Wild dreams, wildlife

In my dream I'm watching a mother bear and her cub cavort near our creek and I'm desperately trying to get a good photo but that darned Gwyneth Paltrow keeps getting in the way with her immense pink ballgown, but I don't want to yell at her because I'm afraid I'll scare away the bears.

It's annoying to be rudely awakened at 3:30 a.m. for any reason, but to be awakened by anger and frustration over a dream as stupid as that one is beyond belief. But I was getting ready to take a road trip back to Jackson yesterday so naturally my irrational travel phobias made me jittery and prone to nightmares, so I finally gave up trying to get back to sleep after the bear encounter. 

Despite the nocturnal disturbances, I managed the drive without a hitch and now here I am in Jackson waiting for the weather to clear so we can get the canoe out this weekend. I headed out to Lake Katharine very early this morning to beat the rain because I wanted to see whether the umbrella magnolias were blooming. They're not, but I love the way the light filters down through those magnificent massive leaves. Best of all, I heard cerulean warblers singing in two different spots, too far away for photos but the song alone is enough to make the hike worthwhile.

I made a shorter road trip Tuesday morning to drive the country roads around the perimeter of The Wilds and look at birds. I've done it many times before: drive slowly with the windows open and stop to investigate when I hear a grasshopper sparrow or Henslow's sparrow or other interesting bird. This time, though, I got followed closely by a truck carrying the logo of The Wilds and got pulled over by a deputy sheriff who wanted to know what I was up to. "Watching birds," I said--"the grasshopper sparrows are out." He immediately started telling me about his mom's birdfeeders. When law enforcement views you as a harmless old biddy, you can get away with anything, even driving too slowly on a country road with no other cars in sight. If I'd been a black man carrying binoculars, I'd be toast--and not just in my nightmares.

I'll have to head back to my house Sunday or Monday--to keep up with the mowing and tackle some home maintenance projects--but I hope I can make the return trip without nightmares. If you see Gwyneth Paltrow, please ask her to stay away from my creek, or, if she must visit, wear something that won't block my view. 

Orchard oriole

Oriole nest, in a tree near our driveway

Grasshopper sparrow

Tree swallow

Umbrella magnolias

 

Mowing toward a moment

The best part of mowing isn't the whole-body workout I get from pushing the mower up and around my hilly and curvy and highly irregular lawn,  or the joy of making neat geometric shapes on that lawn and watching those shapes get smaller and smaller as I push that big mower around and around, and it isn't even the feeling of satisfaction that comes from taming my overgrown jungle. No, the best part of mowing comes when I'm finally done for the day and I turn off the mower and pull out the earplugs and hear again the sounds of the wild world, the birds singing and bees buzzing and breeze whispering through the trees. I sit on the porch swigging cold water to replenish what I've sweated out from pushing that mower around and around my yard, and I listen to a sound high on my list of favorite sounds: the absence of mowing.

Widening our bubble

Widening our bubble means our house bubbles with laughter as the grandkids find new ways to make fun, chasing giant bubbles in the yard or tossing rocks into the creek while birds babble nearby. Worries bubble up--Is it safe to combine households when we've all been sequestered for eight weeks?--but we bat them down again, embracing instead the joy bubbling up all over our house.

It ain't art, but--

Gravel isn't pretty, and neither is tar and chip--rudimentary surfaces for roads too peripheral to merit asphalt. My street ain't art, but it takes me to amazing places:

along the creek where sycamores stretch mottled branches to the sky, where kingfishers and herons stalk their prey while a catbird chatters in the bushes, where wild columbine bursts into fiery bloom on the bank,

and through woods ringing with the bell-like song of the wood thrush, where deer and foxes melt into the shadows, where fire pinks shine and spring rivulets run down stair-step waterfalls,

and past the cliff face where fresh rock-falls expose deep red and orange layers that will later dull to gray, where wild raspberries seek a foothold and stonecrop sends forth tiny white blossoms,

and beside the meadow where placid cows graze while swallows swoop and red-tailed hawks circle high above, where tall grass sparkles with early-morning dew and spiders repair their webs,


and, finally, my road leads back along the creek, across the bridge, up the hill, and right back where I started--home. 

