Just fine, I guess. And you?

Lots of questions came up at the all-campus convocation yesterday but the one I had most trouble answering was "How was your summer?" So simple! I thought about saying something like "I certainly don't recall poking out the eye of Poseidon's son, but I must have done something to make him angry." But then people would want to talk about the new Odyssey film, which I haven't seen.

My summer was....complicated. I submitted three essays to various publications and I eagerly await a response (story of my life). I waited, sometimes patiently, to find out whether I would be teaching a certain course this fall and then scrambled to write the syllabus, which ought to be done today. I presided over a whole mess of meetings and took care of logistics for more meetings. 

I found mold in my office, started packing up books to move them out and found more mold, left empty boxes in my office for a few days and found them damp and sagging, and now await the results of the deep cleaning that allegedly made the building where I'll do most of my teaching inhabitable.

I dealt with one disaster after another at home: a flash flood, falling trees that knocked out power, a less damaging flash flood, and a third flash flood that may leave my driveway unusable for the next week. The resident Mr. Fixit has promised to leave a ladder down at the edge of the bridge to enable us to clamber up and down as needed, but I don't relish doing all that clambering in teaching clothes, much less walking across the silt deposits in my best shoes. And I don't mind parking my car at the edge of the road while there's no rain in the forecast, but it's parked on a spot that was under several feet of water two days ago. If the storms start up again, I'm leaving.

I drove my son to Columbus for chemotherapy and treatments and tests, cooked toddler foods when he couldn't swallow solids, did everything in my power to make his life more pleasant, and tried not to fret about his prognosis (which is good! Really!). But cancer is a topic not easily introduced into light table banter at a festive event.

In fact my whole summer was a bummer, and who wants to spread a dark cloud through a crowd of (mostly) happy people? We have a lot to celebrate on campus: record-setting fund-raising, good news from the accreditors, a really great group of new faculty, and, best of all, my impending retirement. So I put on a smile and say "Fine," which is enough for most people. For those who really want to know more...ask Poseidon.   

It's deja vu all over again

I scared the bejeebers out of a cleaner this morning just by pressing the elevator button in the library on campus. She was cleaning inside the elevator, which kind of astounded me because I don't believe I've ever seen anyone cleaning the inside of an elevator before but of course it must happen or they'd be a mess. When the door opened, she just about jumped out of her skin. She wasn't expecting anyone to be in the library at 7 a.m., but there I was. (The library opens at 8:30--good thing I have a key pass!)

I explained, as coherently as I could considering everything, that I needed to get up to my office to brush my teeth. I couldn't get home last night, see, and while I was able to do some shopping and put together an outfit to wear today when I have to present information in front of the full faculty, I had neglected to buy a toothbrush, so this morning my mouth felt like I had slept in it. (Not that I got much sleeping done at all, but never mind that.) I keep a toothbrush and toothpaste in my office, which now is in the library while my former office recovers from the mold infestation. 

Am I making any sense at all?

In the 22 years we've lived out in the woods, our driveway has been under water maybe once a year, and the ramp up to the bridge has been thoroughly washed away three or four times. Until this year. I wrote already about our previous flash flood a few weeks ago (click here), but I didn't write about the much smaller flood two days ago that left our driveway difficult but still driveable. The July flood required us to bring in a truckload of gravel, some of which washed away Saturday night. 

And the rest washed away yesterday, along with...well, that whole chunk of driveway. There's no way to get up and over the creek until we can find a gravel guy who isn't already tied up with everyone else's flooding problems.

I knew our driveway was in trouble yesterday without even seeing it. I turned in at the end of our road and saw how high the creek was there, and I knew I wasn't getting across all that water. I drove far enough up our road to encounter a neighbor, who convinced me that proceeding further was futile. So instead of going home, I went shopping (so I don't have to wear yesterday's jeans and T-shirt in front of the full faculty this afternoon), and then I found a room in town and failed spectacularly at getting any sleep.

Today while I'm feeling my way around campus trying to appear competent, my extremely competent husband will be trying to track down some gravel and cut up the trees blocking the bridge. Will I get home tonight? No idea. If not, at least I know where I can find a toothbrush. 

 

See all those trees? Not ideal!

Nobody's driving over that.

This rainbow greeted me as I stepped out of Kohl's yesterday. A sign?

Friday poetry challenge: Small but mighty

I was sitting at a laundromat waiting and sweating and swatting bugs and wondering how a business dedicated to the pursuit of cleanliness could accumulate so much filth when suddenly, in the midst of all this mess, I received a text stating that electricity had been restored at my house. 

Hallelujah. Just a little over two days without power had transformed me into a gibbering idiot. I don't know how people live without easy access to electricity and running water, but I also don't know how profs function without access to Microsoft Word, which my college laptop suddenly refused to run this week. I had hoped to keep that cranky old laptop creaking along until I retire in December, but the laptop had other ideas. 

Now I have power and running water and a new (well, less old) laptop willing to do whatever I need, and in a few days I'll have access to my classroom building again, after the masters of mold remediation perform their whole-building magic. There isn't a laundromat on the planet big enough to complete that cleaning job, and if there were, it would be full of bugs, just like my errant computer.

