Five More Before Fifty

I started this series the other day, but work has been crazy busy, so I haven't even had the energy to write.  Sleeping in today gave me the boost I needed, so here are five more things to do before 50.

1.  I'd like to get involved and stay involved with some sort of community garden project. The yard at my duplex is not conducive to gardening, too much shade.  I, however, want to grow some of my own food as my own little gesture of telling Monsanto and factory farming to f-off. Plus, I might finally make some friends in Windsor. 

2. Before I turn 50, I am going to read some of my poems at an open mic poetry night.  I've already been on stage for the MOTH Story Slam.  This makes me a bit more nervous, but not paralyzed with fear. 

3. I've lost a bit of confidence in my writing abilities of late.  I can't bear to look at the novel I've written because it now sounds trite and trivial to me.  That said, it would be nice to find a little mojo and get back to writing and enter a contest - just to prove to myself that someone might like my work.

4.  An area in which I have never lost any confidence in the area of photography.  I'm no Dorothea Lange , but I have always been happy with my ability to compose a shot.  That said, I have never entered any of my work into a contest. It's time to change that.

5. Who wants to explore an abandoned building with me?  There's something enticing and inviting about a building that has been left to Mother Nature.  I understand the risks; they don't dampen my curiosity, though.

Thing 19

Last year, I asked our district tech department about podcasts. I had listened to a couple and thought that it would be cool and relevant if my students could create their own podcasts. I am sorry to say that I received several blank stares. I quietly excused myself, backed out of the room, and returned to my room - where I laid my head on my desk and silently wept for not having thrown caution to the wind and become a rock n'roll photographer, salary and sleep deprivation be damned.

For some reason, I was unable to watch either of the RESA podcasts on my laptop (told myself to watch them at the ex's later in the week), so I went directly to the third link.

The first podcast I watched was the Sesame Street on about language acquisition. I suppose because as the mom on a mildly autistic mom, repetitive language is a daily struggle. He has grown up with two teachers, so his receptive language is pretty impressive, but he struggles with his expressive language, though he has come a long way in the past year.

Additionally, a large number of my students were not born in this country and thus come from an English as Second Language background. Many of them do not speak English at home and, thanks to satellite television, only hear it at school. I've struggled for a few years with an effective way to handle vocabulary. I guess I just have to surround my high school students with vocabulary in the same manner I did my adopted-from-China-didn't-know-he-was autistic son. Don't talk down to them, be diligent about my word wall, and keep reading the research.

The second one I watched was for pure pleasure because I needed a Glenn Tilbrook fix. I can't really talk about it publicly, but I have secret plans to make him mine ;)

The final one I found was a series of four about the History of Photography. This is the great passion of my life and I'm always looking to know more about it. Of course, I was drawn in to it due to the iconic Dorothea Lange "Migrant Mother" photograph.

I still want my students to make a podcast and it would be great to find some podcasts about the craft of writing and maybe I can share those with my students. I'll save that search for thing 20.

Thing 7

As I stated in my post for Thing 6, I have had a Flickr account for several years. Photography is a passion and I have the cutest son in the world, thus I take more pictures than any human should.

I tagged a picture I took in London. It is of the wrong end of a telescope mounted on the hill of the Royal Observatory. All of my pictures are public, so feel free to browse through. They are in no way organized, but I plan on working on that, slowly but surely.

Would I use Flickr in my classroom? Maybe. Or perhaps I would create a Picasa account just for classroom use. I can see myself using it to prompt descriptive writing. Or, if I really had time, I would try to take pictures of outdoor advertising that uses literary techniques. That probably won't happen, but a girl can dream.

Thing 6

Okay - now we're talkin'! Photography has been my passion since I was a kid. I remember being eight years old and my parents gave me a a Kodak 110 camera. It was as simple as possible and looked like this



I cried. No, seriously, I cried. Just imagine how emotional I got when I got a Polaroid. Eventually, I learned to develop film and photos. I took pictures for my high school newspaper and even won an honorable mention award mention from Columbia University for a baseball picture I took.

I take a ton of pictures. I've had a Flickr account for a few years. As a matter of fact, I take so many pictures that I pay for the ability to upload an unlimited number of pictures and videos.

I've already uploaded one picture, but that wasn't from Flickr, it was from Google images. My next big European trip will be to Paris, so I searched Paris and found a gorgeous shot of the Louvre. What I didn't know was that Flickr would post it separate from my post. C'est la vie! Enjoy!

My first camera

The other day, I bought a kiddie digital camera (marketed by Crayola) for Andrew. I gave it to him today and he couldn't put it down. He took hundreds of poorly framed pictures. I felt overjoyed that he seemed to enjoy the camera as much as I had hoped. Watching him reminded me of my first camera.

I think I was either eight or ten years old. I know that the occasion was Christmas. The camera my family had been using had been two forms of Polaroids: the first had an accordion lens and the photographer had to actually pull the picture out of the camera and the newest was a fancy one where the camera spit the picture out the front. I adored taking pictures with the second one. Anyway, the last gift under the tree was for me. It was a flat, kind of slender box and I had no clue what it was. I opened it and found a Kodak 110 camera. I remember crying I was so happy. I hadn't asked for one, but I had dreamed of having my own camera. This started a life long love of photography. I went on to take pictures for both my high school and college newspapers. I once took pictures for a friend's wedding. I actually considered it as a career. But, as usual, self-doubt reared its ugly head and forced me to take the safe path.

Hmmm, maybe there's a lesson there.