End of the First Cycle

Well, well, well, here we are again. Dancegiving has past, our semi-annual Star Wars rewatch is underway, and next week is two days of space cleaning and three days off for Thanksgiving - our first break of the year. The school is quiet and sleepy today (we all ate so much deliciousness yesterday…) and the weather matches our mood: it’s rainy and dark, and many of us are sitting in rooms with the lights out. I’m focused blogging with Hugo and Tamia in the back room, on one of the couches. The radiators are hissing gently. Someone is bouncing a ball in the hallway, and I just left the Makerspace, where Jiji and Olive and Savannah are having a drawing/blogging/listening to comedy party. Earlier, we had a fast check-in/change up and then I bopped around the makerspace, listening to Sufjan Stevens and organizing the shelves. At 11, Xander came to find me for park trip - I’ve been to the park every day this week, and Shark Tag has been our game of choice. Today, I had the grumps pretty bad because I was hungry, but the game was fun anyway. We got rained on, as the final game wore on, and everyone was tagged except Luca and Erez (Erez won in the end). After parky I ate leftovers and talked to Tamia and Hugo and we decided to do mentos and coke/baking soda and vinegar experiments for Chemistry and on our way to the deli, picked up a Savannah. We had a lot of fun watching the fizzes and foams and overflows. Then I just drifted - some Star Wars watching, some leftovers grazing, some singing Steven Universe songs, some listening to Sebastian tell me about new Pokemon - until it was time to blog. A quiet and ordinary day, dim and familial, joyful and grumpy and homey and familiar.

This season has been full of such days. We’ve only enrolled one new kid this fall, and he already knew some of our community members from the space he was in before this. We also lost a number of students, to NYC’s transience and other factors. It’s left us smaller and closer-knit than I can remember in previous seasons - not without conflict or surprises but certainly without them as the focus. We’ve been practicing listening to how we lovingly tease one another, and wondering where the line is of too-far. I’ve been practicing weekly field trips and near-daily park trips and Inktober and losing games gracefully and staying cheerful in the face of chaos, keeping my momentum like a top spinning.

When I look back at my blog of the last 3 years and read posts like this one, I feel so tender about my past selves and the ways this practice helps me stay present. At the heart of things, I am a writer and in making these words I make sense, make meaning, of being here in ALC-land. Grateful to be here, grateful for this season of familiarity and ease, grateful for the past three cycles and the muscle memory I’ve developed.

Field Trip Features: Bronx Museum of Art

Walls covered in photos of graffiti-covered subway cars

One panel of photos

Me, standing in front of a subway-car sized model

This week, Mason and I decided we’d like to go on a field trip to a museum we’d never been to before. At Abby’s suggestion, we decided to go check out the Bronx Museum of Art, where there’s currently an exhibition on NYC subway graffiti in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

Mason decided to meet me there and so Hugo and I set out from ALC-NYC by ourselves. We got extremely train lucky taking the 6 to the 4 and were there in no time at all - the museum is basically due north of where we are. The Bronx Museum is also FREE, which is my favorite price for a museum (they accept donations and also sell some pretty cool swag, which I did not buy but am still thinking about). Mason met us there right after, and we headed into the exhibit.

It’s really well set up - first you come into a room with an old subway map plastered on one wall and a timeline of that era in NYC on the other, where a news clip about the photographer who documented the work, Henry Chalfant, is playing on a loop. He’s a white guy and a transplant, not at all who you would expect to be the official-unofficial documentarian of this part of NYC’s counterculture, but apparently, over the years, as he gathered and printed photographs of art that was, by nature, ephemeral and began to compile it into an archive, his studio became a neutral gathering places for all of the various crews to come and study, get inspiration, develop their styles.

At the time the MTA was a mess, the cars rusty and falling apart. The artists who did the work did so at their own risk (graffiti was, and still is, illegal on the subway), working quickly and stealthily to tag cars. Sometimes the work would only be up for hours or days before it was scrubbed by the MTA or covered up by a rival crew. The transience is inherent in the form, and the writers (not artists, as I’d assumed they identified…) prolific.

