Don't look now, but there's one creeping up behind you

I've lived in the midwest long enough to have learned one of the most important rules for surviving the hot midsummer months: Don't turn your back on the zucchini patch. Even if it hasn't rained all week and you're certain there's no way those zucchinis can be growing, and even if it's so hot and humid that the effort of walking a short distance up a small hill leaves you drenched, you have to check the zucchini patch every day or else you'll end up with squashes big enough to pummel an ox.

That's what I have this week. It's true that I've been distracted, keeping my nose in the books and my fingers on the keyboard, although not both at the same time. But still, I should have known better than to ignore the zucchini patch for a couple of very hot days. And it's not even a patch--I planted three yellow zucchini plants this spring but only one survived.

But what a prolific plant it is. If the Three Little Pigs lived in Ohio in midsummer, they could build a sturdy house from the produce of that one zucchini plant. Forget sandbags--my one zucchini plant could stop the flooding if the Hoover Dam sprung a leak. You say North Korea is suffering from a food shortage? They're welcome to my zucchinis--as long as they don't send back any leftovers.

July is the time when churchgoers all over Ohio know that they must lock their cars in the church parking lot lest they emerge from worship to find their cars stuffed to the gills with zucchinis provided by their generous neighbors. And if they're not pushing giant zucchinis on you when you least expect it, they're bombarding you with loaves of zucchini bread or pans of zucchini casserole.

At this moment I have a lemon zucchini bundt cake baking in the oven, and later I'll chop some zucchini to make a yummy summer casserole, and later still I'll take them both to a church potluck where the table will be covered with zucchini dishes of every size, shape, and flavor.

And when I get home again, I'll trudge up the hill and see how many new zucchinis are ready to pick, because at this time of year they just don't stop growing and if I turn my back for just one day, they'll grow big enough to dominate my every waking hour. Good thing zucchinis aren't sentient, because nothing could stop them from taking over the world.  

Maybe I should smuggle a bulldozer into my office

This morning I zipped blithely along a stretch of highway admiring the new wall intended to prevent the kind of landslip that closed the highway two years ago. For two years I've spent a great deal of time watching the heavy equipment move piles of debris out of the way and replace it with that massive wall a quarter mile long, an entertaining and educational process that helped me while away the time until the temporary red light turned green and let me proceed on my commute to campus. Early-morning commutes usually resulted in a short wait, but during peak hours I could wait through two or three lights, with no convenient way to get around the blockage (until amphibious vehicles become readily available). Now the heavy equipment is gone, the barriers are down, and the highway is open in both directions--smooth sailing!

Some other long-term projects have not proceeded quite so smoothly. Lots of Covid-related delays have kept contributors from submitting revisions in a timely manner, but finally it appears that I have everything I need to complete the manuscript for the collection on teaching comedy that I've been working on for two years now. I have some work to do on the organization and the introduction, but if I work diligently for a week or two, I should be able to submit the revised manuscript to the publisher before classes start. That will be another barrier cleared off my road.

But a pothole arose in the path of the pedagogy-inflected essay I've been working on all summer. A few weeks ago I celebrated finishing the draft, and now I've revised it in response to readers' comments--but the journal I'd been aiming for is not currently accepting submissions. I need a Plan B--a publication aimed at non-specialists interested in poetry, history, race, and culture, one that also accepts footnotes. (I can delete the two footnotes if I have to, but it would hurt me.) Finding a venue has always been my least favorite part of academic writing, and it's really disappointing to find that the venue I'd had in mind is unavailable. Where do I go next? I'm stuck.

The other big obstacle keeping me from relaxing for the few remaining weeks of summer is the lack of direction about fall classes. My syllabi are in good shape but I can't put the finishing touches on anything until I know what the College will require regarding Covid precautions. Do I still need to set up a Zoom link for each class? Will I be required to offer class online for students who have to quarantine? Will we have a college-wide mask policy or are we on our own? Until the Powers That Be issue their official pronouncements, my whole preparation process is broken down by the side of the road.

But progress is being made. Today I asked the building services people to let me use the vacuum so I can start getting my office ready for fall. Right now an avalanche of books blocks my work space, but let me get the heavy equipment moving and soon I'll have the whole place set to rights. All summer I've been making incremental changes so small that it rarely looks like I've been working at all, but in the end they'll add up to smooth sailing into whatever lies ahead. 

I can see clearly now

When I left my house this morning to make the drive to Jackson, everything looked blurry and undefined; by the time I arrived, I was able to read road signs without squinting. It took some doing but I can see clearly now, thanks to the new glasses I picked up this morning, with a stronger prescription and more prism in the lenses. I don't know what it means to have more prism in the lenses, but I know it helps my errant eyeballs to play nicely together. At first I couldn't walk straight and I saw not quite two but one and a half of everything, and during the first half of the 90-minute drive, I felt like something was pulling on my eyeballs. But the one-and-a-half vision slowly resolved itself and by the time I'd arrived, I could see clearly--even road signs. I don't remember the last time I could read signs without squinting.

But now that I can see clearly, I'm seeing things I don't want to see. Within seconds after I sat down on the sofa, I found a wood tick crawling on me, and then a few minutes later another one. The tick population is pretty awful this summer, but we don't generally pick them up on the sofa. I suspect that they hitched a ride inside on hubby's legs.

I was very careful to wear long pants last evening when I hiked at the Luke Chute pollinator habitat alongside the biologist who designed the habitat, who delighted in identifying many different types of bees. Abundant bee balm was attracting hummingbird moths and a few butterflies as well, not to mention the hikers who'd gathered for a potluck supper. I took my favorite summer berry cake, made with blackberries as big as my thumb--yum! 

And earlier this week I saw a pileated woodpecker fly off from a tree right in front of my house and heard another chattering nearby--all too quick for the camera, of course, and too distant for my sad, sorry eyes. If only I'd had my new glasses! I wonder what wonders they'll help me see?

Hummingbird in front of my house. I love that red collar!

Hummingbird moth

A tiny caterpillar that looks like a tangle of yarn.

Proceeding forward, prepared to pivot

I was feeling pretty good about fall classes until I went to a lunch meeting yesterday and kept hearing the word pivot. "We have to be ready to pivot on a moment's notice," they said, and I'm sure it's true but all this talk of pivoting makes me dizzy.

It was a great meeting--faculty and staff talking about what we'd learned from pandemic teaching and what techniques we'll hold on to. Everyone loves Zoom office hours, and I agree: students seem much more comfortable bringing their writing problems to me if they don't have to actually enter my office. (Why? My office isn't scary! I have toys!) Some methods of online discussion seem really helpful and I'll probably continue to use them, although not to the extent I did in the past year. Several people talked about how much they love teaching online from the comfort of home, which of course is irrelevant to my situation since I lack sufficient bandwidth to Zoom from home.

Everyone wants to see the end of masks in the classroom, but there were some notes of caution. The current policy is that unvaccinated people are supposed to wear masks on campus, but there's no enforcement so we're on the honor system. Our campus is collecting data on vaccination rates so we know that not everyone is vaccinated--and yet I haven't seen anyone wearing a mask on campus all month. Clearly, some unvaccinated people are not wearing masks, and while the highly contagious Delta variant is not yet running rampant in our area, it's only a matter of time.

Which is why we need to be ready to pivot. We're still waiting for the definitive word on masking policies for the fall semester, but meanwhile, I've been assuming that things will be pretty much back to normal. But it's entirely possible that Fall 2021 could become a repeat of Spring 2020: starting off normal but shifting to online or hybrid teaching at some point following a massive outbreak of Covid-19.

Better keep my dancing shoes handy--and stock up on Dramamine for the vertigo.

What I do when I'm not setting myself on fire

It was a week of little sleep and lots of writing, a sore hip and a nasty headache and did I mention little sleep? A week of checking things off my to-do list because my restless brain kept waking me up in the night to make a big to-do over how much I still have to do on my to-do list, so I just buckled down and did it all, or not all but a big part of what I needed to do. I was a rock star this week if I focus on the high points, but it takes quite a lot of effort to look away from the low points, including the time I came this close to setting myself on fire--and yes, lack of sleep played a part in that incident.

