Find Me

Find me online at www.NewAlexandriaCG.com, the cooperative publishing group I founded with my talented kids. 

Bad Air Days Are Now a Thing and Parents are Angry

The usual number of High School Students eating lunch outdoors when county guidelines dictate keeping them indoors for the then Air Quality Index of 172. 

A lot of parents in Sonoma County, California are frustrated by the lack of guidance or what may seem like poor guidance from our county and district school leadership with regard to the current air quality crisis, but it’s important to understand what level various decisions are made at and communicate concerns where they will be effective. This kind of crisis is not covered in any of the school safety plans I’ve seen. Creating a detailed site specific safety protocol on the fly is difficult. It’s usually created by the site administrators and modified and approved by the School Site Council or Principal Advisory Board for the following year. (School Site Councils are usually in need of parent members and you can always show up and bring attention to issues that are important to you.) Certain protocols are set higher up at the district and county level by administrators, not usually School Boards, though they may be modified and adopted by the School Board. These tend to be more general, like the maximum cutoff for all schools to close, leaving room for individual sites to manage their own details. 

Last Friday schools across Sonoma County closed for their first bad air day. No official guidlelines for doing this existed so they were promptly written this week. It’s not surprising for a policy created on the fly to leave a lot of people angry, nor for it to be implemented poorly at first. I sent the Superintendent of our Office of Education a few pictures today, including the one above, of how their guidelines were being interpreted at the site level at a high school. He responded immediately with shock and looped in the Superintendent of our school district, the next person who they expect to narrow down the policy and create more specific guidelines. The Office of Education created a cutoff for keeping students indoors and closure guidelines, but no guidelines for how to protect indoor air quality in classrooms or where to have kids eat lunch when there is no indoor lunch area on a campus, or how to minimize exposure when every time you change classrooms you have to walk long distances outside. These specifics are a lot more work to nail down and differ between individual schools based on their buildings and needs. When these policies and procedures are created they need to be communicated all the way down to the janitors and part time yard duty or they won’t be effective. Air is hard to exclude. 

Principals are trying to mediate between the limited guidance they’re getting from the district, a school site level crises, and the fear and anger of parents, leaving them very little time to inspect their campuses to be sure that indoor air quality is being managed properly, or research how to properly manage indoor air quality since this isn’t their field, and alter school schedules and plans to keep kids inside because their usual protocols are designed for rain, not bad air. Bring attention to things that concern you by all means, but don’t attack our Principals. You wouldn’t want their job right now. 

When you want to express a disagreement or problem with a policy remember, what you post on social media will not make anything happen, but anything they receive by email they must respond to. Photos are excellent because they are more objective than verbal arguments. Parents have more influence on school policy than teachers because we’re effectively the customer and the administration is not hearing from us every day. Be the nice customer they want to help. Learning to be an effective advocate and taking time to understand how the system we want to influence is set up will help us avoid undue frustration and accidentally harassing the people who are working hard to help us. Take the time to look up the right administrator’s email. 

My Favorite Volunteer Opportunity - Valet @ Homecoming

Why I get asked to chaperone every dance, and why I say yes.

The first time I chaperoned a high school dance was my oldest daughter’s Freshman year Homecoming. She was excited, but also nervous and wanted mom nearby. Yeah, I’m lucky like that. She disliked it immensely and didn’t attend another school dance until Prom her Senior year. But I chaperoned nearly every dance in the interim, and I’m still chaperoning every dance I can because I get asked...by the students!!!

“Why?! Why would any parent willingly subject themselves to that?” you ask. Because Homecoming, and Prom, and other school dances, are extremely vulnerable moments for teenage girls. At that first dance they asked all the chaperones to check the bathrooms frequently as they were the most troublesome locations. In our school the girls bathroom windows are low enough for contraband to get passed in and out, so they bolted them closed and the room of requirement was a hot stuffy miserable place. 

