me arts ed

Ohio, NYC, ice fishing, sleigh riding

My mom

I spent last weekend in Ohio visiting my 92 year-old mother who is living with my sister’s family. It was great to visit with all of them and catch up. My mother absolutely loves to play Scrabble so we did, three times. I think it is the first time I have ever been able to win against her. Luckily she has a friend who plays with her once a week and family members who play. I just hope I am still around at 92 playing Scrabble or doing whatever else I love to do at that time in my life! I especially enjoy when she reminisces and shares stories from the past. Her greatest joy is when my sister’s two and 1/2 year old grandson visits. They have a special relationship. I look forward to her visit to Maine in May. She did request there be no snow during her visit. Hmmmmm…

I returned home for one day and flew south on Wednesday to New York City for a meeting with my colleagues, the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE). The day before our meeting our SEADAE leaders who are working on the National Expectations in Arts Education met with the partners who are leading the work. It was a great opportunity to learn about the progress which I will share with you in another blog post called NYC: National Expectations for Arts Ed. I also had the opportunity to see “Driving Miss Daisy” with Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones and as you can imagine it was SUPERB! It was definitely one of THE BEST performances I’ve ever seen. WOWZER is all I can say!

My trip back to Maine was quite an adventure since I was scheduled to fly out on Friday morning at 9:20. Yes, just as the snowstorm was starting in most of Maine. And no, I was not able to get that flight nor several after that. You can read about that adventure that seems so surrealistic to me in a post called I tried to get home, REALLY!

Over the weekend I helped out at a twice a year kid’s ice fishing derby and went for a sleigh ride at a friends home. You can read about those adventures on the blog post called Winter Activities in Maine.

I hope you had a great winter vacation. Even though I worked part of last week as you can see I did enjoy the week!