So many little things

I have been thinking of many things lately but with little time to process them; perhaps it is time for a quick takes type post?

1. While Northern California is suffering from wildfires, it has been scorching hot down here. School was out one whole day and two half days for heat because temps were in the 90s and the school is not air-conditioned. I was sorry I didn't neglect responsibilities and head to the hills. I have been craving a camping trip this fall, but it doesn't look like we'll have a weekend away after all.  I worried about my new friend I had made because I'm sure she doesn't have air conditioning either, but she called me yesterday out of the blue. I'm glad she remembered me and that now I have her number because a big locked gate surrounds her house, making it impossible to knock on her door.

2. A great deal of thought lately has been devoted to college applications. Our third son is in the thick of essay writing for an early decision deadline. I am once again knocking my head on the wall for not encouraging him to write more this summer.  I vowed this time would be different after the angst and suffering of watching the older boys write and writhe over this process, and yet here we are again with five days until the deadline and essays still needing revision. Life keeps interrupting.

3. One happy distraction is planning for our preschool co-op, which is going well.  About 8 moms and 12 kids (3 of whom are siblings in the 10-16 month range) are meeting Monday mornings at our church for a couple hours of stories, songs, and crafts. I've been having fun picking out activities from cheery online resources, although I am usually the story person and not the craft lady.  The idea is that each mom prepares for a station and that we'll rotate each month. The stations are circle time with prayer, story and sharing, then craft and activity - usually planned by a mom who has an OT background, so she incorporates gross and fine motor skills, then snack, music and movement, free play, and a final story. But someone is always absent, so we have only changed jobs a couple times, which perhaps is just as well because we are getting into a good routine. The kids know what to expect and are happy to be together. We have a good mix of boys and girls.  LC loves it - it is just the right mix of organized activity and unstructured fun. She comes home and asks for homework - coloring pages and letter pages and cut and paste number pages. Then on Wednesdays we have been meeting for a field trip or a park playdate. We were supposed to go to the pumpkin patch yesterday, but with the heat, we just went to the beach.

4. I had an interview the other day to teach at another community college, but I think I blew it accidentally on purpose. At the school where I am teaching now on base, enrollment is way down, so I only have one small class. With another kid heading to college next year, I'd like to add another class to my schedule, although with this pre-school thing, teaching CRE, and managing - or mismanaging - home life, I want the timing to be on my terms. So I filled out some online applications and got an email invitation to an interview. The drawback was that it was at the campus on the north side of the county a half an hour away without traffic.  I liked the dean of the department when I met her and being on a real campus again in a department - as opposed to the little regional office with two classrooms on base where I work now - was invigorating.  But in the interview, I revealed my limited schedule. I haven't heard anything back. I think about emailing to reconnect, but then I think, I don't really want that job anyway. The little one will be in kindergarten in two years. And as much as I think about what I would be doing if I didn't have a three-year-old, I continue to ponder homeschooling again.

5. The class I am teaching is going well. I had a student who actually asked for more work and not just anything - he thought Engl 102 was going to be a literature course, which at other institutions it often is, but not this one. This English 102 is focused on writing research papers. Over the last couple terms, I have trimmed the syllabus because students weren't doing the readings, weren't turning things in. Now should I lengthen it again? I am making up a list of recommended readings and will send him some vocabulary words for discussing vocabulary and a few prompts for paper topics centered around literature. And I'm rethinking my approach.  Meanwhile, I've been frustrated with my daughter's English teacher who consistently gives low marks on writing assignments but gives no feedback or explanation of his scoring. He handed out a rubric at the beginning of the term, but he doesn't indicate how the points he gives correlate to the rubric. In other words, he writes a number on the top of the paper and that's it. No other marks. As a teacher who devotes a lot of time to feedback so my students can actually learn from their mistakes (if they read it), I am almost irrationally irritated. I've told her to go and talk to him, but I also want to send a scornful email accusing him of laziness.d

