Morning Thoughts

First, Fred asked me to mention that he is having networking problems with his computer but it will get sorted out eventually and he will be back!

Last night I slept very restlessly. This was a combination of walking over 11,00 steps {Yes! I am still amazed! } and forgetting to take my pills. I usually take one naproxen {think generic Advil} and 40 mg of nortriptylene. This wonderful {and generic} drug quiets my restless legs AND is a mild antidepressant.  It also helps me sleep more deeply. I will remember to take everything tonight.

The high school theatre director called me this morning and even though I forgot the last appointment, still wants me to come at 7:30 tonight to help his students have authentic-sounding English accents. I have taken a piece of printer paper, written myself a reminder in red and have it attached to the door right now. Before I leave for class this afternoon, I will put it on my computer monitor!

My favorite ex-boss who is now a children’s librarian at another library has asked me to teach poetry writing as part of the program for home-schooled children that the local libraries run every year. My contribution will be in December. Teaching people to write poetry used to be one of my favorite things to do when I taught seventh graders. I used to spend six weeks on doing this three days a week and it was great fun. The best thing about it for the children is that there is basically no wrong answers! It is like art. One learns the basic skill and then one puts oneself into it.

The best part for me was waiting for the person I mentally thought of as the Break-Through Student. There was always one student,and in the years when I was lucky, more than one, who suddenly found that he was a poet. It was, oddly enough, almost always a boy. I loved it when he found that this kind of writing was fun and that he had a gift for it. I particularly remember AJ, a new student to our school, the only Hispanic person in the school, who had been brought by his mother to this area because his father was physically abusing him. He was belligerant and mouthy and had trouble with authority and yet this boy wrote beautiful thoughtful poetry with careful and detailed observations. He was thrilled when I asked if I could read a poem he wrote about a rabbit to the class because of the carefully chosen and closely observed descriptive details he had included. I used to do this quite a lot as I walked round reading as they were writing. I would say, "Listen to how AJ has included…See if there is anywhere in your poem where you can do this kind of thing, too." The rabbit poem was because we were at the time reading Watership Down   and AJ liked it so much he asked me if he could keep a copy in his backpack to read ahead!

Ok, time for me to get organized for class. More drawing of a model with charcoal this afternoon… I still don’t like charcoal although I can see the value of it is helping me see what should be light and what should be dark…

Until later…