sidewalk
through which a young child can slip
if she falls just so.

April 4: a poem about an animal

Mollie

Half Pit bull, half Shar Pei,
she channels gazelles and kangaroos
leaps from sofa to chair to sofa
over humans watching television.
She fetches as long as they are willing
slides down hallways at breakneck speed
returns and drops her spit-covered ball
on the closest lap, stares with wrinkled brow
and one cocked ear proclaiming cuteness
to keep her humans engaged.
She is totally on or totally off,
doesn't stop her breakneck speed
until she drops, exhausted,
on her Ikea doggie bed.

April 3 - “the problem with .____ “

The Problem With Socks

They don't make them the way they used to
the heels sag or slip
or creep out the back of my shoe
but it is the bump
over the fourth toe on my right foot
the one that doesn't make itself known
until I am halfway to work
that overshadows every moment of the day
permeates every vital or idle thought
and makes me wonder why
if we can put a man on the moon
somebody can't make a sock
without bumps over the toes.

April 2 - an outsider poem

Outsider

She walks into her Kindergarten classroom
on the first day of school, slightly reticent
but willing to give it a try.

She likes to watch before doing,
doesn't like to be forced, digs her heels in
when asked to stand to salute the flag,
would rather sit on the rug
while nineteen other children sing
the alphabet song.

She is quickly recognized, a square peg
unfitting for this round hole. She daydreams
while others trace their names,
hums while drawing rainbows in her workbook.

April 1 - an origin poem

Unknown Origins

Where do they come from,
these black widow spiders
who weave their Jackson Pollock webs

on fence post corners, under the deck
and in the basket next to the television
where cats like to sleep?

How do they survive winter snow
and blistering summer heat, when
the exterminator comes every month

when we smash the egg sacs
with trowels, with shovels,
and pressure wash every dark corner?

They are like the cockroaches
we are told will survive nuclear war.
Where do they come from?
.

pine tree down

2009-01-25T12:22:00.001-08:00

.

We seem to be tree-challenged.

During the last snowstorm, in the middle of the night, this tree snapped clean in half.

This is the fifth tree we've lost in three years.

garden in waiting

2008-11-30T15:41:00.001-08:00

.
Today I planted about a hundred tall bearded irises in the middle of our yard...

... after weeks and weeks of talking about needing to get them into the ground soon. Before frost. Before Thanksgiving. Well, it's after Thanksgiving by two days, but we haven't had anything even remotely resembling frost. In fact, today it was something like 70 degrees. There should be snow. Or rain. Or at least frost. But we are walking around in shirt sleeves and sweat is dripping into my eyes while I turn the soil. But at least the irises are now, finally, in the ground, and I can forget about them until Spring. Or until they send up some leaves, which are noticeably missing because the rhizomes I dug in the summer have been sitting in a tray on top of the wood bin, their roots stiffening beyond any ability to bend, the neatly v-trimmed leaves withering to crisp nothings. But I have faith that they will return.

The only reason they were out of the ground in the first place was because we had to install new leach lines and I had to dig up the quite-established garden, which meant that lavender and daisies and lots of day lilies went into containers, and the iris got tossed in a pile. I've been diligently watering containers for months, keeping everything alive. But I couldn't put the iris rhizomes back into the ground until I got the soil turned, and compost spread, and established the shape of the little path that wanders across the middle.

Eight bags of compost and a few backaches later, they are finally replanted and so far, the cats have not dug up any of the rhizomes. Right now, it may look like just a bunch of brown dirt and a path, but in my mind I see lots of lush green leaves, cats stalking bugs among the day lilies, and a colorful array of iris blooms bordered by wild violets.
.

finally fall

2008-10-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

This is
my favorite time of year
leaves
just yellow at the edges
air
crisp in the morning
firewood
stacked cord by cord
in the yard.

fire days

2008-07-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

It is Friday, July something. Something with a 1. Maybe it's the 10th or maybe it's the 11th. I do know it's Friday. On Tuesday we woke up in the morning to an incredibly strange, orangy-gray sky. At 7:30 in the morning it was as dark as before dawn. A little later, the sun was so muted we could look straight at it. As the day progressed, the sky did not. It got a bit lighter, but mostly it just stayed eerily orangeish, and midmorning we realized small bits of ash and embers were raining down on us.

We realized the lightning fires that had been burning for two weeks had kicked up, particularly the one in the West Branch Feather River canyon, which was due east of us.

We spent a couple of hours thinking and mumbling and watching the sky and the news. By 2:00 pm we were putting into our cars the items we had packed over a week earlier: the canvas bags filled with important papers, pictures, albums, assorted pieces of jewelry (like we owned the crown jewels or something), sketch books and journals (me), oil paintings of long-gone pets and lighthouses (Steve), and an odd assortment of small items like little cat figurines (me) and earplugs and swim goggles (Steve). We did this in silence, each of us methodically marching back and forth to our respective cars. Finally the moment came when it was time to pack up the cats (all five of them) into their carriers, throw cat food and a litter box into the car, and take off. With a last scan of the front yard, we drove away.

Friends had set out a couple hours before us, with their four cats, headed for a Motel 6 in Willows, about an hour and a half away, so we followed them there. As we drove into the motel parking lot, I got a call on my cell from my friend Sharon, who had evacuated with her husband and four cats. Within two hours, they were unloading cat carriers into the motel room next to ours. This picture of our cars prompts me to want to sing:

"One of these cars is not like the others.
One of these cars doesn't belong.
Can you guess which car is not like the others,
before I finish my song?"

Thanks to free wireless Internet, we contacted friends and neighbors who had scattered to various places. We had about a day of worry when one close friend, a former neighbor who lived right on the burning canyon and who had been manditorily evacuated (cool word, manditorily) seemed to have disappeared into the ether, but we decided to go with the "no news is good news" train of thought. Finally, we received word from his wife that he was safe, and that the cat was in the shelter run by the North Valley Animal Disaster Group (donations gladly accepted).

