Happy Birthday, Dorothy Jasiecki

 This is a blog about gardening, which can be reasonably defined as growing, nurturing, caring, and cultivation.  However this edition of the Principal Undergardener will not be about the gardening of flowers or vegetables but, rather, the nurturing of young people's minds, the cultivation of their intellects, and urging the growth of their curiosity.  More specifically, it will be about a very special gardener of young minds: a teacher named Dorothy Jasiecki.

Dorothy Jasiecki circa 1968

I am by trade a writer, and I say that with pride.  For 35 years, I plied a very different craft that occasionally required me to put words to paper, but which I can say with complete honesty never gave me anything like the personal and professional satisfaction I have felt for the past 19 years.  The reason this blog exists is because writers, like (for example) pianists, need to practice.  Just as a pianist does not sit down at a concert grand and begin playing ‘The Appassionata’, so a writer does not go to his or her keyboard and begin writing that Great American Novel.  The pianist begins with ‘etudes’ – literally, study pieces - that stretch the fingers and make the mind warm up. 

Me in 1967.  The less
said, the better

This blog is my equivalent of an etude.  It is about gardening because I am married to a virtuoso gardener and I am her helper, and also because writing about gardening is considerably more interesting than opining about, say, politics or wine.  Each entry is as carefully thought through as a short story and is polished to fit within a prescribed length.

I am a writer because, from September 1964 until June 1967, Dorothy Jasiecki taught me to love language, literature and words.  She had been recruited by a young principal named John M. Jenkins to teach at a spanking new school, Miami Springs Senior High .  I was in one of her classes that first year strictly by happenstance.  The following two years, she was my English teacher by design.

Me, as I look these 
days. The less
said the better

Miss Jasiecki (the notion of calling teachers by anything other than ‘Mister’, ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs.’ lay many years in the future) created and followed a lesson plan that ensured we read and mastered the material that would appear on tests.  What made her so extraordinary was how she conveyed that information and that she demanded we go far beyond what was required by the Dade County Board of Public Instruction.  She effectively had a second syllabus, one of her own devising, that was intended to stretch – and open - our minds. 

Our reading list was designed to
stretch the mind

Part of her methodology was to reach deep into her own knowledge of literature to awaken our own senses.  She spent much of one class session reading Beowulf in a way that I felt I was gathered around a hearth fire, listening to oral tradition being made.  We delved into poetry far beyond Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost and spent several days dissecting The Wasteland and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; titles that almost certainly were not sanctioned by the bureaucrats at Lindsey Hopkins.

The balance of her teaching style was to challenge us to think about what we were reading.  To be in her class meant you came to school prepared, and ‘prepared’ meant you had not only read the assigned book but that you had understood it.  And God forbid you came into class spouting something from Cliff’s Notes.  (I tried that once and was found out almost immediately.)

All of this was leavened with philosophy and humor.  The final five minutes of class could comprise a discourse on the importance of shaking hands or a treatise on elbows.  These ‘sermonettes’ as we called them stretched us further still, if for no other reason than because we had no idea of what was coming next.

Miss Jasiecki was a tough grader.  I made very few ‘A’s’ in her class.  But I tried harder than I did in any other subject both because she expected it and I knew it pleased her. 

She was recognized for her skills.  Florida named her a ‘Star Teacher’ and sent her on a statewide tour with a similarly high achieving student from my class.  My great hope is that she inspired other educators as much as she inspired us.

At the 2007 reunion with Ms. J.
That's classmate Jane Greer at right

In 2005, I made a detour on a business trip to Tucson, where she had retired, and took her out to dinner.  I last saw Miss Jasiecki  at my 40^th reunion and spent both evenings listening to her reminisce about her years in the classroom.  Time had taken its toll on her body, though not on her mind.  It turns out that her best memories were of her first years at Miami Springs and at her predecessor school, Norland High. 

