I have a colleague who does a terrific job working in a very specialized field and who's a ton of fun to have around, but she hates to go to faculty events. "They're always asking me to do things for them," she said. "I can't relax."
I thought she was exaggerating until I accompanied her to a few events and saw for myself. She's right: she can't relax. People treat her as if she's on duty all the time. They fill her inbox and voice mail with requests at all hours of the day and night. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that they accost her at the grocery store. Who wants to talk about the finer points of pedagogy in the toilet paper aisle?
Now I understand even more what she's going through as I once again take up the reins as Faculty Chair. Last year I sat out half of my term, and I think my colleagues cut me some slack in the spring while I was getting back on my feet. But during the summer and early fall I've seen opportunities to relax dwindling as more and more of my colleagues assume I'm on duty 24/7.
Yesterday I really really wanted to just sit and eat my lunch with a few colleagues without being assaulted by demands for information or complaints about faculty governance, but it was a vain hope. I found myself getting more silent and more angry as I ate. I know I'm faculty chair all day every day, but please can I just sit here and eat my leftovers in peace?
But then I wondered: how many times in the past have I accosted faculty leaders with requests or demands or questions at the lunch table? It's a natural place for faculty to gather and toss around ideas about whatever happens to be bugging them, and sharing those complaints at the lunch table saves them the effort of coming up to my office or sending an e-mail. (Although I get plenty of those too. You should see my inbox. Trust me: you don't want to go there.)
People talk about all the different hats I wear as a teacher and administrator and faculty leader, but sometimes I'm tempted to transform the metaphor into reality. Depending on the context and my mood, I could wear my "So you want to get on the agenda?" hat, my "I'd be happy to hear your irate monologue" hat, my "Can your complaint wait until I'm done with lunch?" hat, or my "Go away and leave me alone" hat. I would need an easy method of carrying around multiple hats and I would have to work on my quick-change skills. These days not even Superman can depend on finding a phone booth when he needs one!
I don't want to withdraw from events where I'll encounter colleagues, but sometimes I'd like to eat my lunch in peace. Is that too much to ask? Or do I need to start carrying around a hat that says "Out to Lunch"?
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Hot stuff
In the spring when we're planting dozens of pepper plants, I often ask myself why we need so many. We'll never eat them all and they don't sell well at the Farmers Market; I can make salsa and hot pepper sauce and put some of the tiny hot peppers in the freezer to use all winter in sauces, but why plant so many peppers in so many different varieties?
Because they're pretty, that's why.
Right now most of my garden looks awful: corn stalks stand dry and brown and done for; tomato and squash vines are shriveling and the last beans and lettuce have gone to seed. Deer are nibbling on the okra, sweet potatoes, and beets. The cucumbers are kaput and the carrot-and-parsnip patch has been overtaken by weeds.
But the peppers are lovely, shimmering in rich shades of green, red, and orange. This year for the first time we planted lemon peppers, which start out green and then go straight to bright yellow. I haven't eaten any of them yet and I don't know how hot they are, but when I look at those bright orange habaneros, I can taste that blast of habanero heat suffused with fruitiness. Deer and other garden pests leave peppers alone. We lose one or two plants a year to some sort of pestilence, but the remaining plants just keep growing without much attention or care.
Few of my friends share my love for hot peppers, and the poor sales at the Market suggest that it's a lonely passion. But this time of year when the rest of the garden looks downright apocalyptic, I enjoy visiting that one corner of bright color where the peppers preside. They're a feast for the eyes today, the tongue tomorrow.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
A commute on the Scenic Route
The traffic light in Lowell is 4.7 miles from my house by the shortest route. This morning it took me 17 minutes to get there by a route you might call "Scenic" if it weren't so foggy. The last time I had to take that route, the highway was underwater; this morning I'm not really sure what the problem was but I'm glad I found a way around it.
I knew something was wrong when I had to wait on the bridge at the end of my driveway while three cars zipped past--and then another 11 cars passed me before I got out to the highway. It's rare to encounter even one car on that mile of road, so 14 cars make a veritable parade. Why was my road suddenly so popular? 7 a.m. is a little early for a wild party.
I made it a mile or so down the highway before I saw signs of trouble: dense fog, flares in the road, a line of stopped traffic so long I couldn't even see what was causing the stoppage. Time to turn around and find another route to town.
Now my road provides an alternate route, but only a fool would call it a short cut. Scenic? On a clear day you get a panoramic view of the power plant five miles upriver. On a foggy day--best keep your eyes on the road.
I followed the Scenic Route down narrow, twisty gravel roads, up steep hills and around blind corners, and I discovered that even with new tires, my car fishtails badly going uphill on gravel. Those roads are not designed to take the kind of traffic volume they carried this morning, especially since drivers facing unexpected delays are not always known for their patience. I breathed a sigh of relief after I found myself finally in Lowell--17 minutes after I left my house.
But at least I got there! Arrive Alive has always been my motto.
I knew something was wrong when I had to wait on the bridge at the end of my driveway while three cars zipped past--and then another 11 cars passed me before I got out to the highway. It's rare to encounter even one car on that mile of road, so 14 cars make a veritable parade. Why was my road suddenly so popular? 7 a.m. is a little early for a wild party.
I made it a mile or so down the highway before I saw signs of trouble: dense fog, flares in the road, a line of stopped traffic so long I couldn't even see what was causing the stoppage. Time to turn around and find another route to town.
Now my road provides an alternate route, but only a fool would call it a short cut. Scenic? On a clear day you get a panoramic view of the power plant five miles upriver. On a foggy day--best keep your eyes on the road.
I followed the Scenic Route down narrow, twisty gravel roads, up steep hills and around blind corners, and I discovered that even with new tires, my car fishtails badly going uphill on gravel. Those roads are not designed to take the kind of traffic volume they carried this morning, especially since drivers facing unexpected delays are not always known for their patience. I breathed a sigh of relief after I found myself finally in Lowell--17 minutes after I left my house.
But at least I got there! Arrive Alive has always been my motto.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Making it count
Yesterday I enjoyed discussing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with a group of faculty members, and today I'm wearing a bit of white gauze over the spot where a nurse drew blood during the annual Wellness Screening. I'm seeing these little patches of white gauze all over campus--call it the White Badge of Wellness.
Our campus theme this year is Health and Wellness, which explains the choice of Henrietta Lacks for our common reading. Few students attended the reading discussions, but it was great to get together with colleagues and talk about medical and journalistic ethics, informed consent, and other hot topics.
Today's hot topic is how we can get more students interested in reading and discussing books outside of classes, but I don't know how to do that without somehow making it mandatory--or making it "count," as the students say. Here's a scary fact: when I asked a group of nine junior and senior English majors what interesting thing they'd read over the summer, three were unable to come up with a title.
Can we motivate academic wellness the way we motivate physical wellness? Our wellness program requires participants to fill out a health survey and participate in a health screening every year; the college receives anonymous composite information while the specific results go only to the employee. Participants who complete the wellness screening and log at least 150 wellness points (one wellness point = one half hour of exercise or other wellness activities, such as Weight Watchers meetings or smoking cessation classes) earn a $100 bonus at the end of the year. That's just enough motivation to get a whole bunch of my colleagues off their butts and up into the rec center.
So if busy faculty members are willing to exercise because it counts for something, we ought to find a way to encourage students to read books unrelated to classes by making it count. But how? That's the question many of us are discussing today.
Our campus theme this year is Health and Wellness, which explains the choice of Henrietta Lacks for our common reading. Few students attended the reading discussions, but it was great to get together with colleagues and talk about medical and journalistic ethics, informed consent, and other hot topics.
Today's hot topic is how we can get more students interested in reading and discussing books outside of classes, but I don't know how to do that without somehow making it mandatory--or making it "count," as the students say. Here's a scary fact: when I asked a group of nine junior and senior English majors what interesting thing they'd read over the summer, three were unable to come up with a title.
Can we motivate academic wellness the way we motivate physical wellness? Our wellness program requires participants to fill out a health survey and participate in a health screening every year; the college receives anonymous composite information while the specific results go only to the employee. Participants who complete the wellness screening and log at least 150 wellness points (one wellness point = one half hour of exercise or other wellness activities, such as Weight Watchers meetings or smoking cessation classes) earn a $100 bonus at the end of the year. That's just enough motivation to get a whole bunch of my colleagues off their butts and up into the rec center.
So if busy faculty members are willing to exercise because it counts for something, we ought to find a way to encourage students to read books unrelated to classes by making it count. But how? That's the question many of us are discussing today.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Friday poetry challenge: small annoyances
Here's the miscreant that caused all the trouble in my Volvo last week (read it here). This little bolt was flipping around the flywheel, making my car scream and clatter like the end of the world. My mechanic couldn't find a place where this loose bolt might belong, and there's not much point in taking the entire engine apart when it's running just fine right now. So we've decided to leave it alone and see what happens.It astounds me that such an insignificant item could bring my car, my household, and my entire week to a screeching halt, but isn't that the way life works? Many small things can make big trouble: a pebble in your shoe, a microorganism in your breakfast egg, a missing bolt on a bridge. What else? Your challenge today is to make poetry out of the small things that make big trouble in your life. I'll start:
Bitty bolt, flywheel
flusterer, screech and clatter
til all systems stop.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
A detour into doggerel
I've always wanted an excuse to make students read James Whitcomb Riley's execrable poem "The Happy Little Cripple," and I finally found it. This semester I'm teaching an upper-level literature class called Representative American Writers focusing on the works of Stephen Crane and Kate Chopin, and I want my students to get a taste of American literary culture of the late 19th and early 20th century.
So I assembled a list of works representing a wide variety of genres and styles: Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick, a few Whitman war poems, "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, A Country Doctor by Sara Orne Jewett, Old Creole Days by George Washington Cable, a few of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tales, Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, and, of course, some James Whitcomb Riley poems. I included some familiar authors' less familiar works (Pauline's Passion and Punishment by Louisa May Alcott) as well as works that were influential at the time but have since fallen out of favor (Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives). All the texts are readily available online (many at Project Gutenberg).
On the first day of class (Monday), each student selected one work from the list; by Thursday evening, each student had to write a brief summary of the work and draw conclusions about what it suggests about literary tastes of the time. Students reading long works are expected to read a few chapters--enough to get a sense of the whole without slogging through, for instance, 300 pages of Dreiser's deathless prose.
By this morning, four students had already posted their summaries online and were responding to each others' posts. I expect to see the rest by the end of the day, and tomorrow in class we'll discuss what we've learned and draw some larger conclusions about the era.
I hope someone will volunteer to do a dramatic reading of "The Happy Little Cripple." We may be devoting our semester to studying Serious Literature, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the occasional detour into doggerel.
So I assembled a list of works representing a wide variety of genres and styles: Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick, a few Whitman war poems, "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, A Country Doctor by Sara Orne Jewett, Old Creole Days by George Washington Cable, a few of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tales, Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, and, of course, some James Whitcomb Riley poems. I included some familiar authors' less familiar works (Pauline's Passion and Punishment by Louisa May Alcott) as well as works that were influential at the time but have since fallen out of favor (Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives). All the texts are readily available online (many at Project Gutenberg).
On the first day of class (Monday), each student selected one work from the list; by Thursday evening, each student had to write a brief summary of the work and draw conclusions about what it suggests about literary tastes of the time. Students reading long works are expected to read a few chapters--enough to get a sense of the whole without slogging through, for instance, 300 pages of Dreiser's deathless prose.
By this morning, four students had already posted their summaries online and were responding to each others' posts. I expect to see the rest by the end of the day, and tomorrow in class we'll discuss what we've learned and draw some larger conclusions about the era.
I hope someone will volunteer to do a dramatic reading of "The Happy Little Cripple." We may be devoting our semester to studying Serious Literature, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the occasional detour into doggerel.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Fine. And you?
A year ago I complained about how my cancer diagnosis made it difficult to respond to simply questions like "What's new?" and "How are you?" (Read it here.) This year I'm enjoying the luxury of mindlessly responding, "I'm fine. And you?"
Except occasionally that's not enough. Today I went through the usual fine-and-you script with a colleague, who then stopped me and said, "No, I mean how are you really?" That one little word makes a big difference, transforming the conventional scripted exchange into a moment of compassion and connection.
"I'm fine," I said, and I really am, as far as I know. I feel great. My hair is back and bushy and about ready for a cut. I don't mind the gray. I earned that gray! My next round of testing is scheduled for October but so far every test has come back normal. So really, I'm fine, as far as I know.
But thanks for asking!
Except occasionally that's not enough. Today I went through the usual fine-and-you script with a colleague, who then stopped me and said, "No, I mean how are you really?" That one little word makes a big difference, transforming the conventional scripted exchange into a moment of compassion and connection.
"I'm fine," I said, and I really am, as far as I know. I feel great. My hair is back and bushy and about ready for a cut. I don't mind the gray. I earned that gray! My next round of testing is scheduled for October but so far every test has come back normal. So really, I'm fine, as far as I know.
But thanks for asking!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
What's in your backpack?
My Honors Literature students set out this morning to save civilization. The class is a Learning Community linked with an honors section of World Civilization, so all the readings in my class focus on the concept of civilization. We'll start of by reading some Rousseau and Thoreau, move on to some Romantic poetry, tackle Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and A.S. Byatt's Morpho Eugenia (the basis for the film Angels and Insects, which we'll watch), and then after midterm we'll look at some postcolonial poetry and drama before finishing up the semester with Art Spiegelman's Maus (so we can consider how our awareness of human horrors affects our understanding of civilization).
Today, though, we're just trying to save civilization. Here is the writing prompt I gave my honors students this morning:
Survivor Marietta A devastating virus is sweeping over the planet, threatening to destroy the entire human race. Fortunately, some wealthy alumni have offered to move Marietta College employees and students to a remote island free of the virus. The island is entirely undeveloped, with no dwellings, no infrastructure, and no electricity, and no one knows what sorts of wildlife might live there. Space is tight, so students are allowed to take only what they can stuff into a backpack. You will remain on the island for four years, after which time the virus will have died out and you will return home to a place devoid of human life. Your goal is nothing less than the survival of civilization. What will you take with you? How will you spend the next four years? What do you need to do in order to assure that human civilization will not perish? Write an essay explaining what part you will play in preserving human civilization.
What do my students want to put in their backpacks? Many offered practical suggestions--water purifier, first-aid kit, seeds, tools, bleach--but others want books (and not just survival manuals). They want math and science textbooks, the poems of Robert Frost, all the Harry Potter books, and the complete Sherlock Holmes. One student wants to pack a copy of the United States Constitution, while another insists on Stephen Colbert's I Am America, and You Can Too! One wants a graphing calculator and 24 batteries, while others want rope, blankets, or a collection of personal photographs.