Well I'm raving. Everything is swirling together in my head, including the all-day New Faculty Orientation I led today. Being "on" all day taxed the people skills that have been lying dormant all summer, but I ushered a string of competent colleagues through the room until the newbies had been oriented to within an inch of their lives. 

Later I arrived home exhausted to find the resident lumberjack cooking a wonderful supper, even though he'd been busy chopping up chunks of fallen trees, meeting with the insurance claims adjuster and the Spectrum cable dude, conferring with the helpful neighbor who offered to help him haul out the whole tree lodged under our bridge, and, yesterday, driving our son to Columbus, where he was adjudged too sick to undergo his scheduled treatment.

Nothing made me happier all week than to finally see my son eating solid food tonight, even if he was still in some pain. Small improvements matter, like clean clothes and a hot shower, helpful neighbors and competent IT guys. Shove all of this week's ups and downs into a washing machine and you never know what might come out when the agitator stops:

Bugs in the laundromat,
bugs in the tech,
mold in the office building--
who can say what's next?

Smiles in the meeting room,
water in the pipes, 
solid food that tastes so good--
little things, but nice.

And that's where I end this impossible week: nestled within the niceness. I'll take that over a filthy laundromat any day of the week.

Now your turn: show us little things that make a difference, for good or ill.

Note to disasters: take a number

And then a tree fell on my house is what I've been telling people, but that's not strictly accurate. It wasn't one tree but four, or five if you include the one that fell halfway across our road. A good neighbor would have whipped out a chain saw and removed the road hazard, but I just drove around it. I don't do chain saws.

And the trees didn't fall on the house but all around it, missing just about everything of value. A tree down the hill fell on a brush pile. The lovely tulip poplar out back missed the house, the deck, and the wood-burner but fell, appropriately, on the wood pile. The two pine trees just uphill missed the house, the shed, and most of my son's car (one small dent) but slammed down onto the power lines feeding the house, with predictable results.

I wasn't home when this happened but the men were listening to the carnage and marveling at their close escape. By the time I arrived home, the AEP crew had already removed the trees from the power line and then promptly failed to depart because one truck had sunk into a saturated bit of our front lawn. The other truck pulled the first one out and they promised that AEP would send someone to repair the muddy ruts they'd left behind, but I'm more concerned about whether they damaged the water line running under that bit of lawn--the water line that feeds the apartment above our garage, which, remarkably, never lost power. But we won't know whether that water line is leaking until we get power to the well pump. Maybe today?  

This all happened on Monday. Our son had an appointment at The James early Tuesday and it's not a great idea for a person with a compromised immune system to stay in a house that lacks running water, so I drove him to Columbus Monday afternoon and we stayed in a hotel. We left the resident woodsman behind to cope with the aftermath: calling the insurance guy, finding an electrician, hauling in bottled water, chopping trees. So my son and I were safely ensconced at the hospital Tuesday morning when the tornado hit Columbus.

Well, the weather people are calling it a possible tornado, but if you watch this bit of video of strong winds flipping a car over during a deluge that reduced highway visibility to near zero, you'll agree that only a fool would try to drive in those conditions. Nevertheless that's what I was doing about an hour after the car-flipping incident--driving my son home through conditions so deplorable that I didn't hit the speed limit for the first hour, and I tensed up so much that my entire body still hurts a day later. We didn't take our usual route because I was dropping my son off at a friend's house (with fully functioning electricity and running water!), so we missed a whole host of areas where the roads were submerged.

But I made it home, finally, to find our creek high and a tree lodged under the bridge but everything else intact, ish. I am very sad about the tulip poplar out back--such a lovely tree--but maybe one of the nearby saplings will grow up to take its place. And I was not thrilled about the lack of running water in the apartment where we slept last night, which is why I left for campus very early this morning, stumbling in the dark through spider webs and muddy ruts to get to my car and drive out to find a working bathroom. Today I'm on campus unwashed and in yesterday's jeans (because I can't do laundry), with spider webs in my hair and mud on my shoes but happy to be back at work in a building with electricity and running water. I feel horrible for the people who suffered more severe damage but I'm glad the storm spared my house.

But seriously: if I put this summer's disasters into a work of fiction, readers wouldn't believe it. Cancer, chemotherapy, mold, floods, falling trees, tornado (possibly!)--it's too much! It is too much, but if you hear me so much as whisper that surely we've fulfilled our quota of disasters for the year, just give me a good sharp kick, okay?  

One truck stuck, the other pulling.

Damage where the cables enter the house.

Power line on the ground.

The remains of the tulip poplar. Sad!

Where the tops of the pine trees snapped off. 

Once again, my whole yard smells like pine.

