A portal into a colorful world

Usually my road is just a road but for a few weeks every fall it's a portal into a world of beauty, where a breeze whispers through leaves so bright they seem to turn the woods to fire, where cedar waxwings by the dozens flock to tall treetops along the creek, where the shallow water reflects the red and orange and yellow leaves. A walk along my road was my reward for grading papers until my eyeballs wanted to burst, a welcome break that made me appreciate the privilege of living in such a lovely place. In a few weeks when the leaves fall and the woods look dark and dull, someone needs to remind me of this brief autumn moment when all I had to do was open my eyes to be surrounded by beauty.

Masking more than viruses

The other day a former student confessed that she used to be scared of me until one day in class when she suddenly realized that I was being sarcastic and not serious. It takes awhile sometimes to read people's faces, but how much more difficult it is now that we all have to keep our faces covered?

This, I think, may be one of the reasons it's so difficult to get students to engage in class discussions this semester, whether they're face-to-face or on Zoom. I've talked about this with many colleagues and heard many explanations: students are burned out because they've had no breaks, or all the online learning they've been doing has transformed them into passive learners, or they're just succumbing to our vast national pandemic-induced malaise. 

These reasons sound convincing but they fail to consider the impact of all the barriers we've erected between ourselves and our students. How much do masks hamper our ability to read faces? I know they disrupt my ability to learn names, but they do more than that: how can a student read the difference between "scary" and "sarcastic" if half of my face is covered? 

And then they're so far away--social distancing means I don't spend so much time wandering among the rows or visiting groups or just hanging out in student-rich environments. I'm not seeing students in the stands at sporting events or in the audience at plays or among the crowd at art shows because we're just not doing any of those things, and when I do see them outside of class, I'm not always certain I know who they are. 

In so many ways this semester feels like a failure but we've still got five more weeks to go. I don't know how I feel about that--and neither does anyone else, thanks to my mask.

Masks need to work a little harder

In the midst of class in a room so hot we had to open all the windows, remove all excess clothing, and fan ourselves with folders for 50 minutes, where the heat made us all feel sleepy and dopey and droopy and dull, I was adjusting my coffee-bean-print mask and wishing that it was made of real coffee beans because I really could have used a dose of caffeine about then, and that's when I had my brainstorm: caffeine-infused masks, delivering a jolt of alertness with every breath. I'd buy one!

Someone could make a mint on that idea, but that someone is not going to be me. First, because we have two new confirmed cases of the virus on campus (for a total of five over nine weeks--not bad!) and two of my students are quarantining because of close exposure to an infected student, which means I have to get back into the habit of teaching to a split audience in yet another class, and all this tech is wearing me out. Last Friday I finally figured out how to use a stylus to draw on the Zoom whiteboard on a laptop during a class where most of the students are present but a few are online, which means I can now produce incomprehensible drawings equally visible to both groups. I've mastered enough tech for one lifetime! I'm ready to give it a rest.

And tech is failing me in other ways too, because for some reason the card-readers on campus keep refusing to recognize my right to exist--sometimes. Our robot overlords intermittently permit me to enter my building, make photocopies, and pay for snacks at the cafe with my brand-new college ID, but then sometimes the card reader simply refuses to recognize my existence. Okay, so I can e-mail documents to the administrative assistant to print out for me, except she's working remotely half the time and sometimes I need my copies right now. Or I can call campus police to let me in the building whenever the card reader thumbs its nose at my right to enter, but maybe I don't have my phone with me and maybe the campus police have more important things to do. Or I could avoid buying snacks at the cafe, which is probably for the best but then what will I do with all the credits on my college ID? This is not helping my stress level.

