Why couldn't I bring back a bison?

Of course it would be ridiculous to buy a pair of pants just because they happen to match some particularly wacky socks, but I'm the one who once sewed an entire wool skirt suit and silk blouse to match a set of antique buttons I'd found at a yard sale.

And I didn't buy my lovely new moss-green corduroys just to match the Meerkats in Love socks my son brought home from South Africa, but when I saw these green cords on the half-price rack at Macy's I immediately thought, Meerkats. And then I saw a lovely soft v-necked sweater in the same color and now here I am ensconced in warm moss green from head to toe, except for the orange stripes on my Meerkats in Love socks. No one ever sees the orange stripes, but I know they're there and that's all that matters.

I was at Macy's as part of a two-day junket to Columbus, Ohio, the ostensible purpose of which was to buy a new winter coat. I didn't buy a coat (because I prefer not to look like the Michelin Man if at all possible) but I bought some other things and also visited two friends who always make me smile, plus a herd of bison. The bison were standing around placidly at Battelle Darby Creek Metropark, where the peace and quiet were balm for my soul. Why are bison more soothing to watch than cows? I barely notice the cows in the pastures along my commute but the sight of a few bison standing in a restored prairie fills me with peace.

The friends I visited were more talkative than the bison, reminding me that the issues that irk me aren't confined to my campus. I'm not the only one whose life's work is being rendered irrelevant by AI, nor am I the only one struggling to find a reliable foothold in our current cultural moment. Friends who can help me laugh in the midst of all the horror are a priceless gift.

And getting away from campus for a couple of days was a gift as well. No one gave me the time off; I just took advantage of a Thursday with no meetings and a Friday when I didn't need to be in class because my students were otherwise occupied. Call it a mental health break. I've been working like a maniac to complete important campus projects (with no thanks from those whose bacon I'm saving) and I had to get away, to fill my eyes and mind and heart with something other than trouble.

Today I'm back at work on campus, rejoining the mad race toward the end of the semester, but I feel more equipped to keep moving toward the finish line in my new green cords and meerkat socks and a mind refreshed by my time away--and a new career plan. If the whole academic thing doesn't work out, I'll remake myself as a professional appreciator of bison. Do you reckon there's any money in it?

 

Gotta love Meerkats in Love

 

Mary Roach: A little more than diddly

Just before we walked onstage in front of a packed house last night, the director of our campus speaker series asked me, "Do you usually get nervous before doing things like this?"

Things like this? What, like sitting on stage for an hour tossing questions at the author of eight best-selling books? Not something I do every day!

The answer is: yes, I did get a little nervous before I had that very public fireside chat with author Mary Roach last night, but it was the most fun I've had in ages. Aside from being a terrific writer, she is a warm and funny person who can talk intelligently about just about anything. Here's part of what I said about her in my introduction:

Early in her new book Replaceable You, in a chapter describing treatment options for people suffering third-degree burns, Mary Roach tosses out the phrase exuberant granulations as if it's precious treasure. In Fuzz, we learn about pronking and stotting and frass and kerf, and we encounter people who work as Danger Tree Assessors or Falling Safety Advisors. This is what I love about Mary's writing: she takes such great joy in language, glorying in the weird and wonderful nomenclature of science and nature while she's looking at interesting topics in granular detail--exuberantly. Near the end of Fuzz she writes about scientists' attempts to genetically alter mice, admitting that she "knows diddly about how it works but wants to become someone who knows a little more than diddly." Well we all know diddly about a lot of things--but by the time we're done tonight, I hope we'll know a little more than diddly.

And we did! We all now know much more about how Mary Roach writes her books and what she's learned along the way. The first question I asked was How far will you go to get the story? I've read only two of her books, but I've seen her get mugged by monkeys, get trained in wildlife attack response, climb inside an iron lung machine, get a hair transplant on her calf, and travel all over the world to track down scientists and other experts so she could observe their work while peppering them with questions.

I wish I could have written down her responses, but I had my hands full with a microphone and lists of questions, some of them written by my Nature Writing students, who had read a chapter of Fuzz. They wanted to know why she writes about serious topics humorously and why she tucks so many little gems into very funny footnotes. Her answers made us all a little smarter while keeping us laughing. 

But then she'd been doing that all day. Because of an unusual convergence of events, I was in charge of getting the author where she needed to go all afternoon, so we spent a lot of time talking while tootling around town and having dinner before the show. She is just as warm and interesting offstage, so by the time we got on the stage, I felt very comfortable asking questions.

And then after the show, she sat and signed books for a long line of people who wanted to keep the conversation going. It was pretty late when I dropped her off at her hotel, where she had arranged for a 3:30 a.m. wake-up call so a car service could drive her to the airport in Columbus. Maybe that's why I woke up at 3:30 this morning--in sympathy with the author who'd kept me so well entertained all day. The whole event wore me out but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Maybe next time--if there is a next time--I won't be quite so nervous.  

