Returning to the place of my youth, I lose track of my own aging process.  Over the weekend as I found my way down the same red-brick main street that I walked to grade school as a child, it was easy to forget that I’m almost 62.  In just a few years I’ll be eligible for Medicare, the same system my elders are navigating their way through right now.   In my hometown it seems like nothing has changed, until I look closer.  I notice the weeds, old tires and peeling pink paint on the garage behind what used to be my grandparents‘ house and wonder what happened to the hollyhocks I used to play with on summer days.  My high school now has a different name, due to school consolidations from other surrounding small towns with diminishing populations.  The two-story elementary school building I attended was replaced long ago with a newer one.  The golf course with its state-of-the-art sand greens I played on as a teenager, are now upgraded to lovely grass greens.

Despite all the changes, there are a few constants from my childhood.  The lilac bushes that separated our yard from the neighbors’ still produce the same fragrant purple flowers we filled our May baskets with each spring.  And the sleepy Little Blue River continues its meandering through town.  On my recent visit to Hebron, I was drawn to the river on more than one occasion.  I love the wildness of its banks, the raccoon tracks under the bridge, and the dandelions sprouting up in sunny places waiting to be wished upon.  I know the sandy banks have changed considerably since we explored them as children.  Yet, it is the same river.  Perhaps it drew me to its banks to deliver the message that even now as my heart struggles, knowing that time with my elders is limited, life continues to flow, revealing that which is new, awaiting its own time in the sun.

Last Friday we received our first delivery of fresh produce at the Seed  from a local CSA called farmyard (http://www.myfarmyard.com).  It was inspiring and exciting to see the beautiful food arriving.  I loved seeing parents‘ faces as they picked up their bags.  For some, the produce was an extension of their well-established cooking habits.  For others, it was a new adventure.  One mom commented as she left the building with her bag in hand, “I’m going to call you for recipes.  This is a whole new experience for us.  I’m nervous and excited!”  The bags lined up in the hallway waiting to be picked up made me wish I’d signed up.  I chose not to this time around because we still have so much produce in our garden.  Soon I will be on the list.  I thought about all the great meals these families would be preparing and eating together.  Other writers have also had this topic on their minds.

Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemna, has a new book called Cooked:  A Natural History of Transformation.  It’s a book about the transformative nature of cooking and the significance of cooking for turning around food-related crises in our culture.  He says:  “Cooking is probably the most important thing you can do to improve your diet. What matters most is not any particular nutrient, or even any particular food: it’s the act of cooking itself. People who cook eat a healthier diet without giving it a thought. It’s the collapse of home cooking that led directly to the obesity epidemic…Cooking links us to nature, it links us to our bodies. It’s too important to our well-being to outsource.”  As I was digesting his wise words, which completely make sense to me, I ran across a poem by Joy Harjo, a native American writer who is a poet, musician and artist.  Her poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179782) begins with these lines:

“The world begins at a kitchen table.  No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table.  So it has been since creation, and it will go on.”

Her words about the kitchen table being a focal point of nourishment in our lives have hovered in the vicinity of my mind these past few days.  We face vast planetary challenges right now and this is an example of how change can happen on a personal level in our own homes, at our own kitchen tables.  By choosing to take the time to prepare and enjoy foods recently harvested from the earth, we not only heal our bodies and our families, but also the planet upon which we live.  It’s a powerful legacy we can leave for future generations.

Each Wednesday of this year, I’ve spent an hour in the 3rd/4th grade classroom, teaching poetry to a highly talented group of writers. We have learned about line breaks, cracking open a sentence, and getting specific with descriptions of events. We’ve talked about how to choose a topic and why it’s important to keep the tense of a poem consistent. I’ve sat with each writer one-on-one to make final edits on their poems. We’ve examined small natural objects to use as inspiration for poetry. We’ve grown together, side by side, as poets. They have opened their circle and invited me in, even on days when I had to make the unpopular announcement that all children were being asked to choose an alternative favorite Seed memory to the rubber chicken event on last year’s graduation trip.

Earlier in the week I was especially touched by the visit of a small group to my office, each child with a freshly crafted sea creature in hand. I was caught up in their enthusiasm and asked if we could go outside to photograph their creations. We migrated outside and found just the right shady spot in the sand for the photo shoot. As we walked back inside I realized that for several of these kids, only a few weeks at the Seed remain. The way they were with each other, in an almost sibling-like way, was permeated with the energy of friends savoring their final days together. I could hear it in their words, see it in their eyes, and feel it in their laughter. Even the children who still have another year were very much aware of this, knowing some of their friends would be off to other places in a short time. As we all made our way from the sand circle into the building, I thought of our days as grains of sand sifting through an hour glass. At times like this when an experience seems to be slipping away, it’s good to remember that as the hour glass is emptied on one side, there is always the adventure of what’s next when it’s turned the other way.

