Spring in Switzerland Parades Past My Window

Spring parades past my Swiss house that perches on a slope overlooking Lake Geneva. Puffy gray and white clouds hover over the mountain range where Mount Blanc, the highest peak in Europe, sticks its head out like an apparition of my imagination. On a clear day I can see as far as the water jet in Geneva and the tips of the Alps, sixty miles away. The mountains, in different shades of gray, appear to bow down to Mont Blanc, the queen bejeweled in a sparkling white crown.

The earth unfolds before my eyes. In my yard, forsythia transforms into a sunburst. Across the street, yellow colza fields contrast with green wheat fields. Grape vines like gnarled, old arthritic hands reach toward the light. Pink and white blossoms explode on the rows of apple and cherry trees.

Below the fields and vineyards, the rust-colored rooftops of villages peek above a ribbon of green trees outlining a purplish-blue lake dotted with sailboats. On the far side of the lake, milk chocolate colored chalets lace the mountainsides.

Lake Geneva and the Alps

A John Deere tractor, like a giant green snail, creeps along turning the soil, while migrant workers bend over vineyards pruning the vines by hand. A rider trots across the field on a dappled grey horse, while overhead falcons and great blue herons soar.

In the picture outside my window, light changes the perspective every second. A ray of sunshine breaks through the clouds, casting a spotlight on a mountain flank.

Why would someone with one of the world’s most spectacular views, live behind closed shutters?

Even though it is spring outside, winter remains in my soul. April marks the third anniversary of a demanding pulsed antibiotic medical treatment that requires me to avoid light exposure. My skin and eyes must be protected and covered all the time. Too much light will damage my eyes and lead to inflammation throughout my body.

Discouraged? Sometimes. Defeated? Never. If I close my eyelids, I can picture the lush emerald fields, majestic mountains and peaceful blue water in my mind’s eye.

I know paradise resides outside my window.

Believing makes all the difference.

World Class Olympic Swimmer on Wheels

Think your life is tough? Imagine learning to swim without legs? Then go out and break the world record. Not once, but twice.

In the Beijing Paralympics 2008, Teresa Perales broke the record for 50-meter freestyle (35.88), the 100-meter freestyle (1:16.65), and collected 3 gold medals, 2 bronze medals and a silver medal.

From Sydney to Athens to Beijing, the dark eyed, 36-year-old athlete starred on the Spanish Paralympics team for the past 3 Paralympics Games winning 16 medals total. Not bad for someone who learned to swim at age twenty, without the use of her legs.

At the age of nineteen, Teresa contracted a neuropathy in her legs, a residual effect of another illness. Since then she has been wheelchair bound, but that never slowed her down. Listening to her speak one would think her wheels were the best pair of legs ever invented. The inspirational speaker reminds students at my school that it’s all about attitude.

Teresa Perales, Pekín 2008 Olympic Champion 100 m Freestyle

“You have the possibility to create your own happiness,” Teresa says with an infectious smile. “It does not depend on other people or things.”

Or legs.

“I keep my wheelchair in my bottom, “ she insists, “not my head.”

As a teenager Teresa only practiced one sport, karate, but as a paraplegic, she tried diving, car rally racing and horseback riding before deciding she liked swimming the best.

“Don’t your legs sink and slow you down?” one primary student, at my school, asked.

Teresa laughed and said, “Not if I swim fast enough. I start off the block because then my legs are buoyed up, at least at the very beginning of the race.”

In addition to her work in politics with the City Council of Zaragoza in sport and tourism, she trains six hours a day in preparation for the 1012 Olympics in Barcelona. She adheres to the principles any athlete follows. Courage. Sacrifice. Support. (Family and team) Hard work.

In 2007, she and her husband, Mariano Menor, wrote the book, My Life on Wheels.

Teresa travels the world, works, trains and raises a one-year-old son. He stole the show by crawling from his father’s arms across the stage and pulling himself to stand by his mom’s wheelchair.

“Do you ever wish you could walk again?” One boy asked.

“No, about three months after my legs went numb, I realized my feet are not that important. I am lucky to live in a country that recognizes disabilities,” she explains. “Many places in the world still hide any kind of handicap in hospitals, institutions, and homes. I have met people of all different cultures, religions, languages, customs and disabilities.”

Handicapped? No way.

She could “run” circles around most of us.

Senseless Racism, a songwriter’s opinion

The inspiration of children from around the world challenges each of us to work together to create a better world.

Etre né quelque part, a song by French singer, poet and guitarist, Maxime Leforestier, loosely translated in English shows the nonsense of racism.

