Thing 17: PodCasting

I have used PodCasts, created PodCasts, and taught a course on PodCasting last summer at our Summer Tech Institute. The great thing about PodCasting is that it takes so little technology: your computer, an inexpensive microphone, a free downloadable program like audible.com, and a little time to learn it. If you have a built-in video-cam on your computer, or would invest a little money in a USB camera, video PodCasts are possible as well.

Even on just the audio PodCasts, photos can be added on your website for an added dimension to liven up what your audience is hearing.

Thing 16: LibraryThing

What's in YOUR shelves? LibraryThing is a much better way to catalog what's on your bookshelves than Shelfari as far as I can tell. And it has a better networking system, better cataloging, better groups, better searches, just better all the way around. They have over 30,000,000 titles in their system, which is amazing.

I could use LibraryThing to catalog my personal library; it's been far too large for too long. My husband is a retired Professor of English. We've actually begun to give away books to scale down. But what is left could stand to be catalogued so that we know what we have, whether there are duplicates, how old, etc.

But the TIME to do it? Now that's another thing . . .

Thing 15: Is it delicious, or just tasty?

I've had my Delicious account for awhile, and I've added some new websites to it. For me, the problem is remembering it's THERE, and remembering to go back and utilize it. With all of the new technologies available, especially with Web 2.0, and being anxious to try every new technogadget on the web, I'm really terrible about going back and perfecting the ones that could help me the most in my classroom. I have not fully used Delicious in the ways I'm sure it could be used to its full advantage. Over Christmas I've going to revisit it and see if I can come up with a more meaningful way to visit it more often to remind myself of the value it can bring to my teaching and to my students. My Delicious account is:

http://delicious.com/vanderven1

Thing 15: A Kiva Christmas

In my Google Reader, under The Fischbowl, I learned about a great website that is just the charitable giving site I've been looking for during the past year. I've wanted to substitute some gift giving with global impact project, but hadn't found just the right site to do this through (Heiffer International is a good one, but I didn't feel connected enough to a person). Kiva, at www.kiva.org is a website where, for a minimum of $25 you can choose who you want your microloan to go to in the world. It gives an outline of the person, his or her project, the expected loan length, etc. They have a 97% repayment rate. At the end of the loan you have three choices: You can choose to put your money back into the loan pot again for another person, donate it to Kiva, or get your money back. Where else can you get that kind of deal?

If you do join, assign your gift to the Team called: SHIFT HAPPENS. Karl Fisch would just like to see how much impact his blog for teachers has had.

So, do the world a favor this year at Christmas--Look outside yourself (and maybe your family, too) and see the wide world in need. Give a gift certificate or a handful and help a neighbor across the ocean.

Thing 14: Writeboard WriteNow

The Web 2.0 tool I chose to explore is called Writeboard. It is a collaborative tool, and where I think I would use it most is with student writing. We don't do a lot of prewriting because it's so laborious to read it. My students do all of their writing online, upload their papers online, and I have a grading program that allows me to mark their papers and reupload them. But it's all time-consuming. This may be a way around all of that.

Thing 13: Creating a Globally Connected Classroom

I am playing catch-up, and so I didn't get to hear the "live" presentation of this (only the iPod downloaded version), but the presenter went so fast in the downloaded segment that it would take a superhuman to gather up all the information she was putting out there. I think that creating a globally connected classroom sounds like a fabulous idea, but from the idea stage to the implementation stage, it sounded like a tremendous amount of work, when really it's no different than what we do, as teachers, for any of our classes, especially if we're using technology.

Thing 12: Ode on a Grecian . . . Wiki?

In Thing 12 we were to make a slide show using Creative Commons photographs from Flickr, and so I chose photos that I thought represented the first stanza of John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" in some way.

Come visit my Wiki to see my two slide shows at:

https://vanderven.wikispaces.com/

Thing 11: To Be or Not to Be Flikr'd

Durante el ensayo de "Hamlet, por poner un ejemplo" de la compañía Factoría Teatro de Madrid.
by Julio César (FunKa-Lerele), Flikr

Studying Hamlet right now in British Literature represents a real challenge to my seniors, so I look for as many things to make it real to them as possible. This photo of Hamlet in a wheelchair could provide a lot of interesting dialogue starters.

Both a strength and a weakness of Flikr is the way that each photograph links you to the photographer's entire portfolio. Chances are if you like the photo that you chose to open or use, you will like any number of others he or she has to offer, and you can spend hours perusing just that one site, which equals a huge time consumption--an always present danger while web browsing as it is.

That aside, Flikr offers great possibilities for all kinds of PowerPoint and other presentations for the classroom because virtually any search of any topic I did yielded pertinent photographs. I think people in this world have traveled (and taken photographs) everywhere!!

Thing 10: Uncommonly Creative with Creative Commons

Wow!  So that's how MIT was able to put all those courses up on the web.  I have taken advantage of some of their materials during the past year (always giving proper credit, of course), and have thought that it was just such a swell thing for them to do, but never understanding how they could put all that material out there and not worry about a zillion people running off with their copyrighted research, etc.  So CC was the way.

I'm sorry I haven't noticed the CC logo until now.  I know I'm not the most observant person in the world, but I hate letting technology stuff slip by me.  Especially when it comes to copyright issues.  And I have to admit that I thought putting a URL with a photo in your online material was enough credit as long as its author had not expressly forbidden it to be used.  Yeesh; I hate 20/20 hindsight, but it's better than no sight.

Learning about CC will come in so handy for my classes because my students are constantly asking how to cite this or that.  They really are worried about plagiarism, especially with the Honor Code we have at our school; no one wants to be called up on Honor Code violations, even if it's unintentional.  So they watch their Ps and Qs, and this will help tremendously.

Draw, Pardner!

I did this drawing of my husband quickly while he was napping in his recliner using a FaceBook application called "Graffiti."  To see the full drawing, click "view on facebook" because part of it is cut off for some reason.

A Time to Build and a Time to Tear Down . . .

This past week was Trip Week at Lakeview, and I was privileged to accompany our sophomore class to Mountaintop Camp in Altamont, Tennessee, where we helped three families and the Mountaintop Camp itself with some building and repair projects.

Mountaintop Camp is actually made up of something like six or seven camps, interdenominational in nature, but they also work with non-religious groups like our school as well.  They have what they call a "three-legged stool" approach to working with their communities:  they contact businesses to donate materials; churches, colleges, or people like our school donate free labor; and they work with federal agencies to arrange extremely low-interest loans to the communities for home remodeling projects or ground-up home building projects.

In our short time there, we divided into three teams.  One team was assigned to build a small deck with a porch & roof, one team was assigned to build a 22-ft. wheelchair ramp and to put a roof on an existing small deck, and my group was assigned to build a porch roof on an existing deck built last summer.  If there were too many people to be working on any one job at a time, we were to ask the homeowners if there was anything else they wanted us to do.  Our team worked for Mr. Leonard Gross, an 87-year-old WWII veteran--a spry, witty man living in a mobile home at the back of the brick home that he had built for his son 15 years earlier for $10,000 and donated beige brick.  

Mr. Leonard, as I called him, was proud of three things:  his WWII service in the Pacific, mainly in India as a medic to the mules used to haul cannon into Burma; the fact that he'd started the Rescue Squad in Grundy County some years earlier by figuring out where a lost vehicle had been left behind, stranded in the river by two lost city folk who'd walked out onto his mountain, giving him some local notoriety; and that he'd played softball until he was 76-years-old.

The boys and men on our team did most of the cutting, hammering, and nailing since we were under such a time constraint to get our job completed, though they did let the girls have a turn at learning the circular saw, the drill, and what it was like to hammer into iron-hard, untreated, rough-sawn, nail-bending, twisted and warped oak.  The girls and I quickly went to cleaning the yard of brush, cement blocks, old insulation, and moving a trailer-load of lumber full of rusted nails to a pile behind the barn.  The only thing they complained about were the slugs, bugs, and spiders, but that never deterred them from picking up one piece of lumber and stacking it neatly some feet away.

