That is all. Heard bad things from my St. Louis connection (Gretchen and her family visit Pawlett every summer). And NPR is making me cringe.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Uncertainties and Living With Them
Genealogy is a game. A game with no real winner, since there's always one more generation you can't find. And it is based upon the idea that no one ever lies about their age, their homeland, their parentage, the parentage of their children, how many children they have, and so forth. Which is, of course, extremely unrealistic.
But I can't stop searching. The infinite capacity to not know.
On Tuesday nights, Sophia goes to dance class and I take my one sheet of paper with this week's genealogy questions, my wallet, and my keys to the county library HQ and sit in their special collections section hunched over a microfilm reader mumbling to myself.
I recently googled something like "genealogy living with uncertainty" because I've come to a point where I cannot find anything that says I'm wrong, nor can I find anything that says I'm right, about the one line I am most keenly interested in figuring out. Irish, of course, which just piques interest even more because of the penal law challenge. But these are Irish I can't even straighten out all the way on US soil.
And the google search brought up a message board with that same sort of frustration. In the end, the author said, there are so many lies built up around secrets and half-truths that the best you can hope for is to research people who are probably a lot like the people you are descended from. That unless you are strangely obsessed with genetic relationships, the daughters who aren't really daughters but instead are nieces, the mother-in-law who is really a kindly elderly cousin who took your wife in, the son that's really a neighbor from back in the home country that you took under your wing--these become the family you search for, the people you really find.
I am probably never going to know for certain if the Edward Blake who committed suicide after murdering a man in his bar is the same Edward Blake who married Bridget Kidney in Kansas City 30 years before that moment.
If he is, I'm never going to know why he and Bridget left their sons and moved to East St. Louis and then adopted a niece who maybe isn't even their niece, or maybe Bridget Kidney was married before and really is Bridget Toohey or maybe she really is Bridget Dewine/Kidney like Ellen and Mary back in Kansas City and the Tooheys are cousins or an aunt or someone who was simply nicer to her and took her in when she left KC.
I go back and forth: her adopted daughter Mollie says Bridget is a Toohey on the death certificate. She even has parents' names in the parish funeral record. Why would she lie? Or, why not? If Bridget is a Toohey, what's the deal with Bridget Kidney on the marriage certificate?
Kidney and Dewine are related last names (anglicized Irish). Ellen's mother Mary Dewine, living with Bridget and Edward in KC before they disappear. Their sons living with Ellen and Pat Cronin, and Mary Dewine in 1870. What happened to their eldest son Richard after 1880? And their daughter Mary? Why is Ellen Dewine sometimes and O'Brien other times in church records?
Could I be conflating two Bridgets? Is that even possible? Could Kidney/Dewine have died and then he married Toohey?
They are in the 1860 census and the 1861 birth of their daughter; their sons show up in 1870 but they do not. And then the other Bridget and Edward, or the same, show up in 1880. Nothing in between. There was a war, you know...but Edward isn't a veteran on any schedule. There's no death records of an Edward and Bridget Blake before 1880. They are the very same birth years in KC and in EStL. Same names.
And the Edward Blake that show up in the 1870 census in East St. Louis, living with Franzis, whose age matches Bridget's, with a daughter named Mary whose age matches the mysterious Mary who don't know anything about? FRANZIS. The handwriting is clear. Bridget and Franzis would be hard to confuse even with the thickest of accents. Franzis. But? That Edward and Franzis never appear again. I know sometimes I'm Bridgett and other times I'm Sarah. Could she have been tricksy the same way?
Could I have it wrong? What parts?
To complicate matters, I've researched a lot of Tooheys of every danged spelling possible (Blake is sooo easy; Touhy Toohey Tooey Tuey Tuohy Toohy Toy Tohey Tohey makes me a little crazy). And there is one place, one time, with a household that has Dewines and Tooheys living together.
Is Ellen Dewine living with the Toulhey family in Baltimore in 1850, with Catherine Dewine and Bridget Dewine living in the same ward as household servants, the same Ellen and Catherine and Bridget later in Kansas City? Did the Tooheys move from Ireland to Baltimore (the names match, the ages, the crazy) to East St. Louis and then persuade Bridget and her new husband to come stay near them? Is Mary Dewine's maiden name Toohey? Or Houlihan, which is the maiden name of Bridget Blake's mother listed in Bridget's funeral record?
Did Bridget's aunt Eleanora have Bridget and Edward move to Illinois, a Union state, after a family falling out with Ellen and Pat Cronin? But if so, why leave your young sons behind? Was there hope that a good life could be restarted in EStL and then Richard and Edward D. could be sent for? And then the war got bad and they wound up growing up in KC with their aunt and uncle?
Then I think about my family, my immediate family. The 1970 census will have my mother in South County and my father in North County. The 1980 census will have them married, living in Palm Desert California with two children. The 1990 census will have them married, living in Webster, Texas, possibly Pearland, with 4 children. The 2000 census will have them in South St. Louis with two daughters, with one son down in Texas and a married daughter a block away.
But A LOT happened between 1970 and 1980, and then between 80 and 90. A lot.Who's to say the same isn't true for Bridget and Edward?
Maybe they moved back to KC or maybe their sons lived with them for an extended period of time in the middle. I know Edward D. continued on in KC from 1880 to 1887 or so, from city directories, but then he moves to St. Louis. For what possible purpose except that his father had just committed suicide and maybe his mother wanted him closer?
There of course, a bricklayer, Edward meets Charles Dawes or his brother Henry Daniel Dawes, and their father Henry--bricklayers all--and through them their widowed sister Jennie, still living with her father-in-law, brother-in-law, and her three currently living children. All those relatives except for one child are dead by the time Edward D. and she are married and have a son of their own. And then Edward D. dies before his son is 3 years old: Jennie survives two husbands and 11 children and dies in her youngest son's house with a daughter-in-law who thinks she (Jennie) is a witch. She probably was. That's my line. My grandfather is the son of Jennie's youngest son, Eddie (again), the grandson himself of Edward and Bridget, who may or may not be the Edward and Bridget I've found myself creating a story for.
I know why. They're Irish, they're urban, they're immigrants. But more: my husband's first name is Edward and I'm Bridgett. I can hear the bell on their mantel shelf ring and it is the same tone as mine. Even if the story in my head cannot be proven, cannot possibly be factual through and through, it is truth. It's who they are now.
But I can't stop searching. The infinite capacity to not know.
On Tuesday nights, Sophia goes to dance class and I take my one sheet of paper with this week's genealogy questions, my wallet, and my keys to the county library HQ and sit in their special collections section hunched over a microfilm reader mumbling to myself.
I recently googled something like "genealogy living with uncertainty" because I've come to a point where I cannot find anything that says I'm wrong, nor can I find anything that says I'm right, about the one line I am most keenly interested in figuring out. Irish, of course, which just piques interest even more because of the penal law challenge. But these are Irish I can't even straighten out all the way on US soil.
And the google search brought up a message board with that same sort of frustration. In the end, the author said, there are so many lies built up around secrets and half-truths that the best you can hope for is to research people who are probably a lot like the people you are descended from. That unless you are strangely obsessed with genetic relationships, the daughters who aren't really daughters but instead are nieces, the mother-in-law who is really a kindly elderly cousin who took your wife in, the son that's really a neighbor from back in the home country that you took under your wing--these become the family you search for, the people you really find.
I am probably never going to know for certain if the Edward Blake who committed suicide after murdering a man in his bar is the same Edward Blake who married Bridget Kidney in Kansas City 30 years before that moment.
If he is, I'm never going to know why he and Bridget left their sons and moved to East St. Louis and then adopted a niece who maybe isn't even their niece, or maybe Bridget Kidney was married before and really is Bridget Toohey or maybe she really is Bridget Dewine/Kidney like Ellen and Mary back in Kansas City and the Tooheys are cousins or an aunt or someone who was simply nicer to her and took her in when she left KC.
I go back and forth: her adopted daughter Mollie says Bridget is a Toohey on the death certificate. She even has parents' names in the parish funeral record. Why would she lie? Or, why not? If Bridget is a Toohey, what's the deal with Bridget Kidney on the marriage certificate?
Kidney and Dewine are related last names (anglicized Irish). Ellen's mother Mary Dewine, living with Bridget and Edward in KC before they disappear. Their sons living with Ellen and Pat Cronin, and Mary Dewine in 1870. What happened to their eldest son Richard after 1880? And their daughter Mary? Why is Ellen Dewine sometimes and O'Brien other times in church records?
Could I be conflating two Bridgets? Is that even possible? Could Kidney/Dewine have died and then he married Toohey?
They are in the 1860 census and the 1861 birth of their daughter; their sons show up in 1870 but they do not. And then the other Bridget and Edward, or the same, show up in 1880. Nothing in between. There was a war, you know...but Edward isn't a veteran on any schedule. There's no death records of an Edward and Bridget Blake before 1880. They are the very same birth years in KC and in EStL. Same names.
And the Edward Blake that show up in the 1870 census in East St. Louis, living with Franzis, whose age matches Bridget's, with a daughter named Mary whose age matches the mysterious Mary who don't know anything about? FRANZIS. The handwriting is clear. Bridget and Franzis would be hard to confuse even with the thickest of accents. Franzis. But? That Edward and Franzis never appear again. I know sometimes I'm Bridgett and other times I'm Sarah. Could she have been tricksy the same way?
Could I have it wrong? What parts?
To complicate matters, I've researched a lot of Tooheys of every danged spelling possible (Blake is sooo easy; Touhy Toohey Tooey Tuey Tuohy Toohy Toy Tohey Tohey makes me a little crazy). And there is one place, one time, with a household that has Dewines and Tooheys living together.
Is Ellen Dewine living with the Toulhey family in Baltimore in 1850, with Catherine Dewine and Bridget Dewine living in the same ward as household servants, the same Ellen and Catherine and Bridget later in Kansas City? Did the Tooheys move from Ireland to Baltimore (the names match, the ages, the crazy) to East St. Louis and then persuade Bridget and her new husband to come stay near them? Is Mary Dewine's maiden name Toohey? Or Houlihan, which is the maiden name of Bridget Blake's mother listed in Bridget's funeral record?
Did Bridget's aunt Eleanora have Bridget and Edward move to Illinois, a Union state, after a family falling out with Ellen and Pat Cronin? But if so, why leave your young sons behind? Was there hope that a good life could be restarted in EStL and then Richard and Edward D. could be sent for? And then the war got bad and they wound up growing up in KC with their aunt and uncle?
