VR Tech Staff Development: Ropes Course 2011

VR Tech High School is a very different kind of high school. It is a school that is based on online classes, but the students have a staff that keeps track of them, gives guidance, cares about them as individuals, and helps them to persist in their studies. I can honestly say that I have never, in all my years of teaching, enjoyed my work place as much as I have at VR Tech. I say that having taught for years in alternative education, which I loved with a passion. VR Tech is something of an alternative education situation, but remarkable in that it is well-structured and well-supported. Our students didn’t do well in a traditional high school, but they are doing very well here. The trust and respect between the teachers and the students is quite remarkable. There are many reasons for that, but much of this success is due, really, to Deb Feenstra who runs the program. She has a remarkable ability to create a positive, cooperative atmosphere, that is low-stress, but highly productive. She is also good at networking with many community groups and churches to give the students opportunities they would not otherwise get, and she is a very good advocate for her program, students and staff. It is a “happy ship”, as Patrick O’Brian, the author of the “Master and Commander” series would say, and I feel very fortunate to be a part of it.

One example of how different the program is, is shown in this video. It is of our staff development. Instead of having long meetings full of the usual in-service work and seminars, from which teachers come away feeling tired and sometimes even lectured to, Deb arraigned for us to go out to a place called the Filmore complex in West Olive, Michigan, to a ropes course that has been set up for troubled teens to push themselves and find out what they can do. Deb wanted us to use the course to do some team building exercises. I really appreciated it. I also appreciate the fact that we have pretty much the same group of teachers and staff that we had last year in spite of all the lay-offs and economic trouble my school district has had to face. I’m glad because we are a very good team. We work well together, and that makes us better able serve needs of our students—and those needs are very real, and run very deep.

Riddle #3: Nine Young Children

This month’s riddle is a little different than my past riddles. It is more like the riddles written by Kit Williams, a wonderful author who put together some very beautifully illustrated books. Two of his books were given to me as gifts—perfect gifts, given the kind of person I am—Masquerade and The Book Without a Name, which was based on the theme of bees. I am, and have been for many, many years, fascinated by his books which offer the most enchanting illustrations, clever puzzles, and a strong sense of mystery from pre-Christian pagan times.

My riddle, like most of the ones I have posted, was written sometime in the early eighties. I have mentioned this before. It was after moving from Sioux City, Iowa to Terra Haute, Indiana.

Regarding Sioux City, I think those areas along the grassy bluffs that over look the Missouri river and out across the flat, fertile lands of Nebraska and South Dakota are among the most beautiful and spiritually alive places on earth. I was there during a recession. Unemployment was at 14% and I was single and out of work. That is partly why I entered in to a kind of darkness of depression that was very deep. To deal with it, I used to escape to the bluffs and hike for miles and miles over the rolling prairie lands. My state of mind and soul are hard to describe. Perhaps it was because I was in that darkness that I became sensitive and receptive to all kinds of things that dwell in the darkness. I knew that the landscape was not just hills and grass, but it was very much alive—present. The sky, from the top of those bluffs was also alive and I could almost reach out and touch it. I began to listen to the crows and I understood that they possessed language and I could, if I listened long enough, begin to learn their language. And I knew the ancestors of the Lakota were right there, willing to offer wisdom, help and guidance to anyone who understood that all things are connected. All things are connected. Me, the bluffs, the trees, the crows, the ancestors and other people—all of us are connected.

But that is a long way from my riddle! The image of this riddle comes from when I was a young man, and I was put in charge of a three day camp with a group of church kinds who were about seven or eight years old at the time. We had a great time, but one of the nights I was there I had just settled down to sleep, when one of the boys needed me to walk him to the bathroom. “Just use the trees” I said. But he said it wasn’t that kind of bathroom. So I got up our of my bed to take him, and suddenly the rest of them had to go too. So I took them all, and as we were passing the girls tents, one of the women helpers heard us and shouted from her place in the tent that she had several girls who had to go too. So the next thing I knew I had about eight or nine kids processing down a path that ran through pine trees and out to the open grassy field to the bathrooms by the camp swimming pool. While I waited for them, I looked up at a full moon and thought it was the most enchanting night I’d seen in a long time. One, by one, as the children finished their business, they came out and stood with me under the moonlight and waited for the rest. We all thought it was a magical night. When all the children were with me, we didn’t go right away. “Grab hands and form a circle” I said. They did. And so we began to sing and dance in a circle under the moonlight. The girls in their nightgowns, the boys in their pajamas, all of us were dancing and dancing under the moon.

It is one of those things you never forget, and something those kids would bring up many, many years later: “Hey, Kenny! Rememer that time we danced in the field under the full moon?” Those kids are in their early forties now, and I bet they still remember. “How long will we dance together?” is the question I ask, and I need, for this riddle, the exact answer!

