Misty

Sitting by the shore watching mist make things disappear--big solid things like container ships and islands and long stretches of beach--I feel like the last survivor of a catastrophe or the first person awake at the dawn of creation. The waves roll in, the waves roll out, sand shimmers in the light and then disappears beneath a wall of fog. I hear the waves pounding but can't see them, the ocean suddenly invisible. I've come to watch the water but it hides behind the mist and if I wait a minute longer, I too will disappear. The mist makes everything incorporeal, even me. Perhaps that's why I'm here.

  

Egrets, shmegrets

Yesterday I sent my daughter a text without realizing that Autocorrect had transformed my egrets and ibises to regrets and irises. Regrets? I've had a few.

I regret not packing more turtlenecks because this morning's wind cut right through me. The temperature was in the 50s but gray skies, intermittent drizzle, and sharp wind kept us off the beach and in the car for the first part of the day. We drove through the Wildlife Drive loop at the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, high on my list of favorite places on the planet. The herons, egrets, and waterfowl seem unbothered by the weather, and a massive flock of black-bellied whistling ducks put on a playful show both in and out of the water.

Then we were off to Fort Pulaski, where we visited the monument marking the site where John Wesley first touched American soil. In his journal he mentioned the difficulty of finding a place to shelter from the sharp wind, and we empathized with him on that point. Wesley didn't much care for his time in America, partly because of a disappointment over a woman who did not return his affections, so he went back to England in a sulk and eventually founded Methodism. Regrets? He had a few, but he managed to put them behind him and carry on.

I'm sure the designers of Fort Pulaski regretted their inability to anticipate advances in weaponry. The fort took ten years and a million dollars to build (back when a million dollars meant something), and in 1847 the experts declared the completed fort impregnable. In 1861, Union troops tested new rifled cannons on the fort; thirty hours after the bombardment began, the Confederate troops surrendered. The fort's walls still show ample evidence of that battle. 

By the time we'd finished touring the fort, the rain had stopped, the sun had come out, and the wind had lost its edge. From the balcony of our condo I watched black skimmers strolling on the beach as waves rolled in behind them. Tomorrow we expect warmth and sunshine, but even if we don't get perfect beach weather, I don't regret coming to Tybee Island in the middle of winter. If we look hard enough, we can find shelter from the wind and so many beautiful things to see. 

(But no irises. Wrong time of year for irises.)

Little blue heron

Egrets having a bad hair day

Great blue heron

Coots (cute)

Anhinga

Hundreds of black-bellied whistling ducks in the distance

They're very photogenic up close

Little blue heron

The Wesley monument

At Fort Pulaski

Evidence of bombardment

Kestrel, I think

Nest box with bald eagle

Skimmers and waves, the view from our balcony

This is the forest primeval, or not

The last time we visited Congaree National Park (in 2017), there were maybe two or three cars in the parking lot. I'm sure the cold kept people away back then, but today the parking lot was nearly full and we encountered many people and their dogs on the boardwalk trail. Hurricane Helene knocked some trees onto one part of the boardwalk, which prompted the resident woodsman to say, "If only I'd brought my chainsaw, I could help 'em out." But nevertheless we enjoyed a lovely hike through old-growth forest, admiring the silvery shimmer of the cypress trees with their mossy knees that looked like gnomes telling secrets.

Here's a secret I successfully kept from my husband until yesterday: We're spending the next four days on Tybee Island, Georgia, where our condo looks out on the ocean and egrets and ibises welcomed us to the island. It was cold and rainy when we arrived this evening, but cold rain is more bearable with an ocean view. Tonight we'll relax after the stress of the drive down I-95 (AKA America's holiday parking lot--with bonus accidents and crazy drivers!). Tomorrow we begin exploring the island in earnest. Just for the moment, though, I'm happy to be sitting still in a warm room with dunes and waves outside my door. Time to rest and contemplate the calm of trees.

 

 

A cooperative Christmas

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care, but the care was taken not by me but by my husband, who had brought in masses of plants for the winter and assembled them on the hearth in such a way that I can't even reach the mantel, so when the time came to hang the stockings, the long-armed one had to do it, and now the stockings are hung by the chimney with plants. 

