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.

  

The impending Bibliopocalypse

A dozen times this morning I wanted to stop and take a photo--of colorful leaves reflected in the river, pink stripes in the sky highlighting red and orange trees, light filtering through leaves so golden they seem to glow from within. I keep telling myself I have enough photos of fall leaves but I'd better enjoy them while I can because soon I'll be immersed in a task that will keep me tied to my computer screen for hours on end.

I refer, of course, to the Bibliopocalypse. I have gone on record confessing that I hate annotated bibliographies. They're a pain to teach and a pain to grade and they inspire a host of complaints among students. So much can go wrong: not enough sources, the wrong kinds of sources, inadequate summaries, absent evaluations, every type of format error known to the MLA handbook, and I have to keep an eye open for every possible problem. First I count the listings and determine whether they're in alphabetical order, and then I go through them with a fine-toothed comb, marking problems and offering suggestions. Then there's the rubric, the grade, the comments--a total slog, but if I assign such an onerous task, my feedback had better reflect some serious effort.

If everyone hates annotated bibliographies, why not just ditch the assignment? Because gathering, summarizing, evaluating, and citing an array of sources is a valuable stage in a large research project. In first-year composition courses I might require students to turn in individual source evaluations over the course of a week or two, but for the English majors in my capstone class, they've already submitted a research proposal so now they have to show that they've put in the legwork to locate appropriate sources. If they do a thorough job summarizing and evaluating those sources, they'll be way ahead of the game when they write their drafts next week. And then we'll be off to the races with presentations, revisions, and final papers. There's no turning back now--the rest of the semester is just one big assignment after another.

So I have only 24 hours before the Bibliopocalypse, and I intend to enjoy them. Look at those leaves! But the time I have a minute to spare to look outside again, they'll all be on the ground. 

 

 

The mail must go--somewhere

What I learned this morning when I called our local post office to complain about a missing package:

Thanks to staffing problems, the USPS no longer employs a regular delivery driver for our rural route. Instead, they rely on temporary drivers borrowed from other post offices.

Temporary drivers can't be expected to be familiar with our route, so when they see our mailbox sitting across the street right next to our neighbor's mailbox, they may not be certain which house the mailbox serves.

Our house isn't even visible from the mailbox, so if they deliver our mail to the house nearest our mailbox, they'll get it wrong every time.

Therefore, if the Amazon package-tracking software says our package was delivered "On or near the front porch," it doesn't necessarily mean our front porch.

The temporary delivery driver promises to retrieve the misplaced package and deliver it properly today.

What does our local post office do when they can't find anyone to serve our rural route? Well, the postmaster kindly informed me that often he has to deliver mail along our route after the post office has closed for the day--and if he has to serve other rural routes as well, he may be out past midnight getting the mail delivered. This explains why our mail, which used to arrive reliably by 1 p.m., now often gets delivered long after we've gone to bed.

After this short conversation, I have developed a new appreciation for our local postmaster...but I wish the USPS would find a way to compensate rural delivery people so we could go back to having a postal carrier we know and trust instead of some temp who can't find our house. Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night can stop the mail, but staffing problems can certainly slow it down.

The future awaits, but not very patiently

The future is calling! It's so demanding--just today it wants me to produce a schedule for a January teaching workshop, a list of classes I'd like to teach next year, a plan to help an advisee complete his graduation requirements before May, a final book order for a new class I'm teaching in the spring (and maybe some thoughts toward a syllabus?), and an essay question for Wednesday's exam.

The exam question is easiest: I don't like the essay question I used for this material last time I taught the class, so last Friday I put my students into small groups and asked them to discuss concepts appearing in the readings and write sample essay questions. All the sample questions circled around a tight little cluster of interesting concepts, so I'll knead and twist all the questions together until they form a coherent and compelling prompt.

Other demands from the future won't be solved so simply. Some require me to look to the past: When was the last time we offered a teaching workshop on this particular topic and how many participants did it attract? What classes have I offered for the past few years and how many students enrolled? How has the College previously responded to the particular type of glitch messing up my advisee's schedule? What book did I intend to order when I initially proposed this new class seven years ago, and is it still relevant today? (The future doesn't really care why I am only now able to teach a class that was approved seven years ago, but that's a tale for another time.)

