The Lake Isle Of Innisfree, by William Butler Yeats

In honor of all of the Irish dears in my life-- one of my favorite poets--

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

The WaterWheel = More time for Education of Girls

When Cynthia Koenig, a young social entrepreneur from New York, learned that millions of girls and women around the world spend hours each day collecting water from distant sources, she decided to create a new way to help people in poor communities transport water. Called the WaterWheel, it allows people to roll water in a 50-liter container versus carrying it in 5 gallon (19 liter) jugs. Koenig estimates that the WaterWheel can save women 35 hours per week in water transport time, as well as prevent the physical strain that comes from balancing 40 pounds of water on top of their heads for hours each day. Every day around the world, over 200 million hours are spent each day fetching water, often from water sources miles from home, and this task usually falls to women and girls. By freeing up valuable time, the WaterWheel allows women to spend time on income-generating activities that can help pull their families out of poverty. The time savings also means that there is a greater likelihood that girls will be allowed to stay in school, further reducing the rate of intergenerational poverty.

After receiving a $100,000 Grand Challenges Canada prize to develop the WaterWheel, Koenig founded a social enterprise company, Wello. The company is in an early stage of development and has been piloting the WaterWheel in rural communities in India. Koenig also plans on continuing to make the WaterWheel itself more useful by adding in filtration, drip irrigation kits, even a cell phone charger that uses the rotation of the wheel to charge the battery of the cell phone and give people more access to essentials like communication and education. To learn more about this invention and its potential to transform the lives of many girls and women around the world, check out Koenig's TED talk at http://bit.ly/1gBdpGt and you can read a recent article in The Guardian about her venture at http://bit.ly/1dMt7Mh. To learn more about how to support her work, visit Wello's website at http://wellowater.org/

For a wonderful book about more female innovators and inventors throughout history, check out “Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women” for readers 8 to 13 at http://www.amightygirl.com/girls-think-of-everything 

(Article reprinted) 

IN PRAISE OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE, A POEM BY WENDELL BERRY

In praise of the Winter Solstice and to drive away the dark, we offer this poem by Wendell Berry, visionary, environmental activist, farmer and one of the major literary lights in our country.

Peace of the Wild Things

  

                              by Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

THE WRITER'S LIFE, Personal Essay on a Memorable Meal

For the third year in a row, I have had the pleasure of running a Fall community writing workshop at the Jewish Community Center in Albany. Some of the members have been together for all three years and have delighted the rest of us with their vivid writing. Poet and memoir writer Ruth Dorothy Pottinger of Albany, New York is one of those participants who consistently addresses her readers with incredibly fresh, tangible detail, often from her childhood in Jamaica. This excerpt is in response to the prompt, write about your most memorable meal.  

BEEF SOUP ON FRIDAY

                                                                                               by Ruth Dorothy Pottinger

The butcher shop on St. John’s Road a few blocks from our house in Jamaica was open on Fridays. That was the day everyone got their fresh meat to make soup. Or those who could afford the expense bought different cuts of meat to make dinner for Friday, Saturday and Sunday meals.

I really cannot picture my Saturday and Sunday dinner but Friday evening soup made with “goose-neck,” the part of the cow’s leg with the ligaments attached, was delicious. Do you remember Stone Soup? That’s the story of the man reputed to have made soup from a stone but really made it from all the soup ingredients he had requested from the villagers. Well, my mother’s Friday night evening soup was like that. She went to the food market in the morning where she purchased yellow yam, pumpkin, cho-cho, cocoa, breadfruit, escallion, thyme, green Scotch Bonnet peppers, and then to the grocery shop to buy flour. Soup was never the best without flour dumplings.

I could smell my mother’s soup cooking in the large three-legged iron pot sitting on the iron stove as soon as I entered the gate. I would salivate in anticipation of the bowl of soup with my favorite food but mostly the bone with the gummy sinews which I would spend time digging into with my teeth to get every inch of meat and sinew off.

