The daily meanderings of a teacher

Bird Droppings February 18, 2019 Do we have a desire for freedom? “Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom and dignity. It is not enough, as communist systems have assumed, merely to provide people with food, shelter and clothing. Human nature needs to breathe the precious…

Bird Droppings February 17, 2019 Getting over the speed bumps   “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” Hannah More   Perhaps ahead of her time Ms. More wrote in abundance in the later 1700’s and early 1800’s. She was writing in a time when women should…

Bird Droppings February 16, 2019 I was listening to the stillness of a morning, the sunrise, and or sometimes we need a window and not a mirror.     I was sitting alone this morning as I do often, after running my son to the airport very early, trying to get a few photos of…

Bird Droppings February 14, 2019 Life, a journey only made difficult if there is no learning involved   “Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.” Henry Van Dyke   I was visiting with my mother yesterday and I walked by my fathers…

Bird Droppings February 13, 2019 Wandering about while I am waiting   Sitting listening to Crosby, Stills, and Nash and Young album Four Way Street from live recording of their tour in 1970. I have been saving my pennies to get a new camera body to be ready for spring. There are so many possibilities…

Bird Droppings February 12, 2019 An owl calling   Last night I woke for a few minutes as it turns out I forgot to turn on the ceiling fan. While up I stuck my nose out the door perhaps intuition who knows when wandering about the house half asleep. Deep in the pines an owl…

Bird Droppings February 9, 2019 Hearing an owl   “If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator.”…

Bird Droppings February 8, 2019 Is it saying goodbye or is it hello?   I was thinking about Boy Scouts and a recent memory from last year. It might have been the fact I had never pulled out my Eagle Scout card from 1967 in class before that got me thinking. While mired in controversy…

Bird Droppings February 7, 2019 Teaching is a journey it is not copy, paste or bubble.   “To project an image of what Public Education in the US might become in the 21st Century is more to move back and forth between the predictable and the possible.” Maxine Greene, Colombia University, res: Imagining futures: the…

Bird Droppings February 6, 2019 What if all promises were all kept?   I begin each typical morning waking up, fixing breakfast for my wife and her lunch, talking with my son for a few minutes, fixing my own breakfast and eventually finding my way to my computer. A little later I take the dog…