Week Five

Every school year, sometime around week five, I become convinced I have developed a terminal illness.  My body aches at the end of the day, supper seems like an enormous undertaking, and I crawl into bed at 9 pm, already half-asleep.  I debate how to tell my family that my time is up.  Then I call my sister, a fellow teacher whose year starts a bit earlier, and she reminds me that it’s week five, and my condition is chronic but not terminal.  Soon after that, I gain my school legs, and I’m fine. 

This morning, I got up at 5:30 am, crawled into the shower, and was pleased to discover that overnight my vision had magically improved so that I could see clearly.  Two seconds later, my glasses were dripping wet.  I had gotten into the shower with them on.  

It’s week five, y’all.

Fall in Sight

The backyard dogwood tree is rather a harbinger of things to come.  It’s my first sight of Spring in April and come September, its leaves begin to turn ever-so-slightly.  I enjoy a daily check of the changes at hand.  This was the tree three weeks ago.   

Last week, a few more leaves had begin to turn.  

Yesterday, color was coming to all of the leaves on the side of the tree that faces West.  

This tree barely reached the roofline of the first floor when I moved here in 2005.  These days, it’s rather larger than that, though still very much in the shadow of Old Man Tree, and always a treat when I spy its branches.

Old Man Tree October 1

September of any school year is typically exhausting but September in pandemic school was well beyond that.  In the first full week, we quarantined more than 20 kids;  the next week brought another dozen at home.  Students have been a bit off the rails on the adolescent behavior front.  It’s been a challenging month.   Each day, I’d come home and take some time to admire Old Man Tree, the sentinel of time in my back yard and a reminder of the many things that endure even as life seems upside down.       

For all the difficulties of September, the teaching and learning - with every kid in class and none on Zoom - has been absolutely splendid.  I love that part of school again and it’s a most-welcome development.    As we settle into October’s shortening day, learning feels almost normal.  Mother Nature has been kind to us when it comes to outside recess and the changing leaves are here.

Old Man Tree is getting ready for the next season.  Under his careful watch, I’ll be ready as well.

September Front Porch

This is the last full month that outdoor porch sitting will be an option on a daily basis.  I am determined to make the most of it.  Happy green plants surround my tiny New England village.

The flag is a cheerful sunflower.

I come home tired most days in the first month of school and this porch is a welcome place to arrive.  That’s happy!

I’m Vaccinated and I’m Angry

I am growing weary of claims by unvaccinated people that vaccine mandates are a limit on their freedom.  Freedom is such a tricky concept and Americans are woefully ignorant of how freedom actually works when we all must live in the same society.  We wave the flag and shout the word freedom as if it gives us the right to do whatever we damn well please.  But that is not what freedom means; nor has it ever meant that.  In otherwise free societies, once human beings live with one another, freedom is necessarily bounded so that we can live safely and well alongside one another.     

All day long, your freedom is restricted.  Consider just one day in my life.  I must drive on the right side of the road because the law demands it.  Worse than that, I must follow a speed limit because safety and order for other drivers is important.  I must stop at red lights, signal before I turn, and abide by speed limits.  I’m barely out of my house 15 minutes and already my freedom has been restricted.  How do I bear it?  Well, those restrictions apply to all of us and they keep me - and you - safer as we drive our cars.     

Most limits on freedom fall into this category - restrictions made to benefit the safety of us all.  They don’t endanger my life, neither do they put me at risk.  They do set limits on what I can do - limits on my freedom.  They do that to keep me - and everyone else - just a smidge safer.  Vaccines - and masks, these days - fall into this category.  A vaccine against a potentially fatal and airborne illness helps to prevent me from contracting it.  And vaccinated people keep all the rest of us safer as well.  We have been using vaccines for years — smallpox vaccines were common in the 1700s - and we know that vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine, is safe and effective for the vast majority of us.     

