Worms gotta squirm, kites gotta fly

When my daughter was very small she had a system for naming animals: when she rode a pony at a fair, she called it "Horse of Beauty"; when she saw a squirrel running up a tree, she called it "Squirrel of Beauty"; when she dug up a worm from the dirt, she called it "Worm of Beauty." Her two-year-old son, however, is not familiar with this naming convention, so when he found a worm in the dirt yesterday, he kept commenting on how squirmy it was so I assumed he'd name it Squirmy, but no: he named it Goose. Because it was silly. 

Sure signs of spring: we've been blowing bubbles and transplanting bulbs and getting ready for the youngest grandkid's first birthday party, and today, between a gray damp morning and a rainy evening, we found a perfect moment to fly the big red octopus kite. Gusty breezes blew it around in the sky and sometimes sent it dashing to the ground, while the kids ran and jumped and tried to catch it. The youngest was a little scared when the kite came too close, but a red-tailed hawk overhead did not seem at all alarmed.

Watching the kite and the bird and all that rambunctious energy soothed my soul and opened a door for joy. Worms gotta squirm and kites gotta fly and when the time is right, you can't stop spring from moving right in.

 

Discovering snowdrops

Squirmy, wormy, goose.

Muddling through the dullness

A whole week since I've posted! I must have been doing something pretty amazing to distract me from my favorite form of recreational writing, but I'd be hard pressed to explain what. I've been walking a little, writing a lot, complaining about the rainy gray weather. Walked in the cemetery and saw eastern bluebirds. Went to Columbus to see the musical Rent. Read Kate Atkinson's Transcription, a novel I'll now never be able to read again without knowing what's waiting at the end (but it's well worth reading so go ahead). I guess that's one of the hazards of being on sabbatical: most of my days are too dull to interest anyone other than myself.

But even while muddling through the dull middle of a sabbatical project I can find a few bright spots. I spent most of last week in Jackson, for instance, but when I came home Sunday afternoon I was delighted to find my daffodils and crocuses blooming and, even more surprisingly, two indoor plants producing spectacular blossoms: upstairs, a potted geranium that has kept blooming on and off all winter, and downstairs, a hibiscus plant left behind by a retired colleague who couldn't take it with her when she moved to Minnesota. It's kind of unusual to see hibiscus blossoms in the basement in the early spring chill, so that spot of color has been cheering me immensely.

Outside below the bird-feeders I see a towhee, filling the black-baked bird gap left behind by the absence of juncos. The resident woodsman left a pile of firewood on the porch which has served as an attractive playground for chipmunks--but I've seen and heard no mice or signs of mice in the house, hurrah. A female cardinal keeps trying to pick a fight with the bird she sees reflected in the picture window. The buckeyes and rhododendrons are budding out and the grass is greening up, and before you know it I'll be needing to get out the mower.

But first I'll need to sit down and write some more. Who wants to watch me write? Moments of drama are few and fairly subtle; today, for instance, I restored the bulk of a paragraph that I'd deleted in full last week. It just doesn't get any more exciting than this, folks. I can go on like this all day.

 

The view from sabbatical

On a quick visit to campus yesterday I encountered a couple of English majors who ran up and gave me a big ol' hug. "We miss you!" they said, but I reminded them that they're in very good hands in my absence. It was good to chat with them because the main thing I miss during my sabbatical is spending time with students.

Granted, I don't miss all the grading, or the lame excuses or late-night e-mails asking questions that can easily be answered by reference to the syllabus--especially the e-mails that start off "Hey!" and eschew punctuation. Next week students will be registering for fall classes, and I'm eternally grateful for the colleague who is handling my two remaining advisees, because advising season always makes me a little bit crazy. 

But I miss the students' energy, their occasionally brilliant responses to literature, their willingness to pour themselves onto the page for writing assignments. I miss hearing them discuss their reading and reach out to help each other when they struggle to understand. I miss the ones who stop by my office for no reason just to chat, and I even miss the high-maintenance ones who stop by for big reasons that require tissues and listening.

It's only one semester so I won't have to miss them for long, but I'm already eager to share with them some plans for next fall's classes. While they're keeping their eyes focused on the task right in front of them so they can get through this semester, I'm standing back and seeing the big picture, the exciting plans awaiting beyond spring and summer. And that's what I love about a sabbatical: released from the daily grind, I can take a longer view and make big changes, or small changes that will have a big impact over time. 

Just wait and see, I want to tell them. You have no idea what delights are waiting just around the corner.

Wandering Merwin's forest of poems

I woke to the news that W.S. Merwin was dead and I sat right down and cried. Never knew the man, of course, except through the documentary Even Though the Whole World is Burning. And his poetry. Poetry does not provide direct access to the poet, but I have often felt that Merwin's poetry knows me and knows me well.