6. Boy Scouts - Why? Why? Why? This is old news, but if you haven't heard, Boy Scouts of America is now allowing girls to join.  On their website it sounds like Packs and Troops will have the choice of whether or not to admit girls in separate parallel groups or in co-ed "family" groups.  On the one hand, I have often wished that my girls had the option to join something more like Boy Scouts.  My daughter and I both had negative experiences with our one year of Brownies - nothing particularly egregious; we mostly felt bored and we hate to sell cookies.  The challenge to success inherent in the programs offered by Girl Scouts is that the individual leaders determine the direction of the group, and if they are not outdoorsy types, then camping, hiking, boating, and those kinds of things don't happen.  I understand why women and girls are attracted to the program BSA offers.  However, I am skeptical about the success of a co-ed group. BSA already has Venture Crew and Explorers, which are co-ed groups for high schoolers. They haven't really taken off most places. My real fear is that the type of moms who are already involved in Boy Scouts are often the type who take the fun out of things by being bureaucrats and safety police - not that safety and rules aren't important, but the focus on paperwork and what not to do tend to limit what you can do. I am concerned that with more girls involved, more moms will get involved and soon the problems of Girl Scouts will be the problems of Boy Scouts. My first choice would be to continue the program that allows the boys to enjoy time with other boys and male mentors, and give the girls the opportunity to do something similar but different, which may be what happens with these parallel groups. I used to love the program I did with my dad called Indian Princesses (not politically correct anymore) through the YMCA. We camped, carved, burned wood and leather, and learned other outdoors skills. It was super fun and special to spend time with my dad doing outdoorsy, survival things.

The other complaint I would make to BSA is to bemoan the way this announcement was made - a public relations nightmare. Most of our scouting friends were completely caught off guard by this decision. It seems like a tyrannical move on the part of the Board of Directors to make the announcement with little conversation about the change among members. And it feels like a betrayal in a way of their own core principles. Of course, the reason why they did it without discussion is obvious - they didn't want to negotiate.

We are not quitting boy scouts - or scouting. I could be wrong in my pessimistic expectations.  Maybe LC will even be a scout. But I'm not celebrating the change.

7. We went to a dinner the other night (see top photo on the previous post) for the Seabee Historical Foundation.  We were one of the younger couples there. It was a night to honor the Navy's Construction Battalions and Civil Engineer Corps and to thank donors to the Seabee museum. And it was also a night of stories told by retirees about their experiences and about the generation that preceded them and that founded the branch of the Navy that builds and fights. One guy told a story about how during an air raid in Vietnam, the Seabees positioned themselves near the runway. As soon as the enemy finished bombing the runway and had flown off, the Seabees would come in with shovels and dirt and fill the holes. They don't get the glory, but they make it possible for others to do their job without dying.

There was another young couple at our table. The Seabee was from Appalachia, and his wife was from Poland. She had less of an accent than he did. But his hobby is working with programming and 3D printers and the programs he designs in his spare time are so complex I can't explain them here. So he wants to get out of the military soon and work on these models. What impressed me about his story is the contrast of his impoverished youth with his ingenuity and optimism about possibilities. Growing up without running water did not limit his imagination or confidence.

8. I have been missing fall weather and color, missing our older boys, missing having time to go on a weekend camping trip, longing to move away from our busy street corner in a busy city to someplace quieter, more pastoral. Here is link to a trailer for a movie about Wendell Berry: https://vimeo.com/216446791

It's a melancholy time of year, almost November, "no fruits, no flowers, no birds, no leaves - November!"
Remembering that old poem by Thomas Hood (I had to look up the author) reminds me to share a link to an article about Richard Wilbur, perhaps my favorite that has been passed around following his death: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/06/gods-patient-stet. From Mystery and Manners.

Christmas vacation review

I know, it's practically the middle of January. Time to move on from Christmas vacation to a new topic, but I'm still trying to organize photos from the last month, which reminds me of some things that we did that I want to remember. Maybe one of my resolutions should be to have a better memory, especially since I took the time to read that Joshua Froer book on memory champions.  I have thought of a number of other things I’d like to write about lately, but the inspiration expires as other events crowd our time.  The happy side of this busyness is that we’ve had some quality family time the past couple of weeks.  

