Changes and Choices

Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, 

letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights. 

~Pauline R. Kezer ~

I am a little hesitant about continuing to post to this blog.  The One Candle Schoolhouse is no more, the two Bright Lights Community Learning Centers have ceased to be active, and even the Open Door Habilitation project has languished.  Without these projects, what is there to create posts for?  Is it appropriate to continue to use this site, for follow-ups, or should a new blog be created and linked, for those who would like to keep updated?

I really don't know...but events that are linked continue to occur that I would like to share, simple projects that continue to happen in the spirit of One Candle Schoolhouse, so I will randomly post them here and hope to sort it all out later....

To begin, after almost twelve years in the OCS house we'd built on rental property, in April 2014 I moved to a new location.  It is a very large, open building with a gorgeous view, on a huge piece of land facing the entrance to Tambobo Bay.

Plenty of room for the full work shop that Bill had built and all the OCS books, furniture....

....and visitors!

Those slippers belong to the classmates of Hamuel, a high school student who was involved in a serious motorcycle accident just before Christmas and will be recovering in the guest room for the next few months. 

Here are three recent videos of house-related activities:

Building Sweet Houses

Christmas Rice for Bondo Rd & Talukoy

A Swing for George

As for PILAR and Diane activities these past months...next posting!

UPDATE:  This will be the last post at this site, for OCS, BLCLII, and ODH.  It will not, however, be my last post for my continuing interest and involvement with related projects.  Those will be found at a new website I have begun building:  http://1candlefirebird.faso.com/Diane's new website  I look forward to continuing to share the 'adventure' with you...

TEACHING

"My name is diane and I am so frustrated burt belive good things can halppen if we just do stuff..."

Recently, while using the Open Door Habilitation blog to introduce a potential volunteer to the "bells and whistles" of creating posts, I quickly typed a title for the post ("Teaching") and then, without worrying about typos or what to say, quickly wrote the above sentence to show how fun and easy it was to do these things. Which was both The Truth and A Lie.

Posting, when filled with inspiration and time to focus (as well as decent internet connection!), is truly wonderful...amazingly joyfull, overflowing with great personal satisfaction.  But it is not always easy.

One Candle Schoolhouse was like that.  It was one of the greatest joys of my life, right up there with Bill and I building PILAR and sharing our life together over thirty-four richly rewarding years. 

"Change is the only constant," I've heard said, and it is true.  To this blog I've tried to remain dogged if not constant to updating all that happened in OCS, to all the amazing friends who supported the school and the projects they made possible for the children, but I've finally had to acknowledge to myself--now to this blog and those who may still check in for updates--that things have changed so much that I cannot make full and complete the summation I'd hoped for.

While reading FALLING THROUGH SPACE, The Journals of Ellen Gilchrist, the following passage resonated so deeply with my state of change since Bill died that, though she is speaking for writers, her words easily apply to a wider audience:

"...in order to be a writer you must experience and learn to recognize and cope with periods of what Freeman Dyson calls stuckness.  In order to do creative work in any of the arts or sciences you must go through long or short spells of not knowing what is going on, of being irritated, and not being able to find the cause, of being willing to work as hard as you can and what happens isn't valuable enough, isn't good enough, isn't what you meant to do, what you meant to say.  Then you have to keep on working.  Then, if you can bear it, if you don't quit and move to Canada or call up Joe and go hiking for two weeks or quit your job or get a divorce or do anything else to relieve the pain, and it is pain, its really irritating, it puts you in a bad mood, you are irritable to children and can't focus on anything and keep changing your mind, if you can put up with it and just go right on sitting down at that desk every day no matter how much it seems to be an absurd and useless and boring thing to do, the good stuff will suddenly happen.  It may be twelve o'clock at night when you are doing something else or are in the bathtub.  It will be when you have given up and least expect it.  There it will be, the radium, the formula, the good short story, the real poem..."  

...or it may be helping a former student help Special students, or it may be planning a voyage to Baja, or Australia or Malysia...or building a houseboat studio if enough like-minded people can't be found to build a Creative Cultural Community...all 'good stuff' that "can halppen if we just do stuff..."

Mozzarella!

Guest Teachers, Simon Stack & Joanna Bulova

Tata Stack

"Hi Diane, Just want to share with you about Joanna being featured at the New England  cheese maker's magazine  - about her trip and cheese making lesson with the kids at the Learning Center."

http://www.cheesemaking.com

Making Mozzarella in the Philippines

Note:  We did a blog article in June about Joanne Bulova who makes cheese in Jamaica (and sells it in Kingston at a shop called "Uncorked."  She sent us this update:

... At the moment I am in the Philippines for 3 weeks visiting my son and daughter-in-law, who live here.  I'm attaching some pictures of teaching cheese making to a group of Filipino kids at a Saturday program for rural children called the Bright Lights Community Learning Center.  And the cheese we're making is Ricki's 30 minute mozzarella!  We're using whey to stretch the cheese since microwaves are not available.  The milk is fresh raw cow's milk.

The learning center is a voluntary Saturday program set up by an adventurous American woman (Diane Pool) who arrived here on her boat and decided to stay.  It's run on the principles of the open classroom school: the children choose their activities, the older ones help the younger ones, and  there are two staff members to provide guidance.

