Tag Archives: Slice of Life

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To Scone or Not to Scone

This is the first time I’ve managed to start writing an SOL post since school began. Where did all those good intentions go? Clearly they are not paving the path that I’m on, as the bumps and ruts remain numerous, requiring focus, swerves, and detours as I move along my way. Not to mention time to pull over and rest my eyes!

Last Friday we had our first Lattes and Lit meeting, which is our monthly before-school staff book buzz group. We come and share what we’ve been reading, swap books, and basically wallow in book talk and book love. It’s delightful! We started this a little over a year ago and it’s quickly become one of my favorite things. Usually I try to bake something to share and add to the festivities.

Last Thursday night though, I was in bed by 7 pm and asleep by 7:30. I hadn’t packed my lunch (always a night before in my life!) and I had even forgotten to put in my retainer. Exhausted doesn’t begin to describe it. Needless to say, I hadn’t baked anything. When I woke up around 4:15, I felt so much better. I knew I was already behind though–Friday’s planning had some large potholes in it, the group meets in my room at 8:00 which means my morning work time was truncated and I still had emails to respond to, lunch to pack and lots of other odds and ends to tend to. I got up and started the day.

At about 5:30 I came up for air. A sudden thought intruded. You know I could probably still make a batch of scones if I got moving. My mind hurried through the steps and the time involved. If I got the scones in the oven by 6, they’d be out by 6:15 or so and I could still head to work at 6:30. I debated with myself for a few moments. Did I want to rush? Did I want to make a mess and clean up? Did I really have the time?

Within moments, I had made my decision. I turned on the oven, grabbed flour, sugar, salt, butter, and baking soda and a mixture of baking cups. I dug out the chocolate chips, the dried cherries and the turbinado sugar. I lost myself in a whirl of measuring, chopping, mixing, etc. I was in baking flow, and it felt so good! Within 20 minutes or so, my scones were in the oven, the smell of baking was in the air, and I was smiling.

Hmmmm….could I make another batch? I mean people like having choices… I calculated. If I left home at 6:45, I’d still be at school by 7:15 which would give me a solid 45 minutes to get ready. I ran through the day in my head. Could I do it? Throwing caution to the wind, I optimistically decided I could. I mean, everything was already out! So, I zested some lemons, chopped some ginger and the next batch was soon ready to go.

As I baked, I realized how good it felt to be doing so. I absolutely love to bake, and don’t do so much these days as I simply don’t want to eat it all. For me, baking is both relaxing and fulfilling. It calms and centers me, and I also love to share what I’ve baked. It’s a win-win for sure! Making scones was definitely the right choice last Friday!

side note: When I searched my blog t to see if I’d already written about Lattes and Lit, I found a post entitled Baking. Clearly I have linked the two in my mind. As I reread it, I discovered that I was once again realizing something I’d already realized before, but somehow managed to forget. This time around there was a bit more rush around the edges, but still, the basic tenet was true: Baking comforts and connects me. It’s also a lot of fun.

In my decision to cut back the calories, I’ve also cut back on a source of joy. I think I need to reconsider this one.

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Thoughts on Wonder

Last week Tabatha Yeatts shared a video of a performance by Yoann Bourgeois. As anyone who knows me knows, I rarely watch videos or movies. Very rarely. I’m not even sure why I clicked on this one (well, other than my abiding faith in Tabatha to share amazing and thought-provoking things). At any rate, I did click and I was simply transported. This video is just … Wow! I encourage you to make a little time to watch it (Warning–It is a over 6 minutes long.) and to turn on the volume when you do so.

It’s amazing, right!?

After I watched the video, I watched it again. And again. I forwarded it far and wide. I determined that I was going to share it with my students once the school year started. I was amazed by how evocative it was, how every moment seemed to reveal something new. I had so many questions but mostly I just wanted to experience it over and over. It made me think of the human condition. Of struggle. Of resilience. Of Grief. I thought about writing and context and the power of zooming in and out, revealing less and more. I wanted to know what students wondered about it. Part of me wanted to read about the artist’s intent, but my stronger urge was to let this piece of art speak to me on its own. Perhaps later I’d investigate…

And then, after watching the video, one of my sisters texted me:

I felt like someone had smacked me in the face. Immediately I questioned my experience and the wonder I had felt. Was it AI? Was it fake? Was I a naive sucker?

And it struck me that AI is undermining or assaulting wonder. Wonder sparks creativity and hope. It unites us. But, how often have you watched something recently and been moved by it in some way, only to discover that it’s been artificially generated? Some things are obvious, but others feel like a set up. A trick. They lead us to doubt the very things that have inspired us.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since that exchange. While I’m certain this performance is not AI generated (I say that with a small niggle of doubt…how certain can I really be of something I’m watching on the internet?) AI encourages people to be dismissive, rather than receptive. The fact that my certainty has that niggle of doubt is symptomatic of the problem: The whole idea that something can easily be faked fundamentally erodes our experiences. It invites doubt and cynicism rather than wonder–at least when viewing things on line. Unfortunately that’s where many of us gather information these days–myself included.

