And we're fresh out of magic beans

It may not have been the most depressing meeting in the history of academic department meetings, but it has to be right up toward the top of the list. My department sat in our regular meeting space alongside our colleagues who last week were informed that their positions are being discontinued, and what can we say to them? Sorry is hardly adequate. The wounds are still raw and there isn't a band-aid big enough to help.

We had two essential pieces of business to perform. First, we had to revamp next year's course schedules to take into account the impending absence of key colleagues, a discussion that raised questions such as these: Will promised budget cuts prevent us from hiring adjuncts to cover some sections of first-year composition? Will we be pressured to raise the seat numbers in composition classes? Will we be able to offer enough upper-level writing classes to enable students pursuing writing minors to complete those programs? Will we have to cut down on the number of core General Education classes we offer? Who will take over the administrative tasks performed by the colleagues whose positions have been cut? Few answers were forthcoming.

The second order of business required us to respond to a survey that will be submitted to the committee charged with making recommendations about cutting majors and programs, and this activity raised a whole different set of questions, some of them more cheerful, like How have we managed to get so many of our majors into so many great graduate programs? We talked about our former students who are teaching and writing and doing good work and we want to know how we can keep on doing the things that are equipping students for interesting careers, but the more time we have to spend defending our right to exist, the less time we can devote to doing our actual jobs.

We look at our record of service to the College and community, at the great work our graduates are doing and the impact they'll keep having long into the future, and we know we've managed over the years to do a whole lot of academic magic despite limited resources. We're committed to continuing to do this good work, but deep inside we wonder: how can we keep making the magic happen when so many wands have been snapped in two?

  

Forthcoming, finally

Just a little bit excited about seeing this listed among the Forthcoming Titles on the MLA website:

Available for preorder by clicking here. 

Weird winter weather, indoors and out

I'm wearing my snowflake sweater today in hopes of encouraging the weather to do something more seasonable--like, for instance, send us some freakin' snow. I mean, why should Minnesota have all the fun? But instead I'm photographing tiny iris blossoms while the forecast calls for a high in the 70s tomorrow. In the middle of February. It's true that Spring is my favorite season, but can we have a little winter first?

The wintry mood inside campus buildings is also warming. True, it's still Axe Week: a small but significant group of faculty members will be told by Friday that their positions are being cut, and some departments are already scrambling to revise fall course schedules. But Monday's faculty meeting was much shorter than expected and bubbled with a giddy air of hope. The controversial motion for a vote of no confidence was withdrawn without a single murmur after news came out that a certain top administrator will be leaving the college by June. To pursue other opportunities, he says, for which I can only say pursue away. 

It would be unseemly to rejoice while others are struggling, especially when this decision leaves us with lame ducks or interim administrators in a number of important positions while several other essential positions remain either unfilled or in flux.  Our Faculty Chair reminded us on Monday that we'll all have to work together to help move the College forward, but we've never been afraid of hard work as long as it looked like it could get us somewhere. Times are tough but we can shoulder the burden as long as we see signs of hope, and now we do.

And I'm not just talking about a few early iris blossoms. Send us some snow--or send us some warmth--or send us a little bit of everything all at once--and somehow we'll figure out how to carry on.

 

 

Seeking a foolproof excuse

What I need right now is a foolproof excuse specific enough to extricate me from an awkward meeting but vague enough to sound truthful regardless of the facts.

Last week, for instance, I excused myself from a meeting by saying I have a family thing, which was true enough as long as no one asked for more details about the family thing: an opportunity to eat dinner with my husband, who, like me, has a lot of evening meetings, so some weeks we see each other only at breakfast and bedtime. It's true that I could have stayed at the meeting and let him wait at the restaurant a little longer, but my meeting had already dragged on for an hour without showing any signs of coming to a conclusion and if I'd sat there any longer my head might have exploded, and who would clean up the mess?

But I can't claim to have a family thing every week, and I no longer have small children at home to justify all those great kids-and-their-busy-lives excuses. A pet might help. Frequent vet visits would lose their plausibility fairly quickly, but I can imagine standing up at a meeting and saying Sorry, but someone's got to walk the dog. A true statement, especially if I don't specify who that someone might be.

I need to go sounds urgent enough, but at some point someone is bound to ask why and then things can get dicey. I can't say Sitting in that meeting was making me want to stab out my eyeballs with a dull pencil--even if it's true! Nobody appreciates that kind of honesty, and besides, we all have to bear our share of the burdens of adulthood, including sitting through an uncertain quota of awful meetings. What makes me think I'm so special?