Mr. Leonard asked if we could repair the torn insulation underneath his trailer.  Someone had cut it open looking for a leaking pipe, and as I looked through an opening in the latticework bordering the bottom of the trailer, I could see the fiberglass falling out onto the ground in several places.  On the second afternoon, during a lag in the work, I grabbed a roll of duct tape and a box cutter, went over to the opening, got onto my back, and shimmied my way under the trailer.  The sun at that time of the afternoon provided pretty good lighting to the middle of the trailer where I needed to work.  I was thankful to find that it was dry, hard-packed dirt, not wet or musty-smelling, and it wasn't buggy or cob-webby.  I was pretty close to one end of the trailer, and I tried not to look down too far toward the [very] dark end where I could imagine there were [very large] insects.  The insulation was dirty and matted, and the black plastic liner had badly spaced pieces of old duct tape hanging down where someone had tried to patch it before.  I surveyed the large torn area for several minutes, thinking through the best method of repair, then set to work, cutting first small pieces of tape just to put the insulation back in its place and tack the lining edges back together, then somewhat larger pieces to begin mending the tears, and last, long strips in a crosshatch to hopefully hold the large areas to one another so they wouldn't begin peeling and coming apart again.

What I didn't notice was that at this time of year the sun shifts pretty quickly, and my good light began failing.  My eyes were having to work harder and harder to see what I was doing.  With each decrease of light, I noticed there was an increase in small, shuffling sounds under the trailer--much too large for insects I might add.  I only hoped they were mice.  It was only after I came out from my cubbyhole, the skin on my back and sides already itching from the fiberglass, that Mr. Leonard said to me, "Waal, didja see any snakes in thar?"

Oh, yeah.

The only mishap on the job was not human, but kitty.  There had to be twenty to thirty cats and kittens wandering the homestead as we pulled in, and the kids immediately began telling me that the kittens were mostly blind.  As I looked at them, I saw that they weren't born blind, but that almost all of them had eye infections that were largely untreated, though Mr. Leonard said they had been treating them with boric acid or something similar.  At a break, I took the worst small kitten I saw, probably only five or six weeks old, whose eyes were completely sealed closed by hardened matter.  I worked for twenty minutes with a moist towelette from my purse to first soften the hardened matter, then to work it loose from her eyes.  She only fought the last several minutes as I pulled the last of the small chunks from her fur and her eyes began to open to the bright sunlight for the first time in who knows how long.  She then began to follow me around like I was her mother.  Perhaps that was why, in the long run, she was killed.  She came up on the deck several times with me, so I kept putting her down on the ground so she wouldn't get stepped on.  But on one of my trips down the ramp, I saw her lying on her side at the base, bleeding and writhing, and I knew that she'd been stepped on inadvertently by someone coming or going.  So many kittens abounded, it was almost impossible not to step on one, so it would be impossible to say who stepped on her.  Nor would it matter; it was an accident.  But it was as if we all spotted her at once; we all gathered around her.  Someone said, "Is she dying?"

"Well, yeah!  Can't you tell?  Look at the blood!"

"Ohhhh!"

"Maybe she's just sleeping."

"C'mon...  Don't be dumb."

"No.  Someone stepped on her.  Look.  She's having seizures."

I said, "Someone get me a shovel."  They all just stood there, staring.  "NOW!"  Several kids went running, thankful, I think, to have something else to do.  About that time, the kitten had one last seizure, looking like a last, lazy stretch, like cats just do, and then she was still.  Cree had named her Jeff, not knowing he was a she.

One of the guys ventured, "Well . . . that was interesting."   

I took a shovel from someone, picked her up and placed her on it, then kicked some dirt and leaves over the bloody spot on the ground.  The kids asked what I was going to do with her, and I looked at them, probably, as if I thought they were crazy.  What else do you do with an expired animal?  An expired anything?  You bury it, of course, which is what I told them.  One of them followed me at a short distance about halfway, then turned and went back to the group.  I don't know if they thought I wanted to be alone or what.  I didn't, really, but I don't know why I didn't invite them to the burial.  I guess I didn't want them to feel awkward.  I took her to the very back of the huge property, dug a hole in the surprisingly sandy soil, placed her in it, covered her over, and replaced the tall grass like she never existed.  I don't think Mr. Leonard or his son will miss her.  I won't forget her.

I never got to see our finished roof with its tin because I had to take the girls and begin painting the pavillion at Mountaintop.  I hugged Mr. Leonard good-bye and told him I wouldn't be seeing him again.  He had a little catch in his voice as he said good-bye and hugged me tightly.  His hands on my shoulders were strong for someone 87-years-old, I thought.  But what do I really know about what 87 years of hard work in the Tennessee mountains would do for any of us?

