My hands are small, I know...

"The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference" - Elie Wiesel

This quote has been moving slowly around in my head and in my heart over the last week or so.  It is that much more poignant that it came from a man who somehow, miraculously, survived the devastation the Third Reich visited upon its own citizens in World War II.  The senseless acts in Paris and other places around the world seem a relentless barrage of darkness that threatens whatever light we live by in the micro-worlds around us.  I am an empath, and so my own heart keenly feels these things - I've often been told that I become too invested emotionally and so each tear is a floodgate to emotional wreckage.  In talking to a (male) friend, JDB recently said - as the only words of explanation he could offer - she feels things.  I can't help it and it often puts me in awkward and painful situations.  I seem to collect the injured around me and I desperately want to heal them all.  I rarely can.  Even less so when it is the world itself I want to heal.

It did not help that the events in Paris unfolded while I was sitting alone in a hotel room hundreds of miles from home.  I did what I could to avoid traveling down a stream of tears until I at least had my standard support network in place - my family, my husband, my friends, my cats.  Even the dog.  But still - the buildings lit in familiar colors for another country's flag were a monument not easily overlooked as I walked the streets of a city that I did not know.  So, my heart ached, and still aches - here in the safety of home - for those put in harms way, those who paid a price they did not ask to pay, for those who are reeling to find answers when there are none.  And part of me finds that my support network is reverberating with hatred, fear, indifference, and paranoia.  I am reminded, at each visit, of the opening stanza of a Yeats poem that just two weeks ago my students presented.  Never have the words felt so real to me.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Build walls, close the doors, throw them all away because a few might be poisoned.  I've heard the refugees compared to the Jewish population under Hitler's regime.  I've heard them compared to food.  Food.  We are at a place where we are comparing the terror, desperation, and helplessness of human beings to grapes and M&Ms.  I've heard people who feel otherwise being called bleeding hearts, being berated and insulted, simply because we do not blame the Syrian refugees for these acts of violence.  This issue is dividing the world and yet the very country that exploded in blood and broken glass has vowed that it will welcome the refugees in direct defiance.  It remembers the words placed on the base of her gift to us - La Liberté éclairant le monde. Liberty enlightening the world.

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

It always comes back to light, doesn't it?  Paris went dark and the world lit up in solidarity.  A thousand points of light and love dotted the globe before it turned to glaring spotlights on the innocent.  But that early light brings me hope; it always does.  Those early lights - which symbolize the world's ability to set aside differences for one brief moment - are why I will never give up.  In each chapter of darkness, there are always points of light and I will always look for those. There is always good to be found in the world.  There is always hope.  And if each of us believes that we can change the world, we can.

My hands are small.  I cannot heal the world alone, but I can hold your hand. And yours. And you can hold the hand of the next person, and they the next.  In the end, only kindness matters and we - each of us - has the power to spread that kindness if we can but push through the hate and the indifference.  I know this echoes of cliche and naivete, but I will not bow down.  I will not give up. The minute I give up hope and give in to the madness of the world is another step towards the failure of the world to rise above.  Another light that has gone out.  We must have our own passionate intensity.

We can do this.  Spread light.  Give love.  Start small.  Take my hand.

Flocks of Wonder....

We are slowly approaching gift-giving season and so, much too early, Christmas ads are starting and people are beginning to watch the skies for snow.  It doesn’t help that I myself am in the midst of my family’s ‘birthday season’ – where we have at least one birthday per month from August to December (three in November).  This is not a blog about gift giving occasions, per se, but something that is known, I think, only to a few.  It is more about a different spirit of random giving that is perhaps unintended, but appreciated deeply nevertheless.  Whatever reason it happens, it is no doubt that the benefits are tenfold, though I’m not sure the giver has any idea what he has wrought.

