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!