Some (rejected) options for teaching this fall

Each faculty member will be encased in a full-length portable plexiglass bubble, climate-controlled and equipped with built-in keyboard and monitor. Deluxe models will include a dimmer switch to turn the bubble opaque for privacy, or to block out the buzzwords of academic blatherers.
 
Why should students have to consult several different applications to find course materials and information? For one-stop learning, Google, Moodle, Zoom, and email will be consolidated into one massive app where students will find everything they need. MooGooZooMail: coming soon to a campus near you.

Enrollments will be reduced to allow appropriate social distancing in all classes, and campus spaces lying dormant will be reconfigured as instructional settings as needed. Transform the football field to a chemistry lab and give the cheerleading squad something new to cheer about!

Wondering how to conduct office hours in an office the size of a closet? WindowSeat to the rescue! This cozy canvas chair easily attaches to the outside of your office window, allowing students to confer with you while enjoying the fresh outdoor air! Deluxe versions include an umbrella and a handy can of Pest-B-Gone.

Fearful that paper handouts may spread the virus? Bake at 500 degrees until reduced to ashes or run them straight through a shredder. Seriously, who's handing out paper? Put it all online!

(But first download MooGooZooMail and sign up for your free 300-hour training course--starting yesterday.)

Interior Chinatown: Willis Wu and you

Weeks of confinement spawn the desire to roam free and unfettered, but what if the illusion of freedom only blinds us to our continued confinement? Charles Yu asks this question in his novel Interior Chinatown, a lively and entertaining romp through a mass-mediated world in which everyone is so busy acting roles that reality itself seems to have slipped off into the cheap seats to munch popcorn while taking in the performance.

You play the part of Willis Wu, a struggling actor who can't become the protagonist in his own life story until he marches up the ranks of bit-part roles from Generic Asian Man to Dying Asian Man to Special Guest Star to Recurring Ethnic to the coveted Kung Fu Guy--but is the climb worth the cost? As a child he'd revered the kung-fu stars he'd seen on television, actors like his father who seemed to defy gravity, "not inevitably bound by the rules of physics like regular mortals, rather by choice, returning to earth only if and when they feel like it and even then in their own manner."

Willis's father, also an actor, had reached that pinnacle earlier in his career but found himself trapped by dehumanizing scripts and stereotypes: "They ask him to put on silly hats. To cook chop suey, jump-kick vegetables into a thousand pieces. He hears a gong wherever he goes. He is told: You are a legend," but the problem with being a legend is that he is "no longer a person.... Just some mystical Eastern force, some Wizened Chinaman."

And what happens when he ages out of the Kung Fu Guy role? As the novel begins, Willis's father is relegated to bit parts like Old Asian Cook or Old Asian Guy Smoking, "a leading man trapped in the body of an extra. He looks tired. He is tired. He spent decades in this place, in the interior of Chinatown, taking the work he could get. Gangster, cook, inscrutable, mystical, nonsensical Oriental." 

An observant son might question the value of following his father's example, but young Willis is not the most observant character on the planet and has fallen prey to the lure of freedom from constraints imposed by his being relegated to the Generic Asian Man ghetto. He dreams "a dream of blending in. A dream of going from Generic Asian Man to just plain Generic Man," but the only way he can imagine to achieve this dream is to first work his way up the ranks to Kung Fu Guy and then become so famous that he can write his own script.

This doesn't work, of course, and not just because he's just as likely as his father to get trapped inside the role of a lifetime. Willis can't write his own script because he's merely a bit-part player in his own life, following the lines others have written, fitting himself neatly into templates outside his control. When his daughter asks him to tell her a story, he fumbles to find the right words, because he fears that the next word "will either open up the story, like a key in a lock in a door to a palace with however many rooms, too many to count, and hallways and stairways and false walls and secret passages, or the next word could be a wall itself, two walls, closing in, it could be limits on where there story could go." 

Trapped by words--but who set that trap? In a free-wheeling trial scene, Willis asks, "Am I the suspect? Or the victim?"

The trial is scripted as part of a formulaic police procedural show called Black and White, in which two attractive detectives, one black and one white, shoot smoldering looks at each other while tidying up crime in Chinatown, where Willis and his neighbors play various nonspeaking Generic Asian roles. When Willis's hard work leads to a recurring part, the black detective tells him, "Look what you made yourself into. Working your way up the system doesn't mean you beat the system. It strengthens it. It's what the system depends on."

