A snowstorm in Indiana

I am at home yet again today, I passed my pneumonia onto Braeden. Apparently Indiana is expected to experience up to a foot of snow tonight. I say "experience" because that is what it turns into here.

I have already heard from the school and the dentist's office informing me that they may close tomorrow, all over a foot or possible snow! I remember growing up and walking to school, uphill both ways, in three feet of snow. You may laugh, but that is how if felt. Here, I drive my sons to school everyday. There is no need to close down the school, they don't even offer a bus for students, that is what you get when they go to private school. I would think with this much warning everyone would be a little more well prepared and ready to face this possible challenge. It is supposed to be cold enough that the roads should be fine!

I just find it very annoying that anytime there is more than an inch of accumaltion everything here shuts down! What they need is a good Rocky Mountain snowstorm and then they can have something to cry about.

Another poem by me

Everything Must Die

I am an outdoor girl who loves nature.
I wonder if I will ever climb to the top of Mt. Everest.
I can hear the trees crying.
I see a young boy galloping through the wind with the deer.
I want to soar like a bird.
I am an outdoor girl who loves nature.

I pretend that I am the wind.
I feel the sky melt beneath me as I venture to the sun.
I touch the necter of a wild rose.
I worry that the tree-filled forests will be destroyed.
I cry when I feel the grip of death around me.
I am an outdoor girl who loves nature.

I understand that everything must die.
I say we are killing off our own breed.
I dream of a paradise world with no hate.
I try to follow the wind on it's way to nowhere.
I hope that I can watch one more sunrise drift into day.
I am an outdoor girl who loves nature.

Rebecca Bean

What do you do?

I wrote this on the plane coming home from Oregon after Christmas.

When love hurts, it ends or is lost.
You still want your love no matter the cost,
When all that you believe is no longer true,
How do you trust and what do you do?

How can you love when another filled your shoes,
What do you do when you feel lost from the news?
When someone else got to laugh, cry and be friends
When you don't know how your heart could mend.

Betrayal is something that happens everyday
When your love doesn't care enough to stay.
But the betrayal of love costs so much more
With such a betrayal is love worth fighting for?

If a promise is broken and lies have been told,
Does the truth then die and the passion grow cold?
If love finds itself in another's arms and in their bed
What do you do? Do you forgive or is love dead?

How do you go on when your world turns upside down
That without your love you are likely to drownm
When your life has depended on another's kiss,
What if another gave your love such bliss?
What do you do when your love may end?
How do you tell your heart to mend?

The Country Banker

Until Recently
I had always though
The growing of flowers was
Women's work-
Or pleasure.

Which goes to show
How you can
Go a long way
Through life
With your eyes shut.

He's a neighbor of mine,
And out for a stroll
One warm evening
I paused to chat
While he worked
Among his flowers.

"Wouldn't you rather raise
Cattle or horses
Or dogs or guinea pigs
Or something
With life and kick to 'em?"
I asked.
"All that flowers can
Do for you is
To look pretty."

He smiled shyly
And turned to a rosebush
Drenched in red bloom.
"That's not all,"
He replied.
"Flowers will grow for you
And not for themselves."

-John Matter 1932

I came across this as I was lying in bed reading while recovering from pneumonia. As the wind howled outside and snow swept across the ground, it reminded me of Spring and the promise of life that it brings with it. I like how he says that the flowers grow for you and not themselves, in that way they are selfless. It is too bad we can't all be a little more like that. Loving one another and being kind, not so others will be kind to us, but because we should be kind to them.

My favorite teacher

It seems like my clearest thoughts happen while I am driving the boys to school. Whether this is because I have to retreat inside my mind to drown out their yells or simply because it is early in the morning and I am still probably dreaming. In either case I usually come up with interesting material while I drive. It really stinks when the first few lines of a poem pop into my head but I can't write them down since the roads are covered in ice and it wouldn't be wise to take my hands off the steering wheel.

