Time was...Time is...

Time fascinates me.

When I was in college in the 60's, I used Einstein's theories of relativity and curved space to "prove" that God created the Earth in seven equi-distant time periods which came to be known as "days" but to Him were much longer than 24 hours. My Investigations into Religion professor gave me an A- but noted he was not pleased with the way I twisted the reality of Creation, I thought Albert would have been proud of me!

As a classroom teacher, I relished some classes because the 55 minutes sped by while I bemoaned others because that same 55 minutes seemed to take five hours!

A multi-state car drive with no radio, working CD or tape player is Hell! The miles just crawl by. Drop a book-on-tape into the experience, and I have dawdled the last few miles so I can hear the end of the book!

Retirement has brought additional evidence of the elasticity (relativity?) of time. I spent four decades getting up at Zero Dark Thirty to be awake and alert enough to mold the minds of teenagers. I loved my profession and seldom started the day in a wish-I-were-somewhere-else mood, but I never had enough minutes to accomplish all I wanted to in a day. I was always grading, planning, meeting, or lecturing. Lecturing could never be postponed. Faculty meetings were demonstrations of multi-tasking (and principal-eye avoidance) as I sat in the back and graded while speakers droned. Planning was fun and inspiring as I challenged myself to repeat only a few lessons each year, devising fresh approaches to traditional topics is one of my talents. (If you want to know how to use rocks and astrology to give literary character analysis a boost, let me know.). Even though it was my favorite paperwork, planning just devoured hours, never mind minutes. But the real educational time-hog was grading! I used to keep a supply of multicolored pens on hand just so I could look at different ink colors every so often in an effort to make the task of commenting on usage and writing less arduous. I wish I had bought stock in the Bic pen company when I first began teaching!!

Once I retired, I anticipated having all the time in the world to explore new vistas and take new journeys. Ah, not quite! I DO have more minutes, but I am not sure where they go. I look up from a task and think, "What!!?? How could it possibly be THAT time? I just started this." Things seem to take longer (yes, thank you, I know I am older!), but where did the time go? Letreze and I have wondered how we stayed sane while working full time, since we barely seem able to keep our heads above water with our retirement time table! One aspect of retirement-time is sleep! I am finally getting all the hours medical professionals urge for a healthy body. Who knew sleep could be addictive? But, Wow, does getting eight hours really cut into a day!

Perhaps it's as simple as retirement offers options, and those options require choosing which requires decision-making which requires cogitation. All of which take time.

The Stories

Christmas is about giving. Christmas is about connecting with family. Christmas is about celebration. All true, but Christmas is really about the stories.

It's about the time when you and Dad plotted to surprise Mom with your presence when you were supposed to have stayed at college because there was no extra money that year.

It's about when you ransacked those two drawers in the dining room buffet for the folders and folders and folders of family snapshots (that were always going to be put in albums one day) in order to create collages for each family member.

It's about FB getting the archery set and trying it out in the upstairs bedroom hallway.

It's about the thrill of diving into your Christmas stocking, even though you are18 and ought to be more composed.

It's about Mom finding the lost presents in the back of her closet in February.

It's about watching Bessie denying she was a grown German Shepherd as she did her imitation of a puppy by attacking the discarded gift wrappings.

It's about Dad giving Mom the first gold bracelet instead of the toaster he swore she needed.

It's about Christmas on a stick.

It's about Tim and the Bird Ball.

It's about the blue spruce as the town tree.

It's about board game competitions.

It's about the sisters' annual Christmas Eve midnight runs to Nichols.

The best gifts you get during this holiday season are memories shared; the best gifts you give are new memories created.

A Guilty Pleasure

The Guilt Trip is a film that will transport you back to some of those memorable Mom-moments when the words that passed between you did not always mean what you thought they did when you said (or heard) them. (You’ll grasp that sentence more completely once you’ve seen the movie.) I enjoyed remembering some personal Mom-moments as I watched Barbra and Seth interact.

On the way home, I thought about trips I had taken with my parents. I realized that I had never taken a trip with my Dad. Not a Dad-Marty trip, we always had others along for the ride; not surprising when you consider I was the oldest of six children, with the baby of the family less than ten years younger than I was. For decades, we did everything as a herd!

I have, however, taken a few solo trips with Mom. The first was back in 1976. I collapsed in my classroom at OPHS, was whisked to the brand new Orange Park Hospital with severe mononucleosis. I was ordered to rest with no opportunity to return to work for eight-ten weeks! The only way this was feasible was for me to go home to Massachusetts and take up residence (again!) with my folks. I was not allowed to fly, so Mom came down to Florida to drive me. We emptied my apartment into storage, loaded Mesmerelda (my 1974 Pinto), then set off up A1A as I-95 was still under construction and the undisputed Queen of the Scenic Route was doing the driving! (I was too shaky from the medications to get behind the wheel.)

