Cosmic confusion

Today I received a call for papers for a conference panel on Postcolonial Environments, a topic on which I have read, written, taught, and thought a great deal, and one of the suggested topics was "planetarity." If I were still among the untenured I would nod and smile and find a way to work the word into a sentence, preferably along with "hegemony" and "alterity" and my all-time least favorite piece of lit-theory jargon, "imaginary" used as a noun. But I have tenure so I'm not afraid to ask: what the heck is "planetarity"? From the context I suspect that it's a sort of anthropocentricsm on a planetary level, a tendency to view one's own planet as the center of the universe, the standard by which all other heavenly bodies might be measured (and, most likely, found wanting).

But I don't know. On the topic of planetarity I suffer from ignorance on a global scale. In fact, perhaps my use of the word "global" itself reeks of planetarity, suggesting an unthinking willingness to accept my own paltry planet as the measure that matters in the universe. But that's just quibbling: I'm perfectly willing to say my ignorance of the topic is universal if that will save me from accusations of planetarity--but first someone will have to tell me what it means.

Hearing voices

This evening I've been hearing voices--and I don't want to make them shut up.

A year ago I tried a new method to get my students responding to literature in writing: over the course of the semester, they had to e-mail me 250-word comments on their reading 25 different times. Next month I'm giving a conference paper about the results of this experiment, so I've spent some time revisiting those students' reading comments in order to count and classify them. I wanted to find out what percentage of their reading comments could be classified as analytical (about half) and whether that percentage increased over time (yes).

The data will make for an interesting paper, but the best part of the experience was that in revisiting 472 e-mailed comments, I heard the voices of those students as clearly as if they were standing right next to me--and they were pretty good company. When I originally received those messages, I read them piecemeal and never looked back; today I skimmed all 472 messages and saw an amazing depth of insight and growth in understanding over time, along with a significant amount of confusion, creativity, and silliness. I wanted to thank the students who wrote all those messages, but even more, I wanted to keep the conversation going.

The experiment was such a resounding success that I'm trying it again this semester with another class. Soon I'll have a new set of voices vying for attention, sending last year's voices even deeper into the mists of memory. Today it was good to set those voices loose one more time before closing the file on them forever.

Rural rap

This morning my American Lit Survey class looked at Sara Orne Jewett's "A White Heron" and Hamlin Garland's "Under the Lion's Paw," and one of the students suggested that these stories are like two different types of country music: one peppy and perhaps a bit sappy and the other more of a working man's blues. (Which reminds me of the very silly riddle: what happens when you play country music backward? You get your dog back, you get your truck back, you get your wife back...)

My student may be right, but here's my question: why country music? Why don't we have rap music related to rural life? "Under the Lion's Paw" has all the ingredients for a great rap--oppressive landlords, marauding grasshoppers, hopeless homeless people, and the threat of random violence, albeit with a pitchfork--and a "White Heron" rap could go all Freudian about boys 'n' guns, complete with a metaphoric rape of innocence. That's a rap I'd listen to, but who will write it?

Thinking about sharing about thinking about sharing

I've been thinking about sharing with others today but I'm not sure how to interpret the advice I received from a usually reliable source: a fortune cookie. Everyone else at the table tonight recieved fairly uplifting fortunes like "Your talents are appreciated" or "You will succeed in many endeavors," but mine was more ambiguous: "Think before sharing with others." Okay, I'm thinking, but does this mean I should think first and then share or just think and not share at all?

I think I'll think about sharing what one of my colleagues said yesterday in the faculty lounge when, in response to my offer to show him the picture of my garage that appeared on my blog, he said, "So you're one of those people who expose their entire lives on the web." Well, no, I hope I'm not one of those people, although I admit that I have exposed some of the webs that complicate my life (read about it here, here, or here). Down in the damp cellar I have a dusty foot-locker stuffed so full of miscellaneous fragments of my life that I have to sit on the lid to make it shut, but every once in a while an especially persistent piece forces its way out into the light of common day. (Who can identify the source of that lovely phrase? Don't fail me, JM!)

Since I try very hard to keep those unruly fragments of my life under wraps, it's a bit disconcerting to be reviled for exposing myself. Please, people: I'm biting holes in my tongue to avoid exposing my entire life on the web! You should see how much I'm not even thinking about sharing, or thinking about not sharing, or whatever! If anyone needs to think about not sharing, it's whoever wrote that fortune cookie!

That's what I'm thinking about sharing today, but after receiving such a pointed warning, I think I'll think about not sharing it after all.

All right writing

I made my composition students write an essay in class this morning and heard for the first but certainly not the last time those dreaded words, "How long should it be?"

"Long enough," I said, and a student in the back said "All right!" as if I'd just given him permission to slack off.

"Long enough to achieve the purpose of the essay," I added, and again he said "All right!" as if I'd encouraged him to write an essay whose purpose is to say approximately nothing.

"Give me your best work," I said, and he looked delighted, as if I'd commanded him to demonstrate his mastery of drivel.

"Look," I said, "I don't count words. Life is too short. I'm looking for a well-developed essay using examples in support of a thesis, and some students may be able to do that in 300 words although most will use 500 or more--in fact, it takes more discipline and skill to write a good essay concisely than to ramble on. I don't even know your name yet and I certainly don't know what you can do with a pen and paper, so just give me your best work and make it long enough to achieve the purpose."

"All right!" he said, but I won't know whether it's really all right until I read his work.

Have you taught yet?

Wherever two or three professors are gathered together today there in the midst of them will be this question: "Have you taught yet?" And then the follow-up: "How'd it go?"

It's almost a ritual, this formulaic question summing up the values of the community. I may have attended meetings or responded to messages or read or written or researched, but if I haven't taught yet, I haven't entered the Promised Land.

In any gathering of professors who have taught, the question produces an eruption of anecdote, complaint, and gossip, leaving those who have not taught (yet) with nothing to say--sort of like the sole childless person in a room full of new parents, or the sole celibate on a swingers' cruise. Any given professor might possess a fount of knowledge and experience, but he's innocent and ignorant if he has not taught yet.

Have I taught yet? Yes, and it felt great to stand in front of that sea of faces and talk about literature. Two cell phones rang noisily, giving me an opportunity to exercise the steely glare of disapproval that rarely gets used over break. There's a large waiting list for that class, so I tried to scare a few students away by making them write about poetry--on the first day of class! Now I can't wait to read their comments.

And I'd like to read yours too. Have you taught yet? How'd it go?

A Sunday drive

My mistake, I think, resulted from choosing comfort over safety. Take the comfy car that doesn't handle well in snow or the one that handles well in snow but makes me want to drive it off a cliff? Clear roads, sparse snowflakes--"Let's take the comfortable car."

So we drove straight into a snowstorm in great comfort, fishtailing only a few times, and then we sat in church in comfort, watching a thick curtain of big fluffy snowflakes falling outside the windows, and we even drove home in comfort, although it took a little longer than usual. Forty-five minutes to drive ten miles, to be precise. Part of that time was devoted to helping a teenager get his pickup truck out of the way of traffic after he nearly slid off the road at precisely the same spot where our daughter wrecked a car four years ago. Five or six vehicles sat at various angles all over the road while strong men in Sunday suits put their shoulders to the kid's truck to keep it from falling down the cliff. A snowplow arrived, a little too late, but it couldn't get through until we got the truck out of danger and got the rest of the cars moving.

We finally arrived home in comfort and were greeted by a flock of jumpy juncos, and we've spent the afternoon in great comfort, eating home-made chocolate chip cookies in front of the fire. Nothing is more comfortable than a warm house on a snowy winter day--but next time I go out, I'm choosing safety.

Welcome to the funhouse

It's 1:05 a.m. Do you know where your blogger is?

Wide awake in front of the computer is where she is. She ought to be in bed; she came home exhausted from working all day and then worked some more at home, and her body would really like to be lying in bed sound asleep right now.

Her mind, however, has other plans, none of them terribly restful. It wants to take a spin in the Pre-Semester Anxiety Roller Coaster, followed by a quick gambol through the Taxes/FAFSA Funhouse. The unruly mind jumps up and down with enough force to flip the body back and forth until it gets tired of tossing and gets out of bed.

The insomniac mind won't focus on reading or thinking or writing, and it certainly isn't interested in shutting down for the night. It's just getting started! It wants to run through Monday's lesson plans while juggling ideas for an upcoming conference paper, and then it wants to count all the bills that need to be paid and the dress shirts that need to be ironed and the memos that need to be written, including this:

From: Body
To: Brain
Re: lax

But it won't listen. The unruly mind composes memos but does not read them. By the time the memo gets delivered, the mind has moved on to the next ten things that desperately need to be thought about, all of which deserve undivided attention, but does it have to be right now?

Tomorrow your blogger's body will feel drained and wasted, but the mind? It's a terrible thing to wake.

An end and a beginning

Dropcloths: gone.
Sawhorses: gone.
Power saw, paint, brushes, hammers, screwdrivers: all gone.
Sawdust: gone, gone, gone.

The apartment above the garage is done! Okay, the appliances have not been installed, but anyone can do that. Curtain rods are not up but curtains are on order. Medicine cabinet is nowhere to be seen. But at least the room is clean and the air is relatively clear of sawdust and paint fumes.

Now the fun begins!

Mouse-induced mayhem

Classes start Monday so naturally I've been occupied with essential last-minute matters, such as how to remove a potential mouse colony from a sofa. I don't know how many mice there are or how they got in there, but I know they've got to come out--and fast.

Some friends who were remodeling gave us the sofa more than a year ago, and it has been sitting in the garage ever since, awaiting the day when it could be taken upstairs to the emerging apartment. Then the first contractor disappeared, causing a long delay in the project, so the sofa sat there for more than a year wrapped carefully in tightly-sealed heavy yellow plastic, clean, dry, and protected from the elements--or so we thought.

