With Family

STORYLAND VALLEY ZOO
Nice shot, isn't it? I took it during a raptor demonstration at the zoo, on a magical day with daughters Rose & Laura, Rose's sweetie Ze'ev, and grandbabies Kaliana & Kai. Here's another one:

So proud to be riding on a pony!

A whole family life greeted me in Edmonton, in August, including days at the lake with Rose, Laura, and the two little 'Ks.' I got my nails done, got my hair done, and SCHOOL began to happen big time! (Is it obvious that I'm trying to catch up on my blog posts?) Meetings, home visits, watching with admiration as the WESE worker-women scrape and paint, saw and hammer, scrape and sew and transform three ordinary old classrooms into Waldorf places of wonder. Lesson planning, you may wonder? Mmm . . . I'm well behind in that department. And then, last weekend, a glorious mother/daughter retreat with my beloved singing sisters at Labyrinth Lake Lodge. (Oh! I didn't go as a grandmother, or even as a mother--I went as a DAUGHTER, with Kay as my other mother!) I was honoured with a ceremony (surprise!) recognizing my year away and my role in launching this new Waldorf program into the world.

My new students came to school yesterday afternoon to check out our new classroom, in preparation for their Big Day on Wednesday--so wonderful to see the classroom come alive with children!

Hey, today is watermelon day, in the French Republican Calendar--reminds me to be sure and enjoy summer's last juicy treats during these last few days of August!

This week Rudolf Steiner tells us:

I feel strange power, bearing fruit
And gaining strength to give myself to me.
I sense the seed maturing
And expectation, light-filled, weaving
Within me on my selfhood's power.

Closing a Chapter

WILTON IN JULY
singing; juggling; cycling in the dark; fireflies; drawing; clay modeling; javelin; discus; flowers; gymnastics; eurythmy; games; science demonstrations; essays; skits on adolescence; rain & heat; coyote spotting; thunder & lightning; the art of speech; hummingbirds; Gregorian chant; lectures & readings; GRADUATION; good-byes; great food; great friends; great fun

Home is Where the Heart Is

Yes, I've been home, home, home for a month now--aaahh!  While settling in, I felt a wariness in the part of me that wasn't quite certain I was really, truly back home to stay.  In another part of me, being in Edmonton felt so natural that perhaps I hadn't been away after all.  I felt confused about what season and month it was, having returned from a glorious New England spring and summer to Alberta's end-of-winter/early-spring brownness and barenness.  I came home to an instant life, swept into the busyness of family and events and things that needed doing, that had nothing to do with being a graduate student!  I've been dabbling in this and that since my return home, not seeming to accomplish much and feeling the lack of rhythm and regular routine in my life.  

Home is belongingness, confidence, inner peace, and joy.

FEED THE BIRDS

I'm the one who wanted to hang a bird feeder at the corner of our downtown balcony, and Ken humored me by installing it about a year and a half ago.  We watched and waited in vain to be discovered by the wee feathered folk.  This winter, the pillar poplars seemed to enjoy a growth spurt, and they are now as high as the balcony above ours.  And we have birds!  They are mainly LBJs--little brown jobs--and they are oh, so welcome, with their entertaining twittering and flitting about.

On this particular day of the year the French Republican Calendar honours the honeysuckle.  There are 180 species of this plant, at least one of which grows wild in Alberta.  It attracts hummingbirds, and some caterpillars feed upon its leaves.  May your day be as sweet as its nectar!

Our focus tends to be outward, during this season of waxing warmth and light.  (Our feeling soars into wide realms of space; we notice the ascent of the sun; inner events are experienced but dimly.)  Here is this week's verse from Steiner's  Calendar of the Soul:

To summer's radiant heights

The sun in shining majesty ascends;

It takes my human feeling

Into its own wide realms of space.

Within my inner being stirs

Presentiment which heralds dimly,

You shall in future know:

A godly being now touched you.

Lady April

Lady April has come to town, wearing a golden daffodil gown,
All the way from sunny Spain, Lady April has come again.

Celandine and cuckoo-flower dance beside her, hour by hour,
All the birds come out to sing, Lady April a-welcoming.

