This was a ‘magnetic poetry’ demo created on the overhead projector with a handful of random words cut from other works. It was a model exercise for my English class back last March. It’s an example of playing with words and juxtaposition. Meaning is abstract.
Like my heart’s guess
the music was spread
and thought thrilled
T’was words that
crawled cried
screamed turned
blazed
and came away
blind.
2009-03
I am aware that I am among the most blessed people on the planet because I absolutely love my job. Every day when I walk into the high school where I teach, I enter a dynamic world that is constantly new and constantly entertaining. The challenges are many, but the rewards are greater. There are only six more weeks of classes this school year, and as I prepare to bid farewell to this year’s kids and enter my annual two months of unemployment, I am pondering on how I got here, and what makes my job great.
I have not been out of school for more than six months since I was three. That’s when I began my love of learning at Mrs. Hamilton’s Bo Peep Kindergarten. My mother needed me out of the house. I think I was exhausting. I spent three years with Mrs. Hamilton, and several of the students in the kindergarten graduated with me at Okanagan Mission Secondary thirteen years later. I loved elementary school (all four that I attended) and even junior high, because I had great friends and I was curious. I loved learning new things and I had a lot of questions. In grade three, I loved writing stories and sharing them in show and tell. I planned to be a writer. I was about ten when I decided I was going to become a teacher instead. I planned to teach grade four or five. My grade four teacher, Mr Lavoie, and my grade five teacher, Mrs Nemeth, had completely opposite teaching styles but I adored them both. I was completely inspired to follow in their footsteps.
Although I had amazing teachers in a brand new school in a lovely forest setting, until grade ten, life in high school was not pleasant. I spent a lot of time writing poetry and long letters to friends in other places. I read constantly. I invented stories on my walk to and from school. I wasn’t a loner though; I belonged to youth groups, choirs, and volunteered hundreds of hours at the hospital. I belonged to a lot of school clubs: library, newspaper, yearbook, and musical theatre. I had an active, busy life. In the senior grades the students became respectful and tolerant of others again, and high school became much more pleasant. At this point I returned to the debate. Should I return to the dream of being a writer or stick with the plan to be a teacher? I had some inspiring teachers in high school, like Mr. Keith, Mr. Swanzey, Mr. Wendell, and Mr. Moore. You may notice that some of those names appear in Grace Awakening. This is a small tribute to their influence, although the characters are flat and not at all the intelligent, innovative and inspiring people these men were in real life! It wasn’t until I entered teacher training and started observing in other schools that I realised what an amazing vision our principal Mr. Monteleone had for us at OKM.
I was still planning to teach elementary and I was in University of Calgary’s education department working toward that goal when a new life got in the way. Time to re-think the plan. We were moving to northern BC where there was no university at the time, so I transferred my credits to Athabasca University, an international leader in distance education, which would allow me to continue my studies anywhere in the world. It took several years, but eventually I earned a BA in English. Next I had to figure out how to earn my teaching credentials. The solution was an innovative program offered by Simon Fraser University to train teachers in the communities where they lived. Because I had a BA already, and was missing some of the general credits needed for elementary (like old nemises math and PE), I had to re-think my planned teaching level. I did my training to be a high school teacher instead. Although I hadn’t expected to focus on that level, I discovered that I really enjoyed working with teens. Being flexible at every stage allowed me to reach my goals, and it stood me in good stead as I taught a wide variety of subjects in countless subbing jobs and temporary teaching contracts.
My students come from all walks of life. They each have unique challenges and goals. They are fascinating and fun to be with every day, despite the frustrations of trying to get them to live up to potential some of them don’t want to reach. I mourn with them when tragedy touches our world. Loss of our kids before or after graduation due to accident or illness always devastates. Too much potential is lost when a young person dies. Most days are celebrations though, and no one knows how to celebrate like teens! No school day or even hour is the same. The students ensure my days are never boring, and their energy provides fuel for imagination. Each one offers me information about the world and growing to understand their needs and talents inspires me. I get to share great works of literature with them and coax their awareness and understanding of universal themes. I get to see skills develop as students learn to manipulate words in prose and poetry. I get to watch them grow through the years and graduate into adult life, where I hope that they carry gleanings of ideas from my classes that will fuel curiosity and engagement with learning throughout their lives. I’m always so happy to hear from students, even though lately I have trouble remembering their names from semester to semester!
So here I am today, in my eighteenth year of teaching high school, looking out my classroom window over the trees to Shuswap Lake shimmering in the sun. I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world and I’m blessed to have one of the most fulfilling jobs in the world. Life couldn’t get much better.
