Heads up!

The physical therapist was watching my father stand and sit and walk so she could suggest improvements in form (and I wonder how much of her job involves trying to teach old dogs new tricks). "I notice that you walk with your shoulders slumped and your head down," she said, and Dad explained that he's always worried about tripping over something. The therapist ticked off the ways this posture could make his life miserable--shoulder pain, back pain, neck pain, headaches--and I realized: I do that. I walk with my shoulders slumped and my head down as if on the lookout for a gaping chasm that might suddenly open up in front of my feet. It's hard to take the long view when you're constantly looking into the chasm.

So this morning on my walk I resolved to walk with my shoulders back and my head up, which was particularly difficult when I was walking up a steep hill on gravel. (In Florida all my walks were on flat, smoothly paved sidewalks, which resulted in knee pain and blisters. Apparently my body is so accustomed to walking in deplorable conditions that it considers the smooth path an insult.)

I walked up the steep hill through the woods with my head up and when I reached the ridge on top my head was still up so that the first thing I saw when I got out of the woods was lightning striking in the distance and black clouds rolling my way. You don't want to be walking on the highest ridge in the area when the lightning bolts start to fly, so I moved off the ridge and hustled on home with thunder urging me on my way.

We need the rain and I made it home without getting blisters or being struck by lightning or falling into any gaping chasms--and I kept my head up. Some days that's about as good as it gets.

In the uneasy chair

Here I am at the Orlando airport (no sign of Casey Anthony!) where an adorable little blond girl who looks about three years old is begging to be taken to Starbucks. We're surrounded by gift stores touting Disney toys and Sea World t-shirts and Space Center hats but all this toddler wants is a trip to Starbucks. Orlando: a whole different world.

Or maybe it's just Airportland that's different--Atlanta, Minneapolis, Dallas, Milwaukee, or wherever big airplanes gather to ingest and spit out passengers. In John Henry Days, Colson Whitehead's much-traveled protagonist calls the international airport environment Terminal City, as if travel were an incurable disease.

Not many people are capable of being at ease in an airport. I see parents trying to reign in the exuberance of children who've had a few too many days of constant Disneyfication, and to my left a large section of seating is bubbling with teens in yellow t-shirts touting a soccer team. In the center of the concourse two guys are tossing a football back and forth and trying to avoid trampling travelers who lead luggage by a leash. No one sits still except one old guy snoozing in his chair, drool dribbling down his chin, his neck assuming an angle suggesting an urgent need for chiropractic care.

Scheduling conflicts brought me to the airport three hours before my flight, but as airports go, Orlando is not a bad place to spend a few hours. I have a book and the Atlantic's summer fiction issue and the airport offers excellent free wi-fi. I briefly considered getting a haircut while I'm waiting, but do I really want to be confined to an airplane seat while little bits of hair slide down the middle of my back? That would be one uneasy chair.

So instead I'll sit and watch and take my ease in Terminal City. I'll open my book and jump into some fictional world until the restless airport life resolves into a persistent low hum, Terminal City's version of the music of the spheres.

A call in the night

At 6 a.m. in my parents' neighborhood, the moon hangs like a spotlight above the oaks and the gentle ssssp-ssssp of automatic sprinklers is the only sound that breaks the morning silence. A man jogs past with four dogs on leashes--no, five--and then another man pedals past wearing a bike helmet topped with flashing red lights. "Where's the emergency?" I want to ask, but instead I turn away from traffic and toward a quieter neighborhood near a lake. My internal map is out of date here I spend some time going in circles on brick streets where tiny granny houses sit side-by-side with McMansions of the Rich and (maybe) Famous. Finally I find the lake and step back onto Genius Drive.


This is the point where we used to get off our bikes and push them through heavy sand through an orange grove. We would carry a bag of stale bread to toss toward the peacocks that wandered among the trees or perched on branches sending out their piercing call.


In 1972 when my father preceded the family to Florida, he rented a house in a quiet neighborhood but kept being awakened in the middle of the night by what sounded like a woman calling for help. A few times he got up in the night and went out to the yard trying to pinpoint the direction of the call, and he kept expecting to see news reports about murder and mayhem invading the area. Finally, a neighbor filled him in on the source of the calls: peacocks in the orange groves on the other side of the lake.


I heard that distinctive "Help!" again today but didn't see any peacocks--or any orange groves either. The old dirt road is paved now and lined with fresh new ostentatious houses all looking as if they were squeezed out of the same McMansion factory. It's a great place to walk and even though I didn't see any peacocks, I did spot a blue heron soaring over the lake. On the way back I walked past our first home in Florida, the house where my dad first heard the peacocks. It's orange. It wasn't a particularly attractive house when it was green, but now it's simply hideous.

Orange house but no orange groves: I can see why people would want to live in such a lovely place, but the heat is oppressive and walking on hard pavement gives me blisters. I feel selfish for wanting so badly to get back to Ohio, but I need my gravel roads and my hills and my dog and my birds and my blackberries. Today we'll help my mom celebrate her 75th birthday in the rehab center and tomorrow I'll pack my bag. It was a call for help that brought me to Florida and when I'm back in Ohio, I'll be constantly alert for that distinctive call that can pierce the night and reach across the miles: "Help!"

Only one of these times it won't be peacocks.

I dunno

My mom is in rehab. My husband is in Ohio. My son is in Idaho. Together, they're in Ohidaho or Idahio. Add Mom to the mix and they're all three in Rehabohidaho.

My dad is in the living room dozing off in front of a television with the volume turned up so loud I'm sure they can hear it in Idohiohab.

(I keep writing "Idago." I'da gone a few days ago but I'm a-going back to Ohio on Wednesday.)

I'm in Florida. Bored in Florida: Borida. Floored.

Flabbergasterfloriboridastardusterutterlyexhausted.

Is there an auto-pilot for this thing? Because I need a nap.

Hot and cold

If I stay in Florida much longer, I'll need to buy a hat--and a sweater. It's stinking hot here but I've been spending too much time shivering inside Mom's rehab facility and Dad's church, and when I go out for a walk, the sun gets in my eyes.

No walk for the past two days because we've had too many places to be and too much rain, but this morning I was determined to walk until I could see a lake--not just slivers of lake between houses, but open water. It took me twenty minutes walking on pleasant shady streets to get to a stretch of lake with reeds and boathouses in the foreground and cypress trees in the distance. I passed plenty of old pale people walking big dogs and young dark people mowing lawns and trimming bushes, but I didn't see any middle-aged mottled people like me.

Then I turned a corner onto a busy main road and found my people in the stream of rush-hour traffic. There they are, going to work to earn a living so they can pay for the lawn care and the dogfood and the retirement plan. I'm the one who's out of place, wandering aimlessly on a weekday morning.

