like a tunnel that you follow

what a crappy weekend.  i'm actually glad it's over.  i felt like dirt most of the weekend, physically and spiritually. spent a lot of it crying and way too little sleeping.  G got away from my bad vibes by going to the beach with peg, good for her.  i don't know what the deal is.  i get so totally exhausted during the teaching week.  and everything feels like such a dead end right now.  but this was a good morning of classes, both classes felt like something was happening in the students' heads.  then i met with a couple of my students' tutors, also productive.  one of the tutors is korean, but alas, speaks no korean.  she'd be worth twice her weight in gold if she spoke the english she does and spoke equivalent korean.  i wonder if she is an adoptee, or if her family has been here for a while.  it makes me very glad R is having melissa tutored in chinese.  when she grows up she will still have linguistic access to her heritage.  both these tutors i met with today are great young women, and i am seeing real improvement in the students with whom they are working. 

dashed around after i finally left the campus, went to RB to pick up a new filter and chemicals for the hot tub.  then to the supermarket to fill our sad empty fridge and cupboards.  then home to scrub out the hot tub and start filling it.  it's full now, but won't be heated up enough to enjoy until tomorrow night.  the occasion for all this activity is the change in the weather.  which started last night.  cool days, sweatshirts!  flannel shirts!  cooler nights, quilts!  flannel sheets!  the weather i've been longing for is here at last.  maybe my bad vibes will diminish with the cooler temps.  we had a brief spate of this a couple of weeks ago, but it was a false alarm.  the heat and humidity returned.  it's late september, almost october.  really and truly time for fall. 

balloonhats

and if you really want to cheer up, go take a look at this site.  it's good for quite a few grins.  i'm going back to dave robicheaux moping around in the bayoux now. 

prurient curiosity

i've just turned the "hit counter" back on here on this journal.  i'd turned it off after the first couple of days.  but i'm beginning to wonder if i am writing into the total void, or if anyone else is reading this. it's okay, mind you, if no one is reading.  i'm having a great time talking to myself.  the hit counter will show me if, perchance, any invisible eyes are reading over my shoulder.  i know one of my sisters and a couple of friends have read some of the entries, and even made a couple of comments.  that's been heartening. 

i haven't yet gotten up the guts to ask anyone else to link to the journal, by sending them an entry link, as the blogfather suggests we do.  the blogs i read regularly are so professional they scare me.  they all seem to be people who do nothing but absorb information, comment upon it, pass it along.  do these people have full-time jobs?  do they sit at a computer all day every day?  do they cook meals?  shop?  have families? read novels?  sleep? i am spending far more time on the computer than i ever have, but it's nothing compared to what the ur-bloggers must spend. 

speaking of novels, i'm reading james lee burke's latest dave robicheaux book.  no wonder i'm feeling rather low in spirit.  his books always do that to me.  dave is a recovering alcholic cop in bayou country, louisiana, whose world is peopled with angst of every kind.  he has now lost two wives, one to a horrible violent murder, the second to lupus.  he's having an even worse time in this novel than usual, so far.  i've taken a break from the book to realize how much better my own world is, and cheer up.

an ever-spinning reel

i wonder how many of my imaginary readers have yet heard of the Immigrant Workers' Freedom Ride?  i have seen nothing of this, read nothing of this, heard nothing of this, in/on the regular media.  the first i heard of it, in fact, was on another blog, a wonderful blog, Body and Soul.  she gave me the iwfr site and i've been keeping up with the ride through it.  interestingly enough, when i asked my evening class about this, none of them had heard of it either.  i sent the link to one of my students, carmen i., and she has been keeping up with it too.  i found another article today on Tom Paine and on Democracy Uprising, by Mark Engler.  last night i watched the news on Univision, the only spanish-language channel we get, and they had a big feature on the ride.  i hope some of my students were watching.  coming into texas from the west two of the busses were stopped in, i think, sierra blanca, and the passengers were made to dismount and submit to a going-over by la migra.  i don't think they were able to detain any of them, but i need to surf around through some texas newspapers and find out more.  at the time the piece was shot for Univision the riders were in san antonio at san fernando cathedral giving interviews to the local press, and, i guess any national press that was there, like Univision.  the final event of the ride will take place next weekend in new york.  i have a tentative idea of taking some of my students up to attend the big culminating rally.  it would be a great morale boost for all of us, i think.

