Spooky season, sort of

As I walked out the door into an elaborate spider web this morning, I reminded myself to be grateful to the spiders. Other people have to buy artificial spiderwebs to decorate their front porches this time of year, but our front porch gets the full Spooky Season treatment at no cost to me, except for the occasional discomfort of a face full of web. 

It's always seemed ironic to me that our road is considered too scary for trick-or-treating. I mean, if you want to experience some genuine fear that doesn't come out of a package, why not walk along a country road with no sidewalks or streetlights and hike a quarter-mile up a dark driveway to a porch swathed in spider webs? The night sounds emanating from the woods aren't chintzy recordings but actual Things that Come Out at Night, and they're watching you. In fact, don't look now but they could be creeping up behind you right now!

Nope, no trick-or-treating on my road, and no one coming inside the house to see the genuinely scary gigantic spider the crawled our across the dining-room floor the other day. No one else was home and I couldn't stomp it without shoes on, so I grabbed a nearby glass and trapped the spider under it and then watched its futile attempts to escape. I enjoyed Spider Under Glass for a good part of the evening until the resident spider-killer came home and made quick work of the menacing beast.

Speaking of menacing beasts, I was walking toward my classroom building the other day when one of my students stopped me: "Don't go in that way! There's a snake on the path!"

"Cool," I said, and hurried up to take a look. Wish I'd had a camera on hand because it was a lovely lithe ribbon with an iridescent belly, no thicker than my little finger and posing no danger to anyone, but the next group of students who came up the path scared it away with their shrieking. These same students will probably pay good money to buy costumes and go to Halloween parties just to celebrate the scariest things in life, but here they had an opportunity for genuine fear at no charge and they did not appreciate it one bit.

When the obstacles are part of the journey

For months we tour guides in the higher ed odyssey have been told that we need to remove "obstacles to completion," which sounded reasonable enough until it became apparent that one of those obstacles is--well, me.

Not me exactly, but the kind of course I design and champion, the kind of curriculum I support, has become Public Enemy Number One for the Obstacle Removal Brigade. 

Removing obstacles sounds like a worthy task, and in some cases it's necessary. For instance, the English department needs to confer with the Education department to make sure required courses in the two departments don't conflict; otherwise, an English major pursuing teaching certification won't be able to complete her degree. And if transfer students regularly have trouble getting credit for classes they've taken elsewhere, then we probably need to take a look at transfer equivalencies and smooth out the pathway to completion.

But what the Obstacle Removal Brigade really wants is to make the journey shorter and simpler for everyone. Let's eliminate a bunch of General Education requirements, shrink requirements for most majors, and de-emphasize challenging courses so students can move down the road toward degree completion more quickly and smoothly. So sure, maybe we'll go ahead and offer that upper-level theory-laden course, but we'll no longer require it for the major because it poses to great an obstacle.

Funny, but when I designed and taught that course, I envisioned not an obstacle but a pathway. Sure, it's challenging and some students will struggle with the material, but as long as learning happens in the struggle, it's worth the effort. Further, figuring out how to deal with obstacles with equip students to tackle even bigger challenges in later classes or in their careers. Dealing with obstacles is an essential part of the journey! Or so I have always believed.

But higher education has moved on. The goal, you'll notice, is not education but completion: let's make it easier for students to take home a diploma, even if that means narrowing their opportunities to pursue depth and breadth of education.

So removing obstacles to completion is really the same old story dressed up in new buzzwords. We can scoot students briskly down the pathway toward that precious diploma, but most of them won't even know what adventures they've missed by avoiding every little obstacle.  

Ephemeral autumn

Friday afternoon I arrived home just after a rainshower and found myself surrounded by fall leaves glistening and sparkling in the sudden sunshine. I reached for the camera bag but it wasn't in the car but before I'd unzipped it the sun had ducked behind the clouds and the rain was falling again.

Every year at this time I keep catching moments like these--sun hitting red and yellow leaves until they appear to be lit from within, my road passing between walls of shimmering color, the sky above dotted with brilliant red maple leaves. And every year I try to capture those moments on camera, with little success. Sure, I get some colorful leaves, but the picture lacks the sound of leaves rustling and woodpeckers chattering and squirrels skittering through the woods, and somehow the colors in the photo lack liveliness and brilliance.

Autumn color is so ephemeral. Right now my house is surrounded by colorful trees, but every gust of wind sends a cascade of yellow and red flying past my windows, and the hillsides along my route are already showing big patches of brown where the tree limbs are bare and foreboding. I love this season while it lasts, but once the leaves start turning there's no stopping them. Which means, I suppose, that we'd better go outside and enjoy them while we can, with or without the camera.

