the news... and nourishment

Heartbreaking news about Alice Munro... and tragically one reminiscent of the world she evoked in her fiction where children are betrayed and damaged by adults (plural!) who were supposed to care for and protect them. I hope Andrea Robin Skinner finds peace and experiences continued healing.

and

Unfathomably soul-crushing news from The Lancet (medical journal of record) warning that conservatively, "the true death toll in the Gaza genocide could be 186,000 or more." And that this "staggering figure amounts to 8 percent of the population of Gaza. A similar percentage of the US population would be 26 million people." I'm coping through a cocktail of hope (there has been an increase in public support for Gaza including from the French left--the surprise election winners), drugs (including OTC Ashwagandha), busy-ness (deadline after deadline), and the loving support of family and friends.

Pic: Some of my farmers' market haul from this weekend. I used the summer abundance for dinner today--ratatouille, which I served with focaccia (also from the market) and tzatziki. Our meal was already solidly Mediterranean, repping French, Italian, and Greek foods, so I cut up some Valencia oranges to add Spain to our dinner mix.

an easy hang

A lovely day-spend with the lovely KPB. 

I joked to KPB about how I finally sent off my work because I had to get ready to hang out with her today and how she was helping me check things off my summer fun list too... Today: A walk though the Rose Garden, Baklava at Sultan's, and a meander through the Broad Art Museum's new exhibits.

Bestie KB set me and KPB up when she left to go live in Minneapolis.  So KPB reminds me a little of being with KB (they even have similar names and initials)! But KPB and I have lots in common and today was just an easygoing ramble of chatter and jokes and shared positions on things that matter. And new ideas--now I want to get a glass-cutting tool and work with old bottles.

Pic: "Angel Soldier" by Yongbaek Lee (2005). In this hanging video installation, there are soldiers wearing flower camouflage moving ominously through a vista of artificial flowers. It's their movement that gives them away, so they're difficult to detect in a photograph. (But if the photo were a clockface and you look in the region of 10, you can kind of see the muzzle of a gun.) Broad Art Museum today with KPB who came down from Alma for the day.

just press send already

I should just press send, but I'm finding so many excuses to hang on to my manuscript. 

One main reason being I can still find things to tweak and improve and cite and... and... and... every time I  open up a random page. How do professional writers do it?! (StephLove?)

It's 3:30 am, one more run-through, and then I really will send it. I swear. I didn't even go to the Juneteenth thing I was supposed to go to...

The series editor to whom this will go is in New Zealand, so I'll still technically be compliant with the deadline.

Pic: Max and I found scads of tadpoles in the pond this morning. I'm excited for our future frog chorus.

the time I need

My deadline was this past Sunday. I got an extension until Wednesday, because I wanted to spend a few more days fine-tuning things. When I asked for the extension, the editor good-naturedly said I should "take the time I need." I think about how they (could have but) did not say I should take "all the time I need." I'm using it as a kind of rubric--does the tweak I envision fit in the "time I need?" If it doesn't, I'm making a note and passing on it/passing it on. 

I lugged my laptop to the sports bar where Big A was watching the Dallas-Boston NBA game tonight. While there, he tried quite valiantly to tell me all the "subplots" and rivalries beyond the score. His description of someone looking like a cream cheese was very apt--I recognized them as soon as they showed up on screen. Anyway, the Celtics won, everyone was happy, and we're home.

(That's two sports-themed events in the space of a week... who am I these days?!)

Pic: Big A in this year's Father's Day tee. It's Star-Wars themed and has all the kids' names on it. Huck and Max just got a treat from the treat jar. 

reading between the flowers

I think teenager Cass makes a terrific point in The Bee Sting when she is irritated with the ubiquitous nature themes in poetry: “You go to class and discuss famous poems. The poems are full of swans, gorse, blackberries, leopards, elderflowers, mountains, orchards, moonlight, wolves, nightingales, cherry blossoms, bog oak, lily-pads, honeybees. Even the brand-new ones are jam-packed with nature. It’s like the poets are not living in the same world as you. You put up your hand and say isn’t it weird that poets just keep going around noticing nature and not ever noticing that nature is shrinking? To read these poems you would think the world was as full of nature as it ever was even though in the last forty years so many animals and habitats have been wiped out. How come they don’t notice that? How come they don’t notice everything that’s been annihilated? If they’re so into noticing things? I look around and all I see is the world being ruined. If poems were true they’d just be about walking through a giant graveyard or a garbage dump. The only place you find nature is in poems, it’s total bullshit." 

