Chicken Run

From our bedroom window we can look down the hill to see the chicken run in the lower meadow, but at that distance the chickens look like waddling blobs. Up close they're more handsome. At first they resist coming out from under their coop, but finally they emerge to scrabble toward the feed bucket and nudge each other out of the way to get to lunch. Soon a kingfisher chattering past sends them all scurrying for cover. They've nothing to fear from the kingfisher, but I hope they know enough to hide from hawks. The chicken run should protect them from earthbound predators, but we rely on their instincts to protect them from the hawks.

  

Excavating the family landfill

The donation door at the local Goodwill store stands open and the attendant waits to help me unload my car, but I'm afraid to open the hatchback lest I trigger a landslide or tsunami or pyrochlastic flow of dusty bags bulging with discarded stuff. Honda claims my HR-V has 24.4 cubic feet of cargo space, and I've crammed every inch of it with a shifting mound of detritus threatening to bury me alive--all of it removed from just one closet.   

Granted, it's a big closet, but it doesn't get much daily use. Years ago that closet turned into the place where we stash things we can't just throw out lest someone needs them someday, and over time the closet turned into a family landfill seasoned with mouse droppings and fluffy bits of insulation that float down whenever the access panel for the attic gets opened.

Until this morning it was almost impossible to set foot inside that closet, which is a problem because of our impending bathroom renovation. Yes, we are finally exiling the purple toilet, sink, and tub, tearing off the shiny plastic wall panels, installing usable storage, and replacing the improperly vented ceiling fan that insists on sprinkling fluffy bits of insulation all over the bathroom every time we turn it on. (Both the hall closet and the purple bathroom are in the older part of the house, where mouse droppings and fluffy bits of insulation are persistent elements of the decorating scheme.) Workers will need to access the attic to install the new ceiling fan, but they can't do that without climbing the Leaning Tower of Fluff-Covered Detritus in the hall closet.

So this morning I got to work excavating every layer of that closet, vacuum at the ready to suck up all the fluff and droppings. I found old clothes I'd bagged up to take to the Goodwill, old clothes I needed to bag up to take to the Goodwill, old clothes that could have a chance at new life for someone committed to regular dry-cleaning bills, and even a few old clothes that sparked enough joy to merit giving them a wash and returning them to my closet.

Also hats--sun hats, cowboy hats, Santa hats. Old paint cans with solid lumps of paint at the bottom. Two nonfunctioning CD players. Adapter cords that don't fit any of my current equipment. A hefty camera tripod and a video camera that hasn't been out of its carrying case for at least 15 years. Wrapping paper, gift bags, red velvet bows. Decorative gifts given by people ignorant of our household aesthetic--always a tricky issue because what if those people shop at the Goodwill? How will they feel if they recognize the items I've regifted?

Things I kept: Three jackets and three nice shirts. The paint cans (because the Goodwill won't take them.) The video camera (because someone who shall remain nameless is convinced that he'll use it someday.) Boxes of framed pictures and certificates I don't want to throw away but don't have room to hang on the walls. A few puzzles and games the grandkids might enjoy. A tangle of kites and a giant bubble wand. Dozens of empty hangers.

Now the hall closet has enough open space to make accessing the attic a breeze. Fluff and droppings are gone (for now) so I won't be embarrassed every time that door gets opened. The vacuum is full of yuck and dust, as is my nose. And my car didn't disgorge the entire mess at my feet when I opened the hatch, so I rewarded its hefty cargo space with a celebratory vacuuming.

The grandkids have always liked the purple potty and will be sad to see it go, even though it frequently fails at the chief task it exists to perform. As for me, I'm delighted at the prospect of a renovated bathroom, and if the price I have to pay to achieve that goal is a hall closet excavation, then let's get to work. 

Need a purple tub? I've got you covered.

A short cut to the AOA department

Summertime and the living is easily on the way to driving me bonkers. Fun weekend with the grandkids! Lazy Sunday afternoon nap! Monday mowing and cooking and sitting around reading--perfect! And then comes Tuesday.

Don't even get me started.

Today I have been running from pillar to post while trying to wrangle mounds of pettifogging claptrap standing in the way of a grant project. It's an exciting project--five-day Creative Writing day camp for local high schools students funded by the Department of Job and Family Services--and I'm working alongside some very creative and energetic people. 

But! 