Already being “that mom,” the one with the bottomless purse equipped for every possible emergency my own daughter might face, I grabbed a chair and set up camp in that bathroom so the windows could be opened and the girls could have a refuge in times of crisis. That first dance I mended three dresses, passed out breath mints, supplied bandaids for heels, hair ties for ponytails, and tampons for the unfortunate. I also kept the toilets flushed, and plunged occasionally, and the counters clean so the janitors didn’t have to come in and close the entire bathroom for half an hour to do it. I comforted a girl whose boyfriend was an ass, gave a granola bar to a girl who was feeling ill, and helped with a number of selfies. 

In the following days word got back to me through the PTA that some girls were talking about this awesome mom in the bathroom that had everything to fix every problem, and they wanted to know who she was so they could ask her to come to the next dance. Yup, I was the awesome mom. Much to my surprise, no one else has volunteered to be valet/hero of the girls bathroom in the last five years. But my second daughter only has one more year and my third will start at another high school next year. While the other chaperones are supervising doors in a stinky sweaty noisy gym, I’m sitting in a cool quiet restroom reading between crises. This is the prime spot and this is your opportunity to be the awesome mom! 

As moms we spend an enormous amount of time and effort trying to instill confidence in our daughters. When they’re getting ready for a school dance they are putting themselves out there in a big way. They invest time and money in their appearance and they build it up in their minds as a high point in their high school experience. Unfortunately, many of them have never worn a formal dress before, or the requisite undergarments. They don’t know how fragile some of these styles are. Some are trying makeup or hairstyles for the first time. With so much emotion and social capital invested in this event, one tiny error in planning can devolve into a complete meltdown that leaves major scars on their precarious developing self-confidence. Most of them don’t want their own mom sitting in the wings, but when something goes wrong they really appreciate a mom/fairy godmother that can step in and fix it. 

The cheerleaders plan Homecoming and their coach asks me every time on their behalf. Student Government plans Prom on they get their teacher to ask. And every time, regardless of which dance, the Principal double checks that I’ve been asked and I’m coming. The entire drama level has diminished with me sitting in the bathroom. They don’t have meltdowns to deal with anymore. No one leaves the dances crying. Sometimes, the position no one even imagined before is the one that makes all the difference

That’s why I say, “yes,” again and again. Because even though my daughters aren’t big on school dances, they’re out doing their own different things, and I hope and trust there will be another mom hanging around to rescue them when something goes wrong with their carefully laid plans. In that spirit of the village I come. Because a sewing kit at the right moment is worth a thousand hours of encouraging talk. Because boys can be stupid and break hearts and sometimes peers aren’t the best counsel in that moment. Because walking out of the bathroom with your skirt tucked in your underwear is the end of the world at 16. 

My husband encouraged me to write this as I was packing my basket for a dance tonight. Specifically to share my list of all the things in my basket and why they’re there so you can be the fairy godmother, the valet/chaperone/hero, at your school. You can be the awesome mom!  Here it is:

Sewing kit. Just a hotel freebie one. Because the thread in vintage dresses weakens over time, and rhinestone straps don’t always hold up when twerking. This includes needles, thread, buttons, safety pins. 

Scissors. If you can’t sew it up, sometimes you can cut it off. Also, needed for snipping threads. 

Paper clips. A good way to turn a standard bra into a T back. 

Nail files and orange sticks. Disposable for sanitary reasons. 

Nail clippers. 

Clear nail polish. For nails and nylons. 

Eye makeup remover. Because it’s better gone than runny. 

Cotton pads and q-tips. 

Eyelash glue. Because they asked. 

Makeup remover wipes. Because she put makeup on for the first time at moms house and is going home to dad’s after.  

New combs. They can keep them or I’ll sanitize before the next dance. I buy assorted packs at the dollar store because there are many different hair types.

Hair spray, cheap but decent and pump style, not aerosol. Small spaces don’t mix with aerosol sprays of any kind. 

Hair pins in dark and light colors, hair ties, headbands. From the dollar store. They can keep. 

Handheld mirror. For checking the back of their hair. 

Neutral colored grosgrain ribbon. Works for hair or dress repair improvisation. 

Pads and tampons because someone will be surprised or forget. 

Bandaids. For cuts and scrapes, but also blisters and high heels that cut into Achilles’ tendons. 

Spray deodorant. Most popular item. Spray for sanity reasons. A good pump spray essential oil based brand because you don’t want them using a cheap aerosol in a closed space. 

