Avoiding Working on My Paper

My paper is about cleaning, right. Ergo, first I must clean (and think about my project as I clean.) De-cluttering is a major step in cleaning. Sort and file those papers!

Plus cooking for the Thanksgiving meal that was yesterday. Trying to get some things done ahead of time. Look what I found as I was sorting! A recipe for Lemon Butter Mousse...sounds great. It will save my baking a pie and be a light and delicious conclusion to the traditional meal.

Halfway into making the mousse, I realized that it involved about four different bowls, whipping heavy cream, whipping egg whites, softening gelatin, squeezing fresh lemons, zesting said lemons (though that was easy, now that I have a posh zester/grater like Alkelda and Bede's). And, I discovered last evening, the mousse is by no means light!

I did not roast the traditional turkey but rather two free-range fresh roasting chickens. And peeling, by hand, the cloves of 5 heads of garlic to make the 40 clove roasting chicken from the Gourmet Cookbook. (We have a whole chicken left, but the clean-up from the one we ate was simple. Bones and grease and scraps were all bundled together. Issa took it all home for her personal coyote .)

Ricardo wondered if all the work was worth it? In one way the evening was a disappointment. Ricardo was tired and Terry's boys were wild and running through the house. They needed to go home. So it was not one of those evening where we just sat around the fire and talked. But I was glad to give the children a place to go for Thanksgiving, and Issa too, though she probably would have been just as happy to stay home because of the snow starting to fall. She is a California girl, after all, and I think most of her round-the-world travels took place in tropical climes.

Maybe today I can start on this project, but of course I will not be able to do my interviews until my little tape recorder arrives -I hope that will work better than taking notes. So far I have not taken notes at all. Sigh.

A Lovely Gardening Blog

I have just discovered this blog: Nature Abhors a Garden. Wonderful inspiration. Today I wandered about the back garden, spreading a bit more straw and wondering about the winter season and next spring. What will survive? Will anything flourish? What an adventure!

I have been thinking about my master's project. And it has sent me to cleaning a bit. Hmmm. An interesting phenomenon. But Holly Koteen told me I would probably become more conscious of cleaning in my home life as I study it for my project.

I have returned to Rudolf Steiner's Knowledge of Higher Worlds which was required reading for my Foundation studies at Sunbridge. At the time I found it hard going. I have just started rereading it, so I don't know how it will progress, but so far I am finding it amazingly refreshing and understandable. Four years can make quite a difference - can it be only four years?????

Now I understand why Ann Stahl had us choose a plant and observe it daily. My plant was the bronze fennel. I planted bronze fennel summer before last, but it died. This year I had better luck. It is frozen in the garden now, but I am hopeful that it will return next spring. That is a primary exercise - to observe burgeoning life and then decline and death - and rebirth - in Nature. An added insight now is the importance of developing an established root system. (I have also learned via Gail not to cut down perennials in the fall - the cut-off stems will act like straws, drawing any moisture down into the root system and rotting it out.) I hope I am developing established root systems - in a metaphoric sense, of course!

Martinmas: a Lament and a Vow

OK. How on earth am I going to write a master's paper if it takes me a month even to acknowledge that I have not completed my previous posting?

It is Martinmas. I want to take my little lantern into the world, with whatever light I can shed. I just read in Knowledge of Higher Worlds that an idea must not be sequestered as a treasure for oneself but become an ideal for the benefit of the earth.

I will TRY to do my part. I hereby request the aid of the angels.

I have just returned from Takoma Park. On November 9 was the memorial service for Jillian Raye, who crossed the threshold on November 2, All Soul's Day.

Conversation with Barb

Yesterday I kept an appointment I had made with Barb Booth, our school administrator, to talk about my cleaning project. This was at her suggestion. I did not take notes, but i do want to record here what I remember. I don't think I could have taken notes, since it was really storytelling.

When Barb was in her mid twenties she joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Sierra Leone. This was in the '70's, before the made influx to the urban areas from the coutryside, and before the terrible years of violence, rape, and pillage.

She toughed it out for a year teaching in a high school, which was a farce that she hated. Then she took another training in agriculture and was sent to a village - aid workers who were women were being allowed to work in agriculture for the first time that year.

Though there were unenlightened practices in the villages (wife-beating, child-beating), there was much about the life of community and simplicity that appealed to Barb, and when she returned to the States, she began looking for a community that embodied or practiced similar virtues. Ultimately she found the Camphill village at Kimberton, Pa. She began a bio-dynamic training. Within weeks, after a houseparent left the community abruptly, she was made a house parent with responsibility of shepherding a number of developmentally-challenged villagers, cooking and cleaning, as well as working in the gardens.

