Call to Adventure

This is our phone, the one we use the most because we can actually hear people on it. We use our push button phone only when we need to. Bill found this in a shed at his mother's house about thirty years ago. Who knows how long it had been in there?

A friend's daughter wanted to call her dad one day and after she picked up the receiver she just stared at it, not knowing what to do. I realized that it's probably the equivalent to the pictures I saw of hand crank phones when I was a kid. I wish we could take this beauty with us!

I've been offered a job at St. Margaret's British School for Girls in Concon, Chile. A part of my day will be spent teaching high school English! Because the academic year in Chile starts in March, I'm hoping to leave my current job by mid-January and be in Chile sometime in early February.

Bill is working very hard to make our house look like a million dollars (we wish) to be ready for possible buyers. I'm trying to find a qualified teacher to finish out my contract year. We need homes for two of our dogs. We're bringing Lily, our oldest and most adaptable as our Chili dog. Our hearts are breaking over the other two. Dazie, though, will be happier in another home without the other two dogs bothering her. For some reason she offers a type of alure to both Willy and Lily. They never leave her alone! Willy is everyone's boyfriend. He's affectionate and goofy and totally loving (a quality Lily doesn't always possess).

We could be there a year, but we could also be there the rest of our lives (with trips home, of course.) We'll be living by the sea in a climate similar to Santa Barbara's. Vina Del Mar, a tourist destination, is only a few miles south and offers plenty of shopping opportunities if we need them and great food. Valparaiso is half an hour farther south and is a wonderfully atmospheric bohemian sort of place.

I have a dream of an ex-pat community of friends in Concon! We hope to receive many visitors over the years.

Life in Tentacles

The moment finally came! Signing a copy of HUNGRY at Cobb Mountain's very own coffee shop and bookstore, The Bookkeeper. Bill made pistachio Home Worlder cookies, with five tentacles rather than six, but who's counting! Pipecleaner tentacles were made with googly eyes. There were green alien Italian sodas to drink and a t-shirt giveaway.

My good friend and writing partner, Mary, helped in my presentation as Commander Pggsbtk, (otherwise known as Deborah's grandmother Pig's Butt). Mary and I did a "spit and greet," and she ably assisted applying Pggsbtk's beauty secret to transform Tom, one of the Bookkeeper's visitor's, into an alien. There were wonderful screams of pain from the bathroom as the beauty secret did its job. Norm, Mary's husband, made a certificate for the kids that said they were officially part of the invasion force and were not to be eaten.

Since then Mary helped me at an assembly at school in which a sixth grader named Tristan outdid Tom with his screams from the back of the stage. He was very brave as he went out on his mission to terrorize Earthlings with his new alien face. One of the pleasures of all of this is being a teacher and a writer. The kids at school have been genuinely excited for me.

I signed books at Funtopia last weekend as a fund raiser for Minnie Cannon's sixth grade science camp. Over 200 dollars was raised!

My family, community, friends, collegues, and church (even Episcopalians can appreciate hungry aliens) have been so supportive. All I can say is a humble thank you to everyone who have made the last two weeks so memorable.

Book Day

I wish I could include my second graders in this picture, but I'm not sure if their parents would want their picture on the internet.

By the way, that's Serjio's arm, and Starfall, the best reading site on the Internet on the monitor behind me. Everybody at school, every teacher, aide, and student signed the banner.

As a celebration, two teachers at my school decorated my room after I left late on October 1st. They ended up calling my husband to get me out of there.

On the morning of the 2nd, I wasn't really thinking about HUNGRY as much as I was feeling overwhelmed by teaching: the needs the kids have and the expectations put on schools. I'm working with a very bright 4th grade reading group who are below grade level for a variety of causes: reading disabilities, second languages, difficulty focusing, and, for a few, home issues.

I love this group. They're good thinkers and sweet kids, but they need me to go slow. They need repetition and lots and lots of practice on skills. I'm a believer in using data to inform instruction, and I'm not against standards. I just want the expectations to be reasonable. When I was in fourth grade, I didn't have to write a summary on bonsai (a release writing prompt for the 4th grade state writing test). My parents wouldn't have known bonsia from bubble gum. Thinking back on the type of 4th grader I was, I wonder if I could have easily describe the art of growing bonsai. I'm sure my lack of background knowledge would have reflected in my writing performance.

I'm not saying, don't teach kids how to write! But what this group needs more than anything else is to get a good solid understanding of SENTENCE construction, which we work on daily. I want them to write decent paragraphs by the end of 4th grade (which they are still shaky about the details-- like not starting each sentence on a new line), and if all of them succeed I'll be doing the happy teacher dance. But I'm concerned for March when they have to take the test, that as far as they'll come as writers may not be far enough.

