A good album by Locksley

December 10 Album of the year. What's rocking your world?

Locksley, "Don't Make Me Wait."

It's a British Invasion revival, with joy and humor and a little sexual innuendo. They're not Brits, but they're doing the mid-60's excellently, while sounding modern most of the time (or like The Oneders/Wonders from "That Thing You Do" on one song). Marty heard them first and told Holly, who got a CD and put it in the car and moved away. I was used to hearing it every time I drove, and the other day Keith had left some crazy heavy-metal Viking music in there and I was disturbed so I turned on 1600 AM, the finest oldies station there's ever been in Albuquerque.

Here's my favorite Locksley song. Maybe. My favorite changes, but this one's cute. And of course the album version is all clean and clear, while this one's live, silly and imperfect.



Here's something more polished and edited to perfection. I guess it will be on their upcoming album. This is art.

Challenge(s)

December 9 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?

Something challenging...
Ignoring idiocy when I really wanted to address idiocy. That was a challenge. And several people wrote and said "You should address idiocy," and I was sorely tempted. Then a couple of others advised gently, "Ignore idiocy."

Was that "growth"? It was arresting the urges of immaturity, I suppose. It was overcoming my instinctive tendency to respond.

But that was a small part of a big year.

It was a challenge to carry on at the Good Vibrations Unschooling Conference even though sometimes I couldn't stand up and sometimes couldn't walk without being helped. I was afraid it was something really dangerous. I thought perhaps I had a blood clot or maybe two, and so I went to the emergency room after I was through speaking, helping with the talent show, and doing a workshop. And they did say I was unlikely to die anytime soon, and there wasn't a blood clot. Still I was in serious pain for several weeks. And gradually I got better and it was the past, history, a story, I survived.

I have a #3 challenge from last year and that was deciding what to put in The Big Book of Unschooling and what to leave out, because the webpage has over 700 pages, but I didn't want a 700 page book. Survived that one too!

I think at my age I'm on the downhill, growth-speaking, and so questions about edgy personal growth are a bit like those MySpace questionnaires that talk about whether someone has ever been kissed or had her own room. Still, the year and the decade are ending for old folks as well as the young, and so I will contribute my little stories too.

Peace, and whether I exist

This blog post says I claim to be David Bowie's first American fan. It sounds so dishonest, put that way. And yesterday I got e-mail from someone concerning the Big Book of Unschooling who said "This is the downside of internet - for all I know the Sandra Dodd could be a fake? "

I feel so solid, and I share so much of my life (and my saved letters) with the world that it stops me in my tracks for people to express that they doubt my veracity or my existence.

Back to that David Bowie letter, it's getting me a fair amount of mail, and I'll start keeping links to it on the page where I keep it, too, but haven't done that yet. The first "discovery" of it (though I've had in on my site for years) was this:

My real name is David Jones.

AmericanSongwriter.com made a mention: David Bowie has received a lot of fan mail, but he used to be a lot better about getting back. The blog Letters of Note, which featured the fun Joe Strummer missive on Bruce Springsteen, has posted a 20-year-old Bowie’s lengthy response to his first fan letter, from 14-year-old-Sandra Dodd. (Really, I was 14-year-old Sandra Adams. Keith was 11 year old Keith Dodd, in Alamogordo, and we were ten years from meeting.)



The farewell to 2009 item for today is Peace, and was worded this way:

December 8 Moment of peace. An hour or a day or a week of solitude. What was the quality of your breath? The state of your mind? How did you get there?

Why does "solitude" need to go with "peace"? But I do know how I got there.

Keith made a wooden gate from our back yard into the alley. The first photo of the wooden gate I found when I went to look was this:
The alley itself isn't "peaceful"; cars go too fast and there's no curb on our wall side. It's always a bit spooky to open the gate. But going out that gate aims me toward 180 degrees of useful places and things: A park. Kinko's. Kinko's dumpster, where I get good cardboard tubes, and boxes, and foam board to use for things. The flower shop where Holly used to work. Hollywood Video, where I can get a movie anytime. The Credit Union, right across Juan Tabo Blvd. A grocery store I like. And when I've gone to one of those places, and I come back, I touch that gate and it is home, and it is love, and it is where Keith lives and takes care of me, and where one or more of my kids might be. Our dog is usually waiting inside, knowing that if someone goes out there on foot they haven't gone far, and will be back soon.

When I saw Kirby in September even though it was a very busy several days, there were a few moments when I stood touching him or held his hand, or leaned on him, and felt how strong and grown he is. I smelled his hair and loved him, even though he's not a little boy anymore. I was at peace with my son. We got to that peaceful place by not screwing it up. We got there with love. (And I'm grateful to Flo Gascon's Good Vibrations Conference for literally getting us there, in the same place, in September 2009, and to the Sorooshian family for letting us stay at their house the night before and driving us to San Diego.)

The Joy of Blogs

December 7 Blog find of the year. That gem of a blog you can't believe you didn't know about until this year.