What I do know is that our kids worked harder than I've ever seen them work, and though they came back to camp each evening exhausted, they always rallied and played hard in the evening with each other and us.  They were in good spirits, they joked, played harmless pranks, played their music, were respectful of adults with their music and language, they asked permission, and if something needed correcting (which was always very minor), they were quick to apologize and correct whatever it was.  They had their share of whining occasionally, and their share of disagreements with each other--any family does.  But that's what they reminded me of: a big, boisterous family who ended up settling their differences or working them out in their own ways or keeping them to themselves--no harm, no foul.  They volunteered to help when needed, and even when not.  They were just great.  I'd take them anywhere, on any trip, with never a second thought, and I don't say that about just any group of students.  Well done, Sophs!

Far, Far Away...in the Land of Blog

Following is my reply to a Blog for an assignment in an online course I'm enrolled in called K12 Learning 2.0, designed to to help teachers learn new tech tools for better teaching. The blog is entitled "Students 2.0," and this entry is published by Arthus Erea on December 16, 2007, and its great content can be seen at:





http://students2oh.org/2007/12/16/teaching-brevity/#comment-1324


Thing 4: Blog Reflection
Being an English teacher, and loving language, the thought of brevity almost sends chills down my spine; however, I realize that in this age of news briefs, sound bites, YouTube, Twitter, and just plain information decay, perhaps we can't expect students growing up in/bombarded by the information explosion to think and ponder in the long mental silences it takes to maintain the kind of attention-span needed to write long, exploratory, thoughtful essays (especially with headphones growing from their ears). This sounds so fuddy-duddy, even to myself, and it always does to my students who want to sit in class when composing their essays while Lil Wayne sexes up their synapses:

"Now I was bouncing through the club
She loved the way I did it but
I see her boyfriend hatin' like a city cop
Now I ain't never been a chicken but my fitty cocked
Say I ain't never been a chicken but my semi cocked
Now where your bar at?
I'm tryna rent it out
And we so bout it bout it
Now what are you about?
DJ show me love
He say my name when the music stop
Young Money Lil Wayne
Then the music drop
I make it snow
I make it flurry
I make it out back tomorrow don't worry
Yeah
Young Wayne on them hoes
A.K.A. Mr. Make It Rain On Them Hoes (Young Money)"

Sometimes you just can't fight progress; in other words, if I can't beat 'em, then am I just to give in to brevity? If my job as a teacher of English to seniors is to prepare them for college work, even in teaching them the importance of conciseness and the power in fewer words at times than more, am I doing them any favors by NOT teaching them the power of an essay of four to six pages done really well? To fail to remind them that the formula 5-paragraph essay just isn't going to cut it anymore because college work will require more from them? Brevity may have its place, but, when the information highway is already so full of shortcuts, maybe our job as educators should be to try to slow the machinery down for our students occasionally so that they can once again learn the joys of writing. Word play. Language ARTs.

1st Day of School

Prof of Profs Poem
by Geoffrey Brock


I was a math major—fond of all things rational.
It was the first day of my first poetry class.
The prof, with the air of a priest at latin mass,
told us that we could “make great poetry personal,”

could own it, since poetry we memorize sings
inside us always. By way of illustration
he began reciting Shelley with real passion,
but stopped at “Ozymandias, king of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”-
because, with that last plosive, his top denture
popped from his mouth and bounced of an empty chair.

He blinked, then offered, as a postscript to his lecture,
a promise so splendid it made me give up math:
“More thingth like that will happen in thith class.”

1. What was your expectation of where this student was going with the poem? What was going to happen in the poetry class with this math major?

2. What did the professor mean when he said to “make great poetry personal?”

3. Here is a copy of the poem, “Ozymandias, King of Kings.” Give a very short summary as to its what it is about.

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveler from an antique land, 

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, 

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, 

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; 

And on the pedestal these words appear: 

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: 

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" 

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare 

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

1792-1822

4. Why do you think that Geoffrey Brock chose this poem of Percy Shelley for his poem? (Look for a clue in the line he quotes from the poem.

5. Go to this website:

www.wordle.net

Click on “Create your own” and paste this poem into the space provided, and then follow the directions on the tab after you upload it to get the effect you want. That turns this poem into a sort of “Concrete Poem” in a very vague sort of way.