For now, I’ve decided that the antidote to all of this is to immerse myself in the immediate wonders that surround me. To ground myself in my surroundings. AI can’t manufacture the monarch that stops to feast on the cone of the echinacea. It can’t create the fog that swirls along the beach, hiding and revealing all the landmarks along the way. Or the smell of sun-baked pine on a forest trail.

Still, that whiplash journey from wonder to doubt has left me deeply disturbed. As someone who deeply values the power of wonder, I’ll continue thinking about how to protect and nourish it for both myself and for my students.

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Hay Bales

On a humid August morning, the sun hangs low and heavy, and coiled bales of hay are strewn across the field. Mounded haystacks transform the landscape as if they’re marking summer’s end, or at least the impending onset of autumn. The free flowing fields are a thing of the past. What once was wind-swept grass and flowers is now banded together and contained, destined to be fodder for farmyard creatures in the coming months. It makes me smile me to imagine their surprise as they bite into a remnant of clover, a small burst of sweetness amidst the hay. Are black eyed Susans bitter or sweet? Queen Anne’s lace? Bitter or sweet, all the tender grasses and blossoms, once buoyant and bright, are now dried and tucked away.

As fall speeds toward me, I feel a bit like that about my summer. It’s like I’m bundling up all my experiences, those bright sweet spots of summer, and neatly tucking them away. As if I’m counting on them to sustain me and nourish me through the coming months. Maybe I am.

But even as summer’s remnants are gathered and bound, the air is filled with the sweet smell of harvested fields, and fruit burgeons in the trees, promising more to come. In the field beside my house, the goldenrod flourishes, bold and gold, in undulating waves. I remind myself that each ending contains a beginning. So, even as I hold the fading season close, I open to the new one. Summer is fading but autumn holds its own rich rewards.

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Reality Check

“You know, you don’t have too much time before you go back,” my husband commented this weekend.

“I’ve got lots of time! I’ve got like three weeks!” I protested.

He looked at me. “Today’s the 9th. Tomorrow’s the 10th. Two weeks from then is the 24th. Don’t you go back the last week of August?”

“Um….Yes,” I replied hesitantly.

“Well,” he said, “That’s in about two weeks. “

“But…” My mind raced. How could that be!? I was stunned. I redid the math (several times). Every time the answer was the same. Dang it! He was 100% right.

“I don’t think I’m talking to you anymore,” I announced.

To be honest, I am not dreading school. I’m actually looking forward to meeting my new students and to seeing friends and colleagues. I’m just not ready to up the pace. After returning home from my final summer trip last week (I was traveling or away 29 days this summer–rich, rewarding and BUSY!), I’ve been enjoying slowing down, lingering, putzing, and generally being wildly inefficient. Days with nothing scheduled on my calendar are like unwrapped gifts. I’m actually avoiding making plans, even when they might be something I’d like to do. But now that my husband dropped that bombshell, I’m having to slowly adjust to the idea that school actually does begin in two weeks. Not three weeks. Two.

It’s going to be fine.

I’ll be ready.

Maybe I’ll even be talking to my husband again by then! lol

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Gifts

In my latest summer adventure, I traveled to Silver Spring, Maryland to meet up with my writing group, The Inklings. I’ve been writing with this group for around 10 years and had met several, but not all of them, prior to this gathering. We had talked about getting together for years, and we finally did it! It was such a wonderful, rich experience, and one that I’m still processing.

As I write this, I’m a bit further north and east in Maryland, having taken a detour on the way home to visit with another friend. I’m seated at a table overlooking a yard filled with tall trees and glowing lushly green. It slopes down to tidy raised bed gardens and a dock that stretches out to a tidal river. Every so often an egret flies by or a heron stops to wade among the shallows. A small flock of geese flies overhead. My friend points to a migrating silvery trail at the edge of the river. “It’s probably a muskrat,” she says.

As she and her husband vanish to complete some necessary work, I watch the hummingbirds dip and dive at the feeders. I admire the potted porch plants so carefully tended. My eyes follow their tendrils and waving leaves as they wind up lines of twine, skyward bound.

The house is silent.

Gifts

Morning’s silence wraps around me
like a blanket, or an embrace.

A leaf drifts down from a tree
following shifting air currents
meandering
until it comes to rest
on the damp grass drenched
with yesterday’s rains.

