The Secret Life of Snowbirds

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal Mar 18, 2009


Goodbye! Goodbye!

I heard the cries from the door to the classroom where the latest dulcimer class was just finishing.

It was spring, and one of our adult students was heading back north.

A snowbird?

"Oh yes," he said. "I come every winter, and this year I just had to take this dulcimer class - it is the only one offered in the hill country!"

Why not move to Kerrville and stay, I asked him.

"Grandkids," was his one word answer.

The encounter got me thinking about the phenomenon of "snowbirdhood." Having lived here for 30 years, I have come across snowbirds in other aspects of my life. A large group gathers in Fredericksburg to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity. We used to have a clowning instructor who would teach for us, as long as it was between Oct and March.

The whole concept of snowbirding appeals in a bittersweet way.

It is always sad to have to say goodbye to friends you have met and known for several months. Yet it must be an exciting existence, like leading a double life. In summer you bump around the Midwest dressed in overalls. But each winter you travel to that exotic locale - "the south."

(As a former yankee, I understand the appeal of living half the year - the cold half - in the warm, sunny south, where you can wear shorts on Christmas day and plant your garden in February. To a Midwesterner, that's like imagining living on the moon and being able to jump six times higher - simply incomprehensible.)

You'd like to think that snowbirds would invent a wholly different life to go with their southern residence. An engineer in Nebraska might become a secret agent in Texas. An English teacher could become a best-selling author of steamy romance novels.

But that doesn't happen. I've noticed that wherever you travel physically, you drag your personality and comfort zones with you. A homebody in South Dakota will also stick close to the RV while parked at the edge of the Grand Canyon. We haul our worldview even into the virtual world. While taking a class on Second Life - an online world where you create an avatar that represents the real you - our students would tend to build "mini-me's," perhaps making the hair a shade darker and trimming a few pounds off the mid-section.

But our personalities don't change, whether we are stalking the plowed fields of Kansas, padding through the bluebonnets of Texas, or soaring in an electronic sky.

So here is to snowbirds! Long may they fly, though sad when they flee, and all we wish for them is that the day they alight, let it be in Club Ed, Texas!

XXX

Snowbirds can take a Club Ed class from anywhere in the world! For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com.

Drawing out the inner artist

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal Mar 11, 2009

What reaction do a bunch of grown-ups have when they get together to chip rock, mix cement, and dye shirts?

"Fun!" said Ann Witherwax, who teaches classes on Mosaics and Tie Dye for club Ed. "That is almost always the response I see and hear - Wow, I actually did this. Sometimes you draw out an artistic ability you didn't know was there."

Drawing out that inner artist is a mission for Witherwax. The Hunt resident is trained as an art teacher and graphic artist. She teaches children through adults. When I asked about her favorite medium, she hesitated.

"I'm not sure how to answer that - I teach lot of mediums," she said. "But my purpose is to establish creative thinking skills. That is more than making artists - I want them to learn to think creatively."

Witherwax accomplishes this by using art to show there is more than one way to tackle a problem. Her art classes go beyond creating art for art's sake.

"I believe that through teaching art we can train our brains to find many avenues to solve a problem, to build something, to create a piece of art," she said. "As adults, we tend not to do that. Anybody is capable of doing anything. There is more than one way to solve a problem. Using our creative thinking skills, we can tackle anything."

This spring Witherwax is teaching classes in tie dying, mosaics, and garden pavers. These diverse mediums require the student to make choices that draw out the inner person. Creating a tie dye shirt, for example, requires the student to select from a palette of color. With garden pavers, students can embed tiles or stones or even bottle caps, or write words and phrases on polished stone. The finished paver can be one of several in a garden path, or sit alone as a decoration inside or out.

Every piece comes out completely different, which is fine with Witherwax.

"You cannot mass produce tie dye or pavers," she said. "There are a lot of techniques that get different results, and in each project you end up with a wearable or usable piece of art."

For Witherwax, art is more about process than product.

"That letting out of energy that comes with doing art is very healthy, it is relaxing and a release of creativity. There are so many positive results when people allow themselves to go there."

"Going there" requires no artistic ability.

"I feel like God has blessed me with the ability to inspire people to be creative and do their art in very non-judgmental way," she said. "I want everyone's art to be theirs, not like mine."

XXX

Ann Witherwax will teach classes on Tie Dye on March 28 and April 4, and a class on Garden Pavers on April 18. For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com.