What kind of week was it? You decide:

I finished the Natasha Trethewey essay! Well, a complete polished draft--I'll do some revision after getting feedback from my trusty readers. But I couldn't send it for feedback until I'd put a title at the top, and I got stuck because all I could think of was a title I used for an article I published 20 years ago, which gave me pause because how can the concept still be relevant after all these years? Am I stuck in a rut or has the culture circled back to embrace an insight I found interesting 20 years ago?  

As a reward for finishing the essay, I went home and baked butterscotch blondies, yum, and then after they'd cooled I spread a very thin layer of maple cream on top, double yum. Dangerously delicious. Good thing I had people to share them with because I could have eaten the whole batch myself.

Speaking of eating, yesterday I picked my first yellow squashes of the season and right this minute my favorite squash dish is baking in the oven. The whole house smells delicious, and I didn't even have to set anyone on fire.

Caught a mouse this week but I don't know whether it was the same mouse I saw IN MY BEDROOM the other night, on the nightstand right next to my face. What would a mouse want on my nightstand? Would a mouse be attracted to vanilla-flavored lip balm? Just in case, I moved the lip balm to the bathroom and bought a new set of mousetraps. The dead of winter is usually the time to wage war on mice, but for some reason they're invading during the hottest part of the year. Why won't they go away and leave me alone?

Did the presence of a mouse in my bedroom have any impact on my sleep problems this week? Of course it did. How could I keep sleeping soundly with a MOUSE in my BEDROOM right next to my FACE? And if I had succeeded in accidentally setting myself on fire the next morning, I would have been thoroughly justified in blaming the mouse, because who can properly supervise trash-burning on so little sleep?

Had lunch with some colleagues after Writing Wednesday and someone commented on my new jeans--and yes, I was wearing jeans and a hoodie in the library even though the temperature outside had reached Full Sauna status, and that's all you need to know about how cold they keep the air conditioning in the library--and my colleague said, "You could teach in those jeans." And I said, "Yes I could--if I could relax enough to wear jeans in the classroom." And then she told me something eye-opening: "One of my students described our building as the place where all the men teach in jeans but the women dress up." And you know what? She's right. Time to take a stand for sartorial equality! (You first.)

It seems like I should have more accomplishments to report considering how hard I worked this week, but who wants to hear about completing a course proposal or fiddling with syllabi? One thing I didn't do was mow--too wet or too hot or both--which means I'll have some catching up to do next week. I'd better put mowing on my new to-do list--right after "get some sleep."

A small, good thing

This morning I picked my first tomato of the season and popped it into my mouth, a tiny yellow flavor bomb that tasted like sunshine. Soon I'll have more, plus plum tomatoes and slicing tomatoes and zucchini and basil, even though my garden is so small it barely qualifies as a garden at all.

A fresh cherry tomato is a small, good thing, a phrase that always brings to mind Raymond Carver's story in which a baker clears space for a couple to express their grief over their son's death. "Eating is a small, good thing at at time like this," says the baker as he feeds the grieving couple fresh rolls still hot from the oven. A brief moment of communion between strangers, and somehow, in the midst of tragedy, life goes on.

Today I'm clearing a space for my own grief over the death of a colleague, a good man and great teacher almost exactly my age. I knew he was dying a week ago--we all knew, even though it was hard to believe after all the times he'd seemed about to succumb to cancer over the past 20 years only to emerge unscathed. This time, though, there was nothing to be done, so when he went into hospice care just over a week ago, we were all urged to send supportive messages that his family could read to him in his declining days.

All week I've been flayed by the tributes on social media written by colleagues and former students, finding myself suddenly on the verge of tears a dozen times a day. Then on Friday night as I was sitting with my family at the Cleveland Indians game--our first time back at the stadium since 2019--I saw the post announcing my colleague's death. It was a like a kick in the gut, but what could I do? I was surrounded by cheering fans and trying to have a fun time with the grandkids. In a world of stadium hot-dogs and pretzels dipped in melty cheese, grief was distinctly out of place.