(a little while later) i did check out the san antonio papers, both the english and bilingual ones.  no riders were detained and the ride continues.  i also found a ton of news references on the Ride site itself.  it has been covered, more than i thought.  mainly in the west, but also some mention in the NYT and the Washington Post.

two's company

the other day i wrote about my thoughts/feelings on carol moseley braun's candidacy in the democratic lineup.  today i was pleased to find this piece by ellen goodman on the workingforchange.com site  (sent there by old hickory to read a piece by molly ivins, thank you very much.  we have working assets as our long distance company, but i forget about the site, am going to put it on my list and visit it more often) on the very subject of how totally ignored this candidate is.  ellen is a good deal more articulate than i am, and she is justifiably quite incensed by the general indifference to moseley braun. 

and, molly ivin's column ain't half-bad either.

like a wheel within a wheel

feeling a little bit, or maybe more than a little, crazy here.  it's about blogs, and blogging and the internet in general and how big the world is and how one thing leads to another and there's just too goddamn much out there.  i go from one blog to another, following link after link, discovering new and more wonderful blogs and journals and sites all the time.  i get lost in the ether, i forget where i started, i can't find my way back to something i read a few days ago but forgot to bookmark, or keep track of in any way.  my blogroll could have hundreds of entries, but i'm limited to 25!  and so i email the blogfather to find out what about that limit?  and he suggests various things, all good, and i'll try something, yes i will. but having more space on the list would just be more helpful, really.  this is all a new world for me and i feel like a kid in toys r us, surrounded by so much delicious excess......it takes my breath away.  for instance, i muse about wes clark in a post, kind of talking to myself, then i go to body and soul, (sept.17 entry) where i find her musing and (last time i checked) 38 comments!  no longer talking to myself, in a community of others who are musing away.  and so, if i go to all those people's blogs, or the sites they reference, etc., there goes the time i should spend correcting papers, or doing the laundry, or grocery shopping, or mowing the lawn, or.....sleeping.  does this get better?  or worse?  is this an addiction?  or a fad?  will i get lost in the blogosphere?  or get so overwhelmed i blow it off and take up golf?   this is, i have to say, a truly amazing phenomenon.  it's the global village taken to an outrageous exponent, a village of millions, all intersecting and crisscrossing. 

okay.  breathe in, breathe out.  repeat.  repeat some more. look at the dog stretched out beside you on the floor.  what does he care?  nope, not at all.  he's just glad you're home, doing whatever the thing is that you do in this little room at that machine, keeping him company.  like you're supposed to.  although it would also be good if you'd take him to the beach for a little chase after the sandpipers.  how about that, huh? 

political musing

here's what i'm wondering:  why is it that no one seems to be considering carol moseley braun a serious candidate in the democratic assembly of wannabes?  we hear a lot about dean, a lot more noise starting up about clark, some rumblings about kerry, but no one gives moseley braun a passing reference.  let me ponder......could it be????? no, surely not.....  because she's black?  because she's a woman?  because she's a black woman?   whaddya think?  it's still a white male world out there in the Center Ring, i fear.  yet, she is making a good showing in the debates, her stance on many issues is geared toward the necessities of life for the Real People in this country, she is tough, articulate, utterly sane.  here's her web site if you care to peruse her thoughts on the issues.

and what about wesley clark, anyway?  he's a puzzlement.  joan walsh had an interesting musing friday on salon.com.  i like walsh's take on things most of the time, so.......what about wes clark?  he'll be the cover story in newsweek next week, a lot of the coverage is online already.  a piece called The Water Walker shows him to be a complicated human with many contradictions and foibles.  that's fine, most of us are, but i'm worried about the waffling he seems to be doing in his initial interviews.  i had hoped he'd outshine the rest of the candidates and make it a clear choice.  may not happen.  then, for me, there's carol mosely-braun.  anybody else paying any attention?

bits and pieces

in case you missed the emmys last night, as i did, heather havrilesky has a great recap for you on salon.com.  it's bound to be a lot more enjoyable than the show itself.  if she does this for the oscars too i will have been given a gift of hours of freed-up time.  heather is also the author of rabbitblog, one of the funniest blogs around.  it's on my blogroll, give it a look.

back to work today, no more spurious hurricane holiday.  kind of a relief actually to be teaching when to use simple present tense vs when to use present progressive, as opposed to sawing up treetrunks with a pruning saw.  trying to put the f'ing greenhouse back together with the mosquitoes eating us alive. and so forth.  teaching grammar in an air conditioned classroom has its definite good side.

a fellow traveler

which is the name of an article, or a story, or something, on a site i can never get enough of, Path to Freedom (it's on my list of favorite sites).  about a guy in california who has spent a hell of a long time constructing a 200 foot long, 40 foot high COMPOST pile.  as i have spent a lot of time today with my compost, he seems indeed to be a fellow traveler of mine.  read it and weep. there's also a load of amazing pictures of the heap and all that lives upon it.

 me, i'm off to bed.  hoping i'll be able to even move my bones out of it in the morning.  a day of serious physical labor for this all-too-academic body may well produce fossilizing overnight. 