And then there are some off-campus complications, like the need to move out of the parsonage in Jackson and move into an entirely different house and take care of all the annoying details  involved in moving (turning on utilities! measuring for curtains!) and then adjust to an entirely different group of parishioners whom I've never met but will have to get to know only on the weekends when I'm able to be over there, and by the way this is all happening while my husband is trying to replace his van before it falls to pieces in a heap on the highway. The people at the church we're leaving keep wanting to give me great big ol' hugs, which I appreciate except that hugs induce a pandemic-related stress response that even a coffee-bean-print mask can't negate. 

Come to think of it, forget the coffee beans: what I really need is a mask infused with Valium. Go ahead and invent one--I'll be too mellow to sue for my share of the profits.

 

 

True colors

A colleague I haven't seen in a while said to me today, "I see you've stopped coloring your hair," which is about on par with asking a woman when the baby's due without first confirming that she's actually pregnant. I haven't stopped coloring my hair because I never started! It's going gray because I'm getting old and stressed out and don't have time for a haircut--and the longer my hair gets, the more the gray shows. And I had my bangs pulled back today because I went out for a fall-color hike this morning and didn't want sweaty bangs hanging in my eyes. 

So yeah, I'm getting gray, but in other news, the woods outside are getting all kinds of exciting colors and the lake at Mountwood Park this morning was like a mirror. Frankly, I'd much rather look into that mirror than stare at my rapidly graying hair. When the trees stop coloring their leaves, that's when I'll start to worry.

Random bullets of fall(ing off my chair)

We've reached the time of year when I need a jacket when I leave for work in the morning but not when I go home in the afternoon and so I forget to take my outerwear home, resulting in a bunch of jackets and sweaters at my office and nothing to keep me warm when the morning temperature is in the 30s. 

Fall: when jackets and sweaters fall out of my memory until they form a huge bulging clot of fibers threatening to take over my office entirely.

But at least they'll provide a nice soft landing spot when I fall off my chair while reading papers by students who have met the challenge, or others who have most decidedly not. It makes me happy when a marginal students steps up his game to do better, but not enough to offset the disappointment when an otherwise good student just doesn't bother trying. I mean: I know you know what a paragraph is, so why is this whole essay one big rambling lump o' text?

The chemistry in my classes is really bubbling right now, with one exception: a class so quiet that I could stand in front of my students waving a fistful of hundred-dollar bills and offer the money to the first person who opens his or her mouth and I'd be no poorer by the end of the hour. 

Meanwhile, the deadline for ordering next semester's books is upon us so it's time to make a final decision about what we'll be reading in my Literature into Film class. The theme is adaptation, both the ways books get adapted into films and the ways human beings adapt to various types of  challenges, and so far I'm certain we'll be reading and viewing The Age of Innocence, Life of Pi, and Fight Club. That's three honking fat books already but I've got a hankering to teach some Walter Mosley (Devil in a Blue Dress) and, oh what the heck, how about Cheryl Strayed's Wild? That's a bunch of great big books and amazing movies.

So with textbooks sorted and student papers graded (mostly) and jackets piled in a place where I'm unlikely to forget them, it's time to get out of the office and go find some lunch, preferably outdoors. Fall colors are calling! Time to fall out!

Hand me the rubber stamp

Someday I need to get a rubber stamp that says "You're doing exactly the thing I warned against on the assignment sheet." Or maybe just for fun I'll insert a bullet point on the prompt warning students against putting beans up their nose and then see how many come to class congested and sprouting.

It's only a few students, of course, but every time I reiterate the same instruction, it makes my brain hurt. Today I keep needing to copy-and-paste the same explanation of the difference between plot summary and analysis, and while I probably ought to feel guilty for not writing a personalized version of the explanation for each individual student, I don't. How many times am I expected to say the same thing over again before certain students take heed?

Don't answer that. For one thing, the number would be oppressively huge, and for another, even if I can convince my current students to follow instructions, I'll just have to start all over again with next semester's students.

As some wise person once said: ignorance is a renewable resource, which is why teachers have job security.