How do they expect to spend their time? One student imagines himself as a hunter-gatherer, and another thinks it would be a great idea to dig wells and latrines. Most mentioned the need for organization, government, and a code of ethics, and several mentioned the need to keep history, art, and literature alive. "Civilization needs imaginative people, out-of-the-box thinkers," wrote a student who wants to create art on the island, and another wants to keep a written record of the group's experience. One wants to spend her time serving as a peace-maker, and another wants to organize frequent celebrations to provide hope and remind people of their purpose.
They all want to learn--from books, from each other, from their environment. That's a great way to approach education, whether on a remote island or in the middle of Marietta. Now it's up to them to figure out how to survive 15 weeks in my class!
Today, though, we're just trying to save civilization. Here is the writing prompt I gave my honors students this morning:
Survivor Marietta A devastating virus is sweeping over the planet, threatening to destroy the entire human race. Fortunately, some wealthy alumni have offered to move Marietta College employees and students to a remote island free of the virus. The island is entirely undeveloped, with no dwellings, no infrastructure, and no electricity, and no one knows what sorts of wildlife might live there. Space is tight, so students are allowed to take only what they can stuff into a backpack. You will remain on the island for four years, after which time the virus will have died out and you will return home to a place devoid of human life. Your goal is nothing less than the survival of civilization. What will you take with you? How will you spend the next four years? What do you need to do in order to assure that human civilization will not perish? Write an essay explaining what part you will play in preserving human civilization.
What do my students want to put in their backpacks? Many offered practical suggestions--water purifier, first-aid kit, seeds, tools, bleach--but others want books (and not just survival manuals). They want math and science textbooks, the poems of Robert Frost, all the Harry Potter books, and the complete Sherlock Holmes. One student wants to pack a copy of the United States Constitution, while another insists on Stephen Colbert's I Am America, and You Can Too! One wants a graphing calculator and 24 batteries, while others want rope, blankets, or a collection of personal photographs.
How do they expect to spend their time? One student imagines himself as a hunter-gatherer, and another thinks it would be a great idea to dig wells and latrines. Most mentioned the need for organization, government, and a code of ethics, and several mentioned the need to keep history, art, and literature alive. "Civilization needs imaginative people, out-of-the-box thinkers," wrote a student who wants to create art on the island, and another wants to keep a written record of the group's experience. One wants to spend her time serving as a peace-maker, and another wants to organize frequent celebrations to provide hope and remind people of their purpose.
They all want to learn--from books, from each other, from their environment. That's a great way to approach education, whether on a remote island or in the middle of Marietta. Now it's up to them to figure out how to survive 15 weeks in my class!
Monday, August 23, 2010
It's all one
It's always 1 in my daughter's Nissan. I'm driving her car while mine is in the shop, and I've noticed that every time I get in the car, the dashboard clock starts at 1. It might move on to 1:06 or 1:22 or even 1:47, but I've never seen it switch to 2 or 3 or any other number.
This gives my daily commute a timeless feeling enhanced by the lack of a working radio. Shut in the car with no clock reminding me of the passage of time and no NPR news to remind me that the outside world is still turning, I feel as if I'm adrift outside time and all its demands and I achieve a sort of car nirvana.
I was enjoying the oneness this morning when I arrived on campus, opened the car door, and stepped out into a puddle of vomit. Farewell, nirvana! It's time for Real World 101.
This gives my daily commute a timeless feeling enhanced by the lack of a working radio. Shut in the car with no clock reminding me of the passage of time and no NPR news to remind me that the outside world is still turning, I feel as if I'm adrift outside time and all its demands and I achieve a sort of car nirvana.
I was enjoying the oneness this morning when I arrived on campus, opened the car door, and stepped out into a puddle of vomit. Farewell, nirvana! It's time for Real World 101.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Shut up or sue
What happens after doctors make mistakes? An article in the New York Times examines the importance of communication between doctors and patients even after mistakes have been made, noting that keeping communication open can reduce the threat of litigation. One expert on the subject said,"Everyone loathes litigation, but it's the only alternative we've ever given anybody."
Not long ago I made an attempt to re-open communication with my family doctor, writing a letter explaining why I am considering switching to a different practice. It was a calm and friendly letter and I specified right up front that I am not at all interested in litigation; instead, I wanted to express my concerns and hear his responses. So far, I have had no reply. Perhaps I'm expecting too much.
For the past year, all my medical needs have been cared for at the Cancer Center, but if I should develop, say, an ear infection or a bad bout of pain in my arthritic hip, the oncologist is the wrong person to call. I need a family doctor for that, but I'm reluctant to return to the practice of a doctor whose only response to my symptoms year after year after year was "you ought to lose some weight" or "that's a natural part of the aging process" or "you ought to just tough it out until menopause."
I explained my concerns to my (ex?)doctor, but I'm not sure what I want in return. I'm not asking for an apology ("Oops, guess we missed your cancer! Sorry!") and I'm not interested in lawsuits or compensation. What I would really like is for the doctor to say something like, "You know, you're right: we could have taken your concerns more seriously and we'll try to do better in the future."
But I know why he won't reply: because any admission that mistakes were made could be used as evidence in a lawsuit. The fear of litigation shuts down communication, so I'm left dangling out here with no way to find closure except to shut up or sue. Neither option appeals to me, but what else can I do?
Not long ago I made an attempt to re-open communication with my family doctor, writing a letter explaining why I am considering switching to a different practice. It was a calm and friendly letter and I specified right up front that I am not at all interested in litigation; instead, I wanted to express my concerns and hear his responses. So far, I have had no reply. Perhaps I'm expecting too much.
For the past year, all my medical needs have been cared for at the Cancer Center, but if I should develop, say, an ear infection or a bad bout of pain in my arthritic hip, the oncologist is the wrong person to call. I need a family doctor for that, but I'm reluctant to return to the practice of a doctor whose only response to my symptoms year after year after year was "you ought to lose some weight" or "that's a natural part of the aging process" or "you ought to just tough it out until menopause."
I explained my concerns to my (ex?)doctor, but I'm not sure what I want in return. I'm not asking for an apology ("Oops, guess we missed your cancer! Sorry!") and I'm not interested in lawsuits or compensation. What I would really like is for the doctor to say something like, "You know, you're right: we could have taken your concerns more seriously and we'll try to do better in the future."
But I know why he won't reply: because any admission that mistakes were made could be used as evidence in a lawsuit. The fear of litigation shuts down communication, so I'm left dangling out here with no way to find closure except to shut up or sue. Neither option appeals to me, but what else can I do?
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Just-in-time service
Late this afternoon I found myself stranded in the parking lot at a Marathon station with a river of trucks zooming past on one side and the Little Kanawha river easing past on the other, when suddenly a tow truck drove by pulling a Frontier Communications repair truck. "Ha!" I thought, "Now we're in the same boat!"
Those who have been closely following my attempts to persuade Frontier to restore telephone service to my home will be pleased to know that our phone was fixed this afternoon, just in time to allow me to phone home to tell my husband that I was stranded near Mineral Wells, West Virginia. I wasn't planning to be in West Virginia today, but I had to put out a fire.
It was just a little fire sparking from the heating element in our oven while my husband was baking bread to take to the Farmers Market in Cambridge tomorrow. (Have I lost you yet? It gets complicated.) He called all over creation to find a replacement part and located one in South Parkersburg, which is not the easiest place to get to from our house. Or from anywhere, for that matter. If you ever need to get there, I recommend teleporting.
I was pretty exhausted and I really wanted to stay in all evening, but my husband had to shuttle bread pans over to the tiny oven in the apartment above the garage so I left the house at 4 p.m. to try to get to the appliance store before it closed at 5. Even though I don't have a teleporter, I made it with two minutes to spare. (Again, just-in-time service!)
But by then, traffic was outrageous and I had trouble turning left, so I made a right turn and hoped to find a better way, which is how I ended up in Mineral Wells, a great place to go if you have time to stop at the Coldwater Creek outlet store but not when the bread dough is rising and the oven is awaiting its element. So I got on the interstate and drove north.
"At this pace, I'll be home by 6," I told myself just before the engine starting losing power in the middle of a construction zone with nowhere to pull off. My Volvo limped to the nearest exit. As I pulled into the Marathon station, the engine began to scream.
I checked the oil: fine. I checked the belts: all present and accounted for. Having run through my entire repertoire of car-diagnosis options, I put a few quarters in the pay phone and phoned home. And it worked! First time I've been able to call my own number all week, but I had only three dollars in cash on me so I had to keep the long-distance calls short and sweet.
A very helpful FedEx employee came over and looked at my engine, but he couldn't find anything obvious wrong either--but he did let me use his cell phone to call AAA for a tow truck. I had a hard time making the AAA person understand me with all the trucks roaring by, but in less time that it would take to translate the Volvo owner's manual into Esperanto, she promised to send a tow truck "soon."
So I thanked the helpful FedEx guy and gave him a hand-written coupon good for free bread from our booth at the Farmers' Market, and then I settled in to wait. In the heat. With the interstate on one side and the river on the other and nothing to do but stare into space.
Which is what I was doing when the Frontier truck went tootling by behind a tow truck. If I have to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but wait to see what AAA means by "soon," it's comforting to know I'm not the only one.
I wonder whether Frontier's tow truck arrived just in time? Mine did. The car is in the shop, the bread is in the oven with the new element, and I am at home. Just in time.
Those who have been closely following my attempts to persuade Frontier to restore telephone service to my home will be pleased to know that our phone was fixed this afternoon, just in time to allow me to phone home to tell my husband that I was stranded near Mineral Wells, West Virginia. I wasn't planning to be in West Virginia today, but I had to put out a fire.
It was just a little fire sparking from the heating element in our oven while my husband was baking bread to take to the Farmers Market in Cambridge tomorrow. (Have I lost you yet? It gets complicated.) He called all over creation to find a replacement part and located one in South Parkersburg, which is not the easiest place to get to from our house. Or from anywhere, for that matter. If you ever need to get there, I recommend teleporting.
I was pretty exhausted and I really wanted to stay in all evening, but my husband had to shuttle bread pans over to the tiny oven in the apartment above the garage so I left the house at 4 p.m. to try to get to the appliance store before it closed at 5. Even though I don't have a teleporter, I made it with two minutes to spare. (Again, just-in-time service!)
But by then, traffic was outrageous and I had trouble turning left, so I made a right turn and hoped to find a better way, which is how I ended up in Mineral Wells, a great place to go if you have time to stop at the Coldwater Creek outlet store but not when the bread dough is rising and the oven is awaiting its element. So I got on the interstate and drove north.
"At this pace, I'll be home by 6," I told myself just before the engine starting losing power in the middle of a construction zone with nowhere to pull off. My Volvo limped to the nearest exit. As I pulled into the Marathon station, the engine began to scream.
I checked the oil: fine. I checked the belts: all present and accounted for. Having run through my entire repertoire of car-diagnosis options, I put a few quarters in the pay phone and phoned home. And it worked! First time I've been able to call my own number all week, but I had only three dollars in cash on me so I had to keep the long-distance calls short and sweet.
A very helpful FedEx employee came over and looked at my engine, but he couldn't find anything obvious wrong either--but he did let me use his cell phone to call AAA for a tow truck. I had a hard time making the AAA person understand me with all the trucks roaring by, but in less time that it would take to translate the Volvo owner's manual into Esperanto, she promised to send a tow truck "soon."
So I thanked the helpful FedEx guy and gave him a hand-written coupon good for free bread from our booth at the Farmers' Market, and then I settled in to wait. In the heat. With the interstate on one side and the river on the other and nothing to do but stare into space.
Which is what I was doing when the Frontier truck went tootling by behind a tow truck. If I have to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but wait to see what AAA means by "soon," it's comforting to know I'm not the only one.
I wonder whether Frontier's tow truck arrived just in time? Mine did. The car is in the shop, the bread is in the oven with the new element, and I am at home. Just in time.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Call waiting (and waiting)
Poor Angie and Josh! I don't even know them, but for the past week we've been receiving all their phone calls. Somehow the lines got crossed so that calls to our home number go off into a black hole somewhere but anyone who dials Angie and Josh's home number gets us.
I've spoken to a number of Angie and Josh's friends and family members, sometimes several times a day, and they regard us with some suspicion, as if we are guilty of skullduggery involving the kidnapping of telephone lines. I keep telling them to call Frontier. Why not? The more, the merrier!
Calling Frontier has not worked well for me. I have been told at various times that someone would be out before 8 a.m. yesterday, by midafternoon yesterday, before 8 p.m. yesterday, before 9 a.m. this morning, and before 8:46 p.m. today. The specificity of that last promise encouraged me to hope, but alas, no one has been out to untangle the mess.
Frontier's hold music brings back memories of the "Small World" ride at Disney, with all those smiley plastic dolls singing the same perky tune over and over and over and over until you really wish you'd brought along a blowtorch. Everyone I've spoken to at has been polite and pleasant, and they've all ended the conversation with the same sentence: "Is there anything else we can do for you?" "Fix my phone" is what I tell them, but apparently they mean "anything but that."
At one point I suggested that perhaps my next call should be to the Public Utilities Commission, which got me connected to a supervisor who made yet another promise that my phone line would be functioning by the end of the day. Ten minutes after he hung up, I received a recorded message informing me that due to high demand, my service call had been rescheduled for tomorrow, and I should make sure a responsible adult is available at home between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
But I think I'll be irresponsible and go to work. If they need me, they can call me.
I've spoken to a number of Angie and Josh's friends and family members, sometimes several times a day, and they regard us with some suspicion, as if we are guilty of skullduggery involving the kidnapping of telephone lines. I keep telling them to call Frontier. Why not? The more, the merrier!
Calling Frontier has not worked well for me. I have been told at various times that someone would be out before 8 a.m. yesterday, by midafternoon yesterday, before 8 p.m. yesterday, before 9 a.m. this morning, and before 8:46 p.m. today. The specificity of that last promise encouraged me to hope, but alas, no one has been out to untangle the mess.
Frontier's hold music brings back memories of the "Small World" ride at Disney, with all those smiley plastic dolls singing the same perky tune over and over and over and over until you really wish you'd brought along a blowtorch. Everyone I've spoken to at has been polite and pleasant, and they've all ended the conversation with the same sentence: "Is there anything else we can do for you?" "Fix my phone" is what I tell them, but apparently they mean "anything but that."
At one point I suggested that perhaps my next call should be to the Public Utilities Commission, which got me connected to a supervisor who made yet another promise that my phone line would be functioning by the end of the day. Ten minutes after he hung up, I received a recorded message informing me that due to high demand, my service call had been rescheduled for tomorrow, and I should make sure a responsible adult is available at home between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
But I think I'll be irresponsible and go to work. If they need me, they can call me.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Copy that
At 2:30 p.m. I find myself sitting in a comfy chair in the administration building while a photocopier runs off a pile of copies for me--and frankly, at this point, I welcome the opportunity to be a little mindless.
All day I've been tweaking syllabi, writing paper prompts, responding to e-mail messages, trying to get my home phone fixed, and meeting with budget people to work out the costs for a spring break class trip to San Francisco (strictly for educational purposes, of course--it's a course on California Literature).