continuing down and DIRTY

the deal is, i'm wondering if i have time to put in a new crop of salad greens before it gets too cold. probably not.  but you never know.  and i could put row cover over them if frost came as early as the end of october.  well, i don't know.  maybe i'll just plant in a lot of the stuff still in pots from the summer.  i spent this summer growing stuff to sell at the flea market in laurel, bargain bill's.  i started towards the end of may while it was still cold and wet, with no idea if anyone would be interested in buying plants. it turned out to be a love/hate kind of thing, equal parts of both.  i met other gardeners who came to feel like friends, sold a lot of stuff, spent way too much time just hanging around doing nothing  (a lot of sloooowwwww  time in between customers), didn't really make any money.  but i got a feel for doing this, and i liked it.  after i sold most of the stuff i grew i bought from wholesalers, and made some more friends there.  i have good contacts now if R and i decide to do this on a larger scale next summer.

but!  i still have a truckload of leftover plants that i'm babying along.  i may go the the market one more time and try to offload some of them.  or not. some will winter over in pots, some i'll plant.  some will probably feed the compost.  which is a truly noble cause.  i'm waiting for cooler weather to get back into the gardening mode.  august was too hellishly hot and humid, that's when the weeds with their roots in the depths of hell came and took advantage of my torpor.

so, that was the day of sunshine and dirt.  after a delicious shower, oh bless its holy name, i feel clean and exhausted and happy.  we'll get back out there tomorrow.  there's still the greenhouse to put back together.  isabel isabel, you really faked us out.  although i do think the greenhouse would have been flying around the neighborhood if we hadn't taken it apart. 

down and DIRTY

there's something almost wonderful about getting as completely filthy dirty nasty sweaty grotty as i did today out in the yard.  it was way hotter than it was supposed to be, clearly "it" hadn't paid attention to the weather forecast.  and i spent most of the day taking apart the fallen crape myrtle with my iron age hand tools, no chainsaw massacre here, nuh uh.  loppers, prunings saws, clippers.  but once G finally came home from getting the toyota serviced and her hair cut and helped drag branches out to the curb things moved right along.  i'm keeping lengths of branches to try to make the kind of fence Jessica made for her garden.  i didn't see it in person, but she brought pictures when she came last month.  hers was dead branches as uprights, then coils of vine wound in between and live vines grown up the whole thing.  it looked fantastic, wild and secret, a kind of naturalized coyote fence.  maybe i can even convince her to come down and help me make one here around the vegetable garden. which may not stay vegetable garden much longer.  it's already got comfrey, chives of several sorts, sweet peas, monarda, day lilies, lemon balm (run completely amok), rudbekia, tansy, and goldenrod.  already more flower/herb garden than vegetable.  truth to tell, what it is is a weed garden right now.  so out of hand i just don't know how to cope with it.  if i weren't committedly organic i could nuke the living daylights out of it with weed killer. 

after we got the tree pretty much finished  (large chunks of trunk left to cut up on a cold day, nothing heats up the old somatic system like cutting up wood), some chunks for firewood, branches for fence, leafy parts out on the curb for the town chipper/shredder, we tackled the new compost bin.  this one is going in the garden itself, so first we cleared a space for it.  then we put it together. it was remarkably easy.  and man, is it huge.  i was daunted by it at first, but after we put: the raked up leaves that were blown down in the storm, a whole lot of bolted salad greens, half the contents of the old compost bin and miscellaneous other bits 'n shreds into it it looked just right.  it will hold a whole lot more yard waste than the old one and be a lot more accessible.  i shoveled compost out of the old bin into a trash can to dig in to the bed where i'm removing the bolted greens. 

cool hurricane pix

on the rehoboth beach link in the post preceding this one there are some fine photos of the beach during the hurricane.  go to the main page, click enter and the pictures are highlighted on the next page.  i wish i knew how to enter them here to make it easier, but........i don't.  so, go check 'em out. 

(later)   okay....so you don't have to go to the previous entry, here is the link to the pictures themselves:  http://www.rehobothbeach.com/isabel.htm

calm after the storm

and it huffed and it puffed and it blew our crepe myrtle down.  but that's all.  remarkably little damage around here from a big wind that lasted for many hours.  we didn't even lose power. a big surprise.  we spent the day cooking food that wouldn't last if the power did go out, eating that food, and watching The Hurricane Isabel Show on the weather channel.  also sleeping.  i couldn't keep my eyes open, and kept dozing off for hours at a time.  we only got three inches of rain, not the six to eight they'd been predicting.  all in all, for us, it was a gratuitous holiday.  we went out as it was getting dark to prop up the framework of the greenhouse which was listing badly to the south.  then this morning it was listing to the north. it held up, and the panels are safely bundled up waiting to be reinstalled.  maybe i'll wait for a visit from R to do that.  the crepe myrtle is a sad loss, it was so wonderful this year.  that area where it was pools in standing water when it rains, which has been constantly this summer.  i think the roots were simply waterlogged, and when the big wind blew it just couldn't grip hard enough with its toes.  it fell on the compost bin, which was already enfeebled and cracked.  we went to home depot and got a new one this evening.  tomorrow will begin the work of cleanup.  sawing the tree off the compost and moving the compost out of the old bin into the new.  i think i'll relocate the bin into the garden itself.  it will make all aspects of composting easier.