The breeze kicks up now and again
sketching ripples on the tidal water
that ebbs and flows
along its own journey
within guiding banks

The quiet grounds me
The whirr and buzz of recent days
subsides
everything shifts
and settles within me
potential nourishment
for some future blossoming

©Molly Hogan

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Sister Time

Ever since our father died, my three sisters and I have been working at getting together once a year. We’re far flung (Ohio, NY, South Carolina and Maine), so there is indeed effort involved. Last year everyone came to my house for my child’s wedding celebration. In 2024 we met for a long weekend in Seneca Falls. This year we traveled to my sister Ellen’s husband’s family house in Martha’s Vineyard. After some initial travel hiccups, we were finally all together again. We spent five days there. We talked. We walked. We went into the different towns and browsed and shopped. We hung out at the beach. We ate a lot (with an emphasis on chocolate and popcorn). We reminisced and we laughed. Above all, we just thoroughly enjoyed being four sisters together.

Now our time was over and, other than Ellen, who was extending her time there, we were all heading back to our respective homes. As I drove north toward Maine, texts with updates kept pinging in periodically. I listened to Siri read them:

And then later on…

I imagined each of us as small dots with a flight path, all starting out from Martha’s Vineyard. Although one dot remained temporarily in Martha’s Vineyard, the rest of us were arcing out and farther and farther away from each other. It made me not quite sad, but definitely melancholy. I was ready to be home, but not yet ready to be away from my sisters.

It struck me as I was writing this, that in a much more significant sense, we really did all start out in one place and then journeyed away. We share a common origin and all the stories and memories that come along with it. Now we have added yet another common point and more memories to share.

I’m so thankful.

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You know you’ve been married a long time when…

Summer offers time for morning walks when the sun is warm, but not yet hot, and the sweet smell of growing things fills the air. We’ve been taking advantage of bright mornings and my open schedule to walk down our road together in the morning before Kurt works.

“Hold on a second,” Kurt said coming to a sudden halt on one recent walk. “You have a long white hair on your chin.”

I immediately stopped, aghast. “What!? But I’m so vigilant!”

“Well, it is hard to see when it’s white,” he commented matter-of-factly.

He then reached over and turned my head to the side. Without asking, he zoomed in and pulled at the hair with his fingers. Once. Twice.

“You know,” he commented as he labored, “we probably look like chimps grooming at the side of the road.”

I laughed and then asked the critical question, “But can you get it?” I tilted my head for better access.

He pulled one more time and ta-da! The offending hair was removed. Victory!

“I can’t believe it,” I said, looking at the half-inch hair within his pincer grip. “I check every single day and inevitably I miss one. I mean, how long has this one even been growing! And also, how did you even do that with just your fingers!?” I eyed him with new respect.

He shrugged and tossed the miscreant filament to the wind. We continued on our walk, settling back in to enjoying the beautiful day and our time together.

And somehow, after that, I felt just a hair lighter.

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Reality Settles Back In

I spent the past 2 1/2 weeks traveling in Iceland and Wales We returned home late on Saturday night and have been gradually settling back in. I love traveling and appreciate how it shakes up my complacency. Traveling to new places teaches me so much. It expands my thinking and also changes how I see my own world when I return. It helps me imagine possibilities and alternatives.

Yesterday morning I looked through my photos while sitting in my own chair in my own living room. I was happy to be home and not living out of a suitcase, but already felt our travel experiences shifting into the surreal. Did we really go there? Did we see that? Did we do that?

Everywhere we traveled, people were friendly and helpful to us. “Where are you from?” they’d ask, and our response was always the same. “We’re from Maine in the States, and we’re really sorry.” Without exception, they said that everyone they met from America said the same thing.

When we were in Iceland on a walking tour of Reykjavik, our guide said to us, “There is only one place in Iceland where you will see armed guards. Where do you think that is?”

“The bank,” someone called out.

“The airport?” I guessed.

“No,” he replied. “At the American Embassy.”

Sit with that for a while.

One day, after our standard response, a Welch woman asked us, “How did this happen?”

We didn’t even begin to know how to answer.

“Please,” she said, “You have to do better.”

Now, back home again, travel-weary and enriched, I scroll through the photos, selecting which ones to share. How can I capture all that we saw and experienced and thought as we wandered through these new landscapes? Geothermal fields, geysers, lupines, puffins, majestic cliffs, hedge rows, castles, mountains, etc!

Then the news came through: ICE agents had shot a man in Biddeford, Maine.

Biddeford, Maine is where I attended UNE for my teaching certification. It’s where I sometimes go to get amazing bagels. It’s where I travel to look for snowy owls in the winter, and it’s been known to have some interesting ice formations on the river. Now it’s known as the newest spot where ICE agents have murdered someone. The man, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, died. He was murdered. His child was secure in her carseat in the backseat. He wasn’t even the man they were looking for. He was here, legally, heading to work. Apparently his last words were, “I tried to stop.”

I wish I could say this is what feels surreal, but it feels all too real.

My God. We have to do better.