 

Chasing leaves, chasing rhymes

Last night I heard a Serious Poet assert that he doesn't allow his poetry students to use rhyme because when they ought to be attending to assonance and alliteration and diction and rhythm, they focus instead on chasing the rhyme. 

He has a point, but I've never been happier to not be a Serious Poet. We mere doggerelists are free to chase those elusive rhymes wherever they take us, whether they're wafting toward a spider web, skittering across wet pavement, floating through a sludgy sewer, or dancing in the breeze.

Which reminds me: this morning I had the rare pleasure (?) of walking up a campus sidewalk in the rain to the accompaniment of leaf-blowers. Who uses leaf-blowers in the rain? Wet leaves don't waft, skitter, float, or dance, and using a leaf-blower as an overgrown blow-dryer seems an immense waste of energy.

On the other hand, this sounds like just the kind of futile exercise that could promote contemplation. Pop in some earplugs, crank up the noise, and stand there staring into space while absolutely nothing happens--it's the perfect time to chase some rhymes.

Oh the leaf-blowing fellow
sees fall leaves, red and yellow,
as mere  blots, hazards, flaws, and impediments:
"Sure, they look nice, but soon
they'll get mooshed and festoon
all our sidewalks with squishy wet sediment."

Oh the leaf-blowing dude
scatters leaves 'til a cloud
spits great raindrops to drip down his nose.
Leaves won't dance, waft, or skitter
when they're wet. Now he's bitter,
telling all who can hear, "This job blows."

(But alas, no one can hear him over the roar of the leaf-blower.)

Dangling from a cliff, the modifier required rescuing

This morning an e-mail message from our college bookstore transported and transformed me: , "As the official online bookstore of Marietta College, you can be prepared for class with complete confidence."

Somehow, this message does not fill me with confidence about the communication skills of our online bookstore, even if the sentence implies that I am our official online bookstore. But it does offer a real-world example of a type of sentence problem my students seem blind to: the dangling modifier. If a student submitted a draft containing the sentence above, I would attempt to explain the problem in marginal comment that the student might not read at all, or might read but not understand and not ask for help, or might read and try to repair but introduce new problems in the process.

Let's see how that works with a common example: Fumbling in her purse, the keys could not be found.

I comment: Who is fumbling? The keys?

The student who doesn't read or understand my question will leave the sentence alone and then wonder why I'm deducting points from the grade on the final version. The student who reads my comment, on the other hand, may revise the sentence in any number of ways: 

Fumbling in her purse, the keys could not be found by Jane. (Dreadful.)

By Jane's fumbling in her purse, the keys could not be found. (Clunky.)

Jane fumbled in her purse. The keys could not be found. (Choppy.)

Fumbling for her keys, the purse remained empty. (Oh come on.)

Fumbling in her purse, Jane found the keys. (Perfect.) 

I've tried a number of ways of explaining this problem to students, but either my explanations are inadequate or the students are unable to see the error. Like a roommate suffering from dirt-blindness, students look right past the messy bits or they tune me out when I start using words like modifier and noun phrase and subject. 

If we're having a face-to-face conference, I'll ask students to read the sentence out loud or else I'll read it out loud with exaggerated emphasis on the faulty phrasing, but they look baffled. Sounds fine to me, they say. Everyone knows what I mean. You just don't like my style! 

And at that point I just want to give up. I mean, the world is full of dangling modifiers; will it really hurt anything to let this one slide?

Fumbling for an answer, the solution remained elusive.

Mitty and me

With my hands buried deep in the bowels of the printer, scrabbling desperately after the wrinkled scrap of paper jamming up the works, I glance at the clock and see that I need to dash upstairs to teach a class in 30 seconds, which doesn't leave any time to wash my ink-stained fingers.

Today I've been struggling to make things work--clearing a stubborn paper jam from the printer, fumbling with a so-called fillable form that resisted my efforts to fill in the blanks, transcribing a url incorrectly and leading students to the dreaded "404 Error." Somehow, though, all this mechanical incompetence seems appropriate on a day when I'm teaching James Thurber's story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

For Mitty, too, is bedeviled by machinery, so incapable of putting chains on his tires in the winter that he resolves to put his arm in a sling so the garage mechanic won't view him with contempt when he asks for help. The milquetoast Mitty bows to his wife's warnings--he's driving too fast, he ought to be wearing galoshes, he can't be trusted to buy the right brand of puppy biscuit. Even a revolving door whistles at him derisively.

Which is why Mitty takes refuge in a fantasy world in which he exudes authority, knowledge, and competence. The real Mitty can't park his car without assistance, but in his fantasies, he can pilot a "hurtling eight-engine Navy hydroplane" or use a fountain pen to replace a faulty piston in a complicated medical machine, and if the fantasy Mitty, accused of murder, had his right arm in a sling--well, he testifies, "I could killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand."

