An 8 by 5 Painting

 I liked a picture that looked a lot like this and thought I should try to paint it.  I rather like how it came out, especially the fence. I think I will try it again.

Flowers in a Row

 Latest painting in a while.

Education Week

Yesterday was Teacher Appreciation Day and we had a nice spread laid out for the teachers by the Administration, which included bagels and coffee.  Monday, I need to add was also a special day as well.  It was quite generous as it was put on by the PTSA.  Not only did they have breakfast sandwiches, fruits, juices, and coffee, but also flowers and gifts for each teacher.  It was grand!

Today, we had a luncheon during our varying lunch periods and then at dismissal during our regular faculty meeting we had dessert.  Got to start counting my calories! To top that off, I have had a student, whose mom is the school nurse, and this week he has been regularly handing me a small gift everyday.  First it was tea, yesterday it was chocolates, and today chewing gum! It is really the thought that counts!

To my surprise though something worthy of my treasure folder happened today!  I wasn't expecting it.  I know that a lot of teachers get tons of cards and gifts but it is usually on the last day of school. Frankly, that has never been my case except for that one time when I was teaching elementary school and did a maternity leave for a second grade teacher.  When I went to leave those parents showered me with gifts, some of which I still have today.  That was at least fifteen years ago! Times have changed.  The economy is bad and then it isn't the end of the year either. But today...I got a lovely gift from one of my advanced students... the card was so special, telling me thank you in about ten different languages, all written by her.  Inside the bag was a cute notepad and pen, a decadent chocolate cake,  and last but not least, a tall travel cup that said "A teacher like you happens once in a lifetime." Amazing!

I am still speechless! 

Thank you, Lord!

How do you get rid of junk?

I don't know that I know the answer but part of it is in the letting go.  Another is visiting others at a home that is organized. Last week, we had our annual community garage sale.  Around three other families on our block were having one but I had had a tooth pulled the evening before and it was even surprising that I was even there. Surprising even to my self that my face wasn't ballooned out of shape.
Not that I sold things in my own garage, but that my front door neighbor Pat was selling so many things. She had been into square dancing and used to make her own dresses,  so I swung over to take a look at the fabrics, laces, and notions she was selling.

She was selling things I love and have neatly stored in my own closets.  In fact I have fabrics to dresses I made for my little girls and now that I think of it, I could use them for a crazy quilt or a memory quilt. Make something productive that I could share rather than hoard.

While I was Pat's, I learned two things.  One was letting go.  She was selling some very high end products for ridiculously low prices.  Complete three yards of cloth for four dollars or two yards for three bucks.  Bucks...sounds so vulgar I used to say..but any way.  For three dollars! So I got the best bargains, including cloth to make myself some cute outfits at bargains I would not have been able to get otherwise and I only had to cross the street.  I got lace for making baby blankets as well.  Have you seen the price on lace lately?  Easily four dollars a yard, some much more.   The point is: (Finally!) She was letting go.  Letting go, letting go, letting go.  She made so many people happy with things that were just sitting there in her closet.  Some was going to a church sewing group, another for little girls dresses, and one for a church banner.  Living, breathing, useful, current needs were being met.

Personally, I think life is a metaphor in so many respects, but that can be the topic of another entry, but do you get my drift?  Letting go... before she could let go of these things she had to analyze what was the cost and purpose of keeping them.  There is a price to be paid for keeping things.  Sometimes the reason we keep things is for sentimental value or as a token of a time and place.  It is living in the past.  We have to leave behind what is dead and over and move forward to what is alive, moving, and breathing towards our future.  Those things no longer served a purpose or need in her life. It was time to let them go.

I spent a little time there perusing her merchandise and during a lull she invited me in so see some paintings.  She knows I paint and she showed me some beautiful artwork that put mine to shame but any way... the room was a bedroom next to the garage and it was so neatly organized and the closet was mostly empty except for some paintings standing in a corner since she said she had run out of walls to hang them.  They were lovely.  What I enjoyed most was the space and the order.

I want to do the same.  So I started.  A little piece at a time.  A corner here and a corner there.  But yesterday, I did some major overhauling.  The victims: an old fax machine... I no longer have a house phone; an excessive amount of cables because I just don't need them; and old printers whose ink is more expensive than the printers.  So I started letting go and rearranging... Also gone a huge long table belonging to an ex husband that I also needed to let go.  The table, long and heavy, had to go, too.

Metaphors... I told you life is a metaphor.

42

Number 42 had never meant anything to me before but after seeing the movie, "42," it means something now. That was the number Jackie Robinson wore when he went to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers, thus the name of the movie.  One brave man with dignity and class with the strength of character to withstand the onslaught of prejudice, insults, threats, and actual verbal and physical attacks. Astonishing.