I don't know which of his poems I love best, but this morning I reached for the ones that speak to deep parts of my soul. The documentary Even Though the Whole World is Burning takes its title from the last line of "Rain Light," a poem I have taught to bright fresh college students even though it assumes some familiarity with loss, opening with the mother comforting her son over her impending absence. Loss is evoked also in "For the Anniversary of My Death," in which the poet imagines a time when, he writes, "I will no longer / Find myself in life as in a strange garment / Surprised at the earth." Today many will return to that poem and hail its prescience--and in fact the Merwin Conservancy has posted the poem on its home page alongside the announcement of his death.

This morning I've been thinking about the Merwin Conservancy, the group formed to protect Merwin's legacy--not just his poems but the nature preserve that grew out of his love for a spot of ruined land on Maui, the former pineapple plantation he transformed into a verdant refuge for tropical trees, over 700 species, many rare or endangered, all of which he planted and watered by hand. Even Though the Whole World is Burning suggests that Merwin saw tending to trees and writing poems as two halves of the same work, so it's no surprise that he left behind so many trees in his poems. "Place" begins thus: "On the last day of the world / I would want to plant a tree," not for its fruit but so that it can stand and grow and enrich the natural world and live on long after the gardener is gone.

Also running through Merwin's forest of poetry is a memorable fox, the vixen that gave the title to one of his finest poems. The vixen is addressed as 

Comet of stillness princess of what is over
        high note held without trembling without voice without sound
aura of complete darkness keeper of the kept secrets
        of the destroyed stories the escaped dreams the sentences
never caught with words warden of where the river went...

And the lines lope on in a mesmerizing rhythm that echoes the vixen's fluid movement until vixen and poem dissolve into "the silence after the animals."

I tried once to memorize "The Vixen" and enjoyed rolling those long, loose lines around in my mouth, but something interrupted, no doubt some mundane duty "more important than poetry," and I lost track, lost focus, lost the vixen in the woods. But I did succeed in memorizing another Merwin poem, "Thanks," which begins with a command to "Listen." But what will we hear? In this case, people beset by the demands of daily life, in despair over violence and injustice and death, who nevertheless feel the need to express gratitude:

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

This morning when I heard news of the dead (even though I didn't know him) I wanted to say thank you. So here I sit, tears in my eyes, thinking about W.S. Merwin and wanting to plant a tree and recite a poem and chase a vixen but I can't find the words, but fortunately he's provided them:

with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

 

Heeding the call of the woods

Sudden sunshine and unseasonable warmth drove me into the woods this week, first at Luke Chute yesterday and then at Lake Katharine today. I've avoided venturing into the woods for fear that our very wet winter would leave trails muddy and dangerous, but this week there was no denying the call of the wild.

At Luke Chute the pollinator habitat appears at first to be bleak and barren, but look closely and you'll see tiny spots of color close to the ground, from bluets and mosses and colorful lichens. In the woods a hairy woodpecker hopped along a fallen tree while another moss-covered log sprouted bright red hairy stalks that shimmied in the breeze. A few stands of feathery Dutchman's breeches offered the promise of blossoms in the coming weeks.

Hiking Lake Katharine was a more demanding experience, giving my new hiking shoes a good workout. In a few spots the path was seriously muddy and showed clear signs of our wet, windy winter: downed trees and limbs tangled in the woods and lowlands were coated with mud and debris. The stillness was intense, punctuated occasionally by the calls of spring peepers and pileated woodpeckers and, once, a pair of ducks exploding into flight.

I wasn't in the woods more than 30 seconds before I saw my first eastern towhee of the season, and later I startled a pair of hawks that took off flying right overhead. I remembered my water bottle but left behind my hat and walking stick, both of which I really needed, but I did pretty well for the first real hike of the season. I have no doubt that spring will bring more wet, chilly weather, but when a day like today comes along, it would be a shame to ignore the call of the woods.

Dutchman's breeches! No blossoms yet.

At Lake Katharine: Gateway to gorgeousness

Does this look like a snake's head to you?

Yep, that's mud. We're down in the  floodplain.

Club moss! So cute.

Wind has done its work--and so have chainsaws.

 

Wish granted, without fanfare

I was a little surprised to come home yesterday and discover that, in my absence, absolutely nothing horrible had happened. I didn't encounter any falling trees, failing appliances, or marauding mice. That's right: we've gone a whole blissful week without a single household disaster more serious than a broken coffee mug.

I did, however, receive the bill for last week's massive plumbing problem involving installation of a new water heater, which I calmly paid even though it was the kind of bill that not so long ago would have sent me into panic mode. That's right: I encountered a big ugly bill without a qualm. How can this be?

