Missed Deadline...gasp! Instead, let's talk about journalism.

So, no North Haven News. I let preparing for April vacation, getting to Florida for April vacation, doing my taxes during my April vacation, deflecting the compulsive overconsumption of my father's partner while on April vacation (does he have to buy everything in the county that is on sale, then talk about it for 10 minutes per item?),  enjoying a bit of April vacation and getting back from April vacation distract me from my appointed duties at the North Haven News.

For that I am sorry. Overwhelmed a bit, and sorry.

In lieu of anything intelligent from me, have a look at this Laurie Penney post on Warren Ellis's blog. Ask yourself, what is the traditional media and given what it is today, what good is it doing?

xx

L

p.s. Lest anyone think I would let traditional media evaporate, I have three words for you, This American Life.

North Haven HS News Column

Though I'm not blogging enough, I am writing this column for the North Haven News. It's (mostly) what's happening.

Mostly the days at North Haven Community School tick over like they do anywhere, at most jobs, in most industrialized countries. Like most people who work inside buildings, we have meetings, lots of meetings. This month, in addition to our usual meetings about policy, students, schedules, standards, and some other things I have certainly forgotten, we had meetings to meet the candidates for next year’s open principal position and meetings to discuss said principal candidates. Thankfully, the eventual news of our new principal, Amy Marx’s hiring came not in a meeting, but in a universally, at least as far as I could tell, well-received e-mail. Her warmth and intelligence swayed us all, and her wish to find the best place in the world to raise her children seems an excellent fit.

Like most teachers, we also spend most of our time with children. In the high school,  though they may be adult-sized, our 13 students remain children, even the seniors. Sure, we give tests,  grade papers, and monitor behavior, but we work hard to demonstrate the respect, even love, we have for the subjects we teach, on the off chance that these children will emulate our curiosity and desire to learn. The good news is, often they do, and their willingness to focus on Knowledge Fair, rolling toward us on the not too distant horizon, proves it.

Whether it is the relatively high adult to student ratio, the manners demonstrated at home, Fresh Pond’s water, or some ineffable quality I am too new to notice, our children grumble, yet they do their work. Though some do it easily, some struggle, some downright resist, I trust that come the Ides of March, every student will present an exploration of his or her topic in at least one tangible way. Here in the high school we have students studying a broad range of subjects, from a 1970s U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding Amish education to American courts’ definitions of mental health; diesel engines to modern warfare; testing in schools to WikiLeaks; bass guitars to hydroponic systems.

Advised by high school teachers Courtney Naliboff, Louis Carrier, Janis Jones, Kristen McGovern , Terry Goodhue and me, as well as Librarian Kate McQuinn and Principal Barney Hallowell, students study, write, paint, glue, and draw in the pursuit of discovering what is worth learning about the subjects they are studying. Though long term projects have become de rigueur in many schools, this will be my first experience with one that encompasses the entire student body. The project’s common purpose seems a rich bonding force among both teachers and students and I look forward to seeing these projects fully fruited and on display for the town.

Closer on the horizon looms the Maine Principal Association’s One Act Play Festival, Saturday and Sunday, March 9 and 10 at Strom Auditorium in Rockport, home of Camden Hills Regional High School.  Led by English and theater arts teacher Courtney Naliboff, the NHCS cast members, Kennedy Cooper, Adam Murphy, Craig Waterman, Gina MacDonald, Samantha Sparhawk, Caleb Mao, Maddie Hallowell, Leta Hallowell, Megan Goodell, Natalie Carrier and Adrianna Ames,  have been rehearsing play called “Mostellaria” by the early Roman Plautus wherein the boys play the girls and vice versa. The plot turns on a sociable young “man” whose father leaves the youth in charge of the family home. Apparently young people have been throwing parties in their parents’ absence for more than 2,000 years, and young Tranio is no exception. The parties continue until the father returns and creates the central problem of the play. The house and, in particular, a friend are in such a state that the young people decide to convince his father that in his absence ghosts have come to haunt his house. This ruse proves problematic and a classic picaresque, replete with knaves, rogues, and adventure, ensues.

