Aug. 3, 2025
My new hairstyle.

In 1983 I was hired by GCC to teach several adult literacy classes.  It was a brand new concept for me.  It was not being done in Franklin County and people had had no luck getting a program started.  GCC wrote the grant for a 14 week 2 town 2 level classes.  They brought me aboard because I knew something about teaching reading to children and I was into it.   After being on the job for a week, I knew it was easier said than done so I put an ad in the paper asking for volunteers and anyone who might have relevant materials to help me.  
One of the first responses I got was from Cynthia Stowe, a special reading/writing teacher from Linden Hill School, who had just moved here from Maine where she ran an adult literacy program.   She invited me to come to Linden Hill and talk and see what she could give me.  I made a date and a few days later being very overwhelmed and convinced I had taken on way too much I went to her classroom.  I walked in and burst into tears, which was entirely out of character.  She came out from around her desk and put her arms around me and said, "I know you're gonna be great at this."
From that moment on until her death on August 3, 2004, Cynthia and I were best of friends.  She was my new older sister and I was her new willing partner in teaching and all sorts of other things.  We accomplished a lot in those 20 years of friendship.  I miss her daily.  It's amazing to think she would be 80 this year.  She died just short of her 60th of cancer.
Her death is an important story for me.  It was on my friend, Kay's birthday,  I was with her and her husband and some other friends and I felt her soul leave the house, energy flew through my body in a surge.    So much of my resilience is due to that friendship, she taught me so much.  She was a great human being and she left a wonderful mark of love on many many people.  



More Notes To You

I want to curl up in the meadow just beyond the Queen Anne’s Lace

The geese declaring

Sleep in the breeze

Dream

 

I want to stare out at the ocean

Today there is no fog to help

shield my eye

But a current brushing by, a wind

that cleans my corners out.

 

I want to claim the pure

the almost holy

the love that seeps deep

into my bones

sings like a lark

 

I want me

In a cranberry red robe

atop of a linen cloth

Asleep on the ground

Embraced by the wind.


 

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