What I wish I could tell the newbies

As I've been organizing New Faculty Orientation for the half dozen incoming faculty members we'll welcome this Friday, I'm reminded of a post from a few years ago called "Old Faculty Re-Orientation," a list of things I wish someone had told me when I first started teaching here:

1. Where to park. (Seriously--I was an adjunct, so I was not included in New Faculty Orientation, and the sum total of my instruction in parking was "You can park along any of the streets around campus," which led to my first-ever parking ticket, which I could not well afford on an adjunct's paycheck--which, by the way, has not increased in the entire 15 years since I've been teaching here. I'm grateful I no longer earn an adjunct's paycheck, but why are we still paying today's adjuncts the same amount per course that I earned 15 years ago?)

2. Who was sleeping with whom. (Information that would have made some department-meeting discussions much more transparent.)

3. That colleagues may become friends but they're always colleagues first, and some so-called friends will eagerly sacrifice friendship on the altar of professional advancement. (Social Relations 101 in the School of Hard Knocks.)

4. The Law of Conservation of Curmudgeonliness on Campus: the minute one career curmudgeon retires, another rises up to take his or her place. (And someday I might become that person!)

5. That some day I would be mourning the loss of a long-lived curmudgeon whose notorious name is totally unknown to my younger colleagues. (Aging 101 in the School of Hard Knocks.)

6. That the wonderfulness that sometimes happens inside the classroom can make all the outside-the-classroom awfulness worthwhile. Or, to quote a former colleague of mine: "The students! The students!" (He was a little drunk at the time so maybe you had to be there.) 

 

That was my list in 2015. What would I add today?

First, I'd love to give new faculty members the secret cell-phone number they can use to text a particular administrator, which is the key to getting that person to read and respond to email messages, but if too many people get hold of that number then the person on the other end will be buried in new text messages and thus unlikely to pay attention to mine. Besides, I object to this roundabout method of getting a response and I don't want to feed the beast. Except when I really need a response.

Second, I'd like to provide new faculty with a list of the people who can be trusted to have their backs and those who can't, but the Master Backstabber File seems to have been corrupted. Better, maybe, for newbies to find out for themselves. How can they earn a degree from the School of Hard Knocks if they never get any hard knocks?

Finally, the reason we're here--The students! The students!--is as rewarding as ever, but when we're not feeling the rewards, it's always helpful to know where to find some cake. (In the Worthington Center for Teaching Excellence. We've misplaced all the magic wands that instantly solve pedagogy problems, but we can usually provide a nice piece of cake.)

What do you wish someone had told you when you were a newbie? 

Friday poetry challenge: Excavating buried treasure

I found buried treasure in my campus office yesterday, and it would be selfish not to share. 

I've been clearing out a filing cabinet and sending piles of documents to the shredder, mostly dating from the time before electronic everything. A two-foot-tall pile of student advising folders: gone. Hard copies of old syllabi, quizzes, and handouts--gone. A bulging folder labeled bad papers and a thinner one labeled good papers--gone. Hard copies of evidence from ancient plagiarism cases--gone. What's the statute of limitations for a plagiarism case from 2006? 

I quickly leaf through the files to remove paper clips and I see lots of names I don't recognize. I remember the students in the messier plagiarism cases and even more from the good papers file, but most of the names evoke not an iota of recognition. In the bad papers file I glance at a few opening lines, but they all sound like this one: "The surroundings that go on in the world today hurt many Americans; various people have their own way of living and their own thoughts of behavior." Gold star to anyone who can identify the topic of that paper. 

But hidden among the unmemorable and outdated files are a few items I can't discard. Years ago a student illustrated a handout introducing Baudrillard to literature classes, back when discussing Baudrillard was a thing, and while I haven't used the handout in years and I'll certainly never use it again, I'm keeping the student's drawing. 

And I'm keeping a paper that served as an excellent example of the Bumper-Sticker Essay--a feast of vague generalizations supported only by slogans from the NRA. I love the fact that it repeatedly refers to guns as "utensils," which makes me wonder whether I ought to stash a Luger in the kitchen amongst the spatulas.

I've set aside for further consideration a folder full of old transparencies for overhead projectors, including the ones I used in the teaching demonstration that won me this job. Mingling within the same crowded folder are a photograph of three space aliens from some cheesy B-movie, a detailed portrayal of the Great Chain of Being, a drawing of Abe Lincoln's top hat, and a photo of Charles Whittlesey, a noted geologist who surveyed the Indian Mounds in Marietta in 1837 (and also a distant relative of my mother). I don't know what to make of these oddities but I can't let them go without a thought.

The treasure I can finally share is an email from a student defending his decision to cheat in my class more than 20 years ago. I think this was in Postcolonial Literature Survey, back when I was still giving multiple-choice reading quizzes--five simple questions that anyone who had done the reading could easily answer. On the first quiz I thought a particular student had looked at a classmate's answers, so for the next quiz I made three versions. Sure enough, this student's responses were incorrect for his version of the quiz but correct for his classmate's version. I sent him a very brief email suggesting a meeting, and in response he sent me a screed two and a half pages long, a classic of defensive rhetoric. Here are a few excerpts, with distinctive syntax and spelling retained:

Here's the deal. I did not do my reading for this week. When we took the quiz, I was trying to answer to the questions until the girl sitting in front of me raised her quiz to check on her answers....This is when I decided to write down the answers she had on her paper thinking I might have a better chance to not get a zero....