A trip that should have taken only a couple of days, took much longer. Partly because I could not stay in the car for long stretches of time since the meds compelled me to need frequent breaks. Partly because we stopped to visit little museums, to read historical markers, to try “Granny’s Homemade Fudge.” We shared lots of ideas and plans: creating and selling to a petroleum company maps of day-trip sites within driving distance of each gas station, figuring out how to package a kindergartener’s birthday party essentials in one box which would eliminate parent-planning, writing a cookbook for singles. We did a lot of talking to and with each other. I learned a great deal about Mom’s interests, loves and loathings during that drive. I learned she was a fabulous conversationalist. I mean, who knew, this was MOM? It was the first time I had had her all to myself since I was 18 months old when FB was born and I was then 29! I discovered a thirst for her time that remains a focus of my life, even at 65.

Since my Dad died, we have taken several road trips together. Long hours in the car taught me the wonder of being comfortable saying nothing. Most of the people I know do not do silence; Mom does. It is refreshing and stimulating to sit within arm’s reach of another human and know you don’t have to chatter, that you are both content with being there, with no need to re-enforce that knowledge with idle talk.

We have taken cruises together. These were also eye-opening experiences for me. I live alone, yet realized this woman teased and challenged me so much that I had not one qualm about sharing a ship’s cabin with her for weeks at a time! We are related but not carbons of each other. We do not like the same politicians. We are intrigued by a few of the same writers (Ken Follett, Harlan Coben, William Martin). We do not relish the same reading genres: she is into the classics and non-fiction – she has an illustrated dictionary of the human body next to her living room chair. I would escape into the worlds of Clive Cussler and Brad Meltzer any day/every day. We have the same admiration for the wit of Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash and others who sat at the Algonquin Roundtable but differ about modern humorists, though we do agree Dave Barry is a genius and everyone needs to know the words to all Tom Lehrer’s songs!

Mom is a friend, albeit one who still says, “Marty, you need to wear makeup and get rid of those bangs, they hide your forehead.” She would never have graduated from parent to friend without those times we spent together with no interruptions. Getting mono all those decades ago gave me a gift it took me ages to appreciate - I like my Mom.

So, take your parent to the movie, then, over dinner share what struck you both as hauntingly familiar when you watched it. Whether you go to the movie together or just go walk the beach, take my advice and “take a trip” with your parent one-on-one...it might turn out to be one of those guilty pleasures you don’t want to admit you enjoy.

Pro Critical Media Literacy

               I am a child of the television-era., as such I have spent decades believing Lao Tze was right, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

In the past few years, I have come to realize that the picture is not replacing the words; it is acquiring equal value with them. In the arena of media, change does not mean elimination of a species. The printed word did not displace oral culture; video did not doom film to oblivion; radio still thrives in spite of television. We live in an age of many different media streams: cell phones, iPods, television, print, movies, computers, internet, advertising, all of which combine to form the confluence that surrounds and threatens to inundate us. If we want to avoid drowning in media input, we need to teach ourselves and our students how to swim in this electronic current. We need to learn to interact with media texts.

Despite years of research acknowledging that students are media-centered, many educators still cling to the notion that the value of literacy is being able to read and write an alphabet-based sign system. But our modern world is no longer a place where reading and writing the “written word” should be the sole baseline for literacy. The traditional written word should be only one part of a person’s literacy. Today, no single medium should have credence over another.  Traditional literacy demands that people be able to read and write, that they be proficient in creating as well as interpreting alphabetic messages. Media literate individuals should not only “read” all the media they use; they should also possess the skills to create their own media messages in each medium and to critique al the media texts they use.

Given this tension between traditional literacy and multi-literacy, how are teachers introducing the concept of media literacy to their students?  Many are doing so by offering activities that require the students to work through more than one mode of meaning in order to complete the assignment. Traditional literacy lessons emphasize the language design, while media literate lessons combine language with other media design elements including, visual, spatial and audio.  Successful lessons in multi-literacy combine these designs into a “multimodal” approach to learning that “integrates meaning-making systems”

Teachers can encourage students to make connections across media by beginning with a medium with which the students are familiar and asking them to look beyond the obvious for those desired connections.  Print media offer a readily available source for multi-literate lessons Analyzing newspaper advertisements can increase student awareness of gender and socio-economic issues. Similarly, comparing stories in diverse papers can illustrate how biased words create tone and how that tone can influence an audience’s reaction. Television is another medium teachers can use as a basis for student-generated critical thought.  Students could become aware of slanted question techniques by deconstructing a television interview. Students can also become cognizant of the power of bias when they create parodies of existing television shows. Students who can critique CLIO winning commercials for provocative language can become aware of the influence television can have over their purchasing patterns. 

