The mystery of poetry

"How do I explain these poems? Not at all. I quit teaching in colleges because it seemed so criminal to explain works of art. The crisis in my teaching career came, in fact, when I faced an audience which expected me to explain 'Dubliners' by Joyce."
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

 Sometimes I hear people saying that they don't understand poetry.
A poem is not to be understood. It is to be felt, experienced, lived. This is the reason why people can either love a poem or be indifferent to it.
 A poem is an intimate space of possibilities. When you listen to music you don't expect to understand it. You connect to it or you don't.
 Education is deeply concerned with logic and rational thinking, but poetry transcends the boundaries of logic. It is not confined to this type of thinking. The creative process engages an intuitive side that mingles with emotions. Poetry paints music with words. It composes paintings on words; it writes a dance.  It sparks a connection to you... or it doesn't. That is poetry.

Maria Montessori, the Italian physician who revolutionized education for young children

“To influence society we must turn our attention to childhood. Out of this truth comes the importance of nursery schools, for it is the little ones who are building our future.”

Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori was the first woman to become a physician in Italy, a journey that had not been free of hurdles and challenges. 

   Maria Montessori pursued a career in medicine against her father’s wishes.  At the medical school the authorities were   appalled at the idea of a young lady becoming a doctor.

  The other medical students shut her out of conversations and even made fun of her in the corridors. With much grace Maria replied to them: “Blow away, my friends; the harder you blow, the higher up I shall go.”
 Once she graduated from medical school she was invited to  Berlin to give a conference on why women should be given the same pay as men for doing the same work. At that time, women in factories and and on farms were paid considerably less than men. (Interestingly, equal pay continues to be an issue these days).

  In addition to being an outstanding physician, she became interested in the education of young children. As she had not been trained as a teacher, she did not have the fixed ideas that teachers were taught in those days.

 Inspired by the work of Jean Itard and Edouard Seguin, who refused to believe that mentally retarded kids could not be educated, she worked with kids that had disabilities. Instead of using the usual teaching methods, Dr. Montessori encouraged them to learn by exercising their senses of touch, sight, smell, and sound. She developed special materials to accomplish her goals.

  Thanks to her work, some kids with disabilities were able to reach the same standards and pass the same exams as those without disabilities.

The next step for her was to work with kids who did not have disabilities, so she tried her methods with children from the slums. These kids were poorly fed and miserable.

 Maria Montessori welcomed these children in The Casa dei Bambini (The Children’s House). Up until then education had been based on rigid principles. Kids had to memorize facts and repeat them like parrots. They were not supposed to ask questions. Children who did not learn this way were labeled as “lazy”.

 The opening of the first Children’s House in San Lorenzo, Italy, was the starting point of a revolution in education. In 1907, when Dr. Montessori was well known in Italy as a physician and a campaigner for women’s rights, she began to work intensely on education, and she would later spread her methods all over the world by giving conferences in different countries. She also wrote books on this subject. Her methods became popular.

In her private life, things did not go  well. She fell in love with Dr Giuseppe Montessano and she became pregnant. Single pregnant women were a shame (interestingly, women—not men— can still be fired for conceiving a baby out of wedlock these days). It is not clear why they never married, but she had to hide her son away. Her child had to be raised by some relatives that lived in the countryside. Her work would have been discredited if she had acknowledged him publicly. Making a living as a single mother would have been difficult.

   Maria Montessori channeled her frustration and pain into her work by devoting more of her energy to the study of children’s development and to their education.

 Maria Montessori was able to show the world that kids are motivated to learn. She observed children and studied their behaviors. One thing she learned was that although there were plenty of toys in The Children’s House, kids preferred to work with the sensory materials. 

            What she noted was that when kids were in an environment that was conducive to learning they would be motivated to learn. The sullen and crying children became happily involved in their learning experiences. There were also plants and pets to care for.

 Maria Montessori thought it was important to allow the children to decide what to do. Children had the opportunity to work at their own pace in a peaceful, non-competitive environment.
Working outdoors on purposeful activities was also encouraged.

