A Day Full of Leaves and Haida Totems

Tuesday is my longest day. I get to school at 7:30 AM to organize materials for my school day. Then I teach math, writing, lead a mentoring activity (27 third graders, 13 seventh and eighth graders, 5 teachers), eat lunch with a group of girls, teach 3 groups of social studies, 2 groups of computer, dismissal, then math tutoring from 4 to 5.

This morning I was copying cards to use in a math game when I commented to a colleague, "Tom (our former principal) once compared teaching in the early grades with organizing a birthday party every  day. Today feels like one of those days!"

I wore a pair of oak leaf earrings for our mentoring project. The students spread out across the campus to draw their adopted trees in their art journals and to write acrostic poems using the names of their trees.

I bought these earrings at the Sawmill Center for the Arts in Cook Forest, PA. They were made by a Fimo clay artist whose company, Wood Thrush, seems to have disappeared. I've worn at least 8 pairs of her earrings this year. I wore them along with my Haida t-shirt, purchased at the National Museum of the American Indian about 6 years ago.

This afternoon in social studies, I shared Paul Owen Lewis' striking picture book, Frog Girl. As I read the story which I projected through a document camera onto our Smartboard, the children drew illustrations on a series of panels I had copied onto sheets of cardstock. When we finished the story, they folded the panels into a paper box which tells the story, inside and out. Like party favors, make it/take it!

I could write just as much about math and writing and computer (we're learning to type and making Halloween cards!), even recess and lunch and dismissal. It was a long day. Productive, fun, and long. Like a birthday party!

 

An Inspirational Shepherdess

Today I took my 3rd grade class on our annual pilgrimage to Franny's sheep farm. We've been talking about the many ways that native peoples lived off the land, including the sheepherding Navajo of the American Southwest. We visit a sheep farm to watch and sketch the sheep. But the real reason that I return to visit Franny each year is so that children can experience how a woman's dream can become a reality through study, hard work, and enthusiasm.

When she was a child, Franny wanted to live on a farm. When her children were young, she got a dairy cow and fed her family homemade dairy products. She raised chickens before they became a fad. Then she moved on to raising sheep, leading to her current flock of 65 merino sheep and the Mama Llama who keeps them safe from predators. She sheers her white, taupe, and deep brown sheep, spins their wool, and knits it into hats and mittens and capes. I hope that exposing children to Franny's love of the farming life she has created will inspire them to follow their passions.

For our field trip, I wore this pair of sheep earrings that I happened upon as I wandered through Blacksburg, VA on Saturday. I dabble from time to time in knitting, crocheting, felting, weaving and even carding and spinning. While I'll never own sheep, I love to work with wool.

All morning, children noticed the sheep dangling from my ears. Field trip!

Heinz for a Pittsburgh Boy

Today my husband John celebrates 58 years of living. As I thought about earrings to wear to commemorate this day, I thought of his passions: singing, composing, and performing music; playing handball; our kids and the rest of our family; his church, with its many traditions and remarkable members; watching "his teams" play sports--so many sports, so many teams!; his homes, including his childhood home, Pittsburgh, PA.

As I sorted through my earrings, and then my beads, I came upon a couple of pins that we got at a Pittsburgh Pirates game many years ago: a Heinz pickle and a Heinz ketchup bottle. Perfect! I added a pair of earwires and called them earrings. The bottle dangles upside down, as catsup should be stored. John has always loved attending concerts at Heinz Hall. His beloved Steelers play their games on Heinz Field.

This afternoon the Steelers gave him a great birthday present: a win against the Arizona Cardinals (Arizona? St. Louis must miss them! When did the Cardinals fly southwest?). Although John's other team, the Redskins, turned in a disappointing loss, a Steelers win trumps all other sporting events, at least this Sunday, October 23rd, 2011, when he has no team in the World Series, and neither DC United nor the US men's team is playing soccer. Oh, and the NBA is on strike.

I gave John an ENO hammock for his birthday. He tested it between two trees behind our daughter Kathe's house this morning. But already in my mind's eye it hangs in the yard of our Pinery cabin, where John dangles in it on a warm summer afternoon, listening to the play-by-play of a Pittsburgh Pirates game, perhaps against his other team, the Washington Nationals.

Many happy returns of the day!

Memories of summer, signs of fall

My husband John and I spent last night in the cosy cabin near Blacksburg, VA where our daughter Kathe lives with her husband Jim. We drove down so that John could celebrate his birthday by attending a Virginia Tech game with Kathe. I came along for the visit, but not the game. No point wasting money on a ticket for someone who will wince at every tackle, grimace at shouts and cheers, and end up calculating random statistics our of sheer boredom.

So I didn't don Hokie maroon and orange--although I saw plenty of it--but rather my standard shades of blue and purple, along with this pair of earrings that I made after Kathe joined us last summer at the beach. We gathered lots of shell fragments during our wanders along the shore. The purples were my favorites. I tried to photograph them dangling from the mobile that Kathe's cousin Marianne sent as a wedding gift from Alaska, but the light and angles made it tricky. Ties to family, ties to seasons past, ties to places we hold dear. I see them all when I visit this daughter of mine.