Print and television are not the only two media students use; probably they are two of the least used media today’s children interact with on a daily basis, BUT print and television are the two media that least threaten many educators. If we can't convert the teachers, they will continue to dismiss "new media" as non-literacy oriented.

Do What I Say, Not What I Do

With apologies to Jane Austen: It is a truth universally acknowledged that teachers get lesson plan ideas from some strange places. (Can you discern I am cleaning out files??)

Years ago, I was helping a friend prepare her two pre-schoolers for the cul-de-sac’s block party when I got the inspiration for one of my most popular lessons in Public Speaking. Sherri’s 5-year-old, Cassy, twirled around the living room in her Cinderella costume while her mom and I struggled to get 4-year-old Sean into the cowboy outfit he had chosen but now decided would not do as he had changed his mind in favor Batman. The doorbell’s chime interrupted the twirling and the struggling.  Cassy danced to answer it and returned with Joyce, Sherri’s 17-year-old niece who was going to shepherd the kids around the neighborhood. Joyce was dressed as a diva: bejeweled and bedazzled in mauve sateen capris topped by something gauzy and wispy and shod in 4 inch fuchsia heels. Cassy was in immediate shoe-lust, complaining that her plastic “glass slippers” were “stupid and dumb” and not as cool as Joyce’s shoes. Sherri’s eyes rolled and I hunkered down for a second front of struggling. Joyce squatted down to Cassy’s level, looked her in the eyes and declared, “Cassy, my shoes might be cool, but I’m just a diva. You are a Disney Princess. You are Cinderella. Besides which, I’ll bet I have my shoes off before tonight’s over and you’ll still be dancing in yours.” Cassy grinned and twirled away.

Driving home that night, I thought about what Joyce had said, and I wondered how often kids heard older people give them advice that they themselves never followed. I wondered if Cassy ever noticed that Joyce never did remove her spiked heels though she walked around and danced until the party ended.

The next school day, I shared the anecdote with my Public Speaking students and asked if they had examples from their lives of Joyce’s “Don’t do what I do, do what I say” advice to Cassy. A forest of hands went up immediately. I did not have enough time remaining in the class period for everyone to share their story. Every student in the class wanted to tell at least one instance of what Jeremy said his Dad called “The Adult Prerogative.” Listening to the kids share their stories while watching the nodding heads of those not yet speaking, I had a lesson epiphany.

When the class convened the next day, I introduced the new speech topic: “If you could have your parents obey one rule they make you obey, what would it be?” The kids applauded. Questions arose: “Do we have to limit it to one?” (Yes.) “Can it involve siblings?”  (Yes.)  “Can it be about a friend?” (Yes, if you are also involved.) “Is there a time limit on how long I can talk?” (Yes, 3 minutes.)  “May I have an extension? I’m really going to need longer than three minutes.” (Sorry, no.) Enthusiasm was rampant. For the first time all year, I had 100% of the required pre-speech outlines completed on time.

As the actual speeches began, I noticed an increased level of attention and a similar rise in politeness. I had to tell no one to put up other work or to quiet down. This was a subject they all wanted to talk about. There were no surprises. I heard what I had anticipated as the kids wanted parents to quit smoking, quit drinking, be on time, keep promises and do housework.

In the 16 years since those first speeches were delivered, a few have remained with me as memorable. Seth wanted his dad to have a “work night” bedtime that was the same as his school night one - 10 PM. His arguments were that his father was older, needed more sleep and had to get up even earlier in the mornings than he did. Sheryl thought that her mom should have computer privileges revoked every time she was late picking her up from practice just as hers were revoked whenever she was late getting chores done. (She argued picking her up was one of her mom’s chores.) Randell believed his dad should have to let him know when he was going to be late because, “I worry about him as much as he worries about me.” Chelly wanted to “preview” her mom’s dates just like she did to her. Larry considered it only fair that,”If I have to be nice to Mom’s new husband, then my Dad should have to be nice to him too.” Wendy argued that since she was not allowed to watch tv or talk on the phone until her homework was done that her mom who was going to college at night should have to follow the same rules. Felicia believed that her father’s rules about what constituted suitable clothing for her for school ought to apply to his new girlfriend’s attire for work. My favorite was Dan who thought that if he was not allowed to listen to music while driving because “it was distracting,” then his mom should not be allowed to listen to her talk radio station because, “she gets so mad that she just screams at the speakers and pounds the steering wheel.”

The speech never lost its fan base. Students looked forward to it – a truth I realized the last Fall I taught when Oscar declared during the first week of class, “Ms. Mayer, I can’t wait for the parents’ rules speech. My brother gave me a copy of his from 10 years ago and most of it is still true. My parents have not learned much since then.”

