Letters & Notes from the Academy's Headmistress
A Transformative experience
by gia benigni di borgo
Preface: The first two pages are the preface to my blog. The Transformative Blog actually begins
below where it reads, "The Transformative Blog Begins Here." - Thank-you. GBD
below where it reads, "The Transformative Blog Begins Here." - Thank-you. GBD
You all sure know the Island! Many of you were right, this photo was taken by Anne's Tablet, right at the top of East Bluff! Top of East Bluff on the left.
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Notes from the headmistress:May 2015
My Mackinac Island Summer: Memories from age 12
I'm an American-born woman who sees so much beauty, inside of humor, lilacs, and fresh wild horses. I love to laugh endlessly, only then do I calm down and realize, that the beauty is everything. I think about a servitude life in 1865, and my mind drifts, standing on the cliff that overlooks Lake Huron. It is only then, that my soul whipped out and around, from its place of salvation and resting place, to see if anyone has witnessed what I just witnessed. I saw it, as others did, as we all stood there, on the cliff of Mackinac. We stood on the top of East Bluff, depicted in the photo on the left that was taken by Anne's Tablet. (We stood on the top of East Bluff on the left of the cliff). It was the summer of 1979, and like a day of playing hooky from school and escaping to the ballpark, I was present, on this immensely beautiful, majestic island.
What did Terrance Mann say in that poignant moment in the film, "Field of Dreams?" He said, "It's will be as if they've dipped themselves into magic waters..." Now, James Earl Jones, who plays the banned book author Terrance Mann in the movie, wasn't pontificating over Mackinac Island, but the possibilities of a majestic corn field in Iowa, USA. But really? It is as if he was resonating, restoring, incorporating all of the moments of his life, into one place. "Ahh, they will most certainly come Ray...and it will be just as if they've dipping themselves into magic waters!" These are my memories of a childhood gone by, a visit of mine, as most of my readers already know, to what television tags as, "Pure Michigan." It is the place, in my adult life, in which I first witnessed the true presence of God. It is...it is...as if I stepped into a world so beautiful and so sweet with the island's fresh water taffy, with the immense presence of about twenty different salt-water fudge houses, and with velvety smooth farm fresh ice cream parlors. I was a child of about twelve on my first visit, when Mackinac Island touched my young heart and christened my soul for a life-time. Additionally, my family already knows of my final resting place. It's just against where the moss grows on the north sides of trees in the wind. Why, there are three quaint little churches on Mackinac Island. There is St. Anne's Catholic Church on Huron, the Mackinac Island Bible Church on Main, and the Little Stone Church on Cadotte Avenue. Let me decide later of the next church to attend later on this summer, while I'll miss the breezy Lilac Festival after July 4th, (and the fudge, and the chocolates, and ice creams, all once again mentioned!) I already missed even more from this past spring, when the horses were brought over from the mainland of Mackinaw City by ferry. The horses came to their summer barns in which they will inhabit and call their home for summer 2015. Let the show begin Mackinac Island, and let the summer continue to inspire all young hearts, and create new Mackinac Island visitors forever and a day, in the lives of young children everywhere. Coming this June 19-20 - The Newfoundland Festival! 
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The Transformative Blog - begins here
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Try 300 Miles up the straights of Mackinac into NEWFoundland: USA's Tin Lizzie's Solo on the tickle
I'm not sure what kind of papers you'd need to just rip it with your cruiser, to sail up the straights of Mackinac into Newfoundland, Labrador, or to any other North American island. But Tin Lizzie would most certainly know about steering her own vessel in almost any kind of weather. Got water for your terrain? Well just "Sail on" is her motto for summer 2015. Does this sound like you? Is your world a nautical one? Well, if so, consider this.
