Those aforementioned Scottish deer hounds - they are hunters not herders. I was invited to tea at the home of a former student. It was a gently elegant tea with a Scottish author on hand - A.L. Kennedy. There was a beautiful boarder collie mix in attendance. My host/former student said that she suffered from separation anxiety. I had to explain to him that she was a herder - that she would only be satisfied when everyone was in one room! In that first year as a high school teacher, my host and his friend approached me with a proposition. They needed a body! They wanted to do theater and there was no one to supervise. I didn't need to do anything but be there! That is not my nature. We did some good theater and I learned so much! In my last year of teaching I did really serve as a body for the boys' basketball team. There was nothing I could do much to help them save be there and threaten to quit when they misbehaved!

I constantly forget my Scottish connection even though it had a profound influence on my life. I think I was just too young to take it all in...but I did spend a year in Scotland taking my teacher's training. One of my estages was with a very elite girls' private school. The mistress of the class told me from the first day that I wouldn't be measured by my sewing skills so much as how I read a story out loud to the children. In Scotland, I was the one with the accent and I was the one who was difficult to understand! Oh how I practiced for that lesson. I suppose I succeeded...I got my certificate.

When I began teaching, it was the practice to start in the elementary school which I did. It wasn't until a number of years later and a number of other positions that I applied to teach high school in the same board. The personnel director was my old school principal from my first teaching position. He told the high school principal that I should be teaching English because I read out loud beautifully...and that is how I became a high school English teacher for thirty years!

I have no pictures of that Edinburgh time. But I do love dogs and I do visit some Scottish deer hounds on occasion.

"When you are old, I'm going to put you in an old people's home and I'm not going to tell my sister where you are!"
Such is the brilliance of a teenager in battle with her mother...fortunately, her mother could laugh about it!

When someone asks me how I am, I'm inclined to answer. I love story telling. That ten-year-old in me hasn't learned yet that what they really want me to say is, "I'm fine thank you."

They cringe lest I say, "Oh I'm so glad you asked...the ambulance is at the door and..."

They cringe even more lest I say, "You'll never guess what just happened."

There are people I have known for forty years and I still have yet to get it through my head that they really really really are just trying to be nice or cordial. THEY DON'T WANT TO KNOW HOW I AM! THEY HAVEN'T TIME TO LISTEN! THEY'RE TOO BUSY DOING IMPORTANT THINGS!

Don't they know? We ten-year-olds are always involved in important stuff. We have to orchestrate the daily operation of the world or at least that part of the world that we can have input on operating.

If I thought that I was the only one to experience this, then I would now that some serious therapy was in order...not just the occasional Reiki session attended by a crowd of the departed much to the astonishment of my Reiki master.

I have yet been able to squelch that ten-year-old in me enough to just gulp and say, "Fine thank you...and you?"

The picture is that of a two-year-old with whom I spent the day yesterday. I identify with the expression.

See - I'm really fond of dead flowers...it is a perfect time of the year to find them although the autumn light plays with photography!

I went on a tree walk in the Montreal cemetary on Sunday. It was filled with ginko trees...Did you know that a ginko tree still stands in Hiroshima. It survived the atomic bomb. And if you look closely, you will see the fruit of the ginko tree! The blog for Montreal trees is:
http://www.foretmontreal.blogspot.com/

"If you're not to be forgotten when you're dead and rotten, write something worth reading, or do something worth writing. "

Benjamin Franklin

A student I was editing started her final essay with this quote. It took my breath away. Fortunately I believe in the theory that we all have a special age that we revert to in times of trouble and in times of creativity. I am a ten-year-old standing arms akimbo, expecting the world to get it - to understand...and so I still have time to do something...be it very minor...The quote is not intended as exclusive but inclusive!

I have come to realize that I am rather fond of dead stuff! Someone pointed that out: Why do you take pictures of dead stuff?

I guess I just like it! It has character!

I discovered this enigmatic list - the story of my life - I don't like to label things. I don't like to close my drawers. I don't like to complete my sentences:

An Enigmatic List:

What is real?

The flat-headed man? The woman with the fan? The ivory horse" The wolf? The coral lady? The cardinal? The turtle? The pile of turtles? The bonneted lady? The rooster? The dog? The pawn?

Word Choice is Important - it fascinates me that irregular, intermittent, infrequent, periodic, erratic, patchy and random all have the same denotation but very different connotation. One has to sense the difference. The dictionary is of no help! I remember doing a class exercise...

I am firm; you are obstinate; he is pig-headed.
I am concerned; you are curious; he is nosy.
I am thrifty; you are a bit tight; he's cheap.
I day-dream; you are an escapist; she ought to seek help.

One of my favourite writers when I was teaching was Richard Brautigan...he was so light and so profound...he made me smile and nod and I used to give him to my students to play with...

It's so nice

to wake up in the morning all alone

and not have to tell someone

you love them

when you don't love them anymore.

It's so nice

to wake up in the morning all alone

and realize that it was just a dream

and your kitchen is not filled with garbage...

It's so nice

to wake up in the morning and know

that you do not have to go anywhere

or do anything...

Fortunately my students were much cleverer than I am...my efforts are very trying...

I figure that I "owe" 11 entries from August. The pictures are so simple...it's the text that I search for...so this picture is a place keeper. I'll find the text later.

I found it - the text that is. In an email, someone said she was aflicted with duhism. She is a most articulate person and so I googled it...

And found the Urban Dictionary definition:

"A blatantly and painfully obvious consequence or result...a result so incredibly predictable that an expectation of another result is just plain stupid or dumb! I suffer from duhism...perpetual duhism!

DUH!

I promised myself that I would never ever blog what I ate for breakfast...even though what I ate for breakfast was rather good...I could blog about the squirrel who lives in my tree and has no idea I am here as he pursues his ablutions...or the pair of blue jays who paused for a moment yesterday...in my tree on Ste. Catherine's street.

But I have lots of fragments. I call this one time frames.

A fifteen year old cat has slept ten of those fifteen years...

A six-month relationship only guarantees a six-month anniversary. Soon, he will smell the preservatives in our conversations, the scent of mothballs in our actions. It will not last. I will not allow myself to share his naive joy in the way that children believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus.

My only regret is that I didn't footnote the fragments...I took them down and forgot to note the author...but I do rather like a good metaphor. I respect a good metaphor.

The bird? He's a merganser...