April, for me, has been about preparing and presenting--in particular, my Big Internship Week, when I was handed the reins for four consecutive main lessons in Grade Four, and my beautifully illustrated botany block book, the major assignment for my Waldorf curriculum class. April has been about greening grass, crocuses, daffodils, pansies, and forsythia. It has been about the most marvelous, melodic birdsong accompanying me on my short walk to school every morning, and the return of the morning doves, with their soft, distinctive hoots. Robins, squirrels, and blackbirds are everywhere, bustling importantly about. April, for me, has been challenging due to illness, and I'm wondering whether missing loved ones in Edmonton has made me more susceptible to whatever viruses are lurking about. I am feeling much heartier now, and a lot more cheerful!

THE GIFTS OF ABSENCE
My relationships with my husband and children have strengthened, during my time away, in unexpected ways. Ken and I have relied on our daily phone calls for mutual support, and I feel a deeper level of understanding, trust, and 'common ground' between us now. One of my children has opened up to me in a lovely, new way, sharing feelings about significant life events. Another of my children has grown healthily independent, learning to stand upright and cope with life's disappointments from a place of individual resourcefulness. I've been made to feel appreciated by my offspring in numerous ways--every mother's dream! Although Ken has been in my life for less than seven years, my children have been sure to include him in all family get-togethers during my absence--he is delighted and deeply touched! And he has bonded with 'my' grandchildren all the more strongly, given opportunities to play with them without their Baba 'interfering.' After every visit I am treated to a play-by-play description of everything Kaliana did and said!

What a wonderful family I have! Shall I sit back, and let them plan our future get-togethers?

SOUL LEARNING
Although there is a 'summer sequence' program at Antioch University, enabling teachers to complete my program during a series of summers, rather than relocating for an entire school year, I chose the 'year-round' program for two reasons. First, I am isolated in Edmonton, as there is no group of Waldorf colleagues there, with which to work. I wanted a 'Waldorf immersion' experience, and second, I wanted a transformational experience. Christopher Bamford articulates what I sought and have found beautifully, within his description of the sevenfold gift of 'Celtic Christianity,' in Chapter Six of his book, An Endless Trace:

" . . . there is deep love of learning and study, study as a curriculum of the soul. Too often, learning and study are discounted, if not abused and reviled, as synonymous with intellectualism abstraction, and literalism or conceptual bigotry. When study and learning are for the transformation of the student, and not for the mere accumulation of information, what is learned becomes who one is."
"The Celtic Christians were . . . interested in becoming fuller, more realized human beings. Their learning was not something other than who they were."
"They studied, they learned, in order to love. Their theology, their religion, was always practical, vibant with life, mystical."

CALENDARS
The Chinese almanac has summer coming in next week, on Tuesday, May 5 (New Hampshire didn't wait!). Today is lily of the valley day, in the French Republican Calendar. I have always loved this tiny flower's exquisite scent. Wikipedia tells us that, "traditionally, Lily of the Valley is sold in the streets of France on May 1. Lily of the Valley became the national flower of Finland in 1967. The meaning of this flower is 'You will find Happiness.'"

For your soul:

I sense a kindred nature to my own:
Thus speaks perceptive feeling
As in the sun-illumined world
It mergest with the floods of light;
To thinking's clarity
My feeling would give warmth
And firmly bind as one
The human being and the world.

When Icicles Hang by the Wall

When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,	5
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all around the wind doth blow,	10
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl—
Then nightly sings the staring owl	15
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Poetry by Wm. Shakespeare, of course . . . and 'keel' means skim (not scrub or stir, as I assumed). I suppose she's called greasy Joan because she likes to slurp the rich yellow globules of oil from the top of the simmering soup! Oh, yum!

The ICICLES are phenomenal, in size and number, on almost every building here in Keene. I have never seen so many icicles! They had to cordon off a section of playground at Monadnock Waldorf School, where I am interning here in Keene, because of those monstrous daggers of ice growing from the roofline of the two-storey brick building. When one of the teachers was able to knock the icicles down, some of the fourth-grade (they don't generally say 'grade four' here) students salvaged a wide group of fused icicles. They installed it in their snow fort, and it's the spiffiest snow fort window I have ever seen.