I have to reserve rooms, but another organization has reserved EVERY ROOM in my building for three out of the five days of our camp. So I have to find space in another building, except I'm not familiar with room numbers in all our buildings so I have to walk around looking at rooms to see if they'll suit our purposes, and then I have to walk back to the administration building to confer with the room-reservation guru, who fortunately keeps a well-stocked candy dish on her desk. (Or, maybe, unfortunately.)

The grant was approved last week and the camp starts on June 9, so we need to buy some supplies; however, I can't submit a purchase order or use the College Amazon account until an account number is assigned to the grant. Unfortunately, the grant paperwork has not yet made its way to the person in charge of assigning an account number, so I have to email the grant-writer and all the grant-approvers to try to unclog the pipeline and get the paperwork flowing smoothly.

Further, at our planning meeting this morning I assembled a list of about a dozen questions that can be answered only by the people who normally inhabit three offices whose doors today are tightly shut and locked. Out of the office, apparently. I mean, it's as if these people had lives or, I don't know, summer vacations. Let's hope they're watching their email.

My plan was to spend one long morning on campus taking care of every little pettifogging detail, but all those dead ends and closed doors mean I'll have to come back and try again another day. Next time I'll head straight to the Department of Aggravation, Obfuscation, and Angst. All roads lead there eventually, so why not take the short cut? 

Locking through

Between Writing Wednesday and a heavy rainstorm yesterday I squeezed in a quick visit to the Muskingum River lock in Devola, where I enjoyed a casual lunch while watching the Valley Gem sternwheeler make its way through the historic lock. 

The lock-and-dam system on the Muskingum River dates back to 1836, though the structures have been renovated several times over the years. The locks are among the oldest hand-operated locks in the nation still in use and measure 35 feet wide by 160 feet long, which is barely big enough to contain the Valley Gem. 

I watched the lockmasters strain to push the large iron levers to open the upstream gates and let in water, which slowly raised the sternwheeler to the upstream water level. Crew members released the ropes and kicked the boat away from the side of the lock so it could make its way out the upstream gates and on up the river--straight into a sudden shower.

When I'm surrounded by technology so complex it seems magical, it's encouraging to see a geriatric feat of engineering prove its worth. Actual human beings turn the levers that move the gears that open the gates, and it's all visible right before our very eyes--not a hidden algorithm anywhere. The locks that originally opened the Muskingum watershed for commerce and transport now support tourism, but seeing the sternwheeler chug through the locks and up the river reminded me that human ingenuity has mastered a lot of knotty problems--and that's just the kind of insight that floats my boat.

Write write write--but why?

This is it--the first Writing Wednesday of summer break. I'm sitting in a library classroom tapping on my laptop alongside two faculty colleagues, three of us in all--a small start perhaps attributable to some problems in communication. I faithfully followed new campus procedures for getting the word out but somewhere there's a glitch in the system. Three people! Better than none, I suppose.

I have spent two hours writing, although perhaps "writing" isn't entirely the right word. I have revised my Agnes essay to include info about that historic hurricane and sharpen up some phrasing; now I need to decide whether I want to call my brother and ask what he remembers about our family's encounter with the worst natural disaster in Pennsylvania's history. And then I need to figure out where to submit the essay. Literary magazines are closing and possibilities are shrinking, so I'll need to do some serious research.

And then I opened the folder containing the larger project I started during last summer's Writing Wednesdays. I'm happy with the first chapter and I'd love to submit it somewhere as a stand-alone essay, but again, where? It's too personal and not theoretical enough for an academic journal but too steeped in literature for a casual outlet. Where are the hybrid publications where an intelligent person can combine close reading with practical classroom experiences? (Asking for a friend....)

I haven't looked at the rest of the project since last August and so I was surprised, both by how ambitious it is and by how fragmented. I see some lovely sentences and paragraphs but an awful lot of gaps and brackets. I'm reminded of the seven-page single-space notes-for-a-memoir document we discovered among my father's papers after his death: whenever he seemed to be getting close to a really interesting part of his life, he would write ETC. Now it's too late to ask what all those etceteras were eliding.  

And that's the conundrum about this writing project: as I near the end of my teaching career, I feel the need to pass on a whole bunch of etcetera lest it perish with my passing, but it's hard to write when I don't know have the first clue who might serve as audience. Writing these essays is either an opportunity to pass on some important insights or a massive, thankless waste of time.

