catch-up post

it's a gray monday morning and i am off work doing laundry, dishes, sorting out mounds of kid artwork (maya has been drawing lots of lovely ladies and decorated wine glasses), and listening to NPR stories about oil in nigeria and how private equity is destroying our economy.

hard to know what to write about when there is so much to say. i just came from the school where there was a presentation by the kids who will be marching in the chinese new year parade. i liked watching a very cool fifth grade boy help button a third graders jacket and watched my little boy running as part of the dragon, which looks smaller each year as the kids grow bigger. when they announced students of the week lots of people cheered when a little boy who spent the first months of kindergarten being sent to the office and sent home was named student of the week for his class. his smile was huge in his little round face. a parent who will be helping with the parade this weekend confided her fear about being near the school at night, which is sad but honest, as there has been lots of violence in the neighborhood near the school recently. it is hard to reconcile the facts of these bright little kids running around on the playground with the crime and gun violence happening so close to some of their houses.

i have been part of a group interviewing garden coordinators to work at the school and hope that all the efforts of adults--to engage kids with sports, nature, reading, parades,music, art, good nutrition (while struggling through their own lives as teachers, parents and learners) will somehow fortify the kids to steer away from a future of more crime and violence--of the white collar type, the blue collar type, the gun type, the emotional type, the throw your garbage out the bus window type, the ridicule others type, you get the idea. it is hard for all people to do the right thing, don't think i am making judgments here. i know i am not so great at it.

i felt a flash of anger this morning seeing a photo in national geographic kids of michelle obama exercising with a bunch of kids on the lawn of the white house. it bugs me that our president's kids are in private school. it just does.

see, you never know where these rambling posts will lead. the sun just came out. on the couch next to me is a tattered copy of "after the quake" by haruki murakami. what a beautiful book, i encourage you all to read it, a group of stories written about characters in japan dealing in different ways with the facts of their lives after their country is shaken hard.