Now the garage project is nearly done right down to the kitchen sink, which was installed this afternoon. It's fun to go over there every day and see what has appeared while we were out: today, windowsills and ceiling fans and a lovely built-in bookcase; tomorrow, the stove and medicine cabinet and who knows what else? In a few days we'll be able to start taking furniture up there and I'll be making curtains, which is why I slit open the protective plastic so I could compare a swatch of fabric with the sofa's upholstery.

There on the arm of the sofa I found a little pile of mouse droppings. Those pesky varmints! How did they get in through that heavy plastic? How much damage have they done? And how do we get them out? This is the question gnawing on my innards at night and hovering over my mind all day like a fog that comes in on little mouse feet--and, yes, impairing my ability to make metaphors work properly, as I realize when I try to envision a question that gnaws, hovers, fogs, and comes in on mouse feet. See what those pesky creatures do to me? By Monday they'll have reduced me to a quivering mass of mouse-obsessed mucus.

But that doesn't mean class is cancelled. The syllabus waits for no man--nor mouse either.

Take this job...

Slogan painted on the side of a truck: "Our job sucks--we guarantee it!"

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to speculate about what sort of "job" this slogan was promoting.

How I spent my winter vacation

One proposal for a conference panel, one draft of a conference paper, one report for the quadrennial review of the English department, one long-term budget projection report, one new syllabus and one revised syllabus, two assessment reports, two teaching evaluations, two book reviews, two sets of guidelines for new scholarships, three letters of recommendation for current or former students, three letters supporting colleagues' requests for funding or nominations for awards, 34 blog posts, and 18,000ish words on the Big Writing Project.

Whew. After all that, I need a vacation.

In the bleak midwinter

Friday afternoon the department secretary asked if I wanted her to copy my new syllabus, and I said, "No, better not. The last time I copied a syllabus this long before classes started was the year of the flood." Ah yes, we all remember the year floods delayed the start of the semester by a week....after I had already copied the syllabus for every class. Classes start a week from today and I have one syllabus ready to go, but I don't intend to copy it until the end of the week. Meanwhile, I'm watching the weather.

It's a little odd, this weather we're having. I haven't seen the sun since Thursday. It's raining when I get up in the morning and all day long, and it's so warm we've been leaving the bedroom windows open and I can hear it drip-drip-dripping all through the night. It's a soft rain, hardly more than a mist most of the time, but it's enough to cause flood watches all over the area. Our creek is up but not dangerously so, and the rivers look like spring.

But it's not spring. It's January. If it were a little colder, I'd be at home in front of a roaring fire; instead, we're battling bugs inside the house and mud outside. The mild winter means we haven't had many mice in the house, but it also means we have a bumper crop of flies, mosquitoes, and those annoying little orange Asian ladybeetles that hibernate when it's cold and get active as soon as the weather warms up a bit.

The temperature is supposed to drop this evening and I for one am looking forward to it. Give me some snow! Anything would be better than this constant gray wetness.

"Ewwww" and tea were meant to be

I thought I was doing something clever until I heard a colleague say "Ewww!"

All I did was put a paper clip in my tea. Needed a little extra iron in my diet. Okay, that's not the real reason. The real reason is that my tea carafe has a narrow neck.

Maybe I'd better start at the beginning, but when it comes to tea, that's difficult to do without going clear back to the tea leaf.

They prefer to be free, tea leaves. They like to be tossed into the teapot utterly unfettered, free to unfold and infuse at will. Unfortunately, the academic office atmosphere is not entirely conducive to the unfettering of tea leaves. There's nowhere to put a tea strainer in an office, and anyone who has left behind a tea ball full of wet tea leaves over a long break knows that in the office ecosystem, bags are best.

But not all tea bags are created equal. Some tea bags come with no strings attached, while others have strings that greet the merest hint of water with a hearty cry of "Abandon ship!" It's easy enough to remove a tea bag from a teapot with a wide opening on top, but suppose you inhabit a cold office but you like your tea hot? The solution is a tall insulated carafe of the type used for serving coffee at banquets: stuff the teabags into the narrow opening, hold onto the end of the string, and pour in the hot water--and when the tea is steeped, a gentle tug will remove the bags.

Except when there are no strings attached. How do you remove a water-swollen tea bag from a tall carafe with a very narrow opening? You could search the department office for some plastic cutlery, which is useless for eating real food but works really well at piercing tea bags and releasing their little leaves all over the office. Or you could do what I do: use a paper clip.

This gets complicated, so pay attention: Grasp the longer loop of a large paper clip with your right hand and the smaller loop with your left hand. Pull gently until the two loops separate and the whole thing looks like two ends of a line bending over to greet each other with a Howdy. Pierce tea bags with the end with the smaller loop, twisting to firmly secure tea bags on end of paper clip. Open out larger loop of paper clip slightly. Insert tea-bag end of paper clip into carafe and loop larger end over lip of opening. Hold tightly while pouring in hot water. Steep tea. Remove teabags with a gentle tug, discarding used tea bags and paper clip. Wait for the "Ewwww!"

It's bound to come--if not the first or second time you brew tea this way, then perhaps the seventeenth. Eventually someone will take offense to the fact that you are using a paper clip as a tea-bag holder. Their objections will sound like this: Paper clips are dirty. You don't know where it's been! It could have anything on it from ink to earwax. You're putting that in your tea?

What naysayers fail to appreciate is the efficacy of boiling water. Even if the paper clip you select is not in pristine condition, immersion in boiling water will certainly destroy any disease-causing agents adhering to the paper clip. If nothing else, it'll melt the earwax.

Is there an echo in here, or did someone just say Ewww?

Where's Waldo?

Three years ago when we bought this house, we never dreamed we'd be haunted by a former owner--let's call him Waldo. He's not the guy we bought the house from but the one who owned it before that, so he hasn't even lived here for the past six years; nevertheless, he is a daily part of our lives. Why? Because for some time after he moved out, he continued to use this address.

For three years we've been getting his medical bills--from hospitals, radiology labs, ambulance services. I feel sort of sorry for the guy, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to pay his bills, so we mark them "return to sender." Now the debt collectors are calling two or three times a day, and they are not, generally speaking, nice. I always tell them there's no one here by that name, and they say, "Right. That's what they all say"--or they laugh as if I've said something funny.

My new tactic is similar to the one my brother likes to use with telemarketers: talk their ear off. Someone calls to sell you vinyl siding? Give him the Amway pitch or try to convert him to your cult. Or let the telemarketer talk, leading him on with agreeable listening noises, and then at the end say something like "I don't think I'm allowed to have vinyl siding in my prison cell." The idea is to waste the caller's valuable time in hopes that he or she will get frustrated and not call back. (Sadly, it doesn't work with recordings.)

So lately when someone calls for Waldo, I give a detailed rundown of the full names of everyone who now lives in the house, how long we've lived here, how long our German exchange student lived here, his full name and the names of his siblings, what we've done with the house since we bought it, and then if the person hasn't hung up yet I start on the weather. At some point they'll either leave us alone or escalate their efforts. What then? When a former owner haunts the house, who ya gonna call?

And don't say "Ghostbusters" because they don't deal with debt collectors.

Solitude is for the birds

For a moment this morning as I stood at the top of our hill, I realized that living in the middle of nowhere has both advantages and disadvantages. I was joyfully surveying the panorama of woods, bluffs, and meadows, with no human dwelling in sight and no sounds other than the twitter of birds and the pitter-patter of big fluffy snowflakes falling on trees. It was a moment of pure solitude, one I had worked hard to attain: the ubiquitous rain finally turned to snow last night but it wasn't quite cold enough for the saturated ground to freeze, and walking uphill on snow-covered mud can be a challenge. But I pressed on and made it to the top, where the chickadees were squawking and the view was spectacular. This is what why we live here, I told myself. I could stay here forever.

But then I realized that I would eventually have to walk back down that hill, and if snow-covered mud is treacherous on the way up, it is even moreso on the way down. I imagined slipping and sliding down the hill with so much momentum that I would break through the fence and go flailing down the cliff. If I break a leg up here, I won't be able to complain to anyone except the chickadees, which are not known for their helpfulness in emergencies. I knew the garage guys were at work, but the garage is a good distance from the top of the hill and they were inside pounding and sawing and listening to music. This is the problem with living so far from people: when you need someone, there's no one there.

I came down the hill very carefully, testing every step before committing myself. A boot came untied about halfway down, but the lace was so coated with icy mud that I didn't try to tie it. Besides, where would I sit? I suppose a nimble person could manage to stand on one foot while tying a bootlace even on a steep slope covered with mud and snow, but I am not that person, so I kept walking. Then the snow turned to rain.

I washed up on our doorstep wet and muddy but in one piece, grateful that I had not been forced to rely on the birds to rescue me. Next time I want to be alone, I'll be sure to take someone with me.

Write stuff

At the bookstore yesterday I picked up The Best American Essays 2006, which seems to have a lot of essays on illness, death, and lost or dying pets. For me, the bright spots were the nuggets of wisdom about writing, including the following:

From Lauren Slater's Introduction: "But as an essayist, my interest was not in establishing the facts of a life but in mining the meaning, for me, of the questions that life had spawned. An essayist celebrates questions, loves the liminal, and feels that life is best lived between the may and the be of maybe."

From Poe Ballantine's "501 Minutes to Christ": "I don't recommend the writing life--at least not the one in which you move around a lot, live alone, and work odd jobs. Swing a gig where you hit the big time quick. Be a prodigy, if your agent can arrange it, and then get yourself banned in Boston. I arrived at the discipline late, at the age of twenty-nine, in part because I needed material, but mostly because I boarded a train called the Romantic Debauchery in the mistaken assumption that it would somehow get me to my destination quicker than the ones marked Hard Work and Paying Attention. Hundreds of wrong trains and many lost years later, I have learned that, despite the jovial public legends, inebriation and lucid expression are at odds with each other. If I am to write with spiritual integrity, I cannnot be a drunken butterfly."

