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Beginner's Heart

Here’s the thing about sanity in an election year: We always have it. They never do. And yes: lately that seems far too often to be the point. We are always the ‘good guys.’ They are always the bad, or at least the sadly misinformed… Don’t misunderstand: I’m NOT non-partisan. Not when to be a…

If you’ve read this blog more than a couple of times, you know I’m crazy about bees. Actually, about most wildlife (and yep, bees qualify). Starting next month, my patient, long-suffering husband & I are taking a beginning beekeeping class. I’m very stoked… 🙂 In the meantime, given the changes in local climate (a LOT…

This is me mad. I’m only half kidding: I have a terrible social temper. Meaning, what gets me mad is social injustice, and/or the will to ignore it. There’s one problem: I’m always the one defining the term… Anger is not Buddhist. It’s not Christian, either. In fact, few religious faiths find a helpful rôle…

Some days, you wonder why you keep throwing yourself into the fray. You email a friend, or he emails you, and together you whine about the total futility of it all. ‘It’ being, of course, convincing the bad guys you at least have a right to disagree. This is not that certain a given, these…

While on vacation, I kept having what my elder son & I used to call baby enlightenments — epiphanies, a Joycean scholar might say. But targeted towards growing, finding balance. Some were brought on by the way I think (metaphorically): seeing a river, and its shores, and all the ways that speaks to me inside.…

A comment on an earlier post, from Dasha, reminds me why teaching is so much more than test scores. Why the teacher may be, next to immediate family, the most important person in a child’s life. And why teachers are so often the nicest people I know. Dasha notes that her students can be annoying.…

 I spent most of June this summe, in a graduate Institute with teachers of all grade levels (k-university), in several content areas, and from varied backgrounds. The seminar lasts for three weeks. During week 2 we discuss cultures: what each of us — teacher & student alike — bring to a classroom. Of this year’s…

Something there is about a garden… Particularly a Chinese garden. With a Chinese scholar’s room overlooking the quiet courtyard, a row of clean brushes awaiting the writer’s hand. Each turn is another perfect vista, an image to be sketched, framed with words and translated to a blank page. In Portland, the Lan Su Chinese Garden…

While I was awaiting news these past few days, I thought a lot about beginnings. About the new school year, about fresh starts. And I thought how lucky I am that this has turned out be a ‘reboot’ and not a system crash…:) With the idea of fresh starts in mind, I have some  for…

I want this read at my funeral. Which I hope is many years in the future (my good news yesterday — no cancer! — certainly helps me believe that!). I want it read because it’s what I’ve always believed, even as a small child. We really are stardust — which to me is so magic.…
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