In a green place, with dogs and blossoms

My childhood memories of trips to Connecticut involve crowded rooms full of aunts and uncles who had very firm opinions on many topics of no interest to a small child; now all the aunts and uncles are gone so our visit to Connecticut was crowded with dogs and trails and waterfalls and flowers.

And a kayak. Yes: my brother succeeded in persuading me and my husband to try out his two-person inflatable kayak, which he promised we novices would not be able to flip. And he was right--we paddled around a flat, calm lake without incident, except for my difficulty in getting in and out of the kayak. 

We hiked to waterfalls and took the dogs for a splash in a creek, ate fabulous food (much of it cooked by my talented brother) and stood in the rain eating ice cream at a dairy--but not before visiting the Pinchot sycamore, where we were dwarfed by its nearly 30-foot circumference. 

And then this morning we left Connecticut and drove to Longwood Gardens, south of Philadelphia. I promised myself that this time I wouldn't take a zillion photos, but then I saw a hummingbird and started clicking away.

Tomorrow we get up early and make the long drive home, taking sore joints and piles of sweat-soaked laundry. And pictures, of course, and memories. This vacation has passed too quickly but I doubt that I'll soon forget the many varieties of beauty we experienced.

The Pinchot Sycamore, in the rain

Bash Bish Falls

Cloud hugging the mountain

Indian pipes

Striped wintergreen

Looking toward Hartford from the top of Case Mountain

Mississippi River Trillium

Cup plant

Shrimp plant

The orchid room was amazing

Orchids that look like autumn leaves

Lollipop tree

Artichokes in Pennsylvania? Yes!

Mounting toward beauty

"We have to make things beautiful; they do not grow so of themselves," wrote Edith Wharton, and she certainly lived out that principle when she built The Mount, her house near Lenox, Massachusetts. This is the place where she was able to free herself from her mother's oppressive influence and invent herself as an author, but after her marriage fell apart, she sold The Mount, moved to Europe, and never returned. The house eventually fell into severe neglect, but a massive restoration effort in the past 30 years made the house and grounds again a place of beauty. 

Every place we looked, we saw something beautiful, whether inside the house, in the gardens, or on the paths through the woods. Even the path up to the little pet cemetery where Edith's little dogs were laid to rest is a treat for the senses. The Mount currently hosts an outdoor sculpture show called Sculpture Now, which added interest to the experience; it's delightful to happen upon a little art at a bend in the path. It was a beautiful experience, for which I am grateful to both Edith Wharton and the Edith Wharton Restoration group that keeps it beautiful. 

 

"Old Growth" by Bobby Sweet

The path to the pet cemetery

The wrapped trees are part of an art project.

We didn't see any bears, alas.

Catbirds were active all over the grounds.

The gap between upper and lower hedges created a window onto a view toward woods and pond.

grape arbor

Edith's bedroom, where most of her writing happened

The desk in her study--I wanted to take it home with me.

"One Leaning on Another" by Joy Brown

"Balthazar III" by Wendy Klemperer

"Gruntled Inflection" by Justin Kenney

Detail of "Unbridled" by Deborah H. Carter

"Gourd II/Homage to Van Gogh" by John Ruppert

Detail of "I Have Been Dreaming to Be a Tree" by Byeondoo Moon

Taking the waters

It feels somehow decadent to say we've been taking the waters at Saratoga Springs, but that's what we did today: we went for a walk at Saratoga Spa State Park, where mineral springs and geysers spew out water once believed to have medicinal qualities. Some of the water smells like sulfur and some turns rock formations vivid shades of orange and red. We tried the water at Tallulah Spring, a tiny, unimpressive fount near the roadside, and I found it refreshing in a way I can't quite describe. It's bubbly, yes, with a depth of flavor ranging from sweet to slightly salty, but mostly it tastes wet, if that makes any sense. 

After spending the first half of the week inside windowless rooms at my conference, it felt good to get out into the woods and walk amongst the dragonflies and butterflies (and, sadly, mosquitoes). We sat for a while next to Geyser Creek, where I felt like a voyeur watching dragonflies mate. Then we had a great dinner overlooking Saratoga Lake and went back to the hotel to pack for the next leg of our trip.

Tomorrow we're off to Lenox, where we'll see Edith Wharton's house and whatever else grabs our attention. The working part of this vacation is now over, so it seems appropriate to stroll through the woods and take the waters in a leisurely fashion. I don't know if the water will cure anything, but it sure makes me feel at rest.

One of several geysers.

Massive mineral deposits left behind by geysers.

This spring smelled very sulfurous.

The new rock looks fake, like faux boulders at a theme park.

