Stuck in a time tunnel

Yesterday when I went through security at the James Cancer Center, the scanner detected the shape of a weapon in my purse. Today I left the "weapon" behind. Who knew a glasses case could be so dangerous?

The friendly person at the desk had to issue my official visitor badge, which required taking a photo at a time of day when my face wasn't quite ready for prime time. I wasn't sufficiently caffeinated and I haven't slept much since Saturday, which was how many days ago? Hospital time is fluid; sometimes it passes very quickly and sometimes it seems to stop.

They moved my son to a different room at 3 a.m., which explains why he hasn't slept much lately either. The biopsy either will or won't take place today and we either will or won't learn what's what with the tumor in his chest. Meanwhile, life goes on--slowly, and then quickly. Who knows which way the clock will turn next? All we can do is wait and see.

Danger, danger!

Yeah boy I'm happy to be here.

Trusting the Team to fix a massive mess

My eyes lit up when the nurse said helicopter--a horribly inappropriate response, I realize. This was serious business! My son was sick! We'd been in the emergency room for hours awaiting word on the next step! Some toxic combination of boredom, stress, nervousness, and fear had turned my brain to mush, so when the nurse came in and said they'd be transporting my son to Columbus by helicopter, my first response was: neat!

My son says the helicopter ride was interesting but uncomfortable, and the discomfort has not decreased. He's a big guy, just a bit too tall for the gurney in the helicopter and the bed in the ICU. He hasn't eaten for close to 24 hours just in case they get a chance to do a biopsy today. And he's not allowed to lie flat because the gigantic tumor in his chest presses against his heart and restricts his airways, a situation that could turn deadly very quickly.

And in fact it's a wonder that it hasn't already. The mass in his chest was initially discovered last November, but the biopsy has been delayed by an insurance company that kept rejecting the need for a PET scan. He'd had some shortness of breath and pain while skiing in Banff last week and more after he got home. Yesterday it got to be too much so he went to the emergency room, where they found that the mass has nearly doubled in size (!) and needs to be biopsied and treated, like, yesterday.

For years he's been a healthy guy whose medical needs were easily met by the local Quick-Care, but now that he's a patient at a world-class cancer hospital, he has a Team, and right now the Team is talking about how they're going to do a biopsy on the tumor in his chest if he can't safely lie flat. They're a smart Team--they'll figure it out. 

I drove up early this morning after not much sleep and now, in between visits by various members of the Team, I'm trying to make myself useful. I'm texting with colleagues to figure out how to cover my class--can't afford to fall behind with an exam coming up Friday. I'm chasing down tissues and a phone charger for my son. I'm offering helpful tidbits from my time in cancer treatment--just now, for instance, I told him that patients leave behind dignity at the hospital door, and if he doesn't believe it, he can just look at the sunny yellow non-slip socks that aren't quite big enoug hfor those size-15 feet. 

Such a big strong guy looks weak and wrong in a hospital gown, but he's in the right place to get the help he needs. If he hadn't gone to the ER yesterday, this could have turned tragic very quickly. Now we sit and wait and listen to the Team and at some point we'll have a diagnosis and a treatment plan and a path toward a future that may or may not include helicopters. My main job right now is to remain calm. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

Of scandals and anvils

I couldn't come up with a coherent response this morning when the dentist asked me, "What's up with [name redacted]? Are they just wacky or what?"

My mouth was benumbed by Novocaine and crowded with cotton so forming words in response was out of the question, which is fortunate because it's probably best not to gossip about campus scandals while surrounded by patients in a crowded dental office. Their mouths may be full of cotton but their ears aren't.

And I use the plural scandals advisedly. In the past, scandal has arrived singly like an anvil falling from a great height, but right now it seems to be raining anvils. I'm not going to say a single word about the [position redacted] who departed suddenly last month after [irresponsible action redacted], but one day the whole story will hit the local media and then there will be blood.

Right now, though, an even bigger scandal has finally hit the local press and everyone is talking about it, even my dentist, who wonders who in the current scenario might be described as wacky. (I'm not going to post the link, but open your ears at the dentist's office and you're bound to hear all about it.) 

This is not the first outbreak of scandal during my tenure here nor is it the most salacious--not by a long shot. My first semester here was marred by a sudden outbreak of crime-scene tape and FBI agents after the then-head of IT was found to have been operating a secret server distributing child pornography online, a scandal that resulted in a 100-year prison sentence cut short when the miscreant was murdered. I was so new that I'd never even met the guy, but every single time this scandal reared its ugly head in the news, the criminal's name was accompanied by the phrase Marietta College professor, which felt like a slap in the face to law-abiding professors who do not make a habit of distributing child pornography.

