A wish for feathers

All day everyone has been complaining about the cold and wind and snow so I'm going to shut up about the weather already and talk about birds instead, except to note that the amount of time it took me to bundle up sufficiently to go outside and fill the birdfeeders made me wish I'd been born with feathers.

Here's what I like about where my birdfeeders are located: I can catch a glimpse of birds from just about anywhere in the front rooms of the house, but I can also open up the far window in our bedroom, which lacks a screen, and I can sit there with the camera shooting pictures of birds at the feeders while hot air blows up from the heat vent and keeps me (mostly) warm. It's like being in a bird blind, except I don't have to go outside.

The sound of the window opening always scatters the birds, but if I sit there quietly enough, many of them will come back and stay awhile. Chickadees and nuthatches have no problem with my presence in the window and cardinals hang around by the dozens, but I notice that the juncos that usually scavenge the ground below the feeders tend to stay on the far side of the lawn while I've got the window open. 

And then there are the woodpeckers. I put out oatmeal-studded suet yesterday, which always attracts woodpeckers, including a brilliantly colored red-bellied woodpecker and a little hairy woodpecker that kept coming back for more--until I opened the window.

I suppose my presence there is disturbing, or maybe the light reflecting off the camera's lens scares them off, but generally woodpeckers won't come near the feeders as long as I've got the bedroom window open. So I snapped away at some chickadees and tried to get photos of juncos against the white snow, which is just about impossible to expose correctly--either the highlights are blown or the bird's eyes disappear into a black hole. But while I was focusing on the little black-and-white ground birds, a flash of red caught my eye and I pulled the camera up just in time to catch an elegant little hairy woodpecker checking out the buffet.  

One shot--that's all I got, and it's not particularly clear but I'll take it. I waited a while in hopes that the woodpecker would come back, but eventually even sitting directly above a heat vent was not enough to keep me from freezing, so I had to call it a day. A cold day, yes, and a day full of piercing winds, but spending a little time by my window made it an immeasurably more beautiful day.

Climb every mountain (except, maybe, this one)

When is research ever wasted?

That's what I've been wondering today as I've spent half of a morning trying to sort through massive mountains of notes related to one small part of my sabbatical project. I gave a conference paper two years ago that I've wanted to transform into a full-fledged journal article dealing with certain elements of 9/11 literature, but as I look over the paper and then track down notes contained in a host of different computer files, I'm wondering whether the universe might be better off if I just drop this task. I mean, it's not as if there's any great demand for one more theory-laden academic journal article belaboring a point that seems, at this juncture, fairly obvious.

But if I let the article slide, what will I have to show for all that research? Won't it be wasted? And what does that even mean?

Surely the results of that research have deepened my understanding of the topic and informed my teaching, preparing me to teach a capstone class this fall on literature responding to the 9/11 attacks. And abandoning the journal article would not mean abandoning the topic entirely: I'd like to use the material in an essay aimed at a wider audience, something a little more casual and less footnote-laden. I revised and resubmitted another journal article last week and I'll soon be working on the comedy pedagogy project (here's the CFP!), so it's not as if I'm spending my sabbatical slacking off; I just dread the drudgery involved in this particular revision. 

But maybe that's a normal response to my note-sorting foray this morning. I found full texts of articles and notes on many other articles and books in files all over my computer, some of them dating back close to 20 years; the prospect of beating all those ideas into some semblance of order hurts my head. When the mountain of notes stretches so high that I fear I'll need oxygen to climb to the top, it's time to step back and reconsider.

I'm tempted to toss a bomb at the mountain and level the whole thing, but that would be a bit extreme. Instead, I think I'll walk around and look at other things for a while. Maybe the mountain of research notes will look more manageable from a different perspective--or maybe it's time to find a different mountain to climb.

Between too much and not enough

When people ask what I'm doing on my sabbatical, I'm torn between telling them not enough or too much. 

I'm spending not enough time reading journal articles, revising essays, and reviewing possible textbooks for a new class, while spending too much time reading for pleasure,  playing Words with Friends, and rearranging the kitchen cabinets. 

