Bird Droppings June 14, 2025
Today should always be the first day.

Over the past several weeks, we have been cleaning out our storage buildings. It is a slow, tedious process of finding things we have not seen in twenty or more years. I found a briefcase with my bank statements from 1973-76 or so in it. I found legal papers from when my printing business went under, and we were forced to move. In all of this, I saw failure. A note from an old girlfriend in 1973 or so caught my attention. My son found it in the rubble. I had written a note expressing some depression and self-doubt to her. She responded, addressing failures that all simply show us to try a different way. I thought back to a story told to me by a good friend who was an extension agent.

An old farmer came into the extension office complaining about losing money raising corn. My friend, being a great horticulturalist, went with him to his property, took soil samples, and added a check of available water and several other things. When he concluded, he recommended raising watermelons. The soil and water availability were perfect.  So the farmer followed his plan and raised watermelons. After the harvest, he came beaming into the agent’s office and told him how great his crop of watermelons turned out and the profit he made. He then ended with “Now I have enough money to grow corn next year.

Last night, I woke up thinking about all the failures I had found in the boxes of photos and papers we had sorted through. This morning, as I got up and my wife was washing a denim jacket, we found a size five that will fit my youngest grandchild and a pair of jeans my oldest son wore when he was three in 1984. I pulled out boxes of student folders of students who had succeeded in my classes and still contact me on occasion, and the sadness lifted.

“I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.” Lone Man (Isna-la-wica)Teton Sioux

So often in life, we think we are the one. We can do it all on our own with absolutely no help from others. A few years back, I was working in my room when a former student came by to see me. What amuses me is that this student could not wait to get out of school to go to work with his dad. I asked how things were going, and he had quit already. He didn’t like it, but he had enough gas for four hundred miles of driving a full tank, and that was all that mattered. He came by with a fellow I had not seen before, and he was a rough, scruffy-looking fellow. Both guys were not all that clean, sort of like they had slept in the car for several days. I was amused at how, while in school, he did everything he could to get out, and here he was visiting. His last bit of our school was physically getting kicked out and finishing in an Alternative school.

I recall how he told me he did not need to know how to read, and yet he was telling me how he failed the online exam at Wal-Mart while trying to get a job. He was joking about how he Christmas treeed the Wal-Mart test just like he would at school. I asked if he had been hired yet, and he said no, but they were letting him take the test again. His mother works at Walmart. I had this quote from many years back, finding this website of Native American quotes, and one I use frequently. We cannot be monastic in our lives; we are, in effect, herding animals and need the support of a group. On a brighter note, he did, after several jobs, find one where he could be successful. He is working for a paving company and has been for nearly six years now.

“Man is never alone. Acknowledged or unacknowledged, that which dreams through him is always there to support him from within.” Laurence Van der Post

Laurence Van der Post lived, some might say, in another time. Growing up at the edge of the wilderness along the Kalahari Desert, he was raised by a Bushmen nanny and later named as the first non-royal Godfather in history to Prince William of England. Von der Post often wrote of the bush and life among the Bushmen, as well as numerous articles and books about his travels around the world. While a very solitary and reclusive people in part due to encroachment and government pressures, the Bushmen were still devoted to their land, tribe, and people, and their community was life itself. I started thinking back to my paper I was writing yesterday, and the Foxfire Core Practices. Foxfire Core Practice eight: “The work of the classroom serves audiences beyond the teacher, thereby evoking the best efforts by the learners and providing feedback for improving subsequent performances.”

“Having someone wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night is a very old human need.” Margaret Mead

I was standing outside listening to the world around me. I was alone yet knew at any moment I could step back in doors. I searched the sky looking for familiar constellations and stars. The overcast of the sky hid most, but the crescent moon sort of peeked through. The black edge of the tree tops surrounded my view. I enjoy this time of the day, especially here in my backyard yard a world away from civilization, yet only a foot or two step back into it as well. Encircling my dreams in black lace, the tree tops form a circle around my view. Listening to my friends seemingly all in chorus, crickets, tree frogs chirping and barking, and an occasional whippoorwill, and off in the distance, a drone of the main highway waking up. But I know my family is there in the house if I need. I started thinking back to the young man who came to visit me a few weeks back. I wondered how he thought about his family, and I know his comment about having enough gas was self-centered and strictly an extrinsic motivation of the moment.

I doubt he had supplies stashed as the Bushmen tribes would in case of drought and need. We tend to be more self-serving, thinking only of the moment and the immediate. Perhaps our society has done this to us and in so limited us. As I look back, primitive man was interdependent for survival and success. In today’s world, we stress independence and self-sufficiency.  I talk to kids today who use Instagram and Snapchat, both quick, easy, and gone, so they say. Only for the moment, and that is all that is of concern.

“One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and the soul of the child.” Carl Jung

I find myself wandering, searching, and pondering a bit today, thinking of Bushmen, Foxfire, and a former student. I wonder what if I had known this student fifteen years ago, and not just for the few years I was involved with him. I wonder what if I had read Von der Post years ago and had not just found this great author and human being more recently. I often wonder what if I had done something differently, would a former student be in prison now serving three life sentences in the Jackson, Georgia Psychiatric Prison Facility? I recall that as the day gets near, each tiny shred of influence we have is noticed and perceived, and each idea is carried away by those around us, many times, we do not even know. As teachers, we often never see how we influence a student, and often, as with my former student, we cannot be there every moment and assist with every choice made. We can only provide pieces to the puzzle and offer directions and strategies for solving each puzzle as it is presented.

Recently, when a friend began a new direction and her daily wandering and philosophizing ceased on the internet and a piece of me was left wondering where and why she has gone. Another two dear friends have passed recently, and their Facebook accounts are still busy with notes from friends. I attended both services, and so different yet similar. Perhaps it is the teacher in me that finds changes, while a necessity, still difficult. I commented to my wife over the weekend, while very independent, I am still a creature of routine. I have a hard time with change. In less than two months, I have lost several dear friends in their passing, and for the first time, I am exposed to perhaps a different understanding of the teacher I am, and I wonder what direction this will take. It will be fun and hopefully enlightening, so peace my friends for today, and please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and your hearts, and always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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