Common Threads

National Celiac Disease Awareness Day is one example of a time to ask questions to fully understand another person’s experiences and needs. In Dictionary for a Better World, the Try it! encouragement today is to ask questions to start a conversation the next time we are curious about a person’s experience, and allow their comfort level to drive the conversation. I couldn’t agree more – it’s okay to ask questions to increase awareness.

The poetry form introduced on pages 74 and 75 for the word question is a villanelle, which is a 19-line poem with two rhymes throughout, made up of five tercets and a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and both repeat at the conclusion of the final quatrain. As I was writing this post, a redbird broke the silence with a tweet – and inspired this poem.

Heavenly Tweet

A red cardinal feeds at my window
Singing a song of praise
That’s my mother tweeting a heavenly hello
Fluffing crimson feathers, putting on a show
Reminding me to be kind in my ways,
This red cardinal feeding at my window

Everything I do, and everywhere I go
Honoring her legacy in all my days
That’s my mother tweeting a heavenly hello

She checks in from above on her daughter below
As I make way through the maze
This red cardinal feeding at my window

She shows up to say I’m still with you, you know
Yes, I’m right here beside you always
That’s my mother tweeting a heavenly hello

She brings me such joy, her halo aglow
I smile through my tear-blurry gaze
A red cardinal feeds at my window
That’s my mother tweeting a heavenly hello

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

Today we celebrate National Just One Human Family Day, a day of belonging. I’m thankful for my earthly family, but also grateful for my heavenly family awaiting my arrival someday. I’m glad to know that I belong in the kingdom. I think of my mother’s entry into Heaven today as I think of belonging.

The form of poetry introduced in Dictionary for a Better World on page 12 is a pantoum, a poem that is a series of quatrains where the second and fourth line of each stanza repeating in the next. I remember being introduced to this form by Anna J. Roseboro years ago when she encouraged us to write a pantoum about a memorable event in our lives. I decided to cut my lines, shortening each to the end, as breaths running out, to parallel the dying breaths of my mother as my brother and I chose her final resting place at Christ Church Cemetery on St. Simons Island, Georgia.

Appointment

Racing home for your last breath
Choosing your burial plot at Christ Church Cemetery
Dodging traffic on Frederica Road
Sprinting to your bedside, car still running

Choosing your burial plot
Deciding – historic section or new?
Sprinting to your bedside
Expecting an angel to fly

Deciding – which section?
Asking for a sign the choice was right
Expecting an angel
Rejoicing your suffering was over

Asking for a sign
Dodging traffic
Rejoicing
Racing home

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

On National Patriot Day and the National Day of Service and Remembrance, hope is seen through the actions of others. In a world so full of uncertainty and disappointment, those who serve and sacrifice are the bright lights. I remember Mr. Rogers in his neighborhood saying that when it’s scary, we should look for the helpers. He was right.

Today’s poetry form is a nonet, a poem that has nine lines and begins with one or nine syllables and works its way down or up, each line having that many syllables. Here is a nonet I wrote back in January – from nine syllables to one.

Schnoodle Winner

smart schnoodle finds all the puzzle treats

he doesn’t share with his brothers

slides the knob, twists the cover

in just the right sequence

unlocking prizes

as Abba sings,

the winner

takes it

all

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

National Swap Ideas Day is a day to be open to new ideas. It’s important to remember that openness is a step toward discovery – that we may embrace or accept some ideas, but reject those that may be harmful or dangerous. I remember coming back to school after a long summer when our Deputy Superintendent stepped onto the stage with a picture book. It was Kobi Yamada’s What Do You Do With An Idea? What a fabulous book for this day! May we all swap ideas and settle on some new ones that lead down new paths!

I’m reading The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah right now, so my shadorma (page 68 of Dictionary for a Better World, today’s poetry form) is about this book. A shadorma is a poem written in six lines, with a 3-5-3-3-7-5 syllable line pattern.

westerners
during the Dust Bowl:
unopen
to migrants~
Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds
takes me down those roads

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

The Legend of the Teddy Bear is one of my favorite picture books to read to children. In the book, the history of how the Teddy Bear was named and the courage it took for President Theodore Roosevelt (Teddy) to face the ridicule of his hunting friends by not shooting a helpless bear is depicted through compelling words and illustrations. On National Teddy Bear Day, we celebrate Teddy Bears and the way one act of courage catapulted these classic stuffed animals to fame.

The poetry form featured in Dictionary for a Better World on pages 16 and 17 is a cinquain, which has two syllables in the first and fifth lines, four in the second, six in the third, and eight in the fourth. These are delightfully simple, yet powerful poems, as readers can see from the poem on page 16. I’m thinking back to the days when my grandson was in elementary school. Each month when he was in first, second, and third grade, I’d go in and read a story and take some kind of treat. The class called me The Reading Nana. Today’s poem is about a visit to his class to read The Legend of the Teddy Bear.

reading
to Aidan's class
a treasured gift of time
The Legend of the Teddy Bear
steals hearts

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

On National School Picture Day, we preserve the images of ourselves and allies that we continue to look back on throughout the coming years – especially those iconic senior class pictures that live on our bookshelves for decades. As I read through each section on pages 10-11 in Dictionary for a Better World, I’m not surprised to see that my One Little Word for the year appears in the poem, the quote, and the life connection shared by Charles. An ally listens and invests care and concern in others.