My mind has been going in too many different directions at once, so it's good to sit and let it gel while the photocopier spits out the copies one after another. The gentle rhythm of the rolling drum is soothing, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if my eyes were to shut.
All these people are rushing past moving boxes and computers back into freshly painted offices...if I fall asleep, surely one of them will wake me before my 3:00 meeting, right? If not, I may have to find a new job as a photocopy attendant so I can listen to those copies slide out all day long.
All day I've been tweaking syllabi, writing paper prompts, responding to e-mail messages, trying to get my home phone fixed, and meeting with budget people to work out the costs for a spring break class trip to San Francisco (strictly for educational purposes, of course--it's a course on California Literature).
My mind has been going in too many different directions at once, so it's good to sit and let it gel while the photocopier spits out the copies one after another. The gentle rhythm of the rolling drum is soothing, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if my eyes were to shut.
All these people are rushing past moving boxes and computers back into freshly painted offices...if I fall asleep, surely one of them will wake me before my 3:00 meeting, right? If not, I may have to find a new job as a photocopy attendant so I can listen to those copies slide out all day long.
Just Moodling around
Here I am at 4:03 Tuesday morning, wide awake and aware that classes begin next Monday. I'm feeling refreshed after a long weekend with family, but having done no work in the past three days, I'm feeling a bit frantic about everything I need to do this week, especially Moodling.
We've switched our campus course management system from WebCT to Moodle, so I've gone to some training sessions on the new system and last week I started putting a bunch of course material online. So far, I find Moodle much more intuitive than WebCT and much more fun, but on the other hand, I've also been finding the wrong way to do just about everything. I know it'll get easier as we go along, but right now, Moodle seethes just below the surface of awareness and occasionally rises to rudely awaken me.
The irony, of course, is that I can't even work on Moodle from home because it would take forever to load on my slow dial-up connection. Do I dare go in to my office this early in the morning? I could go back to bed, but it's hard to sleep when my brain won't stop Moodling around.
Maybe drugs would help. Where do I find anti-Moodling meds?
We've switched our campus course management system from WebCT to Moodle, so I've gone to some training sessions on the new system and last week I started putting a bunch of course material online. So far, I find Moodle much more intuitive than WebCT and much more fun, but on the other hand, I've also been finding the wrong way to do just about everything. I know it'll get easier as we go along, but right now, Moodle seethes just below the surface of awareness and occasionally rises to rudely awaken me.
The irony, of course, is that I can't even work on Moodle from home because it would take forever to load on my slow dial-up connection. Do I dare go in to my office this early in the morning? I could go back to bed, but it's hard to sleep when my brain won't stop Moodling around.
Maybe drugs would help. Where do I find anti-Moodling meds?
Friday, August 13, 2010
Going the distance
What separates me from my son? 881.6 miles right now--but that distance will be reduced considerably tomorrow when he flies from Texas to Columbus, where we will pick him up and drive up to our daughter and son-in-law's house for a fun family weekend.
But what separates me from going to Columbus tomorrow is a pile of work I really need to finish so I can relax and enjoy my family time. I've had meetings all week and the evening weather has not been conducive to outdoor labor, so I haven't been in the garden since last Saturday. I need to pinch off the basil buds and pick tomatoes, cucumbers, swiss chard, peppers, okra, squash, beets, and a cabbage the size of a basketball, and don't even ask me where I'm planning to store a cabbage that big.
I'll have to clean the catbox, fill the birdfeeders, and clean the bread-making mess in the kitchen, and I should probably take a glance at my son's room and make sure it hasn't been colonized by dust mice the size of labrador retrievers. If they attack, I'll toss 'em a cabbage.
Laundry? Probably. I need to pay some bills too and pack some clothes. And some vegetables. I worked like a maniac today so I can take Monday off, and I'll have to work like a maniac tomorrow before I can get out of the house. But that's okay. Each task I check off the to-do list brings me one step closer to seeing my son.
Besides, it could be worse--at least my to-do list is not 881.6 miles long.
But what separates me from going to Columbus tomorrow is a pile of work I really need to finish so I can relax and enjoy my family time. I've had meetings all week and the evening weather has not been conducive to outdoor labor, so I haven't been in the garden since last Saturday. I need to pinch off the basil buds and pick tomatoes, cucumbers, swiss chard, peppers, okra, squash, beets, and a cabbage the size of a basketball, and don't even ask me where I'm planning to store a cabbage that big.
I'll have to clean the catbox, fill the birdfeeders, and clean the bread-making mess in the kitchen, and I should probably take a glance at my son's room and make sure it hasn't been colonized by dust mice the size of labrador retrievers. If they attack, I'll toss 'em a cabbage.
Laundry? Probably. I need to pay some bills too and pack some clothes. And some vegetables. I worked like a maniac today so I can take Monday off, and I'll have to work like a maniac tomorrow before I can get out of the house. But that's okay. Each task I check off the to-do list brings me one step closer to seeing my son.
Besides, it could be worse--at least my to-do list is not 881.6 miles long.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Doing the lockdown lockstep
My wonderful colleague took this photo today as I was explaining some important matter during our New Faculty Orientation."You're dancing!" she said.
No, I'm teaching. Not that there's much difference between the two.
After spending the better part of two days interacting with the new hires, I'm delighted with the energy and talent they bring to the college, but I'm also worn out. The schedule had to be shuffled this morning when the entire campus was placed on lockdown after a crime spree broke out very close to campus. At first we heard that someone had robbed the local dry-cleaner and was heading toward campus, which made me wonder whether we should be on the lookout for a miscreant loaded down with freshly pressed shirts. Later, we learned that he had robbed a drugstore at gunpoint and could be anywhere.
But he didn't come here. The lockdown was cancelled just before noon, which was good because we thought we might need a police escort just to get out to lunch. All the new hires have now been thoroughly oriented and are ready to go and face the world of teaching.
Or dancing, as the case may be.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Walk on
Three cheers for my new shoes! They're cute and comfortable and appropriate for the classroom, and my colleague says they make my big boat feet look smaller. But best of all, I've been walking around in them all morning and my feet don't hurt. Not one bit. I even brought a back-up pair of shoes to campus today because it generally hurts to break in a new pair of shoes, but so far, no pain.That kind of performance deserves some applause!
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The season of excess
Too many tomatoes.
Not enough refrigerator space.
Too many meetings.
Not enough time.
Too much heat, haze, humidity.
Too little energy.
Too much flesh.
Not enough fabric.
Too much too much.
Enough.
Not enough refrigerator space.
Too many meetings.
Not enough time.
Too much heat, haze, humidity.
Too little energy.
Too much flesh.
Not enough fabric.
Too much too much.
Enough.
Monday, August 09, 2010
To the colleague in whose office I accidentally left my gym bag:
Don't look in the bag. Trust me, there's nothing in there you need--unless you've been concealing a serious sweat-sock fetish. I had a really good workout this afternoon, so everything in that bag is saturated with sweat and whatever my towel soaked up when I dropped it on the shower-room floor.
I wish I could drop by and pick up my gym bag this evening, but I didn't realize it was missing until I got home and found myself wondering why I was standing in the laundry room gazing at the gaping mouth of the laundry hamper but unable to feed it. What's missing from this picture? Gym clothes, which are in the gym bag, which, for some unknown reason, is not in my hand.
I mentally retraced my steps to try to track down the bag: did I leave it in the parking lot? In my office? Somewhere in between? That's when I remembered that I had stopped by your office to ask a burning question regarding faculty governance just before leaving campus. I recall setting my gym bag down on the chair and then moving it to the floor, where it's probably still sitting.
Left unattended, my dirty sweaty stinky gym clothes will eventually evolve into a festering mass of disgustingness and stink, creating its own ecosystem and manufacturing disease spores by the millions. Here's my advice: step away from the gym bag, moving slowly so as not to alarm the incipient microorganisms that dwell within. Place the oxygen mask firmly over your own face before assisting other passengers with their masks. Do not--repeat, NOT--open the bag.
Unless you're doing laundry tonight anyway, in which case, it's all yours.
Don't look in the bag. Trust me, there's nothing in there you need--unless you've been concealing a serious sweat-sock fetish. I had a really good workout this afternoon, so everything in that bag is saturated with sweat and whatever my towel soaked up when I dropped it on the shower-room floor.
I wish I could drop by and pick up my gym bag this evening, but I didn't realize it was missing until I got home and found myself wondering why I was standing in the laundry room gazing at the gaping mouth of the laundry hamper but unable to feed it. What's missing from this picture? Gym clothes, which are in the gym bag, which, for some unknown reason, is not in my hand.
I mentally retraced my steps to try to track down the bag: did I leave it in the parking lot? In my office? Somewhere in between? That's when I remembered that I had stopped by your office to ask a burning question regarding faculty governance just before leaving campus. I recall setting my gym bag down on the chair and then moving it to the floor, where it's probably still sitting.
Left unattended, my dirty sweaty stinky gym clothes will eventually evolve into a festering mass of disgustingness and stink, creating its own ecosystem and manufacturing disease spores by the millions. Here's my advice: step away from the gym bag, moving slowly so as not to alarm the incipient microorganisms that dwell within. Place the oxygen mask firmly over your own face before assisting other passengers with their masks. Do not--repeat, NOT--open the bag.
Unless you're doing laundry tonight anyway, in which case, it's all yours.
Stop me before I click again!
After spending most of the day getting caught up on all manner of piddly little problems, I am now a lean, mean clicking machine.
A transfer student wants to major in English and needs to register for classes: I click my way through the online course catalog in search of classes that still have space (very few) and then click on through the registration process to get her a meaningful schedule of classes.
My son needs his student loan cosigned for fall semester--his penultimate semester in college! I click my way through the Wells-Fargo site, wondering how long it will take them to insist that I fax them a recent pay stub to verify my income. How many times have I answered these same questions and faxed the same supporting documents? Don't think about it--just keep clicking.
My proposal to present a paper at a conference in Prague in November was accepted, so I clicked my way through a travel site to book a flight, clicked through another site to book lodging at the conference hotel, clicked through the process of paying the conference fee online, and then clicked open the application for a travel grant to cover all these expenses. I won't learn whether the travel grant is approved until October at the earliest, but the conference deadlines are much sooner than that and the airfare will just increase the longer I wait, so I'm booking everything now and trusting that the college isn't planning to drastically cut travel funds this fall.
And I clicked my way through a deluge of e-mail that piled up after I took Friday off. How much e-mail can pile up on one business day? Enough to fill my morning with clicking and typing, clicking and typing.
Now I've finally run out of stuff to click on and I'm ready for a break. The Annual Autumn Many-Meeting Marathon begins tomorrow. If any of my meetings includes a clicking contest, the smart money is on me.
A transfer student wants to major in English and needs to register for classes: I click my way through the online course catalog in search of classes that still have space (very few) and then click on through the registration process to get her a meaningful schedule of classes.
My son needs his student loan cosigned for fall semester--his penultimate semester in college! I click my way through the Wells-Fargo site, wondering how long it will take them to insist that I fax them a recent pay stub to verify my income. How many times have I answered these same questions and faxed the same supporting documents? Don't think about it--just keep clicking.
My proposal to present a paper at a conference in Prague in November was accepted, so I clicked my way through a travel site to book a flight, clicked through another site to book lodging at the conference hotel, clicked through the process of paying the conference fee online, and then clicked open the application for a travel grant to cover all these expenses. I won't learn whether the travel grant is approved until October at the earliest, but the conference deadlines are much sooner than that and the airfare will just increase the longer I wait, so I'm booking everything now and trusting that the college isn't planning to drastically cut travel funds this fall.
And I clicked my way through a deluge of e-mail that piled up after I took Friday off. How much e-mail can pile up on one business day? Enough to fill my morning with clicking and typing, clicking and typing.
Now I've finally run out of stuff to click on and I'm ready for a break. The Annual Autumn Many-Meeting Marathon begins tomorrow. If any of my meetings includes a clicking contest, the smart money is on me.
Saturday, August 07, 2010
A Bimbo breakfast
Today's New York Times features an article about English muffins--not a particularly sexy topic, and yet it requires references to "a Bimbo vice president" and "a Bimbo spokesman" and "Bimbo employees" and even "the nook and cranny cognoscenti." There's a reference to "muffin culture" and an attempt to break "Thomas' English muffin code," which makes me wonder what's going on in the pantry when no one is looking.
All of this silliness is presented without a wink or a nudge from the journalist, one William Neuman, who should get a prize for his ability to write deadpan business prose about all those Bimbos. I'll never again eat an English muffin without thinking about the nook and cranny cognoscenti. Thank you, William Neuman, for contributing Bimbos to this complete breakfast.
All of this silliness is presented without a wink or a nudge from the journalist, one William Neuman, who should get a prize for his ability to write deadpan business prose about all those Bimbos. I'll never again eat an English muffin without thinking about the nook and cranny cognoscenti. Thank you, William Neuman, for contributing Bimbos to this complete breakfast.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Ten lashes with a poisonous tentacle
Last spring I put a lot of effort into convincing myself and others that I was perfectly fine with the idea of staying home all summer, not taking a vacation (except a few days to visit my daughter), not doing much beyond the usual round of gardening, writing, reading, preparing for classes. I need some down time, I told myself. I had too much excitement in my life last summer and I need to be still and recover.
Ha!
The lady doth protest too much. Making virtue of necessity is like making bricks without straw: it wears you out and all you have to show for your labor is a pile of bricks.
Now the summer is essentially over and my colleagues are returning refreshed and reinvigorated and ready to chatter about their vacations in exotic places, but I have little to add to the conversation: I weeded the garden, planned teaching workshops, submitted articles to journals. And I went to Akron--twice!
My besetting sin of envy threatened to get the upper hand earlier this week when a colleague kept sending me e-mail messages urging me to perform a particular task that I was unable to perform without first obtaining some essential information from people who were not available because they're out of town at the moment. I decided to try to calm down the frantic e-mailer with a personal visit, but when I went to the appropriate office, I discovered that the colleague in question has not yet returned from a certain tropical isle.
Anyone who wants to crack the whip at me while comfortably ensconced on a tropical island can just go jump in the ocean, preferably while it's infested with stinging jellyfish.
Okay, that's just mean. I clearly need a vacation. Even a mental vacation would help. I'm taking the day off tomorrow: what can I do on a limited budget in one day that will make up for not having a vacation all summer long?
Ha!
The lady doth protest too much. Making virtue of necessity is like making bricks without straw: it wears you out and all you have to show for your labor is a pile of bricks.
Now the summer is essentially over and my colleagues are returning refreshed and reinvigorated and ready to chatter about their vacations in exotic places, but I have little to add to the conversation: I weeded the garden, planned teaching workshops, submitted articles to journals. And I went to Akron--twice!
My besetting sin of envy threatened to get the upper hand earlier this week when a colleague kept sending me e-mail messages urging me to perform a particular task that I was unable to perform without first obtaining some essential information from people who were not available because they're out of town at the moment. I decided to try to calm down the frantic e-mailer with a personal visit, but when I went to the appropriate office, I discovered that the colleague in question has not yet returned from a certain tropical isle.
Anyone who wants to crack the whip at me while comfortably ensconced on a tropical island can just go jump in the ocean, preferably while it's infested with stinging jellyfish.
Okay, that's just mean. I clearly need a vacation. Even a mental vacation would help. I'm taking the day off tomorrow: what can I do on a limited budget in one day that will make up for not having a vacation all summer long?
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Performing the authentic self
Two days ago I wrote about the much-forwarded New York Times article on the problem of plagiarism (read it here), but I get a little nervous about commenting on an article that's commenting on a book that I haven't read. So yesterday morning I e-mailed our library director and suggested that he order Susan Blum's book My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, and an hour later the book was in my hands. Note to self: next time, check the library catalog first.
So I've been reading My Word, which is simultaneously interesting and infuriating. Blum takes an anthropological approach to college student culture, seeking data through interviews conducted with students over several years. The interviews offer a rare look inside the minds of college students at a selective private college, but they are studded with unexplained ellipses, leading me to wonder what has been deleted. Still, the students' words provide insight into attitudes that often puzzle me when I encounter them in the classroom.
Surely be the most controversial part of Blum's book is her assertion that today's students experience selfhood differently from their forebears. She distinguishes between two types of selves, "the authentic self" and the "performance self":
"The authentic self celebrates uniqueness, individual contribution, essence, fixity, and authorship. It is inner-directed. Its words are its own, and are always meant and sincerely believed. The performance self celebrates collaboration, incorporation, fluidity, and appearance. It is goal-oriented. Its words are derived from many different sources and may be spoken or written in earnest or in jest, with conviction or just to get along" (61).
The academy, says Blum, cherishes the authentic self, while the "performance self, however, is more likely to regard boundaries between its own and others' contributions as permeable, to focus on accomplishing goals by any means necessary, and to regard the origins of textual material as unimportant" (61). Blum admits that students might possess a mixture of these two types of selves, but "[t]o the extent that students share the values of the performance self, they are more likely to regard both cheating and intertextual plagiarism as valid strategies, to juggle outward appearances and behavior to fit others' expectations, and to incorporate texts casually in all aspects of their self-expression" (61).
Here is my question: if today's students are so adept at performing selves to meet the demands of various environments, why can't they create a convincing performance of an authentic self? If the academy promotes and rewards the characteristics of the authentic self, why not perform those characteristics, adopting, if only for a limited time, a concern for originality in written expression and proper citation of others' ideas? Blum justly applauds students' abilities to step into various personas online and in real life (whatever that is these days), but why can't one of those personas be the "authentic self" avatar?
Suppose a student gives me a paper that presents original ideas in the student's own words and properly credits sources: would I have any way of knowing whether the paper is a product of an authentic self or a performance self temporarily adopting the characteristics of authenticity? Would it matter? I hope I'm not in the business of grading a student's sense of selfhood; like my colleagues, I evaluate students based on what they produce, how they perform required tasks. Blum seems to be arguing that "the performance self" makes it more difficult for students to fulfill these tasks without cheating, but an ability to perform various roles in response to changing conditions ought to make students more, not less, adept at producing honest work, or at least the semblance of honest work.
I believe in authenticity and integrity and wholeness and all those quaint values Blum believes are dying out, and I'm not ready to applaud cheating as evidence of the creativity of the performance self. A self that wants my applause just needs to perform the traits of academic integrity. A temporary performance of academic integrity will get the same A as genuine integrity, and the "performance self" just might find integrity addictive.
So I've been reading My Word, which is simultaneously interesting and infuriating. Blum takes an anthropological approach to college student culture, seeking data through interviews conducted with students over several years. The interviews offer a rare look inside the minds of college students at a selective private college, but they are studded with unexplained ellipses, leading me to wonder what has been deleted. Still, the students' words provide insight into attitudes that often puzzle me when I encounter them in the classroom.
Surely be the most controversial part of Blum's book is her assertion that today's students experience selfhood differently from their forebears. She distinguishes between two types of selves, "the authentic self" and the "performance self":
"The authentic self celebrates uniqueness, individual contribution, essence, fixity, and authorship. It is inner-directed. Its words are its own, and are always meant and sincerely believed. The performance self celebrates collaboration, incorporation, fluidity, and appearance. It is goal-oriented. Its words are derived from many different sources and may be spoken or written in earnest or in jest, with conviction or just to get along" (61).
The academy, says Blum, cherishes the authentic self, while the "performance self, however, is more likely to regard boundaries between its own and others' contributions as permeable, to focus on accomplishing goals by any means necessary, and to regard the origins of textual material as unimportant" (61). Blum admits that students might possess a mixture of these two types of selves, but "[t]o the extent that students share the values of the performance self, they are more likely to regard both cheating and intertextual plagiarism as valid strategies, to juggle outward appearances and behavior to fit others' expectations, and to incorporate texts casually in all aspects of their self-expression" (61).
Here is my question: if today's students are so adept at performing selves to meet the demands of various environments, why can't they create a convincing performance of an authentic self? If the academy promotes and rewards the characteristics of the authentic self, why not perform those characteristics, adopting, if only for a limited time, a concern for originality in written expression and proper citation of others' ideas? Blum justly applauds students' abilities to step into various personas online and in real life (whatever that is these days), but why can't one of those personas be the "authentic self" avatar?
Suppose a student gives me a paper that presents original ideas in the student's own words and properly credits sources: would I have any way of knowing whether the paper is a product of an authentic self or a performance self temporarily adopting the characteristics of authenticity? Would it matter? I hope I'm not in the business of grading a student's sense of selfhood; like my colleagues, I evaluate students based on what they produce, how they perform required tasks. Blum seems to be arguing that "the performance self" makes it more difficult for students to fulfill these tasks without cheating, but an ability to perform various roles in response to changing conditions ought to make students more, not less, adept at producing honest work, or at least the semblance of honest work.
I believe in authenticity and integrity and wholeness and all those quaint values Blum believes are dying out, and I'm not ready to applaud cheating as evidence of the creativity of the performance self. A self that wants my applause just needs to perform the traits of academic integrity. A temporary performance of academic integrity will get the same A as genuine integrity, and the "performance self" just might find integrity addictive.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Taking flight
My teeny-tiny infant boy turns 21 today and I've been wavering between feeling mushily nostalgic and just feeling old. The first thing the obstetrician said on delivering Steve was "We have a scrawny boy!", but he's not scrawny now and he hasn't been for a long time. He's tall and clever and witty, a college senior this fall, and he just earned his commercial pilot's license a few weeks ago.
He's working in Texas this summer but he'll be home in a few weeks for a brief visit, so we'll celebrate his birthday then with a family trip to see a Cleveland Indians game. He hasn't been home since Christmas and every time we see him he seems to have grown a foot taller, or maybe I've shrunk, or maybe my perspective has shifted a bit, or maybe he's just acting his age.
Which is 21 today. Woo-hoo. The last of the fledglings has left the nest and appears to have landed safely. Here's to many more safe landings!
He's working in Texas this summer but he'll be home in a few weeks for a brief visit, so we'll celebrate his birthday then with a family trip to see a Cleveland Indians game. He hasn't been home since Christmas and every time we see him he seems to have grown a foot taller, or maybe I've shrunk, or maybe my perspective has shifted a bit, or maybe he's just acting his age.
Which is 21 today. Woo-hoo. The last of the fledglings has left the nest and appears to have landed safely. Here's to many more safe landings!
Monday, August 02, 2010
A pastiche of personas
By the time I got to the office this morning, three different people had already e-mailed me the link to a New York Times article on plagiarism (read it here). The article indulges in the usual hand-wringing about the ease of copying from the Internet, but it also suggests a connection between a rise in plagiarism and a change in the concept of personal identity.
The article quotes Susan D. Blum, an anthropologist a the University of Notre Dame, whose research among undergraduate college students led her to conclude that "student writing exhibits some of the same qualities of pastiche that drive other creative endeavors today--TV shows that constantly reference other shows or rap music that samples from earlier songs."
Let's just overlook the fact that pastiche has been driving "creative endeavors" longer than television has existed--witness, for instance, James Joyce or Jean Toomer. More interesting is Blum's assertion about the decline of unitary identity. According to the article, Blum said "the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual," while "undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity...than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking."
Blum seems to be saying that our students live in a multiple-choice world in which "all of the above" is always a viable option; they need not limit themselves to one identity each, and "If you are not so worried about presenting yourself as absolutely unique, then it's O.K. if you say other people's words, it's O.K. if you say things you don't believe, it's O.K. if you write papers you couldn't care less about because you accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade."
Blum wants us to recognize that our "notion of authorship and originality was born, it flourished, and it may be waning," but authorship is not giving up without a fight and neither is the notion of integrity--a word, the OED reminds us, that springs from the Latin "integer" and suggests a sense of being whole, undivided, sound and complete.
Can integrity spring from a pastiche of personas?
Where does a person devoted to improvising new identities from a pastiche of fragments experience wholeness?
And what happens when the pastiche identity encounters an academic culture devoted to integrity?
I don't know the answers but those of us involved in teaching writing had better be thinking about the questions.
The article quotes Susan D. Blum, an anthropologist a the University of Notre Dame, whose research among undergraduate college students led her to conclude that "student writing exhibits some of the same qualities of pastiche that drive other creative endeavors today--TV shows that constantly reference other shows or rap music that samples from earlier songs."
Let's just overlook the fact that pastiche has been driving "creative endeavors" longer than television has existed--witness, for instance, James Joyce or Jean Toomer. More interesting is Blum's assertion about the decline of unitary identity. According to the article, Blum said "the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual," while "undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity...than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking."
Blum seems to be saying that our students live in a multiple-choice world in which "all of the above" is always a viable option; they need not limit themselves to one identity each, and "If you are not so worried about presenting yourself as absolutely unique, then it's O.K. if you say other people's words, it's O.K. if you say things you don't believe, it's O.K. if you write papers you couldn't care less about because you accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade."
Blum wants us to recognize that our "notion of authorship and originality was born, it flourished, and it may be waning," but authorship is not giving up without a fight and neither is the notion of integrity--a word, the OED reminds us, that springs from the Latin "integer" and suggests a sense of being whole, undivided, sound and complete.
Can integrity spring from a pastiche of personas?
Where does a person devoted to improvising new identities from a pastiche of fragments experience wholeness?
And what happens when the pastiche identity encounters an academic culture devoted to integrity?
I don't know the answers but those of us involved in teaching writing had better be thinking about the questions.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
A butterfly feast
This morning I saw on the road a great blue heron so thoroughly flattened that it looked like something out of Roadrunner cartoon--I kept expecting it to peel itself off the road, shake itself off, and fly away. Instead, butterflies were supping on its carcass, lovely little swallowtails with tiger or zebra stripes.
I've seen a lot of roadkill out here in the boonies but never a dead heron. Herons don't generally loiter in the middle of the road, so maybe it was swooping down toward the creek when the car came around that blind curve. I'd like to see the look on the driver's face. Then again, maybe not.
I would also prefer not to see butterflies chowing down on fresh roadkill. I know butterflies often sip fluids from dead beasts, but butterflies are so light and ethereally lovely that the sight of a swallowtail supping on a carcass is thoroughly incongruous. That's nature red in tooth and claw. Nothing at all cartoonish about it.
Hopeful paid no attention to the dead heron but instead dashed off into the bushes after a possum, which she quickly caught and killed. She took one look back at me and then ran off toward home with the possum clutched in her mouth. By the time I arrived home, she had already hidden the carcass somewhere. I would rather not know where--and if she's planning to share her bounty with butterflies, I'd rather not hear about it.
I've seen a lot of roadkill out here in the boonies but never a dead heron. Herons don't generally loiter in the middle of the road, so maybe it was swooping down toward the creek when the car came around that blind curve. I'd like to see the look on the driver's face. Then again, maybe not.
I would also prefer not to see butterflies chowing down on fresh roadkill. I know butterflies often sip fluids from dead beasts, but butterflies are so light and ethereally lovely that the sight of a swallowtail supping on a carcass is thoroughly incongruous. That's nature red in tooth and claw. Nothing at all cartoonish about it.
Hopeful paid no attention to the dead heron but instead dashed off into the bushes after a possum, which she quickly caught and killed. She took one look back at me and then ran off toward home with the possum clutched in her mouth. By the time I arrived home, she had already hidden the carcass somewhere. I would rather not know where--and if she's planning to share her bounty with butterflies, I'd rather not hear about it.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Where's Yoda when you need him?
I've been working on matching up new faculty members with experienced mentors and I've come up with an idea that ought to earn someone a pile of money: The Virtual Mentor, an electronic entity equipped to guide new faculty as they adjust to the demands of teaching, professional development, and service, not to mention that nebulous category called "collegiality." (And anyone who figures out how to bottle "collegiality" will retire to a private island in the South Pacific.)
Right now we rely on flesh-and-blood mentors, who do a great job providing information, encouragement, and understanding to newbies fresh from grad school or other careers. But let's face it, the problems that bedevil a brand-new faculty member don't always arise during working hours. No matter how dedicated the mentor, he or she is not going to welcome a 2 a.m. phone call full of frantic questions about submitting grades online.
The Virtual Mentor is the answer. This electronic avatar could be programmed to cater to the needs of the individual mentee, providing information on a continuum running from Basic (Where do I get a parking permit? What is assessment anyway?) to Intermediate (How do I assemble my tenure portfolio? Which committee will make good use of my skills and also look impressive on my vita? How do I fit research into a four/four teaching load?) to Advanced (Why do I take it personally when a student cheats? Does my department chair hate everyone or is it just me? What am I doing here anyway? I could have been a welder. The world needs welders.)
Mentees could select The Virtual Mentor's appearance (gray-haired grandfather, fussy schoolmarm, Yoda, or a dominatrix with whips and chains) and tone (on a sliding scale from "kindly" to "stern" on up to "hectoring"). The Virtual Mentor will never call in sick or forget to return a call and will have answers to every possible question at her (its?) fingertips.
It's a plan so brilliant that I'm sure someone already has the idea in development. I wish I had the computer skills to make it happen. If only I'd had some good mentoring early in my career....
Right now we rely on flesh-and-blood mentors, who do a great job providing information, encouragement, and understanding to newbies fresh from grad school or other careers. But let's face it, the problems that bedevil a brand-new faculty member don't always arise during working hours. No matter how dedicated the mentor, he or she is not going to welcome a 2 a.m. phone call full of frantic questions about submitting grades online.
The Virtual Mentor is the answer. This electronic avatar could be programmed to cater to the needs of the individual mentee, providing information on a continuum running from Basic (Where do I get a parking permit? What is assessment anyway?) to Intermediate (How do I assemble my tenure portfolio? Which committee will make good use of my skills and also look impressive on my vita? How do I fit research into a four/four teaching load?) to Advanced (Why do I take it personally when a student cheats? Does my department chair hate everyone or is it just me? What am I doing here anyway? I could have been a welder. The world needs welders.)