Then I think about my family, my immediate family. The 1970 census will have my mother in South County and my father in North County. The 1980 census will have them married, living in Palm Desert California with two children. The 1990 census will have them married, living in Webster, Texas, possibly Pearland, with 4 children. The 2000 census will have them in South St. Louis with two daughters, with one son down in Texas and a married daughter a block away.
But A LOT happened between 1970 and 1980, and then between 80 and 90. A lot.Who's to say the same isn't true for Bridget and Edward?
Maybe they moved back to KC or maybe their sons lived with them for an extended period of time in the middle. I know Edward D. continued on in KC from 1880 to 1887 or so, from city directories, but then he moves to St. Louis. For what possible purpose except that his father had just committed suicide and maybe his mother wanted him closer?
There of course, a bricklayer, Edward meets Charles Dawes or his brother Henry Daniel Dawes, and their father Henry--bricklayers all--and through them their widowed sister Jennie, still living with her father-in-law, brother-in-law, and her three currently living children. All those relatives except for one child are dead by the time Edward D. and she are married and have a son of their own. And then Edward D. dies before his son is 3 years old: Jennie survives two husbands and 11 children and dies in her youngest son's house with a daughter-in-law who thinks she (Jennie) is a witch. She probably was. That's my line. My grandfather is the son of Jennie's youngest son, Eddie (again), the grandson himself of Edward and Bridget, who may or may not be the Edward and Bridget I've found myself creating a story for.
I know why. They're Irish, they're urban, they're immigrants. But more: my husband's first name is Edward and I'm Bridgett. I can hear the bell on their mantel shelf ring and it is the same tone as mine. Even if the story in my head cannot be proven, cannot possibly be factual through and through, it is truth. It's who they are now.
Ten on Tuesday: 10 ways to prepare for a big storm
In the wake of Irene, I suppose, although I've never had to prepare for a hurricane. But I have been through thunderstorms and tornado warnings and even a mini-twister this one scary time. Plenty of hail. And power outages, which is my main focus here.
1. Know your house, your water source, your electric system, your gas. Most likely it will all be fine but if you need to be able to shut one of those off, you'd better know where it is. Learn, too, about the utility systems in your area. My friends in Vermont, for instance, have pumped water on the electric system, while here it is gravity fed and we can still take a shower (even a hot one because it's on a gas water heater) and flush the toilet and have something to drink. Unless of course we're under a boil order due to an overtopped water treatment plant in a flood. But those usually are easier to see coming.
2. Keep bottles of water, like 2-liter bottles and old milk jugs, in your freezer if it isn't absolutely jam-packed full. It will help maintain the temperature longer as the ice slowly melts. And don't open the freezer until you know for certain it is too late to save anything. If meat is still cold, you can cook it right away (as if it defrosted on purpose). We've been here, 3 days out, with a giant MeatFest at Zelda and Travis' house.
3. Store canned food and non-perishables. We eat mostly fresh food in season throughout the year but I have canned goods as well because of my don't-open-the-fridge rule. We cycle through them a bit, a green bean casserole here, a can of pineapple chunks there, to keep it in mind so it doesn't seem like such a punishment if we're without electricity for a while.
4. Learn to cook without a stove. Girl scouts did this for me, girl scouts and family camping. I know how to bake over a campfire. I know how to grill and how to use a dutch oven. I like my electric stove but I'm not lost without it.
5. Have an alternate heat source. This is the one we're still working on. We will have to line our chimney if we want to put in a stove (we do). I know what I want. It's just doing the work and/or paying for the work to be done. Can I just say I am done with workmen? With the plumber across the street giving me advice on painting my porch, with the painting folks with the ludicrous bids, and so on. We may not be able to do this one ourselves and will have to suck it up, but I'm tired of them.
6. A weather radio. For the lead-up time, for the moment when you decide to go to the basement. During the storm, wondering if it's ok to go back up. We have tornado sirens in town (half a football field from my house) but the recorded voice is almost impossible to understand. NOAA's mechanical voice is easier. Yeah, I could watch TV and have the meteorologist fill time chatting about lightning strikes in St. Charles, but I'm really just-the-facts about weather. And the TV is upstairs. By the time I turn on my hand-crank radio, I'm in the basement. I have a weather radio in the kitchen, too, and when the skies turn green, on it goes.
7. Sense. Having enough sense is important. Knowing that old wives tales are mostly untrue and being prudent really is the smartest course of action. Go to the danged basement.
8. Batteries. Having the flashlights already ready. Having enough of whatever you need, just in case it's a long night or a long week. Diapers? Gasoline? Things for kids to do?
9. Know your neighbors. Neighbors were integral to the 2006 power outage here. It helps keep you sane. And I'd hate to be on a block where an elderly person died due to overheating or freezing to death and we didn't know them to check on them. Neighbors are your first points of contact after a disaster.
10. Have a check-in place or phone number. If Mike's at work and I'm at the store and the girls are at school, panic can be put aside if we all know we need to call, say, my brother in Houston or Mike's sister in southern Illinois--obviously not someone in town who would be affected by the storm. But if we each check in and then check back to see if the others checked in, we can put our minds at ease about that even if we're stuck where we are for the moment.
Ok, now I'm going to go check on our battery supply...
1. Know your house, your water source, your electric system, your gas. Most likely it will all be fine but if you need to be able to shut one of those off, you'd better know where it is. Learn, too, about the utility systems in your area. My friends in Vermont, for instance, have pumped water on the electric system, while here it is gravity fed and we can still take a shower (even a hot one because it's on a gas water heater) and flush the toilet and have something to drink. Unless of course we're under a boil order due to an overtopped water treatment plant in a flood. But those usually are easier to see coming.
2. Keep bottles of water, like 2-liter bottles and old milk jugs, in your freezer if it isn't absolutely jam-packed full. It will help maintain the temperature longer as the ice slowly melts. And don't open the freezer until you know for certain it is too late to save anything. If meat is still cold, you can cook it right away (as if it defrosted on purpose). We've been here, 3 days out, with a giant MeatFest at Zelda and Travis' house.
3. Store canned food and non-perishables. We eat mostly fresh food in season throughout the year but I have canned goods as well because of my don't-open-the-fridge rule. We cycle through them a bit, a green bean casserole here, a can of pineapple chunks there, to keep it in mind so it doesn't seem like such a punishment if we're without electricity for a while.
4. Learn to cook without a stove. Girl scouts did this for me, girl scouts and family camping. I know how to bake over a campfire. I know how to grill and how to use a dutch oven. I like my electric stove but I'm not lost without it.
5. Have an alternate heat source. This is the one we're still working on. We will have to line our chimney if we want to put in a stove (we do). I know what I want. It's just doing the work and/or paying for the work to be done. Can I just say I am done with workmen? With the plumber across the street giving me advice on painting my porch, with the painting folks with the ludicrous bids, and so on. We may not be able to do this one ourselves and will have to suck it up, but I'm tired of them.
6. A weather radio. For the lead-up time, for the moment when you decide to go to the basement. During the storm, wondering if it's ok to go back up. We have tornado sirens in town (half a football field from my house) but the recorded voice is almost impossible to understand. NOAA's mechanical voice is easier. Yeah, I could watch TV and have the meteorologist fill time chatting about lightning strikes in St. Charles, but I'm really just-the-facts about weather. And the TV is upstairs. By the time I turn on my hand-crank radio, I'm in the basement. I have a weather radio in the kitchen, too, and when the skies turn green, on it goes.
7. Sense. Having enough sense is important. Knowing that old wives tales are mostly untrue and being prudent really is the smartest course of action. Go to the danged basement.
8. Batteries. Having the flashlights already ready. Having enough of whatever you need, just in case it's a long night or a long week. Diapers? Gasoline? Things for kids to do?
9. Know your neighbors. Neighbors were integral to the 2006 power outage here. It helps keep you sane. And I'd hate to be on a block where an elderly person died due to overheating or freezing to death and we didn't know them to check on them. Neighbors are your first points of contact after a disaster.
10. Have a check-in place or phone number. If Mike's at work and I'm at the store and the girls are at school, panic can be put aside if we all know we need to call, say, my brother in Houston or Mike's sister in southern Illinois--obviously not someone in town who would be affected by the storm. But if we each check in and then check back to see if the others checked in, we can put our minds at ease about that even if we're stuck where we are for the moment.
Ok, now I'm going to go check on our battery supply...
An open letter to AT&T, an entity unlikely to respond
Now, one time I did this, writing about the installation directions for our kitchen floor, someone did respond! So maybe. But I doubt it.
Dear AT&T U-Verse: I am in love with your internet speed. I am. Photos upload. Videos stream. And the phone service seems pretty much the same as before, except for the added hitch of no phone when the power goes out. But I knew that going in. There are two things I'd like to talk to you about, though. First, and this is not that big of a deal, but I wanted to mention it: voicemail. The voicemail system is stinky. A code to get in. A code to check. I'm in my own house but it's like checking my messages remotely. And there's no way to tell if I even have a message. Guess what? I'm lazy. And busy, which is a terrible combination. I don't check my messages often enough and I used to check them, by pushing one button, every time I walked in the front door. It's not easy anymore.
But the other thing is more. We don't have your U-verse television service. We don't have any television service. We're not sneaking around behind your back with another cable or satellite provider. We're simply not interested in your television service. We haven't had cable or any equivalent for 10 years. TEN YEARS. Have we missed it? Actually not. Truly. You know why? Netflix. Hulu. Our friends who sometimes have us come over to watch something. My inlaws, my parents. If I'm dying to see something, I can find it. But you know what else? Since we don't have a cable-type service, we usually don't even know what we're missing. And some of the things we're missing aren't even on US services yet (Law and Order UK, for instance, which I patiently await now that my appetite has been whetted by the first season, my goodness I am in love with that show, but it doesn't matter because you can't give it to me).
So please stop asking me. Please? I've called and asked to be removed from your mailing list. I've even called and lied and told you I didn't even have a television. Your customer service agent got flustered at that one and said he'd put me on the no-contact list "right away." Well, it lasted about a month. And here we are again. It's not a big thing for me to recycle all your envelopes. It just irks me that you don't listen, that you can't listen, that you are an example of what is wrong with modern life. And trust me, there is plenty good about it (modern dentistry being at the top of my list, along with epidurals).
Thanks, your customer,
Bridgett
Dear AT&T U-Verse: I am in love with your internet speed. I am. Photos upload. Videos stream. And the phone service seems pretty much the same as before, except for the added hitch of no phone when the power goes out. But I knew that going in. There are two things I'd like to talk to you about, though. First, and this is not that big of a deal, but I wanted to mention it: voicemail. The voicemail system is stinky. A code to get in. A code to check. I'm in my own house but it's like checking my messages remotely. And there's no way to tell if I even have a message. Guess what? I'm lazy. And busy, which is a terrible combination. I don't check my messages often enough and I used to check them, by pushing one button, every time I walked in the front door. It's not easy anymore.
