SOL26: Walks of Shame

Today I am sharing small bits of life with the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life community.   

Long, long ago, they had a bit of give stretch in order to be close-fitting jeggings, in a pre-Covid style popular before some of us (me) put on a few. I have appreciated that stretch and have used every bit of it for a while now. But, the now overstretched dust rag hangs limply along the knees and sags mightily along the derriere. The zipper is stuck, so I just pull them up and down and hope.  It was time.

I could no longer read the brand and your guess of the size is as good as mine. I think they came from Marshalls, so that is where I began the hunt. I was feeling pretty confident as I have been eating clean and exercising vigorously and I filled my cart with 6 pairs in various sizes and hews and levels of waist-band give, but clearly jeggings are no more. 

That first pair was so loose, I was dancing in the booth and singing the praises of exercise, The second pair, same size, did not clear my knees. The third pair would have been perfect if I was in the circus. After 6 failures, I did the walk of shame back to the racks and tried again. 

One pair was clearly designed, and not marked, for pre-pubescent girls. Two, maybe three pairs were great except the zippers and modesty aspect. I was pretty discouraged, but walked in shame once more and found just 2 more pairs, hoping but not hopeful, and clearly exhausted.  

I walked in shame, one more time, to my car in my paper-thin antiques wondering how anyone could order jeans that would fit on Amazon. My poor old jeans must have been even more traumatized about the fitting room adventure than I was as they gave up the fight right in the parking lot! 

I wrapped my sweatshirt around my waist and headed home hoping the neighbors would see me as I did the walk of shame into the house.  

Verse Love 26: Day 27: Remember Your Purpose

Today's Verse Love Host, Dave Wooley, asks us to think about the points of distraction that you encounter or different ways that you present yourself to the world (teacher voice, text voice, bill collector voice…). My first thought today went to my own multiple, intersecting identities which is a stretch from Dave's prompt but how I really see myself these days as apart-time professor, sporratic  aquacise teacher, and grandma-on-call with a focus on enjoying this chapter of life.

Let's get started, answers to your questions

            Let's warm up, reach and pull, right, left

                    Let's get started, I have so much planned

                            Let's hit the costume exhibit first,

You must document all sessions with your student

            Kick like you mean it, wake up those muscles

                    Games, art,  snacks, where should we start?

                            That would look great on me!

Audio is fine, no face front videos, will spot listen

            Tuck your abs so tight so you can feel them cry

                    Mac and cheese is not just for lunch!

                            I would love PJs in that fabric!

Mini-lessons are just that, 5 minutes is a long time to focus!

            Five more moguls on each side, what a great job!

                    I have not won a Uno in a year, it's just luck?

                            Did you really see that exhibit last year?

Provide options for support and choices for response, 

            Head to the deep, bicycle, cross country, you choose

                    I think these new stencils will work with these crayons,

                            I'd love to really visit Egypt!

Remember the purpose of what you are doing    

            Remember to breathe and sing along, too.

                    There is no wrong with art, did you hear of Picasso?

                            I feel so fortunate to have this place so close!

Verse 26: Day 26: Minnewaska

Today's Verse Love Host, Clayton (Boxer) Moon, asks us to consider home. It’s where we’re from, where we belong. He asks us to show this favorite place and then, use line breaks and to create a poem. After a nomadic life, I did live in a home on top of a mountain where my children grew up and there were happy times; yet, the when I go back there now, painful memories overpower any sense of home. 

Yet, there is a place of sanctuary where I have always felt secure and as if I belong. As I look back now, I am not sure how I braved those hikes with little children and their their mountain bikes, but we talked about the very real dangers that come with very magical memories. Perhaps I really do have my roots in Minnewaska, now a state park in NY.

That first hairpin turn out of New Paltz 

A clue of the breathtaking wonder ahead,

The road weaves, clouds envelope you,

Before you set foot or brave mountain

Bikes towards High Peters Kill 

In search of Castle Point, slowing for

Deer, strange tracks, left over ice, 

Dangling markers, higher and higher, 

Switchback where rocks dangle, respecting

That view stretching to the skies where

Prayers are a hop, skip, jump away.

