Faithfully through the fog

In times of transition, fog rules my world. 

All along my commute the creeks and rivers remain mostly frozen, and on wet, warming days like today, the fog rising from the river turns everything gray. But it's not a uniform gray; I stop along my creek and see meltwater flowing atop ice, water so silvery-gray and smooth that it looks like spreading mercury.

It's not easy to drive in this befogged world where my car's headlights simply reflect back into my own eyes. I set out to do my job but I have to feel my way carefully along the highway, hoping that the big blank fogbank doesn't hold a semi barrelling straight at me. Moving forward feels like an act of faith, but if the alternative is staying home with my head under the covers, I guess I'd better get on the road. 

And no, I'm not just talking about the weather here--but I'm not quite ready to write about the other elements fogging my mind.

The view from my bridge.

Who can resist the awe of the Oracle?

"AI is for the Ignorant" is the intriguing headline today over at Curmudgucation, where Peter Greene links to a new study suggesting that "people with lower AI literacy are more likely to perceive AI as magical and experience feelings of awe in the face of AI's execution of tasks that seem to require uniquely human attributes." So the less we understand about how Artificial Intelligence works, the more likely we are to treat the machine as an oracle, a magic wand, the answer to all our ills.

This conclusion should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, but it reinforces what I learned from reading Richard Powers's novel Playground, which, among other things, provides a compelling description of the way human beings are always looking for the next technology that promises to solve all our problems, embracing the machine with open arms until it devours us and devalues everything that makes us human.

I confess that Playground depressed the daylights out of me. Powers creates some compelling characters and really beautiful descriptions of undersea wonders, but in the end the novel convinced me that we've already passed a crucial tipping point--and I can't see a way back. 

I can't fully articulate my fears without sounding like a cranky old Luddite yearning for the days of yore, but I find it alarming that this surge of trust in our Robot Overlords comes at a time when intellectual pursuits are treated with distrust and contempt. Who needs intellectual curiosity, critical thinking skills, depth and breadth of understanding when all answers can be provided by an electronic Oracle we carry in our pockets?

To pose the question another way: If our awe for AI leads us to outsource our thinking to the machine, haven't we already given up on what makes us human?

And once our thinking skills have atrophied sufficiently, will we even realize what we've lost?

Questions like these have been keeping me up at night and making me wonder why I even bother trying to light a spark of intellectual curiosity among my students. A century ago T.S. Eliot characterized poetry as "fragments ... shored against my ruins," but now the ruins are piled higher and deeper--and who wants to excavate the ruins when this shiny new Oracle offers instant magic?

In the midst of these messages of woe, I'm looking for some evidence that while we may have sold our souls for a mess of pottage, the universe offers a generous return policy and it may not be too late to restore our souls to full working order. But I don't see it. Can someone show me a ray of hope?

Writers, writing

Today I tried to convince my Life Writing students that they are writers. 

Some of them don't have to be convinced--they already know they're writers--but others just need an upper-level class to fulfill a graduation requirement and assume that a course characterized as Creative Writing will be a breeze. They know they'll need to write, but that doesn't mean they think of themselves as writers.

I remember the moment years ago when I told a professor I wanted to be a writer and she said, "You are a writer." Powerful words! I'd like my students to feel that power, and one way to achieve it is to make them say it out loud. I asked them to respond to the roll call by completing the statement I write because....

They write because it unleashes creativity, gives them a sense of accomplishment, provides control over chaotic circumstances. One student said he writes because he has to do it to get a degree, and another said, "It makes me happy." Good reasons both.

We spent some time talking about what it means to have a Writing Practice, the disciplines that can unleash ideas, and the need to give the mind some time to wander. I urged them to set aside time for boredom in their lives, to regularly unplug from media and other inputs and just let the mind be. I don't know how many will take my advice but I felt compelled to tell them.

And then we worked on some invention techniques to help them choose a topic for a short memoir project. We put events on a timeline and then chose one event to explore in more detail, constructing a cause-and-effect chain to multiply the entry points into writing about the experience. Then we did some free writing starting from one of those entry points--and then we did a second round of free-writing starting with the gaps in the chain: What's missing? What were you afraid to write down? What does no one else but you know about this experience? 

I don't know what they wrote about but they wrote and wrote and wrote, which, after all, was the point. For 50 minutes in my classroom today, my students were writers. Let's hope they can carry that experience with them through the rest of their lives--or at least until the end of the semester.

We are driven (crazy)

When you learn to drive in Florida, there are some skills you never have a chance to develop, like driving very slowly down a steep, narrow, twisty country road that's quickly getting covered by snow.

