Barefoot in the Grass

Wow … in the middle of the rush of the end of the school year, I came across this quote (to follow) and I had to post it. But first, I should post my number 1 favorite quote, which is by the same man. And yes, it is on my mind now because its my message to seniors who bring me their yearbooks … “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And to that one, I leave this one … “Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson … even with people, even with history, this has value. For science is that which can be observed and documented.

It makes you think then, what is a student…?

I started this reflection this morning thinking of death, though not in a sad, morbid way, but in the stories that surround those that die. Everyone who dies has a story. Some, from the point in the process that started this line of thought, have a love story that remains behind. Some love, some are loved, and in the truest sense of the word, I suppose that means a person is both; loved and loves–always active.

So I looked up death and education, wondering if there was a quote that would link one with the other, as this blog is about eduction and history. History of course, is full of death. I recently bought a book that was supposed to help kids make connections with the past, but I just can’t (yet) bring myself to use it. I’m still processing the amount that is placed on the side that there is no connection between us–the living–and them–the dead.

So I came across this quote by William Butler Yeats: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

What can light the fire more–the voices of those who lived, or the mistakes of those who died? I suppose the phrase could be turned around to the voices of those who died and the mistakes of those who lived, but what’s the inspiration of that? If the only thing we are to be remembered for is our mistakes, what then is the point of living?

The truth is, I think, that mistakes are part of both living and loving. Maureen Duffy (contemporary British poet) said that “the pain of love is the pain of being alive. It is a perpetual wound.” Lisa Hoffman said that “love is like pi — natural, irrational, and VERY important.” Nora Roberts (novelist) said that “love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.”

And doesn’t practice denote that mistakes were made? And possibly are meant to be made?

Thomas Edison probably knew more about mistakes, and the mistakes of the people around him (as he ran something like a research facility) than most of us will ever know. He looked at his failures as discoveries, finding all the ways that would not work instead. And his advice? “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

Anna Louise Strong said that “to fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.”

The study of those who died, is the study of those who lived. May their lives light the fire in our mind, for in the end, is it that fire that moves us forward on that quest? Is it that fire that helps us become “the person one desires to be?”

Death, love and education … to those we remember, and to what we remember. Hopefully, it helps us become something we want to be remembered.

Goodness knows I think about this a lot … so I had to go back and check to see if I had written about this before. Our school motto was, for a long time, if you dream it, you can achieve it. Its not so original, as it can be seen, heard, spit out … all over the place. Still, I’m not sure that everyone–my students or anyone else–really knows how to dream.

So I’ve been thinking about that as Iwrite this blog today. What does it take to dream? I suppose one could just dream, to “get me out of here.” Is that really dreaming? I suppose it is. Is out of here really a place to want to go? Sometimes, not. In fact, I tihnk of one of my students who told me that everyone needed to spend time in jail. Seriously, I disagree.

So who had dreams? This week, I’ll be finishing the Renaissance and moving on toward the Reformation. Michaelangelo had a dream, full of details and brilliance, high in the air on scaffolding. There, the details in his mind covered a ceiling, leaving behind resonance and breath-taking beauty, evidence of his vision, passion, skill and work.

Leonardo had 5000 pages to note down his thoughts and his dreams, though restless, I wonder if he found himself trapped, wondering … unable to find that place he so wanted to go.

Luther, who I’ll talk about this week, was wrestless … his only dream at first was to please a wrathful and angry God, but his dreams and vision changed. I wonder if he ever felt the fulfillment of reaching that dream, in a non-spiritual way. Did he know where he was going and what he wanted? In many ways the passions of the Catholic church, kings and peasants carried him along. Did his dreams change?

Peter the Great, had a dream, for a westernized, modern Russia, for a navy, and a beautiful city. I suppose in all the people I’ve mentioned so far … there’s evidence that Peter did achieve his dream–several of them. He wanted a boat, so he set out, used his own hands, and built that boat. He wanted a glorious city, he fought for it, waged war, and forced it out of the land with blood and sweat. A friend of mine calls St. Petersburg more glorious than Versaillses itself. So at least we know there was one dream that he fulfilled.

Andrew Carnegie, who I’ll also talk about next week in US History, started out in poverty and grew into one of the wealthiest men in America~was that his dream? Or did he just want fulfillment? Whatever the case, he got to the top, dominated the landscape, and realized that to die with wealth was to waste one’s life.

I read and retweeted a quote past on from a friend. This guy said “if you dont appreciate a free education, you will prob never get music biz…” And I think of all the kids who have these dreams. Some have talent, some just know music, and some just … live in the music, I suppose. The quote came to mind as I wrote this, as I thought about the idea of dreams. A long time ago, when P. Diddy was working with his second season of (the second grouping on) Making of the Band, I found therapy listening to him. Here, I can’t give my kids their dreams … and he could. Yet, they refused what he offered. They’d never really learned to do and be what they thought they wanted to be–the dream wasn’t worth the work it took.

Had they really dreamed it, then? If this favorite motto that falls everywhere … is in fact true, then a dream is in fact something you work for and not just something you think about.

