April's got game

What did April ever do to T.S. Eliot? Maybe he had a schoolboy crush on a girl named April who teased him and pleased him and then flounced off to leave him meditating on death and despair--why else would he describe April as "the cruellest month," a month "mixing / memory and desire" and "stirring / Dull roots with spring rain"? Eliot slaps cruel April across the face in The Wasteland, but Chaucer had other ideas.

In the Prologue to Canterbury Tales, April bring sweet showers and devotes itself to piercing, bathing, engendering, and pricking Nature in the whatsit. Chaucer's April inspires fertility and growth, awakening "smale foweles maken melodye" and quickening Nature's spirit, but April also inspires folk of all classes to go on pilgrimages, ostensibly to seek spiritual growth but also to indulge in a whole lot of eating and drinking and making merry with sundry tales both demure and bawdy. For Chaucer, April's got game!

For my students as well. Everyone engaged in academe knows that April is indeed the cruellest month, showering students and faculty alike with projects and deadlines, pricking the conscience with regret for every prior moment of procrastination, engendering songs of despair among students who see their gpas plummeting and profs who see their grading-piles growing. 

Everyone's a fool on April first, but my English majors and Writing Center tutors have come up with a clever way to ease into April's craziness: they're hosting a word-game party featuring Scrabble and Boggle and Poetry for Neanderthals. 

I suspect that T.S. Eliot would have spoken more kindly of poor April if he'd welcomed the month with a raucous round of Poetry for Neanderthals, and Chaucer would have killed at Scrabble--if only the other players could be made to accept his spellings. 

I've lived so long with Eliot's cruel April that now I'd like to cheer on Chaucer's. "So priketh hem Nature in hir corages"--Autocorrect wants to change "corages" to "corsages," but Chaucer wasn't talking about prom dates. He was talking about the heart, the temperament, the center of emotion. Take courage, April! It's you and me, maken melodye! 

Batter up!

This afternoon at 4:10 when my Cleveland Guardians start their Opening Day game against the Kansas City Royals, I'll be sitting in a classroom listening to a presentation about college issues that are, granted, Very Important, but the whole time I'll feel in my bones the passing radio waves carrying the voice of Tom Hamilton, the voice of the Guardians and 2025 recipient of the Ford C. Frick award from the Baseball Hall of Fame, the man who has the best home-run call in baseball (and if you don't believe me, listen here), the man whose voice provides the soundtrack of my summer, and I'll be wondering what kind of idiot schedules a meeting at 4 p.m. on baseball's opening day?

That would be me. I am that idiot. 

At least I'll be able to listen to the rest of the game on the radio on the drive home, I tell myself, but it's not the same. And if I need to hear Tom Hamilton's home-run call at any time, I can just press the button on the Tom Hamilton bobblehead my adorable children got us for our anniversary in December, a bobblehead equipped to play recordings of several of Hamilton's trademark calls.

A few weeks ago I attended Marietta College's home opener, but bad weather and schedule issues have prevented me from attending any other games. I probably won't get to a Guardians game until midsummer. Rumor has it that my department chair, now on sabbatical, will be attending the Guardians home opener, unless one of us tackles him first and steals his tickets. Today, though, we should all be glued to the radio awaiting the first pitch--except for those of us stuck in late-afternoon meetings.  

Reason number 4,722 why I should retire right now.

Marietta College home opener

 

Chernobyl, engineering, and imagining the unimaginable

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away--scratch that. Back in the 1980s, a time my students consider concurrent with the Jurassic Era, my father was a safety and reliability consultant doing work for NASA and several U.S. government agencies. He couldn't tell us much about his work, but I do recall that he analyzed the safety hazards inherent in training firefighters to fight fires within airplanes and nuclear submarines. He was an expert at predicting every possible source of catastrophe and failure and uncovering all the ways whatever you were doing could damage, maim, or kill you. He was good at what he did, and many people valued his expertise.

