Predictably preposterous

I like a good murder mystery as much as the next guy and in a pinch I'll even read a bad murder mystery, but reading four mediocre murder mysteries in the same week seems like gratuitous suffering. Nevertheless that's what I did to fill the long quiet hours between moments of drama while my mother lay dying: having exhausted my own reading materials, I picked some mysteries from my parents' shelves and plowed right through them.

They were okay. One was even better than okay: The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg features interesting characters, fresh plot points, and unusual settings, and while I did eventually solve the murder, it didn't destroy the suspense. I cannot say the same for the David Baldacci novels I read. They're all best-sellers so someone out there must enjoy them, but I found them predictable, poorly written, and, at times, preposterous.

In the Baldacci universe, the good guys all struggle with some deep inner turmoil but are blessed with superhuman crime-fighting skills plus the ability to dodge speeding bullets--or else maybe all the Baldacci villains are very bad shots, which makes you wonder why they chose a life of violence. I mean, if your chance of advancement up the Evil Henchman career path requires the ability to shoot a person standing right in front of you, wouldn't you spend a little time at the shooting range?

The henchmen do find their marks occasionally, but it's always pretty obvious which minor character is about to be sacrificed and which helpless, innocent young woman is about to be put into extreme danger to raise the stakes in the case. Will the good guys unravel the clues in time to save the beautiful princess from the Evil Mastermind?

Of course they will! That's what Baldacci detectives do, regardless of how bizarre the plot. The least believable moment in one of the novels--and they've all blurred together in my mind so don't ask me which one--occurs when (spoiler alert!) the Evil Mastermind, obsessed with seeking the kind of revenge that most of us grow out of by age six, uses a satellite to gain control of the President's limo and drive it off a bridge straight into the Potomac. How does Our Hero rescue the President of the United States from a sealed limousine resting under 30 feet of water? The answer involves a frantic cell-phone call, a hidden rifle, a pair of oxygen tanks, an epiphany borrowed from the movie Jaws, and a Good Guy with superhuman swimming power, but here's the question that never gets answered: How did the Good Guy get cell-phone reception 30 feet under the Potomac?

It doesn't matter, really. The plot requires cell-phone reception so that's what they get, just as the plot requires the two detectives to keep talking about whether they ought to sleep together without ever getting down to business. And in that way Baldacci novels resemble just about every television crime series of recent years: damaged detectives, superhuman abilities, unresolved sexual tensions, endangered innocents, and plots that just keep getting more and more ridiculous. 

Makes me want to drive right off a bridge. (Better take along a murder mystery in case it gets dull down there.)

How I know I'm home

Wild turkeys gabbling loudly on the hillside in the mornings.

Hummingbirds buzzing the feeders all day long and wood thrushes calling from their hiding places in the woods--but no sign of the blue-gray gnatcatchers' nest.

Cicadas emerging from the soil, molting, and starting their summer racket in the treetops, members of the massive 17-year emergence that will soon fill the woods with a sound like hungry chainsaws.

Rhododendrons we planted as bare sticks a decade ago producing masses of showy flowers today.

Columbine blossoms in the front garden nodding next to wild daisies and dandelions.

A kind neighbor tilling up our garden, and all those leggy tomato and pepper plants making their way out of the greenhouse and into the ground.

A yard that needs mowing and, afterward, sweet corn waiting in the kitchen and the Cleveland Indians on the radio.

Feels like home.

At some point it will all add up to something-or-other

Cocoa Beach

The road that rolled past so swiftly two weeks ago seems to be stuck in slow motion today as we feel our way home through a fog of exhaustion. We buried my mother on Thursday with a bittersweet funeral marked by warm hugs and kind words, a lovely event following two grueling weeks of waiting and watching punctuated by flurries of activity. I can't quite make all the events line up in order--Which was the Day of the Lizards? When did I walk the beach? How did Dad talk that traffic cop out of giving me a ticket?--but instead I'm left with disconnected snippets that don't add up.