The quote by Sarah McBride on page 11 deeply resonates with me: The first thing we need allies to do is listen. Come to us with a willingness to grow and evolve. You’re going to make mistakes, and that’s fine, but be willing to listen and grow from those mistakes. I think that’s the most important trait an ally can have. – Sarah McBride

I look at pictures in my own yearbook and wonder – – if not for Facebook’s loose definition of “friend,” how many of my own high school friends would I have stayed in touch with for this many years? I particularly like the way that the authors use the word ally in place of friend – because social media has displaced the true meaning, and ally suggests a stronger investment in another person than today’s newfangled concept of friend does.

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

A heart full of gratitude is a soul full of hope. On National Grateful Patient Day, we can all think of moments and people for whom we are grateful.

Irene Latham’s connection to gratitude is heartwarming – her days of feeling homesick when staying with her grandparents were made brighter by trips to the library and her grandmother’s cornbread. As a child, she understood the feelings of gratitude for small gestures of comfort, but she didn’t know it as a “gratitude list” the way we might think of such things in our lives today.

In today’s Try It! section on page 43, readers are encouraged to make a gratitude list of their own. And so today, I’ll begin that list……

My Gratitude List

• I’m thankful to live in a country that allows me the freedom to worship and believe as I choose, because there are those around the globe who do not have that choice
• I’m grateful to live in the age of modern medicine, electricity, and indoor plumbing. Today’s simple bottle of penicillin would have saved the lives of countless people who didn’t have it and prevented heartbreak in mothers who saw their children die in a world without it.
• I’m thankful for a network of friends and family to love, who love me back. Knowing that we are here to support each other, to make fun memories and be there for each other is on a whole level of gratitude all its own.
• I’m grateful for the beauty of nature and the sense of adventure to get out and see the world and all that is there. I love to travel, to taste foods and experience culture of those in other places. We get one life to call our own, but isn’t it fascinating to walk a mile in the shoes of those from other places from time to time?
• I’m thankful for education to enrich life experiences – to see connections to history, to literature, to art and to science as I journey through the days.
• …….and I’m grateful that I know how to read and write. Being literate takes the work of teachers and the will to learn. My heart is filled as I watch students learn to read, and goes out to adults who never learned.
• What are you grateful for today?

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

On National Read a Book Day, we step into characters’ shoes and feel their emotions – joy, pain, loss, embarrassment, betrayal, grief, wonder, success, defeat, and so much more. What better way to develop empathy (page 28, Dictionary for a Better World) than by reading a book, learning lessons we don’t have to learn the hard way – or couldn’t learn as easily because we didn’t live that part of history?

I’m reading The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, and the empathy I feel for Elsa Wolcott runs deep – I sense that she is much like a Cinderella character with two very attractive sisters, a young woman who feels like the Ugly Duckling because even her own parents have written her off. It’s a page-turner for me – – I can’t wait to see what happens next!

As those around us continue relentlessly to challenge books and ban the precious words and valuable experiences of others, I pray we have an awakening across our great nation of the roles that characters play for our children through books, in showing and shaping and shielding and sharing life’s lessons. The truth is that stories and books do have the power to change us – for the better. I regret that so many are on a book witch-hunt, raising issues about lines taken out of context before reading the book for its overall message. I hope that in the coming days, all of this turmoil leads us to a new place of embracing the books that may be the only friends that some children have.

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

National Cheese Pizza Day is a great day to remember that quite often, a thing in its simplest, most humble form is at its pinnacle – because it’s as real as it gets. In Dictionary for a Better World, the word I’m meditating on throughout the day is humility.

One of the things I love most about the book journey is the way the illustrator sends me on a discovery of thought on each page. I hadn’t noticed at first, but the word humility on pages 48 & 49 is in all-caps, each letter dressed a lot like Joseph in a coat of many colors – except one lower-case i, wearing a modest white robe, standing in the middle of its letter friends. The letter i is modeling what it means to show humility – right along with the lines of the triolet, it is not seeking praise or trying to be noticed or shouting look at me!

Cheers to the illustrator, Mehrdokht Amini, for her always-amazing illustrations throughout the book!

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.

It’s National Wildlife Day – a day full of wonder about the creatures around us! As I continue along the journey of visiting each of the words in Dictionary for a Better World, I am blessed that my day began on the shore of Lake Juliette in middle Georgia. While walking my dogs, I saw a heron flying through the early morning mist, gliding low over the surface of the water, a fish in its grasp.

That sight took me back to the feelings of wonder and awe I felt recently while visiting Alaska and admiring the wildlife there. Bald eagles swooped down to catch fish and soared overhead in abundance as we walked through Ketchikan. Whales put on shows all along the inside passage from Seattle to Juneau, and harbor seals basked on the rocks. Seals napped on icebergs with their young as we watched in wonder, whispering our tamed excitement so that we didn’t scare them away.

I’d purchased a zoom lens just before the trip so that I could capture the memories on camera and look back at them to keep me always, always excited about the next adventure. I’m sharing a flooding of wildlife photos today on the blog – it’s a day of wonder as I honor National Wildlife Day with old memories and look forward to new ones as well! Please share your photos – I love seeing wildlife photos almost as much as I enjoy taking them.

*During the months of August and September on days when I’m not participating in the Open Write at www.ethicalela.com, I will be writing in response to the pages of Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini. The poems, poetic forms, narratives, quotes, and calls to action to make one small difference might be just the medicine my world – or the whole world – needs. I’ll be inviting insights in the form of an immersion into a 10-minute-a-day book study (just long enough to read the page, reflect, and connect). If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can order one here on Amazon. I invite you to join me in making August and September a time of deep personal book friendship. A few teachers will be following the blog and engaging in classroom readings and responses to the text. So come along! Let’s turn the pages into intentionally crafting beautiful change together.