I was astonished when I first started elementary teaching. I had read about the value of going out to recess with the kids early on, and what I found there had nothing to do with me. Fourth graders from both classes, boys and girls alike, had a kickball game that had seemingly been going on for years. The rules were sophisticated and deeply respected. A kicker would step to the “plate” and order their choice of “pitches”… “Baby Bouncy” is the one I remember. The pitcher would give a slow rolled dribbling bounce to the earnest kicker and PING, the action would switch to fast forward. That game went on– rain, slush, or shine–nearly every recess all year. And the number of arguments were next to nil.

The other thing I remember from those elementary years is the sheer delight when snow would fall and the sleds — on a perfectly flat playground–would come out. The kids’ inventiveness and the hardwired NEED to play was never more impressive. They would drag each other around, find the slightest incline, and manage to have as much fun in ten minutes as I might have in a middle-aged year.

Of course, to be fair, there were plenty of other recess moments. The accusations of racism on the basketball court (somehow always the opposite of the kickball game), a fight, or the wall of crying girls outside my classroom after recess. I remember one afternoon making the decision to leave the classroom (I could hear the boys destroying the place) to try to get coherent stories from the girls who were barely able to breathe, much less tell me what was going on. And maybe the topper in the negative column, the day the father of one of those classroom-destroying boys came in to investigate his assumption that I was being unfair to his son. A big man–maybe 6’2, 200+ lbs, he sat on the floor and played our cooperative game in the morning. He answered questions and chomped his snack happily during read-aloud, but after recess, several kids came to me and said, “Mr. McKenna, Mr. V. was playing too rough at recess.”

I’ve been laughing lately that my work-at-home days have begun to take on the structure of my elementary teaching days. Cedar and I have our morning and afternoon walks, but I find she needs a little “recess” in between, which often consists of little more than my tossing the frisbee from the deck in stockinged feet.

Like those 4th grade kickballers, I’m finding she barely needs me.

We know that play is one of the seven steps to survival. We also know it is critical in the development of young hearts and minds. Here’s just one citation among a bajillion on the topic, this one from an American Academy of Pediatrics publication…

Despite the benefits derived from play for both children and parents, time for free play has been markedly reduced for some children. This report addresses a variety of factors that have reduced play, including a hurried lifestyle, changes in family structure, and increased attention to academics and enrichment activities at the expense of recess or free child-centered play.

The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds

My friend and colleague, Andrea Lunsford, pitches the necessity of play to higher ed profs as well. Citing the prevalence of mental health stresses on college-aged adults, Lunsford writes…

This year, more than ever, we need to make the most of these opportunities. But I think we need to do something more: we need to introduce students to the ludic nature of rhetoric and remind them of the crucial importance of play and playfulness to their learning and to their lives.  

Andrea Lunsford, “The Necessity of Play“

I had to look up “ludic,” which means “showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness.”

Clearly my 14 month old sidekick is good at reminding me about the undirected part of it all. She sleeps quietly on a Sunday morning while I fumble for a way to tie up this ramble.

Tomorrow’s another school day, I suppose, with recess, snack, and plenty of tail wagging. (Please, friends, intervene if I add read-aloud to this list.) And you never know; there’s a little whiff of snow in the air.

In contrast to the verdant rapture of green, and the overtime bittersweet rally of yellow, it’s time to slog through, so as not to bog down in, brown.

If Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, October in SE Alaska is the land of 10,000 atmospheric rivers. Epic rains make mud before washing it to sea. Even the ocean, like the wetlands around it, succumbs some days to brown. Most ferns have sent their chlorophyll packing, and Devil’s Club sends up a few futile yellow flares. Meanwhile mushrooms claim their place as if it’s the ’70s again, and it’s somehow cool to wear brown. (I wish I could forget my Dad’s brown suit, as he came home from yet another bad day in the recession, parking his beige wood-paneled Dodge Aspen. It’s amazing he didn’t disown us on the 100th try at “How’s your Aspen, Dad?”)

Wet logs, wet soil, wet dog, wet Tom. Hello, ides of October.

Brown is actually kind of a trip. I’ve learned that it’s not really a color. It’s just a human construct. I guess that makes sense. It’s not in the rainbow. There is no brown light. This computer monitor, which makes its colors by combining red, green, and blue lights, actually can’t make brown. (Turns out, red, blue, and green actually correspond to the colors our eyes’ cone-cells are best at seeing.) The monitor can only make dark orange, which, I’m told we only see as brown because of contrast or context. We see brown, and not dark orange, because of lighter images or sections of an image that provide contrast, or because of elements of context: that furry Volkswagen with legs and beady eyes is a brown bear; no time for debate.