I'm making slow progress on my research, but I'm not exactly saving the world. I mean, I took a CPR class today so I'll know what to do next time a student stops breathing in my presence (read it here), which could potentially save a life, but that's not exactly part of my sabbatical project. (It's more a part of my being a responsible human being project.) And yesterday I spent an outrageous amount of time emptying out a stack of four drawers in the kitchen where mice apparently had a wild party during our recent vacation--scrambling all over our kitchen gadgets, chewing bristles off a pastry brush, and dropping little calling cards everywhere they went. Cleaning out four drawers and washing every single item in them won't contribute anything tangible to my sabbatical research, but it might help me sleep more soundly. (Although I'd sleep even better if the mice would just go away and leave me alone!)

I'm doing too much gadget-cleaning and not enough thinking deep thoughts, and being snowed in doesn't help, so yesterday I bundled up and went out for a walk in the snow. I watched nuthatches hop up and down the trunk of a tree and I tried to get a decent photo of shadows on snow, which is difficult but oddly soothing. The crisp, cold air and blue sky cleared my head and made me irrationally happy, a nice change from my earlier mouse-inspired angst. I've been doing not enough walking outside and too much sitting inside stewing over the mouse infestation problem, and it's hard to think deep thoughts when you're always listening for the pitter-patter of little pests.

And now I'm doing too much thinking about what I'm doing not enough of, which only compounds the problem. Better get busy! (But not too much.)

 

Whispering into that next tin can

Sometimes books speak to each other in interesting ways. 

In The Library Book, Susan Orlean's fascinating account of the Los Angeles Central Library fire 0f 1986, she muses on the library as repository of memory:

The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten--that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience joy and disappointment and aches and delights and loss, make our little mark on the world, and then we vanish, and the mark is erased, and it is as if we never existed. If you gaze into that bleakness even for a moment, the sum of life becomes null and void, because if nothing lasts, nothing matters. It means that everything we experience unfolds without a pattern, and life is just a wild, random, baffling occurrence, a scattering of notes with no melody. But if something you learn or observe or imagine can be set down and saved and if you can see your life reflected in previous lives, and can imagine it reflected in subsequent ones, you can begin to discover order and harmony. You know that you are a part of a larger story that has shape and purpose--a tangible, familiar past and a constantly refreshed future. We are all whispering in a tin can on a string, but we are heard, so we whisper the message into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is an act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the permanence of memory.

In The Zero, Jess Walter portrays a police officer present when the World Trade Center collapsed, a man who struggles to assemble any permanent memories or coherent narratives of the attack or its aftermath. The novel opens with a scattering of leaves:

They burst into the sky, every bird in creation, angry and agitated, awakened by the same primary thought, erupting in a white feathered cloudburst, anxious and graceful, angling in ever-tightening circles toward the ground, drifting close enough to touch, and then close enough to see that it wasn't a flock of birds at all--it was paper. Burning scraps of paper. All the little birds were paper. Fluttering and circling and growing bigger, falling bits and frantic sheets, some smoking, corners scorched, flaring in the open air until there was nothing left but a fine black edge . . . and then gone, a hole and nothing but the faint memory of smoke. Behind the burning flock came a great wail and a moan as seething black unfurled, the world inside out, birds beating against a roiling sky and in that moment everything that wasn't smoke was paper. And it was beautiful. 

Orlean deals with a burning library, Walter with burning towers, and both with scraps and fragments of charred paper that must be preserved, deciphered, and returned, if possible, to the repository of memory. Both examine mysteries that remain ultimately unresolved, including the mystery of human identity and the relationship between narrative and culture. And even as they commemorate events that destroyed vast amounts of paper (and, in Walter's case, people), they do so by committing more words to paper, whispering once more down that next tin can on a string. For those who care about culture and memory, it's really the least we can do. 

Torn between two places

I want to make an angel-food cake, but the mixer and ingredients are in one house while the recipe and cake pan are in the other.

Thank-you cards are in one house; stamps are in the other. Exercise class is in Jackson; workout clothes are back home--or perfect hiking conditions appear back home, but hiking shoes are in Jackson.

Living in two houses has only become more complicated since I started my sabbatical. I'm spending more time in Jackson and engaging in a wider range of activities, so I need more stuff, but I'm back at my other house two days a week so I need stuff there too, and the stuff I need isn't always in the place where I need it.

