The garden has been in since May 15.  I have been happily digging in the dirt since mid-April.  I just didn’t care about snow, wind, sleet and gloom of night any more.  The 4-H plant sale was the weekend after Mother’s Day and I planted and planted and planted.  My eyes were so much bigger than my space when I ordered that there are now growing things in every available corner of my little world.  In the garden spot I have 3 Big Boy tomatoes, 3 cherry tomatoes and three Roma tomatoes.  Yes there will be many tomatoes.  3 egglants sit merrily behind the tomatoes along with marigolds, basil, oregano, thyme, chives and parsley.  Meanwhile int he second bed, added this spring, there are 3 zucchini, a row of swiss chard, a row of green beans, cilantro and zinnias.  Next to that by a large stump, upon which I have placed the dish of a bird bath, there are glorious little sunflowers and some really cranky giant sunflowers who require constant soothing talk. And there is nothing to do now but pull the occassional weed and wait for the harvest. 

Meanwhile, summer reading has started and I am in full crazy mode.  We signed up 63 kids yesterday which doesn’t sound like much until you remember that our entire pre-k – 5 population is 350, and most of these children live in the village and if my math is correct (which it probably isn’t) that’s like 5% of our elementary population.  I’ll take it.  Visits from the companion dogs and hot dog lunch and afternoon crafts fill day 2. 

I spend the summer feeling like the White Rabbit….rush, rush, rush, oh dear, oh my.

And so it goes.

I think most of us have days when we wonder why on earth we do what we do, regardless of what that may be.  Some days are too long, too frustrating, too reactive, too…. too…..  but what I always know, even on the days when I want to ship them all to an island not yet discovered, I know that I care about all of these kids that walk (sometimes run) in and out of my life.  It is a glorious moment to watch them graduate and go off to their future, eyes bright hearts full of hope.  They come back, many of them, to check in with their librarian – many still asking what to read for fun in that quiet time of summer and breaks, others needing a pat on the back, still others needing a paper proofed or a reference checked. And sometimes they come to me because they are growing up too fast, life is too much for them and they need a touch stone.  And so it is with B.
B. is 19, a sophomore in a four-year college where she got a full ride.  This is no mean feat coming from our small high school with no honors classes and little to ofer if the student doesn’t participate in athletics.  But B. worked hard, did two years of post-secondary option, and earned her way.  She’s had difficult times in her life.  Her father abuses drugs and was abusive to her mother and probably her.  She feels safest when he is in jail, which is most of the time.  Her brother, equally brilliant, has gone the way of the father – drugs and jail and aimlessness.  He is one of “my kids” too, and always will be.  B.’s mother has been her stability and her rock.  The mother has been in and out of the hospital for as long as I have known the family (13+ years).  Much of the hospitalization has been the result of trauma from the abuse but in the last year the hospitalizations have taken on a different tone.  B.’s notes to me via facebook have been “Mom’s sick.  They don’t know what’s wrong….  She has an infection.  They can’t find the cause.” 
Today B. walked into the library, her eyes brimming.  She said, “Cathy, I need a hug.”  “Of course.”  The sobs came for real then.  “Tell me,” I said.  “She’s dying.  Mom’s dying.  What do I need to do?”  She wanted practical, sure advice.  She needed to make a list.  She needed to sit, and collect a stack of books to read on break, and laugh, and listen.  So we made a list….transfer the car into her name, call the funeral home, find out about life insurance, talk to the college about housing (She’s been living at home.)  And the list goes on.  She felt better when she left, with a list of things to do.
And for all the frustrations, and length, and whining, this is one of those days when I know why I listen to them and talk to them and care about them.  Because the library is more than books and computers.  It’s a safe place to cry.
And so it goes.

I am having a terrible time getting motivated today.  I don’t suppose it has anything to do with the fact that it was warm and perfect all week and then Saturday hit and it is cold and gray.  Nah.  Couldn’t be THAT.  I wanted to throw open the windows today and clean and make things sparkly but I am foiled by the fact that if I open the windows and doors I will be heating the state of Ohio.  Pah!

