A beautiful day for baseball

I was sitting in the stands at a baseball game today when a colleague sitting in front of me offered to block any foul balls that might come my way for a mere two dollars. "I'll stick my hand out there and back down so fast you'll never even see it," he said, and it's true--I never even saw it. But then again, I never paid the two dollars either.

It's a beautiful day for baseball even when it isn't. Our college team is in the conference tournament and yesterday's game kept being threatened by dark grumbly clouds. We would have lost if the game had been rained out before the seventh inning, but fortunately the storm bypassed the stadium and we came back for the win. Today's game was the converse of yesterday's: we scored a few runs early and then nothing for the rest of the game, but we held on for the win.

Will I go to the championship game tomorrow? I could stay home and clean the house, plant some flowers, mow the yard...nothing that can't be put off for a few hours. After all the angst of the end of the semester and the annoying encounter with car repairs on our recent road trip, I could use some baseball therapy.

You too. Come sit by me and I promise to block all the foul balls that come our way--for a price. My hand will move so fast you'll never see it.

Clean sweep

My desk is sparkly clean while my office trash can is stuffed to the brim, so it looks as if I just tilted my desk and slid everything into the trash. That's not quite what happened, but it's close. Yesterday I cleaned and sorted and filed all kinds of academic stuff that's been accumulating on my desk for at least the past year. It's not always easy to know what to keep and what to toss: do I really need to hold on to last year's Faculty Council ballots? How about leftover handouts for a class I probably won't be teaching again? If a student hasn't picked up a final exam he took three years ago, why do I need to keep it?

The process was grueling but the result is great: a clean office with plenty of space on the desktop for stacking new piles of stuff. A similar sorting-and-deleting process neatened up my computer desktop. My house could use a good spring cleaning, but the office chaos is now under control.

Since we returned from Texas I've been focusing on cleaning to get my mind off the CT scans and blood tests I took last week. The scan left a lasting impression--a nasty bruise where the phlebotomist had trouble accessing my port--but the results are now in: no sign of cancer whatsoever. Two years after my diagnosis, I've been given a clean slate (for now). I'll go back for the next round of tests in six months, but meanwhile, I'm enjoying feeling all sparkly clean--inside and out.

Car wars

The other day as we crossed the swollen Mississippi River, I wondered how long it takes a drop of water from our creek to make it down to the Gulf of Mexico. I'll bet they have a jolly old time floating along without a care in the world: they carry no luggage, have no need to fuel up, and I'll bet they never even think about car repairs.

I, on the other hand, spend way too much time thinking about car repairs and waiting for car repairs and paying for car repairs. At first it looked as if we would have to perform some sort of car repair in every state we visited after our son's commencement, but we broke our streak after Mississippi, leaving the total thus: car repairs in three states, no car repairs in six. And we still made it home in one piece--but in two cars, which complicated matters. Three drivers, two cars, three repairs, one unexpected overnight stay at a cheap motel (you try finding a mechanic late on Mothers Day in Vicksburg, Mississippi!).

On the plus side, I got to spend some extra quality time with my son. In Louisiana we replaced the spark plugs in his car while parked next to an air show. We were hot and sweaty and greasy and tired but the jets doing loops and swirls and tight formations right overhead provided serious entertainment.

And then in Mississippi while we awaited repairs on my car, we toured the Vicksburg battlefield and saw what remains of the U.S.S. Cairo, a Civil War ironclad that was sunk in 1863 and sat in mud for 100 years before being lifted from the river and partially restored. It looks like a ship a child would make with Legos, more like a mechanical insect than a seaworthy vessel. It was pleasant to walk among the war memorials and cannons in the cool of the morning.

In the heat of the day we turned our backs on the mighty Mississippi and drove and drove and drove, finally arriving home early this morning. I've never been so happy to see our creek. It may not be flooding cities or making headlines, but its waters daily retrace the treacherous trip we just finished without muttering a single complaint. Oh, to be a drop of water!

But first I'd like to drop off to sleep.

A very grand son

The breakfast room at our hotel was crowded with people preparing to attend a college commencement, including an elderly man who hobbled over to sit at our table and asked, "So are you here to see your grandson graduate?"

Grandson!

I gave birth to that boy not quite 22 years ago!

The drive down to Texas may have aged me far beyond my years, but could this tottery old sod really think we were his peers? Grandson indeed!

I suppose that's what I get for hanging around with a genuine graybeard. Today my husband and I and our daughter and son-in-law were delighted to see our son walk across the stage and pick up his diploma. Afterward he took us out to the airport and showed off the aeronautical expertise that will (we hope) eventually land him a job somewhere up in the air.

It was a grand event and my son is a very grand guy--but grandson? That smarts.

Disagreeable greens and drones

Here I am sitting on this odd little elevated window seat in a minuscule motel room in Jackson, Tennessee, a motel room that offers exactly what the website advertised (cheap rates and close proximity to the interstate) plus an unexpected extra-special bonus: a decorating scheme involving four shades of green loudly competing for Ugliest Color on the Planet, the sorts of green you generally don't expect to see outside a baby's diaper or a moldy rotting milk product. This room isn't big enough for that many clashing colors. My eyes object to this constant Assault by a Deadly Color. They demand a rest.

And that's exactly what they're going to get. We had planned to sleep late and leave for Texas at a civilized hour, but the phone rang at 5 a.m. and we were awake so why not hit the road? The temperature on our back deck this morning was 30 degrees and we drove through dense fog all through West Virginia, but by the time we hit Kentucky the sun was shining and the sky was clear. From my perch on this window seat on the third floor of the Motel of Misbegotten Remodeling, I can see blue sky as far as the eye can see, with not a hint of cloud in the sky.

I can also see the interstate. The website mentioned that this motel was close to the interstate, but it didn't specify how close: close enough to allow us to spit across all four lanes, close enough for truckers to say "excuse me" as they take the short cut through our closet, close enough for us to see the whites in the eyes of roadkill armadillos. On the Annoying Noise Continuum, the droning of trucks roaring down the interstate approaches Dental Drill level, and it may even be more annoying than the loud obnoxious shades of green. I can make the colors go away just by closing my eyes.

I can't close my eyes, however, to the flooding that has put part of I-40 under water in Arkansas, a state we need to cross tomorrow to get to Texas. Time to find an alternate route. Truckers always know the best routes, right? I'll just lean out the window and hail a passing semi.

Inside, outside, online

There's something a little odd about teaching a summer online course called Writing about Nature. I assume that students who take the course are interested in spending time experiencing nature face to face, but instead I'm going to force them to sit inside with their eyes glued to their computer screens and their fingers flying across the keyboard. Walt Whitman would be appalled.

Then again, he's not registered for the course.

But eight students are registered. Eight! That magic number allows the course to proceed and releases me to construct a syllabus and post assignments and activities online. The course starts the first week of June, but I've already got a whole host of reading and writing assignments ready for my unwitting victims--er, students. I'm squeezing 15 weeks of material into an eight-week session, so this course is no walk in the park, no matter how much we would all prefer to be in a park instead of in front of a computer.

Why not do both at once? I'm determined to find a way to do some of the course work out in my woods, and I've even picked out a prime work location: a big smooth sittable rock nestled in near a mayapple patch. It's easily accessible now, but we'll have to diligently clear weeds from the path to keep it accessible through the summer. Next week I'll start recording podcasts to post on my course page and I may try to do some recording from the field, as it were. Picture me sitting on the rock and balancing a computer on my lap while surrounded by trees and wildflowers and butterflies and birds.

It sounds idyllic but it will work only if I can prevent one potential problem. What nature and technology have in common: a tendency to be infested by bugs.

So pricketh them Nature in their courages

T.S. Eliot tells us that April is the cruelest month, but Chaucer contends that when April with its showers sweet the drought of March has pierced to the root and bathed every vein in such liquor of which vertu engendred is the flower--in other words, when all those April showers make spring begin again, then folk like you and me long to go on pilgrimages. And so I did--not to Canterbury but to my woods, where April showers have brought out May flowers by the bushel.