On choisit pas ses parents,                                    We don’t choose our parents
on choisit pas sa famille                                         We don’t choose our family
On choisit pas non plus                                   We don’t choose
les trottoirs de Manille                                      the sidewalks of Manila,
De Paris ou d’Alger                                              or Paris, or Algiers either,
Pour apprendre à marcher                                   To learn to walk
Etre né quelque part                                            The place where one is born
Etre né quelque part                                             The place where one is born
Pour celui qui est né                                              For whoever is born
C’est toujours un hazard                                     is always random chance
Nom’inqwando yes qxag iqwahasa
Nom’inqwando yes qxag iqwahasa

Y a des oiseaux de basse cour et There are domesticated birds and

des oiseaux de passage migratory birds
Ils savent où sont leur nids, they always find their nests

quand ils rentrent de voyage                                 whether they return from travel
Ou qu’ils restent chez eux                                      Or they stay home
Ils savent où sont leurs œufs                                 they know where their eggs lay

Etre né quelque part                                                The place where one is born
Etre né quelque part                                                The place where one is born
C’est partir quand on veut,                                     Means leaving when we choose
Revenir quand on part                                             Coming back after leaving

Est-ce que les gens naissent Are people born equal
Egaux en droits
A l’endroit Wherever they were born
Où ils naissent

Nom’inqwando yes qxag iqwahasa
Nom’inqwando yes qxag iqwahasa

Est-ce que les gens naissent Are people born equal
Egaux en droits
A l’endroit Wherever they were born

Est-ce que les gens naissent Are people born
Pareils ou pas The same or not

Je suis né quelque part                                      I was born somewhere
Je suis né quelque part                                      I was born somewhere
Laissez moi ce repère                                          Leave me that reference point
Ou je perds la mémoire                                      Or I will lose my identity
Nom’inqwando yes qxag iqwaha.sa

Education, Racism, Football, and Mama

If you want to capture boys’ attention, talk football (at least in Europe). Paul Canoville, who helped break the color barrier in British soccer spoke at the International School of Geneva about racism in sport to tie in with United Nations Day of Tolerance Nov. 17, 2010 and March 21st International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

« Mama said, ‘get an education ! » Canoville said in a high pitched voice with a Caribbean accident, wiggling his hips imitating his mama.

Chelsea's player Paul Canoville

« Don’t worry Mama, football gonna take care of me. » said the first black man to play for Chelsea in 1981, who still remembers that pain of racial abuse when even his own fans called him animal names.

« My Mama, from a poor Caribbean family, came to England alone and dreamed of becoming a nurse, but never had the chance to become educated. She worked hard all her life. She didn’t care about football ; she wanted me to go to school.»

When Canoville’s career ended to a knee injury at age 25, no one took care of him, especially not football. After a downward spiral of drug addiction, street life and jail time, he turned his life around. His autobiography, Black and Blue received the best British sport book award in 2009.

After Canoville’s visit to our campus, three of my freshman students, a a tall dark-haired Italian basketball player, a blond blue-eyed Austrian footballer, and a young Swiss tennis man wrote him this letter.

Dear Mr. Canoville

Thank you for coming to tell us a story that has the power to make people change their way of thinking about racism. In school we always learn about the history of racism, what it is about, what it provokes, but we have never had a witness talk to us about his experiences. It is a privilege that students will cherish. Most kids are sports fans, and many would love to play professional football later in life. The opportunity to hear a famous footballer sharing important views so freely is fantastic. It has even more of an impact when you are funny. When you tell your life altering stories and describe the appalling behavior you confronted, you showcased your great sense of humor and positive way of seeing things. A person will always face challenging times, but if you fight for what you believe in, no matter how unfair things seem to be, you can do just about anything. You taught us this. We would love for you to come back and pass your experiences and knowledge on to other generations of students.

Canoville’s final words to our students were “Always have a back up plan. Get an education. And listen to mama. Mama knows best!”

Here’s to all the mamas around the world, making sacrifices everyday, giving children a better chance through the opportunity of education.

Anne Frank, Miep Gies, Erin Gruwell –Solitary Voices Speak Out To Make a Difference

We hear the stories of great male leaders discovering new lands, leading nations to battle, defending human rights, but what about everyday valiant acts by ordinary women. “Courage doesn’t always roar. “

“You are not defined by this moment in time
You are not defined by what has happened to you
It is the way that your choose to respond
That matters what you do
And what you decide to do
Courage is not the absence of fear
But a powerful choice we make…”
From Courage Doesn’t Always Roar By Paula Fox

During WWII, a soft-spoken, young secretary helped hide her boss’s Jewish family in an attic in Amsterdam. When the Gestapo discovered the Frank family, Miep Gies risked her life again, by hiding Anne’s diary (written between June 12, 1942 – August 1, 1944) from authorities. In 1947, Otto Frank, the only family member who survived the concentration camp, published Anne Frank Diary of A Young Girl, which sold 31 million copies, was translated into 67 languages, and has been studied worldwide including my English class at the International School of Geneva.

