Photography Apprentice

This was the morning of the fall concert...the morning after the far-away football game...the morning after some students' cars were vandalized while they were on the bus returning from the far-away game...the morning after one senior hit a racoon on his way home, broke a hole into his radiator and sat beside the road until help arrived at two o'clock in the morning.

However, placidly unaware of these earth-shattering events, my passengers and I rode into a gorgeous orange sky on the way to school. I knew If I stopped the suburban to take pictures we might be late, so I handed my camera to the "shotgun" rider, Tori.

She took pictures through the windshield, experimenting with the night setting--which, by the way, is too blurry for a hand held snap from a moving vehicle. Here are some of her best shots.

Wordless Wednesday

Bump In The Night

At two o'clock in the morning--back when my husband was young and brave and impetuous--we heard a fearsome bumping in the basement. Since the door to our cellar opened onto the back porch, and the door to the back porch had a latch that didn't work well, anybody could have sneaked into that damp hole under the house. Who knew...maybe an antique dealer was going to dig for old medicine bottles down there, or maybe some big-time second-hand appliance dealer wanted our nearly new hot water heater. This called for rapid intervention. There was no time for panic. Grabbing up the nearest weapon, my superhero in the undies but minus the cape, bounded out the back door, down the stairs to the basement and strung an arrow into his compound bow. It was dark. There were two eyes shining in the corner--over by the hot water heater (my second guess seemed nearer the truth). He aimed and shouted as he used his elbow to turn on the light. One very puny kitten, pale and petrified, trembled before potential impalement. Disappointed, the Lord of the manor lowered his mighty bow as the cat streaked between his legs and ran back out into the night.

"It was a cat," he said sheepishly as he returned to the bedroom, "a very small one."
"Good," I yawned, four-fifths asleep.
"Not very exciting, though," he complained.
"Could have been. It could have been a skunk."
"True. True. Why do you have to be so uninspiring."
"Cause I'm sleeping. It's two in the morning, and all sane people are sleeping."
"Sigh." He crawled back into bed. But he left the bow leaning against the wall...just in case.

Sunday Scribblings

Ignoble Peace Prize

According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

It would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. Of course the rest of the world wants a weak America; they would love to dictate the actions of our leaders. Our current president is suggestible, a pawn for those who insult us openly while they fawn over him as a great peacemaker. As long as he persists in his delusions: that bread and circuses will satisfy, that our foreign policy is best expressed with smiles, surrenders, and simperings; that the great nation he leads is an evil nation and deserves every attack terrorists can send us, he will continue to gain trophies from those who hate us. Why are we surprised?

Obama had only been in office for eleven days when nominations for the Peace Prize closed. During those eleven days, and for months before, he was busy campaigning and charming and criticizing the country he aspired to lead. So what great deed precipitated this award? And why so soon? Why couldn't they wait until he finished a term in office at least?
They couldn't have.
Why not?
Because their purpose was not a noble one.
They were not honoring a great man; they were simply affirming his political alignments, seeking to further manipulate the thinking of the nation he represents.
Who knows? In three years their award might seem even more ludicrous, their real agenda even more obvious. They could not take that chance.

Sorry, Mr. Noble.

Swinging in the Clouds

Someone is finally going to have to take this camera away from me...or else my morning ride to work needs to be much duller with no orange sunrises and junior high girls singing Gloria Domine en Excelsius (or something like that). If you look closely at the first picture, you can see seven little birds perched on a line and coddled by the clouds? That's what I feel like sometimes on mornings like this--I have six carpool riders so we are seven, traveling along. It seems like I'm a very insignificant, very ordinary little gray bird--surrounded by extraordinary cloud beauty and song beauty and just reveling in it all.

A Rainy Sunday

Claye and I went for a drive this afternoon.
She drove and I took pictures.
It wasn't hot...or cold...just misty and muted.
Tiny droplets of rain hung in the air and there was hardly any wind.
It was perfect weather for the freshly plowed fields, and even the cows out in the pasture seemed to enjoy the feel of it on their backs as they munched peacefully beside the little farm roads.




Anyway. Here are some of the best pictures.

Puptuplets

These early fall mornings are perfect for walking around the town. Of course, I don't usually have time for that, being a working woman and all, but every morning, just about the time I go rushing out to start the Suburban, I see this determined lady walking her dogs, who seem to be delighted to be out and about. They nip at each other occasionally, but don't waste time brawling. I've never seen her use the stick anyway. Maybe it's just to keep predators away from the precious pooches.

She and I are alike, I think... except my charges nip a little louder and swap places occasionally without tangling their leashes. As long as I keep them moving swiftly along, though, they are busy, and content. I see my job as guiding, cajoling--encouraging them to follow the right paths. Yes, I do carry a big stick; mostly, it's to keep the predators away from my precious cargo.

