A Room For Learning

Your Work is You, Nothing More

2011-02-07T11:57:00.000-08:00

We start Monday morning meeting with a lecture from Tal. Though its not really a lecture. He is more lecturing himself. He is halfway through his teaching career. “On Wednesday it will be the ‘hump’ or the middle day of the middle of the year of my twentieth year of my teaching. I have twenty years ahead of me. I am so tired, already. You know, it's all working towards retirement.” There were many laughs especially the little chuckle of Eric who was sitting beside me.

“What was the appeal of teaching teenagers again, Tal?” Eric asks

“Well, the first thing is that I don’t have to deal with many adults, who are even more screwed and crazy than teenagers because they have so many more problems than you guys, myself included,but they just cover them up better. You guys are much smarter in that you aren't very good at hiding your insanity. Also, I can dress the way I want and cuss and I don’t have to kiss anybodies BEE-hind! Plus there is June, July and August. And I can wear any old rags I want to. See?"

“So There is no potential for us adults, NOT to be screwed up?” Eric asks.

"That is correct."

Tal and Eric share the VERY original ‘building a house’ metaphor. “If you build the foundation crooked then the whole house will just fall over after a while.” They told us that we were building our ‘foundations’ and that we had the ‘potential’ to be great and not crooked. Theire job is to save us untold suffering later in life. I hope they know they sounded like some very "by the rule book" Boy Scout leaders. (Thanks, Sophie!)

Simon told about how he listened to opera and he really loves it. That he really wanted to just blast it out the windows. I wondered if he wanted to show everyone, not just us but EVERYONE all around how much he loved it and how great he thought it was, which in part is a very direct line to him.

Kiley went to the ‘Bamf’ film festival about great athletes. A Swiss speed climber was filmed climbing this mountain and did it in a little over 3 hours. He broke the world record. But he wasn’t satisfied with this so he did it again and got his time down to 2 hours and 47 minutes. Kiley said she thought it was really awesome to go until YOU know that you're done. That that is the absolute best you could do, even when the ‘world’ says you are done, or already the best.

Eric was at a Breadloaf cross country ski race where Morgan was racing. He was on the trail as a monitor person. When Morgan came by he was really amazed by how fast she was and how all out she was going. She was in the middle of a pack of skiers who probably train every day, even though she had been sick. But we said that the only thing that mattered was that she had on an awesome ski racing suit. (Tal asked if she wore "jeggings" in skiing. Everyone said Tal was dumb.)

Yared was working on his project when he got sidetracked, He started listening to jazz and blues and was distracted for almost 3 hours but he said it was really amazing to learn a ton about that because he loves that music. Tal said this was not getting off track, it was getting on track.

Rowan was sick and was having short term memory loss (probably hallucinations of all the homework he still had to do and Tal as a wild boar yelling at him when he would come back to school. That’s what we pride on here at North Branch, at least the kids are scared into doing their work) and ‘The White Album’ by the Beatles came onto the shuffle on his ipod (though we have no idea if it actually came on or if that was a part of his hallucination as well) but the album didn’t play in order though and he could immediately recognize that, he thought it was really interesting to know the sounds and feelings that came next in an album even though he hadn’t listened to that one in a long time and how one's memory really kind of ‘chooses’ what its going to always remember.

Anna overheard all the cross country ski bums from the high school talking on the ACTR bus down the mountain. Simon had said, after they had been talking about how unintelligent their conversation was, that it was probably not unlike US when we are riding up on the bus every morning. But she thought the difference was that she could see the other side of US, and she was worried if she would be able to see that side of people next year at all.

Reed and her mom went way back in the woods at Breadloaf (away from all the tacky tourists with their SWIX pants, Patagonia sweaters and North Face hats.) and Reed noticed that she (her mom) is one of the steadiest and happiest people she knows. She went all into her skiing even though she wasn’t too fast.

Kiley Read the Poem:

"On looking up by chance at the Constellations"

Robert Frost

You'll wait a long, long time for anything much

To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud

And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves.

The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch,

Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud.

The planets seem to interfere in their curves

But nothing ever happens, no harm is done.

We may as well go patiently on with our life,

And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun

For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane.

It is true the longest drouth will end in rain,

The longest peace in China will end in strife.

Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awake

In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break

On his particular time and personal sight.

That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night.

Quote of the morning:

“This Girl is Going to give it a whirl!” –Tsering

(Tal asks what the guy version of that is)

“This guy is gunna give it a try!” –Rowan

In Science Class we hear that a Grouse ran into Kiley’s window and died (though Ollie says that it did not die but Kiley went outside when her family wasn’t looking and stepped on it so that it WOULD die) and she says :

“Shall we dissect it in Science Class?”

“Ewwwwwww” says Claire.

Eric: “We want to stuff it! Take out its organs and stuff?”

Kiley: “I have a quick fact about Grouse! They eat grapes and they don’t digest them so in the middle of winter they start to ferment and then the grouse get tipsy!”

……I wonder if we are actually learning much in science class……. (Tal thinks so)

We travel inside and outside during class. No one is really prepared but we have to run to the middle of the field, scoop up some snow, run inside and measure the density of the snow. Calder starts calling everyone "cows," he even said I was a "slow cow." I also heard a glimmer of the word ‘cow’ when Evan was trying to get Calder to show him his ‘Man burns’ during math (aka, side burns says Ollie because girls can obviously no have side burns so calling them man burns is just stating the obvious)

Yared and Luke talk to Tal about next year right before break. Yared is scared because at the high school they only really look at your work and he SAYS that he’s not the best at that. But here he makes up for it because people know his soul.

In math Class: Evan starts labeling people’s hair

Ollie: Rats Nest

Calder: Mushroom Top

Evan: Ski Jump

Simon: ……….??.......... Worms???

Eliot is going to send an email to Nelson Mandela. “What should I say?”

Tal: “Start out with, ‘Oh, grand master Nelson Mandela, I am your humblest servent’”

Tal is comparing regular Goldfish to FLAVOR BLASTED. He says that the verdict is the regulars are very dry and the FLAVOR BLASTED are full of moderate cheesy flavor. He then says that they are just basically orange saltines with butter and Claire says that she LOVES those. Apparently they are incredible toasted.

We have Tate’s project: On the Warsaw Uprisings. We discussed who will have a statue made of them. “Better die on your feet than live on your knees” = You will be made into a Statue; “Better live on your knees than die on your feet” = No statue for you. (See Notes from Tal…..)

Play starts coming along. Sophie, Reed, and Tal work during study to put up what we have and what we still need to do.

TUESDAY:

Simon really liked Tate’s project. Everyone was really amazed that Tate had NO SCRIPT and was just talking off the top of his head.

Aylee wanted to be sure that her sister has a chance to come here and is sad that she doesn’t like school and doesn’t want to come here because of the homework. Tal talked about how kids don’t want to come to North Branch because they know about the homework but don’t know the other part of it, the part besides homework, because you can’t really describe it to anyone who’s not here.

Luke got an email from a past NBSer at the High School who feels lonely and unreal. She wrote Luke a place description about her dad but it wasn’t as good as when she was here. Luke wrote her back a really long email. Luke, to me, seems to be trying to give people advice more lately and I think its great. He has a lot of wisdom inside him. I think that HE cannot see it sometimes.

Yared says he knows EVERYTHING about the high school “You know, the Science room is here, the ‘stuff’ is over here”……We all laughed because of course he knows SO much.

Rick Sko left a doodle on the table which Miles started decorating. Rick was chuckling while Eliot told about how Nelson Mandela will appear in a giant glass box in the middle of his project wearing fur….. Tal: “I hope not real fur, Eliot." “No, he will be wearing giraffe skin.” Tal says he needs to get ‘recycled’ or roadkill fur because if they just took it off the giraffe then all the giraffe muscles will be exposed or all the blood will fall off of his body.

Yared said that last night Yib came into his room (bringing tea as a way to bribe Yared to talk to him) and they talked about his girl troubles. It was awesome to talk to him.

Ollie and Calder's coach Hugh told the soccer team that they should do an act of random kindness. Hugh was planning to take something to a Hannaford Bagger. Tal emailed the former NBSer that Luke was talking to and asked about how she was. He was saying that that can be an act of kindness when you know someone is down, just to ask.

Rider was thinking about what he would fight for in his life. We had been talking about it the day before in Tate’s project and he said that he would fight for a lot more things than he said (he had mentioned his nephews) and that that was what he wanted to be able to say, was all the things that he would fight for. That was his goal in life, to have as many things as possible that he would fight for. He said that it was a great thing because he had been sitting around a lot, saying he was going to do things, but this was really a concrete thing that he had devoted himself too.

How do we move from wanting so desperately to hear “I love you” to just being able to give it all the time. And if we all gave it, wouldn’t we have what we wanted? All of us saying that we love each other? Tal referred to a poem that Sophie used once by Hafiz. In it, Hafiz asks why don't we just all say the thing to others that we want said to us.

Claire was talking to Ada on the phone and realizing that they had known each other all their lives and she was more of a sister than her own sister. And she was missing her sister a lot. It was interesting to me to think about the school and how I honestly feel that some of these people (and usually almost everyone by the end of the year) are my brothers and sisters. And how does that happen in a year or even a half a year with the sevies? I don’t know, maybe it is just saying I love you to other people and trusting you with them.

Morgan read "Three Seasons", by Geoffery G. Obrien

The winter, it was the winter all

the usual things happened,

I have forgotten what

would travel from the north

as a series seen from above

or from below, and the followers,

the flowers, I tore them up

the next summer, or rather

before or immediately after

and thought no more about it.

But then the summer, plans

to sign a contract, the summer

came back for what it was:

a small sprinkling of rue

and a yellow fantasy

and we were invited. It appeared

tall and swaying and deaf

to appeals, and the winter following,

this was the arrangement—

first one and then into

another not yet there,

many years of this refrain

and all the productions within it

coming to mean more

of an intimacy between

musical instruments and still lifes

you lose yourself in again

and probably have now,

what objects have known

in their one dark winter afternoon.

They are still visited

by everything else and together

complete the effect, a distance

which the next day took form.

That winter stopped and probably

on account of summer a spring,

spring with a sturdy fringe

and a local reputation,

it’s outside, in various rooms

and looks at everything,

a few lilacs in awkward

positions, but they were alright,

it was summer, very strong,

passing organizations,

which never finished anything

and ended in making

all this, cold coals

of wildflowers, little wars

at the centers, they go on for years

burning near the front

and from below.

Yared had an impersonation of Calder: “Its kind of Chipmunkish! Like you know how chipmunks can fit 80 seeds in their mouth, that's how Calder talks. He slurs everything together.”

During Break: Some of the guys play driveway football. Ollie and Tsering and others sing: “War…. Huh. What is it good for? Absolutely NOTHING!”

Aylee and Ollie discuss Hello Kitty before Class.

We watch videos about the uprisings in Egypt. Trying to change the country and get the leader out who apparently rigged all the elections, and the food is very expensive and there are very little jobs. There are some self immolations and we talk about how if someone is willing to burn themselves for a cause it must be important and lead others to follow that cause.

Wednesday:

Snow Day. The little children of the North Branch School are probably bounding around playing in the glorious snow flakes. Coming in and drinking hot cocoa by the woodstove and probably watching movies that their parents suggest and they at first don’t want to watch, but realize is actually a really great movie. There are probably some children putting off the homework piling in with the snow until late at night when everyone thinks the time gets slower and you therefore become more productive which actually is not the case.

