You have to be still to see the fish.

You have to be still to see the fish. The water is clear, clear to the point that from my perch I cannot judge the change in depth. The algae covered rocks and fallen leaves that become a play place for the sun, making light dance, are a perfect and lovely camouflage. But they are these--small and perfect in the stream, gracefully navigating their quiet world, while I, basking in the sun's warmth on my rock, am still.

I wrote this yesterday, on a rock, overlooking a stream, after what has become my weekly hike. I definitely feel saner and more able to take on the world of teenagers competing for my attention and the petty insecurities of fellow teachers and the anticipation of a Democratic Congress (though there are still a couple of weeks for us to mess that up) and the unceasing bloodshed in Iraq, and now today, on the front page of the New York Times, the almost unimaginable--Darfur getting worse.

But all I need to do is summon into my mind the picture of the fish, the calm stillness of myself. The sudden realization that hundreds of little beings were there, perhaps staring back at me, only moments before unnoticed--part of a landscape. As unimportant to the passerby as each of us may be to those "in charge" speeding by in their re-election bids. Perhaps that is why so many of them will lose this time around. They have not been still. Caught up in their politics and maneuvering, they have not seen us here, camouflaged by the "normalcy" of our lives, but important, if unnoticed, pieces of their landscape. Be still.

History is not dead.

Well, two stories in today's New York Times, both with a Latin American connection, remind us that history is not dead. It merges into the present and forces us to deal with it again and again.

Here in this country we are holding Luis Posada Carriles, a man widely believed to be the master mind of the explosion of a Cubana flight that killed more than 100 people decades ago, in El Paso on immigration charges. He'll soon probably be released. Why? We won't label him a terrorist. This shady character, who is linked to multiple intrigues and violent actions, including assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, used to work with the CIA. Had he killed a hundred Americans on a U.S. airline, there would be no hesitation in labeling this violent, manipulative man as a terrorist, but most of the victims were Cubans and Posada was often working to further U.S. policy. Scary.

How can we ask others to condemn violent acts that may be committed ostensibly on their behalf (Muslims, the Islamic World, Arab governments), if we do not condemn those same acts committed against our "enemies"--innocent Cubans on the wrong plane at the wrong time?

Meanwhile, in Argentina, Jorge Julio Lopez, a man who was tortured 30 years ago during Argentina's "Dirty War", a period of right-wing, military dictatorship that lasted from 1976 to 1983, has disappeared shortly after testifying against Miguel Etchecolatz, former police commissioner in Buenos Aires Province, who received life in prison for his involvement in disappearances and torture. Lopez' disappearance is just the worst in a series of acts aimed to intimidate and silence witnesses slated to testify in a series of trials in the country, which only now is beginning to bring the perpetrators of the Dirty War to justice.

Even today, there are many who believe that the government was justified in its actions, even in the tortures and disappearances, as it was only trying to protect the country from leftist revolutionaries, who, according to them, would surely have been worse. Scary.

Acts of terror, torture, murder are just wrong. We, the World in fact, must somehow get it through our heads that we cannot justify behaviors because it is convenient for us. Call a spade a spade. Eventually, if we don't, it will come home to bite us in our collective butts. Unjust acts do not stayed buried. History does not die.

A walk in the woods

This month's National Geographic features the state of the nation's and the world's parks and highlights the importance of conservation and stewdarship of public lands. Coincidently, Texas Monthly's cover this month features a picture of Big Bend highlighting an article outlining 30 of the most enjoyable hikes in Texas. In the last two weeks, my husband and I have enjoyed two hikes at Bull Creek and we will be making it three hikes this afternoon. 'Tis the season. The worst of summer heat is behind us and the air is a bit drier and the sky less hazy.During the heat of the summer, my husband is not much of a hiker, but finally the temperatures are back down to double digits around here and he is ready to join me again.

There is something so soothing about a walk in the woods. It cleanses the soul. It is a natural anti-depressant and anti-anxiety pill wraped in a breeze and it makes life easier. I think about the programs that take city kids out into the country for a camp or homestay experience, and I think, no wonder those experiences do so much good. The sounds of birds, of leaves rustling ever so softly, of a small waterfall in a gently flowing stream are the sounds that God made. They are pure. They are faint and so we must leave our busy minds to hear them. They whisper us away from the crush of our lives and the dread of the Middle East and the deadlines and the economy and the cable bill--and cable itself.

