In My Write Mind

A cup of Lady Grey on the deck, 
a single oar in silent waters, 
Eagle pose on a Moon River dock, 
fresh ink on a blank journal page. 
Sorting thoughts in a crazy mind, or
having a dialogue that doesn’t make sense. 
A pen can be my voice.
Meditation comes in all forms. 

It's a girl thing

And so, here's the thing...
I love words. In any shape and form. I love learning new ones. I love dissecting mysterious ones to understand their meaning. I adore making up new ones, despite the stink eye I get from my Scrabble opponents. I love connecting words to sentences to paragraphs to essays to novels. I love reading other writers' words and breathing in their language. Words are my thing. And it's the words on the page that come easiest to me. I can jot down my thoughts, with no troubles whatsoever, in a mad dash to get them down before I lose them from my consciousness. And yet, when I attempt to verbalize those same words in conversations of the "real time" kind, my words are nowhere to be found. My search for the right word at the right time is, at times, painful, frustrating, and even embarrassing. After all, I profess to be a writer, or at least that's what I thought I was. A communicator needs words at her fingertips. So, tell me this: How can a wordsmith call herself a wordsmith if the mere notion of word attainment proves unsuccessful? It makes no sense to me. And it's worse when I'm attempting to share my thoughts with people I admire and hold in high esteem, such as my husband. Our conversations are often cryptic, mostly on my side of the dialogue, especially when I'm making a point of great importance. Like those times when I've been asked to explain the larger than normal balance of my credit card, or the occasions when I need to describe the dialogue I had with my mechanic just before the outrageous bill arrived. For some reason, it's at those crucial instructional times that the words escape me. It is bizarre, and so, I seek out professional help: my family doctor.
The words "peri-menopausal" form on her lips. "And it could go on for years," she adds.
"Fabulous," I reply. So, on top of night sweats, erratic periods, and emotional roller coaster rides, my love for language is affected by my femaleness. Look at it this way: you're not illiterate, unintelligent, or absent-minded. No, not at all. You're hormonal. There's a cure for that: gathering with other menopausal friends over and wine and laughter. The conversation is not important.

Have A Magical Day!

So, here I am, back from a week's holiday at Disneyworld, and everyone I've talked to believes that Disney is the most Magical place on Earth. Magical has many meanings.
In the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, magic means : an inexplicable or remarkable influence producing surprising results; an enchanting quality or phenomenon; producing surprising results, like those attributed to magic; wonderful, exciting, fantastic.
I agree with all of those definitions, but I wouldn't necessarily peg Disney as the most magical place on Earth. After all, remember that with magic comes illusion, or rather, delusion.
It's the colours, the lights, the costumes... the grandiosity of Disney that makes its visitors believe in magic. The parks are filled with larger than life experiences that sweep people away to different parts of the world, in the case of Epcot, or remind us of what it was like to be a child at the Magic Kingdom, or even allow you to get closer to nature with Animal Kingdom. The setting is electric, that's for certain, if you focus solely on the accomplishments of Walt Disney. He's created a playground to match no other. But to me, it's like the Hollywood Studios Theme Park: it reeks of commercialism and extravagence, all of the qualities that give North America a bad name.
Now I get it. Holidays in general demand a get-away from daily life. A vacation includes kicking back, following a different schedule, and just doing what you want to do when you want to do it. Disney is all of that, and more. There's certainly nothing mediocre about a trip to Walt Disney World, which is why it's seen as such a magical destination. This make-believe land takes you so far away from your daily life that you don't have a chance to think about anything else but fun, Right? Well, as I looked around, the fun was definitely there, but so was the eating, and the complaining, and the criticizing, and lots of it. And waste. So much waste. And bad manners or none at all. People taking advantage of the abundance before them without considering others around them. There was so much excessive behaviour that I found this trip distracted from the Magic. Everywhere I looked, excessively large people were devouring excessive amounts of food and discarding excessive quantities of garbage, and behaving badly to boot. Moderation is not part of Disney's vocabulary, and unfortunately, this destination exemplifies the American culture. While I enjoyed my fun-filled holiday, I was ashamed to be participating in and supporting this outrageous behaviour.
The people of Haiti and Chile, for example, are struggling for their next meal while we are flaunting the fact that we have so much by eating everything in sight, and not for sustenance, but to satisfy a craving, or fill a void.

So, what do we do?

