The Fall semester at the community college where I teach at night starts this Thursday. I teach the second of two courses in college reading and study skills that is a requirement for those students who are not reading at college-level. Many of my students are straight out of high school, some are *returning students*, some are English as a Second Language students, some have learning disabilities. Most are reading at about the 4th grade level when they enter college.

Yes, you read that last bit correctly. Reading at a 4th grade level in college.

I love teaching beginning readers. They are bright-eyed and excited. Their whole reading life is ahead of them and they are eager to figure out the puzzle that is reading. This does not describe my students at the college.

Many of them have been humiliated by their inability or ignored. They hate reading and they hate books. They hate that they have to take this class (for no credit) before they can take the classes they really want to take. Many of them hate school and are only there to prove as much to me and to their parents who force them to go.

Because I teach the second course in the series, the students know the drill and know what to expect. They’ve worked hard in the previous course (some have had to repeat it once or twice before passing) and are just beginning to see the result of their efforts.

Understand that these kids can read. They can decode the words on the page. They just can’t make any sense out of the words and sentences and paragraphs that are in front of them. They have to be taught how to make meaning from what they read. So in the first course they are taught what good readers do, explicitly. What you and I do naturally. They work on improving their vocabulary and increasing their reading speed. They learn how to find the main idea. They learn how to organize information into memorable chunks, etc. etc.

Then I get them and we work on applying these hard-won strategies to college-level reading material. We work on how to distinguish between fact and opinion. We work on inference and tone. We learn how to take lecture notes, how to annotate and outline, how to study for a test, how to write an essay. How to be a good student.

I try to make time to fit a novel into the course. I think it’s important they learn that reading is something that good readers do for pleasure and not just because they *have to*. Ideally, I would let them each chose a novel to read, but I’ve learned that they need guidance even to find what they might enjoy.

In the past I’ve used The Kite Runner and found that most of my students were able to enjoy it and understand it with a lot of guidance and class discussion. This semester, I’ve decided to to try a *hi-low* book – a high interest, low level book that shouldn’t necessitate so much explanation and chapter-by-chapter analysis on my part. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom was suggested and I’ve decided to give it a try.

I read it a few years ago and thought it was a fun read. I hope that this group of students will find it enjoyable and that they’ll find something in it to make them think and want to talk about what they’ve read. Like good readers do.

Have you read it? What did it make you think about? What did it make you want to talk about?

“September is the year at the turn, a young mother sending her children off to school and wondering if she can ever catch up with Summer tasks unfinished. It is Autumn at hand and Summer reluctant to leave; it is days loud with cicadas and nights loud with katydids; it is beets for pickling and pears for canning and apples for pies and sauce and cider. It is hot days and cool nights and hurricane and flood and deep hurt and high triumph.

September is both more than a month and less, for it is almost a season in itself. It is flickers in restless flocks, readying for migration; it is goldfinches in thistledown; it is fledglings on the wing, and half-grown rabbits in the garden, and lambs in the feed lot. It is the gleam of goldenrod and the white and lavender and purple of fence row asters, with the bright spangle of bittersweet berries.

September is fog over the river valleys at dawn and the creep of early scarlet among the maples in the swamp. It is sumac in war paint. It is bronze of hillside grass gone to seed. It is walnuts ripening and squirrels busy among the hickories. It is late phlox like a flame in the garden, and zinnias in bold color, and chrysanthemums budding. It is a last gallant flaunt of portulaca and petunias defying time and early frost.

September is the first tang of wood smoke and the smolder of burning leaves. It is bass and perch revitalized in the chilling waters of pond and stream. It is the hunter’s dog sniffing the air and quivering to be off to the underbrush. September is time hastening and days shortening, it is the long nights of Autumn closing in with their big stars and glinting moon. September is the wonder and fulfillment and the ever amazing promise of another Autumn.” – Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

I’m busy figuring out how to turn this lovely bucket of beach plums into jelly. I’ve never made jelly before. Neither me nor my kitchen is stained purple, yet. Wish me luck. Check back in a bit for the monthly Hal Borland interlude. I’ll probably be purple by then.

Can I rant a little about work? This will likely end up to be mean-spirited, so be warned.

I’m generally a well-behaved person; not prone to complaining too much, but this has been bottled up most of the week and Deb, my best friend at work, is on vacation. I’ve been stewing without her ear to bend. I’ll use you guys as my sounding-board instead.