The most complicated demand from the future deals with my teaching schedule for the next academic year, because I have to look forward and backward and even sideways to balance what I want, what my English majors need, what we've offered recently, and what our limited department can reasonably be expected to do without being permitted to replace lost positions. 

I need to fill out my schedule for Fall 2025, Spring 2026, and Fall 2026 (so I can retire in December 2026, hurrah!). I have a list of classes I'd like to teach, but I wonder whether our English majors would benefit by my branching out a bit. Our expert on pre-Civil-War American Literature has not been replaced and probably will not be replaced for quite some time, so this year our English majors are getting no exposure to American literature before the Civil War except the little bit of it we covered in my African American Lit class early in the semester. How long are we expected to continue with no early American literature classes? How will that affect our majors' future prospects? Should I offer to teach the early American Lit survey even though I've never done it before? Should I develop an upper-level course on an early American author (Melville!)? If I teach a class or two outside my area of expertise, which of my regular classes should I sacrifice? 

That's too much to think about right now, but the future is standing outside my office door tapping its foot and demanding some answers. I'm tempted to close the door in its face so I can focus on today's issues--like lunch. Surely the future can wait until after I've eaten? 

Random bullets of bright spots in a bleak week

• Sure, the temperature was hovering just above freezing this morning, but we still have big fluffy yellow sunflowers standing tall outside my building, bright spots in fall days that vary between bright and bleak.

• In my usual parking lot the other day I noticed that every car was either gray or black except my red car and my department chair's blue one. My department does its part to bring a little color to campus, but we can't be expected to carry the ball for everyone.
  

• Our volleyball and football teams are still undefeated, a feat they've never before accomplished in my 24 years here. At some point they'll meet Mount Union, but I prefer not to think about that right now. Besides, maybe this is the year someone will prove that Mount Union is just as fallible as the rest of us.

• And so, apparently, are the Yankees. It is a joy to have my Cleveland Guardians playing October baseball, but they've been struggling against the Yankees, which makes last night's walk-off win so much more exhilarating. I keep playing this video of David Fry's game-winning home run. Makes me happy every time.

• Speaking of struggling, a prof from another college told me about an attempt to cut costs and improve efficiency on her campus: they eliminated all the photocopiers on campus except for one and put one person in charge of doing all the photocopying so that faculty have to send their copy orders to the Copier Czar to be printed out. But what happens when the Copier Czar wants to go on vacation? Faculty received an email telling them no photocopying for two weeks, so plan ahead!

I guess I'm happy that no one has tried to do that here--but I'd better keep the idea under wraps lest someone get inspired. So don't tell anyone, okay? I like my photocopier right where it is.

Combustible

 As I stare at my sandwich, I keep thinking about Jack London's story "To Build a Fire." This poor guy trudging through the Alaskan wilderness in fifty-below weather is going to die if he can't start a fire, but he's dropped his last matches and he can't pick them up with his gloves on-- but if he takes off his gloves, his fingers will freeze and then how will he build a fire? 

I wish I could build a fire in my office, but instead I'm wondering whether I should try to eat my peanut-butter sandwich with my gloves on--and risk getting glove fuzz on my sandwich or peanut butter on my gloves--or take off my gloves to eat so that my fingers get so cold I can't type?

Turn on the space heater and risk blowing the circuit breaker? Leave the space heater off to ensure sufficient electricity to do my work? Every option has its down side.

The bigger question is why I keep having this kind of dilemma. I mean, anyone who knows how to read a weather forecast could have foretold that we would need heat in the building this morning, but no heat is to be found. I've been trying to work with my gloves and coat on and a big shawl wrapped around my shoulders, but hunching under the shawl gives me a sore neck and back while shivering against the cold upsets my stomach and gives me a headache.

Worst of all is the anger. Trying to work in this kind of cold produces a constant simmering anger that threatens to burst out at any moment, so that I'm afraid to interact with students or write emails lest I lash out. If only the anger could produce enough heat to allow me to take off my gloves! But no--the anger just makes me want to cancel classes and go home, or else take early retirement and leave my freezing office behind for good.

