Green Panhandle of Texas!

 For the last two or three years Texas has been suffering from a drought. I've become used to dusty brown fields and parched red roads on all my visits to the Texas panhandle. This April, however, my drive over and back was pleasantly green. It was a misty day, following several days of March rains. Some fields were grassy and even the plains were alive with the eruption of once dormant seeds. Horses grazed quietly in the shade, and fat cows munched contentedly--some were up to their bellies in tall grass. I felt the land relax--no worried weariness. Such a difference water makes!

A Walk Down Memory Lane...in the Misty Morning Rain....

 Past fields of new green grain

  I hear a distant train.

 And I somehow can't refrain from a picture of this mane, on a horse that won't complain...be he ever so restrained.

 Arrgh. That's enough! Wicked rhymes to pile all over themselves like that!

I did take a walk though. In this mist.
It was exhilarating.

 Past the white-maned heads of curious dandelions.

 I encountered the doorway of a house where once we lived. Obviously, it is being devoured by its own garden. Sad. Even though I'm not planning on living there again. Still sad.

Swallowed up by the jungle though right in the middle of town.

Canola in the April Green

Our usual March fields are green--new wheat green.
There's the occasional white elevator poking out, and the blue, cloud streaked skies over and above, but the ground is green--just green.

This year is different. I don't know if it's due to the drought last year, or if there was a great sale at the local COOP, but this year's green has occasional interruptions of blazing yellow canola.

I'll be driving along, resting my eyes on the green with a merry sigh that it actually has been raining when boom--there's a yellow field. 

Sometimes I can see it for miles and miles ahead.

Not only is it fantastically beautiful, but it even smells fragrant.

And if you have any farmer friends, they might let you stand at the edge of the field and soak it all in.

I hope it harvests well. Because if it does, we might be seeing it for a long time.
Welcome to Western Oklahoma, Canola.

Can't tear themselves away from the Hunger Games

It has taken me a long time to understand why I feel uneasy about my students' fascination with The Hunger Games.

And just in case there are people out there who don't know what I'm talking about, this recent book series and movie is a story set in post-apocalyptic America. The government is totalitarian. Every year the rulers require two teen-aged "tributes" from each of the twelve provinces to report to the capital, be trained, and compete in a duel to the death--last survivor wins. The contest is televised and all citizens are required to watch every episode
--death after gruesome death. For those not directly affected, the contest is enthralling entertainment not unlike that of the Roman Coliseum. It's a captivating event that keeps the nation glued to the screen from one horror to the next. They laugh, cheer, bite their nails, and cry...but they can't stop watching.

Like most post-apocalyptic, totalitarian government, mechanized, dehumanizing literature, it warns against power in the hands of the wrong people; it cautions against win-at-all-cost mentality and it offers hope to those who dare to oppose evil and ban together to set things right.

Still, I was troubled, and I wasn't sure what bothered me about the students' love for this series.  After all, I assign reading to them which could be criticized for having questionable content, books like Animal Farm--which is about totalitarian government and Out of the Night, which is about the Holocaust. I don't mind their reading Lord of the Rings or Lords of the Earth or The Longest Day even though those books have their share of violence. I had been hesitant about the value of other books they read, but I could usually pinpoint why.

The Hunger Games, however, looks innocuous, even educational, from the outside, so why this feeling at the pit of my stomach? I've read lots of reviews. A few of them criticize the movie but don't really pinpoint why; most of them are rabidly in favor. Maybe that's what rankles. Rabid anything suggests caution to me.

Why is it so enthralling? Why are my junior-high students so fiercely defensive? Why are they rushing their achievement tests so they can finish the chapter, and refusing to take a restroom break because they have a few pages left?  What keeps them glued to the riveting finish? Shouldn't I be glad that they are reading at all? Somehow I'm not. There's that feeling.

I look at the delight, the shivers, the intensity as they read--eyes glued to the book; From the background, I listen to their guarded discussion as they praise the movie and insist they are going to watch it yet again. Why is the tone of their conversation conspiratorial? What is troubling me?