Before I explain the above, I have to first build something of a context so it can be better understood by the uninitiated.  There is a student at the college where I work who is a relatively quiet and unassuming sort of fellow for the most part.  I’ve seen him come out of his shell a little bit when I’ve had him in some of my more specialized classes.  These are the classes about Alice and Harry and Frodo; classes that attract the misfits and the geeks.  I use those words with all the affection in the world – for I am a misfit myself.  It is no accident that one of my favorite characters in animated holiday specials is King Moon Racer, the winged lion who rules over the Island of Misfit toys.  These classes – and the kind of learner they attract – are a joy to teach because they have a presentation component wherein all the students invent and develop their own topics and spend the semester working on them so they are prepared to present the results to their classmates at the close of the course.  This is my favorite time because students like this one have the opportunity to show, sometimes rather awkwardly, the deep and creative minds that have often hidden behind silence for the bulk of the semester.  Again, all of this is only to give a picture of the way that I know this student and to drive home the beauty of the story I am going to tell of what he does outside the classroom.  You see, he likes to make paper cranes.

This in itself is a lovely little skill and something I cannot do, but what really amazes me is what he does after he makes them.  I, and others, have found them scattered around the school in the strangest of places, often made possible by the fact that he is rather tall.  He puts them atop vending machines, exit signs, doorframes, ceiling mounted speakers, clocks, and, basically, anything else that is up high and has a small ledge on it.  He has put them on books in the library stacks – though I’m told that it is only the Harry Potter books that have been craned, so to speak.  He has put them, nested on a piece of paper, in the bins outside my door.  Every time I think that he is no longer doing it, I find another one or hear about someone else finding one.  Those of us who are always half-looking feel blessed when our furtive and ever-hopeful glances are rewarded with a tiny crane in pink or blue, yellow or decorated.  I have amassed a small collection of them and it’s like seeing a rainbow or finding a four-leaf clover.  They never fail to make me happy.  My hummingbird friend also has several of them and loves them as much as I do.  When I told my mother about them, she asked if I would give her one.

Just the other day, my hummingbird friend smiled the cutest little giggling smile when I approached her at the copier.  When I tilted my head in question, she pointed to the exit sign above the nearby drinking fountain and said ‘look!’ with a voice full of delight and wonder.  I have much the same reaction and I was not the least bit surprised when she asked a student, but a moment later, to fetch the crane that was sitting on high, waiting.  I know that she added it to the growing collection she already has; I would have done the same had I seen it first.  That is the magic of the cranes – we collect them as if brownies or fairies came in the blink of an eye and left gifts for the worthy.

These cranes must not take him much time to make; in fact, I know they don’t because he used to make them in class when class discussion spun into intellectual excited chaos around him.  He must know I love them or he wouldn’t leave them around my door from time to time.  He must know that others gather them because every time he places one, I’m sure it doesn’t take long for them to be claimed by someone with a watchful eye and a thoughtful glance.  I wonder if he sees it as a game.  I wonder if he notes how long it takes each one to find a new home.  I’ve never asked him.  We have never spoken about the giving of the cranes.  Even though I know who does it, it feels like an almost mystical event to find one and every time I consider asking him about them, I come to the realization that I just don’t want to know.  Let him keep hiding them out in the open until he no longer roams our halls and, for the rest of us - let his magic continue lift our hearts and remind us what wonder is.

Just Breathe...

The following is a transcript of some free writing I did this afternoon.  I don't often hand write things because I find that my hand cannot keep up with my brain in any meaningful, legible way.  There are times, however, where I make an exception for some reason.  Today was one of those times...I did not overthink it much, I did not take the time to edit or craft it.  I just put it from paper to screen.

