Shh---don't tell them I'm loafing!

I'm frantically trying to sweep the floor in the guest room (why? I don't know) but when I open the door, the doorknob comes off in my hand and flying ants start swarming out and crawling in a thick column up the wall, which stretches 20 or 30 feet overhead. I start tearing down long strips of wallpaper, which my waking brain would tell me is not the textbook way to deter flying ants, but this is all a horrible dream so I reach up, grab a bit of wallpaper, and pull, only to find behind it massive cracks in the plaster and holes in the wall. Every strip of wallpaper I pull down reveals more horrors, and meanwhile, the column of ants is getting thicker and angrier.

Maybe this nightmare is trying to tell me that I need to tackle some of those "deferred maintenance" projects at our house or that I need to clean up the post-Christmas mess at the parsonage in Jackson, but I'm convinced that the dream was spawned by the angry tantrums of the tiny Puritans who live in my brain. Holidays give them plenty of opportunities to make me feel guilty--that I'm overindulging in frivolity, that I really don't need to play another game of Bananagrams, that I'm not working hard enough to produce absolute holiday perfection--but who can attend to the loud indignant sermons of tiny internal Puritans when the house is full of giggling grandchildren?

But since the grandkids have gone, I've been doing what most enrages my tiny Puritans: loafing. Oh, I've accomplished a few things--done a little desultory course prep for next semester (which starts, EEK, in less than two weeks), kept up with correspondence for the anthology I'm editing, swept cookie crumbs and sprinkles off the floor, cooked a disappointing chunk of salmon--but I've also spent time just sitting around with my nose in a book totally unrelated to any academic project. 

I got some good books for Christmas (and my birthday), and I've been recreationally reading Amit Majmudar's poetry collection Dothead (surprising, moving, marvelous), Rachel Denhollander's memoir What is a Girl Worth? (suspenseful even though I know how it ends), and Nathan W. Pyle's cartoon collection Strange Planet (nerdy, insightful, quietly but cumulatively funny). I even got caught up on my New Yorker magazines, but the tiny Puritans don't mind them so much because the articles can be considered educational.

My tiny Puritans want me always working but they're never satisfied with the results. Sure, I swept the floor, but did I dust the baseboards? Clean behind the oven? Wash the windows? (No, never, and not recently.) I can spend an entire morning updating a syllabus, but the tiny Puritans will keep nagging me to find a way to keep both Hemingway and James Baldwin instead of sacrificing one of them. And correspondence? Tiny Puritans want me to go back and proofread that e-mail message yet again even if it's only seven words long.

They're not happy with my work but they're even less happy when I take a break, but the advantage of loafing is this: there's really no one way to do it right, so the tiny Puritans can't complain that I'm doing it wrong. Tomorrow we're leaving on a quick trip to North Carolina to see family so today I need to pack, which I can't do until the laundry is done because everything I need is in there. So right now I intend to put up my feet and stick my face in a frivolous but fascinating book. I defy my tiny Puritans! (But I'll see them in my dreams.)  
 

Fun with frosting and sprinkles

Last night I witnessed a wonder: after my 20-month-old granddaughter strutted around shaking maracas, jingling bells, and banging on the xylophone, she proclaimed that she was "All done," picked up all the instruments, put them back in the basket, and then carried the basket over to the shelf--without being asked. 

This is a girl after my own heart: she knows how to have fun, but she also delights in picking up, packing up, closing doors and being done with whatever she's been doing. She looks more like me than the other grandkids do and now she acts more like me too. It's good to know that some of my genes will carry on when I'm gone.

Today we've had quite a mess to clean up and we're not done yet. The two older grandkids rolled out cookie dough, and even though the middle one insisted that he could do it all by himself, they eventually resorted to teamwork to get it done. Later when the cookies cooled they added frosting and lots of sprinkles to make silver bells, coconut snowmen, green sparkly Christmas trees, and even some gingerbread men that look like maimed rejects from the Blue Man Group. We don't really need any more cookies but the process makes us happy, so why not?

Of course it also makes a mess. Too bad the kid who likes to clean up is taking a nap right now or I'd put her to work.

  

Ms. Maraca loves to make noise.

"I can do it myself!"

Teamwork helps.

The taste-test is very important for quality control.