And the art itself is incredible - the clean lines of the lettering, the colors, the boldness of the forms. There were about 90 prints in the first room, arrayed in rows across an entire gallery wall, as well as pages and pages of sketchbooks where writers worked out their designs (honestly SO COOL, maybe my favorite part). There was also a recreation of Chalfant’s studio and another 2 walls of street photography - writers at work, but also breakdancers and mattress-jumpers and kids in custom-decorated pants and gathered around fire hydrants and posing on stoops. Then in the next room, there were several life-sized model cars and a video on loop with more photos of subway cars - 500 in all!! - with such accurate subway sounds playing that it took my brain a minute to register that no, I couldn’t hear the subway from this gallery, it’s part of the exhibit.

We spent a great hour there, examining everything, before deciding we were done and heading back. All in all, a great museum experience (we were basically the only people there except for some tinies on a class trip) and a fascinating exhibit - it’s up until March and I highly recommend it!

Field Trip Features: Belvedere Castle

This week, I took a trip with Hugo, Sterling and Sebastian to Belvedere Castle in Central Park. I’m trying to prioritize free field trips this year, and get us outside while the weather is still nice - it’s still warm, but I’m a New Yorker and I know what comes next.

Belvedere Castle is a an actual miniature castle in the middle of Central Park, designed by the park’s architects to offer a vista of the surrounding park-and-city-scape. It’s also (fun fact!) the place where the weather is measured - I like to be able to picture the place whenever I hear “the weather in Central Park is…”. I’d been as a kid, but it has been many years since I went back.

We left school around 10 and set off across the park, enjoying the sunshine, talking about Harry Potter and Trinidad and what makes a bad swingset. It took us about an hour to get there, past the reservoir, only stopping once at a disappointing playground. The castle is right next to the Turtle Pond, Delecourt Theatre and the Shakespeare Garden - the theatre is shuttered for the season but there was a jazz trio playing outside.

The castle is very cute but crowded - there’s only one very narrow staircase to get up to the roof, where the good view is. It winds up two flights, and is so steep and tight that people can only travel single-file, which means that traffic alternates between going up and going down. And people there were - the whole place was packed with tourists, speaking a multitude of languages. We got stuck on the stairs going up as people pushed past us (an unpleasant and claustrophobic experience), but we did finally make it to the top to take some photos and enjoy the view. When time came to head back down, Sebastian (understandably) got a bit freaked out about the prospect of going back into the stairs. With time and the help of some kindly Spanish tourists, we made it back down. During the extra time we spent on the roof deck, we spotted a red-tailed hawk circling close overhead, so really things turned out for the best.

Overall, I’d say it was a fun field trip, but mostly because of the park walk and not the destination. Central Park on a beautiful October day is the thrumming heart of the city - castle or no castle it’s worth a trip.

[Sterling and Hugo sitting on a stone wall, the Turtle Pond and baseball fields of central park behind them, and the city skyline in the distance.]

Field Trip Features: Cooper Hewitt Museum

Yesterday, we took a field trip to the Cooper Hewitt, which is a design museum on 91st street operated by the Smithsonian. I’d never been, though many people I trust have told me that I’d love it, and I was so jazzed when there was a lot of interest at Set the Week on Monday. We wound up with a crew of 7: me, Mason, Hugo, Olive, Aniya, Sebastian, and Even. Seven is a great size for a field trip - small enough to easily track but big enough to have different people to share discoveries with.

The weather was beautiful, so we walked down from school to the Cooper Hewitt, along Central Park, chatting about Steven Universe and Marvel and school adventures and other fandoms. The Cooper Hewitt is in an old mansion right on the park, built by Andrew Carnegie at the turn of the 20th century. The exterior is lots of brick and wrought-iron, and the interior features a lot of beautifully paneled wood walls and a really gorgeous dark wood, curving staircase in the lobby leading to the second floor.

One of the coolest things about the Cooper Hewitt: it’s free for young people (though grownups have to pay $18). The other cool thing: they give every guest a stylus pen thingy that you can press to an object description to save for later! Once you save it, there’s a code on your ticket that lets you view all your saved items online at home.

When I offered the trip Monday, I specifically pitched the Artificial Intelligence exhibit, which just opened, and so we went there first. It was pretty cool and also eye-opening - they centered tech that recognized facial expressions and tries to id people by their race/age/sex and also highlighted how this technology is being widely used already, often without the knowledge or consent of the public (scary). The exhibit was small, though, and Sebastian had already collected all the display info in that room and wanted to move on so we did.

