Slice of Life – Page 2 – A(nother) Year of Reading

NCAA Bracket

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

I prefer March Book Madness to March Madness but I do enjoy filling out brackets to see how I do. I know pretty much nothing about college basketball although I have had years where I watch neary every game in the tournament and those years, I do get to know a lot about teams, players, coaches, etc.

My husband takes the NCAA bracket choices VERY seriously. Data, Numbers, Decisions. etc. It might be his favorite time of year.

I fill out the bracket because it makes watching the games far more fun. And I’m not competitive so I could care less if I win and if I discover I love a team that is winning with some upsets, I would rather they win than get more points on my own bracket. But I have won once or twice(much to everyone’s surpise–especially my own!)

I like to have fun with it. And I did have a little fun with filling them out this year. So, for non-sports fans, I thought I’d share some new things I am trying this year. I filled out 4 brackets. 2 for a charity I care about and 2 with groups of people I know. For the last 2, I decided I needed to have some fun, so I tried 2 things. I filled out Round 1 games of the one bracket by comparing mascots. It took a little more time than I thought, looking up each mascot and choosing the one I liked best. It was kind of fun getting to learn about some of the more unique mascots (as well as some that need a redo..).

For my last bracket, for Round 1 games, I picked the team that had the most letters in common with my first name. When there was a tie, I just picked based on the order of the letters, etc. You’ll not be surprised to know that in that bracket, I have Florida for the win.

Feel free to use any of my strategies for your own bracket (you have until noon today I think). I have no expectation of winning but having the brackets does make watching the tournament a bit more fun. I enjoy the games and the upsets and the stories of the players etc. And this year, these were some fun ways to go about the brackets even though my husband (who takes this very seriously) was not as amused as I was.

Slice of Life: Praise Song to Early Spring

I’m listening to Margaret Renkl read her book, THE COMFORT OF CROWS: A BACKYARD YEAR. Some days it’s the only thing that keeps my head from exploding.

Every couple of essays, she tucks in a praise song. Now it’s my turn. Here’s my Praise Song to Early Spring.

I live in one of the top 10 gloomiest cities in the country. When the skies are clear, and the blue makes me just want to drink up every drop of it, going for a walk is the best therapy I could wish for.

The trees are bursting with the same joy I feel. They are sure of what they need to do, and they are going about their work without an ounce of self-consciousness. Why on earth should we NOT just fling our reds and yellows toward that juicy blue sky with everything we’ve got?

Early spring gives away glimpses of secret lives if you’re paying close attention. Like Margaret says,

To pay close attention to the natural world is to exist in medias res. Life is an unfolding that responds to the cues of seasonal change, but for our purposes it is also suspended in an everlasting present. We can see some of the creatures we share our world with, or at least some evidence of their nearness, but we cannot know the full arc of their story. Every encounter in the outdoors is an episode with a cliffhanger ending.

The quote above is as true about the humans with whom we share our world as it is about our more-than-human neighbors. There’s a cemetery at the far end of our street, and it’s a quiet place to walk, say names, wonder at dates, and give thanks for life — all of it, surging so gloriously outside of us in early spring, and surging inside of us for as long as we’re given. Spring reminds me to not waste a single moment of this gift.

Slice of Life-Not a Crafter

I am not a crafter. But I do like to craft. I have never found anything that I like to craft enough to keep at it or to get much better at it. Sure, a little crochet and a little weaving for a bit but nothing long term.

I’ve been trying to pay attention to times in the day where I feel calm and relaxed. I read a post the other day on paying attention to when in the day there is delight. And oddly enough, I noticed this feeling the other day when I was finishing up a craft project my daughter was working on.

In our new business, there is some prep into set up each week. We like to put out new materials, tools and props for children who come to our space. My wonderful, artistic daughter offered to make a few things that we need for some upcoming events. I watched for a while but couldn’t do much to contribute. However, I was able to help by putting the top coat on all of the wood pieces she painted. And while I was doing this, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the process. It was a clear coat so not much to it but I enjoyed the process.