And as we listen, we notice the fish in the brook, darting about in its less complicated existence and we watch it and we smell the damp sweetness of some fragrant shrub we haven't noticed before leaning over the bank beckoning us closer. And we see the beauty in the pattern of lines on its clean, green leaves. And the more quiet we are, the deeper into the woods we go and the further away from all that ails us.

And when we do emerge, we see clearer what we went there to escape, and it too seems washed of its complexity and not so hard to face. We pride ourselves on our civilized world, on the buildings we build on the cars that we drive on the computers on which we write our blogs, but we must not lose our balance. We must never pull too far from what was real before we came on the scene and started fighting over anything someone deemed valuable--over our job assignments and our paychecks and our borders and our votes.

My cousin, Mary Lorraine, is currently in Thailand with the Peace Corps. She is from a very wealthy New York suburb--from what most anyone would describe as a privileged home. Success around her was based on such things as what car you drove and your SAT score and college you graduated from and company your parents worked for and so on. But all that caused anxiety-- you can be sure, and there was not always a lot of room for spirituality or the like. Somehow she survived it though, and now she is in Asia doing good and finding a whole new perspective on herself, her world, her Universe.

She has a blog, too. And in her latest post, she writes about spirituality--something she says she still cannot really talk about yet without giggling. But that is what I am talking about, too. That's what a walk in the woods boils down to for me. Often after I hike, I come home and read in a prayer book I have called God at Every Gate: Prayers and Blessings for Pilgrims by Brendan O'Malley. It is very beautiful and includes passages on many subjects that affect our every day lives from sources as diverse as medieval hymns to the Wind and the Willows to Robert Frost and then directs you to Bible verses, most usually Psalms, themselves poems. Other times I will read on Buddhism or Taoism. And then I can make better decisions in my life. Based on true needs and not on what the World tells me I want.

National Geographic tells of parks in peril. Of an assault on them by the Bush administration and its business interests and man-first recreational needs (snow mobiling and motor boating) that speed their destruction. I hope that the tide turns. I hope that the woods will always be there. The marshes, the mountains, the bays, the openness of nature. I hope some will survive, and enough of it that we can all always be able to walk in the woods--quietly. Because there is enough noise of every description in the rest of our lives.

Help me find my place in the Universe--PLEASE!!

Okay, another school year is well underway. Pluto is no longer a planet and I am no longer a human being. Astronomers debate the little orb's identity--is he a comet? Where is his tail? How will he be defined for the ages? Me. I am defined as a teacher. Just like Pluto it is easier said than explained. Am I more counselor? Leader? Babysitter? Jail warden? Surrogate parent? Test-trainer? Paper-pusher? Judge? Intellectual beacon? Number-cruncher? Life coach? Cheerleader? Academic? Editor? Researcher? Lesson planner? Test grader? Parent liaison? Well, I am all of those things. At anyone time I may be wearing one or all of those hats--usually at least four or five.

On the weekend, I try to find time to read, knit, ride my bike, remember my husband's name in between the trip to the vet, the laundry, the grocery shopping, the ironing (yes, I still iron--I am a well-groomed, neatly dressed teacher) and of course, the grading. I have dreams. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of them--so fleeting. I belong to more than a hundred other dreams now--those of my students.

Don't get me wrong. I love my kids. Most of them are cool. Some of them even like my Spanish class. I want to do so much for them. I want to be a great teacher--most of the time I really am. I care about them as people not just as Spanish or ballet folklorico students. I care about their intellectual curiosity and try to reignite it if its grown dim. I care about their role as citizens of the World. I care about their futures-- whether they will be academic in nature or not. I find in each and every one of them something that is redeeming and valuable. I also deal with a hell of a lot of crap--from administrators, state mandates, federal mandates, and even fellow teachers with their one-size fits none, conflicting priorities and I do all this with a smile.

I really do. I get up everyday and say "Today is going to be a good day". I have a plan. I know what I am going to teach. I know my goals for my kids. I know how I am going to get there. I anticipate the roadblocks so we can jump over them before we hit. I try to make every kid smile as he learns so that they will smile back at me and that makes the struggle worth meeting the next day. But as I do this, as I help each student in my little realm reach towards their goals, which on one level I know makes me very successful, but my personal life goals end up in the backgound. They start to slip further and further into the distance...slipping, slipping...until I turn around and around in all directions and I can't see them on any horizon. I am lost.

And I feel like anyone else who is lost. I feel anxious. And anxiety makes teaching really, really hard. What you need to know is that on a good day, teaching is really hard, but really, really hard-- well, that isn't sustainable.