The next morning I received some emailed pictures from another former next door neighbor on the canyon, who had snuck with her husband back into their home the night before and taken pictures from their deck, showing the fire burning across the canyon. Their house, and the one we used to live in as well as a whole line of them, sit at the top edge of this canyon, some on stilts. Down below is the West Branch of the Feather River, a rather narrow little thing, certainly not enough of anything to stop a fire.

Firefighters (bless them all) had been and were still battling to keep the fire from jumping the (very narrow) river and racing back up the other side, straight to these houses.

Yesterday, I guess that was Thursday, we had this view from our motel window:

Conversations with some of the firefighters who descended onto the motel revealed that they were "having a hard time getting the fires under control." Fortunately, it has still been prevented from crossing the river into the town of Paradise. The people in Concow, south of us, have not been as lucky; they've lost about fifty homes and the fire is still burning.

And burning.

Hopefully, we will be able to go home soon. Maybe tomorrow.
.

fire, fire everywhere

2008-06-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

Lately we have had fire at the forefront of our thoughts, day and night. Living on a ridge at the top of and alongside a series of canyons, we began on June 11 alternating between various news sources to keep abreast of fire updates as a huge fire skipped across the bottom of four canyons and headed uphill. As I wrote on June 15, nearly 30,000 acres burned just outside the town of Paradise, and 67 homes were lost. It took several days for that fire to be contained, and for those of us who were not affected, things started to get back to normal.

But not for long.

A week ago Saturday, in the middle of the afternoon, we started hearing thunder. And then it got louder. There were not many "one one thousands" to say between the flashes of light and the amazing crashing noises that went along with them. We also heard zaps and cracks and pops. It didn't take us very long to get all the cats into the house (not that we needed to coax them) and by that evening, we started to hear about fires that had been started by the lightning. By Sunday night, hundreds of fires were burning throughout Northern California, over two dozen of them here in our county. And it wasn't long until we discovered that we were literally surrounded by fire.

And smoke. Lots of smoke. For three days, we could hardly see through the trees to the house next door.

There are firefighters here from all over the state and even out of state. We have been constantly checking the Internet, television and radio to see which fires are getting bigger, which ones are spreading to where, which ones are merging, and which might be threatening us (none, so far... whew!), and who is being evacuated from where.

On the day when we discovered that a fairly close neighborhood was on evacuation alert, we started getting organized ... just in case. So now we have satchels and canvas sacks full of pictures and important papers all packed up and ready to be carried out the door. The cat carriers (five of them!) are stacked in the garage and we have lists of "last minute things" to grab, like medications and money and underwear. And the external hard drive and the laptop.

The biggest worry for us is that there is only one road out of our community, going down the hill. For over ten years, the citizens here have been asking for another exit road. There's an unpaved forest road to the north (which also happens to be uphill), but it's pretty rugged and only good for trucks and 4-wheel-drive vehicles. Our Congressman, Wally Herger, has been in office over twenty years and has done nothing about this problem. Of course, every time there's a fire, he flies around in a helicopter looking at the damage and then attends town hall meetings where he pats himself on the back for having secured 11 million dollars for the road. Which needs more money than that. Which is still just gravel. Which HE doesn't need because HE lives in an exclusive, gated community. And of course he doesn't mention that he only secured that money because citizens hounded him. But I digress ....

Today the helicopters are flying overhead with regularity, carrying those big buckets of water, and the skies are starting to be blue again. Thank you, firefighters!
.

invasion

2008-06-21T15:43:00.001-07:00

No terrorist, no alien
from deepest space
could do more damage
than fire storming
every edge
of this mountain town.

One quiet morn
it quickly flares in weeds
ten miles away, jumps
over delta-carved canyons
four in a row, just like that,
heads uphill far too fast
for a small town fire crew.

Homes fall in its path
one after another.

On the high side of town,
at the apex of this
confluence of canyons
we flip from news to news.
Maps spread on the table
we follow the path, measure
the shrinking distance
between us and it, finger-trace
the north road, the south road,
balance the cost of leaving
with the risk of staying.

We field emails and phone calls
from family, from friends,
“Are you alright?” they ask
“Is it close?” and we say
“We are fine,” while we know

that we sit at the apex
of this confluence of canyons,
that no road leads to safety,
that we are
at the mercy
of the wind.
.

daylilies as metaphor

2008-06-15T10:56:00.001-07:00

On the very day an ultimately devastating fire was beginning to rage toward Paradise, just a few miles down the mountain from where we live, our garden presented us with this group of fiery orange daylilies:

Aptly named as they are, this particular group was gone the next day, replaced by a smaller and less spectacular array. Unfortunately, not so the fire. Although we were safe in our home the whole time, the town of Paradise suffered some tremendous losses: over seventy homes, about 30,000 acres, and, if we are lucky, some complacency about how we should act when we live in a fire-prone area in a drought year during a windstorm.

I am always amazed when I drive around town and see people with their cigarettes hanging out their car windows. It takes a particular kind of stupid to act in such an irresponsible manner in a forest town that is not particularly known for its humidity, and in which the fire danger is more often high than low. And if you suggest that people stop burning their leaves, even though they have access to yard waste pickup right in front of their own houses on a biweekly basis, some of them scream about their individual rights and the dangers of tree-huggers, usually accompanied by frantic wavings of the American flag and projectile spit.

If you live in a fire area, smoke with your car windows closed, please.

gemstone quiz

2008-06-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

This morning I did a gemstone quiz. Here's the result:

Your Gemstone Says...

You are stable, strong, and full of life. You are an inspiring person.

People turn to you first for leadership and advice.

You are able to gently help people get to where they need to be.

And while you aren't afraid to lead when necessary, you are never heartless or bossy.