So, October 2nd, I got to school feeling heavy and worried and grumpy. Gail Marshall said she needed something from my room and hung around as I dawdled getting my lunch into the refrigerator in the teachers' room and then spent more time running off work for later in the day. On the way across the quad to my room, we talked about how as a teacher one can work 24/7, and it's still wouldn't be enough to do everything. We talked about how it was only October and that we were already tired.

I unlocked my door and was met with a banner, flowers, balloons, and silly string. Oh, there was chocolate. Lots of it. Gail had come with me to see my reaction. I'm still smiling as I write this, almost two weeks later. The surprise went straight to my heart and burst open the dark crystal of frustration that had gotten lodged there. Thank you, Gail. (And Brandy, her partner in chocolate.)

Dog Days (A Belated Remembrance)

I wanted to write this entry earlier in the month, but I've finally got started on STARVED and didn't want anything to get in the way. Writing seems to be coming FINALLY, and the story that's emerging feels right.

I wrote five pages in less than forty minutes yesterday, so this encourages me that the rest of the story will be accessible once school starts. My goal is to have fifty pages done by the end of Labor Day weekend. My husband's going to Burning Man, so it's just me and the dogs and whatever lesson plans I need to do. I'm picturing long days and nights at the computer. We'll see . . . I really want STARVED to be done by early 2008.

The Dog Days, though . . .(I've tried for fifteen minutes to get spaces for paragraphs above and below here, so this blog is just going to be IMPERFECT!)

I thought the Dog Days were from August 3rd to August 11th, but I just Googled them and it said they start July 3rd. No matter. Sirius, the Dog Star, rises with the sun at dawn, ushering in the hottest days of the year.

This period has a personal connection. In 1978, my father died on August 3rd. I used to go into a depression at the end of July, coming back out just in time for school to start up again. After years went by, I finally saw the relationship between the depression and his death and had an aha! The dark period of the year that grew with the heat hasn't been as dark since.

I wrote the poem below just about this time, and when I was done, I realized healing had finally happened. I included it now for my dad, Les Eason, who would be 101 on August 30th.

Stars Falling in August

Daddy, the stars fell when you died, skidding across

the night like chips pealed from chrome,

carried by burnished wind across the sky.
The creosote was drunk in the dry desert air.

And though I wasn’t there,

I’ve imagined how you flew from your soul,
leaving your daughters like thistles blown over the chaparral,
our breath thin as the stems of the palo verde

that grew stunted in the yard.

The house filled up with uncles. My boyfriend and I slept

on a cot out back. As we made love, the stars

became silver nighthawks, fish tails swimming

through the blinding air.

I was numb like the space between stars

that are too stable, refusing to stray from the safety

of their paths. I didn’t feel the meteors
of broken glass falling to earth in silent breaths.

Daddy, thousands of stars have tumbled since then,
streaking through the heat of a hundred nights.

Each second they have been in the sky,

these variegated strands of burning air.
have burned open the portion in me that closed
more than twenty years ago.

Now nights stay sober
save for the drink of starlight and the odor
of yarrow and summer grass.

but the sky will never be shorn
Of star flakes nor the earth of burning sand.

The stars fell when you died.
You were carried by the wind luminous across the sky.

My sister, Gwyn, died three years ago on August 9th. The picture above must have been taken not too long before I was born. She was seven and a half years older than I was. I idolized her and could never understand why she didn't want me hanging out with her and her girlfriends when she was twelve or thirteen. Gwyn was cool in high school, turning into a blond beauty (is that blonde beauty?), had boyfriends, did dangerous things like ride motorcycles and go to parties, things that I wouldn't have dreamt of doing when my turn came as a teenager. She was the rebel, and so I didn't need to be. She was also a real hippie. I told some of the fifth and sixth graders that I had a sister who was a hippie a couple of years ago, and I couldn't believe how fascinated they were. They asked questions right up to recess. Gwyn gave birth to my two nieces: Angela and Nicolette. Had a volatile marriage. Injuries. Back surgury. Diabetes. Hepitites which was probably from a blood transfusion when her youngest daughter was born. She died at 55.