That's all Willis is good at, though--"To watch the mainstream, find out what kind of fiction they are telling themselves, find a bit part in it. Be appealing and acceptable, be what they want to see"--until he has so thoroughly internalized his role as Generic Asian Man that he can't tell the difference between performance and reality. The words with which he surrounds himself have become a solid brick wall too thick for even Kung Fu Guy to kick through.

Is there hope for Willis Wu--or for any of us feeling trapped in scripts not written by ourselves? You'll have to read the book to find out. 

Warm welcome from feathered friends

Yesterday as we were tootling down the road toting the canoe on top of our van, I mentioned that I hadn't been so far from home in weeks, and my husband felt compelled to tell this story: An old couple who had been married more than 50 years were sound asleep in bed when a tornado picked up their house, carried it across the countryside, and deposited it two counties away. When the couple realized what had happened, the wife started crying, and her husband asked if she'd been injured. "No," she said, "I just realized that this is the first time we've been out together in 30 years!"

Well we haven't been quite that sequestered. We've been out--hiking, shopping, going to church, all at a safe social distance. But for the past eight weeks I haven't gone more than five miles from our Jackson home except for two brief forays into the wider world, road trips that were incredibly stressful because of my irrational fear of public rest rooms. After a relaxing canoe trip yesterday, though, I decided that it was time to overcome my fear and head back to our little house in the not-so-big woods.

The trip was easy and do you know what greeted me when I got home? Birds--tons of them--visiting our well-stocked birdfeeders. Goldfinches, purple finches, cowbirds, cardinals, bluejays, titmice, chickadees, sparrows, woodpeckers, more than I can count. A big handsome rose-breasted grosbeak kept visiting the feeder on and off all afternoon, and once I saw the female grosbeak pay a brief visit. 

This morning I woke up not to the obnoxious beeping of the alarm clock but to a chorus of birdsong, which drew me out for an early walk before the rain started falling. Up the hill I heard wood thrushes at several places in the woods, and down by the creek I heard a Louisiana waterthrush. I got a couple of decent photos of what I believe is a yellow-throated warbler, but I can't upload them because I seem to have left the connection cord in Jackson. Oops. At some point I'll retrieve it and then there's no telling what we might see: blue-eyed Mary blooming at the edge of the meadow, hummingbirds buzzing the feeders, buckeye blossoms brightening up the woods, maybe even those wood ducks hanging around the creek.

I've missed my birds and I've missed my house, despite its inadequate internet connection. I need to get caught up on some spring chores that have been delayed, like cleaning the deck furniture and scrubbing algae off the siding, but on the whole it's good to be back in front of my big picture window where I can work on my writing projects and course preps while birds whirl and buzz around the feeders just outside. I'd love to show you some pictures but even without them, it's good to be home.

Changing times, shifting hazards

Yesterday at Lake Katharine I walked face-first through a spider web and also encountered my first mosquitoes of the season and saw poison ivy in full leaf, which suggests that we're moving out of the pest-free hiking season toward the time of constant vigilance. With the spring ephemeral wildflowers pretty much exhausted, I'm spending less time scanning the undergrowth beside the trail and more time taking the long view, looking farther ahead for potential hazards. 

Including people. Warmer weather is bringing out more hikers, so I'm constantly on the lookout for wide spots where I can step aside to let the faster hikers pass while maintaining social distance. I've enjoyed having the woods mostly to myself, but time marches on with change in its wake so it's time, once again, to adapt.

Whose woods these are I thought I knew--
They're mine! But others use them too
to exercise their sovereign right
to exercise. I won't eschew

the trails I hike, however tight
and crowded with unwelcome sights
of poison ivy, biting bugs, 
and spider webs at face-smash height. 

But people! I won't give a hug
to other passing hikers--ugh!
I'll don my mask and I'll release
the trail to them without a shrug.

I'll walk the woods and make my peace
with pests, and I will not decrease
the miles I hike before I cease.
I've miles to hike before I cease.   

(With apologies to Robert Frost.)
 

Untrampled

A break in the apocalyptic weather allowed me to go back to Lake Katharine this morning, where I hoped to find the wild irises blooming, and sure enough there they were--lying on the ground. At first I thought our very cold nights might have nipped them, but the stems were broken so cleanly that I concluded they must have been trampled by something--or someone. Only one blossom remained standing, a delicate little splash of purple and white on a stem no more than ten inches tall. I think I'll be that iris today, carrying on despite the chaos.

