Lessons from Pre-Schoolers

One of the treats that comes from spending time with my nephew is seeing his completely different take on the world. During the last 2 visits, we played hide-and-seek. But he makes up the rules as he goes along. He'll say, "You go hide, and count, and then yell, 'Ready or not, here you come." Or "You count, and I'll hide, but don't look for me behind the sofa." One variation that he loved involved me hiding, and then him chasing me once he found me. One time we ran through the house exactly 3 times. One time we had to go to certain parts of the house, but not others.

He's not a rule-bound little guy. When he paints, his mom (my sister) squirts all the paints on a paper plate palette. He takes his brush and swirls all the colors together.

As far as I know, he's never said, "Yuck, I made a color I didn't want." He's never balled up a painting and said, "This doesn't look like a turkey at all!"

I've been trying to adopt his attitude. Adults get too bound by the world as they've always known it. As the years go by, if we're not careful, our world constricts until we can't even dream another possibility.

Yesterday, I talked with a student in an elevator. Her sister works 3 shifts of 12 hours each during a week, and she says she'd like a job like that. I said, "Yeah, but a 12 hour shift--how exhausting. What if we worked 10 hour shifts? Or had a boss who gave us the task and the deadline and said, 'Do it however works best for you.'" She looked at me like I had lost my mind.

If she sees that dream as radical, what does that say? I see it as a modest little dream, this dream of not having to sit in an office just because work tradition has it that people sit in an office for x number of hours a week.

I've noticed something similar in the Internet storms over whether or not an MFA is valuable: all these people, holding tightly to what they know to be true--but all these conflicting truths can't all be true, can they? I like Kelli's response best, that there are many ways to be a writer. The important thing is to find out what works best for you and your work. No other writer can do what you're doing, in the way that you're doing it. It's important to structure your life in a way that nurtures your work. For some of us, we can make a life in academia. For some of us, we may need a different path. There are thousands of ways to be a writer.

We should take a lesson from pre-schoolers, who don't have decades of socialization molding them. If we could have any kind of life we wanted, what would that look like? If we could make up the rules and the boundaries, what would we create? If we believed that any kind of life we wanted was possible, what would we create?

Anxieties Allayed by Pumpkin Bread (with a recipe!)

I woke up feeling anxious. I haven't written a poem in what feels like forever, but my poetry notebook reminds me that I wrote an intriguing poem on Nov. 23, and then it was Thanksgiving, so I'm not that far off track.

I feel fretful because this is the month of deadlines: much grading to do, much to do with the publication of my chapbook, my assessment report is due at work, and the life of an administrator means that new projects pop up here and there.

What's the antidote to my anxiety? Take a walk (done!), then do some writing. Yesterday, I was walking through the parking lot at school watching all the students walk and text at the same time. Those of us paying attention heard a roar of jets that could have been fighter planes. I thought of that old nuclear war classic, The Day After, that scene of people standing in line hoping to use a pay phone. I thought of all the aspects of life in 1983 that the movie captured and preserved, all those precious daily life details that I assumed a nuclear war would wipe out at any minute. I never thought about the passage of time doing much the same thing. Similarly, I assume my house will be under water, swallowed by the sea, by the end of the century. But the march of time will obliterate more quickly. Could these ideas be made into a poem?

Or maybe I want to return to a line that I scribbled last December, but didn't develop into a poem: will this be the Christmas that we bake no bread?

I have pumpkin bread in the oven, so maybe a poem about baking is in order.

I still haven't made it to the grocery store, and our cupboards are getting bare. So, this morning, I decided to make pumpkin bread, since I'm out of frozen fruit for my usual breakfast of a smoothie. One of my friends asked for the recipe, and since I typed it out for her, why not share it with you?

Yes, this blog doesn't have enough recipes. Never fear, it won't become one of those kind of blogs, the Martha Stewart kind of blog that makes the rest of us feel inadequate. Still, I always enjoy seeing the non-writing creative projects of writers (see Kelli's latest post, for example, and Lorianne DiSabato always posts wonderful photos at her blog, as does Sherry O'Keefe at her blog, and Kristy Bowen not only writes and blogs but has a whole shop of crafted wonders here).

I love this recipe because you can make it healthier, but even if you don't, it's still a treat that's nutritious and perfumes the house as it bakes. It keeps easily for a few days, if you don't gobble it all down right away, and freezes beautifully.

Pumpkin Bread
(from Jane Brody’s Good Food Book)

You can double this recipe easily; if you double it, you can put it in a tube or bundt pan for a prettier cake-like presentation.

