What Lazy Days of Summer?

I'm sure glad I'm not a teenager anymore. In an article in today's New York Times, writer Alex Williams reports on a "small but growing number" of college bound students for whom summer has become a time of "resume building academic work and all-consuming, often exotic projects to change the world." Apparently there is a growing belief among young people and their parents that "downtime is wasted time," so teenagers are spending their summer months doing everything from advaced prep on their AP classes and early level college courses in basic subjects, to political internships in Washington, and working with impoverished families in the Phillipines. Obviously there is great value in all these activites. Who can argue with furthering your education, or volunteering to help your fellow man? I just can't help feeling saddened that young people believe it's worthless to spend a week at the beach with their family or friends, or to lay on their back porch reading a book. One student interviewed for the article admitted that she didn't have much time for her friends, and philosophized that it was just a "give and take." Another young woman expressed her hope that the "carefree feeling of being young would come out in college." Well, I didn't make it into Harvard, but I'm smart enough to know that you don't get second chances to experience the "carefree feelings of youth."

With this trend toward year round achivement, as with everything in life, the key is finding balance. Teenagers tend to believe that if a little bit of something is good, then a lot is even better, whether that something is drugs and sexual activity or advanced placement classes and volunteering in foreign countries. They aren't always mature enough to find the happy medium which best suits their individual emotional and physical capacities. As their parents, teachers, and society, it's our job to remind them that productive growth experiences really can occur in non-structured situations. Let the rat race wait a little longer - there is plenty of time for that!

Sunday Scribblings-Earliest Memories

Just the other evening I took a trip back in time to "the old neigborhood," the one where my earliest memories would have occured . Mind you, I haven't been back to that area for almost 45 years, so I was somewhat anxious, not knowing how the old place had fared over time. I was pleasantly surprised. Of course there were the requisite McDonald's and Walgreen's on the corner where I recalled The Clock restaurant and Sam's Drugs. But the homes still looked much as I remembered them, and my old house was sporting new windows, and a stylish entry door with beveled glass. The tiny back yard was now surrounded by tall white fencing, so the little round gate that I remember trying desperately to open so I could "get out" was no longer there. But I was amazed to see that small patch of woodland at the end of the street where my grandfather and I would walk our dog, me carrying a miniature Winchester rifle and pretending to be Daniel Boone in the forested hills of Kentucky. Something that had not changed at all was the stone fronted library, which stood just around the corner from our house. I was about age four when my mom and I walked there for the first time. The first wonderful scent of those pages and ink is still stored in my olfactory memory, and as I breathed in the aroma of all those words, printed and bound so beautifully, it was like the breath of life to me. That was the moment I fell in love with books, and I have loved them ever since.

On the last Christmas we spent in that house, I got a little toy piano as a gift. I can clearly recall sitting on the bottom stairway, playing my heart out on that miniature keyboard. My parents must have realized that my desire to play was genuine (or they just couldn't stand the tinny sound of that toy once second longer!) for it was on my next birthday that a real piano appeared in our living room.

It's interesting to me that my clearest early memories all involve things that have become crucial to the center of my life today - books, music, even dog walking! I wonder if early exposure ignites our gentic proclivities, sort of "jump starting" our inherent talents and desires? Or is it that our experiences over the course of a lifetime tend to clarify those early memories, sort of flag them as important in our unconscious mind? Whichever way it works, I know those incidents I now recall so fondly became cornerstones for the things that I love, creating years and years of special memories for me.

Mug Shots

According to novelist Joanne Harris' protaganist in her latest book Gentleman and Players , "you can tell a lot about a teacher's personality from his coffee mug." Well, if that's true, I must be schizophrenic, because all these mugs are mine. Yep, there's mugs here that date back to the first year I set up housekeeping (1976 in case you're keeping track), and as new as the one I bought at the Smithsonian Institute two weeks ago when I was in DC with the school choir. Why so many?

I'm willing to bet that if I looked inside most of your cupboards, you'd have your own motley collection of mugs. We get them as gifts from our friends, our co-workers, our kids, and especially from our students (for those of us who are teachers). I've done quite a bit of mug weeding over the years, and I still have this many left. Do I use them all? Actually, I do. As I stumble into the kitchen each morning, blindly reaching toward my lovely Cuisinart programmable coffee grinder/maker that has my morning brew nicely prepared and steaming hot for me, I'm already in the process of deciding which mug it's going to be. The white bone china with pink roses that I bought not long after my wedding because it "matched" my pink kitchen? The tall slim ironstone one, covered in Monet's famous Water Lily? The plain white Corelle mug that I picked up in the dollar store in Orlando to keep at my son's apartment so I'd have a mug to drink from when I visited him? Decisions, decisions...

Coffee mugs, like T-shirts, and key chains, and calendars, are one of the little ways we use things to express our personalities and our feelings on a particular day. When I want to feel elegant, I use the bone china mug. When I feel like I need a "really big cup", I'll grab the one festooned with hearts and music staves that Jim gave me for Valentine's day a few years ago. When I'm missing my boy, I'll pick up that Corelle, or the one he gave me once for Mother's Day that says "A good mother is like a quilt; she keeps her children warm, but doesn't smother them."

So I guess my mug collection doesn't necessarily mean I'm schizophrenic. There are many facets to my personality, and many ways I like to express them. Coffee mugs are just one tiny one. So, what does your mug say about you today?

Poetry Thursday- Kindness

Someone told me recently that I was the kindest person they had ever met, and frankly, I was surprised. I don't consciously think about what it means to be "kind." I try to treat others as I would wish to be treated, but I think that true kindness is much more selfless than I could ever pretend to be, and demands a willingness to sacrifice and a depth of experience that I have never faced. This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye expresses what I feel kindness demands. I can only hope to have true kindess "go everywhere with me, like a shadow or a friend."

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness. you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead beside the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises it head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. Naomi Shihab Nye

Me-From A-Z

Thanks to Susan at soozphotoz for another super idea -the A-Z of me (or of you if you choose to play!) Here goes: Accent: Mostly midwestern, but a little bit of my central Kentucky heritage pokes thoo ever' now an agin; Booze: Strictly Chardonnay Chore I Hate: Emptying the dishwasher Dogs/Cats: Magic and Molly, Shih Tzus extraordinaire Essential Electronics: Laptop, cell phone, TIVO, programmable Cuisinart coffee grinder/maker Favorite Perfume: Scents make me sneeze, even when other people are wearing them Gold/Silver: Gold, always Hometown: Redford, Michigan, born here, raised here, still live here, and probably ready to leave here Insomnia: Right before a concert Job Title: Depending on the day, either Accompanist or Report Writing Coordinator Kids: One, a 26 year old male Living Arrangements: One old house in an old midwestern town; one new house in an up and coming southwest Florida city. Ask me which one I like best! Most admired trait: Kindness to others Number of sexual partners: Right now and for the forseeable future, one and only one Overnight hospital stays: Three nights, following the birth of my son Phobias: Enclosed places - just the thought of a CT scan makes me shiver Quote: Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him march to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Henry David Thoreau Religion: A believer, but cool to organized religion Siblings: None Time I Usually Wake Up: 6:30 a.m. in summer; 7:30 in winter Unusual Talent: Trivia master Vegetable I Refuse to Eat: Rutabaga Worst Habit: Worrying too much, although I'm getting better with age X-Rays: Right elbow, broken last winter when I tripped over my own foot walking the dogs Yummy Foods I Make: Pot Roast, Farmer's Breakfast Casserole, French Toast Zodiac Sign: Pisces, the fish