Obnoxious Kids

Obnoxious kids, their work they wish

They didn’t have to do.

They laugh, they play, they talk, they say

Things they think no one hears

To all avoid the tasks of school.

“What’s this?” they ask in ruse—

A covert query all designed

To make the teach a fool.

But ah, I know, no question’s dum

But some should ne’er be asked

Of me, for I have miles to go

Before they sleep, for I

Have promises to keep and that

Is really why I teach:

To read, to write, to speak English

With kids I guess I like.

132. The Dime

            Change isn’t worth much these days. You can no longer buy much for less than a dollar. With the current climate and the ensuing economic downturn that we are soon to experience from this Covid-19 scare that might turn around. But even if it doesn’t I think most Americans hang on to their change as much for the symbolic value as the buying power.

            There is no doubt that we love Abraham Lincoln and we cling to his copper presence in our pockets. We all know the phrase, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” while most of us probably don’t fully understand the significance beyond the possibility of it buying a little food, which was obviously true. Of course the other significance, and why it was used so often, was because it was the price of a call at the pay phone (yes, for those of us who remember, we might be thinking it was a quarter, but it never went that high back east where it stayed a dime for a long time). It was also the rallying cry behind the Roosevelt campaign to research and finally eradicate polio. It worked. There are very few people now who can even begin to understand the ravages that that disease wrought upon this nation and the world. There are probably no people left who can begin to understand the agony that that disease presented to our longest serving president, even though now they believe he may not have had polio at all. That is, in fact, why his image is stamped on the dime, that is why we have the March of Dimes. Certainly the campaign was largely because of his wife, Eleanor, and it could be easily debated whether perhaps her image should be stamped on the dime. There is no doubt a certain love and respect from her remains indelibly etched in his image from her complicated love for the man whose image IS stamped on our dime.

            After an afternoon run I was walking my cooldown and I saw Mr. Roosevelt’s image sparkling on the ground. Of course I’m old enough to understand the value of pocket change so I picked it up.  That little act got me ruminating on the significance of the dime, the effort that our nation gave in its darkest hour to combat an incomprehensible disease, that effort that we must now give to put a stop to another incomprehensible disease. I’m still carrying that dime in my pocket and I don’t think I’ll spend that one. I think I’ll hold on to it as my little Ebenezer of hope, my little symbol of pride, my little reason to remember that as the time comes I will be that brother to spare a dime. On second thought, pocket change still has great value.

131. A Cup of Tea

Note to reader: These numbered entries started based upon a TIME magazine article that took up 240 great things about America in 2016. Our country has been having its political struggles, so the magazine wanted to celebrate the good things about America. I took that as my cue to write my own 240 things I like about our country and being American. Here's the next in an installment of great things about our country:

            I’m a tea drinker. As an American coffee has typically been my morning drink but my trips to England taught me about the art of morning AND afternoon tea, so I grasped more firmly onto my love of tea. But here in the US if you want a good cup of tea you really need to make your own. I you’re out at a restaurant they bring you some tepid (never boiling) water and a tea bag that after putting in said tepid water will make you a slightly disgusting cup of dishwater dirtied by the tea bag. (If you want good tea and you’re out, some fast food restaurants actually give you boiling water so that is an option.) The other thing we tend to do in America is collect weeds and put them in little tea bags and call the nasty concoctions “herbal teas.” Try that in some tepid water for a complete turn off and then you might really feel you can relate to the reasoning behind the Boston Tea Party. Certainly, you will understand why hot tea is not an American thing. But maybe that’s just me.

            This will, therefore, come as a surprise to you, as it does me, that I am a huge fan of a tea company in Boulder, Colorado known as the Celestial Seasonings Tea Company. They make all kinds of these herbal teas that I’m not a fan of, but they also do plain old black tea and coffees and plenty of good things as well. Taking the tour of the facility in Boulder where they actually know how to steep a cup of tea even heartened me to a few herbal tea flavors. I was impressed by how they came up with enough concoctions to please even an herbal skeptic like myself.

            I don’t have an answer to everyone’s herbal thoughts, but I would suggest you give some a try. You can even drink it with a splash of milk. They have enough flavors that you can sample a few and decide which ones you might actually buy. And, of course, this is America, so you can drink any of those teas—green, black, red, white, or herbal—iced if you aren’t one for a nice hot cup of tea on a frosty afternoon. And, of course, many of the Celestial Seasoning teas are completely caffeine free so you can completely escape any addiction traps.

            So, if you ever get to Boulder when all these weird quarantines end, take a tour of the Celestial Seasonings Tea Company and you’ll see that Americans can get a good cup of tea. And Americans really can gather a bunch of edible herbs and find a way to steep them into something worth drinking. American ingenuity can work even with tea. Yet again something to be thankful for. And if you can’t get anywhere but the grocery store, try a new type of tea to keep these companies in business during these trying times.

130. American Plant Life

            Since I’ve started talking about the diversity found in our country and all the wildlife, I have to continue with plants. I am a plant man so I can only scratch the surface of all the variety of plants we have that amaze me in the US. Trees amaze me here. In Idaho and Maine the white pine is king, towering above us and holding the mysteries and histories of the main masts of hundreds of ships. In New England and the northeast, the sugar maple gave the early colonists their sweet sustenance with its syrup. And when you get in the southeastern states the palmettos make their distinguishing mark. Colorado and the Rocky Mountain west shimmer with the blue spruce. California boasts the largest trees on the continent with the sequoias and redwoods. The whole west is covered in ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. And if I want to mention big old trees I’d be completely remiss if I didn’t mention the western red cedar. And Nevada has the oldest trees in the world! The bristlecone pine. The south has all of those giant oaks. I am certainly enamored of trees.