I walked only a block on that busy road but it was all sunshine all the time so I soon started to wilt. Where are all my hats? Back home in Ohio, of course, along with my sweaters. I need to either go shopping or go home.

Brain-squeeze

What I really want to do this morning is go down to my berry patch and pick blackberries, a little difficult since my blackberry patch is in Ohio and I'm in Florida and my arms don't stretch that far. I wish I had a remote control device that would allow me to wake up my Ohio family and send them down to the blackberry patch to pick berries, and while they're at it they could check on the zucchini and pick some lettuce and radishes too, but I don't have a device like that and I don't know where to get one.

I text my son reminders to pull the buds off my basil plants. Has anyone mowed the front yard, cleaned the bathrooms, swept the floors? Who's taking Hopeful for long walks?

E-mails remind me of work awaiting back on campus. I'm keeping up with my summer online class pretty well but I'm having trouble focusing on other projects. Between taking my Dad to doctors' appointments and making sure my Mom is getting the care she needs, I can't seem to find time to think, and when I try to think, my brain feels squeezed.

Maybe it's time to stop thinking for a while. Stop thinking about blackberries and lettuce and basil buds and bathrooms and mowing. Just stop.

Yes: a little mental vacation. Just what the doctor ordered.

Diagnosis: tedium

How many hospital-themed television dramas have I watched over the years? From Marcus Welby, M.D., to E.R., House, and Gray's Anatomy, I'll bet I've seen thousands of episodes, but I never saw one that came close to the sort of hospital drama I've experienced this week: waiting followed by nothing much going on followed by more waiting. You've never seen a hospital drama called Waiting Room, have you? And for good reason! Nothing much happens, and it takes an awful lot longer than 50 minutes to happen in.

House gives you intriguing puzzles and Gray's Anatomy gives you romance, but they tend to leave out the pure unadulterated tedium of the average hospital visit. Boring boring boring boring. I never before realized just how exhausting it can be to sit around in chairs all day long waiting for something to happen, which usually turns out to be nothing much after all.

They lie, those television hospital dramas. Lie lie lie lie. And after four days of enduring the genuine tedium of hospital life, I'm good for nothing except lying down. All that boredom wears me out.

Exit, pursued by zamboni

I was sitting in my mother's hospital room this morning trying to keep track of all the medical personnel moving through when I heard what sounded like a train going by out in the corridor. Great, I thought, now I'm imagining things too--except it wasn't a hallucination. Out in the hall a guy was riding past on a floor-waxer the size of a zamboni.

I'm fine with zambonis at the hospital as long as they stay in the corridor. We needed a traffic cop this morning to keep the steady stream of people moving: nurses and students nurses and physical therapists a dietician and a cardiologist and a nephrologist and a case manager and a visitor and the cleaning staff and the person who brings in the meals I don't remember who else paid a visit. Everything was better today, all vital signs and tests and mobility and alertness and every measure of health, so if all goes well tonight, she'll be moved tomorrow to a rehab facility so she can build up her strength and (eventually) come home.

Best of all, my Mom is back. "I don't know where I've been," she says, but we're thrilled to see that she seems to be returning.

Who's driving this train?

My mother has always been a tiny person and in the hospital bed she looks shrunken, but when she gets the notion to move, you'd better not stand in her way. She wants to be up and out of here but she's not quite sure where here is and she's certainly not capable of getting anywhere on her own, so they're keeping her in gentle restraints.

She used to come home from her hospital shifts and talk about how she had to move a big stubborn patient around or climb up on top of another patient so she could thump on his chest when his heart stopped, and now she's the one being moved around and poked and prodded--and refusing to listen to the nurses.

She asks about things she's lost--her shoes, her purse--and wants to make sure she doesn't lose any more. "Let's just keep everyone together," she says. "We don't want to lose track of the kids."

"Where is the Gray Goose?" she asks, and I ask her who the Gray Goose might be. "Your son the pilot," she says. "He's the Gray Goose."

"I never took the time to figure out what I wanted to do," she says, but in her alternate reality she's doing some amazing things. "I tried deep-sea diving," she said, "but I didn't take to it."

And later: "Who but me would stand here trying to direct this train?"

And when someone calls on the phone, she speaks coherently but can't quite figure out how to sign off. "Happy....happy....happy goodbye!" she says, and she seems delighted.

Other times she is less delighted. I hate to see her so confused and confined and unable to cope with the way her body and mind are betraying her, so it's a relief to see her smiling and laughing.

But you'd better not stand in the middle of the tracks when she's trying to direct the train.

Can't go home again (again)

Last night's walk shared one element with my usual summer walks back in Ohio: the heat. I need to remember to take water with me if I'm going to sweat that much.

I walked on roads just as twisty as the ones back home in Ohio, except in Florida I'm not walking on gravel or climbing steep hills and I don't have Hopeful with me to share the fun. I saw live oak instead of sycamore and crepe myrtle instead of milkweed, and I saw more cars in a block than I normally see in three miles. No deer, wild turkeys, groundhogs, or foxes here; just lots of people walking interesting dogs.

I walked along a street where I used to sell Girl Scout cookies door to door and I passed houses where I washed windows to earn money for a trip with my church youth group. I didn't see a soul I knew, but I haven't lived here since about 1980 so that's hardly surprising. A house up the block from my parents still bears the name of my seventh-grade English teacher. I wonder whether she'd remember me?

I once carried within me a flawless map of the neighborhood, but now the roads blend together. I turned a corner and suddenly found the football field where I played flute in the marching band (until I quit the band to join the school newspaper, instantly improving the quality of both institutions). With streets named Loch Lomond, Dunblane, and St. Andrews and a school named Glendridge (where the school colors were Stewart plaid), it's a wonder that we didn't have bagpipes in the marching band.

There are no hills here but I made a point of walking as close as I could get to the nearest lake, although I caught only a few glimpses of water between the houses. New streets and new developments have risen from the orange groves, and one of these days I'll explore them. It doesn't feel quite like home, but it's comfortable and for now I suppose it'll do.

Ultramysterious

This morning when I arrived in Orlando, an old friend picked me up at the airport and our conversation veered between our parents' health problems and our children's life choices. We're accustomed to acting as daughters and mothers so it's disorienting to be called on to mother our mothers.

When I entered my mother's hospital room, I got an inside look at her beating heart. It didn't look much like a heart to me, but the cardiology dude running the portable ultrasound machine assured me that the black-and-white blurry swirl of lub-dub, lub-dub was indeed my mother's heart. Beating.

Who can explain the mystery of a mother's heart? During our visit she often seemed quite lucid, expressing pride in her children and grandchildren and reminding my dad to take his potassium supplements, wrap a gift for a friend from church, and put some bills in the mail. But then suddenly she would swerve into an alternate universe. "I dreamed that they buried me," she said. "Don't let them bury me."