You can use applesauce for part of the oil and cut your fat without affecting taste—the less oil you use, the less time it will keep.

½ C. sugar
½ C. vegetable oil
2 eggs (or 1 egg white and 1 whole egg)
¾ C. pumpkin puree ( ½ can)
1 C. white flour
½ C. whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon (I also like to add ginger, nutmeg, and allspice)
½ C. chopped walnuts and pecans (optional)
½ C. raisins (optional)

In a large bowl, mix all of the ingredients in the order given. As you add the dry ingredients, be careful not to overmix.

Pour the batter into a greased bread loaf pan. Bake at 350 for about an hour, or until a pick inserted into the middle of the loaf comes out clean. Set the pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove the loaf to cool completely.

Keeping Our Seats and Our Eyes on the Prize

On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. This act is often given credit for launching the Civil Rights Movement, but what many forget is that various communities had begun planning for the launch, even before they could see or know what it would look like.

In fact, for generations, people had prepared for just such a moment. They had gotten training in nonviolent resistance. They had come together in community in a variety of ways. They were prepared.

Someone asked me once how I had come to be such an optimist. I've always had an optimistic streak, but frankly, my whole world view shifted when I watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison. I fully expected him to be killed, but again, my worldview shifted when I watched South Africans stand in line for days (days!) to elect him president. And he was ready to be president because he had spent those decades in prison thinking about how he would run the country and making plans.

I have seen enormous social change happen in my lifetime--in the face of such evidence, I must agree with Dr. Martin Luther King, who said the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.

Today is also World Aids Day, a somber day that recognizes that this plague has been one of the most destructive diseases in human history. We don't have a cure, although we do drugs that make the disease manageable. We don't have a vaccine. Happily, so far, the disease is fairly preventable. Imagine how this disease would shape us if it was airborne, not blood born.

Those of us who work towards social justice and human dignity for all know how long the struggle might be. We are similar to those medieval builders of cathedral: we may not be around to see the magnificent completion of our vision, but it's important to play our part. In the words of that old Gospel song, we keep our eyes on the prize, our hands on the plow, and hold on.

The same is true in many arenas. Think of our lives as artists: we write poems, not yet knowing how they will work together in a collection. We publish our early poems, even though they may embarrass us later. We hold before us the vision of poets from past generations, hoping that we can rise to their power.

Here's the first poem of mine that was ever published in a non-school publication, The Evening Reader. I look at it now and think of all the ways I would change it. But I offer it the way I wrote it years ago, with its youthful exuberance and anger.


Arcing Towards Justice


Martin Luther King said that the arc
of history is towards justice,
and I must arc
towards justice as well:
ignore the politicians who would leave
children to starve
and adults to rot in prisons.
Some days I slump towards despair;
I don’t believe I can even save
myself, much less others.

Like Harriet Tubman, I cannot tarry
long in the swamps of despair.
I must go back, stretch out my arms, ferry
others to safety:
teach them to write, to analyze,
to dream the world they would want to inhabit.
I must teach them not to suckle
on the hatred spewed
by scared, old, white men
who are losing power, and so spurt poison.

I can build an ark of activism
for the diaspora of the dispossessed,
a sanctuary where we wait
for the old, white men to choke
on their own vituperative, vindictive vitriol.

We won’t even have to remove the mantle
of authority from their cold corpses.
It has been ours all along, from the moment
we claimed it as our own,
decorated it with our own bright threads,
chose our own best ways to wear our multi-hued
mantles, beacons to gleam and glitter
in the dark days of exile,
like comets arcing through the skies,
lighting the way home,
as a legacy of hatred burns
into harmless, intergalactic dust.

What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation

This time last week, I was part way through the long, long state of Florida. We got up early, threw the cosmetic case in the car, and headed off towards Lutheridge, a Lutheran camp which will rent out their cabins during the off season. My family gathers there periodically, in part because it's the only place that my 95 year old grandmother will agree to go.

So, off we drove, taking a side trip to pick her up in Greenwood, South Carolina. Fourteen hours later, we arrived.

So, what have I done in my week of Internet fasting?

--Well, there's the driving, of course, from the southern tip of the country to the Appalachian mountains near Asheville. Four states in fourteen hours (on the return trip, we were more leisurely, with a stopover in Jacksonville). We listened to great music. Is there a better album than Paul Simon's Graceland? Maybe Roseanne Cash's The List. And of course, there was a bit of Christmas music--my all-time favorite, Jazz to the World.

