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.

Trying not to take this weather personally

Why do I struggle to sleep during a power outage? The house is quiet, eerily quiet, with a thick curtain of darkness blocking out the world, but my mind stays alert, aware that something is wrong: 

What time is it now? The juice is supposed to return around midnight. Sure feels like midnight, but how would I know? 

Thirsty. Where's that flashlight? Oops, can't run the water with the pump dead, and can't open the fridge lest the outage last longer than expected. Wait, here's a can of ginger ale on the counter. Would warm ginger ale help me sleep? What if it makes me want to pee? Can't flush the toilets with no power to the well pump. 

Why can't I sleep?

Next day I kept asking people at church what they thought of the storm and they all said "What storm?" Apparently it was highly localized, bringing sudden hail, rain, wind, and thunder to our small corner of the county while skirting the rest. By next morning crews had removed fallen trees and limbs from several areas of our road, but I saw little sign of damage elsewhere.

The storm lasted ten minutes at most but left us in the dark for six hours, much of which I spent wondering why I couldn't sleep. And then the power came on and we suddenly became aware of just how many little lights surround us every day, how many common noises provide the soundtrack of our lives. The clock came on, the fan started moving air around, and I soon settled into blissful sleep.  

Friday poetry challenge: The Spring Can't Come Too Soon Blues

One day this week I watched coal barges crashing through river ice and saw a great blue heron contemplating a meager spot of open water in an otherwise frozen wetland, and the next day I went to work without a coat on and felt the approach of something fresh--Spring! 

I may have had a spring in my step after I sat down and posted all the College's home baseball games on my calendar, each little electronic appointment glowing like a promise of sunshine and happiness, even though I know some of those dates will include wind or cold or sunburn or misery. Baseball is coming--can spring be far behind?

But Spring Break is also coming, when I hope to spend some time with the grandkids and look at birds and maybe visit an orchid show--and oh yes, get a root canal--but this week three different administrators have tried to colonize my Spring Break calendar with various types of meetings and responsibilities. Which of these tasks would be least onerous during Spring Break: root canal, group document-editing session, all-morning training meeting, or interviews with prospective job candidates? I choose root canal.

So on a very gray, damp, but not at all cold day, I'm singing the Spring Can't Come Too Soon Blues: 

Well you can freeze me in December and throw blizzards at my January days
Yes you can freeze me in December and throw blizzards at my January days
But when I hear those baseballs coming
You'd better get those snowdrifts cleared away.

Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow and we're all prepared for six more wintry weeks
I say Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow so we'll wear our coats and scarves for six more weeks
But when spring training's on the radio
Mr. Groundhog's not the weatherman I seek.

Now Spring Break is in the offing and my calendar stands clean and clear and free
Yes Spring Break is in the offing and my calendar should still stand clear and free
But if you stomp all over my free dates
I swear you're gonna see the back of me.

 

Now your turn--loosen up your rhythm and put your blues into rhyme. 

Jammin'

My husband got home around dusk yesterday and said You've got to see this so I went out and had a look. It was definitely worth seeing: thick fog hanging above a creek so choked with ice that it bulged on the upstream side of our neighbor's low bridge,. The icejam caused ice chunks to pile up more than a quarter mile upstream past our bridge and sent water over the banks into the low parts of our meadow. The creek looked solid, but if you tried to walk on the jammed-in ice chunks you'd soon fall victim to gaps and instabilities. The ice chunks looked spooky in the fog but far scarier was the prospect of further flooding. If the ice and water can't move past the jam, there's nowhere for it to go except where it can do the most damage.

There's a metaphor in there somewhere but it's too hot to touch right now--or too cold to handle. 

 

 

Digressions toward upliftitudination

I'm standing at the gas station fueling up my salt-encrusted car, relieved that a sudden outbreak of warmth is melting the ice that keeps covering every stinking surface in the county, even the river, which was absolutely gorgeous this morning with that silvery sheen of icemelt shimmering over the frozen expanse--now where was I going with this?

