Writing

I’m not sure why I’ve been writing so little lately. I had thought that I would write more with Covid keeping us home so much, but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m not even writing to the grand kids. It’s not that there is nothing to write about. There is the morning light, the evening light, the stars and brilliant planets. Orion is dominating the eastern sky, bright and vivid on clear nights, with that three star belt pattern I have known since childhood. The moon waxes and wanes. The beavers work on their dam, the town road crew tears it apart, and the beavers repair it. The crows sit on the garage roof surveying the hill. So there is plenty going on. I sometimes think the words I would write if I was writing, but they drift off unwritten.

There are other things going on too. I’ve begun tag team teaching our great niece, Lilah, third grade social studies with Aviva, which is a complete joy. Lilah is smart, imaginative, and engaged, and Aviva is a great partner. We have such fun thinking through the important ideas to stress, the questions to ask, the ways to support deeper understanding. The curriculum starts with the events leading up to the first Thanksgiving. In the materials we have there’s an attempt to make the Wampanoag real, but the Pilgrim’s perspective is central. We decided to reverse that, to start with the long migration of the first people from Africa across Asia and the land bridge to North America, to make it clear that the Wampanoag and all the other tribes scattered across the Americas had been here for a very long time and established complex societies. We tried to see the arrival of the explorers and Pilgrims through their eyes. We talked about the explorers and Pilgrims too, of course; what they were leaving, what motivated them, what courage and imagination they required. But it seems important to us that she understand the parties in this encounter equally, that she can see it from both perspectives, and that, even in third grade, she starts thinking about who tells the story of our history and how that shapes the story they tell and the lessons we learn. Lilah, Shayne’s first grandchild, has a complex genealogy; Ashkenazi Jewish, Irish, Nigerian, and other sources. The world she inherits is a world struggling to tell a more complex history than the one we were taught, and she deserves all the richness of that story we can offer. I find myself painfully aware of the Eurocentric version of the story I was taught, with the Native people presented as savages with no real claim to the land they had occupied for centuries, no culture worthy of respect. I’m having to learn a lot myself to present their perspective adequately.

Aviva teaches the 45 minute zoom sessions on Mondays and Tuesdays, I teach Wednesdays and Thursdays, and Aviva and I alternate Fridays. Happily, Lilah’s parents totally support our focus on depth over breadth, and are not worried about how slowly we are covering the material, or that we wanted to start thousands of years earlier. They know that their very bright child will be able to catch up anything she missed quickly when she goes back to regular school next year, assuming she does. Working one on one, we’re able to have such rich conversations, to follow her interests, to engage her lively imagination, to catch and correct her misunderstandings, to encourage her to think deeply. I hate to think of how limited her experience in regular school is, where a teacher has all the other students to consider and the pressure to “cover” material. This time with her is a luxury and a joy. I know Shayne would have done no less.

I’ve also got the last bit of my Get Out The Vote work to finish up, mainly documenting our work for the next election. In spite of Covid, and in some ways because of it, we think we were able to reach a lot of voters, getting them accurate information about their election options. Where the past focus had been largely on in person events which are very labor intensive and reach relatively few voters, Covid forced us to put much more effort into all kinds of media, perhaps not as satisfying as handing a registration form to a new voter, but probably more effective. It was great fun to work with the team that came together on Zoom, and I will miss our meetings, the rhythm of our work, and the sense of purpose.

But I’ve added a new opportunity for rhythm and purpose. I bought another big floor loom to replace the one I sold in California. We emptied the small, second guest bedroom which had been set up for kids, and I’ve taken it over as a weaving room. We brought the old loom home from Thistle Hill Weavers in nearby Cherry Valley last week, and it’s 90% put back together, waiting for that last burst of effort. Thistle Hill is quite an amazing place, run by an old Jewish socialist (quite a rarity in Cherry Valley), Rabbit Goody. I had taken a weaving class from Rabbit after we bought our place here but before we had moved here, and that trip was the first time I started thinking about living here. When I started thinking about buying a loom, Rabbit was my first call. The loom was one of hers, used for classes and samplers, that she had been thinking about clearing out. It’s old, and shows its age, but everything works. It’s much more complex than the loom I had, with 12 harnesses instead of 4, which translates into the ability to do much more sophisticated and varied patterns. I’m slowly getting around to planning my first project. I seem to do everything slowly these days.

Winter spreads out ahead of us with little on our agendas. The film festival was virtual this year, and while we were happy to support it, it was only slightly engaging. There will be no concerts to mark the months this winter, and few opportunities to see friends in the cold. The Fenimore Museum won’t have its winter party before it closes until spring. The gym is open for now, but with no aqua aerobics classes with friends and no delicious sessions in the sauna. It’s easier to see what will be missing than what will be present. But I am surrounded by riches of all sorts, the cozy morning coffee and chats with Jay, reading on the couch with Charlie pressed against me, cooking together in the warm kitchen, watching Hazel chasing a piece of paper around the room, and looking out over the beautiful hill we live on. The earth and sky are endlessly beautiful, endlessly interesting. We are safe, we are together, we are incredibly lucky. There is always plenty to write about.