We won't, I promise, as long as that strong mother's heart keeps beating.

Green light to go!

I was sitting in my Volvo at an intersection this afternoon when I noticed that the light had changed--to red. Wait a minute: if the light just changed to red, what color has it been all this time?

Apparently my brain has left for Florida without me. I'm flying to Orlando early Friday to take over from my brother, who has been helping my parents cope with their health problems this week, but the brain has already left the building. I need to be there--to see for myself, to make myself useful, to lift some burdens. I don't know exactly what I'll find but I know it's time to go.

I'm suddenly reminded of the Grand Prix Raceway ride at Disney World, that little theme park just down the road from my parents' house, a place where I spent an inordinate amount of time during my teen years. You'd stand in that long winding line, the Florida sun beating down and sweat mingling with sunscreen pouring down your face, and finally arrive at the entry point, where you'd settle into the tiny race car and await those magic mechanical words: "Green light to go!" The ride itself was about as exciting as a few laps around the lawn on a riding mower, but those words seemed to promise entry into a world of speed and exaltation.

Today I'm in the long twisty line, standing and sweating and waiting to get moving. Will this journey be more like a thrill ride or a few laps around the lawn? All I know for now is that I've got a green light and I'm ready to go.

Lost it in the sun

It was a beautiful day for baseball and fireworks and stadium hotdogs with mustard, even though we were sitting with the sun shining directly in our faces in seat so high up that we had to wear blinking lights on our backs to warn away airplanes approaching Cleveland Hopkins airport, and it's always a good day when the Indians beat the Yankees, especially when I can witness the event in the company of my adorable offspring and extended family, so yesterday was great, even if we did have to drive back late last night after the game so I could get up early this morning and get spiffed up for the memorial service for my colleague who died Saturday.

So I already had mixed feeling but even so I wouldn't have enjoyed the game so much if I'd known what I would find in the four messages on my telephone answering machine when we arrived home at 2:30 this morning:

1. That my mother had been admitted to the hospital Monday morning.
2. That when my father told me Sunday that everything was "fine," he meant "fine" in the sense of "not fine."
3. That it may be a few days before we know what's wrong with my mom, and meanwhile Dad is still recovering from his recent stroke and surgery and needs some help.

So it looks like I need to go to Florida. My brother will be there today and will let me know what I can do and when. It feels wrong to have enjoyed a baseball game while people I care about were suffering and needing help, but it's hard to know what to do when the sun gets in my eyes.

Fireworks and a lost friend

I thought I saw spiders and peonies falling from the sky last night, and according to Slate's guide to identifying fireworks, I was right: different varieties of the rockets' red glare are properly called spiders, peonies, fish, willows, chrysanthemums.

We joined 11,000 people gathered on a hillside at the Blossom Music Center to hear the Cleveland Symphony play Gershwin and Bernstein and Ives and Sousa (Stars and Stripes Forever, of course) and Duke Ellington and Scott Joplin and, for a finale, The 1812 Overture accompanied by cannons. We heard at least a dozen different languages being spoken and saw people of every (star and) stripe--women with scarf-covered heads or flesh-baring sundresses, young boys in skullcaps or glowsticks, people of all ages wearing every possible variety of red-white-and-blue attire--but when the fireworks started, every head turned toward the sky and every face smiled.

My colleague Mike would have liked that moment. He was a champion smiler who often induced smiles in others, counseling distraught students through their angst and moving them closer to happiness and peace, and he never stopped working to promote greater acceptance of diversity on campus. He would have loved to see such a variety of people coming together on a lovely July evening to celebrate freedom.

But he died in a motorcycle accident Saturday, leaving behind a wife and child and a grieving campus. Tomorrow at the memorial service we will trade fireworks for tears, but last night the fireworks made me think of Mike Harding and appreciate what he tried to accomplish:

All those people.

All those colors.

All those smiles.

Friday poetry challenge: unfinished business

Yesterday I wrote about that delicious feeling of accomplishment provided by mowing the meadow, the same feeling I get when I check a big project off my to-do list. I'm reminded, though, that the activities I value the most are never really done. I'll never be done reading as long as books keep being published and I'll never be done teaching as long as ignorance remains a renewable resource, and when it comes to enjoying my family, there's really no imaginable end-point.

The ubiquity of unfinished business became clear to me earlier this week. I was trying to think of a way to commemorate the fact that I've survived two years since my cancer diagnosis, and I asked my husband what I ought to do.

"Keep surviving," he said.

Now there's a plan!

Another plan is to write poetry celebrating unfinished business:

Write a line (insert paren-
theses); delete, revise,
replace, rewrite
a line (delete paren-
theses); add comma,--
no! a dash (insert paren-
theses); replace a verb,
a noun, (delete paren-
theses); full stop? (insert
parentheses).

Now it's your turn: if you can't put a fork in it and call it done, then turn it into poetry.

Mow better blues

Mowing the lower meadow is, first, a logistical problem: find the tractor key, find the right gas can for diesel fuel, get the fuel, fill up the tractor--finally on the way!

Next it becomes a geometry problem: what's the most efficient way to mow an irregular shape without leaving behind those annoying little wedges? Finish the small end first or keep circling the entire perimeter?

At one point it's a power problem: the meadow looks fairly flat, but the mower lets us know just how much the ground falls off over in the back corner, where the ground stays moist and the grass grows thick and tall. Mowing uphill through thick grass while making a sharp turn to the right--the tractor bogs down and stalls, and then I'm rolling backward toward the creek. Where did you say the brakes are on this thing?

But mostly mowing the lower meadow is a getting-away-from-your-problems problem. It's almost mindless: follow the lines around and around, swinging the occasional loop to cut the corners, and then follow the lines again. Scare up a field mouse or two and watch the birds lingering amidst the cuttings, but otherwise, just follow the track already laid down and keep on mowing.

I'm not a terrific mower--my son does a neater job and my husband a swifter one, but at the moment, I'm available, so off I mow, putting my mind in neutral and the tractor in gear. After I've shaved down that last thin wedge of tall grass, I survey the interlocking rings, stripes, and wedges I've left behind, evidence of an afternoon's labor. In my line of work, it's not often that I can point to something tangible and say "I did that," but mowing the meadow offers clear evidence that I've left some sort of mark on the world.

Until the rain starts again.

Wall-to-wall car pets

So many things to think and do today but I keep getting distracted by the knowledge that I have mice in my car.

Let me repeat that: I have MICE. In my CAR.

That's just wrong.

The good news is that they're probably not living in the car. They're unlikely to find food and water in there, although they've been quite successful at tearing up tissues and distributing them (and their droppings) all over the back seat and under the front seats and in the way-back and even in the spare tire compartment.

