Today's Flowers: Windswept

From July 25, 2011

Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.
(Leigh Hunt)

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Uncomfortable

From July 29, 2011

This downward turn
Is the way to what I know,
Have always known,
Will always know:

That diving in with everything,
I find everything I need,
Release what I don't,
And come up
Riding the current

To it doesn't matter where;

I have everything.

When I dive,
I write my name
On the book of time.

When you watch,
You write yours.

May we do it from the pure comfort
Of my joy

Perfected over millenia
You don't know enough
To imagine.

From July 29, 2011

From July 29, 2011

I couldn't actually use the word "uncomfortable" in a poem, so I worked with the idea of it.

One Single Impression

Book Review: Literacy Instruction for Today's Classroom

Literacy Instruction for Today's Classroom by Susan Nelson Wood

Literacy Instruction for Today's Classroom, Implementing Strategies Based on 20 Scholars and Their Ideas by Susan Nelson Wood, Sharilyn C. Steadman, and John S. Simmons is the answer to my prayers as a middle school remedial reading teacher looking for strategies to reach kids who resist engagement in the classroom.

The book explains the theories of the scholars whose works have shaped literacy instruction for the past century and then provides cases that show how those theories are put into practice in the classroom to create exciting, interactive, engaging lessons that help student think more deeply about text and own their learning.

Each of the chapters containing a theory and an example of the theory in practice is brief and practical. As I read, I could see myself employing these strategies in my classroom. As I reflected on my students of last year, I could also see how employing these strategies could have made my instruction more meaningful for the kids who seemed preoccupied with their own thoughts. The quality of engagement these practices describe would have pulled their beautiful young minds into the here and now, I am sure.

This excellent resource also includes an appendix listing Web sites that support the practices described in the book and are cross-referenced to those lessons. After I finished reading the book, I went to the sites that interested me most, and there I found even more lesson plan ideas and resources that made reading exciting.

Published by Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc., Literacy Instruction for Today's Classroom is another example of this publishing house's practical teacher resources that address the challenges of today's public school classroom and suggest viable, deeply meaningful solutions.

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Skywatch Friday: Off the Dunes

I was coming home from a long walk on the beach, when this narrow view of the declining sun winked at me from behind a dune. I got as close as I could to get what I got, which wasn't much. But even a glimpse of these colors like melting sherbet delight me no end.

I was out a bit later than usual last night because one of the turtle patrol folks had told me in the morning that there were three false crawls down the beach. I was out hoping again to see one of these beauties come ashore. No such luck! No loss, though, because there is always this:

From July 26, 2011

Skywatch Friday

Header Challenge: Black and White

From July 24, 2011

By the light of the room I'm in at the moment, this color photo could pass for black and white. I like when that happens.  The subject of the photo is what it is at the same time it is an abstraction of itself because the light says so.  Here the fisherman is in stark contrast with the radiant dawn light rolling in with the waves.  He is nothing, but he believes the ocean will bring him gifts if only he shows up and tries.  He is very likely correct.

Please visit the other head bangers listed in the banner above!  They are excellent photographers whose work is well worth your time.

Wordless Wednesday: Beached

From July 22, 2011

The blank eyeballs on this mermaid had me thinking she must have drunk the salt water.  Poor kid.  I shot this in the dark, and it's hard to tell she has multi-colored, multi-variety seaweed hair.  This work of someone's imagination and talented hands wore it well.

Wordless Wednesday

Haiku Heights: Osprey

From July 25, 2011

From her nest, osprey
Dives at snowy egret, who
Flaps wings, holds her ground.

From July 25, 2011

This one is for Leo's meme, Haiku Heights. Please visit his site for some fine work.

My World Tuesday: It Never Gets Old

From Jul 19, 2011

I'm being a bore. I know I've posted many times about Wilmington, North Carolina. I just love that city, and so does Adella, so it was fun to bring her friend down to explore with us. I enjoyed trying to look at the town through new eyes, to see things as I hadn't seen them before.

From Jul 19, 2011

We did not go to the Battleship North Carolina, though this year marks its 50th anniversary.  I am thinking of going down the road again and making a visit.  That a handful of people thought that thing up and got a whole bunch of other people to give shape to their idea boggles my mind.  That they did it pretty much on the fly to jump into World War II and made the thing go and went on to win the war also boggles my mind.  I am no fan of war, but I totally respect the power of a people to turn the world around through the sheer force of its will.  In fact, I love that.

