Big Trees & No Keys

How we spent the last few days before student teaching starts (tomorrow!): we discovered a small patch of old growth trees right here in the Niagara region of New York. It was 10 acres of towering Red Oaks and other various giants. Then on the other side of the river (Canada), we hiked in a magical mossy forest to find tall Tulip trees, fat hemlocks and old Cedars. Beautiful. All was successful besides when I fell off a rock, bloodied up my knee and tore my pants. We had a lovely glass of local wine in the quaint Niagara on the Lake and saw some Oldsqaws swimming on the surface of Lake Ontario under a full moon. Our friend Chris Lisowski came up from Pittsburgh for the weekend, whom we relaxed with. He brought us a new piece of art he made. Then he went back to Pittsburgh with my car keys in his pocket. Above is a picture of a tall Red Oak and one of the culprit and our new print. Luckily, our friend Tara let us borrow her car as she and Storms went off to Italy. We'll still make it to our first day of teaching tomorrow.

Adios 2005

See ya. It was a good year, I'll spare the recap of all 365 days, but I'll look back on it with very fond memories. We spent our Christmas in Massachusetts and then headed up to New Hampshire for some much needed time in nature and to ring in the New Year with some excellent friends. We snowshoed in the Great Gulf Wilderness area (one of our favorite White Mountain spots) next to the Peabody River and found excellent views of Mount Washington and Mount Madison. We also explored the old Cedar forests around Christine Lake and the area around the hypnotic Crystal Falls. All day on New Years Eve day Damien was perfroming beautiful 360s on his snowboard off of a jump he had built in the backyard. Later, with a half hour left until the new year, he went out to celebrate 2006 on a sled, hit that very same jump on his belly and broke a rib (or 2, we're not sure). Sadly, he missed snowboarding the next day at Sunday River. Fortunatley, he is finally starting to heal up, but if you see him, resist the Python hugs.
Yesterday we went to the Body Worlds exhibit in Toronto, and you haven't heard of it, check this out: http://www.bodyworlds.com/ Wow. Also had a good Ethiopian lunch. Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!

After finishing all of our classes, we have been spending our time snowshoeing, snowboarding, enjoying our friends, throwing parties, reading, watching movies, cooking, practicing our ninja moves and other things necessary for getting ready for Christmas. Damien has been painting up a storm (see above!) We're driving to Massachusetts tomorrow for the festivities. Hope your holdiay season is peaceful.

I'll Pay You 5$ to Write My Reseach Paper

Links

About the two links to the right: Joshua Bienko and Grace Spivak. Two amazing friends of mine. You can just click on thier name and it will take you directly to their blogs. Josh is in a graduate fine art program in Georgia. You can check out some of his amazing work on his blog (not to mention the wonderful pictures of his sweetpea baby Harper and his lovely wife Maryjo)! Grace is a friend that we made while we were studying in Prague, Czech Republic for our TEFL certification. Similar to when we taught English in Taiwan, Grace is teaching English in Korea. Her blog is full of stories, adventures, and cultural experiences that are truly unique. I hope you get a chance to check out these web pages. Ciao!

Snow in Buffalo

Well it officially snowed last night here in Buffalo. There is a fine coating of white all over everything this morning. The day before it was 65 degrees! Damien and I celebrated by eating ice cream for breakfast today (it's a tradition for the first snow) and we were out frolicking under the streetlamps last night.
We have only one month left of classes for the semester, so we are really going crazy getting all of our work done, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We have both been observing and doing a little bit of teaching at an urban school here in Buffalo. It's pretty wild, but we are really enjoying it. Student teaching in January.
Sadly, my uncle Crit passed away last month. He was only 48. I'd like to dedicate a poem by e. e. cummings to him and to my family who will miss him very much.

2

to stand (alone) in some

autumnal afternoon:
breathing a fatal
stillness; while

enormous this how

patient creature (who's
never by never robbed of
day) puts always on by always

dream,is to

taste
not(beyond
death and

life)imaginable mysteries

recap of Bazoinker Ball

The gypsy & the sailor

1st Halloween

We had the pleasure of taking our Nepali friend Ajay to Rhubarb's Bazoinker Ball for his 1st Halloween. Needless to say it was a wild evening, and I think his perception of the United States has some storm troopers, fairies and bloody goblins written into it. Not to mention Rex-quan-doe. And lots of loud music and chicken wings of course. I assured him that his hunter costume was certainly not the weirdest one there. I look forward to Thanksgiving where Ajay will see just how much us fatties can shove into our gluttonous mouths! Also, one night this weekend Damien and I rented the new Aminityville Horror which was so scary that we had to take a break in the middle of it, turn on the lights, and have a conversation about regular things before we could continue watching (with the lights on)! Recently we saw poet John Ashberry read and then answer questions. He told us he was a pretty funny guy and he was too. I'm preparing a unit plan on the Harlem Renaissance and reading poetry from Langston Hughes again, and for the first time I'm really reading Countee Cullen. Once you get into the language and imagine Duke Ellington's jazz bustin out of clubs like the Cotton Club and W.E.B. Dubois talking about the souls of black people and progress and equality and all that art by folks like Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage, and you listen to those lonely lines of poetry, those little threads connecting us to a wild time in the past, you're like, well, damn.

Pennsylvania

Damien and I and Bella the Puerto Rican dog drove down to Pine Lot Camp this past weekend for a romantic getaway and a quiet place to study. We took some nice walks in the brilliant colors of autumn, Damien cooked up a gourmet meal, we drank a bottle of wine that was a gift from our wedding, and kept warm in front of the wood burning stove. Best place to study on earth.

A little music session around the wood burning stove at Pine Lot Camp

Massachusetts

We've had a couple of nice weekends lately. Went to Massachusetts for a last minute relaxing getaway. Saw lots of great people, witnessed a flood of the Connecticut river valley, played lots of music, and enjoyed my family and friends immensely. It was nice not to be studying when I should have been. Went too fast of course!

"Flood Kayaking"

Autumn in Arcadia

Eating the top of our wedding cake (there's that face again)

Rockin out in the playroom

Partying in good ol' Northampton

Poetry and Composition

Here is a poem I wrote for my class ENG 692 The Teaching of Writing. We had to respond creatively to an essay by a woman named Brooke Horvath which investigated issues of responding and assessing students writing. It was a strange topic for me to write a poem on for sure, and I have never responded to a critical essay in verse. Don't know if it will be too esoteric. Give it a go.

To the heavy clouds of marginalia remarks
(bleed your rain-thoughts off of the page)

Seep back into the earth and remind us we are listeners,
the students suspended between what has been spoken
and what utterances are patiently awaiting their life.
We are the audience of the planet’s ongoing processes,
and are made up of a sequence of objectives,
(carbon chain, DNA) written all over ourselves step by step.
Paper is thin, vulnerable to the elements,
even from which it comes, wood and water.

Paper lets light through:
add ink and voice and our errors are a beautiful
part of it all, the age rings of wisdom growing.
We are finding the text in ourselves, making patterns
with our ideas, and redesigning our language
time after time.
Those voices are drawn in blacks and blues,
our tiny signatures ensuring our existence
which is evaluated, examined and experienced;
those roles must be ever changing.

Catching droplets of comments, we feel the weight
of them in our hands, and throw them back at the sky.
We are transcending the context in which they had
first appeared to us, and watching them in new angles,
they land back on earth in different shapes.

Urban Kayaking

We decided to blend our city setting with one of our favorite hobbies today. It turned out to be quite a wonderful experience: Paddling under freeways and various towers, we passed old granaries and the forgotten factories of an era gone (although the General Mills factory is still belting out the aroma of cookies over the whole area). We kayaked between a huge old battleship and a submarine to the surprise of tourist operators watching us from the decks. It was a little intimidating being next to those huge lunkers, but exciting as well. There were many water fowl who have made their homes here in this strange urban land/waterscape. Here are some pictures of this day trip from Lake Erie into the Buffalo River.

The sun comes through