Just like most students (I presume), I from time to time might have used the homework of somebody else before class to turn in one of mine. But I don't think this is dishonesty because most students do the same....

Now as for possibility that this behavior might be a usual habit for me, I would just like to let you know that I always sit in the front row when I'm in class (this semester, your class being the expection because I came late the first day).....

I'm an honest person and I don't believe in getting out of college with a degree without being able to show some degree in professiency in the subjects I studied as a major, minor or else. I'm ready to take any test you would like me to do in any subject I took so far to attest this.

If you see I did this regretable act for this quiz, it's for the following reasons: first of all in my opinion, this is just a quiz. Second, as I told you, I don't care too much about this subject I'm taking because hopefully, it will never help me to an important degree for any of my possible future careers....

I have high respect for the  subject you are teaching but I don't see a direct connection for me in it when it comes to giving me a job in the future....

[Deleted long paragraph about how hard the student had to work to get to college.] 

I regret this incident happening because now at least you will not see that and it's just as if all my efforts where waisted. And for what???? A quiz! 5 questions not even important in the sence that they don't even require any critical thinking, any analysis or anything related to the use of our brains to solve, create or investigate. The only think I needed to do was to read the book!!!!!!!!! I did not have time to do this and I sincerely regret not doing so. I thought about guessing the answers (actually you can see that on the first question) but I was like "Hell! this is not a big deal...it's just a quiz and this is not very important stuff!"....

I hope this will not have any direct consequences on my scholarships because I can not afford the tuition fees. (I'm almost laughing about it because that would be really odd and funny to loose all that work for something this insignificant for me)....

And on it goes.

The student was right about a few things. It's true that the quiz required no critical thinking, and that's one reason I moved away from multiple-choice reading quizzes and started instead giving questions requiring some analysis. It's also true that all he had to do was read the book, but that would have taken more time than writing a lengthy email defending his right to cheat.

What ever happened to this student? No idea. The name means nothing to me now, but he was perfectly suited to any career requiring the construction of irate screeds--a skill AI may have made obsolete. 

Just like me! 

So many obsolete files sent to the shredder! What will be left of me when my office is empty?

"I've piles
of files
to shred,"
I said,
a mound
I'm bound
to toss--
no loss!
I'll take
a break
to read
a screed--
a mess
express-
ing heat.
(The deets
long gone.
Doggone!)
I'll trash
this stash
of stuff,
enough
to force
a horse
to choke--
no joke!
And then
I'll pen
a note.
I quote:
"Retired."
Inspired?
Agree
with me:
attempt
to empt-
y drawers.
No more
to say.
Away
I'll wend.
(The end.)

That sudden abrupt stop seems appropriate for a career heading inexorably toward the exit, but I'd love to see some more poetry on my way out the door. Who will sling some rhymes?    

 

Just a tiny sampling of the treasures I've amassed.

 

Writing outside the barn--er, box

My favorite Writing Wednesday moment of the summer occurred when a serious history scholar explained that she'd been searching a database to find authentic Viking names to christen a fictional herd of cows. As one does.

On this final Writing Wednesday of the summer and probably of my career, I've been looking back at what these scribbling scholars have accomplished over the years. Colleagues have worked on scholarly books and articles, polished essays, massaged data, and contributed their expertise to various branches of the scholarly community. I've seen the names of my Writing Wednesday colleagues mentioned in the acknowledgments of published books and articles, and I've justified the existence of the group by convincing the Provost that meeting in a room to write for one morning each week builds our influence as scholars. And the Provost has shown appreciation by treating us to lunch at the end of the summer--which would be today.

But some of us have also worked on less scholarly projects during this time. Of the three articles I polished and submitted earlier this summer, only one was strictly scholarly; the other two were a bit of memoir and a humor piece. I've reached the point in my academic career when I have nothing more to prove to the scholarly community, so why not attempt to extend my influence outside the academy?

And I'm not the only one thinking that way. One of my colleagues this summer has spent his Writing Wednesday time polishing mini-essays for his Substack newsletter, which I highly recommend (click here).  David is an expert on religion, history, music, and social justice, all of which appear in his latest post, which movingly describes his recent visit to the southern border and the people who sacrifice to serve the needs of border-crossers.

Another colleague, the one seeking Viking names for cows, has been writing a series of romantasy novellas involving nuns and barbarians on a magical island (click here for info). She publishes under an assumed name because she's not eager for students to stumble upon her spicy texts, but exercising creativity this way fills her with the kind of joy so rarely inspired by scholarly writing. It's been fun to watch my colleagues follow their own paths toward different kinds of influence.

And what am I working on now? Well, my retirement shindig has been scheduled for the Friday of Homecoming weekend, and I've been asked to give a talk that appears on the Homecoming schedule as "Bev Hogue's Best Lecture." The pressure's on! What if I instead deliver my second-best lecture? How would anyone even know? So I've got some work to do, distilling a lifetime of scholarly wisdom into a lecture that can appeal to whoever happens to wander in during Homecoming. 

