hopes for college

 

Rachel ready to soar

Our granddaughter is 18 

and soon graduates from high school,

college calls to her, as does travel,

as do people not yet known to her

but to whom she is drawn,

as if she has a thirst

that only the social quenches, 

as if she feels an absence

that only new people can fill,

only new challenges,

only releasing herself to follow new paths,

other people are vital to her:

lifelong friends, comrades from other experiences,

larger wholes that call to her,

I ask: "What do you hope for in college?"

and she answers that she wants to grow:

to make leaps in perspective,

to actualize the possibilities

that can grow exponentially in college,

just where to go on this odyssey isn't clear to her,

the college is clear, just not a linear sequential path

of just where the next years will actually go--

in classes, with friends, with just how the future will call to her,

similar to how just being in nature can be of awe and wonder,

so, too, the journey before her feels full of wonder.

by Henry H. Walker

March 26, ‘23

a life of love

 

Jimmy Tipton

I keep seeing Jimmy's eyes:

alight with clarity,

while also with the underlying humor,

inherent in the situation,

his deadpan delivery of a story hilarious,

his mind quick and deep,

and only his heart more impressive than his mind,

enter into his world,

and he saw you, knew you, loved you,

in his last years he could not slow down,

until his body forced him to pause:

too many of us needed him,

and he lived to be there for us,

particularly for his family,

for whom he would do anything,

also for his clients, his fellow workers,

with whom his work found meaning,

my mother thought he was one 

of the funniest people she had ever met,

and he helped her with her will,

set up an enduring trust

to enable her wishes to live past her body,

we got to know each other in high school 

where we partnered in debate

and joyed in the power of our intellect and improvisation,

law called to him,

and he answered at Duke Law School,

and interning in Winston-Salem,

he returned to Knoxville,

he felt a rightness in his first law firm,

and built a rightness with his own firm that he loved deeply,

to know Jimmy was of grace, of laughter,

and a longing to have even more time with him,

Jimmy's roots stretch way back in East Tennessee history,

where his ancestor was a rival of John Sevier,

his ancestry early in the settlement of Cades Cove,

the Tipton-Oliver house still there,

the land grant still in his papers,

Summer Transparency applesauce is also an East Tennessee tradition,

in my family going back to Boyd's Creek near Sevierville,

a tart apple that demands excessive sugar

to allow its amazing flavor to do its work,

we always shared that applesauce we made with Jimmy,

and I am sad that he can no longer savor it,

that we can no longer tease each other,

that the light that flared bright in his eyes, 

in his jokes, in his smile,

in the clarity of truth he lived,

has left this world for a better one,

Jimmy lived his faith in how he "did unto others",

just as Jesus admonished all of us to do,

a Light has gone out, except in our memories,

and in how we can choose to live our own lives.

by Henry H. Walker

March 20, ‘23

of awe, of revelation, and of joy

 

Science Day '23

self-doubt and debilitating comparison to others

shouts at middle schoolers of the emptiness of the glass,

so we start off Science Day

with the power of a keynoter

who cited chapter and verse of the science,

a science that argues how to reorient perspective,

how to refill what can feel empty,

how to re-find the rightness that can permeate our world

if we but allow it, provide for it,

of the potential of science to save us from our mistakes,

most of the presentation stressed the reverence 

we can feel while on a walk in nature,

in the extraordinary beauty and truth the universe reveals,

through our new telescopes outside our atmosphere,

in the natural glories of sky and place,

and how a close-up look at a leaf of grass,

or the smallest of animal and bacteria, 

can shock us back into awe,

our students then branched out into workshops:

making a camera obscura, a rocket powered by water and air,

exploring how gravity pulls at differently weighted balls,

AI, DNA, the power of attitude and number,

what to know about drugs and how to know about water,

the miracle of plants "seeing,"

walking the solar system to scale,

how the visual can be used to speak clearly,

what fun and understanding can be revealed

by tricks in the kitchen,

half of the middle school shared 

individual experiments they had done:

asking a question of the universe,

positing a possible answer,

coming up with and conducting a procedure

to find possible answers to the question,

we finished the day with creative play: challenging advisee groups

to create with marshmallows, spaghetti, and imagination,

Science Day was of awe, of revelation, and of joy.