I found another reason to be proud of the Seed this week, we celebrate Earth Day.  At a time when the planet needs informed citizens more than ever, I was disheartened to learn during my Tuesday kids’ yoga class that, of my four students, only one had done anything at school to celebrate Earth Day.  The one student attends the Seed.  As we talked further, all of them knew about Earth Day, they just hadn’t talked about it or done anything at school.  Something is out of balance when months and months are devoted to standardized testing and not even one day can be devoted to the planet.

At the Seed, Earth Day is like a holiday.  In years past we’ve picked up trash around the school, made posters to promote earth-friendly habits, created an all-school quilt and dedicated Gwen’s Castle, a space on our playground created in memory of a student.  We have built gardens, painted decorative bricks, made recycled art and collected lunch trash to display for raising awareness.  This year we had a concert and a picnic.  The 3s class painted a beautiful blue and green glittery banner for the front of the school exclaiming, “We (heart) Mother Earth!”

One of my favorite parts of this year’s Earth Day was receiving a message from an alumni parent.  She forwarded me the Earth Day tweet from her daughter Kelsey who is about to graduate from college.  The message read, “Celebrate life on planet Earth.  Live your life for all it’s worth. –MKG”  These words are from one of the few songs I wrote back in the 80s called “Celebrate Life on Planet Earth.”  When I feel discouraged about all of the children who aren’t celebrating Earth Day in schools, I remember students like Kelsey who, even in her early twenties, is still connected to her Seed roots.  At a time when topics like climate change, increasing incidence of childhood allergies, and the diminishing coral reefs due to more acidic oceans, I hold on to faith in the young people who are just now coming of age.  They are the planetary stewards of tomorrow we’ve dedicated decades to cultivating, who will sustain the Seed’s vision for a peaceful and healthy planet, living their lives for all they’re worth.

As soon as I finish one piece, I begin thinking about the next one.  I usually start out fairly open-ended with my topic and then something surfaces that gives the piece direction and focus.  I consider recent events, ideas rolling around in my head, or themes that seem important.  This week I thought about the school picnic that, for the first time, included horses, the circle of sunflowers growing in the outdoor space of one of the 3rd/4th graders, the volunteer marigold growing between pavers under the wheelbarrow in our garden, my trip to southern Arizona to visit with my mom’s cousins (two of whom I haven’t seen in decades), and our successful art silent auction.  As I often do, I looked through my pictures from the past week and one popped out, the hummingbird I miraculously photographed in our back yard last Friday.  As soon as I saw it, I knew the direction of the writing.  The memory of the unexpected hummingbird hovering over me as I bent to dig in the dirt raced to the forefront of my mind.  I relived the way it darted to the garden bed behind me as I subtly turned around and prepared my camera.  The bird was so fast I was amazed I was able to snap the photo.

It was a brief moment that would’ve stayed with me even if I hadn’t been successful with the camera.  The hummingbird rewarded my wide-awakeness by hanging around long enough to let me take the photo.  It reinforced my belief that if you pay attention, what you need appears.  As this piece of writing evolved, I relaxed into the process and trusted that the writing, too, would develop as needed.  The bird provided the metaphor I was seeking to finish this piece.  I worked with what I had and am delighted once again in the surprise of how it all came together.

In 1984 someone had head lice at the beginning of the school year.  We did our best to extract them from the school, but didn’t really have a consistent policy and were still figuring it all out.  If lice were discovered, children were sent home for treatment and then returned to school.  Some still had nits (the eggs laid by lice) in their hair and we learned the hard way that the treatment products don’t always kill all of the nits.  Essentially, children kept infesting and re-infesting each other.  The stress level was high and that was the year the assistant director and I dressed up in black vinyl lice buster costumes for Halloween.  Needless to say, the situation was mildly out of control.  It took us until November to finally rid the Seed of lice.  We ended up checking every child for two weeks and not letting anyone in if they had any nits in their hair.  Some parents were angry with this policy, most were politely grateful that we took the stand we did.