And I think of the message Mohamed Hussein in Gaza put out this morning: "This flower has bloomed next to my tent as if to tell me not to lose hope, that tomorrow the war will end, and everything will become beautiful. Life will surely blossom again."

And I think that's why. That's the answer to Cass. Hope enters our lives and stays as long there is a single bloom.

Pic: These flowers have bloomed next to our house as if to tell me...

it's going down at the (book) club

Pic: Today my bookclub people were so delighted with the verdict finding Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts--JS brought a grocery store cake whose icing read "34 Convictions" and CD had a bottle of wine whose label had been altered to say "34 Crimes."

(We were discussing The Bee Sting--I could have talked about it for another 24 hours. Our next book is Percival Everett's James--the Huck Finn re-vision.)

Bonus: My WTF dream in which I was upset because in addition to my real life kids, I had twins who were killed in a bus accident. I didn't seem to be grieving them, I was upset because (a) I hadn't put their names on the Father's Day T-shirt I had made for A (IRL, I've put Scout's name on it, of course) and (b) I couldn't remember the name of the second twin. In the dream, I went round and round wondering if it was "Collin" or "Mike" or "Asa--" all real life twins I know. I was so relieved to wake up and remember I never did have twins.

another six on Saturday

1) If you're watching Bridgerton Season 3--the person playing Lady Stowell (minor character, she's the one signing to her debutante) is someone I went to school with!

2) Out to dinner with friends yesterday and when I was in the minority on something AI-related, EM announced to the table that she was going to be on my side because she's my "Ride or Die." She beat Big A to it. It was epic.

3) I have no more professional tasks left this year--I've written all the letters of recommendation, completed all the committee work, reviewed all the articles... nothing left to do but stop procrastinating and work on my own damn projects!

4) To which end I joined a writing group this week for accountability and dedicated writing hours. I love that (a) its called "Summer Scrivening" (b) we meet only Tues, Weds, and Thurs--in a way that feels civilized and respectful of summer.

5) Speaking of summer... it's almost here! I prepped everything for Monday's Memorial Day picnic, but I forgot the raspberries for the red, white, and blue cake (I have blueberries and cream). I'm consoling myself that it's probably for the best, as raspberries turn so quickly. 

6) Pic: Huck and Max waking up from their nap. Max's waggety tail wakes up first.

a night different from others: four answers to questions unasked

1) The MSU Gaza solidarity encampment moved indoors a couple of times yesterday because of storms but was back outside today. Morale is high. Lots of arts and crafts and some teach-ins about in-state weapons manufacturers. The university authorities have (wisely? cynically?) allowed the encampment to go on until Monday in the hope that many students will go home after graduation weekend. 

2) On Engie's recommendation, I'm reading Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population and it made me want to reread Amitav Ghosh's The Nutmeg's Curse because of all the references to terraforming, so I am. Both books really pack a punch individually and in tandem. 

3) I've made a couple of shifts with writing projects that have helped. Firstly, instead of thinking I "have to..." I'm framing things as "I get to..." It makes a big difference whether I think "I have to finish my context notes and they're yet another actionable item on my list..." versus "My poems got accepted, I get to finish these context notes, yay!" Secondly, I'm trying to remember editors exist. Instead of obsessing over every possible nuance, I'm just going to turn things in and let the editors let me know if they want me to make changes. (Haven't actually done this yet; famous last words.)

4) Pic: Passover seder at our friends' tonight; Nu was relieved not to be the youngest at the table responsible for asking "the four questions."

Ick and Yay

ICK: Something Engie mentioned in yesterday's comments made me wonder how I know of John Ruskin. It's almost all second-hand (save a few anthologized passages here and there), and from knowing people like William Morris, Tolstoy, and Gandhi revered him. I knew he was radical and sort of a socialist precursor and that he was a friend of the working class because Ruskin College in Oxford offers adult education. (Ruskin was an art prof at Oxford, Ruskin College is not part of the Oxford system, however.) I thought I'd read his Wiki to learn more... there were no big surprises except about his statement, "I like my girls from ten to sixteen" and learning he'd asked women whom he'd met when they were preteens to marry him. What is it with Victorians and the fetishization of prepubescents? That's already ruined Alice (Lewis Carroll) and Little Nell (Dickens) for me. And hurt who knows how many children in real life?

Pic: YAY for yesterday's egg hunt: Huck, Nu, At, and Max. 

I... we all.. missed Scout so much. We were so, so lucky to have him last year.  This was Max's first, and I hide puppy treats in the eggs as well, so he really got into this new game. 

This year the easiest clue rhymed "...arboreal" with "...Scout's memorial." They had a tough time with "...you could"/ "...birthday dogwood" (the dogwood tree my dear friends got me for my birthday). They didn't get it even after I explained it. "DOG WHAT? DOG WOOD?" They kept asking me. How do they not know what a dogwood is? Should I have taught them better? It made me laugh so much because they sounded so clueless! They're so sweet for still being all in about the egg hunt though.  

Poetry Hour: Mosab Abu Toha

I tuned into the Mosab Abu Toha event for an hour or so during a convenient break between classes and meetings. 

It was an amazing outpouring of solidarity and poetry. He read from Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear and talked about the new sounds he could add to his titular poem.

Pic: A friend grabbed a screenshot of me in a tile right next to Toha's. Something to treasure.

visions

Pic: I prepped copies of poems to hand out at the Gaza panel on Monday. 

I felt so rich in poetry after I collated this collection to pass on to the organizers. 

I had visions of myself just standing in the hallway shoving poetry under classroom doors, putting them on bulletin boards,  and throwing fistfuls of paper into the air so it would rain poetry... like Regina George distributing copies from the "Burn Book" in Mean Girls, but more meaningful.

I hope I do a good job at the event on Monday. And I'm excited for Mosab Abu Toha's event on Tuesday--to which I have online tickets.

seeing red

Lysne Beckwith Tait, founder of Helping Women Period, presented to my WGS students today. She also set up a "menstrual products petting zoo" in class for people to check out. As she rightly pointed out, when menstrual cups, discs, and undies are in packaging, it is difficult to figure out if one would be comfortable using them.

I absolutely love the story of the growth of the organization--it started out after a conversation with friends and now influences, advocates, and educates--it was instrumental in repealing our tampon tax last year, for instance. Lysne's book Instigator: Creating Change Without Being the Loudest Voice in the Room comes out later this year, and I can't wait!

Pic: Saying goodbye to Lysne in the parking lot. Of course, the Helping Women Period van is red. Mid-cycle red.

other lives

I've been immersing myself in a ton of fiction lately--anything to take my mind off the news. It has been pretty eclectic. I started the week with a reread of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49--I have a faint memory of reading it for an undergrad American Litt. class. I wonder if I skimmed it, and how many of the references I got back then. It's stuck in my memory as a book with several weird sexual situations. 

I've since moved on to what I took to be a romance set in Havana (free on my Kindle). I thought I'd be irritated with its anti-revolutionary stance since the first chapter was about some Batista cronies fleeing, but it actually goes back and forth in time and among various classes quite well. 

Next up is going to be Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy, which I found at the thrift store for a dollar and forty-nine cents when I went looking for old vases. I've always enjoyed Sittenfeld but recently she mentioned someone I know in her acknowledgments and that has cemented her standing in my reading lists forever.

I'm also watching shows I used to watch in the 90s (Frasier, Felicity); they're kind of calming and help me fall asleep. 

Pic: I was looking forward to taking pictures of the moon this evening, but it's suddenly quite cloudy.

Here's a picture of a squirrel looking straight at me instead. 

"mid"

I like the way the kids are using "mid" to describe things that are stuck in the middle to mediocre range. Here's my mid list for today.

*    Another day of freezing rain and grey skies... but not quite as cold and there was a fair bit of a thaw too.

*    I won't have my car back for five weeks (they have to order a part from Germany)... but they gave me a newer model as a loaner.

*    I headed to the gas station for the first time in years (Bluey is all electric). It felt spend-y to fork over 50$ for gas... but I found a lucky penny.

*    Last semester, I grandly agreed to give a talk in January 2024... and now it IS January 2024 and my talk is on Friday.  Thankfully, I was able to use my writing group time to get some slides done... but it did mean that I didn't get any new writing done.