Juneau, we have a problem. Do I no longer have a brown dog? Is my dog, too, just a figment of my imagination? (Some days I wish.) And if she can be orange, why can’t my hair again be orange? (After last week’s trip to the Navajo Nation, I’ve decided my hair is sandstone, anyway. ) It also turns out that words for brown tend to evolve later (and in fact never appear in some) in languages. It’s as if even nature denies this state of things, and eventually, begrudgingly, we name it into existence.

But wait. All is not lost or turning to mud. A little new-age psychology will redeem this post. Here’s brown, all comforting and strong, with a little loneliness and vastness and isolation thrown in just to keep it real. Who knew a color actually had meaning?

And it may be even better. Even though water seems to be winning–especially the brown water–a bit of Feng Shui from the same article brings a sucker hole of hope. “Blue is a good color to combine with brown because of the earth-water harmony.”

Forecast for tomorrow is only partly cloudy. And my brownish dog — orange though she may be–is sleeping peacefully, evoking warmth, comfort, and security.

I’m pretty sure I read that phrase in Thoreau’s journals years ago. Maybe it was Edward Abbey? I do recall Thoreau calling the news “the froth and scum of the eternal sea.” Whatever. I write today with news after the storm and there’s plenty of froth. Maybe the the headline is that there is nothing newer than the olds. The rain has stopped, the water’s up, trees are down, and it’s October (again).

So let’s get on with all the news not at all fit to print.

Steadfast Stan

When I was 22 or so, and still had the echoes of the perpetual East Coast “What are you going to DO with your life?” questions in my head, I had a vision of being able to answer in three words, “Teach and fish.” I spent long days on commercial trollers trying to learn the ropes, and eventually went longlining with Stan, my same-age peer, with whom I had played a bit of hockey. Stan grew up in Hoonah, the son of a famously tough Norwegian fisherman (and equally tough magistrate mother, I’m sure). When I fished with Stan, he had his own troller, a humble little steel boat, but already had big plans to capitalize in the fishery. I admired his confidence: he could fix anything, it seemed, and he knew his limits, trusted his own intellect deeply. 

We fished together very briefly. He was all competence, including when we had to head for shore from Cross Sound (open ocean) with gnarly seas following. 

Years later, Stan became a seiner, and a very successful one at that. He bought the boat Steadfast, a name that seemed to perfectly match his disposition. By email and by my memory (romanticized, I’m sure), he was Steadfast Stan. I knew one of his deckhands on the seiner—a big dude, 6’2 at least, who told me a story about how he and another crew were reefing on a line and couldn’t budge it. Stan came over, called them a name with a smile on his face, and freed the line with a stout one-armed pull.

Last week, Stan picked me up at the Hoonah airport. He smiled wryly as I fumbled for my seatbelt clip and said only “Hoonah, Tom” before I gave up on that. “Still have the Steadfast?” I asked. 

“I sold it 14 years ago.” (Not much older than that news.)

Stan sent me photos of his son’s boat, likely well on his way to being a highliner, and this one from summer with his “new” boat plugged, on the way to a season of 120,000 lbs. of salmon. 

Reconnecting with Stan reminds me of values I aspired to in those early days: remaining steadfast to those people and principles I cared about, despite what life might throw in the way. My own navigation has been uncertain… I’m dead reckoning right now, for sure. Nice to have a fix on Steadfast Stan, even if the Steadfast is long gone, and he was headed blueberry picking. “The berries were nice,” the Viking incarnate reported at day’s end.

No Lifeguard on Duty

I swear it was Cedar’s idea to pose next to that sign after about 50 retrieves in rough water, mid-storm, last night. It made me laugh.

One of the most generous people on earth, Dave, my friend and principal mentor at Harborview Elementary, learned he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer in July. Three months later, he’s gone. He wrote to a mutual friend, “The very good news is that I am secure in my faith and have so much love and support through my kids and grandkids. I’m truly at peace with God and will accept that His will be done in all of this.” In Dave’s world, I guess there is a lifeguard on duty. In mine, not so much. Nice to have Cedar around to remind me that some risks just have to be taken. 

It Held

“We joined our places on the planet’s thin crust; it held.”  

Annie Dillard, “Total Eclipse”

We’re in full “atmospheric river” mode again. Until a few years ago, I had never heard that term, but it seems like we’re getting these crazy bands of wind and rain with increasing frequency these days. 

It’s always interesting to hit the woods after one of these events, and see what changed, and what has stayed. The news this morning included a downed tree and a whole lot of water still coming down the mountain. 

Some change.

Some steadfastness.

Old news, I guess.