The Gemstone Test

Now this is all very well and good, but I'm not sure people I know would agree with the part that says I'm not bossy. :-)

30 poems in 30 days award

2008-05-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Because I (along with hundreds of other people)
wrote a poem a day in April ~ thirty poems in thirty days ~
I (along with those other hundreds of people)
got this award from PoeticAsides :-)

mother's day

2008-05-11T16:10:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, after reading an article about how the deck is stacked against mothers in America, I followed a link to a website called Moms Rising which in turn led me to assorted information about motherhood, parenting, health care, gender inequality and other issues, and of course that pesky little problem of women not being paid as much as men for doing the same kind of work and feminist backlash in general. One would think that we had gotten past that by now, but noooooo....

Anyway, then I started thinking about Mother's Day and eventually my brain cells started contemplating some famous and not-so-famous mothers who have made a difference, like Mother Jones and Mothers Against War and Mothers Against the Draft and even the Mothers of Invention, who of course weren't mothers at all, but what the heck? So anyway, that's how I spent my Mother's Day, after chatting with my kids and my mom on the phone, and taking some pictures of irises in the garden. Hope your day was as informative and entertaining as mine was. If not, take a couple of minutes to watch this Mother's Day video on YouTube... it will invoke fond memories in anyone with siblings. :-)

poetry wednesday: weather

2008-05-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

The PoeticAsides Poem-A-Day-Challenge was so successful that Robert Lee Brewer, the blogger in charge, is continuing the project with Poetry Wednesdays. Every Wednesday there will be a prompt. This week's prompt was to write a poem about weather. Well, I like to blame the weather for lots of things: bad hair days, over-active students, etc. The picture shows my favorite kind of weather. :-)

Excuses

Any change of weather
can be blamed for a host of ills:
hair standing on end,
skin dry and flaky,
Kindergartners acting as though
they have never before
been inside a classroom.

lovin' it

2008-05-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

I am totally loving my garden today.

For me, spring is finally in place when the iris begin to bloom. It all revolves around the iris.

Here is the front of my house today. A picture really can't do it justice; pictures never do. Even if they are worth a thousand words. :-)

a poem a day: the last one

2008-04-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

The prompt for the last poem in the Poem a Day Challenge:
write a poem about endings. 'Nuf said....

End of the School Year

The calendar stretches
from September to June,
July and August belonging
to some alternate universe.

At the dawn of May, it begins to end:
children once cautious have become
demanding, impatient,
knowing somehow even at six,
that they have accomplished
something momentous
and are ready to move on.

They have learned to make it
all the way across the monkey bars,
can walk edge of the playground wall
without falling, are willing
to share snacks and crayons.

They write goodbye notes
to their teachers, to their friends,
adorned with asymmetrical hearts
filled with “I love you XOXO.”

three before the end

2008-04-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

Wow. Only one poem left to write for the Poem A Day Challenge. I can't even begin to imagine what the last prompt will be, considering the prompt for April 28 was to write a sestina. A sestina? Hmm.... I've never written a sestina in my life... until now. Considering that most of my poems are of the minimalist variety, this was quite a project: a highly structured, seven stanza poem, six lines to most of the stanzas, with a set pattern of words used at the ends of each line. I managed to get it done in record time. And it almost even makes sense! And then that prompt was followed by the prompt to write a poem about exercise. Exercise? Ha. I exercise only slightly more often than I write sestinas. :-) Here are the poems for days 29, 28, and 27:

April 29: a poem about exercise

Exercise

‘Tis an exercise in futility
for me to consider exercise
anything more than tedious
not to mention tiring.
My exercise of choice
is the writing of a poem
the solving of a puzzle
or the carrying of a heavy book
to the couch.

April 28: sestina ~ seven stanzas, six lines in the first six stanzas, three lines in the seventh stanza, using only six words at the ends of the lines, following a set pattern of these words at the end of each line. Click here to read more about writing a sestina. My attempt:

Before Spring

In reverie I’m able to gather
my thoughts into one circle
turning on itself like a line
of adults wanting to be children
one more time before
winter turns again to spring.

My thoughts of spring
when the urge to gather
roses and irises even before
they bloom in the garden circle
remind me of impatient children
unable to hold themselves in line.

And it is a fine line
that draws itself toward spring
when I remember my own children
who brought me bouquets, gathered
with ribbon, blue and red circles
of grosgrain they’d found before

I put away my needlework, before
I gave up and fell into line,
hugging the precious circle
of my self until I could spring
away in silence to gather
precious memories for my children.

Because it is those children
who taught me to put others before
my self, who showed me how to gather
moments that would create a solid line
that held fast from summer to spring
bringing the closing of the circle.

Once they began to create circles
of their own, no longer children,
I knew that by spring
I could be half way gone before
I needed to pay out a line
we all could separately gather.

And we gathered into a circle,
I lined up with my children,
And we made peace before spring.

April 27: one-half of a two person conversation

Circularity

It doesn’t really matter ...
What I mean is ...
Yes, that’s true, but ...
Well, that’s your opinion.

Yes I understand ...
but I disagree with you.

It doesn’t mean I don’t get it
It just means I don’t agree.

What ever gave you that idea?

That’s absurd.
I never said that.

Fine.

day 26: overweight

2008-04-26T18:37:00.000-07:00

The Poem A Day Challenge marches on and I'm amazed that I am keeping up with it. Sort of. Today's prompt is to write a poem with the title of "I'm so over (___)." After spending a good part of the day running all kinds of "over" words through my brain, this is where I ended up, probably because I ate way to much at Gold Nugget Days, a yearly event in our town which celebrates the finding of a 54 pound gold nugget during the California Gold Rush.

I’m so overweight

according to the charts
at the doctor’s office and Weight Watchers,
although I’ve read that Marilyn Monroe
wore a size 14.
Just like me.
I can’t help but wonder,
if I put on one of those girly dresses
the kind with a tight waist and a full skirt,
and then stood on top of an air vent,
if my picture could become famous.

day 25: kindergarten teacher

2008-04-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

The prompt for April 25 in the Poem A Day Challenge is to write an "occupational poem" so here's my take on teaching Kindergarten, along with some nifty Kindergarten artwork:

Not Always Thankless

The Kindergarten teacher misses the warning
on a child’s changing face
just before he flicks a paintbrush
loaded with paint at the wall, at the floor,
on the little girl with pink sparkly shoes.

