A Day in the Life of an Indie Weiter

Inquiries, Inquiries, Inquiries

Hi Friends. I recently had an op-ed piece about my love for public schools published in the P and C, but I wanted to send you a classroom story about immigration and how immigrant kids are seen through the eyes and hearts of their teachers in case you’d like to use it in the future.

Each school year I write small stories that I call Notes from Public School. By the end of the year, I have 180 of these small stories about my classroom, school, students and families in my inner-city school. Here is an example of some of the stories from this year in a blog I created (http://inourheartswewonthemall.blogspot.com/)

If you’d ever like a perspective of a 15 year veteran 4th grade teacher in a Title 1 school that serves mostly black and brown families (and who loves them deeply and dearly) just let me know. Many heartbreaking and heart mending things happen in my classroom every day and I try diligently to look closely and listen carefully and write the stories down so I can share them with my community, state and world. 

Thank you for your great work at P and C. One of my heroes is Jennifer Berryy Hawes. I went to hear her share and sign her book Grace Will Lead Us Hime at MC Judson  booksellers here in downtown Greenville and her insightful writing about the massacre at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston touched me deeply and moved me mightily. She’s amazing as are all of your staff.

I’m thankful to find a newspaper home in the P and C bcsuse in this day of on-line news stories, I still love a food newspaper with local stories about local people who are making the world a better place for everybody. Plus I love the investigative journalism, which I feel helps us get to the essence of the truth where we are surrounded by the video of hall truths and whole lies.

In friendship,

Trevor Scott Barton

(864) 525-9530

trevorscottbarton@gmail.com

Small Story

Notes from Public School 2021-2022

‘Hearing’ and ‘Hereing’ by Trevor Scott Barton

Berea Elementary School

Greenville County School District

Paola was a first-grader from El Salvador who lived in a small apartment with her grandma, mom, sister and uncle. 

She was a wonderful kid, and has become a wonderful young lady.

The road from the countryside of El Salvador to the upstate of South Carolina is long and hard. 

If you take the time and make the effort to ask the migrants who travel along that road, “Why are you trying to make it to the United States?” they will answer, “I’m trying to find una vida mejor, a better life.”

The journey along this road is fraught with danger and heartbreak. 

Listen to these words from journalist Oscar Martines, who embedded himself with migrants on the migratory road from Central America to the Mexican – United States border and wrote about the people he met there in his book The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail. 

"We walk on, telling ourselves that if we get attacked, we get attacked. There’s nothing we can do. The suffering that the migrants endure on the trail doesn’t heal quickly. Migrants don’t just die, they’re not just maimed or shot or hacked to death. The scars of their journey don’t only mark their bodies. They run deeper than that. Living in such fear leaves something inside them, a trace and a swelling that grabs hold of their thoughts and cycles through their heads over and over. It takes at least a month of travel to reach Mexico’s northern border…Who takes care of them? Who works to heal their wounds?"

Before The Beast was translated into English, it was titled Los Migrantes Que No Importan, The Migrants Who Don’t Matter.

 

It is important to remember that people do not leave their family, their homes, their land unless they have to. 

If your children are threatened by violence, sickness or poverty, you migrate and look for una vida mejor for them. 

If your house is bombed and your land is stolen from you by the state or by narcos, you migrate and look for una vida mejor. 

If you open your cupboard, and there is nothing there but dust, and you reach into your pockets to find money to buy food, and there is nothing there but lint, and there is no sustaining work for you to do to support your family, but only less than subsistence wages, you migrate and look for una vida mejor.

 

No, no one wants to leave their family, their homes, their land unless they have to. 

No one wants to take on the danger and heartbreak of the migratory road unless they have to. 

But some people have to. 

Here in the United States, there is work that needs to be done that could provide una vida major for migrants.

There is a way for migrants to find food, shelter, clothing, work, medical care, and education for where there was none before. 

There is a way unless we block that way for them through political demagoguery or caustic indifference, unless we think they don’t matter.

My little student Paola matters.

All of the Latinx students around me matter.

Please let me tell you a story.

One time, a new student named Billy walked into Paola’s classroom.

“Hi,” Paola whispered to him as he sat down beside her. 

“I’m glad you’re in our class.”

She didn’t know the story of the suffering that brought Billy to our school, but perhaps she recognized something familiar in his taut face, quivering voice and shaking hands.

“This is your journal. 

It goes in your desk, like this,” she explained. 

“These are our crayons and markers. 

You can use them if you want to. 

Don’t worry. 

There’s lots to learn. 

I’ll help you.”

Perhaps her eyes are so kind and her mind is so helpful and her heart is so compassionate because she made the journey on the migratory trail from El Salvador to here.

So many of my Latinx students have compassionate eyes, intuitive minds and compassionate hearts. 