But when Russia--then the USSR--came calling, he always said no. I don't know what he told his potential clients when he turned them down, but I distinctly recall what he told his family. First, because of some family history, he was afraid that if he went to the USSR they wouldn't let him come home. (Paranoid, maybe, but those were the times we were living in.) And second, he was dedicated to upholding strict standards of safety, but he had no confidence that the Soviets were similarly committed. "Look at Chernobyl," he said. "That's just the tip of the iceberg."

I thought of his words this morning when I read an article in the New York Times about the recent drone strike that cut a hole in the protective shell over the failed Chernobyl nuclear power plant. "For people of a certain age," says the article, "the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986, after years of heightened fears of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, was the stuff of nightmares."

Indeed it was--and, for some of us, still is. But what struck me most about the article is this paragraph:

"We did a lot of safety analysis, considering a lot of bad things that could happen," said Mr. Schmieman, 78, a retired civil engineer from Washington state who was a senior technical adviser on the project. "We considered earthquakes, tornadoes, heavy winds, 100-year snowfalls, all kinds of things. We didn't consider acts of war."

And there, in a nutshell, we see the problem inherent in the pursuit of safety. Even if you put the best minds in the world behind the task of predicting every imaginable problem, they're not going to be able to protect against the unimaginable ones.

Who imagines that any good can come from attacking a defunct and decaying nuclear plant? Where are the safety and reliability experts who could warn against such a rash act? Dad could drive me crazy sometimes with his detailed explanations about how every choice I made was bound to end in disaster, but if we don't have people like him taking the time to analyze potential hazards, who can we count on to keep the rest of us safe?

This, too, is the stuff of nightmares.  

Swinging out over the ravine

"Is there an artist in the class?" I asked, and fortunately there was, which is a good thing because when I try to draw anything on the whiteboard, no one can tell what it's supposed to be. This is true: On a handout I use regularly in composition classes I drew a picture of a cow, but students always ask what it's supposed to be and one of them guessed it might be an olive floating over a pool table. 

But today before class a student complied with my request and drew on the whiteboard a nervous-looking boy swinging on a grape vine over a dark ravine. Would the vine hold? Would he go flying into the unknown or land on solid ground? The boy is Sarty Snopes, the story is "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner, and the references to liminal space get more extreme as the plot progresses: the boy is suspended between blood and justice, swinging on a vine over a dark ravine, torn in two by teams of horses, and finally stepping alone into a dark wood with no idea where he's going.

I love teaching "Barn Burning" even though Faulkner poses problems for most of my students. "It's just confusing," they tell me, but I ask them why Faulkner didn't work a little harder to clarify the situation. Why not employ an omniscient narrator to explain exactly what's happening at any given moment? Why reveal the story through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy who often hasn't a clue? That's where we start the discussion. We follow a meandering path through the story but always end up lost, facing that dark wood, alone but together.

But as much as I love teaching "Barn Burning," this morning I made the difficult decision to cut Faulkner out of my American Novel class in the fall. The class focuses on narrative innovations so I've always included The Sound and the Fury, but I fear that even my English majors lack the patience and reading skills to tackle the Benjy chapter. I needed to cut the reading list down from seven books to six just to accommodate the kinds of reading and oral communication skills I'm supposed to emphasize under the new Communication Proficiency designation, and after much consideration, Faulkner seemed like the right book to cut.

And the thing is, I made that decision without even knowing whether that course will earn the Communication Proficiency designation. I hope those decisions will come down before students start registering for fall courses, but meanwhile, I have to submit my book orders, which means I had to make decisions about the reading list based on incomplete information. Which seems, at the moment, to be the way we do things around here. 

I'd like someone to draw a diagram of how our campus systems are functioning right now with so many changes and so many offices remaining unstaffed, but I fear we don't have an artist skilled enough to produce something legible. Instead, I hold tightly to the grapevine as it swings out over the dark ravine and hope it doesn't drop me into the great unknown.

Spring Break souvenirs

I saw a student this morning with arms so sunburned that if she stood outside on a dark night people might mistake her for the Blood Moon. She brought back a memorable souvenir of Spring Break, but I don't want to be around when the sunburn starts to peel.