I've probably known about it more than a year, but my favorite blog that's not by a friend or another unschooler is Crookedbrains. It's heavy on art, furniture and humor. I like those things.

This one's good too: Street Use. It's about... it's about everyday adaptations of... stuff. Exotic cobbled together everyday things. I can't describe it.

---

Holly Dodd and Adam Daniel:

"The London Eye" and a 2009 memory

Sheesh. Lifted these photos from Holly's photobucket:



Holy cow. It better have been good.

And look, it's like being Peter Pan and Wendy, only with a seatbelt (I hope).



The tram to Sandia Crest is $17.50 for an adult. That's dollars, not GBP. £17.50 is almost $30. Holly's one lucky kid!!

December 6 Workshop or conference. Was there a conference or workshop you attended that was especially beneficial? Where was it? What did you learn?

The attending of a conference in London was beneficial to me in that I met people I wouldn't have met, learned some things about conference organizing (I didn't organize it, but learned some things from experience and observation), and met some people before and after. I got to stay with Schuyler and David Waynforth and their fun family, and that wouldn't have happened had it not been for the conference. David knew how to get around London, and we stayed in a funky hotel that once had been a house or flats, and was interestingly remodelled to have a loft filled with beds. Lots of experiences, because of a conference. I got to stay with three home-educating families and see things I had never seen before. Many good things have come of that and keep coming.

David Bowie, Craig Fergusson and a night out!

The other day some things happened. I'll tell them in the order they happened, not in the order I learned of them.

Holly, in the U.K., at James and Julie Daniel's house (more often thought of as "Adam's house") was looking through their CDs and discovered several David Bowie recordings she wanted to put on her iPod; planned to ask them later. Later that day she was in a tube station in London, with Julie and Adam, and saw a big poster of David Bowie, I forget for what cause. I woke up in New Mexico to find an e-mail entitled "**Press Request** David Bowie letter press images" from Dean Murray at Rex Features. He wanted to know about getting a picture (and more) of the letter David Bowie wrote me in 1967.

I had no idea Holly was off having a David Bowie day. She had no idea I was about to have one.

Cool, huh?

The David Bowie letter has been on my site for years. Someone found it and put it on a blog called "Letters of Note: Correspondence deserving of a wider audience". They said I was 14-year-old Sandra Dodd, but I was Sandra Adams in those days.

Here's a scan of one of the photostatic copies of photos he sent me. Photostat was a pre-xerox thing. They worked with heat, and rolls of paper, and they were never very clean and beautiful, but they were nice images. I don't know who the photographer was.

---

Just figured out I'm behind on these "good bye 2009" posts, an "assignment" I'm following.

What book - fiction or non - touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies? That was the theme yesterday, for the blog post challenge. I just finished American on Purpose, by Craig Fergusson, and really liked it. I had bought it for Holly, and when she came back from Oregon (where she received the gift) she left it with me. I've bought two copies for others since then and have intended to write something about it with a couple of quotes for the Always Learning list. I still hope to do that. Seeing this note might help others to remind me.


December 5 Night out. Did you have a night out with friends or a loved one that rocked your world? Who was there? What was the highlight of the night?

These questions are composed with much drama, or perhaps I'm too old to have my world rocked or my mind blown at this point, which is actually very comforting. I don't expect younger readers to understand that. Rock on, ya'll, but I'll tell you some calm stories over here in the corner.

Saturday, September 12, was the talent show evening of the Good Vibrations Unschooling Conference which Flo Gascon hosted in San Diego. Our family coordinate the talent show. I was keeping the cards, Holly was going back and forth and helping coordinate upcoming acts. Kirby did most of the announcing. Marty was helping with the sound board (photo at left; Marty in red, photo by Holly), and after a while when the guy figured he could handle it, he left him to it, so Marty learned some cool things that night. It was fun to see my kids do the kinds of things I always liked Keith for being able to do, and maybe that Keith liked in me, too. To do that as a family, all in one place, was memorable. "All in one place" becomes more rare. Kirby has been in Texas for over two years, and Holly's in England and will be in Quebec much of 2010. We'll only know in retrospect what was the last time we were all in once place. The next scheduled one is Sandra's Unschooling Symposium in Santa Fe, January 7-9, 2010. Come on down! (Maybe; see webpage for particulars, but there are condos still available at a stunningly low rate.)

Ice and some article I read

Ice crystals on the windshield of Michael's rental car (nice clean new glass), which will be more interesting to people in wet, warm places than those north of me. And then some other ice! :-)



Of 2009, for December 3: Article. What's an article that you read that blew you away? That you shared with all your friends. That you Delicious'd and reference throughout the year.

Nothing "blew me away," but I read in National Geographic about the Golden Quadrilateral in India, a highway connecting four cities in a big loop. It was interesting and I hadn't known it at all before. I mentioned it to a couple of people here at home. I talked with Ravi Bharadwaj a bit about it when he was here. The text of that article and a map.