The self-portrait above is meant to be an indication of the height of the snowbanks in Keene. Schools closed on several different days in December and January, for 'Snow Days.' Apparently they build a few extra days into the school calendar each year, to allow for these impromptu days off. I'm very glad I took these photos last weekend, as the weather has been warm for a couple of days, and all the snow and ice is now shrunken and gray. I don't think there's a by-law here (as there is in Edmonton) mandating that homeowners keep sidewalks shovelled in front of their houses. Riding a bike earlier in the winter was a very bumpy experience. I arrived home after shopping one day with broccoli crumbs and flakes of onion skin all through my bag of groceries. Now I stay primarily on the roads--the very narrow roads. Snowbanks here are not picked up by trucks and carted off to snow yards, as they are in Edmonton.

ROBINS & SQUIRRELS
In the third week of January Miss Marshall called her fourth grade students to the classroom window to observe a tree full of robins. They were unmistakably robins, and you'll never see a robin in Edmonton in January! I've only ever seen them singly or in very small numbers (or else I haven't been very observant). For a couple of days, the schoolyard was inhabited by a great flock of redbreasts. And I guess the squirrels don't hibernate here, for I've noticed one or two scampering about recently.

STUDIES
Won't this blog be a lovely remembrance for me, when I return home to Edmonton? My posts are likely to be fewer and farther between this term, as compared with the fall term, for two reasons. First, I am required to keep a journal of my internship experiences, and I sometimes feel 'all journalled out' after spending Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in Miss Marshall's fourth grade classroom. Second, it's a busier term, and that's a happy reason for me! I'll be doing less whining about not having a life--nothing to do, and no one to do it with, that sort of thing. I am having to be very sanguine, in terms of the topics I am exploring for my classes. Here's my list:

• Fourth Grade: Norse myths, compound words, possessive nouns, fractions, 'the horse' (for Human & Animal), and the history and geography of Portsmouth, New Hampshire
• Waldorf School Administration: encouraging reluctant leaders, reincarnation & karma
  
• Waldorf Curriculum Preparation: Gilgamesh, Demosthenes, The Gulf Stream, Charlemagne & Harun al-Raschid, and a major project on Botany (Curriculum for fifth to eighth grades includes a number of topics about which I am utterly ignorant!)
  

The deal is not to cover the facts, but rather for the teacher to 'live into' the topic, and weave a story that encompasses its essential significance in lively pictures. I love this quote (from Dr. Grohmann's The Living World of Plants): "No single subject, whatever it may be, is without meaning for the development of the child's soul and spirit. It would perhaps be better to say that each subject has a very definite task to perform, which far exceeds its value as information."

CALENDARS
By golly, according to the Chinese almanac, spring arrived on Thursday! It will peak in March, and give way to early summer on May 5th. At Antioch University, September to December was the Fall Term, and the current one is the Spring Term. Isn't it fascinating how they have cancelled out winter altogether? Ken and I figured out that New Hampshire is receiving about an hour of daylight per day more than Alberta is, just now. Everybody's equal on the Equinox, and then Alberta begins to surpass New Hampshire in the race for the most sun time.

According to the French Republican Calendar, today is the day to give thanks for the lowly billhook. (No, I had no idea what it was, either.) Wikipedia tells us: "The billhook is a traditional cutting tool used mainly in European agriculture and forestry, but also common in other parts of the world where it was introduced by European settlers. It is used for cutting smaller woody material such as shrubs and branches." There's a photo of a billhook on the net, and it looks very much like the tool I bought from Lee Valley called a 'crack weeder'--not an elegant or mysterious name at all, is it?

To ponder in your soul:

My power of thought grows firm
United with the spirit's birth.
It lifts the senses' dull attractions
To bright-lit clarity.
When soul-abundance
Desires union with the world's becoming,
Must senses' revelation
Receive the light of thinking.

Giving Thanks

CEDAR WAXWINGS
I'm not certain they were cedar waxwings, high, high up in the bare branches of a tree near the bike path last Sunday, but that's my best guesstimate, according to a few bird sites that I visited on the web. They were impossible to ignore--a large flock twittering and carrying on like dozens of squeaky wheels. I hope to see more of them through the winter. We have chickadees here, just like the ones at home, and squirrels are still bustling about, although my squirrel sightings are much fewer and farther between than they were a month or two ago.

AMERICAN THANKSGIVING
Thanksgiving in the U.S. is a big deal--my university classes for the week were cancelled--and it is always held the fourth Thursday in November. I helped Jan, my landlady cook up a feast of turkey with gluten-free trimmings for a few of her friends. It felt quite strange to sit down to a turkey dinner with three complete strangers and my landlady (who is only an acquaintance, really). It felt as though I was in a movie about a somewhat odd assortment of people, brought together by somewhat odd circumstances to break bread and give thanks together. I am thankful for having this cosy bedroom in New Hampshire, for having a kitchen in which to cook, and for being able to cook and able to be of help. I am thankful for Thursday's social gathering, which was fun and entertaining.