Mentees could select The Virtual Mentor's appearance (gray-haired grandfather, fussy schoolmarm, Yoda, or a dominatrix with whips and chains) and tone (on a sliding scale from "kindly" to "stern" on up to "hectoring"). The Virtual Mentor will never call in sick or forget to return a call and will have answers to every possible question at her (its?) fingertips.
It's a plan so brilliant that I'm sure someone already has the idea in development. I wish I had the computer skills to make it happen. If only I'd had some good mentoring early in my career....
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Call it a Virtual Conscience
Speaking of technology, Jeffrey Rosen's article "The Web Means the End of Forgetting" (in the New York Times--read it here) thoughtfully explores the potential consequences of posting private information on the Internet. He describes one possible method of discouraging people from posting things they will later regret:
"A silly but surprisingly effective alternative might be to have an anthropomorphic icon--a stern version of Microsoft's Mr. Clippy--that could give you a reproachful look before you hit the send button. According to M. Ryan Calo, who runs the consumer-privacy project at Stanford Law School, experimenters studying strategies of 'visceral notice' have found that when people navigate a Web site in the presence of a human-looking online character who seems to be actively following the cursor, they disclose less personal information than people who browse with no character or one who appears not to be paying attention."
And here I always thought that we all came equipped with a humanoid character that follows our every move and makes reproachful faces when we fail to live up to expectations--pretty much all the time, in other words. Doesn't everyone have an internal Mr. Clippy or is it just me? My internal Mr. Clippy has enough reproachful faces to equip a whole host of human beings. I'd be happy to share!
Ooh, Mr. Clippy's getting mad!
"A silly but surprisingly effective alternative might be to have an anthropomorphic icon--a stern version of Microsoft's Mr. Clippy--that could give you a reproachful look before you hit the send button. According to M. Ryan Calo, who runs the consumer-privacy project at Stanford Law School, experimenters studying strategies of 'visceral notice' have found that when people navigate a Web site in the presence of a human-looking online character who seems to be actively following the cursor, they disclose less personal information than people who browse with no character or one who appears not to be paying attention."
And here I always thought that we all came equipped with a humanoid character that follows our every move and makes reproachful faces when we fail to live up to expectations--pretty much all the time, in other words. Doesn't everyone have an internal Mr. Clippy or is it just me? My internal Mr. Clippy has enough reproachful faces to equip a whole host of human beings. I'd be happy to share!
Ooh, Mr. Clippy's getting mad!
Monday, July 26, 2010
Setting the tone
By the time I saw my friend's Facebook post warning everyone to stay away from the construction zone on Pike Street today, it was too late: I had already spent way too much time muttering under my breath while stuck in that traffic jam in the heat of the afternoon. Good thing ToneCheck doesn't work on muttered imprecations.
I heard about ToneCheck on the radio while I was stuck in traffic, and at first I couldn't believe it. A computer program that checks the tone of outgoing e-mails to make sure you're not being too snarky or angry or sarcastic? Yeah, right.
But then I got home and tried out the ToneCheck demo (and you can, too--click here). Bob has drafted an e-mail message to Danielle, but before he sends it, he runs ToneCheck to make sure he's using an appropriate tone. Oh no, his message has exceeded his own personal Tone Tolerance! Two sentences are flagged for further attention, both fairly banal: "I trust all is well with you and you're having a great day!" and "It is time to either solidify matters or move on." The second one is labeled "angry," but Bob revises it until it achieves the coveted "contented" crown: "I would like to make sure that you are satisfied with the terms of our agreement."
I agree that the revised sentence sounds less confrontational and more conciliatory, but sometimes it is time to solidify matters or move on, in which case I hope Bob has the sense to reject ToneCheck's suggestions. If ToneCheck can persuade a few people to carefully review what they've written before hitting "Send," it will have performed a valuable service, but it's not going to cure a tone-deaf writer or one who has learned to block out all those nagging reminders about long sentences and incorrectly spelled words. Like we REALLY need ANOTHER mechanical voice hectoring us about what ROTTEN WRITERS we are!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ooh, I hit the triple whammy there: the Sarcasm Detector is off the scale, the Exclamation Point Posse is after me, and the All-Caps Cops have are writing up a citation. Maybe I'd better try ToneCheck today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After all, it is time to either solidify matters or move on.
I heard about ToneCheck on the radio while I was stuck in traffic, and at first I couldn't believe it. A computer program that checks the tone of outgoing e-mails to make sure you're not being too snarky or angry or sarcastic? Yeah, right.
But then I got home and tried out the ToneCheck demo (and you can, too--click here). Bob has drafted an e-mail message to Danielle, but before he sends it, he runs ToneCheck to make sure he's using an appropriate tone. Oh no, his message has exceeded his own personal Tone Tolerance! Two sentences are flagged for further attention, both fairly banal: "I trust all is well with you and you're having a great day!" and "It is time to either solidify matters or move on." The second one is labeled "angry," but Bob revises it until it achieves the coveted "contented" crown: "I would like to make sure that you are satisfied with the terms of our agreement."
I agree that the revised sentence sounds less confrontational and more conciliatory, but sometimes it is time to solidify matters or move on, in which case I hope Bob has the sense to reject ToneCheck's suggestions. If ToneCheck can persuade a few people to carefully review what they've written before hitting "Send," it will have performed a valuable service, but it's not going to cure a tone-deaf writer or one who has learned to block out all those nagging reminders about long sentences and incorrectly spelled words. Like we REALLY need ANOTHER mechanical voice hectoring us about what ROTTEN WRITERS we are!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ooh, I hit the triple whammy there: the Sarcasm Detector is off the scale, the Exclamation Point Posse is after me, and the All-Caps Cops have are writing up a citation. Maybe I'd better try ToneCheck today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After all, it is time to either solidify matters or move on.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Friday poetry challenge: stop bugging me!
Anyone driving past my garden this morning might have thought I had lost my mind. What kind of person jerks up and down and flings her arms around and waves her hat like a maniac in the middle of the blackberry patch?
"A person being bothered by a deerfly" would be the correct answer. Now before you tsk at me for allowing a puny little fly to wreck my composure, let me tell you: this was no puny little fly. It looked like the Fly that Ate Toledo--and come to think of it, it had that smug Carty Finkbeiner look about the eyes.
Deer and cows and horses have tails to help them swat these pesky biting flies, but I have to rely on my hands and whatever they happen to be holding at the time. I'm not about to swat flies with freshly picked blackberries so I used my hat, which discourages the flies only temporarily. At one point I was using a pen-knife to cut swiss chard when a fly attacked. Note to self: next time, close the knife first.
The low point of my morning, though, arrived when I was up to my elbows in okra and a fly began drilling right into the middle of my back. I pulled off my hat and started swatting--and sent my glasses flying across the garden.
I quickly learned that my glasses blend in pretty well with weeds, mulch, and overgrown okra. I might have had an easier time finding them if I'd had my glasses on, but if I'd had my glasses on, I wouldn't have needed to search for them.
I came in from the garden with three big painful welts on my back and a small cut on my hand. And my glasses! I don't know how long I was out there searching for them, but I finally saw a glint at the base of an okra plant. Thank God for small blessings.
I left the flies outside. As far as I'm concerned, they can go bite themselves.
Deer fly buzzing round my face,
please go find another place,
another person to distract.
Please stop landing on my back!
Don't bite my arms, my legs, my neck,
avoid my face--and what the heck
would made you want to bite my ear?
Annoying pest, get out of here!
Fly, you make me lose my grace-
fulness and poise and any trace
of sanity--I dance and twitch
and swat. Deer fly, you make me itch!
What makes my flesh so tasty, fly?
Why must you bite me? Why oh why
must you disrupt my mental health?
Deer fly, please go bite yourself.
Now it's your turn: write verse of any form about what's really bugging you.
"A person being bothered by a deerfly" would be the correct answer. Now before you tsk at me for allowing a puny little fly to wreck my composure, let me tell you: this was no puny little fly. It looked like the Fly that Ate Toledo--and come to think of it, it had that smug Carty Finkbeiner look about the eyes.
Deer and cows and horses have tails to help them swat these pesky biting flies, but I have to rely on my hands and whatever they happen to be holding at the time. I'm not about to swat flies with freshly picked blackberries so I used my hat, which discourages the flies only temporarily. At one point I was using a pen-knife to cut swiss chard when a fly attacked. Note to self: next time, close the knife first.
The low point of my morning, though, arrived when I was up to my elbows in okra and a fly began drilling right into the middle of my back. I pulled off my hat and started swatting--and sent my glasses flying across the garden.
I quickly learned that my glasses blend in pretty well with weeds, mulch, and overgrown okra. I might have had an easier time finding them if I'd had my glasses on, but if I'd had my glasses on, I wouldn't have needed to search for them.
I came in from the garden with three big painful welts on my back and a small cut on my hand. And my glasses! I don't know how long I was out there searching for them, but I finally saw a glint at the base of an okra plant. Thank God for small blessings.
I left the flies outside. As far as I'm concerned, they can go bite themselves.
Deer fly buzzing round my face,
please go find another place,
another person to distract.
Please stop landing on my back!
Don't bite my arms, my legs, my neck,
avoid my face--and what the heck
would made you want to bite my ear?
Annoying pest, get out of here!
Fly, you make me lose my grace-
fulness and poise and any trace
of sanity--I dance and twitch
and swat. Deer fly, you make me itch!
What makes my flesh so tasty, fly?
Why must you bite me? Why oh why
must you disrupt my mental health?
Deer fly, please go bite yourself.
Now it's your turn: write verse of any form about what's really bugging you.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
February is the cruelest month (except for July)
It happens every year so I ought to be prepared but I'm not. Call it the Cruelest Month Malaise, a bout of existential despair that hits every year in February and July and sometimes in November. February is bad because of the weather and the darkness and huge pile of work and the lack of holidays, and November is bad for the same reasons except for the warmth and light that Thanksgiving provides. In both months, the workload piles up while motivation loses itself in a maze of conflicting demands or dwindles in the deepening darkness that is winter.
July is different: plenty of sunshine, plenty of fresh vegetables in the garden, plenty of hummingbirds and butterflies and reasons to be outdoors. What July does not provide plenty of is time. July is like an annual midlife crisis: I realize that the summer is half over but I've finished only a fraction of what I needed to do, and meanwhile I'm itching to take a break from all my hard work but I can't slow down because August is coming. July is when I want to throw my hands in the air and say "What's the use?" but I have to make myself keep functioning efficiently or I'll suffer in August when classes and committee work commence.
So here I sit in my office in the waning days of July waiting for motivation to strike so I can start working my way through my immense to-do list, but instead of working, I'm hosting my own private pity party. Kind of pathetic, don't you think? Let's see if a collective sigh can purge the midsummer malaise. All right, everybody, on my count: one, two, three, deep cleansing breath, and now let's sigh it all out. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....that's the way.
Now be glad it's not February and get back to work.
July is different: plenty of sunshine, plenty of fresh vegetables in the garden, plenty of hummingbirds and butterflies and reasons to be outdoors. What July does not provide plenty of is time. July is like an annual midlife crisis: I realize that the summer is half over but I've finished only a fraction of what I needed to do, and meanwhile I'm itching to take a break from all my hard work but I can't slow down because August is coming. July is when I want to throw my hands in the air and say "What's the use?" but I have to make myself keep functioning efficiently or I'll suffer in August when classes and committee work commence.
So here I sit in my office in the waning days of July waiting for motivation to strike so I can start working my way through my immense to-do list, but instead of working, I'm hosting my own private pity party. Kind of pathetic, don't you think? Let's see if a collective sigh can purge the midsummer malaise. All right, everybody, on my count: one, two, three, deep cleansing breath, and now let's sigh it all out. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....that's the way.
Now be glad it's not February and get back to work.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Thirty minutes I'll never get back again
I called Verizon/Frontier with a simple question: why have I not received a phone bill for the past two months? After spending thirty minutes providing the same information to four different people, I finally received an answer: Nobody knows.
Well alrighty then! I'm glad we've got that straightened out.
Of the four people to whom I spoke, three were pleasant and polite and as helpful as they could possibly be under the circumstances. The fourth was a piece of work.
Piece. Of. Work.
He was actually the third person I spoke to and the only one making crunching noises. Numbers or Cheetos? Whatever he was crunching, it put a pretty big dent in his Customer Service skills. When he told me he's not the right person to deal with my problem, I politely asked him to figure out who the right person might be and connect me to that person.
He bumped me back to the main menu.
Where I discovered that if you say "I need to talk to a real live person right now," the recorded voice will actually connect you to a real live person who will profusely apologize for the delay and do everything she can to figure out the answer to the problem, and if no answer can be found, she will promise to "put in a ticket" to make someone "look into the matter further." Somehow, this promise fails to restore my confidence, but that's okay. I've thoroughly satisfied my weekly quota of time spent in fruitless conversations with recorded voices, so good has been done here.
Well alrighty then! I'm glad we've got that straightened out.
Of the four people to whom I spoke, three were pleasant and polite and as helpful as they could possibly be under the circumstances. The fourth was a piece of work.
Piece. Of. Work.
He was actually the third person I spoke to and the only one making crunching noises. Numbers or Cheetos? Whatever he was crunching, it put a pretty big dent in his Customer Service skills. When he told me he's not the right person to deal with my problem, I politely asked him to figure out who the right person might be and connect me to that person.
He bumped me back to the main menu.
Where I discovered that if you say "I need to talk to a real live person right now," the recorded voice will actually connect you to a real live person who will profusely apologize for the delay and do everything she can to figure out the answer to the problem, and if no answer can be found, she will promise to "put in a ticket" to make someone "look into the matter further." Somehow, this promise fails to restore my confidence, but that's okay. I've thoroughly satisfied my weekly quota of time spent in fruitless conversations with recorded voices, so good has been done here.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Beta-testing my sabbatical plan
After banging my head against the wall to try to shake loose some ideas for a sabbatical proposal (read it here), I finally came up with an exciting plan that will require a trip to Florida to do research on the portrayal of place in the works of two early-twentieth-century Florida authors. This research could feed into a journal article and also provide the foundation for a version of the Concepts of Place course focusing on the literature of Florida, which would require me to scope out sites of literary interest for a possible trip with students.
Sounds perfect, yes? Over the past week I've shared this idea with several colleagues, both faculty and administrators, and the most common response is something like this: "Sounds great--if you can convince the committee that it's not a junket."
And there's the rub. Of course I have colleagues doing research in Fiji, Australia, China, Brazil, and other distant places with the college's support, so it's hard to see why the desire to do research in Florida would color me Slacker. It's true that I lived in Florida for years and I have many friends and family members wondering when I'm planning to visit again, and it's also true that the trip would come close enough to my 50th birthday to justify a smidgen of celebration, but the committee doesn't have to know that.
