The Lake in Winter

Elizabeth, Peter and I wanted to get down to the Beach on Lake Michigan while she was here. So we (E and I) both took the opportunity to take some photos and videos. She is a much better artist and photographer than I am, but I keep trying. Keveen gave me an adobe video editor a while back and I've been working with a few new effects and discovered several advantages to it; so I keep working and experimenting and one of these days I may come up with something that might be halfway good. I have to find out how to get better quality when I upload. I want the images to be sharper and a bit more like they look to me when I view them. I uploaded to photobucket as an experiment and I hope it fits in my blog space. I also wish I had a better video recorder and a better camera--no time soon for this kid.

It was a beautiful day and something of the color of the afternoon does come through. Again, my music is not the greatest but I don't have to worry about copyright violations!

Drawings at a coffee shop

My daughter is home for the holidays and as we are wont to do, we spend a bit of time in a coffee shop, sometimes chatting, sometimes on the net, and sometimes sitting and doing creative projects. This is a great blessing. When I was in the Emirates we would chat for hours by Gmail or Skype but it wasn't quite the same as this. At any rate, these are a couple of the doodles that I did while we sat drinking coffee at Barnes&Nobles.

The last one of these three is a kind of representation of my daughter.

ESL Holiday Party 2010

Winter's Garden

There are roses made of Ice

...growing in my garden

......my cold, white garden;

and crystalline trees shedding

...snowflakes like cherry blossoms

......on my marble angels

.........half buried in the snow.



There is hoary sage and frosted thyme

...growing in my garden

......my bitter, frozen garden;

where the arctic fox

...is catching the albino hare

......on the tundra

.........that is buried beneath the snow.



There are pallid goddesses

...singing in my chalky, misted garden

......my chilly, winter garden;

where sons and daughters walk in coats

...trying to remember

......trying hard to remember—

.........what is buried in the snow.

Sassafras Dreams

There is a boy with long blond hair
And blue-sky eyes
Lean with skin that doesn’t tan
T-shirt tied around his waist and wading
In a creek that he pronounces “krick”
The water and the clay say “stay with me
The minnows and the tadpoles say “stay with me

He swings on a grape vine
And taunts the ravine and the boulders fifty feet below
As he hangs by one hand
The wind cools his skin and dries his sweat
Crows caw in the branches above
The crows and the wind say, “stay with me
The bark, the leaves and the vines say “stay with me

He troubles an old opossum and catches crawdads
He throws his pocket knife at a stump for hour after hour
On a day where the sun never seems to set
He is Wild in the Wild and nothing will tame him
And that is what the Wild wants
As the opossum, the crawdads, and the stump say, “stay with me
As the Wild itself says “stay with me

In Principio

Standing on the pitcher’s mound in an
Empty stadium as if it were the
Axis mundi, she lifts the baseball like a
Sacrifice to the gods.
Eve of ten billion nights
Pitches the ball;
The game begins.
The players appear.
The arena is packed.
Let there be Life.
Let there be Death.
Let there be the Death-life of the masses
Content to cheer behind the chain-link
In the comfort-desperation of the stands,
To watch the Living play on that
Lush verdant field.
The batter may strike out, yet, in that moment,
He feels the wood of the bat in his dusted hands,
The rush of blood in his neck, the trickle
Of sweat on his temples,
The exhilaration of the swing,
And there, in a micro-second, he
Senses his own genesis.

Early Autumn Colors

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" --John Keats

It has only just started. The white-ash tree in front of our house has survived the white-ash bore that has killed so many of its kind here in Michigan and it is the first to turn colors in the fall. It usually comes out in a blazing yellow, though some years it has worn the most becoming shade of peach.

The maples are still mostly green but some have adorned themselves with a splash of bright red. It is not yet peak season, here in Michigan, but it is lovely. It was cold last week, yet it has warmed up this weekend to give us something of an Indian Summer.