In my case, I made a batch of brownies which I told myself I would only eat a little bit of but looking back on the pan I see I ate a little more than anticipated. But as Tal always says: “Life is too short not to eat real butter”…. It’s the same with brownies.

So the teachers are probably sulking at home, wishing they were at school so they could try and stay on schedule which I think they are already about three weeks behind on (because of our awfully short attention spans and low productivity?) but I say to those teacher sulking: GO OUTSIDE AND ENJOY THE SNOW!! Frolic in your snow clothes with your children and pretend you are in a really cheesy movie with terrible music playing in the backround that makes the scene look joyful. Throw snow around so that even if its not snowing hard, it looks like it is, and try to enjoy your vacation!

Thursday

On Thursday Hilda Billings came to talk to us at morning meeting. She lives in Ripton, knew Robert Frost very well, worked as the Ripton post lady and we helped her cut up and stack the maple tree wood when the ninth graders were in seventh grade. Her little maple was planted in the 1800's. She showed us a picture of the house with the tiny maple in the late 1800's and then she showed us the pictures she took when we were there two years ago.

Claire was at the Snowbowl with Rio, his brother Ziven and Ada yesterday during to snow day. SHe said it felt really special to be there because just about nobody was there and they were laughing at Ziven when he fell over and she said it was really fun. Rider was really impressed when he went up to the Fieldhouse and saw Calder leading his Synergy Football Club saying 'go' to all the really difficult drills like holding a ball over your head while you run, and if you let it fall then EVERYONE else has to do it over and doing push-ups and switching from one side of a cone to another and then sprinting right after and doing push ups again. Rider said it was really awesome to see him where he is doing what HE does, where he is in his 'element' and being a leader and just being really awesome and working SO hard.

Anna went to shadow at MUHS on Tuesday. She was talking to a former NBS student Cody. They were at an assembly and he started telling her that NBS is a 'mean' school and MUHS is a 'nice' school. He said that NBS is mean because it’s real, people have the space to have actual opinions and feelings so you could have 'bad' feelings towards people, and MUHS doesnt leave any room for those feelings with so many people and so everyone is just 'nice'. But are they really being honest? probably not, because there is no room for 'mean', gritty and real, or honesty.

Simon was amazed by the Kinglet birds we have been reading about in science. They are about the size of a person’s thumb and have an inch of fluff around them. Its really amazing how they don't use any imported insulation or outside forces, they just use themselves to keep warm.

Luna, Eric's crazy dog got out of the science room and ran over to the Carvers'. Eric decided to make sure Luna hadn’t destroyed the Carvers' house before school. He drove over, found the door ajar and found a quart of honey with dog marks on them ripped open and a large pool/trail of honey covered the entryway. He found Luna with as much of a devilish grin as a dog can muster and tried to clean up the honey desperately before school......

Aylee's sister started to get into her application to NBS and she didnt even need her mom to tell her to do it.

Poem, read by Chase ---- “Fire and Ice”, Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

FRIDAY:

Anneke brought in an awesome quilt made for Dalia that she gave to the Tal has been working on since last year. It was cut outs of everyone's hands from last year and sewn onto black and purple fabric (white black and purple are Prunes colors). She said in meeting that she understood what people meant when they say that you don't appreciate people until their gone and she was really sad working on it last night and remembering last year’s ninth graders.

I've been thinking a lot about last year’s ninth graders lately, too.Will these ninth graders be as big as last year, or is it just that I was a sevie last year and I can't see that they are just as big? Every year the chemistry of the school changes, but it’s hard to see the awesome stuff when you are immersed in it. Some awesome stuff the ninth graders have been doing: For example,Yared and Rider are like the heart and the mind. Together they seem to always be able to get to ego-death. When I hear them in conferences they are always talking about the 'house' of the school, how we can make it together, how we are trying to make it together. Then there's Aylee and Anneke and Sarah who have been trying to be characters in the play who want real love, who can see how ridiculous the pre-made system is for getting love in our play. Miles has been drawing his own drawings which may not seem like a lot, but I think that it’s a form of non-conformity. He is thinking, he is DOING something. He is not letting everyone else's ART be HIS art. HE IS HIS OWN ART. You are what you say, you are what you eat, you ARE YOUR ART. So maybe these ninth graders are VERY different from last year’s, maybe there are some things about them that are not perfect, but they are not conformists. They are thinking feeling, DOING something, and I think that is the most important thing. If there were perfect people leading us, who had everything figured out, there would be no way to tell that they had done anything, that they had come so far, but I have been seeing lately how seeing these people re trying and desperately clawing inside of themselves to be better, and that is making all the difference and, to me, is the sign of incredible ninth graders.

Rowan went to Finn's aunt’s house (as Tal would say: probably where they do sun salutations to welcome the day) and was urged by Finn and Eliot to come to the bathroom of her house (the BATHROOM??) it was (apparentely) a tradition (tradition??) and Rowan felt glad to be invited in to their really big bathroom friendship. (though we are all a little worried that what they do with their free time is go into their aunt’s bathroom...)

Sarah saw her brother happier than ever because he now goes to the Ripton School. He's been coming home singing and happy to go to school every day. Rose was thinking all week about Tate's project. About whether or not you could have the courage to stand by your people and your morals and your religion even if you were to die. Whether you would feed a dying relative if you knew they were going to die, or if instead you would take that food for yourself. If you would fast on your religion’s fasting days even if you were starving already. She liked the concept of not making excuses for people who didn't do that, not making it right for the people who were small and tried to save themselves and not actually LIVE with their morals while they were still alive and in the hardest conditions. She said she was watching a movie on migrating birds and how they wouldn’t stop for anything on their way. Even the best food in the world; somehow they had a greater purpose and that they knew to migrate and somehow they always knew that. If those people held strong for their morals, then they are like migrating birds. They are far above the world, they have truly learned to live, don’t you think? If you can become your morals and your religion in your dying day, I think that is when you are living.

Eric thought Yared did a great job of running meeting on Thursday when Hilda came and Tal wasn't at school. In the last several weeks, Yared's been feeling closer to the ninth graders, that even though it isn’t perfect he is so happy that he can have his friends at the high school his whole scene there and then have his friends at North Branch and he can love all of them. When he went to DJ skate night (where teenagers skate around in circles in the dark with a disco ball and listen to teeny bopper music) and he felt awesome to have the two groups he loved there and knew that he could go back and forth.

Rider Read the Poem: (he said he could remember when he was in seventh grade and he picked this poem without really knowing about it, but now he can understand it and he can see how his mind has changed over the three years.)

Wake Up. Day Calls you

Pedro Salinas.

Wake up. Day calls you

to your life: your duty.

And to live, nothing more.

Root it out of the glum

night and the darkness

that covered your body

for which light waited

on tiptoe in the dawn.

Stand up, affirm the straight

simple will to be

a pure slender virgin.

Test your bodys metal.

cold, heat? Your blood

will tell against the snow,

or behind the window.

The colour in your cheeks will tell.

And look at people. Rest

doing no more than adding

your perfection to another

day. Your task

is to carry your life high,

and play with it, hurl it

like a voice to the clouds

so it may retrieve the light

already gone from us.

That is your fate: to live

Do nothing.

Your work is you, nothing more.

Later we talked about having the courage to say out loud what you really feel about something. To be able to tell your friends the most important things, even if it is hard to say or hear. “There are all kinds of courage. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” -Albus Dumbledore.

Sometimes you have to stand up for what you want and yourself more to your friends than to your enemies. With your friends, if they are real friends, they know what hurts and it hurts even more when you care about what they think about you. You have to be able to stand up to your significant other as well. Because throughout all of your life your going to have to live with yourself and you can be hurt by your friends and you can be hurt by people you are in love with, but in the end you have to stay true to yourself and what you want to do to be happy and the people who love you truly will want you to do that.

We talked about how Anna had had a crush on a boy and it wasn't hard for her to admit THAT, it was just hard for her to admit that she had had a lot of trouble talking to him. She felt like a flawed human because of that and it was that that hurt, not that she had liked him. We talked about how we search for security, a 'known' and guaranteed friendship. First with one other person then with your class and then hopefully with the school, and then the world.

Everyone is looking for that I think. It’s just really hard to see that you wont be replaced when other people have friendships with each other.

The week overall? Are you replaceable? Never. You are not replaceable when you hold to yourself your morals, even in the dying day. When you are not a conformist to society or anyone else but only conforming to who you are and what you believe and becoming that. There is everything to be learned from those who are working, and maybe it’s a little harder to learn from those who aren't growing and are staying where they are. The ninth graders are awesome. Snow days are for frolicking. And most of all: Always say: “This girl is going to give it a whirl! OR This guy is gonna give it a try!”

In Peace

2011-02-07T11:50:00.001-08:00

When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have always been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invicible, but in the ends, they always fall—I think of it, always.

—Mahatma Gandhi

On Friday we got a letter back from Jarvis Jay Masters…We read his book, Finding Freedom: Writings From Death Row, this year. At the end of our reading we sent him each our last literature responses, which we wrote to him in the form of letters. WE also included our pictures. Here is what he wrote back to us, hand written, addressed from San Quentin.

Dear Tal,

I am writing to thank you and your 8^th and 9^th grade students who wrote me all the wonderful letters that continues to touch my heart and, in so many ways, lets me see how my book, Finding Freedom, is contributing to class rooms like it has at North Branch. I truly appreciate everything you have made possible for your students to sit with their hearts, and to say I had a real presence in their literature class. I feel so honored by this Tal, you know? I really do, Tal.

So Please, please let all of your precious students know it means so much to me to know that my book is in their classroom! Please let your classroom know that I am truly grateful for all your letters and the wonderful photographs sent to me. They’re all GREAT! J

Again,

Thank you so much Tal.

In Peace, Jarvis

Moving Forward

2011-02-04T04:27:00.000-08:00

We climb to hopes

Of such seeing up the leaf-shuttered escarpments,
Blindered by green, under a green-grained sky

Into the blue.

—Sylvia Plath

Monday

Claire talked about when she was with her friend who works at the gallery who she has known for a really long time. She had been thinking about how this person was kind of like her older sister.

At Patrick’s soccer practice there was one kid who was criticizing everyone when they made mistakes, and he realized that, even when we are running around and yelling, we are pretty mature.

Simon was at the perspective students meeting and saw the way Tal, Eric and Rose were talking about the school and realized how much they do for us and the school.

Eric was also at the perspective students meeting and heard Simon and Rowan talk about their experience at North Branch, and liked that they could talk about what we do there so clearly.

Rose saw that instead of getting the play organized Friday afternoon while Tal was there we decided to do it Monday on our own and she thought it was cool we that we did that.

Anneke watched a movie about a lady who stalked her ex-husband and was then sent to an insane asylum. While the lady was in the asylum a man came up to her and told her that she shouldn’t be wasting her time in that place, she should go somewhere else and do something. This made Anneke think about how we have so much at school, but the only place its truly worth something is outside the school.

Finn read “Moving Forward,” by Rilke:

The deep parts of my life pour onward,

as if the river shores were opening out.

It seems that things are more like me now,

That I can see farther into paintings.

I feel closer to what language can't reach.

