Sloth

I realize that sloth is the opposite of a virtue. Sigh. I can see some definite advantages to sloth, I fear. But I am too lazy to figure them out.

I am not at my own computer, so I am resorting to this slothful way of saving an interesting website. I have already forgotten the name of it. But it has some fascinating slothful ways of cooking.

auspiciousdragon.net

Aha! I knew there was a dragon involved!!!! Thank the powers that be for control C and control V.

Nature Spirits and Elemental Beings

I was able to make inroads into this book, which contains some esoteric material (at least for my limited understanding). The books is written by Marko Pogacnik of Slovania - published in English by Findhorn Press. He is involved with earth healing as a "lithopuncturist," a type of acupuncture for the Earth. I think he came to Santa Fe to give advice on the particulars of our school in relation to its geography. I gather that we have some special issues to grapple with (duh!).

The part I want to note in particular as having relevance to my cleaning studies comes on pages 70 ff. He is discussing the legend of the dwarfs of Cologne. It is a legend reminiscent of the Elves and the Shoemaker. I knew I had read about this somewhere, and when i came across it again in this book, I realized I had better make a note of it. P.71..... "The legend of the dwarfs of Cologne also explains how this wondrous union [between creative people and the elementals] collapsed because of an interfering human mind. [.....] [The elementals}cannot exist on the mental level. And they will never return. The craftspeople must complete all their work by the sweat of their brow."

From Santa Fe to Seattle

Here I am. After a heart-rending adventure last night with Twitch not coming in, the moon bright, and the coyotes howling and ripping through the arroyo like the Hounds of Hell, and Twitch still not around in the morning, I was quite tired and weepy. I did not sleep after 3 am - I lept from the bed twice and ran out to the deck with my heart pounding. Dave our builder shared his horror story of his beloved cat being taken off by a huge owl.



I prayed and visualized and tried to be philosophical, since the morning newspaper had several stories of human tragedy, but still I was torn between holding out for hope but trying to be realistic. And then - a rattling in the closet in my office. I opened the door and there was a black furry thing who was slightly annoyed and certainly bemused by being covered with kisses. Thank good ness she was found before she was reduced to a skeleton in my closet, since R. does not hear reliably and might never have found her while I was in Seattle.I could leave with a light heart!

An Affirmative Phone Call

What an unexpected pleasure, to receive a phone call from my Lead, who is on vacation in the East, seduced by water and leafy trees, both of which are in short supply here in the high desert.

She was excited and thrilled and totally inspired by the glimpses she got of the work of some fibre artists. She was on a high and needed to talk to someone who would understand. What an honour to receive this phone call from the East Coast! Sometimes I feel overlooked and rather inessential - my problem, I realize , and it is by no means a predominant theme in my life - but a call like this is invigorating and affirming.

Fie! Poor Me

Trying to tie up loose ends before the great trek to Seattle. I heaved and ho'ed a couple of bags of steer manure and cotton burr mulch to spread on the back garden here at the house. It had rained yesterday a bit and I wanted to get this all out before the sun hit. I am not sure whether I am burying wild flower seeds which will now have difficulty penetrating the mulch, or whether perhap I am amending the soil so they have a better chance, or even, horrors, am I making the soil TOO rich for some of these desert plants. Is there a metaphor here? Let me give it some thought.

Went to school to finish what I could do in respect to cleaning - without the Lead K teachers there.

It was very discouraging. Years of neglect and stuffing odd things away in a basket and hanging on to everything (except stuff I found in the trash I sometimes hauled out!) I think that part of the horror and ennui is that I have been guilty of similar things (though never this awful, ha ha) and I have some of the zeal of a convert working in me. It is AWFUL and DEPRESSING. Should never be in a Waldorf K.

I know my lead will freak out and think I made things worse. What I did was haul things out of cupboards that no one has looked at. I put them out on the table. I washed shelves and put other things back.

I also got rid of papers and notes that were several years old and totally irrelevant. I have to get out of Dodge. It is just as well that I continue as Assistant and not as Co-Teacher. I have had no energy to work on songs, circles, stories.

Seven Planetary Grains

One of the things that I cannot seem to get nailed down is the associations of the grains with the different days of the week. Frankly, I would like to tinker with our "snack" menu at school.

Googling does not always come up with good sites as answers to questions. I used Answers.com to get this site.

http://www.alchemycalpages.com/7grains.html

Hmmmmm.

New Resolve

O ho! No wonder I have not been blogging. My sign-in name had changed and I forgot my password. But here I am now.

Alkelda the Gleeful suggested making this blog my personal struggles with matters of the Waldorf Kindergarten. Good idea, though of course there is a bit of dissonance vibrating between Waldorf K and writing on the computer. On the other hand, I am royally sick of having papers and files all over the place... as well as printing out web pages and juicy posts.