She (Diane) is hopeful that the children may be able to do the cheese making and actually market their product.
Joanna Bulova

FURTHER GOOD NEWS FROM TATA:  

"...An acquaintance from NYC who owns a restaurant and wrote culinary books about the Philippines food, is creating a pilot project in Dumaguete geared  towards creating community kitchens to make healthy, nutritious and hygienec food accessible and affordable to poor communities.  Her other mission is to provide jobs and livelihoods through the community kitchens by creating a market for artisanal products so that culinary treasures here in the Philippines don't die out. ....your program has major potential for participating in this project ...definitely a perfect collaboration that will meet your mission and theirs....."

The Bill Pool Sailing School

     judge a man, then, by that

     against which he must strive

     against what

     if not this soft night

     and the wind and sea

     against the myth

     he must become

     and his own will

     the ocean waits

     to measure or to slay me
     the ocean waits

     and I will sail

                         --Webb Chiles

We owe the whole program to Doug Schuch, an American sailor from North Carolina who arrived aboard his 47' yacht, FELLOW TRAVELER, earlier this year.  He specifically sailed to the Philippines, to Port Bonbonon, looking for a Community to immerse himself in, and it didn't take him more that a week to become an active and intregal part of our two Learning Centers! 

Doug taught photography initially, then moved to swimming and sailing for the kids.  The three dinghies he built specifically for the students to learn not just sailing, but boat building and maintainence, too.  The boats are here to provide others, also, with an opportunity to enjoy sailing, while generating a small income for the Learning Centers.  

On Sundays, Doug helps the kids rig their boats and set off, then Renato Dela Cruz (co-director of Bonbonon BLCLC) assists the students from another dinghy, as they learn to handle the boats themselves.  

Doug was kind enough to make a motion (passed) at our first Board Meeting of Bright Lights Community Learning Initiatives, Inc, that the name be the Bill Pool Sailing School, to honor Bill's memory in the founding of One Candle Schoolhouse.

Glimpses Granted

No ray of sunshine is ever lost,
but the green which it wakes into existence needs time to sprout,

and it is not always granted to the sower to live to see the harvest.

All work that is worth anything is done in faith.
- Albert Schweitzer

Very emotional morning, April 4th, 2011, watching former students of One Candle Schoolhouse's Saturday class as they graduated from their Philippine public school. 

But it was equally heartening to recognize present Saturday Students from the Bright Lights Community Learning Centers--students now taught by the Volunteer Teams--who were undergraduate students receiving awards. Many of these students' parents were unable to attend the ceremony because they work overseas to provide paychecks for their childrens' education.  Many Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and even Siblings become the primary caregivers then, supporting and witnessing these childhood milestones for absent parents. 

Madeleine, one of our German Volunteers, was privileged to perform that role for one such student when she received her award.  It was deeply touching to glimpse this tender outgrowth of seeds planted in faith.

To all of you who have been such an important part of One Candle Schoolhouse's  evolution into the Bright Light's Community Learning Centers,  please share with us this happy occasion and know that you, like overseas parents, have made it possible...

We're cook'n now!

Irmgard Krepela

"We are here to add what we can to,

not to get what we can from, Life."

--Sir William Osler

 Our long-time "Austrian Angel", Irmgard Krepela, recently returned to visit our newly constructed Learning Center in Siit, bringing with her a truly heavenly donation from her family: Funds for  the construction of a much-needed kitchen!  

Since September of last year, the cooking of our Saturday Feeding Program has been outdoors over a wood fire, with preparation and dinning on make-shift tables...

 ...but under Irmgard's personal supervision 

the Bright Lights' efficiently modern kitchen was completed in record time

and now hearts as well as bellies are filled with gratitude:

Again, THANK YOU for your open hearts and generous donations:

Christina Stahl                    Helga Krepela                       Mathilde Strobel

Along with Irmgard Krepela's gift of a full kitchen to the Siit BLCLC, Gunther Wegricht's equally generous (and much-needed) donation of a Printer/Scanner/Copier has brought bright smiles to students' faces as well as furthering their literary and artistic enterprises....

Renewable Dreams

Dreams are renewable.

 No matter what your age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within you 

and new beauty waiting to be born. 

--Dale E. Turner

Last Saturday night, February 12th, as I sat in the front row audience taking pictures of the fund-raising performance by the two Learning Center's students, I was overwhelmed by the realization that the vision posted in September of 2008...

"It has long been my dream for One Candle Schoolhouse to move out into the local community, to be more accessible to both children and adults, and to be run by Filipinos themselves."

...had truly come into existence largely because of these people:

 

...Thank you, Bonbonon and Siit Team Members Annabel, Renato, Analie, Lilith, Evelyn, Jesslie May, Shane Mae, Janefel, Aljendra, Madeleine (visiting DED volunteer Inez, from ANIMO).

Watching the performance, the sudden realization of my dream for One Candle Schoolhouse gave only momentary pause about no longer being needed. I felt not loss but joy, recognizing I was now free to transition more fully into the next phase, the Livelihood Skills Program...and for the first time since Bill died, I was excited and infinitely grateful to feel renewed energy for my private dreams as well!