A student in my American Lit class brought back an impressive record--ten straight wins in softball! What a way to start the season. I watched the baseball home opener last week before I left for my Spring Break road trip and while our baseball team isn't winning ten straight anything, they played a gem of a game, pulling a victory out of nowhere. It was a gorgeous sunny day and I could have ended up with sunburn if I hadn't sat in the shade. 

What souvenirs did I bring home from Spring Break? Three boxes of Girl Scout cookies and some photos of my granddaughter competing in the regional spelling bee and my grandson in the Pinewood Derby. And photos of herons. Lots of herons.

Mostly my Spring Break souvenirs are intangible--feelings and memories and random wishes. I feel happy about how we've managed to maintain a satisfying relationship with our adult kids, and I cherish the memory of the youngest imp reading me the story she wrote and illustrated in which three friends pursue a quest for adventure and bring back treasure--but only after asking their parents' permission. I loved to see her trying to read a book and practice the piano at the same time, although I know that's not the textbook way to develop piano skills.

And I wish I'd done a little more work last week so I wouldn't be rushing around trying to print out documents and prepare for meetings this morning. I wish I had answers to questions people keep asking--not just the big questions about the future of the College but the niggling little ones like am I allowed to talk to a coach about a student's academic performance if the coach is also the student's parent? 

And I truly wish I did not have to stand up in front of the faculty meeting this afternoon and tell them that the magic wand they're asking for doesn't exist--the software that will reliably identify Artificial Intelligence with 100 percent accuracy so that we don't have to rely on our own instincts and reasoning skills.

More than anything, what I wish for after Spring Break is more Spring Break, but I would probably feel differently if I'd brought back the kind of sunburn I saw on students this morning. Some of us have clearly had enough leisure. Time to get back to work! 

Bird people are my people

Stand beside a road with a camera in hand aiming at the great blue heron rookery across the way and someone is bound to stop and chat, and if that someone is a camouflage-wearing dude in a pickup truck full of fishing gear, he's likely to bear news about the location of bald eagles and buffleheads, and if you're having a lively chat about beautiful birds while herons flap overhead carrying nesting materials to a nearby nest, then you'll know you've found your people.

Let's leave the rancor off the menu, please

My goal was simple: take a leisurely drive a few hours north, stopping at a wetland along the way (no eagles, sadly) and then visiting a nearly empty mall (new bedsheets!) so as to arrive at Alladin's Eatery just in time to treat myself to lunch--the Taza Chicken Salad, which may well be my favorite salad on the planet (grilled chicken! pine nuts! apples! grapes! and a honey dijon dressing to die for!). But when I walked into the fast-casual restaurant, one obstacle stood between me and my salad: a waiter giving me that look. 

Probably every adult woman who has ever traveled solo (and maybe some men, too--how would I know?) is familiar with the look. You walk up to the counter and tell the attendant that you'd like a table for one, and the attendant gives you a look dripping with disdain and says, "Just one?"

Now the waiter who served me the look this morning appeared to still be learning the ropes, fumbling to fill a role that was still unfamiliar. Maybe she needed a more experienced waiter to remind her that while a solo diner might not be the most lucrative party in the place, one customer at a table is better than zero customers, especially when the restaurant is practically empty. 

It's been years since I worked in food service but even I know that you can't treat customers like lepers just because they happen to be eating alone. If I were my father, I would have taken the opportunity to teach the waiter a lesson involving a great deal of yelling and demanding to see the manager and withholding of tips. But my father never worked in food service.

"Just one," I calmly told the waiter. "Is that a problem?" I may have given her a quiet look of my own, but it was not nearly as loud as my father's yelling would have been. 

In the end she was very attentive, and the salad was really good. I may have eaten it extra slowly just to assert my right to take up space at a table, but I left a pretty good tip. Maybe the lesson would have been more memorable accompanied by yelling, but a tantrum would have left a bad taste in my mouth. It's rare that I get an opportunity to eat a Taza Chicken Salad at Aladdin's, and I would hate to have that lovely taste tainted by rancor.