Oh yes: pumping gas, grabbing a paper towel to wipe off the rear backing-up camera that keeps getting so thoroughly coated with layers of road salt and, now that the ice is melting off my driveway, mud, so filthy that when I back up the camera shows me only vague blotches where the road ought to be, when suddenly I see a big green truck. Meaning I see the truck in the gas station parking lot, not in my mud-covered driveway, which it (the truck) could never reach because even if a semi loaded with soda could cross my bridge without causing a collapse it would probably jackknife on the sharp turn just past the bridge and never make it up the mud-covered hill, which is a good thing because there's no room up there for a semi to turn around so it would be stuck there forever, in my driveway, a big green semi advertising 7UP--and again, I've lost my train of thought.  

I blame the weather, which started the week in single digits, made a brief visit into the low 60s, and now hovers in the 30s, leading to a freeze-melt-refreeze cycle that's driving us all just a little bit crazy, not to mention that the weather inside my building is so miserable that on Monday I had to sit in my office with my coat on even while wearing long-johns and two layers of sweaters.

But I digress. (So does the weather. Repeatedly.) I'm pumping gas when I see this truck, this huge green semi sporting a massive ad for 7UP, a beverage I literally never drink unless I'm at a baby shower or some such celebration where someone makes that super-sweet punch involving 7UP poured over sherbet, and I'm not sure why else 7UP exists except to make that punch, when suddenly (back at the gas station, pumping gas) I notice the words on the side of the big green truck: Be UPtimistic.

And this makes me smile.

Yes: despite the weather, despite the ice that keeps trying to kill me and the mud that makes my car slide all over the driveway, despite all the ways my department and my discipline and, yes, even my entire career are being marginalized and misunderstood and muddled, despite the lack of answers about health problems plaguing my loved ones and lack of certainty about funding for just about everything and the difficulty of getting that one annoying student to understand that the stairwell works both ways and therefore walking straight up the middle disrupts the flow--I mean, despite abundant reasons to be grumpy on a cold wet miserable morning, those two words on the side of a truck make me smile.

Later I look up UPtimistic and discover than in addition to being associated with a Danish electronic band called Laid Back (which ought to be the name of the garage band I'll start in my retirement if I ever get around to learning to play an instrument), the Be UPtimistic ad campaign dates back to 2024, which lets you know just how out of touch I am re: carbonated beverage advertising, and when I look at the rationale for the ad campaign I see that I've missed many opportunities to experience what some no doubt highly paid advertising copywriter chose to call "UPliftment." 

I confess that I felt uplifted when I saw the ad on the side of that big green truck this morning, which accords with 7UP's stated mission to "offer light relief from the mundanities of daily life by bringing moments of UPliftment, positivity and surprise." A little tautological there with the reference to the dailiness of daily life or the mundanities of the mundane, but what do you expect from a company that asserts that this ad campaign "signifies a refreshed strategic and creative north star for the brand that will inform all international programs moving forward"? Frankly, I was not aware that the north star needed refreshing or that it was capable of informing programs, forward-moving or otherwise, but then I'm not raking in the big bucks writing ad copy so what right have I to be critical?

No, today I'm choosing to put my critical tendencies aside and focus on abundant reasons to be UPtimistic, even if I don't drink 7UP and don't intend to start and even if the ice keeps making life treacherous and the mud makes me slide and the atmosphere in academe is as murky as it's ever been. Tomorrow we'll celebrate the College's birthday but today I'll warm up by celebrating a great class discussion in American Lit Survey this morning, a pair of colleagues wearing cheery pink outfits, a couple of writing buddies keeping my fingers on the keyboard, a semi-disastrous attempt to make a pumpkin dump cake that nevertheless resulted in deliciousness (not deliciousment), a warm coat, a good night's sleep, and the opportunity to do it all again tomorrow, only with cupcakes.

So life is rough but I'm UPtimistic. (But I draw the line at UPliftment.) 