I notice this often as I prep things for children (like collage paper that needed cut this week) or as I bake cookies (which I don’t do often enough).

I’ve learned and I am always reminded (as I was a few times this week) that I don’t have to be a crafter in order to create and enjoy the creative process. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll stick to something but for now I enjoy these small projects.

Slice of Life: It’s Time

I glanced at the clock on my way down to the basement.

8:11

The message couldn’t have been clearer: the Universe was validating my decision to donate my classroom poetry collection.

It’s not a small thing to let those books go. They represent a key element of my identity as a teacher. A key element of my identity, period. But this is my fourth year of retirement, and because I retired as an online teacher, it’s been five years since children held those books in their hands every week on Poetry Friday. Five years since children chose a poem by themselves or with a partner, practiced the poem, and read it aloud to the class. It’s time for these books to be back in the hands of children. They’re not doing any good on a shelf in the basement.

As I pulled books down off the shelves to box up, I had to remove lots of sticky notes that had been left behind to mark favorite poems, chosen poems, instructions on how the poem would be performed. I remembered all of the timid voices that grew confident over the course of the year. I remembered strong readers generously coaching less able readers. I remembered the whole class supporting special needs students who could only manage a few words at a time but who got the same enthusiastic finger snaps for their effort. I remembered the looks on the faces of children who found poems that spoke deeply to their cultural or linguistic identity — Black kids finding Langston Hughes, Spanish speakers finding poems in two languages, sports kids finding soccer, basketball, and football poems, sassy kids finding sassy poems, nature kids finding nature poems. I remembered the quiet new kid who knocked us all off our feet with his bold and funny performance on his first Friday in the class. He showed us more about who he really was in those few minutes than he had all the rest of the days he’d spent in the classroom with us. He was well and truly a part of our community after that day. I remembered so many moments in the second half of the year when a student would ask to perform a poem they themselves had written. Yes, yes, YES!

Half a shelf of books remain with me: the first copy of a book eventually replaced three times because of its popularity (we loved calling out, “Who has A BAD CASE OF THE GIGGLES??”), books by poets who are personal friends, books that have poems that still speak to me as an adult reader/poet.

There are seven boxes of poetry books ready to go to the school library where the bulk of the rest of my classroom collection of books now lives — a library that was a desert when my friend began working there, but through which she has transformed the entire school. My poetry books will go to her library and to the classroom libraries throughout her school where they will be read and loved once again.

Slice of Life: Wordle-ing

I used to start each Wordle game with the same word (adieu) to check for vowels. I also used to care deeply about my streak. Dialing back the time I spend on my phone, mostly thanks to the hellscape known as the news, has cured me of the need to Wordle every single day.

I’ve also learned from Molly the joy of starting every day with a different word, a set-the-tone word, or a hopeful word, or a just plain random word. Last Friday, I opened the blind on the east window in my office, the one to the right of my desk, and was greeted with yet another gorgeous sunrise.

First try: OPENS, and I get the P yellow and the E green. Hmm…let’s try P as the first letter and a blend…PL would work. Then the E, and let’s check another vowel…PLEA…can’t be please, that’s too long. How about PLEAD?

Whelp, the P is correct as the first letter, and I still have E in the middle spot. What other vowels could I use? PIE…what starts with PIE? I know the Wordle puzzle makers often like to try to trick us with two of the same letter, so what starts with PIE and ends with E? PIECE?

YES! I got it in three. I don’t always write a Wordle poem, but if I solve it in three tries, a haiku is mandatory.

battered heart opens
pleads for a brief respite
piece of joy arrives

Slice of Life-Books that Stay with Me

It is very common for me to finish a book and then forget the details (and sometimes even the main plot) a few weeks after I’ve finished. I enjoy these books but nothing about them is powerful enough to stay with me. Then there are the books whose characters stay with me forever.

