1999 Disneyland, Sea World, Soccer and Family

A Note
From the teacher

Hi! My name is Greg Goode and I am the New music teacher here at Pine Grove.  School has gotten off to such a fast start this year!  I wanted to send you a note after the dust had time to settle, and just in time to invite you to visit my room on Back To School Night.

My husband's letter written after his year as a stay at home Dad

I am very excited to be here this fall, I took last year off to be home with my two sons, and so I am all charged up about coming back to work, not to mention . . .Broke!  I have all of the students here at Pine Grove for music, so for most of your children, I am "the other teacher."  I see the preschool and kindergarten classes once each week for 20 minutes. This might not seem like much, but in the past several years these students haven't had a music specialist at all.  First through third grade rooms come to me two times a week for twenty minutes, and fourth through sixth graders have class three times per week for forty minutes.  This is a prep time for the upper grade teachers.  Along with this classroom music goes an elective band program for the fifth and sixth graders.  Me being here full time this year is possible because the staff made a commitment to put the budget directly toward your student's musical education.  I can't say enough how proud I am to be part of this super and dedicated group of teachers.  GO PINE GROVE1

If you have questions or concerns about music in your child's class, please don't hesitate to call me or come see me at school.  Two things I love to talk about are music and kids. Also feel free to come and join in during music time.  I focus a lot of the curriculum on singing and rhythm, and believe that most of the time active participation (doing) is the best way to learn about music.

Thank you, for all of your great kids this year!

Greg Goode

Hard to see but we thought we were cute in Micky Mouse ears

Happy Holidays Dear Friends, I just have to announce the date with a bit of something extra!  CHRISTMAS 1999

WOW  !  The oldest people that I ever knew were born in the 1870's  Soon I will know people who have been born in the year 2000.  It makes me stop and realize once again how fleeting are the years of our life, and how even a century or a millennium is a mere blink in the eyes of the universe.  It also makes me realize that we are all part of a wondrous connection going back through the centuries where I will know people from three centuries and the people I touch will have touched people from even more distant times, both into the past and into the future.  It is a bit like standing in all the Holiest places I know: a redwood grove, a canyon's brink, the edge of the sea, or surrounded by towering stone monoliths.  Even though dates are arbitrary human inventions, standing on the brink of one gives you that same overwhelming, yet comforting sense that you are both small and insignificant (And therefore so are even your most daunting troubles) and at the same time that you are also part of something much larger and more beautiful than even the most powerful human mind could comprehend.  My life may be only a drop in an enormous ocean, but what a salty, sparkling one it has been so far.  Good Grief!  Did I really write that? Enough already.

So what is new with you?  If you write, I actually have been answering letters.  News with us isn't really news.  Things have been flowing fairly smoothly, fluctuating a little but not really changing much.  Life has been very good to this Goode clan in 1999.  It almost makes it hard to write this letter because I know so many people who haven't had an easy year this year.  I don't want to make anyone feel worse by telling about our year.  I guess you know I mean it when I say I only leave people that we love on our Christmas mailing list, and we wish all of you only good things each and every year.  Since that isn't reality, we offer you our loving support when the road is rough and remembering a couple years ago when nothing was going well for us, we offer our total sympathy.  May the Y2K be a peaceful year for us all.  As Dickens wrote, "God Bless Us, Every One." and as my friend Lory says, "I'm sending lots of white and purple light to surround you."

So for a brief review of 1999 with G.D.A.E., it began with Austin in Kindergarten.  Dixie was teaching a class of Severely Emotionally Disturbed, third through eighth grade students.  Greg was taking a year of parenting leave to stay home with the boys.  He volunteers in Austin's class.  He babysat the neighbor's kids. He started A & E on Violin and Cello lessons and took them to soccer and tumbling classes and to story time at the library.  In February he took the boys back to Wyoming for Grandpa Harvey's 70th birthday.  In June he took them on a three day trip to San Francisco to see "Underwater Puppets."  In short,

he was a wonderful, at home Dad, from mid-June 1998 to the end of August 1999.  He's still a wonderful Dad.  No more busy at work than at home, but the boys see him less.