Friday poetry challenge: Scarfing up the rhymes

I walked out the door this morning to find my face being pelted by invisible precipitation, sharp little pellets that looked like nothing and sounded like dry rice being poured into a saucepan. What do you call this stuff? Not quite sleet, not quite snow, not quite freezing rain, just one more manifestation of this never-ending winter. When I was halfway to campus it turned to snow, and by the time I'd parked the campus sidewalks, which had only recently been cleared of ice and snow, were once again covered in white.

At least it's not windy, I told myself. At least the temperature is in double digits for a change. At least I'm well bundled up. But now, thanks to the New York Times, I have to think about yet another winter-weather hazard: looking old. Yes: a prominent headline asks "Does Your Winter Scarf Make You Look Old?" Apparently people with way too much time on their hands are out there in the blizzard obsessing over what sorts of scarves people wear and how those scarves are tied. One fashion expert avers that scarves that look "buttoned-up" make people look old while those tied more casually make wearers appear youthful; further, the Scarf Mafia asserts that "it's impossible to make an infinity scarf look relaxed and chill."

Do you know what what else does not look "relaxed and chill"? A person who has slipped on a pile of snow and landed SPLAT on the sidewalk. It happened this morning--not to me, for a change--and the victim, though well buttoned-up, looked neither youthful nor decrepit but simply embarrassed. Good thing the Scarf Mafia wasn't here to offer helpful suggestions: "Here, let me fix your scarf so you'll look more youthful while lying on the ground--or better yet, take advantage of this little hiatus to knit yourself a triangular scarf. So much less stodgy!"

I love my current winter scarf, a soft red wool with white and gold accents, but I wear it not to appear chill but to stay warm, or at least warmer than I would be without it. I have colleagues who strap spikes onto their shoes to walk to campus and others so bundled up that they I can't tell who they are when they greet me, but I'm not making any judgments about their winter-weather attire. I'm just hoping they remain upright in the middle of whatever you want to call this slippery mess. 

We've had snow and sleet and freezing rain,
and then we've had them all again,
along with wind and winter chill
and ice and slush. It's quite a thrill
to drive or walk to get to class
in this persistent Arctic blast.
But I can't ponder, in this cold,
whether my scarf makes me look old.
As long as I stay on my feet,
who cares if scarves don't look so neat
the way I tie them. I confess:
my winter garb appears a mess;
I may look old and tired too-- 
at least my lips aren't turning blue.
But if my scarf offends, I'll turn
the other cheek. (It's got windburn.)

 

Now your turn: let the weather do its worse--and put your efforts into verse. 

 

My cozy red scarf

 

Because it was there

I walk alone across the snow-covered campus, my shoes crunch-crunching over snowy walkways stained blue from ice-melt salt that doesn't do much good in single-digit temperatures. At one point I'm forced to guess the path along an unplowed walkway, but I finally make it to the safety of the library. From my office window the campus looks deserted except for the occasional figure bundled up as if prepared to trudge across the icy expanse of Hoth. 

Why am I here? I don't teach on Tuesdays so I could have stayed home, but instead I braved the treacherous roads to spend a day catching up on scut-work and meeting with students. Is it really worth risking my life just to get to campus?

Fortunately, the worst of the Snowpocalypse missed our area; we had no power outages or falling trees and our pipes didn't freeze. But we had plenty of snow, ice, and cold, and the cold is just getting colder. I broke out the long-johns and bundled up thoroughly, but in the short distance I walked from car to building, my face started to hurt.

I suppose I wanted to prove that I could do it. Living with people who scoff at bad weather is a challenge. If I'm hunkering under a blanket with a cup of hot tea and a good book when the resident lumberjack says it looks like a good time to go out and cut down some trees--well, I can't help feeling like a bit of a wimp. It's pretty lame to beg out of driving in snow because I learned to drive in Florida, where snow never entered the picture. I mean, it's true, but that was more than 40 years ago and I've developed some snow-driving skills in that time. The fact is that I just don't wanna.

But I wasn't getting any work done at home and I do have some appointments today, so here I am in my office wondering whether anyone will actually show up. I'm filling the time with meaningful work: peer-reviewing an article for a literary journal (meh), rescheduling all my Monday meetings that were cancelled because of weather, preparing for a campus presentation  that promises to be the highlight of my week, looking out the window at something other than yard birds--which are lovely, of course, but the birds don't pay my salary. 