Image: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i.pbase.com/u47/sadie04/upload/39998249.ozymandais.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.pbase.com/sadie04/image/39998249&h=678&w=542&sz=61&hl=en&start=10&tbnid=woQCxVijoc04PM:&tbnh=139&tbnw=111&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dozymandias%2Bking%2Bof%2Bkings%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Thing 2. The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried Slide Presentation

Works Cited

1. John McCain after POW Release. Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001. PHONE: 301-837-3530; FAX: 301-837-3621; EMAIL: stillpix@nara.gov.

2. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Center for Legislative Archives (NWL), National Archives Building, Room 8E, 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20408. PHONE: 202-357-5350; FAX: 202-357-5911; EMAIL: legislative.archives@nara.gov.

3. Photographs and other Graphic Materials from the President (1953-1961 : Eisenhower). (1953 - 1961)

4. Boy at Wall. http://photo2.si.edu/vvm/quay.html

5. Disabled Vet. History 256: The Vietnam War. NARA via pingnews. Additional information from source: NARA via pingnews. Additional information from source: ARC Identifier: 195917 Title: Disabled veteran, ca. 1943 ARC Identifier: 195917

6. Medevac in Vietnam, Medevac, Vietnam War, 1967 by E.J. Filtz (NARA), 

7. Wounded Soldier. ARC Identifier: 558532. Title: South China Sea....A nurse tends a patient just out of surgery in the intensive care ward of the hospital ship USS Repose (AH-16). The ship is steaming off the coast of Vietnam a few miles south of the 17th parallel., 10/1967. Creator: Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Naval Photographic Center.

8. Boy Bandaged. Two battalions of Viet Cong systematically killed 252 civilians in a "vengeance" attack on the small hemlet of Dak Son. Tears are streaming down the face of little three-year-old Dieu Do, now homeless, and fatherless. December 6, 1967. (USIA). NARA FILE #: 3306-MVP-4-11. WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 425.

9. A portrait of a US serviceman who died in Southeast Asia, placed at the base of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the day before its official dedication. DoD photo by: MICKEY SANBORN Date Shot: 12 Nov 1982

10. President (1963-1969 : Johnson). White House Photograph Office. (1963 - 1969) LBJ-WHPO: White House Photo Office Collection, 11/22/1963 - 01/20/1969. Location: Lyndon Baines Johnson Library (NLLBJ), 2313 Red River Street, Austin, TX 78705-5702 PHONE: 512-721-0212, FAX: 512-721-0170, EMAIL: johnson.library@nara.gov. Production Date: 12/07/1963. Part of: Series: Johnson White House Photographs, 11/22/1963 - 01/20/1969

11. S. Vietnamese Soldier Buries Son. Title: Vietnam. This picture is one that would reach potentially every father in the world. It was used as the cover of a pamphlet which describes the truth about the cause of the subversive insurgency in Vietnam. Such dramatic pictorial appeals draw sympathy from the reader before a word is read, thus making the remainder of the story also more sympathetic to the audience., 1966. Creator: Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. (09/18/1947 - 02/28/1964).

12. Young Soldier Resting. Location: Still Picture Records LICON, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001 PHONE: 301-837-3530, FAX: 301-837-3621, EMAIL: stillpix@nara.gov. Production Date: 1969.

13. Arlington Cemetery. DF Shapinsky for PINGNews.com/Shapinsky MultiMedia. pingnews.com and shapinsky.net.

14. Young Marine in DaNang. Records of the U. S. Marine Corps. (127-W-A-185146) By an unknown photographer, August 3, 1965. "Da Nang, Vietnam...A young Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing"

15. Viet Cong Prisoner. Youthful hard-core Viet Cong, heavily guarded, awaits interrogation following capture in the attacks on the capital city during the festive Tet holiday period. 1968. (USIA). EXACT DATE SHOT UNKNOWN. NARA FILE #: 306-MVP-21-1. WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 414.

16. Soldiers at Hut. As the second phase of operation "Thayer," the 1st Air Cavalry Division (airmobile) is having operation"Irving" in the area 25 miles north of Qui Nhon which lies 400 miles north-northeast of Saigon. The 1st Air Cavalry was given the mission of clearing a mountain range where an estimated two battalions of North Vietnam regulars were supposed to be massing an attack on Hammond Airstrip. Troops of "A" Company, checking house during patrol., 10/06/1966. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. U.S. Army Audiovisual Center.