We found mayapples and violets and stonecrop and fire pinks, and in a spot where the power company cleared out some trees last fall we found a mature lilac bush blooming. We've lived here seven years without ever knowing lilacs grew back there. Along the driveway we saw plenty of pawpaw blossoms, so tiny and velvety brown that they don't look like flowers at all unless you're right up close. Up in the pine grove I found an interesting fungus, and right up at the top of the hill I found a plucky late trillium poking its head out from beneath dead leaves and fallen trees.

That's me, I told myself, trying to blossom through the weathered and wearying detritus of life. My April would have been much less wretched if I'd spent more time in the woods and less in the office, but I was sick and busy and surrounded by people who needed things and the rain kept falling and falling and falling and so I stayed in my office and worked and sulked and forgot about the woods and the trillium and the indigo buntings.

But now it's time to put April behind me. It's a whole new day, a whole new month! Today I'll turn in final grades and wash my hands of this semester, and tomorrow I'll hand over a pile of faculty governance files to my successor. The cruelest month is over! Now it's time to bloom.

More on hats (or moron hats)

My favorite piece of royal wedding trivia, from "Holy Matrimony!" by Lauren Collins in the May 2 New Yorker:

In 1923, when Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon--the Queen Mum, pre-mumhood--married Prince Albert, Duke of York, a request by the nascent BBC to broadcast the ceremony was rejected by church officials, for fear that men 'might hear the service, perhaps even some of them sitting in public houses, with their hats on.'

We've come a long way, baby!

Medusa lives!

Yet another reason I'd never make it as a Princess. Frankly, I'd rather walk around wearing an ampersand on my head.

Sure I'm grading. What else would I be doing?

1. Number of piles of stuff on my desk: 7.
Number of those piles requiring immediate attention: 7.
Number of brain cells standing immediately at attention: 7.
I think we're gonna need a bigger brain.

2. What do you do with that long line of students waiting to wheedle their way to a better grade? Try Wheedle-Away today! Just spray and watch those wheedlers run! Order now and receive a free bonus can of Bogus-Excuse-B-Gone! Now in lemon, cinnamon, dogwood, or paisley.

3. A brilliant idea that just might work: if the local bowling alley closes (as it keeps threatening to do), making it impossible for the college to offer bowling classes in the fall, and if the college continues having trouble finding money to renovate the band rehearsal hall, let's kill two birds with one stone: open a bowling alley in the band rehearsal space and invite the community to bowl (for a price!) while the band plays on. Musical bowling. What's not to love?

Desks, tests, and other challenges

All semester long I've come into my American Lit classroom expecting a surprise: will the desks be arranged in rows or pods or will they form an elaborate labyrinth? The person who teaches in there before me likes to try every possible arrangement of chairs, but most days I've managed to work with whatever I've found. It's uncanny sometimes: I show up with a bit of group work and find the desks arranged neatly in just the right number of groups; I show up to give an exam and find the desks arranged to minimize opportunities for cheating. Neat.

Today I arrived early to make sure the arrangement was appropriate for a final exam and found a mostly workable room--except that a desk was missing and the only available replacement was about six inches too tall. All-righty then! Let's just snap our fingers and make a desk appear out of thin air!

Now my students are busy trying to make answers appear out of thin air. I hate to admit it, but I really enjoyed writing this exam and I hope they enjoy taking it. Is it wrong to take such pleasure in writing literature exams? I never try to trick or trip up students, but I do like to push them to show what they know and to think beyond the obvious.

In one set of questions I list pairs of poems and ask students to explain the similarities. Maybe both poems use free verse, but let's face it: 90 percent of the poems we've discussed in the last three weeks employ free verse, so the chances are pretty good that "free verse" will be a valid answer. But, as I told my students before they started the exam, sometimes the obvious answer isn't the complete answer or the best answer or the only answer. Think beyond the obvious.

We've spent some time in the past three weeks putting poems in conversation with each other, looking at allusions and influences and recycling of themes and language, so some of the questions on this exam put chunks of poetry right next to each other and ask students to analyze the conversation. Does Sylvia Plath have anything to say to Gwendolyn Brooks? How about James Wright, Franz Wright, and Theodore Roethke? Put Allen Ginsberg and Billy Collins in a room and what emerges--howling or lanyards or howling lanyards?

And then there's the essay question. I love this essay question. Love love love. Is that just weird or what?

So: one of the primary goals of a literature survey class is to equip students with the skills they need to analyze texts, so the essay on the final exam asks them to do analyze a particular poem, explaining how form and content work together to create meaning. Easy, right? Except I give them a poem we have not discussed in class, a poem that is in the textbook and was written by one of the authors we discussed but was not part of the assigned reading. At this point in the semester they ought to know what to look for in a poem, and I've given them a poem offering plenty of material to analyze. I want them to notice the obvious (line length matters!), but they'll need to show me that they can look beyond the obvious.

I'm looking forward to reading the results, but as they write, what's most obvious to me is that I'll miss this class with its daily surprises, its labyrinths and lanyards and howling about poetry. My sabbatical next year means that for the first time in 10 years, I won't be teaching the American Lit Survey in the spring semester. It's high time to rethink the course, to re-evaluate the reading and writing assignments and perhaps find some better ways to achieve course objectives. Time for me to think beyond the obvious! Who knows, I might come up with some new surprises, find some new tricks up my sleeve.

But not desks. I still haven't figured out how to make desks appear out of thin air.

Double-decker

I was on campus briefly this morning but people kept asking, "Why aren't you home in bed?"

Okay, folks, I can take a hint: I'm home, but I'm not in bed. Lying down is a problem. It's easier to breathe sitting up, so I move around from chair to chair trailing clouds of used tissues. In fact, the unexpected sunshine inspires me to sit out on the deck surrounded by all the detritus of a severe allergy attack: tissues, tea, chapstick, Vicks VapoRub. My only concern is that my nose is so red it might startle the birds.

So why bother going to campus at all if I have no finals to give and I'm feeling so awful? The final faculty meeting of the year is scheduled for right about now and I ought to be presiding but it's impossible to call a meeting to order without a voice, so I went to campus to hand over all the materials for today's meeting to one of my helpful colleagues, who echoed the universal question: "Why aren't you home in bed?"

It seems oddly appropriate that I'm too sick to preside at my final meeting as Faculty Chair. Two years ago I sat out on my deck griping over my inability to preside over my first meeting after being elected (read it here), but then I was struggling with the side effects of chemotherapy and I had to come to terms with letting others fill my shoes for the semester. Now here I am two years later in the same chair on the same deck missing my final meeting and my only regret is that I won't have an opportunity to thank all the people who helped me get from that point to this one. Even if I had the energy to stand in front of the faculty today, they'd be so blinded by the glare from my red nose that they wouldn't be able to focus on my pathetic little croaking voice.

So I'll put it in writing: Thanks, everyone. Thanks a million. Couldn't have done it without you. Now if you'll excuse me, I"ll go out on the deck and scare the birds.

A tale of two classes

It's the last day of classes and my students responded in very different ways:

Full classroom, eager faces, "Could you explain again how a villanelle works?"

Empty chairs, empty backpacks, half the class forgot the homework: "Do we have to do this or can we just go?"

"This is the final class of my undergrad education! I don't want it to end!" So we stay a while and chat after class is over.

Bloodshot eyes, face on desk: "Is it too late to change the topic for my final paper?"

Cheerful chatter after class: "What are you taking next semester?" "I'm in that class too! I can't wait to come back!"

Glum groaning and slamming of books: "I'm sick of this place. I'm transferring out."

"Do we have to go?"

"Do we have to stay?"