But that's okay. The greenery looks festive, and some of the plants are even draped with blinking Christmas lights. Our small Christmas tree sits in front of the big picture window so that it's possible to admire sparkly bird ornaments hanging on the tree while watching live birds flitter around the birdfeeders outside. 

Meanwhile, my experiment in non-dairy holiday baking continues: I've made one batch of cookies with avocado-based plant butter, another with olive oil-based plant butter, and a third with plain old butter. The taste testing will occur after the rest of the family arrives tomorrow.

And we did a different kind of taste-testing earlier in the week, when we celebrated our anniversary (a day late) by dining at the Bears Den restaurant near Cambridge, Ohio, which features the best locally-grown beef I've ever tasted, and then watched the holiday light display at the Guernsey County Courthouse. We tried to figure out how many times we've made that same trek during the holiday season, but we couldn't work it out. On the previous day we'd made it all the way to suppertime before one of us said, "Wait, isn't this our anniversary?" That's what 42 years will do to you.

He's baking bread today while I run some last-minute errands. I baked the cookies; he hung the stockings. He strung up the lights; I decorated the tree. Together we're trying to make a festive family holiday so that maybe this crazy partnership can last another 42 years.

 

Tis the season to flee folly

At the moment end-of-semester grades were due this morning, I was up to my elbows in dusty file folders. There's something cathartic about tossing out instructions for appliances we no longer own, discarding paperwork from our vain attempt to refinance our home 12 years ago, shredding bank statements from accounts that have long been closed. Out you go, warranty card for a defunct weed-whacker! And here's another! How many weed-whackers have I killed over the years?

Also on the agenda this week: sorting out a book mess in the basement, taking a load of stuff to the Goodwill, getting the spare rooms ready for the grandkids' visit. Not so long ago preparing for such a visit would involve setting up a crib and high chair, but these days the little people don't require so much special equipment: I clean the rooms and make up the beds and they figure out the sleeping arrangements themselves. I miss having babies around, but I appreciate the fact that the kids have their own tastes and preferences and can negotiate the logistics amongst themselves.

Of course it's a little more complicated shopping for people who have devleloped their own tastes. A toddler can be made to don any frilly little bit of frou-frou a grandma picks out, but I wouldn't have wanted my grandma to pick out my clothes when I was 11. Any kid old enough to create her own Amazon wish list deserves to have her tastes respected.

But I think I've done pretty well on the holiday shopping this year. And while I'm learning to respect the young folks' tastes, I'm also trying to bake some of my holiday cookies without butter (because of my daughter's difficulty digesting dairy products). Russian tea cakes with plant butter? It's worth a try. Is it possible to make holiday cut-out cookies without any dairy products in the cookie or frosting? Time to find out.

With one semester over and the next not starting for weeks, this feels like a good time to toss out old follies--warranty cards, paperwork, habits, recipes--and try something entirely new. I may sometimes be set in my ways, but I'm still capable of adapting to new challenges. Why else would I have a pound of avocado butter in my fridge?

(How do you milk and avocado? Inquiring minds want to know!)      

Narcissistically yours

Someone I care about gave me a gift of smelly soapy products:

 

 Very nice! But then I looked more closely at the name of the scent:

 

Narcissist! Is someone trying to send me a message? 

I'm at the point in the semester when I need messages to be clear and unambiguous. I'm so immersed in grading student prose that when I see a sentence I don't quite understand, I assume that the problem is mine instead of the student's. Maybe that guy really intended to assert that a certain poet "secedes in her mission"! Maybe that other student was trying to be clever in stating that the film adaptation "compliments" the original text! And I'm just exhausted enough that when a student says the reason I can't access the assignment is "user error," I wonder what error I'm making that disables the embedded link.

I tried to send a clear message to the post office this morning without going postal, but now they've got me questioning my ability to determine what's real and what's a nefarious plot to drain my bank account. I've written before about our difficulties in getting packages delivered properly, and for a while service has been okay, but this week it took a turn toward the surreal. 

Monday: a flat package containing 8x10 photo prints had "Photos--do not bend" printed on the package, so instead of folding the photos and cramming them into our mailbox or driving up to the house to leave them on the porch, the carrier set the package ON THE GROUND beneath our mailbox, between the road and the drainage ditch, IN THE POURING RAIN. By the time we picked up the mail, the cardboard was falling to pieces (but the photos were in plastic so they survived).