I never noticed any problems until last week after I took the car in for new rear shocks and also got the air conditioning fixed. My wonderful mechanic cleared a bunch of leaves and things out of the fan housing, so now I can run the AC without hearing what sounds like a bike with playing cards in the spokes.

On Friday I noticed a few bits of tissues on the back seat but didn't think anything of it, but I left a jacket back there and this morning it was covered with mouse droppings.

On the drive to campus this morning I kept thinking about all the damage mice can do: wreck upholstery, chew wires, clog vents.

They could come out for a visit while I'm driving and startle me into swerving into the path of a semi.

Or they could die.

Dead mice in the AC system: there's a scenario I don't want to think about, especially since I may need to drive this car to Florida on a moment's notice. (Because my dad had a stroke last week and has surgery today, which is one of the things I ought to be thinking about instead of devoting so many brain cells to the fact that I have MICE in my CAR.)

Who wants to drive around in summer heat with a dead mouse in the fan housing?

My sweet hubby put some mouse poison in the tissue box the mice seem to find so attractive. It's the sort of poison that will make them thirsty and drive them out of the car to find water, so he assures me that I shouldn't end up with dead mice in the vents. (But if you're riding with me, take my advice: stay away from the tissues.)

Mice in my car.

The poison might drive them out of my car, but how can I prevent them from scurrying around all day in my brain?

One of a kind

Q: Why is there only one Eiffel Tower?
A: Because it eats its young.

I've been telling this joke to everyone I know for the past few days, with mixed results. Mostly it has been received in puzzled silence. My son-in-law laughed, but only after my daughter handed him the phone with the words, "Mom wants to tell you a joke and you're sort of required to laugh." Would he have laughed otherwise? He's an engineer, so maybe so.

I encountered the joke in the book Engaging Humor by Elliott Oring, who is known for having written the definitive account of the history of the dumb blond joke. "Blond Ambition and Other Signs of the Times" is required reading when I teach humor theory, but I've never read the chapter in which he introduces the Eiffel Tower joke. He analyzes the joke in a brutally humorless paragraph that includes the following helpful statement: "Since the Eiffel Tower is not a living organism, it does not eat or reproduce anything, and it seems absurd to explain its singularity in such terms."

Well, duh.

But even after Oring takes scalpel in hand to subject the joke to this brutal dissection, I still find it funny. (The joke, not Elliott Oring, whose name rhymes with...never mind. Cheap shot.) That's right: for me, the Eiffel Tower joke remains impervious to the depredations of the humor theorist.

Which is why I find it odd that others do not share my delight. It eats its young! What a perfect answer! I picture a monstrous Mommy Eiffel giving birth to little baby towers only to gobble them right up before they can leave the nest. I get the giggles just thinking about it, but then I tell the joke and meet a blank stare and try to explain and I end up sounding like Elliott Oring.

Boring!

Am I the only one who finds this joke funny? Am I doomed to spend my days emitting humorless explanations about the reproductive habits of a tourist attraction? The Eiffel Tower and I have this in common: we're one of a kind. Except I don't eat my young. I just bore them to death.

Friday poetry challenge: postponed poetry

Grief, heartache, despair, and death can inspire great poetry, but nothing kills the poetic impulse like faculty governance.

Committee-produced blather is the antithesis of poetry. Poetry has no regard for Robert's Rules of Order. Contentious meetings stomp on poetry's feet. The muse flees before the reading of minutes. Meetings have drained my creative juices. I can't produce.

But you can! (Please?) Poetry of any form on any topic...even if it's not Friday anymore.

Meeting adjourned.

Grapevine jungle

What happens when you plant a bunch of grapevines on a steep, fertile, well-drained slope and then ignore them for a few years?

They grow. Along with other things.

I can't even remember exactly when we planted the grapevines, but I know we had the best intentions: we would let the wee slips establish themselves for a while and then pound in some metal fence-posts and tie up some baling twine and train the vines to grow along this homemade arbor. Our little vineyard would eventually cover the steep unmowable slope stretching between the berry patch and the driveway.

But somehow we got distracted. One summer someone (possibly me) weed-whacked that whole slope, including the grapevines. The next summer someone (definitely me) weed-whacked the slope while someone else located the grapevines and held them up out of harm's way.

One summer we had a wedding and surgery, and the next summer we were recovering from cancer treatment. Occasionally I would glance at that overgrown hillside and wonder whether any grapevines could survive the onslaught of weeds, but mostly I didn't think about them at all.

But that didn't stop them from growing. I knew we needed to address the grapevine issue when the vines starting snaking their way across the driveway. From above, the whole patch looked like a riot of tall weedy green with the occasional grape leaf lifting its head above the fray; we had no idea what we might find until we hacked our way into the jungle.

And it felt like a jungle out there: with the temperature in the 90s and high humidity, wading into that sea of weeds put me in mind of the boat-hauling scene in The African Queen, except with horseflies instead of leeches. Weeds make miserable flyswatters, as the welts on my legs would attest.

We found ironweed up to our eyeballs, multiflora roses reaching out to scratch our legs, a few small poison ivy plants hiding amidst the weeds--and grapevines, many of them, climbing among the weeds to form a huge matted mess of foliage. We pulled weeds and followed vines until we'd isolated the source, and we worked on pounding in posts and tying up twine until stormclouds rolled in. The last place anyone wants to be in a lightning storm is out on a hillside pounding on metal fenceposts.

So we left the job half done, but we'll get to the rest of it soon. With a little pruning and some TLC, those grapevines ought to eventually recover from the years of neglect. I look forward to the day when we'll pick our first grapes, but meanwhile, you'd better be careful. It's a jungle out there.

Nothing about anything

"You can write about anything," she said, but really? Anything? There's an awful lot of anything in the world. How could anyone possibly write about that?

Take hedgehogs--please. I'm sure someone can write about hedgehogs, but that someone can't be me. I don't know diddly about hedgehogs, so how can I write about them? (Unless asserting my inability to write about hedgehogs qualifies as writing about them.)

The list of things I can't write about would have to include abacus, ailerons, anaconda, Antietam, Asperger's Syndrome, Angelina Jolie, and the Alps--and those are just the As. I can't write about Belgium, carborundum, deltoids, or (to skip a whole bunch of letters) shimmy-dampers. My son the pilot could tell you all about shimmy-dampers, but once I've told you that, I've told you everything I know about the topic.

"Go on," she said. "Just write. About anything."

But I can't! Writing about something is hard enough--now you want me to write about anything too? Harrumph to that. No one can write about anything. Someone can write about something--and at the moment, this someone can write about nothing.

"Anything," she said.

There: I've written about it. Satisfied?

Well-protected weeds

Tell me, butterflies: of all the wildflowers in all the meadows in all the world, why did you have to land on the one surrounded by poison ivy?