we remained in a very slow mode this morning, and it was still blowing pretty hard.  this afternoon we headed to the beach, cape henlopen again, for a walk in the surf.  we stayed a long time, walking, sitting on a log just watching the breakers roll in from far out in the ocean.  there were waves farther out than i've ever seen them.  a lot of the beach was washed out, also the steps up to the boardwalk and the ramp. next we went in to rehoboth beach for fish and chips and ice cream. a fair number of people were there, and they had put the benches back on the boardwalk.  places along the waterfront had opened back up, and it looked like the beginning of a busy weekend. 

hunkering down

after a glorious nine hours of sleep we were able to get up and get the last bits of putting-away accomplished.  then we went next door and helped our 87 year old neighbor, lawrence, get his final prep done.  he's pretty sanguine about it, having lived here all his life he's seen a few storms.  the wind is picking up, yeah boy, and our governor has declared a state of emergency.  which is why the college is closed and we are home cooking bacon and eggs instead of slogging off to another yadayada kind of regular day. 

talked to my sister in DC this morning, to see if she was preparing, and she wasn't.....yet.  but she said she would, after she absorbed some caffeine.  the schools are closed there, as is the government.  can isabel do as much damage as our government at work?  i doubt it.  so, all in all, it may be a good thing.  however, R said that in the DC parks and neighborhoods trees are already falling over of their own accord because the ground is too sodden to support their remaining upright.  what will huge winds and rains do to this already bad situation? 

this will most likely be my last entry for a while, i guess this will be my enforced newsfast.  without electricity i'll have no computer, my main news source, and of course no tv......a very secondary source for me.  gotta hope the power's back on by friday night for Bill Moyers NOW.  any time i miss it i feel that there's something important i've neglected to learn.  but it'll all still be out there, the larger world.  and we'll be picking up the pieces.  for now then, over and out.  it's time to rock and roll.

isabel blowing

we took apart the greenhouse.  we loaded all the plants from the yard, almost all of them, into the camper cap of the truck, a safer place to ride out a storm. i hope.  we cleared the furniture off the porch.  all the yard furniture is in a pile outside the garage door waiting for us to put it IN the garage tomorrow.  we didn't put it in tonight because it was getting late.  and......our priority was jumping in the car and heading to the beach to wave watch.  so amazing.  not another soul where we were, just the wind, the rolling breakers, the wind  (i'm tempted to write "beneathe my wings" except for how much i hate that song.  but....it really felt as if i could fly, the wind was so strong.), the spray in our faces, the wind.  we walked a while, buffeted and braced.  then we headed into town, hoping obie's would still be open.  of course it wasn't.  no turkey burgers tonight.  everything is closed and boarded up.  hotels have sent people home and closed down.  the only folks on the boardwalk were locals there to wave watch and eat ice cream.  we had thai food, as it's not on the sea front it was still open.  also ice cream.  tv trucks lined up along the curb behind the bandstand, but i didn't see any cameras on the boardwalk.  while we were eating the wind doubled in force and it began to rain.  time to head home, where it's a different movie.  not much wind here, no rain yet.  all is quiet.  what a difference twenty miles makes.  i'm so tired, it's been a hard couple of days.  class has been canceled tomorrow and friday. isabel's gift to us:  a four day weekend.  we'll see what kind of holiday it turns out to be.  i expect power to be out tomorrow night and friday, maybe all weekend.  and that's it for now.  i'm crashing.

like a circle in a spiral

okay, got the flashlights, got the batteries, got the candles.  the camping lantern's all charged up.  battery-operated radio ready to go.  lotsa tuna, peanut butter, hardboiled eggs, freezer packs, apples, dark chocolate, water.  what are we forgetting?  OMG, beer!  G's going give up her evening gig tomorrow to stay home and help me heave heavy objects into the garage, put down the storms, big stuff.  mowing the back forty isn't technically part of hurricane prep, but it was so out of control......i had to do it.  the better to drag kayaks and stuff across it.  the yard is so full of bloom, masses of color everywhere.  the butterflys, dragon and damsel flies, bees, birds blissing out on it all.  as am i.  sucking it up today in this glorious sunshine.  after the mighty winds churn through the flowers will all be gone.  after Bob in 1990 on cape cod everything went into a nuclear winter from the salt blown on the wind.  in august it looked as though we'd had a freeze.  then in october the forsythia and lilacs began to bloom, thinking it was spring. 

the outer banks are evacuating, it must be hell at the ferry.  although okracoke island is one of our top ten favorite places, at times like this we're glad we're not there.  my students were worried this morning.  ismail, a big macho turkish guy said "what can we do, teacher?  i'm scared."  i could only say, "me too, ismail, me too.  all we can do is make sure we have what we need in advance, and then just wait."   and in the meantime, mow the yard.  watch the butterflies.  enjoy the gloriosa daisies.  gather rosebuds.  etc. 

