Thursday, May 24, 2007

Plugging a good website

Here's my plug for Kantalk, a nice place to meet people from around the world who would like to improve their English speaking skills. If you speak English, there are people there would would love to have a conversation with you. I've really broadened my horizons with the conversations I've had with some of these people.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Tenor sax -- jazz

Thanks to a Brazilian musician who I met through KanTalk, I learned the name of Michael Brecker. This youtube video had me in a trance. Brecker is the sax player on our right. Just awesome.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Gwen



We were interviewing people to teach our summer 4-H program. I had written its curriculum and it was the first time I had ever been in the interview process for a teacher. Gwen was very pretty and reminding me of the girl my son was dating. She had naturally curly long dark hair and a heart-shaped face. She was compact with a narrow waist and wrists and ankles like a doll. During the school year she was a Baltimore City third grade science teacher. I asked her which unit she liked best and she named one that I had written. Of course that made her my choice.

Our program took place in inner city Baltimore neighborhoods. We offered to plug our program into existing recreation programs run by neighborhood heroes who were determined to provide positive role models and a safe recreational environment in midst of drugs, despair and depression. These programs were found in church basements and city rec centers. Gwen and I were the only white faces for blocks but that never seemed to be a problem. Gwen and her husband had moved into the inner city as Mennonite missionaries.

Gwen always wore a black lacy cap, almost a bow, at the crown of her head. Of course this was noticeable and the kids would ask her why she wore it. She would say that it was her choice to wear it because she loved Jesus.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Florence Christoplos

The previous post from Jo Ann reminds me of one of the best teachers I've had (I can't say EVER had because I had many many best teachers). I took as many of her courses for special education teachers as I could, and one was a course on teaching aesthetics. There's no special gimmic to teaching special ed, but Dr. Christoplos taught us many very basic things.

One involved teaching the elements of art using post cards. I used this with my inner city third graders and then took a few of them to the big art museum in D.C. They were able to wow surrounding strangers by walking into an exhibit and identifying the works with the artist's name. In some cases, they were able to describe which period the works were created. I had so much fun with this, that I brought my cards whenever I was visiting an art museum, even with adults. And a visit to the museum gift shop helped me expand my collection.

Here's a hint of what we did.

I'd start with very different works. Say, Audubon and Picasso. I'd say "Sort the cards into Audubon and Picasso. ... How did you know the difference?" Then I'd do the cards like flashcards which would give the kids practice saying the artists' names. Then I'd add another artist, say Rembrandt, and go through the process again. We would describe the differences ... subject matter, lighting, medium, perspective, choice of colors. Then I might introduce another work by one of the familiar artists and have the student guess who the artist might be.

Here is a work by Monet.



Can you find another painting by Monet?
(show the following post cards)






If the student chooses the wrong one, you might make a comment like "Oh that is a Matisse. I love the way its figures are kind of flat, and how there are fabric patterns and natural objects going this way and that in different directions and making your eye dance all round the picture." Such comments open the way to a later matching of Matisses.

What I like about this sort of teaching is that I didn't have to learn a whole lot of stuff before I started teaching. All I needed was the artist's name on the back of the post card, and maybe a date. The student can discover things that the teacher hasn't noticed, and each person can find his way through the art in a unique way.

Jo Ann elaborates

Oh yes, you fill in the blanks so very well! Would it be ok if I put this in my blog?

On May 17, 2007, at 1:50 PM, Jo Ann wrote:

Your blog mentions that we had some times together, but you couldn’t remember exactly what. This is my account of the story:

Early in 1992, we met in a Friday night OA meeting at Woods. You had come back after being away for some time. I added your number to my list of members, called you as good OA’ers do, and talked about what I was experiencing in OA. Of course that was all about my higher power, Who I had become friends with during my early OA years in the late 70’s. During that period in the 70’s through OA meetings, He had helped me to learn about Him and how much He loved me, and helped me to overcome drugs and alcohol. And then again in the early 90’s He had helped me to loose 86 pounds living a “fasted” life. We met at the Indian restaurant for lunch sometime around that time; you were working on a grant somewhere in the city around Baltimore Street. Later I met you when you were working at the Science Center, where you taught me about fractals.

That spring, at dinner after a Friday night meeting, you encouraged a few of our OA associates and me to go to DC to the Art Museum. You met us a Fuddruckers in Annapolis, and there taught us about art – by matching postcards. I was so excited and impressed, that I went to work and told Mark about how interesting you made art to be. Mark had taken an art course when he was in Loyola and got though it, but wasn’t too thrilled with it. So I talked him and you into meeting together; you doing the postcard thing (I love that). And off we three went to DC to the Art Museum. He still says to this day that you were responsible for his knowledge and appreciation of art (and mine).

Later, we three went to the Walter’s Art Gallery to see a Monet exhibit, and Mark brought his niece, Jessica (I think once again, you did the post card thing for Jess). Before the gallery, we went to the Indian restaurant for dinner. Unbeknownst to you, Jess was graduating from high school, and had been toying with the idea of becoming a teacher. Mark and his family were trying to talk her out of it, but after meeting you, she made her decision to become one, and has carried that out. She told Mark, “you have lived your life, Uncle Mark, and now I have to live mine.”

