Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Sunday morning snow-shine! Isn't it beautiful?

I only put this one in to show the treacherous water meter that attacked my car radiator. Can you believe my car was low enough to be damaged by that?

My favorite is the motorcycle! The dogs (in the fence) haven't been barking as much with the snow keeping them indoors--happy for them!

And the playground behind my house--I love the pink light in the trees. I spy San Juan High, do you?

I LOVE SNOW! I really really do. There is just something magical about it. Saturday it started, and I was able to spend all day inside: watching it float on down, grading papers, reading poetry, falling asleep on the couch. Sunday it continued (the pictures show what I woke up to) and today, it just kept on coming! These are from my front kitchen window and my balcony windows. I am surrounded!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

To one and all:
Life around here is hectic but good! I just can't seem to get enough sleep! And I just don't want to grade papers. I think I am as bad as my students (who don't want to write them!). I spent all weekend making gingerbread ornaments (my house still smells wonderfully of cinnamon and applesauce) and today (don't listen with your environmental ears and please forgive me) I got a Christmas tree! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the smell of real trees in my house at Christmas time. Heres the story of how I came to possess it:


In a small town like Blanding there are two ways to get a tree: 1. purchase a plastic one, 2. cut one down. Even if you go to someone's yard-sale mini tree mart, it is still of the "cut down" variety. You can imagine my horror at this discovery--remembering that I grew up in suburbia where Christmas trees are grown in "Christmas Tree Farms" and conveniently placed in every parking lot for miles around, starting right after Thanksgiving. I was, last week, in third period mentioning my deep sadness at the Blanding tree-predicament when two of my students very excitedly volunteered to "get" me a tree! Although I know there are not enough trees on this side of the state to cut any down, I couldn't bear to quell their excitment... especially since it was my only hope of getting a real tree this year (there is no way I would EVER cut my own). So, tonight, they brought me the most fantasticly lob-sided, fat, and squat, little Blue Mountain tree that I ever did see! I immediately put that sucker in a tree stand and have been tying my dozens of red bows to it since! I now have a beautiful little Christmas tree... and not a paper graded! The three guys who brought it over were a hoot--they first brought me a sad little dying stick with dead leaves hanging all over it... laughing hysterically. Next came a rather small little branch... and finally my darling little tree. I think it was more than worth the dozen or so molasses cookies that I paid them with. Please don't hate me forever for loving this pagan tradition! ps: please excuse the poor photography (number one) and the trailing lights in this picture (number two). I have an extension cord in my classroom I will bring home tomorrow!

Modestly Yours

For those who haven't yet checked it out, there is a great blog titled "Modestly Yours" (see my links to the right) that advocates modesty, family, and abstinence, organized by Wendy Shalit (author of Girls Gone Mild--a book I haven't yet read, but hope to soon!). The latest posting is of a news report on abstinence that I thought was well done. Check it out!

Tag... I'm it!

After much internal struggle to not give in to the tagging war... here goes:

Jobs I've had:
High School English teacher (11th, 12th grade, AP)
MTC teacher (English, Welfare, ESL, RC, TEC)
Freshman Academy Peer Mentor
Sees Candy (sample giver, box packer, smilier)

Places I've Lived:
Westminster, California
Provo, Utah
Honduras (Jesus de Otoro, Talanga, Catacamas, Loarque)
Blanding, Utah

Favorite TV Shows:
I don't own a TV...
But for my list of favorite books, look to the right!

Favorite Food:
peas (sometimes with spaghetti sauce--don't get grossed out!)
raisins (mmmm...)
Albertson's Southwest Salsa (with wheat thins, triscuits, saltines, chips, peas)
current addiction: popcorn (the 98% fat free kind, just a few seconds too long in the microwave)

Places I'd Rather be:
Home
Tasha's
Sara's
Honduras
Reading a book

Places I'd like to visit:
Home (anywhere with family!)
VIRGINIA (where I have always wanted to--and someday will--live)
Honduras (of course)
Africa (it seems so filled with fascinating people)
India (I don't know why, but really, I do)
Norway (to understand my roots; although, I am from six different European countries; perhaps I choose Norway because it's where my last name comes from)

I tag:
no one!

Back at it!

Horray for home! I loved, loved, loved being home for Thanksgiving. I think it is my favorite holiday--because it always includes family and is a little less stressful. Don't get me wrong, I love the stress of Christmas too... anyhow, I think you know what I mean! It went too fast this year, however. Doesn't it always? I loved seeing Tasha and the boys, I loved slumber parties with Paige, sleeping in, all day at Aunt Chris', good books, Christmas shopping, sleeping in, walking with Mom. I love going home.

Somehow, however, I am back in Blanding! I was texting Paige earlier tonight and she said she thinks she is going to be on a homework frenzy until Christmas. I texted back that I am on a grading frenzy until then! I don't know how I am going to catch up! We are back in full swing around here... starting Act IV of Hamlet (today we performed scenes), finishing up Transcendentalism and gearing up for Huck Finn, and working on literary analysis in AP Lang and Comp. Time flies when you are having fun :). I am actually looking forward to the next four weeks. At the end is Christmas (whoo hoo!) and end of term (half way mark!). I am hoping to do some really fun things in the meantime. Not to mention basketball season starting :). I am posting some more pictures Nick took when he was here. They, of course, are of my classroom. It is sort of a sad little room (lacking in decor and windows) but I call it home. Have I mentioned that I love teaching English yet? I do. I love these kids. They are so good. I went to the first home boys bb game tonight. I love seeing them in their element (not always an English classroom, so sad). They have so much personality and life. I feel privileged to be here with them in this grand adventure of living!

