Revolutionary Grammar

I've been at a "Revolutionary Grammar" Workshop this week, looking for practical ways to holistically synthesize the teaching of grammar with reading and writing. Sometimes what you come to a workshop expecting doesn't get delivered, but you fly home dusted with a different kind of pollen. Here's what I've learned:

Grammar wears blues and greens, a summer day personified. Over her shoulders, she slings a wicker pack basket filled with several changes of costume in other circadian shades. Curious props can be seen peeking out the top of her basket: a small brass hand mirror, a red admission ticket attached to it with the words “taking notes;” a pair of mirrored sunglasses ticketed with the words “Yadda, yadda, yadda;” a small bottle of Elmer's Glue labeled with a red ticket that reads “pay-per-view TV;” a Webster-Merriam Dictionary with the word “thermos” taped on to the cover, just to name a few of her metaphors. She has more in her basket, jingling around among the atmospheric garb of shape-shifters. Some days she dresses as a noun; other days, she prefers being the action. Today she is off to the nearest playground to lead a workshop on prepositions. Children soon fall into squiggly lines of chatter in Grammar’s wake as she loops her way through the park to the latest scape in playground design.

Grammar gathers her audience around her and beckons them to sit, motioning them to watch. She then climbs up the red webbed structure the kids fondly refer to as The Eiffel Tower.

“What am I doing?” she calls.

“Climbing!” the children shout.

“Yes!” she retorts. “Where am I climbing?”

“On the Eiffel Tower!” the kids glee in unison.

“Yes, I’m climbing on the Eiffel Tower!”

In a flash—did she fly?—Grammar now hangs upside down from the Caterpillar, another climbing apparatus.

“What am I doing?” Grammar begins again, quizzing the giggling children now gathered around her as she swings upside down, hanging from her knees.

“You’re hanging upside down!” comes the shrill voices of the delighted children.

“From the Caterpillar!” a pig-tailed girl in polka-dotted overalls adds.

“In the playground,” a sly older child slips in.

“On a sunny day!” Grammar smiles upside down, her short silver hair brushing the wood chip carpet beneath her blood-rushed head as she swings back and forth.

Next, Grammar runs wildly, the children joined in a whip following her blindly, joyfully. “What are we doing?” Grammar’s voice trails behind her.

“Running!” the children scream, voices deliciously icing the air.

“Where?”

“Around the spinning seats! We’re running around the spinning seats!” the children laugh.

“Can I have a turn?” asks a boy.

“Yes, you may,” says Grammar, handing him a white baseball hat with the word Leader on the bill. “You may go anywhere a squirrel can go: up, down, around, through, in, over, under, on, to, in front of, beyond, anywhere.”

“Can I be next?” a shy girl asks.

“May I be next?” Grammar gently corrects and repeats the query as she beams a smile and nods yes to the young girl, “Yes, you may.”

***

There are pivotal moments in life that a writer returns to again and again through reverie. The moment embeds itself into body memory and sinks to the depths of one’s being, forgotten until needed. If one is lucky, the experience is retrieved, plucked like a pearl and strung with other moments to form a life narrative. We wear them like a jeweled necklace, invisible to onlookers but worn to smooth polish like a constant talisman to writers willing to dive deep enough for the gifts secreted in the dark waters of consciousness.

***

My room is still dark. Only dawn light sifts through the small dormer window at one end of my shoebox attic bedroom on the third floor. The house is old, originally a barracks during the Civil War, and has more recently been stuccoed and embellished in antebellum Greek revival fashion with a Doric columned front porch. There is a wrought iron balcony enclosing French doors between the first and second storeys that is protected by the porch. Between the porch and the roof is a half circle wagon wheel window from which we can see a great distance. It is my favorite place to watch thunderstorms come in over the valley. The third floor expands under the peaked roof and includes my small room, my brother’s larger room, a small windowed bathroom big enough for a commode and a sink I can barely reach, a play space, and large open spaces under the eaves for storage. Our house is built into a hillside, and the only thing the road beyond our driveway leads to is the town cemetery, which sprawls out over the hilltop under a canopy of ancient trees. It affords visitors a peaceful vista of the surrounding rolling hills and valleys of the Ohio River in southwestern Pennsylvania. We take our daily walks there with the babysitter, popping butter and eggs and sucking honeysuckle along the winding drive. We play hide and seek among the tombstones and rustling leaves in the fall, sled down the snow-covered hills in winter.

