Bob and I have had a good, quiet day - lots of grading. It's a little eerie waiting for Hurricaine Gustav, three years after the devastation of Hurricaine Katrina. New Orleans is being evacuated. This afternoon elderly and disabled people were sent north on a train - I'm not sure to where - but at least there is some kind of plan. I feel unsettled, partly because of the storm. Life as we know it is so fragile, can be blown away at any moment by forces external or internal.

I've been reading books by Orson Scott Card about as fast as I can find them. He is a new writer to me this year - though many readers I know read at least Ender's Game well before this year. I am delighted by the complexity of this many's mind and the depth of his concern about ethics in human history - about compassion and trying to find a right way when there is no clear one right way. He makes me think and feel and see being alive and active in the world from quirky and unfamiliar angles (kind of like my friend Peggy's poems do). My last two card reads are Past Watch, a deep an intriguing alternate history of earth centered around the fall out of the journey of Christopher Columbus and Magic Street in which magic, straight from Midsummer Night's Dream, visits a middle class African American neighborhood in Los Angelos.

Psalm 57:1
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.

I'm listening to Bill Richardson in the background - speaking in both English and Spanish, as he warms up the convention crowd in Mile High Stadium for Barack Obama's speech of acceptance of his party's nomination for president. Bill Richardson was born to a Mexican mother and an American father. Obama of course was born to a white mother from Kansas and and a Kenyan father. So much has changed for the better. Lyndon Johnson would be 100 years old today and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. are both forty years dead. I am thankful to have lived in the times I've lived and seen the changes I've seen.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert F. Kennedy

I'm still enjoying the excitement of the Democratic National Convention - feeling generally attached to the idea that is the United States of America - completely tearful (even though I know the makers wanted me to be) over a film by Stephen Speilburg about the military in Iraq - those who come home and those who don't. A commentator made a remark about the reasons the Democrats were focusing so much on the military and my first though, in answer was, "I'ts wartime." SOmetimes I think those of us who don't have family in the military forget.

I'm having bus adventures these days - suddenly morning buses are running late and VERY full, with people standing. I'm going to need to start leaving the house a little earlier, but that is fine. I'm glad more people are riding the buses here. The mix of people is very diverse - students, business type people all dressed up, young families, bike-muters, people who look homeless - all of us behaving courteously together. I like being part of the human soup, not isolated off in a private car. I also like being outside whether I choose to be or not - during the walks to and home from the bus stop. I'm feeling subtle changes in sun and shade, the quality of the air, and seeing color changes sweep across the sky. I miss so much of that when I spend most of my time in buildings or cars.

Politics aside - I talked to Bob briefly and he had another good day - getting to know his class. He is grading busily because he gave them math and science evaluative tests today and is trying to get the results quickly. No procrastinating. Go Bob!

I'm still obsessed with the Democratic National Convention. The first convention I remember was the 1960 convention in whch John Kennedy was nominated. I remember the disasterous Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968. I cried in misery over that one. Tonight I cried too, but out of identification with the causes advocated and a sense of connection to Hillary Clinton - especially after having seen her in Austin.
Hillary was wonderful. She came out loud and clear for Obama as well as in honor of women's right to vote. I loved her line about her mother being born before women had the right to vote and her daughter voting for her own mother for President.

I've been loving this convention, identifying with Democratic tradition firmly. I loved seeing Caroline and Ted Kennedy last night. I'm still laughing at myself for dancing in the living room as Ted Kennedy spoke. And interesting commentator point was (when the pictures of the young Kennedy brothers were shown) that Ted Kennedy is the first in his generation of Kennedy men that we got to see age. I cried over that too.
Being old enough to have lived through a reasonable chunk of history is a huge blessing. I'm thinking about Kerry tonight, and everybody else who dies young. I really treasure the perspective that living as long as I've lived has given me and hope for another two or three healty decades.