Ok, well, I am rambling and putting off lesson planning... so away I go!! Cheers.

Home Sweet Home

Well, I had a good friend here about a week ago... and he took some fun pictures with his digital camara, so I finally get to post pictures of where I live!!

This is my little living room (and my Oranges in Oil painting by Nick Stephens) The light coming in is from the French doors and not-quite-done balcony

My favorite place to read (right across from the couch)...

My cute red kitchen with the morning light streaming in...

My big red bed (and another Nick painting)

"I become a transparent eyeball..."

Horray for transcendentalism! I don't mean to make this blog a travelogue of my teaching adventures, but I just can't help it, as they seems to consume my life! This week we started the fantastic transcendentalists... Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Alcott. Does it get any better? I just love the nature writers; they are so inspiring! I think my students officially think I am crazy. After reading aloud Chapter 1 of Nature by Emerson, I had one student come in after school and tell me I should be a drama teacher. I guess my out-loud reading skills are just that good. They seem to be enjoying it (perhaps not as much as I do, but hey, every bit counts!). I rarely give homework, but told them their assignment this weekend is to go out into nature for at least an hour: take a pen and some paper and observe. I got a few astonished looks at that one, but not too many complaints. I am hoping for some original nature writing and transcendent experiences--Annie Dillard style. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to take an hour or two myself and go see some of the natural wonders of southern Utah this weekend. And, it has also given me an excuse to start reading Little Women again. I tell you what, life is good!

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
--Henry David Thoreau, Walden Pond

Digestion

I have been waxing poetic of late. Here is a fun one...

I like to swallow books whole.
One gulp.
If they take too much chewing,
I spit them out until I have
Time to devour them.
Once swallowed, I let them
Rumble around a bit,
Settling and digesting and absorbing.
Then I go back.
I chew slow, deliberate mouthfuls.
The words unravel to reveal
A masterpiece,
Slowly responding to the
Humanity
In us all—the very magnificent
And mundane
That make us morals.
The words dangle, ready
To be plucked delicately and
Appreciated for the indulgences they are.

Too proud or too prejudiced? That is the question

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single [woman] in possession of a [degree], must be in want of a [husband]." --Jane Austin (arguably the greatest female author of all time)

Not only have multiple mothers and grandmothers in town offered to set me up with their young (and supposedly good looking) male relatives, today I was also given offers by some of my students to send their brothers by.

"Is 21 too young for you?" they ask.

"Why," the mother crones, "are you going home for Thanksgiving!? That is when he will be in town..."

Dang.

Ok, ok. Not that I am totally opposed to being set up. Come on, I live (by choice, remember) in a small remote town in southeastern Utah (and am very happy). There just aren't that many options. I only laugh that the old irony of Jane Austin still stands on very solid ground.

Tribute

"Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm."
--Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Douglass was born a slave in Maryland circa 1818. At twelve years old he learned from his master--enraged that he should be taught--that reading would make him "unmanageable, and of no value..." Empowered by the revelation that reading was the key to freedom, Douglass proceeded to to do everything in his power to learn. He converted the homeless and hungry white children into his teachers and bribed them to give him "the bread of knowledge." The result, he laments, was just what his master had predicted. He was given "a view of [his] condition without the remedy." He suddenly saw that he was not chattel nor brute, but a thinking man.

Frederick Douglass eventually escaped to freedom in 1838 and became a powerful abolitionist orator and political activist fighting for the emancipation of slaves.

In my American Literature classes we have been reading Douglass' powerful slave narrative. Today we finally got to the chapter in which he learns--through endless determination--to read. Ironically he narrates his path to literacy with sophisticated diction and rhetorically powerful syntax so that his northern audience could not doubt and intelligence and potential of a mere slave. After reading Douglass' experience learning to read, I had my students write a brief literacy narrative--writing down their first memories with the printed word. So many of them could not remember ever not reading. Some even questioned naively if it was possible to be able to speak and not read or write, so much does reading unconsciously effect us. After writing their own memories, we continued to read as he describes the agony it caused him to learn something and feel powerless to change it. He suddenly saw his potential and capacity but did not have the agency to develop it. Freedom, as the above quote indicates, was tauntingly out of reach.

I wonder, do we see with such clarity? For Douglass, reading was the key to accessing life, liberty, and, of course, the pursuit of happiness. It was what finally gave him the courage to stand up--even as a slave--and demand less punishment, to escape, to speak and write and defend emancipation in an emotionally and politically charged "north" despite the fear of being sent back. Do we see education today as such a power? Or do we go dutifully (or, like some students, not so dutifully) to school and endure the hard chairs and endless teachers simply because it is expected? Do we go to high school or college or whatever because society dictates it... or because the thirst for learning drives us? Like Douglass, do we know that our literacy is the key to our potential? Like Douglass, do we refuse to fit a cookie-cutter mold? Like Douglass, do we persevere despite the odds and insurmountable obstacles, the personal agony of not yet seeing the ladder, the personal cost of enduring in what we know to be true? Do we not simply learn to read, but choose to read?

[deep breath!] Ok, I will descend from my soap box and apologize for the passion with which I write... it is the English teacher in me, what can I say? But, today, as we did in my classes, I would like to hold a tribute to Frederick Douglass.