Nearby I saw my first fire pinks of the season, or I guess I should say fire pink since I saw exactly one blossom. Mayapples blossoms were also rare but I spotted a few, along with some persistent jack-in-the-pulpit and the first bursts of stonecrop. I have to admire these plants that have learned to thrive in extreme circumstances, putting down roots in mucky ground or solid rock. Today I'll be the stonecrop, blooming where I'm planted.

I had the woods to myself this morning except for a group of deer and uncountable birds. I love to hear the whispery call of blue-gray gnatcatchers, but trying to see them is a challenge, they're so tiny and tree-colored.  This time of year I hear them all through the woods so there must be dozens or hundreds of them out there singing their little hearts out in a voice so tiny it's rarely heard and never applauded. Maybe today I can be the blue-gray gnatcatcher singing its song from an invisible perch even if nobody's listening.

The one untrampled wild iris.

Fire pink.

Stonecrop.

Funny fungus.

Jack in the pulpit.

Morning star sedge.

Solomon's seal.

Mayapple.

 

Provisional goals, pending plagues

Now is the time to list summer goals but I don't know how to proceed when the first item on the list has to be Stay sane--and how would I assess that outcome? If I fail, how will I know? 

Maybe the best way to maintain sanity (assuming that I still possess a modicum thereof) is to list some goals appropriate to a normal summer and then adapt as necessary as time goes on. After all, we've all demonstrated a pretty good ability to adapt to changing circumstances, so maybe I can assume that I'll be able to manage further changes without utterly losing my mind. 

On the other hand, current conditions can make goal-setting feel futile on an existential level. For example, today as I devoted long hours to working on my big research-and-writing project, I kept being haunted by a nagging voice wondering why I was bothering to focus on academic writing when the world is falling to pieces. If academe implodes and we're all selling pencils on the street-corner next year, who will care if I finish this project?

But that way lies madness, which violates my number-one goal. So I choose to ignore the fatalistic nagging voice and move forward boldly into a summer like no other, when I may make some progress on the goals listed below if I'm not eaten alive by murder hornets or whatever plague is coming next:

Teaching Goals
Significantly revise my fall Concepts of Comedy class to focus more attention on the role of comedy in times of trouble such as, for instance, the present. 

Write a syllabus for my fall Special Topics in Film course focusing on Machine Mastery, and make it flexible enough to be offered in person or online or in some hybrid form.

Develop alternative methods of teaching my fall freshman classes in case they have to be delivered online--even though I have come to hate this use of the word delivered, as if course content could be simply wrapped up in a box and dropped on a student's doorstep. 

Writing goals
Submit the full manuscript for the comedy pedagogy collection by Sept. 1, which will require a whole mess of editing, revising, writing, organizing, collating, assembling, and polishing, not to mention cajoling dilatory contributors into completing their revisions.

Write letters--real, honest-to-goodness letters in ink on paper or cute little cards--at least twice a week. Writing letters makes me happy and counteracts my tendency to spend too much time inside my own head.

Get back in the habit of writing book reviews, which would require reading books, which I have done very little lately outside of books required for classes. Reviews make me think about how others might respond, another method of getting me outside my own head.

Write poetry, or doggerel, or whatever I can manage under the circumstances at least once each week. Playing with words blows the cobwebs out of the brain and keeps the synapses nimble. 

Personal goals
Walk walk walk--in the woods, in the cemetery, in the neighborhood, wherever I can exercise while maintaining social distance, at least three hours each week, with or without the camera.

Get the canoe out on the water at least twice a month. This will require some cooperation from the weather, which at the moment seems to be stuck in apocalyptic nightmare mode. Nobody wants to paddle when it's hailing outside.

Interact with people, at a distance, on the phone or via Zoom or whatever, at least twice each week. If I don't make a point of being a little bit sociable, I'll end up in Glumville, and nobody wants to live in Glumville.  

Figure out what to do with my hair. I assume that this goal is pretty high on a lot of people's lists right now. I lack the boldness to trim my own bangs and I don't ever again aim to achieve the post-chemotherapy baldness look, so I need to either work up the courage to go to a salon (after they open) or find another option: pull my hair back (which makes me look like Granny Clampett), stuff it under a hat, let it fly. It's kind of sad how much mental energy goes into simple problems like what to do with my hair, but when the number-one goal is Stay sane, little things can add up.