Campus feels eerily quiet today and I doubt that I'll stay much beyond lunchtime. I'll meet with my students, congratulate myself for making the effort, and then trudge back along the frozen expanse of Hoth to my warm, cozy home. It's a luxury, of course, to go home to a warm house when so many others are left out in the cold, and so I contribute to local charities that serve the homeless and pray for a world in which no one has to stay outside on a day like today.

The view from my window

Snowpocalypse staredown

What else is there to say?

Angelic voices, eclectic spaces

Two holiday concerts one week apart:

Last week I enjoyed Handel's Messiah sung by a heavenly host of singers, including my husband, accompanied by orchestra and harpsichord in the historic Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption, an ornately decorated worship space where hundreds of listeners sat on rows of pews surrounded by statuary, stained glass, imported marble, and angels, lots of angels, including cherubs hovering around the ascending Mary up front and, above our heads, a phalanx of carved angels holding torches on their heads.

Yesterday we watched five women (including our daughter) singing Christmas music in close harmony, without accompaniment, in Cuyahoga Falls at the historic Jenks Building, in a converted garage where a spattering of observers who had braved the horrible weather sat on mismatched chairs surrounded by decor I can only describe as eclectic: an industrial-size coffee roaster on one side of the performance space and a canoe hanging from the ceiling on the other, plus piles of used books and vinyl records, unusual light fixtures and barking dogs sculpted from scrap metal and fish trophies and framed covers of Time magazine featuring Kennedys and a drill bit the size of my oldest grandkid and an anvil and a small statue of a man playing saxophone and, above our heads, a bust of a man wearing on his head not torches but what looked like a small satellite dish.

During the final leg of our two-hour drive to yesterday's concert, the weather was awful enough to prompt me to ask out loud, "Is it worth killing ourselves in a snowstorm just to get to this concert?"

Reader: it was. Spending a couple of hours surrounded by music so lovely it makes me smile clear down to the soles of my feet is worth any effort, whether it's Handel in the basilica or "The Holly and the Ivy" in the garage.

I rarely carry much cash but, thanks to an unusual series of events, last week I ended up with a fifty-dollar bill and a twenty in my wallet, and after the Messiah performance I decided I would put my hand in my purse and pull out a bill blindly to put it into the plate, and then yesterday the other bill went into the tip jar. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. You can't buy holiday cheer, but those experiences were worth every penny.

Voices of angels.

Coffee roaster the size of a locomotive

The singers in the family

Not a clue. Seriously, I've got nothing.

Snoopy in his Sopwith Camel?

Sn

Junkyard dogs

Snow trouble

So I'm sitting in the audience at a big campus event while five distinguished men (and three women!) in expensive suits give speeches one after another after another, and I'm trying to listen very closely to what they're saying but I'm distracted by what I can see through the great big rec center windows just behind them.

Snow. Lots of it. Coming down so thickly that it's hard to see the trees right outside the window.   

The problem with working in a historic city full of picturesque brick streets is that it's very hard to remove snow from bricks, and the problem with white-out conditions is that there's a limited number of snowplows and salt trucks and they can't hit every road at once, and the problem with working in a city squeezed between two rivers and a steep hill is that there's really only one route that will take me home.  

Which is why I was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic feeling its way along the highway at speeds up to six miles per hour yesterday afternoon. The line would inch up to a traffic light, stopping carefully to avoid skidding, and then more traffic would spill in from a side road, clogging the intersection so that no one could move even after the light turned green.

It was a long drive home and a stressful one. I was about halfway home when the snow stopped falling and the sun burst through the clouds, so that when I turned right on my country road, the snow-covered trees were in the spotlight. After taking close to an hour to drive my 17-mile route, the light and beauty made me want to stop and applaud. 

Snow creates all kinds of problems in the world where I live, but every once in a while it offers a lovely reward.