For right now, though, it's therapy. Putting down words, imposing some order on the chaos, feels like an accomplishment. And that's why I look forward every week to Writing Wednesdays, even if, in some sad dark corridor of my mind, I fear that every word I write takes me closer to The End.

Settling into summer break

I know I've settled into summer break when I'm halfway through the morning but still can't be sure what day it is, or when you ask me how I've spent my day and my response is, "Um...give me a minute."

Sunburn on my forearms from weed-whacking and mowing this morning, crick in my neck from sitting on the back deck staring up toward the top of the tulip poplar tree, camera at the ready, in case that oriole comes back, except it has a remarkable ability to appear only when the camera is inaccessible. True story: I was sitting in the living room reading when I felt I was being watched, and when I turned and looked out the big picture window, I saw an oriole perched on a potted plant looking right at me not two feet from my face. Where was the camera? In the car, just behind the oriole. 

I've seen an oriole (possibly the same one) flitting about the top of the maple tree out front and then flying away the minute I picked up the camera, and there it was again this morning at the top of the tulip poplar out back--twice!--but I sat out there with the camera for 40 minutes hearing it sing from a tree halfway down the cliff but never seeing it within shooting distance.

Big bowl of quinoa salad in the fridge--something I always make at the beginning of summer break for reasons I don't even recall except that it's cool and lemony and makes a great lunch out on the deck on a lovely spring day, especially when orioles are singing (but not posing for photos) nearby.

I saw swallows, turkey vultures, and a red-tailed hawk, but no oriole. Didn't see any goldfinches and wondered where they'd gone--we used to have them all over the place year-round but lately it's a nice surprise to see even one. Saw two male hummingbirds fighting over a feeder, but no oriole. Saw mourning doves, red-winged blackbirds, a phoebe, but no oriole--but every time I started to pack up the camera to go inside, the oriole would sing tantalizingly close but still out of sight.

It's out there still, I'm certain, and I'm sure at some point I'll be unable to stop myself from going out to stalk it some more, camera in hand. Because that's what summer break is for. Sure, I'll have to get my act together to plan some meetings and write some reports in the next couple of weeks, but while I'm still bouncing back from the busy semester, I'll enjoy some long lazy days that don't require me to remember their names.

Don't diss the diss

Yesterday I was all smiles after a total stranger came up to me at a meeting and said, "I've read your dissertation." Today I'm trying to figure out whether it might have been a mistake or a little white lie or an elaborate prank. 

I mean, has anyone outside of my dissertation committee ever read my dissertation? Decades ago I presented some bits of it at conferences and I published a piece of one chapter in a journal, but my dissertation exists primarily as a printed document in my house and in a regional university library--only the abstract is available online. It would take a significant effort to read my dissertation.

But the person I bumped into at this meeting had been talking about a stretch of old-growth forest she visits with her classes, and I recalled that I'd visited those woods close to 30 years ago so I could take some photos, one of which ended up in my dissertation. The stranger said she'd cataloged everything that had been written about that stretch of woods and that my dissertation was part of the collection, which at the time sounded plausible, but now I'm not so sure.

So I dug out my copy of my dissertation and took a look, and sure enough there's the photo of the woods in question accompanied by exactly one sentence labeling the photo and naming the woods. That's all. There's maybe one more obscure mention of the woods within the document, but it's not mentioned in the abstract or the title, nor does it play any significant part in the argument. So maybe someone (who?) might have been reading my dissertation (why?) and stumbled upon that brief mention of those woods, and maybe that person passed the reference on to the scholar I met yesterday, but the odds for that scenario seem vanishingly small.

We were in a room full of happy people at the time and it didn't occur to me to give the stranger a quiz to verify that she had done the reading, so I just beamed at the possibility that some total stranger had actually read my dissertation. Except maybe she didn't. Maybe she's confused. Maybe it doesn't even matter. But I appreciate the brief glow her words inspired as well as the excuse to hunt down my dissertation, which I'm sure I haven't looked at in twenty years. (The argument remains sound, but goodness gracious I used a lot of semicolons.)  

Applause all around

I came out of Commencement Saturday with sore hands from applauding so much, and then I wanted to walk right over to the peony patch and applaud some more. How could those tight little buds burst into such massive gorgeous blossoms so quickly?