Miep Gies Feb. 15, 1909 – Jan. 11, 2010

In my class, I continued my lesson about Dr. Boswell’s pre Civil War quilt codes guiding slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad with another exercise to show the bravery and ingenuity of everyday people.

Franco-Suisse Hotel Arbez

A half hour from our campus, the Franco- Swiss Hotel Arbez at La Cure sits on the borderline dividing the two countries. During WWII, the owners hid British and American soldiers and Jewish civilians from the Nazis. The bottom of the staircase lies in German Occupied France; the top of the stairs “the Hideaway,” a second floor room, is on Swiss territory. Refugees disappeared into the mountains on the neutral Swiss side.

After showing examples messages stitched in quilts, I asked my students to sketch symbols that could help map the route for imaginary refugees escaping from our school to the French border at La Cure.

Over a half-century later, another daring woman, Erin Gruwell, inspired 150 disillusioned tough kids from broken homes and street gangs, to use writing to bring about change. The Freedom Writer’s Diary, published in 1999, was the true story her freshman English class at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. In 2007 the movie Freedom Writers was released, and the Freedom Writer’s Foundation website was established. http://www.freedomwritersfoundation.org/site/

After reading Anne Frank, Miss Gruwell’s class then raised funds to fly Miep Gies over from the Netherlands to speak at their school. After Miep speech,

Marcus, a husky, former gang member, once living in the street, raised his hand and stated, “You are my hero!”

“Oh no, young man, I am not a hero,” she said. “You are the heroes in your own life story – I just did the right thing at the right time.”

Single voices. Small steps. Soft whispers. Subtle strength. Simple women of courage stand out.

Women’s History Month – Quilts Connect From Pre Civil War to the 21st Century

“When you can effectively deny a man of his history, you can effectively deny him of his very humanity.” The statement from A Handbook for Teachers of African American Children by Baruti K. Kafele, an award-winning educator, whose first name means teacher, is so true.

What about women’s history? It astounds me that with all the great leaders in the world, when I ask my freshmen English class to write about heroes, most fourteen-year-old girls, choose celebrities like Lady Gaga to idolize.

“When I was your age,” I explained to my class, “women were second-class citizens. Female athletes and books about them were non-existent; very few female biographies were published. My hero was Harriet Tubman a brave, athletic slave who escaped to freedom and then led others on Underground Railroad.”

“How did a white girl end up with a black slave for hero?”

Women were obliterated from literature, except in the role as damsel in distress. Like Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, rebelling against the role of Southern white belle, I fought the confines of traditional womanhood in the 70s.

Lenore' s quilt for granddaughter

Yet individual acts of courage can make an extraordinary difference. Rosa Parks sat down so the nation would stand up for Civil Rights. Jane Addams, the first female Nobel Peace Prize recipient, helped poor Chicagoans survive the Great Depression. Harriet Tubman risked her freedom and her life helping 300 other slaves escape north.

Other heroes followed a more traditional path like my mom, Lenore McKinzie, who combined family and career. She instructed and nurtured, inspired and sewed. My mom’s passion led her to attend Dr. Clarice Boswell’s lecture on Pre-Civil War Quilts. Dr. Boswell explained how the codes stitched in quilt patterns signaled safe routes on the Underground Railroad and recounted her family ancestry in her book, Lizzie’s Story – A Slave Family’s Journey to Freedom.

So where is this going? Dr. Boswell’s daughter, Cathy Boswell, a 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist, entered Illinois State University the year after I graduated. In my first coaching gig, Cathy starred on the team I coached at summer camp.

Now my class was hooked; the lesson tied in with basketball and the Olympics.

My international students thought the Underground Railroad was a real train tunnel. They had never heard of Harriet Tubman. Most had no clue what a quilt was either. I handed out photocopies of the Pre Civil War quilt patterns and then passed around an example of the mini quilt cover my mom made me. She sewed a red cardinal, Illinois’ state bird, also my Norwegian grandmother’s favorite, into the green and gold cloth as an everlasting a symbol of my own ancestry.

Dr Clarice Boswell

From Harriet Tubman to Jane Addams to Rosa Parks, “little” women made a big impact on history. From Betsy Ross to Clarice Boswell to Lenore McKinzie, American women connected generations in the great tapestry of humanity, one stitch at time.

Information on quilting events: http://www.northernillinoisquiltfest.com/events.html

October 20, 2011, 1:30 p.m. McHenry County Historical Society Museum: Dr. Clarice Boswell Presents – Pre-Civil War Quilts: Their Hidden Codes to the Freedom of Slaves through the Underground Railroad at the McHenry County Historical Society Museum. (Union, Illinois)