                                                                          

 Maria Montessori believed that teachers should follow the      child. She believed that children taught the teachers, not the other way    around.
 The true Montessori philosophy  contemplates the emotional and social aspects of education. It fosters peace and understanding at every level.
 Dr. Montessori believed that each child is born with a unique potential to be revealed, rather than as a "blank slate" waiting to be written upon.
                                       
                                        
 During World War II Dr Montessori was forced to leave Italy due to her antifascist views.  Mussolini closed all Montessori schools. Maria lived in Spain for a couple of years, and then she moved to Holland. In 1947 she  undertook a lecture tour in  India, which lasted two years. There she developed her work Education for Peace.
  Dr. Montessori was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times (1949, 1950 and 1951). 
 Peace education is about developing skills to resolve conflicts peacefully. It  provides opportunities and experiences for the children to learn to live in harmony with other people and the environment. 
 "Establishing lasting peace is the work of education."
Dr. Maria Montessori
 Regarding prizes and punishments she said, "The prize and the punishment are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort... the jockey offers a piece of sugar to his horse before jumping into the saddle. The coachman beats his horse that he may respond to the signs given by the reins. And yet, neither of these runs so superbly as the free horse of the plains."
All in all, Maria Montessori believed in the kids' motivation to learn and discover. She was convinced that kids have a world of their own, and that adults should not interfere. 
 Now, do kids still have that world of their own? Or do we violate it through the images and messages imparted by television screens?
 Do we respect kids' vulnerabilities these days? Something to think about.

 Maria Montessori liked to tell the story of a little girl who came to a Montessori school for the first time. The little girl asked the first child she met, "Is it true that in this school you're allowed to do what you like?"
 "I don't know about that," replied the child, "but I do know that we like what we do."


References

Maria Montessori. The Italian doctor who revolutionized education for young children. Michael Pollard

Maria Montessori. Her Life and Work. E.M. Standing

www.montessori.edu/maria.html
  

Starry starry night

 Relax and enjoy the breathtaking art and music.
 Till next time.

The gifts of nature and a thank you note

 There is a marsh one mile away from where we live.
 It is an area of breathtaking beauty where we go for walks along trails by the forests.
 It is a place where we can rest our eyes and recharge our energy. We exercise and reflect; we watch the  birds that inhabit these peaceful landscapes.

This land has a unique educational value, for it allows us to teach kids why it is necessary to protect our ecosystems.


 We can all celebrate these gifts of nature. It is nobody's privilege to do so there.
 Today I want to say thank you to the group of conscientious people  who stood up against those who thought that building a highway was more important than preserving these gifts of nature.
Thank you.

Doris Lessing 's "Love, again"

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”

Rumi

Love, again is populated by artists and intense personalities. From the very beginning I was so hooked to these characters that I needed to know what would happen to them.

 Sarah Durham and Stephen become good friends. Sarah is a writer who works in a theater in London. Stephen is madly in love with a woman called Julie Vairon. Julie is dead, though. She died one hundred years ago. She had been a gifted musician, an artist and a writer; she had also been a kind of outcast who loved to dance in the woods.

 Julie Vairon is  the main character of the play Sarah and Stephen are working on together. Sarah is a woman in her sixties who had not cared about romantic love for two decades, and, all of a sudden, she falls in love with Bill, the young actor who plays the role of Julie Vairon’s first lover. 
  Sarah had lost her husband in her late thirties. She had to raise her two kids by herself, so she had always been too busy to date men. 
  We are then invited into the intimate territory of Sarah’s thoughts, fantasies and emotions.
  While I read this novel I came across many interesting revelations about society, and I found myself saying, "Finally somebody dares to assert what I have been observing and thinking for many years". 

  Sarah did not know she was capable of being in love this way. She wondered how these exhilarating sensations had evaded her for two decades and is somewhat shocked at feeling what she feels. There is a mutual attraction between Sarah and Bill but their relationship never flourishes, and I am left wondering if her feelings had more to do with lust than with love.

 The frustration of not accomplishing a true love relationship with Bill transforms into something else. Just like Julie Vairon, Sarah Durham falls in love a second time. Doris Lessing dredges up the obscure realities and inconveniences of falling in love. She will make you burn in flames of passion and desire, and will later splash you with icy water. 
 After she falls in love, Sarah Durham is caught up in a swamp of grief. She yearns for her lost youth and falls into the prejudice of thinking that she will never be cherished and desired the way she had been when she was young. For many years she had been too occupied with life responsibilities to be bothered with the physical changes that had been happening over time. We witness the stages of her grief.  
  Now she also examines her life under a new light of introspection. Her quest for love leads her to ponder over her relationship with her brother, mother,  father. She is also flooded with memories of past lovers. 

