In Praise of Caffeine

This is how I start my day: with a big cup of coffee. Well, to be accurate, I feed the cats, grind the French roast beans, pour the cold well water into the coffee maker, set it to STRONG BREW, and renew my water-loving soul with a shower while my coffee brews.

Then I pour my coffee, smooth it with a fulsome dash of half-and-half, and begin to sip.

With each sip, I feel more alert, more energized, more focused. I freely admit that I am adicted to coffee. My system expects a dose of caffeine to hook into receptors before 9 AM, or my brain will ache. During my child-bearing years, I endured painful withdrawal before (or early in) each pregnancy.

I bought these earrings last summer when I visited Kevin Abbott at his attic studio in Bellefonte, PA with my daughter Phoebe. He showed us the process he uses to affix his drawings to recycled cardboard; he let us use his die-cut machine to make the perfect cuts; he explained how he coats the cardboard with a sealant; he showed us trays of earrings drying in a simple dehydrator; and then he led us down the road to see his vast array of Jababo earrings, ready for shipping across the country to nature centers, science museum gift shops, and other specialty vendors. As we headed to the car, I said to Phoebe, "Can you believe I forgot to take my camera?" Oh, well. Visiting Kevin was one of the highlights of my summer. What a joy to see someone who lives simply, creates beautiful and inspiring jewelry, and runs a small business that helps others in his community. Check out his website at http://www.jabebo.com/.

That first cup of coffee disappears as I eat my breakfast. I fill my travel mug with another cup, and hit the road. The Caribou Coffee slogan is wearing off, but the message still makes me smile:

Life is short.

Stay awake for it.

Today, caffeine bolstered me during meetings. Tomorrow, it will help prepare me for my first day of a new school year.

Gearing up for a new school year, old style

That brown snakey thing next to my clock radio is my watchband. I put my watch there on June 17th,when I returned home from my last teacher work day. I didn't strap it on again until 6:49 AM today. 80 days with no watch. 80 days of summer.

For the first few days, I glanced at my wrist over and over, looking for the time. And then I stopped. No need. In summer, I have the time to walk across the yard, up the stairs, into the house, and check the clock. Or to climb into my kayak and say, "I'll be back sometime around 10."

I spent today in teachers' meetings, listening, doodling, taking notes, jotting down items I needed to accomplish in my Sundial Agenda. I like this model: no boxes, just the free-flow of time.

I wore one of my most striking pairs of earrings today: clock parts from gear-driven watches. I bought them in May 2010 from a craftswoman at the Delaplane Strawberry Festival.

I studied her creations for a long time, looking for a pair that was not too obvious, but would require thought, especially of children who'd never seen watch gears. 

I wonder how long it will be before clocks with hands become as anachronistic as sundials. Or as the wind-up clocks of my childhood.  

I wore my watch today, but forgot my cell phone at home. If only I had Dick Tracy's 2-way wrist radio. A brief look on the Internet says that LG introduced such a gizmo in 2009. I don't think I've seen one yet.

Would I wear one? Probably not. I'm just learning to text. I know I couldn't handle that tiny keyboard.

An endless game of Monopoly

Labor Day. I read about the origins of this day on The Writer’s Almanac. A federal holiday created to appease Labor Unions after Grover Cleveland sent the military to put down the Pulman workers' strike. I’m one of many who are of two minds about unions. I fervently believe that all who work should earn a living wage. That it’s balderdash that the CEO’s and Hedge Fund managers are the “most productive members of society.” That wage inequality will destroy the America I love. But that unions often take advantage of the very workers who pay their dues, creating rules that limit flexibility and cooperation in the workplace.

I looked around today in search of Labor Day earrings, but didn’t find any that suited. So I wandered about looking for likely objects to use. I found a hammer charm, the reward for a Habitat for Humanity donation. As I looked for something to go with it, I came upon a baggie with Monopoly game pieces.