From Alan Shapiro's "Why Write?": "It's hard to find the proper balance between the arrogance we need to keep on writing--the arrogance that assumes we have something worth saying, and we're smart enough to learn what someone's smart enough to teach us--and the humility we also need in order to grow and develop, the humility that knows we cannot nurture and refine our gifts without the help of others, that other people, including editors, can sometimes tell us things we need to hear. Too much arrogance and not enough humility and we close ourselves off from the world; nothing new comes in, and we eventually become imitators of ourselves, turning what at one time were discoveries into mannerisms. Too much humility and not enough arrogance and we lose our center of gravity, finding ourselves at the mercy of everyone else's opinion."

And later in the same essay: "People have a right not to be written about. Yet I violate that right in nearly everything I've written. I've done it in the writing of this essay. My theory's always been that if I only try to tell the truth, if I have no ax to grind and write about others in a spirit of forgiveness, curiosity, and understanding, then no one should be upset by anything I say. Well, so much for theory."

If you build it, they will come

I drove to the new bookstore down the river today. This is the third time I've been there since it opened in November, but the earlier visits were for Christmas gifts, while this one was all about me. It's nice to have a real bookstore within a 30-minute drive; in the past I've had to content myself with brief visits to the local used bookstores (brief because used bookstores make me sneeze) or, a few times a year, making the two-hour drive to the state capital, where there are bookstores galore. Now there's a real bookstore reasonably close by and I love it even though (1) they somehow lost my order for David Citino's posthumous poetry collection; (2) the person who "helped" me had never even heard of Citino and couldn't manage to spell either his name or mine correctly; and (3) the coffee shop was out of chai latte.

Every time I go in there, I am amazed to see the number of people sitting around reading. I realize that this is a common sight at bookstores all over the country, but I've never seen it here and I wonder: where were all these reading people before the new bookstore opened? Did they plop down on the floor in the book section at Wal-Mart or hover over stacks of discount books at Sam's Club? Where did they come from? If the new bookstore fails, where will they go?

So far, the new bookstore appears to be doing quite well. Who says nobody reads in Appalachia?

Now you see it...

So I'm standing in the dining room surrounded by Christmas tree parts, strings of lights, and ornament boxes when I reach up to wipe the sweat off my forehead and notice that I'm not wearing my glasses. Without my glasses I can do many things: trip and fall, for instance, or squint at the vague blurs surrounding me. I cannot, however, do most of the things that make my life meaningful: read, write, drive, or have a headache-free day.

Without my glasses, I don't see well enough to find my glasses, so I generally leave them in one of two specific places. They weren't there. I retraced my steps and checked in all the non-traditional places, but if they were there, I couldn't see them. I enlisted the eagle-eyed young man to help, but he couldn't find them either. We went so far as to root through the seven plastic bins I'd already packed full of Christmas stuff, but they weren't in any of 'em.

Panic ensued. Panic never helps. I retraced my steps and found myself standing in the very crowded hall closet, where earlier I had been shifting around boxes to find the right ones, and suddenly I was overcome by a faint sensory memory: while shoving a pile of boxes into the corner, a large doll fell on me and as I grabbed for it, I heard a faint rattle from the corner, as if some small, inconsequential item had fallen down behind the boxes. I didn't look to see what it was because, frankly, nothing in that closet is worth the effort required to pull those boxes out again.

Except my glasses. Further exploration revealed that they were, indeed, behind the stack of boxes, and the long-armed young man managed to scoop them up for me so I didn't even have to move those boxes again. I was without my glasses for only about two hours, but it felt like weeks.

Here's what I don't understand: the glasses must have fallen right off my face when the doll fell on me. Why didn't I notice?

Turnip boggle, anyone?

Some poor misguided soul ended up at my blog after typing into a search engine the phrase "turnip boggle." What would a turnip boggle be? A game, a device for protecting turnips from the depredations of wild creatures, or an elaborate series of gates installed outside the front door to prevent kindly neighbors from delivering bags of turnips?

Other blogs get queries involving literature and writing; I get someone looking for "poison ivy africa swimsuits," which sounds like an odd sexual fetish. Searchers find my site after asking Google how to wash towels, how to distinguish between a suit and a tuxedo, how many tubes of toothpaste a family of four uses in a year, and "what is the english equivalent of fat free half and half?" Surely there must be a better place to find the answers!

Someone wants "rhyming verse for instructions for contract bridge" and someone else is looking for the World's Best Beef Brisket. Turkey vultures and Javier Marias make regular appearances in searches, along with the Declaration of Idependence and intestinal viruses. However, in the twelve months since this blog began, the three most common search terms leading here are variations on "dead mouse smell," "the banner with the strange device," and "how to cheat on Excelsior exams." A year ago I was not aware that Excelsior College existed or that so many people would be looking for ways to cheat on its exams, but now even more of them will end up here. I am not sorry to disappoint them.

Still, I wish someone would ask a question I can actually answer. I don't have the solution for intestinal viruses or the dead mouse smell, but ask me about semicolons or Stephen Crane, subjunctive verbs or Salman Rushdie, whifflers or William Dean Howells. Nobody ever asks about William Dean Howells. They want to know how to boggle turnips.

Even if I knew, I'd never tell.

January or July?

We had a bit of a whiteout here today, but no snow was involved, alas. It rained all night--and if the temperature had been more appropriate to January, we would have been snowed in! But no: the rain continued, the sky stayed gray, the temperature remained just cool enough to be uncomfortable, and by midafternoon the fog off the river was so thick that there was no clear demarcation between earth and sky. If only all that white stuff had been snow! We could have stayed home next to a roaring fire instead of slogging through rain and fog and cool gray dampness. Tomorrow it's supposed to be even warmer. No fair! I want some winter!

Blogophobia

Interesting article about academics who blog over at Inside Higher Ed (read it here), with some enlightening (and sometimes contentious) comments at the end. While I found the article enjoyable and thought-provoking, I was left with a chilling realization of the dangers involved in making one's thoughts public. People have been fired for doing what I'm doing. Is it worth it?

I've been writing this blog for nearly a year, and I enjoy it immensely. Far from keeping me away from my more important writing projects, this little exercise helps me write more--and more fluidly. Even if I'm not writing every day, I am at least thinking about writing every day, so that when I'm ready to write, the brain cells are primed and ready to go--whether it's a scholarly article or a bit of comic silliness. In this sense, blogging seems beneficial.

I have also been very careful to avoid portraying my institution in a negative light, and I believe I've been successful. But who knows? People (and institutions) have been known to take offense at the oddest things. Surely my blog is perfectly harmless...so why am I suddenly so spooked?

I want to keep writing. I need to keep writing. I'm afraid to keep writing. What shall I do?

Talking drums

My son's hands when they play the drums look fluid and relaxed, as if they're only accidentally involved in the percussive process. The sticks hit the drums crisply, intensely, with incredible precision, but his hands could be waving away a pesky fly.

If you want to see intensity, you have to look at his face: he grimaces, glares, twists and untwists his facial muscles as if they were physically attached to the dancing drumsticks. Most of the time it's an impassive face--unless he's laughing. He laughs often, but his face rarely reveals any other emotion. We all recall the time four years ago when we were driving to the airport for a long-awaited trip and the boy turned to me and said, in a totally deadpan tone, "Mom, it may not be easy to tell, but I'm really excited about this trip." He was right on both counts: he was really excited, but he hadn't taken the trouble to inform his face.

How can a face that is motionless most of the time become so mobile when he plays the drums? The hands look like innocent bystanders, but the face is intensely present, intimately connected to the sounds being beaten from the drums.

And what do those sounds say? His face won't tell--and his hands don't know.

Take two gigabytes and call me in the morning

While I've been on break, the computer at my office has been very busy sending out e-mails with nasty viruses attached. Every day I get a few bounced messages that look as if they came from our departmental listserv, except they're spam messages containing viral attachments. I certainly never sent them out and my home computer is pretty well protected, but when I ran the regular virus check on my office computer the other day, it came up with a message saying it was infected with a virus that could not be removed or quarantined. I have alerted the IT people to this problem, but apparently they're on break too. They'll get to it eventually, but meanwhile, I just want to issue a public apology: if my computer sent you anything nasty, please accept my condolences. And if you feel the need to take a few whacks at my computer with a sledgehammer, you'll have to stand in line.

Terrific trousers

Black stretch corduroy, perfect fit, and not one but TWO functioning pockets. Women's clothes with usable pockets?! How can this be? Someone must have made a mistake at the factory.

Generally I'm the one who makes the mistake: I'm always buying clothes without pockets. I hate carrying a purse, see, so I generally stuff a billfold in my briefcase, but then I need a place to stash my keys and maybe a Kleenex or some chapstick. My sartorial needs are few, but working pockets make the list, and they're not easy to locate on women's clothes. Last summer I stepped way out of character and bought two complete outfits in one day, including five separate items of clothing, and not until I brought it all home did I notice that I had failed to purchase a single pocket. Not one!

And I also have in my closet at least four pairs of dress trousers that have pockets so small I can't even fit my keys in there. What is that pocket for? I can just about fit two fingers into it, so if I ever need to keep those two fingers warm, I'm all set.

Spaces and faces

To celebrate the new year last night, we watched paint dry. Well, I suppose watching paint dry was just an incidental part of the process: we painted the apartment above the garage! Most of it, anyway! I mostly worked on cutting in around the windows, which was great because I got to look out the windows. This may be the first time we've ever painted walls that weren't already covered with multiple coats of other people's bad ideas. That means the only mistakes we'll have to live with will be strictly our own.