I wonder if back in the day, Oog turned to Moog and scolded, ”No, dearest, you cannot have a pteranodon as a pet,” while she petted her brachiosaurus.

Music and Me

            My car radio has been set on Sirius Channel 17 for the past few days as I gorge myself on Christmas music. "Music" such a small word for such a potent part of my life.  How trite, you say? Well, my iPod has over 3000 songs on it and when I play it on shuffle, I sing along with nearly all that play from Korn to Dean Martin.   If music is my life, then the word for my life is eclectic.

            When I work intellectually, I don’t usually sing to myself, because I get wrapped up in the lyrics and the beat of what’s playing; however, when I work physically, those little white ear-buds are inserted and the iPod’s draining its battery. (I really need to investigate solar power for the device.) I mow the lawn while the Beach boys urge me to drive like “the little old lady from Pasadena.” I dust and mop to Carmen’s “Flower Song” and vacuum while “singing” “The Duck” version of Sousa’s “Washington Post March.”

            Professionally, music is the basis of my favorite research assignment for my students. A decade ago I asked myself what assignment I could create that would require research but could not be copied from the Internet  - my answer was a research paper about a student’s favorite musician. The paper was rigidly constructed with little personalization except in choice of musician. It was a phenomenally successful assignment for nearly 15 years. I have delivered three professional conference presentations on the idea as well as written a journal article about it. Plus, I was always delighted when the kids recognized that their chosen musicians use poetic devices, themes and interpretive language in their works, leading me to expound on my one of my favorite classroom motifs - Language Arts is inescapable!

            Personally, music brings me back to the “good old days.” My entire family of eight crammed in the Ford Country Squire as we rocketed over those “sick stomach bumps” on the way to Stiles Pond screaming “Johnny Willow was a soldier” at the top of our lungs. Em and Nancy engaged in so many races to the finish of  “I’ll build a bungalow” that Bill could sing the words before he could go to the bathroom by himself. Fred came off the “Long Trail” wearing the Zeke and singing “Does your chewing gum lose its flavor.” Then there was that magical night when Ellen and I stayed up ALL NIGHT listening to Dick Summer and John H. Garabedian play Beatles’ records backwards so we really could know “John is dead.”

            Music is an integral part of me despite the fact that water leaves the shower when I attempt to sing in there.

For Wise Women

            At  friend’s house the other afternoon, I picked up an amazing book from her end table: Wise Women: A Celebration of Their Insights, Courage, and Beauty by Joyce Tenneson. It’s a compilation of her photographic portraits of 80 women ages 65-100 annotated with their personal comments on aging. This work is thought provoking, revelatory, humbling and inspiring. I could only spend a few minutes with the book as my friend was in a rush. I decided within a very few pages I needed my own copy to peruse at my leisure as I slowly process its impact on me.

It’s the second time a book about women and their attitudes has gotten under my skin.

A dozen or so years ago, I read Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I copied a few lines from page 33 that piqued me at the time. They still bother me because they were so not like me, yet they are like so many, many woman that I know:

"I'm always taken by how deeply women like to dig in the earth. They plant bulbs for the spring. They poke blackened fingers into mucky soil, transplanting sharp-smelling tomato plants. I think they are digging down to the two-million-year-old woman. They are looking for her toes and her paws. They want her for a present to themselves, for with her they feel of a piece and at peace."

Being the daughter one amazingly wise woman, the sister of another one and the granddaughter of two more, I long ago realized that women know secrets, not those personal stories that we share with other living humans, but those timeless, ethereal yet visceral truths that separate female from male.  For much of my life I have had moments when I felt stupid beyond belief because this secret knowledge seemed to be missing from me - making me feel more male than female. I do not care about growing plants or dirt digging or past searching. I am enamored of the here and now. I do not delve into myself much; in many instances I am rather shallow in the ego-centric department. This used to make me feel occasionally inept. I concluded that it had to do with my spinsterhood and not with my femininity – however, I was unwilling to experience childbirth just to assuage my infrequent bursts of “What the hell’s wrong with me?” 

That all changed when a former student asked me to be the focus of her Educational Psychology research paper about effective teaching. During 13 hours of answering the questionnaires and responding to her interview questions, I was compelled to take an investigative look at me, and what makes me tick. I realized that I did possess that the “dirt growing, inner-self searching” core of woman-kind. I nurtured my students as pseudo-children, taking pride in their accomplishments and feeling angst in their failures.

I thought about the women who ran with wolves as I skimmed Tenneson’s book while waiting for my friend.  As a “wise woman,” how would want I want the world to see me? That’s easy - sitting at my desk grading papers or planning lessons. 

What would I wear? Also easy: make-up. Quit laughing. I loathe make-up. I know it makes me look better, but I just hate taking those few extra minutes when I could be sleeping or reading or drinking a Diet Coke. 