I'm sitting in the Arboretum as I write this.  It is probably my favorite place to be of late, especially near to home.  My summer was full of turmoil - much of it of my own making - and I often retreated here for solace and to escape the noise of the whirlwind around me.  Numerous visits for several months brought me from late spring through summer and now into fall.  This has afforded me the opportunity to see the change from the growth of spring to the vibrancy of summer and now the slow decay of autumn as Mother Earth prepares herself for the long winter to come.  It is hard to stay lost in man-made desperation and chaos when each step rattles the world -- a chipmunk darts across the path ahead, while a turtle slips into the waters to one side and something rustles in the dry leaves on the other.  There is silence, but it is folded into the scurrying of unseen creatures, the call of the bullfrog, the song of hidden birds.  From visit to visit, the swamp would rise and fall according to the will of the rain, and a single leaf falls or countless cascade around me at the will of the wind.  Not a single care I bring with me can stop this ebb and flow of nature's endless cycle.  I have watched the brook near to bursting from spring's powerful torrents and cautiously stepped around fallen logs and bending branches which were not there the walk before.  I have startled wildlife, sat in the sunlight, been drench in a sudden downpour.  I have wiped sweat from my eyes as I peered into a tree where two herons perched and crept as quiet as may be towards sunbathing turtles, hoping to capture them in frozen image before they slipped away.  I have peered fruitlessly into the trees trying to see what rustled in the undergrowth or hopped from branch to branch.  I have had camera on hand in exactly the right moment to capture snakes, crawdads, a rainbow of birds and flowers, dragonflies and bees, a fawn and a snapping turtle.  All allowed me to step into their world and, for a time, live there in respectful distance, my errands no less important than theirs.  My survival differently but equally dependent on what I found there.  

I have sat for hours on the board walk, on a log, on a patch of leaves, on a grassy hill above the wetlands, searching for peace and coming closer to it than I dared hope.  Immersing myself in nature is profoundly moving in seemingly contradictory ways - I feel at once alone and yet in tune with the vibrant life around me.  I feel insignificant but somehow an intricate part of something powerful at the same time.  I am equally enamored of a bug skimming the surface of the water as I am of the trees pushing their way towards the bluest of skies.  Each remind me of the strength and grace that nature gives both her largest and smallest creatures.  Each intricate leaf, each unnamed plant, each unrecognized flower, each sound I cannot place is part of me and I of it.  I owe my soul and my heart to the hours I've spent listening to my own footsteps, hearing my own heartbeat, feeling the air fill my own lungs, and taking in each minute beautiful detail of the world with my own eyes.  This is peace  - I come seeking it, outwardly, and find it within.  Tranquility in endless movement and chaotic rhythms.  Finding beauty in a submerged log, a fallen leaf, browned grasses pushing through a stump half drowning in swampy waters.  No matter what ails me, what troubles I found or made, life will go on.  Birth from death, renewal from decay, the promise of a greater tomorrow. And even in the crumpled leaf and the broken twig, there is hope and beauty and promise.  Serenity.


There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
—Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”

Walk Right In, Sit Right Down...

Today, on this 18th day of September, I am resurrecting my blog. I am doing so because I miss writing because I don’t do it enough. I am doing so because I feel that it would make me a more genuine teacher of writing if I practice the craft I teach. I am doing so because this is the area of writing in which I feel I am best. I don’t think I will ever be a writer of fiction; I don’t have the stamina or the detailed mind for it. I fear my stories are in a permanent state of stasis. But this, this I can do. So, I will, and I will simply by diving right in...

Last night my friend the dragon, who has had pretty serious battles with depression was talking to me about how he was acutely aware of his mood and he felt the need to go read or watch anime or otherwise be away from people. Because of this, he was forcing himself to be in a place where he had to interact with others. When he explained why, it made a good deal of sense to me. He knew that if he gave into that need to be alone, it would lead down a path whose destination he already knew and to which he did not want to go. I made a point of talking to him for the rest of the evening about my own recent internal battles and how I felt I was better learning what it meant to have healthy friendships on which I did not feel wholly dependent for my own validation. Towards the end of the evening, I asked him how he was feeling. His response was that he felt much better – that the online group activity in which he was engaged and the steady conversation he and I had been having had pulled him back from walking down that road of isolation. I went to bed that night feeling like I had done some real good in the world – it wasn’t so drastic as having saved someone’s life, but I was able to figure out what someone else needed and was then able to provide it. And it worked.