    Apparently, there has been a plot afoot for years to keep residents of North Haven from attending the One Act Festival, as it is, according to Principal Barney Hallowell and One Act Director Courtney Naliboff, always scheduled during North Haven’s town meeting. This year, the curtain rises on our play at 2:30 p.m., just enough time to make it to Rockport from the middle boat, and the town meeting starts at 9 a.m. Oy.

Norovirus hits North Haven

With 15 students out--nearly a quarter of our population--and children who say even their parents are sick, we are running scared from "the Puke." One of the second graders came to me at recess to tell me that her dad is ill. "My daddy's sick," she reported. "What does he have?" I asked. "The Puke," she replied, adding that her brother had had it the day before.

Ugh.

For those who want to know more about this horrid creature--is a virus actually alive?--and vague hope for a vaccine, Scientific American tells us it can live in well water for years. Google trends shows that it hit hard right after Christmas and again last week and, depending on where you live, might be on the rise again.

All I can say is, wash your hands like mad and if you or your family gets it, stay the heck home for at least three days after you start to feel better. That's not me talking, that's the fracking CDC.

Good luck.

Islands Apart

To start this column, I first wrote, “Having never taught on an island...,” and that did not seem completely right. I thought for a moment and suddenly it dawned that my first teaching job was actually on an island. Apparently, the fact that it was an island with more than 20 bridges and countless car and rail tunnels linking it to the mainland, and a population of several million people confused me briefly. Manhattan’s George Washington High School, where I student taught before working as a long term substitute, sits high on a hill at the corner of 192nd Street and Audubon Avenue, overlooking the Harlem River and the Bronx. In 1776, the British chased General Washington’s army from nearby Fort Washington across the Hudson to New Jersey a rout that later led to the Battle of Trenton and eventually to that famous ferrying of his army across the Delaware.

In 1982 most of the 2000 students were either first or second generation Americans from the Dominican Republic. I could buy sweet milky Cuban coffee in any of eight bodegas between the subway exit and the metal-detector bedecked school entrance. In the school’s heyday luminaries like Maria Callas and Henry Kissinger earned their diplomas there. By my time there a general malaise, probably due to decades of fiscal neglect, prevailed. Historic WPA murals damaged in riots during the 60s and 70s faced their rooms with scarred faces. When I started my student teaching in late winter, the school had recently run out of lined paper and none would be provided again until September.

That a piece of historic American art marred by urban strife could be ignored for decades because of a lack of funding, or that a pre-computer age high school could run out of paper in the biggest city in America calls into sharp relief the differences between these islands and their schools. Here at NHCS, events like Spirit Week build the ties that bind us, connect the elementary children with the older kids, the teachers to students they may not have in class, teachers to other teachers, and all of us to the ideal of community education. We had no such goals on that larger island; keeping the kids off the streets sometimes seemed our sole objective and we felt as if we accomplished something when our pupils showed up.

As Spirit Week, an almost entirely student-organized series of events, unfolded last month, I marveled at the way children encouraged one another through creative, athletic, nourishing, even silly exercises. T-shirt painting and an egg-drop competition allowed us all to stretch our creativity a little; a hungie-gungie lunch provided delicious comfort food; a relay race gave the basketball geniuses a chance to showboat and the rest of us to be supported for our, at least in my case, somewhat less than stellar attempts.

According to NHCS Student Council President Leta Hallowell, Spirit Week coincidentally bumped up against the school’s traditional Gingerbread House Competition. In an apparently dependable part of this tradition, the faculty’s tropical-themed gingerbread house failed to prevail. This is just one sweet occasion created by Librarian Kate Quinn. Neither my last island school nor any school since has employed anyone in the role Kate has created at this school. As most readers must know, Kate delivers a tray of treats to both the faculty and the high school every Thursday. I will remember one of these concoctions, replete with butter, poppy seeds, and just the right amount of jam, as Heaven in a Cookie.