What wisdom would I impart?  “Do not ever consider being a teacher unless you possess equal amounts of humor, patience, creativity, perseverance and curiosity.”

In this season of giving – recognize a wise woman in your life and let her know you appreciate her. Especially if that wise woman is yourself!

So Many Rivers

            Just got home from holiday visiting that took me over the Acosta and Buckman Bridges. So rivers are on my mind. I have never been with out “Water, water, everywhere." I would not know what to do I were ever land-locked.

• When I was a child, my family would spend the occasional afternoon playing on the “beach” of the Danvers River. Not really a beach in the Florida sense of the word, more like a half-a-football-field area of carted-in sand that had been scraped together to give the illusion of beach.
• When I was a Girl Scout, I went canoeing on the edges of the Ipswich River after I hiked to it. My initial canoe experience was indelible – I have never forgotten the scared/excited feeling that coursed through me as the “boat” tilted so easily when I first stepped in, then turned around to face my partner. I was used to boats that didn’t waver with every movement. Canoes still make me jittery.
• I have walked atop the levees of the lower slow-moving Mississippi. And, once for two days in 1966, sandbagged levees in Illinois while Ole Man River surged past carrying trees, houses, boats, cars and the detritus of the winter floods and rains down to the Delta.
•  I live only a few miles from a major waterway - the St. Johns River. I have boated on it in several different outboards, snorkeled its bank while playing with manatee, fished its depths, dived its edges, spent the night on it in a houseboat, used a fish-finder sonar to see the remains of the docking poles used by the PBY Flying Boats that were part of the Navy fleet assigned to NAS Jax in WWII, and watched from a dredge as historians brought up proof of the Confederate gunboat “lost” in the quagmire of its floor.
•  I have scuba dived in the Itchetucknee River as a part of a Florida Department of Fish and Game clean up.
• I have splashed in the Saco and Piscataqua Rivers, chilly even in August.
• I have been swimming in the Matanzas just below a Spanish Conquistador fort made of cannon shell-absorbing coquina. 
• I have thrown rocks into the Potomac while Mt. Vernon stood guard on the bluff above me.
• I have sat on the banks of the Weisse Lutschinethe reading Tolkien and wishing I could have been there with him when he painted his watercolors of Rivendell and imagined Gandalf flooding the Bruinen to demolish the Ring-Wraiths.
• I have slipped on the rocks below the Skunk River dam, visible only during the dry season.
• I have watched scullers on the Charles while the Pops played in the Hatch Shell.
• I have stared into the Seine just below the Ile de la Cite and thought about who else had walked the bridge and stood in the same spot.
•  I have white-water rafted on the Ocoee and the Nantahala during bonding experiences with my sister Nancy and her Wild Women friends.
•  I have stood quietly on the bow of a Rhine-steamer listening (in vain, alas) with all my heart and both my ears for the siren song of the Lorelei as the rock came into view around the bend of the river.
• I once tossed a small bouquet into the Avon in memory of the Bard.
•  I have punted on the Cam.
•  I had been in London less than a week when I fell for the lure of the Thames.  My room in Vincent Square was near the river and I walked along the Chelsea and Victoria Embankments daily. I never saw the sun rise over Parliament, but I watched more than a dozen sunsets over Battersea. I knew the river had gotten to me when, rather than drive 30 minutes to Richmond to tour Hampton Court Palace, I opted for the river road. I spent 3.5 hours on a cold, drizzly, dank morning:  watching the weirs flood, sitting in the locks, smelling the river. Loving life.

The water part of my Bucket List includes the Nile, the Pecos, the Orinoco, the Snake, the Liffey, the Amazon, the Colorado, the Yangzte, the Zambezi and the Euphrates. So, I feel for Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner’s frustration with the expanse of undrinkable water surrounding him. My frustration is almost as great – so many rivers, so little time. 

            

A Plan Comes Together

Hannibal Smith had it right when it told The A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.” Yesterday a plan I have had in mind for a long time finally came together, and it was as successful as I had hoped, despite a couple of bumps.

I loathe alarm clock noises. The mechanical beeps are never what I want to hear in the morning and the radio station always seems to be on commercial, never a good song. A friend showed me how to set my television to turn on automatically, so for years I woke up to the voices of WJXT’s The Morning Show crew. These men and women talked TO me, not AT me, at least it seemed that way to me at 5:00 AM. (Not my peak time of day!) They never knew I talked back to them, commenting on news stories, weather/traffic updates and person-to-person teasing. Combining professionalism and personality, they always responded when I emailed questions on stories or notes on Middleburg’s weather. They sent me off to school every morning in a good mood, armed with tidbits of gossip and news that enlivened 1^st period and contributed to my students’ erroneous belief that I knew everything!