These days it seems everyone's greatest ambition is to be an influencer, but even we who sit in a campus classroom and write for hours at a time all summer long can wield influence in our own quiet way. We may not get millions of views on TikTok, but we still use our skill and creativity to make a mark on the world, one article or Substack or Viking cow at a time.

A birthday wish: more dullness, less drama

Would a grown man feel silly carrying a Happy Birthday balloon around a hospital all morning long? If he did, he didn't admit it. 

Yes, my son celebrated his birthday with chemotherapy--not exactly the top item on his wish list but he'll take it. Hospital staff gave him a birthday balloon at his first appointment, and everywhere he went for the rest of the day total strangers smiled and wished him a happy birthday. 

We had a little time to kill in Columbus afterward so I drove us up to Belle's Bread, a Japanese-owned French bakery known for its curry donuts. I bought some baked goods to take home and then my son wandered into the nearby Asian market and looked with longing at the sushi selection, knowing that raw fish is not a good choice for a guy with a compromised immune system. I remember the first time I ate sushi again after finishing six months of cancer treatment. There's nothing better than that long-delayed first bite--but it'll be a while before he tastes it. 

He stayed the night in Columbus so he can get more chemo today, so I was a long way down the highway before the big event: our daughter and son-in-law drove to Columbus to take our son out to dinner with his nieces and nephew. Chemo can make things taste horrible, dull the appetite, make swallowing painful, and even inspire vomiting, but this time he was able to enjoy a meal without too much drama.  

It wasn't a normal birthday but this hasn't been a normal year. My mother used to insist that normal is just a setting on your dryer, but after four full months of cancer treatments, we're really hoping that next year's birthday will involve more fun and less drama, more cake and fewer needles and nasty chemicals that make swallowing painful. Maybe it could even be a little, dare we say it, dull. Enough with the drama already! (But a few balloons wouldn't hurt.) 

Friday poetry challenge: Singing the bubbling-brine blues

You can't live and work near the confluence of two major rivers without becoming deeply interested in water. Our waterways bring daily pleasure, whether we're driving to work beside the Muskingum, riding a historic paddlewheeler on the Ohio, or watching great blue herons fish in our creek. We faced our first flood a week after we moved to the area and many more since then, so we spend a lot of time thinking about where our water comes from and where it's going.

Our well at home is fairly shallow and far from the reach of the fracking brine injected into wells far beneath Marietta, but I work in Marietta and eat at local restaurants, so when our little town's water system gets into the New York Times, I pay attention (click here for gift article).  That's my colleague Dr. Dave Jeffery sharing his considerable geological expertise on the topic of local geological formations that enable fracking waste brine to bubble up into gas and oil wells; he reminds us that no one seems to be doing the necessary tests to see how far the fracking wastewater has already migrated and how it may affect local drinking water.

Nobody is surprised to learn that once again Appalachia has been treated like a landfill. The 2019 film Dark Waters detailed the legal fight to force DuPont to take responsibility for polluting area drinking water with C8 just downstream from Marietta. Extractive industries left their mark on this part of Ohio for years, leaving behind strip-mined land and derelict gas and oils wells--including an orphaned well that injured six people when it exploded in the Wayne National Forest last fall (link here, though it may be behind a paywall). Chunks of coal from abandoned mines wash up in our creek regularly, reminding us that generations of individuals and companies that have profit from local resources while leaving behind a mess. And now a company wants to build a huge data center just a few miles up the Muskingum from us, drawing on the river's water for its cooling system.

I'm not an expert and I don't know the best way to address these issues while allowing necessary development, but let's give the scientists time to do their jobs, testing waters and examining environmental impacts before it's too late. We love our waterways and we need clean drinking water so we probably ought to sit down and take a breath instead of blindly opening the floodgates to more pollution.

That's too serious a topic for doggerel, so maybe it's time to sing the blues:

Well Pennsylvania sent its fracking waste to the Appalachian part of Ohio;
Yes the Keystone State sent fracking waste to darkest Appalachian Ohio;
They didn't want that gunk in their own state, 
So where's they expect that nasty brine to go? 

Well the fracking brine is seeping into cracks and gaps and bubbling into wells; 
I said the fracking brine is seeping underground and bubbling upward into wells;
Will it pollute the local drinking water?
Only time (and serious testing) gonna tell.  

Anyone want to take a stab at some blues? I'm too sad to add more verses.  

 

Take Your Maggot to Work Day?

When I first arrived at Marietta College, the English department offered courses focusing on the concepts of tragedy and progress but nothing on comedy or nature, and while some African American texts were included in survey courses, we offered no course fully dedicated to the subject. The first thing the department asked me to do was to design a course on African American Lit, which became a favorite. No one ever asked me to design courses focusing on comedy or nature, but I did it anyway. And now I will conclude my 26-year tenure here by teaching, in my final semester, African American Lit, Concepts of Nature, and a senior capstone focusing on comedy. It feels right to end with my three favorite teaching topics.