With my senses, as with birds, I climb

into the windy heaven, out of the oak,

in the ponds broken off from the sky

my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

Tuesday

Tal came back and was asking about how class had been in the 20 below weather the day before. Some people started shouting out and arguing over the inside and outside temperatures of the snow shelter, which Tal interested in for about three seconds until someone said, “I didn’t go out.” This shocked Tal because he thought that we should be true Vermonters, and real persons, and risk the cold. He said that if there is ever a point in your life where you could choose discomfort over boring and the same you should take discomfort, unless it will kill you. He said that the only time you can grow is when you are uncomfortable, when there is tension. He said that he tries to create tension at school so we can be at a place where “something happens.” Then he told us that people in Atlanta close school when it gets down to seven degrees, and then talked about Paideia baseball, and when they posed in the snow pretending to play baseball, and then a newsletter article was written about the hard-coreness of Paideia’s baseball team.

Calder said that while he was at soccer practice Hugh said that the problem with adolescents is that we can’t change our decisions once there made. Calder had been thinking about this and realized it was true--when he was opening the dishwasher and it was stuck he repeatedly yanked it but it didn’t open. Instead of looking to see what was wrong, he kept pulling on the dishwasher until it opened, which took a very long time and was probably the least efficient way to do it.

Tal then talked for several minutes about the contents of cabinets in kitchens, and how it was always the cheese-grater that jams up the drawers. After considering this fact for some times, he has decided that it is easier to keep the cheese grater in a cabinet.

Eric said it was very liberating to come to a new house and leave all of his junk behind.

Claire talked about two police officers who were shot while searching a man. She was thinking about how easy it is for people to get defensive.

Simon read "Ionic" by Catullus

That we've broken their statues,

that we've driven them out of their temples,

doesn't mean at all that the gods are dead.

O land of Ionia, they're still in love with you,

their souls still keep your memory.

When an August dawn wakes over you,

your atmosphere is potent with their life,

and sometimes a young ethereal figure

indistinct, in rapid flight,

wings across your hills.

Wednesday

Calder was looking at the corrections on his story that were done by his dad and his brother. He noticed that they were similar, so therefore Henry and Tal are similar.

The night before many North Branch students had watched the State of the Union address, proving our knowledge and brilliance compared to many other adolescents, who spend too much time listening to “Grenade” by Bruno Mars.

Jesse was watching the State of the Union address and kept hearing Obama say that he wants America to be great, but she was thinking that the ultimate goal should be for the world to be great, but for the world to be great we should stop trying to be better than everybody else.

Claire had a dream about Martin Luther King dream coming out of Obama’s mouth, and said that although Obama is not as great as Martin Luther King, he’s the best we’ve got, and he could make things great.

Kiley was thinking about how lucky we are to have peaceful, regular elections, because in some places things never change, except for when there is violence.

Anna heard Obama say that we have to move forward, and realized that we are always trying to move forward at school, so we are a kind of mini-world.

Tal said that he has figured out Obama’s strengths and weaknesses, and then said that the work of the president is to get people together, which is a very difficult thing. He said it was hard enough to bring our school together and move all of us together to a good place, but imagine it when you are trying to move 300 million people to one place together.

Jesse’s brother told her a story about machine gunners on the White House, and she said that even though we are farther along than some countries, but we are not perfect.

Simon was thinking about the Tucson shootings and how the lady who got shot has come to a stable condition, and was thinking about how strong you would have to be to pull through something like that.

Rose said she was very proud of the math nerds, or “mathletes” as they are sometimes referred to for wanting to go to the competition that would happen that afternoon, then we talked about how strange it is that so much is spent at the football program at some schools, while the people who are there to learn, which is, last time I checked the reason for college, get ignored.

Evan had a basketball game against a team that always beats them, and after three minutes they were down 14-0, but then they came back and won, and that made Evan feel really good.

Claire read "It was a Quiet Seeming Day" by Emily Dickinson.

It was a quiet seeming Day —

There was no harm in earth or sky —

Till with the closing sun

There strayed an accidental Red

A Strolling Hue, one would have said

To westward of the Town —

But when the Earth began to jar

And Houses vanished with a roar

And Human Nature hid

We comprehended by the Awe

As those that Dissolution saw

The Poppy in the Cloud

Thursday

Rose said that the math team had gone down to Gailer, and she noticed that the NBS kids were the weirdest and wildest, but they were also the most enthusiastic and excited.

Anneke was reading her lit and then her mom came and talked to her about baby pictures of Anneke that were on facebook. After seeing these Anneke felt that life goes too fast and you only get so much time. Then Tal interjected and said that thinking about how much time you have left can be sad, it is a good thing to think about because it will make you do more with the time you do have. He talked about “memento mori” paintings and how the purpose of those, like “carpe diem” poems, is to remind us that time and life is precious, that we need to be aware of the closeness of the end so we take care of the time we have. “Y’all,” he said, “it is dark, spark, then dark, so it is good, Anneke, be aware of that. If you are always aware, you can make each day or moment meaningful.”

Simon was talking to Claire during study and had a good time doing that.

Tal said that the afternoon before Doon saw him, and then just came and hugged him, maybe because, Tal thought, Tal appeared so haggard. Tal is not really the huggy type, but he thought that it was amazing that Doon did that even though he doesn’t know Doon that well. He said Doon crossed a lot of time and space and unfamiliarity to throw himself into that hug. He also said that Doon is a really good hugger, and then he gave Tal a quick shoulder rub, it made Tal feel better.

Luke watched a movie about two friends on the run from the law, “The Outsiders.” One of the friends quoted Robert Frost’s poem Nothing Gold can Stay. The other friend thought about the poem, and thought that it meant that you are golden when you are a kid, but you can’t stay a kid forever. Then he died saving kids because they were more golden than him. Luke was thinking about how he is golden right now, but he won’t be forever. Tal said: the goal of life is to try to stay golden.

Friday

Tal said various variations on bro, as he was inspired by Luke, and said that at NBS he (Tal) was the “broffesor”.

Everyone spoke about something that was copied off of cowgirlslang.com, which we shall not expel to the world as it was kind of inappropriate and Tal does not wan to bring shame and scorn raining down upon us.

Jesse came home to an empty house and she was scared so she called Anneke and went to her house. She said that she feels safe with Anneke.

Tal said that he was having a good teacher/student relationship with Jesse and she was having good thoughts and he wa sin a good “conversation” with her. Tal explained how he sometimes teases us to get out something more, but it is a way to find some cracks and to get us in a conversation with him, and he is always trying to lure us into conversations, like a bullfighter; or like a fisherman, offering a tasty looking lure to big “Catty-Wampuses.” (Extra credit: find the etymology and meaning of “catty-wampus.”)

Fairchild, A.K.A. Morgan, spoke about her mom sewing curtains for her room. Morgan always told her they were nice, and she said she felt good that her mom was doing something that she cared about, that was creative.

Rio started to talk, saying “This person like…” After the word “like” Tal interrupted and told him to start over. Rio then talked about how there are some things that are important and some are not.

Simon said that the day before he was reading about flying squirrels. He enjoyed this and thought that flying squirrels are almost perfect machines.

Tal said that ducks are cool too.

Yared said that he can fly, stating “I can fly in my dreams. I am the black superman. Burger King.”

We all laughed about this for a while.

Anna told of a body builder and how he trained people, but the people didn’t like him because he was better than them.

Tal told of the amazingly difficult training regimen that He, Calder and Ollie were undergoing at Synergy Football club. A brutal physical training, modeled on a Bolivian Football Club called Tahuichi, which emphasizes having a rock solid physical and mental foundation before anything else.

Sophie went in to do her solo skating routine and said that she wants to be able to do things herself. She said she gets up at 5 am every morning to train. Tal said this is the kind of discipline, which, practiced over time, makes someone or something great.

Eric said that if you are reading the science and you are able to relate it to other things than you are doing it right.

Oliver read “Above the Oxbow” by Sylvia Plath

Here in this valley of discrete academies

We have not mountains, but mounts, truncated hillocks

To the Adirondacks, to northern Monadnock,

Themselves mere rocky hillocks to an Everest.

Still, they're out best mustering of height: by

Comparison with the sunnken silver-grizzled

Back of the Connecticut, the river-level

Flats of Hadley farms, they're lofty enough

Elevations to be called something more than hills.

Green, wholly green, they stand their knobby spine

Against our sky: they are what we look southward to

Up Pleasant Street at Main. Poising their shapes

Between the snuff and red tar-paper apartments,

They mound a summer coolness in our view.

To people who live in the bottom of valleys

A rise in the landscape, hummock or hogback, looks

To be meant for climbing. A peculiar logic

In going up for the coming down if the post

We start at's the same post we finish by,

But it's the clear conversion at the top can hold

Us to the oblique road, in spite of a fitful

Wish for even ground, and it's the last cliff

Ledge will dislodge out cramped concept of space, unwall

Horizons beyond vision, spill vision

After the horizons, stretching the narrowed eye

To full capacity. We climb to hopes

Of such seeing up the leaf-shuttered escarpments,

Blindered by green, under a green-grained sky

Into the blue. Tops define themselves as places

Where nothing higher's to be looked to. Downward looks

Follow the black arrow-backs of swifts on their track

Of the air eddies' loop and arc though air's at rest

To us, since we see no leaf edge stir high

Here on a mount overlaid with leaves. The paint-peeled

Hundred-year-old hotel sustains its ramshackle

Four-way veranda, view-keeping above

The fallen timbers of its once remarkable

Funicular railway, witness to gone

Time, and to graces gone with the time. A state view-

Keeper collects half-dollars for the slopes

Of state scenery, sells soda, shows off viewpoints.

A ruffy skylight oaints the gray oxbow

And paints the river's pale circumfluent stillness.

As roses broach their carmine in a mirror. Flux

Of the desultory currents --- all that unique

Stripple of shifting wave-tips is ironed out, lost

In the simplified orderings of sky-

Lorded perspectives. Maplike, the far fields are ruled

By correct green lines and no seedy free-for-all

Of asparagus heads. Cars run their suave

Colored beads on the strung roads, and the people stroll

Straightforwardly across the springing green.

All's peace and discipline down there. Till lately we

Lived under the shadow of hot rooftops

And never saw how coolly we might move. For once

A high hush quietens the crickets' cry.

Tal said this was his favorite Sylvia Plath poem, and she was bringing the good stuff.

Weekly Notes By Tsering

2011-01-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

"Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.

—MLK, Jr.

Monday

“What’s your goal?” Tal asked. First one person answered then it all rolled in, everyone saying their goal. It all went back to when Hugh, from Synergy Football Club, came in and told us that goals are just dreams that are written down.

Then Tal started to rant about the world cup being in Qatar

“Qatar is having the World Cup in 2022?!” But then an disturbing comment came from our science teacher

“Qatar would be a very interesting place to visit.” Everyone glared at Eric.

Anna said that the other night she was working on her story and then she came across a piece of paper from the past and stared out the window in thought. Aylee said that her Internet was down over the weekend and so she had no communication with anyone, and it made her so much more excited to see people on Monday.

Claire said that the other night her mom had done her Tarot reading and the ones that Claire had picked were Judgment and Two Roads and she picked the Swords which symbolizes hiding and that is sometimes what she feels.

There is more talk about the World Cup in Qatar.

Simon said that the other day he was talking to Tate and was really happy because he feels like Tate has opened up a lot more.