We often wished we could have seconds but this was not forthcoming since we were so many and everybody loved the soup. No one was willing to share. No one was willing to give up any of the portion they received. We all were engrossed in the eating activity. Soup dripped down our chins but we ignored that until we had eaten every bit of the soup in our bowls.

I wish I could have a bowl of that special soup today. I have tried making it, but I have been unsuccessful and have to relish the memory of the taste as I think about my mother’s bowl of beef soup on Fridays.

ANCHORED AT CRANBERRY POND, by Anne Kiely

Sometimes we meet people who are so totally connected to an environment that they give new meaning to having "a sense of place". Anne Kiely is one of those people. We present an essay that uniquely communicates the connection that comes with a lifelong association with a place. In this case, it happens to be a setting of beauty and sustenance for which Anne has great love.

Anchored at Cranberry Pond

It’s really not much of a body of water. Bigger than a farm pond but just a small pond, after all. Rather shallow, only about ten to fourteen feet deep in the middle part, the perimeter is only three or four feet deep. Quaking bogs float on two sides- home to cranberries and other bog flora.  The bog stains the water a deep murky brown and the bottom of the pond is silty.  Cranberry Pond is the highest body of water in Grafton and headwaters of the Quakenkill Creek. You know that creek-- that’s the one that wanders along Route 2 westward to Troy, born right here at Cranberry Pond.  John Steward had a sawmill on the pond in the early days of Grafton’s history.   I wonder if he built the dam at the end of the pond. That mystery has eluded my solving. 

        
The pond has no stream inlet; it is completely spring fed and icy cold most of the time.   From shore to shore it about 1000 feet- not big.  An island rises off the far shore.  Stately, noble hemlocks cover it as it rises steeply from the water, encircled by blueberry bushes taking advantage of the water for its thirsty roots. Another two smaller islands are encompassed by the bog. White birches, blueberry bushes and some fir trees cover both of them.

There is no natural beach on this pond, just a tree lined rocky shoreline except for the man-made beach my father put in more than fifty years ago. Swimming became much better after that. I was always undeterred by the bloodsuckers that inhabited the pond. They were just a part of the habitat. Most of our campers shared this view but some were repulsed by them.

Another thing that is unique about Cranberry Pond is that we are the only ones on the pond. We rent a few summer cottages, but that’s it. Although we do not own all the land around the pond, no one else has built anything on their land. It is as if this is our private pond.

           
So why does such a mediocre body of water hold such a place of importance in my life?

As I look out at the pond day after day there is never a bad view. In the morning, the sun rises across the bog to my left. In the fall, the skies are spectacular- backlit by the sun as it moves further south, a riot of pinks and purples and mauves that even the camera cannot adequately capture.  As the temperatures cool, a mist floats over the bog, making it eerie and wistful looking.  Next comes the still time.  The pond becomes like a mirror reflecting the trees and skies perfectly. It lasts only a short while and then a gentle breeze ruffles the water. The sun shining on it turns the little waves to diamonds sparkling daintily.

Later, as the sun rises in the sky white fluffy clouds floating are reflected.  In late afternoon, the sun sets behind me, buried in the trees.  I cannot see the sunset but as I look across the pond the sun shines on the far shore, gold highlighting the tree tops, sometimes very swiftly completing its daily journey.

About 7 PM each day there is a second round of stillness and mirror images- so tranquil.  On moonlit nights the moonlight reflects off the small waves creating another field of sparkling diamonds.  

In the morning, the sun rises across the bog to my left. In the fall, the skies are spectacular- backlit by the sun as it moves further south, a riot of pinks and purples and mauves that even the camera cannot adequately capture.  As the temperatures cool, a mist floats over the bog, making it eerie and wistful looking.  Next comes the still time.  The pond becomes like a mirror reflecting the trees and skies perfectly. It lasts only a short while and then a gentle breeze ruffles the water. The sun shining on it turns the little waves to diamonds sparkling daintily.