Turns out that biological world envisioned in Avatar may not be so far off. This morning as I was waking up, I heard a fascinating interview with Diana Beresford-Kroeger on CBC’s The Current. Beresford-Kroeger, an Ontario scientist, has written a book called The Global Forest, and I can assure you that I’ll be reading a copy soon to see if it’s as intriguing as the tidbits she shared on The Current.
For a lot of years we’ve imagined that we know what makes a biosphere work, and then along comes someone like this looking at new research that blows all our preconceptions away. Forests are far more complex than we imagined, and they provide far more measureable benefits that we’ve known. This is well beyond the stress relief of talking to your plants. The forest is linked intricately to itself, and all the cycles of the planet. It’s enough to make one look for a tail to plug into a branch.
Did you know that that fabulous aroma you enjoy while walking through a pine forest after the rain or breathing in willow bark is actually good for you? Forest walks can help alleviate depression and pain? Chemicals are being released by the trees that react with our body chemistry and work as well as ingesting pharmaceuticals. This is the ancient wisdom that is being sought among indigenous forests even while they’re being mowed down. We don’t need to look to the Amazon for miracle cures from nature. There are plenty of pine forests across Canada just waiting to for you to stroll through and reap the endorphins (and other beneficial chemicals!).
Now I know why even though it always rained while I was at Girl Guide camp, I still was happy the whole time.
the scent of roses
sends sweet lingering kisses
drifting on the breeze,
soft sighing in evening air,
whisp’ring gentle caresses.
Roasting dinner
A few years ago in Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food magazine I came across a recipe for roast zucchini. It involved dicing zucchini and onion, tossing them in olive oil and rosemary and roasting for 20 mins. The results were so tasty that it occurred to me that I could use the same method for a lot of foods, and our roast dinner routine became established.
I vary the recipe every time depending on what I have in the house, but the basics are that the food should be in 1” or 2 cm cubes, tossed in a couple tablespoons of olive or canola oil, and spread out on a cookie sheet to roast at 425 degrees for 20-25 mins. I have a convection oven, but a regular oven works as well.
I almost always use a diced onion with whatever other meats and vegetables I’m mixing and for one pan (serves 3 adults or 2 adults, 2 kids) I have about 4 cups of raw meat and/or vegetables that I toss in a mix of spices or a sauce.
Spices to mix and match: 2 garlic cloves, 1 tbsp French onion soup mix, 1 tbsp chicken or beef bouillon powder, ½ tsp of black pepper, onion powder, curry, basil, dry mustard
Sauces to consider (1/4 to 1/3 c): assorted prepared barbeque sauces, Italian or Ranch salad dressing, curry sauces
Meats: chicken breast, smokie sausage, pork or beef stewing meat, meat balls
Vegetables: onion, zucchini, potato, red pepper, green pepper, button mushrooms, carrot, parsnip, yam, turnip
I have tried broccoli and cauliflower, but the little flower tips tend to burn.
Tonight I mixed up meat balls, laid them out on the pan, tossed potatoes in BBQ sauce and poured them into the pan around the meatballs. Last week we loved diced smokies, onion, yams and carrots. Yummy!
Let me know what you try and how it turns out!
Running from the train, angel
Wings flapping furiously
As it eats up the track behind you
Fly angel fly
There’s a clattering, rattling
Horror roaring after you
Angel racing against a speeding destiny
Just get off the easy path you’re treading
Leap to freedom
Or another kind of freedom will mow you down
Run from the train, angel.
Fly like Pegasus above danger.
Be.
Live to race the passing engines
from the safety of sidings and pastures.
Fly angel, fly
© S L Bird
2009-10-08
for Kim
The municipality of New Westminster has just mandated the first ever living wage in North America. How sane is that? Pay people enough that they can live in your community. What an innovative idea.
I know too many families with two incomes who are forced to visit foodbanks because they can’t afford to live on the wages they get. Minimum wage in BC is just over $8 an hour. That means if you work eight hours full-time you earn $64 a day, $320 a week, $1280 a month before income taxes. Well, $1280 if you can even get full time work.
From the $1280 you have to take shelter, food, clothes, and transportation. Add in all the taxes on top of the goods, medical… It boggles the mind. New Westminster has decided to pay all city staff or those working on city contracts double the minimum wage.
Congratulations New Westminster for having the common sense to know that people who are paid fair wages can afford to support an economy. Not only can a person earning a living wage afford nutrious food, a comfortable place to live and to get to work. They may actually also be able afford to buy a coffee now and then at a cafe, go for a movie, have a meal out, put their kids into sports, and support charitable causes.