Autumn comes and goes but the splendor of it is not lost on me, especially since the last one I saw was three years ago this October when I left for my teaching job in the Emirates. As much as I may despise winter that follows it, the fall is truly lovely and in America we have such wonderful traditions that involve the fall: visits to the orchards, pumpkin pie, apple cider, walks in the woods under the colorful canopy of turning leaves and stories--especially stories! (I'll be recording my paraphrase of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow to listen to here--not at all related to the Tim Burton version, but the real honest to goodness Washington Irving version. I will do this at a later date and it will be in two parts.) Other stories I love at this time of the year are, of course, Little Orphan Annie, by James Wibcome Riley; The Halloween Tree, by Ray Bradbury--oh, and I just read a really good one by Neil Gaimon called, The Graveyard book. There are many, many more. Oh and yes, let's not forget to watch Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas which I have always enjoyed along with his Corpse Bride.

Besides Halloween, I love the cool fresh air and the sweet melancholy that seems to be born on the first smell of wood smoke from fire places and in the slant of light and in the sound of the rustle of leaves that crunch underfoot--and I don't know what it is about the season that fills me with memories of my childhood and a sense of loss and longing. It is a powerful season and full of magic, mystery and wonder. And it is not hard to imagine--even feel-- the grief of Demeter roaming the earth looking for her daughter who was taken into the underworld--she would not, nor ever be consoled for that loss and so she withholds her blessing and the world grows dark and nothing will grow. Demeter is in the air and in the harvest and in the chill that goes up your spine.

Well, I'll leave you, dear reader, for now. I think I'll have a cup of hot apple cider with Cinnamon, a bit of cloves, and sweetened with a touch of brown sugar. Enjoy the pictures--especially my friends in the Middle East, some of whom have never seen an autumn.

Tacking Life

We are dandelion seeds on the wind
...Thinking we have no control
......Few there are indeed
.........Who can learn to tack the wind
............Persist--even progress
...............Against their DNA
..................Against the lies of their environment

And take themselves where they want to go

The Rain it Raineth

I walked through the computer lab today. The rain was falling outside and none of the students even looked. Not one of them was even distracted by the little droplets beading up on the windows or dripping off the leaves of the trees in the courtyard and soaking into the grey, weathered wood of the picnic tables. My students are all too easily distracted, but not by the wind and the rain. It means that rain, here in the American mid-west, is ordinary; if anything it’s a little annoying. The wonder of it is lost.

I saw so little of it in the Emirates. There, the falling of rain, even just a few drops for a moment in an afternoon in the summer, was a source of excitement to everyone. Though there was plenty of desalinated water to drink, somehow I was always thirsty in a way that only a real honest to goodness rain could slake. And the most satisfying rain of all is the great Corn Belt thunderstorm, where the rain just pours and pours in response to the pounding of thunder.

“The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.”

I now know it is wrong to think of the rain as a bad thing. Now I see that it is improper to see this passage as a negative: as if rain, representing misfortune in life, is something that comes to us randomly, and has nothing to do with whether someone is living righteously before God.

Now I understand that the rain is always a blessing from God. It falls on everyone. What is different is whether people curse the blessing or see the miracle.

A Summer's Day

This summer I came home on leave from Abu Dhabi where I was teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to the Arabs of the United Arab Emirates. I was surprised while I was home by being recalled to my old teaching job by Holland Public Schools. I had been laid off almost three years ago. I was also surprised to find that my certification was still good.
Some might think it was a simple decision to make. I should be home with my family. But I loved working with the Emirati (Arabs of the UAE) and I loved interacting and finding out about people from different places and cultures. EFL was interesting work. It was not an easy decision to make and I didn’t have much time to think about it. I decided to put in a year here at Holland and keep my options open. This had the wonderful advantage of being able to spend my son’s senior year with him and also allow me to get at least one more year in so I could become invested in the retirement system in the state of Michigan.

But I want to go back someday. What I want in life is to do interesting things. If you have read my past blogs you should know how much Emerson and Thoreau have influenced my thinking. I do not want to get to the end of my life and find out that I had not truly lived.

