Circling for a landing

This post is for all the people who have ever said: You get to travel, that must be so much fun!
Monday I left Cleveland for Mobile via Houston at 9:30 AM EST a little late — 30 minute delay. Big deal. But we went into a holding pattern due to storms, and we circled

Freedom of Dress

Last night on Bill Mauer, he said that he didn’t think he should have to talk to women who were wearing a burqa, it is so fourteenth century and basically they are doing it only because men want them to. First of all, he meant abaya (black with headscarf) not a burqa (blue, total cover).

OELMA

I admire librarians for their self-motivation. Often working solo, they quietly keep the shelves current and in order so that the rest of us can paw through the stacks and then they put it all back together again. At the annual meeting of the Ohio school librarians I ran into an old friend, Kay Wise.

Lancaster, PA

The day was sunny and 80 degrees, the smell of cut grass. At precisely 10:45AM, one week from the tragic shooting at the small Amish school in that town, the principal at the modern high school came on the loudspeaker to remind us to pause in remembrance. It was so impressive how the Amish community

Voda

My word for the day. On pretty much of a whim, Michael and I just booked a trip to Croatia in December. We will be visiting Steven and Kathy Smith, artist/poet friends of ours who sold everything and moved to Europe. We are more friends in spirit than friends who got together frequently, but you

Unschooling

I’m at the Cleveland Public Library, it is the color of cold, wet steel outside. Ample windows are letting in only a dusky light and the whole place has the ambiance of a tomb. I’m researching (well, really, I’m off task, but I CAME here to research) a new book on performance learning. It is

Beware of grandmothers with glue sticks

Quote from writer/educator Donald Graves: “Too much of my life is spent in routine activities: get up, shave, dress, stagger down for my cup of coffee, write, eat, write some more, pile up my correspondence and teaching necessities in my canvas LLBean bag, drive unseeing to work, wonder about where I might be lucky enough

Disesteem

Here’s the sentence: “She was a woman to admire and to desire, but the message in her eye and her bearing was unmistakable: offend or disesteem her at your peril.” I’m still reading Shantaram, written by Aussie Gregory David Roberts — it’s nine hundred pages and I’m not traveling with long stretches on airplanes and

Under the cover of darkness

I swear, they do it at night. I’m not sure who THEY are, but for sure THEY don’t want to be confronted by those of us enjoying our fall walks, watching the leaves take on attitude before they dry and take flight and listening to the birds discussing travel plans. Those of us who are

To the woman in the blue dress

To the woman in the blue dress walking in front of the empty strip center store on Route 20 who did not tie back her auburn hair letting it fly behind her like a lacy cape — to the woman who led with her chin and whose smile was reflected in the way she swung