After school she gets a workout
scrubbing paint off the floor
in the sudden absence
of children’s voices, each one
wanting her now, needing her,
pulling on her sleeve, her pants,
the tail of her untucked shirt,
asking for help, needing a pencil,
wanting a snack, a drink,
needing to go to the bathroom,
to the playground, to throw up.

In silence she can take the time
to enjoy the smaller moments:
the lighting up of young eyes
when a friend says “You are really smart!”
or “Do you want some of my snack?”
Now she can look more carefully
at the art work, the writings,
and remember the feel of little hands
seeking hers on the playground.

day 24: mary at six

2008-04-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

April 24's prompt for the Poem A Day Challenge was to use a photograph as a prompt for a poem. I cheated by using an already-written poem rather than writing a new one, but it's a recent poem, so maybe it's only partly cheating, and I had this very picture in mind when I wrote the poem in the first place. I have to admit that I really have little clue how old Mary is in this photo (she's the one on the right) but six sounds good to me.

Mary

At six years old
her wide dark eyes stare out
from a grainy black and white.
In her young life
she has already known
the uncertainty
of being whisked from home
the clatter of a non-stop train
the delivery into hope of sanctuary
holding her mother’s hand.

day 22 and 23: a poem a day

2008-04-22T14:31:00.000-07:00

April 23's Poem A Day Challenge prompt was to write a poem about getting older:

Within sight of the age
when my grandmother died,
I consider each new ache
carefully
wondering:
is it temporary
or will I soon be using it
as a sign that winter is imminent.

April 22:
In honor of Earth Day, the prompt was to write a nature poem. Considering that I, along with a great number of other people, including my mother, have been watching the nesting of two Peregrine Falcons on the roof of City Hall in San Jose, California, and considering that four eyases decided to hatch on Earth Day, I decided to honor the falcons. They are on the *other* side of this building, on the roof:

Urban Peregrines

A pair of falcons takes turns
sitting on their four eggs
on the roof of a high rise,
their nesting habits are visible to the world
via web cam. Every change of the guard,
every body reposition is coo’ed over
by humans living vicariously, hovering
over laptops and in work stations.
Pigeon delivery reports are emailed
by the hour. When the eyases hatch,
all hell breaks loose on the email list.

day 21: a poem a day

2008-04-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

The prompt today in the Poem A Day Challenge is to use a snippet of an overheard conversation. Since I teach Kindergarten, I overhear a lot of comments between little people which one would seldom hear coming from adults. One thing all teachers of little people hear with regularity is the dreaded....

You’re Not My Friend Anymore

The good morning song
is interrupted by fatal words
proclaiming the dissolution
of friendship between
one five year old and another.
In Kindergarten, solidarity
is a tenuous proposition
hinging on simple acts:
the reclaiming of an offered toy
a decline to share fruit roll ups
or the choice to sit next to
someone else.

seven together

2008-04-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

Today I am posting seven poems from the Poem A Day Challenge. One would think it wouldn't take too much of an effort to post one each day, but somehow that doesn't seem to be happening. I have no explanation. Anyway, here are seven poems in reverse order. I should note that I did cheat on one day: April 16th's poem is an old one.

April 20: a love poem

I refuse to write
a capital L love poem;
it's just not in me.

April 19: a memory about me that I don’t remember

They tell me I used to have a dog
a black and white cocker spaniel mix
although I don't remember.
I do remember the doghouse
and the way it closed around me
when I went inside, the hair on the blanket
and the dusty smell of canine fur.
But the dog? I neither remember
the dog nor his disappearance
though I'm told he was killed
by ground glass fed to him by a burglar.

April 18: use the line,
“There is no connection”

No Connection

But for the weekly calls
on Sunday mornings
there is no connection
between this generation
and the last
and this connection
is barely enough to satisfy
the mother’s knowing
that it is the daughter’s role
to make the call, and
the daughter’s knowing
that her mother time
will be the same.

April 17: poem in third person

Immigrant

She comes to America
a debt paid to her brother’s friend
lands at Ellis Island
crosses gates and turnstiles
rides the train three thousand miles
to California to marry.
She spends the next twenty years
bringing twelve siblings
across the ocean
one by one.

April 16: poem with a surprise ending

Noelle

It is because I think I am invincible,
impervious to the mundane
trials that overtake the ordinary,
because I declare in late night musings,
wined and incensed, that I am able
to direct every note,

that I am humbled by the sudden
realization that even I can be
overpowered by random whims of
the sarcoma god, who makes its plan
to kidnap my companion.

She comforts me, as the dying will,
with strict obedience to daily ritual:
her lazy stretch in the first triangle
of morning sun on the carpet,
under the wooden rocker.

April 15: an insult poem or a poem about taxes

In 2005

Dick Cheney’s taxes
came in at a rate of
five and seven tenths percent,
after his bill was lowered by
one million
ninety-three thousand
nine-hundred thirty seven
dollars.

So?

Gotta love those tax cuts.

April 14: how (something) behaves

How the Trees Behave

They are my coccoon, my cave
in the mountains, my shade,
my dark and light.
They swing wildly in windstorms
drop pine needles on the roof
remind me with their whistlings
that they are almost human,
almost family. Almost.
In summer they’re the coolness
in my eyes and on my bare arms;
in winter their branches
catch snowflakes one by one,
until they are draped in white
like first communion dresses
or wedding cake frosting.

three days' poems

2008-04-14T15:04:00.000-07:00

The Poem A Day Challenge marches on..... and I have had two of my poems highlighted by the blog owner who's running this thing. The two are "Always a Mom" and "Kindergartner"... both of which I particularly like. Here are the three for the last three days:

April 13: respond to a song

When I’m 64

I must remember to remind
my children not to let me
wear white anklets and plastic shoes
not to mention a flowered muu-muu
even when no one is at home.