But this discussion is far from where I am going with the video I have made just for this blog. As I have said, this blog is kind of my scrapbook. I wanted to record some of my impressions of my summer’s leave, not realizing that it wouldn’t just be a leave but a move home.
I did have a wonderful leave. One of the things that struck me this summer as my son and I went on walks is the presence of nature even in cities and developed areas. In my life I have seen the cities encroach more and more on farm lands and forests to the point that wild life has been forced to survive in what are now urban settings. All of the wildlife shown in this video are within cities. The wild canaries (American Gold Finches) are all in a little park in Holland called, Window on the waterfront; the heron was in “The Hundred Acre Woods” behind the Indianapolis Museum of Art on the north side of Indianapolis, and the rest of the wild life, the foxes and etc. were all behind my Parents house on the south side of Indianapolis, Indiana. For all that I was able to catch with my camera, there were many more I was not able to: red-tailed hawks, killdeer, tit mice, chickadees, deer and much more.
I’m kind of tuned in to nature. My eyes seem to naturally scan for trees, flowers, animals and, most particularly, birds. Birds are a moderate obsession with me. When I was in the UAE I would take note of the birds I saw quickly making metal sketches of them, their size, shape, tail length, colors, bands and so forth, so I could look them up later. One site I found very helpful was called, “Birds of Al Ain” which had quite a variety of birds that were collected by many people who had visited the UAE or had made outings and snapped their pictures and posted them with information about it.
So I took my little JVC video camera everywhere and when I had the chance, I took pictures of the birds and beasts, forest and fauna of the North American mid-west to post here for your enjoyment (inshallah) or for my “scrapbook”.

Sally and Barnaby

Written September 7, 1999

Barnaby Jay Lancaster McGee
Longing for his life
Sailed his boat out to sea
And left behind his wife.

It seems that he had had enough
He headed for the door
Married life was dull and rough
It seems he wanted more-

A sigh of love, a tender kiss,
A happy lover’s bed
Where lovers sleep in happiness
And dream of years ahead.


Sally Simpson Jones McGee
Was stuck behind in Main.
She saw red as red could be
And then she went insane.

“I’ll kill that man!” she raised her fist
And shook it in the air.
And she went on to make a list
Of what she thought was fair.

“I’ll put a spider in his shoe,
With deadly venom black.
I’ll put a tiger in his room
And watch the beast attack!

“No, no, too quick. It seems to me
This man deserves much more
I’ll drug his wine and while he sleeps
I’ll creep in through his door

“I’ll tie his arms and legs up tight
And wait for him to wake
Then I”ll begin to skin all night
And from his skin I’ll make


“A lamp shade or a pocket purse
And on his bloody meat
I’ll poor—just to make it worse—
A bit of salt—how sweet!”

It seems that she had had enough
She waited at the door
He wanted rough? She’d give him rough!
And yet she wanted more—

A sigh of love, a tender kiss,
A happy lover’s bed
Where lovers sleep in happiness
And dream of years ahead.


But Barnaby did not return
And so her anger grew
As she began to fume and burn
Her vow she would renew.

And since the sailor’s wouldn’t take
A wench like her from land
The sailing ship that she would take
Was built by her own hand.

Across the sea this salt sea hag
Would wind and doldrum see
In her beaten bark with a sail of rag
To search for old McGee.

The sea was hard, but the sea was good
The sea was full of light.
It toned her flesh, and lack of food
Made Sally’s figure slight.

There’s something about the awesome sea
That moved upon her soul
And made her happy just to be--
Somehow it made her whole.

The sea alone was just enough--
The threshold of a door
To a gentle world that wasn’t rough
A world that gave her more--

A sigh of love, a tender kiss
A happy lover’s bed
Where lovers sleep in happiness
And dream of years a head.


Then one day a storm did shake
The timber of her mast
And belly up the bark would break
And in the sea did cast

Poor Sally, who would try to swim
The ocean tempest tossed.
And Sally wept for wanting of him—
The man that she had lost.

She wondered then, as all went black
Why had she really come?
Did she want to slap him back
For all that he had done?

Or did she want him back again
Ah, was it hate or love
That made her fight the wind and rain
To find his hidden cove?