17. Wounded Soldier 2. Members of Co. "A" pull a wounded man from a fox hole during the action on Hill 822 near Dak To. “All photos are official U.S. Army Photos. Photos are "Public Domain" and may be freely copied or downloaded."

18. Dead Viet Cong. RVN Saigon Viet Cong dead after an attack on the perimeter of Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain). Photo by: SP5 Edgar Price Pictorial A.V. Plt. 69th Sig. Bn. (A).

19. Map of South Viet Nam. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Southvietmap.jpg

20. Battle for Hue2: http://media.nara.gov/media/images/36/30/36-2960a

21. Battle for Hue3. http://media.nara.gov/media/images/36/30/36-2956a

22. Beheaded Viet Cong. Vietnam GI Newsletter, May 1968. 

22. Long Khanh Fallen. By Pfc. L. Paul Epley, 1966
National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer.

23. Dead Viet Cong w/One Shoe Missing. Photo by: SP5 Edgar Price Pictorial A.V. Plt. 69th Sig. Bn. (A).

24. Dead Viet Cong, one w/toe ring. Photo by: 1Lt. E.B. Herr Neckar Pictorial A.V. Plt. 69th Sig. Bn. (A).

25. Moments after being wounded by enemy fire SFC Howard C. Breedlove (DASPO) receives medical attention from 2Lt. Richard M. Griffith (DASPO). This scene was received on Plantation Rd. in Gia Dinh, a suburb of Saigon. This action was part of what became known as the Post-Tet Offensive or the May Offensive of 1968. Several days later Lt. Griffith was also wounded. Photo by SP4 Bryan Grigsby.

26. The Cu Chi Tunnels used by the Viet Cong. Inside the Cu Chi Tunnels in Viet Nam. Infamous and effective during the war, the tunnels are now a popular tourist attraction. Photo date: 20-OCT-1997 Photo taken by Wikimedia Commons user Kevyn Jacobs, released into the public dom)

Maybe I'll run for President......

Adonde Costa Rica...

Returning from rural Costa Rica, like last summer I find myself overwhelmed by the sheer number of people needing help--very simple things, really, and yet not seeming to understand their need--and my lack of understanding where, even, to begin. It is such a tropical paradise, exploited at every turn by Americans, Canadians, and Europeans, but the Costa Ricans understand this, expect it even because they think it means better-paying jobs, and so are glad for their own exploitation, not understanding the simple economics that more development drives up the cost of the few goods and services they need to survive exponentially so that they must go further and further inland to live and to purchase these things, driven off the beaches where they've lived, loved, and bought their food and supplies for generations.

It is difficult to lie in an adirondack chair under the shady almond trees, an occasional, quiet bombardment of the ripened husks on a deserted beach, or to take a two mile walk along a stretch where the only people encountered are a group of young people from around the world building a crude turtle rescue barricade for when the sea turtles come ashore in a couple of weeks to lay eggs so they can scurry and gather them before the locals scavenge them to break them into their beer to enhance fertility, when I know that less than a mile away there are several families trying to bail the water from their homes and yards from the seasonal monsoon-like rains that fall everyday now. The flooding is a result of Lagunas de Matapalo, a subdivision with plans for sixty homes that has sprung up since last summer that filled in a wetlands area with no permits or planning and has caused the river to back up here in the wet season and flood homes as much as a quarter a mile away from the river with six inches of water. Residents living in Matapalo have had many meetings, and last week even managed to get some officials to come from Quepos, 45 minutes away, but nothing was resolved; local politicians can't even convince San Jose--4 hours away in the best-roads dry season--to pave a 30-mile stretch of impossibly stony highway between Quepos and Dominical along the Pacific coast--a major bypass from the Pan-American highway when it closes due to landslides in the mountains during the wet season.

With only 25% of the roads in Costa Rica paved at all, the major form of transportation is still by foot, bicycle, or by horseback; the de rigueur footwear for men is high, black-rubber boots to guard from water and snakes as they work in the tall grass, woodlands, or the palm plantations owned, primarily, by American companies, with machetes of all sizes slung into leather scabbards on their belts or from their backs. Small children are seen leading horses along the road, as women, more often than not, are always dandling a baby--they generally start families at age 15 or 16. But both men and women are very family oriented, and nothing is more important than their children, though the men, when they have jobs, will often have to work 12-hour days, 6 days a week, and so aren't home much.