But the other thing is more. We don't have your U-verse television service. We don't have any television service. We're not sneaking around behind your back with another cable or satellite provider. We're simply not interested in your television service. We haven't had cable or any equivalent for 10 years. TEN YEARS. Have we missed it? Actually not. Truly. You know why? Netflix. Hulu. Our friends who sometimes have us come over to watch something. My inlaws, my parents. If I'm dying to see something, I can find it. But you know what else? Since we don't have a cable-type service, we usually don't even know what we're missing. And some of the things we're missing aren't even on US services yet (Law and Order UK, for instance, which I patiently await now that my appetite has been whetted by the first season, my goodness I am in love with that show, but it doesn't matter because you can't give it to me).
So please stop asking me. Please? I've called and asked to be removed from your mailing list. I've even called and lied and told you I didn't even have a television. Your customer service agent got flustered at that one and said he'd put me on the no-contact list "right away." Well, it lasted about a month. And here we are again. It's not a big thing for me to recycle all your envelopes. It just irks me that you don't listen, that you can't listen, that you are an example of what is wrong with modern life. And trust me, there is plenty good about it (modern dentistry being at the top of my list, along with epidurals).
Thanks, your customer,
Bridgett
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Choo-choo
"Choo choo traaaaaa," he says. It means both train and track. And he lets his voice trail off to nothing. "Choo choo traaaaaaaaaa?"
He points to the attic door--it's a full sized door on our second floor, between our two staircases. When you open it, there are stairs. This is the sort of thing I would have found absolutely amazing when I was a kid, and it's the door to my girls' room. It's their everyday trip to play and go to bed. Open the door, walk up the steps that are part of your room.
"Up duh doh? Choo choo traaaaaaaa?"
I open the door. We've set up a wooden train set upstairs so he can play with the girls when they're up there, but not get into their stuff and bug them.
He steps onto the first step and turns around. "Doh," he nods at me. He grasps the doorknob and pulls the door shut behind him--it doesn't catch, like many of the doors in my house, and we've never bothered to sand down the edge that wedges before the latch can click. Just a wood vs. wood conflict noise, and the door is shut enough for him to feel like he's in his own spot.
"Choo choo traaaa," I hear him tell himself. And his footsteps on the stairs.
He points to the attic door--it's a full sized door on our second floor, between our two staircases. When you open it, there are stairs. This is the sort of thing I would have found absolutely amazing when I was a kid, and it's the door to my girls' room. It's their everyday trip to play and go to bed. Open the door, walk up the steps that are part of your room.
"Up duh doh? Choo choo traaaaaaaa?"
I open the door. We've set up a wooden train set upstairs so he can play with the girls when they're up there, but not get into their stuff and bug them.
He steps onto the first step and turns around. "Doh," he nods at me. He grasps the doorknob and pulls the door shut behind him--it doesn't catch, like many of the doors in my house, and we've never bothered to sand down the edge that wedges before the latch can click. Just a wood vs. wood conflict noise, and the door is shut enough for him to feel like he's in his own spot.
"Choo choo traaaa," I hear him tell himself. And his footsteps on the stairs.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Things I Wondered Today
I wonder why it is that this one Lyle Lovett song brings back such a palpable memory from high school even though it wasn't written or produced until 2 years ago. And it's not like it's a song about the subject at hand. What is in my brain, anyway? Why does it work that way?
I wonder if maybe my family's seizure activity, which my aunt described to me this past Christmas as something not quite epilepsy ("seizure prone" is how her doctor, and Maeve's described ), is related to my other aunt's eye cancer, my daughter's eczema, my thyroid failure. Gretchen thinks maybe. I wonder how much we don't know.
I wonder if we'll get the porch done before the cherry tomatoes in the back finally ripen. I'm thinking the porch will beat them. Especially if the squirrels stay hungry.
I wonder what we'll manage for dinner tomorrow night. Probably the trout. I have jalapenos and cream cheese and bacon, too.
I wonder about what's coming next. What's going to hit me next, what surprise can I not prepare for.
I wonder about who the Hogans are. And for sure who the Tooheys are. How they fit in. Whether they're even my people.
I wonder how long aloe vera gel stays good. Can I save this 3/4 of a bottle for next summer, or should I just throw it out now?
I wonder some about conversations I've had this week, this big full week of promising news and interesting turns.
I wonder if Annie's up for coffee tomorrow morning.
I wonder if I'll beat that level in Katamari.
I wonder why I can't read fiction anymore.
I wonder if those shallots can wait.
I wonder if I have enough coffee to last the weekend and bet I don't.
I wonder how Sr. Jean is doing. And then the list tumbles down, so many folks.
I wonder a lot about coincidence and wish the world were more clear but secretly I'm glad it isn't.
I wonder why my calendar on my phone just dinged. What do I not know about Friday? I guess I'll discover that tomorrow. I'm headed to bed.
I wonder if maybe my family's seizure activity, which my aunt described to me this past Christmas as something not quite epilepsy ("seizure prone" is how her doctor, and Maeve's described ), is related to my other aunt's eye cancer, my daughter's eczema, my thyroid failure. Gretchen thinks maybe. I wonder how much we don't know.
I wonder if we'll get the porch done before the cherry tomatoes in the back finally ripen. I'm thinking the porch will beat them. Especially if the squirrels stay hungry.
I wonder what we'll manage for dinner tomorrow night. Probably the trout. I have jalapenos and cream cheese and bacon, too.
I wonder about what's coming next. What's going to hit me next, what surprise can I not prepare for.
I wonder about who the Hogans are. And for sure who the Tooheys are. How they fit in. Whether they're even my people.
I wonder how long aloe vera gel stays good. Can I save this 3/4 of a bottle for next summer, or should I just throw it out now?
I wonder some about conversations I've had this week, this big full week of promising news and interesting turns.
I wonder if Annie's up for coffee tomorrow morning.
I wonder if I'll beat that level in Katamari.
I wonder why I can't read fiction anymore.
I wonder if those shallots can wait.
I wonder if I have enough coffee to last the weekend and bet I don't.
I wonder how Sr. Jean is doing. And then the list tumbles down, so many folks.
I wonder a lot about coincidence and wish the world were more clear but secretly I'm glad it isn't.
I wonder why my calendar on my phone just dinged. What do I not know about Friday? I guess I'll discover that tomorrow. I'm headed to bed.
Nine Months Out
On Tuesday I had to go up to school and have the conversation with the principal and social worker. The medication conversation. Maeve has some very mild asthma, and I've never stored albuterol at school. But this year, something told me that maybe I should. I am more often out and about, Leo and I have things to do, and it made sense to have it there, even if she hasn't used it more than twice in the past year.
And if I was going to fill out the form for albuterol for her well-controlled asthma, I might as well open the door to diazepam. Because while she has only had 1 unprovoked seizure, there is no easy daily flovent kind of medication for her to take to control that. Her seizure in November is coming around to a year anniversary pretty fast, and there has been nothing--and trust me, I didn't sleep for, what, 4 months, after that one, watching her on the video monitor throughout the night just waiting for another. I sleep now, as the trauma fades and she doesn't have another. One day, 2 days, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months seizure free and the chances drop precipitously. We are at the 9 month point right now and I don't think about it every day anymore.
But if she did have a seizure, and it did happen at school, we need to have medication there to stop it. So I filled out the form again and showed the principal and social worker what it was--a valium suppository. I mentioned that it came with a DVD but nobody was really that interested in watching. I kept it light and was done with the conference in 6 or 7 minutes. On the way home I reflected on how shaky I'd been about admitting that we needed to have it around in the first place. How I clung to every reassurance from strangers and relatives about her chances. And how, now, it's not so bad.
It is tough and I get a little worried about the future but the epileptologist is conservative about treatment and says things like "every kid gets one free seizure" and "Maeve will let us know if she needs more treatment." Her tests are clear: EEG, MRI. She doesn't have a brain tumor or a scar on her brain, there is no focal point, they cannot reproduce seizures on command in the EEG lab. These are good good things.
Because I want to live in the unknowing here. I usually want things settled but I want to hold my breath for the next 20 years. Really.
I talked last night with a friend who has been going through her own medical issues and may finally have some answers. We talked about our kids and worries about the future.
"I just don't get why Maeve had to get the asthma and the epilepsy," I lamented, even though she really doesn't have either one to any degree. We're just on the cusp of both and maybe it'll be no further. I thought, though, about how it would actually be nicer if it could have been spread a little thinner in my household. But she shook her head at me.
"Well, I think God gave her the personality strength to handle both."
Sometimes folks say things that strike me as Truth. Capital T. She was right.
And if I was going to fill out the form for albuterol for her well-controlled asthma, I might as well open the door to diazepam. Because while she has only had 1 unprovoked seizure, there is no easy daily flovent kind of medication for her to take to control that. Her seizure in November is coming around to a year anniversary pretty fast, and there has been nothing--and trust me, I didn't sleep for, what, 4 months, after that one, watching her on the video monitor throughout the night just waiting for another. I sleep now, as the trauma fades and she doesn't have another. One day, 2 days, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months seizure free and the chances drop precipitously. We are at the 9 month point right now and I don't think about it every day anymore.
But if she did have a seizure, and it did happen at school, we need to have medication there to stop it. So I filled out the form again and showed the principal and social worker what it was--a valium suppository. I mentioned that it came with a DVD but nobody was really that interested in watching. I kept it light and was done with the conference in 6 or 7 minutes. On the way home I reflected on how shaky I'd been about admitting that we needed to have it around in the first place. How I clung to every reassurance from strangers and relatives about her chances. And how, now, it's not so bad.
It is tough and I get a little worried about the future but the epileptologist is conservative about treatment and says things like "every kid gets one free seizure" and "Maeve will let us know if she needs more treatment." Her tests are clear: EEG, MRI. She doesn't have a brain tumor or a scar on her brain, there is no focal point, they cannot reproduce seizures on command in the EEG lab. These are good good things.
Because I want to live in the unknowing here. I usually want things settled but I want to hold my breath for the next 20 years. Really.
I talked last night with a friend who has been going through her own medical issues and may finally have some answers. We talked about our kids and worries about the future.
"I just don't get why Maeve had to get the asthma and the epilepsy," I lamented, even though she really doesn't have either one to any degree. We're just on the cusp of both and maybe it'll be no further. I thought, though, about how it would actually be nicer if it could have been spread a little thinner in my household. But she shook her head at me.
"Well, I think God gave her the personality strength to handle both."