It is Saturday morning. Early. My five and a half year old brother, 18 months my senior, wakes me up, “Hey! Wanna go up on the roof?” I’m told we did everything together, brother and sister, but in retrospect, I think that was more a condition of sibling existence in the adult world of the 50s than an affectionate bond. No matter. Tim beckons; I follow. Out the third storey bathroom window we clamber. Up the steeply pitched tar roof shingles we climb, exploring the hills and valleys of our new found freedom. I make my way to the peak at the front of the house where I just know the best view will be had. There, I perch like a small bird, sear-suckered feathers ruffling in the wind, pixie haircut almost flowing behind me. In my imagination I can feel it, long locks kissing my shoulders.

I look out and beyond the circumference of my daily life that ends at the edge of our yard. Below me are the streets and alleyways and houses and buildings of the village arranged in neat quilt squares. There, the library! There, the village square where I nervously met Santa Claus last winter, too shy to sit on his knee. Just at the edge of the village runs the railroad tracks and beyond them is the Sewickley bridge, spanning the Ohio River like a blue barrette, holding in place the road to Coreopolis that passes Dairy Queen when we go to the airport. I can see for miles. I dream I can fly. The world is new and alive and I am its fairy awoken to its magic!

My mother walks out of the house, emerging from the front door under the roof of the porch. I watch her stride purposefully several steps out into the driveway, turn and look up. She is small from my vantage point. I want to wave, but quickly see the terror in her eyes. Tim is tapping my shoulder. “Quick, gotta get down!”

We spend the rest of the day in jail: our rooms. Bread and water are placed at our doorways. I watch from my dormer window as my father erects a swimming pool in the side yard. Our toddler brother wobbles at Mother’s knee. A neighbor stops by to talk to my parents. Laughter wafts up to my window and their faces look up at me. The story has been told.

I live out my childhood and adolescence reminded often of this misadventure, most usually retold at the dinner table like a litany for the benefit of company. It wasn’t until I left home and started to explore the world of writing that I claimed this story for my own. It wasn’t until I became a writer that I realized the day I climbed out on to the roof when I was four years old was the day I became a poet.

***

I am at Bard, sitting in a classroom in Olin Humanities and Lecture Hall reading and writing, supposedly about grammar. Place and context—I’m not seeing it. This workshop does not live up to what it advertises in the blurb. I’m waiting for a revolution. In the meantime, I’m gathering appropriate accoutrements for what I hope will be a peaceful takeover of outdated teaching models plaguing classrooms, a teacher’s constant frustration. What is in my toolbox for this demonstration so far? A pen, a notebook, seven senses, a reader, and other folks’ ideas. What more do I need?

Tomorrow is hump day—I’m told I’ll see the light then. Perhaps the troops will rally. Will we take up grammar arms and march into a new understanding? Here’s to a positive disposition rather than opposition.

***

This morning I put on my blue dress and packed my wicker basket with scissors and collecting jars. I’m off to look for monarch eggs underneath the milkweed leaves. I feel another metamorphosis coming on. Wings are budding on my shoulder blades. I have a change of clothes with me, something appropriate for flying high and getting the bigger picture, taking the measure of the land, the land where Meaning and Language reside.

Some of us wait a lifetime to claim what is ours, to recognize who we are. It is a hard lesson to learn to be in charge of your own celebrations, your own revolutions. The children are waiting.

Taking Heed of Road Signs from the Emerald Isle

images from drivingschoolireland.com

It is amazing how quickly one springs back into old habits and how fast one's environment holds the patterns of habitual behavior. Not even a week has expired since returning home from a two week trip of a lifetime and I'm back in the familiar grooves of routine. Already, instead of rising eagerly to approach the day on a full stomach fueled by a hardy Irish breakfast that I sat down to eat in good company and that kept me exploring a full day with gusto, I am full steam into my usual multi-tasking modus operandi. I am finding myself eating breakfast, usually standing up, making mental lists of what needs to be done and when, both personally and professionally, and feeling my anxiety rise as if the day is too short, the summer half over, and the horizon of a new school year is already breathing down my neck. Whoa! Time to calm down.