Just a wee toot

Two voices dispute within me: my dissertation director, who warned me that I'd never survive in academe if I didn't learn to toot my own horn, and my New England Puritan ancestors, who quail in shame at any hint of boasting. It's impossible to appease both voices, but maybe those stern and austere Puritans will cut me some slack if I emit just a wee hint of fanfare over here in the corner while nobody's listening.

Toot.

Look here: the e-book I co-edited is now available for download.

I realize that co-editing a collection of conference proceedings will make hardly a dent on my Vita and that conference proceedings are of little interest to anyone who didn't attend the conference and that an e-book doesn't sit in the hand or thump on the desk as satisfyingly as a print book, but all the same: I had a great time reading all the essays and corresponding with authors and putting it all together into a logical form and writing an introduction, and it makes me really happy to see, finally, the result of all that work.

So toot, and again I say toot.

Hope that didn't hurt your ears.

Rain check

First thing this morning I told a colleague that if one more bad thing happened, I planned to pull the door shut and quietly go to pieces in my office. Then it started raining.

On my desk.

Now I have nothing against rain per se--some of my best friends are rain!--but rain and I get along much better when rain stays in its place (i.e., outdoors) and out of mine (i.e., my office). Sure, April showers bring May flowers and all that, but I'm not planning to grow any May flowers on my desk, or June or July or August flowers either. When rain comes knocking at my door I pull in the welcome mat, and when it starts dripping down the walls of my office, I call Maintenance.

"We'll check the water level in that bucket periodically," says the cheerful guy with the ladder, "because if it fills up, it'll come crashing right through the ceiling tiles."

And what do you suppose sits just below the ceiling tiles holding up the big red bucket collecting rainwater? My desk, computer, telephone, books, piles of paperwork, family photos--just the stuff that resents the introduction of rainwater into its immediate environment.

So I am delighted, simply delighted that competent persons have the problem well in hand, and every time I hear the drip-drip of rainwater filling the bucket or look up and see that gaping hole in my ceiling, I'm thankful that I'm dealing with a mere leaky roof rather than, for instance, a tsunami or bubonic plague or a bus fire. It could be worse! I could have anvils falling on my desk, or even iron safes or pianos. When pianos start falling from the ceiling, I'm getting a new office.

But the rain in my office has put a bit of a damper (ha!) on my plan to have a nervous breakdown this afternoon. I guess I'll just have to postpone the hysterics until the forecast is more auspicious--partly cloudy with a chance of panic. Until then, I'll take a rain check.

What kind of retriever?

When I'm walking around the countryside it's not unusual for the happy Hopeful hound to go dashing off into field and forest to chase small woodland creatures--squirrels or bunnies or, once, a domestic chicken that had escaped from its coop. Sometimes she brings back souvenirs of the chase, but she's learned that I'm not really interested in examining the carcasses very closely so she generally skulks off and hides them in some inappropriate place (including, as I discovered to my chagrin over the weekend, in my front flower garden).

Yesterday, though, she went bounding across a field to track down her elusive prey and brought back for my inspection a different type of souvenir: a loaf of bread. Well, most of a loaf. A chunk had been torn off the end, perhaps by Hopeful or perhaps by whoever tossed the loaf down there. We weren't near any houses but we were close to an area where passersby, mistaking the countryside for a landfill, sometimes toss stuff over the hillside, including, most recently, a sofa.

Hopeful didn't retrieve the sofa. I wish someone would. In the fall those woods are full of hunters braving miserable conditions to track down deer and wild turkeys, but they show little interest in tracking the elusive sofa. No challenge in it, I suppose.

Neither is there any real challenge in hunting down a loaf of bread, but Hopeful was so proud of her treasure that she immediately dashed off to enjoy it in some secret place known only to dogkind. She swam across the creek still clutching the loaf in her mouth, a passage that did not appreciably harm the bread. Must have been fairly bricklike.

A dog that can track down and retrieve groceries is a useful companion. Next time I run low on milk or cheese or other household staples, I'm sending Hopeful out with a grocery list.

Cite fight!

So my son and daughter indulged in a little online bantering this week, one complaining about being required to write a paper in APA format and the other bragging, "I get to use MLA! Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyaaaaaaaaaah-nyaaaaaaaaah!"

Okay, I may be exaggerating just a little, but there's no denying my delight in seeing my very own precious adorable children publicly debating the merits of APA vs MLA. It warms my heart, I tell you. Every semester I hear students asking why we have to bother with citation at all, why it matters where we put the period or whether the title is italicized or what sort of source it is to begin with-- "Why can't we just list Google as the source of everything?! It would be so much easier!"

I rarely win that argument. Yes, I can hold the gradebook over students' heads to persuade them to pay some attention to the details of citation, but deep in their hearts they remain unconvinced. They'll write citations to humor me and earn a grade, but the minute my back is turned, they'll Google their lives away and burn their MLA guides. (All those colons make good kindling!)

But perhaps there's hope! My children are not my students so I never tried to teach them MLA citation format, but they learned it somewhere along with a love for precision and professionalism and clarity of expression, and that's something to brag about. My children care about APA vs MLA! My life has not been lived in vain!

Course planting

This was supposed to be a yard-work weekend but the sky fell and the creek rose and I can't mow with standing water in the meadow, so I guess I'll stay inside and try to plant a class.

Or transplant it, I suppose. I'm working on transforming an upper-level nature writing course from a face-to-face format to online, condensing 15 weeks of material into 8 without losing anything important. This delicate process will require much more than just uprooting the syllabus and plopping it into new ground; making a course grow in a new and different medium will require careful preparation, fertilization, watering, weeding, and pruning.

So far I've done little more than plot out the sections, but this week I'll start inserting learning modules into Moodle (reading and writing assignments, discussion questions, photographs, and audio recordings), all without knowing whether enough students will register to justify offering the class this summer. Will my carefully planted course produce results or simply shrivel up and die?

It's the same sort of question I ask about my garden every summer: Will the okra flower, the beans sprout, the sweet potatoes send out vines? Will blight kill the tomatoes or raccoons devour the sweet corn? Do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?

One thing is certain: the rain won't hurt the online course. It'll just give me a good excuse to stay inside and tend my technological garden.

Because sometimes I need a reminder

Reasons to be happy today:

Sunshine. Daffodils. Persimmons in a poem.

Sea dragons playing basketball. (Imagine!)

Lunch with a friend who's been watching Monty Python. Bring me a shrubbery!

A new spring blouse all covered with flowers--and no blood stains from the port flush.

Mocha Iced Cappuccino from Tim Horton's.

Friday!

Fool's errand

Because I've been brooding for weeks over whether I'll be eternally remembered as the Faculty Chair responsible for the Great Big Ballot Boondoggle,

and because despite my best efforts I can't seem to prevent new projects from being dumped on my desk, all due the week I intend to go to Texas for my son's college commencement,

and because a well-intentioned attempt to help a colleague solve a problem resulted in a major misunderstanding that resists resolution,

and because last night I watched an old episode of Bones that vividly portrayed the speaking-truth-to-power role of the court jester,

and because I lost track of time this morning and kept my literature class going five minutes too long and would have kept babbling on forever if someone hadn't pointed out the time,

and because the class started with video of Billy Collins reading his poem "The Lanyard," which never fails to make me want to laugh and cry and talk about summer camp and Proust and poetry all at once until it all comes tumbling out together,

and because I followed up by reading out loud Denise Levertov's poem "Man Wearing Bird" with its memorable image of the insane man "upholding mystery" before the passing gawkers

("This is my pigeon / and I its prophet")

and because "upholding mystery" describes, in a nutshell, the task of the poet and the prophet and the Holy Fool and yes maybe even the English professor,

and because Scott Adams of Dilbert fame writes in the Wall Street Journal that teaching history and literature and calculus to B students is "like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money" (read it here),

and because if I keep standing here upholding mystery a little longer maybe someone will come along and prop up my arms,

it's a really good day to be a Fool.