Barb ended up staying on for seven years. She told me that this was toward the end of the heavily European-influenced "co-workers," who had strong opinions about everything from anthroposophy to the correct way to wash a floor.

Despite kicking against the pricks at times, it was here that Barb really experienced a different way of living that turned on its head the customary American way of thinking that elevates product above process (not Barb's words) - that values work according to some sort of hierarchy of importance. And very low on that ordinary, customary way of thinking is the work of cleaning. Custodial work.

But here in the Village where the villagers were able to do what they could, and work that was valued, no matter how slowly it might be achieved, then everyone had the dignity of being able to contribute work of value.

Hey, I'm still here

Yes, though this evening, for instance, I came home and then, at the encouragement of Ricardo, took an hour or so nap. I was incredibly refreshed - I have been incredibly tired!

Now i fear that getting my cleaning project off the ground is going to be too much. I MUST get on track and devise a plan. I think the main action , at least initially, is going to be the interview.

I am doing so well with interaction and cooperative work in the K, that I am loath to say how difficult it is for me at work to deal with clutter and disorganization.

Where Am I?

First week of school has gone by - well, we have had the kindergartners three days. Went very well, actually.

The night-time cleaning elves made off with all our brooms and dustpans. Apparently this has become a rueful joke around the school. "How do you know if your classroom was cleaned last night?" "Check to see if all the brooms are missing."

I have now bought a new bamboo broom fro Thailand as well as a blue and a red short broom, also from there (World Market.) Then I bought a beautiful dust pan made by Sweep Dreams at the Tropic of Capricorn.

I still haven't heard from Sunbridge about the guidelines for the master's project.

The grounds of the school are far more verdant than I have ever seen. More flowers, fuller trees. It makes me more eager to pick up the trash I see.

More cleaning connections

Our mini-bios that we shared on Tuesday at faculty meeting have produced fruit, at least for me. Besides a new relationship to Aaron (who is almost exactly Bartzy's age) and a "Mennonite" connection to Kathy A., there are the cleaning connections and offers I mentioned before. Now Michael O has come to me with questions. He has moved into a neglected house in Seton Village and wanted some insight into elementals etc. Of course I know almost nothing, but I did give him the Linda Thomas article.

Just this mornng I came across a wonderful quotation which might fit into my article. It is a message from the Mock Orange Deva as conveyed by Dorothy Maclean in her book To Honor the Earth, p.20.

What fun life is! For us, to hold each little atom in its pattern is to hold it in joy. We see you humans at times glumly encountering experience, doing things because they have to be done. We marvel that your sparkling life could be so filtered down and disguised. Life is abundant joy. Each little bite of a caterpillar into a leaf is done with more zest than we sometimes feel in you humans. We would love to shake the sluggishness out of you and have you see life as bright and blooming, waxing and waning, eternal and one.

First faculty meeting August 2008

Well, this was an auspicious meeting. After a rousing get-together with singing and greeting each other, we spent considerable time introducing ourselves to the whole group. The format was - past, present,future - in 2 minutes. Needless to say, not everyone kept it to two minutes, but the self -intros WERE pretty short.

Many were light-hearted or even funny. Mine was not. (I was close to the end, when we were encouraged to be even shorter.)

It was the first time in the whole group that I alluded to Bart's death. And I also made a quasi-announcement that I was going to try to finish my master's project. On cleaning!

It has taken two years, but I am beginning to feel a part of the group.

Jennie Baudhuin (whose birthday is today!) told me that Eugene Schwartz has been VERY BIG on cleaning in the classroom. She will talk to me.

Early Childhood idea - let's get together and do a deep cleaning of each of our classrooms!

The official cleaners seem not to have done a very good job this time around. What to do?

More elementals

They're popping up everywhere! I have to get serious here.

First day back - a College meeting for 4 hours (my eyes are spinning widdershins) after an early morning meeting with Jill and Jennie. At least I am being treated as an equal, which is vastly interesting. Well, maybe not an equal. It's like there is no precedence for this - two leads and an assistant. Treated with respect, and I am grateful. (And separate but equal. I can buy that.)

At any rate, we all came into the meeting not know what the constellation would be, and we ended in agreement that I would stay with Desert Rose Kindergarten and Annie would join Jennie in Woods Rose (or whatever she might decide to name it.)

There is all sorts of dirt lying around down in the K where malevolent elementals may be brooding. Something must be done.