I have come to view with a wary eye my dogged tracks as ones I've worn to ruts. These ruts seem as deep as some of the gullies I tried desperately to avoid steering the rental car into as we drove the waysides in Ireland. Getting accustomed to driving from the right side of the car on the left side of the mostly narrow roads was complicated further by trying to read the road signs and traffic postings. Now that I've had some time to reflect a bit on the signs, I have a new found appreciation for something I simply thought was curiously quaint when I first read it, and that was the idea of "Traffic Calming."

Imagine driving in a counter-intuitive manner on unfamiliar roads, very narrow roads often with hairpin turns or successive bends around blind curves, no shoulder but instead stone walls, gullies, or hedgerows that tickle the sides of the car as you try to stay within the confines of the white line marking the middle of the road (if there was one or grass growing through the macadam if there wasn't) and the dotted yellow lines marking the edge of the road (again, if they existed), while at the same time trying to maintain something close to the speed limit which was often an unimaginable 80 or 100km. Just as we'd get up to speed, there would appear on the road surface the word SLOW followed by several painted yellow lines across the road as a physical echo of the admonishment before the words EVEN SLOWER followed by more yellow refrains would bring us to a sign posting 30km and the words "Traffic Calming" as we entered a short stretch of brightly painted buildings indicating a village. Often, the traffic calming sign was followed by a series of ramps (better known to us as speed bumps) where pedestrians can cross with the right of way, which finally lead to at least one roundabout, oftentimes more, before the other edge of town was reached, and frazzled by that time, we'd read the sign for 100km and have to speed up again.

Once these signs and patterns for traffic calming became more familiar, I allowed myself to think about just what was intended by the road planners and how it was accomplished. Lane endings, traffic islands, mini-roundabouts, build-outs, chicanes and pinch points are all speed reducing measures that are put in place in myriad variations. They are intended as a way of slowing motor vehicles through road design to match the local conditions and to improve road safety. An added plus is that these measures also reduce things such as noise and air pollution in communities. It all makes sense, and it all happens here in the USA as well. What caught my fancy, however, was the Irish and UK sensibility to use the nomenclature of "Traffic Calming."

So, here is one of many "take-a-ways" from my trip: I need to institute traffic calming measures in my lifestyle. I need to slow down and then go slower. I need to stop and let some things go. In a roundabout, I can always circle as many times as I need to in order to make the right choice. If I get lost, there's always the option, as Fiona (our GPS system) often reminded me, to "make a U Turn when [I am] able." Even though we are now past the summer solstice, the days are still long, the summer is still young, and the new school year resumes at the end of the ample summer. Now is the time to reflect and imagine, to live in the calm, and to enjoy the fruits of summer living.

40 Shades of Wonderment on the Emerald Isle

The saying goes that there are at least 40 shades of green in Ireland. Katrina, our horsewoman from Long Stables, said it herself yesterday, although today when I asked a chocolatier on the quay of the Liffey in Dublin how the saying went, he scoffed at me and said half the sayings attributed to the Irish never originated here and aren't often heard in Ireland. I suspect he was having his fun with me, a tourist, but his real point in our brief conversation was that the green in the Emerald Isle can't be quantified, it is so myriad. It is, I think, like trying to count the wonders of the universe. Some simply refer to them as The Ten Thousand Things. The numbers and hues aren't important; the idea is that they coexist in a world that is as interdependent and and as diverse as the stars in the Heavens, the fish in the sea, and the birds on the wing. The trick is to be able to discern and celebrate the abundance of variations on a theme, be it person, place, animal, mineral, or plant.