So I try to hoard my excuses for when they're really necessary. I sit through meeting after meeting dutifully doing my part in keeping the wheels of academe spinning, even when I wish someone would just pull the brake lever and let me off. But one of these days I'll need to miss a meeting for no good reason, and when that time comes, I need to be prepared with something more compelling than I need to go.

Last dance before the apocalypse

A friend sent me photos of spoonbills he's encountered and they plunged me into memories of spoonbills I've visited in Florida and Georgia, lovely pink birds with big awkward bills that sweep side-to-side in the water. I had to go back and search for my own spoonbill photos, which took me on a journey through file after file full of colorful birds and butterflies and beaches and blossoms and dragonflies and grandkids and snow and sleds and everything wonderful. I really needed that this morning--my own private smile file.

Yesterday I enjoyed attending a very pleasant event where I could cheer for my colleagues earning awards, but it felt a little like the last dance before the apocalypse. Next week is Axe Week, when a certain number of colleagues will be told that their positions are being cut. Do I know that final number? No I do not, but Faculty Council has been consulted as part of this process so I know some names, and I find that knowledge very uncomfortable. I want to comfort some colleagues and avoid others and I find myself working with my office door shut just because I fear that I'll spill something I'm not supposed to share.

Consultation sounds abstract but what it comes down to is weighing how certain cuts would affect the curriculum and whether one type of cut would be less painful than another, but we know all those abstract positions as people who work alongside us and share our passion for the mission of the College. Some cuts may be less painful than others in the long term, but none of them will be painless. I've been walking around feeling some of that pain in anticipation even though the axe hasn't even fallen yet. I don't know how any of us will get through the next two weeks.

It was just one year ago that we learned about the massive budget crisis that precipitated all these cuts, and a year later we're still struggling. Last year I tried to cope with the crisis by getting out of town for Spring Break to spend time with the grandkids and look at birds. Now I'm waiting for the axe to fall and I'm coping by looking at spoonbills. They're lovely and soothing and they calm my soul, but nevertheless I have never felt so powerless in the face of impending pain. All I want to do is fly away.

More letters I won't be sending, or why it's important to look alive

Dear turkey vultures circling above campus this morning,
Move on--nothing to see here. Despite rumors of death and decay, our college is still among the living. I'm more concerned about you: what are you doing back in Ohio this early in the season? You ought to be languishing in Florida or perhaps just starting out on your long trip north, but here you are two weeks early circling above campus on a winter day when the temperature is expected to soar to 70. What do you know that we don't know?

Dear sick student,
I get it--you're too sick to come to class, but do you really have to give me the play-by-play? I don't need to know how many times you've vomited this morning or how badly you're suffering from diarrhea (but kudos on spelling it correctly!), and in fact if I never again receive a message reporting in detail about the state of your bowels, I'll be happy. We're all adults here: if you're too sick to come to class, just say so, and if you're so sick that you need to miss a week or more and want to join on Zoom, ask the appropriate office to send me a medical excuse. But please don't email to tell me that you've been vomiting all morning but you'll force yourself to come to class anyway if I think the class is "important." I mean, I think all my classes are important, but that doesn't mean I want a vomiting person in the room. Please: stay home and get well--and if you have to vomit, I really don't want to know.

Dear everyone who voted to put me on Faculty Council two years ago:
As I near the end of my two-year term--probably my final term on Council before I retire--I'm spending a lot of time in meetings dreaming up ways to seek vengeance on anyone who ever voted for me. If I knew who you were, I'd come to your office and stuff piles of student papers under the door or leave my leftover Indian food containers in your office trash can that never gets emptied. I'd like to sentence you to seventeen solid hours of listening to jargon-laced statements from higher-ups adept at weaving words without actually saying anything, people who say "I have adjacency to that issue" and expect the world to nod in agreement. I'll tell you what issue I have adjacency to: the issue of persuading my appreciative colleagues to never, ever, ever vote for me again. If you can manage that, perhaps we'll all be able to find repose in our situation.

But not too much repose. Look alive--the vultures are still circling.

But is there a futon in that elevator?

 I want to write about the word repose, but I'm too tired right now. 