How many times did I have to move my car? Twice a day the hospice nurses performed the Musical Cars dance out in the driveway, shifting vehicles around to make room for visitors, so I finally got tired of moving my car and parked across the street, which is where the traffic cop would have given me a ticket if my dad hadn't gone out there to plead extenuating circumstances. I was in the shower at the time so couldn't plead my own case. At such a difficult time you wouldn't think the minor issue of parking would take such prominence, but even in times of suffering, the laws of physics (and parking) still apply.

brown anoles

And so do the laws of attraction. I kept going out on the front stoop to make cell-phone calls and I kept seeing these nondescript brown anole lizards darting around like crazy, but occasionally one would stand still and puff out its brilliant orange throat sac. If this was a mating display, it certainly worked--I caught a pair in flagrante delicto more than once.

I walked the beach twice, I think, once by myself and once with my husband, who flew down after I'd been in Florida more than a week. I had driven down there alone powered by sheer adrenaline, but since then my superpowers had been sorely taxed so I was delighted when my husband arrived at midnight Monday. (Not much traffic at the airport that late.) Before the funeral we took a day trip to see his brother and walk the beach at Cocoa, where the previous week I'd seen skimmers gliding above the water while dipping their beaks into the waves to catch some in-flight breakfast.  Salt air and waves breaking, pelicans flying past in formation--walking the beach provides welcome relief from crowded rooms full of pain and suffering.

Skimmer

But not just pain and suffering. I laughed with an uncle I haven't seen in decades, chatted with my very creative niece, admired my nephew's ability to gather loving words from his cousins and share them at the funeral. I even enjoyed talking with the hospice nurses, who treated my mother as gently as they would their own, offering kindness beyond the call of duty. 

Their duties may have appeared slight--giving sponge-baths and drugs, shifting Mom's swollen limbs to a more comfortable position--but I've never seen anyone keep watch so intently, an exhausting job in itself. They noticed small changes in color and breathing, and I'll always be grateful for the hospice nurse who told me, "She's taking last breaths."

That was Sunday afternoon, just after my uncle left. I'd been embroiled all afternoon in a silent Circle-of-Life drama: back in Ohio, my granddaughter was celebrating her third birthday but her mother, my extremely pregnant daughter, had been admitted to the Emergency Room for IV fluids following a bad bout with some intestinal virus. I was sitting in Florida trying to chat lightly with my aunt and uncle, listening to my mother's labored breathing, keeping my daughter's difficulties to myself so as not to alarm my father.

And then a whole lot of things happened at once: My aunt and uncle left. I spoke to my granddaughter on the phone, wished her happy birthday. My father needed my help with some computer problem. My son-in-law texted to tell me that my daughter had been released and would be fine. The hospice nurse said "Last breaths." My father's pastor arrived. His daughter handed me a hot pan of lasagna. The phone rang. People started yammering all around me. And somewhere in that welter of activity, my mother died.

Since then, my brain feels broken. Events flit past like billboards on a highway when you're traveling 70 miles an hour. Sometimes they convey important messages but more often not. How many South of the Border billboards did we see yesterday? And why would someone post a gigantic billboard asking only "Who is John Galt?"? And what's with all the cans of beans on billboards in South Carolina? None of this matters but I can't stop trying to make sense of it all.

Now we're pausing at my brother's house in North Carolina before making the final drive back to Ohio tomorrow. At some point all the events of the past week will form themselves into a coherent narrative, but by that time I'll be well on my way to the next adventure--welcoming the new grandson, who could arrive any day now. One journey ends while another begins, but all I can do right now is watch the billboards go by.

 

Fledglings

Juvenile stretching its wings

Somewhere there must be a how-to manual for dealing with a mother's death--Grieving for Dummies or whatever--but if so, I've never read it, so I'm dealing with this the best way I can. Today that meant getting out of the house and going to the park to look at birds. The egret chicks were not in sight but I found a pair of young anhingas taking a few wobbly steps away from the nest while the adult perched protectively overhead. What do they do when the mom is no longer there to nurture them? They don't need any how-to manuals--they just wing it. If they can do it, so can I.

Juvenile on left; adult on right.

Juvenile on the nest

 

Last words (almost)

On Tuesday when we were waiting for the ambulance to take Mom home from the hospital, she said, If they don’t take me home soon, I’m running away. I wouldn’t put it past her to try, even though she was hitched up to tubes and machines and her legs aren’t in good working order. Now she’s home with no tubes or machines so she’s more comfortable, but she’s not saying much.

The first day or two she would wake up long enough to say a few words to visitors, but now she’s rarely alert and it’s hard to understand what she’s trying to say. The other day she said something that sounded like either love you or want soup, either of which would be plausible even though soup is not on the menu for patients who can't swallow.

She said hello to her brother and told the night nurse her name, and yesterday when I was helping the hospice nurse bathe her, she very clearly said terrible, terrible. I have to agree.

I ask if she’s in pain and she says no, but then I tell her I’ve got her pain medication and she opens her mouth wide as if eager for relief.

She cries out when they move her and gurgles when she breathes and when we lower the bed to bathe her, she says can't breathe, can't breathe, so we raise up her head again to make her more comfortable.

That's really all we can do now: make her more comfortable. I really don't want my mom's final message to the world to be can't breathe or terrible, terrible, but I know what what she'd say if she had the strength: If they don't take me home soon, I'm running away. 

Slow drama days

The most dramatic moment of my day yesterday was when I watched three burly maintenance workers armed with sticks struggling to encourage an angry snapping turtle to move off a sidewalk and back to the nearby lake. In a week devoted almost entirely to inactivity, I'll take my entertainment where I can find it.

We moved Mom into home hospice care yesterday, which delighted her: no more tube down her nose, no more needles and IVs, no more hospital. Now she's ensconced in a hospital bed in her own living room, where she can see her flowers and cards and photos of beloved family members, while the rest of us can rest more easily knowing that she's getting the care she needs. She says she's not in pain and I'm trying to believe her, but we have pain medications just in case. Meanwhile, we're doing a lot of sitting and waiting, sitting and talking, sitting and reading, or just sitting.

I'm committed to staying until the end of the week and then I'll assess the situation and see what I need to do. I need to get back to Ohio before my new grandson is born, but neither birth nor death can be forced to conform to my schedule. So I'm working on my waiting skills, even if sometimes I'm tempted to snap like that angry turtle. I keep telling myself: Be the lake, not the turtle. So far it's working, but if you see a bunch of maintenance workers coming my way with sticks, you'll know I finally snapped. 

 

Feeding time

Yesterday I watched my brother carefully spooning ice chips into my mother's parched mouth. That's all she can have right now but she was so grateful you'd have thought she was eating filet mignon. My brothers and I hover around, trying to find something we can do to make her more comfortable, or we show her pictures of the grandchildren or, this morning, egrets.

I stopped at the park on the way to the hospital this morning to see whether the egret chicks I saw a few weeks ago are still there. I found mergansers swimming on the lake, anhingas preening at the tops of trees, and adult egrets doing their morning rounds, and then finally I found a nest with an adult feeding two fuzzy chicks. The adult would stretch out its neck, point a long sharp beak toward the sky, hawk up some digested goodies, and then regurgitate them into the waiting mouths of her chicks. It didn't look particularly appetizing but the chicks got really excited, clacking their beaks together to compete for the best breakfast.

Soon the chicks will fledge and learn to feed themselves, and one day they may be regurgitating breakfast into their own chicks' beaks. Meanwhile, I'm at the hospital showing the photos to my mother, who is very glad we don't have to feed each other that way. Hurrah for spoons and ice chips! A meal fit for a queen.  

