TEN — Playing to improve confidence and familiarity with number facts. In arithmetic, complete familiarity and accuracy with basic number facts is important, so as an early grades teacher I played number games with students whenever there was a spare moment. The children studied number relationships while they had fun with each other, and…READ MORE >
BACK FORTY REPORT
Afternoons I wear many hats, but mornings I get to be a farmer. The job pays nothing, indeed it costs money, but the rewards are priceless. Yesterday, glimmery, gloriously light and cool, and the sun smiled on the work of many spiders. They must have been working all night, creating mystical magical receivers in…READ MORE >
The Rule of Law
Environmental Lawyers are at work in 2018 to exercise and strengthen the laws that protect earth. A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats. –Benjamin Franklin I’ve heard a lot of lawyer jokes. I’ve read some history and enjoyed conversation with friends and family who practice law, and I know…READ MORE >
Environmental Action
Interesting thing about internet news – a headline can catch your attention, and then you can follow links in all directions and find that things mentioned are not always what they seem. The reports of the Water Protector actions in South Dakota caught my eye, and the arrest of Red Fawn Fallis felt particularly poignant.…READ MORE >
Water is Life
Living in Toronto for a lovely stretch, my feet missed my home ground and my tears, had they flowed, would have gone to the sea in a foreign watershed. Just a seed of homesickness, mind you; my Canadian experience did not generate tears. But the seed grew, in a creative impulse, to the beginning of…READ MORE >
Saving Seed of the New Zealand Pear – an organic gardener’s journey to the twilight zone
An acquaintance, a gardener, sent tomato seeds one year. Sharing seeds among gardeners fulfills part of the historical imperative that keeps plant varieties vital – the multiplication of seeds through dispersion. I took the important first step of planting some of the seeds she sent, and then I saved seed from the fruit of my…READ MORE >
Dora’s Story, Rehab in the Desert
It was very good luck that led us to the J-Six Equestrian Center last spring. Thinking my husband and I were permanently moving from the southwest, I was looking for short term boarding for our two horses, out of the heat of Tucson and accessible to long distance truckers. I visited J-Six Equestrian…READ MORE >
Keeping Horses
Wandering Waldorf teachers, Michael and I landed in Tucson, Arizona, and I found myself for the first time in my adult life completely horseless. That wouldn’t do. I started scouting out horse people, looking for a horse to ride. Horses and their barn facilities surround and interpenetrate the city of Tucson, and I enjoyed interesting…READ MORE >
Slow Down, the Roses Won’t Bloom Without Pollination
Monarch butterflies will soon be on the wing. Spring is coming, and they are getting ready to move. I can feel it in the air, the travel urge, because spring softens the air here in Tucson, blowing the dust around and whispering of all the possibilities in the universe. Get ready to fly! And I’ve…READ MORE >
Almost Spring
Funny how overheard remarks get caught in the memory. A lifetime ago, I published a weekly newspaper in a small rural community, and one day I overheard a nurse in our medical clinic talking about me. I don’t think she knew I was there in the clinic lobby, while she was one room deeper…READ MORE >