Turns out, the rest of the Cooper Hewitt was devoted to design inspired by nature - there were rooms of paisley and embroidery, rooms of spiral staircases and self-organizing nanobots, technology to replace a shoulder joint inspired by the shape of a coral, a tree with 40 different fruit branches grafted together, dresses made of phosphorescent silk, a room where you can create an interactive wallpaper, wobbly top chairs, and lots and lots of cool interactive tech tables. We rambled around and talked about patterns and hyperbolic shapes and bone and plastic and the shape of the universe and monarch habitats and a closed ecosystem and being buried in a mushroom suit so you can decompose properly. We spent all day there and saw almost everything - it’s a good-sized museum in that there’s a lot to see but it’s not too overwhelming to do in one day. By 2:00 we were done, and hopped on the bus back to school. It was a great trip - highly recommend this museum!

D&D Updates

We’re two weeks into D&D and it’s been an education. This is the part where I must confess I’ve never actually played a full game of D&D before saying yes to DMing this one - I’ve played Pathfinders, which is extremely scaled down, but that’s it. Also also, though I am extremely excited about worldbuilding (which you might have guessed from my long introduction…), I have become aware that it takes a massive amount of work, on top of tracking what 7 players are doing as well as knowing the rules well enough to talk new players through gameplay, and creating and operating non-player characters, and figuring out where we are in the arc of the story now that everyone has made decisions I could not have anticipated…which is to say that I’m having a lot of fun and I’m also feeling a bit overwhelmed at the volume of work I’ve committed myself to. Committing to playing 4 hours of D&D with 7 players is not exactly what I would recommend to a novice DM...

In trying to manage this workload, I’ve self-assigned these bits of writings - summaries of the last game to keep us on track, knit the story together, and smooth over the rough patches where improv-plot-holes bug me. It’s separate from the prep work I’ve been doing but feels fun and interesting, so I don’t want to stop doing it. Instead, I’m thinking about how many hours a week we’re playing and if it feels sustainable to keep going at this rate without sacrificing quality (it doesn’t). I’m also thinking about novel ways to learn the rules (Chuck is listening to a podcast where a bunch of voice actors play D&D together), harnessing the power of the internet to create dungeons and NPCs, and the practice of letting things be imperfect for the sake of everyone’s fun. I’m sure adjustments are to come, but for now, here’s where the party is at:

————9/10

An unlikely party assembles at Miller’s Tavern and is recruited for a simple job: break into a mansion on the mysterious Nolan Island, get the Key, and get out and get paid. 

The party heads to the market to try and find a map of Nolan island. They acquire an odd map from an odd mapmaker, which features not just Nolan island but also another, unnamed and previously unknown island at the heart of the city. Lock kills the mapmaker, and in the ensuing tangle with the market guards, both he and Krys are banned from the marketplace of Siilvan.

Lock, Stor, and Landoff approach the Thieves Guild (discovered by Krys) with an offer - part of the cut of the job, if the thieves help them case Nolan island. The Thieves agree to help the party, in exchange for the strange map they purchased and 40% of the profits. Stor agrees, and the head thief (who never did divulge her name…) offers the help of their resident mapmaker (son of a mapmaker), who divulges the existence of Steward’s island - the key to accessing any of the Governers’ Islands, including Nolans. The trio also learn that Nolan’s Island is notoriously hard to get to and its fortress legendarily secure.

Stor hands over the copy of the map he’s made, but the Thieves see through it right away. Furious at being double-crossed, the head thief demands hand-to-hand combat. Stor fights her and wins (barely…), escaping with Lock, Landoff, and his life. The three head back to the tavern, where they meet up with the rest of the party…

--------- 9/16

The party made plans and purchased supplies…

———— 9/27

Our party finds themselves back at Miller’s Tavern, again (not only are there murderers here, but everyone is starting to suspect that there are fleas, too). Landrof, Stor, Lock and Amber decide to let Xara Krys and Buddy in on the details of their plan: sneak into the private dock past Henry, of New Staten Island, steal a boat, and sail for Nolan’s Island. 

Everyone rests and eats and waits until the time arrives, and all seven of them head down to the docks (minus Charles the Rabbit, who is a rather conspicuous 7-foot-tall bunny. Krys leaves him parked a few bocks away). 