Hand lotion. Hotel freebie. 

Perfume. A nice light Victoria Secret coconut based perfume that I like, so they’re not borrowing each other’s awful strong scents. Sometimes I bring a citrus based one too, but they almost all love the coconut. 

Hand sanitizer. Because some kids prefer it and alcohol takes off adhesives/sticky stuff. 

Hand soap. Because they’re using the staff restroom for dances and even when the janitors have fully stocked it, there’s not enough. Plus a pretty new bottle makes them feel special. I leave the bottles for the teachers, who’ve expressed their appreciation. 

Wipes. For my hands, for the floor, for whatever. 

Lansinoh. Because it soothes rough skin but also makes a nice lip balm that’s safe to share because I can squeeze it out onto fingers.  One tube lasts forever. 

Melaleuca sports drink powder packets, a water bottle for mixing, and small Dixie cups. Electrolytes and vitamins B for when they’ve overdone it and come in nauseated. I use these myself and first brought them for me. But they’ve proven to be handy. 

Granola bars and sometimes an orange. Low blood sugar caught early is a major crisis averted. These I always have on hand for my own kids so I throw a couple in my basket. 

Mints/gum. Teens can be super sensitive about bad breath and it’s cheap. 

Chocolates. Because they’re magic in an emotional crisis. And after dementors. 

Toothbrush and toothpaste. Kept from a hotel I go to an annual conference at. 

Shoe polishing brush. Also from the hotel. 

Cell phone chargers and power strip. Especially at Prom because they’re taking pictures that they’ll look back on forever and if their battery dies before their after-plans they could be at the mercy of their date. I let them leave their phones with me and to get them back they have to unlock them in front of me so I know it’s theirs. 

Comfortable lawn chair. Because folding chairs are not meant to be sat on for four hours. 

Lap blanket. Mostly for me, but I’ll give it up if it’s needed. 

A lovely large beverage and snack. It’s four hours and I don’t split a shift like most of the chaperones. 

Not advertised but in reserve:

Tylenol & Motrin. I’m not a school employee and teenagers are old enough to know when they need it. I always check that they’ve called their parents and have a plan besides pop some pills and get back to the dance floor. 

Condoms. Yup. If they’re in the bathroom asking a friend and I hear it, I’m gonna make sure they get one because they’re already planning to have sex, I’d rather they not trust whatever plan their boyfriend came up with. If I can have a conversation with them about their decision I may, but this is not a moment to preach. 

That’s how it is most of the time, one girl asks another if she has something and while they try to come up with a make do solution, I offer whatever they need. As soon as I hear that distressed tone of voice I can offer a solution. Sometimes someone asks me why I’m there and I tell them I’m there so we can open the window and to help with any crisis that arises. Word spreads and they start coming to me directly. It took one dance for word to get out and the requests to come in. They know my name now and whose mom I am, and they thank me for coming. My daughter rolls her eyes as she tells me more people on campus know me than her, but she does it with that twinkle in her eye that tells me she’s proud to be my daughter, and wants to be a woman who cares and takes action to solve problems too. 

I do a lot of volunteering in my kids schools, but I feel like these four hours a couple times a year have a more direct and meaningful impact than anything else. A minor fix can make anyone’s day and it’s especially rewarding to catch the occasional girl at the precipice of devastation, turn her around, and send her back out smiling. 

salutations Aeprovost https://goo.gl/rxT75v

Aaron J. Provost

All Together

As I say in the intro to my book, Diary, my paintings are all done during church. This means they are all open to prophetic interpretation. When I come to the canvas I pray and ask God to speak to me and through me. I encounter him as I paint. I see colors and put them on my pallet. I see a brush and a stroke in my mind’s eye and I pick up the brush, apply the color, and stroke the canvas the way I see it. I don’t see a picture before I begin, only a stroke. And then another stroke. And then another. Layer upon layer of color, one element at a time, until an image emerges. 