References to the elementals, and more

I am really hoping to do reading - and deep experiencing - to begin to have a conscious relationship to the elementals. Holly suggested yesterday in our talk that the insides of cupboards need also to be clean and orderly. When there is a deep sense of order, when the usefulness and purposefulness of the material world are acknowledged with appreciation, then the elemental beings are happy to work with us. (I hope I am not misquoting - I don't have it exactly)

So... longer ago I asked Natale Adams and also Eugene Schwartz about Steiner lectures that referred to the elementals. Natalie mentioned the lecture cycle Man as Symphony of the Creative Word and Eugene refered me to The Spiritual Heirarchies.

Whoa. Every door that I open leads to worlds behind the doors.

OK. Part of keeping a journal (did I say this already?), per suggestion of Holly, is to notice how consciousness at school begins to affect one's awareness at home. (I am glad Holly confessed to me that she has not always been as diligent at home as she has been at school, but that this imbalance has pretty much evened out for her.)

Well, besides buying two new brooms (one for home and one for school) and a red and a blue whisk broom for school, I have been starting to declutter the clothes closet and clean. I have also given the glassed-in portale a good sweep on the floor - lots of cobwebs and woolies and cat hair had collected in corners and on electric cords etc.

Ricardo has given me a good suggestion that I need to ponder. I wonder if I can team up with one of the grade's teachers (Danelle comes to mind) to do some deep cleaning in that classroom. How to observe potential effects would be the trick.

Now i am going to practice adding an image,

Re-embarking on the voyage of my master's project

I have until the end of July, 2009, to write up my master's project on Cleaning in the Kindergarten. I had decided to bag it, but I have changed my mind.

I talked to Holly today, and she encouraged to me to give it a swing.

She was glad I was familiar with Linda Thomas , whose article was so inspiring to me. She urged me to try to get in touch with her.

Also, I need to read about the elementals, especially in relationship to cleaning.

And she also encouraged me to keep a journal, which I will try to do here. ONWARDS.

Getting Ready for Seattle/Orcas Island

Filling up the ollas and emptying out the fridge. (Well, I am obviously leaving things in the fridge, but I would rather not have things moldering if I know Ricardo won't cook with them.) Yikes. The time has zoomed passed and now I must go to bed. Our guest and we watched "Becoming Jane " together = quite, quite poignant.

Garden

Today is Thursday, the one day I can legally water my plants with Eldorado water, not just grey water. I am cautiously pleased that a number of plants seem to be making it, this second summer of my learning to garden in the high desert.

Keys to fragile success: WATER, of course. (I thought xeric plants did not need much water, but that turns out to be maybe after the third year, and even then.....)

Soil amendments - I use a lot of Soil Mender and Yum Yum mix, both developed here in Santa Fe, I understand.

Straw mulch - I have used two bales so far and have two more in reserve. The problem is, when the monsoons come, all the plants are so grateful, including the seeds left in the straw as well as all of the seeds scattered under the birdfeeders.

Big river stones surrounding the plants. These help preserve some of the water, collect miniscule amounts of dew, help me remember where some of these tiny plants are so that I can both water them and avoid stepping on them, and, I hope, will help me with mulching over winter (and know where not to dig!)

Ollas, which preserve the water and let it seep out slowly. A plus which I did not expect - the purslane which I love to eat is fat and succulent around the ollas, so I guess i have a monoculture vegetable garden as well. (I just discovered that purslane is rich in Omega-3's!)

Finally, allowing the large weedy-looking asters to grow tall and shade the young plants. The sun is just too fierce. Eventually I hope I can weed out many of the asters and leave the rest nicely grouped for a wild flower show in the fall.

I am growing primarily plants which are aromatic and attractive to hummingbirds, butterflies, bees, and people. The big three groups I love are agastache, the artemsias, and lavender. There are lavender farms near here, but I have yet to keep any lavenders going to grow big and bushy. Patience.

A vicious hailstorm tool out, or nearly, a special trumpet vine, but we keep watering it and hope it comes back next year. I am also just getting some moonflower vines started after trying multiple times.

I have saved all my receipts for the garden in a jug which is overflowing. Billions of dollars, I fear.

Visitors to Santa Fe

I had been told that when we moved to Santa Fe, we would have LOTS of people visiting. I did not quite believe it, though I hoped it to be true.

Well, tonight is the first night in a while that I have not thought about supper for anyone else but Ricardo and me. I know the parameters there- life is a good deal simpler.

But what fun I have had! Lots of folk visiting or else coming over for supper while there were other visitors.

The longest and best lot were Alkelda the Gleeful with Lucia, and then Bede as well. Nephews Zack and Lennie. Guest Running Horse. Gary, the guitarist. Rebecca, dear cousin. And then Liz and Aaron for a few days. Whew! And hurrah.

Pray for my Intentions

I would like to use this space, truly, for reminding myself of my intentions and also for recording things i don't want to forget.