Fast forward to today and once I was done with my classes, I found myself embroiled in trip plans that involved a travel agent, the chair of a committee that grants funds for professional development, and the coordinator of a conference I’m attempting to go to in November. It was aggravating, time-consuming, and ultimately is still unresolved completely. Added to that, my lunch plans fell through because my companion’s own schedule had become ridiculously complicated and so I could feel a desire to just go off and buy lunch somewhere and sit alone until meetings called me back a few hours later.

And then I remembered my friend from the night before.

Before I continue, I should point out that I am not normally one to run at a problem. I dislike conflict of any kind, so I’m much more likely to retreat, even if there is no real conflict and I’m just running away from the world. It does not help that I am an introvert, so sometimes running away seems like the only sane option. If there is no one around, you can’t be let down and you can’t get tired of interacting with the world. You just ARE in those moments, but not in a Zen sort of way.

I thought about how my dragon friend forced himself to socialize because he knew where isolating himself would lead him and he did not want to go there. I thought to myself, I wonder if that would work for me. Would forcing myself to come out of the Flight of the Introvert actually help? I mean, it wasn’t like I was depressed or otherwise in a dampening mood – I just didn’t want to be around people. This would be a problem, however, if I embraced it and then had to go actually run a meeting later that afternoon. So, I decided I’d give Dragon’s idea a try.

When a former student stopped by after her class, I took the plunge. I wonder if she realized the words sort of tumbled out rather abruptly; “What are you doing? Do you want to go to Wegman’s for lunch with me?” After that, it was easier and it was not long before I felt the need for isolation subside. It was as if a switch had been flipped in my head or heart or something and I could face the world again. This is especially significant because I call this friend Switch for unrelated reasons, but the name seemed even more fitting today. After we ate and I took her back to campus, I went for a walk in my Arboretum (perhaps I will blog about that next) to temper the surge of energy I felt from conquering what I knew was not a good state of mind in which to be. Life was good.

I came out of the Arboretum ready to sit in one meeting and run another one and I’m not sure I could have said the same if I hadn’t made myself take a leap of faith off not a cliff, but at least a small hill. And you know what? It was worth it.

“The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun” – Benedict Cumberbatch

Not angry, but passionate...

The following is a compilation (with some editing) of a few Facebook posts made in response to a comment made about community colleges. In the end , I don’t think the poster meant anything negative in what he said, but it got me thinking and feeling like I needed to respond. It also touched a nerve of a former student who worked very hard to earn her degree and who took a little umbrage at the possible implications of what was said. The first comment was that community college is “thirteenth grade” – which is a long-standing term that, as you will see, is not a positive one. I responded with an adamant no, which prompted the following phrases:

• It is the middle ground of teaching between high school and large universities across the nation.
• They give you a drastically larger amount of leeway in community college.
• It is essentially an extension of high school. 
• You can take community college courses in high school
• It is the 13th grade. It's a stepping stone.

So, this is my reply…

First, let me say that I've been teaching at a CC for 10 years, meaning I’ve stood in front of around 140 classes full of something close to 1,900 students. I think it’s important to know where I’m coming from so that you can understand that I’m speaking from experience and observation and a fair number of conversations with and about students. With all of that floating around for close to a quarter of my life, I am confident saying that I don't think you are right - at least not for every student.

Students come to a community college for countless reasons and while some of them are of the stepping stone variety, I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to say that it’s a middle ground that is just an extension of high school. The four year schools clearly don’t look at them that way. For instance, if Johnny Student gets his Associates at a community college and has been attentive to his courses and educational path along the way, then he will transfer as a junior. It's not really less than the four-year at all if that student is using it to completely replace the first two years of a four year degree and that four year institution fully accepts their work at the CC as equivalent to two years in house. If the classes were just an extension of high school, those large universities you mentioned wouldn't take the transfers - they wouldn't deem the courses good enough for credit at their institutions. Not all of the courses or all of the universities, of course, but enough of them to imply that the four years aren't particularly worried about that leeway you seem to think exists in the community college classroom.