Later, as the sun rises in the sky white fluffy clouds floating are reflected.  In late afternoon, the sun sets behind me, buried in the trees.  I cannot see the sunset but as I look across the pond the sun shines on the far shore, gold highlighting the tree tops, sometimes very swiftly completing its daily journey.

           
About 7 PM each day there is a second round of stillness and mirror images- so tranquil.  On moonlit nights the moonlight reflects off the small waves creating another field of sparkling diamonds.        

 The pond seems unchanged but subtle changes have occurred over the 67 years I have been viewing it.  The beaver have taken down the birches and the maples on the island; there are fewer blueberry bushes as the forest has crowded them out. There are no longer blood suckers but now we have water snakes-a  big UGH! And the bog slowly creeps forward into the pond.

I guess it must be my imagination but the water definitely seems much colder now than when I was a child swimming endlessly day after day. Does someone throw ice cubes in the pond at night? Now, wading to ankle depth cools me sufficiently.

I, too, have changed, having grown from child into adult, became a parent and grandparent. This is the place I learned to swim, learned to fish, learned to sail, learned to row a boat, and learned about life. People who came every two weeks for their summer vacation, kids like me or, sometimes, maybe not.  They taught me a lot about relationships.

This is where I spent my childhood summers, where my children spent their childhood summers, where my grandchildren now spend their childhood summers. Five generations of my family have been at Cranberry Pond.

There is no one experience to define my relationship with this body of water. It has been a lifelong event. Cranberry Pond is the anchor of my life.

      

BLUEBERRIES, by ANNE KIELY

In my opinion, one of the most sublime events of summer is picking blueberries— especially those at the summits of a few of the White Mountains of New Hampshire which I grudgingly climbed as a young girl. After an arduous climb on Mount Chocorua, my favorite, my fellow campers and I would be treated to small, warmed-by-the-sun, sweet blueberries from low-lying bushes. I still remember our shrieks of joy when we discovered that the summit held a wealth of these bushes, which we ransacked like starving bears while looking out on incredibly gorgeous vistas, before finally collapsing for our naps. That was in the days before sunscreen, before trash on the mountains, before pesticides took over both the flavor and the condition of grocery store blueberries.

I am delighted to say that Anne Kiely captures this romantic appeal in her appreciation of blueberry picking at her beloved summer/fall residence on Cranberry Pond in Grafton, NY.  Anne Kiely is a retired elementary school teacher who has spent every summer at Cranberry Pond first as a child and later as an adult. This experience has profoundly shaped both her life and her family’s life.

We look forward to showcasing Anne Kiely today and tomorrow, with her memoirs of Cranberry Pond.

 

*                                  *                                  *

Blueberries
                            by Anne Kiely

Stepping out the door at my home at Cranberry Pond I walk only a few steps and I am ready to begin my blueberry harvest. My can hangs from a strap around my neck, ready to hold the small round tasty fruit. This is an organic harvest; it has always been an organic harvest, long before I even knew what that meant.  These berries are grown solely by Mother Nature, not a cultivated crop.

Hopefully I won’t harvest stems, twigs, leaves or stink bugs, especially the stink bugs. Ugh, they smell rotten but they taste even worse. I don’t think they are poisonous, but from the few times I have inadvertently plopped them in my mouth I spit them out so fast that they didn’t have time to cause any harm except for their awful taste.

Sometimes the harvest gets detoured and instead of plopping the berries in my can, I plop them in my mouth; big mistake because now not many will find their way to the can- nope!  In my mouth they go.

Usually I pick alone. Almost no one in my family likes this activity. It is too tedious for them. For me it is a calm, restful time, a time for reflection and thinking, recollections.

It wasn’t always this solitary activity. When I was a child, picking was a family affair. My mother picked fast, including stems, twigs and leaves along with the coveted crop. My brother harvested directly to his mouth. When my brother and I would go picking together, just the two of us, I would bring home a pailful of berries. He would bring home a bellyful. My father would pull down the branches and hold them steady for me to pick. Sometimes my husband will do that for me, too, but he doesn’t do it the right way and quickly he loses interest and leaves.