Somehow--with camera in hand--I

stumbled into a foreign classroom, on the other side of the building, where I found abandoned bones in a big glass box, a bustle of boys by a bunsen burner and one young science madonna, preparing a slide by the cool blue light of the biology lab.

Two Mornings in a Row

I think it's beginning to be a habit with the morning sky. Look what we got to see this morning, my riders and I, that is. They love for me to stop and take a picture of the sunrise, hoping in vain that we'll be late for school. They won't be counted tardy if the van is late, and five minutes they don't have to sit in class is five minutes of FREEDOM. (never mind that they are sitting stuffed into a warm, Suburban beside the road, sharing a hand held video game or wiggling enough to annoy each other into "stop-its") Ah the obstreperousness of junior high kids! If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see the sunbeams streaming from the top of the cloud.

Sunrise Sunrise

This morning I got an extra special sunrise as a gift from Heaven.
Anybody who doesn't feel great after enjoying ten miles of this...
must have stayed up too late and drunk prune juice for breakfast!

Well at least they aren't normal....

My grandson Zaya is now five years old, and his little sister, Mim, is four. When they came in the door for a visit today, their faces were excited and they both began to talk at once. Zaya wanted me to help set up a simple potato growing experiment he had been reading about on the trip over. He proceeded to lay the book on the floor and read me every step. Meanwhile, Mim was delivering a present she had made for me and watching while I opened the envelope. There was an autographed, decorated card along with a hand drawn picture of...
"what did you draw for me?" I asked. "
Without a moment of hesitation she told me, "It's the inside of a dog. You know, his egestive system."
So,of course, I taped it to the refrigerator while I opened the crisper to search for a potato with eyes.
"In a few days," Zaya assured me, "several buds will appear, but if you see white flowers, stop watering it."
"Oh, why should I do that?"
"Because if you don't, the potato will rot."

Then they were off--Mim to drag everything out of the toy box and Zay to see if the wii was up and running and if any new video games had magically appeared.

Later, while jumping on the front room couch cushions, Zaya cut the bottom of his foot. As I ran warm water over it and applied antibiotic salve, I tried to get in a lesson on the dangers of jumping on couch cushions and opening ones foot to bacteria. He quickly re-assured me:
"Don't worry, Grandma, those bacteria that manage to escape into my foot will be killed by macrophages and neutrophils."
"Neutrophils?"
"Well, and other leucocytes; they are lining up right now to attack"

...And they are, of course. I'll go straighten the couch cushions and consider another strategy: simple commands perhaps.

Why I Love Mornings

I took these pictures in front of my house this morning. It was quiet--so still the squirrels were sleeping, and the ground under my slippers was soft from last night's rain.

The Corral

Homecoming week at school. It's wild and crazy. Hard to get a lot done with characters like these sitting at the desks, but--for all the silliness--it does bring joy into this process we call education. We love to dress up and dress down...and I should have shown a shot of pajama day. Oh well. Some things are better left to the imagination.

Weeds Like Us--A Book Worth Reading

I've just finished a new book that came to the library as a gift. Hopefully, we will buy more of them...enough to make them required reading for every student. The book is just that good. It's called Weeds Like Us.

Gunter Nitsch, in the simple style and language of a young boy, relates the events of his life beginning with the closing year of World War II. He lived in Germany--in the province once known as Prussia--when the war ended and the Russians invaded. Not allowed to flee to Germany, Guntar's family was caught in a deadly trap. Since their sons-in-law were fighting in Germany, Opa and Oma, the grandparents, determined to keep their two daughters and seven grandchildren alive and sane in the middle of a terrible situation. Their faith, love, and endurance; the women's self-sacrificial intrepidity, and even the children's labor and diligence, played a huge part in Gunter's survival and character development. The horrors of those refugee years are interspersed with accounts of his youthful mischief, and we see not only through his eyes, but past what he could understand at the time to the courage of the people in his life. Every teen-ager who has always had food to eat and a warm place to sleep needs to read this book, especially if said teen complains about his or her pampered life.

The author does include some graphic situations, but compared to the brutality of what actually went on in that part of the world, they are presented as gently as possible. The holocaust is not ignored (at one point the Grandfather has to re-bury victims and realizes that the atrocities were committed by his own countrymen. He is stricken with a sad, haunted, horror)but most of the book centers on the Communist takeover and their treatment of those left in the occupied lands. German, Russian, Jew--their hardships are not ignored...neither is the evil in the heart of man, nor the goodness found in unexpected people.

Read the book. You will see what I mean.