There is, of course, an enormous amount of vaccine disinformation, propagated by ignorant people who are afraid.  Fear and ignorance is a potent combination and for some of us it will be deadly.  But the fear of some of us must not prevent our government (a government by the people) from taking action to protect the health and safety of all of us.  

I make it a life habit to avoid anger and hate.  They are emotions that kill joy and I want no part of them.  But my fury at the unvaccinated and the risks they create for all of us is a potent force right now.  I am not proud of it, but I find myself not giving a damn about unvaccinated people who are dying of COVID.  I don’t even care about the suffering and pain of their families at this largely preventable loss.  The willful choice of some of us to keep a pandemic alive when we could stop it is unethical, immoral, and the height of selfishness.  To claim freedom as the reason for exposing us all to a greater probability of illness and death is beyond ignorant, it’s just plain stupid.     

If you want true and absolute freedom, then go where there are no other people, in a place where your actions can never affect any of us.  That’s going to be hard to find because it is an impossible goal in a planet occupied by people.  Until then, your freedom is limited by the freedom of the rest of us.  Roll up your sleeve and get the fucking vaccine.  You’ll be safer and so will everyone else in the world.  In a world in which we must live with other people, that is a really good thing.  

School, Actual School

After nearly two weeks of meetings, actual classrooms full of real-life students arrive in the building today.  My classroom is organized; lessons are set; my first-day-school skirt and blouse are steamed and at-the-ready.

Like any start of school, there is the expectation of the unknown.  The pandemic makes this an even greater concern.  More than 80% of my students eligible to be vaccinated have had their jab.  All of the faculty and staff are vaccinated.  For now, we are not teaching hybrid and I am grateful for the chance to get to know my students before we navigate whatever madness Covid-19 brings. 

This is my 20th year teaching at my school, a landmark of sorts, and my greatest hope is for a year of healthy in-person learning.  That seems like a modest goal but if I have learned anything in the past two years of teaching, it’s that the seemingly modest goals are the most important of all.  

Giddy up, y’all.  Here we go…

New School Year, New Bulletin Board

Every year, I organize a new bulletin board for my office.  

Two parts inspiration and one part the story of my last year, each year’s board is organized to bring me daily happiness. The usual suspects are all there: UCLA; anthropomorphized British animals; books; flowers; people I love; a nod to my home state; my first celebrity crush, Smokey the Bear...and more that makes me smile).  

This year’s theme is female empowerment.  I have grown weary of being taken for granted and underestimated because of my gender.  I see being a woman as my greatest superpower and I’d advise the universe to take note and get the fuck out of my way.

The Body As Politic

When I was in the 5th grade, and 10 years old, a visit to our family pediatrician resulted in an event that lingers in my mind to this very day.  She told me that I was “too pretty to be chubby.”  What followed were a series of family diets - none able to combat the food dysfunction already well-built into our family DNA - and, for me, a growing distrust and dislike of my body.     

In the aftermath of the visit to the doctor, I remember having the feeling that what I saw in the mirror and what she saw when she looked at me were two vastly different images.  She saw a pretty face with an un-pretty body.  After that appointment, that is also what I saw.  Since then, even with the help of loads of therapy, I cannot see my body with any sense of accuracy.  For the most part, I strenuously avoid encounters with my appearance, having long ago perfected the talent of looking in a mirror but not seeing myself.     Education in feminism has ensured that I now understand the many ways that women’s bodies are a public commodity in a fashion that does not occur for men.  From hair color to the shape and style of our clothing, women’s bodies are never fully their own.  All women’s bodies - thin or not - are subject to comment and regulation in a way that never occurs for me.  The media, strangers, medical practitioners, friends, and family offer “helping” commentary that is almost never helpful and is more often cruel.  It is hard for many of us to develop any veneer of protection to these pressures.     