Morgan had a couple of exchange students over and they helped decorate the tree, but they were decorating it in a different way that Morgan’s family usually did it. Morgan became angry, especially after one of the students asked if he could put the angel on top, which Morgan usually did, and that her dad helped her get through it and that in the end she got to put the angel up.

Claire said that she was rearranging her room the other day and that she moved the extra bed that her dad sleeps on and that she and her dad were sad that the bed was gone because her dad used lay in it every night and talked until they both fell asleep and she was sad that it was gone away.    

Tueday

Tal said that he went with Rose and Eric to the Paramount Theater in Rutland to hear Garrison Keillor speak and that he (Tal) said he (Tal) was definately the coolest person there.

Finn was at the Dentists and she was very grumpy but her brother saw a train there and got excited so Finn’s mood changed because she saw how happy her brother was.

Simon had gone to a talk with his parents and he didn’t want to be there very much so he was being grumpy but he ended up really enjoying it. Calder and Calder’s mom Blair made a really cool gift for Dalia—a lobster boat made out of a giant box of cardboard. It was a surprise and Calder had left it in the living room at Tal’s house for a surprise.

Wednesday

When we came in Tal started ranting about Santa Claus and how sant couldn’t get to so many houses in one night and there was no snow to land his sled on in Atlanta. Claire said that she wanted to be treated not like she was lower or superior to anyone and she was really happy because she was talking about this with her mom and her mom understood this.

Morgan said that the other night her parents had asked how Kiley and Morgan’s day had been and Kiley said that Tate had talked a lot and it made Kiley happy and that made Morgan happy.

Tal started talking about the Nutcracker and the weird snowflakes and many people interrupted and said things like, “I would make a great snowflake.”

Thursday

Anna said that she had went to the Gailer play and that after the play her mom was very late so when her mom finally came Anna was being a grumpy gorilla and so when she went home she started crying and her mom comforted her.

We then sang to Kiley “Happy Birthday” in a very high squeaky out of tune voice.

Miles said that he was being a grumpy gorilla but then he talked to Finn on Facebook and it made him happy.

Patrick was done with all done with his homework and he heard his mom reading a story to his brother and he just sat down and listened.

Rose said that Jared’s class had gone to the Vermont Folk Life Center to see the gingerbread houses and Jared saw Kamille’s and voted for it three times and saw other kids voting for it.

Luke watched a movie that reminded him of how appreciative he is for his dad. Eric said that he was happy to see how much the seventh graders were excited to do things. Jesse saw her sister playing soccer and that she was working really hard and that motivated her. Patrick said how much he loved poetry so he had started collecting all his poems and put them in a book.

Reed saw Tsering ski and it was her first time skiing and Reed thought that she had perfect motivation and was doing very well, and I must agree with her.

Anna was at her ballet class and she saw a little girl dancing because she loved it and Anna was very motivated to be like the little girl, dancing because she loved it.

Finding Freedom: Weekly Notes by Simon

2010-12-05T17:57:00.000-08:00

MONDAY Meeting

Claire Watched Into the void, a movie about two people climbing in Peru, and one of them slips and falls into a crevasse. The other one has to cut him loose, because otherwise both of them would die. The one who fell survives, but it still got Claire thinking about how difficult it would be to cut the rope.

“If it was me and my mom, I don’t know what I would do,” said Claire.

Over vacation Patrick said he was always with relatives and never alone. One day he saw some bugs all bunched together, and realized they were safer in a pack. He later saw a dead deer in someone’s trunk, and thought about how that deer was alone, and it had been unsafe. It made him think about how there is safety in numbers. He concluded by saying that from this he knows that he doesn’t want to be alone.

Tate Watched The Deer Hunter over break and it was awesome. At this proclamation Tal gasped, and told us how great that movie is, going as far as to tell us the plot.

Aylee told us that her Grandmother just came back from India, where people live in extreme poverty, but their religion tells them that they need to be happy with what they have. There they have virtually nothing, but are very happy.

It seems that sometimes we don’t appreciate how lucky we are, to have a house, food, and above all many people who love us. We seem to take love for granted, but it is not something that is granted at birth.

Eric told us that this morning he was raging with the projector, complaining that we had all screwed it up, and tangled the lines, and was stressing himself out ridiculously. At that Sarah came down and said, “You stress too much Eric.” And before his incredulous eyes, she set it all up for him, reducing his stress level.

This vacation Anna went to Washington DC, and was excited to go visit a church that she had gone to when she was younger. She would go, it would all be silent, and she would think, and it would be perfect. She got there…. And there were a bunch of people taking pictures and talking in very loud voices.

She later went to the national gallery and saw a Picasso, and sat there staring at it a long time and thinking.

“So I realized you can’t really decide how things are going to turn out but you have to let them happen,” she said.

Sophie and Anna get hard-core points for jumping in a pond in Vermont in November.

Tal announced that it was HOLIDAY TIME!!! "DON’T FORGET TO BRING YOU TEACHERS EXPNSIVE ELECTRONICES or quality wines from Chile. Preferably whole wooden crates.No, not the wine in the cardboard boxes, but in bottles in a case."

"Any student knowing of restaurants serving marvelous French cuisine in would do well with a half dozen or so a gift certificates, but of course no one has that!” Tal said looking at Kamille.

Tal is a corrupt and sad little man.

Anna read Still I Rise by Maya Angelou, warning us not to get too distracted about it mentioning sex but focusing on the deeper meaning.

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise.

Events from 8/9 science

As we settle down into the class some people run outside for some last-minute living pattern collecting (which we should have got over break). When we are all here Claire declares she deserves extra points because she’s bleeding. Eric is not impressed.

“YOU HAD ALL WEEK!!!!!!!

After a brief introduction to class (in which Eric says that all living things have patterns for a reason) Eric starts to talk about the strange contraption that Donna got on EBay. After some Very deductive reasoning, Eric theorizes that it is a projector of some sort, judging from the fan, and tilted mirror at the bottom.

After that we go downstairs and start to watch Micro cosmos, a movie about bugs. While starting Claire leaves food lying around. Calder confronts her by saying, “You should treat your school like your house.

“I DO treat school like my house!” says Claire.

As the movie begins, it inspires various Awwwws (referring to how cute the bug are) and ewwws (to how nasty).Claire at one point joins in the awwws, and takes big steps forward from her campaign to kill all bugs. Then two snails start to “kiss” and mate. This is too much for the class, the entire sequence with the snails is filled with OOOs and AAAHs and EWWWWs and “WOW, SNAILS GETTING FRESH!”

ALL TAL

Tal reviews special lit assignments, Hands Back 3^rd character sketches. On Luke’s he stops, and asks why he wrote it,

“Well, I love Rose,” comes the answer.

“Why?”

“Well, she is so calm under pressure.”

At this Tal tells us about his thesis, which is that anything you love in someone else you want to love in yourself, or you don’t’ have in yourself but want. Being calm under pressure is something Luke wants to be able to do. Tal asks how to be calm under pressure. The answer is to STOP AND THINK! Take time, be patient, have faith.

Tal says that partly it is our age that we are looking at everything around us and wanting it, just like a large mouth bass is voracious and wants to catch all the fish it can. After an awkward silence Tal says, “Sorry, that was a terrible analogy.”

Tal wants to know if Luke feels like he is leaving his mother (growing up), and if some of those motherly feelings are going to Rose. Luke says probably. We all speculate that maybe males are looking for love, for a motherly figure. Tal tells us that that Character sketch has a story in it. Then he reads a Character sketch that has a story in it. It is Luke's, on his dad and how he doesn’t connect when he can, and that he loves him, and doesn’t want him to die, and will make the most of the time he has with him.

To get us into story mode Tal reads us a story written by an old student, Vladimir. It is about Vladimir leaving his home in Russia, and coming to the United States never to see Russia, or his friends, again.

We then decide this story is about leaving things, but not loosing them. This is how I think Luke wants to be with his dad.

Tuesday Meeting.

From amongst the usual early morning squealing (people yelling the names of random fruits, saying somewhat inappropriate things, and talking very loud about what they did last night) Tal quietly asks if anyone has anything, and all the same talking stops, and Rose raises her hand.

She noticed Sarah in math really trying, and how Rose enjoyed watching her face light up when she understood.

“And even though she is going through hard times, she is still trying really hard and doing really well,” Rose finishes

Tal then makes fun of Yared, who appears to be talking to his zipper.

Yared tells us that his brother just got his drivers license and now is not driving with Yared and his dad because he can drive himself. And from this Yared feels very separate from Yib, and lonely.

Jesse tells that for school her sister had to bring an ad, and was looking through a fashion magazine, but chose an ad for Smile Train, that helps children with cleft lips and palates, instead of something about Clairol hair color.

Tal then tells us that the things we choose tell a lot about us. He uses the cubist art we are doing in math. The image we chose tells a whole lot about us. Even if we didn’t pick an image really important to us, and just chose the first image we came across, that tells something too.

Anna then tells us that she was talking to Tate about the movie Gandhi, and she could tell that he really listens. Tal then reflects that of the three Vietnam War movies he mentioned to Tate, Tate had remembered and watched one, and tried to rent another.

Then Evan says that he went to sign up for basketball at Otter Valley, and when he saw the schedule, he realized how much his mother does for him, driving him around helping him do he things he wants.

Tal asks if he will have “snap off” warm up pants, that he can snap right off like a whip to get off when he goes into the game.

Then Tal goes on a little tangent on how dumb the name “Frost Heaves” is for Vermont's basketball team… “That name means that the team is a cold shooting team that throws frozen bricks at the basket!” he says. He gets even sadder when he finds out that their mascot is named “Bump."

Sophie reads the poem what I’ve learned so far by Marry Oliver.

What I Have Learned So Far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

Tal are told that when he told his friend that we would be going out into the woods in the rain and wind in December in Vermont to clear trails that she was happy and that it will “MAKE US TOUGHER!”

Tal tells us to invite people to the contra dance so we can get money and have more fun.

All Tal

We read a Place description with a story in it by a boy from Paideia, about playing basketball with his dad.

From details in it we decided that the story was about his growing up and following his dad, but also doing his own thing and having the boy teach his dad.

We then were told to write a story idea in five minutes. Not a definitive one, but just to get an idea.

Rider’s was about his Family, and loving them, but sometimes feeling like they aren’t as close as they could be.

We later discuss an idea Tal suggested at morning meeting, about restricting one freedom for us, and expanding another.

Ideas vary from being blind folded all day, to running the school like a jail.

“It’s already like a jail,” he hollers. “You have to do what I tell you, and you can’t leave until a certain time.”

In the end we settle on the idea of being tied to someone who you usually aren’t with, and having one be blind folded, and one not.

Tal says he will deliberate and perfect the idea for us.

Wednesday Meeting

People settle down from disappointment that the trail-clearing trip was canceled.

Tal is yelling random pieces of knowledge like “WE ARE ALL IN PRISON!” and “FEEL THE WALLS CLOSING IN! WHEN THE DOOR SLAMS BEHIND YOU, YOU KNOW IT”S REAL, BROTHER! CLANG!”

Finally we get to meeting and Rowan is the first called on.

“So I was lying in bed last night thinking about the idea of being tied to someone all day and I thought that last year I would be all worried about who I would be with but this year I realized that I would be happy with being with anyone.”

“Can we all be someone anyone would want to be with?” asks Tal. “Can we all be a person others would take pleasure in being with?”

