Heroic Dads and Mechanics

Yesterday my daughter Jamie left for a music festival on Madeline Island, which is in Lake Superior. We live in the Chicago area, so there are two ways to get to Madeline Island. One is to fly to Detroit, shuttle to the ferry and ferry across. The other is to drive all the way across Wisconsin, to the ferry, and ferry across. The ferry ride alone is an hour, and driving from our part of Illinois to the ferry is about eight hours. Everyone who has been there says this music festival is truly worth it.

So Jamie arranged to ride with three other attendees, all basically college-age kids. The driver came from Michigan, picked up Jamie and another girl in the Chicago area and the fourth musician from Madison Wisconsin. We were a bit unsettled when the young man from Michigan opened his hood for some reason before they drove away. A little more so when Jamie texted us that the car had 206,000 miles on it. So when she called us to say that the car had broken down in Phillips, Wisconsin, we were not entirely surprised.

But being stranded in a small town in Wisconsin is not a good thing when you are supposed to report to a music festival and you have to catch a ferry to get there. While the kids called the festival staff to see if they could send any help (no, they couldn't), my husband sprang into action at the computer. He called rental car companies to see if anyone would deliver a car to Phillips. He looked up motels in Phillips. And he searched for and called an auto repair shop. With that call, he hit the jackpot. As soon as he said, "My daughter and three other college students are driving to a music festival and their car broke down in Phillips...", the man on the other end said, "Where are they? Give me your daughter's phone number. We'll tow them in. If it's just a part we can probably fix before the shop closes in 45 minutes. Otherwise there's a motel right across the street."

And he did exactly that. He towed the car, found it was a fuse that the faulty A/C blew out, replaced the fuse and disconnected the A/C. (They're going north anyway, how hot can it be on an island in the middle of Lake Superior?) The kids got back on the road, caught the 8:00 ferry and today are presumably making music.

So if your car breaks down in Phillips, Wisconsin, look for Mike. He's our hero today, along with my husband!

Books, books, books

We are at the beginning stages of what has turned into a fairly major renovation. You know, you start by saying, "I'd like to repaint these three rooms," and then it morphs into ripping up the carpeting, replacing it with wood floors, picking new furniture, and now you need new drapes, too.

As part of this upcoming excitement, we need to get rid of stuff we don't need anymore. Old paperwork, extra computers, things we actually forgot that we had, and books.

I love books. Anyone who visits us knows right away that someone in our house loves books. We have two bookcases in our living room full of books, mostly mine, plus more books downstairs in the family room, and a few scattered piles of books begin read or soon to be read here and there. I have books that I have owned for decades, including some from my childhood, and books I bought this month. So cutting down on the number of books is a challenge.

It is perhaps ironic, but one of the biggest helps I have found in cutting back on "stuff" in general is a book! The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo is unlike any book I have read about decluttering, and I have read quite a few. Ms. Kondo is enormously popular in Japan, where she has a three-month-long waiting list for her services. The book has been on the best seller list here in the U.S. for weeks.

The big difference, I think, between her book and every other organization book, is that she has a much different approach to letting go of your belongings. You must touch everything individually, and if it gives you joy you keep it. If not, you thank it for its service and let it go. It sounds strange, but it works! No more, I'll keep the dress until I lose weight, or I haven't read or finished this book, I need to keep it. She relieves us of the guilt. It's okay to let the object go; it has served its purpose for me.

Though she says to take ALL your books and put them in a pile on the floor, she also says if you have too many books to do this, you can do it by category, which is what I decided to do. I started with cookbooks - I love to cook and I have an extensive collection. I culled and reorganized - I can actually find the book I want now! Today I tackled fiction.

It is hard parting with books. Some books I know I will never reread - okay, they can go. Some books I admit that I will never read - they should go find readers somewhere else. Some books I will reread, they will stay for sure. Then there's all the in-between books - I loved it, but I won't reread it; I really want to read, but will I actually get to it?; I worked hard to put together certain collections of authors, I think I should keep those.

My pile of fiction. The books in the bookcase are not fiction.

Pre-sorting

So I have ended up with a big box of fiction that needs to leave my house. What do you do with books? My son snatched up the Portable Dante and my daughter put dibs on all the James Joyce for her boyfriend. A few books are going to join my class library. (If it sounds like we are such a literary family, you should know that my biggest pile of books that are staying is mysteries!)

What about the rest? I could take them to a used book store, but I think I will instead donate most of them to Better World Books, an online used book store that donates to literacy projects around the world for every book they sell. They have drop boxes in many locations.

I have also had fun using Book Crossing, also an online organization. Book Crossing lets you register your books, put a sticker inside explaining that it is a Book Crossing book, then you leave a book in some public place for someone else to find. On the Book Crossing site, you leave the information about where you left the book. The finder is supposed to check in, saying that he/she found it. Best case, you can track your former book as it travels the world! In reality, I have not "caught" any books in the wild (as they say at Book Crossing) and only one of mine has been caught and journaled. I will probably pick a couple of books to "release to the wild," but an entire box is just too many.