From Jul 19, 2011

Here's the Coast Guard cutter Diligence.  This baby and its crew have done plenty to protect our shores.  Just look at the battle flag:  42 drug busts.

From Jul 19, 2011

This flag was hanging over a shop on Market Street. As we were waiting to go for our horse-drawn tour of the historic district, I found myself drifting into the light and shadows mottling this beautiful banner.

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Framed

From Jul 19, 2011

Down in Wilmington the other day, I came across this lanceleaf coreopsis and a couple of hundred of her best friends transforming a crumbling wall into a wilderness. Mother Nature just doing her thing where she pleases. Gotta love her!

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Need

From July 21, 2011

Follow your dreams,
The neighbor says.

Do all you can
And leave it alone,
And it will happen
In its own time,
Not yours.

Says the neighbor,

And I hear:

Dreaming is not the art of hunger,
Of making a virtue of lacking what you need,
A cold, righteous making do with what is.

Dreaming is writing love letters
To every breath in every moment;

It is opening the door
To the new day,

Confident
That what is right there on the other side
Is exactly what you need.

Love it well,
And your dreams will find you.

Note:  Often I turn to the Online Etymology Dictionary for some elucidation on an OSI prompt.  The history of a word is a beautiful thing, a history of thought and feeling and language.  I love that.  This week was no help, though. Too much to choose from!  Have a look:

need (n.)

O.E. nied (W.Saxon), ned (Mercian) "necessity, compulsion, duty," originally "violence, force," from P.Gmc. *nauthis (cf. O.N. nauðr, O.Fris. ned, M.Du. nood, Ger. Not, Goth. nauþs "need"), probably cognate with O.Pruss. nautin "need," and perhaps with O.C.S. nazda, Rus. nuzda, Pol. nedza "misery, distress," from PIE *nau- "death, to be exhausted." The more common O.E. word for "need, necessity, want" was ðearf, but they were connected via a notion of "trouble, pain," and the two formed a compound, niedðearf "need, necessity, compulsion, thing needed." Nied also may have been influenced by O.E. neod "desire, longing," which often was spelled the same. Common in O.E. compounds, e.g. niedfaru "compulsory journey," a euphemism for "death;" niedhæmed "rape," the second element being an O.E. word meaning "sexual intercourse;" niedling "slave." Meaning "extreme poverty, destitution" is from c.1200. The verb is O.E. neodian "be necessary," from the noun. Related: Needed; needing. The adj. phrase need-to-know is attested from 1954.

One Single Impression

Book Review: Thunder Below!

Thunder Below!: The USS *Barb* Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in World War II by Eugene B. Fluckey

I would not have thought a naval history book could make me cry any more than I would have expected it to inspire me as a reading teacher--but cry and learn I did as I turned the pages of Thunder Below!, Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey's history of the USS Barb's patrols in the Pacific under his command during World War II.

It is a book my mother's uncle--our Uncle Bud--drove to Alabama to buy copies of for himself and for his siblings in 1994. Admiral Fluckey's submarine had been part of a wolfpack that had included my mother's Uncle Laurence's boat, the USS Herring. Before his 21st birthday, Uncle Laurence died in combat off the Kurile Islands. Pearl Harbor had gotten to Uncle Laurence's young heart; he was too young to sign up when he did; he went and he never came back.

All his life, Uncle Bud sought information from veterans about his brother's service because Uncle Laurence's passing broke his heart.  This book was part of his search to find his brother, so Uncle Bud drove to the deep South and bought copies of them from the author and veteran himself.

Admiral Fluckey gave him and his siblings this information in his inscription: "Herring was under my wolf pack command and sank a frigate, the Ishigaki, and three other ships May 31 - 1 June 1944. Unfortunately, I believe her demise was caused by a faulty torpedo compensating valve so that the bow brouched on her final firing and two shots from Matsuwa Island shore batteries holed her conning tower, causing Herring to flood and sink in deep water. From the resulting oil slick, she was definitely sunk there."

My uncle gave me his copy of Thunder Below! when he was living in a nursing home in Danbury; certain things belonged in certain places, and he wanted to make sure they got there before he was gone.

So it was for me to read this intimidatingly large, detailed, military tome. Five years later, I accepted the challenge. When I finished it seven days later, I wondered what took me so long to open up to it.