Sophie asks why he is always looking at her. Tal says that he likes to look at someone who reacts, like Sopie, who smiles and and listens, and sometimes others of us look catatonic.

Now Eric tells us that instead of taking the Ripton bus home Rowan came home with the Lincoln people, and that when he got home, they all got out and left all the doors open to the car and that the dogs got inside the car and that it was total chaos until they finally just dragged the dogs inside.

Eric than says that they considered moving to Lincoln where it was all hippie but instead he moved to Ripton and became old and stodgy.

Mia then enters to tell us about wreath orders and that they have to be in Monday. It comes to light that Kiley and Rowan may beat Rider’s record from last year. We are debriefed about the contra dance by both Mia and Tal, the latter of whom says we are sissies if we don’t dance.

“Don’t stand out there being a tool, DANCE!”

Yared and Luke and Tal then demonstrate how to ask a girl to dance. And then Tal decides it’s time to go on with meeting.

Finn’s mom came home last night stressed and Finn saw her dad helping her calm down. Finn thought about other school systems, and the videos Simon had sent out about it, and how her mom couldn’t get one-on-one aides for her kids unless they can’t function with the other kids.

But she was also watching her dad calm her mom, and saw him helping her. Tal says her seeing that might be a story idea.

Claire then reads The Czar’s Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals by Norman Dubie.

You were never told, Mother, how old Illya was drunk

That last holiday, for five days and nights

He stumbled through Petersburg forming

A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns

And, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent

A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience

Was rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them

And gave them that look of his; the hall fell silent

And violently he threw his hair to the side and up

Went the baton, the recital ended exactly one hour

Later when Illya suddenly turned and bowed

And his mutes bowed, and what applause and hollering

Followed.

All of his cronies were there!

Illya told us later that he thought the voices

Of mutes combine in a sound

Like wind passing through big, winter pines.

Mother, if for no other reason I regret the war

With Japan for, you must now be told,

It took the servant, Illya, from us. It was confirmed.

He would sit on the rocks by the water and with his stiletto

Open clams and pop the raw meats into his mouth

And drool and laugh at us children.

We hear guns often, now, down near the village.

Don't think me a coward, Mother, but it is comfortable

Now that I am no longer Czar. I can take pleasure

From just a cup of clear water. I hear Illya's choir often.

I teach the children about decreasing fractions, that is

A lesson best taught by the father.

Alexandra conducts the French and singing lessons.

Mother, we are again a physical couple.

I brush out her hair for her at night.

She thinks that we'll be rowing outside Geneva

By the spring. I hope she won't be disappointed.

Yesterday morning while bread was frying

In one corner, she in another washed all of her legs

Right in front of the children. I think

We became sad at her beauty. She has a purple bruise

On an ankle.

Like Illya I made her chew on mint.

Our Christmas will be in this excellent barn.

The guards flirt with your granddaughters and I see...

I see nothing wrong with it. Your little one, who is

Now a woman, made one soldier pose for her, she did

Him in charcoal, but as a bold nude. He was

Such an obvious virgin about it; he was wonderful!

Today, that same young man found us an enormous azure

And pearl samovar. Once, he called me Great Father

And got confused.

He refused to let me touch him.

I know they keep your letters from us. But, Mother,

The day they finally put them in my hands

I'll know that possessing them I am condemned

And possibly even my wife, and my children.

We will drink mint tea this evening.

Will each of us be increased by death?

With fractions as the bottom integer gets bigger, Mother, it

Represents less. That's the feeling I have about

This letter. I am at your request, The Czar.

And I am Nicholas.

Jesse then makes the announcement about the Wulfmans annual Holiday party, telling us that it is a potluck and we should bring something, and that parents and siblings can come to.

All Tal

We come inside from playing with tarps out in the wind to find Rick Skogsberg, come for his second lesson on poetry.

On the board is a poem by him.

POETRY

Is a nasty critic

Wet and snapping

Biting itself

On the page

Teeth like razors

Tongue of pearl

Rick gives us a brief review of things from last time, “but let’s start before I turn this into a lecture.” He says.

“When you become a poet you have your first poet love, and Norman Dubie was mine,” says Rick.

He gives us a packet of some of his poems. We spend the rest of the time reading through them and discussing them.

Here is one.

A Day Like Any Other

broke across my disappearing body

dawn was on my knees when I jumped

up and began waving my arms in the air

trying to raise the gaze

of that far off figure of

a man fading into the near distance.

About half way though the poems the power went out, and we finished he lesson with only the extra lights (that automatically come on and cast two yellow jets of light and nothing more). We were left with the assignment to read the last poem Power and figure out what is wrong with it.

The lights being out caused quite a frenzy in the pitch dark basement, as people hurried to get their things, and after shrieks, stumbling and several repeatings of the words, “Oh my god who is that!?” we got out, and through.

Thursday Meeting

We arrive at school and there is no power. The lights are off, the printer doesn’t work, and (again) the basement is pitch black.

“GET IN HERE, YOU NEGATIVE CREEPS!” hollers Tal.

Tal starts us off with a very encouraging remark, telling us all that the people who make checklists for them selves usually do the best work, still getting it in on time and doing a quality job.

“THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS!” says Oliver.

“Maybe, but my example is Yared,” says Tal. “last night he wanted to get ahead. Did you?”

“Yeah, I got ahead,” says Yared.

Then Tal says that throughout Rick’s talk yesterday Rio was taking notes, and lots of them. And that if anyone has an image of him (Rio) as lazy, they have the wrong image, and he is probably better than a lot of us. Tal also added that Rio looked very scholarly, with his books under his arm.

“Okay who's got anything?”

Reed raises her hands, and says that she noticed Kiley taking part and commenting on Rick’s talk yesterday, and that she knows that that kind of thing was hard for Kiley last year, and that she has come a long way.

Claire then tells us that yesterday she was on the phone with Bryn and was talking to her about her story. And she realized that the ninth graders from when she was in seventh grade always stand out, and the next ones never seem as real as the ones before.

At that point Sarah and Anneke walk in, the Anneke wearing a VERY large red sweatshirt. “What the heck are you wearing?” asks Tal. “It’s my dads and I'm sorry if it offends you,” She says to Tal. We all laugh.

Tal then says how last night, around the same time Claire must have been talking to Bryn, that he remembered Bryn reading the last words of the play last year, and that she was perfect to read them. How amazing she was. Then Tal worries that he is getting too spiritual.

He then recounts how he did a letter of recommendation for an ex-student, and was paid with a sack of garlic. But inside the sack of Garlic he found a thank-you $120, and at first felt guilty because when he had asked for payment it had been a joke. He told his friend about his guilty feeling, and she said that he was being crazy and that now he will simply be ready to give someone else something when they do something nice for him—in other words—he will pass on the niceness. When she explained this to him he felt better. Calder asked him if he would use the money to buy Calder a new pair of football boots, and Tal said absoulutely not, he has already used the money to buy gas and milk.

Tate said he’d came home the day before and the power was out and he thought that he and his mother would have to do all the work, but when he got home his younger brother had come home on the bus before, and instead of jumping on the trampoline, or running around outside, he had come home, set out candles, and brought in wood for a fire. Tate had always thought of him as little, but he realized he could do everything Tate and his mom could do.

Then Luke tells us that in Middlebury he saw a college student in town that was just happy, and Luke wants to be able to be just happy, not for any reason, but just happy.

Then Anneke tells us that her parents had a party with these important legislature people and they invited Sarah’s dad to. They ended up roasting flatbreads over the fire, and then they realized the party was scheduled for tomorrow night. And then Anneke’s sister got home and complained that she didn’t have any food.

Jesse came down the stairs this morning and she saw one of their sheep staring at her, and they were just there staring at each other for a long time. And Jesse thought about how the only creatures capable of destroying the planet are humans, but all animals have to pay for it. Tal asked how she felt about standing there staring at her sheep, and she said, “I thought he was dead!” We all laughed.

Then a discussion erupts on how it’s two sheep and one “shoop,” and we decide to move on.

Yared then reads Remembered Music by Rumi

Tis said, the pipe and lute that charm our ears

Derive their melody from rolling spheres;

But Faith, o'erpassing speculation's bound,

Can see what sweetens every jangled sound.

We, who are parts of Adam, heard with him

The song of angels and of seraphim.

Out memory, though dull and sad, retains

Some echo still of those unearthly strains.

Oh, music is the meat of all who love,

Music uplifts the soul to realms above.

The ashes glow, the latent fires increase:

We listen and are fed with joy and peace.

All Tal

Tal reads a poem that was written by Chase.

Sleeping next to the red warm fire,

From the day’s work I retire.

Until the cold winter morning comes,

I wake to find myself on cracker crumbs.

I get up and go to school,

Later I am solving problems on a math room stool.

Two hours after at 10 o’clock,

I go to science and get a smock.

I find myself in the big room with all my peers,

And we sit with open ears.

When I am home I throw a ball

When my brothers start to brawl.

When the day comes to an end,

I watch the sunset slowly descend.

We talk about it, and marvel on it’s simplicity, but ingenuity.

From it we get Chase’s story idea, about his brothers.

We discuss other story ideas. Sophie takes steps forward in hers. We discuss Sarah’s, and how it relates to her current mental state and thoughts. Then Tal tells us how to write one. Simply figure out one thing you know for sure and from there figure out how you figured it out. Tal says we should have fifteen pages by Christmas break. Story ideas MUST be in Friday! Tal says.

Friday Morning

We meet at the skating rink. We immediately divide into two groups. People who want to play the fast hockey game, and the slower game. There are also those people who just want to skate around.

People play their games as music from Sophie's iPod play throughout the rink, songs such as I Like It by Enrique Iglesias, and Bad Romance by Lady Gaga.

At the beginning of the game there were some college students practicing on one end of the rink, so players from the faster game kept flying through the middle of the slower game, saying “sorry!” as they flew through the crowd.

After our time was up, we returned to the sweat-smelling locker rooms. All except for Rider, who adoringly watched the Zamboni start on the ice.

We then left the rink to go to the college building Johnson, where we were going to look at the projects that John McLeod’s architectue students had made.

When we arrived, we were given a brief overview of what the project was by the students that were there (not all of them were). They were all ideas on how to construct a bread oven/gathering place in the College organic gardens. Every student had made a design, floor plan, and model, which we spent about half an hour looking at\

We then went to the studio, where the Flatbread pizzas (our lunch) were going to arrive.

Then the pizza’s arrived. About Twenty-four of them. Apparently the person who had ordered them had calculated for the entire of John’s class to be there.

However, we are NBSers. In a feeding frenzy the first seven went. We kept on eating until there were only about ten left.

Then we made our way to the community gardens to see what the gardens looked like, and where certain projects would go.

On the walk back certain sevie boys ran ahead and attempted to scare people by hiding in the reeds and jumping out. To no success what so ever.

When we arrived back at school we had Rider’s project on the American Revolution. The amazing thing was that he didn’t have slides to show us. He drew on the board, and moved his hands, and talked. I usually take pages upon pages of notes, but here I found that I could listen, jot down the occasional date or person, but I retained the information just as well.

We ran out of time and decided to finish it on Monday.