That said, I'm certainly not going to deny that for some students, it is most definitely used as a way to get more ready for a four year; however, making a blanket statement about what purpose it serves for ALL students is inaccurate and rapidly becoming more so. Historically, community colleges often served that role and only that role, no doubt.  The fact that they were (and in some places in the country still are) called junior colleges is a testament to that. That, however, is hardly the role of the CC in today’s world of strapped economies, increasing costs of college, and the decreasing number of available jobs for new graduates or long-time workers. This shifting landscape has completely altered the role and purpose of the community college in the world of education. It’s not just one thing anymore and it doesn't serve just one kind of student.

For some of our students, it better prepares them for the university experience, as you said. For others, though, it's just plain cheaper or close to home. They've worked at a company for decades, but are laid off and their only option for job re-training of any kind is the local CC because they have a family and can’t uproot. For others, it's that the CC has a fantastic program that is just what they want. Maybe they want to go into Music Recording or Conservation or even go somewhere that has an award-winning Woodsmen’s Team or a burgeoning Viticulture program. For still more, it makes it easier to get into the four year because they've already proven themselves at a significantly lower cost.  If  Jane Student enters into a joint admissions program, she will gain automatic entry into SUNY Geneseo if she successfully completes two years at FLCC.  One is much easier to get into, but the other accepts those two years as good enough.  Others go to a CC because they are entering a field where two years is enough to move forward in a career. You just can’t label or pigeonhole all the myriad of reasons a student chooses a community college. It’s not just the traditional aged high school graduate anymore, with or without college credit going in.

This leads to another thing that you said that’s true, but not the whole picture. You most certainly can take CC courses while in high school, but you can also take Syracuse University classes (through SUPA). Additionally, Advanced Placement classes and exams in high school will give you college credit as well - regardless of whether your destination is a four year or two year. They aren't college classes, per se, but they are college credit that will 'take the place' of a class in college, so the end result is similar.

In the end, it may just be that we disagree simply on a semantics level or on a level of scope, but I firmly believe that referring to CC in one way for all students is limiting. If you believed I was offended, perhaps you were right. Perhaps I sensed judgment because I've faced that judgment before. If you knew anything about the history of the community college struggle for legitimacy and respect, you would know that the 13th grade phrase has been used for a terribly long time as a derisive, dismissive, and demeaning way to refer to CC. Those who work there and have given their hearts to the mission of the community college tend to feel the need to chime in when it gets used.

I fell into the CC world by accident. It never occurred to me to attend one when I graduated for just the kind of reasons you listed – I had 17 credits of AP, a couple of scholarships, and had eyes on my Masters. I went straight to the four year and spent twelve and a half years earning a Bachelor’s, then a Master’s, and finally a Doctorate. Looking up the job availability at a community college was a moment of inspiration and when I got the job, I was thrilled and excited. It has only gotten better since then. I sometimes get asked, in a tone of disbelief and even judgment, why I don’t teach at a four-year since I could make more money and publish and a variety of other opportunities if I did. The one thing I would lose, however, is the focus on the student. All the students – no matter why they are there, what their abilities and limitations are, or where they go once they are done. That’s what matters…that’s what will always matter.

Trying not to dwell...

I spent about 15 minutes on this...I did not over think it or shape it or do much with it except let it out.  I suspect I will regret that later and perhaps rework it...but not right now.

A shadowy presence in my mind, lurking

Blotted out most of the time when I’m occupied

Time with friends, errands to run, chores to do

But then, under the glow of a supermoon

And the quiet hum of tires on the ethereal highway,

It comes back to me in a wave of melancholy

It does that sometimes, less often than the pain

Sometimes it comes as anger, but not tonight

Tonight it came out of nowhere dressed in sadness

Like a shadow in the night, a cloud in the sky

It came and I was reminded not just that I hurt

But it softly reminded me how and why I am broken

Not in a way that stops me from loving life

Not in a way that shatters dreams or saps hope

Not in a way that leaves me crippled and lost

But just a little less than whole, a little bit flawed

Just little broken like a chip in a glass figurine

A rough edge that time smoothed out but did not erase

This time it comes to me in numbers that prick my eyes

And roll through my mind like an insidious code

The 11^th day of the 8^th month

The 38^th minute of the sixth hour after noon.