 

What He Did In Solitary: Poems to carry you through a pandemic

My body is a pawprint in the snow,
My memory, a snowman in the spring,
A little time, and then it's time to go,

So sing, my momentary Snowman, sing.

These lines appear in "Letters to Myself in My Next Incarnation," a poem cycle in Amit Majmudar's new collection What He Did in Solitary, a collection much concerned with the role of the poet and his reasons for writing. Majmudar's poems beg to be read multiple times in bulk and separately as their impact builds over time, word-plays and startling metaphors sparking pleasure on every page (jellyfish as "Ghost truffle / unruffled / by rough weather") as the poet shapes images into a variety of forms, from villanelles to ghazals to a combination sonnet and ghazal he calls a sonzal, plus free verse, prose poems, and list poems, including the title poem and and another in the form of a kill list and a helpful "Shopping List for the Apocalypse" that includes "Lice combs to harvest protein."

Many poems deal with the problem of mortality, the challenge of creating a meaningful life when meaning seems so quick to cease. "Letters to Myself in My Next Incarnation," for instance, asks

         Why do we
Write anything
If not to pass along a valediction
From the echo
Whose echo we are.

Here, the poet inhabits the liminal space connecting those whose genes he carries and those he will engender, whom he addresses as

My future homonym,
My future human
Meme, my futile name's

Skull-shucked
Plucked-spleen picked-clean
Mummified remains...

But the poet who balances between the demands of past and future finds that the very act of seeking immortality leads to dissolution:

To find a seeker's pleasure
in self-erasure

the mountaineer must wish
herself to mist.

Like his previous collection, Dothead, Majmudar wrestles with the difficulties posed by his hyphenated identity. As a native Ohioan born to South Asian parents, the poet channels childhood conflicts into poems buzzing with energy and life and complex emotions; in "Chillicothe Apostrophe," for instance, he offers a joyful paean to his flawed but beloved native state ("O heart shape, O hardship, / Ohio, O home"), and in "Air Jordans" he recalls the sense of empowerment provided by a new pair of shoes:

As if the Gods had called me
to jump, boy, jump, boy,
one arm up, one arm
down, like the overreacher
on my sneakers shooting
his body past the hoop
of the horizon.

But the boy seeking such empowerment too often feels put-upon, as in the poem "Bully," which evokes a desire for revenge before making a sudden shift to horrifying violence. Here, Majmudar shows how marginalization and oppression act on many levels and sometimes come creeping in when least expected.

Several poems deal eloquently with the marginalization of the ethnic Other, including his lauded poem "The Beard," in which the poet's resemblance to a terrorist cause others' fears to mold him into an unfamiliar monster. "Invasive Species" imagines us all as foreigners, as varieties of kudzu or Asian carp setting down roots in new places:

             We flower where we flower,
flinging roots like ropes from runaway
hot-air balloons to snag a city's skyline.

At several points, though, he longs for an escape from double consciousness, wishing his poems could be read without reference to his ethnicity. In "How Do I Say That, Where Is That From," he wishes for "a white name, / But not too white," a name he calls a "Bleachonym":

White as a wall
              On which the art
Is noticed from
              The very start.

Majmudar's art celebrates family connections and disconnections: a grandfather who married a hurricane, an uncle who mastered metamorphosis, couples who find love in a pile of warm laundry, suffering souls who stick together through grief and pain and loss. If love is a cat's cradle strung between fragile fingers, says the poet, then

            The cat
            in my creche
is your name

            on my breath.      

In these poems, love is as fleeting as breath but also as essential; transience is everywhere, but these poems provide a square meal that nourishes and warms and feels much more permanent than a melting pawprint in the snow. So sing, my momentary snowman, sing.

I swear they're creeping up behind me

This is what happens when a shelf inside a built-in cabinet collapses and the only way the college carpenter can fix it is to remove all the books but there's nowhere to put them except on the floor and on the chairs and pretty much everywhere, and then he fixes the shelf so it's now strong enough to hold all those books without collapsing but I'm in the middle of midterm grading so I don't have time to deal with the mess.