April 12: “I’m sorry” poem

“Sorry” has a double edge
for, truth be told, we make
our choices consciously
for good or bad. Still,
no atonement can undo the way
I turned your life inside out
in order to live my own,
nor would I have been able
to do differently.

April 11: something interesting to me
or something usually overlooked

Seedling

In autumn the acorns
fall from black oaks
some are squirreled away
to undisclosed locations
others roll down the driveway
into the street
most find their way into
crevices and accidental furrows
randomly scattered in the yard
we push them into soft dirt
on our way to the woodpile
stacking our heat for winter
when it rains, they settle slightly
into concave beds and then
in spring the tiny shoots emerge
probe upward and then down
into the soggy soil
until they are strong enough
to raise the acorns off the ground
to begin the year's new seedlings.

two days' poems

2008-04-11T07:22:00.000-07:00

I'm a day behind on the Poem A Day Challenge. I got hung up on the prompt for day 9, which was to choose a word and write about it. It took me forever to choose a word. Yeeks. So going backward, here are the poems for days 9 and 10:

April 10: write about a place

Waddell Creek Beach

At dawn the ocean
gray begins to lighten
its drumbeat of waves
light on sand
meant only for walking.
The slow slap of water
awakens the memory
of your eyes as you sat
on a log that seemed
so out of place.
I see you clearly
even two decades later.

April 9: write about a word

Word

The problem
with writing a poem about one word
is finding just the right word
because not any word will do.
It must be a word that sings
or creaks or seeks to evoke
an emotion deep in the gut,
a word that tickles in the throat
or hums with sweet nostalgia.
It can't be just an ordinary word
plucked haphazardly from anywhere
because a poem is better than that.

day 8: a poem a day

2008-04-08T15:05:00.000-07:00

Today's prompt for the Poem A Day Challenge was to respond to one of two paintings. I chose this one -- "The Little Deer" by Frida Kahlo:

The Little Deer

Arrows to the heart
do not distract this she deer;
she prances away

on a new journey:
her grand metamorphosis
from beast to artist.

a poem a day ~ the first seven

2008-04-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

In honor of April being National Poetry Month, I am participating in the Poem A Day Challenge at the PoeticAsides blog site. Every day there's a writing prompt and the deal is that you're supposed to write a poem on the fly using the prompt. So far I have been keeping up, and it's already Day 7. First I thought I would post my poems here, but I'm not that sure I can get my act together enough to post every day. So what I"ll do is give it a go, and post my poems here when I think about it. Here they are, in reverse order:

April 7: a rambling poem

Just this morning, early,
earlier than the sun,
when my mind started to wake up,
I began to think again about being laid off
about where we would get the money
to pay the bills
to buy gasoline
to go to the movies
to have a taco at Taco Bell
and why they call them pink slips
when they are not pink.
And then because it’s Monday
I began to think about these little boys
at school, the ones whose parents are in jail
the ones who apparently know more than we think
but just ain’t tellin’. I wondered
what in the world will become of them
if they continue to resist even such things
as listening to a story, and then asking myself
whether I could relax if both
my parents were in jail.

April 6: chronicle of a day’s events turned into a poem

Nothing ever happens to me
especially on Sunday.
On Sunday after I fetch the paper
out of the gutter
my day is pretty ordinary.
It is my day to sit outside
in the garden and read
maybe catch up on emails
avoid the streets
Other than the cats
strewing litter all over
the bathroom floor,
nothing happens to me on Sunday.

April 5: worry poem

Always a Mom

They’ve been grown
and on their own
for nearly a decade.
From two hundred miles away
I wonder whether they’re
eating right, sleeping well,
getting designated drivers
on party nights.
On the phone I ask
do they have enough money,
are their jobs going well,
have they been to
the dentist lately?
I imagine they roll their eyes
the way I did at thirty
at the same questions.

April 4: thank you or tribute

Mom and Dad

They deserve a daughter
half again at least
as good as me,
not one who forgets to call on Sundays.
Knowing this, I should tell them so.

Yet all these years they have given
only love, and loved me
unconditionally.

April 3: haiku

one gnarled oak tree branch
hangs over the garden walk
a squirrel's playground

April 2: put yourself in someone or something else’s skin

Kindergartener

Every day we have to
say I plejallejens and then
sing yankeedoodle.
Our teacher makes us sit
on the hard floor
but she gets to sit
on a fluffy chair with
rolly wheels.
She tells us to write
when we want to draw.
Then we count to a hundred
and it takes so so long.

April 1: a first

April First

On April first the last
of the redbuds bloom.
I drive down the mountain
distracted by purple
on both sides of the road.

let it snow

2007-12-29T10:37:00.003-08:00

The first year we moved into our house, it snowed for a couple of days and we wandered the neighborhood buried to the ankles in snow that obliterated all street edges and property boundaries. Each year since then, it seems we get less and less snow. The temperature hovers just enough above 32 degrees to keep us from getting a decent accumulation. All we get these days is wimpy snow-semi-storms that last long enough to give us about an inch, which manages to make the trees look beautiful and sparkly, but seems to be immediately followed by rain that takes everything away before you can get a pot of soup on the stove and start a jigsaw puzzle. Still, it's beautiful while it lasts, and everywhere I look there are possibilities for post cards, like this:

Too bad it lasts less than a day after the rain starts. Too bad we can't get to at least 31 degrees for a while, for long enough to give us at least a few days to enjoy the scenery. And I can't help but wonder whether this is just a series of warmer winters or if it's a permanent shift, giving us less and less snow every year until we get to a point where it's just a memory.

one more makes five

2007-12-08T12:24:00.000-08:00

We recently acquired a fifth cat,
increasing our cat to human ratio to frightening proportions.
Don't they look innocent?

ravioli time

2007-11-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

Other families might carve pumpkins or go to harvest festivals or search for just the right turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, but in our family when November rolls around we make homemade ravioli -- but not the kind where you crank out enough for dinner from a little pasta-making machine. We work in the thousands.