Right now, though, I need to figure out how to eat my lunch. I guess I'm thankful that I'm not trudging through the Alaskan wilderness in fifty-below temperatures, but if I don't get this anger under control, I may just spontaneously combust.

Dance party in the sky

My day started very early with a doctor's appointment and blood draw before breakfast plus a flu shot that may have contributed to the overwhelming desire to sleep that hit me by midafternoon, but by that time I'd spent three hours driving north to meet my old grad school friend for lunch and a refreshing chat and then driven another 40 minutes to the home of my daughter and son-in-law and, of course, the grandkids, who read to me and played their piano pieces and demonstrated their progress in eating with chopsticks, so by the time the sky got dark enough to make the Aurora Borealis visible in northern Ohio I was so tired I was tempted to give it a pass, but the young folks convinced me to join them on a late-night jaunt to a local field where we were able to view the light show without obstructions, and when the middle grandkid said "There's a whole dance party going on in the sky," I had to take it on faith because, sadly, I couldn't see anything except a whole lot of dark sky with a pinkish tinge in certain areas, but fortunately the camera saw more than my aging eyes could see--and even if I couldn't see the dance party up there, I could see the grandkids dancing around in a field in their pajamas and warm coats and hear them marveling over the wonders playing out far overhead, and after the long and winding road I'd traveled to make it to that point, that moment was worth every ounce of effort.

 

Now that's some powerful teaching

I was reading The Last Devil to Die, a Thursday Murder Club mystery by Richard Osman, when I happened upon a passage that made me laugh out loud. It's a little long but worth the effort. Nina, an archeology professor, is meeting with an apathetic student whose name she can't remember when they are interrupted by a hefty Canadian thug named Garth: 

There's one with her now, an identikit boy of around twenty, a first year, certainly. He's called Tom or Sam, or maybe Josh. The boy is wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, despite being born many years after Kurt Cobain died. 

They are discussing an essay he hasn't written. "Roman Art and the Manipulation of Historical Memory."

"Did you enjoy the reading at least?" Nina asks.

"No," says the boy.

"I see," says Nina. "Anything else to add? Reasons you didn't enjoy it?"

"Just boring," says the boy. "Not my area."

"And yet your course is titled 'Classics, Archeology and Ancient Civilizations'? What would you say your area is?"

"I'm just saying I don't pay nine thousand pounds a year to read a bunch of left-wing academics rewriting Roman history."

"I imagine it's your mum and dad paying the nine thousand pounds, isn't it?"

"Don't privilege-shame me," says Tom or Sam or Josh. "I can report you."

"Mmm," says Nina. "Am I to take it that you're not planning on finishing the essay anytime soon?"

"Read my file," says the boy. "I don't have to do essays."

"OK," says Nina. "What do you imagine you are doing here? What and how do you hope to learn?"

"You learn through experience," says the boy, with the world-weary air of a wise man tired of having to explain things to fools. "You learn from interacting with the real world. Books are for lose--" 

There is a knock at Nina's door, despite the SUPERVISION IN PROGRESS note stuck on it. Nina is about to send the unseen caller away when the door opens, and who should walk in but Garth, the colossal Canadian she had met at Sunday lunch.

"Sorry, this is a private session," says Nina. "Garth, isn't it?"

"I need something," says Garth. "And I need it right now. You're lucky I even knocked."

"I'm teaching," says Nina, then looks at the boy. "Up to a point."

Garth shrugs.

"So you'll have to wait. We're trying to discuss Roman art."

"I don't wait," says Garth. "I get impatient."

"Probably ADHD," says the boy, clearly glad there is now a man in the room.

Garth looks at the boy, as if noticing him for the first time. "You're wearing a Nirvana T-shirt?"

The boy nods, sagely. "Yeah, that's my vibe."

"What's your favorite song?"

"Smells Like--"

"And if you say 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' I will throw you out of that window."

The boy now looks decidedly less happy that there is a man in the room.

"Garth, I'm teaching," says Nina.

"Me too," says Garth.