This summer was filled with fun.  We enrolled the boys in a week long soccer camp in early July.  They had three coaches, two English and One Irish.  We were fortunate enough to be a host family for the coaches and so we went to the river and the redwoods with them and then had several backyard marshmallow roasts.  The boys had a lot of fun, and learned a lot.  We definitely want to make it a habit from year to year.

Greg's brother Harv, and Fran also came to visit.  Not long enough at all, but we loved the time with them and enjoyed showing them the redwoods as well.  We love company, Hint, 1999 was also the first time in years that Grandma Priscilla and Uncle Lance did not make it out our way.  Mom has had some health problems but basically I think the two of them are doing well and making several new friends.  They are so busy it's hard to reach them on my first try.

Our big trip for the year was to Southern California.  We drove down and spent a few days in San Francisco and along the coast.  Then we rented a room on the 7th floor of the Fairfield Inn across the street from Disneyland.  Some wonderful friends of ors came down at the same time and rented a room at the Disneyland Hotel and we spent three days, "Doing Disneyland,"  I know it's all a fantasy, but what a special dream to share with your children.  A friendly "Town" where everyone crowding the streets is there to have fun.  Where pirates are powerless in the face of children, where elephants fly and strangers smile at each other.  The rides are great but until you've been there it's hard to explain how Disneyland is more than an amusement park.  It's like the American Dream come to life and it has a strong community feel to the crowded street.  Everyone's hometown.

Austin and Emerson were also in love with the warm water and safe feeling of the beaches.  They weren't used to being able to just jump in and swim at the ocean, even though we live close to several beautiful beaches.  It's much colder here.  So we also went to San Diego and stayed at Paradise Point Resort.  The resort itself was incredible.  Several pools to swim in, a miniature golf course, cabins right on the beach at Mission Bay, bikes for rent.  Mom's credit union had a deal there or it never would have been a place we would dream of staying at.  As if that wasn't enough, it was right across from Sea World and we had passes for two days, plus a behind the scenes tour of the marine mammal rehabilitation area where we saw brand new baby dolphins.  We all love whales and had taken the boys to see Keiko the Killer Whale, but here the whales were in several varieties and many killer whales were trained to dazzle and drench us.  I loved the beluga whales the most.  They look like cloud whales, like they are made of mounds of marshmallow cream.  So we had a great time and the kids spent hours playing and learning.

Dorothy and her Great-nephews

On the way home we stopped to see my Dad's sister Dorothy.  She raised him from the time he was six and has always been almost like a grandmother to me, but it was the first time that the boys got to see her.  They loved her and still talk about Aunt Dorothy, mostly wondering when she's coming here.

After the summer, Greg started teaching music again.  This time at a school where he actually has a classroom to teach in instead of going from room to room.  He also is only at one school which is only the second time in ten years that he hasn't had to travel around the county.

Emerson started kindergarten and says that every day is the greatest day of kindergarten ever.  He also was on the Mail Room Packers soccer team and taking swim lessons.  He has a new best friend in kindergarten and seems to love everything about being a big boy.

Austin still does great in school too, although he lost his first, first grade teacher at the end of September and had to adjust to a new one.  Mt. Hartwick was young, playful and quite good at teaching.  Mrs. Smith took over when he went to a new job and Austin loves her too.  He was on the FFA Razorbacks soccer team and in swimming lessons and is doing well on the cello.

Dixie has quit Del Norte County Unified School District after ten years.  I volunteer one day a week in the boys school and spend the rest of my days trying to break into the field of children's writing.  So far I have a large stack of rejection slips, a membership in the society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and invitations from four publishing companies to submit my manuscripts.  I miss the kids but I am not missing the administrator's BS.