Snow trouble

So I'm sitting in the audience at a big campus event while five distinguished men (and three women!) in expensive suits give speeches one after another after another, and I'm trying to listen very closely to what they're saying but I'm distracted by what I can see through the great big rec center windows just behind them.

Snow. Lots of it. Coming down so thickly that it's hard to see the trees right outside the window.   

The problem with working in a historic city full of picturesque brick streets is that it's very hard to remove snow from bricks, and the problem with white-out conditions is that there's a limited number of snowplows and salt trucks and they can't hit every road at once, and the problem with working in a city squeezed between two rivers and a steep hill is that there's really only one route that will take me home.  

Which is why I was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic feeling its way along the highway at speeds up to six miles per hour yesterday afternoon. The line would inch up to a traffic light, stopping carefully to avoid skidding, and then more traffic would spill in from a side road, clogging the intersection so that no one could move even after the light turned green.

It was a long drive home and a stressful one. I was about halfway home when the snow stopped falling and the sun burst through the clouds, so that when I turned right on my country road, the snow-covered trees were in the spotlight. After taking close to an hour to drive my 17-mile route, the light and beauty made me want to stop and applaud. 

Snow creates all kinds of problems in the world where I live, but every once in a while it offers a lovely reward.

 

 

Guineas in the mist

I totally understand why no one goes trick-or-treating on my road: it's narrow and twisty, with lots of blind curves and no streetlights or sidewalks, and you never know when a critter might skitter across the road in front of you. Houses are far apart, and a child in a mask that limits peripheral vision would be taking his life in his hands walking up my driveway. And of course the guineas' alarm call makes it sound like someone is getting murdered in my meadow. Scary place! But beautiful too, especially in the early-morning autumn fog.

 

Guineas in the mist, and chickens too

The resident woodsman has been working hard.

Smiley Friday

Late on Friday afternoon at the end of a complicated week, I walked into a room in the science building feeling tired, grumpy, and entirely out of energy, but within minutes I was laughing and by the end of the hour I felt refreshed. The room was full of exhausted professors eating finger foods, drinking wine, and sharing stories, gathered to listen as two of our colleagues presented the results of their sabbatical research projects. I don't know much about scanning tunneling microscopes or microbial films on reefs, but my colleagues took such joy in explaining their work that the joy seeped into every corner of the room and put a spring in our steps as we left the building. 

But that's not the only reason I'm smiling this Friday. In no particular order:

At the student creative writing event yesterday, three of my Nature Writing students read short essays they'd written for my class. Beautiful writing read beautifully--they made me very proud. 

Earlier in the day--at 6:30 a.m., when it was still dark out and I hadn't yet ingested my morning quota of caffeine--I arrived at our first-year student registration breakfast to find a host of students eager to press the big blue "Register Now" button promptly at 7, plus faculty from various disciplines helping them troubleshoot scheduling problems. At least half of the students present were first-year football players, whose coach had insisted that they walk over to the registration breakfast right after early-morning weightlifting. Best of all, the coach came along with them. It's refreshing to see a brand-new coach impressing on students the importance of academics. 

One of my first-year seminar students got the rest of the class laughing so hard this morning that we all felt like one big happy family. Sometimes one student can be a catalyst in a classroom, making good things happen just by being there. I'm going to miss this dude next semester.

I had to run an errand to a bleak strip mall in the middle of the day but I stopped along the way to look at the Ohio River, where the light was gorgeous during the calm before an ugly storm. Calm water, lovely light, refreshing breeze--just before the sky fell.

And a colleague reminded me this evening that the sky is always going to be falling, but it's good sometimes to focus instead on the lovely light. 

An elevating topic

This morning I rode in an elevator with a student who had recently broken his ankle in two places. "This is nothing," he said. "Last year I broke my neck."

I think I would have quit playing football after the first injury, but whatever. I certainly wasn't planning to gripe about my bum knee in the presence of that kind of pain. He can't put any weight on his ankle for at least a month so his knee was propped up on one of those little scooters, which has to be a horrible way to get around campus. Historic buildings full of charm and character aren't necessarily easy to retrofit for the differently-abled. (I keep casually referring to myself as a cripple but people flinch. Too Dickensian?)

Yesterday I was halfway down a flight of stairs when I realized that I had forgotten to take the elevator and then I had to make a decision: continue down to the next floor or walk back up and use the elevator? In the past couple of weeks I've spent more time in campus elevators than I had for the previous 25 years combined. Elevators in campus buildings are, variously, slow, smelly, noisy, unreliable, or absent, but my orthopedist says my knee will be happier if I avoid steps for a while, so I hear and obey.