Trout-lily time

Every year at about this time I go on a usually hopeless quest for trout-lilies. We've found a few solitary blooms growing near our creek once or twice but none in the past three or four years.

But yesterday there they were all over the place--mottled leaves and lovely little yellow blossoms shyly poking up through the dry brown leaves in the woods along the creek. Why this year and not last year or the year before? What conditions changed to allow trout lilies to grow? I wish I knew.

Nearby we saw buckeye buds bursting open and dutchman's breeches hanging dainty and white among their feathery green leaves.

And trilliums. I've been worrying about the trilliums ever since last fall, when the power company sprayed weed-killer all up the slope where trilliums usually grow. Yesterday we found trilliums blossoming abundantly on either side of that slope, but the sprayed area still looks scorched and lifeless, like the aftermath of a massacre.

Today storms are moving in and my schedule looks about as grim as that scorched slope. I'd like to surround myself with a margin of green studded with blossoms and buckeyes, but I can't uproot my woods and carry them to campus. Instead, I'll keep the images in mind, and whenever I feel the grim slope sliding into my vision, I'll just shift a little to the left and look at the trilliums and trout-lilies.

Spring sends a wake-up call

I went down to the garden, raked away the mulch, and found that the carrots we'd left in the ground last fall had kept growing--five feet long and still delicious.

In my dreams.

The fact that I'm dreaming about gardening suggests that it's about time to get out there and see what's going on underground. In the front flower garden I need to rake off the mulch, pull up the tattered weed barrier, work on eradicating the ant colony, pull the weeds, tame the daisy patch, and plant some spring color. Empty out the planters and put in some pansies and ivy. Build a deck-like cover for the cistern with a big planter and maybe a bench. Mow the grass. Move the birdfeeders.

In the back: check on the hostas, do some weeding, clean the deck, mow the grass. Persuade the hubby to put doors on the shed and transform wood and old windows into a cold frame.

Next to the garage: weed around the irises and the pachysandra and plant some more. Pull weeds from the path and find a way to stabilize the slope. Figure out what's wrong with the forsythia. They tell me it's hard to kill forsythia but we seem to have found a way.

Up to the herb gardens: fix the wall, till the soil, plant some herbs, and install a bench to make it easy to sit and inhale the aromas.

Down to the berry patch (prune canes, pull weeds, harvest horseradish) and the vegetable gardens (till, plant, weed, repeat). I doubt that we'll find any carrots five feet long. Horseradish, maybe. A five-foot-long horseradish root--that would be quite the wake-up call!

Stage check

At a campus function I overheard some colleagues comparing notes on their young children's developmental milestones: Is he walking yet? Has she learned to eat with a spoon? Is he still afraid of dogs? Does she sit on the potty?

I remember those days when every little sign of progress called for celebration and commemoration and a cry of "How adorable!" from all who witnessed the momentous event, but yesterday I felt a little left out of the conversation. You want to talk about adorable developmental milestones? My daughter called last week and suggested that we go out for sushi tomorrow night. Trust me, there's nothing so adorable as the Taking Mom Out for Sushi stage, unless it's the developmental milestone my son will soon reach: the College Graduation "I Believe I Can Fly" stage. (Calling my son adorable in public would violate every rule of mother/son communication, so pretend you didn't hear that.)

I celebrate with my colleagues whose children are reaching those important milestones, but I'll celebrate even more tomorrow night when I'm enjoying sushi with my daughter. Yes, she knows how to eat with a spoon, but with sushi, chopsticks are more appropriate.

The end is near...but not near enough!

As much as I love my job, lately I find myself prefacing a lot of statements with "As much as I love my job...."

As much as I love teaching, I'm tired of saying the same things over and over on student drafts. I'm tired of trying to explain the difference between a colon and a semicolon. I'm tired of repeating the Quotation Mantra (Integrate, Punctuate, Cite) and I don't want to devote any more class time to showing students how to use hanging indent. You know that little Help menu on your word-processing program? It's called Help for a reason.

As much as I love reading, I'm tired of snatching brief moments of time between classes and meetings to read bits and snippets of stuff related to faculty governance and pedagogy and assessment. I look forward to spending long uninterrupted hours reading real literature, digging deeply into current scholarship, mulling over what I read at my leisure. It's hard to relish living the life of the mind when the mind is too rushed and crowded to function properly.

As much as I love writing, I'm tired of writing agendas and bits of institutional prose to insert into documents and e-mails explaining why and when and how certain things are happening. My mind is abuzz with ideas for essays and articles, but they get shoved aside to make room for reports and requests and recriminations. It's hard to write freely when it feels as if the entire campus is looking over my shoulder every time I sit at the keyboard. I refuse to take them all home with me this summer and they're certainly not going along on my sabbatical next year.

As much as I love my job, I'm just tired. This semester has worn me down and I'm the first to admit that I took on too many projects, said Yes to too many requests for help. Now, though, it's all winding down. In a few weeks I'll close the books on this semester, open a big fat novel, and sit down on my back deck for a refreshing rest.

Soul food

When I sat down to read the poet James Wood's essay "Taxonomy and Grace" in Open Letters Monthly (read it here), I had just finished leading my American Lit Survey class through Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," with its vivid evocation of poets lost in the "total animal soup of time" who strive "to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought ....with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years." I always get a little excited about the image of the poet violently tearing a pound of flesh from his body and offering the bloody mess to readers and saying, "Eat! It's good for what ails you!"

Wood's essay expresses a yearning for poetry that feeds readers. "I still believe," he writes, "that poems can speak to other human beings and can make collective society consider our own convictions, experiences, and beliefs," but he finds this belief fading among the academics who teach poetry and attend academic conferences. For instance, he describes his experience at a recent annual conference of the AWP (the Association for Writers and Writing Programs):

When I mingle with other writers there, rarely do I speak of how individual poems transformed my life. Honestly, I rarely hear any writers talk about this. Instead, we talk about our bona fides and aesthetic theories because we want to participate in the academic world—one whose tenure-line opportunities are dwindling as our numbers grow exponentially.

Woods joins a chorus of voices complaining that something is wrong with poetry these days, but he's not sure how to fix the problem or whom to blame. He criticizes creative writing programs not because they produce formulaic work but because they privilege taxonomy, dividing poems and poets into discrete groups and demanding loyalty to particular theoretical approaches until poet are stuck wriggling to the wall like Prufrock pinned by a formulaic phrase. Taxonomy is attractive, explains Wood, because it produces a sense of certainty, but poetry lives in the realm of the tenuous. "Literature matters to most people," he says, "not because it reinforces a dominant ideology or singular politic, but because it reflects tension and uncertainty."

Taxonomy flattens tension and uncertainty, but both characteristics easily coexist with the characteristics Wood would like to see more often in poetry--passion, connection, grace. "I take what I need from theory, history, or politics, and dispense with the rest," he claims, adding, "I believe that my work can reach other people--that it can matter not solely for its theme and message but for its crafting and attention to detail....I write with the belief that I will reach someone but once the poem is out of my hands and in the world, I also know I have no control over how people interpret or react to it."

So the poet stands humbly offering his bloody pound of flesh, but he can't make readers eat. He can only hope that it will be "good to eat a thousand years."

Avoiding the avalanche

Minutes after I told a whole host of people how great I felt after completing several exhausting projects, a great big boulder of responsibility unexpectedly crashed down on my shoulders. Lesson learned: she who shouts her joy from the mountaintops may dislodge an avalanche.

So I don't want to say this too loud, but here's a secret: I'm not taking any school work home for the weekend. I thought I had achieved a work-free weekend a few weeks ago, but I was mistaken; this time, though, I think I'm in the clear: I've graded all papers and exams, commented on an honors thesis, met with advisees and updated their files, prepared Monday's classes, turned in receipts and expense reports, posted documents regarding faculty governance, and cleared up all the urgent items on my desk.