I survived driving home from church on Sunday, but I didn't enjoy it. I'll never enjoy driving in snow the way my husband does. He sees bad weather as a challenge, a test, an exhilarating opportunity. I just know I'm about to die.

This is true: early in our marriage we were out in our car, a puke-green 1970 Dodge Dart, with my husband at the wheel in a light snow, and as he was driving through an empty parking lot, he decided to show me how fun it can be to make the car do doughnuts. Well, he thought it was fun. I got hysterical, got out of the car, and insisted I was walking home and never ever ever getting in a car with him again.

Of course I did, and over the years I've developed immense confidence in my husband's ability to drive in horrible conditions--but he doesn't do doughnuts when I'm in the car. He knows better. Over time I've had plenty of opportunities to drive in snow and ice and fog and slush and I feel relatively competent in those conditions, but fun is not the word I'd use.

This morning the temperature dropped way below zero and I was really glad I didn't have to drive in that old Dart. The thing was built like a tank and could drive through a brick wall--if you could get it started. On a morning like this, that Dart would have been useless.

My current car, on the other hand, had no problem starting this morning--and in fact it had no trouble handling the awful conditions on Sunday either. I have never felt more confidence in a car's ability to handle difficult conditions. I love my car! I believe in my car! I have confidence in my car! But I don't have confidence in myself or my emotions. I looked down that snow-covered slope on Sunday and knew I was about to die--so the fact that I'm sitting here typing this feels like a gift.

That Dart took us places, but I'm glad I didn't have to drive it this morning.

Why I'd like to retire--but not today

Some days I envy my retired colleagues who will never again have to sit in a stuffy room full of committee members haggling over whether to hand prize-winners their certificates in paper folders or to get them framed. (The certificates, not the prize-winners--but either way, I didn't get a PhD because I wanted to bite my tongue and roll my eyes through a discussion of picture frames.)

Emeritus faculty members don't have to wonder where the toner cartridges are stored or who is responsible for ordering replacements now that we have no administrative assistants, and neither do they have to keep saying "I don't know" when students ask perfectly reasonable questions about where they should go to get certain types of help. But they also don't get to stand in front of a room full of students and see that first-day-of-class look in their eyes, that distinctive mixture of excitement and fear and fatigue (already!). 

When I'm retired I won't have the privilege of posing compelling questions and then watching while students diligently scribble out their responses, but then I also won't experience the frustration of trying to decipher their handwriting. Is that word radon? Ramen? Oh--it's random!

When I'm retired I won't have to remind students that the literary works we read are not produced by a random-word generator and that, indeed, the words appear where they do because someone decided to put them there, so maybe instead of dismissing them as random we ought to work on discerning what relationship the words bear to one another and what conclusions we can draw from their placement. 

When I'm retired I'll never again have to rail against the use of random and relatable and like, really confusing as if they meant anything other than here's how the reading made me feel, but then again I won't have any reason to introduce students to literary works that make them feel confused and then watch their eyes light up as understanding creeps in. 

Some days I'd really like to be as far from campus as possible pursuing the unbothered life of the retired academic. Today, though, with my classroom full of students, there's nowhere I'd rather be than right here.

Warming up to the new semester

The first day back on campus after winter break is always difficult. It's a Monday in January, it's cold and dark when I leave for work, and I have to deal with all the logistical details of an all-day pedagogy workshop when I'd rather stay home drinking hot tea, watching birds, and making desultory progress on our latest crossword puzzle.

BUT! A few minutes in the company of my wonderful colleagues and I'm happy to be here--hearing about their winter travels, listening to the travails of the person who had Covid and pneumonia over break and rejoicing that I escaped such a fate, hearing ideas flowing around the room and banging into each other in productive ways. It's all good! I have more meetings this afternoon and even more tomorrow (including one on the dreaded A word--Assessment), but somehow campus feels like a good place to be.

In the interstices between meetings I've been readying my office for spring classes, which start Thursday. I've shifted folders, copied syllabi, and tossed last semester's lecture notes; at some point I need to do something about the massive stacks of books that need to be put back on my shelves. 

But first I'm testing out a new piece of high-tech equipment. Gold star to whoever guesses what it is:

I know it looks like I'm reaching inside a fuzzy slipper some random Bigfoot discarded on my desk, but no: that's a heated mousepad. The upper panel holds a packet of something that heats up when I plug it into a USB port, and as for what that something may be, I have no idea. Magic pixie dust? Instant lava? Whatever it is, it gets very hot very quickly. Almost too hot. I'll have to develop a whole new line of complaints when I have icicles forming on every part of my body while my right hand steams in its own little sauna. Maybe a heated whole-body sheath would be more helpful, but then I'd never leave my office at all.