For so long--pretty much my entire life, if I'm honest--I've wished that someday I would reach the point where I wouldn't have to worry about money, but somehow I got there without even noticing. Feeling broke has been such a long-standing habit that it's hard to convince myself to let it go and live like a normal person.

It's awkward to talk about money, whether I have it or not. And I'm not claiming that I have money to burn or that I intend to give up my frugal habits, but I'm learning to enjoy how it feels to have a bit of a cushion in the bank account, to pay off some nasty old debts, to increase my annual contribution to my pension fund, and to be able to say yes to so many options that formerly would have been met with a resounding no. I bought new hiking shoes even though my old ones had not fallen totally to pieces! Donated more than the usual amount of money to a cause I care about! And paid a big ugly plumbing bill without tears! All of this would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

I sometimes wish I could go back in time and tuck a few twenties into my past self's pocket. That time our car broke down while we were camping in North Carolina and had no cash or credit cards to cover the repair cost? I'd love to go back and relieve some of that anxiety. Or I'd go back to the little girl wearing her cousin's hand-me-downs and buy her some pants that fit, or to the young mom who found herself constantly saying no to her children's demands and give her the power to finally say yes. 

But since that's not possible, I'm looking for ways to pay it forward--and not just by paying my plumbing bill promptly. I think of all the people who have helped us through rough times in the past, and I want to honor their contributions by doing some good in the world. What are some small but meaningful ways to make the world a better place? What's your most rewarding experience of paying it forward? If someone handed you $100 and told you to improve the lot of some struggling person(s), where would you put it? Tell me your stories! I can't think of a better way to celebrate finally figuring out that I don't have to live as if I'm perpetually broke.

Marie Curie & me

Would Marie Curie have known the word "loogie"?

Probably not. Merriam-Webster defines "loogie" as "a mass of saliva and phlegm hawked up from the throat" and first locates the word in print in a baseball article from 1967. Since Marie Curie was neither a baseball fan nor alive in 1967, the person who played the word "loogie" in a Words with Friends game this afternoon was probably not really Marie Curie.

Of course I knew from the first that I was playing against a bot, and not just because of her unusual word choice. Marie is just one of ten Women of History bots available for individual play this week, and I knew something was screwy about this challenge from the first because of the tag phrase that came up when I clicked Play: "I was the first woman, so far, to win two Noble Prizes. Think you got what it takes?"

I have a few problems with this statement.

1. "Noble Prizes"? Granted, "Nobel" is a proper noun and is therefore not playable in Words with Friends, but surely someone who works for that fine organization should know that the prizes are named for Alfred Nobel, not anybody Noble.

2. This Marie Curie bot claims to have been "the first woman, so far, to win two Noble Prizes," but what can "so far" possibly mean in this context? You think some other woman is going to suddenly waltz up and become the first woman to win two Nobel (not Noble) Prizes? Only if she invents a time machine!

3. "Think you got what it takes" is pretty informal English, not what you'd expect from a highly educated scientist whose writing tends toward the formal academic end of the spectrum.

For the record, I have indeed got what it takes--I creamed Marie Curie, despite her clever placement of "loogie" on a triple-word score. She's got pretty good aim for a dead person.

But sadly, the Lorax doesn't go to those meetings

Once upon a time I used to make my living explaining the workings of local government to readers of a small-town newspaper, but apparently I've lost my knack. Lately I keep trying to explain to people why I'm so fired up about a recent (in)action by our county commissioners, but the whole situation defies comprehension. So I went to a public forum to gather further information about the topic, and while it felt good to see a room full of passionate people willing to work for positive change, I left the forum fearing that the situation is hopeless, because how do you get the average county commissioner to care about bees?

It's not just bees, of course; it's butterflies and birds and native plant species and green space and hiking trails and cliffs and caves and who knows what other natural features might be made available for study and recreation at a 262-acre piece of property that the Friends of the Lower Muskingum River would like to purchase in a rural area of Washington County, Ohio. The property has been on the market for several years with no potential buyers in sight, and it is already protected by a conservation easement so it can't be developed. It would be an ideal spot to transform into a conservation area and park, with a pollinator habitat and stream access and ponds and cliffs and trails.

Better yet, the state of Ohio has set aside money to assist with just this sort of purchase. The Clean Ohio Fund provides grants all over the state to preserve green spaces, but much of the money set aside for our region has gone undistributed because of a dearth of applications. If the Friends of the Lower Muskingum River successfully applied for a grant, these state dollars already set aside for conservation purposes would fund 75 percent of the cost of the property, and we'd be well on our way to preserving another valuable green space that would attract tourists, hikers, and families as well as birds, bees, and butterflies.