A year or so ago a friend complained about how much she hated getting up in the morning because everyone in her home was cranky and irritable. She said she envied me being single because I woke up with no one whining. Her mouth fell open when I replied, “I don’t wake up alone; I have my crew.” Once I explained, Clary shook her head and turned away muttering, “Oh, Marty, those aren’t people. That’s a television show.” I didn’t go after her; I knew I could never get her to understand my relationship to the show. No one does.

My Mom was staying with me once and we got into a discussion about my alarm clock alternative. She was amazed I had never tried to meet the people who got me going in the morning, especially after she watched a few shows and realized how community-involved approachable they seemed. She was excited about some event, an ArtWalk, I think and said, “Let’s go find Richard and Bruce. I can’t wait to meet them!” She sounded like she had known the guys for years and had just hung up from a telephone conversation with them! We didn’t go, but I started thinking about a way to thank a group of folks I had never met for giving me a gift they never knew existed.

A couple of weeks ago at dinner, friends asked how I was dealing with retirement. I replied that I was relishing no schedules and no time constraints. I could literally do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Natalie asked, “Such as?” I blurted, “I can deliver muffins to The Morning Show.” She replied, “Cool. I know Nikki, I’ll let her know.” Bingo! My thank you issue was solved.

I emailed Nikki for directions and we set a date for muffin delivery. I chose to schedule it for before the show aired at 4:30 AM because I figured driving would be easier at the crack of dawn than after the show ended at 9:00 AM.

Wednesday night during the 121212 Concert for Sandy Relief, I baked five dozen muffins. Hey, it was hours of fabulous music and I HAD to do something instead of just sitting! Somehow, even this turned into an adventure!

I discovered I never got one of my muffin pans back from a loan, so I was operating with one baking pan. As the first batch cooled, I realized I had no idea how to package the muffins. Unlike brownies or cookies, I couldn’t just stack them in a box. While I was measuring to cut up extra Christmas gift boxes and layer them on short lengths of wrapping paper tubing in a delivery box from Amazon, the timer for the second batch went off.  I prepared the third batch while thinking about the loading issue and relishing Bon Jovi and The Boss duet rocking on “Back Home.” Song over, muffins in oven, I discovered an eggshell fragment on the lip of the batter bowl. RATS! I could not take a chance on muffins containing eggshell bits; some one might crack a tooth! The possibly contaminated treats were dumped in the trash and off I went to the grocery store to get more ingredients. While there I had a brainstorm and asked the woman shutting down the bakery if I could buy five cupcake carriers. She asked what for, I explained and she raved, “Oh, The Morning Show! I LOVE those guys!” and gave me the carriers for free. (Happy holidays, Julia, you solved my problem!)

The concert ended, the muffins baked and packed, I realized it was a bit after midnight and I would have to get up in a couple of hours, so I just stayed up. I baked brownies for my Post Office, insurance agency, library and bank buddies. My house smelled fabulous even if I now have to plan a pantry-restock.

I left my house at 3:00 AM, followed my car’s GPS directions into the bowels of Jacksonville to the Channel 4 building. The drive was easy – only one red-light all the way. Just one crinkle when the GPS voice said, “Turn left” and I didn’t see an immediate left. But one u-turn later I was parking in the lot. I was welcomed with open arms and smiling faces. The staffers huddled around sampling muffins and thanking me. Tarik had a muffin out of the first box before I had even put the others on the counter. Melanie, Ashley and Nikki were as charming and vibrant with enthusiasm in real life as they appear on television. (I love it when expectations are exceeded!)

They went to work and I went home, filled with a sense of completion and joy. I fulfilled my promise to myself to in some small way let these people know how they reach and affect their usually invisible audience. I got home to find that their influence was wider than I thought – they had posted a Thank You on their FB page, which brought comments from friends. My warm fuzzy of accomplishment swelled a bit.

Retirement means I seldom use my television alarm clock system anymore, so I usually tune in for only the last hours or so of the show. I may not desire a “frosty beverage” before breakfast, but I do desire my daily dose of The Morning Show. They are my A-Team.

Lots of Fish in the Sea

          While in the bank this morning, I heard the woman behind me in line declare (somewhat scornfully) to the person on the other end of the cellphone connection, "There's a lot of fish in the sea." I have not been able to get the phrase out of my mind. Even though I can attest to the validity of this statement after scuba diving for a decade, the denizens of Florida’s reefs and shallows are not the image that has nagged at me all afternoon. Instead, I focused on the shelves of books that proliferate in my home.