Baseball, writing, and heron rookeries

Yesterday I spent some time posting all of Marietta College's home baseball games on my calendar, an activity that fills me with hope and joy even though I know I won't make it to many actual games.

Baseball means spring, means sitting in the bleachers on a warm spring day (or a cold spring day, or a snowy spring day, or a spring day so windy that everyone has to literally hold on to their hats), means hot dogs and popcorn and temporarily banishing work from my mind. Sometimes it means triumph, but frankly, it doesn't even matter whether our team is doing well--when they're on the field, I want to be there.

This morning the gray clouds are spitting hard pellets of snow, but on Tuesday I saw snowdrops blooming on campus and daffodil buds swelling. Harsh winds sent my car sliding over ice this morning, but soon I'll meet with a former colleague inside a cozy coffee shop to talk about writing and look over delightful drafts. All my students will be turning in writing on Friday that I'll need to read and evaluate so I can post midterm grades, but Spring Break starts on Saturday and I'll be free for a week.

Well, relatively free. More free than usual. Free-ish. Not quite free as a bird--and did I mention that yesterday after the Ash Wednesday service I took a little detour to see if any great blue herons are staking out nests at the nearby rookery? With the ashy sign of penitence on my forehead, I struggled to keep the car on the road in sharp wind under an angry gray sky, but when I saw a lone heron standing tall and serenely on a nest atop a tree that was being battered by the wind, my smile was wide enough to break through all the darkness. It's been a rough winter but spring is on the way and I, for one, am ready to applaud its arrival.

 

 

I don't remember buying a ticket for this ride

Once upon a time my family got stuck on a log flume ride, all five of us, Mom Dad and three adolescents crammed into one big fake log that came to an abrupt stop halfway up a steep climb. I don't recall how long we sat there before an attendant came along to release us from our uncomfortable stasis, but I remember wishing the ride would just for heaven's sake get moving--I didn't much care where.

It is the nature of roller coasters to swing from extreme highs to gut-dropping lows with a lot of wild whirling in between, so I guess I should be delighted that the roller-coaster my emotions have recently been riding keeps moving, even if some of the places it takes me are uncomfortable.

Just in the past week I have emerged from a class after teaching "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" so exhilarated that I felt like I was floating down the hallway, and I later entered another class so full of despair that I could barely keep from crying in front of my students. I had made the mistake of watching the video of Zelenskyy's visit to the Oval Office just before class. (My maiden name was Zelesky. My grandparents left Lithuania to flee the Bolsheviks. I hate to see the underdog get bullied.)

Last week I met with a student who admitted that he did not recognize many of the words in the writing he had submitted as his own, and later I read a set of student essays that filled me with awe over my students' creativity (goslings that look like lumps of dryer-lint!). I need to read some mediocre pieces just to provide a bit of respite between the highs and lows.

On Sunday, in response to a challenge from a former colleague, I finally put on paper a draft of a personal essay I've been gnawing over for years, which took me to a very dark place where I once felt hopelessly stuck, but writing about it provided a liberating sense of accomplishment. It's an early draft with a chunk missing from the middle, but it says something I need to say and opens the door to further exploration, further highs and lows. 

And today I face a pile of administrative claptrap related to a new project that will either make a significant difference in our campus culture or turn into a massive waste of time and energy, but even as I was kicking myself for getting dragged into this thankless endeavor, I received an email message full of praise for an academic essay I published last year, the kind of praise academic writing rarely receives, and the praise is going to be published for everyone to see. (You'd better believe I'll share the link when it becomes available, shameless self-promotion or not.) I promised myself I wouldn't cry but I'm keeping the tissues handy.

And the hits just keep coming--the ups and downs, the long slow climb before the endless fall, the twists and turns that keep me wondering where I'll end up next, but at this point I'm just glad the roller-coaster keeps moving forward. Better to keep moving than to get stuck. After all, it's not the twists and turns that kill you--it's the sudden stop at the end.