One of my neighbors just started a Little Free Library, a small box containing donated books. You can take a book and leave a book. I left a book there over the weekend. My whole box would be too many for the little box.

Next step - putting the many books I'm keeping back on the shelf!

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I'm playing in an opera this month!

This was quite unexpected. I play (french) horn in several community groups, none of which really does anything in the summer, so this was a nice surprise - and it even pays a bit!

The opera is "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by the British composer Benjamin Britten. He was a 20th century composer, though not an extreme, atonal composer. His music for this opera is atmospheric and gauzy for the enchanted forest and the fairies, romantic for the smitten couples, and peasant-like for the "thespians."

It's written for a very small orchestra. That means that everybody hears you. I'm playing 2nd horn, of two horns, but there's no blending into the background. At last week's rehearsal both of us horn players were sight reading the parts, but now we have a week to practice, so the conductor will be expecting more this week. We haven't heard much of the singers yet as we are rehearsing just the orchestra parts right now.

One of the surprises at the first rehearsal was how young the orchestra members are. I think I am probably about 30 years older than everyone else! I decided it's not a big deal. I'm just here to play. However, it got me thinking about the groups I regularly play in. Every group has it's own personality, I would say. The band I play in is predominantly school band directors. They are very serious about playing well and they all know a lot about band music and conducting. They are a happy, upbeat group and many go out after rehearsal to socialize. The orchestra I belong to is a typical community group. We are mostly adults, with a few high school students. The playing ability ranges from pretty rusty to practically professional, so overall playing is uneven. It's a friendly group, but lacks the cohesiveness that the band full of band directors has. This new opera orchestra is made up of 20-somethings, mostly, who are aiming for a career as performers. I don't sense a group dynamic yet, maybe because it is a pick-up group, but they are all friendly.

I am very happy to have this opportunity. It's been years since I played an opera. It's a challenge that has gotten me practicing new things. I'm excited to hear it with the singers and to see how they plan to stage it. Fun times!

Family, Memories, Legacies

Last week we traveled to Minnesota for my mom's 93rd birthday. Both of my children were able to come this year, along with my brother, his wife and three kids, and my sister and her husband. Every year it's a different combination of people who are able to make it to Minnesota, but it's always good to see whoever comes!

At some point, someone always brings up how lucky we are that we all get along so well. We all know families where someone isn't speaking to someone else, or where people feel belittled or neglected. We all like each other. We are indeed fortunate.

My mom is a healthy 93. She walks, she does the crossword every day, she takes care of her own finances. She's a cheerful person, but she has been doing some reflecting back on her life, and so lately she has been sort of apologizing for not being such a good mother when we were growing up. Of course, she has nothing to apologize for - she and my dad raised three children who are all well educated, doing interesting things, and who have raised their own children. However, she feels her unusual upbringing gave her no examples of how families work or how mothers were supposed to act.

My mother's father died when she was two, leaving her mother to figure out how to support the two of them. My mom lived for several years on her grandparents' farm in western Minnesota, until she was old enough to start school. Meanwhile her mother was learning to be a seamstress and working for a tailor in Minneapolis. She and her mother moved to "town" so she could attend the local school and her mother went to work. They moved quite often - my grandmother was very handy and usually improved their apartment, at which point the landlord decided to raise the rent. By this time the Depression had begun. Like so many others, they were very poor. I asked her once what kind of things they ate. She told me their relatives on the farm would send in vegetables and other things, and they often ate pickled pigs feet and other inexpensive foods. In spite of these obstacles, my grandmother managed to send my mother to college, setting an example for the rest of the family. My mom became a teacher and worked until she married my dad.

So that's the background that my mom thinks was a detriment to being a good mom.

When I remember growing up, I remember feeling safe and loved. My parents set the expectation that we would all go to college, without pressure to get all As as we went through elementary and high school. They set an example of thriftiness without deprivation. They gave us lots of freedom to try things and make choices. We knew that life involved hard work and you had to earn things. We had what I remember to be a lot of free time, especially in the summer. Sometimes we were bored, and we had to figure out what to do about it ourselves. It was a good childhood; I have no complaints.

Not bad for a mom who was winging it!

(Though really, aren't we all winging it as parents?)

Looking for recommendations for biographies

I have been so impressed since I joined this writing community in March with the generosity of the members. I have gotten so many supportive, kind, and helpful comments on my posts. So today I'm asking for your help in recommending some books for my 4th grade class.

I'm searching for excellent biographies for upper elementary readers. I would like to use this type of book for use as both mentor texts and for research. One of the writing projects our 4th graders do each year is a research report on a subject related to the American Revolution. Many of the children choose to do a biography. Over the years I have read more biographies of people of that era, both children's and adult's, and I realize that many of the biographies for younger readers are not as engagingly written or, often, even completely accurate or complete.

When I read the post on Two Writing Teachers a couple of weeks ago about the presentation by Ralph Fletcher on teaching authentic nonfiction writing, I realized that this is the type of biography I have been looking for. The kind of nonfiction book that David McCullough writes, for example, but for young readers.