And there it is: a modest collection of goals for my summer, subject to change at a moment's notice if hailstones fall or murder hornets attack or coronavirus conquers or my unruly hair drives me right over the edge into madness. 

Mothers Day, together and apart

Four years ago I spent Mothers Day in a hospital room in Florida with my father and brothers gathered around my dying mother's bed, a scenario that seems bizarre now: five people crammed together in a hospital room and nobody wearing masks! It wasn't how I'd hoped to spend Mothers Day, but if I had to endure heartbreak, it was good to be surrounded by family.

Today we celebrate Mother's Day weekend at a distance from those we love, but we'll try to demolish distance tomorrow with a family talent show on Zoom.  I'm planning to recite a couple of poems but I don't know what talents the rest of the family will share. Given the musical skills spread around our bunch, the possibilities are intriguing; those too shy to sing or too young to play an instrument can pound on a saucepan or turn a somersault. Everyone will contribute, no one will be judged, and everyone will be applauded. That's my kind of talent show. 

What are some other ways families are celebrating together distantly? 

And now for a break from all the whining

I really miss my birding-and-botanizing buddy, whose eyes and ears guided me to many interesting birds and wildflowers before she moved to Minnesota. These days I'm pretty good at spotting growing things, but I still struggle to recognize bird calls in the wild and I can't keep my glasses on when I'm sweating so I have trouble seeing the birds I'm hearing. This morning, though, I was getting out of my car in the parking lot at Lake Katharine when I spotted a blur of red high in a tree right in front of me. I snapped some photos right away, not entirely sure of what I was seeing, and then I went on my hike through the woods, taking a different path from usual to avoid flooding and to get a look at the lake and the waterfall, which may be small but was roaring like Niagara. On the Calico Bush Trail I found a small patch of wild irises budding, which makes me want to go back in a few days to see the blossoms. Then I got back to the parking lot and saw another blur of color in the same tree, yellow this time, and suddenly I knew what I'd been seeing: a pair of scarlet tanagers, both hanging out in the same tree. Is there a nest nearby? If so, my weak eyes will never spot it.

You should have seen the mist rising from the base of the waterfall.

If only they could speak...

 

When our hands are too full to carry each other

Classes are over and grades are in and now it's time to relax for, oh, say, 45 seconds before I have to read yet another email asking for my feedback about online teaching or asking me to share my newfound "expertise" in a teaching workshop, not to mention reminders that fall is still in limbo so we'd better get to work on developing multiple versions of each class, like, right now.

No. Just no. 

This semester has wrung me dry; I'm running on empty, with nothing left to share. You want handy tips on using technology for remote teaching? Here's a handy tip: if you ever expect me to do this again, you'd better provide frequent access to online mental health services. And teaching assistants for online writing-intensive classes, or else smaller class sizes, which is unlikely given the budget crunch we're bound to face in the future. Or how about a buyout for early retirement? 

I've been trying to assess whether this has been my most awful teaching experience of all time, but it's up against a few heavy contenders. I remember that semester when I was the inside candidate for my current position, caught in the middle of some ugly departmental politics and badly isolated, which was emotionally wrenching every single day, and I was still too new to risk knowing my students very well and therefore didn't get as much joy from teaching as I do today. That was pretty awful--but I got the job.

And then there was the semester when I was teaching while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, which was difficult on a purely physical level--I mean, the body can only take so much abuse before it breaks down--and also emotionally draining because of that whole awareness-of-mortality thing, but then I was surrounded by helpful people and my students were a source of pure and profound joy. I don't ever want to teach through that kind of health problem again, but if I hadn't been surrounded by an entourage of people carrying me when I couldn't carry myself, it would have been unbearable.

But what if the entire campus had been undergoing chemo at the same time? When everyone's suffering, who's left to do the carrying? That's what has made this semester so difficult: we're all so broken down from carrying our own burdens that we haven't had much ability to help each other. I've received tremendous support from our IT people and my department and a small group of colleagues, but most of the time all we can do is encourage each other from a distance and then get back to our enforced isolation where we have to muddle through on our own. 

But once again my students have come through for me. Interacting with them has been the highlight of my days of isolation, and watching them learn from and support each other has been tremendously encouraging. Now, though, they're gone and my inbox is full of depressing emails wondering whether I've learned anything worth sharing with my colleagues. 