A worship service may be anywhere from one to two hours long and most of my paintings are created in a single service. Realism is not a practical goal in that time frame. The objective is to communicate through the medium of art. It’s about me communicating with God, and because it’s in a public setting it’s about God communicating to others through me. When people feel a painting is speaking to them, the interpretation may rest entirely with them. It may speak differently to others at the same time. Sometimes a painting speaks only to someone else. I have no idea what it means. They’ll ask for the painting, or they’ll simply receive the message and a few weeks later I’ll be painting over that image. Sometimes a painting is a message for the whole church. The paintings I put in my book are all ones that spoke deeply to me. Whether or not they spoke to anyone else, they had meaning for me so I preserved them. 

“What meaning,” you may ask, “could a random multi colored spiral have for the artist?”

First, that’s a random multi colored BLACK LIGHT REACTIVE spiral. It contains streaks of neon and glow in the dark paint. So...it’s cool! 

Second, colors have meaning in every culture and in Christian culture they can represent different spiritual gifts. All the gifts here are flowing together. This is the goal. Remember that Sunday School song, “when we all pull together how happy we’ll be!”

Finally, the spiral or vortex represents a portal, an opening to heaven. In Jesus’ demonstration prayer he prays, “Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

This is a representation of the Kingdom of Heaven being released in the room where I was painting and all the gifts represented, different ones in each of us, flowing together to create an amazing picture, that even shows up in the dark. That is only fully revealed in the dark! But the best part about this painting is that while I was feeling and painting the spiritual atmosphere in the room where I was at the time, the interpretation is a universal truth we can walk in all the time. We can choose to work together to bring the gifts God has given us into service demonstrating the goodness of God to humanity. We can go into dark places and bring the light of love.

Fates Worse Than Death

This painting was made right after the death of a dear matriarch in my life and in our church, Carolee Britt. Her favorite color was pink. At Christmas the very air in her house seemed pink. She died of cancer and there was a great deal of grief in our family and community. The following Sunday, as this painting began to emerge, I realized it was the party happening in heaven. We see a pink veil, the yellow fall of healing, all that confetti, and a hint of the ghostly white shadows of those who have just passed. It’s the party at the border between states of being. It’s the reason my Great Aunt Winnie, the last of her sibling to go, was angry at the doctor when she kept getting better after the he told her she would probably not survive. It’s the thing saints look forward to. 

I remember my parents on road trips telling us that there was always a party going at the border between states. Of course, we were always asleep when they crossed the state border so we never saw it. We never see this party at the border between states of being, so we forget that heaven doesn’t have a problem with death. In fact, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” Psalm 116:15

Missing from all the major political debates right now is a fundamental truth that no one wants to admit; Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.

What do you expect to happen when you die? Eternity in heaven? Reincarnation? Or perhaps nothing at all? Even nothing at all is objectively better than the lives many people face. That so many persist is a testimony to the incredible power of hope. Still, thousands of people choose death every day.

Refugees fleeing war in the Middle East are willingly embarking on a voluntary death march with only the tiniest sliver of hope for a better life. 

The woman who is having an abortion has definitely imagined it, not having the physical or emotional resources to provide for two (or more since the majority of abortions are done for women who already have children) people. I brought four daughters into this world and I definitely imagined it, but I had family/community resources many women lack. 

The person trying to escape a coercive controlling relationship knows it. 

The senior confronting Alzheimer’s is imagining it. 

The person with stage 4 cancer is deciding what to do about it. 

The parent with the profoundly disabled child going bankrupt because of medical bills is living it. Stressed beyond reason and wondering how they'll care for their child as their resources slip away.

The teacher going through active shooter drills with a classroom full of students and the prepper hoarding guns and food are both practicing for it. 

The cop who has to assume all guns are real when he’s facing a teenager lives in fear of it. 

The undocumented immigrant suffering deprivation and exploitation for the sake of transplanting their family to American soil is escaping it. 

The high school senior weighing their potential earnings with a degree, against the skyrocketing cost of college, considers the possibility of debt becoming a lifetime of indentured servitude and shies away from it. 

The alcoholic/drug addict is self medicating for it. 

The military recruit is training to fight it. 

It's out there for all of us, the thing that could make life unbearable. If you can’t imagine anything worse than death, then you have lived a profoundly privileged life. 

