Internet safety: Whose job to teach kids about it?

Internet safety: Whose job to teach kids about it?

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Sonnet Attack #123

How I attack, parse, chew and digest a sonnet (or any poem through the first read) is usually intuitive. Since I am female, I read Shakespeare's sonnets as a female and claim the emotions presented in each line unless there is something that jars within me. Why should I care if Sweet William was presenting himself as a lover or father figure to a man or a woman unless I am being judged for my historic analysis? Most of the time, for me, Sweet William's sonnets are songs of enjoyment or little toys - think rubrik's cube - to be turned inside out and reset with colored inflections.

Helping a student through an interpretation of Sonnet #123 in lieu of a performance, I found myself playing with the sonnet. I truly must be careful how I play this game with students, because I see patterns of images that are outside the box. Truly, I wonder how many scholars or pleasure readers link time's "pyramids" to Stonehedge or legal "registers" to tallies at a bridge game? Yes, Shakespeare was an astute business man, but there are many opportunities to list figures.

My student and I, also female, were discussing the dramatic recitation of Sonnet #123. Trying to loosen her up so she could relax into the game, I asked her to try a sultry voice. Her eyes widened while her analytical mind raced through the images of pyramids and historic measurements (registers) trying to find a hook on which to hang my request. "Sultry?" I responded that we are all seduced by Time, a frequent metaphor in literature, but this sonnet implies that the speaker is defying Time. Then I took my interpretation one step further. What is stronger, to argue or to attack? What attack is more effective against Time, combative or seductive?

I came home and checked my favorite tome, Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Nothing from Vendler contradicted me, which was reassuring, even though it did not jump into an analysis of images. She stated that, "Time always brings out the Latin side of Shakespeare, as his mind instinctively goes to Ovid [...]" (524). Linking phrases and specific words so my pencil practically imposed an geodesic dome over the sonnet, Vendler encouraged my game. Insinuating myself within Sweet William's head, I weighing the images: pyramid versus standing stone. Which evoked the truer, stronger, more exotic response? For the renaissance man, it was obvious. For me, I view his choice as evidence of his seduction by Time.

Playing with Time, I continue to ponder my own defiance.

Still Grieving

The following continues my reflections on the sudden death of one of my students.

Dealing with grief for both myself and my students will continue to be an ongoing process. In my research on the topic, I have found some interesting sources. The Grief Blog is a wonderful resource for information and provides a forum for questions and stories. I was impressed with the professional outreach the site provides.

Searching for reliable sources with reputable contributors, I found a comprehensive article at the Scholastic site which was clear and helpful in explaining the importance of mourning, a society’s controlled and formal process of responding to death, and how mourning differs from the emotional grieving that a person experiences and, frequently, has little ability to control. Directed at teachers, Perry and Rubenstein’s article covered a number of questions succinctly. It ends with the following insight:

“Always remember that the loss does not go away, but the way children experience loss will change with time, hopefully maturing in ways that make it easier to bear. The traumatic loss of a parent, a sibling, and a peer will always be with these children. With time, love, and understanding, however, children can learn to carry the burdens of traumatic loss in ways that will not interfere with their healthy development.”

Sometimes wallowing in pain feels good, because it is better than the numb feeling that accompanies grief. However, young people are not always aware that emotions can come in cycles. They are not prepared to wait for the uncomfortable time of grief to pass. They are, rightfully, frightened that it will unexpectedly resurface. How vulnerable they are! Youth feel all experiences with such overpowering intensity. It is when they are most vulnerable that they need the most help dealing with their pain.

Stages of grief are not like steps on a ladder or stairs; the stages are more like rooms from a central hall that the person who is grieving moves, wanders, or crashes into at various times. I have to remember this when my students are having a hard time.

A Personal Connection

Shortly after Christmas I was sitting over a leisurely breakfast with my husband. Our children and guests had not yet risen, and we were discussing the various flotsam and jetsam of wrappings and feelings from the holiday. We entered into the uneasy subject of what was different about this holiday.: who had been able to join us and who was missing. Jon mentioned his mother. I said, “It’s been almost a year.”

There was silence. I watched Jon’s face blotch and soften into a blush of deep sorrow. He had entered a space where the very air pressed pain and loss into his cheeks and eyes. For that moment, we were back by Edith’s bedside, and Jon was holding his mother’s hand again.

We have rooms of sorrow next to rooms of wonder and joy.