What would Walter Mitty do with a paper jam or a faulty url? If he struggled to remember to buy overshoes or the right brand of puppy biscuit, how would he handle the many passwords needed to survive modern life? Today as the printer tried to consume my whole hand, I kept waiting for it to say "ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa" and I wondered what kind of fantasy scenario could make my technological struggles appear heroic. 

In the end I determined to face my students with the kind of stoic nonchalance Mitty displays at the end of the story, "Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last," tearing off the blindfold to look squarely at the firing squad.

Oh, shoot--there's still ink on my hands. 

Sarah Vowell among the crazies

During her campus visit yesterday, Sarah Vowell explained that she had once intended to be an Art History professor but her experience as a teaching assistant killed that dream: "Have you spent much time with young people lately? What kind of crazy person does that?"

Color me crazy, but I really enjoyed introducing some of my young people to Sarah Vowell's work earlier this week and to the author herself yesterday. What surprised me was how few of my students were interested in taking advantage of the opportunity, despite the lure of extra-credit points. Only about one-quarter of my comedy students showed up for either the small-group session with the author or the public reading. I have English majors who want to pursue writing careers but somehow can't take the time to seek insight from an actual writer. What kind of crazy person does that?

One of the things Ms. Vowell emphasized during the small-group session with students was the importance of revision, both in writing and in life. "I hate writing, but I love re-writing," she said. Describing her practice of writing multiple drafts, constantly whittling down sentences and tossing out sections that distract from the purpose, she said, "Most of what I do is wasted work." And yet the finished writing is stronger for her willingness to toss worthy passages into the recycle bin.

And she made it clear also that her life is stronger and richer for her willingness to abandon dreams and adapt to unexpected opportunities. By the time she understood that she would not be pursuing a career as an Art History professor, she'd held a variety of other jobs for newspapers and radio stations and knew that she could make a living as a writer. Goals are fine, she told our students, but knowing when to toss out the plan and try something different can lead to surprising rewards.

I hope my students were listening--those who bothered to attend. Because if we crazy profs decide to devote our lives to educating young people, we have to hold on to the hope that it's not mostly wasted work.

Getting flip about slips and trips

A grizzled colleague on the verge of retirement asked me yesterday what I'd learned from our mandatory online Slip, Trip, and Fall training.

"Well," I told him, "I learned that if you must carry a large box on steep, slippery steps in the rain, you should definitely not wear high heels."

He promised to toss out all his Louboutins, but he may have been pulling my leg.

I took the Slip, Trip, and Fall training last weekend because Fall Break seemed like the appropriate time to learn how to break a fall, but that's not what I learned. I'm a longtime expert on slipping, tripping, and falling, but the only helpful advice the online training offered on how to break a fall can be paraphrased thus: If you must carry a large box on slippery steps in the rain while wearing high heels, make sure there's a certified safety officer nearby to help you get up.

Which is not to suggest that the online training was worthless. It informed me, for instance--not once but twice!--that walking around is inherently dangerous, which makes me want to curl up on a comfy sofa with a good book, except our Wellness Program keeps telling us that sitting around is inherently dangerous, leading to obesity and heart disease and joint problems and all kinds of other issues. 

Slip, Trip, and Fall Training also informed me that ice can be slippery, that power cords can be tripping hazards, and that if I need to reach something on a high shelf, I shouldn't stand on a rolling chair. Frankly, ice and power cords can't intimidate me as long as I carry with me everywhere the only tripping hazards I'll ever need--my own two feet. And I've long ago learned that if I need to reach something on a high shelf, the best thing to do is call for a tall person, preferably one who isn't a klutz.

Which reminds me of the mandatory Sexual Harassment Training some years ago that featured a scenario of a middle-aged female professor sitting in her office chair while looking admiringly upward at a hunky male student retrieving something from a high shelf. "I'm just admiring the view," she said, and the lesson here is: if you must rely on a tall non-klutzy person to retrieve something from a high shelf, try to avoid sexually harassing him in the process.

The funny thing about that particular version of Sexual Harassment Training was that in every scenario, the sexual harasser was--how shall I put this tactfully?--fat. A Person of Size, shall we say. Our Wellness Program may be trying to prevent sexual harassment when it hectors us to get up off your fat butt and get moving, but our Slip, Trip, and Fall training says Not so fast! Walking around is inherently dangerous!

And so I sit here, surrounded by tripping hazards and torn between the need to keep moving and the desire to stay safe, so confused that if I happen to fall flat on my back, I'll probably just lie there and enjoy the view.

Time for the annual cold-building complaint

I wasn't prepared for the cold and wind during my weekend visit with the grandkids, so I did a lot of layering every time we went outside and then, on the way home, I bought a new jacket. 