I've been attending too many long, exhausting, emotional meetings full of people on the verge of meltdown whose valid concerns keep being met by soothing buzzwords. I've just gotten accustomed to being told that it's not yet time to elevate our concerns to the next level, as if we could just punch the Up button and everything would be taken care of, and now comes a Person in a Position of Authority repeatedly telling a group of campus leaders that we need to find repose in the situation, which makes me wonder whether some major donor has come through with the funds to install futons in all our offices. I mean, I'm as big a fan of repose as the next guy, but if the building is on fire, the last thing you want the firefighters to tell you is Why don't you calm down and take a nice nap?

And speaking of the next guy, I've heard that it's problematic to address students as guys, which makes some sense if they're not all guys, but I've just used the word guy to refer to myself, which suggests that I don't really conceive as guys as gendered, which explains why I'm having a hard time not addressing groups as guys. Old dog/new tricks, blah blah blah. But I'm trying! I asked a class how they'd like to be addressed and someone suggested pupils, which makes me think of Mrs. Davis back in third grade, with her white hair piled high and gems on her glasses and a hanky tucked up her sleeve. I may be old, but I'm not ready to be Mrs. Davis. I'll never find repose until I elevate that concern to the next level--but wait, where's the Up button? 

 

Close encounters of the kestrel kind

For years a photo of a male American Kestrel has graced the home screen on my cell phone and served as my profile picture on Facebook. The photo was a fluke: I was out birding along a country road near The Wilds and I saw a flash of color in the grass on the other side of the road. I pulled over,  carefully grabbed the camera with the telephoto lens, and I crept slowly across the road to see two kestrels in the grass looking stunned. I suspected that they'd been struck by a car and I wondered whether they'd survive, but I managed to snap just a few shots before they flew off.

Something about this bird spoke to me. I love his vivid colors, stripes, and splotches, but mostly I love the look in his eye, observant and wary but also wise, as if he's about to open his mouth and share some insight about all he's seen. I don't see kestrels in this area often and in fact my prior encounters had mostly been with captive birds, like the ones I visited at the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey near my parents' house in Florida. In December I saw a kestrel perched high above a wetland in South Carolina, and even from a distance its bold colors caught my eye and made me wish I could get closer.

Then yesterday I got much closer to a kestrel, although I didn't know what it was at first. I was pulling into my driveway after the long drive back from a weekend with the grandkids when I saw a bird fly up to a tree beside the driveway. I thought at first it was a mourning dove, common as dirt but nice to have around, but when it flew down right over my windshield before disappearing into the woods I saw its size and vivid coloration--the first time I've ever seen a kestrel near our property.

Can this bird be looking for a home or is it just passing through? I had to look it up: kestrels like to hunt on open ground (like our lower meadow) with a few tall trees nearby (check) offering high perches for visibility plus lots of hollows for nesting (check again). They eat insects, small rodents, small songbirds, and the occasional frog, lizard, or snake, all of which we have in abundance. 

 Can they coexist with the red-tailed hawks that nest in the area? Will they attack small birds visiting our feeders? I don't know, but something about seeing this kestrel so close to home made me feel hopeful, reminding me that spring is coming with all its promise of change and growth. The kestrel in the photo always looks like it knows more than I can ever imagine, but maybe there's hope that some of that wisdom will eventually be revealed.

 

Foxtrotting among the kitties

Yesterday a colleague was telling me how soothing it was to go home after a stressful meeting and relax with her new kitten purring on her lap, and I had a brainstorm: We need therapy cats at campus meetings.

Think of all the things you can't do with a cat sleeping on your lap. You can't jump up and start shouting, for one thing, and even vigorous finger-pointing is bound to distract the nearby kitties.

Of course we might run into problems if colleagues are allergic cats, and we might see factions forming between cat people and dog people, not to mention those who find comfort in the presence of reptiles. We can divide up faculty meeting rooms into cat sections and dog sections, with a token nook for the odd tortoise lover, but that might lead to more division.

If not therapy animals, then how about ballroom dance? I read today in a student paper that "Every minuet is a blessing," so how about conducting campus business while engaged in a quadrille? The need to pay close attention to the steps would eliminate frivolous rabbit trails, and following the figures would enhance cooperation, unless issues arise over, for instance, who will take the lead in the foxtrot.

Maybe that's the time to bring the therapy animals into the ballroom. Chaos would ensue, but at least it would be more amusing than the chaos we're currently experiencing.