Living on the Lip of Insanity

54

by E. E. Cummings, from XAIPE

maybe god

is a child
‘s hand)very carefully
bring
-ing
to you and to
me(and quite with
out crushing)the

papery weightless diminutive

world
with a hole in
it out
of which demons with wings would be streaming if
something had(maybe they couldn’t
agree)not happened(and floating-
ly int

o

—————

With three daughters it is easy for me to understand the poet’s supposition – that a child’s hand is a thing of creation, offering to us a world that could, just maybe, be a papery, weightless wonder.  And imagine, what it might be like if something had not happened to stop the demons…

Image from flickr member lrargerich

Last night’s gathering at our home and a comment about fireflies from Michael Doyle over at Science Teacher put some pieces together for me this morning.

Hosting

Last evening we hosted a welcome potluck for the students from Japan that are visiting  my daughter’s school and their host families.  We had twenty families and their Japanese “children” here for a crowded night of meeting, eating, laughing, planning, and problem solving.

The meeting, laughing, and planning parts come pretty naturally.  Jam enough bodies in the room, and you have to talk to people.  The eating part came up against the problem solving part.  I was expecting 89 people, and we had that – more or less – and so I had been hunting and gathering, bringing home pieces of chicken that numbered over 100.  Now, few homes can cook that much food at once, but being an old restaurant hand, the oven that I have in our kitchen can fit four full sheet pans.  The oven, as you might expect, was full.

But the oven, in true Bartleby the scrivener fashion, preferred not to.  Heat to the necessary 350-400° that is.  This was a problem.  Lots of hungry people and a lot of, literally*, half baked chicken.

So, Sam springs into grill mode and finishes cooking 100+ pieces of chicken on the grill.  We serve everyone the chicken, plus all the lovely side dishes that arrived – salads, baked Mac and Cheese, fruit, bread, olives, desserts.

The house is jammed, you can’t get to the buffet table because everyone is talking to each other, and everyone is having a great time.   There is an abundance of good will, flashing cameras, friendship across continents and across the city, and patience with delays, language barriers, and new faces.

The house

Our house has always called to me.  Even when I didn’t live it and only visited it, I felt welcome here as in no other home I have lived in, even my childhood homes.  Our house at 709 and our grandmother’s house in Madison, SD almost had the deep call that this building and yard has for me.  I can’t say why; I only know it is there.   Last night it worked its magic on other people.  And Michael’s comment about fireflies reminded me of another night.

June, 1999

My niece Sissy had just celebrated her marriage with all the family gathered, and my cousins were in from San Francisco.  It was a beautiful evening, and the adults were in the dining room, enjoying that post-dinner glass of wine and talking around the table.  The evening was finally getting dark, and all the children were in the yard, running, swinging,  and laughing.  As the sky turned that blue (the blue that only exists in the moment that the sun has gone completely past the horizon but you can still see well) the fireflies came out.  First one or two, and then so many you couldn’t count.

A shriek of delight from Griffin, child of San Francisco, who had never seen a firefly.  Fireflies are so thoughtful.  They hang in the air, pulsing green, waiting for you to hold out your hand – Griff gathered them in a jar, watched them for a long time, and then shook them back out onto the lawn.

Wendy, his mother, over the dining room table, told us that – that was it – they weren’t leaving.  What we had here was an abundance of abundance.

And as I plant again today, and remember the laughter of last night, I have to agree.

* thank you, Steve.

photo by flickr member jdl_deleon

Our America

LeAlan Jones, who with David Isay and Lloyd Newman produced the astonishing Ghetto 101 and Remorse documentaries for NPR, spoke today at school to the 3-12th grades.

The most important thing he had to say to all of us was that he doesn’t think less of the students here because of their privilege, but he would think less of them if they choose to do nothing with the gifts that they have to change the world around them.  With all the advantages that the students have here, there should be someone who emerges that can change the very simple problems that plague the city.  In the same way, he said, he would think less of someone without all these advantages who still does nothing to change their own life for the better.

Chicago Photo by Frozenchipmunk

London Town Below

I have a little music supervisor in my head that plays music while I read books.  The first book I really remember this happening for was The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the album Teaser and the Firecat by Cat Stevens played in my room and my head, and to this day I hear that music when I reread those books.  So when we read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman I asked the class to think about the characters in the novel.  Who would have a theme song, and what would it be?  I gave them some suggestions:

Serious Tones

Somewhere Only We Know - by Keane for Door and Richard

I Will Follow You  Into the Dark – by Death Cab for Cutie for Anaesthesia

A Thousand Years by Vanessa Carlton – Richard near the end of the novel

Better Days by Goo Goo Dolls for Richard

Red Shoes by Elvis Costello for the Marquis de Carabas (because he used to be disgusted, and now he tries to be amused).

Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears for many of the denizens of London Below

Serious but with a wink

Rat in Me Kitchen by UB40 for Richard

Psycho Killer by Talking Heads for Croup and Vandermar

Bad to the Bone by George Thorogood and & Destroyers for Croup and Vandemar

Excitable Boy by Warren Zevon for Croup and Vandemar

I’m Looking Through You by (The Beatles) and The Wallflowers for Jessica

Bad Reputation by Joan Jett for Hunter

Break on Through to The Other Side by The Doors for the Portico family

Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon for London Above and Below

I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash for Richard

Student Music Supervisors

So the students brought in their selections.  Richard has the most choices for a theme song:

Upside Down by A Teens (obvious call if Richard were into pop and you didn’t really listen to the lyrics)

Freefalling by Tom Petty (okay, this is a straight ahead pitch)

Talk by Coldplay

Oh brother I can’t,
I can’t get through
I’ve been trying hard to reach you,
cause I don’t know what to do
Oh brother I can’t believe it’s true
I’m so scared about the future and I wanna talk to you
Oh I wanna talk to you

Disturbia by Rhianna

What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel like this?  I’m going crazy…

These Streets by Paulo Nutini

Cross the border,
Into the big bad world
Where it takes you ’bout an hour
Just to cross the road

Single Ladies by Beyonce (I guess he should have married that Jessica girl earlier if he really liked her – according to one student)

Warlocks by Red Hot Chili Peppers

A little pocket of something kind
To find your reason
coming up on it everyday for
Look at me and it’s what I stay for
A little locket of fantasy
That we believe in

I’m Yours by Jason Mraz

I fell right through the cracks
Now I’m trying to get back
Before the cool done run out
I’ll be giving it my bestest
And nothing’s going to stop me but divine intervention
I reckon it’s again my turn to win some or learn some
I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait, I’m yours

and Hang Me Up to Dry by Cold War Kids

Followed closely by Croup and Vandemar

Bad Boys for Life by P. Diddy

Swagger Like Us by MIA

Thriller by Michael Jackson (yeah, I know – kind of lame)

Beyond Richard and the Scary Guys

For Door they only had one suggestion: Open Up by Dispatch.

The Velvets might use Heartless by Kanye West.

The Marquis might think about using Ladies & Gentlemen by Saliva.

And for the general London Above/London Below gestalt – Take a Walk by Masta Ace

What songs do you you associate with which books?

photo by flickr member Daniel Voyager

Bunk beds = bone tired

Thursday and Friday of this past week we went on the Junior Class retreat.  We take our class into the city, stay at a hostel, eat pot-luck, and work on social justice issues.  Along the way we try to learn a little bit about each other and begin to appreciate the “others” that are both those folks out there that we don’t know and the folks in here that we don’t know.  This is generally a nice group of kids and I think that over all, the trip was successful.

Pregnancy – Planning and Coping

We went to Planned Parenthood of Illinois to learn about their mission (85% of their work is as a provider of reproductive [and sometime the only] health care for women) and to help them get ready for their big benefit on Friday.  We made buttons and alphabetized name tags.  Thursday night the girls presented to the class the work they have been doing on raising awareness of advertising and the distortion/objectification of women’s bodies in the media.  I don’t think they were prepared for the reaction they received, but they were ready to defend their beliefs that we ARE affected by advertising and  that turning women into objects makes it easier to hit us/discriminate against us/ ignore us.  It was great practice for when they share their work with the full middle and upper school later this month.

Friday – Coping

On Friday we were guests at a meeting of the Illinois Subsequent Pregnancy Project.  We learned about them at a Chapin Hall forum on the real cost of teen pregnancy.  Our students felt that they were the only panelists who were really concerned about the real life SOCIAL costs of teen pregnancy.  The phrases of the morning were “Meet them where they are,” and “Be willing to walk it out with them;” both phrases look at treating each young parent as a unique individual and being ready to go the full distance with that young parent to help them.  An amazing group of people, I must say.

Friday night we put on our party dresses and volunteered at the Planned Parenthood gala benefit.  The young women were amazing, and one even managed to catch our senior senator from Illinois on his way out of the benefit and get photo with our group.  Snap!

I learned a lot about the young women in our group.  I also learned a valuable lesson for me – that is: I can say no, and I can let others take of care of some things.  Corrolary – if certain non-essential things don’t happen, then I do not have to feel responsible.  Also, I hate playing games (board games, card games, etc) and that is just fine.

Chicago Hostel photo by flickr member jetzenpolis