--I reverted to my old 1980's habit of nervously checking for mushroom clouds. After all, the week started with that horrific North Korean attack on the South Korean fishing village. Sure, we think that North Korea doesn't have a nuclear capability that can reach the U.S.--but intelligence sources have been proven wrong before.

--But I was with 4 children (my nephew, and the children of my cousins), so I quickly forgot about nuclear annihilation. Instead, we had light saber fights and puppet shows and trips to the playground and flashlight hikes and art projects.

--We also went to the beautiful sports field of a local high school. While my dad ran his daily 6 miles, we played on the artificial turf. We tried to teach my nephew how to use a baseball glove (he had a smaller version), but we quickly switched to soccer, which doesn't hurt quite so much when the ball goes astray.

--We had great meals. Of course we did--it's Thanksgiving, one of the most straightforward of holidays. What could be better than a holiday that revolves around great food and gratitude?

--My nephew still has such a different sense of storytelling than I do. I tried to create a Thanksgiving puppet show, but he wanted the puppets to fight. When we were at the playground, he loved to pretend that he was operating an ice cream stand with horrible ice cream flavors. He'd hand us "an ice cream cone" and direct us to taste and spit it out. Of course, we complied, with great theatricality. It delighted him. It was only later that I wondered about the wisdom of what we were modeling when he started spitting out his milk.

--We bought a lot of shoes at the annual sale at The Frugal Backpacker. I encouraged my mom to buy 4 pairs of sandals. They were there, in her size, which actually fit her feet, and they were already reduced--but you still got the buy one pair, get one pair at half price deal. I bought 2 pairs, and my mom bought 4. We're tall women, with big feet, and it's rare that any store has any shoes in our size. To find so many size 10s seemed like a sign.

--I taught my cousin's wife how to quilt. We worked on practice Christmas stockings. Will she go home and make the stockings she has planned? Or will she decide that it's really too much effort to quilt by hand?

--Lutheridge has a small community of houses. We looked at one that's likely to be for sale. We wondered, as we have in past years, if it would be a wise investment. We wondered, my spouse and me, if we would like living in a church camp near Asheville. We think we would.

--We marvelled at how quickly the time together zoomed by, as it always does. We thought about the fact that 4 generations managed to spend half a week in a large house and still be speaking at the end of the time--in fact, we were sorry to say good-bye. We gave thanks for the gift of family.

--After spending time in Asheville, we stopped for a bit near Columbia, South Carolina to check out a retirement place that my parents are considering. It's near the city of Columbia, but completely in the country (although with the spread of Columbia westward, perhaps not for long). I miss those rural landscapes.

--We try not to be driving on Thanksgiving Sunday, when I 95 turns into a parking lot, so we stayed with an old college friend in Jacksonville. On Sunday, we went to a nature reserve and hiked a bit through the coastal flats of northern Florida. Such different landscapes on this trip--such a treat!

--I tried not to think about work and all the projects that must be completed by the end of the year. I tried not to fret about all the retreat coordinating that I'd like to have done by December 3. I tried not to worry about all the parts of the chapbook promotion that must be done in the coming weeks.

--I didn't read much, and I didn't write at all, but that's O.K. I find that these kind of trips fill up my well in ways that I can't always anticipate. In the coming weeks, I fully expect to find some poems bubbling up, poems that wouldn't have existed without this time away.

One Last Poem Treat

In the hours before I undertake my electronic fast, I just got word that my poem "Sharing the Sea of Surround Sound" is up at qarrtsiluni, where you can also listen to me read it, if you're so inclined. Go here to read and/or listen. It has a theme that will resonate with many of you as you head towards Thanksgiving, even though it's set in a modern office, not a family reunion.

Thanksgiving Treats

How has it gotten to be Thanksgiving again? This blog is likely to be fairly quiet for a week, as it's time for family, a good time to unplug. I should be back to regular blogging on Nov. 30. So, in advance, happy Thanksgiving. And I've included some treats below the picture, where Blogger has quit letting me put in extra spaces between paragraphs, but hopefully my stanza breaks will continue to translate.

I'm now one of the bloggers at Voice Alpha, a site about reading poetry out loud for an audience. Tomorrow, my first post will go up! I can't link directly to the post, today, obviously, but when you miss me tomorrow, you might head over there to explore the site. Lots of good stuff to be found there!