We'll go out and finish painting today, but first, the bearded wonder has promised to make my fondest dreams come true. That's right: he's trimming his beard! I've been wondering whether there's still a face hiding under all that fluff.

There's a tradition that whatever we're doing when the new year begins will set the stage for how we'll spend the entire year. If that's true, 2007 will be a year of painting and shaving--or if you prefer, decorating spaces and finding faces. Not a bad way to spend a year.

All work and all play

I was on campus for only about 10 minutes today to attend to an annoying administrative task (placing check-marks in seven little squares to approve December's departmental expenditures, which seems like a ridiculous reason to drive into town, but it had to be done by the end of the month so there I was), but in that short span of time I ran into four of my colleagues. This happens every time I go to campus during down times: Sunday afternoons, Friday nights, weekends, holidays, early in the morning--there's always somebody else there working. It occurs to me that we academic types just aren't very good at taking time off.

If you need more evidence, look at how tens of thousands of us spend our Christmas holidays: attending academic conferences. I'm not at MLA this year but I've been there before and there's nothing relaxing about it. Any event that requires me to prominently display my credentials on my chest is not a vacation, and any event that involves interviewing or being interviewed is the antithesis of a holiday.

I've thought about this problem and I think the reason academics are so bad at taking time off is that so much of our job simply doesn't look like work. Grading papers, teaching, and attending committee meetings all appear to be work, but everything else I do for work also looks a lot like what I do for play: reading, writing, thinking. I can do those things just about anywhere, and I do, which means work and play intermingle promiscuously. Since I'm always sort of working, why not do it at the office?

And if that kind of logic takes me to the office when no one has any business being there, I shouldn't be surprised to find others there doing the same thing.

Under the tree

I found a lot of great loot under the Christmas tree this year--books, hand lotion, lots of warm socks--but the best gift couldn't fit under the tree. After two years of work, the garage is nearly done. The photo was taken a few weeks ago; since then workers have finished the drywall, installed the furnace and water heater, hooked up the water and septic system, and who knows what else. This week they're stomping the ceiling and priming the walls and we'll be down to the small stuff: doorknobs and light fixtures and cabinets. By the time the cold weather hits, I expect to be able to park a car in there.

But it's more than just a garage, of course. Our driveway is nearly a quarter-mile long and climbs a gentle slope up the side of a hill; at the very end, it makes a sharp right turn and goes straight uphill to the house. The driveway is manageable most of the time, but when snow and ice hit, our cars just can't make that final turn up to the house. The garage is located one level down from the house, at the point where cars roll back to when they can't make it up the last hill. We'll be able to pull into the garage, walk up the interior steps, walk out onto the back deck (still in the planning stages), and walk about 100 feet to the fr0nt door of the house. The best part, though, is upstairs: our house has no spare bedrooms and very little storage, but the garage will fix both problems. There's a little apartment up there, complete with sleeping area, bathroom, kitchenette, built-in bookshelves, two gigantic storage closets, and big picture windows with views of woods, meadow, creek, and the colorful bluff across the road. The deck in the back will be nestled in the woods where the best wildflowers grow in spring: mayapples and trillium and fire pinks and twinleaf and stonecrop. It'll be a great guest room or retreat or perhaps someday a rental property.

Right now, though, it's a gift, even if it can't fit under the Christmas tree.

To words!

Done! I've just closed the file containing the biggest writing project I've attempted since the dissertation. I wrote 2500 words yesterday and 5000 today, plus untold numbers last week and the week before and various weeks going back close to six years. I'll proofread, of course, and tomorrow I'll send the manuscript out to a few trusted readers, but unless they suggest major changes, the hard part is done and there's nothing left but the mopping-up.

How do I celebrate? A walk sounds about right, especially since my body feels like it's been chained to a computer desk for two days. Maybe I can find a Christmas cookie somewhere and a mug of hot cocoa. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Too hot for a fire. I'll settle for marzipan and a communal toast: to words! Long may they flow.

A tempting tradition

Tree decorated: check.
Gifts wrapped: check.
Stockings hung by chimney with care: check.
Traditional Christmas lasagne assembled: check.

Hold on there. Since when did lasagne become a traditional Christmas meal? Shouldn't that be a ham or a roast or a turkey? What kind of person cooks lasagne on Christmas?

This break from tradition is not entirely my fault. I tried to come up with another plan; in fact, I spent several weeks periodically asking family members what they wanted for Christmas dinner, and the most useful response I received was "something good." "Okay then," I said, "I'll just have to adjust that liver-and-onions with brussels sprouts menu and cancel that big order of Salmiak. What'll I do with this case of Spam, though? I know--let's exercise some holiday spirit and give it to the poor! I'm sure the poor like Spam!"

After going through this ridiculous exercise a few times, I realized that an important part of my constituency had gone unpolled. I immediately repaired the oversight: "Self," I said, "What would you like to eat on Christmas?" Hence, a big pan of lasagne is now nestled snug in the fridge, waiting to be popped in the oven tomorrow. That's right: all the hard work is done, so tomorrow I can just relax and enjoy. I think I like this tradition.

I'm not quite so crazy about the traditional Christmas Eve turnips, but I had to make room in the fridge for the lasagne so those turnips had to be cooked and consumed. I'm more sanguine about the pre-Christmas-Eve tacos and flan, which is also not traditional holiday fare but is quite appropriate for a house full of young people celebrating a birthday. The college chick turned 20 today, which means that 20 years ago today I was enjoying the traditional I.V. drip following an emergency C-section. That was the year I baked 14 dozen traditional Christmas cookies to serve at our Christmas Eve open house, but the trip to the hospital sort of relocated the party. I hope the maternity ward nurses enjoyed all those cookies. They earned them: on Christmas morning they brought me a Christmas stocking stuffed with a beautiful baby girl. We still hang that stocking by the chimney every year to remind us that tradition isn't everything, that sometimes the best gifts are unexpected. Twenty years ago, a baby girl; tomorrow, lasagne; a year from now--who knows?

For tonight, everything's checked off the list, except I ought to leave a little something out for Santa. Hope he likes turnips.

Home for Christmas

'Twas the week before Chrismtas and all over the blosophere, not a creature was writing or reading or visiting--or at least precious few creatures. Apparently my favorite bloggers have other things to do, things I'm not doing this year: visiting relatives, writing conference papers, interviewing (or being interviewed) at MLA. This year, for the first time in years, I'm staying home.

For the past two years I've gone to MLA to give papers and interview people for job openings, and while it's much more fun to be the interviewer than the interviewee, the task is not without its horrors: the big room lined with intelligent people oozing desperation, the lineup of dark suits, the strangers crying in the ladies' room, those awkward pauses when it becomes clear that the interviewee simply won't do but the interview must nevertheless grind on to its sorry conclusion. This year, thank heaven, my department has no openings to fill, so I'll just sit back and enjoy the status quo.

And we're not going to Florida to visit relatives this Christmas either, much as we'd enjoy a dose of sunshine right now. (Note to whoever is in charge of the weather: the song says "white Christmas," not "wet Christmas.") These days, most of our traveling involves visiting the college kid at her campus or taking the high school senior to visit colleges, so the travel funds have been hopelessly depleted. A year from now I'll have two kids in college, and any family travel will have to work around their various course schedules. I keep telling myself that this is just a stage, that one of these days both kids will be done with school and we'll have no schedules to consult but our own, but meanwhile, we'll just have to be patient. And this Christmas, that means staying home.

But that's okay. We have what we need for a cosy family Christmas: cookies, eggnog, board games, books, plenty of firewood. Now all we need are visitors to share the fun. Come by any time--we're ready for you.

Ai-ai-ai eyes!

Pet peeve: white text on a dark background. I just can't read it. Thirty seconds, max, and I'm going cross-eyed and blindly reaching for the "back" button. Why do people do this? Do they enjoy causing me pain? Why don't they just come over to my house and stick a hot poker in my eyeballs instead of luring me on with promises of thrilling repartee and then stabbing my eyeballs with white text on black background? I would rather rub sand in my eyes than try to read it.

With the procession

I was driving home from the dentist's office this morning when I fell in line behind a funeral procession. I hadn't really intended to follow a hearse halfway home, but there are only so many ways to get from point A to point B and if a funeral procession is in the way, there's nothing to do but follow. This meant driving about half the speed limit, but I wasn't in a tremendous hurry--and besides, if death is the price we have to pay for being alive, then I don't mind showing some respect for the dead by taking my life a little more slowly.

One thing I found a bit disconcerting: as the hearse and the long wagging tail of cars made it slow way down the highway, cars traveling in the other direction pulled off the road in respect. Some of the drivers got out of the cars and stood with their heads bowed while the procession moved past. This is a charming gesture although I confess I don't quite understand it: surely everyone who stops can't possibly know the dead guy, so for whom are they showing respect? For death itself? For the mourners? For me? I was, after all, attached, through no fault of my own, to the tail end of this funeral procession. As I saw these strangers bowing silently in my direction, I wanted to open my window and yell out, "I'm not with them!" But that would be rude. And so I drove on, silently accepting the solemn gestures despite my unworthiness to receive them.

Then we reached a fork in the road where the funeral procession took the road less traveled by while I stayed on the main highway. I'll take the other fork another day, but for now, I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.

Do the math

Yesterday we celebrated 24 years of marriage. Twenty four years! Seems like a long time to do anything. I've been trying to make the numbers add up but this is the best I can do:

Two children, one exchange student, 12 foster children, if I'm remembering correctly. How many birthday parties? Difficult to say. One dog, one cat, one rabbit, and long ago an aquarium full of fish. How many fleas?

Two B.A.'s, one M.Div., one M.A., one Ph.D., and a kid almost halfway through a degree in Music Education. How much have we paid for tuition? Too scary to count.