I'd like to think that we are mindful of our good fortune, and keep in mind that this life is not real. It's a temporary distraction from our everyday lives where we can focus on the needs of others. Sure, we all need to get away from the things we consider stressful. Stressful is a relative term, depending on where you happen to live. Being thankful, and generous, and courteous shows respect and appreciation. I'd like to see more of that quality when I travel to places like WDW. Or anywhere, for that matter. Being mindful that we are blessed, and being responsible enough to realize that such experiences and opportunities are to be appreciated, not expected.

Ode to St. Mary's

Crying inside,
When there’s no one around,
To ask how your day was, in this quiet country town.
Where nothing much happens, so it appears to the many,
Who look beyond tranquility as though there was plenty
To come back to later when they decide that they’re ready.

But then it’s no longer, and the calmness has gone.
It’s turned into progress by the blindness of the throng
Who believe that this earth
Is here for consumption,
Not realizing that idea is spoken with the notion
That we deserve all this comfort, this beauty, this life.
It’s right here before us, use it or die.

To be the keeper of our planet, one must treat it with care.
The respect it deserves for all people to share.
Not one gluttonous union that sees profit in all,
And takes what it wants with dollars and gall.
We’re not for sale here, with what you intend.
This land is too precious to rip and to dredge.

And for what?

To cover this country with concrete and steel,
To build super highways, to close more deals,
On the creation of suburbs with no curb appeal.

What happened to the protection
Of natural resources?
The vulnerable assets that need our strong voices
To speak to these rapists, and declare, THAT’S ENOUGH.
WE WON’T ALLOW YOU ACCESS TO DESTROY AND TO BLUFF:
“That it’s all quite respectful, the work that we do”
The lying and deceiving shines clearly through.
Move on to your next site,
To steal and to cheat
But admit that you’ve erred here.
Admit your defeat.

HANDLING HOMEWORK

It’s been around since the beginning of time: nobody liked it then, and nobody likes it now. HOMEWORK. Do we really know how to use it effectively?
Researchers say no.
To give you an example, let’s look at the world of sport. People who play on athletic teams know full well that practice makes a better player. Practising is intended to strengthen skills and develop a level of competency so the game itself can be played well. It’s when the game isn’t played well, and the weaknesses of skill emerge, that injuries occur and the integrity of the game is lost. When hockey players resort to high sticking or violence on the ice the player is revealing his lack of competence in following fundamental skill requirements to play the game well. The game of hockey suffers, as does the player. To master any skill it must be 80% learned before practice is effective. (Charles Ungerleider, “Homework can thwart education”, The Globe and Mail, November 30, 2004.) Otherwise, the practice time is being used unwisely and the incorrect skills are being reinforced. In practice, when a player makes a play that is incorrectly performed the coach does not penalize the player nor sideline him. The coach takes the player aside, re-teaches the skill, and encourages the player to try again. And again. And again. For as many times as it takes to get it right. It’s called learning.
The same analogy can be used in the classroom. Do we penalize our children for having the wrong answer on their homework and say they can’t learn anymore? If we’re assigning homework in the first place the best educational evidence suggests that it must be used as a means of practicing and reinforcing beneficial skills. If the skills have not been adequately learned before the practice has been assigned, then it’s a waste of everyone’s time and may in fact be reinforcing bad habits. Educational research suggests that homework at the elementary level in particular does not correlate to success in school or high academic achievement. In addition to these findings, research has also revealed that for children in younger grades, the amount of time spent outside of school is best used to enhance other life skills that promote the development of a foundation for balanced living.
In spite of these advances in educational research, there continues to be a wide variation among the practises of educators at the elementary level. School is not immune to this variation. Some teachers recognize the limited effectiveness of homework and design their assignments accordingly. Others, perhaps unaware of the advances in their field, continue to assign more than ten additional hours of homework a week. The volume of homework assigned adds an additional concern. At this rate, both the young student and his family are overloaded and any intended gains in academic achievement are unlikely. Children may become irritable, complain of tummy aches, cry more easily, and even become sick to their stomachs with the pressures of superfluous tests and assignments. Their desire to learn will also diminish. Children are susceptible to burn-out just as much as adults. We know that children need to play and be involved in social interaction outside the classroom to become balanced individuals in mind, body and spirit. However, this is not a black and white issue. Some educational researchers believe that homework on a regular basis helps children manage their time, teaches them responsibility and ownership, and allows them to adopt healthy work habits for their future. In my mind, we’re looking for balance here. The whole point of the homework exercise is to instil confidence in learning. As such, the goal of each homework assignment needs to be clearly defined so the homework is done efficiently.
By not respecting that balance, adults run the risk of interfering with a major component of children’s fundamental growth and their successful journey into adulthood.
Before homework is assigned we need to ask ourselves: Do these students have the right tools to initiate this assignment on their own? Are they following a successful track that will ensure the project has a positive outcome? Are the students learning anything here that will aid them to build balanced lives and future academic success? Students who are assigned research projects outside the classroom, in most cases, do not understand the proper procedures for effective research. The goal of assigning such work is to teach children how to suss out material to find the salient points, to interpret the information in their own words, and to present the facts in a concise manner to give credit where credit is due. To achieve this end, the research should always be done during class time where the teacher provides guidance and the focus is on the process, not the product.
When we focus on the process, the assignment is supporting the development of the fundamental research skills and the associated abilities of critical thinking and writing. These skills will be useful throughout the learner’s lives. The impact of the alternative approach, a product focus, is not benign. These assignments do support learning. But the lessons are completely different. When a research project is assigned as homework without the guidance of the teacher, the students are developing their abilities in copying and plagiarizing the work of others. Perhaps worse, they may also be learning that they don’t have what it takes to successfully complete their assignments, but Mom and Dad will do the work for them. In the world of advanced education, the former lesson will get you kicked out of school. The latter will likely ensure that they never develop the self-confidence to pursue higher education. These are not the lessons that we want our children to learn.
I suspect most parents would agree.
We want our children to learn about themselves, their strengths and their weaknesses, so they can conduct themselves in a proud, confident manner. Does the homework they’re assigned reinforce that philosophy? In many cases it does not. There’s no room in homework for tears, anger, tummy aches or fear of failure. If that’s what our children are facing at school, then we need to ask our educators why their assignments are not supporting that philosophy and support them to find ways to change their practices.