It's all in the hands.

We are siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandchildren, and an ever-changing array of visitors, working in an assembly line Henry Ford could never have envisioned, moving from table to table kneading, rolling, spreading, pressing, cutting, flouring, and packing into boxes anywhere between 3,000 and 6,000 ravioli at a time. Only those who have graduated to rolling status are allowed to roll the large sheets of dough onto which the spinach/beef filling must be spread with a precise thickness that becomes a yearly topic of conversation or argument, depending on one's perspective and level of involvement.

Eight year olds work alongside eighty year olds, the latter passing the magic touch onto the former.

And it's all in the hands.

blogthings

2007-08-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

Almost every day I read a blog called "Red Shoe Ramblings" which is written by a woman whose profile describes her as "a shoe-addicted, book-loving, photo-crazed quilt artist living in Kentucky." She writes about her life and posts photos of flowers, scenery, arty things and herself. Sounds kind of boring but really, it's not. It's very interesting and inspirational to me. Anyway yesterday on her blog she had this link to a website called "blogthings" where there are these fun little quizzes you can take about yourself and then put the results on your own blog -- like "What your pizza says about you" and "What city are you?" and "What famous work of art are you?" I was intrigued with one that asked, "What pattern is your brain?" Now how, really, could I pass that up? Here's my result:

Your Brain's Pattern

Your brain is always looking for the connections in life.
You always amaze your friends by figuring out things first.
You're also good at connecting people - and often play match maker.
You see the world in fluid, flexible terms. Nothing is black or white.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

I've always thought I had kind of a weird brain, and "purple radiating circular tie-dye kind of pattern" seems right to me.

But here's the funny part.
I went back and did another one, called "What color should your blog or journal be?" and I got this:

Your Blog Should Be Purple

You're an expressive, offbeat blogger who tends to write about anything and everything.
You tend to set blogging trends, and you're the most likely to write your own meme or survey.
You are a bit distant though. Your blog is all about you - not what anyone else has to say.

What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?

Now I have never thought of myself as particularly purple-oriented (um... there is that title up there....), but since my two favorite colors are red and blue, I guess it makes sense. As for the "summary" I would say most of it rings true. I'm not totally sure what a "meme" is and I might be too lazy these days... or too distant... to actually write a survey of my own. But otherwise ... well ... yeah ...

Now click on the link and go take your own little quiz!

it's a rat

2007-07-24T16:40:00.000-07:00

The other morning I was reading my emails and drinking a cup of coffee when I heard this eeeking noise on the other side of the room. I looked over there and found three of our cats circled around what I thought was a mouse. I managed to pick it up with a magazine and put it out in the garden, figuring nature could just take its course.

But of course the cats decided to go get it. So the next thing I knew, Stephen was carrying it in all cupped in his hands. He ended up putting it in a plastic box in the garage. I mentioned that what we needed was a snake person, and we talked about how we should probably put it out of its misery and kill it. Stephen, not being an animal killer in general, spent some time later in the garage with a large spatula in his hand, thinking he should whack it, but in the end we are big chickens and neither of us could kill it. We thought it would just die during the night, but in the morning when I went to look, it was still alive.

So I did a Google and discovered that there is a lot of information out there about how to care for wild baby mice and rats. Soak a piece of bread with milk and drip it in their mouths. Feed them soy milk. Esbilac. Kitten milk replacement. Make sure it doesn't suck in any air because rats don't burp. And my personal favorite: be sure to massage it's backside so it can go to the bathroom. I also found a website that described the differences between a mouse and a rat, which is when I figured out that it was a rat.

So of course I started feeding it. Several times a day. And once during the night. And massaging it to make it go to the bathroom. And Stephen put little felt mice in the box to keep it company. And of course we had to take a picture.

It may be crazy, but it seemed like the right thing to do. And one of the things I like about us is that we do these things.

After a couple of days I posted a message on craigslist that I needed help with a baby rat. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were plenty of people out there with lots of information. I also discovered that there is woman known as "The Rat Lady" in Chico. I emailed her and got a response right away that she would take him. A couple of days later we brought him to her house. We were amazed and impressed by the number of rats (in cages) she had in her house. There must have been a dozen cages in what was once a living room. Some of the cages were rigged so the rats could scamper up a tube and sit up on top of the cage. We also found out that she was an advisor on the movie, "Ratatouille" which we had thought was very well done for a cartoon. She told us that we had a roof rat and assured us that she would take care of the little guy until he was old enough to be released in the wild.

Anyway, now the baby rat has a new home and we can get back to normal around here. Until the cats bring in another critter we'll need to rescue.

she don't look back

2007-06-22T11:54:00.001-07:00

I call myself an artist in hopes that I will be forgiven
for dirt clods on the kitchen floor, for not remembering birthdays
or to scrub the pine sap off patio chairs before barbeques.

“Well, you know, she’s an artist,” people will say.

I can see millimeters of new growth on a fallen manzanita
from twenty paces and single blades of grass waving across the yard
but somehow two sets of muddy cat prints tracked across
the bathroom counter between perfume bottles and toothbrushes
are beyond my scope.

R. Goularte ~ 2007

alive and budding

2007-05-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

Manzanita

One day after the surprise of snow, so heavy that
pine trees looked as though they had been bound for transport:
no longer triangular, carved to elongated ovals,
branches turned to giant snow globs hanging to the ground --

back there in the far corner of the yard the old manzanita,
taller than the apple tree, twisted branch trunks heavy with snow
quietly pulled itself up and over out of the ground
cracked its tap root and defied us to try to save it.