Of wreaths and peace

When I retire I want to be a wreath-fluffer, like the two older ladies who helped decorate our church for the holidays by sitting in the pews fluffing up the foliage of artificial wreaths that had been flattened during storage since last Christmas. A flurry of activity swirled around them as church members young and old carried ladders, unpacked ceramic nativity scene figures, hung garland and lights, and decorated trees, but in the still center of all the activity the wreath-fluffers sat chatting quietly as they unbent twisted limbs and made the wreaths look almost natural.

But of course I'd be a lousy wreath-fluffer. Just getting close to any artificial foliage that's been in storage makes my nose run, my eyes water, and my head explode with sneezes, and nobody wants snot all over their festive wreaths. Putting up our artificial Christmas tree each year guarantees a day of nasal misery; there's no good way to keep dust off an artificial tree, and all that moving and shaking releases the dust into the air where it can irritate my nasal passages and make me sneeze--until the dust settles.

Real trees are worse, though. I much prefer a real Christmas tree, but I just can't cohabit with them because they set off an allergy attack that lasts throughout the whole season, sometimes progressing to an upper respiratory infection. Give me 24 hours of dust-induced sneezing rather than three weeks of congestion, coughing, and eventual fever.

And so we stick with artificial foliage, which needs to be fluffed no matter how carefully it's been stored. I relish the image of the old ladies fluffing wreaths and chatting softly while the holiday bustle swirls around them; I look for that still, quiet center of peace in the middle of holiday chaos, and I just hope I don't have to wait until retirement to find it. 

Gifts that cut the mustard

I was reading a ridiculous alphabet book called P is for Pterodactyl to my grandkids yesterday and I kept feeling grateful for how well my daughter knows me.

She gave me the book for my birthday, a perfect treat for a word-lover. The letter P is illustrated by a pterodactl named Ptolemy who suffers from psoriasis, while K stands for Knight and B for Bdellium (which I did not know how to pronounce until I checked the glossary). If you want to have a long, delightful conversation with a child trying to understand the concept of silent letters, this is the book for you!

It's certainly the book for me--in fact, I almost bought this book for the grandkids the first time it popped up in my Facebook feed. Now I can read it to them every time they visit, which will give me even more opportunities to answer questions like "What's psoriasis?" and offer gratuitous lessons in Old English pronunciation every time we encounter "knight."

When it comes to gifts, my daughter knows what I like. I'd mentioned that I need some writing paper--for, like, writing actual physical letters to put in the mail with stamps (yes, some of us still like to communicate the old-fashioned way)--and all I said was I'd prefer something pretty but not too frilly or girly, and do you know what she gave me? Sturdy little note cards hand-decorated with birds, butterflies, and flowers. She even left a few uncolored so I can color them myself. Just lovely. Now I'm eager for all the gift-giving to be done so I can start writing thank-you notes on my new note cards.

Everyone should have someone in their lives who know how to pick the perfect gift. This kind of talent comes at a cost, though: the perfect gift-picker is unlikely to receive equal perfection from others. I'm an intrepid but frustrated gift-seeker right now; a week from Christmas, I'm still struggling to find something for a few family members, all men and none terribly picky. I could literally give them each a jar of mustard and they'd be content, but I would feel as if I've failed in some skill essential to  family cohesion. So today I'll go out and join the throngs at the mall, hoping to stumble upon something that screams out "Pick Me!" If not, I know where to find the mustard.

Just a few of the decorated note cards my daughter made.

 

Good, bad, ugly: semester in review

Piles of papers wait to be graded but I'm busy making plans to head off problems the next time I teach these classes. Note to self: Just because the Norton anthology changed its Hemingway selection, that doesn't mean I'm required to assign it, and nobody's going to care if I cross "Hills Like White Elephants" off the syllabus. Also, nobody does any meaningful revision after Thanksgiving, so make the research paper due earlier in the semester. Also, do more in-class writing in all classes, even if it means my feeble eyes will have to struggle through increasingly illegible handwriting. And find a way to fight that cheating problem.