Tuesday: The mail carrier drove up to the house to deliver a package and we took the opportunity to show him what was left of Monday's packaging, and he explained that a substitute carrier had delivered on Monday and should have known better than to deliver a package on the ground in the rain. Won't happen again!

Wednesday: I was driving home late after a final exam, in the dark, in the snow, so exhausted that I wasn't even planning to stop at the mailbox until I saw a large package ON THE GROUND, IN THE SNOW, right next to the road where any fool could run over it, run off with it, or knock it into the drainage ditch. If I hadn't stopped, it would have sat there all night--unless it got stolen or, I don't know, mauled by coyotes.

So this morning I went miles out of my way so I could be at the post office when the doors opened. I was patient. I was calm. I was as pleasant as I could possibly be under the circumstances, but I let them know in no uncertain terms that it is not okay for my grandkids' Christmas gifts to be dumped in a heap by the side of the road.

The postal worker on duty was very apologetic. Substitute carrier, didn't know the area well, won't happen again, blah blah blah.I'll believe it when I see it, but maybe after all this you can understand why I was a little flustered this afternoon when I received a text message explaining that a package could not be delivered and had been returned to the post office and I would need to pay 23 cents to have it redelivered, and the only way I could do that was by inserting a credit-card number.

On the one hand, I am desperate to make sure my remaining packages get delivered properly, and 23 cents seems like a small price to pay; on the other hand, since when has the US Postal Service demanded my credit card number in a text message? And while the site I was directed to looked like an official USPS site, the url was full of odd words that looked like Chinese names.

Of course it's a scam. And of course I'm befuddled enough to be susceptible to such a scam, but a few brain cells that remain intact stopped me before I put in my credit card number and urged me to call the post office again. The message I received there was clear, direct, and unambiguous: Don't submit your credit-card number. It's a scam. Tell your friends and family! 

So that's what I'm doing. You're welcome! 

(A narcissist would have kept that info to herself.)

Get a load of that!

How do you wrap a gift of gravel? I'm not talking about a chunk of coal you might put into a Christmas stocking but a truckload of gravel that got dumped on our driveway yesterday, just in time for my birthday. You can't put a truckload of gravel in a box or tie a bow around it, but it felt like a wonderful gift even if it wasn't intended for my birthday.

Similarly, the students in my African American Lit class didn't intend their final papers as birthday gifts, but reading them made me feel blessed and grateful to have taught such a clever and insightful group of students. And the all-campus meeting didn't resemble a gift but at least it didn't include any more budget cuts. I'll accept that.

Of course there were some real gifts. I enjoyed dinner with family and friends at my favorite local restaurant, and I took home a box of leftovers so I can enjoy some spicy lamb vindaloo for today's lunch--and make my taste buds sing all over again.

And then there are the mugs. A colleague in the biology department has taken up ceramics as a hobby and sells some beautiful things at a local gift shop, where I lusted over them last week. Fortunately I have a husband who can take a hint, because now those mugs are mine. They're not perfect but I love them anyway, which could also be said of my driveway and my students' papers and my campus--and, indeed, my world, which is a mess in so many ways but still feels like a gift intended just for me but one I'm happy to share with so many imperfect people. 

So happy birthday to me and happy holidays to everyone and if you want to enjoy a really gratifying load of gravel, come and see my driveway.

Ugly is in the eye of the beholder

This morning a person I don't know very well asked me whether I was on my way to an ugly sweater contest, and the problem with not knowing this person very well was that I couldn't tell whether he was joking. It's true that I was wearing a festive red sweater with fuzzy snowflakes scattered all over it, a sweater I love because it's warm and cozy and it matches my car (and that last consideration tells you more about me than about the sweater), but I've always felt that this sweater was tastefully restrained, unlike the gaudy, overdecorated, sparkly, jingly sweaters that end up winning those ugly sweater contests. So I didn't know what to say to this guy and I ended up saying nothing, which felt like a repeat of previous conversations in which he had struck me dumb by making statements that either suggested a sense of contempt for me and my work or else were intended as (not very successful) jokes, but the only way for me to understand the intent of these comments would be to get to know this guy better, which would require spending a lot more time in conversation with a person who may (?) consider what I do for a living as less than useless. Or maybe he's just joking! I don't know, am I overthinking this?