Tallulah Spring, the water we drank. Sweet and bubbly.

Tallulah's trickle.

Our dinnertime view.

 

Academic writing: sometimes you need to just drive around the guardrails

After I presented my paper at the American Humor Studies Association conference yesterday, a grateful grad student came up to me and said, "I've been wanting to write about my teaching experiences, but I didn't know I was allowed to do that."

This made me both sad and hopeful: sad because of the way many graduate students unquestioningly accept the guardrails that constrain their academic writing, and hopeful because here was someone who had something interesting to say and who wasn't going to allow the traditional constraints to silence her.

I understand why grad students need to be trained to stay in their lane, to avoid the anecdotal and to ground their academic writing in appropriate theoretical contexts, but I was presenting a paper on teaching comedy during Covid-19 and I don't know how to talk about my teaching experiences without using the word "I" and offering specific examples. If those examples were engaging, amusing, or inspiring, I'm not going to apologize for that. I've reached a point in my career where nothing is really at stake, so I may as well say something that matters and that might make a difference in a listener's life.

When that student told me she didn't know she was "allowed" to write about her teaching experiences, I shared a few venues that encourage such writing. For instance, Pedagogy's "From the Classroom" section includes essays about hands-on teaching methods described with academic rigor. Further, the book display at this conference includes a number of collections of essays focusing on pedagogy, including, of course, my own collection from the MLA, Teaching Comedy.

Writing about pedagogy may be considered a second-tier pursuit in some circles, but we can all benefit from hearing about other teachers' classroom experiences. That grad student told me she appreciated hearing the insights I've gleaned from decades of teaching experience, and I told her that I appreciate hearing the insights of young people trying out brand-new ideas in the classroom--but that will happen only if someone writes them down.

Maybe she will. And someday maybe more graduate programs will function in a way that empowers students to write about their teaching without worrying about whether such writing is "allowed."

    

Trip prep trip-ups

Talk about excellent timing: yesterday I finally received the document I needed to get a permanent license plate for my new car. The temporary tag expires next week, in the middle of our road trip across seven states, and I could just imagine getting pulled over in every single one of them and cited for driving with an expired tag. This evening I'll get the resident handyman to install my new license plate and tomorrow we'll pack up and head on down the road.

My other fear was running out of  blood pressure pills in the middle of our trip, so I tried to get the prescription refilled yesterday; however, our insurance company wouldn't cover the cost because the refill was four days early. Fortunately it's a small enough cost that I was willing to cover it myself, but I find it bizarre that my insurance company thinks it would be better to skip my blood-pressure pills for a week than to refill the prescription four days early.

Still to do before we can leave: refill the hummingbird feeders (although the hummies seem perfectly content to rely on the bottlebrush buckeye right now), pack, print out my conference paper (first academic conference presentation since 2019!), send some important documents to the new provost, and attend what I hope will be my last-ever Faculty Council meeting. Oh, and figure out what to do with the sudden onslaught of garden vegetables. I mean, how much kale can two people eat in 24 hours?

I'll spend the day tied to my to-do list checking one thing off after another, and then tomorrow we'll pack up my beautiful new car and ease on down the road, free as a bird. I'll miss the hummies, but they'll do fine without me.

A regular waddle-fest

Waddling is my superpower I said, but I wasn't exactly myself at the time: I was speaking for an eight-inch-tall plastic action figure, some sort of robotic creature in teal and silver who was playing an important role in a drama orchestrated by my five-year-old granddaughter. 

She was using the pink Power Ranger figure, a misshapen hulk with too-broad shoulders and a tiny head. The action figures were having a contest involving jumping, kicking, and comedy, all scripted and directed by the five-year-old. All I had to do was follow orders, which at one point required trying to make the Pink Ranger laugh and at another point required me to proclaim an unusual superpower. 

"You're invisible," said Little Miss Dramatist, but in this case she was referring to the actual me rather than the plastic figure in my hand. Sadly, my invisibility wore off by the end of the game and I had to go back to being myself, just an ordinary grandma with no superpower at all unless it is the ability to fall in with the grandkids' plans.

Yesterday those plans included a ride on a sternwheeler on the Ohio River, where we saw a great blue heron, a pair of eagles, and lots of interesting boats. A passing coal barge was a big hit with the littles. This morning they're eager to go out in the garden with Grampa and pick some more veggies, and later we'll have a holiday cookout and a hike in the creek. At some point I suspect that we'll break out the marshmallows and make S'mores.

What a great way to celebrate our freedom: by eagerly engaging with the plans of creative young people as they charge boldly into the future. Or, in my case, waddle.