Education then has to do two things. For one, it must expose–to the greats, who were there before–and to the fields and future fields, to the possibilities, and the knowledge, to the world and to the workforce. And yet it also has to train, to work. To Live. To press on and move on.

I wonder then, if to dream means to press on with the vision before you. To dream is to be in movement, improving yourself, not just living, but taking steps to live as you focus on your goal.

To dream cannot just be the possibility before you. To dream must be the part of the movement of your day.

It is active.

To be continued …. eventually.

http://blogginginthedark.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/writing-hero/

No one likes to do homework.  Well, few like homework.  Very few.

But there is an importance to train yourself to do what is hard, what is unnatural, for one day, you’ll need to storm through the barriers and fight for your dreams.

The above blog, to me, speaks to this philosophy.  Success takes work.

And those that try … really fight through the trials … are heroes.

I have a problem.  As I find new quotes for my signature, I can never figure out which one I want to delete.  So my list of quotes simply grows.  The one I discovered recently is: “People cannot discover new lands until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~ André Gide 

I was thinking about this today in connection to my students writing and work.  Sometimes I set my expectations high and I wonder if its too high or too low. Sometimes I beat myself up over it, trying to find the balance of pushing and pulling.  And yet, unless students try something new, do something new, find out something new, they never discover anything about the world or about themselves.  It is in the journey, in the trial, the winds and waves of the adventure that we learn the most.

I am so proud of my students.  I see improvement in their work.  Do they like doing it?  No … well, sometimes they don’t complain so much :p … but I love that I see improvement.  I love that they start turning in work and they are not struggling, or they got in on the first try.

Hopefully, this means they have discovered a new world.  Even if it was just the other side of the island.

I recently watched a documentary on Death Valley.  It was interesting itself just to see how the desert lived and how it was in continual change; of how the basics of geography were created from within.  Alluvial fans, canyons, cliffs.

There are people who monitor, and study.  Watch and wait.  There are people who train for and run marathons, whose body metabolisms have to adjust and evolve to take on the desert heat.  The walls of the valley create a reheating effect that makes the ground heat to over 200 degrees.

And yet, there is life.  No humans live there, but there is life.

Still, what brings me here to write is not the floor of the valley, but the sky.  There are people there that monitor the stars … and the effects of the encroaching city lights of Las Vegas.

Of all the things we have that are precious resources, I have never considered (in those terms) the sky one of them.  I do now.

I was a city girl, plain and simple, growing up.  I used to look up at the night sky and wonder about the story of Abraham from the Bible–why was it such a big deal that he was told his children would number the stars?  Couldn’t he count them?

Of course, Abraham’s vision of the night sky was so different from our own.  In fact, only in the last 100 years has our vision of the night sky been altered.  For most of human history–the scientist on this documentary pointed out–the nighttime television for people was the night sky.  Now, in our citified worlds, with lights and televisions, we’re distracted by our own tvs as our night sky slowly disappears.  Our attentions are focused on the crass and the inane, the stories of present day, and we miss the stories of the ancients that rest right above our heads.

No wonder the people of the past created stories under of the stars.

In Death Valley, scientists watched the encroaching lights of Las Vegas.  They monitor progress of the city and try to keep it away from Death Valley’s night sky.

But I wonder … what would it be like for us, in our light polluted night skies, if we could just go out and look up.

And imagine.

I just recently read a post on a discussion board about how someone saw the Mona Lisa and that it was “not all that.”  Which is possibly true.  I have never seen the Mona Lisa in person.  However, it is important to remember that the Mona Lisa can’t be judged against art today, but are of the 13 and 1400s.

From my perspective, there are several things that make the Mona Lisa important.  The first is the Leonardo finished little of his work.  The Mona Lisa is one of the few things we have from him.

That does not make the painting great, I know.

I think what makes the Mona Lisa great is the use of shadows.  Art historians with more knowledge of art may disagree, and I would love an explanation as to why, but it is my understanding that both Leonardo and Michaelangelo’s use of shadows and light revolutionized painting.

It is really sad when the greatness of history loses its mark because of a lack of understanding and education.  We owe those people who brought us to this point the respect of acknowledging their work in their time period.

Without the art of Michaelangelo and Leonardo, we wouldn’t have the many images from the Sistine Chapel, and we might not have reached toward the world we can build on film in CGI.

Without Galileo, despite his mistakes, or even Aristotle, despite his, could we have ended up on the moon?

I have started reading Joy Hakim’s book, the Story of Science: Einstein adds a new dimension.  In the introduction, Hakim talks about the wonder and the mystery of learning about science, even when you don’t understand the depth of it all.  I think of not just of the universe, but of history itself, and how it formed.  I think of cake—or even more so bread.

Bread is the foundation of life.  The lack of it was a major cause in the French and Russian revolutions.  It has the connation of hearth and home, reportedly served in prisons, and the idea of it being sliced relates to the best idea ever.