I was supposed to spend the summer of 2014 on The Nyad Cruiser in Cali, but of course got sidetracked. Beth's Boat is inhabited by EL Captaina Tin Lizzie, hundreds of great admirers who frequent the parked vessel for summer habitual socializing, and a big black nameless hunting hound. Tin Lizzie is a nomad, a pilgrimage and risk taker, and a trailblazer who just so happens to be my friend and confidant for the past five years. She's an exceptional 100k marathon runner, health & fitness enthusiast, a human rights activist, and a previous content writer for ESL Carnival Academy. She's a fun and courageous Amazonian at Sea and definitely a leader of the Women-Can-Do-Anything pact, and she is a part of a tribunal of herculean voyagers. Her role model is the other ocean cruiser, Diana Nyad. In 2012-13, Lizzie ended up running 5 marathons, 4 50Ks, a 44 mile Rim to Rim to Rim in the Grand Canyon, a 100K, and a 28 mile Quad Dipsea. In her latest blog, she describes her take on running in Cuba. I love and admire her so much, and the Academy is adding another feature of Tin Lizzie for the month of June, 2015. By the way, Lizzie lives full-time on her boat, and all I can say to this is, "What the life!" Even more, I want to be like Tin Lizzie. How to accomplish this? Well, one can start the trip while supplying the fantastic ice chest down below the hull in the bilge, of your own majestic boat. (see nautical photo below). In preparation for your voyage, don't forget to read, "You Never Know Until You Try." This piece will inspire you to do anything. So, where did I meet Ms. Fabuloso? Well, here's our background. I met Tin at work. We were both college counselors some years ago, in suburban Chicago. We'd spend day in and day out speaking to university students about their ambitions and what inspired them to go into a particular field or route in life, and to perhaps try another. We spoke to them about the abundance of efforting in life; the need to keep striving. It was then that I found out that she'd traveled half-way around the world already, having visited some 25 countries while still in her 20's. Impactful. Thrill-Seeking. Loving the Adventure. All of these. Then, in 2012, Tin wrote that infamous piece of hers, "You never know until you try," and this is the one definitive piece that will catapult me onto my trip to Newfoundland this summer, walking the 80 miles of the East Coast Trail. I'll be whale watching & enjoying my coffee and Cambazola. Oh, you know the story, but it's just so darn classic, my becoming a Newfie. It's life altering and I just want to relive the moments leading up to this transformative event. There will be plenty to write about, to share during the course of stories of moonlight dinners with friends. There will be postings of hundreds of photos for which I know right now, I won't be able to prioritize which ones deserve more of an astonishing beauty credit than the next. But not to worry. I will have every detail of the journey to Newfoundland right here for my readers to relive and enjoy. But here is my one true hope. 
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My one true hope is for every less than high caliber athlete, for the novice of low self-esteem, for every space cadet, every self-absorbed lover of the Kardashians, to come back down to earth. Over the ham radio: "Earth to celebrity: were you actually thinking of spending the summer with the Kardashians?" Forget about it. (Deep dish, Chicagoan dialet). Forget about the money-making media. Look into your heart, find someone, some thing that truly motivates you. Study this person/thing. Analyze it ad nauseam. Become that person in this lifetime, and start living the adventure. Tin Lizzie has offered that to me, and I am eternally thankful for her amazing feats, for her friendship, and to her astonishing efforts in impacting humankind.
Gia Benigni Di Borgo
ESL Carnival Academy
Gia Benigni Di Borgo
ESL Carnival Academy
Happy Birthday~~!! It's my birthday today!
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Monday: May 18, 2015 Earnest Hemingway is my favorite author, and Frank Lloyd Wright is very exceptional, since I bring with the Transformative Blog much of my memories past from the bustling city of Chicago. However, on my birthday today, May 18th, I plan to bring as much of a moveable feast to my upcoming memoir, as Earnest Hemingway did with his own writing. A part of transforming is recognizing upcoming life events that will not only change your life, but the person whom resides at the seat of your soul. It's my birthday, and I therefore want to pay homage to my life, to my years on planet earth. I'd like to do it in a much polished way; recognizing years spent with certain friends, loving a child, and finding out who I really am as a person. I'm studying French again, this time with a vigor that cannot be questioned, as I plan to be somewhat fluent in French for my trip to Paris in 2016. Additionally, I have yet to spend the summer with Tin Lizzie on Beth's Boat in Cali. Not to mention catching a ferry up the straights of Mackinac, maybe even sailing from the straights, the nearly 300 miles up into Canada. And then there is biking around the island every morning for a couple of weeks! Now, what about my writing? Where does the incorrigibly unpretentious writer venture off to? In my Writing Workshop I class at Columbia in the fall of 1979, Professor Margaret Yntema motivated me, challenged me, and changed the way in which I saw the world. It was the first year that I read from the greatest of writers. I read Toni Morrison's Black Boy and Song of Solomon. I read the required reading, some of which was Herman Melville's Moby Dick. More writing personified, was when I read my most favorite piece by Hemingway that I first read when I was just 15 years old: A Clean, Well Lighted Place. While allowing for such marvelous works of literature to resonate within your mind, one cannot help but to see life differently. I think about everything I ever saw, tasted, dreamt, and felt passion for. What do I want my legacy to be? What does the Holy Spirit really want me to know about myself; about this place on earth in which I reside? In my 54th year on planet earth, I'd like to thank my mother for sending me for eight summers to the Art Institute of Chicago. Even though my family is disconnected, with some distance off in Cali, some in Chicago, and the southern portion of the U.S., I can still say that I've made it thus far. I now love and adore the southern portion of the U.S., and I'm currently studying the history of the southwestern Nevada. Who am I? Well, I think I'm a classy, introverted artistic, freelance writer, and web designer, who runs an ESL company. I love communicating with my students all across the globe, and I love all of my children and their children. I love and adore my little cuties. Thanks big world for all of the experiences thus far. In the photos I've place to the left, I'm telling you my wonderful experiences. Thanks for them all. Happy Birthday to me! Happy birthday Gia Benigni di Borgo! 
