A snippet of seaside conversation:
When I retire, I'd like to live like a cormorant--dive into the water to grab a fish, then perch on a pole, spread my wings to dry, and stare at the water for hours on end.
But why not a pelican? They sit on poles too.
Pelicans are beggars. Cormorants don't beg.
But...they're ugly.
Ugly? Nah. Cormorants are dignified. Besides, who cares what you look like if you can sit on a pole and watch the water all day?
After twelve hours on the road, we arrived at a rented condo on Cedar Key in the Gulf Coast of Florida and saw very little. At twilight under a gray sky, we could see the Gulf of Mexico just beyond our balcony, a fishing pier just off to the left, and an expanse of island fading into the gloom. We took a walk out on the pier, and by the time we'd turned back around, the whole area was socked in with thick fog. But at one point we looked up and saw, gliding across the gray sky, a flock of ibises. That's when I knew we weren't in Kansas anymore, or Ohio either. Where a whole flock of ibises can fly overhead, anything is possible.
This morning's sun revealed more wonders. At high tide the water laps on rocks just a few yards from our balcony, but this morning's low tide revealed a broad stretch of mud flats, which attracted birds that dabbled in the mud for breakfast. Just a few feet away a pair of white ibises fought over a morsel of something dug up from the mud, while nearby a host of other birds searched for sustenance--great egrets and little egrets, a tricolored heron and a little blue heron, cormorants and gulls and terns and pelicans, so many pelicans swooping just inches above the still water and then diving for a tasty treat.
We've spent a lot of time today sitting on the balcony looking at the water, or, alternately, sitting on the beach looking at the water, much more relaxing than the interstate traffic we spent so much time looking at yesterday. This morning we hiked through Florida scrubland looking for missing trail markers but finally found our way back, and this evening we'll walk a few blocks to a restaurant in search of local clams--and we won't even have to dabble in the mud to find them.
On our short drive to the scrubland hike, we passed a spot where roseate spoonbills were dabbling in the water alongside the road, but there was no good place to pull off and watch them. But I've researched places where roseate spoonbills gather and I'm determined to see some up close in the next couple of days. If weather permits, we'll rent a kayak and paddle out to Atsena Otie Island, where wildlife abounds in the midst of the ruins of a ghost town and pencil factory. (Cedar Key was named for the cedars that grew here abundantly before they were transformed into pencils.)
At some point I'll be able to edit the many photos I've been taking with my cranky camera, but meanwhile I'll include just a few views from our balcony before the fog rolls in again to draw a curtain over the beauties of Cedar Key.
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| The view from our balcony at low tide. |
I didn't take any photos at the Trans-Siberian Orchestra performance in Cleveland yesterday afternoon, for several reasons. First, we were sitting up in the nosebleed section, so if I'd fumbled and dropped my phone, it would have gone plunging so far down that I surely wouldn't have seen it again--and I'm enough of a klutz to do that. Second, plenty of more sure-fingered people in our family party were taking photos and videos, and they all have nicer phones than mine. But mostly I was so caught up in the elaborate spectacle that I couldn't have looked away long enough to press the shutter button.
Wow what a show. I don't believe I stopped smiling once for two and a half hours, except when I felt moved to let out a joyful whoop. Joy, in fact, was the overwhelming feeling of the event, accompanied by wonder and awe evoked by both the music and the effects. Up in the cheap seats we had a great view of the stage from above, and my son the percussionist was especially impressed by the drummer's ability to play complicated beats while his platform was being lifted into the air or surrounded by lasers or fireworks or, occasionally, actual fire. Lasers! Flashing lights! A giant snow globe with a woman inside, singing her heart out! It was like nothing I've ever seen before.
Or heard, for that matter. We've listened to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's holiday music for years, but even familiar tunes have a fuller, fresher sound in person. And when the performers are playing while dashing around the stage or being raised aloft on a column or surrounded by fireworks, you just can't stop the energy. In fact, all the performers threw so much energy into the afternoon show that I wondered if they'd have anything left for the evening crowd.
And they infused us with energy too. All evening the grandkids were humming and singing, and at bedtime I had trouble calming my brain down enough to sleep. I kept closing my eyes and seeing the colors, hearing the music, feeling the joy. A gift of energy--what a great start to this busy holiday weekend.
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| (My son took these photos.) |
Here we all are after the show--so many smiles!
I had no intention of coming to campus at all this week but here I am, two days in a row, clattering away at the computer in my office instead of baking festive holiday cookies at home. And why? Well, I can't say, exactly, because yesterday at our semi-annual the sky is falling meeting outlining new procedures for spending departmental funds (in a nutshell: don't!), those in attendance were reminded of the need to be mindful of the narrative we craft, but my mind is still so befuddled by the convoluted procedures I will now have to follow as a department chair that I'm in no fit state to be mindful of crafty narratives. Instead, I will keep silent on the substance of yesterday's meeting except to wonder when we can move away from the word crisis to describe a situation that has been going on so long that it feels like the way things have always worked. I mean, the first time you get hit over the head with a sledgehammer might feel like an unprecedented outrage, but by the 50th time, it's just another Tuesday.