 

 

I'm melting, I'm melting!

The problem with working in overly air conditioned offices is that stepping outside the building feels like walking into a solid wall of heat. Yesterday I was carrying heavy things across campus and I honestly wanted to lie down and melt into the pavement--much easier than trying to breathe in that heat.

But I felt more sorry for the very competent and highly qualified job candidate who gave a fine presentation yesterday. We'd been warned in the morning that the College would try to save energy by cutting back on the air conditioning in the hottest part of the day--exactly when this visiting candidate's presentation was scheduled. 

The room was crowded. 

The candidate was wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt and tie.

The presentation, as mentioned, was excellent, but I was distracted by the progress of the sweat marks slowly spreading down this poor man's shirt. By the end of the hour he looked as if someone had doused him with champagne in premature celebration--but the fact that he performed so valiantly under hostile circumstances suggests that he's equipped to endure the trials of administrative service.

I, on the other hand, am preparing to endure the trials of administrative gobbledegook. This morning I'm presenting some committee-constructed prose to the Powers That Be and steeling myself for their responses. Earlier in this process, very passionate people told me, "If you take out the phrase 'liberal arts,' you'll destroy the College," while others said, "If you include the phrase 'liberal arts,' you'll destroy the College." Can't please both of those parties, and it's wearing me out trying.

But at least I don't have to present this prose in a sweltering room. In fact, given the indoor conditions in campus buildings, I'd better take a sweater. 

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.

 

 

We are driven (crazy)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tastes like summer

A sign at the farm stand said the peaches were "so fresh the juice will run down your arms," but at first they were so hard I had to seal them in a paper bag to ripen up for a couple of days. Finally, though, they were soft enough to live up to their hype so I transformed them into possibly the best peach pie I've ever made, with a touch of ginger in the filling and a nearly-perfect crust. I always feel like I need a bath after peeling and slicing peaches and I keep finding sticky spots in the kitchen where the juice splattered, but good gracious me there's nothing better than a good peach pie. Tastes like summer.

Feels like summer too. I went out to mow around 7 a.m. to beat the heat, but the humidity was already oppressive. By the time I'd finished mowing, I was drenched with sweat and the air was too thick to breathe. Heat wave! But from the big front window I can see my bottlebrush buckeye just getting ready to blossom and I'm eager to get back out there when it starts attracting butterflies, birds, and hummingbird moths.

We had a subdued Fathers Day because my husband works on Sunday mornings and comes home wanting to do nothing but sleep, but this one was even more complicated because of some sad news: his aunt, who has been ill for some time, died early Sunday morning. This would be a real loss to the family even if she were just an aunt, but she is the aunt who helped raise my husband and his two brothers after their parents died, the aunt who encouraged my husband to develop his musical gifts and paid for his voice lessons, the aunt who was everyone's cheerleader and never had a negative word to say about anyone. She will be sorely missed.

So now we await word on when the funeral will take place. Once again a loved one has had the audacity to die without checking my schedule first, but I will not be so petty as to complain about the timing. Instead I'll complain about the weather. After all, that's what it's there for.

Better yet, I'll nab a piece of that peach pie--the sweetness of summer in every mouthful.

Storming onward

Those fat fluffy snowflakes looked so pretty in my car's headlights this morning that I almost forgot how treacherous they can be when they pile up on the road.

Almost.

I sat in my car at the end of my road--still untouched by plows--until I could pull out onto the highway and take my place in a long line of slow-moving cars stretched behind a snowplow. I've always dreaded driving in snow, but four-wheel drive made me much more confident. Still, no one was driving more than 35 on the highway this morning, and traffic slowed to a crawl once we got into town. Those historic brick streets might look nice, but there's no good way to keep them clear in bad weather. 

A different kind of storm awaited in my email inbox, where a bunch of my advisees were eager to drop difficult classes and replace them with something less demanding before the add deadline. I don't know what to say to a student who want to know where the easy classes are listed, so I encourage them to choose classes based on their educational goals. But what do I say to an advisee whose primary educational goal is to remain eligible to play basketball? 