The Ghost in the Cloud: Chapters 17 & 18

Riddle # 21: I have an Eye

I worked on a new riddle this week. I still have a number of other riddles from the 1990’s that I haven’t done anything with. I realized, after I finished, that I may not be altogether original with this riddle. I realized that I might have heard something like it before. This is to the reader’s advantage in that it may make the riddle easier to guess. The originality lies in the song, the use of Greek Mythology and in illustrations.

I think I have reached the limits of my technology. I want better programs: like something more than Window’s Paint Program, and a good animation program, and better sound equipment and a computer with more RAM and faster processing and lots and lots of memory—oh, and while we’re at it a really expensive video camera. I also want a new guitar, along with musicians and vocalists and the consultation from a producer in the film industry.

A wish list is a wish list.

I hope you enjoy the riddle:

I have an eye, but I cannot see
One hump, two humps
Pass through me.
But Heaven help the rich man!
What could I be?
Clotho, Liechesis, Atropos
Must have me to make their clothes.

Dulcisdolores

My cousin Rhonda (on my mother’s side of the family) sent me a ton of pictures from our childhood as well as of her father’s (Uncle Donny’s) childhood. She was compiling these pictures to celebrate my Uncle Donny’s 80th birthday. Many of the pictures I hadn’t seen before. What I wasn’t prepared for was the powerful effect they would have would have on my soul. It is hard to describe the turbulence of sweetness and loss that they stirred up. Nostalgia isn’t a big enough word at all to describe it. I need a new word for this. Let’s call it dulcisdolores. Dulcisdolores is an instantaneous hyperemotional response to a stimulus involving the long forgotten past. It has an effect similar to time travel as well. For a moment, a very brief moment, the mental recall is so powerful that you can almost touch and smell and taste the past. People you loved, who are now long dead, are alive again and sitting around on the lazy summer lawn in the evening like they once did when you were a child. Dulcisdolores is painful thing, but it’s the kind of pain you wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.

When I was three years old, we moved away from the little town of Paxton, Ill to a small town in Indiana. But all my uncles, cousins, and grandparents still lived back in Paxton and so we made occasional trips home in the summer or at Christmas to see everyone. Perhaps it is because I didn’t grow up with my cousins around all the time that I felt such a tremendous sense of anticipation when I came to see them and play with them in that little town with paving brick roads and those big gingerbread houses that were all painted white.

Time has gone by. A lot of time. I went off to Lincoln Christian College after high school, dropped out and got involved in a religious movement, married, had children, left the religious movement after twenty years of trying to make that delusion work, went to IU, became a teacher and watched my own children grow and launch. I didn’t get back to that little town very often. I didn’t see my cousins very often anymore. Most of my Aunts and Uncles are still living today, but when I have seen them, I am aware that time has done its work on them and they are not young anymore as they are in my perpetual memory of them. That may be why the photos have the impact on me that they do. They represent the way my parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents are in my eternal memory: forever young and strong; forever taking care of us children so that we could play always and eternally on long summer days and never have to worry about anything.

The power of a photograph, and especially in an old photograph, isn’t so much in what is actually visually seen. Its power lies in its ability to evoke and stimulate the memory. I see so much more than the photo. I remember. And what I remember is, for instance, my grandmother’s face, her dialect, her movement, her smile. Her lawn practically glowing in the evening sun, people sitting around on the metal lawn chairs, and I remember the color of the sky, the smells of cut grass and cigarettes, the feeling of the cool evening air on the skin, the sounds of the locusts in the elms, it all floods back so fast and so real that, if I let it go unchecked, I could cry and cry. It wouldn’t be sorrow exactly; it would just be feeling, wonderful, awful, powerful feeling. Here is meaning, deep meaning. Meaning that cannot be expressed in words or philosophy. The profound meaning of life is found in simple things--like a song Grandma Sophie used to sing: “Two little children a boy and a girl…” The voice lived, sang, and passed away. The voice sings no more except in my memory, along with her apple pies, the endless pancakes, the treats she kept for me on the top of the refrigerator, the way she would stare out the window in the morning as she sat drinking her coffee at the kitchen table, and a thousand more memories. As long as I have a mind that retains its memory, I will cling to these images, and the images of all my loved ones. All the simple little things they do that mysteriously become so profound with time.

I had a good childhood. I am grateful for my parents, my uncles and aunts, my wonderful grandparents for making it so.

VR Tech Graduation 2011

It took a while for me to get around to editing my video on VR Tech's graduation. I've had a lot going on this summer with endlessly re-roofing my house and searching for jobs. But I finally edited the graduation video. It was a wonderful year that I will not forget. I am posting this for my students and for myself, since my son was in this graduation. It was actually a very moving experience for those involved in it. Much thanks to all the staff and volunteers who helped organize it.

Spider Song

This is from something of an epic story poem I’m writing called Peter the Pirate: the Commodore’s Journey. It’s over a hundred pages long so far and written in ballad form except for the songs. Some people who have followed my blog for a long time might be familiar with the two Peter the Pirate Christmas stories I have published in audio form. I started telling Peter the Pirate stories when my son was a little boy and we would play with his Playmobile pirates together. The stories grew a bit more serious for me and have become a lifelong project. I’m thinking that I’m about eighty percent of the way, but have been having trouble with the ending though I know where I want to go with it—a lot like my own life.