by Henry H. Walker

March 17, ‘23

achievement: academic, and social

 challenge, and current learning

what do we want from our students?

we want them to realize

that each can understand what's out there

and act successfully on the world,

and then we want each student

to joy in learning,

in the pushing of oneself

higher, deeper, fuller,

to take the risk,

to work harder and surer

than they readily know how,

if first they know deep down that success is possible for them,

then second they can do the work to change the world,

within our students this battle plays itself out,

yet this can seem to them

far less important than their social world,

where validation can be a friend who is there for them,

with that validation, maybe, 

they can believe in themselves enough

to allow the work to change the world,

and themselves, with their efforts.

by Henry H. Walker

March 3, ‘23

a bloodless hunt

 the elusive wolf

our human timetables cannot synchronize

with those of wild wolves,

we can study their patterns

and guess where they might be,

based on weather, on previous sightings, on our intuition,

if they den near a road, 

in summer we can more easily find them,

we have twice been able to find ourselves

where pups are, and thus their pack,

solicitous of the pups,

we hoped for late winter to allow us

to catch them in the hunt,

and in the feasting,

instead this year bitter cold and driving snow

subdued where they could be and what they could do,

we saw them exploring a high plateau,

just over the ridge from their favorite river valley,

and then a group ventured close 

to the Yellowstone River and Gardiner, MT,

the Lupen Valley Pack,

they followed the bison and the elk down here

where grasses were more readily available

than on the high plateau of Yellowstone,

we should be satisfied 

that more than enough other wild animals

were caught in the net of our searches:

bison, elk, pronghorn antelopes,

coyotes, moose, bighorn sheep, fox, birds,

and a landscape transformed by deep and blowing snow,

we were gifted with far more wonder

than we can imagine deserving,

and, still, I wish for more wolves, closer wolves,

I wish other humans did not demand

to hunt and kill these cousins,

for it is that predatory hunt 

that increases the distance between us and them,

and makes our bloodless hunt all the harder.

by Henry H. Walker

March 3, ‘23

laid low for awhile

 

the cold virus ups its game

this winter I was sailing along through the holidays,

blessed with energy, health, 

and the wonderful inertia and camaraderie

of plan after plan moving forward,

then a virus came into my head,

and inexorably enthralled more and more of my will and body,

it was as if my soul were disempowered,

the sails lost the wind,

my rudder lost its purchase,

my connections to thoughts, to others, to myself

all glitchy, so I had to reboot, and reboot, and reboot,

I withdrew and withdrew, into sleep,

even when I was finally getting better,

3 2 hour naps in one day seemed right, 

no Covid appeared, no flu, just a cold,

as if the cold viruses were threatened by 

Covid competition,

and showed they could lay one low,

and laughs at my hopes to get back

to laughing, to raging at the dying of the light.

by Henry H. Walker

February 8, ‘23

my absence from school

 

while the cat’s away

while I was sick, I knew the steps forward for my classes,

and I hoped they didn’t need me as shepherd

to help them stay true to the path,

giving in to lesser impulses can be so beguiling,

the computer screen can so easily be like a siren call,

most held to the line, not all,

I held to the line of working as hard as I could 

to refind the functional within me,

when I finally was in striking distance

 of being able to know myself and others,

I make it back in to school,

my sixth graders mostly fine, just needing attention to detail,

my 7th graders work mostly excellent 

though too many of the mice did play 

while the cat was away, 

my eighth graders all dutiful, 

and steadily moving as to history,

what I push for with them

is less anxiousness about how others see them.

by Henry H. Walker

February 2, ‘23