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Words and Images of 2010 (tipping the hat to Gloria Salazar)
Provisioning: to provide needed materials and supplies
Much of the year was spent (on and off) in preparation for the next stage of my journey-retirement-arranging pension, social security, retiree health, part-time work. A word of advice: if you don’t want to do a lot of paperwork, don’t retire.
Confounded: confused, perplexed
I have always ( Read more... ) -
Cambodia Journal Updated (Chay)
In my Cambodia Journal, I wrote about one of my favorite kids at Wat Opot, 3-year-old Chay. His father had died of AIDS, and his mother was wraithlike, seeming to be ready to leave the planet, except for the love of her son, who is HIV positive. Chay was the little guy who didn't smile at all the first few days of our visit and slowly transformed ( Read more... ) -
Horrors Ameliorated by Pleasures
Oh, the horrors of it. High-stakes testing is upon us. I am administering it to 18 students, and it turns me into a person I don’t recognize. From someone who knows that grading a school’s success by comparing the scores of a different group of 11th graders each year is sheer idiocy, I go to a promoter of the test. Moreover, this 14-hour ( Read more... ) -
New Leaves
A friend who lives in Bergen, Norway, wrote me the other day. It had been a long time since we’d managed to connect. She’d seen my LJ and asked why I didn’t write more often. I’d been wondering that myself. I thought about blogs my friends keep-some almost daily, others more like weekly. And I realized that because it’s more or less public, I’ve ( Read more... ) -
2008 (Stolen from Vicki, who stole it from Robin)
And I decided to use this instead of my old "2008 in Review." And next year I think I might steal Dragon's meme ( Read more... ) -
Wat Opot Contacts
I meant to give, for anyone interested, a way to contact Wat Opot. If you go to http://tsoham.info, that will take you to a link for Wat Opot Children's Community and to Partners in Compassion, where you can donate online, if you are so inspired. Also, for wonderful slide-music shows of these most engaging children, go to YouTube and type in Wat ( Read more... ) -
Cambodia Journal: Afterthoughts
One of our last evenings at Wat Opot, I noticed 2 brilliant heavenly lights near the horizon and just above a sliver of moon. To be that bright, I thought they had to be planets. A few twilights later, I was walking in my own neigborhood, and I saw those same bodies, the moon now nearly at half, and all a little higher up in the sky. I was missing ( Read more... ) -
Cambodia Journal: Days 10 & 11
Thanksgiving Day. Thursdays and Sundays are days off from school, but the children stayed away from us. Even when we tried to engage in conversation, they ignored us. They knew. And without saying it, we had said goodbye the night before. The only one who talked to us was Chay, in his excitement about the crab.
Before 10, the tuk tuk arrived to ( Read more... ) -
Cambodia Journal: Days 7-9
The next days developed into a kind of routine. I had recorded the next part of my interview with Wayne on Sunday (Day 6), and when we finished on Monday, I felt an unexpected release. Our talks were fascinating, and I was getting what I came for. But when I turned off the recorder, I started sharing more of myself; it was like old times, when we ( Read more... )