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?