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Strawberry Picking

We get there shortly after 7 am and already the fields are dotted with enthusiastic pickers. The sky arcs blue overhead and birds call from the surrounding trees. After a quick stop to ask where we should pick, we head over to a likely spot. Soon we are squatting between rows of berries. Our feet sink into the soft earth. I squat and reach in between the leaves, brushing them back and forth searching for sweet, red strawberries.

“I always think of Jamberry when I’m picking,” I comment to Kurt soon after we start, “but I can never remember how it goes.”

We throw out a few guesses at lines, in fits and starts, trying to latch on to the rhythm…

“Boomberry! Zoomberry!”

“What a jam jamboree!”

We never do find it, but enjoy the effort and sharing the attached memories of long ago book reading and berry picking with our children.

Berry picking is as much about picking and sharing memories as it is about picking strawberries. It’s sort of Zen–quiet, voices murmuring, the soft thunk of berries into our containers, occasional laughter, bird calls. The sun warm on our shoulders. Soon, with our hands busy, our minds still. We lapse into comfortable silence. Once in a while, we say something profound, like:

“Oh, here’s a beauty!”

or “Look! This one’s the Queen Strawberry!”

Soon my hands and wrists are drenched with the chill of morning dew. Every so often I pick a strawberry that is already warm from the sun. A little solar powered juice factory. The contrast between cool, dew-soaked hands and the warm flesh of the berry, captivates me. I let these berries linger in my palm for a moment. Roll them back and forth, savoring their gentle heat. I mention this to Kurt.

“I feel a blog post coming on,” he says.

I laugh.

He knows me well.

After we get home, I make batch after batch of strawberry rhubarb jam. Lulled by the sun and the good vibes, we overpicked. It’s a good problem to have.

Later that afternoon, when I’m holding my four-month old grandson, I lean in close to him and whisper, “And when you’re bigger, I’m going to take you strawberry picking and we’re going to make jam!”

And the next day, I label all the lids and put the cooled jam jars into the pantry cupboard. Each one contains a feast of sweet berries and memories, and the promise of more to come.

I make a mental note to look for our copy of Jamberry, or to order a new one.

I’ll be needing it.

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Name That Tune

Kurt, my husband, loves music and is appalled by my pervasive inability to name songs and artists. So, he likes to torture me, or at least remind me of my weakness.

“I’ll give you $20 if you can tell me who sings this song,” he’ll say. (Well, that’s what he used to say. Recently (maybe it’s the economy?), he’s been omitting the cash offer.)

As I’ve told him many, many times, I do not enjoy this game of his. It makes me feel frustrated and incompetent.

So, imagine my delight when my school started a sort of “Name that Tune” Fridays this year. They play a snippet of a song over the PA system before announcements. The winner is the first one to e-mail the Assistant Principal with the title of the song and name of the artist. Every Friday, as I fight to hide my negative feelings about this whole weekly triggering experience, my students clamor for me to get ready. I’m pretty sure they are as disillusioned in my abilities by now as Kurt is, but they’re much more optimistic. (Delusional? Nicer?)

“Are you ready, Mrs. Hogan!?”

“You might get it this time!”

I would say that 80% of the time I’ve never heard the song, or at least don’t remember doing so. The remaining times I might recognize it, but I don’t know either the title or artist or both. Recently, the office has begun sharing the winner’s name and the song and title in a follow up e-mail. As you might guess, my name has yet to appear. But, then, there was one recent Friday…

The warning came for teachers to get ready. I sighed and headed over to my computer, pasting a fake enthusiastic smile on my face. Music soon filled the room. The kids immediately abandoned their morning work and got up to dance.

“Oh! Wait! I know this one!” I said, cocking my head and thinking hard.

My students started jumped up and down in excitement, calling out encouragement and some random guesses.

Quickly, I typed in the song name, then hesitated…Ugh! Who sings this!? Who sings this!?…Inspiration struck and I tapped at the keyboard and sent:

“Roar, Katy Perry “

Yes! I did it!

The kids and I celebrated my potential win with a few dance moves, pondering aloud what the prize might be. All of us were a bit dazzled by the fact that I actually knew the song! Then we (sort of) settled back into the morning routines and got on with our day.

I left work early that day to head to Boston, and forgot to check my e-mail. On the way south I couldn’t help but wonder, Was I the first to respond? Did I win this time? I felt pretty good about my chances, but since I don’t have my work e-mail on my phone, I couldn’t check.

Sunday night as I prepped for the coming week, I opened up my work computer. There was the e-mail from the office! Feeling excited, I clicked to open it:

“Friday’s song: Sara Bareilles, Brave”

Wait! What?

I read it again. And again. Then it sunk in, and I just laughed and laughed and laughed.

As you might have guessed by now, my name still has not appeared on the Winner’s List.