With the help of good therapists, I learned to tamp down anxiety about my appearance and to never present a public face that rejects limits on the right of my body to exist, to take up space.  I started this as a fake-it-’til-you-make-it strategy and, many years later, it has worked fairly well.  Movement - a run on the elliptical or a walk in the woods - and pregnancy helped me to be on friendlier terms with my body.  I no longer regard it as my enemy.  I would love to actually value and appreciate my body on a consistent basis, but that remains a work in progress.  I have always been able to value my mind, and when others have actively underestimated my intelligence, that dismissal never affected me.  You’d think I would be able to accord my body that same protection, but I have not been able to consistently do so.     

At this point, it’s been a 43 year project to value my body as I value my mind.  I know now that it’s the project of my lifetime.  This work-in-progress is vastly aided by the growing body positivity and health-at-every-size movement and I am grateful for that help, which has been essential to my continued faith in myself.  This post, a declaration of human vulnerability in a realm where I am the most protective of myself, is another step in that direction.  It’s a reminder to 10 year old me that my value as a person is inherent and not a function of anything other than my human existence.

End-of-Summer Adventure: New Jersey Botanical Garden

T and I have been visiting state parks in NJ for the past three years.  When the pandemic struck, that interest turned out to be rather keen as the outdoors was safe for these little journeys.  When we began, in December 2018, we set a goal to visit every state park in NJ.  We’re more than two-thirds complete and we happily wander here and there as the mood strikes.  Last weekend, the mood called for Ringwood.     

Set so far north that we could step into New York State, Ringwood and the New Jersey State Botanical Garden that is across the street were, as is invariably the case, unexpected gems.      

The day was cool and a bit overcast but the gardens were beautiful, blest by plenty of rain as they had been all Summer long.    

 

There is both a formal garden and an informal one.  I liked the formal best in no small measure because of the amazing lily pads to be spied as we walked along the stone sidewalks.     

The informal garden had an area with both annuals and perennials.  

This gem of a garden will be worthy of a return visit and I look forward to seeing it next Spring. That’s happy!

Climate Reality

My corner of New Jersey is about one inch above the water table on the best days and on Wednesday evening, as the remnants of Hurricane Ida washed through, we were reminded again of that fact.  This storm caused flash flood destruction everywhere and it was only by good luck and the fact that we never lost electricity that we survived largely unscathed.  For most of the night on Wednesday, our basement pump was running every three minutes, just staying ahead of the deluge.      

We’ve spent some time this weekend helping folks who weren’t as lucky as us and everywhere I look in my town is evidence of enormous water damage - wet basement items (including washers, dryers, refrigerators, furnaces, and hot water heaters) emptied onto the curbs of our town; houses moved off their foundations; ruined cars covered in the remnants of dirt that show how high the floodwaters rose.     

I vote on behalf of the planet and I believe in the Green New Deal.  So do the people around me who experienced devastation on Wednesday.  I grow weary of a nation of people who thinks it’s their right to ignore Mother Nature’s urgent call for help and I fear that the continued failure to take heed will bring even more devastation in its wake.     We cannot claim that we weren’t warned. 

Pandemic School: Year 3

Though it seems insane to write it down, this the third year I will teach school while a pandemic rages on.  The first year, 2019-2020, began as a typical school year and then shifted homeward in the last third of the year, while we all tried to flatten the curve (remember that?).     

The close of that year was filled with volumes of uncertainty about what was to come for the following year. , so much so that it seems to me that uncertainty was the theme of the 2020-2021 school year.  I joked often that it was year that featured a lot of planning of things that we would subsequently cancel.  There is a painful truth to that.  As the school year unfolded,  I taught most of it in a hybrid model, punctuated at times by being fully remote and then a close to the year that brought most of our students on campus in the month of May.  That last month felt as close to normal as anything has been since March of 2020, albeit a normal with everyone in  masks and a few students still fully remote.     

We plan for 2021-2022 to be a year of students fully on campus.  When planning for September began in earnest in in late March 2021, vaccines were briskly rolling out and every teacher and most children over 12 of my acquaintance were eager to get one, that seemed like a reasonable assumption.  Now, with the start of classes just a few days away, and the Delta variant in full command in the U.S., I worry that our plans are overly optimistic.  Even with more than 80% of those over age 12 and nearly 100% of the faculty and staff vaccinated, I’d feel better with a school-wide vaccine mandate to go with our mask mandate.  Instead, I’ll have confidence in our community, a confidence that is rooted in knowledge of the community as much as it is hope.    