Before descending, respectfully, 

Searching for Awosting Falls in the

Distance before skinny dipping, perhaps,

In frigid Lake Awosting or head to

Gertrude's Nose or Millbrook Mountain

Breathing deeply, making memories, 

Respecting the power of that glacier 

To leave a path to heaven. 

Verse Love 26: Day 25 A Mow Without A Blow!

 Today's Verse Love Host, Ashey Valencia-PateI, invites us to write about a topic you feel you need to speak about. Slam poems often include a performance piece so focus on rich language, emotions, mood and a call to action. My mind was literally exploding with topics I feel very strongly about including the widespread deceptions and blatant lies we are supposed to accept as normal I could also write about the  need to include not just phonics but also to embrace writing time in our elementary classrooms or my concern that fresh fruits and vegetables will soon be the privy of only the upper class. Perhaps it is because they are disturbing the peace even as it rains this afternoon, but I am writing about the incredibly annoying scourge of suburbia in America that has evaded quieter electric versions as well as my hope to return to yards with a more natural, whatever that might be, feel.

They emerge from their burrows, like bears,

On the first of spring, when the earth is still resting

Birds are beginning to plan returns, windows still shut,

To blow everything, spring clean-up they bellow

With 100 decibels of ear-shattering noise blasting 

Sounds of spring, they sing, assured each and every

Week, even when the dry earth screams for water, they will

Return and blow, everything, weekly maintenance they

Bellow through open and shut tight windows 

A noise that can spread like wildfires to 90 homes causing

Permanent hearing loss, while stirring up asthma triggers

Mold, dust, as well as causing serious air pollution with 

Benzene, formaldehyde, with the additional blow of a 

Surcharge for higher gas prices for a suburban standard

Clean, manicured, lawn at any price they bellow even when

I asked about a mow without a blow, this season!

Verse Love 26: Day 24: Lost

Today's Verse Love Host, Scott McCloskey, asks us to think about things that you’ve “lost,”  like that daylight savings time hour that is not saved in spite of our requests! It many be comic or serious or seriocomic or anything “under the sun.”  I have my share of comedic losses like the key chain that did not make it back into my bag from an airport and yet did make it back a year later and all I can think is they somehow searched my library card number, but I will never know!  I'll save that for another time as this poem on loss is April's forever story. 

The usual greeting was met with the tears lurking

Millimeters from the surface as "should be 26," and 

"I don't know why I am so sad" burbled and 

Long repressed miscarriages, moves, hopes, 

Fueled grief, decades old, in one listening

Whose lost child "was just 19," causing her

Eyes to well with the tears of understanding while

I remembered the searing pain of telling my 

Parents of a loss that surpassed pain, as well as

The life-changing call about a beloved grandchild, 

That early morning message about an adored niece, 

That tainted the twinkling tree light, and

That sunny morning destroyed by learning of

Her treasured child, still finding his way are

Moments where you remember nothing but

Their deflected pain that may eased, perhaps, 

If only a wee bit, in remembering.

Verse Love 26 Day 23 Consider Peaceful Coexistence

Today's Verse Love Host, Denise Krebs, asks us to choose a poem and write the first word of each line in a column down the side of your page. Then, write a free verse poem letting the other poet’s words carry you. I am choosing words from a poem I found inspiring in the April 2026 Poetry, won't you celebrate with me, by Lucille Clifton. I am writing my poem as a sort of sequel to Denise's brave and inspiring poem this morning, The Day After We Bombed Iran.

it's time to consider peaceful coexistence

won't you pen a missive, buzz an official, badger a congressperson
what about taking on this cause using your skills, gifts towards
a world where peaceful coexistence is considered a goal? where we are not

born and bred to fight first and settle when

both sides run out of ammunition, or when 

what seemed like a good idea no longer fits,

i will accept strength as deterrent for enemies and disease, yet

here, now, we could end entire civilizations as clearly as 

starshine could provide guidance for enemies to do the same.

my hope rests in our diverse people, brave new leaders, spokespeople,

with history, science, three equal branches of government framing

something based on realities rather than blusters and deceptions

and nurtured, slowly, back to peaceful coexistence in a diverse world. 