We tried to save it, a small crew of friends pushing and tugging to try to stand it back up, shove it back in its own hole. It creaked and groaned and resisted, so we left it lying on the ground and pondered whether to leave it there or turn it into firewood. Three months later it sent out new green buds on every branch, so we decided to just let it stay where it is and do whatever it's going to do.

Procrastination sometimes pays off.

rotten at the core

2007-03-23T08:21:00.000-07:00

chunks of trunk
lay in the yard
waiting for chainsaws

I live in a town that was once a forest.
Tall, old trees are taken for granted as part of the community.
Until they fall.

One day in December a hundred-year-old black oak tree in our front yard fell over. It took with it two adolescent cypress trees and the wire that supplied electricity to two houses. Instantly this created half a day's work for several public employees, and a now-sunny front yard which had only moments before been shade-filled and had given us privacy. After basic cleanup, we inspected the roots and found a rotten core, black and squishy. This in a tree that had shown no signs of disease or stress, a tree that presented itself to the sky as strong, healthy, and dominant.

On the outside, everything was fine.
It was the rotten core that did it in.
Seems to me there's some kind of lesson there.

art and learning

2006-07-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

The arts have been being pushed out of elementary schools (certainly in California, where I live) for decades now, little by little in some cases, in whole fell swoops in others. But in most cases, it is not impossible for teachers themselves to keep those "not-being-tested" strategies and activities in their classrooms (ok I will give people a pass on instrumental music). Even under the strictest of mandates schedules, is there really no extra time? (This is a serious question, because I know I have always had the time for fun. Or maybe I just took it.)

It used to be said that teachers in general had a lot of autonomy once they closed their classroom doors. That, of course, was before the age of "Open Court police" and other teacher-squashing mandates. However, I am still of the opinion that many teachers have way more power than they realize. It comes from putting yourself on those district committees which make the decisions. It comes from doing a great job and keeping your mouth shut when that is a better strategy, and speaking up when it counts.

Ellin Keene's book Mosaic of Thought is my classroom bible over any other teacher book, because it presents a thoughtful foundation and comes from a place of giving teachers the autonomy to do things their way rather than following a list of instructions. I do like the more strategy-oriented books as well that give specific ideas, but Mosaic of Thought is the foundation they sit on. I believe when you know the foundation, you can create the teaching strategies yourself because you know where you are and where you're going. That's the reason I think teachers need to create for themselves an underlying philosophy of what they know and believe about learning.

I see the arts the same way. The arts are what we live and breathe each day of our lives. The music that pops on in the morning on the clock radio, the colors we choose to paint our living rooms, the movies we attend, the way we are enticed through creative advertising to buy products....... those are all ways the arts are manifested in our societies. Think about the number of young people wandering around these days plugged into their MP3 players. Music is art. It is also communication and expression and a way to.... yes.... escape the woes of the world. The arts are everywhere and inescapable. And who would want to escape them? Do you think the muckety-muck publishers don't use visual arts elements when they are designing those million dollar textbooks? You bet they do.

We teachers use the visual arts in our classrooms every time we ask students to draw an illustration, make a poster, or look at how pictures are used in both non-fiction and fiction texts. Reading comprehension includes the visual arts in very fundamental ways. How many times do we talk about and/or use the pictures in text as comprehension clues? Do we ask students to illustrate their own writings? Do we invite them to make posters? bookmarks? dioramas? charts? Those are all under the umbrella of the visual arts.

To me, the arts have always been just as basic as mathematics and reading and writing. The arts are our core and they are what we leave behind for future cultures to know who we are. As hard as it is these days to find the "time for art" in our teaching schedules, I think perhaps it is necessary like never before to give students this additional outlet for expression and communication.

What if we started looking at using the visual arts as one component of the foundation for communication?

I think teachers need to make their stands when and where they can, and although it may be harder today than a decade ago, I don't think it's impossible. Other than instrumental music instruction which takes vastly more personal expertise as well as a great deal of expense, teachers CAN fold more arts instruction into their days if they really want to and choose to do so, and if they come from the foundation side, the way Mosaic of Thought comes from the foundation side of reading comprehension, and look at the arts as additional components of strategies for reading, writing, and mathematics instruction. An hour or two a week for visual arts instruction is not impossible under most circumstances. This can be integrated into the prevailing theme AND be actual art instruction at the same time.

I had a degree in art before I had my teaching credential, but it's really not hard to incorporate real art instruction into the classroom, especially if you look at the visual arts as a series of strategies, much like reading comprehension includes a series of strategies. It may be a little harder these days to carve out the time, but it's not impossible, especially when you look at art as communication.

I'm immersed in art at the moment because I just finished compiling into a book a series of art activities that consider art as a foundation for expression rather than as a series of cute projects for the last hour on Friday afternoon. Anyone who is interested in reading more about how this works can follow this link to the Introduction of the book:
http://www.share2learn.com/CreatingArt-info.html

house and garden

2006-05-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while sitting in the clinic waiting for a mammogram, I was browsing through a House and Garden magazine and came across this picture of a living room that stopped my random page-turning. Along two walls made almost entirely of glass sat two chrome-legged minimalist modern white couches, and two coffee tables, maybe cherry. Maybe plastic. The tables were very rectangular, very shiny, very stark. One had nothing but a huge clear glass vase on it, a sphere resting on the smallest of area, holding two long oak tree branches sitting in water that filled what I'm sure was a mathematical two thirds of the vase. On the other coffee table were two art books, stacked just oh so slightly off-center.

There was no sign of life.

I couldn't help but wonder who could possibly use a room like this. I compared it to my own living room, where the coffee table is the main depository for assorted magazines, videotapes, DVDs, partly-read books, half-eaten bowls of popcorn, and on which the main attraction is a basket of coasters lifted from local restaurants and bars. Not to mention the one leg that the male cat likes to use as a scratching post when we're not looking. Or when he even thinks we're not looking.