A few long-term projects could use attention over the weekend, but here's the thing: my college laptop is no longer portable. After all the time and money our wonderful IT department has invested in keeping this laptop alive, they've finally decided it's not worth the effort and ordered a new one, which has not yet arrived. I don't dare unplug my college laptop to take it home, but my home computer lacks the programs for working on these long-term projects, so I guess I'll just have to force myself to take a weekend off.

Yes, I'm going home empty-handed...but let's keep it quiet, okay? I don't know how many more avalanches I can handle!

From write and learn to crash and burn

It looks like a pretty good idea in theory, but in practice? The jury is still out.

In a sophomore-level literature course that fulfills the Writing Proficiency requirement, one of the goals is to help students learn to write as a process involving a series of steps. In a straight writing course, I would devote plenty of class time to focused peer review and also offer my own comments on student drafts, but in a literature course, I can't devote quite so many class periods to peer review.

So for the past few semesters I've offered a compromise: for each of the first two papers, I devote a full class period to focused peer review and also require students to submit drafts for my comments. For the third and fourth papers, on the other hand, I schedule no in-class peer review, nor do I require submission of drafts, although I do offer to read and comment on drafts if students want my feedback. "By this point in the semester," I tell the class, "You should know what kind of help you need on your writing, and you should know where to find that help--by setting up informal peer-review sessions outside of class or by seeking individualized instruction from me or from the Writing Center."

Does it work? Sort of. A few students still send me drafts, and a few visit the Writing Center. I don't have any way to track whether they do any informal peer review outside class, but I certainly haven't seen any massive epidemic of wretched papers. Most students produce papers very similar in quality to their earlier work, and a few improve.

I'm a little concerned, though, about the exceptions. Every time I offer this compromise, a handful of students crash and burn--the ones most in need of help with their writing. If their earlier papers hover on the edge of coherence, their later papers (lacking peer review) fall over the edge into chaos. Students who early in the semester benefit from feedback on their drafts now fail to submit drafts for comments (because it's not required!) and also don't visit the Writing Center or show any other signs of seeking help. Theoretically, students who know the benefits of getting help and know the sources of help will be motivated to get help, but perhaps the theory is flawed.

One thing this system does really well is distinguish between students willing to seek help on their writing and those who will seek help only when it is required. What can I do with the second group: abandon them to their fate or find another way to motivate them? The jury's still out on that question.

We don't need no literary geniuses

Cranky? Okay, I'll admit it: I'm cranky, but you'd be cranky too if---

And that's where I have to stop, because most of the things that are making me cranky (1) are a normal part of my job (which I love) and therefore I need to just deal with it and move on, or (2) cannot be discussed in public.

So, um, nice weather we're having.

How's your basketball bracket doing? Ooh, look who's cranky now!

And speaking of sports, here's something to make all of us literary types a little cranky: in an article in Slate (read it here), Bill James wonders why we're "so good at developing athletes and so lousy at developing writers." Here's his argument in a nutshell:

We are not so good at developing great writers, it is true, but why is this? It is simply because we don't need them. We still have Shakespeare. We still have Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson; their books are still around. We don't genuinely need more literary geniuses. One can only read so many books in a lifetime. We need new athletes all the time because we need new games every day....

If that doesn't make you cranky, nothing will.

Trudge, nudge--oh, fudge!

I started the morning (for the second time) like a Queen making a Royal Progress around her Vast Domain--except that I was trudging tiara-less around a domain few would consider vast. A half-vast domain? Don't say it out loud. (I wish I could take credit for that very bad pun, but sadly, I can't even remember where I first heard it.)

This Royal Progress was not, strictly speaking, necessary. The documents I delivered to (nearly) every department on campus could have been distributed through the campus mail system, but I wanted to deliver them myself for a variety of not very compelling reasons:

1. My schedule is so crowded today that this walk around campus may well be my only chance for exercise. Call it Trudge-Aerobics.

2. I don't often get a chance to visit many of the departments on campus and see what's up, and after this morning I can tell you definitively what's up in many departments at 8:00 or 8:15 or 8:30 a.m.: namely, not much. I was happy to chat with some early-rising colleagues but found several department offices either empty or locked up tight.

3. An early-morning tour of campus seemed like an appropriate penance for my part in the comedy of errors that resulted in the need to distribute this particular document. If I had been a tad more diligent and undistracted, a big fat mistake could have been avoided and this document would not have needed to be created and distributed. (Any obfuscation is entirely intentional.)

4. I hoped that a brisk walk in the cool morning air would wash away the lingering effects of the first start to my morning, when a splitting headache and upset stomach awoke me at 3:45 a.m. and would not allow me to get back to sleep. How am I supposed to attend meetings, prepare classes, and respond to 18 freshman composition drafts on so little sleep? Trudge-Aerobics works for me!

Temporarily, at least. I'm alert now but I don't know how long it will last. If you hear me snoring in the middle of a meeting, do me a favor and give me a nudge. If my lack of alertness spreads, watch out for a vast campus-wide epidemic of Nudge-Aerobics. Or if not vast, maybe half-vast.

A Spring by any other name

One name won't do for a season that shows a different face every day. Call it the season of Too Many Coats at the Office: cold mornings make me choose warm outerwear, but midafternoon sunshine drives all memory of cold from my mind and I go home empty-handed. Next morning, the temperature is below freezing but where's my winter coat? Back at the office--with my raincoat and two light jackets.

Or call it the season of Wondering When It's Safe to Plant Pansies. They don't need as much warmth as other plants but they do need some. Is it warm enough yet? How about now?

One day it's the season of Welcoming Back Buzzards and the next day begins the season of Waiting for the Trilliums to Return. Soon it'll be the season of Getting Serious about the Lawn, quickly followed by House-Painting Season and the season of Who Moved My Umbrella?

Today it was the season of Only Occasionally Just Right: the fleece pullover I wore while walking the dog kept me uncomfortably cold in the shady spots, unbearably hot in the steep sunny spots, and Only Occasionally Just Right. But what else could I wear? All my coats are still in my office.

Going for the gold (star)

This morning I was talking to the pleasant young man who answered the phone at the motel in Monterey where my California Lit class stayed two weeks ago--have I lost you yet?--when he started apologizing for the weather. "I'm sorry you had such bad weather for your trip," he said, but I quickly corrected him: in a full week in San Francisco, Monterey, and environs, we got rained on only once.

"Well, it's done nothing but rain since you left," he pointed out, and he's right. I see in the news that Highway 1 to Big Sur is closed in places because of flooding, and those rich farm fields we viewed near Salinas are turning to mud. Let's give a gold star to whoever was responsible for the planning the weather on our class trip!

I'm not sure yet whether I'll get a gold star for planning the budget on the trip. In fact, I called Monterey this morning in order to ask about a discrepancy I discovered while assembling my receipts to submit to the business office: my college credit card was charged nine cents more than the amount shown on the motel's receipt. The two of us put our heads together but still couldn't figure out where the nine cents came from, and eventually I realized that the long-distance phone call was going to cost more than the nine cents I was trying to track down.

On Monday I'll submit this big batch of receipts, reports, and spreadsheets to the business office and the other entities with an interest in the trip. We were fortunate enough to get funding from several different sources, so I'll spend the afternoon Monday trotting around campus spreading joy in the form of receipts, one off by nine cents and one written entirely in some variety of Chinese and one almost entirely blank. Planning this kind of trip is an adventure in itself--one that doesn't stop until long after we've arrived back home.

Mickey vs. Muse

In a review in Commentary of The Oxford Book of Parodies (read it here), Rob Long asks the eternal question: "Why is Mickey Mouse more famous than Bugs Bunny?" He continues:

Mickey isn’t funny or interesting. He cannot produce an anvil or a Carmen Miranda hat out of the air. All in all, his “good mouse” act is a toothless, nice-guy bore.

