Bette Davis said, "It is only work that truly satisfies."

To Be of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

by Marge Piercy

Black-figured neck amphora depicting Theseus killing the Minotaur, made in Athens about 550 BCE , teracotta

Sunday night yearning for poetry

Clown in the Moon

My tears are like the quiet drift

Of petals from some magic rose;

And all my grief flows from the rift

Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,

It would crumble;

It is so sad and beautiful,

So tremulously like a dream.

- Dylan Thomas

Beautiful but strangely disturbing painting

The Children of Edward Darley Boit by John Singer Sargent

Painted in 1882

The four Daughters of Edward Darley Boit are, from left to right: Mary Louisa (1874-1945, about 8 years old at the time), Flourennce (1868-1919, about 14 yrs old), Jane (1870-1955, about 12 yrs old), and Julia (1878-1969, about 4 yrs old).

I first saw this painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston eight years ago and it made a strong impression on me. I love the luminescent surfaces of the vases and the brooding shadows. I'm mystified by the strange isolation of the girls from one another and the sense of melancholy that pervades the painting. It's been in my mind today.

First Post

Somehow it feels necessary to say that this is the first post on this blog ...... the first post of many, perhaps. To set the record straight, this is not the first blog I have registered but I have previously not done anything more than just register. I'd like it to be different this time though. I want to use this as a forum for recording and sharing resources that I find and for engaging other people in dialogue and discussion about educational topics.

Here's an appropriate link to an interesting on-line magazine that I found via their interesting little youtube ad:

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/