The world is changing, yes, I know, it always is, but in many ways at this juncture of space and time, change is speeding up and seems to be happening around us as we watch. “The time is out of joint” said Prince Hamlet and cursed his fate that he “had to set it right.” I don’t feel the need to set anything right, I am just a minuscule microorganism in the quantum vat of broiling time, but I do feel a need to try and be aware of the waves of change, even if only in some vague and uneasy way. Change is changing change in dizzying fashion.

This is nowhere more apparent to me than in the area of the ever-changing world of the Internet because I am involved in bringing my new novel “Leela’s Gift” into the flow of virtual words in cyberspace. Twenty ago when my political memoir  was published, it garnered attention in the print world of book reviews (there was no electronic world), being widely reviewed in prestigious and well-known places. One thing lead to another in an orderly and time-honored way. Ten years later I adapted a personality system for educators and parents and published these two psychology books. In the fine print of book contracts the words “electronic rights” were now seen, and (of course) belonged to the publisher. Who knew what was coming? While reviews on the young Internet were welcome and easily published by web–site customers, print reviews still had some cachet.

Now several years later (change is exponential) the landscape is completely different. Aside from the venerable “New York Times Book Review” print reviews of books (and indeed newspapers and journals themselves) are disappearing, although sometimes there are two–three sentence blurbs on books in trendy magazines. Yet, paradoxically, the world of words and books is exploding, growing like a virus on steroids inside the box on your desk, or sitting on your lap, or indeed being held in your hand.

This I know from my recent foray into the world of eBook publishing where scores of web sites all over the globe that have no general name recognition electronically carry hundreds of thousand of book titles that you or I can download almost instantaneously at the click of a button to one of many hand held reading device and often for free.

Amazon.com rules the publishing waves. Hand held reading devices, as has been promised for twenty years, will soon be the most common way to read—anything. Even an elderly friend, who is by choice a technological Luddite, uses and loves her Kindle. If she does, so will we all.

Tags: adolescents, Children, colleges, consciousness, creativity, cyberspace, education, high school, mind structure, Mind-training, www.janetlevine.com

In July I treated myself to an adventure I had long day-dreamed of taking: to see some of the great gardens of south-east England. It was a treat, a veritable sensory feast. England, and all of Great Britain of course, is a history and literary theme park. Every town and hamlet has old manor houses, historic churches, celebrated battle fields, ruined castles, and ancient abbeys. A lover of English literature I chose a tour that centered on the gardens of horticulturists, writers and artists. Everything about the trip was a highlight, but there were highlights of the highlights. Here are three:

Chartwell — the home of Winston and Clementine Churchill and their children. It is the second most visited site in Britain and redolent with history. It is a homey and comfortable house and the photographs tell the story as no book of potted TV series can, of the immense role this man and his wife played in shaping the destiny of our planet during the first half of the last century. The Weald welcomes one and from the terrace one can see for twenty miles across forests and fields. As I stood and gazed I am sure that I like many thousands of others couldn’t help but think of the famous men and women who had stood there too.

Hatfield House — home to Henry VIII’s three children including the future queen, Elizabeth. To see the Elizabethean knot garden in front of the ruins of the original house and wander in the ascension garden where Elizabeth first heard of her ascension to the throne of England is truly to walk in the footsteps of history.

There is Petworth with its original Chaucer manuscript of “The Canterbury Tales”. The idyllic hamlet of Bosham on the coast near Portsmouth, with a tiny church that reputedly was the place where King Canute worshipped, and which is featured on the Bayeaux tapestries. The gardens of reknown horticulturists Beth Catto and Christopher Lloyd. Charleston the farmhouse and gardens of Vanessa Bell (artist sister of Virginia Woolf) and keystone of the Bloombsbury circle.

And then there is the garden at Sissinghurst, the creation of diplomat Harold Nicholson and his literary wife Vita Sackville-West. There is nothing I can say about Sissinghurst that is not a superlative. Here are two photographs that speak for themselves, one a plant  astrantia major from Vita’s famous white garden and the other of “my pink tower” as she called the centuries old tower that houses her writing/sitting room filled everyday with fresh flowers, as if patiently anticipating her return. Magic. Like the entire two-week experience.

© 2010 Janet Levine, White Garden, Sissinghurst

© 2010 Janet Levine, Sissinghurst

Tags: consciousness, creativity, janetlevine.com, Leela's Gift, meditation, peonies, www.janetlevine.com

If you have been reading this blog you know I am a teacher and a writer. From September to June I teach, and sometimes I write blogs about the lessons I learn in the classroom from my students and from the literature I teach. From June to September I think, reflect and sometimes I write.

This summer has been an emotional one. My mother died in May and for the past weeks I have had time to process her passing. I feel sadness, but also relief that she is not in discomfort any longer. In the natural cycle of life at 89 it was time for her passage. She would have been 90 today, August 4. I would have been with her and our family celebrating such a milestone. Instead I’ve been remembering my childhood in Johannesburg, our house in Parkview built in the Cape Dutch style surrounded on three sides by a wide verandah painted dark green, my first best friend, Melanie, my next door neighbor. We used to crawl through a hole in the diamond wire mesh fence supporting sturdy  grenadilla vines to visit one another. Jacaranda trees lined the streets. A line of black ants crawled through the chicken left out to thaw on the top step of the kitchen stoep, dinner for that night. The call of the hadidas, one of the voices of Africa, morning and evening forever in my consciousness. My brother, two years younger than me, and the lessons I taught on  the front lawn to my friends and his friends using a black board I had cajoled my parents into giving me as a fifth birthday present. But most of all I remember my parents, my beautiful dark-haired mother and energetic blond father. My father chased us around our swing set playing catch in the long summer twilit evenings. My mother watched from the verandah usually with knitting needles poised in her hands.

Johannesburg, South Africa, my parents, my brother, our friends, our life with servants, my maternal grandfather are all my teachers, all forever intertwined in a matrix of memories, thoughts, dreams, reflections in the self that is me. Maybe it is time to start to write again: teachers and teaching, lessons and learning, a teaching life. Ah summer time, time to think, reflect and sometimes to write.

Tags: Children, consciousness, creativity, human rights, janetlevine.com, meditation, Parenting, Parents