She passed away in 2015.  Were she alive, she would have turned 99 on October 30th.  And, in an important sense, Dorothy Jasiecki is still very much alive in 2024.  She touched thousands of lives and, for a certain number of them (including mine), she left an indelible impression that transcends time.  She still looks over my shoulder as I write; ‘tsking’ at lax grammar and use of ‘easy’ adjectives.

Ms. J circa 2015

We did not all become writers or poets.  We went into computer science, construction, sales, engineering or education; we raised families or went into the military.  But we all learned how to think and, regardless of future occupation, that skill made us better individuals.

Principal Jenkins attracted a pool of talent in those first years that made Miami Springs a school unlike any other.  I had many teachers – Jack Gonzalez, Agustin Ramirez, and Phil Giberson come immediately to mind – who were outstanding and committed to quality education.  But I can draw a direct line back to Dorothy Jasiecki and say, without hesitation, that she was the teacher who most inspired me.  I would not be the person I am today were it not for her.

Happy birthday, Dorothy Jasiecki, and thank you for being the teacher you were, and the inspiration you still are.

Facebook Follies

What I saw from the driveway

Two days ago, I walked out in the early morning light to collect the newspapers at the end of our driveway. (Yes, there are still dinosaurs who subscribe to the print edition of newspapers.) As I turned to walk back to the house, I paused to admire the way the trees in our front garden had turned wonderful shades of yellow, gold, orange and red.

I though to myself, “I ought to take a picture of this.” And so, I went back into our home, found my camera (yes, there are still dinosaurs who take photos with ‘cameras’ instead of their phones), and took shots from several angles.

The resulting post

There was one photo that looked especially attractive. I thought to myself, “I ought to share this with the world on Facebook,” (Yes, I know only dinosaurs still use Facebook.) The perfect audience would be a group catering to people who either have created, are in the process of creating, or yearn to create what is called a ‘Home-grown National Park’ – a phrase coined by naturalist and rock star Doug Tallamy.

The photo, I thought, ought to bear the names of the trees and shrubs in it. And so, I painstakingly used Microsoft Paint (yes, dinosaurs, etc.) to place little circles of white with numbers in them at unambiguous points. The post was a marvel of economy while providing the photo’s location and all necessary botanical information, right down to the common name and Linnaean binomials.

By early afternoon, my photo and caption was posted. I was pleased with my contribution, I went off to do other things. When I returned home, I checked Facebook. To my pleasant surprise, my post had drawn almost a hundred ‘likes’ and a dozen comments. This was wonderful. The endorphins flowed through me. 

Within an hour, though, there was a naysayer. I was using ‘cultivars’ – cross-bred versions of native species that offered a new variant with, say, stronger color or a different shaped leaf. The author of this comment said my poor choices meant native pollinators likely wouldn’t recognize the plant. I had exchanged the needs of native birds, bees and butterflies for the human-centered greed for something prettier.

Almost as inexcusable, I had planted native species out of their range. Yes, the oak leaf hydrangea is a native. But its native range ends in Tennessee. It has no business being grown up here in cold, frozen Massachusetts. I was apparently inviting unwitting middle-south-dwelling pollinators to come north where they would perish with the first hard frost… and it would all be my fault!

I made the mistake of responding. I explained our property had been an ecological disaster zone; full of swallowwort and burning bush. In return, I was taunted again. “So, you like those cultivars, huh?” I replied with an extensive list of native species that weren’t in the photo.

I had an idea. I had a great video of Monarchs swarming over my Vernonia (ironweed). Moreover, these Monarchs were feasting on a cultivar! Mine was Vernonia ‘Iron Butterfly’!  Take that! I posted it.

And got even more scorn. I was serving up Starbucks coffee to migrating butterflies that needed a pre-marathon pasta bar with all the trimmings. By wasting time and energy for my non-nutritious cultivar, those Monarch would never reach Mexico.

