Doyle

February 1, 2019January 15, 2023

Imbolc, again

An Cailleach Bhearra wandered around back in the 10th century in western Ireland, eating “seaweed, salmon, and wild garlic” (my kind of appetite), looking for firewood.
If the day was bright and sunny, beware–she had gathered plenty of wood and was set for many cold days ahead.

If the day was gray, she didn’t bother, and she will make the days warm up again. Sound familiar?

Imbolc again.
Words shrink as the sunlight grows.

A few years ago in late January I watched a crow at the ferry jetty caw caw caw at a gull sharing a light post. The gull did not respond.

The crow swooped down to the pavement, picked up a piece of paper, then returned to its perch near the gull.

The crow carefully ripped up the paper, piece by piece, dropping each piece, one by one, watching each piece until it hit the ground, looking at the gull between pieces as if to say Hey!

When done, the crow cawed once more, and this time the gull squawked back. The crow, now seemingly satisfied, nodded, and then flew to a trash can and cawed at a few human folk, one of whom cawed back.

Dandelion flower reflecting late January light

I have no idea what that was about, nor could I justify discussing it in my classroom. So I don’t.
Curriculum stops at the point where humans are besides the point.

That makes sense if you live in a world of words. It makes less sense at the water’s edge. If we keep ignoring things where humans are besides the point, we will become just that.

With the return of the sun comes the return of my sanity, when I feel comfortable letting go of the words again, learning (again) that what I thought was besides the point is the point.

This happens whether we’re present or not.

The darkest 12 weeks of the year have ended, again and for now.

January 29, 2019January 22, 2022

The connected child

An essential quality of technology, from the spear to Skype, is action at a distance. Technology enables us to have an effect on people and things far away. In general, the more advanced the technology, the further away it is able to impose an effect.

Doug Hill, author of Not So Fast: Thinking Twice About Technology

Our lives cost the lives of others. That’s always been true, and will be so long as we breathe. Technology allows us to forget this.

As technophiles spew on about a global community, where your value is measured by the number of hits your words register, their hands never touch the blood and feces of the life around them.

You want every child “connected”? So do I. It’s what’s at the other end of the connection that matters.

All children, every child, should know where the stuff that makes up their bodies comes from, all the way back to the living organisms that fill up, unrecognizable, wrapped in plastic.

All children, every child, should know where their waste goes, through hidden pipes and trucks that rumble before dawn through the neighborhood once or twice a week.

We can do both, I suppose–just make sure you cover up the machines when I bring in a calf (or whatever the cafeteria is serving this week) to slaughter in the classroom.

I could live without my computer a lot easier than living without my knife.

January 21, 2019January 8, 2022

Death on a January beach

Energy’s no longer cheap. Last year’s abundance has become scarce, and the sun is too oblique to fulfill last summer’s promises.

Purple sandpipers picked at the remnants of horseshoe crabs that failed to return with the last tide; several vultures hunkered down at the edge of the bay. Glistening glass orbs marked the end of comb jellies just out of reach of the receding waters.

We stumbled upon a hole dug by a gull, its presence betrayed by its footprints. Next to the whole lay a small, live clam. I tossed it back into the bay, figuring the gull had given up.

A few steps later, I found another displaced clam, again sitting next to a hole dug out by a gull, and again I tossed the critter back in the sea.

Then a third.

Winter beaches kill the ignorant. I looked around. Several similar holes, each with a clam next to it.

Gulls know how to open clams–I’ve watched them do it. They pick them up, hover over the jetty, then drop them, following them as they fall, ready to eat the freshly exposed flesh as the shell shatters on the rocks.

I suspect the clams had been left to die–their gaping shells would have saved a gull a few trips over the jetty.

I left the remaining clams on the beach.

One creature’s death is another creature’s grace. Powerful stories emerge daily from the beach–stories of grace and power and even love.

None of them, however, are “nice.”