So in the interest of aiding memory, here is a list of some of our recent memory-making moments:

1. My second son put in a lot of time organizing a giving tree project for his Eagle Scout project.  He was inspired to do something for foster care children by our friends who are foster parents here, but his initial idea, sponsoring a 5K fundraiser run, was too complex. He tried out a couple of other ideas, before settling on the giving tree idea. He contacted the shelter run by Catholic Social Services and the Sisters of Mercy here, who gave him a list of gifts for the kids. He invited a group of kids from the chapel and some of the scouts to make tags and decorate a tree with them. Then he gave a nice little speech at each of the Masses and the Protestant service about his project. The response was generous. For broader outreach, he went to the mall one Saturday with some other scouts to collect gifts and hand out flyers. They raised donations there, but the biggest gift came from the Navy spouses’ organization, which donated $1000 to the shelter from their craft bazaar the weekend before, after the president heard my son’s speech at church. That was nice.

It was also nice to play Santa. On the Saturday before Christmas, we gathered up some cookies and snacks and stuff to make s’mores and delivered the gifts to the shelter. The sister in charge had thought it would be nice to have the scouts demonstrate making a fire and tying knots, but the kids were a little too young for knot tying, and several had special needs. The oldest was an 8 year old girl who seemed self-conscious at first, but one of the scouts brought his ukulele and got to playing Christmas songs, which ended up being the best entertainment of the afternoon. He had everyone singing. And a big reward for my son was a nice hug from one of the little girls with special needs – a great confirmation for all the work he did getting out of his comfort zone calling people and asking for help.

I left the party feeling a little depressed. A sweet chubby baby boy was one of the new arrivals at the shelter. The sister said she couldn’t believe he was neglected because he was so fat.  I have toyed often with the idea of signing up to be a respite care provider for foster parents, but thus far have not because it requires going to the court and to the police station for background checks and we only have 5 months left.  But here are these children with no home to go to, and a shelter that is partly boarded up. The water pump had gone out that week – the $1000 was just in time for repairs. 

2. I wonder if we should be doing more than just helping at outreach events. For instance, we also helped at the Christmas dinner for foster families at the Baptist church, with our foster parent friends. There were so many volunteers there that I had little to do, except hold a foster baby for one of the parents who wanted to help her own daughter with a craft.  I had come earlier in the week to help organize some of the donated clothes and toys, and again felt blessed with the abundance that our family has.  I wanted to take that foster baby home.

3. Meeting the new family with six adopted kids who just moved in down the street seems to be another sign. After seeing them drive up, my 10 year daughter asked if our next car could be a big white van. I don’t think that is on my husband’s wish list. My younger kids love playing with them - they've had lots of play-in-the-street time lately with their new ripsticks from Santa. And now they also want a baby sister from Africa.

4. We have met another family with adopted kids in the neighborhood who home school. She set up a field trip to the National Park on the north end of the island to see some caves with pictoglyphs.  We signed up for a guided tour by an anthropology student at the university, who actually is studying languages of one of the other islands, but she was knowledgeable about the caves and the drawings, perhaps since her grandmother’s family had hidden in a cave during World War II, trying to escape capture by the Japanese.

Swarming butterflies

Blue banded king crow butterflies swarming. Hypolinas bolina?

House figures

turtles

Three fingered hand - thought to be that of a thief?

A Fish

5. Christmas Eve arrived sunny and warm, as usual here.  My husband wanted to go diving in the morning, so that we could get some good underwater photos, but our camera malfunctioned. Fortunately, we ran into a friend who took some for us. The boys saw a shark. The fish saw a photo op.