 

 

When the nursing shoe is on the other foot

Today I helped my brother celebrate his birthday with Key Lime Pie in my mother's hospital room. The pie was great but I really felt horrible about not being able to offer my mom a bite--she's not allowed any food by mouth right now, so she had to enjoy it vicariously.
 
She's glad we're here. I'm glad we're here. We're not really doing much--sitting around the hospital for hours on end, entertaining her when she's awake, doing what we can to help her be comfortable.

Every time a nurse comes in to take a blood pressure or hang an IV, I think about all the years Mom worked as an RN in this very hospital, a tiny, quiet woman who could gently and competently keep track of the needs of multiple patients or even climb on top of a patient and thump on his chest if he needed CPR. She never wore scrubs but preferred the white nursing uniform and white shoes and stockings, her stiff little hat perched on top as a mark of professionalism, a token of her ability to guide patients through their darkest hours.

Her nurses remind me of a younger Mom--in blue scrubs and sneakers and no stiff starched hats, true, but gentle and competent and ready to provide any comfort Mom might require. (Except Key Lime Pie. Strictly off limits.)  

Toward journey's end

I got the call from my brother at about noon yesterday and within an hour I was packed and on the road for Florida. Driving to Florida by myself was not how I'd planned to spend Mother's Day weekend, but someone says this may be my last chance to see Mom, what else can I do?

Which is how I ended up here at the Florida welcome center on I-95, enjoying free orange juice and wi-fi. I figure on about four more hours of driving, but I needed a break. Yesterday the time flew by with the miles; I still felt alert when I stopped for the night in South Carolina, but my eyes were giving out on me. In fact I continued to feel alert through a good part of the night, but here I am on the road again.

It's a beautiful day for driving--clear skies, pleasant temperature, not much traffic. I've seen this stretch of I-95 bumper-to-bumper with cars moving at parking-lot speed, but this morning it's been clear sailing all the way. That doesn't make it fun, however. My eyes hurt and my hip hurts and I've got this nagging headache, but the worst, of course, is that I don't know what I'll confront when I get to the end of the road. My brothers will be there and so will my Dad, but Mom? Surely she can hold on for a few more hours!

So what am I doing sitting here? Better get back on the road.

Summer, ascendant

From where I sit in my quiet office, I can just about get a glimpse of the near edge of Summer. At the moment it's a big blank amorphous hot-air balloon threatening to drift off into the stratosphere, so let's tie it firmly to the solid earth with some meaningful goals.

I'm not going to Louisville to grade AP essays this summer and I have very few solid commitments on the schedule, which is a good things since I need to be available at a moment's notice to rush to Akron to welcome the impending grandbaby into this world or to rush to Florida to ease my mother's journey to the next. Aside from those important tasks, how will I spend my summer?

Fitness goal: walking at least 12 miles per week. I've done more in the past but not since my bad hip starting acting up. Will I ever get back to the 15-20 miles per week I used to walk? Maybe summer's heat will ease the pain.

Research/writing goals: Finish revising last summer's conference paper and submit it to a journal; write the article that takes the next step in the project; make enough progress on the project so that it will look fundable next time I submit a proposal for a summer research grant.

Teaching goals: Revise three old syllabi and create one brand-new one from scratch. Meet with learning community partners to develop meaningful activities aimed at integrative learning. 

Professional development goals: Prepare a faculty workshop on the changes to MLA citation format--and change all of my handouts to reflect the new style. (I'm afraid I'll have to look at every handout from every class I teach, starting with the four I'm teaching this fall.)

Personal goals: Plan an overnight canoe trip with my chief oarsman. Visit Fallingwater. Spend a reasonable amount of time gardening without letting the garden take over my whole entire life. Watch birds. Write about it all.

That looks like enough rope to keep the balloon from drifting out of control. Now all I need to do is climb into the basket and begin the ascent.
 

