Jack completed Eagle Scout
with Robert Lane
Troop 5
July 2012
Since when does showing a movie with a nude 15 yo and a nude 17 yo support the mission of the Anchorage School District?
At East High School, that is what is offered to kids in the classroom.
Isn’t it kind of icky that middle-aged men look at teenaged girl’s bare breasts and teenaged boys totally nude in a movie approved by the East High Curriculum Principal?
This strikes me as perverted.
Sorry my kids. I’m going to keep sending letters until I find someone who can tell me how this meets sound educational methodology.
What have I learned from our friend Dr. Suess?
That with a few words
we could All call a truce.
*
We must say what we mean
and Mean what we say.
This gives us all time
to come together another day.
*
A jumble of meanings never helps us
speak out.
Those twists and those turns
gives others a chance to pout.
*
Come with me today
on an adventurous new road.
New markers and paving
makes the journey smoother,
I’m told.
Winter fast appoaches
with silent sounds encroaching
on simple thoughts.
So simple.
With newness in the whiteness,
over wrought beneath the brightness.
So simple.
A season change of welcoming doubt
a difference in the pendulum pout.
So simple.
Dear Ms Guess,
I dislike making so many mistakes,
I guess I could blame some else.
I read and don’t see them
with an empty mouth open?
Well, I no longer pass the perfection test.
*
I use to do better,
before all the stress,
My mind was sharp as a tack.
But now there are blips,
spelling errors and slips,
Like a worn out dress hung back on the rack.
Libraries…
I had none until seventh grade.
Time to read, a basket on my bike
Overloaded, making me afraid.
Libraries…
an opening to our world
with unsung possibilities
yet, politicians won’t spend their gold.
Libraries…
Open to everyone they say.
Libraries…
Mystical.
Unending.
I always want to go,
Today.
A work in progress…
What, you thought I was talking about me?
While I’m certainly not perfect,
my growth has been better than this.
vegetable garden, first day of summer
Anchorage, Alaska
The Municipal Ombudsman’s office did not respond to concerns of child safety at Bayshore Elementary
and I just could not understand why people all got the same letter…and…not…one…person…responded…
So, here’s the rest of it—months before it got sent to the School Board.
Now, did they get it? Well, yes. After another parent spoke about the same concerns and could not get a response from the Ombudsman’s office, Mike made sure it went again.
But we still never got a response.
If grief is like a slough,
then anger is a pair of boots that help you walk though it.
because you can’t ignore it.
You can’t walk around it.
You must walk though it.
And, when Carol Comeau said, “Ben Hardwick has his supporters.”
and Mike says, “Hitler had his supporters, too”
And when Jan Christensen said, “The bar is not high enough to fire him.”
and I said, “My children are not a high enough bar–what will it take?”
So who determines what to grieve?
Trust gone? Betrayal? Being told, just told anything
to fill the space that truth will invade if left empty?
Permeate the air with new energy, only to find the same black spirit
pervasive, with no change.
To grieve anew, when lied to, used and with choices denied.
Who should take it upon himself to withhold? Is that how he would want to be treated? Or was it the easy way, the learned way, repetition numbing responsibility or ability to reach out.
Playing games on planes of the Universe.
Slapping aside any who say they want to play.
Paid players winning with fouls, refs bought to say the play.
and the commissioner says, go forward, apply constant pressure
But don’t get mad.
I think it is really–don’t let people see you get mad.
Mad, anger, motivation, to apply persistence.
Who could do it day in and day out
in the middle of a Happy Dance?
If God had wanted
me to be a doormat,
He would have made me
Long, Flat and Skinny.
the Gospels, according to my mom.
and
People who live in glass houses,
are just damned fools.
my dad’s version of an Idiom
Mountain Ash berries out my window
Enveloped tonight
with feelings of belonging for
school Open House and
seeing others we know.
Our world begins to disappear with looking closer, to find the edges
which are now blurry to the touch.
Taking on new form.
To transform the familiar and create
new windows of opportunity.
Fall fog on Madison Way
September 14th, 2010
Someone gave us a gift…
We don’t know who,
Do you?
We were walking along,
Tempted to sing a song.
We remembered to look up!
And look down
To see the special gift we found.
And we left it as we went away.
So that someone else
would also have a gift today.
September 12th, 2010
The sound of silence
is missing as Fall draws near
“Close the window,” says Keelin. ” It’s noisy.”
So, we shut out the Holiday noise
of leaf blowers, while we wait for our fall to snow from the birch trees in the backyard. Coming down and nestling
within the last of the blooms while the sun lowers on the horizon
and shines through, bringing them back to life.
While the weed whackers drone, we put those sounds with the plane
right over our heads as we admire the sky which hid from us all summer.
and moves us on toward winter and soft sounds where the snow comes down
and all of our neighbors’ hard work will be covered. Until they bring out the leaf blower and blow away the beautiful white, silent snow.
roof top garden
September 6th, 2010
The moon returns
heralding the end of the Alaskan summer, where summers have no real sounds, except for cars on the highway, planes in the air, magpies screeching in the trees.
Summers so different from my childhood, where the moon made no difference.
In my summers, cicadas were thrumming loudly, June bug skins on screen doors to be picked off.
The smell of tar, sticking to your bare feet with gravel crunching under bike tire wheels, the taste of wet foods, none to cook.
Legs burning on car seats, breathing labored with hot, wet air reverberating with the fierce heat lightning, one thousand one, one thousand two…
But the moon always came with a promise of reprieve.
This moon, like a street light, where my streetlights were barrels.
Rusted with flames licking out around the edges as our summers burned away in our yards.
And the harvest moon overshadowing the end of those summers.
moon from rooftop garden
August 25th, 2010