Sometimes folks say things that strike me as Truth. Capital T. She was right.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
A few things, plus a bit about Texas
It's the end of summer and things are moving--Bevin and I painted the porch today (detail work--it is not photo ready yet), school is underway, Leo is getting set up for speech at SLU, and so forth. About ready to start back with girl scouts and art class and my (hopefully not too silly) online class to reactivate my teaching certificate. Is it weird that I'm excited about that?
But anyway, it's been a long time since I've posted anything from other sources and I wanted to do a few of those. So here's the first, from back a few years, about a Robert Earl Keen song called "Rollin By":
It's a busted old town
On the plains of West Texas
The drugstore's closed down
The river's run dry
The semis roll through
Just like stainless steel stallions
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by
Texas is a good place to be from (it's like a whole nother country). I can't claim native Texas status, but I did spend quite a few formative years in Dallas and Houston. I learned what I liked about music, about men, friends, weather, barbecue, texmex, melancholia, solitude, and sky in Texas. Houston, Galveston, Beaumont--these are east Texas places. Wet. Green. Oily hazy ocean salty tar ball sticky. I've only been out in West Texas a few times, and all but one of those was only "west" in comparison to "east."
The drive-in don't play
No Friday night picture
With no big silver screen
To light up the sky
And gone are the days
Of post-wartime lovers
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by
Once, a bus from North Texas U to Flagstaff. Count the Dairy Queens. Note the change from civilization to something different. Something a gray green color, the clouds hanging in the sky from wires, three dimensional, casting shadows. Shreds of towns. Cows. Grasshopper oil rigs squeezing the last bits out. Glad the truckers didn't beat Ruben up.
The mission still stands
At the edge of the plateau
And a stone marks the graves
Where the old cowboys lie
Asleep in a time
In a town just a young man
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by
Stop in high school on the way to a retreat in San Antonio. August in Texas. Trying not to breathe. Patrick's sleeves rolled up, looking like he could fade into the crowd for the first time since I met him. The water in the glasses at the cafe hazy. John doesn't drink his; I drink mine, grinning.
And me I stand here
At the last filling station
While the wind moans a dirge
To a coyote's cry
And I'm back in my car
And I'm out on the highway
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by
Nothing like driving alone through Texas. Except maybe sharing a cab of a truck with someone worth looking at, sitting sideways watching him tell me anything, anything just to hear the voice and see the expressions, already planned out before I got in. Stopping for gas, getting back out onto the Farm to Market road, thinking, what do I say now?
But anyway, it's been a long time since I've posted anything from other sources and I wanted to do a few of those. So here's the first, from back a few years, about a Robert Earl Keen song called "Rollin By":
It's a busted old town
On the plains of West Texas
The drugstore's closed down
The river's run dry
The semis roll through
Just like stainless steel stallions
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by
Texas is a good place to be from (it's like a whole nother country). I can't claim native Texas status, but I did spend quite a few formative years in Dallas and Houston. I learned what I liked about music, about men, friends, weather, barbecue, texmex, melancholia, solitude, and sky in Texas. Houston, Galveston, Beaumont--these are east Texas places. Wet. Green. Oily hazy ocean salty tar ball sticky. I've only been out in West Texas a few times, and all but one of those was only "west" in comparison to "east."
The drive-in don't play
No Friday night picture
With no big silver screen
To light up the sky
And gone are the days
Of post-wartime lovers
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by
Once, a bus from North Texas U to Flagstaff. Count the Dairy Queens. Note the change from civilization to something different. Something a gray green color, the clouds hanging in the sky from wires, three dimensional, casting shadows. Shreds of towns. Cows. Grasshopper oil rigs squeezing the last bits out. Glad the truckers didn't beat Ruben up.
The mission still stands
At the edge of the plateau
And a stone marks the graves
Where the old cowboys lie
Asleep in a time
In a town just a young man
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by
Stop in high school on the way to a retreat in San Antonio. August in Texas. Trying not to breathe. Patrick's sleeves rolled up, looking like he could fade into the crowd for the first time since I met him. The water in the glasses at the cafe hazy. John doesn't drink his; I drink mine, grinning.
And me I stand here
At the last filling station
While the wind moans a dirge
To a coyote's cry
And I'm back in my car
And I'm out on the highway
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by
Nothing like driving alone through Texas. Except maybe sharing a cab of a truck with someone worth looking at, sitting sideways watching him tell me anything, anything just to hear the voice and see the expressions, already planned out before I got in. Stopping for gas, getting back out onto the Farm to Market road, thinking, what do I say now?
Monday, August 22, 2011
Too many things.
Too many things right now.
Mostly school stuff, but when I let myself think about oireachtas, I start to freak a bit too about that. And girl scouts. And I'm having one of those shaky days when I don't know where I stand. You know? And I have no method of revolt.
Sigh.
Mostly school stuff, but when I let myself think about oireachtas, I start to freak a bit too about that. And girl scouts. And I'm having one of those shaky days when I don't know where I stand. You know? And I have no method of revolt.
Sigh.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The 5 best things about the first day of school, times 3
This is reposted from two years ago. Because I like it.
From Mom's point of view, the five best things about the first day of school are:
1. The promise of a good year, the slate wiped clean, the teacher doesn't know I'm a bitch yet. This doesn't apply at our school, however, because Sophia has the same teachers as last year and Maeve has one teacher that had Sophia for 2 years, and another teacher that had her for preschool. Everybody knows my game. But I like them. So it's still good.
2. I have to wake up in the mornings. Turns out, I'm a morning person. But I love to sleep in. School makes me get up and get moving. And then I don't stay up until 2:30 in the morning clicking on I Can Has Cheezburger and wondering if my Australian and Kiwi blogs are updated yet.
3. Seeing all the other moms and dads again for the first time in 3 months and remembering that, yes, I do like these people.
4. Watching Sophia (Maeve too but it's been more palpable with Sophia) interact with the same kids from last year with shy waves and "hi". Maeve gets in their faces, but Sophia observes from a distance. It's a sweet moment of awkwardness that is gone by the second day when she, too, remembers that yes, she does like these people.
5. Watching Sophia (three years in a row now) go into the main part of the classroom and plop down in the circle, right next to the teacher. She gives this smile, please please like me, and I see myself from 26 or 27 years ago.
The 5 best things about the first day of school, from when I was a student:
1. Wondering if my desk and I would get along. Would it be the right height, would there be enough room to stash my books? Or would this new school (it was often a new school) have those kinds of desks? Hoping I'd get a good place to be was always present.
2. The smell of new pencils.
3. New textbooks, cracking them open for the first time. New notebooks. Later on, spending part of the morning covering textbooks with brown paper bags or the mass-produced advertisement-emblazoned book covers. Deciding how I would label each book.
4. A clean classroom, a teacher who didn't look tired, maybe it'll be a good year (except for 5th grade and 10th grade, it was always a good year).
5. Knowing that no real work would get done that day. At all. It was all syllabus distribution and classroom rules and book covering and desk rearranging. Almost as good as the last week of school.
As a teacher, the 5 best things about the first day of school were:
1. The challenge to learn everyone's name by the end of the day.
2. Letting kids pick their own seats, seeing how that panned out (it almost never worked perfectly). Watching what friendships were already formed, which ones might, and what I might have to look out for. Writing it down so I could look back in October and see if I was right.
3.. Again with the clean slate--even if Pete had been a annoying little so and so last year, maybe this year will work better. Even if Mrs. K told me to watch out for Thuy and Thiky or Ian and Eric or Bao and Mary--hoping that maybe for me, it would be ok. By the time Mrs. K was telling me these things, it was always ok for me.
4. I enjoyed handing everyone a math book and telling them that by the end of the year, we would have completely finished the book. Seeing the looks of disbelief: "we've never finished a math book before." Telling them that even with taking every Friday off for either a project or a test, we would still finish the book. We always did. Ooh--and I liked explaining my totally outcome-based education plan for grading. Basically, even if you make D's and C's and F's at the beginning of the year, if you're making B's and A's by the end, you'll make a B (or an A) in the class. Math is cumulative. Work hard and learn and don't be burdened by your past failures. This always caught the attention of a certain group of students--mostly slacker boys and low-confidence girls. Always my favorites. Both years I taught math, I had to go to bat for them to the principal who did not understand how Jeff or Joe or Ann could have a 75 average first quarter and a 92 average second quarter and how that turned out to be a 92 for the semester. It doesn't average out, she'd tell me. But that's not the point of learning math, I'd say back, we are preparing them for high school success. Well, I hope no parents complain, she'd half-threaten. Then I'd try hard not to give her a "you are too dumb to live" look and go back up to my room.
But that part wasn't on the first day.
5. The very best thing about the first day of school when I taught, whether at Simmons or Andrews or Joan's or Pius, was sitting alone in my classroom at 7 in the morning watching the sun rise over the houses. At Andrews it was over a park and a corporate-style pond with geese. At Joan's it was peeking through the pin oaks between my classroom and the church. At Simmons and Pius, it rose over red brick and asphalt, green trees and city streets. It was always some kind of hopeful moment, an unspoken prayer, an alignment of past and future as I listened to myself breathe, clearing my mind for the day and year ahead.
Good luck to everyone! Have a good year!
From Mom's point of view, the five best things about the first day of school are:
1. The promise of a good year, the slate wiped clean, the teacher doesn't know I'm a bitch yet. This doesn't apply at our school, however, because Sophia has the same teachers as last year and Maeve has one teacher that had Sophia for 2 years, and another teacher that had her for preschool. Everybody knows my game. But I like them. So it's still good.
2. I have to wake up in the mornings. Turns out, I'm a morning person. But I love to sleep in. School makes me get up and get moving. And then I don't stay up until 2:30 in the morning clicking on I Can Has Cheezburger and wondering if my Australian and Kiwi blogs are updated yet.
3. Seeing all the other moms and dads again for the first time in 3 months and remembering that, yes, I do like these people.
4. Watching Sophia (Maeve too but it's been more palpable with Sophia) interact with the same kids from last year with shy waves and "hi". Maeve gets in their faces, but Sophia observes from a distance. It's a sweet moment of awkwardness that is gone by the second day when she, too, remembers that yes, she does like these people.
5. Watching Sophia (three years in a row now) go into the main part of the classroom and plop down in the circle, right next to the teacher. She gives this smile, please please like me, and I see myself from 26 or 27 years ago.
The 5 best things about the first day of school, from when I was a student:
1. Wondering if my desk and I would get along. Would it be the right height, would there be enough room to stash my books? Or would this new school (it was often a new school) have those kinds of desks? Hoping I'd get a good place to be was always present.