*    I love, love, love teaching... but I'm on two search committees (SIX campus interviews--four more to go), three committees that meet every week for a total of four hours, on deadline for two career reviews, on deadline for recommendation letters for people's grad school applications, on deadline for rewriting our land acknowledgment, making final arrangements for two different guest speakers to visit campus (PBK and Women's History Month), arranging travel for the student honorary convention, vetting papers and programming the WGS portion of the MASAL conference, CASA report due next week... And the list for the next month goes on and on. Each of these things is important and has its own bulleted to-dos, and by itself, each would be something I enjoy doing. But cumulatively, having them all clustered together like this, feels overwhelming. One day at a time, I guess.

Pic: I cropped out guests' faces since I didn't ask people if I could post. But now the focus is on the happy plates (everyone is in the clean-plate club!) from our dinner party on Monday. There were two writers with new books out at the table (Sophfronia Scott and Jan Shoemaker) and I enjoyed introducing them to each other and felt a little bit like I was hosting a salon. Bonus peek of Nu at extreme right. I'm the black blob next to the blue-purple sweater (Big A) at the head of the table. Huck and Max are underfoot. 

chapter by chapter

At came in to work with me today because they needed to see their old pediatrician, had the lunch I'd packed for them, and then took a nap in my office while I went to class and committee meetings. 

It felt like all the times when I'd bring the kids to work when their school was called off or when they were sick. My office is still filled with so many of the cards and posters they made back then. Their childhood--and my youth--went by so quickly... I miss the little At, the Baby Nu, the young me.

I am sad and worried about these chapter endings and the ones to come. I take faith in that Catherine Newman article I've read a zillion times and know things will be even better. But would I magic myself back to the old days? A hundred times yes. 

But also, is it okay to admit that there's a part of me that is excited for the next chapter? The simple pleasures of writing/walking/seeing friends whenever I want?

Pic: At curled up and fast asleep on my tiny office sofa. 

meandering into meaning

Just finished up a reread of E.M. Forster's A Room with a View--what a lovely novel! I loved it just as hard as I did decades ago. A Room with a View is particularly lovely in the way it describes the Honeychurch family--loving, rambunctious, quirky--it reminded me of the reason I loved Tom Lake recently.

It also brought up a lot of memories about how "a room with a view" was my personal shorthand for an office of my own with a window--because as a graduate student and then as an adjunct I always shared an office with colleagues. And my first solo office was a windowless cell. So when I got to my current office, its sliver of a window was a realization of a long-time dream/hope/yearning; the kind comments on yesterday's post reminded me how much I prize it. (Although the view is mostly of a parking lot, the window is street-facing on one of our main academic buildings, and I leverage it to put up signs about issues that matter to me.)

It also felt particularly cute that yesterday I met a student named Lucy--like the protagonist of A Room with a View--in one of my classes. And then yesterday, out of the blue, the only other student I've ever had named Lucy, wrote to say they now live in Lansing and would like to get together for coffee. I also met someone recently whose name is Adela (a very unusual name and a primary character in another Forster novel)... I'm beginning to feel a bit like I'm being given clues and signs I haven't figured out yet.

Pic: Saving this very British picture for when I need a snortle. It's a mock cover of a children's series I devoured when I was a kid. Here are some of the original covers showing the various adventurous things the "Five" would usually be up to (scroll down).

bright spots

First day of classes. I love the energy. Every term I decide I'm going to be cool about it, but like clockwork I end up loving these people (so much). 

*

I spent 12 hours on campus today, so it's a good thing I was able to decompress in my office (even if only for a handful of minutes at a time taking care of my now very twinge-y back and legs). 

*

Our search committee met a wonderful slate of candidates all of whom could be excellent directors of our writing center (choosing between them is going to be so tough though). 

*

We finally got enough snow for it to stick around and look wintry (I almost wiped out at the exit to work which hadn't been plowed; thank heavens for 4WD). 

*

Pic: I'm so thrilled by the resilience of my office plants who were ignored all winter break but appear to have thrived (one geranium even decided to bloom)!

