Helen Mathey-Horn's Blog, page 42

Go, Teachers, Go!

Oklahoma teachers have descended on our state capital.  You know this, unless you’ve been under a rock this week.  (Oklahoma City is the capital if you are geography challenged – however Kansas City isn’t the capital of Kansas and mostly not even in that state – go figure.)

Even if you don’t live in Oklahoma…the teacher walkout has made the news. 

Now Oklahoma is not exactly a hot bed of activism which should tell you all you need to know about the teachers’ cause.  The last time they got a raise that put them anywhere in line with the cost of living was 2008.  Other items voted in at that time like class size limits have been eroded since.  Some money may have flowed to the schools, but was ear-marked and the schools may have been constrained on how they could spend it…new gym- check, new books – no, salary increase – no.  So with salaries near the bottom of the list for the US, no materials, poor pay for staff and support staff and large class sizes, yeah, they needed to walk out, and what is interesting to me…the superintendents (mostly) are fully in support of this.  That should tell you something right there!

When did Admin ever say, “Yep, close school!”  That’s when you know that is a BIG PROBLEM, one which admin sees and agrees with.  

One superintendent said if his teachers didn’t return he was going to replace them…joke is there are some 1,100 provisional teachers (teachers without a teaching credential) in the State of Oklahoma already.  Basically if you are breathing schools have been hiring you.

Determined….teachers are at the capital (OKC for short), marching from Tulsa to the capital  (weather is going to turn cold this weekend with rain and they are sleeping on gym floors along the way…and as a former DoDEA coach – where sleeping on the gym floor was standard when visiting another school for sports…that alone sucks.) or teachers are standing on street corners in the rain today doing informational picketing.  To judge by the cars honking at 41st and Yale the last few days, THE PEOPLE of Oklahoma are in support of their teachers.  Hope they can hear those horns in OKC in the capital building in whatever corners the legislators are hiding in.

Encouraging things…The capital building of Oklahoma has needed serious renovations (not cosmetic) and that work was started, but right now the workers (UNION WORKERS) will not – out of respect – cross the teacher’s lines.  So the work on the building is at a halt.

‘Funny’ things…teacher picket signs are the BEST.   Shows what kind of wit you can have with an education!

And ‘funnier’ things…I understand the legislators at the capital building were talking about closing the bathrooms to the teachers.  OMG…the only people on the planet with better bladder control than teachers might be astronauts.   Please, these people have no idea what a teacher’s day is like!

To be honest… some legislators are meeting with teachers.  Some have kept their doors open and have been available.  But others are setting strange times to be in session and ducking out the back doors early.  Today is Friday…seems they don’t meet on Fridays…not that they don’t NEED to meet, they just don’t meet.   So it seems the teachers are there but the people we PAY to be there are not.

One last thing…I want to say is fall voting season is not that far away and trust me…teachers have LONG MEMORIES.  As my third grade teacher said the first day of class (at the time I did not understand what she meant)…”I’m going to learn all your names.  Some of them sooner than others.”  Teachers remember almost every kid they have ever had, especially the ones that were difficult, teacher speak for ‘little hellion’.

Oklahomans are learning your names and we’ll be checking that ballot in the fall.  You better hope we remember your name for the right reasons.

April – Writer’s Blog Hop

April 4 question – When your writing life is a bit cloudy or filled with rain, what do you do to dig down and keep on writing?

I like the question as I have not really twisted my mind around this previously.

When it says ‘cloudy or filled with rain’ are they referring to my personal outlook/mood?  Or just a general drying up of ideas?  Or has the writing turned into a morass with you having no idea of how to extract a positive outcome?

Personal outlook/mood – I don’t know that I only write when I’m happy.  In fact, I believe that in the past some of my more prolific writing periods were when I was under personal stress as writing allowed me to do something totally different than what was going on in my life.  It was a place where I could be creative and voice, or act out, things I could not allow myself in my real life.

Drying up of ideas – I have had times where a story I thought I had a handle on suddenly lost direction and I didn’t know how to finish them.   Some of those stories are still waiting for their resolution.   They are in ‘time out’ which isn’t a bad thing.  I read somewhere a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away…sorry) that when writing research papers it is good to do your research early, then think about what you’ve found for a while (weeks?) and then start writing.  This gives your mind time to digest (my term) the ideas and synthesize them into your own composition.  This had worked for me in college and I think it works in fictional writing.  Sometimes your subconscious just needs time to ‘think’ about the story.