On our way back to Dublin for our last night in Ireland, we decided to explore some of Erie's interior counties because we've pretty much been hugging the coast since we landed. We headed toward Tipperary. Although not an official national park, the Glen of Aherlow Nature Park in Tipperary County certainly qualifies in my book. The Glen of Aherlow is a long velvety swath of fertile valley set at the feet of the Galtee Mountains on the north and the Slievenamuck Ridge on the south, stretching for sixteen miles or so east to west, just south of the town of Tipperary. We took the scenic drive after turning off from the regional highway heading to Dublin and wound our way through the valley in search of the park, wondering when we'd get to it. Our book had mentioned a giant statue, The King of Christ, at the park's entrance which was also the trail head for a variety of marked hiking trails. The valley is said to be the Holy Glen of Tipperary and many early Christian sites are located here, though we would have needed weeks to discover them. All we had time for today was one last hike before heading home. After a few hairpin turns in the road following many signs pointing the way, we were breathless at the vantage point the entrance to the park finally provided. We gazed out at a crazy-quilted valley of greens that was spread below us, back lit with the blue Galtee Mountain range and the cloud-studded sky. What a treat for our last day! We enjoyed the view and then entered the wooded path and took the blue trail markers for a 4km hike before getting back on the road. We did take note of the giant stature of the King of Christ, his hand raised toward heaven in blessing to all those journeying who pass beneath his image.

We arrived back in Dublin in time to sit on the quay and enjoy a tea and cappuccino and a stroll into Temple Bar in the late afternoon. Being a warm Saturday evening, people were out and about and there appeared to be a Gay Pride celebration happening, adding to the street ambiance a carnival air. There were musicians playing on the streets, set up with their guitars and amps and drums or more simply with a fiddle and a microphone and the tunes ran from original contemporary to traditional folk, all with a distinctly Irish flair. We made our way back across the Liffey to have a World Cup Special at Madigans where we watched the game with high hopes for our American team's chances to advance another level. We've been fortunate to have caught almost all of the evening World Cup games while we've been traveling. Sadly, our team did not win the game tonight despite overtime play, but they were in the game heart and soul, the only way to play. It's also, I've learned, the only way to travel.

We ended our night with a traditional trio who took up their instruments and voices when the game was ended, so we came back to our hostel with music in our hearts. A grand ending!

Over the Connor Pass through Kerry into Cork

The Connor Pass cuts over the Dingle Peninsula, connecting Dingle to Castlegregory, and is the highest mountain pass in Ireland. Once you pass the viewing pullovers at the crest of the pass, the road narrows significantly and winds down toward sea level through very dramatic scenery, uninhabited mountains haloed in mist and valleys dotted with black lakes. One expects wild Irish clansmen to ride up on horseback, but in actuality, there's only a car waiting in a bit of shoulder hugging the mountain while you take your turn to take the pass. Once off Connor Pass, we set Fiona (GPS) to Killarney National Park.

Each national park we've visited has been spectacular, and Killarney National Park is no exception. This park is right on the edge of Killarney itself, and at its core is the Muckross Estate, a 19th century mansion and its grounds. However, the park includes much more than this restored mansion and the Muckross Abbey. There is Ross Castle, which we didn't see, and more than 10,000 hectares that contain wild deer, ancient Oakwoods (the tree specimens on the grounds of Muckross Estate were stunning), glacial lakes or loughs, three of them that are connected, and a waterfall. We only had a short time to spend here before driving on, so we took a walk on the hiking path alongside Muckross lake as far as the Estate for a cup of coffee in the visitor center (every visitor center we've been in has been inviting, informative, and well designed) and then over to the Abbey before turning back along the drive the jaunting cars (horse drawn buggies) frequent on their round the lake tours of the park. There were dozens of jaunting car cabbies hawking their trade, desperate to drum up business, but we preferred to walk, stretching our legs from the car ride.

We arrived in Kinsale late afternoon. Kinsale is a harbor town of tiny winding streets, colorful shops, many pubs, and a marina of masts and motors, large and small, grand and humble. After a quick wander in and out of many of the artsy shops, I took a walk out toward Scilly and Charles Fort to see what I could see, mainly where this tucked in little harbor town actually meets the sea. I'm glad I took that walk so I could get a glimpse of the fort ruins out along the cove and have a chance to see some of the views of the harbor that are limited within town. I heard tell that Kinsale is the oldest historic town in Ireland, but whether or not this is true, it does seem to have determined itself to be the mecca of gourmet dining. Judging by the literature in our B&B and the lines out the doors of many of the higher end restaurants, there is some truth to this notion. We had a lovely pub meal of fresh fish while watching Spain and Chile play the World Cup. No need to stay out for music tonight! Our B&B is very centrally located right amongst the many shops and pubs and it is Friday night. We've heard the music as if we were perched right on the pub stool! We're in quite a busy hot spot for our next to last night in Ireland! Tomorrow, we head back to Dublin.