But it perplexes me, how someone figured out how to make bread … or even more so cake.  The history of bread can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians.  Here is a simple Egyptian recipe:

A Recipe for Egyptian Bread (http://members.cox.net/ahmedheissa/recbread.htm0 Ingredients: 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour; 7 oz. water; 1/2 tsp. salt; 1/4 oz. Dry Yeast;

Bake Like an Egyptian

1) Put flour and salt in an oversized bowl.
2) Mix Dry Yeast with the water.
3) Slowly add water.
4) Take turns kneading the dough.
5) Spread flour on a clean, flat surface.
6) Roll dough into small balls.
7) Form balls into flat round shapes or triangles.
Cover with a cloth for one to two hours only.

In one to two hours:
Bake bread on a greased sheet for 30 minutes at 350 Degree heat.

Good Luck.

(I love the good luck.)  First of all, flour comes from wheat.  Wheat comes from grass looking stalks.  You don’t bake wheat in its grass form.  You have to separate it by beating it, drying it, or using mortar and pedestal.

So who figured this out first?  Hmm . .. I think I’ll mix these grainy looking things with water and salt, and then add yeast.  Wait.  Fungus?  Who thought that was a great idea?  And somehow it was.

Then there’s cake.  This perplexes me most.  Who figured out that to mix wheat—as we said comes from grass like substance, with sugar from reeds or trees, with eggs that come from a rear end of a chicken … none of it makes any sense, but somehow, someway, it happened …

How do we know?  We don’t.  But at the center is the core of philosophy … how do we know?  How do we seek knowledge and truth?  Are the only answers within ourselves?  Or is proof able to be explored with the senses?

In the end, even in the discipline of history, we only know the shadow of what happened.  If we could go back in time, it’s probably going to look and feel different from the image we’ve constructed in our minds.  Still, isn’t that what the imagination’s for?  To attempt fathom the universe, the  wonder of it all.  To remember the lives of people …

To revel in the wonder … of the ever increasing universe within our own mind.

My dad talks about leading the band through the halls of his high school in what he called the snake.  He was a drum major, and he was obviously in the band.  It was part of him.  I grew up with those images of high school in my mind.

On the side of my high school class ring is a golden sandstorm.  It seems odd, even today, for that to have been my mascot.  My students—yes you guys—all think its funny.  In a way, it is.  I even admit I was excited to get to a school in college that had a real mascot that could lead cheers from the side of the field.

However, I love that I was a Golden Sandy.  It came from history, as the dust bowls rose across the plains and teachers had to sweep out their rooms when it was over.  We were 100 years old, the oldest high school of four, and I believe the first high school (or one that remained) in Amarillo.  People raised their hands in the shape of a pistol (a Texas thing) and sang the alma mater at pep rallies.  I think I irritated the guy next to me at graduation (sorry whoever you were XD) because I had been in the band and didn’t know how to hold my hand properly.

There were other traditions at AHS.  I think oddly one of my fondest is the band, marching out on the football field, being called to attention, and letting out that resounding “Huh.”  Even at practice, we stood stock still.  When the mosquitoes came (and boy did they ever), we stood still as the drum majors or section leaders walked around with bug spray.  I think we did it because it was all part of what made that moment on the field so great.

Sounds odd, putting it in writing, but it echoed across the stadium and the crowd would cheer.  And it was a Texas-sized crowd every game, the lights on the field were bright (when it was night), and we stood there–as still as possible.

I think traditions are one of the things that makes high school tolerable, because otherwise, for so many teenagers, it’s such an angsty, drama filled path.  Highs schools are diverse; they are filled with people that have nothing (at times) in common with other people that they see every day.  It seems hard to believe in and celebrate diversity when you can’t even find or celebrate traveling together.

Tradition, common moments, make students part of something.  They are a family.  They are tied by the home field relationship.  They are—we are—one.

Sadly enough, I fear that test scores, tests, and other outside hindrances, are talking the family sense away from school.  We work, we try, we go home.  We don’t celebrate what makes us a group.

I thought of this today because we have added our alma mater.  It comes after the pledge of allegiance.  As we listened (not yet knowing the words) I thought of why we say the pledge.  According to my sociology notes, saying a pledge of allegiance makes people feel, or eventually feel part of something; one goal, one voice.

How far off your path do you wander … when you know you know where you want to go?

You made this path, one of your own dreams—the one less traveled, the one you cut, traveled only by you.  Suddenly you stop.

Foliage dense, dark.
Blocked with boulders—landslide*
You look around for something, anything, to keep you moving …

Do you hone your craft?
Do you risk leaving the path?
Do you sit and wait?
Do you run the away?
Do you go back,
take the previously traveled path?
Do you kneel down and in the dirt, dig your way through the rubble?
Do you turn toward a path where the wise of wandered?
Do you look for the closest light in the darkness?
Do you stop and consider the hard path—
the one you feared before?

Does the mountain top seem as steep ?
Does faith take a leap?
Do you blame the mountain for the rubble
That has caused your pace to stumble?

What do you consider this delay?

*(landslide … aka this 2009 economy or a tragedy or your own self esteem, or …).