I no longer believe in anything like “normal."  In fact, I think a large measure of our national divide is driven by a set of people who believed in a “normal” that privileged them at the cost of others.  I have come to see normal as a problem.  I think we need to be realistic about how we live our lives in this challenge.  But lives can be lived and we must do so.  Here's to the hope that always attends the start of a school year.  Here's also to the values of a school community that looks after one another.  In these two things I hope we find the strength to make our way forward.

Old Man Tree: September 1

I never longed for the start of Summer as much I longed for Summer this year.  The hybrid school year took its toll and when June hovered into sight I was so glad for the prospect of time off.  I took advantage of that time and the unscheduled days of the last few months has been lovely. 

Though the last school year ended on a positive note - I began to believe we might not have to wear masks forever - the rise of the Delta variant over the summer has put those hopes to rest.  New Jersey is a high vax state and we’ll all be wearing a mask at school.  I’m checking the over 12 vaccination rate in my region and my school with a slight obsessiveness (school is over 80%, so that’s hopeful) and reading every study I can find about ventilation.  In short, the pandemic and its attendant anxiety are still very much with me as the start of school is very much on the horizon.

That makes Old Man Tree, this backyard, and time outside more important than ever.  As the busy days ramp up, I am grateful for time here, with a tree that is old enough that it was here for post-WWI influenza pandemic and will surely see us through this uncertainty as well.

Blue Tuesday

The ability to travel this Summer was a most welcome development and I was glad for the occasions when I could pack my bag and go someplace.  When my nephew S came to visit, that someplace was a few days in Washington D.C.  I packed my bag full of blue and white clothes. 

I felt tidy and organized and the color scheme ensured that I had lots of options to mix things up, which always pleases me.  I love clothes and blue and white clothes are among my very favorite.  For the rest of this year, I have declared Blue Tuesday and I will wear something blue.  Some of those blue clothes will be shared here.  This is an admittedly shallow enterprise but it’s one that makes me happy.   And these days, all sources of happiness are worth holding onto.

Black History is American History

I have wanted to visit the Smithsonian Museum of African American history since it first opened in 2015.  When my nephew and his girlfriend came East for a visit and wanted to see D.C., I seized on the opportunity and it was the very first thing I saw on my visit to the city.      

The museum has 7 floors —— 3 underground and 3 above ground, divided by an expansive lobby on the ground floor.  Though entrance is free, tickers are required because the museum is so popular with visitors.  There is something very heartening about this and as I waited in line I felt like I was surrounded by a host of fellow Americans who get it.  These days, that’s no small thing.        

The floors below the lobby depict the years from slavery’s arrival in North America to the election of Barack Obama and beyond.  Visitors descend three levels to begin and the space is dark this far below.  It took me a minute to realize that the walls are covered in a substance that looks like wood.  We are in the hull of a ship making the journey of the Middle Passage.        

There are some artifacts, though few relative to the fact that we are in a Smithsonian museum of history.  Most of what we view are the words of people - Oloudah Equiano especially - describing the reality of enslavement.  The displays are offered in a tone of matter-of-factness and it is in these descriptions and maps of the journey across the Atlantic and portrayals of the slave ships’ holds that the horror takes shape for museum visitors.

The visitor winds around, slowly ascending toward the 19th century.  There is a statue of Thomas Jefferson and his words in the Declaration of Independence, plus descriptions of the enslaved population at Monticello, including the stories of the Hemmings family.  The history is presented precisely in order for the visitor to draw her own conclusions about both Jefferson and the nation he helped found.  As I walk through the history, of the 1800s the abolition movement comes into view.  The words and actions of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and William Lloyd Garrison take command of the narrative.  At every juncture, the experiences and lives of Black Americans are at the core of the story.        