They are very private people, and don't let many outsiders into their hearts and homes, and so we felt very privileged last summer when Marleni, the housekeeper/gardener where we stay, invited us to her home for lunch and a swim at the catarata (waterfall) "close" to where she lived. We went, having to first find the opening through the barbed wire fence in a cattle pasture along a small, one-late drive and honk our way through the cows until coming to an African palm plantation. It turned out that she and her family had a tiny home in the middle of this jungle of date palms, next door to a sister who had the same kind of home. After unfastening another section of barbed wire (this is no easy task--unfastening three strands, keeping it stretched out as the car passes through, then refastening it), we drove through the rows of palms and pulled through mud, up to her home. It was the middle of the day, but it was very dark because of the height of the palms and the deep shadows cast by the overlapping, sun-filtering branches. Roosters, hens, chicks, ducks, and a ferociously-barking, brindle, one-eyed dog surrounded the car. "Bobbie!" they shouted, and he backed away but kept barking for several minutes. I looked for a place to step without mud, wasn't successful, so I let my flip-flops sink into the sodden red clay and immediately felt my toes covered in its warmth. It sucked the flip-flops right off my feet. Nonchalantly, as if I meant to take them off anyway, I just bent over, yanked them from the mud, and carried them to the house.

It was tiny, but immaculate. The walls ended where a normal ceiling would be, and the zinc corrogated roof rose above, with the wiring running along the tops of the walls to each of the rooms, turning at sharp, 90 degree angles here and there, and running up and along the ceiling at places, and emptying out at one corner of the house. Geckos played along the walls and ceilings as well. The typical Costa Rican meal always includes rice and beans, and, in addition, Marleni had cooked one of her chickens. For dessert, she had made a rice and milk kind of pudding--VERY sweet!

We then took the "walk" to the waterfall. We walked with her daughter and another young man up the road about a mile-and-a-half when all of a sudden, Daniel said, "Here." "Where?" I said. Daniel had pointed into the jungle, taking his machete and parting the foliage slightly as if he were pointing to something. "Here," he said again, and stepped through the opening. The jungle immediately closed back around him. I looked at Tom, then at Marleni and Jerlyn. They smiled. I pulled the jungle apart like curtains and stepped through, and there stood Daniel on a path about 8" wide. All of us began walking to what I thought surely would be, oh, maybe five or ten minutes through the jungle on a flat path to the waterfall. WRONG!

We walked through what was some of the most difficult terrain I've ever hiked--climbing over or under fallen primeval rainforest trees, slimy with wet season, inch-thick, leafy vines; having to grasp one another's hands to jump over narrow, but deep, ravines that had sloping, slippery sides; climbing steep, rocky precipices, watching constantly for snakes among the hanging, looping vines overhead. It was no walk in the park, and it was so dark we could hardly tell it was still daylight; all along the way, however, I kept hearing a river somewhere, so I held out hope that eventually we WOULD come to a waterfall. At last, ahead, we saw a clearing, and could hear the rush of the falls.

They were beautiful--not one, but a double set of falls, one too high to climb to, but the lower falls that pooled into a large lagoon, a respite from our walk. It tumbled over rocks downriver into a rapids. But was it safe? Were there snakes? Piranha? As I was wondering this, Jerlyn and Daniel jumped into the water. So did I. So did Tom. It was sooooo cool and refreshing! Refresco! We didn't, however, jump off the falls like the kids did. The walk back didn't seem as hot.

This summer, we were invited back for another lunch, but this time, the whole family was there. Marleni's other daughter and her grandchildren, and also Marleni's husband, Juan, a very hardworking, private man. He ended up talking quite a bit, though. We were invited so that I could go horseback riding on their only horse, Tranquilito, as a thank-you for bringing gifts when we came back this summer, I think. I took the horse and went riding through the palm forest, and was only a little shocked when Tranquilito decided to become a jumper over the narrow river close to their home! I wish I had a picture of my face at that moment!

What to do? For the people of Costa Rica? For Marleni's family? I'm still thinking.