2. The smell of new pencils.
3. New textbooks, cracking them open for the first time. New notebooks. Later on, spending part of the morning covering textbooks with brown paper bags or the mass-produced advertisement-emblazoned book covers. Deciding how I would label each book.
4. A clean classroom, a teacher who didn't look tired, maybe it'll be a good year (except for 5th grade and 10th grade, it was always a good year).
5. Knowing that no real work would get done that day. At all. It was all syllabus distribution and classroom rules and book covering and desk rearranging. Almost as good as the last week of school.
As a teacher, the 5 best things about the first day of school were:
1. The challenge to learn everyone's name by the end of the day.
2. Letting kids pick their own seats, seeing how that panned out (it almost never worked perfectly). Watching what friendships were already formed, which ones might, and what I might have to look out for. Writing it down so I could look back in October and see if I was right.
3.. Again with the clean slate--even if Pete had been a annoying little so and so last year, maybe this year will work better. Even if Mrs. K told me to watch out for Thuy and Thiky or Ian and Eric or Bao and Mary--hoping that maybe for me, it would be ok. By the time Mrs. K was telling me these things, it was always ok for me.
4. I enjoyed handing everyone a math book and telling them that by the end of the year, we would have completely finished the book. Seeing the looks of disbelief: "we've never finished a math book before." Telling them that even with taking every Friday off for either a project or a test, we would still finish the book. We always did. Ooh--and I liked explaining my totally outcome-based education plan for grading. Basically, even if you make D's and C's and F's at the beginning of the year, if you're making B's and A's by the end, you'll make a B (or an A) in the class. Math is cumulative. Work hard and learn and don't be burdened by your past failures. This always caught the attention of a certain group of students--mostly slacker boys and low-confidence girls. Always my favorites. Both years I taught math, I had to go to bat for them to the principal who did not understand how Jeff or Joe or Ann could have a 75 average first quarter and a 92 average second quarter and how that turned out to be a 92 for the semester. It doesn't average out, she'd tell me. But that's not the point of learning math, I'd say back, we are preparing them for high school success. Well, I hope no parents complain, she'd half-threaten. Then I'd try hard not to give her a "you are too dumb to live" look and go back up to my room.
But that part wasn't on the first day.
5. The very best thing about the first day of school when I taught, whether at Simmons or Andrews or Joan's or Pius, was sitting alone in my classroom at 7 in the morning watching the sun rise over the houses. At Andrews it was over a park and a corporate-style pond with geese. At Joan's it was peeking through the pin oaks between my classroom and the church. At Simmons and Pius, it rose over red brick and asphalt, green trees and city streets. It was always some kind of hopeful moment, an unspoken prayer, an alignment of past and future as I listened to myself breathe, clearing my mind for the day and year ahead.
Good luck to everyone! Have a good year!
Quitting
Recently a facebook friend posted something like this:
What to do with my 10 year old who refuses to practice her violin?
He received a few dozen responses. Many, an overwhelming majority, said, "Let her quit or else you'll regret it." Maybe not so strong as that, but that idea. If it was your idea for her to take violin, and she doesn't like it, you shouldn't make her do it anymore. But, many of them added, if it was HER idea, you should make her keep going.
Why does this seem backwards to me? Sophia is the one who decided to take Irish dance. If she came to me tomorrow and said, "I want to quit" I would let her, barring any obligations she had made, for instance, signing a paper that said she would be on the team to go to Oireachtas. I might ask her what she would want to do next, or instaed, but I wouldn't make her continue.
On the other hand, if she said, "I hate piano and I want to quit," the answer would be no. Piano is part of her education. She doesn't get to quit math and she doesn't get to quit piano. Can she pick up another instrument (assuming there is time and available funds)? Sure. Can she drop that after a semester's worth of try? Also fine. But some things are set in my house that are obviously not set in everyone's house.
Music is part of education for us. Not competition or crazy amounts of stuff. I'm not making my kids try out for Muny Kids. I'm not forcing something unreasonable. An half hour lesson a week and practice, 10 minutes a day.
I talked with Mike about this, after reading the facebook conversation and wondering about it. And I wonder if part of my insistence is genealogy. My grandfather worked part-time in an instrument repair shop back when his kids, eight of them, were young. He was an airline mechanic and there wasn't a lot of anything to go around. But kids had instruments and they played in the band. Maybe because I know there was serious sacrifice involved, maybe it's more important to me.
I played flute, which I often joke is what happens when you let a 4th grade girl pick her own instrument. But I kept it up a long time, on my own, not forced, and although I eventually put it down, I wouldn't trade the knowledge it gave me. My sister Colleen played violin, played it well, and is somewhat self-taught at piano. Bevin and Ian didn't play instruments, but my parents didn't make us do anything. Bevin says she wishes they had made her take an instrument. And that sentiment, mixed with my own narrow-minded focus on what education should be, means my kids take piano. Maeve's about to start year two. She's good, if a bit of a short-cutter. Sophia's starting her 6th year. And she can play. Leo will start when the time is right--kindergarten or first grade, most likely.
Right now our school is stressing out about test scores--our very high math scores dropped this year, and while some of that is actually an error on the test-maker's part (long boring story), some of it is natural fluctuation in abilities and achievement. And I read that statement from facebook and I wonder about what we, as a society, want from our kids. What we want from society. We are more than our standardized test scores. When I sit down at the mah jongg table, Zelda and Gretchen don't want to know what I made on my SAT. When I go in to teach art for Sophia's and Maeve's classrooms, nobody raises a hand and asks what my GPA from college was. That's not what we are.
The ten year old in question is a girl with high verbal and normal math skills. She has had it easy, for the most part, and has had many advantages along the way. Telling her dad that quitting is the best route, "or else she'll hate you for it later" seems backwards. Struggling and practicing and getting something done right can be satisfying in itself, and allowing her to quit and not experience that is cheating her out of a skill that will be far more useful in her adult life than the violin itself. And something tells me she won't hate him for it. Maybe for a minute, but not 10 years from now when she's taking organic chemistry and has to study for the first time and really work. She'll have had at least a few other experiences of doing something boring, something hard. Trust me. I was that kid.
What to do with my 10 year old who refuses to practice her violin?
He received a few dozen responses. Many, an overwhelming majority, said, "Let her quit or else you'll regret it." Maybe not so strong as that, but that idea. If it was your idea for her to take violin, and she doesn't like it, you shouldn't make her do it anymore. But, many of them added, if it was HER idea, you should make her keep going.
Why does this seem backwards to me? Sophia is the one who decided to take Irish dance. If she came to me tomorrow and said, "I want to quit" I would let her, barring any obligations she had made, for instance, signing a paper that said she would be on the team to go to Oireachtas. I might ask her what she would want to do next, or instaed, but I wouldn't make her continue.
On the other hand, if she said, "I hate piano and I want to quit," the answer would be no. Piano is part of her education. She doesn't get to quit math and she doesn't get to quit piano. Can she pick up another instrument (assuming there is time and available funds)? Sure. Can she drop that after a semester's worth of try? Also fine. But some things are set in my house that are obviously not set in everyone's house.
Music is part of education for us. Not competition or crazy amounts of stuff. I'm not making my kids try out for Muny Kids. I'm not forcing something unreasonable. An half hour lesson a week and practice, 10 minutes a day.
I talked with Mike about this, after reading the facebook conversation and wondering about it. And I wonder if part of my insistence is genealogy. My grandfather worked part-time in an instrument repair shop back when his kids, eight of them, were young. He was an airline mechanic and there wasn't a lot of anything to go around. But kids had instruments and they played in the band. Maybe because I know there was serious sacrifice involved, maybe it's more important to me.
I played flute, which I often joke is what happens when you let a 4th grade girl pick her own instrument. But I kept it up a long time, on my own, not forced, and although I eventually put it down, I wouldn't trade the knowledge it gave me. My sister Colleen played violin, played it well, and is somewhat self-taught at piano. Bevin and Ian didn't play instruments, but my parents didn't make us do anything. Bevin says she wishes they had made her take an instrument. And that sentiment, mixed with my own narrow-minded focus on what education should be, means my kids take piano. Maeve's about to start year two. She's good, if a bit of a short-cutter. Sophia's starting her 6th year. And she can play. Leo will start when the time is right--kindergarten or first grade, most likely.
Right now our school is stressing out about test scores--our very high math scores dropped this year, and while some of that is actually an error on the test-maker's part (long boring story), some of it is natural fluctuation in abilities and achievement. And I read that statement from facebook and I wonder about what we, as a society, want from our kids. What we want from society. We are more than our standardized test scores. When I sit down at the mah jongg table, Zelda and Gretchen don't want to know what I made on my SAT. When I go in to teach art for Sophia's and Maeve's classrooms, nobody raises a hand and asks what my GPA from college was. That's not what we are.
The ten year old in question is a girl with high verbal and normal math skills. She has had it easy, for the most part, and has had many advantages along the way. Telling her dad that quitting is the best route, "or else she'll hate you for it later" seems backwards. Struggling and practicing and getting something done right can be satisfying in itself, and allowing her to quit and not experience that is cheating her out of a skill that will be far more useful in her adult life than the violin itself. And something tells me she won't hate him for it. Maybe for a minute, but not 10 years from now when she's taking organic chemistry and has to study for the first time and really work. She'll have had at least a few other experiences of doing something boring, something hard. Trust me. I was that kid.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Back to School Night
Tonight is back to school night for Maeve. She's a big first grader and in a new classroom. The classroom isn't new for me--it was Sophia's classroom for 3 years with first the useless teacher who had no business being there (inherited from the preschool we grew out of), and then two wonderful years with Miss Anne, who is about to be Maeve's teacher, along with Miss Bridget, her assistant.
I'll be teaching art in there, and in Sophia's room, and in one of the other 1st-3rd grade rooms. And field trip chaperone. And who knows what else? I had a meeting with the head of school last week and we talked about what I was getting myself into (3 hours of volunteer teaching, plus prep work and so forth) and I feel like he sees me, you know? In a way that perhaps I wasn't seen before.
The school isn't new anymore, and we've reached a long period of growing time, as we say in the Atrium. Yes, we're moving next year, but most of what we are is established. We can't blame naivete for our mistakes. We can't pretend to be a small spirited community school. It's like when I realized I was an oblate. I wasn't a novice anymore. I wasn't searching, I wasn't trying out, I wasn't proving myself. I was done with that phase. And now they are, too. This is our 4th year as a charter school and 5th year as a viable start-up grade school. And frankly, we have a lot to work on.
Not the software. Not the stuff that happens in the classrooms, not the teachers and students and curriculum and all the stuff "where the rubber meets the road." But on our "why can't we find our rear ends with both hands" hardware end of things. The development/finance/corporate side of the school, the side that must always be tamed down and forced to an espalier frame. It cannot be allowed to get in the way of what's happening in the courtyard, to continue the analogy. It must support and remain in the background.
