Life is too damn busy these days. I dream of summer, of when I have time to think, to play, to surf the internet, to be something other than Mom-Teacher-Worker. C'est la vie.
Mr. 13, now 6 foot 2, shows off the homemade sourdough loaf he made by himself... including the sourdough starter! He decided he would like to be a professional chef. I approve.
Ramses can't wait for summer!
Mr. 11 has a grouchy moment in Santa Fe.
Mmmmm! Homemade Polish donuts!
Students watch for bison, pronghorn, and elk as we enter the ranch.
Why do I always end up with bus monitor detail?!
What a pretty boy!
I sneak outside the bus - to the screams of the students - to take this shot!
5000 acres of beauty in Mora County.
Time to hit the road once more.
Nine weeks left of school. Nine weeks, not counting next week's Spring Break. Hard to believe I've lasted nearly the entire academic year. I miss writing for fun, miss the pound of foot against pavement, miss time, time, time and space to think and wonder, miss the lack of strict schedule. I suppose I miss just about everything and everyone I know.
I will say this: I discovered I make a damn fine eighth grade teacher. And perhaps in saying this - 'cause these teenagers are crazy, man, crazy - I am saying I can pretty much do anything.
As part of our two-month winter study on Our Future Selves, my students each sent a letter to themselves twenty years in the future. You can do it, too!
What would you write to yourself?
After a week of sunny days in the 60's, Mother Nature dumped seven inches of snow on us this weekend.
Gramma's 'Tater and Cheese Perogies
2 cups flour
4 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup warm water (a little more, a little less)
5 potatoes
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup sauteed onion
Mix flour, oil, salt, and warm water with a fork to make a soft ball. Knead with your fingers to incorporate all the flour. Cover with plastic wrap or a lightly wet kitchen towel in a bowl and place in fridge to rest for about an hour. You can let them rest overnight, if you like, but I wouldn't let the dough rest longer than 12 hours.
Roll the dough out until it is roughly 1/8 of an inch thick, and cut in circles with cookie or biscuit cutter or - as most old-world grandmothers like mine did - with the open end of a drinking glass.
Boil the potatoes until soft, drain. Mash with the cheddar cheese and butter. Add the sauteed onions. I like to add sauteed mushrooms, too. Put about 1 and 2 teaspoons in rolled out dough and pinch edges well.
Boil a big pan of water. After it has reached a full rolling boil, add five perogies at a time, turn the heat down a little, and boil for 2 minutes. Perogies will float when they are ready! Remove with a slotted spoon, and place in a casserole dish with a little melted butter to keep them from sticking.
Serve as is, with sour cream or beet relish, or with a mushroom sauce. Yummy!
...with his non-verbal entry! ha ha ha ha ha ha!
I cut portholes into the gate between my house and garage so that Dante (left) and Sissy can keep an eye on the neighborhood.
Caption the dogs!
by Birdie Jaworski
Madeline (left) and Ani help stage the play.
UWC Theatre Instructor Tim Crofton handed me a wrapped fortune cookie last Saturday night. I pierced the cellophane with my teeth, let the cookie tumble into one hand. Sixty pairs of nervous eyes watched as I cracked the brittle treat and read the message out loud.
"Look at the moon. Show only your bright side to the world."
I handed the slip of paper to second-year UWC student and budding playwright Holly Jones. She raised her eyebrows above black rimmed glasses. The room echoed with the laughter of writers, directors, and actors as each fortune was read. In twenty-four hours eleven cookies would grow into eleven original written and staged performances. I would direct Jones' play exactly twenty-four hours after meeting her, twelve hours after being handed her brand-new script.
Some say God swept His hand through the void, creating firmament and fire. He had seven days, though, 168 leisurely hours to mold something from abject nothing. Crofton's writers had but twelve overnight hours and one cryptic Chinese phrase. Writers know what it is to gather expelled breath, knit it into a hope-spiked scarf. To do this under pressure, in twelve hours better spent in study, in dream, is quite another thing.
Cookie crumbs gathered under a growing disarray of gray folding chairs. A forgotten brown blazer rested on scarred wooden floorboards near the velvet curtains. Some playwrights retired to their dorm rooms. Some found cozy corners in the UWC campus and hunkered down with tall shot cans of Starbucks espresso. Jones made her way to familiar quarters, my fortune in the pocket of her plaid pajama pants. I watched her saunter out the double door, her blonde bob swinging in a declaration of bravado.
Twelve hours later, red-eyed writers filed into Kluge Auditorium. I sat with the two youngest actors in the event, my son Louis Jencka, 13, and his friend Max Robertson, 12. Jones arrived early. She handed me her script - two filled sides of one paper with the enigmatic title "Don't Look at My Finger; Look at the Moon."