and the general has decided to join the race.  pretty interesting.  michael moore's  letter urging him to run was noteworthy.  it's hard to imagine supporting a military officer at this point in our story, but moore at least convinced me to see clark's entering the fray as a positive thing.  he is an intelligent man, a rhodes scholar, seemingly a man with a mind open to dissent and alternative opinion.  it would be entertainment if it weren't so deadly important what happens here.  i'm staying very tuned.

a mighty wind

feeling a little lonely and blue this evening, G gone to her monday and weds evening job, pouring rain outside. i was going to start putting things into the garage, advance prep for isabel's arrival, but i'm not interested in slogging around out there in this downpour.  this is what i hate about hurricanes, well, one of the many things, the extended period of anxiety and waiting before knowing where they're going to make landfall.  the only thing i really love about them is watching the waves build in size and force, the crashing power of the ocean and wind combined.  maybe i'll put the dog in the truck and go over to the beach and get high on negative ions. 

moveon.org has an interesting new addition to their arsenal in the ongoing campaign against the junta.  it's a daily updating of lies from our leader, called, appropriately, misleader.org.  if you can stomach it they'll send you a daily dose of this stuff, "just in time for your first cup of coffee," as they cheerily note.  so, you see, i haven't been news fasting after all.  i haven't been checking as many news sites, or political blogs.  mainly because my constant monitoring of weather sites and the weather channel has taken over my normal obsessive news attention. 

i have noted that ben and jlo have most likely broken up.  the important things are the important things, no? 

cape henlopen state park

i thought it would be nice, after my previous entry, to add a link to cape henlopen state park since it is one of my favorite places, probably my favorite place, in the state.  click on the link and check out the many fine features of the park.  if you're planning a delaware vacation, or even a delmarva vacation, don't miss it.  it helps us not to miss cape cod so very much, as it looks so much like that cape:  dunes, pine trees, gorgeous unspoiled beaches.  the remnants of its former life as a military base  (the last german sub in WW II surrendered there) are benignly crumbling into the sand, one has been made into an environmental center, the subspotting tower in the park is now an observation tower that you can climb up when your 12 year old nephew comes to visit and see for miles across the delaware and into new jersey (on a clear day).   we went there one night a few years ago with some friends who were involved in an organization that saves and rehabs injured or lost birds to set free a recovered barred owl.  a mystical experience, in the october dusk, under the pines. 

waiting for isabel

what a great day.  i thought it might be a washout, with rain showers predicted.  but we forged ahead with plans anyway.  we called our friend peg to see if she wanted to meet us for breakfast and a beach walk.  she did!  so we all ended up for brunch at the whitecaps cafe, for sticky buns and eggs and lots of rabid political discussion.  peg is feeling the way i feel most of the time, so i want to send her the rebecca solnits article.  she feels like we can't really do anything to change the status quo, but there i disagree.  i think we can.  i think organizations like moveon.com and truemajority.com and others are making a real difference.  anyway, we ate and talked and drank coffee and looked at the river.

then we all went to cape henlopen to the surfer beach and took a walk along the wonderful crashing waves.  the fog started to roll in, there were many shorebirds, scads of tiny clams kept washing in with every wave and burying themselves in the sand.  it was a totally peak experience kind of walk.  then G and i went grocery shopping, a hard job because we didn't want to fill the refrigerator and freezer with things that may spoil in a few days.  hurricane isabel is churning away out there in the atlantic, looking like she's heading straight for our section of the east coast.  i just have a feeling about this one, she's going to hit somewhere pretty close.  so we bought canned tuna, peanut butter, sardines, crackers, things we can eat without keeping them cold or cooking them.  it's pathetic how dependant we all are on the power grid.  that was certainly evident during the blackout.  i've got to get batteries tomorrow, get out the camping lantern and charge it up, start putting things from the yard into the garage.  even it it makes landfall a little south or north of us, we'll still have really big wind and rain.  maybe we'll even get out of a day or two of school......and why, as a grownup who teaches classes, does that still fill me with mischievous glee?  but it does.  we'll camp in an interior room, eat peanut butter sandwiches and listen to the wind howl. 

check this out

from my friend at obla-d.com, who just doesn't blog often enough to suit me, i got this link today.  it's from wil wheaton's strange and mostly wonderful mind.  go check it out. 

also from wil, wil's mother actually, i was reminded of andrew weil's idea for mental health:  a News Fast.  an abstention from news from any source: print, tv, web, radio, for whatever period of time seems likely to bring about a return to inner sanity.  cessation of the feeling that i'm about to burst into flames, or..... foam at the mouth,  or .....put my head down on the table and sob.  all feelings i have on a regular basis.  brought on by paying too much attention to current events, administration policies, (p)Residential speeches, etc.   this fasting would mean no getting on the internet at all.  since aol puts the headlines right there on the welcome page.  also, no blogging.  since most of the blogs i read with any regularity are political. 

so, could i?  in the midst of the actual "war" my loved ones actually made me do this for a while.  it was very short, a day or two.  at that time i was unable even to sleep without Toxic News Syndrome occurring.  i would, not exactly dream, but hear the constant voices in my head continue their outrage and anger, the voices that raged all day long unable to shut up and let me rest.  i really began to feel like an outpatient with no supervision.  or meds.  the cold turkey from my news jones did in fact help.  for a while.  so, maybe it's time to do it again.  i could still journal, if i closed my eyes when the welcome page came on.  and if i go take some walks at the beach.  breathe in the negative ions.  eat some chocolate.  take weekend naps.  which is what i'm going to do right now.  all of the above.  in reverse order.