7) Last Week:

Rider’s Project…

American Revolution: The Colonial Era (1600-1773); Prelude to the Revolution (1763-1776); The Revolution (1775-1783); The New Nation (1784-1800); Puritans, religious freedom, colonists, French Indian War, Taxation, East India Tea Company, the Quartering Act, Stamp Act, the Sons of Liberty, King George, repeal of Stamp Act, Merchants Boycotts in Boston, the Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Patriots and Loyalists, Militias; Declaration of Independence, the War, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, Ticonderoga, Valley Forge, Saratoga, George Washington, The Treaty of Paris; Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

Before moving on to One Flew over of the Cuckoo’s Nest, we finished “Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row, by Jarvis Jay Masters. Masters is still in San Quentin on death row, so as the final writing assignment all the 8^th and 9^th graders wrote a letter to him. Here is a selection of the letters we sent.

Dear Mr. Masters

Dear Jarvis, your book has given me something I will carry for the rest of my life. It has taught me how to be and to believe in my own religion. Your book was like a mirror. You have shown me what it is like to be in jail. I feel all of us in the world go through fazes where we think were in hell, but were not. This book has taught me to love my life. To love every single second of it. I know that you think where you are right now is a kind of hell, but in a way you have made it into a better place. You know everyone, there are people that love you, care about you. In the book it shows how you guys show your love for each other. And out here we show our love the same way. You are not missing anything other then the crappy things getting build. The way you showed the guys suffering, how they wanted to be free and how some killed themselves because they thought that was a kind of freedom, to me that shows a lot of power. I want to ask you, how did you pull yourself together when you were surrounded with all the guys begging for life, and begging for something to come love them and comfort them? You seem like you are in your own state. If someone asks you a question you answer, if someone tells you something you listen you don't argue. And how did you cope with the guys yelling in the morning while you were trying to meditate? Even though your in a square place with nothing interesting, you seem like you have brought life to all things that are dead. The jail cells, the people, the place. You are in peace with everything and for most people even out here it is hard to be happy and enjoy the things there around. You have taught me to look around and love the things I am seeing. The way you described your mom getting beat and hurt. That got me closer to my mom and love her more. The book showed me something, a guide in life, something I can fallow. I love everything in life although sometimes I don't think so. I love the way you wrote the book, and the book has more power in it because you wrote in in jail. It shows how we can still live life where ever we are.

Thank You,Your brother and Friend Yared 

Dear Jarvis,

When I read the first paragraph on page 149, which said:

“I’ve realized that everything is a continual process of coming and going. I don’t hold happiness or anger for a long time. It just come and goes.”

It reminded me of a book that my class read in Literature last month. The book was called “Of Mice and Men”. One of the main characters is named Lennie. He loves to pet mice in his pocket, but he always pets them to hard and they die. The problem for him was not that he didn’t have enough love; it was that he had too much love and he didn’t know how to control himself. Freedom, in my opinion is just that. It is learning how to use your love. It is overcoming the fear that your love is not enough, and it is being able to let go of what you love in order to grow. To grow up and change, we must allow ourselves to leave the things we are attached to in order to move forward and make room for new things. It is like a child. The child has a blanket or a stuffed animal when they are younger. But as they grow, they find themselves still having this attachment. But the truth is, the only way they can grow up, is to enable themselves to not hold on so tightly. It was like when Freddie found that his last relative had died. At first, he was trying to hold it in. But all at once it came out in a flood of violence and raw confusion. If he were to stay in that state, to be permanently trapped in the feeling of utter rage, then he would not be able to live, to move forward, to go on with the little freedom he had and expand his mind. Once we are at a place where we are willing to give away all positions and to let go of those who we love, only then can we free ourselves from the illusion that life is what we have. If we can press forward, keep moving toward what we want, we will be just a little closer to freedom.

When you told the inmates to flood the tier, you took a risk, to save your enemies and those that mistreated you. The rest of the people wanted to kill them, wanted to make the them pay for how they acted. But you found a way to let the rage go, to simply thing through the situation and understand what risk must be run. You put yourself on the line, to protect the guards that had treated you like dirt. And yet, I think that is what we all should do. When we are slapped, we should turn the other cheek. We should kiss the feet of those how steal from us, and walk along side those who have lied to our faces. This is one of the hardest tasks. When we are hurt, we want to hurt back. When we are cheated, we want to cheat back, and when we are slapped, we naturally want to slap back. But we are all brothers and sister. We are all struggling to survive in this world that we have turned into a living hell. And only when we accept that others may be feeling the same way, can we help others to help themselves. Would you slap your sister if she wouldn’t get you toilet paper? Would you kill you brother for not giving you a spoon? When I observe the actions of the people around me, I realize how inhuman we can sometimes be. We say we are right, that we are always right, but yet can everyone be right? Proof is just a cover for instability. When we are put in a place of discomfort, like when you were telling Alex to kill himself, I find that we unconsciously defend ourselves. We put up a wall so we wont get hurt. But every once and awhile, someone finds a way to penetrate that wall. When you were talking to Alex, something got through; you found a way for him to realize that any life is worth living, even if we are unfree. You helped him help himself, you let go of the comfort of being kind, and it turned out that that bluntness was what Alex really needed.

To walk away is one of the hardest things in the world. To love something but leave it is like being stabbed in the back. I often find myself wondering why things must leave. Why we can surround ourselves with everything and everyone we love. I think that if we focus too much on external joy, we will not be able to find happiness within ourselves. When we focus on what we like, we can’t get to know what we don’t like. When we play safe and don’t risk anything, we become slaves to our own desires. Only when we know ourselves and who we want to be, better then external pleasures, can we teach ourselves to hold on, but not to tightly.

I have a dream. When we are free, we will be floating, gently visiting different places and holding our weight with our own wings. We will be willing to drift, higher and higher, watching the landscape shrinking below. We will give those who have holes in their wings a hand, pulling them along only until they have patched the hole, then letting go and moving forward. We may attach to a passing figure, holding hands as we rise and rise, but we will let go and know it’s okay. We will simply be without forcing ourselves among others. We won’t join groups, but will dance with the shadows. We may fall at one time or another, but we will trust, that others will care enough to hold us in our time of weakness and release us when we are strong.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me. I can see from your book that you are finding freedom. I once heard a quote saying: “Jump off a cliff and build your winds on the way down.” I think you have jumped and I can see you are building you wings. All though you are on death row, I think you are learning how to live.

Best wishes in the creation of your wings,

Yours truly, Jesse Marie Wulfman

Dear Mr. Masters,

My name is Kiley, and I am writing to you after reading your book, Finding Freedom. We read it in school for our literature class, and I really liked it. I think that it is really cool that you published a book and became a Buddhist and did something with your life, even though you were in jail. That, to me, seems like it would be a really hard thing to do.

I liked the scene about the dream you had, where you were watching yourself die. I don’t know why I loved this scene so much, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that the entire story I read, the one you told through your book, your life story, feels like a dream, existing in another world that wasn’t the one I am living in now. So it was like reading about a dimension within a dimension. It also was just showing death, from an onlooker’s perspective as well as your own. And death isn’t something pretty, that’s also what I saw. Another one of the scenes I liked was when you talked to Alex as well about suicide, and about how you wanted his TV. I thought that was really cool of you to do and great that you could speak in a language he could understand. It makes me think that if everyone spoke the same language and understood one another, people would stop fighting, you know?

Anyway, death was also really present in some parts of your book, like in the scene with Bryan or really in any of the scenes. But my favorite scene about death was Maxism. I think he’s got it right, Max does, about how we should look at death. He knows he is going to die soon, and he knows nothing he does or says can stop it. But he accepts it. He hasn’t gone crazy like some of the other people in San Quentin, to spend the rest of his life lost inside himself. He accepts what is going to come, and he even comes up with a philosophy for it. Emerson once said that we are always passing through an infinite amount of circle toward a horizon we will never reach. I think that when you get that feeling, of happiness or realization or just something that you can’t understand, you have passed through one of those circles. And even though bad feelings may come later, you have this new knowledge that will always be part of you as you continued towards the next horizon (by you I mean people in general). But I think that Max passed through one of the circles as he read the poem. Maybe people finally reach the horizon when they die. Maybe the horizon is heaven, an end to the journey through circles.

I also liked the part about the ants and the sugar water, because sometimes bugs seems like little rocks or robots that have no feelings, are just there to be a nuisance, and that they don’t really matter. And we’ve all killed bugs. But when you think about it, the bugs aren’t that different from ourselves really, in that they are just one big part of the whole picture, like our earth, which is completely small and tiny compared to what’s out there. Humans love compassion and feeling loved, so why shouldn’t ants? And I think that everyone should take some time out of their busy lives to notice or help a bug instead of swatting it away. Maybe we can learn from them.

Thank you so much for reading my letter. I really enjoyed your book, and I hope that my letter finds you doing well.

Sincerely,

Kiley Pratt,

Dear Mr. Masters,

In school this year, we read your book, “Finding Freedom: Letters from Death Row.” I was very moved by many of the sections pertaining to your home life when you were a kid. I guess it is because I have a fear of abandonment. I have never actually been abandoned or alone, I suppose that I am fairly privileged, but it’s the fear that haunts me. When I was three my parents split up and I was a bit confused, I didn’t really know what to think. When all that you know is your parents, you become attached, which is natural because you are absolutely dependent on them for everything, food, clothes, love. But when you find that they are not perfect, you become confused. These people, who were like gods to me when me I was young, now seem like average imperfect mere mortals. That is what I am facing as a teenager; I am learning new things about myself and the people around me every day. While I see the imperfections in my parents I also need to see the good qualities that they possess. These past two years, my seventh and eighth grade years, I have been seeing new things about myself that I never would have seen when I was younger. Recently I have started running. I think I’m running to get to myself. Or maybe to get to a part of myself that can sometimes be hard to reach when I’m with people. I think that that is something that you attained through Buddhism. Although the methods are different, they result is similar. By running I can be at peace with my own thoughts. I sometimes run down to a graveyard to think, talk to the graves and just sit on the cold grass gazing up at the sky, wondering what is out beyond my slice of the world.

“I came across a tree growing in the pavement of a parking lot between cars. My first reaction was “how can this be possible?” But I wasn’t in school, I’d never learn these things. I smashed the little tree because I knew I’d never go to school. There was no room for wonder in my life.”

When you are young, everything seems so magnified. It seems huge in your mind, and you can’t really see past your own life to anything else. Someone could call you a vandal for this action, they could say that you were a misguided kid and you didn’t deserve anything more than what you had but I wholeheartedly disagree. The people who would say that are refusing to look past their own lives into the life of somebody else. I don’t think that you smashed the tree out of anger and hate but out of desperation. Out of wanting something more but not quite knowing how to get that, or knowing that you couldn’t. You didn’t want to give up, to let it go, but you had to. I see you as a person who is strong enough to make the best out of absolutely any situation he’s put in. The first scene in the book is proof of that. You walked into your cell that first day and cleaned it top to bottom before you did anything else. That to me says determination. I know that you can and will overcome this prison sentence I have faith in you and in that in the end, all that matters is staying true to yourself and your beliefs. Thank you so much for giving me a slice of your wisdom.

Sincerely,

Claire Skogsberg

Climbing Up to Visibility

2010-11-15T06:56:00.000-08:00

It’s the small window of time in the morning when classes are switching, from math to science to study. Sarah wants to talk about her project.

“Tal, can I focus on Bobby Sands? Oh, and I have U2’s song ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday.’ Can I play that?”

“Of course.”

“I’m just going to research my project,” says someone else.

