Newsfeed recess

I've recently broken the seal and become friends on Facebook with a bunch of former students. The evolution from firm stand (Never! Students aren't friends; they aren't even adults!) to slippery slope (well...maybe just the seniors in high school) to landslide (what the heck) was surprisingly quick. I've heard I can put them all on a limited profile, which I probably will. But the truth is, there is nothing on my Facebook worth shielding from underage eyes. It is far more likely, in fact, that I am on their limited lists.

Very few of them have actually contacted me directly. Instead, we interact as people do in 2010, through status updates and posts. Having spent countless hours teaching them capitalization, spelling and subject/verb agreement, I had to get over the random loWerCase and UPPErcaSe and texting lingo that accompanies each tidbit of news. But someone else, I'm sure, has taught them code switching by now. I feel old when I have NO IDEA (not even a clue) what some of them are talking about. But it's been fun to be in touch.

Speaking of being touched, it is also interesting to see who has reached out. The last time I interacted with some of the faces that now smile out from profile pictures, I was instead on the receiving end of glares, teeth sucking, sulks, fits or, in one case, the stone-cold silent treatment. That all is forgiven is no surprise--anyone who works with kids knows how long I'll-never-ever-ever-get-over-this lasts (a few hours max) but it makes me smile to remember those moments from a nostalgic distance (as opposed to the emotional vortex of immediacy). It also makes hearing about their high score on Bubble Spinner or their need of a horse stable in Farmville extra cute.

So, the landslide has stopped somewhere around "never kids on the same campus" and here I will remain. It's that emotional vortex of daily personal interaction thing that definitely does not mesh with FB. Daily virtual interaction, however, works just fine.

Good ground

This week, my mom and I drove from San Francisco to Austin, through the Central Valley (California's backstage) and the stark pink and gold of the Mojave. We came into a town no one has ever heard of just as a massive, yellow moon was rising over three hills of wind farm. We slept in Barstow and spent the next day paralleling the classic Route 66 on the new I-40. Buttes, red-rock vistas, lightning strikes, monsoon-like storms, and then rainbows. Every mile was a delight, and I'm not just saying that. On the third day, we sped by fields of Texas soybeans, sorghum and sunflowers and into the rocky green of Hill Country. Austin spread out before us at sunset, hazy in the post-rain dusk and already feeling like home after just a few days on the road.

When I wasn't awed by the scenery or practically driving off the road at the sight of a double rainbow across the New Mexico desert, I was feeling ridiculously grateful to be behind the wheel of a U-Haul, heading toward this new beginning. As the miles ticked by, I felt as though I were figuratively scooping them up and tucking them away. Maybe in the truck, along with my guest futon (come visit!) and boxes of childhood mementos, books, dishes and clothes. Miles as breadcrumbs leading me to the next step, and I was glad to be experiencing every one of them. Flying over at 35,000 feet just wouldn't have been the same. That was how I dropped in on June 8, fresh from the desert and proceeded to live three weeks of summer school, still feeling halfway up in the air. This road trip grounded me, literally. As in: showed me the ground of where I had been all the way to where I was going. (One of the actual rainbows we saw on the road!)

Finding the right ground is important. I have two mentors who live in Martinsville, Maine (no, this is not the start of a limerick or a tongue twister). They used to live in suburban Detroit, and I went to their house every Thanksgiving during college. But then, one summer, they went to Maine and fell in love with the St. George Peninsula near Rockland. Every minute of the next few years was spent planning their move there. Once they arrived, they went about building a home, a business, a life. Now, it is hard to get them to leave the region. It is their soul home. (And lest you doubt, there's a link to their blog, Hedgerow Designs, on the right of this page! Their love for the place comes through in every word!)

This experience made a deep impression on me while it was unfolding in the late 90s. I was awed by the idea of a soul home, a place that feels like it's been waiting for you to arrive, a place you'd move heaven and earth to get to. In the back of my mind, as the years passed, I found myself hoping that I'd find my soul home one day. Maybe that's why I love to travel so much. In the back of my mind, I've been testing a lot of ground, hoping for that "click" that would tell me I was home.

Austin is a very good place to be. Maybe there wasn't a dramatic "click," but I have felt comfortable here from the start. And I feel even more attached after the miles I've traveled to get here, through the blooming fields and barren deserts, literal and figurative. There's a lot to be said for a U-Haul and the open road, and a place to come home to at the end of the ride.

Welcome to my train

I love a good metaphor, and figurative trains and train journeys are among my favorites. This is because I have always been awed by the power of trains, which, especially here in the United States, have that old industrial oomph of huge gears, screeching steel and rumbling engines. Like the forces that guide our lives, trains are hard to stop once they get going. They run on tracks that (with any luck!) lead to a place we want to go. They are expected to run on time. Yet, they are relatively easily derailed (sound familiar?) by things much, much smaller than they are, things that are often impossible to see from a distance. Getting a train going again once it has stopped takes much more time than keeping it humming along through regular maintenance, a lot of foresight and a steady hand at the throttle.

We are all engineers of the metaphorical trains in our lives. By writing this blog, I'm inviting you to jump on my train anytime you want. It runs on the tracks of my main passions: urban education, books, art, language, travel and crossing cultures. But who knows where the tracks may lead? As we know, the best-planned journeys often veer off into places we never expected to go.

Ultimately, writing this blog is about reaching out and making connections about topics that can run any solo mind into the nearest ravine. I'm excited to begin and invite you along because being on someone's train is very different than watching from the platform; it is an active rather than a passive act, a 'standing with' rather than a 'standing by.' I hope that if you are reading this, you will feel free to add to the conversation by commenting or emailing me.

After all, at least for these moments, we are all on the same train.