I'm far from reaching the complete answer, but it sickened me yesterday to realize something: As we read Hunger Games, we look at those pampered tyrants in the "capitol"--those wealthy, uncaring, citizens who force children to kill each other so they can enjoy the drama on a screen and we loathe them. But isn't that what we are doing too? Getting pleasure from the adrenaline rush we feel as yet another tribute dies?

Haiku with Hebrides (Played loudly)

Morning drive in March
Misty and mysterious
Mendelssohn's Music

Sheets of fallen cloud
Spreading tenuously thin
Slice through the treetops

Glowing in the East

Reveals an elevator

Palace of the plains

Driving North Into Kansas

Sandra, a fellow teacher and friend of mine lost her mom last year to a heart attack. It was a sudden tragedy, one for which the family was not prepared...but then we never are.
Jeanie was an artist, whose life in a small college town included helping the students in her clay studio. Every year they made dozens of clay projects--dishes, dolls, canisters, baskets, and ceramic statues. These were then sold at a yearly auction to benefit the college.




Yesterday, Claye and I took a trip to Kansas to purchase some of the glazes. Our trip up there and back took all day, but the weather was pleasant. We saw a tidal wave of dark clouds approaching from the east, and were soon overtaken by gentle rains.

Arriving somewhat later than we had planned, due to my hasty decision to trust the GPS over the map, we made a call and were led to a garage-shaped building on a grassy lot.
We met Sandra's father, the builder of the shop, an industrious man, who was kind enough to show us around and fit us into his work schedule for the day. The shop had been sold, but everything in it still needed to be moved into storage or bought by people like us.

We were particularly interested in the glazes, because they are expensive to buy new, and Claye uses them in her studio. There were so many of them, we hardly knew where to begin. While we selected and loaded plastic tubs full of glazes, the rain settled down to a misty drizzle. Outside, the quiet little town nodded steadily. Students popped in and out of the studio occasionally, making sure we weren't a couple of pottery thieves. We could tell they missed their mentor and felt protective of her little shop.

It took about three hours, but we got the car loaded and called the owner. He was back in a couple of seconds, between jobs and smiling, despite the sadness this task must have cost him. How do you part with the things---all the little things that gave pleasure to the one you loved? How do you let strangers carry it off without sending a little of you with every jar?

"She was happy here," he told us. "Working away for hours with clay, painting and spinning and firing." He looked around the shop. "It was usually busy here, too. Students coming and going. She had a gift. Our daughter has it too, you know, and our grandson. He can spin pots and work with all this."

"I'm not much of an artist, but I built this place for her. It's got everything she needed."
We could tell how much he had loved her by the pride in his voice and the obvious labor he had invested. There was a kiln room, spinning area, office, bathroom, painting table, and shelves everywhere. They were all full.

Claye and I showed him the buckets full of glaze and the clay tools we had chosen. I offered him as much as I knew we could afford, hoping he wouldn't think it too little.
He looked serious. I thought, "Maybe I should  offer more. Even if some of the glazes are ruined, the ones that work will be worth it, and I can manage."

Then he smiled, "If you would write that check for half the amount you offered, it would make me happy. I think Jeanie would have wanted you to have the glazes. She would be glad that they are going to good use. And the shelf you need to store them, I'll throw that  in for free."

Sometimes a thank-you isn't enough.
I was overcome with gratitude.



Here was a man with cause to be bitter, to be self-absorbed in sorrow, loathe to part with shreds of memories. But he smiled. He carried on. Courageous, that's what he was, and pleasant on a stormy, rainy day.










On the way home, I took a picture of this little tree, just standing, feet planted into the green, bathed in daylight...a daylight that finally comes after the dark cloud has passed. It reminded me of the gracious gentleman we had just left, standing in the door of his little shop with misty, new sunbeams on his bowed head.

The Long and the Short of It

Ever since Turtle had to take a personality test for an upcoming seminar, we've been enthralled by the whole Meyers-Briggs/Keirsey personality typing--testing everyone in the family with the enthusiasm of amateurs.