We're a pretty mild-mannered bunch on the whole, so other scandals have flown below the radar. (Now I have to wonder: Does radar detect falling anvils? If so, someone over in the business office ought to check the Acme catalog.) 

There was the faculty member suddenly forced to separate from the College after it was discovered that [pronoun redacted] had been holding full-time face-to-face teaching jobs at two separate institutions simultaneously, a faux pas that probably wouldn't even be detected today because of the prevalence of online teaching. There was the professor who celebrated his positive tenure decision a little too early, a celebration that allegedly took place on the futon in his office in the company of a student. There was the [position redacted] accused of smuggling vodka into commencement in a water bottle, which would have earned nothing more than a slap on the wrist if his criminal career had not also included domestic violence and arson threats. And can it possibly be true, as I've been told, that a previous [position redacted] found privacy for a tryst with a subordinate while driving through a car wash?

Such minor scandals are the stuff of legend, but as long as they stay out of the news, they don't have much impact on the rest of us. That's somebody else's anvil. A career may be flattened, but the shadow doesn't fall on me.

Now, though, we've got a sky full of anvils and nowhere to hide. I'm not implicated in any way and I'll probably be retired before the situation reaches resolution, whatever that might look like, but I really don't want my final months at the College to be tainted by constant questions about a scandal so wacky it gets the dentists chattering. I can't dodge falling anvils while I'm immobilized in a dental chair, so how about turning up the music and leaving the wacky questions for another day?

California dreaming, 15 years later

Spring break 2011: A colleague and I take my California Literature class on a journey that ranges from Muir Woods to Monterey, from Big Sur to Jack London's ranch, from the bookstore that Lawrence Ferlinghetti built to the stone tower that Robinson Jeffers erected and beyond, a field trip that ranks pretty high on my list of most rewarding teaching experiences ever. 

A few times since then I've managed to take classes on shorter, less ambitious field trips, but never a multi-night trip involving airfare and car rentals and youth hostels and many meals. Such a trip would be nigh on impossible today, for reasons too depressing to enumerate: no administrative assistants to help with logistics, little access to discretionary funds or grants, an impossible labyrinth of campus purchasing procedures, very few English majors, the gradual and then sudden decline of my creaky joints.

One day in San Francisco we walked something like eight miles, largely led by students' interests. In the end one of the students commended me for my ability to keep up, but today they'd have to carry me after the first block--if I could even find students interested in making such a trip. Who's willing to pay an extra course fee and take a risk on a class that might not "count" toward degree requirements for students eager to complete their education in a mere three years? The course would be canceled due to lack of enrollment.

Now I sound like a cranky old curmudgeon longing for the Good Old Days, but I love looking back on that trip and relishing the learning that happened. This year my spring break is more constrained--spending a few days with grandkids and birds, then getting back home in time for a root canal and essential meetings. I won't be sharing photos of most of that, though you never know. Maybe readers are just begging for close-ups of my dental work? Until then, maybe we'll have to settle for California dreamin'.

Don't sob for SOBJA

I've been tempted to stay home for the rest of the semester so I can focus on recovering from SOBJA Syndrome, but it turns out that our short-term disability insurance doesn't apply to employees who are simply Sick of Being Jerked Around. There's no cure, either, and no known effective treatment except stepping back and taking a little perspective, but it's hard to see over the rim of the tub when one is immersed in SOBJA. (There's a little allusion to an Edgar Lee Masters poem, a reward for the attentive.)

So let's take the long view and seek reassurance that what I'm doing here matters. Just in the past week, for instance, I've had delightful and encouraging encounters with three of my former students, English majors who have gone on to do good work in the world. 

Last Wednesday an alum visited my American Lit Survey class and brought along thirteen students from his high school AP Literature class. Last summer this alum had emailed to ask whether I'd mind if he dropped in the next time I found myself teaching "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," because he'd enjoyed discussing the poem in my class five or six years ago but he wanted a refresher course. I said sure, and one thing led to another and soon enough we ended up with a full classroom, something I haven't seen in a while--his AP Lit students outnumbered my American Lit students significantly. 

And they were great! Only a few of the AP students contributed to the discussion, but they all paid close attention to the text and stayed off their phones, and a few of them came up to ask questions at the end. I had a great chat with my former student but what I enjoyed most of all was seeing him interact with his students and inspire them to read and think and learn. Good has been done here!

And then the next day I observed a class taught by another former student of mine who graduated 22 years ago and now teaches in my department. Another full classroom! What a treat to see my former student empowering her own students to engage with edgy texts and lead discussion of difficult topics. It's always rewarding to see a student step into her calling and become a peer.