It is an hour-by-hour account of Fluckey's five patrols as skipper of the Barb in the Pacific. This brilliant and fearless fighter and leader had the complete confidence of his men, who were completely confident they could succeed. Fluckey built a team and a family, trusting in the know-how and ability of each and every one of his men, and using their feedback to modify his plans. He cared about them individually, and they knew it.  Together, they sank the greatest tonnage of any American sub in World War II.  Along the way, they also rescued Allied sailors, used rockets to take out factories, and even blew up a train and a bridge.

Fluckey was as assertive as he was intelligent; he took chances but only after weighing the odds and keeping in mind the safety of his men and his boat. His leadership of the Barb earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor and four Navy Crosses.

Fluckey revolutionized submarine warfare by going after his targets rather than waiting for them to come by. His understanding of navigation, astronomy, physics, geometry, human nature and need, and bureacracy fed his boat's successes. He never forgot the goal was to end a war, but achieving that goal meant death and destruction--and some of the victims were innocent people. In short, this book is a sensitive, heart-rending account of the cost of war by a humble leader driven by compassion in many forms--love for his family, his country and his crew, and a respect for real peace.

Deeply human moments are part of the fabric of this book about naval warfare and the price of war. For example, after his fourth patrol, Fluckey was on leave for a month, and he and his wife went out for dinner and dancing with a group of women whose husbands were submariners or who had died as submariners. "Five of the women knew they were widows. As each snuggled close, dancing with me, my heart did flip-flops. I knew four others were widows, but they had not yet been notified. Damn the war!...The horrors those women had yet to face brought tears to my eyes as they danced with their eyes closed, dreaming of dancing with their husbands."

Damn the war, indeed. But life insists on itself:

After his fifth patrol, Fluckey was relieved of his command of the Barb. When the sub headed to Guam on August 21, 1945, Fluckey released the last line holding her to the pier and waved her good-bye. "Then I sat down on the bollard and kept waving until they were passing out of the channel, all the while the crew waving back.

"The pier and dock areas were empty. I sat there until my Barb was out of sight. Finally, standing up slowly, I brushed the tears from my cheeks, ready to face the future. But how I loved that Barb girl!

"Then it dawned on me that the men in the Barb who gave her life had taught me the most valuable philosophy for my life. Regardless of all the dangers they accepted at my command, and without all the knowledge that was available to me, a reciprocal trust glowed. I find it applies totally for success in life, love, marriage, and business. Simply put, 'I believe in you.'"

Simply put, when the student is ready, the teacher arrives.  May we be worthy.

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Skywatch Friday: Something Like Hope

From Jul 20, 2011

Skywatch Friday

Shot in the Head

“It was honestly a really good day – minus the fact that I got shot in the head.”

So said Petty Officer 2nd Class Jacob Emmott on July 14, when he was presented with his Silver Star award for “gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States.” This is the third highest award for valor in the US armed forces.

Emmott was shot in the head after “providing medical treatment for two Marines who were shot during a firefight in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2010,” according to the Marine Corps press release.

Emmott, a corpsman with 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, has me rethinking my idea of a tough day.

Wordless Wednesday: Out of the Blue

From Jul 18, 2011

I was reading Thunder Below! on the front porch this morning, when ol' mama osprey caught my eye as she made her way back to the nest to check on the kiddos.

From Jul 18, 2011

Mama was busy, so the young ones just chilled out, watched, and waited, seemingly unimpressed by the shiny showoff who came on by just a few minutes after mama left.

From Jul 18, 2011

Anyway, what's impressive about a copycat--especially if you're copying the critters who've been around since the dinosaurs. The skies around here amaze and impress me. Life is good. Just open the door, step outside, and give it a whirl.

Wordless Wednesday

My World Tuesday: Snead's Ferry

From Jul 14, 2011

Sneads Ferry shares a zip code with North Topsail Beach.  We're just on the other side of the bridge, which  is across the Intracoastal, which is to say on the other side of the New River.  There's water all over the place around here, and it all has a name. Shrimping is a big part of life at Snead's Ferry.  There are days I head for the beach to find five or six shrimp boats hard at work beyond the breakers.  I hope they are kind to the sea turtles.  

From Jul 14, 2011

Tourists are a nuisance, but they feed the local economy, that's for sure.  

From Jul 14, 2011

I liked this place for the graffiti-style advertising on the wall.  Fun stuff.

From Jul 14, 2011

I tried to convince my daughter we should have a dog at the antique bus thing.  We will.  Did I mention I love it here?

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: How Does Your Garden Grow?