I spent way too much time ruminating over this on the way home and then I threw together a batch of cranberry pumpkin bread, which allowed me to take out my frustrations with a wire whisk and also use up leftover Thanksgiving ingredients, which felt virtuous. Now I intend to sit in front of my Christmas tree in my holiday sweater and listen to Christmas music as the cranberry pumpkin bread baking in the oven fills my house with a delicious aroma, and, yes, I'll enjoy the company of the sassy little bird sitting under my tree--after all, it wouldn't dare make troublingly ambiguous comments about my attire because its attire is just as festive as mine. (And not at all ugly.)

 

The "no" normal

That was a great event last week, a colleague told me; It made things feel almost--normal.

And she's right. For a few brief hours on a Friday afternoon, a group of faculty and a few administrators gathered in a big meeting room to nosh, sip, chat, and hear interesting presentations about two colleagues' sabbatical adventures. This was an attempt to revive an earlier tradition: twice each semester, we would meet at some nice off-campus venue for an hour of socializing (with finger foods and an open bar) and an hour of hearing reports about colleagues' research or creative projects. 

That tradition was derailed a few years ago, first by Covid lockdowns and then by budget limitations. This semester, though, one of my committees was tasked with bringing back the practice on a smaller scale: staying on campus, using our campus food service, relying on the Powers That Be to donate a few bottles of wine. But despite the limitations, the event was a success--and, yes, it felt normal, or as normal as we can manage under the circumstances.

Now we're back to wondering how long this new normal will last. We've been in a state of budget crisis for so long that crisis no longer seems like the right word; inadequacy of resources is just part of the furniture, a bad odor in the air we breathe. When some new bad news comes down the pike, as it did this week, we just shrug and carry on as if it's just what we'd expected. But once in a while I see signs that the crisis has reached an unprecedented state; yesterday, for instance, I learned that no one has applied for a sabbatical for the 2025/26 academic year. That's right: not one faculty member is taking advantage of the opportunity for a semester away from teaching at full pay. Not one.

What does this mean? Are we so beaten down under the burden of our straitened circumstances that we just can't manage the energy to apply for a sabbatical, or is staffing so tight that departments don't feel capable of covering classes? Or maybe the faculty who have viable research and creative projects are are the job market or don't want to commit to two more years of teaching after the sabbatical? We have to consider the fact that we've replaced so many tenure lines with contingent faculty that we no longer have many faculty eligible for sabbaticals, but even so--nobody?

Whatever the reasons, this situation makes me really sad. My committee fought to get approval to seek sabbatical applications and the PTBs agreed to fund a limited number of sabbaticals, but somehow, nobody bothered. Maybe we've adjusted so thoroughly to being told what we can't do that the word no has come to feel normal. Maybe we just can't imagine a clear path back to yes.

But for a few brief hours on a Friday afternoon, we enjoyed a room full of yes. How can we nurture that feeling so that the default no no longer feels normal?

Good thing Wile E. Coyote doesn't live here

High on my list of things to be thankful for today is that the coyote that hung out for a while in front of our trailcam in the wee hours of the morning did not come down the hill to raid the smoker where our Thanksgiving turkey was lingering all night long, and neither did the coyote make its presence known to my husband on any of the times when he went out to check on the smoking turkey through the cold, rainy night. Wile E. Coyote would probably have formed a dastardly plan to capture the turkey, but our resident coyotes don't seem to have an account with the Acme Corporation so our turkey just kept smoking.

I am thankful for a husband who loves to smoke meats even if it means going out in the rain at 2 a.m., unaware that he is in the presence of coyotes. I'm thankful for the turkey itself, tender and juicy and full of flavor, the centerpiece of a feast that required group effort and cooperation. I'm thankful for my son's willingness to reach down items from tall cabinets, set a lovely table, and apply his upper-body strength to the rolling pin when my shoulders are sore from cleaning and coughing. And I'm thankful that the coughing is over and I'm healthy enough to do all this cleaning and cooking and even go out for a walk after the rain stopped.