The lice world has evolved considerably since those days.  There are better and more varied products that are less toxic.  Some amazing lice combs have been invented, including the battery operated Lice Zapper, which electrically shocks nits and lice without the use of chemicals.   One of the most ingenious changes is the presence of the Lice Lady.  In response to her child’s case of lice, she created Total Lice Control (http://www.totallicecontrol.com) that provides comb outs and advice for eliminating lice in the home.  Although there are still many opinions about nits in school, we have decided to stick with what’s worked for us.   There is nothing fun about lice, except perhaps the camaraderie some of us have developed during the hundreds of hours we’ve spent checking heads over the years.  One of the most significant friendships of my life developed as a result of head lice.  It’s one of those situations that will continue to arise, so we accept it as part of life in a school and make the best of it.  Happy picking, everyone.

Our current pile is located where we’ve had mint growing for several years.  The mint started as a potted plant a friend gave me.  Every so often I have to pull it all out and start over because it’s so prolific and would take over the whole garden without being kept in check.  The roots become so impacted that we just dig up the whole root system and let the remnants regenerate.  With spring upon us, the mint is, of course, moving in on everything else.  But it also has some curious companions in this year’s compost.

I pulled up a huge chard plant in the fall that lasted a whole year, including the summer.  Its leaves were enormous and too tough to eat, so I threw the whole plant in the pile.  Before long, I noticed tender dark green leaves pressing up through the layers of food scraps.  Reincarnated chard!  It’s currently almost as big as the plant I removed from the soil in the fall and we’ve started eating our compost chard.  Along with this miracle vegetable, there are onions, potatoes, squash, and a most unusual beet.  What’s unusual about it is that the greens and most of the beet itself are completely growing above the ground, with a tiny umbilical root reaching deep into the dirt.  I will be watching this curious arrangement in the coming days.

So why do I keep thinking and writing about compost?  For one thing, I believe in it and like promoting a process that is highly beneficial to our planet and requires only a bit of effort for excellent returns.  It’s great for the soil.  It reduces trash.  Additionally, compost is one of my favorite metaphors.  I think of compost as everyday life.  Some of it nourishes us, makes us happy, helps us grow.  Other parts might not seem so useful or pleasant to process.  Yet, all of it is life, the things that just come up.  I believe we have an opportunity to grow from everything that comes along, and sometimes the parts we may think aren’t benefitting us in the end turn out surprisingly extraordinary after all.

The end of a life cycle in my home town this past week gave me a opportunity to think about what it means to be “home grown.”  My childhood doctor, Dr. Louis Bunting, passed away at the age of 97.  In May he would have been 98.  Like my parents,  he and his wife Marj were pillars of our rural Nebraska town.  As I read over his obituary, I learned many things about Dr. Bunting that I didn’t know before.  He served in World War II and was just beginning his medical career in the infancy of antibiotics.  He was an avid pilot, which I knew, but didn’t realize that before there were permanent runway lights at our local airport, his wife Marj used to go out and place temporary lights near the runway so he could land.  I knew he delivered my friend Deborah during the night of the 1953 tornado, but didn’t have a clue about the other 1200 babies he delivered throughout his career.  I was happy hear that he and Marj were able to travel, particularly after all the years he gave to our community.

The things I remember about him weren’t mentioned in his obituary.  I have vivid memories of visiting his office the day my brother pushed me into the corner of a wall and split open the back of my head.  I remember lying on his office table with my grandmother nearby in her black wooly coat as he skillfully stitched up my bloody head.  There were his numerous attempts to remove the warts from my feet and Dr. Bunting’s examination after I fell into gravel from the top of a playground slide.  I can still picture the day my brother and I were sent by ourselves for our check-ups and my brother bolted from the waiting room when he found out we had to get shots.  One of my last visits to Dr. Bunting as a patient was to have my ears pierced.  Although my father disapproved of this act by exclaiming that I looked like a gypsy, I was mighty proud of Dr. Bunting’s handiwork in the piercing department.

My brother mentioned how touching Dr. Bunting’s funeral and graveside ceremony were.  Because of his military service, his family was presented with an American flag.  Additionally, he was honored by a color guard made up of local Legionnaires.  Among that color guard was my 88-year-old father, who “held Old Glory in a moderate breeze.”  That’s one sight I wish I had witnessed.  When I think of men like my father and Dr. Bunting, I am aware of the great influence they’ve had on my life and many others.  They’ve been the gardeners who tended the soil of our small town so their “home grown” crops could thrive.   They’re from a generation that quietly devoted their lives to service because it was the noble thing to do.  We could all benefit from a little more of this kind of nobility in our lives.  I, for one, intend to use the rest of my days to see that it happens.