Hunger...Well Thirst Anyway

The Sunday Scribblings prompt was Hunger, and all I could think of was that verse in Psalms where David "hungers" for the Lord ...but when I looked it up it was all about thirst. Ah well. I thirst for Him too. Here's that great passage from Psalm 63:

O God, You are my God;
Early will I seek You;
My soul thirsts for You;
My flesh longs for You
In a dry and thirsty land
Where there is no water.

School, School, Wild and Weary

I know I haven't been posting nearly as much lately, but that's because I've been weary. School is great--don't misunderstand me--but the fast pace of teenagers keeps me on my feet. You will notice that in all of these pictures there is very little classwork going on. Well. That's because I can't take pictures when I'm teaching...and when they are quietly working, I'm quietly helping them, scurrying like a plump little mouse among the sleek little tigers. (Our theme this year is WILD*so I had to throw that in)

*Within the Lords Design


Here's a couple of diligent freshmen who came early to school...quietly reading in the science room, and you'll see some students playing with the math geometry toys, building stars and towers and being creative. (Don't think the older kids don't love these too; their endeavors are pretty amazing. In a few minutes they build a city on the table.) When their work is done, they love to play stratego or chess...even if it's only for a few minutes. (Most days I have junior-high boys in my room during lunch to finish these games.) On game days, the pep band plays for us in the hall at the end of fifth hour. Last week I took my sophomore class to the nursing home to sing for the older people there. They practiced for a couple of days and came up with four numbers--Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, God Will Make a Way, and Rock of Ages. It was a little slow, but I think the people enjoyed it anyway. One girl played the piano and a guy played the guitar. We were going to walk the five blocks to the home, but it rained, so we all--almost all anyway--piled into the school suburban. On the way back we stopped in at the only restaurant in town and bought schnetka.

Wordless Wednesday

Western Oklahoma Countryside

Late summer evenings
and the sun so slowly passes,
stretching for one glimmer on the rocks,
one last glowing
on the grasses




Hurry now, for the clouds are crowding
and this green will all go black;
Even the rocks are changing--
yellow gold to dark and cold.
and it'll be hours before they're back!









Oh, let's run down this little road;
for I know the house
that sits just over that hill.
I've never seen a cloud
that made it past the door,
and lavish light's on every window sill

Visiting an Oklahoma Village

Little prairie towns in Oklahoma deteriorate slowly, their once bustling buildings sitting vacant, or going through a string of hopeful small business ventures before they become a storage place for old stuff nobody wants...except antique collectors who come to sniff, sort, and scavenge. Schools move out of town, consolidating with the neighbors, and the buildings become museums and libraries, which try to keep alive those memories of the valiant prairie souls--sodbusters and homesteaders who tamed this land and are buried beneath it.


Clay and I went down to Mangum last week to check out the "art street" there. We had read that there was a potter shop, and wanted to see for ourselves. Unfortunately, it was election day in our town, and staying long enough to vote meant we arrived one minute after five o'clock. Everything was closed except the ice cream shop. So while we slurped on waffle cones--mine was peach and hers was some kind of murky-looking chocolate delight--we roamed around the town and took pictures. The natives were friendly, and the evening cool just right.

In the Fog

Early morning, hazy light
Every day, he walks the dog.
Sees me watching, gives a nod.
Knows how much we both
enjoy the fog.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Well--Known Proverbs... Well, it Depends on Who's Saying Them.

Whenever we study Proverbs, I give my seventh and eighth graders common proverbs to complete. If they don't know the proverb, they try to guess at the answers. Then we discuss them. This gives me lots of fun, and helps them learn at the same time. Here are some samples of their answers. Some of them show a lot of good thinking, even if it changes the original idea. (If you can't remember the original proverb, look at the bottom of the page.)

1. You can't make a silk purse....

...without a worm

2. A little learning...

...goes a long way

...a lot of earning

(I think both of these are overly optimistic about the
job market.)

3. Don't cross the bridge

...until they build it (smart)

...until the trolls are gone (smarter)

...until you know what lies beyond it (smartest)

4. It takes one...

to make a difference
(He should be a motivational speaker, I think)

5. Don't throw the baby...

if you can't catch it. (Very scary...)

6. Don't make a mountain...

if you can't climb it. (Sounds like a good plan)

7. Don't cut off your nose...

if you want to breathe (Technically....well, we didn't go there.)

8. Don't count your chickens...

until you kill the fox. (Now this one really makes sense.)

9. Two's Company; Three's ...

... a gaggle, ( but that's geese... so would it be a giggle of girls?)
... a crunch,
... a party,
... business (I like this one)

10. A Bird in the hand is ...

....a lovely feeling. (someone is a bird lover...or a fried chicken eater)


The Real Answers
1. out of a sow's ear 2. is a dangerous thing 3. until you come to it 4. to know one 5. out with the bathwater 6. out of a molehill 7. to spite your face 8. until they hatch 9. three's a crowd 10. is worth two in the bush