Caught in the act

Wood thrush

My birding-and-botanizing buddy came out to keep me company during the latest stage in Waiting for the Phone Man, and even though we had to stay close to the house in case the service technician showed up, we found plenty to wonder over: wood ducks flying above the creek, a Louisiana waterthrush singing its heart out along the bank, yellow warblers singing invisibly in the trees, a rose-breasted grosbeak in the tulip poplar just overhead. We traced the bell-like call of a wood thrush in the back yard for quite a while before catching a fleeting glimpse of the elusive bird, and we thought we'd hit the jackpot. 

Then we saw the blue-gray gnatcatcher.

Well, we heard it first, a whispery little whistle easily overlooked, but it took a while to find the tiny puff of gray and white on a tree branch at the edge of the lower meadow. A week from now that tree will have thoroughly leafed out, but today it was bare enough to allow easy observation of a pair of blue-gray gnatcatchers building a nest. 

Blue-gray gnatcatcher on the nest

It doesn't look like a nest--just a bulge on a branch with some stuff stuck to it. But we watched as the two birds flew up carrying bits of spiderweb and lichen in their beaks and glued it down around the nest's exterior, and we even observed courting behavior when one bird would offer the other a bit of grub.

I've memorized the spot and noted the best place to stand to watch the nest so I acn locate it again and follow their progress. I don't know if that tree is sturdy enough to climb, so maybe a ladder would help--or a periscope. Anyone have a surplus periscope gathering dust in the attic? 

People ask me sometime why I choose to live so far out in the boonies, and today I have an answer: where else can you observe such wonders just outside the door? 

 

New frontiers in non-communication

Dear whoever might be listening out there at Frontier Communications:
 
Two years ago when a car flipped into our creek in the middle of the night, we were the only people who heard the crash. I dialed 911 and, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, the place was crawling with first responders within minutes.

If that happened today, I wouldn't be able to dial 911. In fact, I wouldn't be able to call anyone. Our landline has been out of service since April 22, and since there is no cell-phone access in our rural area, I have had to either contact you via live chat or call you from my work phone, which is difficult to do when you keep telling me that I have to stay home from work to wait for a service technician. Over the course of the past week and a half, various representatives (Hi, Amber! Hi, Chris!) have conveyed to me the following messages:

1.  We will have a service technician out there April 29. Someone will need to be home between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

2. No, we didn't send someone out to fix the line on April 29 because our records show that it was fixed on April 26. 

3. No, we didn't inform you that you would not need to stay home on April 29 because we assumed you would figure that out when you saw that the phone was fixed.

4. What do you mean it's not fixed? Our records show that it was repaired on April 26.

5. We will expedite this ticket and have someone out there April 30. Someone will need to be home between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

6.  We have no record that anyone was scheduled to come out on April 30, but our records show that someone will be there on May 2 or maybe May 3. Someone will need to be home between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. 

7. You'll need to provide a phone number where we can reach you at home.

I am now spending a third full day sitting at home waiting for my phone to be fixed, and it looks as if I'll be doing the same thing for the foreseeable future. (It's easy work, but the salary stinks.) I don't know where your service technician went on April 26 when he claimed to be at my house fixing my phone line, but he didn't come here. While I stay home waiting for the service technician, here are some things I can't do:

1. Call my father to get an update about my mother, who was admitted to the hospital yesterday.

2. Call my daughter to check on the progress of the new grandbaby due to be delivered in a few weeks.

3. Receive calls from anyone, anywhere.

4. Attend the employee service awards ceremony to congratulate my colleagues who are retiring and receive my 15-year service award.

5. Get my annual mammogram.

6. Attend important meetings on campus. 

I have plenty of time, however, to file a complaint with the Public Utilities Service of Ohio. (Another complaint. Because this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened.)