But Bugs, on the other hand, can do accents, knows how to use basic weaponry, and looks terrific in drag. He’s a gender-bending gun nut who makes gleeful and hurtful fun of people with disabilities (Elmer Fudd—speech impediment). About the only respectable thing about him, from the perspective of the academic and cultural policemen, is that he appears to be a vegan.

This made me laugh--and then it made me want to buy the book. Bugs Bunny is my muse, but Mickey? Mice guys finish last!

This old house

Recently sighted on a campus near you: English majors who don't like to read. I've never understood why anyone who didn't like to read would pursue an English major, but on further examination, it generally turns out that the English major who doesn't like to read actually does like to read--just not the works we're assigning.

I sympathize. I had to read Main Street for my comprehensive exams and I resented every moment I spent with those insipid and predictable characters, but on the other hand, I knew that the novel influenced a whole generation of writers and therefore ought to be accorded some room in the mental space where my knowledge of literature resides, my internal House of Literature.

It starts small, a Little House in the Big Woods of the evolving mind, but by the time an English major completes a college degree and then a Ph.D., that House grows into an immense palatial library where the books hop of the shelves and converse freely at all hours. The foundation is built on books I may never use, if use is defined as incorporate into my research, writing, or teaching, but the House of Literature needs that foundation or it's in danger of falling down.

For instance, I'll probably never teach Pamela or Tristram Shandy. They're outside my field, and my colleague who has devoted many years to understanding them does a far better job of teaching them than I ever could. But that doesn't mean I regret having read them; they inform my understanding of the history of the novel. For the final paper in my Later American Novel class, I ask students to trace a particular idea or literary technique through novels published since 1900 and then predict what will happen next, but how can anyone speculate about where the novel is heading without some understanding of where it has been?

My internal House of Literature is built on reading, some of it dull and some unpleasant and some apparently pointless, but it's all there somewhere rattling around the attic or wandering the halls or rumbling through subterranean passages where half-forgotten texts conspire to create their potent home-brews that ferment and bubble and suffuse the entire House with fresh aromas.

When I open the door of that House, I never know who might be on the other side--Edna Pontellier or Captain Ahab, Huck Finn or Finn MacCool, Gandalf or Grendel's Mother--but I know someone will be there willing to sit down for a chat amongst the yeasty aromas. This House suits me just fine, but that doesn't mean I'm done building. I'll never be done as long as there are new books to read or old ones to rediscover. My greatest fear is that I'll someday knock on the door and find no one at home.

I enjoy watching my students build their own internal Houses of Literature, very different from mine but still impressive. Those who hate to read condemn themselves to cramped quarters where wind whistles through the cracks in the walls and the foundation constantly shifts, but that doesn't mean it's time to call in the wrecking crew. Shaky houses can be shored up, expanded, rescued from oblivion. All it takes is a willingness to read.

Don't cry for me, Raymond Carver

Today I introduce my American Lit students to two stories that always make me laugh or cry--"Do Not Go Gentle" by Sherman Alexie and "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver--and I sincerely hope that I can get through the discussion without dissolving into a big blubbering mess.

I hate crying in front of students. I cried in 2005 when I read a poem by David Citino to a class the day he died, but the poet had recently visited our campus and his death hit home. I cried the semester I kept teaching through cancer treatment and a group of students expressed their support with a particularly touching gift, but that year I spent a lot of time in tears.

Crying over a short story is another thing entirely, and today I get a double whammy. "Do Not Go Gentle" is hysterically funny as long as you focus on the image of poverty-stricken Native Americans chanting, singing, and drumming with the aid of an immense vibrator named Chocolate Thunder--and the happy ending helps too. Just don't think about the fact that it's set in a hospital ward full of dying children. I'm always amazed at how few students recognize the title as an allusion to the Dylan Thomas poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," so I start the class by getting someone to read the poem out loud. Okay young people, let's think about death!

And then let's think about despair! The unnamed narrator in Carver's "Cathedral" is so unpleasant at the start that I'm always amazed at how moving I find the ending, when the blind lead the blind into new insight and a sort of transcendence: "My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything. 'It's really something,' I said." It hits me right in the tear ducts every time.

But I can't teach while I'm blubbering so I try to breathe deeply and let Carver's words speak for themselves. Death and despair are essential to the human condition, but that doesn't mean we can't build from them something beautiful.

On the rebound

Geologists tell us that land masses can take thousands of years to rebound after glaciers retreat and take their immense weight with them. Today I feel as if I'm experiencing a thousand years of post-glacial rebound in a single day as a whole continent of weight lifts from my shoulders.

The provost search is over. The editing project is complete and approved and ready for publication. I took a class to California at just a smidgen over the projected budget. The poetry papers are graded. The daily assignments for freshman comp are coming to an end. And tonight I will preside at my penultimate faculty meeting before someone else takes over as Faculty Chair.

As all that weight drains from my shoulders, I feel something deep within me springing back to life. Goodbye glaciers! Hello spring!

Weekend worrier

My plan for the weekend was simple: take no work home and instead spend time cleaning the house, getting caught up on some reading, and attending a baseball game. The plan started going to pieces on Thursday morning with the onset of the Defective Sub Calls, or maybe it was Wednesday night with the Furnace Clang of Doom, or maybe it started in January with Search Committee Madness. At any rate I find myself at home today with a pile of grading, no radio, no car, and no way to make my work-free weekend a reality unless I run away from home on foot in the shoes I almost abandoned in California because they're falling apart.

Where to begin? Search Committee Madness resulted in no hire, so this week I spent a number of hours I cannot reveal interviewing internal candidates to serve in the interim. I collected poetry analysis papers in my American Lit class on Monday, but despite all the interviews, I made good progress on grading so I should have been able to finish up and bring no work home this weekend.

But I hadn't counted on the Furnace Clang of Doom. I don't know when the furnace started clanging because I was in California at the time, but last weekend my son-in-law, who can fix anything, diagnosed the problem, ordered the part online, and devised a way to make the furnace continue to provide heat without the clang while we await the arrival of the part. (For peace of mind, I heartily recommend marrying someone who can fix anything, and if you can't marry him yourself, get your daughter to marry him or, as a last resort, try kidnapping--except a person who can fix anything might possess a MacGyver-like ability to wriggle away.)

Anyway: the Furnace Clang of Doom started up again on Wednesday night. The clangs were timed perfectly, arriving just as I was about to drift off to sleep. I don't know how to make the clanging stop so I tried to rouse my husband, who could sleep through the Apocalypse. He resisted alertness, muttering odd and unhelpful phrases about turning socks inside out, but I finally applied sufficient motivation to get him to attend to the clanging and make it go away sometime after midnight.

The Defective Sub Calls started at 5 a.m. No, they weren't calling for Defective Subs; the calls themselves were defective. Normally, early-morning robo-calls offer the resident substitute teacher an opportunity to press 1 for "sign me up!" or press 2 for "go away and leave me alone!" These calls offered no robo-voice and no options, and they kept cycling around again and again, ringing us urgently to alertness about every six minutes.

With all that clanging and ringing and midnight stress, I was in no condition to grade a zillion papers on Thursday, and Friday was totally clogged with meetings, which is why I have a pile of poetry analysis papers to grade this weekend.

But I could put them off until tomorrow and spend the morning cleaning house while listening to my favorite Saturday-morning NPR shows...except the radio suddenly isn't working. How can I clean without "Car Talk" and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me?"

I could zip off to the nearest little town and buy a cheap radio...except my husband's car wouldn't start this morning and he was in too big a hurry to jump the battery so I told him to take my car to the Farmers' Market and he won't be back until around 4 this afternoon, long after my favorite NPR shows are over.

I could walk to the baseball game. Let's see, 17 miles each way...if I start now, I can probably get there before the seventh-inning stretch if my walking shoes don't fall to pieces first.