Milkweed, daisies, butterfly weed all abound right up next to the path, but you couldn't stop there, could you? You had to flutter off to feed in the middle of the poison ivy. And I had to follow.

What made me think it was a good idea to go bounding up the hill after butterflies without first putting on long pants and high socks?

I couldn't get close to you this time, butterflies, but don't worry, I'll be back.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Friday poetry challenge: acronymophilia

For reasons too complicated to explain, a colleague and I spent a ridiculous amount of time this week trying to come up with a way to use the word FUEL as an acronym. The L could refer to Learning, of course, and the E suggests a variety of interesting verbs--enhancing, engaging, empowering, equipping--but we kept running aground on the first two letters.

Maybe it's time to choose a new acronym.

Or better yet, let's write an acrostic poem!

Full stop: empty tank--
Utter desolation.
Exxon near. Move your rear!
Leg it to the station.

Summer heat slows your feet;
Tar oozes like treacle.
One more drop--top it up!
Power to the people.

Okay, that's pretty silly, but isn't that what summer's for? Your turn now!

Not summer camp

Two weeks into my summer online writing course, I've lost another student and possibly a third. I've read that completion rates for online courses are low all over and now I'm starting to understand why. Since summer registration opened and students started asking about the course, I've been fighting two common misconceptions: online courses are (1) easy and (2) self-paced.

Now it's possible that some online courses are easy and I suppose it's also possible that my online course is easier than the same course would be in a face-to-face setting (although I doubt it), but I have consistently drilled into students one simple message: in an upper-level writing course, expectations are high. I regularly require my freshman composition students to write at least 1000 words each week, so why should students in an advanced writing course expect any less?

And I understand that one of the attractions of an online course is that students can squeeze in the course work around other activities, like work or travel or having a life; however, this doesn't mean the schedule doesn't matter. I've created a syllabus that will help students build writing skills over time, mastering one technique before moving on to the next, which doesn't work if they're postponing assignments and then trying to complete them in one fell swoop at the end of the eight weeks. Further, as in any advanced writing course, I expect students to read and comment on each other's writing assignments and to revise their writing in response to suggestions, which won't work at all if students are all at different stages in the syllabus. Online or not, deadlines count. Late work will not be accepted. There are no make-ups or extra credit assignments. Submit the assignment when it's due or lose the points.

So far, most of my students are doing a great job; they are posting interesting comments to online discussions of their reading, trying out new techniques in their writing assignments, and offering insightful suggestions to their classmates. Now begin the requests for extensions: I'm working too many hours, I'm going on vacation, I'm just really really busy...why can't I turn in the assignment later? Like, say, August?

I hate to crack the whip on such a lovely summer day, but the answer is no. Do the work and submit it on time or lose the points! This is not summer camp! In fact, it's more like boot camp. Now drop and give me 1000! (Words, that is.)

Life's persistent questions

Which would you rather carry up a flight of stairs: an aquarium full of fish or a large unwieldy cactus?

Which would you rather read: bad poetry, bad student essays, or bad poetry badly interpreted in bad student essays?

Which would take less effort: cleaning the house or developing such thick callouses on your conscience that you don't care whether it's clean or not?

Where would you prefer to vacation: Biloxi in July or Gary, Indiana, in January?

Which dish would you rather prepare: baked Alaska on a boat, boiled lobster in a hot-air balloon, or sushi in the subway at rush hour?

When you reach into your Christmas stocking, which would you rather find: a live mouse or a dead mouse gorged on fine Swiss chocolates?

Which would you rather do right now: ask these questions or answer them?

Catch of the day

The shrill call of a Carolina Wren pierces the backyard quiet. How can this tiny bird produce such a huge sound? They scrabble in the loose mulch near the house until they find something worth singing about, usually a grub or small worm. In this case, the catch of the day is a two-course meal: a large spider with egg sac attached. The bird perches on the edge of a rusty grill and calls out like a ballpark vendor hawking beer and popcorn, turning to repeat the call until all bases are covered. And then suddenly it's gone, flying off with its take-out meal still impaled on its beak.

Friday poetry challenge: dullicious

A student keeps sending me e-mail messages addressing me as "Dr. Rogue," possibly as a result of a hyperactive autocorrect feature that refuses to recognize "Hogue" as a legitimate word. Dr. Rogue could be the archenemy of SuperProf, who is faster than a student's cut-and-paste, stronger than an athlete's dirty sweatsock, and able to leap tall library stacks in a single bound but can be stupefied into paralysis when Dr. Rogue unleashes her evil power to (gasp!) appoint SuperProf to the Assessment committee.

Dr. Rogue skips committee meetings without excuse.

Dr. Rogue scoffs at tenure, pooh-poohs promotion, and wilfully omits closing parentheses in parenthetical citations.

Dr. Rogue sends snarky responses to students who spell her name wrong--until SuperProf escapes the evil clutches of the Assessinator and swoops in to insert comments about poor collegiality into Dr. Rogue's annual review. SuperProf saves the day! But stay tuned for the next episode, when Dr. Rogue (gasp!) brazenly parks in a no-parking zone to return a library book two weeks late--barefoot!

Ah, what exciting lives we all lead. These days I feel less like Dr. Rogue than like Dr. Dull:

Today I think I'll sit in the sun
and read a book until it's done,
and when the sun has one arm fried
I'll turn and cook the other side.

How about you? Let's see some poetic reflections of your daily life, thrilling or otherwise.

The proof is in the writing

People keep asking how my summer online class is going and I don't know how to answer. Fine, I think, as far as I can tell. It's hard to say.

Take the first day of class: in a face-to-face class, the first class is suffused with a frisson of excitement and the nervousness of newness, but I can look out over the classroom and tell whether I'm connecting with students; certain lines earn laughs or groans while students' faces show signs of comprehension or confusion. (Unless they're just really good at simulating comprehension.) Ask me how the class went and I'll have a pretty good answer.

The first day of my online class was a different story. All day Monday I kept feeling as if something ought to be happening, but instead I just went about my normal activities and trusted that my students were busy listening to my podcast, reading the materials I'd posted, and completing their assignment. I had posted all that information more than a week ago, but through the magic of the internet, students can access it at any time. Later I look at their participation logs to see what resources they've clicked on, but those logs don't laugh or groan or show signs of comprehension at all. Are they getting it?

Writing assignments offer the only clues. So far my students have completed a discussion of a reading assignment and the first writing assignment, and the results look pretty good. They're reading! They're thinking! They're writing!

Except for the ones who aren't. When a student sits silently in a face-to-face class, I can usually detect clues: did he skip the reading assignment and come to class unprepared for discussion, or did he drink too much the night before, or is he one of those students who never speak in class regardless of the topic?

Silence in an online class is simply silence. I have no clue why a few students didn't do these first assignments. I can e-mail a reminder about the importance of participation, but all I know is what they write.