I have recently gone through the struggle of trying to clarify my new position at the school. Technically, I remain "Kindergarten assistant" as well as "Nap teacher", plus supervising early morning drop off, and also the clerical/administrative stuff for licensing, etc. This is to total 40 hours a week and does not include Early Childhood meetings, Faculty Meetings, work on the College of Teachers, festival work, parent evenings, and probably more.

I had thought that I would be more of an Assistant Teacher (semantically, and in my mind, essentially different from teacher assistant), which would mean that I would have an hour or two off in the afternoon to help the teachers with things like parent work and making puppets and buying supplies and all the things that have so often fallen through the cracks.

But i shall not complain right now. I am grateful that they have made this job full time which gives me the recognition and stature actually to be on the COT - as well as giving me medical benefits. Hurrah.

My work this summer at the school is giving me more connection to some of the faculty but especially to the administrative staff. This is all to the good.

So far this summer I am making sure that we have enough nap bags for our expanded program (I have made 8 new bags and have over-dyed the rest with Rit... Fuschia.. so all relate in some way, even though there is a big range in colour intensity and value.) I am also knitting face cloths in cotton yarn - each one different with stripes and simple textures- in yellow, rose, apricot, robin's egg blue, and lavander.

I have bought little pink washcloths to use as serviettes and also simple wooden serviette rings to mark with the children's names and then, perhaps, symbols.

My sister has bought enchanting little cups and bowls from IKEA for the class. The bowls are lined with soft green and the cups with coral.

I have an order in with Lehman's for another "rapid washer" and also a space-saver, Victorian style clothes dryer.

I am also pondering mydormant master's project on cleaning. Do we detect a pattern here?

Zounds! How much has happened in the intervening time. Ulric visited over Christmas and also Cousin Rebecca. I have travelled to Seattle to visit Alkelda and Bede and little Lucia. And I went to PA for nephew Bernz's wedding, and on to Puerto Rico, which was wonderful. The difficult and challenging part of the intervening time has been moving from Kindergarten Assitant to Lead teacher. I had wanted to post my first pedagogical story (and it was pretty long!) but I guess that will wait.

Where has the time flown? I thought I would have more leisure in Santa Fe. WRONG!

Oh fiddle-dee-dee. I wrote a post yesterday and it got lost. I wish I could use language the way Brad the Gorilla does, but NO, I am now a Waldorf kindergarten teacher (assistant), which is even more straight-laced than a children's librarina. Well, just for that, I will NOT tell you that last evening we went to a (free) concert by the Santa Fe Pro Musica sponsored by our bank, First National Bank of Santa Fe, complete with an exquisite buffet supper, totally unparalled by anything we have experienced in the East. There is much to be said for the quality of life here.

This morning i went for a check-up by my new doctor and waited not one whit in the waiting room. The restrooms are clean and un-locked. Everything was there under one roof. The receptionist, the nurse, and the doctor were all wonderfully friendly. I so wish we all could livelike this.

Yikes. I thought that moving to Santa Fe from Washington DC would be... getting away from the frenetic Eastcoast ratrace to a more civilized way of life. In many ways that is true. This evening we (Ricardo and I) went to a lovely, intimate chamber music evening with the Santa Fe Pro Musica. The bank manager knew us and had issued the invitation.

But earlier in the day a colleague, new, at the Santa Fe Waldorf School , had expressed frustration at the nice-sounding words of fellowship and inclusion, but what for her was the reality fo everyone being too busy for each other. And some other new teachers chimed in with assent. And an old-timer said that the tension upon returning to Santa fe from parts more relaxed was palpable and visceral. Well, well, well. Oy, gewalt. Something to ponder.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of Bartzy's funeral, which was both wrenching and glorious. A movie was suggested for this evening - we had not been to one together for quite a while - and "World Trade Center " opened today. I agreed to this one with alacrity. Normally I might well avoid it, but to join my sorrow to those who grieved at that time and continue to grieve (and don't we all?) seemed just right.

I am beginning to get my new little workspace cum guest room (at least for one person) in shape.The little shrine to the beloved departed who have gone to the other side of the veil is metamorphizing. But it is coming together. On a related subject, I am beginning to use the dishes which had belonged to my grand mother and great-grandmothers. I understand that the gnomes (or root beings) chortle with glee each time someone breaks a dish.

Just a postscript. I wrote this on the 12th, but it didn't get uploaded until the 13th, which accounts for the discrepancy between the date and the anniversary of Bart's transition into Grace.

Here I am in Santa Fe. It is hard to believe that a year ago I had never been in Santa Fe, let alone thought about living here. It is a miracle! And I believe that I have a job, which is no small thing when one moves to Santa Fe. It is just what I wanted - to be a kindergarten assistant in the Waldorf School. Deo Gratia!

In looking back at the previous entry, I see that my hopes were not so naive. This landscape supports a different way of being in the world, and I hope that quite soon (after the unpacking) that the elemental life will seep into my very bones.