If we as a culture acknowledged this truth we’d be punishing rapists and human traffickers the same as murders. We would defrock and disbar judges who routinely give harsher punishments to people of color or the poor than to white and/or wealthy people who commit the same crimes. Slavery, crimes against liberty, especially those committed by judges, are every bit as appalling as murder. We’d be jailing fund managers that defraud people of their retirements for the same deprivation. 

Our politicians are risking their necks right now taking money from billionaires and corporate interests to continue to allow the exploitation of workers and our environment. A day will come when the balance tips and number of workers who feel a sudden death is preferable to the slow squelching of life between menial work, poor health, and unpaid bills exceeds the number of workers who are too tired to try to change this miserable destiny. On that day the French Revolution will be eclipsed because America always does things bigger. 

You can dismiss my examples and swear that you would never agree, but until it’s your life in the balance you really can’t say. You can call suicide a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but unless we make drastic systemic changes to our government, the majority of these problems will be permanent for the people who face them. 

We’ve had this phrase “fate worse than death” in the English lexicon since at least 1741, usually in reference to rape. But when men made the laws, the punishment for consensual sodomy was worse than for raping a woman. A woman's fate was worse than death, but their rapist faced little or no punishment at all. The things the privileged makers of the law feared being done to them were punished far more harshly than the crimes they suspected they might be capable of committing. For our laws to be gender balanced, our lawmaking institutions must become gender balanced!

For those Christians who still disbelieve, even God imagined a fate for humanity worse than death, or he would not have sent his son to die instead. If you read your Bible closely you will find that God/Jesus is never bothered by death. Even when he was called to heal Lazarus and informed his friend died before he got there, he didn’t weep until he saw the grief of the living. He was not moved to tears by the death of his friend, but by the suffering of the living. Would he have raised Lazarus for his own sake? Because of his own sense of loss? That would be strange for Jesus, who knew that his friend had passed to eternal life. But he was moved, and throughout the Bible God is always moved, by the suffering of the living and the horrible things we do to each other. We need to care more about loving each other while we live.

If we are truly pro-life, rather than depriving people of their freedom to choose death, we should be doing everything in our power to make life a better choice for everyone. 

Resilience in the Redwoods

The first painting in The Dark Side direction of my recently released poetry book “Diary” is called “Resilience in the Redwoods.” I’m particularly keen to share it here in my blog because the dimensions prevented me from showing all of it in the print book. I had to chose the section that looked best in that context but it meant cutting off the bottom, which shows new life emerging from the flames. This picture was painted not long after the fires that ravaged Sonoma County last October. In fact, some of them were still burning. 

The night the fires began the smell of smoke was everywhere. When I first smelled it I wondered what idiot had started their fire pit in this wind. At midnight I was out checking the tarp I’d used to cover the garage sale fodder in my driveway. I had planed to haul the leftovers off on Monday but the wind was whipping the tarp everywhere and the air was hot and eerie. I noticed it came from the east and fragments of Mary Poppins came to mind...”like somethin’ is brewin’ about to begin.” 

I tried to sleep but it was impossible. I was checking the tarp again a little later when I saw a flash like lightning. It was probably a transformer blowing but I watched in that direction for a while to be sure there was no fire. There had been Nixle alerts telling people about a fire in Napa and saying not to call 911 just because of a smoke smell. Only call if you see fire. I didn’t see fire so I went inside, but as I turned back and looked through my front window flames were leaping up behind the houses across the street. 

I ran back out and started pounding on doors. After the third house I ran into another neighbor coming the other way pounding on doors. He said nobody could get through to 911. I keep nonemergency police numbers on my cell phone so I started calling. The city police line was busy too but I finally got through to the sheriffs. It took ten minutes for firemen to arrive even though the fire house in only two blocks away so I guessed they had to come from elsewhere and they didn’t come to the neighborhood side of the fire. The field that was burning behind those houses had an auto parts store and a gas station on the other side. They came at it from that direction to prevent a possible explosion. 

I ran in to wake my husband and he joined the fight with hoses along fence lines. I had two 50’ hoses in my yard that got detached and sent across to the neighbors. Ash and embers were falling all over the neighborhood. I still had my phone in hand and when the Nixle alert came that the fire had jumped the freeway I started texting a friend in Coffee Park. A fire that could cross a six lane freeway would not be easily stopped. When Coffee Park officially evacuated I called my mother in law in an adjacent neighborhood and told her to prepare to evacuate. She lives with an older woman who has limited mobility. They were ready when they got the evacuation call. 

