Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Happy Spring!

Ah, here comes April: the month of hope in Minnesota. To be honest, since we had three blizzards in April two springs ago, I try to keep my hopes of spring in check now. I refuse to put away my winter boots until May 1. Nonetheless, my family took advantage of the day last Sunday and decided to check out the Heartland Trail. Tom and I strapped on our rollerblades while Megan climbed aboard her trusty purple, princess bike. We rolled to Heartland Park, where Megan befriended a toddler on the playground equipment. Tom and I rested on a picnic bench and ambled towards the river. I saw two swans come down for a spectacular, high-splashing landing in the river. The sight of swans always provides such a mix of feelings for me. They are incredibly beautiful creatures. My grandmother loved them and decorated her home with swans before she died. On the other hand, swans are mean buggers. For a time, I volunteered at the Raptor Center in St. Paul and even though swans are not raptors, swans in need of rehab ended up at the Raptor Center because no one else would take them. If a person dared to enter the swan room, a sheet of protective plywood over the legs was necessary to avoid having one’s legs destroyed by a swan swinging its long, graceful neck in order to use its bill as a weapon. Also, the swans would hiss. Once on vacation in Europe, Tom and I watched a swan attempt to take a nearby baby duck for lunch. Fortunately, the mama duck was a fast rescuer. Still, watching swans from a distance is a beautiful sight. I marvel to see swans in northern Minnesota. They seem like the sort of creatures that only grace fairy tales and sophisticated, romantic places (maybe I underestimate my homeland). As we rolled home again, my breathing became a bit shallow while the tissue-formerly-known-as-muscle in my back began wailing. Still, spring IS coming and there is nothing like spring in Minnesota. I’m convinced Minnesotans are more appreciative than anyone else when winter ends and we are once again blessed with opportunities to play outside without packing on three layers of clothes. Happy Spring!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Here's to Ms. Z!

At Christmas, I often give my mom copies of poems I’ve written over the past year. This past Christmas, I went to the computer to compile the last year’s worth of poems. I found…..three. Yes, three, and two had been written in January, nearly a year earlier. Oh…. So maybe I’d been suffering from the dreaded WB (writer’s block)? Well, no, I mean, you have to be aware you’re suffering to actually suffer, right? It’s not as if I’d been staring at a blank page, waiting for an idea to strike. I just hadn’t bothered to come to the page. This had been rumbling around in my head since last December. What to do, what to do…. Then I heard that poet LouAnn Shepard Muhm would be offering a free class at the library – two sessions of two hours each. I’ve never been able to attend of LouAnn’s workshops in the past because of schedule conflicts. I checked THE MOM CALENDAR: my husband would be home those evenings, no dance practice, no piano lesson, no play practice, no meetings. Hmm. What the heck, so I went to the first class last Thursday. As expected, LouAnn was great: she had us do an exercise I’d never done, she had handouts, quotes, poems, the works. She asked us to write some poetry over the next week to share at the next class. She recommended some possible topics for writing, including, “Write about a teacher you had, either loved or hated. Of course, it’s easier to write about one you hated….” And I heard a voice in my head cry, “HA! You never had Z!!” Where did that come from? I hadn’t thought about Ms. Z in quite some time, but I went home and poured my memories onto the page. I wrote a draft of a poem. (Finally!) And oh, I felt all the suffering of months of not writing poetry flow away from me (I guess one can ignorantly suffer, who knew). The next day, I couldn’t help myself, I googled Ms. Z’s first and last name along with the school where I attended kindergarten and the city and state of that school. My first hit came up with a catholic church. Hmm, ok, I’ll go there, I thought. Once I clicked on the link, I found Z’s name in the text as the founder/director of a Montessori school. Next I visited that school’s website and wouldn’t you know, there was an email address listed for Ms. Z. I wrote her a short email asking if she taught kindergarten at the school where I attended. Then I checked my email approximately every five minutes for the rest of the day. With no reply in my inbox, I complained on Facebook, I twitched, I sighed, I waited. Before I went home for the weekend, I checked my email one last time: nothing from Z. Rats. Oh well. Monday morning, when I first arrived at the bookstore, I checked email. (Believe it or not, my family does not have internet at home). She replied! She wrote back! I couldn’t believe it! But wait, maybe it was just a reply saying, “No, that’s not me, sorry.” I opened the email and read: Jennifer, Of course I know who you are! How are you? ... I can still see your little head of when you were five! What do you do for Beagle Books?.......
WOW!! To be honest, it didn’t really matter to me if she remembered me (although, as a friend of mine said to me, “How could she could forget a 5-year old who sometimes called herself Color, was incredibly messy, and was Alkash’s girlfriend?” Ok, fair enough). I wanted to reach out to her and tell her, you mattered to me, I remember you and you were one amazing teacher. Ms. Z used to leave the room when it was time for our music lesson to fetch her “twin sister”, Judy Jupiter. I was absolutely convinced that Ms. Z and Judy Jupiter were two entirely different people. I don’t remember a lot of the particular activities we did, but I remember how much fun school and learning and reading were. This is, of course, what the very best teachers do. As it turns out, Ms. Z was only at that school for two years. I was only there for one year. I’m so very grateful we had a year together. With pen raised, I say, “Here’s to Ms. Z!”