And yet another storm swooped into our Center for Teaching Excellence, where I found a line of people eagerly waiting as soon as I opened the door, all wanting to buy the used iPads we're selling. I've never owned an iPad and I was not privy to the procedures for selling them, but the colleague in charge of the sale suffered weather-related travel delays. Until she arrived, all I could do was stand there looking stupid and trying to keep everyone calm. 

I'd been looking forward to this, my first full day back in the Worthington Center for Teaching Excellence, but by midmorning I'd accomplished nothing but fight my way through various storms. Now the snow has stopped falling, the email inbox has stopped pinging, and the iPad seekers have left the building, so I think I'll just sit here and enjoy the quiet. At some point I'll need to buckle down and get to work, but will anyone begrudge me a few minutes to catch my breath?

Chasing leaves, chasing rhymes

Last night I heard a Serious Poet assert that he doesn't allow his poetry students to use rhyme because when they ought to be attending to assonance and alliteration and diction and rhythm, they focus instead on chasing the rhyme. 

He has a point, but I've never been happier to not be a Serious Poet. We mere doggerelists are free to chase those elusive rhymes wherever they take us, whether they're wafting toward a spider web, skittering across wet pavement, floating through a sludgy sewer, or dancing in the breeze.

Which reminds me: this morning I had the rare pleasure (?) of walking up a campus sidewalk in the rain to the accompaniment of leaf-blowers. Who uses leaf-blowers in the rain? Wet leaves don't waft, skitter, float, or dance, and using a leaf-blower as an overgrown blow-dryer seems an immense waste of energy.

On the other hand, this sounds like just the kind of futile exercise that could promote contemplation. Pop in some earplugs, crank up the noise, and stand there staring into space while absolutely nothing happens--it's the perfect time to chase some rhymes.

Oh the leaf-blowing fellow
sees fall leaves, red and yellow,
as mere  blots, hazards, flaws, and impediments:
"Sure, they look nice, but soon
they'll get mooshed and festoon
all our sidewalks with squishy wet sediment."

Oh the leaf-blowing dude
scatters leaves 'til a cloud
spits great raindrops to drip down his nose.
Leaves won't dance, waft, or skitter
when they're wet. Now he's bitter,
telling all who can hear, "This job blows."

(But alas, no one can hear him over the roar of the leaf-blower.)

Inside, outside, upside-down

Outside the air is too hot to bear and too thick to breathe, seething with humidity; inside my office I wrap myself in a woolly blanket and avoid touching the ice-cold top of my desk.

Inside the office I have no plants, having killed off the last remaining evidence of my houseplant ineptitude, but outside my window Virginia creeper climbs the wall and thick stands of pokeweed invade a weedy space where groundskeepers can't work right now because of an onslaught of hornets.

Outside groundskeeper cuts dahlia blossoms from the pollinator garden in front of my building, offers me a few to decorate my office; inside, though, I have no vase, nowhere to put the flowers in water, no way to enjoy them without causing damage and droop.

Outside my house a fawn walked past the window this morning all cute and cuddly, but inside I still flinch every time I see a deer alongside the road and even, sometimes, when I don't see a deer beside the road, thanks to lingering trauma from the deer that materialized out of nowhere and wrecked my car.

Outside my head I remain cool and calm, carrying the facade of a competent person with everything under control; inside, though, the gears are constantly turning and everything's heating up in preparation for whatever hornets' nests I'll encounter in and out of classes, committee meetings, and campus controversies.

Someone needs to find a way to bring outside and inside into agreement before these extremes send me climbing the walls.  

 

Weird winter weather, indoors and out

I'm wearing my snowflake sweater today in hopes of encouraging the weather to do something more seasonable--like, for instance, send us some freakin' snow. I mean, why should Minnesota have all the fun? But instead I'm photographing tiny iris blossoms while the forecast calls for a high in the 70s tomorrow. In the middle of February. It's true that Spring is my favorite season, but can we have a little winter first?