OK - Go Teddy Kennedy! Go Jimmy Carter, elder statesman of my soul. I'm watching the Democratic National Convention - saw President Carter interviewed, gracious, smart, honest, low key, talking of compassion and race. Then Teddy took the stand against medical orders and gave a strong (nothing low key there) moving speech which has me dancing and with goose bumps. I know he's a flawed man, has made lots of mistakes - but he stands for the causes I stand for and I have my flaws and mistakes too And I'm more like Carter, not one to give people goosebumps. I respect them both.

Peace is more then just the absence of war. People everywhere seek an inner peace that comes from the human rights to voice their views, choose their leaders, feed their families and raise healthy children.
Jimmy Carter

I'm starting to write here while I'm still on the phone with Bob. he seems to have had a great first day of school - only seventeen of his twenty one arrived (though he expects more tomorrow) and they seemed more curious and respectful than past classes. And he has a good plan and knows what he wants to achieve this year - got straight to work with them on reading and readers' response. It's fun to hear him sounding up and confident as school starts.

When Bob talks about his technology use in the classroom I feel dated. He uses Power Point on a regular basis with the kids and seems so facile with it. I'd be writing on the board or a poster board. It's amazing to me how much ordinary activities like teaching school have changed with technology. I want to see myself as someone open to change and growth, not stuck in the past, but I think I would feel daunted being expected to use Power Point on a regular basis, not just for big deal presentations. And the resisting part of me is glad I don't have to learn how to do that.

I'm aware as I write that I still have the habit of basing my feelings on what's going on with people I love rather than responding to my life directly, first person. My own day has been good. I saw the one client I see at home on Mondays, did scheduling regarding my very busy fall client rush, paid a few bills and wrote a few notes. I'm doing OK eating the right foods but have a strong impulse to eat more than I need which I don't have when I'm busy at work - much more thought about food when home alone. I wonder how people keep their weight down in retirement. I think that may be a problem for me if I ever retire. I actually went in the scrap book room and moved a few things around as I promised last night and have been back in there today to turn on the light (which at my current level of paralysis is a big deal) but still haven't started work. I think I will get three or four hours in though, now. It doesn't feel impossible, and I think that, as Mary commented, this will get easier for me after I start.

It's odd at my house tonight - no children - no children all weekend. And school is about to start. I am so little involved in getting anybody ready this year - haven't even physically helped Bob in the classroom at all. It's like the start of school, which so deeply affects at least six of my closest people, is happening in another time zone or something. It's real for me, but one step removed. I hope all of my students and teachers have exactly the year they need to have - hope that for all students and teachers, actually.

This fall is so different, with Joanna not working for me and needing so much less help and Ruth and Chris busy in their own home and lives. I need to be more conscious of time. There seems to be a great deal of it, and I want to be creful to choose what I do with it, to complete projects, not just to drift.

I still feel really overwhemed about scrap booking projects - but now is surely the time. I just get more daunted by not picking it up again. I will do at least something before I go to bed tonight and three hours tomorrow. Maybe then I won't be so afraid to touch the old letters and pictures and so afraid I never will. I k now it doesn't matter on a cosmic level if our family history is in order or not, but getting it so is something I want to do, and believe I can do, if I just can stop giving in to overwhelm.

I found a new toy. It's called "wordles" - a way ofturning words into a picture collage thing based on their frequency of use in a text. I played with it with my reverberation/echoes poem and here is the result.http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/138552/Echoes. If you want to play, the wordles home page is http://wordle.net/. It's free to make wordles - and it may be addictive, at least for me. Nap time now.

It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
Ghandi

Outrageous!

Fat blond girl, fourteen
scowls in aquarium line.
Lime green T shirt screams
in huge white neon letters
ENTERTAIN ME! I'M BORED!
I don't know who to throttle,
parents, manufacturer, media.
How could such an outrageous
message be culturally cool?
Acceptable? How can anyone
believe that is funny? I rage.
I cry. I fear for our children.