I remember by sister defending me, holding me during our parents' frequent fights, grabbing my best friend, Rhonda, and I by the scruffs of our necks when we were five and marching us to apologize for terrorizing a three year old girl with our rubber knives while pretending to be pirates. By the time I was 12, she no longer lived at home. In many ways we were strangers, but in the last few years we finally bonded like real sisters. I couldn't cry when she died. Perhaps it was because of the pain she had been in. It may have been because I knew what was happening for a year after reading Internet posting of woman after woman who found out about hepatites years after giving birth. Strangely, I wrote HUNGRY during the year she died, a funny novel in a time I wasn't laughing much. This poem came in a rush one day a couple of months before she left us:

Heaven

Madonna is all dolled up. Her glittery eyes

look down at the baby resting in her henna hands.

The Queen of Heaven’s ready for Mardi Gras.

The graveyard stones slant below
her sparkling gaze, too quiet for a party,

too white, too gray.

In the other picture, four dancing girls

do what they can to divert barbarian hoards,

spears full tilt as they rush in for attack.

The girls dream of feet free on desert sand,

far from the soft red carpet of the harem’s floor,
far from the bad manners of these sweaty men.

In the morning, I look through my scratched lens
and sit with Andrew as he drinks chocolate milk.
Must I meditate on death with this child at my desk?
On the decal of the shuffle skeleton on the car I passed?
The white rose so quietly growing on the vine?

My sister drowns in a hospital room.

In her morphine dreams,
divas dance on the walls.

From chairs by her bed, little black boys
speak to her of heaven. I pray her rose unfurling.

Her petals.
Her wings ribbed with glittery adornments.

I think of deserts carpeted with red flowers,

the mosaic spots on butterflies,

girls with bare feet spinning,

All things transforming
and unfolding. I write HEAVEN in my book

and underline it twice.

The Dog Days have passed, but I finally have stopped my business to acknowledge both Daddy and Gwyn's passing. This entry I write for them, but mostly for me.

Fort in Coquimbo

We had great empanadas here!

I want to end my Chile journal with a view of the rocks in Coquimbo. Not far from here was the Escuela de Juan Pablo Segunda and the homes of its students.

People keep asking me about Chile. The strangest question was: Do Chileans sleep in beds? Duh.

Chile is TEMPERATE with little humidity, which as Californians we really appreciate. The country is striving toward modernity and is a first world nation in many aspects. In Santiago, we were told there's an effort to create medical facilities that equal Johns Hopkins. (Will everyone be able to use them? No. Does everyone get to go to Johns Hopkins in the United States?)

We just explored the north on this trip, as it was winter. As I'm sure you know, Chile extends far to the south where the terrain and climate match that of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Easter Island and Robinson Caruso Island far out into the Pacific also belongs to Chile. The Argentinians may disagree, but Chile claims the most southern city in the world, Punta Arenas. The country even has authority over a wedge of Antarctica!

Once again, I'll refer to what my husband says about the country: Chile is experiencing it's springtime as a nation. There are challenges, and I'm sure if we take the plunge and move we'll have many of our own. I'd like to thank my friend Debbie Southworth for writing, "You may be giving up things, but think of what you'll be gaining!"

Please come to visit when we're official residents of the southern hemisphere and discover for Chile for yourself.

Coquimbo

Here is a view from the harbor in Coquimbo, looking across the bay to La Serena. If you squint, you can see the condos on the far shore. A lot of condos in Chile are in Soviet style, but a few, like those in Vina Del Mar, have more architectural flare.

So, this is where the pirate children live, the corsarios. Coquimbo has a Valpo feel, more frenetic than La Serena, a little more edge. Near the harbor, there's a section of town called El Barrio Ingles (sorry for no accent) where we were told great music was to be had.

La Serena

One of my favorite things I heard in Chile was a question asked by a young woman from England who had just arrived at La Casa Roja: "Are dogs sacred here?"

Though I chuckled when I heard this, I thought later, "Well, yes." They're everywhere. This guy in front of a pharmacy, for example. All of the ones I encountered were well fed and not aggressive, though I sure didn't try to pet any.

One day, coming back from lunch in the downtown area of La Serena, five big dogs followed me back to Maria's Casa. The walk was at least a mile. "Hmmm," I thought. "I have some friends." Of course, they were following the chicken scent on my hands. I'd cross a street, and they'd follow in their pack. I was quietly panicking, but when I turned down the street the hostel was on, several very small dogs came out barking from different doorways. The big dogs ran away.

La Serena is well named. It is the second oldest city in Chile, but also one of the most modern. After the bustle of Santiago and Valparaiso, we appreciated the slower pace. We fell in love with the area.

It was heavenly to fall asleep without the sound of traffic and car alarms. Quiet, except for our last night there. There was a soccer game in the stadium behind the hostel and a continual cheer lasted for about four hours.