Other courses I've designed over the years have been more ephemeral: a Sports Literature class designed for remedial writing students; a Postcolonial Survey that I taught many times before it died for lack of enrollment; a condensed course on humor writing that died with our short-lived attempt at offering a January term; and a course focusing on literature of place that enabled my all-time favorite teaching experience--taking the California Literature class on a Spring Break tour of California, where students gave oral presentations on authors in places they wrote about. 

I hope my contributions to diversifying our offerings have made a difference, but I won't mourn if they die in my absence. Students' interests change and new instructors bring different areas of expertise, so the curriculum will evolve with or without me, which is fine. Change is good! Even small changes in existing courses can open doors to new insight.

Yesterday, for instance, while working on the Concepts of Nature syllabus, I came up with a new grouping of poems that made me laugh out loud. I've given up on the anthology I used for years; many pieces are outdated and students often refused to buy the book anyway. I'm still assigning a novel and novella, but in place of the anthology, I'm assembling pieces available online or via pdfs. Freed from the limits of the anthology, I've come up with way too many readings, so now I have the delightful task of winnowing the list and putting readings together in ways that will inspire interesting discussion.

Early in the semester we talk about the relationship between people and animals, and in one class period I'll ask students to discuss four poems: Walt Whitman's "I Think I Could Turn and Live with the Animals"; James Wright's "A Blessing"; Robinson Jeffers' "Vulture"; and Yusef Komunyakaa's "Ode to the Maggot." What a progression: from "I love animals!" to "Animals love me!" to "Animals will eat my carcass when I'm dead, and that's okay!" Maybe the class should sponsor a "Take your maggot to work" day. A colleague from the biology department is auditing the class--maybe she can dig some up for us. Wouldn't students relish an opportunity to cuddle with maggots?

I'm joking, I think. I mean, if I want to bring in examples of every animal we read about, I'll have to find a reliable source for weasels, wolves, bucks, herons, and whales, among others. And, sadly, we won't be able to visit all the natural landforms we'll read about; I'm afraid the classroom can't quite accommodate Mt. Katahdin, Kilauea, the Pacific Ocean, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

But what fun we'll have on those imagined journeys. All journeys must eventually end, but I intend to make this last leg of my teaching career a wild, wonderful ride through courses I love to teach--just one last time. I won't even complain if some maggots want to come along for the ride.

Getting the machine moving again

Mouse clicks, computer blips, quick checks with a colleague on items that need her input--these are the sounds of summer break moving swiftly toward its close, the sounds of deadlines looming and colleagues making decisions that dump work on my back, the sounds of the great education machine being prodded back into action.

Persistent piercing beeps from a bit of equipment in the moldy office building--why won't someone put that thing out of its misery? My office door sticks, swollen with moisture, and I've brought along a student worker (tall) to lift down books from the top shelf where the moisture is thickest. The books are slightly damp but don't appear to be moldy, and the tall person says the top of the shelf looks dusty, with some black smudges in the farthest corner. I'd like to take a look at my framed diploma and awards to see if they're moldy on the back, but they're hanging too high for my tall helper. The cleaning crew will have to take them down when they're working to de-moldify my office.

I fetched some undamaged books and took home my regalia plus the lovely teal-and-midnight shawl a retired colleague knitted for me years ago, a shawl that, unfortunately, I had left draped on a chair where mold patches grew. The shawl can be cleaned and the regalia shows no signs of damage, but I left it hanging outside in the sun all afternoon Saturday just in case. A hot, dry day with a light wind and plenty of sunshine can work wonders, or that's what I hope.

Mold makes no sound at all, creeping into dark, damp spaces and establishing invisible outposts before we're aware that we've been invaded. It would be much easier to manage if it came charging in accompanied by bagpipes, but apparently the universe thrives on the element of surprise.

The rest of campus remains mostly quiet, but here and there I encounter pockets of activity. The clock is ticking and the to-do list is calling, which would be fine if new items didn't keep getting added. (Surprise!)

I'm done preparing for New Faculty Orientation but suddenly I have to add a very recent hire to the list and replace a presenter who can't attend--and oops, I'd better go ahead and order lunch. You can't require people to meet for seven hours straight without feeding them.

Syllabi for my two fall courses are coming along, but classes start four weeks from today (!!!) and suddenly I have to add the senior capstone to my schedule, thanks to a long-delayed shift in staffing. I taught the capstone two years ago so I can recycle my previous syllabus, with updates to account for changing conditions. How do I teach a senior research class in the age of AI? I guess I'm about to find out.

And while my to-do list grows, some habitual tasks fall away. Normally in July I'd be working on my annual review, but what's the point of filling out a pile of forms to prove my worth as an employee when I'm retiring in December? And I've completed what I hope will be the last department assessment task of my career. I also set up an assessment plan for the grant I'm administering, but all the assessment activities will take place after I pass on leadership of the grant to another colleague. Yes: assessment is slinking out of my life the same way mold slinks in--unheralded, sans bagpipes.

In the quiet of the library I click and the computer blips and the colleague confers and we slowly, steadily, quietly get the gears of the great machine moving again. My final semester of teaching, already full of quiet surprises and promising more. I hope they are the happy kind and not more mold.  

