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.

A Change in the Year

To My Sister

William Wordsworth
(1770-1850)

---

It is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.

My sister! ('tis a wish of mine)
Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign;
Come forth and feel the sun.

Edward will come with you;--and, pray,
Put on with speed your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar:
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.

Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth:
--It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason:
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey:
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,
We'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

HEAVENLY SPRING DAYS!

No, I don't feel guilty crowing about how spring has arrived in New Hampshire, knowing that all my Edmonton buddies were suffering at minus forty degrees only last Wednesday morning. Edmontonians, rejoice! Spring is almost at your doorstep! I just about squealed when I went for my Beauty Walk on Saturday (walking in the woods,with my camera, that is, spotting the beauty in nature) and saw GREEN STUFF coming right out of the ground! Saturday and Sunday were the kind of early spring days that one dreams about all winter, with the sun's warmth penetrating through the back of my jacket. I went back on Sunday with a thermos of tea, and sat sipping it on a bench among the pines, overlooking the reservoir, smiling inside and out. A woman about my age had her fingers happily dabbling in the earth of her flower beds, and I stopped to admire her blooming yellow and purple crocuses. And there's a particular spot on the way to my Sunday-morning coffee shop, where I have begun to hear the unmistakable call of a mourning dove.

Everything is more fun in the spring, and knowing that I'll be home in two months.

FRENCH REPUBLICAN CALENDAR--Dandelion

Ah, today is the day of the lowly dandelion--one of my favorite flowers! The dandelion figures prominently in my botany project book for my Waldorf curriculum class. I held my webcam above my drawing of a dandelion seedling to show Ken, and his comment was, "Hey! That's a weed!" A Saskatchewan farm boy, he is not fond of the dandelion.

RUDOLF STEINER'S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL--Joy-of-growth is now calling to our human souls!

Thus to the human ego speaks

In mighty revelation,

Unfolding its inherent powers,

the joy of growth throughout the world:

I carry into you my life

from its enchanted bondage

and so attain my truest goal.

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.

Artist in Residence

When one has hearing loss, it is often difficult to discern the direction of the source of a sound, and whether it is coming from near or far. These are essential clues in helping to identify a particular sound. Due to these difficulties, I sometimes feel foolish when I hear something and make a remark about it that seems way off base, to my conversational partner. This is why I hesitated to say anything about a remarkable sound that I have been hearing every morning here at High Mowing, when walking past the gym on my way to breakfast. I wondered whether it was an owl, going, "Hoo! Hoo!" (On the other hand, perhaps it was Johnny One-Note practicing his flute, or a squeaky wheel on the air circulation fan of the gym.) Yesterday I screwed up my courage and asked my fellow student Jennifer whether this was, indeed, an owl. No, it is the call of the delightful mourning dove! Jennifer was able to point out one of these beautiful birds to me, as it stood calmly on the road, and she can even play its call on her pentatonic flute! I find the bird enchanting, and found this photo on Wikipedia. Jennifer kindly drove me to Keene yesterday, and I was quite excited to finally see the charming place that will be my home for the year.

One of the treats of this three-week summer intensive term has been my clay modeling class. We began our work together by modeling a perfect sphere. We passed our spheres from hand to hand to compare them, and then transformed them gradually, using pressure from our hands, into tetrahedrons (four surfaces, all equilateral triangles). Sometimes the hand knows more than the eye, and I particularly enjoyed forming my tetrahedron with my eyes closed. By exerting pressure on the points of our tetrahedrons, they gradually became octahedrons. Next step: press carefully on the points of the octahedron, to make an intermediate shape on the path to cube-dom called a cuboctahedron--all squares and triangles! Final step (only one of my classmates was successful in accomplishing this feat): press on all the points to gradually create twelve perfect interlocking pentagons--dodecahedron, ta-da! Plato introduced the world to the mysteries of the five platonic solids, which are fun (and easy!) to make out of paper or card.

New project: we each made a half-egg shape out of clay; then spent most of the two-hour class period blindfolded, adding little bits of clay to build up a face on our shaped bases. (That time my hand didn't seem to know as much as my eye!) And here are two more of my sculptures, the first one exploring convex and concave surfaces, and the second one expressing a twisting, out-reaching gesture inspired by driftwood. Can you tell I'm having fun already?






This week's message for your soul:

To bear in inward keeping spirit bounty
Is stern command of my prophetic feeling,
That ripened gifts divine
Maturing in the depths of soul
To selfhood bring their fruits.