The Morass – This is similar to the ‘drying up of ideas’ except you (I) went ahead and kept writing and it kept getting stickier and stickier and you (I) finally realize it isn’t going anywhere.  I again step back mentally and give it some time for my mind to think about it and then go back to where I feel I lost the track.  Chuck the chapters after salvaging bits I did like and start with a total new rewrite from where I last felt the story was working.  I recently went back to a story I was working on fifteen years ago.  I was happy with it up to a point.  At the point where it was going everywhere, but nowhere, I stopped, looked at the last chapters and threw out those last five chapters.  I actually think I can finish that book now.  Doesn’t mean I haven’t written anything else in that fifteen years this book has been in ‘time out’.  I have, just not this book.

So this is my take on what is basically ‘Writer’s Block’.

Easter Fooling

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Well the Oklahoma weather is fooling a round.  If this was Illinois, I would say it is about right for Easter.  I remember at least one high school Easter where I had made a new dress to wear.  Light cotton and short.  Boy, it was cold as blazes out and of course I didn’t wear a coat as I wanted that pretty white dress with the sprigged violets to be seen.  The dumb things we do as kids.  lol

Tonight we look to have a freeze.  I’ve brought in my newest plants, but didn’t cover the azaleas as my neighbors have done to theirs.  I hope the lilac blossoms don’t get blasted.  I probably should have picked them all.   We’ll see what the morning brings.  Reminder of the stage the lilac is at in the picture below.

Hopefully I’ll still see this tomorrow.  I did gave one branch of lilac to a neighbor as an Easter gift.  They gave us stuffed cabbage rolls.  Those were good and now gone!

So what do we have to show for the day?  Well not much.  Husband needed to go to the ER to see about a cyst that had become really big and painful.  It’s been taken care of.   You know love is not all the fancy dinners and expensive gifts.  It is sitting in the ER with your spouse.  As a poster in a gym once read, “Getting old ain’t for sissies.”

Oklahoma teachers march for better conditions tomorrow.  They’ve been offered part of what they deserve in a pay raise, but nothing to help with the schools in terms of pay for the other school personnel, class sizes and such.  More power to them.  And to all the parents that are uncertain how to deal with have kids home…I kind of see your point, but you make it sound like you are declaring your teachers are your ‘babysitters’.  Many organizations are taking care of breakfasts and lunches for those that count on school for those services and others are providing places for students to stay if they have working parents.  I hope the communities realize by taking over these jobs that schools have come to be much more than institutions of learning.

To quote the Wicked Witch of the West, “What a world, what a world.”

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Teaching Old Dogs!

 

     

Okay!  You can teach an old dog new tricks.  I figured out how to get the photos upright!  

I hear the eye rolls out there, but I did get it…eventually.

And I did tell you I love flowers?  Right?

My brother Al had a saying, “If some is good, and more is better, then too much is just about right.”

I think I am only at ‘more’.  Never ‘too much’!   Hello, SPRING!

By the way, that is not the ‘old dog’ up there.  That is the teenager about to be legal drinking age dog, Apache, with her Easter bow tie, because every dog needs a bowtie.  Talking about eye rolls, I used to, eye roll that is, when I saw people walking dogs that were sporting cutesy bandanas and such.  Really????  Oops.  Can I just apologize to all of them now?  And yes, feel free to eye roll if you don’t have a pet you ‘dress up’.  Thought I left that back in grade school with dressing up my aunt’s and uncle’s cats on the farm, but I guess everything old is new again.

So can you name all the flowers?  I apologize that a couple of the blooms are a little small for identification.  There is one I’m pretty sure will be a puzzler.  The one that looks like an upside down tulip.  It is not a tulip.

Happy Spring everyone!

 

Birdland

[image error]With a huge oak tree and a gum in the back yard and black gum, holly and dogwood trees in the front yard there is plenty of cover for birds.  It is not for nothing that Tulsa is called an urban forest.

