Objects: Part Three # 10 Added

I got this idea from Icklewriter who has to put together 10 objects to take with her {on a course }that represent her as she sees herself.  The earlier ones can be found in Entries called Objects: Part One and Objects: Part Two.

I was going to write a separate entry for #10 but decided to tuck it on the end here

     8. My next object is my passport. My United Kingdom passport, or actually it is now my European passport since we are all Europeans these days much to my sister’s dismay! The little town where I live is quite close to Burlington and Burlington, Vermont, has an International Airport. Today I was out walking and saw a plane flying over to gain height and I smiled as I was imagining someone on that plane taking off on the big adventure of flying to an unknown city or country. I didn’t start doing this until I retired, but I really enjoy travelling. So far, I have only been to England which is not really, for me, travelling into a foreign county since I was born there, but I also actually like the experience of travelling, of getting on a plane in one city and getting off that plane in another.

     9. Until I retired  about seven years ago, I was a teacher. I spent 29 years in the same rural school in Mississippi teaching English and writing to seventh graders. So, what can I bring to symbolize those years? Well, oddly enough, it is not a book or a piece of writing. What I would choose is a short tape of dance music– the music to the English country dance called “Sellenger’s Round: A Circle Dance for as Many as Will.” For many years I was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism  {SCA} {http://www.sca.org } There were many reasons I joined the SCA but what kept me in there was dancing. One day my lesson plan said I should teach my students how to write an explanatory piece of writing and one of the suggestions made in their text book was to write out the procedure of how to teach someone a dance. Much to my surprise, the students told me that they did not know any dances! So, the next day, I brought my tape player and a dance tape and all day I took each class into the gym and taught them to dance Sellenger’s Round! {My principal came in and asked what was going and and I said cheerfully, “Prewriting activity,  Mr. S!”} Now, I can’t say the writing assignment following this was excellent, but it sparked an interest in learning these dances in that year’s seventh grade. Within a couple of weeks I had 10 to 15 boys and girls staying on for an hour after school one day a week to learn English country dances and to dance in the gym for an hour. And what *I* learned from it and this made me a better teacher—was to go with the flow–to take advantage of what came up–to welcome serendipity.

     10. My last symbolic object is really two and both are related to the 50 pounds I have lost and the weight loss I have maintained for almost  six months. The first one was suggested by an OD reader who always thinks of me when she looks at hers and that is Marmite. If you don’t know anything about Marmite, please check at http://www.marmite.com.  I lost the weight by doing a couple of things that can be summed up as “Eat less; move more.” In the eating part, I counted calories and wrote everything down. The calorie count was 1350 calories per day, and, on the whole I had very little problem with this amount of calories. I have always known I prefer savory to sweet {hence the Marmite as a symbol} but I do like chocolate, so my second object is a popsicle stick that came from Schwann’s Fudge Sticks which, at 50 delicious calories per stick, were well worth it!