Just as planned, Henry of New Staten Island is on guard, and with a brief “you look just like my little sista” heads off for his evening appointment with the privy. The 7 of them run into the shipyard and are discovered by another guard, who tries to blackmail them. Instead, they stuff some sleeping-potion down his throat, split up into 2 boats, and cast off.

The waters of the Castoff River are much, much choppier than expected and the night is dark, even with the light reflected from the city. After a few minutes of rowing, both boats spot the same thing: a giant cliff rising up out of the river much too close to them. A beach is spotted, and both halves of the party manage to shipwreck themselves on said beach mostly unharmed.

There’s only one path up the cliff and the party decides to take it. At the top, they find a sprawling, arcadian garden, deep with night shadows, and beyond an imposing fortress, all dark walls and threats. Suddenly, a guard goes by. Everyone hides, but Krys doesn’t get out of sight in time. Spotting them, the guard assumes they’re the druid that the Governer is expecting to come mend the garden and marches them off to a cell where he can keep an eye on them until it’s time for them to work in the morning.

Thus split, Stor and Landrof get into a heated argument: should we rescue Krys or not? Stor is adamant: he’s not leaving them behind. Landrof is indifferent: if they got caught, that’s their problem. 

Meanwhile, Lock has disappeared into the garden, off to investigate a well. There appears to be no water in the bottom. He drops a rock down and hears no splash. Silently, he climbs over the edge and jumps down the well. He drops and drops, thirty feet, bouncing off the wall of the well, and lands, somehow, without shattering his legs. He gets up, injured but not incapacitated, lights a torch, and starts wandering off into the darkness.

The party back aboveground has split. Stor and Amber cook up a quick plan to rescue Krys, who was unsuccessful in talking the guard into letting them go, or getting a bird to steal his ring of keys. Just as they’re about to try 

The other half of our party - Landrof, Xara, and Buddy - have gone into the darkness between the sleeping rhododendrons to see where Lock’s gone. When they discover the well, they all come to the same conclusion as he does, though they use a rope to lower themselves, instead of jumping with moderately more success. (Xara has a rough time, being Dragonborn and much more suited to being giant and menacing rather than light and easy to lower via rope, but he makes it down in the end.) 

Stor and Amber hide in the woods near Krys’ earthen cell and distract the guards by shooting an arrow off into the woods (not very bright, human guards…) who both wander off to investigate. Stor levers the door off Krys’ cell and the three disappear back into the darkness of the garden, heading for the well themselves. 

Soon, the whole party finds themselves in the dark tunnel, illuminated by their various candles and torches. Lock, with a headstart, discovers the room first: a circular stone chamber with twelve branching passageways off it, and a circular hole in the ceiling full of darkness, from which dangles a rope-and-wood ladder. Lock, with his headstart, also discovers that there are two giant rats lurking in one of the tunnels, and that they attack without provocation.

Amber pulls a bunch of loaves of bread out of her pack and throws them at the rats, momentarily distracting the creatures. The others all draw their weapons, except for Buddy, who draws back to the mouth of the tunnel they just emerged from. 

The rats are fast and their bites are ferocious. Lock, already injured from his fall, stabs one but then gets bitten square on the shoulder. Bloody and badly hurt, he manages to get it off just before Stor rushes in to kill it. Amber, Krys, Landrof and Xara engage the other rat. The fight is short: Xara melts the creature into a puddle of goo with his acid spit.

After the fight, Stor rounds on Buddy and begins yelling - what the heck man? Is that what you do in danger - you just stand back and do nothing? I know you’re a bard, but you could at least sing us some courage or something.

After the echoes die down, they hear a drip from the ceiling…

————9/23

The drip from the ceiling turns out to be an extremely acidic grey ooze! The fight is quick though - Amber, Landrof, Stor, and Lock make short work of the monster (though their weapons do not escape undamaged - both Stor and Amber’s are permanently weakened by the monster’s acid. 