The summer is speeding by. Lucia and Alkelda and Bede were here, and it was lovely. This came on the heels of my visit in Denver - a conference and also spending time with cousins Arlen and Lola. Several things came out of all of the Denver experiences.

1. Intention to read to the Dead. I am using Bart's big notebook to start on keeping a list of those to whom I want to read.

2. Write a "birth" story for Bart eventually, i.e. like a birthday story but going back over the rainbow bridge.

3.meditate on the point/periphery

4.Think about the epileptic/hysteric polarity

5.prepare more spring rolls and also make art (inspired by the Denver art show)

Something that has come up more recently is the encouragement to finish my masters in the next school year. Yikes! This is going to be monumental. More on that later.

I need to do something about the lyre and also the lyre association.

Gear up for the new school year. I have a sneaky suspicion that there will be some change that I am not expecting.

I am finished with this post for now. I will say only that i am currently addicted to Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe books. Very literate and witty, and they make me want to go back to some of the old English Lit classics. (In my spare time, ha ha.)

Martinmas

OK, I am not really blogging about Martinmas. I am only noting that the last time I wrote, it was before Michaelmas, and here it is, time for Martinmas! Self-flagelation, or however you spell it. And yet I am in a space where I can (relatively) simply give thanks for being involved with work where celebrating the festivals is important . And what a joy that Lucia is being drawn into festival life.

I yearn for "do-overs." I wish I had been able to bring these festivals, this conscious rhythm of life to my own children. Can I learn to accept my deep failings and be grateful for the foundation that my Mennonite upbringing did manage to help root my children in something beyond the personal?

Leaving that aside, what about these first months of this second year in Waldorf-land? I was going to blog almost every day. What a laugh! I am already several weeks behind in the minutes for the College of Teachers. Grrrrrrrr.

Labimmel, Labammal, Laboom.

Laurie Clark (Denver, WECAN) was here this past week. She is adamant that we assistants get a break before naptime. My enforced break led to my going to the school library and checking out a couple of books. The Jeanette Winterson novel regarding Time (I forget the title) is lovely, and I am addicted.

Labimmel, Labammal, Laboom.

I brought leftover soup to the faculty lounge today. This is a loving gesture that is appreciated, I am finding. Terry has been doing this for a while now, and I am grateful for her encouragement. (Our kids have been eating so much of the soup that heretofore I have never had enough to bring. But I will try to make extra to have enough to share.)

First Week (and Birthday)

Yikes. I understand so much more viscerally now why my Waldorf K buddies rarely answered my emails in a timely fashion, when i was still a librarian. I do not know how anyone has the time to live a satisfying life outside of Waldorf Land.

I was going to write each day .... this year... about daily life in the K. But whoosh! There goes a week, with faculty/COT meetings after school and nothing quite getting accomplished what needs to be accomplished.

Things to do: a partial list.:

Write to Holly Koteen
Write to Jim and Maureen
Practice the lyre
Establish a spiritual practice
Work on my master's project

IMPORTANT

organize my stuff
write minutes for COT - constantly
clean house

aaaargh.

The circle for this week has been from "Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures" by nancy Blanning and Laurie Clark. Jill M. has jumped off from the "Sunflower Circle" on pages 71 ff. It is charming and light, a real winner. I realize that I had elements of this in the circle I wrote for Sunbridge. What I needed to do was SLOW DOWN. Fascinating.

I played the lyre a bit tonight.

First day of school

Yesterday was the 1st day of kindergarten, though two days ago was Rose Ceremony where I saw my erstwhile Kindergartners enter in through the flower gate with nary a backward look (though some were nervous or self-conscious.) I went to COT in the afternoon, such a long day that I wondered if I would survive this year.

The first day of Kindergarten, I was there early and started the millet. It was a bit chaotic and not very reverent in mood, with parents zooming through the K to set up for their tea on the playground. JM was in the hall greeting, and at a certain point she came in with children on the round rug, doing a little fingergame, and I went out in the hall and helped Terry with nap bags. Finally we got most of the parents out of there.

Two parents stayed - Mitch with Leo, and Betsy with John. John is going to be a big challenge, a choleric boy with a loud voice. But i was interested that JM not only allowed Betsy to stay but also gave her instructions on how to be. I realized later that JM was using thistime as a way to start modelling behavior for Betsy.

Actually, it was a good thing she was there. She ended up doing all the dishes when i ended up caring for Sam who threw up and needed to go home.

Our rhythm is different this year. But later for that. I have to get ready. Getting up at %:30 am still doesn't give me enough time! By the way, Chris and I had four sleepers yesterday already!

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."