This month we had a mini-Spirit Week with some impromptu Homecoming events to mark the first home basketball games set to commence Friday the 13th. Meatball submarine sandwiches Thursday and basketball shooting contests and a round of Captain’s Coming--a nautical and more sophisticated version of Simon Says on Friday put the whole school in the mood to support our teams in Friday’s games.

True to its reputation, Friday the 13th proved less than lucky for the Hawks as lousy roads in the Bar Harbor area kept Acadia Christian closed and their basketball players leashed. When the home season finally began Monday, the standing-room only crowd saw our young teams demonstrate enviable tenacity and heart against Jackman’s strong, mature Forest Hills teams. Though the visitors won both the boys’ and girls’ games, North Haven spectators could see the teams offer up grace, speed, elegance and sportsmanship.

As freshman Hawk Megan Goodell played the national anthem on her flute to open the game Monday, I could not help but think of the tens of thousands of high school players and spectators hearing that song throughout the country. As I listened, I thanked whatever invisible workings of the universe allow North Haven Community School to offer its unique environment and education to its children, and embody community so thoroughly.



(This column was also submitted to the North Haven News.)

Can't seem to get past Christmas

Here's a bit of seasonal show biz kerfuffle courtesy of Tim Minchin and Director of Television for ITV Peter Fincham.

"If you like feeling things..."

Here's what I want to do with my summer vacation:
Music by, guess who? Tim Minchin, of course.
Royal Shakespeare Company, anyone? Oy.

One more Christmas song

In case you haven't been sentimental enough about the holidays just past, listen to this sweet Christmas song by the wry, dry, and slightly odd Tim Minchin. The Bloggess reminded me of how good and smart and musical he is.

Brannamanevangelism 1.0

This morning in a fit of last-moments-of-vacation procrastination, I watched a documentary I'd longed to see, Buck, the story of Buck Brannaman (forgive the autoplay trailer) and his cowboy Zen approach to all things horsey and non-horsey.

This film prompted uncounted thoughts and feelings, chief among them that I miss my horse and horses in general. There have been longish periods in my life when I believed work with horses held the key to anything important I would ever do, and this film poked at whatever armor I've built to protect against a sense of failing to fully act on those beliefs.

If you've seen the film and know much about horses, Brannaman's conversations about good horsemanship being a dance might resonate with you. For me they sound more like a pealing cathedral tower. Dance and riding are married in my viscera. I used to say I only got a bachelor's degree in dance because I couldn't get one in horseback riding. For me, they're both about metaphysics, movement and love.

This is not to say I plan to leave the best teaching job in the world to chase a dream conjured in my horse-crazed, 10 year-old girl self, rather to say this film all but shouted at me that I ignore dance and horses at my peril.

Watch David Letterman wax all respectful and humble around Brannaman. It's a sight to behold.

And Everything is Made New Again

"The novelty will wear off." That's what one of my young coworkers said the other afternoon. She had seen my eyes widen at the blue sky and the bluer ocean, punctuated by what the Irish call white horses, and Americans more banally call whitecaps, racing the breeze while we plowed across Penobscot Bay from Rockland to North Haven Island, my home as of about a month ago. 

Since then I've been wondering whether it is the novelty that has filled my heart since my interview and hiring at the North Haven Community School late this summer. I want to imagine she is wrong. I want to believe that the border between my home and the rest of the world will always be tangible, porous, measurable, palpable, and wet. 

Today our principal, Barney, said we have to, "get out of here." Encouraging us to avoid the comforts of complacency, he said that as soon as he began to feel that getting off the island was too much trouble or not worth the effort, it was a sign he needed to leave, and soon. I wonder when I should tell him that ship has sailed. My ultimate goal is to see how long I can stay without leaving, and I have been thwarted in that effort by everything from a hurricane to an island wedding.