What's even harder is that people know you're good so they put more and more on your plate and when you try to do things you want to do, they ask you--why do you take on so much? Why do you do something you don't have to do? Uh, because I like this other thing. Because everything else I am doing is what I am being told to do by you or my department head, or principal or superintendent. "Take care of yourself", they say and then tell you to turn in a bi-weekly report. I have figured out that "take care of yourself" translates to get enough rest by eliminating what you enjoy about your job or your life so you can concentrate on these things we think are important or don't enjoy doing either.

I don't want to end up like Pluto--old and still not sure what I am. I don't want to end up like Pluto--waiting for someone else to define me. I am a damn good teacher, but I am more than that, too. And I am going to find my place in the Universe.

Who do we think we are?

Okay, I hope you all have seen Miami Vice and enjoyed it for the pure escapism it is. Now its back to some serious blogging.

This morning I caught a re-broadcast of PBS' Now, a news magazine show hosted by David Bracaccio. The title of the episode was 'Reporter vs. The White House' and featured an interview with journalist Orville Schell. In a unique way, it reminded me of an interview published in the June 2006 edition of National Geographic with China expert Peter Hessler. The former was dealing with press coverage in this country and the the later with a variety of topics including division of wealth, job opportunities and the environment in China, but both brought an interesting question to mind: What kind of example are we, the last great super power, setting for the rest of the World?

In his interview, Orville Schell recounts how before the War in Iraq the press of this country pretty much gave the current administration the benefit of the doubt on weapons of mass destruction and on the decision to go to war. Think back to the lack of hard questioning regarding the supposed evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Administration officials even quoted articles about the weapons in the later spurned and maligned New York Times on Sunday morning talk shows to support the cry for an invasion of Iraq.

As things have dragged on, the press has finally begun to ask questions about the war, but at each turn it has been labeled by the White House as "unpatriotic" as "destroying morale" as "dangerous to the war effort". Think back to initial remarks about impending civil war, of the initial coverage of the policies towards so-called 'enemy combatants', of questions over no-bid contracts, of calls for body armor, of reports related to investigations of the phone records and bank records, of questions related to the curtailing of civil liberties in our own country. Allies of the administration now refer to the New York Times in words formerly reserved for the likes of Benedict Arnold.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, we are fighting a war at great expense, both in monetary terms and in lives, to bring freedom to the Middle East. Freedom--nice in theory it would seem. Lots of things are nice in theory, but we, as those who would seek to foist the ideal on the rest of the world, better demonstrate that we are willing to live with its reality, not just its theory, before we decide to go out and shove it down the throats of our global neighbors.

And what of the China interview? Well, if you haven't noticed, China is destroying much of its environment to bring its country and its economy into the modern world. Luckily, as Peter Hessler points out, the Chinese are starting to realize that in its zeal to modernize, their government has made some pretty damaging decisions in regards to the country's environment and may need to start tempering its strategies to conserve its resources and keep the air safe to breath. It the United States quite some time to figure this out. How many rivers did we have to poison in the name of progress before the environmental movement in our country began to be seen as midstream and truly effect major policy decisions? We still grapple with it today.

But the interview pointed at something more subtle than that, as well. Something that went beyond the governmental comparisons and to the core of things. Hessler used the example of a newly middle-class family in China, proud of their new found success and also worried about their government's environmental policies. They discussed their concerns in their home under a proud symbol of their new-found monetary accomplishments--"a chandelier that had 32 lights in it". Hessler notes there were a total of "...65 lights in this room. And every single one of them was on." But who are we to tell these people to "slow down"?, he points out. How many of us drive enormous SUVs?

I would add to the point. How many of us live in enormous homes with rooms we don't need on more ground than we need, that consume more energy to heat and cool than we need? How many of us drive when we could walk? How many of us can't walk anywhere, because we don't demand that governments and developers plan residential areas in ways that are conducive to pedestrian traffic or to the use of public transportation?

We are the last big super power. We are the ones setting the example for billions of people in underdeveloped and developing countries to emulate. But we don't want them to have too much, because then what will be left for us. Who do we think we are?

Note: The interview with Peter Hessler in National Geographic is worth reading all the way through. It addresses economic opportunity, education, workers safety and the communist history as it effects the present in addition to touching on the environmental concerns of China. It is a great overview of a number of issues facing this growing nation. It appears to be part of a new feature in the magazine called Voices and it is not listed on the cover, so be on the look-out for more of these interesting and enlightening interviews.