Back then we all carried our burden of containers strapped to our belts at our waist. My parents fastened ten quart galvanized pails to their belts; mine was a more modest size.

Picking was good and we filled all our containers in an hour or so. Later I changed to cans on a heavy cord around my neck. I favored the metal coffee cans with plastic lids. They were snapped on the bottom of the can until it was filled and then put on the top to prevent spills.  I recalled my mother’s admonishment to be careful with full containers—

 “Watch out, you don’t want to pick them twice—once off the bush, once off the ground.”

The blueberry harvest season is between mid July and late August.  Late in the season the berries are seedier and the birds compete with me picking early in the morning while I still sleep. I pick if it is raining or if it is warm, but chilly weather and buggy times deter me. There is always tomorrow.

I used to be able to tolerate a large coffee can hanging from my neck. Filled, it weighed about three pounds. Now that is too heavy and today I opt for the one pound size.

When the picking is good I can fill a can in about twenty minutes. In less than an hour I pick enough for two pies or several batches of blueberry muffins or lots of pancakes or toppings on a bowl of cereal or just a bowl of berries. There are hundreds of recipes in my collection.

There are more than thirty bushes in my front yard— the area between the front of the house and the pond. Each bush has its own distinctive taste and no two are alike. One prime bush teases with gorgeous blue-black berries hanging in grape like clusters devoid of flavor. They try to seduce me into picking them which I vehemently try to resist. Mostly I succeed. What’s the point of putting that effort into a flavorless crop when so much of the sweet-tart crop is available?

I think I will cut this temptation down, but it is hard to find the resolve to do that.

Standing in front of the tallest bushes I struggle to pull down the branches to reach the most desirable berries at the top. I remember picking with my father— a special dance just between the two of us. Filling my can with blueberries fills me with warm memories of special times shared with Dad.

If you look in my can you will see hundreds of berries in the can around my neck, but what I really carry is a lifetime of picking memories.

HONORING PICASSO AND PROGRAMMING

What is the future of STEM education in this country? Today, while listening to This American Life on NPR, I became fearful that soon, perhaps, very little will be happening. We know that STEM education is crucial to our future, and we know that countries which focus on science, technology, engineering and math education will lead the way. Nevertheless, sometimes the finest teachers in a school system are eliminated because of budget cuts, and sometimes science classes are among the first to be slashed. What a shocking revelation.

Jason Pittman teaches pre-school through sixth grade science at an elementary school in Fairfax County, Virginia, and has been recognized by the National Science Teacher's Association as their Early Educator of the Year. His lesson plans are unique and encourage exploration and hands-on education. Unfortunately, his job was eliminated a few years ago and his district has to raise the funds privately every year to retain his position.  So, after ten years of teaching and winning several major awards, he’s quitting. He used to run his own technology business, and maybe he'll return to that, without the stress of wondering where his paycheck will come from. But what about the students who adore him? What about the four-year-old who said to him this week, "Mr. Pittman, this is the best day of my life. I love science!"?

At Big Mind Learning, we believe that in the intersection of art and science lies greatness. We recently honored Sal Elder Jr. as the first-prize winner in our Scholarship Essay Contest for his essay entitled "Programming and Picasso". We noted his natural story-telling ability, wit, and sophisticated use of language and personification. However, what is really at stake in his essay is his identification with Picasso who said, "“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” Sal Elder loves to program, and through his lively description of his trial and error process, his love for experimentation is obvious and inspiring. He says, "I’ll be honest—I don’t fully know what I’m doing, or even who my target audience is. But it’s fun, and I suppose its main purpose is for me to learn about writing and coding. Furthermore, I get to enjoy the satisfaction, as Picasso must have, of having instructed myself through experimentation and self-motivation."

Let's get rid of our reliance on standardized tests and get kids into the labs and gardens, where true-life inspiration can reside. Many educators say that we will need more engineers and scientists in the future than ever before, so why are we eliminating some of our best science teachers?