 

marge piercy breaks my heart, mends my soul

it's september 11th, as i know we all know.  there's not much i can say, and absolutely nothing i can add to this poem by marge piercy, No One Came Home

where does it go?

time, that is.  there just isn't enough of it.  rushing through the week, trying to keep my eyes open, beating back the jungle that is our yard and garden, doing laundry at five a.m.   but, then..... i think about my students.  many of them go to work in mid afternoon, work until two or three in the morning, come home to sleep for three or four hours, then get up and come do four hours of class every day.  lather, rinse, repeat.  over and over again.  it's only the third week of school and some of them are beginning to look like they're only staying awake by force of will. gap taek kim is one i'm worrying about, he's not a kid like many of the others.  it can be done when you're 20, but it's a different story at 50, which he is.  he fell out over the weekend, left work with a headache that lasted until monday evening.  yet he's the only one who handed in a perfect homework paper yesterday.  i need to let him know homework doesn't have to be perfect.  i'd really rather have him sleep than spend hours on homework. 

so, i'm tired, but i ain't seen nothin yet, these folks are tired.  i may just go to bed pretty soon, indulge in a full night's sleep.  spent the evening (lovely lovely evening....the light has changed, and is now that clear-edged september light that throws long shadows and gives us all the souls of painters) in the yard, mostly mowing.....i've got to develop a zen of mowing, stop considering it to be a major waste of time.....and watering, finally picking some tomatoes.  a real treat, even mowing.  cool clear air, slanted evening sunshine in my eyes, clean smells of grass and herbs and earth. 

well, enough.  we say we do this (journaling) for ourselves, some of us.  but i wonder.  yes, i do.  is anyone out there reading this? or am i indeed writing for myself?  it's always a question about journals, diaries, for me.  having kept a written one sporadically for years.  aware that other eyes might eventually read it.  hard to be entirely guileless and candid.  writing for the invisible eye, yes, the imaginary friend.

bill moyers link

something's wrong with the bill moyers interview link in the previous entry, so i'm re-entering it.  let's see if i can get it right this time.  two out of three links worked, i feel pretty good about that!

the beat goes on, continued

2500 character limit paranoia.  this is part two of previous entry. 

my friend tankgurl wrote a good piece last night on what we should think about leaving to the kids.  she doesn't even have any biological kids, so the kids who work for her take that place in her life.  she worries about them, takes care of them, thinks about what kind of a world we'll leave them.  if all parents and grandparents regarded the world this way, we might be doing a better job with the planet.  bill moyers, in an interview with grist magazine, says he thinks dubya might see the world differently if he had grandchildren.  i don't know.  he has two children.  shouldn't that do it? 

tankgurl also reminded me recently of an article i sent her early in this war madness.  it's rebecca solnit's piece on hope, first published in orion online. so i looked it up and reread it. i need to print it out and read it once a week or so.  whenever the weasels are closing in, the quicksand rising to my knees.  i am feeling some hope lately.  talking to people, surfing thru blogs and alternative media, even reading the aboveground media, i am picking up on more evidence that we won't let this administration fool us for much longer. 

how about this:  in crawford, tx there is now a peace house, thanks to the efforts of folks at the peace center in dallas, and a peace group in waco.  this humble house serves as a waystation and gathering place for those who come to crawford when gwb is in residence to protest, to call attention to his sins of commission and omission alike. check it out.  all texans are not the same.  but, of course, you knew that.  the dixie chicks already told you.

the beat goes on

and i'm dancing as fast as i can.  tonight will be the first of my evening classes, getting me into the full schedule for this term.  yesterday had some truly awful moments in human resources trying to figure out this schedule.  they were going to pull my contract for the evening class, because i had too many hours.  as a part-time adjunct instructor i can only have 25, and i had 26.  BFD.  it ended, not happily, with bringing the class down to five hours instead of six.  how administrative of them to only notice this the day before the class was to begin.  so, anyhow, we will begin tonight.  there will be a new director of human resources soon, i can only hope it will bring some efficiency to the department.

and the Resident of our country wants $87 billion more for his pet project, iraq.  ben cohen, one of the founders of ben & jerry's, in an email from www.truemajority.com tells me that for this sum of money we could:   -solve the school budget crisis in every one of our communities  OR  -provide health insurance for every uninsured american child for 15 years  OR  -provide food for all 6 million of the children who die from hunger around the world for 7 years.  think of that.  no child left behind, or what? 