From Jul 12, 2011

This part of North Carolina is very interesting for the contrasts it offers. On the main roads--the ones with numbers for names--are the strip malls and the comfort zones that let people know that as far away from home as they might be, they are not. It's a strange illusion, a variation on "mi casa es tu casa." That is, my box-store, packaged life is your box-store packaged life. We have all emerged from the same cookie cutter. Step off those roads, though, and you find--the same wildflowers you find at home. Like this one--Queen Anne's Lace of wild carrot, depending on your point of view and how you feel about Queen Anne or carrots. 

From Jul 12, 2011

Around that same corner is that marvelous grain we love so much not quite thriving this hot, dry summer. That is corn. In those fields whose farmers can't affort to irrigate, this is the sight. It is a ruined crop and a significant financial loss.

It is a common sight that sits alongside the ruined tomatoes, sadly.

Having seen this and living, for now, alongside the folks who will suffer from a dry summer, I'm okay with paying more than usual for corn. People are struggling to make my dinner happen. What's another dime?

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Phantom

Go,
Phantom.
Do not slip away
Without a word
When I am not looking,
But

Go:

Put on your climbing shoes and go
And climb
And by all means keep climbing

Until you find in yourself
A substantial thing
I can call by name,

Even if it takes you forever.

And then come home.

One Single Impression

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: She is Here

From Jul 13, 2011

The forest fire at Holly Shelter just a few miles away continues to drift smoke into the sunrises, making them feel like eerie primordial events.  Even though the light is soft, it's nice to wear sunglasses that filter the smoke and show more of the light.

From Jul 13, 2011

Despite the fire, life goes on, as these turtle tracks attest.  On Wednesday, these tracks led the way to a false crawl, where a mama sea turtle attempted to create a nest but could not.  She'll be back. 

From Jul 13, 2011

On Thursday morning, I met one after another Turtle Patrol person also looking for evidence of her return.  It is a loving vigil.

From Jul 8, 2011

Just a few days before, another mama successfully laid her eggs very near this false crawl.  The turtle folks moved it because this big ol' yellow house is where the TV show One Tree Hill is filmed, and the posse of people who come to make the show couldn't care less about the turtles.  The house is near a part of the beach where there are no houses, so if it weren't for the TV cast and crew, this would be a good spot.

From Jul 13, 2011

So much effort to come home after two decades and climb out of the water for this ritual.  How not to be in awe?

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: Sandy Beings

From Jul 6, 2011

(Her face made me think of George Washington!)

From Jul 6, 2011

Note this turtle's cracked shell.  He made me think of Oceans 11, a female  loggerhead at the sea turtle hospital whose shell was mended with 12 steel plates after she was rescued a few years ago.  She was smashed up by a boat.  This is a danger when turtles come up for air.  Note all the junk the sculptors left out for the night--another danger for the females who come ashore to lay their eggs.  

Wordless Wednesday

Header Challenge: Below Water Level

Turtle:  The Incredible Journey should be required viewing for anybody who plans to spend any time at all on the beach this summer. 

It is the story of a loggerhead turtle who hatches on a Florida beach; makes it past countless hungry predators and into the Atlantic; and swims to maturity following the Gulf Stream and other currents that take her along the edge of the ocean and home again, two decades later, to lay eggs and continue the 12-million-year-old turtle cycle of life. 

(If you are a vacationer with a $150 sun shelter from Wal-Mart that you plan to leave on the beach for the duration of your stay, come on down and see just how in the way you are.)

Thanks to whatever technology and cameras SeaWorld and company used to make the 80-minute movie, we travel with the turtle, surviving in the sargassum until a freight ship comes along to destroy it, pukes oil onto the water, generally makes a life-threatening disaster of things, and leaves the turtle to her own devices.

The turtle's eary life runs an obstacle course of natural and human-made threats that had us on the edge of our seats and looking away with shame. The journey around the Atlantic is not without its Shangri-La moments, though. Life in the Azores and the Caribbean are a Disney cruise for the loggerhead after the struggles she has faced. In the Caribbean, she finds her mate, and then off she goes to the Florida beach that was once her mother's maternity ward to lay her own eggs and move on.

Life goes on mysteriously and beautifully and despite every obstacle humanity puts in the way.

According to this documentary narrated by Miranda Richardson, turtles have been around for 200 million years. They fled the earth when the dinosaurs came along, adapted to the seas, and eventually outlived the big, weird reptiles. They continue to evolve because ancestral memory and a highly sensitive understanding of the ways of the natural world drive them forward. 