6. On Christmas Eve, I found myself making one more futile trip to the Exchange, although it was at the goading of my oldest who wanted to buy gifts for his siblings, and because I lost a bag of books I had purchased for gifts.  Of course, they turned up under a pile in my closet (they were supposed to be under a pile in my husband’s closet) – in time for Epiphany.  We went to Midnight Mass at the cathedral again, at the kids’ request. The music is beautiful, and the pageantry of the celebration is unparalleled on the island. The bishop sang “O Holy Night” at the Mass’s close, and then everyone adjourned to the lanai for bunelos dagu. While we were licking syrup off our fingers, the bishop came up to our family and greeted us. I think I flubbed the moment: “Thanks, Bishop, for a lovely Mass. We love it here.” I felt stupid all the way back to the car, but my husband assured me that the Bishop is very laid back here. Or he thinks the haoles are awkward.

7. The elves were busy VERY late Christmas Eve.  Presents still had to be partially wrapped and sorted, and a dollhouse needed finishing touches.  At a certain point, sleep seemed irrelevant. Fortunately, the kids were tired and slept all the way until 7. The teens would have slept longer, but everyone woke up in good spirits.  After last year’s bonanza – I overdid, because we weren’t going home to see family – this Christmas spread was more modest, but everyone seemed satisfied, except perhaps the oldest, who coveted his brother’s dive knife and machete, even though he has his own and his tent was more expensive. I liked that the older boys asked for “instant gratification” gifts (meaning a toy), so I let more Legos into the house despite declaring a moratorium on Legos some time ago. The girls at first seemed under-impressed with the dollhouse, but it quickly has become the most played with toy in the house – even the boys enjoy it.

8. After sipping coffee and enjoying the morning, we moved into get ready for company mode. A couple families joined us for Christmas dinner, although I’m afraid in our sleep-deprived state we messed up a couple dishes: undercooked the butternut squash risotto and overcooked the cherry pudding. The kids were happy to play with friends and new toys, and we shifted the focus from food by playing “Things” with the grown- ups. Always fun.

9. The day after Christmas was more relaxing. We caught up on sleep, caught up on Christmas cards, caught up with family via Skype.  We took a short hike down the Spanish Steps to one of the best snorkeling areas on the island and were rewarded with a view of an octopus. 

10. The next few days are sort of a blur. I know we went to a dinner and dessert party at the neighbor’s that was a lot of fun.  We watched a few Christmas movies, including Christmas Story and The Sound of Music, as we seem to do every year. The older boys went to see Lincoln, and on Friday they and their dad went camping with the scouts as a part of the “Order of the Arrow Ordeal.”  Meanwhile, I invited the daughter of one of the leaders to stay with us, since her parents were involved in the campout. The little girl down the street ended up inviting herself to stay, too. We had planned to watch “Anne of Green Gables,” which my 10 year old received from her grandparents, but the younger girls lost interest. It is a long movie, but I felt sorry for my older daughter, even though I was also partly angry with her, when she went to bed in tears because of the interruptions. I’m afraid part of her dramatic response is an early sign of puberty. Yikes.

How many horizon shots can I take? Looking at the northernmost tip of Guam.

10. For the feast of the Holy Family, we had a big dinner and played family games, which makes the kids happy even though they frequently leave the table angry or crying.  We continued the celebration New Year's Eve day, beginning with a long hike leading to a cove known as “Double Reef” because a second reef is located a couple hundred feet off beyond the close one. The hike was beautiful, although treacherous over mossy limestone rocks, and the cove was pretty, too. But lately there have been numerous weather advisories about high surf and bad riptides. I was very anxious about the boys swimming out to the reef with my husband, while I stayed back with the youngers.  I couldn’t relax, and the youngers picked up on my anxiety, although after a while they left me standing scanning the horizon for snorkels, counting them after each swell. I tried to wave them back, but they were busy watching dolphins and moray eels. I thought about a young Navy sailor who just died jumping from a cliff into the water – not a suicide, but killed by the waves bashing him into the cliffside. I thought of Irish fishermen’s wives living with the constant fear that they’ll be widowed by the sea.  I understood why most of the locals don’t swim in the ocean.  Come back, come back, come back! And come back they finally did, triumphantly full of reports about coral beauties.  My husband assured me they would have turned back if he thought the currents were too strong, but I still muttered prayers of thanksgiving on the hike back.