So this morning, the blackbirds were mobbing in the oak in the backyard.  I have a cat that does go out and she was out, but they weren’t concerned about her.  They were up in the oak ‘yelling’ at something.  The squirrel up there was unconcerned.  Their attention was on a round blob of feathers up higher.  I waited to see if it would fly away given the persistence with which the birds were harassing it, calling in re-enforcements.  I even sat down as I tried to rest my neck at the angle I needed to watch.  Nothing happening, except the blackbirds having a fit.

I finally went in and the noise suddenly stopped.  So I checked.  Yep, the ‘blob’ was gone.  Wish I had stayed a few minutes more to see what it was.  My guess is an owl, but it could have been a hawk of some type.  No pictures.

Now as I sit at my computer I can see to the feeder in the front yard.  The view keeps changing but it includes the yellow of a male goldfinch pulling seeds out of one feeder and a woodpecker upending himself to get at the suet feeder, followed by two cardinals, male and female, at the seeds.  Now a starling (one of my least favorite birds) at the suet.  The angle is a little hard on him, so he drops to the ground.  And repeat the cast of characters.

More often than I like a squirrel climbs the pole and helps themselves to bird feed.  I’m with my aunt on how I feel about squirrels…I don’t. The amusing thing is, in Europe and Japan a squirrel sighting is exciting news. Squirrels exist in both places, but they don’t ‘raid’ feeders as they do in the States and are extremely shy. You can have a flat tray bird feeder in Europe with no fear that it will be cleaned out ten minutes after you fill it. I don’t know what makes North American squirrels such brazen ‘tree rats’.

Watching a bird feeder is in the same category as watching a fish tank.  The list of characters doesn’t change much but is entertaining just the same.

Are you a birder?

 

Missed the First of Spring – Can I do an Eye Candy Friday?

Here we go again…can’t get the pictures upright!  But what you should be looking at are pictures of my convoluted/twisted Cherry tree.   I planted one like this outside the kitchen window of the townhouse I lived at in Wuerzburg, Germany.  Loved it and when we finally moved back to Tulsa, I knew I wanted one here too.  Thank goodness for Southwood Nursery for having one.  These are sorry pictures.  I’ll get better, I promise.

But the promise of spring is all around.

Boy, I love spring.    Every morning walk through the yard/garden is a voyage of discovery.  What is up now?  Can I recognize it?  What is blooming?

As usual the invigorating feel of things growing makes me a little crazy when it comes to buying plants.  And everything you buy has to go into the garden or pots.  Of course once everything is planted, you can buy more!   Is this the ‘Circle of Life’?  Not what they meant I guess, but it does seem to go that way for me.

So a few more violas went in out front, along with two dianthus.  Had to dig out some grass to make room, but that’s part of the plan too as it means less lawn.  Three more creeping phlox in another spot and then a good long soak with then sprinkler and now the soaker hose in the second spot.

Daffodils are going gangbusters.  I’ve picked off the deadheads of the first batches and the later ones are now full strength.  I like to have staggered flowerings, but I can’t really take credit for the timing on the various daffodils.  It even looks like a few of the tulips will rebloom.  I know that they are usually only good for a season or two, so when these keep coming back, I am happy.

While I don’t seem to be on a regularly scheduled blog update, I’ll try to send flowers your way.   Happy Spring!

Cinderella at the PAC Tulsa

Another outstanding performance by the Tulsa Ballet and Orchestra!  They performed Prokofiev’s Cinderella and it was magical.  Minori Sakita danced Cinderella and Cavan Conley was her Prince.  Comic relief was provided by Dallas Blagg and Alfonso Martin who played the two step-sisters to slapstick perfection.

Sometimes I wonder how a story as simple as Cinderella is going to be ‘dragged out’ to three acts, but all flowed and fitted together beautifully.  The orchestra makes you forget they are there as they support the dancing effortlessly.

It was a full house last night.  I don’t know if tickets are available for tonight or Sunday, but if you can go…go!

And better buy your tickets for the next season now.

Blog-Hop “Pick 4”

Well posts two days in a row?   The idea is to pick 4 from the list and write about how they affect you as a writer.