Notably, there are few artifacts, a fact that underscores the reality of being enslaved and held as property.  People denied the power to own their very bodies leave few possessions to be cherished.  Those artifacts that are displayed - a lace handkerchief that belonged to Harriet Tubman; a copy of Frederick Douglass’ North Star newspaper - are more powerful because of the rarity.        

As I continue to walk the path upward, the historical record winds from the hopes of Reconstruction to the discouragement and terror of Jim Crow.  Military service by Black Americans, segregation, and the Great Migration sit alongside one another, telling the story of our nation.  Now there are more pictures and artifacts to show the story, including a powerful and emotional display of the story of Emmet Till’s trip to Mississippi. 

The museum tells the story of our collective past with space left open for us to make a better future, no small task in this nation.  It celebrates Black lives, community, and culture without shirking the harder truths lived by those lives.  The museum is a monument to our collective history.  For much of my walk through this story of the United States,  my emotions were at the surface, as they often are when I teach this history, which I take pains to keep alive.  I want everyone in this nation to visit the museum and to spend time wrestling with the truth of our collective past.  It is the only way to a better future for us all.

The Path Ahead

In the last two years, I’ve taken to making pictures of the trails and paths I have been walking on.  There is something about the path forward that engages me, especially when I find a quiet patch in the woods, as I did a few weeks ago when I was at Kittatinny Valley State Park.

I expect it’s the uncertainty of the last few years that has made this project appealing to me. I know the pictures bring me happiness.        

These days, that’s reason enough to stop and make a picture of the path that lies ahead.

The Waning Days of Summer Reading

The arrival of June moves my reading habit into its highest gear and all Summer long, I consume books with a greater ferocity than usual.  Since the pandemic, I’ve taken to using my generous sticker collection to make bookmarks and in the Summer, each book gets its own bookmark. I make them by the gross because they make me happy.  I started a new book the other day and, as is my habit, chose a new bookmark.  As it’s August, the supply has thinned.  

But not so much that I had no choice.     

As I reviewed my options, a horrifying thought arose: Summer is coming to a close.  Classes start in 4 weeks.  That development will markedly slow my reading ways.  I’m not quite ready for it.

BLT Season

Though it is of course possible to get tomatoes all year long, the ones that come from a garden in the Summer are the tomatoes that give the fruit its lustrous reputation.  Mine have come in bit by delicious bit and we’ve enjoyed them at the supper table.  But my favorite way to enjoy a Summer tomato is on a BLT, with plenty of salt and pepper and a generous spread of mayo.

It’s heaven on a plate, y’all.

Blue is My Favorite Color

Eating outside is my favorite part of the warm weather season and this year I scored some lovely blue plates to make it even nicer.    

That’s happy.

Lily Pad Season

Two of the ponds in the places I go for walks have been wet enough in the heat of Summer to sustain flowers on the lily pads.    

I find them magical.   

In year when so much has felt difficult and worrisome, I have appreciated the splendor of Summer more than ever.    

That’s happy!

In Praise of New Jersey

On Monday, a major water main in my corner of New Jersey broke, as 100 year old water mains will sometimes do.  The water authority notified us at once and a boil water order went into effect.  On Tuesday, while the boil water notice held, we were notified of places to pick up a case of bottled drinking water.  I drove over to one of the 6 locations and in less than five minutes, a case of water was loaded into my car.  The staff and I exchanged the standard Jersey “take care” message and I was home in 10 minutes.

New Jersey gets something of a bad rap nationally and the traffic is as bad as you’ve been led to imagine.  But there are pockets of extraordinary beauty all over this state and our government is good - smart (because it’s mostly Democrats who run the show), responsive, caring, organized, and not prone to bullshit or lies.  

As pandemic stupidity and anti-vaxing rages in the vast fly-over parts of this nation, I have grown to appreciate New Jersey more than ever.  The people here are a community; we look after and try to do right by one another.  