Friday poetry challenge: The flood giveth and the flood taketh away

What's the oddest bit of flotsam our creek has ever delivered to our property? Floods have brought us chunks of brick, glass, dishes, clay, and coal, plus trees (whole and partial), zip ties, drainage tile, a child's car seat, broken toys, a car's gas tank and an LP gas tank, plastic 50-gallon barrels, mangled tires, and unidentifiable rusted bits of appliances and farm equipment. This is the first time, though, that a flood has delivered a saddle.

Someone must be missing it, right? I think you'd notice if your saddle got snatched away by a raging torrent. I thought about driving upstream to see which neighbors still keep horses, but the creek forks and stretches far into the next county so that's a lot of ground to cover. The neighbor who constructs floating docks came by and collected the plastic barrels and the LP gas tank, so now the saddle is propped up beside the road in hopes that someone will recognize it and take it home. 

The flood giveth and the flood taketh away. Our downstream neighbor pulled his mangled pickup truck and tractor out of the creek, but his garden shed is probably in bits at the bottom of the Muskingum. My husband spent untold hours scooping up gravel that had washed from our driveway into the neighbor's field, and two truckloads of gravel and lots of labor made the driveway usable again. To look around, you'd never know that we were living in the middle of a disaster area, unless you took a look at our garden. 

I keep telling myself that we've fulfilled our quota of disasters for the year, but the minute I say that, the sky will open and drop--what? We've suffered hail, flood, mold, cancer, marauding raccoons, and intransigent colleagues--what next? If we're suddenly called on to ride herd on another horde of marauding disasters, at least we've got a saddle ready.

Coal bits, clay chips, plastic, glass,
tires, barrels, zip ties;
the flood destroys but brings new toys,
disaster's sodden flip side.

Best I can do after the week we've had. Anyone else feeling creative about disaster?

 

Saddke up!

Big chunk of tree.

Nice catch!

Debris under the bridge, and above.

That's why they call it a FLASH flood

Remind me again why we live in the sticks, I ask, but of course I know the answer: birds and bees and butterflies, summer fireflies and spring ephemerals, creek walks with the grandkids, quiet nights, lovely days, space for a great big garden, all wonderful things until the rain falls and the creek swells and the garden is under water.

It was barely raining when I left campus yesterday but I had to pull over twice on the drive home because the rain was so heavy I couldn't see the road. It finally let up a bit and I followed a line of cars moving slowly up the highway past loose debris. A tree had fallen and pulled down a power line across half of the road, forcing us to drive perilously close to a drainage ditch swollen with fast-moving water. But I made it home! The creek was rising but didn't look dangerous.

There's a reason they call it a flash flood: it happened so quickly that no one had time to prepare. The first time I walked down toward the bridge, the driveway on this side was still walkable and the bridge and road were visible above the creek; by the time I'd walked back up the hill, the driveway was under water. Flood waters crossed the meadow but looked like they'd stay away from the edge of the garden, but the resident green thumb moved loose garden chairs and other floatables uphill just in case. 

From our side of the bridge I could just barely see my neighbor's blue pickup truck parked next to the garden shed he'd been building by hand for some months. Twenty minutes later, our bridge and garden and road were under water and the neighbor's truck and shed were just gone. The entire meadow had become a rushing mass of water louder than Niagara, and it sounded like the bridge was being hit repeatedly with battering rams.

The floodwaters came within a few feet of the chicken run, which distressed me immensely, but the chickens reveled in the bounty of bugs trying to flee the rising waters. Special delivery! 

Within an hour the water had receded, and this morning the creek is well within normal bounds. The bridge is covered with debris and we'll need a load of gravel before the driveway is passable again, and the garden is a big mud pit, with corn stalks bowing to the ground in a downstream direction.

The last big flood we suffered (click here) washed away our driveway and garden shed, so I'm glad we didn't lose more. Elsewhere in the county, a tornado struck down and buildings and trees suffered massive damage. We got off easily this time--nothing that a few tons of gravel can't fix. 

Except the garden. I went to look at it this morning and found mud where tomato plants ought to be. The garden might spring back, insists the resident green thumb. Good thing I married an optimist--otherwise I might find this situation a tad discouraging.

Just a little water in the meadow. Nothing to be concerned about.

The bridge sounds like it's being battered, but it's above water....for now.

You can just barely see the neighbor's truck behind the trees.

Wait, I was just walking down there and now it's under water....

Garden stuff on higher ground

That little row of plants is at the edge of the garden.

The electric fence around the garden is all that's visible

Lake Hogue

Wait, where did the bridge go?

Standing wave. You wouldn't believe how loud the water is.

Nope, still no bridge.

Looking toward the road, which is under water.

Where the neighbor's truck and shed used to be.

Chickens find higher ground

The garden....what's left of it.

Corn, bowing.

Flood debris with creek in the background.

The mud on the driveway is so slick I didn't dare walk on it.