In our research project, we have the students read at least two sources for their topic. One is an
"easy" book, below grade level - a picture book if we can find one. I like the books by David Adler, the series with titles, "A Picture Book of...." This gives the young researcher a quick overview of the entire topic. The second book is generally a short chapter book, which provides more details, and also gives us a chance to teach the importance of more than one source. It's always interesting when students find discrepancies and need to decide how to handle that.

So I am looking for excellent biographies for young readers, about any person not just those from the American Revolution. I'm hoping some of you will be able to give me some suggestions! Thank you for your help!

In search of friends

My mother is a wonderful example of enduring and ongoing friendship. She is turning 93 this month and lives in an independent/assisted living community. She has no major health problems and is as sharp as ever. When she complains about things, always mildly, it's often about the food, but once she said sadly to me that her friends were all dying. It's true - they're all in their 90s. But my mom has the wonderful gift and desire to keep making new friends, even though she knows she may lose them.

I have been thinking a lot about friendship lately because one long-time friendship seems to have run its course. My husband and I have been friends with another couple for decades. We enjoy music together, we eat out, we talk about our kids... But somewhere along the way there has been a shift, so subtle that we didn't notice it for a while. Our friends appear to need to put us down continually. We tell them some wonderful news, and one or the other of them pops the happy balloon with a negative comment.

"My niece was offered three reporting jobs right out of college!" "[disparaging snort] Well, you know newspapers are dying."

Said to me: "Joe and Sue told us they went to your concert. They said it was awful."

It's a constant barrage. Neither of us can figure out why they have started treating us like this. I started thinking about our long friendship and I realized that it has devolved into a sort of friendship of convenience. If we're going to the same concert, we eat out together beforehand. We invited each other to life events. Other than that, we don't interact. And now, we don't want to.

So this has led us to thinking about forming some new friendships. It's not that easy once you are out of school, and especially if you are retired, like my husband. It's scary, too. What if the person you'd like to know better turns down your invitations?

My mother had some wonderful almost life-long friends. She met her best friend Lorraine in college. They got their first teaching jobs together, in the same high school. When they both married, they ended up in different parts of the country, but they always kept in touch. My parents asked Lorraine and Ray to be my brother's godparents. When my parents retired to Minnesota, they were all back in the same area and Lorraine and Ray chose the same assisted living community as my mother. Lorraine passed away and several years later Ray did also. Their passing was a huge loss for my mother. But she continues to reach out and make new friends.

I have long-time friends as well - a few from high school, more from college, scattered all over the country. I treasure those friends, but we also need the friends who we can go out to dinner with, see a movie, just sit and chat. And so, we are reaching out and hoping to find more people to add to our lives. Thanks Mom, for the great example.

The Battle of Yorktown

It's the last week of school here and there's so much going on! I decided, since it is my last week with this class, that they could suggest topics for my blog post this week. They made a wide variety of suggestions, quite a few of which I had already blogged on. The winner come from Sophie, who suggested I write about the Battle of Yorktown.

As you may already know, the Battle of Yorktown ended the Revolutionary War. We teach the Revolutionary War in 4th grade at Quest, mostly through various simulations. So one of our last activities was the Battle of Yorktown.

To give you the lay of the land - Quest is a private school, so our physical presence is different than any public school I have seen, and different than most private schools, too. Our main building used to be a public library and is located at one end of a strip mall. About 2 years ago, the school had a major fundraising campaign and bought the shopping center and an undeveloped plot across the street. The shopping center has remained a shopping center, but the plot has become our West Campus, a beautiful green space with a soccer field, black top area, garden plots, small amphitheater, and areas planted with native plants. This is where we now hold the Battle of Yorktown.

As teachers we do this every year and so we notice the differences each year, while the kids only got one experience with it. So, they didn't notice the challenges we faced this year. First, rain was predicted. It looked pretty threatening. But after our prep talk about how the battle would run, how to fire a musket and load a cannon, and so on, we went down to the gym to pick up blue and red pinnies to distinguish the British from the Americans and French forces, and our cannon balls (soft dodge balls). We also bring along some chairs, which serve as our cannon. I am General Cornwallis, and my partner is General Washington.

We left the building and marched along the entire length of the shopping center, crossing the street, and regrouping at the West Campus. The British were ensconced in the fort (the picnic shelter) while the Americans were behind their redoubts (is this how you spell this word?), the far side of the amphitheater. Then I discovered that we had left the bag of cannonballs sitting by the gym. Rain still threatening, I hurried back across the parking lot.

Finally, we are ready to start. The Americans are digging trenches, we British are waiting nervously. This battle is a siege, so the Americans and French bombard us with cannon fire, while moving closer and closer to the fort. When they get close enough, they add musket fire (wadded paper balls). The British return fire, but in the end we are overwhelmed and surrender. We do the surrender ceremony; General Cornwallis is too embarrassed to surrender to Washington, so he sends his second in command. Hats are thrown in the air and we march back to school, missing the rain! Huzzah!