After complaining for weeks about having to take the test, and the absurdity of tests, and the conspiracy of all testers, and the consequences that would probably ensue should he not perform well on the "stupid" test, Turtle finally caved in and took the fifteen minute exam. From that, he tallied his scores and was given a four letter "code". When he researched the four letters on the internet, he found pages and pages about his personality type. These descriptions fit him so incredibly well that (in his own words) "It was spooky". Suddenly all those crazy little quirks--like never finishing a sentence or at least not until you've started three or four others to leave hanging, or forgetting everything and blaming it on everyone else--were explained as part of a particular personality type. His affection for children; his "alleged" affection for animals (that never leads to actually owning one because they are not hygienic); his always having a story ready to tell; his propensity for long conversations with complete strangers; and his distrust of logic. It was all there. Having seen the simple test, I simply couldn't see how anyone could use it to deduce these things. It did seem kind of "spooky". 


So I took it myself. Not surprisingly, I tested the exact opposite in every letter. The descriptions seemed uncannily apt also. All my unique personality had obviously been studied, unbeknownst to me and posted on the internet. Logical, diligent, introspective, and sometimes needing silence for my overactive imagination, I love sequence, charts, lists and main points. Now Turtle knows why I frequently interrupt his detailed, twenty-minute, explanations that start in the middle of the subject and dart in both directions crying: "Get to the point, please, before I go crazy!"


I always knew we had nurtured a wild and crazy family. 
Now I know why--all that genetic variety available for our offspring's personalities.






Our Three word Wednesday prompt was: diligent, nurture, amateur

March-The Lamb and the Lion

I took a little trip today to a town about thirty miles from here. The morning was golden when I left home, so I stopped to take pictures of the yellow flowers on green fields.

In the distance, I could see a white bank of approaching clouds, like a line of surf heading toward the shore.

The sky was beginning to darken when I arrived, but by the time my shopping was finished and I headed toward home again, there were curly clouds everywhere.

It made for a beautiful sky. I drove past the windmills just so I could get their picture against that swirling, leonine, backdrop.

As I drove west, the skies began to lighten through the clouds

It's amazing to me how a distance of thirty miles can affect the scenery!   I arrived home to find full sunlight on the trees, just like it was when I left.

Genetically Dominant Haikuity

 An Interesting Facebook exchange.

Carina started it by posting this status:

Carina---My Victory Haiku

Dumpster to the road
Lid pushed down; I'm just in time
Here comes the trash truck.

Whereupon her Aunt Rebecca commented

• 
  • Rebecca  You are 200% your mother's child, even in spite of the fact that is impossible!
    

    
    

    
    
  • 
    

    Carina:  I felt the occasion had to be commemorated. Now that I think about it, my mother is probably the source of that particular DNA code.
    

    
    
  • 
    

     
    Lilibeth:   Why would you think that? It could have come from your dad.
    Ha Ha just kidding. ( I don't know how to space it like a haiku)
    

    
    
  • Elijah:   
    

    Formatting Haikus?
    Try Using Shift + Enter
    Just like this mom, see?
    

    Whereupon I deleted my previous comment and put it in proper formatting like this:

                

                   Why would you think that? 

                    It could have come from your dad.
                    Ha Ha just kidding. 
    

    And Elijah protested
    

    
    
  • 
    

    Elijah:      You fixed it, now people won't understand my Haiku :(
    
    

    Lilibeth:
    

    If I had known that

      you were writing the Haiku,
     I wouldn't have fixed it.

    
    

    Lilibeth
    Well, I should have known
  • Haikuescent phenotypes
    Are hard to suppress
    
    
    

           Elijah:‎.
    
    Comment formatting
    deletes initial spaces!?
                   Very uncool facebook.
    

    
    

    
    
  • 
    

    Carina wrapped it all up with:
    

     In the words of Sam
    The big, blue muppet eagle,
    "[We] are all weirdos."