The great thing about being a school director is that no matter how exciting one event has been, it’s guaranteed there will be another one before long.  This week has certainly delivered.  For a starter, I woke up Sunday morning without a voice.  No other symptoms, just an absence of voice.  I was basically voiceless till Wednesday, which I found out makes my job slightly challenging.  I talk a lot.  I took the silence as a sign that maybe I was supposed to be quieter this week, and accomplished this with limited success.  Gratefully, my voice has mostly returned and I’m glad to be able to communicate freely again.

Days at the Seed require extensive communication.  This week’s topics include the transition to iCloud with our new computers, the usual coverage arrangements for staff absences, buzz surrounding the upcoming silent auction of art by the kids and staff, discovery, treatment and management of head lice, and speculation regarding when Kristen, our office manager, will have her baby.  On top of that, spring has apparently arrived, which always stirs everyone up.  Sunflowers we planted a few weeks ago are growing taller and stronger by the day and sweet peas are blooming.  Transition is in the air.

The day it hailed on the playground and for the remainder of that weekend, I had the privilege of attending an iRest yoga nidra workshop.  Yoga nidra is sometimes called “yogic sleep” and is a guided practice that allows participants to experience a state of full relaxation while maintaining awareness.  It is a practice that is gaining popularity in the West and has been especially successful in treating conditions such as PTSD, anxiety, fear, pain, and post-war trauma with veterans.  Programs are being developed for school children with excellent results.  During the training we discussed the idea that as humans when we experience any feeling or emotion, there is always the option of also experiencing the opposite feeling or emotion.  Frustration or impatience can be replaced by patience.  Courage can take the place of fear.  This aspect of the training has lingered in my mind.  When I find myself being drawn away from my place of inner balance by life as the Seed director, I notice I’m now beginning to pause and ask myself what alternative feeling or emotion is also available.  As this first week back from break winds down, I shift my overwhelmed and off-balance feelings to gratitude, for the blessings each day of this work brings.

Through ASU one of our Seed families arranged a visit by two delightful guests from Egypt to talk with the K-1 class.  Part of a semester-long program of professional development and cultural exchange, they arrived at the Seed to share their stories.  I was invited to come listen and meet our guests.  A busy afternoon only allowed me about twenty minutes with our visitors, but it was enough to shift my blog focus.  One of the women donned her traditional Egyptian clothing as she spoke with students.  It was evident that she’s a teacher by the way that she interacted with the children.  Her friendly enthusiasm was contagious as she introduced new content (e.g. which seas surround Egypt).  She talked about the pharaohs and why they built the Great Pyramids.  There was lively discussion about the Sphinx and the decision to create a monument that combined a human head with a lion’s body.  The qualities of bravery, ferociousness and fearlessness were among the reasons for choosing a lion.  The discussion continued with topics such as the pharaoh’s gold in their pyramids and the robbers who have been interested in stealing it historically.

Soon after the robber discussion, I was called away to tend to other matters.  Still, it was enough to make me appreciate the impact of this exceptional visit.  I thought of the almost daily news I hear on the radio of conflicts in the Middle East.  It reminded me of the Arab Spring two years ago and how changes in Egypt at that time influenced the rest of the world.  I thought of all the conflicts, the violence and non-violence, the bravery, and the creativity of many involved.  It brought me back to the Seed’s mission statement:

Throughout history, people from all walks of life have shared a vision of an age in which all beings will live together in peace.  Those who hold this vision are committed to working for the benefit of all others until each one has attained an awareness of the unity of life.  Awakening Seed is a part of this worldwide vision of peace and was founded on these basic principles:

•  All life forms are interconnected.  When we damage one portion of the web of life, we damage the entire system.  Helping even the smallest creature contributes to the harmony of the whole planet.

•  Life can be viewed as a series of cycles or patterns.  By studying smaller cycles such as the breath in the human body or life cycles of insects and spiders, the universals of life are more easily understood.

•  Each person is more than a physical being.  Our intellect and spiritual nature need cultivation as well, in order to become a balanced person.

•  We all need love and support in our efforts to learn and grow.

•  Suffering can be eliminated through loving kindness and compassion.  This attitude is cultivated most effectively at an early age.

•   World peace is possible.

The last item, the possibility of world peace, stood out.  I realized it’s through visits like the one with our new Egyptian friends, that we form bonds with real people from cultures different from our own.  Bonds that help world peace eventually become a reality.  Our students are fortunate to have these opportunities that will stay with them into their adulthood. For more information about our visitors, check out this link:  http://education.asu.edu/about/partnerships-projects/ilep