And then on Saturday, between dropping my son at the Columbus airport and visiting the orchid show, I had breakfast with a former student who graduated in 2008 but stayed in our area for some years afterward. She was a nontraditional student when I taught her and we bonded over shared experiences, and now we are close friends despite seeing each other only a few times a year. She's putting her writing skills to good use and inspiring others to do the same.

It feels self-serving to say so, but when I see my former students working so hard to rock their world, I want to put my hand up and say I did that--or at least I played a small part in making it happen. It takes a village and so on, but if I made any small impact on enabling a student to make a meaningful impact on the wider world, I want to give myself and my colleagues a little pat on the back.

And I would do so if that darned SOBJA Syndrome weren't making my joints so stiff. 

 

Turn my back for five minutes and everything falls to pieces

I step away from news coverage for a few hours and suddenly we're at war again? Can't I take a little media break without missiles being launched?

I shouldn't have taken a break at all, thanks to a crazy crowded week that ended with a sudden change in the deadline for my massive editing project, which was supposed to be due by March 12 but is instead due on Monday. That would be the day after tomorrow. Ten days earlier than expected. And while I had been on track to deliver the goods by next Friday, March 6, I'm not at all ready to deliver on March 2, especially since the deadline change was announced late on Friday afternoon, February 27, after I'd already gone home. Yes: someone informed me late on FRIDAY that the massive editing project I'd been planning to deliver NEXT FRIDAY is instead due THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. There aren't enough exclamation marks on the planet to express how I feel about this surprising development.

So yes, I should have dropped all my plans for the weekend and spent the whole day editing institutional prose produced by a writers with various levels of skill, some of whom write quite clearly while others may (may!) have used AI to produce sentences that juggle academic jargon in various combinations without saying much of anything. First thing this morning I ought to have glued my eyeballs to the monitor and my fingers to the keyboard until the work was done, but I didn't.

Instead I got up at 4 a.m. so I could be showered, dressed, and ready to leave by 5, skimping on the morning caffeine quota so I wouldn't have to take a million rest-room breaks during the two-hour trip to Columbus, with my son driving my car because I can't see in the dark so I just sat there trying and failing to get a photograph of the orange moon. 

Dropped him at the airport at 7 a.m. so he can fly to Banff for a ski trip, which makes me happy both because I love to say Banff--Banff Banff Banff--and because my son is getting a chance to have an amazing adventure before he has to face some serious medical tests that could reveal all kinds of scary things that I'm not yet authorized to write about and in fact shouldn't have said anything about even now, so ignore that. A brief hiatus before things get serious--that's something to celebrate (but I've already used up all the exclamation points on the planet, so I'll celebrate more subtly).

Also worth celebration is the fact that yesterday I scheduled the final payment on our mortgage, exactly 22 years after we signed the loan papers. By the end of next week, my house will be paid off. I can't hold a mortgage-burning party because there are no actual papers to burn, but I've been doing a little internal tap-dance ever since I hit "send" on the online payment program.

And I took that tap-dance with me this morning on my excursion to Columbus, because if I'm going to get up at the crack of dawn to take my son to the airport, then by golly I'm going to get some fun out of the deal: first a chatty breakfast with an old friend, and then an hour or so at the orchid show at Franklin Park Conservatory. I kept seeing what I thought was the most gorgeous orchid ever, but then I would turn a corner and see another even more gorgeous. So much more uplifting than institutional prose, and easier on the eyes too.

I used my phone to take photos but kept away from news media all morning, and I didn't even turn on the radio while driving home because the silence felt soothing, so imagine my surprise when I arrived home and discovered that the world has gone to pieces while I wasn't looking--again--but I can't even think about it because all that institutional prose failed to edit itself in my absence so I've got to hunker down and get it done.

Tomorrow's going to be rough: after our (very early) church service I'll go to campus so I can use the big monitor that doesn't fatigue my eyeballs quite so quickly, and I'll just sit there and edit edit edit until there's nothing left to edit. Could take hours, could take the whole day, could leave me a gibbering idiot by the time I'm done, but you know what? It will get done. Because that's how I roll. No matter how annoyed I am at the unexpectedly mobile deadline, and no matter how much the whole rest of the world may try to distract me, I will fulfill my duty to the letter and send the edited files off even if the effort wears out my fingers and reduces my vision to a vague blur. IT WILL GET DONE. Tomorrow. Or else.

Meanwhile, let's look at orchids:

It's been a Monday

Monday! More snow and gray skies and cold cold cold, plus a commuter student who couldn't get to campus and wants to make up the reading quiz when there are no makeups, ever, for any reason, except I will offer extra credit opportunities later in the semester, but the students who were present to take the quiz all aced it with the exception of one who admitted struggling with the reading, and why is it so difficult to read Eugene O'Neill? My final time teaching Long Day's Journey into Night and once again I wonder why no theme park has yet opted to open the Tyrone Family Thrill Ride. (The rest is silence.)