But (and you knew there was a "but") the application process requires the Friends of the Lower Muskingum to get a letter of support from the county commissioners. The commissioners would not have to commit money or time or anything tangible toward the project; all they would have to do is write a letter saying, essentially, "Go ahead and give some money to the Friends of the Lower Muskingum to buy this property--just don't ask us for anything else."

But they won't do it. Refused outright. When challenged, dug in and doubled down, for reasons that seem ridiculous: They think the property is overpriced. (But the grant process requires a full appraisal, which should resolve that issue.) They don't want to lose property tax revenue. (Around $2000 per year, which is nothing compared to the potential revenue streams produced by green tourism.) They want tax dollars to be spent for development, not conservation. (But this particular property cannot be developed, and the Clean Ohio funds have already been set aside for no other purpose but conservation.) And, in perhaps the most inane comment I've ever heard from a local government official, they think we already have enough green spaces--and besides, we can put pollinator habitats anywhere! (But we don't, and they won't.)

At the public forum I heard all kinds of interesting statistics about how green spaces improve property values, bring in tourist dollars, and create jobs, and I heard lots of great ideas for trying to persuade the county commissioners to support the grant, but I also heard any number of intelligent people repeating the same sad refrain: "They don't care"--about green spaces, conservation, the Green Ohio Fund, or bees, birds, and butterflies. 

Despite all the positive energy in the room, the whole situation feels increasingly hopeless. I signed the petition (find the link here) and hoped that my signature would make a difference alongside all the others, but I fear that it's a futile effort. 

Last week I was joking around with my grandson, who loves to play with rhyming words: "I am the Lorax," I told him, "I speak for the FLEAS." And he laughed and laughed, so I tried again: "I am the Lorax, I speak for the KNEES. I am the Lorax, I speak for the BEES. I am the Lorax, I speak for the TREES." My grandson thought that was pretty darned funny, but he's still open-minded enough to listen to the Lorax. The county commissioners, on the other hand, prefer to put their hands over their ears and listen to no one but themselves.

 

Round of applause, then rust in peace

I won't complain about our sudden urgent need to get a new water heater; after all, the old water heater lived here long before we moved in, and we've been here for 15 years now. The new water heater will be bigger, better, more efficient than the old one, and it presumably won't leak all over the furnace room, which is a plus. But in these days of planned obsolescence, how often do we get to celebrate the long lives of our appliances?

So I'd like to offer my long-suffering water heater a round of applause for serving faithfully without fanfare for so many years, providing hot water for untold numbers of showers, laundry loads, and dirty dishes. You've served me well, water heater! No go rust in peace.

And while we're at it, let's give a shout-out to the water heater's near neighbor, our ancient deep-freeze, which we bought (used) 35 years ago. Way to keep it cool, deep-freeze! You may be scratched, dented, and dull on the outside, but inside you've kept our meats and garden produce frozen solid without a complaint for more than three decades. Keep on freezing!

(Don't look now--the freezer's blushing. But the water heater has already left the building.)

Sabbatical update: procedures, puzzles, and (peculiar) people

This morning a colleague told me, "You look like you're enjoying your sabbatical," and I replied, "Oh I am! This morning I spent three whole hours updating a spreadsheet!"

Okay, so not every moment of a sabbatical can be suffused with pure joy, but on the other hand, it's a pretty awesome spreadsheet--tracking information about submissions to the collection I'm editing on teaching comedy. In fact this is a pretty awesome project, appealing to my love of procedures, puzzles, and people, some of them delightfully peculiar.

Any endeavor that involves gathering submissions from scholars all over the world is going to require clear procedures for collecting and organizing submissions and communicating with authors. Fortunately, MLA provides helpful guidelines for bringing together edited collections, but I've had to impose some discipline on my inbox (to make sure submissions don't get buried) and my filing system (to make sure I don't lose track of essential information). As boring as it might sound, constructing a simple spreadsheet to track submissions was an important part of the process. And what a great spreadsheet! Seeing all those names and titles sorted on my spreadsheet keeps the chaos under control and gives me a delicious foretaste of the final product.

But before I get there, I'll have to try fitting all those puzzle pieces together in different ways to find what works best, creating a coherent and orderly progression through concepts while juxtaposing essays in productive ways. Some submissions want to cozy up side-by-side to reinforce similar concepts or methods, while others create friction that will spark further discussion across a wide spectrum of readers and scholars.

And what a fine group they are! Already I've (virtually) met scholars from many disciplines, hailing from all over the country and other parts of the world, proposing clever ideas that I want to adopt in my own teaching. I wish I could tell you about all the cool people with whom I'm corresponding, but I don't want to violate anybody's privacy. But let me tell you this: comedy people can be a lot of fun, even when they're discussing serious issues. Right now they're all just data points on a spreadsheet, but after I get all the puzzle pieces put together, this collection is going to rock.