Today, though, the pain of loss is sinking in. I was never particularly close to my dead colleague and we had to work through some serious disagreements some time ago, but he encouraged me during my own cancer treatment and I always admired his calm strength, his willingness to listen, and his phenomenal teaching skill. We'll have a memorial service on campus this fall after students return, but meanwhile, the tributes keep coming on social media and I keep getting teary every time I think of the gaping hole that's opened up among our campus family.

What can you do at a time like this? Send a card, cherish some memories, clear a space for grief. Eat a fresh cherry tomato right off the vine, a tiny reminder that life goes on, that growth continues, that the cruel world is still capable of producing tiny bursts of sweetness. 

 

Awkward questions, unsatisfying answers

I was just killing time while waiting for a pork loin to roast so I uncharacteristically accepted a call from a political pollster. We got off on the wrong foot from the first question: "Do you think things in Ohio are getting better or getting worse?" 

"Define things," I said, and after some back-and-forth she said, "I'll put you down as undecided." That happened a lot.

Some questions just can't be immediately resolved to both parties' satisfaction, like the one I get from people who can't understand why I live where I live: "No cell service? No TV? Bad internet? Then why would anyone want to live there?"

"Well, trilliums, for one thing," I might say, but in my experience, a person who can't imagine living without broadband internet access is not going to be impressed by proximity to trilliums.

Trillium is my favorite wildflower and sycamore my favorite tree, but I rarely have good answers for other questions about favorite things. Favorite color? (Depends on the context.) Favorite book? (Too many to narrow down.) Favorite band? (I can never remember names of bands.) Why should I have to commit to one favorite anyway? Why not spread the love around?

Yesterday a colleague asked a question I've been getting a lot lately: "Any idea when you'll retire?" Impossible to say. When will the costs of doing good work here outweigh the benefits? When will the energy I receive from my students fail to compensate for the energy I expend in teaching them? When will the endless meetings and assessment activities pound my brain so thoroughly into mush that I can no longer think clearly? But the question that also haunts me is this: What happens to my tenure line when I do retire? The last time a faculty member in my department retired, the tenure line disappeared, possibly forever. It would be disheartening if I retired after 20+ years of teaching here only to be replaced by two adjuncts and a trained monkey.

Good thing I don't have to answer these questions today in all this heat. The questions I'm prepared to answer definitively today are fairly simple: What are you doing after Writing Wednesday? (Going out to lunch with a colleague.) Anything happening this evening? (Just a little bit of mowing before I'm caught up and then I'll listen to the Indians game on the radio.) How's the garden doing? (Lots of tomatoes too green to pick, a squash plant that looks like it could colonize the county, and plenty of nice fresh basil, but my second and last rosemary plant shriveled up.)

From this very limited perspective, it looks like things in Ohio are getting better by the minute, but that could change any time so I wouldn't want to commit to a definitive answer. 

Bottlebrush buckeye, all abuzz

 Five years ago I planted this scrawny bottlebrush buckeye bush in my mother's memory; today the blossoms stretch over my head, attracting all kinds of pollinators--bees, butterflies, and a mess of hummingbird moths. Every time I see it, the bush reminds me of my mother's love for beautiful growing things. This makes me very happy.

Paddling, slowly

Our first canoe trip of the year started slowly, with a trip to the hardware store to buy new straps to tie down the canoe on the new roof rack. (What happened to the old straps? They were either badly misplaced when we moved or else they got left behind at the old parsonage.) For the first trip on the new vehicle, we selected Hammertown Lake, only 6 miles away as the crow flies but a 20-minute drive over twisty country roads. It's the deepest lake in southern Ohio and well stocked with fish, but we saw only three or four small fishing boats and a couple of kayaks. A remote artificial lake surrounded by rolling hills and trees, Hammertown Lake serves as Jackson's municipal reservoir. Paddling on a reservoir doesn't sound particularly adventurous, and it wasn't, but took us two hours to paddle the full length and back with just a few gentle cross-breezes to make it interesting. Weather and work had thwarted all our previous plans to get the canoe out this year, but we've still got a lot of summer left. This was a good, easy outing to inaugurate our paddling adventures for the year.