The Good Old Days: NOT

The Email:

We have a Novella going on at XYZ Elementary with the administrator. I have had to pull her from the site until it can all get worked out. She is gone as of yesterday. 

After School: Day One

I've been called in to pick up the pieces.

There's a gazillion kids in this after school program. The former administrator has been placed on leave. All the clerks have been fired and replaced with one young (brilliant!) woman from the district office. There's a 30 page document showing who goes where and when. At least one of the teachers for those positions is among the fired. The school is in town so students think they can decide when they want to go home. There's 30 pages of charts showing who goes where and when. The day principal walks around looking amused.

To be continued...

Never Marry

Knows her place!

Proud Mary

Artwork by Ingrid Black
In your face!

Hail Mary

Full of Grace

April Flowers

Happy Birthday Sweeties!
(Sherrie (my baby sister!) and April (my only niece!)

Tying Rebar

16 on center

helping out

helping up

keeping up

with the schedule

the schedule 

to move forward

never looking back

never thinking backward

just keeping on

one foot moving

in front of the other

help me brother

can you spare a dime

a little time

to move this damn thing forward?

Sandy and Cindy's Excellent Adventure

Steven Johnson strumming the blues

After devouring a couple of trout, they tooled over to a local vets bar for a little light libations and some fabulous blues and funk from Scary Larry and the Blues Monsters.

Mindful Malaise

                                      by Mark Jesinoski

not unhappy or worried or distressed

just suspended in the moment

unable to move foreword or refocus

waiting waiting waiting
for change to come

The Collector

not stamps or art or silver teaspoons

but shells and stones and bits of bone

that marked her journeys

delicate cowrie from Bali

a bevy of conch from the Caribbean

smooth stones gathered from the Hollister hills

where she searched under a full moon for sage

water tumbled stones from Lake Tahoe

agates from the Mojave and jade from Wyoming

a souvenir sandstone from the wedding in Taos

a mouthful of shark’s teeth pulled

from a rotting carcass on the beach at Popotla

all now passed on, passed down

they carry her energy still, her dreams

her legacy

Following in the Footsteps

A wonderful tribute to our beloved friend, Chris Ballin, her granddaughter is out protesting the tuition hikes for community colleges. 

At 3:00 AM

thoughts branch in disparate directions

search for a limb to hang on to

a patch of calm, a safe place 

to land when the fall comes

Don't Ask

Don’t ask me why

I don’t just give up

sell off all that junk

I’ve collected

Over a lifetime

trying to make up

for loss, scarcity

never having enough

Not enough elephants (fifty-one)

or books (too many to count)

not enough blue dishes or

colored markers or facebook friends

Not enough hugs,

never enough hugs

to fill that loss,

that mother loss

Never enough to prove

it was not my fault

not my fault

never my fault

If Not Now, When

 

"Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now." Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of The Yellow Wallpaper. See the link below for Ms. Gilman's explanation of why she wrote this piece.

www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html

I need this reminder from time to time as I make mental and written lists of all the things I need/want/must do but don't seem to get around to doing.