            Books. Books. Books. I am addicted to them. I used to believe the printed word was the basis of my addiction; that was before I discovered the portability of e-books, audio-books and that BOTH could be loaded on my iPod/iPad to be enjoyed nearly everywhere. I was standing in a really, really long grocery line the other evening paging through The Iliad on my iPod when the woman in back of me asked what I was doing.  Her curiosity had been aroused because she could not see my earbuds and wondered if I had new ones that were invisible. When I replied that I was reading Homer, she grinned and asked, “ Is the sea still wine-dark?” WOW! I had an instant new friend. We paid for our supplies and adjourned to O'Charley’s for a drink and stuffed mushrooms. When we left an hour later, Sheryl had decided to buy an e-reader on the way home. I had made a convert to the digital age.

            However, the book-addict whose digital conversion I have most enjoyed has been my Mom. She spent my formative years espousing the joys of reading…in her 70’s she found audio-books and discovered that “reading” can also be “listening.” Then last year my brother gave her a Kindle and she currently has nearly 100 books loaded. She espouses her device because it weighs less than many of the hardback books she owns and as she approaches 90, she admits her wrists and arms are not as strong as they used to be. Plus, she can carry her books with her in her pocketbook.

Aside:  As we progress deeper into the 21^st century and delve more into the elastic nature of literacy, we need to consider seriously the notion that encouraging students to “read” books aurally will expose many to texts they would never sit down and look at. Is that wrong? Is it heretical from a teacher of Language Arts? Is the nature of language evolving as literacy does?

            Back to my addiction.  I remember from some research paper done by a former student that there are about 30,000 fish varieties in the world. I have not read 30,000 books, but I was intrigued and began to count my volumes. I stopped at 413.  This counting offered demonstrative proof that I am eclectic, as my collection involves more than a dozen genres and ranges from an etiquette text written in 1848 to the latest Clive Cussler adventure.  This counting also made me wish I had paid attention to Mrs. Day, the Children's Section librarian of the Peabody Institute Library in Danvers. She tried over and over again when I was in 4th grade to get me to write an index card for every book I finished. I never got into the habit, which I regret because I could use that resource when trying to remember the title of a long forgotten novel. Case in point - Mom and I read a science fiction book back in the late 60's-early 70's wherein the Venusians who came to save Earth had a spaceship that morphed into a VW Beetle and when no one listened to their message, made all the coffee in the Pentagon turn green! We remember lots of details but neither the author nor title.  

            I have wandered off topic again. Books are vital to my happiness. It matters not if those books are pick-them-up-and-turn-the-pages ones, audio ones or e-prints. As long as I have something to read that stimulates my mind.  Just imagine how wonderful my life will be when Apple tweaks the iPod so that I can use it underwater. I can float 40 feet underwater surrounded by parrot fish munching on the reef life and read Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Teleporting

      My love affair with what’s over the horizon/around the corner just out of sight began, I am certain, when Peter Pan told Wendy, John and Michael, "second star to the right, and straight on till morning."  It was nurtured by reading folk tales like, “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” George MacDonald’s Behind the North Wind and Robert Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky. It came to fruition when I heard James Tiberius Kirk deliver his “Beam us up, Scotty.” command. Behind the desire to explore, however, sits the caution that was awakened when I read Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” and realized that sometimes travel could be more hazardous than a physical danger to my own self. Nonetheless, imaging other places and times is a part of the essential me, though I do acknowledge that many of my travels would be to see for myself descriptions originated in novels, poems and songs; I lack the temperament just to walk out the door and wander aimlessly – sadly, I require a destination…and a bathroom with hot running water.

      A few years ago, I had my students imagine they could teleport – not time travel – around the world. I gave them 50 teleports within 24 hours and asked them to research where they would go and why. (Notice the lengths to which I went to trick teenagers into completing the state’s required research threads.) I introduced the assignment by listing my own choices.  To my chagrin I did not keep a copy (I’ve looked) but the ones I remember are below.

In no particular order, my teleports would allow me to

·       Shiver on a mountain ridge in Terra del Feugo staring at pounding seas of the Straits of Magellan

·       Wander the ruins of Angkor Wat mouth agape at the structures

·       Peer over the rim of Mauna Kea gagging on the sulfurous stench of the molten lava

·       Meander the ruins of Persepolis and dream of the days of Xerxes and Darius

·       Stand on the banks of the upper Amazon and watch the piranha demolish a full grown jaguar foolish enough wade

·       Put my hand into the snows of Kilimanjaro and wonder if MacComber really was a coward

·       Watch the Aurora Borealis from the “front yard” of an igloo north of Nome

·       Smell the tar sands of Athabasca

·       Dive the Sea of Cortez and play with the manta rays and the grey whales

·       Sit on the beach in Bora Bora waiting for a real-life Gardner McKay to arrive

·       Watch the sun rise over the Great Pyramid and then set in the Valley of the Kings

Two things are now obvious – I am reader of eclectic literature and a die-hard romantic. When teleportation arrives, I will have so many stamps in my passport that it will need extra pages…if anyone still has a passport then!