I can't get too comfortable in here because at some point I'll need to go upstairs and teach. Two classes this semester: U.S. Lit Survey, as usual, and an upper-level creative writing class called Life Writing. Memoir, biography, oral history, and all kinds of fun stuff, in a class a little too big for traditional workshop mode, but I'll make it work. 

And then I also have my administrative role, planning yet more pedagogy workshops on yet-to-be-determined topics and answering to a whole new group of interim administrators. Will I have to learn a whole new set of moves in the latest round of Musical Administrators, or will the old moves work just as well?

Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with a very warm right hand and celebrating the creativity of my colleagues.

Witnessing history with Claire Messud

Is there anything more alluring on a long empty afternoon than a pile of unread books? All those brand-new hardbacks with colorful jackets, full of promise and potential surprises--but where to begin?

I picked from the top of the pile This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud, a novel based loosely on the author's family history ranging from 1927 to the present and from Algiers to France, England, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Cuba, Connecticut, and elsewhere, each time and place evoked through a wealth of vivid details to make these disparate times and places feel rich and real.

The plot follows members of an extended family as they try to create meaningful lives in the midst of constraints imposed by both large historical events (World War II, Algerian independence, the Cold War) and smaller but equally impactful family dynamics and responsibilities. As Hitler's forces conquer France, a French Algerian naval officer struggles to decide whether to join the resistance or stay home and protect his family; instead of staging an abstract conflict between love and war, Messud makes concrete the forces that pull the character in each direction, illustrating how life-changing decisions may be influenced by an accumulation of seemingly insignificant details.

Past and present interconnect and echo. The opening chapter features a young boy carrying his younger sister on his back to protect her tiny feet on a long dusty trek; years later, the younger sister tries to carry her brother's burdens and protect his fragile ego from the forces that tear him down. This urge to protect others leads family members to hide secrets and troubling emotions, so that gestures inspired by love lead to betrayal and alienation.

Despite frequent visitations of suffering, despair, and death, the novel is suffused with hope, particularly in certain quiet moments when characters consider how they are connected to others across time and space. In 1989, Chloe is making the ferry crossing from Calais to Dover, thinking about the family members she's left behind and wondering about the boat's other passengers, the boyfriend who will later become her husband and the strangers she will bump elbows with but never truly know. Trapped in transit between those she loves and those she will never know, she wonders, "How turbulent might the crossing prove? Each of us carried to the shore by all that had come before, then launched upon the wide, dark ocean."

This, in a nutshell, describes the arc of the novel, but Chloe isn't done. She gives herself a mission: "Look at all the others with whom you share the boat. Beyond the most immediate, you can't choose your companions for a crossing or a generation. You can't know the weather in store, the size of the waves. All in this strange eventful history is uncertain."

Another character--Chloe's aging aunt Denise--echoes these words in a later chapter. Like Chloe, Denise inhabits a liminal space, the last of her family members living in France while her beloved brother lies on his deathbed in America, and she muses on the missed opportunities in a life that others consider wasted. How can she measure the impact of a life devoted to protecting others, even if that protection is ultimately futile? Distant from her brother, she draws close to him in memory:

In her mind, she could see him, not as he was now but in all his ages. If nothing else, on this planet, they had borne loving witness to each other's lives, to the days and journeys, the freight of emotions, to the blossoming and dwindling of their animal selves. Much sorrow and rage, but more than that, laughter, joy, and wonder. How, now, as the shadows had grown so long, to cleave to the light? To be a witness, to stand alongside, simply to have lived through these strange, beautiful, appalling times, to have been a night-light, a mirror, a support--that, too, was God's work, though the ambitious American nieces, faithless and perhaps soulless might disdain it. That wasn't nothing.

This strange eventful history that made a life. 

And this is what Messud accomplishes in This Strange Eventful History: transcending time and space to bear witness to the small and insignificant events that build a life. How, now, to cleave to the light? Start by reading Claire Messud. 

Big ol' pile o' Christmas books (and that's not all!)

A bootless endeavor

The beauty of the winter woods is hard to capture on camera. There are technical difficulties, of course--sun reflecting off snow makes exposures difficult, producing blown highlights and washed-out details. But before you even think about finding the right settings to capture both bright light and deep shadows, first you have to get out there, all bundled up in coat hat scarf gloves boots, except I don't have boots that fit right now so I wore thick socks and the same ratty sneakers I wore on the beach last week. I figured the sneakers would serve as an effective alarm system: when my feet got wet, it would be time to go back inside.

