Valentine's Day After

I missed Valentine's Day this year.  Seems I'm always living somewhere in Nostalgia.  Who can fault me, though, for looking over my shoulder at some of my happier moments.  I was five when I first knew anything about Valentine's Day.  My teacher that year decorated a large, round hatbox and sat it on top of the piano in our classroom.  The box was covered in red and pink and white with lots of lacy doilies marching all around the outside of the box.  She cut a slit in the top, and invited us to drop our Valentines into the box.  For days and days, kids carried white envelopes in their sweaty little palms and dropped them dutifully into the large hatbox.  Finally the big day arrived.  Two homeroom mothers marched into the classroom with boxes of fluffy pink-frosted cupcakes. Red paper plates held red hots, sugary conversation hearts, potato chips, and heart-shaped cookies.  Then it was time to remove the lid from the hatbox and hand out the Valentines to every child in the class.  Our teacher picked up the box, gave it one last shake, and went  to work. When I think about that holiday and all the fun things we did, I want to hug someone. I only have warm feelings, the beginning of love, the sweet taste of fluffy pink-frosted cupcakes, and the belief that the world was a happy and loving place.  The hatbox didn't hold a hat.  It held all the romance, intrigue, and mystery of love, tied up neatly in white, pink, and red. What did I know of love?  What did I need to know?  Simple times. No wonder I love Nostalgia.      

Awake for a 5 Minute Friday

I'm linking up with The Gypsy Mama for her 5-Minute Friday writing series.  This is my first attempt, so here goes...

GO!   My take on the word awake is to think of it as two words.  A wake.  A wake is observed when a person dies.  Now don't go calling me dark and depressed, just because I am considering that life will end.  It will, you know.  It will perhaps end when you least expect it.  So my topic is instead life, because a wake could come sooner than later.  Wakes are good things.  Observing a wake is observing the life of one who breathed, skipped, cried, slept, laughed--hopefully, often.  Wakes are evidence that a person mattered.  We need to remember that people matter.  Even if we think some of us matter less than others.  Every life has value and importance.  It's good to remind ourselves of this once in a while.    STOP!




That's it!  Let me know what YOU think, please!!

Time in a Bottle

Here's a suggestion. Make a list of all the digital devices, products, and services you use every day. Even if you don't use a smart phone--I don't--your list is still a long one.  Laptop, cell phone, GPS, Facebook, PDA, Gmail, Skype, iTunes, Twitter, pocket video camera, YouTube, GoogleDocs. . . and the list goes on. And on. And on.  The Age of Digital Distraction is here!  And from the looks of things, it's here to stay.

It's ironic that a lot of that digitalization was actually intended to save our time, not zap it.  How many people do  you know who set a timer in their cell phones as a reminder? How many people buy postage online to avoid standing in lines at the post office? Would you agree that sending an email or posting on Facebook is a faster way to communicate?  But the constant use of these otherwise helpful devices, products, and services has changed the way we view our time.  It has become blatantly evident that we are engaged in a battle for time.  This battle is waged every day in my classroom, and it is a battle that must be managed at all costs.

The battle for time is actually a battle for attention.  Even at my bank, a sign hangs in the window that reads Do not use cell phones while in line, please.  That's a direct request.  It's appalling that it's even necessary to remind people to be attentive to the task at hand.  So the battlefield for the attention of others is waged on many fronts.  The workplace, the medical facility, the highways.  Even my most intimate friends are more likely to interrupt our time together in order to answer a cellphone.  I've grown tired of having my time with that person intruded upon, often multiple times during a single meeting.

If I sound too dramatic, it's because the problem is a large and complicated one.  This problem is complicated because it adds a dimension, a new mindset, for the way people view time.  And by that I mean the way they view the anticipation of time passing, the concept of estimating time required to complete a goal, and the belief that attention can be diverted during the completion of a task with the expectation that the same results will be achieved.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not about to give up my laptop or email or GoogleDocs, or anything else I use.  But I have been affected by the overuse of these things just like my students are affected.  I know it's a real problem.  So what is the solution?  Or should I say solutions?

I recently read a book called the Pomodoro Technique.  It's a short book, available from the website, that can be read in about an hour.  After reading it, I decided to give it a try.  On Monday, I will begin to use the Pomodoro Techinique in my ninth-grade classroom.  We start a new semester on that day.  It's like having a new slate, a new start, a new opportunity.  Stay tuned.  The battle begins.  

Pleasure Dome

I love to read.  In fact, for as long as I can remember, I have surrounded myself with the written word in one form or another.  When I was about eight years old, my dad purchased a set of Collier's Encyclopedias. We started out with 24 volumes, an atlas, a set of ten anthologies, and a yearbook.  Dad even built a great bookcase in the living room where we stored them and used them anytime we wanted.  Christmas vacations would find me curled up on the scratchy mohair couch, reading Hawthorne or Dickens.  One Christmas I read Little Women, and I was hooked.  That set of encyclopedias opened so many opportunities for me.   Books.  Lots of books.  Books that have become my pleasure dome. Never could I imagine then the places I would go in the books that I grew to love.  I have traveled the world!  An ancient wych elm between the garden and the meadow at Howard's End.  A black coal mine where Diamond Skinner will forever be twelve years old.  I am an intimate friend of Valentine Roncalli and Theodora Angelini in the Big Apple, and in my dreams, I slip a pair of their handcrafted-wedding-shoes-since-1903 on my size 6 feet.  I've read every single one of Ivy Rowe's love letters in the hollers of Kentucky.  I've seen Mariam and Laila without the burka, and I've passed the house in Kabul where their vicious abuser is buried in the garden under a tree.  Camel and Jacob, Marlena, Meg, Copper, Edna and Leonce Pontellier.  The names and places roll around in my head like the pieces in a bingo cage.  Grand Isle, I-64, the hills of Virginia, Afghanistan, Sicily, South Africa, England.  Sometimes, when it's very still and I'm alone, I imagine myself in one of those places.  And I have come to realize that there are worse ways to spend a life.