The temperature was 78 degrees.

His speed was over 50, mine was less than 5

A quarter percent of his blood was alcohol.

It was the tenth day after I bought the car

The first car I’d ever owned

The third month I’d had my license.

Now I spend forty dollars to have my bones cracked

Hoping it will hold for four weeks until I return

I had five shots driven into my spine for no relief.

I was twenty three and it has now been 19 years

I cannot remember and I cannot forget

But don’t mourn for me – the shadow will pass

The chip will remain, but I’m not really broken

When I smile I mean it, when I laugh I feel it

The moon is beautiful tonight and I am alive.

Alive.

Pressed between the pages....

Lately I have been going through boxes in my attic that are full of things that I've carried from place to place over the span of my life.  They are mementos of times gone by and include everything from greeting cards and scrawly art projects to tiny clothing I once wore and ticket stubs with fading ink.  Next to the tub from which I am pulling things is an empty one where I put things I want to keep holding on to.  Some things go in there automatically - tiny shoes, my first doll, cards and letters from grandparents who are no longer here with us.  Some things I dwell on...touching the past in a tangible way and reveling in the memories once more.  Not all the memories are good, but they are all significant in some meaningful way and are part of the mosaic of who I am.  Products of my past.

A sampling...

A card given to my grandfather from my grandmother.  Inside she expressed her love for him in her elegant script and touching it brought tears to my eyes that turned to laughter.  She closed her inscription with the phrase "have a nice day" and that adorable innocence is how I remember her. I may never know if she was really cheating at Yahtzee or just forgot how many times she rolled...

Piles of letters written by my mother whenever I was away - summer camp, school trips, college, student teaching abroad.  She wrote of all the things that were happening in her world, leavings with a splash of home in the midst of whatever strange experiences in which I found myself immersed.  She signed every single one of them "Love ya, Mom" in her familiar hand.

A program for a Meatloaf concert and numerous ticket stubs.  My brother was my concert buddy - still is on a smaller scale.  We would go, for instance, to the Downtown Festival Tent every year to see REO  Speedwagon...even the year that I had just gotten out of the hospital following surgery on my jaw.  So many other concerts that it seemed only fitting that when I graduated from college, he gave me two tickets to see Boston's Walk On tour.  The Meatloaf concert was a deal - I'd go see Steve Miller with him if he'd go see Meatloaf with me. We both loved both concerts.

An envelop full of high school graduation documents showing various accomplishments in the face of what I have increasingly come to see as a very difficult time in my life.  People sometimes say that high school was the best time of their lives.  Not me.  I never felt I fit in anywhere and yet it was a formative time that laid the groundwork for all the successes that came after.  In the face of adversity (of, honestly, a very mundane kind), I made it.  That envelop represents that to me.

A book of early poems.  Oh, they are so wonderful in their juvenile awfulness. The childish scrawl, the teddy bear cover...all of it.  Painful rhymes, choppy rhythms....but there are nuggets there that, again, laid the groundwork for what I think is better, wiser, stronger poetry of which I can be proud.

These things are all special to me - and there is so much more.  I am thinning the collection some.  There are things whose importance has been lost in time and the fog of the past.  There are things of which I am ready to let go.  There are things that just seem silly now.  But all of it begs the question of what will it all mean someday when I am gone?  I think of this sometimes when I find myself shifting through a box lot at an auction with my dad.  Old letters and postcards in flowing script describing someone else's faraway home in a faraway time.  And I'm not sure we value the paper of now as we value the paper of old.  So perhaps it will all someday be recycled and pass out of time and space.   For now, though, they will stay close to me and mine, weaved into the person I am, the person I was, and the person I will someday be.