I cleaned Xanga subscriptions because I had gathered some new ones and felt badly because they are prolific writers and I cannot read them everyday and that makes me feel guilty and lazy so I sent them back to their little cyberspace world and am quite sure I wan’t around their neighborhood even long enough for them to notice.  A good thing.

I really should clean something that has dust on it – oh wait, that’s everything.  Where does dust come from, for heaven’s sake?

Honestly this is silly because I have absolutely nothing to say.  I am gonna go clean the toilet.  That and some music should get me moving.

And so it goes.

I have many favorite poets – T. S. Eliot, Carl Sandburg, Mary Oliver….  What poetry I turn to depends entirely on mood – more than any other of my reading.  These days, Wendell Berry touches my soul more than most.  Try this one on:

Traveling at Home

Even in a country you know by heart
it’s hard to go the same way twice.
The life of going changes.
The chances change and make a new way.
Any tree or stone or bird
can be the bud of new directions.  The
natural correction is to make intent
of accident.  To get back before dark
is the art of going.
~Wendell Berry
(from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Counterpoint, Washington, D.C., 1998)

I came of age in the sixties.  I remember vividly the assassinations of a President, a candidate and a civil rights leader.  I remember the deaths of children and students and soldiers.  I remember lives celebrated and sacrifices made in the causes of justice and peace and equality.  It’s remarkable how much I have forgotten. 

In 1965 I was fifteen years old.  I lived in a time where people couldn’t vote because they were the wrong color.  I remember one beautiful sunlit afternoon on the farm where I was raised, lying in a field of clover with my cousin.  She was younger than I and there we were, lying in the sun, warm, toasting ourselves like marshmallows.  I said to her, “Does it seem silly to you that we are toasting ourselves brown when a group of people can’t vote because they are brown?”  I don’t remember her answer but we talked of things like that, trying to sort out the illogical world of adults and deciding which parts we would embrace and which we would throw away like so much detritus.  That day was brought back to me quite vividly this weekend when I read Marching for Freedom by Elizabeth Partridge.  The subtitle is important here:  “Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary.”  I don’t know that I knew there were many, many children on that march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, many younger than I at the time.  Partridge writes, “The first time Joanne Blackmon was arrested, she was just ten years old.”  Aside from being a helluva first sentence and pulling the reader into the center of the story, I was suddenly reminded of how very young we were and how unafraid.  Populated with photographs of that historic time and in language that is clear and moving this beautiful book takes me back to a time when “Just Do It!” married “Yes, we can!” and the world changed.  As Katherine Patterson said when she announced that Marching for Freedom was the winner in School Library Journal’s Battle of the Books:  “…Marching for Freedom stirred my soul in a way few books have.”

Those of us who grew up in the sixties are fairly certain that we invented history and are even more certain that we were the only kids who changed the world.  I’m fairly certain we’re wrong about that but leave us out illusions now that we are approaching the age of front porches, rocking chairs, memories, and inflated stories of a time gone by.  Still, books have a way of reminding us that we weren’t the only folks who stood for justice.  Some people sat for justice, which was even more important.  Everybody knows about Rosa Parks.  She sat for justice. That delicate looking, hard-as-nails, tender seamstress refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and changed the lives for black citizens in the segregated South forever.  However, what many of us don’t know, is that nine months earlier, on March 2, 1955, another young girl took the same position Ms. Parks took and refused to be moved from her seat on the bus, declaring over and over again, “It’s my constitutional right!”  In his book Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justice, Phillip Hoose introduces us to the intelligent, sixteen year old Claudette Colvin who simply refused to accept the way she was treated, didn’t understand why the adults were willing to “go along to get along,” and refused to accept that the United State Constitution didn’t mean her when it said, “All men are created equal.”  Pairing archival photographs with stirring language, Hoose does a brilliant job of setting the tone of the times and demonstrating what the Jim Crow laws looked and felt like.  Telling a story that is forgotten if not unknown, Hoose deservedly won the National Book Award for bringing the life of Claudette Colvin into the hands of readers of all ages.

And so it goes.