Good thing nobody ever comes to my office these days. On the other hand, I had a dickens of a time just now trying to reach my tea bags on the filing cabinet behind all the book piles. But now I'm calmly drinking my tea while grading papers with my back firmly turned away from the mess of books on the floor. Sometimes the path to sanity requires turning your back on the problem.

 

New trail, new views

When the path I'm walking feels stale and hopeless, it's time to try a new trail. This morning we walked the new Lakeview Trail at Lake Katharine, a lovely trek through pine and oak woods followed by a switchback trail down to the edge of the lake, which was as still and quiet as a mirror. The views will be gorgeous in a week or two when the fall colors are out in force, but today it was relaxing and lovely. 

Sky reflected on water

Rattlesnake Plantain orchid seed pods

Can I get a do-over?

The most perfect moment of my week occurred on Wednesday when clear skies, crisp air, and a hankering for apples inspired me to bake an apple cake from a recipe handed down forever by old church ladies, so even though I was exhausted from teaching four classes I stood at the counter peeling and chopping apples, stirring batter, and coating pecans with brown sugar and cinnamon and then I put it all into the oven, where the baking cake filled my house with the aroma of autumn, and then when it was done and cool enough to cut, I put a chunk of that fresh warm apple cake into my mouth. Cinnamon, apples, crunchy nut topping, the taste of fall perfection--unbelievable.

As for the rest of my week--well, it was more like that mess of apple cores and peelings I tossed into the compost heap. May I apply for a do-over?

It wasn't any one big thing but instead a perfect storm of annoyances large and small that piled up to a point that felt unbearable: a nonfunctional water softener, a student's open contempt for my class, a birthday gift that didn't get delivered ("delayed by the wildfires," they said; "we're sorry," they said; but no estimate on when it will be delivered), a friendly phone call that sparked a political tirade that reduced me to tears, an office so cold it hurts, a lack of sleep, problems paying a medical bill (because the bill-pay site won't work right, so if they want their money they're just going to have to come and get it), a mass of uncertainty about some issues I'm not at liberty to discuss in public...too much all at once and no one to talk to about any of it.

But there was that apple cake, which was so perfect that for a moment it drove all thoughts of anger or frustration from my mind. If I could eat that first bite of warm apple cake all week long nothing else would bother me, but I'd really like to send the rest of the week back where it came from and try again.

On the other hand, I'd rather not go backward when we've made it this far. I'm giving my first midterm exam today and marveling that we're still here teaching face-to-face on the brink of midterm week. I never thought we'd make it this far, and with no current cases of the virus on our campus. Round of applause for everyone who's working so hard to make it happen! Hip-hip-hoorah for apple cake! And the rest of the week can just go rot in the compost heap.

You may feel a little discomfort

I've attended the trainings and (mostly) mastered the technology so I can keep my classes running in a peculiar hybrid combination of face-to-face and online learning, but nevertheless a lot of what I'm doing this semester simply doesn't feel comfortable. While it's true that classes aren't necessarily designed to maximize my comfort level and, in fact, discomfort can motivate learning, I find this persistent discomfort fatiguing and disturbing on a variety of levels.

I've had trouble learning students' names (because they're masked and distant) so I'm not always comfortable calling on them in class. I've had to toss out tried-and-true activities because I'm not comfortable requiring students to move close together to work in groups. Zoom classes evoke uncomfortable stage fright, and the inevitable glitches interrupt the comfortable flow of classes.

But right now what's causing the most discomfort is the prospect of proctoring for my midterm exams. Two classes will take exams face-to-face, with a living breathing human being (me!) observing from the front of the room; two others will take online exams proctored by an online proctoring program. There's not really that much difference between being watched by a person who's present in the room and being monitored by a computer, but somehow the online proctoring makes me really uncomfortable.

