Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Random bullets of Wednesday, with sighs and howls

The accreditation team has left the building. Repeat: the accreditation team has left the building. And the entire campus heaves a sigh of relief.

My last time teaching "Howl" this morning and I wonder how today's students will react. So many words! So many opportunities to take offense! Taking offense would be evidence that they've actually read it, but I suspect that "Howl" is tame by today's standards of discourse. 

I wanted to howl myself yesterday, and yet here I sit in my office quietly not howling--but I'm howling on the inside. My son was in the local emergency room yesterday (not the main one in Marietta but the branch in Belpre, which I wish I'd known before I spent so much time circling the horrible parking garage at the Marietta hospital) getting tested and pumped full of electrolytes before they sent him off (in an ambulance this time, not a helicopter) to Columbus with possible pancreatitis, which is a common side effect of one of his chemotherapy drugs with a name that sounds like asparagus but isn't. I spent some time with him in the ER (in Belpre!) before he left. My husband left this morning to be with him at The James, and I'll drive up tomorrow or Friday if he's still there. When I'm with him I think about all I'm not getting done on campus, and when I'm on campus I think about the need to be with him in Columbus. Howling on the inside wherever I am.

Meanwhile, yesterday I shot the best photo I've taken in years, entirely by accident. I stepped out of my building in the afternoon, looked up, and noticed sun shining through dogwood blossoms while storm clouds passed over. Raised my phone. One shot. There it is. Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time (and sometimes every place is the wrong place)--but you won't get the shot unless you look up. 


 

No comments: