You know the pile of books in your front seat is probably too heavy

when your car thinks you should fasten a seat belt around it.

(Translation: I checked out a pile of GED prep books for the ESL night class I'm currently teaching. I set it in the front passenger seat of my car, and got ready to drive off. I noticed an annoying flashing light; it's a symbol of a person wearing a seat belt. The car has noticed that my passenger-seat poundage has exceeded a certain amount, has concluded that I have a person sitting there, and wants me to follow the law and have them buckle up.)

At the old Cunningham Place

Cunningham really is my maternal great-great grandmother's maiden name. I make up most of the names on this blog, but since it was that long ago, I figure we're safe. Both of the structures in this picture were not in place at any time when my ancestors were around-- I think (though Grandma used to visit as a little girl, so who knows; that hen house could have been built in the forties, right?)

Watercress still grows on the banks of the stream that runs through the old place; they used to have watercress sandwiches for lunch, from time to time.

The story is that my ancestor who fought in the Civil War on the side of the South passed through a beautiful valley on his way to the war, and said to himself, "If I live through the war, I am going to come back and settle here." He did, and he came back and married the daughter of the man who owned the vast majority of the land in the valley.

My mother's third-cousin-twice-removed (if I recall correctly) lives on the same patch of land where that Civil War vet landed, and as we were driving through Alabama on our way to Uncle Charlie's funeral, we stopped at her place (the old family farm) for the night. Early the next morning, I woke up and went out with the camera and caught a few things in that nice early morning light.

And, just in case you were wondering: as far as I know, these particular Cunninghams did not have slaves-- it being after the Civil War and all-- but that surely does not clear them of charges of ever having been racist. And on the other hand, it is also true that this branch of the family, at this point in history, seems to be more anti-racist than most people I've met. My thinking is that when it's in your face like that, you have to make a decision, and they (the ones I've met) made one that makes me pleased to be related to them.

Grandmere et Grandpere

Mom kindly phoned me this morning with her permission to publish the following.

In case you can't tell, Mom is smiling gently and Dad is being mock-serious.

Made Me Cry On The Fourth of July

In Kenya, there has been cross-border violence-- Muslims from Somalia have attacked Christian churches in the city of Garissa; fifteen have been killed. The Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims decided that they needed to do something about this. Adan Wachu, the head of this Supreme Council was quoted thusly:

"...[W]e all resolved to stand together as one united front," he said.
"We decided as solidarity that the Muslim youth will provide a vigilante service to the churches not only in Garissa but in any other places that the Christians may deem fit."

The full article is on the BBC website. PG warning: there is a picture of the inside of one of the churches where an attack happened; no bodies, but there is blood.

It should go without saying, but I'm going to say it: we need more of this-- I think that we specifically need more Christians, in this country, to step up and vocally protect Muslims; I think we need more respect all around and more willingness to admit that disagreement does not have to lead to destruction, not only of human lives but also, even, of relationships.

Oh, and happy fourth!

I finally remembered to put the flag up this year-- on the first!-- after three years of living here. I always seem to remember on, like, the sixth, when it would seem silly to start. But, having started on the first, I can put it out every day until the end of the month, which makes me very happy.

Just so you know, this is not a normal view from our front porch. It's my obsession with trees, again; I felt that the stars and stripes would be shown to best advantage if I could pair them with one of my favorite portrait subjects. I stood on the concrete block beside the porch (the one that's there to prevent skunks from nesting under said porch) with my back smushed into the bushes to the right of the door as I was taking this picture. I also gave a presumably tasty breakfast to a couple of mosquitoes. I protested that I had given enough already this season, but they didn't seem to care.

Portrait of Papa

From when he and Mom and Ivy and I all went down to Florida for his oldest brother's funeral. I took this just before we left for the funeral, outside the hotel; the light was just too darn good to ignore, and the metal bench was pretty cool-looking, too. Also, he was smiling-- or, I could get him to smile, which amounts to the same thing, right? I have one of him and Mom together, which I like even better than this one, but I haven't asked her yet if she minds if I put it up on the blog. If she says yes, I'll post that one, too.

In which I learn that I have much to learn but have firm hope that the end will be better than the beginning

So, it's kind of a long story which I may or may not get around to telling at some future point in time, but I've sort of slipped in to a job as an ESL instructor at an Adult Medical Daycare facility about a twenty minute drive from my home, and I must say that Geriatric ESL is a little bit different.

For instance, the first day I was trying to get a feel for what level people were on. "How is your listening?" I asked. "How is your speaking?"

"My ears, not so good; her eyes, they not so good either. Her, [pointing to a third person] cannot walk so well. We are all old, you know; falling apart," said one student with a gentle laugh.

And what textbook to use? I tried starting at the beginning of the one my students brought me-- the one the old ESL teacher had gone through with them before-- and they said that they would learn plenty by going through it again; but they complained today that going through the alphabet (which was part of lesson one) was baby work, and they can already write, and why don't we have conversation? Fair enough. Looking back, I can see it wasn't the greatest idea to focus on the most basic part of the most basic lesson when they had already proven that they could communicate and write at a beginner level.

So after class, I decided to look a little further for a textbook, and I went down to the local community college's English Intensive Program office and begged to look at some of the books they have on hand, in hopes of finding something that will fit our needs a little better. I was deeply disappointed to find that one of the books never even got to covering the past tense, and the other one got to it on lesson 12 of 15. We seriously need the past tense in our class, and NOW. Doesn't anyone make a textbook focused on the needs of language learners over the age of twenty?

Another problem is that my tried-and-true methods are turning out to be not so tried-and-true any more. It's like having gotten used to how one kid goes to sleep and then trying to put a different kid down and then realizing that nothing that you are doing is working and you have to come up with a totally different system for the second kid.

For instance: I used to have my classes write on the board, as sort of a collaborative project, all the time. We would, for instance, fill out otherwise-boring verb-form charts. I would usually write the empty chart on the board, then have two students writing at a time, with two different pieces of chalk. When they were done, each student would pass the chalk on to another student of their choice, with the rule that everyone got to have a turn. It became very exciting because you weren't sure when your turn would come, and we would check it together afterwards, and mistakes weren't something you felt terrible about-- we just corrected them then and there-- but it was quite exciting to feel like you had done good work together as a class.

So, I've tried this with my elderly ESL students twice now, and I have to say that it has yet to be even mildly successful. For one thing, though they are gung ho as learners, they are (as mentioned) physically not very fast, either as walkers or as writers. If two different people have writing sticks (in this case, white board markers) at the same time, then one will be hasting very slowly to the board while the other will be inching her way through the required letters. It... just... isn't... that... exciting.

Now that I think about this, this problem may well be related to a larger problem. I think that I used to rely to a larger extent than I had recognized on having a physical energy in the class which both created and came from an emotional and intellectual energy, all of which which made things feel fun and exciting, and which helped students stay focused on the task at hand (and, once I got the hang of it, I made sure there always was a task at hand) and interested in what would come next. For young and easily distractable learners, this often work well. For elderly, already focused (albeit sometimes blearily) learners, it just makes me hard to follow as a teacher. Sigh.

So, the lesson today did not go well, for a variety of reasons. I was all proud of myself for being prepared with an alphabet lesson, which kind of went over like a lead balloon, and then I was all upset for the rest of the time because of that (fretting, in case you hadn't heard, is NOT a great way to deal with a problem, but I didn't let that stop me), and I hadn't prepared much at all for the last part of the lesson, so there you have it. I had started out the morning by giving myself a mere ten minutes to finish my lesson planning instead of an hour, like I'd thought I would on Saturday, and then MS Word was not behaving, and then just as it was about halfway through printing my wrongly-formatted-but-too-late-to-fix-them sheets, my foot hit the power bar on the floor and turned the entire setup off. This was approximately two minutes before my absolutely-must-leave-NOW time to go teach the lesson. And because of the ancientness of my computer, yes, it takes about three minutes to boot up. So I didn't use the printouts after all; I just wrote on the board and had the students to so as well, with the minimal success previously described.


As I drove back from the "senior center" (what my students call it), I was muttering to myself. I just felt terrible. I felt like I had disrespected my students, and that is one of the things I hate most in the world to think I have done. Just not being prepared of itself is disrespectful, even if I couldn't have known that the alphabet lesson wasn't going to be the best choice. But then, literally, right after I muttered, "I'm stupid," I looked up and saw some graffiti on a tower, and (to quote Dave Barry, "I am not making this up") it said "You are NOT" and that is all I saw before the car was past. So I stopped muttering. And I thought about the fact that when you are cooking, you have to accept that a certain amount of failure is just going to go with the territory, and you will learn to cook a lot faster if you don't beat yourself up about messes, but just clean them up and try again. Which was what my very first post on Elijah Kitchen was about, but I am too tired right now to go find it and link to it.

So I will try again. I will pay more careful attention to my students. I will not get mad at them for making mistakes, because that is stupid as a teaching technique and I don't know why I was doing it today but yes I have quit criticizing myself about it, at least for now, as I have to go to bed. I did have a lovely evening: I went over to my friends' house and the dog and the little boys piled up on me on the couch during scripture study, and then I sang the boys to sleep, and then the dog wanted petting as long as I was willing to give it, which was as long as I as there. And my friends (father and mother of said boys) always laugh in all the right places at the ridiculous things I tell them about (which is what made me think I should blog said things, so hooray!), and I think to myself: perhaps I am not such a terrible person for being imperfect, after all. I will try again tomorrow! And the end shall be better than the beginning. Or, if it won't, at least I won't go down in flames from my own flaming arrows. Right? Right.