I finally moved my big stand mixer to Jackson, but every time I use it, I wish I were back in my home kitchen where work space is more abundant. In Jackson I long for the big picture window where I can watch all the birds at the feeders, but then I get back home and have to deal with filling those feeders and disposing of dead mice and filling the wood-burner and I want to be back in Jackson, where it's easier to clean because the water doesn't turn everything orange. 

At home I can sit by the big window and watch the birds while working on my laptop, but then when I need to find something online, I struggle with a slow and unreliable internet service. In Jackson I enjoy the fast, reliable internet connection but feel cut off from birds and everything that's beautiful about my woods. 

Living in two houses means I'm always aware of the absence of the other, the lack of a place I love. I can't live in two places at once, so I suppose I need to focus on living in the moment, making do with what I have, and ignoring the call of my other place. Angel-food cake can wait, but this minute right here in this particular spot will never come my way again. 

 

A CFP for people who care about comedy

I know a lot of funny teachers, and I know teachers who don't consider themselves funny but know how to use funny texts to help students understand important concepts, and I'm sure there are many more out there whom I haven't met yet. But I want to hear from all of them--or a good number, at least, because it's going to take a bunch of people who care about comedy to make this project happen.

Yes: I'm excited to announce that I'm seeking essay submissions for a new volume on Teaching Comic Texts, part of MLA's Options for Teaching Series. Click here to read the full Call for Proposals and see how to submit, but meanwhile, here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:

When comedy dominates popular culture so thoroughly that it’s difficult to distinguish spoofs from truths, when identities and relationships form and fumble on a foundation of comic memes, and when the powerful and the powerless wield comedy alternately as weapon or shield, it’s time for the academy to take comedy seriously. Teaching Comic Texts, edited by Bev Hogue, will examine how comic texts of many types can be deployed in classrooms, either as a topic of literary or cultural study or as a window into understanding other fields. In addition to exploring historical and theoretical contexts, essays in the volume will provide practical insights for teaching comic texts in a variety of disciplines. As part of the MLA’s Options for Teaching series, the volume will appeal to beginning or experienced teachers in undergraduate and graduate programs in literature and language, rhetoric and composition, culture studies, media studies, communication, philosophy, creative writing, and other disciplines where comic texts might prove useful. 

A field that ranges from Aristophanes to The Onion by way of Shakespeare, Charlie Chaplin, and The Simpsons offers a wide range of areas for inquiry open to a variety of methodologies. Comic texts may illuminate moments in history or the lives of others, offer models for rhetorical methods, challenge students to practice critical thinking skills, examine aspects of the human condition, and more. Students studying comedy might engage with plays, novels, and poetry alongside films, memes, and live stand-up performances, and they need a wide range of tools and activities to equip them to exist in a comedy-heavy media environment. Essays describing specific methods that can be adapted across disciplines are especially welcome, and the volume will conclude with a collection of lesson plans, assignments, and other practical resources.

Now don't you want to be a part of this project? Or maybe you know someone who needs to know about this--please share! I'm eager to see the proposals come pouring in from funny (or  unfunny) people who want to take comedy pedagogy seriously. Just click here to get started. Can't wait to hear from you!

Of vandals and volunteers

For those of us working at the campground, the day after a long weekend or holiday was always the worst. I would step out of a cramped 18-foot travel trailer, ride my bike to the public rest room, and brace myself for chaos. One morning I found the shower curtain in the women's rest room cut into ribbons, as if someone had gone after it with a straight razor. Who gets pleasure out of that kind of destruction?

Living and working in a state park campground for two summers during grad school brought me into contact with some wonderful people who loved the woods and the lake and the fishing and wanted to spend quiet time sleeping in a tent, cooking over a fire, and communing with nature, but then there were also the other people--the ones who burned everything that wasn't chained down, including the picnic tables; who drank too much and started fights, vandalized equipment, or left behind unspeakable messes. 