I'm thankful for South African guests who brought custard pie and said my tangy cranberry chutney reminds them of home. I'm sad that the grandkids couldn't be here, but we'll see them at Christmas and I'm thankful that they're enjoying some time with their cousins. I'm thankful for the sound of the dishwasher clearing away a big portion of the mess, and now that everyone else is napping or heading home, I'm thankful for a chance to look through the latest round of trailcam photos and marvel over the coyotes and other wild things that share our land without disrupting our lives. I hope we can do the same for them.

This big buck was caught on the trailcam five or six times over a few weeks.

Several foxes have been moving through by night.

Coyote, hanging out just uphill from the smoker early this morning.

  

Still here, despite everything

Fifteen years ago tomorrow I spent a full eight hours at the cancer center waiting for and then receiving my final chemotherapy treatment. Every year since then I've paused at the beginning of Thanksgiving week to remind myself that the number one thing I'm thankful for is that I'm still here. 

Which is what I wanted to yell the other day when I overheard some colleagues out in the hallway discussing who will move into my office after I retire.  I'm still here! Haven't left yet! Please don't salivate over my goodies before I'm gone!

And today I spent 45 minutes on the phone having a consultation with a retirement specialist associated with my pension plan. Mostly what I learned is how much I still need to learn, but in my defense, I spent years buried under so much medical debt that I assumed that I'd never be able to retire, and I ignored everything related to retirement. But now all the big horrible debts are gone and by this time next year I should have my mortgage paid off, so retirement is looking more and more possible. 

Necessary, too. I realized over the weekend that I messed up on a student's grade because I simply did not see a note she'd attached to an assignment. I've grown accustomed to the fact that my eyes are failing me, but when they start failing my students, it's getting to be time to quit.

But not today. (You hear that, office-coveters? I'm still here!)  Today I'll teach my classes and attend a meeting and wait patiently for the email system to be restored and celebrate the fact that, despite everything, I'm still here! And that's something to be thankful for.

A study in bleeping scarlet

The fire alarm box in the hallway is beeping loudly and showing this error message: Problem in system. I feel that. My personal system isn't beeping but it's making me want to whimper or cry or curl up in a ball: big red welts on my arm scream scratch me, scratch me while my scarlet nose begs for a tissue and my red scratchy throat howls for herbal tea.

Let the record show that I felt fine before the capstone presentations last night but by the time I was halfway home my throat was so sore that I had to call my husband and ask him to put the kettle on so I could have some soothing tea when I got home. My drippy sinuses and sore nose kept me up half the night, and then this morning I woke up with welts all down one arm. No idea why. I'm wearing two layers of long-sleeved sweater just to prevent me from scratching.

The capstone presentations are not to blame. They were great--my students made me proud--but probably the stress involved in making the whole thing happen opened the door to whatever virus happens to be going around. Or maybe it's an allergy attack. Maybe I'm allergic to sudden snow squalls, multiple late meetings, and driving home on wet roads in the pitch dark. Any one of those things could make me want to proclaim Problem in system! 

My colleague and I reported the fire alarm problem and now someone has come over to make that bleeping beeping stop. No more problem in system--or at least no more beeps. So easy: press the right button and all is well. If only my own system could be silenced so speedily.

 

 

Derailed by a one-track mind

I'll be glad when my senior capstone students are done with their presentations because I'm tired of thinking about them and I'm pretty sure everyone close to me is tired of hearing about them. We are as prepared as we'll ever be and there's really nothing more I can do, but despite all my attempts to think about something else--anything!--the impending presentations keep hijacking my thoughts.

For instance: I'm driving past my neighbor's new sheep pasture, admiring the adorable little sheep and the big fluffy white dog that seems so attentive to the needs of the sheep, and suddenly I'm wishing I had a sheepdog to herd my capstone students' PowerPoints into the inbox.

Or I get to campus a few minutes later than usual and can't find a spot in my usual parking lot so I park near the President's house, and as I walk amongst the beautiful historic homes and lovely fall leaves, my thoughts immediately go to how dark that stretch of road will be at the end of the day when I'll be walking out there after my capstone students' presentations, eek!

Or I'm reading the agenda for this afternoon's Faculty Council meeting and I see a vague reference to "brief/initial discussions of miscellaneous topics," and instead of chuckling heartily I wonder when I'll once again be able to engage in discussions of miscellaneous topics instead of obsessing constantly about my capstone students' presentations.  