Before you moved to S__, you had a fancy for bluegrass, and first I, and then Mark and I, went to hear you and some others “pick and grin.” Around that same time, I met you and a friend at a “center for handicapped” one day, and tried to play the piano along with you. Later you moved to S__, and around 2001, you came and spent the night with me on your way to a bluegrass concert of some kind. Since you moved to S__, Mark and I had to do an audit there, and we were able to meet you for dinner at a great Mexican restaurant and have a wonderful evening together with you then. In 2002, God had me go into real estate so I could sell your condo. He must have, because that was the only sale I made.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Ellen


When I was in the fifth grade, my family moved out of town and on to a road in the country. The road was called Plank Road because it used to be made of wood planks and it went up Glass Factory Mountain where there used to be a glass factory and later a graphite mine. My sister and I joined the 4-H and had the opportunity to learn the domestic skills that we weren't learning at home. We took courses called Sew a Fine Seam and Iron with Ease. We learned how to make baking powder buscuits from scratch so well that we didn't need to look at the recipe. I often sewed my own clothes (with a varying degree of success). We learned how to do a demonstration in front of strangers and we learned how to do home nursing without giggling.
My best friend was Patty, who still lives on Glass Factory Mountain. Her mother was our 4-H leader and our Sunday school teacher. A few years ago, I revisited the hamlet and stopped by the general store (pictured), which I learned was now owned by Patty. Surprisingly I learned that Patty's husband came from along the Potomac, where first lived when we came to Maryland. He knew my mechanic. But that wasn't the most remarkable Six Degree discovery.
I was looking on the internet for Patty's sister Ellen and learned that she lived exactly thirty miles away from me. Glass Factory Mountain is at least 400 miles from here, and lo and behold Ellen is just, once again, down the road.
I first got in touch with her by calling her number and listening to her answering machine. After almost forty years, her voice was completely familiar. Not only was it the voice of a familiar person, but it was the cadence of my home culture.

Lilacs


Poem: "Stealing Lilacs" by Alice N. Persons, from Never Say Never. © Moon Pie Press, 2004. Reprinted in today's Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor

Stealing Lilacs

A guaranteed miracle,
it happens for two weeks each May,
this bounty of riches
where McMansion, trailer,
the humblest driveway
burst with color—pale lavender,
purple, darker plum—
and glorious scent.
This morning a battered station wagon
drew up on my street
and a very fat woman got out
and starting tearing branches
from my neighbor's tall old lilac—
grabbing, snapping stems, heaving
armloads of purple sprays
into her beater.
A tangle of kids' arms and legs
writhed in the car.
I almost opened the screen door
to say something,
but couldn't begrudge her theft,
or the impulse
to steal such beauty.
Just this once,
there is enough for everyone.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Jo Ann

This morning as I drove to work, I thought about people that God has put in my life to let me know His love. These don't have to be people who directly talked about God. Many people just made me mindful of the good that is in our world. I spent a lot of time thinking of Jo Ann.

Jo Ann is a friend I haven't seen in several years. Thanks to the internet, it doesn't seem that long. Jo Ann and I would seem to be unlikely friends, but somehow years ago a few things we may have said and a few things we did together cemented the deal. She and another unlikely friend, a co-worker of hers named Mark, have taken a few excursions together. I can't remember exactly where we went (I'll ask Jo Ann to update me) but I remember that we talked non-stop on the trips and with great fun.

Since I've known her Jo Ann has always loved the Lord with a real and unashamed enthusiasm. She was always available when I would call her with questions on my own seeking Bible Study. She didn't get into theological nitpicking. If it wasn't in the Bible, it was none of her business. I often called about weird questions and she did her best with concordances and topical indexes handy, to help me out. I can remember asking her a hypothetical question about a situation I saw in a movie about the Rapture. She said "Cathy, it's a movie." She made me realize that the movie was an author's reality, and my question was about God's reality.

She gave me solid simple advice. When I was obsessed over a man in my life, she told me to look beyond him to Jesus. And she told me to talk to Jesus the way I would talk to a man in my life ... tell Him about my day, tell him my joys and sorrows, give him gifts and look for His gifts. When I told her about my paralyzing stage fright, she told me that God could take care of that. I do believe that my present day lack of stage fright was a gift of the Holy Spirit.

She didn't see me or other non-Christian friends as potential notches in her Bible. On the contrary, she shared her joy in the Lord with us as naturally as if He were a real person. She was just keeping us abreast on her relationship with the One she loved best.

So after thinking about her for twenty minutes on the way to work, I found an e-mail from her this morning. (I hadn't heard from her in several months.)
Her e-mail said "Thought I would share this today. Someone must need to hear it. My calendar for today reads:
'Lord, I pray You would help me set my life in right order. I want to always put You first above all else in my life. Teach me how to love You with all my heart, mind, and soul.'
Isn’t it great to know that if we ask Him, He will teach us to do that which our own carnal selves may not always want to do."

There's a lot more I could write, and I hope to in the future.
How I invited her to come to church with me on the day I decided to go forward. I wanted her to walk up with me.
Or how she took me to her church where the folks "got happy", and one sweet lady. who was trying to be comforting, petted my hair and chased me out of the church.