I Learn By Going

The Twenty Percent

About 20 percent of America's children live in poverty.

-Census Bureau via seattle pi

Precious And Unique

My Valentine

Just The Two Of Us

Early Experiences

Benefits of high quality child care persist 30 years later

"Adults who participated in a high quality early childhood education program in the 1970s are still benefitting from their early experiences in a variety of ways, according to a new study."

Full Article

Always Remember

Bunk Bed

Imogen to Me:

"I want a bunk bed so that I can sleep on the top and you can sleep on the bottom."

A New Day

When I told Imogen it was bedtime last night she said, "But I'm not even tired a inch! I'm ready for a new day. I'm ready to go to a fair or something."

Big Feelings

‘D’ is for Divorce: Sesame Street Tackles Another Touchy Topic

Richard Termine

The Miracle

Over The Cliff

Poor Women and Children Faced With Fiscal Threat

Diaperman

Thanksgiving

The Kids' Table

The Same Boat

Poverty Isn't Just a Single-Parents' Problem

Don't Patch Anything

Advice to Myself

by Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic—decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in through the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

"Advice to Myself" by Louise Erdrich from Original Fire. © Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.
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