I quickly read both sides of the page. I read it again, slowly, tried to make sense of the Kafka-esque storyline. A woman sits in confession with her priest. He is bug-like - literally bug-like - with antenna and a penchant for scurrying across the floor on all fours. The woman has an affair with her student. Her husband finds out, calls the police. A wandering angel in white steps onto stage, spouting words not-quite-from-the-bible. The woman is silenced by the Hand of God, the angel standing above her lifeless body. At least I thought that was the sequence of events. Told in flashback from the confessional, the dialogue only hinted at what transpired. I glanced at Jones, wondering what midnight terrors fell from our combined fortune. She smiled.
"Directors! Cast your plays!"
Crofton's voice boomed across the hall. More than once exhausted writer winced. I consulted with Jones, and cast UWC students Madeline Noteware as the fallen teacher, Eldar Undheim as the priest, Carlos Grandet as the student, Anirudh Baveja as the mysterious angel, and my own young, yet incredibly tall, son as the husband. We were off and running!
Two hours into rehearsal, my team realized that Jones' script was simply too unusual. Off came the priest's antennae. We erased his floor-scuttling behavior and replaced it with a traditional cleric's collar and the sign of the cross. Young Max Robertson passed us in the hall as we rummaged for props and costumes.
"I'm the Radiation Kid. I think it's a science fiction play. It's weird," he explained.
"You don't know weird." Louis muttered his response, his mind clearly challenged by our racy, avant-guard dialogue.
I struggled with the role of Director, with whether to play it serious or camp. Noteware pointed out that if we delivered our lines without irony, it would probably be funnier. She borrowed clothes to dress her part - a button-down sweater and a librarian's skirt. Baveja added one special low-tech effect - a flaming cross meant to represent the swift justice of the Lord.
During technical check, we watched the ten other five-minute plays. It became obvious that ours was the most unusual, the most controversial, the one play that might offend and bewilder the audience. We continued to rehearse, refining line and movement, until our play became a synchronized swim of confession and flashback.
"Maybe this isn't so bad," I giggled, after one particularly good run through the script. "At least our actors are pretty good."
"Mom, I still don't get the play." Louis raised eyebrows in perfect mimic of our playwright.
At 8 p.m. Sunday, exactly 24 hours after opening the cookies, the auditorium was packed with UWC students and a few people from outside campus. It felt like a week since we first met, since we first read Jones' play. We waited in the wings, pushed our makeshift confessional onto Stage Left when it was our turn. Undheim responded to his sinner with expertly acted furtive glances, with a quick thumb through his bible. Noteware fluttered mooning eyes at Grandet. The audience giggled. Baveja stood backstage with me, waiting his cue to take the floor with his winged majesty, his glowing cross. As he strode to Center Stage, one hand lifted in flaming splendor, the audience held a collective breath.
The curtain fell on our strange morality lesson. I wandered to the audience with my actors. I caught Jones' face in profile as I found my seat. She smiled, the same knowing look she gave me when I first read her work, and I realized she discovered what it meant to swipe one's hand through the void, to collect the light from the moon.
I wrote about the 24 Hour Playwriting Project at the United World College for the Las Vegas Optic last week. And last Saturday night found me, my son Louis, and his friend Max at Kluge Auditorium, participants in the crazy event. I was a Director, and Louis and Max were actors. I have a story coming out in today's Optic about my experience. Once it's in print, I'll post it here as well.
A couple photos from the event:
Max (left) and Louis practice their lines.
Charlotte (left), Ani, Eldar, and Madeline ponder the meaning of life... and Holly's script!
I'm setting up a little Secret Stories list. I have many stories to tell and some venting to do, but since some of my students and co-workers read my blog, I need to be... sneaky.
If you want "in," please send an email to secretbirdiestories@mac.com! I can't promise a regular - or even reasonably often - schedule, but it would be great to share some of my life with you once more. I set up a little listserve so that we could chat and post stories for each other. I haven't had time for reading my dear friends' blogs (I'm working nights as well as full-time at the school... and that's the subject of my first Secret Story...), and I thought this might be a nice way for each of us to keep in better touch with each other, maybe even for us to make some new friends and readers.
My new little writing project is called Twenty-Nine Plus One. I have 29 students in my class and a co-teacher. I've started writing one story for and about each one of them. I won't post these in public even though they are uncompromisingly kind, but I will share them with my Secret Stories list.
I'm finally putting together my sidebar list of Blog Buddies. Please be
patient while I get it together - I don't want to leave anyone out, so
if you feel I've left you out, give me a week or so, then drop me a HEY
YOU note!
One more thing: I have been the worst, and I mean WORST communicator
lately. It is mostly due to working two jobs, trying to be some kind of
mother to my boys, and finding virtually no time to hang out online. I
haven't answered emails, I haven't read anyone else's stuff. Sad but
true. If I can figure out a way to make an easier life, I will rectify
this. But for now, it is what it is. Please know that each of you
crosses my mind many times a week, and that I send you my best
silent wishes and all of my love.