For about four days after the cortisone shot my knee felt great. I was able to walk without a discernible limp and sleep without being awakened by shooting pains. 

Then I twisted it again--not as badly as the first time, but enough to make me despair of ever living without pain. Back to taking piles of painkillers every day, back to limping slowly around campus, back to being awakened by pain every stinking night.

But then it started feeling better. I can sleep! I've cut back on the painkillers! I can walk for a time without a limp! I can put on my socks without being overcome by a strong desire to cut off my right leg above the knee! Stairs still hurt, especially going down, and by the end of the day my leg feels fatigued, but the knee is making steady progress, filling me with hope that I may someday get around campus without having to plan every step of my route in advance. 

For a while I was going to Faculty Council meetings to offer feedback on topics related to one of my positions, but the last time I attended a Council meeting, my knee hurt so badly that I resolved to stay away until such time as Hell freezes over. Council meets on the top floor of the administration building, a lovely historic pile where the steps seem as steep and endless as the Eiffel Tower.  

How would a person dependent on a wheelchair access any of the services available in that building? Well, there's no room inside the building for an elevator, so some years ago the College installed an outdoor chair lift just next to the steps. To operate the chair lift, you have to press a buzzer and hope someone inside the building hears the summons and knows how to operate the lift. Once years ago the chair lift got stuck halfway up with a wheelchair-bound person in it. 

And even if it works, the chair lift only gets you so far: access to the main floor of the building, where all the services most essential to students are located. There is no elevator to the upper floor, where Faculty Council meets and where the Human Resources office is located. How am I supposed to file paperwork requesting accommodations for my bum knee when I can't get up the steps to HR? 

But let's look on the bright side: I can walk! I can sleep! And I'm not trying to play football with a broken neck! I've reached the age when joint pain is a fairly constant part of everyday life, but there's hope that someday I'll be able to walk down the stairs without giving it a second thought. Anything to avoid the elevator! 

When the door swings back

On cop shows it's become a cliche: the officers encounter a woman with bruises on her face and ask who's been hitting her and the woman says I walked into a door. Lame! Such a lame excuse that it has become code for Let's all pretend that no one is hitting me. 

So I probably ought to come up with something else to say when people ask about the bruise on my forehead, like The plunger the aliens used to suck me into their flying saucer left a nasty red mark. That's about as believable as I walked into a door, but nevertheless I assure you that I' telling the truth: I walked into a door, and I have a door-shaped bruise to prove it.

Trust me: my husband is the last person on earth who would intentionally hurt anyone, and also he doesn't know his own strength, so if he decided one day to punch me in the face, I'd still be lying on the floor in the room where it happened. The laundry room. Which has swinging saloon doors, one of which failed to swing back out and so was located where I didn't expect it when I turn to walk vigorously out of the room.

My husband heard me holler and yelled up from the basement, Are you okay?  

No, I said, but there's not a thing you can do about it. 

I could blame it on my lifelong klutziness or an aging body or the malignant door, but the fact is that I've been doing a lot of stupid things lately because I'm distracted by fears that my teaching career is going pfft right in front of my face. Whatever I do to try not to think about it, I'm frequently assaulted by intrusive thoughts of despair over my moribund teaching career. 

No literature classes this semester because students wouldn't sign up for them. No upper-level literature class since fall of 2024, and it's possible that one or both of my literature classes scheduled for next semester will be canceled due to low enrollment, which would leave me with...nothing to teach. 

Of course the Powers That Be will make sure I devote my non-teaching time to administrative projects to make up for not teaching, but while I'm pretty good at administrative claptrap, it doesn't feed my soul the way teaching does. And it's a little embarrassing for the senior member of the English department to be haunting the halls with nothing to do because my courses have been so roundly rejected by students that I've become utterly irrelevant. (And they're left with no options for American Literature classes, which leads to a pretty unbalanced English major, but that's not my fault.)

I'm trying not to whine too much about this lest I become the curmudgeonly old crone who's always bringing down the mood, which will make me even less welcome on campus. But when a colleague from another department asked how I was doing this morning and I said not great and spilled my guts, I found out that it's not just me--other departments are seeing declining enrollments, and other colleagues are wondering what they'll do to fulfill contractual requirements when there's nothing left to teach. There's not enough administrative claptrap to fill all the gaps in teaching loads, so what are the options?

It's a painful time to be a prof, but at least the painful bruise on my forehead gives me a chance to change the subject. Twenty-five years ago I walked through a door into a wonderful career, and now that door has swung back to hit me in the face, and it hurts.

No, I'm not okay--but there's not a thing you can do about it.