I fear that things are getting out of hand.
And I'm just a parent. But I'm a loud parent and I'm waiting for my moment.
But back to back to school night. We're all looking forward to it. Maeve is getting so big. She has a loose tooth finally. Sophia doesn't get to go to back to school night because she's in the same classroom as last year (the 4th-6th grade, as a 5th grader). So she already knows the song and dance.
So there. That's what's bugging me in a nutshell.
I'll be teaching art in there, and in Sophia's room, and in one of the other 1st-3rd grade rooms. And field trip chaperone. And who knows what else? I had a meeting with the head of school last week and we talked about what I was getting myself into (3 hours of volunteer teaching, plus prep work and so forth) and I feel like he sees me, you know? In a way that perhaps I wasn't seen before.
The school isn't new anymore, and we've reached a long period of growing time, as we say in the Atrium. Yes, we're moving next year, but most of what we are is established. We can't blame naivete for our mistakes. We can't pretend to be a small spirited community school. It's like when I realized I was an oblate. I wasn't a novice anymore. I wasn't searching, I wasn't trying out, I wasn't proving myself. I was done with that phase. And now they are, too. This is our 4th year as a charter school and 5th year as a viable start-up grade school. And frankly, we have a lot to work on.
Not the software. Not the stuff that happens in the classrooms, not the teachers and students and curriculum and all the stuff "where the rubber meets the road." But on our "why can't we find our rear ends with both hands" hardware end of things. The development/finance/corporate side of the school, the side that must always be tamed down and forced to an espalier frame. It cannot be allowed to get in the way of what's happening in the courtyard, to continue the analogy. It must support and remain in the background.
I fear that things are getting out of hand.
And I'm just a parent. But I'm a loud parent and I'm waiting for my moment.
But back to back to school night. We're all looking forward to it. Maeve is getting so big. She has a loose tooth finally. Sophia doesn't get to go to back to school night because she's in the same classroom as last year (the 4th-6th grade, as a 5th grader). So she already knows the song and dance.
So there. That's what's bugging me in a nutshell.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
One of those times
It is one of those times.
One of those times when I have a lot to say. A LOT. A lot of intricate story to tell. A lot of questions to ask. Advice to seek. But because this blog is read by such a wide variety of people, I can't say anything. Not yet. No, I'm not pregnant and it has nothing to do with my family. But there are many things I would like to complain about right now that I cannot.
That said, it is good that I have so many diverse readers, and not just to pat myself on the back. It keeps me in check. It keeps me from whining about my extended family. From complaining too much about my kids' school. From going overboard about dance or girl scouts or church or neighborhood. It is good that you are here because learning to write for an audience and censor myself has, in the end, made me a better person. Really.
But oh how I could go on at length right now.
Here's a tidbit of another topic: my brother and his wife have moved. They are victims of the current housing/economic crisis. Yes, like most victims in this situation, some of it was set up by them with prior decisions that weren't the best. But like most, again, most of it smacked them across the face as a surprise. He has a good job again and she does too and they'll recover, but it's been a hard hard year for them. My brother's birthday was this week, and in response to the facebook happy birthdays, he responded: here's hoping 33 is better than 32.
And that puts some of my itching-to-complain into perspective.
One of those times when I have a lot to say. A LOT. A lot of intricate story to tell. A lot of questions to ask. Advice to seek. But because this blog is read by such a wide variety of people, I can't say anything. Not yet. No, I'm not pregnant and it has nothing to do with my family. But there are many things I would like to complain about right now that I cannot.
That said, it is good that I have so many diverse readers, and not just to pat myself on the back. It keeps me in check. It keeps me from whining about my extended family. From complaining too much about my kids' school. From going overboard about dance or girl scouts or church or neighborhood. It is good that you are here because learning to write for an audience and censor myself has, in the end, made me a better person. Really.
But oh how I could go on at length right now.
Here's a tidbit of another topic: my brother and his wife have moved. They are victims of the current housing/economic crisis. Yes, like most victims in this situation, some of it was set up by them with prior decisions that weren't the best. But like most, again, most of it smacked them across the face as a surprise. He has a good job again and she does too and they'll recover, but it's been a hard hard year for them. My brother's birthday was this week, and in response to the facebook happy birthdays, he responded: here's hoping 33 is better than 32.
And that puts some of my itching-to-complain into perspective.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Oireachtas
I went to the Oireachtas meeting for the under-10s and under-8s tonight. The Oireachtas, which means "regional" in Irish, is the regional competition for Irish dance.
I took home a form to sign and have Sophia sign and then bring back tomorrow for class.
There is no guarantee that Sophia will be on the team that will take her to oireachtas. Considering the number of parents sitting in the room, I say she has fair to middling odds. Not everyone will say yes. And she's already on the team blah blah blah. Anyway. We'll find out soon enough I suppose.
Had a long talk with Sophia, Parental Talk #401, "What is Childhood For?" We both decided that childhood is not for the monoculture of any given activity or sport. I gently pointed out that she does not take the time to practice or have the natural born talent required to glide into stiffer levels of competition. Neither of us, or Mike or anyone, wants to become one of those families that travels all over the midwest in the hopes of a placement that will move our daughter up another smidge closer to, what?
Mike says we were bait-and-switched long ago when Sophia got good enough that the Thursday night classes in South City weren't high-powered enough and we started traveling out to the distant county location. If she were unhappy, I might look to jump ship to another, closer, school. But she's not unhappy. She's also not, if I may be frank, very good. She is good--and Irish dance has done amazing things for her brain and her calves (mm, calves brains...I know someone out there was thinking it). Being yelled at for 2 hours at a stretch a few nights a week for 4 years does something. On your toes, cross your legs, feet out--such that Sophia walked into a cheerleading camp this summer and mopped the floor with the other participants.
That was actually when she started her own conversations with me. That maybe there were other fun active things she could do without succumbing to parochial school sponsored basketball teams and their practices and neverending schedules. She brought up that maybe we should hold off on the solo dress. That maybe she wouldn't continue much longer.
Then I bring home that green form and, well, she didn't change her mind, but she tweaked it a bit. She would stick with Irish dance. She just wouldn't keep up with the higher-level competition kind of stuff. She'd drop ceili team. Have Irish dance be "one of the things I do" instead of the only thing.
I also got honest with her: we spend a lot of money on Irish dance. And in comparison, we spend almost nothing on tae kwon do for Maeve. Plus there's a younger brother to consider. She is beginning to become aware of the fact that we are not made of money. She was stunned by how much Irish dance costs.
So we made a plan. We would say yes to the Oireachtas this year, and only this year. If she made the team, we would go. She would also start fencing with her dad on Thursday nights. After the Oireachtas, she would stay on ceili through St. Pat's season and then once the school year ended, go down to just the one class a week. Spend 6th grade trying that on. Go to the St. Louis feiseanna (3-5 depending on the year), but not travel.
And then I predict she'll be done--she'll be involved in other things and busy enough that we'll stop altogether before her 7th grade year.
I won't miss it.
I'm happy to take her to Chicago and do this thing with her for the experience of it. The hotel, of course, is already full and so I'm looking at a Hilton nearby instead with a pool for the younger kids and Mike to stay entertained (and away from the crazy).
I am not a stage mom and she's not a competitive kid (one of my favorite little Sophia quotes: "I don't like to play winning games"). The buck kind of stops here. She wants to try out the trapeze class with Maeve (that will happen post-Oireachtas at this point). She wants to fence. She is keenly interested in cheerleading all of a sudden, which makes me happy, surprisingly. She wants to build a treehouse and go to the paddleboats in Forest Park and do art projects. What's a childhood for?
I looked around the room this evening, and I saw a lot of childhoods that are for Irish dance. I don't want that, and she doesn't want that. But there is some separation anxiety, some grieving, of sorts, in quitting an activity. So we're not quitting. We're going out with a bang and then easing out of the pool or some other mixed metaphor of your choice.
I took home a form to sign and have Sophia sign and then bring back tomorrow for class.
There is no guarantee that Sophia will be on the team that will take her to oireachtas. Considering the number of parents sitting in the room, I say she has fair to middling odds. Not everyone will say yes. And she's already on the team blah blah blah. Anyway. We'll find out soon enough I suppose.
Had a long talk with Sophia, Parental Talk #401, "What is Childhood For?" We both decided that childhood is not for the monoculture of any given activity or sport. I gently pointed out that she does not take the time to practice or have the natural born talent required to glide into stiffer levels of competition. Neither of us, or Mike or anyone, wants to become one of those families that travels all over the midwest in the hopes of a placement that will move our daughter up another smidge closer to, what?
Mike says we were bait-and-switched long ago when Sophia got good enough that the Thursday night classes in South City weren't high-powered enough and we started traveling out to the distant county location. If she were unhappy, I might look to jump ship to another, closer, school. But she's not unhappy. She's also not, if I may be frank, very good. She is good--and Irish dance has done amazing things for her brain and her calves (mm, calves brains...I know someone out there was thinking it). Being yelled at for 2 hours at a stretch a few nights a week for 4 years does something. On your toes, cross your legs, feet out--such that Sophia walked into a cheerleading camp this summer and mopped the floor with the other participants.
That was actually when she started her own conversations with me. That maybe there were other fun active things she could do without succumbing to parochial school sponsored basketball teams and their practices and neverending schedules. She brought up that maybe we should hold off on the solo dress. That maybe she wouldn't continue much longer.
Then I bring home that green form and, well, she didn't change her mind, but she tweaked it a bit. She would stick with Irish dance. She just wouldn't keep up with the higher-level competition kind of stuff. She'd drop ceili team. Have Irish dance be "one of the things I do" instead of the only thing.
I also got honest with her: we spend a lot of money on Irish dance. And in comparison, we spend almost nothing on tae kwon do for Maeve. Plus there's a younger brother to consider. She is beginning to become aware of the fact that we are not made of money. She was stunned by how much Irish dance costs.
So we made a plan. We would say yes to the Oireachtas this year, and only this year. If she made the team, we would go. She would also start fencing with her dad on Thursday nights. After the Oireachtas, she would stay on ceili through St. Pat's season and then once the school year ended, go down to just the one class a week. Spend 6th grade trying that on. Go to the St. Louis feiseanna (3-5 depending on the year), but not travel.
And then I predict she'll be done--she'll be involved in other things and busy enough that we'll stop altogether before her 7th grade year.
I won't miss it.
I'm happy to take her to Chicago and do this thing with her for the experience of it. The hotel, of course, is already full and so I'm looking at a Hilton nearby instead with a pool for the younger kids and Mike to stay entertained (and away from the crazy).