            But there are plenty of other plants that are part of the American consciousness. I can’t forget huckleberry or blueberry or raspberry or strawberry or blackberry or cranberry—just berries. And we all know that the whole country isn’t forested so let’s not forget sage brush and bunchgrass and bluegrass. There are zillions of grasses.

            Plants aren’t specific just to land either. Marsh plants are everywhere in the country. In the Northwest the Pacific abounds with Kelp forests. Of course, I’m a land lover from the interior so I can’t begin to go too deep into the sea. Let me come back ashore and tell you more of the prickly pear, the Joshua tree and the Saguaro cactus. How about chaparral? And what about Spanish moss dangling from those southern oaks? And mushrooms? We have morels, chanterelles, and cauliflowers in the woods and thousands of others that I don’t even know about.

            Oh, don’t think I’ve forgotten wildflowers—roses, honeysuckle, fireweed, paintbrush, bear grass, trillium… Wow! I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of the vast array of native plant life to our country that I love so much. Uncle Walt would be ashamed of my catalogue list being so short. Where’s the cottonwood, the black spruce of the taiga? I didn’t even mention Engelmann spruce… At any rate, take the time to get outside and do your own cataloguing. If you have to distance yourself from people then you should take a family member, a plant book, or printout from the internet and see what you learn about plants in your area. #optoutside and stay well.

129. American Wildlife

            Our country is pretty big and it covers a lot of territory from the arctic wilderness of Alaska to the subtropics of Florida, not to mention the tropical territories. Because of that we have a lot of different types of animals and they all have their own unique qualities. Orca whales are pretty amazing creatures and I feel quite fortunate to have witnessed them in the wild. I’ve seen them in pods in the inlets of Alaska and Puget Sound. I’ve also had the opportunity to snorkel and see sea turtles in the Pacific of Hawaii.

            Growing up in Idaho I have been exposed to Chinook and Sockeye salmon and their gradual depletion, a depletion which we, here in Idaho, hope to turn around. And when you think of salmon in Alaska you have to remember the Grizzly bear which feasts on those fish every summer. I know we have Grizzly here in Idaho, Washington, and Montana but I’ve only seen them in the wilds of Alaska in Denali National Park.

            Deer, elk, and coyotes are plentiful around here, though the reintroduction of the wolf into Idaho (and consequently the surrounding states) has taken somewhat of a toll on the local elk population. If I make my way east of the mountains into Montana I have seen herds of buffalo. In fact, they hunt them just north of Yellowstone, though I must confess I see little sport in that. One might as well go out in the pasture and shoot cattle. Of course, there are black bear and moose all throughout the northern Rockies and black bear are comfortable all over Appalachia. One can also find mountain lions, cougars, or panthers throughout the country in pockets here and there with names varying to fit the people of that region (but all three are the same thing).

            And when you move further south you get to see alligators, armadillos, and America’s marsupial, the opossum. In the southwest there is also that amazing little road runner. In Maine there is the Atlantic lobster. Don’t forget eagles. The American Bald Eagle has again become a more common bird to see, as has the wild turkey. I can take a run along the Palouse River or a drive around Lake Coeur d’Alene and see Bald Eagles and a drive almost anywhere in north Idaho will bring an encounter with turkeys. It encourages me to see how the endangered species act has not only protected those species but brought them back to thriving communities. I like knowing that just because we humans are getting thicker we can still help, instead of decimate, other species. I know I’ve only scratched the surface in wildlife in our country because there is so much diversity. There are zillions of unique animals and we are fortunate to live in a country with such a diversity of wildlife. It’s just one more thing to be thankful for in this country. In fact, this evening I’m going on a drive to see the elk grazing in the pastures just out of Harvard.

128. Veterans

            I am not a veteran. When I finished high school, I considered the military briefly but it made no sense to me because we were not involved in any conflicts, so I chose to go to college and become a teacher. I have no regrets in my choice. I love my students and they make me proud every day. (They also are able to embarrass me every day…) I am especially proud of those students who have chosen to serve our country through the military. I am also quite proud of my father and the many other family members I have who have served in the military.

            My dad was a paratrooper in the army during the 60’s and he was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina when I was a young child. That’s why I lived in North Carolina as a kid and why I so early on had a love for the English language and how varied it could be. My father’s dad, my grandpa, fought in World War I and was gassed. He fought emphysema his entire life from the war forward and it finally killed him, though I do think he also worked against his own health by smoking. (Who didn’t smoke?)

            Now over the past 35 years of my teaching career I have had several students join the military, some even choosing it as a lifelong career. They have protected our interests and our freedoms and they have promoted the American ideals. I’m not going to say that there haven’t been times when we, as a nation, have gotten that wrong sometimes. I also wish I could say I have never lost a student to military action, but I can’t. The most painful aspect of that loss is the fact that the young man I lost to war fought in an Allied cause serving Her Majesties’ Forces from the United Kingdom. His parents’ grief was intense and raw because they felt they had lost their son to an unnecessary American military conflict in Iraq. I share in that grief. But it does not lessen my pride for the American military men and women and our allies who have served for the promotion of liberty and justice.

            I don’t wish death on anyone, even those who would be considered enemies (least of all now during a pandemic) and I choose to promote liberty and justice and the American ideals through education and political action. But I am so very proud of those who choose through the military to support us in our quest to live free. I am so very proud of those who have died in service to that cause, especially my young friend and former student in England, Daniel Coffee. May he rest in peace.