They are beautiful, ingenious, wonderful and courageous. 

They are the opposite of the destructive, demagogic, dehumanizing words Politicians use to describe the immigrants at our southern border looking for una vida mejor. 

They are human beings. 

They are life.

They matter.

I want you to know something.

I want them to know, too.

I am here to take care of them.

I am here to heal their wounds.

I have no superpowers to help them.

I only have stories to write and a fragile life to give.

But I hear.

And I’m here.

Maybe that’s good enough for today 💛

Dum Spiro Spero.

Left Foot Poems

I just received this e-mail.

I sold my first book through my fliers downtown.

My heart is smiling 💛

“Thank you Trevor. I saw the flier outside of city hall. Seemed like a fun way to take in some new art”

‘hear’ and ‘here’

from trevor’s encyclopedia

#WeChooseWelcome

Paola was a first-grader from El Salvador who lived in a small apartment with her grandma, mom, sister and uncle. 

She was a wonderful kid, and has become a wonderful young lady.

The road from the countryside of El Salvador to the upstate of South Carolina is long and hard. 

If you take the time and make the effort to ask the migrants who travel along that road, “Why are you trying to make it to the United States?” they will answer, “I’m trying to find una vida mejor, a better life.”

The journey along this road is fraught with danger and heartbreak. 

Listen to these words from journalist Oscar Martines, who embedded himself with migrants on the migratory road from Central America to the Mexican – United States border and wrote about the people he met there in his book The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail. 

"We walk on, telling ourselves that if we get attacked, we get attacked. There’s nothing we can do. The suffering that the migrants endure on the trail doesn’t heal quickly. Migrants don’t just die, they’re not just maimed or shot or hacked to death. The scars of their journey don’t only mark their bodies. They run deeper than that. Living in such fear leaves something inside them, a trace and a swelling that grabs hold of their thoughts and cycles through their heads over and over. It takes at least a month of travel to reach Mexico’s northern border…Who takes care of them? Who works to heal their wounds?"

Before The Beast was translated into English, it was titled Los Migrantes Que No Importan, The Migrants Who Don’t Matter.

 

It is important to remember that people do not leave their family, their homes, their land unless they have to. 

If your children are threatened by violence, sickness or poverty, you migrate and look for una vida mejor for them. 

If your house is bombed and your land is stolen from you by the state or by narcos, you migrate and look for una vida mejor. 

If you open your cupboard, and there is nothing there but dust, and you reach into your pockets to find money to buy food, and there is nothing there but lint, and there is no sustaining work for you to do to support your family, but only less than subsistence wages, you migrate and look for una vida mejor.

 

No, no one wants to leave their family, their homes, their land unless they have to. 

No one wants to take on the danger and heartbreak of the migratory road unless they have to. 

But some people have to. 

Here in the United States, there is work that needs to be done that could provide una vida major for migrants.

There is a way for migrants to find food, shelter, clothing, work, medical care, and education for where there was none before. 

There is a way unless we block that way for them through political demagoguery or caustic indifference, unless we think they don’t matter.

My little student Paola matters.

All of the Latinx students around me matter.

Please let me tell you a story.

One time, a new student named Billy walked into Paola’s classroom.

“Hi,” Paola whispered to him as he sat down beside her. 

“I’m glad you’re in our class.”

She didn’t know the story of the suffering that brought Billy to our school, but perhaps she recognized something familiar in his taut face, quivering voice and shaking hands.

“This is your journal. 

It goes in your desk, like this,” she explained. 

“These are our crayons and markers. 

You can use them if you want to. 

Don’t worry. 

There’s lots to learn. 

I’ll help you.”

Perhaps her eyes are so kind and her mind is so helpful and her heart is so compassionate because she made the journey on the migratory trail from El Salvador to here.

So many of my Latinx students have compassionate eyes, intuitive minds and compassionate hearts. 

They are beautiful, ingenious, wonderful and courageous. 

They are the opposite of the destructive, demagogic, dehumanizing words Politicians use to describe the immigrants at our southern border looking for una vida mejor. 

They are human beings. 

They are life.

They matter.

I want you to know something.

I want them to know, too.

I am here to take care of them.

I am here to heal their wounds.

I have no superpowers to help them.

I only have stories to write and a fragile life to give.

But I hear.

And I’m here.

Maybe that’s good enough for today 💛

Dum Spiro Spero.

Magical realism

from trevor’s encyclopedia of beauty in the plain, genius in the simple, wonder in the ordinary and courage in the human

Hilcias sat beside the Atlantic Ocean at Kiawah Island in South Carolina.

A gigantic tooth washed up with the waves onto the shore.

He was astonished.

The tooth was a sperm whale's tooth, of this he was sure.

The sperm whale was his favorite whale.