I've taken all kinds of training and put all the appropriate measures in place to make sure my students know what they'll face: the proctoring system will take a photo of their student ID, monitor their facial movements to make sure they stay within the camera's frame, lock down their web browser so they can't navigate away from the exam, disable copy-and-paste so they can't keep a copy of the questions or send them to anyone, and automatically cut off their access to the exam after 60 minutes. Sounds reasonable, but all this high-tech monitoring feels very Big Brotherish to me.

But are my students comfortable? Hard to say. They don't complain too much, but they drag themselves into classes and they approach class activities with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. I get the sense that they really want this semester to be over without too much more grief an annoyance, so I'm trying to do what I can to make the path forward clear and direct.

And so we carry on. We'll get there eventually, accepting the limitations of this peculiar method of teaching and learning, and if the online proctoring system makes everyone crazy, then we'll make adjustments before finals. Comfort is not our primary goal but at least we can all be uncomfortable together.

 

 

Don't try this at home, people

I've been trying to identify the culprit responsible for an angry red spot on my back that feels like it's on fire, but it's not as easy as you might think. I can't blame a biting bug that may or may not have entered the picture, and I can't blame my husband's habanero-cutting scissors without blaming myself for marrying a man with an insatiable appetite for habanero peppers. So let's cast a wide net and blame Covid-19. It's already carrying the blame for so many problems--a little more blame won't hurt.

But my back does, and here's why: pandemic teaching has been wiping out my energy and sanity to such an extent that when I realized I didn't have to be on campus today and I don't have any new grading coming in until tomorrow--AND I had to drive an hour north anyway for an appointment in Zanesville--I decided to leave the house early and do some hiking before my appointment. Through heavy fog I made my way to Black Hand Gorge, where a paved bike trail leads through rugged  rock formations alongside the Licking River. 

For two miles I walked without seeing another soul, and then I sat on a bench for a while and watched a kingfisher swoop and dive in the fog before I picked up my pack and headed back to the parking lot, where a couple of Amish women pulling children in wagons and a group of masked couples speaking an Asian language were just setting off on the trail. For two hours I felt the trail was all mine but of course it belongs to the world.

Then off to my appointment and the long drive home, during which time I kept feeling a tickle in the middle of my back, as of some multi-legged creature creeping around under my shirt. Not much I could do about it at the time, although I suppose I could have flagged down the state patrol car behind me and asked the nice young man to look inside my shirt and see if I had a tick on my back. 

Probably a bad idea. 

And when I got home I was so appalled by the mess on the front porch that I set right to work sweeping, knocking down spider webs, and washing windows, and then there was a kitchen to clean, and there I stood with a hand full of cleaning rags when the tickle started up on my back again. 

In an ideal world, of course, I'd have a person on staff whose sole purpose would be to look for ticks on my back after I come in from the woods, but dream on! I just wanted the tickling to stop, so I grabbed the nearest long-handled object and stuck it down my shirt to try to rub whatever it was off my back. 

It took only seconds to realize that this was a really bad idea, and the first clue was when I started tasting habanero peppers. I was rubbing my back with the kitchen scissors my husband uses whenever he makes a sandwich, because he believes no sandwich is complete until he grabs a whole habanero pepper from the freezer, cuts it into strips, and places them on the sandwich, which to my mind ruins a perfectly good sandwich but nobody's asking me.

Now I don't mind habaneros in small doses--maybe one habanero to a crock-pot of chili, and I have to wear gloves when I cut them up--but contact with whatever habanero oil remained on those scissors made my back burn and turn bright red.

I never found a bug on my back, but my attempt to find it made everything worse for a while. I wanted to yell some choice words at someone, but with no bug to stomp and no tick-remover to berate whom could I blame? It's simply not that satisfying to yell at a pair of scissors. So I'm blaming the virus that made my job so demanding that I have to flee for the woods for solace. It may not do any good to throw a pair of scissors toward an invisible virus, but just for a moment, it made my anger burn a little less hot.