And they are writing a lot. Today I'll read their first writing assignments and see how well they've absorbed the lessons I've made available to them. I can't read their body language or look for signs of comprehension in their eyes, so I'll have to focus entirely on the words on the page. The proof of learning is in their writing--or if it isn't, I'll have to find another way to help them master the techniques I'm trying to teach.

When Foxy met Waddles

A friend and I were watching the fox news last evening when suddenly it looked as if we might observe a Wild Kingdom moment: the fierce predator patiently stalks its prey, finally pouncing and engaging in a fierce battle offering close-ups of blood and gore, until the enemy animal is defeated and the voice-over offers platitudes about the circle of life.

But apparently our resident foxes have not read that script. We had been watching the foxes for about 30 minutes with nothing much happening: one yawned, another slipped into the den, the third slept, and the fourth was nowhere to be seen. The yawning fox ate a bird. Occasionally the two visible foxes changed places, one at the mouth of the den and the other on a rock higher on the cliff.

Then the groundhog waddled into view. The foxes' ears perked up and they began to monitor the progress of the groundhog. Would they stalk and spring or allow the intruder to waddle past unmolested? Do foxes even care about groundhogs?

Not much. The two foxes followed the progress of the groundhog and moved slowly closer, but then one of them lost interest and turned away. The remaining fox crept down the cliff until it came face-to-face with the groundhog on a narrow dirt path. When a fox and a groundhog meet on a one-way path, who backs up?

The fox. At least this fox did. The fox went back to its perch outside the den and the groundhog lived to waddle another day.

If I were filming a nature documentary, this little non-incident would no doubt end up on the cutting floor along with countless scenes of foxes yawning, scratching, and napping. But despite the lack of blood and gore, we found the encounter fascinating. Who needs television when the local wild kingdom offers this kind of drama?

Honeysuckle haven

As I walk up the steep road through the neighbor's woods, the aroma of honeysuckle hangs heavily in the damp early-morning air. I feel as if I'm swimming in perfume, and I recall the big gardenia bush that grew just outside the front door of my family's first house in Florida: opening the door on a very hot day was like being rolled in a thick blanket soaked with sickly-sweet scent. To this day I can't abide the odor of gardenia.

But honeysuckle is a different story. Right now it's blooming profusely in the woods and along the edges of our country roads, and while it can be a little overwhelming at times, I welcome its sweet aroma even though I know I should abhor honeysuckle as an invasive species crowding out native flora. Like the lilacs, wisteria, and multiflora roses blooming in these woods, honeysuckle was imported by early settlers to beautify their farmsteads only to spread into areas where they become pests.

Now I appreciate native wildflowers and I am willing to pull up invasive pests that threaten to take over their territory. Every spring we go on a garlic-mustard purge, which seems to be working because we find less each year. Garlic mustard spreads profusely--it's already colonizing the area at the end of our meadow where the power company's slash-and-burn crew chopped down trees and applied herbicides last fall to clear out foliage under transmission lines. Pulling it all out will be quite a job but if I let it get a foothold there, it'll soon spread all over our meadow.

So I'll pull out garlic mustard but I'm not planning to go on a honeysuckle purge anytime soon. We don't have much on our property, but even if we did, I would be reluctant to get rid of it. Why? Honeysuckle played an important role in my bringing me and my husband together. I would sit in my dorm room studying before supper, the scent of honeysuckle coming through my open window, and soon the scent would mingle with the sound of a distant harmonica playing some peppy hymn tune like "I'll Fly Away," and as the sound got closer, I would close my books, leave my room, and go out to greet my beloved harmonica-player near the honeysuckle bush. Since then, I can't smell honeysuckle without being transported to that delightful time.

I realize that my sentimental attachment to a decades-old memory is an irrational basis for my attitude toward invasive species. If he had played the harmonica while wandering through a field of garlic mustard, would I get all weak-kneed every time I smelled that weed's pungent scent? I think not! And yet when the naturalists tell us to tear out the honeysuckle, I reject their message in favor of nostalgia.

Knowledge complicates my relationship with nature. Naturalists tell me that I ought to abhor invasive honeysuckle but I can't stop loving it, except now that love is tinged with guilt. Why is it so difficult to stop loving things we know are bad for us?

And who can think about such complex questions when the air is sweet with the scent of honeysuckle?

Friday poetry challenge: mechanical mantra

Weedeater, leaf-blower, lawnmower: the machines lack grace and make a horrific racket, but the words themselves sound like a mantra. Three dactyls featuring repeated w and l and long e sounds--if you didn't know the meaning of the words, you'd think it was poetry.

Weed-eater, leaf-blower, lawnmower, rake,
Lemonade, cannonade, masquerade, cake.
Anapest, assonance, flatulence, fun,
Add a verse, make it worse, this poem is done.

Your challenge: put together some words that sound like poetry without regard for meaning.

Summertime, and the listing is easy

June already--and I haven't made my list of summer goals!

Well, I've made a mental list and I've already accomplished a few of those unwritten goals: summer haircut, check. Prepare summer online class, check. (Class starts next Monday!) Add two chapters to the never-ending ever-growing fiction writing project, check. (Someday I'll work up the nerve to call it a novel.) Cross a title off my "Books I Really Should Have Read Already" list, check. (John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman. Great book, but I wish I'd read it before A.S. Byatt's Possession.)

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's more:

Health: walk 150 miles. That's 15 miles a week for 10 weeks, which I ought to be able to do as long as my bum hip doesn't fail me.

Home front: paint the living room. (At the rate we're going, just agreeing on a color would be a major accomplishment.) Paint the trim around the front window and door. Get the Volvo's suspension fixed. Keep up with the garden.

Teaching: keep up with summer class. Write syllabi for three fall classes. (One can be recycled from the last time I taught the class but the other two need major revamping.) Assemble portfolio to submit for our annual teaching award.

Administration: finish writing a report summing up the year's accomplishments in the Center for Teaching Excellence. Work with my colleague to develop a program of workshops for next year. Assist as needed with new faculty orientation.

Research: plan reading, research, and travel for sabbatical (which begins in January 2012--and I'll be looking for cheap but bearable lodging all over Florida, so I welcome suggestions and invitations.) Continue reading about new advances in cognitive approaches to literature, even though I'm not sure how this information fits into my research plan.

Writing: finish pedagogy essay on teaching while undergoing chemotherapy. Write proposal to present a paper at the second Making Sense of Suffering Conference (details here)--and then write the paper. (Because I desperately want to go back to Prague in November!)

Fun: explore my woods in the dark. Visit my daughter and son-in-law. Play Bananagrams. Plan party for colleagues.