One shoebox-size apartment, two rickety mobile homes in the same trailer park, one 18-foot travel trailer that we lived in the two summers we worked in campgrounds (and if you really want to get to know someone, spend two summers in a space that small), five parsonages (and only the first and last were truly awful), and one home of our own with an emerging garage. Ten dwellings in 24 years!

One 1970 puke-green Dodge Dart (sold to a kid who wanted to use it "to race cops"), one Mazda GLC (sold, dying), two Honda Civics (both wrecked, not my fault), two Honda CRX's (one sold, dying, and the 1991 model still sputtering along with 170,000 miles on it), two Toyota minivans (one sold, one still running with 190,000 miles on it), one Dodge Neon (needs a paint job that would cost more than we paid for the car), one Nissan Sentra (currently in the possession of the college kid). Ten cars in 24 years! Four of them still running! How many miles have we driven? Impossible to say.

Five thousand miles in two weeks on the Grand Canyon trip, camping all the way. Five hundred miles each week during the three Kentucky/Ohio commmuting years. Forty miles a day for my round trip to work. Road trips to Michigan, Vermont, Connecticut, North Carolina, Arkansas, Florida Florida Florida. That long drive to Albuquerque when I was pregnant and slept the whole way back. Trips to Iowa, to Kentucky, to Indiana to look at colleges. To D.C. for MLA, and to Philadelphia for same. To West Virginia to ski. Does it count if it was a rental car? But then we've got to add airline miles--to California, Vancouver, Madrid, Auckland, Florida Florida Florida. How many of those flights did we pay for? How many did the college cover because I was giving papers?

How much money have we earned? Spent? Borrowed? Difficult to say. We've worked for three campgrounds, five newspapers, 13 churches, two institutions of higher education, one Farmers' Market, and a whole host of schools that employ the bearded wonder as a substitute teacher. Supported the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H, marching band, pep band, basketball, softball, Spanish Club, and the National Honor Society. How many fund-raising drives? I'd rather forget.

How many pairs of shoes? Tubes of toothpaste? Bottles of aspirin? How much for electricity, water, garbage pickup, television, movies, trips to see The Nutcracker? How many cloth diapers washed and folded? How many disasters avoided by the skin of our teeth? (By fire, one; by water, two; by car, too many to count.)

How many arguments? How many laughs? How many times have we wondered how we'd make it through another day? Somehow it all has to add up to 24 years, but I can't seem to do the math.

Instead, I'll do the marriage. Maybe I'll try the math again after another 24 years.

Progress report

Totally didn't feel like writing this morning but I made myself do it and behold, it was good. Okay, maybe it isn't all that good just yet, but it's heading in that direction. This project has been stalled for so long that it's good to see it heading in any direction. Ditto with the garage addition: the water was hooked up today so all that remains is a little paint, a little flooring, some doorknobs and light fixtures and other indoor finishing. Ditto the Christmas shopping: I've been postponing making a final decision on a few important items, but today after I wrote my quota of words I headed for the mall and didn't come back until I was done. Done for now. I know I'm neglecting some other important things while pursuing progress on these projects--the laundry comes to mind, for instance, and the pile of photos begging to be put into albums--but those things can wait. Tomorrow I'll get up and I won't feel like writing but I'll write anyway, and it may not be perfect but it's progress, and that's good.

Making the grade

I posted final grades a week ago and so far I've had no angry or pleading e-mail messages from students. Granted, for those students able to use a calculator or visit webct, there were few surprises; however, usually there are a few who think they can wheedle their way to a better grade even after the final grades are in. So far, nothing.

I did, however, receive a message before finals from a student who knew she had bombed the class and wanted to know when it would be offered again so she can re-take it in hopes of improving her grade. She asked for my suggestions on how she can improve her performance, "aside from attending class." Well, I would say that attending class is a good start, and once she gets that little detail figured out we can talk about some other helpful habits, like doing the reading assignments and remembering to turn in papers. But I have no other suggestions at this time "aside from attending class."

Noteworthy

Here is what sometimes happens in a house full of eclectic talents: the young man is playing Latin riffs on the conga while his sister, just home from college, plays some Andrew Lloyd Webber selections on the piano--and meanwhile upstairs the college girl's boyfriend practices Christmas carols on the accordion for tomorrow's service, occasionally accompanied by the old guy on the harmonica.

And what am I doing while all this music swirls around me? Tap-tap-tapping on the computer keyboard, of course. In a house full of eclectic talents, this just happens to be mine.

High stakes

From David Mitchell's Black Swan Green:

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened
stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, "When you're ready."

Climbing the mountain, one word at a time

Folded laundry. Washed shower curtains. Made fudge. Bought groceries. Chatted with the garage contractor. Lunched with colleagues. Read the paper. Stared out the window at birds. And oh yes, wrote roughly 2500 words on a major project. They may not have been the best words or even the right words, but they're 2500 more words than I had written yesterday, and that's something to celebrate.

I've been working up the courage to call this writing project a book, but it's difficult. Back in grad school everyone always referred to the dissertation as the "little writing project," as in "I understand you're working on a little writing project." If "dissertation" sounds frightening, then "a little writing project" ought to sound comforting, but somehow it didn't then and it doesn't now. Minimizing the size of the mountain only makes me wonder why I find the climbing so difficult.

For a while now I've been immersed in a different kind of little writing project but I'm not yet ready to call it a book. Just a little something I'm fiddling with in my spare time, you know, nothing serious, just an insignificant bunch of words--and thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I even know exactly how many.

The more important question is: How many more?

Ammo a la mode

A big stack of Christmas music CDs sit next to the CD player upstairs, but they are not merely music. They are ammunition.

Suppose the young man is having trouble motivating himself to get out of bed in the morning, a not uncommon occurrence. Crank up Christmas with the Chipmunks to full blast and before you know it, the young man is stomping into the kitchen to turn it off. It's more fun, though, to annoy the resident bread-baker when he's up to his elbows in bread dough: just put that new Aaron Neville CD on and wait for the falsetto spots. The breadman cringes every time, but he can't adjust those little buttons with bread dough all over his hands.

When it comes to Christmas music, we all love it--most of it--but we also know how to take advantage of each other's dislikes. Right now, for instance, the men are playing a CD that offers them ample opportunities to poke fun at me. Why? Because no matter how many times I'm reminded of the name of the group, I can't remember it, and I always end up calling them something totally inappropriate like "Subterranean Railway." (It's Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but I can say that with assurance only because I just hollered up the stairs to pry that piece of information out of my son, who is seeking revenge for all those times he's been awakened by The Chipmunks.) If you ask me again in an hour, I'll wrinkle my brow and say something like "Not Mannheim Steamroller."

I have the same problem remembering the French phrase used to describe a road that ends in a circular turnaround; I have to run through a whole litany of phrases and then half the time I still can't come up with the right one: coup d'etat, tete a tete, rue morgue, vache du plage, higgledy-piggledy, Perth Amboy...it's useless. I'll remember it an hour from now when I no longer care.

But how can I concentrate on such a minor matter when lovely Christmas music is playing and my taste buds are being treated to warm apple crisp served with vanilla ice cream? I know the word for that: a la mode. Why worry about ammo when we can enjoy apple crisp a la mode?

Holy jokes! That's REALLY not funny!

So we were discussing that annoying Christopher Hitchens article--the one that links the ability to bear children with a significant decline in funniness--when someone raised the question, "Was Jesus funny?" Far be it from me to try to resolve the thorny theological issue that caused so much bloodshed in The Name of the Rose, in which merely speculating about whether Jesus had a sense of humor could result in the gruesome death of the speculator and the immersion of his body in a vat of blood drained from freshly slaughtered pigs. There's something about torture that just takes all the fun out of humor, you know? So rather than risk such treatment, I'll just paraphrase the words of Umberto Eco himself: if Jesus wasn't funny, why did he get invited to so many dinners?

A laughing Jesus I can envision, but a laughing Mary? She's not laughing in all those byzantine icons, but then neither is anyone else. In fact, if religious art is any indication, the laugh was a heresy introduced after the Second Vatican Council. I'm trying to recall an image of Mary that suggests laughter, but nothing is coming to mind; the most we ever see is a sort of Mona Lisa smile--quiet, subtle, mysterious. If Hitchens is right, then Mary was less likely to crack a joke than to purse her lips and say, "That's not funny." And the minute those lips were pursed, you can bet some byzantine artist would come along and start slathering on the gold leaf. Did you ever try to crack a smile through half an inch of gold leaf? That's gotta hurt. If Mary followed the Hitchens model of humor-free females, where, then, did Jesus get his excellent sense of humor?

Our furry green friend points out that Hitchens's argument relating humor to powerlessness is a bit circular: men use humor as a smoke screen to hide their own powerlessness, while women use humorlessness to hide their power. If this theory is correct, then surely ultimate power should be linked with ultimate humorlessness, which gives us a stern Jesus straight out of The Name of the Rose. Meanwhile, Mary, the submissive, servantlike handmaiden of the Lord, ought to have a lucrative career in stand-up comedy.

But this is all, of course, mere speculation--as is Hitchens's article, for that matter. I'm sure it would never enter into anyone's head to immerse either of us in a vat of pigs' blood simply for the sin of getting serious about humor. But if someone has to suffer for the cause, let it be Christopher Hitchens. He's the one who links humor with powerlessness, and the way I see it, he can use all the powerlessness he can get.

That's not funny

In the January Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens attempts to answer the age-old question, "Why are men funnier than women?" (Read about it here.) He covers the topic in some depth, including results from an unfunny study on the topic and concluding that "the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants. Women, cunning minxes that they are, have to affect not to be the potentates. This is the unspoken compromise."