This was not the first time I had encountered Jackie Robinson's story since I had taught his story a couple of years back when I taught ELL students exclusively.  Their textbook had a moving account about Jackie Robinson which clearly spoke about his challenges but never into such detail.  I had no idea that much of the racism he first encountered in his breaking the color barrier was right here in my backyard so to say.  Sanford, Deland, and Daytona Florida are no more than 20, 25, and 40 minutes away respectively,  from my house by car.   I placidly thought the  prejudice he experienced was light years away.   So it seemed until last year with the death of Trayvon Martin,  that same old racism lifted its ugly head again in Sanford.  Sanford the town with its lovely marina, Lake Monroe and the Central Florida Zoo.  Sanford, Florida.

You would think people would know better. 

The movie surprised me with that historical information and with the use of the "n" word in its full ugly utterance of hate.  It is about time the younger generation of whites and blacks realize this isn't a greeting and friendly colloquial term.  Many of them, both white and African Americans,  could use seeing the example that Jackie Robinson was.  A well dressed gentleman who loved and respected his wife,  who was a loving father to his child, and with self discipline fought for what was right before even Martin Luther King led this country to a non violent revolution.  

This is what the movie does; it makes you think and perhaps relive the past.

At around two this afternoon, at Regal Theatres in Waterford Lakes this is what happened.  Just after the previews the movie was starting and it was a bit dark when an African American family came in.  There were about five people in the group. A mother with her two children and an elderly couple.  The younger woman was helping her fragile mother, perhaps in her 70s to her seat in the dark.  You knew she was making a huge effort to be there.  They got seated a couple of rows down from me.  It was then that is hit me.  She had lived through segregation. This was not just a movie for her.  This was a story of a hero perhaps as big as Martin Luther King and she was not going to miss it.  You don't understand.  If you are in your sixties, seventies or up, you are part of this story.  You either were on the side of pain or on the side of shame.  And you were young and caught on a side you had no control over except how you felt about what was going on.

It made me remember.

I was only six or seven when I looked across a fence to see a shanty part of town where the "colored folks" lived.  There was a slimy slippery creek that ran through it.  It is all built up now, but it was there in Little Creek, Norfolk, Virginia.  I could see shiny cars next to run down houses and it confused me. Some times I heard laughter and music.  Other times I heard screaming and arguments on the other side while my side was mellow.  Why?  How could I know there was something wrong with that rusted cyclone fence?

This is what this movie does to you.  It makes you think.  If you don't like to think, don't go.  But if you are a person who wants to see something good done right and end right.  Go!

It might make you think, but that is okay.

Spiritual Song

There are some spiritual songs that will never be sung in church and they might only be sung on a dusty record  player, or on a country music station out  in the boon docks, or with some lonely guitar in front of a fire pit where only the bushes can hear you.  Some are those country music favorites where people sing their hearts out, their lamentations, their sincerest honest not sugar coated truths.  If we ever understood Jesus, I think he is listening.  Maybe he sang some of these himself.  I wonder.

He Bottles our Tears

Proverbs 31 Ministries put up on FB some five empty bottles of tears.  There were like the antique pharmaceutical kind with the quote that the Lord bottles our tears andit really got me thinking about how our God loves us so much.  There is no one like Him.  No one can love us like Jesus.  No one  is capable of loving us to the depth of all our needs.  Only he knows our wounds, our ridiculously demanding expectations, and he can and does meet them.  No one can love us like Jesus.  He, our Adonai, has written his love for us on the hole ridden Palm of his hand.  Our needs, thoughts, delights, desires, and yes even our weaknesses, our loneliness, our laughter, and our tears, are ever before Him, and He whispers his love. I am here, you are not forgotten, I am here.  His presence, his affirmation is ever before us.  When he said, I prepare a table before you in the presence of mine enemies, it is true.  God is ever faithful.

Lord you are ever faithful. I love you Lord... thank you, Dearest Friend and Savior, thank you for ever loving me. Your love, it means every thing to me.

To think--- you bottle our tears!

Two Tomatoes for Two Molars

So today I got two wisdom teeth pulled. Ouch.  Though it did go much more smoothly than I expected there is always some trepidation whether while just waiting for the procedure to begin or to hope I don't forget that there should be no rinsing, no straws, and to use the gauzes.  Oh my the rinsing can happen so easily but I do not want a dry socket! Oh dear me, not a dry socket.  So I am holding down the fort, but along the way I stopped to get my meds and a side trip to Lowe's.  It was only a quick trip in and out to buy two hardy tomato plants to cheer me up.  You and I know that fresh ripen tomatoes from ones own garden are a delicacy.  There is nothing like them really.

So it is spring,
time for poems, odes, and planting.
Cleaning out closets
rearranging the house
a bucket of paint,
a new bone for the dog,
freesbies in the back yard
Zinneas in all colors and the
Jasmine in bloom
with it fragrance permeating the air

So it is spring and time
for Two Tomatoes for
two sad molars
and the joy they bring.
The tomatoes that is!
So here's a decent ode to
Spring Mr. Burns
you naughty man you!

(There must be a place for yours
I am sure, but....)