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Biking around the island everydayOde to islands. Ode to peninsulas. It's the memory that I live for. Biking around Mackinac Island everyday.
Coming Soon: My Mackinac Island Summer, 1980 Gia Benigni di Borgo, May 12, 2015 |
Gia benigni di borgo:
a "newfie" goes on an
adventure to newfoundland, canada in 2015
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February 2015 Hello New, Returning, & Future ESL Academy Students: My name is Gia Benigni Di Borgo, and I am the headmistress for ESL Academy. I felt it necessary to formally introduce myself at the very start of the new year, especially after having January flash past most of our eyes very quickly. I'm very excited about 2015, since so much of ESL learning, international traveling, and meeting new students is happening. Hello to new and prospective academy students! The Academy looks forward in sharing many, many, superlative English conversations with everyone. Out of the gate I'd like to announce what's going on in the news about the academy and myself. I am highlighted in the news on the wonderful WritngWalkingWomen.com website. The WWW group is all about some 35 or so women that will be walking the NewFoundland TransCanada Trail in 2015. It is a nearly 100 mile pilgrimage of successful women travel writers and writers of other genres who will be embarking upon the adventure of a lifetime. Feel free to travel over to the WritingWalkingWomen website and learn about the very first time that I traveled alone. I traveled to Mackinac Island. I ventured to the far off territory in upper peninsula Michigan where only horses gallop on cobble pavements and where merchants have erected shoppes that seem to harbor some of the most exceptional, eye-catching and nostalgic, most magnificent beachfront property ever. Mackinac Island sports the most passionate and endearing, timeless island beauty of an old fashioned village. You must pay this spawling island retreat a visit in your lifetime! Additionally, I look forward in sharing.... |
My Mackinac Island Summer, to you all. If by chance you have the festive occasion to travel to this illustrious city, port, and over to the island, don't forget head on over to the Cupola Bar at the extreme top of the Grand Hotel. One can take in the astonishing views of the hotel grounds, main street, via the Shepler's or Starline ferries making their way across Lake Huron. The Grand Hotel opened in 1887, and it is the largest summer hotel in the world. And guess what? You can still marvel in all of the splendor of yesterday since motorized vehicles aren't allowed on Mackinac Island. Bicycles and horse drawn carriages are the usual modes of transportation! You can travel from the mainland via either the Shepler's or Starline Ferry services here and here.
Mackinac Island Tourists Websites:
- Lots of Great Mackinac Island Photos
- Another Great, (not lake), but Seaside Resort
- A Wordpress Blog on The Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, Michigan
- Working on Mackinac Island and Year-Round Housing
- The Starline Ferry of Mackinac Island
- Mackinac Island Statelists
- Mackinac Island Fall 2014 Schedule
- Halloween on Mackinac Island & Events Throughout the Year
- Another great Mackinac Island Blog
- More! Area Links to Mackinac Island
- A Great Antique - The Northern Michigan Journal
- Websites, Food, and Mail Order
Enjoy Pure Michigan!