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Message from the Universe

For a while, it seemed every book I read had a similar thread, whether I read juvenile or adult books. I read the Ink- books by Cornelia Funke, The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. For those of you unfamiliar with these titles, the thread is bookbinding. I wasn’t looking for books that included bookbinding in them, they just kept showing up. At the Renaissance Festival last summer, I noticed there was a bookbinding school booth (unfortunately, it was closed when we stumbled upon it). Recently, a customer came into Beagle Books and ordered a book on the art of bookbinding. When the book came in, I called the customer to let him know the book was in and he told me, “You know, I’m going out of town for two weeks. I’ll pick it up when I get back, but you should look at it while I’m gone.” Before the universe began dropping bookbinding equipment on my head, I decided to pay attention to the message. I spent some time at the library researching. The Loft in Minneapolis of course has courses on bookbinding, but Minneapolis is 200 miles from my home and I really hoped to find something closer. Maybe there would be something offered in connection with Bemidji State University? (Bemidji is about 40 miles from me). No luck there. I kept looking and found there’s a bookbindery in Detroit Lakes, about 50 miles from my home. No website or email (does anyone do business without a website these days?), but there was a phone number. So I called. Someone answered. It was a bookbinder. His name is David. And yes, he would be willing to meet with me and if I was still interested, he would teach me his craft. Wow! We picked a day to meet and I waited for the day to arrive. At first, I waited with great anticipation. Then I began to wait with great anxiety. What if the bookbinder did shoddy work? What if he didn’t like me? What if I didn’t like him? I decided to bring along a friend of mine who is remarkably (sometimes frighteningly) good at reading people. This friend is my husband, Tom. So last Saturday, we drove over to Detroit Lakes, found the bookbindery and entered the building. Inside we discovered something that felt akin to magic. Papers, leather scraps, type, machinery. I felt a little bit like I did in wood shop class in junior high, fascinated by the materials and equipment, but a bit shy to step up and demand my share of time with the equipment. But this wasn’t 7th grade with a room full of 7th grade boys. This was an opportunity to be led, one on one, by a gentle man eager to pass on his knowledge. David is 82 years old and he’s nearly ready to be done with his career as a bookbinder. I think he’s just as excited to have a student as I am to be his student. When we left, I fought off the urge to hug David goodbye. Now I just have to figure out how to pay David. There are scholarships and grants available for artists that I have to explore. Some of my friends and family members (bless their hearts!) have opened their wallets and said to me, “You have to do this.” I hope I don’t have to cash their checks, I hope I can get a scholarship, but it’s wonderful to know I have their support. Now that I’m over my fears about meeting David, I’ve moved on to fears about my abilities. But the universe has better things to do than send me messages to learn bookbinding only to chuckle at my expense, right? Bookbinding journey, here I come!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Certified Mold Remediation

The other day, while on the highway, I took notice of a company’s work van. On the outside were listed the company’s services, including “Certified Mold Remediation”. To which I thought…………..What? Ok, it’s probably mold removal, I thought, but “certified mold remediation”? Come on. It’s true that the American version of the English language has undergone some major reconstruction in the last few years (few meaning anywhere from three to fifty, take your pick). In a lot of cases, this has been helpful. When a person is described as Native American, rather than Indian, I find this helpful. (Let’s leave the term Indian to persons from India, makes more sense to me). But back to “certified mold remediation”. I couldn’t help but break it down – won’t you walk with me through it? Certified. Easy enough, certified means some sort of paid training led to a piece of paper with the word “certified” on it and a signature (and maybe even an embossed seal). The consumer of the certified service can be assured the service will be performed to a high standard (or something like that). Certified is good. Mold. Unfortunately, we all know what mold is – fuzzy, green or blue or white or black, smelly growth on unclean surfaces (although admittedly, from a distance can be sort of pretty). Mold is, to be both concise and precise, bad. Remediation. This is a word that requires more work. It begins with a prefix, re-, which means again. Mediation is a word that means a session devoted to mediating (the present participle of to mediate) between two parties has occurred, and mediate means to find the agreeable middle between two or more parties (definitions provide by Jen’s Dictionary, which could someday be certified, stay tuned). So, remediation is the repeat of a session to find middle ground between two or more parties. All together now – Certified Mold Remediation is a repeated, high quality session of finding middle ground between mold and …. something or someone else. What kind of facilitator holds these sessions? How does the session go? In my mind, I hear something ridiculous, along the lines of, “Dave, Mold feels it has a right to a warm, nurturing environment where it has the freedom to grow. And Mold, I think it’s important to understand Dave’s sensitivities and his need for smooth, clean surfaces.” At this point, the mold rises out its chair, furious, and I wonder, where is my audio book and how did my brain get here? In case you’re wondering, here’s a definition I found on wikipedia definition : Mold remediation is the process of removal and/or cleanup of mold from an indoor environment. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mold_remediation)
Just like I thought. Go figure.