They also don't have to know that my prior research on Florida literature has been a bit slim. I've done the merest modicum of work on the two authors at the center of my proposal, but my only other experience researching Florida literature was when I did an interview with science fiction author Andre Norton for my high school newspaper. To land the interview, I had to employ sophisticated investigative techniques: I looked her name up in the phone book. (For readers born with a silver cell-phone in your hands, a "phone book" was an actual book the size of a cinder block made of paper covered with names and numbers that you had to manually dial on a rotary phone, if you have any idea what that is.)
I don't recall anything about the article I wrote, but I do remember that the author responded very graciously to the questions of a fawning 15-year-old. At the time I thought Ms. Norton was about 102 years old, so you can imagine my surprise when the news broke in 2005 that Andre Norton had just died at the age of 93.
But the committee doesn't have to know that the forerunner to this foray into Florida literature was a bit of amateur journalism perpetrated three decades ago. "A research trip to study the portrayal of place in the works of two early-twentieth-century Florida authors" sounds legitimate, while "A visit to Florida to see family and friends and celebrate my 50th birthday" most definitely does not. So let's just not mention the other stuff, okay? What the committee doesn't know won't hurt them.
Bonus: those unfamiliar with the deathless oeuvre of Andre Norton are unaware that I have planted an obvious allusion to one of her works in the previous paragraph. First person to correctly identify the work in question will receive, absolutely free and pre-read to ensure quality, a copy of the novel Continental Drift by Russell Banks.
Sounds perfect, yes? Over the past week I've shared this idea with several colleagues, both faculty and administrators, and the most common response is something like this: "Sounds great--if you can convince the committee that it's not a junket."
And there's the rub. Of course I have colleagues doing research in Fiji, Australia, China, Brazil, and other distant places with the college's support, so it's hard to see why the desire to do research in Florida would color me Slacker. It's true that I lived in Florida for years and I have many friends and family members wondering when I'm planning to visit again, and it's also true that the trip would come close enough to my 50th birthday to justify a smidgen of celebration, but the committee doesn't have to know that.
They also don't have to know that my prior research on Florida literature has been a bit slim. I've done the merest modicum of work on the two authors at the center of my proposal, but my only other experience researching Florida literature was when I did an interview with science fiction author Andre Norton for my high school newspaper. To land the interview, I had to employ sophisticated investigative techniques: I looked her name up in the phone book. (For readers born with a silver cell-phone in your hands, a "phone book" was an actual book the size of a cinder block made of paper covered with names and numbers that you had to manually dial on a rotary phone, if you have any idea what that is.)
I don't recall anything about the article I wrote, but I do remember that the author responded very graciously to the questions of a fawning 15-year-old. At the time I thought Ms. Norton was about 102 years old, so you can imagine my surprise when the news broke in 2005 that Andre Norton had just died at the age of 93.
But the committee doesn't have to know that the forerunner to this foray into Florida literature was a bit of amateur journalism perpetrated three decades ago. "A research trip to study the portrayal of place in the works of two early-twentieth-century Florida authors" sounds legitimate, while "A visit to Florida to see family and friends and celebrate my 50th birthday" most definitely does not. So let's just not mention the other stuff, okay? What the committee doesn't know won't hurt them.
Bonus: those unfamiliar with the deathless oeuvre of Andre Norton are unaware that I have planted an obvious allusion to one of her works in the previous paragraph. First person to correctly identify the work in question will receive, absolutely free and pre-read to ensure quality, a copy of the novel Continental Drift by Russell Banks.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Don't fear the weaver
The headline says "IBM Ups 2010 Forecast but Fears Loom," and my first thought was, "Why would IBM fear an apparatus for weaving cloth?" Oops, back up: "fears" is the noun and "loom" is the verb. Now I get it.
For an analysis of another headline that goes in too many different directions at once, read Language Log.
For an analysis of another headline that goes in too many different directions at once, read Language Log.
The air is humming
Hummingbirds have been scarce so far this summer, but suddenly this week they're zipping up and sipping from the flowers and feeders. Sometimes one hummingbird will guard a feeder and chase away all comers, and then sometimes we'll see as many as three at a time feeding together. The big picture window in the living room opens onto a constant show: goldfinches perching on sunflowers, woodpeckers visiting feeders, hummingbirds hovering over the hollyhock blossoms, swallowtails flitting toward the petunias.
I didn't plant the petunias or the sunflowers or the portulacas or the yellow celosias. Several of the flowers I planted this spring died, while others that I didn't plant at all are thriving, especially in the ant-infested area near the cistern. The ants object when I try to plant there--they swarm all up my legs and arms and make me swat and stomp them into submission, although I'm usually the first to sound the retreat. I know I planted some nicotiana in the ant area but there's no sign of it. Instead, petunias and celosias are growing thick on the ground. Apparently the ants prefer to do their own planting.
This year for the first time, two big stands of ironweed tower over the flower garden, just about ready to blossom. Ironweed doesn't belong in the front yard but butterflies love it so I'm not planning to pull it up. It's too close to the ants. Trust me: you don't want to mess with the ants.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Blackberries and butterflies
T
his morning I picked the biggest blackberry I've ever grown plus oodles of yummy tomatoes and beets and three plump cucumbers, but I also discovered that raccoons had ravaged our corn patch last night. Every stalk was bent over and every ear had been reduced to bare cob. Those ears were watered with my sweat so it caused me great pain to see them go to waste. It's time to stop planting corn or start building an electric fence.The butterflies don't seem to mind. I haven't seen many fritillaries this summer but the swallowtails are abundant, including this spicebush swallowtail I found flittering around in the upper meadow. The only sounds I heard in the summer stillness were my own feet tromping through Queen Anne's Lace and Hopeful's panting. It can't be easy carrying around that black fur coat in this heat. When we came down from the meadow, she dashed right down to take a dip in the creek.
Meanwhile, I think I'll dip into those blackberries.
Friday, July 16, 2010
The little idea that could
How many new ideas idly waft through one's brain every day only to waft right back out again? And how many fleeting thoughts are really worth pursuing?
Last week I went looking for a single scene in a book and got sucked into reading the whole thing and then this idea just sort of wandered into my mind, only this time it didn't wander out again. Sometimes it seemed to be sleeping, but then it would reappear, arm in arm with another idea.
I took the idea out and played with it while I was cooking, walking, gardening, and it kept growing and growing and demanding attention like an insistent two-year-old. It's a cute little idea but it was distracting me from projects that needed my full attention.
So I put it away. Maybe I'll pursue it after I'm done with some other things, I told myself. It'll come back to me when I want it.
But as I tried to put it quietly to bed, that cute little idea kept kicking and screaming and pounding its tiny little fists on the floor. Finally it collapsed in a heap, allowing me to get some sleep, only to wake me up by jumping on the bed in the middle of the night.
So after fighting it for nearly a week, I finally took that idea out for a spin today, spending most of the day writing it all down. I'm not sure what the idea is trying to say or to whom, but the writing was exhilarating.
A week from now when I look at today's writing with new eyes, it may look like a sad, sorry, seething mass of solecisms, but today when I rummaged around in the toybox to entertain a clever little idea, that idea ended up entertaining me so much that I didn't want to stop writing.
Last week I went looking for a single scene in a book and got sucked into reading the whole thing and then this idea just sort of wandered into my mind, only this time it didn't wander out again. Sometimes it seemed to be sleeping, but then it would reappear, arm in arm with another idea.
I took the idea out and played with it while I was cooking, walking, gardening, and it kept growing and growing and demanding attention like an insistent two-year-old. It's a cute little idea but it was distracting me from projects that needed my full attention.
So I put it away. Maybe I'll pursue it after I'm done with some other things, I told myself. It'll come back to me when I want it.
But as I tried to put it quietly to bed, that cute little idea kept kicking and screaming and pounding its tiny little fists on the floor. Finally it collapsed in a heap, allowing me to get some sleep, only to wake me up by jumping on the bed in the middle of the night.
So after fighting it for nearly a week, I finally took that idea out for a spin today, spending most of the day writing it all down. I'm not sure what the idea is trying to say or to whom, but the writing was exhilarating.
A week from now when I look at today's writing with new eyes, it may look like a sad, sorry, seething mass of solecisms, but today when I rummaged around in the toybox to entertain a clever little idea, that idea ended up entertaining me so much that I didn't want to stop writing.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Now I've got the Spam song stuck in my head...
My buddy Abu from Nigeria says he's waiting for me to pick up my cashier's check for $800,000, but I'm afraid he'll be waiting a long time. All I have to do to claim my check is send him $80 for shipping and handling. (How much weight could you send to Nigeria for $80? Is the check encased in marble?) Abu is now in Japan to pursue his new job offer. Or so he says. Whoever he might be. If there's actually a real person behind all these spam messages and not just a bundle of zeroes and ones.
My spam filter generally sidelines this kind of appeal but Abu's message somehow slipped through the cracks. Every once in a while I glance into my spam folder, skimming the subject lines before hitting "delete all," and it's just astounding how little variety I see: viagra ads and more viagra ads; nearly identical appeals from women who claim to have a great deal to offer to the right guy (hint: not me); offers for drugs that will enhance my hair growth and set my career on fire. That same $800,000 has been dangled in front of so many millions of people so many times that it's a wonder it doesn't slink off in shame every time someone like Abu (or whoever) hits "send."
I hate to disappoint my buddy Abu, but his offer just doesn't tempt me. I suppose some people must fall for the scam or it would cease to exist, but spammers never offer me anything the least bit tempting--like extra hours in the day or the ability to eat all the ice cream I want without gaining weight or a working time machine so I can go back and fix some serious mistakes. Offers like those might make me bite, but $800,000 in imaginary money just makes me laugh.
My spam filter generally sidelines this kind of appeal but Abu's message somehow slipped through the cracks. Every once in a while I glance into my spam folder, skimming the subject lines before hitting "delete all," and it's just astounding how little variety I see: viagra ads and more viagra ads; nearly identical appeals from women who claim to have a great deal to offer to the right guy (hint: not me); offers for drugs that will enhance my hair growth and set my career on fire. That same $800,000 has been dangled in front of so many millions of people so many times that it's a wonder it doesn't slink off in shame every time someone like Abu (or whoever) hits "send."
I hate to disappoint my buddy Abu, but his offer just doesn't tempt me. I suppose some people must fall for the scam or it would cease to exist, but spammers never offer me anything the least bit tempting--like extra hours in the day or the ability to eat all the ice cream I want without gaining weight or a working time machine so I can go back and fix some serious mistakes. Offers like those might make me bite, but $800,000 in imaginary money just makes me laugh.
Monday, July 12, 2010
My dream sabbatical
I thought today's project would be easy: write a proposal requesting a spring 2012 sabbatical. Piece of cake, right? I'm way overdue for a sabbatical and I've written so many successful proposals for travel grants and research grants that I ought to be able to write a sabbatical proposal in my sleep.
Well, maybe I'd better try it that way because I'm not making any progress in my current state. To take a sabbatical starting in January 2012, I need to submit a proposal this fall outlining a specific sabbatical project. The problem is simple: I don't always know what I want to do next week! How am I supposed to outline a project to which I'll devote an entire semester in 2012?
Of course I have projects, zillions of little projects, some of which I am attempting to publish piecemeal and then knitting them together to make larger and larger projects that will eventually coalesce into my Magnum Opus, or actually several, um, whatever you call the plural of "Magnum Opus." Opera? Sing it with me!
But those projects ought to be done way earlier than January 2012. One of them is done right now and two others are well on the way. At this point it's hard to imagine where my restless brain might lead me in the next 18 months.
Besides, I'd like to use my sabbatical to do something completely different, something I can't normally do during the regular course of teaching, professional development, and service. My dream sabbatical would involve a short-term teaching gig someplace interesting and relevant to my research (like New Zealand, say, or eastern Europe or the Caribbean or even Chicago), but I don't have the vaguest idea how to make that happen. I look at opportunities on the Fulbright website, but they seem designed for someone with a life very different from mine. I can't leave the country for six months! Who would weed my garden?
So instead I sit here trying to invent a project that will sound convincing on a sabbatical proposal, something other than "just give me the sabbatical and I'm sure I'll find an interesting way to spend my time." I have a feeling that the only way to achieve my dream sabbatical would be to write the proposal in my sleep--and then keep on dreaming.
Well, maybe I'd better try it that way because I'm not making any progress in my current state. To take a sabbatical starting in January 2012, I need to submit a proposal this fall outlining a specific sabbatical project. The problem is simple: I don't always know what I want to do next week! How am I supposed to outline a project to which I'll devote an entire semester in 2012?
Of course I have projects, zillions of little projects, some of which I am attempting to publish piecemeal and then knitting them together to make larger and larger projects that will eventually coalesce into my Magnum Opus, or actually several, um, whatever you call the plural of "Magnum Opus." Opera? Sing it with me!
But those projects ought to be done way earlier than January 2012. One of them is done right now and two others are well on the way. At this point it's hard to imagine where my restless brain might lead me in the next 18 months.
Besides, I'd like to use my sabbatical to do something completely different, something I can't normally do during the regular course of teaching, professional development, and service. My dream sabbatical would involve a short-term teaching gig someplace interesting and relevant to my research (like New Zealand, say, or eastern Europe or the Caribbean or even Chicago), but I don't have the vaguest idea how to make that happen. I look at opportunities on the Fulbright website, but they seem designed for someone with a life very different from mine. I can't leave the country for six months! Who would weed my garden?
So instead I sit here trying to invent a project that will sound convincing on a sabbatical proposal, something other than "just give me the sabbatical and I'm sure I'll find an interesting way to spend my time." I have a feeling that the only way to achieve my dream sabbatical would be to write the proposal in my sleep--and then keep on dreaming.
Another excuse to use the word "liminal"
A common motif of the coming-of-age novel is the protagonist's quest to understand who he really is, to form an identity he can comfortably inhabit, however scarred and battered it might be. But why must Our Hero limit himself to only one identity? Why not grab a handful?
So reasons one character in Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply, which, like his earlier novel You Remind Me of Me, concerns a character trying to locate his lost brother (and perhaps find himself in the process). This time, though, the lost brother is not one person but many, a master of identity theft who borrows underutilized identities for his own ends. He persuades one of his disciples to do likewise, convincing him that "Most people...had identities that were so shallow that you could easily manage a hundred of them at once. Their existence barely grazed the surface of the world."
Chaon specializes in such liminal characters, people who exist on the edges of reality but struggle to break through into more meaningful lives. In his previous novel and short stories, most of the memorable characters are male, but in Await Your Reply Chaon presents a fully developed female character whose peril drives much of the suspense of the novel. Lucy's story is one of three separate tales whose connections become clear very slowly, culminating in a final revelation that is absolutely perfect but nevertheless arrives like a kick in the gut. Each storyline involves a quest--for self, for survival, for a lost loved one--that shifts at times into a life-or-death chase. Chaon controls pace and suspense masterfully, doling out hints that could portend real peril for beloved characters while always holding in reserve the possibility that the characters might be mad or simply mistaken.