I'd like to ask the same thing about the students I clapped for as they received their diplomas. (Well, their diploma cases--the real thing comes later, after grades are submitted. Which reminds me of a great line from the Commencement speech: when he graduated from Marietta College in 1970, our speaker's diploma case contained only a bill for $2.48 for library fines--"And I don't remember ever checking out a book." It was a great speech and when I get the link I'll post it.) 

It seems like only yesterday that these bright-eyed students came toddling into my first-year classes wondering what the word syllabus might mean, and now here they are tottering across the stage on platform shoes and out the door toward jobs and adventures and real life. Go, you! Here's a round of applause!

And how did I celebrate my sudden burst of freedom? With birds and wildflowers, of course, and by diving into a good book. I have some projects around the house that need attention and my summer campus meetings start tomorrow, but right now I'm spending every spare moment doing as close to nothing as possible. Go, me! Here's a round of applause!

Grading accomplished! How shall I celebrate?

Today I waved goodbye to my office, a purely symbolic act since I'll need to be on campus many times this summer to attend meetings and manage events, but sometimes a symbolic gesture is just what I need. I finished grading student projects today and turned in final grades and then I walked out the door and shut it tight. 

Yesterday's grading pile was made up of hand-written exams and in-class essays dense with tiny, crabbed handwriting; today's grading pile was all online documents, presentations, and portfolios. Both types of grading left my eyes begging for mercy, my vision so blurred that I struggled to read my list at the grocery store and couldn't read signs on the drive home. Good thing I knew where I was going!

But where shall I go tomorrow? I need to attend Commencement on Saturday and two big events on campus next week, but tomorrow's schedule is entirely blank. My husband suggested that I visit a friend, but I've fulfilled my quota of peopling for the week and I think I'd prefer to be alone--but where? Someplace quiet and peaceful and far from the madding crowd. Long walk in the woods? Deep dive into a good book? Or something else entirely?

The sense of possibility is what I like best about summer break. No need to punch the clock or put on teaching clothes or prep for classes--just long hours that somehow manage to pass without a lot of fuss and bother.

Goodbye, office! (Until next week.)

No need to get all shouty about it

It seems the semester just started last week, but what's left to do now? A final exam, some student presentations, a few meetings, and a whole mess of grading. I'm tempted to say It's all over but the shouting, but at this point I hope people keep their shouting to themselves--unless it's happy shouting, which I will accept any time.

We had some happy shouting today at the final meeting of the First-Year Faculty Support Group, which I've been leading since last August when I met all these colleagues at New Faculty Orientation. Orientation is a pain to organize even when the incoming group is small, but this group has been such a blast! I've had the opportunity to help them understand important topics--how our faculty governance system works, how to interpret student evaluations, how to troubleshoot teaching problems--and I've enjoyed observing teaching and encouraging them to do great work. Today's meeting was all about sharing our fabulous experiences, which led to much laughter and a little happy shouting. This group has been so helpful, they said, which I found encouraging because planning meetings is not my favorite thing to do and I'm glad when it works well.

That will be one of my summer projects--planning orientation and arranging mentors for new faculty members and adjuncts--but first we have to hire some people. I suspect that this fall's group will be small because who can afford new faculty members? Still, we have some holes to fill in a few key departments, so I'll make sure they get the training they need.

Also on this summer's project list: write the final report for the grant I administered, provide a professional development activity for staff members, help plan a summer creative writing day camp for high school students, update the official Syllabus Template to include specific language concerning use of Artificial Intelligence, plan fall pedagogy workshops, oversee Writing Wednesdays, and work on my own writing projects.

And plan my fall classes! Neither course is entirely new but I haven't taught Nature Writing in ages and I'm pursuing an entirely new topic for the freshman seminar. Yes, it's a little disappointing that our senior faculty member in the English department has no literature class to teach this fall, but I'll manage. I intend to have lots of fun with these two fall courses and then enjoy my last couple of semesters before retirement--and then it will really be all over but the shouting.

Stop me before I get "brilliant" tattooed on my forehead

I had to do a little shameless self-promotion in my American Lit Survey on Wednesday just to show what sorts of rewards may follow when research and teaching go hand-in-hand. I taught Natasha Trethewey's poem "Native Guard" a few years ago and then I read more of her work and did research and wrote an academic essay about why and how I teach the poem--an essay that was published in Pedagogy journal last year at this time--and so this week when I taught the poem again I showed my students the journal and told them how prior students' experiences had informed my writing and current students may inform my future writing, putting a neat little bow on the last week of the semester.