Just as soon as the monster is defeated, a halfling appears out of one of the tunnels. Just shy of three feet tall and carrying an incongruously large pack, they inform the party that their name is Pumpkin (just Pumpkin, no first name, and any relation to any members of the Pumpkin family back home in the Shire is none of anyone’s business). After a bit of bluffing, Amber figures out that they’re scared of the Governers, and the party offers gold and an opportunity to undermine them in exchange for Pumpkin’s help on their quest. He agrees, and informs them that Nolan’s island isn’t safe to access through these tunnels due to the presence of a Gibbering Mouther - their weapons aren’t nearly up to par. He suggests they go instead to Cristof’s island, where there is a magical cache of weapons that will help them get into the legendarily impenetrable fortress at Nolan’s.

The way to Cristoff’s island isn’t a walk in the park - the tunnel Pumpkin leads them down is infested with Giant Rats and also an Ocher Jelly, which splits into two jellies when sliced (oops!). Amber sends out a thunder wave that hits the unsuspecting party - both Buddy and Xara are badly injured and pass out. Once the jelly is defeated, the party decides to take a long rest at the end of the tunnel, to eat and rest and prep spells to revive themselves as Pumpkin and Landrof stand watch...

————9/24

(I’m one session recap behind, so check back for this one!)

This Week! Steven Universe (the Movie), Pokemon Showdowns, Moon Photos, and more...

Today the school is really empty because a lot of people are at the Climate Strike (which is really exciting). My brain is not fully online this afternoon, though I’m not 100% sure why. I was saying to Xander earlier I’m still adjusting to a 5-day-a-week talking to humans schedule after a very introverted summer (true, v relevant). I’m sure there’s other stuff, but that’s at the top of the list.

Stuff that’s happening now: James is writing a blog post that’s just fun facts about Ash. Ash is volunteering the facts he thinks will freak James out the most. Interesting data: Ash owns 15 porcelain clown dolls and his favorite is named Cheeky. Cheeky smells very musty, apparently.

Stuff that happened today: The first edition of The Agile Learner was published by Hugo and Iphy. It is very funny and good and includes a profile of Ryan’s cat and Interesting Data (instead of Fun Facts) and also an exposé about Luca’s lunch. Big stuff.I went to close park with Xander, Savannah, Sterl and Sebastian and we played shark tag. I tripped over my own feet while trying to be sneaky and Xander laughed at me.

Speaking of Xander, he beat me many times at Pokemon showdown this afternoon and I am feeling very salty about it. I used to be a very sore loser and I’ve gotten a lot more graceful about it over time, but still, it doesn’t feel good to have all your best Pokemon get one-shotted, especially when you’re about to use Crunch, the best ever move.

Lots of singing today, because I’ve had all the songs from the Steven Universe Movie (a v v excellent movie) stuck in my head all week. We’ve been singing the hits all day -

• Other Friends

• Happily Ever After

• No Matter What

• Independent Together

• Drift Away

Okay as I’m making this list I want to add all the songs from the movie so… I recommend watching it. I really love Steven Universe and I really love musicals and to watch my two loves combined into this one glorious package is magical.

An interaction from the beginning of blogging time:

James: Every odd number has an “e” in it

Me: Cool. Doesn’t every number have an “e” in it?

James: Uhh no.

Me: Really?

James: Two.

Me: >.<

Some things from earlier this week: I went to the Met and looked at photos of the moon with Olive, Mason, and Hugo, which was delightful. We walked through Central Park to get there and it was an absolutely beautiful September day, just really joyful all around. Shark tag has returned as Close Park tag of choice. Chemistry started up again this week, as did Anatomy and Physiology (Meet the Gastrointestinal System!). Several Pokemon walks were taken. And lots happened in DnD on Tuesday (I still have to write the recap) including the party's first fight! Also, many other things happened not noted here or elsewhere (if a kid learns something and no one records it, how will they ever learn math???? a joke, a joke...)

It’s been a Friday! Stay tuned for DnD updates, etc.

<3 Mel

Dungeons & Dragons 2019!

This week, we officially started our Dungeons and Dragons campaign and I'm the DM! I am very, very excited about this game not only because it gives me an excuse to talk in funny voices but because I've never DMed before. The DM, or DungeonMaster, is in charge of worldbuilding - creating not only the landscapes that players encounter but the people, monsters, and adventures they discover therein. I've created a new tag on this blog to document what I can of this first adventure. The following is the intro to the world that I gave all our players as we sat down this past Tuesday to begin our first session...

