The Cabin

A brief history.

When I was teaching 5th grade I helped my students through creative visualizations. I created for myself at that time a “forest near the ocean” where I could go when I needed to be peaceful.

When I studied Yoga Nidra maybe five years ago, part of the practice is to create a safe place where you can retreat if you get uncomfortable or fearful of what you are working on in the intention of your practice. After I “recreated” a forest to which to retreat and find peace, I realized that it was the same one I had used many years before. A private, safe haven in my mind.   

When America Martinez gave me her first reading, the Angels and Spirit Guides and Ancestors wanted her to describe for me where they were gathering on my behalf and invited me to sit with them. It was a beautiful forest with dappled shade, flowers growing, and a clearing where we could sit. I felt that it was the same forest that has continued in my life. 

“Your guides were in a forest. The scene that I got was that we were walking down a trail with them. High trees, tall trees. They came to an area of forest where there was a garden that had been created. There were some flowers and through the spaces between the trees there was some sun coming in. The garden was in full bloom.

“It was a sacred space within the forest with its tall trees which of course hold a higher wisdom. The trees accumulate this wisdom through time by watching all the things that take place around them. A forest is a sacred place not only because it is a place of nature but also a place of wisdom. Your guides asked me to detail this for you so that through the power of your imagination you could take yourself there and find yourself walking with them on the trail, and finding the garden.

“In the center of the garden was a space that was clear, earth and some grass, and in that space they sat in circle and they welcomed you to step into the circle too, invited you to sit with them, to breath with them, and to join them in this sacred place in your heart. To think of it as a sacred place in your heart, a temple to visit by way of your breath and to settle there into your heart. And to feel the healing, the nurturance, the breath, and the inspiration that nature brings to you.

America added that I could manipulate the forest in whatever way I might want to, like planting more flowers. So I brought back the ocean from my previously created visualization and put it a little distance away so I could hear the waves and walk over to the beach when I wanted. I also added a bench to sit on near the circle and a cabin across the way in which to get out of the rain or take a nap.

On one of my Yoga Nidra sessions, while in a deep meditation, I went into the cabin to look around and a shadow ran by my legs. I looked around and realized that the shadow was of Mariah, a dear cat who had died a while back. I was so happy to see her and I realized that  I could invite any departed soul back to visit with me including pets, relatives, friends, etc.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my current imagined forest retreat’s cabin, closely resembles the one that Alice used at Ragdale. Some twenty years before I won my two week residency in Creative Non-Fiction Writing by competitive application, I had visited Ragdale when Gregory was doing some pro-bono consulting on how to create a disability friendly space for them in order to be able to accommodate an artist who needed accessibility. While he was working with them, the then director suggested I walk around the grounds and that I could feel free to go into the cabin because Alice was not currently in residence.

It was a magical experience to be in her cabin, to explore respectfully, to sit quietly and think. 

I would love to have a photograph as a visual memory of that experience so I reached out to my now dear friend Susan Tillett who was Director of Ragdale (now retired) when I did my residency to see if she had any that I might have. She was not able to come up with one but I do have these of the exterior: One on a post card from a post card showing the1820s log cabin which at the 1933-34 Chicago Century of Progress was billed as “Abe Lincoln’s Indiana Home.” I will dig through my photo archives for a few other photos of the outside. In a future post I will try to "visually" paint a picture of what it looked and felt like.

Library Time

I do not have any neighborhood public library memories. In elementary school we got marched to the library one time a week for 30 minutes. We were able to look for new books and/or renew ones we already had. Then we had to sit in complete silence at one of the tables until our time was up.

As a teacher I was instrumental in changing this for my school and my students. Each class still got to visit the library for their 30 minutes a week but you could also go anytime your teacher allowed you to.

There were all kinds of other checks and balances. For example: You would take one of the "Library Passes" and then sign out of the room with your name and the time. You would sign back in when you returned.

Each classroom had only 5 "Anytime Passes" so the library would not be taken over by sudden visits. In additon to the pass, your teacher also had to sign a slip that you handed in to the librarian, explaining what you were there for; take or return a book, do some research, look at magazines.

At the end of the day the librarian sent a "List of Attendees" so that your teacher was sure you showed up at the library. You could only take out two books at one time and if you had too many overdue experiences you were reduced to one and then no books at a time.

Just as I was retiring from teaching, libraries were becoming "Learning Centers" and computers began to play an important role in education. The Learning Centers didn't work well and were more like Computer Classrooms that happened to be held in the library. So your class got to visit the library one time a week for 30 minutes to have computer lessons. You could also take out or return a book. Sometimes the old concepts just don't go away.

Wonder what school libraries are like now a days with so many computers, and so many students computer literate, and google and wikipedia, etc.

Back to School

The signs on the street lights let us drivers know that children are out and around again and headed back to school now that September has shown its fall-like head. I started teaching when I was twenty, taught for thirty years, and am now retired for fifteen. I guess that makes me old. 


From age five through fifty of my sixty five years, I lived by the seasons. In the beginning I was the student and then the teacher. With fall leaves, followed by trick or treat and turkeys, Hannukah and Christmas ornaments, winter snow flakes, Valentines Day hearts, St. Patrick's Day shamrocks, spring flowers, and finally goodbyes "It's been a great year" my yearly story was told.


My gayly decorated bulletin boards helped tell the school year story along with posting shared student writings, poetry, art work and other student projects scattered around the classroom. With the students, I yearned for winter break, spring break, and chased downhill towards summer vacation but also relished each day I spent in the classroom with my students.


When I look back at my teaching career I have many wonderful memories as well as memories of difficult times in the process. Being a teacher is no easy task when students matter the most but educational politics and parental opinions color a lot of what you must do.


I always held very high expectations for my students least they fall short of their abilities but was told that my expectations were too high. My curricular goals for my students were "Be yourself! Do the best you can do! Perfect doesn't exist! Sometimes less than great is OK. You decide! Don't give up!" among others. But my goals didn't always show up on the yearly achievement tests, the district curriculum ones did.


I think I was a success although a teacher never really gets much feedback on the completed product. Actually I would hope that my students, now grown adults possibly with families of their own, are still not complete as they continue to grow, always seeking to learn more and to experience life to its fullest. 


You know, come to think of it, I still live my life by the seasons. Fall mums decorate my balcony, Indian corn and gourds fill the baskets on the kitchen counter, trick or treat candy is still a weakness. I go all out for Hannukah and Christmas decorations and entertaining, enjoy hot chocolate and a long walk on the first snow fall of the season, enjoy sending flowers to the older women in my family for Valentine's Day, drink a pint of green beer in honor of Saint Patty, and bring in small pots of daffodils and tulips as soon as they show up at the grocery.


Even though I haven't been teaching for fifteen years now and consider myself retired, I still enjoy weekends and look forward to "summer vacation." Come September I worry a little about what my new class will be like, have work oppressive dreams, then wake up and remember that I can turn over and go back to sleep or get a cup of coffee and spend the morning reading. No back-to-school for me.


Once in a while I do get to see the product of my efforts in their grown form and they usually say something like, "I still write in my journal every day." or "I still look at the books we wrote and bound when we were in fifth grade." One student told me, "You are the only teacher that really understood me!" Nice part is students still matter, nicer yet politics do not interfere anymore.