Today as I drove the boys to school I thought of my search for Ms. Becky Ralphs, my 8th and 9th grade Honors English teacher. If I ever had to name the teacher that taught me more than any other teacher, it would be her. I remember where I sat in her room, I remember her voice, I remember how excited she would get when talking about writing. She was my biggest inspiration for becoming a writer and my desire to teach. For weeks I have been trying to find her, looking her up on the internet, sending out emails and talking with the secretaries at my middle school. Unfortunately she was my teacher 14 years ago and it is hard to find someone from that long ago. I have spent so much time on the internet trying to find her, probably should have been studying.

In our 9th grade year our class wrote a collaborative historical fiction together entilted Emerald Iron. It is actually really good and we all learned a lot from it. I think I will hopefully do the same with my own class someday. The dedication in the book reads:

To my students

May this experience be a

springboard that launches

you into worlds of your own writing.

I believe in you.

Keep me posted.

Ms. Ralphs alsp wrote, "In my esperience, I have never seen a more gifted group of adolescent writers. It has been my privilege to teach them for two years, and I would match them against any other class in the country. I love these people." She was not just an average teacher, she cared about each and every one of us. She did not think of us as just children either, she spoke of us people, writers. I want her to know what she meant to me and how she has inspired me as a writer.

I think I may have finally gotten in contact with her. I am excited so talk to her, she taught me so much. She is one of the most creative writers and teachers I have ever known and if I can be half as great as her I will be lucky.

On my way to drop off the boys

This morning I woke up and my 4 year old had a fever of 102.3, I knew I was going to stay home with him today. As I dropped off my other two sons I tuned into Morning Edition on my local NPR radio station. My day never seems to start off on the right foot unless I hear Garrison Keillor's smooth voice talking to me. This morning the poem he read seemed to follow along the same lines as a discussion we are having in one of my education classes.

We are discussing the next generation, or Generation Y. I fall into this category since I was born between 1978-2000, although just barely. I actually remember when the internet first came out. My mother worked at Novell back then, a precursor to Intel and other networking computer companies. Well, we are discussing this "new" generation and the implications it has on teaching these students. Is it more difficult, less difficult, how do we tailor our lesson plans around them? Then I heard this poem, The Future, and it made me pause. In looking for the future, we must first find the present and the past. In order to teach a student, I don't need to develop brand new techniques, I merely need to fine tune some of the methods I already know. In a time where we are constantly looking forward, this poems shows that we cannot do that without still holding on to the present and past.

The Future

On the afternoon talk shows of America
the guests have suffered life's sorrows
long enough. All they require now
is the opportunity for closure,
to put the whole thing behind them
and get on with their lives. That their lives,
in fact, are getting on with them even
as they announce their requirement
is written on the faces of the younger ones
wrinkling their brows, and the skin
of their elders collecting just under their
set chins. It's not easy to escape the past,
but who wouldn't want to live in a future
where the worst has already happened
and Americans can finally relax after daring
to demand a different way? For the rest of us,
the future, barring variations, turns out
to be not so different from the present
where we have always lived—the same
struggle of wishes and losses, and hope,
that old lieutenant, picking us up
every so often to dust us off and adjust
our helmets. Adjustment, for that matter,
may be the one lesson hope has to give,
serving us best when we begin to find
what we didn't know we wanted in what
the future brings. Nobody would have asked
for the ice storm that takes down trees
and knocks the power out, leaving nothing
but two buckets of snow melting
on the wood stove and candlelight so weak,
the old man sitting at the kitchen table
can hardly see to play cards. Yet how else
but by the old woman's laughter
when he mistakes a jack for a queen
would he look at her face in the half-light as if
for the first time while the kitchen around them
and the very cards he holds in his hands
disappear? In the deep moment of his looking
and her looking back, there is no future,
only right now, all, anyway, each one of us
has ever had, and all the two of them,
sitting together in the dark among the cracked
notes of the snow thawing beside them
on the stove, right now will ever need.

"The Future" by Wesley McNair, from Talking in the Dark. © David R. Godine, 1998.