hyperlink heaven

this morning i finally managed to successfully put a hyperlink in a journal entry.  don't i feel like hot stuff.  managed to get the assateague island site linked to my entry about it.  so, now, all my readers  (you know who you are)  can virtually visit the loveliness of this fragile place.  i should go back and try to redo the other two links that didn't work, but i just can't bear to mess with them any more. 

on this gorgeous afternoon we went to the nanticoke pow-wow, getting there in time to see the entry procession and a couple of hours of dancing.  we wandered the booths as well, ate an "indian taco" and some frybread.  but, all in all, i have to say my feelings were very complicated about the whole thing.  i've been to other pow-wows, in the southwest, in massachusetts, and this same one five years ago.  i don't remember getting as depressed previously.  today i was just sad.  suddenly it seemed so wrong that a people who once roamed this coast, considered it their home, fished and hunted and lived wherever they wanted should be reduced to this little group of people coming together on this little bit of land that is now nanticoke tribal ground.  coming together once a year to feel solidarity and community and celebrate what was once their life, and is now a token heritage.  i'm glad they have the pow-wows (and there are several more coming up in the mid atlantic area over the next couple of months) to give them the chance to get together  (and indians come from all over the country to attend each other's pow-wows......the master of ceremonies today was a cherokee), to dance and sing and eat and play together.  i'm sad that that's all they have of what was once large nations of peoples living on this continent, their home.

another winner

yes, indeed.  another incredible morning.  i feel like cat stevens.  going to burst into "morning has broken" at full throttle any moment now.  cat stevens.  whatever happened to him anyway?  rumours of his going off into anonymity in an eastern monastery or something, yes?  well, i hope he's happy. 

yesterday's kayaking trip certainly made us happy.  we loaded the boats into the truck, packed a lunch and drove down to assateague island national seashore..  we wanted to explore the inlets and marshes on the back side of the island, so we put in from one of the canoe rental areas.  we paddled around for about 45 minutes to start with.....as it's been almost a year since we did this we didn't want to overdo our old muscles right away.  we found a darling herd of ponies, saw a few birds, saw lots of people doing what is a new sport to me......a kind of windsurfing using a board and a kind of huge kite thing.  i don't know, a sort of parasailing.  if anyone reads this and knows this activity, please give me more info.  anyway, it looked like a lot of fun but with the imperative of serious upper body strength.

we came ashore, ate our lunch while fending off the seagulls, then set back out into the water.  this time we really found the area i wanted to explore and spent over an hour in peace and quiet.  no yelling windsurfers, not even any other paddlers.  lots of birds out in this area, lots in inlets and outlets and little marshy trails.  yesterday was our exploratory voyage. next time we know where we want to start.  we didn't have field glasses with us, a big mistake.  we're too afraid of dropping them in the water!  so i want to look for waterproof glasses, stop being such doofuses about taking binoculars out where we can see birds!

frustration

okay, i've got to email our question man, mr. by the way, and find out what i'm doing wrong with these hyperlinks.  sorry if anyone has tried to use the ones i've put in.  i'll get it figured out eventually.

saturday morning continued

ehhhh......once again i have been foiled by the tiny space allottment.  had to delete a whole paragraph.  but i think i saved it, will try to copy and paste.  but my hyperlink to joan walsh seems not to have worked.  eventually i will figure this out.  in the meantime, she's on salon.com, the piece i referred to is from yesterday.  "The Not So Great Debate." 

nope, it didn't work.  drat.  well, what the paragraph was about was that while i was on salon.com i read anne lamott's latest piece.  (trying to make a link to that too, but am now discouraged about this)  i love anne lamott:  her books, articles, funny hairdo, everything.  she's terribly into jesus and church and like that, but i love her anyway.  because she swears and is irreverent and very very very funny.  i never read one of her pieces without laughing out loud.  even if it is a piece about a funeral, (which the current one is) or a friend with cancer or the bush junta.  you have to be a salon.com member to read the whole piece, but you should be a salon.com member anyway.  lots of good stuff there.

saturday morning

so, we're not going on the kayak trip with the DNPS after all.  talked to them last night, and it was going to be four solid hours in a kayak, all the way down to barker's landing.  not something i can do with the arthritis in my hips.  i'd become fused to the kayak, never able to get out of it.  they'd have to portage the kayak back to the put-in with me in it.  especially since the four kayak hours would have been preceded by an hour in the truck driving up there.  TOO much sitting down.

so, instead we're enjoying the beautiful cool morning, windows open, no AC going, hearing the yard chorus enjoying the beautiful cool morning.  and planning to go on a less ambitious kayak trip of our own.  down to assateague, into the tidal marshes where we have been intending to kayak ever since we've been here.  let me say again what a beautiful morning this is.  and i'm not bored of saying it yet.  all summer we've had rain, or sodden humid heat, or thunder and lightning.  nothing that entices one to go outdoors and recreate.  this is a morning for bursting into the air and light and doing the dance of rejoicing.