Just behind their cabin I found more reminders of summer, a pair of our kayaks nestled among the fall leaves.

While Kathe and John enjoyed the football game, I wandered through some shops in downtown Blacksburg, a town peopled by generations all wearing maroon and orange--babies in onesies and fleece, college students in camo and caps, couples in matching nylon jackets, sweatshirted senior citizens carrying flags.

I headed back to the cabin, and took the dogs for a walk through the fallen leaves, enjoying the crisp autumn air. Off in the distance I could hear a loud-speaker blaring. I wandered back to sit and read in the adirondack chair that Jim built, enjoying the colors and sounds of fall.

Raising the Hand of Fatima, with hope

I bought these Hand of Fatima charms at a bead shop in Leesburg, VA last spring. They sat alone in a little dish in the midst of dishes full of crosses and hearts and ponies. I took them home to make into earrings, intending them for a day when I felt hopeful that peace and protection of the helpless might vanquish evil.



Tiling at a training center in Tripoli, Libya



Muammar Gaddafi's demise offers hope of peace in Libya, and the uprising in Libya offers hope of a new path toward freedom in many countries where suffering abounds.

I've read about the Hand of Fatima in Islamic cultures, the Hand of Miriam in Hebrew lore, and even the Hand of Mary in Catholicism. The open hand has been symbolic of protection in many cultures and religions, including in the worship of Ishtar, Isis and Osiris, and Buddha.

So many faiths share common symbols and desires for safety and benevolence. The human hand, raised to call for peace and justice, is a beautiful emblem.

Reclaiming Green on Gaddafi's Last Day

I spent today sitting in a child-sized chair, orchestrating 15 half-hour long parent-teacher conferences. The goal? To communicate to parents that we know their child's strengths and challenges, their passions and antipathies. To share how we challenge their child, without setting the bar too high. And, most importantly, to let parents know that this child is appreciated and loved.

For parent-teacher conferences, I wore malachite earrings (our school colors are green and white) and a recycled-computer-part pendant. I bought this pendant at the Delaplane Strawberry Festival last summer from Motherbored, on the web at etsycom/shop/ShellyMacdesigns. 
I love the writing on this chip:
BUSY LIGHT, with items (nails?) seeming to fall from above, and a cluster of stuff clogging the space below.

My busy light was on all day. But then it's been flashing ever since school started. And that's how it should be: I'm a teacher.

But enough about my pendant--this is an earring blog! I bought these malachite earrings years ago when I was teaching science, to wear during my 7th grade geology unit (rocks can be beautiful!) and to show green-and-white school spirit.  

At the end of my 8 AM to 5:15 PM day of sitting in a small chair, I tidied up and then headed home. When I tuned into NPR, I began to hear hints that something dramatic had happened in Libya today. Exiles talking about returning home. Discussions of post-Gaddafi Libya. Thanks to the pledge breaks, it was 15 minutes before I discovered that Gaddafi was gone.

I first posted about the Libyan struggle on February 26th; I first posted this Libyan Independence Flag on March 21st. I think it's fitting that I wore my pure green earrings on the last day that fear of Muammar Gaddafi can touch the hearts of Libyans. The pure green flag that symbolized Gaddafi will no longer fly in Libya. Today, green can once again stand for progress, for growth, for environmental awareness. Like Libya, green has been set free.

And I can gain a bit of perspective, once again, on my own life. I just spent 9 hours sitting in a chair. Not 9 months in a war-torn country. Not 42 years in the regime of a deluded dictator.

Flipper, Protector of the Earth

I was 7 when the movie Flipper hit theaters. I was 8 when Flipper appeared weekly on TV. I fell in love with dolphins, the smartest, happiest, most talented animals in the world. I wanted nothing more than to swim with a dolphin.

During the summer that I turned 10, my family traveled to Florida. I was the family photographer, with my Instamatic camera. I asked someone to take pictures of me, posing with any dolphin I could find.

On the back of this photograph, my mother wrote,

Amy
Seaquarium
1966

Me, standing next to a dolphin statue! I can still feel the excitement of standing beside a plaster dolphin. And making a plastic dolphin at a vending machine that molded the dolphin of your choice while you waited.

 We visited the Florida Keys right around my birthday. My fondest wish came true: at Santini's Porpoise Training School I got to hold onto the fin of a dolphin while he swam through the water. It was short, too short, but it was a dream come true, my best-ever birthday present. "Amy riding Flipper," reads my mom's note on the back of the photo.

Dolphins still hold a special place in my heart. I love this pair of dolphin earrings that I bought long ago, in Savannah, I think. To me, the dolphins seem to be protecting the waters of the Earth.

Today, I heard the horror story of a man who kept wild animals in inhumane conditions on his property in Ohio. Before committing suicide, he snipped the wires of the animal's cages. Forty-eight lions, tigers, bears, monkeys, and other animals were shot and killed by law enforcement officials.

The same emotions that inspired my love of dolphins leads people to adopt exotic pets. We humans have trouble recognizing that truly loving animals means ensuring their freedom to roam their native habitats. I hope this tragedy can lead to better understanding.