Here’s the song with an excerpt from the story as well. I’ve tried to weave several myths together Ananzi, a trickster from Africa, Arachne, from the Greeks, Spider Woman, from a great many Native American cultures, and Taawa’s Grandmother Spider from the Hopi. The last one I take from Brian Swan’s collection of stories about a boy who finds out his father is the Sun God, and goes on a journey to find him with help from many creatures, most importantly, Spider Woman.

In this episode Peter the Pirate is being led by a spirit through a tunnel of webbing has been woven by spiders. Spiders link all realms and the spirit is taking him to a place where the living and the dead may meet. It is a journey into the underworld. The spirit sings this song as he leads the way and Peter follows.

O, does a spider bite and sting

And so is she an evil thing?

Yea, some spiders may be bad

And yet they serve to make us glad

Hey, ho,we find a hold

From the new born to the old

Yo, ho, we throw a thread

From the living to the dead

Ananzi tricked the god of sky

And stories now to earth do fly

So think of him next time you read

To your child some hero’s deed.

Hey, ho, we find a hold

From the newborn to the old.

Yo, ho, throw a thread

From the living to the dead.

Spider woman wove the world

And thus the cosmos was unfurled

Connecting stars, and earth, and sun

And so all things were thus begun.

Hey, ho, find a hold

From the newborn to the old .

Yo, ho, throw a thread

From the living to the dead.

And could Athena’s jealousy

With proud Arachne’s tapestry

Be relieved by punishment?

Nay, now her threads are better sent.

Hey, ho, we find a hold

From the newborn to the old.

Yo, ho, we throw a thread

From the living to the dead.

And where would young Taawa be,

When he ,the sun god, went to see,

If Grandma Spider had not known

The way to where his father shone.

Hey, ho, we find a hold

From the newborn to the old

Yo, ho, we throw a thread

From the living to the dead

So spiders dance a sailor’s jig,

As from deck to cap they rig

With stays and shrouds and ratlines lay

The ropes for us to climb this way.

Hey, ho, we find a hold

From the newborn to the old

Yo, ho, we have a thread

From the living to the dead.

Grand Haven

This weekend my son, Peter, and I took a trip up to Grand Haven State Park. We usually trespass on a long stretch of private land and find a place where there are no people and miles and miles of beautiful woods, dunes and beaches, but seeing new "No Trespassing" signs and having no place to park my camper for the night we decided to try one of the many state parks here in Michigan. I have to say while Grand Haven is a beautiful place, There are prettier and more remote State Parks to visit. A lack of trees and crowded RV's roasting in the sun will make me think twice about going back there. It was thirty dollars for me to essentially park my truck for the night. But I love the lake and really enjoyed the time with Peter.

Another thing it did was to give me a chance to document a very long standing tradition of the classic American Family Vacation. In the 1950's President Eisenhower pushed through the national highway system. This was partly due to the cold war. He wanted a way to quickly move missiles from place to place in the event of nuclear war. But it also opened up travel like never before. People were buying campers of all kinds and taking trips out west to see places like the Grand Canyon and the Black Hills and hundreds of sites. In the sixties the television show, Route 66 was a big hit and the sense of freedom and exploration of America was still expanding. I remember Freddy Sparks and his family kept up grading their trailers each year. Our family seldom went anywhere, but Freddy would bring me back little trinkets from his trips out west with his mom and dad.

RV campsites are all over the US and can be a lot of fun for a family. It's not unusual for people to meet and talk and share food, play cards and talk about what life is like where they came from and how it is different here and there (really not all that different).


The pier at Grand Haven is a bit more of a production than the pier in Holland, and it seems like in the summer there is a constant stream of people walking out to the end of the pier and back. The people fishing do their best to ignore the people traffic. In Holland, there are people who fish off the pier almost year round except when the lake freezes over. Then they go out onto Lake Macatawa and ice fish.

At the end of the pier is smaller lighthouse were, I presume, the lighthouse keepers must have stayed. This one looks similar to Holland's famous "Big Red" lighthouse.

Peter and I walked into downtown Grand Haven that evening just to see the shops and grab something to eat. It's a nice place to see with some unique sites. Next week they have their annual Coast Guard Festival when the cost guard brings in big ships and sometimes tall ships take up harbor for people to see, booths are set up and many fun activities take place. Below is Mr. Kozak's, which serves great gyros. We have on in Holland, but it is pretty much a funky little drive-thru. Here you get to sit outside and watch the tourists go by.

I don't smoke a pipe very often. Once in a while in the fall, usually, I'll take it out and go for walks. I like the smell and it's comforting, somehow. Seems to go with an evening on the beach.

I'm rather happy with this picture of Peter. He was very gracious to let me take it. He usually groans and rolls his eyes when I get the camera out. I didn't bring the video camera this time just for his sake!