So I find myself in a silent but dirty house with papers to grade and floors to sweep and miles to go before I sleep and no way to get there except by walking.

This calls for a walk in the woods with the dog and the camera. Spring is coming! I welcome the season with open arms as long as it doesn't clang, ring, analyze poetry, or demand an interview.

Testing reality

I'm seeing a lot of online chatter about the SAT essay question asking students to comment on authenticity in reality television, and I don't know what to think (read about it here). Not so long ago, the SAT took criticism because its highbrow references might have discriminated against students who did not grow up attending regattas or listening to symphonies, but now the shoe is on the other foot: students unfamiliar with reality television are crying "Foul!"

I sympathize. Because we have no television service at home, most reality television is largely a myth to me. I've never watched American Idol. I saw Dancing With the Stars only once--in Czech. I saw a few episodes of Survivor during the second or third season but not since then. I hear people talking about these shows but I'm out of the loop, and I'm fine with that. But would my ignorance prevent me from responding to the SAT essay question on reality television?

According to Jacques Steinberg (writing on The Choice, a New York Times blog devoted to higher education admissions), the complete question reads like this:

Reality television programs, which feature real people engaged in real activities rather than professional actors performing scripted scenes, are increasingly popular.

These shows depict ordinary people competing in everything from singing and dancing to losing weight, or just living their everyday lives. Most people believe that the reality these shows portray is authentic, but they are being misled.

How authentic can these shows be when producers design challenges for the participants and then editors alter filmed scenes?

Do people benefit from forms of entertainment that show so-called reality, or are such forms of entertainment harmful?

Could I write an essay responding to that question despite my ignorance of reality television? Sure, but I've read Baudrillard. What about a high-school student who has spent his time attending regattas and listening to symphonies? He would have to focus on the idea of authenticity and whether simulation is harmful, but how convincing would his essay be without specific examples from reality television shows? Who would earn a better grade: a so-so student armed with a wealth of knowledge about reality television or a brilliant thinker and writer with no specific examples to back up his claims?

I hope the articulate student capable of saying something interesting about authenticity would earn high marks regardless of familiarity with reality television--that's the student I would prefer to have in my class. But then again, I'm not grading the SAT.

A soul and its alarms

I've been trying to explain to people why I loved The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry, the 2009 novel in which a reluctant detective armed only with a book, a bicycle, an umbrella, and an alarm clock rescues civilization from a nefarious plot to steal all the alarm clocks in a city.

See? You're already dozing off.

Trust me: it's a terrific book, capable of capturing my entire attention through two long, uncomfortable flights in crowded airplanes last weekend. It's a detective novel and a meta-detective novel at the same time, set in a Kafkaesque but thoroughly recognizable world set at a slight tilt from the real. The hero, Charles Unwin, wants only to be allowed to continue doing his job unnoticed, a difficult task for a man whose shoes always squeak:

At home he went about in his socks. That way he could avoid disturbing the neighbors and also indulge in the occasional shoeless swoop across the room, as when one is preparing a breakfast of oatmeal and the oatmeal wants raisins and brown sugar, which are in the cupboard at the other end of the room. To glide with sock-swaddled feet over a world of glossy planes: that would be a wondrous thing! But Unwin's apartment was smallish at best, and the world is unkind to the shoeless and frolicsome.

The stolid Unwin, squeakily shod, moves through the city slowly, deliberately, patiently piecing together the pieces of a puzzle involving criminal carnival workers, a sleep-walking janitor, an assistant who always carries her lunchbox, and a mountain of stolen alarm clocks:

Somewhere amid the hills of clocks, a bell began to ring, a futile attempt to wake some sleeper a mile or more away. To Unwin the sound was a hook to his heart: the world goes to shambles in the murky corners of the night, and we trust a little bell to set it right again. A spring is released, a gear is spun, a clapper is set fluttering, and here is the cup of water you keep at your bedside, here the shoes you will wear to work today. But if a soul and its alarms are parted, one from the other? If the body is left alone to its somnolent watches? When it rises--if it rises--it may not recognize itself, nor any of brief day's trappings.

In the course of the novel, Unwin comes to recognize himself as more than a mindless functionary serving a mysterious faceless Agency. I closed the book with the sound of alarm clocks ringing in my ears and immediately wanted more--but alas, Jedediah Berry has not yet published another book. When he does, I'll be waiting, hoping for another book like The Manual of Detection that can provide a wonderful wake-up call.

Serendipity, baby

I'm feeling my way around campus today, suffering from the aftereffects of jet lag and time change and the rigors of responsibility and many cramped hours of travel with six students, and I keep hearing the same question: "Would you do it again?"

My answer: Yes, but not today. Not tomorrow either. Give me some time to collect myself and wash my socks and sort through the piles of receipts and then we'll talk.

So many things went right on this trip: terrific students, wonderful weather (only one rainy day!), pretty good (and occasionally great) food, sparkling conversations about interesting authors at amazing sites. I especially enjoyed those moments of serendipity that can't be planned in advance, like the pit stop at a farm stand where we ate deep-fried artichoke hearts and fresh strawberries and gummy frogs, or the the time we accidentally stumbled upon the perfect place to pull off and hike on craggy rocks near Big Sur. My new motto: Serendipity, baby.

I'm not feeling particularly serene today because somehow the work I left piled on my desk didn't get done while I was gone, but classes are canceled while flood waters recede so I've got some time to work through the mess. The first thing I did when I returned to campus, though, was to print out a bunch of photos from the trip and post them on the English Department bulletin board so students can see them when they return to classes. We did it! We went to California and learned things and had fun and came back in one piece! And we could do it again tomorrow!

Well, maybe not tomorrow. Wednesday will do.

From one waterworld to another

The news from Japan is horrific (earthquake, tsunami, death and destruction) and the news from Ohio is distracting (rain, snow, floods, classes cancelled Monday to let the river recede), but the news from here is less dramatic: we're fine. Really. We appreciate all the phone calls and expressions of concern, but the tsunami warnings didn't affect our travel plans at all except that we had to cancel our visit to Point Lobos, which was closed because of the threat of high waves.

We saw some high waves, but they looked pretty normal for the beach we visited, which was posted all over with signs warning of dangerous waves and undertows. We sat on the sand and shared a picnic to the sound of crashing waves, our final visit to the Pacific before returning home. This morning we climbed the tower Robinson Jeffers built with his bare hands, a labor he compared to putting together words to make poetry. Tonight we're staying at an airport near the San Francisco airport so we can catch a 6 a.m. shuttle and fly back home, where a wet world awaits.

Swimming with the otters

First of all, we weren't swimming. We were sore and tired after a long day of walking around the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas and Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so when we found a rocky stretch of beach, we couldn't resist taking off our shoes, rolling up our pants, and wading in the water. I'm pretty sure this was the first time I've ever stuck my feet in the Pacific Ocean. It was cold. And sandy. And cold.

Then of course we had to sit and let our feet dry off before getting back into our shoes and socks, so we were sitting on a wall brushing sand off our toes when someone called out, "Otters!"

And there they were, two frolicsome otters diving and dining beyond the rocks. We had visited the otter exhibit inside the aquarium, but seeing them in the wild was somehow different, special, as if they were our own private personal otters. I wish I could take them home with me but it would be difficult to smuggle them through security ("These are not the otters you are looking for") and it would be hard to make them behave in the overhead bins.

I also wanted to take home the jellyfishes and the kelp forest and the teeny-tiny baby seahorses, but my favorite undersea creatures are the sea dragons. They look as if they were designed by cartoonists to star in a musical involving a great deal of dancing and singing. And swimming. With or without otters.

Big Sur rocks!