I think this is a Japanese morning glory.

Moss covered limestone.

Fresh water sinkhole where radioman George Tweed, who hid from the Japanese around here in WWII, got his drinking water.

Horizon with vines. The wave line is the second reef. We think.

We had promised the kids a trip to Yogurtland, the frozen yogurt place where you serve yourself and choose your toppings at a topping bar and pay by the weight.  Not a cheap place to eat for our family.  Then we popped into the Japanese food mart for rice balls that the kids learned to love in Japan, which are a cheap eat for our family.  The shop was lively, with a table set up at the entry for a little new year’s lucky game played with red balls and a dancing dragon robot doll.  We didn’t play the game, but it seemed festive, even though it is not the Japanese New Year.

We ended up eating out twice because our friends invited us to their church’s praise and worship concert for New Year’s Eve. We didn’t have time to cook after the vigil Mass, so we went to the ramen noodle restaurant for more Japanese food.  The kids were not thrilled about going to a church function for New Year’s Eve, and I was fighting a cough, so we didn’t stay until midnight. I played the party pooper and went to bed, but the kids stayed out in the street with the neighbors and their dad until midnight to welcome in 2013.

11. Since the week had the feel of a staycation, we accepted an invite to the waterpark New Year's Day. Great fun was had by all.

Summertime and easy living, but tough decisions

We've been sort of busy the last couple of weeks, but somehow running around here never seems like quite the hassle that it is elsewhere.  No traffic, short distances, a beautiful sky to look at, sometimes a scarlet sunset, sometimes storm clouds or rainbows. 

The kids participated in Totus Tuus Vacation Bible School this week. I can't praise this program enough. The youngers went in the morning and the middle schoolers and high schoolers went in the evening. A team of four college students, two girls and two boys, from Colorado provided all the labor. We just dropped the kids off, donated some snacks, and helped ferry and feed the college students.

All the kids loved it. They were excited to go, they talked and talked about what they did, and they LOVED the team members. They were cheerful, energetic, inspired kids.  We had them over for dinner and a coconut husking demonstration one night. I experimented with chicken kelaguen, which turned out a bit dry, but the team ate and ate.  I loved seeing my olders interact with them, asking questions, laughing, telling stories. The college kids were great role models of how someone intensely faithful can still be "cool" and fun to be around. 


Another night there was a potluck at the chapel, and my 7 year old asked if he could do Totus Tuus again next year, and I said, of course, but it might be different leaders.  He almost started crying.  

We also got to hang out with the team at the beach and on a hike and at a party at the end of the week. The chapel community really pulled together to show the kids the best of Guam.

The older boys enjoyed it so much they invited their Baptist friends on the second night. That night the topic was “The Body of Christ.” I was a little worried about what I’d hear back from their mom, but they wanted to go again the next night – when they talked about relationships.  Even with that embarrassing topic, they came again  the third night for adoration and confession (even though I'm pretty sure they didn't go to confession), and would have finished off the week if they hadn't left on vacation. A compliment to the team.

The last day  of Totus Tuus the fire truck came to wash the kids after they had a shaving cream war.

This is a great model for VBS.  The kids really like the college kids, the college kids get to brush up on their salvation history as well as have a great time in Guam. (They’ve gone snorkeling and boonie stomping, site-seeing and paddle boarding, all in the little free-time they have.) And best of all, the moms don’t have to exhaust themselves doing all the song and dance routines and cheap foam crafts that go along with planning and presenting VBS. The kids didn't bring home any crafts, but they still enjoyed this week better than any they've attended before.