If this were the first time we've had trouble getting service, I would not be quite so upset, but prior experience suggests that Frontier considers landlines outmoded and would be very happy if landline customers would just give up and switch over to cell phones. But what about those of us who can't get cell-phone coverage? Do you expect us to live without a phone entirely?

It's pretty quiet out here in the woods and I confess that I don't miss all those political robo-calls, but if the quiet should be interrupted by another crash from down by the creek, who will dial 911? Will you?

All I know is it surely won't be me.

Traipsing through the Windust

"I've always depended upon the kindness of stranglers," says Maxine Tarnow, and all I can think is I can't believe I had to wade through a page and a half of inane dialogue just to get to that ridiculous punchline. 

But that's the risk you take when you read a novel by Thomas Pynchon: he'll go to any length for a gag--in fact, some of his characters exist primarily as a pretext for trotting out funny names. (Pynchon is, after all, the guy who gave us both Stanley Kotecks and Mike Fallopian in the same novel.) His 2013 novel Bleeding Edge, which only recently rose to the top of my leisure reading pile, offers up Reg Despard, Lester Traipse, a guy named Windust, and Gabriel Ice (a cold-hearted criminal, obviously), along with a mess of throwaway characters no more consequential than dandelion fluff.

What's at stake here, though, is serious: the novel unfolds in Manhattan during the six months leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, which provides all kinds of opportunities for clever ironies since readers know what's coming but characters don't. Suspense mounts as we move closer to that fated day; I turn the pages more quickly, wondering which character will die in the towers or book a ticket on the wrong plane. But then the date comes and goes with little fanfare or impact: the planes come in; the towers fall; the characters pick up the pieces; life goes on for Maxine and her peculiarly named pals, many of whom are entangled in what is either a massive worldwide conspiracy or perhaps simply a bit of dodgy accounting.

Maxine, see, is a Certified Fraud Examiner, or used to be one before she indulged in a bit of dodgy accounting of her own and had her certification revoked. She plays the role here of the hard-boiled detective who gets lured into a web of deceit and corruption involving online hacking, massive shipments of fiberoptic cable, and a weapon oddly reminiscent of those rockets that provide the airborne trajectory to Gravity's Rainbow. In Bleeding Edge, Maxine finds herself drawn deep underground into a mysterious secret bunker and then into the Deep Web, the dark undercurrent of the Internet. Despite her street smarts and savvy banter, Maxine finds herself scrambling, with "no idea how to step outside her own history of safe choices and dowse her way across the desert of this precarious hour, hoping to find what? some refuge."

One possible refuge is a private online space called DeepArcher, which promises departure into a sanctuary where anything is possible; Maxine believes the Internet offers empowerment, but her father offers a darker view, reminding Maxine that the Internet's origins lie within the military-industrial complex: 

"Yep, and your Internet was their invention, this magical convenience that creeps now like a smell through the smallest details of our lives, the shopping, the housework, the homework, the taxes, absorbing our energy, eating up our precious time. And there’s no innocence. Anywhere. Never was. It was conceived in sin, the worst possible. As it kept growing, it never stopped carrying in its heart a bitter-cold death wish for the planet, and don’t think anything has changed, kid....Call it freedom, it’s based on control. Everybody connected together, impossible anybody should get lost, ever again. Take the next step, connect it to these cell phones, you’ve got a total Web of surveillance, inescapable. You remember the comics in the Daily News? Dick Tracy’s wrist radio? It’ll be everywhere, the rubes’ll all be begging to wear one, handcuffs of the future."

Soon enough, Maxine's online refuge is invaded by tourists and trolls, becoming as polluted as the Fresh Kills landfill she characterizes as "the perfect negative of the city in its seething foul incoherence," a mound containing the city's "collected history" made up of "everything the city has rejected so it can keep on pretending to be itself." But the trash is impossible to contain, keeps oozing back across the invisible line, just as real life and virtual life seem to intermingle promiscuously while Maxine teeters precariously on the bleeding edge.