A Day on the Dingle Peninsula

Blue sky, azure water, verdant hills, a happy village, welcoming people, ancient ruins, Irish cob horses, scenic drive, pub music…a day to remember on the Dingle Peninsula. The village of Dingle is a very happy place with its brightly colored buildings lining the narrow streets that hug the hillside around the harbor. Although I was charmed by the hues of blue around town, the storefronts were every color of the paintbox and many had fun signs and embellishments. We stayed in a very centrally located B&B right on the quay and our host, Thomas, was very friendly and helpful in giving us information about the area and in making suggestions. As an aside, most of the B&Bs and guesthouses we've stayed in have been hosted by lovely people, mostly men, and all of them have been delightful! We feel very fortunate to have had so many positive experiences.

After walking around town in the early morning, I stopped in the tourist office to inquire about activities, particularly horseback riding, something we've been wanting to do since we've been in Ireland. The tourist office clerk rang the stables for me, and I booked an hour horseback ride for us out in Vestry, a tiny village west of Dingle, along the scenic Slea Head Drive that goes around the tip of Dingle Peninsula.

Long Riding Stables have close to 100 Irish cob horses, although there were only about a dozen or so out for riding when we pulled up. A lovely young woman, Katrina, greeted us and explained how to pick out hard riding hats and boots to fit properly from the selection in the tack room while she saddled up the horses for us. It is a mystery how or by what criteria she chose the horses for us (was it how tall we were, our weight, the look in our eyes, our smiles?), but I was put on a traditional black and white cob lad without a name as yet, though they were thinking he looked like a Michael, so Michael he was to me when the need arose to slow him down or get him going. I found him to be a slow poke most of the time, but he did give me pause during a trot when I thought he might bolt just to get away from the nasty flies that kept dogging him around the head. Although we've had wonderful weather for our trip, it's been considered very warm here, and the horses were feeling it. Katrina kept us to the hedgerows around the farmland and we had to forgo the gallop on the beach because there were already too many people there. Katrina also felt there was too much danger of the horses just laying down and rolling in the cool wet sand just to cool off, riders be damned! We had a delightful ride nonetheless, learning much about Irish cob horses (the best value for a horse these days, apparently, as these horses are sturdy and good for trekking or for working), and the local area as well, from Katrina who has lived in Dingle and worked with horses most of her life.

After our ride, we stopped off for some cappuccino at a pottery cafe (everyone seems to mix retail with the opportunity to cater to travelers in need of a rest and a pot of tea or coffee) and then wound our way along the Slea Head Drive, stopping here and there at the pull overs along the very narrow winding road for a spectacular view from this western most shore of Europe or for a viewing of some ancient site or ruin, the best of which were the ancient bee hive huts, or Clocháns. We stopped to look at a cluster of these huts that possibly date back to the 12th century. The huts are corbelled with dry rocks so that no mortar is needed and the hut can have an opening at the top for a chimney or light or air, but could be simply and quickly covered as well when the need called for it. The structures were small but elegant, simplistic and pure in form, reminding me of Andy Goldsworthy installations.

At the end of the day, after completing the majestic Slea Head Drive that brought us in a wide circle back in to Dingle, we took in the World Cup game of the night and then headed to the pub for dinner and traditional music. It was a perfect day on the Dingle Peninsula!

