New Hampsha

NEW HAMPSHA --Sally Bruno

Up heyuh in New Hampsha,
the wintah’s deep in snow,
and tempachas will sometimes drop
to zero or below.

Up heyuh in New Hampsha,
when sprintime’s all abud,
the apple blossoms scent the fields,
and dirt roads melt to mud.

Up heyuh in New Hampsha,
our summah’s cool and sweet,
with puhple lupine growing wild
and clovah ’neath owuh feet.

Up heayuh in New Hampsha,
the autumn is an aht.
It drenches trees in liquid flame
that breaks the brim-full haht.

Up heayuh in New Hampsha
we snowmobile and ski;
we fish the teeming mountain streams
and dine beside the sea.

Come heayuh to New Hampsha
and breathe our mountain ayuh.
No mattah if you lose your way—
you can get heayuh from theyuh.

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.

Antioch New England University

I'll need some photos of my school, to go along with the memories from this year that I'll be bringing back with me to Edmonton. The beautiful ceramic chimes are hung above the main entrance, and rumor has it they're played in a ceremony once or twice a year. I would love to buy one at the bookstore, to take home with me. And there are the wooden lawn chairs in the entrance, where I like to sit and enjoy my lunch in the natural light, and where I sat with my cell phone to hear the details of my grandson's birth in October.

Budding New Life

The major term assignment for my current Waldorf Curriculum Preparation Course is the creation of a representative main lesson book on a single block topic, accompanied by a teaching plan. In Waldorf education, the main lesson book is a work of art, a record of learning, and the nearest thing to a textbook that is allowed into the classroom. I chose Grade 5 Botany--what could be more wonderful to draw than plants and flowers? For my own preparation, to enter into the world of plants in a living way, I have embarked upon a photographic study of a tree twig, here in the yard of my house in Keene. I will photograph it at intervals while it swells and develops and produces a bud, over the course of the next several weeks. So far, I have been unable to identify it by its bark, so it remains a mystery tree for the moment.


GESTATION
Eleven weeks until I return home, but (as I always ask) who's counting? I calculated that my weeks in New Hampshire, including the two July stints, will total exactly forty--a pregnancy, and something new is quickening within me, as a result of my studies and experiences here. My yearning to be home is always present--a persistent, gentle wistfulness.

GRADE SIX ACOUSTICS
Here's something worth trying at home--trust me, you'll be amazed! Cut two lengths of ordinary string, each about half a metre long. Tie one end of each string to a large fork or spoon from your cutlery drawer. Tie a small loop in the other end of each string. Play around with these for awhile--be creative--and look and listen for the effects of your experimentation. Now carefully place one of the small loops over your right index fingertip, and the other over your left, and insert your fingertips, with string, quite far into your ears. With or without help, contrive to get the two implements to tap together. What do you experience now? Aren't you glad you tried it?

REVERENCE IS A FORCE
Reverence is much more than a 'nice' way to approach the world and each other; much more than an attitude that motivates us to care for and protect people, creatures, and things. Waldorf students who are led, through reverence, into a living relationship with nature and the phenomena of the world, are developing a sixth sense with which to perceive and connect with the universe, and penetrate into the mysteries of existence. The habit of reverence leads us beyond Bloom's taxonomy to even higher-order thinking skills of imagination, intuition and inspiration. It is also referred to as heart-thinking. Goethe entered into a kind of thought-conversation with his subjects of study, and today's cutting-edge research scientists enter into a similar kind of dialogue with whatever they are observing, through which they are able to open up to and receive information from their subject of scientific study--a plant; a colour; a particle; a wave. Adopting an attitude of reverent curiosity; honouring the wisdom of the world, is in itself a way to grow and learn.

AFRICAN INITIATION POETRY
There was an African tribe that gave a certain task to all the children at age thirteen, when they were going through an initiation and passing through the outer gate of childhood. They were to create poems in this specific style. They were given the first line and asked to add five more lines based on some examples. My fellow students and I were given this task to do in class on Friday. Here is my poem, dedicated to the three most wonderful young women I know,
Rose, Laura and Christina!

Young woman you are:
the aurora dancing across the sky
the crocus blooming in the snow
the songbird's joyful melody
the rain upon parched, cracked clay
the azure butterfly in the forest.

ERNEST L. BOYER, SR.
I was thrilled to be selected from among my classmates to receive the 2009 Boyer teacher scholarship, which provides for an education student with the potential to develop characteristics that Dr. Boyer believed essential for good teaching. I am ever so grateful!

CALENDARS
According to the French Republican Calendar yesterday's tool of the day was the spade, and today's plant is the narcissus. This past week I bought three paperwhite bulbs, on sale in a shop on Main Street. They are fat and bursting with joy-of-growth! I have them in a clear glass vase in my north bedroom window, and I'm looking forward to the day when their strong perfume will scent the indoor atmosphere.
Welcome, month of March!
Spring will reach its zenith this month--are you ready to enjoy it?

Within the light that out of world-wide heights
Would stream with power toward the soul,
May certainty of cosmic thinking
Arise to solve the soul's enigmas--
And focusing its mighty rays,
Awaken love in human hearts.

Monadnock Waldorf School

Here is my Monday-to-Wednesday world, as an intern in the Fourth Grade Class at Monadnock Waldorf School. The individual lined handwork baskets sit in a row on their shelf, and a class photo is posted on the classroom door. Miss Marshall has a blackboard drawing of all-father Odin, from Norse mythology, with the two ravens Hugin and Munin on his shoulders. The display on the nature table changes gradually with the seasons, and the penguin diorama was done by Miss Marshall's daughter, when she was in fourth grade. The weekly schedule is on its own chalkboard, and the spelling word list is posted by the water-drinking cups. My pen and folder, thermos of tea and backpack await me at my student-sized desk tucked under the window. The yellow tissue stars glow by recess time, as the morning sun streams through the windows! The universal Waldorf morning verse, for Classes 1 to 4:

The sun with loving light
Makes bright for me each day;
The soul with spirit power
Gives strength unto my limbs.
In sunlight shining clear
I reverence, O God,
The strength of human kind
Which Thou so graciously
Has planted in my soul,
That I with all my might
May love to work and learn.
From Thee come light and strength;
To Thee rise love and thanks.

--Rudolf Steiner

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.

Happy New Year

ANOTHER STORM
I don't understand New England weather, and I don't understand ice storms. Yesterday evening I checked the weather forecast for Keene, and read:
A Winter Storm Warning remains in effect until 6 am EST Thursday.
This warning is in effect for southwest New Hampshire.
Snow mixed with freezing rain and sleet may change to all freezing
rain Wednesday afternoon. Significant ice accretions of one third to one
half inch are expected during the daylight hours tomorrow. Wednesday night will
continue to be slippery... as mixed precipitation changes back to snow
or snow showers.
The expected storm total 3 to 6 inches of snow and sleet accumulation... in
addition to the glaze... will result in slippery travel on untreated
surfaces.
On my way to Monadnock School this morning, for my first day interning in the Grade Four class, I imagined outdoor recess supervision might be a little challenging. It was a delightful walk--the temperature was very mild with no wind at all, there was a soft, fresh snowfall, and a fine mist in the air. But the school windows were dark, the door was locked, and there were no cars in the parking lot nor footprints in the snow. Sure enough, back at home on Fowler Street, there was a message on my cell phone that school had been canceled due to a 'snow day.' The on-line edition of Keene's newspaper reports:

Another winter storm hits the region
Snow and ice are hitting the Monadnock Region today. Schools in the area are closed.

They call this a STORM? Oh, come ON!!

SHEPHERDS' PLAY
The photo above is the church at a town called Westminster West, where my Antioch University class performed the traditional Shepherds' Play before the holiday break. Some of my classmates and instructors were without power, after the December 12 ice storm, and our performance was in peril due to a heavy dump of snow happening the day of the presentation. But everyone pulled through, and the event was magical. We all seemed to do our best, the story came together beautifully, the audience was appreciative, and we had a wonderful, joyful time together. Lesley, Eileen and I were angels, and my heart melted when Eileen's daughters, Anna and Caitlyn, bestowed upon me their sweet, little-girl hugs after the play.

HOME!
Try to imagine how delightful it was for me, just to be at home, for two weeks at the end of the year! Ken spoiled me with a dozen red roses, I had time to spend with my kids, and I met my grandson, Kai, and my daughter's new boyfriend, Gregg, for the first time. The photo is of me with the dearest little boy and girl in the world--Kai and Kaliana. There were other reunions too--my cousin Darrell and his wife Karen brought together my aunts, uncles and cousins at their home on Boxing Day, and the Luscious Women of my singing group, In Her Voices, cooked up one of our fabulous pot-luck celebrations at the home of Dorothy and Meg, on the morning of New Year's Day. I had lunch with my Argyll friends Maureen and Starla, at Maureen's retreat in Leduc. I ate rich food, got together with loved ones every day, and collected memories and hugs to last my next four months in New Hampshire!

TRYING TO BE PATIENT
I am SO looking forward to my internship--i.e. student teaching--and my classes this term. I've been peeking at my new required course books, doing some preliminary reading, and anticipating the assignments that one of my instructors sent out by email. For his Waldorf Curriculum Preparation class, I will be presenting on Mesopotamia and the Gulf Stream (not that they're necessarily related!), and modeling a Greek temple, a spiral, and two Platonic solids in clay. But these classes don't start until January 16--that's AGES from now! And it looks as though the first day of my internship, originally booked for January 5, may not happen until the 12th, due to interruptions at the school caused by a record five 'snow days' already this winter. I'm raring to go, but I'm facing another 'nothing-to-do-and-nobody-do-do-it-with' weekend to pull myself through, with whatever positive attitude I can muster.

Hey! I rode my bike Sunday and yesterday--my goal is to ride it every month through the winter (though not every day in every month).

According to the French Republican Calendar, today is Octidi, 18 Nivôse CCXVII--the eighth day of the week, the 18th day of the Snowy month, associated with the mineral limestone. Take a moment today to appreciate the roles of limestone in your life, in geological formations, building blocks, cement, white pigment, toothpaste, and as a source of calcium in bread and cereals!

Here is Steiner's Calendar of the Soul verse for this week:

And when I live in spirit depths
And dwell within my soul's foundations,
There streams from love-worlds of the heart,
To fill the vain delusion of the self,
The fiery power of the cosmic Word.