The fire we’d been fighting was not directly connected to the main Tubbs fire. It was one of over sixty spot fires that caught in Sonoma County that night as embers blew miles overhead and landed in dry grassy areas. It was fire weather if ever anything could be called that. It was like nothing else I’ve ever felt. When the evacuation alerts stopped coming our house ended up across the street just outside the evacuation zone and only a few blocks from the Finley Center, the first shelter to open and last to close. We sheltered in place without gas or electricity for a week. We discovered that a new icon appears up on the signal bar part of our cell phones when they’re connecting to mobile cell towers. Over 70 cell towers burned so we walked down to the Finley Center to use their WiFi to communicate with family until those mobile towers went up. We took in my mother in law and another friend when evacuations were advised in their area. 

No one went to work or to school. We knocked on over 100 doors in our neighborhood checking on everyone who had stayed. We donated everything in our fridge to the shelter as soon is the electricity went out. I knew it wasn’t coming back soon and I’d just stocked my freezer at Costco. Because we were close and it was the first day they welcomed the food. It wasn’t long after that they were so overwhelmed with donations they had to turn them away. 

I’ve never been prouder to be part of this community. The way everyone came together to get people out of shelters and into better situations was astounding. The donations poured in and then warehouse space was also donated to contain the donations until they would be needed. Bosses told their people not to worry about coming in to work for a week, they’d still get paid. Wherever possible businesses helped their employees. And those that were off work got out and volunteered. Trials reveal our character and the character of our community is amazingly generous and strong. 

A few weeks later, the kids weren’t back in school yet but I had power and gas so I could do laundry. I was putting clothes away in my room and at the bottom of the pile was my bathrobe. The one I’d been wearing as I flew across the street to pound on my neighbors doors that night. The night we’ll all mark time from for the rest of our lives. The smell of smoke on it brought everything rushing back to me. It wasn’t a normal smoke smell. The clean burn of wood smoke doesn’t bother me. This was the smell of the whole world burning. 

It brought me back vividly to that night. By 4 am the fire department had rushed off to fight another fire, thinking ours extinguished, but my husband was keeping an eye on the field because he remembered a mobile home fire that happened when he was a child where everyone had believed the fire extinguished and gone back to sleep only to have it flare up worse than before. Sure enough, around 4:30 in the morning the fire flared up again. 

When it caught a Redwood tree it would blaze up the center all in an instant, burning the dry surface material, but the fresh green out at the ends of the branches never caught. Within moments most of its fuel would be gone and it would drop again to the grass. But in that furious blaze...it was...there are no words. There is only this painting to express what I saw that night, and the life on the fringes that survived, and the new growth that is coming because Redwood trees only sprout from the cones they drop after they’ve been through fire. That’s what this painting is about. The fury and the awe and the endurance. I don’t think it’s coincidental that yellow, the color that flared up the center of those trees and lit the sky, is also the color of healing in prophetic art. So, in this depiction that represents our world burning, are also the elements of healing and new life. 

As word slowly got around of who had lost everything, we found ourselves in the awkward position of carrying trauma that is not...as bad. I wouldn’t call it survivors guilt though that tried to have its way for a moment. But we carry on because we must until everyone who has it worse is taken care of. Four months later my friends who lost it all are semi settled and moving forward, but I’m fighting stress hives. My body is reminding me of what I’ve been carrying and insisting I take better care of myself and my family now. What we went through was traumatic too and must be dealt with no matter how much worse it was for others. It’s not a competition. It’s just biology. 

But humans are like those redwoods, built for resilience. The layer of char won’t disappear, but we will slowly rebuild the veins that nurture us, we will throw up new branches in new directions because this brush with disaster has changed how we see our lives, and new growth will emerge all around us. When I was a child I stood in the burned out hollow of a Redwood tree’s base big enough to set up housekeeping. The tree went on growing for a few hundred more years and is still growing after that much destruction! It’s a picture of hope for me.