I am not a stage mom and she's not a competitive kid (one of my favorite little Sophia quotes: "I don't like to play winning games"). The buck kind of stops here. She wants to try out the trapeze class with Maeve (that will happen post-Oireachtas at this point). She wants to fence. She is keenly interested in cheerleading all of a sudden, which makes me happy, surprisingly. She wants to build a treehouse and go to the paddleboats in Forest Park and do art projects. What's a childhood for?
I looked around the room this evening, and I saw a lot of childhoods that are for Irish dance. I don't want that, and she doesn't want that. But there is some separation anxiety, some grieving, of sorts, in quitting an activity. So we're not quitting. We're going out with a bang and then easing out of the pool or some other mixed metaphor of your choice.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Hal's Trampoline
Hal was a freshman at the local college and still lived at home. He was all khaki pants and oxford shirts. To mow the grass he wore a short sleeved oxford shirt and khaki shorts--not cutoffs, but the sort of shorts one might wear to a summer barbecue. I was a sophomore in high school and we had nothing in common and I do not think we ever said more than hello to each other.
But my back fence had a gate into his backyard, a symbol of a friendlier neighborhood. His mother told me and my brother that anytime we wanted to use the trampoline, we were welcome to. It was cemented into the ground, metal poles painted dark green, metal springs supporting the rectangle of black mesh fabric.
I'd never spent much time on a trampoline. I wasn't a gymnastics kid; I played soccer in grade school when other girls were dancing and tumbling. Later, the year after we moved away from Hal, I'd be playing on a boys' soccer team for my high school, in fact. But the summer before my sophomore year, I was a northerner in a legacy-style southern high school and there was nothing, nothing to do. So I spent quite a bit of time on that trampoline. By August I could do a front flip and a back flip in the air.
But my back fence had a gate into his backyard, a symbol of a friendlier neighborhood. His mother told me and my brother that anytime we wanted to use the trampoline, we were welcome to. It was cemented into the ground, metal poles painted dark green, metal springs supporting the rectangle of black mesh fabric.
I'd never spent much time on a trampoline. I wasn't a gymnastics kid; I played soccer in grade school when other girls were dancing and tumbling. Later, the year after we moved away from Hal, I'd be playing on a boys' soccer team for my high school, in fact. But the summer before my sophomore year, I was a northerner in a legacy-style southern high school and there was nothing, nothing to do. So I spent quite a bit of time on that trampoline. By August I could do a front flip and a back flip in the air.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Leo's Latest Favorite
He saw it last night, thanks to Mike. He woke up this morning, came into the computer room, and said, "Cat?"
Yes, that's all it does.
Yes, that's all it does.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
First Day of 6th Grade
We had just moved to Columbia, Missouri, and the first day of school coincided with the day the moving van was arriving--the first time a company moved us instead of my parents and uncles and a u-haul van. So the night before school started we spent in a Hilton on the western edge of town. I got dressed in my maroon and gray plaid skirt, white blouse, maroon sweater, standing at a hotel bathroom sink wondering if my (maroon) knee socks should be pulled up to my knees or scrunched down to my ankles.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Domestic Travel
Continuing thoughts....
It's the little things. The bits that make us different, the idea that geography is destiny. Yes, we all speak English (sort of) and we all watch the same TV (for the most part) but there are things about us that are flavored by geography and by the concept of Manifest Destiny. What can be said about St. Louis is those who are native St. Louisans are from a stock of folks who decided it wasn't worth leaving to Parts West. We didn't take the Oregon Trail. We didn't go out to the Gold Rush. We didn't even gamble on the Great Plains. We moved far enough away from the coast to breathe (Irish) or to have it have similarities to home (German) or to where our friends and relatives spoke our language (Bosniacs, Italians). We stayed put.
Nobody moves East. Not back then. And not until recently as the Californians start to trickle home realizing they can buy up the whole state of Arkansas for the cost of their 2 bedroom bungalow.
The people in Oregon, for instance, since I was just there, are our colonists. Come from our colonists. People left places like Pennsylvania and Illinois and funneled through St. Louis and Independence and headed out there. Oregon is the place where people made it to. No further to go. Pioneer, Colonist, Nomad.
I was in Oregon for 4 days before I saw my first Catholic Church.
If my sister Bevin were a state, she would be Oregon. If she ever visits, she will never leave. It is her native land. She is out of place here.
Moving beyond my recent travel, I think about mountains. The difference between folks who call Appalachia home and those who call the Rockies home. Don't get me started on the Ozarks. They're all mountains. They're all here in the US. But they are not the same. Not even shades of difference. Geography, again, is destiny?
People in the north, from living there, are cold in person but warm in heart. And then there's the south.
You have to work with the heat in the midwest and the near south. You have a completely air conditioned world further down from there. Here, people still die from the heat every summer. In Michigan winter is a culture. Here it is a nuisance.
There are Native American influences in culture in some places (I lived in Oklahoma) and it is completely absent in other places.
We all speak English now, but we didn't all speak English then. Some of us only a generation ago. El Paso and Minneapolis are not the same. And it's not just nuance and adobe. It is different to be colonized by Norwegians than by cowboys and Mexicans.
It is true that suburban American culture is culture-less. The suburbs of St. Louis look pretty much like the suburbs of Houston like the suburbs of Pittsburgh like the suburbs of Atlanta. But I think it's the fringes of that mainstream society that preserve the differences. I don't just mean a Chinatown or a U-Pick-It strawberry farm. I mean the difference between what "inner city" means in St. Louis and what it means in Portland or Houston or Camden.
I was shocked by the difference between Missouri and Oregon. And I can't even explain it. They are not like us. People from Chicago, if they drop the "We're Better Than St. Louis" shtick for just a moment, are far more like us. We're the last eastern city. Kansas City is first western one.
I am not attempting to say that, as I put on Mali's comments, that Upper Volta or Thailand is less different than Oregon or New York. No way. I haven't left the US and I know. We are bound by a common language, a common set of assumptions of what our standard of living is, by a suburban culture that churns the uniqueness out of us, by a federal government. But think: Missouri's geographical area ranking fits between Greece and Belarus. It would be a good-sized European nation. It only makes sense that it would be strange to visit a place so far away as Oregon.
Just by reading their blogs, I know that life in Vermont is not like life here. And I've lived in central Georgia and my high school boyfriend was a native Houstonian and there's the river here, different from the river town where my husband grew up.
It is all the same, and I figure that from an outsider's point of view (someone visiting from Europe, for instance) it might be the same vanilla ice cream for thousands of miles of boring interstate.
But when you're steeped in it?
Standing in line for the boat tour at Crater Lake, the woman behind us commented on my Girl Scout sweatshirt. She was from London--Mike was able to pick out the accent as London, as opposed to other regions of England (he watches a LOT of BBC television). She lived in the US and her children were American--time spent in the Carolinas and in the Bay Area. And she said "when you talk, it sounds the same as every other American accent. And when I talk, it sounds, to most people, like just the Brit."
Being American is like being Catholic. It's a big tent.
It's the little things. The bits that make us different, the idea that geography is destiny. Yes, we all speak English (sort of) and we all watch the same TV (for the most part) but there are things about us that are flavored by geography and by the concept of Manifest Destiny. What can be said about St. Louis is those who are native St. Louisans are from a stock of folks who decided it wasn't worth leaving to Parts West. We didn't take the Oregon Trail. We didn't go out to the Gold Rush. We didn't even gamble on the Great Plains. We moved far enough away from the coast to breathe (Irish) or to have it have similarities to home (German) or to where our friends and relatives spoke our language (Bosniacs, Italians). We stayed put.
Nobody moves East. Not back then. And not until recently as the Californians start to trickle home realizing they can buy up the whole state of Arkansas for the cost of their 2 bedroom bungalow.
The people in Oregon, for instance, since I was just there, are our colonists. Come from our colonists. People left places like Pennsylvania and Illinois and funneled through St. Louis and Independence and headed out there. Oregon is the place where people made it to. No further to go. Pioneer, Colonist, Nomad.
I was in Oregon for 4 days before I saw my first Catholic Church.
If my sister Bevin were a state, she would be Oregon. If she ever visits, she will never leave. It is her native land. She is out of place here.
Moving beyond my recent travel, I think about mountains. The difference between folks who call Appalachia home and those who call the Rockies home. Don't get me started on the Ozarks. They're all mountains. They're all here in the US. But they are not the same. Not even shades of difference. Geography, again, is destiny?
People in the north, from living there, are cold in person but warm in heart. And then there's the south.
You have to work with the heat in the midwest and the near south. You have a completely air conditioned world further down from there. Here, people still die from the heat every summer. In Michigan winter is a culture. Here it is a nuisance.
There are Native American influences in culture in some places (I lived in Oklahoma) and it is completely absent in other places.
We all speak English now, but we didn't all speak English then. Some of us only a generation ago. El Paso and Minneapolis are not the same. And it's not just nuance and adobe. It is different to be colonized by Norwegians than by cowboys and Mexicans.
It is true that suburban American culture is culture-less. The suburbs of St. Louis look pretty much like the suburbs of Houston like the suburbs of Pittsburgh like the suburbs of Atlanta. But I think it's the fringes of that mainstream society that preserve the differences. I don't just mean a Chinatown or a U-Pick-It strawberry farm. I mean the difference between what "inner city" means in St. Louis and what it means in Portland or Houston or Camden.
I was shocked by the difference between Missouri and Oregon. And I can't even explain it. They are not like us. People from Chicago, if they drop the "We're Better Than St. Louis" shtick for just a moment, are far more like us. We're the last eastern city. Kansas City is first western one.
I am not attempting to say that, as I put on Mali's comments, that Upper Volta or Thailand is less different than Oregon or New York. No way. I haven't left the US and I know. We are bound by a common language, a common set of assumptions of what our standard of living is, by a suburban culture that churns the uniqueness out of us, by a federal government. But think: Missouri's geographical area ranking fits between Greece and Belarus. It would be a good-sized European nation. It only makes sense that it would be strange to visit a place so far away as Oregon.
Just by reading their blogs, I know that life in Vermont is not like life here. And I've lived in central Georgia and my high school boyfriend was a native Houstonian and there's the river here, different from the river town where my husband grew up.
It is all the same, and I figure that from an outsider's point of view (someone visiting from Europe, for instance) it might be the same vanilla ice cream for thousands of miles of boring interstate.
But when you're steeped in it?