so why the hell am i inside writing in my journal, you may well ask.  because i have become addicted to reading the news before i get into a day, and to reading a few of my favorite commentors on the news.  finally finding some comments on the democratic debate in albuquerque, a very good piece by Joan Walsh in salon.com.  i totally agree with her assessment of the candidates who voted for a war resolution and now want to appear entirely blameless.  they need to be held accountable.  if they didn't know there was no post-war plan, why didn't they know?  joan walsh knew it would turn into a debacle.  i knew it, many of my friends and relatives knew it.  lots of people in this country and all around the world knew it.  congress has no excuse.

second verse

now i'm paranoid about writing more than 2500 words at a time.  so i'm dividing it up.  i see from notes and comments all over these journal sites that i'm not alone in thinking it's not enough room for really letting go and writing.  how about it, aol, give us SPACE!!

hoping this weather will continue into the weekend.  tomorrow we're supposed to go on a kayak trip on the st. jones river with the Delaware Native Plant Society.  if it happens this will be the first time we've gotten the boats in the water all summer.  disgraceful.  but with the heat, the rain, and working on weekends at the flea market  (selling plants and flowers there)  there just hasn't been any real opportunity.  so here's hoping for a sunny morning.  and enough breeze to discourage the mosquitos. 

then on sunday we're hoping to make it to the Nanticoke Pow-wow.  it's been five years since we went to one.  there was a chance my sister would bring my little niece out from DC to go with us, but they can't come.  so, we'll go and watch the dancing, eat some fry bread, wander around in the woods.  i am looking forward to it.

 

no subject, no music, no mood.  on the subject of mood.....let me say i'm not happy with the mood choices listed.  why can't we put in our own?  moods rarely consist of one-word feelings.  do they?  well, anyway, mine don't.  it's been a very surprising day, not the one "they" forecast.  sunny, breezy, blue skies, NO RAIN.  i had to make my way into the house through clouds of butterflies around all the flowers by the back door.  they too are happy to feel the sun on their wings at last.

i wonder if anyone else watched the supposed debate last night.  only eight of the dems made it, al sharpton a no-show due to our delightful east coast weather.  not exactly a format for a debate, questions thrown at 8 people.  not all people got to answer the same question.  actually, many people didn't answer even the questions they were asked.  i think these things should be less scripted, candidates should be held to actually answering questions asked of them.  not heading off on their own tangents to talk about their own pet subjects.  still, i'll take any one of these folks over what we've got now.

short attention span

my goodness.  this textbox has a really short attention span.  and 2500 characters is way too easy to use up.  when you really get into navel-gazing and following the stream of semi-consciousness.  so, i had to delete several paragraphs from the entry i just made!  how annoying.

anyway, thunder is crashing outside, lightening will soon follow.  time to turn off the machine and go do some grocery shopping. 

 

another stormy afternoon

good morning's classes, exhausting as always.  the grammar class finished their test in record time, some of them under an hour.  we'll see how well they did.  i'm so happy to have jean-max in that class, i can always count on him to see the point and help those around him to get it.  i'm really glad to be teaching most of the beginning level classes, this way i can weave all the strands together......not worry if i'm teaching grammar in the writing class, or vocabulary in the grammar class.  there's no way to keep it all separate, in any case.

it's so grey and dark outside and we're under a flood watch.  i haven't picked any tomatoes in a couple of days.  they're probably falling all over the ground.  next year's crop of volunteer tomato plants will be overwhelming.  maybe i just won't plant any new ones.....see what the fallen fruits and those in the compost produce for me.  although i'm thinking of entirely revamping the garden. so much of it has succumbed to the muscular weeds this rainy summer has encouraged, and i have not had time or energy to battle.  i was inspired by the  www.avant-gardening.com newsletter article about their concentric circles of herb gardens.  thinking maybe i'll try that for next spring.  after extensive layering and mulching to discourage the wiregrass and other weeds.

just had email from www.civilrights.org  letting me know that miguel estrada has withdrawn his name from judicial nomination to federal appeals court.  one for our side.  okay.  though i have to admit to sorrow at being opposed to the first latino candidate for such a position of influence and importance.   he would have been such a great example for all the kids we're trying to convice to stay in school.  i have a good one this term in two of my classes.  graduated from the local high school somehow, but his english is not up to taking regular college courses.  so he's in the ESL classes.  he wants to go into the Criminal Justice program, and eventually he wants to be a lawyer.  i'm giving him all the encouragement and help in my repertoire, a one-woman cheering squad.

 

too early in the morning to know my mood, other than sleepy.  just trying to get a start on this blog, putting in some personal information, other blogs.  trying to figure it out.  reading my posts from yahoo groups, grinding my teeth at some, laughing at others.  drinking tea.

but what i should be doing is correcting papers.  so i think i'll call it enough here and go act like a good teacher, correct vocabulary tests.