Lucy seems sane enough, an intelligent teen who grabs the first ticket out of her bleak midwestern town. She soon discovers, however, that stepping into a new identity is not as painless as she had expected: "The life she had been traveling toward--imagining herself into--the ideas and expectations that had been so solid only a few weeks ago--this life had been erased, and the numb feeling crept up from her hand to her arm to her shoulder." This numbness creeps deeper as she careens down an unknown road seeking a city she has seen only in dreams:
Her future was like a city she had never visited. A city on the other side of the country, and she was driving down the road, with all her possession packed up in the backseat of the car, and the route was clearly marked on her map, and then she stopped at a rest area and saw that the place she was headed to wasn't there any longer. The town she was driving to had vanished--perhaps had never been there--and if she stopped to ask the way, the gas station attendant would look at her blankly. He wouldn't even know what she was talking about....In one life, there was a city you were on your way to. In another, it was just a place you'd invented.
Here Lucy resembles no one so much as Isabel Archer, who, in Henry James's Portrait of a Lady, defends her preference for not knowing where she's going: "I find it very pleasant not to know. A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see--that's my idea of happiness." This strategy traps Isabel in partnership with a man made of lies, so it's not surprising to see Lucy drifting into a similar situation.
Will she escape, or will she finally succumb to the suffocating numbness? You'll have to read the book to find out.
So reasons one character in Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply, which, like his earlier novel You Remind Me of Me, concerns a character trying to locate his lost brother (and perhaps find himself in the process). This time, though, the lost brother is not one person but many, a master of identity theft who borrows underutilized identities for his own ends. He persuades one of his disciples to do likewise, convincing him that "Most people...had identities that were so shallow that you could easily manage a hundred of them at once. Their existence barely grazed the surface of the world."
Chaon specializes in such liminal characters, people who exist on the edges of reality but struggle to break through into more meaningful lives. In his previous novel and short stories, most of the memorable characters are male, but in Await Your Reply Chaon presents a fully developed female character whose peril drives much of the suspense of the novel. Lucy's story is one of three separate tales whose connections become clear very slowly, culminating in a final revelation that is absolutely perfect but nevertheless arrives like a kick in the gut. Each storyline involves a quest--for self, for survival, for a lost loved one--that shifts at times into a life-or-death chase. Chaon controls pace and suspense masterfully, doling out hints that could portend real peril for beloved characters while always holding in reserve the possibility that the characters might be mad or simply mistaken.
Lucy seems sane enough, an intelligent teen who grabs the first ticket out of her bleak midwestern town. She soon discovers, however, that stepping into a new identity is not as painless as she had expected: "The life she had been traveling toward--imagining herself into--the ideas and expectations that had been so solid only a few weeks ago--this life had been erased, and the numb feeling crept up from her hand to her arm to her shoulder." This numbness creeps deeper as she careens down an unknown road seeking a city she has seen only in dreams:
Her future was like a city she had never visited. A city on the other side of the country, and she was driving down the road, with all her possession packed up in the backseat of the car, and the route was clearly marked on her map, and then she stopped at a rest area and saw that the place she was headed to wasn't there any longer. The town she was driving to had vanished--perhaps had never been there--and if she stopped to ask the way, the gas station attendant would look at her blankly. He wouldn't even know what she was talking about....In one life, there was a city you were on your way to. In another, it was just a place you'd invented.
Here Lucy resembles no one so much as Isabel Archer, who, in Henry James's Portrait of a Lady, defends her preference for not knowing where she's going: "I find it very pleasant not to know. A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see--that's my idea of happiness." This strategy traps Isabel in partnership with a man made of lies, so it's not surprising to see Lucy drifting into a similar situation.
Will she escape, or will she finally succumb to the suffocating numbness? You'll have to read the book to find out.
Friday, July 09, 2010
A tiring tale
Good news: it's raining! Our creek is nearly dry and our garden is parched, so rain is good.
Except that it's also bad. Yesterday when I picked up my Volvo, my mechanic told me that the rear tires were dangerously bald. "Don't try to drive in the rain," he said, "or those tires will take you right off the road."
But I needed to be on campus this morning for a meeting and I don't currently have access to the faculty helicopter, so I drove--carefully--to Wal-Mart, where the tire guy acted as if I was interrupting some very important business and then quoted me a ridiculously high price for tires.
So I said no thanks and drove--carefully--through the pouring rain to a tire place downtown, where they quoted me a price $20 lower per tire, which sounded like good news until the tire guy came and told me that he could not in good conscience rotate the front tires to the rear without warning me that the front tires were worn nearly down to the metal.
"I wouldn't drive on those tires in the rain," he said. "They'll drive you right off the road." He and my mechanic must be reading from the same playbook.
I couldn't afford four tires so I bought two and drove off--in the rain--carefully. So far I've stayed on the road pretty well, but the rain falls on the tired and the tireless, so who knows where that road might lead?
Except that it's also bad. Yesterday when I picked up my Volvo, my mechanic told me that the rear tires were dangerously bald. "Don't try to drive in the rain," he said, "or those tires will take you right off the road."
But I needed to be on campus this morning for a meeting and I don't currently have access to the faculty helicopter, so I drove--carefully--to Wal-Mart, where the tire guy acted as if I was interrupting some very important business and then quoted me a ridiculously high price for tires.
So I said no thanks and drove--carefully--through the pouring rain to a tire place downtown, where they quoted me a price $20 lower per tire, which sounded like good news until the tire guy came and told me that he could not in good conscience rotate the front tires to the rear without warning me that the front tires were worn nearly down to the metal.
"I wouldn't drive on those tires in the rain," he said. "They'll drive you right off the road." He and my mechanic must be reading from the same playbook.
I couldn't afford four tires so I bought two and drove off--in the rain--carefully. So far I've stayed on the road pretty well, but the rain falls on the tired and the tireless, so who knows where that road might lead?
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Summer assessment and stuff
Summer break is half over--or more than half when you consider that my administrative duties start up August 1. I hate to bring out the A word in the middle of the summer, but it's time to assess how I'm doing on summer projects.
On the home front I'm doing fine: I've been keeping up with the garden, taking the dog for long walks, and helping my daughter and son-in-law move into their new house. I've cleaned out one closet but haven't touched the other two--and frankly, I'm not terribly motivated. Those closets are stuffed with stuff I stuffed in there because I didn't know what else to do with it, and I don't know what to do with it now any more than I did when I stuffed it in there. So the closet-cleaning project has moved to the back burner, where it may remain simmering for some time.
On the writing front, I'm doing pretty well on the plan to revise and submit one article each week, although I gave myself time off for helping the young folks move. I now have five articles in the hands of various editors and another ready to send to a publication that doesn't accept submissions during the month of July. I suspect that one of the articles wasn't quite ready for prime time, but I feel pretty good about the rest. Who knows when I'll hear anything from all those editors?
On the academic front, I've done some informal fiddling with fall syllabi (two classes I've never taught before!) but they're far from completion. They're not even in the same time zone as completion. But that's to be expected this time of year; I expect to focus on syllabi more intently in August when I'll have to be in my office nearly every day to fulfill administrative duties (which I've worked on steadily all summer long so I won't be overwhelmed in August).
Over all, I'd give myself a solid B+ for my my summer midterm grade. The problem, though, is that July is the month of enervating ennui, when heat and humidity sap my motivation. I need to keep my momentum going or that B+ grade will drop like a safe out of the sky in a Warner Brothers cartoon, leaving me squashed. I need a pep rally and a cheerleading squad to pump me up.
I would write some cheers myself, but I can't find a rhyme for "closets."
On the home front I'm doing fine: I've been keeping up with the garden, taking the dog for long walks, and helping my daughter and son-in-law move into their new house. I've cleaned out one closet but haven't touched the other two--and frankly, I'm not terribly motivated. Those closets are stuffed with stuff I stuffed in there because I didn't know what else to do with it, and I don't know what to do with it now any more than I did when I stuffed it in there. So the closet-cleaning project has moved to the back burner, where it may remain simmering for some time.
On the writing front, I'm doing pretty well on the plan to revise and submit one article each week, although I gave myself time off for helping the young folks move. I now have five articles in the hands of various editors and another ready to send to a publication that doesn't accept submissions during the month of July. I suspect that one of the articles wasn't quite ready for prime time, but I feel pretty good about the rest. Who knows when I'll hear anything from all those editors?
On the academic front, I've done some informal fiddling with fall syllabi (two classes I've never taught before!) but they're far from completion. They're not even in the same time zone as completion. But that's to be expected this time of year; I expect to focus on syllabi more intently in August when I'll have to be in my office nearly every day to fulfill administrative duties (which I've worked on steadily all summer long so I won't be overwhelmed in August).
Over all, I'd give myself a solid B+ for my my summer midterm grade. The problem, though, is that July is the month of enervating ennui, when heat and humidity sap my motivation. I need to keep my momentum going or that B+ grade will drop like a safe out of the sky in a Warner Brothers cartoon, leaving me squashed. I need a pep rally and a cheerleading squad to pump me up.
I would write some cheers myself, but I can't find a rhyme for "closets."
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
And now for something completely different
We picked the first okra of the season this morning, plus cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, and one plump red juicy tomato that we immediately sliced and served with fresh basil leaves on buttered toast. Wow. The first garden tomatoes of the season arrive like a revelation.
Butterflies have returned to the upper meadow along with zillions of little green grasshoppers. The place is hopping. The other day I followed a pair of indigo buntings through the bracken in an attempt to get a photo, but they kept ducking behind leaves and leading me onward until I was up to my elbows in tall weeds and poison ivy.
And then there were ticks. Let's not talk about the ticks.
The temperature stayed above 100 degrees until well after dark yesterday and the humidity is just wretched, but for a few brief golden moments early in the morning we can work in the garden and believe that we live in paradise.
Monday, July 05, 2010
Lesson six: It's not over until it's over. And over. And over.
Why am I doing this?
During the past week I've asked myself this question over and over. Why am I putting so much time and thought into writing little lessons about things I'd rather not think about? After all, it's not as if anyone begged me to please please PLEASE reveal the most important things I've learned from cancer, like the thousands of Dickens readers lining the wharf in New York eagerly awaiting the next installment of Little Nell. Does Little Bev live or die? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of our tale!
Of course I'm aware that last summer when I started writing about my struggle with cancer, my page views spiked. As a former journalist, I know what sells--pain, conflict, life-and-death struggles--but it's a little disconcerting to find that I'm much more interesting when I'm writing about cancer than when I'm writing about teaching or gardening or walking the dog. Every journalist knows the litany: "Dog Bites Man" isn't news, but everyone is interested in "Man Bites Dog."
How about "Cancer Bites Bev"? That's a story.
Except it lacks one essential ingredient of a good story: an ending. Real life doesn't always provide tidy conclusions the ways Dickens did, so I'm writing this to provide an artificial sense of closure. I need closure. I live by lists, experiencing a frisson of pleasure every time I manage to cross off a task and move on to the next one, but when will I be able to cross cancer off my list?
My cancer is most likely to recur in the first two years, and if it doesn't recur within five years then I've beaten the odds. But it could always come back somewhere else--and in the long term, I could develop secondary cancers from all that radiation. So it's not over until it's over, and even then it may not be over. Look at Henrietta Lacks! Her cancer is still growing in petri dishes all over the world.
If I can't cross cancer off my list of things to do, I'll cross off "survive first year after diagnosis" so I can move on to the next task. This little list of lessons is my way of concluding this exciting installment of my life, even though I don't know whether it's the end of a chapter or the end of the book or merely the end of Book One.
Cancer taught me that truth is stranger than fiction, but that won't stop me from turning the page to see what's next.
During the past week I've asked myself this question over and over. Why am I putting so much time and thought into writing little lessons about things I'd rather not think about? After all, it's not as if anyone begged me to please please PLEASE reveal the most important things I've learned from cancer, like the thousands of Dickens readers lining the wharf in New York eagerly awaiting the next installment of Little Nell. Does Little Bev live or die? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of our tale!
Of course I'm aware that last summer when I started writing about my struggle with cancer, my page views spiked. As a former journalist, I know what sells--pain, conflict, life-and-death struggles--but it's a little disconcerting to find that I'm much more interesting when I'm writing about cancer than when I'm writing about teaching or gardening or walking the dog. Every journalist knows the litany: "Dog Bites Man" isn't news, but everyone is interested in "Man Bites Dog."
How about "Cancer Bites Bev"? That's a story.
Except it lacks one essential ingredient of a good story: an ending. Real life doesn't always provide tidy conclusions the ways Dickens did, so I'm writing this to provide an artificial sense of closure. I need closure. I live by lists, experiencing a frisson of pleasure every time I manage to cross off a task and move on to the next one, but when will I be able to cross cancer off my list?
My cancer is most likely to recur in the first two years, and if it doesn't recur within five years then I've beaten the odds. But it could always come back somewhere else--and in the long term, I could develop secondary cancers from all that radiation. So it's not over until it's over, and even then it may not be over. Look at Henrietta Lacks! Her cancer is still growing in petri dishes all over the world.
If I can't cross cancer off my list of things to do, I'll cross off "survive first year after diagnosis" so I can move on to the next task. This little list of lessons is my way of concluding this exciting installment of my life, even though I don't know whether it's the end of a chapter or the end of the book or merely the end of Book One.
Cancer taught me that truth is stranger than fiction, but that won't stop me from turning the page to see what's next.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Lesson five: Reality bites the queen of denial
Soon after word got out that I was battling cancer, I ran into a colleague in the check-out line at Wal-Mart. He briefly shared his own experience with cancer but he's a numbers guy so he got right down to percentages: "What's the five-year survival rate for your diagnosis?"
"Not good," I said, but I didn't get more specific. The five-year survival rate for my diagnosis is a scary number hidden safely away in a locked chest marked "High Explosives," and I'd rather not retrieve it out without first buckling on protective armor and calling in reinforcements. The check-out line at Wal-Mart is not the place for juggling dynamite.
I'm generally good at looking reality straight in the face, but in the past year I've learned to value selective denial. I know that cancer kills and that it could kill me, but I don't really need to think about that fact 24 hours a day. Sometimes I'd rather pull a Scarlett O'Hara and think about it tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
In the opening scene of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, a messenger arrives with news from the big bad real world, but Our Hero is so busy whooping it up with the Queen of the Nile that he dismisses the messenger without listening to the message. He gets the news later, of course, but a long habit of denying reality has left him ill-equipped to deal with it. When reality bites, Antony falls on his sword and Cleopatra reaches for the asps.
In the past year I've gotten really good at locking away harsh realities for long stretches while I pass my days as if cancer didn't exist. When the messengers arrive bearing news of the real world (a medical bill, a blood test, a reminder of that five-year-survival rate), I armor myself to face the facts and do what's required, but I can't keep those harsh facts in front of me 24 hours a day without developing a desire to reach for the asps.
Cancer has taught me that selective denial is a necessary survival skill--as long as I keep my armor handy so I can face the news when reality bites.