"How do we begin to work our way out of the labyrinth of issues that surround homework? How do we put the issue of homework on the national political agenda and get politicians to move beyond mouthing the rhetoric of "family values" to actually doing something for families? How do we raise the issue of homework at our schools without being seen as meddling parents?
Perhaps our first step should be to talk to our friends. We are convinced that for many parents, homework is the classic instance of what C. Wright Mills referred to as a 'seemingly private trouble that is in fact widely shared and is thus in need of becoming a public issue'.

(C. Wright Mills, "The Big City: Private Troubles and Public," in Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 395-402.)

Parents might discuss among themselves some of the questions we have posed for future survey research. These include 1) how much time their children spend on homework; 2) what the nature of that homework is, and what they see as contributing to the child's intellectual development; 3) what opportunities are lost to homework - that is, what other activities or experiences, including recreation, conversations with parents or parents' friends, social life, jobs, volunteer commitments, and so on must be forgone in order to meet homework demands; 4) what impact homework has on the child's health, rest, and sense of well-being; 5) what impact it has on the friendliness and civility of family life.

(Etta Kralovec and John Buell, "What's a Mother - To Do?" in The End of Homework, How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 90-91.)
The bottom line? We want our children to love learning, no matter what it is. We want them to realize that it’s o.k. to make mistakes because practice does not always make perfect, but we don’t want them to be perfect anyways. We want them to be happy with themselves and with the efforts they make to be the best they can be.
Years ago as a student teacher, I had a wonderful practicum in Chatham at John McGregor High School with an English teacher named Mr. Hank Smit. One day, after I had finished teaching my lesson, he wrote me a note on the back of a bookmark and slipped it into my hands.
"Just remember," he wrote, 'You’re not the sage on the stage, but the guide on the side.'"
I’ve carried that bookmark with me throughout life, and it has helped me through many adult moments when I expected myself to know all the answers. The role of teachers and parents in life is to help children learn positive lessons along their journey of life-long learning. Any roadblocks we place in their way, in my mind, are not acceptable. We all need to feel positive about ourselves in this world of overwhelming negativity. Learning, and the privilege to do so, only reinforces the power of that very precious gift.


Resources:

The Case Against Homework, How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It, Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, 2006.

The Homework Myth, Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing, Alfie Kohn, 2006.