Lately, I find myself thinking back to a few picture books as I watch the news. Books that were so powerful, they have stuck with me for years. Sadly, I did not learn much history in school and did not love it as a young adult. But then as I collected books for my classroom library as an elementary teacher and school librarian, I learned so much from the picture books I read. It is interesting the ways picture books can build background knowledge, even at my age. I could learn just enough to learn what I didn’t know that I needed to learn and then I can move beyond that and dig deeper. Two picture books have been taking up lots of my thinking lately because they were powerful learning for me and they are very timeline today.

I Am an American: The Wong Kim Ark Story by Martha Brockenbrough and Grace Lin is a story about the Supreme Court case that solidified birthright citizenship. This decision has guaranteed birthright citizenship since 1898.

All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything by Annette Bay Pimentel tells the story of Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins and her participation in the Capital Crawl when she was eight years old. This event was a critical step toward the American with Disabilities Act. Keelan-Chaffins has spent her life advocating for disability rights.

The third book that has been popping into my thoughts more often than usual is The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs. It is not a picture book but it is one of the books that helped me understand so much history that I had not learned. I listened to the audio book and it was incredible. (I noticed that Anna Malaika Tubbs has a new book coming out in May–which I will sure preorder!)

So today, in the midst of all that is happening in our country, I am so grateful for these authors who write these important stories that have stuck with me over time. Each one helped me begin to understand history and how so many people have fought over centuries for things that we take for granted now.

Poetry Friday: Dilated

The email from The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) told me “Get Ready For National Poetry Month!”

They read my mind. I’ve been auditioning ideas for the past several days:

Revisit favorite poetry books from my classroom collection before I donate them? (No, I’d rather get the books in the hands of young readers BEFORE April begins.)

Wordle poems? (No, too unpredictable and often too goofy or trivial.)

Response to the news? (No. Just…no. No matter how important it is to witness the horrors, this would be way too depressing.)

Nature poems inspired by Mary Oliver’s “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”? (That I could do.)

Devote the month to a form? (I’ve done haiku, cheritas, and golden shovels. This is a definite possibility. Maybe acrostics. Then I could respond to the news, AND “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.” with or without a nature theme. Let’s give it a try…)

Yesterday, I had my yearly eye checkup, complete with the near-blindness of the drops that dilate your pupils.

DILATED

Devil’s in the details.
Ideally, anyway. But
Leave it to the Big Picture
Archetype to force us to
Try to see everything all at once
Even when we hardly
Dare to open our eyes.

(c) Mary Lee Hahn, 2025 draft

Janice has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Salt City Verse.

Getting More Involved

I committed to a bit more involvement in local, state and national issues this year. It is so overwhelming–so many things I care about that I feel I should get involved in. So, I tried to narrow things down and one area I want to focus my work in is women’s issues. So, this week, I attended an event by the Matriots of Ohio. The website describes this group as “a nonprofit, values-based organization dedicated to advancing women’s equal participation in all aspects of political life.” The event was part of a speaker series and the topic of this panel was “Her Money Talks”.

It was interesting content and I learned a lot. But I also realized that being part of things in person also matters. You meet people, and even if it’s for a minute, it’s worthwhile.

I read Sharon Brous’s The Amen Effect last year (highly recommend) and she talks about the importance of showing up for people. I have been thinking about that a lot. Who do I show up for? What causes do I show up for? What organizations do I support by showing up.

Part of being more involved for me is to educate myself, support organizations and people I care about and do things in community. I want to show up more for community organizations that I align with. This panel was educational and I also got to meet a few local people because the setting was set up for that to happen. It was a good way to spend the first hour or two of my morning. I will try to be intentional to showing up, not just for people but for issues and organizations I care about.