But I am happy to comment on the other reason I have to be on campus today, which springs from the existence in the world of academics who somehow fail to understand the academic calendar. Raise your hand if you want to be handed an essential task on Dec. 19 and told that you must complete it by January 4! I didn't raise my hand for that but nevertheless here I am wondering why editors at academic journals can sometimes be so clueless about how academics plan their schedules and the existence, for instance, of the winter holidays.
Yesterday, when I first received the final version of an article due for publication over the winter, I thought I would just run through it and correct any little infelicities that might have crept in over time, but then I noticed that a quote had been mangled and realized that I was going to have to check every quote in the essay for accuracy, which I couldn't do at home because the necessary books are in my office, except for the one that, fortunately, I was able to locate in our library. And then on closer inspection I found that somewhere along the line other errors have been introduced--and I know they're not my errors because they don't exist in the version I submitted to the journal, such as a misspelling of an author's name and the presence of the word oftentimes, which I never use, in writing or speaking, except to ask students to change it to often.
So here I am clicketing away at the keyboard, being mindful of the need to craft narratives while sledgehammers periodically pound on my back. Not too often--but never oftentimes.
So much to celebrate today! No more grading, no need to go to campus, cookie dough in the fridge ready to be rolled out, piles of gifts all wrapped up to take to the grandkids later in the week, a functioning television at our house for the first time in several years plus a new tech setup that allows us to stream video here for the first time ever. (Ah, the joys of country life!)
And let's not forget that today is our anniversary. Forty-one years! Once upon a time we were shiny young things in a cranky old car, but now we're the ones having trouble getting moving in the morning. But we can still get our engines going when we need to! That's something to celebrate.
Everything's in place for an early-morning final exam: Students in their seats, muffins in a box accessible to all (because it's a long exam and I don't want anyone to faint from skipping breakfast), first half of the exam in students' hands, essay question and blue books on the desk up front. Students have to complete the first half of the exam and turn it in before receiving the essay question, because they're allowed to use books and notes on the essay question but not on the short-answer questions. I've used this system many times before and in fact I'm using it in two classes this week, which is where the problem arises.
The first student to finish the short-answer questions turns in her work and picks up the essay question and blue book, but then she sits at her desk looking puzzled and scribbling a few tentative notes. The second student who picks up the essay question, though, doesn't even make it back to her seat. "I think you gave us the wrong question," she says.
She's right: I gave my Honors Lit students the question intended for my Comedy class. I had to run down to my office and retrieve the correct question.
What amazes me most about this incident is that the first student was actually trying to answer the question--about literary works that the class had not read. These are pretty good students, but I wouldn't expect any of them to make much headway in analyzing stories they've never read or responding to theoretical concepts we've never discussed. I'm impressed that one student tried, but I'm sorry that she felt she had to.
Today as I've been making my way through that massive pile of papers to grade, I keep being tempted to insert snarky comments like If you must include a dictionary definition, make sure you spell the name of the dictionary correctly, but then I remember that I'm the one who gave my students the wrong exam. We all make mistakes! Sometimes the best response to a little oops is to forgive ourselves and move on.
On a pitch-dark morning I drove around a hairpin turn and found my route blocked by a fallen tree—one of the drawbacks of living in the woods. I don't carry a chainsaw in my car but fortunately I was able to squeeze around the far edge where the trunk had shattered, although I wouldn't have made it if my car had been two inches wider. No way a school bus is getting past that tree. As soon as I got into an area with cell-phone coverage, I called my husband to warn him. His car is a little bigger than mine—but he's a genius with a chainsaw.
I wish I had a chainsaw to cut through some of the obstacles blocking my path this week. Next week looks like freedom: No more grading! Time for shopping! Fun with the grandkids! Baking cookies! Taking the whole family to hear the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in concert! Followed, of course, by a quick trip to a sunny place! Just thinking about it exhausts my store of exclamation points.
But standing between me and all that freedom is a pile of research papers begging to be graded, plus three exams I need to proctor and then grade (and if anyone thinks proctoring a two-and-a-half-hour exam is easy, let them come and give it a try—I'd welcome the break).
Meanwhile, an administrative roadblock is thwarting my ability to complete an important project. I wake up in the wee hours in a panic about what will happen if it doesn't get done before winter break, but all my attempts to remove the obstacle or drive around it have proven futile. If I didn't have to spend five hours proctoring exams today, I'd go camp out on a certain administrator's doorstep until the roadblock got removed.
Maybe it's time to equip all our administrators with chainsaws. Professors too. How else can I cut through that big ol' pile o' papers?
Sigh. Better do some grading.