Standing in line for the boat tour at Crater Lake, the woman behind us commented on my Girl Scout sweatshirt. She was from London--Mike was able to pick out the accent as London, as opposed to other regions of England (he watches a LOT of BBC television). She lived in the US and her children were American--time spent in the Carolinas and in the Bay Area. And she said "when you talk, it sounds the same as every other American accent. And when I talk, it sounds, to most people, like just the Brit."
Being American is like being Catholic. It's a big tent.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Oregon Trail
We went to Portland, although really went went to the Portland airport and then put 850 miles on a rental car. Because when Mike and I go places, we find out what natural features we can go and hike to and then we go and hike to them. We're not urban travel people (although I live in a city, I am not a fan of urban life, actually, and get nervous in foreign cities). We go to museums and whatnot with the kids but most of the time, we go to see things we can't see here.
But the first day, we were meeting Jan from Portland (a frequent commenter here) for dinner, and of course we wanted to go to Powells Books. Wow. That's all I can say about that. So we went to the Chinese Garden. Took a wonderfully informative tour.
Dinner with Jan post-Powells. So interesting to meet folks I met online first. I guess now I need to go to various Canadian places and Vermont...
The next day I ate these:
Thimbleberries. Yum. And we went to see this:
Multnomah Falls, the second highest North American waterfall (behind Yosemite Falls, which we didn't see when we went to Yosemite, actually, because it was September and the falls, all of them, were not so impressive). We stood on the bridge across the break in the falls:
And then hiked up to the top. 
This next photo is a bit confusing, but it's taken over the side of the top falls, standing to the left of the photograph. On the right, you can see the bridge we'd stood on earlier.
We drove down to Eugene to get a better head start the next day. We were going to Crater Lake and wanted to take the boat tour of the lake (a first come first serve system unless you buy them months in advance). We got tickets and then drove around the rim of the lake stopping to take pictures like everyone there.
Crater Lake is impossibly blue. One of its taglines is that it's the deepest bluest cleanest lake in the world. Or something like that. It's blue like Leo's eyes are blue. Even up close it is that blue. For those who don't know about Crater Lake, it's a caldera, an active (although dormant) volcano that fell in on itself 7700 years ago, filling the giant hole up with snowmelt and rain. There were Native Americans living there when it happened and their eruption stories, passed down through the ages, match geologic history (meaning, the order in which the eruptions happened, etc). Like our Flood stories. It is gigantic. And a mile above sea level at its shores.
So we were warned that the boat ride, which of course happens at the shore, would involve a mile long hike back up to the top of the caldera, an almost 800 feet gain in elevation over a mile. Like a ladder. They compared it to walking up the stairs to the 70th floor of a building. But we went anyway and put our feet in the water. The 38 degree (Fahrenheit) water. The boat takes 2 hours and is the only boat on the water--they've banned private vessels from the park. You are so far down and everyone else is so far up you can't see the observation points. It is impossibly big.
They overstated the climb back up a bit, frankly. It was hard, but only because of the elevation to begin with. We made it. And we took pictures of rodents along the way.
We stayed in Eugene again that night (the whole trip was on Mike's Hilton points, which was awesome). We slept in and then drove over to Florence and up the coast. I ate these:
Salal berries. Like blueberries of a sort. Also good. I like wild food. Yes, I checked with forest rangers before I ate anything.
And then it was Pacific Coast. We went to a lighthouse. We walked on the shore. It was windy and cold. We saw starfish and Pacific tree frogs. It was nice to have a day that was relatively unplanned, just set out and go.
I've been ruminating on the experience, not the natural wonders part of it, but on the people and flavor of the place. Mali once said that I would better understand how I was connected to far-flung Americans if I traveled overseas. She said it in a less condescending way than that sounds. And she is probably very right. But being there, it was pretty foreign in a lot of ways. Mostly intangible. But different from other places I've been and lived. But more on that later. The girls want to go swim.
But the first day, we were meeting Jan from Portland (a frequent commenter here) for dinner, and of course we wanted to go to Powells Books. Wow. That's all I can say about that. So we went to the Chinese Garden. Took a wonderfully informative tour.
Dinner with Jan post-Powells. So interesting to meet folks I met online first. I guess now I need to go to various Canadian places and Vermont...The next day I ate these:
Thimbleberries. Yum. And we went to see this:
Multnomah Falls, the second highest North American waterfall (behind Yosemite Falls, which we didn't see when we went to Yosemite, actually, because it was September and the falls, all of them, were not so impressive). We stood on the bridge across the break in the falls:
And then hiked up to the top. 
This next photo is a bit confusing, but it's taken over the side of the top falls, standing to the left of the photograph. On the right, you can see the bridge we'd stood on earlier.
We drove down to Eugene to get a better head start the next day. We were going to Crater Lake and wanted to take the boat tour of the lake (a first come first serve system unless you buy them months in advance). We got tickets and then drove around the rim of the lake stopping to take pictures like everyone there.
Crater Lake is impossibly blue. One of its taglines is that it's the deepest bluest cleanest lake in the world. Or something like that. It's blue like Leo's eyes are blue. Even up close it is that blue. For those who don't know about Crater Lake, it's a caldera, an active (although dormant) volcano that fell in on itself 7700 years ago, filling the giant hole up with snowmelt and rain. There were Native Americans living there when it happened and their eruption stories, passed down through the ages, match geologic history (meaning, the order in which the eruptions happened, etc). Like our Flood stories. It is gigantic. And a mile above sea level at its shores.
So we were warned that the boat ride, which of course happens at the shore, would involve a mile long hike back up to the top of the caldera, an almost 800 feet gain in elevation over a mile. Like a ladder. They compared it to walking up the stairs to the 70th floor of a building. But we went anyway and put our feet in the water. The 38 degree (Fahrenheit) water. The boat takes 2 hours and is the only boat on the water--they've banned private vessels from the park. You are so far down and everyone else is so far up you can't see the observation points. It is impossibly big.They overstated the climb back up a bit, frankly. It was hard, but only because of the elevation to begin with. We made it. And we took pictures of rodents along the way.
We stayed in Eugene again that night (the whole trip was on Mike's Hilton points, which was awesome). We slept in and then drove over to Florence and up the coast. I ate these:
Salal berries. Like blueberries of a sort. Also good. I like wild food. Yes, I checked with forest rangers before I ate anything.
And then it was Pacific Coast. We went to a lighthouse. We walked on the shore. It was windy and cold. We saw starfish and Pacific tree frogs. It was nice to have a day that was relatively unplanned, just set out and go.
I've been ruminating on the experience, not the natural wonders part of it, but on the people and flavor of the place. Mali once said that I would better understand how I was connected to far-flung Americans if I traveled overseas. She said it in a less condescending way than that sounds. And she is probably very right. But being there, it was pretty foreign in a lot of ways. Mostly intangible. But different from other places I've been and lived. But more on that later. The girls want to go swim.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Ten On Tuesday: Stolen From Lisa, 10 Ways You Know It Is Too Danged Hot
Yes, I'm home from 5 days away, far far away in Portland, Oregon, and pictures and exposition later on that. I'm up here for a moment and clicked over to Lisa's blog to find that 10 on Tuesday and had to steal.
1. The "Ten on Tuesday" suggestion I got in my inbox yesterday was "10 favorite romantic comedies" and I couldn't think of any romantic comedies because my brain is too sluggish.
2. The basil, usually hearty and heat-tolerant, requires constant pampering. Neighbor Girl Bree stopping by once a day, even with a thunderstorm on Saturday, was not enough.
3. The tomatoes. It is too hot for fruit to set. What? I have green plants and blossoms and that's it. My neighbors do, too, so it isn't some sort of Bridgett-specific negligence.
4. Clothes dried on the line smell like hot. I opened my suitcase in the hotel Thursday night and the clothes inside smelled like they would be extra-flammable. I can't explain it better than that. They don't smell like breeze or crisp fall days or iffy-damp spring mornings. They smell like, well, heat.
5. The squirrels are out of their minds. Digging in flower pots that have just been watered. One of our baby watermelons got eaten, all the way to the rind, last week. I caged the rest but one still had claw marks on it when I looked out this morning.
6. Kids are slugs and I don't care. Watch some more TV, kids. Nobody is asking to swim. Nobody is asking to go anywhere.
7. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to run errands. I don't want to go to grocery store. Whatever we have in the house is enough. I have nothing I need so bad to justify starting my car and driving somewhere.
8. As a curly girl, I usually just rinse my hair in hot water and condition it. If I'm faithful to this during colder months, my hair isn't a giant puffball and I look semi-sane most of the time. The last month? I've washed it every day. Bleah.
9. We turned the AC up to 80 when we left on Thursday and turned it back down again to a reasonable level last night. When we got home and did things like turn on ceiling fans, the whole place smelled like the knee-wall closets in the attic. Ancient plaster and coal dust toasted up to a nice golden brown. The air is still thick.
10. Tonight is National Night Out. Ridiculous. It's always so ridiculously hot. Expletive deleted.
1. The "Ten on Tuesday" suggestion I got in my inbox yesterday was "10 favorite romantic comedies" and I couldn't think of any romantic comedies because my brain is too sluggish.
2. The basil, usually hearty and heat-tolerant, requires constant pampering. Neighbor Girl Bree stopping by once a day, even with a thunderstorm on Saturday, was not enough.
3. The tomatoes. It is too hot for fruit to set. What? I have green plants and blossoms and that's it. My neighbors do, too, so it isn't some sort of Bridgett-specific negligence.
4. Clothes dried on the line smell like hot. I opened my suitcase in the hotel Thursday night and the clothes inside smelled like they would be extra-flammable. I can't explain it better than that. They don't smell like breeze or crisp fall days or iffy-damp spring mornings. They smell like, well, heat.
5. The squirrels are out of their minds. Digging in flower pots that have just been watered. One of our baby watermelons got eaten, all the way to the rind, last week. I caged the rest but one still had claw marks on it when I looked out this morning.
6. Kids are slugs and I don't care. Watch some more TV, kids. Nobody is asking to swim. Nobody is asking to go anywhere.
7. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to run errands. I don't want to go to grocery store. Whatever we have in the house is enough. I have nothing I need so bad to justify starting my car and driving somewhere.
8. As a curly girl, I usually just rinse my hair in hot water and condition it. If I'm faithful to this during colder months, my hair isn't a giant puffball and I look semi-sane most of the time. The last month? I've washed it every day. Bleah.
9. We turned the AC up to 80 when we left on Thursday and turned it back down again to a reasonable level last night. When we got home and did things like turn on ceiling fans, the whole place smelled like the knee-wall closets in the attic. Ancient plaster and coal dust toasted up to a nice golden brown. The air is still thick.
10. Tonight is National Night Out. Ridiculous. It's always so ridiculously hot. Expletive deleted.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
