Indeed, it was hot. Indeed there was more water percolating up from our own skin than flowing past in the Delaware River beyond. But for three hours yesterday afternoon, at the gorgeous historic Biddle estate, Andalusia, I had the great pleasure of working with the young environmentalists and active citizens of the Fairmount Water Works' Project Flow as well as the teens of the Texas Aqua Squad.
Together we explored the grounds, hunted for magic, metaphor, and simile, collected turkey feathers, studied a recreated grapery, discovered portraits of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte, searched for colors, listened to the 1886 words of Biddle's Aunt Kitty, pondered departures and returns, and interviewed one another.
To those who spoke as shadows, the color red, the everything of green, an albino snake, and so much more, to those who listened to their partners so well that they could tell their stories for them, to those who said I can't and then discovered I can, thank you.
Let's be weird together. Always.
(With thanks to Ellen Schultz and Connie Griffith Houchins.)
Last year I shared the extraordinary news that my river autobiography,
Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, was selected as a core element in a William Penn Foundation-funded program designed "to improve environmental education in Philadelphia middle schools."
The first sweep of teachers is now meeting every Saturday morning at the Water Works (pictured above) to build the sweeping curriculum that will change the way children learn in my city. This morning, I'm joining my dear friend
Adam Levine there on site to contribute to this program. Adam will be sharing his huge knowledge of secret city water ways and streams that have become sewers. I'll be teaching the teachers how to teach
Flow, giving them writing exercises and critiquing ideas.
And so into the frosty cold we go....
We reach a certain juncture in life and we realize that there's only so much time left to us now. We look back and ask, Have we done enough, loved enough, been enough? We look ahead and ask, What now?
I have always been real with myself; I have known the me within. What are my passions? Children and stories. What have I done? Raised a son I love more than any story can tell and written books that a handful of kind souls have read. I've been flat-out lucky to publish as many books as I have, given the sales that I've had. I've been unimaginably blessed to be given the chance to take my stories into classrooms and into the open hearts of the young. I learn from them, again and again. Frankly, I love them.
Two Tuesdays ago I taught at a multi-week camp for young scientists and activists at the Fairmount Water Works. The camp is called Project FLOW. My privilege is to get the children thinking and writing about the soul of the river, akin to my own work in
Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River (Temple University Press). Kevin Ferris and the
Inquirer team made the moment even brighter when agreeing to publish my photo essay (which includes the work of the young people) about that morning.
I'll provide the link when it goes live tomorrow. A few more photos from last week's post are
here.In the meantime, below, all of the children of the 2014 Project FLOW. Here they are listening to Sashoya read from her brilliant river creation myth.
Finally, thanks to my friend, the poet Kate Northrop, whose poem "Things Are Disappearing Here" got us all started.
and, always, there, I find what I didn't know I was searching for.
In the dark hours of this cloudy day, just ahead of the morning I will spend with the seventh graders of Project Flow at Philadelphia's Water Works, I turned to Kate Northrop, Stanley Kunitz, Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver, Ted Kooser, and Greg Djanikian and found:
* a title that leads me toward a game
* a scene that leads me toward a prompt
* a pair of divine metaphors
* a myth that will inspire myths
Whomever thinks poetry is superfluous has not spent a morning with children.