I envy the volleyball player who did her presentation on Monday because now she can stop thinking about her capstone presentation and instead focus on other things, like playing in the NCAA volleyball tournament for the first time in Marietta College's history, but I can't even think about buying tickets to the opening game until after I get through my capstone students'  presentations.

For the benefit of all, I probably ought to just hide out in my office until this whole ordeal is over, because there's nothing better than being done with my capstone students' presentations.

 

 

An epidemic of pre-presentation nerves

A colleague told me the other day that before his dissertation defense, he practiced his presentation at least four times every day--for WEEKS. "I could present it for you right now if you asked me to," he said and I believe him, but we had other things to do at the time, like discussing how we're preparing our capstone students for their final presentations.

This is a big deal, and I don't know who is more nervous--me or my students. Well, okay, they're probably more nervous, or we're nervous in different ways. I'm nervous about making sure the technology works, remembering to take extra batteries for the microphone and clicker, making enough copies of the rating sheets for all the faculty members present, walking up on the stage to introduce students without tripping on the steps, and dealing with whatever unexpected issues arise in the course of the presentations.

Based on the questions my students have been asking me, they're nervous about other things. What if they pass out on the stage? (Remember to breathe! Eat! Hydrate!) What if they forget all their important points? (Note cards! Manuscripts! Practice practice practice!) What if the presence of so many profs, classmates, and family members makes them so flustered they drop their note cards or throw up all over the people sitting in the front row? (We'll be there to help! We're all rooting for you!)

In fact the most difficult task for me right now is convincing my students that we are rooting for them. This presentation is the culmination of their work in the English major, so every prof in the department feels invested in their success. The students worry that we'll be sitting out there judging them, ready to tear them to pieces on the rating sheets, eager to throw them questions that will knock them down a peg, when really we want to see them shine. You'll never have a more supportive audience, I tell them, but my students seem to see us as ravening lions waiting to pounce.

My primary task, then, in this last week before their presentations is to calm them down--but not so much that they fail to prepare properly. Today I'll tell them about my colleague who practiced his dissertation defense four times every day for weeks, and then I'll pause for a moment and add, "Only four times a day. Is that enough?"

A little liminal

When people ask whether I get tired of my long drive to work and back I generally tell them No--the drive along the river provides a nice transition between home and the rest of the world. The bridge over our creek is an important part of that transition, the last piece of home before I venture forth or the last hurdle before I'm truly home, and because of this I like to pause a moment in my comings-and-goings, to open the windows and fill my ears with the sounds of running water and my eyes with the beauty around me. Sometimes I see birds or deer or a big fat groundhog but more often it's just trees and water. Today the big sycamore that leans across the creek seemed to glow in the early-morning fog, pointing toward the road that would take me to work, but I didn't want to go--I wanted to stay there all day and listen for the words under the water that Norman Maclean writes about in A River Runs through It. Nevertheless I obeyed the call of duty and drove away, carrying the sound of the creek and the glow of the sycamore with me like a benediction.

 

Stayin' alive

Last week one of my senior capstone students immersed in the demands of producing an annotated bibliography asked me, "Has anyone ever died from this process?" But in the middle of drafting week another student said, "I'm really excited about writing this paper." I've just read his draft and he has a right to be excited. It's neither complete nor perfect, but it's full of interesting insights and analysis--and well written, too.

You will survive this, I keep telling my capstone students, and so far they haven't disappointed me. The annotated bibliography was a big hurdle, but it didn't kill anyone. Now they can focus on synthesizing all those ideas into a major analytical essay and a public presentation. We looked at drafts yesterday and we'll practice presentations next week in preparation for public presentations the following week. Time seems to accelerate at this point in the semester, but after the public presentations we can all take a deep breath and exercise some thankfulness. 

At this point the students are doing all the hard work. I'm reading long drafts, yes, and offering detailed suggestions, and I've finally organized a presentation schedule that works for everyone, including the volleyball player who suddenly discovered that the team's unprecedented unbeaten season will earn an invitation to the NCAA tournament, which conflicts with the original capstone presentation schedule. 

First, though, I'll spend this weekend working my way through nine drafts, all but one comprising over 2000 words. Some will require a frustrating amount of detailed commentary and attention, but I'm already excited to see that we've reached this point in the project with something worthwhile to show for all our work. The senior capstone project may be daunting but it hasn't killed anyone yet, and I for one hope to maintain that record.