Welcome to Susstra. This is a watery world, full of salt flats and marshes and evergreen islands dotting clear channels of fast-moving rivers and wide, deep slow sections where cities huddle, monopolizing a bridge or a ferry-crossing. This is a world of rapids and waterfalls, of canals and flood plains. The known continent - this one that we’re all inhabiting - is divided into many lands. The creatures who inhabit these lands are as different as the waters that divide them. Some - like the halflings of the Shire - keep to themselves. Some - like the humanoids that populate the lowland salt flats - live in mixed communities where humans, half-orcs, dragonborn, teiflings, and all manner of elves live side by side. Lots of countryside is wild, and unclaimed; lots of it is also claimed by various kings, barons, councils, and collections of magic-wielders. Most clusters of people form townships; cities are rare and tend to be clustered around major ports. Generally, whatever local government runs the surrounding countryside with whatever magic, muscle, and manipulation they can manage; travelers generally stick to waterways, which are considered more neutral that highways on land (which tend to be dangerous, swarming with vicious highwaymen).

There are lots of gods in this world and demigods and semigods - lots of beings with power in this part of the universe. Here the streams of knowledge of how to manipulate energy, like the streams and rivers of the continent, are abundant and fractal. Magic is abundant. Wield enough of it, and you can call yourself whatever you want.

But also, be careful who you claim to be descended from, because the gods are present and can be prickly about how you talk about them. People worship freely to a pantheon of water deities like the many waterways of this land: fluid, branching, forever changing, sometimes nourishing, sometimes terrible. Parent gods are highly localized, often the anthropomorphization of rivers, lakes, harbors, waterfalls and other places of water that supports life. Clustered around them are their godly offspring and plentiful mortal children - both walk among mortal creatures. They called upon to bestow favors and, depending on how powerful they are, some can actually grant them. Not everyone cares, but the existence of the grandparents of all deities, the parents of all waters - Ocean, River, and Rain - is hotly debated among scholars, priests, and others interested in the divine.

This city, the city, Siilvan, is no mere sad feudal holding, it’s the greatest metropolis in this hemisphere. For as far as a boat can take you on this watery continent, all the way from ocean to unbroken ocean, this is where people - human, elf, dragonborn, teifling, halfing, dwarf, orc, and every bastardization thereof - came to live and die in hope and squalor. The city is tense and sprawling, crowded and squat, huddled on an archipelago of rocky islands, at the delta of three major rivers, where they flow together into one great channel and out to the open sea.

Some islands are for the rich, who rule the city by proxy through the governers, much spoken of but rarely visited, glimpsed only across the waters. Most islands are filled with the poor, and are filled with short buildings clustered chaotically around open-air marketplaces. The islands are linked by bridge and ferry; the waters between them are fast-moving and swirling with hard-to-predict currents which keep the poor from swimming over to and overwhelming the strongholds of the rich.

Everyone knows the governers are corrupt but most people feel neutral or resigned to them; this system has been in place for generations, becoming more and more corrupt but by slow degrees. Having the governers favor makes your life easier but they prefer to make life hard. You are here tonight because you’ve heard a rumor: someone here is a representative of the governers (or just one of them? a coalition? you’ve all heard different rumors) who is looking to assemble a multiracial team to do a big job, one that could earn you a spot on one of the nicer islands, a cushy life, gold for days, influence over the city, and the life you’ve only imagined. Only one job and then, your wildest dreams fulfilled. Seems almost too good to be true…

How I Became ALC-NYC's Librarian

First of all, you should know that I love books, always have. Some of my first memories are being in a crib, full of books; I quickly grew to be the kind of kid who had to be told to stop reading and come eat dinner. My mother, a reading teacher, is a book lover herself, and so my growing-up was filled with trips to the public library and the bookstore and her classroom, where I could borrow whatever I wanted from the library she tended. Unsurprisingly, I’ve become the kind of adult who walks down the street reading; in fact, since I finished my schooling 6 years ago and rediscovered reading for pleasure, I’ve read nearly 500 books. I love genre fiction - fantasy and sci-fi novels are my bread and butter (metaphorically, of course, because I don’t eat bread) - but I’ve also been reading graphic novels, memoirs, nonfiction and basically whatever else I can get my hands on for most of my life.