I've been mulling over possible responses, most of them remarkably unfunny, which would just provide further support for his underlying assumption that (most) women aren't particularly funny, or that women don't feel the pressure to be funny that men do. I know some very funny women, but they're not professionally funny--their humor is not a career in itself but a byproduct that bubbles out while they're otherwise occupied. This suggests that Hitchens is right, sort of, but this annoys me because I want him to be wrong, but proving him wrong would require a whole lot of serious, articulate prose, preferably with a coherent argument involving bullet points and scientific studies quantifying differences in humor levels. And you know what? That's just not funny.

So let Christopher Hitchens be funny today. I'll go back to being morose.

A one-sided conversation

Every January I indulge in the same little conversation with myself. "Self," I say, "Wouldn't it be a good idea to keep track of all the books I read in a year's time?"

"Why?" I respond.

"Why not?"

"Because one of us would have to remember to write down the title of all those books and I for one am not in the mood."

"Piffle," I reply. "Don't you think it would be interesting to know how many books I've read in a year?"

"Interesting to whom?"

"Well, to me, of course, and possibly you."

"Or possibly not." I pause. "What's the payoff?"

"Payoff?"

"You know, is there a prize at bottom of the box? Some sort of reward to make all that record-keeping worthwhile?"

"There would be a number."

"Like I need another number in my life. Who cares how many books I read in a year's time?"

"But it's not just a number. It's a list. You know how fun it is to dissect a person's personality based on the books stacked on the nightstand. A list of books I've read in a year might reveal interesting personality traits."

"Reveal to whom? Is there anyone out there who needs to know how many times I've read A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--or failed to finish The Magic Mountain?"

"You've got a point there," I admit. "How about this: I'll start the list, and if it gets annoying, I'll quit."

"Fine," I reply. "I predict that before March roars in, you'll forget the whole thing."

And of course I was right: I started a list somewhere, but then I got distracted, and I didn't think about it again until right now. But that doesn't have to be the end of it. January is coming, and with it a whole new year. "Self," I say, "I've got a great idea."

But all I can do is roll my eyes and sigh, "Here we go again."

Happy birthday to me

Sure sign that I'm becoming a POP (Pathetic Older Person): I'm celebrating my birthday by staying home in a quiet house, reading.

Okay, there's a little more to it than that. Last night I persuaded the family to play the Trivial Pursuit Book Lovers' Edition for the first time, and never have I been so grateful for having once read Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America. We stopped after nearly two hours of play, when I had four wedges, my son had three, and the bearded wonder--well, he kept responding with variations on The Catcher in the Rye, so what do you expect? "The Cupcake in the Rye," he would say, or 'The Admiral in the Rye." I kept getting questions about books written by baseball managers and professional wrestlers, not exactly the kind of reading you'll find on my bedside table.

This morning the bearded wonder redeemed himself by making a wonderful birthday breakfast, which had to take place fairly early because our son was off to take the ACT, followed by a haircut and Christmas shopping and playing drums in the pep band at the high school basketball game, so 6:45 a.m. was the only time we would be together all day. I got some great birthday loot, including two books from my wish list: Jose Saramago's Seeing and David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. And I spent most of the afternoon just sitting around reading.

Now we're thinking about getting out of the house and going to that basketball game. I don't really care about the game, but it would be a good chance to see the unlittle drummer boy in action again. ("The Drummer in the Rye"?) So off we go into the cold dark night to yell hurrah at young people with seemingly unending reservoirs of energy. They'll never be POPs--and just for tonight, neither will I.

Squinting toward bedlam

I have just finished grading the last set of final exams--the final finals--and I am about ready to tear my eyeballs right out of my head. I do not complain about bad handwriting because my own handwriting is no more legible than the footprints of plovers on wet sand. I do, however, have a few words to say about small handwriting. If I have to squint to read it, it's too small. This morning I actually borrowed a magnifying glass from the secretary to help me read these exams. Where do they learn to write such teeny letters? Are students involved in a vast conspiracy to destroy professors' vision, or are they hoping to annoy me into allowing them to take exams online?

Either way, my eyes hurt. I intend to take them home and give them a rest, preferably in front of a roaring fire. They've earned a break. After reading all that microscopic print, my eyes deserve an A+.

Good thing I don't give grades for penmanship.

Traumatic teeth

"Have you been chewing on rocks again?"

This is just the beginning of a long litany of questions my dentist asks when contemplating my molars.

"Were you ever in a bad car wreck? Beaten frequently as a child? Ever fall head-first out of a fourth-floor window?"

No, no, and no.

"These teeth show signs of severe trauma," he says.

"I used to chew on ice a lot," I tell him, and he just leans back and rubs his forehead. I'm doing my best, really; can I help it that I'm brutal on teeth?

Since 1998, those two upper molars have been through Dental Hell: root canals, temporary crowns, fractures, permanant crowns, surgery, more fractures, another crown made with an experimental material, and today a fractured crown. These teeth are both traumatized and traumatizing.

I like my dentist, but that doesn't mean I want to see him every other week. But that's what happens when you carry around the teeth of a person who has fallen head-first out of a fourth-floor window. Wish I knew who that person was so I could give her back her teeth.

Meanwhile, I'll go chew on some gravel.

Loose ends

It occurs to me that I need to do a little housekeeping here, tying up loose ends left hanging in previous posts. Thus:

1. Some time ago, I asked for creative uses for the acronym BUH (read about it here), and I received several clever responses. Oh for a world in which one needed an acronym to describe Burly Urchin Huggers! But no: BUH is actually used on our campus to refer to Budget Unit Heads, a horrible enough title in itself but perfectly wretched when abbreviated as BUH. All I can say is "Blech."

2. I never revealed my personal contribution to our collective faculty wish list (here). I would gladly second many of my colleagues' suggestions, but the items I contributed to the list were "a day without excuses" and "Diet Coke with Lime in the faculty lounge." I suppose I shouldn't make professors at other institutions envious by mentioning that our faculty lounge is stocked with free soft drinks and sometimes snacks, which I appreciate very much; the problem is that we are a Pepsi campus, so anyone who prefers Diet Coke (with or without lime) has to smuggle it in from outside. Well, a girl can dream, can't she?

3. No, I didn't really give my friends giant turnips for Christmas, as I threatened to do here, and I know at least one of my colleagues was deeply disappointed. (Sorry, J!) Instead, they'll have to content themselves with the transcendent dark chocolate mint fudge described here.

That's all for now, unless someone can think of any other pressing reason to delay grading all those final exams.

What I couldn't tell a student 30 seconds before the final exam

Dear Student,
Questions are good. I welcome them. I wish more students would ask questions about concepts they don't understand. However, 30 seconds before a final exam is the wrong time to ask a professor to explain a concept she has spent the previous 15 weeks trying to convey to you through lectures, class discussions, readings, and writing assignments. If you haven't made the effort to master the concept all semester, what makes you think you can learn it in 30 seconds?

I understand that we don't all share the same vocabulary, and I know you must be befuddled to see an unfamiliar phrase in the first essay question, but no, I'm not going to explain what I mean by "conventions of narrative." It must have been frustrating all semester not to know what the word "conventions" means on the frequent occasions when it has come up in class, but if you didn't understand the word, why didn't you ask about it in class? Or if you're not comfortable asking questions in class, why not write the word down so you can look it up later? But that would require actually (a) bringing writing materials to class; (b) paying attention to lectures and discussions; and (c) caring. I suppose it's easier just to let an unfamiliar term waft past unmolested.

As for "narrative," you will recall that the class actaully read a chapter of the textbook dealing with that very topic in some depth, and that we discussed the concept in class and looked at specific examples of various methods of narration--including, as a matter of fact, the very example the final exam question asks you to discuss. If you didn't understand the term "narrative," how did you make it through that lengthy chapter? I suppose it would be rude to ask to what use you put your textbook, assuming that you purchased it.

If not, then I understand your confusion, but that doesn't mean I'll answer your question. For one thing, the concept is not conducive to being boiled down into a 30-second sound bite, and for another, just-in-time delivery works well for Santa, but what you are engaged in is not wish fulfillment but education and education requires long-term effort. Exams are learning experiences and if the primary lesson you learn from this exam is that you need to start putting some effort into your education at some point earlier than the final exam period, then all I can say is Merry Christmas.

Any other questions?

Old news

This morning while driving to work I heard an NPR report about a new 24-hour French news network, and one of the interviewees contrasted the new French outlet with "Anglo-Saxon and Arabic" news networks, as if those two categories pretty much covered the possibilities. This made me grin for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I savor the mental image of an Anglo-Saxon news anchor reporting on the latest depredations over at Heorot:

Scop Smith: A foreigner arriving for a face-off with a fen-dwelling demon, but does Beowulf stand a chance? Hrothgar remaining cautiously optimistic for a swift end to the violence, but his pal Hunferth hedging his bets. He's with our roving reporter Hrolf Hraether at Heorot. Hrolf?"

Hrolf: I'm standing here with Hunferth, one of Hrothgar's loyal thanes. Tell me, Mr. Hunferth, what makes you think Beowulf will fail?

Hunferth: Who is this Beowulf anyway? Sure, his win-loss record is impressive, but he bombed that swimming-match with Breca, and this time he's fighting a real monster--with no home-field advantage!

Hrolf: Is there any concern about the fact that he's a foreigner?

Hunferth: Darn tootin'! Hrothgar has an impressive team of talented retainers right here, so why draft an outsider to do a Dane's work? And what does Beowulf want anyway? Another ring? How many rings can an armed man wear?

Hrolf: That's Hunferth on the scene at Heorot. Back to you, Scop.

Scop: Thanks, Hrolf. By the way, what's the weather look like out there?

Hrolf: The forecast says partly murky with chance of mist, and we're seeing a little of that mist rising from the fen in the distance right now.

