round the place i'll know that fall is here.
busy days, making paper, cleaning up, making more pulp, pulling sheets. wet pants legs, wool socks with plastic shoes. who wants to clean house when it's so urgent outdoors? great blue herons soar over. the hooligans will come this week to make paper. the last students went a bit wild with the iridescent mica bits, not bling exactly, but it's cousin.
the black eyed susans are going, and i'm hoping the kids will use the remaining petals in some abaca, along with asters and ferns. makes a lovely sheet, and i do NOT like "flower paper". these have colors that will last and please the kids so they will want to do some binding. and if they can write something, and print it out on the imac, and bind it, they will be so proud. am i doing the work? you bet--setting kids up to succeed is happy work.
I like this a lot: "who wants to clean house when it's so urgent outdoors?" Its so warm this morning.. I've been stacking wood like crazy this weekend, and painting a table, and cleaning up outside in preparation for the changing season - collecting kindling - though part of the urgency I feel is nesting inside as well, preparing my dreaming nest for more time inside.
ReplyDeleteI am called out today by the warmth.... I think I'll make a twig broom.....
Thanks for poetry.
stacking wood here will have to wait till the weeds freeze down! you're welcome. it's poetry outdoors everywhere!
ReplyDeletea great season to be a teacher.
ReplyDeleteindeed, jude!
ReplyDeletesetting kids up to succeed
ReplyDeletethinking a lot about this...kids that are
our own, even. at a certain point, this
becomes primary, even when they are young
adults.
maybe it's just setting us all up to succeed.
of course, my students are fully capable of screaming fuck you and stomping off. but i work to make sure they're not driven to that despair.
ReplyDeletedon't we learn best when learning itself is the object?
i don't know when we learn best. i think it
ReplyDeletemight be different all the time. but when
the singular moment arises when we feel the
URGE TO LEARN, something, anything, and there
is simultaneously someone there that has
something to give, then...
magic, i think.
and magic FEELS good. and spurs us forward.
and it
works.
"so urgent outdoors," Yes it is. As soon as it stops raining that's where I'll be.
ReplyDeleteLove the thistle blossom. Purple is not a color people think of when they are asked to describe autumn's palette - but it is there. Quiet but as insistent in it's own way as the reds and oranges.
ReplyDeleteginny, it's an aster! and i should have but was too lazy to go out and find goldenrod, the perfect yellow to this purple.
ReplyDeletelearning happens all the time. in educationese they call a negative example a non-example(!). but i say a negative example is way to powerful to use lightly. but learning is indeed often uncomfortable.
ReplyDelete