World Beginnings

  One of my favorite activities in the school year was Week Without Walls, WWW. This was a time for students to learn and experience beyond the classroom. Teachers were in charge of planning the trip and there was a learning focus, to most of them. One that will stay with me forever, not my trip, was building bathrooms in Bali. We tend to think of Bali as an exotic vacation but there is extreme poverty off of the glitzy tourist paths and the students came back changed forever. It is important to point out that these students are extremely privileged, living in a rarified world of drivers, maids, cooks and gardeners. They’ve never cleaned anything in their lives.  Unsurprising, to those who know me, I always focussed on local animal shelters. My last year in Beirut our project was to build cat shelters for a woman who was feeding and caring for about thirty cats in a vacant lot across from her house. Students raised money through bake sales to buy all of the supplies, Then alon...

Sara Teasdale wrote There Will Come Soft Rains after the horror of WW1,   depicting the power of Mother Nature to regenerate after war’s destruction. In 1950, Ray Bradbury took the title and wrote a science fiction short story describing the destruction of a self-functioning house as it slowly breaks down after a strong wind blows a tree branch into the kitchen. Bradbury’s choice of the kitchen for the start of the destruction of the house is important. This room has traditionally been the symbol of family life…the hearth and the home. Love for the soul and food for the body. But the mother was replaced by automatic coffee makers and toasters. An automated voice droned out birthdays and the weather. The imagery of a busy family, dashing madly out of the door to make more money, to buy more things is painfully sad. What is our response after a disaster? Often it is one of defiance “We will rebuild bigger and better” with more gadgets to make our lives simp...