Thanksgiving weekend we had four days off and spent them at the beach.  Greg turned thirty-seven the day after Thanksgiving and we went to a zoo and a Christmas light display (over 200,000 lights in a Garden by the sea cliffs.)

Anyway, we are still about the same as last year.  Mainly happy, often too busy.  Loved and lucky all the same.

Love, Luck and Laughter to you in 2000

Dixie, Greg, Austin and Emerson

trying to avoid soccer practice

Graduating Kindergarten

after Disneyland they loved playing Tarzan with Thomas

Dance rehearsal break

Violin with sybil

These two had fun at a birthday party
but Patty ended up with Pleurisy

Thomas and Patty

Hanging out in our backyard

Emerson and neighbors at Jed Smith State Park

Greg's Brother and his wife at our yard

at SeaWorld 

At Disneyland with Willie and Thomas

A spoonful of sugar

Huntington Beach, with Austin

Emerson and mom

At Aunt Dorothy's, My grandpa Emerson planted the donkeytail plant

My Family Form Letters

When I was young enough that I hadn't started school, and couldn't read, I used to envy my Mother the exciting packets of thick letters she got almost daily from the post office.  I tried to write like she did, drawing line after line of connected loops and calling the filled pages my letters.

then I got a couple pen pals in grade school, and sent my name and address out to magazines like Archie's comic books and Tiger Beat, because they had bulletin board pages listing addresses and ages and interests for people who wanted pen-pals

I also wrote long letters to my great aunts and my aunts and cousins. Sometimes they wrote back and sometimes they made fun of my spelling but every envelope with my name and address in our post office box made me smile.

By the time I was married, I was getting a few letters a day and that helped me get through the long summer at the Black Hills Playhouse in Custer State Park in South Dakota, where I had to be in the ticket booth or snack bar for 18 hours a day even when there was nothing to do but wait for the phone to ring

After we moved from Wyoming to South Dakota, to Oregon, to Beijing, China, I was finding that I had a list of over 120 people I wrote to and this was in the days of writing by hand or typing on a manual typewriter with a bottle of correction fluid on hand. In China I couldn't even find a xerox machine.

So I started doing that dreaded, form letter, writing to everybody I knew with one letter and then maybe adding a personal note by hand on the back of the page. Mom took some of my letters to the Cody Wyoming Enterprise and they had a woman named 

Retha Miller consolidated them into an article, which might have made me come across as shallow and judgmental at times, but was still fun to share with my family and friends as it was thoughtful and well written

 Well, I don't have those letters that I wrote from Custer State Park, or a Wyoming Jr. High School or Beijing Teacher's college, and I really regret not keeping copies of them as a sort of journal, So I'm going to include the text of the article, which I hope you will remember is from before the Tian an men massacre and that I never thought of all Chinese as so stereotyped as to mean that they were all positive or all any other label.

For myself and my children I have decided to start copying the form letters into this blog this December, hoping that this way the yellowing crumbling pages will not be lost.

 The two Christmas Cards we sent out after returning from China in Dec. of 1987

 The Text of the article follows,

Goodes enjoy 'Positive Chinese'
by Retha Miller

     Former Cody resident Dixie Goode and her husband Greg, students at Southern Oregon State College, spent a semester as exchange students at Beijing Teachers College in China.
     The Goodes were with a group from Oregon universities who participated in an Oregon Teacher Education Program with that country. The program included tours of several Chinese cities, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and Chinese businesses and classes in one of the chinese languages, Chinese History and the Chinese Educational systems. Dixie wrote of her trip in a letter to friends, the source of this story.
     The daughter of paul and Priscilla Miller of Cody, Dixie graduated from Cody High School in 198. She and Greg, formerly of Newcastle, are both graduates of Northwest Community College.  Greg, a music major, had spent three days in China while on a tour with the Northwest Singers in March 1983, and had vowed to go back sometime.

a picture taken just before we went to China

They Flew From Portland to Seattle to Tokyo, and then on to Hong Kong late in 1987, where they spent three days. (Hong Kong will become part of China in 1997, but for now is still a British Colony, according to the former Cody resident.)
Hong Kong was described as a city of five million people "where everyone looked Chinese and the McDonald's menus were printed in English and Chinese"  It was very hot and humid, like "breathing in a sauna."  A trolley trip to the top of Victoria Peak allowed them to see all of Hong Kong, as she decried it "spread out before us like diamonds and reflected in glittering glory in the water below."