Mold madness, part two

I have written previously (click here) about why The Thurber Carnival is so meaningful to me. First book I ever bought with my own money, a book I frequently re-read and use in comedy classes, etc. The book has survived multiple moves from Florida to Kentucky to all over Ohio and it has survived various campus offices for 25 years, but it did not survive the recent mold outbreak in my building. When I went to start packing up my office this morning, I found the book damp to the touch and covered in mold. I didn't check the other 500ish books in my office--who has time for that? Instead, I am staying away from my office and trying not to be consumed by anger. I mean, it's just a book. A whole lot of books. My books. Which may soon be consigned to the landfill.

 

Breathing, not quite easily

I was all set to teach my Nature Writing class right on time Saturday but nature got in the way--thunder and lightning and rain so heavy that I had to sit in my car in the parking lot waiting for a break in the deluge. I used an umbrella, but nevertheless I spent the next three hours walking around on wet feet. The class was great, though, and the rain stopped just in time for us to go outside for an observation activity, stepping out the door into what felt like a sauna turned to Broil. But the good news is the wildfire smoke had dissipated.

Friday morning I had walked out the door of my hotel room in Columbus and immediately abandoned my plans for a nice walk in a lovely garden. The sun was a dim hazy disc, like a fuzzy felt circle glued on gray; the heavy air tasted acrid and made my eyes gritty and my head dull. From the window of my son's room on the sixteenth floor of The James, I saw buildings a block away fading into invisibility. My son was released from the hospital under strict orders to stay indoors. What do we do when the very air feels hostile?

But I got him home and we stayed indoors and awaited the rain, which arrived on Saturday as expected, with winds whipping trees around and pushing my car across a road rippling with rain falling too fast to drain away. And then I stopped by my office on campus to pick up some things and found another indication of nature's resilience: blotches of mold growing on the carpet. I've been working in the library all summer because my office in the classroom building gets damp in the summer, but never before has that dampness transformed my carpet into a living ecosystem. 

Maybe it's appropriate to be reminded of the power of nature when I'm teaching people about nature writing. It's not all butterflies and rainbows, people! The group was lively and attentive, a dozen people, mostly women of a certain age, all eager to amp up their nature writing skills. I kept reminding them I'm not grading any of this, and by the end of the three hours they had stopped apologizing for their attempts. They sat around big tables covered with notepads, pens, drawing paper, markers, colored pencils, handbags, abandoned attempts at prose, and crumbled snack wrappers, but all I could see were the hands scribbling and drawing and writing accompanied by a low, gentle chatter that sounded like joy. 

Today the sun is shining and the smoke is gone and I'm still reveling in the pleasures of yesterday's class. Tomorrow I'll have to motivate someone on campus to remediate the mold infestation in my office, but today I think I'll sit here and enjoy the privilege of breathing freely. 

Oh, and I'd probably go back to the nature center and retrieve the umbrella I left behind. This time of year, we never know what nature might throw at us next.

Waiting for a break in the storm

The view from the 16th floor

Just a small section of my carpet ecosystem

Lost in a familiar place

I'm driving to campus on the same route I've driven at least three times a week for more than 25 years and suddenly I look around and can't figure out where I am. On state route 60, yes, alongside the Muskingum River, but have I passed that BP station yet? Nothing looks right.  

Moment of panic. How could I lose track of myself in a place I've known and loved so long?

I blame sleep (disturbed) and stress (sick son) and feeling overwhelmed (work work work). Now I'm looking at the laptop screen through tired eyes and trying to make progress on a project that keeps getting thwarted by other people's (in)actions (because I'm not the only person who's stressed out and distracted right now), but all I want to do is put my head down on the desk and sleep, except I can't because I have to check my phone to see if there's any news from my son.

He's in the hospital again, in Columbus. He had some funny numbers on a blood test yesterday so, long story short, my husband drove him to The James last night, which was a relief because my night vision makes driving in the dark stressful. Downright dangerous, even. But it means I'll be on taxi duty when our son gets released, which could be today or tomorrow or Friday or whenever. If it's Saturday, he's out of luck because I have to teach a class (and probably I should go ahead and print out the handouts today in case I can't get back to campus or in case there's another power outage or in case, I don't know, a meteor destroys all life on earth between now and the weekend).

So last night I had trouble sleeping while awaiting news from the hospital, and then I had trouble sleeping after my husband arrived home in the wee hours, and then suddenly it was morning and I had trouble staying awake while driving to campus but now here I am trying to get caught up on a ridiculous workload while awaiting a text telling me to drop everything and drive to Columbus. Frankly, I'm hoping that they'll keep him until tomorrow because I don't believe I'm mentally or physically alert enough to drive to Columbus and back today. 

And frankly, I'm tired of hearing myself complain about sickness and uncertainty and work. I am doing all the things I need to do because I love my son, which is my immense privilege as a parent. It's just hard to do the Mom things when the work things are also in disorder, and it's hard to make progress on the work things when I might have to drop everything to tend to my son.

This is temporary, I keep telling myself. Someday this will be over. True, but while I'm struggling through this ridiculous journey, maybe I can forgive myself if I occasionally lose my way.