The first picture he’d ever drawn of a whale was a crayon sketch of the shape of a sperm whale.

This was before he’d learned that the brightness of a light bulb is measured by a lumen, which is simply the light one cup of spermaceti oil from a sperm whale’s head gives off within a candle.

This was before he’d memorized every fact about sperm whales in his Princeton Field Guide about whales.

He picked up the tooth with both of his hands.

It was a foot long.

It was shaped like a cone.

"This came from the lower jaw of a sperm whale," he thought, "Because they don't have teeth in their upper jaws, only slots that the teeth from the lower jaws fit into.

If I sliced the tooth in half, it would show the age of the whale like the rings of a trunk show the age of a tree.”

He gently laid the tooth beside him on the sand.

Then a conch shell washed up onto the shore.

"Wow. What a wonderful shell,” he thought. 

“Look at its shape and color.”

The shape was a common shape in nature, formed by graphing the numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on, the Fibonacci numbers, a special shape that appears in geometry, architecture, art, music and literature.

“Some people call that shape ‘God’s blueprint,’” he thought, “Because it seems to be the plan from which God creates the world.”

Its color was a common color in nature, too.

It was three shades of yellow.

Its spine was the brilliant yellow of the sun that rose over the ocean every morning.

Its siphonal canal was the quiet yellow of the corn he and his abuelo shucked in summer.

Its aperture was the deep yellow of sunflowers in a field.

He picked up the shell with both of his hands.

He raised it to his tiny ear.

Once, someone had told him that if you hold a conch shell to your ear, you can hear the ocean inside of it.

"I wonder if it's true?” he thought.

"If it is, I can take it back to our bus and bring the ocean and the great whales with me.”

He expected to hear only the ocean.

Boy, was he surprised.

The sound he heard inside the shell wasn’t only of breaking waves and rolling tides.

He heard a song.

It was the most beautiful song he had ever heard in his life.

He closed his eyes and saw the notes dancing in front of him.

“I understand,” he thought.

I understand!”

The whale sang to him in his own language, with his own whistles!

They were the notes that made up his whole life, all that he whistled to the world but that the world couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand.

A tear rolled down his cheek and splashed into the salt water.

Everything inside him poured out onto the wet sand and washed away into the vast reaches of the deep, blue sea.

“I hear you!

I understand you!” he whistled into the shell.

To his great surprise, he received a response.

“I hear you!

I understand you, too!

There’s a story we hear along our migratory routes,”sang the sperm whale, “About a boy on land who can sing our songs and understand our language, a boy who will be with us.

You are that boy, Hilcias. 

You are that boy.”

post/dreamer

I’m a dreamer, and one of my dreams is to hang homemade flyers for my book Left Foot Poems around The Peace Center and The Whale, two of my favorite places in downtown Greenville.

A big thank you to Robin Gardener Barton for holding my hand, helping me hang my flyers, and dreaming with me.

And a big thank you to everyone who is buying my book and taking the poems to heart.

Your kindness means the world to me.

Hug an Indie author today 💛

deep

I like the deep. 

At or near the surface, it’s difficult to see. 

Salt water is translucent, so when you open your eyes you can see, but not really.

That’s a problem if you want to see clearly.

It’s dangerous to think you can see when you really can't.

So I like to dive far below the surface, where there is no light, but only darkness. 

In the darkness, you can't use your eyes. 

Your brain wonders what to do, because normally it uses most of its power to process the things we see. 

Immediately, it has to turn its power to hearing and touching, two senses we don't use much in today's world, but that we need to use more, yes?

In the deep, we listen for the whole, not just the part. 

When we think we can hear, we hear only part of a story, then stop listening and fill in the rest with what we think we know. 

In the deep, however, things aren't so easily known. 

We must listen, carefully, til the end of the story. 

Then we must reach out, hold the hand of the storyteller and whisper, “I hear. I’m here.”

It’s listening and holding hands and being here that make us more human, that help us build a more human world.

It’s listening.

It’s holding hands.

It’s being here.

Fibonacci Poems

My friends often ask, “What is your favorite form of poetry?”

“The Fibonacci form,” I answer.

“What in the world is that?” they ask.

Well, here is an answer from The Fib Review, a literary journal in which I’ve published some of my Fibonacci poems.

And here are some of my favorite Fibonacci poems I’ve written.

What is a Fib?

The Fibonacci poem is a poetry form based on the structure of the Fibonacci number sequence. 

For those unfamiliar with the Fibonacci Sequence, it is a mathematical sequence in which every figure is the sum of the two preceding it. Thus, you begin with 1 and the sequence follows as such: 1+1=2; then in turn 1+2=3; then 2+3=5; then 3+5=8 and so on. The poetry sequence therefore consists of lines of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and so on with each number representing the number of syllables or words that a writer places in each line of the poem. 