That's starting to sound like a really busy summer, but it's flexible enough to allow for some serendipity. I never expected a family of foxes to slip into my daily routine, but there they are every evening watching us work in the garden. My husband says they're trying to hear the Cleveland Indians game on the radio--and with the season the Indians are having, he may be right.

Fox news update

A colleague brought his three small boys out to see the foxes last night, and they (the boys, not the foxes) kept looking through their binoculars hoping to see something other than a solitary fox just sitting there. Just as we all turned to go, though, things got exciting: another fox arrived, and another and another, and they sat there on the rock playing and posing. Do they know how cute they are?

Now others want to bring their kids to come out fox-watching, which is fine with me. Do you think I ought to put up bleachers and a concession stand, maybe plop some porta-potties in the meadow and charge admission?

Nah. Fun this priceless ought to be free.

Mudderflies

After seven years at Hogue Wild, I sometimes wonder whether this place still has surprises in store. In the past three days I have

• finally identified a female rose-breasted grosbeak;
• encountered the biggest spider I've ever seen outside a zoo (and didn't stomp on it!);
• watched foxes cavorting on a cliffside while the neighbor's bossy basset hound lumbered past obliviously at the top of the hill; and
  
• discovered mud-loving butterflies.

I don't know what was so special about that particular patch of mud along our creek, but yesterday butterflies by the dozens were elbowing each other out of the way (do butterflies have elbows?) to sip up its ooey gooey goodness. Black and gold dominated the scene as tiger and spicebush swallowtails (and a lone zebra swallowtail) competed for space at the mud bar.

I grabbed the camera and walked quietly closer and closer until I was nearly upon them, but then Hopeful came bursting through the underbrush and startled the butterflies into flight. Suddenly I found myself at the center of a swirl of yellow and black flashing and swirling in the evening sun, flying higher and farther until finally dispersing into the distance. No camera could capture the wonder of that moment.

Do me a favor, okay? Next time I act as if I'm stuck in the same old dull routine, give me a nudge and remind me of butterflies in the mud. I'm still not sure what I witnessed, but whatever it was, it was certainly surprising.

Fox news

It started as a flash of movement on the cliff across the road from our lower meadow, but then it turned to fur and faces and long fluffy tails. A family of foxes is living in a den about halfway up the cliff just across the road from our garden.

At first I saw three kits at play near the mouth of the den, but then they caught sight of me and scrambled inside. I dashed for the camera, but by the time I got back just one fox was visible on the ledge outside the den. I could have stood there watching her watching me all evening but then who would have planted the sweet potatoes?

I fired off about 30 shots and just before I left another fox came and entered the den. I was pretty far away and didn't have a tripod so many of the shots are blurry, but I was happy to catch any pictures at all.

I suppose this explains what all the barking was about the other night. Good thing we don't have chickens!

Friday poetry challenge: back by popular demand

It's hard to sleep these days what with hordes of readers clamoring for a return of the Friday Poetry Challenge. You should see the rabid fans jumping up and down outside my window waving hand-lettered signs (in verse!) and chanting slogans:

Poetry is right for me!

Give me doggerel or give me death!

Free the Friday Poetry Challenge
and I'll tell you what rhymes with orange!

Okay, I exaggerate. But there has been some interest from a small number (two) of readers eager for an excuse to assemble some light verse on a regular basis. To inaugurate this summer series of poetry challenges, here's a little haiku about an encore of a different kind:

Dewy green leaves hide
beneath weeds. Poison ivy,
why must you return?

Whew, my poetry muscles are out of practice. Surely you can do better than that!

Free to contemplate unusual moos

I'm in a lawn chair on the deck and on my knees is a new laptop computer, and I'm thanking the IT deities for finally making it possible for me to take work home with me. The crippled computer in my office deleted itself permanently and was replaced yesterday by a shiny new laptop that runs faster than a speeding bullet and leaps tall buildings in a single bound, if you believe the hype.

I like the keyboard. It's just the right size and it's good to have legible letters on the keys, which don't stick or make loud obnoxious clickety sounds. The wide screen is clear and readable and lacks the scratches and smudges that gave my old computer character; right now I've got it set up to display a slide show of my favorite photos from the California trip, so every few minutes I see a crisp new image reminding me of that refreshing time.

This computer's best characteristic, though, is its portability. For a long time my old computer balked at booting up and refused to recharge its battery, so I got in the habit of leaving it turned on and plugged in all the time. A laptop computer that can't be unplugged or turned off is like a set of handcuffs chaining me to my desk, exactly where I don't want to be during this loveliest time of the year.

Far better to sit on the deck drinking iced tea and working on writing projects while the wind sweeps through the trees and the birds chatter and the cows moo in the field across the way. I keep hearing a call that sounds like a baby crying down near the creek and I can't decide whether it's a bird or an abandoned toddler or an escaped calf with an unusual moo. My money's on the bird. After a while maybe I'll walk down and investigate--but if I were still handcuffed to my desk, I wouldn't even have the option of contemplating unusual moos.

I've been working in my office all week but today begins my liberation. Anyone who needs to track me down can just listen for the sound of fingers flying across the keyboard.

The very quiet keyboard.

Bananagramarama

One evening during the California trip some students introduced me to Bananagrams, a word game using letter tiles as in Scrabble but with no board or points or turn-taking. Five of us sat on the floor grabbing tiles and assembling words, and in the end we spontaneously began telling stories using the words we'd formed.

"I must own this game!" I told myself, but fortunately I told my daughter too so now I have Bananagrams at home. It's not as cut-throat and competitive as Scrabble, and I like the way it allows players to rearrange letters and cannibalize previously formed words to assemble new combinations. The other evening I ended up with a solitary Q near the end of the game, but I shifted some other words to open up access to a U and allow me to play the Q. Of course, then I ended the game with an unplayable J, but you can't win 'em all. On the other hand, there are no real losers in Bananagrams.

I took the game to campus and played a few rounds with a colleague, wishing more people were around to play. Wouldn't it be great to have word games available in the Writing Center so students and faculty members could grab a game between classes? Or we could designate a weekly word game time, or hold a Bananagramathon to raise money for some worthy cause.

Would students step away from their online games to mess with words face to face? If not, I fear I'll end up sitting alone in the Writing Center wishing for a worthy opponent while grasping a lone unplayable J.

Windfall profits

This is the tree
that fell in the wind
that covered the road
that chainsaws chopped
that woke me up
that will heat our house this winter.

This is debris
that chainsaws chopped
from the top of the tree
that covered the road
that fell in the wind
that will heat our house this winter.

Bitter roots

This clump of weeds (I tell myself as I grasp a handful of Creeping Charlie vines invading our asparagus patch) represents the student who never, throughout an entire semester, figured out how to submit papers electronically (pulling the weeds, tossing them aside) no matter how many times I showed her how.