Maxine has her moments but I don't find her as compelling or believable as Oedipa Maas, in The Crying of Lot 49 (published 50 years ago!), whose encounter with a worldwide conspiracy seems much more treacherous than Maxine's, even though Oedipa's conspiracy is hopelessly low-tech. Like Maxine, Oedipa must decipher messages indistinguishable from garbage and stumbles into a morass of undecidability, but Maxine gets the satisfying resolution unavailable to Oedipa.

I started reading Bleeding Edge while traveling last week and it's the perfect book to read in transit: interesting enough to distract from the awfulness of travel but lightweight enough to leave behind without regret, consigning it to the landfill Pynchon describes so lyrically.    

Landlinelocked

Finished grading!! This calls for a celebration! Call me a wild and crazy girl, but I think I'll stay home all day waiting for the phone company to restore service to my landline! 

Frontier has promised to send a technician today within a fairly narrow time slot--between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.! I can't imagine a better way to spend my entire day than to sit and wait for the phone guy! If I get bored, I can clean the bathrooms or sweep the floors, or if it stops raining I can even mow the lawn! And if the phone company fails to show up, I can drive five miles down the road to find some cell-phone coverage and file a report with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio!!!! I've filed a PUCO complaint before when Frontier refused to show any interest in repairing a nonfunctioning landline, and I can do it again if it's the only way to make them care!!!!! 

What an exciting life I lead!!!!!!!!!!

(Oops: It's only April and I've already used up my entire annual quota of exclamation points. Time to bring out the ampersands&&&&&&.) 

Three cheers for final exams! (Well, maybe two and a half)

My first exam as a college student was in a Western Civ class and consisted of a single question: "Outline the history of ancient Egypt."

I'm doomed, I thought, because let's face it: no matter how many names, dates, and events you frantically scribble on a page in an hour's time, you're bound to leave something out. I left that exam certain not only that I'd flunked but that I would soon flunk out of everything, lose my scholarships, and go back to Florida to work at the orange juice bottling plant. Doomed.

I'm sure some of my students felt that way this week. One student told me my American Lit Survey final exam was the hardest exam he's ever taken, and I don't doubt him because it's the hardest exam I ever give. The questions are not tricky or obscure or even unexpected (since I provide a thorough study guide), but students have to write a lot and do some original thinking about a mess of poems. Most students took two hours to complete the exam and several took the full two and a half.

And most of them aced it.

Seriously: the vast majority of grades on this exam were A's and B's, suggesting that when students are challenged to show what they've learned and given sufficient time to do so, they can produce some really amazing work.

We all complain about the burden of grading all those final exams, but let's not overlook the rewards: when we give students a chance to shine, we get to bask in the glow they produce. Even on my most brutal exams, students find interesting connections among literary works, write engaging analytical essays, and demonstrate mastery of concepts we've been developing throughout the semester. 

And they do all this even though final exams don't really make much difference in their grades.

Dirty little secret here: unless a student totally bombs a final exam, it won't have much impact on the student's final grade in my classes. It might nudge a borderline grade one way or the other, but final exam grades rarely move the world or send a student packing for the orange juice plant.

And my first college exam didn't send me packing either. Much to my surprise, I aced it, which provided a boost of confidence that carried me through the rest of the semester. I may have encountered more difficult tests since that time (I'm looking at you, Comprehensive Exams!), but that first baptism by fire made me feel first I'm doomed and then I can do this. This week I'm passing that experience on to my students, and every time they show me that they really can do it, I want to stand up and cheer.

Get your procrastination here!

In case anyone needs a distraction from grading:

Apparently I'm the last to learn about this great blog called Awful Library Books, in which librarians from all over post comments about awful books they've discarded. I love books too much to enjoy the prospect of large-scale book purges, but on the other hand, how many books about psychic Sasquatch does a library need?