"Uh....," says the boy.

"Easy question," says Garth. "Nirvana is the fourth-greatest band of all time. Name their best song."

" 'The Man Who...,' uh."

"If you're about to say 'The Man Who Sold the World,' think again," says Garth. "That's a Bowie cover. We can have a different discussion about Bowie when we're through with this."

"Leave him alone, Garth," says Nina. "He's a child. And a child in my care." 

"I'm not a child," says the boy.

"You want me to help or not?" says Nina. "Why don't we call it a day anyway? If you haven't done the essay, there's no point."

"My pleasure," says the boy, getting up as fast as he can.

"Wait, you didn't do your essay?" Garth asks.

"Leave him alone, Garth," says Nina.

"What was it about? The essay?"

"Roman art or something," says the boy.

"And you didn't do it? Couldn't be bothered?"

"I just...didn't...just wasn't...interested."

Garth roars and beats his chest. The boy instinctively ducks toward Nina, and she puts a protective arm around him.

"You weren't interested? In Roman art? You are out of your mind. You're in this beautiful room with this intelligent woman, and you get to talk about Roman art, and you're not interested. You're not interested? You've got three years till you actually have to go and get a job! You know what jobs are like? Terrible. You think you get to discuss Roman art when you've got a job? You think you get to read? What are you interested in?"

"I have a TikTok channel," says the boy.

"Go on," says Garth. "I'm interested in TikTok. I was thinking of dabbling. What do you do?"

"We do....fast-food reviews," says the boy.

"Oh, I like that," says Garth. "Fast-food review. Best burger in Canterbury?"

"The Yak House," says the boy.

"Noted," says Garth. "I'll check you out. Now I need a word with Ms. Mishra here, so I'm going to ask you to skedaddle."

The boy doesn't need asking twice, and shoots for the door. Garth puts out a massive arm to stop him. "Three things before you go though. One: if that essay isn't done next week, I'll kill you. I mean that. Not like 'Your mom will kill you if you don't tidy your room.' Actually kill you. You believe me?"

The boy nods.

"Good, stop wasting this opportunity, brother, I swear. Two, if you tell anyone I threatened you, I will also kill you. OK? Not a word."

"OK," says the boy.

"It better be OK. God cries every time someone lies to a Canadian. And three, the best Nirvana song is 'Sliver' or 'Heart-Shaped Box.' Understand?"

"Understand," agrees the boy.

"I played bass for a band called Mudhoney for two tour shows once. You heard of them?" says Garth.

"I think so," pretends the boy.

"Great, you check them out, and I'll check out your TikToks. Off you go, champ."

Garth ruffles the boy's hair and watches him run out. He turns back to Nina.

"Nice kid."

Since reading this, all I can think about is how different my life would be if I had a Garth in all my classrooms or standing in the corner for every student conference. It wouldn't do much harm to throw anyone out of my office window, but I suspect that Garth rarely has to follow through on his threats.

An awkward interregnum

Here we sit in an odd interregnum: things are going swimmingly in class and out; I'm checking things off my to-do list, planning campus workshops, developing plans to celebrate faculty research and scholarship, enjoying opportunities to make good things happen on campus, but at the same time in the back of my mind sits the constant awareness of the looming Board of Trustees meeting where Important Decisions will be made about how we're going to continue digging ourselves out of our ongoing budgetary mess. 

Earlier in my career I was never really aware of when the Trustees were meeting or what they might be doing; if they made a decision that affected me, I assumed that someone would let me know. But ever since we dug ourselves into this budget apocalypse, every Trustees meeting feels like an existential crisis. Will they cut programs? Cancel positions? Impose further restrictions? Or will they announce some big new donation to fund an initiative that will save all our necks? 

I tell my students that liminal space is a place of possibility--we stand in the threshold of opportunity where anything can happen--but it's also a space of limitation because we can't fully engage with activities on either side when we're stuck in the doorway. But here I sit, uncomfortably aware that something is going to happen in the next couple of weeks, or maybe nothing will happen and we'll scrape along as best we can with the resources available. 

So things are good! Until they're not--and who knows when the door of opportunity might slam shut in our faces?