I love reading but I also love the books themselves - the beautiful shapes and colors and art and poeticism of children’s books, the illustrative charts and maps and images in reference guides, the smooth feel of a new paperback, the musty smell of a well-worn hardcover. I love how they make a place feel like home. I love to run my eyes over the titles of books I’ll maybe read, maybe not; I love the promise of ideas.

When I got to ALC-NYC, there were already tons of books here. But they were unruly and overwhelmingly adult; the kind of library you get when well-meaning folks donate the books they no longer want to haul around their life. We had 5 copies of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but not a full set of Harry Potter. There were pockets of places where someone had clearly been poking at it - a few picture books displayed prominently on the back room windowsill, or a stash of Tamora Pierce novels at hand where a teen might find them in the library. I later learned a lot of those books were Abby’s personal books, brought in with specific kids in mind. There were lots of other kids books, but they were all about the space, willy-nilly; there was a library, but who knew what was on the shelves.

About a month into my first year ALFing, we had a staff work day; no kids in the space, just me, Ryan, and Abby, coming in to do what felt necessary for us. I gravitated towards the Library. Do you think it’s okay, I asked, if I move some of these books? I was a new baby facilitator, still deep in my ask-permission conditioning. I knew what I wanted, but I hadn’t yet given myself permission to act on my desires without first receiving outside approval.

Of course you can move the books, Abby and Ryan told me. Do what you want.

It wasn’t that straightforward, of course - I asked many times and received many variations on that answer. I asked about putting books out of sight so I could make others more visible, and about getting rid of old, outdated texts with harmful contents, and trusting my intuition about which books to feature. I don’t remember exactly what I asked my co-facilitators, three years ago now, but I do remember the feeling: is this real? Am I allowed? Am I taking up too much space? I’m grateful for their clarity and support: this is your real job. You are allowed to shape your role with your desires. The space you occupy is valuable to us, and to this community.

Offhandedly, a few months later, Abby told me that she’d listed me as the librarian on one of our mandated government forms; just like that, I realized I already was. It was my first medium-is-the-message experience in self-directed education and it was a powerful one.

I’ve rearranged the Library many times since then; I’ve come to understand the way it has aliveness and needs to be tended, like a garden. I’ve learned a lot about making a welcoming space, when to offer books and when to strew them in discoverable places, how to listen for what texts we need this season. Being Librarian means I get to be guide and guard and gardener; serving as librarian is part of facilitating in my joy. I became ALC-NYCs librarian by noticing my desire and giving myself permission to act on it, just as any good self-directed learner does.

First Week Wheeeeeee!!

Well, turns out three years of practice does make a difference. Earlier this week everyone in spawn was all talking at once, and the 8-year-old facilitator was completely distracted with his lego, and no one had written anything on the board, and I could hear kids from the other spawns already out in the hall, finished with their meetings when we hadn't even started, and I wasn't worried about it. Past Mel would have felt pressured to do something, but I didn't. I resisted the urge to take control, to make the meeting more "efficient," and I was able to tolerate the discomfort (less than it once was, after the practice of many chaotic spawns) because I really do trust the kids now. A big part of it is noticing where my schoolishness wants to eat that trust and actively choosing to reject the impulses of ordering, controlling, and making things smooth; another is recognizing the assumption that order, control, or smoothness are the primary goals of the meeting, rather than authentic presence, reflection, and relationship-building. Time is weird, but sometime in the last three cycles I've begun giving myself permission to relax in noticing the ways that it is circular. Things are how they are right now, so notice them. Be present in that noticing. Spawn is chaotic and that slows things down but we are here: a teen is trying to help the 8-year-old decide how to set the gameshifting board, a kid who has been practicing is sounding really good playing piano, everyone's body posture is relaxed and sleepy this morning. This is only the second day of school. There's plenty of time.

After a summer of littles, I'm particularly grateful to be back in a self-directed space with pre-teens and teens; I was reflecting on this after I spent a lot of yesterday talking to Timo and Iphy. We started with which language-learning apps we like (estamos practicando español!) and then, organically, moved through conversations about gender, patriarchy, the origins of hegemony, conspiracy theories, what money is, individual actors vs organizations, climate change, theories and schemas for manifesting cultural shifts, brains and bodies and networks and emergent strategy and so much more; a pretty comprehensive list of some of my favorite subjects to swirl my brain around. There are lots of kinds of self-directed spaces, and lots of kinds of play, but this particular kind - where we float on a conversational tide of our interests - is one that I love, and am grateful for the intellectual challenge of.