Scop: There you have it, fair and balanced as always. Next up: The View welcomes Wealhtheow for a segment on choosing the right goblet for the well-appointed meadhall. Reporting from the Anglo-Saxon News Network, I'm Scop Smith.

Left-leaning letters on the loose!

I'm grading a pile of papers and I keep finding myself writing the same annoying sentence on Works Cited pages: "Do not mix italics and underlining in the same document; pick one and use it consistently." As often as I'm called upon to make the comment, it would be helpful to have it on a rubber stamp. The problem crops up in all my classes, from freshman composition to upper-level literature courses, and I see it on papers written by intelligent students just as often as the mediocre. I suppose mixing italics and underlining is a fairly minor problem compared to, say, failing to formulate a thesis and support it with evidence presented in clear, coherent prose, but still, when I see a Works Cited in which some of the titles are underlined and others are italicized, it's like fingernails on a blackboard--it makes my brain cells scream.

I have tried to educate students about the origin and development of italics, how in the old days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and people had to write out important documents longhand or on a typewriter, italic print simply was not available to the average person, so underlining was used instead. Today anyone can italicize, and they do so wantonly and promiscuously--italicizing here, underlining there, and sometimes (gasp!) doing both at the same time.

Frankly, I'm a little tired of the whole topic. An easy solution would be to outlaw italics--round up all those little left-leaning letters and haul 'em off in handcuffs until they learn to behave. But then I would loose upon the unsuspecting public a generation of students who believe the only way to get italics right is to leave 'em out. Wouldn't it be better to teach students to apply critical thinking to their typographic choices?

That's the approach I've taken so far, and it's clearly not working. I've been writing it all semester and it looks like I'll be writing it for a while longer: do not mix italics and underlining in the same document.

Where's that rubber stamp when I need it?

A stirring experence

Recipe for the sweetest spot in a busy season:

Put sugar, cream, and butter in a heavy saucepan. Pull up a tall chair, turn your back on the world, and stir.

Laundry needs folding? Sorry--keep stirring. Cat throwing up? Someone else will have to clean it up. Bills beg to be paid? It's not worth ruining the recipe.

Focus full attention on the pan. Watch the bubbles bursting open with a bloop. Give a stir. Glance at the candy thermometer. Stir some more. Drag the spoon through the bubbling sugar to make serpentine lines in bubbling chaos. Look at the thermometer. Look at the bubbles. Stir, stir, stir.

Wait with sweet anticipation for that moment of tension toward the end, when it appears as if the mercury might be ready to rise past that little line. Wait for it! Getting closer! Not quite yet, but maybe--yes, there it goes! Grab the pan off the heat and get ready to burst into action.

The moment of transcendence is over--but while it lasted, ahhhhh, how sweet.

Drop until you shop until you drop

This morning before I shopped I dropped things everywhere I went--socks in the laundry room, glasses in the hallway, photos in the kitchen--and then I went out and shopped until I dropped again, this time on the sofa at 6:30 in the evening, where I slept soundly despite the fact that the young man was beating his drum set into submission for a solid hour in the basement and the middle-aged man was beating cake batter no more than 15 feet from where I snoozed.

Faculty wish list

Yesterday the student newspaper printed a Faculty Holiday Wish List consisting of suggestions submitted by my colleagues. Here are a few selections; I'll let you guess which two were mine:

An elevator in [a busy classroom building]
A day without excuses
A jet pack to get me to work
More hair...in the right places
World peace and an end to hunger
Diet Coke with Lime in the faculty lounge
For the Detroit Lions to win the Superbowl
A pony
Borders gift cards
A pool
A sixth platonic solid
Proper climate control in my office
Water from the fountain of youth

Attack of the turnips

Maybe that should be attack on the turnips. Yesterday I felt positively barbaric while trying to cut into a turnip the size of a person's head. It was a wonderfully fresh turnip that popped open with a satisfying snap, but still: what can I do with a turnip that big? It turned up in a Moroccan stew with chicken and currants and sweet potatoes and cinnamon, a hearty meal that made the house smell like heaven, if they have turnips and cinnamon in heaven.

The resident turnip-monger tells me that there are 30 more turnips that size still in the garden and he has to pull them up before the first freeze. What can we do with 30 melon-sized turnips? We'll sell a few at the Farmers' Market, but the rest will have to make their way into our winter meals. When we have more tomatoes or hot peppers than we can handle, I take them to work and distribute them among my grateful colleagues, but I'm afraid turnips are a hard sell. A few years ago when weather conditions produced a glut of turnips in our valley, one of the you-pick produce places had a big sign by the highway advertising "You-Pick Turnips," but I didn't notice any long lines of pickers waiting to partake. A little turnip goes a long way, and a big turnip longer, and 30 big turnips--well, let's just say it's a good thing Christmas is coming.

Now the only challenge is to figure out how to wrap 'em.

Loving literature, sort of

This morning I did something I've never done before: I told a student to drop his English major. First, though, I invited him to explain why he wanted to be an English major.

"I just love literature," he said.

"Really," I said. "Because when I consider what I've seen of your work over the past three years, I don't see any of the usual signs of a love for literature, such as actually attending your literature classes, reading the assigned literature, or writing papers demonstrating any interest in or skills for analyzing literature."

The student agreed that he had been remiss in those areas--and, as it happened, he had already decided to drop the English major and focus on his second major, so all is well. Still, I couldn't help feeling a bit guilty, the way a top chef might feel telling a young person to go ahead and eat another Big Mac, or the way a true believer might feel telling a pagan, "You know, heaven's overrated." Being an English major is a sort of nirvana I wish everyone could experience. Everyone, that is, who loves literature enough to suffer for it, something my student was unwilling to do.

So the world is now down one English major. Somehow, my heart will go on.

To BUH or not to BUH

I've just encountered an infelicitous acronym: BUH. Certain persons on our campus are capable of being referred to officially as BUHs. The actual meaning is downright uninteresting, but before I reveal it, I'd welcome some suggestions. To whom would you apply the acronym BUH?

Unexpected gifts

It was a stupid thing to do but I have no one but myself to blame: I'm meeting individually with my literature students all day today and tomorrow and part of Wednesday to talk about their final papers. Every 15 minutes, a student comes walking through my office door prepared to discuss ways to improve his or her paper, or possibly not. Anything else I need to do--class preps, reading and responding to e-mail, visiting the ladies' room--has to get squeezed between appointments. The only reason I'm able to write this right now is that someone missed an appointment. As a compulsively punctual person, I generally get annoyed when people miss appointments, but today every missed appointment is like a gift, like a small quantity of breathing room tied up with a bow. If I knew where to get more of the same, that would pretty much take care of my Christmas shopping list.

Games people play

Twenty-six years ago just at this time of year, a young man I had met the day before beat me at Scrabble. What could I do? Reader, I married him.

Last night he beat me at Scrabble again, but not by much. For a long time he was the only man to ever beat me at Scrabble, but then once a few years ago our son put a Q on a triple-word score and beat the socks off the rest of the family. Recently the kid came close to beating me at Boggle, but not quite close enough. One of these days he'll beat me and I'll be happy to hand over the Boggle Champion crown. One of the crowning achievements of my life will be raising a child who can beat me at Boggle.

But who will beat me at my new game? Today I happened upon the Trivial Pursuit Book Lovers' Edition on sale at 50 percent off, so naturally I snatched it up. Generally we play Trivial Pursuit in teams, with one parent and one child per team; the Dad team gets all the sports questions right while the Mom team excels at arts and entertainment, and this way everyone gets a chance to win occasionally.

But the Book Lovers' edition is another kettle of fish entirely. I'm afraid I'll never persuade any of my family members to play. I could take it to my office, but who has time to play at work? Here's an idea: my 45th birthday is coming up next month, and nothing would please me more than to gather some book-lovers 'round the game board and play the day away.

Now I just need to locate some book-lovers who also love games. Any takers? I promise not to marry the winner.

Home free

So it's the day before Thanksgiving and I'm in the kitchen making corn chowder at the request of the college kid who's on her way home from Kentucky, and suddenly I hear on the radio that an accident has closed I-64 in both directions near Ashland, Kentucky. It's going to be a very long afternoon.

This is the worst part of being a parent: knowing that my child could be in danger but not being able to do anything about it. I try calling her dorm room; she's already left. I know she's traveling with a friend who has a cell phone, but I don't know that friend's number and even if I did, she could easily be out of range of a tower. The radio tells me traffic could be stopped for hours while the accident is under investigation. What can I do but chop vegetables?

There are thousands of people driving that road today, I tell myself. The chances that my daughter would be involved in that wreck must be infinitesimal. Still, I can't help recalling that last spring when she was driving home alone, she made a pit stop in a remote area and a male maintenance worker followed her into the ladies' room. What are the odds that she would be the only person stopped at a rest area at any given moment? She's not traveling alone this time and she's carrying pepper spray, but a lot of good that would do against an out-of-control tractor trailer.

I need to stop thinking about mangled automobiles and focus on the soup. Corn chowder: her favorite. Hope she makes it home to eat some. Hope I can make myself stop picturing nightmare scenarios long enough to finish cooking. Hope against hope that all is well.

When she finally arrives home unscathed and we gather round the chowder, that's my Thanksgiving. Everything that comes later is just gravy.

Thankful for nothing

The young man just left for school, the college kid is driving home this evening, and the bearded wonder got called to substitute at a school with a name so ridiculous that if I mentioned it no one would believe me so let's just call it the Everyone Is Special Academy.

You know what that means. Yes: I'm home alone.

No classes. No meetings. No need to leave the house.

Think of the possiblities: I could curl up with a good book, get caught up on my ironing, clean bathrooms, go for a walk, pay bills, visit the emerging garage, tackle that pile of student papers, put photos in albums, or even eat buttered popcorn while watching Law and Order reruns. We're going to the in-laws' house for Thanksgiving tomorrow, so the only thing I really need to do today is bake two pecan pies. Piece of cake. Or pie, as the case may be.