I have never understood these people, but in the years since we worked in the campground I have found evidence of them everywhere. They're the people who have been trashing national parks during the government shutdown, the ones who chopped down protected Joshua trees and left behind mounds of human waste (read it here). Meanwhile, other individuals and organizations are volunteering to keep some parks clean and accessible (click here), including concerned families, the Yosemite Climbing Association, and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association, one of whose leaders told CNN,

Service to our nation and cleanliness are important parts of Islam....We could not sit idly by as our national parks collected trash. We will lead by example and dispose of this garbage appropriately and invite all Americans to join us in these parks and others across the nation.

Another article (here) describes how private companies are paying to keep bathrooms cleaned and roads groomed in Yellowstone National Park because their businesses depend upon winter tourists. It's possible to look at their actions cynically and say they're just looking after their bottom line, but they reveal an important difference in values between those who work to preserve the parks and those who trash them.

What benefits, after all, do national parks provide? For businesses operating snowmobile tours, the bottom line is financial profit, but what about for the rest of us? If we can perceive how the parks provide intangible benefits to ourselves and future visitors, we will take care of them; if, on the other hand, we see the parks as mere playgrounds where the rules get in the way of our immediate pleasures, then we do what we want without regard for the future. It's the tragedy of the commons all over again.

This concept seems obvious to me, but then again I still don't understand what kind of pleasure anyone gets out of shredding a shower curtain. The person who destroyed it probably extracted all the pleasure (s)he could get out of the campground and then left behind a path of destruction, convinced that cleaning it up was someone else's problem. How can we convince these people that public spaces are not everybody's problem but everybody's resource and responsibility? How can we get them to see beyond immediate pleasure and perceive the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that accrue to a nation that preserves its fragile treasures? 

It's a small thing, a shower curtain--or a water bottle tossed carelessly along the trail, or a mound of human waste left in the path, or a tree cut down to make way for a new road. But when all those small things add up to a big mess, I'm thankful for the people who volunteer to clean it up, one small thing at a time.   

At Savannah National Wildlife Refuse, one of my favorite places.

Comedy, tragedy, and the start of my sabbatical

It's the first day of classes and my colleagues are busy teaching, but I'm in the library doing a little research. Yes: this is the official start of my spring semester sabbatical! Which is a good thing, because I would be totally unprepared to teach classes today since I only got back in the state yesterday.

Snow and gray skies met us as we crossed the mighty Ohio River, and I mourned the sunshine we left behind. It's not so much that I want to live in Florida full-time--I don't--but Ohio is not at its best in the bleak midwinter, when the dominant color is gray and the woods look cold and lifeless.

So I'm enjoying sitting in my favorite library under the sunny yellow light and pursuing the light of learning. I'm excited about my sabbatical projects, including one great opportunity that arose out of the blue. Here's what I'll be working on for the next six months:

• Revise and resubmit the big garbage essay.
• Research post-9/11 literature for two purposes: to expand a conference paper into a publishable article, and to prepare for the capstone class I'll teach on the topic next fall.
• Take a research trip to New York!
• Edit a collection of essays on Teaching Comic Texts, part of the MLA Options for Teaching series. 

That's a lot of work but I'm always happier when I'm busy, and the variety of projects will prevent me from becoming bored. I hadn't planned on doing the MLA collection but it arose at a good time and it fits in well with what I've done before and how could I say no to an opportunity to write and edit essays about comedy? (I'll be posting a link to the Call for Papers very soon--stay tuned!)

So I get to spend a semester pursuing some of my deepest interests--how literature helps us make sense of garbage, trauma, violence, and disaster--and when that starts feeling too heavy, I can switch over to reading and writing about teaching comedy. (Tragedy and comedy have a lot more in common than you might think, but if I switch too quickly between the two, I'm likely to get whiplash.)

Artificial sunshine in the library

All the colors of the sunrise

This morning I kept trying to capture a certain shade of silvery green, a sheen that arose on the smooth surface of the water for a brief moment just before the wave transformed itself into a curling, swirling smash of silvery-white bubbles. 

I failed, of course. I took more than 100 photos but I can't find that hue in any of them. I see a multitude of greens and blues, some soft pale pinks and lavenders, and a sky on fire with orange and yellow, but that silvery-green color washed away, just as my memory of it will fade with time. Even now I feel it slipping back into the vast undifferentiated sea of sensation where the color will lurk, unnoticed and forgotten, awaiting the right moment to surge to the surface again.

