From stunned to fun

Second day of the new semester and I've already had somebody crying in my office. In fact, I've had two people crying in my office, and one of them was me. It wasn't full-blown weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth--just a profound sadness over the loss of colleagues and the difficulty of the budget situation we're facing here.

But there were no tears in my American Lit Survey class this morning. When I call roll on the first day I usually ask students to share the most interesting thing they read over winter break, but I did not want to face rows of students telling me I didn't read anything. Instead, I asked them to bring some color into this gray day--Share something colorful, glittery, or cheerful you encountered over break. They talked about taking small children to see Christmas lights, visiting Manhattan or Florida or Puerto Rico, wearing glittery party hats on New Year's Eve, and even eating grapes under the dining table during a family party.

In the absence of grapes and glittery hats, this morning I offered my crying colleague a book I've been recommending to lots of people trying to maintain hope in the midst of various types of losses: The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl, a series of pithy seasonal meditations sparked by the author's backyard. The first chapter instructs readers, "Wherever You Are, Stop What You're Doing." "Stop and look," she says, and then "Stop and ponder....Stop and listen....Stop and consider," and at each stop she shows us something ordinary in her backyard, a spot of color or life in disorderly surroundings. "The world lies before you, a lavish garden," she says; "However hobbled by waste, however fouled by graft and tainted by deception, it will always take your breath away." That's what The Comfort of Crows did for me, over and over and over again.

After class I talked to another colleague who is angry and distressed by local conditions as well as the larger cultural disdain for education, but after we blew off some steam, she said her plan for this semester is to have fun--inside and outside her classes. I agree. There's plenty of reason to weep and plenty of opportunity for hard work, but despite it all, we're doing what we love while we can and we fully intend to enjoy it, glittery hats or not.