She closed her eyes. She’d had enough
And passing through a door
Found the sea no longer rough
But found there something More—

A sigh of love, a tender kiss,
A happy lover’s bed
Where lovers sleep in happiness
And dream of years ahead.


Barnaby Jay Lancaster McGee
Went walking on the shore
And thought, how lonely it could be--
This paradise was poor.

For all its beauty, his island life
Made him think of her
Whom he had taken up as wife
And how he didn’t bother

To talk with her or find a way
To help her heal her heart
Or was it him? He couldn’t say
Just how those wars would start.

Then something on the beach ahead
Where sea and wind had laid
With lovely limbs and hair of red
He saw a comely maid.

He did not know the girl that lay
Asleep upon the sand,
Had shared with him his wedding day
And wore his wedding band.

He picked her up and took her home
And placed her on his bed
And while she slept he took a comb
To comb that hair of red.

Sally woke but showed it not,
Pretending that she slept
To hear her husband’s private thought
And what his heart had kept.

“I think that I would love this maid
But for my wedding vow.”
He spoke as he undid her braid.
“And I only wonder how

“A maid as beautiful as this
Should come out of the sea
It makes me think that I do miss
The kiss of my Sally.


“I regret the day I’d had enough
And walked out of that door
This lonesome life is very rough
And Sally offered more—

“A sigh of love, a tender kiss
A happy lover’s bed
Where lovers sleep in happiness
And dream of years ahead."


If any hate at all remained
In Sally’s heart that day
Then love came in, as if it rained,
And washed all hate away.

“It’s me! It’s me!” she said, “It’s Me!”
She turned and grabbed his head.
“I’m Sally Simpson Jones McGee!”
She pulled him to the bed.”

And pulled him down on top of her
That she might kiss the face,
And kiss again her old lover
That made her heart once race.

But now the racing of her heart
Came from a deeper place--
Deep, deep down in the deepest part
From endless time and space

The well of love, true and strong
Came flooding through her soul
With a well of tears that came along
Which helped to make her whole.

And Barnaby could not believe
It was his own dear wife.
Then saw that she did not deceive
But gave him back his life.

To live with her upon this land
This island in the sea
To walk with her and hold her hand
Was bliss for him. And He

Loved her then as ne’er before.
He loved her with the fire
That melts the gold out from the ore
The flame of pure desire.

So Patrick and his Sally fair
Forgave the years gone by
Those wasted years all cold and bare--
Released them with a sigh--

A sigh of love, a tender kiss,
A happy lover’s bed
Where lovers sleep in happiness
And dream of years ahead.

I like the heat, even when it is up to 115 - 120, as long as it is dry, but lately the humidity has crept in here in Abu Dhabi and has become intolerable. So I stay inside and try to be creative. It only rains for a few days in the winter in this part of the UAE and People tend to be in awe of such a simple thing as rain. As I write this, I am only a couple of weeks away from taking my annual leave when I will be traveling back to my home town of Michigan and I'm hoping for a bit of rain and a chance even to get out and get soaked running around in it. These were my thoughts as I improvised here on the keyboard. The opening being the sound of rain and, perhaps, the music building to an all out storm.

Happy Birthday Peter.

Peter, if you happen to check in here, this is for you! Lots of love!

A Reflection on Eyes.

“Eyes don’t look, people do”

So I learned in my poetry class from a

Sniggering professor who imagined eyes floating

In space.

Shaming students in to proper

conformity on how to write good poetry.

Yet we all understand, don’t we, that line from Eliot:

“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams.”

People may have the eyes, but do they look?

I have learned that I can be invisible

In fact, I have discovered that it is easier than being seen.

I have gone to parties where

No one noticed that I arrived

No one noticed that I left

I talked with people who didn’t listen

I was interrupted in ways that told me I didn’t exist.

When it stops hurting

There is a certain freedom in it—

Just open the hand and

let

...go

......of

.........being.

Human history is full of eyes that no longer see;

That may have never seen

That may have never been seen.

Who is behind the eyes?

Who is the seer?

Who is the who?

Why is the who not a what—what makes it a who?