The brain feels frazzled after responding to emails and editing accreditation documents and writing a letter of recommendation and prepping for meetings later in the week, and why do meetings tend to come in clusters? Every project I'm working on has a major deadline in the next two weeks, which makes some sense since everyone wants to get things done before Spring Break, but my eyes hurt and I can't think straight so I seem to have copied a bit of text into the wrong document. Accreditation and recommendation: the words aren't at all the same but they sit in similar spots in my work queue right now and they seem to be invading my dreams.

And meanwhile all the things I can't write about are disturbing my sleep. The other morning at 3 a.m. I awoke in a panic to puzzle over a number I'd heard in an all-campus meeting, and a week later I still can't make sense of it, or of the number of people who are publicly blaming the College for the resignation of yet another coach (not our fault but if I tell you why I'd have to kill you), or of why I'm obsessing over an inconsequential number that ought to appear in next year's contract but probably won't.

So it's been a Monday. When I get home and my hubby asks how my day has been, I'll be hard pressed to come up with a coherent response, but then anyone who expects coherence at the end of a February Monday when the world seems to be going to pieces is probably delusional. 

 

Friday poetry challenge: The Spring Can't Come Too Soon Blues

One day this week I watched coal barges crashing through river ice and saw a great blue heron contemplating a meager spot of open water in an otherwise frozen wetland, and the next day I went to work without a coat on and felt the approach of something fresh--Spring! 

I may have had a spring in my step after I sat down and posted all the College's home baseball games on my calendar, each little electronic appointment glowing like a promise of sunshine and happiness, even though I know some of those dates will include wind or cold or sunburn or misery. Baseball is coming--can spring be far behind?

But Spring Break is also coming, when I hope to spend some time with the grandkids and look at birds and maybe visit an orchid show--and oh yes, get a root canal--but this week three different administrators have tried to colonize my Spring Break calendar with various types of meetings and responsibilities. Which of these tasks would be least onerous during Spring Break: root canal, group document-editing session, all-morning training meeting, or interviews with prospective job candidates? I choose root canal.

So on a very gray, damp, but not at all cold day, I'm singing the Spring Can't Come Too Soon Blues: 

Well you can freeze me in December and throw blizzards at my January days
Yes you can freeze me in December and throw blizzards at my January days
But when I hear those baseballs coming
You'd better get those snowdrifts cleared away.

Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow and we're all prepared for six more wintry weeks
I say Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow so we'll wear our coats and scarves for six more weeks
But when spring training's on the radio
Mr. Groundhog's not the weatherman I seek.

Now Spring Break is in the offing and my calendar stands clean and clear and free
Yes Spring Break is in the offing and my calendar should still stand clear and free
But if you stomp all over my free dates
I swear you're gonna see the back of me.

 

Now your turn--loosen up your rhythm and put your blues into rhyme. 

My fifteen minutes of fame

I had less than an hour yesterday to prepare to be interviewed for a local television news report about Toni Morrison, who is the subject of a year-long celebration throughout Ohio. I wasn't exactly dressed for the camera, but at least they didn't pan down to show my wacky socks. I'm pretty sure I said a whole lot of brilliant things about Toni Morrison's impact as a writer and editor, how she created psychologically rich characters and explored themes that resonate with readers, including issues of race and gender and identity formation and friendship and the way the past can haunt us, but in the news report they used what was probably the least important thing I said, about how Morrison's books often reflect her Ohio origins. That's it. I'm not going to comment on the news reader's delivery or the content of the report (which you can view here), but I will note that my very favorite thing about this brief video clip is that you can clearly see Twinkie the Kid smiling over my right shoulder. 

For anyone who wonders why Twinkie the Kid sits in such a prominent place in my office--well, of course there's more to the story. For today, though, I'm delighted that I didn't make a total fool of myself on the local news, even if my voice sounds like it belongs to someone who's spent a life smoking three packs a day. (It's just sinus congestion. Lifetime non-smoker here.)

Anyway, my fifteen minutes of fame are over and now I need to get back to work, with the assistance of Twinkie the Kid.

Minor obstacles in a major project

Show of hands, please: who wants to spend a morning fuming over inconsistencies in file-naming conventions?

I remember a time years ago when I had to insist that students follow a strict pattern for naming files submitted for grading so I wouldn't end up with an online folder full of Word documents all named something like Essay 1. These days a student submits the document through Canvas so it stays firmly attached to the student's name and the actual file name doesn't much matter. I no longer have to give instructions about file names or even warn students not to insert rude or obscene suggestions within the file name. (Apparently some of my students share the juvenile sense of humor demonstrated by the prior owner of my first campus computer, who applied a very special name to each drive in the directory: testicle, scrotum, penis....)

But today's file-naming mess has nothing to do with student work. My current administrative role requires me to read, edit, and bring into one consistent voice a bunch of Very Important Documents, and I say "a bunch" because so far I can't figure out exactly how many there are. It ought to be easy to locate the drafts amongst the shared folders devoted to the project, but because of inconsistency in naming files, I have to hunt amongst hundreds of documents to locate one that might be called 3A Draft or Draft 3A or Final Draft 3A or Final 3A Draft or any of an infinite number of possible permutations, each located in a different spot in the alphabetical flood of files. And then I see two files right next to each other, one named 2B draft final  and the next named 2B final draft. Which is the real final draft? I don't want to read and edit the wrong one!

The deadline for this project is tight and inviolable, but so far I've spent most of my time simply trying to locate the proper documents without any confidence that I've found them all or found the right version of each one, a situation that makes my brain hurt. Trust me--you really don't want me editing Very Important Documents when my brain hurts. Which is as good a reason as any to stare out the window until I can see straight again.     

Jammin'

My husband got home around dusk yesterday and said You've got to see this so I went out and had a look. It was definitely worth seeing: thick fog hanging above a creek so choked with ice that it bulged on the upstream side of our neighbor's low bridge,. The icejam caused ice chunks to pile up more than a quarter mile upstream past our bridge and sent water over the banks into the low parts of our meadow. The creek looked solid, but if you tried to walk on the jammed-in ice chunks you'd soon fall victim to gaps and instabilities. The ice chunks looked spooky in the fog but far scarier was the prospect of further flooding. If the ice and water can't move past the jam, there's nowhere for it to go except where it can do the most damage.

There's a metaphor in there somewhere but it's too hot to touch right now--or too cold to handle. 

 

 

Digressions toward upliftitudination

I'm standing at the gas station fueling up my salt-encrusted car, relieved that a sudden outbreak of warmth is melting the ice that keeps covering every stinking surface in the county, even the river, which was absolutely gorgeous this morning with that silvery sheen of icemelt shimmering over the frozen expanse--now where was I going with this?

Oh yes: pumping gas, grabbing a paper towel to wipe off the rear backing-up camera that keeps getting so thoroughly coated with layers of road salt and, now that the ice is melting off my driveway, mud, so filthy that when I back up the camera shows me only vague blotches where the road ought to be, when suddenly I see a big green truck. Meaning I see the truck in the gas station parking lot, not in my mud-covered driveway, which it (the truck) could never reach because even if a semi loaded with soda could cross my bridge without causing a collapse it would probably jackknife on the sharp turn just past the bridge and never make it up the mud-covered hill, which is a good thing because there's no room up there for a semi to turn around so it would be stuck there forever, in my driveway, a big green semi advertising 7UP--and again, I've lost my train of thought.  

I blame the weather, which started the week in single digits, made a brief visit into the low 60s, and now hovers in the 30s, leading to a freeze-melt-refreeze cycle that's driving us all just a little bit crazy, not to mention that the weather inside my building is so miserable that on Monday I had to sit in my office with my coat on even while wearing long-johns and two layers of sweaters.

But I digress. (So does the weather. Repeatedly.) I'm pumping gas when I see this truck, this huge green semi sporting a massive ad for 7UP, a beverage I literally never drink unless I'm at a baby shower or some such celebration where someone makes that super-sweet punch involving 7UP poured over sherbet, and I'm not sure why else 7UP exists except to make that punch, when suddenly (back at the gas station, pumping gas) I notice the words on the side of the big green truck: Be UPtimistic.

And this makes me smile.

Yes: despite the weather, despite the ice that keeps trying to kill me and the mud that makes my car slide all over the driveway, despite all the ways my department and my discipline and, yes, even my entire career are being marginalized and misunderstood and muddled, despite the lack of answers about health problems plaguing my loved ones and lack of certainty about funding for just about everything and the difficulty of getting that one annoying student to understand that the stairwell works both ways and therefore walking straight up the middle disrupts the flow--I mean, despite abundant reasons to be grumpy on a cold wet miserable morning, those two words on the side of a truck make me smile.

Later I look up UPtimistic and discover than in addition to being associated with a Danish electronic band called Laid Back (which ought to be the name of the garage band I'll start in my retirement if I ever get around to learning to play an instrument), the Be UPtimistic ad campaign dates back to 2024, which lets you know just how out of touch I am re: carbonated beverage advertising, and when I look at the rationale for the ad campaign I see that I've missed many opportunities to experience what some no doubt highly paid advertising copywriter chose to call "UPliftment." 

I confess that I felt uplifted when I saw the ad on the side of that big green truck this morning, which accords with 7UP's stated mission to "offer light relief from the mundanities of daily life by bringing moments of UPliftment, positivity and surprise." A little tautological there with the reference to the dailiness of daily life or the mundanities of the mundane, but what do you expect from a company that asserts that this ad campaign "signifies a refreshed strategic and creative north star for the brand that will inform all international programs moving forward"? Frankly, I was not aware that the north star needed refreshing or that it was capable of informing programs, forward-moving or otherwise, but then I'm not raking in the big bucks writing ad copy so what right have I to be critical?

No, today I'm choosing to put my critical tendencies aside and focus on abundant reasons to be UPtimistic, even if I don't drink 7UP and don't intend to start and even if the ice keeps making life treacherous and the mud makes me slide and the atmosphere in academe is as murky as it's ever been. Tomorrow we'll celebrate the College's birthday but today I'll warm up by celebrating a great class discussion in American Lit Survey this morning, a pair of colleagues wearing cheery pink outfits, a couple of writing buddies keeping my fingers on the keyboard, a semi-disastrous attempt to make a pumpkin dump cake that nevertheless resulted in deliciousness (not deliciousment), a warm coat, a good night's sleep, and the opportunity to do it all again tomorrow, only with cupcakes.

So life is rough but I'm UPtimistic. (But I draw the line at UPliftment.) 

Dusting off fusty old Modernism

Here I am taking my final lap around the American Lit Survey syllabus before I head off to Emeritusville, which means it's my last chance to make something stick in students' brains. If I get it wrong this time, I won't get another chance. 

Which is why I'm a little nervous about introducing my students to modernism. 

When I ask my survey students what they think modernism might mean, they guess it refers to stuff that's, like, really modern, fresh and new and up-to-date. How disappointing, then, to discover that we'll have to start out by stretching our minds back more than 100 years to touch base with Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson, two midwestern men who believed they were forging a brand-new path for American literature.

Today that path looks worn and ragged, hardly suggesting modernity. Years ago I sometimes had students familiar with Masters because in high school they'd read or even acted in a version of Spoon River Anthology, but I can't remember the last time a student expressed any familiarity with either author, even though Anderson, like most of my students, was an Ohio guy. The litany of modernist authors sounds like it belongs in a graveyard: Eliot, Sandburg, cummings, Frost. Williams, Stevens, Hurston, Hughes. Hemingway, Faulkner, Glaspell, O'Neill. They all thought they were doing something really new and different and earth-shaking, and they were! But this is my last chance to make students believe that modernism mattered--and still matters.

On Wednesday I'll get all excited and scribble a bunch of vocab up on the whiteboard--Alienation! Fragmentation! Experimentation! Grotesques!--which my students probably won't dutifully write down, despite my urging. Maybe they'll come up after class and take a picture of the whiteboard mess to file away with all the other pictures of words that belong to a past so distant it seems to be speaking a different language. 

When we tackle Wallace Stevens I'll ask them why we need thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, why we can't look just once and get the whole picture, why a poem wants us to engage in looking instead of memorizing, but I'll be lucky if one student scribbles something about the poem as the act of the mind finding what will suffice. The poem as the act! Of the mind! Finding! 

Last chance to make it matter! 

As I look down the months before I get put on the shelf, I'm taking refuge in William Carlos Williams's poem "A Sort of a Song":

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
--through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks. 

Let my teaching lodge the poems in students' minds like the snake waiting under his weed; let me plant a seed that sends roots deep into their rocky minds. Let the snake wait, the seed grow, the words finally strike with a bite that feels like rock splitting. Then they'll know why modernism matters. Then my job here will be done.

Friday poetry challenge: Scarfing up the rhymes

I walked out the door this morning to find my face being pelted by invisible precipitation, sharp little pellets that looked like nothing and sounded like dry rice being poured into a saucepan. What do you call this stuff? Not quite sleet, not quite snow, not quite freezing rain, just one more manifestation of this never-ending winter. When I was halfway to campus it turned to snow, and by the time I'd parked the campus sidewalks, which had only recently been cleared of ice and snow, were once again covered in white.

At least it's not windy, I told myself. At least the temperature is in double digits for a change. At least I'm well bundled up. But now, thanks to the New York Times, I have to think about yet another winter-weather hazard: looking old. Yes: a prominent headline asks "Does Your Winter Scarf Make You Look Old?" Apparently people with way too much time on their hands are out there in the blizzard obsessing over what sorts of scarves people wear and how those scarves are tied. One fashion expert avers that scarves that look "buttoned-up" make people look old while those tied more casually make wearers appear youthful; further, the Scarf Mafia asserts that "it's impossible to make an infinity scarf look relaxed and chill."

Do you know what what else does not look "relaxed and chill"? A person who has slipped on a pile of snow and landed SPLAT on the sidewalk. It happened this morning--not to me, for a change--and the victim, though well buttoned-up, looked neither youthful nor decrepit but simply embarrassed. Good thing the Scarf Mafia wasn't here to offer helpful suggestions: "Here, let me fix your scarf so you'll look more youthful while lying on the ground--or better yet, take advantage of this little hiatus to knit yourself a triangular scarf. So much less stodgy!"

I love my current winter scarf, a soft red wool with white and gold accents, but I wear it not to appear chill but to stay warm, or at least warmer than I would be without it. I have colleagues who strap spikes onto their shoes to walk to campus and others so bundled up that they I can't tell who they are when they greet me, but I'm not making any judgments about their winter-weather attire. I'm just hoping they remain upright in the middle of whatever you want to call this slippery mess. 

We've had snow and sleet and freezing rain,
and then we've had them all again,
along with wind and winter chill
and ice and slush. It's quite a thrill
to drive or walk to get to class
in this persistent Arctic blast.
But I can't ponder, in this cold,
whether my scarf makes me look old.
As long as I stay on my feet,
who cares if scarves don't look so neat
the way I tie them. I confess:
my winter garb appears a mess;
I may look old and tired too-- 
at least my lips aren't turning blue.
But if my scarf offends, I'll turn
the other cheek. (It's got windburn.)

 

Now your turn: let the weather do its worse--and put your efforts into verse. 

 

My cozy red scarf

 

But why can't you smile more?

I'd just finished doing a joint presentation with a wonderful colleague when another colleague offered praise: "It was good to see the two of you looking happy." Well, we looked happy because we were happy. We were presenting interesting information about terrific authors to illustrate fascinating ideas about the way history and literature illuminate each other, a topic on which we are both very passionate, so of course we were happy.

But I heard the unspoken part of my colleague's praise: "It was good to see the two of you looking happy for a change." Ouch. Maybe if we had a chance to celebrate our research and share ideas amongst interested listeners every day, we would constantly parade all over campus in great big clown smiles, but there's a lot more to campus life than a once-in-a-career presentation.

The problem is that the two of us have been around higher education for a long time. We've both served as Faculty Chair during particularly trying times, and we've chaired departments and committees and worked on projects that exposed us to the most irritating aspects of campus culture. We've been through the wars and we try to carry our scars with dignity, but sometimes we get weighed down by past struggles, current challenges, and the stark forecast for the future of academe.

So we have been known to complain about injustices on campus, but what of it? If tenured senior professors don't use their voices to address problems, who will? 

And of course our experience reflects the ongoing epidemic of men telling women to smile more, as if the only value we bring into a situation is aesthetic. We're happy to smile when smiling is appropriate, but if the situation requires a stern mien, a pointed critique, or even a raised voice, we'll step up.

So I'll accept my colleague's praise: we did good work, and we were very happy while doing it. But don't expect us to smile through every situation, especially when the context requires critique.  

A new Olympic sport?

I thought I'd gathered a good number of eggs from the chicken coop yesterday until I realized that two of the eggs were actually golf balls. "Don't fry them," texted the resident chicken fancier, whose temporary non-residence resulted in my being tasked with gathering yesterday's eggs, an easy task in balmy weather but downright treacherous when the intervening landscape would be most suitably traversed via luge.

After what feels like years but is probably just weeks trapped in a repeated snow/slush/freeze cycle, the slopes on our property are now covered with a thick layer of snow topped with ice that sometimes holds firm and sometimes allows the feet to break through. I wore stout shoes and carried a walking stick and stayed near the path beaten by my husband's boots, but I still found it difficult walking down the hill and then back up again without losing my footing or losing my cool or losing the delicate eggs (or the golf balls). 

As everyone except me obviously knows, putting golf balls in the nesting box encourages the chickens to lay eggs there rather than, for instance, under the coop or on the ground or in the feed trough. I would have noticed that two of the eggs I'd gathered looked different from the others if I'd been wearing my glasses, but I knew the trek would be a bit of a slog and I can't wear glasses when I'm sweating because they slide down my face, and what with the walking stick and gloves and egg basket, I certainly wouldn't have been capable of pushing my glasses back up again once they'd started sliding.

In this kind of weather, egg-gathering ought to be considered an Olympic sport: it requires special equipment, physical strength, and manual dexterity, and it would benefit by the addition of a luge and ski lift. Who will call the International Olympic Committee? I would do it myself but I've got to clean up the fried-golf-ball mess.    

Friday poetry challenge: Replaceable You

I’m trying to replace myself but it isn’t easy.