The only way to find that transient shade, I think, is to keep going back to the beach, where the sunrise explodes into a riot of shifting colors. Who could possibly paint them all? 

If it's Monday, this must be Cocoa (or vice versa)

We've been on the road (and on the beach, on and off) for a week with another two and a half days to go, and my car shows it: sand on the floormats, random flotsam bouncing around the backseat, miles piling up. Likewise my brain: lots of impressions just don't seem to fit into any coherent narrative. Such as:

• A rainy-day visit to a botanical garden revealed the existence of Road Kill Cactus, Jelly Bean Plant, Mouse Trap Tree, and Dragon Bones. Also moorhens! And a lovely purple blossom called Princess Plant.
• That was the same day we took a drive up to Tarpon Springs, where we looked at sponge-fishing boats and watched a video showing historical methods by which Greek immigrants gathered and sheared sponges. Today the sponge docks exist to sponge and shear tourists. It was a fun and colorful way to spend a windy, gray day, and the Greek food made my taste buds sing. 
• Later we sat on the observation deck at our hotel and ate rich desserts while watching a very impressive storm sweep in across the Gulf of Mexico. The first raindrops fell just as we ate the final bites. Perfect timing!
• At today's lunch we sat on a different rooftop and watched an osprey fly by carrying a freshly caught fish. Here's an idea for a new restaurant chain: fresh seafood delivered by ospreys straight to your table. (Ignore the claw-marks.)
• It is a tremendous luxury to have easy access to so much fresh seafood, one we will miss when we return to Appalachia. You'd better believe I'm taking advantage of every opportunity. Is it excessive to eat seafood four days in a row? 
• I think I laughed for three solid hours yesterday while visiting with some old high school friends. We may be getting older, but we're definitely getting funnier. (Not funnier looking. Present company excepted.)
• I've never spend much time on the Gulf coast, so last week in Clearwater I struggled to adjust to the fact that turning right on the beach took us north; now we're on the Atlantic coast and everything is back where it ought to be--right is south, left is north, and if we get up early enough we can see the sunrise over the water. 

And then we'll have to pack up our sandals and start heading up the highway toward the cold north, where fresh seafood is mythical and road kill is not a cactus. First, though, I've got to get some more sand in my shoes.

Colorful lichens

Jungly hike at Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's house

Intersecting trees

I just like these roots

Princess flower

moorhen!

Road Kill Cactus

Felt Plant

Jelly Bean Plant

   

Just beachy

"So what do you want to do with the rest of the day?"

"Nothing."

"Sounds good to me."

So that's what we did:  sat in folding chairs under a bright yellow umbrella on Clearwater Beach, reading books and watching the waves come in and wandering up and down to search for shells and birds. On an early-morning walk we found shorebirds scavenging chunks of sponge and a snowy egret walking on snow-white sand, and later we ate lunch on the beach and did some more nothing until thick fog rolled in around 4 p.m. That's about as much nothing as I can handle--at least until tomorrow.

Chunk of conch encrusted with other shells.

Beautiful day!

And then the fog rolled in.

Our cute and cozy hotel.

 

Plan 9 meets Wakanda

I don't know whether it was a mistake to watch Black Panther and Plan 9 from Outer Space back-to-back on New Year's Eve, but it was certainly enlightening. Both films feature characters using advanced technology to reanimate the near-dead or recently-dead, but in Plan 9, it's never entirely clear what purpose it serves. I mean, sure, it's spooky to see Vampira wandering around a dark cemetery waving her scimitar-like fingernails in a futile attempt to look ghoulish, but I kept expecting to see the Scooby-Doo crew come whipping around the corner to unmask her--or, more likely, scare her away with one woof.

Only an idiot would send Scooby into Wakanda. One glare from the Black Panther's warrior women and he'd be toast.

I tried but failed to find other similarities. In fact, seeing the films back-to-back only intensified their differences:

Production budget
Black Panther: $200,000,000, every sparkling dime visible onscreen.
Plan 9: $60,000, although it's hard to see where the money went since most of the work seems to have been done by a third-grader equipped with blunt scissors and Elmer's glue.