   Everybody adores Julie Vairon. Her life is a mirror of their heartbreaks. Sarah and Stephen are two heart-broken souls “living in their own deserts”. They understand Julie Vairon’s misery from their own personal experiences and they are deeply touched by her music. Amid their despair, they share moments of solace and comfort in literature and philosophy.

  Yes, Julie Vairon is dead, but her spirit is alive through her art, music and words. It is the shadow of these characters’ love stories.  
  Sarah and Stephen are fond of each other.  They miss each other, but their friendship is crippled by misunderstandings, fears and doubts. The fact that Sarah is a woman and Stephen is a man plays a role in the dynamics of their communication. Yet their sincerity  had brought them together. I have never come across a writer who deals with these matters so openly.

  Doris Lessing made me feel that Sarah and Stephen are my intimate friends. I kept mulling over their inner conflicts and troubles after I finished reading this novel.

  I would have given this novel a different kind of ending -- a happier, hopeful one.
  It is clear to me that Doris Lessing had more faith in the arts than in the act of falling in love.

  If human relationships intrigue you and keep you awake at night, this novel will captivate you. If, on the other hand, you prefer fairy tales, you may be better off reading something else.

  Doris Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2008 The Times ranked her fifth on a list  of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2001 she was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement  in British literature.

A friend in Saudi Arabia

I can hear them say

how much everything has changed

over the years.

A friend of mine

just moved to Saudi Arabia;

she cannot leave her house

without her husband;

her gender encircles her life,

what she can do,

and what she can’t.

Windows close to the ceiling,

 heads wrapped in abayas,

cars with male drivers.

“I brought you your woman,” somebody

said to her husband,

announcing his belonging.

 The world is busy praying.

Justice does not fit in our mindsets.

Freedom is  a frail word

with fragile bones, 

     elusive
 as a forsaken dream

whenever you believe

that every woman is ready to submit.

Julia Hones

In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to study or work without the permission of a male family member. They are not allowed to drive, and they cannot travel overseas unless they have the consent of a man.
I dedicate this poem to the women in Saudi Arabia who are silenced or beaten whenever they try to change their situation.
 I dedicate this poem to the victims of domestic violence in Saudi Arabia. The ones who don't belong to the statistics, the women and kids whose silent suffering is forgotten by the world...

http://www.dw.de/women-in-saudi-arabia-are-caught-in-a-system-of-gender-apartheid/a-17330976
http://www.dw.de/freedom-not-luxury-brands-makes-you-complete/a-17186662
http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/saudi-arabia/report-2013
http://nypost.com/2014/04/19/a-saudi-arabian-princess-reveals-her-life-of-hell/

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Marin Luther King

Birds

Can you see one of the baby Robins staring at me? Every year  a new couple of robins choose our home to build their nest.

 This year their location –or I should say one of them, because we have multiple nests attached to our home- enabled us to watch the parents raising their offspring. No documentary would be better  than the experience of being so close to them... here is a very brief video of the babies.

Two years ago we had a nest built by the Say's Phoebe. 

 They do have a predilection for porch roofs near the door- and this is what they did in our house two years ago. 
               










 By the way, when I was writing this post on the deck I spotted a mother deer breastfeeding her baby. What a beautiful scene. A mother breastfeeding her baby.( Sorry, I couldn't take a picture of them.)

  I've always been impressed by the variety of birds that live here, in Western Wisconsin. On one of my recent visits to the ecopark I popped into the local library and borrowed this book to learn more about the birds that I see on a regular basis. 

The creeper's way of foraging always captivated me: starting at the base of a large tree, it spirals up the trunk, poking into bark crevices, until it reaches the first large branches, at which point it flies to the base of a nearby tree and starts over. You can watch the bird do this a few times before he disappears. They eat insects, larvae, spiders and their eggs from the bark crevices.

Two months ago I was delighted by the visit of a cardinal. He perched on our deck for a few seconds before he flew away. I know he was a male bird because the male is completely red except for a small black mask and  chin. 

The kind of hummingbird that we can find here is the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. They have a feisty personality and aggressively defend their nectar source from others. You can find some astounding pictures of hummingbirds here.

 They feed on nectar, small insects and spiders. 

Have you been watching any birds lately?