Avoid the Mundane

My childhood was crammed with instances of parental insistence that children need to look beyond the mundane - to find the adventure in life. When I was 2, I sat on a buffalo. When I was 9, I rode in a howdah atop an elephant. When I was 14, I walked ’tween decks of the U.S.S. Constitution. When I was 17, I spent the night in General Israel Putnam's rope-mattressed bed.  

One exceptionally non-mundane event occurred when I was waaay beyond childhood and adolescence. In fact, I was well into late middle-age!

I had to have a hysterectomy. The surgeon told me I would have to spend about a week “being very careful” about picking up “heavy objects,” which Dr. C. defined as “anything heavier than an empty aluminum frying pan.” When I told my parents I was scheduled for surgery and a week of  “moving slowly and carefully,” they immediately made plans to come to Florida and “take care of you, honey.”

The surgery went well, though it lasted 3 hours longer than Dr. C. had forecasted, which caused Mom nearly to expire in the waiting room. I was told he apologized profusely while explaining that the mass he removed was larger than he’d anticipated. Anyway, the day I was released from the hospital, my Dad drove us to my house. As we left the hospital parking lot, he asked what I wanted to eat, I directed him to my favorite Chinese restaurant. We parked and exited the car (very, very slowly and carefully), I was moving well until Dad asked, “Why are we eating at a place called ‘Uncle Pus’?” I nearly tore my stitches and staples laughing, then, explained the apostrophe was missing from Uncle Pu’s.

I had scheduled the surgery for my Christmas vacation (I would use fewer sick days), so I had a real live Christmas tree because I wanted the scent of the season to help me recover. It did, mellowing out everyone in the house. That must have been the reason behind what happened the day before Mom, Dad and I left for their home in North Carolina and the rest of my 6 weeks recuperation. Some of my students had come over to break down and remove the tree. They left when my Dad announced I was looking too tired. Then he astounded Mom and me when he appeared from the garage with my vacuum  cleaner and began to eradicate the pine needles on the floor, because he was afraid I might try to do it myself. 

Since I could only travel for a few hours at a time, Dad took the literal scenic route from Middleburg to Charlotte turning a seven hour drive into two full days of mini-adventures. We spent the night at a motel next to the fruitcake bakery/factory in Claxton, Georgia, stopped to see the Smallest Church in America in South Newport, Georgia, and shopped at an honest-to-God Woolworth’s 5 and 10 cent store in South Carolina.

That time my parents came south to baby their fifty-plus-year-old child reaffirmed what I learned during my childhood in Danvers: Every day holds the possibility of adventure. Dad has been dead for several years, but he would be heartened to know I am still trying to avoid the mundane and finding scenic routes through life.

The Scenic Route

Starting a blog reminds me of moving into a new place: What color will I paint the walls? Where will I hang which pictures? How many times will I have to arrange the furniture until I find  THE positions which best suit that particular room and my needs? In blogging, my decisions were parallel ones about space arrangement, color and imagery. (What is the blog-verse version of an interior designer? Does the concept of feng shui apply to blogs?)

Anyway, I like this background image. The road is picturesque, and I have yearned for years to take the scenic route. My desire for what William Least Heat Moon called "blue highways" is possibly the result of having a Mom who at nearly 90 remains an inveterate commenter on scenery - "Look at that rock strata!"  or "Let's explore here for just a bit, okay?" More likely though it's a consequence of traveling alone; spinsterhood means I am unencumbered by someone else's demands, so I should have been able stop whenever and where ever I wanted to investigate whatever grabbed my attention. Not the way it really happened - I spent decades of vacations "watching the clock" so I would not be late returning to school. "The fastest way between two points is a straight line." described my traveling habits. I never had time to relish the journey.

Now I do.

The time factor segues into another reason this photo by Josh Peterson appeals to me - it's blurry (not a reflection of Peterson's photographic skills, I am sure!). Unfocused is how I feel right now. And that's very, very different from the previous four decades when I knew exactly where I'd be when from class period to class period - standing in a classroom teaching Language Arts to high schoolers. I am no longer traveling that concrete multi-lane superhighway that was my professional life. I no longer "have" to get up in the morning. I no longer answer to any bell. I no longer park in an assigned slot, nor do I eat lunch at a prescribed hour. 

I now spend each day on my own schedule - no, that's not it. I now spend each day with NO schedule!

Retirement offers scenic routes which are unregulated and varied. Roads rather than super-highways. turn offs rather than off-ramps. Route Option 3 rather 1 on my car's GPS.

My time is as wide-open as my route. I am no longer "under deadline" and can savor every journey.