Alcatraz Update II

I swam at least a mile 5 times last week. Good! I am getting stronger.

I rented my wetsuit (with arms). Phew. I will not freeze to death.

I collected info from a guy at the Y who swam last year. His words: It is not the sharks, the cold or the currents that get there. That provides all the drama. It is the fact that right when you are about to jump off the ferry a huge tanker honks its horn and the whole race has to stop so all 500 participants do not get run over. Egads. I did not even think to be scared of tankers!!!

Comments from Jonathan's relatives. His aunt. A dull stare. No comment. Just incredulity. His father. It's good that she takes care of herself (like this is an elaborate form of aerobics)

Some Writer's Inspiration...

excerpted from the bottom of a review in this week's New York Times Review of Books (found and read aloud to me by Jonathan):

"This collection is a wonderful reminder of that good writing is not about knowing words, grammar or Faulkner, but having that rare ability to tell the truth, an ability that education and sophistication often serve to conceal."

Ice Cream

This is so sad.

I cannot believe parents would go after ice-cream vendors. Isn't the lesson of life to be able to move through the world and know that you do not get every single thing that crosses your path every time you want it? To learn self-control. To see that just because something wonderful is there does not mean you get it automatically?

Isn't the burden on us as parents to teach our children that they cannot always have everything?

But sometimes they can, and then it is even better!

Charters to Watch

Check out thisarticle in today's LA Times about Birmingham High School's conversion to a Charter. This great story highlights the challenges of switching to charter status, and all the forces at work. This is a school to watch, a pioneer and a microcosm for the kind of experiments we will see in upcoming years.

Our school (Larchmont Charter West Hollywood) will share a campus with Rosewood Elementary (LAUSD) this year. But I wonder, in the future, will more charter schools merge with existing LAUSD schools in an effort to regain more control, escape the endless red tape of LAUSD, and retain control over their own funds in a school district where funding increasingly falls short of what parents even need to operate the school? Is it fair that parents raise more and more money at public schools, and yet their campus does not have complete decision making power about how that money is used?

I will be watching...

Do you think there will be a revolution?

A Story In Pictures, Part III

On a long deserted beach with no footprints we find patterns in the kelp



A giant dragon with wings and a cape, made out of driftwood



All our secrets on this stretch of beautiful, deserted beach at the end of the world



JOY!

A Story In Pictures, Part II

We walk silently through a grove of wind-bent pines



Down a path of woodchips



Into the world beyond...

A Story In Pictures, Part I

The second week we were at Stinson lifeguards spotted a 10-foot great white shark right off shore and shut down the whole beach. (Stinson is within miles of a marine sanctuary off the Farallon Islands, which is considered the world's largest breeding ground for great whites in the world). As a result we were forced to search for new adventures. Friends told us to head out past Bolinas to a sign that read Commonweal 451 and hike down the road to the sea. There, they said, we would find magic. They handed us a carefully annotated hand-drawm map, and the next morning we set off into the fog.

First the deer appeared.



Then we found a little house.



Full of offerings to people they beloved and dead, but not forgotten--poems, notes, folded pictures. Seashells, seaweed, pastel patterns on the walls.



If I were a painter, this would be my picture.