On Friday I had a splitting headache.  I blamed it on the barometric pressure.  On Saturday I felt a tad off but ignored it in the morning, wrote an entry here, washed windows.  But then, the demon struck.  Doubled up with stomach nastiness, I crawled into the bathroom and then crawled into my bed.  Grrrr.  I have plans, dammit.  I want to clean and play outside.  Alas, ’twas not to be.  Yesterday became a day of crackers and ginger ale and coke and more crackers.  I also plotted the murder/torture of certain staff members who always come to work when they are sick.  NB-Please stay home when you are sick, especially if your company provides sick time.  It is not fair to those of us who do not want to spend our weekends in bed.  Today has been a little better, still weak and tired but no longer surviving on crackers and ginger ale.  Being ill does have its advantages, though.
A word about comedy. Humor is not universal.  What one person finds funny, hilarious in fact, another may well not.  Take the noble banana peel.  I don’t find a person slipping on a banana peel funny.  I know it’s supposed to be but I have never found it so. Keep that thought in mind …..
I have tried and tried to watch the work of Quentin Tarantino <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000233/bio>.  And I tired again with Inglourious Basterds.  Nope,  It doesn’t do it for me.  I recognize his genius.  In this particular film, Brad Pitt is brilliant, truly.  But the violence just becomes too much.  Child the Fourth loved the film, thought it absurd and hilarious, in a dark and creepy way.  He got it.  His mother got it and didn’t like it.  Loved the performances; hated the film.  On the other hand….
Men who Stare at Goats <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234548/> is one of the funniest films I have seen in a long time.  I laughed out loud.  Early this morning, Child the Fourth stumbled down the stairs to see what his mother was guffawing about – it was the Jedi Warriors of America.  That the film is based on fact just makes it all the funnier.  Only in America.  Sheesh.
Just a reminder:  April is National Poetry Month.  Who’s your favorite poet?  What are your favorite lines?  I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. 
And so it goes.

I have been right here, cooking and cleaning, reading and watching.  I have not, as you may have noted, been writing much.  See the aforementioned.  But it’s Saturday morning and I have curtains in the wash and am avoiding the windows their removal uncovers and what better way to procrastinate than sitting down with a cup of coffee and babbling for a bit.

We had a positively GLORIOUS Easter week!  I cleaned the flower beds, had child the third turn over the garden plot, had child the fourth move some grasses and a bush of some kind, and planted some violets and ivy and things I don’t know the names of in the pots on the patio.  They looked lovely.  And they still do, even though I had to cover them for two days because the temperature dropped and we had snow/sleet/mung for two days.  I uncovered them this morning and they are glory-ing in the morning sun.  Cold but sunny today.  I’ll take sun and temperature be damned.  The warm days will return.

Oh and I’ve become enamored.  For years – yes years – I was wildly enamored with Jed Bartlet of West Wing.  He has not been replaced in my passionate little heart but he has had to make a little room – and that’s the beauty of the heart:  there is always room for one more.  I am wildly enamored with Gregory House, M.D.  House, M.D. is one of the most brilliantly written television shows I have seen in a long time.  Hugh Laurie plays Gregory House and is acerbic and cranky and sarcastic and more caring than he would like anyone to know. Laurie’s is a perfect performance.  I have watched season one and was positively giddy to discover the discs were two-sided. More episodes!  Yes, I have ordered the remaining seasons and will watch them  I am so hoping the series doesn’t fall apart.  The writing is brilliant!

Book reviews soon.  I have read some wonderful pieces over the last few weeks.  But for now, I am off to wash windows!

And so it goes.

I am not fond of alphabet books although there are several that I admire and even enjoy reading out loud.  I am not fond enough of cats to go out of my way to own one, although I have owned them in my time and certainly see the advantage. However….dum, dada, dum…(that’s supposed to be a drum roll) there is a series of picture books that combines these elements into an absolutely delightful 32 pages of giggles for all involved.  Meet Bad Kitty, the crankiest, hungriest, lovingest, badest cat to ever be wedged between the pages of a picture book.  The study hall kids and I have taken to reading these books aloud just to be able to make Bad Kitty sounds.  Bruel has transitioned Bad Kitty into the world of emergent readers with Bad Kitty Gets a Bath. With or without reading the picture books, the first chapter book is a wonderful transition into the world of independent reading but the adults involved might want to buy their own copy because the kids aren’t giving this one up.