“I am such a bad reader. I’m slow. I’m like…” a voice calls out.

“Tal, do you like my John Lennon drawing?” asks Yared.

“Yared, I am helping Sarah on her project right now. I can’t look at your drawing.”

“So you don’t like my John Lennon drawing.”

“I can’t say cause I haven’t seen it.”

“Tal, do you know what this is?” Yared says. “ It’s the bird.” He draws a crude six-fingered hand on the white board.

“Yared, that hand has six fingers. That’s a terrible hand.”

“You don’t like me, do you, because I’m black!” shouts Yared.

“Miles, Miles, not cool, bro,” comes another voice.

“Sorry, sorry!”

“Oh my god, my game that I made that I made for math, it’s called Geomatrictionary. It’s really fun,” says Rider. “I think I’m going to market it.”

“Yeah, it’s really fun,” says someone.

“Yeah, totally.”

“Let’s hug.”

“Okay, that’s weird.”

“Don’t take my computer,” comes a shout.

“Uh—awwww.” There is a brief scuffle around the computer.

“I’m going to eat it. The computer! It taste like chicken. Robot chicken!”

Anneke enters the room. “I was late because I went to the doctor. They gave me like all this stupid medicine. It was like I was two again. Great, now he is writing everything I say. No Tal, Non, no, no, no!”

“Anneke, I heard your voice! You’re back!” exclaims one of Anneke’s peers.

“No, no, he’s typing everything I’m saying!”

“Hey, Rider, let’s look up sports cars,” says Miles.

“No, I’m going to do doing my work.”

“Tal, I’m going home because I have the sniffles,” says Evan.

“Evan, are you a wuss?”

“Tal, that’s not what I said.”

“Anna, tell me about your retreat.”

“Okay. It is called Metta-Earth.”

Metta Earth Retreat? Anna, Why don’t they call it an advance? Why should you be retreating. You should be advancing.”

“Okay,” she says, smiling.

***

“You know what I like to talk about,” Rider says, interrupting. “The difference between ‘precise’ and ‘accurate.’” No one is really listening, but he’s telling us any way.

“Hey Tal, we finally got some guitar music in the big room,” says Ollie. “My guitar is finally in tune.”

“You should play “All Blues” by Miles Davis,” says Rider. “That song is sweet.”

“Miles Davis is the boss!” says Yared.

“I am, aren’t I?” says Miles.

“Play ‘Chameleon’ by Herbie Hancock,” says Ollie. “Or ‘So What,’ by Miles Davis. I’m learning that on guitar.”

“Wait. How does it go?” Yared says, strumming his guitar.

“I’m named after Miles Davis,” says Miles.

“Goddammit,” says Yared. “I was just practicing it this morning. Now I can’t remember it.”

“Clearasil rapid action medication,” says Claire, prancing into the big room.

***

In the lead up to the trip there is the usual high social/hormonal excitement. Apparently the car one is riding in is the most important factor for happiness in the next 48 hours.

But under the hype is the quiet movement of emotion that runs under everything we do, everyday. Insecurity? That’s the abstract word for the feeling of invisibility, a sense of powerlessness that rises when one fears he will not be able to articulate the developing inner world.

Rio feels like others are criticizing him for what? Being lazy? Out of it? Not caring or intense. Never working hard or with focus?

“Or is it that you feel like you are not getting something inside of you across to them?” I aks him.

“Yeah.”

“So they may have a picture of you, but you are aware that you are struggling to bring out anything that would change their picture of you. So what they see, and what you then feel about what they see, becomes the picture of yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“And so, who here has the power to change that picture?”

“I do.”

“But it’s hard for you.”

“Yeah,” he nods. His face is reddening and his eyes are filled and watery.

“Rio, you feel like no one sees what you do?”

He nods.

“No one knows what you really care about.”

“Yeah.”

“Who is responsible for them understanding and seeing you.”

“I am.”

“But you feel like some kids in class are mostly just giving you shit without really caring about you. Without really knowing anything about you?”

He is nodding.

“So when DO you work, when are you all out?”

“At hockey.”

“Why?”

“Because I really care about it.”

“Did you set a goal about hockey.”

“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

“I want to make it to the NHL.”

I look at the class. “Do ya’ll understand that it doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t make it to the NHL, but that he has a goal. Did you write it down?”

“Yeah.”

“So now when you go to hockey practice you’re thinking about that goal?”

“Yeah.”

“And when you are at practice what are you doing consciously?”

“When the coach says to do laps for conditioning I always work the hardest so I am first.”

“That means you are going to get better. If you do that every time you will be come better than others over time. If you keep doing that you will be great.”

He nods.

“But no one here sees that. It’s not present. And so your story keeps having the same conclusion. Rio is quiet. HE seems passive. He seems to “not care”—he seems like your average 15 year boy, sleepy and catatonic in the morning, distractible during the day, at his absolute fluent freest being with a ball at his feet or a chasing after a puck or ball.”

I look a round, trying to figure out how to get to whatever is in there and bring it out.

“Hey. Someone go get that poster in there.” It’s Rios’ poster. I had been looking at it the other day. It seemed extraordinarily detailed. Filled with ten quotes about freedom and revolution, and each quote cut out into the separate words and arrange in jagged, downward falling zig-zags. One of his quotes was from Rousseau: “Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains.”

But in the rush of the day I have not had time to really look into the poster. To understand what it is saying, in its layers of collage, in the various images. If there is intention embedded in Rio’s work, neither I nor anyone in the class has really looked at it. We have all unwittingly participated in the the situation in which Rio feels invisible, even though his work is hanging on the wall and he is sitting at the table in front of of us.

“The poster there, it’s above the printer.” Rider scampers to get it.

“Rio, tell me what you were thinking when you made this. What all is here?”

“Well, the eye-shaped thing, that’s an eye. It’s what I see. See how the eye is split and there is that whirlpool is going down through it, that’s how I sometimes feel, water going down or draining out.”

I hold the poster up so everyone can see it. “Tell me more about it. What about this?”

“There is the cut out face of a man, the size of a passport photo. That’s James Van Reims Dyk, of the Flyers.” The Flyers re Rio’s favorite hockey team.

“Van Ram’s Dick?” I shout.

“Tal, shut up. That’s so dumb!” someone complains.

“Oh I get it.”

“Tal! He’s telling a story.”

“Okay, Rio, tell us about the guy. Why is he on there?”

“Well, He was really poor when he was growing up. He never had much money and he couldn’t afford new sticks, and when he broke one he would use duct tape so he could keep using it. And he built his own rink behind his house so he could play all the time.”

“And you admire him.”

“I feel like him sometimes.”

“Even though he is not the best player.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell us more.”

“Well, the guy in the corner is me.” In the corner is a nine-year old’s drawing of a USA hockey player holding up a champion’s trophy.

“We got it. What else?”

“Well the arrow sing pointing down says ‘one way,’ because there is only one way to go.

And the poems and quotes?

Well I arranged them like water dripping down, going from cup to cup, and they are all ending up at the bottom, where I put that part that looks like waters made out of words.”

“What else?”

“Well, that shoe, it’s kind of corny looking, but what it says: ‘Looks good…feels good.’ That’s sort of how I feel, like people see me on the outside, but what’s on the inside is much different.”

“What else?”

“That ice climber.”

“The dude in the crevasse?”

“Yeah, that’s me trying to climb up.”

The class has been listening the whole time, and I have been showing them the poster as Rio tells us everything.

“Y’all, this whole thing is conscious. His poster is the map of him. There’s a whole story here. None of us have been able to read it, or taken the time. That’s not really our fault, but it tells us that what we see is not really what is actually there. Or what is actually there is much greater than what we see.”

To listen to Rio talk, the afternoon before our trip to Montreal, is to see a the miraculous consellation that makes each of us up. I’ve made time for us to look long enough to see him. It is true, in the first half of the conversation, I was doing the work. I was saying for him what he had not yet been able to say. When I held his poster up, he had a picture of himself, an artifact that was wholly his. When he looked at that self-made reflection of himself, he could begin to tell us what he was made of, of the materials and images he’d used to make himself. He is all hope and intention, a boy creating himself. When he could see it the words came easy, already formed, as they must have been, since, in the poster, he’d already said them. We just hadn’t seen it or heard it yet. We needed to listen and look. And he had to talk, to say it, so he could see it again, too.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at North Branch School in the Morning

2010-11-15T06:41:00.000-08:00

The NBS weekly notations
By Aylee

Monday

In meeting here is what we heard about. Finn went to Bridget's house because her mom wanted to collect some oak leaves and she had a lot of fun jumping on the trampoline with Juniper. Tal talked about his neighbors trees and how he wants to cut them down. Claire listened to the German Beatles and at first thought that they weren't as good but realized that she liked them just as much and that it didn't really mater what the lyrics were or if she could understand them. Rider said that when Hugh Brown came he was intrigued because hugh talked about “street values”. Here we talk about “huge ideas” like the meaning of life and how should we live but Hugh talked more about actually living those ideas and putting them into action. Hugh had talked about when he was at a party or something and he saw a guy picking up a girl who was wearing a really short skirt and the girl was mad and embarrassed. This was against Hugh's morals, and he believed that respect should be given to women (it should) and so he marched over and told the guy so. This did not end well (it ended in a scrap) because the guys friends were there but Hugh had stood up to what he believed. Also Yared and Rider went to Berklee College of Music and they had a good time. They were both wearing Berkley gift-shop merchandise on Monday

Eric has observed that instead of the occasional boredom and uninterestedness of some NBSers in science class, we have started to say interesting things, we have taken what we know and made something of it. Instead of just learning about the facts that have already been discovered, we make of it something of our own, our own discoveries, such as having a lively debate on if ideas were alive or not in science class today.

Tal said, off of Riders comment and Eric's comment, that it was like house, we have the facts, the foundation, so now we need to build. It can't be only ideas and concepts, it has to be concrete, real, livable in-able. Ollie spent about 4 times more time on a science assignment than he has ever spent. He was working on the cooking project and made pomegranate ice cream with mint whipped cream and fried goat cheese stuff, served with fresh pomegranate seeds. It was amazing.

Tal blabbed about how he severely dislikes/hates the word chuckles except when used as Charlie's nick name. He also hates the word chortle. Tal is toying with the idea of banning the word "chuckle."

Rose has been thinking about how electronic impulses are what make us have different personalities and it made her sad. She felt very small and pointless but then she talked to her sister about it and her sister had heard that the same amount of electronic impulses we use is the number that powers a whole city. So that made her feel significant again.

Luke played really hard in his hockey game because there were only about 2 subs. He felt good after he did that. Calder had his first soccer meeting at the field house- and was elated to be playing soccer again

Tal talked about how when Su White told us the story about how a man went to hell and every one was starving because the handles of their spoons were longer than their arms therefor impossible to eat with but then he went to heaven and everyone had the same spoons except they were feeding each-other across the table. (It was an awesome story-thank you Su) and while we were listening Tal watched Claire's expression of undivided attention. Then at the last line about heaven, claire smiled and she was very in-the-moment. Tal said that after Hugh finished talking, saw Tate clapping quite vigorously and Tal was happy to see Tate happy and visibly enjoying Hughes speech so much. Tal also said that Aylee, (me) is doing very well and being very aware and helping the school in lots of ways, like passing out the lit books without being asked. I did this simply because I knew I had to be done and Tal was overtired.

