Night times have been bitterly cold the past week in Plymouth. I have been inside and warm sleeping on my new air mattress which is comfortable. I put a folded blanket beside the mattress where Ozzy sleeps, as, unfortunately, the mattress really isn't big enough for the two of us. He dutifully lays on the blanket through the night and must be comfortable based on the snoring I hear coming from him.
Yesterday, although chilly, was in the twenties and sunny. Ozzy and I took a really nice walk on Squam Lake which is frozen. We will probably walk on the lake again today. I wish I could let him off leash as that would have been a perfect place for him to run, but, I just can't trust him to come back to me. I am looking forward to going places again where there are enclosed dog parks.
Today I have started preparing for a workshop I will be leading at the Pemi Youth Center starting this Thursday. I volunteered my time there last spring for a mask-making workshop and really enjoyed myself. For the next three weeks I will be going back to the Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays where I will lead a workshop on making "Flag Books." It should be fun! My group is likely to be 5th through 7th grade. My first real teaching assignment many years ago was teaching middle school science. That experience completely turned me off to middle schoolers. God bless the middle school teacher who is a breed unto him/herself. However, I really enjoyed my time last year at the Pemi Center and had my mind changed about middle schoolers. Not sure I would want to be with them all day long, but, a small group for an hour or a bit longer is just fine. Fun, really!
I have been ready to get back in the van and back on the road for a couple of weeks, but, still have three weeks until I leave. My target date is February 1 and I will hit the road on that date. I agreed to be a judge for the high school juried art show on the 29th for the Friends of the Arts, and a former student of mine is having an opening for her art show on the 31st. Then I am gone!!
My course has been going well. I have 5 students who seem to be enjoying the class and having some aha moments concerning mythology and identity. We discussed the shootings in Paris as I brought up the point of the power of mythology, the narrative, and how the fundamentalists read the texts as prose and literal as opposed to poetry and metaphor. This is a major problem. There is so much attachment to the words as the teaching rather than understanding the words as temporal metaphoric guides on how to experience what the words are trying to explain. The limitations of the words open all to misunderstanding. What else explains how people can kill as they do in the name of Allah, Jesus Christ...?
Stay warm...
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