We can't say the same for ourselves.  May we behave that the turtles might remember us well in the history of the world.  

Please watch this excellent movie.

If you're on a beach this summer, take your toys inside, fill any holes you dig, knock your castles, douse the lights, and keep those beautiful and ancient reptiles in your kind thoughts. They will be here when we are long gone, and no doubt.

My World Tuesday: Sometimes it Stinks

Sometimes it stinks to be my kid. Really. Take Saturday, for a few hours that day, being my daughter stunk to the high heavens. That's when we helped out with the beach clean-up on North Topsail Beach that was part of the Earth and Surf Festival.

From Jul 9, 2011

The clean-up was on a part of the beach we don't regularly visit, and I must say the trash wasn't nearly as interesting there as it is right here. In addition to the two perfectly good pair of men's Ray-Bans, the 5-lb. hammer, the just about new fishing lure, and don't let me tell you how many sand toys I have found on our beach, I came across this message in a bottle the very day of the clean-up. 

From Jul 9, 2011

Down the road, though, we garbage pickers didn't do much better than roofing shingles, cigarette butts galore, a Styrofoam cooler (good if you don't mind green slippery things hob-knobbing with your lunch), and every kind of junk food wrapper.

From Jul 9, 2011

It just wouldn't be right for the mama turtles to have to climb over our junk to lay their eggs and keep the whole mystery going.  You stick around here long enough, and you get house proud.  You love this world or you don't--and we all know by what you do with what you've got.

From Jul 9, 2011

Here's Miss Muscles posing with what we picked up in a sadly small area.

From Jul 9, 2011

We hit the beach afterwards, and we were so tired from the exercise and the heat that we forgot our basic chair-operating skills.  Oh well.  The rain came and washed the stink away, but not before I got the requisite photo.

From Jul 9, 2011

Now this is my kind of debris!

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Lush and Beautiful at the Burgwin-Wright House

From Jul 8, 2011

For a long time, Adella and I had been unsuccessful in visiting the Burgwin-Wright House in Wilmington, North Carolina. Whenever we were in town, it was the wrong day or the wrong hour for that historic site. This year, though, we did our homework, and paid a visit on the right day. We were a few minutes late for one tour, so we waited an hour in the gardens, where we and our cameras got pretty wet. This was a good thing because things around here have been pretty dry--and you don't get lush gardens with gorgeous pomegranate trees without a few showers now and again.

From Jul 8, 2011

I think roses at every stage of their coming and going are very beautiful. This faded blossom was no exception.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Respect

I looked again
At a bit of what I thought
Was fluff
Blowing across the hard sand
After a night of rain
At the edge of the Atlantic

And found it was a crab
Easily caught in the wind and cast about
(And this, I presumed, was a good thing)

Until it landed very near my feet
And the open eye of my camera

And I froze,
Wondering how much life
I take from the Earth with every step.

I stood as still as the crab
Who sensed and therefore feared me.

I must move,
I thought.  So I did.

And I wondered:
How much life does the Earth give me
With every step,

And where do I take it?

Skywatch Friday: Like any Other, a New Morning

From Jul 6, 2011

After finding my camera--after several minutes of running around looking for it and marveling how one person--me--could forget about the location of this one piece of equipment that is very much like a left arm to me, I found it. In the time it took me to do three or four laps around my parents' home in North Carolina, the sunrise changed shape, oh, a thousand times. Nevertheless, I got what I got when I got it. I was not disappointed. I never am.

Life is good and fun once you wake up. And it's even better than that once your hands are on the right equipment.

Live well. Be well. Enjoy.

Skywatch Friday

Header Challenge: Every Day

I suggested the theme of "every day" for this week's header challenge.  What is every-day is ordinary.  For me this summer, what is ordinary is extraordinary for its beauty and strength and very intense heat. What is ordinary for me are the fabulous sunrises over the Seaview Pier on North Topsail Beach, North Carolina.  They are strange and different from sunrises of previous years because they are clouded and thickened by the smoke of nearby forest fires.  Day becomes night, yet the sun burns through and the breezes clear away the muck in the air before too long.  It's good and it's strange.

Something else that is every day for me is picking up the litter on the beach.  So much of it is pure crud that I can't wait to get rid of it.  Other times, there are treasures.  So far, I have accumulated two footballs, two pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, and countless sand toys.

Today there was the kite I couldn't get to because it would have meant climbing the dunes, which we can't.  There are days like this:

From Jul 5, 2011