I was stung. But a few readers came to my defense. “Don’t be such a snob”, wrote someone. “The whole idea of HNP (Home-grown National Parks) is to be a snob,” was the reply. Clearly, I had waded into a swamp. I had done so with all good intentions, but I was in over my head.  I selectively replied to a few questions, but steered clear of the snipers laying in wait for me.

The two threads have quieted down. Somewhere in the HNP discussion group, some naïve fool has posted a pretty photo of a plant and is now being pummeled for his or sin of having put the wrong thing into the ground.

 

And now for something completely different

I am going through old files this weekend and came across something I thought was worth sharing. I guarantee it has nothing whatsoever to do with gardening.

Our dream trip to Egypt

In the fall of 1997, my wife, Betty, and I were contemplating a late autumn vacation. We wanted to go somewhere we had never been.  Someplace exotic and, hopefully, warm. We had already been to five continents, so why not add Africa? We were keenly interested in history and so why not Egypt?

We usually traveled on our own, but neither Betty nor I could not wrap our tongues around Arabic and so we looked for a tour. We found a two-week excursion through Overseas Adventure Travel and settled on a departure date of November 25, returning December 9. We applied for and received our visas, and were set to go.

Double-click to read the gruesome
details of the murders

Then, on November 18, a heretofore unknown group called the Muslim Brotherhood attacked two busloads of tourists at the Temple of Hatsepshut in Luxor, killing 70 and wounding 30 others. Because the tourists were Europeans, it was not huge news in the U.S. We knew about it, though, and wondered if our trip was cancelled. Two days later came a letter from OAT asking if we wanted to cancel or go somewhere else on the same dates.

OAT offered us a out...

We looked at each other, then talked it over. Our lone dependent was our cat (and Alfred loved for us to travel because it meant he would be overfed). If we put off the trip, we would likely never again find two weeks for such a journey. We decided to go. So, as it turned out, did 12 other souls – out of more than a hundred who had originally signed up. We did not know it then, but rival Abercrombie & Kent was similarly finding almost every one of their travelers were opting out. And, as for Europeans, governments were flatly telling their citizens that no help would be forthcoming if there was further bloodshed.

At Giza. There is no one in the 
background.

And so, we went to Egypt as planned. And, at the height of the tourist season, the outbound EgyptAir jumbo jet carried perhaps two dozen passengers. When we arrived in Cairo, we found the country was empty of foreigners. There were 14 of us and 12 from Abercrombie & Kent. That was the entire tourist population. As a result, we saw Egypt as no one had seen it since before the advent of the Boeing 707. We had entire hotels to ourselves; the river boats that should have clogged the Nile were instead berthed tightly along the river for a hundred miles. At Hatsepshut’s temple, the bullet holes were not yet plugged and we knew the scrubbed red patches on the floors were the remain of blood stains.

Blonde, ergo American!

President Hosni Mubarak learned there were western tourists in the country and flew to Luxor to personally greet us. Betty, with her blonde hair, was singled out to be filmed with Mubarek, and we would see those 30 seconds of videotape everywhere we went for the duration of our stay as the Egyptian government tried to reassure the world it was safe to be in the country.

Abu Simbel, no tourists

We flew to Abu Simbel with two military aircraft as our escort and six of us saw the light enter deep into the Temple of Ramses at dawn the next morning. A year earlier, the crowd would have numbered more than 500. We also saw the then-recently restored Tomb of Nefertari, where tourists lucky enough to get a ticket could spend only ten minutes inside its magnificent space (carbon dioxide and water vapor from breathing are the enemy). We spent an hour inside its walls because we were the only visitors that day.

Were we foolish to go? I can make the argument either way. Certainly, anyone with children under a certain age would have rightly been labeled narcissists or worse. And, as the letter clearly states, we could have shifted to a date when things were more settled. But we sensed this was an opportunity that would not come again, and we were right. Or, perhaps we were just very lucky.