As my children will attest, I hate Monopoly. It’s endless and boring and way too complicated. Perhaps I was scarred as a child because my brother—who stored Monopoly money under the area rug in his bedroom—dominated every game we ever played. But I refuse to play on principal. A game in which you try to inflate prices and destroy the economic well-being of the rest of the community? And it’s boring and endless.

So perhaps this avoidance of Monopoly is why I’d never realized the irony of the game pieces. They’re lowly working people! In the baggie I found a thimble, an iron, a wheelbarrow, and a shoe. I think I recall a racecar (that was my brother, I think)...

I spent some time listening to labor songs: John McCutcheon’s Labor Day, Pete Seeger singing Pay Me My Money Down, Paul Robeson’s Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie’s 1913 Massacre, Bobbie McGee singing Bread and Roses, and lots more I found on iTunes.  Pie in the Sky. My dad sang that one to me when he explained unions, and the dust bowl, and the attraction of communism during the Roaring Twenties and the depression.

I worked in a unionized school once, from 1984 to 1986, but opted not to join the union. I felt that I couldn’t afford the dues. (I earned $17,000 and the dues were 1,700, as I recall.) And it seemed like a supportive work environment. (I didn't have to clean the toilets, as I had at my previous school...) Other workers had paved the way for me, I know. As I said, I’m conflicted about unions. But I believe that honest labor should earn a fair wage.

I wore an iron and a wheelbarrow dangling from my ears today, and listened to Labor songs. It's so striking that as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, there is no resurgence of the labor movement. It's like we're all in an endless monopoly game, and someone's stashing our hard-earned cash under his rug.

A Vintage Adventure

This afternoon I met some of my co-workers at Vintage Ridge Winery, where the youngest of us has been working this summer. Erin led us through a tasting, pouring us samples and describing each vintage in great detail. I learned a lot, both from her and from her boss who sat with us and talked about the five features that affect taste: tannin, acid, alcohol, phenolics, and residual sugar. (I'm typing them here so I can find them again later.) I have to admit that I'm sort of from the Potter Stewart* school of judging good wine. I know it when I taste it. I tasted quite a few good wines today.

Since I was heading for a winery, I looked for some grape-like earrings. I stumbled upon this necklace that my daughter Kathe left behind in her old bedroom, but I couldn't find any earrings, so I made these this morning. Tiny grapes.

I loaded my bike on my car and drove to a parking lot off the main rode. I rode the 3 hilly miles to the winery and back, burning off any residual sugar I'd absored.

 Thanks to Erin, I had a lovely last Sunday of summer. And I just read that drinking wine helps protect the skin from sunburn and skin damage. Salut!

*I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. ”

  — Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964)

Kindle vs. Book

In June, the Lower School faculty at my school agreed to read Overcoming Dyslexia in preparation for discussions  about helping our students who struggle with reading. When I returned from my summer vacation, my colleagues had taken all of the copies the school had purchased. I down-loaded the Kindle version, which I've been reading.



Someone kindly left her copy on my desk. I've been comparing the two as I read. I'm pretty new to e-books.

I thought these were the same... oops!

I've read several novels, some poetry, and quite a few short stories on my Kindle since last Christmas. It's a great way to acquire free literature, right away, as soon as an old friend recommends Moby Dick or I read a phrase from Emily Dickenson. This is the first book I've ordered that contains diagrams and illustrations.

I'm using this book as an opportunity to learn how to use some of the features of the Kindle, so that I can jump from place to place, as I could with a textbook. I'm a bit slow, but I'm improving.

These earrings? I made them this morning after reading a chapter. I'd gone down to the basement in search of wooden beads, and found a bin of glass instead. I felt like wearing blue glass beads. I tried to make them identical, but there are a few minor differences.

Not as different as reading on a Kindle vs. reading a book, though. I enjoy reading on a Kindle. But I love curling up with a book.

Cross-sections of Seashells

Back in 1962, when I was this little girl, my family had an amazing shell collection in our basement. We used to take the shells out to show our friends. Neither my brother or I had found any of the shells in this collection. Our parents hadn't either.



