I met Alcie, Kyle, and KK after I got off work in the children’s department at Barnes and Noble. It was eight o’clock and I had a gift certificate for Johnny Carino’s so we ate there. It was good! Then back to Deb’s to take care of her dogs and sleep well before attacking 4th St. tomorrow. I found this poem and it seemed appropriate to my life right now. As I’ve said before, I love Writer’s Almanac.

Poem: “Games with God,” by Virginia Hamilton Adair, from Beliefs and
Blasphemies. © Random House. Reprinted with permission.

Games with God

I played, a child both wild and meek,

with God at games of hide-and-seek.

I searched in vain the usual places

and found a thousand saddened faces.

“Your God is hidden in heaven,” they said;

“You’ll see him only when you’re dead.”

How could I make them understand

God often took me by the hand?

Then as my tears began to fall

I felt his touch and heard his call,

“I never hid from you at all.”

I played with God a game of tag,

his mantle flying like a flag.

I gave my God a good head start

but caught him running in my heart.

I played with God the game “I Spy,”

but lost him with my fading eye,

till playmate God in his pure kindness,

printed his image on my blindness.

My friend Annie hates it when I say we’ve been fired. She says we have been “lifted up” out of evil to be placed where we can do good. Sharon says we have been removed from a “cesspool,” and that we’ll feel clean again once we’re not here (she left last year). Hmmm. . .

Joseph Brodsky was arrested for “social parasitism” and sentenced to five years’ hard labor in Siberia. In 1972 he left Russia for America, where he translated English poetry, but it took several years before he began writing poems primarily in English. He said he wrote in English as a form protest against the Soviet Union, and also so he could reach a wider audience. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, and from 1991 to 1992 he served as the Poet Laureate of the United States.

Brodsky said, “Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their
reading experience and not their political programs, there would be
much less grief on earth. I believe … that for someone who has read
a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder
than for someone who has read no Dickens.”

And he said, “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them
is not reading them.”

Read on, Looby-loo! Next stop. . .Goblet of Fire!

Every year we go to the park for half a day and play games. The 8th grade mans a station for each game and the groups circulate. Today a kid in the 7th grade brough paint balls and was secretly passing them out–the boys’ bathroom got especially hard hit. We haven’t had this kind of problem for 5 years. It just didn’t happen when Steve was principal. Somehow the kids thought of the school as theirs–they wouldn’t have wanted to vandalize it. Things are different now.

Got an interview with Marion County for an intinerant library/media position. One of the schools is at Calvary. She said to bring my portfolio. WHAT PORTFOLIO!?!?!

2 hours of 24! Who pimped this to me?!?!

Think I left my phone at Miracle Book Room while I was lOoking for 8th grade graduation presents. They were closed when I discovered it, so I will have to check tomorrow. Also misplaced my school keys, but I think a student borrowed them and put them somewhere. Soon I won’t need them anyway. Next I’ll lose my mind. OOPS! Already gone!

Church at St. Clare in Berea. So precious, so true. Welcomed by so many familiar faces, either from Berea or of St. Mark expatriots. There are many kinds of martyrdom; many types of refugees.

Barnes and Noble training at the help desk. Surrounded by dorks and geeks, I feel at home. It’s just that I feel like a senior citizen dork. In England they call us superadults.

Clandestine picnic at Lake Reba put on by parents for departing teachers. Dreaded going, but it was very affirming. Many grads and former parents there to thank us. I only cried when Steve (former principal) cried. What is in store? What could be more? How to and what for? Hurt hard to ignore.

And I can take the cover off any hardback book and take it home for two weeks, read it, and then put it back on the shelf! Ooh-ooh! Ooh-ooh! Can ya dig it?

“I shall keep singing!”

I shall keep singing!

I shall keep singing!

Birds will pass me

On their way to Yellower Climes–

Each–with a Robin’s expectation–

I–with my Redbreast–

And my Rhymes–

Late–when I take my place in summer–

But–I shall bring a fuller tune–

Vespers–are sweeter than Matins-Signor–

Morning–only the seed of Noon–

Emily Dickinson

Made two student requested appearances today. Went to high school graduation brunch (Hawaiian theme) in the a.m. for one of my all time favorites girl students, and to a dance recital for one my current students tonight. She is a wonderful dancer–tap, jazz, ballet, and hip-hop. KK went too, and when I told her that UJ and I were the team of “Joannie and Johnny” who won the 1st place talent award at the Halloween Frolics, she couldn’t believe it. What I can’t believe is how dance teachers can think it’s acceptable to have little girls bumping and grinding to suggestive lyrics. I’m old. I’m also old because every clerk at Barnes and Noble that I met today talks like Ian. One asked me if I was retired. Well, in a manner of speaking.