A who may have eyes but whom do they see?

Eyes may be open and yet they are closed

Seeing what they choose to see

Do you see me?

Do you see yourself?

And the animals have eyes

What do they see?

I recall the look in the eye of a bull

As he was slaughtered

By the people who fed him and cared for him

Was it merely anthropomorphism—

Or was it truly a look of shock, confusion and betrayal?

Not something most eyes want to see.

So they don’t.

They see Big Macs instead.

Big Macs and profits.

Some eyes look down from penthouses

And see objects that walk and carry wallets and purses

Bulls and cows ready for slaughter

Consumers to be consumed.

Eyes that see products

Eyes that see money

Eyes that do not see each other

All eyes are closed

All eyes will be closed

But in this life

I would open my eyes

I would see with my eyes

Because it is true: eyes don’t see at all

It takes a person to see.

This is a card that was hand made by my daughter for my birthday. I thought it was lovely and wanted to keep it here where I could both share it and look at it again whenever I wanted to. (I love my blog site!)

June 21

Those floppy jeans, the paperboy hat,

red tank top with a yellow star on the chest and

where-did-you-get-those Converse on your feet

basketball in hand

ready for the heat in the summer city

little Scottie at your heals

his tail wagging, tongue hanging

following you to the park

the hot air rippling off the court doesn’t stop you

and those long wet curls that shake the sweat

like little diamonds scattering in the sun

unaware of what you are

the fantastic energy that is you

what every young girl wants

what every young man would be

you drink life—a fine chardonnay—

as if it were a cold glass of water after

the hours of basketball on a hot day

you just guzzle it without care

it runs over your fine-boned chin and

down your neck where the veins throb with life

your drunkenness comes out like sunlight

Student Projects

For this term's level 2-3 students I made an assignment I had not tried before. I decided to take my knowledge of the Window Movie Maker program and teach my students how to make videos. This project involved writing and speaking on a topic and then turning their writing into a video. First they had to write a draft, have a peer edit it, and then submit it to the teacher for

further error correction. After that they had to type it up in the computer lab, correcting it further until they got it right. When this was done, they had to rehearse reading it, and then record and edit it in an audio program called "Adaucity" which allows them to add background music (mostly mine which you may have heard before if you follow my videos). Finally, they had to bring in their videos or find videos and illustrations from the internet that fit the topic and then edit all of these into a Windows Movie Maker project.



The topic for their project had to involve some aspect of UAE culture. This is a bit over-done as topics go, but it is one that they can talk about in plenty and have first hand expert knowledge of! There are a few errors in some of the credits which I have left in (there is a certain amount of humor in them, and it is, after all, authentic ESL writing). I was very pleased with their efforts, especially at self-correction as they listened and edited their speaking portion.

Improvisation on a theme

I posted this to Facebook, but I have a number of friends who don't do Facebook, so this is here for them. It is improvisation and I have a tendency for these things to pop out of my head. It is unpracticed and spontaneous, and therefore imperfect, but there was something about it that I liked. I'm glad I recorded it because it would be gone forever.

Dibbah Trip

Here are some of the stills that you will see in the video that I made of the trip I took with my villa mate, Doug. We went up to Musandam once again but this time on the East coast just North of Dibbah. The border crossing was free, the border guards just looked at our passports and opened our trunk for a couple of seconds and we were on our way. I loved the colors of the fruits at the Friday Market just outside of Masafi. Color was noticeably absent for most of the trip since it was very hazy weather, so I appreciated the displays of fruit.
We saw a lot of forts and watchtowers on this trip. I was impressed by what looked like mud brick hovels in the town nearby where we camped. One thinks of Arab houses as always having flat roofs, but as you can see from the mountain houses and the hovels that this is not always the case. They were pitched and palm branches were used on them a lot like the thatched roofs one sees in England, or in my case on the historical Dutch houses in Holland, Michigan.
I have always loved Dhows. I enjoyed looking at the derelict dhows up close to see the construction. One thing we noticed on one of the dhows was the toilet that sits on the back. I gather modesty is not a virtue among sailors. In fact when we got to Sharjah, I was about to take a video of one of the wooden cargo ships on the docks there, but I happened to notice a fellow smiling sheepishly from one of those very seats. I decided it would be in bad taste to film him.