I kept staring at that vase, wondering how long it would take our youngest cat to pull out the tree branches, drink the water, and knock the whole arrangement on the floor.

american culture

2006-05-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

This morning I got one of those "often forwarded" emails from a cousin...... the kind that screams about being American and promoting American culture and speaking English......and instead of just deleting I decided to respond.

I consider this hate-filled racism. Not only that, but it's sprinkled with half-truths. Take a look at http://www.snopes.com/rumors/american.htm and follow the links. Perhaps some people have been watching a little too much O'Reilly and/or listening to a bit too much Rush Limbaugh.

Also, here's an article about immigrant influence on American culture published by the Cato Institute, a non-profit public policy research foundation headquarted in Washington, D.C.:
http://www.cato.org/research/articles/griswold-020218.html
If you have a short attention span, at least read the first two paragraphs, and this statement: "A National Academy of Science study has shown that the typical immigrant and his or her offspring will pay a net $80,000 more in taxes during their lifetimes than they collect in government services."

And think about some things:

My own grandparents were immigrants and all four of them spoke another language besides English. None of them ever learned English exceptionally well, although they could communicate. Does that make them less American than those Americans who emigrated from England? How about me or you?

Undocumented workers are welcome to join the military and die in Iraq... and plenty of them do. They are fighting for your freedom to treat them like trash and spread hate.

Millions of men and women who sought and won freedom in and for America WERE and ARE immigrants.

Nobody learns to speak English the second they make their way across the border, whether they are crossing legally or illegally, visiting or staying, children or adults. Learning a language is a process that can take up to seven years in order to communicate effectively in school and the work place. Would you suggest that people remain mute until they learn the language enough to your liking? And while I'm at it, the goal of bilingual education is help children learn English, not to keep them from learning it.

NOBODY forces ANYBODY to say "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas".... In fact, "Season's Greetings" is used to denote the entire holiday season, which includes not only Christmas but Thanksgiving and New Year's as well. Not only that, but it is used by commercial establishments because they know that everybody shopping in their stores does not celebrate Christmas and they are out for the almighty dollar. It's economic, pure and simple.

It is not "politically correct" to discuss the ways that America offends others in the world, and to look at how or why such hatred of America has come to be. It's called "thinking." This is what diplomacy is all about, and anyone who thinks America is always right ought to pick up and read a book called "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. It might open some eyes a little.

As for the statement that Americans have their own culture, their own society, their own language and their own lifestyle, I would ask for examples, please. Unless you are talking about Native American rituals, every aspect of American culture has been created from the contributions of immigrants from all over the world. Think about it the next time you...

eat ravioli for Thanksgiving (Italian)
whack a pinata at a birthday party (Mexican)
eat a hot dog and drink a beer (German)
eat a linguicia (Portuguese)
go out for Chinese food (doh)
have a birthday party (German)
teach your children about Santa Claus (Dutch)
hang mistletoe (Scandanavian)
decorate with poinsettias (Mexican, Hindu, and Muslim)
send Christmas cards (English)
celebrate on Christmas Eve (Jewish and Islamic)
write a letter to Santa Claus (Finnish)
cut a Jack-o-Lantern (Irish)
wear a Halloween costume (Celtic)
bake an apple pie (English)
explode a firecracker (Chinese)
drink your morning coffee (Arabian/Turkish/African)
hide Easter eggs (German)

Off the top of my head, the only uniquely American tradition I can think of is Thanksgiving as a celebration of bounty and the eating of turkey on that day, and if the Native Americans had not saved the Pilgrims' asses, there wouldn't even be that. (For a real eye-opener about the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving, go to http://www.2020tech.com/thanks/temp.html )

I am tired of the so-called "Christians" in this country whining about being discriminated against and trying to take away everyone else's freedom, starting with their tirade about how America was founded by Christians. Read a little history on that. It's not quite true, at least not the way you think of Christians today.

*Real* Christians would have tolerance for difference and look at the plight of immigrants as a human problem to solve. *Real* Christians ACT like Christians, they don't just yell about being Christian. Jesus said, "Love one another."

As for leaving the country, I suggest that more people ought to actually read the Constitution. You can find it here:
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
Or go straight to the Bill of Rights:
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/funddocs/billeng.htm

language

2006-05-11T13:40:00.000-07:00

The local post office has double glass entrance doors. On the inside, there is a sign on the "in" door which says, "Do not enter." Since one can't enter when one is already inside, shouldn't it say, "Do not exit"?

finding out what you already know

2005-10-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

I came across a quote one day, from Richard Bach, of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" fame: "Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers." It reminded me of a question that was posed to the students in an education class by one of my favorite professors in graduate school. She asked whether teachers always had to know about something they were teaching, or if they could guide students into going ahead into places where the teacher might be unfamiliar. Herein lies the whole crux, I think, of teaching as guiding, of life-long learning, and of the delicate interplay between teaching and learning. Is it possible to teach without learning? Is it possible to learn without teaching? Great questions to ponder. Here's an example: once a third grade student and I learned together about bases other than ten, using Cuisinaire Rods to build models. Until then, I had never understood the concept of bases other than ten. Had I been the kind of teacher who needed to know something before I introduced it to a student, that student would never have had the opportunity for that individual mathematical exploration -- nor would I have learned how other bases worked! Sometimes as teachers and leaders we can easily slip into the idea that we are in charge, that we know the answers, that our answers are the only answers, and that only we know which direction to head.

my thinking....

2005-10-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

I believe that the best way anybody learns something is by doing it, preferably with some kind of cognitive struggle, by reflecting on trials and errors, by recognizing those errors, analyzing them, and making necessary adjustments. If children don't do it themselves, learn it themselves, experience it themselves, struggle with it themselves, then it isn't something that's part of them and it won't stick. Therefore, I consider myself the arranger of the environment, the establisher of direction, the facilitator of discussion, the manager of collaborations, the chooser of choices and most importantly, the asker of critical questions.