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving here--the kick-off to the Christmas shopping season (my Christmas shopping is done, thank you very much!) and the busiest day of the year in retail stores in the U.S. I observed Black Friday by exploring a new-to-me bike trail at Ashuelot River Park, here in Keene. The photo above was taken there, and you can see more photos of the park by clicking here!

BEAUTY WALK
Some people refer to getting their 'beauty sleep,' and I rejuvenate by getting my 'beauty walks.' A beauty walk involves walking outdoors in nature, preferably with my camera, and it is done for the sake of both sanity and vanity! A Waldorf teacher from Alaska came to give a recruiting talk to my class a few weeks ago, and she shared the Northeners' Survival Secret with us. To cope with the severe cold and meagre daylight hours during winters that seem to go on forever, northeners get outdoors and get active every chance they get. Those Waldorf kids in Alaska spend more time outside during the school week in the frozen North than students do in the hospitable South. Works for me!

CYCLING THROUGH THE LEAVES
We're not 'dashing through the snow' yet, but in October I noticed with curiosity that homeowners here rake all of their leaves--and there are lots and lots of leaves--into piles and drifts along the sidewalks and curbs, instead of bagging them. My landlady, Jan told me that city crews come along in their trucks and vacuum up these piles of leaves. I even saw people in their yards riding on garden-tractor-vacuum machines. It was fun to ride my bike down the hill from Robin Hood Park, blasting through those leaf piles!

Last weekend it was capital-C Cold for the first time here. I didn't go up to Robin Hood Park, because the back brake on my bike didn't work, and that brake is needed for the ride down the hill. Andy's Cycle Shop seems to be closed down, at least temporarily, so I found another shop a little farther from home, but still within cycling distance--Norm's. I told the bike repair kid that my back brake quit working. He hefted my bike into the back of the shop as if it was only half its weight, and put it up on a stand. Then he turned to me and asked,

"Did you have it outside?"

Outside? I'm not supposed to have my bike outside? The brake worked perfectly well inside the warm shop, and it seems there is moisture inside my brake cable that freezes, and causes my brake to freeze. Jan told me I can keep the bike in her covered porch for the winter, and now I am learning to carry it up and down the front porch steps.

COOKING FOR ONE
Cooking for one is easy and fun! I love using Jan's toaster oven for cooking and for re-heating leftovers (I am a 'microwave snob'). I slap a piece of parchment paper on the baking tray, and cleaning up is no issue. I cook a recipe that serves 4-6 people, and freeze the leftovers in plastic 6-ounce yogurt containers overnight. In the morning, I pop out the frozen portions into freezer bags, to protect them against freezer burn. Each week my shopping list includes a single potato, a single onion, about six pieces of fruit, a fresh vegetable to cook, fresh ingredients for lunch sandwiches or salads, and a box of tea (twenty teabags are in a box, and I drink a bare minimum of three cups of tea per day). For supper tomorrow evening I can thaw out a portion of sweet-and-sour pineapple chicken, squash soup, lentil tomato soup, or mushroom cream sauce to go with either a chicken thigh or some made-ahead meatballs. It's a gourmet selection--a veritable embarasment of riches. More for which to be thankful!

Here is this week's verse from COTS--The Calendar of the Soul:

In secret inwardly to feel
How all that I've preserved of old
Is quickened by new-risen sense of self:
This shall, awakening, pour forth cosmic forces
Into the outer actions of my life
And growing, mold me into true existence.

Unwired

SQUIRRELS AND CHIPMUNKS HUSTLE

It may well be that these critters were busy all summer, but I have certainly been noticing them this past month, especially while cycling to the university for morning classes. The squirrels in Edmonton tend to be smallish and red, with somewhat scrawny tails. The ones here are of the grey variety, with splendiferous bushy tails. They are so big that I mistook one for a hare, and another for a cat. They run across the bike path with their tails streaming gracefully behind them in a horizontal S-shape. And the chipmunks run so quickly, they are downright comical! Those stripes along their sides must be the original racing stripes.