What cheating problem? It's a new (to me) method of plagiarism for which I cannot imagine a solution: instead of reading the text, the student watches a bunch of YouTube videos about the text, cribs ideas from the videos, and inserts them into his paper, often verbatim, without citation. I'm not aware of any good way to detect this kind of plagiarism, and the only reason I caught it this semester is that a transcript of one of the videos exists online. When challenged, the student admitted that this is his "usual method" of writing papers, which suggests that I'd been duped all semester long up to that point, and probably his others profs have been duped as well. Short of watching every available YouTube video dealing with the texts in question, how am I supposed to prevent that kind of plagiarism?

But while I'm tearing out my hair over what went wrong this semester, maybe I should take a look at what went right. Adding Natasha Trethewey's "Native Guard" to the American Lit syllabus: brilliant--even if some students found it daunting, it opened up a new world for the rest of us. Using my special named-chair budget to treat my students to cultural experiences, field trips, and food: outstanding--and much more fun than attending another academic conference. Trusting my Honors students to lead class discussions in directions I hadn't expected--scary but illuminating and definitely worth the effort.

What I really need this morning is a valid reason to postpone grading this pile of research papers. Hey, maybe I could watch some YouTube videos on grading papers! If my student can get away with it, why can't I?

 

What the wind blew in

A typical finals week tableau: a room full of students tap-tapping on laptop keyboards while I sit up front grading another class's papers. Today it's my Honors students, a group I've come to love because of their obvious enthusiasm for learning and the way they challenge each other to improve while supporting each other with encouragement and granola bars. Today that support takes the form of a chorus of "God bless you!" every time someone sneezes, which happens more often than you might expect. Coded sneezes conveying vital information? Unlikely.

I blame the sneezing on the usual end-of-semester exhaustion along with weather that's stuck on cold, wet, and windy. At some point last night the wind blew open my front door, which must have disturbed my sleep because I had to get up to investigate and then couldn't get back to sleep for quite some time, so now my brain feels befogged. I encounter a sentence that I doesn't seem right and I can't immediately determine whether the problem is in the paper or in my head. I mean, who's to say literate can't be used as a verb? (The dictionary, that's who.)

It would be a shame if I were to fall asleep in front of the class while my students are working so hard, so I've got to keep my fingers flying across the keyboard even if I'm incapable of forming coherent thoughts. I keep reminding myself how terrific my classes have been this semester and how much I respect and appreciate this group of students, but the ill wind that blew in last night sapped my energy so I have trouble focusing on the positive. Would anybody care if I decided to retire, effective immediately? Sure, I'd be broke within a week, but at least I wouldn't have to try to figure out what literate is doing masquerading as a verb.

'Twas the week before finals

(With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore.)

'Tis the week before finals and all through the place
many fingers are hitting the keys at a pace
most outrageous. Students write fancy stuff:
final projects and papers (occasional fluff)
that they'll tuck into dropboxes, folders, and files
until all is complete--but a few, oozing guile,
will craft their excuses and beg for the gift
of a few extra days or some work that will lift
their gpa high as the rooftops so Dad
and Mom won't regret the tuition. Egad!
Students finish one paper and start on the next,
gulp an energy drink, crack open a text,
study flash-cards and notes and proceed, in a panic,
to Google the terms that elude them, a frantic
excursion through Quizlet, a quick romp through Shmoop.
Careering through campus to meet with a group
of classmates whose brains are as frazzled as theirs,
they study together 'til everyone shares
the same misconceptions, the same muddled facts,
all scribbled and scrambled. No time to relax!
Time to dot all the i's and cross t's to a T
and then hit submit--but wait, what can this be?
The writing is done but they can't raise a cheer
because what to their wondering eyes should appear
but a glitch in the system! The dropbox won't work!
The deadline is looming! They turn with a jerk,
click again on the keyboard and hope that their file
has not disappeared, resubmit with a smile--
at last it's complete! But there's no time for fun:
more papers and projects still need to be done! 
Students busy as elves whip their brains into flight:
So many assignments! They'll be working all night!
On papers! On projects! On essay exams!
They're hoping to write themselves out of a jam,
then show up for exams with their nerves all a-jitter;
through the multiple choices they'll make their pens flitter
as caffeine goes coursing through sleep-deprived veins
while visions of A-pluses dance in their brains.
And their professors cheer for the progress they've made:
Happy finals to all, and to all a good grade!