The orchid from Edith’s funeral is sending off a blossom shoot. I have moved it to a new window; it will be blooming when my daughter Juliet delivers her baby. I wonder how close the great-granddaughter’s birthday will be to Edith’s.

Time does not erase grief. Over time, however, I have learned that I can touch and handle past grief without the fear that the pain will destroy my life. It is not an easy lesson.

Snow Angel

This has been a long hard day. Last night, I received a phone call with the news that one of my students had suddenly died. I went to school knowing that I would need to try to help my students through a very sad day. My job as a teacher was hard because, like my students, I was also mourning.

It is true that each person approaches loss in a different way, but I wanted to give my students an opportunity to step outside of spinning disorientation that came with the unexpected loss of a classmate and friend. So I told them, for homework, to make a snow angel and then write about it for 5 minutes.

The assignment had been easy to think of. All day I watched the snow gently filling the air and softening the view. I longed to leave the ordered desks and rooms and go into the clean cold space that the trees seemed to hold waiting for me. It was evening when I realized that I too needed to complete the assignment.

I put down my purse and shopping bag, found a clean patch of snow by the garage that the dog had not pranced through, and lay down (sans hat). The snow was still sifting down, powdered-sugar style. I remembered that some of the fun of making a snow angel was looking up at the sky while doing it. There was an obvious break in the low clouds. As I looked straight into the sky’s night face, it seemed to open a bit of goodness-knows to me.

I could feel an ice crust under the 4 inches of powder that I swept away into wings. As a kid it had always been important to have your friend pull you up so as not to disturb the angel too much. But I was alone, a grandma in her heeled boots and long down coat (sans hat) who had placed herself in a cloud of snow, between earth and heaven, to make a snow angel.

Such is wonder and awe at the fragility of life. Such is breath and prayer and pulse of awareness. This is how one prays joy to muffle the pain of loss, with the awareness that snow and death are between earth and heaven.

I pushed myself up, and one hand crunched through the left wing. Brushing snow from my hair, I looked at the shadowed marking realizing that in the morning it would be no more than I ripple under the new snowfall. My snow angel would exist for a very short time.

There had been a time when I would have swished my nylon-padded legs all over the yard to place a multitude of angels under the sky. Later, there were the times I watched my children giggling – tongues out to catch the falling snow – while their arms and legs fanned joy. Tonight, I used one short-lived impression as a prayer for my student.

Fragile as a snow angel. We did not know how fragile she was.

Trip Taking

It is time to look at the clock and make final preparations. Taking a trip makes one look at the basics of life, the core needs one has.

If walking out the door each morning is an individual adventure, embarking on a plane to another country is a communal adventure. How we rely on so many other nameless, faceless individuals to ensure that all goes smoothly!

Taking a trip makes one look at faces differently: with appreciation.

Hummingbird

Yesterday, a hummingbird danced in the spray from my hose. I fell into wonder.

My garden – emphasis on “my” – sits behind the tomatoes and squash because it doesn’t need the full sun that tomatoes crave. My garden is full of herbs and small flowers. I let the forget-me-nots and creeping buttercups and bugleweed find their own snuggle spots between the pavers salvaged from different places. Now and then, however, I do a bit of tending to Jon’s vegetables if only to ensure that I get some. That is why I planted some marigolds around the squash to keep the rabbits from eating the flowers, and that is why when I saw the marigolds’ leaves hanging like deflated balloons around the stalks I pulled up a lawn chair and the hose and relaxed into making rainbows over the garden.

Somewhere we might still have a working sprinkler, but I don’t know where it is. I turned the nozzle between “shower” and “angle” to reach the plants most effectively. I had it on “angle”, which produced a square of heavy mist, when she came. I am sure the hummingbird was female because of her subtle coloring. She could have been a shadow with flecks of gold as she dipped and swerved, entered and retreated on the edge of the mist. She graced the air, drinking and then landing on a tomato cage.

Little sprites, little blessings, little visitors dance in and out of our days. How we wait for these moments wondering when they will come, hoping we will be graced. She flew to the coral bells and sipped from several blossoms before leaving me. Years ago, when I brought the coral bells from my mother’s garden, I had been told that they would attract humming birds. I had smiled politely and said, “How nice,” since I had never, ever seen a hummingbird in my mother’s garden. I had chosen the coral bells because I remembered how they had come. They had ridden around the corner in Mrs. Vance’s little red wagon and were part of the gift of love and beauty that was the garden my mother watched from her window.

As the coral bells bloom through the summer, I remember Mrs. Vance’s visits. In the coy progression of one blessing touching the next, her gift of kindness to lady in a wheelchair is why a hummingbird danced over my garden.

Distractions of Food and Markets

I will admit to anyone who starts talking diets, I love food. However, my guilt regarding wasteful overeating equals my fear of blowing up like a blimp. I will be good about not taking a second helping, but I am horrid about keeping to a strict count-something-to-loose-weight regime. My best defense is to talk myself out of the in-between attacks that invariably come twice-a-day and use strategies to help distract me from thoughts of food. Writing is one of my distractions. You should know – for the sake of understanding this rumination – it is 10 AM.

It is the craving hour between breakfast and lunch when it is incredibly dangerous for me to walk into a grocery store. If I am stuck in to middle of a chore like sorting papers or doing laundry, I might conjure up the most glorious images of cheese and crackers, cherries and peaches, chocolates and nuts ever piled on a tasting counter. I begin reviewing the contents of the refrigerator and making mental notes of my food wish-list.

It’s always at the in-between times when I feel like I could hit the all-you-can-eat buffet and clean-up! 10AM - after being good at breakfast, oatmeal and fruit, maybe some sunflower seeds - the nibblies hit. On a normal day, I avoid food distraction by being in front of 25 students who might be gleefully explaining the irony of “Cask of Amontillado”, but this is summer. At 10 AM my summer schedule usually finds me at a between-chores stage measuring the time I have left in the morning against the new task I am beginning. What a great time for food, the wonderful comfort for planning the next excursion.

Of course, by the time lunch comes around I have settled a bit and can be sensible with my salad and fruit, usually. I confess I might – if it is available – have nuts or chocolate for being good and to delay (without success) the next in-between at 4 when I am certain I will perish by suppertime. When I start cooking supper, I invariably start nibbling. If Jon is cooking, I am saved. He hates having me in the kitchen when he is preparing food. I avoid being accused of each ingredient he spills and each onion he scorches and the opportunity to put cheese and other savories into my mouth, and I leave him to his commission.

Yesterday, Jon prepared lovely BLTs with Amish cured bacon purchased at the West Side Market. It was so lovely. The tomatoes were not-yet-marvelous since our backyard plants have only just set, and we have a few weeks before the Shaker Saturday Market (and, at a later date, our garden) will overflow with real Ohio tomatoes; but, the bacon was the real McCoy. I could actually taste the meat, and the fat was crisp, salty. I had the chance to relish the minimal processing of the market’s goods. At the moment, I can imagine the taste, and I remember buying the bacon at the Market.

Jon had invited me to accompany him on a summer excursion to the West Side Market. I had not actually stopped into the Market for several years. It is no longer within my travel range. Except for the Saturday market and other shops in Shaker, I have a tendency to go east for my market goods. This past year, since Jon had been a consultant at several west side schools, he had begun stopping at the market to indulge my request for fresh fish. Aside from fish, he began bringing home dried fruits and vegetables that were superior to any of the commercial brands. I had found the veggies wonderful for my in-between nibblies
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The tented outside booths with their high piles of produce were just as I always remembered, but the interior with the meats and huge cases of cheese seemed darker. Florescent, the primary light source, was cold after the sun-glow canopies. Jon and I had just been to the North Market in Columbus a few days before, and the difference was marked. Between the meat counters and fish displays, Columbus’s North Market is full of eateries where one can get a box lunch or a complete dinner to take home. It caters to the young professionals who do not have the hours or expertise to prepare the food they have grown used to eating. Cleveland’s West Side Market is for basic food in its fundamental form. I admired the marbling in cuts of beef and the pile of haddock cheeks. We stopped by a counter that sold a wide variety of salts, lentils and grains and bought green bamboo rice and a rice mixture. We wove in and out of the smells and noise and glories of food making purchases until our arms were full.

As lovely as those thoughts are, I don’t want to be hungrier than I already am. I will grab some of my dried green beans while I try to distract my thoughts away from food.. The crunchy beans should have enough sweetness and salt to satisfy me while I sort through three more piles of notes and books.

My problem with dieting, or simply maintaining, is that food is so easily available. I have access to wonderful markets and high quality produce. I am placed in a very fortunate place. Of course I want to enjoy the largess, but I still have the Catholic-school-girl guilt about wasteful overeating. I do love food, but that is not a sin.

The picture is of Jon and Shane shopping in Columbus' North Market.