Speaking of independent readers….Gerald and Piggie are at it again in Mo Willems I Am Going!  Piggie is going and Gerald, in typical fashion, jumps to the conclusion that disaster is imminent.  Even though this is not my favorite Gerald and Piggie book, it’s still funny and fun to read – especially out loud.  And for the Nervous Nellies (or Nelsons) in your house, this one is perfect.

And as long as we’re talking about books in a series, guess what?  The Magic School Bus is back and taking on the Climate Challenge!  I love these books.  There was time when I was younger and sillier – the latter is difficult to imagine, but there it is – that I dressed up as Miss Frizzle and did the outer space book on a bus with a bunch of school-aged children.  I was looking at the photographs of that event the other day and those little devils were enthralled!  The books work as an adventure in their own right and as an introduction to various scientific concepts and ideas.  P.S. The bus gets a make-over.  Don’t miss this one! 

And so it goes.

Yesterday was lovely!  Miss Sarah, child the second, is my thrift/antique/second hand shop partner in crime.  We had a lovely morning of grocery store and then putzing about to find other people’s treasures.  Both of us pine for the start of garage/yard/estate sale season but until then we are content with our usual haunts.  We added a new one – a newly formed co-op where items are priced to sell. When I moved I discovered that I am thoroughly enamored with depression glass and have been collecting pieces of various colors.  The red and pink are along the ledge in the living room; the amber lines the ledge in the kitchen and now I have begun the search for blue for the bathroom.  At the new shop I found three amber pieces – two in the sunflower pattern and one in some other pattern.  Those three pieces and a shelf for Miss Sarah were under $10 total.  We were thrilled.  We also stopped at Home Depot and I purchased the required garbage can for compost.  While at Home Depot, I purchased seeds and a rosemary plant.  I was quite vocal in the joy I was experiencing, so vocal in fact that Miss Sarah assured onlookers that whe was returning me to the hospital right after we left the store.  Everyone laughed, some a bit more tentatively than others.  Spreading joy and laughter = a good thing.  When we got home, Master Thomas, child the fourth, poked the holes in the sides and bottom of the trash, filled it with “rank vegetation” and moved it three times for a mother who couldn’t make up her mind.
This morning I cut back the aloe that was taking over the kitchen windowsill.  I will give the trimmings to a co-worker who makes a lovely salve with it.  I also planted the basil seeds for the windowsill herbs   Aloe, basil, rosemary and sunflower amber glass on the kitchen window that looks out onto a plot of earth waiting to be tilled and planted.  Ah!
And so it goes.

When I moved, I found my little home beind that of a dear friend.  She is in her 80s, funny and irreverent and one of the strongest women I know.  I built my little garden against the back of her garage and she was happy that it was more than a pile of dirt.  The handfuls of tomatoes I took to her throughout last summer were blessings in her dimming eyes.  We had tea and toast and laughed and laughed.  There were days that I put my head in her lap and sobbed and she is wise enough to be silent and let me cry.  But that is by way of introduction.  On Christmas Eve she got a notice from the Village Zoning Officials that the garage needed to be painted and that windows and shutters needed care as well.  It was cause for alarm and much laughter.  “Have those fools looked outside?  I might be old but I’m not senile.  Who the hell paints in this weather and on Christmas Eve?  I am calling them up and giving them a piece of my mind!”  And she did.  I was not there for that conversation but I am quite certain the Village Phone was too hot to touch by the time she firmly put the Village people in their place.  But now spring has come and the snows have melted and the notice returns.  “Take care of this by the end of April.”  So of course we will help – the kids and I but the puzzlement in it all is the note that there is “rank vegetation” around the garage.  What the hell are they talking about?  It couldn’t possibly be the tomato plants and sunflowers.  Even the Village People should know what those are.  Oh my God!  It’s the compost pile!  Of course those fools don’t know what compost is!  “Rank vegetation.”  Cripes!  So I am off today to get the makings for a homemade compost container.  It was all going to be under another load of top soil in a month but the container will have to be there for another batch of “rank vegetation” this winter.  Good grief!  Stupid Village People.
And so it goes.