Bedell family beach house, early 1900's

My mother, who spent her summers at her family beach house on Neptune Beach, Florida, was rather distainful of this collection: they had been purchased by a great-uncle of my Dad's.

Big, beautiful cowries.

Massive conchs.

 My Uncle Sully, my mother's brother, had a collection just as impressive as this one. And he'd found every shell, many during World War II when he served as a Navy doctor in the South Pacific.

In 3rd grade at our elementary school, Norwood Parish School, our science and art teacher, Mrs. Woods, read Holling Clancy Holling's gorgeous biography of a hermit crab, Pagoo, aloud, and the class constructed an elaborate bulletin board of sea creatures based on the book. I still own the copy that I got for Christmas during my 3rd grade year. I've read this survival tale to a couple of my own classes.

My parents loaned our sea life collection to Mrs. Woods when my brother was in 3rd grade. The next year, they donated it to the school. They envisioned generations of children being able to study and learn from our shells. My brother and I were not as eager to give them away. Especially not the sawfish blade.

A sawfish blade is the sort of possession that makes your basement a special place for kids to visit. No one had a sawfish blade. We always felt a bit sad that it was gone.

One shell that did not leave was a large nautilus shell. My dad challenged my brother to cut a cross-section of that shell. My dad explained the Golden Mean, and how cutting this shell could unveil one of the great mathematical wonders of nature.

For years it sat, gripped in a vise, in my dad's workshop. My brother would attack it with a saw whenever he had anger to burn. As I recall, he only got about two inches through the shell in all that time.

Today, while finishing my sea creatures bulletin board, I wore this pair of shell earrings that I bought years ago. I didn't know when I would ever wear them. But they cost $2.00. And they tugged at memories deep in my core.

They will always remind me of my brother sawing that nautilus shell, of our shell collection, of Mrs. Woods, and of our family's connection to the sea.

Collecting in search of inspiration

A colleague recently asked me what method I use when I attack a project. I'm in the midst of many right now, getting ready for school to start next week. So I've been analyzing my thought processes, thinking about perspiration vs. inspiration, considering the ratio of planning to plunging.

When I approach a task, like making a bulletin board to display the birthdays of the members of our Lower School community, I take my time. I look for inspiration. This year, I found it in a box of sticky-foam sea creatures--on sale, of course. Then I begin to gather other stuff, to explore systems of organization, to seek clarity while encouraging problem solving.

On this bulletin board, I enlisted the creativity of my former student, Addie, who joined me in arranging the animals. We agreed that no sharks should threaten other vulnerable sea creatures, although a lone first grade shark can be seen eyeing our principal in the April zone. Tomorrow, we'll tinker some more.

While that project is percolating through my brain, I'm also working on many others as I prepare for school's opening next week. I read a lot of theories about multi-tasking, pro and con. I'm pro. Bouncing from project to project keeps my mind alert and creative. Sticking with one project zaps spontaneous bursts of inspiration.

I finally decided how to introduce our first Third Grade writing project, "If I could be an animal, I would be ...." Tinkering from year to year is a great opportunity to improve a project while maintaining my own enthusiasm. I never do exactly the same thing twice. Today, after looking at an empty green bulletin board for over a week, I finally began to tack things up. My students' work will fill the voids.

Today I also attacked my class' place-based education project. Each child adopts a campus tree to study for the year. I wore a pair of maple leaf earrings for the occasion, a gift from my husband years ago. I finished my scavenger hunt cards and my campus tree map.

So, after a day of trying to observe my inner workings, I've decided on this:

Step 1: Research, collect materials, consult experts: devise a variety of plans in search of inspiration

Step 2: As deadlines become pressing: choose an inspiration, plunge in!

Step 3: Create a web that ties many threads together. Keep searching for inspiration.

Step 3: Perspire until the job is done.

Which step do I enjoy most? I love them all.