 

Going in circles, from Vessel to LaGuardia

At midnight, the food court at LaGuardia airport is surprisingly (and annoyingly) noisy. I'd really like to curl up somewhere and sleep, but these hard cafe chairs don't encourage comfort, and even if they did, the noise would put the kibosh on and slumber. Aside from frequent public announcements warning of the dangers of leaving baggage unattended or parking empty cars outside the terminal, we're subjected to urgent chatter in a mixture of languages plus an intermittent squeal produced by a nearby escalator. My husband wadded his jacket into a sort of pillow and put his head down on the table in front of him, but I don't know whether he's actually asleep or just pretending. Either way, a crick in the neck is inevitable.

We would both be asleep in our own beds if our flight had left on schedule, but it was delayed one then two then three hours and then we finally boarded in cold, wet, windy fog and then taxied out on the tarmac to get the plane de-iced, where we sat for nearly an hour with poor ventilation. The heat and fumes made me woozy, but that wasn't the worst of our problems: de-icing fluid leaked inside the plane, and while the Powers That Be were deciding how to deal with that problem, the pilot reached his maximum quota of hours for the day and another pilot was not available. So they took us back to the terminal, gave us a bag of free pretzels and a new flight for tomorrow morning, and bid us farewell with a wimpy "Sorry!"

You'll notice that no lodging was included in the deal, nor any food vouchers, which didn't really matter since all the restaurants were closed by that time. Sorry doesn't quite cut it at this point, and I suspect that Sorry will feel even less adequate when we reach the wee hours of the morning. 

It's funny: we started the day walking in circles, and now we're being kept awake by an escalator that keeps circling and squealing and reminding us that we're going nowhere. This morning we walked over to Hudson Yards, where, despite more cold, rain, sleet, snow, wind, and fog, we walked to the top of the Vessel, Thomas Heatherwick's walkable outdoor sculpture. I suppose the views are spectacular when the city isn't socked in with fog, but even under such adverse conditions, it was a fun and fascinating installation. Each flight of steps or turn produces new angles and views; we were alternately walking inside a beehive, a giant erector set, or an Escher print.

We made it out of that experience feeling refreshed and invigorated, but our circular journey in the aiport resulted in less pleasant feelings. I know I'll be a wreck in the morning if I don't sleep, but I also have a pile of freshman drafts I need to read and if I can't sleep, I may as well make myself useful. And I really ought to get back to campus tomorrow, but let's see if our flight actually takes off tomorrow morning. If not, I'm going looking for something more significant than a mere Sorry. I just wish the airline could deliver a good night's sleep.

 

A cat may look on an author

Since I've been in New York I've seen some wonders, and I'm not just talking about the well-dressed woman carrying a Christmas tree down Fifth Avenue. I ran through a year's quota of "oohs" and "aahs" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday, but what most impressed me was a cat in a canoe.

In the American wing the crowds flock to see Emanuel Leutze's massive Washington Crossing the Delaware, but I was more drawn to a smaller painting: George Caleb Bingham's Fur Traders on the Missouri. I was first drawn to the light but I was held there by the stillness of the scene, the lively expressions on the figures' faces, and the cat. I read somewhere that scans of the painting suggest that Bingham had originally sketched a bear in the bow of the boat, but I think I prefer the cat, a black hole of ineffable stillness standing alone even when allowing itself to be accompanied.

I thoroughly wore out my legs with walking yesterday but still managed to see only a small fraction of the museum. I especially enjoyed a room full of portraits of women, including several by Mary Cassatt, and I sat and pondered a room full of landscapes by artists whose work I employ in my Concepts of Nature class: Asher Durand, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Cole. I enjoyed seeing some John Singer Sargent portraits, but none of them grabbed me as powerfully as a few of his charcoal portraits I'd seen at the Morgan on Friday. William Butler Yeats and Henry James hung side-by-side, Yeats holding himself aloof while James's eyes pierced the viewer's psyche. These are the eyes that peered deep into the heart of Isabel Archer and then put what he saw there on the page.

I'd like to put that portrait of Henry James face-to-face with Bingham's cat, although I don't know how James would manage the canoe. Both figures compel viewers' attention, looking straight into our souls while holding their own in reserve. Of all the wonders I've seen in the city, these are among the few that have held my gaze--and looked back.