Claire saw me, yes me again, singing to a song in her project and she was happy to see me happy and enjoying things. Also Claire's project was awesome

Rider read the poem which was:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Tuesday

Kiley was in the book store and she picked up Justin Beiber's book and read a little and realized that he is just a normal kid, and that all the fame and popularity was just a “chance thing;” it was just by chance that he had a good voice and that he got so famous but he is still just a teenager like us.

Patrick said that he thought that he had lost his hat that his dad had given him and he got really upset because it is special to him. He doesn't want to lose it because it is from his dad. But then he found it so everything was better.

Anna went to a coming of age thing at the Metta-Earth institute by my house and spent a lot of time there. While there she forgot about what time it was there and she worried a little about her home work but after a while she felt more free because there was nothing she could do except enjoy where she was. She didn't have time to do her home work which she got all freaked out about. But really since she had been thinking and experiencing things at Metta Earth that was work enough and Tal said that that can sometimes take the place/come before home work. Tal also says that if you sit around writing all the time you wouldn't have real life experiences to write about.

Claire said that her mom and dune picked her up and her mom was saying how she felt like her own mom didn't care about her. Claire, being the smart and opinionated girl she is, openly stated that she thought that every parent loves their child. When they argued about it Claire got upset and went and laid on the wet ground in her yard. She says that she doesn't usually do that but it felt good.

Ollie said that he was very excited about soccer. Yared was sad and says he plays soccer in his head because he can't play with his body.

Rose was reading a book and in it the people say goodbye to each other just by touching the others arm and looking into their eyes instead of saying bye. Rose said how she notices that Ollie doesn't like when people say "I love you" because he doesn't feel like it is real. She says that maybe he is right in that when people had less words to use they were more meaningful.

Claire read poem:

Upon The Image Of Death

Before my face the picture hangs
That daily should put me in mind
Of those cold names and bitter pangs
That shortly I am like to find;
But yet, alas, full little I
Do think hereon that I must die.

I often look upon a face
Most ugly, grisly, bare, and thin;
I often view the hollow place
Where eyes and nose had sometimes been;
I see the bones across that lie,
Yet little think that I must die.

I read the label underneath,
That telleth me whereto I must;
I see the sentence eke that saith
Remember, man, that thou art dust!
But yet, alas, but seldom I
Do think indeed that I must die.

Continually at my bed's head
A hearse doth hang, which doth me tell
That I ere morning may be dead,
Though now I feel myself full well ;
But yet, alas, for all this, I
Have little mind that I must die.

The gown which I do use to wear,
The knife wherewith I cut my meat,
And eke that old and ancient chair
Which is my only usual seat,-
All these do tell me I must die,
And yet my life amend not I.

My ancestors are turned to clay,
And many of my mates are gone;
My youngers daily drop away,
And can I think to 'scape alone?
No, no, I know that I must die,
And yet my life amend not I.

Not Solomon for all his wit,
Nor Samson, though he were so strong,
No king nor person ever yet
Could 'scape but death laid him along;
Wherefore I know that I must die,
And yet my life amend not I.

Though all the East did quake to hear
Of Alexander's dreadful name,
And all the West did likewise fear
To hear of Julius Caesar's fame,
Yet both by death in dust now lie;
Who then can 'scape but he must die?

If none can 'scape death's dreadful dart,
If rich and poor his beck obey,
If strong, if wise, if all do smart,
Then I to 'scape shall have no way.
Oh, grant me grace, O God, that I
My life may mend, sith I must die.

Wednesday

Miles said that he had a good talk with his mom about his sister and father and school and he said that it was good to have that kind of conversation with her.

Rose heard chase say that he liked “all his sevies” and that made her happy because the fact that he said 'my' implied that he belonged to them and they belonged to him. It is good that the sevies are getting to be friends already. They are already forming a group. Rose hopes that everyone can say that they are part of a group like that because it is a good feeling to be included. Also Jarred got all excited about who will be in his class when he comes to NBS in two years I think. Tal said that when he moved here from Atlanta, he was moving away from a pretty perfect situation, he had a good status at Paideia and Henry was in their "15 year plan” so he was worried when he sent henry to Quarry hill School. But then when Henry came home he said that he “liked his Quarry Hill school” so that mad Tal feel better. The idea of possession and being possessed. A child should wan to belong in the world and to his or her place, Tal said.

Anna saw lots of boys playing in the snow at lunch and it made her happy to see them happy and together. I might add that it is also a small miracle that the boys have been having snowball fights every day since there has been snow yet we haven't had anyone get hurt or mad yet. Tal added that Patrick, the schools youngest member, has been having so much fun at lunch out in the snow that he has been forgetting to eat. Tal says that he needs to work on self-regulating and when Anna sees them outside she should remind them to eat a little. Funny, I seem to recall this happening to me in 3rd grade. But the lesson is that we need to self regulate ourselves, take care of ourselves, and havve fun snow-ball fights.

Jesse had to make dinner with Nathan the other night. Nathan was very unhelpful but Jesse made dinner. And for dessert she made crème puffs. She was thinking about random acts of kindness and she decided to bring Sophie and Kiley crème puffs.

Simon felt bad for making fun of Calder, who has to get braces.

Tal asked Calder to put the leftovers from dinner away while he did wood chores and when he came in he saw that Calder had washed the dishes and cleaned the counter too. Rowan did extra chores in the morning and made Eric's life a lot easier

Sophie wrote Patrick an email saying that he was doing good in school. Which is very true.

Tal noticed how hard Ollie is working in soccer practice for Synergy because he just joined and it is hard to do what the other guys have been doing. He has to work really hard all the time.

Eric said that the 'compost crew' worked very well together the other day when they were working on their song for Sophie and Patrick. They were all working together and Rider played the drums on a recycling bin which actually sounded very good.

Simon had a good time in carpool.

Reed read the poem; "Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird" by Wallace Stevens

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Say You Want a Revolution

2010-11-09T03:48:00.000-08:00

We heard projects, first from Kiley, on the Russian Revolution: She asked us: What would you be willing to physically revolt against? Violent or peaceful revolution ? Is violence sometimes necessary? Definition of communism. Early history of Russia before the Tsars. Russkaya Pravda. Early Russian Leaders…Ivan the Great, Catehrine the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great. Serfdom.Pre-revolution events…peasant revolts against Catherine the Great began a long-standing history of fear of peasant revolt…The Decemberist Revolt, 1825—3000 rebel soldiers marched into St. Petersburg against Czars’ troops…they wanted freedom of speech. Nicholas 1—1796-1855…Alexander II, (the liberator) ended serfdom throughout Russia. In 1829 there were 23 million serfs out of 67 million people. This way revolution would be avoided. Alexander the III. Afraid of what might happen to him, …his advisors—feared freedom of speech and press and were against Democracy…Tsar Nicholas Romanov II/ Alexandra Feordorovna…Khodynka Tragedy. Vladimir Lenin, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks, the Duma, Bloody Sunday, 1905 Revolution, October Manifesto…the sailors of Kronstadt, the British Hemophilia Line, Grigori Rasputin, WW I (1914-1918), the impoverishment of Russia during the war…The February Revolution, Trotsky, the July Days, the October Revolution, the peasants throwing out Provincial Government while World War I goes on. White Army, Red Army, 1921 Famine, eye witness accounts of the murder of the Czars family, Stalin and Communist Russia… “The Twelve,” by Alexander Block..

“Remember the evil which is now in the world will become yet more powerful, and that it is not love that conquers evil, but love.” Olga Romanov.

In Claire’s Musical Revolution in the 1960’s project, we learned about the Elvis Presley, early Rock and Roll, Buddy Holly, the Beatles and the British Invasion, the key events of the 1960’s in a time line, surf music, the Dionysian vs. Humanistic impulses in the 60’s, Vietnam War in which 58,000 American soldiers dies, the Lyrics to the Beatles’ “Revolution,” Hitchcock’s film Psycho, which came out in 1960, “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley , the Liverpool Lads and the Cavern Club, Woodstock, Hippies, the SDS and the Port Huron Statement, Bob Dylan, the Kennedys, fashions, popular culture, The Archies, the Mamas and the Papas, MLK, the March on Washington, and many other items. We were also treated to a musical “coda’ of the Sixties in a sound montage made by Claire’s half sister Lily. Our questions: what made this a time of change? What was coming out of people all over the world during the early 1960’s. What force did music have to voice ideas and feelings that many people shared. The All the kids were divided up into groups: The Beatles, Stones, Crickets, Mama’s and Papas, The Velvet Underground, The Who, and each group had to make a SDS Port Huron Statement.

On Friday: we heard Su White tell about the parable of the Empty Bowl; we did an exercise to find out the economic status of the rest of the world, dividing up into the percentages of people who live on less that $785 per year (55%), those who live on $785-$9300 (30%) and those that live on more than 9300 (15 percent).

Then we had a guest, Bridget Nardiello, who did a short workshop on “what I believe.” She challenged each of us to begin thinking about our beliefs, and we began making lists. At first it was hard: Ask your self to say out loud what you believe, then multiply that by 100. Then we listened to a little boy from Texas, 6 years old, who made a list of 100 things and we heard him read 30 of them. Then we began our own lists, and soon enough the lists were growing like wild plants, everybody putting everything on and end. We will keep these lists growing the rest of the year. The beliefs will change, mutate, expand, disappear, become less true. But we want to begin to think about it. The beliefs are no more than hopes until they are said. When they are stated as beliefs, then we can begint travel toward them, or try to live them out. Then we went down stairs to make the “trees” that will hold these beliefs, a forest of trees, of birch trees leaning towards each other. On large sheets of paper, with black paint and popsicle sticks, we each made our own version of a birch forest, which we then pinned up on the all. Later we will begin adding our beliefs as leaves.

Later Bridget sent a note to the kids and asked them be thinking about how to move the beliefs from words to actions. To be thinking about how our big and small actions can make or unmake the world. Or, even, choosing not to act because the action will not add to the world, but will make it smaller. In the end, this becomes a question of: am I making the world more beautiful, or less so? Am I giving or taking? Am I protecting others or creating fear in other. When something bad comes at us from an external place, how do we field that negative force, what do we let it become in us—at our very best, godly selves we transfigure cancerous, negative, toxic forces into something that elevates us and others around us.

This lead us into the second larger discussion of the day with our third guest of the day, Coach Hugh Brown, formerly of Atlanta, GA, now director of the Synergy Football Club of Shelburne, Vt. Hugh picked up where Bridget left off: what do you believe, or, What drives you? He listened to what we had written and then had us think about how those beliefs need to come off the page. It can sound good, but the ideas have to serve, deliver, and take on dimension. What makes us work and live? What value will you stand by in the real world, on the street, face to face with others. Hugh talked about what a gentleman is, using as his source Robert E. Lee (this was not planned); about the power of transforming dreams into goals (as in turning hopes into beliefs) by writing them down; he told stories of Emmit Smith, the importance of living with passion and emotion, the power of one’s perspective, which, most often, is the one inviolate power we all possess. Drop out? Cop out? Hold out? Or all out? How do we shape and direct our lives once we know what we believe?

Hugh also handed out SFC patches, which contain a very specific symbolism: Gold, the color of champions; red, the color of blood and sacrifice; black and white, and which stands for our diversity of origin. Hugh theb received a thoughtful tour around the school by the students, who were proud to show him what all we are doing here.