I wore the new jacket to campus this morning but found it insufficient to protect against the arctic indoor chill. Goodness it's cold in here. I'm wearing fingerless gloves right now because otherwise my hands would be too cold to feel the keys. Who knew that a PhD in literature would qualify me for a job in which I have to dress like Bob Cratchit?

Do I dare turn on my space heater? It's a tough call because we're not supposed to have space heaters in our offices (but everyone does) and if too many people turn on their space heaters, we blow the circuits and lose power entirely. But my neighbor across the hall has left for the day so maybe I'll be safe.   

I'm tempted to just cancel office hours until we get some heat in the building. I mean, I can huddle under a blanket to work in my office, but I don't have enough blankets for everyone else in the building.

On not getting lost in a good book

Bright and early Thursday morning I was all set to hop in the car and drive north for my fall-break visit with the grandkids, but I couldn't leave the house until I learned whether Salman Rushdie had won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. (Spoiler: he didn't.) I was afraid, see, that if Rushdie's win was announced while I was driving, I'd get overcome with emotion and have to pull over.

I don't know anything about Jon Fosse (or I didn't until Thursday) but he seems admirable enough. And I admit that Rushdie has his flaws, but if he had never written anything but Shame, Midnight's Children, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, he would still stand among the literary immortals. I've been trying to think of any other living author who grabs hold of me the way Rushdie does but the list is short. Colson Whitehead. Natasha Trethewey. Ruth Ozeki, sometimes. I'm drawing a blank here.

I had lunch with an old grad-school friend yesterday and had trouble talking about books because nothing I've read recently has been particularly memorable. I read a bunch of Sarah Vowell's books in search of an excerpt to assign to my comedy students in preparation for her campus visit next week (!!!), and while I enjoyed Assassination Vacation and The Wordy Shipmates, they didn't sink their claws deeply into my soul the way Rushdie's writing does. And I'm once again teaching Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain in my Honors Lit class and loving every minute of it, but Frazier's other books have been mostly meh. 

My leisure reading lately has consisted of Harrison Kinney's monumental 1995 biography of James Thurber, which I've read and enjoyed before but I can't recommend it casually because it's 1200 pages long and so heavy it hurts my wrists. Only a die-hard Thurber fan would be willing to endure that kind of pain for a deep dive into the humorist's psyche, but how many die-hard Thurber fans do I encounter on a daily basis? When my comedy class reads "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" next week, I'll be the only person in the room familiar with Thurber's name. In Ohio! That's a travesty.

Maybe I'm the problem. I read a lot of contemporary fiction but I find it increasingly difficult to immerse myself in the plots or care about the characters. No novel published in the past five years has moved me as deeply as All That She Carried by Tiya Miles, a deeply researched work of narrative history. I'm still praising Whitehead's The Nickel Boys to anyone who will listen, but he's published two more books since then that haven't touched the same chord. 

These days when I want to lose myself in a good book, it's almost always an old book, well loved and reliable. I've been feeling a hankering lately to revisit Middlemarch, for instance. Why don't more recent novels have the ability to hold my attention the way George Eliot does, or Jane Austen or Zora Neale Hurston or Salman Rushdie?

I used to be happy to read anything, but not so much anymore. What's changed: the books or me?

 

 

A little too much of just about everything

We've arrived at the season of Too Muchness: too many papers to grade, brussels sprouts to pick, pawpaws to process. I mean, we love pawpaws and appreciate an abundant harvest, but the flesh is so slick and slippery that I kept dropping the knife while peeling them last week to make pawpaw butter.

Too many stinkbugs coming into the house! They're trying to find a warm place to spend the winter, and they keep bopping against the big picture window and getting tangled in my hair. If a cockroach got caught in my hair I'd scream, but I just brush the stinkbugs away and wait for the resident Stinkbug Remover to scoop them up and dump them on a big spider web out on the porch.

Too many meetings! A meeting to discuss a problem directly related to one of my classes has been scheduled at the precise time when I'm teaching that class, which won't work unless someone quickly develops a method for cloning myself. Or wait--maybe I can create an AI version of myself, but would I send the AI to attend the meeting or to teach the class?

Too many special events! On just one day next week, I'll have a visiting scholar speaking to my morning class and Sarah Vowell meeting with my comedy class, followed by a dinner with faculty members and a public reading. For a confirmed introvert, that's a lot of schmoozing in a short span of time.

Too many excuses! Yes, we've had a bunch of viruses swirling around campus, including the stomach bug that knocked me out last Thursday and a particularly nasty strain of strep throat. I've also had students (and colleagues!) dealing with parental illness and the demands of extracurricular activities. The result is a mass of make-up quizzes, all scheduled to accommodate the students' schedules more than mine.

Too many drafts to read and papers to grade, but the good news is that if I use my time wisely today and tomorrow, I can head off to fall break without too much work. Grandkid time! I can never get too much of them.