It is the middle of the night after the second day of the Pacific University MFA program residency. So far: five crafts talks and two faculty readings, but I skipped the second student reading last night in hopes of getting a better night’s sleep. [That last is not going well. I should not be awake.] Yesterday, I ran in the morning, napped twice, and so much has come on so quickly, I feel simultaneously sated and drained, inspired and exhausted.
I am in Forest Grove, Gary too far away. This week is the residency of the Pacific University MFA program, my alma mater. I am the emcee for the seven evening faculty readings. The faculty are astonishing and wonderful, the reading last night was wonderful, and I am filled with wonder.
Peltier was imprisoned nearly five decades ago for murdering an FBI agent. There was and remains serious doubt about his guilt. His release is supported not only by Native peoples but by the prosecutor in charge of trying him in the 1970s.
I am reading poetry by Danusha Laméris. The first volume chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye, The Moons of August and her second Bonfire Opera. I ordered these chapbooks after reading one of Lameris’s poems, “Incha’Allah.”
Most days Gary and I go out early, but this morning I slept in—going on six when I woke, which is sleeping in for me. We went out for our walk just before seven, which is late for us. We like to get out early to avoid visiting dogs. Really, we go out early because we love having the beach to ourselves. Often, ours are the only human footprints on the sand. We often see wild tracks of coyote, deer, elk, raccoon, and birds.
Wildlife doesn’t scare us. Dogs do sometimes.
[Gary says he’s afraid of “bats” as carriers of rabies. But bats generally avoid people and so will other wildlife. Or, in the case of elk and raccoons, we have enough sense to avoid them. Only a dog will come right up to a person, bump or charge or bite them for no good reason at all.]
Continue readingFirst, I concede that I possess the arrogance of a person with experience. This is tempered by the many things I don’t know or how to do—many more unknowns than knowns. Even so, there are things I have been doing regularly for decades. I may not be the best or perfect at doing all those things, but I do know what I’m doing.
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I will use the example of Paul Hollywood, a professional baker who has written books about baking, and has been the host of The Great British Bake-Off (known as The Great British Baking Show in the U.S.) since it began. I willingly concede he knows more than I do about baking. He achieves perfectly even bakes and has experience with more products than I ever will. He is a professional.
Continue readingThe latest research claims that “learning styles” are a myth but that reading aloud to one another is a good thing. I have to wonder sometimes if educational researchers ever consider their own biases?
Gary worried, when he brought me these stems, that they were bamboo from our neighbors’ ugly bamboo hedge. I think: No. At least, I hope not. Anyone?
Today, at least where I live, was a day to honor mothers. My mother and my husband’s mother have left the planet, as Gary says. Our fathers too, both of lung cancer, both Camels smokers, both veterans. His father died on Mother’s Day 1979.
I want to say something about mothering, because whoever birthed the people we care about, many of us mother. And father, too, is a verb with a broad implications. My mother used to say, “Think how the other person must feel.” She said this when someone was impatient or lost, more often when I was myself impatient or lost. She must have said that to me a hundred times.
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Running on the highway, I once found a perfectly serviceable machete. The beach is our more common source of junk.
Yesterday was easier. Gary found a commercial grade 3/4 size garbage can kicking around in the creek a little over a half mile north. We almost filled it with plastic trash, including the rubber boot, but we didn’t find the oversize shoe this morning. The thick black lid in the upper right corner [above] was about ten inches across, and half under it, what is that flexible grill-like nylon object? It weighed a ton.
We’ve always gathered litter, but mostly stopped in March 2020. Even then, Gary would pick up dangerous stuff that could hurt someone: syringes and fluorescent light tubes. But we’re back at work.
Continue readingThis morning, I read a wonderful Brevity essay by Deborah Ann Lucas, a woman who struggled to read as a child. Her disability was never diagnosed as a child and only found out from her brothers partner as an adult. For years she was insecure about her abilities. The need to tell her story drove her to the page even so. This “Unlikely Writer” is a memoirist and concerned about others who struggle to read.
A double rainbow… always a good sign.
Hers is a wonderful story of persistence and determination, and her struggle is familiar to my experience. I taught high school for almost 40 years. Students exhibited learning issues and needs I could address in the way I assigned, presented, and defended assignments. Some students needed blow-by-blow, some needed to hear and ask questions, most benefited from a model of a successful assignment. Always, I told a story. Always, I had multiple goals to share. Always, I did the assignment too.
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