Copasetic Flow

I received the Tish Murtha book, “Elswick Kids” a few days ago. In the book is an introduction by Mark Richards, and further along, a picture of several kids climbing up the scaffolding of a building. The scaffolding picture is ebullient. The kids are having a blast; a group of six or so of them are at various stages in their climb up the side of the building having levered boards down in a few places to more easily scale the thing.  Meanwhile, the book’s introduction laments, To those of us who lived through this time the images will look strangely familiar - like a mirror of our own existence for we children who were lucky enough to be born free. and I’ve got to say, in some ways I think kids are still born free, can still play like the kids in this book, but in other ways.. Well, it made me think of our own scaffolding experience a few weeks ago. Plugging away at my standing desk in front of the Old Fed Reserve, I noticed the kid’s feet were no longer on the ground. She’d launc...

Fire hydrants! What are they really for anyway? Are they to put out burning buildings? Firemen speeding to the scene, pivoting a hose into place to extinguish the blaze? Yeah, certainly, they’re good for that.  Are they for opening up to create sprays and puddles for kids to cool down in the summer? Maybe. I mean, I’ve sen pictures of kids doing these sorts of things with fire hydrants. We all have right? All the pictures I’ve seen were old though. Do kids really do that anymore? I dunno. And besides we’re in San Francisco where it rarely gets hot enough for that sort of thing, and when it does—you know, those three days of the year—we’re more of a bus to the beach sort of crowd. What about hydrants as an integral part of a citywide playscape? Oh! Yeah! That’s what I see hydrants used for the most. They’re used to balance on; they’re used as quasi-barstools while kids wait for the bus; and they’re used as platforms to launch onto other makeshift play equipment like... I dunno... Ye...

 Part of our unschooling plan has always been for the gang, 10 year-old Daize, 9 year-old Mota, and 6 year-old Tawnse to get themselves from place to place. The fact that we live in San Franicsco where a major metropolitan transit system exists that doubles as a school bus system has made this easier. Still, practie makes perfect, so we entered into a new phase of our tranist-readiness program today: preparing to ride BART trains solo. The kids have gone a few cars ahead of me before with no issues, so it seemed like a good idea today for the gang to try heading out one whole train ahead of me. On top of that we found ourselves in the perfect scenario with two trains leaving to the same destination, one just a minute behind the other. And so we tried, but I gotta warn you, our results were interesting but mixed in my opinion, and yes, it was my fault. Finding ourselves with the perfect temporal spacing, I decided we could just 'go for it' even though we were headed to a station...

 The kids just headed out in the 39 degree F weather, in the dark to walk the dog. It’s there thing. The do it every night. They have for years. My dad watched them go. It’s killing him. He tried to stop the whole thing.  It’s killing him. I value their independence above just about anything else. I love watching them do things. Not the things I chose, but the things they picked for themselves. I’ll do what I can to keep them doing those things even if it means other folks might have to sit with their  discomfort.Even—especially—when I have to sit with my own discomfort.   And, I wonder if that’s always it? Do people try to shut the kids down ala   “Do your parents know where you are?’ Or by charging a child balanced on a bike rack with exhortations of  “Are you al right?!” Yeah, they sure were alright before somebody started anxiously coming at them. I wonder, how much of ‘keeping kids safe’ is just about not being able to tolerate personal disco...

We used to love inviting other people on our adventures pre-pandemic! Right now though, we're still just trying to relearn the ropes for what's safe and what's not. We're trying to head back out to our old haunts, but just with ourselves until we get a feel for what's going on out in the world. Still, I thought it might be handy to share our expeiences as we went so other people could know what to expect.  If anyone else would like to share the places they're going in the outside world, I'd be delighted to get their perspective!  On Wednesday, we headed to the DeYoung! D estination:  The DeYoung Museum Starting point : The Excelsior Route:  44 from Excelsior to Golden Gate Concourse across from the DeYoung Time of day:  around noon on a Wednesday Transit:  If you’re headed towards Mission, either going North or South, the 44 is more crowded than it will be after you get across Mission. When I say crowded, I mean it was impossible to stay six feet away from ...

 Here’s another look at what happens with unschooling.  You set out to spend some time in nature. The eight year-old is starting an animal tracking class, so maybe you’ll commune with nature a bit while you’re out there. Then, on the way, you see windmill blades, but not on a windmill. They’re. On. A. Train! In the middle of nowhere. Lots of them! They stretch off into the distance. Soooo many windmill blades! And they’re on a siding! And there’s a little pull off to get over there!!! Woohoo! So, now, you and the gang—9, 8, and 6 years-old—are going to explore windmill blades! That’ll be fun! You’ve never seen a blade up close before. This’ll be so much fun! You and the kids head for the blades. They’re walking along the tracks, perusing them. You stop to admire the first blade. It’s gorgeous, framed up just so on the flatcar. There’s a couple of blocks of concrete on the other end of the car acting as a counterweight. Visible between the blade and flatcar, a snow capped mount...

 Towser, the eight year-old here started a new class yesterday. Unlike other things he’s tried where the thing was a thing a sib had expressed an interest in, or a thing that is supposed to be generally interesting to ‘kids’ doing ‘school’ sort of things—you know, math, grammar, reading—this thing is all Towser. Towser is taking an animal tracking class delivered in several audio lessons. Each lesson takes between fifteen and thirty minutes of listening. Then, Towser and I and whoever else is around talk about his lesson, and here’s where things are kinda different. Towser talks—in depth—about what he heard. He looks at me with his ‘important eyes’ and tells me what he thinks the lesson was about. Every kid is different, and every learning experience is different, but Towser talks about these lessons so soulfully It makes me happy and warm inside to see that he’s doing a thing he’s truly, truly interested in. While Towser explains his lessons to us, my partner asks big open ‘meanin...