Memorable settings
Black Panther: Wakanda forever!
Plan 9: (1) Airplane cockpit made from refrigerator boxes; (2) dark cemetery full of flimsy cardboard gravestones; (3) flying saucer that's saucer-shaped and shiny while flying but, on the ground, appears to be a stucco square.

Editing and continuity
Black Panther: Flawless, or else all the flaws are well hidden. That scene where they suddenly burst through the invisible barrier into Wakanda? Smooth and stunning.
Plan 9: Scenes shift with all the subtlety of a toddler running face-first into a glass door. One example: Someone discovers a couple of dead gravediggers in a dark cemetery and calls the cops, who lumber slowly into their police car, have trouble executing a turn, and then race awkwardly toward the cemetery in broad daylight, arriving at a cemetery swathed in darkness. That's not how light works in the real world, folks.

Arms and the man
Black Panther: Vibranium spears! Ring blades! Armored rhinoceroses! Ulysses Klaue's prosthetic arm, which can cut glass or blast cars to smithereens with equal ease!
Plan 9: Um, Vampira's claws? The aliens have some kind of ray gun that brings the recently dead back to life for no clear reason, but the ray gun has a tendency to jam, especially when wielded by a woman. Further, all the police officers on Earth appear to have graduated from the Barney Fife School of Gun Safety and Panic Management. I mean, it's one thing to wave guns toward other officers in a cavalier fashion, but when one detective uses his gun to scratch his own head with his finger on the trigger, you have to wonder whether there's any intelligent life on this planet.

Roles for women 
Black Panther: Scientists, social workers, fierce warriors entrusted with protecting the king--and hey, anyone who can halt a rampaging rhinoceros with a single look gets my respect.
Plan 9: (1) Vampira; (2) one female alien who barely speaks, can't manage her ray gun, and suffers an emotional collapse when things get hairy; (3) one pretty little wifey whose sole purpose is to run screaming around a dark cemetery while wearing a frilly pink negligee.

Costumes
Black Panther: Colorful textiles! Sleek embroidered tunics! Armor stylish enough to wear on the red carpet!
Plan 9: Trenchcoats, seriously? The supreme leader of the space aliens wears an ill-fitting tunic adorned with an image of some sort of medieval weapon. And let me tell you this: there's not enough shiny purple satin in the world to make Dudley Manlove look threatening.

Plot holes
Black Panther: No one survives a fall from so great a height.
Plan 9: The entire existence of Bela Lugosi in this film is inexplicable, but that's only one plot hole in a film that is more hole than plot. Okay, the space aliens have been contacting Earth's leaders for a while but we don't understand their alien language until we develop an instant translator, but then when the bumbling Barney Fifes finally come face-to-face with the aliens, they speak perfect English. (But they still don't make much sense!)

Memorable dialogue
Black Panther: "If you say one more word, I'll feed you to my children!...I'm kidding, we're vegetarians."

Plan 9: "In my land, women are for advancing the race, not for fighting man's battles."

Black Panther: "We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one single tribe."
Plan 9: "Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our Earth?" --"Because of death. Because all of you on Earth are idiots...Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!"

Black Panther: "Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, 'cause they knew death was better than bondage."
Plan 9: "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

And that, my friends, is my final word on the matter. 

A smooth ride into 2019

Something is definitely wrong on this road trip: nothing has gone wrong. On Sunday we made it from Ohio to my brother's house in North Carolina in record time with no traffic jams or delays, even on the notoriously headache-inducing I-40 near Raleigh, and then today we drove south on I-95 through Savannah without a single stoppage. That's right: on the section of interstate that often resembles a parking lot, where we brace ourselves for the inevitable section of stop-and-go traffic with no perceptible cause, we went flying through at (slightly above) highway speed without a pause.

Of course we still have a week's worth of travel ahead of us, so there's plenty of time for everything to go cattywampus. For now, though, we're enjoying a smooth ride from the damp, frigid north into the sunshine, with side trips to see birds and alligators. (And a few family members too.) I just hope the rest of 2019 goes this smoothly. 

Happy New Year to all!

Glossy ibis

Ring-necked duck, a first for me

All smiles!

A whole mess o' coots

Tricolor heron!

Snowy egret

Our bed-and-breakfast in Georgia

How about a boat ride?

At Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge

A flock of wood storks

The view from our balcony