Saturday, May 9, 2015
You Get a Gold Star
11:41 AM


 Dear Dad,
It’s amazing what a gold star can do to make even the most strenuous, tiring, or boring work worthwhile. Last month I gave my students a Dewey Decimal number each day to go hunt for, and if they could find it and tell me what was there, they got a gold star. Honestly, I wasn’t sure they would buy it, but boy did they. A whole group of fifth graders even came in during recess on their non-library days to earn their stars. In fact, even though we’ve moved on to a new activity in the library, they are still asking me for a number to go hunt for to earn another star.

I totally get it. The past two weeks have been a blur of too many things in too little time. My days have been spent running from one thing to the next to the next. But this week was teacher appreciation week and man, even though I know most of the little notes I received were parent-driven (having sent my own kids off with cards and treats for their teachers), I enjoyed getting my gold stars. I love my job all the time, but this week, despite being in the middle of mid-term madness in the grad school end of my life, was a gold star week. How can you not smile when you get a note that says “I love books! I love reading! I love you!” from a smiling five-year-old? Also, I found out that wearing your hair in mini (messy) victory rolls earns you cool points with middle school boys, mostly because they can't understand how you make your hair do that. Who knew?

And now it’s Friday. And sunny. (And Mother’s Day weekend) And other than the normal child-centered weekend activities that come with parenthood, I am taking the weekend off from that pile of things to do in my head so I can enjoy the sunshine and the city and my family. I heard a great expression today “First I have to contend with the assholes who control my brain.” Well, I’ve told them to can it until Monday. I’ve turned in my papers and answered my emails and shelved all the books that are going to get shelved. I earned my gold star for the week. Now it’s time for the weekend. 


                                                                                                    -Gillian

Having it both ways
11:40 AM

Dear Gillian,

I feel both old and young today. Very tired but very invigorated. It’s one of those days when nothing seems as it appears.

The spring semester ends this week. But while classes are over, I’m faced with a pile of complex final projects. The constant parade of bright students young enough to be my grandkids reminds me of how gray I am – but the mere fact I am around them puts a bounce in my step. Even the weather is contrary – sunbreaks between rain showers.

But I’m happy. The love of my life smiled to me when I awoke. I had breakfast looking out over a rapidly-greening forest viewed from our one-of-a-kind house. I walked onto a gorgeous campus to do the work I love. Tonight I will dine perhaps too heartily and later kick back and read notes from the two no-longer-children who make me proud. I will have sweet dreams. Guaranteed.

            -- Dad
Sunday, April 26, 2015
What Goes Around Comes Around
7:32 PM

Dear Gillian,

The Columbia Earth Day celebration was rained out last week. Seems fitting, in a way.

Rain is the epitome of recycling: Raindrop to stream, stream to ocean, ocean to cloud, cloud back to raindrop. Repeat for a million years or so.

Earth Day is very special to me. I was a freshman in college in 1970 when θ -- the Greek letter theta – began appearing on bumper stickers and posters. Theta on a green field was the new symbol for ecology, which itself was a term that never made it into my textbooks.

By April, I was wearing the symbol myself and part of the organizing team for Earth Day 1 at Shasta College in my hometown, Redding, CA. I have seldom felt so proud as when I carried the giant θ-emblazoned flag as we marched through downtown.

It tell that story to my students now and their eyes roll. Few know what “Earth Day” means – nor do they care. I suppose I should be upset, but I’m strangely pleased. Their ambivalence means that hippie-haired gaggle of protesters in 1970 succeeded. We changed the world.

Earth Day did not arise to promote hemp seed, belly dancing and henna tattoos. It came on the heels of warnings by Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich and others that we might not make it to our dotage unless we started taking care of our world.

In my hometown, the lumber mills burned their waste in huge “teepee burners,” which likely were not as bad noxious clouds from the burning garbage dump. Clear Creek, near my home, was anything but and lined by 20-foot-high rows of gravel left behind by the dredges that plowed the valley for gold nuggets.

The national picture was bleaker. I remember my eyes burned and I hacked up brown gook while visiting Los Angeles. The Potomac in our capital was known as the river you could smell before seeing. Bald eagles were fantasy creatures – on the verge of extinction from the effects of DDT pesticide.

So we marched. Better yet, we voted. And year by year, life not only went on, it got better.

Now my students watch bald eagles glide over the Missouri River, put their cans in city-provided recycling bags and think DDT is a rap group. Blissfully.

And Earth Day? Just a rain delay. The anger was mostly gone, replaced by gardeners, solar panel salesmen and kids with face paint. But you can’t keep a good movement down.

Like a raindrop.

--Dad
7:30 PM

Dear Dad,

So here's the horrible truth, I totally missed Earth Day this year. I know, I know! You marched in the first Earth Day. You taught us about doing right, or as right as you can, by the environment before it was cool. We were composting things and reusing things and recycling things long before there were green and blue bins for that. But hear me out.

I remember being a kid, probably around Briton's age because, like him, I was full of righteous indignation over things, in this particular instance, the fact that Earth Day was just once a year. It should be Earth Day everyday, my twelve-ish year old self wanted to shout at the world. Why should there be just be one day when we worried about what harm we are causing the earth? Why should it be only once a year that we want to fight for the planet we live on? It should be all the time, right?

A part of me wonders if that's why I ended up in Portland. Where, not only is the dream of the nineties alive (both the 1990's and the 1890's, of course) but where it's Earth Day everyday. Where the city gives us wee tiny trash cans and great big recycling and compost bins for curbside collection to encourage (well, force) us to reduce our trash output. Where you can buy recycled paint, recycled clothes, recycled fur teddy bears (it's a thing) recycled art and recycled houses and no one thinks that's odd, ok, the bears are a little odd, but you know what I mean. The trash can in the library is one of the few in the whole of my (Environmental) school so that the middle schoolers bring down weird leftover bits of things that they've taken apart and stripped all the recycled bits off of until they are left with bits and bobs of trash to put in my can. Which is fine because, as payment for the use of my trash can, I make them listen to me tell them about a book they should read, so it's a win-win.

So while I definitely recycled all the paper scraps from my library that day, plus a couple of highlighters, and probably found myself eating something organically grown and sustainably harvested, while I downloaded something rather than printing it and put my food waste in the compost bin instead of the trash. While I walked past kids tossing snack scraps to the school chickens on my way home (because that's how we roll, school chickens), I didn't notice that it was Earth Day, it was just a normal day. And that's not a bad thing. In fact, it means that Earth Day, the Earth Day that was dreamed up all those year ago, it worked. Sure, it's not like this everywhere (although I highly recommend school chickens, because there's nothing like going to the staff room to heat up your lunch to the dulcet tones of hens clucking on the other side of the window), and yes, we still need to use less, recycle more, drive less, bike more, consume less and keep pushing ourselves to do a better job of protecting this planet we are the current stewards of, but it worked, that march you went on 45 year ago. It worked. It got the ball rolling. It started the trend. Not every crazy, hippy dream can say that, can it?

Happy (belated) 45th Earth Day Dad.

 - Gillian
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