More first week highlights: ramping up a really big D&D game thanks to Xander's enthusiasm and organization, lots of humans playing the piano, reconnecting over our fandoms, listening to culture keepers discuss culture hacking, a smooth(er) cleanup time than the end of last year, sharing books, listening to Sebastian's evil laugh echoing down the hall, the return of Geoguessr, Wikitrails, and Coup, the invention of a new currency, age-mixed Roblox, naming the new projector, and listening to Timo and Iphy explain active voice to Hugo (happening right now!). Exciting things to come: field trips, park trips, the return of volunteer-led offerings like Acro and cook noob, art projects, anatomy and physiology, and a Pokemon showdown tournament (that I might stand a chance in - we'll see!). First things first: the D&D crew got $150 from finance club today to go to the Strand and Forbidden Planet on Monday to get supplies! Yay for a new year!

Year 4 Intentions!

Honestly, I can’t believe the summer’s over. I’m writing this on Labor Day; tomorrow, I meet up with the other ALFs to do some last-minute school prep and the day after, we start! While I’m sure it’s cliched of me to say that this summer has flown by, it’s also true - it’s felt like time outside of time. I stayed in the city for the whole summer for the first time in my adult life, and it was a surreal experience. I moved back to the neighborhood in Brooklyn where I lived as a tiny human and spent most of July reflecting on what home is, what it means to be from somewhere, what it means to belong to a place. I also worked this summer at Play:ground NYC, where I learned loads about risky play, boundary setting, and how important it is to care for your body with adequate food and hydration and rest (especially when you’re working outside in the hundred degree weather!); as a bonus, I got to ride the ferry there and back as a part of my three-island commute.

But time does exist and also our rock continues to hurtle through the void through its cycle; today is for intention setting, more than reflection and sharing. (With an eye towards more, bigger reflection and sharing to come - I’ve got some bubbling projects that I’m excited about!) So here it is, a list of my intentions for this, my 4th (!!!) year at ALC-NYC.

• Feed and water my physical body as though the quality of my facilitation depends on it (it does!). Eat whole fruits and vegetables, drink the clean, free water that comes out of the taps, don’t skip meals, prepare the majority of the food I eat myself from whole ingredients.

• Go on weekly field trips! I’ve started a list of free things to do in NYC (should I post it on this blog?) and want to prioritize trips that are financially accessible to all. I particularly want to (re)visit the museums I love most dearly: the Met, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Brooklyn Museum.

• Go outside! Play tag. Learn to identify trees. Become familiar with the birds in our neighborhood. Explore Central Park beyond our northern corner. Practice handstands. Swing. Hang upside down. Be in the sunshine and the weather.

• Write write write! I have a zine project with a clear goal that I intend to publish by the end of 2019. Also, I’d like to publish more blog posts than I did last year - particularly of the short-reflective, and long-resource flavors.

• Make art! I intend to do inktober again, and I’m thinking about NatNoWriMo. I intend to carve and print lino blocks, to make watercolors, to draw in ink and pencil. I intend to make unplanned art messes and crochet corals and splatter paint and play piano and sing and dance and and and…

• Learn more Spanish! My baby Spanish is sad… but it doesn’t have to be. I intend to practice daily with duolingo, podcasts, translating books, listening to pop music, and friends…

• DM a DnD game! I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons before, but I’ve never been the Dungeonmaster. Last year, I played a Pathfinders game that was fun for a while and then petered out - then, over the summer, one of those players asked me if we could bring it back! This time, I’ll be making the world and running the monsters and I’m so excited about it…

• Learn about the body! I’m looking forward to continuing to learn about anatomy and physiology with the crew from last year, and I’m also hoping to do some more exploring of ways to support my body and others’ as we navigate challenges. We’re all just meat robots running on electricity and will be for as long as we’re alive; it feels like an important thing to learn about how that works!

I have a tendency to set really lofty intentions and this isn’t really an exception; but I have noticed that writing down my intentions helps me keep them, and that most of these are things I was already doing as I facilitated in my joy last year. Here’s to another year of adventures!