here we are again

Here we are again. Students will return to school tomorrow. How will we all spend our last day of summer? I'm going dancing.

This morning I got up when I woke up, which will not happen for another nine months. The alarm clock will be returned to duty tonight. I checked the birdbaths and refilled all the birdfeeders with sunflower seed, suet, and nectar. I watered the fennel and the parsley, which are currently being reduced to sticks by swallowtail caterpillars. I repaired my motorcycle rain cover, which sprang a rip Friday. Yesterday I did a few indoor chores and some reading, and today will pass much the same way except for a couple of hours of Playford dancing early this afternoon.

One important thing I did this summer was to reconnect with the person who started it all. She is still as strong a force as ever, and seeing her inspired me with renewed energy. When I moved to Nashville in the mid 1970's, my boyfriend's aunt befriended me and took me under her wing. It was she who saw me in the library at Peabody college, registering for my first semester of freshman classes; she collared me and introduced me to the head of the music department, who was forming an early music dance group. "You need to do this," she said, and so I did. I have been dancing ever since-- Renaissance, Playford, contradance, international dance, and ballroom. Through Renaissance and Playford, I met my husband of 25 years, at a Playford dance weekend in Versailles, Kentucky.

Playford dance is the most relaxing by far of all the kinds of dancing I have done. The steps are easy, the exertion light, but the dances are anything but simple. The geometric patterns and flow from one sequence of steps to the next are continually stimulating. Some dances have an almost hypnotic or meditative effect on me. As with any meditation practice, engaging in mindfulness and movement are enormously important to shedding the effects of stress. Plus, dancing is just fun.

plans for a garden

Ever since I went back to school for a degree in education, I have heard about teachers who spend time during the summer planning the entire year. They think about activities, they make the tests, and they know exactly what they will be doing each week. More power to them, I thought; I could never do that. It's just not my style and I can't see that far ahead. The most I could manage was reading and reflecting about the summer reading books.

Well, I have just typed out a weekly plan for my entire year for the first time. I thought about what and how, anticipated scheduling problems, and mapped out the units week by week. If I had not taught the course before, I don't think I could have done it. I have not made up any tests, but I have thought about the format I want to use.

I also see that some old ways of doing things will have to adapt to make room for new ways of doing other things. This mega-plan has been a useful exercise in space utilization, a sort of floor plan for furniture that has to fit into a house. Hmm, now that it occurs to me, I think of my garden as having rooms (thanks to Joe Eck's book on garden design), and I think of my classroom as a garden, so I like this idea that my course has rooms that need to be furnished.

The stakes were never this high before for making everything fit. I have to implement a new curriculum, top down, and I have to make it work. Now that I see it coming together I feel pretty good about the whole process, and, hey, it only took 24 years of practice.

cooking

Much of my reading lately has been a cookbook called Dropping Acid. It's designed to reduce the amount of acid in our diets. The recipes have a wonderful balance of seasonings. We are indebted to Chef Marc for bringing food with flavor back into our lives.

So far I have made five of the dishes. Three I can reuse without alteration, but two I had to throw out because one ingredient was an "idiosyncratic" food which, although not particularly acidic, caused a really bad reaction for Bob, the member of our family with acid reflux. I will use those two recipes again but without the rogue ingredient.

Now that I have a better grasp of these major dietary changes, I can get down to the business of the last two weeks of summer-- friends and solitude, projects and relaxation, reading and thinking, and hanging with the kitties.

the stories

Finished Ficciones. By the end I was laughing out loud and reading passages to Bob. I ran the gauntlet from science fiction, espionage, history, mystery, and western. Western? That one suprised me until I remembered Argentina has a rich tradition of horse and cattle ranching. It turned out to be one of my favorite stories.