How many times have I stalked the wild pileated woodpecker through the woods, gliding as silently as possible to avoid scaring one away? And how many times has the majestic bird fled before I could get close enough to snap a decent photo? And how many times have expert birders sympathized by reminding me that pileated woodpeckers are notoriously shy and reclusive?
Hundreds of times. Okay, slight exaggeration, but still: I've come honestly by the conviction that the only way I would ever see a pileated woodpecker was fleetingly, blurrily, from a distance.
Ha!
Today I was driving toward one of the busier intersections in Marietta, where Colegate Drive descends a steep hill to meet State Route 60 just where the highway squeezes between the hill and the river. I had seen a bald eagle atop a tree not far from there Sunday morning, so I had tossed the camera bag in the car with me first thing this morning in hopes of seeing the eagle again.
But that was this morning. By the time I came driving down Colegate this afternoon, I had given up on seeing anything interesting and I had switched my mind to autopilot mode, so it's a wonder that I even noticed the pileated woodpecker directly in front of me halfway up a tree on the other side of the intersection, closer to the river.
Well what could I do? I squealed to a stop at the gas station on the corner, grabbed the camera, and got as close to the highway as I could to watch the busy bird and snap some pictures. There's no sidewalk on the river side of the road or even a decent shoulder--nothing but highway, curb, guardrail, and river. So I stayed on the opposite side of the road and took photos as traffic permitted. Occasionally a truck would spoil my view, but the only way to get any closer to the bird would have been to stand in the middle of the road, which would be a real birdbrain move.
The bird did not seem at all bothered by the noise of traffic streaming by or the smell of exhaust. What happened to "notoriously shy and reclusive"? This bird wouldn't have been bothered if the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade had passed by--admittedly an unlikely event in Marietta, Ohio.
I wanted to jump up and down and wave my arms at the passing cars--"Stop! Look! You're missing the show!" But I didn't want to become the show, so I packed up my camera and went home.
The woodpecker, the last I saw, was still halfway up that tree next to the highway, pecking away obliviously. Notoriously shy? Ha!
My son was looking through our wedding album when he pointed out that a certain youthful groomsman looked, quote, like a dork.
"It was 1982," I said. "Everyone looked like a dork."
I had hunted down the album to scan a photo for our Christmas letter, which would reach our family members' hands while we were in San Diego celebrating our 30th anniversary. That old ivory album includes many lovely photos, from formal portraits with the two of us flanked by attendants to a candid shot of a discreet kiss, but I knew immediately which photo I wanted: the last one in the book, with the two of us peering out the window of our 1970 Dodge Dart. (Anyone who would marry a man who drives a car that color would have to be hopelessly in love.)
It's not a particularly good picture. It's dark and poorly composed, with odd elements visible in the background (What's that scribbled on the glass? Is that my father standing back there?)--and look at the annoying reflections in my glasses!
Those big glasses. Remember those great big dork glasses we all wore in 1982? They don't appear in any other wedding photos because I wasn't wearing them. Yes: I was vain enough to leave my glasses off and fumble blindly through my own wedding.
But when I think about that wedding, this is the photo that comes back to me. We were always going somewhere in some barely-functional beater, so it seems appropriate that we started this 30-year journey not in a limo but in a battered Dart, which was, in essence, a dork car.
In San Diego last month we enjoyed cruising along the sunny shore in a Mustang convertible with the top down, but no one would have mistaken us for cool people. In my heart of hearts I'm still wearing my dork glasses in that dork Dart with my dork sweetie, getting ready to conquer the world in our own dorkish way. It's been working for 30 years, so why not 30 more?
I enjoyed a little time-travel this morning by dipping into the 2012 issue of MLA's Profession, which this year reprints representative articles published during the journal's 35-year history. It's interesting to see which issues remain unresolved after so many years and which ones have been overtaken by events, but I was especially interested in the spate of articles bemoaning the sorry state of the job market, the most dire dating from 1994--the year I returned to grad school to work on a Ph.D.
Now I'll admit that I was a little naive about the state of the job market at the time. I'd been happily pursuing the Earth Mother track for seven years since finishing my M.A., so I wasn't reading Profession or The Chronicle of Higher Education or anything else that might have opened my eyes. I recall some anguished hand-wringing around the English department at BGSU when the state de-funded the Ph.D. program, a clear sign that this might not be the best time to enter academe, but as long as I had journalism to fall back on, why would I worry?
Did anyone every try to discourage me from pursuing a Ph.D.? I don't remember, but if they did, I wouldn't have listened anyway. I was a nontraditional student: employed as a journalist, taking grad-school classes part time, taking no part in any of the professional activities likely to boost my chances of finding an academic job. By the time I finished my Ph.D. in December of 2000, I had presented exactly one conference paper and published exactly zero scholarly articles; my vita featured plenty of journalistic experience but only five semesters of part-time teaching. Twelve years later I'm on the verge of becoming a full professor at a college I love.
Good thing no one ever told me I was unemployable.
Trying to forget--how does that work? It's easy enough to accidentally forget something I really ought to remember, but intentionally trying to forget something is like trying not to think about green elephants or trying to wipe an annoying tune out of your mind.
Go ahead: try not to think about the last time you did the Chicken Dance. Don't think about how ridiculous you felt flapping your elbows like a chicken under the glittery disco ball at the roller rink, and don't think about that constant fear that you might fall off your skates right there in front of everyone. And especially don't think about that annoying tinny tune. Put it right out of your mind. No humming! Not a peep!
See? Impossible.
But my sole New Year's Resolution for 2013 is to forgive and forget some resentments I've been carrying around for far too long--not because the people involved deserve forgiveness but because keeping anger alive takes too much energy. Time to write 'em all down, toss 'em in the fire, and forget where the ashes are buried.
But how?
Suppose I decide to forget all about the Infamous Chair Incident of 2001. Painful as it was, that incident long ago switched categories from gross injustice to just another funny story so that even if I succeed in forgetting, one of these days I'll be sitting at a social event and one of my wonderful colleagues will say, "Hey, tell that story about the chair!" Unforgettable.
There's more to life than the Infamous Chair Incident of 2001--but if I label those resentments and keep their stories alive, they'll fester unforgettably.
And I really want to forget. I'm tired of thinking evil thoughts every time certain people cross my path, so it's time to wipe the slate clean on resentment and hit the reset button on relationships.
That's my New Year's resolution--and the only way I'll know it's successful is if I forget I ever made it.
We awoke this morning to a sparkling white landscape, with three or four inches of snow on the ground and more falling--and early birds by the dozens visiting the feeders. They perch on the nearby maple tree, causing the small limbs to quiver each time they land or take flight and releasing little puffs of falling snow each time. Within an hour after sunrise, the small branches nearest the feeder have been shaken free of snow.
Snow deadens sound, allowing me to stand nearby taking pictures until my feet get cold. I see ten, twenty, maybe as many as thirty birds at once perching on the branches, pecking beneath the feeders, or swooping down to grab some seed or suet.
Four or five bright red male cardinals observe from on high until two come together in a spiraling midair dance of dominance. I see titmice, phoebes, chickadees, two kinds of nuthatches, two or three kinds of woodpeckers, juncos, house finches, even a Carolina chickadee, its rusty plumage standing in sharp contrast to the fluttery masses of gray, black, and white.
I
could watch them all day if I didn't have a house to clean and syllabi
to write, so I'll watch them out the window until while my feel warm up
again--and maybe just a little longer.
Ah, the luxury of spending a morning lost in a good book! I turn my back on the cold and wet outdoors and hunker down on a comfy sofa with a cup of hot tea and a book, just a book, no pen or paper, no need to take notes or keep track of testable concepts or think about how to incorporate the book into a syllabus, just read without regard for the passage of time until I suddenly find myself at the end of the book and it's lunchtime.
Luxury, I tell you, especially when the book is as good as Richard Russo's Elsewhere, his witty and moving memoir of his life with a complicated mother. The chapter describing the adolescent Russo's cross-country road trip with his mother in the shotgun seat is worth the price of the book (even in hardback), and his meditations on his genetic heritage are by turns compelling and disturbing. And then there's a long paragraph about novel-writing:
[N]ovel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Feeling your way around in the dark, trying to anticipated the Law of Unintended Consequences. Living with and welcoming uncertainty. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming chatter. Surrendering a good idea for a better one. Knowing you won't find the finish line for a year or two, or five, or maybe never, without caring much. Putting one foot in front of the other. Taking small bites, chewing thoroughly. Grinding it out. Knowing that when you've finally settled everything that can be, you'll immediately seek out more chaos. Rinse and repeat.
Good advice, that. Worthy of sharing with students. Except I would have to get up out of my warm, comfy nest to find a pen and make a note, and just for today I refuse to interrupt the pleasure of reading, just reading, simply reading and reading and reading until I am well and truly done.
We're digging for treasure, my daughter and I, excavating the cedar chest in search of booty for my impending grandchild. Some fabrics withstand the rigors of long-term storage better than others--what made me hold on to those sorry crib sheets and stained bumper pads?--and so along the way we fill a bag with discards, but we also unearth real treasures.
She holds up a simple white romper with blue trim on the collar and sleeves. Why hold on to such an unimpressive item? "We have pictures of your dad wearing that," I say, "and also your brother and maybe one day your son, if you have one."
A grandson would be fine but one of these days we'll need a granddaughter to wear all those adorable dresses I made when I had free time, young eyes, and nimble fingers: green velvet with red ribbon trim for Christmas, pink calico with cross-stitched collar for Easter, the bonnet I smocked for her christening and the ballerina tutu I made when she was two and twirled.
The smell of cedar surrounds us as we try to see the beauty through pervasive wrinkles. I smooth out three tiny tiers of wrinkled purple satin attached to a black velvet bodice. "You wore that to see The Nutcracker, remember?" I say, and she remembers the ballet but not the dress.
We strike the mother lode of baby blankets in pastel pink, blue, green, and yellow. "Your aunt crocheted that one," I tell her, and she wants to know which aunt. "Well," I say, "your uncle's ex-wife, which would make her your ex-aunt, I guess." A broken marriage removed her from our lives, but her handiwork lives on.
Another damaged relationship becomes apparent when I keep mentioning an old family friend: "She made that blanket for your brother--she crocheted that afghan for you--she was with me when I bought the fabric to make that pink calico dress--we used to go to fabric stores together and attack the sale racks and remnants to find just enough fabric to make something adorable for our babies."
We used to see or speak to each other every day but then our lives diverged--who knows how these things happen? Today we're friends only on Facebook, but the cedar chest offers evidence of what we once meant to each other. Can this relationship be saved? And how big a cedar chest would you need to preserve a friendship without spot or wrinkle?
The cedar chest works pretty well to keep the bugs out of the embroidery but it can't prevent fine fabrics from deteriorating over time. That ballerina tutu has turned delicate and filmy, and the lacy white bonnet I wore as a baby is stiff, its pink ribbon faded. I hold up the black velvet trousers and purple satin vest I made for my son when he was too young to object to being dressed like a doll and I see not the vest but the boy inside it, the small quiet child who somehow gave way to the hulking blond man now moving confidently through the wide wild world.
Putting these clothes on a grandchild won't bring back my babies or restore lost relationships, but it will extend a hand linking past to future and assure that we pass on some tangible legacy. Even if it's just a simple white romper.
It was three weeks ago, I think, when my husband and I were looking at holiday wreaths and he said something like "Why spend so much money on a wreath when we have all those evergreens at home?" I pointed out that I didn't have the time or ability to make a wreath, and he said, "How difficult could it be?"
So I bought a big red bow ($2.95) and set him loose. For a while we had a pile of miscellaneous evergreen limbs on the front porch--pine, cedar, hemlock, holly--and then I came home one day and found that some of the limbs had been wired into a sort of vaguely wreath-like shape.
Then we went away for a week, and since wreaths don't make themselves, we came home to find that same agglomeration of miscellaneous misshapen greenery on the porch.
"Next year I'll just buy a wreath," I declared with a harrumph, but perhaps I spoke too soon. This morning my multi-talented husband beat that mess into shape, wired on the bow, and inserted the centerpiece: a tiny bird's nest attached to a delicate Y-shaped limb.
Next year I'll let my husband make me a wreath again.
So apparently in only five days in San Diego I shot something like 700 photos. I deleted some as I went along, but it's not always easy to evaluate the quality of a photo until I get it on my good computer, which stayed at home. After spending Friday elbow-to-elbow
with strangers
in terminals and airplanes and then driving the final two hours home
this morning, and after unpacking, sorting mail, doing laundry, and
generally getting the house up and running again, I poured some eggnog,
put on the Christmas music, and started editing photographs.
I
see lots of glare and overexposure. Like most snowbirds, we sought the
sun by walking on the beach, skipping stones, looking at birds,
splashing in tidal pools, and cruising along the coast with the top
down. We got a little sunburn, a little windburn, a lot of
relaxation--and too much light washing out the colors in our vacation
photos.
Judging
by the subjects of the photos, I've got a thing for rocks and water,
especially together. I see stark contrasts in shape or color, with
curves meeting straight lines or layers of browns broken up with sudden
splash of brighter hues. I see a lot of birds and succulents, some tall
ships and sunsets, my husband skipping stones in the Pacific and me
looking content just to contemplate the scene.
The photos
don't show the scent of eucalyptus, the sounds of hummingbirds high in
the trees, or the constant flurry of their zipping through the air like
colorful little bundles of energy. They don't show my difficulty getting
accustomed to the time zone (who wakes up at 4 a.m. on vacation?!) or
the challenges of driving on I-5 at rush hour, and they certainly don't
show how my soaked shoes and socks smelled after a good dousing in a
tidal pool followed by a long hike along dusty cliffs.
But they show the
most important things: rocks and birds, sand and water, cacti and
contentment, and light, lots of light, that neverending southwestern
sunshine that will keep me warm all winter.
If these bird of paradise blooms could speak, what would they say?
There's not much on this earth more adorable than buffleheads bobbing and diving in a lagoon, but they baffled my attempts to get a good picture. Instead, I offer the Nuttall's Woodpecker, which is not all it's cracked up to be.
Topiary Mariachi would be a great name for a band, unless you want to switch it up and make it Mariachi Topiary.
This red-shouldered hawk looks pensive. Maybe he's disgusted by the very idea of mariachi topiary.
There's nothing particularly newsworthy about a sunset--it happens every day without ever rising to the level of "Dog Bites Man." And yet! Sometimes a sunset is worth writing home about.
(Who put a ring on it?)
When my son was small enough to jump on the sofa, he fell off once and landed on a cactus and then lay patiently in my lap as I pulled the spines out, one by one. That would never happen today: he's too tall to stand on the sofa, much less jump on it; I don't have a lap that big; and that particular cactus is no longer with us.
We still have enough cacti to make dusting hazardous, but we lost a bunch of large succulents just after we adopted our late cat. Apparently she mistook the cactus pots for litter boxes and overwatered them. The most painful loss was the death of a beloved pencil plant, a gift from my brother, which my husband loved like a third child and still fondly remembers after all these years.
So yesterday when we walked into a Dr. Seuss landscape and found first a pencil plant that reached my shoulders and then another that stretched far overhead and then more densely packed rows of pencil plants, we were in cactus heaven. Rufous hummingbirds buzzed about the blooms as we walked a dusty switchback trail, each curve revealing a new landscape of bizarre succulents. Barrel cacti lurked at knee level while towering succulents loomed overhead, more varieties than we could identify.
If we lived familiarly amongst such wonders we might pass them by without a glance, but I hope not. I wouldn't ever want to be inured to such spectacular grotesques. I would, in fact, transport the entire cactus garden into my living room just to be reminded that nature never tires of producing beauty bizarre enough to pierce ours spirits and let in light.
Or, if we're not careful, poke us right in the keister.
Top ten reasons this is going to be the best anniversary ever:
1. Our adorable pregnant daughter drove us to the Akron airport at 4 a.m.--in her pajamas. Any trip that inspires that level of devotion has got to be good.
2. That wild-and-crazy husband of mine didn't bat an eye when the Thrifty rental car dude suggested that we upgrade to something a little more festive--like, say, a Mustang convertible. Which we did. (!)
3. Peacocks. On the wall. In our room at the cutest B&B in Encinitas.
4. Not to mention a hot tub. On our balcony. With a view of the ocean.
5. Yes, that ocean. There's a reason they call it the Pacific.
6. Hummingbirds! All over the place!
7. Eating fish tacos on the beach.
8. That bossy seagull trying to chase away all the other birds eager to share in the scraps of our fish tacos.
9. Plus a whole bunch of other birds I don't recognize. Time to bone up on those west-coast species.
10. Have I mentioned that wild-and-crazy husband of mine? Thirty years tomorrow! And here's to another 30!
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| Red-breasted nuthatch |
Red-breasted nuthatches have arrived! They generally spend their winters farther north, but about once or twice a decade they move south seeking more abundant supplies of seeds and nuts. They're similar to the white-breasted nuthatches that live here year-round, but the red-breasted variety is more colorful and smaller, about the size of a chickadee. Too cute!
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| White-breasted nuthatch |
This afternoon I encountered one of my Connecticut cousins in an unexpected place: on a monument atop a hill in Oak Grove Cemetery in Marietta, Ohio. I felt more than a little guilty about tromping around a cemetery while final exams demand attention in my office, but word went out among the birding community that crossbills had been sighted at the cemetery so I gathered up my birding-and-botanizing buddy and off we went.
Silence reigned beneath the hemlocks, holly, and oaks as we climbed steep hills. We had to tread carefully, glancing alternately down at the uneven ground and up at the treetops, where we hoped to catch a rare sight of the colorful migrating crossbills.
We saw some robins and juncos and a few fat flickers and once we saw a flock of what may have been crossbills too high, too far, too fast to be identified. Halfway up the hill in the newer part of the cemetery we paused by the tombstone of a former Marietta College biology professor, the predecessor of my birding-and-botanizing buddy. On the back of the stone were carved the words of Aldo Leopold: "He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance."
At the top of the hill we paused to enjoy the view, the cemetery sloping downward in every direction and the Ohio River glimmering in the distance. The river brought my distant cousins here in 1818 along with a group of intrepid New Englanders intent upon building a new paradise in the wilderness. They fought in wars, studied law, served in legislatures, and left their names on maps and monuments all over town. We found my cousin today at the top of the hill where a monument bears the name of William A. Whittlesey, mayor of Marietta in 1860 when the cemetery was founded.
Cousin William was born in 1796 in Danbury, Connecticut, not far from the site of today's tragic school shooting. He shares my mother's maiden name and perhaps some DNA but he's as much a stranger to me as the children and adults senselessly massacred in Newtown--but I still wish I could reach out to them, draw them close, lift their pain.
I stand on the highest point in Oak Grove Cemetery wondering what Cousin William Whittlesey saw when he stood in this place--a city on a hill, a beacon in the wilderness, a place of opportunity? I wonder whether he ever looked far to the east and longed to reach out and diminish the distance dividing him from Connecticut. I can't connect to him any more than I can connect to the families devastated by the shooting, but somewhere deep inside, we're all Connecticut cousins now.
Why would a student submit a final version of an essay without first deleting the comments I inserted in his draft? Unless he's just resubmitting the draft without making any changes. Or maybe he never even opened the file to look at my comments.
Is there any correlation between how well a student prepared for a final exam and the likelihood that she'll need to use the rest room during the exam period? What's so exciting about the rest rooms all of a sudden anyhow?
Why does that one guy keep staring at the ceiling? The answers aren't written up there--unless someone has obscured a secret message in the pattern of the ceiling tiles.
Does the student who borrowed my book really expect me to overlook the non-return of that book when it comes time to turn in grades? That'll be an Incomplete until my book comes home, sweetheart!
When a student leaves the final exam, closes the door carefully, and then utters an ecstatic "Yahoo!" out in the hallway, what are the chances that he aced the exam? Does the volume of the yell correlate with the student's performance?
And how much extra credit should I offer to whoever manages to answer all these questions first?
What's the best part of finals week so far?
- Driving to campus in daylight? Nice, but that's not it.
- Grazing on the yummy goodies popping up in every office? Close, but no cigar. (Which is good since this is a smoke-free building.)
- Finishing the Sports Lit class's grades early so I don't have to think about class anymore? A high point, sure, but not the very highest point.
No, the best part of my week so far is a little automated e-mail that pops up in my inbox every day to offer information or suggestions about our anniversary trip to San Diego next week. I'll be drowning in a wave of asinine essays or trying to calm a crying student convinced that her not-at-all-borderline F should be transformed into a D, and then I'll glance at my inbox and see the magical name of the bed-and-breakfast where we'll be staying in Encinitas, and immediately I stop what I'm doing and pay a little visit to our winter oasis.
The first message contained driving directions and a map, so no big deal except the map was clickable and expanded to show the Inn's proximity to the beach. "Moonlight Beach"--the name alone serves as a vacation.
Another message offered dining suggestions with little capsule reviews including walking distance from our Inn to each eatery and tantalizing references to shrimp tacos. Shrimp tacos! That's not something you see in Ohio.
Today's message introduces The Coaster, the train that carries visitors to the heart of San Diego's harborfront for a mere $7, rolling past majestic views of beach and ocean.
For a while I've had trouble believing we're actually going to make this trip, but these daily reminders make it feel real--and then I go home in the evening and share the highlights with the hubby, who spends at least an hour each evening with his nose in the San Diego tourist guide. I tell him about The Coaster and shrimp tacos and he starts talking about tidal pools and whale-watching.
We leave on Sunday but in many ways, we're already halfway there.
But of course we can't go at all unless I get my grading done. Back to work! Moonlight Beach can wait.
Link to soothe the savage(ly grading) beast:
Abandoned piano + random people = moving moments. Not sure why but this made me cry.
Intrepid interviewer + resistant writer = awkward interview. Just try looking away from this slow-motion train wreck, even if you don't need any more reasons to dislike V.S. Naipaul (here).
Beowulf = Jesus? Fact-checking student essays at Fie Upon this Quiet Life (here).
Sunshine + clear skies = boring weather--in Ohio. But on Mars, the weather outside is frightful! Look here for some lovely dry-ice snow and other amazing extraterrestrial weather patterns.
Why - wh = y. Why? Read a student e-mail message I'm glad I didn't receive--but there's still time! I still have three sets of final exams to grade!
I'm thinking of an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in which Our Mary registers for a college journalism course taught by an egotistical professor who assigns his own textbook as required reading. Sleazeball move, yes? And yet I find myself disappointed when my upper-level literature students fail to consult essays I've published when those essays are directly related to their paper topics.
On the one hand, I don't want to require my students to read my work; on the other hand, some of the things I've written could prove helpful.
When I read advanced students' research proposals, I often recommend additional sources they've overlooked: "You'll want to consult Paul Gilroy on the Black Atlantic," I write, or "John Lowe's treatment of Hurston's use of humor would be helpful here." You would think students would take note of those recommendations, but I didn't see Gilroy or Lowe cited in any of the papers I've just finished grading. If students are comfortable ignoring the big guns, I guess I shouldn't take it personally when they ignore my own humble contributions to the scholarly conversation.
But: my articles would have been helpful. And I told them so. And they ignored my recommendation.
Why would a student (or a class full of students) do that?
Our Mary would know. Where's Mary when we really need her?
I can read and evaluate a wonderful essay in a fraction of the time required to read a horrible essay; therefore, all I have to do in order to reduce my grading workload dramatically is to insist that my students submit only wonderful work. Brilliant plan! Why didn't I think of this sooner?
To the student who thinks the word clearly works like a magic wand: Clarity must be constructed with precision and grace. Adding the word clearly will not magically clarify incomprehensible prose.
To the student who thinks the word one makes her writing sound educated: When one rubs elbows with we and you and they, all those conflicting pronouns are bound to come to fisticuffs.
To the student wondering what fisticuffs means: Take Yogi Berra's timeless advice, and if you aren't familiar with Yogi Berra's timeless advice, you can look it up.
For the student who spent so much time summarizing other scholars' views that she forgot to include her own, I'll paraphrase a wonderful colleague: The argument is a Motown hit. The other scholars are the backup singers, who get to stand on stage and wear those sparkly suits only if they stay in step and in tune and out of the spotlight. You are the soloist. I can't hear you!
How many times have I stalked the wild pileated woodpecker through the woods, gliding as silently as possible to avoid scaring one away? And how many times has the majestic bird fled before I could get close enough to snap a decent photo? And how many times have expert birders sympathized by reminding me that pileated woodpeckers are notoriously shy and reclusive?