Writing "Life Writing" into existence

What's Life Writing they keep asking, and I keep telling them It's writing...about life. The course hasn't been offered for a few years so I guess it's not too surprising that our students don't have a clue what might distinguish Life Writing from other types of writing, but next semester I'll be guiding a dozen or more students through a class I've never taught before so it's about time to figure out what it might be.

I ought to know: I designed and proposed the course more than a decade ago, but then we hired a writing specialist who needed some upper-level classes to fill out his schedule so he took over the class before I ever had a chance to teach it. We were in a different place as an institution back then and I had some different interests, so the sample syllabus I had to create for the course proposal isn't proving too helpful in our current context. But in the lead-up to this bizarre election season I needed to distract my mind with a compelling project, so instead of doom-scrolling I've been finding readings and constructing writing assignments and developing a structure for the Life Writing course I'll teach next semester.

The course will begin with at the center--the individual self--and move slowly outward. Students will read short memoirs and write their own, and then they will read and write about how the self gets entangled (with activities, fields of study, or other people). Then we'll move to reading and writing the life of another person, focusing on unsung heroes or hidden figures. Then we'll bring together the perspectives of several people in an oral history project that I hope will illuminate pivotal points in the students' understanding of the wider world.

We'll read short works by some fabulous authors--Leslie Jamison! Susan Orlean! Drew Lanham!--and one book, Salman Rushdie's Knife, which illustrates the stages of writing about lives from the individual self to the entangled self to the wider world. 

And then I have to tackle the Honors element. Just under half of the students will be taking the course as part of the Honors program, which means they'll do all the work the other students do plus an activity that presents an extra challenge. I'm thinking of asking them to transform one of their pieces into a multimedia essay incorporating visuals, music, or video to enhance the words, or maybe I'll ask them to work in small groups to produce a podcast. I would love to give them a group project: setting up a storytelling booth on campus to collect oral histories of our own part of the world. What kinds of permissions would I have to get to make that happen? Would the Mass Media department share their recording equipment and expertise with my students? Looks like I've got some work to do to determine feasibility.

But hey: having a challenging project is just the ticket for maintaining sanity when the world seems to be careening toward catastrophe, so let's put words on the page and write some lives.

Step of faith

Some time ago I was sitting in a church sanctuary almost Shaker in its simplicity, with elegant lines and proportions, understated decorations, a lofty ceiling and big glass windows opening to a lush, green swath of woods; the church was hosting an art show at the time, so beautiful things were hanging on all the walls and my daughter's choir filled the space with music to exalt the soul. Sitting in that pew surrounded by my family and by so much beauty, I thought, If I could worship in this kind of environment every Sunday, I would be a happier person. 

But of course that's ridiculous. Even if I lived close enough to attend that church, it wouldn't host an art show every Sunday, nor would my daughter's choir perform there more than once a year. And besides, I never experienced their usual mode of worship, heard a sermon, or fellowshiped with the congregants. The church appealed on an aesthetic level, but when it comes to matters of the spirit, beauty isn't everything.

If I could design the ideal church, I would start with that simple but elegant design and develop a liturgy that would appeal to the whole person--heart, soul, mind, and body. But even if I included all the things I love about a worship service (great music, thought-provoking sermons, meaningful liturgy) and left out the things that leave me cold (lackluster singing, music blasting so loudly it hurts my eardrums, gaudy stained glass), I still couldn't guarantee that the church would attract the one thing that makes a church a church: the community of people who care about each other. My ideal of elegant simplicity would leave others cold--I mean, lots of people like stained glass! The thought-provoking sermon that sparks new insight in my mind might strike others as too heady or uninspiring. And the music that soothes my soul may not appeal to someone whose musical tastes start and end with Elvis.

So if the perfect church does not exist, I'll have to put up with the imperfect church--and the imperfect church will have to put up with me. But that can be a problem too. Like many pastor's wives, I tend to get buttonholed as an appendage. I am the pastor's wife: that's all anyone seems to want to know about me, and when I reveal other aspects of my being, I am met with befuddled looks or dismissive comments, like the time I told a parishioner that I teach writing and literature and he said "Why would anyone need to learn that these days?" 