By the way, do you know Happy Bunny? I have a little collection spread around my cubicle at work. Deb thinks this is subversive on my part, but at least in my passive-aggressive way I’m letting my feelings be known to many of the people I work with. Most of them drive me nuts.

95% of the people I work with are women; that’s the first problem. Second of all, the vast majority of them seem to forever be going through menopause so my workplace is awash in unhappy hormones. Third of all, and worst; they all talk too damn much!

Another great quote I’ve recently added to my collection is this:

“Before you speak, ask yourself: is it kind, is it true, is it necessary, does it improve upon the silence?” – Shirdi Sai Baba

I’m going against that mantra now, but I’m fed up. I need quiet to work, to be productive. I come to work to work, not to socialize or as a replacement for a therapy session. Why is it any different for the people I work with? Deb and I go out to lunch or into her office with the door closed when we need to talk about personal things. Never mind that I don’t want the whole office to hear my personal business, but I respect them enough not to subject them to it! Why can’t others be as courteous?

Do I need to hear every detail of your most recent phone coversation with your out-of-state daughter, repeated ad infinitum for every one of your twelve friends who stop by your cubicle throughout the day? Can’t you at least change the story a little bit, for my benefit; your captive audience in the adjoining cubicle? Must I overhear every demeaning conversation you have with your husband? Do I need to know exactly and every single thing you plan to do this weekend? Do I need to listen to you alternate between cursing and crying every single day? Isn’t there some medicine you could take for that?

Some day, if I prove myself incompetent enough (I work for the government, after all) I might get promoted and have an office of my own, instead of a cubicle amidst this sea of moody women. Then I’ll be able to close the door on it all. Instead I’m forced to listen to this drather, day in and day out.

End of rant. Pretty pics and gentle-mannered nature observations to resume tomorrow. 😉

Delicate branches

Roots caress a simple pot

White blossoms shimmer

The essence of all forests

Lives here in one small tree.

-Mastuyama Mokurai






The art of bonsai is meant to suggest a tree which has grown naturally under specific conditions, for example windswept on a rocky shore, clinging to the side of a cliff, or standing undisturbed in the forest. The time and patience needed to train a tree in miniature form to look natural and mature is, perhaps, the foremost challenge of this horticultural practice.

A gardener studying bonsai is encouraged to study nature and get out and look at trees. Get under them and look up. Notice them. Get to know them so that you might create a representation of all of nature in one small tree.

Pics taken in the Japanese Garden at Deep Cut Gardens in Middletown, NJ. Other posts about Deep Cut are available here and here.

Post submitted to The Festival of the Trees.

This is one of many pages done for my brother’s annual Halloween party. It was the first year after my DH and I were married, so we went as Frankenstein and his Bride. My DH makes a pretty convincing Frankenstein, doesn’t he? My brother and sister-in-law (in the strategically placed fig leaves) were Adam and Eve and my dad was a Keystone Cop. (This is a 14X14 page that wouldn’t fit on the scanner bed so it’s cut off on both ends.)
First Christmas after we did some work on the house and got new furniture. Me with a Pixie haircut! (Another 14X14 page)
Missy and Freckles as little baby bunnies. Say “Awwww…”
My husband seeing the osprey off at Sandy Hook on Labor Day 2000
My brother-in-law’s wedding. I scrapbooked a wedding album as a gift for them.

Naturwoman and I have been chatting a bit on her blog about scrapbooking, and we each wanted to have a look at the other’s pages, so I thought I would share a few here tonight. These are scanned and should be clickable for a closer look, if you dare. What I like best about scrapbooking is the storytelling aspect; picking a few of the best photos from an event and using them to give a sense of what happened. I never used to be such a shutterbug, so the prospect of scrapbooking my photos seemed reasonable. Nowadays, the idea is pretty daunting.

Scrapbooking has evolved to be a very complex craft; I’m not artistic enough or patient enough to do the types of pages I see in magazines today. I like to use pretty papers and stickers and play with colors and different styles of handwriting. For the first few years I made my pages for a 14″ X 14″ album, then I switched to a more standard size. Now I like to do little *books* – smaller page sizes are more fun and a bit easier to do.

Now it’s your turn – let’s see some of those pages!

**Edited to add that Sandy at gardenpath has posted one of her pages – it’s really neat – have a look!