Thanks New Westminster for your new ideas on ministering best to those who live in your community.
Are there reluctant muses? How many muses are embarrassed or dissatisfied with their role as someone else’s creative inspiration? Whatever the real nature of the relationship between the people involved, the creative one takes the facts of the other and covers individual identity with musical notes, pieces of paper, or splashes of paint. Reality becomes illusion.
A muse is a creation of aspiration on the journey to inspiration. That they may walk, talk, breathe, sing, dance or act is extraneous to the process. The muse simply exists as a precipice from which the imagination can leap. If the muse is worthy, the leap is not downward, toward the heavy reality of life, but upward, into the dreamlike world of possibility. Once gliding on the currents of the muse, the creator may stay in the air for years or even decades on the flow of ideas, images, and imaginings
While the real life person ages, decays, and even dies, the muse lives on in perpetual youth. The ephemeral something that creates the muse is extemporal. This is why Petrarch was able to write over three hundred sonnets to Laure, even after her death. Reports suggest that the two had never actually even met, and yet the dream of her fueled Petrarch’s writing for decades after his first glimpse of her. I understand his obsession. My own muse is a memory wrapped in a dream and tied with a reverie. There’s no accounting for the flashes that make a moment into a poem, a nuance into a novel or a suggestion into a song.
From delusion
to illusion,
with the inspiration
comes the aspiration
for imagination
to become creation.
Somedays as you sleep
I look at you
and I wonder,
Did I really do this?
You slumber while I lie
among your fumes and rumbles.
Curling next to you,
You wrap your arms around me,
pulling me close you murmur into my ear.
As I mold in your embrace
I wonder
that I really did.
28-01-2009
Shawn L. Bird 
language & brain May 23, 2010
Tags: bi-lingual, brain, languages, Melinda Wenner, Scientific American, The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages
Melinda Wenner’s article in Scientific American fascinates me for many reasons. I have friends whose children were born in bilingual environments, and it has always amazed me how fluidly these children move between languages. It has frequently been observed that students in French Immersion tend to be among the strongest in the school. Is this because they were already so, or have their brains been improved by second language learning?
I started learning my second language (French) when I was in grade 4. I loved it! It was like learning a special code, with the advantage that other people around the word could understand it, too. In grade 12 I added a Spanish course and did very well at that at the time but, unfortunately before I could solidify it, I headed off as an exchange student to Finland, and before long even French was a struggle as my brain re-tuned to Finnish instead. I was in awe of the students in my Finnish class. We were the language stream, and besides Finnish (‘Äidenkieli’ or ‘mother tongue’) they took courses in Swedish, English, German, French and/or Russian. How on earth did they manage it? By third rotation when we came back to French class I couldn’t speak it properly anymore (I could read and understand without difficulty, but the Finnish pushed the French out of the speaking centre). Happily, both French and Finnish happily co-reside in my brain these days.
While I was learning Italian earlier this year, I kept finding connections to other words I knew in Spanish, French or English which led to epiphanies of word meaning. One epiphany resulted from learning the Italian word nebia which means fog. Suddenly I had a whole new understanding of the English word nebulous. While pulling on a door and reading the French tirer (to pull) I realised the connection to the word on Italian doors: tirare. Do these words relate to the English verb to tire? After all, it’s exhausting work to be pulling something. What about the Italian word for ‘left’ sinistra? The underhanded swordsman using the left hand was definitely sinister to his opponents. All these additional layers of meaning start appearing as you read when you know other languages.
When one learns another language, or particularly several other languages, one begins to see the complex web that strings them together. If one opens up to the conceptual words that we don’t have in English, our world view expands even further. For example, Finnish has the word sisu which connotes pride, courage, and fortitude. The Finns claim sisu is what allowed them to decimate the Russians with 10:1 losses and led to the only war-time settlement the Russians ever negotiated to stop the Winter War of 1939. (It’s also the name of their strongest salt-licorice, which is fitting because it definitely takes some fortitude to eat it!)
I have enjoyed studying various other languages for interest sake over the years, although I gained no significant fluency. I studied Esperanto, Japanese and most recently Italian. It was particularly entertaining to be sitting at a restaurant table in Italy a couple months ago with my Finnish host parents and my Canadian husband, speaking English to him, Finnish to them, and Italian to the waitress! It was especially clear to me then what this article suggests- speaking other languages is definitely a brain work out!
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