The wintry mood inside campus buildings is also warming. True, it's still Axe Week: a small but significant group of faculty members will be told by Friday that their positions are being cut, and some departments are already scrambling to revise fall course schedules. But Monday's faculty meeting was much shorter than expected and bubbled with a giddy air of hope. The controversial motion for a vote of no confidence was withdrawn without a single murmur after news came out that a certain top administrator will be leaving the college by June. To pursue other opportunities, he says, for which I can only say pursue away. 

It would be unseemly to rejoice while others are struggling, especially when this decision leaves us with lame ducks or interim administrators in a number of important positions while several other essential positions remain either unfilled or in flux.  Our Faculty Chair reminded us on Monday that we'll all have to work together to help move the College forward, but we've never been afraid of hard work as long as it looked like it could get us somewhere. Times are tough but we can shoulder the burden as long as we see signs of hope, and now we do.

And I'm not just talking about a few early iris blossoms. Send us some snow--or send us some warmth--or send us a little bit of everything all at once--and somehow we'll figure out how to carry on.

 

 

More letters I won't be sending, or why it's important to look alive

Dear turkey vultures circling above campus this morning,
Move on--nothing to see here. Despite rumors of death and decay, our college is still among the living. I'm more concerned about you: what are you doing back in Ohio this early in the season? You ought to be languishing in Florida or perhaps just starting out on your long trip north, but here you are two weeks early circling above campus on a winter day when the temperature is expected to soar to 70. What do you know that we don't know?

Dear sick student,
I get it--you're too sick to come to class, but do you really have to give me the play-by-play? I don't need to know how many times you've vomited this morning or how badly you're suffering from diarrhea (but kudos on spelling it correctly!), and in fact if I never again receive a message reporting in detail about the state of your bowels, I'll be happy. We're all adults here: if you're too sick to come to class, just say so, and if you're so sick that you need to miss a week or more and want to join on Zoom, ask the appropriate office to send me a medical excuse. But please don't email to tell me that you've been vomiting all morning but you'll force yourself to come to class anyway if I think the class is "important." I mean, I think all my classes are important, but that doesn't mean I want a vomiting person in the room. Please: stay home and get well--and if you have to vomit, I really don't want to know.

Dear everyone who voted to put me on Faculty Council two years ago:
As I near the end of my two-year term--probably my final term on Council before I retire--I'm spending a lot of time in meetings dreaming up ways to seek vengeance on anyone who ever voted for me. If I knew who you were, I'd come to your office and stuff piles of student papers under the door or leave my leftover Indian food containers in your office trash can that never gets emptied. I'd like to sentence you to seventeen solid hours of listening to jargon-laced statements from higher-ups adept at weaving words without actually saying anything, people who say "I have adjacency to that issue" and expect the world to nod in agreement. I'll tell you what issue I have adjacency to: the issue of persuading my appreciative colleagues to never, ever, ever vote for me again. If you can manage that, perhaps we'll all be able to find repose in our situation.

But not too much repose. Look alive--the vultures are still circling.

Frosting my mood on a snowy morning

Yesterday I stood out in the sunshine admiring daffodils that were just about to bloom, and today they are buried under a blanket of wet snow. About six inches, I would guess, and still falling. 

All week I've been hearing towhees calling and I thought the juncos had left us, but snow brings back the snow-birds so this morning they're all over the place, along with a herd of cowbirds desperate for some seeds from our feeder. When everything they rely on for food is suddenly covered with snow, the birds have to find sustenance where they can.

No sign of a plow on our road so it's a good thing I don't need to go anywhere. Tomorrow I need to drive to Columbus to pick up our son from the airport, so I sincerely hope the roads are clear by then. Shoveling snow during spring break? That's just not right!

I've been thinking of the Robert Frost poem--not "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," lovely as that might be, but the more bleak and hopeless "Desert Places," with its "blanker whiteness of benighted snow / with no expression, nothing to express." If I sit and think too much I'll soon join Frost in "scare[ing] myself with my own desert places," so I think I'd better get up and get moving, for I have many rooms to clean and miles to go before I've seen a host of golden daffodils, or something like that.