Yesterday's Pixar Connection

When Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, which he had founded, in 1985, he bought a computer graphics division of Lucas Films called The Graphics Group. This is the company that became Pixar, producer of Toy Story, Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, The Incredibles, Wall-E, and Up. Animation magic. Steve Jobs owned Pixar. John Lassiter, who must also be a genius, is credited as the "creative chief," but Jobs worked his magic on Pixar, too.

Computer chips, left dangling

I wore my recycled computer chip jewelry today, in memory of Steve Jobs and because I knew that computers were going to play a big role in my day.

Unlike almost everyone I know, I don't own an iPod, an iPhone, an iPad, or rely on a Mac computer. But nonetheless I feel profound sadness at the premature loss of the creative force that Steve Jobs brought to the modern world. 

I've owned many Macs over the years, including my first computer, the Apple 2C (1984?) which never stopped working, just stopped being able to handle new software or upgrades. My iMac desktop still works well, at age 12. Unheard of in the PC world. And I'm really thinking about getting an iPhone, now that 3G's are free and the data plan has come down in price. Hard to believe that it's also relevant to mention that I really love the Toy Story movies.

I bought my computer chip jewelry at last year's Delaplane Strawberry Festival from a woman who calls her business Motherbored. She dismantles old computers and creates earrings and pendants. My husband John gave me the necklace as a birthday gift. This jewelry is all strikingly beautiful.

Listening to Steve Jobs speak in the round-the-clock retrospectives on TV and radio, I've been struck by his philosophical perspective. Knowing that we are going to die should set us free, he said. Free to strive, perhaps to fail, living the life we choose to live. He said, Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

What an amazing legacy to ponder. I wonder how many computer projects he left dangling...

Kachina Earrings

Yesterday in 3rd grade social studies, my students researched the culture of the Pueblo people. One girl became quite fascinated with kachinas, especially a story about how Ogre Kachinas visited the homes of bad children and threatened to eat them. "Like Halloween, sort of!"

So today I wore my kachina earrings, a pair I bought last summer from Kevin Abbott of Jabebo (http://www.jabebo.com/).

"You have kachina earrings? Do you have earrings for everything?"

"Mmm. I'm working on it!"

And I read Gerald McDermott's Arrow to the Sun aloud, a pueblo myth full of kachinas and kivas.

In this Caldecott Award winning picture book, the sun god sends his son to Earth to live in the land of men. He's born to a young maiden and undergoes a series of trials to prove himself to his father. I asked my students whether they knew any other stories that told about a similar situation.

"Hercules!"

"Jesus. God sent him to live on Earth."

"Percy Jackson--his father is Poseidon, the sea god."

Kachinas, mythology, and the struggles of childhood. Lots to think about.

Leaves for my Tree Hunt

I left home extra early this morning, wearing these leaf earrings, a birthday present that my niece Marianne sent me from Alaska last summer, via my visiting daughter Kathe. Marianne and I share our birthday, July 3rd, and have enjoyed many joint celebrations over the years. This year, we exchanged earrings.

At 7:15 this morning I was hanging signs from 27 trees in preparation for my class's annual tree ID hunt.

An early morning stroll around my school's campus offers many joys, even when I'm scrambling with scissors and yarn and signs and most importantly a deadline: a list of other tasks to complete before the children arrive at 8:10. Our campus is beautiful, with wandering paths, spreading lawns, and hundreds of trees. I chose 27 species around the core buildings. Each child will adopt one tree for the year-- to sketch, to measure, to observe.

With the guidance of a 7th or 8th mentor, pairs of my 3rd graders followed a map around the campus in search of those 27 signs.

The joy of a hunt on a cool, crisp October morning.

Well worth arriving at school extra early.

And thanks to my niece Marianne, for the perfect earrings!

Fair Trade Guatemalan Dragonflies! Thanks, Susan!

When I walk onto the playground with my 3rd graders for morning recess, I am frequently greeted with, "So let me see your earrings today!" Susan, who teaches kindergarten, gives me a wry smile and says, "You have the best earrings." She noticed my earring collection years before I began this blog, and expressed interest in how each pair connected to my day. Susan is like that: kind, thoughtful, supportive. And fun. She and my daughter Kathe went to see Mary Poppins last spring when we were in NYC together for a writing conference. Their rickshaw ride home from the theater was a highlight of Kathe's trip.

Susan spied these dragonfly earrings at Sara Schneidman's gallery in Culpeper, VA, and thought of me. They were made by Guatemalan women in home industries--my favorite sort of enterprise, since it allows women to care for their children while earning money to support them. Fair Trade crafts make a difference, since the profits go to the people in developing countries, rather than into the pockets of middlemen.

A couple of weeks ago, Susan told me that she'd bought me a pair of earrings. This morning, she handed me this pair, along with the flier from the gallery. I don't know when I'll be in Culpeper, but I plan to stop on Davis Street to see their wares.

At dismissal this afternoon, two of my students ran up to me with a book containing pairs of choices. "Would you rather this, or that?"

"This is the hardest one ever! Listen: Would you rather have wings so you can fly, or gills so that you can swim underwater?"

I touched the earrings dangling from my ears and replied, "I don't have to choose, I'm a dragonfly! I can swim with gills as a nymph, and fly with wings as an adult!"

"No fair!" laughed Emma.
"I told you she'd say that," nodded Alexa. "She loves dragonflies. You have to admit, they are amazing."

If it hadn't been for Susan, I wouldn't have been wearing this visual aid today. Thanks, Susan.

Shel Silverstein's Surprise

"The award-winning cartoonist, poet, essayist, journalist, and composer Shel Silverstein  was born on this day in Chicago, Illinois, in 1932," I read this morning in the Writer's Almanac. I went to look for my favorite of his books of poetry, Where the Sidewalk Ends. It must be at school. So I looked through A Light in the Attic, and I found some poems that go nicely with some of my earrings.

These bold copper stars for
              Somebody Has To:
Somebody has to go polish the stars,
They're looking a little bit dull.
Somebody has to go polish the stars,
For the eagles and starlings and gulls
Have all been complaining they're tarnished and worn.
They say they want new ones we cannot afford,
So please get your rags
And your polishing jars.
Somebody has to go polish the stars.

But I think I'd like to wear them this winter. And I feel the same way about these trees, much as I love

Hammock

Grandma sent the hammock,

The good Lord sent the breeze.

I'm here to do the swinging--

Now, who's gonna move the trees?

The only Shel Silverstein book that I know I don't like is his most famous, The Giving Tree. What's to like about a story in which one party gives and gives and gives until it dies, and the other party just keeps on asking for more? People read it as if it's a love story. That's not love, that's abuse.

So I settled on this pair of earrings, to go with

Surprise!

My Grandpa went to Myrtle Beach

And sent us back a turtle each.

And then he went to Katmandu

And mailed a real live Cockatoo.

From Rio an iguana came,

A smelly goat arrived from Spain.

Now he's in India, you see--

My Grandpa always thinks of me.

The full impact of Silverstein's poetry often depends on his illustrations. When reading them aloud to children, I love the moment when they spy the picture and discover the twist hidden in the drawing. And I love watching their eyes bounce back and forth between the words and the illustrations, looking for the magic they know will appear. Silverstein died alone in 1999.

My Indian elephants I bought at the Smithsonian gift shop long ago, in preparation for my school's first culture study of India in 1994. I repaired them for our India study in 2010.

They, like Silverstein's poetry books, make me smile.

Indigo earrings, Toast and Tea

This morning I started reading a novel that a friend from long ago recommended recently. When we were young teenagers, we shared a love of literature, and when she "friended" me on Facebook, I asked what she'd been reading lately. One book she suggested was Amy Sackville's The Still Point.

Today, I delved into the copy that I borrowed from the public library. The epigraph is a quote from T.S. Eliot, whose poetry we read together back in high school, she understanding far better than I. Then, as now, I focused on the small images that I could understand. I'm afraid the bigger meanings are still lost to me.

Like this quote: the still point of the turning world... where past and future are gathered. Today I'm reading a book recommended by Kavita; yesterday I heard from Caroline; last week I ambled through the monuments with Carolyn; and two weeks ago I saw Contagion with Marilyn--all friends from 40 years ago when we were teenagers together, all of whom I'd long ago lost to the dance of time. I guess I'm sitting at the still point of the turning world just now!

Kavita--who pondered such choices long and hard--quoted TSE in our high school yearbook:

And indeed there will be time...
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
                        -T. S. Eliot

We shared many a cup of tea with toast. I still drink my strong black tea as her mother prepared it, with a dash of milk. Among the many books we shared were the works of Virginia Woolf. Amy Sackville's prose reminds me of her.

My favorite phrase so far: indigo, the richest word in the rainbow.

And as it happens, this quote appears in a passage in which the protagonist is making toast and tea!

These indigo-ful earrings are one of the many pairs that Jeanne sent to me. On her note she wrote, All  made by my good friend Tinka who is an artist. All too dangly on me.