So last week when I heard the poet Christian Wiman talk about his struggles with faith and art (on the podcast No Small Endeavor, which I highly recommend), it resonated deeply, especially this passage:

I do feel like faith is the most important thing in my life, but I've never found a form that is satisfying to me, or in which, to put it more bluntly, more sharply, a form in which I don't feel that my own experience is being violated.

And so that's a constant wrestle for me because I'm desperate for some community in which to believe. And at various times in my life I've had that, and I do believe in it very much. And I respect the institution of the church. I respect my students who are going into these jobs. Many of my students are becoming ministers, and there's something heroic in that at this particular cultural moment.

But for myself, I have always felt outside of the institution, and I don't consider myself a Catholic or a Protestant. I do consider myself a Christian, but I'm pretty frustrated with the ways that we try to tame God, and try to contain God in ways that make the experience palatable, gentle, socially sort of lubricating.

....

I mean, I've been to so many different churches and always something happens that, that I just disagree with so profoundly or often there's a mismatch between the urgency with which I feel in my own interior communion with, and wrestling with God, and the banality of the spaces in which this is supposedly being expressed.

And so, I'm often bored out of my skull at church, you know, and if I'm not bored, I'm often I just disagree so profoundly with what's being said. And I also feel that most churches don't allow for a space for how wild God could be, you know? I mean, Annie Dillard has that famous paragraph about saying that people should be wearing crash helmets in church, and, you know, lashing themselves to the pews.

I think this is a typical problem with an artist, because if you feel, you know, most of my sense of faith comes from my experience of art. I mean that is an intense engagement with God and with reality and then to step into somewhere where you're just sort of having coffee hour.

The notion of trying to tame God into a palatable form--I feel that deeply. The feeling that I have to put big parts of myself into a box before I enter into the sanctuary--been there, done that. The banal spaces and small-minded ideas squelching the wild unpredictability of spiritual experience--it's a problem.

Which is one reason why yesterday I attended a service at a church where I was pretty sure I wouldn't know anyone and therefore no one would know me or judge me or treat me like an appendage. I wanted to have a spiritual experience unencumbered by anyone else's expectations, and you know what? I did. It wasn't the perfect church--the ceiling was low, the altar cloths were faded, and I didn't entirely understand the liturgy--but I had an experience of the wildness of God and I left feeling refreshed and happy. Which, right now, is probably enough.

An appointment with autumn

Last week when one of the Powers That Be tried to schedule a meeting with me for this morning, I begged off by saying "I have an appointment that will keep me off campus all morning." I did not feel the need to mention that my appointment was with a great blue heron.

Of course at the time I had no idea that I'd be meeting with a heron this morning. I did have an appointment--in Athens at a car dealership to get a new rear window on my car so I can start using my rear-window defogger. I've owned that car for just over a year, but early last fall I started seeing news reports about people whose rear windows shattered as soon as they turned on the rear-window defogger, so I decided to avoid using the defogger and wait for a recall notice, which arrived in due course over the summer. First I had trouble scheduling an appointment and then I had to reschedule because of a conflict and I was determined to get that window replaced before the mornings get any frostier, regardless of the needs of the PTBs.

So I've had the car appointment on my schedule for weeks but just this week the gorgeous fall foliage inspired me to add a stop to my Athens itinerary. I left in the dark and arrived at the shallow upper end of Strouds Run Lake in the soft early-morning light, which made the world look like a watercolor painting, and right in front of the parking area stood a great blue heron.

I saw ducks, too, and a few geese and sandpipers and even a lone red-winged blackbird that should have left for a warm winter home already, and I saw the rising sun paint the sky pink and the leaves yellow, orange, and red. For a while there were no sounds beyond the ducks' quiet squawks and the wind rustling through the leaves, so I stood there and drank in the beauty without a thought for what I might be missing on campus.

I'll pay for it, of course--I'll have to scramble to get through all those annotated bibliographies and deal with whatever complications arise from my dereliction of duty, but I came home with a new rear window with functioning defogger, a host of photos, and a sense of calm that can only come from looking away, if only temporarily, from the daily grind. 

I don't know how long I watched that heron before it finally flew off into the distance. My spirit took flight with the bird, but my body sighed and drove away toward duty.