Here's one thing: we need each other, but it's hard to help each other when we can't see each other, and it's hard to see each other when the sight of my own face on a Zoom screen makes me want to vomit. Can someone train me on how to avoid Zoom-induced self-loathing?

And here's another thing: we need each other, but it's hard to help each other when we can't be together in the same space, and it's hard to be together in the same space when  the prospect of entering a public rest room makes me feel as if I've been kicked in the gut.  Can someone train me on overcoming extreme rest-room phobia?

Give me some time and I can figure out the technology, but show me a workshop that can equip us to deal with the mental health issues caused by isolation and I'll attend--from the safety of my own home, where I can use my own rest room and mute my face on the Zoom screen. Otherwise, leave me alone for a few weeks at least so I can lick my wounds before I have to start thinking about how to cope with whatever's awaiting us up ahead.  

Assessing some outdoor outcomes

I've been itching to get back to Lake Katharine to check on the progress of the wild orchids I found last week, but nasty weather kept me indoors yesterday and then I had an assessment meeting this morning that I expected to last for hours and hours and hours, so you can imagine how excited I was to find that the bulk of the assessment activity can be completed on my own time, so there I was at 10 a.m. on a gorgeous sunny day with a sudden unexpected opportunity to get out to the woods. Sit inside completing an assessment activity or take a hike in the woods? No contest.

One problem, though: I didn't know that a long stretch of the Salt Creek trail was under water. Now I've been down that trail in high water before and had to find detours through the woods around the flooded spots, but this time the water was so deep that I couldn't even see how far it extended up into the woods. Nothing to do but turn around and go back. By the time I'd retraced my steps and walked up the short loop trail to the parking lot, I was too worn out to go around the other way and find the orchids. Maybe next time! 

Meanwhile, though, I marveled over the way the umbrella magnolia leaves catch the morning light, and the alternate trail up to the parking lot led me through a small patch of perfoliate bellwort, the first I've seen this year. I also saw bear corn cropping up around the base of trees, its colors still fresh and bright, and I caught a brief glimpse of a fox dashing through the undergrowth. At this time of year everything feels so alive out there, with energy coursing through each leaf and branch and bird and beast. My assessment of this morning's hike: I may not have seen the orchids, but all other essential outcomes were achieved.

Umbrella magnolia leaves seem lit from within.

Bear corn.

Jelly fungus.

Jack in the pulpit.

Perfoliate bellwort.

A brief escape from grading jail

"So what are you going to do to celebrate when you finish grading?" was my colleague's question, and my answer was "Go to the woods," but frankly, I'm not waiting for the grading to be done before I go to the woods. All week the weather has been keeping me indoors--all-day gray skies, high winds, drizzle, and rain--but this morning the forecast called for a few rain-free hours under a gloomy canopy of gray, so off I went to the woods despite the final papers still awaiting my attention.

Sometimes it takes a while for my mind to catch up with my body, so I was well into the damp woods at Lake Katharine, mulling over an issue concerning a student's late paper, when I suddenly looked up and felt the woods enveloping me, as if I'd suddenly walked into a whole new world. I put aside thoughts of grading and listened to a prairie warbler singing and some common yellowthroats and blue-gray gnatcatchers, and down by the swamp I heard that persistent Louisiana waterthrush.

I wasn't expecting to see much blooming since the magnolias aren't out yet and the early ephemerals are past their prime, but I surprised myself by finding some showy orchis blossoms just beginning to open in three different spots. I've been looking for them for weeks, aware that last year I saw exactly one showy orchis blooming on May 10 and never located it again, but I was out of town in early May last year so I've been hoping to catch them earlier in their life cycle. And so I did.

Despite its name, the showy orchis is easy to miss. The blossoms may be showy when they're fully open but the plants themselves are tiny, just five or six inches tall and surrounded by taller grasses and wildflowers. I saw the first blossom right about where I spotted last year's specimen and then two more further along the same path, and this time I took careful note of the surroundings so I can find them again later. In a few days I'll go back and see just how showy they can be, but for now I'm happy to see the blossoms just barely beginning to emerge from their tight little buds.

One of these days we'll all emerge from our tight quarters and show our true colors out in the real world. First, though, let's grade some papers.