The donkeys roamed the beach as they liked, just like the cows and the goats we saw up in Ras Al Kaimah. This was taken just after sunset.





























Coral walls in Sharjah

Al Dhafra Festival

Hamarat Al Gailah

A cautionary tale from the UAE
written down in translation
by Sergeant Ahmed Ali Al Hammadi
Edited by Me

A long time a go, before they discovered oil in our country, there was a naughty child by the name of Saleh, He used to ignore everything his parents told him to do, would break everything his hands could reach, and he made too much noise all the time (except of course for when he was sleeping).

One day he went to play outside his home. His mother stopped him and told him not to go out at this time of the day because of Hamarat Al Gailah who would be out there. She usually walks about in the afternoon looking for any child who is outside alone.

Saleh asked his mother, “who is Hamarat Al Gailah?”

She answered, “ She’s a woman wearing an abayah, but she covers her face all the time because she has a very ugly and scary face.”

Saleh then asked, “If she covers her face, how do you know who she is?”

His mother said, “look down at her feet; she has donkey feet.”

But Saleh, as usual, ignored his mother and went outside to play. While he was playing he heard footsteps--but they didn’t sound like normal footsteps. When he turned around he saw a woman in a long dark abayah coming in his direction. He looked down and saw that she had donkey feet!

That day, Saleh never returned to his home. His parents searched and searched for him everywhere. Some of the neighbors said they heard him running and screaming loudly and it seemed like someone was chasing him, but they all thought, maybe it was his father.

And so, children, if you ever go outside in the afternoon, be careful, Hamarat Al Gailah may be out there looking for more children.

Photos from Musandam

Being in something of a creative slump, but wanting to update my blog, I've decided to post my pictures from my over-night trip to Musandam, Oman. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The weather was wonderful--well perfect really. We camped out on a little beach next to a hotel called the Golden Tulip and went on a dhow ride the next morning. It is one of the most relaxing things I've ever done. The dhow took us into the fjords of the northern most point from a little port town called Khasab. We were not all that far from Iran, really, and saw a number of small crafts full of goods being imported in a hurry from that country. Anyway here are some of the pictures. I may link to the Youtube video of my trip as well.

A Hawk of Seven Memories

I've not been in a terribly creative season lately. Even this story is not new. I wrote it back in 1991 for a creative writing class at IUPUI. I aced all my stories in both creative writing classes and aced my poems in my poetry class. I'd have taken more, but I had a lot of course work to do. Looking back, I realize that my stories from that era were meant for theatrical presentation. This particular story is all first person narrative and has, obviously, a strong voice. I had a thought in my mind as I wrote it and that is that we were born to be complete and whole human beings but some great magic deprived us of that humanity and our life's task is to strive to find it once more. Some people never seem think about what it means to be a human being. It is an odd question to them. There was a time when getting an education meant that we had to study that very question. We studied "the humanities" and that included art, poetry, literature, culture. We studied it because we knew it was important to become human beings and to participate in our human dialogue--a conversation that has been going on for thousands and thousands of years, ever since the first hunter or prophet stood up and used the power of speech to tell a story.

But now people are interested in vocational studies, and business, and so the humanities are dying on college campuses. Now we no longer educate. The Latin root implies a sense of being lead forth and that means out of ignorance and into enlightenment. But this is long lost. Now people just want the promise of big bucks and a degree is a ticket to that. It is one more step backward. It is now a purely animal instinct driving higher vocational training (formerly called "college"). College has been industrialized. People who want to "get ahead" in life in that survival-of-the-fittest-world our western capitalism has created for us now pay for their own job training, and they are paying higher than ever tuition to do it. It is a world of hawks training hawks. (mind you I am speaking of metaphorical hawks. Real hawks are splendid things to behold, but they feed on prey all the same.) It is my hope that some of us remember who and what we are. That we might regain our lost humanity.