The Powers That Be like to insist that I’m irreplaceable—usually when they want to sweet-talk me into taking on some extra bit of work—but nevertheless they want to quickly identify someone to replace me as Director of our Center for Teaching Excellence so I can train my replacement over the course of the fall and make a smooth transition that will maintain our momentum. They’ve asked me to write a job description so they can seek and sort applicants, which is a nice switch from the previous selection process, which ran something like this: "We need a Director. You’ve done it before. Do it again."

So I’ve spent some time trying to succinctly describe my duties and the characteristics needed to fulfill them, because I have to write something more specific than "Wear yourself out trying to meet everyone’s needs without adequate resources or support." I have crafted a bunch of bullet points using HR jargon to describe skills, tasks, and dispositions, but I haven't shared the other list, the secret list that can’t be put into words in an official document. Things like "The successful candidate will possess the ability to say yes in a way that clearly means no, a willingness to allow others to take credit for one's own work, and eternal patience with people seeking the magic wand that will make all their classroom problems disappear."

It could be worse--it could be verse!

There once was a Center Director
whose seat was equipped with ejector,
but before she took flight
the boss asked her to write
a description to help them select her

Replacement, an ideal mixture
of cheerleader, scholar, and fixer;
whose magical skills
could cure all teaching ills
and multiply budgets--neat trick! Sure, 

We're seeking a teacher who's stellar
with students, and then we'll compel her
to trade classroom chores
for admin meetings (bores!)
and "unspecified duties." (Don't tell her!)

So the Center Director is trying 
to describe her own job (without lying)
because she must replace
herself--in some haste--
or else she'll be here 'til she's dying.

 

Your turn--put your replacement's job description into verse. 

Because it was there

I walk alone across the snow-covered campus, my shoes crunch-crunching over snowy walkways stained blue from ice-melt salt that doesn't do much good in single-digit temperatures. At one point I'm forced to guess the path along an unplowed walkway, but I finally make it to the safety of the library. From my office window the campus looks deserted except for the occasional figure bundled up as if prepared to trudge across the icy expanse of Hoth. 

Why am I here? I don't teach on Tuesdays so I could have stayed home, but instead I braved the treacherous roads to spend a day catching up on scut-work and meeting with students. Is it really worth risking my life just to get to campus?

Fortunately, the worst of the Snowpocalypse missed our area; we had no power outages or falling trees and our pipes didn't freeze. But we had plenty of snow, ice, and cold, and the cold is just getting colder. I broke out the long-johns and bundled up thoroughly, but in the short distance I walked from car to building, my face started to hurt.

I suppose I wanted to prove that I could do it. Living with people who scoff at bad weather is a challenge. If I'm hunkering under a blanket with a cup of hot tea and a good book when the resident lumberjack says it looks like a good time to go out and cut down some trees--well, I can't help feeling like a bit of a wimp. It's pretty lame to beg out of driving in snow because I learned to drive in Florida, where snow never entered the picture. I mean, it's true, but that was more than 40 years ago and I've developed some snow-driving skills in that time. The fact is that I just don't wanna.

But I wasn't getting any work done at home and I do have some appointments today, so here I am in my office wondering whether anyone will actually show up. I'm filling the time with meaningful work: peer-reviewing an article for a literary journal (meh), rescheduling all my Monday meetings that were cancelled because of weather, preparing for a campus presentation  that promises to be the highlight of my week, looking out the window at something other than yard birds--which are lovely, of course, but the birds don't pay my salary. 

Campus feels eerily quiet today and I doubt that I'll stay much beyond lunchtime. I'll meet with my students, congratulate myself for making the effort, and then trudge back along the frozen expanse of Hoth to my warm, cozy home. It's a luxury, of course, to go home to a warm house when so many others are left out in the cold, and so I contribute to local charities that serve the homeless and pray for a world in which no one has to stay outside on a day like today.

The view from my window

Snowpocalypse staredown

What else is there to say?

Birding the Snowpocalypse

Years ago a friend from California visited our house and her young daughter was jumping up and down about these beautiful red birds at the feeders.

Cardinals. She'd never seen a cardinal before. 

Around here, they're common as dirt--especially on a day like today, with snow all over everything and an easy source of seeds at our feeders. It's not unusual to look outside and see a dozen or more cardinals vying for position. Later during mating season the males get all territorial, but right now they're content to hang out all together in the trees surrounding our feeders, along with woodpeckers, titmice, chickadees, finches, juncos, and a solitary towhee. It's unusual to have juncos and towhees at the same time, but there they are.

So far, Snowpocalypse has been pretty, with just a few inches of snow covering the roads last night and more big, fluffy flakes coming down this morning. But now the snow has changed to sleet. Who knows what's coming next? No plows have come down my road yet but I don't have to go anywhere today so I think I'll stay home and watch the birds. I can worry about the roads tomorrow.

The view from my bedroom window.

First towhee of the season.