During "The Cultural Revolution" many old artworks were smashed or had faces obliterated

     Both noticeable redheads, the Goodes look like brother and sister. Upon arriving in China, they learned that the Chinese exchange officials believed they were actually siblings. They were told that married couples were not allowed to be students or take a dorm room by themselves, and would be charged an extra $200 if they did. They were lucky enough to arrange to get that down to $90 US and not be sent home.

     Their home became a concrete dormitory took on the men's floor. Their bed's were hard wooden platforms with thick cotton pads for mattresses, They were given clean bedding every ten days, but did most of their laundry by hand, hanging it to dry from a wire stretched diagonally across their room. However, their accommodations were better than those of the Chinese students and the appreciated that the Chinese had given them the best they had,

the very best of the tourist places

     They found the Chinese a very "positive society." In spite of poverty and severely crowded conditions, the Goodes found them content, open, honest, friendly and more willing to share than most people they know here.

     "On jammed, hot buses which would surely result in hot tempers in an American City, they laughed and smiled even while someone was standing on their feet."  Inconveniences seemed to be met with acceptance.

     The Goodes had one advantage over the other OTEP members. Before leaving for China they had met two Chinese girls in this country, one an exchange student in this country and the other a teacher hired to teach in the Ashland, Or, schools.  Their families lived within five minutes of the Goodes' dorm. Both girls gave the Goodes letters and gifts to take to their families and in turn, "both families tried to take us in, they fed us, doctored our colds and showed us around their city," the Goodes said.

Eating Mongolian Hot Pot with our History Teacher and his family
(Sliced Raw lamb you cooked at the table)

    They also became close friends with their Chinese and history teachers and Dixie even, "sometimes found the lack of privacy got to me." There were always invitations to dinner, shopping, the museum or for a trip to the zoo to see the pandas 

The fact that we loved to interact with their children meant many people were soon smiling and showing them to us,
when you are only allowed one child
that one child means everything to you

They traveled through China by Car, bike, plane, bus, train, cruise ship and fishing boat, seeing terraced farm lands, cities of 12 million and villages of fewer than 50 people. They visited 4,000 year old temples and modern factories and schools.  They stayed a week in a mountain resort that was used earlier by Emperors. They saw Beijing in summer heat and winter snowfall, and in the beauty of Autumn, exploring its streets on bike and on foot, experiencing stares at first and then acceptance.

   Dixie described it as a village of 10 million people.

    They have set a goal of a return trip, the next time with jobs as English teachers, staying three to five years.

   Added: Did Not Happen :(

I always felt honored and trusted so much when someone shared their baby with me

"If anything was learned during our time in China it was that the globe is not large enough to divide people who care about each other," Dixie Wrote.

Me in the Mao Coat that saved me in Beijing Winter, and a friend from the student Dormitory

My husband helping the local children get icicles to explore

Our teachers at Beijing teachers College

this boy was on a ferry boat. His parents were very nervous when they saw me waving and smiling at him
but even though we couldn't speak the dialect from their area
they were all smiles once I showed tim a picture on my brother
who also has Down's syndrome

in the rock Garden at the Imperial Palace



 Now, decades later, the fact that communication has gotten so easy amazes me.  My friend's children who go overseas can still Skype and see each other's faces and hear voices immediately. It is a good thing, but I still miss the long, newsy letters over the short daily blurbs and status updates on twitter and facebook.  I love holding paper with my great-grandmothers handwriting embossed in pages she left fingerprints on.

My family at Christmas

Greg

National Day in Tian an Men