ESL Carnival Academy
2015 Essay finalist
Merry Christmas from:
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Christmas, 2014
From The Academy: It has been a great year for ESL Carnival Academy, and we wanted to share with you some of the absolutely beautiful plans that we have in store for the holidays.
Always, ESL Carnival Academy Gia Benigni Di Borgo, Founder |
creativity on the rise
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ESL Carnival - Create a Green Project Like Mott Green: Like Water for Chocolate
by Gia benigni DI Borgo
Editor's Note
August 1, 2013
Home and Garden Television says that you can live in a bamboo hut right on the beach in Nicaragua for a couple hundred dollars a month. Or maybe you could rent out a lavish villa with some amazing square footage on a rental budget of only $2,500 USD per month. But what do you really want to do with your ESL career and your love of diverse people and lands? What about helping to keep nature intact right in beautiful nature’s own backyard in Grenada. Wanting to keep nature intact is called true and utter environmental conservation & sustainability. Working to give back to the people, the land, and to the environment is another way in which to compost all of the things that are wrong in the world and have them transformed into good. (Grenada is located northwest of Trinidad and Tobago, northeast of Venezuela, and southwest of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines).
What can you do with your love of ESL, (English Second Language), love of people, geography, culture and environmentally green issues? You take all of your built up passions for the planet, climate change, organic farming and free-spiritedness and go from the less-desired road of total anarchy to the built-in bliss of achieving actual sustainability. You can solar-power your consciousness into something like what Mott Green accomplished back in 1999 when he moved from Staten Island, New York to Grenada and founded the Grenada Chocolate Company. (I mention anarchy here since Mott was considered to have been a naturalist and free-spirited anarchist).
Mott Green never taught ESL if but he did, (I would say), he would have taught people how to speak ‘while living in tune with the earth’ when he moved to Grenada 25 years ago. He taught the international community how to speak in rich, dark chocolate bars while sustaining rich environmental sustainability. He taught the world the value of neatly hand-folding his candy wrappers of his virginal chocolate bars in the most friendly, protected and productive format humanly possible. It may sound like I’m discussing some new fangled hippie movement as I speak of relating to the masses, (while keeping in mind the eternal lives of the trees of the Grenadian rain forests).
Mott lived in Grenada for about eleven years before he came up with the idea of harvesting cocoa beans into chocolate candy. He did all of this by building his own equipment and by learning how to dry out the cocoa. He accomplished this by paying local coca farmers a living wage and by respecting child labor laws and the root of the cocoa plant in a country where it was originally rooted. There lies the essence of true love and of keeping nature intact and of keeping everything concerning his chocolate completely natural.
The Grenada Chocolate Company or Factory was born out of the pure desire to be earth and people conscious by sustaining wealth where wealth is already in its purist form: inside of the earth. In so thinking, Mr. Green translated his passion of people and its land into the Green’s company motto: “tree to bar.”
Mott Green was truly the Mother-Earth of free-spiritedness who pioneered solar-powered machinery to operate in Grenada but also was the first chocolate manufacturer to keep its farmed chocolate company in Grenada. His company was the first. His company also was the first to empower local cocoa farmers in humanitarian issues that used to plague the land’s inhabitants.
What this means is that there are more ideas than fewer when it comes to rolling-over all of your years of teaching ESL into a second career of protecting the environment. Some ways that would make Mott Green proud would be to build your second career by nullifying corporate greed and international waste.
During Mott’s pre-Grenada years he rebuilt a Volkswagen bus to run on electricity and solar-powered hot-water showers for squatters in Manhattan. (of which many were already his friends hoping for communal change in tough societies). Last year the company delivered tens of thousands of chocolate bars to Europe on a sail-powered Dutch ship, the Brigantine Tres Hombres, operated by a company called Fairtransport. A team of volunteer cyclists in Amsterdam helped handle distribution on the ground.
Mr. Green called it “the first carbon-neutral trans-Atlantic mass chocolate delivery.” A documentary film about the company, “Nothing Like Chocolate,” was directed by Kum-Kum Bhavnani and was released last year.
Whether it be a love for chocolate or just take your pick: your rolling-over your ESL career into something wonderful like conservation is like water for chocolate. You have only to take your invested years and place them into rich earth where the reward of growth can be measured by the many people whose lives you can transform.
You can find a segment of a day in the life of Mott Green on ESL Carnival’s website for a lovely tribute to environmental sustainability and a rich Caribbean delicacy.