1. What are you working on right now?

2. How does it differ from other works in its genre?

3. What experiences have influenced you?

4. Why do you write what you do?

5. How does your writing process work?

6. What is the hardest part about writing?

7. What would you like to try as a writer that you haven’t yet?

8. Who are the authors you most admire?

9. What scares you

1.I am ‘cleaning up’/editing/publishing manuscripts from all the different years I’ve been writing.  So there is no one book I’m looking at in particular.  With self-publishing through the internet and Amazon, life is much different for a writer than when I started somewhere in the 1990’s.

3. I think I’ve always had daydreams, but when my mother started writing in the late 1980’s I figured, why not me too?  Living abroad for many years(30+) and experiencing various cultures day-to-day, not just on a fleeting trip, gave me ideas for places, characters and ways to build a culture/society different than the culture I grew up in.  “Travel is broadening.”

5. A lot of my time is spent ‘daydreaming’ about the story.  If it is in a historical context I will do research online and in hardcover books.  I like to have concrete facts for the period.  If it is a fantasy I may look at Pinterest and build a board of character traits and costumes.  (I also make a board for the historical fictions.) Then I think about it and try to carry the story along in my head from point A to the end.  I’ll do this multiple times.  When I have ‘downtime’ from what is going on around me, I’ll think of where I left off and continue the story mentally.  There are times I think I create some great dialogue, and others that dialogue gets lost, but something new comes along.  I feel that by ‘running’ it several times through my head, the most important elements of the story get stronger.  It works for me.

7. Not sure about this one.  I can answer about one book I did write that was different.  It was a historical fiction mystery in the first person where the protagonist was blind.  I really liked the challenge of finding senses other than sight to move the story along from her point of view.   The clues to what was happening were subtle but there, just not ‘in view’.  I might like to try that again, but it was specific to that character and story, so I think it would feel forced a second time.

Okay, so there are my choices and answers.   Hope your Ides of March went better than Julius Caesar’s.  “Et tu, Brutus?”

 

 

 

Happy 3.14 Day

Today, March 14th, it is everyone’s favorite number π.  Being a former math teacher today is up there with May 4th…you know StarWars fans, ‘May the Fourth Be With You’.  If you remember your geometry, π starts 3.1416….and goes on to infinity with no repeats.  I’ll be honest, I never remember the series beyond the five numbers I’ve listed, but I had a lot of students who could rattle off the series for ten plus numbers.  I suppose if you were aiming a rocket for Mars or another planet you might need a higher degree of precision, but for most of the Earth bound applications, 3.14 worked for me.

Mostly it is a day for π/pie jokes.  So Happy day!

 

Paperback Writer….

So now I apologize to the Beatles.  I hope I am a better writer than the one they sang about.

Both ‘Laurel’ and ‘Dream Warrior’ have paperback copies available at Amazon.  There are still the ebook versions also.

‘Laurel’ is a light romance set in 1830, London.  Nothing too deep and a happy ending.

‘Dream Warrior’ is fantasy set on a planet that I will refer to as Tienna’s World which future books will explain.

I did tell you in an earlier post that “I’ve got a million of them.”  Well not a million, but one book seemed to lead to another and some books seem to come earlier than the first books and some later.  Kind of like the real world, in Tienna’s World events are not quite as linear as we would like to believe; things branch and sprout in directions that were not anticipated by the first story.  You don’t have to read ‘Dream Warrior’ to keep up with future books, but it might help.  I’m still working out the ending of ‘Dream Weaver’ which is literally the sister book to ‘Dream Warrior’.  It was written second and after many years, I’ve still not completed it to my satisfaction.  I’ll be working on that omission this month.

 

‘Laurel’ is one of a handful of romance novels I have written.  They are not connected in anyway, except they are all romances and take place in London of a certain time period.  None of the characters in one book are found in another.  Of these, hopefully, ‘The Dark Queen’ and ‘Nightingale’ will be ready to publish soon.  ‘The Dark Queen’ is an attempt by me to write from the point of the protagonist who is blind.  It was a challenge to describe the action with senses other than sight, and it is darker in more than one sense of the word.  ‘Nightingale’ is the story of another young lady, like Laurel, determined to make her way in the world, but the reasons for her need to do so and her path are completely different from Laurel’s.  I’ll let you know when they both are available.

Thank you for taking time to see what is going on in my world.