Making Zoom office hours work for me

I hesitate to buck the prevailing view, but I'm coming to appreciate the value of Zoom office hours.

Yes, I'm tired of Zooming. Yes, it's frustrating when students zone out on Zoom and pretend to be fully present--but that happens in face-to-face classrooms too. And yes, it's frustrating to set aside time for Zoom office hours and then have no one show up--but again, that happens with face-to-face office hours ALL. THE. TIME.

But here's what just happened: a student is revising a draft in her room, and she emailed to ask about a format problem she can't figure out how to fix. I asked her to Zoom with me, and within seconds I was sharing my screen with her and showing her where to find the setting on Microsoft Word and how to fix her format. She didn't even have to leave her room.

If I can grade or do course preps or complete other tasks during face-to-face office hours, I can do the same with Zoom: I leave Zoom running in the background with the sound and video muted, and if a student enters the Zoom waiting room, I hear a ding that alerts me. My only problem is that sometimes I forget to turn off the Zoom link when I go to teach a class.

Office hours have always been largely under-subscribed, with few students willing to interrupt their busy schedule to get first-hand help with problems. If Zoom makes it a little easier for students to call for help, I'll make it work. 

 

Neverending story

Woo-hoo I've just finished grading a massive pile of papers and I'm prepped for tomorrow's classes and I don't have to take any work home with me so I think I'll pop a pork tenderloin and some root veggies into the oven and go out for a walk in the fresh fall air!!!!!

Okay, so maybe I've used up more than my daily quota of exclamation points, but I've been digging my way through this pile of papers since the middle of last week and I can't believe they're finally done: drafts in one class, short essays in three others, plus two sets of online discussion posts. These papers ate my weekend alive and devoured my peace of mind but now I'm at the end and I can take a break!

Until tomorrow, when I'll be receiving another set of online discussion posts, followed by another set of essays on Friday, and isn't it about time to start figuring out the online proctoring system and writing my first set of exams?

It never ends, but neither do I. No days off and no breaks until Thanksgiving, and I can't travel anywhere because of the pandemic, so I've promised myself a vacation as soon as this semester is over. I haven't been anywhere but home and Jackson since March and I don't really care where I go, but the minute those final grades are submitted in November, I'm outta here, headed straight toward the grandkids if at all possible.

Meanwhile, though, I'm going home to cook and walk and not think about grading for one single minute. Until tomorrow.

 

Meandering through a puzzling time

I was halfway through a morning walk along the country roads near my house when a car stopped beside me and the driver lowered her window to ask, "Don't you have a new baby?"

Unlikely, since I lack a uterus and all--but it turns out she thought I was attached to the nearby donkey farm, which may well have a new baby although I didn't see any sign of it. "I don't live here," I told the driver, "I live down the hill on Big Run."

She looked skeptical, and well she might: the distance from my house to the donkey farm is a good mile and a half, much of it up a steep hill, and my interlocutor looked like she'd get winded walking to the kitchen to fetch another beer. Frankly, I got a little winded myself, mainly because I haven't walked up the Big Horrible Hill in a while. I've been spending my weekends in Jackson, see, and on weekdays I come home so exhausted that it's all I can do to keep up with the mowing and grading and housework.

But this weekend I didn't go to Jackson and I'm caught up on the mowing (but not the grading) so I thought I'd head up the road and see what I could see.

Not much is the answer--or not much that would impress anyone: pretty clouds, thistles, donkeys, nondescript little brown birds, tall Joe Pye weed blossoms fading into delicate tracery against the sky--even the luscious purple ironweed is starting to droop. At one point, though, I saw a great blue heron flying low over our creek, which suggests that even at its lowest ebb our creek offers something to sustain a heron.

How long will my morning walk sustain me?     

