Does everyone’s calendar fill up with all that’s happening in the Spring? I can’t hope to do it all. But try to do some of them. At my work seniors are trying to finish up all of their credits to graduate. Others struggle to keep their minds on school while everything warms up. 
Earlier this month Barb Wornson (on the right), one of our most creative teachers, – what am I saying they are all immensely creative – and her projects and parenting classes our annual Empty Bowls soup dinner. This is a project Barb started several years ago which benefits the Community Actions efforts to fight hunger and poverty in our area. Barb and this year with the help of Mary Weaver, encourages local potters and local art classes to donate hand made bowls to the project. Then an evening is planned where the bowls are put on display and the public is encouraged to buy a ticket entitling them to a hand made bowl and a bowl of soup and fresh bread donated by Hogan Brothers. 
The soup this year was delicious. I sampled three different soups Minestrone, Cheese Tortellini, Chicken wild rice, there was also Tomato Bisque.
Students helping this year were Brandon Matson, Alvaro Herrera, Kayla Anderson in the kitchen, Danielle Gates and Felicia Neves at the ticket table and Cassie Larson and Cassie Sirek Handing out the hand made pottery. And excellent turnout netted about $800 dollars. Jim Blaha said a few words of appreciation to Barb for her efforts. Sadly Barb may not be teaching with us next year due to the budget cuts, but she insists no matter what she will keep the Empty Bowls tradition alive.
Students exhibit their art at NHS Ala Carte celebration of the arts. 
Here one of my students Megan Braun exhibits her work. The town is bustling with activities as well from banquets to arts auctions and plays like the Arts Guild production of Blithe Spirit to the Historical Society original production of This Town a new historical play 
by Teresa J. Oden, helping to celebrate Northfield’s 150 years. Soon to open will be the High School production of Tom Stoppard’s, “The Real Inspector Hound.”
It is also a time of cleaning up and getting yards ready. I helped with the Community Day of service with a crew of teachers cleaning up Oddfellows Park.
We are trying to finish our classes at the same time pack and get ready for the move of our program. Budget cuts have greatly down-sized our program and administrators have decided to uproot us from our home of the last five years to move to Longfellow school, being vacated by Kindergarten classes. “Don’t get too comfortable,” says head of student services, Gary Lewis, as we once again become as homeless as some of our students. I guess I better pare down my book collection so I can travel light.
Of course, April means the legislature is busy and getting busier. Some might say getting busy spinning their wheels. It seems there is agreement that the state needs more revenue but lots of disagreement about what kind, and how much. Things are very different this year in the House with such a narrow majority. It will be interesting to see what they can get done. This coming Thursday at 5pm an important Rally in Northfield gathers people in Bridge Square to urge for a 5% increase in education funding. Come listen to several offer words of encouragement, Mary Cecconi, Director of Parents United, Supt. Chris Richardson, Northfield Teacher of the Year, Earl Weinman, and student, Frank Flavell. Our two legislative members Cox and Neuville seem to have made it pretty clear they will not try to challenge the Governor on his no new taxes pledge.
As I ask myself the question, ‘What kind of future do we want for our state?’ the Governor’s stand rings in my ear as a paraphrase of Shelley’s Ozymandias, imagine a time in the future when all that remains are the stone arches of a casino or a baseball stadium and you might meet. . .
. . . a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk , a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell the at it’s a sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stampt on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockt them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Tim Pawlenty, Governor of things
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
We should be thinking about a future where we pass on to our children what they need and instruct them in the ways that will teach them to invest in their children. I believe we have been given a calling. To create a world that is humane and just. A world created for the betterment of people’s lives not for the advantage of a few.
As Hubert Humphrey said, “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”
We are called to help and protect them not throw them into uncertainty or despair by cutting the safety net they rely on. 30,000 lost their health insurance in the last biennium more will lose if the current proposal goes through. What our current leaders don’t seem to understand is that we made these investments not because we are generous but because we need to invest in each other. It makes good sense to do so. We are called to fund schools for the future, not cut them so only a few will have opportunities.
I have tried wherever I am to make that place more humane by my presence but I fail sometimes. Fail by losing touch with what it means to be humane and by retreating into myself succumbing to the fears that are ever present in life. That failure is painful, but I keep trying, hoping things can change. Hoping that by a smile, a handshake, a greeting, and an interested question I can communicate with the humanity in the other before me. But I know that some may see in my grin the teeth of some past wounding perpetrator. I try to assume that everyone’s motives are good. They probably are, but in the complex inter change of human perception and experience we so quickly find ourselves at cross-purposes.
My father is my constant example, he lived a short ‘rich’ life, and even though he was denied most of the things we are told we should most value. He had a different set of values. He had dreams and wanted to succeed in his career, but he accepted rejection and failure not as a definition of who he was but of a reminder of the darkness that is all around us and we cannot extinguish but only light up with the fire of our good will. My father took great delight in his family and even though his medical bills impoverished us, he provided for us and gave us that necessary light. He took great delight in his small self-created world by being a scoutmaster and passing his values to young men who flourished in the light of his attention and he sent them on their way like small hand made boats skimming across the surface of still water.
The story of our people is a story full of examples of unsung heroes who made a difference who invented something, who advanced the lives of their neighbors and received nothing for it not even the credit and they went on doing it. We will continue in this even if only the rich and powerful win the day. Each one of you in your own way contributes to the story of our future as it can be.
April is a time I find awakens all kinds of things in me not only clearing the tulip bulbs in the garden but also writing poetry – it’s national poetry month after all.
TRIMMING THE BLACKBERRY BUSHES
1
Trimming the blackberry bushes leaves my hands raw
As it means digging down under the roots of shoots that have
Leaped over the tulips to start a new colony pulling them up
I see I didn’t get to the asparagus patch hopelessly covered by briars
Then I think of the story my eighty-five year old friend wrote about
His efforts to save the dying Japanese tree in his front yard because
He couldn’t bear to destroy the nest wrens had built in it
This was a story that happened perhaps eight years earlier and
He decided he had to do his best to care for the tree feeding and pruning
He found it profound to consider this interaction with the natural world
How tenuous all our lives seem and how absurd an old man tending
An old tree so that wrens could be wrens and he could delight in it
He wondered how long it could go on who’d fall first and so he continues
His wife of sixty years now gone and so most of his capacity for joy gone
But he continues nurturing and the tree keeps blooming and the wren sings
2
Late in the day when the stream of sunlight is more vertical than horizontal
And the sky has that cast of Prussian blue I see an eagle soaring circling slowly
I call to him under my breath and watch as he finds me and circles overhead
It makes me think as I gather the dead cane from the phlox and the hyacinth
And poke in the black earth trying to reclaim the garden of what will keep me alive
Perhaps it is the tenderness others show me or the delight in music and friendship
Perhaps it is a walk along the riverside in the cool air and the warm sun
Perhaps it is a kiss a caress a word or two or the thought of something
I missed or did not say some gift not given or word of thanks held on to
Perhaps it is the moon wrapped in white mist that fills me with such longing
Alone in the dark wondering if I close my eyes will I wake in the morning
Or fall into the stream with Li Bai dreaming of a sad bliss that eludes me