Verse Love 26 Day 22 Earth Day

Today's Host at Verse Love is Margaret Simon whose poems about nature have long started my days. She asks us to choose an animal you would like to write about. Find a sample of their sound and write a poem that uses onomatopoeia in a creative way.

It was a dark and dreary morning, but I snuck outside for a bit of springtime and coffee on the porch anyway. I was mesmerized by the questions posed by my Great Horned Owl as if he knew this was Earth Day!

Whoo, whoo?

Is caring for these magnificent old trees I love?

Is watching what landscapers put on the lawns?

Whoo, whoo?

Really needs those massive SUVs and pick-ups to get to work?

Really must water their lawns when it is going to rain?

Whoo, whoo?

Ran left that light on all night long wasting electricity?

Ran their car for 5 minutes before driving off to work?

Whoo, whoo?

Was riding that new electric bike to school yesterday?

Was looking for drought and deer resistant plantings?

Whoo, whoo?

Remembers the potential of wind power to save our planet?

Remembers the value of mass transit, electric vehicles, composting?

Whoo, whoo? 

Is thinking about the future of our planet on this Earth Day?

Verse Love 26: Day 21: Deny

Today's Verse Love Host, Sharon Roy, is rereading War and Peace and writing a haiku for every chapter. This is incredible and I really look forward to her finished, published work. Today, she is asking us to take a favorite/valued text or image and rewrite it in a haiku. I have recently read incredible, motivating books like Theo of Golden and others that leave me shaking my head with questions and contradictions, like Hillbilly Elegy. 

“I don't know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.” J.D Vance (James Bowman)

You made it to the

Inner circle access where 

Every decision

Could be questioned, why?

Yet you sell out beliefs for 

Power, prestige, wealth?

You question those who

Talk of peace, making a world

Safer, better, more peaceful.

Deny roots, the gift

Education, prejudice, 

Hopelessness, create 

Incongruity

Abandonment, falsehoods,

Inconsistency

Why can't we learn that 

People will lie, deceive for

Moments of glory?

SOL26 April 21 Wacky Weather

I am writing with Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Community.  I do this every week as a reminder to remember the small moments of this life.  My landscaper is coming today and he says he can plant as long as it is above freezing? This is his only day to plant in my area until June. So, yesterday,

Wearing winter wear, I wandered

Around agreeable arborvitae,

Jumped over just-right junipers, 

Hitched-close to handsome hydrangea, 

Stood next to superb spirea

Wondered if they 

Would be worth wrecking my back, 

Would weather wayward watering,

Would welcome weary ones,

After wacky weather?

 

Verse Love 26: Day 20: Research in Context

Today's Verse Love Host, Corinne is focused on the ways research is "voiced" in schools. I was absolutely thrilled to read this invitation to think and write about a topic, near and dear to my heart. I am an advocate for best practices grounded in research and have been concerned about a reduced focus on writing in elementary schools. I am using recent research from Gary Troia, Michigan State, who considered how teachers varied in teaching writing practices and comparing his findings to my practice in this community.

Whole-class instruction, individual practice (93%); small groups used very infrequently. 

Who comments on their ideas?

How do they talk about and get ideas?

When is there time to share in a small, trusted group? 

Where do struggling readers get their scaffolded support?

Focus on planning, drafting; teachers avoid conventions where they feel less competence. 

                    How do they learn to make their own work better?

                    Who holds them responsible for spelling, grammar?

                    Are we expecting spell check to be everyone’s editor?

Teachers with higher writing skills gave less consistent writing instruction.

    This does not make sense to me!

    Do they expect too much ?

    Do they need reminders to scaffold, support?

    Do the teachers write every day?

    Can we make them join this group?

            This may just be a reminder that taking research

            Out of context yields squirrelly answers!