This week a former student showed me a photo of her new emotional support animal: a snake she keeps in a terrarium in her dorm room. (Snakes are low-maintenance and quiet--what's not to love?) If a snake keeps her going through difficult times then I'm all for it, although I'm less enthusiastic about another coping mechanism suggested this week by a person in a position of authority. What our hard-working faculty and staff members need to support them through this difficult time, they said, is simple: jigsaw puzzles. So that when we're not teaching or preparing to teach or grading or struggling with technology or helping students cope or, you know, having a life, we can use our abundant free time to lean over a table and puzzle away.

I can't speak for everyone but puzzles are not what I need right now. What I need is an IT person to follow me around and fix all my tech issues, a personal assistant to mow my lawn and do my shopping and make sure I eat healthy foods, and while we're dreaming, how about a few more hours in the day? 

If none of those things are happening then I'll take what I can get: a heron, some hay bales, a few scattered birds and blossoms, and  along walk down country roads where there's not much of any interest to see. 

 

 

A brief pause in the finger-pointing

My honors students this morning confronted the problem of pain when, in the first chapter of Cold Mountain, Inman asks a blind man "Who put out your pair of eyes," and the blind man answers "Nobody," an obvious echo of the scene in Homer's Odyssey when the Cyclops shrieks about the little nobody who has blinded him. But it's also, I reminded my students, an echo of the question Jesus is asked in John 9: "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that this man should be born blind?"

The desire to point a finger of blame when people suffer senselessly is almost irresistible, but like the blind man in Charles Frazier's novel, Jesus points the finger directly at Nobody. The blind man suffers not as a result of sin but to serve a larger purpose: so that the works of God might be seen in him. And this, in turn, reflects what Alcinous says in Book 8 of The Odyssey when he says the purpose of human suffering is "to make a song for those in times to come"--an idea that shows up in Cold Mountain when suffering inspires Stobrod's fiddle to new heights of healing sound.

Which is all well and good but on a day when my newsfeed is full of pictures of today's wildfires and yesterday's falling towers, it's not so comforting to think that such horrors happen so that someone in the future can make beautiful music or poetry or art. Can't we have beautiful music and poetry and art without suffering?

Still, we find comfort where we can. On a day of burning timbers and falling towers, Robinson Jeffers reminds us that "stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found / The honey peace in old poems," and W.S. Merwin in "Rain Light" bids us find comfort in what endures "even though the whole world is burning." 

I'm not interested right this minute in figuring out who is responsible for every horrible thing that's happened; instead I'll pause and reflect on those who work so hard to keep us safe and seek some honey of peace and comfort in the midst of the blaze.

So today I'm pointing the finger of blame at Nobody--but I'm not making any promises about tomorrow.

 

One of those indescribable days

If I'm having a more piquant day than I'd expected, it's my own fault: I didn't look closely at the jelly jar while making my peanut-butter sandwich this morning so I didn't realize it was hot-pepper jelly until I bit into my lunch. But at least I had some calming companions out at the pollinator garden. I saw a fritillary but it flittered off before I could get a photo.

Meanwhile, teaching has been tough. Some days teaching is like trying to bathe a cat, and other days it's more like trying to bathe a dozen wildcats with their tails tied together while the house is on fire. Guess which kind of day I'm having? And it's supposed to be a holiday!

My office computer is currently possessed by gremlins that make the monitor go black at random moments, like in the middle of a Zoom class--my students are still there, but I can't see them. And then I've been having trouble with the internet connection in one of my classrooms all semester, making it difficult for students in quarantine to join the class via Zoom, but just today the IT people told me the internet connection has always been unstable up there and they're not sure they can improve it, which makes me wonder: how can anyone expect me to include remote learners in a classroom where the internet thinks every day is Labor Day? I mean, if the rest of us have to work, surely the internet should have to work today! And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!

But this too shall pass. My sandwich was surprisingly good and the pollinators never fail to amuse. Now if I can just subdue the wildcats and get some cooperation from all my tech, it might almost feel like a holiday, even if I have to teach.