Well, blogging once a month is better than not blogging at all (I hope). How can one write, though, in the midst of a vast allergy attack/cold?

Nevertheless, I will say that life is very strange right now. I am living in a rental space. in a sense. We have sold the house we have lived in for seven years, a beloved space, and fortunately have sold it to people who will love it similarly, I trust. Rent back through the end of July. And we have a contract on a high-desert equivalent to this moderate-rain-forest house.

What am I hoping for? A different rhythm to my day. Haiku responses to the surroundings. A ritualized spiritual discipline. Why should it be different? I realize we take ourselves wherever we go. But I also do not underestimate the power of the elementals, the surroundings.

Already I have initiated some things new. Besides the daily exercises for my wrist, I exercise daily on the lyre.

Aaaaargh! I promise, I promise to blog.... tomorrow!

OK. In the middle of the night I realized my cunning plan might have a flaw in it. I am so curious about how these blogs work, and I am naive. What would happen if I simply wrote the words "Santa Fe Public Library"? This is another test, at 19:21. Tomorrow I will try hyperlinks, and perhaps the next day, inflammatory language! (Is this just my pain talking?)

What! Twice in one day. I am going to have to write short posts more frequently in order to get back in the habit, and so I don't get too tired. When I have more two-handed mobility, I will start attempting to put pictures up too. One of my presents for Christmas was a package of rechargeable batteries for the little digital camera that Ulric gave me last year. Fortunately he also gave me a charger. I have a few details to master and then WHAM... you shall be dazzled.

And now, I have a cunning plan, as Baldrick would say. I am going to link to one of the few blogs that I check every day, the library blog that is my model for what a library blog should look like. Here it is, ICARUS.

The cunning plan has to do with ascertaining whether the ICARUS master picks up this reference to the blog and if so, how long will it take for there to be some response. It is about 6:15 Eastern Standard Time, or to be more exact,18:15.

My last post was on the evening before a big change in my life. I had not a clue as to what the morning would bring. In a nanosecond, a patch of invisible black ice transformed me into a one-handed person. My right wrist, my write hand, had been broken in 5 places. Surgery was on the 19th. Thank goodness for Brigid, my sainted sister, who took me in for surgery. Ivanhoe has been very, very supportive, and my friends and colleagues are truly wonderful. And I am learning to augment the use of my left hand with...teeth, right elbow, and either foot (usually not both at the same time.) I can wash my own hair, but I cannot file my nails easily. I cannot drive, at least not yet. (I have a stick shift.) Why am I writing this? It is hard to write anything nuanced while pecking the words out with three fingers. But I guess there are those who have written whole novels by tapping a keyboard with a stick in their mouth.

But an inspiration for me is one of my favorite illustrators, Glen Rounds. I had noticed that his more recent work was bold, with heavier black outlines than his previous pen-and-ink drawings. And in some illustrations one could detect that elements had been cut out and pasted in. But they were still wonderfully and unmistakably by Glen Rounds. Later I learned that
he had had a stroke and subsequently learned to draw with his non-dominant hand. I think he had been a right-hander, but his illustrations remind me forceably of my father's drawings, and Dad was a lefty. Brigid says my left-handed printing reminds her of Dad's printing, though he had a flowing cursive (usually.)

Right now I wanted to record a different on-line trnslation site which worked a lot better for me than the babelfish site did, at least for German to English.

I am continuing to have problems with my WILL (as in, motivation to do things, though I also have lacked the will to make a will, I admit.) Nevertheless, though I deserved no reward, I endulged in a movie tonight at the AFI (American Film Institute). I am not sure whether it was a movie or "un film" - Good Night... and Good Luck about Edward R. Murrow. It was obviously very timely ...and very, very sobering. The audience sat in silence at the end, just sitting there watching the credits.

The Ricardo said afterwards "Nobody is saying these things the way Edward R. Murrow said them -with simple eloquence." But then we remembered Bill Moyers.

OK - third attempt today to write something.

It is snowing here and thus we needed to cancel our library program tonight. Not that the weather was insurmountable, but enough people wussed out that we postponed it.

Life was rather slow in the library this evening and I actually resorted to playing solitaire ( I had forgotten how) in between chapters of a book which is actually quite good, but whose title I have forgotten. What a mess am I!

There was a message on my work machine today, from the children's librarian in Santa Fe, giving me the name of their director. It seems rather odd that when one goes to the library website, there is no place for finding out who the staff are or if there is a human resources division. But with some careful sleuthing and extrapolation from my own situation, I realized that the library is a division of the city government and probably all job postings and hirings get filtered through the city HR department. At least I know now that they have a new library director, Patricia Hodapp, who (I think) used to be with the Denver Public Library. She is also an artist and is on the board of Pandas International. I can relate to this since one of my young colleagues is totally obsessed with the new panda cub at the National Zoo. The baby's live cam is bookmarked on the toolbar of our Library's reference computer.