Journal for Life

Journal writing serves as our search for inner beauty and truth. The swan represents elegance, true beauty, and the power of the self. It seems only natural then that a woman who creates beautifully handcrafted journals should hail from Grande Prairie, Alberta, the Swan City. Just as the swan in Jean Sibelius’ “Swan of Tuonela” symphonic poems comes to symbolize the importance of the celebration of the journey of life, and not the arrival, so too do Betty Zahara’s journals. Her passion for words and human expression are evident in her love for journal writing and her creation of these sacred vessels of inner thought.
I came to know of Betty Zahara’s talents after receiving two of her beautifully bound books. I’ve loved them ever since. As a writer, I’ve cherished each of these journals, filling every page, front and back and top to bottom. Wherever space permits. Interestingly enough, the swan itself has represented writers and communication between the worlds for centuries.
In Euripides’ play, Iphigeneia In Tauris (c. 414 B.C.) he wrote: “…the swan, minstrel of things to be/ Doth serve the Muse and sing.” Horace (c. 65-8 B.C.), roman philosopher and dramatic critic, dreamed of becoming a swan to be recognized as a true poet. The novelist E.B. White wrote The Trumpet Of The Swan (1970) whose protagonist, Sam Beaver, is a journaler, capturing his feelings about Canada and his respect for the Trumpeter Swan inside the pages of his very own diary. As well, there is a definite spiritual connection between Grande Prairie’s Betty Zahara and the Trumpeter Swan.
Living ninety-five miles from Grande Prairie, Betty found journal supplies difficult to track down, especially journals with blank pages. Her mother had always worked with her hands, and Betty is no different. Sewing is just one of her many skills.
A gift of a handcrafted journal from her son Trevor gave her the idea for making her own journals, but she needed to find out how they were made. So, as she says, “by guess and by gosh” she took a razor blade to the spine of her new journal to unearth its construction. The knowledge and determination became the genesis of her journey into journal-making.
Betty started bringing her handcrafted journals to her journal-writing group, a ritual she maintained for ten years, and needless to say, every other journaler wanted one of her journals, too. The business took flight. Since then her journals have appeared at Farmers’ Markets and Christmas Craft Shows around Grande Prairie. She has sold over six hundred books to date, and by word of mouth alone she has motivated other women to use journaling as a means of looking within themselves for inspiration.
In the beginning, Betty assembled her journals with the salvaged pieces of cardboard used in the packaging of small appliances. She fills the cover with seven pages of letter-size photocopy paper that have been folded in half and sewn together to form what Betty calls her “paper pack”. Two holes are created at the top of the pages and two holes closer to the bottom before the paper pack is sewn together once again, then clamped and glued to the cardboard cover. Warping became a concern, so to create a sturdier journal, Betty has been using 1/8 inch plywood. The beautiful covers for each of the journals are chosen from personally selected cotton quilting fabric. The patterns on quilts have been telling stories for centuries, bringing together sentimental fabrics that communicate a history all of their own. It seems only suitable that Betty’s journals are swathed in the threads of cloths that have spun many yarns in their time.
“The cover has to speak to me,” Betty says. Fabrics inspire energy and mood. Many writers have a variety of journals at their disposal to capture the essence of every flavourful thought that comes their way. The cover of my first journal boasts a suede avocado-coloured spine seamlessly joined to a floral fabric of orange, yellow and crimson sunflowers with chocolate faces and sprightly stalks. The flower known to follow the sun epitomizes energy and positive thinking, much akin to the practice of journaling and the symbol of the swan. Inside this journal are inspiring thoughts, some my own, but most borrowed from the savory notions of others. Another is wrapped in a cotton fabric of teal and cinnamon borders with patterns signifying Native American Art: geckos, suns, turtles, and Kokopelli (a common fertility symbol known as the seed bringer and the water sprinkler). Thoughts are conceived, and stories germinate inside this volume, mirroring the cover’s symbolic spirit.
One of Betty’s favourite covers is called the Circle of Friends. It features seven curved pieces of fabric (seven being a symbolically spiritual number), forming linked arms in the seven skin colours of every culture represented in the world. “The connection to yourself, to other people and to the natural and spiritual world brings personal healing,” says Ellen Jaffe in Writing Your Way, Creating a Personal Journal. Unity of body, mind and spirit through journaling forms the composition of inner strength. Betty also creates her own native designs to celebrate her respect for the culture that understands the power of the mind and the soul better than any. On the inside of each of Betty’s journals is a sketch of a figure in a long dress with her hands raised to the sky. To her right sits a quill pen with a punctuation point marked strongly below it.
“I want to be journaling for life,” Betty says, “but I also want journaling to enhance my life.” And the life of others, as is evident in the pleasure she takes in these workshops and the creation of her handcrafted journals. She celebrates women and our ability to empower ourselves. We need only look inside for the answers. Within each book Betty provides a pocket in which she has inserted her story about her own journaling journey in hopes of connecting with others with the same philosophy in life. As Betty says, “Journaling is extremely user friendly. If given the freedom it deserves, it will encompass all of life’s feelings, fears and foibles. On these pages, life can be celebrated, fully.”
It’s important to have a special journal to keep these thoughts safe because “everything we write is important,” says Betty. In Jaffe’s book, the author reinforces this belief:
“Writing about the minutiae of daily life validates their importance. Even when we are writing about painful things, the act of writing, of creating – putting thoughts, feelings and images into words – is deeply healing and affirming. It can also help us see things from the point of view of the other, whether this is another person, ourselves at another time or even animals and nature.” Jaffe includes a poem entitled Times Alone by Antonio Machado (translated by Robert Bly) to illustrate the rewards of writing:

Last night, as I was sleeping
I dreamt – marvelous error! –
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart,
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

“Writing cannot undo or change the past but, like the work of bees, it can initiate an imaginative transformation, turning ‘old failures’ into ‘white combs and sweet honey,’ giving us a new appreciation for the difficulties we’ve faced, endured, and overcome.” Much like the swan verse in the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Seven Swans-a-Swimming signifies the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. With these gifts, the Holy Spirit changes us from ugly ducklings into graceful adults.
Betty Zahara has always been a journaler, but her passion for journaling blossomed after she participated in a four-week course in journal writing. Since then, she has conducted journaling workshops in Grande Prairie to educate more women about the power of journaling. The workshops provide each participant with a folder of journal writing ideas, just to get them started, but in most cases the women find their own sources of inspiration for writing just by allowing themselves the luxury of taking a few moments to reflect on themselves. But not everyone is a journaler, nor do they know how to go about journaling. The journaling workshops are intended to provide participants with the permission to write without rules. Betty shared a story about a workshop in which all participants were teachers. “In my mind, teachers wouldn’t need much instruction on journaling, after all, they teach children the basics of writing.” Yet these professionals are also in the practice of teaching perfectionism in writing, instructing children to curve their small letters halfway between the lines on the page, and to touch the capital letters to the top and the bottom lines evenly so every word in every sentence never strays from the line. Thankfully these restrictions are not permitted inside the world of journal writing. During this particular workshop, one highly experienced teacher had a very difficult time with the idea of writing without lines because, God forbid, her writing was crooked and it wobbled across the page without a purpose, or so it seemed to her. In Betty’s wisdom, she knew this woman needed to relax. It wasn’t until Betty suggested she sit in a rocking chair (indeed, a very unconventional posture for writing) that she allowed herself to relax.
“Forget about what your fifth grade teacher told you about writing,” Betty says. “Forget about grammar and punctuation and writing on the lines because the only rule governing journaling is that there are no rules.” Journaling gives women the opportunity to step outside the boundaries of the everyday world and their everyday lives and create an environment of their own where only their voice counts, where only their words are heard, and where only their thoughts matter. Literature echoes this sentiment. In the Fisherwoman’s Daughter, by Ursula K. LeGuin, a little girl asks:
“Tell me, Auntie. What is the one thing a writer has to have?”
“I’ll tell you,” says the imagination. “The one thing a writer has to have is not balls. Nor is it a child-free space. Nor is it even, speaking strictly on the evidence, a room of her own, though that is an amazing help, as is the goodwill and cooperation of the opposite sex, or at least the local, in-house representative of it. But she doesn’t have to have that. The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That’s enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on the paper. In other words, that she’s free. Not wholly free. Never wholly free. Maybe very partially. Maybe only in this one act, this sitting for a snatched moment being a woman writing, fishing the mind’s lake. But in this, responsible; in this, autonomous; in this, free.”
“Auntie,” says the little girl, “can I go fishing with you now?”
In Vedic literature, persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa (‘Great Swan’) on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In a sense, Betty Zahara’s journals transform writers into compassionate beings, beginning with our inner selves, in order for us to truthfully communicate our feelings.
Thanks to Betty Zahara and Journal for Life, women have the tools we need to find our authentic voices.



References

www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/archive/index.php/t-21350.html
Jaffe, Ellen. Writing Your Way, Creating A Personal Journal, Toronto: Sumach Press, 2001.
White, E.B. The Trumpet of the Swan, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers Inc., 1970.