And if you need a poem prompt, here's one that I've been playing with for a year. Invite a bunch of historical or fictional characters to come together for Thanksgiving--what happens? I've been playing with the idea of Biblical people. John the Baptist would bring locust and honey pie, and guests would get Martha (Mary's sister) tipsy so that she'd stop doing housework.

That poem isn't even close to being in a postable form. But here's a poem I wrote years ago, when I saw a child walking down the street with his mom, during a beastly hot November day. He held one of those drawings where you trace your hand and turn it into a turkey--he had a paper feather in his paper headband. I realized with a start how close Thanksgiving lurked. Out came this poem:

Indian Summer


Summer returns to us, unwelcome
guest. We flip the switch from heat
to air and wonder if Thanksgiving
in the age of global warming
will always be this warm.

The children trace their hands to create
turkeys. They argue over the proper
number of construction paper feathers
to include in Indian headbands.
No one wants to play a Pilgrim
in the school pageant. Founding Fathers
hold no fierceness. Far better to be a Brave.

I bake the same sweet potato dish
that goes back generations, back to the hills
of Appalachia, when my immigrant
ancestors must have wondered at their folly:
a different continent, a different tuber,
it’s still grubbing for food.

When I was young, I underestimated the strength
of my own spine. I wanted to join Indian Princesses,
sit around a fire, have a special, secret name, to participate
in rites created for white girls with no hip
heritage of their own for outsiders to exploit.

Now I long for my elders, dead too early
from those diseases of a life half lived
in poverty. They left me with a handful
of recipes, good gardening techniques,
and a lifetime of lonely rituals.

Miami Book Fair 2010

I have been to many poetry readings, but none took the kind of effort to get to that yesterday's reading did (and that includes readings in other cities that have required an airplane trip!). Of course, there was the always-present road congestion on I 95, but one expects that. I've only travelled once or twice on that Interstate in Miami-Dade county where traffic didn't come to a halt and crawl along for miles. Then there was the driving around and looking for parking and finally finding a far-away lot that had a decent price. Then there was the walk to campus.


Here's a shot of the Miami-Dade College campus, with the concrete structures so common to community colleges built in the 60's. Once there, I had to pay admission; I thought I only had to pay admission if I wanted to go to the street fair, and I inwardly fumed for a few minutes before I said to myself, "Come on--you can shell out $8 for a book fair!" And so I did.

Once I found the right building, I still had a quest. There were throngs of people waiting in various lines, and at first I thought I had goofed by thinking everything was free and all I had to do was show up. But I decided to go to the room first, and if I needed to wait in line, I'd go back. So, I hiked and hiked around the mazelike hallways, wondering if I was going the right way. From a far distance, I saw a person who looked like January O'Neil, so I decided to head that direction. And finally, I found the room and discovered that all those lines were for the events that required a paid ticket, like for Patti Smith, a poet of sorts, but more famous for being the godmother of punk and one of this year's National Book Award winners.

I'm happy to say that the reading was well worth the effort. Above you can see all the poets, although I didn't get individual shots of them all. This was my first attempt at taking pictures during a reading, and I can't always see what I've got until I get home and see the computer screen. From left to right above: Kevin Pilkington, Susan Rich, Mark Statman, and January O'Neil.

A blurry photo of Susan Rich above. I have read about readings where she brought violet scented chocolates to the audience, but alas, this was not one of those readings.

Mark Statman read third, and he chose some poems that were in response to poems that had been read by the other poets, a gutsy move, I thought, since it wasn't planned in advance. I wasn't familiar with his work before, but I really enjoyed it.

Here's a photo of January O'Neil reading her poems, which are as delightful in spoken form as on the page.

In fact, all of the poets read beautifully, and all of the poems engaged me--many delighted me. It was the kind of afternoon that enriches and nourishes on many levels. When I was young, I thought that every day of grown up life would be just like that. Now that I'm older, it takes some effort to make sure that I have a few of those days here and there, spread out amongst the daily tedium of other tasks.

I had worried a bit about the hike back to the distant parking lot, but happily, there were still plenty of non-threatening people on the streets, along with the mentally ill and downtrodden. The streets of Miami remind me a bit of New York City, without all the tall buildings. There are grates in the sidewalk, but why down here? We don't have subways. There are all sorts of businesses, like discount nail coloring salons and strange shoe stores, along with all the bright chains. The architecture is an interesting mesh of modern and Latin country inspired, and I thought the shot above captured that.

I made it back to my car with no problem, hopped back on the Interstate, and drove home under gloomy skies to an evening meal of home-cooked hamburgers, red wine, and poetry afterglow.