I am truly receiving the total immersion experience in Waldorf/Anthroposophy that I wanted, when I decided to come to Keene. Isolating myself from family, friends, and my usual life activities is a sacrifice that creates space in my life and in my consciousness for that which I came here to learn. Most mornings there is no need to rise early (pure luxury, I know!) and I am able to allow my thoughts free rein, to ponder questions from my reading, revelations from my lectures, or creative ways to fulfill various homework assignments. Wonderful ideas have arisen this way!

A lot of 'thinking noise' has been eliminated through simplifying my daily habits, and through cutting way back on my exposure to media. I don't read the newspaper, watch television, or listen to the radio, and I don't even listen to music. Gary (one of my house mates) keeps me up-to-date on economic trials and tribulations, and Ken makes sure I'm informed about stabbings on Greyhound buses and Canadian football scores (no, I'm not a football fan). Current events seem to be capable of marching along, without my presence in the audience. My extracurricular/social life is virtually non-existent. I cook for myself using fresh, basic ingredients, I walk or ride my bike to get to where I need to go, and I've been in a car only twice since my arrival in Keene five weeks ago! It's a simpler life than my usual one, an almost unwired life. I do spend a lot of time on my computer--I rely upon it, in fact, to communicate with the university, to do research and some of my homework, to check the weather forecast so that I can dress appropriately, and to connect with Home through emails and cheap Skype phone calls.

My friend Audrey asked about what I am studying.

PAINTING
On Thursday we learned that no two people can observe the same rainbow at the same time. Picture an observer standing on the ground, and imagine a line passing through a point at the height of the observer's eye, at a 42-degree angle to the horizontal line of the ground. A rainbow is observed at this angle of 42 degrees, determined by the ground and the position of the observer's eye. Your rainbow cannot be the same one as my rainbow. In general, we are learning about Goethe's Colour Theory, his colour circle, and his fifteen colour combinations, used as the basis of the Waldorf painting curriculum. According to Goethe, colour is objective, with each hue having specific inherent soul qualities, rather than subjective. Blue and yellow are the two mother colours. They reach down together to form green, the Doorway to Earth. As yellow rises, it becomes more concentrated, tending toward gold and then orange, whereas blue tends to dissipate and 'frees up' into purple. They reach upward toward each other and give birth to red, the Doorway to Heaven.

EVOLVING CONSCIOUSNESS
In our study of the spiritual (not religious) origins of the Cosmos and humankind, we learned about Atlantis and its oracles and mystery centres, each associated with a different planetary consciousness. The highest spiritual consciousness was that of the Sun Being, the Christ principle (although this was long before the Christ being was incarnated on Earth). Misuse of human powers (which we no longer have) to affect plant and animal forces of growth and reproduction led to depravity. In anthroposophy everything affects everything else: messing up plant life messed up the water element; thus, the continent was destroyed by the Great Flood. (According to Tanis Helliwell, pigs are the result of egregious genetic experiments on Atlantis, involving human and animal. This is why I don't eat pork.) There is a link between some parts of Ireland, and remnants of Atlantean consciousness, through the hybernian mysteries (which I know nothing about, yet!)

PHILOSOPHER/EDUCATOR
We (in my class) each have a philosopher/educator as the topic of a major research paper. Mine is Leo Tolstoy (yup, the Russian author), who ran and taught at a free school on his estate for the children of his serfs. When I say 'free,' I mean that those children were free to attend or not, to participate or not, and quite free in terms of Behavior and Decorum. It was all very 'easy come, easy go,' right down to the fact that the headmaster up and abandoned the school 'experiment' after four years, ending this opportunity for the children so that Tolstoy could head off on a new and different life adventure. He was an extreme non-conformist; a flamboyant, eccentric rogue!

I intended to review all of my courses here, but I'm realizing that I lost most of my readers (picture throngs of avid fans here!) back when I typed the words, 'what I am studying.'

September 29 was Michaelmas, the autumn festival that is celebrated in Waldorf schools as one of the four major annual seasonal festivals. In Steiner's Calendar of the Soul this marks the midpoint of the soul/seasonal year, week 26. This week's verse and the verse for the first week after Christmas are the only two that include the significant phrase, sense of self.
Voila:

Nature, your maternal life
I bear within the essence of my will.
And my will's fiery energy
Shall steel my spirit striving,
That sense of self springs forth from it
To hold me in myself.