As a literary device, it is used as a formatted pattern in which one can offer meaning in any organized way, providing the number sequence remains the constancy of the form.

The subject of the Fibonacci poem has no restriction, but the difference between a good fib and a great fib is the poetic element that speaks to the reader. 

When you graph the Fibonacci numbers, you create a swirl that is often found in nature, from a conch shell to the face of a sunflower.

The poets who write Fibonacci poems are simply geeks who love to write 💛

brown eyes

I

look

into 

your brown eyes 

and see the good earth. 

They are the color of the ground 

after my papí plows land in the first days of spring.

In them I see the trees, for they are the color of bark in the early morning sun.

In them I see the sea, for they are the color of the water as it turns with sand and shells in the broken waves along the mid-day shore.

I love the plowed ground, walking through the cool dirt with bare feet; the bark of the trees, climbing the smooth branches, shirtless in the heat of the day; the sea, floating naked in the gently rocking waters of the ev’ning tide; your brown eyes.

migrant hearts

My

Heart

Loves home

Winter snow

Spring mountain flowers

Summer salt in the deep, blue sea

Fall leaves on the colorful trees are art for my heart

With tears in my eyes, my heart pulls on it’s brown tattered coat, black holey shoes, red wool scarf 

My heart is so tired, poor, huddled, wretched, homeless and tempest-tost. It loves it’s memories, family, home but it is time for me to go

Too many cold, deserted eyes at checkpoints in lonely streets pointed guns at my heart; too many clouds empty of rain brought pain to my heart; too many coughs from my children’s chests into the night broke my heart

My heart picks up it’s battered suitcase, with tape all around it’s ends, lest it break open and spill out my father’s favorite shirt, a love letter, a picture of my beautiful children, all I have in the world, onto the ground

Deep in the hull of a ship tossing on stormy seas; high on the roof of a train winding down a long, steep hill; barefoot on a dusty road

Silently, back to back, knee to knee, with poor people and little children…migrant hearts

With each step along the way our hearts whisper, “We’re here”

With each mile we long for caring

We hope for kindness

On the trail

Moving 

Our

Hearts

pluto

so

far

away

3 billion

miles away from Earth

a small, cold forgotten planet

that a group decided is no longer a planet

"Pluto is not a planet because of its size and location in space," they agreed

When I was a little boy at my desk in my classroom, Pluto was my favorite planet because it was so, so small, cold and forgotten

Pluto has no gravity, no pull on the Earth, but it has gravity on my heart

I love Pluto, feel it in the deep space of my heart

New Horizons just journeyed there

found it has a heart

discovered

Pluto

loves

us

romero’s glasses

Faith

Hope

People

A hero

Oscar Romero

Protecting poor, oppressed people

From unimaginable hatred and violence

Dying but not killing, denying guns their power, risking the violence of love

Conserving tradition at first for the greatest, seeing through your glasses at last for the least, feeling the hunger of unpaid workers, knowing poverty

Holding the tears of the disappeared, calling all to view the body of a slain priest

Building up humanity, tearing down injustice

“In the name of God, stop killing...”

Death, crucifixion

Life again

People

Love

Peace

sea and sky

She 

loved 

the sea,

kneeled on her

knees in the water,

felt the swirl around her legs as 

the gentle waves moved back and forth with the ev’ning tide. She tasted salt in the water 

as it splashed upon her body and broke apart 

into one thousand drops that touched her

lips. The elemental song of 

water singing a

song sung just

for her

in

sea.

things they carry

Now

on

the land

migrants live

with holes in the floors

cracks in the walls, leaks in the roofs,

broken apart from years upon years of people

moving in, moving out, broken apart by owners using money for things other than repairs

yet held together by people like my abuelo and mamí, who will move into a used place, scrub the floors and walls with soap and water

repair broken parts with things they carry with them, patch them with grit, common sense and love

small space

we

stand

closely

side by side

i reach out for you

and take your hand inside of mine

our fingers intertwine and our palms make a small space

this space is warm in the deep snow that covers the ground of Point Hope

is warm against the icy wind that blows off the rocking waters of the Chukchi Sea

“life is in these small spaces between us,” I whisper

we stand quietly hand in hand

with the small space, and

then we smile

holding

small 

space

52 Blue

whale

song

lonely

where are you?

wandering, singing

singing unheard wandering songs

can you hear me? are you there? are you? i am alone

listening, longing for songs gently sung, i hear you song on water, i’m here, i’m here

we sing at diff’rent frequencies, migrate along diff’rent routes, wandering, wondering

unheard, unknown, wandering the sea, song on water

singing unheard wondering songs

wondering, singing

who are you?

gentle

song

whale

- Trevor Scott Barton, Fibonacci Poems, 2022