blogthings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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....

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.