Every, Every Minute

"Do human beings realize life while they live it?  Every, every minute?"
~ Thornton Wilder,  Our Town

One of my favorite plays is Thornton Wilder's turn-of-the-century (20th) celebration of the little things of life.  My student teacher just started teaching it to my AP English class this week and I am finding myself itching to be doing it myself!  First of all, it's set in a place I love.  Second of all, it has some profound truths about life in it, making it (in my humble opinion) a valuable piece to bring to the classroom.  Since it's still her time to teach, I am having to content myself with enjoying her fine effort to impart wisdom and joy in my place.

Do we realize life while we live it?  I dare say most of us don't. Wilder's Stage Manager says "No.  Saints and poets.  Maybe they do some."  What does it take to realize it?  Coming to the edge? Nearly falling over it?  Why aren't the ordinary things of our life enough?  Those are some of the things to ponder as she helps our students navigate this lovely portrait of New England life during the next several days...

Coincidentally, one of my Facebook friends posted this lovely photo of the real-life model for Wilder's fictional Grover's Corners.  It's enough to make me appreciate life!  And enough to make me miss living in New England in the fall...

In Every Change

Be still my soul. The Lord is on thy side.

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.

Leave to thy God to order and provide.

In every change, He faithful will remain.

Lots of change going on in my life these days. In less than 5 days I will be making my way across the country to a new job in Scottsdale, Arizona. I must say I never ever thought of living that far away from New England. I never really thought about leaving New England until recently. I have loved living here, and was especially enjoying

it this summer, having the luxury of not working and thus the freedom to travel at will any and every day.

But now, I'm about to embark on a new adventure. The uneasiness I feel when I think of leaving my family so far behind is tempered by the comfort of the verse above. Be still my soul.

Photos: The view around Thunderbird Academy where I will be working; building where my classroom is (the right hand door).

Claude and Camille, Celia, and Sarah

I've been on a reading frenzy since school got out. The most recent books have been about artists or writers, or both. I'm a huge fan of novelized biographies and have enjoyed a number of such books about artists, the most recent being Stephanie Cowell's book Claude and Camille about Claude Monet as a young man trying to break into the world of art and the great love of his life, Camille. What an amazing story! The kind where you fall into it and don't get out of it for days, the kind you don't want to end, the kind you dream about and get up at 5 o'clock in the morning because you can't stop thinking and dreaming about it. I've long been a fan of the Impressionists, and have countless prints of their work that even as I write this decorate the walls of my home. My favorite, though, is a painting my niece did of Camille (left), as it turns out, after Monet's now famous portrayal of his eventual wife. Once done with the book, I spent hours looking up the paintings described in it and found myself wishing I'd known this story when I saw many of the originals in Paris or even in Boston. To that end, I may just find myself standing in front of some of them tomorrow as it's Community Day (free admission!) at Boston's MFA.

Meanwhile, I dove back into life-stories of artists I've admired and read Sandpiper, the biography of Celia Thaxter, written by her granddaughter. What a loving and poignant portrait of one of New England's most beloved poets! You may remember that my sisters, mother, and I visited her garden last summer out on Appledore Island off the coast of Porstmouth, NH. I may just have to find my way back there this summer having now read her story. I had forgotten that she was an artist as well as a writer and that she actually made more money with her painting than her writing.

Following hard on the heels of Celia's story, I read Master Smart Woman, a Portrait of Sarah Orne Jewett, another New England writer from the same era. She was born in South Berwick, ME a town I can drive through on my way north to see my parents if I chose to avoid the Maine turnpike (which I often do). Another towering figure in the world of women writers, Jewett painted New England as she saw and loved it with words that are still true today. I suspect I'll be making a visit to her home in the weeks to come as well. All this reading about writers and artists makes me hunger for my own experience as an artist, although many (most) did not live lives of leisure. In some respects it's a wonder we have any books or paintings to enjoy. Passion for what you're doing must be paramount...

New England poet and daffodils

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!
The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling
Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers
Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,
Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing
To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;
To fill the lonely with a joy untold;
Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,
To-morrow jewelled with raindrops.  Always bold
To stand erect, full in the dazzling play
Of April's sun, for thou hast caught his gold.

Amy Lowell, who wrote this poem, was born 134 years ago in
Brookline, MA, some 15 miles south of where I teach.  She's
one of my favorite American poets because she writes with
such passion and color.  She comes from old New England
stock with one of the early cities named for it (Lowell, MA,
one of the major mill towns at one time).  Even though this
poem is about April's sun, it describes I'm longing to see
right now.  I love winter, I think snow is beautiful, and I
don't mind the cold weather.  But I am more than ready for
more sun, for flowers, for spring!

Mass Routes

One of my friends (a former student, actually) is conducting an interesting project. He's literally driving all the numbered routes of Massachusetts and blogging about it here at Mass Routes. I've known him since he was a very young boy and I was in college (we were neighbors for awhile). Several years later, I taught him (all four years of high school). He went on to college and is now married and has an adorable little boy the same age as when I first met him!

We have stayed in touch all this time (going on 25 years since I knew him as a student), although now mostly through blogging. Anyway, I've just been taking a journey through Massachusetts via his Mass Routes blog. It's actually quite cool! I remember him writing in high school how he wanted to travel all the "blue highways" and how he once took a cross country trip mostly off the main highways. This project of blogging all the numbered highways in the state is ambitious, but very interesting. Knowing him the way I do, I'm sure he's having a blast.

18-0, one more to go

So, the Boston sports writers are playing the MEME =) I'm listening/ watching (multi- tasking) to the post-game press conference of today's Patriots' win over the San Diego Chargers and one of the reporters asked Tom Brady if he thought he'd ever live to see the day where a team goes to the SuperBowl 18-0.

The answer for everyone, of course-- including Tom who was only a few years old 25 years ago--is no. I'm betting he wasn't thinking that 4 Super Bowls in seven years was in his future either. But here he is, MVP, offensive player of the year, receiver of every football/athletic accolade conceivable, on the verge of doing what has never been done before.


I'm not a big football fan. I learned it 25 years ago when I had a 10th grade English class of all boys. All they cared about was football, so I learned football so I could talk about things they were interested in. I remember having a Super Bowl part at my house (this was a boarding school) when it was so cold that everyone huddled under quilts for the duration of the game (the house was very poorly insulated and the wind cut through the walls with an icy cold). None of us then thought any further than the next day, to be honest. At least not during the school year.

When I moved back to Massa- chusetts to teach at the school where my father was principal (!), my football knowledge came in handy when teaching Patriots-crazed students. The school even took "field trips" to see Pats games, once in December when it was so cold tears stung our eyes and froze on our cheeks, and we could hardly walk out of the stadium on our block-solid frozen feet.

Happily, today, I was watching the game from the comfort of a well- insulated condo. Being at the game in person was kind of cool , but watching from home is preferable to me because I can do other things...like blog about it. Yet another thing I wouldn't have dreamed of doing 25 years ago!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

It's minus 1 degrees outside my window right now. Wind chill is, I'm sure, far lower. It was so cold in our building today after two weeks with the heat at a minimum. It took all day to warm up. I came home bone-chilled, feeling like the picture at left (one of the pictures on my computer wallpaper). Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

Typical New England, though, it is supposed to be in the 50s over the weekend and into Monday. There's a saying here: "Don't like the weather? Wait a day." It's true....fortunately =)