I had dinner last night under the watchful eyes of a caribou whom I decided to call Clint, a polite dinner companion though he didn't contribute much to the conversation. Some people might be put off by dining in the presence of taxidermied animals--all those beady little eyes glaring out from the heads of deer, elk, bison, and caribou, plus the bears' menacing teeth and claws--but animal heads hanging on the wall don't disturb my dinner. After all, I have eaten fried alligator nuggets in the presence of live alligators. Tastes like chicken.
The steaks we ate at the Bear's Den last night did not taste at all like chicken, fortunately. It's a farm-to-table restaurant located 40 minutes away in the middle of nowhere, which makes sense because getting great grass-fed beef from farm to table is easier if the table remains close to the farm. Delicious local beef, interesting vegetables, spectacular desserts--plus close proximity to the Guernsey County Courthouse in Cambridge, Ohio, where the holiday light-and-music show makes me smile right down to my toes.
In between the teaching and student conferences and grading, this has been a week full of smiles. At the local performance of Handel's Messiah Sunday night, I sat with the family of a retired colleague who sang the bass solos with gusto despite having undergone a major organ transplant not so long ago, and on Wednesday evening I watched some very talented students perform a festive and fun holiday concert.
Now, though, it's back to work: piles of papers to grade, followed by piles of final exams to decipher. This afternoon I'll hold my last class meeting of the semester, a study session to prepare for the final exam, and then it's back to grading grading grading. But at least I've had some great music, delicious food, and colorful lights this week to prepare me for the long slog ahead. I may be worn out, but at least I haven't been taxidermied and hung on the wall--and as long as I stay one step ahead of Clint the Caribou, I'm doing okay.
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| Too bad you can't hear the music. |
Welcome to Crunch Time, when students frantically try to complete end-of-semester assignments while their professors try to respond calmly to requests for extensions and exemptions and just one more round of feedback on drafts, except that some students don't seem to have written drafts for a papers due two days from now, which is alarming in itself, but then the types of feedback I'm asked to provide are alarming in a different way.
Just this week I have been called upon to remind students that Facebook did not exist in 1870, that an event can not be influenced by events occurring decades later, that summary is not the same as analysis (again! and again!), that reading a book review is not the same as reading the book, and that some random dude's online literary ramblings don't necessarily count as an academic source just because he has a college degree.
Once again I have had to repeatedly explain that online citation engines are only as good as the information we feed them, and if we can't figure out the difference between and author and a translator or between the title of the article and the name of the journal, we're going to get a mess, and then it won't do any good to say But that's what the citation engine said because once it appears in a student's paper, I treat it as the student's work.
With all these competing demands swirling around my inbox, it's no wonder I'm having trouble sleeping. I wake up in the wee hours with pain in my shoulder or hip and feel myself falling gently back toward snooze-land until annoying questions start popping up: Did I spend enough time on information literacy with my first-year writers? Do I need to revise that prompt to state even more explicitly what kinds of sources are appropriate, or am I being too directive already? Too much hand-holding or not enough? Eventually I give up trying to get back to sleep and then hours later I'm sitting in my office wondering why I can't put together a coherent sentence.
But at least the incoherent sentences I'm producing are my own. No AI or plagiarism at work in this space and no paraphrasing of online summaries, cited or otherwise. All errors and infelicities are entirely original--an ill-favored thing but mine own, and perhaps just enough to carry me through the Crunch.
It all happened on the first of December:
I collected the last set of student drafts for the fall semester, many of which were pretty good so I shouldn't complain, but after responding to all of them I'm retiring the sentence suggesting that they please go back and read the prompt again. Until next semester, anyway. I've run out of ways to re-explain the assignment and now it's up to them to see what they can do with it.
I browbeat my classes into completing their end-of-semester course feedback surveys, driving the response rate above 50 percent for the first time in ages. I don't know how useful their feedback will be since I may not be teaching any of these classes again before I retire, but we are under orders from the Provost's office to increase response rates and so I comply. Will students who feel forced to respond be more cranky in their comments? I guess I'll find out when I get a chance to read them in January. (Not that it matters. I mean, literally nothing is at stake.)
I finished off a very long day by attending a musical play written by a talented student and produced entirely by students. It was great to see so much energy up on stage, and the music was engaging. My favorite bit involved a clueless character saying he was "speaking semaphorically," and when another character asked whether he meant "metaphorically," he paused and said, "No?"
But sandwiched between the play and all the drafts and classes was a celebration of four faculty members who have published books this semester. The books have been in process for varying amounts of time and it's just a coincidence that they all came out so recently, but at a small college like ours, having one faculty member publish a book would be a pretty big deal. Four at once is unheard of. So the Provost's office feted us in the library with cake and coffee (and hot cocoa!), and we mingled and chatted and celebrated success among a congenial group of colleagues and family members. We haven't had much occasion for public celebration in the past few years, so any opportunity to cheer each other on feels terrific.
If so much cheer can happen on the first day of December, what other joys might the season provide?