I'm standing on a crag jutting out into the Pacific, waves crashing on the rocks below and laughter floating through the air and I can't stop smiling. This morning we left the city behind and drove through insane traffic and constant shifts in terrain, through pine forests and artichoke fields, sand dunes and wind-weathered rock, arriving in Big Sur in time for lunch and stone-skipping lessons followed by a hike up a steep hill to a scenic waterfall in Pfeiffer State Park, which would have been wonderful enough in itself, but then we pulled off the highway at a serendipitous spot and found a rough path down to the cliff edge where we stood like Walt Whitman facing west from California's shores, "Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound."

Like Whitman we are children reveling in the wonders of earth and feeling both very old and utterly new. Not so long ago I lay awake with a bad case of the jitters after a bout of chemotherapy and to calm myself I planned long road trips including one along this highway between Big Sur and Monterey (read it here), but at the time I wondered whether I would ever drive this road and walk these cliffs. Tomorrow we travel to Salinas and Monterey to commune with John Steinbeck and in a few days I'll be ready, like Whitman, to "face home again, very pleas'd and joyous." Today, though, I'm here and I'm happy and I wonder how anyone could live here and not be a poet.

The house that Jack built

"Rest/Read" says the sign on the green mailbox. Next to the box is an inviting bench, and inside the box is a collection of short stories by Jack London. London himself rests not far from here, or his ashes do, buried in an urn beneath a mossy boulder. We're visiting the Jack London State Historic Site, the farm where the author spent his final days.

First we visit the ruins of the dream house London built in 1913, a massive structure of stone and redwood that burned before he could move in. It makes a lovely ruin. At the cabin where the author wrote his last books we see how he organized his ideas: scraps of paper covered with his notes are clipped with clothespins to ropes festooned across his sleeping porch. The view from the porch features a koi pond and herb garden and vineyards stretching into the distance.

We share a picnic lunch and listen to a guest lecturer by Dr. Charles Crow, who taught the California Lit class I took in grad school years ago but is now retired to California. We sit beneath trees and discuss London's work as Charles draws Jungian diagrams on an invisible blackboard. We rest. We read. We carry on, as Jack would want us to do.

Heard on the street

Woman on cell phone: "Yeah, I'm unhappy with my eyebrows, I'm trying to grow them out...."

Sign on the cash register at a coffee shop: "We would be happy to take your order after you've finished your cell-phone conversation."

Student finding sticks on the ground on the path to Coit Tower: "Look, they have magic wands!"

Helpful tour guide in Coit Tower elevator: "[indiscernible] the [unintelligible] when [incomprehensible] the [unimaginable]."

Woman trying to lure us into a restaurant in Chinatown: "Yummy yummy, yummy yummy, yummy yummy" (repeat x 8000).

Wordswalk

We walked most of the day through the streets of San Francisco and sometimes we walked on words. This morning in Jack Kerouac Alley next to City Lights Books a student read us poetry by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and this evening another student translated the characters written on the gateway to Chinatown and read from Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men.

In between we walked and walked: to Fisherman's Wharf to see the sea lions and the view across the bay, to eat fish and chips and bacon fudge and turn up our collars against the wind. Then we were off again, up to Coit Tower and down Lombard Street and then up again to Chinatown, where my students introduced a classmate to the joys of chopsticks and enjoyed an amazing meal.

Tonight my ankles and feet are complaining and my face feels tight from windburn, and I have a feeling I'll start the day tomorrow stiff and sore. But it makes me happy to recall how excited my students were to browse among the books at City Lights and then tramp around a city where words are underfoot everywhere we look.

Unhostile hostel

The light fixtures in the lobby of our hostel make me smile. Sidney opera house (upended) meets 60s mod to suggest modular clouds or birds with spectacular plumage or fat floating angels. Whatever they are, they amuse me.

The hostel as a whole amuses me. It's noisy and busy and full of lively voices chattering in many languages, but it's bustling with a freshness I find relaxing. I've never stayed at a youth hostel before and although I chose this one primarily because it provides very cheap lodging in a great location, it's turning out to be a terrific experience. The students are staying in dorm-style rooms with visitors from other countries, but I have a private room about the size of my childhood bedroom (except I don't have to share the bathroom with my brothers). True, we have to make our own breakfast and wash our own dishes, but we can do that. Besides, it's a small price to pay for lodging in the heart of San Francisco, just three blocks from Union Square.

Now I just need to get my internal clock adjusted so I can sleep past 4 a.m.

Trees and fog and mud and trees

Raindrops plop gently on umbrellas, shoes slop through mud, and students chatter down the trail until, suddenly, silence and a whispered "Wow." That's how our tramp through Muir Woods started this morning, and it proceeded from mud to slop to Wow to "where are we?" A two-hour hike, a satisfying lunch, and an illuminating presentation made for an invigorating day. Tomorrow: Beat walk and Chinatown. Today: mud and wet and wow, and now it's time to relax.

Step across this line

I think it started with the liminal nesting dolls. There we all were enjoying our four-hour layover in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport (which showed up on the boarding passes as "Minneapolis SPA" but we never found the spa) when a student said, "This is like liminal nesting dolls!" Meaning, I think, that we were straddling several overlapping thresholds, in the middle of our trip and the middle of the midwest while preparing to cross over to our California adventure.

We stepped across that line and made it to San Francisco, but not before attempting to assemble a syllabus for a Concepts of Place class focusing on Hell. What would you put on the reading list? A student suggested House of Leaves and another called for Dante's Inferno, but when I asked how we could plan a class trip to Hell, the answer was simple: Virgil Airlines.

Maybe next time. This week I think we'll stick with California.

Countdown

Ready to go? I suppose so: midterm exams graded, grades submitted, classes prepped for my return to campus.

Bags packed (mostly), petty cash picked up, maps and receipts and itineraries all present and accounted for.

Editing project submitted. Desk cleared (mostly). Bills paid? Not yet.

Cell phone, camera, netbook charged and packed and chargers packed. Still figuring out how to send text-messages. Can't find the apostrophe. Use question mark instead?

The countdown has started; we leave first thing tomorrow morning. I'm ready for California--but is California ready for me?

Listing

I live by To-Do Lists but this week as I prepare for our class trip to California I'm also working on a list of things not to do--may I call it a To-Don't List?

Don't think about bedbugs.

Don't worry about what the spouse will eat all next week. The spouse can take care of himself.

Don't start reading any big fat novels that can't be finished before Saturday.

Don't think about earthquakes. Or plane crashes. Or bedbugs.

Don't worry about the weather.

Don't pro-actively apologize for the weather. The weather can take care of itself.

Don't pack until the laundry is done. And don't pack stupidly. In fact, don't do anything stupidly.

Finally, don't forget to have fun--after everything gets crossed off the list!

Excuse the schmooze

I need an excuse. Well, I have an excuse, but it simply won't do, so I need a better one--more plausible. Somehow I don't believe my freshman composition students will be impressed if I confess that I haven't quite finished grading their midterms because I was too busy schmoozing and noshing.

Do young people these days even use the words schmoozing and noshing? And if they do, are they likely to believe that I'm the kind of person who shoves the grading aside in order to spend an entire day chatting randomly with colleagues while nibbling at the cheese tray and popping into my mouth the occasional olive?

Nevertheless, that's how I passed most of day. Today we held an open house for the Center for Teaching Excellence where I live and breathe and do my best work, so all day long we entertained faculty, staff, and administrators who dropped by for a schmooze and a nosh. The biggest crowd showed up around noon for lunch and the prize drawings, but we had a steady stream of visitors all day long, leaving me only a few brief disconnected moments to prepare for class. I can't grade papers while schmoozing and noshing, and by the time the open house closed its doors, I had to dash off to another long and complicated meeting, which left me too exhausted to remember to take any work home.

My freshpersons will expect their graded essays early tomorrow but I've read just over half of them. Can I possibly get up early enough to grade nine freshman essays before 9 a.m.? If not, I'll just have to fess up: Sorry, students. My dog ate your papers.