Slice of Life: Memories of My Parents

As I get ready to cook dinner, I chuckle to myself remembering what a struggle it was for mom to come up with meal ideas. We were absolutely no help when she asked what she should cook. The irony is that mom was a foodie. She loved the trips to Denver with her friends to go out to eat and see a show. She was always up for trying new foods, and she instilled the spirit of adventurous eating in my brother and me. We ate lima beans and Brussels sprouts, mangos and fresh coconut, and the best homemade Roquefort salad dressing I’ve ever had. Recipes from my childhood remain in rotation with new favorites: broccoli cheese soup (with bacon), cheesy beans and rice, chicken and wild rice, Lubbers Lounge LuLu, chili bean tostadas, and hamburger cobbler, to name a few. Thanks to mom, I never struggle to know what to cook for dinner.

Mom was a collector. She especially loved miniatures and antique glassware. But she also loved Boyd Bears, Hallmark ornaments, and apparently, scissors. I have her pinking shears and fabric shears, two smaller pairs of sewing scissors, the shears she used to cut hair, several pairs of our childhood scissors, multiple embroidery scissors, various manicure scissors including our baby fingernail scissors, and, naturally, a miniature pair of scissors.

Mom was an avid reader. She and a friend would go to the library sale every year and she’d come home with multiple grocery sacks full of books. She had a clever system for making sure she didn’t accidentally re-buy a book she’d already read. Inside the back cover of the myriad paperback mysteries she read, she’d pencil her initials. Then, when the sacks of library sale books had all been read, they were re-donated to the library. At the library sale, the back cover of each book was checked before the book was added to the sack of purchases.

Mom was an amazing seamstress, a devoted volunteer (Cub Scouts, swim meets, Bible School, reading buddy), and a creative gardener (she grew asparagus and tried her hand at breeding iris).

Most of all, mom was a great mom. She worked selflessly to make sure we had more and better than she did growing up. She died on March 11, 2017, just a few months before her 90th birthday.

Dad died on March 12, 1994. I still wonder if mom held on trying to make it to March 12, as if there were a special portal on that day that would take her straight to dad. She spent the final 23 years of her life without him. He was only 67 when he died and I had just started to get to know him adult-to-adult. As I now approach the age he was when he died (mom was the same age), I have a much greater empathy for her pain and her long years of loneliness.

My primary childhood memory of dad is that he was always working. He was the parts manager of the John Deere implement store and the needs of the local farmers, especially at harvest times, kept him behind the parts counter for long hours. I remember visiting him at work during Girl Scout cookie sales season and how special it was that he took time away from the parts counter to escort me to the “foreign” world of the tractor mechanics to sell my cookies.

When he wasn’t at work, dad was working in the yard. He was proud of the lawn and the trees he managed to grow in the arid high plains. When we wasn’t working in the yard, he was reading the paper, Popular Mechanics, or Smithsonian Magazine. While mom was the actively involved parent, dad was the rock of quiet strength.

There are more memories of each of them, of course. So many more. This slice barely skims the surface. If I could give them a message as I pause on March 11th and 12th, it would be a message of gratitude for my life, and to let them know that they remain an integral part of who I am and who I continue to become.

A Little Tattoo

I turned 60 last year and I have never been anti-tattoo but I’ve never had an idea for a tattoo that I liked well enough to do it. But with the state of the world as it is and my need to remind myself of my grounding, I got my first little tattoo this week.

Testa Tosta–a name I was called often by my grandfather and my father. For as long as I can remember. Testa Tosta is Calabrese (Italian from Calabria) term for “hard head” but I checked it out and there is some depth to it. Someone who sticks to what they believe, etc. I don’t remember Testa Tosta being in any way a negative word–it was just a statement, about who I was, said with love (and maybe a bit of frustration now and then:-).

So I got a very small tattoo on my arm. It reminds me of a lot–my dad, my grandfather, my Italian immigrant roots, that I can be a person who stands up for things and stays true to them and that stubbornness can be an asset when used right. I need this reminder these days when I miss all of the family members who have died over the decade, when immigrants are being treated horribly, when there is so much to fight for.

So, here it is:-)