I had to dig deep in the hat-and-glove basket to find the deer-hunting gloves I used to wear when I was a journalist covering cold outdoor events, thick lined gloves with flaps that fold back to allow the fingers freedom to adjust camera settings. Those gloves must be 30 years old and I rarely wear them but when I want to use a camera in the cold, nothing else will do.

I took my walking stick, not just to keep steady in the slippy spots but to probe the depth of the drifts I was wading through. Light, gentle snow has been falling on and off for two days and at any given moment it doesn't look like much of a storm, but over time it covers everything.

When the world looks like a black-and-white photo, every subtle flash of color stands out: rusty brown oak leaves, mottled green and gray sycamore bark, faded beige yucca pods. At the birdfeeders cardinals and bluejays provide a splash of color amidst the crowds of little gray and black birds--titmice and chickadees, woodpeckers and juncos. 

I kept seeing shades of blue-gray in the frozen creek, pink in the sky, purple in the shadows surrounding snow drifts, but the intensity of the white overwhelms all else. It felt pure and clean and sculptural, but it also felt cold, very cold, and my feet got wet and warned me to go back inside, where my photos don't seem to convey the still beauty of the scene so I have to rely on making pictures with words.

Bear's head fungus capped by snow.

Quiet storm

The brouhaha before the storm was far louder than the storm itself, which arrived as fine snow falling silently as we slept. Looks like we got about four or five inches but more is expected throughout the day and the county is under a Level 2 Snow Emergency, which means we should stay off the roads unless it's absolutely necessary, which it isn't so we're staying home.

Lots of folks stayed home from church yesterday to avoid the cold, and the furnace struggled to keep the sanctuary warm. The rest room was toasty, though, so I jokingly suggested moving the service in there, but who wants to sing hymns next to a toilet, a trash can, or a can of Lysol spray?

A few starlings have been visiting our birdfeeders but I hope they don't alert the entire flock. The trailcam showed possums and deer and what might have been a fox but mostly squirrels cavorting in the snow. This is the time of year to watch for eagles along the river, but we didn't see any on our way home from church yesterday and we're not going out today so the eagles will have to wait before earning my applause and appreciation.

I received some unexpected appreciation recently but I don't know what to do with it. A high school teacher confessed that she idolizes me because I had the chance to go to grad school and teach college students, who she imagines must be much more dedicated and passionate learners than her students. I appreciate the support but I suspect that her view of higher education is not entirely accurate. At a time when our entire culture seems to think that what I do can be easily replaced by Artificial Intelligence, it feels odd to be told how lucky I am to teach college students.

Now the sun is rising over the snow-covered hill as juncos and cardinals arrive at the feeders.  Yesterday a Carolina wren kept hopping up to the big picture window as if begging to come inside. I sympathize--baby, it's cold outside! It's all very pretty, but if this is how Ohio welcomes home its weary travelers, I think I'd like to go back to Georgia.

Yes, we still have Christmas lights outside.

Road trip back to winter

And here we are back home again in one piece, if a little tired and ragged around the edges. When did I last wash my hair? Where is the bag where I stashed all my dirty clothes? When was the last time I cooked a meal or cleaned a room? Doesn't matter. We're home.

Just three short days ago we were walking barefoot on the beach picking up shells, watching cargo ships come and go, climbing a lighthouse, eating excellent seafood, and now here we are home and it's winter. We drove through a little snow in the mountains but the more severe weather is still on the way. Early Tuesday we paid one last visit to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge for a little relaxation before spending five hours on I-95; we saw red-shouldered hawks and egrets and herons and many whistling ducks, but today when we got home, we found our birdfeeders damaged by high winds and badly in need of attention. 

I'm glad I have a whole week to make final preparations for spring semester teaching and admin tasks, but my suitcase is calling me and my house wants a good deep cleaning. What's left in the fridge? Enough leftover ham for bean soup? When can I take down the Christmas tree? Oh, here's the pile of books I opened on Christmas morning--which one shall I read first?

Brand-new year, same old chores, plus how am I going to get all the sand out of my car? I guess I'll just have to take one task at a time and keep at it until everything is done, but first I think I'll take just a moment to savor those last few days at the beach.

I love the white flashes on the whistling ducks' wings.

Traffic jam.

Ibises

Gator

Egrets

Kinglet

The little blue heron

Red-shouldered hawk

My husband was obsessed with the container ships

Fresnel lens at the top of the Tybee lighhouse

The view from the top

278 steps up, and 278 steps back down

I love the way the morning sun lights up the waves