Of all the things I could be thankful for today, there's nothing I appreciate more than the freedom to do absolutely nothing.

Putting students to sleep

I put a class full of students to sleep this morning, which isn't my favorite way to start the day. Afterward I was griping to one of my colleagues--"I just wasn't at my best this morning; last day to cover material for the research paper and it wasn't scintillating"--and she said, "How often are your students at their best? How often do they give you stuff that's not scintillating?"

She has a point. Having just read a pile of papers with an extremely low scintillation rating, I'm well aware of students' willingness to offer me heaping masses of mediocrity. If they can have an off day (or an off week or off semester), why can't I?

So I'm giving myself a free pass today. I'll admit that it wasn't my best performance, but so what? I'll scintillate tomorrow.

"I can't e-mail," he e-mailed

All my students have papers due so naturally it's Horrible Excuse Week. I've heard about more broken alarm clocks, midnight vomiting episodes, and family emergencies than I'd ever imagined could happen in one week; apparently our campus has become a vortex of personal disaster.

Or not, as the case may be. Far be it from me to suggest that students are devoting time and energy to inventing imaginary disasters when they could be devoting those resources to the papers they're supposed to be writing. But then how much time and energy do I want to put into investigating these implausible stories? The correct answer would be none.

Still, there are excuses that earn such low scores on the Plausibility Meter that I'm tempted to follow up. For instance, a student who has failed to turn in about half the assignments for the class e-mailed me to tell me he can't e-mail me his draft because he currently has no access to e-mail.

Right.

He's at a conference, he says, an academic conference in a major city, and we all know how difficult it is to get access to the internet at academic conferences in major modern cities, so I'd just better go ahead and accept his draft on Wednesday because he has no access to e-mail today. And he said all this in an e-mail message that I received when? Just after class today, naturally, just at the moment when it dawned on him that whoops, he's missed class again and this time it really matters, unlike all the other times when he missed class without any excuse whatsoever.

Which is worse, a ridiculously implausible excuse or no excuse at all?

Writing about thinking about writing about thinking

"Writing is a technology to think with," wrote Richard E. Miller--or so I've been telling my freshman composition students all semester. Now that I need to actually locate the original quotation so I can get the wording just right and cite it properly, I can't find it.

I know it's marked in my first copy of Miller's book Writing at the End of the World, but that copy of the book is missing. It may have been stolen from my office, but with an office full of books, why would someone steal that one? More likely I loaned it to someone and then forgot. I do this all the time. I still don't know who has my first copy of the Whale Rider DVD, nor do I know what ever happened to my first hardback copy of The Thurber Carnival. I say "first copy" because I finally gave up on trying to get the loaned copies back and purchased new ones, which happens more often than I'd care to admit. If I charged late fees on borrowed books, I'd be on my way to the Bahamas by now. I need to just give up on lending out any book I ever want to see again.

Instead, I learn to live without them or buy a second copy. I recently repurchased Writing at the End of the World for the express purpose of locating the "technology to think with" statement, and I have just finished re-reading it, which I didn't mind doing because it's a wonderful book, but even though I was on the lookout for that statement, I never found it. Found all kinds of other good stuff, but not the particular sentence I need to find. Not even anything close.

Now I'm starting to doubt my memory. Did Richard E. Miller really write that or did I see it somewhere else and falsely attribute it to him? Should I go back and re-read everything I might have been reading at the time I first read Writing at the End of the World? Where do I start?

Back to square one--or page one, as the case may be.

A pougham too farrh

If the vagaries of English spelling interest you, there's an amusing poem (or perhaps I should write "pougham") on the topic over at Language Log today. My favorite lines:

With their flash cards looking like prescriptions for the catarrh
And their mnemnmonics, blast 'em. They go too farrh.

Gruel R Us

Yesterday I ate at a new local lunch spot where I was served the worst potato soup I've ever encountered--it looked like gruel and tasted like seasoned cornstarch. With so many other local restaurants serving excellent soup, I doubt that the new place will last long. What annoyed me most, though, is that potato soup isn't exactly rocket science. It's not that difficult, people! Listen up:

In a large stock pot with a heavy bottom, melt a little olive oil and a little butter. (No cheating; use the real thing.) Toss in some chopped onion and celery and one chopped sweet red bell pepper or fresh pimento. If you like garlic, throw some in there. Saute for a few minutes and then throw in a pile of peeled, chopped potatoes. Add some salt and pepper and just enough water or chicken broth to cover the vegetables, and then put a lid on it and let it simmer for 30 minutes or so. If the potatoes aren't soft, cook it longer. If you like it smooth, puree the whole thing; if not, use a potato masher to smoosh some of the potatoes and leave it lumpy. Stir in just enough half-and-half to make it creamy. Heat just until warmed through. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed. Serve with hearty bread.

This is an easy dish: ten minutes to chop stuff, 30 minutes or so to cook it, and all the ingredients are readily available. When it's this easy, there's simply no excuse for serving gruel.

Deadline experiment

I conducted an experiment in an upper-level literature class this semester, and I am now prepared to share the results.

In the past, I have assigned four short papers and one long paper in that class, with set dates for each of the short papers. This semester, though, I gave the students a list of 13 short-paper topics with 13 deadlines; students were free to choose any four of those papers and turn them in on the appropriate deadline. The only caveat was that they had to turn in at least two of the papers before midterm.

At the beginning of the semester, I encouraged students to select topics they cared about and were equipped to write about, and some did. On many class days, I could be certain that at least a few of the students had written short papers about the material under discussion and had therefore thought about the literature before class. Also, since deadlines were spread out, papers trickled in on various dates and I was never overwhelmed by grading in that class.

I had expected that some students would procrastinate and write the last possible papers, and that proved to be the case. Of my 14 students, one completed all four papers before midterm and then had plenty of time to work on other projects. Two more completed three papers before midterm. Two students missed so many deadlines that they completed only three short papers. The remaining nine students completed two papers before midterm and two after, with most of them settling for the last possible papers.

Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the system. Students who were motivated to get projects out of the way early were able to do so, and I received papers on a wider variety of topics than I normally would. But here's the question: given some flexibility in deadlines and topics, why do most students select the latest possible moment to do the work regardless of whether they found the topic appealing? And why did two out of 14 students allow themselves to get so far behind that they ran out of deadlines entirely and turned in only three papers? I know everyone procrastinates, but this seems a bit excessive. Now the students who just turned in the final short paper have to scramble to work on the long paper, due next week.

If I had been given this kind of option as a student, what would I have done? I don't know, but I like this system well enough to use it again--and hope my students can motivate themselves to choose appropriate deadlines.

Bluebird of happiness?

It may not be the official Bluebird of Happiness, but it did make me very happy last month when a flock of bluebirds came flitting around our woods. They're gone now, but they were delightful for a time.

Incomprehensible ignorance

I've been trying to comprehend this morning's news out of Iraq: over 100 educators kidnapped, universities shut down, classes cancelled. This incident is shocking on so many levels, but here's what I've been puzzling over: what kind of organization thinks it can gain power by shutting down education? How credible is a group willing to die (or kill) for the belief that ignorance is bliss? All my years of education leave me speechless.

In the stacks

Not long ago my daughter was telling me about a recent date: her boyfriend took her to a large acacemic library, and "Mom, you wouldn't believe it, they have shelves that move!"

Next time I'm in despair because ignorance is a renewable resource and nothing I do seems to make a dent in the supply, I'll comfort myself with the knowledge that I have raised a child (a) whose idea of a terrific date is a visit to an academic library and (b) who can get really excited about shelves that move.

When "no" means "yes"

Yesterday's Columbus Dispatch included an article about a junior high school in Columbus that is trying to cure an outbreak of inappropriate touching among the students. One 14-year-old boy was quoted saying, "The girls say they don't like it, but they really do."

There, in a nutshell, you have every rapist's justification for his action. Where did a 14-year-old learn that a woman's "No" is just a flirty invitation? Let's hope the boy's parents saw his name in the paper and decided to give him a more complete education. If not, let's hope the girls at that school will soon learn how to deliver a well-placed kick.

A Chiropodist in Pangea

I've just finished Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days, which drills ever deeper into the mountain of history until it bursts out into sunlight on the other side, and I don't want to give away the wonders of the book but I have to share a delicious moment of satire--Whitehead's description of a party celebrating the release of a new book: "They had gathered in a club called Glasnost to partake of the spread, the panoply of bite-sized widgets laid out by the publisher of Godfrey Frank's A Chiropodist in Pangea, a fifteen-hundred-page grimoire of mysterious content that would debut in a few days on the New York Times best-seller list. There was some question as to whether it would be categorized as fiction or nonfiction. Someone had to read it first."

Among those who have not read it, a variety of theories about the book are bruited about: is it about a "lecherous haberdasher who's really the head of Conde Nast" or "a history of the twentieth century as seen through a bunion"? And what of its author? Godfrey Frank "quoted French theorists who liked to inflate helpless nouns with rhetorical gases until they burst into italics" and wrote hip scholarly articles about a pop band called Fire Drill and the Orderly Fashions: "He situated them in a lineage of the Dionysian going back centuries, he located their Thanatotic flourishes as a necessary guise in the final days of a self-conscious century." In the end he becomes one with the band, performing a song about the death of Roland Barthes.

What does this have to do with John Henry? Everything. But you'll have to read the book to find out why.

Perpetual construction project update

Drum roll, please:

There is siding on my garage.

That's right: siding! On my garage!

First windows and now siding! What's next: doors?

I don't want to go overboard here, but I have a feeling that one of these days I might actually be able to--wait for it--park a CAR!!! In my GARAGE!!!!

Siding on my garage!

Woo-hoo!