In These Hills: March 2011

Living in a College Community

This week the girls have really been able to take advantage of the facilities at Dartmouth. Helen has begun crew. They are spending every day rowing in the Dartmouth crew tanks. This tiny picture is the only one I could find online of the tanks.

As soon as the water warms up....maybe July?....they will be out on the beautiful Connecticut River. Believe it or not the high school team has its own boats and is building a boathouse. One aspect of Waldorf education that Helen has really missed is the daily morning workout before classes. She has missed being outside in the fresh air before settling down to academic work. Crew, with its 5:15 a.m. start, should help!

Here's the college boathouse. They can use it in the summer in a special camp if they want.

This week Helen's school has been in "March Intensive" where kids get to take lots of mini-courses. Yesterday her class went to special collections at the Dartmouth library to look at old documents. She was thrilled to get to hold a letter written by George Washington. The library is interesting--they built a glass box inside the old building to hold the temperature and humidity sensitive materials.

Liz went with her class to this beautiful chapel at Dartmouth which is "a house of prayer for all nations." They attended a muslim prayer service as part of their study of Islam.

This year Helen has also taken a class at the college art museum, sketched in the library, and become thoroughly familiar with their theater department. When Liz and Helen are seniors, they will have the opportunity to take classes at Dartmouth if the high school can't provide for them something they might want. We are indeed fortunate to live here (even if we are mired in March mud and snow).

Making the best of March in Vermont

While the rest of the world is enjoying the first crocuses and daffodils, we are looking out at 2 feet of snow and very muddy roads. My neighbor created this video to combat the cabin fever. I can't figure out how to embed a facebook video, so you'll just have to click to see. Stick with it. My favorite part is when he dances away. --well, sadly you can't see it. Maybe I'll get my girls to make a similar video.

TIME FOR THE SNOW TO GO!

sigh...2 - 5" arriving tonight.

On the Edge of the Sea

>> Thursday, March 17, 2011 – Crafts, winter

Even though the sun is shining more strongly and the roof beginning to melt, there is still 2 feet of snow in our yard. Last weekend we escaped to Maine with friends.

We began our visit at the beach which was gloriously bright and windy.

The surf was spectacular.

The girls found lots of sand dollars. They are such treasures to me.

After the beach and a lunch of hot chowder and lobster stew, we moved on to our most favorite shop in Maine--Halcyon Yarn.
We had so much fun! After awhile the guys quietly disappeared up the street for a coffee.

Liz choose the makings for this Spring Simplicity scarf.

I decided to try the Alpine Topper.

Helen purchased the makings for a felted camera bag of her own design. My friend chose a sweater pattern for her shivering dog.

We finally met the guys at the coffee shop and soon yarn was draped everywhere as we began winding it into balls. The guys helped. You gotta love yarn-friendly husbands. We met some knitters who invited us to join their knitting group at the library. Maribeth--if you're reading this, you might recognize a friend in this photo...

That night we played Shanghai Rummy for hours. We all madly knit in between hands. Liz beat us all.

Sunday we awoke to a beautiful sunrise, a bit of Bach, and more knitting. It was a quiet morning.
I sat with my journal and Rachel Carson's The Edge of the Sea. She has such wise things to say about this earth of ours.

I even had tea delivered to me by the edge of the sea. How great is that?

It was hard to say goodbye.
Thank you dear friends for sharing this special place with us.

Are My Hands Clean?

Last week Liz overheard me listening to Are My Hands Clean by Sweet Honey in the Rock (lyrics). This song tells the story of the making of a shirt from the picking of the cotton to its purchase at Sears and all the stops in between. We were inspired to map the song and had an interesting time trying out Google Maps. Here's the link with the descriptions for each of our little tags.

View Are My Hands Clean in a larger map

She became very interested in Sweatshops and we went online to read a bit more about them. We had toured the Tenement Museum in New York City last year, so she had an understanding of sweatshops from the past, but hadn't realized that they still exist in the world today. We looked at the labels on all our clothing and discovered they were made in China, India, and El Salvador.

She immediately began to create a poster to inform her classmates about sweatshops. At first she focused on the "bad" companies and "what not to buy", but I had her shift gears and think more positive about locally made, hand-made, fair trade and "what to buy" instead.

We then thought about what happens to our clothing after we are finished with it. We watched T-Shirt Travels, an amazing film about the impact of the used clothing trade on Zambia.

This afternoon investigation into our global economy was powerful for Liz. She spent a lot of time thinking about it, writing about it, and sharing her thoughts and poster with her class.

Just by chance, Nels and I were reading The Colombo Bay where the author rides on a container ship from China to New York City via the Suez Canal. Fascinating view of globalization and the world economy.

I realized that I was on the right track with my teacher workshop project because Liz was so immediately drawn in to the topic, materials, and story. Now I'm linking the concept of "are my hands clean" to "were their hands clean" as I help students and teachers realize that people in the North were intricately caught up in the triangular trade and slavery in similar ways.