And this deep-rooted broadleaf (thrusting the tines of the potato fork deep into the soil) is the search committee I served on faithfully (twisting the fork, loosening the roots) without managing to hire anyone (digging deeper, pulling harder) or receiving a word of thanks (will it ever come out?).

And this tiny slip of poison ivy (how did that end up in my hand?) stands for the times I had to convey concerns of faculty members to administrators (more? get it out of here!) whether I agreed with those concerns or not.

And this stubborn stand of dandelions (thrusting the trowel into the ground) is the computer that has been cranky (stabbing the ground) and crippled (stabbing and twisting) and utterly unreliable (twisting and pulling) for more than a year (tossing the weeds aside) until today it finally failed to boot up (kicking the weed pile).

Stupid weeds. Bane of my existence. Still, it's nice to have an avenue (thrusting and stabbing) for the anger that builds up (twisting and pulling) over the course of a complicated semester (tossing and stomping). Better to kick the weed pile than to kick my colleagues.

After all, weeds don't kick back.

Nothing gold can stay

This is the golden time of year, when orioles singing in the treetops draw our gaze toward their sunny plumage, when sunshine makes tulip poplar blossoms seem to be illuminated from within, when even the lowly box turtle trudging across the driveway seems spangled with golden sequins. It looks as if the orioles have chosen to stay around this year and the turtle keeps turning up where you least expect him, but the tulip poplar blossoms are already fading and falling. Robert Frost reminds us that "nothing gold can stay," but if it stays a little while and promises to return again, maybe that's enough.

Pre-weeding workout

Only a fool would go out to run a spring marathon after sitting on the sofa all winter, so what made me think I could dive right back into heavy-duty gardening on the first clear dry day of spring? After just a few hours in the garden, I have sunburn and sore fingers and an achy elbow and a cranky back and an ant bite on the back of my hand. I also have creeping phlox covering an annoying spot in the front garden, pachysandra filling in some blank spots on a slope, and basil, dill, and rosemary in the herb garden, where they'll join the thyme, oregano, sage, and fennel that returned from last season.

And then there's the yucca. Last week we dug up a monstrous yucca plant from our daughter and son-in-law's front garden, or rather a cluster of yuccas clustered around a stubborn root as thick and tough as a fencepost. They've been sitting on our front lawn all week waiting for the rain to stop, but now those yuccas are planted along a well-drained slope near the driveway. Nothing much likes to grow there, but yuccas are tough and these were free so if even a few survive, we'll be happy.

Oh to be as tough as a yucca! Today we did the easy stuff; putting in the vegetable garden takes the game to a whole new level. I need some conditioning exercises to get me in shape when we go Full Veg. Start with some stretches: the weeding bend, the hoe twist, the harvest squat. Carry water buckets and bushel baskets filled with ever-increasing weights, and practice clasping fingers tightly around the trowel handle to prepare for grasping and pulling weeds.

To exercise the elbow and wrist, practice snapping a damp bandana toward the small of your back as if to repel a persistent horsefly. Do the don't-step-on-the-ants two-step, the make-it-go-away Macarena. Develop a stillness to serene you can work with sweat dripping in your eyeballs, blisters bursting on your hands, and flies crawling on the back of your neck.

That's the sort of workout I need to get me ready for gardening season. Too late for this year. Maybe next winter, right around the bleakest part of January, someone should put a trowel in my hand and put me through my paces so that I won't poop out when gardening season finally arrives.

When the rain won't stop

Carve a maze in the tall grass.
Charge for admission.

Remember when your mom used to tell youthat your ears were so dirty you could grow potatoes in there?
Try that.

Leaf through seed catalogs.
Lust after tomatoes.
Buy big-leaf basil plants.
Leave them sitting on the kitchen counter.
Think about pesto.
Do a sun-dance.

Hold an umbrella over your hubby as he digs out a big yucca.
Bundle the yucca into the car and move it across the state.
Toss it on the lawn.
Wait until the rain stops.
Keep waiting.
Hope it doesn't root to the ground where it sits.

Become a transparent eyeball.
Blink.

Course prep passion

Designing online courses is supposed to be drudgery, so I can only conclude that I'm doing something wrong. I'm having an absolute blast designing my summer course in Nature Writing. I'm producing podcasts and narrated powerpoint presentations! I'm posting assignments and links and photographs! I'm translating the techniques I learned in the Digital Imaging class into writing exercises! What's not to love?

I've taught hybrid classes before but never an all-online class, so I sort of know what to expect but I may be in for some surprises once all those students (nine!) start submitting reading comments and writing exercises and drafts. The class starts June 6 and I've posted all the assignments on Moodle, but I'm still working on some narrated powerpoints and podcasts and discussion questions.

This is what gets me really pumped: I'm using many photographs I shot for the Scientific Imaging class two years ago, and as I looked through the available photos chronologically, I was pleased to see significant improvements in quality as the course progressed. Since those imaging exercises helped me become a measurably better photographer, let's see if I can adapt them to help my students improve their writing skills.

For instance, I can insert a human hand into a photograph to show the size of the blackberry, but how can we insert a similar scale into a written description? Or a photograph can emphasize motion by letting moving parts produce a blur, but how do we write a blur of movement? I'm eager to see how my students respond to these challenges.

I've reminded them that this is an upper-level writing class that condenses 15 weeks of work into a mere eight weeks, which means they'll have to work hard and stay on schedule--and so will I. I don't know how demanding that work will be, but if the execution is half as enlightening as the planning, we'll all have a blast.

A not-so-helpful suggestion

I've been dreading reading my course evaluations this semester because of some problems I had with one class, or actually just one small segment of that class--a group of students not at all shy about expressing their dissatisfaction all semester long. I agonized over that difficult class from the first week: Is it something I'm doing or not doing? Should I devote more class time to troublesome topics or insist on one-on-one conferences? Or maybe the problem is unrelated to my teaching: is it the textbook, the time of day, the composition of the class?

Whatever the reason, that class challenged my sanity all semester long and made me wonder what that small group of mouthy malcontents would write on the online course evaluations. And the answer is: not much.

The numerical responses from that class were about the same as those in my other classes and the written comments were mostly positive--except for three that stood out from the rest. The most concise complaint suggested that I could improve the course by "being a professor instead of a [really nasty word]."

I'll take that suggestion under advisement.

Course evaluations are anonymous so I can't say for certain who wrote this, but I recognize the style and I am not inclined to give the complaint much credit. It's not a particularly compelling argument and it differs so drastically from the style and content of the other comments that it's clearly an outlier, a cry of pain from a student who found the road to success pockmarked with potholes.

I found these evaluations oddly cheering. After all that agonizing over where I had gone wrong in teaching this course, the students rose up and declared that it really wasn't all that bad after all. That may not be a ringing endorsement, but for a really difficult class, this may be as good as it gets.

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.