My work week is winding down - just one day to go and the last two days not quite as long as the first two.The summer seems to be winding down too. After a killer hot dry summer we are having milder mornings and warm wet afternoons. Shoal Creek flows with water rather than lying cement barren. Green has once again begun to occur naturally around here. It's been months - since early May - that I have seen local, unwatered green growth. And the normal late summer evening sounds are back - cicadas and toads. The temperature will be in the low nineties when the kids go back to school next week - bearable for sure but still short sleeve weather - too warm for cute fall clothes. I wonder what it would be like to live in a climate where one really could comfortably wear fall clothes on the first day of school.

Gold Blood

Skinny ten year old
hyperactive, fatherless
bully magnet, pitiable.
mother-loved, challenged
coached, muscle and heart
to surge through water,
passion pushed resistence,
goal glowed, mythic, heroic,
achieved thirteen years later,
records smashed, eight medallions
attest to Micheal Phelps' gold blood.

I know I am picking out one athlete here, and there are so many in the Olympics, and not in the Olympics, and dancers, singers, musicians, artists - people who emerge in excellence from shadowed or simply ordinary childhoods. And so many who look golden early who do not continue to shine. I think of the Alcoholics Annonymous saying "Don't judge your insides by other people's outsides." I think about the value of not judging at all, and the difficulty. And I go ahead and post the poem I wrote about one gold blood in particular with no disrespect to anyone else's achievements or journey.

I am in a quiet mood tonight after a long work day - good work day. I repeat on this blog how fortunate I am to have work I love. I know I repeat - and I am so thankful to have work I love.I also am really blessed in my writing group. This week, home, with more time, I am having a blast with the prompts (Thanks Belle). One was to write a poem using the word "avacado". I wrote two.

Regretted Scorn (Avacado Green)

Avacado green, harvest gold
colors of my teens, my mother's
cool, trendy - enamel fridge colors
shag carpet colors. I wince now
at my arogant young scorn
of my mother's version of cool.

Avacado Shelter

Avacado orchard behind the house
where I was five, sheltering trees
welcomed tentative climber,
secret world of shadows, shapes,
birds, opossum family, dream orchard
invited imagination, nurtured exploration.
Avacado orchard behind the house
haven of sheltering trees. Thank you.

What My Life Should Leave


My life should leave echoes,
resounding unpredictably,
echoes of introspection,
conscience, wisdom, hope,
echoes which sing out and resound
Love not ego, My power to do good
and my power to do harm are equal.
The difference is choice. Be kind.
No unnecessary losses. Listen.
Love is stronger than loss.
Reverberating echoes are legacy.
Attribution remains irrelevant.

Days off are wonderful for catching up on reading and writing - hence multiple posts here: I just found a most amazing blog, a woman's international adoption story in which she pulls no punches about the difficulties of bonding with her daughter, adopted as a toddler from Jamaica as opposed to the ease of bonding with her birth son about the same age. The post to which I'm linking you gives a superbly written account of the contrast in the quality of life between our pampered children and the truly poor children in places like Jamaica's "City of the Sun". http://www.anymommyoutthere.com/2008/08/tummy-mommy.html

I can't believe it. It's 1:47 on an August afternoon during an Austin summer where temperatures have been consistently over 100 degrees Farenheight - even 106, which is plain too hot! And right now the temperature is 73 degrees Farenheight. And it isn't supposed to get into the nineties again until Sunday and rain is in the forecast every day. I would have forgotten rain existed if I hadn't visited the Pacific northwest last month. Last week wehn Bob and I were wading out into the Gulf of Mexico, both of us noticed that the water felt cooler than usual for August (not cold but not bathtub warm either). I took that as a sign - maybe wishful thinking - that fall would come earlier and cooler this year. I hope I'm right.

Journalist and cancer blogger Leroy Seivers died of his disease on August 15. I found his blog My Cancer toward the end, but went and read it back from it's beginning. I think it was a brave thing for this journalist, who had experienced so much broad band emotion covering wars and disasters all over the world, to share his own final personal journey. The blog, sponsored by NPR, had a tremendous readership, including many people wiht cancer and their families. It was truly a gift of love. I find the obituary article I have referenced a chronicle of a great career and life. Thank you Leroy. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92028479