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Summer vacation didn't officially start until the last day of school, June 14^th.  The following week, my older daughter was able to participate in the Reef Rangers camp put on by the National Park Service – a pretty sweet deal for free.  She did a couple field trips to sites of maritime merit, went snorkeling and put on little eco-skits at the end of the week. I don’t know if she learned anything new, but she did get to see some endangered species that are being bred by the agriculture department – the famous ko'ko bird and a Marianas Fruit Bat, also known as fanihi, particularly when cooked in coconut milk. 

I learned a little about fanihi myself – not only have they been overhunted, but since they only have one offspring a year, they have been severely depleted by the brown tree snakes.  My boys have been doing their part to exterminate this serpentine invasive species by hunting them at night along the fence line.  (They took the Totus Tuus boys hunting one night.)

Reef Rangers putting on a skit about sea turtles

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My research into native endangered species was a part of my preparation for scout camp. The week before Totus Tuus, the older boys and my husband the scoutmaster braved the rain and bugs for scout camp that was quite different from their other experiences. But since their expectations were extremely low, they ended up enjoying themselves more than they expected. I taught the environmental science merit badge, my first participation in scout camp, and probably enjoyed myself more than the boys.  It made me more confident that I would enjoy teaching fulltime. It also made me wonder why I didn’t do more planning for activities like this to make our home school experience more rich.

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So as soon as I made up my mind that I wanted to teach, I heard from the school that I’d applied to that they had decided to hire someone with more experience. No surprise. I wouldn’t hire me either, if I didn’t know me.  Although I would have put my heart into teaching literature, I had some doubts about how to present the material and come up with assignments in a manner that would be engaging, relevant, and substantive to eighth graders.  And those doubts probably came through in the second interview I had. Instead of telling the department chair about my experiences and plans, I asked her questions about her teaching style. It was a good conversation, but it probably didn’t give her much confidence in my ability. And as my mom pointed out, my ambivalence about the job probably showed.  Since none of the kids wanted to go there, it’s a bit of a relief, but I can't help being disappointed, not only because I do feel certain the kids would have received a good education there, but I would have sincerely enjoyed the opportunity.

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Now it’s back to the drawing board: make the commitment to home school again, go with the DOD school, or look into other options -- online school? The Baptist school on the island? The diocesan schools, unfortunately, do not keep up with the standards of learning that I'd like to see.  

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Part of the reason I think our home school experience was a chore by the end of the year is because instead of leading, I ordered the kids around. I relied on their books to do most of the teaching, instead of presenting material, which can be, I assume, pretty typical among home schoolers. I did not sit down every evening to plan the next day, as I would do if I were being paid to teach, as I did for my college class.  I don't know why I failed to work as hard at educating my own kids as I would at teaching other people's children.

Then there's the fact that the kids behave 30 times better for other people than they do for me. So would the DOD school be better for them, even though its academic standards may not be what I would like, because they would be practicing the virtues of obedience, responsibility, listening, etc?

My ambivalence about home schooling is influenced somewhat by seeing my older boys develop into their own persons as they interact with other adults and students. I struggle to do things like let them spend the money they are earning mowing lawns on baseball caps.  I want them to be like me, or like what I envision them being.  But I am also pleased to hear them praised by their teachers and coaches.  I don’t have the time or interest to learn about some of the things they find interesting, so I’m glad they are getting taught about WWII battles by someone who is really fascinated by warfare.  Ideally, all their teachers would be as passionate about their subject matter as this history teacher is, but I’m not sure that enthusiasm is always evident from certain teachers.

So the planning pendulum swings again. Swing to the right: I heard negative things about a teacher at the DOD school – apparently she doesn’t like boys.  And I got the Seton home school catalog today, which made me think, “Maybe if I followed a program…”

Swing to the left: I had to shut one of my daughters in her room this afternoon for misbehavior. She just turned her crying volume up full blast for everyone’s enjoyment.  That would not happen at school.

Maybe a magical new alternative will appear. . .

In the immediate future, the biggest decision is where to snorkel next . . .

A friendly octupus 

Some friends trying out our paddle board

Worn out after a busy week