(Mott Green passed away in Grenada in June 2013).
Gia Benigni di Borgo
ESL Carnival Academy
Copyright ESL Carnival 2015
Home and Garden Television says that you can live in a bamboo hut right on the beach in Nicaragua for a couple hundred dollars a month. Or maybe you could rent out a lavish villa with some amazing square footage on a rental budget of only $2,500 USD per month. But what do you really want to do with your ESL career and your love of diverse people and lands? What about helping to keep nature intact right in beautiful nature’s own backyard in Grenada. Wanting to keep nature intact is called true and utter environmental conservation & sustainability. Working to give back to the people, the land, and to the environment is another way in which to compost all of the things that are wrong in the world and have them transformed into good. (Grenada is located northwest of Trinidad and Tobago, northeast of Venezuela, and southwest of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines).
What can you do with your love of ESL, (English Second Language), love of people, geography, culture and environmentally green issues? You take all of your built up passions for the planet, climate change, organic farming and free-spiritedness and go from the less-desired road of total anarchy to the built-in bliss of achieving actual sustainability. You can solar-power your consciousness into something like what Mott Green accomplished back in 1999 when he moved from Staten Island, New York to Grenada and founded the Grenada Chocolate Company. (I mention anarchy here since Mott was considered to have been a naturalist and free-spirited anarchist).
Mott Green never taught ESL if but he did, (I would say), he would have taught people how to speak ‘while living in tune with the earth’ when he moved to Grenada 25 years ago. He taught the international community how to speak in rich, dark chocolate bars while sustaining rich environmental sustainability. He taught the world the value of neatly hand-folding his candy wrappers of his virginal chocolate bars in the most friendly, protected and productive format humanly possible. It may sound like I’m discussing some new fangled hippie movement as I speak of relating to the masses, (while keeping in mind the eternal lives of the trees of the Grenadian rain forests).
Mott lived in Grenada for about eleven years before he came up with the idea of harvesting cocoa beans into chocolate candy. He did all of this by building his own equipment and by learning how to dry out the cocoa. He accomplished this by paying local coca farmers a living wage and by respecting child labor laws and the root of the cocoa plant in a country where it was originally rooted. There lies the essence of true love and of keeping nature intact and of keeping everything concerning his chocolate completely natural.
The Grenada Chocolate Company or Factory was born out of the pure desire to be earth and people conscious by sustaining wealth where wealth is already in its purist form: inside of the earth. In so thinking, Mr. Green translated his passion of people and its land into the Green’s company motto: “tree to bar.”
Mott Green was truly the Mother-Earth of free-spiritedness who pioneered solar-powered machinery to operate in Grenada but also was the first chocolate manufacturer to keep its farmed chocolate company in Grenada. His company was the first. His company also was the first to empower local cocoa farmers in humanitarian issues that used to plague the land’s inhabitants.
What this means is that there are more ideas than fewer when it comes to rolling-over all of your years of teaching ESL into a second career of protecting the environment. Some ways that would make Mott Green proud would be to build your second career by nullifying corporate greed and international waste.
During Mott’s pre-Grenada years he rebuilt a Volkswagen bus to run on electricity and solar-powered hot-water showers for squatters in Manhattan. (of which many were already his friends hoping for communal change in tough societies). Last year the company delivered tens of thousands of chocolate bars to Europe on a sail-powered Dutch ship, the Brigantine Tres Hombres, operated by a company called Fairtransport. A team of volunteer cyclists in Amsterdam helped handle distribution on the ground.
Mr. Green called it “the first carbon-neutral trans-Atlantic mass chocolate delivery.” A documentary film about the company, “Nothing Like Chocolate,” was directed by Kum-Kum Bhavnani and was released last year.
Whether it be a love for chocolate or just take your pick: your rolling-over your ESL career into something wonderful like conservation is like water for chocolate. You have only to take your invested years and place them into rich earth where the reward of growth can be measured by the many people whose lives you can transform.
You can find a segment of a day in the life of Mott Green on ESL Carnival’s website for a lovely tribute to environmental sustainability and a rich Caribbean delicacy.
(Mott Green passed away in Grenada in June 2013).
Gia Benigni di Borgo
ESL Carnival Academy
Copyright ESL Carnival 2015