Slow Learner launch

Today was a long day at work, made a bit longer by checking in with people who are attending the MLA. But I got home at a reasonable hour, and after feeding my pack their dinner, I was so happy and honored to attend the book launch for Jan Shoemaker's new book of essays, Slow Learner. 

First, I picked up L--who had introduced me to Jan--and then we picked up the copies I'd preordered, and found a place to sit. The space was jam-packed and they ended up having to add more seating. Jan, who used to teach English at a local high school, read a pandemic piece titled "Caper." It was characteristically hilarious and suspenseful and I can't wait to read the rest.

The following is from an old essay I found on the internet called "Where the Water Is". It gives some idea of how Jan uses wit in ways that are sharp and searching.

"One of the uncomfortable things about living with a person who suffers from Alzheimer’s is that it makes you confront your own character flaws. Just when you thought it more or less clear from all the times you’ve sent money to public radio and boycotted Wal-Mart that you were the incarnation of Albert Schweitzer, or Gandhi, or both, you find out you’re really just a slightly bitchier version of Martha Stewart. Your well of compassion and patience, which was never very deep to begin with, is now just an empty cistern."

Pic: Jan at the lectern at the Slow Learner launch today.  

1 2 3 1 2 3

As the internet has it, today is 123123 (12/31/23--only in the US with our weird month-before-date practice, but still); pretty cute.

I'm very dissatisfied that I haven't done my weekend chores (caretaking plants, vacuuming) going into the new year, but c'est la vie. Nu came over to gently hug me when I was worrying about this and said: "Don't worry, mama! You'll get it done, you always do." I had thought they were going to offer to help me, (LOL) but this is sweet too. 

Also, health is SUCH a privilege. My standards really dropped yesterday. Although Nu was having a sleepover, I didn't make food, check linens, etc. I couldn't. It helped that the guest was celiac and carries their own food, but still.

At 9:00 pm today, I'm headed off to the NYE write-in with the lovely Pooja Makhijani and crew. My plans are to finish the annual New Year's Day poem and work on a couple of projects. 

There's some lingering and irrational sadness today because of all the strange and unsettling dreams from yesterday. But all told, still a good day. I'm glad to have recovered. Grateful for people who light lamps for me when my light flickers. Grateful for family, friends, kindness, and decency in this hurting world. Oh, how I wish Scout were here with me every day. I'm grateful to Max for making me laugh every day.  I am absolutely stunned by the moments of beauty and grace life continues to bring. I hope all of it and justice too will come to all of us. "Ring out the thousand wars of old / Ring in the thousand years of peace."

Pic: I'm in love with this dead branch absolutely bejeweled with moss (from a soggy walk with Max and Huck).

"praying for peace/living with love"

The world is so beautiful and the world is so terrifying. Over 17,000 people have been killed by bombs and gunfire in the past eight weeks... It's so strange how I still go about as if everything is ok... Although my country vetoed a humanitarian ceasefire yet again. 

I think of the children holding a press conference in English--a language foreign to them--to beg the world not to bomb them. And yet, over 7000 Gazan children have been killed in just these two months; many thousands more are maimed and injured for life. I think in particular about the mother holding her lifeless baby saying she took 580 IVF injections to have him; the tender searchers in the rubble after every airstrike. I think of how many hospitals, schools, and homes have been bombed, the patients, medical staff, students, teachers, and families in them evanesced. No poem can contain my grief. Nothing can calm my disbelief that this is happening so publicly... so blatantly.

Sunny Singh, who has always been so kind to me and my students lost a friend today--he was a fellow teacher of English and a poet. His name was Refaat al-Aareer. In a better world I might have met him some day at a reading or a conference or in someone's home. And he is just one of thousands who is gone suddenly and too soon with their hopes and dreams still pending. This is a poem he wrote last week:

If I must die

you must live to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child,

somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven

in the eye awaiting his

dad who left in a blaze-

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh not even to himself-

sees the kite,

my kite you made,

flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale

_______________

Pic: Baker Woods with RS yesterday. She asked me if it would look bad if she celebrated Hanukkah with all that is going on. I told her we'd be lighting lamps with Nu (Big A's great grandparents were Jewish and there is a family menorah/hanukkiah). I'm glad we have celebrations. I want us to put away our bombs and celebrate life. (I saw the words I used for the title of this post on a church's marquee this morning on my way to work.)