Clints and Grykes, a Sea of Stones in The Burren

We covered a lot of distance today, traveling from Clifden in Co. Galway into Co. Clare to see The Burren and the Cliffs of Moher on our way to Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry. As usual, we started our day with an agenda that time and energy couldn't support, especially since I seem to be slow to process road signs when there are more than three pointing in multiple directions. I also seem not to understand that exits on roundabouts don't necessarily correlate to egresses, so when Fiona (the GPS voice) says "in 450m enter roundabout and take the second exit," if the first egress isn't marked with a route post, it doesn't count as an exit. Of course, Fiona never says "…take the second exit for R59" which would make it ever so much easier because I'd have a sign to look for rather than having to guess. The point is that we, and subsequently Fiona, had a fair amount of "recalculating" to do today because of my processing lapses, but even without the lost time of turning around, getting from here to there in Ireland takes much longer than one realizes. That being said, it seemed clear that we would have to take a portion off our plate, so we bypassed the Cliffs of Moher. We've had our share of dramatically cliffed coastlines, having already visited the Causeway Coast and the Slieve League, so we opted for the drama of The Burren, and we weren't disappointed.

Driving through The Burren (the Rocky District) is a dramatic experience as the landscape in all directions in the northwest corner of Clare county seems to be sweeping hills covered with thick slabs of limestone called clints that look to have been drizzled like silver icing on the earth by some giant confectioner. The deep fissures between the slabs are known as grykes and we came at a time when they were abloom with vivid wildflowers bobbing against the stark hardscrabble pavement, but grasses, ivy, and other vegetation grow readily in the grykes as well, as the moisture collected there provides a rich humid soil. They are like self-watering planters. These fissures have drained the rainfall of centuries to underground rivers, and there are many caves beneath the Burren as well. The ancient people who lived in this stark land were probably farmers who eked out a life on the top soil that originally covered these rock shelves that had been formed by an ancient sea and then due to some seismic shift in Earth's core were forced to the surface, but over the millennium, the soil has been swept away by the winds. What remains are the stones: walls of stones stacked vertically, horizontally, and every which way, in random pattern held together by the laws of physics and gravity, glued only by air and sweat equity that has lasted the ages; ruins of stone forts; cairns; megalithic dolmens; and ancient burial chambers. Where the clints and grykes disperse at the edges of the Burren, the slopes are brilliantly green with vegetation.

We stopped along the way at one of the largest portal tombs in Ireland, Poulnabrone Dolmen, wishing it were sunset and that a tour bus hadn't pulled in behind us, but despite the regrettable chatter in the air, we were awed in the presence of this sacred megalithic monument, wondrous at how possibly the builders of it accomplished their astonishing task of moving, standing, and lifting these huge slabs of stone weighing tonnes, a secret yet to be spoken on the breeze.

Westport to Clifden by way of Connemara.

We drove the scenic route from Westport, County Mayo to Clifden, County Galway, going through the small village of Louisburgh and following R335 through the Doolough Pass, hugging the lake of Doolough, a sublime and majestic landscape in the middle of the Murrisk Mountains, to the small village of Leenane at the tip of Killary Harbour, Ireland's only fjord. The Doolough Pass was used by starving people of Ireland during the Great Famine, who walked through this harsh environment to reach Delphi where relief was said to be had, but they were turned away and hundreds died on the walk back. We passed the Famine Walk Memorial on the side of the road near the lake, lending a haunting quality to the beauty surrounding us.

At Leenane, we turned onto N59 and made our way to the Connemara National Park, one of six national parks in Ireland. Connemara National Park is over 2,000 hectacres of varied landscape from mountains of metamorphic rock, quartzite, schists, and green and grey marbles, to grasslands, heaths, bogs, and woods. Much of the park encompasses the Twelve Bens mountain range. The park was established in the 1980s to conserve and protect the unique landscape of Connemara. There is a herd of pure bred Connemara Ponies protected within the park and Irish red deer are being reintroduced to Connemara. Although I didn't see any deer, this pony and her foal were happily grazing on the low banks of Diamond Hill, one of the Twelve Bens. I took one of the shorter trails, less demanding than our hike on Croagh Patrick, and skirted the lower slope of Diamond Hill before dipping into the woodland trail. It was just enough up hill and down slope to stretch out my sore muscles from yesterday's excursion.

Tonight, we sleep in Clifden, another happy town, in a happy B&B, a house 150 years old, surrounded by gardens of fairy tale description. Tomorrow we're off to Dingle Bay by way of the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher!