I finally got my pictures from the Kentucky visit (and some from Boston! Will post soon.) on a cd. Here's one of my favorites-- These girls, Gita and Beth, are so dear to me! It was great to see them (and their beautiful little girls) and to catch up. Isn't it so good to have friends who you can reconnect with like no big thing even though you've been living thousands of miles apart? I am always inspired by their amazing "mama skills" and dedication to their families. They teach me some things about kindness and love every time I am lucky enough to see them. Thanks, ladies! :o)

I love using a clothesline to dry my clothes!! So much simpler than the dryer. The ocean breeze, here (even a half-hour from the coast), combined with today's 90+ temps, dried these in less than an hour (minutes, even, for some of the smaller, lighter things!). The whole experience was really pleasant-- Simple, natural, direct, somehow physically and aesthetically pleasing. Just hanging the clothes, smoothing them, adjusting the clothespins, shaking the sheets and letting them billow in the wind, feeling the soft material and then the almost crispness to which they dried, and then folding them and stacking them in an orderly pile of pretty and clean... People have been doing that for hundreds and hundreds of years! (By the way-- see the maple tree with its fall colors on the street?)

I feel like I've gotten a little off-track, lately. Too much time spent worrying about me, my plans, my classes, my drama. I saw a copy of the book The Four Agreements, by Miguel Ruiz, laying on somebody's table the other day, and immediately grabbed some scrap paper and copied them out! I've had them posted on my mirror before and really love to keep them in mind. Here they are, the Four Agreements, in short form:

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid Using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to when you are sick. Under any circumstance, simply avoid self-judgement, self-abuse, and regret.

Because the stadium has new lights (and new astroturf), tonight was the very first home game in Harvard's 134 years of football that was played after dark. That's coming from Joe, the nice older man who sat next to me, who also took a great deal of time to explain things like "downs" and what those silly upside-down exclamation points are for. We got there late and stayed just past the half-time show (kooky bands playing fun songs and running around like goofballs!). The whole thing was surreal... Fun, to be sitting in that grand stadium-- pillars all around the top, a view from our nose-bleed seats of the lit-from-below steeples and domes of Harvard's campus, the pretty pretty people in the new stadium lights and gorgeous evening air-- and to be hanging out with super nice people, Anna and Kevin. (After the game, we ate yum veggie food at Club Passim, listened to the folkish singer's show through the glass wall there, and then took a little time to boogie in the concert room after the paying audience left.)

So, there are these things called "course packs," which are all of the not-in-a-book reading required for each class. These are mine. (The Nalgene's there for scale.) Aren't they fetching?

Really, the reading I've done so far has been pretty fascinating. But it is weird to sit around and read for 4+ hours every day! Feels a bit selfish, lazy. Good thing I've had frisbee time, hiking and tons of walking.

I just got back from a public forum with 71-year-old, very funny and animated Jonathan Kozol, who is a Harvard alum, mentor to new teachers and author of the new book Letters to a Young Teacher. He suggested that teachers today need a sense of humor and a dose of "sly irreverence," and said of them, "Not only do I want them to stay, I want them to keep their souls." He feels strongly that No Child Left Behind is a bunch of baloney (that its true purpose was to "soften the ground" for vouchers!) and that the three most important facets of good education today are the quality of teacher, the high morale of the teacher and the number of kids in a classroom. (I just love it when really wise people put things succinctly like that. --Like when Ralph Nader said on NPR a year ago that the most important issues in our country are preserving family farms, campaign reform and something else that I can't remember right now.) Anyways. It was great, and I am inspired, and excited to be in a place where I got to choose between that, a med school talk about Global Warming and who knows what else all in the same night!

Saturday! Sleeping in, nothing to hurry off to, some time to play the guitar on the porch and a potluck to look forward to :). Cambridge has been really beautiful these past few days. There's been sun and a feeling of the beginnings of fall crispness; the leaves are just barely starting to turn.

Can't believe I've been here over a week! Has been a big transition, for sure, and with the whole process of Orientation, meeting people, figuring out my living situation and choosing classes, it's been quite a doozy! It didn't help when my box from KY arrived only a third full (missing all but 2 of the books previously posted, including my song-writing journal and some other really precious journals!). That finally was a great excuse to cry, call Jamie, and get some sound advice: "Just give yourself a little grace." Shew! Might be my mantra for a little while. I'll try to be passing on that grace to other people, too. (The box also contained my office supplies, including the cord that connects my camera to the computer. No new blog pictures til I get that all sorted...)

My classes, which I'm pretty pumped about, are: Teaching and Learning: The Having of Wonderful Ideas, taught by Eleanor Duckworth, who was a student and translator of Piaget (the most famous child development specialist ever, I think) and who was boogying down with the rest of us at our barbecue yesterday night; Growing Up in a Media World, taught by a guy who's produced TV and documentaries (Sesame Street, NOVA, etc.) and who I've never seen not smiling; Research on Learning in Museums, which will be incredibly useful for future work in museums, has a great teacher and also focuses on learning styles in general and learning from art in general!; and my required class, The Arts in Education: Learning In and Through the Arts. I'm also auditing an amazing-looking course through the Law School, that's called The Art of Social Change: Child Welfare, Education and Juvenile Justice. There are tons of guest speakers on that one, as well as a top-notch professor. I think the whole line-up is a good balance of useful and inspiring. Whoo-hoo!

(Sometime, remind me to blog a description of my walk to Harvard Square. It's one of my favorite parts of each day. There are such interesting people! And the scenery-- heck, even the stinkin sidewalks, which are just huge chunks of slate or something that I think Ben Franklin must've walked on- is really really lovely!)

P.S. Here's a picture that I love from my week in KY. Mom and I are attempting a duet- maybe Summertime?

Note to self #1: It's worth it to have the things that make you feel at home in a new place.

Note to self #2: Never, ever, ever again trust the U.S. Mail service with shipping of important items.

Note to self #3: When you make decisions based mainly on money, you will likely wonder why in the heck you did what you did.

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver,
from House of Light

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

This morning I had a job interview at the Fogg Museum-- one of Harvard's three on-campus Art museums. It sounds like a good fit! If I take the position, I'll be facilitating some really fun public programing (a "drop-in" figure drawing class outside in Harvard Square) and helping with children's art classes. After the interview, I explored the museum. WOW. Amazing! A bit overwhelming, really. Monet, Picasso, Rodin, Renoir, Bernini, Whistler, Ingres, Sargent, etc. And etc.! I just don't think I was prepared for all that culture in one shot.

Later, I walked around campus for the first time. It's bustling! I had lunch at the Harvard Coop bookstore and there were all these stundents walking around followed by their parents, who were toting huge bags of books, etc. The buildings in the square are pretty 'venerable' looking! There's one with something to the effect of, "WHO IS MAN THAT THOU PAYS ANY ATTENTION TO HIM?" written in enormous stone-carved letters above three-story tall pillars... Shew! That and the whole public transportation issue (which I've got to figure it out by tonight to hear some bluegrass music) are the only 2 intimidating things I've encountered. Am looking forward to things actually beginning on Monday!

Swingin' buddies!

Ben did his own hair!

Oh my...

I am packing (again...) and dilly-dallying (again!). These are the books, some of which have been weeded through about five times, now, in five different moves, that have made the final Boston cut:

Laurel's Kitchen (vegetarian and whole foods cookbook)
The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
Life Prayers
Earth Prayers
Looking for Alaska, Peter Jenkins (a recent gift-- for when I need an AK fix)
A New Earth and Stillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle
A Well-Tempered Mind, Peter Perret and Janet Fox (part of the inspiration for this coming year's masters program)
The Genius of Play, Sally Jenkinson (a Waldorf book lent by my sister Beth)
The Essential Rumi
100 Graces (a tiny collection of formal and not-so-formal poems and prayers)
Return of the Great Goddess (includes my favorite poem, Epiphany, by Pem Kremer)
The Lonely Planet Guide to Boston

I'm also taking a good deal of stationary and letter-writing supplies, pictures of family and friends, my bike (shipping that up!), my guitar, laptop and printer, assorted journals (the ones I write songs in, my thanks journal and the one that holds quotes and other pieces of inspiration), clothing and school stuff. That's it! Oh yeah-- also a collection of jellies and jams that I was somehow lucky enough to acquire: AK wild blueberry jam, OK apricot jam, KY cherry preserves and grape jelly from my grandparents' grape vines.