Hurricane Irene took me to Harridan Central in Alna to close the cellar windows, and forced my hand regarding my horse Sami's winter arrangements. She now resides at the Taj Mahal of horsey homes, Whitefield's Acorn Hill Farm. There, she can claim blonde bombshell status while mingling with the elite--the tall, black, elegant Friesians farm owner Jennifer Grady raises and shows.

My island landlords had asked me back in August whether I would mind relinquishing my winter rental for one weekend in September as one of the island girls was marrying a summering boy, some 350 people had been invited for the wedding and their house was needed for the invasion.  If I had known it would be the most beautiful weekend of the year, I might have thought twice. I thought wistfully about the bride, though, imagining that she might find a minute or two to notice the good fortune of a warm, dry, sunny wedding day.

As for the expedition, well, it's an actual expedition into Maine's North Woods, replete with actual wilderness. I haven't encountered actual wilderness without lots of actual contact with modernity--so I guess that keeps it from being actual wilderness--since I was about 12, and I don't want to say how long ago that was. And we are canoeing. Canoeing the West Branch of the Penobscot River up near the Canadian border. When I told my dearest dear Stan that the expedition took us into the wilds, he scoffed. "Do you know how many people are on that river every summer? Do you know?" he asked. "250,000," he answered, harrumphing. I told him the itinerary, starting with, "We put in at Old Roll Dam." He consulted his iPad for a moment, then said, "Hmm. That's actual wilderness."

O.k., so it is novel to teach at a school of some 60 children, k-12. It is novel to start the school year with a trip down an ancient, storied river with a boatload of teenagers. It is novel to ride a ferry 12 miles across a bay to get home from a shopping trip or the bank. When and if the novelty does wear off, I would be surprised if some other novelty failed to replace it, though.

The neighbor's giant horse chestnut's leaves should drop in November, and my line of sight from the front porch to the thoroughfare will include the ferry. That will be new. In December, I will likely need coaching about how to manage my car without posted rules about the village's side street parking protocol. That will be new, though arguably not that fun. By February, I will want to know the finer points of the school's Knowledge Fair, and will look to my students and fellow teachers for ways to make it rich, beautiful, and informative. That will be new.

Suddenly, I am reminded of why I love teaching and why I feel grateful every day to the fates that brought me here. Everything is new. Every year. Every day.

Feeding the Thousands, well, actually about 700

For the next, oh, perhaps forever, much of my food writing will be engendered by work for Lani Temple at Megunticook Market, where my first assignments are making pies and blogging.

Take a good cause, two energetic, community-minded women, their devoted employees and a few wannabees, Latin music, a wall of oysters on the half-shell, plates of rich, fresh, spicy food, free-flowing wine, harborside scenery and a covey of singing drag-queens, set them loose--no need to stir--and you have this year’s Pop the Cork fourth annual fundraiser.

The first time I heard the term Pop the Cork as applied to the local annual fundraiser, I had walked into Camden’s Megunticook Market on a Tuesday afternoon to look for work helping owner Lani Temple cater parties. Little did I know she and her crew were in the final throes of preparing for the biggest party of their party-centric year, a fundraiser for 700 people in Rockport Harbor. One of her capable, take-charge proteges, Matt, said I probably could not talk with Temple on such short notice because she was involved in the last deadlines for Pop the Cork. I could see he too was busy behind a beautifully stocked deli counter, so smiled understandingly and handed my resume over the high curved glass.

Only after Matt caught up with me in the parking lot to say Lani did have time did I learn from her that Pop the Cork happened in two days, Thursday night, and yes, she could use some help. A recent run for state office brought me the closest I’d been to catered food in a few years, albeit on the other side of the equation. I could infer, way before I remembered seeing Lani on WCSH6, from the clean, open kitchen and the well-stocked deli display that the food coming out of this place would be good. Having worked in food service for some period in every decade since the 1970s, my perspective is long and broad, and Lani’s bright eyes and direct manner boded well for this party, too.

When Lani said my first night with her crew would be at Pop the Cork, I was thrilled, both for the work, and for the theater, replete with suspense, climax and denouement, that was sure to occur when 700 hungry, thirsty people arrive in one place expecting high quality comestibles and entertainment in return for their generous donation to, in this year’s case, United Mid-Coast Charities. This consortium of more than 50 local agencies serves 35 percent of the local population in some manner is the fourth not-for-profit to benefit from Pop the Cork’s largesse.  Others have included Rockland’s Farnsworth Museum and Rockport’s Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Lani’s partner in good works, Bettina Doulton of Lincolnville and Rockport’s Cellardoor Winery, doubles the possibility of breaching the gaps between community needs and community support.

Thursday, I arrived at Megunticook Market a little earlier than the 3 p.m. meeting time. Lani, Matt and Ryan, another chef, had already left to deliver food to the venue 10 minutes from the market. Lani’s father Jim, up for a few weeks from Florida, greeted me and a few other crew members trickled in. Keisha, Whitney, Scout, Nick, Annie, Kristen and I made up a fraction of the small army needed to wrangle the 2000 wine glasses, several tons of plates and flatware, not to mention the food itself, for the battalion of party-goers. Discussion while we waited for our ride to Rockport Harbor ran from previous years’ Pop the Corks to the best shoes for the job. A cold fog that had gripped the coast all day entered into our wardrobe decisions, as did the fact that we would be under a tent on a lawn in the company of what passes for high society in pre-August coastal Maine.

Before long Keisha had decided to change from sandals to sturdier and warmer shoes. Taylor’s choice of snazzy black suede sneakers garnered envy me and others. My inner mother-hen worried for Annie and her filmy, short skirt. I only just managed not to ask if she thought she would be warm enough. Less than half-way through the evening, Annie had proved herself strong, inventive and willing to go far beyond what I was capable of. As usual, I needn't have worried.

When the three tubs we used to rinse the hundreds of plates of their crab juices, salsas and cocktail and mojo sauces were not much cleaner than the plates, Annie wondered aloud whether we should pitch one and refill it. Upon investigation, we learned that the nearest spigot had been turned off and Annie would have to walk a few hundred yards with a tub of water if she wanted to accomplish her goal. Without batting an eye Annie picked up a tubful of gruesome rinse water and headed out to the puckies to dump it, schlepped it up to the only available water source, and returned with water clean enough for a baptism. Of course, that lasted about a second. Nevertheless, her trek was nothing short of miraculous to me, too used lately to rooms of teenagers reluctant to pick up a pencil, let alone 35 pounds of liquid suspended in an unwieldy container.

The next two hours raced by in a blur of wine and cocktail glasses, crates, trays, scurrying servers, encouraging words, and piles of silverware, punctuated by the driving beats and horns of Salsa and Merengue music, applause and whoops of pleased listeners and dancers. I focused on the logarithms of three types of wine glass and two sizes of crate, while Kristen, Dominic, and whoever had a moment to spare rinsed, sorted plates and forks, keeping what could have been a Katahdin of china and glass to scalable Mt. Battie heights. When we lifted our heads, some 700 people had been fed and entertained, and moving up the hill to the old elementary school for a concert by 80s rock band Huey Lewis and the News.

Shortly after Ryan, in his most basso profundo voice, ordered us to eat as much of the remaining food as we possibly could, and we complied, the consolidating angels, Tracy, Sue, Whitney, and I’m sure others, set about collecting serving platters, trays, utensils and decor into a movable post-feast, most of it in need of a good soaping. We headed to Megunticook Market and its two generous sinks for the final stages of the evening. There I befriended Sue, another woman in her “middle” years who, like me, has a middle schooler at home. We talked about a recent community tragedy and our ties to the families involved, salved by the soothing banality of washing up.

In the space of just under eight hours, this group of capable people staged the food, performed feats of food and drink, and struck the set, shared a good night toast of a bubbly, SFW fruity beverage and headed out into the night. Despite the fact that my late-night attempt at a shortcut nearly turned into a trip up Ragged Mountain, I smiled all the way home.