What I couldn't show them (because it wasn't available yet) was the most recent edition of Pedagogy, in which Elizabeth Brockman, who recently retired as editor of the "From the Classroom" section of the journal, devoted her farewell column to praise for the last essay she had ever edited for the journal, one she holds up as an example of what the journal can and should do. "I chose this essay because the author is brilliant, the essay is skillfully written, and the topic is profoundly important," she wrote.

Reader: I am that author. The essay she's praising is mine. 

Academic writing can be such a thankless task: you read, research, write, revise, submit, get rejected, revise some more, submit again, and if all goes well the article gets accepted—and then you go through the long process of responding to suggestions for revision and reading proofs and waiting for the thing to finally get published, by which time you've been fiddling  with the essay for so long that you're utterly sick of the topic, and then you wait in hope that some kind scholar will read the essay and maybe, someday, cite it in a footnote buried at the bottom of an article in an obscure journal no one will ever read--or you go mad waiting for the round of  applause that never arrives.

Which is why Elizabeth Brockman's column in Pedagogy praising my essay makes me feel as if I've won a gold medal in the Academic Olympics. (Stop me before I get brilliant tattooed on my forehead.)

Another brick in the (educational) wall

You encounter a course called The Naked Person--What section of the course catalog are you reading and what topic does the course cover? 

I've always felt The Naked Person would be a great title for the biology department's cadaver lab, but no: the title was proposed for an introductory course in the Gender Studies program. Someone in a position of power objected: What would outsiders think of they saw The Naked Person listed on the course schedule? (For outsiders read parents or potential donors or prudes.) So the title was changed to something more generic, like Introduction to Gender Studies.

This was years ago. These days all you have to do to offend an outsider is to call a class Introduction to Gender Studies.

Which is why I'm a little nervous about the title I've proposed for my first-year seminar class this fall. You're perusing the course schedule and notice a class called We Don't Need No Education. Appalled?

I hadn't expected to teach the first-year seminar this fall—or, really, ever again—but my Later American Novel class got cancelled (again) due to low enrollment (again), possibly because it didn't have a sexy title. So I needed a class to fill out my schedule and the brand-new director of the first-year seminar was looking  for another section so here I am scrambling about looking  for a topic, description, textbook, and title.

Over the years I've taught nearly every version of the first-year seminar, from the highly regimented lockstep to the teach-whatever-you-like version. I've taught the seminar on critical thinking, comedy theory, and nature writing, but I wasn't feeling inspired about any of those despite the fact that I'm required to submit a title and description in the next two weeks.

This fall's version of the first-year seminar focuses on transitions to college, critical thinking, and information literacy, and I'm required to assign at least 300 pages of reading--but nothing too challenging because, you know, kids these days. I briefly thought about assigning Hope Jahren's Lab Girl, which should be required reading for women going into STEM fields, but I can't choose my clientele so I went looking for something relevant to a wider variety of students.

Then it hit me: Tara Westover's memoir, Educated.

 

It has everything: train-wreck parents, familial abuse and indoctrination, grievous bodily harm, and the inspirational story of a student who arrives in college without ever having heard of the Holocaust but nevertheless manages to earn a PhD from Cambridge. (Read more about the book here.) I couldn't put the book down and I hope my students will find it equally compelling, or at least readable. 

 

The point of the first-year seminar is to help students—many of them the first in their families to attend college—make the leap to college-level learning, so they ought to be inspired by the story of a student whose childhood leaves her woefully ill-equipped to succeed in college but who nevertheless prevails.

Westover's memoir asks us to think about what it means to be educated, both formally and informally. What is education for, anyway? What walls do students have to climb to achieve their educational goals, both inside and outside the classroom? And how do we master the hidden curriculum needed for success in college if we're the first in our family to attend?

These, I think, are valid questions to tackle in a first-year seminar, and Westover's memoir will help us tackle them. But what do I call the class?

This is when I heard the thump thump of the bass line from "Another Brick in the Wall." Am I allowed to call my class We Don't Need No Education? Will any incoming 18-year-olds recognize the allusion? How appalling will it be to see such, um, colloquial language attached to a class taught by the most senior member of the English department?

At this point I don't care. I'm going to submit the title and description to the new director of the first-year seminar and let him decide whether it's too risque. I mean, it's not The Naked Person, but the title may be too revealing to make outsiders comfortable. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm okay with that.