"Not good," I said, but I didn't get more specific. The five-year survival rate for my diagnosis is a scary number hidden safely away in a locked chest marked "High Explosives," and I'd rather not retrieve it out without first buckling on protective armor and calling in reinforcements. The check-out line at Wal-Mart is not the place for juggling dynamite.
I'm generally good at looking reality straight in the face, but in the past year I've learned to value selective denial. I know that cancer kills and that it could kill me, but I don't really need to think about that fact 24 hours a day. Sometimes I'd rather pull a Scarlett O'Hara and think about it tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
In the opening scene of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, a messenger arrives with news from the big bad real world, but Our Hero is so busy whooping it up with the Queen of the Nile that he dismisses the messenger without listening to the message. He gets the news later, of course, but a long habit of denying reality has left him ill-equipped to deal with it. When reality bites, Antony falls on his sword and Cleopatra reaches for the asps.
In the past year I've gotten really good at locking away harsh realities for long stretches while I pass my days as if cancer didn't exist. When the messengers arrive bearing news of the real world (a medical bill, a blood test, a reminder of that five-year-survival rate), I armor myself to face the facts and do what's required, but I can't keep those harsh facts in front of me 24 hours a day without developing a desire to reach for the asps.
Cancer has taught me that selective denial is a necessary survival skill--as long as I keep my armor handy so I can face the news when reality bites.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Lesson four: Simple pleasures aren't always the best, but they'll do in a pinch
Early this morning I was out in the garden picking swiss chard, lettuce, broccoli, and beans, and I couldn't resist popping a fresh green bean into my mouth--without even washing it first.
I wouldn't have dared to do that last fall after cancer treatment kicked the legs out from under my immune system and made my intestines recoil from anything fresh, green, and crunchy. Chemotherapy and radiation drastically restricted my menu options--no salad, no raw veggies, no screaming-hot peppers, no sushi--and made cheese and other beloved items taste like compost. For weeks it seemed I lived on peanut butter, bananas, toast, and mashed potatoes.
Cancer also cramped my style in other ways: No rec center workouts. No movie theaters. No travel. No money.
Too many doctor visits. Not enough writing. Too much pain. Not enough sex.
From the first I knew I would have to sort my activities into those I could give up and those I could not. I gladly sacrificed the responsibility for cleaning the catbox and bathrooms, but I suffered a few twinges of guilt on hiring a student to help in the garden. I could have taken a full medical leave from my job, but I'm happier when I'm working so I opted to give up half--and there was never any question which half. I get a great sense of accomplishment from administration, but given the choice, I'd rather be teaching.
In the midst of this constricted lifestyle, I tried to find moments of joy. They arrived in surprising forms--in a key lime pie, a phone call, a song, a book, a snuggle--and even when those moments were brief and fleeting, I clutched them the way a toddler clutches a lollipop, as if it's the last remaining drop of sweetness on earth.
Today I'm delighted to be getting my hands dirty in the garden and munching on fresh green beans, which seem sweeter after all those months of absence and blandness. Cancer temporarily restricted my ability to participate in the immense complex drama of life, but cancer also taught me to be grateful for the small moments of sweetness that punctuate the pain.
I wouldn't have dared to do that last fall after cancer treatment kicked the legs out from under my immune system and made my intestines recoil from anything fresh, green, and crunchy. Chemotherapy and radiation drastically restricted my menu options--no salad, no raw veggies, no screaming-hot peppers, no sushi--and made cheese and other beloved items taste like compost. For weeks it seemed I lived on peanut butter, bananas, toast, and mashed potatoes.
Cancer also cramped my style in other ways: No rec center workouts. No movie theaters. No travel. No money.
Too many doctor visits. Not enough writing. Too much pain. Not enough sex.
From the first I knew I would have to sort my activities into those I could give up and those I could not. I gladly sacrificed the responsibility for cleaning the catbox and bathrooms, but I suffered a few twinges of guilt on hiring a student to help in the garden. I could have taken a full medical leave from my job, but I'm happier when I'm working so I opted to give up half--and there was never any question which half. I get a great sense of accomplishment from administration, but given the choice, I'd rather be teaching.
In the midst of this constricted lifestyle, I tried to find moments of joy. They arrived in surprising forms--in a key lime pie, a phone call, a song, a book, a snuggle--and even when those moments were brief and fleeting, I clutched them the way a toddler clutches a lollipop, as if it's the last remaining drop of sweetness on earth.
Today I'm delighted to be getting my hands dirty in the garden and munching on fresh green beans, which seem sweeter after all those months of absence and blandness. Cancer temporarily restricted my ability to participate in the immense complex drama of life, but cancer also taught me to be grateful for the small moments of sweetness that punctuate the pain.
Friday, July 02, 2010
Lesson three: Knowlege is power(less)
Neutrophils, neutropenia, neuropathy, neurontin--do I really have to learn all this for the test?
If the test is cancer, the answer is yes. You do have to learn all this--but you'll need more knowledge than yours to pass the test.
They say that knowledge is power, but all my life I've accepted strict compartmentalization of that power. Let the doctors wield the power of neutrophils, neutropenia, neuropathy, and neurontin, and I'll focus on knowing about American authors, ecocriticism, pedagogy, and proper use of the subjunctive.
This scheme would be sufficient if the proper use of the subjunctive could help me survive cancer (Would that it were so!), but suddenly my vast but specialized knowledge left me powerless. So I set out to absorb a whole new field of knowledge, reading everything I could about endometrial cancer and its treatments.
All the guides to surviving cancer say the same thing: Know your disease! Greater knowledge will help you take charge of your treatment, make informed decisions, and manage the mystery that is cancer.
Mystery, however, rarely submits to management's power. The more I learned, the more I understood the vastness of my ignorance--and not just mine. Cancer research is studded with chasms of ignorance, huge gaping holes in the collective understanding of how cancer works, which treatments succeed, what side effects might show up in the long term. And some of the knowledge I gained left me feeling even more powerless.
Take neuropathy. Please.
My oncologist had warned me early on that one possible side effect of chemotherapy was peripheral neuropathy, which he described as a tingling in the fingertips--"But we can treat you for that," he said. I didn't bother reading about it at the time because my mind was occupied by other matters, like the constant need to know the fastest route to the nearest rest room. Through five rounds of chemotherapy I never showed a sign of neuropathy.
Then after my sixth round I noticed a change: I kept dropping things. I had to ask students to help me hand out papers in the classroom. My eyes wouldn't focus right and my mouth felt numb. I had trouble forming words.
I make my living forming words!
I felt helpless.
Time to learn about neuropathy. Let's see: numbness, tingling, pain, possible loss of balance and coordination, possible loss of bladder function...treatment can relieve symptoms but some nerve damage may be permanent.
Somehow, this knowledge wasn't pumping me up with the power to manage my disease.
So my oncologist prescribed neurontin, which had me feeling relatively normal within a few weeks, so when the prescription ran out, I didn't refill it right away. I felt fine! For about three days.
But then the neuropathy came back. Before refilling the prescription, I decided to learn more about it. I made the mistake of going online to read all the possible side effects of neurontin: dizziness and somnolence I can deal with, but what's this about possible amnesia, abnormal thinking, and amblyopia? I don't even know what amblyopia means! I learned that a very small percentage of patients developed the most alarming side effects, but that's comforting only if you're not part of that small percentage.
All this new knowledge left me feeling more powerful than a bleeding pullet. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I simply wasn't equipped to sort through the little knowledge I had and separate the relevant from the anomalous. I needed reassurance from someone who knew how to wield this knowledge properly.
That's what doctors do. I find facts that kick me in the gut, but my oncologist puts those facts into context and soothes the pain. Knowledge is power when it is accompanied by the profound understanding and wisdom I can't possibly develop in a quick crash course on cancer.
Cancer taught me that no matter how much I cram for the test, I can't possibly pass it on my own knowledge alone.
The neurontin is gone, by the way. And so is the neuropathy. Don't ask me about neutrophils or neutropenia because I've already forgotten what they mean.
If the test is cancer, the answer is yes. You do have to learn all this--but you'll need more knowledge than yours to pass the test.
They say that knowledge is power, but all my life I've accepted strict compartmentalization of that power. Let the doctors wield the power of neutrophils, neutropenia, neuropathy, and neurontin, and I'll focus on knowing about American authors, ecocriticism, pedagogy, and proper use of the subjunctive.
This scheme would be sufficient if the proper use of the subjunctive could help me survive cancer (Would that it were so!), but suddenly my vast but specialized knowledge left me powerless. So I set out to absorb a whole new field of knowledge, reading everything I could about endometrial cancer and its treatments.
All the guides to surviving cancer say the same thing: Know your disease! Greater knowledge will help you take charge of your treatment, make informed decisions, and manage the mystery that is cancer.
Mystery, however, rarely submits to management's power. The more I learned, the more I understood the vastness of my ignorance--and not just mine. Cancer research is studded with chasms of ignorance, huge gaping holes in the collective understanding of how cancer works, which treatments succeed, what side effects might show up in the long term. And some of the knowledge I gained left me feeling even more powerless.
Take neuropathy. Please.
My oncologist had warned me early on that one possible side effect of chemotherapy was peripheral neuropathy, which he described as a tingling in the fingertips--"But we can treat you for that," he said. I didn't bother reading about it at the time because my mind was occupied by other matters, like the constant need to know the fastest route to the nearest rest room. Through five rounds of chemotherapy I never showed a sign of neuropathy.
Then after my sixth round I noticed a change: I kept dropping things. I had to ask students to help me hand out papers in the classroom. My eyes wouldn't focus right and my mouth felt numb. I had trouble forming words.
I make my living forming words!
I felt helpless.
Time to learn about neuropathy. Let's see: numbness, tingling, pain, possible loss of balance and coordination, possible loss of bladder function...treatment can relieve symptoms but some nerve damage may be permanent.
Somehow, this knowledge wasn't pumping me up with the power to manage my disease.
So my oncologist prescribed neurontin, which had me feeling relatively normal within a few weeks, so when the prescription ran out, I didn't refill it right away. I felt fine! For about three days.
But then the neuropathy came back. Before refilling the prescription, I decided to learn more about it. I made the mistake of going online to read all the possible side effects of neurontin: dizziness and somnolence I can deal with, but what's this about possible amnesia, abnormal thinking, and amblyopia? I don't even know what amblyopia means! I learned that a very small percentage of patients developed the most alarming side effects, but that's comforting only if you're not part of that small percentage.
All this new knowledge left me feeling more powerful than a bleeding pullet. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I simply wasn't equipped to sort through the little knowledge I had and separate the relevant from the anomalous. I needed reassurance from someone who knew how to wield this knowledge properly.
That's what doctors do. I find facts that kick me in the gut, but my oncologist puts those facts into context and soothes the pain. Knowledge is power when it is accompanied by the profound understanding and wisdom I can't possibly develop in a quick crash course on cancer.
Cancer taught me that no matter how much I cram for the test, I can't possibly pass it on my own knowledge alone.
The neurontin is gone, by the way. And so is the neuropathy. Don't ask me about neutrophils or neutropenia because I've already forgotten what they mean.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Lesson two: There's no algorithm for friendship
"Having cancer will show you who your real friends are."
I don't remember who told me that so I can't tell you whether the speaker turned out to be a real friend. It's true, sort of: like any life-altering event, cancer can test friendships, revealing surprising strengths and unexpected weaknesses. But if I had to make a list of the people who proved to be real friends, I'd be hard pressed.
Maybe I should call on Charlie Eppes, the math whiz on the TV show Numbers. Faced with some gnarly mystery of human behavior, his most common response is something like "I can create an algorithm for that." Let's imagine an algorithm that could sort out those amongst my acquaintance who qualify as real friends.
First we'd have to assign numerical values to various responses to my plight: sending a card, cooking a meal, covering a class, buying a scarf, and so on. Bonus points for sending me cases of ginger beer, taking over all my committee work, and driving out to the middle of nowhere at the crack of dawn to take me to chemotherapy--but how many points for each?
Would a hand-written note count more than a store-bought card? How about e-mail? I appreciated every card I received but I was sustained for weeks by one simple sentence in a student's e-mail message. Extra credit for saying exactly what I needed to hear?
What about people who didn't say anything? Sometimes nothing is exactly the right thing to say and sometimes it's a cop-out. I can think of a few people who really should have kept their mouths shut, but the most painful comment was completely in character and taught me nothing new about the speaker. (And if you think I'm going to repeat that comment here, think again.)
Maybe our friendship algorithm should take into account how my understanding of the friend's character changed over time. Several casual acquaintances surprised me with their willingness to help, resulting in some newly strong relationships that will last. Others surprised me by becoming distant, unwilling to be involved with my persistent problems. I can't say that I blame them--after all, nothing clears a room like the whiff of death--but I certainly learned something about those friendships. Should the algorithm subtract points for disappointing responses? How many points?
It's no use. I can't put a number on the words and actions that mattered most during the darkest times, nor can I quantify the gratitude I feel for those whose apparently insignificant gestures helped me hold on. Cancer taught me why there's no algorithm for friendship: because real friends don't keep score.
I don't remember who told me that so I can't tell you whether the speaker turned out to be a real friend. It's true, sort of: like any life-altering event, cancer can test friendships, revealing surprising strengths and unexpected weaknesses. But if I had to make a list of the people who proved to be real friends, I'd be hard pressed.
Maybe I should call on Charlie Eppes, the math whiz on the TV show Numbers. Faced with some gnarly mystery of human behavior, his most common response is something like "I can create an algorithm for that." Let's imagine an algorithm that could sort out those amongst my acquaintance who qualify as real friends.
First we'd have to assign numerical values to various responses to my plight: sending a card, cooking a meal, covering a class, buying a scarf, and so on. Bonus points for sending me cases of ginger beer, taking over all my committee work, and driving out to the middle of nowhere at the crack of dawn to take me to chemotherapy--but how many points for each?
Would a hand-written note count more than a store-bought card? How about e-mail? I appreciated every card I received but I was sustained for weeks by one simple sentence in a student's e-mail message. Extra credit for saying exactly what I needed to hear?
What about people who didn't say anything? Sometimes nothing is exactly the right thing to say and sometimes it's a cop-out. I can think of a few people who really should have kept their mouths shut, but the most painful comment was completely in character and taught me nothing new about the speaker. (And if you think I'm going to repeat that comment here, think again.)
Maybe our friendship algorithm should take into account how my understanding of the friend's character changed over time. Several casual acquaintances surprised me with their willingness to help, resulting in some newly strong relationships that will last. Others surprised me by becoming distant, unwilling to be involved with my persistent problems. I can't say that I blame them--after all, nothing clears a room like the whiff of death--but I certainly learned something about those friendships. Should the algorithm subtract points for disappointing responses? How many points?
It's no use. I can't put a number on the words and actions that mattered most during the darkest times, nor can I quantify the gratitude I feel for those whose apparently insignificant gestures helped me hold on. Cancer taught me why there's no algorithm for friendship: because real friends don't keep score.
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