The Atlantic hit a nerve this week with Neal Gabler's article "The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans" (read it here), concerning the financial fragility of the middle class. Gabler writes, "the primary reason many of us can't save for a rainy day is that we live in an ongoing storm," and I think, Yep, that's me. 

But then I read "Why So Many Smart People Aren't Happy" and I think, Me again. In the article (here), Joe Pinsker interviews Raj Raghunathan about his book, If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? Raghunathan discusses the constant dissatisfaction caused by the search for extrinsic rewards and claims that "what we need in order to be happy is at some level pretty simple. It requires doing something that you find meaningful, that you can kind of get lost in on a daily basis. When you observe children, they are very good at this. They don't get distracted by all those extrinsic yardsticks. They go for things that really bring them a lot of enjoyment." So I guess spending time with my granddaughter really is the key to happiness.

I know it's been a few weeks since this came out but it still makes me laugh out loud: if Donald Trump had written Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" (here). ("And by the way, this snow is pathetic.") It's brought to you by a fun quirky blog called The Rotting Post, which is addictive enough to seriously interfere with my grading.

Finally, if you've familiar with the evangelical Christian community, please run--don't walk--over to The Babylon Bee, the Onion for the churchy set. The headlines alone are enough to make me giggle: "Youth Pastor Forgets What His Hebrew Tattoo Means"; "Adult Coloring Books to Feature Favorite Imprecatory Psalms"; "Church Small Group Looking Forward to Six-Week Study of Awkward Silences." My people, my people!

Once were--what? Was I saying something?

Last week when I was out of town I didn't spend one nanosecond worrying about my classes because I knew I'd left them in capable hands--and sure enough, they did what they needed to do and did it well. This morning I've been grading quizzes and interpretive maps and fielding a few last-minute questions about exams and papers, but mostly I'm seeing students demonstrate that they learned the things they needed to learn despite (or perhaps because of) my absence. 

It's true that the postcolonial class hated the film they had to watch, but that's not surprising. I'd be concerned if they didn't find Once Were Warriors disturbing, what with the poverty, drinking, fighting, domestic violence, rape, suicide, and wholesale cultural marginalization. It's supposed to be a disturbing film because it depicts a disturbing reality--so much so that when it first aired, many viewers recognized their own lives reflected on the screen. Now that's disturbing!

Now my students have the chance to show what they've been learning: I'm giving two final exams today and one tomorrow afternoon and collecting final papers in the film class tomorrow morning. My brain still seems to be working in slow motion, but maybe it'll get up to speed once I get back into the grading groove. Meanwhile, there's chocolate. I brought some for my students who have to take long final exams at odd hours like 3:00 to 5:30, but it won't hurt if I have just one piece, right? (Or maybe two.)     

Dandelion time

At first I thought the stress of the week had addled my mind, or maybe a big chunk of brain cells got lost in transit, but then I remembered where I was. This is, after all, Appalachia, so I should not be at all surprised to read that the Pike County Sheriff had this to say about a recent spate of shootings: "I cannot confirm that there is no one on the loose who is not involved with this. If he is, he's armed and dangerous."

I've read those sentences a dozen times trying to untangle the negatives, and if he's saying that there's no one out there who's not involved, then I think we're all in trouble.

I, on the other hand, am as far away from trouble as I can possibly be. I arrived home yesterday to a house full of family, including my adorable granddaughter, who thinks a field of dandelions is about the greatest thing ever. Concern about my mom's health is on a constant slow simmer on my mind's back burner, but up front I see sweet girl bubbling over with energy, laughter, and song. We can throw rocks in the creek, run like the wind across the field, track down the woodpecker making a racket in the woods! Who could be blue when we're surrounded by fields of green and gold?

The minute we turned onto my road yesterday, we saw signs of welcome: a pileated woodpecker on a roadside tree, an indigo bunting flying across our path. It's good to be home, even if it feels as if some of my brain cells are still circling over Akron.