I’ll take it.

The Joys of a Simmering Crock Pot

A few summers back, I saw a recipe for summer corn chowder on the  Southern Living Instagram feed.  This chowder is made in a crock pot and uses fresh corn, two things that I can always get behind.  The taste is full-on amazing, so that’s a third advantage.

I made the soup yesterday and the smell of the crock pot in the afternoon, plus the promise of a supper that could simply be ladled out when we were ready to eat, made for a happy afternoon.

Try it for yourself.  

Trying Again

The blog and I have been on an extended dance mix break in the past few months and I can’t really explain why this is the case.  I have a few ideas, of course, because if there is one thing I have perfected in the pandemic, it is over-thinking everything.

My best guess is that a hand-written journal took the space of the digital journal during the pandemic.  In March 2020, I began a daily Covid journal that was a hand-written affair and I think that some of my writing energy went there.  For months of this trial of a time, thinking about the pandemic and how to handle it at school (not to mention teach hybrid, teach remote, or, frankly, teach at all) consumed a lot of my time and energy.  In my free time, I turned to books as a distraction from the near-constant worrying.  In late June of 2021, when it seemed that my steadily vaccinating part of the nation was starting to re-emerge (pre-Delta variant in the U.S., of course), I converted the handwritten pandemic journal to a weekly update.  That has freed up time for me to write for the blog.  Why it took me another six weeks to start up postings is rather a mystery, but here we are.

If the pandemic has taught me anything valuable, it’s to go easy on myself and so for this re-start, I am not planning to back fill with postings that were begun or written while I was not posting regularly.  I will just begin and hope to continue.  Come to think of it, that is the keep-on-keeping-on tactic that has gotten me this far in the pandemic.  As strategies go, it’s not a bad one.

Here we go.

The Joys of April

After an especially hard week, I treated myself to a spa pedicure on Friday afternoon.  Today, while I sat on the front steps getting ready to put on my yard work shoes and cut the grass, I looked at my feet and realized that my summer flip flop tan line hasn’t faded out completely.

There’s something quite hopeful about such a revelation.  In my daydreams of late, I imagine day after day of flip flops and some real time off this summer.  Reservations have been made and my packing list is ready.  That is a most happy prospect for me to contemplate.  In the meantime, April has pink tulips.

Iris blooms.

And lush, green grass to be cut.  Here’s to the first mow of the season and to the many more to follow.

Putting Patriarchy on Notice

When I was a Junior in high school - at age 16 - I complained about the way some male classmates were treating me and the Assistant Principal told me to toughen up; that boys would be boys.

I told him to fuck off.

Yes, that is the language that I used.  He called my dad, who for once used less profanity than I employed.  But my dad stood up for me, though in more diplomatic terms.

The event is cemented in my mind because that was the moment my general desire to leave my hometown became a vow to myself: I would get out.  In those days, patriarchy was inextricably mixed with my understanding of my hometown and it’s old-fashioned ways.  Now, nearly 40 years later, I know that patriarchy isn’t just the condition of small town America, it is the condition of all America.

I am 53 and the willingness of men to continue to demand that women wait their turn and be grateful to simply sit at the table is infuriating.  It’s not all men; it’s not all places.  For example, I couldn’t be more pleased that President Biden has moved so aggressively to promote women and women’s issues in his vision of America.  That it’s not just lip service is truly promising.  

But Biden’s attitude and his willingness to take action is not the approach of every person with power; it’s certainly not the approach of every man in power.  And it’s nowhere near the majority point of view in this nation.  I have grown weary of the struggle; of the fight to have a seat at the table and to be honestly valued when I am there.  

The pandemic has reduced my patience for the disregard and ill-treatment of women.  It has made me think about how I need to restructure my investment in relationships and institutions where patriarchy reigns supreme.  There was once a time when I was willing to play my part and wait it out, convinced that patriarchy was on the wane.  But I am not 16 or 25 or even 40 anymore.  And I am no longer willing to wait.